Democracy Now 9-26-2014 Headlines. [Democracy Now]
Statement from Grace Lee Boggs’ Bedside – “I am coming to the end of a long journey…” [Angry Asian Man]
Katie Couric interview US Attorney General Eric Holder, who has announced a his step down from the position
U.S. settlement with Navajo Nation is largest ever for a tribe. [LA Times]
Native tribes from Canada, U.S. sign treaty to restore bison to Great Plains. [CTV]
This Indian Does Not Owe You – Just because you’re curious about my ancestry, my beliefs, and my experiences doesn’t mean I owe you answers. – By Elissa Washuta. [Buzzfeed]
Digging, ‘isolation’: U.S. man’s life in N. Korea prison. [USA Today]
Despite warnings, more Western tourists are traveling to North Korea. [LA Times]
Six banned Middle Eastern books you should read. [Vice]
Denver area students walk out of school in protest. [Yahoo]
Can blogging be academically valuable? Seven reasons for thinking it might be. [Disinfo]
15 lessons from 15 years of blogging. [BoingBoing]
Why So Many Ph.D.s Are On Food Stamps. [NPR]
Precrastination: Worse Than Procrastination? – When just doing something wastes more time than not doing anything. [The Atlantic]
The internet’s population, mapped by nationality. [BoingBoing]
ELLO: Could This Be The End of Facebook? [Disinfo]
Uber Secrets: 18 things you didn’t know about Uber or Lyft – and some you wish you still didn’t. [Yahoo]
Does Silicon Valley Have a Contract-Worker Problem? [NY Mag]
I Had a Stroke at 33 – On New Year’s Eve 2007, a clot blocked one half of my brain from the other. My reality would never be the same again. By Christine Hyung-Oak Lee. [Buzzfeed]
Talk show host Skip E. Lowe dies at 85. [Yahoo]
RBMA presents Diggin’ In The Carts: Episode 4 – The Cool Kid
– Via RBMA.
Interview: Streets of Rage’s Yuzo Koshiro – Celebrated by Nintendo Power as “arguably the greatest game-music composer of the 16-bit age,” Yuzo Koshiro was responsible for the innovative Streets of Rage soundtracks – tunes directly inspired by his time spent in Tokyo’s nightclubs. In this edited and condensed interview, taken from our sit-downs with him during the filming of our video game music documentary series Diggin’ In The Carts, we found out plenty about the inspirations and compositions. [RBMA]
Interview: Street Fighter II’s Yoko Shimomura – Yoko Shimomura’s comical tone for Street Fighter II didn’t fit the normal Capcom style, but her decision to re-imagine the music of each character’s country helped make its soundtrack iconic. In this extended interview from our Diggin’ In The Carts series, Shimomura talks about her early struggles in composing video game music, as well as some behind-the-scenes stories of Street Fighter II. [RBMA]
RBMA presents Diggin’ In The Carts – Hidden Levels – Yoko Shimomura (Street Fighter II) & Manami Matsumae (Megaman) on Capcom
RBMA presents Diggin’ In The Carts – Hidden Levels – Fatima Al Qadiri on Castlevania
RBMA presents Diggin’ In The Carts – Hidden Levels – Kode9 on 8 Bit music
Anamanaguchi Video Game Mix
New York’s powered-up punk pop quartet select the video game soundtracks that inspire their manic end-of-level anthems.
These four NYC-based musicians have been playing together since 2004, harnessing the circuitry of a hacked 1985 Nintendo NES to create their vision of pixelated anthemic power pop. The quartet of Peter Berkman, bassist James DeVito, guitarist Ary Warnaar and drummer Luke Silas subvert the classic indie rock formation with layers of NES sound effects, merging all the drama of coming-of-age nights on the town and end-of-level bosses into one glorious rainbow road. From their very first album Dawn Metropolis, Anamanaguchi have been exploring the rich tapestry of the 8-bit universe, and not just musically, but also using the band as a vehicle to explore internet art, games, videos, lenticular graphics, and other parallel worlds where the virtual and the everyday collide. Their second LP saw them write the soundtrack for the video game adaption of the Scott Pilgrim graphic novels, while they took their third album Endless Fantasy to Kickstarter, and won themselves creative freedom with over $275,000 in pledges.
Hally Video Game Mix
Tokyo’s chiptune pioneer Hally selects some of his favourite video game anthems through the years.
Chiptune pioneer J. Haliyama aka Hally has been pushing Yamaha’s FM chips to their limits since the 80s, co-opting the crunchy character of hacked Famicoms to produce crystalline pop with a modern twist on a pixelated past. As part of chip-pop duo JulieHally, and the NSF Music Collective alongside Bun, Tappy and Robokabuto, Hally has championed 8-bit music in all its forms, from cavernous dub, to overloaded chip-noise without losing a life. The Tokyo-based musician helped compile Chiptuned Rockman, a collection of 8-bit Mega Man renditions and remakes, as well as remixing Manami Matsumae’s Nitro Rider theme for the Rockman 10 Original Soundtrack. Hally also built the VORC.org site, a hub for the chiptune community to share their tracks, and is also releases regularly on Kamishimo Records, one of Japan’s leading chip music labels.
