Audio snake oil, London still the centre of the universe, Summer in Paradise.
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Links: China’s top music site, 808 The Documentary, Shazam is listening.
Douban.com, a movie about a drum machine, software that grabs your microphone.
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Aestheticblogging.
aestheticblogging basically taught me to have feelings, that werent anger.
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Clock DVA: Resistance (1983).
But love, like life, will always stay.
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Cabaret Voltaire: Fool’s Game (Sluggin’ Fer Jesus part 3)/Gut Level (1983).
It’s been a busy day working on the book. So here’s some relaxing early ’80s Crépuscule industrial.
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Links: Floor-sweepings editions, Paul is Still Dead, Imogen Heap’s $133.20, a good industry report.
Fifty year old records, fifty year old conspiracy theories, one hundred and thirty-three twenty and an actually non-stupid music industry report.
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Synthpop: Mlale, Clintongore, Digital Logic (2016).
Some super-accessible pop, some more experimentally-leaning synthpop and more Digital Logic vaporwave.
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Nórdika: Blut; El Mundo que Creamos (2016).
A Mexican EBM-industrial synthpop artist with his album from earlier this year and his new single.
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Links: Burroughs on the presidency, American Pie, Blood on the Tracks.
A beautiful and apposite William S. Burroughs reading, and some classic rock faff.
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Of course audiophiles still want vacuum tube computer audio.
At last, a followup on the legendary AOpen AX4B-533 Tube computer motherboard from 2002, and your options for cheap glow-in-the-dark amplification in 2016.
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Industrial and post-punk reviews: Siva Six, Sirus, Holygram, Rendez-Vous (2016).
EBM and synthpop, plus guitar-based post-punk revival.
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Why Blockchain won’t save the music industry, and Imogen Heap wants to spyware you.
The blockchain book I’m writing; a couple of short excerpts from the music section I drafted about half of today.
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Recording links: a new vinyl process, Brexit and UK records, Pono no mo’.
Exploring new frontiers in obsolete technology, why Brexit will affect UK music precisely how you think it would, and the state of Neil Young’s Pono.
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Links: The Pop Group, the Birthday Party, Plastic Bertrand, Düsseldorf.
A new Pop Group album (and it’s good!), the last Birthday Party record, the truth about Plastic Bertrand and a book about Düsseldorf.
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30 gigabytes of lost cassettes from the ’80s underground.
The Internet Archive has thirty gigabytes of cassettes from the ’80s for your delight and horror, from the collection of CKLN-FM host Myke Dyer. The collection was first put on line in 2009 and was made available on archive.org late last year.
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Death in Rome: Max Martin did nothing wrong. And the touchier aspects of neofolk.
Death in Rome do neofolk covers of pop. And what’s neofolk? Well.
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65daysofstatic, Barcelona, October 24, 2016
It was pure serendipity that I found myself on the other side of the planet from my usual home at the same time that 65daysofstatic graced Barcelona to promote their new soundtrack album, No Man’s Sky. The venue, Razzmatazz, has a good reputation and deservedly so. It’s rough and ready, but sensibly designed allowing for generous audio and viewing spaces, good ventilation, and even reasonable drink prices.
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Celebrate the day with a goth pool party.
What do you do with ten black bath bombs? Plus a goth dance howto. And proof that cyberpunk is real.
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Hip-hop and post-punk synthpop: Ich habe der fahr’n fahr’n fahr’n auf der Autobahn blues.
I don’t often see it noted just what was happening with early hip-hop and English and European synthpop in and from the post-punk era. Hip-hop histories gloss over it, and the reconstructed histories of techno somehow jump straight from about 1988 back to Kraftwerk, as if all that stuff from 1978 to 1984 never happened.
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Blue Plutos: Moon Language (2016).
The sort of guitar jangle pop that was our bread and butter in the late ’80s.
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Industry links: Consumers may only rip CDs to properly copyright-levied 80 minute MP3s of silence.
It was 35 years ago today, Sergeant Adorno taught the band that HOME TAPING IS KILLING MUSIC.
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Links: Indonesian and Mexican record markets, the Mekons, jazz saxophone relationship advice.
Music goes with chicken, retrospective on a scrappy punk band and how to be so foolish as to go out with a musician.
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Reviews: Nápoles, Damsel in the Dollhouse, Digital Logic (2016).
So I use the Bandcamp new arrivals as a radio, so what, so should you. Jangly guitar indie, goth-industrial dance and some straight-up vaporwave.
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J. G. Ballard and music. How to write the entire New Wave into being.
Post-punk’s favourite writer, who didn’t listen to music himself. It’s all about the imagery.
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Reviews: The Royal They, Unity One, Graveyard Love (2016).
Pre-grunge-style indie rock, EBM synthpop and disorienting synthesizer-guitar landscapes.
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Links: Psychoacoustics for recording, blockchain band names, Dépèche Mode demos.
Scurvy recording trickery, scurvier buzzword-compliant scams and Dépèche Mode so too has the accents in.
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Reviews: Crack Cloud, Night Trap, Ivy Fae (2016).
Angular post-punk, synthpop and witch house with songs.
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Links: Negativland, Diamond Rio MP3, Dylan, writing.
The ultimate in merchandising, reviving an old gadget, Dylan as writer, me as writer.
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Culture is not about aesthetics redux: scented candles in a human face, forever.
A retrospective on Rocknerd’s 2013 one-hit wonder “Culture is not about aesthetics. Punk rock is now enforced by law.” What musicians are now faced with.
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“Oh, I already wrote the greatest pop song of the 21st century. Did that in 2006.” The National Pep.
Andrew Hickey reminisces on “Jaded” by The National Pep, from the EP Love Punks Want To Make You Cry.
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