I am the ghost of groovymother.com. Woooooo!

This is an old page from Rod Begbie's blog.

It only exists in an attempt to prevent linkrot. No new content will be added to this site, and links and images are liable to be broken. Check out begbie.com to find where I'm posting stuff these days.

Filed under 'music'

June 4, 2012

Vinyl Tap - A record player app for your iPad

Skeuomorphism gone mad. I kind of love it. (Also, double plus points for the name)

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May 6, 2012

Pairings Box | Turntable Kitchen

“A curated food and music discovery experience”. Subscribe to get monthly deliveries of a) 7” vinyl, and b) recipes and ingredients. <3

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March 11, 2011

SoundTracking

Lovely “Here’s what I’m listening to” social sharing/discovery app for iPhone. Like Instagram, but for what you’re hearing instead of what you’re seeing.

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March 7, 2011

Rdio for Mac

Rdio have launched their (mostly-)native Mac client, and it’s grand. Not as nice as Spotify (playlist building is still clunky), but it does 99% of everything you want. I’ve been using it for a few weeks, and it was the sole reason I resubscribed.

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January 18, 2011

Exclusive video: PJ Harvey - The Words That Maketh Murder/The Last Living Rose

New PJ Harvey album on the horizon. <3 <3 <3

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January 17, 2011

December 1, 2010

Shop Vac

Fantastic text-animation for a Jonathan Coulton song.

November 22, 2010

Mashup Breakdown - Girl Talk - All Day

Visualization of the samples on the new Girl Talk album. Amazing!

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Drugstore: Anatomy Album - studio help | Pledge Music

Drugstore, one of my all-time favourite bands of all time, are back after a 10 year hiatus. They’re recording a new album in January, and are raising funds Kickstarter-style to help pay for it. The demos you get for supporting the campaign are lovely in their lo-fi mono way, giving good hints of the ethereal shoegazy gorgeousness to come. <3

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November 15, 2010

GIRL TALK - ALL DAY

New Girl Talk album, free to download. Similar to his previous work, which is both a good thing, and mildly disappointing.

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August 30, 2010

The Wilderness Downtown

Arcade Fire song combined with Google Maps and some JavaScript voodoo to make a lovely experience.

July 19, 2010

July 5, 2010

Mogwai | Special Moves

Forthcoming live movie and album from Mogwai. The MP3s are already doing the rounds on teh torrents, and are expectedly epic. Highly recommended.

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June 8, 2010

The Divine Comedy - At The Indie Disco

Never has a band so perfectly appealed-to and mocked their fan base. Ace!

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April 27, 2010

April 20, 2010

Thinking 'Bout Somethin'

New Hanson video.

Yes, *that* Hanson.

Still, a great song, and a fine, fine Blues Brothers-inspired video.

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March 27, 2010

Evelyn Evelyn

Fab concept album by either two conjoined twins, or Amanda Palmer and Jason Webley, depending on your perspective. Macabre, silly and ace.

March 26, 2010

Free Again: Teenage Fanclub

Horrifying realisation this morning — I didn’t have this song in my MP3 library.

I owned it on 7” vinyl, bought from Avalanche Records on West Nicholson St in Edinburgh circa 1995. It’s a cover of an Alex Chilton song (pre-Big Star) and is pure janglepop loveliness.

Buy it. If it doesn’t fill you with teh happies, I’ll give you back a buck next time I see you.

March 18, 2010

Tribute to Famous People by Pomplamoose

The fabulous Pomplamoose have compiled their outstanding cover versions into a new album. Many examples of cover versions being better than the originals, particularly their gorgeous take on “Single Ladies”.

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Deconstructing Lady Gaga's "Telephone" Video

It fills my heart with love to see a pop star make a video _worth_ deconstructing! ♥♥♥

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March 8, 2010

OK Go Rube Goldberg video: meet the makers!

Interview about the making of the OK Go video. Confirms that there was some light post-production tweaking, but for the most part, what you saw was one machine.

February 21, 2010

C O D E O R G A N

Analyzes a web page’s source and generates music. Lovely.

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February 9, 2010

T-Shirt War

Great stop-motion music video.

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January 21, 2010

thesixtyone

Gorgeous redesign of the indiemusic exploration and listening site.

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January 15, 2010

BBC News - Music file-sharer 'Oink' cleared of fraud

Hurrah! The founder of OiNK’s Pink Palace found not-guilty of fraud. So in summary, by getting OiNK shut down, the music industry have achieved: Pissing off a large community of music lovers and no conviction. Good work fellas!

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January 3, 2010

Atlantic Records Time Capsule

Killer box set — 165 tracks (11.5 hours!) spanning Atlantic Records’s 60+ years. Stones, Zeppelin, Archie Bell & the Drells… all the greats are here. I *ahem* downloaded this a few days ago, and have been enjoying it thoroughly. Well worth seeking out.

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January 2, 2010

Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space (SP50 and SP60)

Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space (SP50 and SP60)

The bonus tablets with this re-release, containing demo tracks, string and choir sessions and other early mixes.

I imagine the other tablets have the shiny black back. I'm not opening them to find out.

Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space (the tablets)

Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space (the tablets)

12 individually sealed 3" CDs, one for each track on the album.

Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space (the prescription)

Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space (the prescription)

Personalized to me, Signed by J. Spaceman.

Ladies and gentlemen we are
floating in space SP70
Play once twice daily
Quantity : 12 tablets

Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space

Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space

"Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space" by Spiritualized is one of my all time favourite albums of all time.

Released in 1997, I bought the original CD in its glorious one-disc pharmaceutical packaging. But I still remember covetting the limited edition 12 CD blister pack on the shelf behind the register at Fopp, a snip at £120. Alas, my poor student budget could never stretch that far.

This year, the album was re-released with the original "can't help falling in love with you" mix of the title track (which I heard once on the Mary Anne Hobbs Radio 1 show, but which had been removed from the original release due to the expense of including the Elvis tune & lyrics). And part of the re-release was an all-new blister pack.

I had to own it.

It arrived today. The attention to detail is as loving and amazing as I could have dreamt. My 20-year-old self would be proud. $225 well spent.

December 31, 2009

Best of Bootie 2009

This year’s mash-up-mega-mix. Amazing as ever!

