i love techno a-z: baby ford - bruce haack

1st post here for context. on with B...

baby ford - this is unortunately a mixed version of this track... towards the end the melody is from something else... i'll try to get a clean version some time... great track from an early "minimal" innovator. baby ford & zip were great at the last DEMF.

(mp3) baby ford - "no milk today"

basement jaxx - a really over the top disco/pop/house outfit. hard to pick a favorite, but this is the track that started me off...

(mp3) basement jaxx - "yo yo" from "remedy"

bassnectar - not as good as the name suggests, but some solid breaks with good samples. can get a little cheesy in that "action movie soundtrack" vibe, but i like the vocal samples in this one.

(mp3) bassnectar - "pleasure the bass nympho" from "diverse systems of throb"

ben sims - a little known hard techno dork that i kind of love. this track is repetetive, but well named... it's for those riding a climax out with thunderous, non-stop beats... kind of late 90s feel, but a good mixing tool with stepping filters.

(mp3) ben sims - "poise here" from "symbolism 004"

benga - this guy is outrageous. LOVE this new album. Posted a much barer track of his in my first dubstep post, but this is a banger! (benga?) anyway, it's old school rave through and through with something new, something special. BUY this album... FIRE!

(mp3) benga - "pleasure" from "diary of an afro warrior"

bjork - so ahead of her time, and yours... this is from the first album, debut, and always makes me happy. homogenic, her third (?) album is incredible. the new stuff is all over the map, but she picks great talent, has super fly aesthetics and while she can be annoying when over-played, she is a genius of the age

(mp3) bjork - "big time sensuality" from "debut"

blair - i don't know anything about this track except that i tracked it down off an old derrick carter mixtape, and of you play it loud enough, 30-something raver will appear out of nowhere and start house dancing. great inspirational diva vocals.

(mp3) blair - "life"

blockhead - i already blogged this artist and this track here. in fact, it was the first track i posted. i still love it. a house track from a hip hop producer.

(mp3) blockhead - "cheer up, you're not dead yet" from "uncle tony's coloring book"

boxcutter - totally geeked on his last album, "glyphic"... BUY it. this is a somber but beautiful 2step track with nice base and lovey dovey vocals. smashing for a gentle love in dance fest...

(mp3) boxcutter - "foxy" from "glyphic"

brian eno - preposterously talented and influential producer of such gems as david bowie, the talking heads and (cough!) the best album ever (maybe? probably?), "my life with the bush of ghosts" (with david byrne), he made four amazing solo vocal albums in the late 60s and early 70s. lots of early electronics here, and this track is precient in my opinion.

(mp3) brian eno - "kurt's rejoinder" from "before and after science"

bruce haack - child's entertainer, drug-crazed genius and another indispensible electronic pioneer. a great documentary on him (featuring mouse on mars among others) is here. i found it on piratbayan. laura loves this song, too.

(mp3) bruce haack - "electric to me turn" from "electric lucifer"

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i love techno a-z: abe duque - autechre

it's no secret to those who know me... i LOVE techno. (and house, and electro, which i don't bother to make too much of a distinction from techno, they have sort of blended into each other anyway, in my opinion...)

i could upload a thousand tunes i find notable for one reason or another, but i'll start with A... and work my way to Z (do i have any Z?) here's the thing though... a lot of these tracks don't really "stand on their own", a techno track is mostly conceived of as an element in a mix, to be blended in that "non-stop ecstasy throb" that was rightfully jabbed at in an article recently on muddup! so try to imagines these tracks as a temporary layer, slices of rhythmic orientation to be juxtaposed and framed by the dj in the moment...

abe duque - i don't like the rest of this album ("so underground it hurts"), and he was pompous when i met him (saying "it doesn't hurt anymore"), but these two tracks have a nostalgia about them i dig. mind the name dropping in the first one, and i mostly only feel the words in the second...

(mp3)abe duque - "what happened" from "so underground it hurts"
(mp3)abe duque - "acid" from "so underground it hurts"

akufen - was pretty great when i saw him live at fabric. credited with a unique style of "micro-sampling", which seems to bypass copyright laws by only grabbing tiny snips... some of it's a bit smalzy, but it's a great sound.

(mp3) akufen - "severed finger samba" from "montreal smoked meat"
(mp3) akufen - "the dragonfly who thought he was a mockingbird" from "the appleseed ep"

alter ego - i don't know shit about this artist, but this track has a nice "bassline" house sound. it's a lot like what i've heard described as blog-house. it gets annoying after too long, but useful for like a minute and a half of dancefloor slamming...

(mp3) alter ego - "fuckingham palace" - from "why not"

aphex twin - you can't overstate the influence of aphex twin. great jungle, ambient, etc music. i love "on", "windowlicker" (videos) and a ton of his acid work, but these two get me personally with the techno feel.

(mp3) aphex twin - "elephant song" from "analogue bubblebath 4"
(mp3) aphex twin - "breath march" from "analord 4"

ark - this french musician makes minimal, goofy but solid tunes. also some slow, hiphop instrumental bangers... these are the only tunes i would play in a techno/house set...

