Blog

The Peas have definitely traded hip hop for hop pop. With a steady stayin-alive beat, this is a club album all the way through, with tons of ass-shakin beats.  Will-I-am perfectly melts electro and hip hop together to make non-abraisive pop songs with a shelf-life. So, if you automatically avoid anything that hits the mainstream, in this case it would be to your detriment. This is quality beats.

found in July, 2009

It’s a Jazz Thing attacks you gradually like a virus. You start out as a casual listener but before long you’re infected, and the tunes run through your head when you’re not listening. There’s a slightly atmospheric feel on this jazzy drum and bass album, with a good deal of brass being sampled along with a range of vocal samples. A steady half-step snare march keeps the tunes moving but they’re not in a hurry to get anywhere. I rank this full-length DnB album right up there with D Kay’s Individual Soul.

found in May, 2009

The worst thing you can do before you check out new music is have certain expectations for it. That goes double for Santogold. With a unique vocal sound that can range from sounding like Musical Youth to Gwen Stefani and even Dusty Springfield, she has a street-smart, mature vibe that starkly contrasts singers like Britney Spears.

The music is diverse too, inspired by reggae, new wave, alternative and more. Songs generally follow a pop formula, but they don’t manage to annoy me the slightest bit. Out of all the new music I’ve heard lately, Santogold’s appeal took longer to reach me but has also been the last to go.

found in December, 2008

Looming drops, funky loops. Big warbly bass lines. A range of vocal contribution. Pretty varied… you go from feeling like you’re on a campy space exploration to a big breakbeats party at some grimy basement club in London. Either way the punchy rhythms make you want to get up and dance.

found in June, 2008

Sampled out and contemplative, the dubby, sometimes atmospheric breaks are introspective, but keep you awake at right around 135 bpm. The arrangement and progression keep you interested. “Western world” provides an urban soundscape for souful vocals that make up a complete ’song’, in the lyrical sense. “Music” and “No Soul” are also favorites.

found in May, 2008

This book takes an in-depth look at clash of mountain lions and people, specifically in Boulder, CO, my hometown, and specifically the late eighties to early nineties, a time when I happened to lived there.

The topic is thoroughly explored- from the murderous history of Colorado on cougars, to the Boulderites’ defense of them. And Baron takes his journalistic ethic seriously. A little too seriously. Baron goes into an idiosyncratic level  of detail, and it was a bit of a push to finish this book. For instance, he describes the pattern and color of a comforter on the bed of a husband and wife that experienced a cougar sighting. And there are so many instances of this, that I believe if all the unnecessary details were left out, the book could be shortened to half it’s length.

Nevertheless, the book warns of a growing problem.  The ‘burbs are expanding, and cougar sightings are turning up in eastern states where they were thought wiped out. If people are going to continue to encroach on nature, and wildlife continue to become less fearful of people, a way to peacefully coexist must be found.

finished in June, 2009

I always enjoyed Gary Paulsen books when I was a “young adult” and this one sat on my bookshelf for years before I finally picked it up, only to learn who the real Gary Paulsen is.

Paulsen writes fiction, but this book is the real life story of his adventure running the Iditarod. He is a true outdoorsman, and had a fair amount of experience running dogs before the Iditarod,  but nothing could have prepared him.

Truth is stranger than fiction during the 1,180 mile dog mushing race. (Nothing here that isn’t on the jacket,) Paulsen endures -60° F cold, moose attacks, getting lost, in short, the true wild north. Many parts of the book I was surprised that he survived. It’s also about really knowing and working with the dogs, and in the end he emerges transformed after what he describes as “becoming dog.”

In two weeks, 2-in-a-row winner Lance Mackey will go for an unprecedented three-in-a-row victory at the 2009 Iditarod. Gary Paulsen is scheduled to speak the night before the start of the race. Official Iditarod website »

finished in February, 2009

Reading The Grapes of Wrath during our recession was a good source for perspective. People like to talk about how bad the economy is right now. But the Jones’ ain’t got nothin on the Joads. The struggle the Joads endure in The Grapes of Wrath is unimaginable for today’s American. Living in tents, suffering from malnutrition, the Joads were all too happy to pick peaches or cotton from sunrise to sunset, which barely afforded them dinner.

What I enjoyed most about the book was the bare honesty of each of the Joads. There is no false exterior to these characters, they called it as they saw it, and there is poetry in the way things are flatly registered. Although the ending felt unresolved, it proved what kind of characters the Joads were.

Since such definite locations are given in the book, I enjoyed making this Google map of their journey.

finished in January, 2009

Though it starts out a little slow, and the character building a little awkward– “On weekends he could be seen lounging on the quad in blue jeans, discussing computer graphics or religious history with students” it really gets rolling a few chapters in.

I only wished I had read this during my semester abroad in Italy. Many of the places Robert Langdon goes in the book I made visits to myself. But Dan Brown was granted a rare tour of the Vatican and saw a lot of things none of us will ever see, which are described in the book.

Instead, I began reading it around the time the Large Hadron Collider at CERN opened. It plays a central role in this story, but the purpose the scientists built it in the story is what’s interesting. It ties into a struggle between science and religion, in particular the Catholic church, which parallels the main conflict of tracking down the antimatter and the mysterious Illuminati. At times, I wondered if the Catholic church banned this book. I was constantly trying to figure out which side the author was on… Regardless, it is truly a great suspense novel, very unpredictable, with high stakes resting on our protagonists’ shoulders.

finished in November, 2008

The fact that this book was about a kid who worked in the circus didn’t make it very appealing to me. But what I discovered after I read it, was that the insight into the circus was one of the most fascinating things about the book. Life on a train, the ruthlessness of the ringleader, the treatment of the animals, and class system of this micro-culture in 1931 were thoroughly explored. The author, Sara Gruen, did her research well.

The story follows a young man, Jacob Jankowski, in a unique way– through himself recounting the story in present day. It’s his life story, and a great one. When an entire life is explained you reach a point near the end of the book where you almost feel like you’ve experienced it yourself, and it has just happened in a single moment. That kind of feeling leaves you oddly humbled, and moved. Ultimately reverent of one person’s life, but more personally, reverent of how your own time is spent during what is really only a brief period of being alive.

finished in October, 2008