John Oswald Interview

Fairly interesting interview with John Oswald on UBU.

Includes useful snippets of sound.

Here you go!

I Hear A New World

Concept album written and recorded by Joe Meek in 1959, partially released in 1960 and fully released in 1991.
The album is known for its space-inspired production techniques which were ahead of their time.

It obviously sounds dated now, but in quite a cool and interesting way.

Bits of it are pretty insane, as was Joe Meek himself.

Drumming

Steve Reich's piece Drumming from the early 70s.

Really like parts 2 and 4, but it must have been even more amazing at the time!

Found out from Alex Ross that Steve Reich also just won the Pulitzer Prize!

Pinball

Amazing music and animation!

What "DozerBoy25" from Youtube has to say about it:

"A throwback to the days of Sesame Street... this is a compilation of different pinball skits all rolled in to one. Check it out for those of you who remember!!

Performed by The Pointer Sisters. Pinball Number Count was originally produced in 1972 by Imagination, Inc. in San Francisco, California for the Children's Television Workshop. It made its debut on Sesame Street in 1976."

Loverboy

Kinda scary video but I quite like this song.

Good bassline!

Ujino and the Rotators

Japanese artist turns objects into mechanical instruments.

Free show at the Hayward gallery for another week or so.

Youtube channel

Website

Glazin

Actually quite like this music video.

Not sure about the song though.

It's "Glazin" by Black Dice.

Probably done by band member/artist Bjorn Copeland who I like a lot.

Bitte This Bitte That

I've mainly been listening to the leak of "Bitte Orca" by Dirty Projectors, which is very good and something that I'll definitely buy when it comes out, but I don't feel comfortable uploading that!

Frankenstein!!

Here's that HK Gruber thing that I mentioned in the last post.

"Frankenstein!!" is a piece written in the 70s for "chansonnier" and orchestra.

This 2008 performance is from Vienna and stars Gruber himself, presumably as the chansonnier.

I can't actually understand what he's saying but I like it a lot.

Download

Classical in the Air

I found a good blog which uploads many classical music concerts from all around the world called Classical in the Air.

He's a member of a specific torrent site that uploads lots of live music and is kind enough to make good selections from that and bring them to the blogging world.

Quite a lot is uploaded and he has quite a broad taste in classical music, which is good if you're doing that type of thing.

I've so far been listening to the HK Gruber from this post a lot and just got the Frank Zappa from here.

It's a nice way of encountering different composers through looking for other ones as a lot of the live performances are well curated.

The downside is that many of the posts are three part Rapidshare files which then turn out to be FLAC.

Here is a good converter though called Switch, which makes things a bit easier.

Chromeo Remix

Vampire Weekend's "The Kids Don't Stand A Chance" gets "the Chromeo treatment".

It's pretty stupid but nice and fun.

Makes the chorus sound a lot like The Police.

If you want to hear that then click here.

Micachu

I've heard the name thrown around a lot but I only just properly listened to her album yesterday and actually it's very good!

Quite abrasive but done really well. 

The album was produced by Matthew Herbert so that's probably why a lot of the weirder sounds are pulled off so well.

It's nice to hear something original come out of London anyway.

And it's worth noting that she's also a 21 year old composition student at Guildhall.

Jerzy Kucia

The Next Justice

Probably not, but Peter Bjorn and John's new single is very D.A.N.C.E.

The album has a much more bleak "hip-hop" sound, which is pretty cool but the songs aren't that great.

That's kinda the PBJ way though.

Here's the amusing video:

Here's the actual track:

"Nothing to Worry About"

Here's another track off the album with single potential, but relatively extreme lyrics:

"Lay it Down"

The Flying Lizards

Here are some late 70s/early 80s singles from a British experimental group called The Flying Lizards.

I found them on an old Mutant Sounds "Whacked Out Singles" post.

"Whacked Out" is a pretty good description actually, but they're still quite accessible.

Download