Get me MTV on the phone NOW, is time to start playin fuckin music videos on that station again…

Check THAT out! Have been keepin this on the DL for a little while but now it’s on Vimeo so is time to tell the WORLD!

Richard hooked it all up with his crazy Austrian connections… I have no idea how we get this fucker onto the TV, dunno if we even could get it on the TV. Ah, who cares! I HAVE A FUCKIN MUSIC VIDEO YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

There is just TOO MUCH to update you all on I’m afraid, I just got back from Amsterdam which was RADNESS here have a picture or 4

This is where we stayed. Our houseboat! Nice in the morning to get up and sit on the deck and watch the world float by.

Better believe it

Fucking. Purple. Weed.

Nice to see ol’ Ronnie representin’ for SITP

WHAT ELSE well a few weeks ago I saw Paperclip People at a really shit festival in London, later on that night ended up at a KILLER club called the Corsica Studios, is behind Elephant and Castle, two rooms, warehouse vibes, beautifully tuned Funktion 1 rigs in both spaces. We were at an Innervisions/DFA party which was wonderful, great tunes and nice vibe.

Yeah just super busy with Ruf Dug stuff mostly though, working on a new EP, I finally got me some decks and have been getting my DJ skills back… there will be some fresh Ruf Dug DJ mixes coming through, as well as the long-delayed (and delayed again cos I spunked a load of cash in Amsterdam) edit 12″ and then I think it will be time, finally, to start hustlin’ for some gigs.

I’ve never really done it before – hustled – my policy in Sydney was to NEVER ask for a gig and I pretty much managed that, I think I asked maybe 2 or 3 times early on if I could play somewhere but everything else I did was always by invitation. I liked it better that way, it took a while but eventually the gigs came and I never had to feel like I was whoring myself.

But here it’s different – there are more nights, more DJs and I am nowhere near as connected as I am in Sydney. So I need to pimp myself out, and I’m not sure exactly how to do it and it’s doing my head in a bit grrrrrrrr… we’ll see though!

Dâm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We did a party last night  with the fantastic Hoya:Hoya crew – we brought the one and only Dâm-FunK to Manchester and he FUCKIN SMASHED IT… I played a bunch of disco early on which I enjoyed, everyone played rad tunes…

The show was a roadblock, we were over capacity and turnin ppl away… inside a wicked crowd lost their shit to Dâm’s crazy stylings. GREAT NIGHT!

More Omar Droolin

Here’s a little composite of some mobile phone video I took of Omar Souleyman the other night. I really actually like this mobile video for this, it adds to the grainy 21st century lo-fi aesthetic…

Cos make no mistake – this is proper Blade Runner music except this time is not Vangelis sitting behind the most amazing synths ever, no. It’s some dudes with shop-bought electric keyboards on settings they’re not supposed to have, crazy electrified traditional instruments and then Omar up front all gold sunnies with his mate – the Syrian mad futurefolk version of Bez – just hanging around in jeans and a cheap leather jacket, whispering poetic inspiration into Omar’s ear from time to time and generally enjoyin himself, lookin at the crowd, singing along…

SERIOUSLY heavy.

Much love, BTW, to Faktion for putting this on…

MIND BLOWN

 

Nuage Vert by HeHe

 

At the moment here in Manchester we’re in the middle of the Futuresonic festival, which is bloody marvellous. Loads of spaces across town have been given over to this ‘Urban Festival of Art, Music & Ideas’.

Last night I was at the Urbis for a big party, featuring Daedelus (fucking brilliant), Neil Landstrumm (really good but too banging for the time he was playing), Toddla T (not bad but not good either, and with a diabolical MC) and Hudson Mohawke (I fucking missed him cos they put him on well early but I got to have a nice chat with him).

There was something a little bit cool about partying in a museum, even if the vibe was somewhat lacking.

HOWEVER

The music is just one part of it. There’s also a bunch of talks, and plenty of art and stuff. It’s sort of like the This Is Not Art festival but without so much emphasis on Aussie/Youth/Emergent artists. Today I went to the CUBE Gallery to check out a bunch of the art, which was really great. They had a whole bunch of stuff all focused on the environment and whatnot, including some photos and videos of HeHe’s fantastic piece ‘Nuage Vert‘, where the artists used green lasers to light up the polluting smoke billowing out of an industrial chimney.

The most incredible work, however, was Akousmaflore by a duo from France called Scenocosme. OH BOY. Somehow these maniacs have managed to turn a plant into an electrical switch. They have a bunch of plants hanging from the ceiling. Touch one of the plants and some sound comes out of a speaker. As far as I am concerned, this is done by magic. It’s just mindbending. Check the video to see what I’m banging on about; don’t forget to close your mouth so all the drool doesn’t get over your keyboard.

Time to dash now though – more music tonight. This time it’s Floating Points, Alex Nut, Kode 9, Zomby, Move D, Actress, HATE and much much more… YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Exciting…

A VERY cool thing just happened…

I got an email from Chris Duckenfield with a link to a yousendit.

Clicking the link brought me a zip file with remixes of a track I’d made.

Remixes were by Chris himself, Leozero and the motherfucking Unabombers!

