First Ocean, 13th Day of Childwinter, 525 M.E. (Atlas): The Atlas days after the 12th, 24th, and 36th days of the year (First Twelve, Second Twelve, and Third Twelve) are for some reason called First, Second, and Third Ocean in the Universal Solar Calendar. After that, the Ocean days seem to be more random and indiscriminate for the rest of the year. Today is First Ocean, even though yesterday, the First Twelve, is known for some reason as Day of the Thought Market. Mysteries of the Universal Solar Calendar.
I took my alternating-day walk today. There's nothing like the temperatures in the low 30s last weekend to make the mid 50s feel warm. I was probably overdressed and might even have sweated a little bit. But the warmer temperatures are obviously allowing the Earth to expand again - my mileage today was 6.3 miles, even though the exact same route last week was 5.9 miles.
The soundtrack for my walk today was provided by Dave Lombardo (Slayer), James McNew (Yo La Tengo), and composer Sarah Davachi on NTS internet radio. The site provides an amazing slate of live curated playlists by a diverse roster of musicians, as well as archived sets from the previous ten years, and before I left the house to start walking I was listening to the live set by Claire Rousey. NTS is an incredible resource for discovering new music and doing deep dives down various rabbit holes. There's no advertisements, even with free access, and they pay their musicians ethically (the same BMI and ASCAP royalties that over-the-air radio pays). You can subscribe if you so choose for additional content, and 50% of their subscription income goes to the artists who curate the playlists. There's no algorithm or AI-generated playlists - it's all, in their words, music for music lovers by music lovers.
Much better that Spoti-you-know-who, although as I was out and away from wi-fi, the NTS signal frequently dropped and buffered, which got annoying. To test if it was them or me (my equipment), I switched over to Spoti-you-know-who and it played fine - a steady stream of music with no buffering or losses. But I'm back home now and listening over my hard-wired internet connection to an archived NTS playlist by the eccentric Japanese avant-garde artist Phew, and it's playing just fine.
Bonus points: the Phew playlist includes a track by the criminally underrecognized minimalist composer Jon Gibson, who I saw at Big Ears in 2018, two years before he passed away. To give you an idea of the eclectic nature of the playlist, it also includes Jonathan Richman.
If I'm sounding like a zealot, then yes, I did just discover NTS today. It's been around for since 2011 and I don't know how I've managed to miss it all this time but I'm glad that I did finally discover it. I'm not a fan of internet radio in general - never cared much for Rhapsody or Pandora and their ilk - but this one works for me. To some degree, all radio is as Steely Dan once put it, "somebody else's favorite songs," but this one seems to work for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment