Apparently playing at the Paris airport is a thing. Recently, Air played, performing "Playground Love" for the first time in 20 years - complete with Gordon Tracks!
Supposedly the entire concert was streamed live on Twitch in partnership with Amazon Music but I've seen no clips surface. Fingers and toes crossed for more to come of this but I'm happy with the current treat.
Great to see that Menomena has been fleshing out their discography with new expanded editions. Their 2003 debut, I Am the Fun Blame Monster (my favorite), has a nine track extra edition, there's a 22-track expanded edition of Friend of Foe (2007) and, now, a 21-track track deluxe edition of Mines (2010). The band is also playing a pair of reunion shows in August. If you can attend, please attend.
A wonderful interview from 2022 with Tom Persky, the self-proclaimed “last man standing in the floppy disk business.” He owns and operates floppydisk.com, a shockingly active business that still deals with a fairly high volume of disks (relatively speaking).
Persky speaks to how he got into the business, how it's still going in 2024 and, most importantly, how the floppy will never really ever die. Fingers crossed.
Sometimes you just stumble on a video of a cat yawning that's been visually processed by guitar pedals. I can't claim to understand it one bit but I certainly enjoy the results. Will seek out more in this realm of "SSTV" - Slow Scan TeleVision.
Disregard the thumbnail that belies the insightful nature of this conversation* - take some time to listen to Benn Jordan talking Spotify on the Top Music Attorney channel. It's just 21 minutes and brimming with insights and predictions about how fragile the music industry is.
There's a particularly nice bit at 4:30 talking about Spotify's house of cards with funding. Is it accurate? I dunno! But it's a good listen!
* interviewer Miss Krystle is insightful and challenging to Jordan, it's unfortunate the thumbnail is reducing them to a sex symbol.
The TinyPod is a rather clever enclosure for an Apple Watch that makes it look and behave a bit more like an old school iPod. While I find the physical portion of it to be quite intriguing (a scrollwheel that turns the watch crown!), it's even more interesting when you consider the device a "dumb phone." Because of the limited functionality of the Apple Watch, you can't do nearly as much with this little device and, thus, it won't take as much of your attention. Phone calls, music, texting, mail and a few more essentials but that's it. Sort of a walk back in time to pre-App Store.
While I'm sure we all want to embrace "self-control" as the answer to spending less time on our devices, maybe a forced limitation could be a viable alternative.
Click through the site - it's well made and insightful on what the team has made.
a solid take on the Crowdstrike failure and how tech culture is the largest culprit to blame. Also a satisfying evisceration of Growth At All Costs and a warning sign of the future.
I had not spent much time with LOCAL 58, a series of broadcasts that feels related to the above but more alternate reality mixed with "lost transmissions." Also, far less therapeutic and more Melancholia unsettling. Still, worth a watch!
I've been subscribed to this @selfemeris YouTube channel for awhile now as it tends to post some deep cuts in relation to the band Self (i.e. early recordings or old promo vids, etc).
Recently they posted an entire tribute album, entitled Self-Portraits. It's fifteen covers covering a wide range of the Self catalog; a nice variety. I'm not really sure what I think of the album yet as I haven't even listened to the entire thing top to bottom but I do love the idea of a tribute album for a band that has always been overlooked.
Despite not having a strong opinion on it yet, I will say the chiptune Stewardess are a nice treat.
Found myself listening to "Egg Punk" a lot recently. I'm not really even sure that definitely linked in that article is accurate. As far as I can tell it's kind of a mix of Devo, Dead Milkmen, a bit of hardcore and a dash of lo-fi drum machines and production. It's sort of a "you'll know it when you hear it" scenario for me at this point.
This Wesley and the Punks album seems to hit the spot. Tho, I'm honestly not sure if it's "Egg Punk" or an even more niche thing called "Internet Punk," as the title suggests. Who knows and who cares! I like it! I also recommend Prison Affair and their split with Snooper.
Lots of articles are being written about the hacktivist group and the response but reading the actual chat logs is the best example of how hateful AND idiotic the Project 2025 people are. That said, it is still a legitimate threat to the future.
Take one look at this Pixel Mirror and you instantly get it. An image is transformed into a low-resolution, pixelated, version of itself. The actual product is meant to be worn as a necklace (retailing around ~$120USD) but this article wisely points out that its actually an incredibly useful tool for artists as well, reducing images to their simplified versions.
Do click through for more examples. They're all quite neat but the cloud just summed it up perfectly for me.
