451193 songs downloaded from this site since October 2003.
Started with first vinyl EP in 1990, Floppy Records website has offered free downloads since 1997. Download title (Number of downloads since Jan 2012).
Over the past years, UK music labels have innovated to build one of the most vibrant digital music sectors in the world. However, the growth of digital music in the UK is held back by a raft of illegal businesses commercially exploiting music without a licence from the copyright holders.
In considering what next steps to take, BPI would like to know if any PPL record company members have, in the UK, licensed their recorded music to the operators of the below websites. If you have licensed any of these sites, please contact BPI directly by emailing legalnotices@bpi.co.uk by 21 May 2013.
hi
i am very happy to find our music on these sites.
as you know a download is not a lost sale.
as you also know people who download buy the most music.
please stop wasting everyone’s time, money and freedom by criminalising our best clients and spreading censorship.
but i dare say the last thing you want to do is put yourself out of a job
tom
could have worded it better i suppose and it will have no effect.
I know this is about music, this site, and i do have lots to put up. so why aren’t I? wasting time with crap stories when it could be crap music. get on with it. all right already. i don’t think i have ever said that before. next week music.
NB: yes, sorry still no new music, or gasgiant album, or more Boris. Frantic year so far. I will put up some music after easter and try and get that all up and running again. apologies.
March’s story is now up on Amazon: The Birth of Barley-boy. I sort of remember writing it. I was 19 and had just read Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. The plan had been to write a book, and this was the first chapter. I wrote 9 or 10 chapters in all but stopped as i had lost the plot.
The problem was that after my first story ( a short book , 50,000 words, The Felix Tale) i thought that instead of having a very fixed plot in my head, that it would be more fun to write with only a vague idea of what the end should be and that that would leave me very free with how to get there. The problem was that it just to too out of control: i lost the plot.
I thought for a few days that i could write it backwards – i knew the ending and therefore i could write the last chapter and then the one before. But that was just stupid. So i stopped and wrote the second Felix Tale (also a short book – 50,000 words or so).
So, i then showed this to a cousin, and he said that this first chapter was great and that i should forget the rest. So there you have it: The Birth of Barley-boy.
So, here is why i have been fairly silent for the past 6 weeks – been making this damn video! Learned a lot about maths for a strat – its weel worth working out that at 2mb a day rendering a film will take 7 years unless you change some things.
Still linux held out and only actually froze (and needing a forced reboot) once. All the other times it chugged along.
The idea still is to try and do a vdeo and music for each of the 12 stories – we will see if i manage to keep to that.
In the mean time the winner of whcih mix of Help is on the way is:
well thats sort of the end of An Uncertainty Principle tracks – there is one more at the end – it kind of goes bruhahahahahah for a few seconds if you listen very carefully. but that seemed a bit pointless – if you buy the album though you can hear it, and in marvelous quality.
Next up will be the 3rd Gasgiant album!!
yes the third – new unheard album.
lots to do, well not much really. i am trying to make a film to go with The Carp Pond / Help is on the way. somewhat experimental (read: crap). if it happens at all.
And second story – ‘Bored’, has to be got up this month as well. so its all go
i notice that there is a club night here in Edinburgh that seems to be called Coppafeel, something to do with large fake boobs. i am sure gasgiant would be delighted by this if they had had anything to do with it. its tuesday. life goes on.
i have stopped comments as it got too annoying deleting thousands of spam comments.
have you bought m b v yet? i almost did last night but then decided i was quite poor again. will try to buy it next week if my cash improves.
ok so sorry about that. actually just nipping to the kitchen.
ok. so. sorry for disappearing there. turns out january really is a time for corporate new years’ resolutions.
bollocks.
anyway.
so. here are 3 tunes. yes the same, yes sound exactly the same. no difference. but there is. there’s gentle. gentle with bass boost and both together.
Help in on the way - The Carp pond - Both (184)
and right now i don’t know. commercial or honest. thats what it always boils down to. and maybe thats the answer.
it does actually help to put it in writing.
which takes my breath away.
so smoothly into mentioning my (sorry i had to stop typing there it got so … ) first story. called The Carp Pond . by
Varnink (142) i think this is our last release of the year.
maybe release is a bit strong? nah i am releasing it into the wild.
feed the troll!
what else? not a lot. big hopes for next year. my 49th?! holy cat how did that happen?
still i think i am getting my second casio keyboard for christmas.
daughter came out of nativity play and on being asked she replied ‘what baby?’ followed by ‘who’s jesus?’ so i guess thats all for the better?
yes i do read jesus and mo every week.
have a good xmas or as a jehovahs witness told me (ebay sale) holiday break…
well actually there are many things worse than a false hippy. in fact i’ve been exchanging emails with a guy (ebay sale) who has been very patient while i organise a courier (shiply! – where have all the couriers gone??!!) turns out there was a link at the bottom of the email for jehovahs witness. which was sad as he said he didn’t ‘ celebrate Christmas ‘. which is a shame. can’t say that i am a practising godist but i still love christmas. and i hope athiests, agnostics and unbotheredists everywhere still celebrate xmas.
i do find the ‘All I want for chistmas is you creep’ by Peace funny:
on to new Troll album – Memory Lame. and, it seems shorter tracks. Or probably its all supposed to run in togther as one long glorious piece of mayhem
talking of memory lame. its a fantastic phrase. i am memery lame. i don’t mean my memory is shot – becasue it is and always has been (i think – geddit!) but becasue as i get older i start to rememebr things i wish i didn’t, or hadn’t done anyway. Is there anything i wish could change in my life – yes the ’80′s. what an absolute arse i was throughout. whoops, Turn her upside down is finished and i’m still rambling on.
I look forward to uploading Troll – a next album. I say its the next album, it probably is, but troll hasn’t told me, its a guess.
i dont know how math this is but then i am stupid, so this is a song for me. i do like it though its very pretty, and i have seen them play it a few times.
my fingers are going. i felt the end of my thumb go numb this morning as i wne to get a parcel from the post office.
is anybody sending xmas cards this year – 50-60p a pop seems too much. i think the grandparents are getting them and thats about it.
its all down to math or maths (really no s for music math?), at which as i say i am pretty bad. I asked my maths teacher, having got a surprise B in O level maths if i should take it for A level. He said no, but its was the speed he said it that hurt.
i can’t claim to know your views on early Genesis, but to me there’s a mix of of fro genesis to revelations here with some added lighter waving. but then it moves on to something else, much more modern i think.
no idea what its on about – richard a comment??
its monday and i am struggling with my xmas present – what do i want - welll theres a casio 701 in uddingston for £20 i fancy – but how the hell do i get to uddingston its glasgow or somewhere and i’m not a keen traveller.
a pedal… sort of run out of room there (and power actually).
there aer other things clothes books – but they are non musical and i do love a musical thing…
if there was a part of me that was the cool, the following may sound less awful than ti does. i live in a land of black lace. So, on a falling scale – what am i on about?
well, its not that i or anyone else in the flat lives a Shades of Grey lifestyle, or even that there is a preponderance to goth, but that i grind coffee. Or rather Grind coffeeee. Yep that hand motion is what i do once a day, about now. Its about cold burrs, so i have been told, i have no proof. My coffee grinder has cogs that grind coffee slowly as i turn the handle by hand. If i had a machine it would do it fast – but that produces heat and loses flavour ( i am told). It also means my beans are fresh ground (another flavoursome point i am told). What i do know is my llengthy grinding annoys not just thos ein the falt but, i suspect everyone for a few floors around. The plus point is that my shame means i only do it once a day. Why am i telling you this? Becasue i told myself that if i could get another tune up today now, then i could go and make myself a coffee.
Here’s the universe next door, i love troll music, its like listening to radio6 in the evening and they have some dj doing a mix. except this is better.
Aloha (146)mutter mutter mutter. i cant decide whther to do a google review on an edinburgh solictirs or not – they were shite.
my problem really is having so much music half finished. i know i get to this point mid way between albums (a five year period between each album it seems) where i have say 30 or 40 bits of music that i really like but are fairly unlistenable to to the outsider. and at some point the notion will start to come together. but this point, staring at folders of songs, that seem only anlt to get so far is depressing. and then when i fire up the casio (or bass or guitar) all i do do is dodge them and start something else new that then gets added to the folders (or worse added to the folder of songs not included in the ’40′.
i’d fogottem the silence in aloha. actually its a bit more muttering i guess. mutter mutter.
so i tell myself – you always get like this – and there is always an album at the end of it. snap out of it.
there snapped. of course there is always the fake tan solution – of taking the small bits and going – thats it 21 small bits. or to take it further misixng and splicing them all into one mega track , or say 4 samller ones – pesumaly the Elctric mainline route. which if doe well would be great.
i do have the new gasgiant album – i must do something about that.
so, cassettes. you’ve got to be cool to cassette. and my cassette player is staring at me unused for a decade?? really. wow.
i was thinking of ofering a C90 cassette with an album on each side that buyrers get to chose and it would be handemade – and numbered – always nice to number things. with some suitably daft artwork. for how much?? Well lets say each band gets £1 (so thats 2, and im doing this fr me not you my maths is awful), cassette – £1? try and get a nice one i suppose, postage, bloody hell postage is expensive nowadays – 80p?? floppy gets?/50p = £4.30p. Does it matter thats its 4.30 not £5?? i tihnk it does, the firgure means something.
Also, – still not put up gasgiant new album. ALSO still not even began sending out weekly emails to websites for reviews – thats pants. ALSO – done jac kall. working on a nice tune that presumably i want finsih for years to come though (‘Help is on the way’). Wchih sounds quite positive or me.
I’ve not worriten anything about this tune have i. and i’m not going to. so there.
the thing is that this is old. 2004. i momentarily thought i was rich and bought 2 moogerfooger pedals. part of the problem was that i was living in Prestonpans at the time and i really needed to pretend that i didn’t or at least drown out the noise of the neighbours who only had one volume – scream. all conversations were screamed. and they weren’t really very nice conversations to listen to. so there was even more headphones than normal. so this – 8 minute moggerfooger 1 note ebow noodle which i found a couple of days ago and rather liked.
so it was actually recorded during the last few months of work on tantrum’s second album advice to users (of life: work less, earn less, spend less and do more), to give it the wordy title. and therefore pre-casioMTB. but what the hell.
Sadly i realised that having £500 tied up iin two pedals just wasn’t really possible. so i had to sell them, and bought myself a EH micro synthesiser to make up.
Holmes ext play (140)
its fun listening to these mixes – spotting things that i sent to troll, new stuff, bits of the first fake tan album and a cd we made for is birthday all coming together. some are later variations of mixes we’ve had before (Estella remix by Angelo D ).
i love remixes. and it scares me that this could be taken down for things i have no idea are original or not, copyright infringing or not. its all tranformative interesting music for those who like that sort of thing.
only one more track from this Troll album.
I really must sort out the upload of the new Gasgiant lanum – i’ve been sitting on it for weeks.
As a very regular reader of Techdirt i don’t often get surprised by the strange logi of the music industry but this statement i found rather amazing. its by Russ Crupnick, Senior Vice President of Industry Analysis of NPD. NDP are the bunch who produce facts and figures for the american music industry, the RIAA – Recording Industry Association of America. For years they have been fighting downloading, downloaders, P2P, mp3s mp3 players etc.. And they have got laws changed all over the world 6 strickes, 3 stricks etc, for downloaders, fining millions of pounds for downloading a few songs, getting ISPs to spy on the websites that people go to, basically trying to censor the internet to protect an industry that has been determined not to move with the times. Anyway, that this guy says here: Driving Under The Influence is this:
P2P music downloaders do indeed buy more music than non-users. We’ve known that for about 10 years. It’s a dumb, illogical and irritating argument.
man this return button is crazy. and wierd text app[ears at the botto mof pages. is it opera is it linux, or both??/
Friday!
Stop. thank you back here. where my return should be. so i daren’t press it again. just one big paragraph. friday friday. no. can’t thik of anything elase worth saying after all that. g’day.
actually, i do have something else to day – really like this. especially from the chord delays. really nice mello tune
on facebook there was this picture – how many heads can you see on the tree? oooh 9, no 10, 11! all very exciting. but i could see loads more – there was a weasel thing with a long nose, a lot of strange insects and slugs – did they count. i didn’t ask
this [icture is a bit like that is it a double-headed-rat-parrot or more? whic is a bit like this music becasue you get these nice aaahs and you think aaah and then it goes bang and then its off and then its elsewhere.
No messing a bout (or perhaps , lots of messing about).
i’ve been struggling with one tune for 4 weeks now. i have got almost no further. its not usually like this. i wonder if its connected to a lack of. and i should therefore feel healthy. from what i can tell i feel no different. but music making is stuck. or perhaps its becasue i am writing for the first time on a keyboard/casio (not just making noises – actual structure of a gloomy song)
at least i found out yesterday that the wlking dead didn’t finishon se02e07 but there was actually lots more. what was i thinking of??
it happens far too often bu tyou hear a band and go fuck why do i bother. So heres one – not only a great song but with Casiotones! may as well go and put down casiomtb right now.
i won’t but i will have to try much much much harder.
Utopia (147)
Everyone has an idea of their own Utopia. Big Business would like to own everything and lease it it back to you. They used to think selling it back to you was the aim but of course that’s stupid as after a bit they wouldn’t have anything left to sell, so leasing makes more sense.
Am i really?really? oh go on then. Its all Tom Cruises fault. Everything. You see he once made a film called Risky Business (how apt), he danced in his pants and everyone, especially big business folk, took note of what the moral was. Which was: There is always someone in trouble who is willing to break the law to succeed, therefore to succeed you have to do whatever it takes, however immoral, wrong, illegal, ALL THE TIME. Its only when you try to bribe your way into Harvard Business School that Harvard Business School deems you the right sort of person to go to Harvard Business School.
For so many years i have been told how i was cynical and stupid and ‘trickle-down’ and whathave you. But look whats happened now with pretty well everything: banks, government, laws, all big business its all used by a very small group of people to get money as quickly as possible into their pockets and fuck the rest of us, the planet, lives etc…
Bloody hell you’re grumpy today!. No, actually quite a good
some time later
wow, keyboard battery dies and mouse batteries. The long arm of Harvard Business School OR Tom Cruise or Scientologists OR Boring Post Police.
Duty (156)
This is the first one that really goes with the sax which is great.
Hang on words keep popping up – i suspect, what with the name duty – that its an anti-war song. While i like to think of it as a Beguine or maybe a Merengue. Its probably neither but i like to think thats it is. Its like i your first band you have a tune you’ve writtena dn its slightly not punk/pop/metal, so its called the ‘funky one’ and its about as funky as Richard Claderman (what?! whos he? i dont know he had blond hair and played piano, my sisster had an album, it was hell). Anyway, i hop e the Peacemen call this the latin one. Though they dont they call it Duty.
Though obviously war is fun and i suggect they play ‘Call of Duty’ and then they could re write the lyrics accordingly. Call it Fragging.
Now i’m i n trouble, they are not called the Peacemen for nothing. Its all coming together! Man i’m slow. Its this whole lyrics thing i’m just not a good lyrics listener.
Anyway, this is the other one i think i want to remix.
Having just delivered a cat to nursery, a vampire cat at that, i feel i have an affinity to all things cat today, an animal i am not usually fond of. But i feel once a year you can feel something towards them. And why do animals and insects not get the zombie disease when it affects humans? That would make life a lot tricker, instead of just having a good workout regime you would need black light traps and all sorts of additional. Never mind, you would be scuppered.
Cat Paws? i feel it means something so i have just looked it up on wiki:
Cat’s paw is a phrase derived from La Fontaine’s fable, “The Monkey and the Cat”, referring to a person used unwittingly by another to accomplish his own purposes.
So, as i am terrible at listening to lyrics, and though there seems to a lack of apostrophes, i wonder if the song is about this sort of scenario? It sounds likely, though i have heard the song quite a few times now. The problem, or not a problem as such, but the problem is that i listen to the music more than the lyrics with most music. If the words sound about right (ie there’s no ‘You’re like a Nuclear War’ going on) lyrics can pretty well muddle along by themselves. This is not always true, but for instance, to mention japan again, i listened to Oil on Canvas for a year and still had no idea what any of the songs were called, where one stopped and another started (thogh the clapping sometimes helped), it was just one long mush of niceness. Concentrate!, right yes cat paws, so, i listen to the sax a lot. As i haven’t heard much sax since the early 80s. When briefly i dreamed of playing the Benny Hill theme or maybe being in Madness and was taught it at school for a year before one fateful day when i drew the short straw and became a bass player – it turned out i loved the bass and stoppd my sax lessons immediately.
Sax – cat paws, the guitar solo, the curious change, the change in vocals, thats what i like.
I got a message back from the Peacemen (i am not going to include the bit about Japan, thats just mean):
Cat Paws – it’s not Cat’s paw, so it’s a different thing. “Cat paws and think” is the first line – more punning and changing the meaning of words. It’s about a cat in a flat we lived in that got on a bus once, etc etc. It’s also about the first world war: “The wheels of God are grinding” paraphrases Lewis Grassic Gibbon in Sunset Song, the first book in A Scots Quair. A very good book, but relentlessly grim, due to it being set in the first world war. It’s not a war book but about the people left behind. Recommended.
This probably isn’t meant to happen but this took me on a quick memory shuffle. I would have thaought that it would remind me of my very first gig i ever played – at school, 3 songs, one was sort of written by us, but the other 2 were covers of The Poilce So lonely, and Stiff Little Fingers version of Doesn’t Make it Allright . Both as i’m sure you know do the slow reggae to noisier punk thing. So, a bit like this all tommorows slums.
But actually i am listening to Japan’s version of All Tomorrows Parties. Something i suspect The Peacemen will be most upset about – they have always been a bit appalled by my secret love of Japan. What can i say, i keep it as secret as i can. But gosh its good.
Anyway, track 2 of The PEacemen’s 5 track EP, and yes i really am going to do one a day this week. 1 2 3 4, its Thursday i’m looking forward to most. is it a beguine? my hands are reasching out to the casio to check. better not.
So, All Tomorrows Slums – out now – do listen thank you.
Its not often i get to say ‘Oer political’. so here goes ‘ Ooer, political’
Last centurt there was a politician who became a prime minister who’s name was Thatcher. (whoever would have though this site would become educational). Anyway Prime Minister Thatcher was hated by many, but kept getting reelected over something like a 12 year period.
The Peacemen, being peaceable, are encouraging you, the listener to dance on Thatchers grave.
I’ve been talking to the peacement for many months about getting some of their recordings up, and ehere were are – the 5 track EP Dance the Dirt Down, soon to be released all over everywhere. AND unl;ike all other floppy bands – they play live! Who’d a thunk!
So i am hoping to be able to do a remix of this song (and possibly another) as i really like this.
So grab you outdoor dancing shoes (aka wellies) and get dancing!
its friday and i should be in a better mood but the playground drop off was a distater. i got social tourets and managed to say the wrong thing the whole time. well, its autumn harvest soupday and i did have a carrot in my pocket. its when it sounds funny in your head….
so. this blab suits my mood.
oh and the site was down yesterday. probably my fault. so i;ve had to remove the option of ogg and aac from the album downloads – not that anybodu bough them. they were taking up too much space and i dont think i have much left. all these tunes uploaded and geting downloaded. but without much income. i really need to come up with a way of the site earning £300 a year. but then i also need to put stuff up for sale and i am too lazy/busy.
SHEEP FEET!!!!!!!!!!!!! thats what i need to shout.
but instead i’ll go and make a loaf of bread. knead/need yes you see i have no sense of hunmour.
we went to see them on wednesday night at the voodoo rooms. the voodoo rooms are very interesting as it turns out they are not in victoria street – who knew! so, it was a good job we took the car, as we then drove round edinrbug htrying to rememebr why the hell we remembered th name of the street (west register street – of course the penny black and oyster bar). so we got there at the back of nine (doors open 7.30) as planned actually – and still had to wait for another half hour for them to come on.
And they were great. exactly as i had dared hoped they would be, with a screen and music and samples running togther. In fac tit was even better than i hoped as not only were the samples in time with the music it all looked pretty live. in that the drummer was live – though maybe with some electric pads which i couldn’t see, and the guitarist looping a lot of stuff live, and playing keyboards etc – there was just the 2 of them. couldn’t work out how or even if there was bass. it seemed fairly loose. so i am hoping not too much timed midi. definitely midi in that the keyboard was a little midi keyboard (at a guess we were right at the back) and its sound s changed with every song, so it was probably hooked to the laptop. blah. blah. the only complaint is that i am not overly fond of the banjo. its up there with a didgeridoo – just don’t want to see them.
But. and now to be really boring. i was very interested by the problems and the solutions. Instrumental bands can be boring live – not so if you have samples taking on the role of singer.
Instrumental bands can be boring live – not so if you have video providing constant visuals.
Some people can feel embarrassed by their own voices – not if you have a midi dkeyboard that ha a different word for each key to say: Thank. You. … Edinburgh.
