The (retro-)future never looked so good.

via boingboing

via coudal

image courtesy of project8256 for sale here on etsy

Sometime round about 1984 my dad bought my brother and i a walkman & two sets of headphones to share on a long car journey round europe. He got two cassettes for free too. Some early pre-Now That’s What I Call… compilation and a tape called Motown Chartbusters, I don’t think I’d really heard soul music before.

Hell, I grew up in Warwickshire, my parents listened to Radio 4, Yehudi Menuhin and James Taylor. So it was then I heard Al Green and somehow identified that kind of noise with being grown up.

A slow, longing groove which was utterly alien to me aged 7 but somehow intangibly desirable and sophisticated.

As I grew up, and bought more records, that rack reserved for proper old-school soul singers still managed to illicit the same little girl lost feelings in me.

Like, if I were a proper adult, I’d have a beat-up leather sofa, a taste for good whiskey and this is how I’d feel on a saturday night.

And in the 25-odd years since I first heard the Reverend I might have developed a taste for a nice drop of scotch and even have my own turntable to lower a stylus onto but I still don’t feel I’ve ever achieved that real, lonely, headstrong and heartsick independence which resounds in Al Greens breathy sighs.

Even now, in this, his newest recording, featuring the prodigious drumming and silkily respectful production of ?uestlove, the man still knows more than I ever will.

Lay It Down is out on Blue Note in May (thanks to Sit Down Stand Up for the mp3 too)

Al Green - Thought It Out

removed at the request of BlueNote

more here/a>

via marc andressen

For Jimmy

A defining moment In US politics and a further reminder, if any were needed, of the comparative poverty of ideas in UK politics and the danger of allowing universal cynicism to stand unopposed within the public realm.

It’s all about Robert Downey Jr in this one.

If your wondering why we should care about the fate of a US bank.

Try applying the following to the UK housing market;

Asset prices were propped up only by the fact that people were able to borrow unreasonable amounts of money to bid for them, and were able to borrow such amounts only because they were seen to be acquiring valuable assets - ie the whole thing was a grand illusion, sustained by a collective loss of common sense, helped with massive dollops of self-interested propaganda by the financial, construction, real estate and media industries. Now it’s the same thing, in reverse. People cannot borrow, thus cannot bid for assets, whose prices fall down as they need to be sold - and those deep in debt need to sell (ar dump the assets to banks that then need to sell). As prices go down, all loans based on collateral dry out - and more generally banks are getting stingy as they struggle with all those doubtful assets on their hands, so lending dries out.

Here comes the flood.

via oil drum

Mathematical proof that the search for the perfect beat is finally over.

via mefi

See him at the Habana Calle (patio 6) at 1:15 am as part of the SXSW Undertow showcase.

That’s 709 E 6th St. As long as you’re in Austin.

If you’re not just get drunk and pretend.