State of the Music

Wired Magazine has done us a public service by hiring David Byrne to report on the current state of the music industry. It results in two feature articles: David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music (with a striking photo!), and David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars. Both articles include long audio clips of the conversations, with Thom Yorke, Brian Eno, and others. It’s what modern online journalism should be.
In other music news, Daniel Lanois has started a grand experiment, with Red Floor Records. Hi entire back catalog is available for download, with mp3 and high-res wav versions each available for the same $10 price. He has a new movie arriving in March, with the soundtrack available now.

Our first new project available on the site is ‘Here is What is’. This music is a direct soundtrack representation of the music that exists in our feature length documentary film also titled ‘Here is What is’. For those of you who might not know, the film is a camera following me around over the course of a year, in and out of recording studios documenting once and for all the way it really happens.

I’m very excited by his Omni Series:

For every song of mine that gets released there is an abundance of material that does not. These pieces,  often favorites of mine remain unheard, so Red Floor and I have decided to release this body of work as The Omni Series. At the moment we are planning six cds. Each will be thematically assembled to represent a certain part of my work.

The SSEYO guys, makers of the generative music software Koan (no longer available) have launched two new products via Intermorphic: noatikl furthers the generative music cause, and liptikl does the same for lyrics.
And finally, every year or two I tune into the Brian Eno wavelength, which is best done at the news page of Enoweb. There are dozens of interesting links there for your deep-fringe avant-garde reading pleasure. Good diversions from the family dynamics this time of year. ;)