Friday, 26 June 2015

Agiman - "Quantum" ("Toolroom Knights (Unmixed Version)")

Strong electronic bleep beat music. Good for coding.

Wednesday, 24 June 2015

Hrsta - "Hechicero Del Bosque"

Great soundscape with voices.

Tuesday, 23 June 2015

Mad Max - Fury Road (2015)

Critics loved it, as did the audience. As did I.

It took me a while to get into it. I missed the estranged madness from the original Mad Max. Yes, it was all crazy and Immortal and his War Boys or whatever he was called, was crazy and weird, and Max being "Bloodbag"... but that was all normal weird scifi madness. Only later did it develop into a more gripping film, with Max' craziness subtly creeping through the cracks of the surface.

Friday, 19 June 2015

WW II from a data set point of view

http://www.fallen.io/ww2/

Amazing how a neutrally told story of numbers can affect you. Chilling and beautiful.

Thursday, 18 June 2015

Drs P en Willem Duys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4W-0Fs08Aw

nog beter, een VRT ? belgische uitzending:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbawHUR8f80

"de vorm is een deel van de inhoud"

"als je de taal verarmt, dan verarm je het denkvermogen van de mensen, en daarmee verarm je het hele leven"

Wednesday, 17 June 2015

Steven Pinker on language

The man is a wonderful genius.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn87EqoBb14

but still, he curses the split infinitive!?! Ok, not curses, but damnit Jim, I'm a wordpress article, not a linguistic professor!

night driving soundtrack

When I'm in a Kazinsky mood, this might be a good one:

http://8tracks.com/aarthii/late-night-drive
hm, maybe not. Soon deteriorates into rapping ugliness.


U.N.K.L.E. and The Heritage Orchestra Presents "Variation Of A Theme" Live At The Union Chapel"


  • "Cut Me Loose - Redux" - haunting, slow strings.

Friday, 12 June 2015

Bess Winter - "Helena, Montana"

From the Alaska Quarterly, an amazing story about a baby mailed. "It's a parcel" Its diapers need changing. "But isn't that tampering?"

Wow, fucking wow.

The Coral Sea - "Lake and Ocean" (Volcano And Heart)

reminds me of another song whose name I do not know.

Tom Waits - "How's It Gonna End" (Real Gone)

True Tom Waits style. Awesome. Low, grungy.

Anna Calvi - "The Heart Of You" (OST Insurgent)

Hints of Siouxie Sioux's voice in this magnificent song.

fun tech blog posts

http://www.jasq.org/just-another-scala-quant/

Thursday, 11 June 2015

Wednesday, 10 June 2015

Jaakko Eino Kalevi - "Ikuinen Purkautumaton" (2015)

Jännite - soft voice over, slow 80s synths, later speeding up. Quite nice, though I cannot say the rest of the album did do a lot for me.

Tuesday, 9 June 2015

André Breton - "Manifesto of Surrealism" (1924)

...the absence of any known restrictions allows him the perspective of several lives lived at once; this illusion becomes firmly rooted within him; now he is only interested in the fleeting, the extreme facility of everything.

There remains madness, "the madness that one locks up," ... That madness or another.. We all know, in fact, that the insane owe their incarceration to a tiny number of legally reprehensible acts and that, were it not for these acts their freedom (or what we see as their freedom) would not be threatened. I am willing to admit that they are, to some degree, victims of their imagination, in that it induces them not to pay attention to certain rules - outside of which the species feels threatened - which we are all supposed to know and respect.

... the realistic attitude ... clearly seems to me to be hostile to any intellectual or moral advancement. I loathe it, for it is made up of mediocrity, hate and dull conceit. It is this attitude which today gives birth to these ridiculous books, these insulting plays. It constantly feeds on and derives strength from the newspapers and stultifies both science and art by assiduously flattering the lowest of tastes; clarity bordering on stupidity, a dog's life.

If the depths of our mind contain within it strange forces capable of augmenting those on the surface, or of aging a victorious battle against them, there is every reason to seize them - first to seize them, then, if need be, to submit them to the control of our reason.

