Global Warming's Impact on Glaciers npr.org: "Talk of the Nation, February 10, 2006 · Mt. Kilimanjaro is the poster child for global warming -- a stark reminder that glaciers all over the world, from Antarctica to Alaska, are retreating and melting as the earth warms. Our experts discuss the plight of melting mountain glaciers."
Please Explain: The Weather wnyc.org: "We’ve all had countless polite conversations about the weather. But how many of us really understand how it works? And just how much do the experts know? On this week’s edition of Please Explain, we’ll take a crash course on some of the basics, and explore some of the more bizarre sides of the weather. "
allmusic.com: "Hailing from Sydney, Australia, Oren Ambarchi started as a free jazz drummer, went through a Japanoise phase, and ended up cutting himself a place under the avant-garde sun as a lowercase guitarist in the early 2000s, pushing his instrument into territories similar to the ones explored by contemporaries Rafael Toral and Kevin Drumm. His releases on Tzadik, Touch, and Staubgold attracted international interest, but he remained in his home country, working hard at developing a local scene with his What Is Music? festival." More
sirr-records.com: "This piece was recorded live at Phil Niblock's Experimental Intermedia Foundation in New york in the spring of 2005 and is part of Andre's ongoing series focused on creating micro-environments, computer controlled hermetic spaces. Bringing together sound and space through sympathetic vibrations, sound is used as a medium to excite space in order to render audible its natural resonances – sound multiplying in and by space.
Six objects were suspended from the ceiling at different heights, each one made from a globe of white glass with one microphone, one speaker and one electrical lamp inside. Each speaker was connected individually to a computer, that triggered 6 different frequencies – one for each of the speakers. These frequencies were tuned to the objects' resonance frequencies causing them to resonate.
There was no amplification for the sound coming from the objects. Kenneth Kirschner was plugged into the room's sound system."
spectralhouse.com: "The Gates Ensemble is an electro-acoustic ensemble formed in September 2001 to realize the piece Gates, for which the ensemble was eventually named. The piece involved free improvisation within the context of strict entrance and exit times. Since its inception, Gates has had a somewhat fluid membership. As of the time of this recording, Gates consisted of Brent Fariss, Jacob Green, Holland Hopson, Bill Thompson, Josh Ronsen, and Travis Weller. Past members have included David Drew, Afshar Kharat, Clark Crawford, and others.
"...fluent and imaginative, sustained electronic drones and whines weaving among dramatic instrumental clusters." - The Wire"
"Much of the hand-wringing about violence these days has to do with TV, movies, and video games. But Chuck Palahniuk tells Kurt that books can sometimes be the best medium for vicarious head bashing. Palahniuk reads a bit from his new book Haunted. And he breaks the first rule of Fight Club, which is to never talk about Fight Club. " Listen here
podcastingnews.com: rocketboom, a three minute daily videoblog based in New York City, has proven that there's money to be made with video podcasting. RocketBoom successfully used eBay to auction ad space on the video podcast.
dradio.de: "Er hat schon viele merkwürdige Zuweisungen erfahren: "Harald Juhnke des Postpunk" ist nur eine davon. Sie spielt darauf an, dass Rocko Schamoni früher als Punk die Spießer provoziert hat. Danach begann er, Schlager zu singen mit Entertainerqualitäten. Bekannt ist Schamoni auch als Mitbetreiber des Hamburger Golden Pudel Klubs."
Chris Cutler, The Wire : "Alcorn is a great player who has mastered and redefined an unlikely instrument (pedal steel guitar) . . . With an exquisite touch she invoked the history of her instrument, extended its emotional and ethereal strengths, and explored its microtonal possibilities, drawing it out of contexts that traditionally render it invisible -- or generic -- and placing it into its own mature discourse . . . reminding improvisors that "free" includes the right to be romantic, melodic, and eight to the bar."
earlabs.org. "A concert series of Japanese contemporary music after WWII given at Kioi Hall in Tokyo. This issue includes unreleased and rare tape music. [...]
I found these recordings through my favourite p2p Soulseek. Soundquality is not very good (direct from an old vinyl) but it fills a gap in the history of electronic music.
Mayuzumi shows his interest in films here already, presenting many acoustic scenes. He later scored a lot of movies before dying in 1997. The Moroi - Mayuzumi collaboration is purely electronic. Takemitsu's Vocalism AI is a haunting tape piece which really catches your attention. The others are a bit less expressive. Hashegawa's piece is actually a sort of radioplay which really MUST have been a big inspiration for John Zorn's 'Spillane'. "
wnyc.org: "Dave Longstreth is one of those rare composers who has created his own musical world, with its own unusual laws of musical physics. Passionate songs that seem on the verge of falling apart suddenly turn on a dime; melodies that seem improvised are repeated exactly by the ensemble; the musical vocabularies of jazz, classical, rock and folk mutate into something excitingly alien. Longstreth brings his band Dirty Projectors (Longstreth singing and playing guitar, two female singers, cello, and double bass) into the WNYC studio for a live set, and for conversation with host David Garland. Highlights from Dirty Projectors' new CD, "The Getty Address," are also heard. It's a concept album that links the Eagles' frontman Don Henley with the ancient Aztecs... " Listen here
wnyc.org: "They met at a party in Paris, but before long they left the city to live in a cabin in the Finnish wilderness. There they wrote songs, finding a quiet, intense musical style that suits long winter nights huddled at the hearth. Mi (Mira Anita Mathilda Romantschuk) is from Finland, L'au (Laurent Leclere) is French, and one of their common languages is music that takes the listener out of the modern hubub, to a more thoughtful, timeless place." Listen here
Meine absolute Lieblingsserie der späten 90er, Für alle Fälle Fitz (im Orginal: Cracker), ist ab März endlich auf DVD erhältlich. Der erste Teil, quasi ein kompletter Speilfilm, ist in der aktuellen Ausgabe der SFT für 3Euro erhältlich.
wikipedia.org: "Cracker is the title of a television crime series in the United Kingdom, made by Granada Television for ITV and created and principally written by Jimmy McGovern. It ran from 1993 to 1995 with a special in 1996 and was about a criminal psychologist, Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald, played by Robbie Coltrane. The part was originally offered to Robert Lindsay, who turned it down.
