Readers have spoken, and it seems recent outings by Brian Eno can be a bit divisive. (Okay, I’ll admit – I wasn’t at all fond of Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, as a huge fan of Byrne and Eno.)

But Eno isn’t the only English musical legend who … cough … might make fans long for the earlier stuff. See video explanation above.

Music is, of course, taste – part of why we enjoy it is that it is emotional and not objective or (gasp) entirely quantitative.

So, to me, there’s not a moment of the above BBC Web-only comedy sketch that isn’t brilliant. Of course, you’re welcome to disagree. I might just have to ask you to leave.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to frame my exclusive artwork from King of Limbs and put the vinyl edition on the phonograph, after connecting my gold-plated cables. You just can’t hear it at all, otherwise. Who said “hero worship”? SHUT UP! OUT!

(quiet voice in the back … “well … i rather liked … king of limbs…”)

Via Myles Ashley Borins.

Why shouldn’t a digital download be better, not worse, than a CD release?

Sit in a studio as most of your favorite albums are recorded, mixed, and mastered, and odds are the digital material is being recorded at higher bit depths and sample rates. And while the perceptual record is more mixed, there’s also no question that, in terms of data, lossy compression schemes like MP3 do demand some loss in audio information. (Lossless schemes like FLAC, by contrast, use less data but do so without sacrificing sound information.)

All of this means that it’s news that you can get Radiohead’s “The King of Limbs” album in 24-bit, lossless FLAC. It’s the first time there’s been a major artist doing this kind of release online, say 7Digital – and, in turn, the first step back toward greater fidelity after the step backward from 16-bit, 44.1kHz lossless audio CDs to the lossy versions available now. By “first,” I can only imagine they mean on 7Digital; if you like this sort of release, it’s worth checking out HDtracks, an online store with content all going this direction (and lots of FLAC):
https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php

It’s also the latest case that demonstrates that iTunes need not be your only online store for music. UK rival 7digital is the first and only digital store to offer up the band’s brilliant “The King of Kimbs” in 24-bit FLAC.

http://7digital.com
Deluxe release @ 7digital [US link]

Whether their listeners can really hear the difference or not, it’s likely stores will begin to move to greater audio fidelity. For their part, 7digital says that the 24-bit FLAC codec for Radiohead “is the first step in 7digital’s move towards higher quality digital music downloads.” The reasoning is pretty simple. Bandwidth and storage costs are getting smaller for online stores as those stores grow and better leverage server infrastructure. Storage is generally cheaper now than it had been, too, though somewhat mitigated by the increasing popularity of solid state flash memory over larger, cheaper hard disk drives. But most of all, stores are likely to respond to artist and listener demand, particularly as resellers try to differentiate themselves from streaming sound and justify your purchase. It’s likely labels may also look to formats like FLAC to squeeze more revenue out of the enthusiasts who are most likely to buy full albums. The deluxe FLAC edition – bundled with 16-bit FLAC and 320kbps AAC for compatibility – costs US$11.99 instead of the technically-inferior US$7.92 320kbps MP3 version.

I’m skipping over the most important issue, though – how do you listen to this?

FLAC isn’t the only compressed lossless codec, but it is the only format that’s fully free and open source. It’s really an ideal tradeoff – you maintain smaller file sizes, but the quality of a 24-bit FLAC file is the same as a much bigger 24-bit WAV or AIFF.

It’s hardly a household name, but FLAC support is surprisingly widespread. Streaming players like the Logitech Squeezebox and Sonos products support it.

Many desktop software players will play FLAC, too: once codec support is installed on your OS of choice, in fact, most players will do it. Linux these days does it out of the box with most players. VLC is probably the easiest, sure-fire way to get FLAC support on Windows and Mac. On Windows, the excellent MediaMonkey, Winamp, and foobar2000 all play FLAC natively. On the Mac, the open source Cog is also an option (though it appears it hasn’t been updated recently, sadly). Aside from VLC, cross-platform, open source players like Songbird (Mac, Windows) and Banshee (gradually being ported from Linux to Mac and Windows) are promising, too.

Of course, part of the reason the situation is spotty is that iTunes has gained a certain hegemony. Nothing against iTunes per se, but I believe having choice is a good thing. Indeed, the predecessor of iTunes itself – the long-forgotten SoundJam MP by Casady & Greene on which Apple’s product was based – was the product of a period of heated Mac and Windows player rivalries. If you love music, you’ll want some options.

