Tag Archives | Music

The Soviet Synthesizer That Bridged Electronic Music And The Occult

By on July 3, 2012 in News 17

Boing Boing on a bizarre, pioneering musical instrument, suppressed in its day, which built on occultist concepts and attempted to unify the senses:

You don’t play the ANS synthesizer with a keyboard. Instead you etch images onto glass sheets covered in black putty and feed them into a machine that shines light through the etchings, trigging a wide range of tones. It’s a nearly forgotten Russian synthesizer designed by Evgeny Murzin in 1938. The synth was named after and dedicated to the experimental composer and occultist Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (1872–1915).

Today it sits behind a rope at the Glinka Museum of Musical Culture, almost forgotten and seldom used. A few artists have recorded albums with it over the years, mostly notably the late occultists/electronic musicians Coil who traveled to Russia in 2002:

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Katy Perry’s “Wide Awake”: A Video About Monarch Mind Control

By on June 25, 2012 in News 42

samborowski (CC)

Here at disinformation we always enjoy a wacky critique of popular music videos and the motivation of the artists who made them, such as the Illuminati conspiracy featuring Eminem, Lady Gaga and Jay-Z. Now Vigilant Citizen ”explains” (we’re not sure if they’re serious…) how Katy Perry joins the cabal of overachieving recording artists with a video about Project Monarch mind control (a supposed offshoot of the CIA’s MKULTRA program):

Many articles on this site described how many items of popular culture conceal within their symbolism references to an unknown, horrendous practice: Monarch programming. This technique of mind control seeks to create fully “programmable” individuals and is used by the shadowy elite in fields such as the military, politics and the murky underworld (for detailed information on Monarch programming, read the article Origins and Techniques of Monarch Mind Control). Another area in which mind control (especially Monarch programming) is used is the entertainment business – not only because some celebrities are actual victims of mind control, but because entertainment is used to subtly normalize and glamorize this awful practice through symbolism.

… Read the rest

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Pop Music Getting Sadder, Longer, Slower

By on June 20, 2012 in News 14

Are the pop sounds jingling in our ears increasingly ripe with sadness and/or emotional ambiguity? So argues the Pacific Standard… although it’s impossible to decode with certainty a “meaning” of minor keys and slow tempos:

Over the past half-century, pop hits have become longer, slower and sadder, and they increasingly convey “mixed emotional cues,” according to a study just published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts.

“As the lyrics of popular music became more self-focused and negative over time, the music itself became sadder-sounding and more emotionally ambiguous,” according to psychologist E. Glenn Schellenberg and sociologist Christian von Scheve.

Analyzing Top 40 hits from the mid-1960s through the first decade of the 2000s, they find an increasing percentage of pop songs are written using minor modes.

“The present findings have striking parallels to the evolution of classical music from 1600 to 1900,” Schellenberg and von Scheve write.

… Read the rest

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Pussy Riot Facing Long Prison Sentences For Performance At Cathedral

By on June 4, 2012 in News 9

Can anyone save the world’s boldest feminist punk rockers, now that they have been unmasked and thrown in Russian jail? Is this the last stand for politically-subversive pop music? The Art Newspaper writes:

The lawyer for three members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot, who are currently awaiting trial for an allegedly blasphemous protest in Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral shortly before the election that saw Vladimir Putin returned for a third term as Russian president, says only appeals from Western celebrities and high-profile cultural figures can save them from further criminal charges and long jail sentences.

The performance infuriated the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill I, and other top church officials, who were criticised in the “punk prayer” performance which also asked the Virgin Mary to save Russia from Putin.

“The authorities must now, in essence, falsify the charges,” says Nikolai Polozov. “It’s very hard for them to back down.

… Read the rest

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The Special Scent of Age: Body Odor Gives Away Age

By on May 30, 2012 in News 4

We are all going to Hell for this. Via Science Daily:

New findings from the Monell Center reveal that humans can identify the age of other humans based on differences in body odor. Much of this ability is based on the capacity to identify odors of elderly individuals, and contrary to popular supposition, the so-called ‘old-person smell’ is rated as less intense and less unpleasant than body odors of middle-aged and young individuals.

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Google’s Moog Doodle

By on May 23, 2012 in News 2

Doodle_Quick_StartBack in 1999 when The Disinformation Company was just a couple of years old, we released a compilation CD called “Best Of Moog: Electronic Pop Hits From The 60′s & 70′s.” The project allowed us to collaborate with inventor of the Moog synthesizer (and many would say the founder of electronic music), Robert Moog, who wrote the liner notes and MC’d our release party in New York.

Bob passed away in 2005, but today Google is honoring his 78th birthday with one of its famous doodles, this time an interactive virtual Moog synth.

It’s lot of fun, check it out at Google, and for a guide to playing it, visit Moog Music’s Quick Start Guide.… Read the rest

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The Strange Story Of Nazi Jazz

By on May 22, 2012 in News 1

Nazi-propaganda-posterJazz aficionados may think they know cool jazz, bebop, hard bop, and every other style, but what about Nazi bop? Though they had already passed laws criminalizing “Jewishly gloomy lyrics”, drum and horn solos, “Negroid excesses in tempo”, and plucked bass lines, the party realized that dance music was needed to reach the masses. Via Smithsonian Magazine:

Hitler’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels’ strangest effort was the creation of that oxymoron in four-bar form: a Nazi-approved, state-sponsored hot jazz band known as Charlie and His Orchestra [headed by] Karl “Charlie” Schwedler, an employee of the German Foreign Ministry, who discovered he had a talent for crooning.

As “Charlie,” Schwedler—who at least posed as a convinced Nazi—penned lyrics that generally followed a fixed pattern. The first verse of each song would remain untouched, perhaps in the hope of luring in listeners. But the remainder of the lyrics would veer wildly into Nazi propaganda and boasts of Aryan supremacy.

… Read the rest

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Brian Eno’s Imaginary Landscapes

By on May 15, 2012 in News 1

In a short film titled Imaginary Landscapes, electronic music pioneer Brian Eno discusses the nature of boundary-pushing art — on his work as a synthesist, on the the danger of having too many options in a technologically advanced world, and on producing music that creates “imaginary landscapes” both by evoking physical locations and by purposefully mingling with the setting in which a listener is located:

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RIP Adam Yauch (AKA Beastie Boys’ MCA)

By on May 4, 2012 in News 10

The bad news via Global Grind:

Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys has passed away at the age of 47. GlobalGrind has confirmed this very sad news.

One of our heroes, Adam Yauch aka MCA of the Beastie Boys, passed away this morning after a long bout with cancer.

Yauch was a member of the groundbreaking, incredibly innovative and creative group, The Beastie Boys, with his two friends, Mike D and Ad-Roc, which changed our culture forever…

[continues at Global Grind]

For those who’d like to remember MCA in his prime, here’s Fight For Your Right (Revisited):

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