If you can find a spot in the rotation with your Mannheim Steamroller collection for something a bit different, CDM reader Leigh Walsh of Cork, Ireland sends in her work. She describes it as “punky gothy electronic … for Christmas,” with any proceeds benefiting Autism research. The single sounds crazy, but for me, things get good with the game world-like, shimmering “Secret Inside the Ice Level” and “Melody for the Sewn Princess” tracks.

I can find myself mentally wandering an 8-bit ice cave level right now…

Loving her work, hoping to here more, hoping not to get folks’ genders wrong next time… oops.

Heck, let’s take this playlist a little further out.

One darned trippy Christmas: HAPPY XMAS PEBBLES LAILA ROCKET YUSUF! By London-based artist Affie Yusuf, via SoundCloud:

HAPPY XMAS PEBBLES LAILA ROCKET YUSUF by AFFIE YUSUF

Thanks, Laila!

If that doesn’t cleanse your palette after hearing too many of the Christmas standards on repeat, I just can’t help you.

Now, go and use this to freak out your families and friends.

LA-based bang Fol Chen (Asthmatic Kitty records) wanted to go beyond the computer as the playback and manipulation device for their music. So they worked with collaborators to invent a solution. In a new video, sounds, and an interview, we can share some of how this came into being.

Built with the monome creators (Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain) and LA research and experimentation center Machine Project, the Tetrafol is a custom, pyramidal sound device. The object warps Fol Chen’s music using gestural manipulation of playback, but can also use your own samples. And with open-source circuit and firmware, the project could be an opportunity to learn or to build your own creation.

Description:

The Tetrafol is a hand-held tangible electronic sound toy. Circuits enclosed by a wooden tetrahedron detect orientation and motion-gestures to modify the playback of a collection of Fol Chen’s micro-compositions, allowing the user to explore sound through physical manipulation.

The battery-powered device has its own internal speaker but can additionally be hooked up to a headphone or amplifier.

The circuit and firmware are based on open-source hardware and is itself published as open-source, allowing anyone interested to learn about its deepest inner-workings.

Here’s a sample of the project, via the Tetrafol-created Fol Chen track “So Good”:
Fol Chen – So Good by WeGetPress

Built by hand in a limited run of 100, the device sells for US$110 direct from Machine Project. We spoke to monome’s Brian Crabtree about the project – and a new, comically-inclined video shows off the project.

Stems from the track “Back on Kent” come preloaded:
Fol Chen, “Back on Kent” by asthmatickitty

CDM: How did this collaboration come about? How did you work together?

brian: kelli and i have a loving and working relationship with machineproject, a phenomenal organization founded by our good friend mark allen. we’re always amazed at the fantastical variety of projects that are born there. a few inspiring works of recent include a cash machine designed for a children’s museum and a workshop on lockpicking. so when mark approached us on behalf of his good friend adam goldman and adam’s band fol chen regarding a possible collaboration we were all ears. the goal was to design and produce some sort of synthesizer-sampler-effect-instrument-toy-object to accompany the release of their new album. that was about a year ago and we’re happy to see it finalized and soon in playful hands.

in the early stages there was much whittling of ideas (too expensive, too complicated, etc). we arrived at some sort of gestural sample player and a demo video was ready to show the proof of concept (we live on opposite coasts so there was much back and forth through internets and mails) the basic build used a waveshield (by adafruit) and an arduino and some very hacky code i modified.

fol chen provided the sound set. kelli and i proposed a series of enclosures– diamonds, stars, ice cream cones, d20. the tetrahedron ended up being the most beautifully minimal, and incidentally the most cost effective. our friend jason voytilla laser cut a prototype from thin birch ply and we sent the “finished” sample to california where it underwent a series of intense focus groups – thanks to the rigorous machineproject laboratories. after more back and forth, and basic design changes here and there we were in agreement. we used our very reliable production chain that we depend on for monome releases… it was nice really helpful to have that all in place and sped up the process considerably.

the tetrafol accompanies the release of some exciting new fol chen tracks, and there will be a release party of sorts in early december at machineproject. should be very interesting, as the current installation is a 30 foot deep window sill of sorts.

What went into the design? The construction of the thing?

the final circuit board is an arduino, [Lady Ada - Limor Fried] waveshield, and accelerometer smashed together and made very small. i really just put existing technologies together– i can’t take a lot of credit here.

the industrial design was more fun. we didn’t want to use plastic so we experimented with felt and wood. coming up with a size, shape, and feel were the main goals- to create something that was pleasant to hold and sturdy enough to be tossed in the air.

What’s the basic notion of the instrument?

it plays sound loops, or “micro-compositions” written by fol chen. when you pick up and tilt the device it modifies playback: in one axis it changes the playback speed, in the other it triggers a variable-speed stutter (playback position jump). sounds are changed by a shaking motion. given the response is immediate, it comes alive very quickly.

i’d also hesitate to endorse it as an Instrument, though it’s very playable. it’s a bit like a responsive buddha box.

Any other documentation?

i posted the firmware/hardware source on github. there is a no “build your own” guide as you’d be much better off just looking at the waveshield documentation (which is very good.)

this was a fun collaborative side project– and it makes me even more curious to see how musicians continue to create tangible objects to accompany their releases.

More information:
folchen.com

Tetrafol @ GitHub (firmware + hardware, under a GPL v3 license)

Texas-born, Detroit-raised, New York-based artist Matthew Dear has a new EP, to be followed by a full-length in 2012. It’s worth mentioning now for two reasons: one, the driving, “chugging” rhythms of the single, “Headcage,” will pop into your head and stay there, led by Dear’s vocal ability to croon and groove simultaneously. Second, the opening of this video may well make your mind go squish. The work of London-based director Morgan Beringer, seen previously milking monochrome textures out of another Matthew Dear collab, the film makes it look like some very colorful part of the Earth’s crust turned a film into magma. It settles down, but the opening frames are to me transcendent, especially when set to a similarly-morphing sonic backdrop.

You can stream and download the single via SoundCloud:

Matthew Dear – Headcage by ghostly

More on the upcoming release from Ghostly:
Matthew Dear: Headcage

The music writing echoes a bit for me Eno and Byrne on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts; perhaps channeling that, the album art by Michael Cina for Dear has washes of indistinct color, like a kaleidoscope set into motion, then blurred. Ghostly reports Dear co-produced the single with Van Rivers and The Subliminal Kid, vets of the acclaimed self-titled Fever Ray. The rest of the album is full of other vocal and producer collaborations. More on this when it arrives.

With a full length record, we also get a glimpse into sound design and live touch control, along with a cross-media event involving photography and sculpture. It’s the latest Amon Tobin, and for lovers of digital sonic manipulation, it’s big news.

Amon Tobin’s ISAM arrived this week, and it’s an epic opus of ambience and digitally-sculpted sound candy. It’s digitally-distorted without being glitch, off on cinematic reveries through noise before breaking into the odd deep-bass break. It’s also a virtuoso solo album on digital control via the Haken Continuum Fingerboard. Like that instrument, it seems free in its exploration of sound space, totally untethered from gravity.

A lot of it is pure synthesis, says the artist, though there are plenty of recorded vocals, too. (I assume when Tobin says there are “no samples,” he means “…of other people’s sounds,” as there’s definitely a lot of recording, unless he’s been holding off on us and he actually is a robot, thus making a direct digital connection to his computer.) I could imagine some finding the endless digital stretching effects and morphs and punctuation fatiguing, but tracks don’t overstay their welcome; each is a miniature sonic tableaux, and delicate moments balance the bass-ier staccato scenes.

You can have a listen without any particular narration, but Amon makes use of the commenting feature on SoundCloud to provide little annotations about what he’s doing and what you’re hearing. The full album is available on SoundCloud and sounds reasonably listenable as a 128k MP3 stream – certainly good enough to determine whether you love or hate this, and whether you want to buy a proper, high-quality download.

‘ISAM’ – Full album with track-by-track commentary from Amon Tobin by Amon Tobin

‘ISAM’ – Full album with track-by-track commentary from Amon Tobin by Amon Tobin

Via Topspin, there’s also a download of one track available. (See our notes on Topspin earlier this week.)

