Low Power Consumption

New mix up from Myself and Vincent Duff

2012-01-18T11:15:00.000-08:00

We have been doing a bit of Dj'ing together of late so we thought we may continue it.

Recorded live in our kitchen whilst drinking Gin & Tonics and entertaining friends!

http://soundcloud.com/flatmates/flatmates-kitchen-party-01

Knuckle

2011-09-14T10:53:00.000-07:00

So I watched this documentary on the weekend called 'Knuckle'
I am not entirely sure why the fuck I bothered even watching it to the end.
It follows a bunch of Irish travellers who punch the shit out of each others faces over the course of 12 years. I can't believe the guy who made it could even be bothered trailing the idiots for that long. Every now and again, he puts some emotional music over the top to try and get us to feel for these thick-as-pigshit wastes of oxygen. Or perhaps to take stock of the human condition or some such.
The story basically is, that 12 years ago something horrific happened which caused 2 traveller families to have a rift between them making them stage high stake, bare knuckle boxing matches for years to come. Each family will choose a champion and then make a completely idiotic video of their champion, yelling, cajoling and challenging someone from the opposing family to a fight. Usually there is money involved. These fights solve nothing even though these complete fucktards believe they will somehow and the family feuds continue on for years afterwards anyway. Sometimes the feuds get worse because of them.
The only hook in the whole stupid, idiot hole of a film was finding out the reason the two families had been feuding so long in the first place.
As it turns out its a remarkably shit reason.....although I don't know what the fuck I was expecting by this point. Turns out, one family member had died when a member from each family had had a fight. So lets get this clear. Instead of thinking rationally and stopping fighting, they organise more regular and dangerous fights. Then pontificate about how at least their families feud for a good reason, better reasons than some wars according to one of the toothless, drool holes one of the idiots has on what is left of his face.
(He may be right.....but still)
These people seriously need to stop marrying their sisters. The collective intelligence of every single person in the documentary, plus all the kids they will ever have, plus all of their kids, and all of their kids etc, etc, etc, etc would be about equal to the massive amount of fecal matter that was blocking the right hand side cubical in the top floor toilets at work the other day.
I couldn't quite help feeling like we would be better off without these people on the planet.
Unless you to are a fucking idiot I would avoid this film like eyeball herpes.
Remarkably, it got reviewed quite well. Which just makes me think my earlier statements about film critics are all true. Cunts. They say its a 'Remarkable insight to a secretive world'
People are pretty secretive about going for a shit too, but I don't want to watch that either.

Herzog would have made a great doco about this.*

*thanks James

Youtube Playlist of Stuff

2011-09-14T03:17:00.000-07:00

I have been adding music to a youtube playlist for a few days now. It is ever growing so if you like it check back in every now and again. None of it is techno. Its not that sort of playlist. But there is no order. Its more just a reflection of my moods on any given day.
Enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTN3AU-aeGk&feature=BFa&list=PLE306CCD4BEA3C956&lf=BFp

The Film Terminator.........

2011-09-02T07:57:00.000-07:00

Has this bar in it called "Tech-noir"
I watched it the other night for the first time in a couple of years. It seems finally that the fashion in Tech-noir no longer looks old. I swear to god it looks like they shot that scene by going to London Fields on a hot day, grabbed a whole bunch of hipsters and then went to Dalston Superstore with a camera. Minus fixed wheel bikes of course.
Too funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJjYkAs1ZFQ&feature=related

Blowing up peoples faces.

2011-09-01T07:34:00.000-07:00

I am working on a movie at the moment. I probably shouldn't say what I guess, but it has been made before......in a very shit way.
Anyway, the director has decided that it should be mega-fucking-violent. Like Robocop violence. Which is cool. I am not against violent movies at all. The problem is, that my job at the moment is consisting of bullet wounds. Predominately, ones that hit in the face. There has to be lots of blood. And realism. As I sat working late last night, three of us got into an argument about exit and entry wounds. I put quite a bit of fine mist spray coming out the front, where the bullet enters. I am not sure this is right, but it looked good.
Anyway, the discussion continued, and we decided to look at reference. Looking at reference of people getting shot in the face is not cool. Its cool if its from movies. But not real footage. Which, thank you JFK footage, is what we ended up doing. Back, and to the left.
Anyway. I felt slightly sick when I got home late from work last night, and realized I have been using someones murder as reference for a shit action film.
So if you're out there John John. Sorry about that bud. Shot looks wicked though. The film shot, not the one in your face.

An Old Avatar Post I Never put up.

2011-08-29T11:57:00.000-07:00

I saw Avatar for starts. I hated it. Just kidding. The reason I say it though is it seems like a popular thing to say these days.
For starters, by no means do I think its a great movie in the normal sense of the word. I mean, as a far as Sci Fi goes District 9 was a far superior film. Moon even better again.
And I basically have had a hatred for James Cameron that borders on weird ever since he dropped that shit-pile of a film Titanic on us, so I really wasn't expecting too much from Avatar.
And they are very similar stories if you imagine Leonardo DiCapro to be a wheel chair ridden marine and the rich people to be big blue hot cat people, and Kate Winslet to be the forebidden lover and Billy Zane is that blue hard arse that the main blue chick was supposed to bone for the rest of her life....you see the parallels right? No. Neither. Anyway.
So how could I possibly like it?
Well my main problem with Titanic was the seriousness in which it took itself.
James Cameron constantly banging on about how it was an Historical drama made me feel ill. It was a fucking teenage girls wet dream is what it was. He may as well have just made a movie with My Little Ponies or whatever the fuck girls are into these days, on board the Titanic. It was more like a comedy movie, except not funny.
Anyway. The obvious button pushing that Cameron does serves him better when the subject matter is more fantastic, because well, I find it hard to take a neon, blue person filled world too seriously.
I understand Cameron takes himself very seriously, which is a bit shit, but in terms of something to look at, its a pretty staggering achievement.
I have seen some fx films in my time and worked on a few, and they all usually have some bad shots in. This film doesn't. All I can say is wow. And congrats to the people who worked on it.
So for all my cynicism about it. I enjoyed it. That's not to say it doesn't have problems. It does. But for fuck sake, when the other box office toppers include Transformers 2, you have to take a step back and think, well at least this film is actually kinda good. Transformers 2 had no redeeming aspects. At all.
Things that are annoying about it for me, were a lot of the creature design was a bit pants. I mean come on. Lets give everything six legs and name them roughly the same as the creature the idea was stolen from on earth. What was that six legged Panther thing called. I remember it was something really dumb like Panthero or some shit. And as everyone has said the dialogue is terrible. But to be fair, the dialogue was fucking terrible in Aliens and Terminator.
The marines doing pull ups in Aliens scene for instance.
Anything Hicks or Hudson say. The "You're Terminated" line from Terminator.
One thing that I liked which everyone else hated was the simplistic characters.
I liked having a bad guy that was just so obviously bad. It just makes things easier. Plus I sort of agree that the film needed broad brush strokes because, well there was so much other shit to look at.
Anyway. I switched my brain off, and I liked it. It didn't really hold up to a second viewing very well I have to say though. But hardly anything ever does for me these days.
A film I could have watched straight away again was Fantastic Mr Fox. That kicked arse.

Jesse fucking Lewis Evans.

2010-11-16T07:43:00.000-08:00

Jesse is a top man and a good friend. But no matter how highly I already thought of him, I think better of him now. Me and Jesse both met in our infancy in the visual effects world. And what what can I say. I like the little guy. He is awesome.
Anyway he was working at Weta in NZ, but has since decided that he wants to spread his wings in The Big Apple.
Deciding that he couldn't leave Weta and Wellington without a bang, (and probably cause he wants attention so he can show off to the ladies) he made this video to send to the employees at Weta on his last day.
Enjoy. I sure as hell did.

The best thing I have ever heard.

2010-10-11T11:14:00.000-07:00

No shit. Its like a musical map of my childhood. I love it.

http://soundcloud.com/maddecent/blood-bros-first-blood

World famous in the arse end of nz.

2010-05-21T09:03:00.001-07:00

http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/entertainment/southern-arts/3722004/Kiwis-hoping-for-Bafta-win

Zippo throwing.

2010-05-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

I was sick like a month ago and spent the day watching trashy action films. You know the kind. Rambo, Delta Force 1 and 2 and Out for Justice.
It seems to me, if you're either a good guy or a bad guy, when you go to the shop to buy a zippo lighter you must buy them by the case load.
Because man was there a lot of throwing zippos in fuel to cause explosions. Probably like 7 in those movies alone. What weirds me out though is that no one smokes in any of these movies so why the fuck are they all carting around like a hundred zippos each. At least John Mclean smoked in Die Hard. He does a fuckload of zippo throwing.

Erasing David

2010-05-10T03:26:00.000-07:00

So I was interested in seeing this documentary. The trailer looks good right. Well this is the biggest shit pile of a film I have seen. For starters the guy is a total pussy. He spends 1 night by himself in the wilderness and begins crying into the camera about how lonely he is, so then he goes and checks into a hotel. He is basically the biggest whinging fuckwit ever. His experiment is ridiculous. He seems to deliberately leave clues for his team of crack private investigators to find. The whole thing feels staged, and I can't help but think if you're gonna stage something you should add some gunfights or boobs or something to make it even vaguely interesting. He also decides to do this experiment whilst his wife is seven months pregnant which seems like a bit of a douche thing to do. And he gets caught on day 14 whilst attending a doctors appointment with his wife that they had booked before the documentary was filmed. Way to go David. Your nearly un-trackable.
I mean if his idea of smoke and mirrors to make himself disappear from society is to go to his dads house, then a hotel, then go home to an appointment with his wife, he obviously hasn't watched too many spy thrillers.
Some of the stuff he found out about what information various companies have on you was interesting, but that made up about 2 mins of the film. Also the soundtrack was by Michael Nyman, who is fucking awesome. The rest of it was watching this big blubbering douche cry into the camera. The funniest thing as well, is he is constantly going on about keeping a low profile and acting like he is sneaking around train stations etc, but he is walking around with a camera on a rig attached to the side of him or a person blatantly sticking a camera in his face. He seems to think that the audiences suspension of disbelief will set in at some point and make us forget the camera is there.
The crack squad of PIs was funny too. They just looked through his rubbish and at his facebook really. They hardly used any super secret government sources of information to catch him. They didn't fucking need too. I mean he seriously would have had more luck if he had just stayed at home in bed with his head under the covers. They never would have found him.
What scared me the most about this film wasn't government keeping information on us, but whether or not the male population of earth had all become super soft girly boys. I mean, this guy surely couldn't have survived if he was in a war? What would his father think? I know my dad would kick my ass if he caught me crying like a little baby girl and being scared of noises in the dark. Maybe I will make a documentary about how males are becoming soft due to being spoon fed Sex and the City and told we have to be more in touch with out feelings. I mean seriously, David needs to cut down on the cupcakes and get himself a steak or something. I am not usually this pro manliness, but this guy honestly gave me an allergic reaction or something. I mean as I was watching it I could feel extra chest hair growing. Men should be like this.

This guy is killing 2 lions at once. He would stab government surveillance. Right in the nuts.

Bear in Heaven at the Lexington.

2010-04-21T05:49:00.000-07:00

So last night I went to this gig at the Lexington in Islington. If you haven't been to the Lexington and you live in London I highly recommend it. As it's kinda rests on the periphery of the centre of London it's in a nice quiet-ish area which is nice and it also has a mad selection of American beers and whiskeys which are fun to try. Its over two levels, a more standard pub downstairs and the area for gigs upstairs.
Anyway there were three acts on, Chad Valley, Visions of Trees and Bear in Heaven.
Chad Valley is a single dude standing on the stage who who sounds exactly like Panda Bear when he sings. Which, I guess could be a compliment but it felt like I was just listening to Animal collective. The same intense use of noise and strange key changes in his voice and all. It was just a little too close to the bone really, and I felt uncomfortable listening to it because I didn't feel like it added anything to the Animal Collective style of sound (Lyndall called this guy the Animal Un-collective) and it just seemed like the guy didn't have anything new or vaguely interesting to add. Still he is obviously talented so maybe he'll find his own voice one day.
Next up was Visions of Trees. I have to say the first time Lyndall sent me one of their tracks my immediate thought was, this is indie Enya.
Now I have seen them I feel more like summing them up with a question.
What happens when three cars all smash into each other, one car containing Girls Aloud, one containing Enya and the other a pretty talented electronic producer/musician. That's right. Visions of Cheryl Cole....I mean trees.
I mean it wasn't that bad I guess. It's just the lead girl was so damn grating. She gyrated and did all the kind of terrible bullshit on stage moves you would expect of a bad girl band. Also her voice isn't really anything special. I mean it's a voice, like anyone else on Britians got talent has a voice. That stock standard I can sing voice. You know. The one you don't give a shit about.
Luckily they kind of pulled it back with their last track "Sometimes it Kills" which was the first one Lyndall sent me (Indie Enya) and goes to show I either have shit taste and and can't make my mind up about stuff or the band had just suitably lowered my expectations of music. No I take it back. That track is good............. I think.

So on came Bear in Heaven. And I have to tell you, if you like droney, minimalist, psychedelic, pop with massively catchy hooks, then you'll like this.
The poor bastards were pretty tired because of the volcano cloud of death and having to drive everywhere instead of catch planes around Europe, but they put on a hell of a show. The music is so perfect for listening to at higher volumes as it seems perfectly constructed to fill every single inch of space in a venue. You know what I mean? Like certain music feels like a blanket of sound wrapping itself around every inch of your body? So you almost feel like you're drowning in it. Well this did that. Something about the strange key changes in the droning basslines and the way they beautifully offset that with a drummer that was playing high hats and snare patterns which were really complex in a way you usually associate with overtly busy drum patterns from programmed electronic music. He was seriously good.
Factor in on top of that a lead singer with a comforting voice to guide the way through the mist of sound and you have a great band.
Seriously guys to look out for.

New Mix

2010-04-16T17:09:00.000-07:00

http://soundcloud.com/gregatronix/

This one is partially inspired from the Michael Mayer evening a month ago, and also just cause I was bored. Not particularly well mixed as it was more just for me to put these tracks which I have been listening to lately into a single for mix for my own pleasure. Hope you like it.

A Night with Matt John

2010-04-12T08:01:00.000-07:00

Well to say I was looking forward to this after the last party may have been a bit of an understatement. I say "was" looking forward to, because after a particularly techno heavy 4 days in Berlin last week I was feeling somewhat jaded all this week and more like sitting at home on the couch watching whatever shit was on TV, feeling sorry for myself, stuffing my face with food and drinking a year old bottle of red wine mainly used for cooking because I can't be fucked dragging myself to the shop.........Which is about a one minute walk from my house.
As it turned out though, London turned on some nice sun rays during the day and after throwing a frisbee around in a park for 3 hours and gorging myself on BBQ food I felt surprisingly up for it. I was also going to a friends birthday which was right around the corner so it felt kind of like fate that I should go.
Who am I kidding? After the last one and being told by people that Matt John plays a wicked long set, I was always going.
The venue this time, although still not in the place they originally stated all the parties were going to be in, was in Hoxton. I don't really know what happened this time because the promoters stayed pretty quiet leading up to this event, but be it a licensing issue or whatever it didn't really matter. There is something cool about skipping around venues and I have to say that I liked this one a lot more than the last one. Something about having proper toilets instead of port-a-loos. Though that was somewhat ruined by the massive shit some guy had taken upstairs which had attached itself to the side of the bowl, stank, and no matter how much you tried to piss it away down the bowl, just wouldn't budge. Fuck knows what that guy had been eating, but whatever it was, it was stupidly adhesive.
Anyway less about shit and more about the party, which wasn't. Shit I mean.
Yes, yet again it was very good. The venue was one of those abandoned office space type affairs which are awesome to walk around because there are lots of hallways to wander around and dark little areas you have to search through which is vaguely disorientating and adds to the experience of being transported to some strange techno world where all that matters is music and dancing.
The equation for a good party is so simple it seems criminal that hardly anyone else in London is working it out. A room, plus a good sound system, plus a wicked DJ equals fun.
There was a smoke machine at this one as I am sure there was at the last, but it had much more of a workout this time which equated to some fucking cool fogged out madness where time and space seem to stop and you're not really sure where you are, which direction you're facing, who you're standing next to and where bass drops sound like an apocalypse. Cool. People should go crazy with fog monsters more.