If you keep releasing EPs you can go on a long time being a band at the start of its career. Once you have an album out you are locking yourself down. I feel. What will PSB do after a first album? Find more grainy black and white film to play along with. or do something completely different? Or be that famous producer who began with PSB?
the last 30 seconds are what guitar solos should be (sometimes)
though there was one i loved on the (first?) sigue sigue sputnik album that was just 1 note all the way, brilliant.
another good song (feeling noisy this morning – trying to ignore the fact that its monday)
yaaaaah its the end of the week. it seems to me that minecraft is not only a good game its a game that is worth watching youtube videos of. and then you get long conversations about iron ore, diamond armour, hero haines?? and his song. will i ever understand it?
will i ever understand why rain came out of my wall last night. it rained so hard my wall between bathroom and utility room leaked like a madonna. not a religious experience just a memory muddle – did i leave a pipe uncapped in there? do i have to dig in and have a look. does diy ever end?
is the rain n edinburgh just going to get worse?? the world’s shittiest summer (the meadows still has giant puddles that haven’t dried out from the spring!)
And do i know what the frak Zep Tepi means?
Turns out google knows: ‘Zep Tepi is a mythical golden age described by the Ancient Egyptians as the First Time when the gods ruled the Earth and people were immortal.’
Crikey
W
anubis – funk maker
ell thats Troll for you, well versed in religions. i wonder if he has a USB powered Hermeneuticon? I’d like a cartoon video of this with the gods playing percussion to this, whats doghead called - Anubis – shaking his maracas – in fact here he is:
like i said, its friday morning, things are looking up, though just not at the sky its too grey.
Expendable (147)
ok so my maths has gone awry a bit. 50 really i right – at least when i add up the number of tracks in the column over there>>>.
Excellent – we’ve released (?! is that the right word?) 50 tunes/tracks/songs this year (what is the hip word at the moment and pass me my horlicks whilst you’re at it)
Troll, i like this, very listenable to , and a bit of cool guitar at the end. i think a lot of this is done on his Kaos pad, but maybe not.
goodness i am enjoying these tracks. and i don’t seem to have any work to do today – as yet, which i guess means a default down to DIY. But thats better than work so hey ho.
i must start sending out emails to scottish music websites about these downloads its hopeless that i don’t.
The guy who bough the fake tan snippets album is writing a book about edinburgh bands!!?? whcih is a way is disappointing that he wasn’t buying for love of fake tan but its pretty nice to think he considers such a peripheral bunch as floppy as somehow relevant to his book. we’ll see. i have to write a blurb for him..hmmm that could be both whiney and dull, or self-important and crap, difficult.
the best thing to do is to listen to stability and then gop back and listen to the other Troll stuff. i will be putting mor eup this week, hell, even tomorrow.
So, here i am burning 6 copies of Boris new 4 track ep and lots of things come to mind: its half term from tomorrow so of course its started to rain and will undoubtably rain until the week is up, that its half term so now we have colds, boris has sent me a 4th track for the Ep – i hadn’t realised it existed – its really nice, and has some nice keyboards in, and further boris thoughts:
i wish edinburgh blues folk would rise and and demand he play live. he would hate this and love it. secondly. no i am going to stop there, i’m being a bully. left it as it is, an excellent musician doing his thang.
Agnes (182)
sorry, monday is always a bit of a hassle but But BUT. someone, and i must remember to go and see who, someone has bought a copy of Fale Tan Snippets from Amazon. I had completely forgotten that i also put albums up on amazon. this time we earned $4.50 odd or so. So i spent the evening making up a copy.
An evening!? thats what happens when your printer is new (from last time you had to print one) the cds are new and you can’t remember where anything is. Its also interesting because Snippets is getting to be the most popular downloaded album. And we never got it reviewed, or i didn’t as i thought it was too difficult to describe, that reviewers wouldn’t do anything with it. It seems i was, as with nearly every music decision i have ever made – though i do still like my new cheap bass (epiphone eb-0) and don’t yet miss the old expensive one (a Balogh Odyssey Bass) - wrong. MAybe it is the best thing we ever did. Certainly Mike from Gasgiant/Troll/AngelOD said that once.
And getting back to Mike. Here’s Agnes. Lovely tune, really the whole album is great.
considering i have had permission to put these up for months – AND have a new 3rd album to put up whic i am very excited by i have been really pants at putting these up.
Anyway, heres some more fro mthe wonderful An Uncertainty Principle album. Opium: gets played live still which is nice. when i say live still, i mena it was when i last heard them a couple of years ago. but by gasgant standards thats only a couple of weeks ago.
got a bit excited today. you’ll never believe what happened – i had a non-spam comment on a post! the i hate midi post in fact. there’s a shocker. so shcoked am i that i am going to open up all future posts for comments again (for a bit i suppose until i get bored of deleting spam, again).
so please, listen to anti-matter of fact and comment on it. a jaunty tune. (riddled i suspect with that evil worm midi, but what the hell. john, who looks nothing like that <, is a great drummer, but he has a nutty granny neighbour below him so he can’t drum in his flat.
having spent a life time of bass playing i’ve played with so many wonderful drummers: mike, mike, mike?, john, antony. anyway.
R-Gos? why do so many women like him? i mean Drive was ok, but he looks so stupid. I can put up with the Fassbender love, though you do get a right eyeful during Shame. But now it seems we have moved on to Ezra Miller! Dear god there’s no hope for anyone now, he didn’t just get out on the good side of the gene pool he took the lot. So it was a bit of a relief to finally get to watch a film that was a, funny, b, people were only moderately good looking, with fantastic zom-rom-com zombieland.
i don’t know if i could be you. in fact i dont want to be. I dont want to be anybody else. there are no stars i want to meet (jesus?! really? – Hi big J hows it going?… sorry i dont speak aramaic, i’m sure it was great and wise and possibly invovled wine or bread or fish all of which i am in favour of, but you know didn’t catch a word of it). Churchill? what on earth would he want to talk to me for. its all madness.
damn it run out of time for ranting. mid rant, thats no wway to go. and and i haven’t even mentioned blab damnit.
so its time to put up some more Blab. this is the first track fomr the album Blabberkirk 29. (the 29th album from balb while at the ‘kirk , as in Falkirk, except they left falkirk and moved to the metropolis of cupar, where it throbs with activity and action, i am told.
a hive of activity (do you see where i am going with this), inspiring this song, Lord of the Bees, i am sure, certain even.
So, we edge towards our 50th release this year. I have been hope;less at trytyuing to work out how many downloads we have hed these lat 2 months – spreadhsheets depress me and i cant think of any other way fo doing it. the maths that is. And and i must must must start wiring a newsletter about this to the scottish music sites – have i? no. will i – maybe if i can be arsed to find the time.
you know what - im putting another one up today! its like winning the lottery and blowing the lot . i’m just chucking it up and why not?
i’ve been listening to the Mutiny on the Mothership album these last few days, and i haven’t listened to the next 2 yet. It s really good. i will (says he) put it up for sale as a download album soon (ish, along with the huge list of other stuff i have to do).
still this is all great . im off to listen to mutin yagain. next week i feel i ought to put up some more Blab.
an hour or so later: funnily enough i recognise a few samples here and there, some of it from a mix cd we gave mic for his birthday a few years ago. so i think this is early Troll.
I would say this is retrolofi techno myself but then i know nothing. its also like casiomtb but organised (much better). excellent stuff, could listen to this a lot. and there is so much more! 3 albums anyway.
10minutes – causing much trouble with my uploading, but thats fine its the sort of music you need a lot of just to get you in the right mood.
lovn’ the troll. Which is funny really there’s this whole troll thing going on at the moment, talk of making trolling illegal, getting rid of anonymity. its a load of nonsense. anonymity is vital, the whole argument is a front to stop whistle blowers. Now, has anyone seen my tin foil anywhere i need to make a hat.
This is the second track from last weeks rather successful ( i think session). Length warning:10mins odd. It all takes time to sort itself out. but i do find it fun doing it all live in one take.
there is a third from this session and another one that appeared at the weekend though i suspect that that is one that will need vocals, guitars, bigness in general. we’ll see.
If only it were true (197)
now, its been pretty bad of late. had to do a computer update which totally went wrong. The whole lot went chinese for a bit – a common problem with Unity upgrades it seems.
Lost passwords, couldn’t and actually still cant upload to the floppy site.
and most upsetting of all a comment – and its always spam, took time out from their busy schedule of spamming to complain about my careless spelling!
it would be great if i actually read over what i wrote and corrected it but actually. what the hell, yes i should, sorry.
this is 1 of 4 i did last night. its a 15 minute monotonous drone really. but quite nice. background music perhaps. i like it.
so, i have music to go up! casiomtb test runs i guess you could call them, more blab and more gasgiant.
we went to see the xx at the usher hall last night – nice, good sound, good lights, usher halls lovely, nice music, nice people with good voices.
xx – usher hall edinburgh september 12 2012
perhaps you’re waiting for a but, , but its really more of a comment. I got this with Andrew bird a couple of months back. You like the album/s, then a gig turns up , then months pass you’ve moved on musically and then you remember you have a gig to go to. Enthusiasm has waned. the moral i guess is to spot the bands sooner and see the the first time round.
It was a good gig. I remember seeing them on tv once and thinking, well, not great. and then a friend gave us a copy of the album, or rather i copied it having liked it (lost money to band – 50p?) but we bought tickets at £19 ea – money to band £10 or £15?? from £38?). And we played it a lot.
On stage i thin the third person – techy keyboard drummer guy is different? theres a lot more stuff back there than on that tv show. and it gets used. its often very dramatic, bigger sounding, and goes dancey sometimes. and at others songs sto suddenly or drift from one into another.
But, as i have said before here, there seems to be an avoidance of midi (most of the time). in that the timing slides faster and slower sometimes deliberately others just going with the flow – and thats a good thing.
Voices are great, he’s charming and its funny (in a nice way it made me smile) watching him move, which you dont expect from this music, in fact everyone is happier than you suspect in general, and she is shy and sweet.
it probably did go on for an hour (i hate long gigs). and there seemed to moments of spinal tapisms – the x appeared almost after they had left and may or may not have worked correctly (dont want to spoil stuff). and glitter is always appreciated.
good gig, big professional but pleasantly unprofessional at the same time.
its not easy to write the Dickies without immediately giving up on them as the creators of Tra La La (Bananasplits) – even though it was a great song.
But i doscovered 2 things about them last weekend:
someone called them ‘Chip Shop Punk’ quite rightly – great name. But i always assumed that they were from the UK, somewhere. Who else has chip shops? Turns out they are from LA. The first LA punk band it seems.
They were dam good as Fan MAil shows – punk but with more chords and more tune (the type of punk i prefer it must be said.
i hate ebay sales. i mean its great that you sell some pedlas and now can buy a pedal, bu tthe wrapping and posting is an almighty bore.
Not as boring as Virgin broadband who cut me off last thursday and then teased me intermittenly tthrough til monday, giving me minutes and sometimes hours of connection and then turning it off again. as ever they denied it, then admitted it was a fault and then finally admitted that it was in fact a major upgrade. which was obvious it being the weekend between the end of the festical and the return of the students. so over the course of the weekrnd i got given £5 off my bill and separately everyday i complained off my bill – i wonder if i will get either?
i did on the other hand doodle a lot. it is worth putting up doodles – thats the question, epsially sionce i should be putting up more blab or gasgiant and gerena.
you see (some time later). the upload didn’t happen, and no i have no idea what garena means, and no i cant be bothered to read above that word, its makes no sense.
the doodle is expanding. possibly incorporating epic rock out track Panz2. first recorded in 2005, when, well when i lived in the Panz and i had to drown out the neightbours and their gun-toting teenage mayhem of next door. there was lofi rock, souternrock and panz rock versions. this is a different one, its, well my neighbours still make a noise (to the left is a cement mixer (honest DIY/Civil Engineer is really bad combination, i thin khe’s sinking a bath into his kitchen floor. above, i’m not sure, more go in than come out. its like a rather dull dr who episode with a lot of floor sanding.
Which reminds me my bass is stil lfor sale over at ebat – failed at 400 now 300. (Balogh died well, of being sanded to death, supposedly). NIce finish on the bass though a bit de-varnished in places.
where am i – yes drums, noise guitars and my new bass (loving the epiphone eb-0, back to my stumpy fingered woolworth special roots). back to recording.
oh and hello kev.
A: yes i know i seem to have got the numbers in a muddle
B: no i dont know what a Kivy point is – do you? please tell. Anyway i wasn’t sure about putting this one up, but its a grower in cool.
i think i am going to have to do a bit of work and get this album up for sale as a complete download – see if we can seel one (75% will go to blab of course).
that and my bass is up0 for sale: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Atilla-Balogh-Odyssey-Bass-Guitar-/330783588016?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item4d043cfeb0
its an Atilla Balogh Odyssey Bass Guitar a beast in its own right
Loverboy (204)
i am a bit worrie that this is not Loverboy. It should be – it says it is, but for some reason the track order seems muddled. did i change the number on the tracks or did the converter tell the truth and i have the track order wrong. i could obviosuly go and find the cd and check it from that – but that, well its an effort. my cd player barely opens through lack of use – i’ve ripped all my favourite albums to wavs and am slowly doing the rest.
why am i even trying to sell cds?! madness. i must put up more album downloads.
this is great though – whichever song it is.
sadly i cant embed it. But you may have heard that Total Recall has been remade. this is not that – but it should be: Total Recall – Scottish
warning – bit rude.
warning – Arnie’s accent has greatly improved
and if you saw this 2 years ago – sorry for being so slow
i want to put up Kivy Points ( Next to the Stop Sign) or maybe Stroke ( Sheep Feet ) – with a bit of a DO NOT PLAY IN THE OFFICE RUDE WORD WARNING. but instead i have to put this up . though it probably needs a DNPITORW Warning too:
i notice that these are getting called Blab Plays on the cd. Which sort of seprates them out form the music, which makes my life easier in trying to find them, but i don’t think its necessary: its just Blab. And thats a wonderful thing.
i made this, sorry, i couldn’t resist it, too ….
anyway. i’ll probably get a take done from the bbc soon. not sure why though i paid my licence fee.anyway. hope you like it
i’ll put the video up tomorrow i think. Supposedly he was watching the right royal wedding and just wrote and recorded this there and then. Which i think is brilliant, brilliant song, nicely done. can’t say the same abou tthe video i’ve put togther bu there you go.
Mondays are a nightmare aren’t they? its all such a rush.
Now i suspect that the folk at blab may be disappointed by my choice of first track from their album Balabberkirk29. Its rather lovely. A mood they have less often than weird, rude, funny, though i do want to know if that is richard snoring or someone else?
I have been listening again to blabberkirk29 and there is rather i lot i want to share. i am not sure how many they will mind me putting up: it began as 4 and ended at any…
So there will be more.
On another note, i will be putting up the other N E Braeside track next week – i just wanted to give the last one time to sink in – and anyway i have made a video for it so that took a bit (emphasis on bit) of time.
Also. i need more music. i really doubt indie rock will do it as its such a well worn path that actually being interesting and different os going to be difficult. so any music, the odder the better, if you want me to give it away for free please send a vaguely decent mp3 to me and i may put it up. i may sell it (if i do you get 75%). the only thing it must be is original in that you made it. an image is good. just send it to ohallrightgiveitawayforfree@floppyrecords.co.uk
So, here we go. Sorry for the delay.
But i have waited a year and a half or more for these 2 songs.
I heard them, and some others early 2011 and asked to be allowed to put them up then, but i only finally got permission a week ago.
When i heard these. No, wrong way to start. Occassionally you hear stuff and you just think – what’s the point, i really should give up. Here’s a kid, 16 or 17, who is knocking out these wonderful songs every day, while i can struggle for years over one poor song.
And, i am not even particluraly fond of the singer songwriter. Bob Dylan, Nick Drake?? i could barely name a song of theirs let alone an album. But this, this is, i suspect very good.
So, here is not the song that first caught my ear, that’s coming next. but this one, take me home, is lovely.
we never sent snippets out to anyone. it was always a kind of embarrassment.
The idea, no thats not true, they were starts of news songs, after maisie’s friend. but it was all taking too long, all these labels and publishers were saying stuff, and we were recording like mad. Then we thought – maisie’s friend will have lots of snippets of tunes to go between tracks so we can use up some of these ideas.
But the re-recording of maisie’s friend never happened – bar one awful single we won and i stupidly thought we should rerecord tantrum egg… anyway.
we put them together and had fake tan: snippets. and didn’t really listen to it again. But now that it seems to dominate the current charts i have listened to them again – and they’re ok. pretty nice actually. thank you. so as they say in the killing a lot – takk.
its not impossible that this may be taken down again. Complaints made etc.. It is a rough mix of something casiomtb and william gerard did with Dadorails. Or rather Dadorails did something and casiomtb joined in. i don’t know. its all muddling and happened last year. There was a lot of recording done last year. i might be wrong but this may be the only song. can’t remember.
Its about a mattress. more specifically your first mattress as a couple that your parents give you, ie its their mattress, with their mattress formations (which may include a high ridge down the middle, for whatever reason). I don’t normally explain lyrics but i remember last year Neil and Kev, of Dadorails going ‘Oh’, so maybe its needed. Or maybe they said Oh for a different reason – an appalled reason.
NEXT DAY: remixed it a bit, that was a year ago mix. but to gone on about the mattress completely unnecessarily, its not so much what they did do but that they didn’t do, and is it transmissable and can you be haunted by a mattress?
Here is the last track from Alexander’s Dark Band. and its a sort of secret track i suppose. Its 22 seconds long and goes weeow like a ricochet, very quietly.
Hardly a track worth downloading? Well maybe but for completionists everywhere, thats what the album says: this is track 11, it has no name. What can i do , not put it up?
Still not sure what to do about friday? i know of music coming, but none is here yet.
Could be time to pull something out of the emergency bag.
So, almost made it through Alexander’s Dark Band, only 1 left to put up, and then we are on An Uncertainty Principle.
I had a chat last week with Ryan and it seems that they had a practise last month (sharp intake of breath) with Mic on drums (another siob) And there may be A N Other player in the band (sio oh stop it), 3rd guitarist and additional noises.
Its the Edinburgh Festival soon. As ever, almost no decent bands coming to Edinburgh. Too slow to get tickets for Beach House over in Glasgow. Bon Iver are playing somewhere big (oiG – no, not that again), but can’t face either big venues or trekking over to Glasgow.
Escape from Planet Earth (226)
And here we have the last of the single / EP from Boris Boogaloo: Escape from Planet Earth.
I don’t know why he didn’t put it at the start. Nor am i sure when a single becomes an EP – 3 songs or 4?
Its still a miserable blues song but i like the drums and added extra wierdnesses – especially the ending. In fact all 3 of these songs have got rougher but more adventurous too and i think both are a good thing – too much polishing can lead to dullness.
That should be like a motto or something. though i guess it could be crafted better. more work needed.
I don’t really have any idea what i am going to put up next week. Oh actually probably more gasgiant.
This is the one i had up on the site last year (though this is a slightly different version: faster? different drums? actually it all sounds a little different, anyway. i do like a good start to a guitar solo. still a good song though.
Sadly, thats the end of the K A Morton and the Well-wishers tracks. I wonder if we’ll get more? I wonder if i shold try and sell it as a download – must remember to ask.
In other news, no i haven’t done last months stats yet. Yes someone did download 1 song over a hundred times in 2 hours. Yes i did just upload lots of stuff to Soundcloud (though it wont appear for 24 hours). Oh and on CDBaby it does seem that Spotify is paying me about 1cent ($0.01) a day. Which is great. and i mean that. i am now getting a regular income from my music whihc i have never done before. 1 is better than 0. and if i can keep on making music i expect 1 to double.
When will it double? bets please. i am going to guess/hope this year.
It would help if i actually added a new album to spotify – get a wriggle on Messrs Gerard and MTB.
So is CDBaby worth it? well it will take a long time at $.0.01 a day for the albums to pay off their initial £15? to get it on CD Baby, but other sales happen too. Someone bought Fake Tan’s Are you being served? (you just never know what song people are going to like do you??!! Fabulous brilliant thank you ) on itunes recently – thats $0.85 in the CDBABY bank. o at a guess i would say it will take 2 years to pay ff the intitial investment (investment?! thats banker talk).
I think its important to realise the Joss Whedon is startlingly good.
Hangon you may say, this should be about music not tv! -ha (or is it Muhahahaha), it is – watch listen and learn.
Yes ok this came out years ago (2008) but i worry that not everyone has seen this, and they should. I’ll try and get the others up too.
I was very excited to see this again.
and if you’ve not seen it before i think you’re very lucky
Is this my favourite – i think so. How nice is this?! i mean it starts nice and strange and you thik well it needed a bit if oddness and then just before you go ,well thats enough oddness it flips into .. well i wont say.
And Waaaaaaaaaaaay i’m back to putting up tunes. 2 weeks! and you know i could have put some up last week i was here but, work is work and hair had to be pulled and forheads banged on desks and general misereribilitization as i’m sure that word exists and if it doesn’t it does now. actuallu that z is upsetting me misereribilitisation. Better.
Talking about words. I thought i had better start reading 50 Shades of Grey. but i got stuck on upward terminal volocity on page 3.
Been doing this for 6 months and who would have thought that it would be a band called K A Morton and the Well-wishers. I think thats pretty cool.
So here is the wrong road. now i am guessing that this is a review of life so far. a review that happens when a certain age is reached. something i often write about myself. so, as most bands start young they do not have this view. While the baby boomers get to this age they may feel more sympathy for these views than young band views. What i am saying is – is there a market for new Alt Dad music by Dad i mean mums too. altdad? dadalt? music. to mention age is to kill an audience. but it shouldn’t.
