The only thing that's offensive is some jackass invoking the memory of genocide to describe a battle where less than 2,000 people died.
Think about that when YOU'RE on the business end of an AK47. As the bullets blow your world away, know that in the country where your murderer came from you will be immortalised in a computer game, where for a split second some ignorant brute bursts into your house and shoots you as you cower in your bed.
How about a "Wounded Knee" game? Why just play at "cowboys and Indians" or watch Dallas vs. DC on NFL? Go for the GUSTO!!! Kill innocent women and children - call them insurgents/terrorists/savages whatever.
I feel a song coming on...
John was all present and Jim was all there
And Georgie was up for promotion
Not that the Army gave a bugger who they were
When confronting some heathen commotion!
The troops live under
the cannon's thunder
From Sind to Cooch Behar.
Moving from place to place
Till they come face to face
With a different breed of fellow
Whose skin is black or yellow
then quick as a wink
they chop them into beefsteak tartar!
Johnny found his whiskey too warm
And Jimmy found the weather too balmy
But Georgie took them both by the arm and said,
"Don't ever disappoint the Army!"
The troops live under
the cannon's thunder
From Sind to Cooch Behar.
Moving from place to place
Till they come face to face
With a different breed of fellow
Whose skin is black or yellow
then quick as a wink
they chop them into beefsteak tartar!
John is a write-off and Jimmy is dead
And Georgie was shot for looting
And young men's blood goes on being red
While the Army just goes on ahead... recruiting!
The troops live under
the cannon's thunder
From Sind to Cooch Behar.
Moving from place to place
Till they come face to face
With a different breed of fellow
Whose skin is black or yellow
then quick as a wink
they chop them into beefsteak tartar!
I think we need a My Lai game! That's it! Storm into the little hooches with your M16 blazing! Mother and children "Please mister Army Man NO!"
BLAM!
DIE YOU TERRORIST!
BLAMMO!
DIE YOU INSURGENT!
How about this: You get to Fly the "Enola Gay"! Woot!
There's a song for that one, too, but I've got Stanard Ridgeway in my brain right now.
Or here's another one: Be a Nazi bombardier and gunner on an He-111 or a Dornier bomber as you incinerate Coventry or sections of London! COOOL!
Bombardier zu Pilot - die Bomben sind gefallen! Essen Brennen Tod, Sie britischen Ratten! HEIL!
The saddest part is there are people in this world whose hearts and minds are so blinded by power and greed and cynicism and stupidity that this game will find a happy home in some collections.
Hey America - you wanna know why everyone hates you? Games like this, and the attitude behind it.
And it must be stopped. Those in authority must use their power judiciously and fairly and with cause. He could be a total dickweed, but blogging about the police department is not a crime.
This is fascism. And it must be stopped at Every Instance.
I completely agree with drolli. Follow what you enjoy doing more than anything, really. The post also asks:
What looks best on a resume, and where might I expect to make more money in the not-too-distant future?
That's a completely different question from pondering CS vs IT. If it was 1995 and you asked this, I would have said "fuck it all and get into flipping real estate until the house of cards crumbles, then take your money and move to Belize..." I didn't do that because I don't care much about money or real estate.
The future of *everyone's* life is going to be energy generation and energy conservation. You want to make a pile in the long term doing something worthwhile? Start a company that works in renewable energy systems or *URBAN* geothermal HVAC. You'll make a great living in the future and you'll be doing something worthwhile.
Well, I would skip the VC/Angel angle, and just get a few built using the ideas discussed here and then PATENT THE LIVING FUCK OUT OF IT. USA, Canada, EU, Japan, etc. Then sell it to a company that does "camera related USB" devices for (pinky finger at corner of mouth) MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
Then buy a farm near a river in Tennessee and start your own religion. That's where one person can make stupid amounts of money.
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...
Im still waiting...Im still waiting...
SO, with this mp3 hybrid system, you get the downside of lossless (giant file size) but none of the benefits (magnificent audio quality).
What a dumb idea. They counter: but drives are getting cheaper! So it will hold lossless easily!
OK, fine: if drives are so fucking cheap, then USE FLAC FILE FORMAT and get the benefit of superior audio quality from a lossless format.
I think this is Thompson looking at FLAC and getting scared, so rather than invent a better lossless format that holds metadata, they would rather baffle people with bullshit.
