Wednesday, 30 July 2008
Beirut inspires a musical rambling.
Beirut is a band I enjoy. I am listening to them now. I enjoy them so much I find it hard to believe it. In the past six months I think I have listened to at least two tracks a day by them. I put them on in the morning. I listen to them at work. Each different song of theirs takes me to a different place.
I can't remember who said it or where I heard it; thinking about it probably on some film making of I think, but the quote was:
"Music is just the emotional fuel to get to where you want to be."
.............or something along those lines.........................
(Can you put something in quotation marks if your not sure of the quote?........I'm not so sure........fuck it I said I couldn't write, so leave me alone cunt.)
Beirut is funny in its emotional destination though. I listen to it and get confused as to what state I am ending up in. Because of this it has a property I don't find in too much music, which is that, for me personally, its the swiss army knife of emotional music. Its the every occasion Greg music.
Sometimes it makes me want to cry...but usually because it makes me so happy I want to. But then other times not.
As I write I have 'Elephant Gun' playing in my ears, which to me is the grand daddy of their music.
Or maybe 'Nantes.'
Or maybe 'After the Curtain'
Or maybe 'Scenic World.' (the version of the Lon Gisland Ep)
I don't know.
Most other music seems to have some sort of desired effect on me. Like that Eluvium album - Copia,
which I have been listening to a bit of lately, which seems to just make me a droopy, miserable, boob.
Uplifting and beautiful my arse. Maybe some of its beautiful I guess. I like it anyway. The cover art is good, but then again its also really bad. Have a look/read of it and you'll see what I mean.
Techno; well I like listening to that because I seem to just look to the future. I feel slightly stripped of more meaningful emotion, and more just the emotion of hype and excitement comes out, along with the insessent ramblings in my brain of production values and over intellectualizing the concepts of techno of a by-gone era. I'm not saying techno still can't be innovative as I truly believe it still can be, but there is so much shit out there now it can become hard to see it. Maybe its just hard because, like hippies, I also hate the fucking idiot munter fuckwits with their glasses on in the clubs, who yell out shit like 'I'm so minimal' (I'm not kidding. I heard that once) whilst tilting there heads back in the air with there mouths wide open and their hands in the air, in a way only a person who is really high on drugs at 6am can do. When I see stuff like this I often wish I had some kind of touch of god like power where I could instantly zap them, in the pose they are in, covered in sweat to a really inappropriate place. Some kind of funeral would be good I imagine or the accountancy office/call centre they no doubt work in on a monday morning in front of their boss. (did I tell you I saw some of those earthy hippie cunts leaving the Glade in a BMW?)
Techno/minimal/house is getting over run with these fucktards the world over. As I have said before, give me a basement with speakers and some kind of Redshape/Galluzi/Villalobos/Dettman/list goes on, and a no teetering* on heels in shiny dress, or being a general fuckwit, door policy.
So I guess Techno makes me angry then.
Bo Hansen makes me squint my eyes and happily look off into a distant past.
Erik Satie makes me sleepy.
Kraftwerk makes me laugh out loud.
But Beirut? I'm really not sure. It should have plenty of time and place based emotional strings attached to it for me, but yet when I listen these aren't necessarily the places that it makes me go. This is handy, because it quite easily could have been ruined for me altogether. But it hasn't.
Happy, Sad, Hyped. It does it all for me. This makes them a great band for Greg.
I am now looking for another set of music which will be this big for me, techno aside because I listen to that everyday too, and don't say A Hawk and Hacksaw cause I didn't mean same style of music, and besides, I tried them and I'm not their biggest fan.
I went thru a pretty big Matthew Dear - Asa Breed faze recently too. Although I think this will have a definative emotional pull for me. (ps went and checked out a gig of his at the ICA in London, and it was great. He really seems to have taken to the whole stage/singing malarkey after all those years of being behind decks and controllers.)
Anyway.
Beirut is good.
They played one of the best gigs I have been to.
I wish they'd get back together.
*sorry Spagnoletti.
I can't remember who said it or where I heard it; thinking about it probably on some film making of I think, but the quote was:
"Music is just the emotional fuel to get to where you want to be."
.............or something along those lines.........................
(Can you put something in quotation marks if your not sure of the quote?........I'm not so sure........fuck it I said I couldn't write, so leave me alone cunt.)
Beirut is funny in its emotional destination though. I listen to it and get confused as to what state I am ending up in. Because of this it has a property I don't find in too much music, which is that, for me personally, its the swiss army knife of emotional music. Its the every occasion Greg music.
Sometimes it makes me want to cry...but usually because it makes me so happy I want to. But then other times not.
As I write I have 'Elephant Gun' playing in my ears, which to me is the grand daddy of their music.
Or maybe 'Nantes.'
Or maybe 'After the Curtain'
Or maybe 'Scenic World.' (the version of the Lon Gisland Ep)
I don't know.
Most other music seems to have some sort of desired effect on me. Like that Eluvium album - Copia,
which I have been listening to a bit of lately, which seems to just make me a droopy, miserable, boob.
Uplifting and beautiful my arse. Maybe some of its beautiful I guess. I like it anyway. The cover art is good, but then again its also really bad. Have a look/read of it and you'll see what I mean.
