soundtrckr

Bill Callahan Gets Bookish

Singer-songwriter, artist and all-around Renaissance man Bill Callahan is getting his Nick Cave on. His recently completed novel Letters to Emma Bowlcut will be released on July 20th through art-media powerhouse Drag City, publisher of Ian Svenonius' excellent 2006 essay collection The Psychic Soviet.

Speaking in Code

Jonas Woost on Music and Location-Based Tech

Here's Jonas Woost, former head of music at Last.fm. Check out his 5 minute breakdown on how smartphones and 32 satellites in medium Earth orbit are bringing music back to its local-ist roots: 

Electro-house from Daniel Grippi of diaspora*? Yes!

So the diaspora* project pretty much blew up last week, getting press everywhere from tech blogs to the New York Times. In case you weren't paying attention, the basic plot is this: 4 NYU students decided to bunker down for the summer and build a decentralized, privacy-aware social network that's the spiritual antithesis of Facebook. They posted their plan on micro-financing site Kickstarter, asking for $10,000 and 3 months to get the job done. So far they've raised $181,866. :-o  

The students are Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy, and judging from this recent exchange with Luis Villa, they just might have the chops to pull it off. 

So OK, this is what everyone knows. BUT - did you also know that said Daniel Grippi happens to be a pretty kick ass electro-house producer who goes by the name of Telemakhos (which we at soundtrckr, devout Classicists/Hellenists all, just love)? Well, he is! And you can check out some of his stuff at Last.fm. Not sure how long it's been since he updated his page, but we'll dig around some more and see if we can get our hands on his latest...

Post-Hack Day Party @ Pier 38 (w/ music!)

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Post-Hack Day Party @ Pier 38 this weekend! The music was great, the beer was strong, and the company was fascinating (you are all working on some amazing projects, we're very excited to see the results!)

Extra thanks to Elissa, Paul and Matt @ The Echo Nest for co-sponsoring the event and for just being cool people in general, plus to Badmammal and Terbo Ted for providing the tunes, and to Kyle & crew for sorting out sound and lights.

We hope you all had fun, and will definitely be doing more of these this summer. In the meantime, you can check out some pics of the event on our Facebook page, and here's the night's music in full:

Badmammal Live @ Music Hack Day:

badmammal music hack day set by badmammal

Terbo Ted Live @ Music Hack Day:

Terbo Ted - Music Hack Day @ Pier 38 by terbo

OpenMusicMedia Toronto #3: Location, Location, Location

On Wednesday, May 12, OpenMusicMedia Toronto will host a meetup and discussion on the intersection of music and location-based services. Keynote speaker, digital music veteran and OpenMusicMedia co-founder Jonas Woost will lead the crowd on a tour of Soundtrckr, Foursquare, Last.fm, Songkick & more, examining their impact on artists, fans and advertisers. More details soon...  

Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron is an American legend, and if you're lucky enough to be at Coachella right now you can catch him on the Gobi Stage in an hour (Friday 4/16 @ 6:55pm). The soul music innovator and hip-hop forefather dropped his first record in 1970, and after a 15 year hiatus he's back with a new record, I'm New Here. Dig the video for "Me And The Devil" below, and check out the Gil Scott-Heron Station on soundtrckr for more militant grooviness.

С Днем Рождения Сергей Васильевич Рахманинов!

It's Sergei Rachmaninoff's 137th birthday today. Interesting fact: the virtuosic pianist and last of the Russian Romantics is suspected to have had Marfan syndrome, which pretty much means he was really skinny with super long fingers (hence some of the difficulty people have playing his piano compositions). Fwiw, Bradford Cox of Deerhunter/Atlas Sound fame has it too, and so did Joey Ramone, and probably also Robert Johnson. So hooray for long fingers and happy birthday to Rachmaninoff, who rocked hard.

ODDSAC

If you're in Utah for the Sundance Film Festival, make sure and check out Danny Perez and Animal Collective's new film/visual album ODDSAC. It's premiering tonight at 8:30 pm at the Prospector Square Theatre in Park City, and while we haven't seen it yet we promise it will be totally marvelous, because it is Animal Collective: