BigMother.dk

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.

A new survey conducted by Nokia concludes among other things that two thirds of people asked globally would replace their MP3 player with an appropriately enabled mobile phone. Well I already did that. Last month, when I realized that the Nokia 6280 allows for up to 2 GB of MiniSD storage I simply put my secondary (yes the iPod is slowly degrading) device to rest permanently with my kitchen sound outfit. I love my new converged mobile gear = my phone. The interface is of course not that perfect, but the sound is even better with the standard headphones than on my 2G iPod with some pretty worn out Etymotic ER6 HighEnd in-ear phones. And when I’m on the move the whole music-to-answering-calls-and-back cycle is just perfect. So in conclusion, I believe that Nokia’s survey is onto something true about the very near deflation of the iPod hype (even if it’s a quite convenient conclusion for Nokia), as I’m normally quite mainstream in such matters (…early adopter… moi ). Just another reason for Apple to INTRODUCE THAT FRIGGING PHONE!

Via PSFK

Mads got me thinking yesterday, about what all this about Danish Sound Design actually means. And seemingly himself too (see his 2. comment). And while typing this and being about to write a catchy executive summary of our Manifesto for Danish Sound design, a business development promotion from the Danish Foreign Ministry dumps into my mailbox. And it clearly represent the old school ‘we-beat-them-on-technology’ which both Mads and I want to avoid.

Well, one thing’s for sure, it’s not interesting let alone lucrative to compete with the iPod wonder. Only in the sense, that Apple’s success with the iPod is due to an intelligent (and probably quite lucky) multidimensional thinking far superior to a pure hardware driven approach. When I’m thinking Danish Sound Design I think of audio services and design, for which we of course should deploy world leading Danish technology for (from the fields of acoustics, sound production and control). Services that might end up continuing the Danish tradition for clarity, simplicity and quality rather than the extremely lucrative ‘teen-segment-services’. But it is admittedly a new frontier, so we might not yet understand the full implications of all the competencies build up in Denmark and a world wide almost totally neglected field of design. There’s simply too much territory to get a proper sense of direction (that’s when technical ‘inventions’ come in handy, as they naturally point out directions). In early phases of innovation you always tend to extrapolate from a look backwards and sideways (a fallacy my iPod post was very close to commit), but the ambitions of our Danish Design exploration is actually more fundamental and thus also more challenging. It covers political, educational, regional and of course business aspects and already that broad probably block us from fast disruptive innovations. But it might build a more solid fundament for long-term value creation. At least our timing is right as witnessed by the stream of events and publications that have surfaced since we started this December 2004. But please help me with your ideas and opinions on the horizon: how do we build on existing leading qualities in Denmark and still avoid the ‘tech-driven-or-too-nice-and-neat’ approach that we’ve lost ground on lately? I’ll try to keep a mental diary here for what I come up with.

Link: The foreign Ministry promotion

I’m quite pleased to witness how the exploration of possibilities for Danish innovative sound design that I initiated December 2004 is flourishing. Even if based on slightly wishful thinking disguised as firm strategic knowledge back then, the ground was surprisingly fertile and the timing seemingly good. A growing group of skillful professionals have been working focused on establishing a center for sound design in Denmark for since our workshop last May and important alliances are slowly being formed. I still think that there are immense strategic potentials in cutting edge sound design products and services among Danish designers, engineers and musicians. So even if I’ve only been following the efforts on the sideline for some time now due to other duties, I’ll start helping out again soon. I promise guys.