I don’t know how I missed this 2010 Brian Eno BBC documentary “Another Green World”. I can not find it for sale anywhere but you can watch it here. Absolutely fantastic.

Kevin Shields on NME:

I listened to the stacks of CDs and thought, ‘Shit, this is better than the unreleased tracks on the compilation’. I decided it would be insane not to finish it.

I want to believe.

Although I haven’t liked his last couple records, those first three Spiritualized records changed my life. It’s always impressive to see this level of care and attention to detail.

what you’re seeing / hearing here is a monorocket mx-6 case (i.e. the lovingly-monikered “voight-kampff machine”) chock full of digital & analogue eurorack synthesizer modules (360hp of designs by the harvestman, makenoise, intellijel, cwejman, synthesis technology, doepfer, tiptop, plan b, dave jones, 4ms, bubblesound, and division6) fed through a radial stereo direct inject box into a pair of old/busted event studio monitors (replicating the average club / gallery pa system, right on down to the “busted”)

Awesome.

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration. A year or so ago, I started to wonder, with the right team of undersea pros, could we find and potentially recover the F-1 engines that started mankind’s mission to the moon?

What an incredible, and inspiring story.

As a ‘nerdy artist’ trying to teach myself programming I really identified with and learned a lot from _why. I miss him.

Peter Diamandis, of X PRIZE fame and co-founder of the Singularity University, and Steven Kotler have written an “antidote to pessimism” in which they show how exponential technological growth will dramatically improve the quality of life for all people in the near future.

Peter Diamandis does a pretty good job selling the book in this video.

Abundance is out February 21st 2012.

Zomby - Dedication (4AD)

Dedication took me by surprise since I wasn’t a huge fan of his older stuff. It’s a dark, creepy, very personal record that plays like the least danceable DJ set you’ve ever heard. Turn off the Panda Bear track and it’s just about perfect.

Artist Info
Listen to: “Riding with Death”.

Holy Other - With U EP (Tri Angle)

I clicked play on ‘Know Where’ when I was supposed to be walking out the door with my wife and daughter this summer. I left them in the car for nearly 4 minutes while I listened to it, absolutely blown away. I haven’t had a song stop me in my tracks like that for years.

Artist Info
Listen to “Know Where”.

Clams Casino - Rainforest EP (Tri Angle)

Mike Volpe is like the Happy Gilmour of Witch House. He’s been struggling to get work as a hip hop producer while making this unbelievable music on the side. Rainforest EP is awesome.

Artist Info
Listen to “Natural”.

The Weeknd - House of Balloons

I hate R&B, but still played the hell out of this album. “The Party & The After Party” has one of the best bass drops I’ve ever heard. This kid is 21. A few more years and a good producer and he will win at music. Period.

Artist Info
Listen to “The Party & The After Party”.

Kuedo - Severant

Unbelievably cinematic and grand, Severant sounds like an alternate soundtrack to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

Artist Info
Listen to “Ant City”.

Robert Lippok - redsuperstructure

To Rococo Rot (Robert Lippok’s band with his brother and Stefan Schneider) was one of my favorite bands of the mid to late 90s. Robert Lippok returned to Raster Noton after a 10 year break and released one of the best electronic albums of the year.

Artist Info
Listen to “nycycle”.

Who Made Who - Knee Deep

I can’t believe I never heard of these guys before this year. Knee Deep is a super fun, smart, electronic rock album. The best part is that lead singer Jeppe Kjellberg has kind of a Six Fingered Man style going on.

Artist Info
Watch the video for “Every Minute Alone”.

Byetone - Symeta

Symeta is the best rock album released in 2011.

Artist Info
Listen to “Black Peace” right now.

Vladislav Delay - Vantaa

I was super excited to hear one of my favorite artists was releasing an album on my favorite label and Vantaa didn’t disappoint. According to Raster Noton this is the first in a long term collaboration.

Artist Info
Listen to “Levite”.

Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

I can’t say I like Replica better than last years incredible Returnal, but I still listened to it over and over. Unfortunately Daniel Lopatin’s other project Games (which I loved) turned into Ford & Lopatin and released a real stinker.

Artist Info
Listen to “Andro”.

Mark Fell of snd made a mix for the Cyrk series ‘Pattern Compulsions’.

Surprise #1? It contains a Tegan and Sara track.
Surprise #2? I like the Tegan and Sara track.

For the 2011 music portion of it’s annual Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative Rolex paired Brian Eno with Icelandic musician Ben Frost.

Brian never, ever directly answers a question. He always comes back with another question, and I love that about him. He never solves anything for me or proposes anything or gives a straight answer – it’s always about creating a dialogue.

What an opportunity.

The ‘bedrock’ of OPN’s sound comes from a Roland Juno 60 that Lopatin’s dad bought in the early eighties. 

Interview with Mike Powell of Resident Advisor:

It was my dad’s. He bought it in 1983, when I was one year old. He bought the Juno because he couldn’t afford the Yamaha DX-7, which was like the pop synth at the time. I think I can attest a lot of my happiness with my own music to the fact that I’m in a marriage with this one machine. For better or worse, I “get” it, and that closeness and history yields a lot of interesting results—but also, people get used to it and it starts sounding like OPN instead of a Juno, which I think is also kind of interesting.

The new Oneohtrix Point Never album is out now.

Lots of interesting details about Google’s autonomous vehicles are revealed in this talk by Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun who guides the project.

The second thing is that, before sending the self-driving car on a road test, Google engineers drive along the route one or more times to gather data about the environment. When it’s the autonomous vehicle’s turn to drive itself, it compares the data it is acquiring to the previously recorded data, an approach that is useful to differentiate pedestrians from stationary objects like poles and mailboxes.

People laugh then I say autonomous vehicle research might end up being Google’s most important work. Keep in mind about 40,000 Americans die in car accidents every year, roughly 14.5 times the number of people killed on 911. Think about how different our daily lives would be if “War on Terror” money was being spent on safer self-driving vehicles.

From Al Jazeera:

Thursday’s launch brings the growing Asian power closer to matching the US and Russia and comes at a time when budget restraints and shifting priorities have held back US manned space launches.

The module’s name, Tiangong, translates to “Heavenly Palace”.

Excellent video about how NASA’s new Curiosity rover is powered.

tl;dr: rather than use solar like Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity uses nuclear power. I wonder if Stewart Brand was a consultant on this one.

CubeStormer II managed to beat the best human record (5.66 seconds) by a considerable .31 seconds. The robot is controlled via bluetooth from a Samsung phone running a custom Android app.

A wide ranging discussion between novelist David Mitchell and Brian Eno.