Water under the bridge, yo. I've got the memory of a goldfish anyway.

As for the new avatar, it comes from the booklet in the CD jacket of Anais Mitchell's Child Ballads, one of my favorite possessions.

Glad to inspire ideas! I'm trying to figure out what these things are called - it's a birch wood frame with an aluminum rectangular cavity with rubber or wax seal lining to prevent leaking, and there is a small round hole in the center, presumably for a drain.

I imagine the thing is supposed to be filled with ice to keep beer cool? Anyone know what these are called?

EDIT: Some quick Googling suggests it's called a wood cooler or a wood ice chest. And the things aren't actually cheap. Building yourself is always the cheapest solution, or if you'd rather buy one ready to go, the favorite is the LP BIN.

Wooden Beer Cooler

That's the closest thing I could think of, but none of them have quite the same look as the piece you found.

A Tour of the Listening Room!
 

My birthday is fast-approaching, and as you would suspect, I am impossible to shop for. Despite this challenge, my fiance has successfully surprised and delighted me with her creative gifts more and more with each passing year.

This year I had more than once wondered aloud how much I would love a 2-row record bin to flip through my collection record store style. But, as other household expenses have always taken precedence, I'd never gone ahead and ordered one.

But as I mentioned in my preview post above, my fiance with her thrifty eagle eye spotted a wood-framed beer cooler roadside with a large rectangular aluminum-lined cavity that, as luck would have it, measures precisely wide enough for two deep rows of polybagged LPs! It even has an additional shelf underneath for oversize box sets!

It's been so long since I've done a video, and this new acquisition seemed the perfect opportunity for an updated tour of my listening room.

Note: I neglected to mention in the video - Underworld's quintessential album, Dubnobasswithmyheadman is not missing from the collection I present - it is framed on the wall opposite the Eno • Hyde Someday World art print!

A few of the unmentioned items featured include:

Atop the Bookshelf:
William Basinski – The Disintegration Loops Box Set
Cyril Ritchard Reads Alice in Wonderland + Facsimile Clothbound HC of the first edition
Tangerine Dream – In the Beginning…
Tom Waits – Orphans
Underworld – Dubnobasswithmyheadman Super Deluxe Anniversary Ed.
Underworld – Barking Super Deluxe Ed.
20 Years of Jethro Tull: The Definitive Collection
The Motown Story: The First Decade
Miles Davis at the Fillmore Box Set
Harmonia – Complete Works

Atop the Jazz/20th Century Avant-Garde/Funk & Soul/Blues/ and Proto Electronic Shelf:
Klaus Schulze + Pete Namlook – The Dark Side of the Moog Vol I-IV
Music From Some Guys in Space (Fan-Made Box Set)
FAX +49-69/45046 / Carpe Sonum - Die Welt Ist Klang: A Tribute to Pete Namlook
Lemon Jelly – lemonjelly.ky
Lemon Jelly – Lost Horizons
Lemon Jelly – '64-'95 DVD box
The KLF Recovered & Remastered Collection (with new titles I'll be featuring soon!)
and the Buckner & Garcia - "Pac-Man Fever" square pic disc

As for the contents of the record bin; I think I covered each of these in the vid… but let me know if you're wondering about any titles in particular!

Thanks so much for watching and extra-special thanks to my dear fiance for doing the impossible year after year!

Thanks for taking the time to make a video. You really know your stuff!

Looks like you've got a nice apartment with a lot of character. It's nice to get to know you better!

Great setup! You have some awesome pieces, and I love the layout, the photos of your musicial icons in particular stood out to me.

Thank you both! It's just wonderful to have anyone interested in my bizarre subject matter.

Thanks! Believe it or not, I'm actually a homeowner. It's a very modest dwelling but we've filled it with our thrifted findings and made quite a cozy home out of it. Here's a quick tour!

Very happy to see The Great Destroyer! Such an underrated album for Low, just so beautiful and calming.

Also, what's your camera setup like? I thought it was weird how the farther away parts were kind of jerky, but the foreground was really smooth and clear. I think it's be really cool to use whatever that is on a short film, couod you fill me in?

Oh, sorry! So that's just one room, then? Your music den? I wish I had room in my house for something like that. I'd have a combination music/gaming room.

Thanks for the feedback - it was a unique technological anomaly, but I'll fill you in.

I tried shooting the vid with my Nexus 7 2nd Gen tablet. The lens did a terrible job of maintaining focus as I flipped through the LPs so I got creative and grabbed my Sony Cybershot 7.2MP beast from January of 2005. For as old as it is, the massive thing is a tank and takes fantastic stills in low to medium light environments - perfect for the hundreds of shots I take of my vinyl acquisitions.

The camera features a video function, and I found that despite its lower resolution, the lens did an impressive job at keeping focus. The vid is a one-off first take, and when I uploaded it to YT the site detected some shakiness in the vid and offered to auto-center the frames. The result is the vid you saw.

