From the record label’s description:

Last year Les Étoiles returned to his home town of Bridgnorth, Shropshire. To Leave A Mark is a beautiful evocation of this place, its joy and tragedies, the town as a container of people, times, love and loss. It is about how a place, or better, the memories of a place, intertwine with one’s self, even when, on returning, those memories are not quite true. It is a testament to a ‘homesickness’ for ‘the memory of a home never seen’, to when the sediment of memory matches reality, but also to the more common moments when it does not.Simply recorded in the front room of his parent’s home on guitar, keyboards and the drum machine on his grandfather’s organ and then carefully produced and mixed by Tim Wright, these are songs of rare warmth and real fragility, rich with emotion and detail. It is a collection to be cherished: one of sadness, joy and uncommon intensity.

Records on Ribs distributes all of its albums for free under a Creative Commons license.  Donations to the label or especially for the albums are, of course, welcome (and I think worth it).

Lastly, tonight if you happen to be in Nottingham, Tammy reminds us that this new Les Étoiles album  “will be launched in style at a party at Jam Cafe in Nottingham tonight. Come down from 8pm to watch Les Étoiles and El Heath perform, and listen to the ROR DJs spin some tunes whilst enjoying a delicious beer or two. If you can’t make it (and why not?), you’ll have to make do with downloading the album – it’s certainly one of my favourite records of the year so far.”

They appear, more or less, in chronological order.

1. The Cranberries – Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?: I have fond memories of listening to this album early on in high school on cool breezy days in Merced. Dolores O’Riordan’s vocals are kind of wispy-breezy anyway, which adds to these pleasant memories.

2. Nine Inch Nails – The Downward Spiral: I have had a love-hate relationship with this album in the 15 years that is has been out. I love it for so many reasons, mainly because it introduced me to “industrial” music (of course, the album itself is a mix of genres, as Trent has always tended to do). I always loved the sound of the album, but I initially rejected it in my later high school years when I went through a “secular music” purge like many fundamentalist teenagers did in those years. Of course, the album itself is a journey of somebody who rejects society’s mores and embraces everything else like a drug (sex, escapism) only to find the person killing himself in the end. But now, especially in light of the video of the Johnny Cash cover of “Hurt”, the entire album looks much different to me. I still love the sound of the album, it’s heaviness, it’s delicacy, and especially its textures, even more than I did in high school.

3. Alice in Chains – MTV Unplugged: Another high school listen which was introduced to me by a friend who would play the VHS tape of this performance on while hanging out at his house. To this day I still like the Unplugged version of their popular songs better than the original album versions.

4. P.O.D. – Brown: When I went to Spirit West Coast in 1998 I saw P.O.D. play live, and it blew me away. At that time, it was the heaviest music I had ever heard, really (outside of Klank’s Still Suffering album). I was really into “Christian rock” and this was the band, along with Project 86, which opened up the world of heavy music to me. “Full Color” remained my favourite P.O.D. song of all time. Living in San Diego for a while, though, made me grow sick of their music as I ended up seeing them over 10 times. I don’t really listen to this kind of music at all, anymore — rapcore? (yes, their style has changed in the last few years, but I just think they got worse.)

5. Zao – Liberate Te Ex Inferis: This is going to sound weird, but I used to go to sleep to this album with headphones on when I was a sophomore at PLNU (1999-2000). The title means “save yourself from hell,” which was cribbed from the recent (at the time) sci-fi/horror movie Event Horizon, and the album also heavily sampled from sound clips from the movie. This was actually kind of dumb, but as for the actual sound of the album, I still think it is their best. This was also around the time when Christian hardcore and emo bands began wearing eyeliner (and Jesse Smith was skinny at the time, on an Atkins diet I think… wait, why do I even know this?!)

6. Depeche Mode -Exciter: yes, Violator is probably their best album, but Exciter was the album that first got me into their music when I heard “Dream On” on the radio one day. I ended up seeing them in concert in 2001 with my friend Alison. Later, when the DVD came out of the Exciter tour I used to put this on when I would paint from time to time (along with NIN’s Fragility tour DVD).

