15 September 2008

Rick Wright 1943-2008

    And no one called us to the land
    And no one crosses there alive.
      Pink Floyd
      Echoes
      (Waters, Wright, Mason, Gilmour)

Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright died today. Damn. At least they had this one last gig together:

And way back when...

08 September 2008

The Soup covers Kathy Hilton's response to McCain

    Now I'm not a political analyst, but when your candidate for president is wrong and Kathy Hilton is right....
      Joel McHale

I wish I'd found this when the McCain's Britney/Paris add was still running, but this clip still cracks me up...

01 September 2008

Cellist Zoë Keating

    I like to think of it as a DJ scratch approach to the cello.
      Zoë Keating

Another Radio Lab podcast highlight: Quantum Cello. Last season's War of the Worlds episode was live and cellist Zoë Keating provided the music. In this podcast, Jad Abumrad visits Keating to learn more about her music and listen to her perform a few pieces. Her music is really cool. There are certainly better adjectives than those, but that's all I can muster right now. Trust me, though, it's really cool.

As she plays, she digitally captures segments of her music which she loops back. As the loops are playing back, she plays additional layers over them. The result is sounds more like an orchestrated work than a solo one. What I though was especially neat is that she does this live. The loop capture is controled with foot pedals. In the podcast she performs three pieces live that sound more like studio recordings.

It's great stuff. Check it out if you get a chance.

Update: Here's a video of her performing live, so you can really get the idea: