May’s EMusic
Posted by raj | Filed under Music
For many years, the core of Ministry was the pair of Al Jourgensen and Paul Barker. After Barker left, Ministry became more and more metal, but Barker carried on in the industrial tradition with Flowering Blight. (And also in USSA with Duane Denison of The Jesus Lizard, but that’s, uh, not this.)
An hour of massive drone doom in a single track!
I love all things Spacemen 3, Sonic Boom, and Spiritualized. I even liked Songs in A&E, which nobody liked, but this isn’t an “only I will like it” album – it’s just an amazing album
Squarepusher albums are always either awesome dancey techno, or technically amazing but (to me) ultimately boring jazz bass affairs. This is a return to the awesome Squarepusher of old
Swervedriver are back together, and touring, which is pretty awesome. I hope they get the recognition they’ve always deserved.
April’s EMusic
Posted by raj | Filed under Music
For some reason I can’t explain I have an extra $25 balance in my account this month. I did just roll over to a new year’s subscription, so perhaps it’s a bonus? I don’t remember buying a booster pack. Regardless, I have a big whack of downloads for the month!
EBM goodness from Tom Shear:
Cevin Key doesn’t make things easy for the listener, and his Download project is probably the most inaccessible to the casual fan, even compared to the harshest of Skinny Puppy’s output, but I love it.
I’ve long been a fan of Grouper, so when I saw a bunch of new material on EMusic, I had to grab it all.
This one is a reissue of a split release between Grouper and Inca Ore:
This was recommended by EMusic, so I gave it a try:
Ever since I first heard Miranda Sex Garden, I’ve had a mad music-crush on Katharine Blake. Originally a Miranda Sex Garden side-project, Mediaeval Baebes has become Katharine Blake’s full-time project. Wonderful!
I discovered Nadja thanks to the amazing internet radio station and blog Strangeways Radio, as part of their shoegaze spotlight series. An absolutely awe-inspiring blend of shoegaze and drone metal, I had to grab everything I could find on EMusic. Also worth buying is their cover album, When I See the Sun Always Shines On TV, particularly for the mind-blowing Long Dark Twenties, a re-imagining of a Paul Bellini (Kids in the Hall) song from the Brain Candy soundtrack.
A couple of months ago I downloaded Creatures of an Hour by Still Corners ; I was so impressed, I had to return for the rest.
World’s End Girlfriend makes haunting, disturbing, and ultimately beautiful music.
March’s EMusic
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February’s EMusic
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January’s EMusic
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December’s EMusic
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November’s EMusic
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Farewell, John
Posted by raj | Filed under General
It’s been a horrible year for losing giants in the computing industry.
John McCarthy coined the term AI, and was highly influential in time-sharing systems (read: multitasking).
Now, I don’t write AI code, and I’m not an OS programmer, but John McCarthy’s impact on my life is nonetheless immense, because he invented the LISP programming language, and LISP powers Emacs. If a warrior lived and died by their sword, a coder lives and dies by their editor – I’m a tenth as productive in a mundane text editor as I am in Emacs, and LISP is a beautiful (if, to the untrained eye, inscrutable) language.
October’s EMusic
Posted by raj | Filed under Music
Farewell, Dennis
Posted by raj | Filed under General
If I owe the start of my career to Apple, it’s only fair to admit that I owe the bulk of it to Dennis Ritchie. Dennis Ritchie was a co-creator of unix, the inventor of the C Programming Language, and the co-author of this gem: 
I’m long past needing this book, but I keep it on my shelf. Both as a reminder of where I came from, and as a monument to the absolute zenith of technical writing.
There’s not a computer system in the world today that doesn’t owe some of its heritage to either C or Unix. Dennis was a quiet giant of computer science. He wasn’t a public figure like Steve Jobs, but his impact on the field of technology was at least as large, and his loss an equally terrible blow.
