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Listen to jazz trio The Commercialists play Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas live in a small club called The Estate in Milwaukee. That’s this afternoon’s chill work music sorted then.
If you’re anywhere near Milwaukee this month, it looks like there are still tickets to some of their Charlie Brown performances left, although the shows at The Estate look like they’re sold out for the month. (thx, than)
At a recent Portugal. The Man concert in NYC, Weird Al joined the band on stage for a pair of songs, including a cover of Killing In The Name, Rage Against the Machine’s anthem against police brutality and the military industrial complex. Weird Al, welcome to the resistance. (via @erikahall.bsky.social)
Two of the most famous screeches in music history are from House of Pain’s Jump Around and Cypress Hill’s Insane in the Brain — you likely heard both of them in your mind just reading the names of the songs. This short video explains where those samples came from and which one of them is a horse (and not Prince).
Intertapes is a collection of found cassette tapes — some contain music and others voice memos. Each entry includes images of the tape, a description/track listing, and the actual audio (on Soundcloud).
This one was recorded off of a NYC radio station in 1994 and includes tracks from Mary J. Blige, Wu-Tang, Snoop Dogg, and Heavy D.
This tape found recently in Berlin was also recorded in 1994 by someone named Sven and includes tracks by Underworld & Laurent Garnier.
There are a few artists where you hear their name and “Tiny Desk” together and you think, well, that’s going to be great. David Byrne is one of those and his performance does not disappoint.
Though Byrne and his band do normally spread out across large stages, the set design for each show is almost completely bare, without any cables or amps, and the artists wear or carry compact, custom-made instruments to make it easier to move, almost like a marching band.
It’s cozy, but Byrne and his band, in matching, brilliant blue suits, squeeze behind the Desk to perform four songs, opening with the euphoric “Everybody Laughs,” followed by “Don’t Be Like That,” both from his new album. They also perform two Talking Heads songs: “(Nothing But) Flowers,” from the 1988 album Naked, and a show-stopping version of “Life During Wartime,” from 1979’s Fear of Music.
Konnichiwa! I’m back from Japan and finally getting over my jetlag, which took much longer than I expected. Here’s a list of all the things I’ve been reading, watching, listening to, and experiencing over the past few months.1 Let us know what movies, books, art, TV, music, etc. you’ve been enjoying in the comments below!
Deacon King Kong by James McBride. This was my first time reading anything by McBride and maybe I have a new favorite author? I love everything about this story and the way he tells it. (A+)
The Da Vinci Code. One of my go-to comfort movies. “Scientific” art history detective story? Yes, please. (A)
One Battle After Another. Great. Especially Sean Penn. And it reminded me of a Wes Anderson movie for some reason? Like one that he would have made had he followed the Bottle Rocket path instead of the Rushmore Path. (A+)
Meredith Dairy Marinated Sheep & Goat Cheese. All cheese is delicious, but this one particularly so. (A)
Fantastic Four. It was ok? Aside from a few things, I’m having trouble getting excited about post-Infinity Saga Marvel. There was just a special alchemy about that whole arc that is proving impossible to reproduce. (B)
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Fantastic right from the first page. Sharp writing about social mores, reminded me of Middlemarch & Price and Prejudice in that respect. One of my all-time favorites, I think. (A+)
The Gilded Age (season three). Still enjoying the hell out of this show. Total suspension of disbelief is a must. (A-)
Mission: Impossible. I haven’t seen this in maybe 20 years and I guess it holds up? Not my favorite of the series though. (B+)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Great spy thriller. Gary Oldman is fantastic in this. Cold War? Spies? Britain? I will pretty much watch as many of this type of movie as you can make. (A)
Leaving America. This is a 12-part podcast on the logistics, benefits, and challenges of leaving the United States. Oh, no reason. (B+)
The Fellowship of the Ring (and TT & ROTK) by J.R.R. Tolkien. It’s been a while since I’ve read The Lord of the Rings books and wow, are they long. There’s entirely too much “and they travelled from here to there” logistics that drag on over several pages and descriptions of hilltops & ancient landmarks that you only hear about once. But Andy Serkis narrating the audiobook? So good. (A-)
The Lord of the Rings trilogy. After each audiobook, I watched the extended version of the corresponding film. My general feeling after 65+ hours of audiobook and 12+ hours of movie is that the books are too long and the movies too short. An 18-hour mini-series — perhaps three seasons of six episodes each? — seems like the sweet spot. (A)
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (season three). Maybe didn’t enjoy this quite as much as the previous two season, but I love spending time with these people and look forward to doing more of that when season four drops. (B+)
Jaws. Got to see this in the theater when they released it for the 50th anniversary. Spielberg had such a strong style right from the jump. (A-)
Paradise. Just fine. But I feel like there are better apocalyptic shows out there. (B)
Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. It was so nice to head to the theater to nestle myself into the low-stakes world of Downton Abbey for 2 hours. (B+)
Daft Punk Fortnite. Love anything with Daft Punk. (A)
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. Right after finishing Deacon King Kong, I did something I almost never do: started in on a different book from the same author. Loved this one too. (A+)
Tron: Ares. It was a loud NIN music video on a huge screen, what’s not to like? Jared Leto was fine, but there were probably better casting options here that the audience would have been more excited about. And the direction could have been stronger…Gillian Anderson and Greta Lee were both surprisingly meh. (B+)
Tron: Ares soundtrack. Better than the movie. (A-)
Total Recall. First time! Maybe a little too Verhoeven/B-movie for me. (C+)
Cars. I’ve seen this movie several times and what I noticed this time around is how incredibly expressive the cars are. You can just tell they worked very hard on that aspect of the animation. (A-)
Shopkeeping by Peter Miller. This was recommended from a couple of different vectors — pretty sure one was Robin Sloan. Lots of resonance to my work here and how I think about it (and want to think about it). (A-)
Japan. Absolutely loved it. (A+)
Iyoshi Cola. Craft colas are often disappointing, but this one was absolutely delicious. Wish I could get it in the States for less than $14 a can. (A)
teamLab Borderless. Some of this was too “built for Instagram” but a couple of the rooms (the one where it felt like the whole room was moving & the cathedralish one with the light strings) were great. (A-)
The Sumida Hokusai Museum. Had to make the pilgrimage here. (A-)
In Praise of Shadows by Jun’ichirō Tanizaki. Read this book about Japanese aesthetics while visiting Japan — it provided an interesting context. (B+)
Hokusai at Creative Museum Tokyo. Fantastic show…there were hundreds and hundreds of prints and drawings that showed his evolution and influence. (A+)
Okunoin Cemetery. Had one of the strongest senses of place I have ever experienced. (A)
Konbini. The Japanese convenience stores really are as appealing as you’ve heard. (A-)
Awakening Your Ikigai by Ken Mogi. Perhaps a little over-simplifying when it comes to Japanese culture, but I appreciated the message of having a purpose. (B)
Sho-Chan Okonomiyaki. When I got to Hiroshima, I knew I had to try their version of okonomiyaki, so I went to Okonomimura, a multi-story building crammed with okonomiyaki restaurants. I picked one and had one of the most surprising meals of my trip. So good. (A)
Blue Planet Sky. I spent a lot of time sitting in this room by James Turrell. (A)
Kanazawa Phonograph Museum. Lovely little museum, and a good opportunity to observe how successful inventions move from technology to culture/fashion/commerce. (A)
Princess Mononoke. I saw this in the theater on my last full day in Tokyo; they recently released a 4K remaster. Absolutely breathtaking. (A+)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Redford and Newman are both total smokeshows in this. And I’d forgotten how goofy this movie is. (B+)
A House of Dynamite. A very tough watch, but I thought this was fantastic as a tour of some of the different kinds of people who hold the fate of every single person on the planet in their hands every damn day. They’re tired, stressed, distracted, at cross-purposes with themselves, set in their ways, more celebs than leaders, and mediocre. And none of them have ever seen Dr. Strangelove? (A)
Past installments of my media diet are available here. What good things have you watched, read, or listened to lately?
