#my notes are only color coded in the sense that one color highlighter corresponds to one subject like that's about it | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

p-sychblr · 6 years

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The Most Effective Way to Annotate

I annotate pretty much every reading assignment I possibly can. My high school never formally taught us how to annotate nor gave us annotation-based assignments as I know a lot of other U.S. schools did, but I started annotating for my own benefit during high school, and I still find it the best way to absorb what I read.

I want to emphasize that this is the most effective and efficient way for me personally — it might not be for others, and that’s okay! Find what works for you. I wanted to make this post because I think the way I do it could potentially work for a lot of people!

The basics about how I do it:

Mindset: I approach annotation as a method of making my life easier, processing text better, and remembering information more readily, not as accomplishing having a certain amount of info written down or highlighted. It’s easy to conflate these things as the same goal — don’t. Therefore, my personal goal of reading+annotating is to make it so I never have to read something more than once. When I go back to a reading, I want to be able to look at my notations, reference the things I highlighted, and have that be all I need to do to fully remember and understand that reading. With this in mind, here are some guidelines:

How to actually do it: I approach annotating from a write-first-then-highlight angle:

Writing: When annotating with the only-read-once goal, I want to be able to read my annotations and correspondingly follow the path of the text. You should annotate in a way that makes this easiest for you. For me, it may mean writing down main points, summarizing passages, noting the conclusions I think an author is making, writing down questions I have and seeing if they get answered, etc. It mostly means, quite literally, summarizing what the author of the text is saying in a certain section (a section could be a phrase, sentence, paragraph(s), etc.).

Highlighting: I highlight the portions of text my notes reference (sometimes drawing arrows to link them). If I see an important example of something, for instance, I might write “example,” then quickly summarize what the example is and/or jot down an explanation of why the example is significant. Then, I will highlight the portion of text I reference in my note (or: a small portion of the portion, if I think future-me will easily be able to deduce what’s being referenced). Essentially, everything you highlight should correspond to something you’ve written. When future-you “rereads” a text, they are reading your annotations, and your highlighting of the text is a tool to help them better follow how what you’ve written works in conjunction with the text.

Abandoning write-first-then-highlight: I do write-first as a way to avoid highlighting a bunch of stuff only to come back and find that I have to actually reread a text to understand and remember it. But if I get to a section of reading that I know I can follow, for instance, by skimming for highlighted topic sentences, and one or two examples per paragraph, I annotate a lot less (I might just denote what’s a highlighted example by literally writing “example”).

Alternatively, highlight first, then write: Look at a chunk of text. What will you need to look at when rereading? What’s essential? Highlight it. Why did you highlight that portion, as opposed to anything else in the chunk? What makes it important? Jot that down.

Remember: When you reread, you just want a text to make sense for you. Highlight to make sense of what you wrote, or write to make sense of what you highlighted. Just make it make sense.

I do NOT color-code highlighters and sticky tabs. This makes the annotation process a lot more efficient for me. Personally, my brain doesn’t process color-code as a language like it does for some people. To me, it looks like a mess of colors on a page, and to properly benefit from color-coding, I constantly have to reference my key. I also find color-coding makes me highlight more than I need to, because I highlight to follow the color code, not to understand. This unnecessarily slows me down. Sometimes, though, I do use two colors, each for a specific purpose, which could be considered a form of color-coding. When I do this, however, I tend to use one color a lot more sparingly (as though I’m just using one color, and the other pops up maybe once per few pages as an ULTRA-highlight to make something REALLY stand out, like a question or something). Using more than two over-complicates things for me.

You can use annotation as a tool to understand as you go. When my brain starts doing that reading-the-words-but-not-processing-literally-any-of-them thing, I switch goals: I’m not annotating for my future self, I’m writing to help my current self process what I’m reading (and honestly, this usually helps me accomplish the goal for my future self anyway).

Sometimes (a lot of times), you just need to mark an entire block of text, but highlighting the whole thing is always a bad idea. Avoid this with brackets, like so:

If I see a chunk of text that encapsulates something I already know or can easily understand, I’ll skip it when annotating or block it off with brackets and summarize it in like 3 words.

Don’t be afraid to break any of the above rules. Sort of counterintuitive, but as long as your annotations accomplish your goal of processing and remembering text more effectively, there is no such thing as a bad way to annotate! For instance, I say above that everything highlighted should correspond to something written. But if the thing you highlight speaks for itself and is easy to isolate on the page when you go back through your annotations, why waste time writing something for the sake of following an annotation rule you created for yourself? Ultimately, you just don’t want to waste your own time.

Think: what’s efficient for you? I don’t like using sticky tabs. For me, they waste time. But maybe for you personally, they’d save time when rereading, and therefore help you accomplish your goal of processing text effectively and efficiently. NOTE: Sometimes (for me at least) things that seem inefficient are actually efficient. For example, sometimes I have to word-for-word write down a sentence of the text just to process it better. I’m not gonna waste time trying to internally process that sentence if just writing it down will do it for me. Often times, that piece of information is important, or key to synthesizing what follows anyway. If something is hard for me to understand the first time I read, it’s probably hard for me in general — having it written down for me as a part of my notes when I reread might help me.

I hope this helps at least someone! I know it’s very rambly — I wrote it on tumblr mobile, randomly in the middle of a study session when inspiration struck me — hopefully it makes sense!

#studyblr #study #study inspiration #studyspo #studyspiration #studying #college #annotation #study spo #study session

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guestcanpost · 5 years

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How to Hire a Great React Native Developer

This post is originally posted in Toptal. React Native is a library for rendering mobile applications on iOS, Android, and UWP. Using React Native, it’s possible (in most cases) to write code once and deploy to all available target platforms—which is probably why you’re looking to hire a React Native developer. React Native shares many concepts and libraries with React, so it’s important for any React Native job that the developer is at least familiar with React on the web and its common patterns. It’s also recommended that a React Native developer is proficient with JavaScript and especially with the ES6 syntax. Many of the questions in our React hiring guide apply when hiring a React Native developer as well, so it is better to keep both guides in mind at the time of interview. Of course, the JavaScript hiring guide also applies: As the guide mentions, there’s a big difference between having some understanding of JavaScript and being an expert in it, and being a JavaScript expert is paramount when working on React and React Native jobs.

React Native Interview Questions

Let’s dive into some React Native interview questions to help you in the process of assessing your candidate. What are React Native components? Components are the building blocks of a React Native application. React Native provides a set of components that map to the corresponding native components on each platform which the React Native developer can use. Some components can be used on all platforms (like View, Button, and FlatList) while others are platform-specific, as they map to native components that exist only on iOS or Android: For example, iOS does not have a hardware back button, so a BackHandler component for iOS would not make sense. The developer can create their own component by extending the React.Component class, and implementing the Render method: export default class App extends React.Component { render() { return ( // my component's visual tree ); } } What’s the best way to display items in a list, performance-wise? React Native offers a VirtualizedList component that provides virtualization out of the box. While VirtualizedList can be used directly, the more high-level FlatList (display items in a scrollable list) and SectionList (same as FlatList but with grouping and custom sections) implementations are fit for most use cases. Some things are important to keep in mind when working with a VirtualizedList, however. There’s no assurance that the internal state of the items in the list will be kept when scrolling the list: Based on the amount of elements and the level of scrolling, the list might dispose of some elements outside of the viewport. Those elements will be recreated from scratch based on props when coming back into the viewport. So, the developer needs to make sure that the item can be recreated based on props alone. Items should specify a Key property which identifies them uniquely. Alternatively, it’s possible to provide a custom KeyExtractor in the list’s definition: It’s a good practice to make sure list items do not re-render if passed in the same props they already have. This can be accomplished by implementing shouldComponentUpdate in the item’s component, or alternatively inherit from the React.PureComponent class, which provides an implementation of shouldComponentUpdate that does shallow prop and state comparison. How do you style components in React Native? Styling is specified by plain JavaScript objects, and all React Native components accept a Style prop that can be set with the object specifying the style. Note that while the syntax resembles CSS, it’s not CSS, and styling a React Native application’s components does not follow the same conventions. Notably, all properties follow the camelCase convention instead of dash-case (background-color becomes backgroundColor) and layout can be specified only using the Flexbox algorithm. Since style definitions are done in code, it is easy to parametrize styles and do things that usually CSS preprocessors/extensions (Less, Sass) are used for: import { StyleSheet } from 'react-native'; import { primaryColor, secondaryColor } from './style/consts'; // values defined in another .js file let width = 50; ///... const style = StyleSheet.create({ 'color': primaryColor, 'backgroundColor': secondaryColor, 'width': width }); How would you debug a React Native application? While running a React Native application in the emulator, it’s possible to access the developer menu by either “shaking” the device (by selecting the “shake” gesture in the emulator) or by pressing Command-D (iOS) or Control/Command-M (Android). The developer menu will display a “enable JS debugging” menu entry, among other things. After clicking it, it will be possible to browse to http://localhost:8081/debugger-ui with Chrome/Chromium, which displays the debugger. Log traces are visible by running react-native log-android for Android, and react-native log-ios for iOS, while the emulator is up. If using Redux, Reactotron is especially useful to see all API calls and actions dispatched. Our existing codebase is in Xamarin, and you would be helping to port it to React Native. What would be the issues to watch for? Unlike our other React Native interview questions, this may not apply to every project. But if it does, it’s certainly an important line of questioning to consider. React Native and Xamarin.Forms adopt the same approach towards making cross-platform applications: Both take a UI definition (virtual DOM or XAML) and transform it to native code. There are two main differences between the two: The language of choice: It’s almost always C# for Xamarin—though potentially any other language available for the .NET framework—and JavaScript for React Native. The development platforms they’re available on: React Native is available for Linux, MacOS, and Windows, while Xamarin is officially available only on Windows and MacOS. While React Native and Xamarin.Forms do conceptually the same thing, the abstractions they use are not directly compatible. For example, a component available on React Native might not necessarily be available on Xamarin, and vice versa. Also, the same abstraction is often implemented in different ways across the two frameworks: Take FlatList and SectionList on React Native, which map to their corresponding concept on both iOS and Android, and ListView on Xamarin.Forms, which conflates the two into one single UI component. If a React Native developer were to tackle a port from Xamarin.Forms, it would be greatly beneficial for them to have at least some experience with C#, and ideally some experience with Xamarin. What’s the relationship between React and React Native? React is a JavaScript library that allows the developer to define a user interface in a declarative way. If offers some infrastructure when it comes to state handling (props for one-way data flow, injected from the outside; state for two-way data flow, internally managed state) and general component lifecycle method hooks. React keeps in memory an internal representation of the UI (virtual DOM). It uses this representation to compute deltas in the visual appearance of the components on props/state changes, in order to make it possible to partially update the UI on data changes—thus avoiding the need for complete redraws. React Native sits on top of React and, where React would render the virtual DOM as an HTML document, React Native maps the virtual DOM to native iOS/Android components. So, while React is often used together with JSX in order to generate HTML output, React Native has its own set of tags that represent abstractions of native components. Those native components are what get displayed on the device in the end. So, if a React component would look like the following: class ReactJSComponent extends React.Component { render() { return( Hello world! ); } } …then an equivalent React Native component could be something like: class ReactNativeComponent extends React.Component { //note that's the same class we're extending render() { return( Hello world! ); } } Libraries that are often use to handle state (Redux, MobX) and most plugins that are not dependent on UI are used the exact same way in React and React Native, and most patterns/best practices that apply to React apply to React Native too. Highlight the major differences and tradeoffs between native development and mobile development using React Native. React Native has clear benefits when it comes to mobile application development: React Native allows for cross-platform development: The application logic is written once, using the same language (JavaScript) and can be deployed to the available target platforms (iOS, Android, and UWP). Writing an application natively for a specific platform requires instead an almost complete rewrite when porting said application to a different platform. A React Native app, with some limitations (see below), is written in JavaScript. That can be a plus or a minus depending on the situation, but generally, finding developers that are experienced with JavaScript is not as hard as for other languages. Hot reloading is a great React Native feature, allowing the developer to change the application code and see those changes directly in the emulator, with no need for recompiling/redeploying. React Native is a strong choice, especially considering the ever-increasing user base and continuous improvements made to it. But there are some drawbacks to be considered: While performance has been improving steadily over the last two years, React Native is still significantly slower than a visually equivalent native application, especially when the application makes heavy use of animations or has a complex UI. Some native functionality is not available for use directly from React Native, and it might be necessary to write modules for each target platform, in the target platform’s language. JavaScript is a mainstream language and thus widely known and used, but it has some serious drawbacks. It might be challenging to write and maintain a JavaScript application that scales up to a certain size. How does React Native behave across different platforms? React Native takes the virtual DOM, generated by React based on the interface definition—i.e. the result gotten from calling the render method on the application’s components. It then uses this to generate native code for each of the target platforms. That means that, for the most part, the developer doesn’t have to worry about platform-specific details and can rely on React Native outputting the right native code based on the situation. For example, if the developer adds a Text component, it will be transformed into a UITextField on iOS, and into a TextView on Android. The same goes for layout definitions: React Native uses flexbox, and that is translated as proper layout definitions specific to the target platform when the application is deployed. Sometimes the abstraction provided by React Native is available only on some of the target platforms (an example would be the already-mentioned BackHandler). When that’s the case, it is up to the developer to properly make use of the abstraction. A check for the current platform might be necessary: import {Platform} from 'react-native'; if (Platform.OS == 'ios') { // iOS-specific code } There are some cases where React Native does not provide an abstraction layer over native components or functionalities. In those cases, the developer will have to write a native module, in the target platform’s language. That is done by extending the ReactContextBaseJavaModule for Android, and by implementing the RCTBridgeModule in iOS. With those modules in place, it’s possible to interact with them from React Native using the endpoints explicitly provided by the modules themselves. We simply annotate methods with @ReactMethod on Android and by exporting classes and methods with RCT_EXPORT_MODULE and RCT_EXPORT_METHOD on iOS: public class MyModule extends ReactContextBaseJavaModule { @ReactMethod public void myMethod() { // implementation } } @implementation MyModule RCT_EXPORT_MODULE(); RCT_EXPORT_METHOD(myMethod) { // implementation } import {NativeModules} from 'react-native'; // call it like this: NativeModules.MyModule.myMethod(); What are the different options available when it comes to handling state in React Native? As it is, React (and thus React Native) does not enforce any kind of global state management. The only patterns available to use for the developer are injecting state into components using props, which are meant to be immutable, and internal component state managed privately through the state property. There are several options available when it comes to global state management, the more widely used being Redux. If the developer is familiar with Redux on React, there are no changes for when it comes to using it on React Native. The behavior is exactly the same, as are the common patterns of use. Another available option to manage global state is MobX, which handles state using observables and bindings, the way Knockout.js and WPF do. While Redux follows functional programming paradigms—and is suited to that kind of programming style, for that reason—MobX can be easier to pick up for those coming from an object-oriented background. Both options are valid, and it’s important to consider the team’s composition before picking one or the other. Redux is often the choice preferred by those with a functional programming background, but it can be challenging to get up to speed with. MobX offers a flatter learning curve, but it might show problems when the application grows up to a certain size. What is a Thunk? Generally speaking, a Thunk is a function returned by another function. It is used to defer computing a result to when the result is actually needed: function doMyThing() { return function() { return "my result"; } } The concept is important for the React (and React Native) developer because they’re used in one of the most popular pieces of middleware for Redux: redux-thunk. That allows React actions, which are normally just plain JavaScript objects, like this: { type: "MY_ACTION_TYPE", value: "myvalue" } …to actually dispatch other actions directly, like so: function myActionCreator() { return function(dispatch, state) { dispatch(anotherActionCreator()); } } There are other pieces of middleware for Redux that do not expose the concept directly—the most famous being React Saga—but it’s very important that your React Native developer candidate is comfortable with functional programming concepts like the above. What is middleware? How is it used in Redux? Redux middleware is a function provided to Redux by the developer (either imported from an external module, or developed directly) that intercepts all actions dispatched before they reach the reducers, potentially does some operations on those actions, and forwards them to the reducers afterwards. Middleware thus provides a hook that can be used to run custom operations on actions before they reach the reducers. This is important, as many libraries and extensions (e.g., the aforementioned redux-thunk) register themselves as middleware. A piece of middleware returns a Thunk, as it is a function that returns a function. A sample middleware implementation looks like this: // middleware that does nothing const myMiddleware = store => next => action => { return next(action); } Here, store is the application’s store, available from inside the middleware function. That means that store.dispatch is available from inside the middleware, thus making it possible to dispatch more than one action per action received—beware of infinite loops! Then next is a function that returns a function (which will dispatch the action) and expects an action as the parameter. The above middleware can be registered using the following: const store = createStore( myCombinedReducers, applyMiddleware(myMiddleware, otherMiddleware) )

