Tuesday, 29 September 2009
Photos Of The Day
We All have a few possessions that we cherish, today I share with you my vintage Revox Stereo Amplifier circa 1974ish and A little sculpture of a head, given to me by the owner of a gallery I used to work at. Also a towel that has my name sewn into it, from when I was at boarding school!
Glitch Track Of The Day
Just a Quick post, check out this lovely dreamy glitch orgasm from London Producers Floating Points, on Eglo Records. They are playing Plastic People 24th October
Great Album art too:
Floating Points - K&G BeatA Couple of Good Films
I watch quite a lot of films, as I don't usually watch any television. Only a couple of shows on BBC iPlayer, which I love.
I stopped watching TV pretty much all together a couple of years ago. There Is a lot of rubbish on and its easy just to zone out and watch whatever the box is pumping at you.
My favorite comedies of all time are:Alan Partridge
Nathan Barley
The League of Gentlemen
Peep Show
The Office
Black Books
Last night I watched "District 9" after seeing the interesting advert on a phonebox (right). Its only now after undertaking a little bit of research into the makers of District 9, Neil Blomkamp and Terri Tachell, that I see a reason for this film to have good marketing/advertising.
Written by Neil Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell. This is Blomkamp's first feature length movie, he has previously worked on adverts for Nike, Gatorade and most notably the Citroen "alive with technology" advert (below). The advert was hugely successful, it did the one thing an advert should do and stood out. B
Because of the technologically and visually brilliant ice skating robot car, its links with the transformers saga and the choice of music. A Tocadisco remix of "Walking Away" by The EGG. I think its fair to say that the prolonged airing of this advert made this song very successful, increased mainstream interest in house music (granted only a little bit) and probably put another fat cheque into the hands of Tocadisco, who's studio I will look at in another post!
The Film was Great. Captured me from the beginning, violent, funny, action packed (but not over the top) and visually quite brilliant. Trailer below.
Just time for one more film...
I have a great memory of an extremely young me, sitting at a friends house watching one of the Terminator films, I think it was Terminator 2. I was scared. Very scared. Scared to a level that I don't find myself being scared to anymore, especially not by films. Like going on a scary ride at a theme park the thrill and exhilaration of a scary film is a release, both of emotions and of chemicals, we all feel a "fight or flight" high from the adrenaline and dopamine surging through our veins when we experience these emotions, our body is preparing us for one thing: survival. Only a brief time ago, by evolutionary standards, these "fight or flight" chemicals would have been the difference between life or death. Today they are leisure activities for us to experience within controlled environments and at our pleasure and taste. By far the scariest film I have seen in the last couple of years has been REC (record)
REC is a 2007 Spanish horror co-directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. The film was released in Spain in November 2007. I think the film was quite widely publicized in the UK and I'm sure it received a good response. However no response can really demonstrate how brilliantly horrifying this film really is. Trailer Below.
The film follows a Spanish reporter for a television channel as she is recording a series called "while you sleep", for her show she accompanies people while they work during the night. The normality and believability of the whole storyline, tied in with the boring and seemingly everyday opening sequences lead you into a state of boredom. As a viewer I felt comfortable, I was lead into a false sense of security.
The film slips you in to a state of discomfort so gradually that you don't even notice it. Like a patient waking up from an anesthetic after the removal of a limb, at first you feel OK, almost dream like and unaware. Then you begin to notice things are very wrong.
Monday, 28 September 2009
Do You Go To Central Saint Martins? Do you Want a Job
Hi All.
I recently started working for Nokia, its a pretty good job, basically they give you a phone and lots of sexy nokia gear, and you have to go out and talk to people, in queues, at parties, or on the street, at events... and get their contact details (name number etc). Then you talk to them a bit about the new services nokia are offering, genuinely good, check out www.ovi.com...
The contract is 12 hours per week, £7.00 per hour, work when you want and where you want, you may be called upon at short notice to work a specific event and that might be miles away, nokia will pay expenses and travel.
I think its a pretty good job given that you can work when you want and the hours are contracted so you won't be fighting or worrying about hours.
Anyway. If you need a job and go to CSM I know that my boss is looking for someone like you and I can say you'll have a pretty good chance of getting a job.
