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London radio station XFM has been holding a competition, challenging artists to see how many acts they can fit into a ten minute window. Smashing the record this week was Akira The Don, UK rapper and producer with 210 tracks in the ten minute window. See how many you can recognise here… and be prepared to give up the next ten minutes of your life because once this starts it’s somewhat mesmerising.

In a similar vein, this Lego stop motion tribute to the 80s is difficult to stop watching when you start. Then again, 80s + Lego + animation + electro + video games = how could this not be awesome?

Finally Owngig would like to give a shout out and promotion (not that he needs it) to a former work colleague, Lee Washington who produced a nice little video as part of his work as a design student, detailing both his frustration and a solution to that most prosaic of problems, tangled iPod headphones. The video, which has been picked up by top gadget blog Gizmodo, trend site PSFK and has so far had over 131,000 views. Add a few more from Owngig.com here.

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This week we’ve been working behind the scenes on our new Polish version of the site to launch soon. We’ll be announcing full details of this next week but if you have any Polish friends, let them know – and gigs in Gdańsk, Kraków or Warsaw with their favourite artists could be coming soon.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

OK, so they’re not going to win any awards for sound fidelity but these tiny iPod speakers in the shape of an 80s boombox will certainly win points for cuteness. Following on from the iPod dock that was similarly retro styled, this mini version is just too much. Buy here .

Some of you will have seen the small space invader tiles in various cities around the world, done by French artist, Invader. Well we liked this project that takes famous album sleeves and tiles them. Try to guess them all here …

Finally a link that’s being doing the rounds this week to a musician I think it’s safe to say won’t be doing an Owngig any time soon, this singer is more an exercise on how long you can stand to listen to his song. I got 49 seconds in before I could stand no more. See how you do here and if you make it all the way to the end then your aversion to pain is impressive.

Calvin Harris’s amazing human synthesiser.

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Want to spread the word about Owngig and help promote a one-off gig from your favourite artist? Remember that on site we have tools that allow you to make custom badges and banners you can use to place on forums, blogs and websites. They’re perfect for artists too. Check them out on our site here.

This week on the web we’ve been loving…

Well although he seems to have been having a bit of a melt down on Twitter today over a bad review in the Guardian, we’ve still been rather impressed with Calvin Harris’ amazing human synthesiser. Using fifteen models, conductive paint and markings on the floor, his new single can be ‘played’ by dancing. To be honest we can only explain this so well – check out the videos here. Then, in a similar and somewhat simpler vein, this remote controlled instrument allows you to play tunes automatically on your kettle when it boils. Very clever.

Finally we spent quite a while playing with this Lyrics visualiser. Simply put in the name of a song you like and it plots similarly lyriced themes on a nifty little chart. Great for preparing similarly themed mixtapes.

This is from the Owngig.com weekly newsletter. To recieve this in your inbox simply register on site

Gigs, we love ‘em. That’s pretty obvious really, considering what Owngig is about. So we were impressed with these amazing gig posters. We did notice most of them were American. You’re lucky over there to have stuff like this advertising your favourite band.

We’re surprised we haven’t seen any bids for UK band Raygun yet. Then again, although this band has been over the internet this week, the publicity they’ve got hasn’t been exactly favourable thanks to a rather risible YouTube clip that’s been going viral for all the wrong reasons. It’s as if they though Spinal Tap was career guidance, the band profile contains some classic lines – such as

“We might have mojitos at 11am in the morning! I mean, what the hell, man? It’s, like, fun. We want people to have fun.” See the full horror here.

Finally, some science. The Owngig newsletter isn’t about to get the Bunsen burners out but we just wanted to share this rather clever crowd demonstration from 80s vocal man Bobby McFerrin. In proving people have an innate sense of musical scale, he gently messes with their minds. Watch it here to see what we’re on about.

Seen anything interesting on the web? Drop us a line.