OK ... BeatBlog has now moved home again. The new BeatBlog is in my own space, running on a copy of OddMuse Wiki although I'm running it in non-editable mode. Still working out how I want it to look. As of the transition, we're up to Beat 0237.
The New BeatBlog
NB : BeatBlog reverts to being just about the beats. Other musical stuff will now be recombined with my main weblog
I'm out ...
phil
Monday, September 22, 2003
Alert readers will note that BeatBlog is still suffering technical details. On the left you can see the old list of beats from the old site.
Looks like my includes are no longer working ... so maybe something drastic is in order. Haven't decided yet.
In the meantime, I've been working on music to accompany a show of poetry readings. Some mp3s can be found on the show's dedicated wiki
Looks like my includes are no longer working ... so maybe something drastic is in order. Haven't decided yet.
In the meantime, I've been working on music to accompany a show of poetry readings. Some mp3s can be found on the show's dedicated wiki
Thursday, September 18, 2003
If you've recently come to this site, you're probably confused. What are the beats I'm talking about.
Sorry. Normally there's a "roll" of links to MP3 files down the left hand side of this page. Unfortunately, since I changed my hosting to a different server, for some currently unexplained reason, these no longer appear. BeatBlog will be continuing soon. (Basically as soon as I can figure what's wrong with javascript including from my new host.)
Sorry for the outage.
Sorry. Normally there's a "roll" of links to MP3 files down the left hand side of this page. Unfortunately, since I changed my hosting to a different server, for some currently unexplained reason, these no longer appear. BeatBlog will be continuing soon. (Basically as soon as I can figure what's wrong with javascript including from my new host.)
Sorry for the outage.
Friday, September 12, 2003
Simon Reynolds has a great discussion of the Amen break used in junglism. And some interesting comments from a real producer, Brandon Ivers, about the techniques of producing breaks. These days it's apparently all about layering multiple breaks, using a lot of carefully planned eq and filtering to make sure they don't fight. This takes so much effort that the producer then isn't much into the kind of cutting up and messing about with the beat that characterized earlier jungle.
Seems a shame. But possibly why d'n'b got so boring. Though maybe I need to check out some recent stuff. Ivers says mashed up breaks are back.
Seems a shame. But possibly why d'n'b got so boring. Though maybe I need to check out some recent stuff. Ivers says mashed up breaks are back.
Thursday, September 04, 2003
TODAY'S BEATS :
0236 : Woah! This is MONSTROUS! Stop-start tricksy, syncapations from a loop at two slightly different speeds, luminous synth toms, soul claps. Then a big slab of Moogalike riffs takes it to the next level. Whoahahaha !
0235 : Slimy analogue synths slink between the carboniferous trees of a primordeal woodland.
0234 : Samples a horrendously emphatic Flash advert that turned up on a web page. For obvious reasons I'm not putting this one into Creative Commons public domain or indemnifying you against being sued for using it. Use at own risk.
0233 : Listen to that build-up. I like this sort of "start without much recognisable pulse" thing, then add more drums to reveal the groove.
0236 : Woah! This is MONSTROUS! Stop-start tricksy, syncapations from a loop at two slightly different speeds, luminous synth toms, soul claps. Then a big slab of Moogalike riffs takes it to the next level. Whoahahaha !
0235 : Slimy analogue synths slink between the carboniferous trees of a primordeal woodland.
0234 : Samples a horrendously emphatic Flash advert that turned up on a web page. For obvious reasons I'm not putting this one into Creative Commons public domain or indemnifying you against being sued for using it. Use at own risk.
0233 : Listen to that build-up. I like this sort of "start without much recognisable pulse" thing, then add more drums to reveal the groove.
Sunday, August 31, 2003
Saturday, August 23, 2003
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
I know, I know! I've been away, caught up thinking about economics and money etc. Now I'm back, for some concentrated musical projects. More about these soon ...
Meanwhile ... back to a rash of
TODAY'S BEATS
0225 : Shakers ... hats ... toy-trumpet fanfare. Then go swingy cymbals!
0224 : A polite bass and tinkle, then some toms before random melodic bongos flood the scene ...
0223 : Tinkle 'n' bass.
LAST CHANCE
0180 : heavy and melacholic, flanged stabbing chords, trickles of cowbell.
Oh ... and today's my birthday .... :-)
Meanwhile ... back to a rash of
TODAY'S BEATS
0225 : Shakers ... hats ... toy-trumpet fanfare. Then go swingy cymbals!
0224 : A polite bass and tinkle, then some toms before random melodic bongos flood the scene ...
0223 : Tinkle 'n' bass.
LAST CHANCE
0180 : heavy and melacholic, flanged stabbing chords, trickles of cowbell.