They had the now familiar "This must be the place" red neon sign up on the wall, and the really cool granny standing lamp as a DJ light again which added a feeling of continuity carried over from the first party.
Overall the impression is of a really well organized house party.
Again the funktion one was in attendance. This time there was a little bit of a flat spot in the sound towards the front where the DJ was, but that is being excessively picky. Generally it was a great sounding system, and when you consider they have changed venues twice now and how hard it is to tailor sound for specific places it's incredible how good it sounded. As long as you stayed towards the middle or the back it was perfect. Also maybe my ears are being overtly picky after spending a good stab of time at Watergate last week.
The music was an entirely different kettle of fish to last time which was to be expected, with Mr John playing music exactly like the aforementioned weekend in Berlin provided.
You know it, much more stripped back, with that straight beat and plenty of percussive elements.
It had less obvious flow than the month before, which is no bad thing, although he did build it really nicely to a massive centre section where beats would drop out in a haze of sharp percussion and noise and slam back with a huge amount of force. This generated genuine hands in the air moments with plenty of crowd appreciation in return. The dropout mix to a Doors sample of Break on Through to the Other Side if I remember correctly, got lapped up by the crowd and got plently of cheers.
There were a couple of super tight loopy tracks that he used as great builders right before the more slamming middle section. I think I enjoyed those moments most. Where your brain almost makes up a melody for you and you could look around and see people getting lulled into a false sense of security before the onslaught was about to happen. Fun, fun.
I think one of the best things to say about Matt John is his ability to connect with a crowd. He looks genuinely happy to be there and this rubs off on the audience. Its hard to be cynical about someone when they look like they are having so much fun.
His technical skill as a DJ is pretty staggering as well. The music more or less passed me by in a blur because watching him work two turntables, plus Traktor scratch pro and whatever midi controller he was using was so impressive. It was the jumping between Traktor playing tracks internally and then mixing standard vinyl over the top and then back into Traktor I found so impressive, whilst covering 3 channels at once sometimes. I also appreciated watching his skill as a beat matcher. I know, I know, anyone can learn it, but having been DJ'ing for over 15 years I know I don't generally slap a track in without listening to it and pretty much work the pitch over the club PA to get it in time. Its nice to see someone still giving standard DJ'ing a good nudge as well in this internally beat matched world we live in these days. I think no matter what anyone says, playing when the need to mix is taken out of the equation changes the way DJs choose music to play and therefore ends up changing the way they play. I think mostly to the detriment of a decent flow. Less thought about how they are going to get somewhere in a set and how to bridge the gaps to get there as you don't need to think about it as much anymore.
This is of course, just my opinion. But I do own Traktor and have pretty much stayed away from the internal mode since working out it completely changed the way I play.
Whatever. I was just happy to see he still had standard beat matching skills mashed in with his internal beat matching set up. Call me old fashioned.
Anyway, Matt managed to avoid any issues with flow and provided a damn solid nights entertainment. So thumbs up there. I think it was the perfect follow up DJ to Mayer's night of Cologne style fun. (which for me still shades Matt's set, but that's not an insult as Mayer was totally on and totally wicked the month before) And it is so nice that the promoters aren't totally raping just one sound for this series of parties.
As with the last time, the door staff, bouncers and bar staff were exceedingly polite, helpful and even smiled. Again, so rare for a night out in London, and a very important part of what makes these nights great.
And again. A total lack of cunts. So a good crowd then. People that looked like they were there for the music.
So. A solid thumbs up from me. As a party it totally stood up to anything I have experienced in the world, and it gets a tip of the hat from me.
That's two for two. See you at the next one.

Berlin love.

2010-04-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

So it was my birthday last weekend, which happily fell on Easter.
Anywho, I decided that I would go to Berlin as one of my best mates, Simon Beeston-a-ding-a-ling-a-ding-dong was playing at Watergate. Which is a seriously cool club.
I was thinking it would be cool if I got some of my friends from London to come over too, as most of them hadn't been to Berlin and thought maybe they would like to see what the fuss was about.
I wasn't expecting anyone to come really, but I started a facebook group inviting a bunch of peeps.
Now either A: I am way more popular than I thought I was or B: People just wanted to go to Berlin, but heaps of people came. Which was wicked. And made me feel loved beyond belief so that was pretty sweet.
Anyway. I can only describe the weekend as damaging and a hell of a lot of fun.
Watergate was heaps of fun and Simon knocked out a cracker set. Way harder than I expected him to play, which was a nice surprise.
I drunk heaps, ate a lot of sausage, managed to even get a private walking tour from two of the best tour guides out (hats of Simon and Teresa) and danced my arse off.
All in all it was a fucking rad time.
I just wanted to say a big thanks a give a massive hug to all involved.
You know who you are.
Cheers guys!

A Night with Michael Mayer.

2010-03-11T09:00:00.000-08:00

Lets get this out of the way first. This was an awesome party.
The idea behind the party (or parties, as there is going to be ten of them this year) is to have one dj play 8 hours. In a warehouse. With an amazing sound system..........This sounds good.
Still, I was slightly skeptical about the sound system because in my experience with London warehouse parties, they usually suck. I was also skeptical about Mayer a little bit. Don't get me wrong. I used to be a massive fan. He came out to New Zealand and Dj'd there in 2004 I think it was, and I was totally gutted I had to go to a wedding that weekend. I did briefly meet him in Auckland on the Friday but didn't see him play a single record. Gutted. By all accounts though, that party was one of the best Auckland had ever seen. Unfortunately this didn't hold up when Superpitcher came out 2 years later and played to virtually no one because of Aucklands dying techno scene.
Anyway, I was following him pretty heavily after that and went to a few of his parties over here and in Spain and at C/O pop.
He blew me away the first couple of times, but lately when I have seen him I have been a little bit disappointed. Now I think about it though, its always the short sets where this happens because when I saw him play in a junkyard in Cologne after the Kompakt party at C/o pop 2 years ago he killed it. I guess he just needs time......and he had time here. I'll get back to that though.
The other reason I had low expectations was that I guess the general feeling around the place is that Kompakt has dropped off the boil in the later 2000s. Something I sort of agree with. On the other hand, it just seems to me that in a scene based on ever changing trends Kompakt has stayed a bit more static of late than most of the other labels. But not really in a bad way. I think (this is talking about the 4/4 stuff or course) that when you hear a Kompakt record, you can tell its a Kompakt record. And this is important. So many labels have been losing their identity at the moment by covering their bases and releasing records that are hip and now. The problem being, by the time the record comes out it's neither of those things. Anywho. The party.
The venue itself, was not the one it was supposed to be in (licensing issues made sure of that....and being that I like a drink I am glad they moved it), but it was really good none the less. It was a standard London railway arch type of warehouse and it was a perfect size for the 350 people that were allowed to go. Oh yeah did I mention that? They limited it to 350 people. And 350 fucking great people to be clubbing(warehousing?) with by the looks of it as well, because the crowd was great. It was like they had a no cunts allowed sign up outside. Amazing for London. So people good. Check.
The next thing that hit me was the sound. It was great. Perfect even. That kind of loud that hits you in the guts, yet you can talk over at a pretty normal volume, then you get home and your ears are not ringing at all. So sound. Check.
Service for the bouncers and bar staff. Also very good. Not something that people usually write about but it does help a lot.
So the music. Well. It was kind of like seeing Mayer in 2005. Which I enjoyed. He started a bit slower and ended up pushing it relentlessly into the Speicher-ish territory as the night went on. You know the sound. Brilliant for a warehouse. (correct me if I am wrong but doesn't Speicher mean warehouse or storehouse in german?)
He went through a few hits too. Most memorable for me was the remix of Baxendales - We Built this City. I used to thrash this at my radio show so of course I jumped up and down like a little school kid when it came on.
But the overwhelming feeling wasn't so much for the tracks themselves but more for his ability to play for 8 hours and seem to have a plan of the way the arc of the night is going to go. The way he wound it up, then wobbled around in the middle and slowly wound us all down from about 4.30 so we could go home and sleep. I thought it was brilliant. Sure I didn't find the music as cutting edge as I have found other gigs. But you know what? I didn't give a flying fuck because I had one of the best nights dancing I have had in years. I danced all the way to the end in fact. Something I was beginning to think my 31 year old body just didn't want to do anymore.
And you know what else. He did it on 2 turntables. Not on 4 turntables on a laptop that is making you a coffee and placing 20,000 fx over the top of all of it at the same time. I think this helped with the arc thing. More concentration on the tracks and what they are doing and how they will shape the night and less snap, crackle and pop over the top.
Anyway. As I said. brilliant night. Congrates to the promoter for giving me faith in London clubbing again. And I will be at the next one with bells on for sure. Bells the size of houses. Roll on Matt John.

Double J and Once the O takes nice pictures

2010-03-05T04:47:00.000-08:00

......that's Jeremy James O'sullivan to you. These are just a few from a goldmine of favorites.

Carl Craig, Francesco Tristano & Moritz von Oswald @ the southbank centre.

2010-02-16T07:46:00.000-08:00

First up, let me get it straight out the way, that going to what is basically a techno gig and sitting in seats and listening seemed like a weird idea to me. But I was willing to have a go.
The whole idea was about having techno artists perform live accompanied people playing other instruments and try and have this free form jam kind of thing.
Fortunately, there were warm up acts for the above three, who had more planned out sets. I will get to why it was fortunate shortly.
Ok so first up was Henrik Schwarz and his buddy on a piano, inventively called the Henrik Schwarz duo. This was wicked. Easily the highlight of the night for me. Basically really melodic and beautiful tracks, where the piano didn't over crowd the laptop twiddling or vice versa. Think Eric Satie with a beat and weird and beautiful electronic noises in the background and you wouldn't be too far off. They managed to have an interesting concept, but it wasn't just concept music if you know what I mean. It had the ups and downs of emotion that music should have, and managed in parts to be genuinely beautiful. The second to last track may have even made my eyes wet a little. Wow, I thought. This sitting and listening to Techno is rad.
Next up was Matmos. They began and for the first fifteen minutes I was waiting for a dwarf in a red suit to walk on stage backwards and say "Garmonbozia".
Disturbing visuals with disturbing noise to boot was the name of the game, until it became a pretty standard beaty affair in the middle and then returned to weirdness. I enjoyed them on reflection....at the time my brain hurt a little though.
Next up was the three we had come to see. The good things. Moritz Von Oswald certainly looks cool. So much no moving charisma. He took minimal to the extreme. I think I saw him move once. He also stayed on stage behind his laptop after everyone else had finished making us wonder whether or not he thought he was still going and had a whole bunch of silent loops still playing or sub bass so deep only animals could hear it. Funny.
Apart from that though it was a bit of a mess. Sometimes I think techno artists are so caught up in their "we are actual musician" hurricanes of self doubt that they feel they have to over compensate by trying shit like this. Bands with real instruments don't generally go and play a gig without practicing some songs first, and if they did it would sound like a me and my friends in the late 90s early 2000s, drunk and fucking around with noise and instruments we bought from the 2 dollar shop. Example here.....yes we recorded it.
The thing is, our stuff is supposed to be formless, because, well, we are shit basically. But that adds a dimension of fun to it. You can feel the fun leaking out the headphones can't you?
But if you try and make a jam session have form, and also be pretentious about it, and on top of that have the levels all fucked up whilst looking for this form, so like an interesting melody will start coming from Craig, and he seems to be looking around going come on guys follow my lead, but Sax man goes, Nah I am gonna play something different and louder than you, and then piano man does the same, and then Moritz goes, my bass is lower and ignores everyone....take a breath Greg. Well anyway it was a fucking mess. Like a pre-school concert you got dragged to or something.
There were moments where I thought it would come together and that just made it more frustrating.
You wanna know what weird is though?
This is weird!

The endless loop

2010-02-10T10:12:00.000-08:00

So last night after upgrading one of my laptops to windows 7 (I'm a PC and a Mac, and have 2 laptops.....how much of a wanker does that make me?) I decided that I should try and hit the music production again. Having never really finished anything up to a decent standard, and never really felt the need to make anyone elses ears bleed with my musical meanderings, mainly because they are so diabolically shit or weird, or weird and shit, I felt it was about time I tried to finish something.
I sat down with Ableton, and cracked open an old file, lovingly called, Greg_Edit_Fucked_v020. Thats right version 20.
I was amazed, that when I opened it, I actually liked it.
Hit the fast forward button to hours in the future, and I am left holding my hands in my head. (I meant holding my head in my hands but I am gonna leave that mistake in because I like the visual imagery it brings....plus my head is massive so its perfectly feasible)
I hate that creativity involves computers so much these days.....or at least that mine does.
I spend so much fucking time looking at fucking computers and trying to solve problems during the day/night, that as soon as I get posed with a problem that is computer based on the outside world, I flip several hundred shits all over the place and then go watch some pile of shit on TV whilst necking spiced V8 juice and taking intermittent smoke breaks, where I wander round outside in the cold giving myself shit for being such a failure.
Anyway. One day I will finish something.
Here's a mix I made.
http://soundcloud.com/gregatronix/greg-dec-09

Dusty Back Room.

2009-11-30T07:45:00.000-08:00

Well here is a copy of the music video I made for my friend Simon Beeston. I would like to say its completely finished, but I basically ran out of time.
There are supposed to be six more plane shots, which in turn would have padded out the end more, and the stop frame footage of the girl in the room was supposed to be shorter and take up less time. It was just unfortunate timing that right in the middle of shooting and beginning post on it, I became one of the lead compers on a massively under quoted tv job, which took 2 months out of video making time, and my spare time......which was when I had to make the video anyway as its a freebie. That left me with little under 3 weeks to do it all, and seeing as I don't produce my time very well, I ended up spending too much time on some shots, not enough on others and none on the said six, which really would have helped the edit, because as it was I had barely enough footage to cover everything. Anyway.
I still kind of like it, but would have loved to have had another 2 months on it. But, I suppose, what are ya gonna do?
Anyway, the track is called 'Dusty Back Room' and my idea for it was based around my trips back to NZ. Everytime I go back (which now can be over a year between trips) I look thru all the things packed up into boxes and usually covered in dust. On one of these trips I found a viewmaster. I love those things. This was a few years ago now, but I had been toying with the idea of doing an animation based around the flick when you pull the lever for a while.
Simon and I also share a common love of planes (and Top Gun, haha) so I figured with the orchestral sounding track and the idea of finding things in a room, some sweet looking ww2 fighters would be a go to place as images in the viewmaster.
Being in visual fx, I mostly get to work with Cgi, and never models, so I decided to do a shoot with 1.72 model planes. I choose so small because they were easier to move the camera around, and I had to set up a blue screen studio in my spare room and that couldn't have been too big. I tracked all the planes backgrounds and the planes themselves in PF track, painted up some propellers, made a big sky texture, got some 2d cloud elements and threw them all into a 3d scene in nuke.
I never wanted the planes to look photo realistic, I always had an idea that they would look like a 1950s Godzilla movie model, or at least a bit bung but stylized.
The stop frame animation for all the stuff with the girl (the lovely Lyndall) came from the fact that I thought seeing as she was seeing moving images in a still image based toy, it might be nice to swap it around so the live action was made up of stills. I also wanted the whole thing to look a bit jumpy and not too polished. Kind of like Fantastic Mr Foxes quirky stop motion.
Anyway, I am not sure how well it worked, mainly because I have not had any distance form it yet, and I am a little sad I never got to complete it properly!

This is the most realistic video I have ever seen...

2009-08-29T03:44:00.000-07:00

about working in commercials.

Thanks to Mr Flower for this one!

Animal Collective @ Brixton academy

2009-08-21T04:21:00.000-07:00

The guys were still good. They played a lot of older stuff this time, which was enjoyable. Their stage show has got more lights and trippy stuff going on now too. However, the sound at Brixton academy is so shit. It was frustrating to the max. A song would come on and you'd get all super pumped and then all you can hear is the bass and the tops. No midrange. Anyway, they still ruled, was just a little sad about the sound.
Fuck Brixton Academy. Fuck it right in the eye with some garden shears.

I'm getting old.

2009-08-21T03:52:00.000-07:00

So I was listening to this review of The Watchmen movie (which I thought was pretty good all things considered actually) and the guy reviewing compared it to those old records you used to get where you'd read along with a cliffs notes version of the movie and the records would play sound effects and dialogue from the films, and you could also read along with the story. He basically said that the Watchmen film was like a read-a-long version of the graphic novel.
Anyway.....whatever.............
I had completely forgotten about those things! So I looked them up and found a few photos of the ones I owned. I found some pictures on an antique toy website. Antique! For fucks sake.
I then tried to turn around and see if James (the fella that sits next to me) had heard of them. He is 25 so I changed it to tapes instead of records because I remember they made those as well and I thought he may be more a cassette kid than an LP kid.
He just looked at me blankly like I was crazy. So did Lyndall when I asked her.
They had no idea what I was on about.
Ugh.
Anyway looking at these pictures brings back all sorts of fun time memories of sitting on the lounge room floor and turning the page when Indie cracked his whip or R2 beeped.
Funny thing is my brain is now putting those memories in a kind of sepia tone grade, with 8mm film dust on them and lots of weave as the film goes through the gate.
Fucking arsehole brain. I bet it thinks its really funny doing that. What a cunt.

