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Video description: If it wasn't for the huge 100GB hard drive inside the chunky Xclef HD-500, we'd swear it was the year 2000 and we were reviewing the Hango PJB-100 all over again.

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The Postal Service: "Such Great Heights"

Despite many industry insiders' prediction that Death Cab For Cutie's incendiary "Why You'd Want to Live Here" would create a Pacific Northwest vs. Southern California indie-rock rivalry reminiscent of hip-hop's East Coast/West Coast conflict, no blood was shed over such lines as "Is this the City of Angels or demons?" In fact, you might say most people in Los Angeles couldn't care less that Seattleite Ben Gibbard was giving their city a good old-fashioned tongue-lashing. Silverlake denizen and Dntel mastermind Jimmy Tamborello certainly wasn't bothered - instead of hiring someone to lay Gibbard down for the dirt nap, he asked DCFC's leader to lay down vocals on a track for his upcoming album. A week later the electronipop masterpiece "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan" (included on Dntel's 2001 full-length Life Is Full of Possibilities) was completed and the seeds for The Postal Service were planted. "It seemed kind of effortless," says Tamborello, who had never met Gibbard before the recording of "Evan and Chan." "He came down and sang it once and we were just really happy with it." "We did the song in an hour one afternoon," explains Gibbard, who was in L.A. visiting Tamborello's roommate, The Jealous Sound's Pedro Benito. "It was such an easy, fun way to work. The idea was spawned: Maybe we could do an EP of this kind of stuff. Then [Sub Pop A&R rep] Tony Kiewel brought '(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan' to the label and said, 'They're going to do a record of this kind of stuff - do you guys want to do it?' We just went from there." In December 2001, Gibbard started receiving CD-Rs from Tamborello filled with beatsy electronic music, which he manipulated in his computer before writing melodies and lyrics and recording vocals. He also added some guitar, drums and keyboards - much of which was recorded by Death Cab guitarist Chris Walla at his Hall of Justice studio - and then sent the demo back to L.A. Gibbard had to run his changes past Tamborello, but he more or less had the freedom to alter the songs to his liking. "It was really great to get a little package every month or two - 'Two new songs!'" says Gibbard. "Sometimes I'd say, 'I want to move that part and this part,' and it was really fun to have such autonomy in the writing; I could pretty much do whatever I wanted." Though Tamborello (also known for his work in Strictly Ballroom and Figurine) is no stranger to collaboration - everyone from Beachwood Sparks' Chris Gunst to That Dog's Rachel Haden to Slint/The For Carnation's Brian McMahan appeared on Life Is Full of Possibilities - this was the first time he had attempted a project with a relative stranger. "It was like having to work on the album and make friends at the same time," admits Tamborello. "In the beginning I was probably a little nervous about not wanting to say I didn't like something 'cause I didn't know him. But in the end it didn't end up ever being an issue. It seemed like I was always excited with what he did." Ten months, two trips to L.A. (to record vocals and finish mixing) and one big postage invoice later, Give Up was completed. And just like that, Gibbard & Tamborello find themselves standing alongside such giants as Morrissey & Marr, Lennon & McCartney and Anderson & Butler. All ten tracks are exercises in smooth beauty, with Gibbard's inviting voice perfectly complementing Tamborello's unique and charming programming and guest vocals from Jen Wood and Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis adding a gentle layer of sweetness to many of the songs. Though it's tempting to call it an "'80s-sounding" record because of its keyboard-driven pop sensibilities, there's nothing retro about Give Up, save for a few sounds here and there and "nothing better," a duet with Wood inspired by The Human League's "Don't You Want Me." On the other hand, fans of Death Cab will hear faint echoes of Gibbard's main band in The Postal Service, but overall it's a completely different experience. "Some of the songs are very much of a Death Cab mode, but people have been commenting, 'Wow, the lyrics are really different,'" explains Gibbard. "When somebody is just handing you music and you're supposed to sing over the top of it, it feels different than when you're sitting at home with a guitar trying to write a song." "'the district sleeps alone tonight,' 'brand new colony' and 'this place is a prison' are pretty much the only songs that border on autobiographical," he continues. "But everything else is just kind of daydreaming and coming up with ideas for songs that aren't necessarily based in reality, and I think that was a lot more fun for me to do because I'd never really done that before. It didn't feel right for all the songs to be break-up-type songs - they just felt more like the kind of songs that you would want to dance to and you wouldn't want to have a lyric that's super heavy, especially on 'such great heights.' I think 'such great heights' is the first time I've ever written a positive love song, where it's a song about being in love and how it's rad, rather than having your heart broken." Though Gibbard is still committed to Death Cab and Tamborello is already hard at work on another Dntel album, the duo has penciled in a late-spring tour and plans to record again in the future. "I told Jimmy, 'Whenever you start sending me stuff is when we'll start working on the next Postal Service record,'" says Gibbard. "I don't see any reason why it couldn't continue to be a project as long as Jimmy wants to do it." "It seems so easy to do them and it doesn't take any time," says Tamborello. "And at this point I think we could do it where he just records everything up there and we could do even more through the mail." - Marc Hawthorne, November 2002

