moodmat

Ok, I’ll take a deep breath. However, my knee jerk reaction to the screenshot I saw on Flickr still stands: I’m not a big fan. Some things are cleaner, yes. Some things are too clean. And some things I just don’t want to see right on my home page.

Wish I had known about this earlier. I might have considered taking a day off work to sink into the new features and have more constructive feedback. Yes, I use/love Last.fm that much. For now, consider me “that guy” in the focus group.

If you’re a subscriber, you can have a look for yourself, too.

EDIT: Beta only available to subscribers.

User page, May Beta 2008, originally uploaded by last.fm.

I just lost my Last.fm erection.

Leffler/Library of Congress

So far, it’s been a great week for record release news. Little did I know it would also be a great week for record keeping.

I passed 10,000 tracks played on Last.fm sometime in the last couple days. Trying to hit it right on the mark proved difficult, like stopping a gas pump on a nice round dollar figure. A good number of those tracks played, or ’scrobbles’ as Last.fm calls them, came from my iPod.*

It’s a normal-sized suburban Detroit commute to work for me, clocking in at about 20-25 minutes. Just enough time to get a good ways into a playlist. When I would get to work or get back home, I always had to remember to first use iScrobbler, a third-party utility app that would pull the Recently Played tracks off my iPod and submit them to the database.

Using it has been a bit of a challenge.

I won’t go into all of the little things I had to learn to make things run smoothly, but the kicker was remembering not to use iTunes to play music before I made the iPod submissions. Doing so would put a date and timestamp on the submission cycle (I’m sure I got the technical terms wrong just then) and all my iPod tracks would no longer “make the cut.”

So you can imagine how happy I was to see this little dialog box pop up in the “regular” Last.fm player/client today.

I must have been asleep at the wheel (metaphorically speaking) for a while, because iPod scrobbling was introduced several software updates back. Something in a recent update must have helped Last.fm assert itself over iScrobbler (yes, I had a need to run both). But now it’s just the former and a user experience that’s decidedly more SPLADOW! Hey, all I ask is that Last.fm tracks songs on a couple of devices — without me aiding in the negotiations.

*as in “AudioScrobbler,” the core database system/recommendation engine.

Big day for MC Paul Barman fans and anyone else who enjoys ill syllables, quantum wordplay, and advanced self-deprecation. Yes, I count myself among them. Even after five years, I’m still rocking “Anarchist Bookstore Pt. 2″ in the car and laugh out loud every time at the lyrics and MF Doom’s sample drops.

Lifted from Barman’s myspace:

“Full Moon Kaboom 2″ will go up on mcpaulbarman.com late this evening with Body of Work, part 1, a suite of songs from forthcoming album Thought Balloon Mushroom Cloud. Thought Balloon Mushroom Cloud will be a digital release with production by Questlove, Prince Paul, DOOM, Michel Gondry and Memory Man. Guest MCs include Masta Ase and Del the Funkee Homo Sapien.

Michel Gondry? Suddenly I’m overwhelmed with and ashamed at memories of the old “DJ Jazzy Jacques and the French Prince” from Remote Control. Can’t wait to hear what this is about. Also, ?uestlove? I think you’ve been working too hard. Not that I’m complaining, but may I suggest some ?uiet time?

You might also want to mosey over now and snatch the track “Power” for a donation of your choosing. I’m assuming cash as PayPal has not yet implemented bartering for 89 octane or rice.

Three things I learned last night:

1. The new Al Green record with ?uestlove is finally coming out.
2. To coincide with that release, Omer Saar is producing The Green Album using Al Green beats and his favorite a capellas.
3. They don’t make the nighttime formula of Tylenol Sinus like they used to.

Two out of three were gleaned from reading UniverSoul, a blog written by Saar to showcase his productions among other things. Make that many other things. Tip of the hat to Miguel for bringing this one to my attention.

p.s. The above cover is one of three directions Saar is considering for the cover. I like this one sans comma.

technicolorcavalry

As Movement ‘08 approaches, that word “techno” gets disproportionally large in the great tag cloud that is my brain (I’d show you the rest of the terms, but it’s mainly new curse words I’ve invented and varieties of beer). So I was especially pleased to find a vein of mashups based in part on this style. DJ Pronto delivers the goods (and takes a lot of chances) on Prepackaged. Here are two of my favorites, with an older Boards of Canada mash for good measure. Boing Boom Tschak, y’all:

Burnt Friedman vs. Ozomatli (feat. Chali 2na) - “Hard Drive Dub” + “Who’s to Blame?”
by DJ Pronto via Mashupciti

Aphex Twin vs. Outkast - “Complex Mathematical Equation” + “B.O.B. (Bombs over Baghdad)”
by DJ Pronto via Mashupciti

Boards of Canada vs. Doug E. Fresh & Slick Rick - “Aquarius” + “La Di Da Di”
by the Evolution Control Committee

Stepping away from a straight music video, this is a featurette by Ghostly on a recent favorite producer, Osborne. There’s a bunch of good quotes that resonate, in particular those regarding the how and why he got into making his own music.

For more information and sounds, visit the Ghostly site for Osborne there’s even a couple legal mp3 downloads there for public consumption.

Things to consider while reading this:
1. I am currently fighting the worst sinus inflection I’ve ever had
2. Originally this was to be a borderline lascivious rant on this year’s Detroit Electronic Music Festival, but I have run out of steam. Maybe next year.

Okay on with the post.

