@GP - your MiG trains mixtape piece was a fascinating read. I thought your original train mixtape on emusers a while back was good, but the expansion of all the extra information you provided on MiG makes it even so much better. I really enjoyed it.
Thanks, kez! I had fun with this one. I just added a bandcamp stream for the Parks track, having just located it there, and a stream for the Pierre Schaefer piece.
I can't get the player for the Doyeq track to display, even though I think I created it exactly the same way as the Oathless one. Can anyone see what I've done wrong?
@ GP, RE. Trains.
- Do you know Banco de Gaia ?, He has made an excellent old school, trancy techno (kind of) album . . . "One of the all time classics of modern electronica, Last Train to Lhasa is an incredible sonic journey whose globally inspired, groove infested soundscapes helped to form the blueprint for much of today's global electronica."
- Pretty accurate description, I'd say . . .
OK, this is weird - all the tracks on that album that are album-only on emusic (including the 36 minute track) are 89 cents on Amazon.com, but one of the shorter tracks, available singly at emusic, is album-only at Amazon.
I was glad to see the 2-line titles of MiG pieces had been fixed, but was that just a temporary fix? Just wondering, since there's no allowance for 2-line titles today.
Okay, I added the embedded player from the Archive site to your trains article. Also, I adjusted the width so it wouldn't bleed off the page and I deleted all the tracks from the playlist except for the "Train Travel" song you reference on your list.
Go ahead and take a look at it. I'm listening to it right now. Neat song. I like it.
OK, I'm seeing it now - thank you! Odd thing is, what you describe is what I thought I did, and successfully did with the Oathless player a couple of entries higher up. Oh well.
The whole of that Doyeq release is worth a listen. The first track is excellent too.
I just submitted a draft that is ready for review by anyone who has the time.
I had intended for this piece to cover about 5 or 6 albums, but the piece became so long after discussion of the first album that I had to cut it off and will continue with the rest of them in future articles. I could not bring myself to shorten what I say about the first album. It is too special and demanded a more lengthy coverage to do it justice. I cannot overstate how important I found this album to be.
I meant to copy and paste your audio "post" and compare it to mine and tell you where things went wrong, but got a bit ahead of myself and forgot to save it elsewhere. It may have just been something really simple like an unmatched bracket or a missing quote mark. Once you start modifying the embed code, it doesn't take much to render it useless (as I've learned from practical experience).
@Craig - wow, that was fast! I just looked at my piece up on MiG and noticed I have a wrong link connected to "This Rock Can Talk." Can you please edit it to use this link? http://www.edochs.com/files/trct/trctpress.pdf
As for the speed, I didn't have anything to go today, and took the opportunity to not come up with something myself. (Yes, everyone, I know it isn't the end of the world if nothing goes up, but I'm going to keep it going as long as I can.)
I've got two articles on the go, Craig, the shorter half written and the longer one in early planning stage. With my mother having been in hospital time for writing has been limited, but you will get the first at some point later in the week
greg - Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining, not in the slightest, and I completely understand why both you and BT haven't been around much recently. Frankly I'd be surprised if it were otherwise.
We all have our lives going on and our families and real jobs take extreme priority.
@jonahpwll, saw your retweet re Hibernate and GWFAA - I could review that; I've streamed it and think I could say good things about it. I have emailed Jonathan at Hibernate.
Good call. I tweeted back also. I'm still new enough to twitter that I still have to summon up faith that it works as a way of communicating with specific people rather than just spraying comments. And I am sure that telling you on a message board that I tweeted you does nothing but underline that fact.
@kez, enjoyed your Bob Carpenter piece. I like the way you come across as genuinely caring both about the music and the person who made it. (This was underlined for me by reading a review elsewhere of an album in a totally different genre that was not just negative but to my ear rather insulting, coming across like 'this bores me and this failure of an artist should have been a bit more intelligent and realized what I was looking for'; the album may not be the best (though I like it better than that reviewer) but the review struck me as snide and likely to be personally discouraging to the artist if they read it. So I doubly appreciated the tone of your piece). And I really like the precedent for reviewing albums from a long time ago - we should keep doing that.
Thanks, GP. Yes, I do genuinely care about Carpenter's music (and Carpenter, too, since I felt like in a way I knew him just from corresponding with Ochs, who greatly admired him). A month ago, I never even heard of Bob Carpenter or his album. I stumbled upon it when I was doing some research on another album I planned to include in the '70's series. In fact, my initial intent was not to extend it into Part 2, but when I started writing about Carpenter's album it grew and grew and I soon realized I had taken up the whole length of what I had planned to cover for all the albums combined. Yet I could not bring myself to shorten it. And even if length had not been a problem, it would have been anti-climactic for me to go on from there and discuss another album. I wouldn't have been able to do them justice, after being so effected with this one. "Silent Passage" struck a chord with me, deeply. I think that chord got struck even deeper when Ochs shared his comments about the impact Carpenter's music made on him, and still has on him, even after all these years. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I am listening to a little music of other artists right now, but I am still not rid of Carpenter's hold on me and still have to play his album every day. That was one extremely talented guy. I don't even know if 'talented' is the best word to use. One Toronto newspaper article described him as a "mystic in minstrel's clothing." That is entirely fitting. He gets under your skin.
