I’ll start with some music: Visionist’s A Call to Arms is the album I’ve been listening to the most for the last couple of weeks. It’s a bit of a departure from his previous work in that there, you know, songs on it, but it’s still hard to classify. Parts of it are almost ambient, …
One of the goals I’ve made for 2021 is to post here at least once a month. One symptom of the vast malaise that was 2020 was having my attention taken hostage by the constant drumbeat of crisis and catastrophe. For me, at least, it was like having an eye glued to a peephole— unable …
In “We Made Plastic. Now We’re Drowning in It”, Laura Parker’s recent cover story for National Geographic, the fundamental point— we make and throw away a lot of plastic, and this very bad— is not surprising; what she (and the photos, by Randy Olson) does most effectively is convey the scale. Because plastic wasn’t invented …
#agir Recommendations for January 5, 2014 I’m trying to start the year off right, by being on schedule. I also thought it would be good to kick things off with some new music: Song: “Never Gonna Change” by Broods This song shares a lot of sonic DNA with Banks’s “Waiting Game,” which was pretty much …
Starting with a bunch of new music this week: Song: Virginal II by Tim Hecker I came to Tim Hecker’s last album, Ravedeath 1972, a bit late, but it became one of my favorite records of 2011. His work mixes noise with more “musical” sounds, sculpting it into a powerful sense of atmosphere. This is …