The Wired Jester » Music

There is good in everything

Alex — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:06:04 +0000

All you need to do is slow it down, as this Justin Bieber track, running 800% slower than it should do, shows:

Related, the way the Inception soundtrack works:

What to call these? Audio timelapses?

New music for May

Alex — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:56:59 +0000

Three albums I have added to the wishlist, all of which will be out soon:

The Hold Steady, Heaven is Whenever – out May 3rd, you can stream it all from The Guardian.
The National, High Violet – out May 11th, you can download the song Bloodbuzz Ohio from their site.
Band of Horses, Infinite Arms – out May 17th, you can download the song Factory from their site.

All release dates are for the UK version.

I Heard It Through The Grapevine, a capella

Alex — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:28:10 +0000

When the music moves you, you can see it, and you can definitely see it here. Quiet for the first 20 seconds, absolutely burning by 0:50.

Previous a capella 60s pop: The Beach Boys

Desert Island Discs podcast

Alex — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:38:03 +0000

Radio 4′s Desert Island Discs is now available as a podcast¹. The show is shorter than the radio version as it only includes samples of the chosen songs. Still, it’s often the case that the interview is as interesting as the music so this isn’t too much of a hardship. In fact, in the case of the inaugural podcast, the interview is actually much more interesting than the music.

The guest is Morrissey, who’s introduced by host KirstyYoung as “the outsider’s outsider”, beloved because of his “harsh romanticism.” It’s not a tough set of questions, but all the better for it – relaxed, a little indulgent, but an excellent back-and-forth. I particularly liked Morrissey’s description of his younger self as “constantly waiting for a bus that never came.” Musically, it’s less engaging, being a bunch of 70s art-punk stuff with doomy gothicky overtones:

1) New York Dolls – (There’s Gonna Be Be A) Showdown
2) Marianne Faithful – Come and Stay with Me
3) Ramones – Loudmouth
4) Velvet Underground – The Black Angel’s Death Song
5) Klaus Nomi – Der Nussbaum
6) Nico – I’m Not Saying
7) Iggy and the Stooges – Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell
8 ) Mott the Hoople – Sea Diver

I’ve made a Spotify playlist of Morrissey’s picks; it’s missing numbers 5 and 6.

¹ The page design is excellent, making it obvious you can subscribe to the program using a wide variety of software. The BBC even includes a link to a Zune subscription, despite the fact it’s only on sale in the USA.

Added to the wishlist: The Cello Suites

Alex — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:53:00 +0000

[Book] Via the indomitable Tyler Cowen’s short but sweet Books of the Year post:

“A very good gift book is Eric Siblin’s new The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece. It signals the sophistication of both the giver and receiver and yet it is short and entertaining enough to actually read. Package it with the recent Queyras recording of the Suites, if need be.”

Now that is how you write a book recommendation. I would like to know more about classical music. And of course, one is not averse to signalling one’s own sophistication.

The Rolling Stones and The Brussels Affair

Alex — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:36:48 +0000

The Rolling Stones have released several live albums, and the recording from their peak period, 1970′s Get Yer Ya-Yas Out!, has recently undergone a deluxe re-release. In the original review for Rolling Stone, Lester Bangs said that “I have no doubt that it’s the best rock concert ever put on record.” He might have been right at the time, but just a few years later, the Stones went one better with the release now known as The Brussels Affair. For some reason, it’s only available as a bootleg, but it’s absolutely worth downloading.

It was recorded in 1973, following Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St, so the setlist is terrific. You get Brown Sugar, Angie, Honky Tonk Woman, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Street Fighting Man and Tumbling Dice. It’s the version of You Can’t Always Get What You Want which stands out though; it’s 10 minutes long, so, yes, it’s indulgent, but then melancholy is. It features guitar-work that puts the studio version in the shade, backing the verses with sad-but-bright descending notes. If you’re a guitarist, or just a fan of rock guitar playing, the whole gig is packed with highlights, and listening to it, I can almost convince myself that that evening Keith Richards and Mick Taylor played practically every sound you’d ever want to hear an electric guitar make.

The Brussels Affair is convincingly involving and completely silly. It’s all summed up in the second track, Happy, which Jagger introduces with a ludicrous lawks-a-lummee cocker-nee accent:

Mick: Keith’s gonna sing a song for yer called ‘Appy…

Keith then proceeds to start singing with a voice that sounds like the Cookie Monster singing the blues having gargled TCP, while the music rolls along brilliantly; despite seeming to contain a hundred guitar solos and campfire chorsuses, the song is over in at just over three minutes.

