The Do It Yourself craze in the ‘70s — ie. arts and crafts, not putting out seven-inches — was partly fuelled by the middle class’ desire to save money in lousy economic times. Of course, anything you’re tinkering with these days is likely to be electronic, so Wired’s “How To” wiki site is just what these trying times ordered, whether you’re trying to save cash or just figuring out what to do with your retirement now that you can’t afford to travel, or eat non-bologna-related foodstuffs.
There’s plenty of music-related stuff, ranging from the basic (“Convert LPs into MP3s”) to the dubiously legal (“Make Custom iPhone Ringtones Without Paying Apple $2”) to the awesomely WTF (“Build Your Own ‘Iron Man’ Armor”). And of course an Iron Man suit is music-related — who other than Ghostface Killah will buy it from you on eBay?
(http://howto.wired.com)
THE WORLD IS FLAT
When Etienne Tron of DJ duo Radioclit wandered into a second-hand furniture store in London, he probably didn’t expect to meet the man Radioclit planned to record for their first artist album. But Malawi-born, UK-based singer Esau Mwamwaya won them over, not least with his reworking of M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes.” In preparation for their first disc, they’ve made a mixtape together which they’ve modestly dubbed The Very Best. You can decide for yourself, but if their crunchy rework of Vampire Weekend’s “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” isn’t the very best thing out there, it’s damn close.
(http://tinyurl.com/verybestmix, via Gorilla Vs Bear)
MP3 OF THE WEEK
Eminem, “I’m Having A Relapse”: It’s not quite what we were all hoping for. He’s got a weird, inexplicable accent, and he keeps talking about being up on murder charges. But the beat’s dope, his flow is mostly back to form and hey, it has to be good — since it looks like his leaking it last Friday singlehandedly brought down ZShare. Ah, Slim Shady, how we missed ya. (from the net)