Monday Music Discoveries!

I'm just highlighting some stuff I've come across on Last.fm, through various folks' recommendations, and otherwise...dang, I've got to get into a regular blogging schedule of sorts...Don't forget to read the Intro, if you haven't!

Delia Derbyshire - This is thanks to Ezraghast, who mentioned her in the shoutbox for my Last.fm music profile. Though much more experimental and spacey than my own work, there are loads of similarities in the pacing and sound of the instrumentation that I was quite surprised by hearing it. Primarily known for the Doctor Who theme music from the 60's, she has an interesting, and haunting body of work that sounds ahead of it's time even today. She worked with David Vorhaus in The White Noise, one of the first-ever all electronic groups, which put out an album called Electric Storm on Island Records in 1969. Several mp3s are available on her site and a BBC article from this month discuses the 267 (!!) tapes of material found in her attic after her death.

Slowdive - (thanks to antaine) Shoegaze!! I'm really into this genre all of a sudden...I mean, I had heard Lush a few years ago and went out and bought the Ciao! compilation right away, though it wasn't until this year that I heard MBV's Loveless and Ride's Nowhere (discussed two posts earlier). I downloaded Souvlaki a few minutes ago, and I'm already impressed by it. It's so drifting and mellow...something to dream to. ^_^

Magazine - Their first album, Real Life (streamable here) was on the list of 1,001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, plus the band had piqued my interest from the frontman, Howard Devoto, being an ex-Buzzcocks member. I listened to it the other month, and was definitely impressed! A lot of the instrumentation reminds me of video game music, and all of the tunes are madly catchy. The only other album of theirs I've heard so far is Secondhand Daylight which is definitely moodier, and just as good.

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More Last.fm Mayhem

The protest movement again the new design of Last.fm keeps growing! In response, I made a track that is a musical interpretation of the change from old to new, and is a theme for the group: Bring Back The Old Last.fm Group Theme. More to come in the next few days.

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Talkin' on Tuesday

Tuesdays, I plan to discuss the albums I've been listening to, music-related sites that I've come across recently, and ask a question or two to whatever readers might be out there...hence the self-explanitory title. Which sounds like eerily like the name of some conservative radio station's morning segment, in retrospect. Erm...carry on! Read the Intro if you're new, first.

My current progress on the 1,001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 36%.

I started this quest in April, at the 15% from albums I had already heard. I plan to continue on until I've heard them all, bwa ha ha! I've most recently listened to Ride's Nowhere, commonly referred to as the 2nd-best shoegaze album, beaten consistently by My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. Although they both have a hazy, drifting atmosphere, they are actually quite different from one another. Nowhere would be a great CD to listen to travelling in a car, or maybe while on a beach lazing about in the sun. Loveless is more of a strung-out, distortion filled mindtrip...and a blip seen on a poster in the background in Final Fantasy VII (see image above)

My main point in listening to all of those albums is to discover great bands, and gain some music history along the way. It isn't complete in scope: where are INXS, Donna Summer, and Oingo Boingo, for instance? But, it is the broadest and most definitive of any, and I'd say that anyone who started from 0% and listened to all of them would have quite a broad understanding of rock, pop, and subgenres, and likely gain a lot of new favorite artists. The book has been out since 2005, so I might as well buy it if I'm going to continue on with this, and also so I can show it to someone and say "HA! I've listened to ALL of these", when I'm done. I'll probably wait until this lovely item comes out and just order them both at once. ;) You can check out the list at Rocklist.net, and listen to most of them at Radio3net.

• I've noticed that there are only a select few artists that I have been able to fall asleep while listening to, and not at all because they are boring! They are some of my favorite artists and I think they must really put me at ease, since I'm a bit of an insomniac: The Beatles, The Kinks, Blur, U2, Brian Eno, Television, The Magnetic Fields, and...Iggy Pop, surely known widely for his soothing vocal tone (?!).
• JamsBio is a website with a nice concept: a place for people to share memories attached to songs, albums, and artists. You can make your own collection of stories, and peruse those of others. When you want to share a memory, they make it easy to search their databse of songs by year, plus allow you to hear brief audio samples, then write it out and publish. I like the purpose of JamsBio and will definitely be checking it out again soon, maybe typing up some memories of my own. Also, I rather like their JamsMatch Music Memory Game, a perfect brain-racker and major time-waster.
• Last month, MeeMix (a Pandora-esque streaming radio website, but with a hipper interface and different recommendation system) introduced artist registration. Though still a strong believer in promoting my music on Last.fm, MeeMix boasts some features not available there, such as being able to your sort your fans by country and a hot-or-not meter widget by which your coolness can be voted on and gauged as a percentage. What's more, their radio offers a twist: not only can you generate streaming stations based on an artist, track, or genre, but by mood and pulse. I have submitted my catalogue of instrumental tunes already, and it will be some weeks time before it starts getting integrated into their stations because it has to be analyzed so they can sort it properly.

SO...
Anything critical missing on that list of 1,001 Albums? Find any cool, potentially revolutionary, music-related websites lately? Leave a comment; do tell!

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Mondo Music Monday!

I'm experimenting with posts named after using first letter of this day of the week, just like an amateur blogger would do. Shazam! If you're new, you might want to read the Intro.

