Wednesday 26 May 2010

Elsewhere on the internet...


That's me, that is.

I was shown this celebrity face recognition thing on a forum earlier in the week. You upload a picture of your face, and the doubtlessly state of the art software brings up a list of celebrities you look most like. Despite being female, apparently I have a 77% resemblance to Jude Law. Which would be fine, if I were a man. My closest female match was Diane Kruger, although she looks about as much like me as Jude does.
I should go on at this point about the pernicious and vacuous nature of celebrity culture, and our obsession therewith, but the face recogniser is kind of fun, and it's not hurting anyone.

Elsewhere on the internet, music is afoot. Autechre are releasing their second album of the year in July, and have put a track online for our listening pleasure. y7 is available here from Autechre's own site. y7 is quite an upbeat track, with a shifting rhythm of pleasing analog-sounding synth pulses. Despite its upbeat tempo, there's a nice hint of menace lurking within, too.

RWL favourite Trent Reznor has also been a busy boy this week. First, he put out a new track as Nine Inch Nails, a soundtrack effort for the film Tetsuo: The Bullet Man. You can download it here. The Theme is one of the most aggressive pieces Trent has put out for a while. It is almost completely electronic, abrasive as anything and manages to make a synth horn section sound quite scary. This is interspersed with typical Reznor minor-key piano. It works almost like an angry little symphony, with movements and reprises.

Not content with putting the rumours of NIN's total demise to bed, Trent has also unveiled another How To Destroy Angels track. It's meant to be a giveaway with Wired magazine's iPad app, but copies are leaking all over the internet. Atticus, Trent and Mariqueen have taken a more rhythmic approach this time, and The Believers is full of glitchy beats and chopped-up synth. I think you can even hear a Swarmatron riff at the beginning. This is the first HTDA track to feature an obvious TR vocal, which should please many.



Lastly, Klaxons are back, if anyone is still bothered. Their new track, Flashover, was described as a departure from their Nu Rave beginnings by a critic, but to me, it still sounds like Klaxons, albeit a more noisy incarnation. Listen

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