My name is Hervé This von Kientzheim. I'm an Alsatian physical chemist, in exile in Paris (because ich habe mein Herz in Kientzheim verloren) and my research is "molecular gastronomy", a scientific discipline that I created in 1988 with my old friend Nicholas Kurti. I have to add that contrary to a misconception, molecular gastronomy is not cooking, but a scientific activity, and more precisely, a science of nature (opposed to sciences of human and societies).
This means looking for the mechanisms of phenomena occurring during dishes preparation. The idea is that cooking involves a lot of transformations (the meat turns brown, the pancake hardens, etc.), and that we are looking for the mechanisms of such transformations (why does the steak turn brown, for example).
We are doing a scientific activity, which means that there are no pans in the lab, but only nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy.. and equations. I have a passion for equations, and my job gives me the wonderful pleasure to deal with equations all day long.
The goal is to make discoveries, as for any science. We have to push the borders of knowledge farther. Of course, making research involves teaching, at least to younger scientists of our group.. but also much more broadly, because I get so many applications from all over the world (this is why I contributed to create a Master programme called "Food Innovation and Product Design").
Also science has applications: technical applications, social applications, educational applications. And I participate in applications of molecular gastronomy in these three directions. For example, for more than 15 years I've been publishing one culinary innovation, often on the Internet site of my friend Pierre Gagnaire, one the of best chefs of the world. But I'm also introducing new educational programmes in primary schools as well as in high schools (and of course at university level).
Some years ago, I also had to head the "Human Food Group" of the French Academy of Agriculture, and I was appointed the Director of the International Centre for Molecular Gastronomy, with relationships with more and more universities of the world (often, I contributed in creating such laboratories).
I also forgot to tell you about "note by note cooking", which means cooking with compounds, instead of using vegetables and meat, fish or fruits. This will be the next big culinary trend, and you can trust me: it will last for a long time. I proposed it as early as 1994, but it's now begun spreading all over the world.
And there's more, but let's come back to the most important: sciences of nature, physical chemistry! Indeed, this is the basis on which all is built.
What hardware do you use?
I'm not a native English speaker, so I can interpret "hardware" as computers, but also more generally electronics.. and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy is mostly a big magnet with a lot of electronics.
The system that I'm using is a Bruker Avance 300 MHz spectroscope that Jean-Marie Lehn (Nobel Prize 1987) gave me, some years ago. This huge electronic system is run by a small computer, but the computer itself has no importance, and I even don't know which one it is.
For my most important work, i.e. calculation, I'm using UNIX and Linux running on various systems. My laptop is a laptop, and it has no importance. I mean, it has to have a real keybord, a screen bigger than 13", and it should be thin and light, because I have it always with me (indeed, I have two of the same, because I don't want to lose one second, if one breaks). The flash memory is very useful, and I could not admit booting in more than some seconds now.
On my desks there are other computers, and most are Dell, but indeed I don't care, as long as they can calculate. You know, this is an attitude that I have generally: for example, I have two cars, but I don't care, as long as I can drive safely. I don't care about their color, their brand, their power, etc. Sometimes, I need them, and they have to work. It's only a question of use. For my clothes, the same, and also for my laboratory, etc. On the other hand, intellectually, I am completely different, and here elegance and beauty are most important for me.
The way I calculate, the way I think, the way I speak, the way I write... and this is why I am so sad to answer your questions in English, because my English is very poor (it means that I cannot express myself with the utmost precision that I love).
And what software?
Here, the answer is straightforward. I told you that Linux is on my ultrabooks and computers (or UNIX), but the main software that I am using is Maple.
Indeed this software is really good, and I regret that it is so expansive, because it deserves being used by more people. Using it, you can write, but primarily you can do good science, i.e. calculus, equations. I love it, and it is almost the only software that I am using. Immediately when my computer is on, a Maple file is opened (my "notebook"). Right now, answering the questions, I am looking on the left of the screen and I can see that I am also using (sometimes) Unison (for backups), LibreOffice Writer, GIMP, Avogadro..
What would be your dream setup?
If Maple could include a chemistry software, it would be wonderful. But indeed, I am not sure that this would change a lot. What I need is intelligence, kindness and time.