Anvil

2009-08-17T03:01:00.000-07:00

So I watched Anvil - The story of Anvil on the weekend. I agree with Mark Keomode. It is an amazing film. I can't believe I hadn't seen it earlier.
It is a documentary about the band Anvil, A heavy metal band who should have been massive and had the respect of many of the biggest metal bands in the world musically, but somehow never made it.
Sacha Gervasi, the director of the film, had been one of their English fans when he was a teenager.
When the band had toured London, he had gone back stage and they asked if he would like to come with them on the rest of the tour. Lips and Rob (the two foundations of the band) took this 15 year old under their wing.
Years later, after Sacha had made it as a Hollywood writer he wondered, what ever happened to Anvil?
So he called, and was amazed to find they were still making music, had released 14 albums, but had had no critical or commercial success. 30 years with no success but they still believed in themselves and the band just as much as the day they formed it when they were 14. They are now 50.
So Sacha decided to make a film about them.
The thing that I found so great about it, is even though we can laugh at some of these aging metal freaks, I feel like it was all done in a loving way. I don't feel it takes the piss out of people for the sake of it which I think would have been an easy path to take. You begin to really care for Lips and Rob, and their families who support them. You are amazed at their commitment and hard work, and in particular, even with crushing set backs, the glimmer of hope that they always hold onto. I couldn't quite believe the way that you can be laughing one minute and in tears the next. And I mean literally in tears. You really, really want these guys to make it. So much so that when things do go right you feel like jumping up on your chair and screaming for them.
Anyway as you can tell I'm pretty fond of this movie. You couldn't have written better characters. What began for me as watching it for a laugh, possibly at Lips and Robs expense ended up with me, really respecting their ideals of friendship, family and hard work.
And I got this from two aging metal heads. Weird.
Anyway. See this movie.

And she broke everyones heart a little....

2009-08-11T03:17:00.000-07:00

So the Lyndallator(ha) and I went to a nice little gig on friday at Cafe Oto to go and see this young American Indian lass called Mariee Sioux.
For starters Cafe Oto is cool.
Its a small place with tables set up where you can get Japanese food, good coffee and booze. (although we had a boozeless gig as we were riding our bikes)
So it began with Alessi's Ark first, although without the Ark part, which I gather is her band and not a boat full of animals, so just Alessi then.
She was great. Really quite quirky, and the songs were all very short and very pretty. Quick fire bursts of pleasure with nice hooks that kinda made you want them to keep going. She also had a nice way of keeping the gig really light, with a few comical stuff ups where she would just stop playing all together, apologise, then have to remember where she was up to and keep going. It was also very hot in there and seeing this very softly spoken, hippie dress wearing girl wipe her forehead on her dress like a farmer on a hot day....if farmers wore dresses, well ,it looked pretty comical.
Next up was Rick Tomlinson. I liked him the most. He played two tracks, each one about 20-25mins long.
It was just him sitting in the middle of the stage, head bowed, with a guitar. He had the guitar plugged into a multi track sampler. So he began playing what is best described as spanish-old-west-folk-mexican style guitar, sampling a bit, playing some more, sampling some more etc etc etc etc.
He added beat samples in by banging the side of his guitar, and by the end of each track, you ended up with something that sounded more like Aphex Twin than folk music. Anyway I really enjoyed it, but felt like it was a funny choice of middle act for what was essentially a folk gig. I like music that changes slowly over time like that though(of course). When you get to the end you have no idea how you arrived at this sonic place from something so quiet and your brain tries to string together the middle part, usually unsuccessfully.
So then Mariee came on. I must admit I was pretty sure I wouldn't like her as all the stuff I have listened to is pretty cheesey, but she treaded the line damn well and stayed on the good side of it. I noticed that lots of her songs mention snakes though. I think perhaps all of them.
Anyway, she is a softly spoken and pretty girl, and you get the feeling everybody would probably like her even if she didn't play songs and just came up on stage and had a chat. But she did play songs. And they were nice. And I was in the mood for nice. It turned out her friend had just died and she used to play the last song she played with her all the time. She looked like she was going to cry when she sung it. It was heartbreaking.

Antichrist

2009-07-27T02:25:00.000-07:00

Ok. Lets get the torture part out of the way. Yes its kinda gross. Masturbating a penis till it comes blood after you smashed it with a log is gross. Cutting off your clit is gross. Drilling peoples legs is gross. The thing is. When your presented with these things quite clearly in front of your face, it sort of pushed through gross and into laughable. Its like your brain tells itself that there is no fucking way you'd watch this in real life so it must be a movie. So less shocking than I imagined. And pointless. And it just makes me think Von Trier is a bigger twat head than I already thought he was.
Aside from that, once you remove that stuff, well its boring. Its shot like an expensive commercial for banking or insurance. Which is crap. Remove the penetration shot from the shitty black and white prologue at the start and place an insurance logo at the end of it and you have an ad for accident insurance.
I pretty much absolutely hated how this film was shot. Hated it. Von Triers style smells so badly of intellectual, university, film studying cunt face.
It doesn't feel natural. As far as I see it he is a studied film maker and not one with any natural talent. Like Kevin Smith, but more of a cunt.
I liked the animals in it though.
Willem Dafoe comes across this doe in the forest with a half born baby deer hanging out its deer vagina. That was sort of good horror fair, as was the fox eating itself. The rest of it was crap though. He has tried to do that deep, resonating Lynch thing with sound, but he even fails at that.
The girl in it is so fucking annoying as well. She says all her lines in a whisper, because apprently depressed people whisper all the time.
Maybe he made her whisper on purpose so that people watching would hate women even more. Because the movie did seem like it wanted you to hate women. Anyway I'm sure there is plenty of other reviews about all that. All I'm gonna tell you is its pretty boring, and unless you have a need to see genital violence, I wouldn't bother with it.
Its not scary AT ALL. Its message seems to be a hatred of women and even if that's not what he is saying, that's what everyone thinks it is. And its Obnoxious. If you want a good torture film, watch Takashi Miikes film Audition.
In fact to save yourself watching it, imagine a slow motion shot of a penis going into a vagina and then watch this ad. That's Antichrist.

Drag me to Hell is good.

2009-07-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

Go and see it.

The Hangover.

2009-07-14T06:44:00.000-07:00

What a fucken pile of shit. I Laughed as much in this film as I laughed in the Deer Hunter. Which obviously was sweet fuck all.
The Hangovers poster has fucking stars all over it as well. Its the most star filled poster I have ever seen. The Poster makes you think its the best film ever made.
Don't you hate how movie posters now all have stars on them. Usually 4 or 5.
Well it's bullshit for two reasons.
1: Most reviewers are people. And people have shit taste. See Titanic and The Hangover as an example.
2: What you see on the poster probably isn't the opinion of a reviewer anyway, but a newspaper or publication getting free advertising on said movie poster.
Example: A wee while ago I was reading a discarded news of the world paper on the tube. Reputable rag that.
There was a review on Transformers 2 in there. It basically said it was the worst movie ever and gave it half a star. I put down the paper, got off the tube and walked past a man pasting up a Transformers 2 poster. Across the top it said. 4 stars: News of the world.
Aside from that. Why the fuck brag about 4 stars anyway. That's like saying, "Wow look at me I'm just above average."
Great.

Sweet stylophone action

2009-06-18T08:18:00.000-07:00

Unfinished Business.

2009-06-15T06:58:00.000-07:00

So my friend Brett and his friend Nick were making this film. It was all gonna be done in 2d. Anyway I posted one of the finished scenes up here some time ago. The only finished scene.
However. They did complete the storyboards and made a pre-vis version of it.
If anything this makes me want them to complete it all. It is awesome. And the soundtrack. Absolutely cracking.
If you think its awesome too, post in the comments so Brett knows it. Maybe he'll finish it then.

Part 1

Part 2

Design/Pitch/Build/Test/Approve/Sell

2009-06-11T03:36:00.000-07:00

These seem like the process's you have to go through to get something onto the market right?
More or less.
We bought a sofabed. We did this because we have guests and gave them our bed. It should be called a sofafuckinguncomfortablepileofcunts.
As a lay awake last night I could not fathom how this thing ever got past the test stage.
Actually, even the design stage.
It has a mattress that is split into four parts and held together with zips. I'm no rocket scientist, but that sounds like a bad idea right off the get go. The four parts are different sizes too, so if you are asleep on the right side your two cushions are only 20cm wide.
I ended up sleeping/steadily getting angry on it like a drunk cowboy on the back of a horse. You know face down, legs and arms splayed over each side.
My mistake was when we bought it, I trusted that even though the design looked a bit silly that with all the testing that must have been done before production, it would surely be as comfy as a normal bed.
It certainly makes a nice sofa, and it was one of the more expensive ones (again a reason to think it would work) but for fuck sake. Who designed it and who approved it as a bed?
I think everyone involved must think that sleeping on a plane in economy class is comfy, because that's what it reminded me of.
Still. Only three more weeks. Ugh.

A Taste of Sonar

2009-06-10T02:58:00.001-07:00

A Taste of Sonar was at the roundhouse here in London.
As you may have guessed it was supposed to be a little bit like being at the Sonar music festival in Spain.
It was just like it; except, its a lot less hot in London, Camden is pretty much a shit hole compared to Barcelona and the drinks were cheaper at Sonar last time I went but measures were huge. Aside from that, it sorta, kinda, maybe felt like it.
Jeff Mills was doing one of his crazy DVD-J sets with visuals from vintage Sci Fi movies. It was really good I thought, not least because he lowered the tempo somewhat to his normal full frontal assault techno vibe.
He also had this nifty trick of being able to trigger these two holes on the screen exactly where some of the actors eyes were and then strobe lights spewed out of them. It was a bit freaky looking and the crowd pretty much went nuts for it.
After this I went downstairs and checked out this dude called Internet 2.
This guy was funny as something really, really funny. Like cat aids. Or comedy racism. Or that joke about the holocaust and apples Simon told me once.
Except maybe even funnier because he just kept going for like 30 mins and my face hurt from laughing.
He basically had all these synth pads layed out on the floor that were hooked up to a computer via midi, and he could change what sounds any of these pads made depending on the song (I use the word song here in the broadest possible way. More like noise....but funny noise)
He'd kind of run backwards and forwards making what can be described as the Amelie soundtrack played by a thrash metal band on computers. So cute but noisy then.
The highlight for me was when he asked if anyone in the crowd were djs and for one to come up because he was going to perform a song called dj love.
So this guy got up and internet 2 pulled a random girl out of the audience, put a pad between them and made them hump, thus triggering the synth and making me laugh. He had a lot of audience participation. It was funny.
It makes you notice how shitty dance music crowds are though with their tolerance for anything outside the box, as heaps of the boring fucktards were yelling "play some music" and other such wit filled abuse.
Got fuck yourself in the eye with garden shears you cunts.
Next up was Mary Anne Hobbs. This had to be one of the funniest things I saw.
She was supposed to be playing a Dub Step set. She came out, all blonde hair and sparkles, looking for all the world like a trance-listening extra out of a shit movie made in England about how fun clubbing is. All the fuckwit cuntfaces who hated on Internet 2 seemed happy and I heard several "I'd do her" comments.
Classy.
Anyway she came out jumping around like a total fuckwad, waving her hands in the air and acting like Teisto while her first track began building up....and then the rig stopped, making the room silent and making her look the cuntface twat she quite clearly is. I don't give a shit what she has done for music. There is no need to act like a cunt. No need.
Anyway, I'd like to say I watched heaps of other acts after that but I didn't. I smoked and talked to my friends.

We won a Bafta.

2009-05-29T02:30:00.000-07:00

For this.
http://www.beam.tv/beamreel/XqjyRydNPX
http://www.bafta.org/awards/television-craft/visual-effects,743,BA.html
The only shot I did in this edit is the vomiting rock dude.
I did four more in the actual episode.
I'd be more of a smug cunt about it but I didn't go to the awards (a whole lot of people that had no right to went instead because our boss had a brief lapse of shit-for-brained-ness for a while which I am still smarting over) and its shared between about 30 of us which makes it seem less exciting.
Pre-nominations they had e-mailed and said they had put forward two things we worked on, and the other was a show I was a lead on but for whatever reason it didn't get nominated in the end.
I would have been more excited if that had gone through.
Oh well.
Still.
I guess its pretty good.

Beirut @ the Forum.

2009-05-11T03:42:00.000-07:00

So on Friday I went to see Beirut again. Myself, Lyndall and Papa Carter got there just as the supporting band were finishing, which I was quite pleased about cause I thought they sounded a bit arse.
To say I was excited would be a hella understatement. The forum was really rammed, as I guess the popularity of Beirut has sky rocketed since I saw them for the first time over 2 years ago.
I kind of wondered how things might have changed, seeing as back then it was all quite fresh and prior to Zacks, lets break up the band, I can't handle the pressure freak out.
They eventually emerged on stage to a massive roar from the crowd. The band looked really different. Gone was the crowded stage of at least 20 musicians of various shapes and sizes gathered from around the world. In their place, 5 people, who looked like 'A+' music school students who Zach had picked up at the local university.
So they began. Starting off with 'Nantes' which was awesome..............But.
But. But. But. Stupid But. Stupid annoying But.
The Music school guys seemed to lack the energy of the original band and maybe seemed to play more by the numbers instead of looking passionate about anything. And the sound was all over the place. The kick drum was drowning out everything, except Zacks voice. (luckily) Also Zack, looked depressed and unsure of himself. His voice however was still strong. As Lyndall pointed out though, he looked sad, and it seemed like there is something so tragic about him. Like he is going to die young somehow. Which if I am honest is quite an attractive quality in one of your favourite musicians.
However. The crowd absolutely loved it. Every song was greeted with the kind of cheers you expect at the end of a concert. And it was an amazing atmosphere to be in. Everyone was singing along. People had their hands in the air....and thankfully, the sound got better. And even more thankfully Zack got better as did the band.
It was about halfway thru and he made a slight hick up on the uke. He looked super pissed at himself, but as soon as he realized that even though everyone saw it they were all still cheering louder and louder with each song, he seemed to relax and really get into it.
People cheered so loudly in fact that they did two encores.
From that point this became, for me, the best gig I have ever been to. The whole stage loosened up and it was awesome.
Highlights for me? Zach playing 'The penalty' by himself with just the uke was probably equal highest with, 'Scenic World' and 'Sunday Smile'.
They played one of the his Real People songs as well, and it sounded heaps better being a live band and not his badly produced electronic shit.
I know I can appear cynacal sometimes,(ha) but I sure as hell wasn't this night. I didn't drink anything. I danced. I sang along. And I may have even wept a little. I guess my earlier post about Beirut being my everytime/every situation music and not having any strings attached was a lie. They got me through a really hard time last year and it was hard not to get emotional about seeing it live.
I'm a big fucking girl.
Heres a video of Sunday Smile from the night. People singing along. Sweet.

And

And

And

Reverse super hero/Super heroes dealing with crime in London.

2009-05-05T03:28:00.000-07:00

I have spent most of the late half of my twenties in a bodily state of disrepair.
A combination of drinking too much, working an absolute shit load and going out to all night parties made my interest of looking after myself close to zero.
I looked normal enough to the untrained observer. Not fat or anything I mean.
This state is what I like to refer to as "the Reverse Super Hero"
This means that your costume or outfit makes you look like a normal person from the outside, but as soon as you strip off, you look like the skinny-fat, (combo skinny arms and legs with a pot belly) nerdy, computer welding, compositor geek you are. Add to that mix a pasty-ness that is unheard of in NZ and you have a lethal combination of shitness.
Its the antithesis of Clark Kent, who tries to look normal but really he is Super awesome.
I tried to look normal but really I was shit.
Anyway I have been going to the gym for a while now so things are looking up I guess. Although I can't say I'll ever be one of those "oh theres a bit of sun I'm gonna get my top off" guys.
And I don't think I'll ever be fully rid of my slight stomach bulge because I like eating and beer too much. Fuck giving up that. I'm just trying not to turn into John Goodman.
"Hey look.....Its a fat funny guy. How you going fatso? Say something funny fatty fats fat fatso."
Anyway.
I was also recently thinking about crime in London. It all seems to be little fuckwits that are under 16 doing all the stabbing/murdering and stealing. Where does this put your average crime-fighting-vigilante hero?
I mean Batman couldn't just go out and beat the shit out of kids could he?
It'd be a PR nightmare. Even if he was saving someones life after some of these little fuckwits were trying to stab them to death he'd get in trouble. I can see the headline now.
"Batman beats the shit out of five children"
With quotes from the kids parents saying stuff like.
"My little Petey was just standing there playing Knifeseys when this crazed maniac dressed as a bat swung down and punched him and his friends in the face. He is such a good boy and this happens. Whats the world coming too?"
I fear that this means that even if a science experiment is going horrible wrong right now and giving some mild mannered scientist the power to fight evil, he is never gonna do it.
He like me realizes that he'll just end up killing little fuckwit kids.
No superheros for us then.

