Music

Over on Current TV, there is a great pod about the Handmade Music Nights held at Etsy Labs every month. The events invite people to come play and show off their handmade music instruments and meet other like-minded tinkerers. The video highlights some of the more creative instruments from the event.

Legendary techno producer and dj Richie Hawtin has a habit of merging concepts and new technology to push the evolution of music making and performing further into the future. Hawtin established the +8 record label back in the late 80’s which was largely responsible for defining the sound of techno music for two decades to come. His recording work under the moniker of Plastikman explored the minimal end of techno long before it became the most fashionable sound of the genre. Hawtin also has a reputation for crafting some of the most intensive sound and visual events to showcase his djing skills and the stable of artists who belong to the label. Hawtin threw a few select parties earlier in the decade where he used a custom designed sound system that matched the acoustics of the space. It was nicknamed ‘the system’ and delivered sound that basically rearranged your internal organs. For those events Hawtin designed the dj booth to combine audio, video, and lighting control together in one area in order to create a more theatrical experience.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Hawtin’s other hugely influential record label M_nus. To celebrate, he’s planning a select number of events called Contakt around the globe that build on the past and also look to introduce something from the future. It’s called ‘The Cube’.

What is apparent is that the Cube is a highly advanced communications device that responds positively to the presence of humans and interacts accordingly. By acting as a central hub it seems to allow us to direct our thoughts, collect and share ideas, transcend language and interconnect musically in ways previously not possible. We’re still in the early stages of research but it seems our destinies have somehow become interlinked.

M_nus have just launched a beautifully designed site for Contakt. The first event is scheduled for May 25th in Detroit, Michigan.

Often, we find ourselves turning to YouTube when we’re actually just looking to hear a particular band or song we’re fiending for. That’s why we’re excited about the “Last.fm +YouTube = music tv goodness” mashup, a simple site that uses your Last.fm music picks (or another users’ you like) and finds videos from YouTube that match them. After entering in a Last.fm username (or even simpler, the name of an artist you want to hear), the site will start streaming YouTube videos of similar artists. The interface is clean and easy to use, with the name of the artist and clip title scrolling across the top of the viewer and a simple controller that lets users easily fast forward through clips.

Last.fm + YouTube = music tv goodness

[via Lifehacker]

One of our favorite musical artists, British Sri Lankan M.I.A., has just released her own clothing line (also called M.I.A.). The singer/DJ/musician is known for wearing bold, bright-colored outfits, and her eponymous clothing line will of course reflect her own personal style. She explains:

With my stuff, because everything’s really bright, if you lose it or someone steals it, you can see it from miles away and you can be like, ‘Oy! Give me my shirt back!’

via NME

Other Music is one of New York’s most respected music boutiques. To try to add some musical inspiration to our content, we’ve decided to publish their music chart each week. Here’s their latest album chart with links to OM’s store when they stock it (or Amazon’s store when they don’t) .

1. Portishead: Third (Mercury)
2. Santogold: s/t (Downtown)
3. Various Artists: Nigeria Rock Special (Soundway)
4. Cilibrinas Do Eden: s/t (No Smoke)
5. Boris: Smile (Southern Lord)
6. Various Artists: African Scream Contest (Analog Africa)
7. M83: Saturdays = Youth (Mute)
8. Jamie Lidell: Jim (Warp)
9. Cut Copy: Ghost Colours (Modular)
10. Kid Creole: Going Places (Strut)

Other Music

Internet radio station ByteFM started earlier this year in Germany. Based in an old Bunker in Hamburg, ByteFM surprised us with its completely ad-free program. The project is currently funded by donations and their main sponsor Panasonic, who are getting endorsement on ByteFM’s webpage and their online radio player.

ByteFM aims to provide a high quality musical broadcast, put together and moderated by professional journalists - not hobbyists. Instead of the same old hit-rotation or classic tunes, their station stands offers valuable interviews and background information on music and its makers, small venues and huge clubs within Germany and elsewhere.

ByteFM

Maybe we all got a little too excited by the success of it all… when Radiohead launched their album In Rainbows with a pay-what-you-want online promotion and album length video on Current TV, they were heralded as music-industry saviors - guys who got the web and the changing attitude towards content. An interview with Thom Yorke in the Hollywood Reporter may suggest that the band may not be the crusaders we were all hoping for as they won’t repeat the pay-what-you-want promotion again. The THR says:

“I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation,” Yorke said of the band’s downloading policy for the album “In Rainbows.”

“It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do,” he said. “I don’t think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time.”

Radiohead’s decision to allow fans to pay into the online equivalent of an honesty box for the album came shortly after the band walked away from troubled record label EMI, sparking a slew of comment about the future direction of the music industry and the dwindling revenue pot from CD sales.

Thom Yorke: Radiohead’s stunt was ‘one-off’

This great photo taken by Dave Bullock for Wired of a gig at Coachella got us thinking. Quite a party - but when you look deeper, there appears to be a lot of people taking photos in the audience. It’s not hard to be reminded of camera-wielding tourists who arrive at an attraction and spend more time looking through a lens at the attraction than looking at it directly and taking it.

In similar ways, these music fans seem to be recording a memory that they never really experience. They’re too busy taking that shot to actually be there in the moment.

And the reason? Like the tourist, they want to share. But today they share that memory instantly via email and MMS to their friends on Facebook or readers of their blog. They share so that other people can see the photo of a moment that they actually didn’t see. And the motivation? For social status: to bolster the image their friends and network have of them.

So in summary: these folks are taking photos of moments in order to share those moments with others in order to gain status for having experienced a moment they never really had.

Our friends at Coolhunting have an excellent interview with Ghostly’s Sam Valenti, where he describes the label’s recent collaboration with Adult Swim: a 19-song compilation available for free download. And, in a playful example of brand synergy, a few Ghostly mascots — BoyCatBird — make their animated debut on Adult Swim. Following is an excerpt of the interview, available in its entirety here:

CH: As an indie label owner, you’ve obviously taken some unique steps towards enhancing your brand. Ghostly is one of the only companies taking a lifestyle approach to the music label. What guides your choices in brand enhancements such as the new BoyCatBird/Adult Swim project?

SV4: We get in the sandbox with other creative companies whenever it makes sense. We obviously love Adult Swim as do a lot of our fans, so it was a no-brainer. We were allowed a lot of creative latitude to represent the brand both musically and visually.

On the visual tip, it made sense that our mascots, BoyCatBird, would be front and center. They were created by our good friend, Detroit-artist Michael Segal and have been a visual part of the label since our first release “Hands Up For Detroit” by Matthew Dear and it was a chance to give them the spotlight.

Don’t miss the Osbourne cut, “Wait a Minute,” which features a hand-built vocoder, ripped from the Frampton Comes Alive! playbook.

Coolhunting: Ghostly Swim: Interview with Sam Valenti