Gauging Your React Native Developer Candidate

The answers to these questions should give you an idea of how much a developer candidate is comfortable working with React Native. This hiring guide, of course, was not meant to cover an exhaustive interview, but to act as a guideline—there’s much more both to React Native development and to app development in general. For example, somebody who is very experienced with both JavaScript and React should be able to pick up React Native and its concepts in no time. At the same time, someone who has been working a bit with React Native development but does not have extensive experience with JavaScript or with native development might know the answers to the questions above, but not be very effective as a React Native developer. Your mileage may vary, as with everything else in life. Good luck! Read the full article

#developers #React #Reactnative

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stormyrecords-blog · 7 years

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new releases 6-15-17

in on FRIDAY ORPHAN SWORDSLicense To Desire LP $22.99Orphan Swords see the reissue of their License To Desire LP, originally released in 2015. The Belgian duo, formed in 2013, bring a heady, fog-shrouded sonic maelstrom to Aurora Borealis, perfect for the post-truth era. What sort of music is this? What genre do you file it under? Hard to say. There's chaos, there's unhallowed chanting, there's some fierce rhythm and there's undeniably some abuse of electronic equipment. It's best to leave the definitions up to the listener, but with titles referencing demons of Goetia and the world's oldest profession, you should let the good times roll. Their music, described as "a brutal hypnosis" by Ransom Note, has been released on Desire Records, Clan Destine and Idiosyncratics. Idiosyncratic is indeed a description that perfectly fits both their releases and live performances. Recently back from the US, they have shared bills with acts as diverse as Oathbreaker, Andy Stott, and Vatican Shadow. Their new collaborative side project Black Swords, with Stuart Argabright of Black Rain, was released on Vienna's Noiztank label (2017). Black/white label; Comes in full color folder sleeve, in heavy PVC outer sleeve; Includes download code; Edition of 200 (hand-numbered). ORPHAN SWORDSLicense To Desire Remixes LP $22.99Aurora Borealis unleash Orphan Swords' License To Desire Remixes LP. The sonic tangle and entheogenic orgy of the demonically inspired "Asmoday" and the tranced-out "Hooker", are given workovers by Helm, Icon Template, Black Rain, Prostitutes, and Svengalisghost. This is remix as rite of destruction, the tracks being disfigured rather than beautified for commodification. Awkward, uncomfortable listening rubs shoulders with pounding bass, post-techno hiss squall prevails. And then there's the superbly dirty fever-dream lope of the Black Rain remix. Formed in 2013, Orphan Swords is a Belgian electronic duo. Their music, described as "a brutal hypnosis" by Ransom Note. Their work has been released on Desire Records, Clan Destine, and Idiosyncratics. Idiosyncratic is indeed a description that perfectly fits both their releases and live performances. Artwork by Lara Gasparotto. Black/white label; Comes in full color folder sleeve, in heavy PVC outer sleeve; Includes download code; Edition of 200 (hand-numbered). Borusiad/Sixteen: Promises 12" $24.99"Cititrax is thrilled to present a split EP by two massive talents, Borusiade and The Sixteen Steps. Borusiade, originally from Bucharest, Romania began as a DJ in the early 2000s and then started producing music in 2005. With a background in classical music, she combined her love of raw electronics, obscure themes and melodic lines to create her own signature sound. She has released on the Cómeme label as well as Correspondant. 'Infatuation' and 'Confutation' are dark, moody and intense tracks that catch you upon first listen. The flip side of the Promises And Infatuation EP features The Sixteen Steps, the brainchild of George Lanham who cut his musical teeth DJing and running events in the south of England. We have been listening to many of his tracks endlessly for a while now. They've also been a highlight of Veronica Vasicka's DJ sets as of late. 'Signals From The South' and 'Promises On The Run' are both immaculately produced, hypnotic, dance floor killers. They are sparse ebm meets smoky warehouse techno, and offer a wonderful contrast to Borusiade's layered emotive tracks that reminisce of an East Village club in the 1980s. Themes of infatuation, appearances, and anonymity appear throughout this EP from the music itself right through to the cover art. Limited edition vinyl pressing of 999 copies." Whitehouse: Dedicated To Peter Kurten LP $32.99Green vinyl version. Gloss laminated thick 350 gsm sleeve; Edition of 250. Dirter Promotions present a reissue of Whitehouse's Dedicated To Peter Kurten, Sadist And Mass Slayer, originally released in 1981. Unavailable on vinyl for 36 years, this iconic and ground-breaking masterpiece of