It is a gaming room as well. I picked up an archive of every North American and Japanese gaming title released from the Commodore 64 on up through the N64. Every Atari, Master System, GBA, Nintendo, Snes, Genesis, Turbo GFX, and ZX Spectrum title as well as all the upright arcade titles from the arcade era.

I generally use Snes USB controllers, but have considered an X arcade 4-player joystick for classics like Turtles in Time and Simspons the Arcade Game.

Evening Listening Update: I Hate Stuff
 

Really enjoying the leftfield atmospheric acid-tinged sounds of The Future Sound of London's Environments series and Carbon Based Lifeforms' early albums on the Ultimae Records label.

http://i.imgur.com/McAK9Z3l.jpg

I thought to myself, "You know, these albums are fantastic explorations of silence and near-silence. Many were only released on compact disc and there's no reason to be a format snob... I'd enjoy having these albums in my physical library."

But goddamn it, even these CDs - a format at the edge of extinction - are $60-$90 on the used market.

Curse me and my specialized tastes!

http://i.imgur.com/gXbMBl0l.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/jaTfjkTl.jpg

Interesting... I'll have to figure out how to emulate this somehow.

I've been on a Carbon Based Lifeforms kick lately.

Say, does your name come from the previous name for Can?

An astute observation, Hawk! While the name of Can's castle studio was indeed Inner Space, the origin of my UN is actually derived from a snippet of the stream-of-consciousness lyricism of Underworld's Karl Hyde.

As a teen, their album, Dubnobasswithmyheadman was the very first record I heard outside of the sphere of top 40 radio rock, and it opened my mind to all the critical musical explorations which followed.

Also, the album's packaging, created by Tomato (the band's internationally-acclaimed design collective), directly inspired my pursuit of a design degree.

Great stuff!

New birthday tech!
 

I’ve come to realize that very little of my online activity ever benefits from mobile view. I know that mobile is the norm, but writing articles, reading papers, research, using forums like MB (a nightmare on mobile), database updates… all of these are an uphill battle on a phone or a tablet. And as I work heavily within the Google apps framework (Docs, Sheets, Cal, Keep, Chrome, Drive, Photos, Gmail, etc), a Chromebook is an excellent (and affordable) solution.

I gave the wireless keyboard dock a fair shot with my tablet, but two persistent issues remained:

• I found that I type far too fast for the keystroke capture over Bluetooth

• vBulletin on mobile is hell. Have you ever tried to bracket on a tablet?

So I sold enough freelance design to cover the Samsung Chromebook 3 and it arrived this morning for my upcoming birthday! Best of all - it fits in my manbag alongside the tablet which I can now use as a dedicated e-reader.

I’m looking forward to getting more done while cuddled up, working side-by-side with my favorite fellow writer!

http://i.imgur.com/ZgLyVTyl.jpg?1

The badassary continues!
 

The new addition to my tech family has been officially named - the Chromebook is henceforth dubbed, "Rover" with a login avatar of the namesake giant white orb capturing Number 6.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...risoner%29.jpg

But the next critical question was how to personalize Rover and make it truly my own?
A good friend suggested a custom graphical skin and there was no question as to what design to use. I've Just ordered it from decalgirl.com.

My new favorite bit of tech will soon be boldly emblazoned with John Warwicker's universally-acclaimed design work for Underworld MkII's debut on Junior Boys Own from 1994 - one of the most memorable works of the Tomato Art Collective.
The piece which directly inspired my pursuit of a design degree, produced for the album which first exposed me to music beyond top 40 and flung open the doors of my mind to all the discoveries which followed.

Ladies and gentlemen - Dubnobasswithmyheadman.

The outside face of the opened laptop:

http://i.imgur.com/7WRHZzD.jpg

and the keyboard overlay:

http://i.imgur.com/zE48KnK.jpg

What good is tech if you can't have a bit of fun with it?

Celebrating my birthday as only an insane design fanatic could!
 

In fulfillment of the prophecy... it has arrived.

Today I celebrate my fast-approaching birthday with the aforementioned album that started it all for me.

Shamelessly celebrating as only a lunatic designer can... with a shrine of custom-printed tees, buttons, concert memorabilia, the original UK LP, the 20th Anniversary deluxe edition, the WaxTrax US compact disc, and the custom album art skin for my new Chromebook which arrived today!

Thank you, Underworld for sticking with me for 20 beautiful years.

http://i.imgur.com/CkfY8E8h.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/D13x2KJh.jpg

PS I'm insane.

Wow! You sure do have a crush on Underworld. :)

Well over 500 of their albums, EPs, singles, solo projects, side gigs, and live performances in my library, along with a hefty collection of the art books published by The Tomato Design Collective, I think it's safe to say that I'm a bit of a fan.

