Circadian Shift

Addendum 01 May 2005: Thanks to Maria for pointing out that "Quatro" should be spelled with a "C". I never claimed to be fluent in Spanish :)

We're at the end of the month already, but here at last is April's addition to Circadian Shift: The Outpost. Get out your smiley faces, because it's time for some acid house:

• "We Call It Acieeeed" by D Mob (MP3; 3,008 KB) -- with its distinctive siren call, this pretty much heralded the arrival of "acid, the musical phenomenon" into the mainstream (at least in the UK)
• "Theme from S-Express" by S-Express (MP3; 3,650 KB) -- an epic string break, a smooth vocal sample, and that trippy synth line made this pretty damn irresistable

I suppose if I were truly cool, this would be the point in the blog post where I'd regale you with all sorts of tales from my experiences during the Summer of Love. Problem is, I don't have any. I spent that summer working in a bank and going to summer school. But I do have fond memories of the music of that year, depending largely on the CBC's overnight radio shows Brave New Waves and its former weekend counterpart Nightlines for sounds like the ones above.

Anyway, for the keeners, here's some additional linkage:

• Jahsonic's page on the History of Acid House
• Wikipedia's entry on acid house
• a shorter entry on acid house from a site called Pure 80s Pop

It was three years ago today that I typed these words into a newly set up account at Blogspot:

I've been meaning for ages to set up a blog. It's finally here.

I'm an information junkie, meaning that I read a lot (or at least I try to). I also like a lot of different music and the occasional film. So I thought I'd set something up to record what I've been reading, watching, or listening to. Something like that.

At the time I wrote that, I was unemployed, taking classes, and staying up very, very, very late (hence the blog name Circadian Shift). These days, I am... uh... unemployed and taking classes (but at least not staying up so late), and blogging about stuff that I've been reading, watching, or listening to.

Obviously, a lot of stuff has happened in between then and now -- both with life and with the blog -- but it's kind of funny how some things have come full circle.

Anyway, thanks to those of you who have stuck around.

The DSL came back on Tuesday, and there's just been so so much to catch up on. Which leads to the inevitable "OMG, what the hell do I blog first?"

Some good stuff has jumped out at me lately from these MP3 blogs. Go check them out:

• Music Forest
• this.mix.kicks-ass.net
• Spoilt Victorian Child
• Lost in the 80's

There's also some new Drive-by Linking down at the bottom of the page.

Addendum: Kick & Go is a new blog with a ton of retro MP3s to offer, for those of you who like that sort of thing.

I really have very little recollection of what the heck I've done over the last seven days. It wasn't much.

This week's board is dominated by yet another wretched school assignment (*#!@$*#*#! content modelling) hanging over my head. Not fun. Not happy.

Lack of broadband access has also really played hell with my online media consumption -- no streaming internet radio, no new MP3 downloads. Boo.

Instead, the following MP3s (among others) wound up on heavy rotation this week:

• "Signal Crossing" by Dykehouse -- back on the board, having first appeared two weeks ago
• "Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime" by Beck
• "Sweetness and Light" by Lush
• "Pretty World" by Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66 -- I have Silence is a Rhythm Two to thank for the presence of this track on my hard drive; this song is one that I heard when I was very young, and it sort of stuck in the back of head as a vague memory; about twenty years later, I heard it again and learned that it was done by Sergio Mendes, but I still didn't know what the tune was called; a good decade-and-change after that, the mystery is finally solved
• "Ladyflash" by The Go! Team -- another returning tune, having originally appeared on the inaugural mood board

Uh, yeah, it's a somewhat moody and sentimental playlist. It's been that kind of week.

Just thought I'd mention this for any Toronto readers out there...

The Bloor Cinema will be re-running the collection of Oscar-nominated short films that I blogged about here.

You can catch it tomorrow (i.e. Wednesday) or Thursday at 7 pm, or on Friday at 4:30 pm.

Go see it if you have a chance -- there's some good stuff.

A screwup at my ISP has resulted in me being without the benefit of a home DSL connection since Friday, and it will be several days yet before things are back to normal (am currently using dialup). Expect blog updates to be sparse in the meantime.

Of course, this has resulted in me being late with the weekly mood board:

Have been pre-occupied with matters pertaining to job-hunting and classes. Have also bashed out a good chunk of email correspondence, which accounts for all the text on the board this week.

