Brian Eno Tribute

For those that will tolerate more than fifteen minutes of conversation with me, you may know that I tend to geek out on modern music history from time to time (for instance this and this and this). In furtherance of this pursuit, I came across an article this morning, titled Five Things Your Favorite Indie Band Owes to Brian Eno, which details a few of the many influences that Brian Eno has had on modern indie music. Which is cool, 'cause up until this point, I didn't have a fucking clue who Brian Eno was. Boy was my face red. Here's a bit of what I didn't know:

Eno famously developed his conception of ambient music while recuperating from a car accident. Stuck in his hospital bed, he couldn't adjust the volume of some music a friend had brought him. After struggling for a while to hear it, he realized it was better to just let it meld with all the other sounds in the room. (He may also have been on a shit-ton of morphine.)

Among other things, this confirms one of my long held but controversial beliefs that artists do drugs, and sometimes it works out pretty good. [UPDATE: It also works for Adele.]

The article also included a number of tracks to help demonstrate five influences identified, which include i) ambient soundscapes (Tracks 1 and 2), ii) theatrical flamboyance (Tracks 3 and 4), iii) songs as collages (Tracks 5 and 6), iv) the use of guitar with echo and swirl to create awesome (it's pretty scientific) (Tracks 7 and 8), and v) a methodical, intellectual approach to creativity (Tracks 9 and 10).

Coincidentally, Eno's got a new album out called Drums Between the Bells. You can check it out on Rolling Stone.

Justin Bieber, so hot right now

So, I found some time today morning to dick around on the iPhone for a few minutes. A fellow psych intern posted on facebook a link to this article describing a Justin Bieber song that actually sounded pretty good if you had the resources to slow it down by about a factor of 8.

Now I know what you're thinking, Mander. "But wait, Justin Bieber sounds mindblowingly awesome enough normal, assholes." And you're right, but...

I checked it out. It's actually pretty interesting. If you download the MP3 and play it on Windows Media Player (you may remember this from the pre-iTunes era that we all enjoyed during our first years of college), you can speed it up using the available enhancements, verifying for yourself at least the similarity between the downloaded track and the pop single recorded by Justin Bieber.

I'm not here to draw lines between drafts, that's entirely Rusty's job. But, it was worth the wait between initially catching wind of the thing at 0945, and finally getting the opportunity to explore it at 2020. Vague, unhelpful references to post-rock icons notwithstanding, it's still worth the download.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/great-job-internet-justin-bieber-sounds-amazing-wh,44254/

New Radiohead EP

Strap on your rubber underpants, cuz you're all gonna bust a collective nut. Here goes . . . There is talk of a new 5 song EP coming out soon. One of the songs, "These Are My Twisted Words" was leaked last week. As a result, Radiohead released a second song, "Harry Patch (In Memory of)" a couple days later. They can both be downloaded at Radiohead's website or found elsewhere on the Google.

http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/

"These Are My Twisted Words" is you're standard, solid Radiohead. "Harry Patch" is awesome. Very Sigur Ros-ish. Lots of strings and very relaxing. Check it out.