July 25, 2006

Today's Hotness: Bruno Pronsato, Metallica, The Lemonheads

Bruno Pronsato, we presume>> According to this piece in The Stranger, under-appreciated minimal tech-house genius Bruno Pronsato (a/k/a Steven Ford) is relocating to Germany from Seattle this fall. Bruno Pronsato's 2004 release Silver Cities is a go-to record for us when we want to groove minimal stizzington. Unfortunately for those of us who aren't vinyl junkies, most if not all of BP's releases since Silver Cities have been vinyl sides. Will some label please collect those all up on a two-CD comp please? For a full run-down of Mr. Ford's many forthcoming releases, check his web site here. Bruno Pronsato is touring North America ever so briefly, and is in Boston this coming weekend. [via 3IG RSS / photo credit: Flickr user Minlove]

>> One of the most interesting things Stereogum has posted in a long time is speculation about how digital music holdouts including The Beatles could boost Microsoft's nascent Zune service and player, if Microsoft can get the Fab Two and posse to just agree. The history of litigation between Apple and Apple Corps would certainly seem to give the appearance of advantage to Microsoft in the case of The Beatles, although there is always a possibility that the settlement of that litigation last fall (if we recall correctly) set the stage for The Beatles to do a deal with Jobs, et al., on particularly favorable terms. Anybody's guess. Stereogum, of course, gets the last word: "It sure would give 'em an edge in acquiring the music fans who didn't download the 28-album Beatles torrent on Pirate Bay."

>> Related item: The 'Gum at first identified waning metal gods Metallica as among the few digital music holdouts, before commenters corrected the venerable blog. Then our man Koomtopolis dropped an email in our hopper a couple minutes ago with some more info. And we quote: "I noticed today that ITunes has added the Metallica catalog, which as far as I know is the first time it has been available as digital downloads. The first four albums (aka the good ones) all include two bonus tracks, which are only available if you buy the whole album. But they're all live tracks of songs from those albums, so it's not like they're B-sides or anything." Thanks for the tip, Koomz. Here's the official word from Hetfield and the boys.

>> The "provisional" album art for the eponymous Lemonheads record can be seen here. Provisional art? Does that mean if the cover doesn't get caught filching smokes or putting the trash out too early for collection that it then gets to be the cover for realsies? Anyway, it's a pretty cool cover. Vagrant, we say go with it.

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