To me, Tya is a fusion of Enigma and Deep Forest. It combines Enigma’s mysterious and melodic quality with Deep Forest’s worldly tones, with very interesting results. I’ve actually only downloaded a couple of his songs–Akwaba and A Place to Rest, both from his album Akwaba –but am seriously considering others. This is definitely consistent with my rather non-mainstream musical tastes, but it’s still cool to be a nonconformist, right?

By the way, I discovered this artist on Pandora. What a great service. Between that and the musical interludes on NPR, the world can be your musical playground!

First. I was listening to the January 18, 2009 podcast, and during the first segment, the caller was given a trivia question about Ricardo Montablan’s unfortunate recent passing. After the caller answered, Peter Sagal launched into his usual background and banter on Montablan and at one point noted that he played the over-the-top villain in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. At that point, the always-entertaining Charlie Pierce chimed in and noted “and in the Original Series episode Space Seed,” and then almost immediately someone from the crowd shouted “YEAH!!!” in an obvious display intended to both congratulate Pierce for knowing that Montablan appeared in a Star Trek episode, and, of course, show some solidarity among Star Trek fans! Simply awesome. If you want to listen, the segment starts around 7 minutes into the show.

Second. This one is from yesterday’s (January 24, 2009) show. At about 3 minutes and 45 seconds into the show, Sagal notes that he still feels like he’s in a science fiction movie when he says “President Obama.” To demonstrate this feeling, he exclaimed “President Obama promised a strong response to the invasion of the Corellian fleet!” Did you catch it? It’s a reference to Star Wars.

In short, these guys are geeks. What a great show.