Music

Tocotronic, one of the greatest German bands ever, is going to release a new album on January 17th, 2005, named "Pure Vernunft wird niemals siegen". So, that's the next big thing to look forward to (after Christmas and 21C3...). They also go on tour, and will play e.g. in Linz on March, 26th.

Update: what I just found out is that the Tocotronic website now contains technical notes about the used technologies. What I find cool is that they use XHTML 1.0 Strict (and it validates!), that they provide an RSS feed, that it's design barrier-free and that they ensured that the page also works on alternative web browsers. The people of rockITbaby do the technical part. Many thanks to them!

A few days ago my mother gave me the new [[Mark Knopfler]] CD - "Shangri-La" - to make a few (legal) copies. So I just ripped the CD to iTunes and started listening to it. And it sounded good, very good, it's quite calm and relaxed music. After some listening, one song, "Postcards From Paraguay" caught on to me more and more, as it has some South-American touch, and just sounds catchy. I can only recommend it, the CD could probably be a gift to your parents, for Christmas.

I just listened to the classic [[Popcorn (song)|Popcorn]] track by Hot Butter (in case you don't know it, download it from your favorite warez and mp3z P2P network or from here), and IMHO, it's still the best song ever produced in the area of electronic music. What makes it so special is that is not totally perfect -- beside the cracks you hear in the mp3 file I have because it was recorded from vinyl, the synthesizer's sounds are not perfect, they seem to oscillate a bit irregularly. But that might be just an imagination from myself. Nevertheless, no other electronic music track could please me as much as this one. The only other track that came close was "we are the robots" by [[Kraftwerk]], but that's already from the late 70s (IIRC), and Popcorn is from the late 60s. Oh, and the synthesizer music from "A Clockwork Orange" comes close to it, too, but that's not music I would want to listen to during work on a daily basis (and the score is from about the same time as Popcorn). So, anything to recommend that is still available somewhere (where "somewhere" is preferably Amazon)?