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Me Myself&I Music

Amber Mark

Making love to my ears right now.

(I still think a 10-track album is better than a 15+ ones, but whatever)

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Music

Don’t say goodnight

It’s just so beautiful. That ample sound, that beat (sampled by Dilla, of course), those chords. Mmmh.

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Music

My Number One

I just have a thing for that one. Although it doesn’t sound like the real Paramore, I think it just so perfectly encapsulates the 00s pop metal stuff. Catchy, well produced, screaming but also kind of relaxed? Sure no crazy breaks, no style changes, just the same good thing for 3:50mn.

Also it makes me push on my skateboard to go faster. Whatever works, works.

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Audio&Games Music

Music and sound are simply supreme

Lots of nostalgia happening in games right now with the new GTA announcement.

Invariably, it comes down to music. GTA III, GTA Vice City were not that great of games. But Vice City introduced good 80s music to millions of dudes and that’s all they really remember fifteen years later.

You can swap GTA for Minecraft. Or Mario. Or Halo. Music and sound design shape memories like nothing else. It makes the past look better than it was.

Everything visual blurs in our memories. Considering how much effort is poured into textures, animation and 3D models, what a waste.

A distinctive sound, or melody will unearth the most pristine snapshot of that time. And those sounds can be created in an instant. Audio is the closest thing to actual magic.

I recently recovered a one hour and half recording of a dinner with my parents, sister and grandparents from I think 1999 or 2000. I remember that I was testing the microphone quality. Well, it’s really good. I can hear everyone’s voice. Utensils on the table. The dog’s collar and its movements.

It is so powerful, I’ve only been speechless listening to it once.

Hearing my grandparents (both have passed away) talk and laugh is a million times more powerful than looking at a picture of them. Video is cool, but sound is so pure; I can reconstruct the scene in my mind with the recording. It was a winter evening. I know where I was sitting and where everyone was. Grandma tells me how I should try to go door to door to get hired and I can almost remember what I was thinking in that moment.

Sound and smell are just wired at a lower, deeper level than vision.

Unless we wildly genetically change, reading a book while listening to music will always be some of the best thing you can do, ever. ‘love that.

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Music

Bandcamp falling

A bit sad, disturbing and violent.

It’s about to be over. Bandcamp is in the process of being sold. Half of their employees have been laid off.

Bandcamp has been profitable for years. I hoped that Epic buying them would keep them away from hard times, and could actually be a nice synergy. Goddamn.

Fortnite was making $1M a day on one single platform in 2018, and so that’s why Epic didn’t have any money left in 2023 to keep an already profitable business under its wing.

FOH

Categories
Music

Isley

Who Loves You Better just came up on my sound system and, I’m reminded how great the Isley Brothers are at making music and grooves. Mmhmm.

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Music

2000 music

Going through a bunch of music from 2000. It’s not good.

It wasn’t then! But we were just looking where this would go. For instance UK Garage, seemed to be really cool. That 2 Step vibe? Yessir.

By 2001 it was dead though. Gimmicky. No substance. Horrendous remixes.

I had those compilations from Radio Nova, Nova Tunes. I had the first three volumes, which were very much underwhelming at that time and are just sad today. Producers discovering filters and sampling, looking at their expensive Genelec, that’s all I can think about when listening to them now.

Same with Kruder Dorfmeister. Every artist or edgy person in Europe had that album. Every single one of them. I just listened to it skipping all songs one by one because it’s indulgent or boring or plain lame.

I think it demonstrates that musicality is everything; production value in sound doesn’t add that much. It was impressive sound at that time, but musically, it was poor.

It still is.

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Music

Azealia Banks

Great interview of the artist.

I wrote about her before and I think that part is accurate:

She has her own way of eating words, changing her accent, inventing meaning and breaking lyrics convention while empowering and dissing over dance music. It’s overwhelming, dense and I love it.

I’m listening to Paradiso from her Fantasea mixtape and it’s just 49 seconds to transition between songs—an interlude but I feel like she could go on for 6 minutes empowering women or trashing niggas, or the opposite or both, and I would just bop my head all along.

I think I respect the hell out of her for being so 1,000% without this pretending veneer that is so often all over the place with artists these days.

I still so want to see what I could come up with collaborating with her.

Anyway looking forward to her 70ish new songs. I hope she can release her new music on Bandcamp and get most of the money. She deserves.

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Me Myself&I Music

RE Dilla

The book never ever mentions Go Go music but that’s a huge influence: the groove’s steadiness and inner play on too soon, too far kicks and snares, is so much part of its DNA.

It shouldn’t work well but it does, for hours and hours.

As often at the end of winter and start of spring, I’m listening to some old school Go Go. It gets me going.

Categories
Me Myself&I Music

Spotify

Look, Spotify is 16 years old. It grew to have 200M paying subscribers.

They were losing 39M euros last year and this year, they’re losing 270M euros. Net income: minus 430 million euros.

This is not even supposed to be possible.

If your company has 200 million people paying you every month and you can’t even turn a tiny profit, your business model is pure trash. Just trash.

Folks! Please buy music on Discogs or Bandcamp, and grab the rest on torrents™. Listen to podcasts for free on Obama’s internet like it’s 2004.