Gilles Peterson and Ben Westbeech in Paris, Homecookin' & DeepSoul3

Ben Westbeech, his band, and of course Gilles were incredibly good. I had an extraordinary evening. Ben seems to be a really nice guy (watch out for his LP dropping next month), the club had a decent sound, and the crowd was in a good mood.
Nevertheless, I would have wished for a little less hard-to-dance-to Brazilian music, Gilles. Apart from that, the transition from Alice Coltrane via some HipHop classics, Funk and Samba over Soil and Pimp to close with Minimal and House-- what can I say?!

Plus, Ichi.One's latest Homecookin' guestmix for DeepSoul3 is perfect, and the 4hero LP is out and superbe... Musically, 2007 starts off as a good year.

Old School B-Boying & Grandmaster Mele Mel

Just to continue some older posts:
On the one hand there have been some posts on B-Boying, such as the one on the crazy styles of Elsewhere or on a pop-locking competition in Paris.

On the other hand some Old-School discussion and media, such as the Newcleus video two months ago.

Furthermore, you know I am a fan of music (that sounds like) from the end of the 70s / beginning of the 80s, such as DJ Mehdi or Chromeo.

Now, there is this German guy who has a weird Old-School fan page, but who also has a mad collection of old HipHop videos, some of which he put up on youtube.
Among others Breakmachine with Streetdance (compare to DJ Mehdi's "I am somebody")

Another highlight is this interview with crazy "Muscle" Grandmaster Mele Mel, who, by the way, just started another embarrassing come back (two years ago Boris and I went to a rather disappointing concert by the Furious Five in Montreal-- ever since, I think they should retire...)

Television is Revolving -- Simplicity Sells

Just as the introduction of German Rap Music paralleled the one of its American predecessor (Die Fantastischen Vier ten years after the Sugarhill Gang), the online development of audio-visual media repeats the course of audio files:

First music files became easily downloadable, then podcasts revolutionized the radio in disposing it of the inappropriate dependence on a certain time of consumption, and allowing everybody (with internet access) to make their own broadcast.

Also due to increasing bandwidth, shortly after, the same has been happening with movies and TV broadcasts. In itself nothing new-- youtube, google video and myspace have been known for a while. Now, however, a crucial point has been reached: every single day there are breaking news on new IP.TV stations, apple launched apple TV, google bought youtube, and, whether the spreading videos on google TV are a hoax or not, google is--rather sooner than later--gonna hop on the internet TV train.

A propos: Watch brilliant David Pogue making a point for simplicity, and thus for apple, at the TED conference, provided by google video.

Tags and Archive--Feel Free to Browse

I finally managed to tag all posts in a more or less exhaustive manner.
I am sorry if some RSS feed readers got confused (mine did).
Feel free to browse the archive via the tag column on the right (ordered by frequency)!

By the way, Mo just posted his interesting newest developments on his well-formed-data blog on tagging and tag dynamics.

Gilles Peterson Tourdates again & 4hero

T minus 5 till Gilles Peterson is coming to town (Feb 1st). He's gonna bring Ben Westbeech and he will celebrate the Brownswood Recordings inauguration party in Le Bus Palladium.
I will tell you next week about it, but nevertheless, readers don't miss his gigs in
Tokyo, April 5th (source: myspace) 20th and 21st (source: brownswoodrecordings) and in
Edinburgh, April 28th (source: brownswoodrecordings).

T minus 2, in turn, till 4hero will drop their long-awaited new album Play with the changes. After the nice podcast #4 on gillespetersonworldwide.com, as well as his great output in 2006, I even added Marc Mac, one half of 4hero, to the list of 'Musicians Worth Knowing'.

Brain, Language, Broca, Wernicke, and Norman Geschwind

One video synthesizing it all:
My area of interest-- Brain and Language
A perfect (but of course: simplified) version of the topic of my "mémoire"-- particular impairments in understanding sentences with a certain grammatical structure in English Broca's aphasics (presented by Norman Geschwind himself)
An explanation of the seminal discoveries by Paul Broca in Paris and by the German neurologist Karl Wernicke a couple of years later.
Put it all together in a seven minute video with the characteristic voice of a 70's documentary movie... Watch it!




--
Plus: A very recent German video (3sat nano, 16.01.2007) on the general topic of brain and language, including ten seconds showing my former Berlin laboratory (the kid, Lucie, wearing a red glowing EEG cap).

Moog (2004) Trailer -- Human-Computer Interface

How come that when you have to work you discover the most amazing things to distract you? Is it Murphy's Law? Is it cause your hormones are changed and things easily appear to be fascinating?
Anyways:
I stumbled upon the movie trailer of a documentary on the greatest synthesizer of all times, the Moog. The movie came out in 2004, and Dr. Robert Arthur Moog, the ingenious inventor of the Moog synthesizer unfortunately died a year after-- one more reason to watch the movie...
I especially enjoyed when Bob Moog in the trailer enthusiastically signifies the metaphysical human-computer interaction between the musician's mind and the moog circuit board: "not physical contact, not sumthin' like they have it under their arm... but" and the following gesture is just gorgeous. Check it out-- great guy, great synthesizer.