Thank you, Inconstant Sol

I’ve been trying to reunite myself with this record, Bush Baby by Arthur Blythe, for a long time.

Blogbert Blogowicz

Here’s a blog that posts film soundtracks.  (via)

Here’s a blog that specializes in library music. Via the first one.

Bloggity bloggity

Mutant Sounds, which I found out about because it won an award, which I found out about because it was geblogkt by Avant Music News.  I live in constant fear of the day that you guys (both of you) start reading Avant Music News for yourselves.  Until then, he’s got a few best-of-aught-seven lists here and here.  But seriously, it’s like Eurypterids never even existed over there.

Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) memorial linkfest

Official site

Unofficial site

Wikipedia

Obits: NYT, BBC, WaPo, Bloomberg

YouTube

Informative bloggery: Marginal Revolution, Damin Lanigan (the Telegraph), The Rest Is Noise,

Blogs against cultural oblivion, in a loungy-islandy-brasilly kinda way.

Loronix.

It’s coming out of your speaker.   Lots of Lee “Scratch” Perry on top at press time.

Linkfest re: the volume wars

Avant Music News has blogged a post from Bob Drake to a prog listserv with a bunch of links to articles and videos about the disappearance of dynamic range from commercial recordings. You can read that post, but my quote of his quote of Drake’s email has hyperlinks:

The Loudness War. Very good YouTube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ

IEEE article on the loudness war:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/aug07/5429

Over The Limit: excellent, classic article about the volume war:
http://www.prorec.com/prorec/articles.nsf/files/8A133F52D0FD71AB86256C2E005DAF1C

Short Term Gain/Long Term Pain:
http://gboers.xs4all.nl/daisy/home/g3/139/loudnesswar.html

Death of Dynamic Range:
http://www.mindspring.com/~mrichter/dynamics/dynamics.htm

I Want to Break Free of the Volume War. Another good Youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkkqsN69Jac

Here is my own little example:
http://www.bdrak.com/other/mastering/examples.htm

These “web logs” of which you speak…

This guy has a blog where he podcasts the fruits of his used record bin digging throughout Africa.

I rant a little: mp3 blogs and the guerilla archiving of commercially challenged music.

Avant Music News blogs the demise of a couple of MP3 blogs (1, 2) that specialize in making available out of print music (I wish someone had blogged their existence).   I’m a little sad that these people are conflicted about what they were doing. The underlying principle for me is that it is never ethical to prevent music from being heard. I believe that the act of turning a music lover on to something that they need to know about improves the universe by a measurable degree. This act is sometimes complicated by ethical considerations involving monetary compensation, but even in these cases almost always registers in ethical black ink.

A couple of clarifying points: I do not believe that a rightsholder not getting money that they weren’t going to get anyway (which is what we’re talking about with these mp3 blogs) moves us closer to Stalinism. And I believe that in this day and age, scarcity is artificial at best and is usually more akin to market manipulation. The correct way for a capitalist to look at the collision between the internet and content is to recognize that there is no longer a market need for the manufacture and distribution of content. Consumers are happy to do it themselves. Anyone wishing to profit from the manufacture and distribution of content must either add value, or regulate our nuts off. Now who’s a Stalinist?

The Hellcows on the blogosphere.

The Hellcows were one of my favorite bands to see in Portland in the late eighties, they had a very original approach to noisy art-school postpunk with lots of personality. The only thing that I didn’t like about them was that they hated my band, I mean really hated my band, and loved to talk smack about us onstage. Anyway, someone put their first EP and split single with Smegma up on a blog. Good times.

I just heard some great punk-funk on KALX

It was by the Higsons. It was called “Put the Punk Back in the Funk.” I also came across this blog about unknown eighties new wavers while trying to find out about them.

KALX is over here, doncha know.