After I picked myself up off the floor, I made sure to ask for an interview. Mr. Levin graciously agreed, and the results are below. The good news is Todd Levin is a real guy. The bad news is… well, everything else if you enjoy his music.

iconmaster: Just what have you been doing since DeLuxe was released in 1995? It seemed like you went into hiding there for a while.

Todd Levin: Not “hiding.” I just never wanted to be a “career” composer – it didn’t interest me. There are other things I enjoy doing more on a daily basis than writing music. Nor did I want to compose music in order to earn money. There are other ways I’d rather earn money.

i: How have your views on classical music and the world of classical music changed or matured since DeLuxe?

TL: I would say my views on classical music and the world of classical music have not changed/matured substantively. Classical contemporary music is, on the whole, less interesting to me than it was 10-15 years ago, though there always are individual exceptions.

i: You said in Todd Levin that you didn’t want to influence history. However, I think you probably did in some way. Do you feel like critics and fellow composers have come around to your point of view somewhat? Now that you’re older, do you still find yourself wanting to “push the boundaries” in music?

TL: I said what I meant. As to critics and fellow composers, I wouldn’t know what they’re thinking, as I haven’t really spoken to anyone in the contemporary classical music world in over five years.

i: You also said that classical music needs to “climb down from its parochial pedestal and throw off the artistic aurora.” Do you think classical music can compete for attention in today’s digital culture? Does it need to? What should it do to stay relevant?

TL: I think that in the most basic terms, comtemporary classical music is as impotent (or more so) than it was 10-15 years ago, in terms of its ability to impact culture in any meaningful way. There are individual exceptions, but I’m talking broad generalities.

i: Do you think this is a trend we ought to be trying to reverse, or should we just accept that classical music is not really a “fit” in contemporary culture?

TL: Why would one desire to be involved in an art form one believes to be impotent, and unable to make a significant cultural contribution to the arts community as a whole? I think I stated this as clearly as possible in the text of Todd Levin (DG Ultramix) on DeLuxe.

i: Are you working on any music projects right now, or looking ahead to any?

TL: I always revolve ideas in my head, but I do this for my own personal delectation only.

i: What other composers or musicians would you consider to be successfully covering some of the same ground that you’ve been covering (figuring out what “classical” music should sound like today)?

TL: The last group of composers who created their own musical language were the minimalists such as Glass and Reich. Adams has extended this musical approach successfully by packaging this music better than any other “post-minimalist.”

i: It’s probably hard to make a living off composition these days unless you hit it big as a film composer. What kind of work are you doing instead of music?

TL: I’m a curator of Post War and Contemporary Art, and have been doing this before either DeLuxe or Ride The Planet was released. I’ve been involved in the Post War and Contemporary Art market as a buyer/seller for almost thirty years.

i: That’s great work, and I’m glad you enjoy it. But isn’t contemporary art even more rarified than contemporary classical music? Consider how many people will buy and listen to Howard Shore’s Lord of the Rings soundtrack or just about anything by John Williams, and compare that to the number of people who visit modern art galleries. You might argue that soundtracks are too populist to count as true “classical” music, but once you take the movie out of the equation I’m not sure of any empirical test that could neatly divide those categories. To put it another way: isn’t it the responsibility of the artist, rather than the medium, to inject the cultural potency that you feel is missing in classical music today?

TL: Your assumption, viz. “…contemporary art even more rarified than contemporary classical music..” is sadly, incredibly mistaken.

Go to a major international art fair such as Basel Miami Beach, and look at the crowds. Look at the prices being paid. Look at who shows up to be seen – anyone who is anyone in the fields of the Arts, Business, Sports, Popular Culture, etc. The immediate cultural influence is overwhelmingly massive. Young artists are sexed up for the pages of such magazines such as Vogue, WWD, GQ, and Esquire, and the results of major auctions when record prices are set is seen immediately on Bloomberg News, CNBC, MSNBC, and any/every major paper/web page. Your comment shows a total ignorance of the contemporary art scene [iconmaster note: He’s not wrong], and more importantly the market mechanism.