Salutations to the Milwaukee Admirals for organizing one of the greatest marketing initiatives in major or minor league history ; on Feb 21, the Admirals are giving away Crusher bobbleheads to the first 5000 fans who attend a matinee against the Iowa Wild (I’ve been to Iowa a few times, and I can promise you that it’s extremely wild). Even better, it’s Purina Dog Day, meaning for an extra $2 you can bring your dog to the game. With the possible exception of thunder and Michael Vick, there’s nothing dogs like better than noisy ice rinks filled with people brandishing Crusher bobbleheads.
Crystal Leww: “Otubone Rock” sounds like a variety of influences from Sleigh Bells to early 00s techno to 90s grunge, but only if all of those things were forced into a blender with a shot of adrenaline, attitude, and the distilled energy of the best dance floors that I’ve ever been on. Gonchi’s work moves through time and across timezones to make something frantic yet appealing. Itsuka is disinterested in being boxed into a vocal style, singing and rapping in all sorts of tones. One moment she sounds like she’s robotically reciting something from memory and the next she’s wooing, then singing sweetly. And yet, comparisons to other larger than life rappers seem inappropriate. Charisma.com sound like the future instead. [9]
Tristan Bella: MC Itsuka and DJ Gonchi assume the role of “Otsubone” by hiring the riff from “Song 2” straight out of rehab for a cubicle position, but it’s a hectic work environment. DJ Gonchi is sawing through desks with a “Satisfaction”-level baseline while Itsuka’s vigorous rhymes delve into the life of the office’s Queen Bee. She’s committed, fierce, and successful. She’s disliked, mocked, and lonely. She works just as hard as the King Bee, but in a country with the second highest wage-gap in the OECD, she gets paid a quarter less. “Otsubone Rock” will not change her situation, but it might put a little more stomp in her step. [8]
Austin Brown: One of the most underrated (and underexplored) songwriting topics is workplace rock, something I didn’t realize until hearing this song. With a spy-movie riff that just never lets up and a rapid fire flow that feels appropriately suave, there’s also still a tiny bit of dorky clarity to the inflection in the verses that lets you, the audience, in on the fun — you’re just looking to get mad at your boss here, not start the revolution. [6]
Iain Mew: I’m a bit disappointed that this doesn’t go in anything like as hard as “Iinazuke Blue,” but the bits that DJ Gonchi makes sound like “Hello” stuck on a loop-the-loop go some way to making up for it. [6]
Scott Mildenhall: To brainstorm, this sounds like Martin Solveig meets Grand Theft Audio meets Benny Benassi meets a thousand other cursory referents, and while the eclecticism is appealing, the abrupt cuts from one train of sound to another are sometimes stifling. Itsuka ploughs through irrespective of what’s going around her, sounding and reading very impressive, but she’s still slightly stymied by the lack of focus that something like this doesn’t have. [7]
Maxwell Cavaseno: I can never commit my heart to Charisma.com, partly because of DJ Gonchi’s production; every solid on the verses just tends to veer a bit too close to Hadouken! territory when the big chorus comes. Otherwise, Itsuka’s mic skills are considerable in the age when peppy and rapid get confused for gifted despite never actually being on the beat. And she maintains it while sounding so typically disaffected. [6]
Kenny Komala: I am feeling a poppy Deerhoof vibe. I like that it gets to the point without letting up until the final note. No syllables are wasted. It accentuates words and builds in all the right places. If Otsubone is a new sub-genre of rock, I’m on board. [8]
Anthony Easton: This is just a good time had by all, the guitar speed matched by some solid electro production, and a hip hop sweet spot. Extra point for the speed. [8]
Alfred Soto: Office ladies by day, noise-pop purveyors by design and by night, Charisma.com take the dumbest of hooks — a repeated ooh-ooh here, a lurch into a quiet interlude there — and piledrive them into my brain. This is why we need secretary pool unions. [8]
Thomas Inskeep: I want Charisma.com to cross over to non-Japanese-speaking countries so that the world can learn what a great rapper Itsuka is; she’s so verbally nimble. DJ Gonchi provides a tasty electro-rap backdrop, full of farty noises like a 2000s Peaches track (or something equally electroclash). [6]
