"In terms of variety, in terms of genres and styles and intensities, they're 10 very different artistic statements, all very passionate in their own way," prize founder Steve Jordan said.
I surely do not envy the judges, they've got their work cut out for them.
It's really tough to pick from such a diverse group, but my pick would be Caribou's Andorra.
Apparently the My Bloody Valentine show the other day was pretty good.
I would have brought ear plugs whether they gave them out or not. Not just because I've read about the band's legendary loudness, but with my headphone usage and dutiful concert attendance, oh lordy, I could be deaf by 40.
I also saw a version of this trailer with Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" highly featured, though I can't seem to find it online for some reason. I swear it was real! It was on CNN! Everything they run is real!
From my recent trip to the UK: Here's an interesting art exhibition named after on the classic psychedelic folk album Forever Changes, a classic LA psych/rock/folk album.
An exhibition of new work by the Glasgow-based artist... including a spectacular vinyl floor and several new sculptures.
The Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art is free, just like most of the museums in the city, as they're owned by the public.
That could never happen here, of course. Except when a gallery is re-opened after a renovation. And it'll be packed as hell.
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This tune, probably the most well known on the album, was listed as #436 on Rolling Stone's 500 greatest songs a couple years back. It's a really interesting mix of flavours and genres, it combines all sorts of instrumentation to produce a vibe that is very psychedelic but also very unique.
Don't worry, they're mostly crap records. We checked. No sense in putting that rare Sonics bootleg in there; it won't do any good for the art.
There was at least one Carole King Tapestry album in there, though there's around 200 billion pressings of that pop masterpiece, I suppose it's really not that big of a deal to toss a couple in a piece of abstract art for the good of the cause.
It looks like the My Bloody Valentine show originally scheduled to take place this Thursday at the awful Ricoh Coliseum will now be happening at a far superior venue, Kool Haus.
I kind of threw away the idea of going to see them before, but as that day gets closer I think it would be very hard to pass up that opportunity.
According to this analysis, audiophiles would be better off recording the songs from the videogame than buying the album because the Guitar Hero version has far more dynamic range than the hyper-compressed CD version.
If you're an audio file, you're probably not buying the album in the first place. It's also utterly ironic that a video game is highlighting the band's total irrelevancy, considering the way they infamously railed against new media at the turn of the century.
And no, I'm not bitter because I got caught with a "Master of Puppets" mp3.
Speaking of autotune, the production team went to town with the robotics, making Hetfield sound like Wall-E. Where are the killer riffs? Attitude? Backmasked Satanic messages?
And this video... Yawwwwn. What the fuck is going on here? Have you ever seen a band prove that they are just a fucking shell of the artist you once loved? I would say this is it, but that god damn Mission Impossible song a few years back already took the torch on that one.
I'm not really sure what to make of this piece of garbage.
While it could be seen as a bold move by a major mainstream artist towards minimalist hip hop. One of the maddeningly frustrating things about the hip hop genre is its inability to absorb new trends or musical directions. The music simply does not reward free-thinkers and iconoclasts.
That being said, this music is more like a severe castration of musicality. The nauseating use of auto-tune suggests Kanye is taking a dangerously stupefying trend and exacerbating it to its unwanted conclusion.
I'm still hoping that this is all some elaborate ruse on his part, that he's testing the waters before putting out the "real" first single. We shall see... his three-album streak of brilliance just might be over.
I decided to take a listen to Little Wayne's new offering, hoping to find foolish musical fodder to tear to shreds. Too bad my plan didn't work, as there are a few decent, catchy tunes on the disc. A few tracks produced by Kanye West are interesting to listen to, so is the duet with Babyface (yes, that Babyface) titled "Comfortable"; it's a reasonably well-executed response track to Beyonce's "Irreplaceable".
The guy is quite the entertainer, able to stir up controversy by calling out Al Sharpton in his lyrics while walking around in his underwear. His performance at the MTV VMA's this year was nothing short of hilarious... he's mastered the art of the cartoonish rapper that was pioneered by his rap-tastic forefathers, Snoop Dogg and Lil Jon.
That whole thing about him selling a million albums the first week the album was out also sounds like a bit of a hoax. In this day and age, are people really going to run out to the record store to pick up this guy's plastic? I would think that all the suburban white kids would already have downloaded the thing weeks in advance!
