music
oracknows | January 17, 2010While I'm working today, enjoy some bizarre cartoon awesomeness from Max Fleischer, courtesy of Boing-Boing:
Truly amazing. And 80 years old, too, with a wicked jazz soundtrack. The Fleischer brothers rule.
cagapakis | January 13, 2010There have been a lot of great Darwin themed things popping up in the past few months in celebration of the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species, but none as avant garde and awesome as "Tomorrow, in a year", an electro-opera based on the life and work of Charles Darwin by The Knife, a Swedish electronic music duo (and one of my favorite bands). From the website of the company performing the opera, Danish theater group Hotel Pro Forma:
An opera singer, a pop singer and an actor perform The Knife's music and represent Darwin, time and nature on stage. Six dancers form the raw material…
oracknows | January 9, 2010As regular readers know, I really like Tim Minchin's take on skepticism in general and on alternative medicine in particular. His piece de resistance thus far in his career is a "nine minute beat poem" entitled Storm, in which at a dinner party our performer is forced to deal with a female version of Mike Adams spewing nonsense about "natural remedies," how "science doesn't know everything," how "there's more" than just the material world and "you can't know anything," and how big pharma is just out for profit. Minchin's slapdown of this woo-filled nonsense is epic and hilarious.
It turns out…
grrlscientist | January 1, 2010tags: Never a Year Like '09, JibJab, politics, America, cultural observation, 2009 in review, comedy, streaming video
Octomom. Balloon Boy. Tiger Woods. If there's one thing for sure in this world, it's that as long as people are acting reckless, insane and just plain stupid (i.e. like people), there will always be plenty of material available for JibJab's annual "Year in Review" videos!
What was your favorite event of 2009 that wasn't mentioned in this video? Mine was the amazing career of Rachel Alexandra.
grrlscientist | December 29, 2009tags: The Nature of Cell Science, cell biology, microscopy, research, science, music, Venetian Snares, Szamár Madár, field work, Dirk Pacholsky, streaming video
Cell biologist, Dirk Pacholsky, created this video. He writes; "Certainly it´s irony in the title, because these images never made it to publication status. Sitting over the microscope, whilst listening to music the idea popped up to combine microscopic imagery with electronic music. The Scientist will certainly see more than a carpenter, but both might enjoy the beauty. Concerning the accompanying music, it is Venetian Snares (oh…
edyong | December 29, 2009Many of us have just spent the Christmas season with a persistent and irritating ringing noise in our ears. But now that the relatives have gone home for the year, it's worth remembering that a large proportion of the population suffers from a more persistent ringing sensation - tinnitus. It happens in the absence of noise, it's one of the most common symptoms of hearing disorders, and it's loud enough to affect the quality of life of around 1-3% of the population.
There have been many suggested treatments but none of them have become firmly established and most simply try to help people…
oracknows | December 25, 2009I think that David Bowie and Bing Crosby say it best:
Yeah, I know I've become a heathen, but I still love this song and this particular performance.
oracknows | December 24, 2009If there's one thing that's irritated the crap out of me ever since I entered the medical field, it's celebrities with more fame than brains or sense touting various health remedies. Of late, three such celebrities have spread more misinformation and quackery than the rest of the second tier combined. Truly, together, they are the Unholy Trinity of Celebrity Quackery.
The first two of them, of course, are that not-so-dynamic duo of anti-vaccine morons, Jenny McCarthy and her much more famous and successful boyfriend Jim Carrey. Having apparently decided that selling "Indigo Child" woo was not…
terrasig | December 22, 2009Audio documentarian, local hero, and Pharmboy family friend, Richard Ziglar, let us know over the weekend of some employment opportunities for music and tech-minded folks at Zenph Studios in Research Triangle Park.
What is Zenph, you ask? Zenph takes classic piano recordings, often from long-departed performers, dissects them digitally to capture nuances of the live performance, and then "re-performs" them live in a recital hall on legendary Steinways driven by the software. These are *not* digital remasterings but recordings of an actual replaying of the original work.
Listen to this…
goodmath | December 18, 2009
Naftule's Dream, "Speed Klez": Naftule's Dream is a
brilliant progressive klezmer band. I happen to love klezmer,
but I think that anyone into jazzy prog rock would also enjoy
them. They're terrific.
Oregon, "Celeste": Oregon is a band that I can't make
up my mind about. They're a jazz trio, with most melodies played by
a wonderful oboist. They tend to really push the boundaries -
playing with unusual tonalities, really pushing the edge of
the envelope with their improvisation. It's quite impressive. And yet,
they frequently leave me feeling cold, like there's nothing under…
aardvarchaeology | December 17, 2009I've listened to Escape Pod, the science fiction short-story podcast, for four years now. And lately I have become increasingly awed by one of the newer hosts, Norm Sherman. His writing is acerbic, his delivery is deadpan, the guy is just so cool and funny. On the most recent EP episode he played an absolutely sublime H.P. Lovecraft love ballad that he's written and recorded, and it turns out the guy is a veritable Jonathan Coulton! Only one who speaks as well.
