I got invited by Nokia to talk a bit about podcasting and music discovery. The results of that interview, combined with opinions of Clo Willaerts, Alex Koprivnicanec, Steven Lemmens and Dieter Sermeus, can be found on the Nokia Nsights blog. Instead of just creating a sales brochure for their N95 phone, Nokia created a place where new technologies and trends are discussed, thus touching the bleeding edge of Internet, music, photo, video, and GPS usage. The perfect positioning for a state-of-the-art phone like the N95.
Today, the Nokia N95 starts a new and exciting future, building on the combination of all these revolutionary devices. Therefore, we’ve invited visionaries from across the technology world to share their insights into different parts of the future that got here early.
I don’t know if I was expecting too much, but the content of the Humo’s Pop Poll De Luxe was a bit of a disappointment. Thanks to my good connections I was the “+1″ for a VIP-ticket yesterday at the Sportpaleis. While the VIP-treatment is always a most enjoyable circumstance, during the show we often had a “WTF?” feeling, but not in a good sense. K3 doing “3 biggetjes” comes to mind, and the dance steps of the woman that was supposed to be the head of TV station één (she wasn’t). DJ Tony from Willy’s en Marjetten (Bart Depauw) came on stage in a Borat minimal swimming outfit and placed an image in our mind that took several doses of alcohol to get rid of afterwards. Whoever wrote Roos’ texts wasn’t very inspired and even the Methusalem of Humo(r), Guy Mortier, who undoubtedly writes his own texts, was not up to his – granted, quite high- level. Most of the comedy acts went for cheap routines on gays, blacks and women. Wim Helsen even combined all three in an interview with Tom Lanoye. The best stand-up comedy act came from a Dutch guy: Najib Amhali. Ouch!
As for the music: most of it was loud. It felt more like a circus: everyone was invited to do one or two tricks and then disappear again. Why a group like the Van Jets were invited to play, will remain a mystery for me. The musical highlights for me:
Just after the break: Steven Wold aka “Seasick Steve” who played blues with just a guitar and a heavy left foot. Authentic, addictive and big fun.
Did you ever wonder if there was something as easy as Youtube for audio? That you could use a simple copy/paste procedure to put a music player in your web pages? Well, there is. I’ve started using the Radio.Blog.Club player for my Sample Spotters blog and it’s proven to be as convenient as Youtube.
Radio.Blog.Club is a french project that works differently from YouTube. The music is not hosted by them, but by individuals. You can install the Radio.blog.player, which allows you to ‘convert’ your music (it actually creates MP3 files at 64kbps with the LAME encoder, but calls them .rbs files) and then stream them from your own site in a playlist. The clever thing now is that Radio.Blog aggregates all these playlists and allows you to search from a central place. You can then listen to individuals songs (streamed from their respective hosts) or get the copy/paste HTML code to include them in your own blog/site. So they give you access to the music, but they don’t actually host the files, which puts them in a better position against the RIAA. They also have the RadioBlog store where you can buy music (through Amazon).
What I love about it is just when you think it couldn’t possibly get any worse, it does. By a lot. And it does this more than once, building to the most glorious mess I’ve ever heard. I smile every time I hear it.
from thesneeze.com via defectiveyeti.com and themorningnews.org
OK, this post will give away my age: I went to a Level 42 concert. For those of you born after 1980: Level 42 was quite popular between ‘81 and ‘88. They make music that can be described as funky pop. Their lead singer, Mark King, is also a bass guitar pop-n-slap virtuoso. Up til that moment, bass acrobatics could mostly be found in jazz circles: Marcus Miller, Stanley Clarke and (more recently) Victor Wooten. Mark King not only took the technique to a mainstream audience, the guy actually sang while doing amazing stuff on the bass. Continue reading ‘Mark King plays a mean bass’
I wrote a post last year “REQ: Live mashup performance tool” on how much fun it would be to be able to do live mashups: mix basslines, drums, guiter riffs and vocals from different songs in real-time. I just found out via beatmixed that there is a New-York DJ that has figured out the nuts and bolts: Toto a.k.a. Moldover.
SOFTWARE: he has organized an extensive collection of loops in Live into 8 columns or channels – I think “DJ1″, “DJ2″, “Beats”, “Percussion”, “Melody”, “Bass”, “Ambient” and “Vocals”. Loops are color-coded for the key they’re in (if any). Each channel has 1 FX configured which is the Reaktor plugin. There are also some effects on the master output (limiter, compressor, …)
CONTROL: he uses the 8 white keys at the right to trigger each channel. The 8 sliders, which are nicely lined up right above the keys, control the volume of each channel. The 2 x 8 knobs control 2 FX settings per channel. On some channels these are equalizer settings (cut-off frequency), on others delay/reverb settings (depends on the type of ‘content’ of each channel, and what FX go best with that).
Pukkelpop is the last of the big summer festivals, and for me, the best. It might be the Limburg influence, something in the water, or the relaxed guidance of its founder, Chokri Mahassine, but everyone working at the festival seems to be so happy and aiming to please.
I spent most of my time there at the press lounge, in the pleasant company of Clo, Zabine, Bart, Ben, Gunther, Sylvie, Lien, Vanessa and so many others. I also received a much-too-short massage from Tamara at the Coca-Cola booth. Clo has pictures, so they’re bound to show up at some moment. Continue reading ‘Pukkelpop 2006′
On that last post I just got a comment by someone who seems to be the original copyright owner of the song: Richard L. Spencer:
I am thoroughly disappointed at all of the comments that I read from decent sounding young people who are not appalled that works by artists such as Greg and the rest of us in The Winstons can be ripped off by hundreds of artist and they do not protest.I am the copyright owner of The Amen Drum Break which was created by fellow Winston Greg Coleman and neither of us have ever received a penny for our product.
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