Plaistow: Recycled Criminals

From insubordinations, a netlabel for improvised music, this release:

[insubcdr02b] PLAISTOW : Los Criminales Reciclados En Conductores De Autobuses

Yap Yap

Michael Bates

Michael Bates' Outside Sources:  On Equilibrium

I'm back on The Island, and finally made it to the Duncan Garage Showroom. The Man (Longevity John) himself, told me I should come hear Michael Bates, and so I did. Such a memorable show. And suddenly I'm listening to jazz again.

MP3 generation heading for a silent tomorrow

Saw this article about the iPod generation's future hearing problems. Hearing aids will cost thousands -- get custom earbuds: listen better, and protect your ears at the same time.

Dirge for George

microtonner George II

I heard this on the recent Blocsonic compilation netBloc Volume 9.

Lawrence Lessig's New Gig

The San Jose Mercury News offers this interview with the founder of Creative Commons. Lawrence Lessig remains as CEO, but he's started work on something new.

Ganga Giri

Vacation, travel and other distractions... and I'm not sure I'm even back yet, but I did make it to the Vancouver Folk Festival... wow... Ganga Giri knows how to put on a show... though I'm not sure everyone would call this folk music. Festival rules say no dancing in front of the stage -- but for Ganga Giri, that's impossible -- everybody was dancing.

Creative Commons in the news

Google Earth is getting an audio layer. Bernie Krause has been recording the planet for 40 years. He has released part of the collection under a Creative Commons license, for listening on Google Earth.

Tim O'Reilly has published a lot of books... I've been buying them since the 80's. Now he's written a case study of sales vs. free downloads for one of his titles. The free downloads are under a Creative Commons license.

Larry Lessig says in this interview, that there are now over 100 million objects licensed under a Creative Commons license. He participated in a panel discussion at the recent "copyright summit" in Belgium.

Other items: Know your rights with this simple chart that explains copyrights. An open source film project has over 1000 members. The Creatives Commons license, applied to dance.

The Silent Ballet - Volume IV

Various Artists - The Silent Ballet - Volume 4
Lost Children Netlabel release
post rock, instrumental, ambient

The Bird Ensemble: Part 1 No. 4

Signal Hill: This New Year's Absence

The Lost Children net label celebrates a year of showcasing new artists, and presents their fourth compilation release.

Blocsonic: netBloc Volume 5

Various Artists - netBloc Volume 5
blocsonic net label release
rock, post-rock, jazz, hip-hop, electronica, glitch-pop, dub, pop

This month's netbloc compilation held onto me for quite awhile. It's a great (to my taste) blend of music this month.

Misery (myspace) - Misery Sara

Lucrecia (myspace) - Like Being Home Counting Backwards

Easily Embarrased

Easily Embarrassed (archive.org)
Sublogic Corporation net label release
ambient, psychedelic, chillout

From Sunset Last Night to Sunrise This Morning (I Don't Want to Sleep)

Four tracks released in one mix with a cue file... I've had it on repeat play over an hour now -- it wanders off into different musical territories, and comes full circle when I press play again.

The Internet's new walls

American Internet radio webcasters can no longer offer connections to international listeners. Has anything like this happened before on the internet? I guess there's always been illegal data, but this seems big to me. I lost Pandora yesterday. Too bad too, according to this study 77% of music listening internet users, use the internet to discover new music. Obviously, it's not about getting artists more fans.

American soldiers in Iraq lost their radio too -- no more radio or YouTube for them... they say the soldiers are using too much bandwidth, there are also concerns about security. Now the Pentagon has a YouTube channel -- not sure how that works -- they have a channel, but American soldiers will have to go to an internet cafe to watch it.

Meanwhile, back home, webcasters got some breathing room... the new royalty rates are now due in July -- hopefully the deal makers and law makers can come up with a system that will keep the webcasters we've grown so fond of in business. More news about this here.

The Resonance Association

The Resonance Association (myspace)
Mrs. Vee Recordings releases
ambient, experimental, post rock

Appendix One: Heroes of The Atomic Age (live at Immersion)

Appendix Two: Lower

Be prepared for a listening journey on these releases. The Resonance Association have also orchestrated the "Fake Numbers Station" that you can hear on short wave radio bands, believed to be encrypted messages sent by either a friendly or unfriendly government to their agents, wherever they may be. Here is a short version:

Appendix One: Fake Numbers Station - Transmission Two

Update May 31, 2009: These releases on archive.org are down for the moment

The week in post-rock

I've been listening to the post-rock keyword on archive.org for a week now. I'm going to split my search results down to a few posts, starting with these tracks which are not part of bigger releases:

Sickoackes: Wedding Rings And Bullets In The Same Golden Shrine

Tom Sweetlove: Janvier Ier

From Delta Waves Under Clouds Over Ground release on Earth Monkey Productions:

Delta Waves: For Your Smile

And also a track from a Gasgiant release on Floppy Records I stumbled upon a while ago... The Silent Ballet raves about Gasgiant in their review.

Gasgiant: Slocore

Save Net Radio, update

There has been a lot of coverage of the internet radio Day of Silence next week (May 8th), a protest against the new royalty rates. Those that don't turn the music off will be playing Public Service Announcements. NPR, ClearChannel, SomaFM, and Digitally Imported are the strangest group of bed fellows I've seen in awhile. But with 25% of radio listeners now tuning in to web simulcasts, you'd expect the big boys have a concern about this too. And the U.S. Congress has listened... it introduced bill HR 2060, "the Internet Radio Equality Act". As you can imagine, SoundExchange is not happy about this; their offer of special deals for selected webcasters fell on flat ears.

But it's not over until it's over. So don't forget to either call or email your representative in support of HR 2060, The Internet Radio Equality Act.

A Beautiful Machine

A Beautiful Machine (archive.org page)
Embryo netlabel releases
Post Rock, Shoegazer

Solar Winds, White Noise, Antigravity: Shining
Home: Home
Another Time EP: The Last Time

A Beautiful Machine -- a band from Australia, I'm not sure they're together anymore. These releases are from 2004 and earlier. And again, so hard to just pick a few to post here, I had their complete releases playing all weekend.

Berklee Internet Radio Network

Finally, a post about internet radio that is not (entirely) about a recent copyright board decision. Berklee College of Music presents BIRN: four internet radio streams including one that features Berklee graduates, and another about what they listen to.

I spotted this item about BIRN on Wired's Listening Post. The Listening Post (RSS) has been coming up on my Google news alerts a lot lately.

Just in case you haven't yet, it's not too late to inform your members of congress about your views about the CRB decision. Pandora co-founder Tim Westergren explains that the higher rates won't mean more money for artists, and even with the royalty rates in place now, nobody is expected to retire to their yacht in the Caribbean anytime soon.

French Teen Idol

French Teen Idol (myspace): Enlightened False Consciousness
LostChildren netlabel release
post-rock instrumental ambient

Enlightened False Consciousness
Ode To A Departing Friend

French Teen Idol (myspace): self-titled release
Nishi netlabel release
Shouting Can Have Different Meanings
Lamb

Many many gems here, hard to pick just two from each of these releases. This is mostly instrumental music, and orchestrations of found recordings. Beautiful awesome music.

News Update

The Sansa Connect is the newest MP3 player on the block, featuring wifi, and the ability to download from Yahoo's music service, as well as stream internet radio.

Radio? What Radio? The copyright board didn't budge on it's decision to greatly increase royalty rates, and the future of net radio now hangs on an act of the U.S. Congress to restore the diversity we've become accustomed to. David DeJean wrote about the decision in Information Week... he also wrote a pretty good survey of Internet Radio sites recently. I wonder which ones will be able to afford the new royalty rates.

Meanwhile, over in the music download business, AnywhereCD, offered customers download only copies of CDs for sale. This was for customers who didn't want to take delivery of the physical CDs. Somebody balked, I read it was a record company. You can still get your CDs in MP3 download only, but AnywhereCD will store the physical CD, and destroy it after the auditing requirements are met. Read the whole story.