Want the album?

Buy direct from Amon Tobin if you’re in the US or most parts of the world or –

Buy from Ninja Tune if you’re in the UK/EU to save a few euros/pounds

The other unique aspect of this release is its multimedia versions. In addition to the digital release and t-shirts and whatnot, we get:

• The installation. Saatchi Collection artist Tessa Farmer works with Amon Tobin on a collaborative installation that employs the creepy, beautiful organic dead insects and other creatures in her sculpture. May 26 – June 3 at (aptly) The Crypt Gallery in London – let us know, readers, if you’re in London and can make it.
• The AV show. Amon Tobin has made a lot of doing audiovisual performances. These promise to be particularly involved, however. The artist will be presenting a live audiovisual show for Montreal’s MUTEK on June 1, which I expect may prove to be a real highlight of this summer’s event calendar. Also in June, he’ll take the show to Berlin, Brussels, and London’s Roundhouse.
• The photography. Working with the same materials, there’s some heavily evocative photography to enjoy, too, available on the site. Put that in full screen, crank the album, and bliss out.

All of this is covered on the official site for the album:
http://amontobinisam.com/

Making Of…

Spectral morphing is at the heart of the work on this album. As such, I would view the record’s process as an extension of a continuum (cough) with some of the landmark electronic albums of the 90s and 2000s rather than something wholly new. But I think it can be enjoyed just as that, as a kind of Baroque take on lush digital sound design. A making-of video explains the sound production work:

Here you can see the artist playing on the aforementioned Continuum instrument:

I’ll be curious to hear thoughts on this.

Packed tightly with interlaced rhythms, set against crisp cool intoned lyrics, the first cut of Brian Eno’s forthcoming “Drums Between the Bells” from Warp can give us all reason to look forward to the summer.

Mr. Eno has been on something of a roll lately. We’ve certainly gone through periods when he wasn’s necessarily in command of electronic headlines in music, even as he contributed in other ways – the 90s brought pioneering work in generative music software and the infamous sound set for Windows, for instance. Now, he’s had back-to-back major releases in recent years.

2008: Spore (the videogame, the soundtrack for which may have overshadowed the actual game title), Everything That Happens Will Happen Today with David Byrne

2009: New live work, score for Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones

2010: Small Craft on a Milk Sea with Jon Hopkins and Leo Abrahams

And now we know what’s coming for summer 2011: Warp Records, July 5, a full-length with Rick Holland entitled “Drums Between the Bells”

The stunning cover image, as much alien patchwork quilt as glitch, is Eno’s own creation. You can preorder vinyl with high-resolution digital for just $21, but $39 gets you the hardback two-CD set with instrumental versions of the tracks (perfect for a late-night painting session when you don’t want to be distracted with poetry), plus a forty-four page book. Typically, such books are superfluous to the musical experience, but here, with Eno himself as accomplished in visual media as musical, they’re almost a no-brainer.

Bleep has your pre-order options.

Give the first track released a listen:

Brian Eno – glitch (taken from Drums Between The Bells) by Warp Records

More details:
http://brian-eno.net
http://warp.net/brian-eno

The Guardian’s take

The poetry

So, who’s this Rick Holland, anyway?

It’s perhaps best answered with his words, which to me sound unaccompanied as though they already have Eno music behind them – the forward-moving staccato cadence, the interwoven reflections of a modern electronic age, the unassuming zen echoes, the amiable ambience of the thing. Here’s his Orange Notebook Philosophy, from his blog:

flutter eyelids against the pillow
flashes behind the eyes

the sounds are computer processors

the mind reflects on itself

on what it can simulate

and it becomes that thing

the imagining becomes event

and event leads to event

so the imagining becomes

in retrospect

equally an event. The computer processor

flutters and electric outbursts

merge data with data

and en route

creates florettes of accidental light

enough to capture the path of animated thought

and divert to a place at once utterly surprising and real within us.

He is mindful of the world around him, but he’s no elitist: he pits the Marquis de Sade against Sasha Fierce.

Read his posterous blog – evidently a new outlet for poetry. Follow him on Twitter (of course).