And the tide is turning. One of the most encouraging audio player initiatives I’ve seen yet is from Audiofile Engineering. I’m already a fan of AE because of their excellent wave editing and loop products (working on a new review – stay tuned). Now, they’re reviving the spirit of SoundJam’s principle rival, and my own player of choice in another life, Audion. Fidelia is a perfect choice of commercial player for Radiohead; it can play FLAC natively and even dither the 24-bit audio stream for a 16-bit output. I haven’t reviewed Fidelia yet as I’d like to see it mature a bit; minimalism is good, but some basic functionality is still emerging. But I do hope to talk about it soon. And while Windows users have had lots of terrific choices, it’s nice to see choice returning to the Mac, too.

http://www.audiofile-engineering.com/fidelia/

Speaking of hegemony, mobile players have tended to lag in FLAC support, but that’s improving, too. The free and open source andless for Android supports FLAC, and I expect more as the Android music player market continues to heat up.

Many of these players do actually also support Apple’s Apple Lossless format – even including many of the free Linux options – so I expect future iTunes lossless exclusives wouldn’t necessarily be a dealbreaker. (That’s true even of andless, so you could, say, rip to Apple Lossless with iTunes and load Apple Lossless and purchased FLAC files onto an Android music player when on the go. Maybe someday we’ll even see DIY devices based on Android that offer high-fidelity audio outputs.)

An obviously-essential part of this equation is whether you can actually hear the results. I won’t start on music consumers who listen regularly on internal laptop speakers and generic Apple white earbuds. But I’d be interested in what you can detect, comparing different music content, using better listening environments. With “deluxe” editions bundling the MP3 and FLAC together, we’ll have lots of raw material for double-blind tests. Anyone with some experience in administering such tests – or who wants to get involved in a research project?

Radiohead are billing their new release as “the world’s first* (*perhaps) Newspaper Album,” except that no one really seems to know yet what that means. (A Style section? Funnies page? Wrapped in newsprint? Apparently, none of these. Chatter online seems to suggest they’re printing the artwork newspaper-style, which could be potentially cool. Update – readers agree the “first” honor belongs to Jethro Tull, at the very least.) They’re definitely pursuing the “kitchen sink” approach some beloved megastars of music embrace these days, with a CD and two vinyl records and downloads and artwork. There’s ecological packaging, too; someday, the music world will make up for all those awful plastic jewel cases we put in landfills.

I could tell you how much this costs, but that would depend on some complex mathematical calculus based on where you live and whether you opt for MP3 or WAV and the chance of whether there’s a Golden Ticket in the package and if your nation’s government has a Thom Yorke tariff. (The US Trade Representative is working on that.)

But in the US and Europe, at least, it appears to be a lot of stuff for a pretty accessible price – around US$50 / EUR 40 with all the artwork and vinyl and CD and downloads.

Anyway, it’s quite simple: click your country, opt for a WAV download, and Saturday, you’ll be listening to the new album, uncompressed. There – that wasn’t so bad, was it?

And it’s new Radiohead. Girls may not scream incessantly, they may never have played Ed Sullivan or gotten their own Rock Band/Guitar Hero game, and they’re just a band. But the reason this will spread across every music blog and Facebook page and Twitter post and Smorgasioo social network “bjork” and Fluuuiolike.me music fan mash-up today is because, hey, a whole lot of people are going to be really happy and listening to music Saturday. That sounds like a good thing to me.

Just remember – $14. Wav. You can pay with PayPal. That’s the easy way to go. It’s what I did. I’ll never understand why so many bands are compared to Radiohead when the comparison almost never holds. But we’re lucky to still have the original putting out music. Happy Valentine’s Day.

http://radiohead.com/deadairspace/

So, in the ephemeral digital age, how do you market and merchandise music? (There’s way more discussion on the Interwebs about the fact that “In Rainbows” was free.)

Interestingly, Radiohead – and loads of other top UK artists – are working with some folks called Sandbag:

They’re rather an interesting outfit: they do the e-commerce thing, like everyone else, with a pretty simple, no-brainer, international store for downloads. (Just went through the purchase process myself; we’ll see how downloads go Saturday.) That puts them in a league with countless others. But their twist is that they also do global physical fulfillment, and “ethical” physical goods and manufacturing. That puts them in a league with – well, a league of their own. It earned the UK-based firm a Grammy.

They also do webcasting and ticketing, though the latter is so dominated by the Ticketmaster empire, that sounds more like an uphill battle.