Noise Room

Noise Room: The End of the Lord's Constellation
LostChildren netlabel release
post-rock post-metal instrumental ambient

Friends

Back. Vacation, visits with relatives and friends. All good. Thankfully Lost Children haven't been on vacation -- new releases await. I think Noise Room (from Italy) have personally welcomed me back with this anthemic homage to friends.

Michael Sandler

Michael Sandler: archive.org myspace
Farther From Home - archive.org release
ambient, drones

Spring is here. Time for another reset. I'll be returning to San Francisco soon, after spending a winter on Vancouver Island. It's always an adjustment switching homes.

I scanned drone on archive.org -- lots to listen to there. Today's reset is an hour-long guitar drone piece:

Michael Sandler: Farther From Home

This weeks copyright and copyleft buzz

RIAA won a worst company in America contest. Halliburton came second: taxpayers are pouring billions down Halliburton's throat, but somehow RIAA is even worse than that. Meanwhile, RIAA says that students are settling piracy claims, but university of Nebraska wants RIAA to pay up for wasting it's time.

The Copyright Board decided to review the webcaster royalties decision.

The San Jose Mercury News profiled Brazil's Minster of Culture, Gilberto Gil, who happens to be performing in the Bay Area.

Nic Bommarito

Nic Bommarito - Taciturn - 12rec.037 - netlabel release

I heard Nic Bommarito's music on the BlocSonic Volume 3 compilation... enough to get me listening to all of Taciturn. It's all good -- I'd have picked one of these for the compilation:

The Academic (Life and Afterlife)
Badly Asbestos Covered

Check out Nic Bommarito's blog -- there's a lot more music there, including this gem from the Paranormal is Normal EP:

Pure Sound

Seeq and ye shall find

My friend in Halifax pointed SeeqPod out to me. It's a web2 music site... think Hype Machine with saved/shared playlists like Streampad, and add music recommendations to that. When you're listening to something you like, click "music", and get a page of listening recommendations that you can add to your playlist. There's no links back to the music blogs but I think that's okay -- usually it's the music I'm after, not what somebody else says about the music.

Iambic2

Iambic2 released Under These Stars, We'll Sleep Again a couple of months back. Thirteen beautiful emotional indietronica tracks on the Laridae net label. Hard to pick just two from this release, since the whole release sort of works together, but these two caught my attention:

Rain Drop
Going Home

Death by Panda

Here's one the good folks at Silent Ballet should notice... lovely post rock sounds in 3 releases on Beardology Records from Death By Panda:

From EP1: My Sleep Machine

From Arms and Allocation: Arms and Allocation
From Arms and Allocation: Everything Was Gone

From EP2: JFK Samples

Video: Dichotomy from Arms and Allocation release

Gilberto Gil

Musician turned policy maker, Gilberto Gil, Brazil's Minister of Culture, promotes Creative Commons in an effort to free digitial culture. If there were more musicians working in politics, maybe there'd be less business men (and it is mostly men) working for laws that restrict music fans.

Lawrence Lessig

Lawrence Lessig, a founder of the Creative Commons, explains the licensing system ... (this video from summer '06 -- but still timely)

Internet Radio Update

RJ Eskow chimed in about Patti Smith's dubious appointment to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I mean, considering what Rock and Roll has become: A multi-billion dollar industry that sues music fans and wants to stamp out internet radio. There's been a lot of media attention to this, and NPR is stirring over the new internet radio royalty rates.

Meanwhile, Slacker is in the pipeline: a satelite/internet radio/media player mashup service aiming for a $7.50 per month subscription. All that for the price of voice mail. I know what I'd pick -- I never really enjoyed voice mail anyway.

