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music
blade runner
Massive Attack Makes Blade Runner Melt Down
Mixing 1980s SF dystopia with electronica, this year's Meltdown Festival in the UK will include a couple of performances that may be of interest to fans of Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott or DJ-friendly orchestras. The annual festival, this year curated by Massive Attack, coffee-table favorites and creators of the House theme music. Plus the festival will give fans even a special one-off IMAX screening of Blade Runner: The Final Cut along with a hipper, younger version of the soundtrack. More »
retro futurism
A Trio of Futuristic Guitars from 1958
If you're a music fan—or a fan of Guitar Hero—chances are good you're familiar with the iconic look of Gibson's Flying V guitar. What you might not know, however, is that the Flying V is only one of a trio of futuristic guitars designed in the late 1950s by Gibson president Ted McCarty. Click through for the story of the Flying V, the Explorer, and the Moderne, plus a peek at their patent drawings. More »
concept art
The coolest thing about the cover artwork for Queen's 1977 album News of the World was that it was inspired by a cover from the October 1953 edition of Astounding Science Fiction magazine (later called Analog). The caption for the image was "Please... fix it, Daddy?"
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Oops, A Robot Accidentally Killed Queen
The coolest thing about the cover artwork for Queen's 1977 album News of the World was that it was inspired by a cover from the October 1953 edition of Astounding Science Fiction magazine (later called Analog). The caption for the image was "Please... fix it, Daddy?"
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found footage
Laurie Anderson's Petrochemical Arms
One of the weirdest moments in pop music has to be the brief, early-1980s rise to fame of radical alterna-electro-artist Laurie Anderson. Her eight-and-a-half minute song "O Superman" (whose complete video you can see here) caught on in England and then spread to the U.S. With her androgynously-modded voice, multi-media performance style, and mad-scientist hair, Anderson was like some kind of cyber-alien in the days before most people knew what "cyber" meant. In "O Superman," she sings about nukes, computers, and the future. Anderson is still writing great music, mostly performing to an artsy crowd. But for a brief moment in 1981, she was a mainstream pop star. Eventually, this music video showed up on VH-1, in a shortened version. [Laurie Anderson]
Are We Iron Man Yet?
You've heard the dark riffs from Black Sabbath's famous 1970s song "Iron Man" in the latest trailer for the movie Iron Man, but is the famous heavy metal song really about the comic book character? It's a question that has plagued pop culture enthusiasts for decades, even though songwriter Geezer Butler denies that he had the warmongering hero in mind when he penned some lyrics about a warmongering hero who yells, "I AM IRON MAN!" Now the Boston Globe's Joshua Glenn has written the definitive analysis of whether the song is, in fact, based on the comic. He's got conspiracy theories; he's got video; he's even got some obscure references to Queen albums. This is crucial reading for any Iron Man enthusiast, whether you are of the metalhead or comic dork variety. [Brainiac]
music
Heavy Geek Music from Goblin Cock to Filk
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. More »
music
If there were a musical equivalent of alternative history writing, Harry Partch would be its best-known author. A hobo in his teen years during the 1920s, Partch grew up to be one of the twentieth century's greatest speculative composers, who created his own set of 27 new instruments that could be played in his specially-designed symphony space. Influenced by the tonal scales of Asian and Native American music, Partch's instruments use the "Just Intonation" scale, which is composed of 29 tones. This scale is a more direct reflection of the tones we hear in nature, and was used quite commonly in the West before the 12 tone scale (which you know from pianos) was invented about 250 years ago.
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Alternate History Orchestra Includes Harmonic Canon and Chromelodeon
If there were a musical equivalent of alternative history writing, Harry Partch would be its best-known author. A hobo in his teen years during the 1920s, Partch grew up to be one of the twentieth century's greatest speculative composers, who created his own set of 27 new instruments that could be played in his specially-designed symphony space. Influenced by the tonal scales of Asian and Native American music, Partch's instruments use the "Just Intonation" scale, which is composed of 29 tones. This scale is a more direct reflection of the tones we hear in nature, and was used quite commonly in the West before the 12 tone scale (which you know from pianos) was invented about 250 years ago.
