Showing all posts about music
Black hole stars, a weird cosmic entity and Soundgarden song
18 December 2022
Black hole stars, sometimes called quasi-stars, were a hypothetical star that may have existed in the earliest days of the universe, up to about half a billion years after the Big Bang.
They were larger — far larger — than any star known to be present in the universe today, and were capable of outshining entire galaxies. And, as the name suggests, they were part black hole. We know some stars become black holes at the end of their lives, but for the two to somehow co-exist, star and black hole, without one destroying the other? How can such a thing even happen?
In 1927, British-Indian scientist J. B. S. Haldane, in an essay titled Possible Worlds wrote the oft quoted sentence: “now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.” It was Haldane’s way of saying we’re unlikely to ever make sense of the universe, no matter how much we learn about it. Black hole stars, in their bizarre weirdness, only add to the wonder.
And, as a bonus, American rock/grunge act Soundgarden’s 1994 track, Black Hole Sun, written by the late Chris Cornell, takes on a whole (er, no pun intended) new meaning in this context.
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astronomy, music, science, video
Spotify Wrapped 2022 into the genre-verse and Aussietronica
1 December 2022
Spotify Wrapped for 2022 has dropped, and once again the music streaming service is bamboozling listeners with custom genre definitions and statistics that apparently place some listeners into what appear to be elite music listening categories. And it also looks like we have listening personalities.
One of my top genres — in what Spotify now call the genre-verse, a nod to Mastodon’s fediverse perhaps — is a genre dubbed Aussietronica. To spare scrolling pages and pages of search engine results, I’m going to take a punt here, because it seems quite self-explanatory, and state the obvious: this is Australian made electronica. I’d simply call it electronica, but have to admit Aussietronica is kind of cute, and maybe saves us from having to say “Australian made electronica” all the time.
And for a moment I thought I was kind of special when Wrapped informed me I was among the top five percent of listeners of Sydney based, yeah, Aussietronica act RÜFÜS DU SOL. I played their 2021 track Alive on loop earlier this year as I was re-booting disassociated. But a glance at Twitter trending revealed I was anything but special. Some people are finding themselves in even more exclusive bands, such as, but not limited to, point zero five percent.
I also learned I have a listening personality. To be precise I have a listening personality type, just like you (allegedly) have a Myers–Briggs type. My listening personality type, according to Spotify is F T L U, being Familiarity Timelessness Loyalty Uniqueness. The Replayer, they call me. The F and the L are doubtless a result of the aforementioned looping of Alive.
Listening personalities, all be they a gimmick, are kind of cool though. In fact I’ll go out on a limb and declare the Spotify listening personalities might just be a little more scientific than the other type indicator. But Wrapped is, according the Wikipedia page, a viral marketing campaign, so it is doing its job, getting the interwebs excited, once again, about our music listening preferences and habits.
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Sydney act 1300 wins Triple J/RAGE music video of 2022
28 November 2022
And before another Ausmusic month, and November for that matter, falls behind us… Western Sydney based Korean rap act 1300 have won the music video of the year for 2022, with their clip Oldboy in the 2022 J Awards. The video was directed by long-time collaborator Raghav Rampal.
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1300, Australian music, music, video
Vance Joy, Baker Boy, Archie Roach win at 2022 ARIAs
24 November 2022
Melbourne based Australian indie pop musician Vance Joy has won the Best Video award for his 2022 single Every Side of You, which was directed by William Bleakley, at Australian music’s night of nights, the ARIAs.
Meanwhile fellow Melbourne music act Baker Boy also known as Danzal Baker, picked up five ARIA awards, being Album of the Year, Best Hip Hop/Rap release, Best Solo Artist, Best Cover Art, and Best Mixed Album.
Other winners included Amyl and the Sniffers, who collected the Best Group and Best Rock Album, while late Indigenous singer and songwriter Archie Roach won the Best Independent Release award. A full list of winners is here .
Update: not sure how I missed this, but the Australian Chamber Orchestra also had an ARIAs win, being awarded Best Original Soundtrack, for their work on Australian made documentary River.
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Archie Roach, Australian music, Baker Boy, music, Vance Joy, video
Bad news sells but negative lyrics also sell songs
24 October 2022
In a study published in 2019 by Cambridge University Press, researchers found the lyrics of pop songs have become increasingly negative in the last thirty years. They reached this conclusion after analysing the emotional content of more than 160,000 songs released between 1965 and 2015.
One major trend in popular music, as well as other cultural products such as literary fiction, is an increase over time in negatively valenced emotional content, and a decrease in positively valenced emotional content.
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A timeline of electric guitar invention and innovation
19 September 2022
A timeline of electric guitar invention and innovation, by Dutch guitarist and tutor Paul Davids. Starting from 1950, when the Fender Telecaster guitar arrived — originally called Broadcaster — followed soon after of course by the Gibson Les Paul, and then right on through.
Almost all guitars currently on the market are either a direct descendant of, or very similar to, a handful of instruments that came to life during the span of one decade: the fifties.
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Relive the good old days of Daft Punk at the Daft Punk cafe
14 September 2022
The Daft Punk cafe, by Ukrainian developer, and fan of the erstwhile French electronic music duo, Vadim Demedes.
With daftpunk.cafe, I wanted to create a fun corner on the internet for Daft Punk fans around the world. Listen to the radio, play some tetris or test your knowledge of track names and just have a good time!
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The ingenious sampling techniques of Daft Punk
3 September 2022
Fans of defunct French electronic music act Daft Punk will love this… Sample Breakdown, by Tracklib, shows how Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo composed some of their signature tracks.
Oh to have a job that required listening to just about every recorded musical composition since the 1970s (it seems) in order to compose original material. And then to hone on just the right samples from a song, and create something else from it: amazing.
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Holiday new music from Australian band Crooked Colours
29 August 2022
Just what the doctor ordered on a Monday morning, Holiday, the new single from Perth, Australia, three-piece alternative dance act Crooked Colours.
Take me away…
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From woe to go Triple J ratings rebound in latest survey
26 August 2022
Last time I wrote about listener survey ratings for local and alternative music Australian radio station, Triple J, the news was not good for the broadcaster. Results of survey four for 2022, conducted between Sunday 22 May and Saturday 25 June, and released on Tuesday 5 July, showed a sharp fall in the number of people tuning in.
The findings of survey five though, where radio listeners were polled between Sunday 10 July and Saturday 13 August, revealed a jump in audience numbers, among Sydneysiders aged 18 to 24.
Australia’s national youth broadcaster Triple J has seen a noticeable bump in its key 18-24 demographic in the fifth radio survey of the year, after struggling with its core audience in Sydney for most of 2022. The latest survey has seen the broadcaster more than double its 18-24 audience share, leaping from 4.4 per cent to 9.6 per cent of all listeners in that age group.
Despite the overall increase of listeners in the 18-24 demographic, Triple J’s breakfast and morning shows saw a decrease in audience numbers.
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