Tantrum

I'm still a sucker for loud noisy guitars. Tantrum, from Scotland, have two releases on Floppy Records. Some samples from Advice To Users:

Liftoff
Emergency Poncho

I particularly liked Emergency Poncho, that's exactly what the weather is like here on Vancouver Island at this time of year. Some lovely dreamy sounds from the earlier release, Maisie's Friend:

Pills and Dreams
Filmsong part 2

The Music Wars

Fighting on at least four fronts right now: internet radio, file downloading, MP3 patents (hardware, software). And artists get less than a nickle of each dollar earned from downloads.

Too bad we can't just switch to OGG, that's half the battle right there. Meanwhile, the RIAA P2P Lawsuits website makes a good read -- check out the FAQ... RIAA still claims downloading kills CD sales. Right... as if they sell music we want to buy. I've noticed Amoeba has no trouble selling CDs.

Observation Point

The music and sounds of Observation Point (myspace) are inspired by the surroundings and atmospheres of Port Talbot, South Wales: abandoned buildings, decaying industry, looming hillsides and deserted beaches provide the backdrop to deep space collages, ambient rhythms and dark experiments. And it's all good, in fact, I've been listening to it all for days... here are highlights in the collection on the OUIM net label:

from Geometer: Brugel Artefacts

from Thought Paths Vol. 2: Breathing Space

Nobody Here, haunted abandoned buildings found in the undergrowth of South Wales:

New Releases from Archaic Horizon

There are a few new releases at Archaic Horizon since I last looked... lovely drones and beautiful careful ambient listening from Sora Shima:

Sora Shima - Distancing EP: Monsoon

Hills West spins lovely jazzy dreamy sounds on this track:

Hills West - Glare: Sonsun

Save Net Radio (dot org)

Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, sounded the alarm about the new royalty rules for streamed internet radio, and encourages all those who care about this to email their elected representatives. Here's a discussion of the legal implications, and the cost implications.

Maybe the future of internet radio is people sharing links to artists websites like Blue Foundation and Xploding Plastix -- hours of great listening there, not to mention, cool flash-y websites to browse.

That's if the greed based record industry people get their way. Check out savenetradio.org, find resources there to take a stand. Consider telling your friends about their public service announcement:

PSA - Save Net Radio

Michael Waters

I saw Michael Waters at the Duncan Garage Showroom tonight... authentic Vancouver Island talent, performed on a stage adorned with driftwood and candle lanterns. His music takes you somewhere really good. Here are some samples from his latest project Acoustic Psychedelic Chill:

Anaconda King
Velvet Letters 3

Verian Thomas - video

Verian Thomas releases the Massive follow up to Miniatures. Get the music at the Negative Sound Institute net label. The Fireflys video reminds me a little of Picnic at Hanging Rock...

The Silent Ballet - Volume 3

Another great compilation from The Silent Ballet on the Lost Children net label. Some samples:

Jatun: The Temptation of Joy

Miaou: Anything Goes

Blocsonic: netBloc Volume 2

Another Creative Commons compilation from Blocsonic. A few noisy ones on this release:

Microtonner: Frequency

Giraffe: A lot of history in a very short time

The week in news

The RIAA has sent complaints about illegal downloading to 15,000 students at 25 schools. We didn't have illegal downloading when I was a student -- but we did have great independent radio. And thanks to the internet, I can listen to that radio anywhere I have an internet connection.

Not for long, if the RIAA and SoundExchange, have any say. They have bureaucratized internet music streaming so heavily, that this form of music enjoyment is also at risk: If you stream digital music, you must file 11 pieces of information about each track played with SoundExchange. For that effort a musician receives about a penny in royalty for every 12 tracks played. The catch is musicians can't claim until they have $10 in credit -- or, about 12,000 tracks played. There probably are some bands out there that can lay claim to $20 or $30 from all the independent radio stations out there, but isn't that the point of independent radio, to hear things you don't hear anywhere else?

DRM-free music sales continue to get buzz, and if this study has any merit, it appears illegal downloading has nothing to do with declining music CD sales after all. RIM (the blackberry people), known more for corporate email than music, have created more DRM-free music buzz... expect to hear the music on your blackberry soon.

