Vibin.fm – The Pandora For Electronica

 

Name: Vibin.fm
URL: http://www.vibin.fm

A visit to this website is mandatory for those who love electronica. Vibin.fm is brimming with nothing but quality mixes that you can listen to without even having to register for an account first. The site’s usable on the fly, and all of the music that you can listen to on Vibin.fm is available at zero cost.

And in addition to letting you play the latest mixes for free, the site makes for having music streamed to all of your rave-oriented friends. What better way to start curating a party list together? The minute you’ve found a mix that you think’s got potential for rocking the house till your neighbors either call the cops or ask you to join in the fun, then you can simply stream it to your most discerning friends. They’ll tell you right away whether that mix is a keeper or a dud.

The site comes with lots of categories such as trance, deep house, trip hop, dubstep, lovestep, dirty dub and psy-trance, and finding a song suiting your exact mood (or the mood of the party you’re about to host) is a piece of cake.

And what’s even cooler is that the site can recommend you new mixes based on these songs that you’ve been listening to. In that sense, it’s quite similar to Pandora.

I feel I must mention that accounts are also available, but you’ll only need one if you’re interested in saving your favorite mixes and playing them back again. But if all you want is to have some music quickly played in the background while you’re doing something else (such as working out), then Vibin.fm is a winner.

Radiohead – General Introduction

Radiohead Are: Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Colin Greenwood & Phil Selway. All Five Members Met While Attending School At Oxfordshire.

Radiohead Are: Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Ed O'Brien, Colin Greenwood & Phil Selway. All Five Members Met While Attending School At Oxfordshire.

Innovators in the truest sense of the word, the name of Radiohead is synonymous with the best music that came from the ‘90s. Conformed by five school friends from Oxfordshire, the band led by Thom Yorke mutated from a grungier outfit into electronica linchpins over the course of just three albums, writing the rule book as they went along with the songs they chose to release as singles.

Radiohead is also remembered as one of the biggest emotionally-tumultuous bands this side of Joy Division, The Sisters of Mercy and related acts. Yorke’s recurrent themes of paranoia and self-loathing surfaced as early as their first single, “Creep” (from “Pablo Honey”, 1993). The song was actually banned in England by Radio One on grounds of being too depressing, but when “Creep” became a surprise hit in Israel and then in San Francisco the band gained recognition in their home soil. They were thrown into an onslaught of live shows that left everyone dour, and the subsequent album was to be named after the mental condition that affects drivers that have risen to the top too quickly

The Bends” (1995) included the desperate “Street Spirit”, the turmoil-weighed “High and Dry” and the we-have-fucking-had-it title track. But nowhere was the frustration expressed as clearly as in “My Iron Lung”, a song in which the music could barely sheathe the vitriol. Also included was the turbid yet beautiful “Fake Plastic Trees”, composed by the band the night after they attended a Jeff Buckley gig.

None of those songs managed to make them feel better as a performing unit (or as individuals, for that matter), and the sessions for their next album were the most trying ever.

But the struggle was worth it. “OK Computer” (1997) quickly became the best album not only of the year but also one of the most celebrated LPs of the whole decade. The band managed to beat lots of acts who had broader appeal like Oasis, whose “Be Here Now” was rebuffed by the public and found its way into the used racks pretty quickly. Continue reading

Tony-b.org – For The DJ In Everybody

Tonyb

Name: Tony-b Machine
URL: http://www.tony-b.org

Every rock & roller has got a bit of a shady past that hangs like a sword of Damocles over his head. I am no exception. Before listening to The Who, before listening to Oasis, before listening to The Sex Pistols… can you ever dare to guess which artist I intently listened to?

DJ Bobo.

Those of you who are still reading (and who haven’t wiped MusicKO from their bookmarks after such debilitating news) would be less shocked when you learn I was that keen on DJ Bobo only because my older brother (always a role model to me) was a rabid fan of electronic music. And you will feel relieved when I tell you that I never, ever lay a hand on his Ace Of Base and 2 Unlimited CDs.

[My brother from behind my back:] Hey, have you seen my copy of “The Sign”? Wait, here it is, what was it doing in your backpack??

Shit, man!! Keep quiet for a second, will you?!

Ahem.

Before it gets any worse I am telling you about this new app.

Named the Tony-b Machine, it will let you create your very own piece of electronic music. And the way you can get around doing that is dead clever (and entertaining, too). You simply pick the relevant effects (”Kick”, “Snare”, “Hi Hat” and “Cymbal”) and push the pertinent keys as you go along.

Tonyb Console

The results are actually very impressive, and one of the best bits is that you can proceed to save and upload them for everybody to listen to. Continue reading

RjDj – Turning Music Into Something Truly Interactive

RJDJ

Name: RjDj
URL: http://www.rjdj.me

The technology we have available today might not have been put to the best use when it came to engaging users. That is the lasting impression I was left with after browsing through this site. The company (a transatlantic one) builds iPhone apps that take the music created by electronic artists, and then it lets you come up with tunes of your own by using the accelerometer from the iPhone along with the sounds that surround you. This is what the company calls “reactive music”. That is, music marked by activeness on the user instead of the passiveness of sitting while a song is playing, merely tapping your fingers away and so on.
Continue reading