Techno; well I like listening to that because I seem to just look to the future. I feel slightly stripped of more meaningful emotion, and more just the emotion of hype and excitement comes out, along with the insessent ramblings in my brain of production values and over intellectualizing the concepts of techno of a by-gone era. I'm not saying techno still can't be innovative as I truly believe it still can be, but there is so much shit out there now it can become hard to see it. Maybe its just hard because, like hippies, I also hate the fucking idiot munter fuckwits with their glasses on in the clubs, who yell out shit like 'I'm so minimal' (I'm not kidding. I heard that once) whilst tilting there heads back in the air with there mouths wide open and their hands in the air, in a way only a person who is really high on drugs at 6am can do. When I see stuff like this I often wish I had some kind of touch of god like power where I could instantly zap them, in the pose they are in, covered in sweat to a really inappropriate place. Some kind of funeral would be good I imagine or the accountancy office/call centre they no doubt work in on a monday morning in front of their boss. (did I tell you I saw some of those earthy hippie cunts leaving the Glade in a BMW?)
Techno/minimal/house is getting over run with these fucktards the world over. As I have said before, give me a basement with speakers and some kind of Redshape/Galluzi/Villalobos/Dettman/list goes on, and a no teetering* on heels in shiny dress, or being a general fuckwit, door policy.
So I guess Techno makes me angry then.
Bo Hansen makes me squint my eyes and happily look off into a distant past.
Erik Satie makes me sleepy.
Kraftwerk makes me laugh out loud.
But Beirut? I'm really not sure. It should have plenty of time and place based emotional strings attached to it for me, but yet when I listen these aren't necessarily the places that it makes me go. This is handy, because it quite easily could have been ruined for me altogether. But it hasn't.
Happy, Sad, Hyped. It does it all for me. This makes them a great band for Greg.
I am now looking for another set of music which will be this big for me, techno aside because I listen to that everyday too, and don't say A Hawk and Hacksaw cause I didn't mean same style of music, and besides, I tried them and I'm not their biggest fan.
I went thru a pretty big Matthew Dear - Asa Breed faze recently too. Although I think this will have a definative emotional pull for me. (ps went and checked out a gig of his at the ICA in London, and it was great. He really seems to have taken to the whole stage/singing malarkey after all those years of being behind decks and controllers.)
Anyway.
Beirut is good.
They played one of the best gigs I have been to.
I wish they'd get back together.
*sorry Spagnoletti.
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
An old e-mail conversation I came across
It makes me happy and sad all at once, and I feel in a lot of ways they were better days.
BRETT:
So. You must be there, which must be very different. Subway transport and dog-shit ladies and american flatmates and homesickness and culture shock and pure hype of the pure unknown? The old Wellington is very quiet. I have a cold. I have watched Greenaway's 'The Draughtman's Contract" to see how that sweet 2d track was used, and it was played much slower and used like mainly to mark progress in the story, for transitions between scenes as far as I could tell. The exact same zoom failure that occured with Nick's camera the moment you bought your new camera happened to Nick's gamecube controller = as we played Resident Evil 4 and the zoom on our rifle scope kept going in, then kept going out then stopped. We have not begun any new projects as of yet. Endeavour on white elf pilgrim! --
JEREMY:
day 17.
1000 hundred dark golden
infinity potion sparks from the lost moons of an unforgetable elvish realm.
Seoul.
population density: without question
its got smog and concrete for comfort, whats more plants are very popular.
i am a teacher.
one of my students is a harmonica slinging akido master.
he is ted.
there are many others.
everyday is another list.
i walk and film. first without any image stablisation and later with plenty.
I am surrounded, but without threat.
they dont seem to have police here and hospital patients roam the streets and the side walk cafes like the zombies they are.
I live on the 13th floor of a brownish gray apartment.
number 103.
there are many more simular for me to ponder its like communism.
except with makeup.
when you go into the exterior there are devices for physical toning in every direction. so forget about not fully indorsing a resolute physical rigme its part and parcel.
old women wear visors that make them look like future humans.
I work and hang out with children. they like how hairy i am, im like some enlarged domestic animal, made for group patting.
its a lot hotter. a better climate for sweat excreations
drinking so to get drunk is also a well established doctrine of these shores, especially on mondays and wednesdays.
drunks inhabit a lot of your visual resources. and are a pleasure to watch much like the subway is a great way to invest your 'won'. its in tunnels and on bridges, and breaths a wind so intoxicating you are bound for nothing less than unrivaled meta mayhem.
sun ra helps, by and by whats sweet is how similar both shen mu and warlords are to this place.
in each you start of small and unknowing and before long expand to rule the greater universe... but watch out for dragonflys they surround this dimension heavily, korean horror films also know a few princely limits that and filled suassage cabbage can implode my brain into a million shards of paraniod pain with consumit ease.
Osaka, Japan was like a giant over-sexualised robot planet sphere. the train i caught there was a heavy purple and was so full of its own deep-speed-emotions that it didnt even give a crap about going fast.
your comrade jeremy
Ps. next un-union toyko?
