Let us make it clear right off the bat: Meat Beat Manifesto is not on a major label, however, a commissioned remix, "What Is Hip (T.O.P.R.M.X.)," by Jack Dangers, which appeared on the compilation What Is Hip? Remix Project Volume One has been nominated for a Grammy!

This video documentary, produced and originally released in 1993, has a ton of great footage and interviews from all members of the band from their inception through 1993's Tabula Rasa. 

The box cover depicts what could be a strange retro-digital flower with Buddhist temples pictured in the background. The writing is entirely in Chinese, with something which loosely translates as "electronic prayer machine" on the spine and on the back a list of good things about buddhism (being nice to others, not killing, etc,...) and the all important "Made in Hong Kong."

Our kindergarten teachers always told us how we should be sharing, but the RIAA would have you believe otherwise.  Looking at any recent major label release, the packaging is pretty much destroyed now with big blocks of text, an FBI symbol and a warning.  Unfortunately, monster megalith Sony BMG isn't out to warn the consumer or provide any information that they're illegally loading "malware" (malicious software) onto unsuspecting machines. 

Truman Capote elegantly described the brutal murder of a family in the midwest through his famous book In Cold Blood.  The book birthed a genre: the "nonfiction novel" by means of poetic license: making a very cold, dark story something captivating enough to win the affinity of the public, and that's exactly what Bennett Miller does with his movie Capote.

Intone, the current umbrella record label Richard H. Kirk (of Cabaret Voltaire) releases music under, has announced fortcoming releases for 2006 including Chapter Two - Live in the Earth by Sandoz in Dub, URP 4 (Unreleased Projects 2003-2005), and an as yet untitled EP for the label Dust Science. 

Consider yourself fortunate.  Since you're reading these words you have access to a computer, the Internet, and an endless repository of film, music, art, and culture.  It wasn't always this easy.  In the 1930s, Henri Langlois founded the Cinémathèque Française, both an archive and a theater, holding on to every film he could get his hands on under the notion that all film had some value to society.

Boston residents can tune into Brainwashed peeps Jon Whitney and Nick Feeley every Monday morning now from 7-10 [EDT] (Jon) and 10-12 (Nick) on 90.3 FM.  Remote residents can tune in online to WZBC by clicking here (it should open in your iTunes or WinAmp).  It's commercial free and it's live!  Request lines are now open! (Remember to add 5 hours if you're in the UK and subtract 3 hours if you're in California!)

We all know by now how the major labels fuck all their artists over and fuck all their customers over but now they're trying to fuck over their promotional outlets!

Richard Zvonar, the composer and innovator of electronic music, died this August 3, 2005. Richard worked with me on Wild Women with Steakknives, Eyes Without Blood, Tragouthia apo to to Aima Exoun Fonos, and Panoptikon, which we were planning on
redoing this year.

Nekesa Mumbi Moody has just published an article on how "Best Of" albums are not so great these days.  But have they -ever- been?  She identifies who's doing it all wrong but bands and labels are often confronted with the task of "how to do it right." Here's a helpful guideline to anybody faced with making a compilation.

This past week, Sony BMG agreed to pay $10 million in fines over their illegal Payola practice.  Payola is as old as the recording industry itself and is basically another way big business labels fuck everything up for the rest of us.

Next week will be the last issue of The Brain.