This also wags a BIG FAT FINGER at Apple who refuse to support FLAC on iTunes. If iTunes supported FLAC, NONE of this would be an issue. Period.
HELLO! APPLE! You wanna be a fuckin' HERO? Support FLAC in iTunes like you do MP3!
Sure - FLAC plug ins for iTunes - *that's not the point*. It should be native. Period. end of discussion.
It's THAT tiny detail that is holding iTunes back from dominating the next generation of audio listening.
Finding a "twin" earth, no matter the distance (assuming if we can see it, we can get to it at some point in the future) is possible _the_ most important thing for the continuation of the human race.
No it isn't. Humans are built for here. We are an evolving species and once the oil is gone and the metals we've dug up oxidise and wash into the oceans, we'll be right back to our neolithic lifestyle - you know - the one that worked for hundreds of thousands of years.
Industrialism will disappear and we we relocalise and eventually evolve into something else. If we prize certain features, such as intelligence and co-operation, to deal with changes in our environment, we might become a "better" species. If we prize violence and competition, then we will become something else. Likely, it will be a bit of both.
The stars will still be there, but they are not for us.
OK - right - I see what the problem is - you don't understand some of the ugly details of digital audio, so this'll have to do, and will explain how a FLAC can sound worse than a CD. no biggie - teach this stuff.
Let's take the example gear I have, cuz I know it really well.
The signal path in the laptop with the FLAC goes like this (this is simplified, for illustration):
hard drive takes data and dumps it into the internal bus (SATA, IDE, whatever). However, it is analogue in the sense that it takes an actual voltage on the drive and interprets it as a value. It does this EXTREMELY well, but not perfectly, and drives have built in error correction. The internals of the laptop (like most computers) is very noisy with RF and similar distortion. The data streams to the USB bus, which is not really insulated and is exposed to all kinds of craptastic voltages. This introduces noise which then has to be filtered out by the error correction, and is then passed on to the USB output, where, again, it is subject to some noise. This is also error corrected. Then it goes along a standard USB cable I got with my printer to the DAC which takes the data from its USB input and blows into the USB bus. It collects noise from the OK but not GREAT cable. From there it goes through error correction in the DAC and is then sent to the DAC chip which turns it into an analogue signal.
The chip that does this is of paramount importance. The better devices use Burr Brown or similar chips. These are very expensive and extremely well constructed. Also the interior of the DAC is seriously shielded to prevent noise and the opAmps and similar are of the highest possible quality. From there it goes to the preamp and then to the amps.
The introduction of noise or error correction into the signal creates differences (at best) jitter at worst. If you're copying a.doc file, the jitter is corrected long before you read the doc. but with live gear, everything is happening at once - the DAC wants data NOW, and the amp and speakers are expecting a constant feed of signal. So, a device that is noizy and inducing jitter will have error correction, but the results are alterations in the signal, leading to cloudy soundstaging, indeterminate instrument positioning, fuzzy placement, etc.
Now, lets look at my CD player. The
CD player (rotel 855) has a transport built by Philips - VERY good transport. The laser reads the pits and negotiates with dust and crud and blows it through an error corrector. It is a VERY sophisticated error corrector designed for audio demands. This is why it is good to take care of CDs, anyway. from there, the data goes to the chip to be routed to the SPDIF output. It's a good CD player and there is some shielding in there, so it's pretty quiet. The SPDIF cable I got is a proAudio SPDIF cable we use in the studio - I forget the make - it costs about $50 for a meter cable. It has really good ends. from there it goes into the SPDIF of the DAC, which is a GREAT DAC (Benchmark). So, it then routes to the chip and to the audio out, as it did with the FLAC.
The difference is between the computer and the CD player. The CD player is BUILT to be electrically quiet and the PC is not. The SPDIF bus in the CD player has been specifically tested and designed to favour audio and its more demanding problems.
The result? Noisy FLAC quiet CD: CD wins.
But not by much - I agree there.
We ALWAYS test with recordings we are EXTREMELY familiar with. We also test with records that are well known to be BRILLIANT recordings. Example of opposite:
The opening track on "Selling England by the Pound" by Genesis (Dancing with the Moonlit Knight) starts with a VERY nice recording job. When Gabriel sings "for her merchandise, he traded in his prize." on the p in prize, he doesn't pop it - but you should be able to hear his lips are slightly wet, and a bit of proximity effect after that, as if it he could have popped it, but he's a skilled vocalist and was able to av
We're actually pretty tight on our testing because we're dealing with expensive gear. The listener is NOT allowed to know the source, the tester keeps track of what the source is.
you would think "digital is digital" but it isn't. Otherwise, there would be no point in a recording studio blowing thousands on ProTools when all they need is an iMic.