7. In Reverent Fear – Written in the A.M.: One of the most-listened to albums in my entire collection. This was when IRF was ‘hardcore’. I first started listening to this album heavily in 2002 when I was going through a lot of stuff still latent from the latter part of high school, which the lyrics on this album mirrored in a real, yet hopeful way. I eventually married the guitarist’s sister and even went on to play some trumpet on their follow up album called Stomacher, which eventually stayed in my musical rotation to this day when it came out in 2006. So, in many ways, I am very, very close to the music and lyrics (and band members!) of this band.

8. Apoptygma Berzerk – Harmonizer: I can’t even remember what this kind of music is called (synthpop?), but I used to listen to this album a lot when I was a computer programmer for seven years. The album both has tons of energy as well as lyrically speaks to a lot of my issues in really intimate ways. The song “Unicorn”: listen to it.

9. Cocteau Twins – Victorialand: According to my Last.fm stats, this is the the band I’ve technically listened to the most. Similar (for me) to The Cranberries in their etherial wispiness, I usually put this album on in the late evenings or when it is time to drift off to sleep. I wish this band were still around.

10. Front Line Assembly – Epitath: Probably my favorite of all the FLA albums as far as a honed ‘sound’ and tone. The final track called “Existance” is one of my favourite tracks of all time from any band (the song’s “hidden track” was reworked into the track “Submerged” on Bill Leeb’s side project Noise Unit, on the Voyeur album). I have fond memories of listening to this FLA album on repeat while driving the 400 miles from Merced to San Diego in my Dad’s truck.

11. Mayfairgrin – Equine Noir: An ambient release that probably has more listens than Cocteau Twins’ Victorialand, but I wouldn’t be able to tell because I was listening to this before last.fm came into existence. Written by a friend, this album contains the kind of sounds and textures I absolutely love.

12. Indigo Girls – Swamp Ophelia: A classic Indigo Girls album and contains the best IG song ever written, “The Wood Song.” This was the song performed at our wedding, and, because it was a surprise to me, and because of the emblematic nature of the lyrics as to what we hold to be important for life, I wept during the entire performance. The entire album, which also features “Least Complicated” and “Power of Two”, became one of my favourite albums of all time 10 years after it’s release (I hadn’t heard of the Indigo Girls until college).

13. The Dresden Dolls – Yes, Virginia: I first heard The Dresden Dolls when they opened for Nine Inch Nails in 2005 around NIN’s With Teeth release. The Dresden Dolls completely blew me away, for such a simple yet powerful performance of two people. A couple years later I got to briefly meet Brian and Amanda when they played an in-store show at the now-defunct Tower Records in San Diego. “Modern Moonlight” from Yes, Virginia gets me going, but it is the album’s “Sing” which is profound in too many ways. I put “Sing” in our wedding reception mix, and I’m pretty sure nobody noticed the cussing in the end; even one of my good friends thought I had put on the edited version. Nope!

14. Hammock – Kenotic: Although this album isn’t exactly new, I’ve only recently discovered it, and it’s currently my favourite ambient album, consistently in my rotation. I’m finding it harder and harder these days to read to music with lyrics in it, so Hammock always makes my iPod’s on-the-go playlists (along with Explosions in the Sky, The Album Leaf, Manuok, etc.).

15. Once: Music From the Motion Picture: I hope this isn’t cheating, but this movie’s soundtrack is phenomenal. The movie had such a profound effect on me (I was lucky enough to have watched this movie before hearing anything about it, having now heard that a lot of people think that the movie didn’t live up to the hype, but it’s hard to ‘hype’ up a movie whose subtleties are what makes it so “great”). Because the movie itself is made up of 60% music which tells the story, and because the soundtrack contains the full versions of all those songs, listening to this soundtrack is like experiencing the story all over again.

Mr. C. was totally an inspiration to me.  He worked us hard in the band room and on the streets and field as well–the first two years of high school we also did field show performances with him and that was probably the hardest I ever had to work in a band, both physically, mentally, and endurance-wise (due to his own time commitments we only did street marching the last couple years of high school, ’96-7, ’97-8).  We all took Mr. C. seriously because he was no joke, especially when it came to jazz.  He still practiced his trumpet every day, and was an accomplished professional jazz musician himself.  So when he told us that we needed to practice every day, we knew he wasn’t full of it.