Edward Okulicz: I’ve got no idea if “Otsubone Rock” and its mix of thrashy guitars, whooshes, dumb beats and playful, commanding rap from Itsuka has as much inherent appeal to the kids of Japan as it must to hipsters and festivalgoers. But right now I’m imagining how much my parents would have hated me blasting this at stun volume and exploding with happiness. [9]
Patrick St. Michel: Charisma.com’s energy has always been miles ahead of their actual sound, which is fine because the pair hold nothing back on the bulk of their songs. “Otsubone Rock” is just the latest example of it, a sonically dense song that rightfully puts all the energy on the duo themselves, seeing as they could read an issue of Hot Pepper and turn it into a roundhouse kick. It’s a winning strategy — that it works wonders at festivals, the primary way anyone in Japan sees live music anymore, is even better for them — but I also think, like, it’s all starting to blur together a bit, especially perched over my laptop. As long as they go in like this, they’ll always be getting buzz, but I also feel like I’ve heard this song from them before. [6]
Brad Shoup: It would’ve been hard to maintain the energy of the intro, which chops a math-rock breakdown into a ludicrous number of portions. Gonchi settles into electro-tinged big beat: the whiny synth and ascending tone never get more insistent than the rhythm. Itsuka is chill throughout; the FBI/CIA references — her most compelling bit — foreshadow the spy-caper bridge. It’s not as much as I was expecting, but it’s plenty. [7]
Will Adams: Strange turn of events for the verse to be the more compelling section of the song, but bending basslines usually fare better than trebly guitar stabs with me, so there you go. [6]
Jessica Doyle: I’m at that infatuation stage where I could go on and on about Itsuka’s wardrobe alone (two ties! comfortable pants!). The garage-rock touches are a new addition and a nice expansion from the likes of “Hate” and “Now,” not that I haven’t spent a fair bit of time dancing around to “Hate” and”Now” in the past week. And Itsuka is a whirl of ruffles and force onstage. I reserve the right to rethink things if they turn out to be talking down to, as opposed to on behalf of, the otsubone; as Patrick has pointed out, in the past they’ve gone for relatively easy targets. But in the absence of a lyric translation I’d be dishonest in giving anything lower than: [9]
Gayathri Shanmukhasundaram: “Bang Diggy Bang Bang” caught me by surprise in its matching ofKorean rappers Bizzionary, Tiger JK and Yoon Mi-rae (AKA Tasha K) with Hindustani music, a classical genre from India. The bol (kind of like scatting) fits in seamlessly with the rappers’ easy flow. Add in some ‘African bongo sounds’ and you have thumping dance tune that fits to a tee the ‘hip pop’ MFBTY claims to create. Such a label feels like it would be used to describe a cheap knock off. But this meeting of South Asia and Africa with East Asia, underpinned by Black American creation, is an authentic addition to the world of fusion music — more so than the current trend of Middle Eastern samples employed in current hip hop. If only Tiger JK had stayed away from the turban, this would have been an impeccable example of cultural exchange. [8]
Scott Ramage: The obvious comparison point is “Get Your Freak On,” but what it really resembles is Little Mix’s “Move.” The way it skips, bounces and bangs around the beat, all sonic Easter eggs and idiosyncratic delivery, brings out so much fun. The raps recall “212” — not necessarily because of their technical ability, but in the sheer pleasure of language explored. The groove is so elastic that the hooks feel strong enough to resist translation as a requirement but if I heard this in a club it would be absolute submission. [8]
Mike Mathews: What the Black Eyed Peas sound like to people who HATE the Black Eyed Peas. [0]
Jessica Doyle: Playful, deliberately light — this isn’t anywhere near the expanse and emotion of “Sweet Dream,” and thank goodness for that; it’s hard for me to imagine a second, cohesive “Sweet Dream.” They’re veterans, and don’t confuse experimentation with slack. [6]
Alfred Soto: It has the daft enthusiasm for nonsense phrases (BUSY. TIGER.) that I liked about the Spice Girl’s “Wannabe” and the usual K-pop finesse for protean rhythms. [6]
