Music

10 Reasons to be Excited About Pop Culture This Fall

There are just four months and change left to 2012 — and even if we don’t get destroyed by a solar Maya neutrino asteroid, we’ll still end the year with a bang. The final third of 2012 is going to be an exciting time to be a science fiction and fantasy lover — with tons…

Watch the composer from Blade Runner and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos have a synthesizer freakout

The measured electronic music of Vangelis evokes C-beams glittering in the dark near Tannhäuser Gate, but the famed composer was just as enjoyable when he was improvising. Here are approximately seven minutes of the musician wigging out on Spanish television in 1982. I wish Sagan was there to wax galactic over this jam. Those of…

Like Rdio? It just added 3 million new songs to the service (now 18 million songs total). [Billboard]

The Science of Music Shows Why It’s a Drug That Feels So Good

AsapScience took a look at how music effects humans and it’s not unlike a drug: your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, your brain gets into a tizzy and that all important dopamine (the thing that makes you feel good) gets released into your body. Listening to music chemically alters our body. Listening to music…

The perfect song for a crashed computer

We love this new tune about drunk computers from Futureboy 5000, a DJ who mashes up old science fiction with newfangled beats. And yes, that is a very strange Michael Jackson impersonator playing the role of the drunk computer’s brain. Take a break, plug in your earbuds, and groove to the beat of space computer…

These Android Music Apps Could Keep You From Getting Run Over by a Car

Last week, we took a look at iOS apps that keep you aware of your surroundings as you listen to music through headphones, and found a fairly healthy selection to choose from on Apple’s mobile platform. These apps either allow you to hear surrounding noises while listening to music through your phone’s or headphone’s microphone,…

Teenagers Listen to More Music on YouTube Than Anywhere Else

A new report from Nielsen on music consumption habits is packed with loads of surprises about the young consumers of the world. In the last year, only 50-percent of teenagers actually bothered to buy a CD. Who knew? But the more significant news is that 64-percent of teens listen to music on YouTube. It’s important…

The Flaming Lips’ Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots musical is coming this November

The Flaming Lips’ 2002 concept album Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots happens to be a personal favorite of ours. And from November 6 to December 16, a musical version of this trippy LP will hit San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse. Here’s the synopsis of this show, which is helmed by Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne…

Do You Use Your Phone As Your MP3 Player?

I had a dumbphone for a long time, so when I finally got a smartphone, one of the big things I was excited about was using it as an mp3 player. “One less thing to cram in my pockets!” thought I, and I just assumed everyone else felt the same way. Any trimming I had…

Digital DJs Can Say Goodbye to Wires Forever

Unless you’re incredibly organized, it’s highly likely that you have different music tracks dotted around different devices, which can turn digital DJing from a celebration of music to a mess of jumbled cables quicker than you can shout “tune”. Pioneer’s new digital decks, however, swap wires for Wi-Fi. The new XDJ-AERO, you see, can suck…

The Chemical Brothers turn Olympic cycling into Tron

For the 2012 Olympics, British electronic stalwarts The Chemical Brothers composed “Velodrome,” a theme song (unsurprisingly) for London’s sweeping Hopkins Velodrome. And between each of the velodrome’s sessions, design firm Crystal CG International has created a music video depicting a race between two Tron-like cyclists. And in earlier Olympic geekery, see Dario Argento’s Suspiria by…

Spotify is now available in the Amazon App Store, meaning Kindle Fire owners can get in on the action. [Amazon]

The 1978 Doctor Who disco theme is pure hot fire

Almost every single science fiction theme that exists has received some manner of brain-detonating dancefloor remix, but one-hit wonder Mankind’s reworking of the Doctor Who theme in 1978 was actually solid. Pair it with “Doctorin’ the TARDIS” next time you invite some Ice Warriors over for, uh, Ice Warrior food. BONUS #1: “Doctor in Distress,”…

You Can Livestream All of Lolapalooza This Weekend

The Lolapalooza music festival is officially underway in Chicago, but you can catch the whole event at home because it will be livestreamed all weekend on YouTube. If you’ve got some down time why not tune in and catch some jams from the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Black Keys, Jack White, and…

Iggy Pop’s entire Star Trek acting career, in under 3 minutes

In the 1970s, beanpole rock legend Iggy Pop provided animalistic shrieks for his band The Stooges, whipped his genitalia out, and rolled around in broken glass and bloody peanut butter. And in 1997, Pop would guest-star on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine at the request of DS9 bigwig Ira Steven Behr (below). Pop’s role? Yelgrun,…

Amazon Cloud Player Will Upgrade All the Horrible Quality MP3s You Throw at It

Amazon’s Cloud Player has always been able to take your crappy old MP3s and stream them to any device with access to the S3 cloud, but now Amazon has an added perk for users: they’ll upgrade any low bitrate files you upload to 256kbps quality. Additionally, Amazon Cloud Player can scan your music library and…

Androids Can Funnel Spotify’s Free Radio Now

Good news for Android users who’ve had to stare with envy at their iOS counterparts enjoying free Spotify radio on their iPhones and iPads for the past month. The Android Spotify app has been updated to include the free radio streaming and is now available on the Google play store. Go get it. https://gizmodo.com/spotify-is-now-free-on-the-iphone-and-ipad-sort-of-5919500 The…

Prince “Alter Ego” Scans

The opening page. Prince is back in Minneapolis! Alert the citizenry! Prince rides a purple motorcycle, which later gets blown up after a dramatic motorcycle chase sequence with Gemini. There is music in Minneapolis, and only Prince can hear it. Is that Lake Minnetonka? You probably have to take your clothes off before Prince will…

Today’s pop music really does all sound the same — and science can prove it

Music snobs, take heed. Detailed analysis of songs produced between 1955 and 2010 confirms what you’ve always known in your heart to be true: modern pop music really has gotten louder, and it all sounds exactly the same. All aboard the train to smug-town! Your vindication comes in the form of a peer-reviewed study, published…

Prince, the Great Unsung Fantasy Storyteller

Prince may call himself the Purple Yoda — but when he tries to tell a sweeping, transformative story, he always reaches for fantasy, not science fiction. Prince’s career is littered with weird little magical adventures, and it might even be fair to call him the Tolkien of funk. (Or maybe, just the Purple Hobbit.) Don’t…