The title of this post is a throwaway comment Bruce Sterling made in his lecture, “The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole” (mp3, video with terrible audio), in the course of mentioning that most scientists who are able to do the scary stuff that frightens Bill Joy are unlikely to be willing to take up residence in the caves of Afghanistan or up in North Korea just to get the freedom to research things that have been banned by everyone else. It reminded me of a funny thing an ex-student in Beijing told me — this blog is blocked …
Tag: MUSIC
Two Videos From a Busyish Day
Today was kind of busy, so here are a couple of videos I found amusing, with comments as to why they caught my attention. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/iC65ufGUvKM” width=”425″ height=”344″ allowfullscreen=”true” fvars=”fs=1″ /] Have I mentioned that at a high school variety night I performed a freejazz/fusion version of this song? Sort of. Same bass line, and I hollered some of the words into the mic before the atonal saxophone weirdness kicked in. (I played my tenor.) I was accompanied by a keyboard bassist named Jennifer Duggleby and a drummer named Mike Murza. I doubt anyone recognized the song. Maybe one or …
Star Wars: 스타워즈 프로젝트 컴필레이션 (2008)
Quite a long time ago, K-indie insider helikoppter of Indieful ROK emailed me to let me know about an album she figured I’d be interested in. The reason she thought I’d be interested was, you see, my ongoing series about SF in Korea. (How she stays on top of music in Korea is something everyone paying attention is amazed by, considering she’s not actually in Korea. Such is the power of the internet… and strong passions.) Now, this is going to be delicate. See, there’s such a thing as genre-media-inspired music in the West. It’s called filk, and it generally …
Hwang Shin Hye Band and Bulnabang Star Sausage Club — Live at SangSang Madang
This is a review of the 불나방스타쏘세지클럽/황신혜밴드 show at 상상마당 last night. If you’re interested in Korean indie music, here’s my skewed and fannish take, behind the cut.
A Random Linkdump and Concert Tonight…
No time to post anything too significant today, or for the next couple of days. Oh yeah: this is late notice, y’all, but… Hwang Shin Hae Band is playing tonight. No idea if there are tickets available but I’ll be there a few hours early, trying to get one! Show’s at 8, and here’s a map to the venue — the Sang Sang Madang live hall… So anyway — my content free post of… Shiny Links! Some stories by people you should know about: Tina Connolly’s “Hard Choices” at Brain Harvest (or play the game, made by Kaolin Fire, here) …
Korean Industrial & Japanese, Er, FolkyPop?
More free stuff… Not sure about quality — which is my nice way of saying I’m not really convinced — but you may be amused by Che-Il Gwa, which is some kind of Korean industrial music. And to cleanse your palate, something a little more folkypop, from Nagoya: Secret Ocean’s album Kokoro No Furyoku. Okay, and for people like me: Intercontinental Music Lab. Geek out, ya geeks.
Giving It Away For Free?
Those of you who know my taste in music know I’m not all that crazy about hip-hop, but I have to say, there are a few tracks on the new Super Chron Flight Brothers album (titled Indonesia) which are pretty cool. I particularly like “African Robotics” and “Broccoli.” Don’t ask me why: it’s very, um, Mouse on Mars meets Wu-Tang Clan, or something. With moments of Pete Namlook-ishness, and smatterings of that flutey Futurefantastafricanistic sound (yeah, my own term, baby) that always makes me think of Sonny Fortune’s hypnotic flute solo on that amazing Miles Davis album, Pangaea. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/fRXwqX1ag2Q” …
Pop Top 40…
One of the big jazz films for me, when I was a teenager and getting into the stuff, was Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues. I know, I know… the integration of the music into the film is shaky at points, as some have pointed out. I don’t remember it being quite shaky as that guy claimed, but there were things I kind of raised an eyebrow at back in the day — though also a lot of things I thought it got kind of right. After all, the film had style, and it imagined a world where jazz was cool, …
“Fly My Voice” by 뷰렛
The band I used to play in actually did a gig at this festival, same day that Biuret did this performance… but I didn’t know, and got into the band not long ago. Funny, huh? I like this song, though I like the album version better… [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/wIjpvR4RfAI” width=”425″ height=”344″ allowfullscreen=”true” fvars=”fs=1″ /]
On Engineered Obsolescence in Music Today
This afternoon, a music professor from my university took a few of us out for lunch. I was invited along because I’d edited the biographical info for her new CD’s liner notes; the other two professors had translated the lyrics of some English-language songs on the CD to Korean for the liner notes, and coordinated the whole process. Anyway, she took us out for lunch at this amazing little place in Bucheon, the name of which I will have to get. The food was all made with special herbs and leaves and plants grown in places like Kangwon Province and …