This is a vintage David Byrne interview on the release of the Talking Heads‘ concert film Stop Making Sense – which is, amazingly, 25 years old.

via oberonx83:

David Byrne interviews himself for a Talking Heads´ film concert by Jonathan Demme.

Here are five electronic musicians that had great blogs in 2008:

Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails blog was probably the most influential electronic musician’s blog of 2009.

Reznor, more than any mainstream musician, has deftly used Internet media and social networking, and his blog has tied his multi-pronged approach together.

In 2009, Reznor used his blog to tease fans about new projects, highlight NIN media from Flickr and YouTube, release two albums of Creative Commons licensed music, share an insider’s view of one of the biggest concerts of the year and just to share his thoughts about the world.

In 2009, Reznor set an example of how musicians can use new media that will be hard for other artists to match and hard for Reznor, himself, to duplicate.
In 2008, Jean Michel Jarre used his blog aerojarre to offer personal insight into his life and also to talk about highlights of his 2008 tour.

Readers got to see where Jarre went in 2008 and meet the people that Jarre met. Readers got to share Jarre’s excitement about things like trying out a new instrument and the story of how a street musician in Budapest got a once-in-a-lifetime chance to jam with Jarre. 

When people were upset that YouTube was removing Jarre fan videos because of copyright infringement, Jarre made a video response and posted it on his blog, stating that he was sorry about the situation and that he personally approved of the idea of fans sharing their takes on his music. 

Jarre is the oldest electronic musician on this list, but the way he used his blog and new media in 2008 shows that age is no hindrance for artists wanting to make intelligent use of the Internet. 

Moby has been blogging a long time, Of the electronic musicians included in this list, he tends to use his blog in the most personal way.

In 2009, Moby did use his blog to promote his new album and a project that offers free music licenses for indie filmmakers. And he used it to engage his fans with a user-generated video contest. 

But the main point of Moby’s blog is to share his take on the world.

That means Moby’s blog often featured mini-essays on his liberal-leaning concerns, ranging from his work on the board of the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function to net neutrality to the environment to the 2008 election. It also offered tiny views into his life, ranging from the movies he like to things that he saw on the street.

Moby’s postings are frequent, chatty, unfiltered and uncapitalized, which complements his artsy everyman personae. 

Whether or not you are a fan of Moby’s music, you can’t ignore the way he’s used blogging and Internet media to express himself and to promote his music. 

David Byrne is not the most obvious choice for this list.

While his solo work and work with Brian Eno in the 80’s was seminal electronic pop, his more recent albums have focused more on traditional song craftsmanship and less on experimentation.

Much of his work, though, is as experimental and electronic as ever. His Playing The Building was an electroacoustic installation that let visitors to play a building as a musical instrument, through the interface of a hacked organ. And his recent colloboration on Julio, a robotic vocalist, challenges our concepts of what is human.

“Like many animals, humans sing for pleasure, for sex, for attention, to express pain, to relieve angst and to join and participate in a social group,” writes Byrne. “All of these urges seem, if not uniquely human, at least not at all machine like. To see machines mimic these aspects of human life, is to watch some part of our imagined souls being appropriated.”

Byrne’s blog offers some of the most interesting and intelligent writing coming from any electronic musician. 

Finally, it wouldn’t be a Propa list without mentioning the journal of Charissa Saverio, aka DJ Rap.

Ever wish that you could get gear tips and insider industry info from an uber-hot superstar DJ/producer/model? 

Then you’ll want to check out Saverio’s Propa Journal. It’s a basic blog and Saverio doesn’t update it very frequently – but when she does, she offers her take on what it takes to succeed as a DJ. 

In her first post of the year, Saverio offered her take on DJ equipment:

Decks: Although I still own the one and only pair of turntables I’ve ever bought, SL-1200’s the Pioneer CDJ-1000 or DVJ-1000 is my weapon of choice. I simply LOVE Pioneer. [yes I love vinyl, no I haven't abandoned it. but you try carrying 20 20lb. crates to Ibiza only to find the crates nicked when you get there!] So CD’s are what I spin.

