BigMother.dk

I just learned about the new album cover design resource Sleevage. Complete with background stories, design details, gossip on design origins, copycats etc. this is a must go site for music lovers of all ages.

Sleevage is still in the building up phase so please allow for growth. I personally look forward to future visits for both encyclopedic info on covers as well as mere browsing around. If you have privileged information to share even better so.

Via Josh Spear

There’s been quite some fuzz about Radiohead’s distribution method for their latest album ’In Rainbows’. You simply decide yourself how much the downloadable version is worth to you by choosing your own price. I choose to pay 10 pounds. Most probably a lot less. I paid for affection to the best mainstream rockband there is. Besides, I thought that since analytics and commentators will judge the success and importance of Radiohead’s move on how much revenue they manage to get out of downloads, I might as well make a contribution to quite decent numbers.

I’m not sure if ‘In rainbows’ is revolutionary for the music business. But linking price closer to real value and affection is quite strong. Bands can benchmark average price of downloads to test their real net worth. Fans will have a much harder time ethically to simply pirate the material. In a certain sense, there will be prestige in paying a lot to demonstrate how hardcore a fan you are. And labels have obviously become obsolete with new technologies for production, cover art and digital distribution. So let’s see who follows Radiohead on this one.

Oh and the album? It’s fabulous! Rich, textured, melodic, dynamic appropriately harmonious. It seems quite short but it’s probably because it’s so very good. For a very interesting song-by-song walkthrough, see Pitchfork‘s excellent coverage.

I’d wished to put some LastFM stuff on Bigmother for some time to flash all the überhip music I listen to all the time. The result is the somewhat MySpace-ugly display at right. The reason is that LastFM hasn’t worked properly for me (no, Keith Jarrett and Bob Dylan are NOT my overall top artists) and I haven’t used it fully either. Besides, my loved Powerbook has almost died (I’m still trying to recover the music library) and left me with my wife’s old G3 incapable of wasting resources to music listening and LastFM streams. The result is highly misleading top artists and tracks, no radio and no recent tracks at all. So until I get my LastFM mojo working or find other musical bling for my blog, you’re left with the display.

But as a service, let me manually recommend the latest albums from: Battles, The Field, People Press Play, Cinematic Orchestra, Björk, Yeah yeah yeahs, Jacob Bro, Deadbeat

And as always, the coming material from WhoMadeWho and Samurai.fm

Thom Yorke is sampling some of interesting coming remixes of The Eraser (press some of the weird buildings and close the original window). And on Samurai FM there are as usual great stuff, incl. hours of great streams with on-everybody’s-lips mr. Hans-Peter Lindstrøm and Mr. Scruff. Go treat yourself with these smallish but great goodies while you’re still at the computer.

I was too busy yesterday purchasing the long awaited new Trentemøller album so I did it today. Too busy might sound strange when I always buy music online for several reasons (CD’s with popular music is simply outdated). However, today the price had even gone up from DKK 160,- to DKK 184,-. One more testimonial to Trentemøllers fast rise to the skies.

I was little impressed the first time I heard Trentemøller back in 2002 or 03. Perhaps the setting was simply wrong as he played together with the (once very cool) Danish big Band The Orchestra as Beats and Big Band. They simply didn’t manage to play together. Four years elapsed and I got hands on His Singles Collection. Right away the unique touch of a talent was springing to my years. Then hype about a coming a totally different debut began. An album much more calm and contemplative than the club material who had brought him fame. I began waiting, just like everyone else.

Now that the hype is settling in with the actual material out (I have actually already enjoyed it for a while now due to reasons I cannot disclose , I can agree: The album is great. Not revolutionary, just a very nice companion when you’re on the move (physically or mentally) and generally extremely craftily done. Mostly of course the new stuff being new and exiting. I hear a lot of notes of minimal Nordic electronica and dub. A dose of more Amazonian wild Amon Tobin-ish stuff. A few Fat Boy Slim passages backed by introvert crescendoing a la Sigur Rós and fresh staccato like Jaga Jazzist. Numerous layers elegantly interweaved for a clear and focused expression – unmistakably Scandinavian. The combining effect of pace and calmness is amazing. Trentemøller is a genuine talent and ahead awaits a long career as both artist and producer (what’s the difference these days, I mean it’s not less artistic being a skilled producer). He’ll be gefundenes fressen for cool-aware but tightly controlled major artists by bridging mainstream and street cred. So go and buy it. It’s no shame sharing taste with many – not in these seldom occasions when they’re actually right.

In what seem to be either a conceptual experiment or a desperate move of necessity in a new world order of me too indie musical marketing, the father of dub minimalism and it’s signature label ~scape, Stefan Betke, has created a MySpace profile for his Pole moniker. Even if he has tried hard to keep the design cool and calm (check out the minerally aesthetic picture and the fact thatit’s poleartist not polemusic), there’s still a long way to Pole’s classically minimalist cover art. Among the standard elements Betke is suffering under is ‘Band members’ (to which Betke has written “I edited my profile with Thomas’ Myspace Editor V4.4″) and a screaming yellow as the most suitably monochrome color Betke could come up with. It’s truly tragic-comic to see an iconic electronica avantgarder like Betke submerged among friendship and ‘thanx-for-the-add’ craving wannabes and the worst of web-Americana of MySpace. Brave new world.

But from a new principle of always bringing you at least one pleasant information per post (however misanthropic and gloomy it might otherwise by), note that Betke promises new material out soon. Moreover, Jan Jelink is also about to follow up his kraut-rock studies of Kosmischer Pitch with more organic stuff on Tierbeobachtungen (listen here) on the ~scape label. Ganz toll!

I’m just back in from a great meeting with the most convenient king, always-lovable Erlend Öye and his new act The Whitest Boy Alive. Jeppe called me in the mid of Sunday night working saying that his friend Erlend was in town and just put him in the door and the concert was in 30 min – if I had the time? No, I’m afraid I replied, but he luckily managed to convince me over a couple of fast SMS’. And what a nice concert with a lot of loyal Danish fans (and probably a lot of Swedes as well) and a band jamming considerable parts of the show. Gentle and full of love as the album (and everything Erlend does). And most of all the concert stopped at a very ‘I-got-some-quite-important- business-meetings-tomorrow’ friendly hour. As father to a little child I could really use more of that. Which reminds me, I need to crash now. Later!

Erlend in red (sorry for the lousy quality it wasn’t meant to be indie)

What a day. Even if I’m totally overstressed at work (no, Actics is not a work but a condition), hitting my Samurai.fm bookmark today was a blessing. The two first streams today is presented by Scape and feature Pole with band (picture) and Deadbeat. Nearly two and a half hours of high quality music – for free! I haven’t even scrolled down yet to see the other gifts. Go there, listen and enjoy a productive Friday!

Most often mashups are merely two or more tracks multilayered for the fun of it. Others create a new expression and a pristine track. I just fell over this, which simply sounds right (however my judgement is handicapped in not knowing the original material). And those of you who speculate if the DJ Kicks serious is still any good (if it ever was – oh yeah, the Erlend Öye was of course great) I can inform you that the latest of its kind with Four tet is nothing short of amazing. As you probably expect from Kieran Hebden, I know I do. Go buy it NOW!
I’ve started to use Last-fm more systematically (read: get it to work properly) but my stats don’t give an adequate picture of my present sonic world, as I listen a lot to music on my phone and have started to dig through the archives of Samurai FM which holds so many quality shows. Recommended. So even if Last.fm doesn’t track these other sources yet I still find it a very interesting piece of social software with lots of inspiration for musiclovers.

As always: if you got any tips on new music or sources I (and probably other readers) will love to get the tips.

I just can’t wait for Tobin‘s next album. And a score for a hungarian movie! Watch clips from his coming releases here.