dreamy. so sad it's sold out. maybe can go to the one at north six.
5/8/04 - southpaw, brooklyn, NY - ratatat w/ clinic
5/21/04 - north six, brooklyn, NY - ratatat
sample mp3s:
ratatat - seventeen years
clinic - the second line (free download @ bottom)
This one's a rediscovered link. The Glass Engine is a database dream. You can navigate all of Philip Glass's compositions (and listen to them in full) by qualities such as title, year, length, joy, sorrow, intensity, density, and velocity.
note: the glass engine works ONLY with Internet Explorer 4.5 w/ java enabled. even though the page says it function with os x, i could only get it to work on IE for OS9 (classic)
also random note:
in Summer 2005, Philip Glass and the Philip Glass Ensemble perform a series of live concerts with screenings of the Qatsi Trilogy at the Rose Theater in New York. yay.
MIT Technology Review's The Sound War profiles two innovators in directional sound, Elwood “Woody” Norris (the self-taught inventor) and F. Joseph Pompei (the MIT Media Lab PhD). More details on their respective inventions/companies can be found on the ATC HyperSonic Sound and Holosonic Audio Spotlight websites. (via Engadget)
note for in person delight:
The Holosonic Audio Spotlight is on display at the Museum of Science in Boston. The web site doesn't say when the exhibit goes down, but it's been up since August 2003. // bonus geek note: The museum will open a Lord of the Rings Exhibition, on August 1, 2004, featuring costumes, jewelry, CG/special effects/animatronics highlights, video interviews, and on and on and on.
also sound related -
sound waves = temperature drop. ben and jerry's is using a 190-decibel note that fluctuates some 100 times per second in combination with a system of air circulators then funnels the cool air created in sound wave pockets into the ice cream case. the thermoacoustic refreigerators were developed at Penn State. (via HubLog)
Gomez is releasing a new album, Split the Difference (stream it here). Hooray. More about Gomez on fan web site Step Inside. Their new music video is available here. Flashy and Yellow Submarine inspired... why are vectors and streamlining video so popular again? (wonder if Adobe is going to bring back Streamline... mmm...)
They're playing at Webster Hall on June 8. I got tickets. Too bad Ticketmaster slaps an extra $15+ on the cost in fees. Otherwise I'd go to the Magnetic Fields concert too. arg.
also-
Ratatat is playing at North 6 on May 21.
Magnetic Fields is playing at Town Hall Theater on May 20 and 21. The new album, i, is lovely.
also random-
Apollo Sunshine will be playing as the house band on Last Call with Carson Daly this Friday. Previews of their new music video here on the web site of awesome artist, Jeremy Wabiszczewicz.
via g3rm
The Seven Percent Solution discusses the theory that some male and female singers have exactly the same voice, just shifted in pitch. (with featured mp3s for your review, of course)
I got to watch Elvis Costello and the Meteropole Orkust perform. Best thing ever. I love New York. In the last month I've also seen David Foster Wallace talk shop with George Saunders and cheered for Takeru Kobayashi as he ate 53 1/2 hot dogs in 12 minutes. all free! (well, if as long as waiting in line for two+ hours doesn't conflict with, say, a job). but more on that later.
Janet Cardiff has a new audio walk at Central Park. Her Long Black Hair is a 35-minute journey on a winding journey through Central Park's 19th-century pathways, retracing the footsteps of an enigmatic dark-haired woman. Each person receives an audio kit that contains a CD player with headphones as well as a packet of photographs. Cardiff uses binaural recording to create an experience of physical immediacy and complexity, playing with location, time, sound, and local history.
The audio kit will be available at a kiosk on 59th St. and Sixth Ave., thursday through monday, 9:30am to 5pm, June 17 - September 13, 2004. The last audio kit pick-up time is 5pm. Reservations are recommended and can be made by calling 212-446-9529 by 4pm the day before. Viewers will be asked to leave a drivers license or credit card in exchange for the audio equipment and should allow at least 50 minutes for audio tour.
