Rowland S. Howard, 1959-2009

Musician Rowland S. Howard — the guitarist in Nick Cave's cult punk-era bands The Boys Next Door and The Birthday Party - died yesterday at the Austin Hospital from liver cancer. He was 50.

SOURCE: The Age

What are “Props”?

What exactly is a ‘blip’?
A blip is a combination of 2 things:
1) a song
2) a short message that accompanies it.
The way you create a blip is to first search for a song that you want to hear (or a song that you want your listeners to hear), then add a short message (under 150 characters), finally you submit it. Submitting a blip is also referred to as “blipping”, so from here on out, when you read “he blipped my favorite track” it means “he submitted a blip that had my favorite song attached.”

— Blip.fm

Fever Ray's Karin Dreijer Anderssen

Ahead of her performance as Fever Ray at the Loop festival in a few weeks time, Drowned In Sound's Alexander Tudor got on the phone with Karin Dreijer Anderssen about various things including the commercialization of music, identity and an upcoming Opera about Darwin?!

[READ MORE]

Triangle Walks from Fever Ray on Vimeo.

SOURCE: DrownedInSound.com

Introducing: The Florida Noise Report

"I remember playing with the band Numb Right Thumb in the 90's, and the early part of this century. I think of the band as dipping into space rock, fake jazz, soundtracky sort of music, but we also were called noise by many amateur musicologists (most of my friends) , and some music critics."
"I read something about the artist Robert Rauschenberg. A critic said something about him not being a real artist. He responded by saying something like, I don't care what you call it, I'm going to keep doing it."
— Pat Greene

SOURCE: The Florida Noise Report

"The finest soundtrack for slam dancing"

Future of the Left
Travels With Myself and Another
[4AD; 2009]

Travels With Myself and Another might be the finest soundtrack for slam dancing, fast driving, heavy drinking, or whatever poor decision you make this year. But in addition finding new ways to snarl in their music, the lyrics go beyond mere cleverness into sharp, thoughtful introspection, making Travels a document of a creatively restless band out to prove something to themselves, and not just the fans they’ve picked up along the way. [READ MORE]

SOURCE: Pitchfork

Burning pianos. Lightbulbs. Sand.

Diego Stocco - The Burning Piano from Diego Stocco on Vimeo.

We’re a visually driven culture, relying heavily on what we see to understand the world. Maybe what we should be doing instead is listening. And I don't mean hearing. I hear just fine, but I'm not listening. Maybe I’m overstimulated and easily distracted—or maybe I never learned how to listen in kindergarten.

SOURCE: SoulPancake

“Sensory rejuvenation chamber.”

The Collateral Damage of Old School Advertising

“Sensory rejuvenation chamber?” What kind of bullshit is that? What copywriting genius came up with that gem? Which agency suit presented it, and which style-less, Bananarama-loving client approved it? Has this been a car for old farts all along? I feel used. And not in a good way.
[READ MORE]

SOURCE: ScalableIntimacy.com (via @miketrap)

Let's pretend to do it in the road

"There’s something to be said for keeping it spontaneous" — Chris Trew, performer

It began, as so many perverted things do, with the Japanese. Alamo Drafthouse owner Tim League came across a viral video from the game show Japanorama of some men making sweet love to invisible partners. Inspiration took hold, and shortly thereafter Air Sex—Air Guitar’s dirty, smutty cousin—was born.
[READ MORE]

SOURCE: TheOnion

PHOTO: © Copyright 2009 by Alamo Drafthouse/All rights reserved.

Damn the Rubber Bandit man!

"The Rubber Bandit: the rubber band gun for the lady or gentleman that knows better than to grow up. Handcrafted out of curly maple and bloodwood, The Rubber Bandit comes complete with interchangeable barrels, allowing the bearer to fine tune the amount of damage he or she inflicts."
SOURCE: AndyMangold.com (via @mattmansfield)

OMG! It's @ohmgee

SOURCE: @ohmgee

Serendipity, indeed

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble’s sturdy family business.

