Some of the music played at US President Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony on Tuesday (January 20) was taped, not live. The decision was reportedly made to play a recorded version of John Williams’ piece ‘Air And Simple Gifts’ when the musicians determined that the Washingon DC weather was too cold for the instruments to stay in tune. “They were very insistent on playing live until it became clear that it would be too cold,” Inaugural Ceremony organiser Carole Florman told the Associated Press. The piece appeared to be performed live by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Gabriela Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill, but the televised broadcast featured the recorded version, as did the performance heard through the speakers at the inauguration ceremony.
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January 26, 2009 - 8:12 am
Sonic Youth have reached the mixing stage of their forthcoming album, tentatively titled ‘The Eternal’. The band have also revealed the names of songs destined for the album. The indie veterans are mixing the album with producer John Agnello (Patti Smith, Aerosmith, Dinosaur Jr.), revealing on Twitter.com/thesonicyouth that working titles for songs include ‘Calming The Snake’, ‘Sacred Trickster’, ‘Massage The History’, ‘That’s What We Know’ and “something about a Malibu gas station”. Former Pavement guitarist Mark Ibold plays guitar on ‘That’s What We Know’. Sonic Youth plan to release the new album, the follow-up to 2006’s ‘Rather Ripped’, in June. Twitter users can also follow NME updates at Twitter.com/nmemagazine.
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January 24, 2009 - 3:09 pm
Advertising 2.0: Social Media Marketing in a Web 2.0 World is a comprehensive look into the new models of advertising for business-to-business and business to consumer organizations. The book highlights specific companies and how, through their use of the various modules, they were able to create online relationships with current and future customers. It is no surprise that advertising has changed drastically. Tracy L. Tuten, author and Associate Professor of Marketing at Longwood University, introduces the readers to the shifts through the emergence of social networking, virtual worlds, blogs, and online games. She clearly explains that companies must change tactics if they want to compete in 21st century advertising. She urges a thought shift away from advertising being viewed as one-way communication and towards what is called Brand Engagement. Brand Engagement can happen on many different levels and in many different ways. Advertising 2.0 demonstrates best practices from the most popular social media websites while exploring methods that can take your company to the next level. While the book covers what might be considered obvious social media companies like MySpace and Facebook, it also has companies consider other means of building online relationships through consumer reviews and brand sponsored alternative reality games. By also considering social news communities and marketing a company can create an online word of mouth that becomes viral and grows on its own. If you are new to social media marketing, Advertising 2.0 will help you learn the basic vocabulary as well as introduce many different options a company can consider in determining the type of online marketing that will be of the most benefit. Table of Contents: 1: Advertising Online: Engaging Consumers with Web 2.0 2: Socialcentricity and the Emergence of Social Media Marketing 3: Friendvertising: Advertising and Brand Building with Social Networks 4: Advertising in the Imagination: Social Virtual Networks and the “Vlobalization” of Brands 5: From Moments to Minutes: Advertising with Social Play 6: Influence the Influencers: Building Brands with Social News Media 7: Citizen Advertising: Consumer-Told Brand Folklore 8: In My Opinion: The Social Influence of Consumer Product Reviews 9: Social Fiction: Branding with Alternate Reality Games 10: Ads in Play: Immersing Brands In and Around Social Games 11: Social Media Impact: Balancing Metrics and Insight for Advertising Success
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January 23, 2009 - 7:31 pm
“I love making up genres, we did tech-house before tech-house became huge, it’s only that we lived in Bristol then so no one got it. I�m now big into hyphy house… am I serious? You decide?” As one of the leading lights of �fidget house’ (a joke term invented by his long term mentor/collaborator Switch), Londoner in Berlin Jesse Rose is well aware of the power of words, though impressively chilled about being called �a big Jesse’. Recalling the last time it happened, he’s adamant he didn’t get angry, despite the term being a notorious English slang term for �wuss’ (pussy). “Well, I have put on a few pounds in the last year,” he admits. “So it was probably my gran saying �You’ve got big, Jesse’. But I decided not to deck her out.” Rose also admits to adopting a similarly zen-like calm when dealing with over-persistent people tackling him in the DJ booth, even when faced with terrifying requests. “I learnt a good way to deal with it early in my career after being ninja kicked to the floor by a girl who asked me to play Gina G and I said �No’,” he recalls. “So nowadays I always say I have the record and agree to play it. If they can remember asking me about it again (which let’s face it mostly they don’t because they are too off their heads) then I tell them I played it but they must have been in the bathroom. Works every time.” Starting his DJ career aged 14 around his home town of Bristol, nowadays 30-something Jesse is better known for producing MIA’s debut album, maintaining a monthly residency at Berlin’s Panorama Bar and as a producer in his own right, still working closely with Switch and his ilk. Shortly releasing a remix album, an album tour for the first Made To Play compilation and more releases under his pseudonym �Content’, he’s also about to release his debut album �What Do You Do If You Don’t?’
