Noise, noise, noise: In between frolicking through the 404s of the web
searching for data on the next coherent update, I went off on a noise tangent
starting from the
All That Noise
underground / noise / experimental linklist. Quite a few dead ones, but the
chaff led in some way or another to the following places:
- Sheep Fiends
are the indescrible genre lifters. They have a veritable ton of
mp3s on
mp3.com
if you're feeling adventurous.
-
Mechanoise
is sonic warfare, with 4 band/idea-makers creating-creating. Most of you would
probably not enjoy this type of random war against senses, I'm guessing. But the pages are interesting, even if the music is off your dial.
-
Broke Bunnie Recordings
carries a softer, ambient set of noise by so-called "amateurs". It's a
non-profit label, lots and lots of mp3s. I recommend Acumentice on the slightly spastic side, Toho on the new-agey side [quite good], and Violent Feast if you liked the MIDI soundtrack to DooM.
-
WFMU
pops up again as the radio station to beat.
They have
interpretative comics
based on Captain Beefheart lyrics, by gum!
Also,
just plain weird comics
decorate their
halls
-- unique for a radio station. The
upcoming events page
lists many intruiging things, but most notably December 12th and 13th David Grubbs stops by with an amazing cast of notable French performers to to a show of improvisation, and a show of his tunes. Note to self: Do not miss this.
I keep finding links to
noiseweb.org
but the domain is down. Sounds like a fun place, too.
[11/28/1999]
Headphone amps: Crank dat rock.
I just
don't understand amplification.
I need to get louder output from my portable CD. Something I can stick in my
pack, that doesn't cost more than the phones I have.
This tour of the universe got touched off by the cheap lil'
Boostaroo, reviewed by
Dan's Data
and
Street
Tech.
From the
tiny amp with decent output
to the
big ol' box with 70's-style LED bar graph...
Who knows, you might actually need
studio-style
headphone amp racks.
Or, go to the
incapacitatingly expensive
part of the scale, then you get
cool Quicktime VR models
of the wallet-busters.
(This review
points out that the Grado amp only works well with Grado phones, so out with
that.)
These Headroom guys are alright,
a few of their techs do Epinions:
Todd
&
Tyll.
They both think the Sennheiser HD 580s [my current primary phones] are a good bang for the buck:
Todd on 580
&
Tyll
on 580.
Headroom's premiere product is
way out of my league.
I'd be looking at the
AirHead.
However,
a hardcore
audiophile's review finds that it's got interference and radio tuning trouble.
ZDNet
says, "Duh, what amplification?"
Almost feeling crazy enough to do this:
Build your own
headphone amp
, or cheat
with a pre-packaged kit.
The schematics
for these things are a bit beyond my level of circuitry comprehension.
I'm learning here, but I think it has come back full circle to the
Boostaroo.
Just want to blast the music with less distortion, so I won't hear the bus
honking as it careens towards me. Heck, the Boostaroo costs less than the
price of two CDs; not too much of a loss if it stinks.
Extraneous audio sites found during this search:
An excellent
drill-down portal for audio information.
And oh yes, the
Headwise guy
maintains a decent
general headphone FAQ.
Soundstage Audio Reviews
and
Soundstage Music Reviews look
handy if I suddenly become rich and picky.
[11/26/1999]
Graphics marketing strikes back
in a rather pathetic and underhanded way. Read the article if you are:
a.) a computer nerd, b.) a student of advertisement, or
c.) someone who believes in the general goodness of humanity.
Assume nothing...
Ars Technica
is an excellent resource for slicing, in-yr-face geek rumour-mongering when
Slashdot
isn't quite cutting it. It's swiftly becoming my one stop for priority
hardware, OS, and game news, and their detailed reviews are a step above the
rest. With the ArtX spectacle, do I have reason to doubt?
[This should make a good segue into this weekend's Opinionation
issue.]
[11/25/1999]
2x3 mini music reviews:
- Stavesacre - Speakeasy
Evolving riffs charge. Melodic, challenging drums.
- Starflyer 59 - Everybody Makes Mistakes
Sarcastic fuzzy spagwestern. Echoing pop aftertaste.
