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"63 tracks, containing sine waves at various frequencies"; free download; burn to your own disc
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"Here's why floating things tend to clump together"
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ergonomic tips
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"These strategies are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history."
Circadian Shift
Surfing the information tsunami.
« August 2005 | Main | October 2005 »
I didn't follow the show, but the word is that Rockstar: INXS wrapped up this past week, and some Canadian guy won. I'm not going to get all worked up about the whole "bastardization of INXS' legacy" thing that some fans are on about, but let's face it: getting anyone to replace Michael Hutchence as lead singer is a mighty tall order. J.D. from Oakville, I wish you luck.
Anyway, I'd been meaning to put a couple of old INXS tunes online for a while, so now is just as good a time to do it as any.
These two tracks are from INXS's 1982 album Shabooh Shoobah:
- "Don't Change" is one of my favourite INXS songs, which is kind of funny, since it's somewhat different from the sound for which they later became known. It's got a very pop-y, almost dance-y, New Wave feel to it, and features a keyboard riff that will appeal to fans of the Modern English tune "I Melt With You". Fun fact: when No Doubt was deciding on an 80's tune to include as a cover version on their greatest hits album, "Don't Change" was one of the songs under consideration. (FWIW, I thought they did a fine job with the song they eventually picked -- "It's My Life" by Talk Talk.)
- "The One Thing" still features some prominent keyboard work, not to mention some screeching sax, and something that sounds like marimbas (?), but already you can hear the swagger that went on to typify the group's later stadium rock hits.
You can download "Don't Change" and "The One Thing" as a ZIP file (EXPIRED) (7.14 MB) via Rapidshare.
Very freaking little to report.
The major highlight of the week was doing some very severely needed excavation work on The Hovel. It's a work in progress. sigh
Other than that, I went to work and did stuff, drank a lot of coffee, and listened to a bunch of MP3s. Meh.
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"Cursing... is a human universal. Every language, dialect or patois ever studied, living or dead, spoken by millions or by a small tribe, turns out to have its share of forbidden speech..."
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you too can appear to be hard at work all the time
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"Instead of fighting the real war that was thrust upon us on that incomprehensible morning four years ago, we stubbornly insisted on fighting a war of the imagination..."
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"Your man is no good. He treats you like crap, lies to you, abuses you, bullies you, exploits you, takes your money..."
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"'(T)he authorities' are too few and too centralized to respond to the dispersed and numerous emergencies of a disaster. Instead, the people classified as victims generally do what can be done to save themselves and one another."
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"People reach their peak of alertness between 6pm and 7pm"
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"A survey by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) found that 33% of adults said they would nap at work if they were allowed."
Boring week. Boring mood board.
I finally got around to seeing Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (IMDB info). It was OK -- didn't love it, didn't hate it. Really, I just went because I saw all the other episodes and even though I knew how this one ended, I still had to see it for myself.
Also bought a couple old/new CDs:
- Although I've accumulated a bunch of Bjork MP3s over the years, I've never bought any of her albums. (Although I did buy "Army of Me" as a CD single back when it was first released.) So I went and got her Greatest Hits compilation from a couple years ago.
- I downloaded a copy of Tourist by St. Germain from somewhere a few years ago, and had been meaning to get a "legitimate" copy for some time. I have now finally done so.
I love my Firefox browser. Really, I do, whatwith all the cool extensions that provide some totally nifty functionality, and all.
But I am really getting hella goddam sick and tired of it crashing on me all the time -- popups in particular (even user-requested ones) seem to make it choke, sputter, and die.
It's been happening for the last couple versions now. Version 1.0.6 was supposedly a "stability" release, but it hasn't seemed to make one lick of difference.
There's a Beta version 1.5 available for the brave people to try, but I am not one of them.
I'm telling ya, though, if this crashy stuff doesn't get corrected soon, I'm thinking about switching back to Opera.