Art can be quantified, therefore, it can be bought and sold, and therefore, a market economy which is impossible for classical music exists behind it. Global music sales (including digital music sales) were just under $20 billion in 2008, down for the tenth consecutive year in a row – but remember (and this is important) classical (or ‘fine art music) sales make up only about 2% (!) of that total amount. Global fine art sales are probably around $40 billion dollars, and have increased every year for the past ten years, with Post War and Contemporary Art being the largest portion of that total.

Contemporary Art has an immediate cultural impact on people’s lives today in a way that it never has in the past – artists such as Jeff Koons are rock stars (not classical stars) in their own right, with all the attending cultural awareness and adulation. Contemporary classical music once had that power – at the end of the 19th Century (think Wagner) – but has allowed itself to be marginalized and rendered impotent.

That’s why someone like Philip Glass is important. His early work not only created a new language, but he also took on the responsibility of creating his audience and inserting himself wherever possible into the wider cultural milieu. Interestingly, do you know why PG became the cultural phenomenon he now is? Because of the support of the visual arts community – they basically ‘made’ him.

i: Finally, what do you think are the essential components of a good work of music?

TL: It’s like pornography – “I know it when I hear (see) it.”

This liner note, from the Deutsche Grammophon’s 1995 release of De Luxe, is the last clue we have as to the whereabouts of the composer Todd Levin. After that, the composer seems to have dropped out of music entirely. Over a decade later, the internet barely acknowledges his existence. I had to resort to scanning my liner notes just to get an obscured photo of the guy.

A website for (apparently) a Stanford radio station is one of the few places to find a review of Levin’s music: “this New York (by way of Detroit) composer’s latest album will be reviled by most fans of classical music (modern and traditional alike) as well as by [Deutsche Grammophon’s] presumed intended target audience of young hipsters. That leaves those who appreciate irony, camp, and audacity, not to mention orchestral music with a backbeat.”

If you know anything about me, you have already plugged me into that last sentence.

I am generally suspicious of folks who claim deep connections to particular pieces of music. The teen in his bedroom who’s convinced Coldplay’s latest single is the theme of his tumultuous suburban life; the couple who note when “their song” comes on the radio. Music is written by real people in historical contexts; claiming a work you enjoy as completely your own seems to me an attempt to strip the thing of much of what makes it worthwhile in the first place.

But in Todd Levin’s compositions I sense an artist aiming at something bigger. He wants to tap into the larger context of modern human life. (I should say “postmodern” here, but that sounds too pretentious.) Like modern life, his music is frenetic, disjointed and often confusing. It reflects a hodgepodge of cultural influences, and draws on them haphazardly. It is at turns beautiful and violent, and it’s always being driven forward by the tyranny of the mechanical clock (or metronome).

It is, in a word, brilliant.

Help me bring this talented composer out of hiding. You can sample his music [July 28 update: samples are gone now, bummer], or get in touch with me if you’d like to hear the complete works (this isn’t stuff you can buy on iTunes or at your local record store). You can also become a fan of the Todd Levin Facebook page.

This week Sony’s increasingly random flailings in the digital music realm have snagged it a partnership with Nokia, wherein users of Nokia phones will receive free music for a whole year on, presumably, someone’s dime other than their own. (Though I’d be not at all shocked to see Nokia up its prices to cover the cost — a Sony BMG tax, if you will.)

If I were feeling particularly mean, I’d suggest that this is actually an attempt by Sony to offload some “excess inventory” — really, is anyone still buying Britney Spears at this point? The Dixie Chicks? Ricky Martin? But as fate would have it, I’m only feeling slightly mean — mean enough to revisit Sony’s storied history of failure in the realm of digital music.

