necessary bitching? maybe... i'm not sure if i got much out of that article. but simon r's piece on the same topic is definitely good reading.

i am the first to admit that i've spent the last four years or so as an unabashed "channel surfer" wrt the music i listen to. ever since discovering freakytrigger and ilm, i've been cramming new shit in my ears about as fast as i can, whether i can digest it or not. some stuff sticks, some doesn't, and i move on. it does get kind of tiring at times, though.

the genre-ist escape route is very appealing, but i just don't think i could do it. "everything is immenent" and all that, but i don't know if i could get everything i want to out of music by narrowing my focus to one specific (sub (sub-sub?)) genre, and just becoming that obsessed.

also, i fucking love pop, and i am not about to give that up. so given a genre to pick, i'd cop out and pick pop. pop-as-genre is a somewhat dodgy concept in general, but it seems particularly so here. it is by definition (or one of them, at any rate) ominivorous, anything goes, so maybe it is not a valid genre to consider wrt this problem, as becoming a pop genre-ist gains (or rather, excludes you) nothing, or at least very little. but if it's not, then i am completely screwed, reynold's out is no good for me and i am stuck being a dilettante. oh well, i guess. maybe i just need more filters. or maybe i just need to be more aggressive about what i just won't listen to. as tim finney points out, good "eclectic" dj's cope with the overload by "pinpoint[ing] what should not be played with greater precision than anyone else."

so... has anyone tried going genre rather than general? if so, is it worth it? and what genres? and how hardcore were/are you about it?

freiland makes a track. justus köhncke "remixes" freiland, dj koze remixes justus, isolée remixes international pony (aka koze), freeform five remix isoée, richard x remixes freeform five, mylo remixes annie (richard x production), rex the dog remixes mylo. nobody remixes rex the dog. what would be the point? though wolfgang v. (aka freiland aka...) did release his records...

eccentric mathematical genius(?) and egotistical quasi-crackpot stephen wolfram has unleashed wolfram tones, an online applet for instantly generating unique musical compositions in 15 different styles (eg classical, country, dance, r&b...) apparently based on ideas discussed in his book a new kind of science. when i first read about this on slashdot, i was quite excited and already wondering what title i might give to my first 12".

what a gyp! the music generated by this program is the crappiest randomly generated midi(?) music i've ever heard. seriously, this shit would have been unimpressive in the 1980's. my cat (rip) consistently 'generated' better music by walking across my 61-key casio back in the day.

if this is an audio representation of the science contained in that behemoth of a book, it's no wonder the rest of the scientific community has been so slow to follow up on it.

on a more positive note, the 'compositions' generated in the country style are genuinely hysterical.

returns? is this mylo remix new, or am i just out of the loop?

not a fan in general, but for some reason she is so so remixable.

one of the songs that dominated last year for me. finally got around to picking it up on vinyl, and since the rip floating around is like 128k and even my beat-up ears can tell that it sounds kind of distorted i decided to digitize a copy myself. this is an art in which i have almost no experience so it might not sound all that much better but whatever, it's mine and i like it. oh yeah, it's eq'd a little low, so you might need to crank up the volume.

i finally got around to reading this fine post about moonbootica over at the seldom updated House is a Feeling. i am completely obsessed with the moonbootica remix of luomo's tessio - probably my favorite track that i don't have on the shelf (anyone know where i can buy the 12" online?). i haven't heard or paid much attention to any other moonbootica products, but i'm completely jazzed about exploring their catalogue thanks to this essay.

any suggestions regarding where to start? the House is a Feeling post is almost too comprehensive to provide a clear point of departure, but the DJ Sounds Good mix sounds promising (and good).

