Eyes and Ears – May Session

Welcome to this month’s edition of Eyes and Ears. Today we’ll be talking about books from two special authors and we’ll be listening to chill-out tracks; perfect components for the rainy afternoon I’m working on this edition!

Books

A year ago I had listed a book by my friend Pieter Hintjens called “Culture and Empire”. It’s a great book but there’s more: Pieter has written other works about online communities development and more personal topics such as handling psychopaths. Pieter is unfortunately gravely ill and made these news very public. By purchasing his works you can help him and his kids in the future.

Another very interesting -and quite famous- author is the Greek economist and politician Yanis Varoufakis. His latest opus is very well written, very personal and a must read, regardless of one’s opinion about the Greek economy and its major debt issue.

Music

The musical part of this session will be a bit shorter than others. I picked three tracks of a rather dreamy and chill-out genre; each of these stem from a very different type of artist but these three form a rather nice ensemble. The first one is an “oldie but a goodie”. We’re talking about the beatless version of Smokebelch 2 by the Sabres of Paradise:

The Second one is “Ja ne” from Manu Lei, who’s usually more into melodic trance:

The last, but not the least is an excellent chill-out track written by a Jazz composer, Stephanie Sante. Now Stephanie Sante has been conncected (in real life or through remixes) with the Balearic movement while pursuing her own path in America. Her works may be sometimes very jazzy but some others capture the Balearic mood in a pretty incredible way. Here’s Seaside Strut for you:

Enjoy the weeks to come!