Is pop music going slower and more sad by the minute ? Seems like it according to two behaviorists Phd from Canada !

Dr. Schellenberg and Dr von Scheve have analyzed more than a thousand US popular music hits from 1965 till 2009, looking at tempo and mode (major or minor, determined by the tonic/main chord of the song). Most of pop songs used to be in fast mode and major chord but there has been a steadily increase (they have doubled in fact) in hits being slow tempo with minor chord (usually a sad song). Plus there has been a strong increase in songs that are "emotionally ambiguous": fast tempo song in minor mode.

Not surprisingly, lyrics have taken the same way: there has been a decrease in references to social interactions and positive emotions and an increase on angry and antisocial wording! I guess, if you start scanning songs in the sixties, you'll have a good quota of social references and even politically charged songs and going thru the seventies lyrics start to be more centered on mindless fun; the eighties are quite a sad era lyric wise, the Nineties is a hymn to hedonism and since the 2000 lyrics are most often than not repeated sentences hammered...

The entire planet knows by now that Batman's next opus (The Dark Knight Rises) is about to be unleashed and already reviews of premieres are talking about standing ovations and delirious responses.

I have no doubt it will be a thrilling movie, I'm a big fan of Christopher Nolan, and Christian Bale is undoubtely one of the best actor around, especially when one need to paint the internal turmoil one experiments: then he's out there with the Tim Roth, Gary Oldman or Philip Seylour Hoffman, all actors who's eyes can act on their own and make you uneasy with the simplest and nearly invisible twinkle.

The score is written by Hans Zimmer and I know most of you are already shivering. The guy is uber good, has a huge Moog (he has good taste) and he surely makes movie soundtracks that are immersive and wide, slighlty disturbing when needed, has some cool guests (Johnny Marr...) but, for me, a bit too much on the heavy Tokai drums...

Part of the gigantic media frenzy around the release of the movie, the soundtrack can already be listen to online on http://www.empireonline.com/news/story.asp?NID=34498...

Now, guys, let's experiment something...Let's take a normal pop or rock radio station and listen to it a couple of minutes.

Ok, now, tune in to a classical music radio station....Amazing, isn't it ? When you listen to pop, and then to some classical music, it's like jumping from a cold water swimming pool to a warm one: or coming from a mono recording to a stereo recording. All the harmonies (missing a lot in rock music) , all the spectrum, all the spatialisation, all the arrangments: all that seems to have been erased and forgotten in many, many recordings nowadays.

Ok, we do gain many, many wonderful things and I'm personally totally mad about electricity, electronics and great melodies, but too often do we put classical music on the side and forget how wondeful it can be and how some composers were total genious. And how some classical melodies would totally fit pop music. It's all great to be a DIY man and to deal ourselves with all the chain in recording a song, but we do missing now some of what can make a great record greater: a producer, a sound engineer, an arranger...

Serge Gainsbourg knew about that, and a great exemple lays in Jane Birkin's...

Today is dedicated to a pandemic disease that has already taken tens of millions of lives around the world, in every categories of people, gender and social origins, middle age people like children, heterosexuals like homosexuals, drug addicts or plain simple citizen: the disease is stil here and still cannot be cured.

In the artistic world, AIDS has taken some world famous artists like Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Freddie Mercury, Silvester, Klaus Nomi, Jermaine Stewart but also Israeli's female singer Ofra Haza, disco singer Sharon Redd or Liberace, that so-tacky and funny flamboyant piano player who made Las Vegas his own...

December 1st is here to make us remember the disease is still around us, taking lives and that there is no cure yet...

Yes, it's that time of the year where banshees do take life and come banging on your door...

Remember you must fill up that basket with sweets and mashmellows and enjoy the ghoulish season. We found a very seasonal Ipad application. I don't think it was ever Steve Jobs's vision on how to use the Ipad, but between the Animoog (http://blog.kollector.com/?q=blog/making-music-ipad) and this nice Halloween app we find it difficult resisting the purchase of that great Apple product.

Trick Or i-Treat ?

