Blue Ikea bags
How would you move house without these? This is the ideal moving bag. From humble beginnings as a $1 useful item available in large boxes at the Ikea checkout, these are now officially one of the most useful things … [read more]
Read: Karim Rashid, Design Your Self
A review of Karim Rashid’s Design Your Self (2006) Ladies and gentlemen of the class of ’97: Wear sunscreen. If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have … [read more]
Taking notes with Evernote
Note-taking is one of those things that get better with age, like wine or jazz. I didn’t take notes for many years at the beginning of my career, and I think I was significantly less productive because of it. In … [read more]
Listening to: Brad Mehldau Trio, Day is Done
A review of Brad Mehldau Trio’s Day is Done (2005) This is a surprisingly remarkable record. I’m not sure why it’s surprising, exactly: Brad Mehldau is one of the foremost young jazz pianists working today, and I enjoy most of … [read more]
Listening to: Manu Katché
A review of Manu Katché’s Neighbourhood (2005) and Playground (2007) Manu Katché is a French drummer (born 1958), originally famous for being an in-demand session and live drummer on the 80s/90s ‘world fusion’ circuit (Peter Gabriel, Sting, etc.). Now, his … [read more]
Jazz
For someone who thinks of himself as both musical and deeply interested in listening to all kinds of music, I had, previously, studiously avoided listening to jazz. While I had been taught about jazz in high school (Improvisation! Dissonances! Drugs! … [read more]
Listening to: Tomasz Stanko Quartet, Lontano
A review of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet’s Lontano (2006) Tomasz Stanko is a Polish jazz trumpeter who sounds a little like Miles Davis without anger. Lontano contains a series of thoughtful, quiet and slightly angular (maybe geometric is a better … [read more]
E.S.T. – Tuesday Wonderland
The Esbjörn Svensson Trio sounds like the most balanced and smartest modern ‘jazz’ piano trio of the ones I’ve heard. It’s post-everything: it’s not ironic, not ‘fusion’ in any way – it feels like a logical growth path for jazz. … [read more]