This pair of electronic collage artists stands out as innovators in a field noted for innovation. Matmos's Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt have intriguing backgrounds which help explain their brainy, decentered approach to electronica. Daniel is a UC Berkeley graduate student in Renaissance Literature and a longtime radio and club DJ who has collaborated on both film scores and hip hop projects with Louisville musicians Jason Noble (Rachel's) and Jeff Mueller (June of 44). Schmidt manages the conceptual art department of the San Francisco Art Institute and has pursued a number of experimental and/or electronic projects in the past. More
Are you an Autechre hardcore fan ? Than head to xltronic.com. More than 170 remixes, done by fans (I guess) are waitin' to be downloaded. If don't have enough bandwith or patience, they can also be ordered on CD-R.
.tape, aka daniel romero is a young guy from asturias, spain, who makes beguiling electro-acoustic sound collages and tunes with cheap keyboards, children's instruments (toy acordion, toy spanish guitar), electric bass, acoustic guitar. his music captures the wide eyed innocence of a world of musical possibilities and the soundtrack to the most dreamy of days.
If you don't know about Tuvan throat singing, and it's most famous band "Huun Huur Tu" make sure to read this little article and download all the songs!
"To an outsider, the most striking music in Tuva is that which the Tuvans call khoomei, from a Mongolian word that means ‘throat.’ Khoomei (sometimes transliterated as xöömij, xomei, or hoomi) is generally translated as ‘throat-singing,’ but Western musicians and researchers have also referred to the same phenomenon as overtone singing, biphonic and diphonic singing, and harmonic singing. The principal in all cases is the same: a single vocalist produces two, and occasionally three, distinct notes simultaneously. By precise movements of the lips, tongue, jaw, velum, and larynx, singers can selectively intensify vocally produced harmonics." (From the liner notes to Voices from the Center of Asia, Smithsonian Folkways)
Huun Huur Tu
The remote region of Tuva, one of the new countries formed with the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., has produced one of the world's most unusual vocal groups, Huun-Huur-Tu. Masters of the throat singing style of xoomei, in which a vocalist produces two or three notes simultaneously, the group has been warmly by an international following. According to Jazz Times, "a rustic joyousness and unadulterated expresiveness come out of these musicians". Analyzing Huun-Huur-Tu's music, The Chicago Tribune, wrote, 'it is unfamiliar yet very accessible, an other-worldly but deeply spiritual music that is rooted in the sound of nature". More
Kim Cascone has a long history involving electronic music: he received his formal training in electronic music at the Berklee College of Music in the early 1970's, and in 1976 continued his studies with Dana McCurdy at the New School in New York City.
In the 1980's, after moving to San Francisco and gaining experience as an audio technician, Cascone worked with David Lynch as Assistant Music Editor on both Twin Peaks and Wild at Heart. More
Kim Cascone also seems to be a reader of my weblog ! He once wrote me an email, because of some broken links. Because of his email, I became aware of his brilliant microsound mailinglist:
.microsound is an unmediated mailing list oriented toward discussion of the styles of digital and post-digital music promulgated by the proliferation and widespread adoption of digital signal processing (dsp) tools.
.microsound is not a "genre" mailing list, since this proliferation has occurred largely without regard for stylistic boundary. instead, .microsound presents itself as a forum for the discussion and exploration of a more general "digital aesthetic" manifesting across a wide variety of styles and disciplines -- from academic computer music to post-industrial noise to experimental ambient and post-techno.
Andrey Savitsky The microsound mailinglist has allready servered as a great resource for new and interesting music. Because of the list, I became aware of Andrey Savitsky from Belarus (german: Weissrussland) who makes microsound, using the name hhtp. Make sure to download hhtp.and.evelindomnitch.mp3
I just added a new feature to my weblog. Now it's possible, to search for audio files, directly from this webpage. Just press the "altavista music search" link in the right coloum, just below the wire-drop-down menu.
Greg Dyke, director general of the BBC, has announced plans to give the public full access to all the corporation's programme archives.
The service, the BBC Creative Archive, would be free and available to everyone, as long as they were not intending to use the material for commercial purposes, Mr Dyke added.
"The BBC probably has the best television library in the world," said Mr Dyke, who was speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival.
