Check out tons more neat Olydig stuff over at www.olydig.se. Theres even a sale going on as we speak, so some of it might come even cheaper if you care for some leftovers.
So christmas was over just like that..... oh well, its freakishly chilly outside (again), and i feel like recommending something warm and toasty for the cold. So... meet Gothenburg girl Susanna Brandin aka. Winter Took His Life. Once again, as in the almost endless Swedish cases of amazing in the shapes of such newer girl names- Lykke Li, El Perro Del Mar, Promise And The Monster, Britta Persson and beyond, one could wonder how there could be any room left for further greatness. But, fear not, Winter Took His Life found herself a quiet prosperous little picnic spot only a heartbeat away.
Her wonderful debut album- You know what it´s like to be alone and shut down, came out last year and can be found at Bless The Press. So if you (just like me), didnt get on the first one in time, there you go. It would be a shame not to follow up on this fantastic girl from the start.
So it seems.... The shimmering Cowon S9 makes it to shops and stores (pretty much globally) just before christmas. It is officially out in Germany, Uk, Sweden, Norway, France, U.S etc. 8gb goes for 180 euro and 16gb for approx 215 euro. 32gb? Unfortunantly not up for grabs untill next year. Anywaa, for specs along my initial S9 post, go here.
For those interested in some serious gadgetporn, here you go. The two very first Cowon S9 unboxings. First one by Engadget, second one by Boy Genius Report.
Visit the Engadget Cowon S9 unboxing gallery here.
Visit the Boy Genius Report Cowon S9 unboxing gallery here.
Or check out some neat amateur hands-on footage on youtube, click here.
My "Something Monthly" posts - Artist of the month, was initially starting as of today. But it is with sad eyes i am to inform, that i am going to postpone its debut till the 15th of February, due to the fact i was rushed to the hospital late thursday night last week, with a somewhat scary lung infection. So now- 4 days, 27 intravenous blood samples and a couple of hours sleep later, i am finally online again. I will try to keep up with my ideal blogging spirit and get some stuff going. But dont expect the world of me just yet. thx.
As for artist of the month, it will be running every 15th, of each month. Starting 15th of February. Hopefully that will work out for all of us. Ta ta.
The ever so super fantastic swede- ex. Bear Quartet member Carl Olsson and his brilliant solo project Paddington Distortion Combo, just announced his new album, set for release February 23rd 2009. There is no mention of a definite album title, though the following four song titles will be present on the upcoming release- -White mans clap, La La, Birth Defect and Defätismus.
So, if youre generally silly to the bone concerning Paddington or just excited about uplifting lofi kiddy electro combined with 80's kitsch/trash and swedish sub-suburban indierock "one man style". You gotta a wonderful surprise coming up in 2009.
Also, here's a cuddly live clip from a PDC show this summer at Potatiskällaren (The Potato Basement) in Luleå (north Sweden).
The video is part of a 4 piece liveshow recording, that is to be found here.
Last month i posted about the diverse (but amazing) Korean consumer electronics company- Mintpass and their super fabulous Mintpad mediatablet. As it seems, Mintpass has alot more neat design stuff cooking in the lab. So i figured i would let you have a look at this- A fascinating concept design entitled "Used As Read".
Click images for larger sizes. (opens in a new window). All images courtesy of Mintpass.co.kr.
Disturbing cables on the back, clashing with the cleanliness across. Classic and retro.
Brilliant, to say the least.
The whole concept stacked.
It really looks as though Mintpass is a company all about doing things right from the start. Wonderfully refreshng and ambitious, i must say.
What if you could travel the seas between Sweden and Finland for 24hours accompagnied by a bunch of questinable bands, a couple of interesting, justified by a few awesome. Would you? Well, let me include the fact, that Swedish math-metal-maniacs Meshuggah are among the awesome, along swedish indie wonder Promise And The Monster and Porcupine Tree founder/singer Steven Wilson's own project (accompagnied by wonderful Danish artist, photographer and filmmaker Lasse Hoile).
To be quite honest, i dont even care much about who else is playing the Melloboat aka. Siljaline Galaxy cruiser that night and day the 24-25th of april. Just the fact that one can brag about sailing the dark baltic sea with the 3 artists mentioned above, already have me itching my backpocket.
I doubt it will the most important music event of the year (as stated in small print on the bottom of the poster), but the fact that you can get to witness a neat thing like this for a measly 100 swedish kroner (10 euros), or even get a nice room with a view for 900 swedish kroner (85 euro) pr. person along with, seriously should make this worth your while.
Personally Meshuggah and Promise And The Monster are two of my favourite artists of this last year. So in my opinion, this boat holds a great deal. If youre not familiar with my 3 personally recommended reasons to join this event, heres a taste of what to expect.
Around 3 months ago Korean Cowon announced a somewhat handful of new devices, set for public arrival around the new year (before and after). One of these, is the extremely talked about- Cowon S9, also known as the Curve. Not only is it sweet sweet eyecandy out of the ordinary, it also plays every living audio and video format out there.
This just oozes beautiful build quality from top to bottom.