The Postal Service: "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight"

Despite many industry insiders' prediction that Death Cab For Cutie's incendiary "Why You'd Want to Live Here" would create a Pacific Northwest vs. Southern California indie-rock rivalry reminiscent of hip-hop's East Coast/West Coast conflict, no blood was shed over such lines as "Is this the City of Angels or demons?" In fact, you might say most people in Los Angeles couldn't care less that Seattleite Ben Gibbard was giving their city a good old-fashioned tongue-lashing. Silverlake denizen and Dntel mastermind Jimmy Tamborello certainly wasn't bothered - instead of hiring someone to lay Gibbard down for the dirt nap, he asked DCFC's leader to lay down vocals on a track for his upcoming album. A week later the electronipop masterpiece "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan" (included on Dntel's 2001 full-length Life Is Full of Possibilities) was completed and the seeds for The Postal Service were planted. "It seemed kind of effortless," says Tamborello, who had never met Gibbard before the recording of "Evan and Chan." "He came down and sang it once and we were just really happy with it." "We did the song in an hour one afternoon," explains Gibbard, who was in L.A. visiting Tamborello's roommate, The Jealous Sound's Pedro Benito. "It was such an easy, fun way to work. The idea was spawned: Maybe we could do an EP of this kind of stuff. Then [Sub Pop A&R rep] Tony Kiewel brought '(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan' to the label and said, 'They're going to do a record of this kind of stuff - do you guys want to do it?' We just went from there." In December 2001, Gibbard started receiving CD-Rs from Tamborello filled with beatsy electronic music, which he manipulated in his computer before writing melodies and lyrics and recording vocals. He also added some guitar, drums and keyboards - much of which was recorded by Death Cab guitarist Chris Walla at his Hall of Justice studio - and then sent the demo back to L.A. Gibbard had to run his changes past Tamborello, but he more or less had the freedom to alter the songs to his liking. "It was really great to get a little package every month or two - 'Two new songs!'" says Gibbard. "Sometimes I'd say, 'I want to move that part and this part,' and it was really fun to have such autonomy in the writing; I could pretty much do whatever I wanted." Though Tamborello (also known for his work in Strictly Ballroom and Figurine) is no stranger to collaboration - everyone from Beachwood Sparks' Chris Gunst to That Dog's Rachel Haden to Slint/The For Carnation's Brian McMahan appeared on Life Is Full of Possibilities - this was the first time he had attempted a project with a relative stranger. "It was like having to work on the album and make friends at the same time," admits Tamborello. "In the beginning I was probably a little nervous about not wanting to say I didn't like something 'cause I didn't know him. But in the end it didn't end up ever being an issue. It seemed like I was always excited with what he did." Ten months, two trips to L.A. (to record vocals and finish mixing) and one big postage invoice later, Give Up was completed. And just like that, Gibbard & Tamborello find themselves standing alongside such giants as Morrissey & Marr, Lennon & McCartney and Anderson & Butler. All ten tracks are exercises in smooth beauty, with Gibbard's inviting voice perfectly complementing Tamborello's unique and charming programming and guest vocals from Jen Wood and Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis adding a gentle layer of sweetness to many of the songs. Though it's tempting to call it an "'80s-sounding" record because of its keyboard-driven pop sensibilities, there's nothing retro about Give Up, save for a few sounds here and there and "nothing better," a duet with Wood inspired by The Human League's "Don't You Want Me." On the other hand, fans of Death Cab will hear faint echoes of Gibbard's main band in The Postal Service, but overall it's a completely different experience. "Some of the songs are very much of a Death Cab mode, but people have been commenting, 'Wow, the lyrics are really different,'" explains Gibbard. "When somebody is just handing you music and you're supposed to sing over the top of it, it feels different than when you're sitting at home with a guitar trying to write a song." "'the district sleeps alone tonight,' 'brand new colony' and 'this place is a prison' are pretty much the only songs that border on autobiographical," he continues. "But everything else is just kind of daydreaming and coming up with ideas for songs that aren't necessarily based in reality, and I think that was a lot more fun for me to do because I'd never really done that before. It didn't feel right for all the songs to be break-up-type songs - they just felt more like the kind of songs that you would want to dance to and you wouldn't want to have a lyric that's super heavy, especially on 'such great heights.' I think 'such great heights' is the first time I've ever written a positive love song, where it's a song about being in love and how it's rad, rather than having your heart broken." Though Gibbard is still committed to Death Cab and Tamborello is already hard at work on another Dntel album, the duo has penciled in a late-spring tour and plans to record again in the future. "I told Jimmy, 'Whenever you start sending me stuff is when we'll start working on the next Postal Service record,'" says Gibbard. "I don't see any reason why it couldn't continue to be a project as long as Jimmy wants to do it." "It seems so easy to do them and it doesn't take any time," says Tamborello. "And at this point I think we could do it where he just records everything up there and we could do even more through the mail." - Marc Hawthorne, November 2002

