keep cool, babylon...

when sept 11th happened, i had just completed my junior year in art school at cmu, the automobile revision project & my first group art show (in holland with many other talented artists). i was taking a year off from school to re-assess and re-align... to figure out how to best use my last year of classes.

i was at my girlfriend's ancestral home when we saw the news... i was to fly to vermont to build a music studio with some friends the next day, and like many people, had to wait a few days until the planes started flying again. not much changed in those initial days, but the event certainly helped to define that year.

which brings me to reggae. i had just discovered reggae (beyond bob marley) through Suzie Silver recommending me Alton Ellis (and rocksteady in general) and listening to Lee Perry's Arkology. i had made a couple mixes, nothing special, but collecting my favorite songs i had been able to score off of napster (lol) or my friend Jim's palatial collection of dub & roots. i was (and still am) very fond of the Twinkle Brothers' album "Rasta Pon Top" with it's luscious harmonies and rock-of-gibraltar-solid rhythm section. i loved "Festival Wise", with it's imagery of people dancing outside evoking the outdoor raves and hippie festivals that had been so influential to me in the previous years.

but reggae became something much more to us after 9/11. to a young radical's mind, the patriot act, the violence & wars, the opportunistic business dealings, the utter perversion of justice... done in our name... brought us to a state of artistic, political and spiritual fervor. reggae embodied all of this. with it's soul fire, reggae was rife with referents we enjoyed identifying with. there was little questioning our appropriation of this black rebel music... it felt as if it was speaking to our very being... we let it educate us on the ills of babylon, political rhetoric & the wisdom of the spirit... that hot & cool play of the heart.

in reggae we saw the events of 9/11 connected to a historical context... the valentine's "blam blam fever" and not only spoke to the violence inherent in poverty, but offered a condemnation of our military reaction in afghanistan & iraq... "the gun fever is bad", indeed. the heptones (utterly, heart-breakingly beautiful) "country boy" offered a similar critique of gun violence (in a jamaican context), but also was an excellent diss to GW... "country boy, you shootin' up the place". despite feeling the immense pressure... the gravity of the situation, reggae taught us we could help... we could resist with righteousness & love... borrowed, though it was.

along with great books & greater people and experience... our resistance eventually took on an essence of it's own... artistically, politically & spiritually, we became more than the privileged caricatures we were that year in vermont. but everyone starts somewhere, and i'll always be thankful to reggae for being the kick in the pants that helped myself and my peers to have the courage to resist, the wisdom to connect our struggles with others' and the respect for the rhythms of the spirit... the time to go to battle, and the time to chill the fuck out and let things pass.

speaking of chilling the fuck out, we made a lot of reggae mixes that year, and sent them to our friends around the country. it was our little act of peace in the midst of all that war. they were in constant rotation. they we're our discipline, our meditation. "resistance reggae" vol. 3 and vol. 4 are below. enjoy them. light a fire. keep cool.


01. dave & ansel collins - double barrel
02. niney - blood & fire
03. the maytals - pressure drop
04. stranger cole & lester sterling - bangarang
05. justin hines & the dominoes - carry go bring come
06. lee perry - soul fire
07. yabby you - conquering lion
08. the upsetters & dillenger - rastaman shuffle
09. the heptones - coutry boy
10. ras michael - keep cool babylon
11. the melodians - rivers of babylon
12. lee perry & the upsetters - dread lion
13. johnny clarke - african people
14. alton ellis - arise black man
15. the congos - at the feast
16. desmond dekker - (007) shanty town
17. bob marley - bus dem shut (pyaka)
18. little roy - hurt not the earth
19. abyssinians - mark of the dub
20. black uhuru - guess who's coming to dinner
21. rhythm & sound w/ tikiman - spend some time

DOWNLOAD VOL. 3


01 - lee perry - good will dub
02 - the congos - education of brainwashing
03 - the valentines - blam blam fever
04 - johnny "dizzy" moore
05 - alton ellis & the flames - blessings of love
06 - herman marquis - tom's version
07 - u roy - festival wise
08 - cornell cambell - jah jah me no born yah
09 - prince far i - commandment of drugs
10 - honey boy martin - dreader than dread
11 - lee perry - perry's jump up
12 - lee perry - rub & squeeze
13 - the congos - youth man
14 - the ethiopians - train to skaville
15 - derrick morgan - blazing fire
16 - don drummond - don d lion
17 - blake boy - cambodia
18 - the maytals - take me home country road
19 - the heptones - cool rasta
20 - lee perry - city too hot
21 - ras michael - rise jah jah children
22 - lee perry - the upsetter
23 - heaven sisters - rasta dreadlocks

DOWNLOAD VOL. 4

note: jim mulhearn is at least equally to credit for these mixes. i couldn't find the version of the original artwork that properly titled. also... the struggle continues, modern reggae keeps moving.

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Awesome.

this the story of how karl rove got beat up by a 9 year old girl. she saw a nixon sticker on his bicycle and gave him a black eye. gawker thinks we should make this young child a folk hero. money quote:

"The little girl knew not what she did, that her fists would launch a thousand campaigns and a war in Iraq. All she knew was that Karl Rove was a snot-nosed punk and she could take him down with one hand tied behind her pigtails."

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the pittsburgh grassroots examiner

a photo of our hero from my archive of early 20th century anarchists...

all you need to know
about the upcoming g20 in pittsburgh
and the accompanying bullshit, lies and state terrorism
can be found in the erudite, funny, subjective, personal and ultimately
triumphant column of the pittsburgh grassroots examiner,
which is penned by mike boda (formerly the town crier for
the yinsurrectionary times)...

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that veiled gazette #369

blogging is hard...

it's been a long time since the last digest... a lot of current events have passed, scandals, debates, triumphs, miseries... i'm not going to touch on most of them... but only share with you the fragments i collected in the meantime... just things i dragged into the ever-over-flowing folder of "blog ideas" on the bookmark bar... blogging has been a weird fit for my current efforts, and there has been much talk and some action on quitting the internet around me... BUT, i feel the flame hasn't died quite yet... and we'll see where this shrouded deer leads us next.

quality performance art...

ART, FASHION : fascinating article about faking a vermeer... old pal's art on boing boing video... dj ripley has been posting a lot of great jamaican fashion from her trip there. here, here, here, here, and here. flower mandalas and other decent new-agey art. speaking of new-agey (old-agey?) this celtic talismanic jewelry reminded me of calder's contour drawings of animals. this guys design is supercolorcleanskillz. subway mind fuck art. did you know that motorcycles used to look WAY cooler? here's good billboard mod. and more book sculpture.. this time a face. the results of this camera art are boring, but the idea is good. more pretty art on basic sounds... also, van gogh didn't cut off his ear... it was gauguin!

MUSIC: flute-boxing. daichi-boxing. woman-boxing. competition-boxing. music of colombia via geko jones. love this guy's tabla style. blue daisy sounds like flying lotus, burial and a nice hum. great new mellowish dubstep artists here, here, and here. afro punk interview. LOVED this 10 essential wiley tunes article. poppy music blog. lovin' this old school jam. wendy carlos interview (if you don't know about her, you need to read up...) a bonus for those who actually read these digests, i picked my favorite brian eno tracks off his first four pop albums and put them here. old buddy from college's remix site, remixin. skweee... get hip. oh, and can someone please toss me khalid's secret eq chart?... yeah, thanks.

90 degree angles get old quick...

ARCHITECTURE, ECO, DIY: holy shit, dangerous tea house! splendid, extensive collection of beautiful and bizarre houses... including the one above... great inspiration there for designing or remodeling buildings (both of which i've been doing recently)... i've posted before about art made with books, including shelves, but here's a cool upside-down book shelf design... LED lights can now do pretty much every color... some interesting eco work... saw it on the colbert report... ceiling porn. bottles and cob. laundry water greywater system. other bizarre houses and furnishings chronicled in dornob magazine.

one of many real angels...

SEX: i continue to be interested in finding a way to fit sex into this blog. i enjoy it being mostly family friendly... but there's something to the eroticism of brian's blog that helps counterpoint the brutal truths and mystic bliss. apparently obsession with sex goes back some ways. anyway, as erotica goes, mod fetish tends to be more artful and interesting than most, but is mostly just photos of naked women... i guess there's just a big part of me that would rather be naked at burning man... and that's about all the sexual openness i can muster for the moment.

