RIP George Carlin

Featured Selections

Azure Ray, Azure Ray (11)
-, Burn and Shiver (12)

It’s hard to pinpoint just what stands out about the darkly evocative work of Orenda Fink and Maria Taylor, especially without reference to their following album Hold On Love and its standout “The Devil’s Feet.” The whispery confessionals over quiet strings, strumming, or mysterious clanking make for intimate fare perfect for late night contemplations.

Dead Can Dance, Aion - Remastered (12)
-, Dead Can Dance - Remastered (14)
-, Into the Labyrinth - Remastered (11)
-, The Serpent’s Egg - Remastered (10)
-, Spiritchaser - Remastered (8)
-, Spleen and Ideal - Remastered (9)
-, Toward the Within - Remastered (15)

Almost the entire catalog of Dead Can Dance, evidently remastered - from their goth-rock leanings on their eponymous debut through their trademark medieval ecstacy to the worldbeat of Spiritchaser. Only 1987’s Within the Realm of a Dying Sun is (curiously) absent, which sadly means no “Cantara.”

Ladytron, Velocifero (13)

A continuing shift in sound away from their earliest pure synthpop homage, although not too far astray from Witching Hour. But still, “new Ladytron” is enough for me.


Niyaz, Nine Heavens (9+8)

Second full release from Azam Ali’s electronic collaboration, although this time joined with an album of separate acoustic renderings for contrast. The beats are pulled back (or rendered more natural) compared to the debut, and with the acoustic arrangements this runs closer to the ethno-ambient continuum already inhabited by her work with Vas. Gradually they are becoming more like the aggressive-folk sound of Sweden’s Hedningarna and less like a Persian Delerium, which actually adds to their distinctiveness.

Stray Cats, Choo Choo Hot Fish (11)

You may have heard “Elvis on Velvet” when it was in heavy rotation back in the summer of 1994, a bit of a surprise hit given the general absence of rockabilly from the 90s and the struggles of the band to stay together between albums. The rest of the album besides the breakneck “Elvis” is a good mix of old-school Setzer swing plus classic instrumentals like “Sleepwalk” and the Chris Isaak-esque “Jade Idol.”

See Also

Aarktica, Bleeding Light (8)
-, Matchless (8)
-, Pure Tone Audiometry (7)

Adele, 19 (12)

Alpha, Without Some Help (11)

Arcana, Raspail (10)

Bitter:Sweet, Drama (13)

Black Tape for a Blue Girl, Scarecrow (5)

Mari Boine, In the Hand of the Night (12)

Camper Van Beethoven, Popular Songs of Enduring Strength and Beauty (18)

Eliza Carthy, Dreams of Breathing Underwater (11)

Chandeen, Teenage Poetry (11)

Collide, Live at the El Rey (16)

Gigi D’Agostino, The Greatest Hits (10)

Delerium, Chillout Friends (17)

Not a new album but a theme compilation of similar artists, including ambient side-project Synaesthesia.

The Dreaming, Etched in Blood (11)

Featuring Chris Hall (former vocalist of Stabbing Westward) in a rock setting versus the industrial feel of SW. Would have been awesome in 1988.

The Durutti Column, Sunlight to Blue…Blue To Blackness (11)

Hybrid, Gravastar/Celebrity Science (2)
-, Visible Noise / Know Your Enemy (3)

Justice, Cross (12)

Mogwai, Come On Die Young (12)

Monolake, Hongkong Remastered (6)

Mötley Crüe, Saints of Los Angeles (13)

Sarah Nixey, Le Temps De L’Amour (2)
-, When I’m Here With You - Mixes (4)

Nomo, Ghost Rock (9)

Gary Numan, Exile (9)
-, Pure (11)

Michael Nyman, 8 Lust Songs (8)

The Orb, The Dream (15)

Piano Magic, Disaffected (11)

Maddy Prior & June Tabor, Silly Sisters (13)

Scanner, Sound Polaroids (6)

Looks to be the same as the originally-posted Scanner+Tonne version.

A Shoreline Dream, NeverChanger (3)

Featuring Ulrich Schnauss.

Si-Se, More Shine (12)

Spanish-flavored downtempo.

Synaesthesia, Embody (7)

Maria Taylor with Andy LeMaster, Savannah Drive (7)

Tearwave, Tearwave (10)

Sally Timms & John Langford, Songs of False Hope and High Values (12)

Trance to the Sun, Spiders, Aether & Rain (13)

Two Lone Swordsmen, Emissions Archive Vol 1 (10)

Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend (11)

Vidna Obmana, Passage in Beauty (8)
-, Shadowing in Sorrow (7)
-, Ending Mirage (6)

Together these make up the out-of-print Trilogy collection of early albums converted from LP.

Voltaire, Ooky Spooky (11)

The Weepies, Happiness (8)

Wolfsheim, Pop Killer (12)

soundtrack, The Running Man (Harold Faltermeyer) (17)

studio cast, Songs From: Phantom of the Opera (16)

Christine suffers from a touch of lisp, the Phantom hams a bit, and the orchestra remains overly muted, but generally competent. Last 4 tracks are from “Sunset Boulevard.”

