+ Pygmy Lush - Old Friends.

This album is a perfect mixture of the genre’s I’m interested in listening to lately.  Atmospheric downtempo folk-tinged music.  I think my musical tastes are starting to mellow out as I get older.  Pianos recently had the opportunity to play with these guys in Virginia and they blew me away.

Here’s a praising review from punknews.  My favorite track is Chance which you can listen to in that little music player above.

+ Transcendent Man

Transcendent Man is a documentary film (streaming on netflix) that follows inventor & futurist Raymond Kurzweil on a world speaking tour where he discusses his thoughts on the merger of man and machine.  The main focus of the film revolves around the concept of the singularity, a point in the future when artificial intelligence will overtake human intelligence, and the implications this will have on the human race.  Ray and a collection of other scientists give their utopian and distopian views on how this merger is going to play out.

While watching this documentary it struck me just how awesome Raymond Kurzweil is.  When he was 15 he coded a computer program that analyzed the works of classical composers and then generated it’s own music in similar styles.  In his twenties he created a reading machine for the blind using a technique called Optical Character Recognition, which scans a page of text and translates the text of that image into either brail or sound.  After a meeting with Stevie Wonder where he complained about how awful synthesizers sounded Kurzweil invented a new generation of music synthesizers that were capable of accurately recreating the sounds of traditional acoustic instruments.  At 35 he was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.  Unsatisfied with his medical treatment he stopped taking insulin and created his own supplement and diet regiment.  Now he shows no signs of diabetes.

He also plans on living forever.

What a great track record.

+  Michael Chrichton’s Prey

I’ve been dipping my feet into the sci-fi genre since my friend Zac introduced me to Orson Scott Card’s Enders Game series a few years ago.  Michael Chrichton is best known for authoring Jurassic Park.  Wikipedia says, “His literary works are usually based on the action genre and heavily feature technology. His novels epitomize the techno-thriller genre of literature, often exploring technology and failures of human interaction with it, especially resulting in catastrophes with biotechnology.”

If you’re into science fiction and want to read a disaster story about nano-technology and artificial intelligence that rises above human control and threatens the human race then give this a go.

Janine Conway filmed,edited and produced this short documentary on the beloved Charm City Art Space – a well known punk/hardcore/indie/whatever music and arts venue in Baltimore, MD.

It’s neat to hear from the venue organizers and attendees on why this venue has been/is still a really important space in Baltimore for musicians and artists.  It’s cool that she was able to conduct the interviews before the venue moved into the new Charm City Art Space building – which is actually right next door to the old space.