If You Find The Earth Boring...

I’m back from a week-long getaway and have many things to tell you about and update you on.  Since it’s March 14th here’s a video about the musicality of Pi (get it?, 3.14159…) from Portland musician and all around nice guy Michael John Blake.  His video was featured on NPR’s morning edition today.

Thanks to the generous and always on the ball peoples over at Warp Records, I have been enjoying the new Bibio album Mind Bokeh which will be released March 29th.  I’ve been a Bibio fan for years and  I was so excited by the title of this new album I got myself in gear and re-worked some of my own bokehs from a past holiday (see here).  Now I’m enjoying the further expansion of Bibio’s oeuvre with another fine album that has been sinking into my head for the last week or so.  He’s moving in some drastically different directions since his fine debut Fi in 2005.  Mind Bokeh is going to be one of my favorites of this year for sure.

I don’t think I have ever won anything by a random drawing before - and I’m not counting the time I was selected to, reluctantly, flip the light switch at my local town’s Christmas Tree lighting ceremony when I was eight years old - so you can imagine my surprise when I was just notified I had won an autographed copy of 1,000 Reasons Never To Kiss A Boy by acclaimed children’s book author Martha Freeman. Not only am I very excited to be able to now proclaim that I have actually won something, but I’m also excited about finding out what all these reasons are, and there sure are a lot of them.  Perhaps this will help me to understand my adolescence a little better?  I plan not to show the book to my girl - I’ve obviously provided enough reasons for her not to kiss me, so I don’t need to introduce another 1000 reasons into the mix.  After I have finished my read, in order to spread the love around - people say you should pass a good book on to another librophile - I have an extremely special 9-year-old in mind who would very much appreciate this book as long as her mom and dad say it’s acceptable.

I’ve been enjoying the new Thank You album Golden Worry on the fine Thrill Jockey record label.  This album nicely compliments the band’s last album (2008’s Terrible Two) and formidably rocks out - without ever over rocking out - and is weird enough to keep my attention through multiple listens today.  There are some fine things happening in Baltimore right now.  Just thought I would let you know.

Check out this short film and string piece based on the New York City MTA subway system by Alexander Chen. [vimeo 19372180 480 390] From Alexander Chen’s website: “Conductor turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument. Using the MTA’s actual subway schedule, the piece begins in realtime by spawning trains which departed in the last minute, then continues accelerating through a 24 hour loop. The visuals are based on Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 diagram.” Here’s an interesting film of Massimo Vignelli discussing the design of his New York City MTA map. Re-blogged from the great blog ghostcapital by Portland’s very own Nicholab.