For the second time, Nine Inch Nails has released an album off of its website. The newest album, titled "The Slip", is entirely free. Says Reznor on the site, "thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one's on me." This represents the first time an artist has distributed an entire album without providing fans any opportunity to pay for it. The development is particularly exciting for me as I have been working directly with the technology team in developing a spin-off closely related to "Ghost I-IV" and "The Slip".

I also think NiN embracing "free" is a very wise move, given the particular climate of the music industry. Earlier today, a friend expressed curiosity at the new release: "What is the business model?" I would call the business model community relationships 2.0, one in which the model is fundamentally based on built and fostered trust between artist and tribe following. Reznor already proved that he can cater better to his fan base than any major record label could do in the old model, by allowing fans to pay anywhere from nothing to $300 based on their individual loyalty, audiophile status, and economic flexibility. Given that he raked in over $1.7 million on Ghosts, it seems like the perfect strategy to reward fans for sustaining his model. We are quickly shedding the mentality of music as a one-for-one commodity, into one where music begins to gain value precisely because it is free.

The Slip is being released with a Creative Commons license. Stay tuned for my review of the album...

Tags: Nine Inch Nails, NiN, Reznor, The Slip, Free, Ghosts I-IV, Creative Commons

Stanford Law Professor and founder of the Creative Commons, Lawrence Lessig, is starting a new movement aimed at reducing corruption in politics. Lessig's contention is that the fundamental obstacle preventing political change is not a misunderstanding or disagreement over policy, but instead a lack of transparency and, therefore, accountability. Because campaigns are privately financed, our candidates are able to take money from lobbyists and political action committees and often do out of lust for power. The obvious problem here is that these candidates are no longer solely accountable to the American people that elect them but are forced to compromise their supposed duty to their constituents by returning favors to those special interests that helped elect them. The ultimate result of this is a lack of trust in government, manifested by consistently low congressional approval ratings that today stand at 23%. Lack of trust, of course, leads to two even more profoundly detrimental trends: apathy and disengagement.

Lessig's project, Change Congress, will aim to establish a wiki-style watchdog movement that will seek pledges from elected and running officials in terms of campaign finance, with the goal of reducing the influence of lobbyists, PACs and earmarks. Ordinary citizens will be called upon to hold their representatives accountable and to upload their own political pledges for reform, so that like-minded candidates can link up with like-minded citizens. It will be interesting to see whether or not Lessig can galvanize a community around building an application which has as its sole function a kind of use-value and utility that members of the web 2.0 community are unfamiliar with. Social media applications have rarely been centered around the idea of political utility, but instead are more often centered around more hedonistic or voyeuristic value propositions. So, yes, you can build a site that enables people to upload home movies or pictures, or allows peers to keep up with their ever growing network, and these applications have tremendous value in terms of creative collaboration and social utility. Lessig is asking whether that social energy can now be leveraged into political activism.

Tags: Lawrence Lessig, Congress, Corruption, Transparency, Lobbyists, PACs

Justin Vernon's debut album, "For Emma, Forever Ago" is steeped in mysticism, romance, and the deep spirit of nature. Vernon sings under the pseudonym "Bon Iver" a slight modification of the French bon hiver, meaning "good winter", and indeed there is an intimate presence of the cold and dark penetrating nights of winter pulsating throughout the album. In making the album, Vernon retired himself to an isolated log cabin during a Wisconsin winter for what he called a period of "hibernation". I listen to a whole lot of music, and I will not hesitate to say that "For Emma, For Ever Ago" is the best album I have listened to in 2008 and one of the best in the last 5 years. What makes it great is not just a transformational fusion of lulling folk fundamentals with what Vernon calls "neo-soul", but also the tender kinetics that weave a fabric of songs into and out of each other beautifully. Everything on the album works, there are no dull moments or pointless diversions, it is simply a collective and wholesome masterpiece.

The album opens with the lugubrious Flume, which somehow begins in mourning and transcends into personified metaphysics, "Only love is all maroon / Gluey feathers on a flume / Sky is womb and she's the moon." Vernon's voice pierces through the harrowing, hollow guitar chords and quivering electronic sidenotes to communicate an ethereal yet poignant spiritual ascension. Indeed, his voice is layered and re-layered over itself throughout the album, ranging from heights to depths though usually rooted in an angelic falsetto. But for all his hushed fragility, Vernon always has the potential to reinforce the strength he finds in natural isolation by catapulting his voice through powerful sforzandos and accentuated fortes. "I told you to be patient / I told you to be fine / I told you to be balanced / I told you to be kind" castigates the incensed Vernon on Skinny Love. "Now all your love is wasted? / Then who the hell was I? / Now I'm breaking at the britches / And at the end of all your lies."

