Your Daily Dose mkII

... a thousand words AND pictures. Great site, great pics (click on it)!
(...since the page updates constantly - here's the above pic.)

Thanks!

Nice month for the BPU, don't you think? Oh, and while I'm at it - thanks for the collective silence! See you around...

Alex Sux. Really!

Marshall McLuhan.

"Instead of tending towards a vast Alexandrian library the world has become a computer, an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of science fiction. And as our senses have gone outside us, Big Brother goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence. [...] Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time. [...] In our long striving to recover for the Western world a unity of sensibility and of thought and feeling we have no more been prepared to accept the tribal consequences of such unity than we were ready for the fragmentation of the human psyche by print culture."
Note McLuhan's stress on the importance of awareness of a medium's cognitive effects. He argues that, if we are not vigilant to the effects of media's impact, the global village has the potential to become a place where totalitarianism and terror rule.
Key to McLuhan's argument is the idea that technology has no per se moral bent - it is a tool that profoundly shapes an individual's and, by extension, a society's self-conception and realization:
"Is it not obvious that there are always enough moral problems without also taking a moral stand on technological grounds? [...] Print is the extreme phase of alphabet culture that detribalizes or decollectivizes man in the first instance. Print raises the visual features of alphabet to highest intensity of definition. Thus print carries the individuating power of the phonetic alphabet much further than manuscript culture could ever do. Print is the technology of individualism. If men decided to modify this visual technology by an electric technology, individualism would also be modified. To raise a moral complaint about this is like cussing a buzz-saw for lopping off fingers. "But," someone says, "we didn't know it would happen." Yet even witlessness is not a moral issue. It is a problem, but not a moral problem; and it would be nice to clear away some of the moral fogs that surround our technologies. It would be good for morality."

--- Marshall McLuhan, early sixties.

Relativity.

M. C. Escher

Another Disc In Different Drawer (Jaga Jazzist).

While I'm at it - leaving UMG behind, that is - why not support the old Ninja Tune? They are distributers of Jaga Jazzist's fine platters (outside Norway), and it's been a long time since I heard such excellent contemporary material from the funny smelling Jazz drawer. I hate to use the word eclectic in this context (actually I hate to use it in any context), however their output is very, er... versatile? Forget the labeling, check it out yourself. Classy stuff! (btw - NT also offer NetVideos, so if you have some time to kill or simply are interested in some off the beaten track stuff... there you go).
[edit: if you care for effectivity, buy 'The Stix' right away. This record keeps me shaking my head in disbelief - it is that good! Wiki says they're influenced by Talk Talk, Soft Machine, Eric Satié, John Coltrane, Don Cherry, Aphex Twin, Stereolab, Squarepusher, Isotope 217 and Tortoise. I hear a good deal of old King Crimson... however, I don't think comparisons do them much justice - they're simply unique in a strange familiar way. That's more like it.]

Big Night Music (Revisited)

Howdy folks! Don't know how many of you remember my post about Shriekback, but that's labeled never mind anyway. As I'm quite flabbergasted about Doug Morris, Universal Music Group chairman / CEO, calling iPod owners thieves, I decided to not comment on such dumbass statements (those interested find the story here and here). Instead, I encourage you to buy more indy music (one out of three CDs sold in the US is produced by Universal, a company that appreciatively insults its customers. Oops - sorry). A good example of how it could (should) be done can be found here: nicely set up website with integrated player to browse the band's whole catalogue (including the new album Cormorant). Worth a visit!

Not Even Skin Deep.

Well, if you have a spare minute - click the picture to see how that can be the same person. Really - no wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.

... To Swing A Cat.

Howdy! You think life ain't funny? Reconsider - click the pic and prepare to laugh. At least if you have a sick humor, like I do. Har har, harry-dee-har.

Horrified B-Movie Victims.

I Want One Of Those - that's the name of an online shop that sells, er... stuff. It caught my attention selling Nothing, but this (I think) tops it by quite a bit: horrified B-movie victims. They say those "can be placed in the terrifying spot of your choice, such as by the photocopier, by a killer sandwich etc." - all that for just about 27 US$ (approx. 22€). Hm... is that a sign of the aposynapse? Do we get what we absurd?

Sound Mirrors.

Dig this - almost at the other end, I stumbled across one of the finest releases of 2006, music wise. And it was an early release... clearly missed it. Call me Miss Bunka, if you like :o)) However, I'm talking about Coldcut's Sound Mirrors, a 12 track CD / double vinyl on Ninja Tunes. They write "Let’s just say it right at the start. In Sound Mirrors Coldcut have made the best album of their long and illustrious career. It’s not something you can state lightly, but there you are. Their production has never sounded better, their ideas have never been more various or interesting, they’ve never had such a great cast of guests and then integrated them into their sound so well. Yes, it’s a record that is deeper, funkier, cleverer, more engaged and more engaging than anything they’ve done before. And, it follows from that, it’s deeper, funkier and cleverer than just about anything else around right now." That, my fellow reader, is absolutely correct (here's the record's press release page). Not just because of the brilliant cover version of Joe South's 'Walk A Mile In My Shoes' which features Robert Owens (!!). Meet Roots Manuva, Annette Peacock (yes!), Saul Williams, Fog and many others - you'll find no filler material: 56 mins of pure quality! When was the last time you witnessed me raving like this?