Favorite Artist Name/Reference

Marty McFly, This Is Heavy (4)

Free

The Postmarks, By the Numbers - 6 (1)

various, 2008 Pitchfork Music Festival Sampler (13+12)

various, Chemikal Underground Sampler (6)

various, Prestige/Rudy Van Gelder Sampler (5)

various, White Whale Records Sampler V.1 (7)

Spoken Word

Allen Ginsberg, Howl (6)

Bertrand Russell, 20th Century Philosopher (25)

Orson Welles, War of the Worlds (1)
-, Best Of (10)

Tribute Corner

Pickin On’, The Bluegrass Tribute to Guns ‘N Roses (10)

Some of these (”Welcome to the Jungle”) would fit in quite comfortably on Dr. Demento, while the ballads stand up pretty well and the arrangement for “Paradise City” is surprisingly apt.

-, The Bluegrass Tribute to Classic Rock Volume 2 (15)

Creedence Clearwater Revival makes a pretty smooth conversion, while “Don’t Fear the Reaper” is a natural fit.

Value

Darla Bliss Out Series: “The Darla Records Bliss Out series was created as a venue for uniquely qualified artists who work with more ambience, melody & mood than most to have the opportunity to step off their career path and showcase their epic musical Om.”

1. Flowchart, Tenjira (4)
2. Windy & Carl, Antarctica (3)
3. Orange Cake Mix, Silver Lining Underwater (13)
4. AMP, Perception (no longer available)
5. Fuxa, Venoy (2)
6. Tomorrowland, Stereoscopic Soundwaves (6)
7. Mirza, Anadromous (4)
8. Transient Waves, Wading and Waiting (3)
9. American Analog Set, Late One Sunday (2)
10. Junior Varsity KM, Taking Care of You (not currently available)
11. Sweet Trip, Halica (7)
12. Bright, Blue Christian (7)
13. Piano Magic, A Trick of the Sea (2)
14. The Cat’s Miaow, The Long Goodbye (not currently available)
15. Lilys, Zero Population Growth (6)
16. Technicolor, Normal Control Range (9)
17. Mus, Aida (2)
18. Aarktica, Or You Could Just Go Through Your Whole Life and Be Happy Anyway (7)
19. Japancakes, Belmondo (6)
20. Manual, The North Shore (7)

Scanner, Audiosphere (2)
-, The Crystalline Address (2)

Sunn O))), White 2 (3)

But under the face-melting surface, World Tour’s greater influence may ultimately be in the steady march towards unifying simulation (pretend you’re a rock star!) and emulation (make actual music!). In the past we’ve come to this junction from the other direction, using game platforms as engines for music production: MTV Music Generator series on the Playstation 2 (used by artists like Boomkat to sketch out songs), Nanaloop on the Game Boy (part of the 8-bit music movement), and upcoming touch-studio offerings for the iPhone like MooCowMusic’s Band and Intua’s BeatMaker. Meanwhile, rhythm games by the likes of Harmonix (Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero) and Konami’s Bemani division (Beatmania, Dance Dance Revolution, GuitarFreaks) have gradually introduced ever more elaborate interactions between players and underlying musical performances. In FreQuency, for example, a secondary mode allowed players to ‘remix’ songs in freeform fashion after unlocking them through normal play.

Based on this early preview, World Tour is even more ambitious with its Music Creator mode. While normal gameplay will center around the established note-matching mechanism for various instruments, the proposed editor supports multi-track note creation for each of the supported instruments (minus vocals, evidently for legal reasons—cross apply the perversities that abound in most online smack talk and this makes regrettable sense). Premade loops, tempo control, and beat quantizing are provided within a wizard interface to simplify the learning curve. For laying down tracks, the guitar controller provides extensive options: you can program drum machines through the new touch-sensitive fret strip on the guitar controller, trigger samples by fret buttons, change pitch with the strum bar and sample speed through the Star Power tilt control. Need more crunch? Licensed Pod modeling technology from Line 6 lets you can choose your amplifier. Want to generate notes algorithmically? Use the built-in arpeggiator. Once you’ve finished laying down tracks, a separate mix mode is available for looping and editing. Finally, you publish your creation (complete with custom cover art) to an online community store where others can download and play it within the game. User ratings will drive online charts. Voilá, you’re a published musician.

One of the most common comment-thread trolls since the release of Guitar Hero has been purist backlash: "why not play a real guitar?" Up to now, the typical answer is along the lines of, "because this [playing a simplified game]  is more fun than learning the real thing." And certainly, to remain successful, World Tour will need to retain that sense of rock star power at mere mortal effort levels. But the potential for the Creator mode, and whatever follows it, to create a new level of musical expression suggests an exciting future of entertainment all its own.

The Sopranos: Definitive Explanation of “The END”

Featured Selections

Aphex Twin, Classics (13)

Early works by Richard D. James are more emblematic of his AFX moniker than later squelch-hop compositions as the Twin. While we wait on Warp to release those later works, this is a welcome addition to the Selected Ambient Works collection already available. Particular standouts include the tranceful “Digeridoo” and upbeat “Polynomial-C.”