by Sasha Frere-Jones

The music that Hypnotic Brass Ensemble plays might best be described as highly composed instrumental hip-hop. If it is jazz, it’s closer in spirit to jazz from a hundred years ago: accomplished and energetic music parceled-out in short songs designed for dancing. It stays in key for long stretches, and moves in easy-to-follow periods. In a typical Hypnotic song, the shifts in key and the emergence of themes happen against a sound of massed horn parts that provide a sense of solidity. The music stays rooted to the cycle of the beat and the riff, and the players don’t leave the center behind to leap around as they might in hard bop or free jazz. Unlike the musicians in the avant-garde community that Hypnotic grew up in, these players have no interest in dissonance or “out” passages of squeaking and skronking. They keep their compositions lean and their harmonies broad and varied.
[READ MORE]

SOURCE: SFJ/The New Yorker

If yr in town and around

SOURCE: B&C LLC

Jay Bennett, Ex-Member of Wilco,
Dies at 45

By BEN SISARIO

Jay Bennett, a singer and songwriter who was a former member of the rock band Wilco, died on Sunday in Urbana, Ill. He was 45 and lived in Urbana.
[READ MORE]

SOURCE: NYT.com

Mountains' blissful shoegaze drone

"…Choral sometimes feels staid and a little postcard-y: a pretty gesture that fails to eclipse the experience of actually going somewhere. That's OK: The best parts of Choral — the title track, "Melodica", most of "Add Infinity"— suggest that the band's moniker refers less to the vistas their music may or may not evoke and instead to the shifting strata of sound they create. On Choral, Mountains arrange those layers in ways just subtle and precise enough to shift your headspace."


SOURCE: Pitchfork

Spontaneous show at an IKEA

On February 15th Orange County rocker Will Crum and his band were able to sneak their music equipment (amps, drums, etc.) into a IKEA and performed a 3 song set in one of the kitchen sets before being shut down.



SOURCE: LaughingSquid

Did you feel that?

"We are not here to save the world, we are here to serve an emerging paradigm... [Places and spaces of possibility], they are kind of like midwives, places that are holding the template of what's trying to emerge,... so there can be a birth of the next stage of human evolution."
— Rev. Michael Beckwith, "Serving the Emerging Paradigm" (video)

SOURCE: Crossroad Dispatches

Langerado Festival Cancelled

Looks like the recession just took its first major music festival victim. The 2009 Langerado Music Festival, which was to take place March 6-8 at Miami, Florida's Bicentennial Park, has been cancelled due to poor ticket sales.

SOURCE: Pitchfork

This band will melt yr brain

Franchise is a 5-piece rock band that has just released their finest record! The band (which includes Dan: Vocals, "Gitfiddling pedal operator"; Matt: Guitars and pedals; Keri: Bass and pedals; Waylon: Drums) is described in their own words:

Influences: Anyone who worships the sun, or any other noise source.
Sounds like: Progressive cultural train wreck.
Record label: No Money Music

REVIEW:
This record, simply titled '3,' is all the best music Sonic Youth, The Butthole Surfers, didn't have the talent to make. The multi-layered, at times dense, record rewards on repeat listens. Let it envelope you with feedback, noises, screams. What makes the record work is a very strong musiclal backbone. The band may also draw comparisons to older material from Mercury Rev or The Flamings Lips, but they soar past those references and deliver something unique and stunning in the process.

RATING: 5 STARS
LINK: Franchise on myspace

Introducing…

From Mejo: Digi Graf with a wii remote

SOURCE: Mejo

Documentally: What's The Future Of Social Media?

SOURCE: Documentally

Free! Legal! Download every Beatles song

Oyvind sez, "Some weeks ago, NRK — Norwegian Broadcasting — signed a deal with music rights holder organisation TONO in Norway. The new deal gives NRK right to publish podcasts of all previously broadcasted radio- and tv-programs that contains less then 70% music. Podcast containing music may be up for four weeks, while our podcast without music stay up on our server forever. One result of this deal, is that we now can publish 'Vår daglige Beatles' - 'Our Daily Beatles' in English — as a podcast. In this series from 2001, journalists Finn Tokvam og Bård Ose tells the story of every single Beatles tracks ever made, chronologically. Each episode contains a 3 minute story about each track (sadly for our international visitors - in Norwegian) and the actual Beatles tune. This is — as far as we know — the first time you can download the Beatles’ music legally. Neither iTunes nor Amazon have The Beatles in their music stores." Last ned alt av “The Beatles” - og historien om hver enkelt låt (Thanks, Oyvind!)

SOURCE: BoingBoing