Pink Tentacle posted a collection of photos documenting Japan’s ‘tetrapod beaches.’ It’s a curious engineering of the environment that overwhelms the natural beauty of the coast with a Utopian repetitiveness of form. Yet, the form, scale and patterns of the tetrapods somehow come together to create a new, if utterly urban aesthetic. I once saw some similar structures in the Western Korean town of Mallipo, but on a much smaller scale.
Photos: Tetrapod beaches of Japan ::: Pink Tentacle.
More images of tetrapod beaches from Flickr.
photo credit: +fatman+
I will be posting a selection of podcasts and links that have caught my attention recently. In the meantime, here’s a podcast from the always enlightening CBC Ideas program. It explores the fundamental conception of time in relation to modern physics and reveals that our common sense understanding of time is terribly flawed.
CBC Radio | Ideas | Features | Living On Oxford Time.
Link to mp3: Living on Oxford Time.
CBC Ideas podcast feed.
In Memoriam Andrey Tarkovsky, a a compilation of music dedicated and inspired by Russian film-maker Andrey Tarkovsky has just been released on the Musica Excentrica netlabel. It features tracks by Kim Cascone, Kenneth Kirschner, Alva Noto and other excellent experimental artists. You’ll also find a new 833-45 track entitled ‘Marshlands‘ on it.
Direct ZIP file download: In Memoriam Andrey Tarkovsky
Muxtape is a young website that went online in March of 2008. While it lacks an exciting, glossy interface that the iTunes generation has come to expect (or even a search function) it excels in two things:
1) It makes it dead simple to share a mix-tape of your favourite music anywhere an internet connection exists.
2) It lets you find new music and bands in an organic and spontaneous manner that is unmatched by any other online music site. Oh, and it’s entirely free.
Those of you who are old enough to recall those hours spent to make the perfect mix-tape to impress your friends will enjoy this digital take on the process. No more worrying about the tape running out half-way through the final track you’re desperately trying to fit on the cassette. It also now integrates with Last.fm, so what you listen to will be tracked on your last.fm profile.
While the Muxtape site has a rather sparse interface, there are a few ways to get more out of it:
Muxtape.com/random - which does what you’d expect — take you to a random Muxtape playlist
Muxtape Stumbler - allows you to search out playlists by artist or song titles.
Muxtape’s quickly growing popularity has been noticed in the music industry, with some chatter that it may be facing legal challenges in the near future. But, it has also been praised by a number of smaller independent labels who understand the potential of digital distribution and the fundamental changes that the music industry is undergoing (or rather is in deep denial of). Whatever the future of Muxtape may be, head there now and enjoy!
And this wouldn’t be complete with-out a link to my current Muxtape: kmkrebs.muxtape.com.
How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand — An engaging article in Wired exploring the future evolution of the English language. It is sobering and somewhat ironic to consider that English, with its incredible capacity to absorb other languages, is growing and developing most outside of what we consider ‘English nations.’ It ties in very well with a documentary series I’ve been watching entitled ‘The Adventure of English‘ which explores the past, present and future of the English language.
Gallery Crawl - a monthly vidcast of visual art from art galleries in Northern California. Broadcast by KQED, PBS-member station in San Francisco, California.
And, the Open Culture blog helps prove that the hard drives at YouTube contain more than discomforting video blogs or 80’s music videos: 70 Signs of Intelligent Life at YouTube
Mashup is the music of non-linear editing. Maybe the ADHD of music?
If you keep your ears open to ‘mashup‘ music, you’ll have noticed the ever increasing complexity and density of mashups. Compared to the early mashups which were mainly the accapella of one song and the instrumental of another, the last year or so has seen the emergence of mashups that combine four, five or even more songs, sometimes entirely re-contextualized. Listen to Apollo Zero’s blog for some brilliant examples of this emerging development of the genre.
I have been tentatively been calling this ‘post-mashup’ music as it seems to me to reflect a significant change in the both the theory, talent and tools involved. Mashup artists are no longer content to do some basic mixing and beat-matching to highlight the similarities and differences of two songs colliding into a strange juxtaposition. Mashing is now transforming into a cultural exploration bringing together decades of music into new relations, curiously reviving the multiple memories and enlivening our musical imagination as we hear these admixtures of music permeate our normally solid concepts of genre in pop music.
I just bought the new Girl Talk album ‘Feed the Animals’ from Illegal Art (an enthralling experiment of a music label… read something here). Taking the cue from Radiohead, this is a ‘pay what you want’ album, andfor a mere $5, you get access to the FLAC compressed version.
‘Feed the Animals‘ is the most coherent, intricate and developed expression of the post-mashup aesthetic I’ve yet to hear. I’ll be blunt - get this album. Pay whatever money you can and take a look at other exceptional artists on Illegal Art as well.
Michael Geist has posted a blog entry detailing the new “Canadian DMCA” that was tabled by Industry Minister Jim Prentice today. The post is here and I suggest every Canadian — especially those involved in arts and technology — find out more about the ramifications this legislation would have on you.
Someone made an insightful comment on the post noting that it is astounding timing that it happened to be the same day as the Canadian Government’s historic apology for residential schools and so will get to avoid much of the spotlight that may have otherwise been directed toward it. I am pleased to see one of the CBC’s top stories examines it quite critically.
Just released on the Treetrunk netlabel: K.M.Krebs - Constant.
This is my interpretation of the ‘Constant’ recordings which began with Mystified’s ‘Constant’ release on Webbed Hand. The basis underlying these recordings is one of stark minimalism, with long, glacially-shifting drones.
This track was challenging in that I had to work with a repetative, stark and long structure to stay true to the ideal ‘constant.’ Finding the connection between this form of composition and my own voice which includes a great amount of variation and subtlty resulted in a 33 minute track that moves like a natural process on a scale of time larger than what we are used to in our daily lives.
A quick note to prevent frustration: Electrosound.ru and the net labels under its auspices have all been relocated to a dedicated server. As a result, my Tunguska album has moved and can no longer be found on archive.org but rather here. I think I’ve managed to change all links to it on 833-45.net, but links from reviews or other postings on the web may lead you down a dead end. Please update your bookmarks accordingly.
Some recent notable net label releases I’ve been enjoying:
Eucci - Coast Days And Cruel - A compilation of recordings from 2000-2001 from Eucci, a faded memory from the younger days of the No Type net label. This album captures the fragile and crystalline sound Eucci carefully arranges in his work.
Reii - We fade away - A subtle, intricate & meandering set of four tracks that re-explore brooding IDM circa early Autechre & Boards of Canada without being derivative or forgettable.
A little push for the Bleepshow podcast — a daily hour-long podcast playing music from net labels both old and new with a focus on electronic/idm/ambient tracks.
photo credit: nrkbeta
K.M.Krebs August 12, 2008