A Japanese experimental music group called Open Reel Ensemble plays reel-to-reel tape recorders from the 70s & 80s as musical instruments (give it a sec to get going):
Brilliant! A YouTube commenter notes: “Very cool, looks like you’re fishing for sound waves.” Here’s another video of them playing…this one’s like a reel-to-reel version of DJing with turntables:
I went looking for information about how they’re producing these sounds and found this profile of the group from 2018.
Over the years, the group has developed new techniques. As Motherboard explains, each member can now “program” sounds directly on to the recorders, creating a strange blend of digital and analog technology. With multi-track recorders, Open Reel Ensemble is able to switch individual tracks on and off, too. Sometimes they’ll record blocks of sustained noise, at various pitches, to be triggered and disabled like notes on a guitar. These allow the band to play intricate chords and melodies on stage. “We’re finding new techniques every day,” Wada said, “exploring rotation and movements, and the relationship between magnetics and sound.”
I bet they are amazing to see live.
A two-hour version of the music played in the Wellness Center in Severance. “Please try to enjoy each listening session equally.” See also Severance: Music To Refine To.
✅ Added to my Underscore collection.
Bionic and the Wires connects sensors to plants and fungi to help them play music.
The attached sensors measure bio-electrical fluctuations in the mushroom. The fluctuations are converted into signals that control the robotic arms. The keyboard is playing a synth in Ableton Live.
What are the chances it’s just saying “uh, can you get these things off of me?” Top YouTube comment tho: “Play that fungi music.” (thx, pascal)
Speaking of Daft Punk, did you know they released some new music recently? Ok well, that’s not quiiiite true, but in late September, Epic launched the Daft Punk Experience in Fortnite and IMO it’s a) extremely cool, nd b) should be considered a part of the group’s official discography.
For a taste of what it’s like, here’s the seven-minute intro to the experience:
I watched this live when it launched, on a big TV and with the sound turned up, and it was awesome. Again, no new music, but definitely a new music video experience.
During the intro, you can control your player slightly but the game mostly moves you through it. After you’re inside the pyramid though, there’s a lot to do. The main event is a concert playing some of the songs from their Alive 2007 tour; here’s what that looks like from start to finish (33 min):
You can move freely around and dance, including with other players who are in the pyramid with you. During some songs, you can bounce really high on the dance floor or fly around the room.
Off of the main pyramid are four smaller interactive rooms (in order of coolness):
In all, that’s six new interactive audiovisual experiences from Daft Punk, featuring 31 songs from their discography. It’s huge.
The easiest way to see/experience all of this is to play the game…the Daft Punk Experience is still playable afaik. Fortnite is a free download and the DPE is free as well. If you’re a Daft Punk fan, it’s worth checking out for sure.
I don’t even know what this is — classical pop? surrealist orchestral? — but it goes hard and is kind of fantastic. Wow. A few comments from YouTube:
This is the most insane lead single from a pop artist I’ve ever come across! I’m absolutely stunned.
The only criticism I’m going to make is that the song should last at least 8 minutes.
I feel this needs to replace whatever was stolen from that museum in France.
Berghain by Rosalía is available to stream or buy on many of the usual platforms.
Courtesy of login.jp (“archiving the Japanese experience through music”), a jazz jungle mix by Takuya Nakamura, played in a Japanese rice field to celebrate the importance of rice in Japanese culture. A trumpet makes a few appearances.
Nakamura recently played a set in an elevator as well. (A trumpet makes a few appearances.)
It’s worth exploring login.jp’s back catalog, including party mix with green onions, techno & house mix in a Japanese fish shop, and chill mix with Japanese grandpa at a stationery shop.
(via mike bates)
This is so so cool and an arrow-splitting bullseye in the middle of my wheelhouse: a short Boards of Canada tune played on a DEC PDP-1, one of the most significant machines in the history of computing.
