.

Okay, firstly apologies to all injured parties for my somewhat belligerent tone last night. I was just in one of those stupid moods, y'know. And although I'm still really disappointed with iTunes Music for not being good enough, I did relent and purchase the latest Tortoise album, more on which soon, possibly. The download time was super-bloody-fast, I'll give 'em that.

But my beloved Bleep remains the finest download facility in the known universe. The Domino catalogue has now been added, so now you can get your Franz Ferdinand and Preston School Of Industry there, if you're so inclined. Junior Boys entire Electrokin output is now also available, so you really don't have any excuse not to check them out. Some of the earlier Big Dada albums are now available too, including Roots Manuva's splendid "Run Come Save Me". It's just gonna get bigger and better - though why the hell Rephlex haven't pitched in yet is beyond me. I hope RDJ and co. aren't holding on to some archaic notions of 'real' music packaging. I mean, sure - put out that limited 180g double vinyl edition if it makes you feel better, but what's the harm in making MP3's available for those of us who couldn't give a toss anymore?

True, individual track prices are still not cheap (99p a shot) but you do make big saving if you buy in bulk - typically £6.99 for an album or £2.49 for an EP. It works for me, anyway....

...but just to return to Marcello for a moment, he's written some of the most naked personal shit of all, in the past. In some ways, his blog's failure to cleanse him, or at least comfort him, to enable him to move on from past horrors is the most damning argument against my standpoint. I won't go any further on this, it's his life and I've no right to dissect it. But I have known loss. My father died of Cancer in 1992. It fucked me up for a long time. I still dream about him. I still find it difficult to listen to Buddy Holly (his hero) without bursting into tears. It fucking kills me that he never got to see me get married, or got to see his grandchildren, who I know he would've fucking adored. Life can be a bastard. So let's party!

...And then you get people like John Eden, who sound like they actually have something to moan about, seeming to draw some strength from sharing his 'bitch-of-a-week' with us, using the blog as a cathartic cipher to let off some steam and (sorry to admit it, John) amusing the rest of us because we've BEEN THERE (well, maybe not there precisely, but somewhere pretty damn close). I occasionally try to get personal, let some bits of my real life ooze into the blog, and I always feel better for it afterwards, even if I might be initially embarrassed. It's the way forward...ask Tiffiny, who's been rocking my world recently.

Blogging = freedom of expression, cathartic mental ejaculation, empathy, personal fulfillment....others?

So I finally got 'round to downloading the latest i-Tunes software. Now I have access to the i-Tunes Music Store. So what? I couldn't even buy that Kid 606 album I've been trying to find! Christ, I give these people a chance to prove that the legal way is best, but they're just not catering to my fucking tastes. The 'Electronic' section is a joke (although, somewhat inexplicably, they do have the Silver Apples' first two albums). Mainstream cocksuckers! Die! Die!! DIE!!!

Oh for Christ's sake!!! Marcello's gone and had another hissy-fit, so now he's throwing in the towel again. Another cool Carlin blog bites the dust. He just doesn't seem to have that protective psychological wall that allows most of us to just get on and enjoy ourselves, reveling in our own little obsessive backwaters, cherishing that which fulfills us, not really caring too much how many people read/enjoy/detest our opinions, just shouting our mouths off into the virtual void. It's a damn shame, I really thought he was starting to get into the spirit of things....when he's hot he's burnin' and when he's not he's moaning tediously, which is all part of the fun. If you're that concerned about blogging being pointless, then why not do something really worthwhile and do some voluntary work, or become a missionary or something. Musical/cultural commentary is never gonna change the fucking world (at least, not at this level), it's just something to pass the time, stimulate a few brain cells, connect with like-minded souls, have a fucking laugh.

I love blogging, me....

CASSETTE PETS: REMEMBER A TIME WHEN THE NME WAS ACTUALLY EDUCATIONAL....?

Hi-voltage (NME 028)

Oh. my. god. This compilation was available by mail order only from the NME back in 1987. Totally blew my head off.

