Lost AT E Minor

Scour, a new way of searching the net

Have you heard about Scour yet? If not you will. It is quickly emerging as the most serious competitor to the Google search engine, with an approach based on votes and comments from users focusing on relevance. It delivers search results from Google, Yahoo and MSN, and the best feature is that each time you search, vote or comment, you receive points which can be exchaged for VISA gift cards. Sour gives you one point for each search, two points for each vote and three points for each comment. With around 6,500 points, you will receive a $25 VISA gift card. Not bad for doing something you’re doing now anyway for free.

Roots Manuva’s Slime & Reason

I like Roots Manuva because he tells stories. I know that sounds simplistic, but honestly, have you noticed how rappers, certainly American rappers, have stopped narrating their lives and are purely focused on how great they are? I know, I know, hip-hop is all about word play, slang, and blah blah blah. But I listen to music for stories and heart-felt sentiment. Roots Manuva gets that. He’s old school that way. His latest album, Slime & Reason, is still rooted in the UK grime scene (does that still exist, or has it gone the way of electroclash? I’m earnestly asking), but a lot of it is more overtly dub than anything he’s done so far, and he’s got some beats and samples on this record that are as dramatic and epic as some of the metal bands I listen to. He talks about real sentiments and earnest emotions and believable and relatable experiences, which may make him uncool amongst the sneaker-collecting kiddies, but even though this isn’t his best record, I still like where it’s coming from.

The Nines

The directorial debut of John August, a writer who was worked on films such as Go, Big Fish and Corpse Bride, is a complex and thought-provoking arthouse feature crowned with a spectacular performance by Ryan Reynolds in the lead role. Like most films, it is in three parts. However, these are three distinct parts with the same actors all playing different roles. Read more

Micah P. Hinson takes the good with the bad

We said a few weeks back that Micah P. Hinson is ‘like every rustic, broken down, and pieced back together country great that’s ever been. Only hipper and slightly less sombre’. With that in mind, we spoke to him recently and asked him whether his hometown of Texas was a difficult place for a young, aspiring musician to grow up in: Read more

Kristin Baker

Kristin Baker’s paintings strike the eye like massive Hollywood blockbusters, but have the elegance of delicate watercolors. Reminiscent of Kazimir Malevich and the Italian futurists, Baker’s two-dimensional pieces abstract images of crashing cars, explosions, and other apocalyptic images to create unnerving and dynamic works that resonate with the uncertainty of our times. Read more