But if you’re looking just at the free “In Rainbows” and the paid “King of Limbs,” you’re missing a lot of what’s happened in the intervening time. Artists and the vendors who work with them have begun working on new ideas for how to sell music and merch. And some of that innovation, by necessity, can’t just be ephemeral – it means working out how to make physical goods and ticketing and events work, too, and not just in one country but worldwide.

From the ashes of the old music business, in other words, expect a lot of new music businesses, plural, to arise.

http://sandbag.uk.com/about.php

I can’t say anything this song doesn’t say brilliantly. Comedian Adam Buxton takes on the Radiohead remix contest with his own entry, which cuts through the hype brings a bit of wit to TV incidental music and remixing alike. And, really, how often do you get to say "Radiohead" and "rap" in the same sentence? Take my mechanical rights, please!

See, there, I said something. It wasn’t very good. Just so listen to the song and thank me later, okay?

See also Adam Buxton’s sketch for BBC3′s Rush Hour which cleans up NWA to "Help Da Police." Thanks, Jaymis!

Via Monome virtuoso Matthew Davidson (aka Stretta, the man who has built a lot of the patches that give the Monome its unique personality), here’s a video that really demonstrates how the Monome turns a set of buttons into a way of arranging and performing music. Adam, aka makingthenoise, covers Tom Yorke’s “The Eraser” using a Monome 40h, Ableton Live, and the SevenUp Live software setup.

(You may remember makingthenoise from the East Coast Monome Jam, a Princeton convergence of Monomes and the musicians who love them.)

The killer ingredient here is Adam’s SevenUpLive, a Java application that combines 8 different Monome apps in one and integrates more tightly with Ableton Live.

SevenUpLive

On the software page, you’ll find a full file pack to recreate The Eraser as in the video.

It’s AES this week in California; I won’t be there, because I have a family engagement. But what I find interesting is that this homespun way of controlling music is very different from the typical studio/mixer paradigm you’re likely to see at a trade show. It may be a better model of the actual music.

Monome on CDM

• In many circles, Metallica is no longer cool or never was cool.
• Lawyer make people MAD. Angry. Smash. (Apparently in addition to going after 60,000 pages of fans on Napster, Metallica doesn’t even like fan-made buttons.)
• Metallica is not Radiohead or Trent Reznor. (Stop the presses!)
• Even if you’re not Radiohead or Trent Reznor, you probably want your fans on your side. Pitchforks and torches tend to be a bad sign.

Of course, some might see the doomsday scenario of Internet music releases, in which fans determine that all music should be free and you can’t make money on releases any more. Big bands give away their stuff for free, the independent artist dies, music isn’t made any more, etc., etc. But given glowing fans proclaiming that they’re “glad I could shell out 40 pounds for the discbox” of In Rainbows, that seems unlikely.

And that’s the fundamental nature of fans. They’re looking for ways to give you their money so you can give them something back. Lesson learned by Metallica: don’t piss them off.

Fans Rip Metallica a New One [Wired.com Listening Post; enjoy the Napster-era parody video]

Photo: massdistraction, via Flickr.

In case you haven’t seen this, James Houston has produced a short film in which an assortment of old computer gear “plays” Radiohead’s “Nude.” We’ve seen various bicycle parts and such performing music around here, but not the actual components of computers in this way. James features:

Sinclair ZX Spectrum – Guitars (rhythm & lead)
Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer – Drums
HP Scanjet 3c – Bass Guitar
Hard Drive array – Act as a collection of bad speakers – Vocals & FX

He explains:

I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there.

It doesn’t sound great, as it’s not supposed to.

Sorry, James. You’ve failed thoroughly. It sounds fantastic.

Not only that, but I think it’s quite a nice reminder that even in regards to technology, sometimes sounding bad or primitive is wonderful. Yorke’s songwriting prowess comes out even as the music is translated to an entirely different arrangement. It’s humbling to hear — it means that, technology or no, being able to write great ideas sure helps. And it strips away some of the justification for having the latest and greatest soft synths, erm, not that it’ll stop us any time soon.

By the way, I hadn’t heard that Thom Yorke thought it was impossible to do remixes in 6/8. Come on, really? Okay, maybe for people whose heart beats four on the floor…

Time to dig into my equipment closet and see what will make sound. Peace out.

