The 'Mastered For iTunes' Deception
The Rapper Headphone Conspiracy
Allow me to propose a scenario to you. You purchase an iPod and begin listening to music through the earphones that come as standard with the product. Now that the minimalist white design isn't such a fashion statement anymore, it's lifted the veil on a search for audio quality, which is still driven by looks; but under a different rule to before: bigger is better.
The Black Keys - El Camino Review
The American blues duo hit us with their seventh studio album in the end of 2011, and they hit us hard. From the moment you press play a feistiness is unleashed, with the well known 'Lonely Boy', until the final tracks, like 'Nova Baby' you just wish you could sing a long live to, when you just can't help but press repeat.
WOWee One Product Range Hands-On
Where pushing the boundaries in sound quality often comes at the cost of increasing size and reduced portability, and where reigning in the bulk of the product design allows the quality of the sound to suffer, portable speakers in their very nature are, quite frankly, more often than not atrocious excuses for speaker systems. With little to no low bass range to sort our Mcfly-friendly tunes from our dubstep, dance and drum and bass while on the go, the inherent design issues associated with portable speakers has seemingly not escaped the team at WOWee One.
The Maccabees - Given To The Wild Review
Third time lucky? Or do bad things really come in threes?
The Maccabees have only recently come into my preferred bands just before their third album release, 'Given To The Wild', and before this album my opinion of them was a very indie sound: twangy guitars, fast drum beats, unique voice, the usual.
SBTRKT - Hold On (SISI BAKBAK RMX)
The rumours of Thom Yorke being the musical mind behind SISI BAKBAK are in high debate over the recent remix of SBTRKT's 'Hold On' on Youtube.
The musical style is very much similar to Yorke's style: sections of repetition and polyphony, which is Radiohead all over. The speculation of this artist playing Seattle's Key Arena can only be linked with Radiohead (playing April 9th).
Rdio Redesigned To Compete With Spotify
Rdio has took to the stage at South by Southwest to announce an update to their website and desktop apps. The new look features revamped sharing options to compete with Spotify's robust community features and a remade interface.
Editorial: Plan B Is Only Half Right. Everybody Is Alienated
So Plan B (Ben Drew) has returned to his roots in rap and underground electronic music with his new release 'ill Manors,' and was interviewed recently by MistaJam on BBC Radio 1Xtra about some of the topics surrounding rioters' motives across Britain last year, and the stereotypical nature of the press when it comes to the working class. Alongside this he also released a statement on his website.
An Interview With Frank Turner
For a large section of artists currently residing at the head of the UK music charts, mainstream popularity and chart success might well be the result of riding the success of a single hit record, perhaps the fame associated with a certain audition-based reality TV show or, different still, riding the wave of current musical tastes and trends. But for English folk-punk singer-songwriter Frank Turner, it means something else entirely.
'Portrait of the Ghost Drummer.' Music turned into visual art
We look at a drummer, and see a more audible form of art. Sure the person operating the percussion instrument is present, in a storm of drum sticks and sweat; but it's the rythmic intonations, and the harder emphasis on key strikes of the drums that grab the attention.
That has now come to an end, as Polish artist Obaide developed a new form of digital art, which tracks the sticks of a drummer in motion and creates an intriguing line pattern, showing the aftermath of just how much movement the tempo keeping-percussionist actually makes.
An Interview With Shed Muzak
Take a moment to purvey YouTube's 'Music' category and there's considerable odds that you'll stumble across one of two things. The first of which will be all-too-familiar with regular viewers of music videos on the video-sharing website: the presence of VEVO and traces of the music monopoly it has built through the site. The second is the wealth of renditions of popular music by artists largely unknown outside of subscriber-bases and online fans. Shed Muzak might very well fit into the latter category, but it'd be remiss to take the group for granted as yet another band whom methodically recreate songs word-by-word, beat-by-beat, such is the large proportion of videos therein.
Megaupload promotional music video gets pulled
It's kind of surreal to see the likes of Kanye West, Mary J. Blidge, Will.I.Am and Kim Kardashian performing in a promotional music video for file sharing site Megaupload; but that's exactly what's happened, which was faced with an immediate removal by Universal Music Group.
All about 8-bit Metal
So someone over a couple years ago took to the tablature program Guitar Pro and inputted their song of choice at the time, and created a MIDI playback via SCXX. Immediately, one is transported back to the likes of the Sega Master System, Atari 2600 and the Nintendo Entertainment System with a listen to merely one of these.
And henceforth, the 8-bit versions of metal songs were born in 2009: the absolute fascination being how some would suit so eloquently as soundtracks to video games, in some situations bettering the originals in an abstract sense. The combination of the raw buzzsaw sound of the chiptune with the melodical intricacies of the songs makes for a remeniscent experience. Basically, you'd never think metal would work in this sense; but it makes for a rather unique form of paying homage. Take a look at some of our favourites.
IP crimes=child labour and murder. McGruff the Crime Dog said so
The Department of Justice and McGruff the Crime Dog have released their latest media campaign yesterday, targeting the wide world of piracy.
The campaign ties the aforementioned piracy and counterfeiting to to rather unwanted outcomes such as drug trafficking, gang violence, child labour, and the usual suspects of the industry.
Editorial: Spotify is not winning with Facebook Open Graph
So Facebook released it's first batch of early results for the Open Graph integration into social music apps. While the numbers maybe positive (I pick on Spotify because they are absolutely crushing the competition in terms of numbers, probably because users are forced to login with Facebook), this is merely a quantitative result, whereas more qualitative data (meaning my opinion) would beg to differ.
Le internet Medley. 40+ memes. 1 music video
The title sums up what it is very nicely. The song and visual attraction would have to be the fact that this seems to be a music video for the internet troll in us. The GAG Quartet's most recent song, Le internet Medley, posted on Wednesday, contains over 40 memes, which have already been listed by one guy...but we're not going to link it. We'd rather you take a shot at identifying them all from 'Forever alone' to the Dramatic Chipmunk. Meme's have been somewhat a favourable past-time for us here, so please enjoy. Y U NO WATCHING THIS ALREADY.
This week at the Broadway...
Showing you some of the best films this week that you probably have never heard of. Weekend love and an off exploration into fear. Let's get started.
Hollywood to BT: "Block The Pirate Bay."
A coalition of Movie, Music and and publishing companies have formally requested BT block internet access to The Pirate Bay voluntarily, before they send the boys around.
The group are called BPI, and supported by the rest of the UK creative industries, they asked Britain’s largest ISP to voluntarily deny public access The Pirate Bay. The resistance would seem futile, since it'd probably be too easy for the studios to get a court order to get BT to do it. But regardless of that, we hope they say no.
Korg lifts the veil on new Monotron Duo and Delay
Korg have just announced a two new additions to its Monotron line of pocked-sized analog synthesizers.
Pete Townshend complains about music downloading
He didn't have a problem with child pornography; but with the amount he's paid for downloads? Thats where The Who's own Pete Townshend draws the line in the metaphorical sand.
Speaking at a music industry event last night, Townshend started to make a statement about Apple for their percentage share of income to artist, labelling the boys in Cupertino as a “digital vampire” and said if they do ”even one of the things on my wish-list [my inner artist] will offer to cut off his own balls.”