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Interesting Podcasts and Interviews

Background, context, and transcript: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/07/09/sylvia-plath-spoken-word-tulips-bbc/

Sylvia Plath reads "Tulips": A Rare BBC Recording

See the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIVFYp5AUKU

Professional recording is now available on iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad as well as the Mac. Apogee Quartet, the new Apogee Duet and new Apogee ONE can now easily connect to your iPhone and iPad. Not only can you connect, but with the new Apogee Maestro app you have all the same controls as you do on the Mac.

Erick Serna and the Killing floor record "Whisky Song" using ONE, Duet, and Quartet with Auria on iPad. Erick records his guitar and vocals using ONE, and then exports from Auria into dropbox. Julio and Cliff then download on to their iPad and record bass and drums using Quartet.
Julio recorded his bass direct. On Cliff's drums they used a Nuemann U67 over the kit and another in front. D112 on kick and SM57 on snare.
As Erick says "Apogee has really turned my iPad and iPhone into professional recording devices"

learn more: www.apogeedigital.com

Erick Serna & The Killing Floor Record "Whiskey Song" on iPad with Quartet, Duet and ONE

Background, poem text, and context: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/08/09/charles-bukowski-reads-friendly-advice-to-a-lot-of-young-men/

Charles Bukowski reads his "Friendly Advice To A Lot Of Young Men"

In Britain, Growth of Urban Beekeeping May Be Hurting Bees

The cheapest of new technologies is bringing light into hundreds of thousands of homes in the developing world, with virtually zero environmental impact. Host Marco Werman reports on the "Moser lamp," which captures sunlight in a plastic bottle filled with water.

For the Developing World, Innovation on the Cheap: Light in a Bottle

credits to Blauni music official
Livemittschnitt Konzert "Bye Bye Mein Herr...." 08.05.2012, Beethoven Gedenkstätte, Wien

Alle Tage- Ingeborg Bachmann

T.S. Eliot reads from his 1930s classic, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. Poem text, background, and other goodies here: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/09/26/t-s-eliot-reads-the-naming-of-cats-1947/

MORE / POEM TEXT

T. S. Eliot reads "The Naming of Cats" from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Background and context: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/09/27/anais-nin-reads-from-diary/

Anaïs Nin reads from her famous diary (1966)

Taken from the alum 'Goodbye'.

How to describe Ulrich Schnauss's music? Let's see. It's shoegazing heroes. Slowdive headlining a rave. It's krautrock plunging headlong into the celestial raptures of the Cocteau Twins. It's U2 if Brian Eno had ousted Bono and commandeered the band in 1985. It's Balearic with a view of the Baltic instead of the Mediterranean. It's art-techno for the heart as well as the head. It's stadium chillout, as immense as a festival field and as intimate as a bedroom. It's celebration and catharsis. It's vapour trails and meteor showers. And it's very, very good.
 
So far, the quietly spoken German who creates this music has operated beneath the radar. His first two albums, 2001's Far Away Trains Passing By and 2003's A Strangely Isolated Place, worked their way into record collections by stealth. People heard tracks played by Rob Da Bank or Tom Middleton, or chanced upon him on stage at the Big Chill or Bestival, or heard about him from friends. However they discovered him, they were hooked. XFM's Lauren Laverne called A Strangely Isolated Place "a life changer everyone I have forced to buy it loves it."
 
Ulrich's third album, Goodbye, is his first for Independiente. It is also the end of a chapter in his sound. "I see these three albums as moving closer to something I wanted to do right from the beginning but didn't quite manage," he says. "Merging songwriting and indie elements with electronic music. I've tried to take all the ideas to the maximum."
 
So the ambient tracks are more spacious, the songs more memorable, the multi-layered, guitar-heavy tracks more ragingly psychedelic. Just listen to the obliterating rush of Medusa, or the cloudbusting dream-pop of Stars (performed by long-time collaborator Judith Beck). At times, there are over 100 different audio tracks playing simultaneously: a tower of song. No wonder Goodbye has taken three solid years of in the studio.
 