"Up until now this huge resource has remained locked up, inaccessible to the public because there hasn't been an effective mechanism for distribution.
"But the digital revolution and broadband are changing all that.
"For the first time there is an easy and affordable way of making this treasure trove of BBC content available to all." Read more
Simon Stockhausen was born on the 5th of June 1967 near Cologne. At the age of five he commenced his musical education ( piano - saxophone - drums - synthesizer - composition ). After his final exams 1986 he began touring with the Stockhausen ensemble thruout the world and also co-produced the electronic music for two of the Operas by his father Karlheinz. 1996 Simon stopped to work with his father.
Besides the frequent collaboration with his brother Markus Stockhausen over the last 19 years, which generated numerous CD- releases on record labels like ECM - EMI - LARGO and two compositions for the Cologne philharmonic , he writes and arranges music for many german theatres and wrote music for rezitals with actors like Hanna Shygulla and David Bennent.
Experimental hip-hop outfit U.N.K.L.E. was one of the original artists releasing material through noted U.K. label Mo'Wax, which helped launch the instrumental mid-'90s downtempo breakbeat revival eventually termed trip-hop. Though hardly the label's highest profile group (at least until the long-delayed release of their debut LP in 1998), U.N.K.L.E. numbered among its members label-head James Lavelle, who formed Mo'Wax while still in his teens as an antidote to the increasingly stale acid jazz/Northern soul scene. Read more
Drum'n'bass deviant Amon Tobin fuses hip-hop and jazz compositional ideas with the bustling rhythms of hip-hop and jungle and the bent sonic mayhem of ambient and dub. Unlike rolling junglists such as Alex Reece and Wax Doctor, however, who draw from a softer, "cooler" brand of jazz, Tobin aims to maintain the heat of bop and free, pairing spry, galloping basslines with complex trapset orchestration and shrill, screaming horns. A native of Brazil, Tobin moved to the U.K. in the mid-'80s, when hip-hop was beginning to take hold and the rhythms of breakbeat electro-funk were replacing reggae and punk as the underground youth music of choice. Read more at Allmusic.com
Glasgow lo-fi post-rockers, described as the "best band of the 21st century" by Pavement's Stephen Malkmus, whose studied art-rock boldly attempts to emulate the sound of legendary US alternative rockers Slint and Sonic Youth. Formed by Stuart Braithwaite (guitar/vocals) and Dominic Aitchison (bass) in 1995, they were soon joined by second guitarist John Cummings and drummer Martin Bulloch. Their debut single "Tuner"/"Lower" appeared in March 1996 on their own Rock Action label. Other early singles, including "Summer" and "New Paths To Helicon" (collected on the Jetset release), were released on various independent labels. They received high praise from a music press anxious for an antidote to the Oasis-dominated guitar-rock scene, although they left many listeners bemused by a "difficult" live broadcast on BBC Radio 1 that ended with 10 minutes of white noise. Read more @ the BBC or Allmusic.com
Read reviews of their latest CD "Happy Songs for Happy People":
With blizzards of guitar noise, urgent beats, and looped electronics, Oita, Japan's Xinlisupreme (pronounced zinly supreme) recast My Bloody Valentine, Suicide, and Aphex Twin in a strange genre-assaulting sound that is at times gentle, at times violent, but always unique. Read more at Allmusic.com
It is somewhat difficult to explain what Xinlisupreme actually is, or sounds like. What we can say is that instead of letting the concept of noise, feedback, etc needlessly carry them away (like so many others; you know who you are), the band take matters into their own hands and boldly shape and craft theirs into a melting pot of dissonance based ideas. Read more at the BBC
Xinlisupreme are a duo from Japan, but they play some of the wildest surf-guitar instrumentals this side of 1960s USA. Read more at Pitchforkmedia.com
Once, the fans came by the busload from across the country to see superstar DJs, the "new rock stars" flown to oversized nightclubs at great expense.
But now dance music, the genre that revolutionised people's clothing, drinking, drug-taking and socialising habits beyond recognition, is battling for survival. Read more
People don't change. It's allways the fallt of someone else. Peolpe are blammed for downloading movies, now they are even blamed for telling the truth about crapy movies:
...No, the executives are not blaming such bombs as The Hulk, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle or Gigli on poor quality, lack of originality, or general failure to entertain. There's absolutely nothing new about that...Read more, or discuss at Slashdot.org
While I was surfing the net to find MP3 files of Hrvatski (Keith Fullerton Whitman), I found lot's of reviews of Hrvatskis' last CD "Playthroughs". One described his music as minimalist ambience, not unlike a sonic equivalent of a Mark Rothko painting.
I don't know if everyone would agree about that, but a few links later, I found Whitman and his friend Greg Davis, standing in front of a painting by Mark Rothko.
I'm not sure, if it's really a Rothko picture, but it sure does look like one. Isn't that a big coinsidence ? Or maybe it isn't ? If you know more about the event, leading to Hrvatski standing in front of the painting, please leave a comment.
...The Lali Puna sound is a sophisticated, complex mélange of classic pop motifs, pulsing electronic rhythms, and sleek European styling. Valerie herself could be the subject of a dissertation on modern cross-cultural anthropology: a Portuguese-educated German national, of part Asian descent, writing in English, sampling Spanish voices. The band isn't shy about its influences, which include Stereolab, Buffalo Daughter, and Aphex Twin, but close listening reveals echoes of less obvious artists like Nico, Brian Eno, and Saint Etienne -- as well as a strong streak of originality that makes simple comparisons like these somewhat difficult. Read More
You never really quite know what to expect from Hrvatski. Born Keith Fullerton Whitman, Hrvatski seems to have two sides to his musical persona. On the one hand we have the schizoid drill 'n' bass side, which conducts experiments in percussive programming more than melody, as on his 1998 release Oiseaux 1996-1998. Among the hard abrasiveness, hints of a more emotive side were apparent on his 2002 follow-up Swarm & Dither, where an acoustic and digital hybridization could be heard among surprising tracks like a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black." Read more
"Whip It," the 1980 song that was the anthem of the band Devo's rage against a society dehumanized by industry and commercialism, is now the theme of a Procter & Gamble Co. TV campaign for the Swiffer line of home-cleaning products.
In a new version of the tune, Devo lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh substitutes the lyrics "Swiffer's good" for the "Whip it good" of the original...
...Devo agreed to perform the altered version for Swiffer advertisements because, Mr. Mothersbaugh said, "it was so absurd. We like messing with the boundaries between art and commerce." Found at BoingBoing. Read more and watch the clip
last year I discovered some very beautifull but somehow spooky pictures of the german photografer Loretta Lux. Some of her recent pictures of little children were published in a german photo-magazine. Nowadays she seems to be everywere. In her own words:
„My pictures of children are not portraits in the true meaning of the word. They are rather imaginary portraits. I always choose models that I can somehow identify with, that remind me of my own childhood. What interests me about children is the mixture of vulnerability and pride, genuineness and learned behavior, self-awareness and hidden knowledge. I am exploring the awakening of the self.
As a trained painter, I don’t consider myself a photographer. My main influences and inspirations are great Italian painters like Pinturicchio and Bronzino, Spanish painters like Velasquez and Goya and the German romanticists. Some of my works refer to fairytales and myths, such as The Rose Garden, but they are never direct quotes.”
One of the premiere names in the field of electronic home-listening music, Mike Paradinas' recordings retained the abrasive flavor of early techno pioneers and explored the periphery of experimental electronica even while coddling to his unusual ear for melody, the occasional piece of vintage synthesizer, and distorted beatbox rhythms. While his side projects -- including Diesel M, Jake Slazenger, Gary Moscheles, Kid Spatula, and Tusken Raiders -- have often emphasized (or satired) his debts to jazz, funk, and electro, Paradinas reserved his most original and exciting work for major album releases as µ-Ziq. Read More
WATMM (we are the music makers) is a very nice fan site dedicated to Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher and Boards of Canada. The webpage is very rich in content, but unfortunally, lots of links aren't working.
Some time ago, they had Aphex Twin live sets, now I found some audio interviews with him on the watmm webpage.
Downloads: Alchemy One Hour Special On The Aphex Twin
Coming from Austrailia's SBS TV, this one hour special on The Aphex Twin on the televison programme Alchemy features an interview with Chris Cunningham talking about working with Richard.
Ultrasound Interview on 107.7 The End Live On "Ultrasound" 107.7 FM, The End September 22, 1997 in Seattle, Washington. Richard talks about mouth noises, and debuts an early form of the song "Equation" off Windowlicker calling it "Oh, just some crappy old song I'll never release."
Richard and Grant on KISS FM
This was a radio interview with Richard and Grant Wilson-Claridge on KISS FM in the UK, on it you will hear early Rephlex Releases, including Cordialotron played at 33 RPM
Quickbeam and Bombadil, the foremost rappers and rhymebusters in all of Middle Earth-- known for awe-inspiring live shows that draw legions of fans and send elf-girls into hysterics. Quickbeam and Bombadil have been dropping hobbit rhymes since the dawn of the first age. Lords of the Rhymes is the first single off their wildly-anticipated self-titled album.
Links + Downloads:
More Information and seven MP3 downloads is availible at IUMA. They also have an official homepage at www.lordsoftherhymes.com
It began in Kabul as a joke, but with the help of a few German musicians Afghanistan's all-girl rock group "Burqa Band" was formed in the space of a day and has hit the airwaves and clubs in Germany.
All that remains of the ephemeral alliance of the Burqa and rock is an amateur video clip and a song remixed by Berlin DJ Barbara Morgenstern which has become a modest summer-time favourite.
The female trio appears on screen as three blue ghosts in a makeshift studio in Kabul; bound by their robes they nevertheless let it all hang out on the drums, electric bass and microphone. Read more
During the mid-'70s, Germany's Kraftwerk established the sonic blueprint followed by an extraordinary number of artists in the decades to come. From the British New Romantic movement to hip-hop to techno, the group's self-described "robot pop" -- hypnotically minimal, obliquely rhythmic music performed solely via electronic means -- resonates in virtually every new development to impact the contemporary pop scene of the late 20th century, and as pioneers of the electronic music form, their enduring influence cannot be overstated. Read more
Links:
Kraftwerk - Tour De France, is the album of the week at BBCi, you can also listen to the whole CD.
In a rare interview, John Wilson talks to Ralf Hütter, founder member of the German avant-garde group, Kraftwerk about the group's considerable influence on contemporary music. Hear it
This pair of electronic collage artists stands out as innovators in a field noted for innovation. Matmos's Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt have intriguing backgrounds which help explain their brainy, decentered approach to electronica. Daniel is a UC Berkeley graduate student in Renaissance Literature and a longtime radio and club DJ who has collaborated on both film scores and hip hop projects with Louisville musicians Jason Noble (Rachel's) and Jeff Mueller (June of 44). Schmidt manages the conceptual art department of the San Francisco Art Institute and has pursued a number of experimental and/or electronic projects in the past. 
Are you an 
.tape, aka daniel romero is a young guy from asturias, spain, who makes beguiling electro-acoustic sound collages and tunes with cheap keyboards, children's instruments (toy acordion, toy spanish guitar), electric bass, acoustic guitar. his music captures the wide eyed innocence of a world of musical possibilities and the soundtrack to the most dreamy of days. 
The remote region of Tuva, one of the new countries formed with the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., has produced one of the world's most unusual vocal groups, Huun-Huur-Tu. Masters of the throat singing style of xoomei, in which a vocalist produces two or three notes simultaneously, the group has been warmly by an international following. According to Jazz Times, "a rustic joyousness and unadulterated expresiveness come out of these musicians". Analyzing Huun-Huur-Tu's music, The Chicago Tribune, wrote, 'it is unfamiliar yet very accessible, an other-worldly but deeply spiritual music that is rooted in the sound of nature". 
Kim Cascone has a long history involving electronic music: he received his formal training in electronic music at the Berklee College of Music in the early 1970's, and in 1976 continued his studies with Dana McCurdy at the New School in New York City.
Simon Stockhausen was born on the 5th of June 1967 near Cologne. At the age of five he commenced his musical education ( piano - saxophone - drums - synthesizer - composition ). After his final exams 1986 he began touring with the Stockhausen ensemble thruout the world and also co-produced the electronic music for two of the Operas by his father 
Experimental hip-hop outfit U.N.K.L.E. was one of the original artists releasing material through noted U.K. label Mo'Wax, which helped launch the instrumental mid-'90s downtempo breakbeat revival eventually termed trip-hop. Though hardly the label's highest profile group (at least until the long-delayed release of their debut LP in 1998), U.N.K.L.E. numbered among its members label-head James Lavelle, who formed Mo'Wax while still in his teens as an antidote to the increasingly stale acid jazz/Northern soul scene. 
Drum'n'bass deviant Amon Tobin fuses hip-hop and jazz compositional ideas with the bustling rhythms of hip-hop and jungle and the bent sonic mayhem of ambient and dub. Unlike rolling junglists such as Alex Reece and Wax Doctor, however, who draw from a softer, "cooler" brand of jazz, Tobin aims to maintain the heat of bop and free, pairing spry, galloping basslines with complex trapset orchestration and shrill, screaming horns. A native of Brazil, Tobin moved to the U.K. in the mid-'80s, when hip-hop was beginning to take hold and the rhythms of breakbeat electro-funk were replacing reggae and punk as the underground youth music of choice. 
Glasgow lo-fi post-rockers, described as the "best band of the 21st century" by Pavement's Stephen Malkmus, whose studied art-rock boldly attempts to emulate the sound of legendary US alternative rockers Slint and Sonic Youth. Formed by Stuart Braithwaite (guitar/vocals) and Dominic Aitchison (bass) in 1995, they were soon joined by second guitarist John Cummings and drummer Martin Bulloch. Their debut single "Tuner"/"Lower" appeared in March 1996 on their own Rock Action label. Other early singles, including "Summer" and "New Paths To Helicon" (collected on the Jetset release), were released on various independent labels. They received high praise from a music press anxious for an antidote to the Oasis-dominated guitar-rock scene, although they left many listeners bemused by a "difficult" live broadcast on BBC Radio 1 that ended with 10 minutes of white noise. 
With blizzards of guitar noise, urgent beats, and looped electronics, Oita, Japan's Xinlisupreme (pronounced zinly supreme) recast My Bloody Valentine, Suicide, and Aphex Twin in a strange genre-assaulting sound that is at times gentle, at times violent, but always unique. 
Once, the fans came by the busload from across the country to see superstar DJs, the "new rock stars" flown to oversized nightclubs at great expense.
People don't change. It's allways the fallt of someone else. Peolpe are blammed for downloading movies, now they are even blamed for telling the truth about crapy movies:
While I was surfing the net to find MP3 files of 
...The Lali Puna sound is a sophisticated, complex mélange of classic pop motifs, pulsing electronic rhythms, and sleek European styling. Valerie herself could be the subject of a dissertation on modern cross-cultural anthropology: a Portuguese-educated German national, of part Asian descent, writing in English, sampling Spanish voices. The band isn't shy about its influences, which include Stereolab, Buffalo Daughter, and Aphex Twin, but close listening reveals echoes of less obvious artists like Nico, Brian Eno, and Saint Etienne -- as well as a strong streak of originality that makes simple comparisons like these somewhat difficult. 
You never really quite know what to expect from Hrvatski. Born Keith Fullerton Whitman, Hrvatski seems to have two sides to his musical persona. On the one hand we have the schizoid drill 'n' bass side, which conducts experiments in percussive programming more than melody, as on his 1998 release Oiseaux 1996-1998. Among the hard abrasiveness, hints of a more emotive side were apparent on his 2002 follow-up Swarm & Dither, where an acoustic and digital hybridization could be heard among surprising tracks like a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black." 
"Whip It," the 1980 song that was the anthem of the band Devo's rage 
last year I discovered some very beautifull but somehow spooky pictures of the german photografer Loretta Lux. Some of her recent pictures of little children were published in a german photo-magazine. Nowadays she seems to be everywere. In her own words:
One of the premiere names in the field of electronic home-listening music, Mike Paradinas' recordings retained the abrasive flavor of early techno pioneers and explored the periphery of experimental electronica even while coddling to his unusual ear for melody, the occasional piece of vintage synthesizer, and distorted beatbox rhythms. While his side projects -- including Diesel M, Jake Slazenger, Gary Moscheles, Kid Spatula, and Tusken Raiders -- have often emphasized (or satired) his debts to jazz, funk, and electro, Paradinas reserved his most original and exciting work for major album releases as µ-Ziq. 
