Tag Archives: Music
New videos uploaded
Posted on 16. Sep, 2007
Videos from a couple of fantastic music festivals attended this summer. The sound is really bad due to the puny mic in my Canon IXUS 800, but you get the idea:
Also some videos of the bullfights I watched last year in Madrid, Spain:http://anthonyjhicks.com/...
Bestival 2007 Highlights
Posted on 16. Sep, 2007
Bad sound due to the puny mic in my camera, but fantastic visuals!
Wild in the Country 2007
Posted on 16. Sep, 2007
Bad sound due to the puny mic in my camera, but fantastic visuals!
MixDepot.net > Spread the Sound
Posted on 29. Sep, 2005
Fantastic collection of mix sets uploaded by DJs in a variety of eletronica genres. Well worth a look. I recommend [Steve Marx] as a good starting point for downloading.
http://www.mixdepot.net/...
V Festival 2005 Pictures
Posted on 01. Sep, 2005
Lots of pics from V Festival in Hylands Park, Chelmsford.
http://anthonyjhicks.com/...
EU opens investigation into iTunes UK overcharging
Posted on 28. Feb, 2005
UK expensive? It's all part of the fun of living here, I'll be interested to see how this one pans out though, silly conspiracy theories aside. I don't buy my DVD's in the UK anymore, I import them from the Jersey Island's tax free due to a loophole in UK import laws. Pretty much any gadget purchase now I look into offshore options first including buying in Australia and getting it shipped over. 17.5% VAT plus the most extraordinary markups in the world, particularly on the high street often show the UK as being *20-30% more expensive compared to foreign markets.. I guess if you do enough travelling it all works in the long run as taking that strong sterling overseas with you is great, you feel like a king! ;)
* this stat has no real basis, just from a few observations on recent gadget purchases ;)
http://www.engadget.com/...
Techno Definitions
Posted on 23. Dec, 2004
Good list, comprehensive.
UPDATE: Forget that list at ethnotechno.com, Ishkur's Guide to Electronic music lists 170 genres in a Flash based timeline interface and includes several samples for each genre. Fantastic! (click the large bold blue link text below the image to launch). I've already spent a solid hour on it and I've barely scratched the surface. Highly recommended. Thanks Wade.
http://www.ethnotechno.com/...
The Prodigy tonight!
Posted on 04. Dec, 2004
We're going to the late show of The Prodigy at the Brixton Academy tonight. Tickets sold out long ago, luckily a friend had two spares. Should be great, can't wait!
http://www.brixton-academy.co.uk/...
Glastonbury Festival
Posted on 26. Jun, 2004
I really need to crawl out from under my little rock more often, I keep missing great stuff I could see in the UK. If only I'd realised Glastonbury 2004 was on this weekend, I would have hunted down some tickets and happily spent the weekend roughing it in a tent with 112,000 others. Watching the BBC3 and BBCi coverage, the festival looks incredible. Check out the BBC Glastonbury site for pics and live streams. As usual the excellent BBCi is running a multi-screen so you can flick between different venues on interactive TV. While we're on BBCi, love the interactive interface for Wimbledon, hit the red button on your remote and choose the court/match you'd like to watch. Ah well.. next year for sure!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/...
Apple opens iTunes in the UK, France and Germany
Posted on 16. Jun, 2004
http://www.theregister.co.uk/...
19 Anniversary Concert Review
Posted on 22. Apr, 2004
On Monday night we went to the 19th Anniversary Concert of 19 at the Royal Albert Hall. 19 is an artist management company behind the likes of Spice Girls, Cathy Dennis, Victoria Beckham and Annie Lennox. They also own the Pop Idol shows and manage most of the Pop Idol winners and runner ups from the USA, UK and Canada. While none of the music they produce or artists they represent are to my tastes, it was interesting to attend a music biz gathering like this and see a little of what goes on behind the scenes. As a business you certainly can't fault 19, they've picked highly successful marketable artists that Top 40 buyers like and have done extraordinarily well.
Despite being a private invite only event, 19 managed to fill the RAH by asking each employee of 19 to invite 19 friends. We got great seats, 10 rows from the front in the stalls. Highlight of the night was seeing Annie Lennox, Dave Stewart, and Cathy Dennis performing. Also seeing David and Victoria Beckham together in the flesh was interesting after all the text message business. Aside from several UK TV, radio and Top 40 celebes I struggled to identify, they had most of the big name idol winners performing including Kelly Clarkson, Will Young, and Ryan Malcolm, as well as Emma Bunton (Baby Spice) and Rachel Stevens. All-in-all an interesting night, thanks for the invite M.
http://www.19.co.uk/...
RIAA sues 532 music downloaders
Posted on 22. Jan, 2004
Interesting:
Nectarine - Demo Scene Radio
Posted on 30. Oct, 2003
Nectarine has over 14,000 mods, Scream Tracker, MP3, SID and other songs online going back over the last 15 years of underground demo scene computer music, all nicely categorised and user rated. There's plenty from the Amiga days to bring back memories for me. If you're overwhelmed by choice tune into Nectarine Radio to listen to playlists live programmed by users of the site.
