News, Quick Links, Good Reads: (1) Art by Orb/KLF member James Cauty was removed by municipal workers in Brighton, England, when it was mistaken for graffiti (nytimes.com, ink-d.co.uk). … (2) The Guardian on noise abatement and urban soundscapes: “Visual aesthetics are a major part of the planning system with strong guidelines determining what is acceptable or unacceptable. A corresponding aesthetics of sound is missing” (guardian.co.uk). … (3) The exhibit until yesterday by Oliver Payne and Nick Relph at Gavin Brown‘s Enterprise gallery in Manhattan took “its rhythm from an abstraction that suggests a striding man, derived from the logo of the ambient musician Aphex Twin” (nytimes.com, gavinbrown.biz). … (4) A recent Kronos Quartet performance included “music by Amon Tobin, instrumental sound created by Trimpin and visual effects by Laurence Neff” (nytimes.com). … (5) The International Music Score Library Project (imslp.org) has a growing number of post-1945 scores, including work by Henry Cowell and Terry Riley (there’s a PDF of Riley’s In C).
(6) Rob Walker interviews Sam Valenti IV, head of the Ghostly International record label (Matthew Dear, Christopher Willits, Dabrye): “I’m aware most people don’t think about record labels, but it’s a road map for the people who do, and is important for those who want to dig deeper” (murketing.com). … (7) There’s a new social network for musicians — not myspace.com, which certainly helps promote music of its members, but kompoz.com, which is for musicians seeking feedback and collaborators. Judging by the relative size of genre tags, it’s currently weighted toward rock and “alternative,” but there are several “techno” subgenres, including “techno, ambient.” There’s also a healthy “easy listening” section. … (8) Those little Takara Tomy plastic turtles apparently have more moves than ever (engadget.com). … (9) The creator of the Wii loop machine, Yann Seznec, has posted a PDF of a paper he delivered at the recent Audio Mostly conference in Germany (theamazingrolo.net, audiomostly.com). … (10) I picked up a few Nintendo DS video games at a mall store recently. The clerk asked me what my favorites are, and I rattled off a few, closing on Electroplankton, which he’d never heard of and which the store had, apparently, never sold a copy of. … (11) “Who flipped it better?” The soul-sides.com hip-hop blog compares two uses of the same sample. Nice idea (soul-sides.com). … (12) Sadly, I only discovered the spliffhuxtable.com MP3 blog of hip-hop instrumentals after it went on hiatus, but I hope it’ll be live again soon. …
(13) Liz McLean Knight (aka Quantazelle) interviews Gustavo Bravetti about DJing and playing music with alternate interfaces, such as interactive gloves (createdigitalmusic.com). … (14) The skreemr.com search site locates free gray-market and otherwise free MP3s on the web. (Thanks, Evan.) … (15) It just occurred to me how much the cover of the collection Audiotion : A Sonic Tribute to Takashi Miike (featuring KK Null, Shinjuku Thief and Jazkamer; below, right) looks like a hyperreal detail from the cover of King Crimson‘s In the Court of the Crimson King (below, left). …
Let’s Get Video: (1) An Aphex Twin song was used as the backing track for this parodic Saturday Night Live skit (youtube.com). … (2) Gavin Bryars reportedly composed the music for this little art film shot by Stephen Dwoskin (ubu.com). … (3) Footage from the documentary Here Is What Is about producer Daniel Lanois, opening with him talking with frequent collaborator Brian Eno (u2france.com). … (4) Musical crutches (createdigitalmusic.com). … (5) Music critic Anthony Tommasini gives a video tutorial on 12-tone music (nytimes.com, via therestisnoise.com).
Score Keeper: (1) Clint Eastwood has occasionally written the scores for his own films, such as Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby. James Strouse‘s forthcoming Grace Is Gone appears to be the first film Eastwood has scored that he hasn’t directed himself. Unfortunately, his contribution comes at the cost of a previous Grace Is Gone score by Max Richter (nypost.com). … (2) Though Eddie Vedder‘s songs for Sean Penn‘s film Into the Wild are getting a lot of attention, the score is by Michael Brook. … (3) Raz Mesinai has reportedly scored the documentary Burning the Future: Coal in America. … (4) Clint Mansell‘s old clintatthecontrols.com website now redirects to the site of his band Pop Will Eat Itself (pweination.co.uk). Mansell makes his web-home at clintmansell.com.
R.I.P.: (1) Sri Chinmoy, spiritual leader, guru and peace advocate who, among other things, is said to have provided the Mahavishnu Orchestra with its name, died on October 11 (indiatimes.com, nytimes.com). … (2) Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge of Psychic TV passed away on October 9 (genesisp-orridge.com). … (3) Marcel Marceau, who made the world laugh in silence, passed away on September 22 (nytimes.com). … (4) Record producer Rob Deacon of Trance Europe Express fame died on September 8 (guardian.co.uk). … (5) My favorite print music magazine of the last few years, Scratch, has folded (scratchmagazine.com). If a magazine can’t survive with 50 Cent and Timbaland on the cover together (as Scratch had for its final issue, November/December 2007), then the producer-as-musician category still has a long way to go. Scratch was the only major print hip-hop magazine to focus on producers rather than rappers.