Friday, May 30, 2008

Wildbirds & Peacedrums, yeah!



SOURCE: TheLeafLabel

Thursday, May 22, 2008

YouTube = citizen journalism

Elbowing aside the media elite, YouTube wants to grab a seat at the anchor desk with a new channel dubbed "Citizen News." Harnessing the advantages of the burgeoning citizen journalism movement, YouTube aims to aggregate and capitalize on newsworthy content produced by an increasingly well-equipped user base. An official YouTube channel will give the world's John and Jane Does a bigger spotlight with which to illuminate stories not picked up by mainstream media, but big spotlights are hot; will YouTube be burned by linking its brand with citizen news?
SOURCE: Ars Technica

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

From 'Tube to 'Tomb…

YouTomb is a research project by MIT Free Culture that tracks videos taken down from YouTube for alleged copyright violation.
SOURCE: YouTomb

Monday, May 19, 2008

Osho speaks volumes

Conditioning
Many of us are like this lion — the image we have of ourselves comes not from our own direct experience but from the opinions of others. A "personality" imposed from the outside replaces the individuality that could have grown from within. We become just another sheep in the herd, unable to move freely and unconscious of our own true identity.

It's time to take a look at your own reflection in the pond, and make a move to break out of whatever you have been conditioned by others to believe about yourself. Dance, run, jog, do gibberish - whatever is needed to wake up the sleeping lion within.
SOURCE: OshoZenTarot

This just in from PitchforkTV…


Jose Gonzalez on a Brooklyn rooftop,
playing songs from In Our Nature.

SOURCE: PitchforkTV

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Russian Circles



SOURCE: Russian Circles

Robert Rauschenberg: 1925-2008

Robert Rauschenberg
(born Milton Ernst Rauschenberg; October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008)
was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art.

Rauschenberg is perhaps most famous for his "Combines" of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. While the Combines are both painting and sculpture, Rauschenberg has also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. Rauschenberg had a tendency to pick up the trash that interested him on the streets of New York City and bringing it back to his studio to use it in this works. He claimed he "wanted something other than what I could make myself and I wanted to use the surprise and the collectiveness and the generosity of finding surprises. And if it wasn't a surprise at first, by the time I got through with it, it was. So the object itself was changed by its context and therefore it became a new thing."



Robert Rauschenberg
Bed
1955
mixed mediums, ca. 75 x 32 x 8 in.
Museum of Modern Art

SOURCE: Wikipedia, ArtNet

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Kayo Dot is…

…an American avant garde group that was formed in 2003 by Toby Driver. They released their debut album Choirs of the Eye on John Zorn's Tzadik Records label that year.
The music of Kayo Dot bridges several genres, from heavy metal to classical music. Their songs involve complex instrumentation (composed by singer and frontman Driver). They are substantially longer than typical rock songs, often ranging from 8 to 15 minutes in length.

Tzadik's descriptive label on that album reads: "Kayo Dot powerfully integrates elements of modern classical composition with the layers of guitars and vocals more common to rock and metal. With a compositional map that is strict in form yet malleable in execution, Kayo Dot uses a vast array of instrumentation to create an exciting convergence of violence and serenity."

New Muxtape mix!

Future sounds from London


Daniel Burka - FOWD London 2008 from Future of Web Design on Vimeo.

SOURCE: DanielBurka

Black Postcards

A wickedly honest and unsparing account of a journey through the music world-the artistry and the hustle, the effortless success and the high living as well as the bitter pills and self-inflicted wounds-by a brilliant and fearless participant-observer, Black Postcards is absurdly rich in rewards for anyone who was ever in a band or just took an interest in indie music over the past twenty years-a sort of Kitchen Confidential written by a different species of front man. Black Postcards also captures what has happened, for good and ill, to the entire ecosystem of popular music over this time of radical change, a time when categories like "indie" and "alternative" started to morph beyond all recognition. Rolling Stone called Dean Wareham's band Luna "the greatest band you've never heard of " and named its album Penthouse one of its 100 greatest rock albums of our time. Black Postcards is also about what it's like to have to pretend to be civil as you answer the same helpful question over and over again, "Why aren't you guys more famous?" Why indeed?
SOURCE: PenguinPress

My Morning Jacket is grand


SOURCE: BrooklynVegan

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Bloody well told!


When people think of "Activism", most envision some form of awareness program, protest or public disobedience. While these forms of Activism are functional and important, they often only operate on a limited level, usually failing to address root causes. In fact, our whole society tends to address any and all social problems from a superficial standpoint.

SOURCE: zeitgeistmovie.com

In The Year of the Pig

Simultaneously nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary and the subject of bomb threats and innumerable editorial attacks, In the Year of the Pig became a rallying cry for the growing anti-Vietnam War movement and a sensation whenever and wherever it screened. In the Year of the Pig remains not only a great document of the era but also a sad and still relevant meditation on the hubris of power.

Print courtesy of the UCLA Film and Television Archive.
SOURCE: Film Society of Lincoln Center

Portishead: 3rd times' the charm

What Barrow and Gibbons have cooked up now ain’t no party, ain’t no disco, ain’t no fooling around.

SOURCE: PASTE