If I was a composition teacher, I would probably give [my students] very difficult and strange types of sound-making devices, and say, 'Make me a piece of music with this.' Two-by-fours, pipes, I don’t know, whatever, because I don’t think the music is about the instrument. I think it’s about the mind. The mind creates the music. Not the instrument. Not even the musician. | | | | "Dangerous" footwear: Michael Jackson's loafers from his July 4, 1992, show in Rome. They'll be auctioned Saturday in New York.
(Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images) | | | | |  | “If I was a composition teacher, I would probably give [my students] very difficult and strange types of sound-making devices, and say, 'Make me a piece of music with this.' Two-by-fours, pipes, I don’t know, whatever, because I don’t think the music is about the instrument. I think it’s about the mind. The mind creates the music. Not the instrument. Not even the musician.”
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| | rantnrave:// Every curator is an unofficial censor. Whether you're mounting an art exhibit, programming a playlist or assembling an internet newsletter, part of the job is deciding what to include and part of the job is deciding what to exclude. The potential reasons for exclusion are many: genre, era, subject matter, place of origin, style, personal taste, etc. If you're a 17th century Dutch painter, for example, you may find yourself repeatedly excluded from exhibitions at the MUSEUM OF MODERN ART. But not all decisions are as clean and easy as that. What if you're a 21st century French painter whose work is of unquestioned curatorial interest and whose private life is of police interest? What is the curator's job then? Who does the curator answer to: The police? The artist's (alleged) victims? The internet? The walls of the museum? The art itself? The market? Her own morals and values? Someone else's morals and values? The optics of who's being excluded and who is not? If she rules out all work by the 21st century French painter, does she have to rule out all the 19th and 20th century French painters who committed, or might have committed, the same offenses? Does the answer change if her museum is a mega-institution, responsible for, say, 40 percent of all the world's museum visits? Does it change if it's not a museum at all, but a store—a megastore where 40 percent of the world's paintings are sold? Does it change if the alleged offenses are horrifying and she hates the painter? What other considerations are there? MusicSET: "The Playlist Police"... The Norwegian newspaper that claimed last week that TIDAL grossly over-reported the streaming numbers for BEYONCÉ's LEMONADE and KANYE WEST's THE LIFE OF PABLO is now alleging Tidal has quietly lowered its payments to labels from 62.5 percent to 55 percent over the past year. Collection societies in Norway and Denmark have called for investigations... MERLIN has cashed out its SPOTIFY position for an estimated $100 million plus, and will pass the proceeds through to its member labels... When we talk about creating beauty from noise, we often exaggerate on both ends. But with GLENN BRANCA, who died from throat cancer Sunday after 40-ish years of turning up the volume in avant-garde and experimental music circles, the compositional feat was literal, and it was a way of life. "I consider volume to be one of the compositional elements in my work," he once said. Other elements: armies of unconventionally tuned electric guitars, custom-made microtonal instruments, trash cans, regular ol' orchestras. He was a well-known curmudgeon (he was a disciple of JOHN CAGE, who famously hated his work, and he in turn loathed the output of some of his followers), and a rigorous composer whose symphonies and other work could rattle your ears and brain into a state of transcendence. His influence on rock was immense: He was a central player in New York's late-'70s No Wave scene, and SONIC YOUTH was pretty much formed on his watch. Sometimes it could be too loud even for him. Like the time he performed SYMPHONY NO. 12 (for seven guitars, bass and drums) at the ANCHORAGE inside the BROOKLYN BRIDGE, and the space's soundman overrode his soundman. "I’d like to tell anyone who was there that it was not intended to be that f***ing loud," he said years later. "It was so loud I couldn’t stand to listen to it. The funny thing is, people loved it, they were going nuts." Some still are. RIP... RIP also ALARM WILL SOUND's MATT MARKS. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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 | Forbes |
| Napster and iTunes ungrouped albums into individual tracks for sale and exchange; streaming platforms like Spotify regrouped these tracks into the newly-ordered format of a playlist. In the unbundling forces underlying music's technological disruption, the song itself is next. | | |
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 | Garage Magazine |
| Musical anhedonics don’t enjoy music the same way as everyone else, but it can make for delightfully weird listening habits. | | |
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 | REDEF |
| Has Spotify gone too far by banishing R. Kelly and XXXTentacion from its playlists under its new policy on "Hate Content and Hateful Conduct"? Or, by leaving their music in its catalog, has it not gone far enough? The content conversation takes a new turn. | | |
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 | ThinkProgress |
| "I think the black world is divided, the white world doesn't care, pop culture doesn't know what to make of it." | | |
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 | Vulture |
| The jam-band hero on his new album, his fans’ desires, and his own self-doubt. | | |
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 | NewMusicBox |
| Glenn Branca has had a deep and lasting impact on several music scenes, but he was never really a part of any of them. In the two hours we spoke at Smash Studios, he offered salient commentary on everything from the differences between East Village and Soho No Wave bands to how orchestras should play Messiaen. | | |
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 | Rocknerd |
| I actively try to use Spotify, because I like the idea that the artist will get at least a penny shaving. So why do I keep just using YouTube? Because it’s not a goddamn pain in the arse. | | |
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 | GQ |
| Uzi dishes on his oddball fashion moves and how he wants to meet Jeff Koons. | | |
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 | The Guardian |
| After showpiece armed raids on techno clubs Bassiani and Cafe Gallery, protesters took to the streets and faced aggression from nationalist radicals. | | |
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 | Switched On Pop |
| There is a lot of scare about the impending future of artificial intelligence making humans irrelevant. Musician Taryn Southern examines this narrative through her song “Life Support,” written with the aid of AI composition tools. We dispel current myths about AI music and discuss its future opportunities. | | |
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 | Music Business Worldwide |
| Documents from 2008 reveal much about Spotify then - and now. | | |
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 | The Huffington Post |
| “Every now and again, a racial incident or an expression of art makes us pause and reflect, but we soon return to dancing.” | | |
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 | Noisey |
| What does the megastar mean to young queer fans today, and why is she so significant? | | |
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 | Huck Magazine |
| Carly Wilford had it all - from the perfect house to the successful business. But something was missing. Now, as a DJ bridging the gender divide, she’s found her calling. | | |
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 | Global News |
| Let's look into a mind-control theory involving music, Nazis and a deliberately mistuned piano. | | |
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 | Fact Magazine |
| With algorithms making organic music discovery ever more difficult, London-based duo patten have decided to open an old-school forum for fans and artists to escape the social media bubble. Scott Wilson talks to the pair to find out why they’re going against the grain. | | |
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| The Guardian |
| A new set of legal issues for the singer join almost a decade’s worth of allegations that might finally derail his career. | | |
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 | The Outline |
| Neil Young is onto something here. | | |
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 | Complex |
| Many of T-Rell’s gigs are at memorial services, on the strength of a tribute to his late pal 8-Ball. | | |
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 | Rolling Stone |
| Everyone from Elton John to Ozzy Osbourne is launching a final trek this year. But will this really be the end? | | |
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 | YouTube |
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