I’ve been talking about going to the Picnik for many years, but last Sunday I walked the walk: I attended August 14th 2011’s edition of the Piknic, which feature artists primarily from the UK: Dorobo (Canada), Appleblim, Addison Groove, and Hotflush head-honcho Scuba aka SCB.

Back in the days of my brief visit at CMR Saint-Jean, one of my extraordinary instructors taught us a piece war-time wisedom that I still remember: wearing the same combat uniform for 30 straight days is hell, but lugging around too much fresh gear is probably worst. Since then, I have tried to apply this lesson in minimalist packing into my daily life. Previously, my packing/carrying habits would function on a cycle of progressive accumulation followed by a frenzy of furious stripping of anything remotely less useful. The ample wallet that I carried allow me to pack as much stuff as I wanted without getting disorganized, until I eventually grew tired of my fat wallet and cleaned it out to make it slimmer. However, no matter how much stuff you take out, you can’t make a big wallet smaller than the size it was built to; after a solid 6 months of minimal wallet habits, that’s when I felt a need for change.

SBTRKT has been stirring things up lately. With many pre-release plays from big DJ’s including Boilerroom regulars, hype was very well built up for the release of the anonymous producer’s eponymous debut LP on Young Turks. I usually don’t believe in hype. Aggressive marketing ploys and abusive use of the hype-machine that is the internet are too often deceptive; Skepta’s latest is probably the best example that I can give of this off the top of my head. So obviously, when I obtained SBTRKT’s release, I didn’t expected the whole album to be of Wildfire calibre. I was very, very wrong.

My lust for B&W products dates back to a while. Back when I was a kid, this friend’s father, all-around enjoyer of fine things, built a home cinema setup decked out with a full set of Bowers and Wilkins speakers. The gear nerd in my was fascinated by the equipment in this room, and my friend and I spent countless hours locked up in the sound-tight room indulging in the pristine audio that this remarkable setup delivered to our ears. As a matter of fact, that setup is probably what got me into loving fine audio products in the first place... once you’ve had sound this good, you generally don’t every want to go back to something inferior. The Bowers and Wilkins Zeppelin is the perfect continuation of what the brand means to me in regard to sound quality, while being modern in both design and function.

Let's face it, storage is probably the computer component with the least sex-appeal. When building a computer, consumers usually put the latest multi-core processors, monster video cards and screaming fast memory at the top of the list, while the hard-drive is considered last. As long as it holds my data, right?