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How Hackers Won the Water

September 13, 2019 | News | No Comments

Just as he was graduating from high school, in 1990, Chris Moore had a fanciful idea. He had noticed increasing numbers of so-called sport kites arcing through the skies above his home town of Lenexa, Kansas, outside Kansas City, Missouri. A traditional kite is tethered to its operator by a single line, and is more or less impossible to maneuver. But a sport kite—a needle-nosed, fighter-jet-like wing of nylon or polyester—has two lines, which an operator can use to induce acrobatic turns. Moore was skilled with a yo-yo and had watched riders do tricks on their bikes. He watched the sport kites soar, reverse, and double back, and wondered if the kite could become the next bicycle—a vehicle for art, competition, or some combination of the two.

After he graduated, Moore opened a kite store in partnership with his mother. Sales were slow. The problem, he felt, was that the kites he was buying from suppliers weren’t fast or trickable enough—they could only do a loop or two. Moore brought on an aerospace engineer from the University of Kansas named David Bui, and, together, they started reverse-engineering the kites. Bui turned out to be a gifted scavenger of parts. They built kites using the shafts of high-performance arrows, which were constructed of lightweight aluminum encased in a carbon-fibre wrapper; later, they made their own spars out of tapered graphite tubes that were being used in the production of helicopter frames. The technology they used was modelled on bird bones.

Moore, who has a compact build, a bright smile, and the serious, studious voice of an airline pilot, took his kites on the road, performing at schools and birthday parties, for Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, and before crowds of thousands at kite expos. In the process, he became one of the most skilled kiters in the world. He and Bui made sixteen-square-foot sails that were stiff but weighed only three ounces. “I could literally walk and move, and my body created enough pressure against this highly controllable feather to orchestrate a whole routine to music,” Moore recalled. He was one of the first people to fly kites indoors—a boast, since it showed that the kites were so light that they didn’t even need wind. Moore had been right about the sport-kite business: he soon opened six stores in Missouri and Kansas, advertising in Stunt Kite Quarterly and other new publications devoted to the sport of kiting. Moore himself became one of its top professionals, travelling each weekend to tournaments around the country and earning a national title.

In 1994, Moore went to France as part of a seven-week European kiting tour. He watched as one of the other performers, with a paragliding sail at his back, made a controlled landing on the water, then used the sail to pull himself through the waves to shore.

“My mind was blown,” Moore said. “I was just connecting all kinds of dots.” He stopped his tour, tracked down the performer, horse-traded one of his kites for a glider, and took it back to the United States. In the past, Moore had been interested in making kites more maneuverable. Now he was fascinated by a different problem: harnessing their power to take flight himself.

In landlocked Missouri, he began a series of reckless experiments. He sat in a three-wheeled buggy, launched a large kite, and, by swooping it through the air, set himself racing across football and soccer fields. He strapped himself into a climbing harness, then tied himself to a soccer goal; by diving a kite down and up repeatedly, he was able to rise into the air, sometimes as high as sixty feet. He found that a well-timed flick of the wrist could bring him in for a soft landing. If his timing was off, he’d sometimes knock himself unconscious.

Moore didn’t know it, but similar experiments were happening all around the world. Wind speeds are higher at the altitudes where kites fly than they are at ground or sea level; in 1984, two French brothers, Bruno and Dominique Legaignoux, had envisioned a more efficient catamaran that was powered by a kite rather than a sail. In the course of developing their vessel, they had built and patented a kite with an inflatable leading edge, which allowed it to float when it crashed onto the water so that it could be relaunched. Their kite had made its way to Hawaii, where big-wave surfers were used to paddling out into swells or getting towed into breaks by Jet Skis. They began experimenting with wind power.

“I was living in my own world—I was in Missouri, in Kansas,” Moore said. There was no World Wide Web to bring these far-flung communities of enthusiasts together. Even so, through one of his customers, Moore heard a rumor. In Oregon, a Boeing engineer and his son, both avid windsurfers, had rigged their windsurfing sail to a long line, attached it to a pair of water skis, and then used the wind to pull themselves along the Hood River. Moore found out the names of the father and son—Bill and Cory Roeseler—and wrote them a letter. They replied with a VHS tape. “I put it in my VCR, and it was a video of this guy and his dad pulling themselves on this kite-like device,” he said. The Roeselers sold him one. When the contraption finally came, it affected Moore so deeply that he sold everything he owned, laid off more than sixty employees at the business he’d built, and moved east from Missouri to rebuild his life on the ocean.

In 1999, in Nags Head, North Carolina, Moore opened one of the world’s first kiteboarding schools. Kiteboarding promised to combine the best of wakeboarding, waterskiing, surfing, windsurfing, and paragliding; Moore’s school, Kitty Hawk Kites Kiteboarding, attracted hundreds of thrill-seekers willing to strap boards to their feet and kites to their waists. But the sport was a work in progress. There were no safety releases; if a kite, caught by a gust, went out of control, the kiteboarder went with it. “I really just scared the shit out of people,” Moore recalled. “Mostly, they quit after the first lesson.” There were stories of novice kiteboarders being flung into the sides of buildings; people broke ribs, or worse. The problem was obvious. The early adopters knew how to harness the wind—but they didn’t know how to tame it.

In the late nineteen-eighties, a few years before Moore discovered kiting, Don Montague started his own experiments in aerodynamics. Montague, one of the world’s best windsurfers, was frustrated by his performance in light winds. A windsurfer and his sail need to balance each other: only heavier riders can counterbalance the large sails necessary to draw power from low-speed winds. Montague weighed only a hundred and sixty pounds; in competitions, when the wind was low, he had to strap weights to his back. He longed for sails that were both lighter and more powerful, and decided to try to design them himself.