Mixer: Now, I’m really fussy about this shit. It HAS to be a Pioneer-800 for me. I don’t care what anyone else says, it’s the best. For me the effects, are stellar. The Pioneer-600 sounded a little too woody and muffled, if you like, often there were feedback problems.

Monitors: In my home studio I use the M-Audio BX5’s and the 10-inch sub that goes with it. I find they are incredibly accurate and really translate well to the dancefloor. I also use a pair of NS-10’s which help me with what I call the “car radio mix test.” In other words, if it sounds good in my car, it sounds good anywhere. For my mains, when I’m writing and producing I just got a hold of a pair of VXT-8’s which have a MASSIVE sound.

Headphones: I only ever use Sony-MDRV700DJ’s. They’re solid. And I haven’t gone deaf yet.

In a more recent post, Saverio offers her perspective getting played by DJ’s:

Make sure you print a label on your CD with all the relevant contact info. Pictures of yourself on the CD are a bad idea (I’m not kidding, I get those too) unless of course you look like Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Ryan Reynolds… ok you get the picture!

A note (preferably typed on a letterhead) with a BRIEF explanation of who you are (this is why a small bio is a good idea) and why you think this label is right for your music. That’s right, you have to think about where you feel your music fits… no good sending drum and bass to a house label like Subliminal or Impropa Talent, when you know it needs to go to Propa Talent! lol…

Don’t spend all your time gushing how great you think the label/DJ is.

Ok – that’s my take on five great electronic musician’s blogs of 2008. Let me know what you think in the comments. And, if you know of an electronic musician’s blog that was better than these in 2008, leave a link!

Fatboy Slim plans to release his first album in four years,  I Think We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat, using his new Brighton Port Authority identity. 

The release features a guest vocalist on each track, ranging from David Byrne to Iggy Pop to Martha Wainwright. It’s scheduled for release February 3rd.

Tracks:

• He’s Frank (ft. Iggy Pop)
• Dirty Sheets (ft. Pete York)
• Jumps the Fence (ft. Conan)
• Should I Stay or Should I Blow (ft. Ashley Beedle)
• Island (ft. Justin Robertson)
• Local Town (ft. Jamie T)
• Seattle (ft. Emmy the Great)
• Spade (ft. Martha Wainwright)
• Superman (ft. Simon Thornton)
• Superlover (ft. Thom Gandey)
• Toe Jam (ft. David Byrne and Dizzee Rascal)
• So It Goes (ft. Olly Hite)

All about Brian Eno, rap style.

• Newport News, VA Ferguson Center for the Arts (September 18)
• Atlanta, GA Chastain Park Amphitheatre (September 20)
• Austin, TX Zilker Park -Austin City Limits Festival (September 26)
• Phoenix, AZ Orpheum Theatre (September 30)
• San Diego, CA Humphreys Concerts by the Bay (October 2)
• Santa Barbara, CA Arlington Theatre (October 4)

Brian Eno will apparently not be touring with Byrne.

This is exciting news. Eno and Byrne’s last collaboration, My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts, was 20 years ahead of its time and any new collaboration is sure to be interesting.

Here’s Byrne’s announcement, via their site for the release:

Brian Eno and I recently finished our first collaboration in about 30 years. For the most part, Brian did the music and I wrote some tunes, words and sang. It’s familiar but completely new as well. We’re pretty excited. In August the music will be available via this Web site, free for streaming and it will also be available for purchase as both a download and in physical formats. One of the songs will be available free of charge.

In September I will begin a tour, on which I will be playing music from the new album as well as music from our previous collaborations – 3 Talking Heads albums, Bush of Ghosts, etc. If you’d like to be updated as this story unfolds, please add your email address via the box below (we will not contact you for any reason other than to tell you about this David Byrne and Brian Eno project and the tour and we promise not to give or sell your contact to anyone else or even to the government).

If you’re a Byrne or Eno fan, let me know what you think of the news!

Note to David Byrne: autoplay is evil!

Remember David Byrne’s Julio – the creepy realistic animatronic singer?

