Brian Eno’s Small Craft on a Milk Sea comes ashore in the US today on Warp Records, produced with collaborators Jon Hopkins (whom I recently interviewed and covered live) and Leo Abrahams (a wonderful and dexterous composer and musician himself).

You can hear the full album on Grooveshark:

A name like Eno’s tends to precede itself, but I quite honestly think, his fame aside, it’s a masterpiece. The collaboration of the three artists seems utterly clear and harmonious. Some of Eno’s own best ambient and experimental tendencies, from the artist who helped define those categories, float back to the surface here. But they’re partly reflected anew in these other artists. The ease with which the trio fuse their sounds is little wonder: these two gentlemen have been ongoing collaborators with Eno, working extensively on fine details of various productions and playing live with him onstage. They seem to achieved a creative mind meld.

The result is something that returns to that tradition, but finds continuity between the old and new, a common voice that can begin to escape the burden of time and trend. It is often unabashedly simple and, in the words of The Great Pumpkin, full of sincerity. It’s the original soundtrack score to something you haven’t imagined yet. And it’s just sonically wonderful, even in the lower-fidelity stream, warm and clear, evoking deep colors. It’s something you might like to bring along with you for the winter of 2010-11.

But, anyway, through the magic of the Internet, you don’t have to take anyone’s hollow words; you can give it a listen and disagree violently, immediately, if you like. Grooveshark above, and if that doesn’t work, SoundCloud players on Brian Eno’s official website.

For myself, I’m off to purchase it as a physical album, to listen repeatedly in its entirety, in defiance of what supposedly happens these days in music listening trends.

Release news via Flavorwire, who point to still more reading.

Los Angeles based band Grouplove are prepping the release of their debut self-titled album in January. Never heard of them? Well lucky you, we have a free download for you below!

"Colours" gives you a good clue as to why Florence + The Machine hand-picked them to open her shows at the Wiltern next week. The song is catchy, anthematic, and is just great!

After downloading "Colours", look for what the closest show is to you.

| Grouplove - 'Colours' MP3 |

Grouplove's debut, self-titled EP will arrive January 25 via Canvasback Music.

Track List:

Colours
Naked Kids
Gold Coast
Getaway Car
Don't Say Oh Well
Giddy

Tour Dates:

November
05 - Oakland, CA / Fox Theater *
06 - Los Angeles / The Wiltern *
07 - Los Angeles / The Wiltern *
08 - Los Angeles / The Wiltern *
11 - Washington, DC / Black Cat &
12 - Harrisburg, PA / The Abbey &
13 - Allston, MA / Great Scott &
15 - Philadelphia, PA / Johnny Brenda's &
16 - New York, NY / Bowery Ballroom &
 
w/ * Florence + The Machine
w/ & The Joy Formidable
 

This new series of professional headphones feature an advanced transducer design, sonic accuracy and a high level of comfort.

The RM 510 interchangeable ribbon capsule for beyerdynamic’s OPUS 900 and OPUS 600 wireless systems features an ultra-light, barely 3-micrometer-thick aluminium ribbon. A unique sound-channeling technology provides the capsule with its cardioid polar pattern, making the RM 510 able to be used onstage with wireless microphone systems. The capsule’s treble resonator delivers rich high-frequency reproduction and also serves to protect against “plosives.”

Dallas Clayton decided to write a book a few years ago for his son about never giving up. He had no idea that thousands of people would read and live by the words of An Awesome Book. Now Clayton has set his eyes on saying thanks!

An Awesome Book of Thanks! is the follow up to his massively successful kids classic complimenting the idea of dreaming big, magical unicorns, robotic dinosaurs and more.

To celebrate the release, Dallas is throwing a party in Los Angeles at Family Books where Dallas himself will read the book and there will be live music by Micky Adams and Hug Cabin. There will also be cupcakes. Count me in.

Check out the flyer for all of the details and watch Dallas talk about his new book in the video below!

An Awesome Book of Thanks! from Dallas Clayton on Vimeo.

An Awesome Book Of Thanks! officially arrives November 11th. What a perfect Holiday gift eh?

Check out all things Dallas Clayton here.

