New Music to Get Excited About

A few new albums to watch out for:

  • My ongoing obsession with The Fall shows no signs of letting up, and neither does their resurgence of quality (despite the usual turmoil). Their new album is called Reformation Post TLC and is due out pretty soon. It includes a reworking of Coming Down by classic 60’s band The United States of America which I’m pretty keen to hear.
  • Speaking of bands that have been around forever, The Red Krayola must be getting close to their 40th birthday. As Mark E Smith is to The Fall, so is Mayo Thompson to the Red Krayola. A couple of years ago there was a compilation of singles from the 60’s up to the 00’s which reminded me of just how great and unique they are. Their last album Introduction got great reviews but I haven’t heard it yet. Now they have a new EP out called Red Gold. The casual listener should be warned that they are something of an acquired taste though. By the way, if anyone has any footage, recordings, posters, photos etc of The Red Krayola their record label Drag City is after material for a documentary. But don’t give it to them until they agree to reissue the out of print Silver Jews records. Don’t give in if they offer to reissue The Red Krayola’s Soldier Talk, they’re doing that in March anyway.
  • New York hip-hop group Dälek, whose last album featured the best shoegazer noise production since Kevin Shields went into hibernation to try and work out how to top Loveless, have a new one called Abandoned Language due out some time soon on Mike Patton’s Ipecac label.
  • Speaking of hip-hop, a group that I think doesn’t get enough recognition is TTC. Maybe that’s because not enough people speak French. Well, I’m working on it and I’ll see what I can understand of their new album 36 15 TTC as soon as I get my hands on a copy. Their anything goes attitude results in music that sounds like no-one else – French or otherwise. I would love to see them live but an Australian tour does not seem likely!
  • It’s quite some time since I’ve caught up with the music of Stefan Betke aka Pole. In the late 90’s his minimal glitch dub seemed to be all the rage, but he fell out of favour a bit and has been quiet for a while … actually he was always pretty quiet but you know what I mean. Not to say he hasn’t been active, his record label ~scape has put out some great stuff, particularly by Jan Jelinek. Now Pole is back in action with Steingarten and if David Stubbs’ review in The Wire is anything to go by (and on past experience it is) it is something of a return to form.

Coast to Coast

Adelaide cyclists might be interested in the Coast to Coast ride from Glenelg to Victor Harbor which is coming up in a couple of weeks. I’m considering it but I don’t know that I’m sufficiently prepared – after being sick last week, and then with hot weather this weekend, I haven’t been out riding much, and I haven’t done a ride of that length before, and haven’t done riding in the hills … but I should start on that this week at least. So anyway, Coast to Coast is looking unlikely for me but I’ll report back when I’ve conquered Mt Lofty by bike!

Update: The forecast is for 40 degrees! I’m glad I decided not to go. Good luck to my almost-teammates: The Don, Beetroot & Scares.

Update II: Sensibly the event has been cancelled due to the extreme weather.

IPCC AR4 commentary

The summary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change‘s Fourth Assessment Report has just been released. I’ll leave the commentary to some of the excellent climate change blogs:

RealClimate – The IPCC Fourth Assessment SPM
Open Mind – Summary for Voters (here’s my own shorter summary for voters – vote Green)

At DeSmogBlog they are all prepared for the attack of the think-tanks

Eli Rabbett is up for some bingo

For a local reaction head over to Road to Surfdom where the Australian Climate has no greater friend …

Upcoming Adelaide Events III: Adelaide Film Festival

The full program is out for the Adelaide Film Festival, as usual there is lots of interesting stuff. I had some admittedly unrealistic hopes for My Name is Albert Ayler in the music docs section, and for something new from Eric Rohmer in the World Cinema selection, but neither of those was ever really likely. If you have the time I suggest a 5 or 10 film pass (which come with 1 or daytime tickets respectively), though individual session tickets are also available.

Here’s some of the films that have caught my attention:

Bamako puts the World Bank and IMF on trial

The Bothersome Man “Not far beneath the clever surface of this film, you will find a cry of despair that will be familiar to anyone who has ever spent more than an hour in an Ikea showroom.”

Infamous the same story as Capote, which I thought was excellent. I’m curious to see a different account of the same events.

Lunacy, it’s years since I’ve heard anything about surrealist animator Jan Svankmajer. I really loved his versions of Alice and Faust, though this one doesn’t sound quite so appealing to me.

Modern Love, gothic Australiana. Could be worthwhile.

One Fine Day offbeat French comedy. I need to get to a at least a couple of French ones to help with my efforts to learn French.

Private Fears in Public Places new film by Alain Resnais, the Nouvelle Vague director who was responsible for the brilliant Last Year at Marienbad and Hiroshima Mon Amour

Special “A very select group of people in life are truly gifted. Special is a movie about everyone else.”

