Big Depeche Mode article in The Los Angeles Times

Having handled challenges both internal and external, the veteran group stands strong with a new album and tour ready to go.

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The Grace Jones concert last night was amazing

The genius behind Google’s web browser

There is a big article about Lars Bak*, the Danish programmer behind the 'V8 Javascript engine' in the Google Chrome browser, in Financial Times today. Yesterday, the Herald Tribune ran a story about the current browser war.

With more and more applications running on the web, the browser will become more and more important. Sometimes it can be a bottleneck. (Wait for a war on 'startpages' anytime soon).

Here is my take on the browser situation:

GOOGLE CHROME
If your primary use of the browser is Gmail, Google Apps, watching videos on YouTube and prefer search results direct from the address bar, Google Chrome is the way to go. All of the applications and serviced mentioned is run by Google anyway, so there is really no alternative for 'Google Optimization' on your client. Also, it is lightning fast and very secure. In the future, they will have plug-ins and add-ons as you know from the Firefox environment.

INTERNET EXPLORER
Microsoft has finally released a new web browser. They seem to have been quite lazy about it, enjoying a massive amount of 'factory installations' on the market and the biggest market share, however dropping fast. If you believe in Windows Live, is an incarnated user of the Microsoft Office suite and have a PC running Vista, the new, improved IE might be the right choice for you. The security matters seem to have been solved with the newest release and it runs pretty smooth.

SAFARI
So many Mac users out there and the Apple Movement is a mega-cult following that reminds me of Scientology and other quasi-religious sects. However, there is no denying the popularity of the products (I am an avid iTunes fan myself), and when you own a Mac, the browser is Safari. A killer app for Safari would be an exclusive iTunes browser version, but that would also be very evil to non-Mac users.

FIREFOX
This is the open source browser favoured by many, when they dumped their Internet Explorer and the original 'anti-Microsoft' web reader. It is still a pretty good browser and there are so many cool applications and plug-ins made especially for this browser that makes it a good choice for many. However, Google Chrome, will probably overtake this browser as soon as they open up for third-party development. As soon as Google Chrome 2 goes out of beta, I think this will be the choice of many hiherto Firefox users.

OPERA
If you primarily use the web from a mobile phone, Opera, could be an interesting choice. Opera have been frontrunners of the 'mini-browser'. But the mobile web seems to be an iPhone vs. Google Phone affair in the future, so I am not sure about the position of Opera in the coming years. Microsoft should buy it just for the cool brand effect.

Conclusively, I predict that the future belongs to 'white label' browsers: costumized browsers running on powerful engines developed and delivered by Apple, Google and Microsoft. Or e-commerce vendors such as eBay or Amazon Web Services. Another vision could be a next-gen Mozilla or other open source community-based project somehow taking advantage of 'cloud computing' and 'the sematic web'. The next couple of years, however, we will see increases in Google Chrome and Apple Safari use, and several users leaving IE and FF.

I am currently running FF 3.0.7. on weekdays and Google Chrome 1.0.1 in the weekends (watching more YouTube on Sundays) on a ThinkPad Vista machine. I am saving up for the new Sony Vaio P model that has (a big and slow) Vista on it, but also a Linux quick-start install for web only use.

*In the article, Lars introduces a Danish version of the Google business model: cycling to work, playing ping pong in between work and going home at five to be with the family.

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Ornette Coleman "Skies Of America"

Here is a good tip for the weekend. Grab this 1972 recording by the godfather of free jazz, Ornette Coleman. Read one of the of original (a very well written, and utterly postive) reviews here.

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Spike Jonze "Where the Wild Things Are" [Leaked Trailer]

Terry Richardson in Vogue Homme

[ via Highsnobiety ]

Official 'Antichrist' Photo Released

UNKLE x Spike Jonze, ‘Heaven’ Video

Heaven (Fully Flared Intro Video Remix)
by UNKLE_UK

Sigur Ros Unplugged In A Parisian Cafe

La Blogotheque's Takeaway series in which they film unlplugged and impromptu performances from the likes of Fleet Foxes, Bloc Party, Foals and Animal Collective is cult viewing among music fans.

