Sequiturs

“tick…tock…tick…tock…t-t-tick…t-t-to-tock…t-t-ti-tick…to-t-to-t-tock…

… burn.”

There’s really only one place in the Solar System where the success of Soviet space exploration eclipsed that of NASA: Venus. Nobody else has yet landed an operational probe there on purpose (one NASA atmospheric probe punched all the way to the surface and returned data, but it wasn’t equipped to take advantage of such luck). The Soviets, meanwhile, returned data from not less than four landers.

Don Mitchell has applied modern image processing techniques to create a collection of processed images from these missions. It’s great work! You can get a feeling for the inhospitable surface. Here’s a composite panorama view:

Nice day for a stroll, if you like 700 K temperatures and enjoy picking out the cute animal shapes in sulfur clouds! Inhospitable as the surface is, Venus is easily overlooked as a destination for manned exploration. However, as Geoffrey Landis has pointed out, if you go a few tens of kilometers up in the sky, it’s actually a very promising place.

Why impale yourself on either horn when you can just kiss the ram on the forehead and be done with it?

Read this or I will throw my voice at you.

I reserve any opinion on NASA head Mike Griffin. I’m linking this satire because I find it amusing, but I take no position on its merits. Still, it’s a diverting read.

The ill-understood area of solar-planetary physics got a new twist recently, as an the solar wind punched an unexpected hole in Earth’s magnetic field.

From out and about on the internet.

Colonary cuisine. I love how they magnanimously allow you to use it either as a side dish or a main dish.

Harmonic harm.

Spirit and Phoenix.

Let’s take a break from our regular programming (such as it is), and introduce one of my favorite new music albums in years. In September, Scottish “post-rock” artists Mogwai released their sixth studio album, The Hawk is Howling. It is available in its entirety at their Myspace page. (I think Myspace is good for exactly one thing: distributing legal free music.) I encourage you, of course, to support the artists with a purchase if you like the album. I’ll add that Mogwai is my favorite band in the world, so this “review” is less an effort at critical objectivity than at at encouraging everyone to go listen to them by describing the album.

While there are no drastic departures from the melodic, brooding, hopeful sound of previous Mogwai works, there are a few minor changes that add up. First of all, The Hawk is Howling contains no vocal elements at all. Also missing are most of the electronic dubbing and sampling of previous works, resulting in some of their most organic tracks to date. Perhaps most importantly, this album seems much more direct than their other offerings. Each song, excepting perhaps “Batcat,” has an immediately apparent, gripping melody that could be played by one or two peole on keyboards without losing too much vitality. These tunes are relatively simple and memorable, compared with 2001’s Rock Action or even 2006’s Mr. Beast. There’s plenty of somber, crystalline beauty here, but there’s also a newfound willingness to write tunes you can hum or stomp along to. The melodies are as sophisticated as ever, but a little more aggressive and less complex, without losing depth.

There’s also quite a lot of stylistic variety on this album. The strangely named opener “I’m Jim Morrison I’m Dead,” with it’s shimmering piano and angular guitars, sounds like what might happen if Mr. Spock wrote a Klingon opera. On the other hand, “The Sun Smells Too Loud” is upbeat, even danceable, conveying a sense of enjoyment with the emotive force most artists in this genre sadly reserve for melancholy. “Scotland’s Shame” is a straightforward, driving anthem that will immediately setup housekeeping in your hippocampus. “Danphe and the Brain” and “Thank You Space Expert” are catchy numbers that sound like somebody bouncing wordless poems off the sky. “The Precipice” is the thing you jump off of at the end, wondering if you can fly.

One thing that sets Mogwai apart from most of their post-rock brethren/followers is that their hard rock roots are deep and healthy. With the barely-bridled malice of tracks like “Batcat” and “I Love You, I’m Going to Blow Up Your School,” Mogwai not only invite the space invasion, but threaten to beat it back as well. At once meditative and gripping, The Hawk is Howling has as much in common with Tool’s Lateralus as with the latest from Explosions In The Sky or GY!BE. Imagine your favorite hard rock band had a spiritual epiphany and spent a few years in a secluded monastery; Mogwai is what they’d sound like when they came back down the mountainside and found you worshiping a golden calf.

This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I think it is post-rock, and indeed music, at its very best. The world is a better place with The Hawk is Howling in it.