Introducing: Monotonix

Monotonix are a punk trio from Tel Aviv, featuring guitar (Yonatan), drums (Ran) and vocals (Ami). They formed in November 2005, set up on the floor of the club with the audience, and the party began. But the party usually got too wild, the power got cut, the cops were called and Monotonix were banned from playing again almost everywhere. Before long, they were looking for good places to play outside of Israel — and they were delighted to find that there are more rock and roll party places outside of Israel than inside!

SOURCES: DragCity, Myspace.com/monotonix

Damon Albarn's Monkey Opera premieres in London

Damon Albarn's operatic adaptation of Journey To The West, which had its premier at the Manchester International Festival last summer, will make its London debut at the Royal Opera House. Monkey: Journey to the West will open in Covent Garden in July as part of a celebration of the Beijing Olympics. Chen Shi-Zheng directed and adapted......
[READ MORE]

SOURCE: Londonist

Composites

Patrick Winfield shoots with many different cameras, but likes his Polaroid best. “It’s that creaminess,” he says, “that seductive, almost nostalgic look that you get from it.” He also enjoys the instant gratification of the film, being able to hold it in his hand and work with it as soon as it’s shot. “It’s more like drawing in a sense. You can see the line or the finished piece instantly, it’s very nice to work that way,” Winfield says. [READ MORE]

SOURCE: PatrickWinfield.com

What is crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing is when people gather via the Internet to create something and share in the profit — often without ever meeting each other in person. The products of these collaborations are referred to as crowdsourced. [READ MORE]

SOURCE: CambrianHouse

Twitter: A community in 140 characters

This morning Jeff Pulver woke up with the melody of “Happiness Is... from “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown” in his head. So he decided to ask his friends on Twitter to finish the sentence that started with “Happiness Is...”
Enjoy!

SOURCE: Twitter

"The Originator" dies of heart failure

Bo Diddley (December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008), born Ellas Otha Bates^[1], aka "The Originator", was an influential American rock and roll singer, songwriter, and guitarist. Often cited as a key figure in the transition from blues to rock and roll, he introduced more insistent, driving rhythms and a hard-edged guitar sound. He was also known for his characteristic rectangular guitar.

SOURCE: CNN, Wikipedia

Wildbirds & Peacedrums, yeah!

SOURCE: TheLeafLabel

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

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

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

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

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."

SOURCE: Kayo Dot, Wikipedia

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

Documentally speaking…

SOURCE: Documentally

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