Music For Robots

This week, NPR's All Songs Considered blog posted a challenge:  pick a song to score a video of a robot folding a stack of towels (from a robotics perspective, no doubt much harder than it sounds). That sounded like more fun than working, so I dove right in.  Of course, I couldn't just pick 1 song, so I ended up picking 6.  My selections are below.


Field Music - "Working To Work"
The first 3 words really say it all. The lyrics ("pleasure is useless," etc.) and the punctuated, syncopated rhythm really make this sound like the music inside a robot's head to me.


Pete Townshend - "Keep On Working"
Pete sings, "If you never have pleasure, then you could be dead"... or perhaps, you're a robot? I like to imagine a command set inside the robot's internal programming which reads simply: "keep on working."


The Aliens - "Robot Man"
"I am a robot man." What more needs to be said? Perhaps a bit on the nose, but it's a nice funky beat that goes well with any sort of housework.


Leadbelly - "Pick A Bale Of Cotton"
What is the robot but a modern-day slave? It didn't ask to fold towels, but does it really have a choice? I think not.


Glomag - "Pocket Calculator"
This is a cover of a Kraftwerk song that my brother recommended for this video. I think this version works well (I don't have the original, so I couldn't compare) because it's made entirely with 8-bit sounds. That's what a robot would be into, right?


Rose Royce - "Car Wash"
Any video goes better with this song, it's just a fact of life.

Let me know what you think in the comments!  What song would you have chosen and why?

Friday Playlist: Spring Has Sprung

Ah, spring.  Season of rebirth, outrageous pollen counts, and the looming threat of that hideous muggy bastard, summer.  Well, before you let all that get you down, have a listen to today's playlist and see if that doesn't lift your spirits.

I should note at this point that today's playlist is actually not thematically related to spring at all, it just happens to be springtime when I'm posting it.  So sue me.  Instead it's a mix of new (or new to me) stuff I've been listening to lately as the seasons change and we're forced to keep our windows closed so my wife's allergies don't run amok and make her unable to see, breathe, or not itch uncontrollably.  Ah, spring.

1. Childish Gambino - "New Prince (Crown On The Ground)"
   Childish Gambino is New York-based comedian, writer, and actor Donald Glover's rapping alter-ego, and what he lacks in flow, he makes up for in picking awesome indie rock songs to rap over on his mixtapes.  On his first one, "I Am Just A Rapper," he raps over Grizzly Bear, Neon Indian, Animal Collective, and Discovery, to name just a few.  On this track he's using a song from Brooklyn's own Sleighbells, who got a remarkable amount of buzz at this year's SXSW despite not yet having released an actual album.  This song is great on its own, but I like it even more with a rap on top of it.  (Hat tip to Greg for turning me on to this guy.)
   
   
2. Yelawolf - "Good to Go (featuring Bun B)"
   This track is from Alabama-based Yelawolf's "Trunk Muzik" mixtape, and it's one of the most slickly produced tracks on the mix.  The southern skinny white rapper takes things faster on this track than his usual laid-back stance, but that drawl is still omni-present, and a good reminder that not all Dirty South rappers sound alike.
   
   
3. Los Campesinos! - "Romance Is Boring"
   Who says bands have to change anything about their sound from one album to the next to stay relevant?  On their latest album, Los Campesinos! has filled out their sound somewhat (more instruments, more production, slightly less yelling), but overall I think they're offering up a more refined, well-built version of their high-energy, overly verbal, angsty-but-fun pop songs that they've been writing since their first album.  And that's just fine.
   
   
4. Liars - "Scarecrows On A Killer Slant"As usual, I have no idea what's going on in the new Liars album, but I like it, whatever it is.  This album sounds like the soundtrack to a nightmare, or maybe a series of nightmares, all featuring themes of disassociation, loneliness, and general paranoia.  I suppose you could call this album more "listenable" than some of their other albums, but that really depends on your ears.  This track is probably on the less listenable side of things, but I like it.  The bonus disc is fantastic, by the way - featuring remixes and covers of all the tracks on the album by artists like Atlas Sound, Devendra Banhart, Thom Yorke, and TV On The Radio's Tunde Adebimpe.  It's fascinating to hear what all these different musicians do with such bizarre source material.
   
   
5. Titus Andronicus - "Richard II"
   No need to add to the slew of glowing reviews of their new album "The Monitor," so I'll just say that it's a bombastic, kick-ass, hard-fighting, hard-drinking, rough-riding concept album (more or less) about the Civil War, and it's seriously awesome.  This track straddles the line between chaos and control nicely, as does much of the album.
   
   
6. Band Of Skulls - "Fires"
   I had never heard of these guys before I saw them live at SXSW this year, but I'm glad I did.  They remind me of a British mashup of the White Stripes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, with a nice dose of Zepellin-inspired Secret Machines to keep things interesting.  This is one of the quiter tracks on the album, but it's got a nice slow burn that keeps it moving.  [Side note - I got to meet the band after the show, and they even took a picture with me.  Band of Skulls are the 3 people totally not smiling in the picture to the right.]
   
   
7. Portugal. The Man - "When the War Ends"
   I was actually pretty underwhelmed by their new album "American Ghetto" but I like this band enough that I wanted them to have a place on this playlist.  There's not much new here that wasn't on their last album, but this song has a different instrumentation (more synths, some plucked string instruments) and a more upbeat vibe than they usually evince, but it's not exactly progress for them.
   
   
8. The Besnard Lakes - "Like the Ocean, Like the Innocent Pt. 2:  The Innocent"
   Yes, this song is 7 minutes long, and no, their new album does not really break new ground for this band, but so what?  They have a really cool sound, they can rock the falsetto, they know how to make reverb work for them, and they can build from a meandering intro to a driving psychedelic rock anthem without breaking a sweat.  So score one for the Besnard Lakes.
   
   
9. Shout Out Louds - 1999
   I think their new album, "Work," was aptly titled - it felt like work to get through a few listens of it.  What happened to the sense of playfulness that used to inhabit their songs, even a sad breakup song like "Impossible" or a song that's nominally about all of the singer's friends dying in accident ("Time Left For Love")?  It's not like they wrote happy songs before, but at least the band injected them with a sense that somehow music could make things a little bit better.  Here it sounds like they've started reading their own gloomy lyrics, and it's getting them down.
   
   
10. Nicole Atkins - "Brooklyn's On Fire!"
    Another artist I heard about because she performed at the SXSW PBS party this year (though I missed her set), Nicole Atkins has become a new favorite for me.  Her album "Neptune City" is rock and roll without being punk, pop without being saccharine, and filled with powerful vocals, catchy hooks, and solid songcraft.  I think this is the kind of music Neko Case strives (and fails) to make.  This track doesn't really sound like the rest of the album, but it shows a level of creativity and a great arrangement that really grabbed me.  I also recommend tracks "Neptune City" and "Maybe Tonight."
    
    
11. Sleighbells - "Infinity Guitars"
    This is the band Childish Gambino samples in the first track of this playlist.  (He uses this song his second mixtape.)  While the world doesn't really need another Brooklyn-based electropop duo, especially one that intentionally cranks their levels up into and beyond the red zone, I just can't help liking these guys.  They're simply too much fun to hate.  This is a simple track that by all accouns shouldn't even really be a song, but somehow it works, and I always find my head bopping along by the end.
    
    
12. Jónsi - "Go Do"Sigur Rós's frontman just released his first solo album, and it's whimsical, enchanting, and a bunch of other complimentary adjectives.  The arrangements are full and lush, the songs sound like something you'd hear while flying on Falcor's back, and his voice is like aural cotton candy.  This song is particularly uplifting, and sounds to me like something Mika might have written if his life had gone completely differently.
    

That's it for this week.  What did you think of the playlist?  What are you listening to as the seasons change?  What's coming out soon that you're excited about?  Tell me in the comments.

Lessons From FAWM (via SXSW)

On my last day at South by Southwest Interactive 2010, I was fortunate enough to catch a panel led by the creator of February Album Writing Month (FAWM), Burr Settles. Joining him on the dais was Charlie Cheney, avid FAWMer and creator of the Indie Band Manager software. They were there to talk about lessons learned from FAWM, specifically what they had learned about fostering and managing a creative community online. Burr broke the lessons into 4 guiding principles:

1. Don't promote. This was counterintuitive to me at first, until I understood the sub-heading: "let the community do their own promoting." This makes sense for a site like FAWM, where the goal is not to amass the biggest number of "friends" or "followers," but rather to attract people who are eager to create something, and who will benefit from (and return) the encouragement of others. Having a friend urge me to do FAWM because it changed his life for the better has much more of an impact than a Facebook ad telling me to sign up.
   
