pathologizing the present
1. The Cinematic Orchestra - To Believe (Ninja Tune) After a 12-year hiatus, The Cinematic Orchestra are back and doing what they do better than everyone else: make soundtracks to films that don't exist. The sweeping grandeur of To Believe delivers on that front, and then some: a selection of seven exquisitely assembled, heart wrenching… Continue reading Top 10 Albums of the Month: March
The histories of the US and Indian constitutions show two related political and legal systems evolving over time.
1. Nubiyan Twist - Jungle Run (Strut) A sumptuous second album from the Afro-dub jazz 10-piece collective, meandering between hip hop, soul, Latin, and atmospheric electronics. Not to mention it features two legends in Afrobeat drumming maestro Tony Allen and Ethio-jazz pioneer Mulatu Astatke. Ace! 2. Celeste - Il Risveglio del Principe (Mellow Records) An… Continue reading Top 10 Albums of the Month: February
In life we face tradeoffs, and choosing security has its own.
The attack against modernity is a cliche at this point. Even if once upon a time that critique was in the domain of reactionary intellectuals and apocalyptic sects, now it simply forms part of popular culture, embedded in movies, music, and video-games. Recently, I opened a book by Ernesto Sabato, a surrealist writer of the 50s. The first paragraphs describe a world where humans have turned into cogs of the capitalist machinery and slaves of instrumental reason. Although this proposition may have sounded very profound and original for the 1950s reader – it made me close the book. I didn’t stop reading because his viewpoint was incorrect or stupid, but simply because I would learn nothing from that book, for I have encountered that perspective throughout most of my life, through the internet, television, and contemporary thinkers.
However something that has been transformed into a permanent topic of conversation is…
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1. Nick Walters & The Paradox Ensemble - Awakening (22a) 2. Leyla McCalla - The Capitalist Blues (Jazz Village) 3. Nicola Cruz - Siku (ZZK Records) 4. Khana Bierbood - Strangers from the Far East (Guruguru Brain) 5. Lifafa - Jaago (Self Released) 6. The Twilight Sad - It Won/t Be Like This All The Time (Rock Action… Continue reading Top 10 Albums of the Month: January
Nihilism is not a pathological exacerbation of subjectivism, which annuls the world and reduces reality to a correlate of the absolute ego, but on the contrary, the unavoidable corollary of the realist conviction that there is a mind-independent reality, which, despite the presumptions of human narcissism, is indifferent to our existence and oblivious to the… Continue reading On Nihilism
