Rocknerd

What it feels like to lose the ability to perceive music.

3 July, 20146 May, 2017 Writing 0

Quite possibly the scariest thing you will read this year.

The audiophile woo motherlode: Wat Hifi?

31 May, 20145 September, 2016 Audio 0

Some kind person has been collecting this stuff. Enjoy. HT Paul Makepeace.

The stupidest audiophile argument against double-blind testing to date.

23 May, 20144 September, 2016 Audio 0

Paul Wilson writes, in Audiophile Review, possibly the stupidest argument against double-blind tests I’ve read in some time. He doesn’t just argue the case

Punk rock is alive and well in Myanmar.

12 May, 20144 September, 2016 Punk 0

A great photo essay by Olaf Shuelke in Roads and Kingdoms of punk rockers and their kids, in full mohawked peacockery, putting on unlicensed

Helvete, an open-access peer-reviewed journal of black metal theory.

6 May, 20144 September, 2016 Metal, Writing 0

“Helvete is a new open-access electronic and print journal of black metal theory.” Conceived after Melancology, the second Black Metal Theory Symposium, in 2011,

The Moog Music factory tour.

4 May, 20146 May, 2017 Musician 0

Robert Moog’s second company to be called Moog Music still exists and still makes analogue synthesizers. Cool Hunting went on a tour of the

Rappers, sorted by size of vocabulary.

4 May, 201417 October, 2016 R'n'B 0

Matt Daniels answers the question you hadn’t thought to ask: who has the largest vocabulary in hip-hop? Counts done from first 35,000 released words.

The Church of Scientology has its own kiddie pop groups.

1 May, 201426 August, 2016 Esoterica 0

As if the Scientology rap wasn’t enough, Vice gives us Kids Of Today For A Better World. “In time we’ll become the leaders of

A librarian reviews her husband’s “Stupid Record Collection.” All of it.

19 April, 20144 December, 2016 Record, Writing 0

In which a relatively normal person decides to sit down and review her husband’s entire vinyl LP collection. In alphabetical order. “I can’t believe

Playing to the demographic that actually has money.

11 April, 201417 June, 2018 Rock, Writing 0

Pete Farnan of Boom Crash Opera writes about playing A Day On The Green, to the most irony-free audience possible. “The Hunters and Collectors

New Wu-Tang Clan album available only as no copies at all.

2 April, 201428 April, 2017 R'n'B, Writing 0

JOHN CAGE MATCH, Praxis, Wednesday (NTN) — The Wu-Tang Clan has announced the nonrelease of their new album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,

New Spotify stratagem: get your fans to stream your silence.

19 March, 201428 April, 2017 mp3 2

Mashing together public domain audio to get cash out of Spotify is too much like work. Vulfpeck, a funk band from Ann Arbor, have

You didn’t know you wanted a robot J. G. Ballard until this moment.

18 March, 201429 November, 2016 Writing 0

Courtesy Mike Bonsall on the jgb list. “It took months to painstakingly analyse 7,000 answers JG Ballard made in over 300 interviews and turn

Subscribe using an email function that works!

17 March, 20144 December, 2016 Rocknerd 0

We’ve previously sent out email via the Subscribe2 plugin, but it keeps ending up in spam filters. The Jetpack plugin (turn your blog into

Industrial Soundtrack for the Urban Decay: documentary film later this year.

16 March, 20146 May, 2017 Film, Industrial 0

Now this is an interesting thing. Amélie Ravalec and Travis Collins (the one from RTR) track down the conceptual origins of 1970s and 1980s

Why we love repetition in music.

14 March, 20146 May, 2017 Esoterica, Writing 0

Why do we listen to our favourite music over and over again? Because repeated sounds work magic in our brains. Do anything repeatedly and

Daniel Miller from Mute’s top five German prog rock albums.

12 March, 201429 March, 2017 Industrial, Musician, Prog 0

Miller is not quite comfortable with the term “Krautrock”, and neither am I. But this is a delight for any decent record nerd, and

Neil Young launches new music player based on magic beans and unicorn poop.

10 March, 20147 May, 2017 Audio, mp3 4

Neil Young has unveiled at SXSW a new $400 pocket music player that only plays one specific file type, encoded at “high resolution”. The

That Tyson guy? Eh, I could take him.

28 February, 20145 May, 2017 Your rights 0

Liberation Music really don’t like people using their music on YouTube. So when some guy used a recording they owned, they got it taken

The levels of musical appreciation.

5 February, 20146 May, 2017 Esoterica, Writing 0

From The Dark Side Of The Room. I’ll note that Rocknerd has already reached the later levels. HT Ms45.

How a major record deal works in the 2010s.

4 February, 20146 May, 2017 Industry, R'n'B 0

From Cracked, one-hit wonder rapper Spose describes his major label career trajectory. Thankfully his story had a happy ending and he’s now making a

Deaf from birth, Austin Chapman hears music for the first time.

13 January, 20146 May, 2017 Audio, Writing 0

Filmmaker Austin Chapman was largely deaf from birth until, a year or so ago, he finally got hearing aids that didn’t suck. “It was

Renaissance by the Village People (1981): the Highlander 2 of disco.

12 January, 20148 August, 2025 Dance, Record 0

It’s 1981. The disco empire has fallen. The Casablanca label has been bought by PolyGram and all the disco artists have been dumped. You

Kim Jong-Il was the North Korean Roger Ebert.

9 January, 20146 May, 2017 Film, Writing 0

Amongst his stupendously many literary achievements, Dear Leader Kim Jong-Il was an accomplished film critic. LET US CREATE MORE REVOLUTIONARY FILMS BASED ON SOCIALIST

The trouble with actually learning how to write.

7 January, 20146 May, 2017 Writing 0

This is entirely and horrifyingly accurate. Chris Bucholz, Cracked: 4 weird side effects of learning how to write.

If only you could collect this well.

21 December, 20136 May, 2017 Record 0

How a working-class couple amassed a literally priceless art collection. “They were artists, and the collection was their work of art.” If only I

Macaulay Culkin has formed a pizza-related Velvet Underground tribute band.

10 December, 20136 May, 2017 Esoterica 0

That is all. Available on Bandcamp.

Don’t be this embittered ex-rock star.

5 December, 20136 May, 2017 Writing 0

There’s a lotta David Lowerys out there.

A real-time Internet radio search engine, from the creator of mp3.com.

16 November, 201320 May, 2017 mp3, Radio 0

Michael Robertson, original founder of mp3.com, has come up with an interesting new toy: the world’s first real-time radio search engine. It takes the

The completely recyclable LP record.

7 November, 201315 March, 2017 Audio 0

And if her 3D-printed records made of petrochemicals are too icky and modern, Amanda Ghassaei has followed up with a wooden record. Cut with