tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50579038139676328362023-11-16T12:28:25.120+00:00thinks murmurs stuffain't the style of writing real geeky at the mo ... ?LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.comBlogger28125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-2619833365685939792013-09-27T16:05:00.001+01:002013-11-07T06:06:20.132+00:00Random Elevator Memories, Random Access Floors (or as the song lyrics suggest, Bluebeard-esque rooms)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i><span style="vertical-align: middle;"><b>Random Access Memories</b></span></i></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: middle;"><b>by Daft Punk</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: red;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;"><span style="vertical-align: middle;"><span style="color: black;">Going Up? Watch your head.</span> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: red;"><span style="vertical-align: middle;">The Daft Punk stage specially commission by Sony for</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: red;"><span style="vertical-align: middle;"> 2013 Wee Waa Festival, Australia, the</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: red;"><span style="vertical-align: middle;">live uncovering of the top secret album</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="vertical-align: middle;"><span style="color: red;"><i>Random Access Memories</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: middle;"><nobr></nobr></span>
<br />
Knowing that so many people shop online now, Daft Punk have decided to
bring some of the most bland (and badly performed) elevator style music
to your own home now. So you can shop whilst sitting right at your
computer and hear digital, digital-age elevator music without even the
dizziness or sense of hemmed-in claustrophobia coming from being in a 4
square meter space without windows. Unfortunately, though, that might
come anyway without the movement up and down stories, just from this
nauseating music.<br />
<br />
One might guess that the music was also
conceived in a 4 square meter space without windows and those strange
beings who dress up as robots did research over a year or so in going up
and down, whilst writing the music there also, eventually.<br />
<br />
It's awful.<br />
<br />
Random
is right. That's what you're given by the people whom, once, you could
be fairly sure to trust about every segment seeming to be very well
chosen by very aware, intelligent, sympathetic, understanding, hard
working music producers. Daft Punk never seemed to be the kind of
musicians who might be able, for example, to produce a stage or film
soundtrack on directions by producers for "5 minutes here", "12 minutes
there", "20 minutes there". They had a wise knack of knowing short
pieces of music based around short hooks. It's some achievement to be
able to make or choose those very hooks and develop a short, concise,
apt track around them.<br />
<br />
This album, whatever you make of it
musically, is NOT by any means Electronic Dance Music or, usually much
to do with EDM, or if you like the spectrum of 80s and later house club music, with the odd exception such as parts of (yes, parts of,
because everything is a shocking, confounding mess) "Gorgio by Moroder".<br />
<br />
I'm
not whatsoever reacting particularly to the duo's decision to make
music outside of their old EDM, house - club electronic frame of
production. Like many others, I'm all for diversity and for being
adventurous. I'd agree totally with the spirit that says sticking in the
same, weathered club house electronica frame would probably be much
worse than doing something new or adventurous. However, it seems that
the duo have lost their creative talent, their know-how, whatever the
genre.<br />
<br />
I read recently that they'd tried to make some new club
electronica for an album a few years ago, but even they concluded the
stuff stank, and it was withdrawn, binned, never published. So, they
decided instead to try to learn how to be jazz and psychedelic pop-rock
musicians.<br />
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<i> </i></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;"><i>Tron</i> soundtrack days (2010 / 11)</span></div>
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<br />
They don't have a clue, unless that is the point, in
keeping with some of the duo's old expressive, conceptual art concepts.
These may be seen as "Illuminati style unseen controllers ruin musicians
all over the world" and "So, the robots or controlled puppets are
unable to manifest as normal humans and make some good, real, living
music." And if it is the point to not have a clue, it only means that
they really, really don't have a clue about making this kind of music
for such a focus is worse than it coming "naturally". And it sounds it.
It really does. It sounds so conceited and framed, staged and effected.<br />
<br />
OK,
these guys aren't stupid it seems, from past evidence. Now they've set
out to make a modern jazz - fusion record which would normally be in the
smooth soul kind of area, but they throw in vocoders like you'd throw a
banging bin-lid into, say, the nicer Spanish style styles of Maurice
Ravel, or someone like Miles Davis. Even the machine like vocoder voices
sound as if they're doing it against their will, only because they've
been made to. That's a very specific thing to do, but the duo seem not
to be able to show respect to the meaning and worth of that genre alone,
strangely going down serious psychedelic rock and avant-garde 70s
pop-rock music-theatre alleyways at the same time. Who would think of
mixing up these musical worlds? More than that, they believe it's time
to add an old 50s to modern day West Coast USA flavour of music to the
already very odd cauldron.<br />
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<span style="color: red;">From the<i> RAMs</i> album live premiere in Australia, 2013</span></div>
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<br />
I can't accept that Daft Punk aren't
completely aware of that the music clearly sounds framed, staged,
conceited, effected, unnatural, highly ridiculous. I think they may have
done this deliberately, such is the quite extremist strangeness of
their conceptual performance art idea (which is something unrelated to
pure musicianship art), and the fetishist strangeness of this album.
It's a completely different kind of art. That the music is not good is
what is aimed at. Their <i>GQ</i> exclusive interview (still available in the
Web) shows the duo tending to try to make clear that novel direness may
be exactly the point. They thought people would think "<i>it sucks</i>", and
while they think it's genuinely, honestly bad to stay in the same
creative style rut, they decided to make record which kind of "<i>sucks</i>".<br />
<br />
I
can't help feeling that this is Daft Punk's attempt to bow out of the
spotlight, to go down, perhaps in a huge flash of light. There had to be
a perhaps there, for they say they could not predict the reaction to
the album. They've said they expected the opposite. I kind of feel sorry
for them that so few people have taken their production as what I
believe they meant it to be, and so many have taken the awful music at
face value, but thinking it is good. I fully respect the duo's right to
make any kind of sounds they wish to. I think this is a rebellion
statement, against numerous things perhaps, and I believe that the
group, of course, know better than anyone that the music of this album,
taken as music alone and without further meaning, is nothing to be proud
of.<br />
<br />
(Except, that is, perhaps, in just expressing feelings such
as in therapeutic music creative sessions - which I think is very
important for anyone to be able to do, also to the general public if
desired. But need it be something to set the duo up financially for the
next 10 or so high-spending years? The film they decided to release in
very limited editions is great, <i>Electroma</i>. I love it, it's a landmark
piece of cinema, and it ought to be able to be seen without feeling one
is sneaking cursory, seemingly under-the-table glances in a low
resolution <i>Youtube</i> upload version. This album, though, is one they ought
to have kept for a release numbered in very low thousands. I feel
strongly about this because it's like we're being told, being force-fed,
strongly, that "this is modern culture", and even, "it's good". That's
the kind of thing that both the media and the modern user-created media
communications reality does.)<br />
<br />
The last big question - flavour of
the decade in these conspiracy theory obsessed times, Daft Punk's own long-term
obsession also - is, is this some kind of rather purposefully bad,
tongue-in-cheek album merely because of their long term Illuminati style
control in music art theme alone? The question is, are the themes and
purposes which I find to be behind <i>RAMs</i> purely to be taken as art
(<i>Interstellar 5555</i>, <i>Electroma</i>, <i>Human After All </i>etc.)? Or is there
really someone behind them making them act like puppets against their
wills, as the stories were to suggest for musicians generally?<br />
<br />
I'm
struck by the staged, absolutely still characters in the <i>Capricorn
One</i> evoking Mars video set to <i>Get Lucky</i> who suddenly move on cue near
the end, as if the unseen fat controller had just clicked his fingers,
or raised their puppet strings. It leads to wondering, of course, and
considering they're making so much money out of this, of is, were / are
the guys in the control of musicians gang after all? These people make
their music on tour right in the middle of a big Illuminati style
symbolic pyramid. What's the point? What are they doing? Are they
perhaps saying they're put there, unable to choose. Or are they making
the statement, hell, look, we just go a little further in our diversions
than the other bands who know the handshakes and symbols to get the
money and suppress the real creativity out there?<br />
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<span style="color: red;">Does the<i> Get Lucky </i>clip with frozen then suddenly moving figures seem like a Mars set? </span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: red;"> Mars in a warehouse studio, <i>Capricorn One (1978)</i></span></div>
<br />
Anyway, I
think, perhaps it's not so much worth dwelling on when the music alone
is that poor. If it were a good album that managed to express similar
things, to ask the same questions by a different means, everything would
be different. It's a big thing to make inferior music to go into other
peoples' sensitive ears kind of on purpose, perhaps behind the cloak of
serious art. Still, I'll always feel at least a bit sorry for them that
they've somehow felt they had to make this particular album (or maybe,
any album at all, anything), and yet, the people can't see it for what
it is. Sympathy might be due where the duo discover that most of the
fans will love and take as without subtext anything with a sheen, high
quality studio recording values (not the Daft Punk original values at
all, this) rather than musical values, and a hip marketing crusade.<br />
<br />
While
I know most people will only consider this album as on face value, and
will think it is good music (it's not), I suppose there are people who
will buy the album for the social significance, the event-like nature of
it, the conceptual art identity I've been trying to describe. However,
at the end of the day, to me, it's torture, it really is. I've rarely
been so annoyed and pecked at and hurt by a piece of music, it feels
like a quite sadistic thing. If Daft Punk really are making the