Firewater, The Golden Hour (13)

We’ve seen a renaissance of superlative Eastern European-influenced indie lately (Beirut, Gogol Bordello, Yeasayers), which makes the return of Firewater less urgent but still very welcome. Five years after their last proper album (2004’s Songs We Should Have Written was built from covers), former Cop Shoot Cop frontman Tod A. introduces further-East influences from his nomadic travels through India, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia as well as some pointed political invective more reminescent of his “angry period” with CSC.

Radiohead, In Rainbows (10)

Much has been made of the manner of the online distribution for In Rainbows, less about the album itself except that it represents a more accessible palette after some of the freakout experiments of Amnesiac and Kid A. Along with the much-remarked-upon online giveaway, what’s also notable about the album is the sheer ubiquity of its distribution. Contrary to the normal split between the Big Four labels appearing only on services like iTunes and Amazon while the ‘independents’ find outlets at eMusic and others. Yet Radiohead has somehow maneuvered no less than Warner to allow their cross-sales of this release across all of the major online services as well as normal distribution. Hopefully this is a sign of the narrowing of the divide, but in the interim, take full advantage now if you missed the earlier “as cheap as free” offer. (Note that this is the 256-bit CBR version of the album, among the highest available through eMusic I’ve seen.)

Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band, Born Into Trouble As The Sparks Fly Upwards (8)
-, Horses in the Sky (6)

Completing the catalogue for the Godspeed! You Black Emperor offshoot The Silver Mt. Zion [insert twee suffix] ‘chamber rock’ collective. Born Into Trouble… is the gem here, with an unhurried majesty that slowly breaks into sparkling vistas.

Hector Zazou, Corps Electriques (9)

Master collaborator Zazou joins with Katie Jane Garside (Daisy Chainsaw, Queen Adreena), Bill Rieflin (Ministry, R.E.M.), Lone Kent, and Nils Petter Molvaer for a more band-like effort compared with earlier compilations of guest vocalists.

See Also

16 Horsepower, Live March 2001 (10+8)

Apocalyptica, Cult (14)

Natacha Atlas, Ana Hina (12)

Attrition, All Mine Enemys Whispers (7)

Banarama, Careless Whispers (2)

Barenaked Ladies, Snacktime (24)

The Bats (Jon Brion), How Pop Can You Get? (13)

Black Tape for a Blue Girl, the best of… (13)

Brother Sun Sister Moon, Luminous (14)

Gavin Bryars, A Man in a Room Gambling (10)
-, Biped - Music for the Dance by Merce Cunningham (6)
-, Lockerbie Memorial Concert (14)
-, A Listening Room (9)
-, On Photography (10)

Tony Carey, A Lonely Life (18)

Solo efforts by frontman for Planet P Project.

Cherry Poppin Daddies, Susquehanna (13)

Cylon, Battlestar EP (2)

The Egg, Forwards (11)

Eggs, Eggs Teenbeat 96 Exploder (24)

Final Fantasy, He Poos Clouds (10)
-, Has A Good Home (15)

Firefox Ak, If I Were A Melody (12)

Paul Giovanni, The Wicker Man (27)

Eerie soundtrack to the original film.

I Am Kloot, Play Moolah Rouge (10)

Jesca Hoop, Kismet (11)

Jive Bunny & The Mastermixers, Ultimate Jive Bunny Party (9+5)

Straightforward megamixes, notably Swing the Mood.

Spike Jones, Cocktails for Two (24)

Junkie XL, Cities in Dust (6)

Remade from the Siouxsie & The Banshees hit.

Matmos, Supreme Balloon (8)

Melodyguild, Aitu (4)

Modey Lemon, Season of Sweet (9)

Mogwai, Young Team - Remastered (10+9)

Morcheeba, Gained the World (4)

Nightwish, Angels Fall (16)
-, Oceanborn (15)
-, Wishmaster (14)

Three slices of pop-friendly goth metal.

Michael Nyman, And Do They Do - Zoo Caprices (13)

P.D.Q. Bach, The Jekyll and Hyde Tour (29)

Piano Magic, Disaffected (10)

Poi Dog Pondering, In Seed Comes Fruit (12)

Scanner, Lauwarm Instrumentals (6)
-, Mass Observation (4)
-, Messe (13)
-, Nemesis (9)
-, The Radiance of a Thousand Suns (7)
-, Sound For Spaces (9)
-, Sulphur (6)
-, Stopstarting (9)
-, Warhol’s Surface (9)

Steve Roach & Jeffrey Fayman, Trance Spirits (7)

Suicidal Tendencies, Freedumb (14)

Sunscreem, Broken English (8)
-, When (9)

Thee Silver Mount Reveries, Pretty Little Lightning Paw (4)

TransGlobal Underground, Moonshout (14)

Tsunami, Deep End (13)

Steve Vai, The Elusive Light & Sound (40)

Including segments from Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (9-16?).