Oh ... and today's my birthday .... :-)
Thursday, July 17, 2003
I'm a big Current 93 fan, and today I'm excited to receive my copy of England's Hidden Reverse from Amazon UK, which only took about a week (to Brazil). Lucky I got it from Amazon UK, because the US are having a lot of problems.
Q : But phil, I never figured you as someone to get off on all that spiritualism and mysticism stuff!
A : You're right. In real life I have no interest at all. In art, it adds a certain flavour. And I often find Tibet's lyrics hilarious. (See a comparison with Momus)
But, strange as it seems, I really like C93 (and Nurse with Wound) for the music. One of the things I realized is that it reminds me of my youth, messing about with a 4-track bedroom studio. It's all fun and play with recording. Instrumental technique seems incidental, sometimes there are clearly musicians playing well. Other times, inept, amateurism is sufficient. The elements could be seen as trash : punky guitar strumming, fake celtic folk music, simplistic tape collages and sound manipulation, hammily intoned gothic poetry. And yet, these elements add up to something greater, a sense of exhilerating freedom : "We're doing just what we like". It's stunning, and hypnotic, scary, and beautiful.
And suddenly a phrase strikes you, because of it's absurdity - often a collision of the apocalyptic and mundane - and resonantes : the second thing [God icreated, to scare children] was an old rocking horse which moves on it's own, and a discoloured doll, moving occasionally Fantastic!
Q : But phil, I never figured you as someone to get off on all that spiritualism and mysticism stuff!
A : You're right. In real life I have no interest at all. In art, it adds a certain flavour. And I often find Tibet's lyrics hilarious. (See a comparison with Momus)
But, strange as it seems, I really like C93 (and Nurse with Wound) for the music. One of the things I realized is that it reminds me of my youth, messing about with a 4-track bedroom studio. It's all fun and play with recording. Instrumental technique seems incidental, sometimes there are clearly musicians playing well. Other times, inept, amateurism is sufficient. The elements could be seen as trash : punky guitar strumming, fake celtic folk music, simplistic tape collages and sound manipulation, hammily intoned gothic poetry. And yet, these elements add up to something greater, a sense of exhilerating freedom : "We're doing just what we like". It's stunning, and hypnotic, scary, and beautiful.
And suddenly a phrase strikes you, because of it's absurdity - often a collision of the apocalyptic and mundane - and resonantes : the second thing [God icreated, to scare children] was an old rocking horse which moves on it's own, and a discoloured doll, moving occasionally Fantastic!
Wednesday, July 16, 2003
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Saturday, July 12, 2003
OK, I know, what happened to "everyday"? Here's a rash of beats I've been failing to put up over the last week or so.
RECENT BEATS
0217 : slow, housy thing, more of those synth loops, but in a sepia style ... gets gritty at the end.
0216 : Flanged, glassy synth playing very poppy random loops.
0215 : Something, fast, happy and wholesome.
0214 : This pr0n stuff's getting kitsch. Away with it, no more!
RECENT BEATS
0217 : slow, housy thing, more of those synth loops, but in a sepia style ... gets gritty at the end.
0216 : Flanged, glassy synth playing very poppy random loops.
0215 : Something, fast, happy and wholesome.
0214 : This pr0n stuff's getting kitsch. Away with it, no more!
Monday, July 07, 2003
Thursday, July 03, 2003
In Jamaican dancehall, musicians and producers make beats and backing tracks (riddims) and multiple vocal artists record their own, different songs / raps over them. Is this a productive division of labour? Each riddim is tested with multiple vocals, so the right combination can be found. Or does it sap variety, all vocalists use the same pallete?
Perhaps this is the only way a poor country like Jamaica can be as musically productive as it is?
Perhaps this is the only way a poor country like Jamaica can be as musically productive as it is?
Sunday, June 29, 2003
Saturday, June 28, 2003
RECENT BEATS
Some slightly shocking sounds going on at the moment which need a bit of explanation.
Clicking the wrong radio button in my P2P file sharer one day, took me into a hitherto unexplored world of downloadable pr0n. I yield to no-one in my naivety about such things, but I was still shocked by the implied violence of it all. Short porn films gather layers of extra descriptive names, trying to "sell" themselves to the downloader much like commercial web-pages add irrelevant meta keyword tags.
Depressingly there were the internet cliches of "preteen" and "lolita". I hope this was just hype rather than reality, but it's disturbing that these are the memes that prevail in the name space.
I was more shocked by the frequency of "real rape" and "forced". Even if it's fiction, why the hell do so many people (men) seem to be getting off on this fantasy? Looks like Andrea is right, and Momus is wrong.
Weirder was the "she's my wife / girlfriend" key phrase. It's hardly likely to be true, and why would you pretend, and why would I care? OTOH go read the intro to Dworkin's "Pornography", there are some sick bastards around.