Here’s a description of what’s going on, courtesy of @dryad.technology on Bluesky:
The PDP-1 doesn’t have sound, but it does have front-panel light bulbs for debugging, so they rewired the light bulb lines into speakers to create 4 square wave channels.
You can read more about The PDP-1: The Machine That Started Hacker Culture:
The bottom line is that the PDP-1 was really the first computer that encouraged users to sit down and play. While IBM machines did the boring but necessary work of business behind closed doors and tended by squads of servants, DEC’s machines found their way into labs and odd corners of institutions where curious folk sat in front of their terminals, fingers poised over keyboards while a simple but powerful phrase was uttered: “I wonder what happens if…” The DEC machines were the first computers that allowed the question, which is really at the heart of the hacker culture, to be answered in real time.
And every day is a good day to listen to Boards of Canada. Oh! And if you’re anywhere near Mountain View, the Computer History Museum has regular demos of the PDP-1 and will play the song if requested!
If anyone would like to see this live, we demo the PDP-1 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA on the first and third Saturdays of the month, 2:30 and 3:15p. Just ask, and we’ll be happy to play it!
(via @k4r1m.bsky.social)
One hour and twenty-five minutes. That’s apparently all of the footage that exists of Joy Division playing their music on TV and in concert. Open Culture’s Colin Marshall writes:
Brian Eno once said of the Velvet Underground that their first album sold only 30,000 copies, but everyone who bought one started a band. Joy Division’s debut Unknown Pleasures sold only 20,000 copies in its initial period of release, but the T‑shirt emblazoned with its cover art — an image of radio waves emanating from a pulsar taken from an astronomy encyclopedia — has long since constituted a commercial-semiotic empire unto itself. That speaks to the vast subcultural influence of the band, despite their only having been active from 1976 to 1980. When we speak of the genre of post-punk, we speak, in large part, of Joy Division and the artists they influenced.
(via open culture)
For the past several months, I’ve been using a web-based music player I built called Underscore. It’s playing music for me right now. I recently revamped & improved it and thought it was time to show it off. Here’s a screenshot:
Ok, let me explain. I listen to music all day while I’m working, favoring music without words — electronic, classical, soundtracks, ambient, nature sounds, that sort of thing. I listen to whole albums, long mixes, and playlists across several services, including Spotify, YouTube, and Soundcloud. It was becoming a pain in my ass trying to pick something to listen to while working; I’d have to scroll through playlists on all these different services and generally I’d end up listening to the same stuff over and over again, getting sick of it, getting distracted by choosing music, missing some gems buried deep in a list of saved albums, etc.
So, pair programming with Claude, I built Underscore, a “home-cooked meal” app that’s both simple and opinionated. Here’s how it works. You can add links to music from Spotify, YouTube, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and Apple Music to it — just paste their share URLs in. Reloading the page gives you a random piece of music from your collection. You can see a list of the songs, videos, playlists, and albums in your collection and can hide them if you want. That’s it. That’s all it does.
There’s no APIs or authentication or auto-synching playlists. The music is played through embedded players and if it lands on something from Spotify, Apple Music, or Bandcamp, you’re gonna have to click the play button in the embedded player (Soundcloud and YT videos should play automatically (but don’t always for whatever reason)). When your current selection ends, the new random thing doesn’t automatically play…you need to refresh the page.
It’s not ideal, having it be a little bit manual and janky in this way. But oh boy, am I loving this thing. It took me awhile to get everything into the system, but I’ve got almost 300 resources in my collection now — probably 300-400 hours of music all told — and I listen to it all day while working. I’m listening to stuff from deep in the archives, albums and playlists I just wouldn’t have thought to play, when strapped for time in the rush to get to work. When something new comes along, like NIN’s Tron: Ares soundtrack, I add it in there. I don’t get distracted…I just get good music for flow/coding/writing all the live-long day.
The background animation was adapted and extended from one of the examples in Rick Rubin’s The Way of Code — there are a bunch of different patterns and colors that it cycles through. I’m kinda proud of the way the media embeds fade into 1-bit images so you can see the background behind them when they’re playing…dorking around with CSS & web design is still super fun.