Sony was once the king of personal music devices. Its Walkman cassette players dominated the industry for roughly twenty years — an unthinkable run for a consumer electronics product these days. And the Discman CD players that followed did just fine too. But Sony was utterly unprepared for the digital music revolution. Sony took two years after the iPod’s debut to intro its Network Walkman digital music player — and then made the fatal decision of ditching MP3 support in order to emphasize its own ATRAC music format.

Today, the iPod defines portable digital music. Sony’s efforts barely constitute a footnote.

Of course, the devices are just one part of the equation. You also need a music distribution mechanism, and Apple’s is iTunes. Sony tried to fill this gap for its own players with the Sony Connect music store — an endeavor so successful that in five days from this posting Sony is shuttering it completely.

Sony seems to have finally decided that the best it can do is to give its music away. But don’t think for a second that the Masters of Rootkit have seen the light about giving consumers control over their music. (If you were thinking that, allow me a chortle at your expense.) This “free” music being provided to Nokia’s customers will be DRMed out the wazoo: “The ‘Comes with music’ library will be transferable to PCs and to a new Nokia handheld; however, users won’t be able to transfer it to certain non-compatible devices, such as iPods.” There’s one way to enforce those kinds of limitations, and it’s not through the honor system.

What’s really insidiously ingenious about this plan is that casual use of the singular: “a new Nokia handheld.” Not, notably, new Nokia handhelds you might purchase in the future. So what happens after you’ve spent a year downloading your “free” Sony BMG songs and decide you’d like a spiffy new Nokia device? Does the “Comes with music” library come with you? Nobody’s saying… and silence in the realm of DRM restrictions is almost never a good thing.

On the surface, Sony BMG and Nokia are promising a lot of free music — and who can say no to that? But “never a free lunch” is a cliché for good reason. Sony intends to get its payday here somehow, and they’ve already proven they really don’t care what they have to do to get it.

Here are the most important, along with a bit of commentary for the newcomer.

1) Equipment and Objectives

The goal is to a) remove a laptop and its power supply from a carrying case, b) connect the power along with an external monitor and keyboard, and c) power on the laptop in the least amount of time. The goal is complete when the laptop is ready to accept input.

2) Expected Obstacles

The laptop and power supply should be secured behind suitable fasteners — usually zippers or velcro flaps. The laptop should be in a standby or sleep state (not powered down, which would make boot time too large a factor). Power supply cabling should be tidy and secure.

Note — maintenance of the laptop is still important as you want the wake-from-sleep time to be as short as possible. It’s no coincidence that the last seven speed docking world champions were all Mac users.

3) Rule of Ordinary Workspace

The work area used in the attempt should not be excessively optimized for speed docking — “as you left it” is generally the rule here. Loose cables may be left on the desk surface; desk chair should be positioned under the desk.

Note — always be on the lookout for seeming innocuous protrusions in your workspace that can suddenly turn deadly in the heat of a docking attempt. Don’t forget the Richard Dunlevy incident of ‘82 — poor guy still eats through a straw.

Regarding the timekeeping device: Obviously regulation speed docking timers are available at many sporting goods retailers, but for the docker just getting into the pursuit a standard stopwatch or mobile phone stopwatch feature will suffice.

Hopefully these rules will help you to safely and legitimately set some great speed docking times.

Speed Docking is a highly competitive sport wherein the contender attempts to unpack, plug in and power on a laptop within the least amount of time.

Thanks to Keegan Jones for his cinematography here. I’m calling this one at 39.0 seconds — much better than my first attempt of 47.4.

As Ars Technica puts it, “a rootkit is a program or set of programs that allow a usually malicious user to maintain access to an compromised computer by sinking deep hooks into the OS.” Sony was not merely trying to govern what listeners could do with its music; it was attempting to control what users could do with their computers.

Stewart Baker, assistant secretary for policy of Homeland Security, issued one of the most succinct responses to Sony’s actions: “It’s very important to remember that it’s your intellectual property — it’s not your computer.” Sony had showed just how much regard it had for the property rights of its customers. But more than that, it had left these customers open to data loss and attack by hackers: “Sony’s application will utterly hose your Vista install… Sony’s rootkit provides a means of entry for other hackers to compromise your system.”