Just to sum up the specs before taking a closer look at the amazing design. The S9 revolves around a 500mhz dual core processor (yup, dual core), a razor sharp 3.3" iamoled touchscreen, (480 x 272 pixels, ), Flash storage capacities in 4, 8, 16 and 32gb, Bluetooth 2.0 support, DMB tv (probably asia only, since europe isnt prepped for that), Audio playback support for: MP3/2/1, WMA, FLAC, OGG, APE, WAV, Video playback support for: Xvid SP/ASP, Avi, Divx, WMV9 SP/MP at 30 frames pr. second, and best of all, it promises 40 hours of audio playback. It will be available in Korea from the 16th and prices announced so far range 150-220$ with 4-16gb. (No price on 32gb yet).
And here they are, the rest of the latest S9 press shots. Courtesy of Cowonglobal Korea.
Clean backside in gunmetal black.
It looks as though the S9 will be the first touchscreen player, to have nice tucked away controls, allowing you to function when not looking at the screen (fx.in your pocket.) play/pause in the middle, skip buttons on the right and volume on the left. Very slick details.
Looks to be the sleakest of Ui's Cowon has yet to launch.
Clean and neat UI, aesthetically in the middle of Samsung and Apple. Very promising stuff.
No it is not Swedish indiepop sensation I'm From Barcelona, but merely a pile of blip festival 2008 performers. Yesterday (Sunday) was the fourth and last day of Blip festival 2008. By now, around 40 artists (plus/minus) have performed, tons of dancemoves where executed, and a boatload of photos were snapped,..... Yeah, so in order to enhance the envy (and regrets) in all of us who couldnt go, here's some photographic highlights and shortcuts (links) from/to some of the people who took insightful pics from the festival.
Elektropionir took 78 nice pics (amongst them, the top group photo), Check his blip festival set here.
All in all, it looked like the most awesome thing in the world, and agaainnn...... im sooo bummed out that i didnt have the possibility to go. Oh well, atleast i got to sit and surf, post and escape boredom at the same time. One thing is sure though, next time, i'll blog/snap the shit out of the real thing. I promise.
The Sid 6581/8550 Recordings Archive is a massive hive hosting 343 Sid chip tunes, all up for completely free download. It is one simple site, one long list, no registration, just click to download. It is really that simple and glorius. A definite thing to check out if you have commodore music hunger.
More to the Atari side of chips/music, then head over to the Ym2149 recordings archive instead.... once again... same concept.... really simple, one long list, download whatever you feel like, no registration.
Furthermore in the spirit of dear father christmas/pixel baby jesus and courtesy of Doctor Octoroc, heres a cool 8-bit christmas compilation entitled 8-bit jesus. All free. Enjoy lo-tech sheenanigans in the shape of holiday monstrosities like- Ryu the Red Nosed Ninja, Silent Knight Man, Super Jingle Bros and more. Check that out Here.
Every year Crunchy Co. cough up a free compilation surprise. This year, hard copy CD's (of the 2008 edition) were distributed for free at Blipfest in New York, and other events for a limited time. Though it is also up for grabs by download, so if you feel like getting 27 free bittunes and bliptracks for your music library, click here.
Nine Chip Nails Album.
If youre more into Nine Inch Nails, and curious about how it would sound 8-bit style. Then you should head over to Robotrecords and get yourself a free album of 8-Bit Nine Inch Nails Covers, right here. Robotrecords also hosts 4 other awesome album downloads (just scroll down further on the robotrecords page).
Micromusic is a global community of bitmusic creaters, listeners, engineers, promoters, labels.... well alot of things really. What was originally thought out as being a simple community website to get hold of low_tech_musik produced by low_tech_producerz for lovers of computer generated tunes via the worldwideweb was developed fast into a highly complex websound_community_system using the latest internet technology. Yup, today Micromusic is an almost 10 year old massive hyper active community with tons and tons of cool stuff underneath its neat pixel skin. News, Bitradio, gig calendars, shop, links, downloads, graphics..... You name it.
If you register (free) at Micromusic.net you can get access to over 700 free downloads. So if youre curious about chiptunes, bitpop, picopop, ciruitbending, nintendocore and beyond. This is your new playground.
More more bitmusic............. French Divag blips from Paris doing outrageously nice Gameboy stuff. (some of it released on 8bitpeoples). You can download an entire album of Gameboy Tunes here (18mb zip. file) and another bunch of Gameboy tracks here (30mb zip. file). (rightclick+save as). You can also visit the Divag site for more individual downloads, bit graphics, and even Atari style tracks.
Tokyo based prince of darkness- Gameboy-Bit-dubstep producer/artist Quarta 330 (whom played blipfest 2006), has a 30 minute liveset for free download over at Spannered.
8itpeoples crewmember and blipfest 2008 performer Timothy Lamb aka Trash 80, has a whole page filled with his free downloads right here. His 2 8bitpeoples releases can also be downloaded for free here (Hologram ep) and here (Icarus ep.)
As promised, while passively celebrating the 2008 blip festival in New York. Im posting some links, chatter and downloads for all you interested in or curious about the world of bitmusic.
