I usually post music that is easy on the ears and in my opinion will start your Monday morning off gently or some kind of pre festivities at home mix to listen to on a Friday right before you get the real deal at some venue with entertainment. Well its Wednesday and all I need is the strength to get me thru the weekday and Mogi Grumbles is all about getting us thru that by bangin’ out what he does best which is sharing his favorite disco french house songs. My favorite part about this mix is its a collection of songs that are classics that might catch anyone’s ear but a few surprises as well that come from a lot of crate digging since Mogi works at record store in Ann Arbor. Highlight track for me is Lifelike – Discomachine, reminds me of what Beamer would listen to on the way to the new Tron Legacy film screening.
TRACKLIST Sebastian – Dolami Thomas Bangalter – Night Beats Alter Ego – Beat the Bush (Ewan Pearson‘s Slow NRG Edit) Sebastian – Untitled Lifelike – Discomachine Daft Punk – Revolution 909 Le Knight Club – Rhumba Modjo – Roller Coaster Alan Braxe – Vertigo (Thomas Bangalter‘s Virgo Edit) The Phantom’s Revenge – Saturated Phat Impact Mr. Oizo – Gay Dentists Redman – I Hold the Crown (His Majesty Andre Gimme Back Da Crown Remix) The Lipsyncs – You Bring Me Up Stardust – Music Sounds Better With You (Juxx Remix) Kavinsky – Testarossa (Sebastian Remix) Boys Noize – Oh! (A-Trak Remix) Daft Punk – Alive
Gold Panda has been a busy remixer but finally got the chance to release original material. His efforts on Quitters Raga has a very current feel which isn’t bad to have, definitely has some unique world music sampling and mash up of tons of jerky editing in the sequencing of it, i’d maybe put it on a mix tape for a friend that needs something refreshing to listen to while they travel off into a hot destination.
Benjamin Curtis of Secret Machines and School of Seven Bells highly suggested Simple Minds to me one night weeks ago, I think I grabbed the wrong album but hey I definitely rediscovered and found some hits, gonna dig deeper now.
I love playing this DJ KO song for friends because of 2 reasons: A. its the only Talib Kweli song I have and everyone seems to love him so it always goes over well B. puts a smile on everyones face that hears it or they just always somehow start rapping along knowing every word.
This might be my favorite Dubstep track of all time, when I hear it I just want to open my window at my apartment and stick my head out and invite people over to dance around inside to it but obviously after the song is over everyone would need to leave quickly but during the song i’d be very friendly to the strangers in my apartment.
p.s. Sorry Scott for posting a triangle hipster cover on the blog, it was that or a bug holding a skull and I can’t even explain how bad the Simple Minds cover is.
Gold Panda – Quitters Raga
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Simple Minds – Someone Somewhere In Summertime
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DJ KO – Someday feat. Torae, John Robinson, Talib Kweli & Tiffany Paige
After all my recent hyping of SSD’s (Solid State Drives) I thought it was time to jump in and try one out first hand so I went downtown to Central Computers this afternoon and got an OCZ Vertex 120. I decided to post up my initial reactions and findings after dropping the Vertex into a Macbook Pro Unibody and installing OS X today. If you’re not really a technical person, still have a quick read through the numbers at the bottom because if you use a computer for anything creative (or for anything at all actually) and are looking to significantly boost performance, SSDs should be on your radar. If you have no clue what an SSD is, here’s a brief primer from an earlier post.
After a lot of research on the various SSD manufacturers I came to the conclusion that OCZ’s drives have the best performance/quality-to-dollar ratio. I went with their Vertex 120 drive not only because it’s very fast, but also because it uses the Indilinx Barefoot controller. The concept of an SSD controller may seem a bit esoteric, but it’s very important at this relatively early stage in the development of SSD technology. Inherent to all SSD drives is a tendency to build up “garbage” which can slow performance over time (if you want to know more about SSD “garbage”, read this). The Indilinx controller has a built in mechanism to deal with this garbage and keep the drive running at optimal speeds. The garbage collection runs while the drive is idle and is completely transparent to the OS or user. This capability makes the OCZ Vertex and other drives that run the Indilinx firmware arguably the most advanced SSD’s available at this time. Only firmware 1.30 and up supports this feature but luckily the Indilinx controller supports updates. The drive I bought came with firmware 1.10 but I was able to flash it to the latest 1.30 with relatively little hassle. Apparently all new Vertex drives are shipping with 1.30 stock; mine must have been a couple months old. Here’s the method I used to update the firmware: Bootable Free-DOS for Mac ISO w/ 1.30 FW update.
While the Vertex 120 is not by any means cheap ($389 for 120GB), it is much less expensive than many comparable drives from other manufacturers. It’s the first I’ve seen that offers this kind of performance for anywhere near this price. Of course, 120GB isn’t a lot of room, so you’re going to sacrifice storage space for the speed unless you want to put up the $720 for a 250GB model. I’m not too concerned with that as I’m using the Vertex for my MacBook Pro and I don’t store most of my media and large files on there. I typically use it for live shows where I just need very high read speeds and about 20GB of space. If you’re using a desktop computer, you could alternatively keep your large standard drive and use an SSD as the OS drive.
Bare drive - same form factor as a normal 2.5\
So I opened up the MacBook Pro and swapped out the old drive for the new SSD. This was very easy on the new unibody MBP and only took a few minutes. I then did a fresh install of OS X and booted up. Even after all the hype about SSD performance I was still amazed by the marked improvement in overall system performance I experienced. I could go into the minutiae of interacting with OS X running on the SSD, but suffices to say it is incredibly quick and surprisingly enjoyable.
So, on to the numbers: I did some really basic measurements to gauge the basic performance of the new drive and compared them to the original drive that came with the MBP. First I timed how long it took from power on to login screen. I chose this method so that the amount of startup items and installed apps on either particular machine wouldn’t effect the time.
Power On to Login Screen – MacBook Pro OS X With standard drive: 75 seconds
With Vertex SSD: 28 seconds
The boot time for the SSD was nearly triple the speed of the standard drive. But this doesn’t tell the whole story, boot times are dependent on a lot more than raw hard drive speed so even though the difference is impressive, it’s still not telling of how fast this drive really is. For that we need hard numbers. I used the free Xbench to measure the drive speeds and give a better picture of the wide chasm that separates these two drives.
Original Drive Scores (Stock Mac Hitachi 320GB) Overall Score: 34.13
As you can see, the SSD destroyed the standard drive in every conceivable way. The speeds I am seeing are nearly comparable to my RAID0 system which has 3 drives and a highpoint controller and cost me over double the amount I paid for the Vertex SSD. Throw in the fact that the Vertex uses hardly any power (great for notebook battery life) and has no moving parts to break down and you’re looking at a bargain. If you’re looking for a way to speed your rig up I highly advise looking into getting a SSD. Just keep in mind that SSD is a very nascent technology in the grand scheme of computing. If you don’t really need a drive now I would hold off a little and wait for the industry to develop. Prices have been falling very steeply while performance and disk space has steadily increased. If there’s one thing that consumer computer technology has taught us it’s that this trend will most definitely continue until SSD drives become the norm.
If anybody currently has an SSD let us all know your experiences in the comments.
Yesterday I saw Theo Parrish DJ, the man was an amazing DJ, he played everything that most people would be afraid to combine and play to a crowd but everyone loved everything he put down from Motown into Chicago Acid to Soul Funk into Hard Techno. I tried to Shazam(iPhone app that detects what song is playing) a lot that he was playing but I wasn’t getting much luck but below are a couple songs he did play and a couple that I just wanted to share to make this Monday move along a little happier.
Keep your ear out on some great parts like in the Marvin Gaye song what is that under water sonar echoed out sound? In Chick Corea’s Earth Juice, I want that guitar melody to wake me up every morning, soo good i’d let it loop for 20+ mins. The power of this Four Tops song, at 1:33 and the rest of that breakdown almost sounds like the first taste of what I think Chicago Acid is now with that muffled blown out tom sound. 9 mins of James Brown ramblin’ has never sounded so good, whenever now someone says “I don’t like electronic music is too repetitive” i’ll have to say “Oh, I get it you hate James Brown, no worries we don’t need to talk anymore, good day”
Said the Computer to the Specialist is a new book by Tom Rowe. It’s a collection of illustrations of analog recording equipment and long extinct super computers. Very stylish if you ask me. I would love to see some typography going on though — could really make some of these pieces. Nothing crazy, just some interesting titling to introduce some variety and that extra level of visual interest. Either way, some terrific illustrations.
Production is limited to 50 signed/numbered copies, so better act fast if you’re interested. Availible for purchase through Nobrow press.
Alphanumeric has a great set of Otl Aicher work including these artifacts from the 1972 Munich Olympics. As much as I love the posters from Munich, there’s something about the official stuff (tickets, badges, etc.) that might be even more fun to look at. I love how they combine form with function and you can never go wrong with serial numbers. It’s amazing to think that people defiled that beautiful luggage tag with their names and addresses. I guess that’s what makes these all the more interesting, the fact that most were destroyed by being used for their intended purpose.
Australia’s Tim Shiel aka Faux Pas runs a great blog, has a LP coming out soon and is a damn fine DJ with a very unique taste in good new music. Faux Pas recently sent me this mix as something to pass along to a blog but once I heard it I had to share it with the ISO50 blog family first, enjoy your weekend!
On a side note: I think there isn’t one mix out there without a Hudson Mohawke song on it.
TRACKLIST Arp – St. Tropez Elegi – Despotiets Vesen Dam-Funk – Galactic Fun Ka So Re – Shoes (Eero Johannes remix) Jason Forrest – Evil Doesn’t Exist Anymore Aoi – Floral Foam Megastick Fanfare – June Stranglets (Seekae remix) The Avalanches – Since I Left You (Cornelius remix) Charles Spearin – Mrs Morris Basement Jaxx – Raindrops (Joker & Ginz remix) Hudson Mohawke – Overnight Daedelus – Lights Out Chuncha Via Circuito – Prima Jean Michel Jarre – Zoolook Kraftwerk – Tour de France Mount Kimbie – Vertical Eero Johannes – Finnrexin Rustie – Tempered Qua – Ritmo Giallo Gershon Kingsley – Popcorn Moonbeam – Slow Heart Oh Astro – Candy Sun Smiles Electronic – Getting Away With It Jackson – Teen Beat Ocean Isolee – Enrico The Soft Pink Truth – Promofunk Bogdan Irkuk – Space Reflecting On The Bosphorous