conceptual art statements I've suggested here, by in a deadpan fashion
making very inferior music, they'd really need to have guns held at
their backs by those Illuminati style controllers (in the mould of
Dmitri Shostakovich) for me to appreciate this as expressive performance
art. While I don't wish that on anyone, of course, I wouldn't bother
with the art concept in itself, otherwise. Give my ears and brain a
break, please, I'd say. <br />
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<span style="color: red;"> Sasha Frere-Jones, <i>New Yorker</i> magazine, notes the robot mask allusion to art of Jackson's <i>Thriller </i> </span> </div>
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LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0United Kingdom55.378051 -3.4359729999999912.202562 -86.05316049999999 90 79.18121450000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-86262672593550198472013-09-15T22:21:00.000+01:002013-09-15T23:00:53.579+01:00What is "deep house", the disagreements, and the reasons why.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="mw-headline" id="What_is_.22deep_house.22.2C_the_disagreements.2C_and_the_reasons_why"></span> </h2>
Faced with a ridiculous Wikipedia article under the title of "<em>Deep House</em>" that actually goes down the route of trying to make concrete some old Frankie Knuckles (etc.) fan's eulogy that "<em>Only Frankie Knuckles and related DJs ever made real deep house music</em>", I have to do something.<br />
<br />
I had to write. Hating making or adjusting Wikipedia articles myself I add the text of this article to the talk page for Deep House in Wikipedia only. Someone may come across it and think something of it, it may help. Maybe it would even convince someone or some people to adjust that article and the many other fallacies that have grown up around the term <em>"deep house</em>" in The Web.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">I'm someone who doesn't spend much time caring much personally about what that site, Wikipedia, says. It's a site I wish very much wasn't there - a dictionary created by anyone, anywhere, anytime based upon what they feel like defining, and worse. The worse is that is generally policed by Nazi professionals of within the anyone, anywhere, anytime class (since that is the only associated class) who may or may not have any idea what even small words truly mean, but they'll fight to the death to have their meaning and not others' displayed. I'll never believe some of the lexical creations these Nazis can come up with to put others down and reinstate their often truly ludicrous and illogical meanings.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong><em>What is "deep house", the disagreements, and the reasons why.</em></strong></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
I'm hoping to resolve this age old dispute over the meaning of the term "<i>deep house</i>". I hope that if people reading can think about what I'm saying here, they can come to accept it. I think it's quite important. No, it's more than quite important.<br />
<br />
I can find the disagreements about the meaning of "<i>deep house</i>" very funny, and I often did, from a long time. While it also led to a lot of annoyance and anger. Many people have their own definitions of what it means, and really the truth is that, in times and in different places (often multiple places so as that it seemed general), these meanings were pretty accurate.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(I do realise that some of the disputes over the meaning of this term comes over something on the other side of the fence to my finding the disputes funny. They can come from a sheer fatigue and unwillingness to deal with those who take categories very seriously.)</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Early trance</i> (not later, faster, formulaic <em>trance</em>), <i>Chicago house</i> of disco origin, <i>soul house</i>, <i>funky house</i>, <i>minimal dub house</i>, even <i>acid house</i> (as included in a wider genre) have all been named "<i>deep house</i>" by various people (often a lot of people) through the years. One important thing is that some people who named a genre of house music I've mentioned as "<i>deep house</i>" did mean that that genre was exclusively <i>deep house</i>. But other people naming a single genre of house music did not mean that that genre was exclusively <i>deep house</i>.<br />
<br />
Personally, I can't come to terms with the Chicago-isation and R&B-isation of the meaning of "deep house" in an exclusive sense. That's my personal gripe, while that is most of the definition which happens to appear on the Wikipedia article currently. The article is rather ridiculous, and attempts to define <i>deep house</i> by elements such as analysis of melody, using a funky, R&B based <i>Chicago house</i> model (which itself is actually only one part of what is distinctly <i>Chicago house</i> music.) I can't agree with it, while it is a perception that has got around in later days, I'd say since the mid 90s at the earliest. Before then, I believe people were more aware what <i>deep house</i> meant.<br />
<br />
Before I go back in time to recall and describe the most sensible meaning of <i>deep house</i>, I'll say one more thing. Why should <i>Chicago house</i> be termed "<i>deep house</i>" exclusively? This is silly. <i>Chicago house</i> is the proper term for <i>Chicago house</i>. And <i>Detroit house</i> for <i>Detroit house</i> and so on. It was (and is and will be) a very important thing to outline the real meaning of "<i>deep house</i>". I remember, as <i>house music</i> got more followers in the 1980s, and as time went on, people began to think "<i>deep house</i>" meant a certain thing or things, including myself for a while. People turned up at certain clubs, maybe having travelled far for the night, to go to a nightclub which was to be playing "<i>deep house</i>" music, but to find a type of house music they didn't like and maybe they left the club.<br />
Here I'll give what became an accepted definition amongst most people going to clubs and DJing, I think, by the early 90s, after 6 or more years of developing underground <i>house music</i>.<br />
<br />
"<i>Deep house</i>" is a really loose term. It does not mean specifically <i>Chicago house</i>. (Though I also understand in a sense why some people made and make this mistake because the term "<i>Chicago House</i>" was also sometimes used to identify most to nearly any serious <i>house music</i> at all, linking it to the roots of house in Chicago, as distinct to the peculiar house music idioms of Chicago that could be very distinct to those of Detroit, New York and New Jersey for example.) However, if "<i>Chicago house</i>" is a term used to describe distinct <i>house music</i> idioms associated with the life of the city Chicago itself, as it is most used and correctly used, it is only one small part of what "deep house" is.<br />
<br />
(Whether going on a tangent or not, one thing I want to say here is that not all "<i>Chicago house</i>" music - the <i>house music</i> coming from the city Chicago itself - was the R&B tinged or funky, soul disco tinged style some people try to make it nowadays. Though identifiable in clear ways, <i>Chicago house</i> was a quite varied spectrum of club music. For example, look at much of the music of L'il Louis, of Chicago, who many have called the father of <i>house music</i>. His music has a much more electro based foundation rather than R&B, funky disco based foundation which evolved with a style of electro music. The music of L'il Louis is foundational and central "<i>Chicago house</i>" music. Though it may be closer to styles associated with <i>Detroit house</i> music, for example, music of Kevin Saunderson of The Belleville Three, than to house which developed from R&B or funky or soulful disco music, which, for example, Dj Frankie Knuckles and Dj Leonard Remix Roy are more known for.)<br />
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Going back to the wide genre of "<i>Deep house</i>", it does not specifically need to have a soulful basis, or be <i>vocal house</i>, or have any funk or R&B root tinge. I know that is a particular preference some people have for the meaning of "<i>deep house</i>" but it's not accurate. Just like the others house based on funk or jazz funk is simply <i>funky house</i>, or <i>jazz house</i> or <i>jazzy house</i>, or <i>jazz-funk house</i>.<br />
The point is that these CAN all be identified by the term "<i>Deep House</i>".<br />
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<i>Deep House means serious house music</i>. Yes, it means <i>Chicago house</i>, it means <i>Detroit house</i>, it means <i>New York house</i>, it does also mean original British <i>garage house</i> (later <i>UK garage</i> or <i>UK garage house</i> may be distinct, I don't know). <i>Deep house</i> means <i>French house music</i>, it means <i>Balearic house music</i>, it means <i>electro house</i>, it means <i>minimal dub house</i>.<br />
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The point is that it is serious, house club <i>house music</i>. That's all. The term arose in places to distinguish clubs that were reasonably serious house clubs from discotheques that liked to advertise and promote their nights by saying they played, for example, up to date dancefloor sounds and <i>house music</i>. This could make a club night seem to many house fans that it was a house club they could go to, but in actual fact, it was an old era style, or chart music style discotheque that happened to play some popular, usually charty house tunes.<br />
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That is how and why the term "Deep house" developed in most places.<br />
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(As well as distinguish serious club music from standard discotheque music, the term <i>deep house</i> also partly came about within a need to distinguish the music of clubs and the clubs themselves that were serious, niche nightclubs which adapted to the growth of dance music and <i>house music</i> by incorporating a more house sound, or elements of a house sound. Many R&B clubs, hip hop clubs, soul music clubs, jazz funk clubs incorporated the popularity of house music in the style of their music. These clubs could incorporate some <i>deep house</i> music also, but these clubs were distinct from <i>deep house</i> clubs.)<br />
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There were some DJs and scenes which became particularly associated with the term "<em>deep house</em>" and, like others, I myself made the mistake at times of attatching a personal meaning to the term. Personally I associated the term with an area of house music that was more dub than vocal but also at times had vocals, that was kind of very <i>early trance house music</i> which for example Paul Oakenfold played in his very early years (nothing like later, formulaic <em>trance</em> music which Oakenfold also became soon known for). It was <i>electro house</i>, it was lighter <em>rave</em> or heavier <em>techno</em> but not fast <em>techno</em> and slow enough to be recognized as central or core <i>house music</i>, and it could include the fringes of <i>acid house</i>.<br />
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So, for a while, when I forgot the purpose of the term, this was <i>deep house</i> for me and many others. While many others still in the UK who associated their music exclusively with the term <i>deep house</i> thought the term meant exclusively <i>garage</i>, and others exclusively more R&B rooted <i>Chicago house</i>. And so on.<br />
