I arrive with the following music recommendations:

1) Mountains: Sewn

This album seems to be compared to the work of Fennesz and John Fahey, but I’m not so sure I see that. It doesn’t matter though, since this album is completely awesome in its own rite. It’s hard to go wrong with any release on Apestaartje. You can listen to some samples over at Boomkat.

Front Cover

Back Cover

2) Mountains: Tour 3″ CD

I bought this at Other Music, because I never saw them on tour. It’s probably only available there. It’s a 3″ CD-R – like what you’d buy at Best Buy, but every second on this two track disc is amazing. Definitely Fennesz-like here.

3) Anything from Ryoji Ikeda

On a completely unrelated note, I noticed that 12k (that is, Taylor Deupree) has started a blog. Should be fun to follow, much like michaeljardin.com.

Touch Records released a bunch of photographs from Jon Wozencroft in the form of desktop wallpaper. Wozencroft does all of the amazing cover art for albums released by Touch.

Finally, I really plan on releasing Rooter to the public (through SourceForge) soon. I just haven’t had the time. There are two areas of the project that I think could use some help: the installation process and security. Both are a little rough.

Approximately a month after Christmas I knew it was time to finally send out the thank you cards, because if I waited any longer people would rather just get nothing. I wanted to step it up a notch from the email thank you’s I’ve sent out in the past. I’ve learned over time that no one really cares about email thank you’s.

I needed inspiration and I needed to send out something which appropriately conveyed my gratitude. Perhaps even more importantly, I needed many 2 cent stamps because Uncle Sam decided to throw me a curve ball and raise stamp prices.

A friend sent me this link, where I found all the inspiration I needed.

If you did receive one of the cards below, consider yourself extremely lucky – I ran out of cards fast. Priority went from the oldest family members on down. Here’s a sample of some of the cards I came up with (keep in mind many of these cards were made with a member of the “older generation” in mind). Although everyone in my family celebrates Christmas, I was very careful not to bring anything related to Christmas into these “holiday” cards.

Clearly, this card was targeted for someone old. Pictured here is the mischievous work of some young ragamuffin rapscallions. Who pays for this recklessness? Not the guilty rogues behind the antics, but the helpless snowman himself.

As the sun appears from behind the clouds, the snowman knows his vacation is over.

Dream on snowman!

This is probably my favorite. Unlike the others, this one makes no sense. Note the use of “Season’s Greetings…” Who is this card going to offend? No one!

Some people have thought this is a skunk spraying its stank on a snowman. It’s in fact, Huguenot, my sister and brother-in-law’s pug. Here Hugo is relieving himself on an angry, but helpless snowman. Hugo looks onward with innocence, not realizing the ramifications of his actions.

Feel free to click on the images for higher-resolution scans which you’ll probably want to set as your computer background. From there you have to choice to center a card, or tile the card so it appears all over the place and gives an instant headache. I also give permission to print them out and send to your own relatives claiming they’re your own work, although it’s getting a little late and there’s a good chance your relatives will have already seen them here first.

This is that great time of the year when all of those top-“n”-albums-of-year lists come out (where n is contained in N, the set of natural numbers). It’s your chance, and civic responsibility, to catch any jems that you missed over the year. My advice this year (as opposed to last year when I gave no advice at all) is simple: do not trust any list that doesn’t have Venetian Snares’ amazing “Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett”. Tough to say whether it is my #1 of the year, but it’s so strong that any list without it is ruled whack the in the courts of fresh jams.

With a little help from my friend Rooter (who isn’t much of a help because I haven’t entered in all of my music, nor is he really a friend), here are some of my favorites, in no particular order:

B.J. Nilsen: Fade to White
Boris with Merzbow: Sun Baked Snow Cave
Biosphere: Dropsonde
Kevin Drumm / 2673 Split
Carlos Giffoni: I am Real
Hrvatski: Irrevocably Overdriven Break Freakout Megamix
Alva Noto + Ryuichi Sakamoto: Insen
Arcade Fire: Funeral
Venetian Snares: Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett
Ryoji Ikeda: dataplex
Animal Collective: Feels
Fennesz + Sakamoto: Sala Santa Cecilia

Ryoji Ikeda’s “dataplex”, out on Raster-Noton.

Ikeda’s latest is magnificent: both conceptually and sonically. The range and command of frequencies is most impressive. The layout and track ordering of the album is very unique and, in my opinion, a huge strength.

I’m away from my desktop right now and I have more albums on there (if you know what I’m sayn and I think you do!), so I’ll probably add more later. I’ll try and include some releases that make the list more diverse.

