Canada's great rock wits have built a career around grown-up tunes with immature themes. Now they flip it around, penning a kids' record that adults will chuckle along with. Spooky singsong melodies, songs about counting that skip numbers--it's all classic BNL.
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- Rock and Pop,
- Free MP3 of the Day
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Listening to new mixtape material from the Cool Kids really is like getting let into a clique that normally wouldn't have you. Needing just a simple beat to get rolling, the Pitchfork-approved crew repeatedly drop vivid images and wordplay-driven stories.
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- Hip-Hop,
- Free MP3 of the Day
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Wiseguys' Theo Keating melds deceptive dance-style tracks with Simian Mobile Disco's Simon Lord's sinister lyrics that alchemically transmute the otherwise alluring dance-pop elements. When one thinks of haunting music, U.K.-based electro doesn't immediately come to mind though The Black Ghosts are stepping up the creepy noir factor with each and every psychotically romantic track.
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It's sometimes lost in all the flavor-of-the-week mix-remix-download-social networking sites, but eMusic has been selling DRM-free MP3s--meaning they can be played on the iPod or any other player--from independent labels and artists for a decade now, and has a reasonable claim to be the No. 2 music store behind iTunes.
The venerable MP3 retailer is getting a redesign.
(Credit: eMusic)A planned redesign is meant to help eMusic retain this position. According to reports in Fortune and Digital Music News, the site's slated for an overhaul beginning next week. Artist pages will be updated with Wikipedia biographies, original editorial content, and embedded YouTube videos. In a nod to Web 2.0, fans will be able to embed portions of these artist profiles, including streaming song samples, in their Facebook pages, as well as on other social-recommendation sites such as Digg. A navigational update is also in the works--for such a well-established site, eMusic is kind of hard to get around.
One thing they're not getting rid of: the subscription-based purchasing model. That's always been a deal-breaker for me, as I simply don't download 30 songs from independent artists and labels per month. Still, if you're a voracious consumer of new music, and prefer legal downloads to file-sharing or buying physical recordings, eMusic remains an excellent choice.
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- eMusic,
- Wikipedia,
- YouTube,
- Amazon.com,
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(Credit: Steve Guttenberg)The end is near, another war seems imminent, oil prices continue to rise, the dollar is in free fall, and now audiophiles have abandoned the CD.
Don't get the wrong idea: they haven't all dumped their CD players for turntables (I wish). Instead, they've bought music servers of some kind or another. How can this be happening?
I read the sad news on the Stereophile July 6 voting feature (scroll down to see results).
That week's question: how do you listen to digital music? The poll says 34 percent still use CD players as their primary digital source. Yikes, I would have guessed much higher, more like 70 percent. Thirty-six percent use a computer-based server, and 10 percent use dedicated servers such as Sonos or Squeezebox. Another 4 percent use iPods! I felt a little better that 11 percent use a SACD or DVD-Audio player. Another 3 percent voted "other."
Mind you, these are the Stereophile online readers, presumably the print readership would skew towards CD players. Or not.
Regardless, something's going on. Audiophiles tend to be a conservative bunch, or at least I thought they were. Me? I listen primarily to CDs and maybe 20 percent of the time to LPs. I cannot imagine using a music server anytime soon, and sound quality issues have nothing to do with that. I like picking music from my collection. It's a touchy-feely, organic process. One album leads to the next, or I ... Read more
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- iPod,
- CD,
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Imani Coppola's new project feels like a fire hydrant busted open on a hot day: It's refreshing, forceful, and pretty much illegal. The frontwoman mashes tart-tongued (but sweet) neo-soul with infectious Motown beats in a way that usually only Cee-Lo and Danger can manage.
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- Free MP3 of the Day
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Toth's tumbledown guitars and weary vocals can suggest a '70s Rolling Stones B-Side; one of those sublime little hangover ditties, where Mick just decided to roll tape. Other appealing evocations on the Tennesseean's debut are alt-country types like Gary Louris or Tom Heyman.
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- Country,
- Rock and Pop,
- Folk,
- Free MP3 of the Day,
- Alternative/Punk
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(Credit: CNET Networks)I use iTunes on both my Mac and Windows machines here at work. On my Windows box, it's not quite as smooth and takes up a few too many resources, but I still run it to listen to music from other users on my network. On my Mac, it couldn't be better, but I've found that the biggest problem I have with iTunes is not with the program itself.
In fact, even though it's mostly my fault, my music library is what gives me the most trouble. Like most people, I've gotten my music from a number of different sources so a lot of music is tagged incorrectly. My cover art is almost nonexistent so I can forget about using Apple's fancy Cover Flow feature. Some songs I accidentally added more than once, while others are from mix CDs where a song might read "Track 8" so I don't even know what it is until I listen. Certainly, I could spend a day going through each track, switch the tags, and grab the cover art, but who wants to spend all day Saturday sifting through their music library? Not me.
All of TuneUp Companion's tools show up to the right of your iTunes interface.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Fortunately, someone has developed an app to fix this situation, though it is not yet perfect. TuneUp Companion from TuneUp Media is an iTunes plug-in that helps you analyze and clean ... Read more
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- Software
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Inspired by beaches, ocean and sun, Pacific! seeks to remind us sonically about the stuff we love scenically. The pair that make up Pacific! are electronic music light bearers who sound more like Daft Punk-loving French producers than Swedes who dream about the sea.
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I've had a lot of time this summer to watch how the next generation interacts with music and technology, and it's making me feel like my parents. Two stories to illustrate my point:
1. My 14-year-old niece came to visit last week. One night, she excused herself from the table because she had to take a particular call. As she explained, "My friends brought a portable keyboard with them through the Chick-fil-A drive through and recorded their order as a rap. Now they're sending it to me." (This is the kind of story that sounds like parody until it happens in your presence.) I listened to the rap over the phone, and despite the limited bandwidth, it sounded like they'd rehearsed it.
Mudhoney, a musical outfit playing a quaint, conservative type of music colloquially known as "grunge."
(Credit: Daigo Oliva, via Wikimedia Commons)Later that day, she sang part of this song she loved so I could help her find it online. It turned out to be "Our House," recorded in 1970 by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young--perhaps the most crinkly old-fashioned song to emerge from her grandparents' generation. It's all the same to her--if it's personally meaningful, she couldn't care less where it comes from or how "cool" it is.
2. My daughter just turned two. In a fit of parental insanity caused by lack of sleep and 80-degree weather after a long cold spring, I convinced my wife that ... Read more
- Topics:
- Rock and Pop
- Tags:
- MySpace,
- CSNY,
- Sub Pop 20,
- Mudhoney,
- Green River
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