Tracklist:

Side 1
Suicide - Ghost Rider
Soft Cell - Memorabilia
Matt Johnson - Red Cinders In The Sand
Holger Hiller - Jonny (du Lump)
Erasure - Senseless
Thomas Leer - Letter From America
D.A.F. - Kebab Traume
Cabaret Voltaire - Baader Meinhof

Side 2
Holgar Czukay - Hey Baba Rebop
Depeche Mode - Black Celebration
Neu! - Hallogallo
Can - I Want More
Colourbox - Breakdown
Yello - Homer Hossa

Amazing to think that, apart from the Depeche one, I'd never heard any of these tracks prior to receiving the tape. Even the Cabs one, which at that time was still only available on the ultra-rare "Factory Sampler" EP. There's a couple of things on here that still warrant further investigation, such as Matt Johnson's pre-The The experimental piece, which is from an album called "Burning Blue Soul" (4AD, 1981) which to this day I still haven't gotten 'round to tracking down. On the strength of this track, it must be blinding. If anyone out there can supply me with a cd-r burn, I'll be eternally grateful.

Compiled by Roy Carr & Ian Pye, this was my first taste of Suicide (I think I bought their just-reissued first album immediately afterwards), Neu!, Can & Thomas leer, as well as my first hearing of Soft Cell's early 'prescient-as-fuck' single "Memorabila".

Of course, being the wisened old know-it-all that I am now, I'm thinking about all the stuff they missed out. I mean, did we really need to hear current chartpop by Erasure when we could've had Cluster, SPK or Metal Urbain? But at the time...christ, it was like peering into a whole hidden history of music that I was only just beginning to comprehend. NME, I salute you for what you once were...

Y'know, Chris Cunningham got it completely spot-on when he thought of using hyperactive martial arts action sequences in the video for Squarepusher's drill'n'bass landmark "Come On My selector" back in 1997. Tonight I was sat on the sofa 'chilling out' listening to Shitmat's totally bonkers "KillaBabylonCuts" album -a truly exceptional piece of work, if I might be so bold - with the TV on at the same time. I was watching a martial arts movie called "Fists Of Legend" on BBC1, when I noticed that the high-speed fight scenes were almost perfectly in sinc with Shitmat's outrageously OTT Gabba-Jungle concoctions - a flurry of limbs accompanied by skittery snare-rolls, a fist connecting with jaw accentuated by sinewave sub-bass detonation, a mouth opening to utter some Kung-Fu yelp in harmony with a snatch of Ragga MC chatter - it was almost uncanny. The overall sense of hyper-kinetic delirium shared by the two mediums produces similar sensations of bewildered euphoria in the viewer/listener. Has anyone ever done any serious study into the correlation between martial arts and breakbeat science?

On the subject of Chris Cunningham et al, Warp Records release their first DVD video anthology next month. You really should buy it, you know....

Way back in September last year I wrote a piece on The Human League in which I quoted a line from David Buckley's Mojo article, concerning the League's groundbreaking "Love & Dancing" remix album. Here's the quote once again:

..a project that would arguably be the most influential product of their career. Producer Martin Rushent had journeyed round America in search of the latest dance sounds, and came back with an idea to pare "Dare!" down to it's basic grooves and release a remix album. Released in 1982, "Love & Dancing", by the Barry White-homaging League Unlimited Orchestra, was the first British pop remix album to reach the Top 5.

Then earlier this week, completely out of the blue, I get a rather disgruntled e-mail from Martin Rushent himself, as follows:

whats this crap about me touring america lookin for the latest dance sounds
and then coming home and revamping dare

thats bollocks

if you want the real story e me and i will tell you what really happened

To find out what really happened, keep watching this space....

I have absolutely no opinion on 2004 Drum'n'Bass whatsoever. Why? 'Cause I haven't heard any. My interest in the genre peaked around '95-'96 when the whole Goldie/Photek/Dillinja axis was in full effect. It was that point where sophistication was still tempered by some tasty rave noise and the beats were still rinsing as opposed to just rollin'. The Roni Size era pretty much killed it for me (using real drummers and double bass players? - fuck off and Die!) and I haven't been back since.

I dunno if it's because people like Luke Vibert and the Planet Mu label have ignited my enthusiasm by excavating and reimagining the old Junglist stuff, but I find myself in total agreement with Drip Drap Drop's comments about a "great fondness for jungle" . I'm listening to this sort of shit now more than I ever did during it's heyday and, to coincide with my 'Cassette Pets' nostalgia trip, I was extremely pleased to find this little beauty lying at the bottom of a pile of my tapes recently:

A HISTORY OF HARDCORE

It's a double cassette tracing the development of two of Hardcore Jungle's most central labels, Suburban Base and Moving Shadow, from 1991-95. I hadn't played it for years and, if I'm honest, there was a time when I probably would've scoffed at it. But playing it today is just a total fucking rush. Selected and mixed by DJ Kenny Ken and sequenced in a fairly chronological order, it really shows the development of the scene, featuring all the major playaz like Q Bass, Hyper On Experience, DJ Hype, Omni Trio, Foul Play and Remarc. Side 1 is mainly still anchored to the 4/4 House kick drum with ghost-traces of Happy Hardcore's E-rush oscillator riffs, side 2 is where the BPM's start getting excessive with the helium diva samples and the breaks start to fragment, side 3 is where the breaks start to really fragment and the sounds get sparser and more raggafied and side 4 is total Amen madness. How the hell anyone (me included) thought 'intelligent d'n'b' was progress after this shit is beyond understanding. Total genius - Reynolds was right all along!

CASSETTE PETS

Over the last few years, with affordable cd-r burning and high speed MP3 downloads becoming the norm around here, I'd almost forgotten that I had a cassette collection. It's huge! There's piles of the fucking things lying around in boxes and cupboards, just collecting dust. There was a time when cassettes were the life's blood of the hard-up music obsessive who's earnings could never match his voracious appetite for fresh sounds, and I'm sure there are many people out there who still have much affection for those home-made compilations their girlfriends and buddies made for them or those inspired mix-tapes they cobbled together on a wet afternoon in 1992.

So anyway, I was thinking what to do with them. Keep 'em, and just let them lie there taking up space? Can't sell them - they have no monetary value. Which means - gulp! - throw them away?! Yeah, I'm actually considering chucking the bloody things out. About 50% is probably stuff I'll never listen to again (Bronski Beat's "Age Of Consent"? The Cure's "Disintegration"? Gary Clail live broadcast?!!,) and the rest can probably be obtained in nice shiny digital format on Soulseek if the urge to hear them should return.

But before I jettison this portion of my music collection, I've decided to spend the next few weeks just listening through them, hoping to find forgotten thrills, sorting the wheat from the chaff, maybe relenting on the Stalinist Purge vibe and keeping some of them. I'll also be reminiscing about a few favourites here at the blog - so consider this to be Part 1 of an ongoing, occasional series.

One thing I've noticed is the surprising amount of off-the-shelf pre-recorded cassettes I own. Makes me realise that, even before I started buying CDs, I was never a vinyl purist. I've always been into convenience, so I guess that was my motivation for buying albums in cassette format. Easily played on stereo, walkman or in the car without any fuss. Come to think of it, cassette compilations played a vital part in my musical education. Take this one, for instance:

TECHNO: The New Dance Sound Of Detroit

No doubt all the hipsters will claim that they bought all the originals on 12inch import long before it came out, but this 1988 cassette comp. from 10 Records was my first exposure to Detroit Techno. Listening back now, some of it sounds a bit average, particularly the Blake Baxter tracks like "Ride 'em Boy" which is almost moronic, although when he gives over the vocals to the serenely disengaged Mia Hesterley on "Spark", it elevates the vibe ten-fold. I think she also did the vocals on that other weird Baxter tune "When We Used To Play" which appeared on the "Retro Techno" album later on. There's some solid tracks from Eddie "Flashin'" Fowkes, Anthony Shakir and Tongue & Groove (who I know almost nothing about), but there's too many examples of gimmicky stutter-vocals and 'mega-mix' effects which makes me suspect there was an attempt to cash-in on the House music explosion. Even Model 500's "Techno Music" is mired by some daft speak'n'spell robot voice nonsense, which is thankfully absent on the version on R&S's "Model 500 - Classics" anthology. At least "It Is What It Is", the peerless opening track by Derrick May's Rythim Is Rythim, is unblemished by such cynical maneuvers, although compiler Neil Rushton credits Derrick as 'Detroit Co-Ordinator', so I guess he approved everything. The man had bills to pay, I guess.

