A week ago I posted the video for Radiohead’s House Of Cards. A few people asked me if there was a high quality version available. There wasn’t but there is now! The video can be downloaded as a zipped folder containing a Quicktime file.
Download it here: High Quality House Of Cards Video (right click, save as). The original low quality version is below if you haven’t seen it yet.
It has become the norm for us to digitize our lives and this is having a profound effect on our lifestyles. Those of us who grew up during the transitional period and more aware of this than most. I actually remember a time before mobile phones, digital cameras/music storage and the Internet. For the next generation this may be unthinkable but we were there and we saw phones the size of bricks and dial-up connections.
Previously photographs, videos and racks of CDs where found cluttering up living rooms around the country but digital storage is now taking over. Some hard drive companies are referring to “terabyte lifestyles” in an attempt to define the need for storage (You can just picture the look on the little Marketing types face’s when they came up with that one can’t you?).
All this constant collecting and documenting is The Fear. Anyone who has lost a year’s worth of photos or a great collection of obscure hard to find albums will understand that moment of panic when your computer will not turn on (hint: plug). The Fear leads us to backup, backup our backups and use online file storage and backup software.
The result of all this technological development is that physical copies are becoming less popular. This is affecting record companies in a big way as we know. Netflix has recently said that they only expect their mail-order DVD rental service to be needed for the next 5 years after which time downloads will take over. Does this mean that Ikea will have to sell digital storage rather then CD racks? Will archaeologists in the distant future be able to learn all about us by digging up a USB stick, or will they not have the necessary drivers?
Jack Schofield wrote an article about ‘Lifecaching’ in 2004 which seems to become more relevant as the years pass. He described the four ways in which recording our lives were (and are) becoming easier and easier.
First, new devices such as camera phones and digital recorders have made it much easier to record your life. Second, the use of digital media has allowed all the different types of record to be combined instead of stored separately. Third, the cost of disk storage has fallen to the point where many PC users can afford the terabyte or two of storage needed to keep everything. Finally, the internet has made it easy to share the results.
The advances in technology which Scholfield noted have lead to ‘Lifecaching’ or ‘Lifecasting’ becoming a real phenomena. Internet celebrities/attention seekers such as IJustine record their lives via blogs, live video streams and services such as Flickr and Twitter. These same advances have lead to the rest of us become more likely to record our everyday lives via photography and video.
New blogging platforms have sprung up which attempt to accommodate those who wish to keep a record of what they are doing whilst they are doing it. This is quite a small but significant difference. Once waited to post to our blogs perhaps at the end of the day like a traditional diary but now updates can be constant. When a bomb went off in my home town it was discussed online long before the traditional media arrived. People where able to communicate with each other and gather information directly. Twitter (as discused previously), limits users to update using 140 characters leading to a blog which is like a collection of sms messages. Tumblr and BrightKite all allow their users to update quickly using different media such as photographs or video. Brightkite in particular allows users to tag their location to keep in touch with others in real time, online whilst away from their computers.
The increased ease of blogging allows us to become more comfortable with sharing our offline life with our online ‘friends’. All the information we release is stored for posterity, to be viewed by whoever wishes (in the case of public blogs at least). Imagine if you could read your parents blog from when they were young, would you want to? Do your opinions on pastys need to be fixed in digital form?
There has been a lot of anticipation about Radiohead’s video for House Of Cards ever since details about it’s creation were released. The video was shot using lasers rather than traditional camera technology. The effects seen below are representations of data collected using 3d plotting technology AKA laser Magic (at least thats what I’m calling it.)
The official description states: “Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.” As I said, Laser Magic.
You can interact with the video and learn more about it at Google Codes here. Click for more information about Radiohead House Of Cards Video.
A collection of free Dubstep mixes from Skream, Skulldisco, Bunzer0, N-Type, Kode9 and many others. This aims to be a definitive list of all the places to get great Dubstep Mixes. If you know of any I haven’t listed (I’m sure there’s loads) add a comment or email me.
I was planning on making a list of the best music videos of 2007, but its time to look forward to the future people. Or at least the recent past!
