Music, the sweetest thing. Here’s a list of recent favourites I’ve been bumping in the iPod and on the computer (I don’t got a car!). It also kinda serves as an end of year list too, in case I don’t get round to doing one.
Pinch ‘Underwater Dancehall’ - quite possibly one of the albums of the year for me. It just gets better and better with every listen. The vocal tracks are superb. It has echoes of previous Bristol classics like Massive Attack, but it’s entirely its own thing.
Stones Throw ‘Now Again:Re Sounds’ - been a while since I bumped something like this. Re-edits and remixes of classic tracks unearthed by the Stones Throw historians. Some great moments with Percee P on there who proves that he is still one of the best.
Oh No ‘Dr. No’s Oxperiment’ - Madlib’s little brother does good and comes up with an incredibly funky collection of short beats and loops taking their cue from Turkish music. Another grower.
One more thing on the whole piracy subject, and this one is gonna be short and sweet. I came across this video on the dot-alt blog, and it’s another great addition to the whole debate about piracy, not just in music but in every aspect of society.
This is a video of Matt Mason, the founding editor of Rewind magazine, doing a presentation about his new book ‘The Pirate’s Dilemma’. The video is quite long but really worth it especially if you’re interested in this whole subject. It’s hard not to be drawn in by Matt’s cleverly put together presentation and pretty spot on argument. He doesn’t actually focus on just music piracy, though he touches on it, but draws an interesting parrallel between pirate radios, and pirate movements, and pioneering. It’s definitely on point I think and gives more ammunition to the whole debate.
UPDATE - hours after I posted this Ed sent me another link, and one that couldn’t have been more relevant to the subject. The head of Warner Music admits that the industry was wrong to go to war with consumers, and what’s more he delivered that speech at a conference for mobile phone companies warning them of not repeating the same mistakes on the digital platforms that were made on normal computer platforms. Additional food for thought…
Continuing the recent series of posts about piracy and torrents, a friend of mine (Ed again!) sent me a very interesting link from someone who used Oink, worked in the music industry at various majors and who puts forward some very interesting points regarding the whole debate surrounding piracy, outdated business models and new technology.
You can check the article here. While not everyone may agree with his total disregard for the record industry (the majors that is, not the indies) it’s hard not to see some sense in a lot of the points put across - especially with regards to the record industry essentially missing the boat 8 years ago when p2p networks first surfaced. Something I’ve also mentioned before and which I really believe is what this whole debates does boil down to. They missed the boat and then went for the worst of the two remaining options: pretending that they were the victims and continually refusing to move on and adapt to the new world of music as a digital medium, with no tangible, physical aspect. There are other good points, regarding the bully tactics employed by the remaining majors and organisations like the RIAA, as well as some of the suggested possibilities for a new business model (which I don’t totally agree with).
Learning is not always fun, especially if you don’t want to do it or if it seems like an impossible task. Learning Kanji when you’re not Japanese, and didn’t start at an early age, falls quite neatly into the latter category (or the first one too, but at that point you’ve got to be thinking about why you’re learning something like Kanji, which you can get by without). The thing with Kanji is that once you get the past the feeling of pointlessness, and the other one that makes you want to bang your head violently against a wall because people today are still using such an antiquated, and totally impractical, way of writing and communicating, you actually realise that it’s quite good. And interesting. And fun. Really I’m serious.
It took me roughly 8 months before I seriously contemplated learning Kanji properly. And I’m glad I waited because it’s made it that much more interesting, especially after you get to the point where you know and can read the phonetic kana alphabets fine but you’re stuck on the Kanji and therefore have no other option but to move forth. My first step towards Kanji mastery was to buy the first set of the excellent White Rabbit Press Kanji cards, which are used to help you train for the first levels of the Japanese Language Profiency Test. Cards are cool and being a teacher makes you automatically down with flashcards anyways, so it’s a winner. There’s a few annoying things about them, including the order of the cards and the usefulness of some of the example sentences/words, but by and large they’re a great way to get stuck into Kanji and open a whole world of daily understanding.
A lot is happening right now so I haven’t got much time to post, but I managed to record a quick mix the other day.
Was feeling pretty shitty but the mix actually came out all right. Made in Ableton for bumping in the iPod, maybe you’ll enjoy it as well. Some new and unreleased bits alongside some favourites of recent times - turn up the bass and sit back.
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