The truth will out, as they say. And in the case of Sony’s little experiment, it outed rather quickly. Less than a month after Mark Russinovich brought public attention to the rootkit issue, Sony stated it would stop distributing the copy-protection software on its music CDs.

The fiasco wasn’t over for Sony. A product recall and multiple lawsuits would soon follow — costing Sony several million dollars (a pittance given the size of the company and the seriousness of the offense) and no small amount of consumer goodwill. But as far as I know, Sony has never apologized for the rootkit decision or promised that such a technique will never be utilized again.

Here at home, I issued a complete Sony boycott. Dramatic, perhaps; but I was steamed at Sony’s utter hubris and contempt for its customers. We probably haven’t followed it perfectly — thankfully, the Transformers soundtrack turned out to be a Warner Brothers rather than a Sony BMG release — but by and large we have kept Sony products out of the home.

Thus as far as I can see, I will never own a Playstation 3. I will never own a Blu-ray player of any kind. (Sony is not the only party behind Blu-ray, but they are closely bound up with its success.) The latter shouldn’t be too hard: with the rise of digital downloads, high-definition DVDs were obsolete before they arrived on the scene. The next movie player I invest in is much more likely to be an Apple TV than anything built around optical media.

Sony items which were already in the home prior to the boycott were allowed to remain. Sony already had my money there, I figured. Discarding them wouldn’t do anything to hurt the company.

So why bring this up more than two years after the event? The reason is this: I like to lift weights, and I like to use my iPod while doing so. The thing with lifting weights is, if you employ any effort in the process, it makes it difficult to keep your face in a neutral configuration. And if your facial expression changes, so do the shape of your ears. (You can try this for yourself.) iPod earbuds aren’t designed to remain in place under these conditions, so I found myself needing constantly to readjust the little white nuisances.

It was time to try new earbuds. Offerings at the Apple store were divided between the $100+ stratum and that occupied by Apple’s own $40 in-ear offering. I’m not paying $100 for workout headphones, so Apple brand it was. Unfortunately, through some quirk of otology, these were even less inclined to remain in place than the standard earbuds.

One of the Sony products grandfathered in after the boycott was a pair of cheap blue earbuds with hooks designed to hang on the ears. Their design is mediocre. Their sound quality is passable at best.

They also stay on my head no matter what I try.

After all this time, wearing a Sony product centimeters from my brain makes me slightly ill — as if the earbuds might try to rootkit my cerebral cortex. But they work, and I’m running with it for now.

You’ve won this battle, Sony. But I still intend to win the war.

It’s put together by eight people.

When you’re a company of eight people, you tend to interact directly with your users. There’s no PR office. It’s just the developers and artists and CEO using Facebook or Twitter or whathaveyou to talk about what’s up.

You might think folks would look at that and say, Hey. These guys have faces. I can follow the Rails guy on Twitter. I can drop the artist a note on Facebook. I can check out the UI designer’s photos on Flickr.

But something about putting that “Inc.” after a company name changes things. Eight people are alright. But Eight People, Inc., are surely out to get you. They change the product to spite users. Their performance improvements are really excuses to reduce communication. They work to bring out the worst in people and ruin everyone’s fun.

Changes in products happen for lots of reasons, and the upside isn’t always immediately apparent. Sometimes a feature is dragging the system down and needs to be pruned a bit to keep everything rolling along. Often a new feature is part of a larger plan which won’t become apparent until later. And a few features look undesirable at first, but turn out to convey some big advantages as time goes by.

It’s funny how tenuous trust is on the internet. Meet one of your users in person and everyone gets along. But drop the curtain of the internet between you, and the suspicion returns. You’re an Inc. again.

I’ve stuck with small companies over the years precisely because I wanted to keep my face. I wanted to be a human working with and for humans. I’ll keep on following that philosophy whether the internet chooses to acknowledge the difference or not.

But right now, I’m tired of being treated like an Inc.

