Ricardo Autobahn’s The Golden Age of Video is amazing. He took clips from various movies (and a few TV shows) and mashed them into a song, but gave it a beat and lyrics that border on actually making sense, so that what you end up with is a video that could fool you into thinking it was music.
See for yourself:
Sour shot the music video for their song Hibi no Neiro using just webcams and an amazing amount of coordination and planning, giving the effect of choreography across time and space.
It’s a little hard to describe, so watch and be inspired:
[Via: NOTCOT]
The radio is dead, and Jelli is here to replace it.
Ok, so maybe that’s a bit extreme, but the concept behind Jelli is a fascinating one, and does have the potential to change radio as we know it.
Essentially, Jelly is a single radio station that’s 100% listener controlled. Users can nominate songs, vote for songs they like, and bomb the ones they don’t, and the song with the most votes at the end of the currently playing track gets the next spot in line. The more you listen, the more power you gain, though even first timers have the ability to push a song over the edge.
The result is a mix of music that will surprise and delight, with an ever changing flow of community taste and creative control.
Just don’t expect to hear the Billboard Top 40 playing on repeat any time soon.
[Jelli]
Archrival is a ’sweet youth brand marketing agency’ with two interns named Dan Sheppard and Anthony Galvan. The pair decided that their agency didn’t know enough about them, so they created a damn funny music video to share a few ‘Personal Things’:
What does the collective voice of 2,088 people singing Bicycle Built for Two into Amazon’s Mechanical Turk system sound like?
Probably a little something like this:
The music video for Thunderheist’s Jerk It was recently awarded the Grand Jury Prize at South by Southwest:
[Via: NOTCOT]
If you couldn’t make it to South by Southwest (aka #SXSW for the Twitter-ites) but you still want to keep up with all the latest and greatest in the semi-undiscovered music scene, then check out the fully legal, DRM-free, RIA-safe collection of music that’s been released by the festival’s promoters through the torrent world.
The torrent, which is the fifth such collection to be put out on the ‘net, contains more than 6 GB of music, or 1267 MP3s spanning multiple genres and levels of famous-ity.
Granted, not everything is going to match your specific tastes, but there are plenty of songs to try out, so open your mind and be prepared to discover, because you never know what’s going to be the next big thing.
(Just one warning: There are so many songs here that it will probably crush your current collection of music, and if you try to use the random function on your MP3 player ever again, you’ll still end up listening to 10 SXSW songs between every normal song, so be prepared. Not that that’s a bad thing, just don’t expect your best of Michael Jackson collection to string together like it used to ever again.)
[Via: Torrent Freak]
Kutiman is an artist that takes YouTube videos and turns them into musical magic.
He starts by sampling the various clips that users have uploaded onto YouTube, such as a guitar lesson or a drum demo, and then combines them, along with the videos, into something else entirely. It’s a bit hard to explain, so I suggest that you just watch and see:
If you liked that, he’s created six more tracks that follow a similar structure, and all are available through YouTube on his site. (Which features a fantastic, destroyed-YouTube design, and is worth a look all on its own.)
World of Goo has been an indie gaming sensation, and now Kyle Gabler has made the soundtrack that he created for the game available as a free download.
The majority of the instruments you’ll hear are computer instruments, with a few live performances on top to add a bit of warmth. For the older music, I used one of those Sound Blaster cards that let you load samples into memory. More recently, I’ve been using the freeware sfz soundfont sampler. I have an m-audio keystation 49e midi keyboard for picking out melodies. Influences include Danny Elfman, Vangelis, Bernard Herrmann, Hans Zimmer, Ennio Morricone, and all the big movie guys. I grew up listening to them, and they remain a big influence in everything I write.
Many of the songs were written specifically for the game, but a few were also salvaged from previous projects that he had worked on, but if you’re looking for some interesting music to get you through the day, then give the World of Goo Soundtrack a try.
DJ Earworm has once again put together a year-end mashup of the Top 25 hits of 2008 according to Billboard Magazine, and it’s called United States of Pop 2008 (Though the current edit also carries the title of Viva La Pop.)
According to DJ Earworm:
This year in the charts, we’ve gone all soft. The songs are sexy and defiant, less macho than in previous years. Accordingly, I’ve selected Coldplay as the instrumental track, giving the whole year a sort of symphonic feel.
Artists and tracks include:
- Flo Rida Featuring T-Pain – Low
- Leona Lewis – Bleeding Love
- Alicia Keys – No One
- Lil Wayne Featuring Static Major – Lollipop
- Timbaland Featuring OneRepublic – Apologize
- Jordin Sparks Duet With Chris Brown – No Air
- Sara Bareilles – Love Song
- Usher Featuring Young Jeezy – Love in This Club
- Chris Brown – With You
- Chris Brown – Forever
- Ray J & Yung Berg – Sexy Can I
- Rihanna – Take a Bow
- Coldplay – Viva La Vida
- Katy Perry – I Kissed a Girl
- T.I. – Whatever You Like
- Rihanna – Disturbia
- Rihanna – Don’t Stop the Music
- Natasha Bedingfield – Pocketful of Sunshine
- Chris Brown Featuring T-Pain – Kiss Kiss
- Ne-Yo – Closer
- Colbie Caillat – Bubbly
- Mariah Carey – Touch My Body
- Madonna Featuring Justin Timberlake – 4 Minutes
- Pink – So What
- Finger Eleven – Paralyzer
If you like the mix, you can also download it HERE.
