Serendipity Book

Do you have an eclectic taste in music?

Apparently my musical tastes are relatively eclectic. This handy little script analyses the tracks I have listened to recently using Last.FM, rates their eclecticism and then provides me with a list of recommendations.

How does it work?

The script takes my top 20 artists and then for each of these artists, the top 5 similar artists. Clearly if your musical tastes are limited then there will be a lot of overlap. The more UNIQUE recommendations it comes up with, the more eclectic your tastes are.

My eclectic score is 83/100. The 83 related artists for my profile are:

50 Foot Wave, Arctic Monkeys (2), Audioslave, Beck, Belle and Sebastian, Belly, Bloc Party (2), Broken Social Scene (2), Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine (2), Cat Power, Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, Dirty Pretty Things, Duran Duran, Editors (2), Eurythmics, Faithless, Foo Fighters, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Franz Ferdinand, Good Shoes, Half Man Half Biscuit, INXS, Incubus, Inspiral Carpets (2), Interpol (3), James, Jesus Jones, John Lennon, Joy Division, Kaiser Chiefs (2), Kristin Hersh, Larrikin Love, Led Zeppelin, Leftfield, Maximo Park, Maxïmo Park, Modest Mouse (3), Morrissey, Muse, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Neutral Milk Hotel, Orbital, Pavement, Pixies, Queen, Radiohead (3), Razorlight, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Regina Spektor, Stars, Sufjan Stevens, Sugar, System of a Down, Tanya Donelly, Tears for Fears, Teenage Fanclub, The Arcade Fire (2), The Automatic, The Breeders, The Chemical Brothers, The Cribs, The Cure, The Decemberists, The Flaming Lips, The Futureheads, The Go-Betweens, The Holloways, The House of Love, The Killers (2), The Pigeon Detectives, The Prodigy, The Rakes, The Rolling Stones, The Shins (3), The Smashing Pumpkins, The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Who, The Wonder Stuff, The Zutons, Weezer, Yo La Tengo

That's not a bad definition of the stuff I like to listen to - especially considering that Last.FM only gets a narrow slice of my listening behaviour. The overlaps appear to be predictably on the dour side of indie (Radiohead, Editors, Interpol, Modest Mouse etc.) No surprises there then!

There's an interesting analysis of the impact of the viral spread of this script on Last.FM's site here.

(HT Iain)

The Housemartins: Me & The Farmer

Norman Cook must have really struggled to get any credibility as a DJ. No wonder he opted to re-brand himself as Fatboy Slim.

Strings of Life

This is a short documentary featuring techno pioneer Derrick May talking through the story of how he made his classic song Strings of Life.

Best bit: "The more I listened to it, the more scared I got."

Radiohead teaser

Nigel Godrich (Radiohead's longtime producer) has posted an odd mix of swirling sounds to the band's official blog Dead Air Space that may or may not be indicative of what to expect from the new Radiohead album. Nigel said: "I keep bits of tape which have been chopped out of the mixes when they were edited .. stick em on a reel.. when you play it back it sounds like.. this"

Sound quality on that version is not great -- navigate over to their blog to hear a cleaner unsampled Quicktime version.

Detachable Penis

Keeping with my rather irresponsible theme this week of posting things that are not safe for work, this is the video for the classic King Missile song "Detachable Penis" which I first heard on MTV's 120 Minutes many years ago.

It's about a guy who can't remember where he left his removable knob. Obviously.

Toilet humour is, of course, a much lower form of wit than sarcasm but I must admit I do remember thinking this was very funny indeed about 15 years ago. Innocent days. I was younger. Forgive me.

For the puritans out there, this is the daytime version in which the said member is occluded by a big black box, so to speak.

If you fancy seeing it withot the censorship then try this version (you'll have to log in to YouTube though):

Art of Noise: Close to the Edit

Classic video for you. Zbigniew Rybczynski's bonkers video for 'Close (to the Edit)' by Art of Noise.

White Stripes: Icky thump

This is the video for the new White Stripes single, Icky Thump.

Satisfyingly bonkers isn't it? Their album of the same name is getting insanely good reviews (The Times, The Guardian, The Independent and The Scotsman love it and even The Daily Mail likes it) in contrast with their last outing, Get Behind Me Satan which most of our critics panned (but I must say I still enjoyed).

And, as an aside to this interlude ... Pitchfork is now reporting that Starbucks is soon to release a compilation of cover versions of Sonic Youth tracks! On brand?

Groove Armada: 'Get Down'

More fun from Pleix. This is their work for the latest Groove Armada video 'Get Down' featuring some crazy rabbit dancing:

Better version here.

Plus a quick hello to Mr Uttley over at Sony BMG. It was good to catch up last week -- let me have your blog address!

The Delgados - 'Coming in from the cold'

A bittersweet musical recommendation for you from an old friend who just popped up on Last.FM. Hi Valentina.

The last verse goes ...

We're coming in from the cold
And everybody's searching for someone to hold
Have a look around you there's no-one there
How can you call this fair

Lovely. Here's the video ...

Pingu Disco

This one's for young Ella who started crawling yesterday. Here's Eskimo Disco's fantastic "7-11" Pingu video. which has now picked up nearly half a million views online.