At work, a group of us are using Music League to create weekly, collaborative playlists, built around various themes. The most recent theme was titled “We’ve Since Broken Up, But I Still Love This Song,” and my submission for it was Billy Bragg’s “The Only One.”
I really do enjoy seeing experiments on the web. With the advent of social media, these types of projects are nice reminders that there can still be wonder online. That we can still explore and marvel at possibilities and combinations that don’t have anything to do with commerce. They feel like reminders not of the page or the site being viewed, but of the creators and the viewers. The people behind all those many screens.
It’s pretentious at times. But I still have a fond memory of it. I don’t know whether this qualifies as an art film or not, but it’s definitely not your typical film.
The thing that I remember most fondly is that there were a few moments – a few select segments/scenes… that caught me off guard, and made me rethink how I listened to the world. One of those moments from the film was called “Truck Stop”:
Happened across this video describing the happy accident of gated reverb, and how this particular sound shaped the 1980’s (and seems to be experiencing a bit of a comeback).
“… Pump is out there living his best life, as evidenced in his song ‘Drug Addicts,’ where he raps, ‘I’m a drug addict, I’m richer than my professor (man, fuck school).’
If you are an old person like me — I am a full decade older than Pump so he sort of treats me like a matronly aunt bothering him with questions about his grades — your first question about Pump is likely: Where is your mother?“
I spent a lot of time surfing the Internet yesterday, as a kind of relaxing day. It’s been some time since I’ve done this, as the house work has kept us pretty occupied. I remember first seeing a visualization of Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” a long while ago, back in 2005. This was before YouTube was around, so I’m not sure…
Created by musicians Ólafur Arnalds & Halldór Eldjárn, Stratus is a piano installation project that allows people from all over the world to influence the music produced.
I found the bass line to be an incredibly curious and unusual opener. And as Marling’s vocals came in… the two seemed to do this really interesting thing where they were in sync and at odds with one another, at the same time.
I’m introducing things in a kind of non-linear way here. Mostly because I want you to experience the same process I experienced, earlier today. So first up, I’d say watch the video below. It’ll give you a bit of context about the song, and after it dives into the specifics… give a pause. And then keep on reading.
It’s a rainy, gloomy kind of day today. Thunderstorms this morning, with a lot of clouds and fog this afternoon. Paris 12 seems like an appropriate soundtrack for the day.
Earlier this morning, thanks to a post by Merlin Mann, I found a whole set of new music to explore. The whole MetaFilter thread is worth checking out, as there are various links to some really great stuff.
I found it kind of nice to remember some of these older tunes, but she clearly didn’t have the same reaction. The interesting thing with the Suzuki Method is that it really emphasizes memorization – so much so that even now, many decades later, I still can remember most of these songs. Even though I may not have actually touched a violin in years.
Musician Martin Molin (a member of the band Wintergatan) created a fantastic device that’s powered by 2000 marbles. The device handles percussion, xylophone, and bass, all the while recycling a torrent of marbles that makes the machine seem less like an instrument… and more like an entity with its own circulation.
I joined on August 2, 2011. The first thing I listened to was “Call of the Playground” by Shudder to Think. The song I played the most was Ordinary, by Copeland (a surprise). My most-played album was The Weatherman, by Gregory Alan Isakov (not a surprise).
When this happened, I was thinking that I wish I had a t-shirt. So I decided to just write in on a whim to ask. Lo and behold, I got a reply pretty quickly – and got sent a shirt in the mail several days later.