John Cage – 4′33″ Free iTunes Download
“John Cage was a modernist composer with a playful sense of humor. In 1952 he wrote this short piano piece, which instructs the soloist not to play any notes at all – the only sound you hear being provided by audience and their surroundings. The ensuing argument over whether or not this counts as music quickly made 4′33″ the most famous and controversial composition of Cage’s career. Today, the work is most widely understood as a challenge to the concept of silence – even when there’s apparently nothing present to make a sound, you can always hear something if you listen hard enough. This week’s free Discovery Download is the first of the three movements, recorded at London’s historic Henry Wood Hall. Listen carefully, and you can hear traffic outside, creaking floorboards and a clock ticking somewhere in the building. If you like it, you can download the remainder of the album here and check out some of John Cage’s louder works here.” — iTunes Store
Bum Rush the Charts Today
An interesting experiment is taking place Thursday on iTunes. Can shoppers and followers of podsafe and independent musicians push one selected 99-cent single to the top of the “most popular” list on iTunes for one day? We’ll see. The first lucky band is Black Lab, who is giving half the sale proceeds to a music charity.
New live Stephen Malkmus Tunes
You Ain’t No Picasso has posted a recent Portland show from Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, containing 9 new songs. From what I’ve heard so far they’re pretty jammy and mellow, and it sounds like the normal Malkmus gold.
Sasha Baron Cohen on Fresh Air
I caught a bit of this excellent interview with Sasha Baron Cohen on NPR’s Fresh Air a week or two ago and I thought I’d post an MP3 of the entire show. I’m rooting for Mr. Cohen tonight at the Golden Globes, where the BORAT film is up for several awards, and in my opinion is more than deserves to win.
Click here to grab it and enjoy.
Today is Day Against DRM
“Today is October 3, the International Day Against DRM — the first global day where people rise up and say no to anti-copying technology that treats you like a crook. Remember, DRM doesn’t stop “piracy” — the only people who get DRM infections are people who don’t pirate their media. You get DRM by buying your movies, music, games and books through authorized channels — the stuff you download from P2P or buy off of a blanket at a flea-market has already had the DRM cracked off of it. They say that DRM “keeps honest people honest” — but all it does is keep honest people in chains.” [via Boing Boing]
New Free Deerhoof EP
Deerhoof have released a free MP3 EP on the Kill Rock Stars website, and it features covers of Beatles, My Bloody Valentine, Canned Heat, and Herman’s Hermits. It seems to be all jammed into one big file, but click here for the isolated MBV cover track. [via Stereogum]
Stream new Yeah Yeah Yeahs
I’ve been listening to a few of the tracks on the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album constantly for a few weeks now — good news is you can stream the whole shebang on their MySpace page. Take note of Cheated Hearts and Dudley, two really catchy and fantastic tunes.
New Yeah Yeah Yeahs Tunes
Some new YYYs tracks have begun showing up: the new single is entitled Gold Lion [mp3] which has a nice repetitive indie rock swing to it. Not the most inventive of tunes but it has some nice hooky riffs/lyrics and gives me a positive outlook on what other new material is to come.
The second track, which seems to be B-Side, is called Let Me Know [mp3] and is considerably more down tempo. It also has a slight country twang on it, but more on the ballad-y side of things and honestly sounds a lot like it was thrown together pretty quickly.
Trigger Cut Podcast Debut
So here goes nothing — the first Trigger Cut Podcast, Episode #1. Click here to download. (Running time: Approx. 20 mins, 16.5 MB file)
Artists/songs featured:
The Bugs
Tortoise & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy
Radel Esca
Please bear with me as this is a trial run and I’m still working out the kinks but I hope you dig it and thanks for listening.
Note: If you’d like to subscribe with iTunes:
1. Launch iTunes.
2. In the Advanced menu, select Subscribe to Podcast.
3. Enter http://feeds.feedburner.com/TriggerCut in the text box and click OK.
The Strokes “First Impressions of Earth”
So the brand new Strokes album has leaked and I’m can’t say any less underwhelmed than when I first heard the initial single, “Juicebox.” I must admit that their first two albums have been and probably always be guilty pleasures of mine, but this new outing sounds not only sounds tired but feels generally very stale overrall.
The mp3 I posted is the third track on the disc, “Razorblade,” which I like basically for its vocal melody alone, but not much else.
The production is the same, the “cabaret-style” vocals are the same, the dueling guitars are the same; obviously this won’t disappoint the “big” fans but I can really take it or leave it (no pun intended from their own song title). I understand that most popular bands don’t (and almost can’t) make very drastic changes in their sound over only the first three records, but until these guys decide to take any sort of risk I’ll be sitting this one out.