Very effective trailer here for The World According To Allee Willis. Who is Allee Willis? I've no idea! But from some cursory readings I can tell you that she wrote songs for Motown, she wrote for 80's pop artists like Cyndi Lauper, she wrote the The Rembrandts "I'll Be There For You," she was friends with and influenced Pee-Wee Herman, she was nominated for a Grammy and a Tony for The Color Purple, she won a Grammy for the soundtrack album score for Beverly Hills Cop, she gave a keynote address to the first Digital World conference in 1992 about "interactive journalism and self-expression in cyberspace."
I've never heard of them but I can't wait to learn more. Already fascinated.
This ARS Technica piece on rampant location tracking technology is a nice reminder that you do have a little bit of power to not be tracked - you just gotta dive into your settings to make it happen.
Personally, I am quite guilty of not disabling these settings but I think after reading this I will finally do it.
I recently learned about the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project - an undertaking that aims 10,000 mirrors at a tower filled with salt, generating a "molten salt flow" that is used to produce steam and, thus, electricity. Reading over the Wikipedia, it has been fraught with technical problems, bad contracts and hiccups - which is unfortunate because look at that thing! It's a rather incredible concept and an impressive implementation, even if it was a bit troubled.
I'm not here to inform you about the environmental advantages of such an undertaking as the Wikipedia truly makes my head spin when trying to explain the amount of energy this creates. It doesn't really matter tho, I'm just here to tell ya "Look at this thing!"
Today, yk Records released the third LP from LA based Talking with Hands (aka Matthew Smith). I'm biased of course but I think it's a particularly strong offering from Smith and am really pleased to have been involved in some part with bringing it into the world.
As the story goes, Smith was working on a follow-up to his previous album and decided to make two EPs - each tackling a different topic. The first would be about Generative AI's entaglemenents with human creativity. The second would be about the devaluing of music from big tech. Heady topics but good starting points for inspiration as they were near and dear to his personal experiences.
Over time, those two EP's congealed and transformed into one cohesive album - Organic Machine. It's a ready that covers a lot of big topics but doesn't do it in a way that feels cumbersome or dense. The songs may be about how terrible streaming (and Daniel Ek in particular) is for artists but it's a lot of big, memorable, hooks and buzzy guitars. It's a fun time!
We released threepreviewsingles ahead of the album. Each containing two remixes and each accompanied with a music video - you should watchthemall.
I made the cover art with Matthew Smith and am quite proud of how it turned out. I don't think it needs any heavy-handed explanation but I am quite happy with the subtle Black Mirror-esque vibes and the old school loading animation - both appropriate for the album themes, imo.
I can't believe it but here's 11,000 words about The parallel evolution of React and Web Components from Baldur Bjarnason - an icelandic web developer with plenty to say. Did I have any idea I'd be interested in 11,000 words about this topic? No. Was I incredibly satisfied with the read? You betcha!
Been a big fan of Jordan Lehning since the days of Eureka Gold and the Make-Out with Violence OST - going back to 2013 or 2009, respectively. He's an incredible songwriter, performer and studio magician. This new video for "Cherry Stem" - the first single from his forthcoming album Up at the Witching Hour - is an impressive collection of animations and styles all set to the sublime and melancholy track. Can't wait to hear more.
Much to my own surprise, it seems I have been making Halloween mixes since 2005. I missed one in 2016 but published two in 2017, so I'm revising history and saying I've never missed. This year is no different! I just published Gruesome Ghouls and Ghosts, a two and a half hour mix of spooky and scary tunes that just so happen to be from Nashville.
Please do me a favor and hit play on that just for the first 60 seconds. You may not have 2.5 hours available for a slow burn from kooky songs into scary soundscapes into totally devolved sounds but you've hopefully got 1 minute for a goofy introduction from my favorite alter ego, Michael Bleeds! We have fun.
For proper posterity, I'm going to list all the prior mixes below. Next year will mark twenty years of doing this. I can't even comprehend it. Hope you enjoy!
It's been awhile since I just encountered a proper photography portfolio site - the kind you used to run across with great frequency ten to fifteen years ago but feels so rare and fleeting now. The photographic work of Hudson McNeese is a quality slice of life - often strange, intriguing or beautiful. Sometimes just tasty. All of the collections and selected works are worth spending some time with.
I'm not sure where I stand on the state of music journalism. Sites like Pitchfork and Stereogum still cover a great deal of the "mainstream indie" press and mainstays like Brooklyn Vegan, Aquarium Drunkard or Bandcamp Daily are still providing great insight on a bit more of the fringes. Not to mention Nashville Scene coverage that always hits the spot for me (tho I could stand to have 10x more of it). I never really looked to sites like Rolling Stone or SPIN for my music coverage because they tend to cover music that isn't for me.
That said, there is a general feeling that music journalism is in a shake-y spot. Confidence in Pitchfork or Bandcamp sticking around for the long term is very low because of their parent companies. I understand that thinking but, for now, both seem to be chugging along just fine. Regardless, diversity is king when it comes to covering the arts! More is better! I read somewhere that 10,000 songs were uploaded to streaming per day. There's no shortage of music that can be covered if you wanna hear it.
Enter Hearing Things, a new independent music journalism destination. They've got a nice about page explaining where they come from and the ethos they are hoping to embrace but the gist it - a bunch of experienced music journalists started a new thing with the hopes of covering more things. The vibe is a bit like early Pitchfork days in terms of how casual it feels but all of the unnecessary snark seems to be replaced with wide-eyed optimism. Feels good!
I wish them luck and they're in my bookmarks for regular reading. Maybe you'll give them a spin too?
I've been working with Talking with Hands to help promote the upcoming album Organic Machine. We've released two prior singles - each with music videos and remixes of the album track. It's a lot of work to put together beforehand but the results are worth it. Today, we release the third (and final) single before the album is out but this time we've got a full-on short film!