Austin Brown: If there’s not a general rule that spending more time on ad libs and “let the 808 bump” interjections than on the actual verses and choruses of a song is usually bad, I would like to get working on one now. [4]
Tristan Bella: Sits equidistant from “Boom Boom Pow” and “Get Ur Freak On,” avoiding the former’s forced futurism but lacking the latter’s extraterrestrial whiplash. [5]
Joshua Kim: Such a rush but everything’s in its right place here, especially that playful slide whistle sound during the verses. The accents at the start of Tiger’s verse are crucial and give the song that extra push before it dive rolls straight into the chorus. [8]
Peter Ryan: This needs nothing but since she seems to be back for real this time I can’t help but imagine Missy hopping on this c. 1:40. I can dream… [9]
Thomas Inskeep: This Korean rap collective have managed something I thought impossible: they’ve made a record that shows the world what Black Eyes Peas (their iteration with Fergie) might sound like if they weren’t terrible. “Bang” starts out with what sounds like a child reciting the opening of Sly Fox’s “Let’s Go All The Way” before the boom-bap kicks in. Their raps are playful, the chorus makes mention of “that bass/that 808,” the production here is buoyant and readymade for the dancefloor, and overall this is just pure happy partytime. [7]
Brad Shoup: I like it; it reminds me how much I miss Fergie. With a title like that it needs to bang and it bangs: check Tiger JK, constricting his throat and wondering when he’s gonna go stale. And the sample, which feints at something untenably syncretic, but gets stripped to a tiny pinging figure, lean and nagging. [7]
Leonel Manzanares: The tempo and the different percussions on the track recall Missy Elliott’s classic era maybe a little too much, but the energy in the chorus and the Hindustani instruments sold it for me. Bonus point for Yoonmirae’s powerful rapping. [7]
Crystal Leww: MFBTY have a wonderfully executed pop-rap song in “Bang Diggy Bang Bang” that would fit along nicely with the likes of some Amber-heavy f(x) tracks or Missy Elliott. The verses are energetic, with each member contributing their own little bit, but the best part about this is the percussion, which takes a page out of Elliott’s book: they’re layered and varied. Still, k-pop continues to suffer from a serious appropriation problem: no one needs to see Asian folks in dreadlocks or braids, y’all. [6]
Patrick St. Michel: Befitting a Korean rap supergroup who don’t need to really prove anything, “Bang Diggy Bang Bang” is pure energy as the trio tag in and out over a song that seems effortless. That’s what’s most impressive here — I’m used to high-concept K-pop videos and “G-Dragon…but Young Thug style!” that dashes out the gate with Drunken Tiger pretending to be a drum machine, nodding to sounds beyond their borders. [8]
Megan Harrington: It took me days to figure out where I’d heard the words “bang” and “diggy” juxtaposed before. Let me save you a possible hundred units of time — it’s Kid Rock’s “Bawitdaba.” Aside from that potentially incidental reference, there’s also a little Meghan Trainor and maybe some Da Brat here. It’s a seemingly strange recipe — like one that calls for nutmeg in mac ‘n cheese, but it works in a sophisticated way. [7]
Boston College's University Health Services reports:
More than 120 BC students have reported to BC Health Services with symptoms consistent with the Norovirus. Nearly all cases are related to students who ate at the Chipotle restaurant in Cleveland Circle during the past weekend.
In response to the spread of the virus, BC has taken several steps, including shutting down all on-campus salad bars and other self-service food offerings.
The Boston Public Health Commission reported yesterday that several people not affiliated with BC also show symptoms of the illness. City inspectors shut the burrito place in part because a sick employee was allowed to continue on the job.
What were the things Julian Glander was hoping to capture with his game? 'All of the real feelings that we chase when we go into nature: Tranquility, calm, enjoyment.' ...
Sharing as a reminder to self to watch Tim's Vermeer
I’m typing this as North America slowly unwinds below me, fleeing the rising sun that will still overtake us, light-headed and a touch giddy from a sustained shortness of sleep. If this all sounds a little bit familiar, you’re right, and thank you for following my meanderings over so many months. Anyone can write, but not everyone is read, and it’s always an honor.
I’m not going to write about my obsessions this time, at least not directly. But as it happens, I’m watching a movie about someone else’s obsession: Tim’s Vermeer. In short, it’s about the inventor of Video Toaster and Lightwave, Tim Jenison, and his quest to figure out how Johannes Vermeer did what he did so incredibly well. Tim hypothesizes that Vermeer used high 16th-Century technology in a novel and long-forgotten fashion.
In the process of making his case, Tim not only reverse-engineers the technique, he decides to recreate Vermeer’s studio, employing 3D CAD modeling and visualization, not to mention computer-driven lathes and mills and routers to build the furniture to exacting precision. It’s a fascinating contrast to the constraint he sets himself of only using materials that would have been available in the 16th century for the room and the painting itself. He puts a piece of wood into an industrial tool the size of a 1970s DEC mainframe and sends it commands to fashion a chair leg in the style of 16th-Century Europe, and then picks up a pestle to grind the pigments for his paint by hand.
In the end, he produces a painting that bears all the hallmarks of a Vermeer, a very close copy of The Music Lesson, even though Tim has never studied or even practiced painting of any kind. In the process, he uncovers a clue in Vermeer’s original, something not noticed in the 350 years since its production, that provides very strong evidence he’s gotten it right. It’s a really fascinating story.
And there I sat, seven miles above the earth, moving at a significant fraction of the speed of sound, watching the whole story unfold on my iPhone 4S plugged into a compact charging device, the movie streaming over wifi from a media server stowed away somewhere in the airframe. Far above me, a constellation of beacons circled in polar orbit, helping to keep the plane on course and on time as it hurled itself through the thin air.
Bathed in marvels, I watched a man who had birthed or helped birth some of those marvels resurrect a forgotten marvel and produce a marvel of his own.
Then I cued up Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, because the antics of an anarchic sentient raccoon are never not funny.
Reminder to self to spend a long weekend reading all this stuff and going over my own server
Two weeks ago, the server I host all my personal projects on was hacked by some guy in Ukraine. It really sucked.
I was overdue for a redesign anyway.
I first noticed something was amiss while trying to post a link here and the server was unusually slow. I SSHed in and the server was slow to respond, as if system resources were being consumed by a runaway process.
A quick 'top' revealed that MySQL was pegging the CPU, so I logged into the MySQL console and saw that a dump of the database was being written out to a file. This was very unusual: I never schedule database backups in the middle of the day, and it was using a different MySQL user to make the dumps.
Then I noticed where the mysqldump was being written to: the directory for a theme from a WordPress installation I'd set up the previous month, an experiment to finally migrate this blog off of MovableType.
This set off all my alarms. I immediately shut down Apache and MySQL, cutting off the culprit before they could download the dumped data or do any serious damage.
I'd recently updated to the latest WordPress beta, and saw that the functions.php file in the twentysixteen theme directory was replaced with hastily-obfuscated PHP allowing arbitrary commands to be run on my server through the browser.
This confirmed all my lingering unease about running WordPress, built up over a decade of hearing horror stories of friends and acquaintances getting hacked--but that stereotype of WordPress security was outdated and wrong, and led me to make a very stupid, very serious blunder.
I moved the WordPress install, along with the hacked PHP and aborted mysqldump, to my local machine and deleted it from my server. I looked through the logs to see what else they'd been up to, and convinced I'd closed the hole by removing WordPress, eventually started my server back up to minimize downtime.
The next day, "Ivan" dropped every database in MySQL, deleted my blog, and replaced it with this pseudo-political polemic he's used on other compromised sites.
After going through every log file, and with the help of Gary Pendergast from the WordPress security team, I assembled a minute-by-minute timeline of what happened.
Our friendly hacker first appeared in the logs on the Waxy.org homepage, running a vulnerability scan testing thousands of different URLs to find possible vectors of attack. And it finds one, a copy of PHPMyAdmin that I apparently installed in 2002 and forgot about it entirely.
He tried to sign in briefly, but failed, so starts looking for other PHP scripts on the server using a simple Google query for "site:waxy.org inurl:php". This turns up half a dozen results, with one that looks promising — a project I did in 2005 to visualize a data dump that Boing Boing released to commemorate their fifth birthday.