Something I fondly remember is that Mr. C. made jazz mix tapes for us. Everybody had CD players then in the mid-’90′s, but CD burners didn’t exist yet, and so everybody still had tape players as well.  He made mix tapes of different jazz artists and we would sign up for different ones and check them out for a week and then pass them around to the others in the jazz band until we had exhausted his supply.

Most people know that I was a computer science major in my undergrad, but I actually started out as a music major for my first year of college, mainly under Mr. C.’s influence and inspiration.  I even skipped two semester of music theory because of passing an AP Music Theory test, which Mr. C. had clearly helped prepare me for by never ceasing to teach us scales and chord progressions in jazz band.  [I went through some weird stuff at the end of highschool and I became increasingly reserved, finally discovering that the 'perform' part of my music performance degree became nerve-racking and uninteresting, sadly, perhaps.  Hence the change to computer science.]

If I were still in San Diego, I would definitely go up to the Pasadena Rose Parade to see Mr. C.’s Cardinal Regime band play in it on New Year’s day (I hope my sister goes!).  My dad performed in the Rose Parade when he was in high school, so it would definitely be fun for all of us to go, if that were possible.

I’ve gone back to see Mr. C. a few times when my younger brother and sister have been in his band as well, and I’ve consistently been impressed with how he is both able to attract and refine talent in his bands to produce an amazing blend of sound.  Mr. C. clearly deserves his award, and I hope he teaches and continues to inspire for many years to come.

Yeah, it’s just a bit into Saturday, but I saw this earlier this week on XLR8R TV and this guy is awesome. That’s all.

Alfred Darlington, our favorite Los Angeles-based Victorian gentleman, is best known as the prolific producer Daedelus. Here, he charts the evolution of his love of electronic sounds and gives us a private performance on his famous future toy, the Monome.

Probably my favorite episode of XLR8R TV so far!

There’s also this which is sorta interesting, but I am more impressed for it’s “triggering” application of sounds/loops for live performances like illustrated above. (via Computer Music blog)

I couldn’t find a description for this video, but it’s pretty cool. More videos documenting the trial and error process before arriving at this stage can be found here.

This comes from my friend Dave-O. Just watch.

One of the oldest electronic instruments, the theremin in this video was used to do a cover of Gnarles Barkley’s “Crazy.”

Piggy-backing on my NIN (and related) posts from earlier this week, here is a video of one of the members of NIN (I’m not fan enough to know all their names) configuring a monome two fifty six in conjunction with the Jazz Mutant Lemur to control an upright piano.

You may remember that Daft Punk used four Lemurs to perform the back-up music to Kanye West’s “Stronger” at this year’s Grammy’s. Seems like a device that is based on Star Trek: The Next Generation-visuals…which I like.

Brian Viglione of The Dresden Dolls has a fun story to tell with pictures of how his contributions to the new NIN album went down.  You can read it here on their myspace blog or reprinted here on their livejournal community.

I had the privilege of seeing The Dresden Dolls open up for NIN back in May of 2005 and Brian is truly an amazing drummer; I’m stoked.  Oh yeah, Brian is on tracks 19 & 22 of Ghosts.

Well, since I don’t really have much time these days to do any kind of interesting posts I might as well not slack on posting some electronic music video! Above is a demonstration of the FantomX series of keyboards with their extremely slick Spanish Guitar patch loaded. When I go to Guitar Center I often tinker around with this keyboard because it is so slick, but as it is quite expensive, that is all I do. If that person’s playing seems to not entirely line up perfectly with the notes heard it is because with that particular patch, when you hit a key really hard it plays a slight trill on the note.

One time I actually almost bought one of these until I was reminded a) I didn’t have the money, and realized b) I could save thousands of dollars by getting a decent plain midi synth and just replicate all this stuff in soft synth.

Check out this music video for Autechre’s “Gantz Graf” song. It is a trip. Music visualizers for the future? (Apologies for the mediocre video quality.)