GREG:
Mr O, oh oh oh I didn't even know you had a go go go.
Mads told me you left. Wow excursions excursions!! Did you come through the A to the K to the L. I would have very much liked to have seen you, but instead I will make do with your tall step sister DJ Cyrus-ette. It sounds exciting and scary and like my thailand excursion except for a lot longer. Not much to report on the Auckland front. I have a radio show called the electric company now, like the childrens show but without spiderman and much less American. I plan on making a move at the end of April 2006 for some sort of european shores. Maybe I will swing by Asia way and catch up for some white port and cigars. I like the idea of a harmonica slinging akido master. Its a long way from Taupo me old droogies. Phil. Where abouts are the photos from the droog re-union to end all droog re-unions. Brett jog-hansoth. I am sad that Wellington is lonely for you. We will have to make an effort for some kind of half re-union. What has happened to all the instruments O'sullivan? and what of the footage from the trip?
A tokyo re-union sounds right up my hutt valley.
Japan
Japanese people
cell phones as small as i-shuffles
Neon lights shimmering neon lights
technology.
A haven for four such futristically cultured fellows such as ourselves.
The one like the one called Greg
PS: Send me an address Jeremy James and I will send you a care package for your masterful travels.
Monday, 28 July 2008
a resolute will and the heart of a tireless dune
An e-mail my friend Jeremy wrote me and some of my friends once. I felt that the public at large needed to see it; and by at large I mean the four people that read this blog.
On the left there, we have an example of jerry.
On the right there we have an example of suburban safari-ing.
Greetings,
This Saturday the hypnotically induced, mirage prone 'trans suburban
safari' trances into your local harbour of lockwood and weatherboard.
A strange and gloom ridden voyage through the esoteric reality's of
the subtopia chimera... the milk and honey of wastelands. The 'trans
suburban safari' offers you an apparition, a hocus pocus phantasm of
isolation and desolation - like a desert fever dream except with
houses and tar seal. So join us on this solitary crusade, this walk
where hell knows only of such sweat laden misery's and utopias.
Equip yourselves with all and many of the following essential survival
techniques:
- car key desert robes and drabs.
- water
- salt
- camels and camel paraphernalia
- other devices for general sand deflection
- airtight food wraps
- maps, compasses and constellation arts
- safari pith helmets
- sweat retention co-ordination
- snake and scorpion death rattles
- Tuareg swords and arm daggers
- hawk eyes and intensities.
- a resolute will and the heart of a tireless dune
Suburbia awaits thy questing... and conquering delusions.
South Karori 9am.
I missed out on this. I think I'll always be upset about that.
I also have a sneaking feeling Jeremy is my favorite author.
I hope he feels ok I have put this up.
(Dust vs Bono) My job is creative..........
.........So I hear. Except for the last 5 hours I have been trying to make some dust look real. Dust. No one gives a shit about dust in real life. I mean if you ran into dust on the street (assuming that was possible) you'd probably ignore it. Like one of those people you don't wanna talk to but know anyway. People spend their lives trying to get rid of dust out of their houses. For some reason I'm getting paid to make fake dust. I can tell you making dust is less fun than cleaning it. Making 30 frames of dust, probably about a coffee table at most amount if you hadn't dusted for a week, is taking a long time. Dust.
I think the only people that really care about dust, are people that live in deserts. Like Bedouins. If they wanna go to the shops or something, and a sand storm happens, dust is a real shitter. But you know, even though dust plays a far more intricate role in these peoples lives, its not a good one......and I don't reakon they get to the movies much or watch much tv, so all my dusty work is wasted on them.
I don't think anyone really likes dust.
I'll probably get proved really wrong, by like falling out of a plane and be saved by a big mound of dust, or maybe I'll somehow be captured and forced to watch a U2 concert and a big mound of dust will fall out of the sky and kill Bono.
If dust killed Bono I think I'd like it. Then I'd be enjoying my job at the moment.
Widely accepted truths vs reality
Sometimes some of the truths people widely accept are wrong.
Example.
There is no way that Terminator is a better film than Robocop.
Example.
There is no way that Terminator is a better film than Robocop.
Friday, 25 July 2008
Aorkystrate in Taupo
Here is a link to a band I used to be in quite a few moons ago. I reakon we'll get back together at some stage and take over the world.
You can download the whole album. What we lacked in talent we made up for with a massive amount of hype and a large amount of mish mash instruments, mostly from second hand stores and one dollar shops.
The recording of this happened over a completely drunken week spent locked away in a holiday house in Taupo, New Zealand.
The sad thing is we never made it big.
http://www.last.fm/music/The+Droog+Band/Aorkystrate+in+Taupo
Kids these days are shit.
Imagine, if you will, that you are 6 years old. You have a group of friends you see everyday after school. You're really close to them. You laugh together, you cry together. They are really cool, and make your life that much more enjoyable. You look up to them. You wanna be them.
Then one day you see nearly all of them ruthlessly murdered in front of you. They die in horrible ways. One of them gets his foot jammed in a door and literally has to blow his own leg off to escape. Another dies on an operating table.
You're 6. You're scarred.