If Ulrich hailed from somewhere less boring, things might have been different. Fortunately, he was born in 1977 in Kiel, an unprepossessing city on Germany's Baltic coast best known for its naval base. It seemed to the young Ulrich as if everything important was happening elsewhere.
 
He explains, "I was talking to Andrew Sherriff from Chapterhouse and he told me that being from Reading had a significant influence because the place was so shit that you had to create beautiful music to get out of that state of mind. I'd say the same thing for me. Kiel is probably the most boring, ugly place in the world. The whole city is grey concrete. Places like that inspire you to create something that elevates you out of reality for a few minutes."
 

Bands didn't tend to play in Kiel, but at least the NME arrived regularly at the train station, albeit four weeks late, and the british forces radio station was good. Around 1990, Ulrich discovered electronic music and shoegazing simultaneously: the Orb alongside My Bloody Valentine, 808 State next to Ride, Shades Of Rhythm beside Slowdive. He also followed up every artist namechecked by LFO in their 1991 single What Is House?: Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, YMO His core ideas about music were forged there and then.
 
"For me that was the magic of those days," he says. "You couldn't say if a band was electronic or rock. I'm not interested in purist ideas. I like it when things you don't expect merge and mix and something new comes out of it."
 
And because he never got to see his heroes in the flesh, they maintained an aura of mystery and wonder. "You make up your own idea of how things are. For me that whole early '90s scene was something I imagined, like a fairy tale - an alternative reality to what I was experiencing."
 
Ulrich worked as a psychiatric nurse as part of his national service. After that, he moved to Berlin, where he tried in vain to become accepted by the electronic scene. "I felt really isolated. I desperately tried to integrate but it just didn't work. I was trying to marry what I wanted to do with what was trendy at the time and I always ended up with a foul compromise. So I thought I might as well do what I want to do."
 
After a few years of watered down, pseudonymous productions which he'd rather you didn't seek out, Ulrich released Far Away Trains Passing By on the dauntingly hip City Centre Offices label. He was amazed they even wanted to release it; more amazed still when it became a cult success. With its abundant charm and unabashed optimism, it was the most pleasantly surprising electronic debut since Boards of Canada's Music Has The Right To Children.
Its more rock-influenced successor, A Strangely Isolated Place, received an even warmer response, from critics and other musicians alike. It led to Ulrich remixing some of his shoegazing heroes (Neil Halstead and Rachel Goswell of Slowdive, and Mark Gardener of Ride), as well as Depeche Mode, Justin Robertson, Lunz (Hans-Joachim Roedelius), and Longview.
 
Tired of the Berlin scene, Ulrich moved back to Kiel to make Goodbye. Most of his schoolfriends had moved away, so he didn't have to worry about distractions. His last two album titles spoke of isolation, but was that the pain of enforced loneliness or the comfort of voluntary solitude? Goodbye is equally ambivalent. "Emotionally, I find farewell situations interesting," he says. "Saying goodbye can be tragic or hopeful."
 
Like its predecessors, Goodbye constructs its own world, vast and vivid. When he's making music, Ulrich sees colours: one song might be red, another blue. Next time, he wants to "record an album based on more traditional electronic music structures - which could enable me to merge all these different influences beyond recognition". Meanwhile, this is the album he's been moving towards for over a decade: a sonic tour de force, an alternative reality, a life-changer.

Ulrich Schnauss - Stars

"April is the cruellest month..." In a rare recording from 1933, T.S. Eliot reads an extract from The Waste Land. Part of The Waste Land app for iPad, now available to download in the App Store: http://bit.ly/kJATn3

T.S. Eliot reads The Waste Land (The Burial of the Dead, extract)

Background and poem text: http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/24/mary-oliver-reads-wild-geese/

Recorded by the Lannan Foundation in 2001.