Directed by TJ Masters, "Organic Machine" was shot in Austin, TX on Kodak film. The effects were created in pre-production and most everything in the piece is a first take, since film is expensive and time was fleeting! I think the results speak for themselves but if you need any further enticement to hit that play button, there's always this.
Maybe this is lazy but I get a Shane Carruth vibe from the short - ala Primer. If you stick around for the whole thing, there's a bit of a Michel Gondry vibe and a pixel animation by yours truly.
Along with the short film we also released another maxi-single with two remixes. It's on Bandcamp, AmpWall and everywhere else. Please enjoy.
Don't let anyone tell you the Internet doesn't have its fair share of goodness left to give. Here's a website - called The Pudding, hosted on pudding.cool - showcasing an interactive article on "Crokinole" - a word and game I've never heard of until this moment but can instantly understand why it is incredibly fun. The above GIF shows two masters of the game having a perfect round, which is honestly the most boring way to enjoy the game. It should be more like this:
TLDR: I made a video that I'd love for you to watch. That's it! Below is my journey of how I put it all together.
In September, yk Records released Mantra / Miracle from Eve Maret - a double sided single from an electronic artist that I've enjoyed for years. I knew that we needed videos for both tracks and I took it upon myself to cook something up for "Miracle." For reasons I can't explain, I was inspired by those Magic Eye prints from the early 90's. Being able to relax your focus enough to partake in the hidden scene often felt a bit miraculous to me, so I let that be my guide.
The research and proof of concept'ing process involved writing some PHP scripts to merge a still image with a pattern to create my own autostereogram; the "proper" name for a Magic Eye. There's a decent amount of existing software out there that will do this for you but I just hit up ChatGPT to help me out and we came up with a pretty good solution.
Continuing to work backwards, now I could make a Magic Eye image but I needed a proper depth map to merge with my pattern. That depth map would need to be generated from a still image of video footage. My buddy Cody swooped in with the solution - ComfyUI.
After much trial and error to get python working and install ComfyUI Manager properly, I was able to use this workflow to input a video file, process it and output each frame as a depth map.
Now that I understood the technical flow, all I needed was some proper video footage! Eve sent me multiple video performances which, quite frankly, worked great on their own. I use my Comfy workflow to generate the Depth Maps and then merge those into Magic Eye images with the PHP script. It was a bit of a time consuming process but not really hard, just time consuming. Taking those raw ingredients into Premiere, I just had to edit it all together.
I am very happy with the end result. If I had to do it again I might try to make the Depth Maps less hazy. Or tighten up the PHP script to tile better or not waiver between frames. There's always optimizations to make but anything I would change is minor. I hope you like it.
Really nice behind-the-scenes rundown about the 2024 XOXO festival and the themes that emerged. Those final comments from Charlie Jane Anders are words to live by. Reposting here just for posterity and enjoyment:
“Connecting with other people is really pleasurable, even though it’s also really hard. And it is the thing that gives me hope for the future. Human connection fundamentally is the thing that makes me believe that we can survive.
“So I’m here for gentle absurdity and tender weirdness. And I just don’t trust any version of the future where we don’t party and goof off and act ridiculous and rejoice, and just rejoice together.
“So my final thought: I don’t believe in utopias. I don’t believe in dystopias. What I do believe in is people taking care of each other. So please, take care of each other. Thank you.”
If you run in similar circles to myself, you have likely seen folks talking about this Cabel Sasser talk from final XOXO Festival. If you have not indulged in watching this video yet, let me pile on with endorsement. His energy is nervous but his excitement and passion is palpable. It's inspiring but it's also incredibly entertaining. I can't tell you any details because doing so would ruin the ride. Just let yourself have those 20 minutes.
Back in 2022, Nosferatu released his version of Unchained Melody. Now, two years later, the performance can be confirmed to be an absolute classic. It's every bit as entrancing as it was the moment it was released. A yearly viewing for sure. Nosferatu still got it.
I recently watched the semi-horror movie In the Earth and enjoyed the world building and folk horror aspects to it. Not a perfect movie by any means but worth watching. I was especially struck by the end title sequence created by Julian House at Intro (also known for design for Stereolab, Doves, Broadcast, The Prodigy, etc). I was familiar with his work prior to the film but had never connected the name - it certainly calls for a deeper dive.
A lifetime ago I helped out with Silent Uproar Records, an indie label out of North Carolina working with a range of great artists like The Capulets, Feersum Ennjin, Bellparker (and these guys!). Owners and operators Scott and Robbie have always had my respect for their diverse taste.
One artist they introduced me to was Grant Henry's Metroid Metal - which is exactly what it sounds like; a collection of metal inspired covers of songs from the Metroid universe. If you've not heard any of the recordings, I suggest you start with Varia Suite.
All that preamble is to get to the point that the Metroid Metal project is now 20 years old. Henry has gone on to be involved with a ton of other projects but still has a sharp memory of the origins of the Metroid Metal project. This 20 minute retrospective walks through the history of the project, some of the early demos and how he got involved with early Internet communities. Even if you have zero familiarity with the videogame, the music or Henry - it's a compelling bit of storytelling.
I've really been enjoying the offerings of Scotto Moore's This Newsletter Cannot Save You. As the description states, it's a bi-weekly offering of various distractions typically of the video variety. You can peruse the archives before subscribing but it's free and it's got my endorsement!
He's a shape-shifting monstrous alien Dad teaching his son to control his kinetic abilities while feasting on the flesh of humanity. At least, that's what I think is happening in this Xtro trailer.
I haven't seen the full film (yet) but every sneak peek of special effects in this trailer calls to me.
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