Club 8 - the chance i deserve, 2002

"The song’s tone is bittersweet, balancing hope with a lingering sense of insecurity. It’s a classic indie pop ballad, with Komstedt’s delicate vocals carrying an air of sincerity that makes the emotional stakes feel real."

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - joan of arc, 1981

"I mean it's not hard to overdo the hyperbole, but it's a perfect album, so cohesive, and every song perfectly speaks to the other song, the unapologetic emotional quality of it is really inspiring. Even the artwork by Peter Saville, everything about it is perfectly crafted."

Enya - portrait out of the blue, 1987

"‘Portrait’ was first released in its original length of 1:23 on’ ENYA’. Later a new extended and re-recorded version of 3:12 was released as ‘Out of the Blue’ on the ‘Orinoco Flow’ single and as ‘Portrait (Out Of The Blue)” on ‘The Celts’."

The Durutti Column - cocktail, 1985

"You also get the ripples and rushes of ‘College’ (‘formerly ‘The Sea Wall’) and ‘Journeys by Vespa’, which are both in line with the gently hair-raising thrills of earlier tracks like ‘Madeleine’ and ‘Danny’, where Reilly’s guitar weaves complex, dazzling textures, the down-tempo, desolate spaces of opener ‘At First Sight’, which does sound a lot like Without Mercy, although not identically so. ‘Destroy, She Said’ is one of a few pieces which ties the album to the year it was made, but like I said, not in a negative way. You know, in that a sitar in a pop song is most likely going to be a mid-1960’s song just because a song is immediately recognisable from a particular era, doesn’t mean it has dated. Anyway, despite all of what I just said, ‘Destroy, She Said’ is not one of my favourite pieces here, erring closer to the jazzier spectrum of Durutti that I’m not so keen on. ‘Model’ (formerly ‘Little Horses of Tarquina’) is a brief and gorgeously spectral guitar solo. ‘Take Some Time Out’ and ‘A Silence’ both have vocals – the former is a lighter than average creation, though Reilly’s singing can’t help but conjure an air of downtrodden misery! The latter is not as good, a bit Durutti-by-numbers. ‘Mirror A’ and ‘Mirror B’ are quite different pieces, ‘A’ being a decent if lightweight, fully electronic piece with vocals by ‘Pauline’, and ‘B’ a piano-led dirge, punctuated by Eric Sleichim’s saxophone, not one of my favourite elements of the Durutti sound circa this time, I have to say. In-between those two pieces we get ‘Cocktail’, which is lighter than ‘Mirror B’ but has the same saxophone problems, and ‘Telephone Call’ which has saxophone too, but used to much better effect. This piece is quite jazzy actually, but the more melancholic, late-night, drowsy side of jazz. It’s good! The album concludes with ‘A Room in Southport‘ (formerly ‘Snowflakes’), a very gentle, shuffling thing of beauty, with some lovely harp playing from Anne Van Den Troost."

Beach Vacation - break the ice, 2020

"This track has a summery beach vibe but the underlying guitar riffs hint at an emotional edge which evokes the sounds of MGMT and London Grammar. The distant, soothing vocals relax the listener and add to the general chill vibe throughout the track. The lyrics add to this, with the chorus opening with “Would you take a walk with me? Over seas and through the breeze”.

The Cure - pictures of you live, 2019

"Most love songs are just calculated attempts at commercial exploitation — they’re not anything to do with love as I understand it," said Cure leader Smith. After the relatively cheerful pop songs of Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, he wanted to write the Cure’s heaviest songs yet. With this epic of cascading synths and broken dreams, he succeeded."

Bonnie Prince Billy - crazy blue bells, 2023

"Within the resplendent symphony of melodies, emerges Sara Louise Callaway's delicate yet mighty violin, its enchanting presence painting the air with its ephemeral strokes. Raw-voiced, as if back from the wars, the Prince leads the orchestral reverie of voices and strings that envision another tomorrow."

Blur - russian strings, 2023

"Damon wrote this track during a trip to BelgradeW, where Gorillaz shot their music video for the single Silent Running at the city's High School of Electrical Engineering."