Email me and have a look here:
You can apply online here
And Email me here
More Music.
You Play Dem Bongos Mate?
I'm obsessing over this new sound. Call it what you will, its jazzy, funky, Latin sounding, with tribal elements, bordering on minimal, tech-house (as always) with more bongos than you can click a castanet at, and probably them too.
I've been generous and linked to direct downloads, I will try and always do this in the future!
My Flat Mate's Kitten
My Wonderful flat mate Tracey has just bought home the sweetest little kitten called George, we think he's about 9 weeks old, he's very small and likes a good play and long naps (as well as pooing in the plant pot you can see in the piano picture from my last post). His poos are very smelly but its worth the stench as he's so cute!
My First and possibly longest post!
Hello World/ Nobody!
This is my first post, I don't really know where to start...
Points I want to cover on my blog:
Music - All genres, DJs, Production, Nerdy Stuff
Design - All types, mainly modern minimal and Swiss inspired
Films
Art
Illustration
Photography
Technology, I will try not to be too nerdy!
Food Ramblings
I guess a sensible place to start is for me to link to a few of my favourite people at the moment, I'll categorize them for you!
Technology I'm particularly liking at the moment:
My grandad would have hated me for saying it but its inescapable, the Germans are as ever, leading the way in all things electronic. I just received the latest addition to my DJ controller setup.
Only a few months ago I was spinning CDJ's (a set of pioneer CDJ 1000s) and a Korg Zero 4 mixer, The mixer was pretty snazzy and allowed full audio or audio/midi, so it could be an audio mixer and midi controller or full midi... Having started on a set of CDJ 400s and then upgraded to the daddies, I found myself using ableton live more and more. The CDJ's gathered dust and I finally decided to go completely software, using Live 8.
I got myself one of these:
The APC is basically an all in one DJ controller, for those of you who know ableton, it works. Period. Everything is designed by, with and for ableton, the first controller to be designed purposely for ableton.
For Those of you who don't know ableton, its basically a program that lets you play, mix, produce, write, and do pretty much anything with music, noise, sound and all things nice.
Have a look here
The buttons launch songs, loops, effects and the faders control them!
And one of these:
And A Doepfer Drehbank which in English translates as "turning lathe"... Appropriate!:
The APC above, was designed so that you can use it on its own, but having come from using a mixer with millions and millions of knobs I was left feeling a little low on the knob front. This little controller sorted me out, with 64 rotaries! (128 through the available bank switches) So I now have a 3 band EQ, beat slicer, and 4 other rotaries for each of my 8 channels! Much like a traditional audio mixer but completely customizable and expandable. I'm currently using an array of VST effects including effectrics, sonalksys Low Pass Filter, Camel Phat and more!
Some would say this is too much for one man! I am still getting used to this monster!
As I mentioned I'm still getting used to the setup overall and perfecting which effects I like most and generally ironing out a few glitches, but I should put up a mix in the next few days.
OK thats enough tech talk for one day, now for something you'll actually enjoy reading!
Music I'm liking at the moment:
Like all of us I don't want to be categorized as sticking to one genre in particular, of course we all say that, but what I mean is that I will try and feed out a fairly varied mix for your ears to feast upon. Sure, you will hate some but I hope that you might fall in love with others. I won't bore you all with my "musical history" because you probably wouldn't care I just wanted to say that probably like most people my age I grew up on what my parents played me, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Bob Marley (cringe dad), and the usual mix of what I call good old rock and "parent friendly lounge". The first CD I ever bought was Britney Spears, fortunately after a week or so of listening to that in the car aged around 8 or 9, my parents threw it out of the window, I wasn't allowed to have my music playing in the car after that, :(
Anyway my musical tastes changed and grew and now I'm listening to music that only a few years ago was in my opinion the epitome of "non-music" or music made by machines/computers/robots.
I think it was probably early daft punk, Zero7, Lemon jelly, Morcheeba (mostly chilled out stuff) that first turned my ears more towards electronic(a). As well as the general pop and "indie/alternative" mainstream turning more electronic, taking inspiration from the underground as it always has done.
