Blogger and digital curator focusing on Internet Music, Open Content and the Social Web.
Dave's Imaginary Sound Store for hand-picked Amazon books, music and cool gadgets.
Dave's Lenses for social music and related web technologies.
Twitter.com/DavidHolmes for sharing interesting links, thoughts and ideas.
Open Music Search for scouring hundreds of copyleft media resources.
Click on the icons below to see my other blogs.
'Upular' - a new mashup track from Australian electronic music artist Pogo, composed using chords, bass notes and vocal samples from the Disney Pixar film 'Up'. More Pogo video tracks via http://www.youtube.com/user/Fagottron
Merry Christmas!
This 'Split LP' is a five track, instrumental post-rock release from Australian bands Sleepmakeswaves (Sydney) and Tangled Thoughts of Leaving (Perth).
'Keep Your Splendid Silent Sun' 06:19 - Sleepmakeswaves
'We Sing The Body Electric' 05:23 - Sleepmakeswaves
'This Is How We Remember (Secret Robot)' 06:49 - Sleepmakeswaves
'A Vexing Predicament' 03:22 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving
'The World Is A Deaf Machine' 15:13 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving
Although both bands are musically quite different the respective recordings are nicely balanced and complementary. Each offering anthemic and emotive excursions into experimental rock landscapes, with gutsy guitars churning out crunching metal mantras over driving drum and bass rhythms. Epic themes are entwined with more delicate piano and guitar melodies, ranging through ethereal ambient spaces, jazz inspired improvisations and dynamic freeform passages exploding with tribal energies. The track titles are interesting and evocative too.
Comments [1]
Tweet Cloud is an online service that lets you generate a customizable word cloud from your tweet archive. Log in using your Twitter account to create and save multiple word clouds at an address like http://tweetcloud.icodeforlove.com/DavidHolmes - Clicking the image above will take you to the saved cloud page. Each page has a date stamp at the time of creation.
You can also view clouds by people you follow that also use Tweet Cloud, via the Friends link once logged in (top right). Recently created Tweet Clouds are shown on the homepage, which is useful for discovering people with similar interests.
Note that upon generation a tweet is automatically posted in your tweetstream along the lines of: " I just generated my #TweetCloud out of a year of my tweets - http://w33.us/1ta" or whatever the period it is you choose ie. a day, a week, a month, 3 months, 6 months, a year. You're also given a choice of small, medium, large or HUGE cloud sizes.
Coded by: Chad Scira aka tumblr.icodeforlove.comComments [0]
The official video for "Wiinter Winds" the new single by London folk quartet Mumford & Sons, from their debut album "Sigh No More" released on 5th October 2009 (iTunes album downloads)
Comments [0]
"Sycamore Cowboys" - a mashup by Colatron for the Mashed in Plastic project. Merging Little Jimmy Scott: "Sycamore Trees" (from the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me soundtrack) and Portishead: "Cowboys"
Video by The Reborn Identity - more MiP videos available via the Vimeo Channel and YouTube Channel
Comments [0]
Songs from the Bar of Lost Souls is a 5 track EP by independent UK band Hope and Social. The tracks were written, recorded and mixed in 5 days and created as part of the imitating the dog theatre piece Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls. Available as digital download for whatever you want to pay.
There's a raw and live sound to these tracks that makes you feel like you're in the same room as the band, sharing something honest and real. You can see how this fast recording method works via their YouTube Channel.
Band member Rich Huxley shares his insights on what true independence can do for a band's career in a recent post on the Creative Deconstruction website titled The Declarations of Independents. The article provides information about the social strategies, ideas and tools used by the band to connect with fans, both online and off.
Social Connections
http://band.to/hopeandsocial - Hope and Social Page address on Facebook
Tweets - Twitter search for all band member messages.
http://www.myspace.com/hopeandsocial
http://www.last.fm/music/Hope+and+Social
For more music and info check out the links at the top of this post.
Comments [0]
FeedUps is an online feed aggregator for news about Web 2.0 tools and services. It provides a one-stop resource for quickly scanning 18 popular sites focusing on Web startups and applications.
Comments [0]
Inspired by a photograph of birds perched on the wires of a street light, journalist and musician Jarbas Agnelli decided to write a song using the relative proximity of the birds as notes on a stave. "Birds on the Wires" is his musical interpretation of the picture. He says "Inspiration can come from anywhere, but we must be alert". You can follow Jarbas at http://twitter.com/jarbas_agnelli
The video has received widespread attention, appearing on popular websites like Laughing Squid, Wired, and Gizmodo. Jarbas's friend, Sean Crownover (Candlegravity) from Tokyo, has also posted a version on his FaceBook page (player bottom left).
Link to original newspaper article (Portuguese)
Musical Data
I'm reminded of David Cope's ideas on the concept of musical recombinancy. In his "Experiments in Musical Intelligence" he argues that:
"...recombinancy appears everywhere as a natural evolutionary and creative process. All the great books in the English language, for example, are constructed from recombinations of the twenty-six letters of the alphabet. Similarly, most of the great works of Western art music exist as recombinations of the twelve pitches of the equal-tempered scale and their octave equivalents. The secret lies not in the invention of new letters or notes but in the subtlety and elegance of their recombination."
These "hidden structures" are present all around us, at the very core of sound creation in the natural world. For more on exploring the hidden data in nature see Evan Grant: Making sound visible through cymatics (YouTube video)
Comments [0]
An online CO2 converter built by David Kjelkerud, Henrik Berggren and Jorge Zapico at Ecomo09, an environmental hacking day in London. It is designed to help you more easily understand what a kilogram of CO2 really means.
You can convert CO2 amounts to other units such as bottles of beer or compare different emissions for instance how many apples are equivalent to a litre of milk. The data used is mostly localized to Sweden.
David and Henrick also built http://citysounds.fm/ the web app that lets you listen to the latest music from cities around the world.
Comments [0]
Swedish folk/indie duo First Aid Kit release their new songs "Hard Believer" and "Waltz for Richard" on October 5th via http://www.wichita-recordings.com/ - If you like the song above you can vote for it to appear on the official BBC 6 Music Playlist through Steve Lamacq's Rebel Playlist, the vote closes at midnight on Sunday 6th.
Sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg come from Enskede near Stockholm. They have a loyal following of fans built through their personalised and direct style of social media marketing. An example is their use of Twitter to invite cover song requests which they publish online as video performances (First Aid Kit Sessions). The request form is at http://thisisfirstaidkit.com/your-requests/ the tweetstream is http://twitter.com/faksessions and the videos are shared via http://www.youtube.com/jagadambarecords
In fact it was their video cover of the Fleet Foxes "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" that attracted worldwide attention in 2008 (currently at 790,987 views).
The girls will be touring the UK with Fanfarlo during September/October. You can get tour details and purchase tickets via their website or Music Glue (includes exclusive free tracks). They have also announced tour dates for The United States of America in October, see their MySpace for further info.
Web Connections
Comments [0]
Comments [0]