Since you’re already bored with my list, I recommend Boomkat’s list:

http://www.boomkat.com/charts.cfm

Wire magazine has a great list too, but I won’t reprint it here because I don’t want to get SUED. A lawsuit would likely bring CCROW.NET to its knees, and no one wants that. No one.

While your neighbors are out watching “Yours, Mine & Ours”, “In the Mix” or some other blockbuster crapfest, I highly recommend Antonioni’s L’Eclisse.

Admittedly, I’m totally biased towards films which use minimalist visuals, airplane rides in small planes, and contain extended scenes of chaos at a stock exchange (even if the markets are portrayed in a negative light).

So remember to stop yourself this week as you sit down with an ice cold O’Doul’s to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” for the 63rd time in your life. Ask yourself, “Do I really want to do this? WWCSCIVD?”.

ccrow.net is your source for around-the-clock, comprehensive, unbiased reviews.

You know this book is going to be a great read because of the two pictures on the cover. One is a guy acting like a robot and the other is a robot acting like a guy. One thing is for sure, I’m not going to be acting when I give this an awesome review at amazon.com.

For those who have no idea what this is, the following book description may shed some light (or, more likely, confusion will set in as to why I’d buy “classic” computer music articles between 1980 and 1985):

Since its inception in 1976, Computer Music Journal has led the field as the essential resource for musicians, composers, scientists, engineers, and computer enthusiasts interested in contemporary electronic music and computer-generated sound.

In The Music Machine, Curtis Roads brings together 53 classic articles published in Computer Music Journal between 1980 and 1985, providing a cohesive survey of the major developments in computer music and in the related technology during the last decade. The book includes interviews with major figures in the field and articles devoted to composition, artificial intelligence, and the popular Music Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI). Roads has written an overview of each of the book’s seven parts, highlighting the major topics and placing the various articles in a thematic and historical context.

This album is awesome, so I figured I’d point it out in case you haven’t already heard it. This release has been out for a while – it’s not new, but it’s worth mentioning.

[Just going on raw probabilities, chances are you wouldn’t like Fennesz’s music because he is not photographed in glossy magazines brandishing guns, has not been shot 6 times, and does not star in a crappy movie coming out in which he states, “they can’t lock me up for sellin’ records” (or at least I’m unaware if he is). Nor does he resemble Britney in all her retarded glory.]

So anyway, what do you get when Fennesz essentially remixes his phenomenal “Endless Summer” during a live performance? Well, you get this recording, which took place at Shibuya Nest on Feb 9th, 2003. What’s presented here is one ~45 min piece that meanders all over Endless Summer.

Surely the word “remix” conjures up some DJ Crapola’s cut and paste restructuring of some Depeche Mode song in Garage Band. I use “remix” here to mean the following: Fennesz approaches”Endless Summer” from a conceptually different angle. The final result differs enough to stand on its own two feet. In addition, the album artwork features more of Jon Wozencroft’s amazing photography found on most Touch releases.

Since I’m a very busy and important man, it’s easier for me to copy and paste a summary from forcedexposure.com:

Japanese-only release on the newly developing Headz imprint, in a striking digipak designed by Jon Wozencroft. “Four years after his first performance in Japan in 1999 with Mego, this album is a solo live recording of his latest show in Tokyo. This recording features the full show that took place on February 9, 2003 at Shibuya Nest in Tokyo including the encore, and has been praised by many as the greatest laptop live show in music history. This album is officially approved by the Touch label in the UK, which Fennesz is now signed to. Listen to this mind blowing historical document where you can actually feel a packed club being overwhelmed by Fennesz`s cutting edge and radical pop sensibilities. With his participation on David Sylvian`s album Blemish (Sylvian is featured on Fennesz`s album Venice in return), the amount of international attention that Fennesz is receiving seems to be growing exponentially.

His attention is not growing linearly, it’s growing exponentially!! I’m not sure if it is a “mind blowing historical document”, like, say, the Declaration of Independence or Howard Stern’s autobiography, but it’s a great record nevertheless.

That tingling feeling you have, is in part, due to the fact you are experiencing CCROW.NET Version 2: Richard Attenborough Edition; it may also be related to that fish sandwich that you couldn’t say no to at Arby’s. “Who is Richard Attenborough, and why did you name this new design after him?” He is an actor best known for playing John Hammond, the fat old man who ran Jurassic Park.

