Here are some more-poised than usual thoughts on the first ten years of this record label-like thing I've been running. To cover the entire bodily spectrum in a single mixed metaphor, I'd like to think this piece is a bit less of a gut-level kneejerk response than I usually muster, a bit more of a heady, meditative deep thought.

On September 12, 2001, I wrote a thing about the day before. (Though I was living in Brooklyn at the time, that week I just happened to be in Los Angeles.) Here it is with some pictures I took when I returned to New York.

Last week !!! played a semi-private show at New York University where they debuted this LED jacket, created by the creative and technically minded folks at Van Adams Technologies.

This one, sung by James Blake, but written by Feist.

So you've heard Kanye West talking shit like he's the next Michael Jackson, no? If not try this one on for size: "As far as rapping goes, how can I say this? Jordan, Michael Jackson - it's what I do."

Generally speaking I find Christmas to be a bummer time of year. Quiet too quiet. Friends have headed home. Not enough ambient buzz to distract me from...A few months ago I began advising a young pop musician from New York named Ian Axel. He's recorded a holiday song with an equally young YouTube phenom named Julia Nunes.

Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson was a co-founder of Throbbing Gristle, partner of the amazing graphic design studio Hipgnosis, and a video director for artists as likely as Sepultura and Nine Inch Nails -- and as unlikely as Yes.

Terry Teachout's love of theater, his leisurely pacing, and his old-fashioned-ish musical tastes sometimes leave me with the impression that he's a bit out-of-step with contemporary culture. But then he contributes a column that's so on it snaps into focus just how with it he is, how much he understands the pulse of contemporary life.

Five years ago was a crazy time. Lots of artists I knew on the cusp of this and that. Below is one of the boys, below that ma' boy, and farther down still is the boy -- all of them in photos from half a decade ago, long before anyone cared.

I won't pretend like I trust or respect political art. I think it's inherently suspect. Which is not to say that art cannot have a powerful galvanizing effect on politics, or that it cannot be great art.