At first, Montague took a traditional approach. Sitting in the middle of a large sheet of mylar, he drew an outline of the sail he wanted in felt pen. He then placed battens—stiff strips of material, usually fibreglass—on the sheet, like ribs. By moving the battens, he could adjust the sail’s shape; by changing their length, he could alter the profile of tension it presented to the wind. And yet this process seemed, to him, alarmingly imprecise. Montague wanted to explore the space of design possibilities in a methodical way, and, from the floor, it was difficult to track changes from one design to the next. What he needed was software that let him move the battens virtually.

Montague is dyslexic. When he tried designing sails with standard “computer-aided design” tools, he found tweaking the numbers, which was the only way to alter a sail’s design in those programs, too irritating. Although he’d been a lifelong tinkerer—as a kid, he’d taken apart telephones and attached a sail to his skateboard—his only formal training as an engineer had been a drafting class at the University of California, Santa Barbara. (To save on tuition, he’d enrolled under the name of a Californian cousin; when a professor discovered the ruse—his daughter, Montague recalls, turned out to be dating the cousin—his time at the university was cut short.) Montague decided that he needed software that would let him play directly with sail designs, and recruited a small group of programmers who worked out of a garage in Maui to build it. “Because I was very visual,” he said, “the programs needed to be extremely visual”—fewer numbers, more pictures; fewer formulas, more drawing tools. The programmers made software that showed him a sail’s shape in three dimensions, allowing him to change the parameters he cared about with a few clicks. It insured that all the parts of the sail would fit together and created a blueprint for the final product.

Later, Montague tried to build software that could simulate a sail’s real-world behavior—accounting for the weight of its mylar, the motion of its boom, the choppiness of the waves. But simulations, he found, were less useful than experience on the water, and so he tested his sails by surfing with them. His tests were driven primarily by feel. Was the sail breathing enough? Was it too stiff? “Point five of a millimetre in takeup on the leech of a sail”—the back edge—“is the difference between a good sail and a bad sail,” he said. “Within ten seconds, I would know what was wrong.” A sail, he concluded, is “basically a living membrane. And unless you approach it like that—if you’re just looking at the numbers . . . you get nothing.” He went on, “You know, we are a computer. . . . So you can’t really say, ‘Oh, you need this fancy computer program.’ I’m actually the best computer you could find for this application.”

By the early nineties, Montague had perfected his more powerful windsurfing sails. His designs—which he refined as the head sail designer at Gaastra Sails and, later, the head of R. & D. at an outfit started by Robby Naish, a legendary surfer—sold in the hundreds of thousands, and transformed windsurfing. (Eventually, Montague would start Makani Power, a wind-based electricity company, which Michael Specter wrote about for The New Yorker, in 2013.)

Like Moore, Montague heard rumors about the Roeselers and their kite ski; in 1993, he met Cory, the younger Roeseler, in Maui. They talked about turning kite-skiing into a sport of its own. But Montague was skeptical: the wind was just too strong. “He was a super-fit guy,” Montague recalled, of Cory Roeseler. “He had gigantic legs to hold these skis in the water.” It took great strength to control the heavy bar of Roeseler’s carbon-fibre-framed kite, which, Montague said, could “whack you in the face.” Kite-skiing seemed more like a stunt than a sport. “ ‘People are going to get hurt,’ ” Montague remembers telling Cory. “ ‘It’s just not going to work. Even though you can do it, no one else can. You’re superhuman.’ ”

I first experienced the power that both Moore and Montague were confronting a few years ago, on an overcast day in Providenciales, in Turks and Caicos. The promise of kiteboarding is that a wind strong enough to draw small whitecaps from the water can take you on a magic-carpet ride. But the same wind can be dangerously uncontrollable.

New kiteboarders start on land, by learning to fly a small “trainer” kite. Mine was powerful enough to drag me up onto my toes. My instructor drew a small semicircle on the beach: the “wind window.” When the kite sits at the top of the window, or to the sides, it’s in neutral; when it swoops inside the arc, it enters the “power zone.” If you swoop too aggressively and lose control of the kite, it can start spinning. In a “death loop,” the spins become unstoppable; the kite gathers speed, pulling you along with it.

After an hour or so, my instructor hooked the trainer kite’s big brother—a bow kite with a fifteen-foot leading edge—to a harness wrapped just below my rib cage. I had been warned about its power; now I was tethered to it. Feeling its pull, I was reminded of riding a horse: each of the kite’s small motions suggested irresistible strength, and pretending to control it was hubris. Whenever I lost focus, the kite swooped and pulled me downwind. I watched the lines: if my fingers got caught in them, the kite could rip them off.

My first time out, I flew the kite too timidly and barely stood up. Later, at the instructor’s urging, I flew it too aggressively and face-planted in saltwater. In kiteboarding, the learning curve is unusually steep: a rider must coördinate kite and board while reacting to the changing wind. For two weeks, I was often scared and uncomfortable. Then, my first real ride: I coasted for half a mile toward open sea, bright blue above and below, the sun hot, my skin wet, the wind high and warm. I shouted to myself in disbelief. Speed is freedom and freedom speed; that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

In the mid-nineties, when Montague tried his first kiteboarding setup, the problem of “de-powering” was foremost in his mind. “When I got hold of it, it was, like, ‘We can’t use this in Maui,’ ” he recalled. “ ‘It’s twenty-five knots here—we’ll die.’ ” On a boat, it’s possible to let the wind out of a sail by tightening a line. Kites had no such ability; in fact, in a crash, they tended to fall directly into the power zone, with the strongest wind. “The only reason we all didn’t die in the beginning is because we were already watermen,” Montague said.