- Elvis Costello and the Attractions - Get Happy!!
Still catching up. Elvis is king.
Quality output from both TND bands. I think the Stave disc tops their previous outings, and the SF59 is close; I have a soft spot for Americana.
Still having CSS problems with the page cross-browser; specifically, the links show up without underlines in Opera, although I don't specifically say not to show them. [except in the sidebar...]. If I force underlined links, Netscape feels the need to underline all text in each paragraph element that follows after the first link. So, I had to change the link color. This is getting ugly, but hopefully it'll all go away with the ever-impending redesign.
[11/23/1999]
MP3 of the Week: It's time to expand and contract your musical horizons again! This week, it's split personality song time, visiting two sides of rawk.
The Cootees jump around their happy house and confuse things with this gem of a self-referential song: The Cootees - (blank) [2.2 megs]
...while Frodus, masters of cranked-out punk jamming, do angry justice to an old Devo song: Frodus - Explosions.mp3 [3.3 megs]
What else is happening? The Dismemberment Plan album is still ruling the crowd in a way few records have. If you're in NY, be sure to catch their show this Tuesday or Wednesday. Even if you're not, stay up past your bedtime and go to The Knitting Factory's site - they're supposedly broadcasting on the wacky Internet. During off hours they show archived gigs. Neat, since they have a lot of crazy jazz-er-rock-er-classical ensembles.
I caught some absolutely crazy band called Magma when updating this Sunday night. They invented a very sharp, bizarre language for their lyrics, and pretend to be visiting from another planet like M...oAM. Apparently this French musical conglomerate has been releasing music since 1970.
Q3A is so close. My fingers are aching in anticipation. Or maybe it might be due to all the links I tore up below.
[11/21/1999]
Bits: If you're not a compulsive weblog surfer, here's some nifty links I've [cough] appropriated from the listed sites. Blink makes it easy for me to track these goofy things, so blame them this time.
Play a game with Snapple. Fun time! [from sara... neat two-person pita concept]
Norm Gregory weblog. He's a fan of Napster, which I went and tried this weekend. Good for those who like popular music, still not much help for tracking down obscure tracks. There's a distributed problem most folks using it are not aware of: when you start the app, you are shunted to one random server of a few, so you don't ever search the entire userbase's collection. [stolen from anitar]
Wow. A Lego AT-AT, so realistically articulated, it's scaring me! I tried to make one back in the day, but it was much smaller and ended up looking more like a mechanized camel than a functioning walker. [thanks to ed]
Beware the Sphericon, son of Möbius! Part of the incredible Concise Encyclopedia of Mathematics. [wherefore, bifurback rivets?]
Also see the arXiv.org e-print archive: Science and math papers, with abstracts and Postscripts of each posted for printing. Far more serious than the
Math Pages, but both are worth exploring for avenues in math. [mike is on a roll with the geekery]
Insanely huge archive of Microsoft-related "political" cartoons. Sickening in one way, but interesting to see how their ideas duplicate. Intentionally or not. Some browsing later finds me at the site of one Mark Brewer, containing this stunning bug image.
[from the lovely backupbrain]
ee cummings index might cm fr handy, and
Savoy Magazine's music section is pleasingly all over the board. [both from the font of air pollution]
Milemarkers is quite honestly one of the most engrossing web visions I've had the pleasure of being engulfed in. A picture every mile on a drive from NY to CA. They even have mini-videos where each frame represents a mile; be sure to check out the trip through Utah and Nevada. Bubbling kudos to Kodak. [and to magnetbox via metascene]
Perfect Sound Forever is even more spread into the nooks and crannies of music and un-music than Savoy, above. The current issue contains a wonderfully inconclusive analysis of US Maple. Digging through the archives, I come across this lucky explanation of Magma which I am still being bewildered by live on the Knitting Factory. Amazing music. [again with the metascene!]
What? [shockwave timewasting with misterpants]
If you haven't seen it, check out the Asheron's Call beta log for a few belly laughs. Or possibly a confused look and a click on the back button. [old man murray is causing trouble again]
[11/21/1999]