DETAILS / POEM TEXT

Mary Oliver reads "Wild Geese"

Maya Jane Coles – ‘What They Say’

http://www.beatport.com/release/what-they-say-ep/1398492
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/what-they-say-ep/id948342759

Buy on Beatport

What They Say

TS Eliot - The Naming Of Cats at emasalo

Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan talk with Music Designer, Janica Quach, about their album, Goat Rodeo Sessions. 

Visit Mood's site: http://www.moodmedia.com
Read Mood's blog: http://blog.moodmedia.com
Like Mood on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/moodmedia
Follow Mood on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/moodmedia


Goat Rodeo Sessions (Yo-Yo Ma, Chris Thile, Edgar Meyer, and Stuart Duncan) Interview

Lovers Rock Deep House Instrumental, Straight From The Bassment With The City's Pressure, And The Love Of Family To Heal.  Hubble Your Heart, Shield Your Soul Believe Peace For Earth

Think You Know Me Better

Excerpt from Jeff Goldsmith's Q&A with Ray Bradbury, recorded at Comic Con 2010. Discussion and other highlights here: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/09/04/ray-bradbury-comic-con-interview/

Full audio here: http://www.theqandapodcast.com/2012/06/ray-bradbury-q.html

Ray Bradbury on (Not) Growing Up

For full poem text, plus Eliot on idea-incubation and the mystical quality of creativity, go here: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/09/26/t-s-eliot-on-creativity/

T.S. Eliot Reads "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

Sylvia Plath reads "A Birthday Present." Written in September of 1962, recorded in October. Background and full text: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/10/29/sylvia-plath-reads-a-birthday-present-1962/

Sylvia Plath Reads "A Birthday Present" (1962)

From a BBC radio segment broadcast on April 29th, 1937. Background and transcript:http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/04/29/craftsmanship-virginia-woolf-speaks-1937/ 

MORE/TRANSCRIPT

On Craftsmanship: The only surviving recording of Virginia Woolf's voice

Story: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/02/18/sophie-blackall-debbie-millman-interview/

Excerpt from Design Matters with Debbie Millman: https://soundcloud.com/designmatters/design-matters-with-debbie-133

Subscribe to Design Matters on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-debbie-millman/id328074695

Sophie Blackall on Design Matters with Debbie Millman: The Whale at Coney Island

Andrea Wenger & Paplow - Greenless (Original Mix) DS005 2013 - FREE DOWNLOAD 

Deep soul house 4 your heart...

Andrea Wenger & Paplow - Greenless (Original Mix) DKZ005

Background and transcript: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/03/21/ernest-hemingway-1954-nobel-speech/

Portrait of Hemingway by Yousuf Karsh

Ernest Hemingway's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 1954

De Profundis by Georg Trakl, read in German, then in English Translation

De Profundis by Georg Trakl translated and read by Mark Johnson

Excerpt from Orwell's fantastic 1946 essay outlining his 11 "golden" rules of tea perfection: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/14/george-orwell-a-nice-cup-of-tea/

TRANSCRIPT / DETAILS

George Orwell on how to make the perfect cup of tea

An inspiring commencement address delivered to the graduating class at San Jose State University. Transcript and discussion: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/15/debbie-millman-look-both-ways-fail-safe/

MORE

Debbie Millman: Fail Safe

Annotated highlights and discussion: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/29/joss-whedon-2013-wesleyan-commencement-address/

Be All Your Selves: Joss Whedon's 2013 Wesleyan Commencement Address

T.S. Eliot reads from his celebrated classic, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/06/04/t-s-eliot-reads-t-s-eliot-the-ad-dressing-of-cats-1947/

T.S. Eliot reads "The Ad-dressing of Cats" from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

Hemingway wasn't great at reading lit out loud. He over pronounces everything and tends to pace it differently than you'd hear it in your head if you were reading it to yourself. But it does shed some light on the way he put thoughts together on the page when you hear him reading it. 

T. S. Eliot reads "The Naming of Cats" from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats

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