Kevin Morby - kingdom of broken hearts, 2023

"The first part of this song is from a session we did a few years ago when recording This Is a Photograph, but the second half we cut more recently and fused the two parts together. We got our friend Saundra WIlliams to sing on it, and her voice is so incredibly beautiful. We’d changed the lyrics in the back half a lot, never feeling they were perfect, which is a big reason it never made the first album. Then during the last session, Sam and I wrote the lyrics together."

The Radio Dept - can't be guilty, 2016

"Can’t Be Guilty" retains The Radio Dept.’s signature dream pop sound but introduces a slightly darker, more electronic edge compared to their earlier work. The song features soft, layered vocals by Johan Duncanson, pulsing synths, and a hypnotic rhythm that builds tension without ever fully resolving it."

REM - that someone is you, 2011

"It's the final thing I sing, the last song on the record before the record goes into a coda and reprises the first song. In my head, it's like I'm addressing a nine-year-old and I'm saying, 'I come from a faraway place called the 20th century. And these are the values and these are the mistakes we've made and these are the triumphs. These are the things that we held in the highest esteem. These are the things to learn from."

The Goon Sax - love lost, 2018

"Formed in Brisbane by high school classmates James Harrison and Louis Forster (who is not, coincidentally, the son of the Go-Betweens' Robert Forster), the duo began working on songs in Harrison's bedroom, and were joined by drummer Riley Jones, who had been taking lessons for a month. The trio soon started playing house shows, then graduated to clubs, where they played with like-minded bands like the Twerps and Blank Realm."

Seablite - ink bleeds, 2022

"Seablite" is a San Francisco-based indie pop band known for their dreamy shoegaze and jangling guitar sounds, often compared to influences like The Smiths, The Mamas & the Papas, and Cocteau Twins. "Ink Bleeds" is one of two tracks on their 7" single released on January 1, 2022, via Emotional Response Records, with the other track being "Breadcrumbs."

The Moody Blues - have you heard part one, 1969

"Have You Heard" is a 1969 song by the progressive rock band the Moody Blues. Written by the band's keyboardist Mike Pinder, "Have You Heard" is actually a two-part song, and both parts were recorded and released in 1969 on the Moody Blues Album On the Threshold of a Dream."

Fait-divers on unpredictability

Don’t assume knowing a lot about the internals of your current database is the only thing you need, scale will introduce new unknowns. Unpredictable hotspots, uneven distribution of data will make you reconsider your database. Significant database growth introduces unpredictability. See reality as a database.

Fait-divers on meditation

How do we love ourselves? We love ourselves by becoming still. Stillness is a great discipline, it’s the great discovery of meditation. Stillness is the dynamic of transcendence.

Praia do Magoito, Litoral de Sintra, ontem, 12 de Abril de 2025, a meio da tarde

Sharon Van Etten - close to you, 2023

"Equal parts eerie and alluring, “Close to You” sees Van Etten infuse her classic Americana-inspired rock with a heavy wash of dreamy reverb, cooing lines like: “I got a taste of being with you, don’t wanna waste more time,” “put on your best dress and get out of your head,” and “get away and I’ll stay close to you.”

Arcade Fire - age of anxiety i, 2022

"We is the sixth studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire, released through Columbia Records on May 6, 2022. Produced by Nigel Godrich and band members Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, it was recorded in studios in New Orleans; in El Paso, Texas; and on Mount Desert Island in Maine. The album takes its name from the Russian dystopian novel We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It was the final album by Arcade Fire to feature multi-instrumentalist Will Butler, who departed the band in 2022."

True Blue - youth, 2023

"Capturing influences of past decades, German (Munich) indie solo-project True Blue makes dynamic contemporary indiepop. The second EP named “Borrowed Spaces” was released on September 29, 2023, starting with its eponymous debut single. Producing all his music in his home studio, True Blue stays, I quote, “true to his intuitive approach and tries to preserve the vibe mirrored in the songs as best as possible“: a true bedroompop approach! The result echoes in a blend of different genres such as dream pop, new wave and new-fashioned surf-rock. Single “Youth“is released today and feels like a fast paced car-ride at dusk!"