[DJ Earworm - United States Of Pop 2008]
Celebrate the holidays with Doctor Octoroc’s 8-Bit Jesus: Classic Christmas Songs in the Style of Classic NES Games.
Featuring 18 tracks, with titles like Ryu, The Red Nosed Ninja, Super Jingle Bros., O Come, All Ye Vampires, and Have Yourself A Final Little Fantasy, it’s the perfect entertainment for the gamer geek in all of us.
Plus, there are two ways to get the album: Download it for free from his site, or make a small PayPal donation and help him with future recordings, as well as receive a physical copy of the CD by mail sometime in mid January.
[Via: Wired]
Phil Clandillon and Steve Milbourne have created what they call “the world’s first music video in Excel format” for AC/DC’s Rock N Roll Train.
By creating the entire video in Excel, the two are able to bypass and subvert even the most restrictive of corporate firewalls, allowing you to rock out any time you want.
If you’d like to download the original (Windows only) Excel file, it’s available at the AC/DC Rocks site, or you can view it in YouTube format here:
McDonald’s has partnered with MySpace to bring you the Big Mac Chant-Off, a competition that lets you mash-up the music from their audio kit, or lay down a track of your own, with the winning remix appearing in the next McDonald’s commercial.
The only rule: You still need to use the original lyrics.
Say it with me now: Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.
[MySpace - McDonald's Big Mac Chant-Off]
Apparently someone in Weezer knows a thing or two about viral marketing, because their video for Pork and Beans, which features many of the Internet’s most famous viral video stars doing what they do best, has been passed around the Internet like the plague this past week. In case you missed it:
Vitaly Komar, Alex Melamid and David Soldier conducted an online poll to find out what types of music people are most annoyed by. The list includes:
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Holiday music, bagpipes, pipe organ, a children’s chorus and the concept of children in general, Wal-Mart, cowboys, political jingoism, George Stephanopoulos, Coca Cola, bossanova synths, banjo ferocity, harp glissandos, oompah-ing tubas and much, much more.
After compiling this list, they then took all of the styles and lyrical subjects and combined them into a single track, called simply “The Most Unwanted Music”.
Can you survive a listen?
[Via: Wired]
Muxtape is “a simple way to create and share mixtapes”.
It’s goal is to bring back the joy of laboring over a mixtape for hours to get everything just right, and does so by only letting you create one mix per account, and limiting your mix to just 12 songs. (Each no larger than 10 megabytes.)
When you’re done, the music is then streamed through your browser, so it’s not exactly a file sharing service, but since the only way Muxtape prevents copyrighted music from being uploaded is with a meek little warning: “By uploading a song you agree that you have permission to let Muxtape use it.” I’m guessing Muxtape is going to be dealing with a few high priced lawyers in its near future.
Regardless, it’s a nice (and simple) service that has some potential to help undiscovered artists get their start, and it relies on the “sharing is caring” motto, so I hope some sort of agreement is made to keep Muxtape around.
[Muxtape]
South by Southwest (AKA SXSW) is an interactive, film, and music festival that takes place every year in Austin, Texas.
Because many of the bands that perform there each year are trying to make it big and break into the scene, they release an official torrent with most of the music from the festival for you to download and enjoy.
This years torrent contained 763 tracks, and played end to end, would be nearly 48 hours of continuous music.
If that sounds like a lot to go through to find what you like, that’s because it is, so Paul Ford decided to listen to them all and give you a kind of cheat sheet for finding the music that you like.
His chart ranks each of the songs on a one to five scale, and gives each a six-word review, making it easy to find the good stuff.
If you’re looking to be on the cutting edge of the music scene, then head on over to the download link and fire up your favorite torrent downloader, because it doesn’t get much rawer than this.
[South By Southwest - Six-Word Reviews]
Looking for something a bit “different” to add to your music collection?
Then check out a set of compilations called Wakka Chikka Wakka Chikka: Porn Music for the Masses.
Featuring “unique cultural and geographic” spins on the classic sound, it’s meant to fuel “a range of emotions from lust to disgust”.
Can you dig it?
[Wakka Chikka Wakka Chikka: Porn Music For The Masses - Volume One]
[Wakka Chikka Wakka Chikka: Porn Music For The Masses - Volume Two]
[Via: Random Good Stuff]
DJ Earworm’s United State of Pop is an incredibly impressive mashup of the 25 most popular songs of 2007. (According to Billboard.)
Besides saying that it’s amazing, it’s hard to describe, so just give it a download and see what you think. (But prepare to be united.)
[DJ Earworm - United States Of Pop]
Here Comes Another Bubble was a fantastically viral video about the Web 2.0 bubble that was taken down recently by a San Francisco photographer’s DMCA take-down notice over her ’stolen’ image.
Thankfully, that photographer’s photo has been removed, and the video is back as v1.1:
Unfortunately for The Richter Scales, the group behind the video, their 15 minutes hasn’t exactly been profitable:
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In the week Version 1.0 was up, we sold only eight CDs of previously recorded music. That’s one CD sold per 125,000 viewers of the video. If this rate holds, the “profits” from CD sales will equal the $355 we spent making the video when Version 1.1 gets its 3.5 millionth view.
I guess DMCA notices don’t necessarily need to be correlated to lost compensation!
[The Richter Scales - Announcing "Bubble" Version 1.1]
[Via: TechCrunch]