This was pretty much what it was like being into transformers when I was a kid. I would come home from school and watch the cartoon. I had some toys. I loved those big transforming fucks.
Then out of the blue you hear a movie is coming out. Of course excitement levels are high.
You finally get taken to it and its one of the most brutal movies you have ever seen. Remember, this isn't just a movie where some characters you have got to know in the last 45mins or so die. These characters have been built up for you over years of you watching the tv series............and then in the first half an hour, nearly all of them die. I cried. Smoke poured out their mouths. Limbs were lost. The robots were cracked and dented and fucked up like you had never seen them before. I cried some more.
This is an example of what kids used to have to deal with. Dark as fuck.
Think about some of the kids films of the 70s and 80s.
Watership down. Fucking rabbit with a wire strangling the life out of it, with blood and shit coming out its mouth and eyes. Choking noises galore.
The reason I bring this up is because I have just seen pixars latest film WALL-E.
In all its much hyped-ness, reviewers kept going on about how dark it is. How for a childrens film its grim. While I do think that the subject matter is dark, its done in such a airy, fairy, everything is gonna turn out alright, cotton wool kids fashion, that it just isn't.
Kids need to see grim shit. Having a cartoon build you up to deal with the harsh reality that life can be a fucker is a good way toughen the little fucks up for the future.
WALL-E had some great moments when I really thought it was gonna get grim, but they chickened out.
At the end, they bring into question the whole idea of your soul. You know that whole philosophical argument which poses the question: if a complete map of your body was made, 100 percent correct, every detail the same, and then someone made a copy of you out of human goo, would that copy of you be you? Would an exact physical replica of yourself have the same thoughts etc. Or does the soul exist?
I think the idea for a kid of having lets say, their parents, or a cute garbage compacting robot, all of a sudden not recognise or know who they are, fucking scary.
I wish the film had ended like that.
Or the robot had died.
Or it wasn't gonna be ok in the end.
It would have made it a better film.
Kids films have no emotional punch anymore.
Kids now are pussies.
Then one day you see nearly all of them ruthlessly murdered in front of you. They die in horrible ways. One of them gets his foot jammed in a door and literally has to blow his own leg off to escape. Another dies on an operating table.
You're 6. You're scarred.
This was pretty much what it was like being into transformers when I was a kid. I would come home from school and watch the cartoon. I had some toys. I loved those big transforming fucks.
Then out of the blue you hear a movie is coming out. Of course excitement levels are high.
You finally get taken to it and its one of the most brutal movies you have ever seen. Remember, this isn't just a movie where some characters you have got to know in the last 45mins or so die. These characters have been built up for you over years of you watching the tv series............and then in the first half an hour, nearly all of them die. I cried. Smoke poured out their mouths. Limbs were lost. The robots were cracked and dented and fucked up like you had never seen them before. I cried some more.
This is an example of what kids used to have to deal with. Dark as fuck.
Think about some of the kids films of the 70s and 80s.
Watership down. Fucking rabbit with a wire strangling the life out of it, with blood and shit coming out its mouth and eyes. Choking noises galore.
The reason I bring this up is because I have just seen pixars latest film WALL-E.
In all its much hyped-ness, reviewers kept going on about how dark it is. How for a childrens film its grim. While I do think that the subject matter is dark, its done in such a airy, fairy, everything is gonna turn out alright, cotton wool kids fashion, that it just isn't.
Kids need to see grim shit. Having a cartoon build you up to deal with the harsh reality that life can be a fucker is a good way toughen the little fucks up for the future.
WALL-E had some great moments when I really thought it was gonna get grim, but they chickened out.
At the end, they bring into question the whole idea of your soul. You know that whole philosophical argument which poses the question: if a complete map of your body was made, 100 percent correct, every detail the same, and then someone made a copy of you out of human goo, would that copy of you be you? Would an exact physical replica of yourself have the same thoughts etc. Or does the soul exist?
I think the idea for a kid of having lets say, their parents, or a cute garbage compacting robot, all of a sudden not recognise or know who they are, fucking scary.
I wish the film had ended like that.
Or the robot had died.
Or it wasn't gonna be ok in the end.
It would have made it a better film.
Kids films have no emotional punch anymore.
Kids now are pussies.
What would you rather do?
Eat a dead baby, or have Rosanne Barr pooh in your mouth solidly for a month?
You'd be surprised at how many times this question comes up.
You'd be surprised at how many times this question comes up.
Thursday, 24 July 2008
I named my cat wrong.
I was invited to a private party on a Thursday night not so long ago. A swanky new artist had his gallery showing in london and for the after party the gallery asked him what entertainment he wanted. So 5,000 odd pounds later the gallery got Luciano to play for the night in a very swanky bar/club just off regent street in london. Usually the hang out for celebrities and people that arrive in Limos, this party was Swank with a capital S. So swank they had several maids attending the bathrooms that were made of Crystal. And no I am not joking. Even the urinal. Really, I pissed on crystal.
So doing the good kiwi thing I rocked up drinking bottles of beer on the street, wearing jandels (thats flip flops for you english idiots) and looking and feeling somewhat out of place. Luciano and his crew (his crew being all of the Phonica people) came on push bikes.
