Chad Taylor

Changes


Camino has been discontinued, so I've started using Firefox. Deleted Facebook's iOS app in favour of Facebook Messenger. Because iOS switches between different e-mail accounts if one is slower, I've been nudged to migrate from my original and very first email account at Yahoo to my Gmail, which I initially used as a dead email account. My iPhone is the only thing I make calls on, or Skype on my Air. I've been to a movie theater once in the last five months -- Fast and Furious 6. Although I'm living a house with Sky and Soho, the last TV I watched was repeats of The Sopranos, Columbo and The Wire, and a MP4 of Mad Men. Of the last four books I bought, three were on my Nook -- from Barnes and Noble UK, which is cheaper than New Zealand. The last seven books I sold were on Kindle.

But the last music I bought was secondhand CDs, and I still write with a pencil on a yellow legal pad and still carry a Moleskine notebook / diary.

Update: Confirmed? Twitter for iOS does seem to be a data suck.

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Bullitt (1968), Vanishing Point (1971), Christine (1983), Fast and Furious 6 (2013)

Earthbound


I bought a secondhand car with a six-CD player but Led Zeppelin Remasters is only two discs: what to choose for the other four? To start I picked up a secondhand copy of Lisa Ekdahl's Back to Earth (1998) with the Peter Nordahl Trio -- quite possibly the exact same one that I'd sold to the store after listening to it in 1999 and deciding that I didn't like it at all. Plus ça change and all that.

When I first heard Back To Earth I found it clockwork but now, 14 years later I like it: I find it clockwork. I remembered her cover of 'Now Or Never' that hits like espresso but forgotten her charming version of Cole Porter's 'Laziest Girl In Town'. And 'Tea for Two', 'I Get a Kick Out of You' and 'Night and Day.' It's like being in a five-star lobby that never closes.

Ekdahl is Swedish, the daughter of a nuclear physicist and a kindergarten teacher. She takes after both parents: her voice is perfect and innocent, precise and untroubled. The band whirl around her like electrons while she glows at the center, neither positive nor negative, on time and in key.

Critics are divided on Lisa Ekdahl, most of them rating her as not very good. Her voice is one you either love or hate, and she makes no excuses for it. As she told Time Out Hong Kong:
I'm aware that I have a tiny voice, and I try to do the best with what I have. So I accept my voice and try not to make it bigger than what it is, because, for me personally, I love when someone naturally has a big beautiful voice, but I don't think it's so interesting when someone with a not very big voice tries to make it sound big. Another thing is that when I record, I'm aware that my voice is tiny, so I want to make a lot of space around my voice, so for me it's very important to work with musicians who naturally leave a lot of space.