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The truth is, though, it meant all of these.<br />
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Mostly the mistake came about by not realizing the term was a wide term. Then, however, there were in fact other reasons. Firstly, it became not uncommon for DJs and promoters and people connected with a scene or club(s) to say things like "<i>This is deep house."</i> Many DJs and clubbers went a lot further and said things that seemed to be defining things, such as <br />
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"<i>This is the real deep house music</i>", and, <br />
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"<i>This is what Deep House means</i>", and things like, <br />
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"<i>Other DJs [in the city / elsewhere] don't play deep house. This is the only place where you will find real deep house music</i>.", and,<br />
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"<em>That other stuff is not deep house music. They get it wrong. This is real, deep house."</em><br />
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Of course, confusion may easily come about anyway when a DJ or producer or promoter or clubber wishes to emphasise a deep feeling intended in the club music they are making, or that they go deep into house, or into a feeling, or deeper, or will bring the clubber deeper than other DJs etc. This can have nothing to do with the particular genre anyway, and many DJs and producers and so on have just been describing that their music is thought to be "deep", whatever house genre it would fall into.<br />
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"<i>Deep house</i>", properly, though, just meant serious house music, the music of serious house clubs or where a club played some serious house music. [The term was also used to make clear to potential guests that a mixed club night would indeed play serious house music among other things.] It could even at times include nights of mostly <i>acid house</i> music, though generally acid clubs listed themselves as playing acid. But, even then, the term <i>deep house</i> could apply because, to many people, it distinguished the club as a serious house club.<br />
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At the time what became known as handbag house clubs were growing more popular. That was most often not thought of as <i>deep house</i>. There were many clubs which played remixes, house style remixes of popular songs and called themselves house clubs. They were not <i>deep house</i> clubs. Some of the <i>house music</i> played at such clubs was not <i>deep house</i> and some may have been, or, otherwise, simply these clubs didn't play any <i>deep house</i>. The <em>Disco Mix Club</em> DJs gave many nights and sometimes or often (depending on DJ) this could include quite a lot of house music, but, largely, I thought this was still not quite really <i>deep house</i> music. Some <em>DMC</em> nights did include <em>deep house</em> music. (<em>DMC</em> remix record releases, though, did tend much more to be <em>deep house</em> music from the late 80s and especially into the 1990s, as well as some being non-<em>deep house</em> and disco club tracks. The <em>DMC</em> compilation albums of the late 80s and onward, however, were usually a very good example of what should never be mistaken as <i>deep house</i>.)<br />
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In the very early 90s when <i>trance house</i> music turned from the best part of <i>house music</i> in the centre between <i>techno house</i>, lighter <i>electro house</i>, <i>acid house</i>, <i>Balearic house</i> and other styles (and very occasionally <i>soulful house</i> and <i>funky house</i>) into a completely new type of club music, I had to conclude that that probably wasn't <i>deep house</i>. I don't know. It just became so far removed from standard <i>house music</i>. Later <em>trance</em> became music that was most often very little like <i>early trance house music</i>. The thing with serious <i>house music</i> up until around 1990 / 91 (and this includes quite a good lot of what was called <i>rave music</i> for a while, also), it was usually possible to be identified as being part of the same thing, in different styles. House was so varied, but it was so clear and identifiable, also.<br />
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I guess some people would disagree with me. Some people will still say that the really fast <em>trance music</em> with the typical breaks in the middle and, typically, white race women vocalists <em>is </em>still house music. I'm not sure about that. It probably isn't to me. But, if it might still be house music, and even if people think of it as serious house music (I can't), I just can't see this stuff as <em>deep house.</em><br />
<em></em><br />
From around '90 (or just before in certain quarters), some things began to change and the biggest change seemed to be the new <em>trance music</em>. It was very different. Some core (and even foundational) <em>deep house</em> DJs such as Oakenfold actually followed the change (to my dismay) and copied the immense change that happened with the type of house called <em>trance</em> - which transformed into something completely new.<br />
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Now I can hardly see the later <em>trance </em>style as <i>house music</i> at all. From around the same time, you may be able to say the same thing about a lot of <i>rave music</i>, and harder <i>techno music</i>. These three scenes all had styles which developed far away from what was reasonably recognizable as core <i>house music</i>. Yes, there was still <i>rave music</i> that was clearly <i>house music</i>, and the same for <em>trance</em> and <em>techno</em> (the three were core parts of <i>house music</i> previously), but in all three scenes the style got more divorced, usually much faster and very formulaic with very similar sounding tracks often. This was the more popular element of these scenes. While at the same time, this was exactly when underground <i>house music</i> began to lose its grip. Then, quality, serious <em>rave, techno</em> and <em>trance</em> which was identifiable as a core part of the earlier house scenes, actually became a great deal harder to find in clubs and records, if you were looking for it.<br />
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To finish - "<i>Deep House</i>" meant and I think still means and should only be regarded as meaning serious house music. I know that so many people (really loads of people) went to a particular club or a few particular clubs playing the same type of music, a single type of <em>house music</em> and meanings seemed to seem made from that. They identified the meaning of "<em>deep house</em>" as being that type of house exclusively. It's a mistake, though. The term is a general term for serious house.<br />
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While I don't think I'm personally able to make a direction or anything like that, the last few paragraphs before the paragraph just above I've gone on to include, are only to outline my own feelings about 3 types, or 3 scenes in dance music which developed noticeably away from the traditional, core <em>house music</em> elements (<em>rave</em>, <em>trance</em> and some <em>techno</em> scenes). My feelings are that those later developments in dance music could not be called "<em>deep house</em>". I don't know if there would be significant disagreement on that. (I guess that some DJs and clubs were playing a mix of the newer styles within those dance music and the older, clear "<em>deep house</em>" tracks. However, in my experience, especially with <em>trance</em>, generally there was a real breakaway from the past and there was not much significant incorporation of the old "<em>deep house</em>" style, feeling or attitude at all.)<br />
<br />
Of course, there was still a good amount of <em>techno, rave</em> and original style <em>trance house</em> music made from around 1990 and after which was easily core <em>house music</em> - serious house, or "<em>deep house</em>" (but harder to find).<br />
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I hope this helps.<br />
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I feel it's important, to clear up the confusion. To think that "<em>deep house</em>" refers exclusively to one type of serious <em>house music</em>, whether <i>Chicago house</i>, or <i>soulful vocal house</i>, or <i>minimal dub electro house</i>, is inaccurate. <br />
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<b>"<i>Deep house</i>" just means serious house of the kind that emanated as core <em>house music</em> from the explosion of<em> house music</em> from the mid to late 1980s.</b><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<strong></strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">Finally, to people involved in or around or informed by a scene from the early days, you will find that, to them, <i>deep house</i> still will only ever mean the particular music of that scene, the particular style of music alone. So, yes, the description of the Wikipedia article of "<i>deep house</i>" as a Chicago, more melodic, soul and R&B based <i>house music</i> will always be identified as correct by those people who live deep in the jelly of Chicago <em>house music</em>. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Larry Heard himself may indeed validate the current Wikipedia article as being true of <i>deep house</i>. (Indeed, many people would but they wouldn't bother to mention that they don't mean that that is an exclusive definition of the term <i>deep house</i>.) Larry Heard and others may actually feel rather strongly that the current Chicago orienatated, soulful, melodic house basis of "<i>deep house</i>" is the exclusive definition of <i>deep house</i> music.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Without wanting to say they are wrong (though they are), the point in such communications such people inextricably linked to a particular scene or style of music make, is to express exactly their own, all-consuming involvement in or attachment to that scene or style. In actuality, when such a figure gives such a limited definition of <i>deep house</i> music, all they are in fact doing is what the old DJs used to do, in saying, "This is the real <i>deep house</i> music, the others don't have it." To them, it is true and perhaps always will be, "<i>deep house</i>" only means their particular style or styles of <i>house music</i>. Thus to many Chicago people, "<i>deep house</i>" is <i>Chicago house</i> and soulful <i>Chicago house</i> alone. This home grown affectionate legend has managed to get itself passed on to others in the world who have accepted it, but in a wider sense, it is really inaccurate.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The current Wikipedia definition would find it very difficult to include L'il Louis in its definition of <i>deep house</i>, for example. While L'il Louis is called by many "the father of <i>house music</i>", a founding father of <i>Chicago house</i> music and is known himself to have stated numerous times that he plays <i>deep house</i> and that his music is <i>deep house</i>, that music of that Chicago house veteran mostly won't fit into the current Wikipedia article description. One thing about Louis I remember is that he has openly described how some (or, probably, many) people in Chicago have believed that <i>deep house</i> is a different style of <i>Chicago house music</i> to his own, and how he accepts that these people have their own definition of <i>deep house</i> and <i>Chicago deep house</i>. Louis has said that while his music is <i>deep house</i> and <i>Chicago house</i>, "it ain't that", in his own words, meaning this style of house music that the current Wikipedia article attempts to fashion in an exclusive way as being the true meaning of deep house.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">I think it's very important to realize just how strong the individual claims are of particular scenes from people involved in those scenes, and, funnily, other people from the other side of the world who have believed them. They are really strong. But, the claims are many.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Again, I've said it many times in this text, and I'll end with the true definition of <em>deep house</em>, yet again, though it may disappoint many people involved in many different styles or scenes or house music. <em>Deep house music</em> is not any exclusive style of <em>house music</em>, but simply means serious <em>house music</em>.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The best thing to remember is this:<strong> </strong></span><br />