But whatever my gripes now, I remember this as a special release at the time. Maybe much of it isn't as 'timeless' as I would've liked to think, but as a symbol of change and gateway to future pleasures, it ranks as one of the greats. I think I'll be keeping this one for a while yet...

OH DEAR, OH DEAR, OH DEAR....








Remember I said awhile back that none of my comic strip art remained in existence? Well, I came across this fucking thing earlier, in amongst a bunch of loose paperwork. Kinda wish I hadn't, if this is the sort of adolescent wank-fodder I was producing.

CANCORDE?!








Got a nice e-mail from Dan yesterday:



When I woke up this morning I was thinking for some unknown reason about your post on Concorde a while ago, oh god nearly a year ago...



I was thinking of the meaning of the word concorde as I understand it - I had an old LP issue of Can's "Ege Bamyasi" and printed on the inner sleeve was a quote from Shakespeare about "concord of sweet sounds..."



Now I don't know if Can were opposing their product to the noise of the plane - I think the record was released in 72 so it's a possibility...maybe...



I was most gratified to think that a piece I wrote on Concorde back in October last year should still be providing stimulating thoughts for someone else now and, in turn, Dan's e-mail tickled my fancy to the point where further investigation seemed necessary.



Naturally, Concorde's name is derived from it's more well-known definition, meaning 'harmonious agreement', representing the spirit of co-operation between Britain and France that made the project possible (ironic then, that the two nations actually argued over the spelling of the name for some time - at one point, after Prime Minister Harold Macmillan felt slighted by President de Gaulle backing out of a scheduled meeting, Britain insisted on calling it Concord, only relenting to the Gaelic spelling some time later), but the word also appears to have a second music-related meaning (previously unknown to me) defined as "chord satisfactory to ear without other(s) to follow" or "Agreement or harmony between things; esp. said in reference to sounds and rhythmical movements, and in uses thence derived"



Along with Shakespeare, Dan came across several literary quotes relating to music:



1340 HAMPOLE Psalter cl. 4 In pesful felagheship & concord of voicys.

1509 HAWES Past. Pleas. XVI. xiv, The vii. scyences in one monacorde, Eche upon other do full well depende, Musyke hath them so set in concorde.

1596 SHAKES. Merch. V. v. i. 84 The man that hath no musicke in himselfe, Nor is not moued with concord of sweet sounds.

1744 J. PATERSON Comm. Milton's P.L. 171 If two stringed instruments be exactly tuned alike, the one that is not play'd on, will answer to that which is playd on, in perfect concord.

1849 M. SOMERVILLE Connex. Phys. Sc. xvii. 158 When their vibrations are so related as to have a common period, after a few oscillations they produce concord.



Although it's obviously incidental, I find it a delicious irony that the world's most notorious noise-polluter should have a name that represents perfect musical harmony. The secret of Concorde's distinctive 'sound' is due to hot gases leaving the engine's exhaust system and hitting the surrounding air, creating turbulent eddies, which can reach twice the speed of sound. The eddies act like a stream of Mach 2 bullets, each creating shock waves - and sonic booms - as they twist and turn back from the engine. These shock waves are the strongest source of noise for exhausts like these. Although I would hesitate to claim that the resultant deafening roar is music, I would certainly say that it excites me in a similar way to good music played at high volume. The way it seems to slice through the very fabric of reality, overpowering the senses, is (was) an intoxicating experience, proving - to me at least - that Noise can produce vibrant, ecstatic emotions and hence validating it's potential as a rich source of exploration in the field of conventional music composition. Which brings me full-circle to Non, Whitehouse, Pan Sonic etc etc...