The Streets: "Fit But You Know It"

When "Has It Come To This", the first vinyl offering from The Streets, started to make it's way onto the airwaves in the Summer of 2000, Mike Skinner was a 22 year old rap obsessed kid from Birmingham in the English Midlands who'd spent the past 15 years working toward that moment. Since hearing his brother?s Run DMC and Beastie Boys records at the age of 7, Skinner had been determinedly making and producing his own music, listening and learning from the American pioneers of that genre, honing his own craft in studios in his hometown and in various bands and crews of friends from Birmingham. His early offerings were self-confessedly US influenced. "I was just trying to sound like the music I liked at the time, I just wanted to be Redman or Ice Cube, but I was a white kid from Birmingham. I was sending my stuff out to people but it wasn't anything new so no-one was interested." One of the turning points in Skinners development was the onset of UK Garage, the first identifiably British strand of rap music. "That was a really exciting time. Things were happening in England that had their own following and their own sound and it seemed to make it easier for me and my friends to relate to it. The beats were exciting and sounded new and what people were rapping about didn't seem so distant." This helped to focus Skinner towards a sound and style of his own. Mixing his hip-hop influences with UK Garage sounds, Skinner realized that if there was something lacking in UK hip-hop it was someone who talked about British culture. "I wanted to make something honest and entertaining about the things I knew. As far as I was concerned no-one else was doing that and if I could do that, and do it well, maybe that would be what set me apart" Skinner?s first move was to relocate to London. ("It seemed like more was happening there, I had more chance of getting people's attention."). He decided on the name The Streets because it "sounded good" and pressed up 200 white label vinyl copies of his first offering "Has It Come To This." Locked On, a London based garage label picked up on the track and signed Skinner up. In October 2001, "Has It Come To This" hit the UK Top 20 after months of exposure in clubs, and on pirate and eventually mainstream radio. People were undoubtedly excited about what they were hearing. Yet as most UK Garage-related artists were struggling to get beyond token hit singles and UK hip-hop had still not produced a truly credible success in it's own right, the usual skepticism followed. But didn't last long. The Streets' debut album "Original Pirate Material" was released in the UK in March 2002 and later in the US in October 2003. The reception for the record was phenomenal across the board. The press reaction was unanimous, proclaiming the album as a generational classic, radio played the singles and nearly a million worldwide sales later, it's firmly established as one of the most important and innovative albums of recent times. Over the past two years, Skinner has toured the world with his band, avoided a plethora of award ceremonies (nominated for Brit awards, The Mercury Prize, The Shortlist Award and winning an Ivor Novello songwriting award for Best Contemporary Song) and found critical acclaim not only in the UK, but in Europe, South East Asia and most notably in the US where he became the first UK rapper to make any serious impact. So what next? In May 2004 we'll find out when his hugely anticipated second album "A Grand Don't Come For Free" hits the shelves. Recorded (like Original Pirate Material) in his bedroom studio ("but with better microphones"), the album is a collection of songs linked together by a plots and subplots that whilst still reflecting the typical life of normal young Britain. ?A Grand? shifts the overall focus from the society overviews of "Original Pirate Material" to the more personal, everyday twists of relationships, friendship and just getting by. We won't tell you how good it is. You can find that out for yourselves. For Skinner, it's all in a days work. "I just have to keep making music that sounds fresh and entertains. That's what I want to do. I'm obsessed with that. I'm starting on the next one now..."