While working on their kite-powered catamaran, the Legaignoux brothers had nearly solved the de-powering problem. They could never quite perfect their approach, Montague says, in part because their prototyping process was so slow: they developed their kites by cutting full-scale models out of foam blocks. Montague had the advantage of his sail-design software. He began laying out designs on the computer and bringing them to life outside. “I was so crazed about it that I would be flying the kite in a field at night, in the dark, without looking at it, so that the kite was now an extension of my body,” he said. “Just like windsurfing, it was an immediate feeling.” Montague sewed webbings to the bottom of his kites and attached the lines in combination until he got the behavior he wanted. He brought a staple gun to the beach, so that he could change a kite’s shape with a few staccato snaps.

Montague’s kites had all the power of the old models, but only when you wanted them to. They were dynamically stable, like airplane wings, with a natural tendency to park high and soft, exerting comparatively little force until it was summoned. In a crash, they flapped harmlessly instead of gathering speed. Early kiteboarders had ended their days miles downwind from where they’d started, shuttling themselves back to their launch points by car; Montague’s new kites could go left, right, upwind, or downwind. “The day I stayed upwind in Ho’okipa,” he said, “That was the day the sport was real.”

What followed was a kind of Cambrian explosion—a cascade of small breakthroughs. “Every year was some new mind-blowing thing,” Chris Moore recalled, of the early two-thousands. As the equipment got better, students became more likely to stick around; their demand, in turn, drew more investment in equipment. “Suddenly, the sport became way safer,” Moore said.

A technical revolution can take root only if there’s a human infrastructure behind it. “I started teaching people how to teach,” Moore said. He trained thousands of kiteboarding instructors and developed and conducted instructor examinations. He learned that teachers of high-risk sports have huge liability exposure—a hang-gliding school, for example, might only obtain insurance after proving that it rigorously trained its teachers—and created the Professional Air Sports Association, which began certifying kiteboarding instructors so that the schools could get insured.

Kiteboarding began developing the social on-ramps—culture, community, distinctive rituals and vocabulary—that could turn it from a dangerous hobby into a sport. Today, more than a million and a half people participate. Kites litter beaches in Brazil, Egypt, and South Africa; in the Caribbean and in San Francisco Bay, they sometimes crowd to the point of colliding. As with horseback riding, standardization of the equipment and teaching allows newcomers to forget the improbability of what they are actually doing. A sense of inevitability descends. Of course we sit on the backs of two-thousand-pound animals and order them around; of course we strap ourselves to wakeboards and kites in fifteen-knot winds.

This summer, I rented a kite—a fourteen-metre Cabrinha model, the descendant of a descendant of a design by Don Montague—from Chris Moore’s school, which is now located in Turks and Caicos, and went to the beach. After fifty hours of practice, it was time for my first unsupervised kiteboarding session. I unzipped the oversized backpack and unfurled the fabric downwind; it flapped gently until I pumped it to life. I flicked the inflated leading edge and listened to the pitch; a high note signalled good pressure. Earlier, I’d watched a well-produced YouTube video with animated overlays that reminded me exactly how I should connect my lines. The control bar to which the lines attached was color-coded, and I used a mnemonic, “red rigs right,” to remember which side went where. I clasped my safety leash to the bar and then hooked it to my harness using the “chicken loop,” a device that would allow me to disable the kite in case I lost control.

It’s customary for a kiteboarder to launch with the help of a partner. As I walked sideways into the water, a stranger on the beach righted the kite. It waited, parked in neutral, while he held its leading edge; I gave the signal to launch, and the stranger let go. Most kiteboarders stick to the surface, where they can do everything that windsurfers can, but with far less wind and muscle; the default pose is to recline, shoulders back, hips forward to carve. But it’s easy to take flight. If the wind is good, a light pull on the control bar will start the bow-shaped kite on a turn toward its apex, into the full force of the wind. At the right moment, you turn the board hard upwind and pull the bar: a surge of power lifts you skyward. A beginner might hop a foot above the water, abs tight with effort, then lose the board and crash. But the best riders can rise dozens of feet in the air, then ride away after a soft landing.

I looked around. The waves were short and smooth, the water bath-warm and indigo; for more than a mile, it was no deeper than my waist. The bay seemed designed for kiteboarding. With a few swoops of the kite, I got myself up and moving. It felt entirely natural when I leaned back and cut upwind.

Did You Lock the Door?

September 13, 2019 | News | No Comments

You just left the house in a rush, because of course you chose this morning to stalk your college friend’s neighbor via her online wedding registry, but once you’re halfway down the street you are suddenly gripped with fear as you try to recall—

Did you lock the door? O.K., you definitely did! Remember that nice, audible click you heard as you walked away? There you go. Irrefutable evidence.

But, then, wasn’t your neighbor also talking to you as you closed the door, asking if you were coming to his barbecue and then jokingly reminding you that you didn’t have a choice since you share a yard? And weren’t you so focussed on doing that fake laugh you know is extremely unconvincing while trying to escape that maybe you didn’t lock the door at all? Maybe it’s just swinging wide open, welcoming everyone in the city of Los Angeles into your home.

