Artifacting » music

I’m About To Whip Somebody’s Ass

hubs — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:42:18 +0000

As far as I now, this song comes from a man named Ray. Ray has a daughter who was stressed out about her job. So he wrote this song to cheer up his daughter and for the benefit of “all employees under stress”. Ray has shared it on the internet and I’m sharing it with you.

A bunch of Ze Frank minions have created a ton of remixes of the song to pay Ray back for the happiness he brought.

“Now you might not be able to sing that out loud, but you can hum it to yourself, and you know what the words are, and let it give you some strength to get through the next few moments on your job.”

Goldberg Variations Variations

hubs — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 23:54:33 +0000

Artist, John Menick, has created an album entitled “Goldberg Variations Variations or Music for Insomniacs”. The work simultaneously plays ten different synchronized recordings of of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Goldberg Variations BMV 988“. All of the ten recordings are synced at the first note. But, because of the varying tempos of each of the ten different recordings, they quickly fall out of step with each other and dissolve into a beautiful chaos and eventually end with the quiet, final notes of the slowest paced recording of the Variation.

The CD contains all thirty of the Bach’s Variations, including the Aria and Aria da Capo. Below, you can listen to the first track.

Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 Aria

B Flat

hubs — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:37:15 +0000

Play any of these together, some or all. Start them at any time, in any order. Mix them with the individual volume sliders. Then sit back and get washed over by the B flat ambiance.

This all taken from a collaborative music and spoken word project called Bp 2.0 conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls.

Crying Over Auto Tune Part II

hubs — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:00:01 +0000

A couple weeks back I posted about an auto-tuned crying baby. Well DJ /Rupture was given a track put together by DJ Champion call “Baako” witch mixes the auto-tuned crybaby from my previous post over a relentlessly simple loop. DJ /Rupture says,

Arnold Zea gave this to me. He got it in Ghana, telling me, “I remember two guys in the studio listening to this music and talking about it as music for body exercise.” It is 12 minutes long and features a baby crying through full Auto-Tune (and cheap reverb). There’s more, but I’m not gonna spoil it here. The sound makes you stop and listen. Oh yeah, it’s over a one-bar hiplife loop.

I think it’s pretty horrible. Have a listen: DJ Champion – Baako

On the other end of the spectrum, Matt Smith, has created his own sample of an auto-tuned crying baby and turned it into an absolutely wonderful song that will get stuck in your gooey grey matter all day. As of yet, there is just a sample but give it a listen: Matt Smith – Untitled

I can’t make a post like this without mentioning Buzz Clifford’s “Baby Sittin’ Boogie”. This song may be considered the original baby-sound song. The song peaked at #6 on Billboards Hot 100 in 1961 and eventually sold over 1 million copies. I think it’s terrible.

I would have to say my favorite baby-sound song is Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody”

UPDATE:
Another African DJ, Lwamondo Production, has used the same baby crying sample from above for his remix called Baby Cryin.

It’s All In The Ending

hubs — Fri, 01 May 2009 20:47:19 +0000

I really dug the video for Mat & Kim’s song “Lessons Learned” (great song to boot). Not since The Prodigy’s “Slap My Bitch Up” has the last 10 seconds of a music video made such an indelible impact on me. There is a decent interview with them on Pitchfork about the video.

I posted both of the videos below. It’s important to watch the last ten seconds of each video. It should also be noted that both videos are NSFW.

Smack My Bitch Up by The Prodigy [flash medium=7 w=500]

Lessons Learned by Matt & Kim – This one is in HD so watch it full-screen [flash medium=8 w=500]

8-bit Hip Hop Medley

hubs — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 05:01:23 +0000

I Stumbled upon this great little 8-bit medley by New York-based drummer ‘n’ chiptuner Jesse Novak recently and liked it enough that I had to post it here for all of you to take a listen to. Track list goes like this:

Jay-Z — Dirt Off Your Shoulders
T.I — What You Know
Chamillionaire — Ridin’
Ludacris — What’s Ya Fantasy
Bonecrusher — Neva Scared
Kanye — Overnight Celebrity
Ludacris — Move Bitch
Lil’ Jon — Get Low
Kanye — Gold Digger

Have a listen: Tugboat Jesse: Hip Hop Remix Medley

If you dug that, check out the video posted below the fold of Tugboat Jesse playin’ live at the Blip festival in 2006.

And if you really liked that, head on over to CalmDownKidder Records and download (for free of course) Tugboat’s send-off album (he doesn’t do 8-bit chiptune anymore). You can also just go check out his tumblr. He posts all kinds of great creations there.

JoJo’s Mardi Gras Band

hubs — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 19:34:57 +0000

Last weekend I went to see JoJo’s Mardi Gras Band at Cervantes Masterpiece Ballroom. JoJo is the keyboardist for Widespread Panic, but his side project is nothing like his main band – Jojo’s Mardi Gras Band plays nothing but fast moving Mardi Gras music that keeps you but shaking the entire time. They have that quintessential sound of New Orleans. I suggest the next time your in town you go check them out. JoJo’s MGB doesn’t have any recorded music but you can purchase a live album of their 2007 Denver performance. Somebody at the show on Saturday had a mic set up, so I’m sure there is a copy of it out there somewhere. Taper, if your reading this, I’d love a copy. As an added extra bonus to the evening I visited my secret bar.

Billy Mays Is A Sad Robot

hubs — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:01:02 +0000

[flash medium=6]

There is something about this Kaboom commercial that is filtered through auto-tune that I really enjoy. It was created by CastOutTheSelf, and although it may not be quite as funny as Jabo0ody’s dubs, I like it better.

This Kaboom commercial is apparently run at 140 BPM. I wonder if there have been and studies done to determine the perfect beats per minute for shysters to use for there sing-song pitches? Does the lyrical styling of Billy May’s script help us tune into the commercial?

SXSW Free Music Torrents & Radio

hubs — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:15:06 +0000

Here are two torrents containing all the MP3 files publicly posted on the SXSW website that will be showcasing this year. More may music may show up, these may be packaged up into an third torrent at some point in the future.

SXSW 2009 Showcasing Artists Part 1, 519 files, 2.44GB
SXSW 2009 Showcasing Artists Part 2, 534 files, 2.60GB

If you don’t want to have all these songs on your hard drive but want to have a listen, use this SXSW radio.

2008: The Year In Music

hubs — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:37:28 +0000

According to last.fm these are the bands that I listened to most during 2008. There are a few bands that were also on last years list, namely Ween and Modest Mouse, however both have slid down in there positioning.

Below is a wave graph of the top 75 artists that I listened to over the last year (click for a larger image). It’s a great way to visualize the trends in my listening habits throughout the year. And it sure is purty.

And these are the songs I listened to most:

As far as live music goes, here are my 2008 top four:
1. Ween
2. Bishop Allen / The Republic Tigers / Electric Owls
3. Widespread Panic
4. The Police / Elvis Costello And The Impostors

Last.fm is the service I use to track my listening habits. I’m always trying to discover new music so please go ahead and friend me over at last.fm.

And if you are really bored you can check out my Twones account which tracks all of my music listening on Hypemachine, MySpace, Youtube, and Favtape.