David Emery Online

The Horrors - Primary Colours

Certainly a contender for album of the year, now in handy embedable form:

Big Pink ++

It’s funny how gigs seem to come – like the proverbial fleet of buses – in waves; you can go weeks without one and then have a week packed with them. This week was one of those weeks, with the lovely St Vincent playing the Hoxton Bar and Kitchen on Tuesday and then a whopping four possible gigs to go to on Thursday: Jeffrey Lewis playing the Scala, Camera Obscura playing Shepherds Bush Empire, British Sea Power playing the BFI and The Big Pink & The XX playing the ICA.

I ended up going for the latter and I’m very glad I did – it was probably my favourite gig of the year so far. For a start, the other two support acts – A Grave With No Name and Loverman – were surprisingly good, both being worth of checking out further (Loverman particularly – the hints of things like 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster and Nirvana being right up my street).

The XX came in stark contrast to the riotous noise that came before but were no less diminished for it; you get the sense that every note they play has thought and weight behind it and...

Discovery - Orange Shirt

Discovery is a little side project by Rostam from Vampire Weekend and Wes from Ra Ra Riot, and is totally the sound of the summer - the album is really something special.

From http://stereogum.com/archives/mp3/vampire-weekenders-prepping-second-album-side-proj_066112.html

Discovery - Orange Shirt

Sonic Youth - Sacred Trickster

From Sonic Youth’s forthcoming album The Eternal – more info: http://www.matadorrecords.com/matablog/2009/04/20/sonic-youth-first-mp3-secret-show-in-london/

Sonic Youth – Sacred Trickster

Working

Today, as you may have noticed if you’ve spent time on any music related site recently, is Record Store Day. Now, unlike seemingly most people I’m not quite so gung-ho positive about the concept – I rarely buy music from a bricks-and-mortar shop, and I’ve never even used a record player for crying out loud, so I guess I’m part of the problem that RSD is rallying against. It all seems strangely anachronistic, but then I’ve never seen the appeal of spending an extended amount of time in any shop so maybe I’m a lost cause…

However, one of the nice things to come out of it is all the interesting RSD exclusive releases that have sprung up, including some interesting looking Sonic Youth spit 7“s and a fun cassette put out by Rough Trade Records featuring Micachu, British Sea Power, SFA, Mystery Jets and many more. Also on that cassette is a brand new song by Jarvis Cocker, which we’ve also put online on the first phase of his new website:

jarviscocker.net

We’ve also got a fun little widget you can embed as well:

Fluid Images

Ultimately, I decided to use the approach from his third example, which was to set a max-width of 100% on all images on my website […] And as it turns out, this works just fine for most embedded videos, too.

Well that’s mighty clever.

Phil Spector convicted of murder

US music producer Phil Spector has been convicted of murdering actress Lana Clarkson, after a five-month retrial. The 68-year-old, famous for the “Wall of Sound” recording technique, faces between 18 years and life in prison.

So does that mean we have to expunge his existence from musical history, Glitter-style? Or is murder, you know, not as bad?

jbd2.

Very nifty use of static backgrounds on this portfolio site – took me a little while to figure out how he did it (it wasn’t as complicated as I thought it might be – I was already thinking along the lines of swapping out images with js…).

iTunes Price Changes Hurt Some Rankings

Two days after the Apple iTunes Music Store raised prices on some individual tracks, there was evidence the increases have hurt the sales rankings of songs given the higher $1.29 price.

While it is difficult to say with certainty whether a price increase had resulted in less revenue, rough estimates reveal slight, negative changes in chart position would result in a positive change in revenue. The changes in chart position between Tuesday and Thursday, however, clearly show that higher prices had forced many songs to cede chart position to lower-priced songs.

It’s no real surprise to me that for chart ‘hits’ a higher price leads to lower sales – a chart-based purchase is more likely to be an impulse purchase, so it follows that that impulse is more likely to be quashed by a higher purchase price (especially when placed next to lots of other cheaper chart tracks).

UMG and YouTube officially announce Vevo

The rumours were right. Universal Music Group and Google have announced their joint venture, Vevo – a video site offering UMG’s music videos, with advertising revenues shared between the two.

Isn’t this just the same as what should be at universalmusic.com/videos? Such a pointless piece of band-engineering and marketing rubbish.

Also, while you’ve got a moment check out umusic.com (which is the groups site, as opposed to just music – or something…) – it’s stunningly awful.