But, even if they did come inside, they would, in all likelihood, leave immediately. Your roommate’s boyfriend, Dan, is probably right where you left him—lying out on the couch, playing Super Smash Bros. and buying car parts off Craigslist. Is he building a new car from scratch? Why does he need so much raw material? But if Dan has driven you to flee the apartment that you willingly pay rent for every month then surely he’ll convince strangers to leave, too, right?

Honestly, you have nothing to worry about. Just keep walking. Everything is fine. That door is definitely locked.

But, if it wasn’t, what would a potential burglar even steal? I mean, you don’t really own anything that valuable anyway, which is equal parts comforting and upsetting. You’re almost thirty. Why is your most valuable possession your four-year-old laptop? What is wrong with you? Wait, didn’t Grandma Esther tell you that holding on to that block of gold is what got her through the war? You should get a block of gold. Just a nice, big piece that you can melt down and sell on the open market. Now that would be a valuable thing to steal! Yes, this is a good plan. Remember to Google how to buy gold bars later.

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Now move along and don’t look back. You’ve got this.

Wait. What if this ends up being a Goldilocks scenario where someone just strolls in to sleep in your half-broken IKEA bed and use your Hulu login, but then realizes that your password has been changed because your friends do not trust you with their streaming accounts anymore? Or the intruder could go through the fridge and realize that everything has mostly gone bad, except for a half-eaten block of cheese and some hummus. Maybe he will be so depressed by your inability to be a properly functioning human that he’ll leave—but hopefully first go grocery shopping for you out of pity.

No. You’re spiralling. Come on. When have you ever not locked the door?

O.K., sure, there was that one time you were drunk in college and stumbled home and left the door ajar and, in the morning, you found out your friend’s cat had got out and they had to search for Ginger for weeks. But this is different! Like, people have the capacity to change, and this is clearly one of those cases.

Only maybe, to be safe, you should go home quickly and check. It’ll take no time at all! Yes, that’s it. Just a brisk walk back. O.K., now this is more of a jog. You’re really booking it, huh? It’s fine. You needed the steps anyway.

God, this is a disaster. All of your belongings are GONE.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

No, stop. Get ahold of yourself. Of course you locked the door, because you’re a goddam ADULT. Stop doubting yourself.

You’re back. Now just calmly walk up your stoop, past your neighbor, who is already putting up streamers and blasting the Eagles. Stop your hands from shaking, press down on the handle, close your eyes, and—

It was locked the whole time.

Just like you knew it would be. Cool.

Now leave your house so you can do this all again tomorrow.

Trumpism and Conservatives’ Identity Crisis

September 13, 2019 | News | No Comments

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One of the big stories of the 2016 Presidential election was the rupture within the Republican Party. “Never Trump” traditionalists lost their fight to prevent the nomination of Donald Trump, but a small faction still strenuously objects to his scorched-earth style and many of his policies. Earlier this month, Catholic University hosted a debate between two prominent conservatives representing two distinct visions. On one side, the constitutional lawyer and National Review staff writer David French, a voice for traditional Republicanism who sees Trump as a threat to democracy. On the other side, Sohrab Ahmari, the op-ed editor of the New York Post, who fervently supports the President and describes politics as “war and enmity.” Benjamin Wallace-Wells joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss what their opposing positions mean for the future of the Republican Party.

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The photographer of jazz whose work is art in itself is Roy DeCarava. His book “The Sound I Saw”—a montage of his images and texts that he composed in the early nineteen-sixties but was unpublished until 2001—reaches deep to the experience, of the black American city life, that the music embodies and the musicians express. (It’s newly reissued, and DeCarava’s work is also the subject of a pair of current exhibits at David Zwirner.) DeCarava’s musical portraiture is centered on the public performance of jazz in clubs and in concerts. Yet there’s another crucial aspect of jazz history—the private side, of music made in recording studios—which is documented in a remarkable archive newly available online: the photographs of Francis Wolff, which preserve precious moments of some of the greatest musicians at work on some of the most enduring jazz recordings.

Wolff’s photos are a peculiar, passionate, and personal subset of the medium: they’re both documentary and promotional, made in part for use on album covers for the great Blue Note record label, of which Wolff was a co-founder, along with Alfred Lion. They were childhood friends in Berlin, Jews who escaped Nazi Germany. The pair founded the label eight decades ago, and ran it together until 1966. Together they fostered a collective body of work and a teeming set of individual performances that are at the center of modern jazz history and a core of the music’s living repertory; Wolff’s images offer keen reminiscences of historic musical moments, and they inspire fantasies about what it would have been like to experience them in person.

Despite their practical function, Wolff’s photos go far beyond the promotional; they are a part of the Blue Note label’s authentic devotion to the artists. In recording and promoting jazz, Lion and Wolff called attention to black American artistic heroes—many of whom they brought from merely local renown to the enduring spotlight—and Wolff’s photographs reflect the depth of his admiration for them, artistically and personally. (It’s exemplified in his habit of photographing artists from low angles—he’s literally looking up at them.) If there’s an element of mythology in the images, it’s one that’s rooted in truth—in the authentic artistic power of musicians who may have been at the margins of mainstream media but who, for Wolff and Lion, deserved the canonization of any of the cultural celebrities of the time.

Most of the musicians photographed by Wolff are men, because most of Blue Note’s roster of musicians were male. Though there were female jazz musicians active at the time, they also, with very few exceptions, faced prejudice in the development of their careers—except for singers, who were prominent, but Blue Note recorded very few singers, male or female. The label concentrated on instrumental music, and there was an artistic point to that emphasis. The repertoire of most jazz singing was rooted in the so-called American Songbook of repertory from plays and movies; though many Blue Note artists certainly played these works, too, the core of the label’s repertory was rooted in instrumental improvisation—and in the musicians’ original compositions, which the label emphasized, by paying its musicians to rehearse, to prepare to record original pieces that were both unfamiliar and complex. (Wolff documented many of these rehearsals, as in an image of Miles Davis, pencil in hand, working on a chart for a 1953 session, and in the one of Bud Powell, in the company of his son, Earl John, rehearsing the 1958 album “The Scene Changes,” on which all nine pieces are Powell’s originals.) It’s as if the label were setting up a classical modern-jazz repertory that rendered black American music an instant modern American counterpart to the European classical repertory and a part of the avant-garde music of the day.

Most of the musicians in the photos, and in the Blue Note catalogue, were young—in their twenties and early thirties. Lion and Wolff—whose tastes were expanded by their close consultation with the veteran saxophonist Ike Quebec, who also recorded a wide range of albums for the label—found that the jazz they loved was significantly a youth movement. In the nineteen-fifties and sixties, they recorded, as leaders of groups, Clifford Brown, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, and Bobby Hutcherson at twenty-two; Larry Young and Tyrone Washington at twenty-three; Sonny Clark, Grant Green, Hank Mobley, and Joe Henderson at twenty-six; Lee Morgan and Tony Williams at eighteen. (The latter, a drummer, began recording for the label in 1963, in Jackie McLean’s band, at seventeen.) The saxophonist on the twenty-four-year-old Bud Powell’s classic 1949 quintet date (the band was expressly called “Bud Powell's Modernists”) was the eighteen-year-old Sonny Rollins.

The names of many of the musicians may not have been known beyond the cognoscenti, but the prominence of the label and its associations helped to expand those ranks. Thelonious Monk’s first recordings as a leader came with Blue Note; John Coltrane recorded only one album, a historic one, “Blue Train,” there, in 1957 (and worked as a sideman on several other major Blue Note albums); the boldly modernistic pianists Herbie Nichols and Andrew Hill recorded a major body of work there. Other crucial modernist innovators were there, too, in the mid-sixties: Eric Dolphy recorded “Out to Lunch” at a key turn toward further extremes of the avant-garde months before his death, at thirty-six, in 1964; Cecil Taylor recorded two gloriously complex and explosive albums there; and Ornette Coleman recorded a spate of Blue Note albums, too (including one with his ten-year-old son, Denardo, as drummer).

Blue Note was, and is, also a business, and Lion and Wolff needed to sell records; not all the music was a part of the avant-garde. They also recorded music that was close to the R. & B. tradition—yet this, too, they recorded with enthusiasm and respect. They both noted and fostered the continuities between popular and intellectual black American music, including in their inspired mixing and matching among musicians for recording sessions, bringing younger and older musicians, more popular and more exploratory ones, together fruitfully. What’s more, even as Blue Note’s studio recordings (most done by the engineer Rudy Van Gelder, first in his parents’ living room, in Hackensack, New Jersey, then in his custom-designed studio in Englewood Cliffs—and Wolff’s photos display these singular spaces) helped to define an era, the label was also a pioneer of live-in-concert night-club recordings, which gave several artists (especially Art Blakey, Jimmy Smith, and Sonny Rollins) unusual and effective showcases. The musicians who recorded for Blue Note were working artists; their recordings were business for the label and jobs for them, and the fusion of their labor and their art meshes with Wolff and Lion’s fusion of their enterprise and their enthusiasm to create a catalogue, both sonic and visual, that’s a product of love on which the transmission of art, from generation to generation, depends.

Goal has got you covered with the SBC solutions so you play with the best versions of the Manchester City and Liverpool stars on Ultimate Team

The votes have been tallied and Liverpool’s Virgil Van Dijk is the Premier League PFA Player of the Year and Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling is the PFA Young Player of the Year. As well as their commemorative trophies, both players have been awarded with sensational cards on FIFA 19 Ultimate Team – both of which are available exclusively through Squad Building Challenges (SBCs).

It’s likely that both of these cards will be joined by similar versions when EA Sports releases Team of the Season but for now these will be the only Premier League cards close to this calibre. If you do want either of these cards you’re going to need around 1 million coins lying around, though you could get some lucky tranfers thanks to the current market crash. Still if you do want to earn these cards, Goal can help you with the SBC solutions.



Van Dijk has been an absolute rock for Liverpool this season as he performances earned him a place in the FIFA 19 Team of the Year but this new 96-rated card is now the best in the game. The monstrous card has everything you could ever ask for in a centre back with 81 acceleration, 90 sprint speed, 99 reactions, 99 composure, 99 jumping, 99 strength, 95 aggression, 97 interceptions, 93 heading, 95 marking, 99 stand tackling and 94 slide tackling. There’s even some nice bonus stats in there which could help such as 99 shooting, 89 free kicks, 97 short passing and 99 long passing.

Requirements: Minimum number of Liverpool players: 2, minimum number of informs: 2, minimum squad rating of 87, minimum team chemistry: 70, numbers of players in the squad: 11.

Solution : Inform Guaita (27,750), inform Angel Mina (22,500), Hugo Lloris (44,000), Aymeric Laporte (5,700), Sadio Mane (23,000), Antoine Griezmann (60,000), Jorginho (4,900), Fabinho (14,750), Team of the Knockout Stages Olivier Giroud (29,500), David Silva (65,000), Romelu Lukaku (33,000) (325,600 coins total). 