Where do you get the money for that stuff?

Awesome looking gear! A tad insane sure, but I think we're all a little too into music over here, so who is judging, right?

Many of the titles among the ~550 are demos, works-in-progress, art installation pieces, and other non-commercial recordings not made available to the public. I've built an archive of these, somewhat out of my devotion to a band which flung wide the door of my mind to strange and wonderful sounds.

Out of the 150,000+ recordings and films in my catalog, I'd estimate that ~35% (approximately 52,000) are works not available to the public at any price, so my investment has been small.

The vast majority of the items in my library are commercial works which have been out of production for the last half century, so I purchase them from resellers in their country of origin, or sometimes I have to settle for an independently-sourced archival FLAC + .CUE.

I take home about $24,500 a year - a very modest income for a homeowner. So I do my best to limit my music investments to about $1200 a year. It's a good balance.

The good news is, I have resources at my disposal to custom print most anything I desire , so all the imprinted merch and poster prints that fill my home are made by me on the cheap.

Damn. You ain't just whistling Dixie.

Daydreams of Exile - An Exploration of Dub Techno
 

This weekend's musical exploration began, and it so often does, with a single catalyst. That agent was the arrival of the latest addition to The much-hailed KLF Recovered & Remastered series, titled, The KLF Remix Project (Part One) This limited edition promotional comp features an assortment of delicious deep cuts and rare and exclusive mixes breathing new life into the long-deleted KLF catalog.

http://i.imgur.com/waDGnaXl.jpg

One of my favorite selections from the comp is a surprising remix of "Me Ru Con"- an acapella track from The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu's 1987 What The ****'s Going On? LP. This is the album The KLF are pictured burning on their follow-up album, Who Killed The Jams? The Remix Project compilation presents Steve Rowlands' "Me Ru Con (WTF Mix)" which transforms the unassuming and humble recording into an ethereal mix of radio signals, steel drums, and atmospheric beats. The mix really gets you grooving and stirs all sorts of nostalgia for the legacy of the band. If you have the opportunity, pick up this comp (as you should all titles from the series). It does a fantastic job of filling the void left by the absence of the KLF. And for a remix comp the collection functions extraordinarily well as a cohesive piece - consistent with all of the releases in this fantastic series. The Remix album is packed with dark ambient dub and dub techno beats and fueled my aforementioned muse resulting in this weekend's discoveries.

https://innerspacelabs.files.wordpre.../hqdefault.jpg

Yearning for more dub techno greatness, I turned to my own archive and performed a search for genre values including "dub" + "techno". Surprisingly, there were a number of discographic archives from artists whose names were familiar but whose body of work had escaped me. Several online sources indicated that one of the resulting artists - Basic Channel were universally heralded as the founding fathers of the subgenre in Berlin in the early 1990s. Basic Channel is Mark Ernestus and Moritz von Oswald, who appeared in my library under the alias, Rhythm & Sound. Ernestus owns the Hard Wax store in Berlin and together, the duo has released numerous minimal dub 12-inch singles as Basic Channel, Cyrus, Round One/Two/Three/Four/Five and other aliases. This is an ideal starting place to familiarize yourself with the genre.

Basic Channel - "Lyot Rmx"

Finnish electronic musician and producer Sasu Ripatti creates dub techno albums as Vladislav Delay, and interestingly intersected with Basic Channel member Moritz von Oswald where he provided percussion for a series of LPs released as The Moritz Von Oswald Trio between 2009 and 2012.

Oswald also collaborated briefly with Thomas Fehlmann as Schizophrenia. They issued on lone split single - a self-titled track on the b-side of Sun Electric's "Monolith" in 1995, but the track is a stand-out classic. And listen close - the single samples Ash Ra Tempel's [I]"Sunrain"[I], the opening track from New Age of Earth from 1976.

Schizophrenia/Schizophrenia

Andy Stott is another dub techno artist from Manchester. His work began around 2005, but his most critically-acclaimed recording is his 2012 LP, Luxury Problems, receiving awards from both Resident Advisor and from Pitchfork Media.

Andy Stott - Luxury Problems [Full Album]

Digging further into my library I discovered Canadian electronica musician Scott Montieth's work as Deadbeat as well as his collaboration with Paul St. Hilaire from 2014 titled The Infinity Dub Sessions.

Deadbeat and Paul St. Hilaire - Infinite Dub Sessions [Full Album]

Also well-represented in my collection was Rod Modell and Stephen Hitchell's catalog performing as cv313 on the Echospace label. Modell's solo project under the moniker Deepchord is also fantastic, particularly his releases from the series of "Deepchord Presents Echospace" albums produced with Souldubsounds owner Steven Hitchell (aka. Soultek). Discogs notes that these recordings were "produced using nothing but vintage analog equipment, Roland Space Echo, Echoplex, Korg tape delay, vintage signal processors, noise generators, Sequential Circuits 8 bit samplers & numerous analog synthesizers" featuring an array of "sounds, static, tones and field recordings, including paranormal activity captured and recorded in Chicago & Detroit.”