The work on this site began probably a month after finishing the first one. Every so often, I’d make progress on Version 2: Richard Attenborough Edition, but never had the time to really finish it off. That is, until this weekend, when I entered into a Zen-like programming state. If one were to equate life to the video game NBA Jam, Marv Albert would have repeatedly described me as “on fire.” I listened to the following four records while in this state:

Lasse Marhaug: Bring Me the Head of Lasse Marhaug
Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians
Interpol: Turn on the Bright Lights
Billy Joel: Greatest Hits I & II

Although I felt okay about the previous design, I was never really that comfortable with it representing all that ccrow.net stands for. I needed something that had an unmistakably unique feel. WordPress is great, but I’ve always felt they sacrifice too much flexibility and freedom for user simplicity. The result is that most sites under WordPress have the same structure, look, and feel. So, I took some time to get to know the well-documented API, did some hacking, and created my own theme. In fact, for a while I wasn’t designing a “theme” at all, and instead just making raw API calls. I scratched that in the long run, since it’s clear that WordPress isn’t designed to handle such craziness (i.e., it turned into a headache). The finished result is a hybrid: half-theme, half-API calls.

Anyway, the site should render fairly consistently under Firefox and Internet Explorer (I’ve seen the site under Linux, Windows, and OS X), although why you’d be surfing the web with Internet Explorer is pure craziness. Speaking of pure craziness, let me explain what ccrow.net has blossomed into.

I’ve tried to create something that promotes dynamic content, which spells easier, more frequent updates. Essentially, the site now consists of three blogs. The Intro page is not a static image but is instead a PhotoBlog (this is actually very tricky to do under WordPress – that is, getting a “splash” page to access the database, in addition to displaying the regular blog on another page. WordPress really wants your blog to be the first thing people see – exactly what I didn’t want). The featured image is always the latest blog post with the photo-blog tag. The first entry in the PhotoBlog is the good ol’ trusty clouds/power-line picture on the Intro page just so people don’t get too disoriented. We don’t need anyone being disoriented. The “Projects” page consists entirely of posts, too.

If you couldn’t tell from my previous posts (the “Retarded” category being the most popular), I don’t take blogging that seriously. I think it’s pretty ridiculous and unprofessional for the most part, which is why I don’t want it to be the forefront of my site.

Oh, and a word about the the site’s gray overtone: it’s not intended to be depressing, I just feel it works better with varying colors of each post. SNOOZE FEST. Anyway, that’s enough talk for now. I hope you enjoy it.

I just came across this recent Sept 6th, 2005 memorandum to President Bush by Stephen Flynn, Senior Fellow for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

For those who haven’t been following the serious issues concerning domestic security over the past few years, this PDF document (pages 5-9) gives a brief overview of the problems facing U.S. Sea Ports and the global transportation of shipping containers. If this document interests you, I can recommend Flynn’s book, “America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us from Terrorism“.

Some of Flynn’s best points, I believe, are related to recovery after a catastrophic event. This is where true costs sky-rocket. What might be a devastating local event can quickly turn into a devastating national event, in terms of cost to U.S. corporations (frozen/depleted inventory, for example) and every day citizens (think gasoline is expensive now?). The same cascading effect can apply to human lives, depending on the type of attack.

Furthermore, appropriately delegating responsibilities between the federal and state governments is hugely complex.

Anyway, there are many additional important issues here that I don’t have time to get into. My guess is Flynn would say the same thing about this short memorandum (at which point, his eyes would turn into dollar signs and he’d take the opportunity to plug his book, which goes into more detail).

PDF Document

I had a dream last night: I was at a Notre Dame football game. It was 1976, and the crowd started chanting “ROO-TER, ROO-TER”. I had no idea what was going on, and before long, I was lighting trash cans on fire and rolling them down a hill.

This morning I woke confused and disoriented – but, I knew what I had to do. Finish Rooter, and release the seminal version 1.0!

Rooter has always been told that he was too small to organize CD collections online. When people say dreams don’t come true, tell them about Rooter.

For all those who missed the release party, that’s too bad. The pictures are all too racy to put online.

Some new features include, but are not limited to:

1. Added search ability.

2. Fixed serious bug limiting the number of albums displayed per “page”.

3. Fixed text description field, so users can insert HTML tags into their notes.

4. New album cover icon!

5. Added concept of “views” which act as filters for various format types.

With all this craziness, I may have introduced new bugs. I’ll hammer those out as I discover them. However, all of the original features I had in mind are in place, hence the label: Version 1.0. Check it out here. I’ll announce when I get around to posting the code on sourceforge.net.