ALEXANDRIA IS OPEN, GREATSITE, TECHNOLOGY : the pirate bay just got sold, but that's o.k. because google is the new pirate bay. it's a silly issue, because pirates buy more music than non-pirates. this is a nice collection of rainbow design tutorials, (including how to make lines like in the picture above). good source of high res photojournalism is the boston globe's big picture and the wall street journals photo journal. I always enjoy looking up words on the online etymological dictionary (try magic!), but the urban dictionary is indispensable for slang (try hyphy!) dig the voting process. yeah, yeah, change the internet forever... and phones. i'm up in the air about internet privacy issues, but this tool seems to make it simple to stalk. oh, and if you're going to waste time playing video games, this one helps map proteins...

BABYLON, POLITICS : the g20 is in pittsburgh soon, and that fucks with me... mostly because i have some outspoken anarchist youth using my first floor to feed people and have meetings, and cops love to fuck with innocents. grr. obama - he releases some important secrets, blocks other important secrets. i could do a whole post just on how complex my feelings are about obama and the new senate... among the issues are the "two" wars... the cronyism going on that he campaigned against, and the fact that the soldiers are still being told to "hunt people for jesus". (of course the bush era version of this was far weirder... really, really weird.) after 5 years, portugal's drug decriminalization has produced some seriously positive results. did you know that as many people are making their living from blogging as are from being lawyers? old bomb scars. face transplant successful (warning, graphic images) here. old castes in newly revealed maps... constant police brutality. how will the newspapers survive? there's no huffington post without the new york times, so can the grey lady stay alive by being a non-profit? REX84... yuck. and google beware.

WEIRD, SUFI: plants can recognize genetically identical cuttings... i'm a big fan of rumi... and never heard him weigh in on hallaj until reading this poem. great zen motivational poster from the great mojo1000. weird water properties. weirder other substances, including the ferro-fluids in the video above. earliest bible online for free. gurdjieff's long gone, but a movement technique not unlike his exists(youtube)... tap the wisdom of the crowd. it appears having religion is good for your health... remote viewing experiment - hey, you don't have to convince me. mentalist whoops master chess players(youtube). remember, death is milliseconds away.

seriously...

HUMOR: stephen colbert in iraq... i had profoundly mixed feelings about the whole thing, partially because apparently conservatives don't realize stephen colbert is joking (seriously!) laura and i were hurting from laughter watching this old snl thing. this may not be funny to some, but a lot of people got weirded out when amazon dropped all of it's search results for gay and lesbian books, but it may have just been one lone hacker making a "point" facial hair contestants. mark twain motivational posters. funny silhouettes. married to the sea.

VIDEO: parkour (first 7 seconds AMAZINGZOMGWTFAWESOMESOX)... free running... speed stacking... psychedelic yoooooouuuutube... and now witness a baby give a fiery sermon. it's not what you say, but how you say it, apparently:

PERSONAL, POINTSOFPROCESS: mixing dirty was named as a tie for mix of the year. I've got a brand new deejay night, which i'm gonna call "The Garden of Earthly Delights". Way more details (and previews of the gorgeous flyers i made) coming. as i've been blogging less, i've mostly been tossing little tidbits on facebook. i post compelling images in an album called "incarnations", and some art in an album called "art i like" Some links that probably aren't here are here on facebook. maybe i'd have more time to blog if i had a monkey babysitter. but seriously... kids are awesome. i love my son... he's such a joy... and we're having another in february. but then that's enough. two will do... i'm travelling now to take him to see his 6 grandparents... which is why i have the leisure to blog. pittsburgh too hot! i-man haffi cool out, up on the mountain top...

