Recently, the groovy folks over at It's coming out of your speaker have completely and unreservedly outdone themselves. They're currently serving up heavy weekly doses (on rapidshare) of vintage & classic dub, reggae and dancehall records that you'd snatch up in an instant at any physical record store. There is also the smattering of Afrobeat, samba and Batacuda. Each post is complete will full liner notes and images. I made the above collage from images of the various postings.

This rabbit hole goes deep, and is worth the cost of a rapidshare account.

Thanks to man pikin for the tip!

Starting last month, the folks at Auralism teamed up with Alland Byallo (KontrolSF | Comfort Sessions | Nightlight, etc) to run his Proton Radio show, now called “Auralism presents Comfort Sessions”.

Ruoho Ruotsi submitted his phoenix landing liveset that is now featured on the Comfort Sessions page. Enjoy!

This is a fascinating article on what happens when in the brain when (Jazz) musicians switch from playing heavily rehearsed material to free improvisation.

Wiring up accomplished musicians to an fMRI machine and having them play from memory, then improvise, neuro-scientists observed that during improvisation, the section of the brain responsible for self-monitoring (one's performance) shuts down completely, while the smaller prefontal cortex in charge of self-initiated ideas and impulses (common during dreaming) is unusually active. I love the analogy to a ball player, “over thinking” a jump shot.

Short of reading the actual paper, Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation, here's a choice blurb from the scientificblogging article that summarizes the essence:

Moreover, the researchers found that much of the change between improvisation and memorization occurred in the prefrontal cortex, the region of the frontal lobe of the brain that helps us think and problem-solve and that provides a sense of self. Interestingly, the large portion responsible for monitoring one's performance (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) shuts down completely during improvisation, while the much smaller, centrally located region at the foremost part of the brain (medial prefrontal cortex) increases in activity. The medial prefrontal cortex is involved in self-initiated thoughts and behaviors, and is very active when a person describes an event that has happened to him or makes up a story. The researchers explain that, just as over-thinking a jump shot can cause a basketball player to fall out of the zone and perform poorly, the suppression of inhibitory, self-monitoring brain mechanisms helps to promote the free flow of novel ideas and impulses. While this brain pattern is unusual, it resembles the pattern seen in people when they are dreaming.