Also, for those familiar with Autechre’s style this is par for the course. For those who are not familiar, just say you’ve been warned.

In light of Herbie Hancock’s Album of the Year Grammy Award for his album River – The Joni Letters, I give you this appearance of Herbie on Sesamie Street in what seems like a galaxy a long time ago. The YouTube description reads, “Herbie Hancock and the Fairlight Synthesiser on Sesame Street, featuring a young Tatyana Ali of Fresh Prince of Bel Air fame.” The Fairlight is the first sampling synthesizer ever (popularly we saw a later version of the same concept in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off where he samples flu symptoms), something computer musicians take for granted today.

One of my all-time favorite jazz records is Herbie’s Head Hunters and he has been no slouch in musical experimentation such as his (in my opinion) amazing Dis is Da Drum release in the mid-90′s where at one point he uses a grasshopper to keep the beat.

“Hi Clive!”

My friends in In Reverent Fear solicited questions from their fans over on their Myspace page. In the video above, Jarrod and Jeff answered 10 of them, including a couple of mine!

Very much like how FL Studio works but with a touch screen. The ability to make the tracks repeat at different lengths in juxtaposition to the others is quite rad.

• Cake: I cannot stand their frontman’s voice at all. I appreciated the song–lyrically–that had to do with “All I want is a girl with a short skirt and a long jacket”, but it was still excruciating for me to listen to. To me, it doesn’t sound like the guy is singing at all but just kind of deadpanning the words. Does nothing for me.
• Beck: can’t stand his aesthetic, music, or lyrics. He seems like an absolutely pointless musician to me. I remember in 8th grade algebra when my classmate repeated “I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me” over and over again. I thought what he was singing was so stupid and perhaps ‘edgy’, but when soon heard the actual song, I thought it was basically living up to its own proclamations of being a loser song as well. Ever since then I’ve listened to his CDs here and there and his radio hits and his videos and it just seems like nothing is going on.
• Beastie Boys: perhaps the most annoying voices I’ve ever heard, and the music seems disappointing to me. I know these guys have been around for a while, but I’ve heard better hip hop and DJ riffs elsewhere. “Sabotage” had a cool vibe as far as the music video was concerned, but I was never really into anything else they’ve ever done. That ‘intergalactic planetary planetary intergalactic’ song grates on my ears.
• Interpol: can’t stand the frontman’s voice at all. Reminiscent of Cake’s deadpan monotone, these guys are supposedly really cool and indie, but I can’t get past the voice. What’s odd is that I absolute love VNV Nation, an industrial band whose lead singer kind of does this ‘monotoney’ thing, but I think their music and vocals are phenomenal. Their Matter + Form album is one of my all-time favorite industrial albums.

And a close runner up: Sublime. I understand that this is considered to be one of the classic 90′s Los Angeles (Long Beach) bands and that they were very influential in the ska/punk scene, and some of their music is actually pretty good, but something about the grittiness and content of their lyrics just really turns me off. Their music actually makes me think of driving through the smog of L.A.

Watch Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater melt your face with his progressive rock synth skills! I saw Dream Theater in concert a few years ago in San Diego. They were absolutely incredible.

Friggin’ awesome. From the Youtube description:

MooT BooXLe performing on the Synthesizers.com modular analogue synthesizer. This is not a perfect performance, as it was improvised in one go. Also functioning in this video are the Moogerfooger CP-251, the Roland Space Echo, and Reason drums. I was controlling the filter cutoff with a CV pedal. [...] Also, I wasn’t looking at the camera, in case you were wondering. I was watching computer monitors, which were showing visual feedback on what I was playing.

Check out the versatile effects that can be accomplished in realtime by the Glitch VST. This is probably one of the best free effects VST’s out there. It’s really easy to use and produces some amazing effects.

I used it on the glitchy parts of my “Jelly Poo Beans” song which can be found here. [Unfortunately, the website for Glitch seems to be down with the explanation: "Illformed is changing servers and changing direction. A new site will be online pretty soon." If you want a copy of it, drop me a comment or e-mail me and I can send you the latest version that I have.]

(via Morgan at Strictly Social)