Saket Vora

Traveling again for business, will be back in a week. Going to miss the opening of the World Cup — hope I can catch some of the action while in Shanghai.

My friend Dustin, who is back in the Bay Area this summer from Waterloo for another internship stint with us in iPodland, went to a concert last week to see Plants and Animals. He left discovering a new great band – Lost in the Trees from our very own Chapel Hill, NC!

Lost in the Trees brings the full arrangement to the stage, with violins, cellos, piano, horns, surging guitars and plucked banjos. There is baroque classical inspiration here (two of the tracks are sweeping classical arrangements that would fit right in with a Bach compilation) intersecting with folk. There is a dark and brooding manner about many of the songs, but the whole production is so aurally intriguing that I can’t help but be drawn in.

Note to my friends back home — Lost in the Trees will be playing at the Arts Center in Carrboro on Thursday, June 3rd it’s apparently a Planned Parenthood benefit, but if that’s weird for you then they will be at TRKfest in Pittsboro on June 26th).

Here’s the title track of their new album, All Alone in an Empty House:

Lost In The Trees – All Alone in an Empty House by antirecords

And here’s another, called Walk Around the Lake:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I wonder if they could open for the Decemberists on their next tour — would be rather fitting, right?

This past Sunday Nader was itching to get out of the Bay so I tagged along on a leisurely drive up north to Santa Rosa and Sebastopol, about 1.5 hours north of San Francisco. We stopped in a lovely coffee house / bookstore shop in Guerneville for iced coffee. While perusing the bookstore, I came across a copy of Dune and bought it (of course), and I also picked up The Maker of Dune, a look at the author’s motivations and creation of Dune, and some really intriguing commentary on the major themes that run throughout the book — the danger of a superhero figure in society, the complexity and stagnation of societies, etc.

A few minutes out of town and we’re in a deep redwood forest, and did a short hike around the park.

Note you can see Nader, for size reference.

After the park, we headed west to Highway 1, planning on heading back down through Bodega Bay before angling back towards 101 through Petaluma. With the sun beginning to set, it will quite pretty out there by Russian River.

And who wouldn’t mind seeing the beautiful California coast again?