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January 23, 2009 - 1:13 pm
In an era where mash-ups, remixes, and mixtapes are plentiful, it takes a lot to stand out from the crowd. Girl Talk (aka Gregg Gillis) certainly does so on his newest album Feed The Animals. Drawing from an unbelievably wide variety of songs and genres, Gillis has not only crafted a great party album but also one of the best albums released in 2008. For those who are unfamiliar with Girl Talk's work, his style of music involves combining elements from many different songs into something new. It would be easiest to describe it as a "mash-up" but it's really something quite unique. While most mash-ups are meant to be singular tracks, the songs on Feed The Animals are really meant to be listened together as a cohesive work. Each one flows easily into the next one, like a DJ mix. However, with over 300 songs sampled across the entire album, it's a lot more intricate than most mixes. Many dance/DJ artists sample obscure tracks or make familiar samples unrecognizable. Girl Talk does neither. If you have been a fan of popular music at any moment in the last 20-30 years, you will probably be able to recognize at least one or two of the songs sampled. All the samples used don't matter unless the music made with them is good and fortunately, Feed The Animals is very good. It's immensely entertaining from start to finish. The music is always changing and songs progress in unexpected ways. Some of the album's best moments come from successfully combining hip-hop tracks with ones from very different genres. "Set It Off" pairs Jay-Z's "Roc Boys (And The Winner Is)" with Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" which gives Hova's lyrics a darker tone than the original celebratory beat that surrounded them. One can't help but laugh at the combination of Eminem's raunchy "Shake That" with Yael Naim's sweet, Apple-approved "New Soul" in "No Pause." The hard-hitting drums of Lil Mama's "Lip Gloss" are replaced with the hard guitars of Metallica's "One" on "Like This" for a combination that works far better than it should. While the clever combinations of samples are what drives the album, it's the actual construction that makes it great. A lot of the samples used on Feed The Animals are small and are used to transition to the album's larger moments. The opening drums of "In The Air Tonight" by Phil Collins lead to the Busta Rhymes/Police combination on "What It's All About." A very short clip from OutKast's "Ms. Jackson" leads to the Vanilla Ice/Jackson 5/Rihanna/Queen sequence that ends "What It's All About." It's these smaller elements that keep things moving and help make everything else seem that much better. No matter what kind of music you like, Girl Talk's Feed The Animals will keep you moving. It makes unfamiliar genres palatable whether it's classic rock for a pop fan or heavy metal for a hip-hop fan. It's the perfect album for the music lover who is likely to have anything and everything on their MP3 player. It's detailed in its construction but still insanely fun to listen to. If you haven't heard it yet, it's worth checking out. Feed The Animals is available in a variety of formats from Illegal Art.
