Setup Goodbye

I discontinued this blog after one year of activity. As a goodbye, this is my current setup:

• I have used Last.fm, Youtube and Spotify to keep track of music plays, videos and tracks. Songkick is also handy for concerts.
• I own an Apple computer on which I use iTunes to handle MP3 files and other audio sources. Spotify is the only serious competition to iTunes for me.
• On the other end of the setup spectrum, my hardware has not changed much in years: I use an iPod Shuffle and various sets of neckband headphones by Sony and Sennheiser.

See you somewhere else!

Fr.

Änglagård

I started using Last.fm seriously yesterday and it brought me very quickly to an excellent prog rock band from Sweden, Änglagård. Expect mellotron and superb arrangements on their album Epilog.

Stages of techno

I am listening to two lives, both from Carl Cox, both at Tribehouse Neuss in Düsseldorf. The first one is allegedly from the mid-1990s and sounds very much like it: I can hear track sI have already listened to in mixes by Jeff Mills. I can hear acid tracks, and a lot of tracks that are also featured on the F.A.C.T. volumes. The second mix is dated 30th April 2008, and has almost nothing really interesting. It sounds very much like some of that commercial electro crap that you can listen to pretty much everywhere. I have no enthusiasm for that second stage of techno -- I believe the best stuff is now in minimal techno (Ritchie Hawtin) and in hard techno (Chris Liebing, Frank Kvitta). Technasia and their friends (Joris Voorn, Renato Cohen) stay on top of my all-time list.

Isis

A band I do not know, sounds interesting:

Isis_-_Paris
Uploaded by sonik_kaos

Sepultura - Inner Self

Drums Cats

"Dream of Cat" show, Edinburgh Festival, August 2008, truly excellent.

Related videos:



In a different scenery:

In the morning

In the morning, I enjoy some light jazz. Anthony Braxton's "Seven Standards" are extremely appropriate. Here he is, playing Coltrane's "Impressions":