Standout bits of media consumption:

• saw Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason on DVD. Having now consumed the two parts of the Bridget Jones saga in both written and filmic varieties, I can say that the first part of the story is the superior of the two in both media. And of the four pieces, the movie sequel is the weakest -- still OK (I was reasonably entertained), but just not as good as the others.
• Broken Spindles is another musical discovery for which I have dirtyradio to thank. The work is likely to appeal to both indie and electro fans. You can download three songs for free here. "Induction" is a moody, atmospheric tune with a cinematic quality to it, while "Downtown Venues" is a more punchy, bhangra-tinged track.

Not much else to add, and I have to sign off and get ready for tonight's class, so I'll end here. See you in a while.

Lots of new links going up over the last few days under Drive-by Linking.

The latest retro tune offerings from the MP3 blogs:

• Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark tracks from the Dazzle Ships and Architecture and Morality albums, courtesy of Spoilt Victorian Child
• SVC also has the 12" mix of Visage's "Fade to Grey"
• very early Ministry over at grapeJuiceplus
• woodentop has some Billy Bragg
• Addendum: Silence Is a Rhythm Too has a little something from Pete Shelley's synthpop phase

In response to a post I made over at Clicks & Notes, "N" sent me this link:

The Conceptual Space of Collage
Collage is a critical paradigm of the information age because it opens the range of possibilities through which we interpret information artifacts. Cut and paste enables semiotic construction that simultaneously leverages and detourns the means of production embodied by particular media elements. The recombination of genetic codes of meaning creates hybrid forms. Through these cross-currents, culture, and even knowledge, evolve.

Of course, with my weekly mood boards, I've been getting into the whole collage thing a lot lately. Sure I could just stick with a textual laundry list of things that I've been seeing/hearing/reading/doing/thinking all week, but the mood boards just feel (to me) like they capture it all so much better...

Anyway, the article above talks about some sort of application called "CollageMachine", which unfortunately seems to be no longer available online. So, I did some hunting around and turned up some other online collage applications:

• National Gallery of Art NGAkids collage machine -- choose from various shapes and pictures; you can flip things around, resize elements and adjust their transparency; or if you're feeling lazy, just click the "Auto" button and it'll generate a collage for you; very neat
• Collage Machine 1.0 -- a few different galleries of images to choose from; you can rotate and cut pieces, as well as add your own scribbles with the mouse
• typoGenerator -- I've linked to this one before; not so much interactivity here, but the results are very cool

I also got to thinking about a few online news sites that rely heavily on a collage effect to transmit many news items in a visual way:

• Yahoo! Buzz Images and News -- splays out a bunch of photos for you; mouse over them to get the textual summary
• 10 x 10 -- 100 keywords and 100 pictures
• newsmap -- no pictures, but relies on size and placement of textual elements to convey importance or magnitude of coverage

Are we going to rely more on interfaces like this to cope with information overload? When are we going to get RSS aggregators that look this?

Slightly off-topic -- but also very neat -- are these visual works that reprocess other visual information (found via swens blog):

• MTV's 10 Greatest Music Videos of All Time, as manipulated by Jason Salavon -- "Each of the videos in the top 10 of this list were digitized in their entirety. The individual frames from each video were then simplified to their mean average color, eliminating overt content. These solid-colored squares were then rearranged in their original sequence and are read left-to-right, top-to-bottom."
• 50 people see... -- blends together different photo images from Flickr that all bear the same tag

Not a lot to say for myself.

This week's media consumption:

• The standout tune for the week has been "Signal Crossing" by Dykehouse. The song is all swirly and dreamy and atmospheric, with a sound very reminiscent of something coming out of the UK in the mid-80s. Some have invited comparisons to The Jesus and Mary Chain, or Echo and The Bunnymen -- I won't disagree. You can download it for free here.
• Also gave the CD Loops from the Bergerie by Swayzak a couple listens. I picked the disc up sometime in February, I think. By far (in my my mind) the standout track on the disc is "Speakeasy", a swaggering bit of Electro with a wicked fat synth line and a terrific schaeffel beat. There's a Motorola TV commercial that uses the song. You can also download an earlier tune by Swayzak from Epitonic.
• Am also still really liking the LCD Soundsystem disc that appeared on the board a couple weeks back.
• Saw the movie Ocean's 12. It was sufficiently entertaining. I never saw Ocean's 11, and it didn't seem to matter.

