I was away on vacation this week, which explains the near-total
silence on the blog. But at least you’ll get a FRT from me. And some
nice posts on cryptography and game theory coming next week.
- Gogol Bordello, “Dub the Frequencies of Love”: Eastern
european gypsies meet punk meets reggae. - Hawkwind, “Urban Guerilla”: A live recording of a rather
catchy tune by Hawkwind. Personally, I prefer their spacier stuff. - Porcupine Tree, “Glass Arm Shattering”: Porcupine Tree is
always great. This one starts off slow and quiet, and then builds. - IQ, “Harvest of Souls”: Peter Nichols, the leader of IQ
in their incarnation on this album is nothing short of a
genius. This is a wonderful song – which is not surprising, since
everything from the “Dark Matter” album is wonderful. - Naftule’s Dream, “Afterwards”: Lately, I’ve been very
into Klezmer – particularly the more modern jazzy/experimental type.
Naftule’s Dream is one of my favorite bands of this style. They
record traditional Klezmer as “the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra”, and
their more out-there stuff as “Naftule’s Dream”. This is a
deceptively mellow track, which has a lot of strange stuff going on. - Genesis, “Supper’s Ready”: early Genesis – this track is
the direct precursor of “The Lamb Lays Down on Broadway”, which is
one of the best works in the history of rock music. - Sonic Youth, “Lights Out”
- Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, “Buma”: More Klez.
- Peter Gabriel, “Signal to Noise”: a masterpiece off of
Peter Gabriel’s latest album. This is an amazing track – blending
orchestral backing, African singing and drumming, and some
traditional progressive tropes. Really great – this gives me chills
every time I listen to it. - The Flower Kings, “A King’s Prayer”: As far as I’m
concerned, the Flower Kings can do no wrong. I can pick out any
track off of any FK album, and be pretty much guaranteed to
hear something amazing.
Hi Mark,
Sorry this is OT but how are you on actuarial math? A comment over on pharyngula
has intrigued me about McCain and age and, frankly, I’m worried he won’t see out the year.
eddie: I know it’s not exactly evidential, but having read pharyngula a lot over the past 2 to 3 years, I’d say that Nick Gotts is pretty firmly on the side of reason.
And the numbers look right to my (admittedly non-expert) eyes.
Mark,
Any recommendations on Thijs Van Leer and Focus?
Oh, great – you FRTed at us…
(Sorry…)
Mark,
Peter Gabriel’s “Signal to Noise” plays out very closely to the Karnataka Music Raagam Shanmukhapriya. Apart from the many streams of styles you have pointed out he also does some beautiful gamakkam (vocal glides).