“Nyc” (Used 7 times)

Following up on last week's announcement that The Echo Nest has indexed the Free Music Archive catalog, Mike Adler put together an open source hack to demonstrate one of the myriad possibilities when this most incredible music intelligence platform is applied to the finest collection of free music.

The demo lets you search for any artist in the universe that Echo Nest knows about, and returns similar results from within the Free Music Archive's catalog in an HTML5 audio player. Go ahead and try it out. This is an incredibly powerful music discovery tool, though it's just the start of what we can build together. Sign up for API keys at the FMA and The Echo Nest to begin tinkering with our demo hack.

Next week, we're holding a Hack Day as part of WFMU's Radiovision Festival: Sunday October 30th we will "Re-invent Radio" with The Echo Nest, the Free Music Archive, and Zeega's new HTML5 platform for digital storytellers. There'll be workshops on Musical Timelines, Hacking Physical Spaces, and Multimedia Mash-ups, so plenty of opportunity to participate in the hands-on making of stuff whether or not you've got the proverbial coder's neckbeard. The Radiovision Festival takes place atop WFMU's annual Record Fair at NYC's Metropolitan Pavilion (125 W. 18th St), and Hack Day is free with RecFair admission as long as you reserve a spot in advance.

I saw 'em explode once.  So did many others.  It was a sold-out show.  May of '09.  Opening for a reunited Chrome Cranks.  Glasslands: place is packed with good-time misanthropes ready for a prime piece.  Foursome lurks onstage, nary an introduction.  Ratchets volume up to red levels.  Volleys out waves of great, green ugly noise.  It laps at the shore of the crowd for all of four songs.  Then Ryan Skeleton Boy whips his bass at a wall, the other two gents drop their guitars, and drummer and all stalk to a dark corner offstage admist a glorious feedback serenade.

"I had people tell me that was our best show," says guitarist/vocalist Kristian Brenchley.  "It was a lotta fun."

Fun, sure.  Memorable, yeah.  Volatile, you bet.  A stellar display.

And an atypical one.  Because beyond premature explosions and mere volatility, the band is actually a sort of machine -- a black paisley mash of Aussie dark-day rock (Scientists, feedtime), '80s Midwestern knuckle-drag (Drunks with Guns, first Vertigo 45) and LES dirt (Pussy Galore).  Their din's bent by the metallic thud of Skeleton Boy's bass, tangled up in a caustic two-way guitar cacaphony of Brenchley and Brett Schultz, grounded -- but just barely -- by Alex Velasquez's thudding drum.  When they're not tossing instruments at concrete walls, when they're just as focused as they are loud and unhinged, WOMAN are probably one of the better bands in the NYC area.  Largely because they dare to keep this area scummy.  Or at least celebrate when it once was.

As evinced by "When the Wheel's Red," culled from their self-titled LP on Bang! Records (2009), this foursome means it.  And they're currently recording tracks for their follow-up album, which, judging from their live show, is going to be a good one.  

Speaking of the live show, these gents are heading to Yurp in October.  Be sure to catch 'em, because since vocalist/guitarist Schultz moved to Mexico City, they don't play as often as they once did.  There's no telling when they might finally explode for good.  Go forth:

"WFMU-YOU GOT IT!" sung Anamanaguchi's Peter Berkman on their improvised WFMU jingle last Sunday for Beastin the Airwaves with Keili. The chiptune-punk quartet's 10-song set (including the jingle, plus a bonus Wavves cover!) of hyper-active and insanely tunes is now part of Anamanaguchi's FMA Profile.

Anamanaguchi integrate traditional rock instruments--drums, bass, and guitar--with the soundchips from early video game systems (in this case, a hacked NES from 1985) that make Chip Music unique. And with innovative releases like the immersive Dawn Metropolis and a new album in the works, they've taken the scene to new heights.

Once an underground phenomenon, chip's growing popularity could be tied in with nostalgia-fueled extended adolescence of today's Millennial Generation. Yet for the members of Anamanaguchi, video games were not the sole influence on their music as "a lot of influences come from stranger stuff," Peter Berkman said in a 2009 A.V. Club interview, "...just absurd stuff." And a simple listen to the range of chip-inspired music here on the FMA -- resources like True Chip Til Death, and the ever-expanding Blip Festival -- is enough proof to show that the genre of the new millennium will be infecting young minds well into the future.

There are certainly enough Anamanaguchi fans to sell out their upcoming shows at at Philadelphia's North Star Bar Thursday July 21 and the Music Hall of Williamsburg this Friday July 22. Get tickets while they are still available, and in the meantime, listen to this incredible live recording, engineered/mastered by Ernie Inradat here.