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Wiktones

I may be in line for a Wikipedia editor smack-down, but after several comments I decided to move my transcription of the audio clips in The Kleptones song "Question" to its own Wikipedia article. I'd rather have added some sort of intellectual article, but what can you do?

Adios Kleptones

During the last two days I was pummeled with Kleptones downloads with no end in sight. Sorry, had to de-share them. I tried throttling back, but I need to first set up a separate Kleptone site in IIS so that the requests don't block me from my blog. It'll just have to wait.

A Kleptone Web

Waxy has a great list of the music sampled for each track of A Night at the Hip Hopera along with a list of mirrors. I'm not in there, thank god, but if anyone really needs the files they're on my site here.

Today's reading list

• 2004: The 50 Best Albums
• New coal plants bury 'Kyoto'
• Who are the nation's 'cheapstates'? Try the blue ones.
• Head (1968)
• Head (1968)

Watchmen and annotation

Matt G. just sent me this site that annotated every panel of Watchmen [Amazon]. I had previously posted about an annotation of V for Vendetta. The reader definitely benefits from such Cliff Notes to accompany the detailed research of Moore's writing and all that's added by the artists.

Lyrics: "Question" by The Kleptones

"Question" is the last song on The Kleptones CD A Night at the Hip Hopera. I'll try to label the source of the lyric samples as best as I can. I'm not sure what Queen clips are used for the music.

Currently Listening To

I discovered Amy Beach's [Wikipedia] music at the public library back when I was in high school. New World Records published her Violin Sonata under the name Mrs. H. H. A. Beach--in the halcyon days of pre-feminism and pre-suffrage, women went by their husbands' names with the quaint 'Mrs' attached. Anyway, post-feminists re-branded her works and she's now herself again. She was part of the New England School of composers. I'm generally not a fan of early American music or art, but at around this period our composers start getting interesting. And I'm a sucker for this Romanticism.

The Kabao CD was handed out during his recent show at Django. A cool time was had by all, and now you can relive a few songs of that cool time.

Red is classic King Crimson from 1974 (30 years ago?!?). I can do without the free improv on "Providence," but the rest of the songs are models of creative rock composition. The mix of alto sax (?)--carried over from their earlier days too influenced by soft jazz--and noisynoisy guitar and drums is perfect. Some notable musical features: check out the diminished scale [Wikipedia] used in "Red" and the single-note solo played over a 13/8 meter in "Starless." Two sites provide analysis: King Crimson: Red - An Analysis by Andrew Keeling and Chapter Six: King Crimson III and Brian Eno from the online book Robert Fripp by Eric Tamm (who mistakes the opening scale in "Red" for the whole tone scale [Wikipedia], probably because of the tritone in the harmony). Correction: Mr. Tamm has below corrected my sloppy misreading of his analysis. In his book, he points out the whole-tone-scale root relationships. Subtle and different than my misrepresentation. Apologies.

I've been enjoying my recent acquisition of Kleptones music. They combine Queen and The Flaming Lips with various rappers by replacing the former's vocals with the latter's. It's called mash up [Wikipedia] for all you groovies out there. With these recordings, the pallid harmonies and limited song structure of rap is replaced with music that excels at both. The Yoshimi tracks contain the exact songs with the vocals replaced. The Queen tracks are more scattered and fragmented--The Kleptones create a new structure using Queen's harmonies.

New acquisitions

A resource for some music from The Pixies, Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, etc.