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noticías de latino america

"when it's truly alive, memory doesn't contemplate history, it invites us to make it... ...up until a few centuries ago, the spanish word for "remember" also meant "wake up" and it's still used in that sense in some rural parts of latin america. a memory that's awake is contradictory, like us... ...it was born not to be an anchor but a catapult."

mostly random quotes selected from eduardo galeano's "upside down"

i was reminded of eduardo and (one of) his great books recently by the storm over hugo chavez handing barack obama one of his books. i read it during john jota leaños's AMAZING class, "technomythologia" at carnegie mellon university. "upside down" is chock full of facts and stories, blurbs and boxes, pictures and power. it takes on the odd (upside down) relationship between the latino/latina/chicano/chicanas in the south and the gringos of the u.s. it tells tragic tales, but his writing has a humanity and humor and respect it think is crucial to actually make the truth digestable and inspirational.

things could be said to be going a little better in latin america, what with hugo chavez and evo morales and michele bachelet and christina fernández de krichner in power, but there are still sketchy things going on, with help from america. of course there is plan colombia, but did you know about the ILEA(international law enforcement academy)?

"Though lack of transparency makes it impossible to know the content of courses, the conduct of the Salvadoran police—who compose 25 percent of the academy’s graduates—has shown an alarming turn for the worse since the ILEA was inaugurated. In early May 2007, the Archbishop’s Legal Aid and Human Rights Defense Office (Tutela Legal) released a report implicating the Salvadoran National Police (PNC) in eight death squad–style assassinations in 2006 alone. Meanwhile, the Salvadoran Human Rights Defense Office has also published reports connecting the PNC to death squads and repeated cases of corruption and misconduct. While US interest in ILEAs is to ensure an environment that protects free trade and US economic interests, the PNC has played an active role in a crackdown against civil liberties, aimed at curbing both crime and social protest."

in more happy latin american news, i'm spinning SUPER HOT LATIN SHIZNIT at the may day global crunk edition of PANDEMIC... MAY 1st @the brillo box 10pm-2am. expect to hear merengue típico, cumbia crunk, and this completely ill brazilian dubstep track i'm listening to right now... i'm spinning 10:45-11:30, but if you riot on the dancefloor i'll go longer! pete pandemic and juddy will play their typical lovely blend of afro house & coupe decale, balkan brass, ukranian dancehall, badass bhangra & turkish freak out tunes...

facebook event page here!

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pop urls zen

my (personalized!) recommended links from popurls today...

click this picture to view an incredibly detailed map of where the u.s. spends it's money...

also:

snow rollers?

viking myths!

pirate deaths :(

and this, maybe the weirdest video i've ever seen. warning, sappy songs!

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that veiled gazette #349

editor's note: sorry for the delay getting out this issue. i've been super busy, so blogging has been hard to get to, but admittedly i've also been a little geeked out on using facebook for the first time. finding old friends, writing letters, posting little things for them, becoming a "fan" of hummus, etc... for real though, it has been fascinating watching people from completely different periods of my life talking with each other. not that that doesn't ever happen here, but, well, it's a different audience. i love you both, and that veiled gazelle isn't going anywhere...

painter in bangladesh, via wall street journal's picture of the day

ART: the delicate special works of rachel sumpter. the composite (time not space!) photography of peter funch. the (street art blog) wooster collective truly continues to put out great stuff. check out sally's blue wall or this colorful wheatpaste. my old friend fran (thank you, facebook) documented a cool piece that involves ink drawing on walls and an air compressor. design is fun, but "hyperbolic bronnerism" is even more fun. it's a little hard to navigate, but the site neocha is a collection of independent chinese culture. also, check the vibrant, subtley pagan, mucha-like (mostly) nudes of svetlana valueva. also, while he's a bit miffed about watchmen (his work, originally...) that's o.k., because alan moore is a super-genius. witness video (direct link here):

MUSIC: wizards are better posts some good bassline & dubstep stuff (and some hipster crap). are you annoyed that pirating music takes so much time? take the wait out with skipscreen. blackdown makes a mind map on the origin of scenes. promotion services for world musicians. frieze article by dj rupture on the "decline" of digging. also, i hadn't heard about soul singer phyllis hyman, but she's got a nice voice (video) (and is from pittsburgh!) three more youtube music links here: kinsmen (indian jazz ensemble), carl craig classical remix, and some ethiopian heat. anyway, i've been posting A LOT of DUBSTEP. so here are seven songs that aren't:

(mp3) atom™ - "wellen und felder II" - bizarre, yet entrancing ambience from uwe!

(mp3) dinosaur l -"go bang" (walter gibbons mix) - classic arthur russell material

(mp3) amon tobin - "twelvses" - throwback gorgeousness, not two fingers style

(mp3) morteza - "morteza"? - weird iranian pop i was given for my nouruz gig

(mp3) isoleé - "a nightingale" (original mix) - abstract & beautiful tech-house

(mp3) hermutt lobby - "play" - twisted, wonky, slow glitch-hop type shiznit

(mp3) jakes - "swerve" - fun drum n bass track... with an mc! ~1996 style?

your's truly spinning at global beats march 2009. photo by carla.

TECHNOLOGY, SCIENCE, DIY: great rhyme writing resource in writerhymes. inflatable hood for sleepy travelers. do dumb shit to photographs with pikipimp. laura's always been a proponent for local currency... learn about algebra (i forgot all mine in art school...) create large wall posters with little printers. nice home-made picture frames out of jars. and for the record, artificial life could be created within 5 years, whatever that means...

ECO: meditate on the size of the earth and how lucky we are. 25 reasons why you should consider earth-sheltered technology. paris is grey, and sarkozy has a plan. another weird plan on the table for global warming issues. or is global warming all a hoax? i dunno, i'm not a scientist... something tells me that it's not a bad idea to act like it's real, if only because we might help with the bio-diversity problem. good soy milk recipe. candle-powered heat? i don't live in these cities, but: space in detroit. space in baltimore. i found some nice eco stuff on chelsea green, including this article on the case for "small" hydro-electric power.

british kid in thailand, via wall street journal's picture of the day

BABYLON, SCANDAL, POLITICS: you know about Carnivore and ECHELON, right? their giant spy networks that troll everyone's communications for these words, among others... well there is at least one more ghost-net recently discovered, this time in china. here's what you might look like to your government. there are some sneaky shenanigans in the obama copyright treaty... france is ready for rebirth of the "violent left"... that's a hilarious article, but to be fair, they have had some history of awesome riots (which in turn left us a lot of slogans.) there's been a tiny crack made in the travel restrictions to cuba, but then there's the wholeembargo thing. why? chomsky has some ideas on that... also an OLD scandal may be getting some light shed on it.

SUFI, WEIRD: perfect memory, anyone? bahauddin's book sounds pretty great. my friend found one of the (super rare) copies ofthis book in a junk shop... still haven't seen it yet. for free, an archive of female sacred poets. amazing horse dancing in pakistan (video... jump ahead for the fast parts.) the thousands of inscriptions are getting translated, finally. i'm starting to think i ought to learn a bit more about ramon llull. creationist science fairs... first prize in the high school division actually sounds pretty interesting... top ten secret scientologists. get your daily weird at the daily grail. finally, the sisters of perpetual indulgence celebrate 30 years.

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a quick link dump via the huffington post.

thought these stories we're good today...

Teens Capture Amazing Space Photos With Just Balloon And Camera...

One Congolese Woman Uses Radio As A Weapon Against Rape

The DJ Who Has Become Africa's Youngest President

A Religious War Heats Up Within Israel's Army

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palestinian hip hop

i keep hearing great palestinian hip hop on democracy now. i've been hunting for tracks i like for a while. carlos pointed me to slingshot hip hop, a documentary on the scene... the website has this large collection of artist links. hyla sent me a link to checkpoint 303 has a nice set of descriptions of their songs (with accompanying mp3 downloads) on their site.

here's the trailer to slingshot hip hop:



the torrent is here.

the female rapper featured in the preview is called arapyat... this is her myspace.

i still haven't finished my analysis post on the israel-palestine issue (cause it's COMPLICATED!), but in the meantime, here's a rap track with both hebrew and arabic lyrics, which according to one source is

"a song with politically-charged lyrics in Arabic and Hebrew, urging the Israeli and Palestinian youth to distrust their respective leaders and look towards forging a new, peaceful future together."

(mp3) balkan beat box - "ramallah tel aviv" from "nu made"

i'll update this post if i find any palestinian (or israeli) hip hop i'm in love with... in the meantime i'd love it if anyone could translate the lyrics from this track...

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that veiled gazette issue #325

photograph of tinfoil i shot recently...