Vampire Weekend, Oxford Comma (2)

Voyager One, Afterhours in the Afterlife (10)

Windsor for the Derby, How We Lost (10)

various, Tokyopop Presents J-Rock Vol 1 (12)

soundtrack, Grand Theft Auto IV: Vladivostok FM (16)

Free

The Impossible Shapes, 9 (8)

The Postmarks, By the Numbers - 5 (1)

Tribute Corner

Abba Alstars, 20 Golden Hits (20)

The London Theatre Orchestra and Cast
The New Musical Cast

New renditions of numerous classic and modern musicals.

Piano Tribute Conservatory, Piano Tribute to Alvin and the Chipmunks (4)

Just in case you wanted to answer the question, “what would schtick musical comedy sound like without the schtick?” by remaking instrumental versions of songs based on chipmunk-speed vocals.

Pickin’ On, Bluegrass Tribute to Classic Rock (14)
-, Pickin’ on Classic Rock (14)

Pink Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd Instrumental Renditions (21)

Tribute to the Sims, Songs in the Key of Simlish (9)

Value

Steve Roach, A Deeper Silence (1)

Exploring the neurochemistry of fairness

First, consider the notion of innate fairness. People who participated in a experimental transaction called the Ultimatum Game (a simple 2-party example of game theory) tended to reject offers they perceive as ‘unfair’ even though doing so results in them receiving less. This reinforces a recurring theme in current economic theory that participants often act fundamentally irrationally (e.g. Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational and other efforts in behavioral economics). One hypothesis drawn from the Ultimatum Game is an underlying evolutionary selection of a shared ‘golden rule,’ given the comparative advantage of group cohesion this might reinforce.

Second, the implications of the neurochemistry itself are more sobering. Even basic negotiation is often based on latent manipulation through psychological leverage; more advanced techniques sometimes exploit physiological factors such as room temperature or sleep deprivation to affect pliability. The casino industry has invested heavily in psychological profiling both in developing comp systems and interior design to lower inhibitions and increase the desire to stay on the gaming floor (high ceilings, rounded walls, indirect lighting, running water)—some examples are given in a short featurette on the DVD for Ocean’s Thirteen. Pushed a little further, you can see some of the same techniques deployed in the fields of law enforcement and the military as interrogation aids, as well as within specialized training such as SERE. In each case, the environment and physical comfort of the targeted participant are manipulated to lower their resistance, gain their trust, or ultimately obtain some concession.

Moving from science to science fiction, you can find ready parallels to controlling serotonin and oxytocin with the Pax used to curb aggression on the Outer Rim planet Miranda in Joss Whedon’s Serenity; the drug Prozium in Equilibrium and Soma in Brave New World; and more obscurely, the hormones produced by alien Powers that activate the ‘god module’ (aka neurotheology) in humans from Walter Jon Williams’ Voice of the Whirlwind. In each, the population is effectively controlled through their own neurochemistry by instilling languor, reducing aggression, suppressing emotion, etc.

Polaroid PoGo

The PoGo - short for "Polaroid On the Go," a seemingly unnecessary repetition of the cultural meaning of "Polaroid" - is about the size of a compact digital camera and can accept digital prints from camera phones via BlueTooth or from PictBridge-capable cameras by cable. Rather than normal dye- or ink-based photo printers that rely on quickly-exhausted cartridges, the Zink process embeds all of the color technology within the special photo paper itself. Embedded dye crystals are manufactured molecules that generate the necessary additive hues to create color prints under heat. The paper currently produces "2×3 in. borderless sticky-back prints" in about a minute.

Despite the claim of "fade-resistant, long-lasting images," it will be worth testing just how long these instant photos hold up, like their spiritual predecessors and other home printers. The entire class of photos that have been produced by digital cameras and never committed to professional printing raise rather wide-ranging questions about future provenance. What will we hand down to our grandchildren in place of unfinished photo albums and shoeboxes of snapshots? Will we still be able to read even now-ubiquitous formats like JPEG and the various RAW flavors in 50 or 100 years, like we can with earlier generations of photography going back to examples like daguerrotypes? As with the physical book, the printed photograph requires no special reader, no software, no compatibility matrix. Until flexible, non-volatile media like E-Ink or Zink develop equivalent endurance, we risk losing entire generations of family history to the junkbin of obsolete media.

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus

His first contention is that television sitcoms served the same sociological midwifery role during the American post-WWII ‘leisure age’ as gin during the Industrial Revolution. First it might help to understand just what gin had to do with anything. The history of gin is actually quite fascinating: first concocted as a medical elixir for kidney disorders by Dr. Franciscus Sylvius in 17th century Holland, gin is distilled from grain mash and flavored with juniper berries—hence its name, derived from the French for juniper, “genièvre.” It was adopted by the British military for its fortifying effects, earning it the nickname “Dutch courage.” The low cost of production compared to whisky and brandy—gin used low-grade grain unsuitable for other purposes—helped secure it as a favorite among the British lower classes. Further encouragement came due to punitive taxes placed on French wines and liquors under William of Orange, making the import of Dutch gin even more attractive. By 1700, 5 million gallons were consumed, almost a gallon per person; by 1710, the rate had grown to 19 million gallons.