Plenty of bands have jumped on the "remix generation" bandwagon, releasing music to be remixed and sampled and visualized as a publicity stunt. But, then, plenty of bands aren’t Radiohead. Readers here may have been disappointed that our favorite superband didn’t embrace Creative Commons sharing when announcing their iTunes-only stems. But a number of the artists we follow came up with some brilliant work.

In Visuals: Robert Hodgin, aka Flight404, has the enviable job of exploring new visual expressions as his day gig of sorts. Working primarily in code developed in the open-source, Java-powered Processing, he develops a technique and then iterates and iterates on it until it goes from computer gimmick to refined artistry. He blogs that process, as well, pushing forward the rest of the Processing community. His video above uses abstract, generative processes to visualize Radiohead’s "Weird Fishes", but is developed enough to become organic. It’s a voyage under the sea. Via our sister site, Create Digital Motion.

In Music: A number of readers tackled the Radiohead remix contest. Here’s my favorite: our friend Alan Molina created a sparse string accompaniment that spotlights Tom Yorke’s vocal part. He explains:

Thanks for listening!  I actually recorded and mixed all the strings.  

They are all a violin (just lots of layers of me).  My profession is an orchestral violinist–this remix was an outlet to do something different!

I used Ableton Live 7 for the effects, and used  the kind of mic that clips on behind the bridge of a violin.  Done on my couch in front of my computer!

Of course, the other direction to go is stretching the tune past the point of recognizability, with strange bizarro-universe remixes pulling the tune to experimental glitch and faux-punk. Here are a few of the more unusual takes on their music:

But I have to say, I’m delighted by these results. They really do give me a new sense of the music. And to people who complained that it’s a publicity stunt … well, hey, at this point, I think you all know who Radiohead is, so I don’t particularly feel like I’m shilling for them. (Hey! You’ve got to listen to this new band!)

What’s wonderful about this is getting to hear the songs differently — and, whatever Radiohead’s celebrity, you’ve got to admit Thom Yorke’s voice got to where it did for a reason.

But if you are looking to discover some new music, definitely check out the comment thread on the previous story with other artists offering remixes and stems.

And if you’ve got a favorite Nude remix you want to share, let us know in comments.

No, not photos of you remixing in Ableton in the nude! Sheesh. Wish I hadn’t opened my inbox.

The era of artists regularly releasing stems for remixing seems imminent. In the meantime, we see occasional examples of artists who get it. Radiohead have a new feature on their tune Nude, promoted with Apple. Purchase stems of a song (that’s by stem, so you pay US$0.99 * 5 stems + 1 full song if you want everything), and you get audio via iTunes Plus. Purchase the full set, and you can also download a GarageBand / Logic Pro-compatible project with all loop, tempo, and key information embedded, as pictured at top. (Unless I’m mistaken, that’s also the ideal way to get uncompressed audio for use in other tools.)

If you happen to prefer another tool for remixing (say, one that rhymes with Mabledon Dive and is often seen running on computers from Apple), these are just DRM-free audio files, so the choice is yours. Upload the finished results to the Web, and the band will review submissions and open them to votes. There are already a number of remixes up at the moment.

NUDE RE/MIX on iTunes

Radiohead Remix Site

Hmmm, nude remixing? Brings new meaning to “bedroom producer.” Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Radiohead does specify that you can’t use these for commercial purposes; it’s too bad they didn’t choose to apply a Creative Commons non-commercial license, which would formalize essentially what they’re saying. But this is otherwise done quite nicely, nonetheless, and I hope we see more of this.

Like remixable music? Nine Inch Nails has a whole remix site, and indie label Magnatune lets you remix all their artists’ work via a Creative Commons license (though they typically don’t offer stems). Online music outlet Dance Tracks Digital goes beyond stems with full Ableton Live-ready projects, suitable for DJs. That’s just for starters; if you have other favorite remix resources, let us know.

As this is not the Beatles, you don’t get to watch Thom and Jonny arguing about the arrangements. Sorry.

This certainly gives more insight into the music. Sure, In Rainbows’ pay-what-you-will pricing may have overshadowed the actual music, and the “top album of 2007″ moniker from the music press almost seems too easy. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t great music. In fact, on repeated listenings I think I found what it was about the album that didn’t win over some fans initially: the narrative of the album itself isn’t quite as strong as the songs on it. As those songs sink in, for me at least, the writing stands up to some of Radiohead’s best — and having themselves as competition is hardly a blessing. While the media argues, again, about the future of music, it’s great to know great bands survive.