As a follow-up to my death of Robert Moog post, I purchased “Switched-On Bach” by Wendy Carlos today on vinyl (original pressing) for $1.99 from the Princeton Record Exchange. Here’s what wikipedia has to say about the influential album:

Switched-On Bach is a 1968 album by Wendy Carlos on CBS Records . It was the first record to popularise music performed on synthesizers, and resulted in a huge increase in interest in synthesizers, particularly Moog synthesizers. The album was the first classical album to go platinum. It went quickly to the Top 10 in Billboard’s pop Top 200 and stayed on the chart for more than a year. In the 1970 Grammy awards, the album took three prizes: Best Classical Album, Best Classical Music Performance, Instrumental Soloist(s) (With or Without Orchestra) and Best Classical Engineered Recording.

The album consists of a selection of pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed on a Moog Modular synthesizer system (one can be seen at the back of the room on the album cover). Switched-On Bach, or S-OB as Carlos referred to it, was recorded on an 8 track Ampex tape recorder using numerous takes and overdubs. This was long before the days of MIDI sequencers and recording the album was a tedious and time-consuming process.

Remarkable! I also added some of my other purchases from today’s trip into Rooter, including a new split with Kevin Drumm. You may or may not have noticed that I’m very slowly getting my collection organized and cataloged with help from my friend Rooter. He’s not so much a friend, as he is software I wrote that runs on a remote web server. The process is kind of a pain, but I think it’ll be worth it in the end. I also hope to put some finishing touches on the software and get a formal sourceforge project rolling. Finally, while I have your attention, be sure to check out my photo gallery soon – I’ll upload pictures from my recent trip to Philly.

Four hours of experimental improv . Very very good from what I’ve heard so far.

From the Erstwhile Records website:

ErstLive 005 is from the quartet of Keith Rowe, Sachiko M, Toshimaru Nakamura, and Otomo Yoshihide, the centerpiece show of AMPLIFY 2004: addition, the “four hour quartet”. ErstLive 005 contains three individually packaged slimline CDs in a slipcase with original artwork by Keith Rowe, which wraps around the entire box, front, side, and back, as well as liner notes from all four musicians and numerous pictures from Yuko Zama. ErstLive 005 documents only the second performance of this quartet, after a brief set in Cologne the week before.

One thing I can say for sure is that the boundary between listening to this CD and playing this music is totally dissolved, and there is only a difference of time and space where the sounds are heard.-Otomo Yoshihide

This 19 minute, single track CD features a recording between Fennesz and Sakamoto at the Auditorium Parco della Musica, for the Romaeuropa Festival in Rome on Nov. 28th, 2004. It’s a fantastic piece, which has that very distinct, strong sonic C. Fennesz sound. Not nearly as sparse and academic as the recent Fennesz/Sachiko M/Otomo Yoshidie/Rehberg ErstLive 004 release. Unfortunately, for many, it’s a bit too short for a ~$12 price tag. Recommended.

The Big Daddy George Dantzig died at the age of 90. Dr. Dantzig essentially created the field of linear programming. He will be remembered for his creation of the simplex algorithm, as well as the Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition principle, in addition to many other contributions to the Operations Research community. Society’s benefit from the simplex method, and the incredible work derivatived from it, are remarkable.

Above: “Amazing! z = 7/3 is our maximum objective value after pivoting only twice! Thank you Dr. Dantzig!”

In addition, Leonid Khachiyan also died. He is most well known for the creation of the ellipsoid algorithm.

So, the old site hosted on JHU‘s ACM site has finally been put to sleep. I wanted to move away from static HTML for a while. The primary motivation, however, was that I believe half the people that ever visited my previous site never realized that it scrolled to the right – sporting the unconventional horizontal layout. This still boggles my mind, but so does the fact the number one selling album right now is 50 Cent‘s “The Massacre”. That means that these people saw about 3% of the entire site.

45% out of the remaining 50% who realized it scrolled to the right thought I had no idea how to make a website, and that my HTML styles were “reckless” and “needing some serious discipline”. The remaining 5% (my mom, dad, and girlfriend) thought the site was “awesome” and “it was clear I put lots of time into it”. Hence, I had to take it out of it’s misery, much like that kid did to Ol’ Yeller, or CBS execs did to Doogie Howser, M.D after the fifth season. I think the current design is a fresh look for the new millennium…5 years too late. I’ve digitally preserved the old site, for those who never “experienced” it in all its raw goodness. I’m still planning on keeping my photo gallery on ACM’s server, though.

I created these web screen shots using this Windows software called SnagIT. It does a nice job if your page is vertically laid out. Of course, it falls on its face if your page scrolls to the right (or, to be fair, I spent 20 seconds trying to figure out how to get it to work on my site and gave up)…so I had to do some manual overlaying. I used a trial version of the software, and it seemed like it wanted to completely take over Windows, installing all these plug-ins in all MS Office applications and in IE…plus it wanted to install background apps. Homie don’t play that.