Title 1970 John Cale & Terry Riley Church Of Anthrax 1 Church of Anthrax 1970 John Cale & Terry Riley Church Of Anthrax 2 The Hall of Mirrors in the Palace at Versailles 1990 Robert Rich Geometry 1 Primes Part 1 1990 Robert Rich Geometry 2 Primes Part 2 1999 Tranquility Bass Steve Reich Remixed 4 Megamix 1974 Laurie Spiegel New Music For Electronic and Recorded Media: Women in Electronic Music 4 Appalachian Grove I 2003 Aphex Twin 26 Mixes for Cash (Disc 1) 5 Heroes (remixed Philip Glass and David Bowie) 1991 Harold Budd By the Dawn’s Early Light 1 Poem Aztec Hotel 2005 dj BC Glassbreaks 1 Einstein on the Beast 2006 Boards Of Canada Trans Canada Highway 1 Dayvan Cowboy 1972 Bill Withers Still Bill 4 Use Me unknown year Ghost Exits Sun EP 3 [unknown title] 1967 Jorge Luis Borges Por él Mismo 6 el gólem 1959 Raymond Scott OHM (Disc 2) 1 Cindy Electronium 1975 Lard Free I’m Around About Midnight 1 Violez L’espace De Son Réfrigérant 1975 Lard Free I’m Around About Midnight 2 In A Desert Alambic 1975 Lard Free I’m Around About Midnight 3 Does East Bakestan Belong To Itself? 1975 Lard Free I’m Around About Midnight 4 Tatkooz A Roulette 1975 Lard Free I’m Around About Midnight 5 Pale Violence Under A Reverbere 1975 Lard Free I’m Around About Midnight 6 Even Silence Stops When Trains Come 1980 Robert Fripp with David Byrne God Save the Queen/Under Heavy Manners 4 Under Heavy Manners 1988 Spacemen 3 Playing With Fire 1 Honey 1982 Brainticket Voyage 1 Voyage (Part 1)

(Also available via streamin’ Internet audio, the programme “Amplified Harmonic Resonance,” is brought to you by Heavenly Music Corporation brand cigarettes and Ubik brand reality cleansers.)

On hiatus for the last six years, dj spaceling has been on academic retreat, whiling away his years in hermitages and think tanks, and more recently, battling leviathans off the coast of Louisiana. His heart as broken as a thrift store fiddle and mind as sharp as a kite racer’s glass string, you can expect morning musiks that aim to temper and wrastle the caffeinated raging  mania that fuels our modern Empire.

In other words, yours truly shall be on the radio and live on the Internet Monday mornings for the next semester on Philadelphia radio via WKDU, Drexel University’s student run radio station, 91.7FM 7am-10am. (Noon-3PM London, 2pm-5pm Haifa)

Then I noticed that the ipods had album shuffle. The new players from Cowon and Archos did not, nor any others that fancied themselves as ipod competitors. But I still wasn’t convinced to buy an ipod yet. My trusty if heavy and slow Archos had a (then enormous) 100gb hard drive that I had installed myself and the largest ipod then available was 60gb. Ahh, but just before my birthday Apple announced their release of a new 160gb ipod. I was won over. Soon I gifted myself with a new Ipod Classic 160gb.

iPod Management

When it arrived, the ipod’s hard drive came formatted with Apple’s native file system, HFS Plus (HFS+). As the Windows operating systems cannot natively read HFS+ drives and my Thinkpad runs Windows XP, iTunes reformatted the ipod with FAT32, a file system engineered by Microsoft. At the time I didn’t think too much of HFS+ vs. FAT32, I was just happy that the ipod was working. And so, I put all concerns about file fragmentation and the need to periodically defrag FAT32 volumes to the side, and got to work filling the ipod up with good music and videos.

Over the last year I’ve learned how to corrupt my ipod’s database (and how to fix it painlessly) by avoiding iTunes as much as possible. iTunes had the advantage of supporting Album shuffle, but I preferred to use Winamp with the Album List plug-in for listening to albums on my computer. I had some success using Floola (which does not support Album shuffle) and Floola is my choice ipod manager on my Linux boxen. But on my Thinkpad running Windows XP, I was more interested in whether there were any plug-ins for Winamp that could suffice as a fully featured alternative to iTunes.

Looking at Winamp I discovered that it supported iPods through a plug-in bundled with the Winamp installer called pmp_ipod. Trying it out I was underwhelmed by its poor support of album cover art on the ipod, a feature I had really come to love. Then I discovered ml_ipod — an open source winamp plugin written by independent developers that could do (almost) everything pmp_ipod could do but better. The only thing I would need iTunes for would be for occasional firmware updates. ml_ipod support was fairly well documented on an online wiki and any further questions could be pursued on an active support forum hosted at Winamp. I’ve been using ml_ipod since January and have donated money to the further development of the plug-in.

File Fragmentation in FAT32 vs. HFS+

A few weeks ago I began to wonder again what my ipod’s FAT32 volume file fragmentation looked like. Unsurprisingly, after tens of thousands of file transfers, the ipod’s music, video, database and artwork files were critically fragmented according to Diskeeper, a windows defrag tool. A fragmented file system meant that my ipod needed to work harder and slower than it should have to. The answer to a fragmented ipod file system isn’t defragging it though. Ever wonder whether you should defrag your ipod? Don’t waste your time. Defragmenting an ipod over USB takes a LONG time. It is much much faster to simply do a full restore from your computer’s existing archive of music. (Before doing so, make sure you have an archive of all your iPod’s music.)

Even after I initialized and reloaded my FAT32 ipod, I found that the the iTunes database of music files as well as the artwork database of cover art were still fragmented — just less so. I began to explore what benefits there might be to manage the ipod with its original HFS+ over FAT32. I was impressed to find that HFS+ drives do not suffer from the same fragmentation problems as FAT32 drives. As this comparison of file systems shows, the main reason for the lack of fragmentation in HFS+ is because unlike FAT32, HFS+ supports Extents. Wikipedia explains:

An extent is a contiguous area of storage in a computer file system, reserved for a file. When starting to write to a file, a whole extent is allocated. When writing to the file again, possibly after doing other write operations, the data continues where the previous write left off. This reduces or eliminates file fragmentation.

Additionally, because HFS+ was specifically engineered to minimize disk access and quickly access individual files, its specific utility for the iPod seems obvious. This specific advantage of HFS+ over FAT32 was summarized well by the user, “Millenium,” over on the macnn web forum in a 2006 thread on HFS+ vs. FAT32:

You may hear that HFS+ is slower than FAT32. That’s true in some cases, but not in others. In particular, HFS+ does not do very well in tasks where you need to access many small files at once…

For looking up individual files, however, HFS+ is actually one of the fastest filesystems out there, and has been for a long time. This all comes from the way that HFS+ stores its data: when you’re working with relatively few files it’s better, but when you’re working with many files at once it isn’t as good. It’s a design tradeoff, and whether it will be better or worse for you in this regard really depends on how you use your computer.

The original Macintosh File System (MFS, from which HFS and then HFS+ directly descend) was created in an era when most people used floppies to store all of their data. The same is true of FAT16, which is where FAT32 comes from. Apple’s engineers decided that since floppies were so slow, people and applications would try to minimize disk access in general, and so they optimized their filesystem to work best under those conditions. It worked extraordinarily well for the time, and even today there aren’t many better filesystems for people who work under those conditions.

In other words, one of the best file systems available for the iPod is HFS+ (especially compared with FAT32). Unfortunately, FAT32 is not a comparable alternative to HFS+. FAT32′s presence as an alternative file system for the ipod simply reflects the lack of support in Windows OSes for the more advanced HFS+ file system.

Perils of FAT32 to HFS+ Conversion

As a result of learning this, I became increasingly interested in converting my FAT32 ipod to HFS+. Besides fragmentation and reliability, I also wondered if a change in ipod file systems might affect the file transfer speed over USB 2.0. File transfer speeds over USB 2.0 with my FAT32 formatted ipod averaged around 6000 kB/s. Would HFS+ perform worse or better?

General information on converting the iPod from FAT32 to HFS+ was plainly lacking and specific recommendations advised iPod users to accept FAT32. I was on my own. To access HFS+ formatted drive volumes on Windows I’d need to install special software like MacDrive by Mediafour. So to begin, I downloaded the MacDrive software and formatted my ipod to HFS+. So far so good. I wanted to make certain that my firmware was installed correctly so I proceeded to initialize my ipod with iTunes, and then re-transfer my mp3s and mp4s to the newly formatted ipod with winamp + ml_ipod. This seemed to work fine (although I didn’t see any discernible change in file transfer speeds). But afterward, I was surprised to find that my ipod was still formatted with FAT32! I soon learned that as part of its restore sequence, iTunes for PC will automatically format HFS+ formatted ipods with a FAT32 file system. It also copies ipod for PC firmware that seems tailored specifically for FAT32.

In my next attempt, I reformatted the ipod to HFS+ with Macdrive, ignored iTunes altogether, and did a full restore with ml_ipod in winamp onto the Ipod. ml_ipod recognized the drive and transferred the files. This time the file transfer speed was much higher: 9500 kB/s vs. 6000 kB/s. I was impressed but once the transfer completed, I found the ipod would not recognize any of the files that had been transferred. The itunesDB database was not corrupt and the actual data files were all present so what could be the problem? Was it a problem with the iPod’s firmware not being able to read HFS+?

I found the answer on a wiki page written for Gentoo Linux users on how to update ipod firmware. Simply formatting the ipod’s drive to HFS+ would not work because HFS+ formatted ipods have three partitions: the first partition contains the partition table, the second partition the ipod for mac firmware, and the third partition the media files and databases. (FAT32 formatted ipods have two partitions: a hidden one for the ipod for pc firmware, and the other for the media.) The ability to create these HFS+ partitions on the iPod aren’t available on Windows, even with MacDrive. MacDrive can format a disk to HFS+ but does not provide the ability to create three separate partitions on the disk. And to make the ipod work, I would also need the correct ipod firmware installed in its respective partition. Could iTunes solve the problem? iTunes for PC will neither create the three HFS+ partitions nor copy anything but ipod for PC firmware to a FAT32 partition. The only solution I could imagine for copying the correct firmware and creating the correct partitions would be by connecting my ipod to a computer running OS X and restoring my iPod using iTunes for Macintosh.

So iPod USB cable in hand, I visited my friend Isaac S. and his Macbook, and soon afterward I had a functioning ipod with the correct HFS+ partitions and firmware. (Thanks Isaac!) Back home, I found that with MacDrive installed on my Thinkpad, ml_ipod and winamp had no difficulty recognizing the HFS+ volume. Transfer speeds hovered mid 8000 kB/s. Success!

