Gears of Mad World

Gotta love the 80's for bringing the world dorky little keyboard horn licks in the middle of serious gothy anthems (listen around 2:29 into the song):

Tears For Fears - Mad World



A lot of you probably know this song from the (also great) remake from the Donnie Darko soundtrack:



Interestingly, this remake was recently used to advertise the wicked awesome game Gears of War, which just seemed like an odd mix... hardcore shoot-em-up game using a brooding emo remake of a big-hair-80's proto-goth-pop tune:



Turns out, this caused the tune too spike to #1 on iTunes.

Yay 80's.

Song Lyrics as Expressed by a Finite State Machine

This is really neat:


Essentially Kunal Anand is applying Computer Science algorithm analysis to pop songs lyrical structure to see if interesting patterns emerge. If nothing else they turn out to be visually aesthetic.

Glancing alternative song structures with Graphviz

Here is the song structure - based on previous/next words of some of my favorite songs.

...

I am interested in comparing some of these alternative song diagrams to more radio/poppy ones. I might even try looking at all the tracks of an album too.

Note, I am leaving all the analysis to your interpretation. After all, music is an art. I am merely curious if it is possible to visualize a possible "hit?"

From Graphviz's site:

Graph visualization is a way of representing structural information as diagrams of abstract graphs and networks. Automatic graph drawing has many important applications in software engineering, database and web design, networking, and in visual interfaces for many other domains.

Time for the GraphViz guys to add "pop song analysis" to their list.

keeping your culture alive

So I have been minorly obsessed with a theme that I started by finding a Georgian song online. I would like to place that song in context, which is what makes it so exciting to me, beyond being a music that makes me want to sing along and dance. That song, Pherxuli, is a traditional Georgian song, and that version of it was done by a band, Zumba, that seems to be popular in Georgia now. Zumba is taking the musical traditions of their culture, and expanding on them, keeping that culture alive. I originally found this song on this random site, which has a bunch of Georgian music for download, ranging from cheesy Eurotrash to traditional songs:

http://www.irakli.ru/english/songs.html

I have recently come across some other examples of this. I saw Luminescent Orchestrii (http://lumii.org/music.html ) and they are another example of this. The two main composers, Rima Fand and Sxip, bring their musical traditions to this band, Rima from the Balkans, and Sxip from Appalachia. I also recently dug up Bucovina Club, an album by Shantel, a German music producer of Roma decent. In this album, he has remixed some music of some Roma bands.

Which leads me to my musical traditions. My great-grandmother and all of her sisters lived their whole lives within walking distance of each other in central Ohio. Every Saturday, all of their families would get to together, and they would play music and dance all night. They all grew up doing this, my grandfather grew up doing this, my mother also participated as a child. But the fifties set in, and everything that wasn't modern was deemed worthless, and this tradition died. And on a similar note, when I play umpapa in Austria, people my age think I am insane that I would actually enjoy that music, let alone even listen to it. For what are we giving up our musical traditions? That's the worst of it, since most likely its for heavily marketed crap.

So now the whole reason for this thread: I would love to hear about other examples of musical traditions that are being embraced by younger generations.

Some Free Digital Dub Goodness For You

I found this really nice little (little is literal here, it's 15 minutes long) dub podcast:

Digital dub for my doggers

(Don't let the hideous picture keep you away)

The first track of which led me to this nice dub influenced glitch haus netlabel release:



"Levemente" by Sumergido

"Lisboa (Glander Remix)" in particular walks that line between Dub, House and IDM/Ambient so gracefully its drives me nuts. Slick deep atmosphers, undeniably groovey deep backbeat, trance inducing melodies. A+.

Should keep your friday afternoon chill...

It's too hot! In the hot tub! OW!!

I see your hilarious early Eddie Murphy clip and raise you one:

Celebrity Hot Tub

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Lasse Gjertsen Plays the Video Edit

You owe it to yourself to watch through to at least the middle when he brings on the split screen:



Nicely done.

Aries Spears Does Really Fricken Good Rap Star Impressions

Amazing, his Jay Z is scary.

Looks like he's doing it improv style too:

Home Brew + Found Sound = Rad Music

Finally my two loves come together: home brewing and experimental found-sound music:

Hear Beer - a sound art piece by Jeremy Avnet and Soren Goodman

Hear Beer is meant to be listened to in the gallery environment. But, who cares. Download it here and play it in your house or bring it to your favorite gallery and look at someone elses art while listening to it.

Sample, mash-up, or otherwise creatively transform this work for commercial or noncommercial purposes. See the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License for more info.

Video: Lacquer "Behind" (by Michel Gondry)

Damn, this has me itching for a road trip:



Download the video yourself.

Info on the band Lacquer.