Elsewhere

Oh what a lovely summer. New releases from three of my most favorite electronica artists.

BT is releasing a new album at the end of August entitled This Binary Universe. His MySpace page and blog have a teaser video and hint at some details: a musical and spiritual epic masterpiece accompanied by abstract artistic visuals of some sort. You can pre-order it on Amazon and supposedly also on iTunes, although I don’t see it listed there yet. Some people don’t care for BT because he’s straying too far beyond straight dance music, but that’s why I like him.

Hybrid’s new album, I Choose Noise, will be released in early September (info also culled from their MySpace page). You can download a free track from the new LP off of their website. Like much of their previous work, it is sweepingly cinematic and orchestral; good, but it didn’t blow me away. I expect some new tricks from artists of this caliber — then again, anything of similar quality to the seminal Morning Sci-Fi would be just fine.

The Crystal Method have released a new 45-minute mix; that’s the good news. The bad news is that it was developed exclusively for Nike to promote their new Nike+ iPod shoes, and it can only be obtained via iTunes as a single monolithic track (for ten bucks!). Although TCM is promoting it as their latest release, some of the reviews complain of recycled material, so I ain’t buyin’ it (literally or figuratively). Maybe next year? Until then, the London soundtrack will tide me over.

I’m also hoping that Tiesto releases a new artist album sometime to follow up his much-beloved (by me) Just Be. But for now he seems content to keep releasing DJ sets ala his In Search of Sunrise series. I like DJ mixes, but I don’t buy them; I prefer the creative and thematic qualities of artist albums (although Sasha’s Involver album interestingly blurs the line). A good DJ does not a good artist make, contrary to what some DJ’s might mistakenly think of themselves. (Apparently BT agrees with me on this one.)

I recently discovered a couple iTunes tricks that I’ve found quite helpful.

* In iTunes, you can create Folders in the playlist panel, which you can use to organize your playlists. For example, I’ve got folders for “Artist Specific”, “Genre Specific”, “Moods & Themes”, etc. This navigation aid enabled me to create many more playlists than I otherwise would.

(Unfortunately, folder organization does not transfer to the iPod, where all playlists are still listed in a single alphabetical list; seems like it would be trivial to implement this, but whatever, I can live with it.)

* When creating Smart Playlists, “Playlist Is…” is one of the filter options. This allows you to filter the Smart Playlist contents by the contents of any other existing playlist. Terribly useful: you can now build playlists-upon-playlists. My favorite is to create “Best” lists–take a given genre or playlist and create a new Smart Playlist which contains only the 4- or 5-star rated songs from that list. When your collection gets large enough, why waste time shuffling among 3-star songs? This trick lets you stick with the good stuff without sacrificing your existing organization.

Yahoo! News: A software engine that translates network activity into classical music so that sysadmins can hear what’s going on, making use of the efficiencies of right-brain pattern detection. Fascinating and potentially very, very useful in a variety of applications.

I don’t really get mash-ups. I don’t
see how they can have lasting value. You listen to them once, snicker
at the novelty, and then they collect dust on your hard drive. Really,
they are just boring Frankenstein remixes that dilute the impact of the
original tracks. If you know of some examples that might change my
mind, please, tell me.

If I were Steve Jobs for a day:

Overhaul
iTunes with tags. I want to be able to be able to create my own tags
for songs, such as “mood” or “activity”, as well as assign multiple
tags to a song, such as multiple genres. Think along the lines of
Gmail, GarageBand, Flickr, del.icio.us, etc.

Taking it one step
further, there will be meta-tags to help organize the tags; in fact,
these meta-tags will replace the existing information fields, although
the existing, standard tags will remain un-deletable. Same
functionality, different implementation, to allow more flexibility.

For example:

Standard:

• Name (required) - Bad Boyfriend / Galvanize / The CameraEye
• Artist - Garbage / The Chemical Brothers / Billy Corgan
• Album - Bleed Like Me / Push the Button / TheFutureEmbrace
• Genre - Rock,Alternative / Electronica / Alternative
• Track Number - 1 / 1 / 3
• Disc Number - 1 / 1 / 1
• Year - 2005 / 2005 / 2005
• Artwork - [image data] / [image data] / [image data]
• MyRating - 3 / 5 / 4

Custom (anything you want!):

• Mood - Fun / Upbeat,Energy / Introspective
• Activity - Driving / Workout,Driving,Party / Moping
• Singer - Shirley Manson / Q-Tip / Billy Corgan
• Guitarist - …
• Producer - …
• RecordLabel - …
• MajorOrIndie - Major / Major / Indie
• SawInConcert - TheGorge_2005-04-21 / /
• SexyScale - 7 / 5 / 3
• HomeCountry - USA / UK / USA
• HomeCity - / / Chicago
• etc. you get the idea

The key points, again: 1) multiple tags allowed; 2) custom tags allowed

Since
this doesn’t change the existing functionality, it need not be enabled
by default so that it doesn’t confuse the casual user; it can be
enabled in the options by those who are ready for more organization
control. There can be a dynamically generated button-interface like in
GarageBand so that you can filter on multiple tags at once, and of
course Smart Playlists can filter by tags.

