chilling on the couch with my phoenix

via nymag's vulture: "'yoooo they banned my album cover!!!!!' exclaimed kanye west via twitter last night. 'they don't want me chilling on the couch with my phoenix!' he said, describing the glorious proposed art for 'my beautiful dark twisted fantasy,' a painting depicting a topless, armless, winged female character farting polka dots and straddling a demonic-looking gentleman who we suppose is meant to be kanye. who are they? still unclear."

most excellent:


via latimesblog.com: "kanye...revealed a piece of graphic artwork in which a naked representation of the artist was in a sexually suggestive position with the mythological firebird in female form. in a follow-up tweet, west wrote, 'in the '70s album covers had actual nudity... it's so funny that people forget that... everything has been so commercialized now.'"

the (best) source of this ballyhoosery is kanye's twitter: "So Nirvana can have a naked human being on they cover but I can't have a PAINTING of a monster with no arms and a polka dot tail and wings [sic]"

in other news: the garden of forking paths is a latenite mixtape curated by james blackshaw and compiled in may of 2007. it is slow, exotic, half filled with strings, and half filled with open spaces throughout which those strings draw themselves out to a fine point before, while, and after resonating with the rest of the plucked atmosphere.

says blackshaw of his selections: "chieko mori, a japanese composer, koto virtuoso and one-time FABRICA resident, who first came to my attention with her beautiful and mesmerising debut recording 'jumping rabbit' for john zorn's tzadik label in 2005, which ranks itself as one of my all-time favourite albums; jozef van wissem, a similarly accomplished rennaissance lute player and composer from the netherlands, who has collaborated with gary lucas and tetuzi akiyama amongst others and whose solo albums often make use of palindromic or mirrored structures interwoven with field recordings to haunting and immensely compelling effect; swedish cellist and improviser helena espvall, perhaps currently best known for her work with US psych-folk group espers, but who has also played with such luminaries as pauline oliveros and eugene chadbourne and whose own recent solo work has demonstrated her amazing power and sensitivity as an artist." read more of his thoughts here.

says wiki about jorge luis borges' eponymous hypertext, "beyond its facade as a spy narrative, 'the garden of forking paths' has similarities to today's digital media and hypertext projects, including perhaps wikipedia. borges conceives of 'a labyrinth that folds back upon itself in infinite regression,' asking the reader to 'become aware of all the possible choices we might make.' the elaborate hypertext is much like the book which borges suggests to be the labyrinth, ('every one imagined two works; to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing...the confusion of the novel suggested to me that it was the maze') in a sense of how the site offers different approaches to how you may interpret the information provided, yet you're not trapped in the dilemma of choosing one and eliminating others; you may choose to unfold all possibilities. you "create, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork" (wardrip-fruin, 33)." (more)

chieko mori - jumping rabbit (2005)


espers - the weed tree (2005)


here is a list of tunings used by james blackshaw.