Pitchfork: Aphex Twin Launches “Sample Mashing” App. “Aphex Twin summarized the app in a statement through Warp: ‘What if you could reconstruct source audio from a selection of other mp3’s/audio on your computer? What if you could build a 303 riff from only acapellas or bubbling mud sounds? What if you could sing a silly tune and rebuild it from classical music files? You can do this with Samplebrain.’”
Boing Boing: French artist collages war photos from Ukraine into classical paintings. “Fanny Lechevalier Lafon is a French artist trained in classical painting techniques at the School of Fine Arts, Rennes. She also does digital collage. Feeling like she wanted to do something in response to the horrors of the Russian invasion of Ukraine she saw daily on French media, she decided to do what she does best: make art.” The first image in the article made me go “meh” but the other ones were much more striking, especially the William Banks Fortescue combination.
The Verge: Mashup star DJ Earworm ends his decade with two new compilations and a promise. “To mark the end of a decade, [Jordan] Roseman has released two new tracks: a best-of-decade mashup and a traditional end-of-year tribute. Music has changed over the last 10 years, of course. New superstars like Lizzo have emerged, and former main players like the Black Eyed Peas have faded away. Roseman’s own career has skyrocketed; assisting artists like Pink and Queen with mashup projects of their own have helped him turn his viral moment into a full-fledged career. Tracking trends in music, shifts in technological methods and melancholic voices, have also become much easier through Roseman’s compilations.”
From Creative Commons: Reviving archives through remix: How a Dutch archival project is reinvigorating electronic music. “What does it mean to listen to the past through a truly modern lens? This is the question the Dutch project re:vive seeks to answer. Working with renowned electronic and experimental musicians such as Lakker, Roly Porter, and Bas Mooy, the project from the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision draws on global archives and museums to encourage legal, creative reuse of historic sounds.”
One of those “for a given value of useful”. From Gizmodo: Microsoft Bot Makes Your Worst Pop Culture Nightmares Come True. “Crossovers are a mainstay of pop culture, but they rarely address the deepest questions posed by their fictional universes. ‘What if Guy Fieri was Han Solo?’ you might ask. ‘What if the Joker had a beard?’ Thanks to a criminally deranged Skype bot named Murphy, you needn’t wonder any longer.” I dunno, I thought the Ben Affleck Wolverine was pretty good…
I am one of those people who spends the holiday season trying to ignore as much music as possible, because if I hear “Silver Bells” one more time I will go 100% spare. For that reason, I really appreciate these annual holiday mashups. There’s some Hanukkah stuff available as well as Christmas music, and everything’s free.
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