lo tech poetry

I just love that.

Enough words, gimme some pizzas

I talked about Matt&Kim in a previous post : here they are. This is what pop music is all about. Raw, funny, fresh, cheerful and catchy.

Dont miss the bit when they change the tee-shirt : the drummer tries to get her drum sticks back and she just misses one.

Internet moves so fast

Pumpkin

In the amazing and weirdo Maxinquaye album (a must have, in my personal 90s TOP10) by one hit wonder Tricky , there was this brilliant duet with Alison Goldfrapp : the track name is Pumpkin. It's a bit of a sticky and suffocating 6/4 ballad based on a Smashing Pumpkins sample (hence the title). In this song, Tricky, with his usual psychopath whispering voice goes "MTV moves so fast, I refuse to understand".

That's a bit of the the way I sometimes feel about the web 2.0 (MySpace owners saying they are the MTV of this generation makes it even more applicable) and the welter of technologies, toolkits, frameworks, langages and components coming down on us on a regular basis. On one hand I have to admit these really are exciting times to work in the IT world. But on the other, I cant help feeling discouraged by all the new stuff we have to go through to keep up to date. It was a bit of a relief to read even people like french Techcrunch feeling about the same (sorry I havent kept the actual link) .

Hibernate with GWT

I am sooooo depressed when I read guys like Sami saying in his nice blog post on GWT "When I want to learn about a new technology, I just hibernate for a few days preparing the material for a training on that very subject". This makes me feel so unprofessional. I have just finished doing my Spring and Hibernate self training. After a long time observing the Ruby or Groovy debate (I just dont have enough time to go through both), I have just ordered my Ruby On Rails book. But still, I just feel like a slacker, a part-time IT professional.

So here are my questions : how do all these tech savvy do to keep up to date with what's going on, where do they find the time to be (on top of their own job) superstars of the open source community ? Do they have special authorization to have 48 hours day ?

Walking the dog and running Tiger

Man, I have a family, a house to DIY on a regular basis, a dog to walk, a pop band to run, CDs to listen to, movies to watch , books to read, oh and secondarily, my own company to run (I'm self employed).

And you know what ? I think I'm not the only one. When I talk with my colleagues at work it just occurs that most of them don't know as much as I do on this new tech topics. All these techy web sites are the avant-garde of the IT world. Real world is a different story : as an example, I had about 10 jobs interview in February with different IT companies, none of them (well in management team at least) had ever heard of Ruby On Rails, none of them was running Tiger either. Okay I dont work in the Silicon Valley but still ...

So I guess that for us, the geek next door, they just are like Super heros. I'm not saying that we should not do anything to keep up with the technologies : we should do our best within the time and space that is given to us. And as the Radiohead song goes along, "the best we can is good enough".

SofiaCoppoleries ou les transparences capiteuses de la culture Indie

Mes longues conversations electroniques avec la teck mob (population plutôt urbaine et branchouille) m'ont confirmé dans ce sentiment diffus selon lequel nous achetons plus des produits culturels comme des attributs de définition socio-culturelle que comme des objets de découverte et d'enrichissement intellectuel.

La mouvance pop-indie (pour indépendante, par opposition au Mainstream) propose ainsi des objets culturels (disques, films, livres) qui ne sont souvent qu'un assemblage (plus ou moins réussi) de signes de subversion délicate : lo-fi contre le tout technologique, histoires évasives plutôt que scenarios en béton, personnages en plein doute contre sportifs baraqués ou business women résolue, voix et arrangements hésitants en lieu et place de maestria instrumentiste, ironie et détachement plutôt que certitudes et engagement, erotisme diaphane plutot que sex-appeal hormonal.

On pourrait ainsi tracer une ligne de Sofia Coppola à Air pour relier les centres névralgiques de cette mouvance. On pourra y adjoindre l'electro-pop des princesses glacées d 'Au Revoir Simone, trio de new yorkaises à la beauté diaphane (merveilleusement mis en valeur par la pochette) et aux jambes interminables, trio venant tout les comme les impeccables Matt&Kim de Brooklyn.

On peut donc avec The Bird of Music (succédant au superbement nommé Verses of Comfort, Assurance and Salvation - en hommage à Depeche Mode ?) s'acheter une petite conduite indie, car tout est là, dosé à la perfection, sans véritable surprise : synthé antédiluviens, belles mélodies (le micro-hymne "The Lucky one" est une sorte un micro-tube), textes en demi-teintes, vocabulaire musical réduit à son plus simple appareil, minimalisme des arrangements.

Nous sommes dans la lignée des Stereolab, The Notwist, Lali Puna, et ce charme capiteux, cette grâce transparente s'exprime totalement lors de l'écoute de The Bird of Music, parfaite bande son vernale. Reconnaissons donc à ces artistes indie un grand talent pour exprimer si précisément des sentiments si subtils, si ténus.

On pourra reprocher à cette mouvance un peu de systèmatisation dans l'emploi de ces signes, systématisation qui peut donner un sentiment de superficialité. Et se questionner sur la typologie socio-culturelle monolithique des artistes et du public : à savoir une jeune bourgeoisie blanche de gauche, plutôt aisée. Et se demander si celle-ci ne perpétue pas, en creux, cet élitisme et cette condescendance intellectuelle que l'on peut reprocher à ses aînés.