Facebook and the Internet can be two amazing tools.
A few days ago – thanks to a lead posted in a Facebook forum (thanks Corrado!) – I was able to reach Anthony James, the vocalist that sung on the album “Lies” credited to Den Harrow, in 1988.

Anthony is still in the music business and now runs a “Production music” company called Music Candy, in the USA. His role is CEO and Creative Director.
He was surprised to receive my message asking him about the Den Harrow project, despite it wasn’t the first time that someone in recent years contacted him on that.

Here’s his part of the long lasting (and fascinating) Den Harrow saga.

Anthony’s adventure in the music industry began with UK radios, in mid ’80s at Chiltern Radio in Dunstable (England): “that was where I was working at the time producing promo’s and commercials. It was my first job out of school so I was doing very well at only 17 years old. I think it was around August 1986 that I moved from London to live in Milan, Italy“.

A friend who was from USA and lived in UK had just moved to Milan and – continues Anthony – he

got a job with Claudio Cecchetto at Radio Deejay working on the new station called “Radio Capital” alongside Albertino and other DJ’s. Radio Deejay was in the same building, in fact right next to the Radio Capital studio. The programme director of the two stations offered me a job to produced jingles and promos etc, so it was great that after only being in Milan for 3 days, I had a good job.

Continuate la lettura »

DeeTeeDee is an electronic musician and IMVU 3-d avatar (in this, she shares something with our friend Lady Wallace). We have met Dee in the IMVU world a few months ago. This was the transcription of the talk.

Nicola (Dj Batman) Battista is talking to DeeTeeDee about her music; [1]

DeeTeeDee: one track I especially wasn’t going to put on the album is rave1 but it sold so well as a triggerless…

djbatman: (opening an imaginary tape recorder) ;)

djbatman: why didn’t you want to use?

DeeTeeDee: oh a tape recorder, how do I look?

djbatman: where you thinking not good enough for that?

djbatman: heheh
djbatman: you look great. ;)

DeeTeeDee: well it’s kinda an overused sound

djbatman: you used Tunecore to upload music in the IMVU Music Store

djbatman: did you do that after the store was opened or were you using that distributor before?

DeeTeeDee: i had heard of Tunecore before but i was emboldened (if that’s a word) by IMVU

djbatman: and what has been your experience so far? regarding Tunecore as IMVU distribution channel, I mean

Continuate la lettura »

Artist: ReArz
Title: Spered
Year: 2008
Label: Coop Breizh
More info: www.myspace.com/rearzgroup

Five tracks for a project with an international feel: strings, electronics, voices, guitar, accordion, sampling are just some of the elements used for a wonderful fusion that takes the best out of different traditions and looks to the future, in an original mix which cannot be easily compared to other material (apart maybe for Afro Celt Sound System, in “Stone Dance”).
Behind it there is the Arz Nevez project, a string quartet plus guitar, led by Breton Yves Ribis, from Lorient. And the meeting with Italians Maurizio Piazza (co-producer of the whole work with Ribis) and Dj Brahms (which adds sampling to “Stone Dance”). But also some other interesting guests: Bring’s of Monkey B – a French hip-hop combo, in “Utopie” – and world famous Nepalese sitar player Bijaya Vaidya (in “Battle of Gods”).
The only negative bit? The disc is just twenty-five minutes long. When will we see a full album?

Musicblob normally doesn’t host audio files. This is the first exception and we are not talking of a music file but a spoken word track about 3 minutes long.

It is the historical recording of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Adrin and Michael Collins’s Moon landng: the Apollo 11 mission. It was July 20, 1969: 40 years ago.

Bits like “The Eagle has landed” and “That’s one small step for a man… One giant leap for mankind” these days can be easily found as mp3s. In the peer-to-peer underground and other places. This is public domain material, as most of the production of NASA and other US government agencies.

Fragments of these recordings have been sampled in many occasions: the best example is “Apollo XI” by OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark), from the album “Sugar Tax” (1991) subsequently remixed in “big beat” style, as shown in “The OMD Singles” collection, released in 2003.

You can find the mp3 format recording here.

Photo: Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, July, 1969. NASA.This file is in the public domain because it was created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that “NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted”.

The present post marks a new MusicBlob feature: a playlist for Spotify users; Spotify is the streaming music juke-box in perfectly complaining with copyright laws.
While available in certain countries only as a “Premium” fee service, in some territories it is available as a “free” ad-supperted program.

Our first playlist is called “Cyberpunk” and it mainly features electronica, including some well known tracks (Eat Static, a real jungle classic…) and some lesser known names (Spor) which still perfectly fit the theme.

Nout Heretik brings a track whose title is identical to our playlist but the sound is more on the gabber side… while The Kilngonz represent (how do we define that?) …an ambient industrial!? ;) moment that goes on also in a track by Katharsis.

What has Billy Idol’s “Shock to the system” to do with all this?
It definitely fits, and not just because it comes from an album titled “Cyberpunk”, but also because Idol was the first among the big names – it was December 1998 – to act as a pioneer in the mp3 revolution. A guy who really “shocked the system”: a cyberpunk in his own right.

You can find the “Cyberpunk” playlist here:
open.spotify.com/user/djbatman/playlist/0sTZG82gQdNg2sdUTeSTOK

Full discloure, folks: my opinion on her may be biased. I don’t find myself too often writing about a good friend and also someone I am collaborating with on a few music projects in these terms. But there are some good reasons for my online friend and IMVU avatar Lady Wallace to be featured in the news.

Lady Wallace – "Goodbye (Acoustic Version)" – Watch the top videos of the week here

Lady Wallace (real name Mary Elizabeth Wallace) joined IMVU.com less than two years ago. She wanted to see if that could be of some use to promote her music, just like her MySpace page. A road many other people have taken (me included ;)) since the Internet gave people a chance to express themselves in music and many other fields.

Her first effort happened to be a music track accompained by a 3d video filmed within the virtual world of IMVU (www.imvu.com), which may be defined as a cross between Second Life or something similar to that, and an instant messaging system. You basically chat in public or private rooms with online friends and everyone is represented by a 3d avatar. MSN Messenger made into a videogame, if you prefer.

Just as in Second Life, independent “developers” create objects for your avatars and your IMVU page: and copyright for these objects stays with their creators, not IMVU Inc. The company lives mostly selling “credits” (just like Linden Labs have their own virtual currency) and those can be used to purchase stuff.

Music soon became an important part of the IMVU scene but 90% of that wouldn’t have been approved by the music industry. It was bits or entire tracks ripped out of cds and then converted to a format suitable for IMVU: avatars would “wear” visible (or invisible) objects containing the tracks and play those for their friends, maybe enjoying dancing in a club that exists only in cyberspace.
The music industry didn’t notice that – IMVU was probably still marginal and well, these days the big labels are pretty much busy with other problems.

Continuate la lettura »

In the tradition established with our “Escape from (music) majors” feature here’s a list of recent (and not-so recent) awkward, risky or just puzzling statements to press and online media from musicians, authors and music business people.

Note: updated with a new statement from Edgar Bronfman.

When: 08/08/2008
Edgar Bronfman (Warner Music Chief Executive): Music Video Games Must Pay More
Details:
[speaking of today's video game companies and games such as Rock Band and Guitar Hero] “The amount being paid to the music industry, even though their games are entirely dependent on the content we own and control, is far too small.”
Source: Billboard

When: 18/06/2008
Gene Simmons (Kiss): Fans Killed the Recording Industry
Details:
“The record industry is dead [...] It’s six feet underground and unfortunately the fans have done this. They’ve decided to download and file-share.”
Simmons also criticized Radiohead [...], and promised that Kiss would not follow suit.
Source: Digital Music News

When: 13/06/2008
Joss Stone: Piracy is Brilliant, Music Should be Shared. The only part about music that I dislike is the business.
Details:
Asked by a reporte what she thinks of piracy, and people who download her songs off the Internet her response was: “I think it’s great…” [...] “Yeah, I love it. I think it’s brilliant and I’ll tell you why,” [...] “Music should be shared. [...] The only part about music that I dislike is the business that is attached to it. Now, if music is free, then there is no business, there is just music. So, I like it, I think that we should share.”
“It’s ok, if one person buys it, it’s totally cool, burn it up, share it with your friends, I don’t care. I don’t care how you hear it as long as you hear it. As long as you come to my show, and have a great time listening to the live show it’s totally cool. I don’t mind. I’m happy that they hear it.”
Source: Todo noticias

Continuate la lettura »

The last find about that improbable digital distributor called Qtrax happened here at Musicblob this morning: there’s apparently pirate music in Qtrax (!).

Pirate what? Qtrax theorically should be the legalization of peer-to-peer legalizzato, meaning that if someday they ever allow downloading of a Madonna album (everbody is wondering if they ever will be able to do that…) the copyright owners involved would be compensated with the supposed advertising money.

But there seems to be a problem when somenthing that shouldn’t exist at all appears on the market among official releases.
By entering “KLF” in Qtrax, one can find several tracks from the British duo formed in late 1980s – early 1990s by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty.

Most of this material comes out of compilations and “The White Room” album which, probably for some contractual reasons, remained available in USA despite the whole record catalogue of this group has been deleted and withdrawn from the market several years ago by the artists themselves.

But, incredibily, “Ultra Rare Trax” can be seen listed as if it was an official release; this is a compilation of rare and alternated versions circulated on cd in 1993. Examining band discography, one can see that it is a bootleg, and it is even part of a larger series with the same title. Even if these cds were professionally printed, the tracks were often ripped off vinyls.
This material may be loved and sought by hardcore fans, but entirely illegal. Finding it in Qtrax – even if not currently downloadable for the known troubles with this service – surely seems weird and rises more doubts on the genuineness of the project.
Looking for “Ultra Rare Trax” more similarly unofficial publications appear about Orb, Kraftwerk, Duran Duran, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Erasure, OMD.

Not mentioning royalty payments (we doubt that Qtrax went back to the real copyright owners of the tracks included in these pirate collections) one might wonder: where did they find the master recordings, did they buy them off some market stall?

Pictures take from the Qtrax software, freely downloadable at www.qtrax.com.