Eventually the resulting widespread drunkenness led to attempts to reduce its influence. The Gin Act of 1729 increased the retail tax. The Gin Act of 1736 increased taxes on both retail licenses and sales, creating a boisterous black market and eventually triggering riots in London in 1743. By this time, despite the prohibition, consumption was about 2 gallons per person. The Gin Act of 1751 attempted to recreate a ‘respectable’ market by lowering license fees but tying licenses to rented properties. By 1757, the initial ‘gin craze’ had passed and farmers were less incented due to increased grain costs. The next wave came with the 1820’s development of a malaria treatment derived from quinidine dissolved in cheap alcohol, created the gin & tonic. With the British empire facing widespread risk from malaria in its tropical holdings, the gin & tonic became again widely adopted, prompting later admiration from no less than Winston Churchill:

“The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives, and minds, than all the doctors in the empire.”

Its role in the Industrial Revolution finally appeared in the 1950s in Northern Britain, where coal miners and textile workers relied on the “bistouille” (gin in coffee) for breakfast and refreshments of gin and beer at “estaminets” to help them cope with the hard labor. As the economic benefits of the Revolution expanded the middle class, and licensing demands were introduced by the various Gin Acts, the working-class takeaway ‘dram shop’ gave way to the ‘gin palace,’ a more upscale establishment that presaged the later development of Victorian pubs. By the 1920s, gin made its way into the American bathtub via Prohibition and even transformed itself into the sophisticate’s choice with a splash of vermouth and olive as the gin martini. Curiously, gin production peaked in the 1930s, just as WWII loomed and another social pacifier began its ascent.

The effects of WWII on the American economy were profound: the G.I. Bill greatly expanded the educated workforce; a surging production economy had been established; and global competition was disadvantaged by massive rebuilding efforts necessary in Europe, Russia and parts of Asia. Quality of life was also improving due to increased life expectancy during the 20th century, increasing from 47 years in 1900 to 77 years in 1998; and better working conditions, such as the establishment of a nationwide 8-hour working day with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The collective effect was to increase the amount of free time available to American workers above even the gains achieved during the Industrial Revolution following improvements in technology and the formation of labor unions (recall that prior to the Industrial Revolution was the agrarian age, characterized by backbreaking sunup-to-sundown work cycles). Shirky suggests that television sitcoms helped consume this new surplus of time in passive leisure; by example, he notes that:

“Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.”

Of course it has been advanced that sitcoms provided much more than a time sink, but also served to manufacture a common experience among a nation beset by racial, political, and social ferment. As idealistic and unrepresentative as they were of the travails of their time, shows like Leave It To Beaver through to The Cosby Show arguably acted as a kind of collective signpost of what the American Dream might represent—a programmatic “city on a hill” as evoked by demagogues ranging from John Winthrop to Ronald Reagan.

At last we come to the more interesting turn in Shirky’s speech. Television viewing is on the wane, following a series of setbacks from the decoupling agents of DVR and online distribution to the most recent Writers’ Guild strike. Similar complaints are levied by established interests in the music and movie industries, who see declining CD sales and theater viewings. What are we doing with our time, then? Shirky gives the example of the debate on Wikipedia over the delisting of Pluto as a planet, which absorbed tremendous attention and time from a sizable group of contributors. The response from a television interviewer is, “where do people find the time?” And that myopia speaks volumes of how slow the broadcast media institutions have come to the realization that their grip on public attention has slackened. (A counterpoint might be to point to the recent network upfronts, which suggest a much more defensive stance with minimal investment into new shows other than the ‘unscripted’ variety.)

The answer Shirky gives is staggering in its calculation, even undocumented:

“If you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project–every page, every edit, every talk page, every line of code, in every language that Wikipedia exists in–that represents something like the cumulation of 100 million hours of human thought…And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that’s 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television. Or put still another way, in the U.S., we spend 100 million hours every weekend, just watching the ads.”

Put together, that means the American viewing public spends the equivalent of building Wikipedia watching ads each weekend. The obvious follow-up questions regarding the potential in reapplying that ‘cognitive surplus’ explain the relevance of this whole thought process to Web 2.0, which defines itself as the socially-connected response to a static, broadcast-only Web 1.0. The theme of interactivity as central also brings in the continued propagation of gaming further into mainstream, borne on the success of Nintendo’s focus on casual gamers with the DS and Wii. Shirky closes with an anecdote about a friend’s four-year-old daughter who stopped watching a movie and went behind the TV “looking for the mouse.” As the latest generation grows up in an always-connected world, with computers and consoles increasingly taking the place of television, with passive media existing as only an option rather than the default, what mindset will they bring to the world as they enter the workforce?

Addendum: If sitcoms are to the Television Age what gin was to the Industrial Age, I would propose that the analogue in the Computer Age is Solitaire. In addition to its ubiquity in customer service departments, at least twice I have found that relatives who have little use for their computers other than occasional email or web browsing make regular use of Solitaire. One was insistent that their new Vista laptop was essentially broken since it came without the game pre-installed (Vista Business Edition excludes the default games, presumably to try and prevent the corporate timesinks that are Solitaire and Minesweeper). Incidentally, as an example of one of those UI quirks that perhaps Mark Hamburg was hired to help address in the Windows user experience, the unintuitive remedy to add Solitaire back into Vista Business was to use “Uninstall a Program.”