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December 24, 2009

Shadow Percussion Project

One of my all-time favourite things: A high-school percussion group performing DJ Shadow’s “Building Steam With a Grain of Salt” live.

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December 18, 2009

Pomplamoose - Always in the Season

Christmas carol by Pomplamoose, with Zoe Keating on cello. Ace!

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December 11, 2009

8-bit Christmas

Chiptunes Christmas album, raising cash for Child’s Play.

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December 4, 2009

Unhenged: A Coverville Tribute to Spinal Tap

I love Love LOVE the Coverville podcast, and here’s the Spinal Tap tribute album they’ve compiled.

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November 24, 2009

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

This just makes me so, so happy!

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October 23, 2009

Classic Album Covers stamps

Man, nothing would make me send more letters than being able to put a Screamadelica stamp on the envelope.

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October 11, 2009

JoCo performs Flood (1/9)

When Jonathan Coulton realised that his concert in Chicago would collide with a They Might Be Giants concert, he did the only sensible thing: Together with his support act, learn the whole of “Flood” and perform it.

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October 9, 2009

Rock Band Coming to iPhone/iPod Touch

Will be interesting to see how this compares to the just-released Tap Tap Revenge 3. TTR3 costs $0.99 and has a fairly weak collection of free songs, and a small but decent music store. Rock Band will come with 20 tracks from bands you’ve heard of, but will likely be in the $10 range.

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August 14, 2009

John Cage - 4'33"

Performance of John Cage’s “4’ 33”” by the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

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July 20, 2009

Weezer - The 8-bit Album

Compilation of chiptunes covers of Weezer. Ace!

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Coverville

Twice-weekly podcast of themed collections of cover versions of songs. HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS SOONER?

Things that are ace about it: 1) The whole songs are played without being talked over. 2) Even if you don’t know the originals, you get a mixed bag of styles of music, and will discover new artists 3) The iTunes version syncs program notes and artwork to your iPhone and uses chapters so you can skip dreadful songs. In summary: AMAZINGNESS!

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July 14, 2009

THE TREASURE ISLAND MUSIC FESTIVAL

Flaming Lips, Bob Mould, MGMT, The Streets, Girl Talk… Should be a great weekend.

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July 5, 2009

Help Polyvinyl Save 10,000 Records From Destruction

Great Kickstarter project — A small indie label has too many copies of their CDs, so rather than destroy them, they’re giving them away cheap in return for ridiculously small sums. $20 gets you 8 CDs and a DVD. Bargain!

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June 24, 2009

The Passion Index

Using last.fm data to work out how “passionate” fans of bands are. A sloppy metric, but interesting nonetheless.

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May 18, 2009

Dark Night of the Soul

New album by Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse, with a shedload of guest contributors.

Due to legal wranglings, you can’t buy the album. But they will sell you a book of photos by David Lynch and a custom blank CD-R for $50, to which you can write any music you like. For example, one of the copies of “Dark Night of the Soul” available on most file-sharing networks.

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May 14, 2009

Amanda Palmer's secret show sneak peek | Current_Music

Current TV filmed a half-hour Amanda Palmer concert. She’s completely engrossing live. Enjoy! (The new Current flash video player is quite lovely too.)

May 12, 2009

in Bb 2.0 - a collaborative music/spoken word project

Each video has a soundtrack in B♭. Start and stop them to create a musical tapestry.

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May 5, 2009

High-Tech Cellist Fuses Music, MacBook

Interview with Zoë Keating, and a clip of her performing one of her wonderful looped cello tracks.

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May 3, 2009

Moray McLaren - We Got Time

Lovely music video. Make sure and watch the “making of” to understand how it was done without (much) trickery.

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April 26, 2009

What I think Born To Run sounds like

Amused me since that’s the entirety of my experience of “The Boss”.

March 31, 2009

March 4, 2009

THRU YOU | Kutiman mixes YouTube

YouTube videos remixed into awesomeness.

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February 26, 2009

Röyksopp: Happy Up Here

New Röyksopp video — imaginative “real-life” space invaders.

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February 17, 2009

Amanda Palmer: On Abortion, Rape, and Humor

Amanda Palmer on her song “Oasis” being rejected for airplay by the British music media. While I could understand the “mainstream” (Radio 1, MTV, The Box) knocking it back, it’s sad to see that 6 Music, NME et al are also afeard of perceived offense.

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February 4, 2009

YouTube - Her Morning Elegance / Oren Lavie

Wicked cool stop-motion music video.

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January 19, 2009

BBC NEWS | Magazine | A bit of vibraphone nostalgia

In tribute to Tony Hart, the BBC News magazine profiles the music for “The Gallery”. An iconic ditty for any member of my generation.

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December 30, 2008

Best of Bootie 2008 CD

Awesomesauce! The new Best of Bootie mashup CD is ready for download.

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December 16, 2008

What's In The Box? | Vermillion Lies

One of my favourite music-geek-thrills is hearing a support act at a concert, being wicked impressed, and buying their CD from the merch table afterwards. Vermillion Lies supported Amanda Palmer last night, and were ace in a quirky discordant silly folkpop kind of way. You can download their latest album for free here. Give ‘em a listen, whydontcha?

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December 15, 2008

rodbegbie's Songcolours.

No idea what this means, but it’s pretty. “ohh roof da walk boy gigantic”

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Last.fm's Playground: Unwanted

Which tracks do last.fm’s users hide from their profile most often? Your guide to the world’s finest guilty pleasure tunes.

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December 8, 2008

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Fifty Years of Popular Songs Condensed Into Single Sentences.

The Beatles, “I Want to Hold Your Hand”

I want to do it with you.

- - - -

Marvin Gaye, “Let’s Get It On”

I want to do it with you.

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November 29, 2008

Auditorium

Gorgeous swooshy musical flashgame

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November 23, 2008

b3ta.com challenge: recreating album covers

The “Screamadelica” salad is my favourite.

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October 27, 2008

RjDj

Echoing Andy Baio’s advice on Twitter: “If you have an iPhone, go install RjDj Single (it’s free), pop in your headphones, start it up, and go back to whatever you were doing.” S’bloody AMAZING!

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October 24, 2008

TinEye Mobile - Idée Inc.

