I was looking back through the RSS file for our episodes and realized I’d been doing recordings for a half-year-ish now. The first couple (dozen) episodes I was in were pretty rough. But I always listen every week and it’s nice to hear (what I think somewhat resembles) progress. It’s certainly feels more comfortable in front of the microphones. It’s not nearly as strange to listen to my own voice anymore.

It’s nice that we get a lot of freedom to be the curious people that we are, exploring topics as we get fascinated by them or as listeners request them. Favorite episodes? I’m partial to the ones in which we talk about:

• Musicians who use alter egos (including a discussion about the post-modern meta-cultural qualities of Hannah Montana and Eminem)
• How to decipher classical music titles
• The 1980s cassette version of iTunes
• Guilty pleasures and what makes music “cool”
• Brian Eno’s Music for Airports
• Narcocorridos
• The life and times of Billie Holiday
• Terry Riley’s In C
• Wizard Rock
• Leonard Cohen
• The West Coast/East Coast rivalry
• The Dies Irae melody
• Etc.

Also, I’d be silly not to mention that I’ve got smarter, even more well-spoken colleagues that do many other podcasts [iTunes] that are even better.

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 a major record label.

i decided to make a concept album using some of the hot beats on these pages and creating a backstory for the song based on what information was on the page. the songs are all named after the .html you can find the beat and story on.

I live in DeKalb, so it was a nice surprise to come across this. I think index_home.html [mp3] is my favorite, but executive_command.html is a very close second. [via decatur metro]

Carp Leaping Up a Cascade by Katsushika Hokusai. I find this rather breathtaking.

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 had merged and diffused into a continuum when they reached my ears. By this experience it came to my mind that it is more satisfying for me to listen to continuous changes within one sound than to the combinations of discreet sonic events usually found in music.

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,” and Paul Desmond’s saxophone work in “Strange Meadow Lark,” which has some unusual 10-bar phrases.

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.

This week’s installment at mlarson.muxtape.com.

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.

A lot of it made me think of those time-lapse videos I saw on kids TV when I was little. Seeing a factory in fast motion was cool, not cause for worry. I was glad I found this Koyaanisqatsi: Redux which matches a portion of the film to a goofy, upbeat soundtrack, and contrasts it with a more dramatic string arrangement in the middle (musical transitions are around the 2-minute and 4-minute marks). I like parts of Philip Glass‘ original soundtrack for the film, and I think it’s kind of spooky-cool how the soundtrack can direct your response to what you’re seeing. But it’s too much of an emotional shortcut.

There are a lot of excerpts from the film on YouTube, like the original trailer, the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing in St. Louis, scenes from New York, and the famous closing scene that reprises the opening.

Bonus: Georgia Public Broadcasting had a show about O’Connor in August. And earlier this year NPR talked with Steve Enniss, the director of the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, about the O’Connor–Hester relationship.