A few weeks ago, when I got the Rotel 855 ($690 new in 1991) CD player, we did a *digital* test of SPDIF out to the Benchmark DAC. We tested it against a NAD 502 ($649 in 1993). MY DAUGHTER (11 years old) could hear the difference! The Rotel's imaging was rock solid and the bass was articulate and precise. by comparison the instrument locations were fuzzy and imprecise on the NAD and the bass was warm and mushy.
People, such as myself, spend *years* training our ears to be very precise and critical. It's how high quality music is recorded, mixed, and mastered, and it requires a good ear and good gear.
It is NOT a religion, but it is an art, with changing tastes and needs. for example, "dry" and "flat" amps are necessary in studios, hence, Crown and Bryston and others are common. They are less common in home systems - "warmer" sounds are more welcome there, hence the popularity of tube amplifiers. speakers in the studio need to be very precise and accurate - very fast. They don't need to be super loud. So, you see Genelec, Tannoy, EVENT, Yamaha, Mackie, Meyersound, and other similar systems in studios. but if you play them at home (especially old Yamaha NS-10s) you would feel like someone has a vicegrip on your head. Decent common home speakers range from cheap Polks to expensive Dynaudio or B&W or KEF. They are often very precise as well, but are made to be less "fatiguing". Spend 12 hours editing the same damn song and you will know what a blessing less fatiguing speakers can be. I hate NS10s for that reason.
All of these systems have different sound qualities. And it comes down to fairly small differences that, when added up, make for a huge difference in sound.
Now, to spot you some bit of truth - I do agree that there is a lot of nonsense in the world of audio, and anyone who buys a Krell amp *is* definitely a douchebag. Anyone who thinks that a $500 USB cable is going to make their system sound better than a $50 USB cable is a douchebag. (shielding matters, but its the end pieces and the wiring into them that really matters there). And Monster Cable? Bullshit. It's all made in the same factory as any number of other cable companies. I *am* partial to Kimber Cable, though. It's VERY good stuff - better than monster, but I think it's way Way WAY overpriced, so I buy it used.
I'm planning an electronic music and mastering studio for a school right now. Getting the audio right is going to be half the battle. it isn't a game, and it has to be done well or not at all. Yes, I am a professional audio and video expert, and i know this stuff cold.
obviously TUNE OUT the standard ClearChannel crap. There's TONS of great stuff out there. I've been posting all over this TFA about this topic, click on my posts here and I list a few EXCELLENT bands.
Have you tried somafm.com? They have lots of great music for your edification.
I teach at a university and I am amazed at the talent of people coming up now. Many of them realise that the days of Big contracts for recording are done and the next forefront is going to be in performance - so knowing how to pay REALLY FUcKING MATTERs. And they do get it - I've seen some massive talent lately. But then, i live in Canada....
look to online radio. If you're into metal, go to aquarius records in San francisco CA. THey have a website, and you can get really extreme stuff there that makes Tool sound like the Carpenters.
good luck. My most recent Metal acquisition was the latest from Marnie Stern "This is it..." - she shreds and she's hot. check her out. Her drummer is Zach Hill from HELLA. You will be in love.
Sure - here's a few that I think are pretty damned excellent. Some are newer than others, none are more than 3 years old - they are all new to me (last 6 months):
Andorra by Caribou
kind of like stereolab with Brian Wilson on vocals. sort of.
This is it... by Marnie Stern
Stunning. This woman can SHRED, and she's cute to boot. Imagine 70s prog played by a thrash punk outfit with Virginia astley pretending to be Yoko Ono (i.e. high pitched like VA but in key, unlike YO) on vocals. Demanding yet rewarding listening. record has very positive message.
monstre cosmic by Monade
Latitia Sadier of Stereolab's side project. VERY nice record. very smart and pleasant listening, as one might expect from stereolab, but less uptight...
Espers II by Espers
Awesome folkie stuff. Dark yet inspiring. Imagine Judy Collins off her meds singing with Incredible String Band under the influence of Current 93. Dead brilliant.
