Much like Moby at First Avenue a few weeks ago, The Quest turned out to be a nearly ideal place to hear one of my favorite groups, Thievery Corporation.

Neither Quest’s Web site nor the ticket mentioned an opening act, so I was a bit surprised when Isabella Antena was introduced and took the stage.

Antena’s music is best described as Bossa Nova meets Euro-Pop and relies almost entirely on her vocals to drive the performance. With minimal instrumentation, just Antena on guitar and vocals and a “backup musician” named Excel (Axel? Accel? I couldn’t quite understand her name), it reminded me quite a bit of Stereolab. The sing-songishness of Antena’s voice could easily be mistaken for that of Laetitia Sadier or Astrud Gilberto.

Excel’s main purpose seemed to be controlling (really just starting and stopping) the playback that handled percussion and backing instrumentation, using a hand-held video camera to film the audience and Antena, and flailing about in some kind of odd histrionics. I suspect there was a bit of a Linda McCartney thing happening—the few times excel played keyboard or a set of shakers, it was impossible to find her in the mix by the time it hit the loudspeakers.

In spite of Excel’s antics, I enjoyed Antena’s set. It was good enough that I’ll pick up her latest CD and give it a try.

Once the crew had cleared Antena’s equipment off the stage, I was stuck by how much gear still remained.

When you get down to it, the brains behind Thievery Corporation are just two guys, producers Rob Garza and Eric Hilton. They create mid-tempo dance music that falls between trip-hop and acid jazz with an international flair. I figured it would be just the two guys behind keyboard gear and DJ coffins playing music while the crowd danced along with a coordinated light show. What we got was the Garza and Hilton—plus a bassist, a guitar/sitar player, two percussionists, trumpet, saxophone and a rotating stable of vocalists. What we got was nothing short of stunning.

During the 100+ minute set they did a handful of songs from their latest album The Cosmic Game including “The Heart’s A Lonely Hunter” and “The Time We Lost Our Way” plus a veritable best-of from their previous releases. Favorites include “Liberation Front,” “The State of the Union,” “All That We Perceive,” and the title track from The Richest Man In Babylon as well as “Lebanese Blonde” and “Samba Tranquille” from The Mirror Conspiracy.

All in all it was a great show and I hope to see them again.

Never content to leave things alone, I made a couple tweaks to the site layout.

• The icons down the left are smaller than they used to be. The page was looking too crowded so I wanted to give it a little whitespace.
• Changed the icon for Legible and Archives. Added new icons for Flyable (not sure I like that name) and a couple sections to appear in the near future.
• I added a glossary, of sorts, and a site menu for suitably equipped browsers.
• The template for the date-based archives has been changed to look more like the main page.

I’m sure there’s more changes to come, but that’s all I did tonight.

Sort of on my way to Patrick’s house for dinner and tech talk Saturday afternoon/evening, I got a chance to fly the Bullet for a little while.

The weather was kind of cloudy all day and it rained in the morning. To my delight it started clearning in the early afternoon and I wasn’t supposed to be at Patrick’s until 1830, so I figured I’d give it a shot. Leaving the house around 1530, I headed out near his house and found a park.

Vetran’s Park in South Saint Paul turned out to be kind of small, but I didn’t need a lot of space. With the short lines on the kite, I only need the rough equivalent of half a football field to have a comfortable place to fly. Thankfully the only people in the park were using the playground and not the ball-fields. The park is surrounded by houses, so low-altitude work wasn’t going to be easy, if even possible.

Once the kite was ready, I spent maybe 15 minutes warming up with some basic turns, spins and dives, then settled in for the real workout. The wind was running about 12 mph gusting to around 20 or so, which made it interesting on occasion.

Occasionally the wind would just die, but other times I’d catch a gust just right and get yanked around a bit. I came away from it tired, but exhilarated. My legs, shoulders, and arms are sore from pulling against the kite, but it’s a good kind of pain.

At one point I brought the kite through a ground pass (flying across the wind window with the wing-tip close to the ground) and caught an unexpected gust of wind. The result was grass stains on my shorts after I got dragged 20 feet down the field. That’s my favorite part.

I want more. More flying time, and more adventure. I’m looking into either a landboard (kind of like a modified skateboard) or a buggy. First I need to find a good field to practice on, then I’ll buy the extra gear.

I also need to figure out a way to get pictures too.