[ via Pedestrian ]


Sigur Ros - Við spilum endalaust - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

BLOGGING FROM BERLIN-SCHÖNEFELD AIRPORT: My T-Mobile USB stick is running on an EDGE network. It is soooo slow. Don't they have UMTS in DDR?

Blogging from Berlin-Schonefeld Airport

My T-Mobile USB stick is running on an EDGE network. It is sooooooooo slow. Don't they have UMTS in DDR? (Enough TLA's and FLA's for you??)

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New Jimi Hendrix Material Due

The artist's recording catalog appears poised to continue expanding, with Hendrix noting that Experience Hendrix has "10 more years of Hendrix music" in the vaults.

"Currently, I am in the studio transferring tapes of Band of Gypsys performances that have never been released before," she said, referring to Hendrix's last band.

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Michel Gondry's Tokyo

Depeche Mode article in Billboard Magazine

Martin Gore says that the core tracks of "Sound of the Universe" are "Peace" and "Little Soul," both of which concern liberation, light and freedom. "I wrote them back to back, and the flow of the album started to make more sense. I really felt they had a spirituality to them. That somehow set a cornerstone for the rest of the writing."

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Microsoft rocks!

Digital versions of Playboy magazine, from 1954 to 2007 have been put online through a partnership between Microsoft and Bondi Digital Publishing. Bondi Digital Publishing scanned and re-typed each issue of Playboy, appear as they did in the print version, with all advertisements left in-tact.

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'You need more than the Gerard Richter hanging on your wall / (...) / (...) / You need more, you need love!' --- Pet Shop Boys ("Yes", 2009)

Carey Young @ NGBK

Phillippe Starck to star in BBC reality TV show

"Design for Life" is a British reality TV series to be broadcast by the BBC next month. The star is Mr. Starck himself, a shameless show-off who is so brazen, exuberant, charming and silly that he not only outshines the contestants, but reduces them to stricken silence for much of the time.

Warner Brothers launch online TV series about music blogger

"Rockville, CA," makes its debut on Tuesday with the first four of its five- to seven-minute episodes. Set in the fictitious Club Rockville in Los Angeles — the name is a homage to the 1984 REM song "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" — the 20-episode season follows Hunter (Andrew J. West), an archetype familiar to devotees of Mr. Schwartz's series: he's the dark-haired, hyperarticulate, self-deprecating, self-professed nerd, like Seth Cohen of "The OC," Dan Humphrey of "Gossip Girl" and Chuck of, uh, "Chuck."

In this case he's a music blogger with a crush on Deb (Alexandra Chando from "As the World Turns"), an A&R rep for Wall to Wall Records. Deb, whose primary trait is her obsessive use of the word "major" (as in "that band is major"), comes to the club to see and sign her favorite acts.

Those acts — a diverse mix of established (the indie rock band Eagles of Death Metal), up-and-coming (the synth-pop singer-songwriter Lights), foreign (the Swedish singer Lykke Li) and local artists (the power-pop group the Broken West) — are as essential to "Rockville" as Hunter and Deb's budding romance. Each episode was shot at the Echoplex, a real rock club in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, and takes place in one night, with a single band playing in the background. The show's home page on TheWB.com features interviews with those bands and exclusive live performances of two of each band's songs.

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Kasabian Debut Upcoming Single On Sony Bravia TV Ad

Everything Social: Dopplr is launching a 'Social Atlas', Streamy is launching a 'Social RSS Reader' and Wuala is launching 'Social Storage'!

The Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, Moscow

The Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture was founded by Dasha Zhukova, girlfriend of Russian billionaire and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich.

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Office Made from Cardboard

New Photograph of Charles Manson Appears

A photograph of Charles Manson, taken Wednesday March 18, 2009, at the California State Prison in Corcoran. The photo of the 74-year-old Manson was taken as part of a routine update of files on inmates at the Corcoran prison, where he is serving a life sentence for conspiring to murder seven people.

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The exclusive organization of the world's wealthiest people

Social network for rich people...and it's FREE! Sounds like a joke, but I am afraid it is dead serious. I wish there was a social network for cool people. Oh, wait. There is.

