Here's a quick, somewhat obvious thought: musicians as a body (imagine it exists) let technology dictate itself. Not like production and sound technology, but all of the other stuff -- the websites and blogs and streaming services. All of this other
Ai Weiwei, the dissident artist, comes in for lots of criticism, from the government and from many of his fellow artists. Now he's taking flak from everyone, not for his politics but for his weak parody of Gangnam Style, a video he calls 草泥马 Style, o…
Philip Glass is turning 75 this year. And that's a pretty big number with a lot of interesting divisors, so in honor of the occasion, "Orange Mountain Music":http://www.orangemountainmusic.com/ is releasing _Rework - Philip Glass Remixed_, featuring
"A Winged Victory for the Sullen":http://www.awvfts.com/ is American composer Dustin O'Halloran and Adam Wiltzie, who normally forms one half of Stars of the Lid. The song, off of the duo's recent self-titled disc on Erased Tapes, is startlingly brie…
The Pirate Bay is entering a new era as it moves all of its data from in-house servers in Sweden into the cloud in a move designed, in part, to evade the copyright cops. It all happened very quietly on Tuesday, and except for the five or so minutes o…
What a relief it is that the xx, three years post-hype storm, has not become terrible. The extrapolation of dance/club music to sultry, ubersparse night-drive pop feels as perfect now -- or even more honed -- as it did in 2009. And in this world of n…
In the late 1940s, Colombians and Jamaicans simultaneously began building and decorating massive sound systems and throwing street dances playing imported records. In Colombia, it was African music. In Jamaica, it was American R&B. Like finding cell
When I asked Kevin Parker if he hails from another planet, he paused. And then he laughed. "Not that I know of, no," the 20-something Aussie admitted. "I'm assuming that's a compliment of some description?" You tell me. By this point, Parker i…
Pandora founder Tim Westergren just published this curious humble-brag of an article, which has predictably rippled across the music blogosphere. In it, he explains that his plucky company is super successful and can totally afford to pay the artists…
When you think about it, pretty much all modern electronic music is just a series of loops — sometimes overlapping with each other, sometimes evolving. So it's not surprising that the new laser-powered "Instrument for the Sonification of Everyday Thi…
Why did Werner Herzog decide to film a documentary and an "online concert event" featuring The Killers? Probably because American Express and VEVO paid him a lot of money. Also: why not?
Electronic rock has never felt so much like cyborg rock as on Lower Dens' new record, _Nootropics_. It's an aesthetic as much as a concept, a delicate and subtle mingling of synthesized or processed or programmed sounds with a rock scheme nodding hea…
http://pitchfork.com/news/47753-watch-dirty-projectors-short-film-hi-custodian/
Music video, new album teaser (out Oct. 1, again on Warp), short arthouse film, or whatever, ""Until the Quiet Comes"":http://flying-lotus.com/watch-until-the-quiet-comes-short-film/ also happens to be beautiful and inspiring in a totally unexpected
In these here days of dark matter, the Higgs boson, and the multiverse, poor string theory often gets left out of the pop science news cycle. Maybe that has something to do with string theory being incomprehensible to just about everyone beyond its c…
Not done with the thing itself, of course. Just the "electronic" qualification. It has become not so much incorrect, but redundant and awkward. And has been for some time. Dan Deacon made this point yesterday afternoon "on NPR":http://www.npr.org…
"Mouse in Mars":http://www.mouseonmars.com/, the way-old German mutant IDM duo, has been quiet for almost six years now, finally showing up again this summer with a "new record":http://www.monkeytownrecords.com/releases/view/51/mouse-on-mars/monkeyto…
The thing is that these PBS remixes should be way worse than they are. I'd honestly put off paying much attention to the first couple, "Mister Rogers":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFzXaFbxDcM&feature=relmfu and "Bob Ross":http://www.youtube.com/wat…
In a 2008 "interview":http://www.negrophonic.com/2008/fetishism-is-so-vague/ Jace Clayton laid out a manifesto of sorts. “I don’t care what ‘Westerners’ fetishize. They’ve been fetishizing black people for centuries now, who cares? You simply exist i…
Even _I_, one of the more dickheaded skeptics I know, sometimes likes to think metaphysically about music. Maybe that's because I'm someone that really, really likes music and has devoted a significant portion of their life to it, and there's somethi…
I'll say this much up front: Vladimir Putin is an asshole. Dude needs to ease up. To think he's so hot and bothered with Moscow-based femme punk outfit Pussy Riot "having staged a so-called Anti-Putin 'Punk Prayer'":http://www.vice.com/read/free-puss…
Rap is steeped in a long, _long_ musical and oral tradition of boasting, and as such it's no surprise that so much of what rappers rap about involves being tough and manly. Of course, there are plenty of exceptions to the rule, but as DMX's "freakout…
This is the question posed by our pals at PBS' Idea Channel in a new video, and if anyone out there remembers "old dubstep," it's kind of confounding. Because dubstep at its genesis was actually a way exciting avant-garde genre of music on its own te…
