Violin playing robot

This is cool - a violin playing robot, developed by Toyota. Not quite in the same class as Stefan Grappelli, admittedly.

Album: RANDOM NUMBER - Modern Ambivalence (Moamoo 2007)

Since leaving Leeds avant-popsters Hood six years ago, Matt Robson has issued four albums under his Random Number alias, each on a different label. His latest, Modern Ambivalence, comes courtesy of Tokyo-based Moamoo.
Robson’s music combines gltchy electronica with a melodic pop sheen, similar to Chris Clark’s or Squarepusher’s gentler sides. Like 2006’s Golden Acre Sleeps, [...]

Albums of the year: Top 3

Before the trumpets sound and the drums roll, here are a few things that could have made the top thirty, but didn’t owing to the fact that I haven’t yet heard them! But all are high on my “to hear” list in 2008:
ARVE HENRIKSEN: Strjon; MISTICAL: The Eleventh Hour; WILLIAM BASINSKI: Short Wave Music; ALVA [...]

Albums of the year: #4

SHINING: Grindstone
Rune Grammofon would be my label of the year. It’s an extraordinary imprint that combines design elegance and, to a degree, uniformity with a musical breadth that would be dismissed as dilettantism if it wasn’t so consistent in quality.
Shining are pretty much the consumate Rune Grammofon group, if such a thing could possibly exist. [...]

Albums of the year: #5

PORT-ROYAL: Afraid To Dance
The Genovese quartet followed the superb Flares with an equally strong collection that blends instrumental rock and breezy electronica into an emotional, cinematic soup.
Below is a video for “Putin vs Valery” directed by Sieva Diamantakos.

Albums of the year: #6

DO MAKE SAY THINK: You, You’re A History In Rust
There’s no full review to link back to for this one. I don’t think I’d started the blog when this appeared early in the year, and simply never got round to writing one. Do Make Say Think have come a long way since they first appeared, [...]

Albums of the year: #7

FENNESZ / SAKAMOTO: Cendre
In my review at the time I remarked how it took a number of plays before Cendre revealed itself. It is a fairly homogenous album in that each track can be summed up as Christian Fennesz building a chassis of guitar drone and noise on to which Ryuichi Sakamoto adds the coachwork of [...]

Albums of the year: #8

THE NATIONAL: Boxer
On the first couple of hearings Boxer didn’t appear to quite have the quality of the National’s two previous albums, although it was a record I returned to quite often. I only realised how the songs had imprinted themselves on my consciousness when I saw the band at the ABC at the beginning [...]