1. Bandish Project – Track 3: Brown Skin Beauty Liquid Stranger Astral Abduction Remix (7:12) – CD: Brown Skin Beauty (Bheja Fry Records, 2010)

2. Bandish Project – Track 1: Brown Skin Beauty. Feat. Last Mango In Paris (3:46) – CD: Brown Skin Beauty (Bheja Fry Records, 2010)

3. Midival Punditz – Track 2: Tonic Piyush Bhatnagar Breaks Remix (7:12) – CD: Tonic Remixes (Six Degrees Records, 2010)

4. Midival Punditz – Track 3: Tonic Punditz Remix (5:21) – CD: Tonic Remixes (Six Degrees Records, 2010)

5. Sub Swara & Big Boi – Big Boi – Shutterbug (4:09) – Sub Swara Remix (2010)

6. Sub Swara – Track: 8 (pre-release): Steam (5:33) – CD: Triggers (11/2010)

7. Fusing Naked Beats – Track: 1: Treason (4:55) – CD: Crystal City (Just Play Records, 2010)

8. Fusing Naked Beats – pre-release: Assyria (4:31) – CD: Ubiquity (Just Play Records, 11/2010)

9. Siamgda – Track 6: Golden Prayer (7:32) – CD: Siamgda feat.Morty – Beach Tracks (Mind Plug Records, 2010)

10. Siamgda - Track 2: Ernakulam – Okha Express (7:07) – CD: Samsara (Mind Plug Records, 2010)

11. Engine-EarZ Experiment & DJ Luxy – Track 5: Scars – Basement Jaxx (4:38) – The Pyramids Mix (05/2010)

see all playlists here.
—

say Hello to KONKREET PERFORMER from Konkreet Labs on Vimeo.

Berlin-based artist Shai Levy of Konkreet Labs shares their upcoming Konkreet Performer, an OSC controller application running on iOS that combines touch control with interactive visualization. The experience rethinks what A/V performance control could be, with a wild, alien interface of circles and particles interconnected with delicate meshes of lines.

If you’re in Berlin, there’s a performance tomorrow evening (I’m not, so send pics!):
http://konkreetlabs.com/

Shai also has more to say on our own Noisepages community (which is launching in full form very, very soon, by the way). Excerpt:

and then came the iPhone and the stream of new music apps grew by the day. we could see the potential of using this platform to be used as a controller, but were literally shocked to see faders and knobs being repeatedly cloned from the old physical interfaces down to the flat, yet very powerful domain of the tablets.

so we came up with Konkreet Performer! and because it’s not out yet, i’m really dying to tell you how it is to work with:
we use OSCulator to map it to our DAW of choice. so far we’ve experimented mosly with Ableton Live and Kore2.

the first thing you experience while working with KP is the good old magic of “happy accidents”.

Join in on the discussion on the intriguingly-named “We Are Artists,” which proposes asking deep questions about what it means to be an artist on these media:
Noisepages Groups: introducing Konkreet Performer

(By the way, feel free to use the Facebook login without fear it’ll litter your wall – it takes your email, once, to check to see if we already have an account for you, and then posts just once to the wall to share that you’ve signed up.)

Stay tuned for more on Konkreet Performer; it’s due early in 2011.

While Mac blog TUAW calls on Apple to kill optical drives (does Apple need that kind of encouragement?), the shiny digital compact disc and the album in general still have their devotees. Sure, album sales are down. Sure, digital downloads are in. But look beyond business or practicality for a moment at these exotic hand-constructed musical objects, and what you see is sheer love. A hand-constructed CD or vinyl album is a gesture of making music for someone, not for the ether.

I raised the issue early last month, and readers responded with lots of examples of handmade records, which I round up here. (And yes, practical, it’s not – a number of you complained that hand-construction is a lot of work. It’s clearly best kept to small runs, but then, I think that’s part of the point.)

Also, last month at NYC’s wonderful Culturefix, a handful of us got together and constructed some handmade discs. It’s definitely something you could do at an album swap meet with other artists and DJs in an afternoon or evening, and it makes the swap feel more meaningful. Pics at top; I hope we do more of these.

If this is the way the CD goes out, I think it’ll go out with style. And whatever the trends in the larger world, who’s to deny you your tangible album, really?

(About the end of the CD – I can tell you that demos, album reviews, music bought at shows, and the like are still very much tangible. Until flash memory is cheaper than CDs, I expect that’ll remain the case.)

First off, a vinyl album – but the process of hand-making these vinyl jackets is already lovely. moni writes:

We hand sprayed album covers for Ruoho Ruotsi’s Hmmm … album (De’fchild Productions release 003) Different colors were used to make each one a little bit different. Hard work, but rewarding. These came out nicely!

The electro-pop band Miaoux Miaoux did a custom run of 100 hand-knitted CDs to benefit Cancer Research and Maggie’s, available for a donation. They also included full-color artwork:

http://miaouxmiaoux.com/album/knitted

My favorite of the round-up is the work of Atlanta-based artist magicicada, who makes handmade boxes full of “surprises” – exquisite photography and unspecified collections of nine songs, packaged in a box made of mud. He also performs music live. (Thanks for the tip, tender vittles!) More images on his site:

http://magicicada.com/

Mugison makes his own CDs, as viewed in this lovely timelapse. (Thanks, Derrida! I assume not that Derrida, but…)

Hey, they’re flat, they’re round, they’re absurdly cheap, they store a good hour of lossless audio, and you can actually hand them to someone. There’s something to be said for that. Now I hope someone takes on the idea of using generative algorithms to make one-of-a-kind album covers en masse.