Also: I'd give the album a less glowing review if I didn't think that the Lil Wayne boogeyman might be hiding in my closet.
With more than 40 tons of lighting and stage rigging, hundreds of LED lights, a daunting array of professional and custom-built machinery running both archaic and standard commercial VJ software, three different video systems and an array of sensors and cameras, the tour is nothing if not a lavish display of techno wizardry.
This is an awesome article detailing the technical aspects of the most jaw-dropping live show I've ever seen. I've heard people say that KISS shows were the best rock shows they've ever seen... I think I've had my KISS moment after this particular show, all it was missing was the 3-D glasses.
None of the videos available online even come close to doing this show justice. If you get a chance to see them before this tour is up, do it. Seriously. Awesome.
You might remember this tune from about 1000000 cartoons you may have seen in your life.
That's an interesting article, though I think that they give him a bit too much credit for 'setting the template for ambient music', which was done years earlier by Erik Satie. In any case, it's a good read and good to see the guy getting some much needed recognition, especially considering everyone is familiar with at least one of his compositions, whether they realize who wrote it or not.
Oh boy, am I ever so excited to head to the ballot box next month. My favourite part about these overwrought wastes of hard working people's time and money is the campaign ads. They've long been a form of the most cunning wit and vile slander, but what's really of interest to me are the hidden messages contained within the half-minute nuggets false pretense.
Listen to the music in the following clip:
The gentle piano suggests that kind ol' grandpa that Harper seriously wishes he was, but can't quite pull off with the frightening zombie look that no amount of cosmetic band-aids can cure.
However, listen closer and you will notice the tune sounds quite a bit like Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me".
Sounds like a desperate man.
In fact, it's the cry of a man who desperately needs to be loved -
Don't discard me just because you think I mean you harm But these cuts I have they need love to help them heal
More on this when the Liberals get enough cash together to hire an ad agency and buy some air time. My guess is that Dion's ads will feature music that's vaguely reminiscent of Jackson's "Heal the World".
Cut Copy rolls into Toronto next Friday the 19th, and I can't help but wonder why the fuck they even bother making music videos?
What a piece of garbage. Seriously boys, stop making videos and spend the dough on gear. This looks like a bad Steve Perry video from the 80s.
I know I linked to it, but seriously don't waste your time unless you're a student looking for an example of what not to do in a video. It makes no sense and doesn't jive with the feel of the song.
Star: Oasis brothers assaulted on stage at Virgin fest Bravo, unnamed soldier, for doing the work that I wouldn't pay the admission price or suffer through brutal event pricing and elbows in my goddamn face all day to accomplish.
The study of more than 36,000 people from six different countries found that people had more in common with fans of their favourite music in other countries than they had with fellow citizens who preferred different styles of music.
North describes it as a new kind of tribalism, based on musical taste.
My favourite line from the whole thing:
indie music lovers lack both self-esteem and the work ethic.
That's right, anyone who listens to Broken Social Scene is a stoned slacker! Get a job, hippie! And cut your hair!
Of course, this all means I'll be committing myself to Arkham tomorrow morning on account of the blatant schizophrenia I suffer through given my wide ranging and eclectic musical taste(s).
At times, the 1980s were fucking awful. Today I listened to a podcast from NPR's All Songs Considered and they discussed this very question.
The panel's discussion of the cheeziness of Hall & Oates made me think of how "You Make My Dreams Come True" was used in Adam Sandler's The Wedding Singer. That soundtrack featured a wide range of 80s' smashes and trashes. Somehow, songs that are truly terrible when they're released accumulate stock in irony as the years go by, becoming a sort of touchstone that people can rally around, all in agreement of the vile nature of the song yet somehow, someway are able to enjoy it.
How else do you account for the popularity of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'"? No matter which way you slice it, that song is a total piece of garbage. The worst part is about it is the way it gets stuck in your head - "...belieeeeeiiiiivinn' Whoaaa--ooooo--ahhhhhhhhhh!!"
More key points in the podcast included mention of the cornerstone/bane of the 1980s studio, Yamaha's DX7 synthesizer. Still in use today, though used much more sparingly and as a "creative decision". Apparently even hardware can accumulate irony stock.
