Et voila

I graduated from my master degree in marketing research ! yata !!

2004: 11 films

Nobody knows (Daremo shiranai) - Hirokazu Koreeda
Collateral - Michael Mann
Oldboy - Chan-wook Park
Memories of murder (Salinui chueok) - Joon-ho Bong
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind - Michel Gondry
Head-on (Gegen die Wand) - Fatih Akin
Coming apart - Milton Moses Ginsberg
La mauvaise education (La mala educación) - Pedro Almodovar
Shara (Sharasojyu) - Naomi Kawase
Gerry - Gus Van Sant
Five obstructions (De fem benspænd) - Jørgen Leth / Lars Von Trier

Now you know !

Analord

Richard James is back on Rephlex with a new release called Analord 10.
Sometimes we have a tendancy to like new releases based on the artist name: don't worry, it's a classic situation, the track might be basic, but wait, it's the new _____ !!!! LOVE IT !!.

This doesn't work with Richard James.

His new release is beautiful. No one sounds like him, nobody can think of such an intelligent and beautiful collision of piano and acid and melodies and sick beats. This is unique, and this is very, very emotional. Difficult too. Not the Come to daddy thing.

The first time I heard Vordhosbn from Drukqs, I was in Osaka, at Tower records, and it made me cried. I won't get into details, but his music is moving me like no other (Fennesz maybe ?).

I'd better go to bed before I decide to quit music.

Destroy rock'n'roll (and house music while you're at it)

Random is the best way to listen to music, ever. It opens new possibilities.
Mistake is the best way to create, always (well, for me).
Creativity doesn't require the best tools. Never. I don't need a big studio and tons of equipment to do this. In fact I don't even have a soundcard ! Can you believe this ?

Life ?
Nothing too new here...still in the process of transfering all my record collection to MP3, tons of CDs to pack.
I bought a new mac, so now I'm broke because I haven't sold the old one yet (You want a PowerBook G4 ? you know where I am).

Still working on the Darsh record, I have no idea of the result: is this an album ? a diary of sounds collected the past five years ? what is this ? I don't know. It's fun.

Fashion ?
Shoichi Kajino was apparently in Paris for the winter sales, but arrived too early.

Sounds ?
NIN the downward spiral is amazing. Plus Tech rules, as usual.
The new Beck sounds like a best of all his previous albums, which is a good think (you know how much I think Sea change was sometimes a Gainsbourg rip off) but it sounds like Beck: no suprises maybe. Daft Punk new single is pure daft punk: bad guitars but catchy single. No samples, no vocoded vocals. Cool. I'm really crazy about crunk now anyway. The Diplomats album is full of new ideas.

Take that, RIAA !

I'm moving all my music collection from CDs to hard drive storage to save space and evergy. I'm thinking iPods and large USB2 hard drives and Mac mini server and random playlists etc
I might start selling all my CDs too. (Ah, the space !) I believe space for trees and cats is more important.
Any idea / recommandations on that ?

Microfuture

Predictions for the ten years to come usually make me smile (especially when they are sold at a 'special discount price' of $2000) but I like to read them anyway. Like our need of end of the year lists (see my upcoming post on 'best of' lists - yes it's coming), we love predictions in the IT business (and in fact, on many other topics, technological or not).
Will Apple launch a media center under $500 (hint: they might), or will Beck release an album with the White Stripes (he is !) ? what's the difference ? None. It's all about being excited by possible things happening. And we love it, as much as we love to look back at past predictions and laught at how stupid they were ("ahahah I told you !!").

So, should I post my own set of predictions for 2005 (or 2010) ?
Naa, too risky !
Instead I'll leave you with a link to Gartner predictions (.pdf) for 2005 ('and beyond' ! ho ho).
You can forget about the whole IT boring stuff (except if you're a nerd like me), but keep in mind the microcommerce thing, cause this is really happening (and it's far more interesting: think social (micro) interactions).

Connect the dots, but never take it too seriously. Have fun !

Hospital elevator

A different kind of blue



Ah, a new year. Usually I'm not happy at the beginning of the year, and I've been very often found walking the room (and this blog) with a promise of 'this is over, I'm quiting music !' (or maybe this comes around February ?) But not this year !! This is something new.
2004 was good (yes you will get my 'you should peer 2 peer this' list of interesting sounds from 2004 very soon on this very same blog), but 2004 was also a messy, in-between year. Things and ideas taking shape but at a different pace than usual, like a preliminary ground work for things to come. And I don't think only about my sound activity, but in general, about my life in 2004. It was good, but 2005 sounds already like an even more exciting year.

Back to soundwork, 2004 was a lazy year for Digiki. Lazy, because after two years of work on several albums (Kitchen and the Toog album) the only new sound I produced last year was Wiki wifi, a song for the great Sonido Uzumaki compilation from Music Related. Yes, one year, one song. How lazy no ? I did some remixes and a mix CD too, but on the 'original' side of things that's not much. But maybe it's enough: no obligation !
In a way Wiki wifi was an obligation, it forced me to work, it puts me back in front of a blank page with a deadline. Which is sometimes a good thing.

2005 is and will be different. I'm not adding 'hopefully' because, yeah, it's happening. I can feel it, and it's very very exciting. I'm full of new ideas, new styles and people to blend into one big record. Let's try things. I know where I'm going, I'm doing a new album now and it's different from Kitchen, it's not 2002 anymore, it's Digiki, and it's personal.
It's seriously fun, fun-ky serious. Hopefully ? no, really !

The Darsh album I'm producing (and focusing on) now is different too. It's an album, with my best friend, for us. I don't know if you'll like it, and we don't really care (sorry!). It's fake hip hop meets guitar meets sonic experiments. No format, no structures, it's open form nonsense. We are not hip hop, we don't play guitars, we are no composers. Just two kids trying things, and it's a perfect state of mind: let's all do mistakes.

More than contexts, I think I'm exploring keywords. (Thanks Nick)
But aren't keywords part of the recontextualisation process ?

New Year soba

Animals don't sleep



Meet the original Animals don't care team: Florence from Paris and Mie from New York !
We found the name for this album together last Christmas in Paris.

And the album is still available online (FREE !) for one more week ! (until January 7th)

Get it, love it, hate it, share it ! GO !!