Portishead’s Third : Cold but engrossing

Portishead took over a decade to come up with their third proper album, dully titled Third. In 1994 when they burst onto the scene, Portishead sounded unique and surprisingly their songs received a fair amount of airplay. In fact their songs were even used (and blatantly plagiarized) in many TV commercials. It seems Portishead want to distance themselves from the sound that made them famous and their subsequent music has been progressively more abrasive, cumulating in this latest album.

Third distinctly sounds like a Portishead album, but gone are the more accessible melodies. In its place are bursts of cold and harsh synthesized chords with layers of distorted guitars. Beth Gibbon’s vocals are more jagged and nuanced than previous albums as well. Make no mistake, the music is oppressive and depressing.

Listening again to the album last night, sonically Third reminded me of the spartan and detached production of Martin Hannett’s Joy Division albums. Adrian Utley’s guitar playing is more aggressive and angular and in some songs, it reminded me as well of Joy Division’s guitar driven songs. I also thought some of the keyboards owe a debt to Kraftwerk.

I highly recommended this album to serious music fans of somber (and depressing) music. Third is a album of very high quality and demands more than a  few spins to appreciate.

Outstanding tracks : We Carry On, Machine Gun, Small

Todoist gets upgrade – sidebar enhances productivity

Online task management service Todoist received a major enhancement last month with the launch of a sidebar extension for Firefox (compatible with Firefox 3.x). The extension adds a button onto the browser toolbar and a simple click opens a sidebar on the right side of the browser – currently it seems this sidebar cannot be docked to the left.

Enhancements brought about by the sidebar include:

• One-click addition of web pages as task items – this transforms Todoist into decent solution for bookmarking temporary / working web pages online
• Tight Gmail integration. It is now a breeze to add important emails that need follow up action as a to-do item in Todoist with a simple click.

I have been using Todoist on and off for over a year. I prefer it over other more powerful task management software and online services mainly because of its simple and clean interface. In the past, adding links to web pages inside Todoist required too much manual cut and pasting; now with the sidebar, it is a great deal easier. The service has also evolved with the sidebar and is capable for doing much more than compiling simple to do lists. With this current enhancement, I can myself using it on a much more frequent basis.

If you really need elaborate features and multiple ways of syncing it with Microsoft Outlook or cell phones and PDAs, then Todoist is probably NOT the solution you seek.

To begin using Todoist, you need to register here for a free account. The extension can be downloaded and installed here.

Highly recommended.