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Antichrist (The Movie)

Going to the same concert hall where I experienced Peter Gabriel live in 1983 to see David Byrne tonight. The connection, you ask? Brian Eno

Ron Silver R.I.P.

Twitter on Yammer on Blogger (via Facebook!)

The Damned United

In 1974 the brilliant and controversial Brian Clough made perhaps his most eccentric decision: he accepted the Leeds United manager's job. As successor to Don Revie, his bitter adversary, he was to last only 44 days.

In one of the most acclaimed novels of this or any other year, David Peace takes us into the mind and thoughts of Ol' Big 'Ead himself, and brings vividly to life one of post-war Britain's most complex and fascinating characters.

Trailer for the upcoming film 'The Damned United'.



From the best-selling and critically acclaimed novel by David Peace, The Damned United is directed by Tom Hooper and stars Michael Sheen as the legendary, opinionated football manager Brian Clough, with Timothy Spall as his right hand man, only friend, and crutch Peter Taylor.

Set in 1960s and 1970s England, THE DAMNED UNITED tells the confrontational and darkly humorous story of Brian Cloughs doomed 44 day tenure as manager of the reigning champions of English football Leeds United. Previously managed by his bitter rival Don Revie (Colm Meaney), and on the back of their most successful period ever as a football club, Leeds had an aggressive and cynical style of football - an anathema to the principled yet flamboyant Brian Clough, who had achieved astonishing success as manager of Hartlepool and Derby County building teams in his own vision with trusty lieutenant Peter Taylor. Taking the Leeds job without Taylor by his side, with a changing room full of Dons boys, would lead to an unheralded examination of Cloughs belligerence and brilliance over 44 days. This is that story. The story of The Damned United. Jim Broadbent plays Sam Longson, Derby Chairman. THE DAMNED UNITED was filmed in locations throughout Yorkshire, Leeds, Derbyshire and Spain

In UK cinemas from March 27th 2009.

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Dallas Austin is 'retrofuturistic'

In the past decade writer-producer Dallas Austin has been the creative force behind hits such as “Unpretty” by TLC, “Push The Button” by the Sugababes and “Just Like a Pill” by Pink. He has also produced films, including “Drumline” and “ATL”. His newest venture is a menswear line, The Rowdy Collection. He lives in Georgia, US, with his three sons, aged 14, 11 and six.

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During the intimate concert with legendary avantgarde drummer Han Bennink brought back sweet memories of discovering 'free jazz' in my teens

Tyson

Third Man Records

Third Man Records, the imprint on which Jack White releases all of his music including The White Stripes and The Raconteurs, now has a physical location in downtown Nashville. White's new Third Man Records building serves as the company HQ and houses the label's offices plus a vinyl record store, photo studio, dark room and performance stage.

In celebration of the building's opening, the label’s newest rock outfit, The Dead Weather, delivered their first public performance with a set including songs from their forthcoming album, Horehound. The band, fronted by Alison Mosshart (known to music fans as one half of The Kills) includes The Raconteurs' Jack Lawrence on bass, Dean Fertita from Queens Of The Stone Age on guitar and Jack White on drums and vocals. In addition to playing, White also served as producer on Horehound. Recording took place earlier this year in just three weeks at the newly constructed Third Man Studio, designed from the ground up by White. Third Man plans a June release for the album.

Around 150 fans, family and friends attended the Third Man Records grand opening event and exchanged their letter-pressed invitations for limited edition 7" vinyl pressings of The Dead Weather's debut single "Hang You From The Heavens" (b/w a stealth cover of Gary Numan's "Are Friends Electric?"). The Dead Weather hand painted each of the 150 7" records that also included a different photo booth strip of the band members. Downloads of these two songs are now available exclusively through iTunes.

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The art of nothing

Art exhibitions without exhibits are nothing new. Nothing has been a recognised art form for half a century. But the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris can claim a cultural first this week: a retrospective exhibition of 51 years of exhibitions without exhibits by nine different artists. How can a museum retrospectively exhibit nothing? With great care. The 500-page catalogue costs €39 (£34).

