Links for 21-11-2007
Music reviews a-plenty, psychology of flamers and trolls, digital music business forecast, Japanese airships are go!, pictures from the CERN LHC …
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1 – Album review: The Winnebago Orchestra – Born In The Sun
“Thirty seconds into Born In The Sun, I was dreading having to listen to the whole album; ten minutes in I was humming along to the melodies; once it finished, I put it right back on again.”
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2 – Album review: Various Artists – Monopoly Of Brilliance (Southern Records)
“… what can be said with certainty about Monopoly Of Brilliance is that there’s not one song on here that you could ever label as average or ordinary; it’s like an hour-long slice of a John Peel playlist.”
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3 – Album review: One Small Step For Landmines – One Small Step For Landmines
“… every song sounding like it’s being rushed through as quick as humanly possible — not because they’re bored with playing it, but because going fast is always more fun, and they can’t wait to start on the next tune in line.”
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4 – Album review: Sons Of Alpha Centauri – Sons Of Alpha Centauri
“Call it stoner rock, desert metal, riff rock … whatever you name it, there are three essential ingredients. First and foremost, you need the riffs, and Sons Of Alpha Centauri have no shortage in this department.”
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5 – Album review: New Project – Ultraviolent Light
“New Project capture the technology-saturated atmosphere of the [cyberpunk] genre with synthesized percussion and riffs meshed tightly to uber-heavy guitar and brutal live drumming …”
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6 – Album review: In The Fur – Magnificent Designs
“They’ve got everything the Radio Two set looks for in a band — approachable songs without too much filigree, and a distinctive yet familiar sound that combines the best elements of the past and the present.”
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7 – Album review: Quit Your Dayjob – Tools For Fools
“… should you throw a house-party that includes a banquet of booze, nitrous oxide and assorted class-B controlled substances, Tools For Fools should set the atmosphere up just about right for an evening of inebriated shouting and jumping around …”
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8 – Album review: Chapter – Two (The Biographer)
“This is probably as much to do with my lack of familiarity with folk and country styles as anything else, but as pretty as these songs may be, they’re not particularly memorable.”
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9 – Interview: Hundred Reasons – Larry Hibbitt (guitarist and producer)
“Our limitations? No one plays the cello … [laughs] That’s a difficult question to answer. I don’t know … you don’t really think about limitations. You think more about what you can do than what you can’t.â€
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10 – Jupiter Research – Latest US Digital Music Forecast
“… digital music, which accounted for only 9% of consumer spending on music and ring tones in 2006, will total a whopping 34% in 2012. That’s because the bottom continues to drop out of CD sales, and the overall pie ends up shrinking.”
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11 – Don’t flame me, bro’
“After being described a few weeks ago as “a self-lobotomised liberal who can’t face the facts”, I decided to look into the psychology of online behaviour a bit further.” Heh.
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12 – The god of small things – Peter Higgs
“It was Dirac’s work that enthralled Higgs and put him on the path to study theoretical physics. “It’s about understanding! Understanding the world!” Higgs says, his voice full of excitement.” Yeah, Higgs as in Boson.
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13 – Researchers Create Robot Driven by Moth’s Brain
“The robot’s motion is guided by a tiny electrode implanted in the moth’s brain, Higgins said, specifically to a single neuron that is responsible for keeping the moth’s vision steady during flight.” That’s just … wow. Weird science.
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14 – New airship era takes off in Tokyo
“The world’s biggest airship will make its first commercial flight over Tokyo later this week, 70 years after the Hindenburg disaster brought the golden age of the dirigible to a fiery end.” Nu-steampunk is go!
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15 – CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
Picture gallery! w00t! I loves me some large-scale science.
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16 – Nicholas Carr – The Luddite dream of Jeff Bezos
“The only thing that will keep books great is respect for the individual author, the individual reader, and the sanctity of the book as a closed container. When that respect goes, the book goes with it.”
