 Searching through the pickings in other people’s del.icio.us networks can yield some very tasty bits for the blogger in search of worthwhile content. Like many, I’m a fan of Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science Guardian articles and blog and I noticed today that he now provides a link on his site to his del.icio.us account. It’s only got a few entries but it did bring me to The Music Thing blog. The site’s founder Tom Whitwell is the former editor of Mixmag and deputy editor of The Face. He's also just been made Communities editor of TimesOnline.
If you want to read all about ‘weird and unusual’ musical instruments and left-field music stuff then this is the place to go. Some of the YouTube links are amazing, such as a clip taken from an old Tube show featuring The Art of Noise performing one of their hits. The gear used for the performance, it is important for you to know, includes: ‘three Fairlights, a PPG Wave 2, a MemoryMoog and racks of AMS RMX16 and Lexicon 224 reverbs’. In the clip the camera pans over the keyboards and green text filled computer screens with a ‘pornographer's lustful eye’. You also see a youthful Paul Morley working at the control desk with a glass of wine in hand.
Other stunning posts are about an eBay sale of 60s Mosrite/Von Dutch guitars (picture above) Dr David Deak's 'Acoustic Levitation Chamber', which uses three loudspeakers in a plexiglass cube to levitate a paper cup and make it move around by changing the frequency of the sound waves and the super smashing great Vocoder video.
Whitwell says that he initially though this must be a joke, something like the fake electro craziness of molvania (‘my blue jeans are tight/so climb into my space rocket’ – all silver hair flicking and video delay effects). But it’s not. Vocoder is a real band and this video was supposed to help promote them. Says Whitwell:
“It features a gang of the kind of bearded guys who might have trouble flying from Malaga, miming in a supermarket with an SH-101 (hand held synths). It's all far too perfect - right down to the misspelt 'Waht Happens Now' subtitle and the way the guy who looks like Borat starts rapping in the second half.”
At one point a woman who turns out to be the singer is behind one of those stands you see people in supermarket working behind. She offers another band member sitting in a shopping trolley a piece of cake as he spins past her. He refuses, so she eats it herself while giving the camera the most unnatural wink I’ve ever seen. A mean to wink knowingly or suggestively should be second nature to anyone. But it looked like she’d never winked in her life before and this was her first attempt. Brilliant.
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