West drama set in the “suburban badlands west of Sydney”. I come from the western suburbs of Sydney … don’t know about “badlands” though! Might check this out.

Dr Strangelove or How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb truly one of the greatet movies of all time. I’ve probably seen it enough times that I’ll not see it here, but anyone who hasn’t seen it should!

First on the Moon I’m quite curious about this unusual sounding film about the Soviet Union and the space race.

What the Future Sounded Like documentary about pioneers of British electronic music, sounds great.

Black Gold a look at the global coffee trade that should have you buying fair trade from now on.

A Sunday in Hell one for the cyclists.

I do have one gripe about the festival – all of their advertising is a huge rip-off of The Residents who, while not exactly a household name, have been around for over 30 years, and have been using the eyeball masks for around 25 years.

The first great album of 2007?

Thanks to a mail-order mix-up mentioned in a previous thread, Ninja Tune were kind enough to send me a promo copy of the new Amon Tobin album, Foley Room. For quite some time I’ve considered Tobin to be one of the best artists around who construct music completely out of samples, but on this album he’s taken a slightly different approach. He still samples, but rather than using records as his source as in the past this time he uses field recordings of all sorts of things. There are animals, from lions to ants, also there are various machines, ranging from industrial equipment to toys, and all sorts of other things. On top of this he also recorded samples from musicians including the Kronos Quartet. All of this is not exactly groundbreaking, and in the accompanying documentary he admits as much, but it presented all sorts of new challenges and inspirations for him. The results are superb, the album fits in with his great back catalogue, but the new approach also has brought something fresh. It will be out in early March, in the meantime there is a single available as a download only from Bleep.

Maths Degrees at Half Price

The Labor party propose to halve the cost of maths and science degrees. An excellent suggestion, though in my opinion it doesn’t really get to the heart of the current problems with the mathematical sciences in Australia as outlined in this recent study (see also commentary on this at Larvatus Prodeo), the real problem is the massive funding cuts to universities by the Howard government which have hit less industry-oriented faculties like maths and pure sciences (and also others such as the Arts) particularly hard as universities depend more on outside funding. Furthermore there is a change towards more vocational courses (and less demanding ones) as universities compete for the student dollar, leaving the fundamental disciplines struggling.
So what has Howard done for the mathematical sciences lately? Well, he asked Australia’s first Fields medalist Terence Tao what country he was from. Of course if Howard knew more about the state of the mathematical sciences he’d actually ask “what country did you go to?” (link to PDF).

UPDATE: The education minister disagrees with Labor’s plan, basically because it won’t fix the problems … the problems that her Government created that is. The universities on the other hand are rather keen on the plan. Of course what the minister says is not in total disagreement with what I said, I also don’t think it will fix everything, but I do think that something has to be done and this would achieve some good.

[gigs] Mr Scruff, Mad Professor, The Evens (Ian MacKaye), Pivot

There’s a few new things worth mentioning – firstly Ian MacKaye formerly of Minor Threat, Embrace (the Washington DC proto-emo band, not the UK group) and Fugazi (who are on hiatus) has a new group called The Evens which is a duo with Amy Farina (formerly of the Warmers, with Ian’s brother Alec). They are playing on Saturday 17th February at somewhere called the urtext ballroom. I’ve never heard about it before, but a search turned up this blog where an address of level 2, 14 Grenfell St is given. Nice to see that someone else is spreading the word on Adelaide events (rather more comprehensively than I am), I’ll add a link to my sidebar.
Secondly the full WOMADelaide lineup has been announced and there is plenty more good stuff, in particular I’m very keen on Mr Scruff and The Mad Professor, both from the UK. Mr Scruff records for the always excellent Ninja Tune label (more about them below), and has contributed to their Solid Steel series, which are about the best DJ mixes around at the moment. Mad Professor is a dub producer ppossibly best known for his work with Massive Attack. I’ve also heard good things about Etran Finatawa from Niger.

Also in March, on the 3rd at the Rocket Bar, is a show by Sydney band Pivot. I saw them in Sydney once and can definitely recommend them, also I’ve been listening to their album Make Me Love You quite a bit and really enjoy it. They feature some mebers on Triosk who played a fantastic show at the Wheaty last year, but Pivot are less jazz than Triosk, they’ve got more of a post-rock vibe, Tortoise circa TNT. To be honest there are too many bands with that particular vibe (especially from Sydney, that ’98 tour seems to have had a particularly big effect there), Pivot are one that I can recommend seeing.
I won’t bother repeating the complete listing as I did in the emails, since it can easily be found here (by clicking on the gigs tag), instead I’ll just mention new items, and list anything in the immediate future as a reminder.