The conversion did not come without any caveats. After the full transfer was completed I did notice that there was less free space available on the ipod. The ipod with HFS+ used approximately 5% more storage for the same files than when it was formatted with FAT32. (116gb/FAT32 vs. 122gb/HFS+ out of 148gb total.) I don’t know why, but perhaps it has something to do with the extents allocated for each file in HFS+ (described above). (See update below on this weird problem.)

Because ml_ipod was designed to restore fat32 formatted ipods, I don’t think I’ll be able to use ml_ipod’s “restore or initialize ipod” feature anymore, nor will I be able to rely on iTunes for PC for the occasional firmware update. Rather than buy a whole new Apple computer for this task, I’m looking at vmware workstation, an emulation environment that I can run OS X on within Windows. Another option is to use another piece of software by Mediafour called Xplay.

Conclusion

I hope this story helps anyone else out there wondering whether to get their FAT32 ipods converted back to HFS+ (and how exactly to go about doing that). I think it’s a worthwhile project because of the advantages that HFS+ provides in speed and reliability over FAT32, the lack of file fragmentation in HFS+, and some moderate file transfer speed advantages. The disadvantages  are the need to purchase HFS+ software for Windows like MacDrive and no longer being able to depend on iTunes for firmware updates or ml_ipod for occasional full restore and ipod initialization. (You can probably get around the latter problems by installing Mac OS X in a vmware emulation, but then you’d need to buy a copy of vmware workstation and OS X as well. Or you can buy a mac mini, macbook, or other Apple computer.) If this doesn’t faze you, then you should also expect that due to differences between the two file systems, that HFS+ will utilize more storage space on your ipod than FAT32. On my ipod, HFS+ used 5% more drive space with the same files loaded onto it.

If you want to run an HFS+ formatted ipod on a PC running Windows, follow these steps:

1. If your ipod is formatted FAT32, restore it using iTunes for Mac on a friend’s Macintosh computer. (iTunes for PC will only format your ipod to FAT32.)
2. Install HFS+ reading/writing software for Windows like MacDrive by Mediafour.
3. Optional but recommended: Install ml_ipod for winamp and transfer your files to your HFS+ formatted ipod.

In the comments please let me know if you’ve found other ways to partition ipods correctly for HFS+ without using iTunes for Mac. Besides file transfer speed changes and degrees of fragmentation, I’m also interested in documenting any other reported benefits of using HFS+.

UPDATE: A week later and I’ve reloaded my ipod once more under slightly different conditions. The important difference is that this time, the strange 5% storage space loss from my earlier adventure didn’t manifest. Instead of restoring the iPod using ml_ipod, I used XPlay (ver. 3.0.2), another piece of software by Mediafour. I’m not exactly certain what made a difference… but my iPod certainly seems happier having been reformated with MacDrive and restored with XPlay. XPlay has a trial period of 30 days or 20 times running, and I’ll be curious to know whether the software makes any difference to managing an HFS+ formatted iPod besides using its restore feature. I’ll provide another update to this post when I do.

Upon moving to Philadelphia in 2007 I bought a copy of Commercial Entertainment Product at the Digital Underground, a music store at 5th and South where I was making friends with local scenesters, and it was there that I probably learned the following year of the Spooky tour with EBN coming to the TLA. I had a mixed experience at the show. I think I got there late but was quickly impressed by EBN’s visuals. They had set up a double screen with a mirror image of the left on the right side, so there was some very cool if simple effects of action in the videos blending towards the center of the two screens. The visuals they provided for Spooky’s set were again very aggressive and I thought kind of childishly masculine, with lots of quick cut edits of men in race cars, spies, guns, and things getting blown up. EBN had made their name for videos that parodied the manipulation and dissemination of propaganda for the first Gulf War through mainstream media. For example, in their video “Syncopated Ordinance Demonstration #1″ (see below) they contrast the war footage of tanks getting bombed, with GI Joe’s cartoon battles, and scantily clad women shooting uzis in gun manufacturer advertisements, and so present the different ways violence on TV is presented in one single grotesque.

EBN’s viduals for dj Spooky’s sets were much more superficial. Without depth, EBN’s art was merely being used to complement the aggressive and masculine tone of Spooky’s presentation of illbient in relation to hip hop.

But I wasn’t dissapointed during EBN’s solo set. I saw videos that were works of art in and of themselves, and not being used to complement some other message. One of them featured a manipulation of Frank Sinatra from a short TV clip that would phase in and out of itself in audio and video. Seeing it made the entire evening worthwhile. Following the show, I searched in vain for anyone who had recorded the show. I wrote to dj Spooky asking for more information. I asked friends who new folks that regularly bootlegged shows at the TLA. Nada. And to make matters worse, I soon learned that EBN disbanded.

Fast forward to 2006. EBN videos were all over the place on youtube, and I did some exploring and found that the EBN project has been revived somewhat. All the members had gone onto other things, mostly in media production work, and EBN frontman Joshua L. Pearson had become a family man. But he had also created an official web page for EBN and posted a few videos, mostly quicktime files from Commercial Entertainment Product, for download. I still couldn’t find the Sinatra video but I was excited that it probably wasn’t lost. Hopefully it would be posted on youtube or somewhere else. At the time, looking for it would have to wait since I was terribly busy in Louisiana doing urban planning following the hurricanes of 2005. I would follow up on this later.

And so when I had some spare time earlier this year I sent out emails to all the EBN project members on whether the group had any plans to make an official release of the old videos on DVD. Greg Deocampo (currently of Mediatronica) was the only one who responded, but wow, what a response. He pointed me to his pesonal project Eclectic Method (EMN) and his portfolio of EMN videos. On a separate page of the EMN project, Greg had all the videos that had been made for the CD album Telecommunication Breakdown in 1995 but hadn’t been released due to there not being enough space on the CD for all those videos. (Only “Electronic Behavior Control System,” “3:7:8,” and “Homicidal Schizophrenic (A Lad Insane)” were released on the data side of the CD.) Mediatronica was also hosting a mirror of the videos on their video distribution site televis.es. Among the flash videos was a copy of the Sinatra video entitled “Frank”; I was overjoyed! (See “Frank” below.) A great interview of Deocampo is available in the episode archive of the public radio program, Some Assembly Required.

Having become a collector of EBN videos, I was dismayed to find that quite a few were no longer accessible on youtube or anywhere else. For years, a site called GNN (Guerilla News Network) had hosted a series of seven EBN videos it called “The Lost Tapes.” A few had surfaced on youtube, and one or two on file sharing networks, but the others had since 2004 when GNN stopped hosting them, become truly lost. Another video, “Banjo Lesson,” was made inaccessible when a youtube user named Nomeus had his account suspended. And so last week, I went looking for Nomeus, and finally caught up with him on his urban exploration site flurbex.com. I’ve since been able to get copies of all the missing files and repost them on youtube. Here’s “Banjo Lesson”:

A piyut (piyutim, pl. hebrew) is a sacred musical poem, sung as part of a communal prayer service but just as often after a good meal with friends and family. I was raised with these songs and tunes, learning a new one occasionally while eating as a guest at someone’s house, or at a weekend gathering, or in Israel at Yeshiva. I always hoped there was some archive because I was hearing quite a few of the common melodies and worried that there were likely thousands more that were fading into obscurity or limited by geography. (Ever wonder what shabbat tunes are kept in the piyutim of Kurdish Jews?) Then I stumbled on this site, piyut.org, which is just such an archive. I am so thankful. They even have something like a comprehensive collection of musical scales… I’m not certain what is meant by “musical scales” on this page, but I chose one at random and I found some musical expression that was completely new to me. I suspect that the music found on this site would also be appreciated by audionauts of sufi sacred music such as the Qawallis of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. But this archive is so diverse, I am still plumbing its depths of ancient sounds and their contemporary echoes.

I don’t know when this website was founded but from their about page it seems quite active with a passionate group of musicians, academics, and other scholars working on something they know is unique and essential to preserve and promote. This statement on that page summed it up nicely:

The vast majority of the poetic and musical creativity of the Jews emerged in various Diaspora communities during the past two millennia. Since the founding of the State of Israel and the immigration of the majority of these ancient Diaspora communities to Israel, large sections of the great tradition of piyut have been lost or forgotten. Finding access to the remnants that remain is not easy. The brief history of the modern period created, in many cases, a gap between the tradition of the past and the modern society and culture that developed in Israel. Tradition generally, and the legacy of piyut in particular, has stayed alive and meaningful only among a small portion of the Israeli population.
As time has passed, the need for people to connect with these roots has grown greatly. It is a need to access the voices calling from the depths of time, absorbed in emotion and wisdom of the many generations that sang these piyutim. We will widen and deepen our language and understand ourselves and our nation better as part of understanding our ancestors and their traditions better.

To change the ipod from shuffling songs to shuffling albums follow these steps:

1) Go ahead and shuffle your songs
2) Press the center button three times
3) select the shuffle setting you want (“songs”, “albums”, or “off”)

Once you have done this you will once again be able to change the shuffle setting via the ipod classic Settings.

For regular readers of this blog curious whatever happened to my 100gb Archos Jukebox/Rockbox player (blogged of here) a short note. The Archos is ok but (since soon after the periodic completion of this spaceling’s ambient solar orbit) the Archos took to rocking it with the Junkions on Planet Junk (at the bottom of my junk pile).

But looking back all nostalgia like for my tech-Gomi, the Archos Jukebox was an energy whore, that required me to lug around an AC adapter to service it’s unquenchable thirst for electrons. And it couldn’t shuffle albums.

“Shuffle Albums” was the killer feature I pined for in an mp3 player so when I discovered the ipods were capable of that (and the newer archos’ and cowons still could not) I shelled out for my little slice of Apple. (iTunes free thanks to Ubuntu Linux + Floola, I should add).

Why is shuffle albums so important? For the same reason that “Album List 2″ is an essential plugin for winamp — it provides for the ability to listen to a random album (just like those old giant 100 CD jukeboxes could). Industry folks talk about how the revolution of the mp3 was that it liberated tracks from the medium of “Albums.” Tracks could be listened to individually, mixed and shuffled at random, and most importantly, sold individually. But the medium of albums is still important for much of the music I listen to, whether it be Beethoven’s 9th Symphony or Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians: I want to listen to my tracks sequentially in the order suggested by the composer artist’s imagination. Or said differently: context matters, provenance matters, and please don’t use tech to manipulate art as a commodity.

