Friday, July 27, 2012

POP IS EATING ITSELF

Comforting news for anyone over the age of 35, scientists have worked out that modern pop music really is louder and does all sound the same.
A Spanish research team analysed pop songs recorded between 1955 and 2010 by delving into an extensive archive called the Million Song Dataset. After applying algorithms to the music in the archive, they found that pop songs have become "intrinsically louder" and less varied in terms of chords and melodies. (NME).

http://www.huffingtonpost.es/2012/07/26/canciones-parecidas-_n_1706313.html?utm_hp_ref=spain
http://labrosa.ee.columbia.edu/millionsong/
http://revista40.los40.com/blog/2012/06/top-ten-canciones-que-se-parecen-a-otras-canciones/
http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/07/26/us-science-music-idINBRE86P0R820120726
http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120726/srep00521/full/srep00521.html
http://www.nme.com/news/various-artists/65153

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

PATTI SMITH - 'BANGA'

Patti Smith records are as much about proto-rap poetic ritual as verse-chorus rocking. Her first set of new music since Just Kids – the 2010 memoir that found her dancing barefoot into the literary mainstream – has some sweet moments of song. But the real magic happens when words start flying off the grooves. "We'll break all the rules," she sings on "April Fool," a beckoning single that breaks none but boasts exquisite guitar by Smith's old pal Tom Verlaine. He also illuminates "Nine," a gleaming folk-rocker that imagines the sort of extended collaboration that might've been had the two not taken separate roads. Bowing to the Russian filmmaker who also inspired Geoff Dyer's recent tour-de-force Zona, "Tarkovsky (The Second Stop Is Jupiter)" spaces out in Sun Ra soul-jazz territory, while "Seneca" is a mourning waltz that floats on accordion and fiddle. The incantatory peak is "Constantine's Dream," an extended anthem to art-making which replaces the snubbed Jesus of her signature "Gloria" with a snubbed St. Francis and makes the painter Piero della Francesca sound like an awesomely rock'n'roll dude. On a lovely coda of Neil Young's "After The Gold Rush" featuring her kids Jesse and Jackson, Smith instructs "look at mother nature on the run in the 21st century." She's a mother who still ain't runnin' from nothin'.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/banga-20120605#ixzz210UgxTJ6
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16693-banga/
http://www.npr.org/2012/06/14/155014549/on-banga-patti-smith-pays-homage-to-friends
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jun/03/patti-smith-banga-review
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banga_(album)

Thursday, July 19, 2012

CHARIOTS OF FIRE

Hugh Hudson's 1981 Oscar-winner gets a deserved Olympic rerelease: a bold, intelligent, romantic film with all the lineaments of a classic, and a score by Vangelis as instantly hummable as the music for Jaws. As the British team prepare for the 1924 Paris games, we follow two underdog outsiders: Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson) is the devout Scot who won't run on a Sunday; Harold Abrahams (Ben Cross) is the Jewish runner who faces casual antisemitism at Cambridge University. Screenwriter Colin Welland was a vigorous socialist, but the movie was nonetheless adored by Ronald Reagan for the individual striving and patriotic glory. Hugh Hudson's stylish candlelit college dinner scene at Cambridge may well have inspired the Hogwarts dining-hall scenes in the Harry Potter movies.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/jul/12/chariots-of-fire-review

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

SWEET SPAIN at Little Big World

Joerg Daiber has released his newest tilt-shift – Sweet Spain Viva España. Shot in record time in Seville, Madrid and El Chorro (Málaga) in Spain this is the newest addition to the Little Big World tilt-shift series.

http://vimeo.com/joergdaiber/videos
http://www.youtube.com/user/LittleBigWorld
http://thrashlab.com/sweet-spain-tilt-shift-joerg-daiber-2494/
http://dailypicksandflicks.com/2012/07/16/daily-timelapse-sweet-spain-by-joerg-daiber/

Desfiladero de los Gaitanes (El Chorro, Málaga)

Saturday, July 07, 2012

San Fermín 2012

The fiestas of San Fermín are celebrated in Irunea/Pamplona, in the region of Navarra, every year from the 6th to the 14th of July. They have become internationally known because of the running of the bulls, where the bulls are lead through the streets of the old quarter as far as the bull ring by runners.

The fiestas are celebrated in honor of San Fermín, patron saint of Navarra, although the religious aspect would seem to have taken on a secondary role over the last number of years. Nowadays, the fiestas are seen as a mass gathering of people from all the corners of the world and where the partying, the fun and the joy of it all are the most outstanding ingredients. (...)








Sunday, July 01, 2012

Euro 2012 Final

                                             Eddie Keogh/Reuters

All the criticism seemed empty now, silly. This was classic Spain, inspired and precise and piercing with its passes, impenetrable on defense, unsurpassed in this golden period of international soccer.
With a 4-0 rout of Italy on Sunday, Spain won its second consecutive European championship and third major title in a row, along with the 2010 World Cup. (...)

“I think Spain deserves the compliment,” said the United States Coach Jurgen Klinsmann, a former star forward for Germany. “It speaks of outstanding class and the marriage of hunger and desire. To win the title, at the end of the day, you need to be a total giver for your team. You need to be able to suffer through the difficult moments and to put your ego totally on the side. What they’ve shown in the past few years, now playing without a striker, is that they find ways to confuse, to create chances, to make everyone else look not capable. I think this is the team of the century.”