Trans Canada Highway by Boards of Canada
who are from scotland. LOVELY electronic music that conjures up waves of nostalgia.
Escapologist by Tovah
Brilliant eclectic recording - extremely well recorded and very strong compositions. Sounds very original - sort of like Sheryl Crow singing with King Crimson or David Sylvian band, sort of kinda not.
Slashdot Mirror
Think about that when YOU'RE on the business end of an AK47. As the bullets blow your world away, know that in the country where your murderer came from you will be immortalised in a computer game, where for a split second some ignorant brute bursts into your house and shoots you as you cower in your bed.
Two words for you:
Fuck. Off.
RS
I feel a song coming on...
John was all present and Jim was all there
And Georgie was up for promotion
Not that the Army gave a bugger who they were
When confronting some heathen commotion!
The troops live under
the cannon's thunder
From Sind to Cooch Behar.
Moving from place to place
Till they come face to face
With a different breed of fellow
Whose skin is black or yellow
then quick as a wink
they chop them into beefsteak tartar!
Johnny found his whiskey too warm
And Jimmy found the weather too balmy
But Georgie took them both by the arm and said,
"Don't ever disappoint the Army!"
The troops live under
the cannon's thunder
From Sind to Cooch Behar.
Moving from place to place
Till they come face to face
With a different breed of fellow
Whose skin is black or yellow
then quick as a wink
they chop them into beefsteak tartar!
John is a write-off and Jimmy is dead
And Georgie was shot for looting
And young men's blood goes on being red
While the Army just goes on ahead... recruiting!
The troops live under
the cannon's thunder
From Sind to Cooch Behar.
Moving from place to place
Till they come face to face
With a different breed of fellow
Whose skin is black or yellow
then quick as a wink
they chop them into beefsteak tartar!
I think we need a My Lai game! That's it! Storm into the little hooches with your M16 blazing! Mother and children "Please mister Army Man NO!"
BLAM!
DIE YOU TERRORIST!
BLAMMO!
DIE YOU INSURGENT!
How about this: You get to Fly the "Enola Gay"! Woot!
There's a song for that one, too, but I've got Stanard Ridgeway in my brain right now.
Or here's another one: Be a Nazi bombardier and gunner on an He-111 or a Dornier bomber as you incinerate Coventry or sections of London! COOOL!
Bombardier zu Pilot - die Bomben sind gefallen! Essen Brennen Tod, Sie britischen Ratten! HEIL!
The saddest part is there are people in this world whose hearts and minds are so blinded by power and greed and cynicism and stupidity that this game will find a happy home in some collections.
Hey America - you wanna know why everyone hates you? Games like this, and the attitude behind it.
RS
This is fascism. And it must be stopped at Every Instance.
RS
You know your business well, so email the important parties and send them links to your site with the info.
If it's a good idea, and you are upfront about it being public domain, then people will use it.
RS
agreed. It proves the point better than the article itself.
RS
Keew da wabbit keew da wabbit...
RS
I wonder if it's kick start...
RS
RS
What looks best on a resume, and where might I expect to make more money in the not-too-distant future?
That's a completely different question from pondering CS vs IT. If it was 1995 and you asked this, I would have said "fuck it all and get into flipping real estate until the house of cards crumbles, then take your money and move to Belize..." I didn't do that because I don't care much about money or real estate.
The future of *everyone's* life is going to be energy generation and energy conservation. You want to make a pile in the long term doing something worthwhile? Start a company that works in renewable energy systems or *URBAN* geothermal HVAC. You'll make a great living in the future and you'll be doing something worthwhile.
good luck.
RS
Then buy a farm near a river in Tennessee and start your own religion. That's where one person can make stupid amounts of money.
RS
Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...I'm still waiting...
I'm still waiting...
Im still waiting...Im still waiting...
What a dumb idea. They counter: but drives are getting cheaper! So it will hold lossless easily!
OK, fine: if drives are so fucking cheap, then USE FLAC FILE FORMAT and get the benefit of superior audio quality from a lossless format.
I think this is Thompson looking at FLAC and getting scared, so rather than invent a better lossless format that holds metadata, they would rather baffle people with bullshit.
This also wags a BIG FAT FINGER at Apple who refuse to support FLAC on iTunes. If iTunes supported FLAC, NONE of this would be an issue. Period.