Some free (and legal) MP3s that I've been enjoying lately:
- "Barnowl" by Caribou was a tune that I first heard on the presently AWOL dirtyradio; it's got a nice chugging little groove and some drone-y bits to it which are very catchy
- "Please Wake Me for Meals" by Barbara Morgenstern and Robert Lippok is another dirtyradio find -- all buzzy and blippy, like electro for an airport lounge
- "Do It Now" by Dubtribe Soundsystem is twelve-and-a-half minutes of cool and groovy acid jazz to get down to (sorry to use groove/groovy twice in the same post)
- amazon.com (free registration required) has a couple of exclusive non-album tracks to coincide with Meat Beat Manifesto's new CD; "Postcards" is the stronger of the two
- download.com has two tunes from the new Broken Spindles release, as well as some older tunes that I blogged about here
- the agriculture is currently featuring on its homepage three tracks each from NNNJ and DJ Olive
- more beats are available at smart-music.net, which currently has an entire CD's worth of downtempo and abstract sounds thoughtfully packaged in one convenient ZIP file, as well as a mother-lode of other MP3s in a variety of styles
While it still may be warm enough outside to work up a sweat while just walking around, make no mistake about it -- summer is fading fast.
The passing of Labour Day and the start of a new school year have left me feeling rather wistful. An entire season has passed in what seems like the blink of an eye.
A couple end-of-summer mixes, brought to my attention via totally fuzzy:
- From the long-dormant mix of the week comes their latest offering, called "Gods of Eden". It's a blend of funk, fusion, electro, and other stuff, with several older tracks from the likes of Giorgio Moroder, Jean Michel Jarre, The Art of Noise, and Level 42.
- BendingCorners is new to me; it features monthly mixes of jazz and groove. August's mix, called "Desert Moments", wanders into ambient territory, with tracks by Steve Roach, Autechre, Boards of Canada, and Peter Gabriel (from the Passion soundtrack).
One of the CDs I was listening to at work over the past week was Underworld's 2002 release A Hundred Days Off. This song in particular was on heavy repeat on Friday afternoon:
"Sola Sistim" by Underworld(EXPIRED) (5.92 MB) (it's a RapidShare link; some scrolling, clicking, and waiting will be required)
Downtempo, and so very chilled -- quite a departure from a group that's perhaps best known for "shoutin' lager! lager! lager!". Beautiful.
Now that we're back, I can finally tell you that Silence Is A Rhythm Too is once again featuring 12" mixes from the 80s all week.
Thus far, there have been tunes from the Tom Tom Club, Spandau Ballet, and The Associates; so, for all you retro freaks, get over there pronto!
Better late than never, here is the mood board for last week...
The week brought the start of a new job, a new month, and a new raft of downloads from eMusic. For my forty-track allotment this month, I decided to forgo getting full albums, and instead cherry-picked a bunch of tunes from different sources.
- Picks number 1 through 27 were a selection of mid-80s goth and industrial tracks from Bauhaus, Gene Loves Jezebel, Love and Rockets, Ministry, Peter Murphy, The Revolting Cocks, Skinny Puppy, The Bolshoi, The Cult, and Tones on Tail.
- Keeping with the retro theme on picks 28 through 39 was an assortment of miscellaneous 80s tracks from Camper Van Beethoven, Eddy Grant, The Dead Milkmen, Scandal and Patty Smyth, Berlin, Toni Basil, Expose, The Go-Go's, Bananarama, and The Alarm.
- And, for my last track for the month, I picked "Raag Shree" performed by Ali Akbar Khan and Ravi Shankar; dubbed by the eMusic pundits as "one of the oldest, most difficult, and most exciting of all the ragas", it makes for a decent (I would beg to differ with the "exciting" label) twenty minutes and forty-one seconds (or so) of quieter listening.
Not shown on the board is another bit of media consumption from the week, namely the movie Pollock (IMDB info), which I saw on DVD. I found it to be an enjoyable overview of the life of Jackson Pollock; obviously, they can't cover everything in a movie, but this was good to whet the appetite for more information about his art, and other things.
As you may or may not have noticed, things here at the Shift have been on hiatus for the last week.
My hosts at sauna.org, including the lovely and talented Mr. GAK, have been hard at work, moving the server to a new location, installing some spiffy new upgrades, etc., etc.
So, things should be progressing much more smoothly from hereon in.
Thanks to all concerned for keeping this little enterprise of mine going.
