Hot Chip are previewing their new album ‘One Life Stand’ over on the Guardian’s website (unfortunately only fully available in the UK), via We7’s streaming service.
The album itself is a return to their previous form, mixing heavily electronic beats and samples with roomy, live sounding instruments at will, but always with delicate care and attention, Baroque sounding string synths, trashy Pixies-esque drum kits, steel drums, marimbas[?], vocoders [ sorry Justin ], and flagrantly dance sounding bass lines nestle in together under the distinctive semi-falsetto vocals rising above the tracks, blending elements of electronic music from the last two decades together in a disctinctively stylish way.
Hot Chip may not have the bass-thumping force of other electronic acts like Simian Mobile Disco and the Chemical Brothers, but this album drips energy and musicality. Check out the video of the album’s title track they’ve posted on their Dino-space – if you like it you might consider catching them on their current tour, visiting most regions of the UK before moving on to Europe and America, full listings below.
You can also pre-order the album from their website, getting yourself a free bonus track in the process (but sadly obviating the need for a digital distributor, ho hum…)
Warner Music Group has had mixed experiences with investing in music startups; losing out heavily on their purchase of Imeem and Lala, and their bad experiences look like preventing them from investing in any other online startups. Their spokesman Stephen Bryan, during a panel at Midem, pointed out the difficulty of trying to run a company subsidiary with opposite interests to its owner. Imeem and Lala were attracting customers with as much music as possible for as little investment (whether that be in terms of ad views or dollars paid), while WMG was concerned to make as much money for each stream or download of every song in their catalogue. A reluctance to find themselves in this ’stuck in the middle’ position again and the money they burnt means that they profess reluctance to own any more services.
Bryan did state that they’re very happy with their relationship with Spotify, which is going from strength to strength in terms of both users and advertising revenue. The less likely WMG is to invest in new services, the better Spotify will be pleased, as Warner will be more likely to channel all their efforts into promoting their content with their part owned partner.
The Knife, in collaboration with Berlin DJ/producer Mt. Sims and Boltondeutscher Planningtorock, have been collaborating on one of the more bizarre sounding projects of the past year – an Opera celebrating Charles Darwin’s origins of the species [perhaps hoping to replicate the anti-creationist success of the Jerry Springer Opera]. It’s been comissioned by the Danish performance group Hotel Pro Forma, who’ve created many other such pieces of quirky music and theatre together with other European artists.
The development of the project has drawn from a multitude of sources, and the list of influences on The Knife’s website seems like something from Hesse’s Glass Bead Game:
‘Tomorrow, In A Year’ is a unique musical project. Richard Dawkins’s gene trees have formed the basis of some of the musical composition, artificial sounds have been mixed with field recordings, with the music inspired by everything from the different stages of a bird learning its melody, to a song based on Darwin’s loving letters about his daughter Anne. These are compositions that challenge the conventional conception of opera music.
The collective are to release the studio version of the opera ‘Tomorrow, In A Year’, on the 1st March 2010. You can listen to the first track from the forthcoming album on Soundcloud by clicking here [a download is available if you subscribe to their mailing list]; atmospheric, cleanly produced, intricate and odd – like a sonic cross between a Kabuki play and a Rubix cube, with Fever Ray over the top of it. Whatever that means, it’s odd, and interesting.
[Edit: Merry Christmas - stop reading blogs and go eat some turkey]
Artist Name: JINGLE CATS
Genre: Holiday
Location: HOLLYWOOD, CA USA
A long time ago in the frosty North Pole, nine kittens were born on Christmas Eve at Santa’s house. Mrs. Claus found them on the porch. They were very hungry and she gave them some milk. The mother was nowhere to be found. Mrs. Claus brought them into the house and set them down in front of the Elves. They mewed and purred with joy because they had been outside quite a long time. When Santa came home from delivering gifts to all the good girls and boys he put on a Christmas record and an amazing thing occured. The Jingle Cats began to sing along with the music. Everyone laughed and cheered and the Jingle Cats brought joy to the entire North Pole that year. Now, with each Christmas, the Jingle Cats ride with Santa on his sleigh and sing songs along the way. Many ordinary cats can hear them even when they are high above the clouds. All cats know about the Jingle Cats and they look out their windows for them each Christmas. If your cat winks in your eyes you will know that he has seen the Jingle Cats riding high. Oh what a joyful sound.
The debate on music piracy is a bit like that on global warming; vocal and vehement, and extremely polarised (pardon the pun). Evidence can be produced to support the most extremeopinions, and is wrangled over until those in the middle don’t know what is believable. Consensus seems to be that even though music pirates are active music fans, and likely to be buying music as well as ’stealing’ it online , piracy is damaging to sales of actual music tracks, although this may be slightly offset by increased gig attendance and other types of premium content purchase – box sets, t-shirts etc.