Ikonika Video Game Mix
The ever-reliable producer and Hyperdub key figure picks some of the video game soundtracks that have shaped her sound.
Sara Abdel-Hamid aka Ikonika from South West London grew up listening to hardcore and post punk while her elder sisters obsessed about hip hop. So for her, Dilla and Dillinger Escape Plan were next-door neighbours from the get-go. After starting out producing hip hop, the dubstep bug bit her hard in 2006. Her musical tastes, ranging from Pretty Girls Make Graves to Burial, are reflected in her music: not in any kind of forced fusion of sounds, but in productions that move from the sweetly melodic to atonal clang effortlessly. This approach made her a natural addition to the Hyperdub roster, with Kode9 first inviting her to release a 12″ on the label before he coaxed her into thinking about what an Ikonika album might sound like. The results, on Contact, Love, Want, Have, were as odd and iconic as anyone might have wished for, and set the tone for further explorations on her follow up Aerotropolis. Expect Ikonika to keep pushing things forward (and sideways) in the years to come.
J Rocc Video Game Mix
The world famous Beat Junkie digs through pixelated classics and 8-bit b-boy anthems.
A (Not At All Definitive) Guide to Mastering – We’ll be hitting the lecture couch again in just a few days when we kick off Red Bull Music Academy in New York. Over the past 15 years, we’ve hosted some of the finest mastering engineers in the world. They’re names you may not immediately recognize, but the records they’ve worked on are. Among them? Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, Jay-Z’sThe Blueprint and Nirvana’s Nevermind. There were many recurring themes and lessons from these lectures, so we’ve gone ahead and distilled some of that knowledge into one place. (If you’d like to watch the full lectures, simply click on the first instance of each engineers name.) [RBMA]
House Music Shop Details – Mark Richardson, the mastering engineer behind some of house music’s most beloved tracks. [RBMA]
Nightclubbing: San Francisco’s Trocadero Transfer – A history of San Francisco’s sleaziest club. [RBMA]
Red Bull Music Academy Tokyo 2014 events schedule and tickets. [RBMA]
Asian Female Hip Hop PRODUCER Making Beat mpc 2000xl – 90s Groove
– Nice beats. For more check her Youtube channel KayKayONTHEBEATZ.
The evolution of Flying Lotus. [Noisey]
Nardwuar vs. Whitney Cummings
Nardwuar vs. Aziz Ansari
The strange story of what happened immediately after SNL’s weirdest sketch. [Cinema Blend]
From ‘Fight Club‘ to ‘The Phantom Menace‘: Looking back on the mixed legacy of Hollywood’s class of 1999. [Yahoo]
Feast your eyes on these awesome Blaxploitation movie posters. [Disinfo]
Edward S. Curtis’ Native American photographs. [Juxtapoz]
The black Victorians: astonishing portraits unseen for 120 years – From the African Choir posing like Vogue models to an Abyssinian prince adopted by an explorer, a new exhibition spotlights the first black people ever photographed in Britain. [The Guardian]
Data bending with Audacity. [hellocatfood]
‘Matte’ Magazine presents Pixy (Yijun Liao) – NSFW. [Vice]
Welcome To Noisey Jamaica II – Episode 1/6
Noisey – NOLA: Life, Death, & Heavy Blues from the Bayou (Episode 1)
Noisey – NOLA: Life, Death, & Heavy Blues from the Bayou (Episode 2)
Vice – Big Night Out – Ibiza
NPR Microphone Check – Andre 3000: ‘You Can Do Anything From Atlanta’
– Via NPR.
The Story Of ‘A Love Supreme’ (John Coltrane). [NPR]
Femi Kuti: ‘Africa needs to love Africa’ – The Nigerian musician – son of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti – on what inspires and frustrates him about his country today. [Aljazeera]
PC Music: Are they really the worst thing ever to happen to dance music? [Vice]
A Rational Conversation: Is PC Music Pop Or Is It ‘Pop’? [NPR]
How college students listen – One nation, under spotify. [Pitchfork]
Annie Lennox at Age 60: A Q&A About Fame, Feminism, and ‘Nostalgia’. [Yahoo]
Urban Outfitters is now the world’s biggest seller of vinyl. [Stereogum]
The Lost Art Of Cratedigging – Discovering rare vinyl once inspired music producers. Not anymore. [Medium]
NPR’s Microphone Check – “The Stories of Notorious B.I.G.” Panel
– Via NPR.
