music

Biophilia - Björk's app-based music album - is a curious experience. Among the different app, the one that caught my eyes is certainly "Crystalline" (which corresponds to the first single off the new album) made by Scott Snibbe.

From a musical standpoint, the song is played with Gameleste, an iPad-controllable mix of Gamelan Celeste hybrid that makes sweet xylophone organ box sounds. On top of which she sings the following lyrics:

"underneath our feet, crystals growing like plants/ listen how they grow/ I’m blinded by the light/ listen how they grow/ in the core of the earth/ listen how they grow/ crystalline internal nebula/ crystalline/ rocks growing slow more/ crystalline/ I conquer claustrophobia/ crystalline/ and demand the light."

Now, about the app, it's a bit like a REZ/Katamari Damacy cross-over. It's basically like a rail shooter except that you don't kill targeted enemies. Instead, your avatar, a tiny crystal, travel along a predetermined path through mines in which you can collect other kinds of crystal. You just have to tilt the iOS device to catch them:

By aggregating new material, basically unlock new colorful tunnels in which you can progress. Each of them correspond to different music modules. The result is a quite immersive experience that allow listeners to discover their own music arrangements.

As discussed on evolver.fm:

France has just released its order behind the “music card” as the public policy to accompany the so called “legal offering measures” for its three strikes approach to copyright infringement (HADOPI).

In a nutshell, I was deeply shocked by its implementation details. Not that I actually expected much out of it (Hey, it’s HADOPI related !), but sometimes you think / hope things can’t fail 100% of the time. Well, I hate to say but it’s actually much much worse than I expected (i.e., really ugly)

Basically I have three major point :

1. Discrimination : The card is reserved for “youngsters” aged 12 to 25. Read : if you’re below 12 you should go ahead and figure out why you don’t belong to that category and consequently look for alternative options in the darknet or eventually consider filing a complaint for abusive age discrimination (something their parents should do given their young age). Likewise, up to 25 you should feel you belong to one of four stigmatized categories of youngsters as advertised in their ridiculous communication campaign videos : Rap / Electro / Rock and a Fashion junkie. Left me speechless!
2. Inequality : The number of cards is maxed out at 1 M units per year! France has the largest population in Europe (65 M people) out of which (sorry I don’t have the breakdown for the age category 12-25 at hand, but…) I can reasonably assume there are much more than 1 M “youngsters” concerned, and by far. Moreover apparently this will be on a first come first served basis without actual age checking (self declaration based on honor).
3. Exclusion : at a time when we’re talking about eInclusion and how to prevent exclusion, this initiative will only serve a handful of people excluding all the others. This is particularly corrosive considering it is instrumented by governments through public policies that cost actual hard worked tax payer dollars. But they are only buying themselves some good conscience, trying to legitimate their HADOPI law.

At the end of the day, there goes 50 M€ of public money down the drain through a public policy generating potential discrimination, exclusion and inequality. What a mess ! Adding up the public money spend through the years with DADVSI, HADOPI and this latest joke / waste of public policy, I just cannot refrain thinking it would have been much better spent educating our kids at school on these issue and others related to living in the Digital Age ! This has become as important as learning to read, write and count.

As requested on Twitter here are links to the Lift Asia 09 music composed by Fabian Kalker, a Berlin based Producer / Sound-designer.

Serious fun! - Anthem
Serious fun! - Theme Song

feel free to download them (right click to download), with compliments from Lift Team!

Fabian Kalker is currently living and working in Berlin, he is a freelance composer for A/V media,
writes music for movie-commercials, online content and theatremusic. He produces pop and electro music with his project One Shot Orchesta, the latest record for the swiss undergound hiphop Artist Kutti MC entered the Top 50 Swiss Album Charts. He freelances for the renowned company Native Instruments.
For more information, please visit www.fabiankalker.com

The Lift music is composed by (my old friend, we studied together and even played live at the 1997 Bal HEC...) Lucas Grolleau since 2007. It has since toured the world in our animations, videos, and now maybe in your ipods where you might have downloaded the songs. Lucas just released his first album with his band Lucky Joy, check it out it is worth the 13$ from beginning to end!