You don’t usually think of Thomas Dolby as a jaw harpist, and in fact the actual track was played by Imogen Heap:

Brian Eno as “Dick Flash” interviews Brian Eno as Brian Eno:

In spite of being a bit harsh about Eno’s marketing, I would kill to get my hands on the sold out Collector’s Edition:

At least a friend surprised me recently by saying this when they noticed I had a deck of them. I didn’t know anything about this friend’s spiritual beliefs, so I was even more surprised when they described themselves as a “rational minded agnostic”. I asked them why they thought they were evil, and they said something to the effect of “silly fortune telling tools like that impede rationality“. Which underscored the fact that they had NO IDEA what Tarot cards are about, which is not surprising; the cards have a very murky history. Although the first documented mention of them is in 1367, The earliest documented use of them for divination wasn’t until 1781. Although many still use them in a predictive fashion, perhaps more people (like myself) use them as a reflective tool, to simply open up thoughts on a topic, much like Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies or Marshall McLuhan’s obscure Distant Early Warning Deck. Although the evidence is anecdotal, I think it’s safe to say that the more “occult” impression that modern people have of Tarot cards is a result of the same crazy British aristocratic types that would hold seances, go to India to get their personal gurus, and allow weirdos like Aleister Crowley to hang out with them. All of which I believe was driven at least in part by a sort of quiet Anglo rebellion against the stifling rules of the more repressive forms of Christianianity of the era. A more modern use of the Tarot is probably descended from the influence of C.G. Jung, who suggested that the images on the cards were “distantly descended from the archetypes of transformation“. Over the years I’ve personally used a few “conventional” decks. I started with the Rider-Waite as a teen, which ultimately felt too 19th century and crusty. I moved to Aleister Crowley’s Thoth Tarot in my morbid later teens. This deck ultimately comes across like a heavy metal band: it ends up being almost comical in its desperate attempts at being sinister and mysterious. I later used the Aquarian Tarot, which I still kind of like, but more recently I’ve used the Pomo Tarot, which cleverly integrates some rather dramatic changes in the design with some extremely hip and useful changes in the language of the interpretations. There’s a decent overview of the deck here. If you’re intrigued with Brian Eno’s “Oblique Strategies”, you can try an on line version here.

The Pomo Tarot uses familiar images from art to rethink the symbology of Tarot. Although some of the images are almost comical at first glance, they end up working surprisingly well when pondering more modern life issues.

I got into a conversation yesterday with some of my smarty-pants friends about whether or not music in the workplace improves performance. The answer we arrived at, after a lot of pseudo-science was tossed around? Yes. If listening to music improves your performance. Although playing Metallica and Sesame Street music at high volume 24 hours a day will reliably make just about anybody insane, and playing music and feeding beer to cows will cause them to produce more milk*, most things about the experience of music are extremely subjective, and hard to research because of “self-reporting bias”. A classic example is that although mp3′s intrinsically suck as an audio format, they are actually preferred by many of today’s listeners. So if music doesn’t drive you crazy while you work, go for it. Apparently the Mozart Effect has some scientific basis. If you’re looking for some interesting alternatives, this LifeHacker article offers up some ideas. It’s where I found the Buddha Machine Wall, which I listened to while I typed all of this, and it’s also where I discovered Chatter Blocker, which, while an interesting piece of software, would probably be more useful for creating walla for your next movie than improving your productivity. By selecting the “Cypress Goats” and “Male/Female Chatter” settings, I was totally convinced I was at a Turkish Bazaar haggling over the price of my wife-to-be, rather than sitting at the computer. LifeHacker also mentions ambient music like Brian Eno’s Music for Airports. I’m personally pretty partial to this kind of stuff. In fact, I create it myself. Check some of my ambient stuff here (especially calming are “On The Eve” and “Redshore”). People compare it to Stars of the Lid, but in fact that should be the other way around. My stuff is older than their stuff, and both owe a lot to Fripp & Eno’s Evening Star, if anything, nanny nanny. So put on some jams and get back to work now. No-one’s paying you to read stupid web sites, okay?

Buddha Machine Wall is a virtual version of The Buddha Sound Machine

Apparently Chatter Blocker is so calming that you levitate in your cubicle:

* As far as we know, there was no control group to see if beer alone would’ve done the job.

I’m sure there’s some deeper significance to the fact that in grade school, one of my favorite bands was the Monkees, and that many years later, one of my favorite bands was Gorillaz. One thing is for certain: I didn’t grow up much in the interim. During the little growing up I did do, I was exposed to a lot of live music and production (my mom managed a music store, and had a lot of connections at live venues). From an early age, I had plans to be a failed pop star who would later have a successful career as a producer. I had some definite success with the former, the results aren’t fully in on the latter. In any case, as a result I’ve never been a big fan of conventional pop music acts; some of my favorite artists over the years were production teams or their projects. Zang Tumb Tuum, Chemical Brothers, Brian Eno, and Thomas Dolby would be a few examples. Which is part of why I’ll never forget seeing the first Gorillaz video. I loved it from a creative point of view, but was almost ecstatic when I later found out that the cartoon characters were the band. Which should make the new “behind the music” documentary Bananaz that much more amusing. It’s going to be released on DVD in June 2009, and the trailer is featured at left, but you can view the whole thing on line now at Babelgum, Oo-oo!

When Grace Jones first broke onto the scene over twenty years ago, my genderblending friends and I welcomed her to the club, but always thought of her more as a Jean Paul Goude media creation and personality than a true talent. Well, after 19 years of silence, she’s back to prove us wrong. Her new CD Hurricane ranges from the obligatory dub-derived club grooves to the unexpectedly sensitive and soulful , with masterful production (thanks to Sly and Robbie, Brian Eno and Tricky) that makes you feel like you’re opening a new present over and over each time you listen. The release cleverly manages to capture the essence of her early sound while somehow sounding timeless in spite of the extensive use of electronics, kind of like Seal’s secret dark sister. Although the cover art is suggestive of Goude’s other media creations (check out this classic Citroen ad featuring Grace Jones on YouTube) it was actually conceived by artist Tom Hingston. And yes, that’s an actual mold of Jones’ head in the photo here, rendered in chocolate.

David Byrne sent me an interesting e-mail today. He let me know that the The new Byrne/Eno collaboration Everything That Happens Will Happen Today was happening today. They’ve done some creative things with this release, one of them being the dirty trick of offering a Deluxe Package for $69.99 that includes four bonus songs, a short film about the album, a screensaver app (meh), an “Everything That Happens” miniature hardbound book, and immediate access to download all the songs in various formats. They’ve also cleverly offered the little embedded player seen here. A little advice David: you’re pretty tech savvy; your people could’ve made it resizeable, and they could’ve included a frigging volume control! I’m going to ponder spending the $69.99 after I stream the songs for a bit, a nice option.