– Genetically modified mosquitoes are being released in Brazil.
– I think I’ve mentioned Jukedeck, who algorithmically generate royalty-free music, before, but they’re worth talking about again.
– Driverless trucks are already in use in the mining industry – these appear to be mostly autonomous, but not totally.
– Block some ads, use Brave.
– Y Combinator, of all people, are looking at doing some basic income experiments.
I went to a hack day, and finished a thing! It is called Socialist Streaming, and it lets you see what would happen if streaming services like Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music taxed rich streamers and gave the money to poor streamers.
There’s a lot of things I could say about this – most of them are dealt with on the site itself. I do need to shoutout Hannah Donovan and my cats at Drip for helping me work all this out. And, of course, this idea is at once ridiculous (no label or service would ever go for it), and also, like all socialist ideas, totally beautiful. I mean, why not?
As you may have seen on the internet, we’re shutting down Drip, as of March 18th.
I’ll write more about things that I did and things that I learned at Drip, but for now I need to thank Sam & Miguel for taking a chance on me, and thank Daniel, Lauren, Hannah, Joe, and Amanda for being great. Much love.
The more things change.
– Audio feature extraction in JavaScript. The JavaScript-only world continues to arrive.
– Iffy branding aside, it looks like Serato Pyro has done a really, really good job of transitions between tracks – I’ve heard fades, echoes, and beatmatching so far, all are which are pretty good.
– I was hepped to the work of Regina Flores recently, which is super great.
New York City remains too too warm.
– A video game character is modelling for Louis Vuitton. Of course.
– Pauline Oliveros has a Second Life Orchestra, also of course.
– Guesstimate: spreadsheets for uncertain things.
– Pi, Pi, Pi.
– Of Oz the Wizard: The Wizard Of Oz in alphabetical order.
Not really – but if you go to the DJ sets page, you’ll see my latest series. It’s been a tough year, with not enough time to really DJ properly, but there’s still some magic in there. It is notable that I’ve crystallized into basically three styles: endless house / techno sets; ice-cold collections of ambient, neo-idm, classical; and smooth, throwback disco.
The first is the logical evolution of what I’ve always played. The latter comes from having access to amazing record stores in New York. The middle one comes from both the amazing surge in this sort of music of late, but also from the affect of living in Brooklyn and looking at the Manhattan skyline as a storm rolls in. New York will eat you – make sure you’re ready for it.
Next year I need to get something like an album done, so there probably won’t be time for much recording – but we’ll see.
– The complete works of Walter Benjamin are available as PDFs. Here’s the big one – thanks to Sam Valenti for the tipoff.
– James Bridle continues to do amazing things. All Roads Lead to _____?
– “Light Pattern is a programming language where one communicates with the computer through photographs instead of text”. I can’t top that – take a look.
– Spotify has a beatmatching Party Mode. Need to check that out and see how they’re doing it, yes indeed.
Happy solstice, team. Oh, let’s go around one more time.
Four Tet x Floating Points @ Sugar Hill Disco
The best reasons to live in the UK came to NYC, played two shows, and I happened to luck into the one at the run-down restaurant / bar / etc in Bed-Stuy. It is hard to find deeper, more knowing DJs out there, these days.
JD Twitch @ Mr. Sunday
No one has a (secretly friendly) DJ sneer quite like Twitch, and nobody warms up the dancefloor like Twitch, and Mr. Sunday’s move to ‘way down south in Sunset Park helped keep the amateurs away from the best Sunday party in New York. Nothing but good times.
Dope Jams Halloween @ Good Room
The dudes are assholes – the dudes have great taste in house music. Simple as that.
Honorable mentions to Rabit & JLin at PS1, bringing the darkside thunder on a sunny Sunday; to Kode 9 at Cielo, and to Lindstrom at Good Room for playing the hits.
Tyler Drift – Style
This (*ahem*) cover of Swift’s cultural carpet bomb devoured me for at least first half of the year.
Psychemagick – This Must Be The Place (Psychemagik Naive Edit)
On the other hand, this is barely a cover, but is one hundred times a delight.
Julia Holter – How Long?
“Bewitching” is a deeply overused word when talking about female singers, but just name me another adjective for this tune. See? You can’t.
Profoundly honorable mentions to Hot Chip’s Re-Harmonize, Julia Easterlin’s cover of Leadbelly’s In The Pines, Four Tet’s gargantuant remix of Eric Prydz – Opus, Cloned by Paula Temple, Twig’s Glass & Patron, Fatima Yamaha – What’s a Girl to Do (yes, the reissue, like everyone else. so?), MFSB’s going deep on Touch Me In The Morning, and Deep Dish – Stranded (BT vs. DD Mix) (Danny Tenaglia’s Groovejet Dubby Edit), which I had on a mislabled MP3 in 1999, and found during a dig at Academy. What a year.