The other pix on the page come via Cognitive Distortion and morgueFile. They seemed appropriate.

Some mixes to kick off your weekend...

Smashed Robot has The Bush-League Sessions, which has a few recent tracks that I've been grooving to lately (Mylo, LCD Soundsystem, Vitalic), as well as some older stuff (Gang of Four, New Order).

Pop77's mix #27 also has some LCD Soundsystem (different track, fortunately), as well as some Earlimart, Mercury Rev, Ivy, and Aphex Twin.

And, just because, here's the video for the song "Paris Hilton" by MU. It's, uh, different. (Needs Quicktime plugin.)

Tim Horton's "Roll Up the Rim to Win" contest is still going on, and I've done pretty well recently. Yesterday I won a donut, and today I won a cookie.

However, in my eagerness to snip the winning piece out of today's cup, I failed to check that it was completely drained of coffee first. Sure enough, as soon as I tipped the cup on its side, cold brown liquid came running out, and all over my nice clean shirt. Argh.

That better be one damn good cookie.

Some MP3s, courtesy of MusicForest:

• for those of you who like your beats big and booming (a la Chemical Brothers or Crystal Method) here are some tunes from the soundtrack to WipeOut Pure (apparently some sort of videogame for the Playstation)
• Hardfloor - Live at Subsoil 02-08-2003 is an hour-long set, perfect for re-living your acid house days

The WipeOut Pure set reminded me of some tunage available from Epitonic:

• Elite Force -- per this writeup from sputnik7: "If the Chemical Brothers are out of town, and the Fatboy isn't returning your calls, it's time to download this one-man SWAT team of breaks."
• Electrostatic -- a couple months back, one of the MP3 bloggers featured a few tracks and a video from this trio; "Electron Gun" is particularly heavy on the block rockin' sound

Addendum: Speaking of the Chemical Brothers, Seb's Open Research links to the Michel Gondry-directed video for "Let Forever Be" (Quicktime), taken from the Brothers' 1999 album Surrender.

BTW, in light of what's been in the news over the last week, figured I might as well jot this down...

Should circumstances arise wherein I'm rendered into some kind of giant meat popsicle, with most of my brain tissue gone and doing nothing but lie in bed for a decade, by all means pull the goddam plug.

When you do, please take any bits and pieces of me that still work, and do something useful with them.

Another week has gone by, and I don't feel like I have a heck of a lot to show for it.

So here's what's on the board this week (starting from the lower-left hand corner):

• I went and picked up Set Yourself on Fire, the latest CD by Stars, which happens to be yet another disc that everyone's liking a lot. If I had to describe the band's sound in terms of what other groups sound like, I go with it being a cross between Prefab Sprout and Lush, accompanied by a Nintendo Gameboy. No, really, it's good. (Damn, I just noticed that the New York Times also cited Prefab Sprout in their writeup. And here I thought I was being so original.) I've seen the adjective "devastating" being bandied about a couple times, due to not only the sheer gorgeousness of the instrumentals, but also to the lyrical content. If you've ever had your heart broken -- be it last week, last year, or last decade -- you'll know what they mean about the lyrics.
• As the jobhunt thing continues, one company that I've applied to asked me to cough up a sample requirements document with use cases, which gave me the opportunity to show off a bit of the UML stuff I learned recently.
• Saw the movie Sideways. It's a bittersweet sort of film, heavy on the themes of aging and watching your dreams fade away, while trying to fight back and not give up on it all so easily. Nice visuals, fully drawn characters (flaws and all), understated humour, and pacing that feels leisurely without being draggy -- in all, a film well deserving of its handful of Oscar nominations (although Paul Giamatti should have gotten one too).
• Nick Lowe appears on the board, thanks to Tuesday's theme song.
• It's been a while since I visited Exploding Dog, where Sam has posted a number of his ink drawings on paper, in additon to his usual digital drawings. This particular pic has been especially appropriate for me lately.
• The background text is another jobhunt artifact, the well-known FOAD letter.

Not showing on the board is anything pertaining to school. While I'm all up-to-date on the reading, I've been thrashing around on the assignments. Blech. One's due Monday, so you know how the rest of my weekend will be spent.

(You can also view the image full size on Eye Magazine's site.)

More 'toons on m@b's site.