H/t to Crucial Tracks for this incredible find. So much fun listening through the demos that led to the creation of the best album of the year.
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Kevin Kortum
274 postsPosts by Kevin Kortum
đź“® What's in my NOW?
I'm not really supposed to do self-promotion here... but I was featured on What's in my NOW? if you care to give it a gander.
🧻 I hate the Pantone color of the year
In fashion language, white suggests luxury, like, you don’t have to work, because if you worked, you’d wear a more practical color that won’t get stained within 5 minutes. Staying clean is a privilege — the aristocracy keeps their hands clean and the working class gets dirty for them.
I’m going to go out on a limb and play the contrarian: I kinda like the color of the year. But I do think they are on to something here when it comes to privilege, white nationalism, etc. Especially as the class gap continues to grow and people with abhorrent views continue to show their true colors.
🎼 Quitting Spotify, ethics, and pay per stream
I don’t think it’s ethical to use Apple Music, but I DO think it’s unethical to use Spotify. I don’t think the “How to quit Spotify” article made any point other than finding a more ethical alternative to Spotify, which isn’t hard… and yes, pay per stream has to be a part of that equation.
Related to the previous entry on pay-per-stream, in typical Crucial Tracks fashion, Jason nails everything here, including why Spotify isn’t a great place to be and why you can’t just shrug off the pay-per-stream part of the discussion. Just because there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, doesn’t mean you can’t try—especially when you can do so for the exact same price.
🤖 Inside the Creation of Tilly Norwood, the AI Actress Freaking Out Hollywood
Over the next six months, Van der Velden toiled with her 15-person team to nail down the look of her leading lady, creating 2,000 iterations of an actress unbound by the limits of physical ability, age or talent.
In recent weeks, she has signed about 60 nondisclosure agreements for hybrid movies (with real actors), full AI films and Tilly-specific projects, most of them in the $10 million to $50 million range.
This is so embarrassing. It took a 15-person team to “nail down the look”??? There are thousands (if not millions) of individual artists who can draw a person with any detail and look you desire. And why would someone pay a human actor $5 million when you can pay an AI actor $50 million. What on earth are we doing here???
🪿 Will Geese Redeem Noisy, Lawless Rock and Roll?
In the months since Geese released its third studio album, “Getting Killed,” the band has been rhapsodically heralded as the redeemer of a certain kind of noisy, lawless rock and roll.
Spoiler alert: Getting Killed is making my top ten albums of the year. Easily. I wasn’t a huge fan of their last album, but singer Cameron Winter released his debut solo album, Heavy Metal, which made my top ten last year, and they’ve done a great job of combining the sounds and styles to make something that’s absolutely wonderful.
