Last year, Labor Day weekend, Dae and I went to Canberra by car to visit dorukai. Dae was the only license-holder of the two of us, so she was behind the wheel. On the drive down from Sydney, upon discovering that the radio didn't have any reception (due to somebody forgetting to put the antenna up), Dae slipped a self-copied cassette into the stereo. It ( Read more... )

The guitar riff, the percussion beat, the surprising decadent mix of Jay Malinowski's almost androgynous, raspy croon and Béatrice Martin's cool, husky Franco-pop.

I love dysfunctional relationships; they're the only ones that make sense to me.

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( lyrics )

Toasting
Author-illustrator Shaun Tan is such a beloved part of the childhood and adolescence of so many of my generation of Australians (who could forget the wonderful images in The Red Tree, or his collaboration with James Marsden, The Rabbits, an allegorial retelling of the colonisation of Australia), it's a little surreal to be following his ( Read more... )

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Father and I don't agree on a lot of things - his worldview is essentially patriarchal and Confucian; mine is feminist and Daoist - which makes it difficult sometimes to have a conversation that doesn't devolve into an argument. (This is compounded by the fact that his native language is Chinese, and mine is English.) But one subject that we both ( Read more... )

Listen to Rainbow: Music of Central Asia Vol. 8 from the Kronos Quartet, in its entirety at NPR. CD/DVD available 30 March 2010.

Be forewarned, this new disc does not always make for restful listening. In fact, I'd advise against operating any type of heavy machinery while the Qasimov's are singing. The intensity of their voices reaches such a ( Read more... )

• "Wolf Cub" - Burial & Four Tet
Burial, apparently, was a big deal, or something, last year? I dunno. I downloaded this for Four Tet, and it didn't disappoint.


• "Stillness Is The Move" - Dirty Projectors
• "If I Had A Heart" - Fever Ray
My radio, in my car and in my study, is permanently set to Classic FM. (It's a brilliant station, which plays ( Read more... )

on top of every mountain / there was a great longing / for another even higher mountain / in each city longing for a bigger city

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The Kronos Quartet performs "Oh Mother, The Handsome Man Tortures Me" live at Barbican Hall's Ramadan Nights Festival in London on September 26, 2008.

"Oh Mother, The Handsome Man Tortures Me" is featured on Kronos' upcoming album "Floodplain", out now on Nonesuch Records.