Relax with Radix

Newton's third law of motion states that "for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." In other words, all that aimless internet browsing, blog reading and general slacking off you get up to on a Friday afternoon is entirely essential activity - without a relaxing Friday afternoon you'd get even less done between yawns the following Monday morning. Welcome, then, to The Root of the Matter's first weekly selection of paradoxically productivity-enhancing procrastination fodder.

Without further ado, then, let the parade of YouTube clips, gadgets, odd news stories, games, and sundry other stuff begin. Today, a musical theme:

YouTube clips

According to this, a halfway listenable electronica track can be made entirely from sounds native to Windows XP and 98.

More gadgety resourcefulness: there's now an iBand, playing songs on modified iPhones and a Nintendo DS. (You can see more of the iPhone being played as a guitar, and as a piano, here and here, respectively. Oh, and there's an iBand site with loads more videos - only just spotted that).

Rather than hack their DS, Japanese users can now get professional music making software, courtesy of Korg. The existence of an English website, suggests it might be heading this way...

Further illustrating Japanese tech-know-how, here's Kieran Hebden (Four Tet) getting to grips with a unique new musical instrument, the TENORI-ON - cooo, look at the pretty lights!

Games

Might be slightly old news this one, but, well, let's just say, it's a bit different, and it fits the theme: Synaesthete.

This musical puzzler-thing's just a demo: Audiosurf. But you could pay for the full version.

And if you happen to have a guitar controller handy (no, me neither, but anyway), you could use it to "play" a platform game: Fret Nice.

[At the risk of having nothing to post next week: all the above found at the Independent Games Festival 2008 site].

For when you've completely given up on any pretence of work for today...

Radiohead have released the five "stems", and a GarageBand project file, that make up their new single "Nude" - download them from iTunes and post your remix here. Apparently the band will listen to the ones that get the most votes. It doesn't say whether they'll do any more than that, mind, but still, it could lead somewhere...

Loads of great bands have played at Amsterdam's Paradiso and Melkweg, over the years; fortunately both venues have been recording them. In high quality. And they'll let you see/hear them for free. Well worth a look through the concerts list. More bands added as more bands play (the blog should keep you up to date).

Songbird is a web browser/media player designed for music lovers. It's in beta, but apparently it's been stable for a while now. And for added procrastinatory value, it's based on Firefox, so you can customise to your heart's content.

And finally...

Has it been one of those weeks? Nerves frazzled? Starting to wonder what life would be like without all those people around to screw everything up? Anything just to get away from them? Perhaps, you might have found yourself thinking, it would be more peaceful living on the bottom of the ocean... Well, now you can find out. Sit back, stick some headphones on and chill out to the sound of no humans whatsoever.

Bliss. Utter bliss.

Actually, you possibly better not do that: sometimes things like this happen. Iceberg calving can be a bit loud, apparently...


DISCLAIMER: This service is provided purely for the benefit of our readers; any way in which the gathering of these links might be construed as an attempt on my part to legitimise my own countless moments of time-www.asting idleness is purely coincidental, and entirely accurate.

Oh, and videos weren't embedded to save loading times. Or would people prefer to see them added to the post next time?