He starts an open-source toolkit called SQLMap to probe the script for SQL injection holes, it quickly finds one, and uses it to own the database.
In the database, he sees a database for WordPress from the installation I mentioned earlier. He fires up a third vulnerability scanner called WPScan to search for WordPress vulnerabilities, but it's not clear if he finds any.
Either way, it's not necessary — with access to MySQL, the culprit can add himself a WordPress admin and sign in. Immediately, he uses the WordPress theme editor to install malware PHP to the theme, allowing him to execute arbitrary commands on the server. Just in case, he writes copies of the malware PHP to three more locations outside of the WordPress installation in case it's deleted.
So, after I removed access to WordPress, he was still able to get to the malware needed to own the box. Eventually, he grows bored and deletes the database and everything on Waxy.org.
Comedy of Errors
Fortunately, I had a database backup from earlier that morning, and a recent backup of all files. I killed all services on the server, and started the long process of restoring sites carefully, one by one, with modern security practices in mind.
But this was easily one of the most miserable, stressful experiences of my life. Yesterday, I woke up in the middle of the night with a cold-sweat nightmare that I was hacked again.
I had a PTSD-ish nightmare that my server was hacked again, this time from an exploit in Postfix. Stupid lingering stress.
And it was so avoidable, born from laziness and complacency. Let's go through the highlights of bad security practices:
My old server at Softlayer was running continuously for eight straight years, since December 2007, and there was code carried over from previous servers dating back to 2002.
The Boing Boing Stats was a throwaway PHP hack that sat untouched for a decade on multiple servers with a glaring SQL injection hole. And, hell, I didn't even know that ancient copy of PHPMyAdmin installation was still hanging around.
I was using a shared MySQL user account for nearly every project running on the server, which had near-universal permission to delete records or drop databases entirely. Plus, it allowed for remote connections. So bad.
I played loose with file permissions, giving the Apache user the ability to write to far more than it should have.
I was running Centos 5, but not keeping up-to-date with security updates.
Critically, I wasn't running any software to monitor and ban vulnerability scans or alert me to malicious activity.
And that's just scratching the surface of issues relevant to this hack. I was still using password-based logins with SSH, root logins were available, MySQL passwords were weak... Frankly, it's amazing I wasn't hacked earlier.
Righting Wrongs
If there's a bright side to any of this, it's that it gave me a long-overdue crash course in modern infosec practices. And migrating from a dedicated leased server to virtual servers feels like waking up in the future.
After a bunch of research, I decided to abandon dedicated servers entirely and move to a beefy DigitalOcean droplet running Ubuntu 14.04. It's more powerful than my old server, provisioned instantly, and I'm paying a fraction of the price. DigitalOcean's admin tools are phenomenal, and backups are automatic and painless.
DigitalOcean's tutorials are absolutely incredible, and I found them invaluable in initial setup, securing Ubuntu, my firewall, MySQL, and using Fail2Ban to protect Apache and SSH. There's still more work to do for monitoring intrusions, but it's a start.
So, all of that sucked. But, while bittersweet, I'm better and stronger for it.
Sharing for the link to the DoomWorld awards themselves, which are a great read even if you haven't played DOOM since the 90's but *are* interested in rubbernecking a fascinating and decades-old active creative community — http://www.doomworld.com/22years/index.php
22 years ago today id Software released Doom for MS-DOS, and to mark the occasion Doom enthusiast community DoomWorld announced the winners of its twelfth annual Doom modding honors: the Cacowards. ...
There are many people out there that don’t appreciate ASCII art; we call those people “idiots”. ASCII art has been used forever and remains, in my opinion, a feat of programming and creativity. There’s a project called image-to-ascii which doesn’t just create ascii art but does so from an image of your choosing. Baller!
Assuming you’ve installed dependencies, outputting an image to ASCII art in the console is fairly simple:
Short bit of code for a cool effect. You’ll want to size the image down to less than 200px for best display and even then the ASCII output within the console looks excellent. As I mentioned in Show Images in Console with Node.js console-png, adding graphical elements to the console can be a nice touch and enhancement from bland text!
