We'd say we told you <I>Sound Grammar</I> was a winner, but we were really just echoing what Fred Kaplan said. His essay on the record is worth reading again—or for the first time, if you didn't take our word for it the first time around.
Not that I had any idea what Sigur Ros' "Hoppipolla" was about (actually, I never know what any Sigur Ros song is about), but this video wouldn't have even made the top 20 possibilities.
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Four Tet has done something I would have thought impossible: produce an entertaining Morris dance video.
But he's still amazing, as this subdued (for him) performance of "Le Moribond" proves amply. Leave it to Brel to put this much life into a song about dying. Forget "Seasons of the Sun," this was the original and still the greatest.
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"Documentary-maker Tim Samuels has been all over Britain recruiting isolated and lonely old people - those who can't leave their flats or who are stuck in rubbish care homes. The finale of the show is this group of lonely old people coming together to stick it back to the society that's cast them aside - by forming a rock troupe and trying to storm into the pop charts."
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If I were to tell you that four months into 2007, I already had a nomination for the year's best-sounding record, you might think me daring. If I told you that it features bandoneon—a chromatic accordion—and cello, you'd probably think me barking mad.
The website www.appleinsider.com revealed on <A HREF="http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/04/12/apple_inc_scores_trademar… 12</A> that it had discovered filings with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) showing that record label Apple Corps had granted computer manufacturer Apple, Inc. far more than the right to use the word "Apple" in conjunction with music in February's trademark settlement.
Recently, on the <I>Stereophile</I> <A HREF="http://forum.stereophile.com/forum/ubbthreads.php">Web forum</A>, reader Natal commented on Robert J. Reina's review of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/integratedamps/107creek">Creek Audio Destiny</A> integrated amplifier in the January 2007 issue: "Maybe it's just me but I've never found any piece of electronic equipment sexy."
Alicia Zuckerman has a nice coda on Kurt Vonnegut over at the <I>HufPo</I>. She gets the final word on Vonnegut's epitaph because she actually asked him what he wanted it to be.
On my morning stroll through the intertubes, I hit <A HREF="http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/">Freakonomics</A>, as is my wont. Today, Stephen J. Dubner is raving about Jeff Henderson's <I>Cooked</I>. Henderson, the new executive chef at Cafe Bellagio, leaned to cook in prison, where he was incarcerated for dealing crack.