Now I mostly listen to electronic(a). In a true rebellion to my former taste I especially enjoy Tech-House and straight techno (Berlin/ Detroit). Tech-House:
Its strange that the thing I like most about this genre, the repetition, is the thing that I truly hated most about it a few years ago. The repetition is so apparent that sometimes, and in some of my favorite tunes, the entire song is simply the repetition of only a few 4 bar loops; which themselves have more often than not been sampled from vinyl or a sample library and arranged. This brings me on to the subject of minimalism in a "loose" context.
Minimalism in music is the same as minimalism in art, minimalism in design, minimalism in food (haute cuisine). Less is more, you won't (see/hear/taste) experience a great quantity, but what you do experience is so astonishing that you allow the lack of quantity because the quality is so high. It does the most important thing music can do, In the words of Nina Simone, "it leaves you wanting more", it leaves you hungry, it leaves you salivating.
Its only because the few sounds that you do hear are so well considered, so well engineered, selected, timed, structured and the level of production is so high that we allow it, we praise it. Like a Rothko painting hanging in its own special room in the Tate Modern, the minimal sounds you hear in today's slightly underground Techno or Tech-House will be the structure that tomorrow's Rothko, err, musically.
And now for some actual music:
As this is my first post, I'm not going to stick to a way of linking to tracks, I might eventually, like most bloggers just put a link to a rapidshare file so that you can download the tracks right here in your browser, but for now I'm affraid its a good old youtube link. On that matter, I have a lot of invitations to the invite only electronic music torrent site www.torrentech.org so please send me a mail or comment with your email address and I would be more than happy to invite you to torrentech, as far as electronic music goes, this site has everything you could possibly want.
I will start with something for everyone, I absolutely guarantee that you will fall in love with this producer if you don't know him already:
Four Tet - As Serious As your Life
No Explanation needed. Genius.
Four Tet - And They Look Broken Hearted
No Explanation needed. Genius.
Booka Shade - In White Rooms (Neo Mix)
A simple Remix of a Classic tune.
James Holden - A Break In The Clouds
Great Trancy, tech tune by James Holden.
D-Kay - Golden Hands
Diamond Jazzy track, technically DNB but make your own mind up
This is one part of my blog that I know I want to continue to cover every day, week, month or when I can. My obsession with what I called earlier, a genre-less sound started a few months ago when I saw Paul Pre DJ at one of my favorite clubs "plastic people".
Before I get too carried away I recommend you download Paul's mix from september last year, this one has some of the tracks I heard him play at Plastic People:
Direct Download Here
Track Listing Here (click on september mix)
I wasn't overly impressed with his mixing, infact I was fairly appalled by the actual mixing, but the track selection was impeccable. I really hadn't ever heard anything like the stuff he played that night. As I said its fairly genre-less but its somewhere between IDM, down-tempo, hip-hop, ambient, dub, dub-step, techno and ambient. All of these things combined with an astonishing Funktion-One soundsystem so good that songs have been written about it (same as what used to be the End). I then repeatedly listened to a few of his mixes (available on his site), contacted him personally and did a shit load of reading/listening to bring you the best of what I know to be "glitch"...
Port Format - That's overbroke you amateur
Direct Download, This one is unreleased and was sent to me personally by Paul
Check out their myspace here
Dorian Concept - Fort Teen A Track in the September Mix By Paul Pre
FaltyDL - The Shape To Come
Direct download, from his album Love is a liability on Planet MU (NYC)
Nautilis - Blackwidow Mix Direct Download, From the compilation
"Mergerz & Acquisitionz" By Machine Drum, well worth checking out.
Help there's a Grand Piano in my bedroom:
As some of you will know I've recently moved to Islington/Dalston in London, I used to live in a horrbile flat in Chalk Farm, it was fairly big but a basement flat, dark and dingy.
Our (me and my lovely Lady Jonna) new place, fortunately is much better, a big old victorian terraced town house with big rooms, high ceilings and a big garden. Its not the cleanest, freshest of places but that's what you tend to get being a student and living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Pictures will follow I'm sure.
Unfortunately, the room temporarily came with a grand piano. Its still here, to my displeasure its horribly out of tune and a nightmare to play, should be out of our hair soon hopefully, its starting to get in the way a bit!
