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the unhappy clef: Bandcamp x smart phone

To date, this is not a positive development. From a Bandcamp blog post titled "Every Bandcamp site is now an awesome mobile site," -- All artist sites on Bandcamp now work and look great on mobile....

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The music of The Dark Knight Rises

Did you ever hope that the Darth Vader character would be reworked? A timeless and unforgettable villain, Vader has always been the kind of adversary who draws booing from the audience, but no genuine...

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smart phone app: TastemakerX

Don't sell your favorite album short. No, seriously. Don't sell it short. What you should do, though, is buy around 8,000 shares of Cock and Swan. Quick math says that will lift...

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The music of Contre Jour

Imagine Cut The Rope meeting Angry Birds Space somewhere in French children's literature, and you're getting close. If you've got a smart phone, you owe yourself a copy of Contre Jour for several reasons,...

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Marco Donnarumma’s Xth Sense

Often we don't learn about a contest until after the prizes are awarded, and only then because the winner generates so much buzz. Georgia Tech's Guthman Musical Instrument Competition is one of those contests, and...

“Untitled 1,” by Forever’s Gonna Start Tonight

Both the name of the track and the ensemble sound like the ad agency’s private label, and this isn’t really a post about the music, anyway. Even so, the composition is elegant, reverberant, and fitting. Two unbound hands reaching out toward both ends of a piano, if for no other reason than that they can.

The clip is Amnesty International’s “Slide To Unlock” advertisement: one of at least three device-centric spots, and easily our favorite. Wallpaper on a locked iPhone depicts a man’s shackled, unwashed hands. A user’s finger operates the slide bar and unlocks the phone, revealing a second wallpaper, in which the shackles are cast aside, and the hands are freed. A title card offers a link.

The gesture may seem downright futile, even hollow: the 2.3 inch swipe of an index finger across a wireless device — more than likely intending to unlock the phone for another crack at Angry Birds — could not be further removed from Amnesty’s efforts to free a political prisoner, or police a brutal regime’s human rights abuses. But awareness begins this way, in tiny increments, agonizingly small degrees.

Visit the app store on your phone and download the free Amnesty app. There seems no easier way to get started.

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