Tag Archives: music

Amen Brother

If you’re like me, you probably never heard of the “Amen Break,” but you have heard it. It’s inescapable, as this documentary points out. While the origins and the spread of the “Amen Break” is interesting, what really sets this apart, is the turn it takes around the 13 minute mark. The narrator, Nate Harrison, examines the legal situation surrounding the “Amen Break,” since it has become quite a lucrative six seconds of audio.

The other thing struck me about this video was the simple visual of the turning record. Watching it evokes thoughts of The Replacements’ “Bastards of Young” video.

Football Hero

Make highlights Phil Clandillon and Steve Milbourne of Sony Music UK, latest project Football Hero. (Behind the scenes video after the jump.) Football Hero is a a copy of the open source clone of Guitar Hero, Frets on Fire, and series of pressure sensors. Soccer players kick balls against the sensors in time with the music.

Yeah, it’s a viral video to promote Kasabian’s new single, but this is pretty cool.

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Score for a Hole in the Ground

Jem Finer, of The Pogues and the Long Player fame, project Score for a Hole in the Ground is a large horn erected in the middle of Kingswood, near the village of Challock in Kent, England.

Inspired by suikinkutsu, the input end of the horn is located in the middle of a large pit, that has been covered with a grate. As water falls into the pit, it strikes a series of metal pans. The sound from these pans is then amplified by the horn.

Unlike The Long Player, I don’t find this work a pretentious waste of time, because it is a complete composition. It pretends to be nothing more than what it is. A large horn in the middle of the woods. Conversely The Long Player is just an algorithmic looping of all permutations of some seed while people stand about clucking their tongues about the impermanence of man and the universe. It is the hipster Long Now clock .

I like the idea of walking through the woods, hearing some odd watery sound, following it to it’s source and being confronted with a rather large metallic horn jutting up from the soil. The visual incongruity of the unmistakably artificial blending in to the landscape reminds me of the Monolith from 2001.

If I had even a not so large wooded area, I would want one of these.

via Oddstrument