And but so anyway, I built Underscore for myself, to scratch an itch, but recently thought that it would be relatively easy to add other users to it. So, if you’re a logged-in member of kottke.org, you can build your own collection and play it with Underscore; just head right this way. If you’re not a KDO member, you can still check it out…but the only thing it does is play my music collection (which has some good stuff in it IMO). Fair warning: aside from this post, there is no onboarding. You may be confused as to how it works. But it’s simple enough that you quickly figure it out. Due to lack of auto-shuffle, it’s not worth using if you’re adding stuff that’s under ~30 minutes in length — Underscore is for albums, long tracks, playlists, etc.1 Caveat emptor. You break it, you buy it. Etc. Etc. If you try it out, let me know what you think in the comments below. Suggestions or improvements welcome.
In 1969, Fred Rogers appeared before the Senate to argue against cutting federal funding for public broadcasting. During his testimony, Rogers recited a song from his show, What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel? In this short video, Jon Lefkovitz accompanies Mister Rogers’ words with some music and short scenes from movies like Moonlight, The 400 Blows, Do the Right Thing, Lady Bird, 2001, and Return of the Jedi.
Watch as Paul Davids plays 80 of rock’s most iconic guitar intros, including ones from Robert Johnson, Chuck Berry, The Kinks, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, ZZ Top, Joan Jett, AC/DC, Blur, and The White Stripes.
A few days ago, I linked to a NY Times piece about the V&A’s 90,000-piece archive of David Bowie stuff — costumes, photos, drawings, lyrics, etc.
The David Bowie Centre is a working archive with new reading and study rooms. The archive contains over 80,000 items, including 414 costumes and accessories, nearly 150 musical instruments and other sound equipment, designs, props and scenery for concerts, film and theatre. Bowie’s own desk is part of the archive, alongside notebooks, diaries, lyrics, correspondence, fan mail and over 70,000 photographic prints, negatives and transparencies.
The Centre is brought to life with a series of small, curated displays. Highlights include 1970s Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane ensembles designed by Freddie Burretti and Kansai Yamamoto, a film showcasing performances from Bowie’s career, and an installation tracing his impact on popular culture.
Last week, Open Culture linked to this video tour of the Bowie collection by Jessica the Museum Guide:
I imagine it’s not quite like being there in person, but still. (via open culture)
Artist and composer Matthew Wilcock looks for patterns in the everyday and creates music from them. It’s easier to quickly watch an example than to explain:
Instantly thought of the video for Star Guitar by The Chemical Brothers, directed by Michel Gondry. They also seem like the sort of videos you would have found on Mister Rodgers’ or Sesame Street back in the day.
In addition to traffic, Wilcock has made music with people on escalators:
Each escalator and path is assigned three notes and they alternate between those as the person’s head breaks the line. Lowest note closest to camera, highest furtherest away. I love the idea of involving all these people unknowingly in an artwork. Recorded in Liverpool St. station, London.
And a bird eating:
Bees:
You can find more of these video compositions on Wilcock’s YouTube channel and Instagram. He’s most active (and popular) on Insta; check out his Tour de France and swingset videos there. (thx, andy)
This is not some AI-generated to-study-to jazz video; it’s a guy who really likes jazz playing a bunch of records from his extensive collection.
over the years i’ve built a small but reallllly incredible and meaningful record collection, spanning from jazz, classical, a great folk collection from my dad, hip hop, house music, and random other things. record stores have been a sort of library for me, a place where i can find artifacts. there in sooo much real living history in a record.
most of vinyls i’ve collected are originals too and it’s just such a cool experience. for so many of the records i have they were originally recorded in a studio or live, mixed on a mixing console and put onto tape. then from the tape recording the vibrations were etched into the wax of the vinyl. how cool is that?
there’s a certain sense of bringing back to life i feel when i put a record on, these preserved etches of a song reawakening. it’s really beautiful.
i had an absolutely balll making this and i cant wait to make many more. i truly hope you find some songs that you love in here, so many of these are real favorites of mine.