Meet Hitomi, a green-haired Harajuku girl wearing all-black. She is 21 years old and she’s a student.
Her fringe dress is from E hyphen world gallery, worn with a resale bomber jacket and fishnet tights from Tutuanna. She is carrying a Roppongi Art Night 2015 tote and her lace-up peep toe boots are Forever21. We also noticed her minimalist ring.
Hitomi likes shopping at Melange and she likes listening to Baseball Bear.
Stereolab co-founder has announced that his new collaborative project Cavern Of Anti-Matter will release debut LP in February.
Stereolab’s co-founder Tim Gane and their former drummer Joe Dillworth have joined forces with Holger Zapf in a new group called Cavern Of Anti-Matter. So far, the trio have released a handful of limited edition EPs and 12"s, 2013's Blood-Drums and You're An Art Soul among them. However the group insist that the forthcoming Void Beats/Invocation Trex is their debut album proper. It also features contributions from Deerhunter's Bradford Cox, Jan St Werner of Mouse On Mars and Spaceman 3 member Sonic Boom aka Pete Kember.
Void Beats/Invocation Trex will be released by Duophonic on 19 February, but it is possible to pre-order it now. Stereolab were featured on the cover of The Wire 149. You can hear a preview of the album’s fourth track “Melody Of High Feedback Tones” below.
What the fuck with this fucking lineup??? Do I have to go to NC for this?!
Moogfest 2016 Talent Announcement with Reggie Watts
Published on Dec 8, 2015 Moogfest
"Headlining performances include Gary Numan playing a three night residency of his trailblazing early albums, a two-night residency by GZA, ODESZA, Laurie Anderson, Oneohtrix Point Never, Suzanne Ciani, Blood Orange, and Sun Ra Arkestra; with keynote presentations by transhumanist activist and pharma tycoon Dr
I bought the cassette five minutes into this track. Awesome stuff.
The Hausu Mountain label had a great year in 2015, and it was bookended by two fantastic albums of electronic-psych-folk by Eartheater. Like February’s Metalepsis, this album combines the dreamy, underwater vibe of Grouper with haunted backwoods folksiness and shimmering synth textures. But there are some key differences. RIP Chrysalis, as an album title, signifies the end of a period of change. You rip the chrysalis and emerge, and then it’s R.I.P. Chrysalis. If this is the end of a period of transition, what has emerged is impressive: It’s a more grounded and vital record, shedding some of its predecessor’s aloof spaciness for a lived-in, malleable sound.
Eartheater’s Alexandra Drewchin got her start with the indescribable Guardian Alien, but this emergence from the chrysalis has, to my ears, transcended that band and her earlier solo work by an impressive margin. Eartheater is unlike anything else I’ve heard all year, but sounds ageless. It’s almost limiting to call it psychedelia. There’s an atavistic, pre-verbal ritual quality at play in its finest moments. It draws you in immediately, and stays with you long after it’s over. Truly sublime.
Sound Of The Future | The Archivist Presents # 22
Published on Dec 1, 2015 British Movietone
Great find via @AtomicShadow
"This week's Archivist Presents slot features a genius of electronic music, Daphne Oram.
This converted oast-house in Kent is really a kind of studio where Miss Daphne Oram is engaged in scientific research into electronic music. Thanks to a Gulbenkian Foundation grant,
Meet Meoko, a 19-year-old girl with green hair and glasses who we often see around Harajuku. She works in the Tokyo fashion industry.
Meoko is wearing a pills print sweatshirt from Sevens with bondage pants from Hellcatpunks, pink Converse sneakers, a cute Teddy Bear charm bracelet, and kawaii food earrings.
Meoko’s favorite place to shop is the underground brand/boutique Nincompoop Capacity and her favorite band is Groomy. Find her on Instagram and Twitter for more updates.
All I can think is, "what self-respecting Minecraft architect is gonna drop these nasty cell towers and this huge ugly cellphone into their landscaping"
Verizon has created a Minecraft phone that can connect to the real world, letting players browse the internet, send texts, and even make video calls from within the game. ...