electronic and extreme music is finally back. Superbly re-mastered and cut by Noel Summerville. BACZKOWSKI/CHRIS CORSANO/PAUL FLAHERTY, STEVE The Dull Blade $20.99"More than a decade since their first (and last) trio album, Dim Bulb (2005), 'Buffalo Steve,' Chris Corsano and Paul Flaherty are back on the attack. The three recorded as part of a larger ensemble on the Open Mouth LP, Wrong Number (2014), but they have a certain way of creating focused trio dynamics that makes babies talk in tongues and old men drool. The line-up is a bit unorthodox -- two saxes (one a goddamn baritone) and drums. You might almost be tempted to call the format European. But it'd be a canard to try and place this album in the Euro free music tradition. I mean, yeah, there is some massive outsider brawling here. Buckets of wind and clumps of tubs 'all double twisted up,' as Fred Blassie used to say. But the fire never refrains from flaming as jazz-qua-jazz, which places it a lot more squarely in the American tradition than actual squares would have you believe. These three are clearly savages, which is a far cry from people impersonating savages, if you catch my drift. Beyond that, there is an ineffably jazzoid heft to the music here. Both Steve and Paul are playing in a distinctly post-Ayler jetstream. The freedom of their runs maintains that strangely (perhaps even imaginary or projective) American connection to bar-walking R&B maniacs -- something that seems to lie at the bottom of our country's hornic subconscious. Which is not to say individual moments on this record couldn't have come from the FMP catalog, but there's a red hot holism here that will brand most asses with the stars & stripes. The Dull Blade has a strange undercurrent of swing here as well. Largely provided by Mr. Corsano's driving full kit approach, the most outward-moving passages (often those involving the inner and outer freak registers of the horns) get corralled back into more clearly terrestrial and genuinely moving. It's a great goddamn record. Once again these guys manage to defy odds and expectations, creating music that is as fully-charged and beautiful as it is warped." --Byron Coley, 2017 Edition of 400. New York Contempory Five : Consequences LP $29.99Modern Silence present a reissue of The New York Contemporary Five's Consequences, originally released in 1966. The New York Contemporary Five barely lasted a year, all told, but they recorded five albums that shaped the jazz to come. They were a super-group after the fact -- the stellar frontline of Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, and John Tchicai all being relative newcomers at the time. Cherry had recently left Ornette Coleman and was only starting to stretch into world music. Shepp was fresh off a stint with Cecil Taylor and had just found his voice as a composer and performer. And Tchicai was virtually unknown. Their scorching music -- aided by the supple and hard-hitting rhythm section of Don Moore and J. C. Moses -- is a thrilling mix of adventurous soloing and post-bop structures, memorable heads and go-for-broke improv. Shepp and Tchicai offered two different ways forward for sax players: Shepp privileged texture, density, and fragmentation -- a pointillist take on Ben Webster or Coleman Hawkins, perhaps. Tchicai was a master of melodic invention, teasing out hard and bright phrases that seem unpredictably off-kilter. What's still remarkable about these tunes is their sense of internal tension. They're wound tighter than a magnet coil, without sacrificing any spontaneity. There's little that's strictly free about this jazz, but it's full of reckless and unexpected drama all the same. "Consequences" is the record's barnburner, built on fiery performances and climaxing with a Don Cherry solo that sounds like the aural equivalent of a fifty foot skid mark. Their version of Bill Dixon's "Trio" is contemplative by comparison, offering a loping groove, overlapping textures, and a series of wonderfully sustained solos that show off the stylistic strengths of each player. VA: Pop Makossa 2LP $29.99Double LP version. Gatefold sleeve with 20-page booklet; 140 gram vinyl. The Pop Makossa adventure started in 2009, when Analog Africa founder Samy Ben Redjeb first travelled to Cameroon to make an initial assessment of the country's musical situation. He returned with enough tracks for an explosive compilation highlighting the period when funk and disco sounds began to infiltrate the makossa style popular throughout Cameroon. From the very beginning, there were several mysteries hanging over Pop Makossa. It was not until DJ and music producer Déni Shain was dispatched to Cameroon to finalize the project, license the songs, scan photographs, and interview the artists that some of the biggest question marks began to disappear. His journey from the port city of Douala to the capital of Yaoundé brought him in contact with the lives and stories of many of the musicians who had shaped the sound of Cameroon's dance music in its most fertile decade. The beat that holds everything together