Quote of the Week

"God is too big for just one religion." - Michael Franti

Left Foot Shank

The year: 1995. The place: A record store in Oslo, Norway. I'm browsing the aisles when some very deep downtempo beats start playing on the sound system. "What's that?" I ask the clerk. She hands me a compilation titled Left Foot Shank, from an obscure British label called Oceans Eleven. As it turns out, they have just one copy of the album in stock. "It's this new thing called trip hop," she says. "Damn," I say to myself. "I gotta have this."

In the wake of buying that rare CD (which featured some pretty obscure artists), I became aware of more mainstream trip hop groups like Portishead, Massive Attack, Tricky, Morcheeba, Fila Brazillia, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Thievery Corporation, Hooverphonic, etc. But this album always had a special place in my collection -- until it was "lost" in 2000 (along with 300 of my best CDs) by the hoodlum movers who shipped my stuff from Virginia to San Francisco.

Though it was long out of print, I never quite gave up hope that I would find another copy of Left Foot Shank. And last week, after seven years of searching, I finally struck pay dirt: An outfit in the Netherlands called Black Rhythm Records had several used copies in stock -- and they were selling them for $4.86 each. Voila.

Ain't the Internet great?

Samson S•equalizer

The home studio owner on a budget typically faces two simultaneous challenges: Not much space, and even less money. That's where tools like the Samson S•equalizer can really save the day.

This little marvel, which retails for around fifty bucks from pro audio retailers such as Sweetwater, is perfect for tasks such as subtle tailoring of a small near-field monitoring system. I recently found myself in need of a good stereo equalizer after upgrading my studio monitors to a set of used ported JBLs that turned out to have a pronounced boom in the upper bass region around 160 Hz.

The S•equalizer easily solved that problem, and sounds (to my ears at least) acoustically transparent. It's also sturdy and well-made, and comes with a quite decent manual. What more can you ask for fifty bucks?