Take a photo of a CD sleeve, and it’ll attempt to ID it for you. Like Shazam, but for product photos. Since I use my iPhone as a way of remembering books I’ve seen in Borders to buy off of Amazon, that’d be a handy app.

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September 12, 2008

Stephen & the Colberts in Rock Band

Available now as a free download. A payback for that Rush playing Rock Band viral?

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July 29, 2008

BBC - Music

The first part of Auntie Beeb’s integration with MusicBrainz and Wikipedia is live. Every artist in MusicBrainz now has a page on bbc.co.uk, featuring radio playcount information where available. Very cool.

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July 15, 2008

Feist on Sesame Street

In retrospect, “1 2 3 4” was an obvious choice.

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July 13, 2008

Shazam iPhone app

Probably the best free app on the iPhone so far: Hold your iPhone near a music source, and it will identify the track for you. My initial tests against slightly fuzzy FM radio and the background music in a crowded theatre worked perfectly. Wicked cool!

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June 29, 2008

What I’ve been listening to

What I’ve been listening to

My last three months worth of listening. Generated with last.fm data and Wordle.

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June 6, 2008

Big Ideas (Don't get any)

Beautiful video of Radiohead’s “Nude” being “performed” on old hardware. (Slightly skeptical because I don’t recall the 48k Spectrum having multi-channel sound, but let’s not piss on the chips of a great clip.) Forward to 1:10 if you want to skip the Spectrum loading sounds.

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May 26, 2008

LastGraph3

The last.fm music visualizer just upped the awesome a tad. I love the “posters” showing your artist preferences over time.

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Music Catch

Gentle quick and fun flash game, with lovely piano accompaniment.

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May 22, 2008

Treasure Island Music Festival

Awesome looking two-day music festival in San Francisco — Justice, Goldfrapp, Spiritualized and The Raconteurs are amongst the acts. Tickets go on sale next week.

May 10, 2008

The car, the radio, the night - and rock's most thrilling song

Travelogue round Route 128, inspired by Jonathan Richman’s “Roadrunner”

May 6, 2008

Economist wins acclaim from rap duo

Things I never thought I’d hear: Nerdcore rapping about The Economist.

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May 5, 2008

nine inch nails: the slip

Another NIN album released for free download under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. It should be noted that Ghosts I-IV was the first NIN album I’ve ever bought, after enjoying its free release earlier this year.

April 27, 2008

Creative Review: Spiritualized and Farrow: made for each other

Interview with Jason Spaceman and Mark Farrow about the fantastic packaging they’ve put together for Spiritualized’s albums. They’re one of the few bands where I make sure to buy the “deluxe” CD.

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April 11, 2008

Portishead in Portishead // Current

Portishead concert, showing on Current TV over the next few weeks. Material from their splendid new album, Third.

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March 29, 2008

shirt.woot: Now Let Me Get This Straight

Best shirt.woot in a while. Only problem? When I wear it, I can’t get the bloody song out of my head.

March 25, 2008

March 6, 2008

Kevin Kelly -- 1,000 True Fans

“Anyone producing works of art needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.” Discussed this over lunch today, and could definitely think of a handful of bands I’d pay $10-a-month to “patronize”.

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March 3, 2008

Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts

Trent Reznor releases a new NIN album as online download with “premium” collectors offerings. Notable differences to the Radiohead “In Rainbows’ download include a) It’s CC BY-NC-SA licensed, so you can remix it however you like and b) The first part has been “officially” seeded to BitTorrent in a shareware stylee.

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February 22, 2008

CoverSutra

Got this as part of MacHeist recently, and dismissed it as “pointless eyecandy”. I couldn’t be more wrong — While it is graphically-lovely, it allows for keyboard control of iTunes (including tasks like rating tracks) and is a lower-memory last.fm client than the official last.fm client. Added to my Login Items!

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YouTube - VIVA OBAMA 2008

Well, if a mariachi band won’t bring out the “hispanic vote” in Texas, I don’t know what will…

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February 20, 2008

taint.org: Vote for Dustin on Saturday

Amazing! Ireland’s potential Eurovision entry treats Eurovision with precisely the seriousness it deserves. Best entry since “Guildo Horn and the Orthopedic Stockings”?

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February 19, 2008

The World's Greatest Music Collection - eBay

3m records and 300k CDs, for $3m? Bargain! /me runs off to ask for line increase on my credit cards

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February 17, 2008

Music using ONLY sounds from Windows XP and 98!

Posted mostly because it’s clever, but also because I miss hacking on MOD files.

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February 16, 2008

Audiosurf: Ride Your Music

An outstandingly fun Windows game: Drive a car over coloured blocks on a track generated by an MP3 of your choosing. Pick something mellow, and you get a relaxing low-scoring game. But if you want a challenge, throw some pumping techno its way. Works very well with Chemical Brothers and Pixies, I find. Best use of Digital Signal Processing ever!

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February 3, 2008

Yes We Can - Barack Obama Music Video

Song and video by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas (plus a bunch of other artists), based upon Obama’s stump speech. I cannot imagine anyone doing this with a Romney speech.

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M. Ward + Zooey Deschanel collaboration is near :: Four new songs from KCRW!

I loved Zooey Deschanel’s singing in Elf, and the tracks here sound lovely.

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January 18, 2008

A Bit of Fry and Laurie - "Mystery" song

Classic bit of early Hugh Laurie musical brilliance. (Also worth seeking out on YouTube: his version of Hey Jude)

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January 11, 2008

Easy Acid

Large collection of loungecore covers. Hugo Montenegro’s version of “Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)” is my favourite so far.

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December 27, 2007

My Albums of 2007

I’ve been meaning to do something like this for years. I listen to a shedload of music, but always find it tough to rank or rate things. Not for nothing do I have about 50 top-ten all-time personal number one favourite albums of all time at any given moment.

But this year, through a highly-scientific and cunning algorithm of glancing at my last.fm most-listened-to tracks and my Squeezebox “Albums released in 2007” list, ignoring them, and just picking whatever the sod I want, I can hammer the following together:

My undisputed album of 2007


Mark Ronson: Version

I’d been looking forward to this album ever since Popjustice previewed it in December 2006. The sampler appeared on Mark Ronson’s MySpace page in late January, and on OiNK not long after.

