io9: filk

It's Not Filk - It's Trock!

Annalee Newitz — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:30:00 PST

Filk is a science fiction and fantasy inflected subgenre of folk music — you know, tales of hobbits and Tatooine all done up with acoustic stylings. But filk is also heavily associated with the 1960s hippie generation, and nerdy rockers these days need something that has a more millennial feeling. Enter Trock, or Timelord Rock. It's all about Doctor Who, and it's a lovely smashup of emo shoegazing and electronic zoom.

This phenomenon is so huge, so world-changing, that it has its own internet forum. And it has a flagship band: Chameleon Circuit, whose first single "Blink," is about one of the most popular Doctor Who episodes in recent memory (it was written by Stephen Moffat, the new Doctor Who showrunner). Here is "Blink" with explanatory images from the episode:

And here is "Blink" with an introduction and full emo-tastic Who-gazery from the lead singer:

The band also has a new song called "Exterminate Regenerate" - it's got a synth flair and is actually quite a bit better than "Blink." You can hear it on the band's MySpace page.

What can we expect next from Trock? Hopefully a huge upswelling of tragic tales of love and betrayal featuring the Master, along with some angry breakup songs from Sarah Jane. I am prepared to fully back this awesome new trend, as long as nobody spins it off into Twock - you know, Torchwood rock. I am not ready to face that quite yet. Thanks, Ria!

For Further Listening:

Chameleon Circuit MySpace Page

An introduction to Filk from BoingBoingTV [via BBTV]

Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About the Large Hadron Collider, via Rap

Ed Grabianowski — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:20:00 PDT

Science can be pretty weird, especially theoretical physics, but weirder still is watching someone rapping about the Large Hadron Collider. (That's the giant device in Switzerland that will recreate the Big Bang, among other things.) Time to recalibrate your strangeness meters - science writer Kate McAlpine and some friends filmed themselves busting various moves deep in the caverns of the LHC while Kate dropped mad verse about the collider. Check out the video, below, and find out why other colliders are just suckas.

The lyrics, plus an mp3 version, can be found here. Next time you're rollin' in your Escalade, crank up the bass and let the people know:

The protons and the lead will rock you in the head.

Image by: CERN

For Those About To Grok

Ed Grabianowski — Tue, 06 May 2008 08:00:00 PDT

"I'm your superluminal lover, baby, emission beamed into the night. Check out my relativistic jet, my love's faster than the speed of light." Ok, so Alan Marscher, Professor of Astronomy at Boston University, isn't exactly Bob Dylan. Or even LL Cool J. But he does write dope lyrics about astrophysics, and really, how many people can you say that about?" The latin rhythms of "Superluminal Love" are not all that the multi-talented Professor Marscher has to offer.

Prof. Marscher is an astrophysicist with a sense of humor and a guitar. He's written a series of songs about physics, some of which he performs during the classes he teaches at BU. He even put a bunch of them on his website - you can go check out all his lyrics, plus listen to mp3s of the tunes as performed by the Professor himself.

Here are some choice examples of these mad rhymes:

Relatively Weird
Is it energy or mass? Well, E = mc2.
And if it goes really fast, put a gamma in there.
Superluminal Lover
Full of twisting magnetism, feeling hot inside.
Bursting forth with energy, ready for a high-speed ride.
Acceleration growing, focusing my beam.
The jet starts flowing, plasma shoots downstream.

Stars By the Colors
Red dwarf stars, a common sort, have low luminosity,
Living for hundreds of billion years in cool anonymity.
Luminous red giants are middle-aged, fat but not so hot,
With core collapsed to Earth-like size, hydrogen fuel is shot.

Another Planet
On Mercury we'd roast all day & during the night we'd freeze.
We'd gasp for air to no avail with no atmosphere to breathe.
On Venus we would suffocate from CO2 gas so dense,
The greenhouse effect would bake our hide, the heat would be so intense.

Professor Marscher, we salute you. Photo by: NASA.

Songs with Science Themes by Prof. Alan Marscher. [Prof. Alan Marscher]

Heavy Geek Music from Goblin Cock to Filk

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 08:40:00 PDT

I am totally in love with this band Goblin Cock, whose entire goal in life is to sing about geeky topics in a register that can only be described as Spinal Tappian. This video from their song "Stumped" contains every possible great thing: druids, comic book stores, women's softball, robots, and street fights. I guess you could call this the other side of nerdcore — the side that's all about rock and roll, man. The side that has its roots in the darkest of the dark geek arts: filk music.

Just yesterday, BoingBoing's Xeni Jardin posted a great show from a local filk convention, where old-school filkers told her the story behind the word "filk" and explained the more traditional side of filking. It's strange to think bands like Goblin Cock have their roots in songs about cats and UNIX, but it's obvious they do. Similarly, heavy metal and hard rock owe a lot to folk and country music.

Now if you want to see some seriously awesome new-school filk, you have to check out this video from Judgment Day. The guys in the band use filky instruments like violins to Completely Rock Out in a way that pleases me all the way down to my bleeding entrails. Call it string metal, or call it zombie filking. Whatever you do, don't let it bite you.