What's in YOUR WinAmp?

Listening to: The Books. Sublime.

Found it!

"It" being the radio program that fills the void left when CBC Radio 2 canceled Brave New Waves in 2007...


...it's Late Junction, on BBC Radio 3. Yes, I'm sounding like a shill for BBC Radio lately, but I don't care. Where else am I going to hear a guitar quartet arrangement of Arvo Pärt's Summa?!

Enjoy!

For Your Listening Pleasure

Said the Gramophone, an excellent music blog, has posted a "top 100 songs of 2010" list, complete with links to download all the songs in two .zip files.

While the tastes of site mangers Sean, Jordan, and Dan doesn't always intersect with mine (one or more of three likes dance tracks), it overlaps often enough that I find about 80% of the music they post of interest. And hey, at least this list was compiled by someone with opinions about what he likes, not by some algorithm or sales figures. This quote from the posting sums up Said the Gramophone's philosophy nicely:

Said the Gramophone is one of the oldest musicblogs. We try to do just two things well: finding good songs, and writing about them. We don't mess about with tour-dates, videos or advertising.

So, check out the site at saidthegramophone.com and Sean's top 100 songs of 2010 here.

Brian Eno interview

Took me a bit to catch on to what's going on here...



Small Craft On a Milk Sea is out now on Warp Records, and it's very, very good.

Currently Listening to...

...The Social Network soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It's a terrific disc of dense music, packed with lots of slippery electronics and surges. It's one the best things Reznor has done. Like all good soundtracks it enhances the film without distracting. Yet this soundtrack is not uninspired background music. On the headphones, devoid of image, it's a terrifically engaging work.

Filmmakers often use songs to put viewers into the emotional headspace of characters or convey specific emotions. It's a cheap shortcut, one I call "soundtrack over substance". Watchmen is a film loaded with examples of this. The director and producers didn't even have the good sense to license much of music which was directly quoted in the comic, or they changed the scenes so much that when they did use music quoted in the comic, it made no sense in the context of the film. The comic shows two characters approaching an Antarctic fortress on hover bikes. Author Alan Moore imaginatively quotes "All Along the Watchtower": "...two riders were approaching/ And the wind began to howl." The film uses the same music, but the characters are walking towards the fortress, so the lyrics now don't mirror the action, and it becomes an "I wonder why they used Jimi Hendrix here?" moment. The use of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" over an overly-long sex scene was just schmaltz.

Doctor Who broke with tradition last season and used a song under a scene wherein Vincent Van Gogh is transplanted temporarily to the 21st century to see a retrospective of his own work. While the perfectly serviceable song by Athlete didn't ruin the scene, I'm not convinced the scene needed such an obvious musical punch, not with Matt Smith, Bill Nighy, Tony Curran, terrific actors all, and the luminous Karen Gillen onscreen.

Some films make great use of songs. Magnolia manages to nicely avoid sentimentality by having the characters lip-sync one of the wonderful Aimee Mann tunes. Basquiat uses period songs evocatively, not literally. Trainspotting busts out "Lust for Life" as an ironic anthem for the "upside" of herion use.

Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone, Guy Ritchie, and David Lynch all use songs to complement or contrast action and dialogue. Using "Bang Bang" by Nancy Sinatra to Open Kill Bill Volume 1 was inspired, as was re-purposing "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" by David Bowie for Inglorious Basterds. Julee Cruise's vocals added more layers of dread and loss to Twin Peaks.

I'm happy David Fincher and the producers commissioned a proper score for The Social Network, and didn't just fill the film with assorted songs from the years covered in the film. With dialogue like Sorkin's why would you let song lyrics speak for the characters?

The Social Network soundtrack is up there with the soundtracks for Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters and The Hours, both by Phillip Glass; and Mike Oldfield's score for The Killing Fields. What are your favourites?

Oh, M. Ward!

One of the worst covers ever has to be M. Ward's version of Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open the Door". No, I'm not going to provide a link to it and for that you should be thankful.

I love covers but this version is just pap, not what an song like this deserves, and not the sort of performance one would expect from the (until now) excellent M. Ward!

Dance of the Daleks

Streaming online until August 31, 2010, part of BBC Proms 2010: a discussion of Doctor Who's early incidental music, with composer Dudley Simpson.

http://tinyurl.com/28tdjfs

Anyone interested in TV/film scoring will like this 20 minute programme.

Your antidote to boring music and teeny commercial radio playlists...

http://www.thewire.co.uk/

Walkman turns 30

30 years of SONY Walkman personal stereos (yes, that's the official plural of "Walkman" according to SONY). Wow.

I figure I had at least four SONY cassette players, one recorder/player, one cheapie Walkman knockoff (called, I think, a Rollyman or some such), and two Panasonic Sports tape players. The SONY ones were always the best, and got used and used and used until they died a natural death.

I always wanted the WM-W800 (double) Walkman. It was way beyond my first-year university student budget.

How many of these did you have?

Easin' the pain...

Just found this online. Down In Black Bottom: Barrelhouse Mamas. Fantastic stuff.

Yeah, I figured out how to embed vids...

Tell me this ain't catchy. FANTASTIC video editing job, too.

Wonderwall by way of Songsmith

There are really no words for how wonderfully awful this is. Songsmith is a piece of Microsoft software that allows you to sing into it, then creates the backing music for you. Some brave souls dumped the vocal from Wonderwall into and this is the result. Would have been top-10 in 1983.