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January 22, 2009 - 8:51 pm
My girlfriend's PC is an amalgamation of old and new parts. The ten-year-old motherboard went south and needed replaced, but the IDE hard drives were still in good shape. Seeking to merge the old with the new, it was upgraded from a 750MHz AMD Duron processor on a decade-old Gigabyte motherboard (hot when AGP first debuted) to one of the newer Intel Core 2 Duos with a Gigabyte S-Series motherboard. IDE is on the way out, replaced by Serial ATA, so I had to look specifically for that in whatever motherboard I was going to buy. We put the thing together, fired it up, installed Windows XP Pro, got everything else on there, and she started happily plugging away on the upgraded monster (slipped a Geforce 7950GT in there to replace the 3dfx Voodoo3 too, to feed her growing gaming habit). Everything seemed ready to cook. As an avid online-TV watcher, it wasn't long before she discovered the sound and video in the stuff she was watching would stutter often, though it seemed to smooth out as things played on. I initially chocked it up to buffering issues, but when it started happening in offline videos and music in Windows Media Player and iTunes, I knew something was amiss. We tried updating sound hardware drivers, but that didn't help. Then we defragmented the hard drive, but to no avail. I even replaced the IDE cable, but nothing changed. I had narrowed it down to only happening when the C drive was being accessed, though. She tested it by playing a video file, then in the middle of it, she initiated a file copy from her laptop through the LAN to the afflicted machine's C drive and sure enough, as soon as the HDD activity LED lit up, the sound started getting choppy. Even Windows start up and shut down sound events were affected. After a few minutes of tireless searching (hey, I'm good), we stumbled onto a couple very specific fixes other users fighting this problem had reported. The first was to see if Windows had reverted the Transfer Mode between the hard drive and motherboard from the more common and faster DMA back to the slower but more reliable PIO. Windows switches automatically to PIO after a number of disk errors are reported, as it's apparently a more stable reading method. Problem is, since it is slower, it can cause glitches like what we were experiencing, and it's particular to IDE drives, so I wouldn't have seen this before on our other machines, which use SATA exclusively. To check for this, go to Settings-> Control Panel-> System-> Device Manager-> IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers-> Primary IDE Channel-> Advanced Settings. Look under Device 0 and it should be set to "DMA if available." If it says "PIO only" instead, change it, click OK, save settings, and reboot. This may resolve your issue, though if the disk is really going bad, Windows is likely to change it back to PIO after some time, and you may want to look into getting a new hard drive.
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January 21, 2009 - 6:44 am
White Lies release their debut, ‘To Lose My Life’ today (January 19). Single-wise, Franz Ferdinand make their long-awaited return this week, releasing their comeback single ‘Ulysses’. The Scots are up against The Killers and Pink. Single’s released this week: Bon Iver – ‘Blood Bank’ Franz Ferdinand – ‘Ulysses’ Kid British – ‘Leave London’ The Killers – ‘Spaceman’ Pink – ‘Sober’ Album’s released today: White Lies – ‘To Lose My Life’ Circlesquare – ‘Songs About Dancing & Drugs’ It Hugs Back – ‘Inside Your Guitar’
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January 21, 2009 - 6:26 am
Warning: Very mild spoilers ahead House, MD executive producer Katie Jacobs has a lot on her plate. As “showrunner” of the hit series, she, along with series creator David Shore, are largely responsible for House’s feel and look; its stories and direction. Approaching its 100th episode, and in the middle of its fifth season, House was the only network series nominated for a Golden Globe award. The show's star (and executive producer) Hugh Laurie was the only star of a network drama nominated in the drama category. I had an opportunity to sit down with Jacobs by phone the other day to chat about the show and reflect on its upcoming milestone 100th episode (airing February 2). Although House, MD came away empty-handed from the Golden Globes, Jacobs said that the nomination “made us really, really happy.” She pointed out that the other nominated series (including the winner, Mad Men) are “wonderful, ambitious, and original.” But she also pointed out that “they don’t have to do 24 episodes a year. To be included alongside them, when we have to produce so many shows a year,” she continued, “is really an honor — especially in our fifth season.” House returns Monday, January 19 (NOTE: Another new timeslot for the show!) at 8:00pm ET with an episode entitled “Painless,” an ironic title given House’s own problems with pain. This week’s patient, suffering with pain more “advanced and severe than House’s,” according to Jacobs, has been referred by House’s former fellow, Cameron. The patient's pain has become intolerable “to the point where painkillers no longer work,” Jacobs explained. “He’s at a place where House may find himself at in years to come. That’s the focus of the episode.” She continued, “House is in a constant state of pain; believes that his drug use lets him do his job and relieve his pain. Cameron introduces the patient to House hoping that he sees some sort of version of what it might be like for him if he doesn’t take better care of himself. She is worried about House, how he deals with his pain.” As you all might recall, when last we saw Dean of Medicine Lisa Cuddy back in December, she had rescued a left-for-dead baby, hoping to first become a foster mother and then adopt the child. “Painless” picks up with Cuddy dealing with the challenges new-motherhood. As anyone who has tried to cope with the trials and tribulations of being a working mother of an infant knows, it is an incredibly challenging task. The them resonates deeply with women who try (and not always with success) to find some sort of balance. “Would it be fair if we didn’t present the challenges that it presents?” asked Jacobs. “Hopefully at some time she will find a balance, but it takes time,” she added. “One of the things that is going to happen at the end of the next episode – Cuddy will see if perhaps someone else can do her job for a period of time so she can spend more time being a mother.”