Apple iPhone 3G

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ENIAC: The public's first glimpse of a computer

On Valentine's Day sixty years ago, the world read the first newspaper accounts of a mysterious, new computing machine in Philadelphia. It wasn't the first computer ever made, but on that day, public awareness of modern technology took its first great post-war jump forward.

ENIAC: The public's first glimpse of a computer

On Valentine's Day sixty years ago, the world read the first newspaper accounts of a mysterious, new computing machine in Philadelphia. It wasn't the first computer ever made, but on that day, public awareness of modern technology took its first great post-war jump forward.

Teairra Mari: "Make A Girl Feel"

The newly crowned "Princess Of the Roc," Teairra Mar, wasn't even born when Eric B. and Rakim unleashed ?My Melody,? the hip-hop classic who's sample is featured in her debut single, "Make Her Feel Good." But when the 17-year-old Detroit native heard the bass-heavy gem recycled she immediately knew she had found the cornerstone of her signature sound. Teairra Mar recalls, When I heard that track, I was like, "This is the one, because it's simple but also huge." The enthusiasm that "Make Her Feel Good" set off at The Island Def Jam Music Group marked a defining moment in Teairra Mari's young career, which began at age 12 when she started recording rough demos in her cousin's basement. Despite scoring a local radio hit with one of those early songs, four years passed before Teairra Mari's demo landed on the desk of Island Def Jam Group Chairman, Antonio ?LA? Reid, who signed the then 16-year-old singer on the spot at a brief meeting where she performed live. "I couldn't believe it," she says. "I was crying because I was so happy. I feel like everyone's behind me, which is a great feeling to have coming from a time when it seemed that nobody believed in me or wanted to hear me." In the first creative collaboration since Shawn ?Jay-Z? Carter became President of Def Jam Music Group, he and LA Reid recruited hit-making songwriter, Sean Garrett (?Lose My Breath,? ?Goodies,? ?Yeah!?), to help translate Teairra Mar??s innermost thoughts and emotions into lyrics. The two successfully completed "Make Her Feel Good," a defining first single from forthcoming album scheduled to be released June 7, 2005 on Roc-A-Fella Records. "Make Her Feel Good" is just a peek into her full-length album, which she describes as a girl's dictionary. "When Sean started writing the lyrics for "Make Her Feel Good," it was because of stories I was telling him about my guy friends," explains Teairra Mari, whose musical influences and inspirations include Michael Jackson, Aretha Franklin (her grandmother sang back-up for the Queen of Soul), Prince, Sade, Patti LaBelle and Minnie Ripperton. This is just the beginning.

Auslogics Disk Defrag

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