Previously: Reclaim the Album’s Soul: Tips for Handmade CD Artwork, Make One Sunday

As we wrote about about back in September, the FCC has allocated two new DTV stations in the Mid-Atlantic region, one in New Jersey -- Channel 4 in Atlantic City -- and one in Delaware -- Channel 5 in Seaford).  With the release yesterday of its further Public Notice, the Commission has now officially slated the auction of the two new channels for Tuesday, February 15, 2011.  In the auction Notice, available here, the Commission formally adopts the rules and the minimum opening bids for the auction, setting the starting point for each construction permit at $200,000.  Applicants interested in participating in the auction will need to put at least that much on deposit in order to be eligible to bid, and will be required to start the bidding at that amount.  And while $200k is the starting point, there is no limit to the ultimate purchase price. 

Short Form Applications on FCC Form 175 must be submitted by 6:00 PM ET on December 15, 2010 in order to participate, and upfront deposits are due by 6:00 PM ET on January 21, 2010.  The FCC will hold a Mock Auction on February 11, 2011 to allow eligible bidders to test out the bidding interface, and the real thing will kick off on February 15, 2011.  As we discussed in our earlier post, given the looming issue of incentive auctions and spectrum repacking, as well as the reception issues attendant with low VHF channels, it will be interesting to see who turns out to participate in the auction, but as evidenced by the minimum opening bids, there's still plenty of value in a full power television construction permit and the cable and satellite must-carry rights that go along with it. 

Iceland Music Export points us to the news that the Bedroom Community man is working on a score for the Stanislaw Lem novel Solaris along with Icelandic composer Daníel Bjarnason.

Long-closed theatres, empty industrial spaces and other such abandoned buildings hold quite a resonance and morbid fascination with many people. The juxtaposition of enchanting beauty in such decaying surroundings is captured perfectly by UK-based photographer RomanyWG.

The artist, „one of today’s most important urban art documentarians“, will launch his book November 4th at the Resistance Gallery together with counter-culture publisher Carpet Bombing Culture.

‚Beauty in Decay’ features 49 photographers from 14 different countries, all showcasing the best urban photographs from around the world. If you are in London on this date you should definitely be in attendace. The book is available at carpetbomingculture.co.uk.

Resistance Gallery

265 Poyser Street

City of London E2 9RF, UK

To commemorate this week's Berlin Music Days festival (aka BerMuDa), we've gathered special charts from 11 key DJs from the Berlin underground: Ellen Allien, Sebo K, Oliver Koletzki, Luna City Express, Matthias Tanzmann, Troy Pierce, And.Id, Tiefschwarz, Sebastian Wilck, and The Cheapers. All told, that's 110 tracks running the gamut from deep and tech house to techno, minimal and *proper* electro. (As in, Drexciya, not Justice!) Plenty to discover there. Speaking of discovery, BerMuDa offers a wealth of music and ideas to open your ears, eyes, and mind, from the De:Bug Music Technology Days showcase, featuring workshops, product previews and drool-worthy displays of gear, to a jam-packed schedule of club nights. The week ends with Fly BerMuDa, an all-night festival at the historic Flughafen Templehof, featuring an all-star lineup including Paul Kalkbrenner, Sven Väth, Richie Hawtin, Booka Shade, and many more. Get full BerMuDa details at bermuda-berlin.de.

Read more on Beatportal

We are certainly fans of the Buddha Box here at Electronic Beats, especially since industrial provocateurs Throbbing Gristle released their last album on one of the small noise generating devices. Therefore we are quite excited about the prospect of getting our hands on the third generation of the box, called the Chan Fang which when translated means Zen Room.

Arriving for the first time in four different clear plastic cases that allow you to see all of the electronic components inside, the third generation box allows you (as with previous versions) to tweak the tone and pitch of the repeating loops, of which there are four to choose from.

Apparently "all tracks were composed and performed on the Qin, a seven-string zither revered as the grand-daddy of Chinese instruments. Deep sonorous tuning and complex harmonic overtones give the Qin a contemplative and soothing voice" - which sound reason enough to us to go and find one and enjoy some Zen like repetitive calm.

The third generation Buddha Box is expected to ship from the 22 November 2010.

Mini Mansions' debut self-titled album is out now.
 

Here's the video for the Geeneus-produced Katy B single "Lights On," forthcoming on Rinse Recordings.