David Gerard

Doctor Who goes disco. Delia, we are so very sorry.

9 December, 201511 December, 2016 Dance, Esoterica 0

The Doctor Who theme has of course been done in every possible style. Today we have disco versions from Space Disco and Mankind. But

Reissues, past subcultures and the dead foot of the market.

8 December, 201512 September, 2017 Opinion, Record 0

Amanda Petrusich at the New Yorker writes a ramble on the reissue market. It’s not clear, but she seems upset these previously-unavailable classics are available again, because they’re available again for the wrong reasons.

Alvin and the Chipmunks at 16rpm.

7 December, 201524 December, 2016 Esoterica 3

Retrospectively obvious, but this is what Alvin and the Chipmunks sound like at 16rpm: normal vocals with GRIND CORE DEATH SLUDGE DRONE music. That being how they were actually recorded. I think we’ve uncovered Sunn O)))’s secret past.

Access denied: The media in a world where they aren’t the gatekeepers.

6 December, 20153 January, 2017 Media, Opinion 0

John Herrman at The Awl laments the difficulties of the media in a world where they are no longer the gatekeepers of social knowledge.

Links.

5 December, 20154 September, 2016 Industry, Links, Metal, mp3, Musician 0

A Swedish black metal band who studied Catholicism so intensely for more efficient blasphemy that they wound up converting to Catholicism. The pioneering women

The Music Theory Song!

4 December, 20156 May, 2017 Musician 0

Just in case you forgot all this stuff, here it is doing everything the words say as they say it. By David Swenson. The

How to cook squid ink calamari risotto the Blixa Bargeld way.

3 December, 201528 March, 2017 Drugs, Industrial 0

From ’80s German TV show Alfredissimo. The other dude is Alfred Biolek. You can tell how old it is by them quoting prices in

Imogen Heap failing to catch all the money raining from the skies, on The Blockchain.

Imogen Heap doesn’t make the blockchain hype make sense either.

2 December, 20152 May, 2017 Industry, mp3 3

The big name in recent “blockchain” (Bitcoin) hype is Imogen Heap. As far as I can tell, it’s still the case that nothing about this is going to work.

LA punk zines Slash and NoMag scanned, courtesy Circulation Zero.

1 December, 20154 September, 2016 Writing 0

Ryan Richardson has put up lots of old archival material before, and his latest is Circulation Zero, on which he plans to make available the complete runs (or, at worst, the complete interesting runs) of ancient punk rock history.

I don’t want to shock you or anything, but pop music is an industry.

30 November, 20153 November, 2016 Pop, Writing 0

The Atlantic is perturbed and depressed that pop music is created by an industrial process and wants you to be too.

Dammit Yahoo, stop giving the game away.

28 November, 20153 November, 2016 Media, Writing 0

Yahoo posted their writeup on Rihanna’s Anti just a little early.

Baron: Torpor (2015).

1 November, 201516 June, 2017 Prog, Record 2

Torpor is squarely an attempt to recapture early ’70s English folky progressive rock. With vaguely sci-fi lyrics.

If you’re gonna do martial industrial music, at least make it really gay. Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft.

15 October, 201514 October, 2016 Industrial, Post-Punk, Record 0

DAF were a Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) band, covering the time from when NDW meant hideous post-punk noise to when it meant cheesy pop. Funnily enough covering a similar arc themselves.

Links: Rod Stewart took cocaine up his arse to protect his nose.

10 August, 201528 April, 2017 Drugs, Links 0

Yes, really. Also, psychedelic glasses. And caffeine.

More on the blockchain-music hype: what PeerTracks thinks it’s doing.

7 August, 20155 September, 2016 Industry 1

After the amazingly terrible Berklee white paper on how to make all musicians rich using magic beans, today we have a breathless piece of content marketing in Billboard hyping the notion, devoid of useful detail and promising the moon on a stick fueled by very complicated computer wizard magick.

Classical links: In which classical is hampered by iTunes.

29 July, 20152 September, 2016 Classical, Links 0

iTunes and streaming in general. Not one, but two cases. The problem is that (a) ID3 is crappy (b) particularly for classical (c) and

Film links. KUNG FURY!

28 July, 201528 August, 2016 Film, Links 0

How to make Zardoz make sense, automated iPhone music video making, geolocking, racism and Kung Fury.

The silver age of music: the Midas plague. How do you keep up?

26 July, 20153 May, 2017 mp3, Opinion 1

“Will I buy something? Pretty much not. If I see what I really want, I’ll buy the CD, or if I feel guilty, but physical records or even the CD things are just a nuisance. More and more things and piles of things, and guilt versus things, not having the things wins.”

Blacklisters: Adult (2015).

25 July, 201514 October, 2016 Punk, Record 0

Early 1990s grunge, reproduced with 100% authenticity. Really, I felt like I was a 26-year-old student/bum again, smoking Lucky Strikes on a front porch in Perth, wondering if I too would ever find some way to hit it big with Generation X.

Industrial estate.

24 July, 201528 August, 2016 Industrial, Links 0

I am doing the musical thing at last, despite literally being unable to sing or play (‘cos that observably never stopped anyone else). Two

Putting the record industry on Bitcoin: Why this won’t work.

23 July, 20155 September, 2016 Industry 1

Bloomberg has put up a breathless piece of hype based on a report from the most speculative unit of the Berklee College of Music, suggesting that doing it all on THE BITCOIN BLOCKCHAIN will shower money on all. Plus point: it is indeed from Berklee. Minus points: it’s made of squirrels and crack.

The James L. “Rusty” Hevelin Collection of fanzines (the SF sort).

2 July, 20156 May, 2017 Writing 0

Of course, the first zines were science fiction zines, and they sprung up in the 1930s just about as soon as mimeographs were physically

Matrix HiFi: Blind-testing high-end audio equipment.

11 May, 20156 August, 2020 Audio 0

As usual, a well-set up blind A/B test of supposedly stupendous audio equipment. And as usual, the actual answer (from ridiculously famous sound engineer

Apple wants free streaming and videos on YouTube shut down.

4 May, 201528 April, 2017 Industry, mp3 0

Of course the new distribution channels are going to act like the old distribution channels. Apple wants to relaunch Beats as a new and

Help the suffering stars of Tidal.

28 April, 201528 August, 2016 Industry, mp3 0

With the tidal.com app sinking without trace for no better reason than that it’s terrible and there’s no conceivable reason to bother with it,

Based on the trailer, it is blindingly obvious that everyone must watch the hell out of Kung Fury.

25 April, 201528 August, 2016 Film 0

A kung fu cop film from the television ’80s. Here is the trailer. And here is the Wikipedia article. And here is the theme

The Cramps’ long-lost video for “Human Fly” found.

24 April, 201528 August, 2016 Film, Punk 0

An item alluded to in epic-nerd-level Cramps coverage, but so rare nobody was even known to have a full copy. Here in the astounding

Donald Fagen: Sunken Condos (2012).

23 April, 201528 August, 2016 Jazz, Record 0

This is light jazz funk rock with brilliant musicianship, and Fagen’s voice is still lovely after all these years. I could not remember a

Metroland: Triadic Ballet (2015).

20 April, 201528 August, 2016 Industrial, Pop, Record 1

Metroland is a Belgian electronic duo. Their publicity says “Kraftwerk” a whole lot, though my first thought was “the Kraftwerky end of Severed Heads”.

Musician links.

19 April, 20156 May, 2017 Links, Musician 0

Chord progressions of 25,000 songs analysed, using the database of Hooktheory’s Theorytab. Which itself is ridiculously fun to play with. Audacity is the computer-based