'Super Freak' singer Rick James dies - Aug 6, 2004
"The girl's a super freak
I really love to taste her
Every time we meet
She's all right, she's all right
That girl's all right with me, yeah"
Lucky Dragons is performing in NYC on saturday at La Superette art fair.
4pm @ The Tank Annex, 208 West 37th St. b/w 7th & 8th
Even if you can't make it to the event, check out sample mp3s on his site - including heartbreaker and mercy. Live performance even better? Even better.
I was pretty psyched when Gizmodo listed a Hello Kitty Fender (right below Playboy's new 'bodcasts'). BUT. EVEN BETTER. There's a Badtz Maru Bass!!!! EEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
kitty specs - $199 from bananas.com
badtz maru specs - $199 from bananas.com
Dr. Frank of the Mr. T Experience has written... a young adult novel! Whhaaattt?!? What a way to have my childhood come rushing back. King Dork follows Tom Henderson, a 70s rock obsessed anti-Holden Caulfield tenth grader in the San Francisco bay area circa 1999 (oi, that's close to home). One of the blurbs I came across used the phrase "Catcher in the Rye for the MySpace generation". Crazy. But the marketing fits the description; there's a trailer for the book on YouTube and a Litzkrieg Bop Blog Book Tour visiting the hip high-traffic Gawker, Stereogum, Largehearted Boy, Brooklyn Vegan, and Jane. It's brilliant really, the interviews are more informative and entertaining than most book reviews, and there are mp3 "readings" and MTX songs at each pit stop. I like Dr. Frank's description: What do you do if you can't afford a book tour? Answer: you do it on the internet...It is almost just like real life, except fuzzier and less expensive.
Q&A excerpt between Dr. Frank and marketing wonder Andrew Krucoff that makes me want to smash head into wall:
We did a skit of My Fair(ian) Rasta, where some Rastafarians try to teach a simple country girl to speak with a Jamaican accent and smoke ganja and pass herself off as a stoned hippie. We had dreadlock wigs made out of yarn. (That was for the multiculturalism segment.)
We did a Siskel and Ebert thing where Siskel and Ebert dressed as ancient Greeks and reviewed parodies of Greek tragedies. I think I may have been Ebertos. This one guy played Oedipus and with those bouncy eyeballs-on-springs glasses and got two thumbs down. And then there was Spot the Wonder God...
Also, an excerpt from the book:
Well, let me put it another way: no one ever actually calls me King Dork. It's how I refer to myself in my head, a silent protest and an acknowledgment of reality at the same time. I don't command a nerd army, or preside over a realm of the socially ill-equipped. I'm small for my age, young for my grade, uncomfortable in most situations, nearsighted, skinny, awkward, and nervous. And no good at sports. So Dork is accurate. The King part is pure sarcasm, though: there's nothing special or ultimate about me. I'm generic. It's more like I'm one of the kings in a pack of crazy, backward playing cards, designed for a game where anyone who gets me automatically loses the hand. I mean, everything beats me, even twos and threes.
I suppose I fit the traditional mold of the brainy, freaky, oddball kid who reads too much, so bright that his genius is sometimes mistaken for just being retarded. I know a lot of trivia, and I often use words that sound made-up but that actually turn out to be in the dictionary, to everyone's surprise--but I can never quite manage to keep my shoes tied or figure out anything to say if someone addresses me directly. I play it up. It's all I've got going for me, and if a guy can manage to leave the impression that his awkwardness arises from some kind of deep or complicated soul, why not go for it? But, I admit, most of the time, I walk around here feeling like a total idiot.
According to Lookout! Records, Dr. Frank will be reading at Coliseum Books in New York on Wednesday, July 12, but I can't find confirmation on other sites. Hopefully it's true...
Mechanical Music Box Set. Make your own music box melodies with this mechanical music box set. Comes with hand-cranked music box, one pre-punched music strip that plays the "Happy Birthday" song, 3 unpunched strips (48cm), a hole punch, and instruction manual to have you creating your own music box melody in minutes. 3" long x 1" wide.
Also available at Amazon.