The 75 tram on Flinders St. Photography by Rob Birze
This is everywhere.
what seems overtly, blatantly digital in today’s pop — to draw attention to its digital hyper-reality — are all those AutoTune treatments and various other vocal-science effects (stutters, glitches, drastic pitchshifts from high to low) etc that you get routinely in chartpop in recent years— that, and the general sheen of too-perfectness on both vocals (through AutoTune) and on the entire sonic-surface of songs — a digi-gloss - there seems to be an attempt there, semi-unconscious most likely, to make music keep up with the high-definition crispness of flat-screen TV, CGI in film, skin-tone even-ness and other digital touching-up effects as used in glossy magazine photography and (i believe) also in TV and films.
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| — | Retromania, Simon Reynolds on the New Aesthetic. (via new-aesthetic) |
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Have you started seeing images in online reCAPTCHAs that look suspiciously like house numbers pulled from Google Street View? Well, as it turns out, that’s exactly what they are. Google confirmed it’s currently running an experiment that involves using its reCAPTCHA spam-fighting system to improve data in Google Maps by having users identify things like street names and business addresses.
When I moved to Hong Kong I joined a band. We quickly discovered that despite it being a large city (pop. 7,000,000+) there were actually not that many places to play original non-mainstream (i.e. Cantopop) music. Any venues that have live music tend to have very proficient Filipino cover bands, who can be relied upon to play music that everyone knows. I think there was probably less than 20 venues in the entire city where an indie band could play!
Fortunately there is also the Underground - not a venue, but an event. Organised by ChrisB, the Underground showcase 4 or five bands every couple of weeks. The only criteria is the music must be original. Sometimes the bands are great, sometimes the bands are a bit crap. But the point of the Underground is to give original bands a chance to play, because as you can imagine, with so few places to play it can be hard to get proficient at performing live for an audience.
My band played there three or four times, and it was great fun every time. ChrisB and the other volunteers have created an important institution in Hong Kong’s music scene and if it wasn’t there Hong Kong would be a much more boring place.
Congratulations to the Underground - here’s to another 100!
Gig this Sunday
I am playing a gig with Goofyfooter this Sunday afternoon (March 18th), at Gertrudes’ Brown Couch in Fitzroy. This is the debut of our new drummer, and a couple of new tracks as well. Show starts at 3pm, we’re on at 3pm. So don’t be late.