The exhibition, Voids, a Retrospective, fills, or fails to fill, five rooms in the French national museum of modern art on the fourth floor of the Pompidou building. All the rooms are entirely empty. The walls are white. The floors are bare. The lighting has been arranged just as carefully as for any other temporary exhibition. The gardiens (guards) watch suspiciously to make sure that the visitors do not touch anything, or in this case that they do not touch nothing.

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Frank Gehry slows down but not by choice

"I promised a lot of people I'd slow down when I turned 80," confesses Frank Gehry, the world's most celebrated living architect. Then with a sheepish grin, he adds: "I wasn't really planning to do it, but because of the economy, I wound up keeping that promise by accident."

That day finally arrived Saturday. And on Friday night the occasion was marked by an upscale bash for his 500 closest friends at the funky (but now shuttered) Geffen Contemporary museum at MOCA.

Guests included Gehry's family, artists, the mayor of L.A., and movie stars Brad Pitt, Donald Sutherland and Dennis Hopper. Actor Sally Kellerman sang "Happy Birthday" to the man acclaimed for taking architecture out of the box and reshaping it into a sculptural art form that grabbed the world's attention.

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DJ Hell "Teufelswerk"

Listen to “The Angst & The Angst Pt. 2,” the lead single [video here, ed.] from DJ Hell’s forthcoming album Teufelswerk, and you’ll appreciate the direction Hell is taking. Teufelswerk – the German for “Devil’s Work” – is Hell’s masterpiece. Across 16 exquisite tracks divided into two themes, “Night” and “Day”, Hell weaves an intoxicating spell. Celestial vocals cascade around an acoustic guitar figure as a motorik rhythm propels it ever skywards, sharing space, spiritually at least, with Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk and Can. Hell, with his old friend Peter Kruder produced the "Day" half assisted by noted multi-instrumentalists Christian Prommer and Roberto Di Gioia. This is Hell's enchanting interpretation of kosmische musik. “The Angst & The Angst Pt. 2” joins tracks “Germania”, “Hell’s Kitchen” and “I Prefer Women to Men Anyway” to unravel with sinuous grace, culminating in a cosmic reading of Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine”. The “Night” album is raw mix of Chicago and Detroit influences combined with Hell’s swashbuckling approach to electronics, this portion is for the dance floor. Ten-minute jams such as “Wonderland” and “Electronic Germany” zoom and thrust with menacing intent. Hell hooked up once more with hip-hop superstar P. Diddy for freestyle jack-track and future single, “The DJ”. The most pleasant, eyebrow-raising moment here is the collaboration with Bryan Ferry, “U Can Dance”. This serpentine disco burner, a smouldering highlight of Teufelswerk, finally unites two of modern pop’s suavest outsiders. For this single release Hell invited Henrik Schwarz to bring a touch of the night to “The Angst Pt. 1and Pt. 2.” As a stand-alone piece of music it’s as solid as the dance floors it will be played on, but immediately hints at the wealth of ideas that exist on this forthcoming album. Teufelswerk is a lush, narcotic odyssey, the album sounds unlike anything he’s produced in the past. “The album is very personal,” he says. “All my knowledge is there…I don’t think I can make a better record.” “I have done kosmische musik in a new way,” he says. “This is where I come from, I grew up with the early German electronic pioneers of music, and this is why I went in this direction. Often it is called German electronic avant-garde, or psychedelic music. I went back to the ’70s and tried to do it in my own way.”

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Ulrik Crone skateboard

Just realized that I have been writing a diary since October 2007, when I first posted "making coffee" on Twitter. http://ping.fm/pgmQc

Kevin Rose & Alex Albrecht On Late Night

Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht made their official late night television debut on LNWJF tonight and turned it into a mini episode of Diggnation (if you've never seen Diggnation before, you must check it out). Even Russell Brand got in on the action. Beers spilled on laptops, Macs outnumbered Alex's lone PC, and everyone had a (nerdy) great time.

Derek Jarman Four Early Films

UbuWeb just published four early Derek Jarman films: Journey to Avebury (1971); Garden of Luxor (1972); Ashden's Walk on Møn (1973); Stolen Apples for Karen Blixen (1973).