MUSIC, MP3, ALEXANDRIA IS OPEN: bolachas grátis is back! beat does it better (albums up for three days only). local (to pittsburgh) hip hop dj archives his tape collection... recently i've been downloading great stuff from torrentech... it's invite-only, but if you love electronic music and are cool with uploading to stay on (need to upload 30% of what you download...) email me for an invite. great research into some dubstep sample sources here (and right on time, apparently). and MUZAK FILED FOR BANKRUPTCY!!! anyway, here are this issues mp3s, all .zipped up on mediafire like usual...

(mp3) atom™ - "insulting the dj" - cheeky minimal banger
(mp3) lv - "takeover (dub)" feat. dandelion? - beautiful epic dub reggae
(mp3) dj mujava - "township funk" (radioclit remix) - funky hipster shit
(mp3) alarm will sound - "4" - 20-piece orchestra covering aphex twin

ANARCHY, BABYLON, POLITICS: i definitely believed some of these 5 myths about U.S. prison growth. pentagon hiding torture information from obama. speaking of obama, you can track how he's doing on his promises here at the obamameter. at least he's bringing back the FOIA. given that 8 in 10 corporations use off-shore tax havens, it's pretty cool that swiss bank accounts may not work so well anymore. iran's people are A LOT more moderate than their overlords. this article about french radicals is both hilarious and disturbing. confrontational graffiti on headless fuck-object advertisements. other people are pissed off at virgin mary fashion spreads and pron spreads. and did you know you are being lied to about pirates?

ART, ARCHITECTURE: the architecture of takis zenetos is profiled in bldgblog... fragile, desert dwellings and nice canyon turbine design there... i recently touted the art on basic_sounds, but if you haven't seen it check it out (albums there, too...) this art is sure to piss some people off, but the event that inspired it was one of the best performances of 2008. following the election... a group of people turned bush street in SF into obama street. incredible, colorful graffiti from guatemala. the designer's republic is dead, sort of. if you aren't familiar with their (mostly awesome design) work, you can see some here.


ECO, TECHNOLOGY: riding a bike is great for the planet, but it's a lot safer with a laser bike lane (pictured above). google's powermeter seems cool. this person seems to think it's better than wind and solar energy combined. also, 7 "green" daily show moments. the first video is classic, if infuriating. i've blogged about living buildings, but this may be easier to implement: living walls. i met solar cooking designer bart orlando at the oregon county fair... watched him boil water with the sun. there is a very non-eco side of me that loves insane research vehicles like the maximog and the unibox. btw, bush actually did something cool before he left office.

WEIRD, HUMOR: one of my favorite headfucks is telling people about the pagan origin of the days of the week. rufus is awesome at slingshot. far out lindy hop. terry pratchett becomes a knight. this woman clearly isn't afraid of scorpions. cracked occasionally has awesome content, like this "6 insane discoveries science can't explain". finally some potential justice for this weird tale of geronimo's bones. and of course, drunk pigs.

VIDEO: steal video off youtube with pwnyoutube. and here is great darbouka playing, great mouth playing and great editing... triple great!

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getting around to the obvious...

often i don't see movies or read books that i assume to deliver a message that i already agree with. this was the case with the film "milk"... it tells the tale of the first gay elected official and human rights activist harvey milk... i was already familiar with the story, thanks mostly to a great jello biafra spoken word piece on "i blow minds for a living". i'm a big advocate of gay rights, so i thought... "why bother?" but it was so much more. life. liberty. riots.

great flick.
download it.
watch it.

the documentary "the times of harvey milk" is supposed to be awesome, too...

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high water, low brow

the watermark project from the beautiful and detailed bldgblog... if global warming continues, water levels will rise... but, how high? the answer is projected on buildings, and detailed on the website of this art project.

for unintelligent commentary on global warming, witness...



i'd love to see his broadway show...

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yesterday, today and tommorow...

so yesterday was martin luther king day... i highly recommend listening to the (hour long) program of martin luther king speeches here. the two speeches are from a year and a day before his assassination.

it's good to remember that he wasn't just a civil rights leader, but a political savant, labor organizer, anti-war activist and mystic. that's my favorite photo of him, shaking his malcom x's hand, despite their many differences.


today was the last day of george w bush's presidency. the end of several errors. you can throw out all those keychains counting down to his last day now...

today was also the first day of barrack hussein obama's presidency. i don't know if he's all that, but i still got chills reading his inagural address. something's happening here...

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that veiled gazelle digest issue #306

well, despite the atrocity in gaza (and the ufo-believer's sex orgy being canceled!) 2008 ended up pretty well, all things considered. the greek riots gave hope to anarchists everywhere (and made me obsessed with no-go laws...) 2009 looks to be quit exciting. it's the international year of astronomy, for instance, and international year of natural fibres... most importantly though, it's the year of conflict resolution... i hope your year is filled with beauty (and underwater bliss-scapes!)


ALEXANDRIA IS OPEN, GREATSITE, MUSIC: there have been a couple of HUGE music archives found recently... pretty much all the trojan reggae box sets are available on this site. props to rupture for locating that. the boxes are great, especially if you need help learning about the various forms of reggae. a ton of (pre-2008) grime hip hop albums can be found here. in thanks for uploading a request of mine on extra music new, i uploaded the entire ernst catalog here. they are some of the first records i bought (1999!) and i love them. a deep minimal tech/house series by thomas brinkmann. you can really hear the evolution of his sound. fun stuff. a couple other music blogs i've been digging recently are disturbed beats, which is full of fidget house and bassy dance stuff (thanks conway!), blog to the old school, which is a spectacular service that uploads vinyl rips of old jungle and hardcore records (run by devnull!) and the elephant's child is loaded with videos of mostly modern african & middle eastern music. in the too much music category... i plan on posting my 7 reggae mixes from 2001 soon... i gave them to my local pizza shop and they bump 'em all day some times.

MOVER, MUSIC: 2008 saw the passing of odetta... brief eulogy and 1963 folk songs album here. also, miriam makeba passed away... brief eulogy and her debut album is here. others (like teo macero) passed, but those two i had just learned about...

MUSIC, MP3: alright, here's some track i've been diggin on. some really different stuff here, this time. some chunky, faltering house, an old illbient track, 1 serious epic pounding dustep tune, more, all .zipped up on mediafire again.

(mp3)passion pit - sleepyhead (streetlab mix)
(mp3)mokobé feat. mohammed lamine & mory kante - africa tonik
(mp3)babylon system & noah d - examination of time (VIP mix)
(mp3)qaballah steppers - the conqueror and the mute sea
(mp3)mwamway & radioclit feat m.i.a. - rain dance
(mp3)a made up sound - sunday

ART: if you are unfamiliar with swoon, (and even if you are) you might want to check out these videos of her work... sort of like a paper-cut-out banksy with a lot less myopic view... these snow sculptures (sort of bas reliefs, really are amazing. i found the image on this guys front page cool, but the rest is fairly boring (and very NSFW). yulia brodskaya's paper work is unique. i like the text ones mostly. demakersvan made an awesome lace fence. make your own fractalized photos with this plugin (windows only, :( ) also, i never saw this olympic water cube... gorgeous (as was the opening ceremony, which i finally saw)...

BABYLON, POLITICS, SCANDAL : even if you escape to a beautiful monastery, world politics will surely find you. it's hard to be surprised any more by popular newscasters slinging bullshit, government contractors exposing military people to toxins, or google unnecessarily disrupting music bloggers (ripley covered this too). but what about people with intimate knowledge of rove, bush & cheney dying mysteriously? also, on a brighter note, this is an idea whose time should come.

SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, WEIRD: clump together rat's neurons and they can learn to fly an airplane. seriously. cool, but i'm much more impressed by scientists making matter out of pure light. or if they pull off MAKING a fucking STAR.

NATURE: the world's oldest cat, mischief, the world's weirdest animal, adorable miniature creatures, natural aphrodisiacs and potential ARMAGGEDEON (probably not?).

ECO: only thing that crossed my radar was an improvement in passive;y heated homes that allows the heat to be captured during ventilation so that you can be warm and breathe at the same time (with super low fuel costs). article.

LEFTOVERS: top five visualisation methods of 2008. top ten astronomy photos of 2008. how to travel the world for free (basic, but good stuff if you don't know it already...) woddy harrelson and co blog. poem/video thing from said blog (it's good!). oh, HUGE machines.

VIDEO: dj fly dmc winner 2008 (anyone see any dubstep at the dmc? seems like jungle took over after craze... anyway, he's fly!

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