HELLO! APPLE! You wanna be a fuckin' HERO? Support FLAC in iTunes like you do MP3!
Sure - FLAC plug ins for iTunes - *that's not the point*. It should be native. Period. end of discussion.
It's THAT tiny detail that is holding iTunes back from dominating the next generation of audio listening.
RS
No it isn't. Humans are built for here. We are an evolving species and once the oil is gone and the metals we've dug up oxidise and wash into the oceans, we'll be right back to our neolithic lifestyle - you know - the one that worked for hundreds of thousands of years.
Industrialism will disappear and we we relocalise and eventually evolve into something else. If we prize certain features, such as intelligence and co-operation, to deal with changes in our environment, we might become a "better" species. If we prize violence and competition, then we will become something else. Likely, it will be a bit of both.
The stars will still be there, but they are not for us.
Wrong planet.
RS
Yeah - godferbid they just make a quick efficient OS because it's a good idea...
your member ID is freakin' me out, dude....
Let's take the example gear I have, cuz I know it really well.
The signal path in the laptop with the FLAC goes like this (this is simplified, for illustration):
hard drive takes data and dumps it into the internal bus (SATA, IDE, whatever). However, it is analogue in the sense that it takes an actual voltage on the drive and interprets it as a value. It does this EXTREMELY well, but not perfectly, and drives have built in error correction. The internals of the laptop (like most computers) is very noisy with RF and similar distortion. The data streams to the USB bus, which is not really insulated and is exposed to all kinds of craptastic voltages. This introduces noise which then has to be filtered out by the error correction, and is then passed on to the USB output, where, again, it is subject to some noise. This is also error corrected. Then it goes along a standard USB cable I got with my printer to the DAC which takes the data from its USB input and blows into the USB bus. It collects noise from the OK but not GREAT cable. From there it goes through error correction in the DAC and is then sent to the DAC chip which turns it into an analogue signal.
The chip that does this is of paramount importance. The better devices use Burr Brown or similar chips. These are very expensive and extremely well constructed. Also the interior of the DAC is seriously shielded to prevent noise and the opAmps and similar are of the highest possible quality. From there it goes to the preamp and then to the amps.
The introduction of noise or error correction into the signal creates differences (at best) jitter at worst. If you're copying a .doc file, the jitter is corrected long before you read the doc. but with live gear, everything is happening at once - the DAC wants data NOW, and the amp and speakers are expecting a constant feed of signal. So, a device that is noizy and inducing jitter will have error correction, but the results are alterations in the signal, leading to cloudy soundstaging, indeterminate instrument positioning, fuzzy placement, etc.
Now, lets look at my CD player. The CD player (rotel 855) has a transport built by Philips - VERY good transport. The laser reads the pits and negotiates with dust and crud and blows it through an error corrector. It is a VERY sophisticated error corrector designed for audio demands. This is why it is good to take care of CDs, anyway. from there, the data goes to the chip to be routed to the SPDIF output. It's a good CD player and there is some shielding in there, so it's pretty quiet. The SPDIF cable I got is a proAudio SPDIF cable we use in the studio - I forget the make - it costs about $50 for a meter cable. It has really good ends. from there it goes into the SPDIF of the DAC, which is a GREAT DAC (Benchmark). So, it then routes to the chip and to the audio out, as it did with the FLAC.
The difference is between the computer and the CD player. The CD player is BUILT to be electrically quiet and the PC is not. The SPDIF bus in the CD player has been specifically tested and designed to favour audio and its more demanding problems.
The result? Noisy FLAC quiet CD: CD wins.
But not by much - I agree there.
We ALWAYS test with recordings we are EXTREMELY familiar with. We also test with records that are well known to be BRILLIANT recordings. Example of opposite:
The opening track on "Selling England by the Pound" by Genesis (Dancing with the Moonlit Knight) starts with a VERY nice recording job. When Gabriel sings "for her merchandise, he traded in his prize." on the p in prize, he doesn't pop it - but you should be able to hear his lips are slightly wet, and a bit of proximity effect after that, as if it he could have popped it, but he's a skilled vocalist and was able to av
We all know that Red Blinky numbers are the favourite of terrorists the world over.
RS
hahahaa
you would think "digital is digital" but it isn't. Otherwise, there would be no point in a recording studio blowing thousands on ProTools when all they need is an iMic.