But! Don't start hammering nails into the DRM coffin yet... Widevine, in a new twist on DRM, sees opportunity in their "device agnostic platform." The MP3 format itself may be at risk: Alcatel/Lucent have just won a copyright infringment case against Microsoft for the MP3 playing capability built into Windows XP and Vista. I expect that ruling might one day affect the little play button right here on earhead#101111.

Time.Space.Repeat

Another Lost Children release... Time.Space.Repeat is a London/UK post-rock band (myspace). Loved the opening anthem... These tracks are from Early Transmissions:

Joy / Sorrow

Meditation #1

Apple, the new Microsoft

I would never choose an iPod over my AAA battery, removable storage SanDisk MP3 player. And I suffer considerable indignation because artists make only a couple of pennies from a track sold at the iTunes Music Store, while the RIAA sues "illegal downloaders" $1000's for each of their lost pennies. So I was happily surprised to see Rolling Stone's opinion on Apple, the new evil empire. The comments make an entertaining read, as the Apple faithful leap to it's defense.

Transit

I'm still listening to Lost Children releases... Transit is a Belgian post-rock band (website, myspace). I love how they blend simple quiet melodies and big noisy sounds. A track from their first EP:

Harmattan: Maza

From their second EP,

Broad Leaves vs. Conifers: Reflections Upon The Asfalt

Music business challenge

RJ Eskow writes about Steve Jobs' recent proposal to consider selling DRM-free music, and suggests a new free market approach to develop artists... maybe something like sellaband.com, where bands raise money from fans who buy a share in ad revenues from the bands' music download sites.

Phonocake compilation

Electro chilled and ambient sounds from Phonocake, a net label based in Dresden (Germany). There's something for everyone on this release:

Graf: Ein Muehlstein Wird Nicht Moosig

Bad Comfort: 060727 (steps)

Aphex Twin - Monkey Drummer

I stumbled upon this video -- I've always wondered how this drum'n base sound was made:

Recent news in music

The RIAA was in the news again recently. A teenager has accused them of violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats, and has counter-sued them for damaging his reputation, interfering with his school work, and for legal fees.

Prince performed at the Superbowl and made news for some questionable shadows cast onto a huge screen on the stage.

Worried about drivers operating cell phones while they drive? What about iPod users crossing the street? New York state is considering banning gadget use while crossing the street. Apparently three pedestrians have been killed in Brooklyn by listening to music. They obviously haven't read about my four laws of pedestrianism.

Museum of Modern Betas

Recent Web2/music MoMB related posts at Museum of Modern Betas:

Boomba: flickr for audio files

ChartU: new music, playlists, ratings.

Grooveshark: share, review, and discover new music. (Downloads)

Midomi: name that tune. (Search by singing ... see also Musipedia)

Loss Of A Child

I think Zune's play 3 times sharing system is okay. That's my rule of thumb... if I want to play something a fourth time, I figure I should write about it here. I've been listening to Loss Of A Child all week. Two albums on the Lost Children net label... samples from The Future Symphony:

The Future Symphony
One Wish

A couple more tracks from Caught And Lost:

Like Dancing In Rain
DTA

This Week in News

Gurdonark (co-proprieter of the Negative Sound Institute net label) is interviewed on bleepwatch.

A new music blog, blocsonic, releases a mix of music made to share, and explains the buzz about net labels exactly ... may net labels continue to proliferate.

The State of Connecticut will help one of it's residents defend herself in a music downloading lawsuit brought against her by the RIAA.

MIDEM is a big music business conference in France that just ended. In case you missed the considerable buzz about this, The New York Times reports that record companies are moving closer to selling DRM-free mp3s. FMQB had this summary of MIDEM.