If you enjoyed that, you might like this other YouTube channel that I posted about recently. (via undermanager)
I needed some new bouncy/chill music today and Tycho’s sunrise DJ set from this year’s Burning Man is doing the trick. I also ran across this playlist with 190 DJ sets from Burning Man this year containing 305 hours of music.
(via @mikeakers.bsky.social)
Gabriel Bonnin, aka Singer Sound System, plays an electro-acoustic hurdy-gurdy that’s driven by an old Singer sewing machine pedal.
My instrument is an electro-acoustic hurdy-gurdy. I just removed the crank and use a Singer machine to drive it :-) It is equipped with four integrated microphones that allow me to process the sound live, especially in Ableton Live.
Some of his most popular recent covers include the Doctor Who theme1:
And Enter Sandman by Metallica:
Oh and Daft Punk!
In 1987, choir director Dennis Bell arranged a version of U2’s #1 hit I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For for his choir, the New Voices of Freedom. After hearing a recording of the arrangement, U2 asked Bell & the choir to join the band for an upcoming show at Madison Square Garden in NYC. Before the show, the band and the choir rehearsed together at Greater Calvary Baptist Church in Harlem:
Here is some behind-the-scenes footage of the rehearsal (more); Bono’s arm is in a sling for some reason?
The live recording of the song from that MSG show appeared on their next album, Rattle and Hum; here’s the (music-only) video from U2’s YouTube channel:
And here’s an actual video of the MSG performance (taken from the Rattle and Hum DVD):
You can also find the MSG version of the song (and the rest of Rattle and Hum) on Spotify, Apple Music, etc.
Bell and the New Voices of Freedom recorded their own version of the song, which you can listen to on Spotify, Apple Music, etc.
P.S. That same day, the band walked around Harlem and stumbled across street musicians Satan & Adam; a clip of their song made it onto the album and DVD.
(via laura olin)
William Maranci took Nine Inch Nails’ Closer and mashed it up with Ray Parker Jr’s theme song to Ghostbusters and it’s maybe a little bit genius and a little bit cursed? Like one commenter says, it’s “the musical equivalent of cats and dogs living together”.
See also Eminem’s Lose Yourself mashed up with ELO’s Mr. Blue Sky.
This music video, directed by Kevin McGloughlin for Max Cooper’s song Repetition, features remixed fractal-like forms from the constructed world (roads, skyscrapers, wind turbines, etc.) interspersed with scenes from nature. Totally mesmerizing. (You’ve got a give it a minute to get going though, especially if you’re not a fan of gradual repetitive music. I was in a trance by the end. 😵💫)
Radiohead dropped a surprise album yesterday, a live album of songs from Hail to the Thief. You can find the album on various streaming platforms, including Bandcamp, Spotify, and Apple Music. The band’s lead singer Thom Yorke says of the album:
In the process of thinking how to build arrangements for the Shakespeare Hamlet/Hail to the Thief theatre production I asked to hear some archive live recordings of the songs.
I was shocked by the kind of energy behind the way we played and it really helped me find a way forward.
For us, back in the day, the finishing of this record was particularly messy and fraught, we were very proud of it but there was a taste left in our mouths, it was a dark time in so many ways…
Anyway we decided to get these live recordings mixed (it would have been insane to keep them for ourselves) by Ben Baptie, who did an amazing job.
It has all been a very cathartic process, we very much hope you enjoy them.
Radiohead is great live — they should rerelease live versions their whole discography. I’m listening to this right now, thinking about a friend who is no longer with us; they would have loved this album.
Today I learned that the opening theme song for the original Iron Chef TV program was adapted from a song composed by Hans Zimmer, who has done scores for films like Interstellar, Dune, Blade Runner: 2049, Inception, and Dunkirk. Perhaps even weirder, the name of the theme song is “Show Me Your Firetruck”. (The song is from Zimmer’s score for the movie Backdraft.)
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