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Hitting the Links: Talk Talk, a Package from Felix Laband, and Hippie Architecture

05.28.2017 by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment

Talk Talk – 10 of the Best:

Engineer Phill Brown, speaking to the Guardian in 2012, recalled “an endlessly blacked-out studio, an oil projector in the control room, strobe lighting and five 24-track tape-machines synced together. Twelve hours a day in the dark listening to the same six songs for eight months became pretty intense.”



Felix Laband – A Life In Collage:

Hailing from Johannesburg South Africa, Felix hasn’t exactly become a household name here in the States. His obscurity made legitimate purchases of his music difficult, so like any rabid fan I resorted in the early 00s to piracy and felt the pain of having shorted an artist that has contributed so much to our well being. But now more than a decade later it’s easier than ever to patronize the artists we love. And so we did, with the largest music-related purchase we’ve ever made.



Psychedelic Supersonic Silicon Space Age: Photos Of The Radical Hippie Design Sense:

In the 1910s, the horrors of the First World War had pushed disillusioned creatives to invent new ‘modernist’ modes of expression. Fifty years later, Vietnam, civil rights, and their political backlash had radical thinkers again refusing to get in line. We all know well the profound musical heritage of this period. But the influence of countercultural aesthetics on the graphic design and architecture of the era is far less recognized, even as its impact continues to ripple some half a century on.



Why Time Seems To Speed Up As We Get Older:

If our memories can trick us into thinking time is moving quickly, then maybe there are ways to trick our brains into thinking that time is slowing down — such as committing to breaking routines and learning new things. You’re more likely to remember learning how to skydive than watching another hour of mindless television.



There’s a Replica of the Otherworldly Bedroom from 2001: A Space Odyssey in a DTLA Warehouse:

{Simon} Birch, a Hong Kong-based British artist, has transformed the space into a series of micro-exhibitions meant to take viewers on a “hero’s journey,” a reference to Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth. The various large-scale immersions feature projections, paintings, sculptures, and, in one instance, a lush patch of real grass. But the most Instagram-worthy is a bedroom—one that happens to be an exact replica of the one in Stanley Kubrick’s Oscar-winning film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Categories // Items of Note Tags // 2001: A Space Odyssey, Architecture, Art, Design, Felix Laband, Hippies, Music History, Psychedelia, Science, South Africa, Stanley Kubrick, Talk Talk, Time

Fun Fun Fun at the Weddingbahn

01.08.2017 by M Donaldson // 2 Comments

Last Wednesday I was honored to attend the wedding of my longtime close friends David and Jennifer, who opted to transform their ceremony into the most delightful homage to influential electronic music heroes Kraftwerk. I’ve known David since my somewhat misanthropic college years in northern Louisiana, and I remember our shared love of Kraftwerk as present even then. Of course, David reportedly went on to fully exemplify the Kraftwerk lifestyle, and the ‘Weddingbahn’ is only the latest episode in this couple’s meisterplan.

I was thrilled to be on hand to not only DJ at Weddingbahn, but I also recorded some very special wedding music. Check out several photos (mostly taken by the intrepid Jon Wolding), read a couple online accounts from the local press, and have a listen to two tracks I specifically recorded for Weddingbahn (featuring vocoder contributions by @pimpdaddynash), all below:

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→ Tampa Bay Times: German ’80s Band Inspires ‘Kraftwerk’ Wedding

→ Creative Loafing: This Tampa Couple had Full-On Kraftwerk Nuptials

Update: Jennifer just posted a wonderful ‘behind the scenes’ recap on her blog.

Categories // Items of Note Tags // Kraftwerk, Pranks, Q-Burns Abstract Message, Tampa

Music On The Bones

12.22.2015 by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment

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The latest Fugitive Waves podcast discusses the fascinating history of Soviet ‘bone records’:

Before the availability of the tape recorder and during the 1950s, when vinyl was scarce, ingenious Russians began recording banned bootlegged jazz, boogie woogie and rock ‘n’ roll on exposed X-ray film salvaged from hospital waste bins and archives.

“They would cut the X-ray into a crude circle with manicure scissors and use a cigarette to burn a hole,” says author Anya von Bremzen. “You’d have Elvis on the lungs, Duke Ellington on Aunt Masha’s brain scan — forbidden Western music captured on the interiors of Soviet citizens.”


Listen to the podcast here:

Fast Company:

These records only played on a single side, and the quality was low, but they were extremely cheap: A single disc only cost about one ruble on the black market, as opposed to five rubles for a two sided-disc. And it was subversive. According to Artemy Troitsky’s 1987 book Back in the USSR: The True Story of Rock in Russia, they often contained surprises for the listener: “Let’s say, a few seconds of American rock’n’roll, then a mocking voice in Russian asking: “So, thought you’d take a listen to the latest sounds, eh?” followed by a few choice epithets addressed to fans of stylish rhythms, then silence.”

Soon, an entire underground network of bone music record distributors popped up, called the roentgenizdat, or X-Ray press. Analogous to the samizdat that reproduced censored publications across the Soviet bloc, the roentgenizdat was soon distributing millions of Western records.


Here’s a great TED Talk on X-ray bone records where Stephen Coates asks the question, “What would you risk for the sake of music?”:

Watch on YouTube

And here’s a lively debate over on Discogs.com on whether bone records should be included and cataloged on the site.

Categories // Items of Note Tags // Bootlegs, e0e0e0, Music History, Russia, Soviet Untion, Vinyl

Watch: Good Looking Records Documentary from 1996

10.16.2015 by M Donaldson // 2 Comments

Here’s a fantastic find that hopefully won’t get pulled offline anytime soon … it’s a BBC documentary from 1996 focusing on Good Looking Records and LTJ Bukem, right on the cusp of their peak.

Reminisce: People smoking in clubs! All the DJs playing vinyl! Excited that you can make a track in the studio and play it out a week later, but only after the dubplate is pressed! Worried that your record sales will suffer because a shop in Japan is selling cassette tapes of radio sets! One of the hottest DJs in Britain getting “as much as £1000” per gig!

In addition to all that, the doc is a brilliant glimpse into the international DJ and independent dance label scenes in the heyday of the mid-1990s. Many things are different, many things are the same. And business manager Tony Fordham’s adventures in Asia could be a documentary series of their own. Certainly worthy of an hour of your time.


Modern Times – LTJ Bukem Documentary (1996) by junglednbdocumentary

Categories // Items of Note Tags // Dance Music, DJs, Drum N Bass, Music History, Record Labels, Video

Plutonian Nights

07.14.2015 by M Donaldson //

Celebrating the spectacular Pluto fly-by with an appropriate tune from our original space-ways traveler, Sun Ra …

Watch on YouTube

Categories // Items of Note Tags // Outer Space, Sun Ra, YouTube

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8sided.blog

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8sided.blog is an online admiration of modernist sound and niche culture. We believe in the inherent optimism of creating art as a form of resistance and aim to broadcast those who experiment not just in name but also through action.

It's also the online home of Michael Donaldson, a curious fellow trying his best within the limits of his time. He once competed under the name Q-Burns Abstract Message and was the widely disputed king of sandcastles until his voluntary exile from the music industry.

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Sonic and compositional changes that are unexpected but not necessarily out of place … sometimes these sound like accidents, but tiny ones.

Handwash Jukebox: Battling COVID-19 With Music Discovery

“I wondered if there was something I could do to help people wash their hands for the full 20 seconds. Then I wondered if these smart speakers we already have in our homes could be a cool way to solve that problem, by offering different fun 20-second experiences that would keep people washing their hands to the end.”

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