The Archos is still accessible and usable and I’ll find a place for it in some future project. But aside from random firmware scares (see above shuffle surprise), I’m pretty damn pleased with this little apple unit. Wish Apple’d be more open with their firmware though and less jerky about opening up their tech to 3rd party itunes alternative ipod managers.

From wikipedia:

Snippets of dialogue between and over the top of the songs are also featured on the recording [of Dark Side of the Moon]. Roger Waters devised a method of interviewing people, whereby questions were printed on flashcards in sequential order and the subject’s responses were recorded uninterrupted. The questions related to central themes of the album such as madness, violence, and death. Participants were commandeered from around Abbey Road, placed in the darkened studio in front of a microphone, and told to answer the questions in the order which they were presented. This provoked some surprising responses to subsequent questions. For example, the question “When was the last time you were violent?” was immediately followed by “Were you in the right?” (Henderson, Peter; Surcliffe, Phil; and Bungey, John (1998). The First Men on the Moon Part 2 (html). REG . MOJO Magazine. Retrieved on 2006-12-23.)

Recordings of road manager Roger “The Hat” Manifold were the only ones obtained through a conventional sit-down interview because the band members could not find him at the time and his responses (including “give ‘em a quick, short, sharp shock…” and “live for today, gone tomorrow, that’s me…”) had to be taped later when the flashcards had been lost.

From the liner notes of A Tree Full of Secrets (disc 3):

Roger the Hat interview (07:30)
Recorded : 1972
Primary source : Capital Radio broadcast (“Pink Floyd Story”), December 1976 – January 1977
Source for the tree : unknown gen from Capital Radio broadcastAll through “The Dark Side of the Moon” album, you can hear the voices of people interviewed by the band. Here, Roger the Hat (who was a roadie for various rock bands) is interviewed by Roger Waters. On the album, you can hear his voice during “On the Run” (“Live for today, gone tomorrow, that’s me, hahaha-¦”) and during “Us And Them” (“Short, sharp shock -¦”).

(UPDATE: Very difficult to find more information on Roger Manifold on the web. The above picture came from this webpage about another band he was a roadie with, The Third World War. Apparently, the Hat monicker derived from Mr. Monicker’s recognizable top hat, sported in his daily roadie ministrations. Wish I could find a picture of it. I love top hats, too.)

Far be it for me to add another to the blossoming forest of eulogies for Kurt Vonnegut, a man who I loved — I’m just thankful I’ve been alive at a time when I could read his writings (Mark Twain, never got the chance). I do have something to share though: some audio of Philip K. Dick expressing his insight into Kurt Vonnegut, an author which arguably, I think, he shared much in common with. Both Vonnegut and Dick used speculative fiction to explore a relationship between author and character and the hopes and tragedies of individuals within narrated realities outside their control (see Breakfast of Champions and Man in the High Castle). Vonnegut’s Player Piano was also one of Philip K. Dick’s favorite books.

Interviewer: Did you read Breakfast of Champions?

PKD : Yes.

Interviewer: What did you think of Vonnegut’s attitude towards his characters?

PKD : Disgusting and an abomination. I think that that book is an incredible drying up of the liquid -sack- sap of life in the veins of a person like a dead tree…that’s what I think. I also love Kurt Vonnegut.

You can listen to it below in the mog player here.

The audio comes from a cassette rip of an interview with Philip K. Dick, circa 1981, by persons unknown for a PKD newsletter. The cassettes came from a collection of tapes loaned by a friend to David Roel, who in turn made them available on the Internet a few years ago. You can hear more of these recordings here.

Click here, for a post on Vonnegut’s Calypsos of Bokonon.

This brings me to the musical subject of this essay: Conemelt — or more specifically, the music of Ashley Marlowe. As with my previous post on Squarepusher’s remix of “psultan” and “bedroom glow” by Kiyoshi Izumi’s , “Under The Hood” by Conemelt has that break in rhythm and shift to new melody where everything becomes even more intense and delicious sounding. The track appeared on a 12″, Rocker’s Ruin E.P. (1997) I discovered at the 611 record store after much much browsing. And similar to “psultan” I needed to find my own pitch for the track to sound right. On the version you’ll hear on the MOG player, it’s been shifted down from 45 to about 42. (vinyl rip by yours truly.)

Ashley is an amazing drummer and listen for yourself below:

There is something so comforting about vinyl. I went to Goodwill a few days ago and found a live Leo Kottke record. Took it home and lavished loving care upon it. Cleaned it, set it reverently on my Technics, opened a beer and sat outside listening to the 12-string sounds float from the speakers.

This is not a post romanticizing vinyl — there’s already plenty of that. The trope of nostalgia is the conjuring of a half-forgotten past, a lost landscape, a castaway of obsolence, things of ponderous beauty set aside in the name of “progress.” No, this post is not about romanticizing vinyl. It is about pitch control.

I wrote:

Is there a breeze in your apartment? That was my romance with the needle. Swinging back and forth, surfing up and down on the groove, despite the breeze. I could take a sit and enjoy both, but feeling the vulnerability of the medium to its environment made me feel some kinship.

But I forgot to add that the flip side to the vulnerability was the control the medium allowed, I mean, allows. You can put your hands on it and change it. I don’t mean making perfectly horrible scratches on the record and I don’t mean cutting up the record and splicing it back together like Christian Marclay might — that’s too obvious. I mean the casual control of the medium that I never had with my cd player. (Hell, that I never had with winamp!) With some records, they’re just begging to change up, and not just slow from 45rpm to 33rpm or speed the Beatles up from 33 to Chipmunks territory at 78rpm. No… just a slight twist from say 33 to 39 or maybe 41rpm. You hear it on 33 and it just sounds wrong but its too fast on 45. But what can you do?

Well, that was what was so lovely about those turntables, the one’s with the pitch shifting knobs or levels. There was no danger, no danger of scratching the precious record for the casual listener to make some important if subtle change to the music — to really possess and take ownership of the music, like a dybbuk might hijack an aimless host. But that was what you could do, even what you could take for granted, with vinyl turntables with pitch controls.

Take a listen to the track “Psultan” by Tom Jenkinson. It’s his Squarepusher remix of a heavier beat-laden track, “Psultan Part I,” that he put out in 1998 under his Chaos A.D. alias. Like the previous track I posted about by Kiyoshi Izumi, it has a break in the middle where it shifts course and becomes an even more potent instrumental. (That was the original focus of this post). But the piece below, you won’t be able to hear a version like it anywhere else. Ripped from vinyl it was, but at the speed that made sense to my ears somewhere between 38 and 39rpm. The official, “native” speed sounds just too fast for me… (if you like what you hear, go and find a copy of the original version for comparison — mog only allows me one piece per post).

There are three other tracks on the Remixes 12″ this appeared on, but the psultan remix sounds nothing like the others, and I think it’s indicative of Jenkinson’s best work. Can you hear the similarity between this piece and the one by Izumi?

In 1997, Rephlex released an EP by Kiyoshi Izumi featuring the track below, “Bedroom Glow.” A few years later he followed up with a full length album on Nobukazu Takemura’s Childisc label pleasantly titled, Orange Sunshine, the tracks of which, while appealing enough, sound nothing like “Bedroom Glow.” (Orange Sunshine is a nice little idm/ambient album). His most recent album, Protocol A was released in 2004 by Peace Records… and nothing has been heard from since.

There are these electo pieces which have something like a twist in it, that carries it forward creating an even more potent climax and sense of urgency. “Bedroom Glow” has it, as well as a piece by Conemelt and Squarepusher that I’ll write about in future posts. I’m not sure what to call it — kind of like the instrumental equivalent of a break but considering these pieces have plenty of breakbeat already that might be a misleading description. Like a break, the driving rhythm and melody is shunted, and a new melody picks up a little later. Eventually, the original rhythm and melody picks back up. The result I think is a much more sophisticated piece than one might be expecting. This piece mixes many familiar electro sounds along with a club whistle and what I think may be a Farfisa organ. I ripped it from vinyl, so I hope you also like the crackle and pops. Enjoy!

Izumi, like Doctor Y.S. is another musician I wish I knew more about, but alas, I can’t even find Japanese websites about him that can be garbled in translation. Thus the MOG player and its audio content will have to stand surrogate for all the juicy bits I’d like to add here for you.

Currently the president of Pokémon card producing and game developing company, Creatures, Inc., Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka in the 1980s was a sound engineer for the Japanese game developer, Famicom. There he produced the soundtrack for the NES game, Metroid (1986).

To say that Tanaka was just a sound engineer would completely understate the man’s influence on video games and geek culture — this is the hacker who designed the Game Boy camera and Game Boy printer, besides composing the music for Duck Hunt and Ballon Fight in assembly language. Here’s some more background from wikipedia:

Nintendo began development of its Famicom home video game console in 1983 (known as the Nintendo Entertainment System in North America and Europe), and Tanaka worked on early titles including Duck Hunt and Kid Icarus. The new system had three tone generators and one pseudorandom noise generator, with which to produce melody, harmony, percussion, and sound effects (which would usually interrupt a note). Though a vast improvement over the simplistic sound of the arcade machines, the Nintendo hardware still left Tanaka and the other composers severely limited in the complexity of the music they could write. Even though sound tools had been written for the Famicom, Tanaka continued to write his music alongside his custom playback libraries written in assembly language, a fact he credits with helping to set his work apart from that of his colleagues. By 1986, Tanaka was writing over a third of the music for the Famicom’s games.

This increase in sound technology, coupled with the composing talents of Tanaka and his coworkers such as Koji Kondo helped raise the popularity of game music in Japan. The increased attention spurred good-spirited rivalries between many game composers, a development that bothered Tanaka, since it forced composers to write in a way that he felt was contrary to the atmosphere of the games themselves.

It was this dislike that inspired him to compose the subdued themes of Metroid. In his words, he tried “to create the sound without any distinctions between music and sound effects.” He composed the music so as to deny the player a simple melody to hum along with; only after completing the game is any “catchy” music played. [emphasis mine]

For a long while, if you wanted to hear Tanaka’s score to Metroid, you had to play the game to its completion. However, by the late 1990s an underground of video game system emulation programmers were busy copying the data off of NES and other game cartridges for their precious ROM (games stored as Read Only Memory). And in a sub-basement of this underground, a small group concerned only with the soundtracks to the games was figuring out ways of directly copying the digital scores from NES games into NSF (Nintendo Sound Format) files. Plug-ins for listening to NSF files were written for winamp and until a few years ago the most popular plug-in was called Nosefart.

Even with these plugins, listening to NSF files as easily as other audio files remained difficult. Like midi files, NSF files were small files usually less than 50kb, and relied on synth chips in sound cards to reproduce the orchestration programmed into the file. A single NSF file would contain all the tracks for a game, but each track would usually lack an end-time signature. That meant that in order to listen to the next track in an NSF file you’d have to manually advance the track, otherwise it would play indefinitely. This made sense, because the soundtrack was engineered to be played in a game for a level which a user could take an indeterminate amount of time to pass through — so the music would need to loop.

In 2004, a new plugin, NotSo Fatso, was released which offered the user the ability to set a fixed song length and set their own fade out length to the loop. This wasn’t a complete solution but finally I could realize my dream of converting the entire soundtrack of Metroid to mp3 for the rest of the world to listen to. Unfortunately, the MOG player can only accept 15mb of file per post and my join of Metroid’s constituent tracks into one mega-MOG-playable track came out at a too hefty 21mb. However, I’ve posted to the MOG player Metroid Parts I-V with the last track, Part XII (total length is about 9 min). I’m also hosting the entire album here for you to download if you like what you hear below (or would simply rather enjoy them in a ridiculously large audio format compared to the original NSF ). My favorite piece is Part V which should start around the 4:40 mark.

Just one final point before I go. It really grieves me that there is this entire library of music which although now accessible in a sense, is still amazingly obscure despite important compositions such as Tanaka’s Metroid. Search on the web and glance at any voluminous archive of NSF (and other game system sound files) and you’ll gape at how many possibly brilliant works are almost completely unknown, often times without the composer’s names even known. (spaceling raises his chalice in a toast). Here’s to you aging monks of 8-bit, may your precious sounds sold over to corporate suits find their way to more anxious ears! (If you’re interested a nice collection of links to NSF archives can be found at the bottom of this wikipedia article on NSF files.)

This was later re-released as a 12″ single with liner notes and a short sci-fi story by Xevious game designer Masanobu Endoh. A 3 .5 minute video of Hosono playing the club version can be had via youtube.

The rest of the album features shorter tracks with delightful kitschy hooks like the track “Little Rabble,” an adaptation of many popular piano songbook classics into 8-bit. The other long-ish track is the 4 minute long “Galaga” which after listening to Hosono’s other albums sounds just as whimsical. “Galaga” leaves the medium of 8-bit to include extra orchestration, and sounds very similar to the style Hosono expressed in his ambient-dream lounge albums of the early to mid-90s. The most experimental track is the 16 second long “Bosconian” (nice filler for any mix-cd). Really, the whole album is a treat. Although the album was re-released in 1999 as “The Best of Video Game Music” with non-Hosono produced tracks, this has been hard to locate as well (but seek and you shall find).

First up is Doctor Y.S. and the Cosmic Drunkards. I have three tracks by this artist/project/brainchild of Yoshihiro Sawasaki. I’ve tried to find out more information but I’m lacking some language ability here (and here), so help me out if you’re in the know. Discogs tells me he has a number of other projects besides the Cosmic Drunkards. There’s also Meditation Y.S., Mushroom Now!, Techno The Gong, and he’s released music in collaboration with these other projects/groups: Transonic Jokers and Ultra Machine. Sawasaki seems like a really fun guy who’d be fun to tour with from the pictures I’m finding of his sushi eating antics and explorations of neglected steam baths and other fanciful places.

I first discovered Sawasaki by cosmic serendipity in a welcome moment of confirmed pronoia. His track “Secret Samba” was one side of some vinyl I found in an orphaned record sleeve in a Philly Record store (611). With little idea of what album it came from, and little help provided by the store dj/clerk, I had to settle for the pleasure of a good mystery. The other tracks on disc were also brilliant: “Matsuri” by dj Krush and “Paradise, version 2″ by Swing Slow (the project of Miharu Koshi and Haruomi Hosono). I left the store without buying the disc — a big mistake! At the time I was thinking it was only one of four discs and I’d rather get the complete album, and the orphan was selling for something outrageous, like $10. I mean, how much would you pay for an orphan?? The Internet was of no help to me in 1997 looking for more information. (I’d have to wait five more years before I learned it was off a compilation called Pacific State (1997, Devaint Records). You can now find it easy.). It dawned on me a week later that what I had heard was extraordinary and I had to find that disc. But Alas! it was nowhere to be found. I was really lucky when a year later, to the day, it reappeared in a section given over to happy hardcore. Really, there’s no telling how stuff can sometimes be filed in some record stores.

Now for the music. First, is “Secret Samba.”

Second, by Yoshihiro Sawasaki, is “Snow Coast” from the soundtrack to the anime show, Boogiepop Phantom. (You’ll have to stream/download this into your favorite player for MOG is, for now, only allowing me to share one song at a time, not that I’m not appreciative.) I should mention that since I’ve been rather hooked by this “Snow Coast” track… I think I’ve listened to it about 20 times now!

A few studio only tracks presenting the licks and chops of Martin, Fleck, & Trischka (including one original Beatnick Banjo Poem) are also available from the NPR page, one of which I liberated from real media format, for sharing purposes below (via MOG player). Enjoy. (Ivory Toad of Catalan by Bela Fleck and Tony Trischka).

(Above: the chemist, Aron Kuperman on his one-speed)

While researching though, I did discover the music of Haruomi Hosono, who I had only known from a track, Paradise v.2″ that appeared on a Japanese compilation called Pacific State along with gems by Doctor YS and the Cosmic Drunkards (“Secret Samba”) and DJ Krush (“Matsuri”). “Paradise, v.2″ is credited to Swing Slow, the project/album of Hosono and Miharu Koshi. (Check that link on Koshi to discover another brilliant eccentric Japanese artist). I’m not a fan (yet) of Hosono’s pop from the 70s and 80s, but his album, Video Game Music (1986), however, should be a must listen for all electronaudiophiles. I haven’t heard enough of Yellow Magic Orchestra to say anything, but from the video I discovered below, I’m intrigued. See for yourself, kind of a minimalist Pee Wee Playhouse (?). Help me out, Nipponese translators, please.

It’s about being in love and loving the love that’s hating the love and the love and the hate that’s loving with all it’s around the love that’s hate that’s the hate that’s the love and the love is the love that is the hate that’s hating the love, it’s loving the hate.

It’s the beginning pieces, the “Space Intro” and the other instrumentals on the record: the beginnings of “Fly Like an Eagle” and then on side B, “Blue Odyssey” (an homage to the synthesizer?) and maybe even the wierd little track that comes afterward, “Sweet Maree.” Are these the forgettable throway tracks on the record? Are these the tracks they dropped in to appeal to young stoners? Well, I am appealed, but the other tracks count for shite. Please forgive me if you love the Steve Miller Band… I still NEED you! I need to know about the other small but wonderful instrumental tracks hiding on all the other Steve Miller Band albums. I will adore them, I promise, like a stray kitten, I will take them home and feed and play with them and give them string to play with. And what about all those other awesome instrumental filler tracks on 70s pop albums I haven’t heard of. Please tell me about them. And then I will thank you.

Love, spaceling.

Above: a visual representation of similar mid-70s space kitsch

Mrs. Lipman gave me my first chance at musical expression back in first grade. I lost track of her after second. I really appreciate her work back then and I think it still stands out, especially in comparison with the schlocky performances of other Day School Choirs from the 1980s like the god-awful Miami Boys Choir. Here’s a streaming link for listening, and you can download the individual mp3s from this directory.

If you like this, definitely check out the album Leah Lipman released two years earlier (1978), one of the most beautiful Jewish records I own (and I’ve been questing for non-schlocky Jewish records a long time!).

UPDATE : I just got off the phone with Leah (thank you Internets!) and she shared with me some wonderful stories regarding the record. It was produced on a $3000 budget at a time during a very stressful period where had just recently given birth. Two of the song tunes were original “Ani Ma’amin” and “Mahtai Yihyeh Shalom” and composed by Leah. The accordionist was Pinchas Zahavi. Leah retired from the Hebrew Academy in 1997. She’s still somewhat active in the music scene in Silver Spring, MD, organizing women’s concerts within the Orthodox Jewish community and teaching her grandchildren piano.

This is about the most heavy metal guitar I’ve heard in a long time that I’ve been willing to put up with. Something about this track is just putting me under a spell. Part of it is that Buckethead changes focus and his direction so often. I don’t know why I like it so much. I lost interest in Joe Satriani pretty quickly, but maybe this means I should revisit him. What’s happening to my ears?! Buckethead has attested that Satriani and Malmsteen were huge influences on him, so perhaps my ears have found a hook on patterns I hadn’t heard in the last half of my waking life. Click on the link above (or on the picture below) to hear “Nottingham Lace”… I think, if you can get past the bluesey electirc guitar riffs (?) at the beginning, you’ll hear what I’m talking about, and if you do, let me know what you think.

I’d also appreciate any further Buckethead related suggestions. Danke shöen!

Open question to the denizens of MOG . Has anyone heard (or be willing to record) the Calypsos of Bokonon from Cat’s Cradle? (Looking hopefully towards you, Spencer.)

image from science blog, Keat’s Telescope
see the cat? see the cradle?

yes. (mog precedes MOG )

no. (Sir MOG is not on soulseek (as far as I know)… however other MOGgish rascals are verily ubiquitous).

mog is Polish and blogs here.

Below, Perrey’s 2006 performance of “E.V.A.” from Perrey’s 1971 album, Moog Indigo with current collaborator Dana Countryman. Don’t they make it look easy?

QED .

If you’ve seen any of the original Mission Impossible episodes or seen Cool Hand Luke then you’ve heard Lalo Schifrin’s incredible jazzy scores and sensitivity to the director’s vision. For THX -1138, it is obvious that Schifrin was paying attention to the work of Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind, Carlos’ teacher Vladimir Ussachevsky, and the plethora of sound explorers and music geeks pioneering the advent of electronic music and noise in the late 60s and 70s. Before this film, I had no idea Schifrin had dipped his toe in these (now) deep waters.

I’ll tell you about punk rock: punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and, uh… and, uh… heartless manipulators, about music… that takes up the energies, and the bodies, and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds, of young men, who give what they have to it, and give everything they have to it. And it’s a… it’s a term that’s based on contempt; it’s a term that’s based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism, and, everything that’s rotten about rock ‘n’ roll…

I don’t know Johnny Rotten… but I’m sure, I’m sure he puts as much blood and sweat into what he does as Sigmund Freud did. You see, what, what sounds to you like a big load of trashy old noise… is in fact… the brilliant music of a genius… myself. And that music is so powerful, that it’s quite beyond my control. And, ah… when I’m in the grips of it, I don’t feel pleasure and I don’t feel pain, either physically or emotionally. Do you understand what I’m talking about? Have you ever, have you ever felt like that? When you just, when you just, you couldn’t feel anything, and you didn’t want to either. You know, like that? Do you understand what I’m saying, sir?

Last night I went to Carlotta Street near LSU to observe and possibly make myself part of the teeming youth and desperate insanity of a Halloween weekend in Baton Rouge. I’m a raver cowboy in my best duds, pearl buttoned shirt, Stetson, and orange cargo pants. Earlier, on the open porch scene of Spanishtown, I made some friends of some drifting youth here in Baton Rouge to work, go to rehab and eventually get custody back of their child, so the two of them are with me now. Just the three of us, two being on anti-depressants, and we’re asked repeatedly to help buy vodka at the local Circle K for these three 17 year old girls, dressed as faeries, one with a cellphone tucked between her boobs. As what seems to be thousands of students dressed in their terrible and amazing costumes brush by me, I wonder how I can feel so dissociated in this overwhelming crowd. I don’t know whether it’s the consequence of over-stimulus, or whether I’ve just developed some mental barrier against joining into the fullness of this horde. I wonder whether this is a problem for the 17 year old girls too and maybe that’s why they’re asking me to help them get a fifth of Taaka from the Circle K to mix with their blue Powerade. I went to Carlotta in the hopes of finding in the mass the girl who told me to come out last night. “Hey Aharon, you should really come out to Carlotta, I’ll be on Ivanhoe later on.” Sweet crazy girl. I am loneliness in this mass.

The three of us make our way back to my car, and I play for my new friends “Philip Glass”, the homage by Colourbox, as I speed us back to the nooks and crannies from which we came.

With the new parallel 160gb tech rocking the laptop drive world, once pricey 100gb drives can now be found on sale and for rebate. The free and open source rockbox firmware will further extend the device features — and flashing the rockbox firmware into the Jukebox Studio was doable (although reading through lots of documentation was a necessity). Rockbox is a very useful firmware replacement since it supports OGG -Vorbis encoded audio files and gapless playback. (UPDATE: gapless only works if your mp3s are encoded in LAME with the gapless switch. Rockbox does not support ogg-vorbis on archos jukebox studio/recorder models .

ebay seems ripe with the old Archos now, but I was not the only one shopping for them. Folks are bidding over $100 for the Jukebox Recorder’s with USB 2 .0. I relented and bid on the older Studio model with usb 1.1. (Hint: can be had cheaper than the Recorder).

Things I learned if you’d like to do something like this.

0. A jeweler’s sized Philips head screwdriver will come in handy for removing the very tiny screws holding on the Jukebox faceplate. Otherwise, the directions for upgrading the drive at mctubster are fairly accurate.

1. To transfer your files over from your main computer to the new 2.5″ drive, use a usb 2.0 portable enclosure or some other speedy connection. Connecting via a 3.5″ to 2.5″ ide converter is fraught with danger (bent pins and too high voltage in your new drive).

2. Move your files over to your new HD before you swap it. And don’t forget to defragment it too, cause that will take a longish time over USB 1 .

3. The rockbox manuals for flashing the Jukebox Studio and Recorder models are inaccurate. You might think that rockbox will create an id3 tag database on these models with rockbox’s Tag Cache feature. No. The included RAM in these models is too small (2mb) to use Tag Cache.

4. id3browse is some very useful free and open source software to use in generating m3u playlists. (You’ll need to generate playlists in lieu of an id3 tag database. Otherwise, you’ll have to rely on playing files according to directories. This is limiting since without a playlist, Archos will only play one directory at a time without advancing to successive or nested directories).

5. Be patient. If you’re confused don’t blame yourself. Continue to read. Nerdy, zen like acceptance of tedium will be rewarded. Take a nap.

6. And, oh yeah, be patient bidding on eBay. It’s not like there is a supply problem or anything and yet impatient demand is driving prices up. If everyone could just wait their turn, they’d get their obsolete but upgradeable old archos at a reasonably cheap price.

Image copyright Frank Schindelbeck

I’ll reveal a secret to all y’alls. The best place to get your filez on is on USENET . That’s where I just collected Hooper Bay, Boards Of Canada’s ultrarare 1994 mini-cassette/12″ extremely limited release. I’ve been burned before with non-BOC tracks tagged as BOC before (badly tagged, and mis-tagged Old Tunes mp3s are ubiquitous on soulseek), so I checked on over at Frederik Claes’ BOC fan site for the authoritative track listing and song length duration. Sure enough, it is really Hooper Bay. This sort of file sharing is exactly what USENET and the file sharing networks are good for. Grabbing files of out-of-print and intolerably rare limited pressings. I have no idea why Warp hasn’t re-released this material to the BOC craving (and crazed) masses. Until then, I will have to make do with my low-fi 128kpbs encoded, usenet downloaded, mp3s of Hooper Bay.

This short album really is lovely.

Well, I really liked Terrapin Station and quickly noticed that Dead music covered a number of flavors of prog: folk-psych, funky folk, and improvisational prog rock/space jams. This was all well and good, but I have no taste in funky folk, and little taste for the Dead’s brand of space jams, no matter how hard I whirl like a Bektashi Dervish.

So I’m hoping that in the world of MOG , someone can turn me onto songs by the Grateful Dead that are not funky folk songs like “Samson and Delilah” and more like “Terrapin Station, Part 1.”

But I think the more significant thing about this album is the cover art. Check out those slit glasses. Remind you of anyone?

Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)

And speaking of slit glasses. How come I can’t find them anywhere? Why if fashion repeats itself has it taken so long for these to make a comeback? From my blog to your ears, Soho fashion geeks. I mean, take a look at this young gangster from John Carpenter’s whimsical 1986 synth-pop opera, Big Trouble in Little China.

I should also note that the soundtrack to Big Trouble in Little China by John Carpenter and Alan Howarth is excellent. Here’s a quality review of it written back in 2003 by the fantastically named, Messrob Torikian. I don’t have a copy of the soundtrack. It is rare! It is also expensive. If you have it, please share it with me. Also, if you know of a supplier for retro sunglasses, please pass on my request.

UPDATE: Some follow-up thoughts to this post are blogged about here.

Below, “378″ by EBN (courtesy of youtube and user electricmonk).

I am sharing this with you because you would never come across this song. It is the final track at the end of Danny Elfman’s score to the Clive Barker film, Nightbreed (1990). It doesn’t appear in the film, not even in the end credits. But it made it to the cassette soundtrack. I’m thinking that Danny Elfman (formerly of Oingo Boingo) had wanted “Skin” covered by a country artist for years, but he had to wait through ten years of making soundtracks for Tim Burton films before one came along where he could sneak the cover of “Skin” into the budget.

Please take a listen. Here is “Country Skin” by Michael Stanton. And here, for comparison is the non-country original “Skin” by Oingo Boingo. And here is El*Argento’s beautiful new skin for winamp. What is hiding underneath this skin? The boring old winamp skin. If you use windows and winamp, you can download this skin and make your winamp look more like a late 1990s Warp label album cover here.

Still, the album has its place, especially here on MOG , for track 2 is entitled “Re-Entry to Mog.” Heh. Work that into your Story of MOG , collaborative fiction moggers.

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MOG has given me a list of the 50 most popular artists/bands in my collection according to the number of tracks I have for each of them. (There’s a widget that indicates this if you haven’t noticed) The “popularity” of this chart is skewed by artists who have many short tracks (such as J.S. Bach), or many tracks that I just don’t listen to that often (such as John Williams).

Meanwhile, my charts at Last.fm\audioscrobbler provides a list of my 50 most popular artists/bands according to how often I listen to them. Since I listen to so much of my music using shuffle, the “popularity” of this chart is skewed again by those artists in my collection who have many tracks (i.e., J.S. Bach). My listening isn’t entirely random however, since I often skip albums by artists I’m not interested in listening to.

If I can compare “artists with most tracks” with “most listened artists” I should be able to locate the outliers and get a true sense of who I really most like.

I set up two columns with the 50 most listened to artists (via last.fm) in one column, and the 50 artists with the most tracks in my collection (via MOG ). After sorting the two columns and arranging the artists so that they appear alphabetically I have their two rankings side by side. (For example: J.S. Bach ranks 15th in most tracks I have, and 5th in most listened to. Other artists such as Legion of Green Men, are ranked in the popular listening column but don’t even make MOG ‘s cut in number of files).

Now I need to perform some equation on the two popularity values to determine a most popular score. Any ideas?

Assumptions: Artists that score high in listening but low in tracks should have their scores amplified.

The album comes in three parts, really: “Sur Le Them De Bene Gesserit” (Parts I-VII), “Duncan Idaho,” and a thrity minute Fripp-ish multi-track guitar improv jam with drums and accompanying synth sounds entitled “Paul Atreides.”

The connection between science-fiction and the evolution of electronic music is deep. Just consider the influence of György Ligeti and Wendy Carlos’ scores for Stanley Kurbrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clark) and A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess). I’m wondering now what the musical accompaniment may have been for Karel ÄŒapek’s play Rossum’s Universal Robots (and its numerous adaptations).

Please comment if you know of any other electronic music inspired by fantastic or fabulist literature.

And in the book, there is a subversion, and the illusion is broken for one character, at least briefly, through an intervention enabled by a character’s meditation on a trinket. The thing, hidden by it’s apparent worthlessness becomes the most valuable thing in the universe. The trinket was created by a man who smokes marijuana cigarettes sold under the brand name “Heavenly Music Corporation” (a Japanese brand sold in a parallel California where the Japanese won the Pacific front in World War II).

Brian Eno and Robert Fripp named side A of their 1974 proto-ambient album No Pussyfooting: “Heavenly Music Corporation.” Two years earlier, Klause Schulze had composed “Study for Philip K. Dick.” Was Klause Schulze meditating on what the Penfield Mood Organ might have sounded like, had its moods been conveyed by sound? It’s worth a listen. But it is “Heavenly Music Corporation”, by virtue of its homage to the inspiration of gnostic subversion, that can be listened to as a means of revealing for ourselves the illusion of the “Black Iron Prison.”

It’s significant to consider that Dick wrote this ten years before We Can build You (1972) where he introduces the idea of the Glock Frauenzimmer, electronic organ, six years before the “Penfield Mood Organ” in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968). Fripp & Eno chose an obscure prop name from an older PKD novel. I don’t claim to understand why they chose it, just that the name is well suited on a number of levels to the concept and the potential of the composition and genre Fripp & Eno were helping to invent.