A few weeks ago, when I got the Rotel 855 ($690 new in 1991) CD player, we did a *digital* test of SPDIF out to the Benchmark DAC. We tested it against a NAD 502 ($649 in 1993). MY DAUGHTER (11 years old) could hear the difference! The Rotel's imaging was rock solid and the bass was articulate and precise. by comparison the instrument locations were fuzzy and imprecise on the NAD and the bass was warm and mushy.
People, such as myself, spend *years* training our ears to be very precise and critical. It's how high quality music is recorded, mixed, and mastered, and it requires a good ear and good gear.
It is NOT a religion, but it is an art, with changing tastes and needs. for example, "dry" and "flat" amps are necessary in studios, hence, Crown and Bryston and others are common. They are less common in home systems - "warmer" sounds are more welcome there, hence the popularity of tube amplifiers. speakers in the studio need to be very precise and accurate - very fast. They don't need to be super loud. So, you see Genelec, Tannoy, EVENT, Yamaha, Mackie, Meyersound, and other similar systems in studios. but if you play them at home (especially old Yamaha NS-10s) you would feel like someone has a vicegrip on your head. Decent common home speakers range from cheap Polks to expensive Dynaudio or B&W or KEF. They are often very precise as well, but are made to be less "fatiguing". Spend 12 hours editing the same damn song and you will know what a blessing less fatiguing speakers can be. I hate NS10s for that reason.
All of these systems have different sound qualities. And it comes down to fairly small differences that, when added up, make for a huge difference in sound.
Now, to spot you some bit of truth - I do agree that there is a lot of nonsense in the world of audio, and anyone who buys a Krell amp *is* definitely a douchebag. Anyone who thinks that a $500 USB cable is going to make their system sound better than a $50 USB cable is a douchebag. (shielding matters, but its the end pieces and the wiring into them that really matters there). And Monster Cable? Bullshit. It's all made in the same factory as any number of other cable companies. I *am* partial to Kimber Cable, though. It's VERY good stuff - better than monster, but I think it's way Way WAY overpriced, so I buy it used.
I'm planning an electronic music and mastering studio for a school right now. Getting the audio right is going to be half the battle. it isn't a game, and it has to be done well or not at all. Yes, I am a professional audio and video expert, and i know this stuff cold.
RS
go to Google and type in:
"bandName" "recordTitle" download inurl:blogspot
just substitute "bandName" with the name of the band you want and "recordTitle" with the title you need from them.
BANG.
the blogs linking to them come up.
sigh. So simple and convenient...
RS
My wife, who is NO audiophile (which makes her a good test subject) can hear the differences.
It's not my fault you're deaf.
RS
Have you tried somafm.com? They have lots of great music for your edification.
I teach at a university and I am amazed at the talent of people coming up now. Many of them realise that the days of Big contracts for recording are done and the next forefront is going to be in performance - so knowing how to pay REALLY FUcKING MATTERs. And they do get it - I've seen some massive talent lately. But then, i live in Canada....
good luck. My most recent Metal acquisition was the latest from Marnie Stern "This is it..." - she shreds and she's hot. check her out. Her drummer is Zach Hill from HELLA. You will be in love.
Andorra by Caribou
kind of like stereolab with Brian Wilson on vocals. sort of.
This is it... by Marnie Stern
Stunning. This woman can SHRED, and she's cute to boot. Imagine 70s prog played by a thrash punk outfit with Virginia astley pretending to be Yoko Ono (i.e. high pitched like VA but in key, unlike YO) on vocals. Demanding yet rewarding listening. record has very positive message.
monstre cosmic by Monade
Latitia Sadier of Stereolab's side project. VERY nice record. very smart and pleasant listening, as one might expect from stereolab, but less uptight...
Espers II by Espers
Awesome folkie stuff. Dark yet inspiring. Imagine Judy Collins off her meds singing with Incredible String Band under the influence of Current 93. Dead brilliant.
Trans Canada Highway by Boards of Canada
who are from scotland. LOVELY electronic music that conjures up waves of nostalgia.
Escapologist by Tovah
Brilliant eclectic recording - extremely well recorded and very strong compositions. Sounds very original - sort of like Sheryl Crow singing with King Crimson or David Sylvian band, sort of kinda not.
Those are just a few off the top of my head.
It's there if you look for it.