May 2012
6 posts
5 tags
You, Me, Technology, Music Discovery, The Future... →
@seaninsound: One of my personal major bugbears is the lack of investment available for artists, and the short-term knee-jerk reactions we make. Like, bands used to have labels funding tour support, and they’d get good live, and then be presented to the public and the media. Now they’re slogging it out at showcase conferences and pick’n’mix festivals, with no soundcheck, and no real assured...
May 22nd
18 notes
Louis Barabbas | Identity →
Louis writes about music, image and identity. He should know, because he’s just shaved off a foot-long beard.
May 20th
“The corporate system is fully psychopathic, and any creative people who enter...”
– Interview: Kevin Shields (Pitchfork) My Bloody Valentine got screwed by Sony. The major labels are completely psychopathic, and this interview with Shields is a great example of how insane the system is.
May 13th
3 tags
WatchWatch
Listening through the Bandcamp staff picks and came across this beauty recommended by Ryan.
May 8th
1 note
May 8th
5 notes
4 tags
“I think the way we represent music and musicians on paper is interesting, and I...”
– Miranda posted the text of her talk On Writing About Music, which is really interesting (and not just because it’s tangentially about Little Fish).
May 2nd
1 note
April 2012
5 posts
7 tags
Host yourself
People are starting to look for the next social network: one that isn’t ad-driven and data-hungry, an open network where you can own your data and control how it’s used. One of the main moves I’ve seen has been towards federated open-source social network software like Diaspora and Status.net (the platform behind Identica). Diaspora could maybe end up being a place where geeks...
Apr 24th
2 notes
“Have mercy!” said the blacksmith. “How are you going to replace human hands?”...”
Apr 21st
3 tags
Instagram and ageing →
On retiring from the world of faux-retro photos and endless novelty
Apr 10th
2 tags
“I’d argue that an obsession with the new has been more damaging to music than...”
– Legendary Music Blogger Sean Adams on ‘Slow Death of MP3 Blogging’ | Evolver.fm
Apr 5th
1 note
2 tags
Apr 5th
9 notes
March 2012
3 posts
6 tags
Mar 22nd
2 notes
1 tag
Keyhole Observations: Mediocrity killed the Video... →
louisbarabbas: Three decades after MTV first aired (with the wonderfully apt though artistically abject “Video Killed The Radio Star”) the default rock band music video still seems to be “dubiously attractive twenty-somethings playing guitars miserably and/or angrily.” This makes complete sense. I’m glad someone has managed to put into words what (I think) I thought.
Mar 8th
4 notes
Little Fish: a 2012 update →
littlefishmusic: I woke up this morning with a feeling that I should write something to you to explain a little about what has been going on in Fishville, behind the scenes, within our Rubik’s Cube, in my head. Juju has written an important message for the Fish fans. An update. An explanation. It’s long, so get yourself a cup of tea and go and read it… I love this piece of writing....
Mar 5th
2 notes
February 2012
5 posts
3 tags
Feb 28th
1 note
4 tags
Feb 26th
3 tags
Feb 24th
The Dissolving Mirror - Miranda Ward →
Notes on Space, Place, Facebook, Harry Potter, and the Construction of Identity/ies A great essay on how we construct our online profiles and how they construct us back.
Feb 13th
3 tags
Feb 8th
4 notes
January 2012
10 posts
7 tags
ListenI gave an interview to a nice chap called Sean for...
Jan 25th
6 notes
6 tags
Will Cameron's call for popular films mean more... →
A great article about commercialism and art, but this bit (where David Cameron meets the magical Traum Gnaums who weave our dreams) killed me: David suggested that, instead of dreaming of being dancers or spacemen or clowns, children should be encouraged to dream of, for example, studying economics while being financed by corporate sponsors with a view towards structured apprenticeships within...
Jan 24th
3 notes
2 tags
Leonard Cohen: 'All I've got to put in a song is... →
A good little write-up and interview with Leonard for the release of his new album.
Jan 24th
1 tag
Coding for success – Andy Young – The Kernel →
Learning to code is learning to use logic and reason, and express your intent in a consistent, understandable, repeatable way. Learning to code is learning to get under the skin of a problem and reduce it to it’s simplest form. Learning to code is learning to harness power external to yourself and provide instructions to realise your ideas – whether that be directly to a computer, to delegate...
Jan 23rd
6 notes
SOPA, Internet regulation, and the economics of... →
As a rough analogy, since antipiracy crusaders are fond of equating filesharing with shoplifting: suppose the CEO of Wal-Mart came to Congress demanding a $50 million program to deploy FBI agents to frisk suspicious-looking teens in towns near Wal-Marts. A lawmaker might, without for one instant doubting that shoplifiting is a bad thing, question whether this is really the optimal use of...