Later, in the 1990s, Kim Cascone of industrial project PGR and founder of the defunct Silent/Flask label (also out of San Francisco) and reviving ambient in America, named his newly christened ambient project, Heavenly Music Corporation. Kim produced four excellent ambient albums in the mid 90s under this name: anechoic (1996), consciousness iii (1994), in a garden of eden (1993), and lunar phase (1995).

Below, I am linking to a collection of cassette rips of what appears to be interviews with PKD in the early 1980s. I’m also adding to the stream some of the music I referenced in this post.

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Well, mission accomplished and fontgoddess and my philatelist father will be so proud (stamp fiends know what I’m talking about). But said mission would not have been accomplished without referencing the great video library at youtube and listening to the master, Andres Segovia performing Gavotte BWV1012 in a tv performance recorded December 10, 1956. I am so pleased to share it with you!

Beginning in the mid-70s when all of the rest of this was percolating, Bolling burst onto the classical and jazz scene with these incredible albums featuring classical melodies and instrumentation with jazz drum accompaniment and swinging rhythms.

Compare “Bourrée” by Jethro Tull side by side Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio (1975) and you’ll hear the progressive connection immediately. (I despair to think the reason I hadn’t sooner was because these genre classifications: classical, jazz, rock, have taken root.)

I’d especially recommend Picnic Suite (1981), Toot Suite (1981), Suite for Cello and Jazz Piano Trio (1984), and Suite for Violin and Jazz Piano Trio (1984). You can easily spot Bolling’s albums in thrift and used record store bins. The airbrushed cover art is all by Roger Huyssen. See below for Huyssen’s artwork for Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano Trio.

If you find you like Bolling’s classical compositions, check out his catchy score to the Italian TV series Borsalino and Co. (1970) and his rags album Ragtime Boogie-Woogie (1970). (no shuggie).

I started out tagging with the quiet and devout rigour of a monk gilding the dome of the basillica, but I eventually gave up with the genre field of id3 because it felt dishonest to tag entire albums according to a single genre style, and I was too lazy to tag different genres to individual tracks in an album. But isn’t that what it comes down to, laziness? Not in the seven mortal sins concept of laziness, but more so in finding the balance between the strict control of information and the freedom of the music to wander into one’s listening queue like a free-radical crying “Serendipity!”

All Music Guide does a nice job of identifying genres and flavors and styles of music, and I value the meaningful typology of genre classifications as useful and more than academic. However, for now I’m keeping my musical associations in my head and not in my tag, and using (the free and open source) Albumlist to listen to and shuffle my mp3s by album whilst listening through Winamp. It’s enough (and actually necessary) for so many of my music files to remain associated with their respective (concept) albums when I listen to them.

mp3s may have liberated individual single tracks from their Albums, even leading some people to question whether Albums are now a quaint anachronism, and while this may be true for some short and sweet pop tracks, so many progressive, classical, and electronic pieces are lost without the provenance of their album. The whole, in these cases, is greater than the individual track, and that’s what makes Albumlist and plug-ins like it (are there any others like it?) so useful.

Below, an image of LuigiHann’s Adventure for Atari 2600 skin for winamp, with the Albumlist and Cover&TAG plugins.

From More from the Gay Nineties Village Audio Fidelity Records, 1957:

So, you’ve never heard of a Wurlitzer Fascinator! You’ve never been to a county fair, an amusement park, or a circus? You’ve never wandered around the side shows looking at bearded ladies, strong men, flame eaters, or girl-slicing magicians? You’ve never sat beneath a big top and watched lithe-bodied acrobats swing to and fro defying fear and gravity? You’ve never seen the elephants dance or thirsty clowns pile out of an exploding Model-T? You’ve never seen the lions jump through hoops, seals balance balls, or dare-devil riders do somersaults over the backs of galloping horses? No? Then you’ve probably missed the reedy piping of the good old Fascinator as it puffed its mechanical heart out in accompaniment to children’s cries for popcorn and cotton candy.

On the other hand, if you’re a kid from way back who took any and every opportunity to run off to the fair or carnival, the sounds you will hear in this album will immediately place you in the show grounds of your childhood and surround you with a milling crowd of calico dresses and wide-brimmed straw hats. Over there is a man selling balloons and plastic pinwheels on a stick to hold up to the wind. And as the pinwheel turns, the wind brings with it animal smells from the barred wagons holding the ever-prowling lions and tigers, and of course, the monkeys, competing with each other in their antics to gain favor and peanuts from the kids straining to reach the bars.

The old Wurlitzer was there, quickening the pulse, the very heartbeat of the circus. Or if it wasn’t always a Wurlitzer, it was a Calliope or a Mortier Band Organ or a Regina Music Box or any one of the other nine mechanical music makers recorded in this album.

Like many things American, nickelodeons—and all these grand old instruments come under this definition—started in Europe. Perhaps the first was one built by Justinian Morse in England as early as 1731. Morse connected a rather complicated peg-studded board to the keys of an organ. It proved impractical and was abandoned. About the same time in Paris, however, a famous automaton maker named Vaucauson pierced a cylinder in such a way that when it was turned, it regulated the movement of needles to produce designs corresponding to the holes in the cylinder. No music came out of it, though some years later Jacquard incorporated Vaucauson’s cylinder principle into his new invention, the silk loom. Vaucauson’s contribution to what eventually evolved into music rolls were jointed pieces of cardboard folded in book form and pierced with holes which traced for the loom the pattern to be woven.

We hear next of nickelodeons being built in San Francisco and Chicago in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the period out of which came most of the instruments recorded in this album. They found homes in bars, saloons, cafes, railroad stations—anywhere that people congregated—as well as at fairs, carnivals, and circuses. Among them, the player piano became so popular that it found its way into private homes and many an evening was spent with the neighbors and friends standing ’round the piano, cranking ice cream freezers to make home-made ice cream, popping corn, pulling taffy, and bobbing for apples while the player rolled out Dark Town Strutters Ball just as you have it here.

From the player piano, we all know more or less how the nickelodeon evolved. Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, still on the revolving paper cylinder principle. Then the cylinder was replaced by a disk, changing the function of the machine from the mechanical production of sounds through triggered pipes and cymbals to one of reproduction of sounds originally made by instruments having no connection whatsoever with the machine doing the reproducing. People have plopped nickels into jukeboxes for the Charleston, Cake-walk, Turkeytrot, Shimmy, Rhumba, Jitterbug, Bop, Twist, and now, their quarters (economic inflation along with mechanical evolution) go into the Scopitone for the Fish and the Watusi. At the moment all of the songs are in French, since it was the Gauls who invented and manufacture the machine, but the “listeners” hardly feel cheated since in addition to hearing the song, they get to see it performed in color on a screen attached to the top of the “jukebox.” What next?

In the meantime, It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, Moonlight and Roses, I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now, Marching Through Georgia, Whistling Rag, and How Ya Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Farm will regress you back to the good old days of bare feet, faded jeans and freckles, when your idea of adventure was playing hooky to see the circus—and for much less than the cost of an analyst!

THIS RECORDING was made at Paul Eakins’ Gay Nineties Village, one of the most unique amusement areas in the United States, in Sikeston, Missouri. The Village was built by Paul Eakins, a mechanical engineer who “retired” from the plumbing and heating business to devote himself to his hobby of collecting and repairing nickelodeons. The hobby grew from a preoccupation into a full-time occupation. The Village now houses the world’s largest collection of nickelodeons from all parts of the United States and twenty foreign countries. The smallest instrument stands three feet wide and five feet high. The largest is eight feet high, weighs 1,800 pounds and contains a piano; mandolin; 17 viola pipes; 21 violin pipes; 38 flute pipes; xylophone, drums—kettle, bass, and snare; triangle, castanets, and cymbals.

[More information on Paul Eakins and the Gay 90s Village can be found here, at the site of his gradson Chris Carlisle. (Warning: javascript intense). My first Eakins album that I found whilst thrifting, is located here and is recommended.]

I’m looking for music from the seventies that are similar to Kraftwerk. I’m a sucker for robot music/old electronic and I thought I would throw this out there. I’ve already discovered Telex, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Jean-Michel Jarre, and more recently Roberto Cacciapaglia’s Anne Steel album. I’m even down with 80′s music like Klein & MBO and Alexander Robotnick. So that’s where I’m at. Do you know of something I’m missing or leaving out that would be along these lines? Please let me know if you have a suggestion. I would greatly appreciate it.

Like you I’m also looking for this music, and what I’m including below is a survey of what I’ve found so far. There are plenty of holes so maybe we can help each other fill in the gaps?

To find the robot musics you like from the 70s you’ll need to start with the late 50s, oh yes. Start with “Cindy Electronium” (1959) by Raymond Scott, the fellow who inspired Robert Moog, of moog synthesizer fame. Listening to “Cindy Electronium” you’ll swear you’re listening to early Krafwerk. But it’s over ten years earlier, truly remarkable — Raymond Scott definitely comprises a good portion of the musty humus this music tree has its roots planted in. If you’re digging “Cindy” then pick up Raymond Scott’s 1962 trilogy, “Soothing Sounds for Baby.” And there is also an incredible new album of Raymond Scott’s compositions for TV commercials, Manhattan Research, Inc. see more info here. (I don’t have this album but I’ve heard tracks… check out “Bufferin: Memories” if you can).

The revelation that Bell Telephone labs had succeeded in synthesizing speech was publicized in 1963. Bell Labs, electronic engineer Max Matthews had coaxed their computer into singing “Daisy Bell”, aka “Bicycle Built for Two” back in 1961. (“Daisy Bell” later becomes fixed in the popular imagination with computers and computerized speech by appearing on the 1968 soundtrack to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey).

For a few years, work remained hidden in backroom labs and university music departments and then Robert Moog came out with his Moog synthesizer in 1964. I’m still searching for music from this critical period 1964-1967.

In 1967, Terry Riley reveals the A Rainbow in Curved Air. I’ve written about this album before. Yo, I get the chills every time I hear it. This is still pre-Wendy Carlos’ moog music explosion, so keep this in mind in the train of music influence, just how awesome this album is. This sound was popularized by the sequencer opening to “Baba O’Riley” on the Who’s 1968 album Who’s Next.

Also in 1968, find Kenneth Gaburo’s album Fat Millie’s Lament — Music for Voices, Instruments and Electronic Sounds in the Nonesuch backcatalog (Nonesuch LP H -71199). When it comes to electronic composers in the Nonesuch backcatalog, don’t look over Gaburo. Xennakis, Crumb, and Subotnick may be more famous but Gaburo is a joy to listen to! (Also to dj and mix with

Significantly, 1968 also featured the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL9000 sings Daisy Bell. No electronic music here really (and this was important to Kubrick who was distancing the cliche sounds of the theremin from golden age sci-fi 50s films like The Forbidden Planet) but the concept I think of computer-human interaction becomes much more complete here than with the idea of computer speech in Star Trek.