Cuz you're my quasi-icthyan angel
You're my half amphibian queen
You're the Overlord of my Universe
You're the Tormentor of my Dreams…
aardvarchaeology | December 14, 2009
These are my obsolete portable music players. A post-1985 cassette player, a 2000 minidisc player and a 2002 iPod whose sole means of communication with the outside world is a firewire socket. In the 90s I didn't listen much to music while on the move. Since 2006 I use a smartphone as my mp3 player.
oracknows | December 11, 2009
Has it really been that long?
It was a dismally overcast Saturday five years ago when, on a whim after having read a TIME Magazine article about how 2004 was supposedly the Year of the Blogger, I sat down in front of my computer, found Blogspot, and the first incarnation of Respectful Insolence was born. If anyone is curious, this was my first test post, and this was my first substantive post (well, sort of). Every year (at least the ones where I remember my blogiversary, I find it particularly interesting to go back to the beginning and see how true to my original vision for this blog I've…
jdupuis | November 30, 2009Welcome to the latest feature here at Confessions of a Science Librarian -- Music Mondays! My plan is to have a vaguely music-related post here most Mondays, somewhat in the vein of my Friday Fun posts, but probably not quite as regular. I'll probably mix in short CD reviews, odd bits I've found on the web, the occasional "Five Songs I Love" feature with who knows what else I think of.
And speaking of odd bits...
Rob Halford, Metal God, Judas Priest front man, solo act with a couple of really great albums under his belt, has a new Christmas CD coming out called Wintersongs
Let's hear what…
oracknows | November 26, 2009It's Thanksgiving here in the States; so I plan on taking the day off from blogging that I might partake of the American custom of stuffing myself to the point of unconsciousness while hanging out with my family.
In the meantime, bow before the genius of the Muppets, as they perform one of my favorite songs of all time:
I thought it appropriate for the holiday, given its beginning. The use of Beaker in this video was particularly inspired.
terrasig | November 21, 2009At the recent U2 Academic Conference, I had the opportunity to be at the local premiere of It Might Get Loud, a much-more-than documentary of the electric guitar as told through the careers of Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, U2's The Edge, and Jack White of The White Stripes and Raconteurs. For the record, I thought that White was going to be totally out of his league - while I wouldn't call him a "legend" as billed by the producers, I left being incredibly impressed with his background and breadth of abilities.
Related to the movie trailer below, I had an exchange with Toaster Sunshine, a…
pontiff | November 6, 2009I get a lot of press releases forward to me which usually get forwarded directly into my gmail archive. But this one I'm happy to pass along: Third Man Records is releasing A Glorious Dawn. You know the Carl Sagan remix (w/ guest appearance of the Hawkmeister) that I've been looping over and over again while I work:
Third Man Records is over the moon to announce the 7-inch release of "A Glorious Dawn" on November 9th.
...
The release is timed to coincide with the 75th anniversary of Sagan's birth. Also happening that day is a reception in United States' Congress with speeches by senators,…
goodmath | November 6, 2009
Porcupine Tree, "Kneel and Disconnect": New Porcupine Tree! It's
always great to get new stuff from these guys. It's good, but it's not
up to the quality of their last two albums. (But given that their last two
were utterly amazing, that's not much of a criticism.)
Mind Games, "Royalty in Jeopardy": Some prog that I recently found
via eMusic. They've got a sound that I describe as being sort of like a
mix between Yes and Marillion. They're very good - I wouldn't put them
in the top ranks of neo-prog, but they're not at the bottom either.
Riverside, "Cybernetic Pillow": Now, these…
oracknows | November 4, 2009Oh, hell. I actually used to like Smashing Pumpkins back in the 1990s. Unfortunately, its leader, Billy Corgan, has just revealed himself to be as medically ignorant as Jenny McCarthy in a recent blog post:
If you follow some of the links I have been supplying as of late, you'll notice many are focused on the propaganda build up to our day of reckoning with the Swine Flu virus. I say 'propaganda' because, in my heart, there is something mighty suspicious about declaring an emergency for something that has yet to show itself to be a grand pandemic. merican President Obama has declared a…
aardvarchaeology | October 21, 2009
The other day Dr. Isis made comment no 10,000 here on Aard. Lucky it wasn't one of the hate commenters that swarmed the blog around that time! Because the prize I decided on for commenter 10^4 was a song, and it could have become awkward. Now, If you want to hear me do a Queen song, head on over to the good doctor's place.