New blog.

Alright folks, if there IS anyone here who still reads this, go to http://antificial.blogspot.com - that's where my new Mp3blog is. Bye.

After a long, long break, Antificial Radio Weblog's active again. Among the main musical news of the past two weeks for me is the new recording committed by Gogol Bordello, which is now out in the US. For those of you who don't know yet, Gogol Bordello is a horde of gypsies from Kiev who emigrated to the states some time ago to make something they call "gypsy punk rock" and I'd say you have to hear to get. Luckily, the whole thing can be streamed from Side One Dummy's site.

And since we're at it, let's give you a few other links. Now, regular readers may know or have guessed i'm way into mash-ups and from time to time looking for some fresh and good ones. DJ Earworm is not exactly new, but worth checking out since he doesn't just mix vocals from one song and the instrumentals from an other, but rather puts together bits from many tracks. Technically, this is similar to Eve Massacre in a certain way, and if you don't know her, be sure to visit her site as well ("Sweet as Neurotic Euro Trash Indie Boys" is a classic but, sadly, not available for download anymore).

eMusic: What the... (no mp3s in this post; mp3 bloggers please pay special attention!)

Has anyone else got this?

"Hello



I hope all is well. My name is Matt Zerbo and I handle the affiliate program for eMusic. I wanted to get in touch to see if there is a way Artificial Radio Weblog and eMusic can work together.



Your blog focuses providing independent music lovers with access to new and interesting music as well as providing exposure for emerging artists. eMusic provides the same service, only on a larger scale. We are different from the other major online music providers for a number of reasons. We only carry music from independent artists and labels, which makes our collection much more diverse. Also, we offer our entire catalog in the MP3 format free of any copy protection, which means our customers truly own the music they purchase from our service. They can burn unlimited CDs, transfer their music to any digital music player/product (including the iPod), download to unlimited computers, and play using any digital music jukebox.

[Well, so far so good... except for the grave fact that they SELL their mp3s. CDs are being sold. Mp3s aren't.]

I feel that connecting your users to eMusic would add value to your blog by offering them the ability to download the music that they love at an affordable price and from a trusted source. I would like to offer you acceptance into our affiliate program, which will provide you the opportunity to earn commission for posting links to eMusic. Becoming an affiliate will cost you nothing and has the potential to earn significant money for your blog. Our affiliates earn $9 dollars for every paying subscription started through the links posted on their sites, which is a very competitive rate.



[passage about eMusic being great and stuff cut out]



Please let me know your thoughts when you have a chance, or if you would like to move forward immediately visit [address cut out] to apply. Your application will be accepted promptly. If you have any questions about the affiliate program or eMusic in general, please do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to hearing from you and I hope you decide to join.



Best

Matt Zerbo



Matthew Zerbo

Affiliate Manager

eMusic.com

[contact information cut out]"

I first thought it was some sort of clever spam, but nope, it wasn't, which could be noticed alone on the fact that motherfucker spelled the name of my blog wrong.

Now, obviously, I am NOT going to participate in this. Antificial Radio Weblog is not going to sell out. All mp3s that I offer are for free, and I do not believe in selling mp3s. So it would be nice if Mr Zerbo managed not to bother me with this kind of crap in the future. However, I'd like to hear some other bloggers on this subject.

"Guero"

I didn't get warm with Beck's new album. I don't feel it was a good idea for him to go back to the Dust Brothers; AMG reviewer Stephen Erlewine writes that "[...] Guero never is as surprising or enthralling as Odelay" and that's right. But Erlewine finds it "mature", and I'm bored by it. The fun you had with "Odelay" never even comes up on "Guero", it lacks energy, it doesn't freak out, and Beck always knew how to freak out ("Sea Change" is an exception by the way, which doesn't mean it's bad). This new album hopelessly tries to freak out. It's the same low-fi samples, similar lyrics, the same voice and the same style, but something is missing on it.

The remixes on the "Hell Yes" EP are better, at least the 8-Bit remix of the title song. They are by far not the best thing Beck has ever made, but they're neat. The whole single has this Nintendo sound by the way, so if you like that, you'll probably have your fun with it. And you get the album version of the song as well.

I Hope You Die three times

No one will deny that the Bloodhound Gang was absolute crap but somehow still fun music. "Hooray for Boobies" was actually probably the best you could make out of punk in the nineties: Just plain fun music without much sense. This is punk rock music completely disposed of any punk ideology which, at that time, was hopelessly dead anyway. Take Blink 182 or a random nineties band who are similar to them as a negative counter-example to this.

So, the lyrics for "I Hope You Die" are just ridiculous. If you saw a Ramones song called like that, you'd expect something different, and you would be right on that. There's a more shocker-based version by 16 Bit Slaughter (or just Bit Slaughter? I couldn't find any info on them or him or her on the web) though, for all those of you who are looking for some medium anger (the lyrics are the same ridiculous ones, so if you want hardcore anger, take something else). A bit cheap, but I like it. And finally, there's a nice mash-up of this song with Fatboy Slim/Macy Gray's "Demons" by Fettdog which is partly out of key, but. Available on Fettdog's site.