Journey to Avebury (1971)

Garden of Luxor (1972)

Ashden's Walk on Møn (1973)

Stolen Apples for Karen Blixen (1973)

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Zeppelin Maybe Played This Epic Show in 1969, Old Zeppelin Fans Claim

VANITYFAIR.COM: So a bunch of people claim they saw Led Zeppelin at the Wheaton Youth Center in Maryland in 1969. And a bunch of people (who worked at the youth center) say it never happened. Like the late 60s themselves, it’s all a bit hazy.



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Check out Brooklyn's spectral garage-pop quintet CRYSTAL STILTS on my iTunes and YouTube twin blog channels: www.realdj.com + www.realvj.com

Francis in the studio (Photo by Jake Schreier)

Francis and the Lights "Just In Dark" (photo)

Francis and the Lights "The Top"

The Top (Music Video) from Francis and the Lights on Vimeo.

Queensrÿche "American Solider"

Queensrÿche envisions war and its consequences through the eyes of a soldier with their twelfth studio release, the epic concept album AMERICAN SOLDIER. The disc's twelve original songs were inspired by numerous interviews that Geoff Tate-the band's singer and chief songwriter-conducted with veterans over the last several years. In speaking with service people engaged in conflicts from World War II to Iraq, Tate became committed to telling their stories through songs that used their own words. The result is an unflinching musical exploration of the life of a soldier and the profound impact of war.

Tate says that the idea for AMERICAN SOLDIER came both from hearing stories from fans who are veterans as well as from his own father, who served in Korea and Vietnam. “Until very recently,” says Tate, “he never spoke about what he went through. I think that reticence is true of a lot of veterans, which means most people never truly understand what it means to be a soldier at war. Hearing what he and some of our fans have endured made me want to share their stories with the world.” Tate adds that making the album was enlightening-“I was surprised to learn how little has changed through the generations...but what surprised me the most was how antiwar most soldiers are. To me, that makes their sacrifices even more moving.”

Tate, Michael Wilton (guitar), Ed Jackson (bass) and Scott Rockenfield (drums) recorded the album over the course of nine months in 2008. The songs summon up vivid details about war's emotional and physical tolls, evoking battles (“Middle Of Hell”), sacrifice (“The Killer”), loss (“If I Were King”), the longing for home (“Remember Me”) and readjusting to civilian life (“Man Down!”). Several tracks feature dialogue from the interviews Tate recorded with veterans, as well as vocals captured when some of them were brought into the studio. Also making a guest vocal appearance is Tate's 10-year-old daughter on the searing duet “Home Again,” which examines the emotional burden of war from the dual perspectives of a soldier and the child he left at home.

Queensrÿche formed in Seattle in 1981 and had a major breakthrough with the 1988 concept album opus Operation: Mindcrime, which spent over a year on Billboard's album chart. In 2006, Rhino released the long awaited sequel, Operation Mindcrime II, and in 2007 released CD and DVD versions of Mindcrime At The Moore, recorded and filmed at the Seattle stop of a tour that featured Queensrÿche performing the politically themed saga in its entirety.

Annie Leibovitz @ c/o Berlin

Annie Leibovitz . A Photographer’s Life . 1990 - 2005

21 February to 24 May 2009

A family album, a comprehensive exhibition, and a personal diary – Annie Leibovitz’s photographs from her private life and professional work merge seamlessly into a chronicle of the events, official commissions, and personal stories of the last fifteen years.

With this exhibition, Leibovitz honors her family and close friends with photographs of their travels to Sarajevo, Venice, Berlin, Kyoto, and Cairo. Numerous sequences of photographs focus on her parents and her extended family as it expanded from one year to the next, with images of family reunions and trips to the sea. Poignant photographs of her father’s death appear alongside pictures of the births of her three daughters. And again and again, we find ourselves face to face with the celebrities who Annie Leibovitz knows how to portray with such startling immediacy: Bill Clinton in the Oval Office, George W. Bush and his staff, Nelson Mandela in Soweto, Demi Moore in the late stages of pregnancy, Jack Nicholson on Mulholland Drive, William Burroughs in Kansas.

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