Orion

Low Light Mixes has published a very nice ambient selection. The mix is mostly made out of field recordings and other recorded soundscapes. Very interesting, relaxing and surprisingly rhythmic.

The sounds range from a resonant pipe in a rain storm to foghorns to church bells to chanting to arrival anouncements to piano and an open window. I know that some field recordings may be interesting but not really listenable, not musical enough. I think this mix works pretty well & is easy to listen to.

Download “Migrations” mix or read more.

This is very interesting. Proton Music manager Jay Epoch tells Beatport has sent the following notification to all the labels selling music via their service:

“Any label that cannot produce $300.00 in GROSS sales each quarter will be put on a probationary status. If the label is unable to hit the $600.00 mark by the second quarter then that label will be cut from the Beatport system […] by increasing your promotions outside of the Beatport store and providing a consistent new release schedule we are confident that many of our low producing labels will be able to achieve the quarterly sales goal.”

If this if true, this means two things.

First of all, the huge amount of bad quality music will little by little vanish from Beatport. Finally – what we buy actually affects what they are selling. Very nice.

BUT there are loads of very good small labels, which probably will have problems selling enough music in order to stay in the store. In the worst case scenario this would mean that Beatport would end up selling just electronic music hits and supporting the major labels and we would need to find the rare gems elsewhere.
This must be the first time I’m mentioning the word “rare” when talking about digital music. I really hope they will find a good compromise between those two scenarios.

If you liked the From Rural To Urban chill-out mix series, you might want to download some similar tracks.

Check out the DJ Orion – Rural & Urban iMix #1, now available on iTunes Music Store.

And yeah, this is crystal clear, but anyway: when you’re buying the tracks, you’re supporting the artists who made that wonderful music. No money is being transferred to me.

Now it’s time for Time Magazine to write the same article which Wired (1, 2) and Yle wrote already months ago.

Still, 990,000 vinyl albums were sold in 2007, up 15.4% from the 858,000 units bought in 2006. Mike Dreese, CEO of Newbury Comics, a New England chain of independent music retailers that sells LPs and CDs, says his vinyl sales were up 37% last year, and Patrick Amory, general manager of indie label Matador Records, whose artists include Cat Power and the New Pornographers, claims, “We can’t keep up with the demand.”

Time: Vinyl Gets Its Groove Back

Thanks, Thomas!

Suomen Kuvalehti: Tanssi Villi Lapsi

House on leikin nimi ja säännöt ovat ne tutut ja turvalliset. Hauskanpitoa ja kapinaa tällä postmodernismin, dekontruktion ja kaaos-teorian aikakaudella.

Jos tiedät artikkelin ilmestymisvuoden tai lehden numeron, jätä viesti kommentteihin.

Kiitos skannauksesta Juha-Matti Ojakoskelle!

The blogpost of the week: Lifehacker writes a very nice article about websites offering free music for downloading and listening. I know, it’s all old for you music freaks, but I bet there is a page or two of which you haven’t heard of.

>> Lifehacker – Download and listen to free music on the net

Danceteria & DTM present The Black Party 31.12.2007

Click the image.

Voima-lehdessä julkaistut Adbusters-antimainokset.

Aki A. from Turku, Finland, makes his first apperance on the podcast for this year with another very, very fine guest mix. See the tracklist after the jump and get subscribed to the podcast here.

Read More

First of all – here are the photos from Curacao & Aruba. If you’re in a hurry, check the best 15 photos, but in case you’ve got time, see them all.

Here are a couple of tips for those who are planning their trip to ABC Islands.

I don’t know did we just have bad luck with our pilots, but on both cross-atlantic flights with American Airlines we experienced something which would feel pretty impossible with airlines like Finnair. Just before starting to cross the ocean, the pilot says: “Hi folks… we might have a small problem here… It’s something to do with the meters… We are checking at the moment whether or not we can cross the ocean…”.
Ok, it’s cool that he lets us know if something is wrong – but it wasn’t even sure if there really is a problem. So why to tell this to the people on board and make them nervous?
Some time passes, and the pilot announces: “Hi again, folks… It seems we have the problem pretty well solved and we can leave the French airspace.”
I really would have slept much better the next 8-9 hours on board without knowing that they had a problem in the cockpit which they got “pretty well” solved.
Maybe it’s just a foreign attitude, but – as I said – it’s hard to believe hearing that kind of uncertain announcements from the cockpit on Finnair fights.

Anyway, we got to Curacao & Aruba alive and well. Here are the tips if you’ll ever travel there:

Stay at “Howard Johnson Plaza” at least a couple of nights. It’s not too expensive not not too fancy either, BUT nothing beats the location. Try to get a room with a view to Punda (the other side of Willemstad).

Visit Kura Hulanda museum to get a good historical overview of the island’s history of slavery.

Eat at El Toro, a nice-price restaurant with a large variety of different kinds of meat dishes. Spend an evening at Mondo Bizarro bar/restaurant at Punda. Probably the coolest atmosphere of all the restaurants on the island. Check the photos:

Forget the evil tourist crowded beaches and head to north of the island in the morning and find a whole lagoon for yourself with white sand and incredibly clear waters for snorkeling.

In Aruba, check Pinchos restaurant – less than one kilometer from Oranjestad centrum. Excellent service, good food and probably the best view of the island’s restaurants. Make sure to get a table before 18:00 and you’ll get a perfect sunset for starters :)

A good tip for people using traveller’s cheques: you can cash your cheques at any Casino on the island, without any extra commissions and with good exchange rates. The same doesn’t work in Curacao, though.

Stay at Arubiana Inn at least for a couple of nights. The place is incredibly cosy, the owner is very nice and the location not bad at all. Compared to the horrible resorts everywhere, Arubiana Inn is a true gem among those. The prices are very nice, also if you rent snorkeling stuff or anything similar, you’ll get it cheaper than most of the places. The poolside is chilly and the 5,5e breakfast fills you up for sure. Only 19 rooms make sure you’ll get individual service, unlike those huge hotels.

The owner told us that in some of the big hotels the visitors pay up to 700-800e a night and end up lining up at 7a.m in the morning in order to get a sunchair on their private beach. What a vacation… And there they sit on their incredibly crowded private beach, unable to move anywhere and just 100m to the left or right you’d find kilometres of free beach. But without sunchairs. Or a bar. Or shower! That’s a reason to stay at your private beach. At least I’m happy they did :)

This must be the worst DRM case we’ve seen in a long, long time. It sounds SO unreal I had to check a couple of other sources before posting it here.

“A person buys a new monitor, with the end result that Microsoft wants full access to all of his files on his computer, and Netflix wants to delete all media files bought from competitors.”

Think about it – there are people out there who get paid for designing this stuff…

Read more at ButtUgly and BoingBoing.