HOT
Good Taste from the Start
VICE.com’s music branch, Noisey, recently interviewed a man in his early twenties who was born deaf, but thanks to a new, high-quality hearing aid, finally could hear music for the first time last summer. The young filmmaker, Austin Chapman, took to Reddit to ask for listening suggestions, so Noisey checked in to see how it was going. Chapman’s favorite music includes Beethoven, Mozart, Bob Marley, Queen, Explosions in the Sky, Radiohead and Sigur Ros. And what music does a man who has never heard music before never want to hear again? “‘Call Me Maybe,’ Bieber and ‘What Does The Fox Say,’” he told the site. Bet those artists will leave that tidbit out of their press kits.
The first music Chapman listened to with his new hearing aids:
WARM
Auto-Tune in a Pill?
These days, it seems like there’s a pill for almost anything that ails us. If what ails you is “tone deafness,” there now may even be a pill for that. Sorta. In early January, NPR reported that a professor at Harvard is studying a drug that makes the brain as absorbent of new information as it was when a person was 6-years-old or younger (i.e. pre-social media and the other distractions that build up over time), when “perfect pitch” can actually be taught. (The professor says there are no known cases of an adult learning perfect pitch.) That’s the hitch — the subjects still have to learn perfect pitch and it won’t magically give them, say, singing talent, so it’s not quite as easy as Auto-Tune. Sorry, T-Pain.
OK, he's not horrible:
COLD
“Satan is Not a Toy”
A self-proclaimed Satanist in Thailand has been accused in the gruesome murder of a member of a Thai Black Metal band. Surrender of Divinity’s singer/bassist Samong Traisattha allegedly invited a “fan” into his home to screenprint some T-shirts and have some drinks, but the man later stabbed the musician multiple times while his wife was putting their child to bed. The suspect later went on Facebook to take credit for the crime, saying it was because the singer was not actually a Satanist (despite his lyrics). “In my view, I have more respect for devoted Buddhists, Christians and Muslims than those who call themselves Satanists without knowing anything about it,” the suspect wrote on what police believe is his Facebook page. “Above all else, Satan is not a toy.” At press time, the suspect was still at large.