It is unfortunate that some reviewers write extremely negative reviews like you describe. It's one thing to offer a fair criticism, but if a reviewer really intensely dislikes a work, it's probably best to just not review it rather than risk discouragement and hurt feelings.
Everyone, thanks to Jonah's retweet I have arrived at an important realization. Know that we now have enough material up at MiG that is good enough to be accepted as legit with independent labels for PR purposes.
I just obtained reviewer access to downloads and presskits for the new Good Weather for an Airstrike album on Hibernate and the new From the Mouth of the Sun release from Experimedia (which is not actually released for two more weeks and sounds excellent) by pointing them to our blog and my existing reviews there. I'll be reviewing both of them in the next 2-3 weeks, and will get back to Farewell Poetry about the interview next week. (feel free to suggest questions)
Work still crazy next 10-12 days, after that should get a little more time and maybe have the energy to write something in the time I have. More immediately I have to work on two book chapters (finish one and write the other) for an edited volume in the next two weeks, on top of teaching all day.
I just finished up the "Best free albums" post and marked it pending review. If anyone has any pieces to add to it, this would be the "speak or forever hold your peace" moment, I think. Kez, I'm afraid I had to shorten your entry quite a bit to make it fit with the others. Craig, how does this get changed into a post that is by "MiG Staff" or some such rather than by me? And if someone knows how to center that Vimeo player, feel free.
If we are really short of stuff this week, Craig, you could always split this into a part one and part two.
Craig, would the workaround be to (i) create a new author called something like "MiG Staff" and then (ii) just copy all the text out of my post, log on as MiG Staff, and paste it all into a new post?
Comments
I can't get the player for the Doyeq track to display, even though I think I created it exactly the same way as the Oathless one. Can anyone see what I've done wrong?
- Do you know Banco de Gaia ?, He has made an excellent old school, trancy techno (kind of) album . . .
"One of the all time classics of modern electronica, Last Train to Lhasa is an incredible sonic journey whose globally inspired, groove infested soundscapes helped to form the blueprint for much of today's global electronica."
- Pretty accurate description, I'd say . . .
@GP
Are you still trying to get that Train Travel song audio embedded?
Go ahead and take a look at it. I'm listening to it right now. Neat song. I like it.
The whole of that Doyeq release is worth a listen. The first track is excellent too.
BTW: 29,933 Downloads, that is very impressing !
I had intended for this piece to cover about 5 or 6 albums, but the piece became so long after discussion of the first album that I had to cut it off and will continue with the rest of them in future articles. I could not bring myself to shorten what I say about the first album. It is too special and demanded a more lengthy coverage to do it justice. I cannot overstate how important I found this album to be.
It goes up in an hour and a half.
Craig
I meant to copy and paste your audio "post" and compare it to mine and tell you where things went wrong, but got a bit ahead of myself and forgot to save it elsewhere. It may have just been something really simple like an unmatched bracket or a missing quote mark. Once you start modifying the embed code, it doesn't take much to render it useless (as I've learned from practical experience).
http://www.edochs.com/files/trct/trctpress.pdf
(Sorry).
As for the speed, I didn't have anything to go today, and took the opportunity to not come up with something myself. (Yes, everyone, I know it isn't the end of the world if nothing goes up, but I'm going to keep it going as long as I can.)
Craig
We all have our lives going on and our families and real jobs take extreme priority.
Craig
It is unfortunate that some reviewers write extremely negative reviews like you describe. It's one thing to offer a fair criticism, but if a reviewer really intensely dislikes a work, it's probably best to just not review it rather than risk discouragement and hurt feelings.
I just obtained reviewer access to downloads and presskits for the new Good Weather for an Airstrike album on Hibernate and the new From the Mouth of the Sun release from Experimedia (which is not actually released for two more weeks and sounds excellent) by pointing them to our blog and my existing reviews there. I'll be reviewing both of them in the next 2-3 weeks, and will get back to Farewell Poetry about the interview next week. (feel free to suggest questions)
Work still crazy next 10-12 days, after that should get a little more time and maybe have the energy to write something in the time I have. More immediately I have to work on two book chapters (finish one and write the other) for an edited volume in the next two weeks, on top of teaching all day.
If we are really short of stuff this week, Craig, you could always split this into a part one and part two.
As for the Vimeo player, I tried to center some players on my last post and failed, but I'll look again.
Craig