This is my first post, I don't really know where to start...
Points I want to cover on my blog:
Music - All genres, DJs, Production, Nerdy Stuff
Design - All types, mainly modern minimal and Swiss inspired
Films
Art
Illustration
Photography
Technology, I will try not to be too nerdy!
Food Ramblings
I guess a sensible place to start is for me to link to a few of my favourite people at the moment, I'll categorize them for you!
Technology I'm particularly liking at the moment:
My grandad would have hated me for saying it but its inescapable, the Germans are as ever, leading the way in all things electronic. I just received the latest addition to my DJ controller setup.
Only a few months ago I was spinning CDJ's (a set of pioneer CDJ 1000s) and a Korg Zero 4 mixer, The mixer was pretty snazzy and allowed full audio or audio/midi, so it could be an audio mixer and midi controller or full midi... Having started on a set of CDJ 400s and then upgraded to the daddies, I found myself using ableton live more and more. The CDJ's gathered dust and I finally decided to go completely software, using Live 8.
I got myself one of these:
The APC is basically an all in one DJ controller, for those of you who know ableton, it works. Period. Everything is designed by, with and for ableton, the first controller to be designed purposely for ableton.
For Those of you who don't know ableton, its basically a program that lets you play, mix, produce, write, and do pretty much anything with music, noise, sound and all things nice.
Have a look here
The buttons launch songs, loops, effects and the faders control them!
And one of these:
And A Doepfer Drehbank which in English translates as "turning lathe"... Appropriate!:
The APC above, was designed so that you can use it on its own, but having come from using a mixer with millions and millions of knobs I was left feeling a little low on the knob front. This little controller sorted me out, with 64 rotaries! (128 through the available bank switches) So I now have a 3 band EQ, beat slicer, and 4 other rotaries for each of my 8 channels! Much like a traditional audio mixer but completely customizable and expandable. I'm currently using an array of VST effects including effectrics, sonalksys Low Pass Filter, Camel Phat and more!
Some would say this is too much for one man! I am still getting used to this monster!
As I mentioned I'm still getting used to the setup overall and perfecting which effects I like most and generally ironing out a few glitches, but I should put up a mix in the next few days.
OK thats enough tech talk for one day, now for something you'll actually enjoy reading!
Music I'm liking at the moment:
Like all of us I don't want to be categorized as sticking to one genre in particular, of course we all say that, but what I mean is that I will try and feed out a fairly varied mix for your ears to feast upon. Sure, you will hate some but I hope that you might fall in love with others. I won't bore you all with my "musical history" because you probably wouldn't care I just wanted to say that probably like most people my age I grew up on what my parents played me, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Bob Marley (cringe dad), and the usual mix of what I call good old rock and "parent friendly lounge". The first CD I ever bought was Britney Spears, fortunately after a week or so of listening to that in the car aged around 8 or 9, my parents threw it out of the window, I wasn't allowed to have my music playing in the car after that, :(
Anyway my musical tastes changed and grew and now I'm listening to music that only a few years ago was in my opinion the epitome of "non-music" or music made by machines/computers/robots.
4/4 bass drums, 4/4 hi-hat, repetitive synth, few or no vocals, simple walking or 1/2 bass melody and going nowhere.The repetitive structure, minimal melodies and precise almost robotic production was about as far away from musical expression, creativity and real music as I thought it was possible to get.
I think it was probably early daft punk, Zero7, Lemon jelly, Morcheeba (mostly chilled out stuff) that first turned my ears more towards electronic(a). As well as the general pop and "indie/alternative" mainstream turning more electronic, taking inspiration from the underground as it always has done.
Now I mostly listen to electronic(a). In a true rebellion to my former taste I especially enjoy Tech-House and straight techno (Berlin/ Detroit). Tech-House:
Tech house, like progressive house, represents a fusion of house and techno. However, whereas progressive house tends to incorporate atmospheric, ethereal, almost ambient sounds and is often mixed to varying degrees with trance and progressive trance, tech-house tends to have more in common with soulful deep house, traditional Detroit-style techno, and contemporary minimal techno, with which it is often mixed in practice. As one reviewer for Amazon.com suggested, this style fuses "steady techno rhythms with the soul and accessibility of house.
