This comes as a mild surprise to me insert shallow smirk, but my traffic logs and feed reader tell me that tunequest has been accepted into 9rules. What this means for the site, I don’t know yet. I must admit that I’ve not devoted as much time to the community as I know I should have, because it seems like a most excellent place.
I’m sure I’ll have more to say as this develops, but I look forward to engaging with it and once again, welcome.
Originally called just “Isotope,” the band changed its moniker to Isotope 217 to avoid confusion with the 70s experimental rock/jazz outfit of the same name.
But whether by direct inspiration or after-the-fact realization, I-217’s modus operandi is remarkably similar to its nomenclatural predecessor, specializing in a kind of improvisational, “experimental” jazz, similar to the jazz+rock fusions of the 60s/70s, but updated for the late 90s. Released on Thrill Jockey, the group forms an intermingling triumvirate with Tortoise and the Chicago Underground Duo/Trio/Orchestra as well as a number of other Chicagoland side projects, sharing members, ideas and in some cases, melodies and song titles across multiple records and banners. It also shares those groups’ ethos of merging the compositional prose of post-rock with the expressionism of jazz.
Though Isotope 217’s later albums are somewhat less accessible, the group’s 1997 debut The Unstable Molecule features some compelling grooves and is heavily centered around percussion, as is evidenced by Phonometrics below.
[audio:061210Phonometrics.mp3]
iTunes 7’s built-in artwork finder is a great little enhancement to the program. But it does have it’s limitations. It seems to require exacting ID3 tags or it won’t return a requested cover. And if a particular song/album isn’t sold by the iTunes Music Store, well, you can just forget it. Likewise if you’re not running iTunes 7.
Cue SlothRadio.
SlothRadio.com is a streaming radio site and music blog who’s self-described mission to “just play great music.” I can’t vouch for that claim, but, in addition to that, the site does offer a nice cover finder. You can find high-quality art for music, movies, games and books just by typing into the search fields.
Results default from Amazon’s extensive catalog, but if that doesn’t turn up any results, you can do a Google Image Search with only one additional click.
The beautiful part, for Mac OS X users at least, comes in the form of an AppleScript from dougscripts.com called, appropriately, Search SlothRadio for Artwork. Drop that sucker into your Library > iTunes > Scripts folder and whenever you need to search for an album cover, just select the songs in your iTunes Library then run the script from the Scripts menu.
Voila: Instant artwork to drag & drop, copy & paste or do whatever you want to with it.
There’s a slight bug though. The script uses Safari to perform the query. It will give you an error if there’s not already a browser window open. But other than that, it presents a nearly flawless way to retrieve album covers.
French composer Francis Lai is perhaps best known for his breakthrough song Un homme et une femme from the 1966 film of the same name.
Lesser known, however, at least in the States, is the film from the next year called Vivre pour Vivre (Live For Life). It was the second collaboration between Lai and Un homme et une femme director Claude Lelouch.
This film is incredibly hard to come by in America; Netflix doesn’t offer it. Amazon offers a Russian! import
The music itself was also nominated for a Golden Globe but lost to Camelot. For this score, Lai composed a specific theme for each of the main characters: Robert, newscaster; Catherine, his wife; and Candice, his mistress (played by Candice Bergen of all people).
Without having seen the film, I can’t comment on how it works on screen, but Candice’s theme evokes a kind of troubled, but determined passion:
[audio:061210ThemedeCandice.mp3]Who doesn’t like free music?
No, no, I would never be so gauche as to advocate illicit file transfers though, who am I to condemn you for it. But you see that light blue Feedburner badge in the sidebar? I’d like to see the number on it start increasing.
So here’s the deal: sign up for the Tunequest RSS feed, and on a regular basis, I’ll point out a link to downloadable mp3s of worth in the feed entries. It could be a new indie rock song, or an old forgotten gem, a live show or a crazy cover version; anything that’s interesting enough to share. The internet is teeming with excellent free music, so I’m certain that everyone wins.
Originally uploaded by The Polish Ambassador.
The Polish Ambassador has posted four downloadable electro-musings on intergalactic negotiation tactics.
Partake of them slowly and acclimate yourself to the Ambassador’s power. Though he is on a mission of peace and synthesized grooves, these treatises are but a prelude to the all out assault that will be Diplomatic Immunity which launches December 15.
Specialized bike parts has released an intriguing holiday card for the 2006 season. It’s an excerpt of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker suite, a perennial Christmas time favorite.
The catch is that the piece is played entirely on bicycle parts. From createdigitalmusic.com:
[audio:specializednutcracker.mp3]Glockenspiel & Clarinet melody = spokes.
Cello & Violin pizzicatos = plucked derailleur cables.
Triangle = disc brake hit.
Percussion = shifting, coasting, finger over turning spokes, chain pulls, braking, clipping into pedals, back-spinning, air out of tires.