Thus the dream finds itself reduced to a mere parenthesis, as is the night.

I am growing old and, more than that reality to which I believe I subject myself, it is perhaps the dream, the difference with which I treat the dream, which makes me grow old.

The mind of hte man who dreams is fully satisfied by what happens to him. The agonizing question of possibility is no longer pertinent. Kill, fly faster, love to your heart's content. And if you should die, are you not certain of reawaking among the dead? Let yourself be carried along, events will not tolerate your interference. You are nameless. The ease of everything is priceless.

I believe in the future resolution of these two states, dream and reality, which are seemingly so contradictory, into a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, if one may so speak. It is in quest of this surreality that I am going, certain not to find it but too unmindful of my death not to calculate to some slight degree the joys of its possession.

At an early age children are weaned on the marvelous, and later on they fail to retain a sufficient virginity of mind ot thoroughly enjoy fairy tales. ... There are fairy tales to be written for adults, fairy tales still almost blue.

Joseph Delteil: "Alas! I believe in the virtue of birds. And a feather is all it takes to make me die laughing."

Desnos... reads himself like an open book, and does nothing to retain the pages, which fly away in the windy wake of his life.

After you have settled yourself in a place as favorable as possible to the concentration of your mind upon itself, have writing materials brought to you. Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of mind as you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone else. Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything. Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you're writing and be tempted to reread what you have written. The first sentence will come spontaneously, so compelling is the truth that with every passing second there is a sentence unknown to our consciousness which is only crying out to be heard.

Les Champs magnétiques: the first purely Surrealist work.

Surrealism does not allow those who devote themselves to it to forsake it whenever they like. There is every reason to believe that it acts on the mind very much as drugs do; like drugs, it creates a certain state of need and can push man to frightful revolts. It also is, if you like, an artificial paradise, and the taste one has for it derives from Baudelaire's criticism for the same reason as the others. Thus the analysis of the mysterious effects and special pleasures it can produce - in many respects Surrealism occurs as a new vice which does not necessarily seem to be restricted o the happy few; like hashish, it has the ability to satisfy all manner of tastes - such an analysis has to be included in the present study.

The mind becomes aware of the limitless expanses wherein its desires are made manifest, where the pos and cons are constantly consumed, where its obscurity does not betray it.

This is the most beautiful night of all, the lightning-filled night: day, compared to it, is night.

.. that the mind is ripe for something more than the benign joys it allows itself in general.

I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned that all others before him have failed, refuses to admit defeat, sets off from whatever point he chooses, along any other path save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can.

Surrealism is the "invisible ray" which will one day enable us to win out over our opponents. "You are no longer trembling, carcass." This summer the roses are blue, the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak, makes as little impression upon me as a ghost. It is living and ceasing to live which are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere.

Monday, 8 June 2015

The Ex - "Too Many Cowboys"

Started playing automatically after I looked up "Aha Gedawo" by Getatchew Mekuria feat The Ex. That song did not work so well for me anymore (I had heard it in Butchers Tears) but the beginning of this album is promising instrumental soundscapes.

Nescio - "Verzameld proza en nagelaten werk"

prachtteksten, zoals altijd, met vroege versies van "Titaantje", "Dichtertje" en de andere bekende stukken. En daarachteraan, zoveel juweeltjes.


Reactie

... Ik voel me niet meer zoo gerust. De doodsklok heeft geluid over den waan van den dag. 'Waarom zullen we alles deelen?' De jeugd heeft de toekomst, het getij kentert.
    Ik voel me niet meer zoo gerust.

Oosterpark, 8 December 1947, in de mist


'Deze dag bestond uit blauwe lucht'

Deze dag bestond uit blauwe lucht en witte wolken, uit blauw water met de zon er in, uit felle zilveren flikkeringen van auto's.
    Er was een laantje van ijle, dunne boompjes, dat in het licht verdween. Opging in God.

25 Maart 1947



FFS - "FFS"

Franz Ferdinand with (legendary?) sythrockduo Sparks

Fun enough

  • Save me from myself
  • Collaborations Don't Work - silly fun