...or black people, apparently. but i give a fuck about the new kanye west album late registration. i don't like it as much as i immediately liked last year's the college dropout, but that could change, since i haven't listened much to the back half. it's sonically dense - some might even say over-produced, but that doesn't bother me in the least.

my early favorite from the album is gold digger, complete with guest appearance by jamie foxx. it's a bit simpler than a lot of the other songs, relying primarily on a sample of jamie does ray, a big beat, and a single repeated couplet for the chorus. the song has high potential for getting stuck in one's head, and i suppose that's what i like about it.

just got this in the mail today (new mix by dan selzer and mike simonetti) and have already played it three times. mmm... very nice.

one of the reasons i love djs and buy their mix cds is that they are such wonderful information processing devices. there is soooooo much music out there, and even in the genres i'm really into there is no way i'll even get close to listening to it all. so in some sense that's what the dj/mix cd is to me: a black box, an obscenely tasteful selection & filtering mechanism whose inner workings i don't understand but who's output i most definitely do. and hot damn did this one do it for me.

actually, lately i've been ambushed by a buch of killer mixes: caps&jones on lemon-red, that old hollertronix tape, freeform five's misch masch, ronan's backlash minimize 05... i feel like i can't even keep up with the amount of pre-filtered output i consume, let alone the ocean of 12"s out there.

back to the selzer/simonetti joint: it is great. 90% of the tunes on there i had never heard before and probably never would have, and now i can't imagine living without them; i can see how one might get addcted to crate-digging rare disco & postpunk. also, the mix peaks on my new favorite song ever, so extra points for that. seriously, this shit is great and IT'S FOUR DOLLARS! tonto, jump on it.

if you feel like getting a taste for what the mix is like but are too goddamn cheap to shell out four bucks, dudes did a set on beats in space (april 28th), i think it's still up.

if you're too much of a little bitch to even download the free mix, at least listen to this song, which i caught on there and was taken with enough to track down.

the rockist straw-man totally does exist! i was talking to someone about music last night, the conversation went roughly like this:

him: music with guitars is good and better than music without guitars. electronic music is "fake".

me: you are an idiot.

except it lasted for half an hour. that was the basic content, though.

i'm sure geeks post ipod battery tests on their geeky weblogs all the time, so here is my contribution. i've read a lot of horror stories about the deterioration of ipod batteries and apple's recent settlement with customers (most of this pertains to early generation ipods, i think). last night, on a whim, i decided to test my ipod (20gb click wheel) battery.

i didn't plan this out very well (or at all) - after letting it charge to full, i unplugged it from my powerbook at 9:30 pm, turned it on, and let it go. when i woke up this morning at 7:50 am, it was still going, and i've been monitoring it since i got out of the shower at about 8:15.

here are the details of the test:
the apple ear bud headphones were plugged in about 5 min after starting. the play mode was set to "shuffle songs" and the volume was about 65% for the duration of the trial. the led was activated 4 times and stayed on for 2 seconds each time.

here are the results:
the ipod finally ran out of juice at 10:20 am. thus, the battery lasted for 12 hrs and 50 min. the battery indicator displayed an "empty" battery for the last 75 min. the ipod played a total of 191 complete mp3s. (corresondingly, the average track duration was about 4.03 min.) the 192nd track, which was playing when the ipod finally quit, was the larry levan remix of central line's walking into sunshine. btw, this is a great remix and you should definitely listen to it if you haven't.

overall, i'm very happy with the results of this test, especially since i have generally ignored apple's suggestions for extending battery life. i am now at ease, knowing that my ipod battery is not a dud. (unfortunately, my powerbook battery is a different story entirely.)

i love queen. most of their 70s hits - eg bohemian rhapsody, another one bites the dust, killer queen (i don't really care for we will rock you, but you may include it here if you like) - are utterly bizarre and fantastic anthems. but i think queen really came into their own in the 80s. my favorite queen song is radio ga ga hands down. the primitive, glitchy synths and over-produced drums meld perfectly with the bombastic guitar and vocals to create the ultimate hybrid of synth-pop and hair metal. how this song manages to be so schmaltzy and nostalgic with gibberish lyrics like "all we hear is radio ga ga, radio goo goo" is a mystery to me.

and don't get me started on the flash gordon ost (most underrated sound track ever? i'll get a track up soon).