Here are my best CDs of 2008, in no particular order: Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson, Rattlin’ Bones Hayes Carll, Trouble In Mind Sugarland, Love On The Inside TV On The Radio, Dear Science Lambchop, OH (Ohio) Calexico, Carried To Dust Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals, Lifeline The Infamous Stringdusters, The Infamous Stringdusters John [...]

Kasey Chambers
Here are two videos from the great Kasey Chambers, an Australian country singer/songwriter. I think hers is one of the most unique voices in music today – both her actual voice, and her songwriting. [Sadly, this is another case where the label has removed most of her videos from YouTube, or disabled embedding. Will labels [...]

Leonard Cohen a lucky man this Christmas
Leonard Cohen in 2008 by Rama. This Christmas, music took a strange turn towards the democratic, at least in the UK. And it did so in a fairly unexpected way: not in iTunes or because consumers voted with their credit cards at retail (music retail sales are down 20% year over year). Music took a [...]

Snowmageddon? C’mon!
The media should really be regulated. Not only have they been painting the economic apocalypse for the last month or two, but today’s snow storm in Toronto has now been dubbed ‘Snowmageddon.’ Great. The predicted total accumulation will be something like 20 or 25 cm…

Today’s desert island disc: Michelle Shocked, Short Sharp Shocked
A review of Michelle Shocked’s Short Sharp Shocked (1988) Some of the most memorable music from the 1980s, for me at least, stems from this album (and that’s perhaps because none of it sounds like the 80s at all). Michelle Shocked appeared, pretty much out of nowhere, in the mid-80s after she was “field recorded” [...]

Wool socks!
Wool socks are a remarkable discovery. My dad had grey wool socks when memory starts for me – a holdover from Germany in the 1960s, no doubt. Soon after, everyone started to wear cotton socks: they were supposed to be healthy, and – I think – they were cheap. Manmade materials never really took off [...]
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About

Carsten Knoch
Software and services professional, attentive music listener, vision enabler, instigator, reader of books and the web, vegetarian, affordable audio hobbyist, thinker, writer, blogger, tinkerer, Internet dweller since 1992. Human being since 1970.
I blog about music, technology, business, vegetarian food, politics, culture and life.
More about me on the About page.
Me, elsewhere
@carstenknoch on Twitter
- Barbarism is not the inheritance of our prehistory. It is the companion that dogs our every step. (Alain Finkielkraut) 10 hours ago
- Music really is amazing. No matter how deeply you steep yourself in it, or for how long--there's always a fantastic new artist to discover. 13 hours ago
- More world's worst brands: http://t.co/FEgngM6s 1 day ago
- How to accommodate low literacy readers in your web writing. http://t.co/2s1dKV52 1 day ago
- @dybskiy So what — are you staying? 2 days ago
- @joniv Absolutely. No issues. We're having the easiest winter in the history of winters this year... can't complain really :) 2 days ago
- @joniv Great - now I have that song in my head! Hope you're well :) 4 days ago
- It's 5:30pm, and - strangely - things are finally starting to flow (where I've been beating my head against a wall for most of the day). 4 days ago
- How to catch an iPhone thief: Officer knows buttons to push. http://t.co/YHVgl0MS 1 week ago
- I have a nasty, sneaky cold. TGIF. 1 week ago