In fact listen to this and decide, and as Denim said in my favourite popsong of all time: it’s your right to choose it’s your rock n roll. (middle of the road) .
This is lovely. it makes me think that its a christmas song – because of the bells? or just the wistfulness. really good. well done k a.
I HAVE TO SAY hang stop the caps, that this last para is late st night from my patents house overy ‘droid phone. Well done wordpress, android, htc, wireless amd presume bt.
I will try to get another up early Friday – though i am very bad at keeping promises. Try my best.
This sort of reminds me of Talk Talk. Damn it i think that sthe first time i have referred to another band like that – should n’t do it too much pigeonholign in music already. Or erhaps its useful . is it helpful. maybe i should be sounding off like whats his face from Smashing PPumkins – johnny greenwood is a rubbish guitarist when compared to ritchi blackmore. When i saw that i thought (being a natural cynic – interesting use of keywords to promote return to music: if you like radiohead and rainbow then listen to my music. being rude to get yourself noticed .
Nothing to do with Human war but i want to know how soon a I World government can be started by us so we can start to ignore our own little countries petty politicians. Alreay the Net world is ignoring, or abiding is better, by different rules, why not complete the change and set up our own government. and start forcing environmental policies through.
Well this was a nice surpise: An envelope on the floor from the Kingdom of Fife with 5 songs to add to floppy. And its a nice surprise, its a lovely song
Before i opened it i had no idea of the who/what/where of K A Morton and the Well-wishers. I’m not much better now. BUT i do know the fifth song, We’ll be dead, we’ve had on floppy before under the name of Engine – and i really liked it, though this version is faster and more rockier i guess.
Anyway, these are all going up. I may have to do 3 this week, all from K A Morton and the Well-wishers.
I know Boris Boogaloo has got some more coming and CasioMTB and William Gerard are arguing a lot as to what to finish next. All very exciting.
yes sorry – put nothing up this week, as you may have noticed. I do have music, from Gasgiant, Boris Boogaloo and, arriving yesterday, 5 tracks from K A Morton and the Well-wishers, which i am very excited by this as i know one of the songs of old -though this version is a remix.
NO i have not had a chance to listen to it. This has been my week - an extensive pile of shit.
The cry of many – lottery win where are you when i need you .
What? Reguritating the same old crap?! Its an outrage.
And yes i didn’t have time to mention Stumbling in the Dark Looking for the Light Switch earlier. I’ve had it since last summer and sometimes i love it and sometimes i think – oh it goes on a bit. But these are not about final mixes. Its about what is happening now. (and 6 months ago is still now to me and my recording speed).
Which leads me on to Its nice to have you home again at last V2. Hang on, its the same iwth a blepp blep bleep at the beginning!. Well its not. The middle section has grown and devopled a bit – hopefully for the better - with lots more vocally things going on.
Is this the final version. I don’t know
Are these albums? The first was ‘Homemade prog for the down at heart punk’ and now this is ‘Of No Merit or Consequence’? I don’t know.
I hope to see gasgiant very son – and will try to chivvy up some new material from them.
its probably a phase, its trendy, or something but god i hate midi. or perhaps i should say i love just recording what comes out – live.
I am a frantic chopper upper, and a mover around of sounds afterwards, but they are live sounds.
Looking back we may have used midi to play sounds, but on the whole we recorded them live, and we certainly haven’t used it even for that for years.
I could never get Cubase to work – initally on my P200 i only had a half duplex(?) soundcard so i had to mix down to mono and record mono along side that track. That was using Acid 2 (which i still use – though just for mixing now).
Then i tried Cubase but it seemed an endless war of fiddling trying to get it to work – those 2 settings ASIO and MMR was it? Always a nightmare. And everytime you came back to it it would not work again.
Now when i go round to friends’ and they turn on Cubase you can still guarantee at least half an hour of fiddling to get it going and then far too much fiddling during recording. Midi, trying to get eveything running together, is so boring.
I like starting Audacity and pressing record.
Sorry been wanting to get that off my chest for a bit.
I am going to turn on comments again – see if i still get 2000 spam comments (and only spam comments sadly) in a day .
Just had an email from Flattr – we’ve been Flattr’d.
I wasn’t expecting that to happen ever really. That is fantatsic – thank you very much, thats really kind of you – whoever you are.
If you are wondering how much money floppy got – well i dont know. I think i am right in saying that depending on how much money that individual has put into their account each month then gets split up between the number of flattrs they have clicked on. so, i am guessing – not a whole heap. But thats not the point. The point is ‘widow’s might’ and all that. Its really kind that someone bothers and cares enough when they dont have to at all.
Angelofdeath (281) Of course its really an intro to the next song – Assassin, which is lovely. You probably wont hear a thing for the first 40 seconds as its a quiet fade in.
Now, there is whisper, whisper i say, of possible gigs. they are talking of starting practises again with this in mind and it seems mic is making the trip down from inverness to do this.
Very excite by Blab coming top and a remix sneaking in at the bottom – we really need more remixes – i winder how i can encourage that? A lot of Fake Tan Snippets getting listened to whcih is curious.
Not sure what to do about this – 2 IP addresses, both edinburgh have downloaded 2 songs a over a hundred times last night. I assume that its a server/pc hiccup.
I can see in the logs that one was downloaded 109 times from one address and the second song 20 times . A second address downloaded the first song another 6 times
So i guess i will call that one each? I know it makes me look bad and evil, but i think its fairer to all the musicins who have contributed to try to be as fair as possible.
So, on the basis that we will try anything to help support flooppy and the bands i have added a Flattr button over>>>>>>>>>> there>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
Flattr, if you don’t know already, sets up an account wherby you can donate / /give in a charity kind of way moeny to whoever you want – if they have a flattr account too.
You set an amount of money a month – lets say one pound a month. And if, during that month you click on the Flattr button on five sites – then each gets a split of your £1 – 20p per site.
Now, if like me you hate all these small dribble of standing orders coming out of your account – netflix and spotify and flattr then dont do it.
But it is possibly a thing that might work, might become normal like facebook. So we are trying it.
if you are a band then Flattr mentions joining Music Brainz http://musicbrainz.org and getting yourself a Music Brainz number. Music brainz is sponsred by Google – the idea is to get a number for everybody so things like Flattr can work better – ie if here on floppy 10 people flatter Boris then he gets the money.
SO i am off to persude me and the others to sign up with Music brainz
Oneway (268) Here we are working our way doen the Alexanders Dark Band album – only 2 more to go.
Oneway is, sort of, one of the albums singles. Surf has the vocals but this one has an ear catchiness to it. Almost like post-rock pop. theres a guitar solo that goe sup high. if gasgiant did pained experssions while playing guitar – thi sis the song they would be seen during.
I have to say, point out, that they dont make wit hthe facial atheletics. live. Oh dear this has all wondered from what it was supposed to be:
Oneway – nice tune.
HAve a good holiday today – if you are having a holiday – for some reason we dont seem to be but thats scotland for you – always got to be different.
I like this song. Its almost playful for Boris. And its incredibly short – not that boris particularly goes in for long-windedness like some i can mention on this site (me).
There is something good about short. Is it Teen-angel that manages to tell the story of a girl who is given a ring by her boyfriend, while in a car that gets stuck at a rail road crossing, they jump out when they hear a train coming, but she left the ring in the car and runs back to get it and gets killed – thus Teen-angel: she died for love. But the whole song 3 or 4 verses and choruses and a middle eight is over in 58 seconds! It takes longer to explain the song than to hear it.
So, Are we downhearted? yes we are. but there is always hope.
here’s hoping you like it.
TEENANGEL UPDATE
ok it seems its 2.35. But looking though the American Graffitti track list – 40 songs, only 3 make it over the 3 minute mark, 6 are under 2 minutes. Thats pretty cool.
But there is a songthat is under a minute (i know there a lots, napalm death etc.. under a second) but it must be on some other film sound track – i shall go and look for Lemon Popsicle. My brother loved this stuff so i ened up listening to a lot of it and still have a soft spot for early doo wop / rnr. no i dont like early elvis. To be fair my brother also had emi label Anarchy in the UK (rotten,matlock,cook & jones) which is pretty cool.
Anyway, Low Down Dirty Blues is certainly feeling the blues and nicely done at that. IS there jolly blues? does it stop being blues then? does it change colour?
you wait to the next one – sadly there are only 2 from boris. we hope for more.
So, here you go - get some low down and dirty blues.
Mobility Plaza by Chips for the Poor – i keep hearing it on Radio 6, but cant find it anywhere online. Seems its a b side if Fistula – which seems to be easy to find/see.
But then i remembered!
this week ai bought Beach HOuse: Bloom and Lower Dens: Nootropic. and amazon kindly gave me a £1 voucher for mp3!
i can buy it. and nice amazon offer drm-free mp3s so i really can buy it. (otherwise there might be a problem with moving it to my phone.)
its great. everytime i hear it i think ‘oh no i remember now it is a bit shouty’ but then i get over it and it just works.
Reason for Daftness (289)
So, here we go, a sad moment – the last of the 4 balb tracks, and mayb my favourite – no its Horsehead Nebula. then again i’m not sure. Everyone likes daftness or doesn’t like daftness.
Is this political?
maybe.
I’ll never be sure unless i ask them but theres no point doing that as they wont give a straight answer.
I am really pleased that they are getting lots of downloads – thats cool – thnk you all very much.
Spread the Blab! Share with all. Sharing is good, sharing is what its all about.
I have about 60 of these i made up. The cds were copied professionally. The covers are all individually made from locally sourced suppliers (rubbish on the streets of Edinburgh. They are pretty strong. There is a sheet of blurb inside.
Am i over selling this?
Oh and, to make it more interesting, after every sale the price goes up by £1. By £1! so at
the cd of Fake Tan Pieces - you see its actually been made by someone else!
the end the last cd will (as if) sell for £60, or something. Hang i am just going to see how many i actually made. OK, the next unused sticker says 64. I may be missing cds inbetween whatever i have left. At some point i will lean over and check them. I think that just about covers it.
Also, Paypal will take their money, not sure how much yet, 25p + 3% or something, the band get the rest. (as floppy is the band in this case) .
AAAND i wont put your name in if you dont want me to. most of those down there didn’t buy – they were ‘Press freebies’ back when i could be bothered to do that sort of thing.
tan5cd CD released Dec 2009
CD starts at: £1.00 inc p&p worldwide. (yes this did say £10 first – that was crazy!)
I think, and i would expect to be wrong, that this is an explanation of time and space. Or it could be the story of a scientist having a Godfather -like bad morning. Or its both. Or neither.