While you're taking a trip down memory lane, checkout scene.org, I hadn't visited this site for ages until Graham reminded me. Checkout the top PC demo, fr-025 - the popular demo. Very impressive, I think I might turn that into my screen saver.
http://scenemusic.net/...
Sounds Like Techno
Posted on 09. Jun, 2003
I heard them plugging this on Triple J last week but forgot about it until I noticed it on Benn's blog. It's an excellent Flash documentary tracking the development of Techno from it's birth in Detroit and then into the Australian scene and beyond. Highly recommended.
http://www2.abc.net.au/...
Aphex Twin
Posted on 20. May, 2003
The J-Files are doing Richard D. James this week. Should be interesting - 11pm, Thursday May 22nd, Triple J:
Shazam
Posted on 09. Apr, 2003
A UK service where you dial a number on your mobile and then point your phone at the music source, it takes a 30 second sample and will then SMS you back the name of the song. The idea is that if you're out and about and hear a song you like, dial the number to find out the name so you can buy it later. Interesting. [Thanks Bruce]
http://www.shazam.com/...
Front Line Assembly
Posted on 04. Apr, 2003
If you've been watching my recent Winamp tracks, you'll notice a lot by the Canadian industrial group Front Line Assembly, mainly from their 1999 CD "Implode". Why has it taken me this long to find them? From what I've heard so far I like their work. I would never have found this group had it not been for MP3's, now it's off to the record shop to buy some of their albums. The 10 min 54 sec "Silent Ceremony" is a great track.
I'll have to buy their latest album "Epitaph", sounds good:
UPDATE: Hmm, just listening to "Epitaph" now, it's a fair bit more gothic than "Implode".. not liking it as much, but still good.
http://www.metropolis-records.com/...
Moby Sydney Concert Mini-Review
Posted on 28. Mar, 2003
I saw Moby at the Horden last night for his 27th March concert in Sydney. I've got to say I was fairly under-whelmed by the entire performance. When I go to a performance by an artist like Moby I expect a significant level of live performance and improvisation that sets it apart from listening to his CD's. However for most of the performance I couldn't help but feel that a majority of the music was coming from a pre-sampled studio recorded set minus the lead vocals from Charmaine Sinclaire, which for the most part did appear live.
There were certainly a few brief interludes where he was definitely playing the keyboard or guitar backed by the violin duo, drums and the DJ, but for a vast majority of the tracks, particularly on the bongos, it looked like lots of jumping around mime performance. I'm no expert, and I was pretty far back from the stage, so I could be completely wrong but to me it lacked any of the tell tale signs of a live performance, the tracks and vocals were exactly like the CD, there was little improvisation, and certainly not enough equipment on the stage.
The microphones were on and Moby did sing over some of tracks, and in at least two tracks he did add a few chords on his keyboard to make it sound a bit different, but as soon as he stepped away from that keyboard, it was just the CD playing. The bongo rhythm had studio perfection and was perfectly sustained and timed, I listened hard for any indication of a break in timing to indicate he was playing the bongos live rather than just miming to a studio recording. Either Moby has incredible rhythm on the bongos, or they were just part of the CD track.
It may be that Moby does not attempt to hide the fact that a majority of the music comes off a digital backing track, but for my $80 I was hoping it'd be mostly live. Anyway, it was an okay way to spend a Thursday night, but I'm unlikely to go to another Moby concert unless it offers something different from just playing the CD at home. Harsh perhaps, but it's my money and I've already paid to listen to the CD's.
Hah, and yes he played both his Microsoft and James Bond theme songs.
Piracy increases music spending
Posted on 30. Jan, 2003
Nojoman's editorial on how the availability of pirated music has actually *increased* his music spending is I am sure a common story for many MP3 downloaders on the Internet. For me personally, I never use P2P or music swapping services, or download MP3's because it's just too damn expensive to do so over broadband in Australia. However access to MP3's over the years has allowed me to explore many new artists I'd never thought to check before, as a result my spending on albums has increased massively over the years as I have discovered whole genres of music that interest me, and introduced me to many new artists, as a result when they release a new album I'm far more inclined to rush out and buy it. I would argue that a large chunk of the music piracy community who do not buy albums and pirate all their music, are more likely to be doing so because they are minors with no income and simply cannot afford to buy the albums as they are so expensive. (okay, look.. poorly structured rant, as it ignores the obvious cultural evolution of people going to their P2P client first to download an album, rather than buying it. Just felt like making a quick comment on the latest RIAA controversy).
http://www.inthemix.com.au/...
Trance Fan Crickets
Posted on 19. Jan, 2003
I was working on a essay until quite late last night and had a flying-cricket-bug-thing venture into my apartment and sit on one of my hi-fi speakers, I caught him and dropped him off my balcony into the bushes below, within ten minutes he was back in my apartment and sitting on my speaker again. All I can guess is the trancey electronica sounds of X-Dream - Electromagnetic attracted him to the speaker, thinking it was the sound of a potential mate. Interesting.
