@jbushnell muses on what it means to be able to stream everything. Guest appearances and useful proddings by @debcha and @mathpunk

As it happens, this is not the first time this bird has yodeled its way into popular music.

Any band who goes on Letterman for the next month, at least—like the one that was on last night—has been completely screwed to hell by this one.

I called Missi Wooldridge, the Executive Director of a nonprofit drug testing and harm reduction agency called Dance Safe, because I was curious about the surge in ecstasy-related deaths at music festivals in the last few months despite a social history of drug use that predates the 1960s.

Mike Hadreas’ latest album, ‘Too Bright,’ isn’t just an angry gay record—it’s a complex web of emotions of what it means to be queer. And it’s one that needs to be heard.

What artists have cited other mediums or technological assemblages than their native one as inspirations on their creative style?

Listen to music that you like. In the end, your taste is your taste. But you should probably avoid saying that something is bad if you haven’t done the work to understand it. I think it’s okay to say, “I guess I haven’t found that song compelling enough to listen more closely.”

Typically appearing in works that employ a score with non-original elements, these are brief segments of recognizable songs—like classical music that doesn't involve paying royalties—as themes for various types of scenes or activities. Some of these occur often enough to seem standardized, and in some cases they are the only reason people know the songs these days at all. Many of these have become verbal shorthand for particular nationalities or ethnicities, and thus may border on stereotypes.

The nine-note tune made famous in Carl Douglas' 1974 song has served as a stereotype of Asian music since the 19th century.

Following the 10th anniversary of Madlib and DOOM's telepathic mind meld of an album, Jeff Weiss traces the history of Madvillain and details how these two perpetually mystifying artists came together for an uncanny hip-hop classic.

We help and hurt each other all the time. Occasionally, music is playing.

Before this summer, I'd never listened to a Kraftwerk album in my life. Before this summer, I might have also been terrified to admit this publicly; I figured it was the kind of statement, especially coming from a music critic, that prompts somebody to knock at your door, flash an important-looking badge, and step aside to reveal a crew of movers who've come to cart away all of your records, because you are no longer deemed worthy of owning them.

Cassettes are coming back as a viable alternative to digital releases. Will CDs ever be romanticized as well?

The dusty field of library music—background tracks owned by labels and lent out to TV, radio, and film projects—has proven to be an endless sample source for hip-hop producers as well as inspiration for avant-garde experimentalists.

Lindsay Zoladz revisits Justin Timberlake's thoughtless co-opting of Take Back the Night, explaining why, in the often-acontextual and increasingly powerful realm of the internet, these sorts of confusions can take on a treacherous new life.

There is no arguing with a riff. It’s a conversation-ender, something resistant to analysis that strips away the intellectual to situate the music in a purely physical space. Of the 100 greatest guitar riffs in the history of rock music, Jimmy Page might have written 20, and a good number of those can be found on Led Zeppelin’s second album from 1969.

In a culture that expects women to be happy, shiny objects, sadness can become its own form of defiance. Lindsay Zoladz details the perfectly gloomy online teen-girl aesthetic, typified by the all-encompassing sorrow of Lana Del Rey.

Even 28 years after his last hit, Michael McDonald can still trigger laughter and tears.

It’s tempting to speculate on how the record would have been received at the time and why it might have been shelved. James was moving fast in those days, so it’s possible that this album felt too much like where he’d been before, especially given the new ground he was breaking with SAW II. By the following year’s I Care Because You Do his sound was again changing rapidly, and the rest of the decade saw him attaining the status of a serious composer. Given all that, Caustic Window LP probably wouldn’t have left a significant mark, and would have been heard as second-tier James. Twenty years later, though, we’re hearing it with that aura, that extra bit of longing that comes from how scarce music from James has become. And in that light, second tier is still very good indeed.

Whether it was Moby’s sampling of Badalamenti’s unfathomably influential ‘Twin Peaks Theme’, James crooner Tim Booth’s desire to collaborate (the two ended up releasing full-length Booth and the Bad Angel), or German band Bohren & Der Club of Gore’s relentless fetishism, the unmistakable blend of wavering strings and sluggish, pitch-black jazz has made an indelible mark on contemporary music.

there are certain technical issues that are still misunderstood by many

Objects accumulate meanings because of the associations and feelings we bring to them.

But this kind of obsolescence has a way of creeping up on you. Even the researchers involved with CD preservation efforts at the Library of Congress say that academics started thinking about this kind of work later than they should have. "We really haven't focused as much on 20th-century media because you just think there are multiple copies of things. People just assumed it's more widely distributed."

Instead of years of local/subcultural prep work resulting in a sudden mainstream (or midcult) explosion, we see the sauce simmering, and see all the ingredients that go into it. And as a result, we don’t call it sauce. We just see the ingredients, and don’t think they need to be reclassified. Indie rock changed enough between 1994 and 2014 (waaaaaaaay fewer guitars) that you’d think it’d be called something different, but we still call it “indie rock,” because we didn’t get to see a big, dramatic moment with a big, dramatic break. If everything’s always connected, it becomes much harder to see meaningful divisions.

So: Do you make room for transient joy? Does it impede your deep thoughts, or does it inspire them, like a spark to wick?

I don’t know anything about music theory, not what an E or an A means in terms of sound. But through the crucial context Ross gives, and his descriptions, I don’t need to. My Lai to Manson, this is not going to be a happy work. The E “longs for resolution”, signifying tension. It does what all great music writing should do, make you desperate to hear the music being described.

Bay Area sound critic Marc Weidenbaum—acoustic historian, noise futurist, music instructor, and writer of a brand new book about Aphex Twin—has been blogging about music, electronics, and everyday sounds at his blog Disquiet here at Gizmodo for the last few months.

Why do we listen to our favourite music over and over again? Because repeated sounds work magic in our brains.

Thanks to Twitter, the hashtag has become an important linguistic shortcut. But while everyone from Robin Thicke to Beyoncé has used the symbol as part of their art, only a few have truly taken advantage of its culture-jamming possibilities.

I see characters in a sort of John Waters via furries in a violent, bloody malevolent German fairy tale kind of way.