One of the problems of criticism is—what happens when it takes you just forever to realize that something is totally great? It took me until this week, and lots of it cropping up on shuffle, to realize that the latest PJ Harvey album, “White Chalk,” is absolutely her best. (Okay, second best—maybe nothing will ever be as cool as “Rid Of Me,” if only because who writes rock music in 5/4? ) Back in September, Pitchfork gave “White Chalk” a 6.8, and I would have given it a worse score even as recently as December. But of course, what does anyone know? “Uh Huh Her” got a 7.6, her Peel Sessions got a 7.9, “Stories from the City…” got a 5.5 and “Is This Desire?” got an Pitchfork 8.
The Kronos Quartet is playing at Carnegie Hall late next month—and on the program is Clint Mansell’s “Requiem for a Dream Suite,” which is its New York premiere, sort of.
I had to go uptown to interview some people this afternoon and Laurie Anderson’s “Live in New York” came on the headphones on the way, which made me think about “Cloverfield” and 9/11 and “too soon” again. “Live in New York” was recorded at Town Hall on September 19 and 20, 2001. Is it in my mind, or does she sound uncomfortable singing “I feel like I am in a burning building and I gotta go” on “Let X=X” (iTunes link)? Nexis doesn’t deliver any useful accounts of the concert—just a review from Newsday which is appreciative but not very descriptive. (Also, though, now we know that the name “Laurie Anderson” has appeared in the New York Times an astonishing 799 times, and, yes, nearly all of them are her.) Also I’m not convinced she doesn’t get choked up during (iTunes link ahoy) “Slip Away.” (“What’s this? A little dust in my eye.”) Anyway, somehow that wasn’t too soon.
Apparently there is a new (and exceedingly posthumous) Klaus Nomi album; there are three way-out mp3s from it on this site. Today’s Village Voice published a little oral history of the East Village legend. There is also this incredible performance on YouTube—which, oddly, is of quite nearly exactly the music (or at least the harmonic progressions) from Michael Nyman’s “Memorial” from “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover”… which came out in 1989, though it was apparently first performed in 1985; Nomi died in 1983. Update: Ah ha! Rumors on the internet say the tune is based on Purcell.
Sad news. Guitar Hero 3 and I have broken up. Sure, we might hook up occasionally when I’m lonely at night, but our relationship is effectively over. I can play every song1 without effort on Easy mode but can barely make it through any on Medium after dozens of tries. So so lame. I’ve hit the wall and my pinky is to blame…the damn thing just won’t work properly and I’m unwilling to try playing with just three fingers (a la Clapton) because that seems like a dead end once Mr. Orange Button comes into play.
But the real reason is that because I don’t have a natural talent for the game, the only way to get better is through deliberate practice.
Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task — playing a C-minor scale 100 times, for instance, or hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.
Deliberate practice…sounds like fun! Yeah, no. No doubt I could master the game with enough focused effort, but when games stop being fun and become deliberate, that’s where I get off. Back to the surprising depth of Desktop TD.
[1] When relationships end, that’s when the lies start. The one song I still can’t play all the way through is Slayer’s Raining Blood. That damn song is just random notes as far I can can tell. ↩
Leung began his career as a part of hammer & tongs, the creative team behind many influential music videos as well as the movies Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, on which he acted as 2nd unit director and title sequence director, and the upcoming Son of Rambow, which he edited. (via antville)
Tucked in among The Kinks, The Velvet Underground and Belle & Sebastian, the track behind the animated opening title sequence for the new movie Juno is All I Want is You by the children’s folk musician Barry Louis Polisar. It’s as inspired a choice for this enjoyable little movie as PT Anderson’s inclusion on the Punch Drunk Love soundtrack of He Needs Me (iTunes link), Olive Oyl’s love song from Robert Altman’s 1980 adaptation of Popeye.
Polisar was a favorite of mine as a kid. In particular, the 1978 album Naughty Songs for Boys and Girls was my undisputed favorite record. Featuring the classics Don’t Put Your Finger Up Your Nose and Never Cook Your Sister in a Frying Pan, the album has never gone out of print. Give the tracks a listen on iTunes and if you have kids, this will give them lots of laughs and teach them to rebell against their parents.
Activision is working with Nintendo on re-mastering the Guitar Hero III discs for the Wii, which have been mistakenly encoded to reproduce music in mono rather than in stereo. Once the re-mastering has been done, early next year, the company will swap out current Guitar Hero III discs for free.
I honestly hadn’t noticed the mono issue, but I’m still waiting for my replacement ‘Pet Sounds’ to ship.
Influenced by his idol, Elvis Presley and the 1950s rock revolution, he rose to stardom as the main figure of the 60s musical movement known as Jovem Guarda (Young guard, in opposition to the ‘old guard’ of Brazilian music), which was the first manifestation of the Brazilian pop rock movement.
Epic Records/Legacy Recordings is releasing a 25th Anniversary Special Edition of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” with bonus tracks including remixes by Akon, will.i.am, and Kanye West.
The latest installment of Super Mario has received plenty of notice for its revolutionary style of gameplay. But just as striking is the intricacy of its sound design. One convention of the game is a Pull Star, a floating anchor that Mario can grab with some sort of magical, musical force which, when activated emits a creepy, almost theremin-like wail, wavering just a bit before solemnly sliding down in pitch. This sound is one of those elemental formulas for touching an emotional soft spot. The other day I was playing a level with a series of Pull Stars in succession and my girlfriend implored me to stop, as it was making her sad, and not only because I’m a grown man playing a child’s video game. Here is an example of the Wailing Pull Star (and a taste of the very Vangelis-like score scattered throughout the game).
Also: via Boing Boing Gadgets, footage from a live orchestra scoring session for the game. Mario’s creator, Shigeru Miyamoto sits aside and supervises.
Also also: I noticed that the menu for selecting levels to play is a musical instrument in its own right, allowing the player to create melody with chord changes and everything. It’s a subtle touch.
Been on a bit of a Guitar Hero kick lately…I just played it for the first time recently so of course I’m looking around the web for advice, hacks, YouTube videos, etc. Nothing like a little web research to reinforce how little you know.
Anyhoo, I found this video of a 8-yo kid shredding it up on Guitar Hero 2…he missed only three notes on an expert level song and wasn’t even looking at the screen some of the time. Little blighter. If you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go have a few alcoholic drinks, smoke some cigarettes, rent a car, and join the Army…let’s see him do all that! (P.S. I wrote a hit play!)
Guitar Hero offers a connection to all this, but departs from it in an obvious way: You’re not actually playing the guitar. No matter how good you may get at Guitar Hero, if you decide to take up the real instrument at some point, you’ll be starting from scratch.
I don’t know what it’s like to be a rock star and there’s no way I can pick up a guitar right now and play it, but the pretend version of the whole rock n’ roll thing that Guitar Hero provides is pretty powerful, at least for this impressionable newbie. Playing Guitar Hero and believing you’re a rock star might be like eating apple pie on the internet, but if you don’t know the difference in the first place, does it matter?
Japanese researchers have developed “melody roads” that play tunes when you drive on them. You could use this technique for traffic calming…i.e. the road plays music only when you’re driving the speed limit and hope that there’s no second-order melody that plays at two times the speed limit to entice highway hackers to speed for forbidden tunes.
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