Afterwards Jagger says, sounding camp and drunk:

“Merci Keef, that was a good one. Woo hoo. Shake-amonay. God a mama.”

It’s rock n’ roll.

Pet Sounds, a capella

Alex — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:44:41 +0000

It’s a beautiful sunny morning in London, so this seems like just the right thing to listen to: Pet Sounds, a capella. Despite the fact that it’s a YouTube link, sound quality is terrific. This is probably the first time I’ve really understood just how spine-tingling what music writers refer to as a singer’s ‘phrasing’ can be - check out God Only Knows. Particularly stunning is when the harmonies simply ends, and one of the group says in a very normal voice, ‘how was that?’

Apparently, the original source is a box set called The Pet Sounds Sessions.

Wikipedia’s entry on a capella singing is interesting, relating ”a cappella music originally was, and still often is, used in religious music” and that the use of instruments was a matter of debate in the early Christian church.

Virtual reality, then and now

Alex — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:25:36 +0000

In the 1980s and 1990s, the term ‘virtual reality’ was understood to mean the creation of reality inside the computer – and thus we would need to experience it using complex imaging and interaction systems (3D googles, cursors mapped to the movement of a glove etc.) The implication behind this was the reality itself would be untouched. The real world would simply be a home for the VR equipment: Star Trek imagines it holodeck as a big empty room, for instance. Moreover, since VR ran inside the computer, it only worked when you turned it on – and in movies such as The Lawnmower Man, the nightmare scenario was not being able to get out.

Few people imaginged that when VR came to pass, it would actually involve computers altering the way we acted in reality. The video below shows 100 dancers in central London recreating the dance from Beyonce’s music video for her song ‘Single Ladies’ (which Peter Sagal called ‘a wonderful, brilliantly performed dance number set to an irresistably catchy pop tune’). As a piece of PR in reality, it holds very little value – few people would have the chance to actually see it, as it the dancers and organisers take pains for it to appear to happen spontaneously on the street. It’s over in three minutes, and few of the people who happened to be walking by would actually be able to make sense of it because it only works if you’ve seen the original music video. Indeed, the behaviour of the dancers only really works if it’s watched as a video, passed around virally on the web. It is, essentially, VR: actions in reality that are targeted at, and only make sense when experienced virtually.

What’s next for The Beatles catalogue

Alex — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 23:05:11 +0000

I’ve written before about why it’s important for The Beatles to sort out making their music available digitally, but it seems like what’s next is a videogame from the the makers of Rock Band and… some new CDs. The original albums, plus a new version of Past Masters will be remastered and released on the same day as the new game (9th September). According to the press release:

“Each of the CDs is packaged with replicated original UK album art, including expanded booklets containing original and newly written liner notes and rare photos. For a limited period, each CD will also be embedded with a brief documentary film about the album… The albums have been re-mastered by a dedicated team of engineers at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios in London over a four year period utilising state of the art recording technology alongside vintage studio equipment, carefully maintaining the authenticity and integrity of the original analogue recordings. The result of this painstaking process is the highest fidelity the catalogue has seen since its original release.”

If they’re telling the truth about a four year long process, then that means it predates Love. As noted previously, it sounded, in terms of raw audio, fantastic – and it therefore seems a sensible guess that Love is essentially an early preview of these upcoming remasters. Can’t wait.

Come Saturday by The Pains of Being At Heart

Alex — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:31:20 +0000

Was the last song stuck in my head. Yes, it’s a terrible name for a band. Although they had no problem grabbing the domain name. And it’s a great song, with that whole 80s chiming guitar thing going on, and floaty-light vocals. They’re offering it as a free download, which is just as well as the album isn’t on Spotify.

There’s a few bands around at the moment with a similar, shimmery sound – this eMusic article does a good job of neatly anthologising them, tracing their roots back to NME’s C86 tape, once dubbed ‘the most indie thing that ever existed.’

Other bands joining The Pains of Being Pure At Heart in excavating C86 are Vivian Girls and Crystal Stilts. In a sign of how times have changed, all have been championed not by the NME, but by Pitchfork.