This could
effectively replace the existing static Genre/Artist/Album panel
interface; and it looks like the technology already exists in OS X 4
(Tiger), in the form of Spotlight. Really, it ties into the idea that’s
starting to float around about eliminating file system folders
altogether in favor of modern search utilities like Spotlight. I really
think the tag idea is the way to go for just about any media
organization system.

One more point: while we’re at it, let’s
give it an open API for importing and exporting tags. Online
communities could spring up to share all kinds of crazy information
about songs via tags. Of course this would require standardization
around means of song identification, but we can write a little app that
will verify your collection’s identifiers against a central master
database and suggest corrections where your song doesn’t match up, sort
of like a spell checker for song information.

I guess what I’m
really talking about is totally XML’izing the iTunes collection. I
think it’s already stored in XML, but let’s open it up for more
customization via a standard user interface. Hmm. Maybe I should write
the damn thing myself. Make a plug-in that will demo this idea. It’s
probably not a new idea, but has anyone else bothered to implement it
yet? Maybe I’ll look into that.

OK I need to finish doing the dishes. Being sick with a cold gives you more time to blog, I’m finding.

Use this URL
to stream Billy Corgan’s new solo album (coming out June 21), which is,
incidentally, quite good. Share the URL with your friends and help me
win a couple tickets to his L.A. show next month. And no, I have
absolutely no shame.

Do you like Kelly Clarkson? Do you like
people in animal suits playing rock instruments? Do you like being
disturbed that you find something so odd, yet so cute, and unexpectedly
hip? Then check out this music video remix of Kelly Clarkson’s hit.

Stereogum has finally earned a coveted spot on my meager list of links.

On a new update to the blog/Q&A page
of the Nine Inch Nails website, Trent Reznor — amid pinings for the
lost art of vinyl covers and inserts — addresses the relatively
minimalistic art and packaging that accompany his new CD album.
(Incidentally, I find the design quite tasteful and fitting with the
music.)

As this campaign and tour unfolds, you’ll see
how we’ve planned everything to fit together. The band’s performances
will mutate from what they are now to something different. The music
will change, the experience will change, your package will even develop into something else. Watch and see.

OK, Trent, you’ve piqued my curiosity. Exactly what do you have up your sleeve?

I’m thinking:
*
There is hidden audio on the DVD side of the DualDisc release that can
be unlocked through as-yet-unpublished easter egg tricks
* New downloadable audio tracks will be released on the website
*
More tracks will be released in GarageBand format, and users will be
able to post and download each others’ remixes on the NIN website, with
occassional random contributions/edits from members of the band
*
With each performance, they will increase the key of all songs by one
half step (vocals augmented by a real-time pitch-shifter), until the
final tour date which will only be audible to canines (hey… it’s art,
man)
* On a certain date, a hidden pop-up diorama of Trent surrounded by cute forest animals will spring forth from the CD digipak
* It’s a clever marketing ploy to keep us coming back to www.nin.com for updates
* All of the above
* None of the above

Hmm… yeah I guess that about covers it.

So. The new Nine Inch Nails album, With Teeth, out today.

Impressions:
His most straightforward release since 1989’s Pretty Hate Machine.
It’s more rock than industrial — simpler, stripped down. (Actually reminds me of Manson’s Holy Wood album in places.)
Lyrical content hasn’t changed much — maybe mellowed a bit, but still angsty.

Worth the 5.5 year wait since The Fragile?
Not
really. It’s not *bad*, it’s just OK. Maybe it will grow on me. It is,
however, nice to see that he’s loosening up a bit, which may bode well
for new creative directions on his future releases; and he has also
hinted that we won’t have to wait as long for the next release.

He
also said to not expect any remix CD’s for this album, which is
unfortunate, since those are half the fun. I’ll be on the lookout for
them anyway.

A few weeks ago I was
enjoying a leisurely dinner at a favorite local pub. At one point I
realized that someone had just popped a CD into the sound system and it
was really, really good. A mellow funk/rock vibe with a very skillful
and soulful vocalist, perfect for relaxing and noddin’ your head to it.

As we paid, I asked the bartender about it. Turns out it was a local Seattle band called Maktub. I picked up the CD and I
must say I’m not disappointed. I was afraid it had been the pint of
amber going to my head and making things sound better than they
actually were, but no, this is good stuff. Found some reviews online
that call this band “Seattle’s best kept secret” and wonder why they
haven’t made it bigger than they have — I suspect it’s because they’ve
got a bit of an indie philosophy.

In any case, check it out. Really, you can’t go wrong when the lead singer blogs
about playing Dungeons & Dragons and Warhammer with the band on the
tour bus, even though the music leads you to think that they are rock
‘n roll pimps rather than role players. Love that.