Some Sounds We Like » reviews

Boingo on the… Gong show??

stevecooley — Sun, 25 May 2008 06:34:13 +0000

Holy cow..

No glockenspiel, but… that’s them alright.

Technorati Tags: oingoboingo

Autoimmune – MBM

stevecooley — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:06:52 +0000

I’ve been a Jack Dangers fan since the early 1990’s. My first exposure was a CD single for Mindstream. I learned about Meat Beat Manifesto from looking at the giant list of shout-outs on Nine Inch Nails’ “Pretty Hate Machine” release of the similar era. Listed along with The Orb, Orbital, and disposable heros of hiphopricy, meat beat manifesto was listed in good company. Eventually I tracked almost all of those bands down but it looks like MBM would be the long term peer to NIN’s longevity.

Today MBM released “Autoimmune”…

Along with definite nods to the mode firmly established on their 90’s era Satryicon album, the solid lineage of progress shows throughout the album. Dubstep / Grime in places, hiphop backup band in others… This album is much heavier than “At the Center”, but it still feels connected to it. You can definitely feel the fantastic attention to detail on everything from the heaaaavy drums and bass to the vocal treatments and etherial melodies floating around.

production quality is amazing. Basssssssssss… beat-driven with modest inclusion of procedural glitch. That’s my sweet spot. I like glitch, but I don’t love glitch-based music. I like beat-based music with some glitchy elements…
ok, I’ll live with one completely abstract track on this album.

Ha, I like the album artwork. Structured, but randomized and grimy at the same time. Yep! That sounds about right.

final verdict: AWESOME!!

iTunes:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=276970538&s=143441
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0016OAQH6/ref=yml_dp

Bleep (this is actually a slightly different set of tracks.. so I’ll have to save my pennies and pick it up someday soon):
http://www.bleep.com/player/?/ZIQ202CD/134405/maxiplus/D3F9D3/575757/00D126

Technorati Tags: MBM, meat beat manifesto

Guitar Hero 2 songs on the iTunes Store

stevecooley — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 22:27:43 +0000

In the last 15 years of my life I’ve veered almost entirely to the electronic side of the musical spectrum, but I can’t deny that my roots are in headbanging. I just got Guitar Hero 2 and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s freakin’ amazing. It’s giving me a nice flashback to my musical youth, and it’s an interesting study in interaction design, interface design, game design, graphic design… it goes on and on how interesting and fun this game is.

As I’ve been going through the game (just passed medium, woot) my wife and I have both come to the conclusion that there are so many songs that we’ve heard all our lives but never really appreciated them for their guitar work. Amazing, no? Well, if you already play guitar, maybe this is old news to you, but I never had guitar playing on my list of things to do when i was a kid, so I just never had the ear skills to pick apart a rock track in the unobvious places until now. Some of the newer tracks are incredibly hard to play and start to feel *incredibly long* after about 4 minutes. Others which are more familiar to me feel like so much fun to play and seem to end too quickly.

Now, I know, or know of, most of the tracks in the competition playlist… but there were a few that I didn’t, so I figured I’d go through the itunes store and see if I could locate them. With the exception of 1 track, (danzig’s Mother) I was able to find them. Here is the list with links to the itunes store:

1. Opening Licks

Motley Crue – Shout at the Devil
Danzig – Mother
Cheap Trick – Surrender
Wolfmother – Woman
Spinal Tap – Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight

2. Amp-Warmers

3. String-Snappers

4. Thrash and Burn

5. Return of the Shred

6. Relentless Riffs

7. Furious Fretwork

8. Face-Melters

Any of my friends readin’ this have a PS2 version of guitar hero and want to meet up to play? hit me up!

Technorati Tags: guitarhero2

I

stevecooley — Thu, 03 May 2007 23:36:48 +0000

It costs a little more, but HOmg, every track a killa. Come on, get your own crack pipe now! … thanks a lot, Derek.. sheesh.

ElectrOne Podcast

stevecooley — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 23:30:15 +0000

The Derrick May mix posted at the ElectrOne Podcast on feb. 26, 2007, starts about half way through the audio file… is… freakin’…. awesome. This is my first exposure to ElectrOne, so far so good! :):)

iPod Shuffle: clip it to your headphones

stevecooley — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 23:11:06 +0000

Oof, I think I love this new shuffle.

Technorati Tags: ipod, shuffle

iScratch

stevecooley — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 18:00:38 +0000

iDunnoguys…maybe you need a better demo to really show off why iScratch is worth $70? The problem here is that the people who know anything about scratch djing are going to think this product is kind of… cheating? And the people who don’t know what’s what would be diluting the culturality of what scratch djing is all about. There’s some interesting sample manipulation glitch potential here, but… $70? seriously?

I mean, I guess everything’s fair game. We have virtual saxophone instruments, and we have virtual guitar instruments… even the very best of these end up sounding cold and phony to some degree. It all sort of reminds me of what American cheese is labelled under the brand name: “cheese food product” Not actual cheese. Cheese food product.

Get lofi

stevecooley — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 02:14:07 +0000

GetLoFi is turning out to be a really interesting website. I’d recommend you check it out.

the Amen break beat

stevecooley — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 22:01:54 +0000

This is an awesome audio essay on one of the best known breaks in electronic music. Thanks Cory..

The 4th level

stevecooley — Sun, 05 Feb 2006 22:15:48 +0000

one of the authors of this podcast wrote a comment here pointing me to their fine techno effort: The 4th Level. Bangin’! woot! 2 nice enhanced podcast episodes so far, along with other techno subgenres that I haven’t checked into yet. Thanks for the record label info in the podcast artwork track! That’s way cool.

Podcast URL is: http://podcast.techno.fm/podcast.xml… and then grab the 4th Level episodes.