Fitz is a classic antihero, unfaithful to his wife, alcoholic, a chain smoker, overweight, addicted to gambling, manic, foulmouthed and sarcastic; and yet cerebral and excellent at his speciality: getting into the heads of violent criminals." Mehr
Geschichtsbilder im deutschen Film
Von Josef Schnelle
dradio.de: Hitlers letzte Tage im Bunker lockten Millionen ins Kino. Bernd Eichingers Großproduktion "Der Untergang" wurde sogar für einen Oskar nominiert. Lutz Hachmeister verfilmte Goebbels Tagebücher in einem dokumentarischen Essay. Heinrich Breloer setzte sich in drei Folgen mit dem Architekten und Rüstungsminister Albert Speer auseinander. [...]
Welch eine Anhäufung von Filmen über das Dritte Reich in einem einzigen Jahr! Sind das Scharmützel um die Deutungshoheit? Werden neue Bilder geliefert oder besetzen noch immer die Inszenierungen der braunen Barbarei die Imagination? Der Versuch einer Bilanz - mit den Stimmen von Heinrich Breloer, Lutz Hachmeister, Volker Schlöndorff und anderen."
dradio.de: "Dollars damn me", schrieb Melville 1851. Seit ihren Anfängen hallt der Fluch auf den Dollar durch die amerikanische Literatur, von Cooper bis zu William Gaddis. Max Weber hat seine "Protestantische Ethik" nach einem Aufenthalt in den USA geschrieben. Was es über die religiösen Wurzeln des modernen Kapitalismus zu wissen gab, lehrte ihn nicht zuletzt die puritanische "Leitkultur" der USA seit den Tagen der Pilgrim Fathers.
Vielen ist das neue "Empire" unheimlich, zu dem Vordenker heute die USA erklären. Doch als "Empire des Geldes" sind die USA schon seit den frühen Tagen der Kolonialzeit angelegt, in dem sich ökonomische Verheißungen des Weltmarkts von Anfang an mit religiösen Verheißungen verbanden. Klaus Theweleit und Noam Chomsky erläutern, wie die Frühgeschichte Amerikas bis heute in der eigentümlichen Empire-Politik der USA weiter wirkt.
Der Traum vom unaufhaltsamen Wachstum des Geldes auf den globalen Finanzmärkten ist genauso wie der Traum von der Unerschöpflichkeit natürlicher Ressourcen im puritanischen Vorsehungsglauben verwurzelt. Die Krise der westlichen Ökonomien und das Ende des Ölzeitalters zeigen ein dramatisch anderes Bild: Die Stärke der USA ist halluzinativ. "
Who started this whole "4 Questions" thing? Well, thanks to Andreas here are my answers:
Four jobs I’ve had:
I worked in a boutique, selling shoes, held German classes at a Berlitz school and "internet 101" classes at the adult education centre in Mannheim. Currently I should be working as a chemical process ingenieur, but nobody wants to employ me :-(
The Wire: "Los Angeles based musician and film maker Hans Fjellestad may have earned more column inches recently for his film work (his 2004 documentary on the synth pioneer Robert Moog has been widely praised) than his composition of late, but let's not allow the volume of an off-Hollywood career drown out the quieter tones of a growing and consistently interesting musical opus. Kobe Live House, is, as its title suggests, a live album, recorded in one unedited take over two sets at the Big Apple jazz club in Kobe, Japan. Equipped with a grand piano, laptop, synth and some custom software, Fjellestad - a pianist who studied composition and improvisation - brings a spontaneity to the album's seven untitled pieces that is as risky as it is laudable."
mp3 downloads:
There are lots of mp3 files available via his homepage. Unfortunately there is no "MP3 Page" but here are the links to all the sub-pages providing mp3 files:IIIIIIIVVVI
bigomagazine.com: "Haino is the name to follow in underground circles in Japan. Notorious for the noise he makes on his guitars, this short 45-min set has him with Coil stripping the blues to the bone. You’ve never heard these blues standards played like this before."
guardian.co.uk: "Universal Music Group, home to U2 and the world's biggest record company, will next month take the first step towards rescuing more than 100,000 tracks from its archives over the next three years"
"We know there aren't millions of people who want to buy it but it all adds up, said Barney Wragg, senior vice president of Universal's eLabs division. " Link
guardian.co.uk "A group of grime's brightest young stars are working to rid the genre of its negative image. In a spectacularly unlikely combination, they have joined forces with the BBC Symphony Orchestra for a night of live 'classical grime' at the Hackney Empire next month." Rad the whole article
Meine absolute Lieblingsserie der späten 90er, Für alle Fälle Fitz (im Orginal: Cracker), ist ab März 
The Wire: "Los Angeles based musician and film maker Hans Fjellestad may have earned more column inches recently for his film work (his 2004 documentary on the synth pioneer Robert Moog has been widely praised) than his composition of late, but let's not allow the volume of an off-Hollywood career drown out the quieter tones of a growing and consistently interesting musical opus. Kobe Live House, is, as its title suggests, a live album, recorded in one unedited take over two sets at the Big Apple jazz club in Kobe, Japan. Equipped with a grand piano, laptop, synth and some custom software, Fjellestad - a pianist who studied composition and improvisation - brings a spontaneity to the album's seven untitled pieces that is as risky as it is laudable." 