Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

Earthshots is a gallery of desktop wallpaper-scaled images of the Earth from orbit. Remind yourself of the eggshell we live on...

Currently the screen backdrop on my work laptop is this image of Vesuvius and the Italian coast.

I started listening to trance quite a few years back, as a logical slide into dance music from the cross-over between ambient, dub, world music and rave techno. Since then it's become a staple of my musical diet, its mix of electronica, melody and psychedelica a regular theme to my days in front of the keyboard. So it probably wouldn't be a surprise to see that I bought the latest Ministry of Sound TranceNation compilation.

But what has happened to the innovative music from bands like Terra Ferma or Union Jack?

Instead we get the nth remix of Energy 52, and covers of Bryan Adams, Berlin, Heart and Cutting Crew... and worse yet, George Michael. There appears to have been a collective failure of imagination all across the trance scene. Personally I blame the success of Scooter and their cover of Supertramp's The Logical Song. We've lived through the 80s and 90s already, and while those tracks were perfectly fine and dandy as they were, they just don't cut it as trance remixes.

I think I'm going to go back to listening to pure electronica like Boards of Canada, FSOL and The Orb, and finding my trance from niche labels like Platipus and Transient.

At least they're still doing interesting, innovative music.

Grrr.

Just click here for the plans: http://www.smallfilms.co.uk/ivor/makeivor.htm