This is fantastic, and a sound I've obsessed about the history of before: Fairlight Orchestral Stab 5, aka ORCH5. A paper that traces its history.

"A toolbox for algorithmic remixing, after Echo Nest Remix." Oh, hello. And, wonderful as remix was, the fact this is _local_ feels exciting.

Merged together in the way that makes most coherent sense: using the start/end of the longest track as the markers to stretch the others to; turning rubato in performance into what sounds like granular synthesis, almost. Good write-up, too: the more I listen to this, the more thoughtful it gets.

"Driven by my devotion for vinyls and analog processes (perhaps a bit of Dj wannabe too), and emulating the audio tape cut&paste technique, I tried to make the vinyl sampling a bit more analog – literally cut and paste pieces of vinyl to create samples." Cut & Paste with physical vinyl; bonus points for excellent Delia Derbyshire video.

"I’m not saying that a book that makes you cry is a great book. It would be a wonderful criterion if only it worked, but alas it admits effective sentimentality, the knee-jerk/heart-string stimulus. For instance, a lot of us cry when reading of the death of an animal in a story — which in itself is interesting and significant, as if we give ourselves permission to weep the lesser tears — but that is something else and less. A book that makes me cry the way music can or tragedy can – deep tears, the tears that come of accepting as my own the grief there is in the world — must have something of greatness about it."

More comprehensive notes from Gavin Bradley – this time, on the legacy of Funky Drummer.

"What fascinates me about this evolution is not just the multiple levels of cut-and-paste that went on through these productions, but the fact that this exposes a clear example of the sort of rewriting/rethinking that sometimes must happen before a song hits its apex.  Cherry’s rap on the b-side of ‘Looking Good Diving’ isn’t the fully realized version of the lyrics she went with on ‘Buffalo Stance,’ and neither is her confidence in place, yet, vocally." Marvellous, fascinating deconstruction of the mighty "Buffalo Stance"

Great list, and lovely to be able to actually listen to it all, rather than just have to hunt it down later.

"We write and listen and play music in a cultural environment in which there's intense excitement and anxiety around the idea of music as a social object, not just a commercial one… in order to understand better the ways in which songs are becoming lines in listeners' conversations, we need different ways of thinking about how they've played that role for musicians too." Tom Ewing on music as fanfiction.

"After she left, the school began to switch away from Acorn computers to Windows PCs, and computing at school became less and less about actually wrangling the machines for their own sake: programming went away, to be replaced by word processing and the other kinds of useful activities which I'm sure helped a lot of pupils gain the kind of computer literacy they needed for the real world, but it wasn't the kind of computer literacy I needed. I needed the more abstract, joyful, engagement with computers that Sister Celsus provided, and which could only have been provided at the end of the 80s." A lovely post for Ada Lovelace Day from Matt.

"In this series I showcase a number of portraits of musicians made out of recycled cassette tape with original cassette. Also included are portraits made from old film and reels." Just gorgeous.

"I hit upon a card game mechanic that I thought would work. I explored it a bit and it wasn’t long before I realized that in order for the design to really sing, it needed to be a collectible card game with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cards. This sprawling design would create the sense that a large part of the story is happening outside the realm of the game currently being played, much like the feeling you have while reading the novel." Corvus' own entry for his roundtable is bloody marvellous.

Blimey – 1.68gb multisampled Yamaha C7, for most popular soft samplers, for no money.

"No consoles are launching in 2009, right? Not so. Brazilian manufacturer Tectoy, most notable outside of South America for its long partnership with Sega and official distribution of its consoles in Brazil, will be releasing an entirely original product called Zeebo. Centered around downloadable games distributed only over a 3G wireless network, the console is designed for emerging markets…" and, even if it's not exactly powerful and the business model still seems sketchy, this could be really, really interesting.