Rick is musician as well as poet, just as Eno is artist as well as musician, and has various collaborations around London, it seems. Like many of Eno’s collaborations, this one is long-standing, dating to 2002.

http://www.rjholland.com/

And as with Eno’s other recent releases, Eno has a talent for finding other resonant minds to present.

Somewhere at the boundaries of “ambient” and “experimental,” there’s a great deal of wonderful music being made these days. Even with great labels behind them, it’s the sonic signature that stands out.

With densely-layered, trance-like loops, “Hearts in Stasis” is a perfect example of this hard-to-categorize immersion for your ears, worth repeated listens for its tightly-packed details. Direwires, aka Adam Young, has been on Moodgadget since the beginning, included on their first compilation. The Ontario-based artist talks to CDM about his approach to music making, and I think it’ll resonate with a lot of artists of a similar mindset. With minimal, software-conceived production and drawing heavily on memory and the sounds around him, Adam says he crafted this record as though manipulating a dream.

You can have a listen to the full release on SoundCloud. Digital downloads on iTunes. There’s also a free MP3:

Bayfield

Direwires – Hearts In Stasis by Moodgadget

Peter: Above all others, there’s a sense of a hypnotic quality to the piece, in these repetitions. What’s the compositional idea behind these? Do you put yourself in a sort of meditative state when working?

Adam: I’ve always loved repetition in music. Repetition gives things weight, and meaning and draws you in, and makes you ask questions rather than taking a recorded idea for granted… sort of forcing you to “live” in it for a short bit. I’d say for this material in particular, it is more about intro/retrospection than meditation or some kind of self-hypnosis. There were many moments in the album where I drew pretty directly from fond and bittersweet memories of my teen years and because they meant so much to me, I wanted to stay there for as long as possible without creating something people couldn’t listen to. It was a pleasant process and it felt a bit like manipulating a dream you were trying really hard to not wake up from.

What’s your technique for working with loops?

There are exceptions to my methods all the time, but typically I’ve either heard naturally-occurring repetition that I really liked or something that I think would be fun to get my hands dirty with and edit into something loopy. I’ve used telephones and telephone messages, portable tape recorders, computers — all sorts of things to capture these things or pull from personal sources. But ultimately I feel most at home doing all of the reconstruction in software. I like the control I have over things on a computer, and it’s how I learned many years ago. Most things you hear have gone through software samplers or received some sort of digital manipulation.

It was a pleasant process and it felt a bit like manipulating a dream you were trying really hard to not wake up from.

There’s a real sense of dense dynamics to the layering here. You talk as well about “lo-fi” sounds here. Can you describe what that meant, how you approached the sound of this record?

I used a lot of analog and digital methods to capture audio from life around me. I did a lot of disregarding of source quality with the mindset that it would only add to the texture of whatever piece I was working on if I treated all things equally in the production process. A poor quality voicemail message was just as valuable to me as a perfect recording of a grand piano. This really helped bring things into perspective without a lot of effort and I was able to focus on the more conscious creative decisions I wanted to be making.

What are the sound sources we’re hearing? It sounds like you’re sampling all kinds of different things and working iteratively with those materials.

Anything that makes a sound is fair game, typically. There are a lot of human voices, but this time around I’ve tried to stick to tangible objects from my life and surroundings, and some synth parts here and there. It’s very personal music and it was important to me and context was crucial, even if the listener can’t hear all of it in a recording. There’s a LOT of different things in there though. You’ll hear everything from traffic and construction sounds to human speech and garage sale guitars. There’s even a couple seconds of a beat up read-along record in there.

Even I think without be influenced by the lovely album art, there is a sense of being underwater in this piece, perhaps because of the ebb and flow of the rhythms and dense layers. There were some natural inspirations, yes?

I’m very fond of aquatic themes and water in general, but it was mostly coincidental in this particular case. Most of the album was inspired by fond memories that just happened to take place in and around water and beaches and the like. I am always inspired by natural surroundings though and it just so happens that I’ve spent most of my life in and around fairly beautiful areas of Canada. The lovely cover art was put together by Alex Koplin at Moodgadget, based on a photo I took while swimming in Lake Huron in my teens.

Moodgadget notes that this album is the product of four years of work. Obviously, some records are produced in days, others years. How do you sort of keep material that has evolved over a longer period of time fresh?

I would like to think that it’s always “fresh” because I didn’t write music for the music people. I wrote songs about things that will always be the same so long as I remember them. I wasn’t chasing after a trending sound or trying to write something for a certain group of people. I was just writing something for me in what was almost a side effect of being someone who spends too much time thinking while sitting around a bunch of studio tools.

Since you’ve been with Moodgadget for some time, how did that relationship come about?

I met the gentlemen involved and their friends at Ghostly some years ago when I was attending parties and trying to make some connections for a couple of techno projects I was a part of at the time. They had been putting on some really cool mixed-genre multimedia shows at the time and eventually formed the label. At one point they were brainstorming by email and talking about their intentions and what they should call it and I suggested the name and they apparently liked it.

Can you share some of your background, and how you approached this musically / technically speaking?

I was always around video games and computers as a child, which gave way to spending too much time hobbying about with computers to the point where I was actively looking for new things I could do with a computer. I eventually discovered the “tracking” scene and some of the things people were doing musically with computers. I started experimenting a little bit at a young age and was writing mediocre techno and ambient things by the time I was twelve. I guess in a lot of ways, not a lot has changes other than I’ve developed some very intentional compositional habits, understand how to write music that flows the way I want it to and how to use the tools I have..which are obviously better tools than I’ve started with.

Most of the songs here were written in similar ways. I’d start with a sound I had recorded, would pull it into a virtual sampler or waveform editor, pull it apart, and start putting it back together in different ways until I had a new sort of “instrument” I could write something musical with. Then I’d start laying out some sort of melody or just ride out a loop I liked and would build something resembling a song around it.

What are you listening to these days? I hesitate to call anything “ambient” as the word has so much associated with it…

That’s a tough one, and I agree. I’ve gone through a lot of different phases but lately it’s all over the place. I’m listening to a lot more traditional music than I used to, bands and stuff. I used to listen to a lot of exclusively electronic things. I have playlists I rotate through for different moods and I guess the ones that see the most play lately are ones that include some folk and things like Grouper, Owen Pallett’s solo work, David Sylvian, Fennesz… I think I have listened to that “Transit” song Sylvian and Fennesz did together about a million times. It kills me every time. Once in awhile I’ll go on a strange bender and spend a week only listening to 80′s New Wave stuff, or something like The Stranglers.

If you asked me several years ago, almost everything I listened to was some form of techno. It’s kind of funny, because when I first began listening to music as a child, I only wanted aggressive, violent sounding metal and rock music around and my father would play Tangerine Dream and all sorts of classic synth music and I would attempt to make fun of him and tell him to put on “real music”. It looks like he gets the last laugh.

Can you describe for us what’s in your studio?

It’s not very impressive to studio nerds, it’s always been the least important part of my process for better or worse. My studio was my bedroom for most of my life. I’ve had dedicated studio space a couple times in recent history but i’ve always found myself bringing everything back to my home so I could work on things and always revert back to working where I live. The setup changes over and over, and depends on what I’m working on. Sometimes I’ll have space reserved for vocal recording, synths, guitars, odd objects or very seldomly – people singing. The centre of it all will always be the most appropriate computer or two that I own at the time (which is always something Apple based… I’ve had enough bluescreens, crashes, lost work and the like for two lifetimes.) I often run a myriad of VSTs and stand-alone applications that have been written by friends and strangers alike, but usually a fairly typical sequencer/host is at the core. I’ve been using Ableton a lot in recent years, I like how easy it is to use the same software in the studio and on stage.

At the moment I’ve an obsession with not being distracted and keeping the area free of unnecessary instruments or objects and so it usually just looks like someone’s typical office until I need to bring in a specific synth or controller to work on a specific part. I rarely use proper monitor speakers because there was a time in my life when I couldn’t and made a habit out of using headphones as long as I could until bringing it elsewhere for mixing, or compensating appropriate. A silly way to work, but old habits die hard. One of the few strengths in doing things the way I do them is that it’s very easy to take the process mobile and work from neat locations. I’ve done work on boats, in cars, in tents and cabins out under the open sky on warm nights with a laptop.

