Recommended reading, news, and so forth elsewhere:
The developers of the iOS app Sonorasaurus weigh in on Apple’s restrictions on developers. Let’s just say the situation is a tad more complicated than Steve Jobs suggested in his presentation today (via engadget.com: “10:14AM What about the ones we don’t approve? Well why is that? What are the reasons? 1: the app doesn’t do what you said it would. 2: It uses private APIs… and if they change the app will break… and the third reason? They crash.”) Here’s Sonorasaurus’ take, from sonorasaurus.com:
Why can’t I use the music from the iPod section? Why do I have to add files and maintain a separate library for Sonorasaurus?
The answer to this is basically that Apple does now want you to be able to use your iPod library. Applications like Sonorasaurus, and many other music apps, are restricted from using the songs in the iPod library.
We have done everything we can in terms of compromises by including iTunes File sharing and an HTTP Server, but until Apple lifts the iPod library restriction we are not able to give you the most convenient option possible.
Why the restriction is in place continues to baffle us. We have sat and tried to think of pros and cons to give the issue a sense of purpose and balance, but so far nothing seems to go in the CONS column.
News courtesy of Roddy Schrock of eyebeam.org in Manhattan: some codes for discounts on the institution’s summer classes (info at
eyebeam.org). “SUMMER” will get you $100 off; for two people taking a class together, “COLLAB” will reduce the cost to $300/person; and for three people taking a class together, use “GROUPIE” to get the cost to $250. Classes include Kaho Abe‘s alternative controls for game play.
SoundWalk2010 will be held in Long Beach, California, on October 9 of this year. Deadline for submissions is Sunday, August 1. More info at soundwalk.org.
Alan Lockett‘s write-up at furthernoise.org of the Moritz von Oswald Trio draws from the Disquiet.com “MP3 Discussion Group” of the group’s recent work (see disquiet.com).
The website rebakery.com is an ongoing “recursive remix project” (along the lines of the “remix tree” at freesound.org).
The website ohio.com notes a great New York Times correction: “A dance review on Friday … misidentified the author of the text to which David Neumann‘s Tough the Tough (redux) is set. The author is Will Eno — not the musician Brian Eno.”
Martyn Ware (of Human League and Heaven 17) is a partner in sonicid.com, along with Noel Franus and Dan Kirby. Their mission? “[T]o demystify sonic branding and identity and give it the same credence as other design disciplines.”
The mix of found noises and hip-hop-derived beats that comprise “Saloon Shwagger” render the track, by 22tape (aka Jared Dunne), absolutely irresistible. It’s from his MosaicChangeTone EP, available for free download. “Shwagger” is all looping horns and these splayed beats that break apart in time for sauntering piano, brief call-outs, and stereoscopic droning. On Soundcloud.com, where the track is hosted, he labels the music “vinylistic downbeat hip/glitch hop,” which isn’t far off — the “vinylistic” suggests music that’s indebted to early, LP-based hip-hop, even if it’s constructed on computer (hence the qualifying “-istic” suffix); the “downbeat” speaks to its tempo, which is slow as can be without losing sight of its downbeat; the “hip/” clarifies that the “glitch” is not of the abstract variety from whence the word comes; and the “hop” seals the deal, brings it all home:
The title character in Four Tet‘s song “Angel Echoes” is the female voice, a snippet of which ekes out one sentence, more like a half-mumbled clause, that slowly repeats with what amounts to ethereal insistence for the track’s full length. It echoes, as the title suggests, with slight variants as time passes, each appearance sliding in behind the main voice like so many cards in a deck, always the same voice, less a chorus than a figment in a hall of mirrors. The track opened the recent Four Tet album, which arrived with the blissfully naive title There Is Love in You, and it manages to approximate with cloudy gestures what the musician (born Kieran Hebden) more frequently has accomplished with dastardly percussion: a shifting field that has a club-friendly downbeat yet endlessly flirts with abstraction.