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mangobot
Human Music Machine Cornelius Deciphers His Alternate Reality Videos
Welcome to MangoBot, a biweekly column about Asian futurism by TokyoMango blogger Lisa Katayama. Keigo Oyamada, aka Cornelius, is a sound artist best known for his perfectly timed synchronization of beats, robot noises, and trippy music videos showing everything from spinning cows to lips that grow exponentially to little kids with butterflies. He's teamed up with video director Koichiro Tsujikawa and CG artist Munechika Inudo (think Dead or Alive 3) to create some intricately detailed videos that could only come from the finest futurist brains in Japan. Keep reading for two iconic music videos from his latest album, Sensuous, and a translation of the live commentary he gave me at his Tokyo studio last week. More »
9:00 AM on Fri Feb 22 2008
By LISA KATAYAMA
1,058 views,
4 comments
Latest by dubqnp: Cornelius makes some great music & videos. I liked how he mentioned Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go) - I remember seeing that when i was a teen. more »
retro futurism
Crotch Shots in the 23rd Century
In 1970, the bigwigs at ABC/Dunhill Records had to figure out a way to repackage yet another performance of composer Gustav Holst's seven-movement orchestral piece, The Planets. Holst named the individual pieces after Mercury, Neptune, Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Uranus, but maybe the astrology angle seemed too obvious. Perhaps they were influenced instead by the futuristic spacey-ness of recent movies like Barbarella (1968) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Or maybe they just thought how great it'd be to have a model in a miniskirt and reinforced pantyhose squat towards the camera. And thus we can bring to you one of world's best bad album covers after the jump. More »
daft punk
Daft Punk + Kanye West + Tron = TechnoHipHopScifi
If you watched the Grammy awards on Sunday, then you saw the robotic duo Daft Punk in its first televised performance ever, with Kanye West. West comes out and does his thing in front of a large pyramid, which later lights up with neon piping and splits open to reveal Daft Punk in Tron-inspired versions of their robot suits playing a touch-screen mega sampler/computer/synthesizer. Click through for pics and video. More »
cloverfield
Cloverfield Has Secret Emo Rock Soundtrack
Pete Wentz from Fall Out Boy has been having a Cloverfield fangasm, along with some delusions of grandeur. He somehow became convinced that writer Drew Goddard based the entire movie on the band's Infinity on High album. In fact, his story got so extreme that he started saying the movie would sync up with the album, just like The Wizard of Oz and Dark Side of the Moon. However, Drew recently cleared things up. More »
interview
io9 Talks To Junie About P-Funk And Aliens
Parliament-Funkadelic (P-Funk) was known for its science fiction storylines and spacey music. One of the crucial ingredients in the P-Funk stew was musical genius Junie Morrison. He also jazzed up the early Ohio Players albums (which featured this alien-looking bald woman as their cover model.) And his own solo albums are the bomb, including 1984's proto-electronica Evacuate Your Seats. If you've ever grooved to "The Funky Worm," "(Not Just) Knee Deep" or "One Nation Under A Groove," then you're a Junie fan already. He's also starting his own funky social networking site, IAmNation. He talks to us about the truth behind P-Funk and aliens. More »
triviagasm
The Best Sampled Lines from Scifi in Music
We've already told you about the scifi-themed songs you might be entertained (or tortured) by if you end up stranded on Asteroid B17-X. But the music-scifi relationship goes both ways: music has been sampling your favorite scifi movies and shows for years. When a musician decides to include a line from Solaris (the original, not the Clooney remake) in their work, that frightens us. Sometimes though, they get it right. We've got a list of the most-sampled scifi in the world of music. More »
triviagasm
Ten Scifi Songs You Should Take to a Barren Asteroid
The year is 2199, and you've just entered the long phase of your thirty-year journey to the outer reaches of the galaxy. You're about to enter suspended animation when, oops, something goes wrong. You end up stranded an a decent-sized chunk of asteroid, and thanks to the technology of the future, you have a self-replenishing oxygen supply, and a foodgizmo that will keep you flush with nutrient cubes for decades. However, your implanted music device has shorted out during the crash, and you only have one playlist available to you: Great Science Fiction Songs From Back In The Day. What's on that playlist? Click through to find out. More »
u23d review
U23D Gives Us a Glimpse of the Music Video Future
If ideas from William Gibson and Cory Doctorow got mashed up, and the resulting technology was stolen by the music industry in a desperate attempt to reinvigorate their bottom line, then you'd end up with U23D, the 3D concert movie of the future. io9 took a look at U23D this week, and the experience was flashbaked into our brain matter. Find out why. More »
found footage
Buck Rogers In The Disco Century
Buck certainly knows how to strut his stuff and get down with it. We've already seen the phenomenon that is the disco-dancing Buckettes on skates, but what about Buck himself showing folks the intergalactic funky chicken? It's great how the DJ just sort of gets the gist of what Buck is explaining to him through hand signals and finger snaps. Plus that Princess Ardala might be a vampy bitch, but she dives right into the dancing fray, bikini top and crazy headdress in tow. More »
comics