Rotoscoping

2009-04-30T06:12:00.000-07:00

For those that don't know, and lets face it that's probably a lot of you because I have the weirdo picture job, rotoscoping is when you painfully trace around the edge of something/someone so that the background can be replaced with something else. You see, if people don't shoot stuff on a green/blue screen, and you want to replace the background you have to roto the stuff. Its like drawing a mask in photoshop, except the pictures are moving. This makes it about two hundred million times harder.
And it fucking sucks giant donkey cock.
You see, roto is usually something given to juniors when they are working their way up the food chain because why the fuck would a senior want to do it. Its shit.
The lone rose in the devils bum guts that is roto, is that at the end it can be quite satisfying looking at how well you have cut shit out. But its a minor victory. You see if you are roto'ing something, that usually means you're not comping it. So you cut out all of your shit (in my case at the moment, full football team, roving camera, full HD plates, motion blurred to buggery = cunting nightmare) and then you don't get to put all the elements together. Some other smug cunt does. And because this is for a commercial that smug cunt is gonna be all like "Yeah I worked so hard on this" to the clients, even though he probably did fuck nothing. Oh wait. He might add a lens flare and some grain.
Now I have roto'd for anyone in about 4 years I think, but due to this fucking, shitting, ball ache of a recession, I have to do it for a couple of weeks till a bigger job comes along.
I don't know how I ever did this shit.
Sure there are worse jobs, like being a sewer cleaner. But you know this is my story, not a sewer cleaners.
I mean if a sewer cleaner was doing this roto marlarky, he'd be writing in his blog "Fucking hell man this shit is so sweet. I get to sit at a desk and I'm not all covered in human turds and flushed used condoms and tampons etc. Its like I'm a king"
But I don't think sewer cleaners have blogs.
Maybe Swine flu will kill off some of the overabundance of compositors in London and there'll be a shit load more work to go round.
I'm not doing anymore roto after this.
See how I mentioned the recession and swine flu?
Ranty and topical.

Gravenhurst in a church

2009-04-28T01:56:00.000-07:00

St Giles In The Fields is a church near Oxford st in central London. I didn't really know what to expect of the church itself, I thought maybe it would be a semi-abandoned, used mostly for gigs type affair, but it wasn't. It was a full on, big, Majestic London church of the type you don't get in New Zealand.
We ventured in and got ourselves some (communion?)wine out of a cask which you didn't have to pay for, but could make a donation, but to be honest they should have made a donation to us for actually drinking it.
Inside all the pews were still in place and everybody was sitting facing the front where the warm up band were just finishing up. It was deathly quiet when the music stopped and the whole thing had a really strange atmosphere, not helped I guess by the slowly colour changing lights that were faced directly into the performers face so that they cast a massive shadow on the back wall of the majestic church.
Gravenhurst came on (by himself, no backing band) and was really really good, and uber talented in a way which is slightly annoying. He played a lot of familiar songs off Fires in Distant Buildings and The Western Lands in a somewhat unfamiliar way.
The thing I liked most about it was the way it kind of felt like just a guy, having a jam in his bedroom. It was intimate. You know how people say they went to a gig and it was at this intimate venue and really they just mean small? This wasn't one of those. It actually was.
I really like how he rocks out so hard in the middle of such quiet songs.
I didn't really like the seats.
Are Church pews made, hard as granite in a bolt upright position on purpose? Does it make you feel closer to Jesus' suffering?
Possibly. Its fucking annoying at a gig though.
Still. Great gig.

Two gigs and a Stripper.

2009-04-21T04:16:00.000-07:00

On the one hand, I went to Matter. Its like Fabric (owned by those guys too) but bigger and dumber....if that's possible. Anyway it was a Cocoon night, so Sven Vath was doing an extended set. Not that I wanted to see him, as I'm sure some earlier posts in this blog will attest to. I think he is a shit dj. I really have to stop seeing him, but somehow I always manage to catch him. Its like a bad smell following me around. I really wanted to see Oner Ozer and Chris Tietjen....maybe Extrawelt too.
Well we got there, and Tietjen had finished and Oner couldn't get into the country because of Visa issues. I had a little bit of fun for a while (when Extrawelt were playing), but those big super club situations aren't really my cup of tea these days, and the fact that Matter was so busy didn't help. Also. Its FUCKING MILES AWAY FROM ANYTHING. Too far. Far in a kind of I wanna go home but can't be fucked because its so far. Anyway I saw lots of Vath (again fuck it) and he was doing his usual play a track all the way to the end, no matter what it is (like think of the most boring M_nus track you can and imagine doing a one bar mix at the end of 13 mins of it) and then no real mixing at all. Now if there was an awesome amount of flow to his track selection that'd be good. But there wasn't. It was rubbish.
Anyway so that was that.
On Sunday night I went to go and see Bat for Lashes in Shepherds Bush.
It was awesome. Really good sound and a nice mix of slower stuff and really up beat stuff.
I wanted to dance so much more than the night before. I liked that she had a deer head on stage with antlers that lit up for one song.
As a performer she is a funny one. She sort of has this way of appearing like she lacks confidence when she talks and that she is really bashful. It seems like a kind of an act though. A sort of look how coy and cute I am stage show.
Which is fine, because she is cute and even if its an act, its a good one, and for some reason, even though it sounds annoying, when she does it, its not.
It obviously worked to because this guy yelled out every-single-time there was a silence
"You're so hot" in a real Queer eye for the straight guy gay mans voice.
This also sounds annoying, but after he had done it five times it pushed through annoying and into funny.
After the gig, Lyndall and I were catching the tube home and what I can only assume were a group of strippers got on the tube. I assume this because they were skinny, overly made up, tanned woman with massive fake nungas. We sat down next to an Asian couple.
One of them who seemed more drunk than the rest, came over and started pole dancing on one of the tube poles and waving her ass in the Asian couples faces, and yelling
"Have you ever seen an ass like that.....no because you Asians have pan asses"
I guess she is talking about flat like a frying pan? Any help on that one would be good.
She also screamed out when the driver called out what the last stop was going to be for the train, "This train terminates at Pussy lane."
After this she continued stripping for the whole train car, got her knockers out and screamed
"If anyone of this train got me a vodka my pussy would be theirs for the night"
She then got off the train with her stripper friends and walked off down the platform, top still flapping open, boobs everywhere.
I wonder if all strippers act like this on nights out.

I am working on a commercial at the moment.

2009-04-07T02:18:00.000-07:00

I had really forgotten how bad it is. I went down yesterday to watch with producers and clients and the like. They told me "Oh this is gonna be such a fun project!"
We watched the ad, which is an ad for juice.....a really shit ad for juice with 3d creatures interacting with real people, and they all turned around and said, "Isn't it great!" and smiled and patted themselves on the back. I smiled along too, and felt a whole bunch of dirty inside.
It wasn't great. It was seven hundred shades of shit. I don't give a fuck about it, and neither will anyone when its on TV. Its a shit, but expensive ad, for what is probably a shit product.
The really fucking annoying thing is that all the advertising cunts were talking about it like it was the most important thing in the world. They thought I was a freelancer brought in to work on it, and when I told them I was actually from the film dept, they were all like "Oh well this is going to be really fun for you then!"
Why?
I prefer working on things that people actually want to watch actually.
I worked in ads long enough. I thought maybe one day I'd like to go back, but I honestly don't think I could handle the egos. Its like the world is reverse. We have people like Del Toro(Pans Labyrinth fella) come in and be all down to earth and not up his own ass at all and shit, then you go down two flights of stairs to meet a director making an ad for dishwashing soap who thinks he is full on shit hot.
The difference is this. Geeks make films. Fashion victims make ads.
Even the awards shows reflect this. There are a million of them for ads. I am probably 200 times more likely to win an award for doing this ad cause there are 200 times more award shows than there are for ACTUAL films or ACTUAL television.
The plimsoll, skinny jean, wayfarer, stripy tee-shirt, 80s hair, suit jacket wearing cunts sure do love patting themselves on the back. Vanity to the max.

For some reason.....

2009-04-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

I find the actor Michael Cera the most likable of characters. I haven't particularly liked anything he is in (except a Tim and eric show...which was fricken funny) but every interview I see him in, I just like the guy. He is so damn likable. Watch this interview and see if you agree.

Movies need more lines like this.

2009-03-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

Simply awe inspiring.

I spend too much time on youtube.

2009-02-12T08:22:00.000-08:00

The cycle of my life.

2009-02-11T12:22:00.000-08:00

I seem to be in a never ending cycle of work until late, go home and to bed, get up go to work, work until late and then back to bed again. Even weekends seem to be sucked away into this place where I will never get them back. It feels frustrating. My life is twittering away before my eyes and for what really? If the market all of a sudden fell out of the bottom of the tv/film/commercial market I would be the most unqualified person in the world to do anything else.
I could dj and make rubbish sounding music I guess.
I just wonder though. What would I really do if not this?
Write this shitty blog?
I got depressed as I wrote this, and then I just spoke to Brett on gmail chat whatsamacallit and now I'm super happy.
So have this!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When humanity doesn't let you down.

2009-02-05T14:43:00.000-08:00

So you know all that stuff I wrote in the previous post. Well. I stand a little corrected. They came along and said it was awesome. Even the marketing guy. They did it all in under five minutes as well. I feel good about it. But then again it was version 12. That is a lot........I guess my sted-fast, I'm not gonna change it too much from version to version and pretend like I did attitude seems to have paid off. I must have learnt something from flame and commercial clients then. So I guess humanity could have let me down then, I just tricked myself into believing it didn't.
In other good times in humanity news, three of my friends are becoming quite the Techno producers on a world wide scale.
Simon Beeston, Simon Flower and Andi Numan.
It gives me plenty of warm feelings inside to know that people I know that have worked hard are getting recognition they deserve, and also its nice knowing people that are contributing to something that I have felt so passionately about for a long time now.
Simon Beeston I used to have a radio show with back in NZ, which was really, really fun and my brain is littered with nothing but fond memories of, is reaching new heights of awesome with every track he produces. It seems like he could get on any bike and learn to ride it in a matter of minutes. He has had plenty of focus over the last three years and risked a lot by moving to Berlin to put all his effort into making music, and I am really glad it has paid off for him.
Andi Numan was someone I met through the Auckland club scene, a friend of a friend, and a genuinely nice fella. He used to come up to said radio show and dance around like a mad man in the studio to the music myself and Simon were playing. If you have ever done a radio show (especially a techno one) it can be hard to keep your energy levels up as sometimes you really have no idea how many people are listening and being techno in NZ (which is a very small scene that no one is interested in!) our show used to be really late at night. None of that seems to matter when you have an Andi dancing in front of you.
Simon Flower was a guy I was a fan of anyway before I moved up to Auckland, and as it turned out later when I met him properly is a great guy. I was lucky enough to play at a couple of parties with him where he was playing live and see that he is an ultra talented dude that was just a diamond waiting to be discovered on the world stage. He has given me plenty of demos over the years and its safe to say, that every single track on all of them is something I would buy if I didn't know the guy and I also still regularly listen to them today. Surprisingly I was listening to one of the first cds he gave me when I moved up to Auckland the other day and it had 'The Whisper had it' on it, which got released on Pokerflat a few years later.
It pleases me greatly seeing there releases in record stores and I have bought all of the records all three of them have released so far. I can't see that stopping.
Hats off fellas!

Waiting for clients.

2009-02-05T09:38:00.000-08:00

I am doing this right now. I have been working on these shots for a film for a while. I am attached to how they look now. I like them. I don't want to change them but my palms are sweating and I feel nervous because I know someone among the gaggle of people that have to come up here with the director because said director can't make decisions on their own will suggest something stupid. Something irrelevant. Something just so they can use their stupid dumb arse voice just because they like the sound of it. This person probably won't be a creative person. Someone in marketing no doubt. But the director, who is a floundering mess, and hasn't made a film in a long time, will latch onto it. Then this one stupid idea, uttered by a person who has about as much right as a deaf and blind monkey to make comment on a film, will have to be executed through my hands, and then printed to film forever. Sigh.

I just bought a stylophone.

2009-01-30T10:11:00.001-08:00

I can't wait for it to arrive!!!!!!!!!!

Farewell to a comedy genius.

2009-01-30T04:34:00.000-08:00

I like stuff because its got subtitles aka I am a tit.

2009-01-26T05:55:00.000-08:00

Once when I was younger a friend of mines Aunt, who according to herself is a 'film buff'(when people refer to themselves as film buffs you pretty much know they are twats) suggested that I go see this Gérard Depardieu film 'The Closet'. It was a comedy and it dealt with gay rights etc and was really good because it was French. Thats what she said. Its good because its French. Anyway, I trusted her because you know I was a young eager film studying git and probably wanted to appear like I was smart and I probably thought going to foreign films made me look cool. So I went to it at the local film theatre that plays all the arty stuff....Rialto I believe it was called, and what I saw on the screen was essentially a really long episode of Friends, with hysterically unfunny (ha) obvious and boring comedy. You know that look in Empire Strikes Back when Yoda says 'You will be' to Luke inside that little hut thing and looks all pissed off and evil and shit. That was the expression on my face for pretty much the whole film. That was as close as I got to laughing. That expression. Anyway everybody seemed to think that film was great and I thought it was shit and I couldn't understand, so I kept asking people and their answer was always, 'but the french make cinema with so much more heart/flare/integrity/insert- whatever-you-want-here-if-you-say-this-sentence-for-real-but-prepare-to-look-like-a-cunt-in-the -process.
Anyway. This weekend I spent a lot of time watching movies, because well, I'm not drinking at the moment and I need something to distract myself. I watched, in order: The Orphanage, After Hours, Hansel and Gretal, and Alice doesn't live here anymore. (I have a bit of a Scorsese thing going at the moment because I am reading a book about him)
This really only has to do with the Orphanage.
Firstly lets get one thing straight. Del Toro did NOT direct this. He presented it. Its the same old trick they did with Tarantino and films like Killing Zoe and Dusk till Dawn. This is a trick instigated by Miramax films in the 90s (off the back of Tarantino) to make fucking idiots think they are watching the next Pans Labyrinth. If you thought Del Toro did, do me a favour and go die a bit.
Now I know your probably thinking 'Well here goes Greg on another hate the film everybody likes rant' and I can understand that. But let me clear this up, I don't hate this film. It looks pretty, and I wasn't bored. There is a but though. It was just another hack job of a ghost film. There was nothing particularly exciting about the script, or the acting and the direction wasn't earth shattering. If you wanna good ghost film get out 'The Devil backbone' (which actually is Del Toro) or if you wanna watch this film but can't be bothered with subtitles rent 'The Others'.
If you want to be different and not watch any of these just go to your local DVD shop and look for anything with a brownish monochromatic cover and Gothic or Times New Roman-ish font in the thriller section. Brown reminds us of old and old reminds us of ghosts!
Anyway, I'm not bagging the film too much, its worth a watch, but I don't think its as brillant or as scary as everybody makes out. I felt the need to have a rant about it now though because I went outside for a smoke earlier and one of my work colleagues asked what I watched. When I said I watched a few films including 'The Orphanage' they said. 'I love Del Toro films, I thought it was brilliant and Spanish cinema is great.'
I'd like to tell you that I tripped said person or something, but instead I smiled thru gritted teeth and came up here and bitched about it on this shitty blog.
Anyway if your interested, the best film I watched was 'Alice doesn't live here anymore', which is weird cause its a film about a single mother going on a journey to discover herself after her husband dies. Sounds boring, but wasn't over the top in anyway. The human relationships seemed really real and was a great slice of life bit of cinema. If this film was made now (and not by Scorsese) it would be a fucking train wreck of monumental proportions and have Jennifer Assfaceton in it. Is it me or has she completely cornered the market on being shit in nearly every way? Anyway it would have turned out like this.

I have to say next was 'After Hours' which is another Scorsese film, this time a comedy. Anyway its quite surreal and has a really good picture on the wall of a shark eating a mans cock in one scene. I think that alone makes it a good movie.
The Korean film 'Hansel and Gretal' was better than the Orphanage. It got a little long towards the end, but it was shot beautifully, and for the first half was creepy as fuck. It got a little over sentimental, but I think the acting and uneasiness for the first half overshadowed that.
I didn't love it, but again it was well worth a watch. Plus you'll seem like you're smart cause its got subtitles.

A joke
A Catholic Priest and a Rabbi are walking through the forest when they come across a young boy tied to a tree.
The Catholic priest says: 'Shall we screw him?"
The Rabbi says: "Out of what?"

Mark Gormley is a genius

2009-01-23T03:29:00.000-08:00

Mark Gormley is a singer/songwriter. Some people say he started singing in the 70s. I feel like potentually he became a burnout in his early years and his promising career took a nose dive when the drugs and the drink got too much. He could have been bigger than Elvis. After leaving the scene all together he could have fled to Tibet and become a monk. Everybody thought he had just dropped of the face of the earth.....but he's back.
My favorite part of Mark is his music videos (although who am I to hassle as I can't seem to even finish the damn things) which consist largely off him standing with his hands by his sides on a green screen comped over a poorly chosen background and looking decidedly uncomfortable. If you watch closely you can catch the quick glance off to the side "Are we filming?" faces.
Lens Flares feature quite a bit as well.
I also like the presenters of the show and really want to watch it. I gather that its some kind of cable access show. Its billed as the most important music show on television. Mark is quite the celebrity on it. I like the idea that perhaps it could actually be really important musically in the future, like Tony Wilsons old show on the bbc or even John Peel. That would make me look quite the fool.
I do feel quite sorry for the guy though. I mean his voice isn't bad if your into that really generic hippe shit that came out after Vietnam, and it just sort of seems like this random fan who works at a TV station has some how told him its a good idea to make these music videos and poor old Mark who did a bit much acid when he was a hippie just doesn't have the anything left upstairs to fight back with.
All in all. Genius.