Then rumors started swirling, and were confirmed by the comic’s authors, that the comic was true — Jeff Gerstmann, editor-in-chief and 11-year veteran of the gaming site GameSpot, had been axed for panning the game Kane & Lynch, an Eidos Interactive title that was being heavily advertised on the GameSpot site at the time.

Naturally, Eidos weren’t pleased that the site they had poured thousands of dollars into was pooh-poohing their product. But what happened next sent a shockwave through gaming journalism.

C|Net, the owners of GameSpot, shattered the wall between editorialism and marketing and unceremoniously dumped Gerstmann for the “tone” of his review.

Multiple industry insiders have come forward to confirm these events, and I’ll leave the Googling to those who want more proof. Valleywag offers an account of the debacle from another, supposed GameSpot editor (note: strong language); and it certainly has the ring of truth about it.

So what can gamers do about this, if they value integrity in gaming journalism? First, obviously, you can boycott Kane & Lynch. That shouldn’t be hard, as the game is seriously flawed. But on top of that, you can boycott those responsible for the mess — C|Net and all the sites they own:

gamespot.com
gamefaqs.com
metacritic.com
gamerankings.com
cnet.com
news.com

I realize this may seem like a tempest in a teapot to those who don’t pay much attention to gaming. But there’s a larger issue at play here — specifically, Do journalists answer to their readers or to their advertisers? In most every other industry — movies, for example — this question has been satisfactorily answered. (Think a movie reviewer would be let go for giving Fantastic Four a less-than-glowing assessment?) It needs to be answered definitively here too.

Clubbed! is now available for download in the icons area.

The game holds up well, 17 years later. ActRaiser is remembered in no small part for Yuzo Koshiro’s symphonic score (a fully-orchestrated version was made available on CD, but it’s a rare find), and the aural portion has lost none of its luster. Graphically the game looks slightly dated, but only because of its somewhat choppy animation. The art direction and use of color (lots of simultaneous contrast in the creature designs) still impress.

It’s hard to imagine any major publisher greenlighting a game today that combines two so totally different modes; and it has to be said that ActRaiser’s action mode isn’t the most compelling example of its genre. (Super Castlevania IV, released on the SNES a year later, showed how deep action games on the new system could be.) Control of the character is a bit labored, and there are really only three moves at the player’s disposal: slash, kneel and slash, and jump and slash. Still, the sequences are fun enough and provide a good excuse to listen to Koshiro’s compositions.

However, what finally sells these segments is that they actually have some meaning. In ActRaiser you are a deity working to restore a ruined world. To even have a chance at creating a peaceful civilization, you’re required to eliminate the monsters that plague the land. So as you slice your way through these creatures, you’re not just clearing a level; you’re cleansing the world. It’s remarkably satisfying from that perspective.

Still, it can be argued that the simulation, town-building mode is ActRaiser’s real backbone; and these portions continue to impress with their solid gameplay. The townspeople will build and (apparently) reproduce on their own, but they require your divine intervention to clear the land of obstacles, protect them from wandering monsters, and give them a little urban planning guidance. Occasionally some crisis will arise requiring particular attention. Some even require the player to transport the fruits or inventions of one village to another — a nice touch. While ActRaiser’s simulation segments are much more linear than, say, a game of SimCity, they keep the player constantly engaged.

Having played ActRaiser again on the Virtual Console, I can’t help but long for a sequel. However, it’d have to be a true sequel — not the action-only diversion ActRaiser 2. I’d love to see a current-day release with deeper action (perhaps borrowing heavily from God of War) and an even more intricate simulation mode. Clearing obstacles and transporting items between towns was a good start; what about making use of the town’s particular resources or the possibility of managing political relations between villages? Could towns declare war on each other? Would the player be forced to involve himself (via the action mode) in settling these conflicts? The dual-mode design makes for many interesting scenario possibilities. For now, though, I’ll just content myself with this strange and wonderful classic.

Shine on, little naked cherub. Shine on.