8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

  • 8sided About
  • memora8ilia

Wiki-Nature Wordplay

11.19.2020 by M Donaldson // Leave a Comment

Album Art From The Fall's Grotesque

Bandcamp’s Live Stream Platform → After some September trial runs with live online concerts from Mary Lattimore, Matmos, and Sarah Davachi, Bandcamp has announced a public launch of its live stream platform. This live stream feature is built from the foundation of a retail music site instead of a video networking tool adapted for music performance. And because the backend is Bandcamp — and pretty much every band has a Bandcamp presence — there’s a much lower barrier to entry than something like Dice. 

Livestreams will incorporate many of Bandcamp’s existing tools, such as fan messaging and merch sales. An added feature is a live chat window, which includes notifications when fans buy merch items. Bands can sell tickets to their live stream concerts, with Bandcamp taking 10% of the revenue (and no Ticketmaster-ish hidden fees). Until the first of April 2021, Bandcamp will waive this fee. 

I find the announcement exciting. It’s, at the same time, a natural next-step for Bandcamp and an outside-of-the-box move. All bets are on this live stream platform being a big hit, positioning Bandcamp as a contender in this field once the pandemic subsides. Live stream concerts aren’t going anywhere, folks. 

I’d love to see Bandcamp continue developing the platform to add things like geofencing, which would allow bands to do virtual ‘tours.’ And maybe an option to chain bands together under a single ticket for festivals and opening slots. I also want to see the bands step things up — to use this in surprising and unusual ways, rather than simply livestreaming some musicians playing in a living room. 

——————

The Fall in 1980 → The beginning of this article on The Quietus posits that your favorite album by The Fall is the first one you’ve heard. They’ve got a kazillion albums, so I can see how difficult it is to choose a favorite objectively. The first one I heard was This Nation’s Saving Grace, rescued from a cut-out bin while I was in college. Yeah, it’s my favorite. But, man, I do like a lot of other Fall albums, too.

Angus Batey, the writer of this Quietus piece, is fascinated by Fall singer Mark E. Smith’s lyrics. I’d say that’s the case with all listeners of this often challenging band. But Batey alludes to connections and references I hadn’t realized, portraying Smith’s oeuvre as a self-contained musical wiki of sorts. The Fall exercised intricate and interconnected world-building through the band’s presentation, lyrics, and identifiable sound. What’s remarkable is that Smith latched on to this, nearly formed, at such a young age. Early Fall was more ramshackle, but it’s still The Fall we recognize years later. The essential bits were always in place.

Here’s Batey on the wiki-nature of Smith’s wordplay:

Where to begin? And at what point would you believe you’d finished figuring out what the hell was going on? Perhaps it’s better not to start, and just delight in how [Mark E.] Smith uses his brilliant band like a stage conjuror uses the cape and top hat – as a diversion and a distraction, cloaking the deception. It’s little wonder contemporary critics baffled by Grotesque thought Smith was hiding something. In many ways they were right. […] Anyone trying to critique and catalogue and contextualise this stuff as it came out was doomed to fail. It’s too deep, too densely packed, too rich in allusion and scope and too well-read and learned in its reference points, even in an era with so much more information so easily locatable as is the case in 21st-century internet-enabled present. Back in 1980, nobody really had a chance.

If you’re not familiar with The Fall, then I’m not sure if this article will pique your curiosity or drive you away. But The Fall were that kind of band, really. If it’s curiosity, then I’d start with This Nation’s Saving Grace — though, as it’s my first Fall album, I’m biased.

——————

Steve Jansen – “The Extinct Suite” (video) → I randomly happened across this video for a song by Steve Jansen, ex-Japan drummer and otherwise storied musician and producer. The tune hails from 2017’s ambient solo album of the same name. “The Extinct Suite” — the only track on the album — is 56-minutes long, but we are treated to a nearly 5-minute excerpt for the video. This video is remarkable, created by German photographer and animator Anna Malina. Her Tumblr blog shows some of the original prints and their assembly for this dark, visual feast. I was intensely into photography while in college — my second nostalgic college reference in this post — but got bored after a few years. If I had the vision to stretch the medium’s possibilities as Malina does, I bet I would have kept at it. 

------------------

Related posts:

  1. Dark Days for College Radio
  2. Sampling Non-Stop
  3. Exploring New Opportunities in Livestreaming

Categories // Items of Note, Live Music + Touring, Watching Tags // Anna Malina, Bandcamp, Japan (band), Livestreaming, Steve Jansen, The Fall, The Quietus

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

8sided.blog

 
 
 
 
 
 
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.

"More than machinery, we need humanity."

Learn More →

featured

A Degree of Randomness: A Conversation With Joseph Branciforte

In an extensive interview, Joseph Branciforte discusses LP2, his remarkable album with vocalist Theo Bleckmann, how a pleasing result always beats out creative process, and the high-fidelity ethos of his Greyfade imprint.

More Ghost Than Man: A Spark in the Dark

Terry Grant is a painter, a filmmaker, a guitarist, a tinkerer, a voice-over actor, and who knows what else. He’s also More Ghost Than Man, producing music on the knife’s edge of dystopia, meaning his songs seem like they were recorded a few minutes into the future. It’s the sound of NOW while paradoxically vibing out a step or two ahead of the present time.

Are We Running Out of Notes?

It’s reasonable to imagine a few different songwriters coming up with similar melodies. But should we consider that plagiarism?

Mastodon

Mastodon logo

Listening

If you dig 8sided.blog
you're gonna dig-dug the
Spotlight On Podcast

Check it out!

Exploring

Roll The Dice

For a random blog post

Click here

or for something cool to listen to
(refresh this page for another selection)

Linking

Blogroll
A Closer Listen
Austin Kleon
Atlas Minor
blissblog
Craig Mod
Disquiet
feuilleton
Headpone Commute
Jay Springett
Kottke
Metafilter
One Foot Tsunami
1000 Cuts
1001 Other Albums
Parenthetical Recluse
Robin Sloan
Seth Godin
The Creative Independent
The Red Hand Files
The Tonearm
Sonic Wasteland
Things Magazine
Warren Ellis LTD
 
TRANSLATE with x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian
TRANSLATE with
COPY THE URL BELOW
Back
EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back
Newsroll
Dada Drummer
Deep Voices
Dense Discovery
Dirt
Erratic Aesthetic
First Floor
Flaming Hydra
Futurism Restated
Garbage Day
Herb Sundays
Kneeling Bus
Orbital Operations
Sasha Frere-Jones
The Browser
The Honest Broker
The Maven Game
The Voice of Energy
Today In Tabs
Tone Glow
Why Is This Interesting?
 
TRANSLATE with x
English
Arabic Hebrew Polish
Bulgarian Hindi Portuguese
Catalan Hmong Daw Romanian
Chinese Simplified Hungarian Russian
Chinese Traditional Indonesian Slovak
Czech Italian Slovenian
Danish Japanese Spanish
Dutch Klingon Swedish
English Korean Thai
Estonian Latvian Turkish
Finnish Lithuanian Ukrainian
French Malay Urdu
German Maltese Vietnamese
Greek Norwegian Welsh
Haitian Creole Persian
TRANSLATE with
COPY THE URL BELOW
Back
EMBED THE SNIPPET BELOW IN YOUR SITE
Enable collaborative features and customize widget: Bing Webmaster Portal
Back

ACT

Support Ukraine
+
Ideas for Taking Action
+
Climate Action Resources
+
Carbon Dots
+
LGBTQ+ Education Resources
+
National Network of Abortion Funds
+
Animal Save Movement
+
Plant Based Treaty
+
The Opt Out Project
+
Trustworthy Media
+
Union of Musicians and Allied Workers

Here's what I'm doing

/now

Copyright © 2025 · 8D Industries, LLC · Log in