Cornelius and friends mash up spectacularly

Best google maps use I’ve seen for a while… certainly more entertaining than Penguin’s story on a google map

Also, Cornelius can also teach you to count. It’ll be good to see him live again.

Hard to say, but I’ll try anyway.

Why? – Alopecia

Way back in ’03 I came accross Why? (aka Yoni Wolf) after coming accross him via Fog. Over time he and Fog collaborated on Hymie’s Basement then both gradually reinvented themselves from oddball solo artists into band leaders. Now everything has come full circle and Andy Broder (Fog) and Mark Erickson (of Fog’s current band) have collaborated with Why?’s band to produce an utter masterpiece. Much like the excellent album Ditherer Fog put out last year it sees Yoni take his sound and peculiar style and push it to eleven by using the might of a full band and the confidence of a few successful releases behind himself.

I’m very much a lyrics man myself, and Why? does definitely play towards that kind of listener, but also he’s found a way of taking his near monotone delivery and like many of the best rappers taking it as a way of focusing on delivery as well. This is not, in the main, a cheery album, which at least makes it fit with most of his previous work. A good example comes from my favourite track These Few Presidents…

Even though I haven’t seen you in years, yours is a funeral I’d fly to from anywhere

…which gets sung in a laid back breezy style. Looked at in text form the lyrics seem unworkable, but somehow the whole adds much more than you’d imagine. And even if you don’t like the sound of that – check out their cover of Close To Me on their Myspace.