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Year: 2007/Archives

2007-06-29

HEAD and LEG

CD coverWFMU’s blog has mp3s of Head and Leg’s In Your Dreams, a spoken-weird, oddio art, musicollage. I suggest you buy the CD, as I did, from Seeland, Negativland’s mail-order label, if only for the exquisite artwork inside by Pauline Lim:

Paitning by Pauline Lim
“Your ___ Is Only Momentary” © Pauline Lim
Oil, alkyd, acrylic on canvas. 22″ x 28″ 2004

From Head and Leg In Your Dreams…

“Poke You in the Eye” (1:09):

“The Womb Room” (2:54):

“Dreamscape” (2:15):

2007-06-28

Forgotten Voices

Museum logoThe Sound Archive at the Imperial War Museum has a huge collection of sound-recorded war-related oral histories and broadcasts from WWI on. Some of the best-of are in the Forgotten Voices project; there’s a play in London based on the collection; and there’s several Forgotten Voices of the Second World War book/CDs.

Here’s the tres-Brit voice of First Lord of the Admiralty 1/Oct/1939, Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, getting ready for a fight (1:13):

Sent by Rich Halten.

2007-06-27

Ultimate Ears headphones

HeadRoom logoI’m kinda lucky to have
HeadRoom, the large net/mail headphone retailer, right in my hometown (Bozeman MT). When I need cans I just cruise by and buy whatever they recommend: they’re audiophile fanatics and listen critically to everything they sell.

In the field I use ear canal headphones (don’t call ’em “earbuds,” sez HR). They sound good, they seat well (i.e., don’t fall out), and they’re small, so you don’t look like a Martian when approaching folk outta-the-blue to interview them. I usually pay between $100 and $200 for a really good, but not top-o-line pair.

I used a Shure E4 with an Etymotic ER6 as backup. The Shure sounded better and had a thicker cord. I say “had” cuz I recently broke both (abuse), leaving me field phone-less.

So I swung by HeadRoom for new Shures, but Shure’s new E’s have much thinner cords. “Anything else as good?” asks I.

Guy pulls out the Earphones phtoUltimate Ears super.fi 5 Pro ($180). I buy sans listen; take ’em home and am impressed. For the first time I hear a decent bass response from ear-canals. People say both the Shure and Etymotics have good bass, but I never thot so, even when I had the in-ear seal as tight as a [fill in offensive simile here]. But these UE’s go low, likely cuz of their dual drivers, one just for bass. (Caveat: HR mentioned the crossover could be a prob as it occurs at in vocal mid-range, but probs for them are usually out of my range of perception.)

Bass is important not just for the funk-in-recordings but also for field recording, as most of the wind and plosive overdrives occur in the lower freqs — lower than most open-ear phones go. So you could be wrecking your recording and not know (hear) it.

2007-06-26

Now this is a biker…

Jeremias PinkLatest High Country News has a profile on a pocatello graphic designer who also makes bikes to give away — when he’s not teaching folks how to fix their own bikes… Seems to be currying a sort of low-key activist stance on fighting urban sprawl.

here’s the web teaser.

2007-06-26

Day of Silence

Save Internet Radio
Internet radio is in immediate danger. Devastatingly large increases in royalty rates take effect July 15: retroactive to Jan 1 2006. Many radio and music sites can’t afford the increases, so will be forced to shut down their music streams.Microphone graphic

Today is a national “Day of Silence” to protest these rates, and to encourage the millions of net radio listeners to take action and contact their Congressional representatives.

Webcasters across USA have special programming planned; some will broadcast complete silence.

The bipartisan Internet Radio Equality Act can save internet radio. Info at Savenetradio.org and Radio and Internet Newsletter.

2007-06-23

Hype Machine

Site logoThe Hype Machine tracks music blogs and mp3 posts. You can add a Top 10 to your own site of what folk are music-blogging right now, looks like: