The New Old Music Blog – WELL, IT'S NEW TO ME

More Youtube playlists, and tracking down samples.

Following up on my last post, Youtube granted me an API quota exception, but instead of a quota of 200 additions to a playlist a day, they gave me 300 – that’s not enough. I still made a few playlists from it, but I’ve kind of stopped since my setup has changed:

Shoegaze: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL34nTXIAgkSkK9pPQ3vff_7KLfcNHzAxB
Progressive / Fusion: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL34nTXIAgkSlaQH08Ad0vmXzGgC3S0SuL
Video Game Music: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL34nTXIAgkSmqyo-_2_xZwNgNfjLG_LbS
Industral: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL34nTXIAgkSmqyo-_2_xZwNgNfjLG_LbS
Psych / Noise: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL34nTXIAgkSn_H6yFvVPkEFRhZeZrmMir

I did change my music setup entirely, I would use my computer as a big fancy mp3 player, but after wiring my house for fancy LEDs, I realized it’s easy enough to add in some cheap amplifers like the tpa7297. It sounds like a nightclub in here now if I don’t cut my sound down to like 33%. I rather like this setup, I can change songs remotely pretty easy – I just use a Linux desktop on my server and play the music from the browser in there, then I can access that anywhere on my network from my phone via VNC. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to get rid of noise interfering, my amplifiers would pick up the data from my LEDs – I was using a Raspberry Pi on the same power source as the LEDs and speakers, using these bluetooth chips helped [https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Wireless-Bluetooth-Receiver-Lossless/dp/B07W7YCFS1], but lag and having to sync after every restart made me dislike it. Changing the PI to a different power supply fixed it, then I got rid of the Pi completely and am now controlling the lights with an ESP32 chip and WLED instead.

Back to music, I’ve been listening to this Autechre track a bit for some reason. I think it’s kind of generic, especially compared to Warp Tapes 89-93 that has a different version on it, but I found the samples on it kinda funny. The first one is Hawkwind and seems to be well documented, a man about to get a cavity fixed, but the other samples I couldn’t find any information on.

Autechre – Cavity Job. Kinda bland early 90s UK Hardcore, but the samples at the beginning of the second song intrigued me.

At 6:28 there’s a sample of someone saying “Everybody on the freeway just stopped. Police had no choice but to just, shut down the highway. [honking, pause] THE MOST AMAZING SIGHT, EVER VIEWED, BY THE HUMAN EYE”

I found the way the guy said it kinda funny, so I started googling. A few results came back with Jean Michel Jarre’s Oxygen, but I listened to the whole thing and didn’t hear it. Then I found a post buried on a forum mentioning it’s from a Houston concert he put on. And I found this, JMJ doing some massive concert in Texas for it’s 150th celebration.

Jean Michel Jarre – Rendez-vous Houston

The first half of the video is basically a documentary about the concert and the build up to it. The “amazing sight” quote shows up by some guy on the street at 9:32~, when I saw the video of the traffic at 11:45, I knew what was coming next – it’s that guy, explaining how the police shutdown the highway.

I don’t know why I like finding weird little hardly documented things like this. I just found the sample kinda funny. They sound so concerned when it’s just a big concert.

I havn’t really listened to any of Jean Michel Jarre’s stuff other than Zoolook before this, I really like the use of vocal samples on that, maybe I should look into more of his stuff. I wish I could find more stuff like Zoolook, stuff with lots of vocal phonemes cutup, but outside of one offs like “The Red House” by David Byrne, and maybe “Disco Hospital” by Coil, it’s not very common.

David Byrne – The Red House – another example of a song using lots of vocal sounds cut up

Playlist generation script, thoughts on Chiptune/VGM and an API quota appeal to Youtube.

I got the idea to scrape a few social media sites to generate playlists. Here’s one for Video Game Music, a thread about retro video game music and finding a neat track made me decide to write a script to automatically add things to a playlist. I don’t know if it’s really worth posting as it’s just the basic python script provided by Youtube, as the only real addition is a loop and logic to check for previous entries in the list, but the results speak for themselves: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL34nTXIAgkSmqyo-_2_xZwNgNfjLG_LbS

The list has a lot of modern stuff too, but my favorite is NES and C64 stuff, just because of the technological limitations and how they got around it – those two platforms have a lot of fast arpeggios where there would normally be a chord since they don’t have enough voices for chords. I think it’s an interesting effect and love how it sounds. SNES and Genesis sound hardware are a lot better but still limited, the lofi sampling on the SNES is interesting (see all the crazy sampling on Earthbound) and the Genesis uses FM synthesis which can do some really crazy stuff in the right hands (although that’s actually rare, as FM was all over 80s pop music, but only games like Streets of Rage 3 actually do anything unique with the technology.)

Malcolm McClaren’s Tranquilize is kinda neat, I do like “About Her”, a downtempo version of the Zombies’ She’s Not There – it’s not chiptune, but other songs on the album are.

A lot of this music is kind of obnoxious – the only time it’s approached “mainstream” is people like Malcolm McClaren hyping “Chiptune” in the mid 00s. I can’t really think of any instances of it being popular other than that, maybe Crystal Castles but they are kinda long gone, and for good reason. I do like the band “The Depreciation Guild”, they managed to mix Shoegaze and videogame bleeps and bloops quite well.

The Depreciation Guild – In Her Gentle Jaws. Shoegaze / Chiptune crossover? I wish more bands would try stuff like that, though the actual hardware for this stuff can be kind of hard to get or even know anything about.

I’m going to submit this post to the Youtube API quota bypass page, I can only add 200 songs a day which really isn’t enough. If someone from Youtube actually reads this, please approve me, lol. I just want to make playlists, of everything! Finding new music is something I love, and this makes it much easier. Please approve~

my most listened tracks over the years

I did not realize you could easily export your Youtube history – besides my car and Jellyfin, that’s mostly what I use to listen to music these days, with an adblocker – and thought I would write a script I listen to the most there. Here are my results:

De La Soul – A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays: 66
Xmal Deutschland – Peel Session 1985: 62
Kraftwerk – Computer Love: 57
Glaxo Babies – Who Killed Bruce Lee: 55
Killing Joke – America: 53
Crystal Castles-Doe Deer Ep: 52
Buzzcocks – Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve?) (TOTP, 1978): 50
Killing Joke – Let’s All Go (To The Fire Dances): 50
The Sisterhood – Rain from heaven: 50
Sparks – Tryouts For The Human Race: 50
Hypnobeat (1984) ► Daktari Missiles: 49
Sparks ‘Nothing is Sacred’: 48
Asylum Party – The Desert: 48
Klaxons – Flashover: 47
“the approaching of the disco void” john fahey @ the new varsity: 46
Disco Inferno- Footprints in Snow: 46
Colonel Abrams & Boards of Canada – Trapped (Hell Interface edit): 46
A Tribe Called Quest – Jazz (We’ve Got) Buggin’ Out: 45
Xiu Xiu – Wondering [OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO]: 45
Can – The Empress and the Ukraine King (1976): 44
Boards of Canada – Dave (I’m A Real Traditionalist): 44
Alternative TV – Action Time Vision: 44
Glaxo Babies – This Is Your Life: 44
Crystal Castles ‘BAPTISM’ //official video: 43
Boards of Canada – Chinook: 43

I’m not sure how accurate it is – I’m sure deleted videos aren’t on there, and this only goes back a few years, but it’s about what I expected, a bit of everything really – Boards of Canada seems to be listed the most, and I’d guess if I listened to anything the most, it’s them (both volumes of Old Tunes is massive and I listen to that a lot). Lots of english punk & post punk – Killing Joke and Glaxo Babies twice (I really like both of them), and lots of experimental electronic stuff. I see both disco Sparks and glam Sparks, that surprises me (those are the only two Sparks eras I’ve listened too, there’s just too much of it and I’m not sure I like what new stuff I’ve heard).

I think the Daktari Missles song I only found a few months ago, but I’ve listened to a lot in that amount of time, I think I found that trying to find recommendations for the best song containing a Roland 303 or 808 (or both). My choice would be this, Jaquarius – Acid Rain / Love is Happiness, or Chris & Cosey / CTI – Dancing Ghosts

Maybe I should match this up with my old last.fm playlist too, but I’d guess it’s just more experimental electronic & english post punk.

lots of live music

I do love the archiving aspect of the internet and how much stuff it’s saved – there’s so much media and information lost to time, and will continue to be lost, like countless vinyls sitting at a thrift store or old TV shows. For example, I was at one today, and saw an album called “Skeptic Union – From The Hills Of Arizona” and it looks like a self released album with not a whole lot of information out there, just an RYM and Discogs page. I’m not really into country, but I do wish I had picked it up, just because it seems like it’s rare – discogs confirms that, with a range of $28 to $208, shockingly. There does seem to be a rip on youtube, but it’s surprising how much stuff out either has no information, or is just not available at all.

Old music shows and concerts seem like they would be at risk, but surprisingly there’s a lot on Youtube. Some of really awful quality for various reasons, but some has aged pretty well, and either way some of them are worth watching, especially if the audio quality is still there. These are some of my favorites I’ve found?

Mudhoney – Live in Berlin. I think Mudhoney is my favorite Washington band? besides Unwound and Melvins

Half Japanese – Live in Hell

Wire – On the Box (Rockpalast – Germany)

The Chameleons – Live Nov 1984 London, Camden Palace

Wall of Voodoo – Live at Steve Wozniak’s US Festival 1983

Kraftwerk on Ohne Maulkorb (Austria) w/ interview

Au Pairs – Live at The Tempodrom, Berlin, 1981

Cows on “What” (Minnesota Public Access)

David Bowie on Musikladen, playing a Chamberlin on the first track, and Adrian Belew is his guitarist. Kind of an odd piece of history?

XTC – Sight and Sound 1978 – I think this is the best version of “All Along The Watchtower”? That harmonica is going all sorts of crazy.

Liaisons Dangereuses – Live at the Hacienda

also, I don’t know if I would call these good exactly, but here is two videos that amuse because I like music heavy in ideas or theory, although the execution isn’t always perfect… both of these videos end up seeming very culty, lol.

Robert Fripp’s weird ovation guitar cult

Steve Reich’s Music For Pieces of Wood (and human metronomes)

the mystery of John Fahey’s Grammy (and 4 other unrelated albums)

The worst thing about writing is editing, I find writing easy but actually sitting down and editing takes quite a bit longer.

Anyways, let’s try one album at a time?

John Fahey – America

John Fahey is pretty great and under-rated for all he’s done for archiving blues and folk music, let alone his own music. His story is really sad, he died semi-homeless in Salem, Oregon, his Grammy for writing about folk music was stolen, and it sounds like he was a pretty severe alcoholic in general. He painted and one of his paintings was used as the cover for the final Sonic Youth album. It’s sad that he’s unknown in most regards, but that’s kind of the standard for the blues I guess.

I do wonder where his Grammy ended up. Google says you can’t sell a Grammy, and that they aren’t worth melting down. Is it just sitting on the shelf of a house in the forests of Marion/Polk county somewhere? Hopefully it’s found some day, and wasn’t just tossed into the river or forest when his car was broken into.

C Cat Trance – Screaming Ghosts

This seems to be Medium Medium with arabic instrumentation and aesthetic? It’s funky as heck, I really like it. I can only compare it to 23 Skidoo.

Shake The Mind
She Steals Cars

A Primary Industry – 50 Hertz

Sounds a lot like early Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance, that sort of post punk + female vocals + drum machines. “Ultramarine” is a very good album, it’s probably better than this but I this showed up on my list and I hadn’t heard it, it seems to be demos or related to it somehow.

Nature and Organisation – Beauty Reaps the Blood of Solitude

I think this has to be the ultimate acoustic neofolk album? next to maybe “Earth Covers Earth” by Current 93. It’s very folksy and only goes into heavy industrial on one track – the rest is all acoustic. The cover of Willow’s Song from Wicker Man is probably the best on the album, the rest of it sounds like a Current 93 album for obvious reasons.

Destroy All Monsters – Self Titled

This is great, I really like the guitar on this. I think I learned about this band from this Cows video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5hf488M4Kw – then he mentions Kraftwerk and the host says he’s surprised, lol. there’s a longer Destroy All Monsters 74-76 set I need to listen too, although it doesn’t seem like actual songs compared to this.

Bored
Goin’ to Lose

That’s all for now. I’ve got a few more focused topics I should write about after I get through my next set of posts:

Microtonality, and tips and tricks for playing fretless guitar.
Interesting uses of drum machines outside of pure electronic music
303 bass lines
interesting rhythmic music
amazing bands with really awful names
bands who changed styles completely
list of songs with clean harmonics on the level of Jaco’s “Continuum”

A Music Mystery

I found an odd little song I like, but it might be mislabeled.

Danny and the Dress Makers – Eggs on Legs

I like the random electronic noise and piano floating around in it.

Someone in the comments says it’s mislabelled though, and links to the real song, which sounds much more UK DIY ala Swell Maps or Desperate Bicycles and what I thought this band sounded like.

So what is this song? Who knows! but if you know, do comment on that youtube post, people are curious.

I suppose there’s a good chance of it being listed in one of the DIY or John Peel lists in my database just because of the way music propagates.

About

This is a blog to go along with my tool at http://discover.newoldmusic.co m – I’ve found or remembered quite a bit of music using it so far, some of it with no comments or mentions on google – just a discogs.com page or something similar – so I figure I should probably try and write about it. I’ve played musical instruments for a long time, mostly bass and guitar, with my interests going more towards synthesizers and computer music over the years – live coding environments like https://foxdot.org/ or https://tidalcycles.org/ or PureData are what interest me these days.

I have a more detailed write up of the code used for discover.newoldmusic.com at https://www.jasonrparadis.xyz/music-list-site-update-scraping-scripts/

I have another music discovery tool at music.jasonrparadis.xyz, but it’s having issues and is generally slow. It’s a bit less curated than these lists.

This site is using WordPress since I just want to write and not have to deal with anything else like resizing images or dealing with HTML and CSS. Otherwise, I’d probably use python + pelican or another static site generator with bootstrap if I was going to use just text. I run all my stuff on Debian with Docker

I’ve always found it hard to write and talk about music, it feels like it’s so easy to devolve into meaningless descriptions of sounds, looking too deeply into music or make references to obscure stuff but after reading lots of other music criticism it seems impossible to avoid. Oh well, I’ll try anyway.