Troll@CrackWhoreModels has assembled a stylish black and white video for X-Dream’s latest brooding and paranoid single, March. Watch it here (Flash required):

This track is available on the excellent Chronika Chapter III compilation from Boshke Beats. March has also been released on a vinyl single alongside Building No. 7, another recent favourite of mine.

Here is a creepy little video for Kino Oko’s Dead Birds In The Sky, originally released on the album Lost Entertainment in 2005 (Flash required):

Tyler “Quasga” Smith first came to my attention years ago, as a member of the pioneering American psytrance group Prahbamandala. I never really got into what he was doing back then but the moment Tyler switched gears and went deeper with his Androcell project, I was hooked. Androcell was primarily a psychedelic dub project–imagine Ott with less polish and a bit more plastic. After two solid albums–Emotivision and Efflorescence–Tyler seemed about ready to call it quits in 2006. Rather than disappear entirely, he quietly shifted his focus to a new project: Distant System. Taking a cue from Ultimae Records, Tyler began to produce what I would call deep cosmic trance. Spiral Empire, released earlier this year, is pure science fiction music–just the sort of thing to send you drifting off into the void. To get a feel for the album, here is a video for the song Equidistant produced in collaboration with Jason Major, Tyler’s old partner in crime from the Prahbamandala days (Flash required for viewing):

SunStation posted an awesome video featuring footage from Electric Woodland, an event they held in Saint-Petersburg at the end of 2007. The soundtrack showcases a full-length piece by Luminexia entitled Ultraviolet. This will be released on the Mind Control EP, a free download coming soon from the SunStation netlabel. Here is the video:

What follows is a vitriolic deconstruction of Big Music in a 40-minute talk by Michael Perkins entitled How Piracy Feeds a Starving Audience. It was originally delivered at The Last HOPE conference in New York City on July 19th, 2008. From their website:

This talk will present observations of the relationship between technology and art in a comprehensive look at how the rise of piracy and its effect on the music industry can enrich the art form as well as the global audience. Drawing from the ideology of open source and user-supported technology, this talk will attempt to demonstrate that the concept of “free music” is set to overhaul the way in which music is created and acquired. The topics to be discussed include the history of the music industry, the war with the RIAA, Digital Rights Management, Creative Commons, and more.

Download a 64kbps MP3 recording of the talk or watch the video (Flash required):

Whenever you are done I have a few thoughts of my own to stir into the mix. Continue reading the rest of this post »