First- Im gonna kick you off with a link to virginia based Receptors and some free albums/tracks put up for free download via Last.fm. Receptors have previously played Blipfest in 2006, but also showcased at festivals like Iceland Airwaves and SWSX in Texas. Receptors is mainly run and directed by artist/producer Jeremy Kolosine, whom amongst many projects also is one of the guilty brains of the more commercially aimed bitmusic release - "8-Bit Operators - an 8-bit Tribute to Kraftwerk" released by Astralwerks/Emi.
Secondly- Heres a link to the Receptors + Weblabel ops releases that are for free download. Amongst those, Pharmacom doing bitversions of all the classics like beethoven, bach and haydn.
Third- i wanted you to have the chance to listen to a neat interview with Jeremy Kolosine, him talking about bitmusic/chiptunes including his involvement as executive producer on the 8 bit operators release - An 8bit tribute to Kraftwerk. Listen to that over at Npr by cliking here.
Not only does swedish Suffocate For Fuck Sake, have a scary badass name. Together with their almost 9 month old debut album title "Blazing Fires and Helicopters on the Front Page of the Newspaper. There's a War Going On and I'm Marching In Heavy Boots" they definently set one of this years most interesting standards for not being subtle. Sffs is indeed a strong unknown piece of sweden, that i definently would recommend to fans of anything from Sigur Ros, Cult Of Luna, Mono and even more cinematic things like fellow Swede "collage musician" Hans Appelqvist. Want something sweet in your ears without leaving out the roaring blasts and the painful screams? Sffs is the place to look all of the above.
Go check out some of their fantastic tracks on myspace, or take a chance and jump straight into the purchase and get yourself an epic surprise out of the ordinary. Its available for only 9Euro at Bisaufsmesser.com.
Chinese company - Meizu, usually known for making cheap/ugly (but quality built) ipod looking mp3players. Have finally finished and launched samples of what has been a painful 2 year struggle, of yet another somewhat familiar looking device. Yes, the Meizu M8, the "iphone clone".... the evil twin.... have finally found its way out of the production line and into the open arms of reviewers and fondlers everywhere.
Meizu's goal was clear from the start: To sincerely live up to the quality of the iphone, while still surpassing it on the specifications. Frightening about this, is that after almost going out of business, it looks as if they actually pulled something good off.
So what is really so interesting about this that i wanna go post about it? Well, multiple reasons actually. Two of them being intellectual properties (rights to designs/thoughts etc.) and format support. Does apple really hold the right to squares with rounded corners? Does everything have to be closed up in a box of itunes in order for you to play with it? Well.... Apparently not.
Again i find parts of the basic iphone concepts intrigueing, though i have some general dislikings for it. Some of them very solveable, but proven difficult for many phone manufacturers. One being that, i cannot see what i would use a video playing device for, when companies like apple does not deliver video downloads/purchases in Scandinavia and along it, offer no alternative. Conversion sucks, it is time consuming and dumb. Second is the actual codec supports for audio/video. Why should i settle for measly couple of codecs (apple and mp3)? Third: battery. Battery time is freaking vital when you have a phone that wants to double as your media tablet. So an internal battery that only last a bit over a day, such as in the iphone, is just not acceptable in my opinion. Wrapping those failures in a nasty 90's chrome front, just makes me wanna run for the hills.
So, why shouldnt a Meizu M8 be a fair choice above all the other companies like Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Lg and Htc? All of them companies that dont wanna look towards the consumer, because theyre too busy to put out 60 identical devices a year.
The specifications of the Meizu M8 speak for them self. It will be cheaper, not locked to a carrier, it is smaller than the iphone (with the looks of an ipod touch), it has a 480x720 resolution which is double than most phones/mediaplayers (iphone included), it has a better camera at 3.2 megapixels (iphone at 2.0 mp), it has a removable battery, the new Opera browser and last but least, a massive list of codec supports. Audio being- mp3, wma, ogg, flac, ape, aac, and wav. Video doing- Wmv, Avi, Divx, Xvid, Mpeg and even Flv. That is to me all in all, freakishly impressive. Best of all, it comes in colors all black or all white, simple and clean (no chrome).
Heres a closer at what were dealing with.
The M8 browsing with Opera. Notice how responsive the screen is. Am actually quite impressed by this.
Playing music. Notice the swipe functions between play and visualizer. Wonder if one could add extensive cover art for individual albums?.
Keyboard and typing.
So to sum up. I really do stay impressed and hope to see this fair little bastard up for grabs very soon. Ofcourse it needs to withstand a boatload more trials before ending up in true consumer hands. But, overall, it states pretty clear- Its not a piece of junk. Today, that in itself is some sign of quality.
PS: Heres a translated i depth review of the M8 with loads of details and pictures from it168.com.
A bleeding mess, a pile of words, some downloads, fuzzy images, reviews, recommendations, observations and Scandinavian shit-talk, twisted and turned in a love for music, design and weird scandalous/fabulous behaviour. Like vegetarian food at Mcdonalds, intriguing, yet fascinatingly questionable. Superantonym.
Posts
