David Emery OnlineUnder Great White Northern Lights Box Set Pitchfork Review
In the final scene of the White Stripes tour documentary Under Great White Northern Lights, Jack and Meg sit on a bench in front of 88 black-and-white keys. Jack starts to play the piano and sing his ballad "White Moon". Meg starts to cry. It's a heartbreaking, out-of-nowhere surge of intimacy that briefly lifts the curtain on one of the most fascinatingly private bands to ever reach arena-rock ubiquity. It's also one of those revealing moments that raises more questions than it answers.
I don’t think this documentary has really received the fanfare it deserves; while obviously I’m a big massive White Stripes fan so slightly biased, it’s one of the best music documentaries I’ve seen. Incredibly compelling, and a stark reminder that while Jack White is still about and playing in band after band, it’s the White Stripes that made him famous and for good reason.
Also, this review is a lovely bit of writing (not that that’s out of the ordinary for Pitchfork album reviews, though).
Visit ➔Times and Sunday Times websites to charge from June
The Times and Sunday Times newspapers will start charging to access their websites in June, owner News International has announced. Users will pay £1 for a day's access and £2 for a week's subscription.
I just can’t see this working – how can you charge when more competitors then have ever existed are giving it away for free?
On the flip-side though, I can completely see £2/week working for an iPad version – the medium is important, as is the payment and distribution model.
Visit ➔LCD Soundsystem new album reviewed track by track
So what next, when you’ve nothing left to prove? Prove it again, differently. Usually when a band tells you their latest, yet-to-be-aired effort is “the best album we’ve ever made” it’s code for “we’ve lost it completely, but at that mega-volume playback in the expensive studio it felt like we’d got away with it”. This isn’t one of those records. The third, still-untitled LCD Soundsystem album contains a run of heavyweight hits that compress the best elements of their previous work, topped and tailed by some intriguing slow-burners.
Of course as soon as I post something that says we can’t hear any new LCD Soundsystem music yet, what appears on the internet? New LCD Soundsystem music:
DRUNK GIRLS!
Visit ➔The Re-Designer
My name is Bryan Veloso, and I am a re-designer. I do not create, I improve. I do not envision what is new, I envision how something that already exists can be better.
I can relate to this a great deal; I think I’m best as a designer when working with pre-existing elements, illustrations and the like.
Visit ➔
Designing for the Web. On the Web.
Last week, after a lot of thought and a heap of work, we released my book, Designing for the Web, online. For free.
Well worth a read.
Visit ➔The Orchard
I like this because it encapsulates the journalistic narrative on the music industry perfectly: yet another nail in the coffin of the music industry. Pretty much any story on music is shaped around that narrative, regardless of what the story is and regardless of the truth of the narrative.
In many ways (instruments, publishing, licensing) the music industry is doing better than ever. It is only the record industry that’s dying, just like the wax cylinder industry before it and the mass market for sheet music.
Can we stop the “it’s the record industry that’s dying” narrative as well? From my point of view it’s doing pretty well; it’s different and changing but in no way dying. Although certain chucks are (cough-EMI-cough) that’s nothing to do with the viability of selling recorded music.
Visit ➔NPR, WSJ plan Flash-free Web sites for Apple iPad
In addition to new App Store software, National Public Radio and The Wall Street Journal also plan to create specific versions of their Web sites completely devoid of Adobe Flash for iPad users.
This week Peter Kafka with MediaMemo revealed that both NPR and the Journal will convert at least some portions of their Web site to load properly on the iPad. The custom-built sites will feature the same content and run concurrently with the traditional and iPhone/mobile-friendly versions of each Web site.
I wonder if this is going to be easily available to non-iPad users, and also whether they’ll be the normal website with the flash elements replaced, or some form of iPad specific version with a different UI.
Considering the apparent rise of flash blockers, it would be pretty smart to have a version without flash that gets fed to those users (iPad browsers included). Of course, that begs the question: why have the flash version in the first place?
Visit ➔