See a followup post about female remixes of “A Milli” Lil Wayne and I have some differences of style and taste: about facial tattoos, about drinking cough syrup recreationally, about jewelry on one’s teeth. But we agree about music. He brags constantly that he’s the best rapper alive. I think he makes a pretty good …
Author Archives: Ethan
Björk thought she could organize freedom, how Scandinavian of her
I revere Björk above most other musicians. She knows how to balance the coldness of electronic production with hotly unpredictable vocals and instrumental textures. Not everybody loves Björk as much as I do; her approach is eccentric and her sound gets on some people’s nerves. It took me a couple years to be convinced by …
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The Beatles were an electronica band
Update: hear my 5.1 surround remix of “Here Comes The Sun.” Why are the Beatles still so cool? By which I mean the late Beatles, Revolver onwards. I like Please Please Me as much as the next guy, but it isn’t why the Beatles are cool now. No, I mean the last few records, especially …
Game controllers as musical instruments
This is a picture of my electronic funk-soul-R&B band doing a show. From left to right, it’s Nicole Bishop, me and Barbara Singer. We were the whole band for that show. I did all the beats, samples and keyboards from my computer using a video game controller. Here’s a screenshot of the program that the …
His name is Prince, and he is funky
Hip-hop artists love Prince. Like them, he blends drum machines, live jazz-funk musicians and samples of other songs.
Music at my house
My parents and stepparents loved music when I was growing up, more as spectators than participants.
Real guitars are for old people
Here’s one of my favorite bits of South Park.
Can robots DJ?
Now that I have an office job, I’m spending a lot of time under headphones while I correct people’s grammar. It’s a good opportunity to explore the outer reaches of my music tastes. The office has some networked iTunes libraries heavy on the Pitchfork 500, and I have whatever I’m bringing from home. I’ve also …
Brian Eno writes songs with the mixing desk
“Once In A Lifetime” by Talking Heads and Brian Eno is one of my favorite songs by anyone ever.
Sampling keyboards
One of the greatest weirdnesses of electronic music is the sampling keyboard. You press a key and any sound recording you want pops out, at whatever pitch. The recent passing of John Hughes made me think of the scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off when Ferris samples his coughing and puking on an E-mu Emulator …