A surprisingly good model of inter-human communication
Jan 12, 2020
For some reason, I was wondering how hard it is for humans to communicate without misunderstandings. And I do not even necessarily mean the difficulty arising from such obvious obstacles as different languages1, but even among people sharing the same mother tongue there are enough communication problems. And I guess, these communication problems become the more pronounced, the more personal and subtle the subject of the conversation is.
While thinking along these lines, a verse from a song popped up in my head, which I think, paints a relatable picture of communication among humans:
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Starfish and Coffee
Jan 02, 2020
“Starfish and Coffee” is good contender in the “fun-and-simple” Pop song category. It appeared on Prince’s “Sign O’ The Times” album which was released at the beginning of the 80’s.
The lyrics play out in a school setting. The narrator in the song identifies as one of the pupils, who observes and, in a way, admires the peculiarities of a fellow pupil. These peculiarities manifest themselves, for example, in the ever-unchanging breakfast of said fellow pupil.
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Interlude sounds so good
Jan 01, 2020
Between Christmas and New Year, I spent multiple hours cruising on the autobahn to visit family and friends. Besides the fact that I enjoy driving anyhow1, I also use multi-hour autobahn cruises to revisit some albums which I bought long ago and which I feel could deserve an in-depth listening session which does not just skip to the perceived highlights. Always hoping to uncover some hidden gem which does not reveal itself when skipping through the album.
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Lessons in Greek Mythology
Nov 15, 2015
Given recent events and developments, I doubt whether it’s still fashionable to learn Greek. But the ancient Greeks could tell good stories, many of which still continue to influence contemporary artists. The band Ex Libris chose to do a rock version of the tale of Medea. For those who don’t know this tale – go and read it and then listen to the album. For those who’ve got no time or just need a little reminder, here’s the ultra-short version of the story which leaves enough open questions to make you read the whole story anyway:
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(記憶) Ki-Oku
Oct 29, 2015
One of my all-time favorite albums and, in my opinion, one of the greatest genre-crossing collaborations of all time is “Ki-Oku” from DJ Krush and Toshinori Kondo. Both are Japanese musicians, and they’re both renowned in their respective musical niche.
DJ Krush is a DJ / producer. At least at the very beginning of his career, he could clearly be called a Hip Hop DJ. But with each release, the musical horizon broadened.
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The Appeal Of Lana Del Rey
Oct 21, 2015
Some time ago, Lana Del Rey released her album “Honeymoon”.
I personally discovered Lana Del Rey only because rapper Joe Budden sampled Lana Del Rey on his 2012 mixtape “A Loose Quarter” on his song “Off 2 The Races”. (Guess which song he sampled…) Before the Joe Budden mixtape, I already saw the music video to “Video Games”, but it left no impression with me. “Video Games” is not exactly a catchy song, nor extremely melodic or interesting.
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Tell A Gangster Friend To Join In
Sep 22, 2015
Every Hero Needs A Villain is the second album from Czarface and probably one of the best Hip Hop albums of 2015. For those who don’t know yet, Czarface is a collaboration of 7L & Esoteric, a Boston based rapper-producer duo and Inspectah Deck from Wu-Tang Clan.
The overall theme of the album is the previously introduced Czarface, a superhero / supervillain persona, which makes its appearance on the CD booklet as well as the CD itself and which apparently destroyed my jewel case:
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Better Than My Competitor
Sep 21, 2015
The Hip Hop music genre has some unique features which go beyond the audible characteristics. Hip Hop music is an interesting genre since it is an art as well as a competition. In most other musical genres there may be personal rivalries between artists for some personal reasons. There may be financially motivated battles for consumers’ attention. In rock, drum battles apparently are a thing.
But no other genre has the competitive aspect as deeply entrenched in its character as Hip Hop.
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Straight Outta Compton - But what about MC Ren?
Sep 11, 2015
I went into the cinema and saw the movie STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON. I wasn’t sure, what to expect. At least from my friends the movie got so much hype half a year ago that I thought the movie was already released back then when in reality it was probably just announced that they were starting to film.
As you can see, I didn’t show too much interest in the N.W.A movie.
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Blacastan - The Life of a Tape
Sep 10, 2015
Blacastan’s song The Life of a Tape is a poster child for storytelling. It was released on the 2010 album “Blac Sabbath”. Musically, the song is hardly anything special. An oldschool drumkit, accompanied by some sampled piano chords and unintelligeble female singing, the everlasting same three tones making up the ‘baseline’ and a good amount of noise and crackling on top of this. To be honest, I’ve heard better sampling, you can hear where the loops were cut.
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