music

Happy Easter, everyone. This morning, I completed the long-overdue move of all my ripped CDs from my old 2012 MacBook Pro to the new one and, then, to my iPhone. I’m using Doppler on both devices. I like Doppler, a simple yet elegant MP3 player app with few well-thought-out features. I am increasingly convinced that returning to purchased music is the way. I’ve been listening to streaming services for so long that I almost forgot the accomplishment of listening to music I own....

I recently bought Dirty Rat, the absolute banger from Orbital’s 2023 Optical Delusion. It couldn’t be anything different, given that it’s a collaboration between the seminal electronic duo that emerged from the rave era and one of my British favorites, Sleaford Mods. Sleaford Mods’ barbed lyrics perfectly augment Orbital’s concrete-heavy digitalism. Mods’ James Williamson lambasts the people, “blaming everyone in the hospital, everyone at the bottom of the English Channel, and everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal....

Thanks to Giovanni Ansaldo’s convincing review on yesterday’s issue of Il Mondo podcast, my first Bandcamp purchase1 is the recently released Astral Gold album by Dean McPhee, a British guitarist who combines folk with experimental music and jazz using his telecaster guitar to create endless landscapes. As the title suggests, McPhee’s latest album is a journey into outer space. The album consists of six instrumental pieces, all captivating, enjoyable, and cohesive; they all serve as each other’s natural continuation....

I’m growing sick and tired of Spotify’s music-consuming model. There are many compelling and sometimes conflicting reasons, most perfectly outlined in The day I canceled my Spotify subscription on Raed’s blog. I used to cherish music, I used to religiously collect, catalog and enjoy every album on my iPod. I could navigate the endless folders and find that exact song that I needed for that precise moment. Spotify killed that, I listen to what it suggests and just accept that it will go away when it decides to rotate it out....

NTS Radio is a family of like-minded and passionate individuals, dedicated to supporting exciting music and culture through online radio and events. NTS uncovers the best of the musical past, celebrates the present and cultivates the future of the underground music scene, and prides itself on being open-minded and experimental. (source) I’m certainly a latecomer, but NTS Radio is the bomb. I have not opened Spotify (whose algorithm I find dull and repetitive) in the last week, not even once....

Julian Casablancas (The Strokes, The Voidz) says Infinity Repeating is “the last Daft Punk song, ever.” The song was recorded in 2013 as a demo and left unpublished until it was included in the 10th-anniversary edition of Random Access Memories released a few weeks ago. The video is a highly addictive masterpiece. Digging into the comments on YouTube, I found that someone attempted a reconstruction of all the citations included. I’m especially fond of the 8-16-32-bit graphics animation section....

Brad Mehldau plays Lennon/McCartney’s I Am the Walrus, from his upcoming album, Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays the Beatles.

Wrapped by Spotify, the 2022 edition just landed in my mailbox. This year I listened to twenty-four different genres. My favorite was Indie Jazz, followed by Hip Hop, Jazz, Electronica and Rock. I am a little puzzled about that Hip Hop in second place. In total, I spent 14143 minutes listening to music, 80 percent more than other listeners in Italy did. My favorite track was Fear Of The Dawn by Jack White, followed by The Beginning by Native Soul, Sorcery by The Toxic Avenger, Spirals by Django Django, and Boy From Michigan by John Grant....

Kottke reports this juicy excerpt from Jonny Greenwood’s interview at npr: Thom [Yorke]’s band had a keyboard player — [whom] I think they didn’t get on with because he played his keyboard so loud. And so when I got the chance to play with them, the first thing I did was make sure my keyboard was turned off … I must have done months of rehearsals with them with this keyboard, and they didn’t know that I’d already turned it off....

I stumbled upon Modulations, a documentary on “the evolution of electronic music and its many genres. How the wide range of styles and scenes formed through experimentations on sound formation.” This short film (75 minutes) is packed with guest stars of all calibers1, some of them genuinely pivotal to the evolution of electronic music. Indeed, the uninitiated mind gets to know a lot of details and amenities on the first decade or so of electronic music....