Taking a departure from our typical musician interview, we visited the headquarters of Neff Headwear to see exactly what their clothing line had to do with the music community.  As we found out, they have quite a bit to do with the music world, including major involvement with the hip hop community and MTV (I know, I know…they barely qualify as music television anymore, but like it or not, MTV still plays a big role in defining pop culture, including broad musical tastes).

Neff Headwear is certainly not the first clothing label to have teamed up with members of the music community, nor will they be the last; however, in industries that can seem too serious at times, one can argue that Neff is having the most fun.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Music used in this video:  “Monsoon” by Delorean (used with permission from Mushroom Pillow Records)

To find out more about this amazing group:  http://www.myspace.com/deloreandanz

To preorder Delorean’s new album: http://www.matadorrecords.com/store/index.php?catalog_id=488

One of Sony’s biggest productions ever, the musical score to God of War III covered hours of orchestral and choral recording at Skywalker Sound and remotely in Prague. This video gives a behind the scenes look at how the process worked, from theme concepts to MIDI mockups to final product.

Via wired.com

Ever heard an advertisement without music? Negative. Music is an integral part of the advertising industry. We aim to give you insights into some of the trends music is following in the advertising realm. This page is here to explore how artists are dealing with this aspect of the industry. How are musicians using advertising to promote their music? How are they using it to make money with their music? You know you want to know what we know….

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Fellow motorcade audio member, Rob, introduced us to this magical & musical Carl Sagan tribute, made using audio samples & footage from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and Stephen Hawking’s Universe series. This work of re-mixed scientific genius was created by John Boswell of Colorpulse Music. Sure, it takes advantage of the growing “auto-tune-everything” movement, but it is put together so wonderfully that I feel that it deserves mention. Thanks for the memories Carl!

In the future, all our auditory enjoyment will be created by one (or maybe a combination) of three parties: robots, Asian video game makers, or 8-year-old Guitar Hero prodigies

Video games are becoming a major player in the music industry.  The obvious culprits are games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero, which revolutionized the marriage between the music and video games industries.  Dig a little deeper and you find games like Tony Hawk Pro Skater, which helped usher in an era in which underground music was used as a soundtrack for a video game.  Go further and you have games like the Call of Duty franchises, which have stepped up to such a level of cinematic quality that the most recent game in the franchise has signed Academy Award winning composer Hans Zimmer (Gladiator, The Dark Knight, etc.) to scoring duties.

On all levels, the merger between the video game and music industries is growing strong and stronger.  Music + Video Games explores this merger and the future impact it will have on both the industry and the artists.

Yes, that is a sewing pattern for hammer pants and yes, Kim Kardashian is wearing pants made from said pattern.

The Beatles helped popularize long hair for men and MC Hammer convinced an entire generation to accept parachute pants.  For better or for worse, fashion is, in many ways, the visual representation of music.  Artists have long used fashion as a means of visual definition and self-branding.  Music + Fashion explores the relationship between the music and fashion industries to see how one truly affects the other.

There are certain landmarks that attract music lovers – Woodstock, Liverpool, Graceland – all worthy historic pilgrimage sites. There are lesser-known sonic shrines around the world, and the Audium is one of them. One could easily describe the Audium as a temple, built to exacting specifications for a special purpose, and then open for the faithful to come and experience. It is truly one-of-a-kind, a “theater of sound-sculptured space”. It is an institution that has been a part of the San Francisco music scene for over 40 years, the brainchild of composer Stan Shaff and equipment designer Doug McEachern.

Some time ago, I read an article about the Audium in a music magazine, and I was fascinated with the description of its design – 176 speakers, installed in a space with sloping walls, a floating floor and suspended ceiling, where listeners sit in concentric circles while the program is performed live at a special console. This is not your typical home theater 5.1 surround sound system, this is immersion. For me, that description was enough to make me search it out while in the Bay Area and finally attend a performance last month.