Vernon overcomes the lack of versatility that sometimes detracts from other wistful folk acts like Iron and Wine by relentlessly pushing the boundary. Wolves (Act I & II), takes a soulful chorus line encumbered by deep spiritual trauma ("Someday my pain, someday my pain / Will mark you / Harness Your blame, harness your blame / And walk through) and infuses it with a percussive and violent retort, a seeming refusal to acknowledge a past wrought with painful memories ("What might have been lost - / Don't bother me!"). And on the wonderfully percolated "For Emma" Vernon clearly steeps himself in the tradition of Simon & Garfunkel, but leaves a place for incredibly nuanced brass voices, accompanying his high pitched yearnings like a friend that knows compassion but doesn't know the best way to communicate it.

The highlight of the album, if I had to isolate a single song, would definitely be Re: Stacks, a hauntingly austere examination of the relationship between nature and loss. Has there ever been a more fragile song than this? It brings to mind some of the sweepingly intimate epics of Red House Painters and gives Nick Drake a run for his money in terms of poetic frailty. "I've been twisting to the sun I needed to replace / The fountain in the front yard is rusted out / All my love was down / In a frozen ground." "For Emma, Forever Ago" is clearly a cathartic act for Vernon as he isolates himself in the wintry confines of northwestern Wisconsin and confronts old wounds by recognizing their inextricable relationship with the natural world. But the album is neither about resignation nor about resolve, and catharsis is not ultimately the resolution. Instead, Vernon seems to have found what he came for in Wisconsin and seems to want to hold onto memories no matter how painful they ultimately are. "This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization / It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away / Your love will be / Safe with me."

Vernon went to the woods as a sort of Rousseaun retreat, isolated himself in a log cabin for 4 snowy months, and confronted his private tragedies and interiorized emotions. The music is particularly evocative of cold wintry nights, but somehow Vernon's embrace of universal themes and his penchant for cathartic lyrics allow the music to transcend this kind of taxonomy. I listen to the album at the break of dawn, and just as the sun goes down, here in Southern California. It is as beautiful in the open sun as it must have been in the hallowed and darkened beauty of the wilderness.

Tags: Bon Iver, 2008, Wisconsin, Folk, Falsetto, Justin Vernon, Album

This is why I can no longer get my news from television. Honestly, I could not tell if I was watching Election Coverage on MSNBC or Around The Horn on ESPN. This is sad. And what's the deal with that stupid boxing donkey, is this really how people want to get their news? Why do shows like this continue to get air time, are they getting high ratings? Has the MSM decided that there is absolutely no value to real objective news and analysis? I encourage everyone to pull their news from other sources (internet, podcasts, etc.) and not get pushed by this comic-book trash.

Tags: MSNBC, News, Democratic Primary, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton

On the eve of the anniversary of the assassination of MLK Jr., I thought it would be appropriate to post a video here of one of King's less popular speeches. Less popular because it does not showcase his familiar vision of racial and spiritual harmony, but instead criticizes America as hegemonic, militaristic and arrogant. Less popular because it instead promulgates the idea that dissent is perhaps the most fundamental tenet of our democracy and because King tied together the damage caused by an imperialistic war with that of a government unconcerned by the domestic plights of poverty and hunger in its own country.

Listening to this speech I am humbled by the power of King's words. There is a great sense of disappointment in his words, yes, but there is a powerful distinction between disappointment and resignation. Disappointment by nature requires a belief in a higher moral ideal as a priori to the standard being upheld, whereas resignation implies moral and spiritual passivity. King clearly believes in a higher ground that America can reach for and indeed calls for a "radical revaluation of values". King is prophetic and could be speaking today:

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

And later:

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

Reading this, I am led to wonder, where is the moral courage of our age. Where is the strength and fortitude that instills a man like Martin Luther King, who saw injustice and made it his life duty to call it out and to protest it, no matter the consequence. It is certainly in none of our candidates for president. I respect Obama and I perceive strong moral values at his core, but not at the level of King or the movement that once existed in this country. By many standards, the war in Iraq has been a graver injustice than the war in Vietnam. We have spent $3 trillion on a war without pretence, while at home our citizens cannot afford healthcare, our teachers are underpaid, poverty levels continue to rise and now an economic crisis has taken hold. We have spent $3 trillion on a war that has resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 Americans and, lest we forget, the 90,000+ Iraqi citizens that have perished as result of our presence (is it odd that the number 4,000 is boldly in my mind, but I had to scour the web for the civilian toll, which, as it were, is only the documented casualties; thousands more have surely perished). Where is the fury and the moral indignation of the youth? Of the media? When can we finally say enough is enough?

Tags: MLK, Vietnam, Poverty, Iraq War, Barack Obama

Tags: Nutrition, Diet, Obesity, Diabetes, Eating