The City & the City by China Miéville


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another fine tale by the master of urban fiction. I’m a huge fan of Miéville’s more fantasy type stories, but his boundless imagination still holds up in this modern-day/real world setting. Any of his books would make for a great movie, as his writing is so visual, but in this case, I’d especially love to see how a director of cinematography would handle the two cities in which this book takes place.

I am absolutely loving this live set by Ashland, OR based Kalpataru Tree. An hour and a half of dank, lush psydub, with strong resemblances to Phutureprimitve and hints of Shpongle, Ott and Kuba. That’s four home runs in my book… no wonder I like this so much! I have got to get this man up for a Chillography set. That would be absolutely divine.

» Listen here

From Fluid Motion:

“Recorded live @ Priceless, Belden Town, CA. Priceless is an annual event put together by the False Profit crew out of the Bay Area. Held on the banks of a beautiful river, Priceless is a camp out filled with beats, breaks, swimming, beaching and art. This set was recorded Midnight – 1:30am, Saturday, September 27th. This set was followed by Androcell, making a night of Deep, Dubby, Dreamy music in the Chill Dome.

85 Percent of the music in this mix is material yet to be released. Some of it could be released as “Kembwe” a side project with Vocalist Wahkeena Sitka Tidepool Ripple www.myspace.com/kembwe. Other Tracks should appear on a new album which I’m thinking should be released sometime in 2009, with the tenative name of “Preverberations from the Infinite Future”. Some tracks are on myspace, www.myspace.com/kalpatarutree. I’m still looking for the right label to release my stuff, so if you’re a label person and you like my sound – please contact me!

Here’s an excellent post from DJ Basilisk of Ektoplazm about the emerging new techno/trance blend that will soon be all the rage (once the dubstep craze mellows out a bit, of course). I’ve been thinking of it more as Progressive Techno, rather than a psytrance/techno blend, but it’s all the same in the end. Basilisk’s post lists the major players in the genre as well as the labels that are releasing the majority of it. This is truly a great resource for DJs looking for that something special for their next set and listeners looking for that killer new sound to get them through the day.

http://www.ektoplazm.com/journal/exploring-the-borderlands-of-techno-and-psytrance/

I’ve started a Twitter account. Not sure how or how much I’ll use it, but I thought I’d give it a try.

Stop what you are doing. Right now. You have got to hear Gel-Sol’s high-larious sample orgy, “Adventures Beyond the Plunderworld”. Seven years of sample collection have culminated in this potty humor romp done right, in proper Gel-Sol fashion.

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If you like what you hear, click through to his site to download the file and give him the props he deserves.

Midtempo maestro, Phidelity, has released another fine collection of psychotropic beats for your midtempo lifestyle, via his Bandcamp page, and this time it’s free! Check it out and download it with the player below.

I’ve blogged about Osmos before, and I’m happy to see that it has finally been released, though us Mac users will have to wait a wee bit longer.

From the Microscopics blog:

Osmos Released: Free Copies to Give Away

Osmos, the ambient game with the ambient soundtrack, has been released and we have three free copies to give away. Just add a comment to this post below, and we’ll use our atmospheric-noise derived, random number generator to draw three winners on Monday 24th Aug. Easy.

Note that actual gameplay is smoother than the video.

The full game has 47 levels and features music from Gas, High Skies, Biosphere, Julien Neto, Loscil and others, and is DRM free.

$10 from Hemisphere Games direct
$10 from Steam
$10 from Direct2Disc, plus gift Osmos to a friend for $1

A demo is also available if you’d like to try first.

WinXP/ Vista/ Bootcamp currently, with Mac and Linux versions to follow.
Mac and Linux versions will be free updates if bought direct from Hemisphere

REVIEWS
“beyond doubt, a work of genius… a relaxing, meditative experience, about going with the flow… very ethereal feel to the design… It all adds up to something otherworldly and just… incredible.” read more at GameAndPlayer.net

“wonderful gameplay… beautifully polished and tantalisingly atmospheric… Osmos mixes puzzle, action and strategy remarkably and all the while does it with great finesse and style.” read more at Indiegames.com

Good news from the HOTwired crew:

The stars and moon have aligned, Future Nurses and Infinite Connections have joined forces once again to present a truly amazing chance to see Yuli Fershtat (Perfect Stranger — B.L.T.) perform his magic here in the States for the first time. Yuli’s music has been a personal favorite of ours for years and his recent embrace and incorporation of the more powerful aspects of techno into his already complex and dynamic sound has only increased our excitement and respect for his craft. Used to blowing up main stages in massive venues and outdoor events all over the world, Perfect Stranger will come half way around the world to join us here at HOTwired for an up-close and personal three hour set of some of the very best dance music being produced anywhere in the world. You simply can not miss this..

http://www.myspace.com/perfectblt

“Perfect Stranger is Yuli Fershtat, born 1970 also well known under the guise of BLT. He is a musician and a graduate in Acupuncture and Herbal Therapy.

The project “Perfect Stranger” presents a progressive dance music approach, with a comfortable pace, keeping it highly psychedelic, techy, atmospheric and challenging. Perfect Stranger’s fat and deep sound is designed to fit outside venues as much as to kick ass in a club surroundings. Yuli’s Live sets as his DJ sets are of a very high hypnotic value, and if your caught @ the beginning, there is a big chance you won’t leave the dance floor till it has finished…”

Also Featuring Future Nurses in a 2×4 performance (Osiris Indriya vs. Amanita) and a whole host of HOTwired shenanigans and circus performance to be announced soon!

Location:
noc•)} noc•)}
1516 2nd Ave.
City/Town:
Seattle, WA

STILL ONLY $10 all night.

I’m really looking forward to this. Noc Noc is a great venue for a show like this.

I just stumbled across an interesting digital download music store with serious deals on music, Amie Street. What makes it interesting is their business model:

The only store with dynamically-priced MP3 downloads.

On Amie Street, the community determines the price of music. Every song starts cheap (or even free!) and increases in price up to 98 cents as more and more people purchase it.

This ensures that you get music at a sensible price. If you find cheap songs or albums, that means they’re new to the site and/or undiscovered; conversely, when you pay top price for an album, you know that a lot of people think it’s really good.

I picked up the classic ambient album, Gas 0095, originally released on EM:T Records in the mid-90′s, then remastered and re-released by Microscopics in 2007. I paid $2.85 and the files are DRM-free, 320kbps MP3s. Not too shabby.

 
Amie Street seems to have a decent catalog of music, including both Ambient and Psytrance, the two genres I tend to buy most digitally, so I will definitely be back to browse again for sweet deals on older albums I may have missed. Check ‘em out, they don’t have everything, but they’ll probably have something you’re into, and you might just save a buck or two or three buying from them versus iTunes, or whoever your preferred digital shop may be.

Here’s a loungey house track for your afternoons of sipping bubbly beverages from the deck of your yacht, featuring the acoustic guitar stylings of James Whetzel. This is not the final version of the tune, but I’ve never been able to open the working files properly after upgrading to a new computer a year or so ago. So, until I can resurrect it in some workable form, I thought I’d share this early render with you all.