Flop Rock: Inside the Underground Floppy Disk Music Scene

The Verge

The Verge:

Nobuko believes the proliferation of floppy music in Western cultures is linked to strong punk movements with a DIY aesthetic. “Also, the lobit scene seems to be bigger in countries that had bad internet connections, so they would already use lobit encoding to upload or download things online,” he explains. In a similar vein, Hilkmann believes that floppy recordings are an explicitly anti-capitalist niche that exists outside the usual means of publishing music today on Spotify and other streaming services. “A medium, artistically, is only interesting as long as it’s available,” he says. “Now that floppy disks are becoming more and more difficult to get, they’ve become more and more a collector’s item almost, while a few years ago, it was more like almost a trashy medium that you could quickly get your hands on and do fun things with.”

Adobe Reveals a GenAI Tool for Music

Technology

TechCrunch:

Today at the Hot Pod Summit in Brooklyn, Adobe unveiled Project Music GenAI Control, a platform that can generate audio from text descriptions (e.g. “happy dance,” “sad jazz”) or a reference melody and let users customize the results within the same workflow.

Using Project Music GenAI Control, users can adjust things like tempo, intensity, repeating patterns and structure. Or they can take a track and extend it to an arbitrary length, remixing music or creating an endless loop.

A video example.

Review: Laura Jane Grace – Hole In My Head

Laura Jane Grace - Hole In My Head

Against Me! frontwoman Laura Jane Grace has never been afraid to push the envelope in her music and artistic growth. Hole In My Head gets its title from Grace taking it upon herself to tattoo the last remaining part of her body she had yet to ink up, and that was her head. The artwork showcases an explosion of colors and images from Grace’s scalp, and it’s fitting, since she paints with wide and vivid colors on her latest LP. The topics found on Hole In My Head range from her mental health, to the early days of her music career, all the way to coming to terms with her gender identity. Grace’s ability to tell vivid stories over an acoustic (or electric) guitar, and remain captivating, is a remarkable talent not to be taken lightly in a songwriter. It’s a gift that keeps on giving to her fans both old and new, and Hole In My Head ends up being Grace’s finest work since the instant classic of Transgender Dysphoria Blues.

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Smooth Brain – “Good 4 U” (Song Premiere)

Smooth Brain

Today I’m thrilled to bring everyone a really cool cover of an Olivia Rodrigo track by Smooth Brain called “Good 4 U.” On this electric-charged cover, Smooth Brain channel the original spirit of the song and a few twists and turns along the way too. The band shared, “We’ve been playing “good 4 u” live – with a fun twist – since our inception, and we’re thrilled to finally put it out. If you’ve been to a Smooth Brain show before, you know how much these songs mean to us, and how much fun we have playing our version of Olivia Rodrigo’s hit single.” If you’re enjoying the early listen, you can check out the band’s Facebook page here.

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