Basshunter

Despite his shoddy pirate technique and library and content library management, my younger brother really does have quite good taste in music– a fact which I often fail to acknowledge due to sheer laziness. He introduced me to Pendulum a few weeks back, and this evening assisted my discovery of Basshunter.

I listen to a lot of great music, and I’m sure you readers do as well– so what makes this Basshunter fellow post-worthy?

Geek cred.

Not only is his music some excellent upbeat eurodance, but the themes are about as nerdy as you can get. His first international hit, Boten Anna, tells a tale of mistaken identity involving an IRC bot, and his second single is a sort of techno tribute to Warcraft 3 mod “Defense of the Ancients” and voice-conferencing application Ventrillo– complete with sound samples from the game mixed in.

For fans of dance and geeks alike, Basshunter is definitely worth checking out. Below is the video for Vi sitter i Ventrilo och spelar DotA

Keeping Score

Keeping Score Interface

Produced by the San Francisco Symphony, Keeping Score is a project designed to, show that classical music can speak to everyone and instill a lifelong love of music through the use of pervasive media.

Part of the Keeping Score initiative are interactive flash websites showcasing selected classical masterpieces, and the history and music theory behind them. The works of Aaron Copland, Beethoven’s Eroica, and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring are brought to life through companion sites featuring embedded audio and video, as well as interactive musical notation, wrapped up with an elegant design.

The Keeping Score companion sites are, in my opinion, some of the best examples of the proper way to use flash technology. Many designers use flash in places where it is truly un-needed and simple javascript or CSS would do. Others use flash as an excuse to create awkward non-standard interfaces that are not only hard to navigate, but hard on the eyes. With great power comes great responsibility, and Rolling Orange, who produced the Keeping Score site, wielded the power of flash to stunning ends. Mixing classic typographic design and digital-multimedia, these sites have earned a prominent place in my personal design archive, and I would argue they deserve a place in yours as well.