LWA Blog — life without algorithms

Happy 65th birthday (born 30 July 1958) to one of my all-time favourite weirdos and overall super cool lady. Above is a pic of her filming in a water tank for a video sequence (for The Ninth Wave suite) that was included in her Before the Dawn shows in 2014. Probably the greatest concert I've ever attended. The word "concert" doesn't even do it justice. I also just made a 9-track playlist, 1 song from each album (Director's Cut doesn't count in this exercise). Kind of a sampler, I guess, for the uninitiated. You know, if anyone actually reads this and...

Didn't really consider myself a Kpop person, but a buddy tipped me to TWICE. Listened to some tunes I really liked, but KNOCK KNOCK is far and away my fave. This is pop perfection. Guess I'm on the bandwagon now. 

Julie Byrne's last album, Not Even Happiness, was my first encounter with her. Read a blurb and listened to it on a whim and it really clicked with me. If I remember correctly, the album came out in the fall of 2017. I looked her up and saw her tour was hitting SF in early 2018, so I just made it a point to try to make the gig and pick up the record there. The show finally arrived, she was the middle act on a three band bill. She was as good as I hoped she would be. After...

Happy birthday to Björk's Debut, released 30 years ago on this day (5 July 1993). I had followed The Sugarcubes at the start, I saw them on Saturday Night Live, wondering who was this girl and her incredible voice. Eventually saw them supporting U2's Zoo TV tour (92, I think). Then this album came out and what an unexpected turn this took. A cornucopia of influences on this album which somehow totally work, and it still sounds fresh today. Just an excellent album, through and through. Give it a shot if you haven't yet heard it.

Had some credit so I picked up Stuart Braithwaite's memoir. Looking forward to reading this, I fucking loved Mogwai way back. My first experience with them was catching the tour for Happy Music for Happy People. I didn't know who they were at the time and my roommate had an extra ticket, so I ended up tagging along. I left that room a changed person, what a mesmerizing show. Saw them multiple times after that, but I kinda fell off after The Hawk is Howling, when they started doing more soundtrack-y stuff. Which is weird because I love soundtracks and...