I found the above one quite sad cause he ends up on the moon without his woman.

I think I need to take a leaf out of these guys books and realize its quantity not quality.
Also of note, Lyndall just pointed out he has a perfect balls on his face chin.

Panda Bear

2009-01-22T03:33:00.000-08:00

So I have been listening to the Panda Bear album Person Pitch, and enjoying it a lot. I am having a musical join the dots. I knew that Panda Bear was part of Animal Collective, but stylistically there is a lot more repetition and filtered out echos and delays. Obviously being one guy its all made from samples and loops. It sounds acoustic and natural, but quite clearly isn't. I'd say I have been enjoying it even more than Merriweather Post Pavillion. I have been wondering why all morning.
Anyway I just noticed that the top four artists listed (I guess as influences) in the inside cover are Basic Channel, Luomo, Dettinger, and Wolfgang Voigt.
Basic Channel was one of the first of the European minimal techno record labels and when it began consisted of Moritz von Oswald (see post below about the classical record label business) and Mark Ernestus.
Luomo is Sasu Ripatti, also known as Vladislav Delay. Luomo is his slightly more pop orientated house/techno/experimental project.
Dettinger, who releases on Kompakt and Wolfgang Voight who started Kompakt with Michael Mayer.
The whole album sounds to me like something Villalobos would make if he was born in California and surfed. I recommend it.

Fuck, Shit, Cunt.

2009-01-19T06:56:00.000-08:00

Today is depressing and looking at my screen and working on this fucking rubbish looking film is feeling similar to what I imagine injecting cyanide into your eye ball with a needle designed for hippos may be like.
I wish I got to design the movie posters/dvd cover for it so I could include that as the quote hook line across the top.
Here's an example on one of my favorite films.

La Llorona - Beirut

2009-01-16T03:40:00.000-08:00

Off the new album coming out at the end of the month. I just got tickets to their show in London in May. It sold out in a couple of hours so I feel lucky and in an extreme state of pure pump.

Animal Collective @ Koko

2009-01-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

I took Lyndall to this for her birthday. It was at Koko, which I think was pretty perfect for it as it has those sweet high balconies that you can look right down onto the crowd/stage from, but it still has some big ass speakers up there so you can hear everything nicely. (I have photos I'll add to this soon)
My good friend Brett loves these guys all to death. I have had a love/hate relationship with them I guess. I find I have to be in the perfect mood to listen to them. When I am its good, if I'm not I won't give them another chance for a month.
I think this gig has changed that. It was awesome.
Something about all those mechanical instruments large synthetic thunder rolling basslines and the tack-tack-tack-tack of the drum stick on the drum and the foot pedals and the volume, and the melancholy and the happiness.
I think perhaps I have been treating them more as a background band instead off a turn the volume up to eleven kind of deal and that was my mistake.
So Brett, I hope it makes you happy that I think I have found my latest musical love affair.
Well them and Tape, who I can't stop listening to at the moment either.

Techno makes it onto oldest ever record label in the world.

2009-01-07T03:01:00.000-08:00

Carl Craig and Moritz Von Oswalds original remix of Ravels- Bolero has had another remixing with two new versions by Craig himself in his C2 guise and also Ricardo Villalobos.
Villalobos mix is called the Polyhof which apparently is a sort of horse-riding/family vacation camp popular in Germany and the Netherlands. I find that funny, but on listening to it I can kinda see why.
Recommended.

A game of shovseys aka I am an alpha male.

2008-12-19T07:31:00.000-08:00

I went to our office Christmas party the other night. As is the case people were getting pretty drunk. This guy came up to us and said inappropriate things to my girlfriend and then to me. Neither of us knew him although he obviously works somewhere in the building with us.
I gave him a shove. He came at me with a 'I can see I was being a cunt and I deserved that, BUT never lay a hand on me again or else..........' line like he was Jason Bourne or some shit and gave me a shove back for good measure.
I told him to fuck off seeing he had just admitted he was being a cunt and deserved the intial shove and gave him a gentle finger push in the chest just to be a patronising cunt. Eventually he fucked off after I just started ignoring him. I never did find out what the ................ threat meant unless what he was going to say was 'or else I'll stay standing here and shove you back, then you can shove me back, then I'll maybe shove you back a bit more, then we'll abuse each other, then it'll just kind of peter out and we'll both look like dicks.'
Which is pretty much what these situations turn out like seeing as neither of us a from the streets or anything.
At best if I had kept talking to him we would have ended up in a drunken, stumbling about hug and then drunk friends. At worst we would have ended up the same way. A lose, lose situation.
Just walk away.
Males are dicks.

Geddes, Damien Lazarus and Michael Mayer @ T-bar

2008-12-11T03:33:00.000-08:00

This was on a monday night. Its all part of T-bars final 12 days before closing down....which is a shame, because I really like it there. Its refreshing to have a place with great line-ups that starts a little earlier and closes at 3am. T was also the venue for many an after party on Sundays.
Anyway, the Monday we went down was the last of the Stink parties, which were run by Mayer and Lazarus for just over a year every Monday for a while. Seeing as I had actually never made it down to any of them despite living quite close by at one stage, I thought I could at least make it down to the last one. Something about Monday night parties had always put me off. As it turned out it wasn't so bad at all.
So me and three of my mates meet up in Soho and downed a few pints before heading down. When we arrived, no massive line outside and Geddes playing the warm up on the inside. We sat down and got doen to the business of drinking and I looked around and felt bad that Tea is closing. Its quite a large space, spread across one floor and one room. The sound is a bit lacking but ok if your on the centre of the dance floor bit, but never really quite bass heavy enough. It is really nice having lots of tables speckled around the place though and if you have five or six of you sitting around a table it can feel a bit like having friends over for a letsgetpissedandlistentomusicroundthetablewhiledrinking evening which is fun. (Except with Mayer and Lazarus playing instead of my drunking fumblings on the decks)
Damien Lazaruz came on, and true to form played a wicked mix of deep house, techno, grindy stuff and plain weird electronica. I have never actually seen him before but have heard him say he is not afraid to clear a dance floor and I can believe that now. He got pretty weird in some bits, but I don't mean bad weird I mean awesome weird. It was a lot of fun, and he got me up dancing and bopping around like an idiot which was refreshing and a bit of a catharsis for me because I don't feel I have had fun dancing for ages due to all the cunts about. Speaking of which, the crowd at tea was really good. Not overtly young, and just into the music. No handsey bastards for the girls, and no idiots wearing glasses.
Michael Mayer then came on. Which was a shame. He just sort of lost the vibe and plodded out this increasingly boring house music. It really didn't have any sort of kick or swing or bop or whatever the fuck it is that makes you wanna dance....although the girls that were there seemed to be loving it so maybe he was just trying to score chicks or something. We went home after that. Still, that was a good thing being a school night.

Villalobos at Fabric.

2008-12-09T10:18:00.000-08:00

TOO MANY CUNTS
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I may be in an aggressive mood today.

This makes me laugh.

2008-12-04T02:45:00.000-08:00

http://www.deadact.com/
DeadAct.com is an online archive of videos found in the public domain that show electronic performers blatantly faking their "live set".

To qualify as a Dead Act, the performer must have pre set out their performance in such a way that if they were to drop dead, the set would keep playing on as normal. Bonus points for fake knob tweaking, failed attempts to play real instruments , and good orgasm faces.

Not surprisingly trancey/hard housey bollocks features a bit here. Worth a laugh.

This Owl is AWESOME!

2008-12-03T11:59:00.000-08:00

Criminals in the 80s were easy to spot.

2008-12-02T07:02:00.000-08:00

I have noticed, and I'm sure I'm not the first to notice this, that in a large amount of movies from the 80s the criminal element all wear outlandishly punky/ cyber goth clothes and scream/laugh manically everywhere they go. There is plenty of examples of this type of behaviour lurking around the place in your local dvd store, but one of my personal favs is the Robocop attempted rape scene. But you know you can find these type of crims in any 80s action flick really. Bill Paxton in Terminator for instance. Any Troma film. Jeff Goldblum in Death Wish. I like how if you watch the credits on Death Wish, his character is labelled as 'freak 1'. Not rapist, not murderer and not even criminal. Freak.
In movie land in the 80s, most of the time you were a criminal, you screamed and shouted and generally acted up a lot. You were a freak of society that was easy to spot, and most probably easy to kill in most of the movies I am thinking about.
Anyway this got me thinking about the time frame in which these films were made and something I read about, have heard and studied.
You see in the 70s and 80s, before the Berlin wall came down, America was pretty much scared of Communism. (The early 80s was a bad time because of Russia invading Afghanistan, Americas then Allies and Regan and Thatchers hard line ideals that Communism was complete evil)
The problem with being afraid of Communism, is that you're afraid of an idea or ideal, and not something that you can touch, or taste, or blow away face to face with a machine gun.
I think, maybe not on purpose, Americans made and wanted movies where the bad guys were obvious. Where they knew who to shoot and everything was in black and white.
The most classic example of preying intentionally on this fear is Predator with Arnie. The Alien is an unseen presence for the first 40mins of the movie. An unseen enemy picking the squad off one by one. What are they fighting? Its an evil they can't quite comprehend. I know John McTiernan was essentually dealing with this on purpose, as I have heard him talk about the influence of fear of communism on this film, but I don't think he realized that in the end he turned it into another America triumphs over evil post the Vietnam war loss movie though.
This is of course, one of the main ideals behind the glut of action films about invincible characters dealing punishment to destroy all enemies in their path. The re-masculinisation of America after suffering a loss in Vietnam.
This is a well documented trend. Missing in Action, Rambo, Commando to name a few.
America had taken a knocking. Their egos were bruised and their backs were up. What better way to fix that than fictional action films where your heroes are ex US military hard asses that can't be killed. (strangely Schwarzenegger feature in a few of these and he doesn't really sound American at all)
An interesting series in this period is the American Ninja movies. This is a weird one, because, a culture Americans don't understand, they do in this film, and then make a case and point of saying they are actually better at it than the Japanese originators. A strange take for action film makers of the time, because, well who needs to use the enemies skills when you can just blow them up with guns.
My favourite of all action films in the 80s has to be Robocop.
Robocop is a funny one, because all of the things I have talked about enough are in the film, and on purpose. The trick was, when the script went around they couldn't get anyone to make it. The script fell into little known (then) art house film director Paul Verhoeven.
Verhoeven, having never been to the States before, saw all these things about America and there culture and movies and put them in his. Don't believe me? The proof is in the movie.
The adverts in Robocop? (and later Starship Troopers) The story goes Verhoeven arrived in America for pre-production meetings on the film and the Shuttle Challenger exploded in Flames. Breaking news reports were all over the television, yet instead of staying with the action, occasionally the news would go to commercials and advertise things as inappropriate as childrens toys.
Vietnam references? In shovel loads. The Robot ED-209 face is roughly a mimic of the Bell Huey gunship used for urban pacification Vietnam, which was a completely failed (and in-human) way of dealing with riots in small towns and villages by shooting them from gunships. As a further nod in this direction, Ed-209s creator, who introduces the Robot, is called Robert McNamara. Robert McNamara was the Secretary of Defense from 1961-1968 for the US, when their Urban pacification idea came about. Then as one final nod a bit later, they state clearly that ED-209 was built for urban pacification.
On the flip side of this, the film deals with the unseen threat, but with a much more anti-establishment swing on things. The unseen or unknown threat to our hero is coming from the company that created him. His own soil. Not an outside force at all.
Either way. The lowly crims are still loud mouth, screaming and laughing punks and in the end Robocop still shoots everyone bad all to hell. I think maybe I over thought this. This sounds like a loud of shit.
....
....
80s action films Rulz.

"I can imagine something like this.....

2008-11-27T06:40:00.000-08:00

...french kissing my brain." - Leetnad (youtube user comment)

David Lynch car commercial makes Greg Laugh. A lot.

2008-11-27T06:31:00.000-08:00

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.................................haha.......
ha........ha........snigger.......phew.

If you like music....

2008-11-26T03:51:00.000-08:00

Listen to this.
Its a mix of german 70s and 80s music, so all sorts of electronic, pop, krautrock, weirdness and the like. Its by a fella called Riton, who makes anything from electro-house to techno to krautrock.
This mix is from another of his guises Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and was made as a bit of promotion for the album and given away for free on his website. (obviously giving away a lot of the albums influences in the process.)
Anyway. This is awesome-ness to the dizzying max. Highly recommended.

Track list.

Eroc- Zimperlein
Edgar Froese- Pinnacles
Intence- Jump On Velvet Paws
Kraftwerk- Boing Boom Tschak
Kraftwerk- Neonlicht
Tone Band- This Is Germany Calling
Toy Planet- Two Dophins Go Dancing
Faust- It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl
Guru Guru- Globetrotter
Conrad Schnitzler- Das Teir
Peter Bauman- The Third State
Cluster- Caramel
Cluster- Grosses Vasses
Holger Czukay- On The Way To The Peak Of Normal
Die Grune Reise- Ich Bin
Baffo Banfi- Indian
Rheingold- Drieklangsdimensionen
Canaxis 5 -Boat Woman Song
Amon Duul II- Burning Sister
Uberfallig- Puls
Neu- Hallogallo
Eloy- Impressions
Holger Czukay- Persian Love
Tangerine Dream- Love On a Real Train

My friend Brett has talent.

2008-11-25T02:00:00.000-08:00

This is the only completed scene from his short film. Its fucking good. He needs to finish it. If I win the lottery, I'll put money towards its completion.

I have a lot of talented friends. They all make me feel sub-par.

I hate i phone users.

2008-11-21T04:19:00.000-08:00

This guy is all excited because he can control Abelton with his i phone. I don't get it. You pretty much have to be near your laptop for the wireless to work so why not just use the laptop? You can only control a little bit of abelton at a time with it, so why not just use the laptop and get more control?
There seems to be no point to this except that, well, its cool to use your i phone to control abelton. Or so they say. I mean, surely a midi controller would be better. What happens if your performing a gig with your i phone and someone calls you? Its just novelty value really isn't it. I'll probably eat my words when everyone in the world starts performing with i phones. Actually I'd probably just shoot myself in the face. Possibly with my i phone gun application.

Sun Ra Arkestra.

2008-11-20T07:16:00.000-08:00

We went to see this on Sunday night after working all day on that animation below and the night after the Stockhausen gig. Gravenhurst were playing too, but due to a complete useless fuckwad of a tape operator we missed it. Dumb. Gravenhurst are cool. Still Sun Ra. That should be sweet. Well it was to start with. Many black jazz performers come out on stage in there many, mythical, 1970s ideal of what the future is, sparkly hats and capes. Sunglasses seemed fairly important too. They started off doing a cool number that had plenty of noise all over the place and that sweet, sweet way in which everybody on stage sounds like they are juuuussssssttttt out of time with each other. Like everyone plays to a different metronome. Sun Ra is good at that.
Two songs to start about space. Sweet as.
Problem is, that then they turned into a covers band. They played Jazz and blues from a whole bunch of famous people who I am sure are wicked, but when you want to see some Sun Ra it doesn't really cut it. They did a couple more Sun Ra tracks at the end, but it wasn't enough to save the boredom in the middle of what was basically a good covers band wearing space outfits. I wanted more songs about space. More organ freak outs. If only the Ra was still alive.
No 'space is the place' or 'spaceways inc' in sight.
I could have saved the night by buying a Space is the place t-shirt, but I didn' cause I was saving money. I regret that now.

stockhausen gig.

