Month: January 2004

Attention Brewers and Distillers!!!

A fan writes...

I am greatly flattered by the above letter which arrived today from Keith of Electron with two CDs and three mini-CDs enclosed, two of his work under the name The Stereo Effect Project and three from his pal in Germany going by Heptane Sun Quad.

I am enjoying this electronica as it reminds me of incidental music from space shows of my childhood, both cartoons and Apollo news coverage, as well as, more generally the Fripp and Eno stuff I got into from King Crimson, Fripp’s Exposure and loop albums to Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports which I first heard at Dave Swick‘s apartment in the winter of ’79-’80 in Halifax when I was in grade 11 visiting with his brother, Rob. Soon there after, new wave like Gary Numan’s cars incorporated the synths into a pop music reaction to punk which itself was reacted to mid-80’s by the Smiths and others.

Biometric Day

Yesterday was very biometric:

  • The date for my seminar with the Surveillance Project at Queens was reset for later this month. I am going to talk about my thesis on the constitutionality of automated biometric surveillance and the recent cases on the liberty right in section 7 of The Charter of Rights and Freedoms;
  • The US confirmed that we need to get the new biometric passorts before October. I, too have no problem with this as it is not my country.
  • On West Wing the nutty DARPA (not ARPA) character in the Hawaiian shirt admitted to spokesperson lady that they were doing biometric studies within government on the biometrics of citizens. [It was very well described in the script.]   And she was shocked at the imposition on the US Bill of Rights.

Neato. Gaff and gaaf. Spelling has yet to settle on that one.

I am Robot and Proud

A few weeks ago, I bought a CD by I am Robot and Proud (aka Shaw-Han Liem of Toronto) called “You Make Me this Happy” from Electron, discussed here, run by helpful Keith. I appears I am Robot and Proud has other newish CDs out called The Catch and Grace Days. I just listened to “Saturday Afternoon Plans” [recordco mp3 link here] from The Catch and I liked it very much. All good to listen to with Oswald.

Oswald

Children’s TV is a wasteland. Smarmy Barney is banned from our house. Caillou is nothing but an example of the whinging bad child. Clifford is a big red moralizing freak surrounded by little pink moralizing freaks banished to the Island of the impossible economy. Hidden within the chaff is a gem – Oswald the Octopus. A happy surrealist’s dream, it is a bright cartoon about symbolistic New Yorkers. Henry the Penguin who is nervous about doing anything much. Weiner who is, in fact, a hot dog. Best of all, like Messrs Rogers and Dress-Up, is the music. Light hopeful themes in the style of a sloppy burlesque orchestra. Be glad. There is a CD. Don’t trust me – read this review. Tony Orlando singing the Sammy Starfish tune in the style of Tony Bennett with a nod to Tom Waits is a treat. Put it in random rotation on the CD player with Brian Eno ambient music.