As far as I can tell everyone else probably showed up in Hummers. I went in and it was all free drinks and the like and 'glamourous' girls who looked ridiculous. You know the sort. Gold shimmery dresses that are too short and skyrise high heels. One day I really wanna chop 2/3s of the way thru some of these heels and watch one of these stupid cows topple over 45 mins into wearing them, then laugh at them while they flail around on the ground looking like fish with their scale-like dresses.
The bar itself probably held about 100-130 people. The decks and serato were set up in the corner with no monitor and the sound system was shit. Luciano came along and made them get in a monitor and another speaker for the dance floor and we were off. He started off quite techy and moved onwards into some housier numbers passing thru Abe Duques 'What happened' and a Recloose track. So far so good. Mixing was tight, but very short. 2 to 4 bars at best. Every single mix he would high pass fiter the playing track heaps, then bring in the new track, drop the bass on that, pull the other one out. There was an overall overkill of filter all night really. Now, the people who were on the floor, Phonica people, The artist and his mates, my group. We all know our stuff. Luciano knew we did from various people speaking to him and the fact that all of Phonica and their mates were there. But he continued playing music that was just getting worse and worse. He played Heater, which was alright but so overplayed over here now its not funny and from there on it was all downhill. I mean really downhill and I mean really bad music. ie. Whitney Houstens I wanna dance with somebody bootlegged together with Kraftwerk. I shit you not. There is a couple of other goodies (baddies?) but I tried to wipe the shitty music from my memory banks. It just got worse though. That fucking abomination of a track that goes 'Absolutely everybody, everybody' was another lowlight. Nothing like his sets online, it was all just really bad pop song remixes. I tried to look for the irony in it, you know how Michael Mayer plays cheesey music but those Kompakt boys play it in a cool and ironic way, and they are usually pretty good tracks anyway? But I couldn't see any. What was so funny, is that apart from a few people who were looking disgusted most people, including everyone from Phonica were still practically sucking his cock, which is laughable cause I know if you went into there store and asked for some of those tracks they would laugh in your face and spit at you.
Anyway, you know the scene from Terminator 2 when Sarah Conner sees the world explode? Well thats what it was like for me. I sat in the corner in disgust. Then I left.
Now. The first 2 hours was awesome, so thats ok, and perhaps he was just playing down to the crowd? Although if all members of staff from one of the most respected (supposed to be anyway) electronic record stores in London was at a gig you were playing at would you dumb yourself down? Also......It flummoxs me that he even owns such music? At heart is he a total cheese fest. The last hour of his set would have been more at home on a ministry of sound compilation rather than something from Cadenza. Actually I dont even know if some of the Ministry of sound people would play music as shit as he got.(Thats a total exaggeration, of course they would. They are some of the biggest cunts the world has to offer.)
Luciano Dumbing himself down. I was so confused. ...and startled...and feeling dirty.
I named my cat wrong.
So doing the good kiwi thing I rocked up drinking bottles of beer on the street, wearing jandels (thats flip flops for you english idiots) and looking and feeling somewhat out of place. Luciano and his crew (his crew being all of the Phonica people) came on push bikes.
As far as I can tell everyone else probably showed up in Hummers. I went in and it was all free drinks and the like and 'glamourous' girls who looked ridiculous. You know the sort. Gold shimmery dresses that are too short and skyrise high heels. One day I really wanna chop 2/3s of the way thru some of these heels and watch one of these stupid cows topple over 45 mins into wearing them, then laugh at them while they flail around on the ground looking like fish with their scale-like dresses.
The bar itself probably held about 100-130 people. The decks and serato were set up in the corner with no monitor and the sound system was shit. Luciano came along and made them get in a monitor and another speaker for the dance floor and we were off. He started off quite techy and moved onwards into some housier numbers passing thru Abe Duques 'What happened' and a Recloose track. So far so good. Mixing was tight, but very short. 2 to 4 bars at best. Every single mix he would high pass fiter the playing track heaps, then bring in the new track, drop the bass on that, pull the other one out. There was an overall overkill of filter all night really. Now, the people who were on the floor, Phonica people, The artist and his mates, my group. We all know our stuff. Luciano knew we did from various people speaking to him and the fact that all of Phonica and their mates were there. But he continued playing music that was just getting worse and worse. He played Heater, which was alright but so overplayed over here now its not funny and from there on it was all downhill. I mean really downhill and I mean really bad music. ie. Whitney Houstens I wanna dance with somebody bootlegged together with Kraftwerk. I shit you not. There is a couple of other goodies (baddies?) but I tried to wipe the shitty music from my memory banks. It just got worse though. That fucking abomination of a track that goes 'Absolutely everybody, everybody' was another lowlight. Nothing like his sets online, it was all just really bad pop song remixes. I tried to look for the irony in it, you know how Michael Mayer plays cheesey music but those Kompakt boys play it in a cool and ironic way, and they are usually pretty good tracks anyway? But I couldn't see any. What was so funny, is that apart from a few people who were looking disgusted most people, including everyone from Phonica were still practically sucking his cock, which is laughable cause I know if you went into there store and asked for some of those tracks they would laugh in your face and spit at you.
