I'm not satisfied with the sidebar music section. Don't ask me why. I'd rather throw my recent favorites up here in a post. I'll do it infrequently. Here we go...

• Matrix & Futurebound - Universal Truth
  • From 2007, a great straight-ahead drum&bass album with some subtly but interesting sounds/samples. Well selected MCs on a few tracks.
• Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
  • Enough has been written about this, it's just a beautiful album.
• The Berg Sans Nipple - Along the Quai
  • Warm and soft sounding electronic/post-rock mix.
• London Elektricity - Syncopated City
  • One of my two all time favorite dnb producers (the other is LTJ Bukem), Tony Coleman puts together another good full-length. I'm not sure I quite like his singing lead, but good in all other areas.
• The Slapped Eyeballers - Sloppy Future Manipulations
  • A one-off EP Dimlite and Balt Mirczok, with Balt's achingly beautiful, breathy vocals. And yes, the title track is in waltz time.
• Home Cooking: Soulfood Served by Jazzanova and Friends
  • Jazzanova put together a soulful, loungey mix that is a definite must have.
• High Contrast - Tough Guys Don't Dance
  • A solid drum&bass album. Has a retro sound (tell me you don't hear 'Timeless' in the first track), with a great epic quality to many of the tracks.

A good short piece that ponders the myriad issues and problems involved with President Obama giving an iPod with 40 show tunes on it to the Queen of England on an official state visit. Particularly interesting:

 

So, how does President Obama fare in this? It's nearly impossible to figure out. If he'd simply purchased a "greatest hits" CD of show tunes and given it to the Queen, the first sale doctrine would have taken care of it. But because digital technology is involved here, suddenly it's a legal quagmire. (And, for the remainder of this discussion, I am going to set aside the Presidential immunity issues and the UK copyright law issues, which make it even more of a quagmire.)

First, let's imagine that the President (or his staff) bought the 40 show tunes from the iTunes music store. Do you "own" the music that you buy from iTunes? The nearly 9,000 words of legalese to which you agree before buying don't answer that question (an oversight? I doubt it). Copyright owners have consistently argued in court that many digital products (even physical "promo" CDs!) are "licensed," not "owned," and therefore you're not entitled to resell them or give them away. (And the Amazon MP3 Store terms of service are even worse for consumers than iTunes -- those terms specifically purport to strip you of "ownership" and forbid any "redistribution.")

Saw a great episode of Nova on PBS about the Extreme Ice Survey - images of it, how it's melting, and what that means. What dragged me in was the photographer James Balog, who is an amazing nature photographer. I have his book Tree: A New Vision Of The American Forest and it's one of the few photography books that I actually look at with any regularity.

The beauty of the landscapes and features that they showed, along with the time-lapse images was amazing. After Planet Earth, the ante definitely got upped for showing nature through moving pictures. Time-lapse is now the way to go - for everyone who can't get out to these places in real life, at multiple times throughout the year (or longer) to see the changes themselves.

Maybe the beauty of the images, undercuts the climate change message they're going for, but that's ok.

 By way of The Medium, I found this Israeli producer who chopped up YouTube videos and made - good music. Not that this hasn't been done before, but these tracks are good - enough that you can ignore the video and still like them. The official site while cool is a bit flakey, you can check out at least one video here.

There's a great post on Jezebel (I found by way of David Byrne) that shows their favorite (not!) airbrush/re-touch magazine cover (of Faith Hill) from a couple years ago. Man, wasn't her arm already thin enough? And you must read the extended entry with the annotated picture whereby they imagine the comments of the photo editor to his photoshop-monkey. Great.

We were trying to get a cab home from midtown today, and since it was a bit before 5PM, all the cabbies begged-off as they needed to get back to the garage soon (we don't usually have any trouble getting a cab to Brooklyn, especially since we live pretty close in). But the doorman-guy at Bed Bath and Beyond got this interesting character for us: He handed me his card when we got in his recent model Buick (no TLC plates, mind you). I thought that this could be a very interesting ride home... but he was cool. He said call any time, except Sunday, as he has services. Good rates on airport trips, and he knows the best place for ice cream in Connecticut. Oh, did I mention that he also performs exorcisms?

Not familiar with Furney, but quite a big fan of Tayla - always a big fan of the GoodLooking connected artists. Really good rolling mix.

This story happened a couple weeks ago. I was riding the subway uptown from City Hall when a group of four Italians boarded and sat near me. I gathered from their chatter and map reading that they were trying to figure out which stop to get off at. We soon stopped at a station and they belatedly decided to get off the subway. As the Italians quickly passed in front of me, I saw a glove drop on the floor. I leaned over to pick it up and say something to the woman who had dropped it, but when I got up they had made it through the car doors, and the normal small crowd of people was now pressing it?s way in. Being tall, I could see the woman walking away over the entering people, but didn?t know how to yell anything useful in Italian. So I made a quick decision and tossed the glove at her, managing to hit her in the back with just enough force so she would notice. Satisfied that I had helped her out as best I could, I turned to sit down again. When I sat down, a woman who had been standing near me held out the matching glove and said ?she dropped both of them.? So I tried again ? I quickly jumped up with the second glove, turned and looked over the crowd and saw the woman just standing up from having picked up her first glove. I lobbed the second glove at her over the crowd, nearly striking her (lightly) in the face. She managed to catch it, and looked at me with a bewildered look, mouthing what I can only hope was 'grazie' (probably more like WTF??). I sat down again and shared a laugh with the woman who handed me the second glove. I figured the gloves were better off with their owner, even if it required an unorthodox method of return.

Wow. Went last night to see Ustad Shujaat Khan, Karsh Kale, Vijay Iyer, and Jonathon Maron in a show at the new Alice Tully Hall (and a good deal - tickets only $25). I figured it would be good, but we were both just blown away. I had wanted to go see Karsh Kale and a few other people this past summer at Prospect Park doing live accompaniment to Bruce Lee's Enter The Dragon, but it was seriously hot out that day and we didn't go. I knew Karsh was quality as I'm a fan of Tabla Beat Science. But the amazing fusion of these four players last night was beyond what I had expected. Khan played sitar, Jonathon Maron played electric bass, Karsh Kale played alternately tabla and a regular drum set, and Vijay Iyer switched between piano and Rhodes electric keyboard, and all five songs just worked. They took their leads in jazz style during the extended songs, with their jams flowing smoothly with what could have been a mismatched set of instruments.

My friend Anhoni Patel finally had her first novel published - All Good Things Die In LA. I plan on reading it hopefully in the very near future.