April 2011
19 posts
The Indie Rock Cred Test for Girls
An example question:
Genre you don’t really like all that much but gloss over your dislike of so as not to reinforce sexist notions about what kinds of genres girls are into:
a) prog
b) noise
c) grindcore
d) math rock
e) drone
f) jazz
Head over the Hairpin to see the whole hilarious and, if you are me, occasionally cringe-inducing quiz.
[For the record, (f).]
Hat tip: Magen.
“As a matter of fact, records that I’ve been craving for years…are languishing unlistened-to. I’ll never get to them either, because I’m more interested in the hunt than I am in the prey. The minute I get something, I just crave more. And so something has really changed – and I think this is the real epiphany: the ways in which culture is distributed have become profoundly more intriguing than the cultural artifact itself. What we’ve experienced is an inversion of consumption, one in which we’ve come to prefer the acts of acquisition over that which we are acquiring, the bottles over the wine.”
—
Kenneth Goldsmith, founder of Ubuweb, in The Wire
(via Bruce Sterling)
LPRoulette →
lproulette.com
A record bin simulator. Links go to Amazon page for the album.
Otomata: Game of Life-inspired generative music →
batu.in
Another in-browser generative music player, this one inspired by Conway’s Game of Life and other cellular automata.
Thanks to Rob for the tip; he also adds, “It’s particularly nice when the app barfs a little bit when opening a new browser tab or launching another app.”
Are song lyrics becoming more narcissistic?
A new study analysing lyrics of Billboard Top Ten singles suggests that they are getting more self-centred over time. From an article at Miller-McCune:
The researchers found the use of first-person plural pronouns (we, us, our) declined over the years, while the use of first-person singular pronouns (I, me, mine) increased. Words reflecting anger or antisocial behavior (hate, kill, damn) became more prevalent over the 28-year period.
Conversely, terms depicting social interactions (talking, sharing) became less common, as did the use of words conveying positive emotions (love, nice, sweet). These findings mirror “recent evidence showing increases in U.S. loneliness and psychopathology over time,” the researchers write.
The actual article is paywalled, but you can read more about the study here.
(via Ethan Hein)
Pulsate: a generative music application →
lab.andre-michelle.com
Developer Andre Michelle, who created an online version of the Tenori-On a couple of years ago, is back with another gorgeous generative music app, Pulsate. Go play.
(via Warren Ellis)
“…[Music is] the third rail of life. You grabbed it to shock yourself out of the dull drag of hours, to feel something, to burn with all the emotions you didn’t get to experience in the ordinary run of school and TV and loading the dishwasher after dinner.”
—Joe Hill, Horns