2008-11-18T12:42:00.000-08:00

Lyndall happily (as in I was happy....she could have been really pissed about it) bought me tickets to see the London Sinfonietta play Stockhausen numbers at the Southbank centre as a present because she is awesome. It was supposed to be a celebration of his birthday (that he was gonna appear at) but having died last year they changed it into a celebration of Stockhausen. Lyn bought me tickets well early on, and as the time approached they unveiled more and more concerts until it became a full blown festival. This was kind of annoying because there were plenty of other things I would have liked to seen and if we'd known earlier we would have waited to see everything that was on.
Anywho. It was all very adult when we arrived. Lots of people wearing 1970s school teacher blazers with arm patches, and silver rimmed glasses, and salt and pepper pony tailed men. Some people had taken their kids. Small kids. I don't think small kids and Stockhausen go, but then I guess I know sweet fuck nothing about raising kids.
The first part was a track for Alto voice and Orchestra. Three songs. The conductor was huge. I don't mean huge, in a 'this guy is huge in the music business' kinda huge.....just huge. He was wearing a suit and the suit jacket was so stretched it looked like a shirt. Huge. Also really, really square. I feel like, in a live action movie of Mr Men, he could play a part. No costume. Mr Conductor.
This part kind of went from making me happy, to sad, to annoyed.....to something. I'm not a fan of ladies wailing at the best of times so it wasn't really for me. There were flurries of high pitched squeaky-ish fun here and there, and and undertone of funeral march seriousness. The thing is I find Stockhausen funny. Like Klaus Kinski funny. Seriousness meets humour. This bit wasn't funny enough for me. It was ok. Nothing to write a blog about though.
I found my mind wandering to the uniformed in black shirt and pant performers and wondering what kind of social life they have. Who are the babes of the orchestra and who were the hunks. Did the guy with the glockenspeil get beaten up in a 'your not even a real musician' fit of rage afterwards by the violinists cause he only only got to play a note once every ten minutes?
Next up was a pre-recorded electronic number. Spotlight comes on. Looks like a moon on the curtains. Stays in one place for twenty minutes while swirling, distorted noises and ladies that sound like japanese kubuki singers, ping ponging round in 3d sound space. This was way fun to start with, but after a bit I felt like I was losing myself, and having had a hard night the night before I thought I may fall off my chair, or vomit into the very serious looking fellows lap next to me. I held it together and a break came. I grabbed a beer to make me feel better....which worked, and went back in for the last part.
I liked this the most. It was more standard musical fair, but with a some funny stops....wait....wait.....wait.....wait.....start again bits, which reminded me of the up channel on my mixer.
It was fairly pleasant music. Then out of no where BAM! A guy with a tuba walks out and does some awesome bass heavy farts for a little bit and then walks off. People laughed and clapped him off. Tuba man. least work, most claps. I worked out who the hunk was.
The night wasn't entirely what I expected, but I really enjoyed it.

Fred West is a nutcase...

2008-11-18T03:12:00.000-08:00

I think everybody who knows who he is knows that anyway really, so that is a pointless title for a post. But if you don't know look him up. He raised his children so him and his wife could beat and have sex with them. (and sometimes kill them if the whim struck them) They called this little happy family, 'The house of love'.
Sometimes he murdered women he got pregnant before they even had the baby. He also seemed to like murdering girls he loved. His wife helped too.
For some reason I have been watching documentaries on Serial killers. I'm not sure I enjoy them. They make me feel a little ill. I'm interested though. This one on youtube about Fred is a goodie............or a baddie I guess depending on which way you look at it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iGlGLscUtk
I think its in like 15 parts, so its also a long one.
Quoting Youtube:
'it as extremely controversial as it included exclusive police taped interviews with Fred West. The police tried to ban it but failed as the tapes were part of Fred West's Estate so were no longer their property, it resulted in the law being changed so in future Police Interviews would remain the property of The Home Office and would never again allowed to be sold.'

Karlheinz Stockhausen

2008-11-06T03:28:00.002-08:00

'What has happened is - now you all have to turn your brains around - the greatest work of art there has ever been. That minds could achieve something in one act, which we in music cannot even dream of, that people rehearse like crazy for ten years, totally fanatically for one concert, and then die. This is the greatest possible work of art in the entire cosmos. Imagine what happened there. There are people who are so concentrated on one performance, and then 5000 people are chased into the Afterlife, in one moment. This I could not do. Compared to this, we are nothing as composers... Imagine this, that I could create a work of art now and you all were not only surprised, but you would fall down immediately, you would be dead and you would be reborn, because it is simply too insane. Some artists also try to cross the boundaries of what could ever be possible or imagined, to wake us up, to open another world for us.'
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Hamburg, September 2001 after the 9/11 terror attacks.

Leftroom records @ Bar Rhumba

2008-11-03T15:31:00.000-08:00

Bar Rhumba is an old club in london (15years) that hasn't had a lot going on that I've wanted to go to. I spotted that they were doing a monthly techno night there on the interweb and decided I should go check it out. Its a small place, and reading their website I discovered they seemed to be in full support of the backlash against all the fucking cunt bags that end up in clubs in london. Trying to make their policy aimed more at people who actually know what music is going on in the club, and not letting in the stripped shirt wearing fucktards and gold shimmery dress wearing sluts who are just cruising down the street looking for anywhere to drink thats open so they can get more pissed than they are and go home and fuck each other and then vomit and then shit in the bed then laugh about it with their hugo boss jeans wearing mates later, seems like a good idea to me. Oh yeah did I mention they are aiming to be the home of techno in london? It sounded all too good to be true.
I was also pleased to see it was a Leftroom records night. I like these guys. They have been less caught up in the whole 'Berlin' sound than everybody else, well because....they aren't from Berlin. Which is good. I am slightly sick of hearing the same minimal techno sound over and over again. I also kind of think the whole scene in general is imploding in a weird way, with everybody just following a trend for a few months, then a new one pops up, and everybody follows that. Its really bad at the moment (Trumpets spring to mind...but then I like Trumpets a lot so I'll let that one fly), and the epi-centre seems to be Berlin. I guess a place gets too popular and everybody knows about it and then rapes it in the arse until it screams 'No more!' So they give it some more just to make sure. This is not the city itselfs fault. Just the knowledge spreading to idiots that its the techno capital of the world. And since techno is no longer a dirty word, this knowledge has spread to Wire reading, art magazine cocks and Djmag reading glow, stick cunts and everything in between. Come one, come all.
Berlin is still fortunate though because it still has plenty of the best Techno in the world coming out of it....I think most of the blame needs to fall on all the cunts who couldn't make music without Berlin. The people who just copy the sounds that come from there. And there are plenty of those.
Techno never used to be this way.
Still there is a real talent pool there of labels and people (including good friends of mine) who are not so caught up in the copying for popularity sake, but sometimes I wonder how long the citys number one on the podium spot can last?
Anyway, Leftroom is a tougher sound than is really popular at the moment and I like it.
Anywho. I got down there and there was a bit of a line outside. I wasn't sure that it was the right place, so I wandered up and said 'Is this the place that Matt Tolfrey is playing?' and they let me right in.
On the agenda for the night to play: Matt Tolfrey, Clive Henry and Neil Parkes.
It is a cool little dark bar/club. The PA wasn't really as good as I expected. It was really clear and sounded nice, but not enough bottom end to it. Still, there was only about 50 people in there and it was SO cool, being able to sit down and listen to cool music not surrounded by arseholes and have drinks. I LOVED IT.
Clive Henry was playing really good music too. Basically the kind of tough tough you'd expect from a leftroom night in that the sounds were sharp and clear, and there was less roll to the bassline. Not so warm and wobbley. Slightly sharp. There were warmer tracks in there but fewer than I am used to hearing out these days, at places like Fabric etc. If I had to define the sound using two labels as examples, it seemed like a perfect halfway point between cadenza and m_nus.
Anyway Matt Tolfrey came on and I had a dance , on a dance floor with PLENTY of space to move. Crazy.
He played well, and I spoke to him for a bit and he was a really nice guy.
My only thing I could say that maybe brought the night down a little was the fact that, because there were less people than in a normal club experience in London, the actual DJ'ing itself was kind of a I'll just do enough to get by kind of experience and not really a work the hell out of it type thing. I guess as the night gets a few more people (not too many though) this will change. Either way, its so nice to have a place where you can go, hang out without too much pressure, and listen to and chat about good music. Did I mention its right by my work? Did I also mention the major nights are on Fridays. It all seems a little bit too good to be true.
I'm gonna head down next month for sure.
November gigs I'm going to in the next month. Stockhaussen, (not actually him of course) Gravenhurst, Sun Ra Arkestra and Ricardo Villalobos.
Living in London is rad.

Shellac, Lightning Bolt etc.

2008-10-31T08:08:00.000-07:00

I went to a halloween gig last night consisting of a few bands and some djs and stuff. It was at the forum in London on a thursday and I was looking forward to it quite a lot. Myself and Lyn finished up work at 6 and went to the venue straight away because Lightning Bolt were playing at 6.30. This was somewhat annoying because they were the ones I really wanted to see, but I guess because they refuse to play on the stage and just play in the middle of the audience it was probably easier to have them first before the venue filled up. Anyway, this was a good start. A wall of distortion and drums and happy noises and somehow cute and cheerful but aggressive sound explosions of goodness. I particularly liked the slower noise making better, but the faster songs were surprisingly giggly. Overall I liked the fact that they didn't seem like a band of chin stroking seriousness, which can be the case if you have two fellas making noise type experimentalish rock.
One thing though: As they seemed to play out of their own Pa the sound just wasn't loud enough for such a large venue. It was ok for us because we went on the thursday so it wasn't busy and you could get nice and close, but I can only imagine on the friday it would have been frustrating not being able to get close enough to the speakers. I don't think Lightning Bolt suited the venue at all either. They really needed a dark sweaty basement with a low roof. Still orsum though.
They also reminded me of the droog band a bit which I liked.
Next up is a band called Pissed Jeans. Pissed Jeans were shit. The lead singer looked like he worked in a call centre in insurance or IT or something, which I guess was their wacky modus operandi cause you know its funny seeing a straight laced person sticking their finger up their bum and gyrating their hips. Only problem with this is he looked fucking uncomfortable doing all this stuff, like he was an actual IT/insurance guy (which I later found out he is) I can't explain it any better than it would be like Clark Kent changing into Superman and still having all Clark Kents mannerisms and really dumbed down and shit Superman mannerisms. They also sounded like any other fucking crap punk band. Their lyrics are supposed to be biting and sartirical. I didn't notice. I just thought they sounded shit. The drummer was good though, and young people seemed to like jumping up and down and bashing themselves into each other and walls to it.
Next was Wooden Shjips. These guys had beards like ZZ top and clothes like a American survivalist. I really liked them. They made me smile a lot with their kind minimalish, hypnotic, repetitive, surf music. They looked like they smoked heaps of weed, and I couldn't help feel that they kinda just kept things looping along because they were forgetting chord changes etc or just wanted to do them in their own time. It is strangely accessible music and it made me have a large grin for the duration.
Next on the agenda was Les Savy Fav. The best thing I could muster about them was their music was harmless. I don't think thats a good thing to say about music. The lead singer tried to make up for it by running around the audience and flashing his belly, and in that way I guess he got the crowd worked up a bit.....but the music was just so........harmless. Like a really inoffensive dog, thats neither cute enough to pat or ugly enough to take note of.
I had high hopes for Shellac. They weren't met in anyway. From what people had told me they were awesome live. I thought they sounded amazing in terms of actual sound production ie its seemed obvious that the Pa etc for the night had been tailored for them, but I just found there music pretty boring. Maybe its my fault because I don't know enough about rock, but, to my ears, the songs themselves sounded like 300 other bands I had already heard. I guess maybe they are just not my type of music. I gave up 3/4 of the way through and went and stood outside in the cold and smoked and talked to a guy who was wearing a labrador cross as a scarf. It was awesome. The dog just sat there. (it wasn't dead) He didn't even have to hold it on. I was slightly jealous. One disadvantage was the bouncers wouldn't let him into the gig though.
Om were on after Shellac, and I found them terribly boring. The singer/guitarist looked a lot like this guy Ben Comry I went to school with and seemed to behave exactly the same as my fourteen year old memories of him as well. They were pretty drab (not drab in a "this music is so drab it makes me wanna cut myself" way either just drab......kinda like off brown curtains) and pretty boring. We left then.
That was about the night. Also of note was that Andy Weatherall of two lone swordsman fame was djing in between acts, but considering his considerable talent as a dj it was a disappointment. He really was just a juke box. I would have liked to see him play some more challenging music and maybe play for longer at the end.
I enjoyed the night despite being less than enthused with any of the later acts. It is good having a variation of stuff on(although I thought they could have taken that further) and I never got bored.
Lightning Bolt was ace, and now I can't stop listening to them.

Overdeveloped sense of vengence.

2008-10-30T05:31:00.000-07:00

At what point do you start running your emotions like a communist state instead of a democracy? I have been ponderising the hell out of this lately. The inner struggle of doing what is right by everybody else and what is right by you. Sometimes if you try to please everybody all of the time it leads to a SUPERMASSIVE melt down of mega proportions.
The same is true of the other way around.
In other news. I really like the title of this post. It has nothing to do with the above. It was on an episode of fonejacker I watched, and I laughed one hell of a lot and quite loudly as well. I want to write a Charles Bronson style revenge movie back of DVD cover blurb using that turn of phrase. So I will.

Steve Grittycops family is mildly offended by some guy on the street. Steve makes the decision to kill him so hard that the mildly offensive mans parents, friends, friends kids, future kids they might have, people they know and family doctor all die too. Steve Grittycops has an Overdeveloped Sense of Vengence.

I think...

2008-10-24T04:55:00.000-07:00

Paul Thomas Anderson is set to become one of the greatest American directors ever. Big claim, but he is still so young, and makes films well beyond his years. In 40 years times I'll say I told you so.

While I'm on the subject of cunts.

2008-10-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

Youtube recommended this to me as something I might watch. Ha. Here are some of the best comments from the comments section.

Looks god!

lol looks stupid but...eh maybe still watchable
why Dragonfly? xD

I love it when he breakdances on the side of the building! Can't wait 2 see it on the big screen, or at least in my living room!

break dancing on da wall!

I love the part when he get's hit by da bus three times and when he break dances on da wall.

I love when he keeps getting hit by the bus!!
Yeah cause thats funny you fucking muppets. If you love watching people get hit by stuff and dancing wacky so much watch Americas Funniest Home Movies. In fact I wonder if I made a movie version of that if these idiots would go to it. Probably. Judging by their use of youth urban slang I'd probably have to make it slightly more street though. Americaz Dopest Crib Movies? Sounds like baby porn to me.

is this basically a spoof of spiderman but a comedy?
This person is so sharp they should become a cop or a PI, or maybe the President of the US (Oh look obvious political humor! I should write one of these movies!).........I feel dirty.

This might be funny. It only seems to make fun of spiderman and there are no pop culture jokes maybe they finally listened to my letters.
This one makes me all sorts of puzzled. Someone actually went to the effort to write to the people that make these movies with some creative input. And more than once! What?

wow when i heard of the movie i didnt think it would be that good but after the preview im going to see it right when it comes out
You're an idiot. A preview is supposed to be full of the best bits to make you want to see the movie, and as far as I can see there are no best bits in that preview.

dang this is funny! im gonna watch this!
Dang? I would take their word for it that its funny, but they probably also find shooting wreaked cars with AK47s and gang rape on city folk amusing.

it looks better than meet the spartans
Way to go. It looks funnier than one of the worst movies of all time. Thats a hella recommendation.

Just try to breathe.
I can't, you're nailing on my crotch!
LOL
What this guy is doing here is, saying a line from the movie and then adding LOL after. This shows us that he thinks its funny.

its like spiderman
Another brilliant observation

i wanna see this cause ive
seen all tha scary movies and i ve seen epic movie and ive seen date movie
they all fucking rule i really wanna see meet tha spartans but and dis
I don't know how anyone can think any of these movies 'Rule'
Why do people find these films funny. Taking a succesful movie, and then remaking it shot for shot but worse, isn't funny.
Why is remaking Spiderman funny?
I don't understand.

IMDB. The D should be for Dumarse

2008-10-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

Examples of reviews found on this garbage dump of crap opinions.

MAX PAYNE
Max Payne was a very slow moving movie for the first part of the movie. The reason why it was slow though is because it was explaining the story of the movie. The story was very good and kept going with it all the way until the very end. The last half of the movie really kicks it up and has a ton of action. I liked all of the special and visual effects. Their were many slow motion scenes that made the movie cool. The visuals were very good and many of them were shots of tall long buildings. Mark Whalberg was very good and did a stellar job as Max Payne. Mila Kunis was good as t they can use to showcase their style of film making.

THE BIG LEBOWSKI
This movie was a confusing, mixed-up mess that took a while to piece back together in the end, as well as leaving a few plot holes behind. Like what happened to the guys in the beginning that threw Jeff into the toilet, demanding his money? And instead of a clever kidnapping/ransom story, we find out in the end that the girl Bunny never really WAS kidnapped. What?!? Jeff Bridge's character, also named Jeff, or the "Dude" (oh, god) goes through the movie trying to save another man named Lebowski's slutty, porno-star wife (Tara Reid)and gets his ass kicked all the way. This movie sucks.

DUDE WHERES MY CAR
This movie is funny, period. Everyone I know (and like) that saw it thought it was hilarious, including me. I don't understand what people were expecting when they saw this! It was a thousand times funnier than any recent Ben Stiller "comedy". There are at least a dozen scenes that made me laugh out loud. The couple of people that actually wrote a good review for this said that it was so stupid that it was funny. Well, I don't think it was any stupider than most of the unfunny "comedies" that have come out lately...And a lot of people compared the to "Bill and Ted". Why? It was nothing like "Bill and Ted", except for maybe there were 2 male leads, like countless other buddy comedies. You people are just... WRONG!

SEX AND THE CITY
Hearing Samantha saying FABULOUS again after so long...,
I really enjoyed it!! It was like a double episode AND on the big screen!! Everything felt familiar yet a bit different since their lives have moved on and in the end it gave me a sense of closure. For me it absolutely worked. I was really hesitant after visiting IMDb but really for me it had it all - Fabulous Samantha on the west coast, happy Charlotte wife and mom, Miranda on the verge of a nervous breakdown and of course Big.. Carrie moments. And of course Carrie shoes.. In some scenes I laughed my heart out, in others I was (almost) in tears. From a summer night in the theater I am perfectly content. Thanks SaTC I got Carried away..