And it was BLUDDY GRATE!

Chock-full of quality covers, multi-layered brass and drums and love, and a cover of the best song Radiohead have ever done (FACT!), the only disappointment was the weak, insipid, boring cover of throbbing driving indie madchester classic “The Only One I Know” by Robbie sodding Williams, who apparently found the, let’s face it, simplistic lyrics of Tim Burgess too complex to apply anything approaching passion or, y’know, emotions to.

I still haven’t gotten bored of it almost a year later, which is a pretty good sign.

Indietastic Obscure Acts Which I Liked Before You Therefore I Win!


Rasputina: Oh Perilous World

I discovered Rasputina when they support Belle & Sebastian at The Boston Orpheum in 2005, and rather fell in love with their two-girls-with-cellos-and- a-bloke-on-drums musical stylings. Their latest album is loaded with Melora Creager’s bizarre world-view, on top of unadulteratedly gorgeous cello-goth-rawk.


Helen Love: It’s My Club and I’ll Play What I Want To

Helen Love has been one of my favourite bands for over ten years now, and every time I’ve suspected they’ve given up the ghost, they reappear with newer better material. What could so easily be a one-trick-pony (Welsh girl who idolizes The Ramones) has turned into something special: Bedroom punk-pop, painting tableaus of bored teenage girls, wannabe popstars in small towns, and early love, all the time dancing at the altar of shiny, happy, POP music! Absolutely fucking brilliant from start to finish.

The incredibly comprehensive mix-tape


Fred Deakin presents: The Triptych

Fred Deakin of bubbly indie-electronicists Lemon Jelly compiled a three-CD, 90 track mix-tape which spins madly from genre to genre covering everything from Leo Kottke to Roni Size, accompanied by detailed sleeve notes explaining each choice. Huge kudos for including “Shangri-La” by The Rutles, even if it was admittedly because they couldn’t afford to clear a Beatles track.

The albums from last year that are still in heavy rotation on my digital devices

Arctic Monkeys: Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not

I prefer the Arctic’s debut to this year’s Favourite Worst Nightmare, only emphasized after seeing them live in Providence this year—To some degree, not giving a fuck about the audience, but just getting on with the business of rawking out. The final track, “A Certain Romance”, is near perfect in its combination of witty picture-painting lyrics (“There’s only music so that there’s new ringtones”) and playful guitar riffing. Amazing!

Franz Ferdinand: You Could Have It So Much Better

Lovely jagged punk-pop art-rock, which has barely been far away from my ears. Another album that exits with a belter of a final track, Outsiders, which is made all the better after seeing the live version on Later with Jools Holland, which features every drummer in the studio for the climax.

Girls Aloud: The Sound of Girls Aloud

When Girls Aloud first appeared, pulled together on a UK TV pop show, I ignored them. Bar a few snide references to “pramfaces” in Popbitch, they barely registered. Then a year ago, I read the review of “Something Kinda Ooooh” on Popjustice, listened to the sample, and was viciously earwormed. I bought the “best-of”, and will gladly admit: Girls Aloud are the best goddamned pop act on the planet today. Yes, it’s 95% the work of the songwriters and producers (hat tip to the fantastic Xenomania), but the girls are nice to look at too (the ginger one excepted, natch).

The album that isn’t actually out yet (Thank you, The Internet)


Juno Soundtrack

Downloaded this off of STMusic (See, IFPI—You may have killed OiNK, but music trading LIVES ON!) last week, because it had an interesting looking tracklisting (The Kinks and Belle & Sebastian – Together at last!), and am now desperately hunting down the recorded output of Kimya Dawson who features heavily on the soundtrack and is, from all presented evidence, FUCKING ACE! Hooray for sharp witty female-fronted indie-pop making me smile and rocking my soul.

Bubbling under

Honorable mentions for albums I quite liked, but got bored of quickly and haven’t listened to much recently: Amy Winehouse: Back to Black, Lily Allen: Alright, Still, Kate Nash: Made of Bricks

Postscript

So there you go… a brief glimpse into what’s been floating my sonic boat over the last twelve months. Hunt them down at your local indie record store, or your preferred BitTorrent site, and enjoy.

Happy new year, popchums!

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November 30, 2007

A thought I had this morning which, if you went back in time to 1992 and told my 16-year-old self I would be having in 2007 aged 31, he probably wouldn’t believe you (part 94 in an occasional series)

“I really love the new Kylie album.”

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November 28, 2007

Rock Band vs. Real Band: Sleater-Kinney's guitarist tests out Rock Band. - By Carrie Brownstein - Slate Magazine

Greate article on “Rock Band” by Carrie Brownstein. “If you are going to play the game with a group of friends for more than a night, shouldn’t you just form a real band? There is something sad about the thought of four teenagers getting Rock Band for Christmas and spending all of their after-school time pretending to know how to play.”

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November 27, 2007

Sleevage : Album Cover Blog. Music, Art, Design.

Great blog analysing and documenting album cover design.

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Audible Awesomeness

Audible Awesomeness

A Slim Devices Squeezebox atop a new portable speaker which, depending on how you read my employer's new blogging policy, I don't think I'm allowed to tell you is bloody great.

But let's just say that the combination of the two is comparable to the combinations of cheese and pickle, hops and barley, or The Beatles and recreational drugs.

November 20, 2007

BBC NEWS | KLF frontman marks 'No Music Day'

Curmudgeon-par-excellence Bill Drummond promotes “No Music Day”, and BBC Radio Scotland is going along with it, playing no music at all for 24 hours.

October 23, 2007

BBC NEWS | Huge pirate music site shut down

OiNK is raided. *sigh*. /me expects RIAA letter in 5.. 4.. 3..

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October 13, 2007

Popjustice - Kylie - '2 Hearts'

Corky O’Reilly, It’s Kylie! Top new track. As Popjustice put it: “Woo etc.”

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A Social Network for Two

Ze Frank lives! A lovely little modern-day love song.

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October 10, 2007

Cover art for In Rainbows // journal // hicksdesign

Since the MP3s don’t have any cover-art, Jon Hicks is hosting a “Design your own Radiohead Cover Art” contest. #21 is my favourite so far.