Rewards : One jumbo rare players players pack which is worth 100,000 coins.

Requirements:  Minimum number of Premier League players: 2, minimum number of informs: 2, minimum squad rating of 87, minimum team chemistry: 75, numbers of players in the squad: 11.

Solution : Hugo Lloris 44,000, Thibaut Courtois (76,000), inform Clement Lenglet (27,000), Samuel Umtiti (34,000), Kasper Schmeichel (3,400), Thorgan Hazard (1,000), Axel Witsel (9,300), Christian Eriksen (46,000), Alexis Sanchez (35,000), inform Christian Benteke (14,250), Romelu Lukaku (33,000) (322,950 coins total).

Rewards :  One rare mega pack which is worth 55,000 coins.

Requirements : Minimum number of players from Holland: 2, minimum number of informs: 2, minimum squad rating of 87, minimum team chemistry: 60, numbers of players in the squad: 11.

Solution : Gianluigi Buffon (47,250), inform Diego Carlos (14,000), Thiago Silva (50,000), Kepa Arrizabalaga (3,600), Team of the Knockout Stages Olivier Giroud (29,500), Anthony Lopes (4,300), Paulo Dybala (62,000), Miralem Pjanic (22,500), Team of the Knockout Stages Hakim Ziyech (79,000), inform Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (13,750), Stefan de Vrij (4,500)(330,400 coins total).

Rewards : One rare players pack which is worth 50,000 coins.

Requirements : Minimum number of informs: 1, minimum squad rating of 85, minimum team chemistry: 80, numbers of players in the squad: 11.

Solution : Emiliano Viviano (850), Team of Knockout Stages Dusan Tadic (18,500), Kostas Manolas (12,250), Leonardo Bonucci (24,750), inform Diego Carlos (14,000), Suso (1,600), Sergej Milinkovic-Savic (12,250), Daniele De Rossi (2,000), Radja Nainggolan (13,000), Douglas Costa (22,250), Mario Mandzukic (4,100), (125,550 coins total).

Rewards : One prime gold players pack which is worth 45,000 coins. 



At 24 years of age, Raheem Sterling may seem a bit too old to be rewarded with YPOTY but FIFA 19 fans won’t be complaining when they see this new card. The 96-rated right-winger has sensational stats with 99 acceleration, 97 sprint speed, 99 positioning, 98 finishing, 91 shot power, 91 long shots, 91 vision, 91 crossing, 99 short passing, 99 agillity, 99 balance, 92 reactions, 98 ball control, 98 dribbling and 99 stamina.

Requirements : Minimum number of Manchester City players: 2, minimum number of informs: 2, minimum squad rating of 87, minimum team chemistry: 70, numbers of players in the squad: 11.

Solution :  Kasper Schmeichel (3,400), Bernd Leno (3,800), Aymeric Laporte (5,700), inform Phil Jagielka (19,500), Harry Kane (81,500), Nemanja Matic (22,000), Ivan Rakitic (33,000), David Silva (65,000), Kepa Arrizabalaga (3,600), Philippe Coutinho (46,750), Team of the Knockout Stages Olivier Giroud (29,500) (313,750 coins total).

Rewards : One rare mega pack which is worth 55,000 coins.

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Requirements : Minimum number of Liverpool players: 2, minimum number of informs: 2, minimum squad rating of 87, minimum team chemistry: 70, numbers of players in the squad: 11.

Solution : Inform Guaita (27,750), inform Angel Mina (22,500), Hugo Lloris (44,000), Aymeric Laporte (5,700), Sadio Mane (23,000), Antoine Griezmann (60,000), Jorginho (4,900), Fabinho (14,750), Team of the Knockout Stages Olivier Giroud (29,500), David Silva (65,000), Romelu Lukaku (33,000) (325,600 coins total). 

Rewards : One rare players pack which is worth 50,000 coins.

Requirements : Minimum number of Premier League players: 2, minimum number of informs: 1, minimum squad rating of 87, minimum team chemistry: 70, numbers of players in the squad: 11.

Solution : Alisson (32,000), Bernardo Silva (4,300), Vincent Kompany (12,000), inform Fabian Schar (40,500), Yann Sommer (3,500), Jorginho (4,900) Iago Aspas (12,000), Axel Witsel (9,300), Sergio Busquets (65,000), Isco (66,000), Antoine Griezmann (60,000) (309,500 coins total).

Rewards : One jumbo rare players pack which is worth 100,000 coins.

Requirements : Minimum number of players from England: 1, minimum number of informs: 1, minimum squad rating of 86, minimum team chemistry: 70, numbers of players in the squad: 11.

Solution : Jordan Pickford (1,100), Antoine Griezmann (60,000), Aymeric Laporte (5,700), inform Phil Jagielka (19,500), Hakim Ziyech (3,200), Douglas Costa (22,250), Fernandinho (35,000), Dries Mertens (32,500), Allan (5,900), Ivan Perisic (21,750), Mario Mandzukic (4,100) (211,000 coins total).

Rewards : One rare mega pack which is worth 55,000 coins.

Requirements: Minimum squad rating of 85, minimum team chemistry: 70, numbers of players in the squad: 11.