Ugh.

straight to lunchbox

2008-10-17T07:03:00.000-07:00

Is a good term. Its like straight to DVD, except that in this case no one actually sees the film. They just buy the merchandise. My friend is working on 'Fast and Furious 4'
I think that is a straight to lunchbox film.
One day they might just stop making the movies and just do the merchandise.
I can see the marketing pitch in my head. Its really funny. I'm thinking board room. A couple of guys called Steve. Some graphs on how they can save money by skipping the film production part out of the film making process. Haha. Funny.

My stomach hurts

2008-10-17T06:40:00.000-07:00

I just hopped into a very small elevator at my work. It just holds four people. I am slightly delirious from working too much and hard and also drinking too much booze last night.
Another three people were in the elevator. One man nervously said to me,
"I'm one hundred kilos" and then pointed at me obviously intending to see how heavy I was so as to calculate the likely hood of us plummeting to our death. I somehow misheard him and simply answered "Greg"
I realized when he looked at me funny he hadn't in fact asked my name. Everyone in the lift looked at me strangely. In my hungover daze I began laughing hysterically. I laughed so much tears came to my eyes and I got a sore stomach. The people in the elevator got out before me. I know they work here, but on a different floor and I have never spoken to them before.
They probably think I'm crazy now. I bet the first guy is writing a blog right now that goes: I asked a guy his weight in an elevator. He answered "Greg" and then started laughing hysterically. What a crack job.
....
....
....
....
....
A JOKE

A man is waiting for his wife to give birth. The doctor comes in and informs the dad that his son was born without torso, arms or legs. The son is just a head! But the dad loves his son and raises him as well as he can, with love and compassion.

After 18 years, the son is now old enough for his first drink. Dad takes him to the bar, tearfully tells the son he is proud of him and orders up the biggest, strongest drink for his boy. With all the bar patrons looking on curiously and the bartender shaking his head in disbelief, the boy takes his first sip of alcohol.

Swoooosh! Plop!! A torso pops out! The bar is dead silent; then bursts into whoops of joy. The father, shocked, begs his son to drink again. The patrons chant 'Take another drink!'

The bartender continues to shake his head in dismay. Swoooosh! Plip! Plop!! Two arms pop out.

The bar goes wild. The father, crying and wailing, begs his son to drink again. The patrons chant, 'Take another drink! Take another drink!!' The bartender ignores the whole affair and goes back to polishing glasses, shaking his head, clearly unimpressed by the amazing scenes.

By now the boy is getting tipsy, but with his new hands he reaches down, grabs his drink and guzzles the last of it. Plop! Plip!! Two legs pop out. The bar is in chaos.

The father falls to his knees and tearfully thanks God. The boy stands up on his new legs and stumbles to the left then staggers to the right through the front door, into the street, where a truck runs over him and kills him instantly The bar falls silent.

The father moans in grief.

The bartender says,
'He should've quit while he was a head'

This is good stuff.

2008-10-01T03:58:00.000-07:00

I was bored.

2008-09-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

I have been having a mental block with techno lately, which I think is an easy thing to happen if you have gone to many lack lustre gigs in a row. Its not that I didn't enjoy C/Opop. I did. Its just I thought I could really get into things there, and I really didn't. My enjoyment of the music was good but not amazing. I think perhaps had I seen all of Villalobos set I would have rated it more. I just felt everybody else wasn't as good as they could have been. Anyway, because of this I haven't been listening to any mixes at all either. In a strange twist of fate, reading this blog and seeing the link to mnmlssg, my friend Jerry, who originally got me into Techno in the early to mid nineties but hasn't listened in years is having a resurrection. In a cyclical cycle of immense tornado type proportions it seems he is having the same effect again (albeit on a much lesser scale, but I was being dramatic.)
He sent me one of the mixes that mnmlssg have up for download saying he was really enjoying it and what did I think. Well, J my man. I have listened to it and it rules. It rules really hard. Hard like a granite table made out of solid oak and diamonds. The man mixing is Peter Van Hoesen and I think he deserves to be more famous than he is. Anyway here it is with tracklisting and all. The mix to me seems really co-heasive, but at the same time intricate and never stale. I saw that he put its not the type of thing he'd normally play out, and I think thats a real shame because I would love to hear this type of set out. I listened to it before I read Peters description and as I was listening I was reminded of the best sets I had seen. If I could go out and see a set like this, I think my faith would be restored. The last really great set I think I saw was over a year ago and was by Jens Bond at a half empty Fabric. Perhaps I'm just going to the wrong parties.

I think its time to take reality TV to the next level.

2008-09-09T01:54:00.000-07:00

Having been unable to avoid the glut of reality television that festers away on screens all around the world, I decided to have (a very brief) think about what the next step is. Some reality Tv isn't so bad I have decided. It can be entertaining and as one friend of mine pointed out, if you move to a new country where English isn't the first language it can be kind of comforting to be able to understand whats going on in a program without actually understanding the language. Apparently the Americas Next Top Model derivative Germanys Next Top Model is good for this. I hope none of Tyras good advice is lost in the translation though. It would be frustrating if girls in Germany didn't know how to 'get it going on' because of a silly little language barrier. Girl Sie bekam es los!
I also have picked up a bad habit of watching everything that Gordon Ramsey is in just cause I love the swearing and him punctuating every sentence with 'uh' and find the whole thing really funny.

To be honest though its not these type of shows that annoy me so much. Its the shows with the people who aren't famous already, who are trying so desperately to be famous. Big Brother is probably the prime example, but there seem to be literally thousands of them. There is something so skin crawlingly bad about watching grown people act like they are having fun, are 'up for it' and generally acting like the biggest cunts possible in the vague hope that someone will notice them and they will become famous. Whats even more annoying is nearly all of these people have zero talent and zero reason that we should be watching them in the first place. But then somehow (mostly in the UK) they actually do become famous for a time, and I end up reading on the tube about where they have been going out to and who with. Why should I care? I have not the foggiest.
Sometimes I can't help but wonder what these people would be like in a war......probably not for any other reason that I want to imagine them blow up. Sometime it seems hard to fathom why these people think they should be famous, especially when you see the ones on those talent show type deals who actually believe they are really talented and quite clearly are not.

Anyway going on this they really want to be famous notion, a friend of mine thought up a brilliant idea for a big brother like show.
You take a whole lot of people, interview them and then carefully select a group that really want to be famous. You put them in a house equipped with fake cameras, tell them to act up, lock the doors for 3 months and then just not film them at all. The brilliant part is when they come out no one will know who the fuck they are, but they'll think they are national celebrities. Not real reality tv more just reality.
My idea actually involves Tv.
Basically, you get all the stupid, fame hungry, think they have talent idiots like this

and again make them live in a large house. Maybe this house can have big grounds too. You can set them tasks or do whatever you want with them really. Now it sounds a lot like big brother up to this point but the point of difference with my show, is none of it goes out immediately and also you set up cameras in places where you specifically have said you haven't. So they will think there are safe zones. You wait for like three months whilst filming them constantly, you know, enough time to get plenty of footage of them falling over and doing stupid shit. Then you just edit together a half an hour long special of them doing nothing but falling over, bumping into shit, going to the toilet, squeezing zits, Farting, basically anything to make them look stupid. I like the idea of cutting it to the 1970s Dawn of the Dead supermarket music by Goblin. It may sound really childish, but I think all that these blights of society deserve is basically what equates to Worlds Funniest Home Movies.
Besides, people find other people falling over funny. Look.

The bad thing about this is that, in the UK at least anyway, they would probably become famous for it anyway. Cunts.
One other option I guess then, is again, the Big Brother
scenario, but you actually do film them. Every night when they go to bed you move the walls in by say, two inches. It'll be funny watching them get confused and in the end, you have the bonus that they get crushed. Maybe as it draws towards the end of the series we could introduce water everyday too, and perhaps some predatory animals.

Get back together you cunts.

2008-09-04T09:41:00.001-07:00

This thing is disturbingly scary.

2008-09-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

Its a version of an unfinished work by Mark Twain called 'The Mysterious Stranger'.
For some reason someone in the 80s thought it would make a sweet little scene in a kids movie called 'The Adventures of Mark Twain'.
I agree. Kids need to know about the futility of mans existence. Nice small ideas to really fuck them up in the head. Great to get to sleep to when your 5.
The voices and animation really are a cut above the rest in terms of general creepiness. If I ever have kids maybe I'll put a tv in their room and they can watch this every night in the dark right before they go to sleep. Hell (haha) I wouldn't watch it by myself in the dark.

How to get into any club.

2008-09-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

Silly Dj humour. Quite funny in parts I thought.

Bo Hansson and Accidental Dark Knight Hatrid

2008-09-03T08:36:00.000-07:00

So I was watching Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings the other day, and I have to say I don't think its a bad effort considering the length and breadth of the source material. In my humble opinion it takes a large poop on The Dark knight.......Oh and speaking of which this was one of the 'Featured' reviews of The Dark Knight explaining how good it was on IMDB:

Batman has always been my favourite superhero ever since the first time I heard about him because he his human with no powers, also he is much more questionable than any other superhero. The story of the film is about Batman, Lieutenant James Gordon, and new district attorney Harvey Dent beginning to succeed in rounding up the criminals that plague Gotham City. They are unexpectedly challenged when a mysterious criminal mastermind known as the Joker appears in Gotham. Batman's struggle against the Joker becomes deeply personal, forcing him to "confront everything he believes" and to improve his technology (which introduces the recreation of the Batcycle, known as the Batpod and the Batsuit was redesigned) to stop the madman's campaign of destruction. During the course of the film, a love triangle develops between Bruce Wayne, Dent and Rachel Dawes.

There are now six Batman films and I must say that The Dark Knight is the best out of all of them. The title is good because that is what Batman actually is. It has been 3 years for the adventure to continue from Batman Begins but that entire wait was worth it. Gotham city is very Gothic looking and is very haunting and visionary. The whole movie is charged with pulse-pounding suspense, ingenious special effects and riveting performances from a first-rate cast especially from Heath Ledger who gave an Oscar nomination performance for best supporting-actor. It is a shame that he can't see his terrific work on-screen. The cinematography is excellent which is made so dark & sinister that really did suit the mood for the film. Usually sequels don't turn out to be better than the original but The Dark Knight is one of those rare sequels that surpasses the original like The Godfather 2. I also really liked the poster where the building is on fire in a Bat symbol & Batman is standing in front of it. Christopher Nolan is a brilliant director and his film Memento is one of my most favourite films. He hasn't made 10 movies yet and 3 of them are already on the IMDb top 250. Overall The Dark Knight is the kind of movie that will make the audience cheer in the end instead of throwing fruit & vegetables on the screen.)

I mean really. Whoever wrote that must have been really very bung in the head.

"The title is good cause that is what Batman is"

"Gotham city is very Gothic looking and is very haunting and visionary"

This person is clearly a waste of oxygen and needs to be farmed.
I have no understanding of why it became the front page review on IMDB either. Maybe its just automated. Either way with people of that intellectual caliber telling me its good I can see I'll be talked around soon.

Even smart people have been suckered in to saying its good even though they are filling it so full of holes in their reviews and basically saying its not a great movie yet its still getting all this award talk. There were so many better movies out this year and this getting put on a pedestal really annoys me.

Anyway.....I got a little side tracked then on the Batman hate. Sorry. I have to stop this.

So we were watching LOTR and it made me think about Bo Hansson
If you read the Wikipedia entry you'll see he made music inspired by Lord of the Rings was his first solo album. I used to listen to this a lot with my friends when I was younger and I realized I hadn't listened to it in ages. It reminds me of so many good times and so many fun times. Emotional time and place attachment is big on these tracks. I looked it up on Youtube and hey presto someone had put the album up. So for convenience I have posted the videos into this post with titles.
I really think Peter Jacksons movies could have done with some of this music......and way less slow motion.....and no Elijah Wood.........or Sean Astin.
Enjoy.

Fog on the Barrow Downs

The Old Forest

The Black Riders

The Horns of Rohan

The Gray Havens

Dreams in the House of Healing

Shadowfax

Lothlorien

Homeward bound and the Shire

I'm becoming cynical about my cynicism....

2008-09-01T04:42:00.000-07:00

and I'm not sure where abouts that leaves me.

Haha.....haha.....ha

2008-08-29T04:54:00.000-07:00

http://ronaldchevalier.com/

The Dark Knight.

2008-08-26T10:48:00.000-07:00

Is a bad movie. I got so bored I wanted to sleep. I was gonna write a foot stomp to the throat review of it, but I'm not sure the damage to the ends of my fingers from aggressive typing would be worth the effort. I didn't hate it as much as Titanic, but I still lost a little faith in humanity over the fact everybody seems to love it so much. Maybe I am missing something. I think the movie just should have been Heath Ledger sitting a room doing his bit for the 25-30mins total he was in it. I didn't even think he was that great though.
I nearly left the cinema and I never do that.
My girlfriend got angry at me because of my grunts of despair.
I've written off a little check list that Christopher Nolan must have adhered to strictly when making this movie.

Character development: Nil
Bad/Lazy editing: 100 percent
Stupid plot that tries to be all realistic crime thriller sometimes, but when it suits it, comic book silly: Oh you better believe it
Too many plot threads causing you to not really get anyones motivation for anything, except for the most minimal idea of what they could possibly be thinking: Sure
Too many plot threads causing the film to be far too long and boring: Oh yeah
Completely wooden and really boring acting from Christian Bale and Maggie Gyllenhaal: Yep
Michael Cane and Morgan Freeman acting exactly the same way they act in every single movie they have ever been in: uh huh, uh huh.
Character who gets disfigured and becomes evil with little explanation as to why considering he was a pretty rational guy beforehand: Yes oh yes.

I thought Aaron Eckhart and Gary Oldman were pretty good, but Oldman didn't have enough screen time and Eckhart sucked after his turn into two face which was more of a problem with the terrible script than his acting. Funnily enough I think I liked Eckhart because he is a slightly over the top looking comic book character-esque guy and his part as the morally in-corruptible white knight of Gotham was really over the top............well morally in-corruptible until he gets very easily corrupted later on. This is among some of the ridiculous contradictions in the script.
For instance why does the joker, who in the middle of the film is shown burning his half of a large amount of money because he in no way is motivated by money, go to such lengths to get more of his share of the money in the opening scene? Why kill off all those henchmen who would be much more useful to him alive to help pull off his (frankly) impossible to pull off plans for their money?
Then there is the jokers stupidly easy escape from jail when the police forget to put the most dangerous criminal in Gothams handcuffs back on and leave him with the door unlocked and one unarmed guard.
Now I can hear people saying 'Suspension of disbelief', and usually I would agree with that. Except. Nolan and everybody who has seen this and loved it goes to great lengths to tell you how realistic it is, and that Nolan wanted to make a serious crime thriller like Heat. Well its not realistic. It doesn't even tread a fine line between being serious and silly. Its just an overlong and pretenious comic book film, which takes all the fun out of comic book films.
My advice, hire Heat and Tim Burtons original Batman and watch them at home. They are both much better movies and probably collectively shorter too.
I guess I ended up writing a foot stomp to the throat review then.