has its origins in the rhythms of the Sawa people: ambassey, bolobo, assiko and essewé, a traditional funeral dance. But it wasn't until these rhythms arrived in the cities of Cameroon and collided with merengue, high-life, Congolese rumba, and, later, funk and disco, that modern makossa was born. Makossa managed to unify the whole of Cameroon, and it was successful in part because it was so adaptable. Some of the greatest makossa hits incorporated the electrifying guitars and tight grooves of funk, while others were laced with cosmic flourishes made possible by the advent of the synthesizer. However much came down to the bass; and from the rubbery hustle underpinning Mystic Djim's "Yaoundé Girls" to the luminous liquid disco lines which propel Pasteur Lappé's "Sekele Movement", Pop Makossa demonstrates why Cameroonian bass players are some of the most revered in the world. "Pop Makossa Invasion", an obscure tune recorded for Radio Buea makes its debut here and joins the pantheon of extraordinary songs that plugged Cameroon's makossa style into the modern world. Also features: Dream Stars, Mystic Djim & The Spirits, Bill Loko, Eko, Olinga Gaston, Emmanuel Kahe et Jeanette Kemogne, Nkodo Si-Tony, Bernard Ntone, Pat' Ndoye, and Clément Djimogne. Haino, Keiji: Watashi Dake LP $32.99Black Editions present the first vinyl reissue of Keiji Haino's stunning debut album Watashi Dake?, originally released in 1981. This first ever edition released outside of Japan features the artist's originally intended metallic gold and silver jacket artwork. Over the last fifty years few musicians or performers have created as monumental and uncompromising a body of work as that of Keiji Haino. Through a vast number of recordings and performances, Haino has staked out a ground all his own, creating a language of unparalleled intensity that defies any simple classification. For all this, his 1981 debut album Watashi Dake? has remained enigmatic. Originally released in a small edition by the legendary Pinakotheca label, the album was heard by only a select few in Japan and far fewer overseas. Original vinyl copies became impossibly rare and highly sought after the world over. Watashi Dake? presents a haunting vision -- stark vocals, whispered and screamed, punctuate dark silences. Intricate and sharp guitar figures interweave, repeat, and stretch, trance-like, emerging from dark recesses. Written and composed on the spot -- Haino's vision is one of deep spiritual depths that distantly evokes 1920s blues and medieval music -- yet is unlike anything ever committed to record before or since. Produced in close cooperation with Keiji Haino and legendary photographer Gin Satoh. Coupled with starkly minimal packaging, featuring the now iconic cover photographs by Gin Satoh, the album is a startling and fully realized artistic statement. Housed in custom printed deluxe Stoughton tip-on jackets, including black on black inserts, extras, and hand-colored finishes; Remastered by Elysian Masters and cut by Bernie Grundman Mastering; Pressed to high quality vinyl at RTI; Includes download code. Faust: Od Serca Do Duszy 2LP $33.99Od Serca Do Duszy originally appeared as a double CD set, joint-released by Lumberton Trading Company and AudioTONG in 2007 (LUMB 008CD). Long out of print, this album documents a professionally recorded live show at Krakow's Loch Ness Club. As anybody who has seen Faust live, in their countless different yet always wonderful forms, can testify, they are such a musical high, all other stimulants aren't necessary. This remastered reissue once again illuminates the residual experience of a Faust concert in all its expectation-scrunching glory. Comprising the thirteen songs that constituted the original show, this set was produced by founders Jean-Herve Peron and Zappi Diermaier, plus Amaury Cambuzat. Together they dovetail perfectly with one of Peron's mantras during the occasion, "Od Serca Do Duszy". This translates from Polish to, "From heart to soul", which just about covers one of the many facets to Faust's incredible music. Leyland James Kirby, : When We Parted I Wanted To Die 2LP $29.992017 repress. Originally released in 2009. It's a prescient hauntological elegy somewhere between Vangelis' Bladerunner OST (1982), Lynch and Badalamenti's Twin Peaks score, Erik Satie's solo Piano works, William Basinski's gradual tape decompositions, and James Ferraro's washed out visions. Back in 2009, James Leyland Kirby explained: "Here we stand, twenty years on from the first CD, and our optimism has been gradually eroded away collectively. 