Solution: Anthony Lopes (4,300), Zlatan Ibrahimovic (9,900), Kamil Glik (1,800), Naldo (24,250), Stephane Ruffier (4,000), Marco Verratti (21,500), Nabil Fekir (12,000), Dimitri Payet (4,800), Angel Di Maria (4,800), One to Watch Mario Balotelli (16,000), Alexandre Lacazette (10,000) (113,350 coins total).

Rewards: One prime gold players pack which is worth 45,000 coins.

The Spaniard has been granted a rare spot in Tottenham’s starting line up in the absence of the England forward, but he craves a more prominent role

Tottenham striker Fernando Llorente has confessed that he “struggles” to accept playing second fiddle to Harry Kane in Mauricio Pochettino’s squad.

The 34-year-old has only started 20 games in total across all competitions for Spurs in the last two years, most recently returning to the line up for a European clash with Ajax.

Llorente was unable to find the net in a 1-0 home defeat in the Champions League semi-finals, but he is likely to retain a place in the starting XI while Kane continues his recovery from injury.

The veteran forward has featured in 30 matches for Spurs this season, scoring five goals. However, rumours of a summer return to former club Athletic Bilbao have surfaced since the turn of the year.

Speaking ahead of Tottenham’s Premier League clash against Bournemouth on Saturday, Llorente revealed he is far from content with a lack of regular minutes on the pitch but remains determined to fight for a place in the team.

“It’s something you have to adapt to,” he told Sky Sports. “I am at a great club with incredible players, and in the end, the manager has to make decisions, because only 11 players can play.

“It’s not easy for him and, with players of that quality, it’s not easy to get into the team.

“Internally, it’s a struggle. Because in the end what all players want is to play every Sunday, so every time you don’t, it’s a disappointment.

“But that’s also where you learn to be mentally strong and say, ‘Okay, I’m not playing but I have to keep working hard every day and I have to be ready every when the opportunity comes and the mister needs me.’

“That is the idea I always have in my head, but it’s also where it is most difficult because the only way to really get up to speed is to play 90 minutes regularly.

“That’s particularly the case for me because of my attributes as a striker. I need to feel strong and be in the best physical condition possible in order to show my best.”

Kane has been touted for a return in time for the European Cup final, but Spurs have an uphill task on their hands to qualify for the showpiece event when they travel to Amsterdam next week.

Llorente will be expected to lead the line once again and Tottenham will be boosted by the return of Son Heung-min, who missed the first leg against Ajax through suspension.

Spurs are in danger of finishing another campaign without a trophy, but Pochettino is on the verge of steering his side into the top four for a fourth consecutive season, having also overseen an impressive European run.

After revealing he would like to remain in north London for another year, Llorente praised the Argentine for his motivational skills, adding: “He’s a manager who gives a lot of freedom to his players in order to get the best out of them.

“He’s not the kind of manager who says, ‘You have to do this, this and this.’ He shows you that he trusts you and he doesn’t kick you off the team if you mess up or you do something bad.

“That mentality is something he drums into us. He knows how to motivate us and get the best out of us. It’s the way he has of managing the group, planning the training sessions and making sure we are all happy.”

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The former Blues player and manager cannot understand why the Belgian forward is being benched and not used in a system which plays to his strengths

Maurizio Sarri’s handling of Eden Hazard continues to baffle former Chelsea manager Glenn Hoddle, with the Blues warned that Real Madrid will use the Belgian properly.

A Belgium international forward was benched again for the first leg of a Europa League semi-final clash with Eintracht Frankfurt on Thursday.

Chelsea battled their way to a 1-1 draw on German soil, with Hazard introduced just past the hour mark.

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Sarri had claimed that his most effective attacking weapon had been in need of a rest, but Hoddle believes a 19-goal star should be the first name on the team sheet.

He feels Madrid, who continue to be linked with a summer swoop for the 28-year-old, would find a way of using Hazard at his most effective.

The ex-Chelsea player and coach told BT Sport: “I really for the life of me can’t understand why you wouldn’t play your best player in this semi-final.

“They will only find out how important Hazard is after he is gone, unfortunately, because he is that good a player.

“But let’s face it, without him in the first half they were ordinary.

“What he does brilliantly is you can give him the ball and he will draw three players over to him and he can get you up the pitch.

“But he has goals in him and has got end product in there and around the penalty area. He is a danger.

“He has got everything going forward, possibly not all the time he doesn’t track back, but they will miss him.

“I actually think that he could be even better as a No. 10 with two holding midfield players behind him.

“You could then just say to him go and play and he might get that if he goes to Real Madrid, unfortunately.”

Hazard is yet to extend a contract at Stamford Bridge which is due to expire at the end of next season.

As a result, he is being heavily linked with a move to Madrid, despite Chelsea putting him front and centre at the reveal of their new home kit for the 2019-20 campaign.

The Arsenal boss won the competition three seasons in a row while in charge of Sevilla and has led the Gunners to the semi-finals this term

Granit Xhaka believes Unai Emery’s past success in the Europa League will count for little when Arsenal travel to Valencia next week for the second leg of their semi-final.

Emery won the Europa League in three successive seasons while in charge of Sevilla, and with Arsenal taking a 3-1 lead to the Mestalla for their second leg this coming Thursday, the Spaniard is well on course to lift the trophy for the fourth time in his successful career.

It would be an impressive achievement, especially in his first season in north London, but Xhaka does not believe what has gone on in the past will have much of an impact on Arsenal’s most recent attempt of European success.

“If you have a coach like this you can take a lot of experience from him,” said the Switzerland international. “But the past is the past and I don’t think it’s so important.

“We spoke before the game [first leg] about his experience but in the end we had to show it on the pitch.”