C/O Pop

2008-08-19T11:32:00.000-07:00

So myself and my good friend Mark did a bit of a trip over to Cologne in Germany for the Cologne on Pop festival. (or ze Germans idea of pop which in a Uk/Nz sense doesn't really translate to Kylie or Brittney)
I'm sort of wanting to call it the Confused on Pop festival, not because the festival did anything to confuse me, but because I got internally confused by the festival. I think I may get to that later.
We decided to take the train to Cologne from London because it seemed more adventurous, and having watched 'The Darjeeling Ltd' five times now and loving it to bits the idea really tickled me.
So we got on the super fast train, and on the five hours down (with a stop in the middle in Brussels, which incidently in our hour there seemed quite boring) and went and stood at the the bar a pretty much drunk continually the whole way. It was quite fun propping yourself up at the bar and watching Europe go by whilst drinking overpriced beer, but it certainly wasn't like the romantic ideal I had in my head. Why oh why do they have to make modern trains so stark and hospital like on the inside. I want 1930s plush plushness with a stale smell of books and a slightly moldy feel. Maybe a few special made mini chandeliers that look like a rich Smurfs extravagance.
We arrived in Cologne, had a quick meal of what tasted like reheated lasanga and then headed out to the Kompakt Total 9 party, figuring what better place to go to a Kompakt party than in its home. Speaking of which I never realised the Kompakt logo is in fact the logo of Cologne. It was funny walking around and seeing it on Ambulances and man hole covers everywhere.
The party itself was in a large hall with arches running the whole length and immense ceiling height. Impressive but the sound left a little bit to be desired. There was also an upstairs which was smaller and had much better sound. The party itself was only ok. No one really took off though. Supermayer did most of the songs of their album live, which was interesting to see, and I am quite happy to report that Superpitchers voice translates quite well live.
Aril Brihka was boring as buggery. I hate that new trance bollocks he makes and plays. It never really went anywhere and just seemed stale. I suppose some people could get into it, and there is no doubt his stuff sounds really good so he is obviously a talented producer, its just not my cuppa.
Tobias Thomas was good, but not as good as I have seen him. It was still a fun place to be and not a total right off, I guess I was expecting more of a Kompakt wind up as the night rolled on and not just to be belted in the face with quite hard music right from the outset. Maybe this is a problem of having all headliners on a line up. Either way, the musical flow felt somehow off. In fact I think I only had a decent bop round to DJ Koze. I did end up speaking to Sasha Funke in an rather embarrassing mix up of identity, but thats another story.
We decided to head off to the after party. So after a lovely stroll around Cologne in the wee hours and an annoying conversation with some rich English university students who were trying to reason out and use their philosophy 101 majors on our obviously tongue in cheek conversation about the possibility of farming dumb humans for meat, we arrived at Odonien which as you can see by the photo is a cool junkyard space equipped with fire breathing junk dinosaurs and all.
The actual mixer and turntables are hanging from the ceiling in a small room at the back of the junkyard and although at first this looks like it surely must be a dodgy as place to put turntables, despite the gentle rocking back and forth they never seemed to skip.......until knocked mid mix by one of the above annoying students.
This was much more like it. Michael Mayer and Superpitcher playing back to back, an absolutely fantastic sound system and a sunny day in an open venue. We sat here for quite a while soaking up the sun, talking rubbish (this farming humans conversation just wouldn't die) and listening to the music. Which was really good by the way. A lot more of that music they are known for that makes even the straightest of white men swing their hips from side to side like they are a funky fresh jive talking black man from the 70s. Although I note with much horror that now I am 30 I seem to have replaced any type of dancing with a casual thigh slap which would look more at home in a hoedown. Needless to say at this party my jeans were getting a worn patch on my right thigh.
After this we went for a quick sight see around Cologne (Cologne Cathedral is one of the most impressive buildings ever) Then we went home to bed.
We awoke at about 10.30 on sat night, faffed around for ages then got going to see Larry Heard at the Subway club. This was a strange choice for us, but with the hang over still grasping at my head like the pincers of a giant crab the idea of the Triebstoff party or the Traum party seemed too heavy and too far away. Subway was right around the corner from our hotel as well.
Subway is really cool. When I first walked in I thought that perhaps it was a little cramped, but the bar staff were really quick at serving so it was never a problem getting a drink and I ended up really liking the place. It has a lovely tight sound system, and they let just the right amount of people in. We basically just sat and had a good listen to the music and chatted whilst sinking copious amounts of beer to fight off the dehydration of the night before thus becoming fully entrenched in the circle of alcoholism this weekend was creating. Larry Heard was pretty good. I'm not a massive fan of house with vocals telling you its house music. We were never quite sure why we needed constant reminding. I'm also not sure about the lyrics which state things like 'Music is love and love will solve problems' and how soulful and how much love house creates. I always just want the music to speak for itself. Luckily the tracks underneath this carry on were really good, and he had a pattern which we deciphered that went a little something like this: Vocal house, vocal house, acid house, acid house, techno/tech house, techno/tech house then round again.
I was surprised to hear a Johannes Heil track and he certainly pulled out AME -Rej at a funny time. His mixing was tight, but sometimes the tracks he put together didn't work so well and it sounded quite messy. I enjoyed the musical variation though and it was a lot of fun. Kraftwerk- numbers sounded amazing over that system as well. Superpitcher showed up with a bunch of flossies in tow and had a bit of a groove next to us as well. He looked like he hadn't slept since the party from the night before. We left this party at about 4.30 in the morning to go and get some more sleep. I really enjoyed this night. It was nice and relaxing and the music proved to be again, thigh slappingly good. The worn patch continued to grow.
We woke at about 11.30 am the next day and sat round and read books for a bit. I read Ballards 'Empire of the Sun' and am writing a bit about that at the moment as well. Theres nothing like reading a war book to make you feel alive and happy after you have removed your brain from the grimness and repositioned it in a sunny Cologne where your about to go and see Ricardo Villalobos and Sven Vath.
We had a big long walk down to the venue which was pretty good, but as it turns out a mistake. You see this open air party started at midday and finished at ten pm. We assumed Villalobos would be playing last, but as it turned out we assumed wrong. Sometimes those assumption things really bite you in the ass. I really should have payed more attention to that stupid saying about it.
Anywho, we arrived at this little grassy area covered in a circle tent with speakers and about 1000 german wasters of vary sizes and description. There really were some funny looking people there. Being an overweight guy with large biceps and no top on seemed to be one of the orders of the day. Old Villalobos was doing his thing when we arrived, and I have to say, no matter how many times I see him I just don't get bored. This is because every time I have seen him, he has played completely differently to the last time. He had his whole tribal minimal Latin click thing going on so we did some more thigh slapping. I really enjoyed it when he played the B side of what I believe was Lucianos 'Amelie on ice' and he finished of his set with an ever lasting mix into a beatless orchestral, rolling thunderish sounding track. It was a shame we only saw him for an hour, but it was a very good hour. Sven Vath came wandering up and wouldn't start mixing until they found a mic, plugged it into the mixer and had someone announce his arrival. Which was twatsville USA if you ask me. I really don't rate him as a dj anymore. I think he has just become a crazed, over drugged, silly man. He did his usual act up to the crowd, which was not cute or funny anymore and played really obvious tracks right till the very end when he would do a one or two bar mix even though he had been standing there queing the track up for the full 6-8 mins of the previous track. See this as an example of what I mean. The extended cueing drives me insane!!!!!!! Just mix the tracks together already. After watching Ricky V Sven Vath looked like Amateur hour. So we left.
After this we went out for dinner, and then went of for a drink with Emma Jean, who is a NZ'r who lives in Cologne and I have had an internet friendship with, but only ever really met twice in noisy clubs beforehand and for a total time of about 5 mins and about 5 years ago on top of that. Its always amusing meeting someone you only know from over the internet, and me being me suffered a case of verbal diarrhoea. I have found in the past from meeting people like this that they often speak how they write, and somehow, and I'm not sure how, it seems that their mannerisms imitate their words in some way too.
So that was my C/o Pop experience. Its a festival I will attend again. Is really enjoyable and seems to have a nice laid back vibe about it.
Now the confusion part. I'm beginning to wonder if I am seeing just as good a dj sets as I used to, but not enjoying it as much because I'm getting bored of the music. I'm sure I would have liked the Kompakt party more a year ago. Or am I?
I guess I'll throw all my balls on the table and see if they bounce by going next year and seeing the lay of the land.

I'd just like to say.....

2008-08-19T02:55:00.000-07:00

That I think Christian Bale is the new Sean Penn. I don't think thats a good thing.

Poo covered in a visual rhapsody.

2008-08-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

I like Michel Gondry. Or I used to. Maybe I still do. I dunno. Anyway, I have two reasons for which my estimation of him has gone down somewhat. One I can't talk about, but involves work, and a relation of his, so take my word for it. The other is because of 'Be Kind Rewind'.
I don't know what happened here. I'll sum up the plot for you, and probably take a few pot shots on the way.
Theres these two guys, one a black guy played by Mos Def, and a white guy, played by Jack Black.
The black guy listens to jazz. Stereotype. Racial. The white guy acts a lot like Jack Black.....but a not funny Jack Black. Maybe more like an impersonator of Jack Black doing a very bad Jack Black. Seriously. Its like Gondry pointed the camera at him and said 'Act funny'.
I felt uncomfortable for him.
Anyway, these guys live in this kinda slummy part of some American city which could be New York but I can't remember, and work in a video store owned by this other old guy who is black and played by Danny Glover, who is also black. The Video store boss also listens to Jazz and makes up lies about it.
Jack Black for some unknown reason....I think probably cause he is wacky and Jack Black like, and you know him, he is CRAZY, decides to attack some power station with a grappling hook. Anyway he ends up being eletrocuted and becomes magnetized in a wacky Gondry way.........because I don't know if you realise this........but in real life.....you'd die. Fuck I love Gondrys little wacky flights of fancy. He's so wacky and cute. Anyway he goes back to the video store and wipes all the tapes.
The boss guy who listens to Jazz and is a liar, has gone away to look at other video stores to find out what makes them money, because guess what? His business is failing. It needs saving.
(Funnily enough when looking around one of the mega stores, he says, 'More copies of the same film, less selection' in a hysterical satirical social attack on Dvd shops and those films that they make so many copies of that you can by them in supermarkets. Which is double funny cause I bought 'Be Kind Rewind' in a supermarket.)
Not wanting to damage the Boss guys store Jack Black and Mos Def decide to remake all the films in the store on the cheap with a video camera.
Now, Although what I have written so far sounds pretty scathing, I actually really like the idea of guys remaking films on the cheap and coming up with awesome ways to recreate scenes which everybody already loves and knows in an inventive and cheap way. The problem is that, this only seems to make up about 1/5th of the movie. About 1/5th of that 1/5th is inventive and interesting. The rest of it is just crap. 1/5th of 1/5th of this movie equals about 2 mins and in each of those minutes I laughed once. This is exactly how much I laughed during the whole film.
Anyway, the guys end up making enough money to save the store, but then get sued by the corporations for pirating their movies. (Those guys again. To get out of that one they should have made some logo art out of the DVD logo where instead of standing for Digital Versitile Disc, it stood for Defining Vacuous Dicks. Then they could have plastered pictures of George Bush all over it sucking Tony Scotts cock.....political, with a cool and popular opinion about movies and the types of people that watch them and a little nonsensical as well so you can say 'Don't you get it?' That would have shown them.)
The guys come up with an idea of making a movie that is an original idea so they gather the community together to help them make a movie about a Jazz singer who used to live in the video store building. Only it turns out he never did. The Boss made up a whole lot of stories about the guy that never really happened, but as it turns out none of them give a fuck, so they also decide that they should all make up stories about this jazz singer and put them in the film. So its a town of liars.
Anyway the corporations see the film the lying fuckwads of a community made whilst standing outside with their bulldozers waiting to smash the store to shit and find it as heartwarming as the putrid music playing on the soundtrack. The credits roll.
I really like Gondrys other films and music videos. I like all the cool, clever little tricks he does. I like the design and art direction of his stuff. I like how you can tell stuff is a Gondry film. None of that shit matters. You can have all the cool ideas you want to add salt and pepper to a story, but if its a bad story its not gonna make one turd of a difference. For me, this turned Gondry completely into the 'arthouse' version of Michael Bay. All style and no substance. The fact that he even had a cool idea like that and ruined it makes it even worse. Again a Michal Bay comparison: Gondry had two guys remaking films we know and love in a downright funny and interesting way as his idea, Michal Bay had giant Transforming robots. Both great ideas for a movie and both these cunts managed to fuck them up.
I went and did a search for Gondry on Youtube and found all these wacky ideas that he has been making into little films. I particularly didn't like ones where he sprouts hands out of the ends of his fingers/nostrals/feet to do multiple rubix cubes all at once. I can see how maybe you'd make it once (I think the feet one was first), but to be honest why keep making it? Its not hard to do, its not really all that clever and its not really funny.
I think he has some brilliant ideas and I loved 'Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind'(which he didn't write)
I just hope 'Be Kind Rewind' isn't a sign of things to come.

Fake Fist Dinosaur Punch

2008-08-12T15:48:00.000-07:00

Is a movie I saw the other day that was made in the 70s. Its about a hired gun who can time travel. (I dunno who this guy was but he looked like a skinnier Steven Seagal without the ponytail and was obviously an American putting on an English accent really badly) He is originally from England and is a soldier in WW1. He was fighting in the trenches when a freak lightning bolt caused by scientific experiments the Germans were doing with a weather weapon, hit him in the Lee Enfield (thats the standard bolt action rifle of an infantryman during the war) and not only caused him to zap into the future, but also gave him the ability to control where he is in space and time. As a weird side effect it made him the best lover in the universe and he scores heaps of futuristic poontang. (I kid you not, its weirdly 70s softcore!) When he arrives in the future(1996) he realises that the world has been overrun by genetically and robotically enhanced super dinosaurs. In the future he also meets a wise old futuristic kung fu cowboy played by David Carradine. He finds out from him that there was a 'World war 2' after he left. In this second world war, Adolf Hitler did experiments with robotic dinosaurs and used them to win the war. He soon lost control of them though and the robotic dinosaurs began mating with crocodiles and other forms of reptiles, forming a race of super robot dinosaurs which now inhabit the earth. The Cowboy kung fu master teaches our hero how to kill these monsters (and he also modifies his lee enfield into a bolt action super rifle) and in an effort to save the world from its roboty dinosaury fate, sends him back in time to this alternative WW2 to stop the dinosaurs before they can be created. He makes several failed attempts at this as the Germans base is so solidly guarded it is impossible to get to the creators of the robot dinosaurs. He nearly dies in the process several times. In one of the attempts he gets very close and sees someone he recognises amongst the German scientists, but cannot place the face.
As he makes more and more attempts on the German base, and flits around in time scoring chicks he is plagued with nightmares containing the German scientists face.
In a scene of eplosive emotional hard hitting explosiveness he realises that the German scientist is the very young soldier he was about to kill as he got hit by lightning. He realises that he can't affect anything from the point before he got hit by lightning and can't even travel back before said event and after testing out all his time traveling options soon finds out the young German is seemingly protected from him as well in anytime and anyplace. It is apparent that he has been given god like powers, but only his normal self, before the strike, has the ability to kill the young German at that exact point in time. So he has a choice. Travel back in time and move himself out of the way of the lightning, thus erasing his own time traveling future pimp-ness self but saving the future from a world plagued with dinosaurs, or fuck the rest of the world and go score chicks and time travel and shit. He chooses the later.
....
....
....
I didn't actually see this, I just made it up. I wish I could travel in time so I could make this in the 70s.

The twitches on my face.

2008-08-11T05:27:00.000-07:00

I find my face contorting in all sorts of weird ways lately. I didn't actually notice this myself, but now that it has been pointed out to me I can't help feeling the furrowing of my brow and the strange scowl that covers my face as the top of my lip pulls back over my teeth. I know this from feeling as the scowl I have seen what seems like one or two million times on the face of Nick. (My father)
Nick scowls a whole lot. I have never known anyone to scowl as much or look as pissed off at the world as him. I'm pretty sure (not 100 percent) that Nick is the toughest son-of-a-bitch in the world.
I have some pretty good stories about growing up with a father like that, but thats for another time.
The thing with Nicks scowl though is that it seems to be generally at everything in the world, and because of this it kind of feels like its more meaningful than me scowling at bad television commercials and movies and music I don't like and fuckheads.
So I was watching tv and being gazed at in the face in a super close inspection and noticing that everytime I was getting told that my face moved in an amusing manor was in correspondence to the amount of shit I was watching on tv. So choosing to watch the commercials was a bad idea. I have been noticing that advertising is shit a lot more lately. I mean I always knew it, but as I used to work in commercials, and I'm the spawn of advertising as well (yep Nick works at Saatchis) I was covered in the rancid diarrhea of some complete fuckwit who thinks he has the right to call himself a 'creative' nearly 24 hours a day. Sometimes when you are doggy paddling round in a swimming pool of poo your nose becomes used to the smell and you just think its slightly dirty water.
Anyway, as I sit under intense facial scrutiny, I am told what my face is doing. It seems that I must get so worked up on the inside about these shitty bits of filler between the programs that I actually react with a series of facial ticks and look somewhat like a person who should be committed.
This annoys me. Because if there is one thing that I hate its those people that feel like they have to fight the power of the corporation by always saying that advertising is shit and making art out of logos but altering it slightly to tell us some ridiculously shit message which everybody with half a fucking brain already knows.
Speaking of which I went to a gallery and saw a picture painted of the word love, but the word love was made out of guns. Really? Whoever did that is a complete and utter waste of my oxygen. I'm gonna become an artist and paint a much bigger picture of a gun made up completely out of pictures of cocks and vaginas screwing each other and hang it up next to his picture. I'm not even really sure what I mean by it, but I'm sure some fucking cunty arty farty cuntface will make up some deep meaning for it, when I'll just find it funny.
I'm gonna call the painting 'Fuckgun' or maybe 'Penis Cunt Gun Riot'

Paedophiles

2008-07-30T10:44:00.000-07:00

You can say what you like about them, but they're generous with their sweets.

Beirut inspires a musical rambling.

2008-07-30T04:00:00.000-07:00

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.

What's the biggest cause of paedophilia in the UK?

2008-07-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

Sexy kids.

I laughed at that.

An old e-mail conversation I came across

2008-07-29T05:54:00.000-07:00

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.

a resolute will and the heart of a tireless dune

2008-07-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

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..........

2008-07-28T08:04:00.000-07:00

.........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

2008-07-28T01:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes some of the truths people widely accept are wrong.
Example.
There is no way that Terminator is a better film than Robocop.

Aorkystrate in Taupo

2008-07-25T06:01:00.000-07:00

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