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October 8, 2007

Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses and Content vs. Context, a Presentation for Some Music Industry Friends

Presentation by Ian Rogers (ex-IUMA and Nullsoft) to music industry folks. “Want a track on-demand? Oh have we got a deal for you! If you’re on Windows XP or Vista, and you’re in North America, just download this 20MB application, go through these seven install screens, reboot your computer, go through these five setup screens, these six credit card screens, give us $160 dollars and POW! Now you can hear that song you wanted to hear…if you’re still with us.”

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October 4, 2007

MHD

HD channel from MTV networks, made up of loads of music videos and concerts. Launched on DirecTV this morning, and looks a bit bloody good!

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September 30, 2007

Radiohead: In Rainbows

The new Radiohead album is released on the 10th, and will initially be available in only two forms: 1) Pay £40 for a deluxe box-set of two CDs and two LPs, or 2) Pay whatever you like for an MP3 download. I’ve chucked in £4, though will probably end up downloading it off of OiNK when the official servers are predictably swamped next week.

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September 25, 2007

Macworld: On ringtones and copyrights

Good summary of what Apple would be up against even if they *wanted* to let you turn your MP3s into ringtones for free.

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Amazon.com MP3 Downloads

Amazon’s un-DRMed 256kbps MP3 store launches. It’s got the full EMI and indie catalogues that iTunes has DRM-free, plus the Universal catalogue.

There’s an optional downloader for Windows and Mac that allows you to queue up entire albums and import them into iTunes automagically, but you can also download individual tracks without any software.

My only problem with it? The first track I tried buying — “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond — turned out to be a live recording without being marked as such. So now? I get to test Amazon’s refund policy!

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August 10, 2007

Jam Sessions

Upcoming release for the Nintendo DS, allowing you to play your DS like a guitar. It’ll be interesting to see how much it appeals to a music-geek like me who’s never played a guitar in his life.

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August 3, 2007

meemix: Internet radio that gets you

Best online radio station I’ve played with in a while. Definitely a step-above Pandora — Meemix has a social edge Pandora lacks — and the “Pulse” control is nice too.

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SPIN.com: Days of the Leak

Article about the inevitability of records being leaked pre-release. I can’t remember the last time I bought an album that I hadn’t listened to already via download. All hail OiNK!

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July 8, 2007

YouTube - Spinal Tap + Army of Bass Players - Live Earth

“Big Bottom” as it was meant to be played — by every bass player they could find. “On bass drums: Skippy Scuffleton - pray for him!”

July 6, 2007

YouTube - Franz Ferdinand on Jools Holland

My favourite song off their last album, Outsiders, performed on Jools Holland with a metric shitload of drummers. Fantastic!

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June 29, 2007

Record shop chain Fopp closes | News | NME.COM

This makes me tremendously sad. A large proportion of my student income was spent at their shop on Cockburn St in Edinburgh.

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June 28, 2007

MusicBrainz Blog: The BBC partners with MusicBrainz for Music Metadata

More on the BBC/MusicBrainz link-up — Not only are the Beeb paying to use MB data on their site, the music experts over there will be helping update MB. This can only be a good thing.

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June 21, 2007

Peel & TOTP Open Data

BBC releases music playlist data (from Peel Sessions and Top of the Pops at first), linked in with MusicBrainz IDs. Hurrah!

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June 19, 2007

Kempa.com: Vinyl Data

Compilation of the ZX Spectrum programs sometimes included with British pop singles in the 80s. “OH DEAR!! a bat bit you” I had no idea about the Urusei Yatsura track. Gonna have to give that a shot!

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June 1, 2007

LastGraph: Welcome

Renderer for that awesome squiggly last.fm-over-time visualization I posted a couple of weeks ago. Very excited to see my results from this!

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May 27, 2007

YouTube - The Zimmers "My Generation" Released: 28/05/07

British charity single to promote a documentary on the disenfranchisement of old people in the UK — a choir of OAPs performing “My Generation”.

May 18, 2007

Moody - Mac OS X app to mood tag your music in iTunes

Tag your tunes by mood, then shuffle away for the right mix. Would be interesting to see if there’s a consistent way to share moods across users…

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May 10, 2007

BBC - Eurovision 2007 - Home

Only two short days until Eurovision 2007. Once again, I’ll be downloading this off of torrents and trying to avoid spoilers until me & the missus have had time to sit through it. Not fancying Scooch’s chances much, it must be said.

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May 4, 2007

What have I been listening to?

Gorgeous visualization of a year’s worth of music listening. Hey! Last.FM! I would pay $50 in a heartbeat for a nice poster print of this with my own listening habits.

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April 26, 2007

Happy Mondays man refused US visa | News | NME.COM

Bez won’t be appearing with the Happy Mondays at Coachella this weekend. What’s the point in seeing them, then? Bez *was* the Happy Mondays.

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April 24, 2007

Yahoo! Music - Lyrics

Yahoo’s made a bunch of song lyrics legitimately available for searching. Nice, and all, but it’s still easier to google for “song title lyrics”.

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April 20, 2007

reacTable media

Wicked cool multi-touch-esque synthesizer-thing.

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April 5, 2007

Spinning Into Oblivion - New York Times

“The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc.”

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March 20, 2007

BBC NEWS | Judge rules against cheap CD site

A British online music store is being banned from purchasing cheap (legal) CDs in Hong Kong and selling them to British people cheaper than the “official” British release. How in the name of sodding fucksticks is this “copyright infringement”?!

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March 14, 2007

slacker.com

New webradio service a la Pandora, but with plans to create desktop, portable and car music players that integrate with the service.

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February 16, 2007

YouTube - Scissor Sisters Live - Take Your Mama

Another great live puppetry performance with the Scissor Sisters from last year’s Brit Awards. I love the way the entire set erupts to life.

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YouTube - Scissor Sisters at the Brits - I Don't Feel Like Dancing

Stonking live performance by the Scissor Sisters. Disembodied legs and floating singers a-go-go. $5 says the Jim Henson Creature Shop was involved.

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February 15, 2007

WFMU's Beware of the Blog: The Sixty Second Song Remix Contest (mp3s)

Taking lengthy songs and shrinking them down to minute-long morsels. “Bohemian Rhapsody” snipped to sixty seconds is an improvement, if you ask me.