Xhaka added: “It was good to win 3-1, we wanted a clean sheet but we didn’t start well. We showed the big character in this team once more to come back and win against a big team.

“We had not the best experience last year [in the semi-final]. We played very well here against Atletico but didn’t win.

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“Away games are always difficult against teams like this but 3-1 is a good result and we hope we can score one there, then after we’re in the final.”

Arsenal went into Thursday’s game on the back of three straight defeats in the Premier League, a losing streak which has seen them drop out of the top four with just two games of the campaign remaining.

The Gunners now need Chelsea to drop points to have any chance of finishing in the Champions League spots, and even then they realistically need to win both of their remaining games, against Brighton on Sunday and then at Burnley next weekend.

Given Emery’s side’s dreadful away form, that is far from a foregone conclusion – but Xhaka is adamant that there is still hope.

He said: “If you see the results from the last week in the Premier League of course we are not happy but we still have a chance.

“Everything isn’t in our hands, what is in our hands is the Europa League. We want to finish our season back in the Champions League.”

The Catalans saw their European dreams extinguished following a remarkable capitulation on Merseyside, to add to their dismal recent last four record

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Barcelona’s dreams of a treble are in tatters after their hopes of reaching the Champions League final went up in smoke once again after they were stunned 4-0 by Liverpool at Anfield.

The Blaugrana failed to find the back of the net on Merseyside, with their continental exploits curtailed shy of the last round once again by another humiliating loss for Ernesto Valverde’s side.

Having swept their visitors away at Camp Nou last week with a 3-0 victory – thanks in no small part to Lionel Messi’s talismanic skill – the Catalan club were heavy favourites to reach the final at Wanda Metropolitano this season.

However, the Argentine and his fellow playmakers found their creative power stymied by a brilliant, high-intensity performance from Jurgen Klopp’s injury-blighted Reds, who still mustered the vital number of goals to win on aggregate despite missing Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino through injury.

As such, the club suffered their heaviest ever defeat at the hands of an English opponent in all European competitions.

Furthermore, Barca became the first team to be on the receiving end of multiple Champions League knockout tie exits after holding a three-plus goal lead from the first leg, having been eliminated by Roma last season in similar circumstances.

It was only the fourth time any team has overturned such a deficit to reach the next stage of the competition.

The result means that they have now been eliminated at the penultimate stage in three of their last four Champions League semi-final ties.

Save for the 2014-15 campaign, where they beat Bayern Munich to reach the final and subsequently down Juventus, Barca have failed to progress beyond the final four on their last trio of visits to this stage.

In 2011-12, they were sunk by a second leg injury-time winner from Fernando Torres as Chelsea came from behind at Camp Nou to snatch a 2-2 draw and win 3-2 on aggregate.

The following year, they were foiled again at the same mark by Bayern Munich, who delivered a 4-0 battering in Bavaria before following it up with a 3-0 romp in Barcelona for a 7-0 victory on aggregate.

Indeed, in the latter campaign, Barca won only one knockout stage game, against Milan in the second leg of the round-of-16.

They lost the first tie 2-0 before clocking up four goals in the reverse for a 4-2 aggregate win, and then required a superior away goal count to see them through in a 3-3 aggregate draw with Paris Saint-Germain.

Barcelona can at the very least console themselves with their La Liga title win, though their wait for European success will now stretch for at least another season.

The former Blues full-back has endorsed his old team-mate for a highly-coveted role, amid rumours the Italian boss could leave this summer

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Derby County manager Frank Lampard would be a “great” choice to succeed Maurizio Sarri at Chelsea next season, according to Glen Johnson.

The Blues legend has enjoyed a successful first year in management at Pride Park, guiding the Rams to a Championship play-off final against Aston Villa.

Lampard has been linked with a return to Chelsea as a result, as rumours linking current head coach Sarri with a summer exit continue to swirl .

The Italian tactician has had a mixed first year at the Bridge, having been drafted in to replace Antonio Conte at the helm in 2018.

The Blues secured a top-three Premier League finish and reached the Carabao Cup final, but ultimately lost to Manchester City after a tense penalty shoot-out.

Sarri’s side will have a second chance to pick up some silverware in the Europa League final, with an all-English tie against Arsenal scheduled on May 29.

Johnson, who played for Chelsea between 2003 and 2007, feels Sarri’s fate beyond the end of the campaign has already been decided, regardless of the final result in Baku.

He told Talk Sport : “I do think the club have made their mind up already. Sarri hasn’t done a bad job, I just think there are a few personalities that are clashing at Chelsea.

“If they win the final, you’d say it’s a positive season.

“But I don’t think it’s about the results, it’s just the way they’re getting the results.”

Johnson went on to suggest that Lampard would be the ideal man to take up managerial duties at Chelsea , given his illustrious history with the club.

The former England international spent 13 years at the Bridge as a player, scoring 211 goals in 648 games from midfield.

Lampard won 11 major trophies in total, including three Premier League titles and the Champions League.

“I think Lampard will definitely be Chelsea manager one day, and it might be sooner than I anticipated,” Johnson added.

“Could he do the job? Now might be slightly too early and I’m sure Lamps would probably agree with that, but I definitely think he’ll be capable of being successful as the Chelsea manager.

“I personally think it’s too early, but I could also see it happening. It’s exciting.

“I actually want him to get the job, I think he’d be great there.

“He is Mr Chelsea, he cares about the club and he would be interested in the youth teams and be the link between all the age groups and get the club back on its feet.”