For those of you having problems with the scottish accents – ah well.
I hope to be getting more from Blab – there is one left from this series, i’d like to do an album to give a better spread of the crazy variation that is blab.
Track 7 from the brilliant Alexander’s Dark Band album. I know i shouldnt calling these new releases as they’re 14 years old. Bu tthey are new releases to us as we were’nt abpe to give them away before. So if the idea is to provide new tunes regularly that you may not have heard before then this is new.
I also have 2 new songs from Boris that arrived last friday and 2 possible versions of casiomtb tunes. Not too sure what to do about the latter – replace originals? upload revised mixes as new tunes?? replace orignals but also leave old versions on casiomtb page? Just not sure.
Other things to do – add more downloadable albums – now we know it works
Upload more tunes.
wow. wordpress really hates .bmp files! ah well.
Got 2 more Blab tracks to upload, 3 more Alexander’s dark band tunes, 2 new boris boogaloo songs. Tha should keep us going for the next week or so.
fuktfret (299)
i shouldnt get cross. but it annoys me how i forget to put stuff up. All this great music from friends and its days before i get round to putting the next one up.
in the mean time here’s fuktfret. lovely tune from the alexander’s dark band album.
i don’t know if mic is going to drum again for gasgiant. which is a shame as he is such a good drummer. and i do like drummers, its the bass player in me i suppose. i have had 4 really important drummer friends. anyway, i just hope mic does music again at all. i kind of got the feeling that he might last time i saw him. we’ll see.
i am though very excited to hear that gasgiant are recording though and that at some point we are going to get new stufffff.
in the mean time i will continue to work my way through the first 2 albums – putting them up.
BUt it was open for only one day. whcih makes it more difficult. though i knew a few of the names i hadn’t heard any of the albums. I dont really go ‘ooh scottish band, must listen’. i’m more prone to going ’that sounds good must find out more’. Maybe i should change my ways, after all our bands are all from scotland.
So, i took it on advice and voted for Rustie. They are on Warp so it seemed like a safe bet. now i’ve listened to some . ok actually heres what i listened to:
not a bad choice. bet they dont won though. i bet an acoutic guitar wins.
Must try to find out about Album of the year though, maybe we shol dtry. if its not too expensive.
I love cheese. We have a cheese van man who drives up here on a saturday with fantastically unknown cheeses. I also dream far too much, though rarely cheese related. Most of the time i am battering Zombies with blunt objects. It would be easier with guns but when i was 9 or 10 John Lennon came down some golden steps into the jungle where we were fighting and took all our guns. We chased after him but damn he was quick. Guns have never worked since. Its really tiring trying to fight zombies.
Blab skips around a lot, you never know what its going to do next. You wait til you hear the non-musical stuff. But this, Dream of Cheese, its good.
I left PRS last year. This is not a drmatatic thing really, i hadn’t had a cheque from them in years. But i did not like they wa ythey were so pleased with them selves for extending copyright further saying this was great news for the artist. Vut the artist is just as dead 70 years after their death as 50 years after their death.
But i was wondering whether there was a collection society worth joining who might allow me to give my music away for free, who might not complain if others share it, as i want them to, and may even want to change the copyright law to exist for fewer years.
Now i know i am supposed to be promoting Floppy Music. But no one has heard of floppy music, they may have heard of Crybaby when the lights go out:
i would have put the video up but it begins with an advert for Keane and i found that upsetting.
and anyway, whats wrong with liking other music. a listener might listen to this and then dab their nervous hand into the murky waters of floppy records.
of ourse – i should put up this:
Smoking Popes i need you around.
even thogh its old.
wow – some sort of manyly singer thing going on today?
Anyway. I want to put up different music. I want to put up that which is not power guitar pop (well you know unless i hear something utterly unmissably brilliant). Just a bit odd.
And Blab help us keep our balance. I’ve just been writing on their page here , and maybe Blab will hate it, i’ve no idea, but its true they produce an extraordinary range (and quantity) of music (and other stuff).
Wahtever – i have 4 Blab songs and they’re all going up over the next couple of weeks. Enjoy.
i had sort of forgotten that we also had albums on bandcamp. To be honest i seem to be selling them cheaper there than here. Actually – thats not true. Just goes to show ho wlittle i look at these things. it seems i have them as Name Your Price. So this person bought Maisie’s Friend for 50p. Which is jolly good of them, thank you very much.
I think thats our first sale on bandcamp.
On a completely unrelated point though also today: yesterday i read this article: How Intellectual Property Destroyed Men’s Shaving which admittedly i first heard about on Techdirt (of course). And its something that has bugged me for many years – the pointlessness of ever increasing numbers of blades. So, i had been thinking of buying a Safety Razor (which may be a misnomer, judging by my father’s occassionally bog-roll covered face), and now i’ve done it. Bought yesterday – arrived today. Which was a mistake, i always lick on Free Delivery on amazon, but somehow in the excitement failed to that time. Anyway – it arrived to day!
Tonight, for i am an evening shaver, i will shave with a Safety Razor.
its like i cant count? Shold have put up track 4: fuktfret, and instead put this one up. dont know whats come over me.
perhaps the excitment of stuff??
I have in my hands the 4 Blab tracks i can put up, so i will try and get one of those up this week too. i mean, if you have it why wait, and it seems nicer to offer more music quicker, and just hope that you can come up with more later. Later? Schmater.
Howshemoans? the thing is the whole album is suppsed to run togther a lit like alphabet street but WITH stop signs. God that annoyed me. anyway.
this is good much more to follow – with luck, this week. And i kno i am suppsoed be sending emails to all the press and radio and shit every time and so far i have managed it once to one place. i will try and get more organised. Newletter sign up – thats what i want. maybe.
This is quite exciting for me anyway. Our previous hosts would not let us put up too many gasgiant songs as it made the server crash quite often.
But now we have a lovely new server that, with luck, will cope.
So, its an old song, originally released back in 1999 on Alexander’s Dark Band, though we’ve heard it live many many times over the years, but still great.
So, nice to see a second Boris song appearing, and CasioMTB’s first appearance – who would have though it would be a seriously lofi bit of ?techno??. And, what a lot of Fake Tan!
This late – sorry. I had hoped to get 8 up by CasioMTB and William Gerard but… well never mind.
On the plus side, next up some Gasgiant, or rather, mik and ryan have given me the go-ahead to put up free mp3s of all the rest of their 2 albums. Starting , probably towards the end of this week.
Now, Dymaxion, started in 2010 though i think i can find something much earlier – if i could just work out what i called it:
plugin and start with the guitar, then miks drums (sliced and diced) bass, casio mt46, sadly my vocals with some aahs which i am ok with, and lead stylophone, a bit of (legitimate – it happened, not added after) that noise and an extra chord. bit more whatever it is, and the stylophone drum kit with some i-just-like-reverse-vocals. guitar continues on. Casio solo1. My vocal, with the tc helicon (so much more to follow with that beast) Casio solo2. bit more stylophone drum machn.ine..don’t come round here no more i am not as damned as it may seem, to me.
i’ve worried over the mix for so long, the balance between noisy bass, guitar and bass drum. i just dont know. may yet have to record it all again. i hope not.
So, its a bit delayed. Finished mixing this on monday but didn’t get a chance to listen to the mix properly until last night, so, here it is, the next unfinished (or not necessarily finished anyway) mix of a new tune by CasioMTB and William Gerard:
So, we moved servers yesterday – to our new and super powered almost dedicated server. Well i suppose it is dedicated. Which means i can finally put up loads more music! Thanks to the homecinemacentre for making this possible.
Expect both Gasgiant albums and all Boris up soon for free downloads.
Also, i haven’t oput up a new Casiomtb song this week as i only had monday night to finalise mixes but could only check them last night. In that my hearing wasn’t ready until last night. assisted listening and all.
So, i have 2 new songs to load, i’ll try and do one this weekend and another next week. To keep up with one a week. More info about that coming soon by the way – new music by others!
And finally, with the server change Ant downloads mysteriously jumped to 321. I dont think that was likely. I mean it could happen – if someone famous mentioned it, but then it would continue being downloaded. I i think it was a hiccup with the server move. It was 109 when i last looked so i reckon is was a straight 200 bump, which i have undone. Actually i think i had better drop it to 111.
Recorded the same night it starts the same, and then wanders off in its own direction.
I am in the process of making a lame-arsed video of this one too.
It is one take, live recording of a Casio MT46 through pedals.
And again, i really rather like it. I am hoping others or maybe i will add to it. Or maybe not.
Currently outside Appin in a cottage overlooking Stalker Castle. Which is cool, and wet, but at least not midgey season yet. So this post is a bit short. And i can’t finish the video.
So, hope you like it.
PS. Sorry – download didn’t work first time – surprisingly difficult by phone
Scared of Empty Threats is a live, one take, unedited jam i guess, on a CASIO MT46 going through various effects pedals. No other instruments were hurt during the recording of this.
I dont know what style of music this: lo-techno, no-techno, electronic?
i did normalise it and compress it a bit.
It starts as you would expect, crappily, and then picks itself up and goes for it.
as to the video, well, its an 8 minute video captured from linux’s media player (which i think i now know how to get it in better quality, sorry) and i like watching it. its very dated and i think thats quite cool.
just added tantrum maisie’s friend to paid downloads. £1.25 for the album in the file format of your choice (between aac, 320kbs MP3, and 499kbps OGG) at pretty high quality. also with a text file of notes and 2 sizes of album cover.
I finished a full blown version by September 2009. And around this time i played to nikki – who had written, without hearing the rest of the song, the bass line at the start. She absolutely hated it.
So i put it on ice.
And came back to it at the start of this year, 2012. Shortened it a lot. There’s still more i will do to it, probably.
And i am sorry its me singing not nikki, but there you go.
so, here’s something i began in mid 2007, (in fact here is an early version from May 2007 – not sure if i am doing this or not).
its guitar, bass, mic wheeler (gasgiant) drums sliced and diced, casio mt46, vocals through a tube amp (must remember to remember how i did that, as it worked quite well) .
As a small amateur record label that has been going for 20 years, and a musician that has been making music since 1980, now is the best time
for a musician.
We have had close on half a million free downloads from our website since 2003. We have had had more people discover us and listen to us than ever and we are starting to make a small amount of money. And that is so different from the 80s and 90 when no one heard us, and we had to pay to play.
A free download, like a listen on the radio is an advert for our music and something to be rejoiced.
This is for same reason that you yourself file share. You have, i am sure, a file server, probably a few, in your house – diguised as a book shelf, and on it files/books, that you encourage people to browse and borrow and share, maybe your family, maybe your friends, either way they are not the person who bought the books. You know and accept that you are denying the creator the sale by lending these books, but you do this because you know that it is morally good and right to share, and you know that by sharing you are recommending and encouraging the discovery of new authors and that these readers will buy new books because of this. You know from your own life that books you borrowed gave you a love and desire to read more and buy more.