Thanks to Adam for sharing a glimpse into his creative life. Find the album at Moodgadet:
http://moodgadget.com/direwires/

Rob Brown and Sean Booth, aka Autechre, remain one of the most forward-thinking acts in electronic music; going back to their work from a decade or two ago feels less like history and more like futuristic artifact, a musical seed from space unearthed in a cornfield somewhere and about to rip your throat (or ears) out. Warp Records’ Bleep service doing the hard work for you and collecting all their EPs? That’s very good news.

EPs 1991-2002 promises to be what a box set should be: all substance, no nonsense, and with 47 tracks, many of them rare and out of print, for US$30-50, this is an astoundingly-good deal.

In a sign of the times, you can even forgo the box if you don’t want it. (Yes, yes, tangible objects and whatnot – but many electronic music lovers live in cramped urban quarters.) US$29.99 buys you high-quality 320kbps MP3s, and an extra $3 gets you the proper, uncompressed files. Or you can get the box set with the five CDs and some lovely packaging. Regardless of which option you choose, the fine folks at Warp don’t hold on out you; you still get three of Autechre’s ground-breaking music videos in high-quality form. It’s about time we get to see them somewhere other than grainy YouTube clips, or, erm, the countless music videos by other artists that have tried to clone them cheaply.

Nor do you have to wait. Pre-order the physical box or buy only the downloads, and video and audio downloads are ready for you, right now.

Highlights:

Cavity Job (1991 – First Autechre release from before they signed to Warp and not available on CD before)
Basscad EP (1994)
Anti EP (1995)
Garbage (1995)
Anvil Vapre (1995)
Peel Session (Transmitted 1995, released 1999)
Envane (1997)
Cichlisuite (1997)
EP7 (1999)
Peel Session 2 (Transmitted 1999, released 2001)
Gantz_Graf (2002)

All versions come with 3 High Quality Videos:
Second Bad Vilbel (Chris Cunningham)
Gantz_Graf (Alexander Rutterford)
Basscadet (Jess Scott Hunter)

Release page: EPS, 1991-2001

Actually, full track listing:
1. Cavity Job
2. Accelera 1 & 2
3. Basscadet (Bcdtmx)
4. Basscadet (Basscadoublemx)
5. Basscadet (Tazmx)
6. Basscadet (Basscadubmx)
7. Lost
8. Djarum
9. Flutter
10.Garbagemx
11. PIOBmx
12. Bronchusevenmx
13. VLetrmx
14. Second Bad Vilbel
15. Second Scepe
16. Second Scout
17. Second Peng
18. Milk DX
19. Inhake 2
20. Drane
21. Goz Quarter
22. Latent Quarter
23. Laughing Quarter
24. Draun Quarter
25. Yeesland
26. Pencha
27. Characi
28. Krib
29. Tilapia
30. Rpeg
31. Ccec
32. Squeller
33. Left Blank
34. Outpt
35. Dropp
36. Liccflii
37. Maphive6.1
38. Zeiss Contarex
39. Netlon Sentinel
40. Pir
41. Gelk
42. Blifil
43. Gaekwad
44. 19 Headaches
45. Gantz_Graf
46. Dial.
47. Cap IV

For reference only (you really need those high-quality files), here are the videos in question; first, the legendary, oft-copied Gantz_Graf video by Alexander Rutterford:

Next, Chris Cunningham’s contribution:

Actually, watching these with all the TV artefacts is … kind of awesome. So here’s another:

Lastly, Jess Scott Hunter’s interpretation of Basscadet:

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

Given the vastness of music available today online, “best of…” lists, while nice to have, can be disappointingly predictable. Not so with music selected by readers of this site. We asked for your favorite albums of last year, and you responded with extraordinary variety. I’ve selected entries from readers – some must-have inclusions, some that were simply well-described or surprising – for your enjoyment here. In these mid-January doldrums, it’s a perfect time to catch up on musical inspiration, then hole up and create some digital music of your own. I’ve called attention to some specific choices with images and videos and audio embeds, too, as you’ll see.