Despite its sophisticated design, surprisingly, the speakers in your home are likely to have “higher fidelity” than many in the Audium. Stan Shaff, the composer and performer of the Audium spoke with me after the show and explained that he was less concerned with each speaker perfectly reproducing the entire spectrum of sound than he was in exploiting their natural character, limited as it may be. There are speakers of varying types and sizes around, above and below you. Their differences are what give depth and variety to the sound being played, in addition to their spatial position.

After waiting in the “sonic gallery” and a brief introduction by Stan Shaff, we were led down a winding labyrinth that served as a sound and light trap before entering the “inner sanctum” of the Audium itself. Looking around, one might feel they had wandered onto the set of “2001: A Space Odyssey” – the closest example I could imagine to describe the architectural style surrounding me. Finding a seat in the dim lights, I settled in, aware of my fellow audience members for only a moment before the lights very slowly faded to absolute blackness. Among the many unique qualities of listening to a performance at the Audium, I was struck by how effective the total darkness was at modifying my sensory experience. The slightest glow of muted arrows on the floor leading to the exit were all I could see. Rather than having to close my eyes, as many people might do to close out distractions at a concert, I was staring into the blackness with my eyes open the entire time.

What followed can be only poorly described in words – it is simply best experienced in person. In the darkness, sounds, textures, voices, music and more appeared from the void and floated in space around me. The sensation was so visceral that I couldn’t help but imagine the sounds physically manifesting, and sometimes I had to resist the urge to reach out and feel for their source. As the program described, “the Audium is the only theatre anywhere constructed specifically for sound movement, utilizing the entire environment as a compositional tool.” Unlike a typical movie theater experience, where the sound has been created in a studio somewhere else and is played back to approximate the original intent of the creator, the Audium itself is the instrument, and only there could the composition be accurately conveyed. The sounds being performed are sculpted in real-time “through their movement, direction, speed, and intensity on multiple planes of space.” Thus I found myself experiencing a performance totally unique to myself, in that exact time and place. No two performances are the same, though the audio sources have been designed and arranged on tape ahead of time as part of a specific compositional “edition”. For someone used to creating and listening to obsessively-polished and identically-replicated recordings, this was an organic soundscape, being formed by someone’s hands while it was revealed to me. The sonic samples, while possibly a bit dated to modern ears, were a surprising and eclectic mix of noises, songs, instruments, and voices that altogether had the uncanny effect of being in a lucid dream or blind hallucination. More than once I lost all sense of time and even forgot I was in the Audium at all.

Afterwards, Stan was available to answer our questions and elaborate on the design and history of the Audium. His journey began in the 1950′s, exploring the dimensional connection between music and the space it inhabits. A detailed chronology is available on the Audium website (www.audium.org). There are few music shows still around today that can claim such a long, continuous run of performances. There are even fewer that have been conceived, created, and realized as a living experiment in the human perception of sound and music.

“I have always been possessed by the evocative qualities all sounds seem to have, whether natural or electronic. Sounds touch deeper levels of our inner life, layers that lie just beneath the visual world. All sounds are communicative sound as birth, life and death; sound as time and space; sound as object, environment or event. Audiences should feel sound as it bumps up against them, caresses, travels through, covers and enfolds them. I ask listeners to see with their ears and feel with their bodies sounds as images, dreams and memories. As people walk into a work, they become part of its realization. From entrance to exit, AUDIUM is a sound-space continuum.”  - Stan Shaff, Composer

Moby starts an old school punk band with teenage craigslist recruits…and then gets kicked out of his own band. I guess the fact that I’ve listened to the bands he cites means that I’m getting old. Whether you love Moby or hate Moby, I think this video is pretty entertaining … and telling.

Maybe Axl should consider bringing back the biker shorts.

After 15 years and a reported $13 million in production costs, Billboard announced that Guns N’ Roses “Chinese Democracy” will be released before the end of the year, on Nov. 23. Click here to see the billboard article.

So I guess everyone really will get a Dr. Pepper! That’s if the album actually does see the light of day.