DeepChord Presents Echospace - Aequinoxium

Fluxion is another figure worth exploring in this category. A pseudonym of Konstantinos Soublis (aka K. Soublis), Fluxion is an electronic music producer from Athens Greece. The artist's profile states that his music "has a characteristic of slowly evolving parts and contemplating elements which form lengthy musical pieces. His sounds are heavily processed to a point where the origin of a sound has little to do with the end result." - soundscapes in which a listener may lose him/herself.

Fluxion - Vibrant Forms 2 (Chain Reaction) - 02 Bipolar Defect (CD2)

Berlin artists Robert Henke and Gerhard Behles performing as Monolake are also noteworthy, if not for their catalog perhaps for the fact that together they founded the Ableton music software company, responsible for instrument and sample libraries used by countless musicians over the last 15 years.

Monolake - Cyan I

One of the better-known German sound projects of the genre is Andy Mellwig and Thomas Köner's catalog performing as Porter Ricks (whose name is based on a character from the series, Flipper). Their sound is described as "a project that lies between clubs and art."

Porter Ricks - Nautical Dub

In fact, Köner also works as a multimedia installation artist and gained critical acclaim for his digital opera, The Futurist Manifesto.

Thomas Koner - Futurist Manifesto concert (Impakt 2009)

It's really wonderful to have a music library as a resource for genre explorations like this. And extra special thanks to those behind the KLF Recovered & Remastered series for the quality tunes which inspired this latest journey.

The Perks of Being a Music Blogger
 

After publishing my recent feature on a private press ltd ed abstract dub techno comp, the artist reached out to me, and as a way of saying "thanks" he's sending me the entire back catalog of the label!

And a brilliant journalist friend tapped me asking if I'd republish the feature on their NYC-based news site, (linked below).

I'm not looking to make a buck off my writing, but being paid in exclusive music and notoriety is certainly a delightful benefit!

Check out the article here. Cheers everyone!

Andy Stott was the only artist I recognized...but well done, you! :)

An early birthday gift arrived today from a dear friend. The new rug really brings together everything in my listening room/office!

http://i.imgur.com/ziBdU4hl.jpg

What a pretty little room. Looks comfortable!

That framed Beefheart goes hard.

Thanks! There's a framed Tom Waits opposite the Beefheart. You can see it in the tour of my listening room vid.

Nearly every framed piece in the room is a custom print I either designed or printed.

Inb4 hawk's anti-waits rant.

nah. I'm not going there here. Journals are sort of a personal space.

Respect.

I'm trying to learn it.

Celebrating my Birthday Proper
 

Today I turned 35. I'm of the Lucky Ones - those born at the cusp of the digital age where we were children of the 80s who played outside and performed other "analog" activities, but who also grew up with the internet, vintage gaming, coding, and the birth of mobile tech.

I decided to celebrate my 35th like a proper 80s child - by building a blanket fort and playing board games inside with my fiance. She also gifted me my favorite Fisher Price Little People from the Sesame Street playset - Grover and Roosevelt Franklin! I'll have a blast getting the rest of the band back together in the year ahead.

The fort:

http://i.imgur.com/SsxeDk6l.jpg

The gift:

http://i.imgur.com/M35RNqpl.jpg

And a selfie of the 80s child at 35:

http://i.imgur.com/iLkIEObl.jpg

Happy birthday to me!

Awesome! Happy belated birthday dude!

Trying to resist.....

Trying......

Ugh....

**** it.

Way to unsubtle the reference.

:) I thought it smelled funny.

BECOMING BRITISH: Day 1
 

After receiving a box of Great British Tea and a tin of assorted biscuits from a friend overseas I began to ask myself why I was repeatedly subjecting myself to weak generic American mud coffee day after day. As of late, I've found myself watering down the coffee as much as I can and diluting it with Almond Milk. I then further mask its taste by dumping in an excessive amount of sugar. What the Great British Tea quickly revealed to me is that all this time I've been trying to make my coffee taste like tea!

Today I replaced my 3 daily cups of discount shop work-day coffee with a few cups of black tea with cream and a tiny dash of sugar. Almost instantly, my usual anxiety subsided, my pace slowed, and I found myself enjoying the tea instead of pouring coffee down my throat.

But something important was missing from this first day of making the switch. And that was the accompanying proper English biscuit. Thankfully, our area Wegmans had an Emergency English Kit in stock in their international section. Now I'm ready to perform the sacred ritual as it should be.

http://i.imgur.com/VNyYU6sl.jpg

I've always wanted to try these http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/...3180200771.jpg