If you’re like me, creating often must begin with listening. Here’s plenty of listening to get you started.

Hollow
36
36, Album (full-length)
http://3six.net/album/hollow

Fine musician with an ear for ambient texture and melody. People ought to pay attention!

Suggested by Peter Dines http://modulations.noisepages.com

2010
$.99 Dreams
Bandcamp/$.99 Dreams, Album (full-length)
http://ninetyninecentdreams.com/

2nd album delivers a novel mix of dark jazz, instrumental hip hop, and a raw improvised aesthetic.

Suggested by Mat

Music for motion pictures
Åbäke
Åbäke, Album (full-length)
http://itunes.apple.com/se/album/music-for-motion-pictures/id403203224

Cosy and cute. This is a soundtrack that fits all seasons of the year and I always listen to it when I travel by train!

Suggested by Lars Jönsson

Mimikry
Alva Noto and Blixa Bargeld
Raster Noton, Album (full-length)

Suggested by strunkdts

Cavalier
Antix
Iboga, Album (full-length)
http://soundcloud.com/mpdqx/sets/antix-cavalier

A buddy of mine put this CD in his Oldsmobile in the middle of the Snoqualmie National Forest at about 2am. Pitch back outside. Damp from the moisture of the forest, and smelly from the smoke of the campfire. I was in the back seat and I remember being transported by this album. It really is a trancey record. The bass feels warm, and the percussion is so nicely done and crisp. I love the different noise sweeps and use of side-chain compression. The first disk of the album plays back in the form of a Mixed set, however all of the songs are by Antix. The second disk contains single versions and remixes of the album’s songs. Check out Manta (Beckers Remix) for some good cheese. Mmmm. Cheese. It’s both smooth and crunchy at the same time. I chose this record because I really don’t think it should be missed. It is a great trance record.

Suggested by Adam

In D
Arandel
Infiné, Album (full-length)
http://www.myspace.com/arandelmusic

Got impressed by this string-techno-driven-glitch mixture… great album!!!

Suggested by flogistox

Consume, Adapt, Create
Architect
Hymen Records, Album (full-length)
http://www.hymen-records.com/all/y781.html

A perfect mix of dubtep, ebm, experimental, techno, ambient, cinematic, Daniel Myer is a master sound designer and an expert hook maker

Suggested by cooptrol cooptrol.com

Oversteps
Autechre
Warp, Album (full-length)

Old bastards don’t miss a hit in my opinion… This new full-length is brilliant!

Suggested by Gilieu

Oversteps
Autechre
Warp, Album (full-length)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vWoxs47oiE

It’s ridiculous. It’s probably one of the best albums ever. The sounds, the music, the algorithms (at least it sounds very algorithmic (in a good way), in Treale for example). I don’t know what to say really. But it feels like I’m about to rethink everything I thought I thought was important in music. Again. A good thing, i guess.

Suggested by Max Wainwright soundcloud.com/maxwainwright

As the inevitable “best music of 2010″ arrive, so, too, do complaints. Why are the lists the same? Why is an obvious choice overlooked? Why is a less-known choice overlooked?

So, it’s time again for readers to discuss. What was your favorite music of 2010? Mixes, albums, singles? Unless your favorite was recorded entirely to tape, nearly any genre and instrumentation has gone through the filter of digital recording, mixing, and mastering. Almost anything might be said, rightfully, to qualify as digital music. What were the albums that inspired you, sonically, compositionally? What were your favorite performances?

In particular, I hear regular complaints, even from people who develop music software, that electronic music lacks the element of human musical performance. Even without the criterion of virtuosity, what music challenged you? Obvious choices from major labels should not be overlooked, but so, too, should unknown netlabels and Creative Commons recordings.

Let us know, and wherever possible, do include a link to the music. You can also use our Google form below if you’d rather not just discuss, unstructured, in comments.

Direct link to the form

See also our call for the Best Music of 2010 on our sister site.

We’ll celebrate the New Year with a round-up of a few of your choices and editorial choices to go with it. Also, I hope we can get input from some record shops and curators, so if you’re in that capacity, do get in touch. It’s always a nice way to spend January, revisiting the best music of the previous year.