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Damon Albarn, singer of famous english 90's band Blur and also main prime suspect in the excellent Gorillaz, has recently been to Congo where he recorded "Kinshasa One Two", an album done in 5 days with local musicians (among them Nelly Liyemge, Jupiter Bokondji and Bokatola System) plus Dan The Automator, Richard Russel and others. All benefits of the operation will go to Oxfam as part as the DRC music initiative.

This isn't the first time Damon Albarn works outside of the "occidental pop music" confort zone as he did the music for a chinese opera and already released an album called Mali Music in 2002.
At Kollector, we're very aware of the cultural diversity ingredients forming this world's radio broadcasts and we're happy to have people from South Africa, Chile, Samoa islands or Jamaïca (for example) joining us and following their tracks with Kollector.

Listen to the full Kinshasa One Two album: http://hypem.com/search/DRC%20Music
Damon Albarn on Mali Music: http://youtu.be/5lGRQVkXEts
Damon Albarn's Monkey - 'Journey To The West trailer...

Oliver Sacks is a brilliant british neurologist also author of many bestsellers, including Awakenings (1973) which served as base for the Robert de Niro/Robin Williams movie of the same name.
He is also known for his works on autism, deafness, de Tourette and degenerative cerebral diseases.
The New York Times once described him as "poet laureate of contemporary medicine". Of course, he had faced many criticism from fellow doctors and scientists: it's never easy to defend theories when they go against the tide...Yes, jealousy on his success probably adds to the bill and it's a shame as he's a true humanist and only wants to put the person back in the middle of the equation instead of considering the sick person as just being the vehicle of a anormality or disease.

In this warm clip, Dr Sacks talks about an odd condition called "amusia" which could be described as "musical deafness". The patient is, among other things, unable to recognize familiar melodies and cannot detect wrong or out-of tune notes.

Sounds like some composers you may know ? ;)))

http://www.oliversacks.com/

We often know, or think we know, what music styles and genres are about (altho I'm pretty sure most of us don't have the slightiest idea what crunk is and who invented neo-dark folk) but how sure are we about the origins of the names themselves ?

This good piece in the Guardian (where else ?) reflects on that and comes up with some fun moments and accurate knowledge.
Let's just test this: what is the origin of Heavy Metal ? Hmmm ? It comes from a character in a William S Burroughs book (1962): Uranian Willy, the Heavy Metal Kid. How it ended up giving a name to a music genre more known for its knobs-on-eleven rather than it high interest for english high fly literature is down to a Humble Pie album review, in 1970. Uncanny, isn't it ? :)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/aug/25/origins-of-music-genres-hip-...

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The Cuba missiles crisis is long gone now (in october/november 1962, the Russians were building up missiles sites in Cuba, Kennedy stood up strongly and eventually had them put down. In exchange, he had to put downsimilar US sites being in Turkey. This dangerous moment also ended up with the creation of the red telephon between Washington and Moscow), but Cuba is still a very closed country and even tho it opens up to tourism, life there is still severely regimented.

So, it's kinda a sign when the Cuban Tourism Office opens up a club with Beatles name, Beatles logo, Beatles songs, Beatles lyrics, etc...Ah, and no, they didn't clear the copyrights issues or the licencing rights with Paul or Ringo. Or Yoko. Or Sean :)))

The thing is, you see, the Beatles music, long forbid on the island, has somehow be associated with a freedom Cuba didn't have bac then when the regime was at its peak and now singing it, playing it, whistling it, or doing accapellas with it, gives the islanders a real feel of/for freedom.

The New York Times has a godo view on this: ...

(the vibes on this short video are just incredible)

It was ugly. The death of an artist rarely leaves people without an emotion, and the death of some polarize these emotions in rather violent fashion sometimes.
Rarely have people been so cruel on the passing of a star . And this was a fragile, erratic, wonderful artist with, yes, a terrible addiction.

Now that a few days have passed, it's time to go back and remember who Amy Winehouse really was, what an incredible singer/songwriter/talent we loose and how terribly tragic these recent years, and the medias, were to her.
This excellent Pitchfork analysis by Jess Harvell replaces Amy in context.
And it feels good.

http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/8011-appreciation-amy-winehouse/

The final word would be Oscar Wilde's: "A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal".