Although I was really hoping to be in Chicago this past weekend to catch the Police with Elvis Costello, I did get one benefit of having to stick around Charlottesville for the weekend: I caught another fantastic Toubab Krewe show on Friday night. I saw these guys last fall at the same exact place (the Satellite Ballroom), but this time around they really kicked it up a notch and impressed me.

If you have not yet checked out Toubab Krewe, they are basically a West African instrumental jamband: a bunch of white boys from Asheville, NC who play traditional West African music, complete with the kora and plenty of drums and percussion. But it works.

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the Bad Plus LIVE [YouTube]

It’s been a busy day for me today but I’ve got a bit of time to drop a couple updates on the site, one of which being the fact that I’m going to be catching The Bad Plus tonight in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre. I was fortunate enough to catch the set they did last September at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, which really blew me away in many different respects. Much like the clip above would if you had never heard or seen these guys before. Can’t wait; hope to have some stuff to share tomorrow once I find my camera USB cable. I still have stuff on there from SXSW that needs to be wrapped up.

The lineup for the third-annual Sonic Bloom Festival was just announced, featuring a solid lineup of up-and-coming live electronica acts (basically all of them, really). For fans of getting down to live dance music in the mountains during the summer (read: hippies), this is probably the festival for you.

Read on for the lineup. Also, we haven’t featured much at all on EOTO yet, the all improvised, never-repeated dance music featuring Jason Hann and Michael Travis (better known as the rhythm section of the now-defunct String Cheese Incident). This video that came over in the press release was hawt and definitely worth sharing. Maybe that’ll get you off your ass and onto some untzappreciation.

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I have a nasty habit of taking photographs without people in them. In fact, I prefer landscapes, plants, and especially buildings. Truth is, people can ruin pictures sometimes. Maybe one person isn’t looking, or another closed their eyes. Some might see these imperfections as human, something to be lauded in photos as opposed to eradicated. I usually do not.

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