NONSTOP

NONSTOP from SML on Vimeo.

My homegirl Suzette (Small Medium Lee) created this small triple screen project of being on the go in NYC.
Whether by bike, train, or by airplane she get around like Tupac. (No nasty pun intended)

.. and maybe part heaven.

Murs & 9th Wonder- The Problem Is

Murs Presents His New Music Video For His Track "The Problem Is" In Collaboration With 9th Wonder, Sick Jacken And Uncle Chucc. Make Sure To Check Out His New Upcoming Cd "Fornever" With 9th Wonder Releasing March 30th! Make Sure To Support And Buy It!!

This Way feat. Median - The Tabloids

Tab-One - This Way feat. Median from BECAUSEUS on Vimeo.

Tab-One’s first video off his 2009 release, The Tabloids. Directed by Napoleon Wright III.

Minimum Wage Machine

Blake Fall-Conroy is a sculptor, for who it is important to make a social or political statement within his work. His new work-in-progress is titled Minimum Wage Machine, which actually makes you work for minimum wage.

He introduces the machine to his readers at his website:

The minimum wage machine allows anybody to work for minimum wage. Turning the crank will yield one penny every 5.04 seconds, for $7.15 an hour (NY state minimum wage). If the participant stops turning the crank, they stop receiving money. The machine’s mechanism and electronics are powered by the hand crank, and pennies are stored in a plexiglas box.

Eat. Pray. Love.

Seems pretty good. I'll have to go check this out when it hits the theaters.

Coming August 13th, 2010

Paralyzed Graffiti Artist Draws With His Eyes

Paralyzed Graffiti Artist Draws With His Eyes from StapleNews on Vimeo.

FTC "For the Ca$h" 2010 Invitational Contest

FTC "For the Ca$h" 2010 Invitational Contest from Mecky Creus on Vimeo.

Skhizein

Thanks to my great friend & Muse, LotusB, I learned of this director, Jérémy Clapin, from Paris France. Winner of the 2009 Manhattan Short Film Fevistal after submitting a short animated film about a man named Henry, who's struck by a 150-ton meteorite and has to adapt to living precisely 91 centimeters from himself.

After doing a bit of searching I was able to find the short film with subtitles on Youtube. Here's Part 1/2;





You can read his interview here.

Massan for Leader Bike

The homie Massan displaying his skills on a fixie in the concrete jungle. That last scene is crazy dangerous yo!!! He gets mad props for the back wheel foot brake method. I haven't used that technique in years.

Massan for Leader Bike from Dan Arel on Vimeo.

"NY-Z" - An ABSOLUT Collaboration with Jay-Z

ABSOLUT Vodka presents "NY-Z", a new 15-minute documentary featuring Jay-Z. The film was directed by Danny Clinch. More exclusive content at Facebook.com/ABSOLUT.

Continuing to collaborate with creative visionaries, ABSOLUT Vodka presents this new 15-minute short film featuring Jay-Z. The documentary, titled NY-Z, was directed by Danny Clinch and paints a rare portrait of the global hip-hop icon. With unprecedented access to Jay-Z the days and moments leading up to, and after, his legendary September 11th benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, Danny Clinch gives us an intimate glimpse into Jay-Z: his childhood, his motivation as an artist, his passion for music, and his muse, New York.

NY-Z kicks off the ABSOLUT Concert Series, a collaborative partnership between ABSOLUT and two New York icons: Jay-Z and Madison Square Garden.

Lyricism and Capitalism

Why having lyrics matters, even if you're only in it for the money.

XO – Blah Blah (Video)

XO - Blah Blah from KENNY BURNS on Vimeo.

BAMBU - "SLOW DOWN" FT. PROMETHEUS BROWN

Bambu: Slow Down (with Prometheus Brown of Blue Scholars) from Beatrock Music on Vimeo.

Bambu and Prometheus Brown (a.k.a. Geologic of Blue Scholars) come hard, flipping double-time rhymes on this joint off Bam's freshly released Paper Cuts EP, which dropped last week on Beatrock Music. The EP also features guest appearances from Chace Infinite of Self Scientific, Diz Gibran, Thurzday of U-N-I and Malcolm & Martin. If you're a regular 'round these parts, then Bam and Geo need no introduction. Just check the ill video, directed by Luis Ivan Garcia and featuring a gang of Filipinos holding it down at IMIX Bookstore in LA.

Downtown Calling

In the late 1970s, the “greatest city in the world” was teetering on the edge of total chaos. A failed economy, crime and en mass housing corruption gave way to a city in crisis. Yet out of the economic and social strife that held the “Big Apple” hostage, a family of homegrown cultures that would forever change the world began to emerge. Downtown Calling not only documents, in detail, the evolution of New York City’s fertile music and art subculture during this period, but how its collective output continues to play a prominent, driving role in the international fashion, art and music industries today.

