tunequest

From the album Dial M for Monkey (2003) Bonobo, the simian pseudonym of UK producer Simon Green has been a downtempo-lounge favorite for a while around these parts. In addition to his excellent production values, he's notable for his distinctive infusion (though not pervasively) of eastern (mostly Indian) influences into what could be called "intelligent chill-out music." With a danceably faster tempo usual, Flutter is actually a bit ...

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I don't use the site as much as I should, but it's cool nonetheless. But I find this trend of useful, independent websites getting bought by soulless corporations to be increasingly annoying. $280 million though. It sure it's hard for those UK boys to pass up. The last.fm blog claims there's no reason to worry and that CBS "understands the Last.fm vision." Still, as we've seen with ...

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Yeah, What They Said, pointers to interesting stories. Some people call it "link sharing." "Same great Pabst taste, without the beer." PBR bottled water, available in China: Pi (π) played on a piano Each digit 1-9 is assigned a note and 0 is a quarter rest. Cumulative advantage Some things remain popular because they are popular. As the popularity of something increases, the likelihood that its popularity will continue to increase ...

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A couple months ago, I wrote about the advantages of maintaining a large digital music library, specifically with regards to cost and storage as compared to maintaining a large physical music library. One of my points was that the decreasing prices of hard drives makes it increasingly easy to store, as well as backup large quantities of high-quality music. I even went so far as to ...

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From the album Nothing's Lost (2004) Belgian composer Styrfoam is a consummate bedroom auteur, accomplished in the so-called "indietronic" genre, effectively wielding his laptop to weave a kind of downtempo electronic pop music. His early work is more ambient in nature, peppered with influences of 8-bit game-style accents. As his music has progress, however, he's become ever more audacious in his compositions, fleshing out his sound with ...

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From the album The Sunset Tree (2005) This song is about escapism. With poignancy and daft lyrical narration, John Darnielle (aka The Mountain Goats) weaves a tale of domestic violence and a troubled life on the skids. The only outlet for the song's protagonist is the volume knob on his stereo and the "dance music" it amplifies, which he uses to elude the strife in his life. The ...

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One can only wonder what's up between CBS/Viacom/Paramount and Apple these days. The first season of the original Star Trek appeared for sale at the iTunes store, only to be removed a short time later. Then, about a month after that, the first season of Enterprise showed up, only to suffer the same fate. Both those shows eventually returned to the domain of the $2 ...

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From the album Varcharz (2006) After creating some most infectious and "warm" electronic grooves that were both danceable and singable, Mouse on Mars returned with an album of "spatial free-jazz and cocaine-fried booty funk" on the largely structureless Varcharz. But don't take structureless to mean groundless. Beats are what MoM do best, and while the album has its share of dissonance, it's a noise symphony built on ...

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A long time ago, while expanding my cultural horizons and getting to know a distant branch of my family, I spent a good portion of the summer in the nation of France. It had the works: sight-seeing, landmarks, historical places, family gatherings, camping, Eurorail, and of course shopping and souvenirs. An excellent summer well spent. And it was made more excellent by a handful of hard-to-find ...

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