Byrne has written a post from the opening, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. In the post, he elaborates on the show and his throughts on his man-machine:

I don’t think what I’ve addressed thus far really engages the supposed theme of the exhibition; many works seem to address the uncanny, the creepy, and the vaguely lifelike….

Julio, the singing robot made in collaboration with David Hanson’s lab, fits in mainly with the creepy uncanny side of the show. Julio is old-school creepy — he resembles a person, uses lifelike motions, and — yikes! — smiles and looks around, mumbles to himself, and then bursts into song. He recalls a Frankenstein monster, although, instead of being outwardly and obviously scary, he’s quasi-friendly looking and bursting with emotion. I hope the sense of realism together with the singing make him doubly creepy. How can a machine be feeling what’s expressed in the songs.

Like many animals, humans sing for pleasure, for sex, for attention, to express pain, to relieve angst and to join and participate in a social group. All of these urges seem, if not uniquely human, at least not at all machine like. To see machines mimic these aspects of human life, is to watch some part of our imagined souls being appropriated.

While machines can mimic aspects of human, animal and biological processes, they still lack souls, or whatever it is that leaves us sentient, independent beings. Machines, even computers, are for the most part still modeled on digital, binary and logical thought processes, clutching the legacy of Descartes and the Enlightenment. For machines to truly simulate human beings, they will need to reason with their hearts, their emotions, as we and other animals do. We may like to think that cool logic guides, buffers, and tames our hot emotions, but many now believe that the amygdala and other emotional areas of the brain do most of the “thinking.” It seems that much of our thought process is unconscious, based on impulse, gut feeling, and instinct — and no less wise because of it. This is what’s absent in these machines.

For me, an important part of this show is about this lacuna, this missing part. Witnessing a machine approach being human — and for it to be almost believable, but not quite — can be a creepy and unsettling experience.

Machines and Souls (Máquinas y Almas)

Participating artists in the show:

Antoni Abad, 1956, ES
David Byrne, 1952, UK & David Hanson, US, robot
Daniel Canogar, 1964, ES
Vuk Cosic, 1966, RS
Evru / Zush, 1946, ES
Harun Farocki, 1944, CZ, football
Paul Friedlander, lights
Pierre Huyghe 1962, FR, anime girl
Theo Jansen 1948, NL, insect machines
Natalie Jeremijenko, 1966, AU, recycling
Sachiko Kodama magnet forms
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, 1967, MX
Chico MacMurtrie
John Maeda, 1966, US
Antoni Muntadas, 1942, ES, map
Daniel Rozin, 1961
Ben Rubin & Mark Hansen 1964, US, blog feed

OT: This video, for Toe Jam by The Brighton Port Authority, is insanely infections and NSFW to boot. 

David Byrne is showing up all over the place, lately. This isn’t really an electronic or experimental release, but it does make everybody want to get nekkid and dance!

Now, if they’d just post the uncensored version…..

David Byrne is keeping busy.

While he just opened his audio installation Playing the Building, he’s working on a new project, involving animatronic robots.

Byrne explains:

About a year ago, I was approached by some Spanish curators to participate in a show scheduled to open at the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid at the end of this month. I was told the show would be called “Machines and Souls: Digital Art,” so I suggested I work with David Hanson (of Hanson Robotics) to make a quasi-realistic singing robot. Animatronics date at least as far back as Disney’s Lincoln robot delivering part of the Gettysburg address, although Abraham’s delivery all but ignored any emotional fervor.

Having seen some of Hanson’s work at Wired Magazine’s Nextfest—and having heard about it for years before that—I thought it might be time to attempt a collaboration. I immediately thought the robot should perform an action with a weird emotional resonance, like singing. An impassioned speech, laughter, or tears, would have worked just as well, but I had an inkling I could write a short passionate song (in both English and Spanish) for Julio the robot to croon.

Byrne’s interested in exploring the strange effect of the almost-real robot.

“It’s still a work in progress—the movements will be more “natural,” as will his hair,” adds Byrne. “But this definitely demonstrates the creepiness factor at work!”

Remember the news about David Byrne’s latest project, Playing the Building?