That is why the US Government Accountability Office (The GAO) study (http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-423) found that:
a: the figures put out by the lobbyists were invented
b: piracy did not cause harm
c: piracy actually seemd to increase sales.
Furthermore, Copyright is not a natural right. It is a short term monpoly granted by the people to creators through their representatives (the Government), and yet copyright keeps getting extended. Art that should be in the public domain has been taken, truly stolen, and handed back to copyright holders. Extending copyright does not increase art production. In fact it reduces art production. If copyright were the length it is now when Disney first started making their 10 Disney Princess films (everyone of which have been taken from the public domain stories) would they have been able to make these films?
I believe copyright should be shortened. I believe software patents should be scrapped. I believe trying to fight piracy is a waste of time and effort when more films, more music, more books and more games are being made than ever before and more money is being made than ever before.
It is really nothing to do with piracy but a fear that the old business model has no control over the new internet business model, and their only way to fight it is through regulatory capture. Which won’t even work because this is the what is happening:
And those that do not understand this will fail whatever the laws.
thank you for your time
tom
I dont suppose its a particlularly clever letter, or well written, or for that matter that it will be read – but i do think we all have to try our best.
There is another site here that i will try to repond to too:
Following on from the post a couple of days ago about how to sell music cheaper, i have come up with an idea.
On the Buy Music page i have a new option – its to download an album (starting with Tantrum’s Advice to Users) for £1.25 (roughly 1.5euro and under $2). You get to pick whether you want the files in AAC, MP3 or OGG format. the money is taken by Paypal and you then have 2 days to download the zip file. Also included are large and small versions of the album cover and a text file with information on the album.
I am using the WordPress Paid Downloads plugin – its free, as is setting up a Paypal account.
Buy download albums directly from Floppy Records:
Tantrum: Advice to users. £1.25 (roughly 1.5eu, $2)
Select the music file type you want (AAC is for iPod type players, MP3s shoulk work with anything, and OGG is for us nerds).
8 tracks – 499kbps OGG £1.25:
8 tracks – - 320kbs MP3 £1.25:
8 tracks – - AAC-MPEG4 £1.25:
Zips contain:
Large album cover
Small album cover
8 album tracks (including Marguerita Time, not included in mp3 downloads, but from secret last track on CD)
Text file with album notes
Money is taken by paypal. You do not need a Paypal account to pay. You will be sent an email with a link to the download. You will have 2 days to download the file.
If in anyway this does not work, or you feel the files could be better, or contain more, please let me know. I would like you to be really happy to have bought this.
Thanks. More albums to follow. I will be speaking to Gasgiant and Boris about this too. If it works.
But the plan was always to put up tunes knowing that they were not necessarily the final mix, so: THIS IS NOT A FINAL MIX!
What it is is my grandfather-in-law’s acoustic guitar, whose bridge is slowly tearing away from the body through the Helicon (of course). But double tracked with the clean acoutic as well (just so i know where i am, as it got a bit muddling). Clean vocals, helicon vocals, and then the casio mt46, through the works.
I have not yet worked out how to get the list to number itself. I now its easy: ol instead of ul but thats not the case here. Shortcodes dont seem as yet to be up to that. Still we’ll see.
UPDATE: managed it! almost. it seems to muddle bands and albums a bit, but who doesn’t.
Continuing the debate as to whether to stop paying for Spotify, I just can’t decide. This weekend is a very good example of why it is difficult.
On Friday evening we were listening to the unbelievably good Tom Ravenscroft show on BBC Radio 6 , which has a couple more days before its taken off line. The thing is that its difficult to keep up with what you are listening too, often the radio can’t be bothered to say, nor the website, and if he does speak it can easily be a series of vowels and consonants that often make little sense: Inigo Ugarteburu Aeraberan being a particularly good case in point. Even now i am not sure if i am correct, but this may have been a brilliant tune.
So, on saturday night i found the track list for the show and decided that the closest thing i could find to what i had written down the night before (i had written ‘beringi el berengar’ about 3 minutes after he had said it as by then a second or even third track had been played and i had no idea what he was referring to).
Yes, i do sit there with a note pad to write down things we listen to and talk about.
Anyway, staring at the set list of fridays show i decided that Casiokids Kaskaden, Ben Butler & Mousepad was what i had liked, and tried to find it in Spotify – and couldn’t. Though i did find Casiokids by Kaskaden but thats a different thing. (And who knew Bernard Butler was doing interesting things with Mousepad, AND as a big big fan of my casio and what can be got out of it i liked the idea of the tune Casiokids). But it wasn’t that. So i wondered down through the set list, thinking that was where i had been listening.
And thats when i found Sugar Minott Ghetto Youths. But i didn’t play that. What caught my eye was Sugar Minott Exit Music. Surely no?! But yes, digging deeper into Spotify it turns out that there is an album called Radiodread, what a fantastic name. And what a fantastic album, well mainly anyway. According to wiki Radiodread ‘is a 2006 album by the Easy Star All-Stars (on backing it seems), a collaboration of reggae and ska artists’, so its not as varied as i had originally hoped (i had hoped it was completely different artists playing any Radiohead song, when actually it turns out its OK Computer). But still worth getting and listening too. Actually, its just brilliant.
And they have an earler album called Dub side of the Moon! Just makes me laugh even saying that. Got to hear that too.
Anyway, i have to go back and continue relistening to Tom Ravenscroft’s show, i am beginning to think the songs i am after are:
Inigo Ugarteburu — Aeraberan
A Giant Dog — Trash Can USA
Kromestar — Wooo
Groundislava — Creeper Shit
Trans Upper Egypt — Cleopatra
or maybe it was the The Haxan Cloak — Untitled – which i think is a 20 minute mix.
i dont know. More work needed.
So, the result is i need radio 6 and spotify. I need spotify to find the bands i hear on radio 6, and to branch out to find more.
Whoops, sorry forgot another song that got played: The Beach Boys — Feel Flows. Reading about that on wiki too. Its surprising late, 1971, but a lovely tune. I dont like like the Beach Boys much, i bought Brian Wilson’s Smile which i liked a lot, yet somehow it feels wrong. But maybe Surfs up is the album to actually listen to. Just a surprise i suppose.
I would love to sell my music directly from this site. I would love to charge say 10p or 20p per song (thats about 16c or .12euro).
But when i look at Paypal rates, and that is pretty well the only way i can think of doing it, they would charge 20p per transaction plus 3%.
So i would have to charge 30p at least to get my 10p.
itunes change 99c, currently thats 62p, and they pocket about a third, leaving 40p to me ( i think if i understand this site correctly). And its an itunes file and i don’t know how well they travel even if they say it is DRM free.
Now this is a bit odd. Yesterday when i thought about this it didn’t make sense. Maybe i should give it a go?
Oh, i know, i was being greedy thinking: i’ll make more from itunes than selling directly.
But that’s not the point and never has been. I am going to give it a go. Why not?
so, you are not expecting this. The best thought would be to reboot and it’ll be gone. But it is, so…
one take. Watching or listening to the idea of going and playing live and winging it, just playing and hoping you’ll get through, is very scary. this is live casiomt46 and helicon vocals, and claps, got to have claps, followed by a wig out, again to be expected. oh my dear god she doesnt want me to come.sorry.
no.not about sex.
and it goes on so please stop at any point. its only lofihardcore, if there is such a thing.
There is a radio mix in there. But should i edit it when its currently one honest piece? ok i just chopped the first minute off – its a hard enough start as it is.
And, should mention: C, all the way. not point messing around thinking ‘ooh what about …that’, just this.
I am just going to listen to it one last time, this time the mp3. Had the headphones on, no sound, forgot arthur has the mixer. ok, this time.
Also, turns out that this is download 100 from Floppy Records. Thats nice. I’ve not released anything new since the day i uploaded Fake Tan: Pieces, in 2009.
Which is actually quite quick for me i guess.
good luck and thank you.
oh and the B side next monday, 12 March. (to be edited?)
By ‘amongst other things’ i mean also, all the other intruments, though i guess i also accidentally mean getting the bass louder while it sits amongst other things – just shut it now tom.
Anyway, i have sometimes done a good mix, normally by accident (eg i always liked Scaremonger‘s mix), and almost always, before trying to mix it. In other words, while recording (currently using Audacity) everything just sits where it is while i get on with the next sound. Its when i start to mix (still using Acid 2) that it all goes to pot.
I worry about the bass, its never beefy enough, so i turn it or worse, i make it bassier or worse still i record it bassier. But then the drums need to be made louder, and then the guitars are too quiet, and the vocals – well who cares about them. But eventually i have turn down the master mix volume. And then i start again turning the bass up.
So then you get to mastering and compression. Once things get too loud you can sort of compress stuff and it sounds more exciting and well, it sometimes helps.
But that does not get round the fact that i cant hear the bass or the drums or the guitar.
Until i read this post here on Home Recording Connection: Getting Your Mix to…mix. Did i read the whole article? Maybe, i can’t remember. But i do remember thinking: stop turning up the bass eq when recording. But what really caught my eye was this graphic:
How to mix properly by Home Recording Connection
And i have to say it immediately solved a problem with a tune i had been trying to mix (for a couple of years). I gutted the bass ( by removing the upper and lower edges of the bass in a graphic eq, turned up the bass drum at about 80hz, fiddled with the guitar eq – and managed to drop the whole volume of the song a lot – thus enabling me to trun the overall volume up. It was great.
Will you hear this beast(ly) of a tune? I have been working up courage for the last few weeks and will try and make myself upload it in the next couple of days.
But i thought that this may help someone somewhere.
Arthur was telling me that the some of our mp3s he listened to sounded really bad. So i listened to a few and they sounded ok.
All the free mp3s are recorded at 16bit, 44.1khz, 128bit (and, i think variable bitrate??). Currently i use Sound Converter 1.4.3 to do the conversions from 16bit, 44.1khz WAV files.
When i play them back they sound OK. My original thought, 10 years ago, was that people would download the free versions but want to buy higher quality files or CDs. And that works a bit i suppose but not to the degree i imagined – not that that bothers me – it was just a theory, a possible method to make money from music, and it works, a bit.
But maybe, as i work on Linux and record and play on linux, these files sound awful to other users – Macs and PCs. Maybe i need to remake my mp3s using better codecs and converters?
I mean, its good to know that i dont have to think about going up to 24 bit or higher than 44.1, which is great but i am worried by this section:
Lossless formats
It’s true enough that a properly encoded Ogg file (or MP3, or AAC file) will be indistinguishable from the original at a moderate bitrate.
But what of badly encoded files?
Twenty years ago, all mp3 encoders were really bad by today’s standards. Plenty of these old, bad encoders are still in use, presumably because the licenses are cheaper and most people can’t tell or don’t care about the difference anyway. Why would any company spend money to fix what it’s completely unaware is broken?
Moving to a newer format like Vorbis or AAC doesn’t necessarily help. For example, many companies and individuals used (and still use) FFmpeg’s very-low-quality built-in Vorbis encoder because it was the default in FFmpeg and they were unaware how bad it was. AAC has an even longer history of widely-deployed, low-quality encoders; all mainstream lossy formats do.
Lossless formats like FLAC avoid any possibility of damaging audio fidelity [18] with a poor quality lossy encoder, or even by a good lossy encoder used incorrectly.
I strongly suspect that i am using Vorbis and FFmpeg.
So i really need your help – if there is anybody reading this at all:
are the mp3s here awful sounding?
Should i re-encode – using what softare / codec?
do you think i should sell individual FLAC files (or wavs, thogh i hate to do anything pro microsoft)
finally got round to adding the rest of the music from the old site: Boris Boogaloo and Gasgiant. I wish i could get gasgiant to release some more for free. i’ll ask ryan, see what he and mik say.
Actually thats just not true – there is still more to come – some remixes and a few odd tracks.
Plus some new ones. Honestly i think they are ready and maybe ok
So, its my birthday today, but couldn’t resist writing to the IPCC – the Independent Police Complaints Commission about the rnbxckusive.co takedown:
hi
as a small record label and website offeeing free music i am very disturbed by the actions of SOCA re rnbxclusive.com.
Is this really the work SOCA should be doing?
From what i can tell most of the music was put up on the site by the artists themselves.
But they seem to operating under a lot of false assumptions:
1. copying a music file is not stealing
2. copying a music file is not a lost sale, in fact, from your own experience i am sure you know that your favourite books and music came from shared copies – which then encouraged you to go and buy more. As many studies have shown piracy helps artists.
3. Should SOCA be setting this example to the world of taking down non-uk domains?
4. should they leave up lies (since taken down) about tracking visitors, harm to artists, stealing etc…
It smacks of censorship. If there was a problem let civil court deal with it and let SOCA chase actual serious crime not do the bidding of lobbyists
UPDATE, 17 feb: Got an email back very fast asking if i wanted my questions passed on to the police for them to investigate, so i said yes. Seems i have to get a reply within 15 days. I wonder what the reply will be:
a: blah blah blah rnbxclusive.com deserved it they are evil axis of evil crime lords
b: you (as in me) are evil we will now arrest you (me)
c: (no reply)
d: whoops what a bunch of chumps we (the police ) are, we shan’t do this again.
i’m going for a:
UPDATE: Tue 13 March.
Got a reply on Wed 7 march. The email says: ‘This information is supplied in confidence by SOCA, and is exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. It may also be subject to exemption under other UK legislation. Onward disclosure may be unlawful, for example, under the Data Protection Act 1998. Requests for disclosure to the public must be referred to the SOCA FOI single point of contact
So i dont know whether ‘may’ means it is unlawful to say what they have witten or not.
And maybe i will ask if i can or not disclose the reply or not.
But what i find odd is the heading: ‘SOCA investigation into stolen data files.’ You can only copy data files you can’t really steal them, can you? Maybe they mean copy and delete?
Anyway, it seems copying music files is a VERY SERIOUS CRIME by organised criminals and needs the SERIOUS ORGANISED CRIME AGENCY to catch them.
and another story from Techdirt makes me write more letters, this time to my 6 MEPS:
Dear
i believe you have recently recieved a letter signed by a range of rights-holder lobbying groups, including the European Publishers Council, the British Video Association, the Dutch collecting society BREIN, GESAC, IRMA, and the BPI, probablly sent by the IFPI concerning the widespread ACTA protests claiming that these “protests silence the democratic process.”
I hope you see these protests as the real democartic process and that the people are the real Rightsholders who have granted these short term copyright monopolies through their governments.
And we are sick of having our rights taken by these lobbyists.
Yours sincerely,
sent to George Lyon
Liberal Democrat
David Martin
Labour
Catherine Stihler
Labour
Alyn Smith
SNP
Ian Hudghton
SNP
Struan Stevenson
Dear Ian Murray,
As a very small time record label, since 1990, that has given away music since 1998 i was horrifiedto see that SOCA (Serious Organised Crime Agency) had taken down http://www.rnbxclusive.com/ a well respected and used by most RnB artists music Blog.
Though SOCA have changed the message they left on the site now, it used to say this:http://imgur.com/qHHuZ.
There are so many troubling aspects to this:
1.a foreign country seizing a .com. So now any country can feel safe to copy the UK and sieze a .co.uk domain?
2. the lies that SOCA left in its message (but i guess they work for whichever Big Media wrote this for them), like:
- Merely downloading music wouldn’t be a criminal offense with a possibility of 10 years imprisonment. Its a civil matter at best.
- nothing is stolen, they are copies, nobody is missing their files.
- The scare tactic of displaying your IP address and pretending that this suggests they’re coming after any visitor to the site. This is, again, insane.
- claiming that SOCA has the ability to “monitor” you is also an exaggeration.
- Claiming that “young, emerging artists may have had their careers damaged” because of this site is pretty silly. Most young, emerging artists are actively leaking their works to such sites so they can emerge. They know that obscurity is a much bigger threat than piracy ever was or will be.
- Saying that downloading music means you have (absolutely) “damaged the future of the music industry” is again insane hyperbole.
3. On the BBC story: ‘ leading the industry to attribute losses of approximately £15m per year to the site’s activity’. Again this is the usual fantasy maths.
So many studies have shown that piracy, far from hurting sales, actually encourage sales. People who download music like music and buy more than those who dont. And these are actuall studies by groups like the US Government GAO, not made up figures by Industry.
But you know this. Your favourite books and music came from friends sharing copies with you. Thats why you have a ‘file sharer’ in you home and office: bookcase and magazine table. It may lose the first sale but you know they will buy more later.
And lastly i suppose i should point out that the rights holders, who never get asked about this are us the people, who through government, grant a short term monopoly to creators. We are the rightholders and we are having our property stolen from us by endless copyright expansion.
How do you think Disney made its money – by lifting everyone of it Princess stories from the public domain. Public Domain is where things should be to encourage economic growth.
thanks
Yours sincerely,
again – not great but i think its a good idea to pester your MPs, MEPs and MSPs as much as possible about this stuff
As you may be aware, the BPI is working with internet service providers to block access to the website The Pirate Bay.
The Pirate Bay provides a facility whereby internet users can illegally download recorded music and other digital content such as film, TV programmes, games and publications. Such use undermines legitimate online music services, many of which are licensed on your behalf by PPL.
In order for BPI to have the most up-to-date information, if you have licensed the use of your recorded music to the operators of The Pirate Bay, or if they have tried to contact you, please email the BPI directly on legalnotices@bpi.co.uk by Thursday 15 December 2011.
so sent a reply:
hi
Please do NOT stop the Pirate Bay from linking to my music.
I want people to freely download my music so it can heard as much as possible.
Please try to understand this!
thank you
tom
Not, obviously a work of genius, but trying to do the right thing.
New Releases
Track 7 - (101) An Uncertainty Principle, Gasgiant, 06/02/2013
Coppafeel - (102) An Uncertainty Principle, Gasgiant, 05/02/2013
Please consider doing a remix yourself and sending it in. Download an mp3 or more and have a fiddle (include your own stuff if you want - slightly worried if you use other poeples' copyrighted stuff...). We'd love to hear it.
Could you do us a Favour?
Download our Music
Share our Music
Remix or do whatever you want with our Music. We'd love to hear it.
Submit the music to Radio - BBC Radio 6 But any country, any station would be great.
ok so sorry about that. actually just nipping to the kitchen.
if there was a part of me that was the cool, the following may sound less awful than ti does. i live in a land of black lace. So, on a falling scale – what am i on about?
WARNING RUDY WORDS ALERt
Tantrum: Advice to users. £1.25
Track 7 - (101)
Help in on the way - The Carp pond - Both - (184)
Varnink - (142)
Are we all in? - (143)
False Hippy - (154)
Turn her up side down - (139)
Math4stupid - (150)
Cathedral Skies - (181)
The Universe Next Door - (136)
More than you can handle - (136)
Utopia - (147)
Three Words - (160)
Lord of the Bees - (199)
If only it were true - (197)
Stop Sign - (225)
Loverboy - (204)
I wish - (233)
Take me home - (208)
Come On Over - (217)
11 - (217)
Assassin - (229)
Escape from Planet Earth - (226)
We'll be Dead - (245)
Sleep Horses - (231)
The Wrong Road - (257)
Human War - (250)
You and I - (261)
A Real Dislike for Authority - (236)
Its nice to have you home again at last V2 - (251)
Stumbling in the Dark Looking for the Light Switch - (239)
Angelofdeath - (281)
Oneway - (268)
Are We Downhearted? - (254)
Low Down Dirty Blues - (266)
Reason for Daftness - (289)
Waiting - (283)
fuktfret - (299)
Dream of Cheese - (302)
I could be you - (328)
Howshemoans - (307)
Bagel - (326)
So, what's the turning circle like on a Dymaxion then? - (322)
Trying Very Hard Not to be an Idiot - (349)
Well its better than dy'n to death - (343)
Scared of Empty Threats - (346)
Ooh Its just not natural - (356)
Its nice to have you home again at last - (397)
Oh My Dear God She - (610)
Carry On Blabbing - (353)
Flat - (342)
Come Dancing - (536)
VooZoo - (524)
Ant - (408)
Please Take Your Time - (380)
Island Lady - (362)
Paying the price - (361)
Tantrum Egg - (359)
Tangles and Knots - (359)
According To The Bear - (358)
Long way home - (357)
Pets - (355)
Merry-go-round - (355)
Angel on the Loose - (354)
Love Me Two Times remix by Dismay Rage - (354)
Aching to make those sounds - (354)
Once knew a woman - (354)
Time - (353)
The Fool - (353)
In trouble deep - (353)
Tigerlilly - (352)
Time remix by Dismay Rage - (352)
Livin' in a hole in space - (352)
Little Donkey remix by Angelo D - (351)
Pigs in Space remix by Angelo D - (351)
Every road - (351)
Living alone - (351)
Big road blues - (351)
dontwakeme - (351)
Cut Me Loose - (350)
Ain't Got No Time remix by Dismay Rage - (350)
I just can't let go - (350)
An angel walkin by - (350)
Smilin Blues - (350)
tracerlaced - (350)
Blue Velveteen - (349)
Life and Times - (349)
Walkin with God - (349)
Estella remix by Angelo D - (348)
She knocks me out - (348)
deadbeat - (348)