Jan 22nd
1 note
How Copyright Industries Con Congress | Cato @... →
If you’re concerned about the overall jobs picture, as opposed to the fortunes of a specific industry, there is no good reason to think eliminating piracy by U.S. users would yield any jobs on net, though it might help boost employment in copyright-intensive sectors. Turns out all of the numbers bandied about by the pro-SOPA crew are complete bollocks. What a satisfying article. It’s...
Jan 21st
4 tags
“The sweeping waves of fake autism that we call youth culture now”
– John Roderick, Roderick on the Line S01E17, “Antisocially promoted”
Jan 15th
5 notes
How Doctors Die →
Not full of tubes, apparently. Via neilhimself.
Jan 10th
13 notes
schlock-corridor-poltergeist-1982-part-i →
(via Instapaper)
Jan 9th
3 tags
“Independent publishing poses a trade-off: in exchange for editorial integrity...”
– Nice copy from the thank you email I got after buying Cadence & Slang
Jan 3rd
2 notes
December 2011
22 posts
how to make a living playing music | Ol' Danny... →
(via Instapaper)
Dec 30th
3 tags
“No matter how much you shout “Challenge me!” at your stereo, it’s not going to...”
– Music journalism is the new boring | Andrew Dubber
Dec 29th
Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist (Paul... →
Great essay. We are not environmentalists now because we have an emotional reaction to the wild world. Most of us wouldn’t even know where to find it. We are environmentalists now in order to promote something called “sustainability.” I like Kingsnorth. He writes a lot of sense.
Dec 28th
1 tag
“The best cure for bad internet is making your own thing that is not a response...”
– Fight with knives: Lessons Learned in 2011
Dec 27th
145 notes
1 tag
On the Art of Staying in Touch →
I worry about this too. Then I fail even harder to do anything about it. It’s Christmas soon, so I’m guaranteed to spend at least a couple of hours in the next week writing lists of people I should really keep in touch with more. Like most years, I’ll probably rewrite it in columns of weekly, monthly and biannual contact. Then I’ll ignore it entirely. I don’t have the...
Dec 23rd
1 note
2 tags
Fishy Paper Square #6: The Fox →
Made a vid, blogged a blog.
Dec 20th
1 note
3 tags
TWELVE PRINCIPLES UPON WHICH 12K WAS FOUNDED
jameswelch: 1. Don’t tell listeners what they want to hear, let them discover that for themselves.  2. Treat your audience as they are: intelligent, passionate lovers of art and sound. 3. Evolve constantly, but slowly. 4. Stay quiet, stay small. 5. Strive for timelessness. 6. Never try to be perfect. Soul is in imperfection. 7. Simplicity. Anti-Design. 8. Never try to innovate, be true to...
Dec 18th
5 notes
2 tags
Wood burning stove
loopcam: Wood burning stove Posted by @ihatemornings This is making me seriously happy today.
Dec 17th
3 notes
4 tags
Dec 17th
11 notes
“We need to have everyone feel the vulnerability that public criticism creates,...”
– Frank Chimero: The Wall
Dec 15th
45 notes
4 tags
We're gonna need a better myth.
I used to have a problem with the rock’n’roll myth. We all grew up believing it and I didn’t like that the music industry used that belief to dupe us into doing anything to get signed. Now I have a bigger problem with it. My problem now is that we’re still using it. The rock’n’roll myth was the story our parents told around music. It was a great story and we...
Dec 12th
1 note
4 tags
Unsigned Melody →
louisbarabbas: The sad thing is that practically everyone I know (outside musician circles) would respect me far more if I was on the books of a major label. Even if my records flopped and I was playing to empty rooms, even if my management was taking every penny I earned, even if I was in thousands or even millions of pounds of debt to the company, my family and friends would probably think...
Dec 12th
20 notes
2 tags
Endgame: Eight Principles of Uncivilization →
cultureofresistance: We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it. We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can… Might paint these on my wall.
Dec 12th
68 notes
2 tags
Dec 12th
1 note
Paul Kingsnorth: This collapse is a 'crisis of... →
(via Instapaper)
Dec 10th
1 note
1 tag
“Fuck ‘significance’ if it always has to mean impactful on a large scale. Give me...”
– Hannah Nicklin
Dec 7th
Dear Editor: LAPD arrests - the truth at OccupyLA →
(via Instapaper)
Dec 7th
http://torrentfreak.com/canadian-songwriters-want-t... →
(via Instapaper)
Dec 7th
"Music and theatre should belong to nobody,... →
THIS! This is how we should be talking about music, art, theatre, everything. It might be the jetlag, but this made me cry a little bit in G&D’s.
Dec 7th
1 tag
Dec 5th
30 notes
wikistream →
A real-time stream of edits to Wikipedia. Stunning and fascinating.
Dec 5th
2 notes