'Tomorrows World' never came. We are lost and isolated, many of us living our lives through social networks as we try to make sense of it all, becoming voyeurs not active participants. Documenting everything. No Mystery. Everything laid bare for all to see." A decade later, it could hardly have been more prescient. It's with this pessimistic sense of being that Kirby constructed these incredible pieces, creating a sequence of music designed to overwhelm and absorb, affecting our sense of time and place by tracing and retracing musical steps into a blur, re-using the same motifs with incremental differences, trapped in our own feedback loops of lost emotion. On this long double album, James Leyland Kirby once again acts as a spiritual bridge, holding fast against the perceived current of time and culture in order to afford a slow, lingering gaze on its ambiguous, ever-shifting ripples and eddies. Like staring at a body of gently moving water, the effect is strangely soothing and meditative, encouraging immersed reflection and dilated focus... Leyland James Kirby: Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was double lp $29.99 2017 repress; Originally released in 2009. The second part of Leyland Kirby's uniquely prescient dark ambient masterstroke, Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was (2009) finds the listener returning to Kirby's draughty corridors of processed 78s and midnight keyboard meditations is a sublime, haunting experience like no other. The listener can read his melancholic diagnosis of capitalist malaise, deferred futurism and thwarted social utopianism as a genuinely uncanny foresight of what has played out in contemporary society, in an age when Facebook and Twitter have become an all-encompassing filter for daily life and effectively assuaged the rich analog ambiguity of collectivism in favor of cold, hard, binary politics and reflexive, unthinking emotional responses. Especially in the wake of Mark Fisher's tragic passing earlier in 2017, Kirby's hauntological sentiments, embedded quite literally in titles such as "When Did Our Dreams And Futures Drift So Far Apart", and figuratively perfused through its stark negative space, now feel to resonate stronger than ever; using shared echoes of the hive mind such as classic film scores from Vangelis and Lynch/Badalmenti -- both quite literally omnipresent in imminent sequels right now -- as cues for sorrowful elegies and meditations which aesthetically resonate as much with Deathprod's liminal scapes, as a sort of mildewed modern classical flocking to Satie's tasteful ambient wallpaper. Yet it's not all doom and gloom. There's a sense of underlying sense of resilience, of resistance to Kirby's hushed, ribboning expressions which flows with a considerate pathos and open-ended emotional curiosity which belies the narcissistic reaffirmations of social media's echo chambers and dialectic cul-de-sacs, quietly striving to wrench something beautiful and affective from the clutches of a manipulative mainstream. VA: Monika Werkstatt 2LP $26.99restocked!!"... Gudrun Gut has a proven track record of successfully connecting with like-minded artists on unusual paths of creativity. She's an outstanding example of someone who refuses to compromise their artistic vision. And now she is ready to present one of her most ambitious projects ever: Monika Werkstatt -- a loose collective of female artists set up to enable each of them to achieve new goals through collaboration. Monika Werkstatt will ensure that their artistic output gains visibility in an art context still too dominated by men. Monika Werkstatt has its origins in collective workshops and in shared interactions. By sharing their own challenges and achievements later on with an audience, this opened a gateway to a further feedback and creative dialogue. . . . History has a weakness for coincidences, and the release of Monika Werkstatt happily falls on the 20th anniversary of Monika Enterprises. A fantastic landmark and a means of celebrating such a tremendously talented collective that Gudrun Gut has orchestrated. So what is this release really about? Gudrun's fellow Monika members -- AGF, Beate Bartel, Lucrecia Dalt, Danielle De Picciotto, Islaja, Barbara Morgenstern, Sonae, Pilocka Krach, Natalie Beridze -- travelled from Berlin and assembled in the creative oasis of Uckermark. The goal was to create and record without any of the usual pressures and distractions that you'd anticipate in a group context. To keep the focus, Mo Loscheider cooked, Manon Pepita assisted with the day-to-day and Lupe was filming. . . . Between recording and jamming, their days were filled with music, eating, short walks in the fields and forests resounding with inspiring talks and discussions. Without any restraint or rules, they opened up new forms of interaction and creative dialogue which found themselves falling into a process without any clear beginnings or ends. . . . Once the recordings were completed, representatives of the group were delegated roles for a finished production -- some sequenced and mixed the recordings into their own tracks, while others built their own from the material recorded. The results succeed in showcasing the community as a group, as well as portraying singular pieces of art derived from a collective process." these chris watson cds are being reissued - please let us know if you'd like a copy - they are scheduled for july release datesWatson, Chris: El Tren Fantasma CD $15.99Watson, Chris: Weather $15.99

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