David Fisher : What is Noise Blog

Trent Reznor has just knocked the ball out of the ballpark. In fact he has ripped the ball to shreds, and broken the bat in two upon impact and impaled the umpire that is the record industry with it.

This evening Trent posted a series of albums online called Ghosts I-IV. The first album Ghosts I he released as a free download via his website, and also posted it to his favorite site The Pirate Bay. Oh, and did I mention all are released as Creative Commons?

The fun doesn’t stop there.  There’s a wide range of physical purchase options. These range from $5 to $300 for a limited box set of vinyl and CDs, signed by Trent. Unfortunately the site tonight is slammed after the Digg post of it and I’m unable to get in there and drop my cash on the big box set. What can I say? I like vinyl, and I’m into supporting artists directly.

I think the concept that people won’t pay for music is being proven dead, after the Radiohead release, and now with this. People will pay for music. It just has to be good music. This crap that the radio is loaded with isn’t worth paying for. Maybe we need to realize that there’s only a handful of excessively talented people in the world that are making music worth paying for?

I have just finished downloading the .torrent file and I’m giving it an initial listen. Using headphones since my neighbors would kill me. So far it’s sounding very dark, well written, sparse and noisy.  He’s working with some instrumentation that I haven’t heard him use before. It’s really nice. Can’t wait to give a full review.

Update: Torrent file of all 4 albums. Please buy them if you like, but hey… it’s Creative Commons. I for one think he deserves my cash.

Update 2: It gets even better. Boston’s very own Brian Viglione of the Dresden Dolls is playing drums on some of it! Holy Crap! Also, he’s releasing data CDs with full tracks of all songs for remix. More information about the CD’s concept and creation can be found here.

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WhhhhaaaA?

Yes. I said it. And I normally (ok, never) talk about “celebrities” on here. I think that, while I honestly do wish the best for her, that Britney Spears will be making headlines around the globe by 2010 that she has died. Cause of death likely to be either a drunk driving accident, or an “accidental overdose” on some sorts of drug/alcohol combination.

Where the hell do I get off making such a statement? Well let’s be frank, her situation is spinning down quickly. She’s been been in rehab more times than Kurt Cobain was, and seems to keep just getting worse and doing more stupid things.

Her parents even think it! A quote from CNN

 Pop star Britney Spears is an “adult child in the throes of a mental health crisis” whose “life is presently at risk,” her parents said Wednesday night after the singer was released from a hospital.

When it happens, there will be odd press stories about the “pressures of young stardom”. Some news people will question if her parents, “pushed her too hard as a teen” and other horrid accusations. She’s been identified as potentially bipolar (manic depressive).

I’m all up for people having a good time, partying, and generally making fools of themselves so that we can all laugh at the silly things that they do on the evening news. However, at this rate she will end up dead. There’s no question in my mind of it. She needs to have some massive transformation in her life, or she won’t have one. It’s a sad thing, but likely true.

Let’s face it. Many young people have died from depression, too much excess, and poor lifestyles. We even have the “27 club” since many of the great artists died at 27. Ms. Spears is coming up on 27 if I’m not mistaken. Will she be the next member of the “27 club”? Some weeks however I have to wonder if  Lindsay Lohan is competing for who will overdose first.  I’d love to be completely wrong however and both of them to find some balance in their lives.

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I have a Fender Mustang that I’ve modified a bit. There’s a few more things that I want to do to it, in order to make it all around my favorite guitar of all time. Then I’ll have to start hacking on another guitar.

So here’s my thoughts for what I want to do pretty soon. The only downside being that this is all going to cost what the guitar did, all over again:

• I want to put a new bridge pickup on it. The stock bridge pickup is fairly anemic compared to the neck one I currently have in there. I’m thinking perhaps a humbucker that I can split, or a P90. I don’t mind routing out the body a bit more or the pick guard.
• I’m going to put a Graphtech saddle/bridge system on it, which basically is throwing piezo pickups on it. This will allow me to do three things:
  • Output a piezo pickup sound (a bit more like an acoustic, but not quite)
  • Output to a 13-pin midi synth system for synthesis and tracking
  • route a mult of each pickup to send back to a sustainer system (more on this later)
• Put a much better volume pot on there. Tune a fixed tone pot position for each pickup and remove the tone pot. Replace with encoder for midi system or piezo system.
• Rewire pickup switches to make them more useful with new pickup system
• Add a kill-switch
• Add a Fender branded Bigsby tremelo. This will make it look “almost stock” but not quite.

I’d like to build another guitar or two with this similar feature set. Also, thinking of how I could integrate a Nintendo Wii controller on the guitar for both IR finger tracking and motion sensing to use with Max/Msp

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I just got an email from the w.a.st.e. mailing list. Part of the content was:

FAREWELL TO IN RAINBOWS DOWNLOAD AREA
We also thought you’d like to know that the download area that is ‘In Rainbows’ will be
shutting its doors on the 10th December so if you’ve not yet downloaded,
here is the place to go www.inrainbows.com

The discbox will still be available at w.a.s.t.e. until they have all gone. We then have no plans to make further stock.

For some reason, this seems to be about the second dumbest thing that Radiohead has done. The first would be signing again to a label, instead of staying free of them as Trent Reznor/NIN is doing.

I can totally understand not making more of the discbox (and I need to get in my order), but as for stopping the download section? That just seems stupid. Yea, they are releasing the ‘real’ CD in stores soon. But consumers being told to choose their own price, and then being told to pay $14.99 or whatever… well there just seems to be a massive dissonance there. I have a feeling that the piracy of this CD will go up massively, and that the actual ’sales’ of the CD as the stores will track them will be abysmal.

Radiohead- pick something and stick to it! I hate the term ‘flip-flopper’ but you’re making John Kerry looks like he sticks to his guns here.

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I was hoping to have the Y34RZ3r0r3mix3d vinyl album by today. No such luck. I got an email from Insound, who said that there was a delay and they have just gotten it in and are sending out ASAP. Hopefully by Friday.

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