<br />
<strong><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: x-small;">"<i>Deep house</i>" means just serious house of the kind that emanated as core<em> house music</em> from the explosion of <em>house music</em> from the mid to late 1980s (or, in a very few places in the world, such as parts of Chicago, Illinois, the origin of <em>house musics</em> before the mid 80s ).</span></strong></div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-44708224456521509342013-06-27T14:45:00.000+01:002013-06-29T16:32:46.162+01:00The problem with that London bolt-hole in Knightsbridge is that it does get rather stuffy after a while and, unfortunately, one does tend to feel rather claustrophobic: JULIAN ASSANGE AND THE FUTURE.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Julian Assange and the future: The<em> potential rescue</em> opera.</div>
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<em>A 2013 perspective (late June) given the upscaling of things due to the Snowden situation.</em><br />
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The answer to Assange and the very tricky problem of unfortunate captivity in an Embassy lies in 2 main parts, the only answer, I'm guessing (but then, maybe I just need more faith).<br />
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Part 1: KIDNAP.<br />
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Part 2: A sympathetic anti-fascist organisation. Or an organisation against a reality of international conglomeration of nations pretending to enforce their national rules of law but which have been developing and entrenching a world defined by borderless jurisdictions / jurisdiction (the pursuit of the single, international jurisdiction for many, or rather, any bodies of law).<br />
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The organisation I'm just imagining is disposed to deal with the problem: How can many countries' jurisdictions extend to much or most of the globe, especially when the issue is proposed treason of a single nation, but many believe, including experts, really amounts to exposing human rights abuse? The organisation believes this is highly wrong.<br />
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Take the situation this year with Snowden, one year after Assange moved into the Ecuadorean embassy in London. Even the USSR was not allowed to do what the USA now believes it can do with much of the world now - it's federal, all world fascism.Then they go further when countries do not meet their extra-jurisdictional demands and threaten China, Russia and Ecuador with such things as future trade restrictions made upon the current trade situation. (Is that not something approaching the sordid worlds of blackmail or extortion, if this were personal? Could it be bribery, when Ecuador believes it will and has the right to make a personal decision of asylum over Snowden, always in removal from other concerns, such as extradition agreements? For the USA to suppose that their extradition agreements will override what can be constitutional or similar core values of a country, such as the right to award asylum, just reveals their ever increasing dumbness. In any event, extradition is decided by case in every country I think, and most countries have refused others their extradition requests in cases. So the USA's threats upon Ecuador seem to amount to something else.)<br />
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So, after the soap box, back to the simple two part plan to save Assange from his cabin fever and allow him to experience all of the delights of the equitorial rainforest as he matures.<br />
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Here's a proposed situation.<br />
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When the guard seems at a low, one dark hour, our underground organisation (who have no connection with Julian Assange) have an old, working helicopter, approved and with approved registered pilots (false names or something, I don't know, or maybe they all get asylum!).<br />
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Assange takes delivery of a trunk in the Embassy by himself, which he opens, surprised to find a small, army trained man quickly leap out, silence Assange and pin him down and tie him up, administering a quick knockout drug also. Within a couple of minutes, the guest has opened the mini balcony window / door, allowing someone in the helicopter which quickly flies there, to fire a bolt on a line into the room. This is unwrapped and contains securings for two bodies on the line, as in rescue helicopters. Assange and his kidnapper sit on the window edge and are winched up as the helicopter ascends, and within half a minute proceeds to outer London. At a disused field there are 30 cars waiting. All in the helicopter bail out by parachute to the field, setting the vehicle to crash in more disused land close by (<em>it does, is blown up, no-one is injured, or at least you don't see it like in the original A-Team episodes</em>).<br />
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The kidnappers put Assange in one of the 30 cars. The cars are sent out in all directions, as police vehicles will just be getting the message to follow. The car with Assange heads for somewhere on the outskirts of London, somewhere quite built up. Assange is taken from the car in a trunk and put in a safe house.<br />
<br />
Assange is kidnapped, out of the embassy, but in danger of capture from the British authorities, but they'd never really find him. (His phone and any other way of identifying him through the airwaves have been removed.) The captors take a recording of Assange saying that he has been kidnapped, is being treated well, and doesn't know where he is. At another location, the tape audio is then relayed to the British authorities, Ecuadoreans and the media.<br />
<br />
The next bit goes, of course, that the kidnappers of the underground organisation against global, borderless jurisdiction somehow get Mr Assange to Ecuador, as it happens, conveniently for Mr Assange, I suppose. There Mr Assange witnesses the beauty and difference of the equatorial rainforest, in many visits to primary forest over the years, I suppose (again).<br />
<br />
I don't know how the getting him to Ecuador bit is achieved. If there are enough people in the organisation, maybe it's not difficult. Do they just need to get the man to Jersey, (or, some say Switzerland) for Ecuador to take over? If not, then Morocco or Algeria may be an option (do they have extradition agreements with Sweden - or even UK, if wanted for breaching bail terms?)<br />
<br />
Morocco, perhaps is not too hard. A private boat to France. Stowed in a camper van driven through France, Spain, Portugal, though this is fraught due to the European Arrest Warrant. But the countries do not know Assange is passing through, and why would they be searching camper vans?<br />
<br />
There's the answer. Convoluted? Yes. But the only answer? It's hard to say - what other possibilities are there? So a possibility? All depends on if there happens to be some kind of underground organisation which could be hanging around somewhere with the aims I've been imagining. And the resources and kind of training or experience or aptitude with planning and carrying this out. I guess some secret services "defectors" or former specialist army personnel with some kind of experience would have to be involved, but really could be from any relevant countries. There are probably many of those.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<img height="283" src="http://www.heligoair.co.uk/sfPhotoGalleryPlugin/308.jpg" width="400" /></div>
<br />
<div align="center">
<em>From a site in the first google search result, this ex army machine</em></div>
<div align="center">
<em>is going at the reasonable price within the range of £150,000 to £200,000,</em></div>
<div align="center">
<em>necessitating wealthy organisation members or donors. </em></div>
<div align="center">
<em>The small factor of an expert pilot able to descend</em></div>
<div align="center">
<em>within the towers of Knightsbridge</em></div>
<div align="center">
<em>and ascend once more within seconds in darkness</em></div>
<div align="center">
<em>ought not be overlooked also.</em></div>
<div align="center">
<em>Heck, this notion is so 'captivating',</em></div>
<div align="center">
<em>it ought to become </em><em>a fictional movie at the least:</em></div>
<div align="center">
<em>"Escape from Killer Drab Victorian Tower Land" (inspired by</em></div>
<div align="center">
<em>a true situation involving celebrated / reviled human rights, liberties,</em></div>
<div align="center">
<em>state accountability </em><em>and openness of information</em></div>
<div align="center">
<em>journalist / activist, Julian Assange.)</em></div>
<div align="center">
<em></em> </div>
<div align="center">
<em></em> </div>
<div align="center">
<em></em> </div>
<div align="center">
<em></em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
...</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
...</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Oh dear, how could this cabin fever predicament be resolved?<br />
<br />
One thing, the impossibility of the situation of liberation from the Knightsbridge square metres together with the awfulness of it after so long is only telling as to why it remains the reality for Mr Assange. The great difficulty anyone at all would have, Assange himself, persons known to him or persons unknown to him, or any combination (!) in attempting to patriate him with his recently adopted country by asylum, is monumentally forbidding. Let's not call it an impossibility, <i>but Godammit, is it something so hard</i>! Yes. <i>So very, very hard</i>.<br />
<br />
<em>What this brought home to me is the seriousness of the situation itself, beyond the walls of the Embassy actually, best appreciated in comparing the Embassy experience with the alternative, if Mr Assange walks out with hands up.</em><br />
<br />
The<strong> Edward Snowden</strong> situation <strong><em>could not leave anyone in any doubt whatsoever</em> </strong>that <em><strong>as soon as Mr Assange would be walking</strong></em> on British or Swedish soil, the Americans would have <strong><em>diplomats arriving to further the goal</em></strong> of the <strong><em>US extradition papers faxed literally within seconds of the news (or silently already waiting</em></strong>, accepted and agreed to, in some particular cupboards somewhere in Europe).<br />
<br />
Whatever happens regarding a trial over some women who so strangely popped up in Sweden, whether Assange would be convicted of something in Europe or not, the Australian secretive journalist would be subject to serious extradition moves by the USA in one or other of these countries which both have normal US extradition agreements. These agreements typically mean being honoured.<br />
<br />
The UK or Sweden may well seek not to extradite in such a circumstance unless the USA pledge not to exterminate Mr. Assange, but the USA will do anything to get their hands on this man. Anything this time (after much protest over the sovereignty of their American rule of law and constitutional right to choose how that is exercised) may mean swallowing a lump in their mouths this time and accepting they don't get to electrocute he who seems such a petty but impetuous, uncomprehending upstart. I don't doubt that the Americans will do this if challenged. I can easily see those powers who can seem to like to be the powers-that-be beyond their own shores, settling for the international example made of Assange in a highest security prison for the remaining years of his natural life. <br />
<br />
And so, beyond that demand a European country can make, I can see nothing stopping those who could hold Assange from extraditing him to "serve" out the rest of his natural years in the land of the American dream.<br />
<br />
<br />
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...</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
...</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
In this sense, if the best Mr Assange could expect from not remaining in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London is most or all years of his life in a similarly sized or smaller room, and with yard and hall time shared with nasty and dangerous people who don't hold back, the appeal of the walls and few square metres of Knightsbridge remain undeniable. Claustrophobia, it seems, reigns everywhere, in any direction Mr Assange looks, from his London window view.<br />
<br />
Unless that underground organisation is springing itself into action at a time before Mr Assange's cabin fever drives him mad enough to insist to himself that he goes for a walk in the street one day, with consequences that he never gets the chance to do so ever again, anywhere. <br />
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<span lang="EN-GB"><div style="text-align: center;">
<em>For those who are not aware,</em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>this fanciful but possible, yes, possible, hypothetical situation</em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>thus far has hidden the fact that Ecuador's London Embassy</em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>lies on the ground floor apartment of the building in</em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>Hans Crescent, Knightsbridge, simply standing a few metres away</em></div>
<span lang="EN-GB"><div style="text-align: center;">
<em>from the trained (probably specialist) police</em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>
on the ground, outside. Hence the demands are increased</em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>
for the right kind of helicopter pilot than would be required</em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>
for higher floors, let me say, um, well, really, really, really</em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>
substantially. But, yes, yes, possible, still possible.</em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>
Maybe.</em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>
A further, adapted, realistic situation may involve knocking out</em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>
more than just Mr Assange with an injection, but funny gas and masks</em></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>
or the liberating proletariat of the non-borderless world.</em></div>
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Such a shame, perhaps, that Ecuador's Embassy in London was chosen for a ground floor in a high, old mansion block.</div>
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Still there are ways around this. There must be for God only makes answers, of course, never the complete dearth of them.</div>
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Somehow kidnappers #2, 3 and 4 have been waiting upon the roof of the building with a secured winch. When our quicksilver reflex guest in a hamper, kidnapper #1, has done with Mr Assange (drugged, bound and secured to a harness), he quickly connects the harness to the exactly measured line, muscle bound kidnappers #2, 3 and 4 have quickly and silently thrown down in darkness to the famous window / semi- balcony.</div>
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</div>
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The stuporific Mr Assange is hoisted quickly by winch a few floors, out of quick reach of the police on the ground.</div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Within seconds, the helicopter which has been flying close by is above the roof, it's own line instantly upon the roof at Mr #2, 3 and 4 who in 5 seconds secure the line of the dangling Mr Assange by a secondary branch to the helicopter line, severing the primary branch from the winch at the same time.</div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
This is all much safer for Mr Assange, who is no longer required to be taken by a helicopter coming between mansion blocks in order to shoot a bolt through an open window. The aircraft stays high and quickly ascends even higher, moving towards the rendezvous point at great speed. Mr Assange is further protected by a thermal layer and inflatable cat suit, for the helicopter will be some distance above a certain field of waiting treehuggers with varied vehicles, and though Mr Assange may be drugged, he could still be hurt potentially without the inflatable cat suit. (I'm not sure which model, there are various, including an eyecatching red, bulbous version which I haven't included here for the sake of not wishing the serious hypothetical situation deviate too much from adherence to seriousness and principles of truth. Yet, if you fancy the idea of such a catsuit, personally, it is easy to find in a google image search.)</div>
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<div style="text-align: left;">
In true 70s espionage film spirit, kidnappers #2,3 and 4 have pre-attatched a pulley descent line from the rear of 3 Hans Crescent to the lower roof or a lower balcony / window of a neighbouring building. And yet another one from either that roof or a different apartment within that building. (Other side, of course). Via two sharp descents on pulley wires, the three escape into waiting vehicles, and are taken to a nearby safe flat, lost in the expanses of appartment blocks of Battersea or somewhere.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<em></em> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<em></em> </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
And what of kidnapper #1 in the new situation? Well, perhaps he fancies being a martyr in terms of long term imprisonment (or shooting by police), or perhaps he too is cat suited (memory foam this time?) and harnessed to the line along with the inflated Assange. That sounds to be how it would happen, yes.<em></em></div>
</span><em> </em><br />
<em>Possible, remember. Possible.</em></span> </div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-79142690782601913862013-05-17T19:06:00.002+01:002013-05-17T19:06:58.684+01:00You know what's funny about Scotland?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Tell me.</div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-13037105254730648002013-04-26T02:07:00.002+01:002013-04-26T02:16:29.418+01:00May there be life in the Liberal Democrats yet? Is it even possible after the Qutada & human rights sale to potential torturers for "smiles"?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="dsq-comment-text" id="dsq-comment-text-875936726">
The media report: Nick Clegg blocks Tory plans for a 'snoopers' charter' (as in the headline of a Telegraph article).<br />
<br />
It is great to see Mr Clegg acting for a change. I'd love to see much, much more of
it. I suppose there might be still some pulses tied to brains within the Liberal
Democrats and I wish they could be felt more.<br />
<br />
This government espionage charter is exactly the kind of thing the last Labour government were trying hard
to bring in. Theresa May shows her colours, as ever, as being exactly the same.
She's a real populist, socialist (as in communist, it seems). She really is.<br />
<br />
Of course it is cried that the snooping is necesssary to stop terrorism. This is an old Blairite agenda, from the world of his gang's deceits and misleading, brainwashing soundbites: the way to ruin society, <em>to head straight for 1984</em>, to exactly <em><strong>go one more than the terrorists</strong></em>, to get there first, to beat them at their own game, leaving nothing genuine to terrorise.<br />
<br />
As regards the pulse of the Liberal Democrats, unfortunately I've just
watched Simon Hughes in tonights' BBC <em>Question Time</em> programme go with the "we'll do anything to get
Abu Qutada on a flight to Jordan" gang. Just like Clegg did before him. <br />
<br />
This issue seems to really test the plebs - they can escape other issues, but
this one shows who are plebs and who aren't.<br />
<br />
It's so basic:<br />
<br />
- there are human rights, <br />
<br />
- they are inalienable
otherwise they become meaningless if on a pick and choose basis, or "only if you
do x" basis, <br />
<br />
- it means we do not do the same to murderers & torturers
as they do to others, we are above that and value reform in justice,<br />
<br />
- Qutada is untried abroad and unless the Crown Prosecution Service finds fault with him here to try on something, by the law a free man - the law being the written law, and not the rabble's salivant desires,<br />
<br />
- it is
thought not too unlikely Qutada would be tortured in Jordan in order to "gain
information" (which evidently couldn't be counted as information, and so,
anyway, one couldn't trust the authorities which claim such things are
information),<br />
<br />
- the disgusting rabble who don't want human rights at all
anyway focus on one man (of course - you have to expect that. the rabble REALLY
is THE lowest common denominator),<br />
<br />
- thanks to people like Theresa May and
tabloid editors this one man is Qutada,<br />
<br />
- the worst politicians realise how
vociferous, stupid and goal orientated (and popular seeming) this rabble is,<br />
<br />
-
so they choose - "put the untried, unconvicted man on a flight to Jordan - let
him be tortured", just as a plea to the rabble - "vote for me, support me". It
goes beyond the specific - beyond this Jew of Malta - to the universal as each
politician knows they are deciding against the concept of inalienable human
rights when they decide for the rabble's one man pursuit.<br />
<br />
On <em>Question Time</em>, the topic was raised of that the government has avoided a
home trial in the UK of Qutada because, as some people allege they are sure of, it would expose things they could be culpabale
of. Such as more general human rights abuse; such as systematic domestic and international systems abuse; such as
illegal involvement in extraordinary rendition around the world. Simon Hughes
denied this.<br />
<br />
I don't think for an instant it is such a wise idea to believe him at all.
