1. SolarBeat is a really neat little music box program that models the orbits of the planets in our solar system. Really ingenious—my favourite is when you turn the speed up and Venus is kind of a bass drum to nod your head to—. It also puts the solar system into perspective: I still haven’t heard what Pluto sounds like. (And yes, Mark Wilson, I know that Pluto isn’t a planet)
2. The Whitney Music Box is a more complicated implementation of a similar idea. It is a “musical realization of the motion graphics of John Whitney,” whose book I might have to go pick up. Shockingly, he was writing about the intersections of music and visual art through motion graphics in 1980. Anyway, of all the different options on the Whitney Music Box page, my favourites are the first one, the Microtonal one, the Chromatic Non-Prime one, and the Bell Carol one, but they’re all amazing.
3. P.U.D.G.E is yet another LA guy with a growing bit of hype. He’s pretty dynamic and big city, but his nonchalant approach is fun. Mostly though, I’m shocked at how awesome Bandcamp seems. I signed myself up, just in case I decide to release stuff. It seems like an amazing platform.

Considering how few people read this blog, I get ridiculous numbers of emails from PR people asking me to post their clients’ tracks. Plantagenet 3 is an exception to this: the main guy sent me a really polite email, and being a history nerd I wondered if his band was named after the Planagenet family. A few emails later and yes, he named his band Plantagenet 3 because his dad claims he’s named after Richard III.

Anyway, their music is awesome. They describe it as “a misguided combination of Spaghetti Western soundtracks, 1960s surf guitar and lo-fi post-rock” and that’s pretty accurate. The sound is interesting and the songs are fun and unpretentious. And they’re using Bandcamp too, hmmmmm.

(♪) Plantagenet 3 – Theme from an Imaginary Western

And, not that I care really, but PR people shouldn’t take this as a sign that emailing me a lot is an effective use of their time.