I haven’t talked about work much in the 3 or so years I’ve been running this site, but I thought it was time to share a side project I’ve been involved in. I’m a co-host of Stuff from the B-Side [iTunes link], wherein, twice a week, my friend John and I have a conversation about [...]
My homeboy Steve Reich won a Pulitzer. So did Atlanta author Douglas Blackmon, for his awesome book (judging by what I read when I borrowed it from Mom between holiday meals last winter), Slavery by Another Name. Need to move that one back on the list.
The 14-Second Work Year. Parody may not be timeless, but it can be very satisfying.
I get a kick out of nerdcore rapper ytcracker’s album DCPD Bangerz:
my friend mikey pasted me a link in skype to this police department’s site -
http://www.dekalbpolice.com/
EVERY page on this website was filled with the most banging beats i had ever heard. whoever picked these beats for this website seriously needs to be an a&r for [...]
Good news: back in October I wrote up my notes from Umberto Eco’s lecture on “How I Write”. That one and his other 3 Ellmann Lectures are now available on iTunesU.
Tonight I was thinking I’d love to hear hip hop that samples bluegrass music. I looked around and came across Gangstagrass. So far, so good. (Also reminds me of The Gourds’ cover of Snoop’s “Gin and Juice”.)
Carp Leaping Up a Cascade by Katsushika Hokusai. I find this rather breathtaking.
I recommend Wieland Samolak’s 1993 album, Steady State Music:
When I was a teenager I used to sit on an empty field listening for hours to the sounds of distant cars, railroads, helicopters, and other motorized objects. These sounds, which are very rough and noisy when they are near, attracted me from the distance because they [...]
RjDj uses your iPhone and the environment you’re in to make soundscapes, etc. It’s some sort of sampler with echo and reverb or other scenes that makes life more like you’re on something. There’s a couple good videos of RjDj on geobloggers. [via funkaoshi]
I’m not as thrilled with this one as I was with the unusual editon last week, but it’ll do. You might recognize the opener from the 28 Days Later soundtrack.
The only reason I put together the unusual edition is because of the first track “Strange Overtones”. I’ve been repeating that religiously since I heard it earlier this weekend. I haven’t had a track get such heavy play since “Weird Fishes”. Other highlights include Victor Wooten’s sick bass solo around the 2-minute mark in “Oddity,” [...]
Highlights in my fifth Monday muxtape include a more relaxed, non-heavy-metallic Judas Priest; my good friend and brilliant jazz vocalist Kat Edmonson; an obscenely catchy tune from Peter, Paul & Mary; a quiet little number for percussion ensemble; and some Yeasayer—the bass just kills me. Can’t sit still when that one comes up.
My fourth muxtape is ready for your aural pleasure.
Simply Noise generates white noise and pink noise. I was surprised by how nice it is.
This week’s installment at mlarson.muxtape.com.
Andr?°s Schiff did an 8-part series of lectures on all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas.
My second muxtape in an ongoing series of indeterminate length. Some static hiss on the last track, but it’s a hot performance.
The first in a series of themed weekly amusements. Get your fix while you can at mlarson.muxtape.com; I forgot to post earlier this week and I’ve got a new edition coming in a few days.
An audio slideshow about competing in the Barkley Marathon. Over the 22 years of the 100-mile race, only 7 have finished. It’s fondly called “the race that eats its young.” [via trails and tribulations]
“David Rakoff, who swore off TV in college, returns to it in dramatic fashion: he attempts to watch the same amount of television as the average American—29 hours in one week.“
You Are Not Dead: A Guide to Modern Living, an online essay + soundtrack, “was born out of fraughtful observations of the state of our States and the repetitive, empty monotony of consumer culture and electronic music.” [via waxy]
I watched Koyaanisqatsi this weekend. It’s got a lot of cool footage and overall it was worth watching. But part of the problem with the message (that we live a “crazy life,” a “life out of balance”) is that it’s so dependent on the soundtrack.
A lot of it made me think of those time-lapse videos [...]
A recording of Tony Danza reading “The Barber’s Unhappiness,” a funny story from George Saunders‘ collection in Pastoralia. The book was quite good, but hearing a story like this makes it even better. [thanks, austin]
On NPR, a conversation about Holden Caulfield, protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye. The literary remembrance has some interesting segues into how you read the book differently as you grow older, the beginnings of a teenage culture in the ’50s, and whether or not you can imagine Holden as an adult.
A short NPR story on the names on paper bags by Barbara Klein: “One of the names, ‘Alan Rumbo,’ intrigues her. She traces the bag back to its maker, and actually gets to talk to the line worker at the paper bag plant, Rumbo himself, who explains how the name on the millions of bags [...]
Emory University held a Flannery O’Connor celebration this week. The highlight was the first public exhibition of the nearly 300 letters between Flannery O’Connor and Betty Hester, which had been under seal for the past 20 years. Brenda Bynum gave a dramatic reading of O’Connor’s letters. I was late for it, unfortunately, but what I [...]
There is a ton of recordings from the 2007 Singularity Summit, featuring all the speakers and panels. [via justin, of course]
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