David Holmes

"Passenger" is a 28 minute audiovisual work created by musician Julien Mier and VJ Daan Kars. Featuring vocals by Zefora, with violin and contrabass recordings by Myrthe van de Weetering (see website for links to all artists).

Passenger tells the story of the liquid matter transforming into the physical in which humanity is able to manifest itself. As time passes by the physical is bound to disintegrate. We are all passengers in time.

The piece glides seamlessly through nine compositions starting gently and progressing rhythmically as scenes shift between organic natural environments and man-made ones. The effect is to transport you as a passenger through discreet moments of natural calm and bursts of urban motion. Shimmering windows of fragmented worldly images slide across the surface of a constantly reconstructing musical undercurrent. The fluid themes, punctuated by electronic pulses and pauses, form into recognisable patterns and momentary pools of clarity, that are quickly carried away again in the creative stream.

This is the first release on the new Born Digital netlabel, which is part of the Born Digital electronic art assembly and production house based in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Complete free download available from the Internet Archive under CC license.

Via Invisible Agent

Shuush is a web-based Twitter client that allows you to focus attention on the people that tweet less frequently.

Twitter users are assigned a frequency level of 1-11, calculated as a function of how many tweets per day each user has averaged since joining.

A simple on/off switch allows you to flip between normal and amplified views, the latter giving a visual boost in text size to those infrequent but valuable tweets that often get lost in the firehose. The updates of less active tweeters are scaled up whilst more active tweeters are scaled down, making it easy to retrospectively scan the tweetstream of people you are following for those rarer communications.

This is a really useful tool, for dialling down the level of frequent updates and surfacing the missed messages, to achieve the balance that Twitter currently lacks. It would be great to have a way of doing this with hashtags too.

Official video for the "The Architekt" by US band Arms and Sleepers. Directed by DJ and filmmaker Ben Andrews.

Max Lewis and Mirza Rami formed the band in 2006 and have gone on to create several albums/EPs of beautifully crafted ambient/trip-hop music.

The duo have started a new project called In The Empire Of Builders:

The sole purpose of this project/organization will be to raise money through various programs for groups and individuals in need of aid (financial or otherwise)... Our first fundraising campaign is called MUSIC AGAINST HUNGER, with the goal of raising $10,000 through various music events and projects.

For ways to participate and learn more please read.

http://wearearmsandsleepers.blogspot.com/

http://www.facebook.com/armsandsleepers

http://twitter.com/armsandsleepers

http://www.youtube.com/user/armsandsleepers

Arms and Sleepers on Spotify.

'Upular' - a new mashup track from Australian electronic music artist Pogo, composed using chords, bass notes and vocal samples from the Disney Pixar film 'Up'. More Pogo video tracks via http://www.youtube.com/user/Fagottron

Merry Christmas!

This 'Split LP' is a five track, instrumental post-rock release from Australian bands Sleepmakeswaves (Sydney) and Tangled Thoughts of Leaving (Perth).

'Keep Your Splendid Silent Sun' 06:19 - Sleepmakeswaves

'We Sing The Body Electric' 05:23 - Sleepmakeswaves

'This Is How We Remember (Secret Robot)' 06:49 - Sleepmakeswaves

'A Vexing Predicament' 03:22 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving

'The World Is A Deaf Machine' 15:13 - Tangled Thoughts of Leaving

Although both bands are musically quite different the respective recordings are nicely balanced and complementary. Each offering anthemic and emotive excursions into experimental rock landscapes, with gutsy guitars churning out crunching metal mantras over driving drum and bass rhythms. Epic themes are entwined with more delicate piano and guitar melodies, ranging through ethereal ambient spaces, jazz inspired improvisations and dynamic freeform passages exploding with tribal energies. The track titles are interesting and evocative too.

"Sycamore Cowboys" - a mashup by Colatron for the Mashed in Plastic project. Merging Little Jimmy Scott: "Sycamore Trees" (from the Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me soundtrack) and Portishead: "Cowboys"

Video by The Reborn Identity - more MiP videos available via the Vimeo Channel and YouTube Channel

Songs from the Bar of Lost Souls is a 5 track EP by independent UK band Hope and Social. The tracks were written, recorded and mixed in 5 days and created as part of the imitating the dog theatre piece Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls. Available as digital download for whatever you want to pay.

There's a raw and live sound to these tracks that makes you feel like you're in the same room as the band, sharing something honest and real. You can see how this fast recording method works via their YouTube Channel.

Band member Rich Huxley shares his insights on what true independence can do for a band's career in a recent post on the Creative Deconstruction website titled The Declarations of Independents. The article provides information about the social strategies, ideas and tools used by the band to connect with fans, both online and off.

Social Connections

http://band.to/hopeandsocial - Hope and Social Page address on Facebook

Tweets - Twitter search for all band member messages.

http://www.myspace.com/hopeandsocial

http://www.last.fm/music/Hope+and+Social

For more music and info check out the links at the top of this post.

FeedUps is an online feed aggregator for news about Web 2.0 tools and services. It provides a one-stop resource for quickly scanning 18 popular sites focusing on Web startups and applications.