I am a happy man. More info soon enough…

In other news, Budapest is one of the coolest cities in the world… I was lucky enough to go there last weekend where I met up with the always wonderful Vanessa, part of my gorgeous Sydney family… ahh, was so good to connect with the fam once again, especially in such ace surrounds. Beautiful warm weather, breathtaking architecture, dope thermal bath action and the coolest squat bars in the whole wide world… oh and it’s cheap as chips and the goulash is amazing. GO TO BUDAPEST NOW IF YOU CAN…

ALSO here is a video from the squat party 2 weeks ago… what a great night that was (feels like a lot longer than 2 weeks ago also) – witness the bike-powered light sculpture and dancefloor, and plenty other weird stuff…

TOTAL LUST

It’s the Teenage Engineering OP-1. Currently the most erotic vaporware ever, it’s got every music nerd on the net the most moist… those looks! That DISPLAY! The teeny size!

Never mind the fact that it doesn’t really sound spectacular, nor does it actually exist, and that it comes from a company that’ll happily charge you €650 for a fucking desk lamp. I want one. MEEEE PLEEEEASE!!!

In other news, there’s a chat window down the bottom right there, you can have a chat with me if I’m online. How exciting!

xx

Warehouse Wrap-Up

Nice times last night at the Human Shield warehouse party! ‘Twas held in a warehouse on the North-West perimeter of the city, suitably grimey environs, in a space that is conventionally used as storage for a local independent off-licence (ie bottle shop for all you aussies). I arrived a little after midnight, and Convextion was already playing – much more on the electro tip than the deep tech I really love him for, but still plenty of lush chords and melodies.

BUT

Not very much volume, despite a fuckin hoooooge rig up the front. A quick conflab with young Mooken revealed that the noise complaints from the nearby block of flats had already been coming thick and fast pre-midnight and so the rig was turned down to home stereo levels. Oh dear. Nonetheless, there was a good sized crowd of heads – it was quite a sausage fest as predicted; I would expect that at least 70% of the audience owned 4 or more Drexciya records – and there was plenty of Manchester techno royalty in attendance, as well as plenty of scally drug dealers asking “do you need any E’s mate” and seemingly bedecked in authentic early 90s warehouse attire, kangol hats and all.

The warehouse was reasonably well decorated, some dope stencilling going on courtesy of a really nice bunch of ferals who I had some good chats with – they’re essentially the Manchester version of the Mekanarky mob and they assure me that there is a fairly decent free party scene up here which makes me happy.

Convextion finished up as the sound guy was doing his best to surreptitiously up the volume all the while, and DJ Stingray showed up with his balaclava and huge frame and insane record collection. Normally I don’t really care so much for yer slammin detroit electro – there are a few tracks I quite like here and there – but I don’t think I’d ever heard a full set in the club of this gear before, and Stingray delivered some proper juice. Plenty of Drexciyan classics (so I was told, repeatedly, by the many many screaming fanboys around me) and he never took that balaclava off all night.

BUT

The sound system never got loud enough. It was really frustrating for me, and for the faithful underwater devotees it was truly heartbreaking. You could feel the annoyance in the room, and as Stingray masterfully dropped classic after classic into the fray, only to have the track completely drowned out by the rapturous recognition of said tune by the crowd, one really yearned to jump behind the speakers and crank that fucker. I have never screamed ‘FUCKIN TURN IT UP MATE’ so many times in one night, nor heard it feverishly demanded with such frequency. I felt for one guy next to me who was determinedly enjoying himself but, on the verge of tears, lamenting that “I’ve waited fucking years to hear this shit played out and it just sounds like it does at home” and he was right. The fuck off huge subs barely tickled our chest cavities when enormous wobbly basslines kicked in, giving us just a tease of what devastation might be wreaked upon us if only the promoters had thrown caution to the wind (or planned their party a little better) and cranked the fuckin volume.

Nuff bitching though. Despite the rigorous adhesion to social order, the boys in blue made an appearance – only a few of them though, bringing great cheers from the crowd who all started taking pictures of them, chanting out ‘The strippers have arrived!’ and asking them if they knew anyone who had any pills. As soon as they came, they left (Greater Manchester Pigs > NSW Pigs), perhaps knowing that the frustrating volume levels were a punishment greater than anything they could mete out.

I left around three, pleased to have witnessed some quality 313 business, and very encouraged by the enthusiasm the Mancs dished out in spades – the rig might have been weak but it wasn’t stopping anyone from having a good night. Promising business from Human Shield – sort the goddam noise issue next time though, I BEG YOU..

Oh yes, new pics up on the Flickr as well… February business!

OPTRON

(via CDM)

Atsuhiro Ito has hooked up contact mics to fluoro tubes and made something that could be easily described as Jean-Michel Jarre’s take on air guitar, if only it didn’t sound so FUCKIN RAUCOUS!

Paloma Triste

I downloaded Hable Con Ella recently; I saw it when it came out in the cinema years ago and loved it. Once the download was done, the first thing I did was skip to the most memorable scene (for me), which was this delightful song in the middle of the film.

And fuck me dead, it’s only bloody Caetano Veloso singing it! When I last watched the film I wasn’t really acquainted with Tropicália etc, and so it was kind of funny to get re-acquainted with this beautiful song while having a new amount of incidental knowledge gained separately from this experience that served now to enhance it…

Subsequently, a search yielded a translation of the beautiful lyrics which augmented my appreciation further. So, with a lump in my throat, I bring you an incredible telling of the delightful story of heartbreak and a sad dove. Take it away Caetano…

(PS I do like that the translation of the Spanish voiceover at the end is ‘Caetano freaked me out’… yes mate, you totally did)

Scintillating

For some time now I’ve enjoyed two different things.

1. People using video projections to augment reality
2. People making movies using still digital cameras

And now the very talented Xavier Chassaing has combined the two magnificently. Watch and get all melty…