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January 20, 2009 - 8:31 am
Announced late last night at Wired.com is an awesome new photography contest, whereupon the subject is the elusive and oft-captured shadow. The contest trounced across my computer screen and into my head just a few hours later and I have not been able to forget about it! It's like a song you hear on a television commercial and cannot get out of your head, nor can you fill that space with another song. I have been shooting regular (as opposed to unleaded?) photography for a couple of decades and stock photography for a few years. I have become accustomed to the fact that the shadow will, on the norm, kill a good stock photograph. Kill it! That has not deterred my fascination, neigh obsession for capturing the shades of gray human form, nor has it allayed my desire to do so, but there has, fortunate for me, not been that many opportunities to suspend the aforementioned form in a digital format, as I shoot in a digital format. The fine print entails that the submitted photograph be one that you shot, the bigger the better (800×1200 is the accepted minimum), and a description of the image to include exposure, employed hardware, along with whatever else you would like to include. It must also be hosted on a Web site and the link submitted to enter the contest. The winning image will be selected by popular vote. The top ten of those will be displayed on the Wired.com homepage. Here is my chance! Here is your chance! And this is our chance to shine like the brightest photographic stars that we are. So, go! Rush out into the streets, the alleys, the caverns, the piano mills, and the shopping malls. Aim for the gray, the other side of the road, defy the wind, the rain, and the obnoxious and go for the gold! This is your chance.
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January 20, 2009 - 12:36 am
Yet another year has passed and it’s time to name the top ten best albums of 2008. You will have heard of a few but may not have heard of others. If you’re looking to be exposed to new music, expand your musical horizons or you're just bored check out these albums online. Honourable mention – Derek Webb and Sandra McCracken – Ampersand EP As I have written previously I am NOT a fan of Christian music because Christian rock has no redeeming artistic or social value, in that it neither inspires people to worship nor to appreciate great music. The restrictions placed on Christian musicians by both the Christian record labels and existing fan base, crush out all true artistic growth, every spark of originality or individualism — as if being original or different wereun-Christian or sinful. That said, just because someone celebrates their love of a mythological being (God in this instance) by making artistically barren music doesn't necessarily mean they don't have talent, artistic vision or originality. In the case of singer-songwriter Derek Webb – most famous as part of the Christian band Caedmon’s Call – and his equally talented and successful wife Sandra McCracken, that is certainly untrue, as evidenced by the release of their debut duet EP, Ampersand. This is the first collaboration from these two deeply personal performers and a true joy to hear. Webb and McCracken's voices perfectly complement each other, harmonising playfully, dancing together in joyous vocal foreplay. McCracken's voice is a mixture of Emmylou Harris and Shawn Colvin, rootsy, warbling, and gently, elegantly loving. And Webb's voice is a mixture of buttery smoothness and raw passion, like a good spicy whisky. And the same can be said of their musical styles; McCracken is a bit alt-folk, with country tinges and Webb, alt-country with rock colour. This collaboration sees the best that both these talented artists have to offer, what it doesn't offer are references to religion or Christianity – thank jebus. 10. The Ruse – Midnight in the City One of my favourite former Band of the Week bands, The Ruse have finally released their newest masterpiece, Midnight in the City. Filled with stunning creamy, rich, Celtic-flavoured soundscapes and dreamy, warm, sensual vocals, Midnight in the City has earned this place on my top ten list. The Ruse's signature sound is reminiscent of Snow Patrol playing U2 songs with Travis arranging the music. Fabulously Brit-rock sound is surprisingly coming from an L.A. band, but it is such a melodic, cultivated sound you'll hardly care. That said, with Midnight in the City you can hear The Ruse beginning to push their sound to a new level. In fact I am willing to admit that the only reason the that Midnight in the City isn't higher in my countdown is simply because I would like to see this band push their sound a bit further, to develop their impressive talents to new levels. The Ruse are a band who's talent, vision and drive are the stuff of legends and I have no doubt that one day these guys will be rock gods.
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January 18, 2009 - 6:52 am