archives

AC/DC are defintely back in action

After an extended bout of rumour mongering, word from the PR beasties that AC/DC are definitely back in the studio. Brian Johnson has also confirmed the happenings. Looks like one last hurrah.

ac/dc | source | read more

If you're going to do noise, do it properly

Love this video from Tom Bugs of Bug Brand, demoing the latest £100 Weevil 08, with a mini Kaoss Pad. The only problem with Tom's stuff is that it's impossible to buy - his lastest batch of Weevils sold out within hours. Previously: Tom Bugs in his workshop. (Via Matrix)  

source | read more

25 ways to kill a piano

A couple of years ago, one of the angriest comment threads ever on Music Thing concerned a bunch of students in Aberystwyth who bought a piano on Freecycle, put it on a beach, burned it, and said it was art. Today, YouTube is stuffed with people being mean to pianos. Damn, you must have had some bad piano teachers...

  1. Throw it off a cliff, set fire to it
  2. Shoot it with shotguns and an AK47
  3. Knock it over and jump on it
  4. Jens Johansson (who is Yngwie Malmsteen's keyboard player) smashes up an old piano while giggling hysterically
  5. Back a pickup truck into it
  6. Play it with a JCB digger (this one really is the stuff of nightmares)
  7. Drive over it in an enormous truck
  8. Put on a leather coat and fill it with fireworks
  9. Smash it and sample it
  10. Fire it from a trebuchet (or here at Burning Man, where presumably it's performance art)
  11. Throw it down a hill
  12. Burn it and call it art (again)
  13. Pull it off the back of a moving pickup truck
  14. Drag it behind a pickup truck
  15. Chop it with an axe
  16. Hit it with a sldege hammer
  17. Throw it off a building (Warning: Video contains giggling MIT students, where they've been doing it since 1972)
  18. Bash two together
  19. Drop it off a fork lift truck
  20. Drive a car into a piano shop
  21. Blow it up
  22. In the interests of fairness, here's an organ getting smashed by giggling metal fans
  23. Use a burning acoustic guitar to set it alight
  24. Throw stuff at it
  25. Blow up a grand piano with really a lot of TNT
(Idea from Michael, whose new book Sod Abroad will make you chuckle) digg_url = 'http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2008/04/25-ways-to-kill-old-piano.html'; digg_bgcolor = '#ffffff'; digg_skin = 'compact'; digg_window = 'new';  

source | read more

Cardboard synth dude Dan McPharlin on the cover of Wallpaper

Nice to see Dan McPharlin made a nice white reel-to-reel control panel thing for the cover of this month's Wallpaper. There are new models in his flickr set, an interview on Wire to the Ear, the splendid new-ish gear blog, and finally some shots of Dan's own home studio, which runs on CV/Gate from a Roland MC-4.  

source | read more