Check out this snazzy bit of Flash handy work. The intro is pretty slick take on the animated style of the recent feature, Les Triplettes de Belleville.

I bought my first iPod today ... 20 GB of white and aluminum sleekness. It is a gift for an injured cousin I'll be visiting in the UK next week[end]. He's bedridden for the next bunch of months. I'm currently ripping and transferring as much music, comedy and home-family-minidisc recordings as I can muster. Destination: the world's biggest, tightest, freshest we-love-you-get-better-soon mixtape.

In the last month, I've really been digging into the guts of Reaktor. In part because I've needed to make the time and because I'm on my way up the learning curve as I finish up some of the last bits of Galileo.

Initially one of the most frustrating things was being able to have complex sequence and modulation parameters from a friendly “control center”. On one hand, I really wasn't into trusting my own cushy-chair timing for sequence generation, but then making and importing sequences from some non-Reaktor tool was too large of a context switch. On the third hand, many of the “tables” or other widgets for note/data entry were to small and un-ergonomic for me to really get “into” and enjoy thoroughly.

In my frustration, I posted a lil' sump'n sump'n on the Reaktor board and was pointed to lost-online Studio instruments. These patches were godsends. I can now happily sequence and modulate everything from note and controller data, to presets, in a comfortably big window, and can plug and play these instruments into any new patch. Sweet.

This time I didn't have to bite the bullet like back in 2001, when 6 months before Ableton Live was released, I wrote a gargantuan MAX/MSP patch and a handful of abstractions to sync asynchronous input/MIDI events to large banks of seamlessly looping audio clips at a given tempo. I learned a lot, but the tool was way too unwieldly.

I can't make heads or tails of it now, and has thankfully been archived for posterity.

It is common knowledge that the etymology of term Rock 'n' Roll, is undoubtedly sexual. The rock refers to the good ol' va-et-vient, and the roll presumably a mid-mambo position change. Blues standard “My Baby Rocks Me with a Steady Roll” and Ray Brown's 1947 “Good Rockin' Tonight” were popular around the time when Alan Freed coined the term for the emerging style.

I wasn't aware, however, of the origins of the term Jazz, its sexual connotation, distinctly more pejorative. This might be explained by its link to Blackness or perhaps because the music had its origins in the finer New Orleans brothels that offered both sex and music.

Equally fascinating are the origins of the terms gig and jelly roll.

I didn't know what a dervish was when I encountered this section of dialog from Meet Joe Black, in one of the few times the writers “got it right”.

“There's not an ounce of excitement, not a whisper of a thrill. This relationship has all the passion of a pair of tit-mice. I want you to get swept away, I want you to levitate, I want you to sing with rapture and dance like a dervish.

I say fall head over heels, find someone you can love like crazy and who'll love you the same way back. How do you find [her]? Well, you forget your head and listen to your heart, and I'm not hearing any heart”

So that's this hapless romantic's renewed resolution this year, to levitate (au naturel thank you wery much), croon with rapture, dance à deux like dervishes ... and most of all be wide open to being deliriously happy. Crazy. Folle. head over heels. All heart.

There's an interesting discussion-dialog going on between Tim Finney (skykicking) and Simon Reynolds about the [d]evolution of 'ardkore, jungle and techstep in relation to their rhythmic danger. I especially like Simon's term, the Zone of Fruitless Intensification (ZFI), in other words, a region of diminishing returns along some musical axis.

Simon and Tim point out that rhythmic danger is not all about speed or increases in tempo, neither does more complexity necessarily mean more danga. There are other factors involved, like bass motion and the interplay (tension build up'n'release) between the various percussive lines ... and the predictable unpredictability of it all. Compare this feeling to straight up flavours (e.g. early house) in which the aesthetic isn't big on the danga-zone and where although you might be grooved, there's not the same sense of urgent anticipation, tenseful restlessness that made certain jungle styles, some garidge and broken beat so exciting.

Also important is when these various potentially hazardous elements come together to define a new style, sub-style. Understandably, after you've been subjected to something for a coupla years and its 1001 knockoffs ... whatever it was that tickled you darker brown, most likely isn't going to do it for you in the same dosage, except maybe in a nostalgic sense. A “higher dosage” is often required and this is where the ZFI becomes important. Simon and Tim argue that jungle and subsequently techstep latter-year higher dosages of speed and complexity, didn't carry on the danga legacy and the core of the initial attraction, resulting in something much less exciting and less musical.

So in what is becoming a regular sunday ritual, I made my way to the cinema this afternoon, for an irregular dose of regularity. Most waking hours, stacks of bugs to vanquish, riddims to sequence, tracks to master and schemes to scheme occupy my jammerjam, so no love was lost checking out for a couple.

I'd seen previews of the Australian film “Alexandra's Project” and read one or two good reviews, at least enough to put it ahead of other cinematic triteness running rampant out there. After paying my money and styling myself out with a medium coke, I noticed a cover of a tune I'd overdosed on on my way back to the city at New Years playing over the loudspeakers. “First Cut is the Deepest”.

It is always kinda funny for me to notice music like this in these cavernous places. Typically I don't. And if I do, it takes me a second or two to orient myself. Not the case tonite though. I immediately recognized the tune and made a note-to-self, to surf for the “contemporary adult artist” doing this cover. Needless to say, it turned out to be Sheryl Crow. My favourite version of this Cat Stevens (errr ... Yusuf Islam) classic is a Studio One (surprise!!) cover by Norma Fraser. An endearing mixture of the old skool ambiance, Jackie Mittoo's keyboard plunky funkyness and her amazing voice had me unhealthily auto-repeating this track for many miles speeding through upstate NY.

Back to my cinema story. So I saw “Alexandra's Project” and needless to say I don't think I've ever been shaken so non-violently. Back in November, I saw 29 Palms arguably the most violent film I've ever seen. Two women ran screaming from the theatre in one horrific scene five minutes from the end. Alexandra was much less violent, but very psychologically chilling. The director's use of surprise and fully developed “wrong paths” ... had the men in the audience sweating ... in a cold “Fatal Attraction” kind of way. While 29 Palms probably isn't ever going to have a general release, I'm sure glad this did. The film gives to meaning to that old phrase about hell, fury and a woman scorned.

Some minor personal irony in the nomenclature of the forthcoming year of the monkey. If the last couple of weeks are any indication, I better hold on tight for the ride.