orbis quintus

Hypd 2 Death’s liner notes has some details, but one guy went on to be in a band without the instant hooks that these two songs have. I’ve never heard of Blue Screaming, and when i search for them, the engines turn up the Screaming Blue Messiahs, not exactly what i’m looking for. It’s like early XTC, with Barry Andrews still in the band, doing Suicide.

Take It “Taking Sides”

Take It “How It Is”

Belle & Sebastian “Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto” This has to be one of the most odd covers i’ve heard in years.

Belle & Sebastian “Silent Night” This coud be anyone, anywhere, but this was with John Peel. So there.

Belle & Sebastian “O Little Town of Bethelehem” Murdoch goes lounge singer. That Peanuts number earlier went to his head.

I’m sure you’ve seen this cute little story about the Mars Opportunity rover:

LONDON (Reuters) – An unexplained phenomenon akin to a space-borne car wash has boosted the performance of one of the two U.S. rovers probing the surface of Mars, New Scientist magazine says.

It said something — or someone — had regularly cleaned layers of dust from the solar panels of the Mars Opportunity vehicle while it was closed down during the Martian night.

The cleaning had boosted the panels’ power output close to their maximum 900 watt-hours per day after at one stage dropping to 500 watt-hours because of the heavy Martian dirt.

By contrast, the power output of the solar panels of Mars Spirit — on a different part of the Red Planet — had dropped to just 400 watt-hours a day, clogged by the heavy dust.

“These exciting and unexplained cleaning events have kept Opportunity in really great shape,” the magazine quoted NASA rover team leader Jim Erickson as saying.

Could it possibly, just possibly, be rain?

Click it to get a close-up. This was taken 12/19/04. It could be a mere trick of the light, but that looks like puddles of water pooled in the low spots. Rain could be washing off those solar panels.

Obviously, if this indeed is water, this would mean Mars is also a lot warmer than they are telling us.

Do you remember that early LCD Soundsystem album review? Yancey’s spot-on.

I haven’t made it all of the way through the album just yet, but i had to do a quick search to find this review to find exactly what the hell he wrote, as he summed up what i’ve heard perfectly. I think that the song “Movement” is a Count Five “Psychotic Reaction” homage though, and in a moment of weakness, i thought that the opening “On Repeat” was playing on Soft Cell’s Tainted Love”. And “Never As Tired As When I’m Waking Up” is so Beatlesque that i thought that i had tossed the wrong song into the mix. He said that “Too Much Love” was the weakest song of the album, but i’m hearing Bowie’s Young Americans all over it, so it’s a lot stronger in my ears.

The only irritation is that they waited until 2005 to release it. I don’t think that it has lost its moment in time though.