archives

[ May 31, 2006 / bookmark ]

field notes / Laptop Forum

What do we talk about when we talk about “laptop music”? Over at newmusicbox.org, there is now an open thread for discussion of “laptop music,” spun off from the article I published there last week Wednesday: “Serial Port: …

[ May 30, 2006 / bookmark ]

downstream / Centerless Remix MP3s

While on the subject of remixes: there’s nothing with quite the free feeling as a series of remixes of something entirely unfamiliar. Listening to the wide variety of treatments of Matthew Rozeik’s “Oh Lord Please Give Me Another Brain,” a …

[ May 29, 2006 / bookmark ]

downstream / Bush of Scanner Remix MP3

There’s something understandably derivative about the remix. It is, by definition, a secondary object. Even though the word “mix” would be sufficiently descriptive, the “re” just, well, reinforces this sense that it’s a subsidiary development. At a communal-remix website like …

[ May 28, 2006 / bookmark ]

field notes / Kitundu’s Laptop

A recent performance by Kronos Quartet played a central role in a story I published last week, at newmusicbox.org, on the history of “laptop music.” Three laptops were involved in the performance: one played by a member of Matmos …

[ May 25, 2006 / bookmark ]

downstream / Bush of Ghosts Remix MP3s

The Bush of Ghosts remix site seems to be working better than it had recently been. You can, on the Listen page, pick the Filter format, choose from a range of subjective-aesthetic continuums, and then map the songs as they …

[ May 25, 2006 / bookmark ]

field notes / Laptop Music, A Brief History

I was invited by newmusicbox.org to write an overview of “laptop music.” My intial instinct was that this would be less an introduction than a requiem. Isn’t the phrase “laptop music” sorta “over”? Well, as it turns out, no. …

[ May 24, 2006 / bookmark ]

downstream / Bush of Ghosts Remix MP3

As of this writing, some 31,586 songs have reportedly been downloaded from the public-domain website dedicated to the re-release of David Byrne and Brian Eno’s 1981 album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. Two Ghosts songs, their 20 to …