archives

[ February 27, 2006 / bookmark ]

downstream / Cepia Glitch MP3

How glitch went from an experimental manifestation of technological unease to a kind of cozy comfort music is a tale for another day. For now, one can simply download a file like Cepia’s “Hoarse” (MP3), off the forthcoming Idol …

[ February 24, 2006 / bookmark ]

downstream / Musique Concrete Remix MP3s

The long-running, if long quiet, netlabel No Type is back. A quick glance at its archives suggests that the last significant update to the site occurred in July of last year, and the announcement via email this week of new …

[ February 23, 2006 / bookmark ]

downstream / Agriculture I-Hop MP3s

Cut’n'pasted in the studio, and often mistaken for background music when it can play well in the foreground, instrumental hip-hop has much in common with the broader field of ambient/electronica. But there are key differences, and one of them is …

[ February 22, 2006 / bookmark ]

downstream / Madlib I-Hop MP3

Moonlighting as Beat Konducta, the prolific hip-hop producer Madlib has grafted, in both senses of the word, some 35 bite-sized chunks of instrumental hip-hop into Beat Konducta Vol. 1-2: Movie Scenes, due out next month. One entry, “Understanding (Comprehension)” (…

[ February 21, 2006 / bookmark ]

downstream / Blue Gene Tyranny MP3s

The nature of the Internet Archive, at archive.org, is that it’s so big — or, as Monty Python might have had it, so very very big — that one only really knows if one’s seeing, or hearing, something oneself …

[ February 20, 2006 / bookmark ]

downstream / Electro-Acoustic MP3s

Jo Jena’s Rhythm ‘n’ Drones on the test tube netlabel was a standout last summer amid a slew of new freely downloadable music (link), a mix of crafty guitar counterpoint and thick industrial hums. The recent addition of four angular, …

[ February 20, 2006 / bookmark ]

field notes / Philip Glass and the Rise of the Machines

It was billed as “Philip Glass — In Conversation with Robert Osserman,” but as they say in the late-night TV commercials, “Wait, that’s not all!”

Glass was in San Francisco this past weekend with his ensemble for live performances on three …

[ February 20, 2006 / bookmark ]

field notes / Storm the Web

Darren Bergstein, who edits and publishes the print magazine e/i, for which I do a fair amount of writing, and with whom I’ve debated the culture gap between — how best to put this — tactile and virtual publishing, just …

[ February 17, 2006 / bookmark ]

downstream / Willits-Laner MP3

Christopher Willits uses his laptop as a time-shifting effects pedal for his electric guitar. In the past, that guitar has distinguished his solo work (notably the full-length Folding, and the Tea and his tracks on the guitronic E*A*D*G*B*E compilation) as …

[ February 15, 2006 / bookmark ]

downstream / Free Tibet MP3s

No, not Milarepa Free Tibet, but free sounds of Tibetan singing bowls (and balloons and other odd sound sources), as well as resulting remixes. Bit of a scare today when a routine stop by freesound.iua.upf.edu came up with the …