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Posted in music on April 8, 2006

The Sound Fix Top 10, The Buddha Machine & upcoming instores

SOUND FIX TOP 10 SELLERS
1. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Show Me Your Bones
2. Band of Horses: Everything All at Once
3. Tapes 'N Tapes: The Loon
4. Ghostface Killah: Fishscale
5. fm3: Buddha Machine
6. Cat Power: The Greatest
7. Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
8. Arctic Monkeys: Whatever People Say I Am ...
9. Isobel Campbell/Mark Lanegan: Ballad of the Broken Seas
10. Belle & Sebastian: The Life Pursuit

I was comparing the list of top selling albums at Brooklyn's Sound Fix Records to (Internet retailer) Insound's list. Insound includes pre-orders, Sound Fix probably doesn't carry Voxtrot yet (not sure though), Ghostface Killah (recently awarded best-new-music-by Pitchfork) is 18 at Insound - 4 at Sound Fix, and Belle & Sebastian & ex-Belle & Sebastian (Isobel) are doing much better in Brooklyn (arctic monkeys are doing much better in brooklyn too).

What really stood out most though? It was #5 on the Sound Fix list: fm3: Buddha Machine. Insound has it on their list too, though barely - it's #98. What is it?

"2nd edition now available. A unique 'Soundbox' from China, which is causing senstation worldwide. A totally dazzling item which causes jaw-dropping delight everywhere -- Alan Bishop bought twenty-four of these on sight, Brian Eno bought eight (how's that for apocalyptical math?). FM3 are a duo of Christiaan Virant and Chinese keyboardist and computer musician Zhang Jian -- based in Beijing. The Buddha Machine is a hardware loop player, built kind of like a little AM radio (available in 6 different colors, shipped randomly), but without all the nonsense -- total genius from out of nowhere. Comes with 2 x AA batteries." [Insound]

Pitchfork dubs this toy an 8.2: "It's a toy. Most of us are drawn to little gadgets that make music; we love to pick them up and fiddle with the switches, and play with them, and figure out how they work. Along the way we're testing and stretching the ways we experience and consume music. The Buddha Machine isn't the first self-contained music maker to sell as a work of electronic art, but it is an almost perfectly-realized example. And I can't stop playing with it."

UPCOMING FREE SHOWS @ SOUND FIX RECORDS
APRIL 11, 7pm: J.F. Robitaille
APRIL 14, 5pm: Cities and American Princes
APRIL 15, 4pm: Samara Lubelski
May 6, 4pm: Eef Barzeley (Clem Snide)

Posted on April 8, 2006 1:40 AM

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