Anyway, you know the scene from Terminator 2 when Sarah Conner sees the world explode? Well thats what it was like for me. I sat in the corner in disgust. Then I left.
Now. The first 2 hours was awesome, so thats ok, and perhaps he was just playing down to the crowd? Although if all members of staff from one of the most respected (supposed to be anyway) electronic record stores in London was at a gig you were playing at would you dumb yourself down? Also......It flummoxs me that he even owns such music? At heart is he a total cheese fest. The last hour of his set would have been more at home on a ministry of sound compilation rather than something from Cadenza. Actually I dont even know if some of the Ministry of sound people would play music as shit as he got.(Thats a total exaggeration, of course they would. They are some of the biggest cunts the world has to offer.)
Luciano Dumbing himself down. I was so confused. ...and startled...and feeling dirty.
I named my cat wrong.
I smell of hippies.
So anyway. I went to the glade on the weekend. For those of you that don't know, the glade used to be an illegal area at Glastonbury about 5 or 6 years ago. It only hosted underground electronic music, ie Autechre, Plaid, Jeff Mills, Hawtin and the like. The actual organisers of Glastonbury thought it was done so well they made it part of the main festival. However the people who organised the glade saw Glastonbury as becoming too main stream and decided to cut ties and make their own festival in a glade that is a dragonfly sanctuary about an hour out of london. It is a very pretty venue. Anyway seeing as another festival I was going to got cancelled I thought I'd check it out, so bought a tent and and sleeping bag and headed off for the weekend.
I had a pretty bad feeling it was going to be full of hippies and neon colours and I was right. I hate that shit. Dreadlocked, smelly hippies doing yoga and talking about the moon and its cycles. One of the conversations I heard....and I shit you not happened when a group of these smelly, dreadlocked people with an identity crises basically o'd on drugs. He got taken away and his two mates sat there saying:
"You know man, I'm a goat, and your a horse....so we are like stable and stuff, but mike over there is an eagle.....so you know he gets knocked off line easily and stuff like that effects him more."
I was pretty close to kicking them in the shins and yelling "Its because you have been feeding him k and acid for the last day and he has taken far too many drugs you hippie cunts."
I also heard a guy yelling at the top of his lungs "Your rubbish!"
Assuming he was yelling at a dj I turned around to see which one and realised he was yelling at a rubbish bin.
I hate people with dreadlocks. Especially white people. Especially white girls. White girls with dreadlocks and brown, raggy clothes and bits of red or orange in their hair and big beady necklaces, and bangles and shit. I noticed that most of these dreaded idiots seemed to all pray to the 'King of the dreads', who had a backpack and a huge lion main of dreads and a digital SLR camera so he must be arty and cool. Go fuck yourself cunt.
Anyway. I saw a few acts and thought I'd give a run down.
Most of it sucked.
In fact the only good thing I saw on the first day was Ben Sims and Surgeon playing as frequency 7. They kicked ass. Ben Sims was so much better than the other times I have seen him in Europe. In full on three deck attack mode with surgeon over the top with his lap top and some midi controllers. It was pretty full on techno stuff as you would expect, but a great performance. Plenty of exciting and inventive mixing, a few of the old hits (sims played his goodlife of course) and heaps of energy. There was hardly anyone in the tent when he started (seeing as all the dumb uk hippies like breakcore and psy trance, the two most packed tents all weekend) but by the end they had filled the place up. A really good show, and made me realise how average a lot of the djs I have been seeing lately are. Although having said that, it was more a display of technical ability than a super enjoyable explosion on good music explosiveness.
The next thing I saw was the Osaka invasion. This is four japanese acts that all played in a row. Scotch Egg, Bogulta, Ove Naxx, Maruosa.
Scotch egg makes music on gameboys. It was entertaining as hell. He was a real performer. Jumping up and down and screaming etc. In reality, jumping up and down and being wacky and japanese doesn't really mean the music is any good. And it wasn't.
They were all pretty heavy. Some guitars and drum kits which sounded like thrash metal and some pretty heafty beats with a japanese pop princess singing over the top. They all get and A for entertainment but a C for the actual music, maybe even a D seeing as I can't even be bothered dividing them up into their individual groups.
After that was Dub Step Maestro Distance. I really rate this guy and have his cd anyway. He is a great dj. Its the first time I have really been caught up in dubstep and had a good bop. I'm not a massive fan of the dubstep sound really so thats an achievement. He really played an amazing set. Started off with groovier more laid back dubstep, but by the end it was dark as all hell....and heavy. REALLY heavy. Also a fantastic dj. Lots of nice little tricks, not just the usual crossfade at the end of a track with a 2 bar beat mix like most other dub step djs I have seen.
After that was Dubfire. Stadium minimal right? Boring as fuck. Started off like he was gonna play some interesting stuff then just dropped into and what sounded like an endless, really boring, not quite minimal but driving exhibition of crapness-ness. He also had visuals that had pictures of himself in them, in which he kinda looks like he is roaring like a tiger with his hands in claw shapes. Roar. What a total fuckhead.