So, I offer you, in the spirit of the rather illustrative industrial music styles of my youth - and really I'm too old to be doing something this adolescent, but what the hell, on the internet no one knows you're a dog - beats 0208 and 0209 : pornography as violence against women.
I'd like to say that in reality no women were hurt in the production of these beats. But I can't because, as Dworkin says : "pornography is the orchestrated destruction of women's bodies and souls", and no one can say if those involved were damaged. I can promise that I didn't download anything advertising violence or underage sex. All sounds are derived from movies at the "soft" end, that at least portrayed themselves as about consenting, non sado-masochist adults. The extraordinary roaring on 0208 seems to be the result of a badly connected / placed microphone, and the ferocity in 0209 has been added with the distortion effect. The scream in 0208 comes from a Llamasoft video game.
So, bad taste? Yep. Confused politics? Yep. Not what you'd expect from someone as politically correct as me? Yep. Can you explain please Phil because I think I've just lost all my respect for you? I guess the "name of art" is a lousy explanation but it's all I can offer at the moment. It sounds better than "an afternoon of prurient curiosity" anyway.
YOU MISSED 'EM
Up to 0154
LAST CHANCE
0155 : Return of the space invaders
0156 : Recommended, another of those irie, melancholic things over a swingy beat
Some slightly shocking sounds going on at the moment which need a bit of explanation.
Clicking the wrong radio button in my P2P file sharer one day, took me into a hitherto unexplored world of downloadable pr0n. I yield to no-one in my naivety about such things, but I was still shocked by the implied violence of it all. Short porn films gather layers of extra descriptive names, trying to "sell" themselves to the downloader much like commercial web-pages add irrelevant meta keyword tags.
Depressingly there were the internet cliches of "preteen" and "lolita". I hope this was just hype rather than reality, but it's disturbing that these are the memes that prevail in the name space.
I was more shocked by the frequency of "real rape" and "forced". Even if it's fiction, why the hell do so many people (men) seem to be getting off on this fantasy? Looks like Andrea is right, and Momus is wrong.
Weirder was the "she's my wife / girlfriend" key phrase. It's hardly likely to be true, and why would you pretend, and why would I care? OTOH go read the intro to Dworkin's "Pornography", there are some sick bastards around.
So, I offer you, in the spirit of the rather illustrative industrial music styles of my youth - and really I'm too old to be doing something this adolescent, but what the hell, on the internet no one knows you're a dog - beats 0208 and 0209 : pornography as violence against women.
I'd like to say that in reality no women were hurt in the production of these beats. But I can't because, as Dworkin says : "pornography is the orchestrated destruction of women's bodies and souls", and no one can say if those involved were damaged. I can promise that I didn't download anything advertising violence or underage sex. All sounds are derived from movies at the "soft" end, that at least portrayed themselves as about consenting, non sado-masochist adults. The extraordinary roaring on 0208 seems to be the result of a badly connected / placed microphone, and the ferocity in 0209 has been added with the distortion effect. The scream in 0208 comes from a Llamasoft video game.
So, bad taste? Yep. Confused politics? Yep. Not what you'd expect from someone as politically correct as me? Yep. Can you explain please Phil because I think I've just lost all my respect for you? I guess the "name of art" is a lousy explanation but it's all I can offer at the moment. It sounds better than "an afternoon of prurient curiosity" anyway.
YOU MISSED 'EM
Up to 0154
LAST CHANCE
0155 : Return of the space invaders
0156 : Recommended, another of those irie, melancholic things over a swingy beat
Monday, June 23, 2003
Sunday, June 22, 2003
Saturday, June 21, 2003
The BBC is cool. BBC radio over the internet is essential for an ex-pat in Brazil. Now 1-Xtra has joined The Archers on regular rotation here.
TODAY'S BEAT
0204 : Starts with lush, ponderous synth. But then the rapid offbeat snares speed the whole thing up. Off pitch clinking adds an unworldy sheen.
0203 : Another rain of tinkling bells. Over a froggy kind of bass. What could you do with it? Be creative.
You missed 'em : up to 0145
Last chance saloon :
0146 : A whole lunar ecology of gloopy sounds. The Clangers mooch about as desperate radios broadcast their last.
0204 : Starts with lush, ponderous synth. But then the rapid offbeat snares speed the whole thing up. Off pitch clinking adds an unworldy sheen.
0203 : Another rain of tinkling bells. Over a froggy kind of bass. What could you do with it? Be creative.
You missed 'em : up to 0145
Last chance saloon :
0146 : A whole lunar ecology of gloopy sounds. The Clangers mooch about as desperate radios broadcast their last.
Friday, June 20, 2003
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Saturday, June 14, 2003
Friday, June 13, 2003
TODAY'S BEAT
0197 is storming. Download it and I defy you not to dance round the room crazily like I'm doing right now!
