I read on Pitchfork
this morning that UNKLE is set to release a new album sometime
this year; while it won’t be a dual DJ Shadow/James Lavelle
project, Lavelle is getting some awesome people to guest on
the disc, so it should be challenging, if nothing else. The
Flaming Lips also released a companion disc to Yoshimi,
which could be good for a listen or three, if Apple adds it
to the iTunes library.

This Could Be Very Dangerous. Signing up for, and using the iTunes music service, is remarkably simple, hideously easy, and could be bad for my bank account. A few days ago there weren’t a whole lot of tunes I was interested in buying, but they’ve added a lot of stuff into the database since then. I’m impressed by the process, the seamless integration of the service into the iTunes interface, and the satisfaction level I have upon completion. This is a great way to buy music.

Now, the big problem is to try to resist the urge to fill out the catalog—the entire Rush back catalog is there, for the High School still left in me; there’s a ton of electronica to fill out; don’t even get me started on the jazz selections… this is a baaaaaaaaaad thing for me. I only bought one track from the new Massive Attack remix EP, but there’s a Jelly Roll Morton ’26-’35 compilation of about 25 songs for $10, which is a fantastic deal. Must resist….

On the PC front, Dan has helped me resurrect my old 466 Celeron back from the brink of extinction to a condition of relevance; we swapped out an old CD-ROM for a burner I had laying around, and he gave me a bunch of old components laying around the office- RAM, a 10/100 NIC card, and some other small goodies. We wiped NT4 off the drive and replaced it with Win2000, so the list of available hardware and software I can use has greatly expanded. It was sad to see old SLANN go, but it’s a much happier machine now.