2008 seemed pretty futuristic when I was growing up, I figured we would be zooming around on hover-boards in silver suits eating pills for food. I never will forgive television for raising my hopes so high only for them to be dashed against the rocks of disappointment, or something.
One thing I never thought about was that one day we would be able to watch videos online, which might explain why I’m blogging right now not being paid to theorise about the future.
Maybe these audio-visual treats will help you (and me) to overcome the disappointment that is living in the future.
Hot Chip have a knack for great videos. Lots of bright colors and geeks dancing, what more could you want?
Perhaps not the most exciting video ever but the song is great. Experimental Japanese Doom anyone? For the epic album Smile.
Art Brut have always been pretty ‘meta’ and tongue-in-cheek (their first single was called ‘[We] Formed A Band’) so I’m going to assume this wasn’t really filmed for an Australian television station. EMI didn’t actually tell the band they were releasing this single, which seems a little bit rude.
We all know that Kanye throws a hissy fit if his videos don’t receive enough attention so I’ve put this one in at number 1. If you find rappers being killed with shovels by women in fancy lingerie offensive, don’t watch this (sorry, that might have given away the plot a bit).
This video is amazing, if somewhat un-embedable. As The Complete Sound points out, ” Record labels seem to have forgotten that videos are PROMOTIONAL material”. Below is a link to the hi-res version. Click if you like flying dolphins, tribal themes and really low quality effects. This is my favourite song of the year so far, by far.
Quicktime Link.
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Once again I have another great mix for you to download. This one is by Kanye West to support the realease of the single ‘Can’t tell me nothing’. Features Kanye (obviously) along with Common, Ne-Yo, T-pain and the always excellent Talib Kwel. This is mixed by Plain Pat.
Tracklisting:
01. Kanye West - Friday Morning, May 25th, 2007 (Intro)
02. Kanye West - Stronger (Snippet)
03. CRS (Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West & Pharrell) - Us Placers
04. GLC - I Ain’t Even On Yet 05. Kanye West - Can’t Tell Me Nothing
06. Common feat. Kanye West - Southside (Snippet)
07. Common - The Game
08. Kanye West - Porno (Interlude)
09. 88 Keys feat. Kanye West & Malik Yusef - Stay Up (Snippet)
10. Talib Kweli feat. Kanye West - In The Mood
11. Bentley feat. Pimp C & Lil’ Wayne - C.O.L.O.U.R.S.
12. Kid Sister feat. Kanye West - Pro Nails
13. Kanye West - Young Folks
14. Kanye West - Interviews (Interlude)
15. Common - The People
16. Big Sean - Get’cha Some
17. Consequence - Don’t Forget Em
18. Sa-Ra - White! (On The Floor)
19. Ne-Yo feat. Kanye West - Because Of You (Remix)
20. T-Pain feat. Kanye West - Buy You A Drank (Remix)
21. Kanye West - Throw Some D’s (Interlude)
22. Kanye West - Throw Some D’s (Remix)
23. Tony Williams - Dreaming Of Your Love
24. Really Doe feat. Jennifer Hudson - Magnetic Power
25. PM - Hater Family
Size: 73.3mb
Download the mix from megaupload here.
Here is the video for ‘Can’t tell me nothing’.
Update: This is a .rar file. It needs to be extracted using WinRAR which you can get for free here.
Qtrax, a new service offering unlimited, free downloads from 25-30 million free tracks for download launched at midnight EST last night. Or rather it didn’t launch - the site still does not allow users to download the necessary software, more than six hours after its official launch time passed.
The service which benefits from P2P (peer-to-peer) downloading has reached a deal with the four largest music labels: Universal, Sony, Warner and EMI. The owners of the music will receive money each time one of their tracks is played.
The money to pay the labels will come from advertising revenue. Whist looking for, and downloading music users will be streamed adverts via the Qtrax software.
Upon further research it becomes clear that the service Qtraz offers may well be too good to be true. Most of us who download music from the internet will be aware of the problem of music which is crippled by DRM (Digital Rights Management) software. The software is often attached to legal downloads which prevents users from having as much freedom as if they had downloaded the files illegally. DRM can prevent a track from being copied or played more than a certain number of times and can limit the type of hardware on which the files can be played.
As an example consider this. I payed for and downloaded the third season of Ricky Gervais’ Podcast from Itunes, but due to the file type I am unable to listen to this on my (non-Ipod) mp3 player. If I had illegally downloaded these files I would be able to listen to them away from my computer but as it is I am restricted when it comes to listening to content I payed for!
Tracks downloaded from Qtrax contain DRM software allowing Qtrax to keep tabs on how many times the file is played. The Record labels are payed per-play rather than per-download.
The tracks will not be compatible with Ipods, which will seriously limit the amount of people willing and able to use the service. Ipod integration is due to be launched in March all being well.
A Reuters article of the launch notes “[Qtrax] will also feature music videos, artist documentaries, interviews, album reviews and biographies among other features.” All-in-all this seems like an interesting service but I’m not sure if the DRM will put me off from using it. Hopefully once the launch is successful we will be able to tell if this will become a viable alternative to traditional P2P services.
News.com.au is reporting that three of the big four record labels Qtrax claimed had authorized the use of their music have denied making any deal with the company. This is a major blow for Qtrax and may explain why the site has yet to launch. The site says
Nobody seems content mastering just one medium these day. It has become the norm for actresses to sing, rappers to act and artist tho direct. Most of the time when actors and actresses start making music it turns out to be sub par rubbish which wouldn’t get released if they weren’t famous. Anybody remember keanu reeves’ band dogstar? These three upcoming albums by actresses (one is more of a mix-tape than an actual album) sound like they are going to be worth downloading and maybe even paying for!
Deschanel stared in Almost Famous, Elf and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. She is going to release an album, called Volume One, as ‘She And Him’ alongside singer/ songwriter M. Ward in March. They met on the set of the forthcoming film The Go Getter. The album will be released on Ward’s record label Merge
Here is a clip of the pair at LA’s Disney Concert Hall:
Mp3: M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel - When I get To The Border Zshare download link
Stream: The Go Getter Myspace page.
Update: recently released track listing:
01 Sentimental Heart
02 Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?
03 This Is Not a Test
04 Change Is Hard
05 I Thought I Saw Your Face Today
06 Take It Back
07 I Was Made for You
08 You Really Got a Hold on Me (Miracles cover)
09 Black Hole
10 Got Me
11 I Should Have Known Better (Beatles cover)
Johansson is due to release an album of Tom Waits covers on May 20th. How on earth she is going to pull this off is anybodies guess, Tom Waits sings about two octaves lower than your average singer and sounds like he drinks whisky for breakfast (in a good way). The album will either be called Scarlett Sings Tom Waits or Anywhere I lay my head depending on who you believe and will be released by Atco (Rhino) records. I haven’t managed to find any clips of Scarlett’s Tom Waits impression and I’m still not convinced this is actually gonna happen.
The album is produced by David Sitek of TV On The Radio and features members of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. No track listing details yet. Its also worth mentioning that Scarlett sang with The Jesus And Mary Chain at Coachella so she clearly has great taste in music. Here a very shakey video of the Coachella performance:
This one is kind of a cheat as its already released and its a compilation but its an excuse to see a photo of Natalie Portman, so stop complaining. Last October Portman curated an album which was released on itunes with all the profits going to FINCA (Foundation for International Community Assistance)
Tracklisting:
1. Be Good (Tokyo Police Club)
2. My Night With the Prostitute From Marseille (Beirut) [exclusive]
3. Plaid Lined Jacket (Tom Brosseau)
4. Tudo Bem Malandro (Curumin)
5. Australia (The Shins - Bjorn Yttling Mix) [exclusive]
6. Ain’t No Reason (Brett Dennen)
7. Turnaroundturnmeon (Sean Hayes)
8. Oh Yes, Another Mother (Thee More Shallows)
9. The Beast (Angus & Julia Stone)
10. Paddy’s Gone (Antony & The Johnsons)
11. Idle Ties (Vetiver)
12. Broken (Norah Jones)
13. There’s Always Something Happening (Devendra Banhart) [exclusive]
14. What Is a Soul? (M. Ward) [exclusive]
15. Forgiveness Figg (Bethany Hotel Blues) (Wooden Wand)
16. How We Landed (Rogue Wave) [exclusive]