Its strange that the thing I like most about this genre, the repetition, is the thing that I truly hated most about it a few years ago. The repetition is so apparent that sometimes, and in some of my favorite tunes, the entire song is simply the repetition of only a few 4 bar loops; which themselves have more often than not been sampled from vinyl or a sample library and arranged. This brings me on to the subject of minimalism in a "loose" context.
Minimalism in music is the same as minimalism in art, minimalism in design, minimalism in food (haute cuisine). Less is more, you won't (see/hear/taste) experience a great quantity, but what you do experience is so astonishing that you allow the lack of quantity because the quality is so high. It does the most important thing music can do, In the words of Nina Simone, "it leaves you wanting more", it leaves you hungry, it leaves you salivating.
Its only because the few sounds that you do hear are so well considered, so well engineered, selected, timed, structured and the level of production is so high that we allow it, we praise it. Like a Rothko painting hanging in its own special room in the Tate Modern, the minimal sounds you hear in today's slightly underground Techno or Tech-House will be the structure that tomorrow's Rothko, err, musically.
And now for some actual music:
As this is my first post, I'm not going to stick to a way of linking to tracks, I might eventually, like most bloggers just put a link to a rapidshare file so that you can download the tracks right here in your browser, but for now I'm affraid its a good old youtube link. On that matter, I have a lot of invitations to the invite only electronic music torrent site www.torrentech.org so please send me a mail or comment with your email address and I would be more than happy to invite you to torrentech, as far as electronic music goes, this site has everything you could possibly want.
I will start with something for everyone, I absolutely guarantee that you will fall in love with this producer if you don't know him already:
Four Tet - As Serious As your Life
No Explanation needed. Genius.
Four Tet - And They Look Broken Hearted
No Explanation needed. Genius.
Booka Shade - In White Rooms (Neo Mix)
A simple Remix of a Classic tune.
James Holden - A Break In The Clouds
Great Trancy, tech tune by James Holden.
D-Kay - Golden Hands
Diamond Jazzy track, technically DNB but make your own mind up
This is one part of my blog that I know I want to continue to cover every day, week, month or when I can. My obsession with what I called earlier, a genre-less sound started a few months ago when I saw Paul Pre DJ at one of my favorite clubs "plastic people".
Before I get too carried away I recommend you download Paul's mix from september last year, this one has some of the tracks I heard him play at Plastic People:
Direct Download Here
Track Listing Here (click on september mix)
I wasn't overly impressed with his mixing, infact I was fairly appalled by the actual mixing, but the track selection was impeccable. I really hadn't ever heard anything like the stuff he played that night. As I said its fairly genre-less but its somewhere between IDM, down-tempo, hip-hop, ambient, dub, dub-step, techno and ambient. All of these things combined with an astonishing Funktion-One soundsystem so good that songs have been written about it (same as what used to be the End). I then repeatedly listened to a few of his mixes (available on his site), contacted him personally and did a shit load of reading/listening to bring you the best of what I know to be "glitch"...
Port Format - That's overbroke you amateur
Direct Download, This one is unreleased and was sent to me personally by Paul
Check out their myspace here
Dorian Concept - Fort Teen A Track in the September Mix By Paul Pre
FaltyDL - The Shape To Come
Direct download, from his album Love is a liability on Planet MU (NYC)
Nautilis - Blackwidow Mix Direct Download, From the compilation
"Mergerz & Acquisitionz" By Machine Drum, well worth checking out.
Help there's a Grand Piano in my bedroom:
As some of you will know I've recently moved to Islington/Dalston in London, I used to live in a horrbile flat in Chalk Farm, it was fairly big but a basement flat, dark and dingy.
Our (me and my lovely Lady Jonna) new place, fortunately is much better, a big old victorian terraced town house with big rooms, high ceilings and a big garden. Its not the cleanest, freshest of places but that's what you tend to get being a student and living in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Pictures will follow I'm sure.
Unfortunately, the room temporarily came with a grand piano. Its still here, to my displeasure its horribly out of tune and a nightmare to play, should be out of our hair soon hopefully, its starting to get in the way a bit!
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