By day I make web applications, here I link to things I find interesting - generally relating to music, news/journalism, writing/reading and aspects of design.
Following on from a serious, but interesting, article on what’s happening in Iran were two pieces in the New Yorker this week that were interesting, a little quirky, and made me smile.
The first is a look at what kinds of music soldiers listen to. Unsurprisingly, Metal seems to feature prominently - the research was spurred-on by claims that a ridiculously high proportion of fan-mail sent to Slayer came from serving soldiers - but while Jazz is yet to get a foothold inside the Hummers, Wagner (in homage to Apocalypse Now) is fairly popular.
The second delves inside a class at Mover University, where removal men (and women) are trained up to Elite standard. It’s not an immediately interesting topic, but at the same time a little look into the precision with which they operate is fascinating.
Pentagram take a look at how cigarette companies might embrace the new rules on tobacco advertising that are coming into effect. I hate smoking, but as a campaign I have to admit it’s a good idea.
Yesterday’s Review section of the Guardian, that I just got round to reading, had three articles from the New York Review of Books that made for interesting reading:
Malise Ruthven writes on a Divided Iran, picking out the ways, both now and in the past, in how men and women are considered and treated.
Michael Dirda writes about Patricia Highsmith, the author of The Talented Mr. Ripley ,and its sequels.
Micahel Tomasky, who I know as the Guardian’s US editor, takes a look at what’s happening with Obama on different aspects of policy.
An effort to get people reading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest this summer (starts Sunday, carries on into September, doing around 75 pages per week).
I’m a little bit tempted to join in, but it would mean buying another book when I have quite a large pile (literally, I don’t have a bookcase in my new flat yet) sitting unread. The idea of reading-along like this intrigues me though, so even if I’m not joining in I’ll be checking along with how it all works.
So, for the record: I am not the Zodiac killer, had absolutely nothing to do with those (or any other) murders. As far as I know, I wasn’t even in California when any of them happened. Similarly, I had nothing to do with the death of Joan Webster, a Boston college student whose murder Penn has also tried to pin on me. A note to Zodiac hobbyists and Penn aficionados: Please don’t bother parsing the foregoing for cleverly worded nondenials and numerological incriminating clues; if you don’t like my choice of words, feel free to make up other language that you would take as a flat, comprehensive, unqualified denial, and assume I said that. What follows will tell you nothing at all about Zodiac or Webster; it’s a personal history of being struck by low-voltage lightning out of a clear blue sky.
"For a while everyone was using the word. Ponzi, Ponzi, Ponzi, it bounced around sounding like a slightly deflated ball. I couldn’t surf the web, read a newspaper, or have a conversation on the street corner without someone saying Ponzi. And since Madoff’s confession, many more Ponzi schemes have been laid bare by the bad economy. The billionaire Allen Sanford, Madoff’s neighbor Donald Young and a Tennessee financial adviser and are among the many that have been accused of running Ponzi schemes. But when the economy recovers and the accusations dry up, what will become of the word Ponzi? Will it continue to thrive?"
The Quietus have an interview with the Manics regarding their new album Journal for Plague Lovers, due out in a couple of weeks. All signs point to it being a step back towards them being good (great, even) but I refuse to get too excited after the massive disappointments that have been their last 3 albums. There’s a track-by-track look at the album as well, and using phrases like “could have been lifted directly off The Holy Bible without anyone noticing” and “distorted bass intro reminiscent of Archives of Pain” mean I’ll definitely being giving it a listen.
I enjoyed playing this downloadable game (there are Mac and Windows versions) where you have to help a little toy train progress through a number of rooms. Rock Paper Shotgun take a look, though their thoughts will make easier (“spoil”) one of the early puzzles.
The Morning News asks its readers and writers to tell them what printed publications they still read. If they’d asked me, I’d have told them that I generally buy the Guardian on saturdays and the Observer on sundays; I have subscriptions to the New Yorker and Believer; I buy the Economist approximately every other week; and Private Eye now and again.
Phosphine gas is a byproduct of the meth-cooking process and is highly lethal to inhale. Lethal smells are so not feng shui. A good idea is to counterbalance a lethal odor with a delicious one, like that of a Mango Splash Glade PlugIn. Plants are a key feng-shui component for their unique ability to absorb energy-stifling toxins from the air. Unfortunately, your average fern probably won’t stand up to the piercing wafts of hydrogen chloride, so consider something hardier, like a fake fern.
Colin Nissan, for McSweeney’s, with one of many tips to ensure you make the most of Feng Shui principles in your meth-lab. Useful to us all, I’m sure.
As I don’t seem to have found anything interesting to link to recently, I thought that I’d instead write a little about some of the new albums I’ve been listening to recently. It seems that this time of year is a favourite for 2nd and 3rd albums, while only a handful of debuts have made it into my ears. (Links are all to Spotify, sorry to anyone who can’t access it.)
Without further ado then, I’ll start with the album I’m listening to at the moment: Two Suns is the 2nd album from Bat For Lashes, the stage-name of Natasha Khan, being a follow-up to the much-acclaimed Fur and Gold, released in 2006. The new album doesn’t change much from the working formula, but it adds to the songs, making use of many more instruments and sounds and generally producing “bigger” songs. They’re still gentle, but they carry more weight and with it power.
If I were to group all of my favourite bands by nationality (and I’m not about to, it would take far too long) then I have no doubt that Canada would be up near the top. April sees the release of 3rd albums from two Canadian bands that I love to bits; Metric release Fantasies (not Spotify, everyone can listen!) and Malajube give us Labyrinthes.
Malajube are from Quebec and as such sing in french. This makes listening to their music interesting for me, as normally I pay attention to lyrics and think about what’s been said. When I can’t understand the lyrics (beyond picking out a few familiar, basic words) the vocals almost turn into just another instrument and the rhythm of what’s being said becomes more important than the content.
Help I’m Alive off the new Metric album shows what I love about Metric really well, having powerful instrumental sections demanding as much attention as Emily Haines’ wonderful singing voice. With this not (yet?) being on Spotify I haven’t listened more than a couple of times, but I do like it.
I think MSTRKRFT (also Canadian, though I only just found that out, so I’m not going to back and rewrite the last bit to include them…) will always be “that guy from Death From Above 1979” to me, even though with the release of Fist of God this guise now have more albums out. I wouldn’t put them amongst my favourites, but they do make fun music and sometimes music being fun is all it needs to be enjoyed.
Coming back to England, Micachu (aka Mica Levi) along with “The Shapes” (keyboardist & drummer) present Jewellery and it would take a lot to convince me that any album could be more fun to listen to. It’s quite short but really quite catchy and makes me want to jump around listening to it. And it makes use of a vacuum cleaner.
Also worthy of mention are Yeah Yeah Yeahs with It’s Blitz - better than Show Your Bones but not as good as Fever to Tell; and Polly Scattergood with a self-titled album in which she sings, in a quirky but cool way, 5, 6 and 7 minute songs about all manner of things.
Queued up for a second listen, I have Security Screenings from Prefuse 73, BORN LIKE THIS from Doom and Carboniferous from Zu. And I’m waiting for the new Love is All album to be online somewhere so I can see what that’s like.
The Lost Tribes of New York City, a short film of interviews with New Yorkers. Quite like Creature Comforts in its style, but takes the idea in a slightly different direction. The part in between the credits, right at the end, made me laugh.
Just after putting up the link to the video I got an email from Amazon kindly letting me know that they’d dispatched a copy of the album to me and, sure enough, on Saturday morning it slipped through my letter box.
To say I was looking forward to listening to it is something of an understatement. When Polly announced a few years ago that she was going to stop touring, I took it to mean that there wouldn’t be any new material either. White Chalk put that worry aside to some extent, but it still had the feel of a “last album” - it was quite a change from previous ones, so much softer and, while still wonderfully dark, it was a lot more gentle than either the anthemic Stories From the City… or the almost abrasive songs from To Bring you My Love or Dry.
A second collaboration with John Parish still doesn’t leave me feeling relieved that there will be years of music still to come, but it’s at least a temporary fix and it’s a damn good one, if a little mixed-up. Pitchfork’s review is typically unenthusiastic, but does a decent job in attempting to describe some of the music. Meanwhile, the pair have been allowed to “take over” the Guardian music website where there are interviews, pictures and a song to download.
