Whenever I hear the name Jane I can’t help thinking about a high school friend of mine (spelled “Jayne”). She was one of maybe three people from my school I hung out with my senior year. When I attended a reunion recently my wife asked me, not facetiously, “Are you even going to know anyone here?” The only person I could think of was Jayne, but I knew she wouldn’t be there. Like me, Jayne was slightly anti-social. As I expected, no Jayne. But you know how high school reunions put you in that nostalgic mood/mode? Thus affected, I did some internet sleuthing and actually tracked Jayne down, an entire continent away, hoping to say hello and catch up. I left two awkward voice messages (it’s impossible to sound casual, as if I hadn’t talked to her for a week when in fact it had been years). Did Jayne call back? Nope. Made me feel even more awkward, like I was some creepy internet stalker!
I think if Jayne’s personality were more like Cannonball Jane’s music we would’ve had a nice conversation, shared a few good laughs, and traded our latest listens and reads. See, Cannonball Jane is playful, colourful (Jayne was from England—she made me use British spellings), and obviously up for some fun. By day Cannonball Jane teaches elementary school. By night Jane, aka Sharon Hagopian, fires up the beatbox, guitars, synths and gadgets and records a groovin’ pastiche of hip hop, new wave, and sixties pop. A mix of Soul Coughing and Luscious Jackson, Mary Tyler Moore and Solex. This is the kind of woman I’d trust to educate my children and school me in the ways of beats and breaks and dance party extravaganzas. Hey, sounds a lot like Alisa, the woman I married. Who, by the way, tracked down one of her old high school friends during a reunion year. And he called her back! Who wouldn’t? She’s fun like that.
Since I first posted Ratatat four years ago all the original MP3s have been taken down. See, you gotta grab the goods while there are goods to grab (you can still download their second mixtape 
I was surprised to find these tracks in my in-box. They’re quite the weekend treat. As you might imagine I spend a fair amount of time scouring the web for new music and I haven’t heard a peep from the Independiente label since DeeJay Punk-Roc’s ’98 release of Chicken Eye. Obviously I’m not listening closely enough. They’re Travis’ UK label. OK, so I’ve got some catching up to do. And besides the occasional David Holmes or Diplo track she sings on, I haven’t spent quality time with Ms. Topley-Bird. That’s gonna change too. Today. String theorists searching for other dimensions just may find what they’re looking for if they’d get strung out on some MTB. Topley-Bird’s voice carries me to other worlds, worlds I first discovered listening to Tricky’s Maxinquaye where she played the beautifully haunting foil to his gravelly trip-hop hero. Topley-Bird herself is off on her own inter-genre exploration with co-pilot/producer Dangermouse. Whether it’s the dusty after hours slow-mo of “Valentine,” the playfully seductive “Carnies,” or this bumpin’ club remix of “Poison” Martina Topley Bird’s buttery-rich voice easily lilts your soul enough to keep you just on this side of an out of body experience.
I so need this right now. Lately my brain has been swelling at the seams as I work through my first year of teaching (in the face of pending budget cuts that may very well force me into retirement decades too soon), grading (English teachers do too much), and, the really hard part: snowboarding, skateboarding, biking, legoing, and birthday-partying with my kids. Just as I’m about to lie down to sleep (quick usage 
Even if you’ve only listened to my 
As most of the music world heads to Austin, Texas this week for the annual South By South West music festival I’m stuck here in my front bedroom doing the virtual bar crawl hunting for something new to listen to and re-living 
Realistic (brainchild of musician/motion graphics designer James Towning) started a la Negativland: whipping up a smirky hodge-podge of everything from self-help tapes to soap operas to classic rock. With Perpetual Memory Loss, Realistic rises to the next level, crafting some outright tuneful (if chaotic) thumpers from layers of sounds and samples. These tracks illustrate the contrast between albums, but don’t even represent the best that Realistic has to offer. Stream the whole album 
Today’s selection is actually a nice bookend to Lisa’s Hello, Blue Roses post yesterday, albeit 4Hero has always been more of a sweeping club fave than an electronic bedroom dweller. Way back in 1999, I took a job in Los Angeles and drove down the very next day in my Chevy Sprint Turbo (yes, turbo), and 4Hero’s Two Pages, which came out a few months before, was about the only cassette I had that would play in my cheapo radio. Unlike the CD release, the promo segregated the darker drum’n’bass onto one cassette and the more chilled-out, string-laden fusion stuff onto another. As the title suggests, one was a great antidote to the other. In the central Utah mountains? Time for Ursula Rucker’s smooth spoken-word over lovely breakbeats and sweeping strings. Trudging the home stretch through the Mojave? Bring on the sci-fi jungle. Since that bygone era when we were all going to be dot-com millionaires, 4Hero has gravitated more and more toward the groove, and “Morning Child†has the feel of both a return to form and a culmination of the form. It also sounds like a lithe and lovely summer song, so perhaps it’ll warm up your new year a few degrees.
C.O.C.O. play funky dance music, as does their lumberjack-soulman-boss Calvin Johnson, with an unselfconscious swagger that wears its anti-hipster lameness like a faded black t-shirt, not to mention on instruments that won’t be rendered useless when the power goes out at the house party (although their propensity for dub fadeouts might get lost with the lights out). Olivia Ness and Chris Sutton are a rhythm section in no need of melodies. It’s what all the Olympia kids are dancing to these days, and with any luck these rhythms will sweep the nation and set basement parties afire from coast to coast.
Staffan Ulmert (aka Mojib) shares a taste in music with many of us here at 3hive. He lists