For most of us the music CD-R is a memory now; a transitional technology while we waited for digital music players and decent smartphones. But for a group of people who make music, it was a master storage medium -- one that is now beginning to self-destruct.
Last night I had a drink and a yarn with Pitch Black's Mike Hodgson, who has been immersed in a big archiving project before he heads off, with his family, to London. He's been successfully transferring the contents of vintage tapes to hard drives -- but has hit a roadblock with one batch of recordings: the ones stored around the turn of the millenium on early CD-Rs. Those are unplayable.
The stability of the medium improved later, but Mike reckons there will be a group of electronic artists who have pretty much lost everything they stored on early CD-Rs from about 1996 to 2000. If you really want to make the effort, you can rehabilitate cassettes and VHS tapes, even mouldy ones, but a bad CD is a bad CD. And he reckons a lot of people haven't realised yet that that's the case. Oops.
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This week's Busnach: Bobby moves on from Barbara Streisand to Bobby Goldsboro and Lawrence Welk. You know the tune -- but the beat is sinister:
And three sweet, downloadable mixes. The eternally reliable Adrian Sherwood at the controls for The Fader (the actual download is here and there's an accompanying interview with the man here):
Leftside Wobble on a Bob Marley excursion (track listing here):
And a shout-out to Tom from Home Brew for the tip on this delicious disco set:
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Of interest on TheAudience. Clap Clap Riot's 'Lie':
Iva Lankum's slinky 'Dreams', from the new album Black Eagle (out today, album release party tonight at Wellington's San Francisco Bath House, streaming here on the Herald website):
See also her Askew One-directed video for the P Money-produced 'Doo Bop':
Note further that TheAudience is giving away four VIP tickets and Grabaseat flights to Rhythm & Vines to people who like gtheir Facebook page and share a track.
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If you haven't checked out Jon Ganley's lovely set of Auckland music landmarks in his new Capture post, you should do so.
And, finally, some awesome Korean action. No, I'd never heard of PSY before this week, but I think this is my favourite music video for 2012 so far:
From the YouTube comments:
"Oppa Gangnam Style" is hard to translate. "Oppa" is an honorific that the young girls he is pursuing would use to address him since he is older than them, and the "Gangnam Style" refers to a part of Seoul, Korea south of the Han River that is comparable to Beverly hills or the better parts of New York City, with the busiest workers, students, etc., as well as many night clubs, so, ya' know, party central. So Psy is saying that him, despite being an older guy, is the party master, essentially.
Just so you know ...
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