Old houses tend to be uniformly creepy, with their unique swishes, groans and clangs. A decade’s old collection of withered girders in an abandoned factory, or the wind swishing through abandoned hallways can create acoustics which make your hair stand on end, praying that whatever it is in there, it won’t be following you. But [...]

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In the last week or so, music blogs – at least those that weren’t deleted by Google for posting copyrighted content – have exploded over “zef”, an energetic hybrid of rave and hip-hip with a self-consciously white-trash aesthetic [the word itself refers to the South African redneck subculture] typified by bands such as Cape Town [...]

Continue reading " Great Rock N Roll Swindle – Die Antwoord and Zef "

On December 4, 2009, a user going by the name “iamamiwhoami” uploaded a video to YouTube. The video featured images of trees with writhing limbs, a metallic-skinned woman in the foetal position in what appears to represent the womb, and – most disturbingly – a goat giving birth; its soundtrack was a haunting trip-hop piece, [...]

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In the first “controversial moments” post of 3, we take a look at ten of music’s most controversial onstage moments of the last 20 years – from Kanye’s mic-jacking to Donita Sparks’ er, inventive response to a hostile Reading Festival crowd – plus five classic pre-1980 shockers that just never get old.

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Portland, Oregon, fall 2008. Club Satyricon, the revered punk venue which throughout its lengthy history has played host to some of the greatest alternative, punk and metal acts of the 80s and 90s, is currently getting down to a hybrid of hip-hop, electronica and inhuman screaming courtesy of BrokeNCYDE, four neon-clad young men whose excess [...]

Continue reading " Great Rock & Roll Swindle – Is BrokeNCYDE for real? "

As Johnny Rotten said in 1978, at the end of the final Sex Pistols concert before the untimely death of bandmate Sid Vicious, ‘Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?’ This article has nothing to do with the Pistols, except that its title was borrowed from their 1980 film and it relates to an artist [...]

Continue reading " Great Rock & Roll Swindle – The People Vs Andrew WK "

You’ve got to dig to dig it, you dig? Shimon digs it. So now, robots can do something mere mortals can’t…………improvise. Shimon the Jazz playing robot, can listen and improvise to any musician, not in any spectacularly impressive manner, but it can capture the tone structure, a basic idea of the artists composition, and work [...]

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Audio d-touch is making a collection of applications for real-time musical composition and performance freely available. Using a web-cam, computer, and printer, you can play sounds using image processing to recognize physical markers. You can visit the site below to get the application which includes a drum machine and a sampling sequencer, both are controlled [...]

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