Spiders On Drugs

An off topic post...sorry. I'm not known to listen to flute music -- but this video, made by some local talent here on Vancouver Island, has beautiful flute music:

Lost Children - net label

The Lost Children net label focuses on emerging post-rock bands. Together with The Silent Ballet, a wiki/ezine with a decided preference for noisy post-rock sounds, Lost Children has released two compilation disks so far. Some samples from Volume 1:

MT: Add Obvious Errors

Up-c Down-c: Simple Reminder (Anger Is Not A Motive)

Some cool surprises on Volume 2 -- but I won't spoil the plot here:

Capulet: Champ

The Ascent Of Everest: If I Could Move Mountains - Majesty And Awe

Corwin Trails

This Corwin Trails release, on Archaic Horizon Records net label, is pretty hard to classify -- this time we journey through a surreal landscape of found sounds and smooth melodic phrases:

Corwin Trails: Palindromes
Corwin Trails: Sand Castles

Archaic Horizon Records - net label

I like the Archaic Horizon Records logo. It reminds me of the ocean, sure to attract a closet surf music groupie like me. The music takes us on a trip to somewhere between here and there. The first release brings us back to ambient territory with Peter James:

Peter James: Still
Peter James: In The Face Of Loss

Orange Crush gets us there just a little faster...

Orange Crush: Spring Breaks
Orange Crush: Camber Rye

Music for Martin Luther King Day

It's Martin Luther King Day in the USA today. Wouldn't it be cool if all radio stations played music like this:

Circle of Willis: War No More

DJ Kryptide: Equal (Chupacabra Remix)

René Vis: Rosa Parks

Maldroid

I read this story about Maldroid... more local talent. They're video won a YouTube contest.

I'm up in Canada visiting my mother these days, the video made me homesick... the subway system makes a terrible screeching sound, captured beautifully on this video. And the subway gates work just like this: when you're in a hurry -- forget about it -- they won't cooperate.

The Government Against Music Fans

Ars technica published this article about my senator (Diane Feinstein) who is writing law to require internet audio streams to "protect" music with DRM. I'm disappointed that Diane thinks music fans are thieves, and that she thinks DRM can stop thieves. If you don't have time to read the ars technica story, at least consider sending email to your senator, and let them know what you think of this.

Droog - Name Your Poison

I'm encountering a lot of cool ambient music these days. Droog's "Name Your Poison" is a first release for Norbu, a Belgrade net label.

drencrom
synthemesc

Verian Thomas

A little more mind clearing for the new year, this is a beautiful release, Minatures by Verian Thomas, released on the Negative Sound Institute net label. Memories of childhood, "pristine in their imperfection", encoded here in beautiful ambient tracks made with a guitar. Listen well... follow the track titles, or create new titles from your own memories. It's hard to pick just two to sample here...

The Drop From The Tree Is Forgetting To Fly

Those Happy Few Minutes

Thomas also supplies the sample tracks for Those Happy Few Minutes, which you can reweave to your own magic.

My mother is pretty sick right now in the hospital -- she's 83 -- she's never even had a CD player -- but today I'm leaving my headphones and mp3 player with her -- she's pretty uncomfortable. I hope she'll find comfort listening to her favorite childhood memories.

The Houston Drone Concern

The new year is here -- good time for a reset -- here's a start...

The Houston Drone Concern: Variation 3

NPR: The Year in Memorable Concerts

Great performances of 2006 -- an apt title for this series of live concert programs from NPR: Paul Simon, Neko Case, Sonic Youth... many more.

NPR also updated the James Brown concert page, which features a podsafe mp3 download.

Australia Outlaws mp3 Links

A new law in Australia outlaws mp3 links... it's explained in this post. I think the mp3 links are illegal if they are in a "catalog of copyright infringing content". Which puts me (a non-Australian website) right on the edge of Australian law... I've heard this is the case for Switzerland as well.

This seems to have put a bit of a chill in the Australian music blogging scene... Anyone a Lawyer? asks one Australia music blogger... who also crowns my home town (Vancouver, Canada) as a very safe haven for music gear thieves!

Earhead#101111's podsafe status: I tend to focus on Creative Commons links with sharing rights. I occasionally cross link to another music blog, or to a band or music label website; I can't vouch for those links, or any embedded video's. They might be dangerous one day, if the RIAA succeeds in dividing the music world into those that can share they're music, and those that can't.