So I went to check out Autechre. I dunno if its just me or have these guys been taking a long a slippery reverse slide into boring over the past four or five years. Anyway. I got bored. It wasn't interesting at all. Just sounded like a variation on the breakcore crap I had been hearing everywhere else. I used to really like these guys. They seem to be the electronic act that all people that are into rock champion. See pitchforks glowing reviews if you don't believe me. These guys could take a crap and your average alternative-post-glitch-noise-alt-count-rock fan will say its the best electronic thing ever. They just don't know what they are talking about is what it comes down to, and are basically taking a piss on people that actually know what they are talking about by pretending they do. Get fucked.
I went to check out James holden then. Also rubbish. Basically played bad slowed down trance, which I could have heard at the trance tent. His mixing was rubbish too, just to rub salt in the wound.
Next up. Jeff Mills. Now I have seen him a few times over here....and have been pretty disappointed. Not this time.
I don't think I have ever. And I say ever seen such a dazzling display of technical skill, but also mixed with real flow and groove. It wasn't just banging it out, look what I can do. It was amazing. It made hanging around the hippies seem worth it. He played in the same tent as sims, and it kinda seemed like he thought, well so you can do that right, but I can do this....
It was pretty fast....not as slamming hard as Sims though. Lots of nice pianos and strings in the first half. Three decks the whole time. Scratching, spin backs, fade down to ambient tracks (one old pete namlook one even) then thru the bells, a good life edit I had never heard before, then foot down towards the end. The end was stunning. He had to walk centre stage and take a bow. He was on fire. He restored my faith in him. The other times I have seen him it has just been a relentless onslaught. Technically great but boring as buggery. This time there were all sorts of tricks I had never seen him to before....but more importantly was, it had real flow. You could sit and listen to it at home and it would be good. I wish I could. He kicked arse
After that I left the festival.
Too many smelly fucking hippies and glow sticks and everything I hate about rave culture and the uk.
I really wish I could just find a dark basement with no lights, a large sound system and someone like Redshape playing for a night. Then I could cleanse this hippie crap out of my system. I feel like maybe I still smell of them.
Friday, 4 July 2008
Direction is the key.
I am apparently a 'people person', or so people tell me....as I guess they kind of would being that they are telling me I'm the type of person a person can talk to. I accept this I think. I accept this because I have a lot of friends, or at least did until recently, when a life changing situation of gigantic proportions made most of them hate me....or at least dislike me a lot. I may go into this at a later date, or not because, to be honest I doubt anyones even vaguely interested and to be doubly honest I'll most probably lose interest in this.
Anyway this lofty gift that has been placed upon me from the gods of being a 'people person' has afforded me the luxury of realizing recently that most people are cunts.
They seem to fall under one of the following categories.
The person who goes through life, in a seemingly harmless way. They stay out of other peoples way mostly and generally just live their lives. They meet someone, stay with them, eventually reach there mid twenties, panic and get married. They don't really strive for anything, but hey, no gain, no pain . I don't really have that much of a problem with these people. If they talk about things behind peoples backs, its generally only to each other and their opinions are so lifeless, boring and crap anyway, who really gives a shit what they are saying. I do however think these people are cunts in other ways. These are the type of people who say things like U2 is the best band in the world, and I fucking hate U2. Take any mediocre , mainstream band/pop singer and these fuckers listen to it. Green day is punk to them. Crazy Frog is Techno.
They all love Banksy. They all think 'Pans Labyrinth' is the height of intelligent cinema. Usually the girls would watch the 'Sex and the city' movie or 'Dirty Dancing' and the guys would watch 'National Treasure' or some other pile of shit with wire work and cg enhanced camera moves.
They have all read at least 3 Dan Brown books. They don't know it, but they want to be told what to read/view/look at.
For some reason as well, nearly every guy in this group wears oakly sunglasses from the mid nineties. Those wrap around ones with the mirrored lenses.
Next is the more broad person. These people consider themselves 'cool'. They haven't really got taste of their own, but act like they have. The music they listen to and movies they like is just a few years conglomeration of other peoples taste that they have hung around with in the past. They tend to think these people they hung around with are cool, so they take the things they say and make them there own. Usually the people who have all this apparent interesting taste , are just more well practiced at stealing others ideas. At the heart of this idea stealing mass of bullshit, is a person who steals their ideas out of 'underground' design, art, music and film magazines/free publications. You have to be a bit edgy to be into these because it means you go to shoreditch which is the burning heart of society for a whole army of people who consider themselves the living ideal of art/music/movies/whatever the fuck they are into. I'll cover these people later.
Anyway this group of people here are generally the ones that actually end up making all the more successful creative forays into life. Sure a whole lot of them end up making toilet paper commercials filled with dogs, but they also end up kind of making it by having their creativity seen by more people than anyone else. I can kind of see why as well. Any creative product, be it music, art, tv, film is basically the artist searching for approval from people. Otherwise why show any of this shit to anyone? This group of people have built up all of what they think is cool from what actually kind of ends up being a life long focus group. Of course people are gonna like the shit they spew out. The people they are showing probably gave them the idea. These people serve the needs of the group above nicely. Probably not a good idea to tell them that though as they think they are way smarter and or cooler.