Playing the Building, a 9,000-square-foot, interactive, site-specific installation by David Byrne, will transform the interior of the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan into a massive sound sculpture that all visitors are invited to sit and “play.”

Byrne’s project will consist of a retrofitted antique organ placed in the center of the building’s cavernous second-floor gallery that will control a series of devices attached to its structural features—metal beams, plumbing, electrical conduits, and heating and water pipes. These machines will vibrate, strike, and blow across the building elements, triggering unique harmonics and producing finely tuned sounds.

Byrne explains, it is an elaborate system for “activating the sound-producing qualities that are inherent in all materials.”

BoingBoingTV caught up with Byrne and got an personal tour of the installation.

David Byrne has announced the opening of his electroacoustic installation Playing the Building.

Playing the Building, a 9,000-square-foot, interactive, site-specific installation transforms the interior of the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan into a massive sound sculpture that all visitors are invited to sit and “play.”

Byrne’s project consists of a retrofitted antique organ placed in the center of the building’s cavernous second-floor gallery that control a series of devices attached to its structural features—metal beams, plumbing, electrical conduits, and heating and water pipes.

Says Byrne:

I felt bad that folks were waiting in a line to get in, but it was one of those lovely NY days, and lots of the folks seemed to run into old friends (I did too), so the waiting didn’t seem all that tedious. At times the party seemed to spill out to the street.

I was happy to see that the crowd has few trepidations about getting their hands on the device, and the New Yorkers were, contrary to their reputation, incredibly polite about not hogging the thing. It was also good to see such a demographically diverse crowd: little kids (well, with their parents), students, twenty-somethings, hipsters, artists and musicians (I met one of the guys from Mouse on Mars), city officials, and some folks even older than myself.

Elsewhere on my website and on the Creative Time site there is more information about the installation. It will be open to the public every weekend through most of the summer. Big thanks to Anne Pasternak, the donors, and to Mark McNamara, Justin Downs, and Danielle Spencer for their work on this piece.

As much as people enjoyed the device, I think they also enjoyed entry into an incredibly beautiful building in downtown Manhattan that was previously closed to the public for fifty years! It’s almost hard to believe such a thing could be possible, so thanks to CT and others for opening up that secret doorway in our city.

Playing the Building, a 9,000-square-foot, interactive, site-specific installation by David Byrne, will transform the interior of the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan into a massive sound sculpture that all visitors are invited to sit and “play.”

Byrne’s project will consist of a retrofitted antique organ placed in the center of the building’s cavernous second-floor gallery that will control a series of devices attached to its structural features—metal beams, plumbing, electrical conduits, and heating and water pipes. These machines will vibrate, strike, and blow across the building elements, triggering unique harmonics and producing finely tuned sounds.

Byrne explains, it is an elaborate system for “activating the sound-producing qualities that are inherent in all materials.”

Playing the Building marks the first time in decades that the second floor of the Battery Maritime Building will be accessible to the public. The space will be open and free to all visitors on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday throughout the summer of 2008.

In addition, David Byrne and Creative Time will invite guest musicians to challenge his creation through a series of performances and jam sessions.

Sounds like a pretty cool installation from a very cool musician. Details at David Byrne’s site.

The dream art-rock team of David Byrne and Brian Eno will return with new, strange fruit soon, the former Talking Heads man told NME.com recently.

Speaking at an event in New York, Byrne revealed that the duo had rekindled the relationship they formed in the late 70s/early 80s which resulted in three Talking Heads records and 1981’s classic My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

“I’m finishing up a record with Brian Eno, a musician that I worked with 30 years ago,” Byrne said following an appearance with Paul Simon at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on the 9th of April. “We did a record together of songs, and that’ll come out.”

Anything else in the pipeline?

“…I’m also working on a collaboration with Fatboy Slim, also songs, I don’t know when that’ll be done but sometime.”

Is that awesome news, or what?

“Brian had written a lot of music, but needed some words, which I know how to do. What’s it sound like? Electronic gospel,” adds Byrne. “That’s all I’m saying.”