Why, why would he and the others be so insistent on the stance: "put the
untried, unconvicted man on a flight to Jordan - let him be tortured", just as a
plea to the rabble - "vote for me, support me"? Does it even make
sense?<br />
<br />
I am reminded of Annie Machon and David Shaylor, the British secret service agents who left the service and went into hiding after witnessing numerous illegal acts that included what can only be described as murder or acts tantamount to murder and widespread, needless, pointless destruction with no sake. I am reminded that David Shaylor eventually decided to return the the UK of his own volition, and was brought to a court - ALLEGEDLY. Yes, he was arrested on suspicion of breaking laws one would label as treachery laws, and forcibly taken to a court room. But this was not really a court as one understands in the UK. A Kafkaesque, Orwellian court, yes.<br />
<br />
But it's horrid to think of it as a British court.<br />
<br />
For the judge and jury in the court were instructed <br />
<br />
- they may not hear Mr Shaylor's evidence AT ALL for it breached these so-called treachery laws of a certain statute, <br />
- that Mr Shaylor be silenced from being heard in court for he would allegedly be breaking treachery laws if speaking within the so-called "court",<br />
- that, regardless of evidence presented by any side, and regardless of legal arguments presented, and completely regardless of what the judge might feel would ordinarily be the law in the circumstances, the particular treachery laws NECESSITATE that the judge finds Mr Shaylor guilty IN ANY EVENT. The judge was directed by the secret services accompanied by government representatives that there could be no usual court discussion and decisions made whatsoever, but that a guilty verdict - as if of a normal, British court, by law must be found.<br />
<br />
The judge, bound by these so-called treachery laws of statute, did indeed forego any arguments and any personal decision making or connection with the circumstances, merely accepting he was legally obliged in any case, as by the letter of the secrecy statute, to deliver a guilty verdict without consideration of acts or circumstance.<br />
<br />
Mr Shaylor was "convicted" and imprisoned. Since then it is reported he has become markedly schizophrenic. One wonders exactly what kind of treatment he suffered in imprisonment and, exactly, from or, ordered by, whom.<br />
<br />
At times, indeed increasingly more and more, it is hard not to conclude that this nation stinks more than others. Within the 12 months since it chose to proclaim itself to the world as one of the greatest (as it likes to do - while only at least rather bad, at least rather stupid, at least actually rather empty and shallow nations are caught doing this) in the hosting of the Olympics, while even getting the name of the nation wrong live in the opening ceremony publicised around the world. (The event had the national British team enter the arena to the announcement of "Great Britain", which is an island and not the name of any nation, rather than "United Kingdom [of Great Britain and Northern Ireland]".) If these people don't even care, it's hard to find it in oneself to care about this country.</div>
</div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-43543635829055112842013-03-30T22:26:00.001+00:002013-06-27T15:05:45.165+01:00Real beauty; balearic ambience from Francois Kevorkian<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: #073763;"><strong>I cannot resist sharing this one.</strong></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<span class="userContent" sab="4203"><span style="color: #073763;"><strong>This is so beautiful.</strong></span></span><br />
<span class="userContent" sab="4203"><span style="color: #073763;"><strong></strong></span></span><br />
<span class="userContent" sab="4203"><span style="color: #073763;"><strong>Reminds of '88 to '92 and ambient stuff and Balearic / Ibiza ambient stuff and also some British stuff engulfed in the ambience of that type of house, like Innocence and also some French ambient and deep stuff which I can't remember at all, but that Roger S and L Garnier played bits of them or more. (Saw Laurent last month at Stiff Kitten, Belfast. Very nice.)</strong></span></span><br />
<span class="userContent" sab="4203"><span style="color: #073763;"><strong></strong></span></span><br />
<span class="userContent" sab="4203"><span style="color: #073763;"><strong>It can always be annoying being ill so much of the time. Maybe I'm getting more used to it, emotionally, rationally. And then it can seem as if bad fate is just throwing something at you to annoy you further. Francois Kevorkian made a very rare Northern Irish appearance last month, in Londonderry. I was dying to go, but I knew well in advance I was just not well enough to make it there, alas.</strong></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #073763;"><strong><em>The Time Is Now</em> by Moloko, <em>Francois K's Blissed Out Dub</em> </strong></span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/xpwMmvoYcBo?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<strong><span style="color: red; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">BUY <em>The Time is Now</em> (<em>Francois K's Blissed Out Dub</em>) by Moloko</span></strong></div>
<ul>
<li><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<strong><span style="color: red; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.7digital.com/artist/moloko/release/all-back-to-the-mine/?src=live-search" target="_blank">From 7 Digital download store, track from <em>All Back to The Mine</em> Moloko remix LP</a></span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: red; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.best-cd-price.co.uk/Product-229816/B00005K2V2-All+Back+To+The+Mine.html" target="_blank">Find <em>All Back To The Mine</em> C.D. here, best-cd-price.co.uk [** see below]</a></span></strong><em><span style="color: #073763; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong></strong></span></em></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><strong><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #073763;">** ... even if you do end up at Amazon. Where else is there? I've gone through quite a lot of a web page listing supposed online record stores selling and posting C.D.s. But nearly all either have gone down or don't maintain a website for online sales</span>.</span></strong></span></div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-74103132767898394382013-03-29T05:25:00.002+00:002013-04-20T07:46:46.488+01:00Classic of our times: Todd Terje's "Ragysh", my Italo-Disco samsara & modern, norse, zen take on Italo-Disco<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A break from Bowie for a while.<br />
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Just as old hometown (where I don't live anymore but spend a lot of time at, visiting mother at the old parents' shack) prepares to welcome Todd Terje (Limelight, Belfast, UK, Easter Monday) supported by the excellent local heroes Bicep and Space Dimension Controller ...<br />
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... here is what sounds to me like Terje's real classic of the times. Though it hovers easily around electro house environs, also electro disco register, maybe some would say norse electro funk house also (a more icey Daft Punk, I know I have to qualify that that may be a shallow comparison or others will think it), it also comes across as something of a techno classic to me actually.<br />
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From when the word techno meant, yes what would be identifable now to techno fans as techno - <b><i>LFO</i> and all that</b>, but also this kind of thing too - techno-electro house. Meant a lot to what relates to what in the early world of Balearic house music maybe, I think.<br />
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A true classic of modern instrumental house, <i>Ragysh</i>.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/bqvlPbEAkMM?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Promoted in the video above is a recording of the vinyl pressing of <i>Ragysh.</i><br />
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Because just because, I'm also sharing a share of the digital recording:<br />
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<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F60985821&color=f9cf0b&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true" width="100%"></iframe>
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I think I'm going to miss Mr Terje. on Easter Monday - a few days away. Staying at my mother's, I've been trying to make it back home to the peninsula coast for weeks now, being ill. I tried to make it home to return for a hospital appointment (appointment was a few days ago). I happened not to be able to return home, stayed (as so used to, at home and not at home), and was not able to make the appointment for the procedure, not due to my ongoing illness, but an occasional sickness anyone can get which meant I couldn't have the procedure. Annoying. So now I want to go back as soon as.<br />
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Shine Productions, now the huge guys of the city's entertainment scene in most genres, once limited to a single house - techno club which became famous (<i>Shine</i>) have brought a lot of brilliant names to the city over the years. Especially in more recent years, opening up from just the large scale <i>Shine</i> club event, to The Stiff Kitten and in the last few months the redeveloped old city favourite, The Limelight (where I saw Simian Mobile Disco & Bicep before Christmas - unforgettable.)<br />
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While Belfast had not much of a regular, real house or dance music scene for many years, Shine Productions have changed that. It can seem strange to see numerous bookings in the same night. You can feel like someone might need to say to the promoters, this <i>is</i> Belfast, give us more of a chance. But I think it's just as much or more that things really may have changed.<br />
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On Easter Monday, while Todd Terje, Bicep & Space DC come to The Limelight, paces away Sasha is playing at The Stiff Kitten, and the <i>Subculture</i> team from Glasgow's Sub Club are lined up for the mega club at <i>Shine</i> itself. On the same night, from the same promoters. No lack of choice there for house fans in Belfast on Easter Monday. While, there is more going on (it may be hard to recognise the city, for those who knew it 15 to 25 years ago), for one thing something of good house in The Hudson I've forgotten, and DSNT present in Voodoo, for harder, minimal techno house fans (still <i>not trance fast</i>, I think, nor really trance, I think, but techno house, and not moddish d&b or <i>snare-insanity-stadium-synth</i> crap either maybe - would hope).<br />
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I had planned to go to see Sasha on Easter Monday. Though he's probably easier to find to see, by travelling somewhere, than Todd Terje. I still feel I owe myself seeing a Sasha show - since I went to see him with others at <i>Shine</i> a few years ago and missed nearly all of his set, listening to 808 State's set with SDC (in previous blog post "<a href="http://thinks-murmurs-stuff.blogspot.co.uk/2012_09_01_archive.html" target="_blank">House, house, house, house house</a>".) I was thinking I'm not ready for Todd Terje.<br />
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Some of his stuff, not just <i>Inspector Norse</i>, seems really some kind of close relation to Italo-disco (a very particular sensation of pre-"house" times, except if you mean early Chicago). Now, Italo-disco, well a whole set of it, can seem a strange beast for those who aren't prepared nowadays. It even could be hard going for those in the 1980s. The 80s, the main era of disco, and of serious, mature pop music, soul also being as serious as it could be true (very), R&B being <i>serious,</i> great, beautiful generally & better than previously, also with Adult Orientated Rock and Middle of the Road niches of grown-up music for pleasant but real, true times, minimalism getting well beyond lofts in modern classical circles. "Italo-disco could <i>even</i> be hard going in the 1980s?" That seems to suggest the beast is easier than it is. Those times with Italo <i>were hard,</i> they were hard, they were hard.<br />
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Yes, even then Italo-disco, a whole night of it, was something pretty specialist probably. It was serious, it seemed to me. One needed to take stock about consciousness. <i>What it was</i> (one's consciousness). <i>What it was</i> (Italo-disco). <i>What the context / contexts was or were</i> (going to a disco and all that meant, which doesn't really stop context wise in human life if you want to or can't help getting deep and don't have an automatic rear hill brake to stop you). <i>What it all might mean</i>. If these things may even come together in a meanginful or ordered or comfortable (that's really important) confluence at the one time. Or at least reserve themselves to do so later, after the event, rather than try to jacknife you existentially, even physically, off the dancefloor and off the globe.<br />
