Pay what you want for Girl Talk's newest album 'Feed the Animals'

Love it.

Hate it.

It's some of the most creative mash up I've ever heard.
I'm a couple days behind on this one, but I took a little time to give it a listen. Twisted, imaginative, frenetic, fast, it's Girl Talk, and for a "pay what you want" it's totally worth checking out.

Girl Talk - Feed the Animals

any price grants the download of the entire album as high-quality 320kbps mp3s
$5 or more adds the options of FLAC files, plus a one-file seamless mix of the album
$10 or more includes all of the above + a packaged CD (when it becomes available)

That's not a bad deal ($5 for FLAC), and if you dig on mashups, I don't really think it gets much better...

Have you purchased your copy of Niggy Tardust yet? Why not?

I just slapped down my $5 for an FLAC copy, and I'm really enjoying it. Dark, edgy, I just really dig Reznor as a producer.

Saul Williams, a champion of DRM free content, brings a powerful performance to the table. At times vulnerable, at times invoking a raw, explosive energy that stabs you between the eyes, a Lenny Kravitz meets Jimmie Hendrix meets Seal...

on PCP...

The constant genre mashing can be a little exhausting, but in a good way. It's like the first time I heard Downward Spiral from beginning to end. I really felt like I had accomplished something. There are influences aplenty...

The cover of Bloody Sunday is a stand out single that really moved me, almost as much as when I heard the original. This track needs to be on the radio NOW. Another standout for me was the raw nakedness of No One Ever Does, a gorgeously simple/sweet ballad, amid the chaos/frenzy/hunger of the rest of the album.

There's just so much to hear in Reznor's mix, and in Williams' words, it's unlikely that I'll pull it off the ipod anytime soon.

Just like my posts on Radiohead's release of In Rainbows, this is another grand experiment. The album is being released for Free (MP3 @ 192Kbps) or for $5 (FLAC or 320Kbps MP3). So far the numbers are ... interesting? Out of 150,000 downloads almost 30,000 have paid for it. That's one in five, 20%. Is that success? No one really knows yet...

Ars Technica has a pretty good write up explaining the details behind the distribution, and Reznor himself offers up a fairly in depth look at the experiment so far.

You can download the album here.

Traverso Free Audio Recording/Editing Software - Simplicity = Virtue?

A week ago I wrote about Open Source Living, a site dedicated to cataloging open source/free software, and was really excited about their audio page. One particular program caught my eye, and I've finally had a chance to try it out.

Traverso is a multi-platform, multi-track audio recording and editing program that boasts a simple and clean user interface. It's still technically a Beta (I downloaded v.42), but it's fully functional. Best of all, it's totally free!

Right from installing, driver support is great with Traverso instantly picking up my 410, and setting up 2 stereo recording tracks for me to play with. I have to say the interface is a little off-putting at first. It's very stark. There are NO bells or whistles on installation. It does have support for skins (and I don't know how that would affect functionality), but I'll only be dealing with the default.

What's good about this minimalist approach?

Well, this program is tiny (about 35MB full install), and snappy. There was no lagging, stuttering, weird pauses, nuthin. It launches up and is ready to go. Recording and playback are accompanied with a very smooth screen slide , which is very pleasing to watch as you play through longer files. Simple. Clean.
This approach is also very low impact on the computer. Along with having a small install footprint, CPU and RAM use is also extremely low. I don't think I ever got above 5% CPU recording 2 Mono and 1 Stereo tracks, and Memory usage stayed between 15-20MB. Those are Audacity numbers for true multi-track recording (though Audacity does have better editing features). By comparison, to accomplish the same recording in Acid6Pro I'll hit 20% CPU usage and upwards of 90MB of RAM use. This is great news for people who haven't built bleeding edge quad core monster workstations. Add in very good exporting and burning. ogg/flac/mp3 support, unlimited undos, non-destructive editing, and it adds up to a pretty substantial package.

What didn't I like about Traverso?

Well not a lot. With such a stark interface, it can be a little frustrating digging through menus to get to the features you want to use. None of the keyboard commands are anything like any other DAW I've ever used, so be ready to hunt through right click menus when you start. Along with that note, the cursor is frustrating to use. I spent 5 minutes alone just trying to playback something I had recorded. The selection and playback cursors are different cursors, and to move the playback cursor you have to hit the shift key. This is a bad decision. I got myself into a little trouble trying to rapidly make some quick edits. I ended up hitting the shift key so quickly that Windows tried to enable sticky shift, which is a major pain.
Also I had a small bug where I couldn't see waveforms while recording, but I'm pretty sure that's a me thing.

All in all I'm VERY impressed with the functionality and stability of Traverso. If you need recording on the cheap (heck on the Free) this is an excellent DAW, and one you should totally check out. Using this program with Audacity, was very much like working between Soundforge and Acid. It's a great unofficial software suite, and you wont spend a penny!

Traverso can be downloaded for Mac or Windows.

Traverso

Open Source Living: Audio Page