   
2. Embrace constraints. This is really at the heart of the FAWM experience (or similar projects like Script Frenzy or National Novel Writing Month). The idea that constraints breed creativity might sound strange at first - after all, aren't constraints there to constrain you? But in practice, I've found time and again that having a constraint (a deadline, an improv show format, etc.) can really kick-start the creative process. Knowing that you have 28 days to write 14 songs does a lot more to foster creativity than knowing that you have the rest of your life to get around to it.
   
   
3. Keep it ripe. This one was based on a principle of chemistry, but I think the underlying point is to make it easy for users to be encouraging, creative, and constructive, and make it harder for users to be negative, engage in trolling, flamebaiting, and non-stop self-promotion. A key point here is to design the interface of your site/app/tool/whatever to "mirror your ideals." For example, on FAWM, it's clear on the page for any song that the star ratings are for your records only, i.e. not a way to drive up the popularity or rank of someone's song. Similarly, built right into the song comment form is the text "Be honest but respectful with feedback!" That simple imperative is a gentle but constant reminder that we're here to help each other create and get better at it, not tear each other down or engage in ruthless competition.
   
   
4. Favor communication over aggregration. This is an attempt to get around "the last.fm problem" where popular artists and songs get more popular over time. On the FAWM site, the point isn't to collect as many stars, thumbs-ups, or re-tweets as you can; the point is to make music, and share constructive feedback with the community. FAWM has some built-in tools to help fight against the tyrrany of the popular, such as the jukebox (which plays a random shuffling of all songs on the site), and a built-in search to help you find songs that have not yet been commented on; this helps push the least-noticed content to the top of the stack. Again, the point isn't to rack up as many comments as you can, but rather to emphasize that the commenting system can be a useful way to provide encouragement and feedback.

You can download the slides from the panel here [PDF] and hear an audio stream of the second half of the panel here. You should also take a look at my previous posts about SXSW and FAWM for some more context about this topic.

What do you think? What's the best way to foster a creative community online? Tell me in the comments.

SXSW 2010

I'm back at SXSW! Amanda and I led a Core Conversation yesterday called "Improv Lessons For Freelancers," and it was a blast. We had a great audience who played improv games with us and carried on a really interesting discussion about how the fundamentals of improv can help your career as a freelancer. Our friend (and improv impresario) Zach Ward posted a great writeup of the session on his blog, including a video of me leading a deceptively simple (yet surprisingly challenging) improv game.

But you don't want to hear about that, you're here for music! Sadly, I won't be staying for the music portion of the festival this year (any of my readers want to sponsor Wired For Music to cover the festival next year???), but I can offer you a taste of all the incredible music that's going to be featured here in Austin next week.

NPR's All Songs Considered blog has posted "The Austin 100" - their favorite 100 tracks from the 1,000+ MP3s posted on the official SXSW music site. If that's not enough for you, you can download the entire set via bittorrent and listen to it - every year I try to get through every track, and every year I fail, but it's always an interesting challenge. The site that hosts the bittorrent files has links for past years as well.

As we draw nearer to the official starting date, be sure to check NPR's SXSW Music page, as they'll be posting previews, interviews, and streaming live coverage of many of the acts.

Enjoy! Anything you're looking forward to this year? Any favorite tracks from the playlists? Let me know in the comments.

Friday Playlist: Wednesday Edition

I'm headed off to lead a panel at SXSW in a couple days, and the last-minute preparations haven't left me much time to do a writeup for this playlist. The short version is that today's playlist features tracks from new (or pretty recent) albums by Lightspeed Champion, Surfer Blood, The Heavies, Man/Miracle, The Ruby Suns, Clem Snide, and more! This is one of my favorite playlists in a while (and yes, there are 2 tracks by Lightspeed Champion on here, and they both rock; also, there are 2 songs with the word "swim" in their titles - pretty cool, eh?). There's also an instrumental cover of a Wu-Tang song and a return to form for the Magnetic Fields, among other things.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy the tunes. [Editor's note: Please insert your own liner notes and witty commentary as you see fit.]

See you all when I return!