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February 6, 2007

Apple - Thoughts on Music

Steve Jobs publicly calls for the record companies to drop their requirement for DRM on online music sales: “Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. […] This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat.”

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February 5, 2007

YouTube - Girls Aloud vs Sugababes - Walk This Way

Bah. I had such high hopes for this, but it’s a decidedly underwhelming cover.

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January 27, 2007

Mark Ronson's MySpace page

His covers (and to call them “covers” does them an injustice, they’re *massively awesome* reinterpretations) of Coldplay and Britney Spears are outstanding. Can’t wait for the full album.

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January 26, 2007

Show me - The Boston Globe

Local live-music aggregators Tourb.us and Tourfilter get a writeup in the Globe.

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January 21, 2007

My most-played artists of the last year

I didn’t realise last.fm had this functionality. Rather puzzled that The Beatles are Number 1 — I do love their new “Love” album, but I didn’t think I’d played it more than The Delgados, or even Girls Aloud, in 2006.

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January 15, 2007

rc3.org: Defining your music collection

Interesting thought: Is your “music collection” just your audio files, or is it all the ratings and playlists and stuff that go along with it? Is Apple’s DRM less of a lock-in than just the time spent organising your music *just so* in iTunes?

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January 14, 2007

Lines From Alanis Morissette's "Ironic," Modified to Actually Make them Ironic

“An old man turned ninety-eight. He won the lottery and died the next day… of chronic emphysema from inhalation of the latex particles scratched off decades’ worth of lottery tickets.”

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January 13, 2007

Best of Bootie 2006 CD

Some stonking mashups on this album. The Bon Jovi vs. George Michael “Careless or Dead” is a particular favourite in this household.

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January 12, 2007

NME.COM - Girls Aloud and Sugababes to duet

This cannot fail to be BLUDDY GRATE P!O!P!

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January 5, 2007

Singles chart set to go retro | The Guardian | Guardian Unlimited

This weekend, the UK charts will switch to including sales of all digital tracks, not just those marked as “singles”. As a result, album tracks and one-hit wonders are likely to hit the Top 100. Anything that gets The Proclaimers into the charts *has* to be a good thing.

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January 4, 2007

finetune wii player

Finetune, Boston-based music streaming playlist geezers, have a nice Flash-based player designed with the Wii web browser in mind.

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December 31, 2006

Phonogram #1

First issue of excellent Britpop-as-sorcery comicbook miniseries “Phonogram”, scanned and online for your delectation.

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December 21, 2006

YouTube - SNL - Digital Short - A Special Christmas Box *Uncensored Version*

How odd. When I saw this bleeped on SNL, I thought it was “Cock in a Box”, as did Joy. I’m not sure how I feel about “Dick in a Box”. Doesn’t seem as funny, somehow.

December 20, 2006

YouTube - Jarvis - Don't Let Him Waste Your Time

Great new video from Jarvis Cocker.

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December 16, 2006

TuneGlue | Relationship Explorer

Yet another Flash musicmap explorer. This one’s from EMI and uses Last.fm relationship data.

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December 15, 2006

Jamglue - Remixing for the Masses

Interesting Y-Combinator startup which offers a web-based frontend for mixing audio, with the social twist of being able to remix others’ mixes.

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December 12, 2006

iTunes sales 'collapsing' | The Register

Has the novelty of digital downloads for music worn off?

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ridiculous_fish » Blog Archive » Logos

Logo Quiz — Can you tell the Digital Audio logos from the ones for Haircare?

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December 10, 2006

DVD Audio Ripper

Handy utility for ripping (stereo) music DVDs as MP3s.

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December 8, 2006

BBC NEWS | Children 'swap music via phones'

Of course they do. And when I was a kid, we used tape-to-tape decks. Just because this is using shiny new Bluetooth technology doesn’t mean it can/should be stopped. Surprisingly, the BPI take a rather sane approach: “Ultimately the way to grow revenues with mobile will be to offer music fans what they want and encourage them to get their music legally.”

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December 7, 2006

Fritalian (Dunkin' Donuts commercial)

Another series of Dunkin Donuts commercials featuring music by They Might Be Giants has started hitting the air. This is my current favourite.

November 29, 2006

Young at Heart Chorus covering Coldplay's "Fix You"

Young at Heart is a choral group of senior citizens who cover rock songs. This rendition of Fix You is just chilling.

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November 28, 2006

Kunal Anand - Blog: Glancing alternative song structures with Graphviz

Visualizing the structure of a song, based on the pattern of words used in the lyrics.

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November 22, 2006

Test your musical skills in 6 minutes!

Research project from the music & neuroimaging lab at Beth Israel Deaconess. Test your musical memory.

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November 8, 2006

THE BEATLES - Love

Login as “foo@example.com” to hear four tracks from the forthcoming old-rope-remixed disc ‘Love’. It’s not as bad as you think.

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November 6, 2006

YouTube - Girls Aloud - Something Kinda Oooh

Man, this is the best sliver of pure P!O!P! gold I’ve heard in a long time. I’m going to have the chorus engraved on my tombstone.

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October 26, 2006

Popjustice - The Truth About Pop

Top quality P!O!P! research from Popjustice. “44% of Lily Allen’s MySpace friends think her next album will be shit.” FACT!

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October 16, 2006

earFeeder :: Customized newsfeeds about your favorite artists

Site which scans the MP3s on your hard disk, then builds you a custom RSS feed of news, tourdates, etc based upon your “favourite” artists. Taking this for a spin too. Update: The user experience on the site is horrible — It freezes your browser for a few minutes with almost no feedback, then finds barely any of the many, many artists on my computer. Not recommended

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The Filter

App that works with iTunes to build up “smart” playlists from your library. Seems to be entirely metadata based (no fingerprinting), and limited to your existing library. Giving it a spin now.

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October 12, 2006

It’s Great When You’re Straight, Yeah! Photomosaic

It’s Great When You’re Straight, Yeah!  Photomosaic

The cover art for Black Grape's It's Great When You're Straight, Yeah!, made up from untouched cover art from 900 other albums. View in full size for the full effect.

