Tuva-pop
The popularity of Tuvan overtone-singing has been growing for nearly two decades. You've probably heard it in movies and adverts. I've always liked it. I've seen Huun Huur Tuu in concert and, I have a compilation of traditional and recent stuff but, I wonder if things are going too far. It seems like Yat-kha is just doing covers of Western music with overtones thrown in. I don't object to experimentation. Yenisei-punk was fiendishly boss and the combination of blues and Tuvan-overtones was so staggeringly appropriate that key laws of physics would fail if it didn't happen. But doing Joy Division covers is not really that compelling to me.
Posted by Pace Arko at 11:27 PM on July 10, 2005
It's weird to see things revive
Now I'm truly old. I've lived to see punk and thrash return to the station formerly known as KCMU. I guess the kids think it's hip to be angry again. I'm glad! I was getting completely, aardvarkly sick of the whiney, neo-paisley, post-cobain stuff that passes for college radio these days. It stopped being fun after Hammerbox broke up. Good to see the hyperactivity return.
Still it's kind of weird to think there isn't any new sounds out there to replace the tired stuff now. Punk is fun but revivials do not creativity make.
Posted by Pace Arko at 8:32 PM on May 1, 2005
There are still things that are impossible to find on the Internet.
For example, I tried searching for the lyrics to Chris Knox's "Flaky Pastry" with no success. Damn. I really wanted to know those lyrics. The connection might be weak, but I blame the Music Industry's paranoia about intellectual property for this!
Posted by Pace Arko at 4:29 PM on January 29, 2004
Music I like, the short list.
A friend recently sent me and others a mail asking what sort of music we liked. As opposed to taking up a mail thread with my list, I decided to preserve one here for posterity. Read on:
Continue reading "Music I like, the short list." »
Posted by Pace Arko at 5:54 AM on October 24, 2003
Don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing--
Ziff pointed to the site of the band he plays bass in, The Moonlighters. They go for that retro, latin, swing, jazz feel and include stuff from the neo-swing revival.
As an old school ska and punk fan, I agree, pop music needs a lot more horns and accordians.
Posted by Pace Arko at 2:17 PM on July 19, 2003
The music of computer games
It occurred to me last night, as I was playing NWN with some friends, that the background music of computer games has improved a great deal over the last 15 years. No more tinny, grating MIDI files being played on very simple sound cards. I sometimes wonder if the music of Age of Empires might be as memorable as all the pop hits of previous decades are. Of course the pop hits of previous decades are hardly high brow (Assuming that's something that anything really wants to be.) but it says something about how bad computer game music was to say that it's reached this level now.
Posted by Pace Arko at 3:25 PM on May 2, 2003
Electronica and My Growing Fame.
- My site has become a minor example of table-free, three column layout.
- Just yesterday I learned who created the Dr. Who theme music way back in 1963: Delia Derbyshire. Ms. Derbyshire, a scholar of music, mathematics and electronics, was one of the early pioneers of electronic music.
- Someone notes my complaints about Flash.
Posted by Pace Arko at 12:05 PM on January 17, 2003
Joe, we hardly knew ya
Posted by Pace Arko at 6:55 PM on December 24, 2002
Teeth like Hotels on the Florida Coastline
I don't know--in between work assignments and thinking about recent events for some odd reason Laurie Anderson appeared in my brain. I, being the pretentious geek that I was, listened to a lot of her stuff back in the early Eighties. I don't know how that association works.
Posted by Pace Arko at 11:17 AM on September 18, 2001
Indestructable!
Listening to South African Rhythm Riot (The Indestructable Beat of Soweto Volume 6) right now. Feeling very transcendent. I guess you'd have to be me here now but, I really believe this stuff is the best damn music on the planet currently. If this stuff doesn't move you, you're already dead.
Posted by Pace Arko at 10:58 AM on April 12, 2001
What I Have to Say About Music
Or, how a young man was warped by endless exposure to college radio
When I was a kid I really couldn't make up my mind about music. Like a lot of kids, I was a knee-jerk nonconformist and as such couldn't possibly mellow out enough to admit that I liked the stuff that my friends were listening to. No, I had to be different (even though I didn't viscerally realize what a paradox nonconformity was). So I vehemently pronounced my fondness for European classical music while all my friends were rocking out to the Led Zeppelin and Earth, Wind and Fire. I was determined to like a kind of music my friends would hate.
Continue reading "What I Have to Say About Music" »
Posted by Pace Arko at 8:01 AM on February 21, 2000