More in 1968: Wendy Carlos came out with Switched-On Bach and followed up with The Well-Tempered Synthesizer in 1969. And due to the success of Carlos’ album, the moog starts appearing all over the place, and not necessarily in a good way. Listen to The Byrds, “Moog Raga” instrumental (available on the 1989 album Never Before. But, as yet, no one has put these two sounds (synthesized speech and synthesized organ) together.

The robot sound you’re looking for probably cannot be found on Ed Sander’s 1972 song “Yodeling Robot” (although for fun, you should hear it). Rather, it’s on Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind’s interpretation of Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 by Ludwig Van Beethoven, on the A Clockwork Orange soundtrack. Listen to the “March from A Clockwork Orange.” You can hear Kraftwerk give homage to Wendy Carlos on the first track of their live bootleg from 1982 “Virtu Ex Machina.”

Lots to cover in the 1970s. Kraftwerk, was of course, not the only German band heavily experimenting with electronics. Make certain to check out Tangerine Dream — Christopher Franke and Edgar Froese had been experimenting with sequencers for years before Peter Baumann came on board in 1972. Listen to their 1974 and 1975 albums, Phaedra and Rubycon before picking up their live album Ricohet. (Also from 1975).

Steve Reich and Philip Glass are also busy during this period. Listen to Philip Glass’ 1971 composition Music with Changing Parts and Steve Reich’s 1976 masterpiece Music for 18 Musicians.” You can hear the influence of the latter directly on Michael Hoenig’s 1977 opus Departure for the Northern Wasteland. (In a future post, I would like to chronicle all the music pieces that sought to emulate the sound of the railway or subway).

Other Germans to take note of are Cluster, and Ashra (the project of Manuel Göttsching after Klaus Schulze left). If you like Michael Hoenig’s Departure then most certainly find his collaboration with Göttsching for the 1976 album Early Water. Peter Baumann and Edgar Froese from Tangerine Dream were also putting out great solo albums you’ll be interested in: see Froese’s Epsilon in Malaysian Pale (1974) and Macula Transfer (1976), and Baumann’s Romance ’76 and Trans Harmonic Nights (1979). More Berlin School space music can be found on Kitaro’s early albums Astral Voyage (Tan Kai), Full Moon Story and Oasis.

Ok, so that’s as much as I can write cause like you I’m still searching and I’m especially interested in new wave synth-pop and Kraftwerk inspired detroit techno. Below is the image of a flyer from my first ever ambient/space/chill-out/improv jazz/shoegazer show, Stupid Robot, almost ten years ago in Philadelphia.

But aside from the benefits of uneasy listening, I just wanted to share with you all a couple of the artists I found that actually were ear-opening if not outright enjoyable to listen to. Laurie Spiegel was perhaps the best find of all 42 artists. Listen to her 1974 composition “Appalachian Grove I”. (If there is an “Appalachian Grove II” I… I really want to hear it too!) Short percussive notes moving into and out of phase, becoming longer and louder as the intertwining melodies reach various states of climax. Gorgeous. If you like it, check out her albums Obsolete Systems (compositions 1971-1983) and Unseen Worlds (compositions 1987-1990).

And then there was François Bayle. There is a mystery track on the Adam Douglas/Deeper than Space album Current (1996) which sounds like guitar peddle knobs modulating raw square tooth waves. But it sounds really neat! (I promise) Like the sound you might pick to molt your exoskeleton or change alter-egos and become a shaman. And it was this sound that I was reminded by when I heard “Rosace 3 from Vibrations Composees” by François Bayle. His albums weren’t too easy to find when I was looking for them and they are not exploring melody at all. “Rosace 3″ might actually be the nicest thing I’ve heard by him.

So there it is, from my ears to your point of reference via this M(usic bl)OG. Below is an image I found on a French site whilst searching for info on François Bayle. It’s in French and there is more wierdness there also related in some way to another Musique Concrete composer on Ohm, Pierre Schaeffer.

Anyways, I’m posting about Baumann because the first track “This day” has a sequence that reminds me of the very influential (and embarrasingly [for me] sentimental teenage anthem) “Baba O’Riley” by the Who, Pete Townsend’s homage to Terry Riley, on the album Who’s Next (1969). If you love the organ sequence in “Baba O’Riley” but can’t handle the memories that “Teenage Wastleand” exhumes from the long (or recently) buried grave of your adolescence, then you can listen instead to a 9:49 only instrumental version of the song on Pete Townshend’s Lifehouse Chronicles: Disc 1 — Lifehouse Demos (1999). Unfortunately, this instrumental version excludes the riveting klezmer fiddle accompanyment (update: by Dave Arbus) at the end of the song. It also includes all the rock drumming from the original, I think, sounds very out of place on an all instrumental “Baba O’Riley.” (I dream of Stereolab covering this with fiddle played by Jean-Luc Ponty).

The Who toured Germany in 1972 and performed Baba in Hamburg — a bootleg exists. Perhaps Baumann heard the song live then and it sparked his imagination for what it might be like to play Riley-esque instrumentals with a live band. Because that’s what he was doing 2 years later with Tangerine Dream. (Baumann joined Tangerine Dream in 1972).

For those new to Tangerine Dream, permit me to recommend their live album from 1975, Ricochet. (Listen carefully for the industrial-psych breakdown with homage to Brian Eno). Below is a photo of Baumann inspiring a generation of blissed-out spacelings to grow their hair long and assume the waifish intensity that only those who channel long dead baroque composers endure.

The gamelan school (for lack of a better name) is the school which has the most easily recognizable influence on modern classical style of Minimalism. I’m remembering now that Indonesian Gamelan music is what inspired the late romantic compositions of Ravel, Satie and Debussy… ambient pre-cursors according to David Toop in hi s book on ambient music Ocean of Sound. For a good introduction to this progression, listen to the sample of Gamelan mixed into “Voyage, Part 1″ on Brainticket’s 1982 album Voyage. Once you hear it, you’ll begin to spot it throughout ambient and classical minimalist compositions. Hear it on Controlled Bleeding’s “Hymns from the Shadows, Parts 1-IV” (1996 on Inanition and Dark Shadows). Hear it in Terry Riley’s Shri Camel (1968) and “Kometenmelodie” by Kraftwerk (1975, on Autobahn and the bootleg Concert Classics), as well as their other earlier exquisite xylophone melodies “Ruckzuck”, “Tanzmusik”, and “Klingklang” from their 1970-1971 albums Kraftwerk 1 and Kraftwerk 2.

What makes this music form so communicable in this period, I believe, is how easily it reminds us of non-video computer-human interfaces, with each bleep and bloop, or sequence of bleeps indicating one step, function (or malfunction) in the operating system. There is definitely something of a culture hook in the kitsch of sci-fi and the continued appeal of gadgetry and computers for this music. And this sensibility has long been used with wonderful effect by bands like Stereolab. Listen to these note swimming behind the pummeling beats of “Les Yper Yper Sound” on their Noises EP (1996, not to be confused with “Les Yper Sound”… what a difference one Yper makes!) and “Mr. Fantasy’s Love” by Fantastic Plastic Machine on Luxury (1999). With vocoder, the computer motif is complete. The musical connection of bleeps, vocoder, punctuated melodic structures, and computer aesthetics had been brought together for the first time by Kraftwerk in their 1981 album Computerwelt. (Please correct me on this, readers).

While djing, long I fought the misconception among fellow djs that ambient music was all drones and no beats. This was a technical concern for them, as their modus depended heavily on the mastery of beat matching and other techniques… mine on what I could accomplish by multi-layering tracks (often with the need for more than 2 turntables). Their exposure had been limited to the drone-core etherics, atmospherics, and industrial noises which had had its own evolution from Brian Eno to Throbbing Gristle to Pauline Oliveros, Spectrum and Tristeza. More on drone and industrial ambient in another post though. If you haven’t yet, I urge you to listen to an incredible mixture of the two styles of ambient in Controlled Bleeding’s “Hyms from the Shadows, Parts I-IV.”

Following image is from Peter Herchenröder’s multi-media work “Computerwelt I” (found via trusty old google image search, and curiously located on the site of the Yiddishist, Nizza Thobi.)

Oh it was an intense day. The wait had begun years earlier when I was 11 or 12 in the mid-1980s. I had been listening to a collection of cassette albums by the Berlin Schooled Japanese Korg master, Kitaro (aka Masanori Takahashi) and begged a clueless record store clerk for any other artists who sounded like him. Such disappointment came after I went home with a crap newage album by Andreas Vollenweider. (A more knowledgeable and sympathetic clerk would have turned me onto Neu!, Cluster, Dieter Moebius, Kraftwerk, or a handful of the other Krautocking space music types that Kitaro hung out with before he went solo and when he was playing keyboards for the Far East Family Band.) In the meantime I kept my ears open, hearing tantalizing glimpses of the genre that had given birth to the music of my desperate craving on Classic Rock Radio. (It would take me many more years to interpret the tree of influence leading from Terry Riley and Philip Glass to the Who, Yes, Pink Floyd and Alan Parsons, and some really cool intros and breakdowns by folks lie the Steve Miller Band. Breadcrumbs).

But, thanks to a pre-Internet commercial music kiosk, the wait was over in 1992. Which leads me back to Steve Hillage by way of the Orb. The most wonderful thing about Dr. Alex Patterson’s music (beyond his lovely mixes) is how through his selections he schools his listeners to the ambient, krautrock and canterbury prog albums from the 70s and early 80s. There’s so much to learn in following the train of his musical references and spotting the pattern he’s leaving for the attentive. (Try your hardest to follow them on the Orb’s most experimental, and I think, enduring album, Orbvs Terrarvm, 1995). Listening (and mixing) to the Orb is what led me back to the 70s and eventually to Hillage. Being more of a fan of instrumentals than silly lyrics about UFOs and electric gypsies, I urge you to give listen to Rainbow Dome Musick. But if you do have the patience for silly lyrics, the live and (alas, Rare-on-Soulseek) album Ggggong-Go-Long is the one to check out of your local public library’s CD collection. For your curious nature, you’re rewarded with a fearless cover of George Harrison/The Beatles’ “It’s All Too Much”, a few minutes of lovely guitar noodling making you feel just the same way the hairs on your neck feel when they stand up in ovation to a good saw bowing. (listen to “Radio” on disc 1 and “Crystal City” on disc 2).