Made with AndreaMosaic

Screamadelica Photomosaic

Screamadelica Photomosaic

The cover art for Primal Scream's iconic Screamadelica, made up from untouched cover art from 400 other albums. View in full size for the full effect. Add notes if you recognise anything!

Made with AndreaMosaic

October 10, 2006

Qloud

Some kind of weird audioscrobbler-type thing, that allows you to deal with Tags inside iTunes. Or something. Their site is incomprehensibly flashy and slidey and swoopy and I only got five hours sleep last night.

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My last.fm chart arcs

My last.fm chart arcs

Funky visualization of my music listening over time from MartinD at last.fm. Read his explanation to understand what it means, or just enjoy the soothing colours.

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October 6, 2006

Battle of the Bands

When album cover art attacks… One for the music geeks.

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October 5, 2006

'The Information' Chart Ineligible - Music News: This Is Fake DIY

When I got the new Beck CD yesterday, one of my first reactions to the blank inlay and sticker-set (after “Awesome!”) was “I wonder if this makes them ineligible for the UK charts.” It would appear so.

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October 3, 2006

Listening Post: Winamp Adds Remote Access, Dashboard Widgets

New version of WinAmp (Remember them? It’s like an iPod, except you can’t carry it around with you. Ask your parents) includes “remote listening” — Stream music from your home PC to wherevers. Since Apple kept disabling hacks that did this with iTunes, I’m curious how AOL think they’re going to be able to keep this “legit”

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Jet: Shine On: Pitchfork Record Review

Normally, I can’t be arsed with Pitchfork’s reviews — too pseudy by half. But this one is short, witty, incisive, and pretty danged accurate.

September 29, 2006

stereogum: New Gnarls Barkley Video - "Gone Daddy Gone"

Computer-animated insect upskirt action!

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September 14, 2006

finetune - playlists you can share

Stretching the DMCA streaming limits as far as they’ll go, a site that lets you build up a playlist from their collection, then share it with friends for free. The embedded flash player is pretty nice.

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September 4, 2006

REAPER - Rapid Environment for Audio Prototyping and Efficient Recording | Cockos Incorporated

Shareware Windows multitrack audio editor from Justin Frankel and co.

September 3, 2006

The Kransky Sisters: Overload

The Kransky Sisters’ show “We Don’t Have Husbands” was the best thing I caught at the Fringe. Here’s a small taster of their wonderful character-driven comedy — a cover of the Sugababes song “Overload”.

August 7, 2006

Concert Ticket Generator

Create real-looking ticket stubs for the shows you wish you’d been to (or wish existed)

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August 3, 2006

OK Go - Here It Goes Again

Very cool (and pretty low-budget) promo from OK Go. Just four guys, eight treadmills, and presumably hours of sweat and choreography. Anyone know who directed it?

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July 31, 2006

The Broadband - God Save the Internet

” Writing songs about corporate malfeasance so you don’t have to!”. Free net-neutrality MP3 from Jill Sobule, Kay Hanley and Michelle Lewis.

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July 26, 2006

YouTube - Pulp - Bad Cover Version

It’s a great song, but this video just made it even better. I’ll always have an especially soft spot for it after someone on a mailing-list I was on made it clear he didn’t get the joke, and wondered how Pulp had pulled it off.

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July 23, 2006

Puffy AmiYumi cover Green Day's "Basket Case" (MP3)

I’m curious to test out RedSwoosh’s P2Pness, so link-followers: Have a shot at downloading seven stonking megabytes of J-Pop oddness! Windows users should be directed to download the RedSwoosh client, while Mac & Linux users should be redirected to the CoralCDN service. Let’s see how little bandwidth I can use distributing some QUALITY CHOONS!

July 21, 2006

The Pipettes - Pull Shapes

Top music video (blatantly/lovingly ripped off from “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”) from quality new Spector-esque polka-dotted powerpop group.

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July 18, 2006

Belle & Sebastian Charity Album Details

Splendid indie line-up for an album benefiting Save The Children.

Popjustice £20 Music Prize: the 2006 shortlist...

Who gives a toss about yer Mercury arty wankfest? *This* is the music prize that matters. Some great choons in here.

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July 6, 2006

WSJ.com - Free, Legal and Ignored

College kids snub “free” DRMed not-playable-on-Macs-or-iPods lots-of-strings-attached music. Well, duh.

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Music For Kids Who Can't Read Good: The Evolution of "Crazy"

An MP3 of the obscure instrumental that “Crazy” is based on. It’s originally from the soundtrack to a spaghetti western!

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June 29, 2006

It's Pop It's Art

Screen-printed posters of classic song lyrics. I think the “What’s Going On?” one would look dashing in our living room.

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June 21, 2006

Pitchfork Feature: 100 Awesome Music Videos

Does what it says on the tin. Pitchfork scoured YouTube for 100 awesome videos, skipping over your usual suspects like Jonez, Cunningham and Gondry.

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June 12, 2006

Musicovery : webRadio

Yet Another Flash Music Discovery App. Really like the “Dark/Calm/Positive/Energetic” axes.

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June 11, 2006

Rhapsody support coming very soon? - Slim Devices : Community : Forums

SlimDevices have battled the uPnP demons, and Squeezeboxes will soon be able to stream Rhapsody content.

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May 30, 2006

Better Than We Know Ourselves: Pitchfork Feature

Article covering the myriad of music discovery and recommendation engines out there. “Echo Nest” sounds interesting (and they’re local).

May 6, 2006

This Is Fake DIY

Indie news/reviews website. Focuses on the shiny, fun, P!O!P! side of the indie coin, to my immense delight. And it’s named after a bis song, so how can you go wrong?

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May 1, 2006

Radiohead Festival Announcement

Radiohead have announced some summer US tour dates. Boston is 4th & 5th of June.

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April 30, 2006

Napster's Free Service FAQ

Napster (remember them?) launch free streaming of most tracks in their catalogue. Unlike Rhapsody’s service, it requires registration first, and forces you to sit through advertising every few tracks.

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April 28, 2006

Coca-Cola: What Goes Around

Trippy Coke ad, with music by Jack White.

April 26, 2006

hackdiary: Last.fm isn't just for humans

Matt Biddulph scripted an AudioScrobbler profile containing a live feed of the music played on the BBC 6Music radio station.