[EB: Gin, Industrial Revolution]

I hope you got your Rolling Stones fix last month, since they’ve now been stripped out of the catalog for “events outside of our control” according to eMusic. This reversal is part of a larger issue affecting eMusic’s catalogue, which invisibly loses some portion of its releases even as it publicly reveals all of new additions. Just among the artists I note below, at least one is a repost of an album by Future Sound of London that had previously been offered and then removed at some point, plus all of Ladytron’s albums apart from the new “Ghosts” single have likewise vanished. The unfortunate lesson is that you can’t assume that your “Save for Later” selections will actually still be there when you have the downloads to spare.

Featured Selections

Brian Cachia, Gabriel (23)

A comparatively high-quality if low-budget Australian movie that asks the burning question, “what if Archangels were sent to Purgatory as mortals in order to save souls with guns and kung fu?” The score by Brian Cachia is atmospheric in a Craig Armstrong vein, with piano and choral parts layered over beats and occasional guitar. As typical for a score, many are short mood pieces that don’t have a lot of time to build, but I’d recommend at least trying the Opening Titles, Sin Factory Battle, Angel Eulogy, and Conclusion.

Paul Hartnoll, Ideal Condition (9)

Formerly one half of Orbital, Paul Hartnoll compiles a softer mix of orchestral-influenced electronica with largely female vocals that actually runs closer to Conjure One or even trip-hop than the hardbeat of his former gig. The Cure’s Robert Smith guests on “Please”.


Ministry, Cover Up (14)

Having released the ‘last Ministry album’ with The Last Sucker, this collection of covers is actually billed under Ministry & Co Conspirators so one could imagine the same kind of semantic rebooting when KMFDM became MDFKM. The album is simply Ministry blazing through a series of classic rock staples like Rolling Stones’ “Under My Thumb,” T.Rex’ “Bang a Gong,” Golden Earring’s “Radar Love,” etc. You have your Doors, Black Sabbath, even the unlikely Louis Armstrong with a grating “What A Wonderful World” (in 3 versions, no less), ending with an a capella riff on “Stigmata.” It sounds more or less exactly how you would think Ministry covering these songs would, which will either commit you to an instant download or giving it a wide berth.

Orbital, Blue Album (9)

Another swan song, Blue Album is far from Orbital’s finest work. Some tracks like “Tunnel Vision” are decent enough, but the only real standout is the closing “One Perfect Sunrise” which joins them with the incomparable Lisa Gerrard. Nevertheless, even a middling Orbital record is still worth having.

Martina Topley-Bird, Quixotic (13)

Out from under Tricky’s wing, Martina Topley-Bird released her debut 5 years ago as Quixotic. Bizarrely, for the US release they waited a year, changed the name to Anything, replaced the cover, changed the play order, renamed “Intro” to “Outro” and dropped 3 songs (”Lying”, “I Wanna Be There”, and “Stevie’s (Days of a Gun)” - the only collaboration with Tricky). Previously it’s been an expensive proposition to track down the full original release, which I felt had a better flow. The genre still trends towards trip-hop, but without any the harsh edges that Tricky adopted after Maxinquaye, and with more influences from blues, gospel and downtempo.

Underworld, Oblivion With Bells (11)

Another recent release from an electronic titan that betrays some of their age. Rather than simply continue on the trend set by 2002’s A Hundred Days Off, Oblivion With Bells harkens more back to their earliest efforts with Dubnobasswithmyheadman, which I recall panning quite snidely in a review for a college radio station (it grew on me later). Like Orbital’s Blue Album, it may not stand out as their finest work, but it’s a solid addition to their plutonic catalogue.

See Also

Barry Adamson, Back to the Cat (10)

Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (13)

Apocalyptica, Apocalyptica (11)
-, Amplified (15+11)

Apples in Stereo, Electronic Projects for Musicians (14)

The Autumns, Fake Noise from a Box of Toys (12)

Autumn’s Grey Solace, Ablaze (11)

Björk, Wanderlust (4)
-, Declare Independence (4)
-, Earth Intruders Club Remix (5)
-, Innocence (4)

CJ Bolland, The 4th Sign (9)

Gavin Bryars, Hommages (6)

Cruachan, The Morrigan’s Call (12)
-, Pagan (13)
-, Folk-Lore (10)
-, A Celtic Legacy (14)
-, The Middle Kingdom (11)

Celtic trad. gone metal

Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours (15)

Dirty Three, Whatever You Love You Are (6)

Fischerspooner, The Best Revenge (3)
-, Danse en France (4)

Future Sound of London, Papua New Guinea Translations (8) [repost]

Gabriel & Dresden, Tracking Treasure Down (3)

Kirsty Hawkshaw, Reason to Forgive (2)
-, Outsiders (2)

Hooverphonic, Perfect Dose (1)

I Am Kloot, Play Moolah Rouge (10)

Information Society, Don’t Be Afraid (10)

In Strict Confidence, Where Sun and Moon Unite (10)

Ken Ishii, Jelly Tones (8)

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, Ka’Ano’i (10)

Kristine W., The Boss (12)

Ladytron, Ghosts (4)

Legendary Pink Dots, Stained Glass Soma Fountain (12+10)
-, Poppy Variations (8)
-, Canta Mientras Puedas (13)
-, It’s Raining In Heaven (7)
-, Faces in the Fire (6)

Among frankly way too many more to list, not even counting solo releases under Edward Ka-Spel or just Ka-Spel.

April March and Steve Hanft, Magic Monsters (10)

Holly McNarland, Chin Up Buttercup (12)

Colin Meloy, Sings Live! (17)

Katie Melua, Shy Boy (3)

Moloko, Things to Make and Do (18)

Muslimgauze, Dome of the Rock (7)
-, Sufiq (9)
-, Fakir Sind (10)
-, Hand of Fatima (6)
-, Speaker of Turkish (6)

Nina Nastasia & Jim White, What She Doesn’t Know (2)

Michael Nyman, Mozart 252 (11)

OMD, Architecture and Morality and More Live (13)

Planet P Project, Levittown (13)

Rapoon, Raising Earthly Spirits (7)

Happy Rhodes, Building the Colossus (12)
-, Find Me (11)
-, The Keep (14)

William Shatner, Exodus: An Oratorio in Three Parts (3)

Kirk does opera? Shatner contributes his trademark delivery as narrator, but the oratorio itself is composed by David Itkin and performed by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra.

Vonda Shepard, By 7:30 (13)

Spoon, Don’t You Evah (8)

The Surfaris, Wipe Out (10)

Tying Tiffany, Undercover (13)

Bleep-pop with some of the same effervescent vocals as Freezepop or a PG-rated Peaches, and a bit of the anarchic energy of Atari Teenage Riot. But what exactly does she mean, “I wanna be your MP3″?

soundtrack, Frankenstein the Rock Opera (35)

soundtrack, Guys and Dolls - original studio cast (13+15)

soundtrack, My Fair Lady - original studio cast (18)

soundtrack, West Side Story - original cast recording (12+12)

Favorite Names: Artist Name Pun

The Count of Monte Cristal, EP2 (4)

Favorite Names: Artist Name Referencing Dune

Tleilaxu, Gene Therapy (11)

Favorite Names: Making the Best of a Comics Inheritance

Charles Xavier, The Xman Cometh (10)

Seems his name really is Charles Xavier. Woe betide the poor schlub saddled with Clark Kent, though.

Free

The Postmarks, By the Numbers - 4 (1)

Spoken Word

William S. Burroughs, A Spoken Breakdown (14)

Tribute Corner

DJ Dado, DJ Dado (16)

With trance mixes of theme songs like X-Files, Mission Impossible, and Twin Peaks.

Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Beatles Instrumental Renditions (20)

The Soundalikes, Abba Tribute Gold Edition (20)

Vitamin String Quartet, Gothic Wedding Collection (15)
-, Rock ‘n Roll Wedding Collection (15)
-, Strung Out on Indie Rock Vol 1 (10)

various, Forever 80’s (11+17)

Value

Mickey Hart, Henry Wolff & Nancy Hennings, Yamantaka (5)

Mon Roe, Hemi-Sync series

Nurse With Wound, Rock ‘n’ Roll Station (7)
-, She and Me Fall Together in Free Death (6)
-, Stereo Wasteland (3)
-, Angry Eelectric Finger 1 (2)
-, Angry Eelectric Finger 2 (5)

Rapoon, Church Road (4)

1. A new post is scanned, either via its feed or one of the aggregator services like Technorati, looking for certain keywords.
2. A corresponding post is created on the spamblog with a generic blurb like “[author] had an interesting post about [keyword]” and a short 1- or 2-line excerpt centering on the keyword match.
3. A comment is submitted to the originating blog, linking back to the spamblog.
4. The spamblog post is then able to attract traffic either through clickthroughs from the comments thread, or from increased PageRank from Google since their blog gradually increases its network of keyword-linked sites.

The ultimate purpose is still simply to gain visitors which in turn trigger ad revenue through a combination of Google text ads, banner ads, and other pay-to-host content. The spamblog itself is often a default template, e.g. the Kubrick WordPress theme, consisting only of these short linked posts. For blogs that either don’t moderate comments or who don’t scrutinize excerpting sites individually, growth is mostly automatic. The adaptation is that they propagate links without the prior telltale markers of comment spam like overt sales messages included in the actual comment text.

So far I’ve seen these keyword comments triggered by an unusual set of terms: ‘elevator operator,’ ‘turquoise jewelry,’ a ’sequel to 5 People You Meet in Heaven,’ ‘Apple,’ ‘zebrafish,’ and ‘plumbing license.’ As an exercise for the reader, I leave it to you to guess which original posts generated each of those matches (hint: keywords don’t have to be sequential). I’m also curious whether having listed those now all together, I will get a repeat entry of all prior spam comment attempts.

