It’s close to showtime.
Friday night is yet upon us, and that means the start of a new weekend. And with it comes Urban Landscapes to lead you into it.
Cool music to be have, of course. As always, looking forward to the drops.
Come this week, though, is a special drop at that. it’s the first Urban Landscapes Profile aired in recent memory, and tonight is a treat. As mentioned previously, the nine-member West London collective known as Bugz In The Attic will take the spotlight for about a good half of the show. if you’ve been a fan of this show, as well as other choice shows around the world, then you know that the Bugz crew are best known for the proliferation of what’s known as “broken beat” music. They will tell you that they aren’t crazy about the terminology, but fans will tell you that it’s amongst some of the freshest dance sounds around. And while they are best known for that particular style, they’ve done everything from house to ballads, too. Some of the key Bugz members have also done other projects from both within and outside the Bugz camp.
Earlier this year came the domestic release of “Got The Bug” on V2 Records, a compilation of choice remixes compiled from the collective’s many works of mixes over the years. The tune “Booty La-La” is perhaps the group’s most accessible record to date, but no less effective on the dancefloor.
Orin Waters (aka Afronaught) and Daz-I-Kue were present for the interview, which took place during the dance music conferences in Miami this past March. As you’ll hear as part of the interview, remnants of thunder could be heard due to a tropical depression. But no worries, cuz Orin gives the rundown on the crew, the origins and challenges of broken beat, their busy touring schedules, the Puerto Rican project, and more. You’ll also hear music, past and present, in various incarnations. So check it out this week on the live show, or next week online the podcast site.
Podcast, you say? Back to that later.
You might have missed it on your way onto the blog, but there’s a teeny weeny addition to the “About Me” section. If you look at the end of the paragraph, you’ll see a “Atom 0.3″ icon. For many people (including me, up to last Wednesday), it’s just another link. But as I’ve found out in subsequent days, it could make life for you and me much easier. That small link that you see, in part, gives you the ability to subscribe to my blog.
(Caveat: in place of the “About Me” is “Contributors.” This is temporary for the moment, but you can simply click on my name. A page will appear with the Atom icon, which can be dragged to your newsreader.)
One of the most powerful features of blogs, as well as more “professional” publications, is the ability to store all similar links into one location. It could be a web browser such a Firefox; it could be a news aggregation reader such as NetNewsWire, or even an online service like My Yahoo that allows the same thing. In other words, you can take my blog, the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, Wired, Ain’t It Cool News, and other sites bearing the RSS or Atom icon (or even text cues such as “RSS” or “Site Feed”). and save them all in one location.
The power is that when you launch a news reader or a browser, any updates on the appropriate sites will be updated to the reader. This makes it so that you don’t have to dig into layers of pages and windows to find what you need. One window, with your list of subscriptions, is all there is to it.
The same is true for podcasting, though you may or may not need to grab a separate “podcatching” software (fortunately, NetNewsWire does both). But think of all of the cool shows available via podcasting. For those that aren’t, some software will allow you to set a time/date to record your favorites. With podcasting, though, you will know when a new show is posted without having to visit my site. This also means that I don’t have to load the latest show, then wait a few days before you are aware of it. I load the show, you open your podcatcher, you’ll see the info updated. In some cases, it can download on the fly or you can grab the file at your convenience.
This is amazing stuff!
Sites such as Beyondjazz and Clubbity are already making good use of these tools. It’ll be very cool and convenient (especially for sites that don’t update but maybe several times a month) for labels, promotion companies, artists, and others to incorporate such technologies into their sites. Perhaps like me, they too will have to spend some quality time playing around in order to realize the true potential of RSS/Atom feeds. In the end, it can be a godsend!
Speaking of Beyondjazz, there’s a page that kinda/sorta explains a bit about what I’ve talked about. There are also additional links on the site that you can branch out to for more info.
Many thanks to Jurrian from BJ for hooking me onto this, and for his continued assistance. Expect to see some evolution of both sites (mainly behind-the-scenes) in the next week or so.
Aight, time to put the technobabble to rest, except to say that a few links have now been added to both blog sites. Check it.
Have a good weekend, and catch y’all next week!