God damn, I'm gonna miss that baby....

Plastic Man gets all excited by the latest Grime dubplate.



(I'm waiting for the big Plastic Man/Mark E. Smith "How I Wrote Elastic Man" connection over at Kid Shirt....)

RUST IN PEACE....








Dalek creator Terry Nation was born today in 1930. He also created Blake's 7 and The Survivors, which earns extra props 'round these parts.



Whether or not the supposed rift between the BBC and Terry's estate was a publicity stunt, I'm pleased to note that the Daleks will in fact be featuring in the new Doctor Who series. Go here for the latest....

EXCLUSIVE!! BLOGGER KEK-W IS REALLY AN ESCAPED 2000 A.D. SCRIPT DROID!



Discovered completely by accident earlier today, whilst thumbing through a box of '90s British Comics (Crisis, Strip, Revolver, Judge Dredd Megazine, 2000 A.D...) in my garage. Picked one out at random to have a browse through - this one. Came across an interesting story called "Cannon Fodder"; a really trippy excursion featuring Albert Einstein and The Devine Mother.









Then a quick glance at the credits reveals:









Kek's droid credentials can be viewed here.



So, Kek...when were you planning on coming clean on the fact that you're actually an artificial entity, constructed by an extra-terrestrial being called Tharg? A full, frank and honest account of your excursions in the land of comic writing is requested, nay demanded.



Great post on car-booting, by the way...

Big thanks to Derek Poplife for hipping me to the rather superb girlie synthpunk duo Metalux. Never heard of 'em till Derek's coy little mention pricked my curiousity. At last, a current American electro act that don't sound like a cartoon pisstake of The Normal. An uneasy alliance of indie lo-fi and the electronic avant garde. Better than Add N To (X). I'm hearing strong echoes of late-70's Sheffield - those clammy analogue synth tones remind me of early League/Cabs home recordings. The singer is fucking amazing - sounds similar to Nancy Blossom, vocalist in late '60s psych/synth group Fifty Foot Hose, but with a nastier streak. Most excellent!

Oh yeah.. Derek, web info is thin on the ground, but if you want to learn a little more about these ladies, their website is here. No live dates in the UK scheduled, though. Poo!

NOVEMBER X-RAY MEXICO

Excellent new posts over at Woebotnik.

At the risk of boring the hell out of everyone, it MUST be noted that Richard H. Kirk has been monitoring the shortwave 'numbers' for many years now. As he said in the Wire back in March 2000:

"I started listening to shortwave radio because I use it a lot for sound sources and I kept picking up snippits of conversations relating to the war (Kosovo). There are also these weird frequencies just transmitting numbers that have been going on since the Cold War. These are stations that you can tune into and all they do is recite strings of numbers in robotic voices. Well, if the Cold War's supposed to be over, why are the voices still there?"

These 'clandestine transmissions' are like a red flag to a bull in the ultra-paranoid worldview of Mr. Kirk. Samples of 'numbers voices' have appeared in his work, particularly on "Darkness At Noon" and "T.W.A.T. -The War Against Terror".

There's also a Boards Of Canada track called "Gyroscope" from the "Geogaddi" album that features a string of numbers recited in a freaky childlike voice which I presume was sampled from a shortwave station.

Also loved Matt's piece on the bleep 'n' bass/ Belgium 'ardkore era, which is never out of fashion at Gutterbreakz HQ. Respec'

Just had a listen to the previews of Bizzy B.'s blog-buzzin' "Science EP 3" over at Bleep. What do I think? It's a fucking wet dream, baby. Rather than steal an advance copy off Soulseek, I'm gonna be a good boy and wait for the official release date, 9th Aug, because this chap clearly deserves my hard-earned cash...

Really enjoyed reading John's advance review of The Bug feat. Warrior Queen single, over at Uncarved. I'm excited. More stuff like this please, sir!