Finally, the what’s on the stereo bit. This week it’s a big pile of Ninja Tune promos that they sent me to compensate for an error in an order I got from them (except for the last item, and for the Hexstatic one which was in the original order)… I would say that they more than compensated for it, so thanks Ninja Tune!

Amon Tobin – Foley Room cd+dvd (Ninja Tune)
Mr Scruff – Mrs Cruff cd (Ninja Tune)
Hexstatic – Master View cd+dvd (Ninja Tune)
Daedelus – Denies the Day’s Demise cd (Ninja Tune)
Coldcut – Everything is Under Control cdep (Ninja Tune)
ZerodB – Bongos, Bleeps & Basslines cd (Ninja Tune)
Ammoncontact – With Voices cd (Ninja Tune)
Ollie Teeba – DJ Mix cd (Ninja Tune)
Steinski/Mr Scruff/Flexus – RolitoMix 3″ cd (Ninja Tune)
Four Tet vs Pole – Pole vs Four Tet EP 12″ (Leaf)

Desalination Plant for Adelaide

This week the South Australian opposition leader proposed a desalination plant for Adelaide, more detail here as well.

The model for the proposal is the recently constructed desalination plant in Perth. This plant has some excellent features, it uses reverses osmosis which is the most energy efficient method that we currently have for desalination, and it is powered by renewable energy (a wind farm). So why don’t I agree with the proposal?

The motivation seems to largely be political point scoring – trying to be populist by saying that they can get rid of the water restrictions. The overall goal has to be sustainability in our use of water resources. Our supply of fresh water is limited, so it is very tempting to make some more from the vast expanse of salt water nearby, but we have to realise that there is an energy cost involved in this. Often evaluations of whether a desalination plant is worthwhile compare the monetary cost of water from different options, but this fails to take into account that the cost of the energy used in desalination may increase. Really it is a matter of shifting from one resource (water) to another (energy), and while there may be instances where this is a sensible move (perhaps in Perth, but I don’t know enough about the situation there. The small scale plant at Rottnest Island certainly sounds reasonable). The opposition’s motivation here ignores the need for sustainability, rather they want everyone to continue with our current water usage – in particular they mention keeping our gardens green – but we have to think about whether sustaining gardens consisting of plants unsuitable for our environment is a sensible use of our energy resources.

If a desal plant was to be powered by renewable energy then why would this be a problem? We have to consider our overall energy usage. To deal with global warming we need to greatly restrict our CO2 emissions, and realistic models on how to do this involve a combination of the use of renewable energy, and a decrease in energy use via increased efficiency. Is it efficient using desalination to provide water? At the moment we are very wasteful in our use of water resources – and this is exactly a problem that water restrictions address. Rather than desalinating seawater to water our gardens we should reconsider what sort of gardens we should have. We should use rainwater tanks, and recycling of grey water, recycling of stormwater using wetlands (as is done by the City of Salisbury) and so on. We should make the most of the water that comes naturally first. Essentially I think that the task ahead of us in dealing with our energy usage is difficult enough as it is, without compounding it by using it to solve our water problems.
It may appear that some water recycling methods / tanks etc are more expensive, but these are long term solutions for achieving sustainability, rather than the band-aid solutions of desal which relies on our uncertain energy future, and if used to enable continued inneficient usage of water will eventually lead us back to the same point anyway – so why not look at reducing usage now, rather than getting more water. As we are forced to cut emissions energy will be more expensive, and any economic advantages of desal may be eroded. We can’t just keep getting more water by using more energy – this is not sustainable!
I should point out that in the News Ltd article linked above, it is mentioned that the Liberals’ policy also includes recycling of grey water and rain water tanks – this is commendable.

It has also been suggested that this plan would help the Murray River, however the impact of taking 45 GL per year from seawater, while a large amount compared with the 119 GL per year we take from the Murray, is very small compared with the 12903 GL taken in total from the Murray-Darling system (source, pdf). This is not to say that reducing our usage from the river is not a good thing, but I don’t think that Adelaide has a large enough impact to use it as justification for a desal plant, rather we should efficiently use the rain that falls in the Mount Lofty ranges and Adelaide plains.

There is one other aspect that I would like to consider briefly – is there a significant detrimental environmental impact from a desal plant? At least one Adelaide marine biologist thinks so. It is easy to think that the sea is so huge that we can’t do that much damage, but I imagine that when people started building smokestacks they didn’t imagine that we would have a significant impact on the atmosphere. The problem here is that there could be some rather large local effects. As anyone who has been to an Adelaide beach would know, the Gulf St Vincent isn’t exactly the open ocean, so the salt removed might stay in the area. This could affect local ecosystems and the long term operation of the plant if its intake was increasingly saline. These problems aren’t necessarily insurmountable but could present some extra hurdles.