Series of posts

  • Top 40 Over 40.36: Carl Craig live at The Fruit in Durham

    Preface: I recommend listening to Falling Up by Theo Parrish &b Carl Craig while reading this post. My favorite track from Carl. I love how dry the percussion! This was a set I caught at Slingshot in 2022, an electronic music festival held at a former wholesale fruit warehouse near downtown Durham NC. This repurposed…

  • Top 40 Over 40.35: Sylvie Courvoisier & Wada Leo Smith Live at Long Play Festival in Brooklyn

    Part of the purpose of this post is to let folks know that I have relocated from Durham NC to Brooklyn NY. While the move was a personal one motivated by the desire to remove the “Long Distance” prefix from a relationship I’ve been in for three and a half years, it comes with some…

  • Data.1

    Today I’m starting a new series of short posts on data I pull from things I’m reading, listening to, or watching online about history and politics. Right now I’m listening to the podcast Millenials Are Killing Capitalism where they interview Michael Hardt, who teaches at Duke here in Durham. Hardt has a new book out…

  • What’s Left Out.2: Rania Khalek goes where the New York Times won’t

    Korea has been on my mind recently as I was working on a song based on The Blowback Trilogy by Chalmers Johnson, who I have written about before on this blog. As I reread the trilogy looking for bits to use, I decided to try and use a teachable moment Johnson wrote about. He recounted…

  • Listening to.2: While Whirling by Frantz Loriot

    The viola is a beautiful instrument but not often a surprising one. Not so here. I know very little about this record, but I do know that it explores the viola in ways that are unusual but aesthetically successful and fully developed. It reminds me of textures from electronic music, which it may be influenced…

  • The Core Is Getting Soft.19: Good Kit

    It’s been a few years since I’ve done a post in this series about music production software. I’ve been more interested in learning to use a few pieces of recording hardware I’ve acquired from Overstayer in LA and studying Persian classical music of late. But – there are still some software tools that catch my…

  • What’s Left Out.1: Black Power Media on Paul Robeson

    I’m starting a new series of posts here to express appreciation for and link to pieces published online by some of my favorite sources of news, information and analysis. The title refers to the difference between these sources and what is conventionally understood as “The News,” ie, mainstream outlets like NPR and the New York…

  • Top 40 Over 40.33: Blemish

    I think I’ve found my personal record of the year. It’s Roberta Flack’s First Take. There’s a song on it called I Told Jesus that joins Jesus is Waiting by Al Green as the only songs that give me a feel for what it is about Christianity that moves people. (I was raised in a…

  • Listening to.1: Brandon Lopez

    Today I’m beginning a new series of posts on the spring chickens. If you’ve followed this blog for awhile, you know I’ve done a series of posts called Top 40 Over 40 about musical artists who have done work after the big four oh that to my ears is as good if not better than…

  • Top 40 Over 40.32: Double Sunrise Over Neptune

    There’s an hour left on the first day of 2022 in my time zone. Enough time left to get started on one of my new year’s resolutions: to write shorter posts on this blog, and to write them more often. Here goes. There are very few times these days when I feel like I’m missing…