David Neiwert, perhaps our nation’s most respected writer on white supremacy and right-wing extremism, says Donald Trump is probably not actually a fascist because he lacks the white supremacist bona fides and because he is a lazy narcissist rather than a coherent thinker. But he’s certainly moving us along the fascist road. It’s both scary and sad. If you haven’t read the whole thing yet (it came out a few days ago), it is well worth your time. You may however want to wait until later this evening when you can more easily justify the drinking it will force onto you.
All of which underscores the central fact: Donald Trump may not be a fascist, but his vicious brand of right-wing populism is not just empowering the latent fascist elements in America, he is leading a whole nation of followers merrily down a path that leads directly to fascism.
Consider, if you will, what did occur in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s remarks about “roughing up” Black Lives Matter protesters: Two nights later, a trio of white supremacists in Minneapolis invaded a Black Lives Matter protest there and shot five people, in an act that had been carefully planned and networked through the Internet.
What this powerfully implies is that Trump has achieved that kind of twilight-zone level of influence where he can simply demonize a target with rhetoric suggestive of violent retribution and his admirers will act out that very suggestion. It’s only a step removed from the fascist leader who calls out his paramilitary thugs to engage in violence.
America, thanks to Trump, has now reached that fork in the road where it must choose down which path its future lies – with democracy and its often fumbling ministrations, or with the appealing rule of plutocratic authoritarianism, ushered in on a tide of fascistic populism. For myself, I remain confident that Americans will choose the former and demolish the latter – that Trump’s candidacy will founder, and the tide of right-wing populism will reach its high-water mark under him and then recede with him.
What is most troubling, though, is the momentum that Trump’s candidacy has given that tide. He may not himself lack any real ideological footing, but he has laid the groundwork for a fascist groundswell that could someday be ridden to power by a similarly charismatic successor who is himself more in the mold of an ideological fascist. And it doesn’t take a very long look down the roll of 2016 Republican candidates to find a couple of candidates who might fit that mold.
Trump may not be fascist, but he is empowering their existing elements in American society; even more dangerously, his Tea Party brand of right-wing populism is helping them grow their ranks, along with their potential to recruit, by leaps and bounds. Not only that, he is making all this thuggery and ugliness seem normal. And that IS a serious problem.
For some time, my internal response to the rise of the Tea Party, the incredible spike in mass shootings, the love of so many in this nation for killing brown people, and the rise in obvious racism, has been that I just hope we as a nation can hold on until the older generation of whites passes on from the political scene and a more diverse nation with a younger generation of more tolerant whites can hopefully turn some of this back. But at the same time, I also know how naive that view is, in no small part because it really takes so little and so few people to seriously derail a democratic state through the use of violence and because I know that there is always another cohort of white people holding onto whiteness as a zero sum game. When you add long-term unemployment and underemployment into that mix, the potential for violence just grows, which is something that the defenders of the globalized economy outsourcing most industrial jobs simply do not consider in their analysis. Am I unduly disturbed right now? Perhaps. But this is indeed a scary time.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you love adventure games. I mean, we all love adventure games. We must, because they keep pumping them out there on the App Store. Lucky for us, most of them are well done with a great story and some not-too-shabby graphics. Daedalic Entertainment is responsible for a few of those already. Earlier this year they published the story about a world of trash, Deponia, and just last week released the PC port of The Whispered World. Soon, they’ll be adding another adventure game to that mix, A New Beginning.
A New Beginning tells the story of Bent Svensson, a retired bio-engineer and his encounter with Fay who claims to be from the future. She’s here to try to prevent the climate change disaster that has made the future a living hell, you know, a hell in which they have time machines. I might be willing to watch the world burn if it means I can get a time machine. Oh no, did I say that out loud? Well, that all but confirms your suspicion of me being a selfish jag. Apparently, Bent created something that can help prevent climate change and it’s about to fall into the wrong hands, so Bent and Fay must travel the world to make things right. It all sounds very adventure-y, and who doesn’t want to stop climate change?
We don’t have a solid release date for A New Beginning, but I’m guessing it will be coming this week or maybe next. It will be for iPad only and run $10. Check out the trailer after the break.
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Verizon has created a Minecraft phone that can connect to the real world, letting players browse the internet, send texts, and even make video calls from within the game. ...