It's using my patented[1] "multiple, random, analog synth riff laziness"
Most people use their virtual analog synths like this :
Or maybe there are algorithms that fake the last move.
Well, it was great back in the days of Acid House (anyone remember "Electron" by "WildPlanet"?). But now it's become kind of cliched. (And I haven't figured out how to do this in Fruity Loops :-(.
So I like to bung in 3 or 4 random analog synth riffs, with slightly different settings. And then just throw them in semi-arbitrarily. One pattern might repeat, another might appear occasionally, sometimes several happen at one. I find this kind of thrilling. Instead of a uniform sound, you get sonic multitexturality, the kind of collision you get when an imaginative DJ is cutting and scratching different records together,
[1] only joking, but Creative Commonsed sounds clunky
0197 is storming. Download it and I defy you not to dance round the room crazily like I'm doing right now!
It's using my patented[1] "multiple, random, analog synth riff laziness"
Most people use their virtual analog synths like this :
- program a pattern,
- repeat lots of times,
- slowly and lovingly caress the filters, up and down, until you bring your synth orgasms of euphoric pleasure
Or maybe there are algorithms that fake the last move.
Well, it was great back in the days of Acid House (anyone remember "Electron" by "WildPlanet"?). But now it's become kind of cliched. (And I haven't figured out how to do this in Fruity Loops :-(.
So I like to bung in 3 or 4 random analog synth riffs, with slightly different settings. And then just throw them in semi-arbitrarily. One pattern might repeat, another might appear occasionally, sometimes several happen at one. I find this kind of thrilling. Instead of a uniform sound, you get sonic multitexturality, the kind of collision you get when an imaginative DJ is cutting and scratching different records together,
[1] only joking, but Creative Commonsed sounds clunky
Thursday, June 12, 2003
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
TODAY'S BEATS
Yesterday's beat (0190) was so much fun that I fancied another piece of frenetic, distorted, rage . But somehow, the distortion / echo combination I used on 0191 seems to have got into some weird cancelation thing. The beat erodes to almost nothing. Didn't plan it, but it's kind of interesting. 0192 is one of those telephone thangs.
Yesterday's beat (0190) was so much fun that I fancied another piece of frenetic, distorted, rage . But somehow, the distortion / echo combination I used on 0191 seems to have got into some weird cancelation thing. The beat erodes to almost nothing. Didn't plan it, but it's kind of interesting. 0192 is one of those telephone thangs.
Monday, June 09, 2003
Notice BeatBlog has an RSS feed? Not for the trivial words. But to support Beats in RSS enclosures. The problem is, I haven't tested it yet. The XML looks OK, but I need to try it with some aggregators that support enclosures.
Anyone got ideas which ones do? My Radio Userland trial license expired before I got this working, so I'm still looking for something free or that I can try it out with.
If you've managed to get the RSS feed working and BeatBlog enclosures downloading, please tell me
Anyone got ideas which ones do? My Radio Userland trial license expired before I got this working, so I'm still looking for something free or that I can try it out with.
If you've managed to get the RSS feed working and BeatBlog enclosures downloading, please tell me
And hi to everyone who's now getting here redirected from the old URL. If you want, you can still go to the original BeatBlog page.
Sunday, June 08, 2003
So, I'm unemployed. And I've got loads of time to listen to, think about and write about music.
So let's kick off. Today on the stereo : "Consolidated". Early 90s, ultrapolitical, ultra-politically correct, self styled "hardest, vegetarian, pro-choice, lesbian and gay supporting motherfuckers". Since Iraq 2, Consolidated are more relevant than ever. "Infomodities 92" was on the case of the Bush clan back during Iraq 1. Beats were pretty cool for the early 90s, mixing hip-hop and industrial. Some harsh electronic bleeps.
Check out ...
America Number 1, Consolidated, Infomodities 92, This is a Collective
So let's kick off. Today on the stereo : "Consolidated". Early 90s, ultrapolitical, ultra-politically correct, self styled "hardest, vegetarian, pro-choice, lesbian and gay supporting motherfuckers". Since Iraq 2, Consolidated are more relevant than ever. "Infomodities 92" was on the case of the Bush clan back during Iraq 1. Beats were pretty cool for the early 90s, mixing hip-hop and industrial. Some harsh electronic bleeps.
Check out ...
America Number 1, Consolidated, Infomodities 92, This is a Collective
Monday, May 05, 2003
Q : Hey! I just found this blog ... what beats?
A : Right now, they're still h3r3 but will get incorporated into this site very soon ...
A : Right now, they're still h3r3 but will get incorporated into this site very soon ...
And who are these clowns who stole my name? Huh?!
Listener beware ... You only get fresh beats (nearly) every day from the original beatblogger.
Listener beware ... You only get fresh beats (nearly) every day from the original beatblogger.
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