I needed to go through all of this because what I really wanted to do was have an excuse to post about a particularly wonderful and serendipitous discovery of a synaesthetic art, the kind where artists try to reproduce the experience of one sense in that of another. I was hunting for a nice album cover image for my ill-begotten Ggggong-go-long P-threes, when I stumbled across this site thanks to google images search. Behold for your viewing pleasure, the Gong, as quilt:

I am listening to Shri Camel by Terry Riley. This is a work of divine inspiration, or perhaps human inspiration masquerading as divine. It might not matter. The point is that this is so beautiful and powerful as to melt the boundaries and liberate us. This is a Key!

There are others… I’m certain you know of them. Works so special they argue for the existence of something more profound than anything offered in exoteric practice. These are what matter. All the rest of our actions matter only as the substrata, the infrastructure, the lattice supporting these inspirations.

The climax of this style must be the breakout disco hit Walter Murphy & the Big Apple Band’s “A Fifth of Beethoven” (1977). But the Fifth hardly retired the trend. Frank Zappa released his synclavier recompositions of his possible ancestor, Francesco Zappa as late as 1984. But where did this movement begin?

Leaving aside for the moment, the simple fun of rescoring classical pieces for synth and tock guitar, inspiration must have originated in part from the pioneering moog work by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind in the late ’60s with their popular Switched-on Bach (1968) and Switched-on Bach II albums. Soon after, Stanley Kubrick’s films 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, prominently featuring works by Johann and Richard Strauss), and A Clockwork Orange (1972, with works by Gioacchino Rossini and Sir Edward Elgar) used classical music to explore visions of space and dystopic futures. Andrey Artemiev was also using the solemn organ works of J.S. Bach to great effect in his film soundtrack to Tarkovsky’s Solaris, 1972. Meanwhile, the Nonesuch label had since the mid-1960s been using psychedelic art to market both their back catalogue of classical works as well as the new electronic compositions trickling out of university music programs.

I don’t know why the theme of classical resocoring came to be so entwined in prog circles. Perhaps it’s no surprise that baroque and romantic classical works found their way into albums and concerts that were excessively romantic and baroque in both their aesthetics (think wigs and long hair) and self-seriousness, obscutiry, and esotericism. For artists that had an interest in showing off their mad keyboard or fretting skills whilst validating their fame with a deep connection with musical roots, rescoring classical works must have had a deep appeal.

Besides the impact in progressive rock, the trend really took root in the electronica albums of Isao Tomita (aka Tomita) who throughout the 70s released one completely synthesized late romantic album after another starting with Debussy’s Snowflakes are Dancing (1974). (If you haven’t heard the album, you may have listened to a peice of it while watching public television in the US late nights. Tomita’s interpretation of Debussy’s Claire De Lune is the theme music to the long running weekly astronomy show, Star Gazer with Jack Horkheimer.

When in 1977, Walter Murphy took classical from prog to disco it was only the most recent form of a music style that had been evolving for almost a decade. Murphy took the success of his disco-classical formula to the furthest extent he could still capitalize on it, with disco imaginings of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee,” Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” and a 1979 Mostly Mozart album. The funky jazz offshoot of this movement however originated 5 years earlier with Eumir Deodato’s interpretation of “Also Sprach Zarthustra” (later used to great effect in the 1979 film Being There).

The cycle could possibly be considered complete in 1984. Besides Frank Zappa’s Francesco Zappa album, that year also featured the release of the 2010 the film sequel to Kubrick’s 2001. In a glance back at over 15 years of classical scorings starting with 2001, the first track of 2010 presented yet another disco-electric version of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” by Andy Summers. (Was the Deodato version not available?)

Since then, I haven’t seen (m)any classical remixes, at least of composers spanning baroque to late romantic. (One notable exception is Art of Noise’s Seduction of Claude Debussy (1999) which, I think, takes the idea of an homage album to an extreme.) With the revival of ambient in the early 90s came renewed interest in the minimalist composers, Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley, who had long been influences to Berlin School space musicians (Michael Hoenig, Manuel Göttsching), British proggers (the Who, Steve Hillage, Gong), new wave artists (Brian Eno, Colourbox), and detroit techno and hip-hop remixers. The fact that these composers were (and remain) still alive also offered the possibility of exciting new collaborations. For neo-minimalist albums, see Reich Remixed (1999), Donkey Rhubarb (1995) featuring Philip Glass Orchestra with Aphex Twin, and Philip Glass’ rescoring of Low Symphony (1993) and Heroes (1996) — both, of which were originally albums by Brian Eno and David Bowie that had themselves been initially inspired by Glass compositions! (Further and recommended, brilliant remixing of this jumble of collaborations, influences and inspiration can be heard on the track “Heroes” on Aphex Twin’s 26 Mixes for Cash, 2003.) Finally, check out dj BC’s excellent Glassbreaks remix album, perhaps the best example of synchronicity between minimalism and rap.

Please message me or leave a comment if you know of any other albums or tracks that fit into this interesting offshoot of classical/progressive/electronica (clogronica for short

I had made a point in Hyman not having mentioned last.fm or other audio based social networking sites in his explanation on the origins for his idea for mog, quoted by David Pescovitz on boingboing.net. Hyman wrote me to explain that he had no control over the questions he was asked. Apparently, Pesco hadn’t asked Hyman about other site like last.fm, so the issue never came up.

But he would have liked to have been. Apparently, as CEO of Gracenote Hyman had long been studying music identification. Writes Hyman, “[I] envisioned MOG very clearly [after I] bought a waveform analysis company called cantametrix in 2000 for gracenote to do things like this.”

This would help explain why mog was using gracenote’s proprietary CDDB rather than the open source, FreeDB or musicbrainz project. As Hyman explains, “musicid… is a big, nasty beast of a thing.” Gracenote’s recognition technology via waveform analysis allows mog to bypass localization issues by recognizing songs in any language, Japanese, Korean, etc., so long as their songs are in the database. The gracenote database mog is using has, according to Hyman, been fined tuned — a process which required “a massive amount of work”. But will mog users be able to edit errors they discover in this supplemented DB? It’s unclear.

What is clear is that, unlike last.fm, mog has no interest in suggesting music recommendations to its users. It’s enough for mog to use it’s algorthimic powers to suggest fellow users with similar music tastes. Showing “musical neighbors” has long been a feature of last.fm, as has the prevalence of charts and statistics. The latter might be shown “for the novelty of it” in aggregate across all of mog and not for individual users. Charts don’t really interest Hyman for mog because with more users, the more their collective listening habits will begin to reflect billboard charts.

Likewise, mog won’t be creating any musicmaps based on connections between artists, or to compute “genres” based on grouping of users similar tastes. The more important mission of mog is to help like-minded enthusiasts exchange tastes. Thus, social maps showing connections between moggers may be implemented.

Elsewhere on my mog page I had written snarkily, “Mog profiles are:: the latest vogue in hipster exhibitionim.” Hyman took note, and in good humour countered

what you call hipster exhibitionism i call, “self expression” and something i’ve felt myspace does pretty well! – not all moggers are hipsters. especially, me. ; )

But will mog allow its moggers to tinker with their user pages, ala myspace? It’s unclear. Currently, there are only a few templates designed by others for users to choose from. By next week, Hyman writes, the template library will be open to many more additions from a presumably larger number of CSS designers and “there are plans for beyond that as well.” Does this mean that users will be able to hack their own page’s CSS ? I don’t know, but here’s hoping. Without this aesthetic control, for now, users will have to be satisfied with the substantial control they wield — creating and editing their own mog widgets.

But beyond the desire for audio based socializing and “self-expression”, why mog? What if one simply wants to listen to, not read about, some cool music some other mog user is raving about? Myspace allows users to express their taste by sharing their favorite indie band tunes so long as that band is promoting themselves on myspace and are making that track accessible. Last.fm offers customized music streams based on the tastes of individual users. What will mog offer its listeners in a world which is making it awfully difficult for users to legally share files with each other? Hyman shared with me this sensational bit of news:

we are working with a partner to allow for anyone to listen to almost any song on mog it it’s entirety. not streamed 30 second sound samples like we have now.

I can hardly wait.

And these are the artists I’ve listened to the most (since 03/2003):

my friends and i always turn each other on to music. i wanted to automate the process of sharing what was in our collections and what we are listening to without having to do the work of typing it in.

Could it be that Hyman wasn’t aware of the a handful of free (or pay) sites that already do this? (See Gnoosic, Echocloud, Audioscrobbler, last.fm, musicbrainz, musicplasma, etc…). It would have been insightful to read why existing music-based social networking sites such as audioscrobbler/last.fm were too limiting in comparison with his vision. After all, there is certainly quite a bit of room for improvement among these sites.

From my few days experience with Mog, there are some significant differences, large and small, between it and other audio based social networking sites:

1. Mog offers an option of “undeclared” for users who prefer not to identify as male or female. Compare this with the last.fm option of “unknown.” Neither site offers much of a choice for gender queers, but at least “undeclared” offers a less offensive option for those who know perfectly well that male and female don’t make sense for who they are.

2. Like last.fm and musicbrainz, Mog seems to be having trouble with the data quality of its established database of artist and album names. (Perhaps Mog will experiment with user’s working together to clean up this data? Audioscrobbler tried this with mixed, but I think mostly positive, results.) This is my biggest complaint so far with Mog.

3. Unlike audioscrobbler, Mog will scan your music collection up front (and post it to your user page). This could theoretically be a boon for filesharers seeking ultra-rare tracks… or for media companies looking for quasi-anonymous users to litigate against.

4. Mog offers uses the ability to customise the look of their page. Last.fm maintains a single template for all user sites, which drew the ire of many users of the old audiscrobbler site. Last.fm could learn a few things from Mog.

If one has the ambition and audiactiy to create yet another of these sites they should aspire to a greater goal, and more pioneering goal than Hyman described. How about creating a site which celebrates less hipster exhibitionism, and promotes more creative and/or collaborative behavior. I’d like to see some cooperative tools that aren’t forums. The closest we’ve come to seeing anything like a collaborative project on these sites is cleaning up database cruft (see below). The most valuable collaborative product of these social networking sites is the aggregate statistical data of popular and niche music. But what good is this data other than extremely valuable fodder for sale to media companies?

I’ll be experimenting with Mog and comparing my experience with other free sites over the coming months. I’ll be very interested to see how Mog helps to enable communities to form that aren’t the more typical bastions of trolling pedants you’ll find at musicbrainz and elsewhere.

Best of luck to Mog. It’s never a bad thing to reference the ideas (both the mistakes and successes) of past inventors. Here’s to David Hyman and the rest of his team learning from them.