a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream
Installing a duck box in our backyard (yes, we’re in front of a lake) is one of the best things we’ve done in a while. These wood ducks are amazingly prompt — this sight has greeted us at 7:45 every morning the past couple of weeks (give or take several minutes) as the female is escorted back after searching for breakfast. We expect to see duck babies dropping out of the box any day now. (Spycam view through the screen porch grid.)
via @frozenreeds on Twitter, here are Buddy Rich’s “Apples (AKA Gino)” and Photek’s “KJZ” back-to-back:
“Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.”
The past is alive. It is political, it is ever-changing, and it influences our daily lives in meaningful ways … every statement about the past is a powerful statement about the present.
Even knowing that there are eight men onstage in this clip, the densely textured sound they achieve seems to belong to a much larger band. There is a relentless quality to the song, as Lurie, Fowlkes, and Nathanson build phrases into a frenzy, pausing only to let Ribot wail on guitar like an atonal Chuck Berry.
Brian Eno’s 1984 video + music installation Thursday Afternoon is currently on display in the window of London’s Paul Stolper Gallery. It’s also available to stream from the gallery’s site — and in the correct aspect ratio.
This remix/reinterpretation of Tomaga’s “Intimate Immensity” by Floating Points is the loveliest thing I’ve heard in a long while.
I’m a big fan of the Analog Africa label and the upcoming compilation, Edo Funk Explosion Vol. 1, looks fantastic. Immediately added to the want list.
Unlike the rather polished 1980s Nigerian disco productions coming out of the international metropolis of Lagos ‘Edo Funk’ was raw and reduced to its bare minimum … What unites these diverse musicians is their ability to strip funk down to its primal essence and use it as the foundation for their own excursions inward to the heart of Edo culture and outward to the furthest limits of sonic alchemy.
There are problems with the DMCA, and big corporations do have too much power in the music industry. But Amazon alone is 20 times the size of the entire recorded music business. When people are encouraged to direct all their ire at the DMCA (not at Amazon’s failure to implement it correctly) or at the music biz, it improves Amazon’s bargaining position in licensing negotiations, and imperils Congress’s ability to achieve needed reforms.
— @future_of_music
the current state of Twitch: the official Twitch Gaming channel cut off the live Metallica concert to play 8bit folk music to avoid DMCA pic.twitter.com/sCn56So8Ee
— Rod Breslau (@Slasher) February 19, 2021
lmao blizzcon muted metallica's live virtual concert and is just playing random low-key music over the whole thing pic.twitter.com/UqKnJf24VS
— RickyFTW (@rickyftw) February 19, 2021
This whole thread is worth a read:
Much of the chatter about Twitch and Metallica and copyright is getting the facts and the history wrong. Quick thread.
— Future of Music Coalition (@future_of_music) February 20, 2021
Angel Tears in Sunlight is the first album in over 30 years from Pauline Anna Strom. Sadly, it’s also her last. The album is lovely — ambient electronics with a healing intention.
Here’s a recent profile (and obituary) on Strom in The New York Times.