The next group is the 'artist'. You know how models appear vacuous? Try taking a look at these people. They seem like they aren't really, because at first glance they look like they have lots of interesting ideas because they have so much stoke piled information about art/music/books/films in there heads. They try really hard to be cool and different, but act like they aren't trying to do that at all. I seem to find with these people that some part of their emotional make up is missing. Its like they have had to rid themselves of some of their emotional response to other people to make room in their head for the latest four experimental rock band cover artist names and the like. Artists/directors/musicians become like ammunition for their brain so they can spray anyone that will listen with bullets of finger on the pulse-ness-ness. These are the people that tend to hang around shoreditch/hackney where ever is deemed cool next. They are all in bands/or djs/or directors. None of them have made it. They hate people from the above group because they have and if they had the chance to do what they were doing it of course would be better. They usually write blogs as well, or at least have a heavily up-kept myspace page, telling the world what they are up to. This gives them the chance to show off how witty and or smart they are. It also affords them a stage to put up photos or videos of gigs they have played at, or movies they have made, or drawings they have done.
I think this makes me a straddler of the bottom group and the middle group. As it turns out I don't like myself very much at the moment. I'm a cunt.
I also lost interest in this before I even finished my first post.
Anyway this lofty gift that has been placed upon me from the gods of being a 'people person' has afforded me the luxury of realizing recently that most people are cunts.
They seem to fall under one of the following categories.
The person who goes through life, in a seemingly harmless way. They stay out of other peoples way mostly and generally just live their lives. They meet someone, stay with them, eventually reach there mid twenties, panic and get married. They don't really strive for anything, but hey, no gain, no pain . I don't really have that much of a problem with these people. If they talk about things behind peoples backs, its generally only to each other and their opinions are so lifeless, boring and crap anyway, who really gives a shit what they are saying. I do however think these people are cunts in other ways. These are the type of people who say things like U2 is the best band in the world, and I fucking hate U2. Take any mediocre , mainstream band/pop singer and these fuckers listen to it. Green day is punk to them. Crazy Frog is Techno.
They all love Banksy. They all think 'Pans Labyrinth' is the height of intelligent cinema. Usually the girls would watch the 'Sex and the city' movie or 'Dirty Dancing' and the guys would watch 'National Treasure' or some other pile of shit with wire work and cg enhanced camera moves.
They have all read at least 3 Dan Brown books. They don't know it, but they want to be told what to read/view/look at.
For some reason as well, nearly every guy in this group wears oakly sunglasses from the mid nineties. Those wrap around ones with the mirrored lenses.
Next is the more broad person. These people consider themselves 'cool'. They haven't really got taste of their own, but act like they have. The music they listen to and movies they like is just a few years conglomeration of other peoples taste that they have hung around with in the past. They tend to think these people they hung around with are cool, so they take the things they say and make them there own. Usually the people who have all this apparent interesting taste , are just more well practiced at stealing others ideas. At the heart of this idea stealing mass of bullshit, is a person who steals their ideas out of 'underground' design, art, music and film magazines/free publications. You have to be a bit edgy to be into these because it means you go to shoreditch which is the burning heart of society for a whole army of people who consider themselves the living ideal of art/music/movies/whatever the fuck they are into. I'll cover these people later.
Anyway this group of people here are generally the ones that actually end up making all the more successful creative forays into life. Sure a whole lot of them end up making toilet paper commercials filled with dogs, but they also end up kind of making it by having their creativity seen by more people than anyone else. I can kind of see why as well. Any creative product, be it music, art, tv, film is basically the artist searching for approval from people. Otherwise why show any of this shit to anyone? This group of people have built up all of what they think is cool from what actually kind of ends up being a life long focus group. Of course people are gonna like the shit they spew out. The people they are showing probably gave them the idea. These people serve the needs of the group above nicely. Probably not a good idea to tell them that though as they think they are way smarter and or cooler.
The next group is the 'artist'. You know how models appear vacuous? Try taking a look at these people. They seem like they aren't really, because at first glance they look like they have lots of interesting ideas because they have so much stoke piled information about art/music/books/films in there heads. They try really hard to be cool and different, but act like they aren't trying to do that at all. I seem to find with these people that some part of their emotional make up is missing. Its like they have had to rid themselves of some of their emotional response to other people to make room in their head for the latest four experimental rock band cover artist names and the like. Artists/directors/musicians become like ammunition for their brain so they can spray anyone that will listen with bullets of finger on the pulse-ness-ness. These are the people that tend to hang around shoreditch/hackney where ever is deemed cool next. They are all in bands/or djs/or directors. None of them have made it. They hate people from the above group because they have and if they had the chance to do what they were doing it of course would be better. They usually write blogs as well, or at least have a heavily up-kept myspace page, telling the world what they are up to. This gives them the chance to show off how witty and or smart they are. It also affords them a stage to put up photos or videos of gigs they have played at, or movies they have made, or drawings they have done.
I think this makes me a straddler of the bottom group and the middle group. As it turns out I don't like myself very much at the moment. I'm a cunt.
I also lost interest in this before I even finished my first post.
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