Recently because I am terrified of not having every minute of my day being monopolized, I thought it a good idea to take a class on Media Law and Ethics. I realize that the title might be a bit oxymoronic for some, but bear with me here a moment. This class has helped me develop a greater appreciation of the First Amendment, as well as a pretty thorough knowledge of famous cases that have made the grand ol’ Amendment what she is today. One of the things we probably won’t get into, but my professor has followed closely is the limits of speech and expression on the internet.

Which brings us to the subject of today’s post. Lately there has been much ado pertaining to “availability” and file sharing. One of the chief arguments the major labels and the RIAA have used over the years is that simply making the readily available for download, whether on private or public networks, constitutes a breach of copyright protection. One of the more popular cases on this matter, Capitol V. Thomas, found the defendant guilty following this RIAA argument.

However, a District Court recently ruled in another decision that the availability clause may not be enough for the RIAA to use in their suits. Specifically, Judge Wake had this to say in his ruling:

The court is not unsympathetic to the difficulty that Internet file-sharing systems pose to owners of registered copyrights. Even so, it is not the position of this court to respond to new technological innovations by expanding the protections received by copyright holders beyond those found in the Copyright Act.

Of course this technicality immediately had Thomas’ lawyers up in Minnesota filing for a retrial , and with good reason. If this new viewpoint can hold water with a new jury, there could be a serious impact on filesharing suits nationwide, and we could have ourselves a whole new ballgame. Much like our current President, there are a lot of things which I readily claim I am not, and legal analyst would definitely be somewhere on that list. But for some reason this news gives me the goosebumps in a good way.

*A very special tip of the cap to the good folks at Recording Industry V. People for providing links to resources — making this post sound far more eloquent if I had done without.

It’s fair to say I have an unhealthy obsession with this track by The System, only to randomly find this video today. Have you ever seen a keyboardist trying so hard to make this look cool: jamming with one hand on a qwerty keyboard with a green-screen and waveform display? Long live synthesis!

Incidently, (cue self-promo jingle) I dropped this track in a midtempo classics mix I did exclusively for the excellent and diverse DeepSoul3 crew. Check out their mix archive page, mine “In My System mix” is linked there about the third mix down in the list. I’m flatterd to be in such excellent company.

Here’s a direct link to my mix, but please check out the others and their interviews are truly dedicated too.

Tracklist:

Trevor Horn, Paul Morley with The Art of Noise - Love Beat - ZTT - 1984
Delegation - Oh Honey - State Records - 1977
Mantronix - Get Stupid Fresh - Sleeping Bag Records - 1985
Brooklyn Dreams - Street Man - Millennium - 1979
Ronnie Foster - Midnight Plane (Disco Version) - Columbia - 1978
Memory Control One - Basic - Crash - 1984
Natasha King - AM-FM - Emergency - 1983
Peter Brown - Burning Love Breakdown - TK Disco - 1977
Whodini - Five Minutes of Funk - Jive - 1984
Force of Nature - traderoute - Mule Musiq - 2007
Newcleus - Automan (Dub) - Sunnyview - 1984
Royalle Delite - (I’ll Be A) Freak For You - Skyview - 1984
Mahogany - Ride On The Rhythm (Dub) - West End - 1982
The System - You Are in My System - Mirage - 1982
Thelma Houston - You Used to Hold Me So Tight - MCA - 1984
Fonda Rae - Hey-O-Bah - Posse Records - 1983
Bi & Co - How Do You Love - Blue Blood - 1984
Leon Haywood - I’m Out To Catch (Club) - Casablanca - 1983
Omni - Body Groove (Dub) - Mercury - 1983
The Creatures - Believe In Yourself - Teldec - 1983
Roy Ayers - Chicago - Ichiban - 1988

Huge tip to the sterling Mr. Chris Edwards over at DeepSoul3 for making the connection, and supporting the diverse mood mixes! Also I give them huge props for hosting the mixes themselves, we know as much as you do that bandwith CO$TS and the traffic they must get on some of these must be massive. My mix went live a couple months ago, so proper blogwise thanks is long overdue

You’ve been Rick-Rocked and Rolled Over.

andy emcee

Salon.com is wondering whether or not hip-hop is “dead.” I’m too busy waiting for this whole “video game thing” to blow over. Kids these days.

Ok, that’s not fair, but I do wonder how Paul Kix got so lost and wrapped up in hype-hyping-hype. If you’ve loved hip-hop for even a few consecutive years, you know that silly trends will come and go. He’s so amazingly laser-focused on the “dances of hip-hop” and Souljah Boy, it’s almost a parody piece.

I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said in the comments section of the original article, but you don’t have to look far to find the less commercial strata of hip-hop. Thanks to new-school stores like Amie Street, I’ve been on a bit of a spree lately. Not all of what I’m buying is hip-hop, but there’s enough new stuff out there to keep me interested. Hell, even the free “VIP” tracks at Beatsource are impressive. Mr. Kix, step away from YouTube and MTV, and get yourself some new records.

Superman dat sto’!!

What a bunch of assclowns. The money has made them crazy.

- Citizen Game on Activision’s plan for Guitar Hero IV.

Why see a bunch of boring new rock bands when you can see amazing ancient ones?

- Bill Corbet, quoted in the New York Times article about the Gnawa and World Music Festival in Morocco.

We are just another band trying to make enough money to fuel our private jet. Please help.

- Part of the Foo Fighters’ highly entertaining tour rider, via Gawker.