LAST.FM MAYHEM

Last.fm, the self-proclaimed "social music revolution", a wonderful place for discovering and sharing music, as well connecting with like-minded listeners, unveiled the new version of their website on the 17th of this month...to much hooting and hollering from thousands of users. I had been invited to test the Beta only about a week prior. After clicking "view the beta version of this page" and seeing what it looked like, I switched back immediately. Initially, it was just because I had found it less aesthetically appealing. But now that it has come into full-force, I have found that there are issues of functionality as well. There are a few benefits, which could have likely been implemented without downgrading the appearance and usability of the entire site. Yes, there are pros, including:

• A smarter recommendation system.
• Instantly updated charts.
• Hearts appear beside your loved tracks...um, yeah.
• 'Unique to this Group' charts.
• When visiting an artist page, a box displays how many times you've played their songs
• The concept of the website still rocks: the free streaming radio, the massive amount of charts available everywhere, the connecting with people, and so on. I'm not going to be leaving in protest.

As for the cons:

• Group recommendations are currently disabled. This one is a bummer because that's where the bulk of my listeners were coming from. I suppose time will tell.
• More clicks required to get anywhere: to view more than 15 of your most-listened to artists, to type in a band and have to click again to view the artist page, to view the groups you are a part of (only 10 to a page!) and to view a group member's profile, to name a few.
• Music tags taking a backseat, in terms of visibility.
• You can no longer listen to your playlist or anyone else's, unless you are a subscriber. This was apparently a liscencing issue, but still...

I'm not sure how the staff and developers of Last.fm could not have forseen the troubles, as there were loads of comments and posts of a negative nature in the Last.fm Beta Group while it was still being tested. This was definitely a premature move. As it stands, a group called Bring back the old Last.fm has 9,000+ members, and We don't whine about the new Last.FM has 300+ members. That, I think, sums it up right there, and I'm not talking about the difference in numbers. An unfortunately large number people that have had issues with the new layout have complained about it using ALL CAPS and/or little rationalization, in a pesky manner, often with no regard to the possible benefits of the change. There are a handful of users that have thoughtfully articulated their views, but those in favor of the new design have mostly been witness to random yelling in un-related artist shoutboxes about the 'hideous' new layout and such. The Beatles artist page in particular has been a hotbed of this kind of activity.

I think that the best solution would be having a Switch-to-Classic button available. This should've been implemented from the start, actually. After spending time developing a new look, Last.fm isn't going to revert to the old way simply because of mass-complaining. The comparison between the new layout of Last.fm and Facebook, in particular, has been made repeatedly. While this might help people get that there is a 'social' aspect of the website more readily, it has alienated those who see the new design as a sort of ploy to reach a more mainstream userbase. Not to forget Last.fm's new 'smart advertising' plan. As a fan of the site, and an artist that uploads my stuff there, I find these matters disconcerting and hope that some happy medium can be met, though with a few more months of testing and fine-tuning, the new Last.fm might've gone off with less trouble. More on the new layout here: Last.fm Gets a Makeover

OTHER NEWS

• Tomorrow, the newest Nine Inch Nails album The Slip comes out on CD, for those that like having physical copies of your music. It's still on the official website for free. It's one of my favorites since Pretty Hate Machine. More acessible than that Ghosts instrumental thingamabob, too...Except for Ghosts 14 Ghosts IV, that track is fab for belly-dancing.
• Goldfrapp announces North American tour dates
• I read over on JP's blog that Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst will be touring...the world. I felt it necessary to mention Oberst because MyHeritage Face Recognition claims that I look roughly 70% like him, regardless of what pictures of myself I submit. You be the judge. Something in the eyes, perhaps. The first one's me; I know it's tricky to tell:
  

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GLAD YOU'RE HERE, BECAUSE...

...you've reached A Future in Noise, my music-based foray into the vast blogosphere! An intro is in order:

"WHO ARE YOU?" That's me in the b&w photo there, Marilyn Roxie, fem. age 18. I'm into making instrumental tunes on my jazzy (and rockin', and electro-fied) Korg Triton LE Workstation keyboard, listening to all types of music throughout the day/night, re-reading The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde on occasion, taking pictures, playing video games, applying Rimmel U make-up, and going for morning walks...ah, I love the crisp breeze!

"I KNOW YOU ARE, BUT WHAT AM I?" You, presumably, are a music fan. But not the run-of-the-mill music fan that could be found just anywhere, no! You sir/madam have discerning taste, not to mention that you take an active interest in the state of music as we know it. What bands are around these days that are fantastic and worthy of note? What bands of the past are worth rediscovering? Is there hope for an eclectic variety of music to be appreciated on a mass scale, or is it better to keep the good stuff on the down-low (and the download, har-har) anyway? Through this blog, I'm going to be perpetually answering those questions and more as best as I can...and here's where you could help me. See HOW CAN I HELP?, at the bottom.

WHAT WILL THIS BE? The main focus of the blog can be summed up in one sentence...when I figure it out, I'll make it the tagline...Anyhow, I'm going to present you with these things:

• Information: Selected with relevance in mind, news + names + details in the world of music, past and present.
• My Take: Raising questions, debating, making playlists, band vs. band (what fun!), giving my opinion and asking yours. What's on the rise...projections of music's future to come.
• Linkage: Relevant and/or cool sites, tracks to listen to

This is not a download blog, though I will point readers in the direction of other music blogs that I am a fan of personally. The demand for download blogs of all shapes and sizes has already been met. This is info-driven and opinion-driven material.

WHEN WILL YOU POST? Semi-regularly, meaning that whenever I gather enough info, articulate myself, and type it out, it'll show up here.

WHERE? Here at A Future in Noise...exclusively!

WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? I love telling people about music and hearing people's personal suggestions. I haven't been doing a lot of writing lately, aside from lyrics, so this will do as an outlet for that as well.

HOW CAN I HELP? Tell people about this blog, subscribe to the RSS feed, leave comments, and e-mail me suggestions for future topics. It might be nice to have a collaborator or two as well. Watch this blog, and if you're interested drop me a line here: marilynroxie@gmail.com

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