This brings to mind what I am sure has already been codified into the equivalent of Sturgeon’s Law, which would go something like: “Any sufficiently popular mainstream communications system will generate spam” or perhaps the more prescriptive, “A communication system can be considered mainstream once it attracts spam.” Spam is generally considered to have originated with electronic systems like e-mail and Usenet forums, but extending the definition backwards, one could potentially designate parallels like telemarketing and robocalls for telephones and junk mail for postal service as examples. Did telegraph operators ever suffer from unsolicited commercial Morse Code transmissions? Certainly spam has gained tremendous genetic diversity in jumping to every emerging communication form—chat spam (first IRC then IM), forum spam (first newsgroups then web), mobile phone spam via SMS, online games, search engines (aka spamdexing), blog spam, and even video-sharing sites like YouTube. Twitter? Check.

Part of the original blame can be placed on the idealism of academic groups like the IETF who established standards for communication protocols like SMTP and NNTP without incorporating more robust authentication and authorization to deter spoofing and other common tactics. Except, of course, that those standards were created long before the very notion of a commercial Internet had been considered, and the online community was small enough to police itself by etiquette alone. Certainly we could assert that newer protocols should learn the lessons of the past and instill greater protection against potential abuses, right? Except, instead, the rapid evolution of spam in response to antispam efforts has created ’superbugs’ and an extensive evolutionary toolbox of techniques that can thwart most any systemic precaution. Just like our immune system and pharmacology have developed to deal with ever more sophisticated organic threats, inspiring ever stronger virii and bacteria, so the race continues between platform developers and those who would distribute spam over them. It is effectively now almost impossible to create a communications system that is actually usable, capable of reaching mainstream acceptance, and totally immune to spam-like behavior. Instead, like the common cold, we now aim instead to reach a détente where we can take steps to prevent infection and minimize symptoms, but no longer envision a ‘cure for spam.’

Botnet agent plays lost sheep to avoid detection | The Register

The Register reports on one such development in the ongoing mutation of the strain ‘Kraken’ (AKA Bobax) bot. Earlier botnets were susceptible to interruption by attacking not the zombie clients but, in military parlance, going after their C&C (command and control) elements that issue the bot its orders—attack a certain host via distributed denial-of-service (DDOS), for example. These were often IRC servers that allowed pseudonymous communication via protected messages. Yet IRC is, with the advent of IM and Web-based chat, now itself something of an anomaly that an AV program could view as suspicious.

The Kraken adaptation adopts dynamic DNS through generated domain names, passing encrypted commands through HTTP further obfuscated with bogus headers to fool SPI-capable firewalls. In this fashion, the bot homes in on the current location of its control server without having any hardcoded lists that can be used to target them for shutdown. The Australian firm PC Tools that analyzed the new code compared the process to the way a lost sheep tries to locate its shepherd (hence the article’s title). Similarly, new variations of P2P software have attempted to replace the fragile centralized tracker with distributed databases and multi-hop obfuscation through efforts like TOR and I2P.

Kraken also employs a random word generator to vary its infection host filenames, which spread through IM networks like MSN Messenger. This is a tactic previously adopted by spammers, who in turn were responding to naive Bayesian filtering built into antispam engines like SpamAssassin.

A parallel story at The Register notes a new kind of SQL injection attacks that targets DATE and NUMBER fields. Previously SQL injections exploited unchecked parameters or syntactic tricks to pass SQL code, often limited to text-based fields like VARCHAR. The recent nihaorr* mass attack on older ASP-based sites, for example, used a combination of techniques: the injection was appended as a POST in place of a standard GET query, overloading the request with a 4000-character hex string set within a CAST function. Decoding the hex to text revealed a procedural cursor that trawled the sysobjects DB for any char-based columns, to which it then proceeded to append rogue JS code via UPDATEs. Since most remedies for SQL injection have centered around validating text-based input, this variation bypasses such defenses by manipulating date and number data routines in Oracle’s PL/SQL.

Not content to be left on the defensive, particularly with suspicions that certain governments could be building up their own stockpiles of zombie PCs to act as a botnet in the effect of a (sigh) cyberwar, the US Air Force Cyber Command (AFCYBER) has recently published their consideration of mustering a military botnet. Ars Technica reviews the salient points of Col. Charles Williamson’s proposal, including the need for offensive capability (essentially to attack the attacker) in light of the indefensibility of our present infrastructure, and the potential political fallout were we to, say, pingflood France due to a DDOS mounted from a botnet there controlled by a rogue group elsewhere. The implications for this are somewhat provocative—even if AFCYBER were to build a managed botnet out of decommissioned military PCs, would some other branch like the NSA or CIA also receive a secret mandate to develop ‘offsite assets’ by infecting civilian PCs in other countries? Will some portion of future conflicts consist of shadowy agents provocateur wielding heavily anonymized zombie PC armies trying to provoke retaliation against the enemy’s allies by launching DDOS attacks from within their civilian networks?