Knuckledragger

Gratuitous Quad post.

The Information Age doesn't have to suck (it just usually does.) All India Radio is an Australian space rock/downtempo/ambient/call-it-what-you-will band based in Tasmania. I've been an of them since I first heard a track off their remix album 20 years ago. last.fm tells me I have scrobbled them over six thousand fricken times(!) I'm Facebook friends with Martin L Kennedy (the main man behind AIR) because (A) I'm a nerd and (B) 15 years ago I really cared about FB enough to seek out the personal profiles of a bunch of electronic musicians I liked. For the most part, the people who make the music I've been obsessing over for most of my life are a group of interesting, thoughtful, worldly individuals. One or two have turned out to be cretins Mark Archer is a total jackass, who knew? MLK is certainly in that first category. He's a remarkably humble, down to earth man whose primary interest is making the music that it's in his head and we're all better off because of it. Today (well, technically yesterday, Tasmanian Standard Time) marks the the 20th anniversary of the release of AIR's excellent Echo Other album. It's one of my favorites by them. I saw MLK make a post about it with vintage photos of the recording process: Very neat, in a 2006 digicam kind of way. I jokingly commented on Martin's FB post "Need a picture of the Speak N Spell that's on the title track. 🤖" It's very audible throughout the song, starting around the 3:20 mark. I logged into FB this evening to check the local MV FB group and had a notification. MLK posted this photo(!) Coolest thing I've seen all ..year. This has been your "Knuckles has a genuine fanboy moment."

New vs. old. vs. miau.

Doctor Who Actor John Leeson, Voice of K-9, Passes Away at Age 83.

Goddamn. RIP Juan Atkins the godfather of Detroit techno.

Let's talk about Steely Dan. The boomer jazz rock duo who took their name from a steam powered dildo described in William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, best known for their super slick studio production. They were hugely popular with boomers housewives in the 70s and gained a significant following amongst aging boomers classic rock aficionados in the 80s and 90s. Their 1977 album Aja is considered a studio masterpiece by some, and the most wretched, excessive piece of wank imaginable by others. The late, great Steve Albini, a legendary punk rocker and and god tier record producer, absolutely loathed Steely Dan and Aja in particular. In the 21st century, Steely Dan is the source of ironic zoomer memes. Their albums have a following with audio snobs to tend to listen to equipment and not, you know, actual music. This can lead to some obsessive behavior (top comment: "jfc"). All of this is to say, I don't really like SD, at all. I had to endure them on the radio throughout my youth. I was in a hardware store a few years ago and they had their in ceiling speaker system up louder than usual. I got serenaded by "Do It Again" while I furtively looked for ant cups. That experience threw me in a depression for the rest of the day. I actually love 1970s music production. It's all analogue, full of optically compressed bass and often loaded with horn sections that are really well recorded. Obvious examples are Rev. Al Green's "Can't Get Next To You" and the 800 lb gorilla that is Stevie Wonder's "Superstition." Bonus points to Bobby Bland's Dreamer album. To their, uh, credit, Steely Dan managed to wankify 70s studio tech to the point that I find it physically uncomfortable to be around. A while ago, I was browsing the official YouTube channel of 70s music television show, The Midnight Special. It's a treasure. It has live segments, obvious lip syncing, and entire shows (one hosted by George Carlin!) They have a rare live performance by Steely Dan, featuring their original frontman David Palmer. This rendition removes more or less everything I loathe about the band. The slick studio sheen is gone. In my very jaded opinion, Palmer is both a better and more emotive singer than Donald Fagan. It's kind of hilarious what an absolute statue Walter Becker is on stage, especially as the rest of the band is making a considerable effort to be really into things. The guitar solo is still kind of wank, but that's the 2FA for knowing it's really Steely Dan. Not long after this performance, Fagan and Becker fired the rest of the band and became a masturbatory studio duo. It would be interesting to see what kind of band they would have become if they'd done the opposite.

The Hitachi DA-1000 (and associated clones) is one of the earliest and most prized CD players. It's method of loading the CD can't accurately be described as unusual (at the time there was no defined normal) but it's certainly a striking one. Working examples change hands for a tidy sum. Even nonfunctional units are near to look at. European market clone of the Hitatchi. The fragile but very interesting looking CD loading mechanism. When was the last time you saw a CDP with an output meter?

Elke Sommer, Actress in ‘A Shot in the Dark’ and ‘The Prize,’ Dies at 85. Just missed her 86th. She was a fascinating character. Stunningly beautiful, accomplished actor and talented singer. Apparently she had trouble with core subjects in school, but excelled at language. It has been my pet theory for decades now that had a learning disability.

The following is less porn in the "hubba hubba" meaning and more in the "fake, unsatisfying and containing gratuitous bulbous objects" sense. LampizatOr is a Polish based manufacturer of, ahem, "ultra high end" DACs, music servers and totally-not-snake-oil cables. They share a 90s l33t sp34k brand name similar to Switzerland's darTZeel (whom I have mocked mercilessly over the years.) Recently LampizatOr came out with a new DAC. It's called the Aphrodite, it has a bunch of tubes sticking out the top and can be yours for the low, low price is $105,000. Tariffs not included. The Aphrodite has tubes in places in the signal chain where tubes don't normally go. This "revolutionary" and "iconoclastic" design philosophy is enough to make one wonder where Mikhail Rotenberg scampered off to, but I digress... Anyway, on to the toobs like fake boobs: Pardon me for a second. All that and USB A?!? In twenty twenty fucking SIX? Get with the USB-C times, old man. The following photos were online in such absurdly large size that I had to scale them down, and I'm someone who shoots with a 45MP camera body. I have legit never heard of "XDMI" before. As someone with freakishly large hands and increasingly bad eyesight, this remote looks like pure pain to use. Thank you for watching TubeDAC ...Tube. Maybe next time I'll post some Polish gear I actually like.

Eric Bauza, Voice of Bugs Bunny & More, Dies at 46.

Tom Skerritt, everyman actor of ‘Alien’ and ‘Picket Fences’ fame, dead at 93.

RIP BioWare: EA has shut down the legendary RPG developer.

RIP "Office Space" actor Richard Riehle who has jumped to his last conclusion.