Click the image to watch the trailer or click here

Brooklyn's Finest

In the course of one chaotic week, the lives of three conflicted New York City police officers are dramatically transformed by their involvement in a massive drug operation in Brooklyns Finest, a searing new crime drama from acclaimed director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day).

Burned out veteran Eddie Dugan (Golden Globe®-winner Richard Gere) is just one week away from his pension and a fishing cabin in Connecticut. Narcotics officer Sal Procida (Oscar® nominee Ethan Hawke) has discovered theres no line he wont cross to provide a better life for his long-suffering wife and seven children. And Clarence Tango Butler (Oscar® nominee Don Cheadle) has been undercover so long his loyalties have started to shift from his fellow police officers to his prison buddy Caz (Wesley Snipes), one of Brooklyns most infamous drug dealers. With personal and work pressures bearing down on them, each man faces daily tests of judgment and honor in one of the worlds most difficult jobs.

When NYPDs Operation Clean Up targets the notoriously drug-ridden BK housing project, all three officers find themselves swept away by the violence and corruption of Brooklyns gritty 65th Precinct and its most treacherous criminals. During seven fateful days, Eddie, Sal and Tango find themselves hurtling inextricably toward the same fatal crime scene and a shattering collision with destiny.

The film captures the volatile and deadly world of one of New Yorks most dangerous precincts through the eyes of the men and women pledged to protect and serve, as they face the wrenching choices that make them Brooklyns Finest.

Icon A5

The Icon A5. An amphibious light sport aircraft that you can park in the garage thanks to its folding wings. The carbon-fiber airframe on this little two-seater is lighter than aluminum and stronger too! Which you’ll appreciate when you plow through a flock of geese. The 100 hp engine tops out at around 120 mph and will haul you and a passenger up to 10,000 feet and as far as 350 miles on one tank. When you’re ready to land, you can put her down on solid ground or water. All that’s left to do is fold it up and tow it home.

Check out the website.

Flutebox

The UK's premier beatboxers performing live at the Google offices in London.



I have one word for this, "DOPE!!!"

Shipping Container City

There's an entire city of made out of recycled shipping containers which recently sprang up about two hours outside of Mexico City. Along with a few residential apartments, the eco-friendly Container City houses restaurants, bars, shops, art galleries, and an open public area with ping pong tables. I want to live there! (Note: There’s also a Container City in London. As far as I can tell, they’re similar, but unrelated.) More images after the jump.











A clip from History Channel’s Modern Marvels about London’s Container City:

Solar P-Flip by Dexim

Dexim has launched five new accessories for use with iPod, iPhone and the BlackBerry at CES 2010. One of the more intelligent offers are solar P-Flip. It can be flipped vertically or horizontally for hands-free viewing and can extend talk time up to eight hours.

Unique design of P-flip allows it easy to fold, carry and charge and it provides efficient charging capabilities using green solar power. It owns a 2000mAh lithium polymer battery that provides for eight hours of talk time, 15 hours for video or games, or 60 hours of music. Holders of this desktop also allows you to charge and sync and can be used as a back-up battery for games and video.

Solar P-Flip is expected to be released in a few months and should retail for USD79.90.




Story brought to you by Solar Lighting Guide

Music with Buttons

I thought this was pretty dope. A couple guys from my hometown (San Francisco) making noise in the Hip Hop community.Creating sounds with buttons. All one shot sounds. No loops running. 64 buttons. 64 noises. Let's get it son!!!

Mos Def challenges...

I'd put my last dime on Mos Def. Lil Wayne would get chewed the fuck up. Trust.

Jern Eye - Vision, Part 1

My boy Jern Eye presenting the first part in a new series that gives fans the intimate details of a typical day in his life. This is his sophomore album, Vision, which features production from !llmind, Jake One, Keelay & Zaire, DJ Vinroc, Def Supreme, Phil Jahns, and Artek, and collaborations with artists like Cali Agents, Mistah F.A.B., Zion I, Guilty Simpson, Nightclubber Lang, and more.

Jern Eye on facebook
Jern Eye on MySpace
Jern Eye - Vision on iTunes

Black Star. History.

Mos Def – History f. Talib Kweli (video) from Black Sheep on Vimeo.

Muhsinah - The Oscillations:Triangle

Muhsinah - The Oscillations: Triangle on iTunes

The Loudness Wars: Why Music Sounds Worse

Christopher Clark graphed the peak levels of and RMS levels of three hit songs a year over the past three decades. This image links to a PDF of his full poster, "A Visual History Of Loudness."

As we come to the end of the decade, we turn to one of the more dramatic changes we've heard in music over those 10 years: It seems to have gotten louder.

We're talking about compression here, the dynamic compression that's used a lot in popular music. There's actually another kind of compression going on today — one that allows us to carry hundreds of songs in our iPods. More on that in a minute.

But first, host Robert Siegel talked to Bob Ludwig, a record mastering engineer. For more than 40 years, he's been the final ear in the audio chain for albums running from Jimi Hendrix to Radiohead, from Tony Bennett to Kronos Quartet.

Bob pointed to a YouTube video titled The Loudness War. The video uses Paul McCartney's 1989 song "Figure of Eight" as an example, comparing its original recording with what a modern engineer might do with it.

"It really no longer sounds like a snare drum with a very sharp attack," Ludwig says. "It sounds more like somebody padding on a piece of leather or something like that," Ludwig says. He's referring to the practice of using compressors to squash the music, making the quiet parts louder and the loud parts a little quieter, so it jumps out of your radio or iPod.

Ludwig says the "Loudness War" came to a head last year with the release of Metallica's album Death Magnetic.

"It came out simultaneously to the fans as [a version on] Guitar Hero and the final CD," Ludwig says. "And the Guitar Hero doesn't have all the digital domain compression that the CD had. So the fans were able to hear what it could have been before this compression."

According to Ludwig, 10,000 or more fans signed an online petition to get the band to remix the record.

"That record is so loud that there is an outfit in Europe called ITU [International Telecommunication Union] that now has standardization measurements for long-term loudness," he says. "And that Metallica record is one of the loudest records ever produced."

Old News

"The 'Loudness Wars' have gone back to the days of 45s," Ludwig says. "When I first got into the business and was doing a lot of vinyl disc cutting, one producer after another just wanted to have his 45 sound louder than the next guy's so that when the program director at the Top 40 radio station was going through his stack of 45s to decide which two or three he was going to add that week, that the record would kind of jump out to the program director, aurally at least."

That's still a motivation for some producers. If their record jumps out of your iPod compared with the song that preceded it, then they've accomplished their goal.

Bob Ludwig thinks that's an unfortunate development.

"People talk about downloads hurting record sales," Ludwig says. "I and some other people would submit that another thing that is hurting record sales these days is the fact that they are so compressed that the ear just gets tired of it. When you're through listening to a whole album of this highly compressed music, your ear is fatigued. You may have enjoyed the music but you don't really feel like going back and listening to it again."

Ludwig's final assessment of the decade in music?

"It's been really rough, folks," he says. "But it can get better and I think it will get better. I'm glad it's going to be over."

Digital Compression

Digital compression is the process that allows a song to go from being a very big sound file in its natural state to a very small file in your iPod — so you can carry your entire record library in your pocket. But at what cost?

Dr. Andrew Oxenham is a professor in the psychology department at the University of Minnesota. His specialty is auditory perception — how our brains and ears interact. He also started out as a recording engineer.

Robert Siegel asked him to explain digital compression.

"Really, the challenge is to maintain the quality of a CD, but to stuff it into a much smaller space," Oxenham says. "Let's think about how digital recording works. You start out with a very smooth sound wave and we're trying to store that in digital form. So we're really trying to reproduce a smooth curve [with] these square blocks, which are the digital numbers [the 1s and 0s that are used to encode sound digitally].

"Now, the only way you can make square blocks look like a smooth curve is by using very, very small blocks so it ends up looking as if it's smooth. Now using lots and lots of blocks means lots of storage, so we end up using [fewer] bigger blocks. Which means we end up not representing that curve very smoothly at all."

Lost? Go back and re-read it — you'll get it.

"The difference between the smooth curve and the rough edges you end up with in the digital recording, you can think of as noise because that is perceived as noise," Oxenham says. "It's perceived as an error, something that wasn't there in the original recording. The trick is to take the noise — which is the loss of fidelity — and just make it so you can't hear it anymore."

In Hiding

It's called "masking." Think of it this way: You're having a conversation in a quiet room, and you can hear every word, every mouth noise, every stomach rumble. But if you were having that same conversation outside on a busy street, you'd get the gist of what was said, but you'd probably miss a few words. The traffic noise would mask them.

So let's say you're listening to a Brahms symphony.

"[The loud parts of the music are] giving the coding system a lot of leeway to code things not quite as accurately as it would have to," Oxenham says, "because the ear is being stimulated so much by the loud sound it won't pick up very small variations produced by the coding errors."

In other words, the loud parts of a recording are used to "mask," or hide that noise produced by the rough-edged squares of those digital 1s and 0s.

But are we missing something?

"There are really different levels of MP3 coding," Oxenham says. "You can go from much less data — which people can hear the difference — to higher levels of coding which take up more space on your MP3 player but sound better and are basically indistinguishable from a CD. And I would argue that under proper listening conditions — if it's really indistinguishable from the CD as far as your ear is concerned — then you really haven't lost anything perceptually."

Oxenham likes the convenience of portable MP3 players. But ultimately, he says, he prefers going to concerts.

View story here - NPR News