playtherecords

80's Sax Solos

2009-06-30T13:03:00.000-07:00

There was a time in the 80's when every rock song had to have an epic, wailing saxophone solo in it. Obviously this was a terrible, terrible thing for popular music, but until now as far is I know no one had conducted a musical analysis of the phenomenon.

This site devoted 80's sax solos fills that void. It features audio clips of just the sax solo parts of many 80's pop songs, analyzing the specific sucktastic qualities (such as "vibrato overuse", "middle school level", "blaring", or "solo to fade out") of each one. I know this sounds like a bad idea, but it's actually a lot of fun to listen to these solos divorced from their original context. Or maybe I just want you to have the solo from Wham!'s Careless Whisper stuck in your head too...

Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough

2009-06-25T23:38:00.000-07:00

RIP Jack-o

segways + fire + Philip Glass = ...

2009-06-24T15:31:00.001-07:00

I don't know quite what to do with this, but they certainly spent a lot of money and time doing it.

Podcast: Mudd Up! with DJ/Rupture

2009-06-23T08:31:00.000-07:00

Mudd Up! is a weekly radio show broadcast Mondays from 7pm - 8pm on WFMU in New York. Hosted by DJ /rupture, Mudd Up! features an expansive, eclectic, globe-spanning sound:

New bass and beats plus live guests (musicians, DJs, poets) and an ear for the global south. Cumbia. Dubstep. Gangsta synthetics. Sound-art. Maghrebi. International exclusives.

Also recommended is /rupture's associated Mudd Up! blog.

I've been a fan of DJ /rupture since I stumbled upon his epic, genre-spanning mix gold teeth thief many years ago, so it's a real treat to get a weekly dose of his brand of sonic creativity.

Weapon X - Time for a Change

2009-06-19T22:19:00.000-07:00

Iranian-American rapper Weapon X put out a new song about the events in Iran. Watch the video:

Death to Autotune

2009-06-18T15:35:00.000-07:00

Good, it's not just grumpy music bloggers like me who are sick to death of all the Autotune (AKA "The Cher Effect") RnB and Hop Hop tracks flooding the airwaves. Jay-Z enters the fray with a diss track:

Perhaps the best use of Autotune:

Producers: Autotune was old after Cher abused it in 1998, it's time to move on.

Waveformless

2009-06-17T13:02:00.000-07:00

I recently came across this awesome music-gadget blog called Waveformless, you should check it out:

Waveformless

Freeform discussion of electronic music and the techniques and gear used in making it

If pictures like the above make you go all soft inside, you will definitely love it.

We're always looking for more like minded bloggers, if you have any suggestions please leave a comment here.

The Kids call it Fidget House, I Call it Hardcore

2009-06-16T14:29:00.001-07:00

I recently noticed that Hardcore has made its latest comeback, which seems to happen every 2 years in some form. This time it's called Fidget House, but I'll just call it Hardcore:

It comes complete with Amen Breaks, stabs, hoovers and over the top vocal samples.

Just to reinforce the cycle of Hardcore that I mentioned... Jake pointed me to this article from Simon Reynolds about the "Hardcore Continuum":

The Wire 300: Simon Reynolds on the Hardcore Continuum: Introduction

And here's some classic hardcore:

(thanks to waveformless for the downlow)

FEEL THE POWER OF THE DRONE MACHINE

2009-06-09T12:02:00.000-07:00

DRONE MACHINE DOES NOT CARE HOW MUCH YOUR EARS BLEED

(from engadget)

Lady Sovereign has the cure

2009-05-21T20:38:00.000-07:00

Just try not to get this song stuck in your head:

She definitely took a page from M.I.A.'s playbook and ran with it. Vocally, musically... right down to the clothes. She mixes Grime with a high energy cover of The Cure's "Close To Me". If you ask me, it works. I've been singing it in my head since Tina and I caught it in passing on The Current a few weeks ago.

Here she goes a little more traditional Grime:

2am iPod Sequencers

2009-05-21T20:29:00.000-07:00

Widget and Hans stayed up til 2am hacking up some iPod sequencers at NYC Resistor. We are using pdPod on iPodLinux. You can hack your own iPods too, as part of the re-ware project, we are trying to make it easy: http://re-ware.org

Thanks to Bre Pettis for his camera work.

Two-Stroke Rhythm Section Looks Exhausting*

2009-05-11T13:33:00.000-07:00

This reminds me of a wonderful duet for trombone and tractor I once heard at the SF Contemporary Music Players, I wish I could remember who that composer was.

Tractor Used As Drums For Sweet Georgia Brown

(thanks steve)

* apologies for the pun, I couldn't resist.

MUTEMATHs Spotlight

2009-05-06T13:47:00.000-07:00

Really great idea for a video:

Where The Hackers Get Together

2009-04-10T11:38:00.000-07:00

PRI's The Takeaway did a nice short video spot on the mixed media hacker collective phenomenon, specifically about NYC Resistor:
"Hacker spaces" are giving geek tinkerers a place to gather, create and collaborate

(My brother is the guy with the bags full of hacked iPods)

More Stockhausen

2009-03-25T14:46:00.000-07:00

More delicious, free STOCKHAUSEN for you:

Karlheinz STOCKHAUSEN Cosmic Pulses- Gérard Pape : projection du son 2009-01-10

(thanks The Rambler)

Kutiman-Thru-you - 01 - Mother of All Funk Chords

2009-03-12T16:16:00.001-07:00

This guy created an song entirely by stitching together unrelated youtube video clips of individual people playing single instruments.

This is not only a great idea, but the song is actually really damned good. Consider me completely blown away speechless.

(As of now, this has 79,547 views... it will be fun to watch over the next week to see how much this video explodes...)

Interview with Hans Christoph Steiner, ReWare

2009-03-11T16:14:00.000-07:00

An interview with PTR contributor HCS:

Attila reconsidered

2009-02-13T21:32:00.000-08:00

RAWR! We are ***ATTILA***!!!

Monday marked my latest (and first for 2009) music acquisition, the suppressed, self-titled and only album by the band Attila from 1970. Most people have no idea what makes the lone Attila album so interesting, so I will clue you in: the notorious personnel. On drums: Jon Small, formerly of the Hassles. On everything else: William Martin Joel, also of the Hassles and prefers to be called "Billy". Yep, Attila was Billy Joel's "heavy metal" band.

First, some perspective: by "heavy metal" I don't mean the opening act for Metallica, Slayer or Napalm Death. In 1970, the heaviest sounds around (that most people were aware of anyway) were coming from Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Jimi Hendrix. Attila was the natural progression from the garage and psychedelic output of the Hassles and many bands were moving into a much heavier direction. Joel pretty much does the work of three musicians with the kind of distorted Hammond sound he developed for the album. The discordant grinding sound at the beginning of "California Flash" is particularly good and the wash of static that slams into "Rollin' Home" is pretty cool, too. Small pulls off a few nice tempo switch-ups throughout the album, so his contributions should not be overlooked. The lyrics are pretty silly throughout, but I don't care; they are on par with a lot of other stuff being released at the time. Vocal delivery varies throughout, but I have to admit to this sick thrill I get hearing Billy Joel scream out "Jesus Christ!" (the exclamation, not the prayer) in "Wonder Woman". Really, though, look at the cover of this album and tell me that Joel and Small were out to a create a deadly serious piece of work. The whole thing is meant to be fun and relatively mindless, a point some people completely miss.

Critics hate this album. They hate it passionately and with a vengeance. Get a load of this review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine. I think much of this has to do with some kind of embarrassment that the "Piano Man" not behaving like the sensitive singer-songwriter we've come to know and love. Critics seem to be allergic to the different and uncharacteristic of the artist. Diehard Billy Joel fans probably don't care for this kind of music, but for somebody who is indifferent to most of his output since 1971, listening to Attila gives me a new and more open-minded perspective of the man. (Oddly enough, allmusic.com stamped the album an "AMG Pick".)

Billy Joel HATES this album. He calls it "psychedelic bullshit" and has suppressed every track save an edit of "Amplifier Fire" that appears on the Billy Joel box set. Trying to dismiss the album, to me, feels like denying you pegged your pants in the 1980's and burning any pictures of yourself wearing eighties clothes, or refusing to admit that you said some dumb things to strangers when you were a little kid. Like physical growth, musical development is a series of phases and not all of them give us warm, fuzzy memories.

My take? If you want to find this album guilty of something, then press inconsistency charges. When I see a title like "Amplifier Fire Pt. 1: Godzilla" I expect a heavy slab of monster-grade hard rock, not a Jimmy Smith inspired instrumental. And yet "Amplifier Fire Pt. 2: March of the Huns" is exactly what "Godzilla" was not. It's either Jimmy Smith style music ("Brain Invasion") or hard-hitting drums and keys ("Rollin' Home", "Wonder Woman") and the two styles lead a somewhat uncomfortable coexistence.

I classify Attila with three other unusual listening experiences: (1) the self-titled album by Armageddon, which was ex-Yardbird Keith Relf's final and heaviest hurrah, (2) Sam Gopal's Dream, featuring Lemmy Kilmister, later just "Lemmy" of Motorhead, and any of the singles by Ronnie and the Prophets, the band fronted by Ronald Padovana, aka Ronnie James Dio, of Rainbow-Sabbath-Dio fame. I guess I'm a sucker for those "before/after they were famous" moments that put the entire musical output of an artist in a whole new light.

Classic Hits by Microsoft Songsmith

2009-01-20T13:33:00.000-08:00

Microsoft has a piece of software that creates (horrible) backing tracks to whatever you sing into it... when you feed it the vocal tracks of classic songs, hilarity ensues:

"Roxanne" by The Police

"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" by The Beatles

"What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye

"Just What I Needed" by The Cars

Mr. Rogers Break Dances

2008-12-26T23:16:00.001-08:00

...but just a little:

Super Tesla Bro's

2008-12-05T19:46:00.001-08:00

Super Tesla Bro's

(thanks venter)

Check out the Reware Project

2008-12-01T17:15:00.000-08:00

The Reware Project just put out a great video showing what they do:

Reware Your PDA

Rachmaninov had big Hands

2008-11-25T17:41:00.001-08:00

Real Life Meat Puppets

2008-10-28T09:03:00.001-07:00

electric stimulus to face -test3 ( Daito Manabe )

(from engadget)

****ing Like Rabbits

2008-10-09T14:36:00.000-07:00

Dancing... what did you think the **** was standing in for?

Best video i've seen in ages.

(Grr, the only embeddable version i can find is censored, here is a link to the uncensored version)