Meet the Feebles soundtrack, Ween

I first got into "Meet the Feebles" when a guy I know sent my girlfriend and me "Sodomy", a song sung by Sebastian the Fox in that movie. I instantly liked it. When I first listened to it, it sort of reminded me of Anthony & The Johnsons' humour, only more offensive and with less kitsch. The song (as well as three other ones from the movie) can be picked up at this "Meet the Feebles" site in the "sound clips" section. Interestingly, that site is placed on the Ween domain and is created by someone called Hill, as the links section on their official site states. I couldn't find out who Hill is and how he relates to Ween, but seemingly he strongly does, given the fact that you can contact him on the site, while the link sections says it's run by Dean Ween. I never really got into Ween, but I downloaded "You Fucked Up" again another day and listened to it quite often (I had already heard it, but that was looong ago). Hearing "You fucking nazi whore" screamed in a microphone with a hysteric voice is just amusing. You can get a live version of it in their audio section.

Rx

This guy sampled speeches of George W. Bush (mainly) and made songs out of them, available at thepartyparty.com. At times sloppy (which is no wonder, try to make a song out of a political speech, and I don't mean just sampling one or two damn sentences for one song), but sometimes really good sampling, funny and hell, there are even Bush "Imagine / Walk on the Wild Side" and "Sunday Bloody Suday" cover versions now. I particularly recommend "My Name is Rx" ("By the way, I wake up every day, every morning, that's my job! And it's hard work, it's haaard work, it's hard work, it's incredibly hard, believe me") and "Boys and Girls".

PS: Those are Anti-Bush songs and at times really evil parody. So if you are a rigid Republican, you could easily be offended by them. Download at your own risk, then.

Dozer, Gogol Bordello, Locust Toybox, AFX

So, Dozer from dozer mp3 blog emailed me and asked me if I wanted to take a look at his blog. Now, normally, the links that people visiting this place send me are rather uninteresting: mediocre bands who want to somehow get their music promoted (bands and musicians, keep on sending anyway, I still hope to get something really interesting from you) and some strange actions like putting a "vote" sticker on the blog shortly before the 2004 US presidential elections in order to make people vote (yeah, in an mp3 blog. EmptyFree then wrote about that and although his tone was rather harsh, in general he was right about it). Well, this time I actually got a link to a good mp3 blog via email, thanks Dozer and you all go check it out. As far as I have figured it out until now, it's mostly concentrated on IDM and other electronica. And oh yeah, just in case Dozer reads this: could you put up a sort of a preview mp3 of this nintendo thing?

Anyway, Gogol Bordello have a new EP out and a free mp3 track from it up on their website (just scroll down). This one is in crap quality (only 96 kbps) but a damn good song.

Also, check out David Firth alias Locust Toybox. This is IDM music, I haven't heard much of it myself yet, but I've seen his cartoons on fat-pie.com where some of his songs are partially used as a soundtrack and some of them seem to be pretty good. He is copying Aphex Twin in a certain sense, which of course cannot lead to great results because copying Aphex Twin never leads to great results. Nevertheless, give it a listen. And take a look at his cartoons, as well, and because this is an mp3 blog, I'll particularly mention the soundtrack: lots of AFX music used in there, and there is even a flash clip to "Milkman". Enjoy.

I originally intended just to make an entry about a famous rap group sampling Rocket from the Tombs, but then discovered that some more RftT related stuff has accumulated during some weeks, so now you get an entry stuffed to the neck with mp3 files. Now, isn't that something?

I hadn't noticed that the Beastie Boys actually sampled a guitar riff from an RftT song until I listened to that collection of 1975 recordings again with my girlfried during her latest vacation here. Obviously, the Beasties didn't take the 1975 version of "Sonic Reducer" but the re-recorded song from 2003's "Rocket Redux"; and here's "An Open Letter to NYC".

Then, it appears that Guns'N'Roses covered RftT's "Ain't it Fun". Rocket smoothened the song themselves in 2003, having an old Cheetah Chrome sing the song (and the last thing you want to have on a Rocket from the Tombs song is a singer with that typical old rocker attitude), but Guns'N'Roses outran them in these terms. Well, what would you expect from G'N'R anyway; but hey, they DID do a Rocket from the Tombs cover!

"Ain't it Fun" (1975 version)
"Ain't it Fun" (2003 "Rocket Redux" version)

Some anonymous commenter mentioned that "Love Love Love (I Can't Believe it)" from Pere Ubu's "Cloudland", a song which on that album possibly got the most synth-driven treatment, must have been written in the RftT days; and indeed, although no RftT version of the song is known to me, I have a Pere Ubu live recording from 1976 where the band plays the song, titled just with "Can't Believe it". The recording quality is even tolerable, you can quite well hear the arrangements.