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(I know many might find themselves looking at me in a confused or worried fashion, thinking<i> those are thoughts that might come up in life at times, maybe, yes, even with popular music appreciation. But Italo-disco? Isn't it just rather minimal, simple and fun?</i>)<br />
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That's just my way of saying, you may need to be in the right frame of mind, or much more, the right existential vibrational level (even more, maybe), for certain music experiences. Italo-disco often struck me as one of these experiences. And with Italo, it seemed to have a cerebral focus for an existential identity, rather than just the tones and beats themselves. It was kind of seemingly logically daunting, suddenly ... about thinking lots and lots and lots of things. Things which, if you hadn't really thought them or concluded, need to be done extremely quickly. It could seem. It's not like an emotional requirement, or a feeling requirement - "I feel like this, like that". No, if you tried those options, you'd see how hard it was to be for Italo-disco.<br />
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I hope it's becoming clear this is (ahem, very likely) a personal angst experience description more than (um, probably, one doesn't know) any objective analysis of the general, particularly existential, significance in the essence of Italo-disco.<br />
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<i>Disco should be fun.</i> Italo-disco sounded serious to me. I could see fun, but only knowing it is serious first, and never discarding that.<br />
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To want to be serious fun, real, mature, grown-up fun. How can you push something serious to be fun, or something when you're trying to seem to be fun, to be serious then? Surely if you're even in a position that you're <i>trying</i>, <i>attempting, maybe forcing somehow</i>, the wise, wise Italo-disco animal is going to breathe down its nostrils violently quickly and blow you out of that cool little dancing shack quicker than you can say "<i>Spagna knows</i>", just for being in such bad faith in its presence.<br />
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<i>But no, don't get so agitated and afeared and anxious, I suggest the Italo-disco animal does know, just like Spagna maybe. And would not blow you out of his or her magic, mature, sparsely glittering while linen and carbon lined realm of very worked out adults who seem to have a new Oriental style karma enlightenment of a sensible and loving and just downright successful kind, on and around the little dance floor. </i><br />
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<i>No, he'd / she'd stroke you lovingly with his / her mature, benevolent, healing saliva dripping from his / her huge panting nostrils. (They're bigger than you. You wouldn't believe how tall and mature. ...seeming, anyway. ) As his dripping saliva intentionally massaged your sweating brow, he'd say, "O grab a cocktail, one. One can be as relaxed and unattatched as one desires. If I come to you, I come to you.". Then, after a pause that is enjoyable, "Do you think they know?", meaning the other dancers on the dancefloor, as one felt a nice, puffy feeling of love from the great, wise, mature animal, whispered somehow in a truly enlightened sounding fashion just before Italo-disco animal retreats swiftly, normally seeming, but I can't deny it, with a personal impression of importance to me, quietly, as if maybe engaged, as would be natural in one's life.</i><br />
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I loved Italo-disco. Yet wanted to love it more. Or me, I wanted to love me more directly in relation to Italo-disco experiences (and not really any other musical or disco experiences). Then I got over that second part: I was separate to Italo-disco, and I loved me as much as I could and I wasn't affected. Yet I wanted to love Italo-disco more, because the me, the subself or subselves whom I knew appreciated it most, flew away at the wrong times which ought to have been there and signifying at the right times.<br />
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Yet I wanted it, the kind of thing I thought Italo-disco was, to be less distinct from what the rest of life and the world was. Why should it be like this? It could even seem that Italo-disco, by not being a cultural phenomenon in what it is unintentionally, tragically made exactly just a cultural phenomenon. For the very reason alone that the rest of the world, the rest of the culture has flown away some time ago, it could seem. One learned in struggling with the normal seriousness of elements of life in Italo-disco and drowning over time in that struggle, that normal, strong, sensible, <i>necessary</i> seriousness in the rest of life, perhaps in the rest of the world, had diminshed, perhaps even disappeared. What ought to be a normal element of life, the Italo-disco outing, seemed may have been exposing the housing - the world and modern life - as a facade, a dying ember pretending to be in the time, alive, vibrant, natural,<i> but, aaah, only pretending</i>.<br />
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Perhaps within this awful, tragic, unexpected manhole or sticky, suffocating lacuna of life, I feel I need to invent that the Italo-disco animal significantly has a maturely compassionate, distinguishing, prising, valuing, even maybe encouraging nature, or at least impression.<br />
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In any case, however the animal may stroke you, in its saliva massage spa, or perhaps who knows what else, for me there could be no denying, if you take yourself and this life in this place fully seriously, Italo-disco seems serious. Not a mere passing of the time, unless you happened to be in a certain way. I used to believe I felt jealousy of imagined Italians, who I imagined either had this <i>way</i> available for most times, or could conjure it easily from far reaching climes to the here and now at will.<br />
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Quickly returning to my decision that I would probably try to see Sasha finally on Easter Monday, and not Terje who I was associating in good part with a new, nordic Italo-disco upated to electro house. Though I began to kind of subconsciously form into someone curious for this. When it had seemed I could never muster enough seriousness, I began to think both that it was coming and that it was not so required. And further, if a good deal of Terje's stuff could seem like a close relation to Italo-disco, it's kind of the best part, because it is Zen calm Italo-disco. Yes, Zen calm Italo-disco did exist in the past in small amounts, maybe rationed as if a nectar from the gods. If the artist is signficantly steeped in Zen calm in his Italo-disco relation, things should be all right anyway.<br />
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I want to add quickly, importantly, I know Todd Terje may not be an actual Italo-disco producer, really. (Added: Is that true, though? I've just bought a few more of his things, listening as I write, including <i>Lanzarote</i>, and in good part it sounds pretty like Italo stuff to me).<br />
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I know that some (or many) people won't find Terje's stuff reminiscent of Italo-disco much or at all. <i>One thing is to say that what I don't mean by Italo -disco is euro poppy, maybe slower hi-nrg, typically pub night out guys crooning, 80s disco that was popular in many Italian discotheques. Another thing to say is that I think I'm thinking about a more specialist club 80s electro Italo-disco style - the Italo electro from before house (while probably including poppier stuff like Spagna, but Spagna was certainly steeped in a kind of esoteric Italo-disco ethos, it seemed, rather than just being a poppy disco queen). There definitely seemed an esoteric feel to the kind of music I'm thinking of (and I can't remember examples since most of 30 years, I don't really think I knew the titles then anyway)</i> <i><b>The last thing to say, which maybe ought to be the first, is that, perhaps, again as I have before and maybe do reasonably often, I take some notion - here Italo-disco - and go off on a personal tangent. I am thinking of what some of it meant to me, maybe ignoring the rest of it - maybe the most of it!!! I don't know.</b></i><br />
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"<i>If it be now 'tis not to come, if it be not now, yet it will come."</i><br />
<i>Coping with life and Italo-disco.</i></div>
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If you want to hear one example of one kind of thing which could be found in old Italo-disco scenes, listen to Terje's <i>Inpsector Norse.</i> Of course, I think, from that track and maybe the odd other one, I must have partly worked myself up into believing something that isn't really so relevant. Of course, just to enjoy that itself and then make some kind of strange online blog post fest out of the willed nostalgic semi-neurosis, perhaps. It may be - if ya can't be a drama angst queen the odd time, if ya haven't mustered it <i>once</i> anyway for the year, ya have to drag it out <i>somehow.</i> If not all of the time.<br />
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A quick ending, so I thought I'd changed my preference, to want to go see Todd Terje on Easter Monday, and again, think about following Sasha somewhere else, still (after those years!). For what it's worth, I say, because I think I'm far too sick, and need to go home and spend 3 weeks in bed! And that doesn't bother me. I feel so bad, it sounds like heaven actually. And the thought that Mr Terje (who's stuff I <i>don't </i>know so well yet, I find any serious fandom hard nowadays) and Sasha (who I haven't really examined for a long time) would be happily playing into the night air when I am tucked up in bed beside the sea tantalising perhaps. Maybe it could be a rare night when the experience of the sea waves, having come to the highest point, may be audible and there is no wind to sound also to smother the sound of the sea, relaxes me, inspires me, settles me, gives me healing feelings. (Just when I know I am not well enough to try what could really harm me.) Something else happening in the night air.<br />
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Perhaps just the thoughts of the subtly, esoterically, but copiously benevolent, wise and caring <i><b>Italo-disco animal (or the iced zen version)</b></i> make well enough for to bring me around to some kind of life again, in some time, without the maybe splendid context of Italo-disco experienced itself, in an enlightened, mature fashion or not at all that. His / her care, I hope, sails me.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #073763;"><span style="font-size: small;">Conceptual portrait of <span style="font-size: small;">I</span></span>ced Zen Italo-disco animal, sex not known</span></b></span><br />
<b><span style="color: #073763; font-size: small;">(which is not the reason for the question marks)</span></b></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Buy "Ragysh" by Todd Terje</b></span></span></span></h4>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><a href="http://www.beatport.com/search?query=ragysh&facets[]=fieldType:track" target="_blank">From the Beatport download store</a></b></span></span></span></h4>
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LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-31554926022545951752013-03-28T22:24:00.002+00:002013-03-28T22:39:13.352+00:00A Bowie perspective, 'The Phenomenon' Part 2 - continued<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I'm fairly certain that there are legions of Bowie fans out there who would scorn and spit at the notion that the man of the music, the music of the man (of the idea, I add) could be <i>only</i> a performance artist with the meaning of artist not of the same use as musician.<br />
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So I'm not going to force that one, the research for to make any more clear assertions in that direction is not there. I hadn't really intended to go further than making a bare suggestion alone, in any event. So there it is, I've made it, just the suggestion alone, mull over it, take it or leave it, see if it leads you anywhere. (Perhaps it's a foregone conclusion that hardened Bowie fans may be much more unlikely to go down the route of considering as seriously as more detatched others, perhaps I'm prejudging and quite blind to a phenomenon I don't really understand.) Yes, there is a lot of much loved music surrounding - or being surrounded by, I don't wish to exclude just now - the obsessive vision of personality cult.<br />
