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The Gorillaz seem to keep getting better with each album. Plastic Beach resurrects a heavily produced 80′s sound and features more collaborators then ever before. Mos Def, who lights up “Stylo” with Bobby Womack also recently released Mos Dub -a free album that mixes up a bunch of classic dub tracks, and has been racking up the play count on my iTunes. My favorite new collaborator is definitely Little Dragon, appearing on several tracks, lending an ethereal quality. Bobby Womack no doubt leaves a lasting sonic impression as well.

found in April, 2010

I usually save Drum and Bass (dnb) releases for my mixes and reserve this section for other music. But this is an album, and deserves to be treated as such.

The fact that dnb is being released more and more often in album form shows that it’s growing in popularity. Not only that, but some songs on these full-length albums aren’t even mixable. That means these tracks aren’t just being loaded onto the turntable, but onto the ipod.

Hospital Records is one of the dnb heavyweights, with some of the best producers in its lineup,  distributing all forms of popular media. And with their award winning podcast, dnb is reaching new listeners all over the globe. Hospital has turned the ‘cast into a two-way relationship, soliciting for your demos, promising the best ones to be played on the podcast. The tune will reach millions of listeners, and possibly get signed.

That’s how Tony Coleman, the man behind the label, found many of the artists on this compilation, which consists of all Russian producers. True to his form, these tunes push the boundaries of the genre. They’re not really dancefloor mashers but a diverse collection of tunes that take a little while to warm up to, and they soon end up on your smart playlist of most played songs in iTunes.

found in December, 2009

At first, sheer awe of the two guitar virtuosos and the machine-like live drums was what drew me to DragonForce. I loved how over-the-top the sound was- each second is packed with so much complexity that it takes multiple listens to digest the tracks.

But after a while you begin to appreciate the jazz-like soloing ability of this power metal band. As well as the melodies, any of which could be covered with an acoustic guitar. But instead DragonForce rages, as if infused by a power surge. The energy and dexterity necessary for an album of this sonic scale is impressive, and I can’t wait to see DragonForce live.

found in October, 2009

311 has not begun to rest on its laurels. If there is a little more harmonizing and less lyricizing, they are still putting just as much thought and effort into their jams. I was slow to adopt this album, but a couple key tracks kept me coming back- “Daisy Cutter” – there are so many great parts to this song, and “Never Ending Summer”, a straight up rocker. 311 has been making new music and touring for 20 years, I wonder if they’ll ever stop. Read about my conjecture of the album art here.

found in July, 2009

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

Survivor is one of those books that is nothing you expected. Palahniuk uses a unique writing style that delivers deadpan humor and heavy satire. Dark themes like suicide and death are explored. It can be a little depressing at times, but you can’t help but be drawn in by all of the unexpected events that occur in the book.

Told in first-person, this is the story of a survivor of a suicidal religious cult. Cared for by a government program, the protaganist, Tender Branson is placed in a job, and provided a new life. Life goes on uneventfully, until he meets Fertility Hollis. From there, nothing and everything go as planned, in a tragic story saturated with symbolism and rife with satire of modern American life.

finished in June, 2010

I’ve been a fan of Michael Pollan ever since I heard him interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR some years back. They talked about his book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which brought to light many things I had never considered about food, and encouraged us to foster a better relationship with the food we eat.

2007′s In Defense of Food goes a step further, exploring what food to eat. It’s a question a whole industry has sprung up to answer. But IDoF raises questions about food most of us have never considered.

For instance, the degree to which our government influences what we eat. One example of this are government subsidies that make corn and soy cheaper to buy than they are to produce- which floods the market with cheap corn syrup and soybean oil. This enables highly processed, unhealthy food to be cheaper than fruits and vegetables.

Pollan singles out the “Western diet” as a cause for most of the maladies that are unique to the western world- diabetes, cancer, obesity, hypertension, and stroke. He points to those cheap sugars and fats lacking in nutrition as the cause-

A diet based on quantity rather than quality has ushered a new creature onto the world stage: the human being who manages to be both overfed and undernourished, two characteristics seldom found in the same body in the long natural history of our species.

And the thing is, it all makes very good sense. Without summarizing the book, Pollan makes a case for the importance of foods as a whole, rather than the nutrients we generally value them for, and a case against the nutrient injected processed foods that dominate an American diet.

He finishes with no hard rules for what to eat but some very good rules of thumb such as, “Shake the hand that feeds you” and “Pay more, eat less”. Pollan points out that in 1960, Americans spent 17.5% of their income on food and 5.2% on health care. Today we spend about 10% on food and 16% on health care. What does this say about the quality of food we’re eating?

In all, In Defense of Food is an excellent evaluation of how we eat as Americans, and how we should eat. Look for Pollan’s next book, Food Rules in January.

finished in December, 2009

The Art of War has been adapted to all sorts of training and self-help books, but the original is quite literally a guide to conducting war… in Asia, circa 6th century B.C.E. The book consists by and large of clearly stated guidelines for war. There are many simple statements like this:

When the common soldiers are too strong and their officers too weak, the result is insubordination. When the officers are too strong and the common soldiers too weak, the result is collapse.

And there are more conceptual principles such as this:

Do not interfere with an army that is returning home because a man whose heart is set on returning home will fight to the death against any attempt to bar his way, and is therefore too dangerous and opponent to be tackled.

When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. This does not mean that the enemy is allowed to escape. The object is to make him believe that there is a road to safety, and thus prevent his fighting with the courage of dispair.

I believe these principles transcend the scope of just ancient warfare. Many of the principles in the book appear simple and obvious, but upon examination of the United State’s war history, you have to wonder if some of these principles weren’t ingored, how our history may have been changed.

finished in November, 2009

Having also read Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons, I couldn’t help but notice the pattern in his writing, it’s undeniably formulaic.  But I’d say the formula of Robert Langdon running all over a historical city to solve an ancient riddle makes for a good read. And once again, there are hints that this book was written to eventually become a blockbuster film.

This is probably the most violent, cryptic, and intense incarnation of the Langdon series. And what is everyone after this time? It’s the legend of the ancient mysteries, which if unlocked, prophesize to illuminate the world and change mankind. A character in the book points out the true meaning of the word “apocalypse” (in reference to the apocalypse theory of 12/21/2012), that it means to illuminate. So in a way, the book is making a real life suggestion that these same ancient mysteries will change the world forever at some point in the near future.

At the end, the ancient mysteries are revealed. Without spoiling the book, it raises plausible questions, but really, when you offer up a worldwide epiphany, how much of it do you expect will be delivered?

finished in October, 2009

I got this book in a used bookstore while visiting my grandparents in Carson City, Nevada. The owner offered it to me for a penny when she heard I hadn’t read it.

This is one of the oldest books I’ve read, it was orginally published in 1851. To me the book was interesting for this reason alone, to get a glimpse of life 150 years ago.

Melville was very likely inspired by Shakespeare, as the book is filled with soliloquy and in parts is written like a play. References are as abundant as in an episode of Family Guy, but here they’re references and allusions to Roman and Greek mythology, as well as the Bible.

As one of the most well-known and oldest novels about sailing the ocean, it’s likely the source of our modern day image of the peg-legged sea captain crying, “Avast! Thar she blows!” As the book explains, many Nantucket whaling captains and sailors were quakers, who emulated scripture in their speech.

Definitely an epic, and perhaps America’s only contribution to classic literature, Moby Dick.

finished in August, 2009