MGMT

A song on MGMT's newest album is called "Brian Eno", and, well, it's all about him. The only reason I know who Brian Eno is is because of EMAC.. So I thought it was blog appropriate to exploit my enthusiasm of hearing it. Woo!

Illegal Remixing?

The controversy that revolves around copyright infringement and music is a tricky one. I personally love Girl Talk and think that “his” music is both a lot of fun, audibly enjoyable and shows incredible talent. I don’t believe that his usage of other artist’s music in his own work is wrong, as he is only using portions of different artists’ songs and putting them together in ways that do not sound anything like the original, and is more representational of his own style. The main reason that people get so upset over the whole ordeal is because of money: people aren’t profiting from Girl Talk’s work, and therefore are not okay with it. It seems that they don’t care so much about it being like “stealing” someone else’s art, which is not fair. I also don’t think it’s fair to stop people like Girl Talk from creating music because of copyright laws. Artists should definitely have the right to make something new from something old, especially if it’s creating something completely new that sounds totally different. And hey, look at Duchamp. I don’t think the makers of his read-mades were ever given credit.

If someone wished to use my work and integrate it into their work, I would first be more than honored that someone likes my work enough to use it in theirs, and I would second be more than okay with it, as long as I am given credit. If someone used my work and claimed it as their own, I would of course not be okay with that, however I'm sure that would not be the case.
The idea of "intellectual property" is a little ridiculous, as I'm sure two people have shared the same thought. Owning a thought, and having legal rights to that thought seems kind of illogical and halts the production of more ideas.

I used to listen to Kraftwerk when I was young, never realizing how important they were in music history for the development of music. I was attracted to the strangeness of it, and how different it was than anything else at the time (as far as the musical interests of middle schoolers goes). Watching the Synth Britannia documentary opened up my eyes a little bit more, when it comes to understanding the evolution of music from instrumental to electronic and so on. Synthetic music is integrated in a good majority of modern music, so after watching that video I have made many connections with how certain sounds are made in certain songs. Many contemporary artists revolve around the whole idea of electronic music and synthetic sounds. Take the Crystal Castles that my roommate is playing right now - they're into the whole cheap 16-bit sound, integrating strange screechy synth sounds (sweet alliteration, right?). I always find this type of modern electronic music to be fun although mildly annoying at times, and definitely a step up from the 80's version of new electronic.