Leb Laze in New York Times

LEB LAZE IN THE MIDDLE

Matchless Music artist Leb Laze recently performed with Prefuse 73 at the Sonar Festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Art. The New York Times was there to cover it and snapped a photo of the set. Check out the photo above and the full story here.

Cartoon Network’s “Are You CN This” Music Video

There’s been a great response on the web to Cartoon Network’s “Are You CN This” promo. It’s a music video for their 2009 schedule done in a tongue and cheek Crunk Hop style. Check it out and turn on your sub woofers if you got ‘em; there’s some serious 808 bass. It’s a lot of fun, and Matchless Music’s Ben Jastatt wrote the music and did it in a jiffy. So there you go…

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Share music illegally, get your Internets taken away

The Irish Times is reporting an unprecedented deal between four record labels – EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner – and ISP Eircom.

Taking a bit of inspiration from California’s “three strikes and you are out” law, Eircom customers who get caught three times sharing music illegally will get sentenced to life without the Internet. Yes, that’s right. After two warnings, a third violation will result in customers being cut off from the Internets entirely, at least until they find another ISP.

However, the Times also reports that “as part of the deal, the record companies – EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner – have agreed that they will take “all necessary steps” to put similar agreements in place with all other internet service providers (ISPs) in Ireland.” So in theory the Internet could go bye bye for good for repeat offenders.

PSST! Pass It On 3

Matchless artist and founder, Ben Jastatt was lucky enough to write some music for one of the short films featured in PSST! Pass It On 3. We’ll have more details when the project is released later this month. For now, here’s the skinny on the project and a sneak peak…

PSST! 3 is a collaborative film project. 17 films are currently being made by 51 teams of Designers, Directors, Animators and Composers.

The mission of PSST is to produce original short films through the collaboration of different teams of designers, directors, and animators. Each film is comprised of three sections produced by three different teams. This process is the whole idea behind PSST! – a technique derived from the Dadaist game of Exquisite Corpse and the children’s game Telephone and applied to the arts of motion graphics, animation and film-making.

PSST! is curated and organized by Bran Dougherty-Johnson of Grow Design Work. For more info, contact PSST!: psst@psstpassiton.com.

Check out the PSST! Pass It On 3 trailer below. (The music for the trailer was not composed by a Matchless Musician, but by the extremely talented Balun.)

PSST! 3 Trailer

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Nine Inch Nail’s “Ghosts I-IV” top’s Amazon.coms MP3 album sales in 2008

Amazon.com announced that Nine Inch Nail’s “Ghosts I-IV” was their top selling MP3 album of 2008, even though the band gave the album away for free. My how the music business is changing. It wasn’t that long ago that naysayers were dismissing the give-it-away-free business model. We’ll admit it sounds like a contradiction, but for well established musicians with cult followings like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails, this is the future and it is bright.

Promos that Kept TV on Top in 2008

A few decades ago there were less than 20 channels and the big three networks–NBC, CBS, and ABC–captured the overwhelming majority of viewers. With the recent explosion of networks and the push towards content segmentation, new channels have been popping up like gremlins.

Viewers have so many choices that it’s getting increasingly difficult for the networks to capture a meaningful slice of the market. For the viewer trudging through a mind numbing array of choices, just finding something to watch can take hours. Still, there are winning shows like Weeds and Lost and wildly successful networks like HBO and Cartoon Network. So how do they stand out?

Content, of course, but content by itself is not enough. On-Air promotion is needed. Content is king; promotion is it’s chariot. And while most promos just end up as background chatter, a few stand up and demand to be noticed. (Again, they are inevitably promoting a great show or a great network. What’s that about not being able to polish a… oh, never mind.)

A great promo can make viewers put down the remote. Really creative promos can successfully revive a listless drama or launch an under the radar sitcom into the big leagues. A visionary promo can even change the direction of a failing network. Such promos have got to be boundary pushing and take creative risks in order to get noticed. Music almost always plays a key role in this process. Below are a few of the best promos from 2008, all of which use music to great success.

#1) Showtime’s Weeds Season 4 promo. Hands down, it is the awesome. Brilliant use of Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Were Made for Walking.”

#2) HBO’s Voyeur Project. Amazing promo with some fantastic music.

#3 & 4) Two from the CW’s Gossip Girl. Whether you like this show or not, they’ve done some great work and used fantastic music throughout.

#5) Cartoon Network Latin America Zoo Promo. Cool concept. Reminds us of something from Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie.

La Blogotheque’s Take Away Shows

La Blogotheque’s take away shows rule. Seriously, this is some of the finest stuff the internet has to offer.  It’s so exceptionally rare to witness great music, film and concept come together so brilliantly.  These shows revitalize the spirit and inspire the mind.  If you have a heartbeat, go here now. Thank you Blogotheque!!

A little bit about the project from La Blogotheque themselves…

“About the Take away shows:

The Take away shows are la Blogotheque’s first video podcasts.

Every week, we invite an artist or a band to play in the streets, in a bar, a park, or even in a flat or in an elevator, and we film the whole session. Of course, what makes the beauty of it is all the little incidents, hesitations, and crazy stuff happening unexpectingly. Besides, we do not edit the videos so they look perfectly flawless, instead we keep the raw sound of the surroundings. Our goal is to try and capture instants, film the music just like it happens, without preparation, without tricks. Spontaneity is the keyword.

The Take away shows exist since April 2006. There was Chryde, who wanted to shake things up and find another way to share music, and there was Vincent Moon, who wanted to film music differently. Chryde offered Moon to go and film musicians in the city, Moon seized the idea and glorified it. Since then, other directors across the world joined this project, and we plan to extend it worldwide.”

Let’s say hello to David Merson Hess and Reverse Engine Records

We’d like to give a long overdue welcome to film composer and indie musician, David Merson Hess.  Hess has been actively writing and producing kick ass indie music for almost ten years. And now he’s part of Matchless Music.  We couldn’t be happier.

As a film composer, he recently scored the Drifter Pictures feature film PRESENCE, written & directed by Bryan Kramer and produced by Ashley C. Kramer.

He’s also the curator of Reverse Engine Records, a fully digital ‘some rights reserved’ netlabel with free Creative Commons-licensed releases hosted in the Internet Archive’s netlabels collection.

Reverse Engine is currently working on a Swirlies tribute album called Sneaky Flute Moods.  The Swirlies’ stellar catalog is looted and reimagined by a killer lineup including Tape Quartet (Tobias from Blue Foundation!), sug(r)cane, Tiger MCs, Cardinal Family Singers, Tender Frame, The Harvey Girls, The Got To Get Got, Nolan Smock, Moogle Charm, kasparhauser, The Hamiltones and many more.

If you’ve never heard of the Swirlies, do yourself a favor and check them out.  They are one of the most under appreciated indie/shoegaze bands from the 1990′s.   We highly recommend their 1996 album “They Spent Their Wild Youthful Days in the Glittering World of the Salons.”  The Swirlies back catalog can be downloaded for free and legally here.  So dig on the Swirlies and then dig on Reverse Engine’s tribute album. You have no reason not to being that it’s free and legal and awesome and all that.

But enough about the Swirlies already.  Come give Dave’s music a listen at here.   We know you’ll like what you hear.

Smells Like Kurt Cobain Rolling Over In His Grave

Covers can be awesome or the opposite of awesome.  Guess which category this cover falls into…

Apparently, the audience is too young to remember Nirvana.  Perhaps they are just love a waxed chest.  Who knows?

One thing is clear, there is no reason to cheer these guys on.   Wow.

Coldplay, Satriani, Lily Allen, Enanitos Verdes, Alizee, Creaky Boards and Plagiarism

So a lot has already been said about Joe Satriani suing Coldplay for plagiarism. Hey, maybe Coldplay did steal Joe’s hot lick.  Coldplay’s been accused of ripping off a lot of bands from Radiohead to Kraftwork to, umm…Joe Satriani.  Anyway, it’s up to the courts (or their lawyers) to figure that out.

There is no a justification for plagiarism or copyright infringement –definitely not.   However, modern music from the western world  is written using the same 12 notes, so it’s impossible for us to imagine that there wouldn’t be some songs that sound alike or even identical.  (This fella does a good job of pointing out 30+ popular songs that use the same chord progression and essentially sound the same.)

It’s gonna be hard for Joe to prove this one.  Maybe he’s just hoping for a settlement…  Compare Coldplay’s song with Satriani’s song.  Then check out these these below songs by Enanitos Verdes, Lily Allen, Alizee, and Creaky Boards.  You tell us, who is ripping off whom?

Enanitos Verdes – Frances Limon (at 0:34)

Lily Allen – Littlest Things (at 1:12)

Alizee – Jen ai marre (at 1:33)

Creaky Boards -