Gaz and Nick nailed down a name for their IOS5 audio show, Sonic Touch. The previous episode is here. Sonicstate’s IOS5 news page is essential.
My current favorite hand audio app is Animoog for iPhone 4. The following video features the previously released Animoog for iPad.
A Tour of Animoog from Moog Music on Vimeo.
Comparisons with Pandora quickly come to mind when describing Senzari. Both services let you search for your favorite artist to create your own radio station which will mix that artist’s tracks and similar ones by other bands. Since algorithms aren’t perfect, you can still skip a few songs if you don’t like them.
However, Senzari’s CEO is quick in pointing out the differences between his service and Pandora’s. One of them is the depth of its catalogue: with 10 million songs, Senzari boasts “10 times more tracks than Pandora”. This is clearly a huge asset for Senzari – we all know how frustrating it is to fail to find an artist on these services. This is also an important element for a platform that hopes to please listeners all over the world, with different music tastes, including Brazilian and Hispanic music. (How Senzari Plans to Take On Pandora and Traditional Radio)
Sometime in my second hour of auditioning Senzari last week I realized its algorithm for choosing music sucked. I suppose I should qualify this impressions by adding ‘for my purposes.’ After all, my purpose, as long as I’m going to be subjected to some kind of algorithm, is to enlist it to aid a serendipitous journey of discovery.
Pandora leverages the Musical Genome Project to great effect. The Pandora user loads in multiple “seed” choices when initializing and developing a custom radio station. This really revs up the subsequent unwinding of the algorithm’s musical choice-making. It is easy to develop custom stations that step off trail.
Whereas Senzari’s current algorithm fails. To set-up a station you select a single artist. There’s no way, yet, to refine this initial choice. The ensuing broadcast set reflects this ‘monological’ approach.
Presumably, refinement of this “single factor” comes with plugging in social factors gleaned automatically from Facebook friends on Senzari. Whatever…
I started with rock choices, and started stations with the seed of The Byrds, then of Quicksilver Messenger Service. Initially The Byrds station reflected the folk rock core of the early Byrds, ignored the group’s country-rock breakthrough, and, then morphed into a mostly non-stop 1965-1967 pop hit machine, interspersed with minor tracks from Roger McGuinn and Stephen Stills. My first thought? Way too much of the machine part involved in executing the algorithm was showing through.
My Jellyfish station cycled through Jellyfish and XTC. Inexplicable. Likewise, the Ry Cooder stations cycled through about ten artists. Senzari didn’t get the AFrican core of Abdullah Ibrahim or Randy Weston. The most successful station I created was the one with experimental guitarist Aidan Baker, but only Baker’s context and musical relations are not very familiar to me.
Nor could Senzari make a station from Amos Garrett or The Quarter After. I stopped trying to stump it when it went 0-2.
Next I decided to challenge the obviously thin formula by introducing two left field seeds, Pauline Oliveros, and, Bill Laswell. In both cases, the test I posed to the darn algorithm. was to travel down the various branches implicit in the substantial diversity on offer by Oliveros and, then, Laswell.
Here’s what the formula spun on the Pauline Oliveros station:
Gordon Mumma
Deep Listening Band
Gordon Mumma
Henry Cowell
Pauline Oliveros
Charlemagne Palestine
Henry Cowell
Terry Riley
Pauline Oliveros
repeat: Gordon Mumma
Charlemagne Palestine
Deep Listening Band
Lou Harrison
Harry Partch
Pauline Oliveros
Oliver Messiaen
Gordon Mumma
On one hand this provided an intriguing aural trip. On the other hand, the formula revisited the same records by Mumma and The Deep Listening Band and Henry Cowell, and so shouted out to me how stupid it is, as a musical set-inducing piece of programming.
The Laswell set was even more narrow, and, as a ‘machine take’ purportedly able to access hundreds of recordings related to the various genre preoccupations of Bill Laswell, laying into Jah Wobble and Burnt Friedman for seven of the first twelve tracks was ludicrous and revealing.
Burnt Friedman
Jah Wobble
Praxis
Bill Laswell
Burnt Friedman
Bill Laswell
Muslimgauze
Jah Wobble
Burnt Friedman
Jah Wobble
Material
Burnt Friedman
Senzari won’t be damaging Pandora based in their having a superior music-choosing technology. For me, if there are sensitive muso types laboring for Senzari, their day hasn’t arrived. The musical results sound random, and in comparison to Pandora, Senzari’s hype is cynical.
However, the archival photographs which get plugged into the broadcast interface are wonderful.
Deep Listening Band
Buffalo Springfield
1 Glenn Jones – Menotomy River Blues 1:30
2 Barn Owl – Midnight Tide 5:16
3 Ellen Fullman – Flowers 9:56
4 Erik Wollo – Silent Currents 2, Part 6 3:15
5 Julia Holter – The Falling Age 9:14
6 Tim Hecker – Sketch 3 1:20
7 Trouble Books & Mark McGuire – Life in a Peaceful New World 4:47
8 Aidan Baker & Kevin Micka – Figures 14:42
9 A Produce & Loren Nerell – String Theory 3:54
10 Nauseef, Mori, Parker, Laswell – Majuu 3:33
11 thisquietarmy – The Pacific Theater 11:58
Imagine what a very long slow sweep of a wide brush laden with several shades of paint looks like. This mix captures a sweep of slow music, a favorite genre known–otherwise–by different labels. Yet, as you have the opportunity to hear in this bringing together of some of my favorite brush strokes from recordings of the last year or so, it all could be termed sound painting too.
1 Kaysha | Bien plus fort que les mots 4:03
2 Tiê | Já É Tarde 2:45
3 Aurelio | Bisien Nu 3:35
4 Malika Zarra | Leela 4:24
5 Anelis | Bola com os amigos 4:47
6 Hindi Zahra | The Man I Love (Unplugged) 3:19
7 Banco de Gaia | Farewell Ferengistan 6:13
8 Chico Barque | Nina 3:07
9 Hamilton de Holanda & Andre Mehmari | Bebê 1:34
10 Menahan Street Band | Make the Road by Walking 2:59
11 Seu Jorge & Almaz | Cristina (Vou Ver Cristina) 3:09
12 Boban i Marko Markovi Orchestra | Caravan 3:18
13 Dengue Fever | Family Business 3:38
14 Arat Kilo (f. Rokia Traoré) | Get A Chew 6:39
15 Jadid Ensemble | Llamar 3:43
16 Karsh Kale | Man On Fire 4:41
17 Sussan Deyhim | Fire Within 6:07
18 Hazmat Modine & Kronos Quartet | Dead Crow 3:45
‘thrilling songs recap’ part one, World music. Lots to dance to here!
Bonus, Iness Mezel.
320kbs mp3 iTunes/IPod ready Rapidshare
Matana Roberts
…kind of a housekeeping note. This year I am much more prepared to assess and feature my favorite recordings of the year. The principle change is, like similarly indulgent net musos, I’ve set the end point for the year in music to be the end of November. This outs my own efforts more than a month ahead of where such efforts usually are at.
Short of providing the year-end wrap up, I’m also going to present a series of Dub Collision podcasts/mixes that throw together individual tracks I’ve been struck by; sort of a teaser you can download and enjoy.
1 Allman Brothers – One Way Out 5:08
2 Bob Dylan & Grateful Dead – Gotta Serve Somebody 5:50
3 Matthew Sweet – Back Of A Car (Big Star) 2:32
4 Willie DeVille – Miracle 4:50
5 Jesse Ed Davis – Washita Love Child 3:49
6 ‘Til Tuesday – Voices Carry 4:20
7 Dinosaur Jr. – Anodyne 4:49
8 True Believers – Hard Road 4:04
9 Georgia Satellites – Red Light 2:53
10 Better Days – Too Many Drivers 3:22
11 Lynyrd Skynyrd – Call Me The Breeze 5:58
12 Los Lobos – Route 90 3:22
13 Cream ’2007 – Crossroads 4:25
14 John Hiatt – The Crush 4:11
15 Robert Palmer – Sneakin’ Sally Thru The Alley 4:25
16 Little Feat – Apolitical Blues 3:49
17 James Gang – Walk Away 3:35
18 Pete Townsend – Gonna Get Ya 6:22
Drivin’ tunes for my bro.
download 320kbs mp3 iPod ready Rapidshare
The Staves; debut due next year; free tastes arrived already
If you had asked, me say about five years ago, whether or not the hippie folk rock of my youth would ever burst through into a completely contemporary iteration, I would have cynically reminded you music culturistas have sustained their reaction against so-called hippie music for twenty-five years.
This reaction has been going on so long that we can nowadays find it remarkable (for example) that Wilco or The Jayhawks, folk rock exponents in the second wave, have managed to ply their trade on the margins of guilded respectability for over 20 years. Face it: only with guilded respectability is the listener relieved of being accused of favoring (at least) mildly uncool, bourgeois, regressive musical artistry.
Then, amazingly, the reaction dissipated without issuing even an audible gasp. Alternately, and more likely, I haven’t been paying anywhere near enough attention. Yes, I was rather struck by the debut of The Fleet Foxes.
Upshot is I get it–it’s the new golden age. I’m now tracking its antecedents beyond the lucky accidents, (such as Or, The Whale, Last Town Chorus,) I’ve gathered up over the years.
Dawes, Nothing Is Wrong. Laurel Canyon soft rock, it is said, is on the up and up. This is funny branding from the perspective of those long in the tooth. Wait, has Silver Lake fallen to the side?
However, the Dawes’ second record is quite entertaining, and, the lead video here is at once straight-forward and deliciously laced with odd visual references.
Compare this with the movie Laurel Canyon from 2002, a flick itself a very long way from somebody deciding whether or not Graham Nash is the ticket.
Follow Kamelmauz
