Kutiman Broke the Internet

You LOVE this! Israeli producer Kutiman made a whole little album of YouTube mashups, and put them on this website, thru-you.com, which then CRASHED, HARD, because the entire internet wanted to hear these songs at once. Of course they did! They're in them! My favorite things about this project: 1) how talented some of these people actually turn out to be when subjected to the remix treatment, 2) that these sad earnest dudes are now famous, 3) the way he works with wonky acoustics of the original samples. Here are the rest of the songs from Thru You; they are all as poignant and attractive as the one I posted above (Hey piano people, is that a Chopin sample?) 1. Mother of All Funk Chords 2. This Is What It Became 3. I'm New (see also above) 4. Babylon Band 5. Someday 6. Wait for Me 7. Just a Lady 8. and finally a video of Kutiman explaining the project. Don't thank me—thank loyal reader Greg B.! Now, Internet, I want somebody to make a band that consists entirely of YouTube kittens playing theremins and walking across keyboards, if you would be so kind.

Evryali (Shall Be Exalted?)

Johnson's Rambler (no relation) hosts this awesome clearinghouse of YouTubed contemporary music, which, okay, you've probably seen already. I'd have to say that one composer who benefits most greatly from the A/V treatment is Iannis Xenakis, whose music is actually designed to be heard as a set of points and curves. My father the schoolteacher might say that I am a visual learner, so it does give me a greater appreciation of Xenakis's stuff to get a virtual tour of, say, his sketches for Metastasis (best viewed full screen): or the "score" for Mycenae Alpha (ditto—also, be warned, it is loud and nasty): but my favorite online Xenakimation, again thanks to the Rambler, is the side-scrollin' Evryali graph that John Mark Harris has whipped up to accompany his performance of the (literally unperformable) piece, so you can watch it roll by like player-piano music. Has anybody performed Xenakis on Disklavier? (Defeats the purpose, I know, but still interesting.) Conversely, has anybody come up with MIDIfied visual maps like this for the music of Conlon Nancarrow? Would be fascinating to see...

Incredible Shrinking Googoosh

Thanks to one of the Gregs for this amazing link. Googoosh: is there anything she can't do?