It also seems to be accepted that legal methods of ad supported, free-to-the-consumer streaming is the best way of combating the rise of piracy – the great user experience that Spotify has been able to offer has seen it expand faster than it can deal with; attracting users to use a great free streaming service isn’t hard, but finding a way of profiting from all those users is, balancing ad revenue against streaming and licensing costs, and Spotify’s launch in the States has had to be delayed while they evolve their model, and figure out how to move people onto their £10 a month premium service.
While they figure this out, MOG is stepping up to the plate in the States with their £5 a month subscription only model, that allows playlisting and file searching in a pretty similar way to Spotify’s interface [see the video at the bottom of this post]. A poll conducted by Demos (a company that sends people out with clipboards) suggests that revenue (income and adoption) would be maximised at the £5 price point:
But this doesn’t account for the costs inherent in delivering the amount of music that people tend to consume through such streaming services; leaving the computer streaming music all day, an individual could incur a lot of charges for their service provider.
So which footpath of digital development is going to turn out to be the music superhighway of the future? In my humble opinion, it’s going to come down to user experience: if we discount piracy as a viable future for the industry (no revenue means no artists) then we’re left with paying per track, either for streams or downloads, or for a month on month subscription service. These will remain as competing options, probably with iTunes still in pole position of the download market, given it’s current market dominance, and the relentless success of the iPod and it’s cousin the iPhone, and for the rest it’ll come down to whoever provides the slinkiest, most versatile service for whatever the music industry decides is the rock bottom price per stream, plus the minimum streaming cost. I for one hope that the big 4 accept thatad-supported music streaming is the best and only real way of putting an end to piracy, that they come to terms with the smaller license fee and infrastructure that will be demanded by this model. Of the options currently available, I think that Spotify has the most user friendly platform, I’m proud that we’re working with them, and I suggest that you upload your music to their service, via RouteNote’s digital music distribution platform right…. Now.
Australian blogger Andrew McMillen recently hosted a panel on the digital music industry in Perth, on which sat Simon Wheeler – director of digital at Beggar’s Group, an amalgamation of some big indie labels here in the UK [they're on the same road as my old primary school ]. Mr. Wheeler has some pretty progressive and pragmatic attitudes to online promotion, and some forward thinking methods that it might be useful for artists to replicate in their own spheres.
“…we know that fans are passionate about an artist, and they’re very excited about a new album. So to be able to give them something to satiate that demand somewhat has been quite effective. There’s also the purpose of giving people a piece of music to ‘try before they buy’, if you like. We get a lot of love and a lot of coverage in the blog world, because I think our artists are very suited to that world.
We don’t give music blogs free reign, because you’d find that each blog would post a different track from the album, and so ten minutes after you’d publicised the album, people could just go and download the whole album (laughs).
So by making available one chosen, one focus track from a new album – much as you take a track to radio – there’s kind of an unwritten dialogue between us and the bloggers. We don’t tell them to post it, we don’t say they can’t post it; if people post the whole album, we’ll definitely say they can’t do that, and we’ll get it taken down. But they understand that if we post an mp3 to one of our label sites or blogs, then they won’t get any grief from us at all [if they repost it to their blog].
This really helps focus the campaign around a lead track, much as you do when taking a track to radio. There’s no new science here; this is just what the record industry has been doing for decades. We’re just applying that to the digital age.”
Making a few tracks available for streaming or download online is a great hook for pulling people into an album or gig ticket purchase – that’s one of the major reasons myspace was such a success, bands need to connect with fans these days. Blink 182’s Tom Delonge is of the same opinion: [via Hypebot, via Techdirt, via The Guitar Center]
We picked up on Blue Beat’s strange decision to start streaming otherwise unavailable tracks from the Beatles’ back catalogue without the right’s owners permission, but it turns out their infringements are much more widespread. As music business news site Hypebot has just reported, they also claim to have the rights to sell music from AC/DC and Dan The Automator right through to Frank Zappa and ZZ Top. A totally spurious claim, based on this piece of US copyright legislation:
17 U.S.C. § 114(b):
“The exclusive right of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clause (1) of section 106 is limited to the right to duplicate the sound recording in the form of phonorecords or copies that directly or indirectly recapture the actual sounds fixed in the recording. The exclusive right of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clause (2) of section 106 is limited to the right to prepare a derivative work in which the actual sounds fixed in the sound recording are rearranged, remixed, or otherwise altered in sequence or quality. The exclusive rights of the owner of copyright in a sound recording under clauses (1) and (2) of section 106 do not extend to the making or duplication of another sound recording that consists entirely of an independent fixation of other sounds, even though such sounds imitate or simulate those in the copyrighted sound recording.”
A piece of law designed to allow people to make different tracks using parts of the original piece – sampling the Amen break [1:45], or nicking a riff off Labi Siffre [2:10], but not intended to cover what Blue Beat have done, which is to re-record the song pretty much wholesale. Their defence [via Ben Sheffner's blog] is pinned on their hopes that their copyrighted PsychoAcoustic process creates a new piece of intellectual property, that they own… basically they contend that some hocus-pocus like changing the file from a WAV to an MP3, playing it on a My First Boombox and re-recording through a microphone in a glass of milk, or some other magical process of transformation that ends up with the same noise at the end, will be enough to transform their ‘version’ into a derivative work rather than just a rip off. Unlikely. If anyone out there was thinking of it, we’d ask you not to try and upload anything similar to our digital music distribution service. The precise details of why BlueBeat consider their process to constitute a method of creating a new artefact aren’t online yet, but I’m looking forward to seeing what they say in their next filing on the 10th of Nov.
All those who love the beatnik side of Stephen Bishop, the albums of James Taylor – above all those prior to Flag – the masterly melodies of the Beatles, and the soft acoustic atmospheres of Ink’s Liv Taylor, simply have to listen to Let Me Ride. They will not be disappointed.
Max Tosi, originally from Cremona, a lengthy transit in Milan, but Sardinian by adoption (resident in Sassari for the last 11 years), gives the impression of having just stepped out of the Troubadour on a balmy evening in the mid-seventies with his live-act cassettes tucked under his arm. In effect the album Let Me Ride, although a studio album, has all the warmth and spontaneity of a confidential acoustic set recorded live in a small club. Priceless emotions for those who were brought up on bread and Mud Slide Slim or for those who for years have dreamed of travelling under a Californian sun towards San Buenaventura on the Fwy 101.
Genuine passion, love for the ballad, artisan attention to detail and simple instrumentation with light touches of strings and brass. Ten original compositions, ten instant soft-focus snapshots which, for better or for worse, appear to have been taken on an old-fashioned Polaroid. No bluffing, only the fragile, inexpressible charm of daily sensations, of little stories told with a delicate and at times almost naive touch. Review by Franco Fusilli
Landerim is a band named after a word made up by Robert Wyatt on his album
“Rock Bottom,” featuring Larry Demellier (drums, keyboards, vocals), Derek
Knott (guitar, bass, keyboards) and John McGuire (keyboards, guitar,
atmospherics). Jessica Bailiff sings duet and backing vocals, and
Producer/Shimmy-Disc Founder Kramer played bass, flute and sang backing
vocals on a couple of songs.
The band was formed by Larry Demellier who asked a couple friends to help
out with some ideas and song sketches. Influences include Robert Wyatt,
Brian Eno, Jon Hassell, Harold Budd, John Cale, Gene Clark and the Byrds,
Love, Nick Drake, Talk Talk, Scott Walker, Big Star and Pink Floyd.
Most of the pieces were worked up very quickly and recorded immediately to
capture the ideas that geled the most before they became stale and
rehearsed. The emphasis is mostly on the spaces in a piece of music: very
minimal, sparing and quiet arrangements with long flowing chords and few
notes. There are some pieces with vocals and some instrumental sections;
all created to be fleeting vignettes.
I am a solo performer/producer from a little Village called Tollard Royal. I produce all my music from my bedroom recording on a zoom H4 and putting all the sounds together on my laptop. Away from studio work I also have a live setup. I use an MPC, Kaoss Pad 3, Boss RC-50 looper and a wide variety of instruments that I bring in and out of soundscapes and loop based melodies.
I love making music. It would probably drown me If it could, but I try and keep my head above the flow. Just to keep myself in control of time. If I don’t I find myself surrounded by instruments but not able to record because the dawn corus is too loud and the fact that the sun is rising makes my feel ill. I get lost in another world when I am making music, sometimes I stay there for hours on end. Untill eventually I am forced back into reality by a sound that wasnt made by me. I dont feel these hours are wasted. If anything there some of the best hours of my life. But there also the shortest. The world is an incredible place and has so much to offer. I realised a few years ago that I don’t think I could ever be truly sad because there is always something far bigger and more incredible than anything I could be sad about. My life is quite pleasant though. So I could understand if you can’t relate. Its just, trees, to me are enough to keep me smiling forever. When I make a piece of music that I think matches what I think about trees, I will have got as far as I can get musically. Please enjoy my explorartion untill that point.
My website: www.memotonemusic.blogspot.com
My myspace: http://www.myspace.com/williamyatesmusic.
[Edit: memotone is James' (our support engineer) favourite artist on RouteNote after the Bloody Tentacles (his own band)]
Hot Chip are previewing their new album ‘One Life Stand’ over on the Guardian’s website (unfortunately only fully available in the UK), via We7’s streaming service.
], and flagrantly dance sounding bass lines nestle in together under the distinctive semi-falsetto vocals rising above the tracks, blending elements of electronic music from the last two decades together in a disctinctively stylish way.
[Edit: Merry Christmas - stop reading blogs and go eat some turkey]
The debate on music piracy is a bit like that on global warming; vocal and vehement, and extremely polarised (pardon the pun). 
]. Mr. Wheeler has some pretty progressive and pragmatic attitudes to online promotion, and some forward thinking methods that it might be useful for artists to replicate in their own spheres.
Genre:Alternative Minimal Electronica
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