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April 13, 2006

Mr. Beast by Mogwai on Rhapsody

Example Rhapsody album link. Follow this, and you can hear one of my favourite albums of the year so far.

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O'Reilly Radar > Rhapsody Distributes Their Music

Rhapsody try to keep themselves relevant — You can now listen to 25 full tracks without even signing up. So I could link to an album, and you could legally listen to the whole thing in your browser for free. Will this lead to thousands of folk linking to Rhapsody?

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March 26, 2006

www.myspace.com/wigwamrock

Betty Boo & Alexfromblur’s new single. Hot damn, it’s ridiculously catchy and smashing.

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January 19, 2006

NPR : The Mystery of 'Sweet Caroline' and the Sox

Why do Sox fans sing “Sweet Caroline” during the middle of the 8th? Apparently, just because it’s a fun song.

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January 18, 2006

Slim Devices : Product Info : SlimServer 6.2

I’ve been playing with SlimServer as a replacement for iTunes’s role as my listen-on-my-laptop-to-the-music-on-my-server tool, and it’s pretty damned impressive. Open-source, plenty of plugins, deals well with my collection, and hey! It’ll work if I choose to buy one of their delightfully-tempting $300 Squeezebox networked music players.

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January 10, 2006

POPJUSTICE ::: Is this the greatest band logo of all time?

Betty Boo and Alex from Blur — Together at last! Oh, this sounds like a fantastic slice of P!O!P! and no mistake.

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December 29, 2005

Free Music

Kristin Hersh has released a new EP as free creativecommons-licensed FLAC files.

Top 50 Music Videos Of 2005

All linked and ready-to-view. Some great stuff here. I’m of the opinion that the 4-minute pop promo can be an incredible work of art, and there’s a lot here to help support that argument.

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December 28, 2005

Tunatic: free music identification software

Shazam-a-like “hold a microphone up to a speaker and identify the tune” service that runs on your PC. Neither codebase or database is open, sadly.

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December 19, 2005

SNL - The Chronic of Narnia Rap

So not only did SNL hire the Lonely Island dudes, they’re also taking a page out of their “distribute it online” book too. This is possibly the funniest non-Robert-Smigel-cartoon SNL clip in years.

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December 12, 2005

They Might Be Giants podcast

“The host is the Duke of Dead Air- Cecil Portesque- broadcasting from an undisclosed, very rainy location.”

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December 6, 2005

iTunes Signature Maker

This brilliant little applet analyses your iTunes library and based on your listening behaviour, patches together a short “signature” of your music taste. I’ll upload mine in a moment.

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December 5, 2005

Why the current all-you-can-eat music service providers suck: An illustration

As a Rhapsody subscriber, I’m able to listen to only nine out of fourteen tracks from the Beck album ‘Midnite Vultures’ without forking out another $10. What idiot in charge of licensing decided that ‘Mixed Bizness” was fine for free download, but that the excellent “Debra” is blocked? Record companies: You’re morons, and this is why no-one uses your crappy “legal” alternatives to file-sharing.

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Rhapsody

Real take their Windows-only all-you-can-eat music streaming app, dump the drmcrypto into a cross-platform Firefox plugin, and expose the catalog as a webapp.

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December 1, 2005

Dean Gray Tuesday

On December 13th, the now-banned Dean Gray “American Edit” album will be up for download from a bunch of locations — including groovymother.com. Spread the word.

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November 30, 2005

MP3tunes Locker

Michael Robertson’s new site seems to be targeting itself as an “off-site backup” and synchronisation service for your music files, and therefore completely covered by fair-use. RIAA, start your lawyers.

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November 26, 2005

the Radio Knives

My brother-in-law-in-law’s band. Really rather stonking garage-rawk.

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November 25, 2005

Songbird Media Player

New cross-platform iTunes-a-like being built by some former Nullsoft guys. Interesting to see someone other than the Mozilla foundation building apps in XUL.

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November 23, 2005

Indieish: Remixing Pop Culture - CC:365

Podcast promising a new CC-licensed indie MP3 tune every day of 2006. I’m really looking forward to this.

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Mario Unleashed - Google Video

This is insane — Video of some kids at a high-school talent show, performing segments of the Super Mario soundtrack on marimba, complete with costumes and props.

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November 22, 2005

Dean Gray presents American Edit

Mash-up album based on Green Day’s “American Idot”.

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November 15, 2005

XM Satellite Radio on DirecTV

You can now get XM stations on DirecTV (replacing the old MusicChoice channels). I particularly recommend “Lucy” (alternative greatest hits) and “Ethel” (current alternative music) on channels 838 and 834.

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November 9, 2005

American Laundromat Records: High School Reunion

Indie rock acts covering songs from 80s high school flicks. Purchased!

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October 27, 2005

Newbury Comics coupons

Some decent savings this weekend at New England’s finest record chain, Newbury Comics.

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October 26, 2005

Slim Devices : Squeezebox

The new Squeezebox is gorgeous. Throw in excellent format support (MP3, OGG, WMA, AAC and FLAC) and an open-source server, and it’s a geek’s dream.

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October 5, 2005

Music Science = Sexy

Music   Science = Sexy

Purchased from Questionable Content, this is the official uniform of the [RhymesWithNose] "Applied Research" team.

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September 22, 2005

School band play 'Endtroducing' with real instruments

Superb! DJ Shadow re-imagined by hitting things with sticks.

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September 14, 2005

Audioscrobbler - The Music Technology Playground from Last.fm

The Last.fm chaps share their music tag data for non-commercial purposes. Can you say woo?

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September 9, 2005

Pulp/Radiohead supergroup forms to be Weird Sisters

Following on from Ian Brown’s cameo in the last Harry Potter film, Jarvis Cocker and a couple of Radioheadies are going to appear in the next one,

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February 22, 2005

last.fm’s list of my top albums

last.fm’s list of my top albums

According to the folks at audioscrobbler.com/ and last.fm/, these are my top albums. Mostly true, although the "Standing on the Shoulder of Giants" in the bottom left is somewhat suspect.

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About This Site

This is an archive of groovmother.com, the old blog run by Rod Begbie — A Scottish geek who lives in San Francisco, CA.

I'm the co-founder of Sōsh, your handy-dandy guide for things to do in San Francisco this weekend.