I find most rap and hip-hop music to be dull, uninspiring and one-dimensional.  The typical American variety with the main subjects of money and "I am cooler than you" is especially bland and uninteresting.  Unfortunately many would-be artists seem to be doing their best to copy the Americans.  I have no doubt some real talent gets completely lost this way.

There are some grounds for optimism or exceptions from the rule.  I find both German and French rap and hip-hop to have better qualities.  There seems to be more variation both in musical and lyrical content, as well as a much bigger room to experiment.

One example is Rödelheim Hartreim Projekt from Frankfurt, Germany.  (Big thanks to my Austrian friend Simon for introducing me to them.)  I don't know much about Rödelheim Hartreim Projekt, except their music is great.

Here's their music video "Keine ist".

As a bonus, a fan made montage to the song "Guter Tag".

The Atlantic has a very interesting article about turning creativity into a methodical process.  Well worth a read.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/how-to-think-creatively/248211/

Winter has come in earnest and during the last couple of days snow has settled on the ground.  Time to shoot some photos again.  In a couple of the pictures one can see that the camera is having problems with the bright light and all the white.  But all in all I think it turned out okay for a first try.

(download)

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first-snow-vcEjuDDymGgjkrAezweJ.zip (13.14 MB)

The Blue Man Group is a truly amazing band.  They arrange great shows, wear paint, have invented a bunch of instruments.  They even make good music!  Here's the music video "Sing along" from their second album "The Complex".

I keep experimenting with and learning about HDR images and how to take them.  This time a couple of pictures from "downtown" Skotterud.  The HDR is generated by the automatic function in the Canon S95.

I have a Canon Powershot S95 compact camera.  I think the camera is brilliant, and it's capable of doing a lot more than one would expect from a compact.  Among many other options it has built-in functionality for making HDR images.  The S95 takes three pictures at varying exposures and combines them automatically.  Here are my first experiments with this.

(download)

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my-first-try-at-hdr-yxztDHraBlBeJinhiuAF.zip (5.14 MB)

Here is a very interesting presentation given by Julian Treasure at TED.  He makes a set of excellent points, relevant wether one works with sound production or not.