(mp3) ark - "preacher" -from "caliente"
(mp3) ark - "sweet chat rio" from "alleyuark"

autechre - another highly influential musical force, these folks make a lot of machinic, experimental sound. some great melodies, here and there. a little sparse for most situations, but these two tracks i play a lot... particularly the second, but it's not really "techno"... but what is it?

(mp3) autechre - "djarum" - from the "anti ep"
(mp3) autechre - "iera" - from "untitled"

that does it for A...

anyone you think is missing?

bear in mind i'm going with first names, and if the artist has a ton of aliases (like atom heart) i'm going to use their "real" name (uwe schmidt)...

god, i love techno...

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omar osama bin laden - so hot right now!

27-year old omar osama bin laden, pictured above with his british-born wife jane felix-brown (now known as zaina alsabah), 52, has been denied british citizenship. it's a shame really, because while he hasn't denounced his father (a serious thing to do, regardless of the circumstances!), he has pledged that he wants to work as a peacekeeper between islam and the west, promoting a horse race across africa for the cause. and he's hot, in a braided hair/leather jacket kind of way... i wish him luck, and the other 600+ members of the bin laden family that aren't of the evil persuasion.

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it's over for clintons

i wish. it ain't over till it's over. but seriously folks. let's look at the facts...

if playing with the delegate calculating thingy over at the new york times doesn't convince you, read this article from way back in march that made a pretty convincing case. even her camp using the "nuclear option" isn't likely to accomplish much, because howard dean will have a say, and he's too smart to let the party get split that way.

everyday you can watch obama close in quicker than clinton on the table at the top of the daily kos, and clinton losing already commited delegates is happening more and more.

add it all up, and i can't wait...

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nice idea department

i registered today at marrow.org to become a marrow donator. race is a factor in finding matches, and as i have some unique dna (particularly basque) that might not be in the registry yet, i joined. even if you are a common race, there are still particulars with each individual that might be in demand. it normally costs money, but right now the first 10,000 to sign up it's free, and you just swab your inner cheek at home and send them back the samples. if you are called upon to donate marrow, they just suck it out with a hollow needle under anesthesia.

you could save someone's life, on the real, and how nice would that be?

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dubious idea department

ecologically devastating or actually beneficial?


anyway, bulk mailer shows you how to use postage paid envelopes to send heavy objects back to the companies that send wasteful junk mail... costs them money, but also costs carbon. i'm intrigued but unsold. the faq (on the same page as the link above) is worth reading, anyway.

anyone have a feeling one way or the other?

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incredible medieval manuscript scans

an incredible amount of illuminated medieval manuscripts have been scanned at the colombia university digital scriptorium. they have highlights, and search function, and high res scans. above is the only entry marked "alchemy" though...

if anyone is interested, i have some information regarding the sufi connection to european alchemy, but i wont jump the gun with that...

via metafilter

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RANDOM specks OUT there pt. 2

spectacular card trick by shawn farquhar (haha.nu)
name generator hit refresh for more (metafilter.com)
the "duh" history of cat domestication (popurls.com)
9 detainees released from guantanamo bay (dailykos.com)
pittsburghers! gear up for local burn, wickerman! (laura's site)
working bike with shoes for wheels (boingboing.net)
clinton will work for barrack obama (drudgereport.com)
awesome amazonian blow gun skills video (nytimes.com)

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custom engraved moleskine notebooks

so i'll get to the moleskines eventually, but you have to start with the image below...


after making a grid of vesicas (precisely overlapping circles), you can use various intersections of the grid to create the first ten regular polygons. you can do most of it with just a compass and a straight edge, but i actually found (using adobe illustrator) that one of the classic methods for constructing a pentagon was inaccurate. so i just used the computer to make perfect versions of the odd-number polygons with all of these polygons sides being equal.

i then extrapolated and itterated my ass off with lines between the vertices forming exponentially more polygons (using only equal-weight lines, no fills or gradients, also all the shapes arise naturally, i didn't pick what looked "best") it starts off looking like a few quite simple stars in the pentagon, but by the time you get to the 12-sided dodecahedron, it is a lot of shapes. i then placed the polygons back into a rough mockup of the golden spiral, inverted it and voila! (click on the picture for a much bigger version... also note i increased the line weight for printing, the original has tons of tiny detail at huge sizes.)


so then i submitted it to custom engraved moleskin notebooks to see if they would feature it in their artist series. they would give me 15% of the price, but i would just be psyched to earn enough to get a moleskine with this free. we'll see. note that you can also just submit your design and get it printed on a full size moleskine for like $35...

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may 1st good news

below is a picture contrasting virign rainforest to a palmoil plantation encroaching on it...


greenpeace got dove to halt palm oil productions in indonesia's rainforest after only a week-long campaign. the story is here. now granted, they are a large organization, with a decent budget, but it's good to know that a little pressure can go a long way. the problem of palm oil production isn't completely solved, but the orangutans can sleep a litle easier tonight.

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nik ainley's art, design and typography

some of it's a bit hipster, some's a bit rave-flyer circa 1999, but then again, how bad is that? his site is shinybinary.com. some nice attention to detail. i like the piece for national geographic.


via a real old post in the haha.nu art archives.

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