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What type of personality cult is it? In simple terms, the personality cult of the rather obessesively mad - <i>not just pretty darn different</i> - individual of legendary porportions. Indeed <i>legend </i>can also easily be analysed to be a good part of the starting points of the blueprint into cultural voyeurism within the framework of the notion of an individual. <i>BOWIE: How big can you go?</i> This is the cultural aspect itself. Another aspect one might consider could be elements of savant, visionary, chosen one, even serious jester or holy fool (remembering of one time, the mime elements of Bowie's act, and that he was taught by actor, dancer & mime artist Lindsey Kemp), Russian style Yurodivy. The Messianic pop star? Surely the limit of the familiar elements of this well known cultural position, the star, are taken to the limit.<br />
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I want to avoid going further where I know many would be feeling gradually more and more disappointed as if the music and the man of the music was being given less and less respect, inappropriately. I can't, anyway. I feel I'd need a major investment in refamiliarising myself with Bowie's work, of which I don't remember much from all of those years ago I made some foray in there, trying to remain as objective as possible. One thing I do remember feeling, and I was very young, is that it felt like relatively uncharted territory in the sense that one wondered just how many of the millions who loved Bowie had chosen or were able to remain so objective and judgement reserving in their experience of the legend. But this was <i>not my time</i>. It was of a different era, and young people naturally, typically seem to tend to make faces at these bygone eras in general terms, unless attracted by particular artists. I never thought of myself as someone particularly interested in 'the spirit' as 'the spirit of an age' where particularly 'the spirit' may come second to musical or identifiable elements, so I don't think that's why I would have been more sidetracked by the sounds and movements of my own age.<br />
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(I could be wrong, but I did wonder strongly if these rock music elements of the previous eras in popular music were much more defined by 'the spirit' of human energy spirit before content than the stuff of my era. Perhaps in a similar fashion to after 'my time', meaning these contemporary times. And perhaps that was why I wasn't so pulled there. But then, most people from before, during or after the prime time of 'my era' would hardly consider my real love, House Music, had any spirit, or any to much content of any kind whatsoever, anyway! Perhaps, I am actually a spiritilessly obsessed soul, someone happily ensconced by the drone of digeridoo or the beat of a shamanic, jungle drum, rather than the presented human, kind of gutsy, physical but also somehow, somehow potentially, <i>or</i> at least purportedly, cerebral energy of the modern pop eras. I am entitled to disagree but I feel it's more healthy for myself to leave my verdict open, at least for now. Take such thought contexts whenever available - they help, believe me.)<br />
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Recapping from last time, when suddenly compelled to think about it, I couldn't even find the context of viewing Bowie's musical catalogue as basic musical selections in themselves. The stuff did not fit conceptually into the category or contexts of musical catalogue for me. And I know this is because in my mind at the moment, Bowie is <i>Art</i> itself, not particularly the artist of musical performance (also that, of course), but the artist of performance itself. So self-contained, if there had been a Turner Prize in his earlier days, he'd never have acknowledged it appropriate to who he was! Hahahahahaha. And so, yet, while acknowledging my vision of Bowie could never be verified by the man or what his essential spirit embodies, I continue with the argument of my perspective, for better, for worse.<br />
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Perhaps it is time to mention the argument that an essential part of a blueprint for something which if ever spoken out loud, admitted in any slight way, would destroy the essence of what it is, of course, well, what can I say? ... ... shh ... Must remain a secret. If even a rather dramatic, seldom or never precisely voiced or identified, <i>Pulcinella's secret </i>(open secret). Perhaps it is also that I have a more fortunate (from one perspective) position than real Bowie fans, who could never see or be able to admit to and see at the same time what I experience. Granted, being outside the time of his works, the scope of the core pull of his fandom leaves anyone voicing what I have been voicing wide open to the knock down criticism, "It's only because you didn't <i>get</i> the music - it would be the same for any act you didn't like or become seriously affected by their music." <i>But isn't Bowie different? </i>Yes. <i>Surely?</i><br />
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<i>to be continued ...</i><br />
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LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-31467527550187397222013-03-27T15:14:00.001+00:002013-03-28T22:44:40.321+00:00A perspective on Bowie: 'The phenomenon'<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The V and A Musuem, London, which calls itself "the world's greatest museum of design and art" opened the <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/david-bowie-is/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b><i>David Bowie is</i></b></span></a> exhibition a few days ago this March. It runs until 11 August 2013. The museum curators were given unprecedented access to Bowie's personal artefact archive. There is a lot of stuff in there from a Ziggy Stardust suit (etcetera) to attention grabbing multimedia including nine foot video walls, to original lyrics hand scrawled on note paper by Mr Bowie.<br />
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I was alerted to the exhibition by BBC's <i>The Review Show</i> (22 March 2013), and I heard the exhibition described as a collage rather than a chronological exhibition, and a very diverse journey. As you might expect for a discussion by critics who are really, mostly long term deep David Bowie fans, there was only a little mention of the exhibition itself before they got lost into going on about the man himself and the past and the present. Evidently the exhibition inspires this.</div>
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I've often seen this perspective of David Bowie, not the full picture I know. For it is partly cynical and partly can't fully appreciate part of the core essence of what he did, but in ways it is also <b><i>a</i></b> full picture from a wider human sphere (that can't be fully or as drily defined or summed up, of course), as even intended. Even though it is a partly cynical perspective, it still was intended, is still inextricable from Bowie, I feel, and is a substantial part of the inherent truth of the essence of David Bowie as the man in his public work.<br />
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Here it is. Bowie is a definite cultural phenomenon and that is no accident. It is a deep phenomenon which this musician is. The phenomenon in large part involves the essence of the postmodern practise of <i>receptionism</i> (seldom used term, but central to some elements of postmodernism in culture).<br />
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What is this? What a thing is is substantially about the effect it is intended to have, or can have anyway where the effect is not so planned particularly. A thing is substantially about how it is received. With Bowie this is a cultural phenomenon that is to be, which is to be about being, a cultural phenomenon. "<i>Spiders from Mars</i>" sung to those notes told me this a long time ago. But this is more than just a cultural phenomenon that is about being a cultural phenomenon - it is the erection of a personality cult intentionally to be worshipped as a personality cult. As said in the BBC program, Bowie "permeates our culture" and "seems to be all round us". Even when he hasn't been active much, he is always very notably there somehow, or the notable absence of something large may register. I'm not saying this is the whole story, of course.<br />
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Of course, David Bowie himself might voice disagreement, saying he just is and performs. But I know he'd be lying really, of course. He can't not know. It's more likely he'd be laughing at me for even considering that last sentence.<br />
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In essence, Bowie is a cultural phenomenon precisely as a cultural statement, the statement being the phenomenon, the stating of this in itself. The phenomenon comes before what it may contain? Maybe, maybe not, but in any case it's inseparable. And I'm not suggesting that the content of the phenomenon itself is meaningless, drivel, pointless or anything like that at all, but the content is a separate consideration to the other inextinguisable element, the phenomenon.</div>
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The cultural statement in the cultural phenomenon speaks the embodiment of the personality cult, of the <i>mad</i> individual in society. There are, of course, elements of tradintional art obsessions such as the artist in society and the romantic notion of the society against the expressive, visionary or just sensitive individual - but in the cultural statement and phenomenon these have been designed to have gone to haywire proportions, intentially and from the blueprints, it seems. For the phenomenon, for the statement. "<i>Love me in it</i>", Bowie is saying in making the quite complex cultural phenomenon itself. (I wonder how close he gets to spelling this out. Not being a proper Bowie fan, it would take me some time to go through his stuff to try to see if there are times he gets obviously close to an out and out statement. My guess is he is so contained in character(s) and the phenomenon and the statement, he does not even envisage that he would allow himself to get close to "opening up".)<br />
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That the traditional concerns of artists are made to really extreme proportions - again, the artist in society gone absolutely haywire - may be the only point of them within this cultural phenomenon. (In one sense, Mahler or Wagner may express the painful yet perhaps divine like notion of the artist in society but neither danced across a stage blaring it from their lungs, personally drawing you into this notion as it they were that and maybe significantly only that. The individuality of the individual is a major concern but as extreme voyeurism in culture, in peoples' faces, down their trannies, on their screens, in pubs, everywhere. And <i>it is for</i> the massess. This was mass appeal cult appeal voyeurism as if even in establishing in some artistically playful way <i>a real sect, a real cult </i>of worship as definitive in the cultural phenomenon. Interspersed in the man's career are definitions, elements, storylines of it, the voyeuristic, extremely distinguished individual as cultural phenomenon itself: <i>The Man Who Fell To Earth, Starman</i> (There's a starman. Yes a star, <i>man</i>. Guess who it is?)<br />
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It's distinct.<br />
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Regular BBC <i>Review Show</i> critic Natalie Haynes mentioned that her era was after mainstream Bowie, so after most of the <i>real </i>fuss, after much of the real phenomenon itself. (But it is something which can't really die to give way for a pure musician that was never bound up it in.) That was a more restrained, perhaps sensible and mindful area in culture - the 80s and 90s. It did not have so much time for the mad personality cult as art and cultural plan, being very, and gradually more and more, obsessed with the genuine cult of the self (whether part of the 'Me' era and generation or a purer, higher concern than what's now often seen as the time of greed, or the time for the development of greed). The genuine cult of the self has since become lost in the ingenuine, aimless <i>anti-cult cult </i>of the self pretending still to be a true, pure cult of the self. This modern, much more unfortunate reality, can appear like a certain American TV series involving a plane crash that went on and on and on - seemingly endlessly and without aim - as much as it was incomprehensible.<br />
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Now, in this post <i>Lost</i> age, an absolutely out and out, down and out, lost age which even yet still pretends we are allied to the genuine cult of self, there returns an obsession with a kind of personality cult (back since its diminution in the early 80s). This modern revision of the era of glam rock etcetera personality cults comes within the ingenuine cult of the self pretending to be a pure cult of self - in <i>pretend obsessions</i> with any and every empty cultural phenomenon instead of troubadors or minstrels in music. <i>Pretend you like it. Just pretend. Don't mean it, naturally.</i> (Just what did Bowie, Glitter and so on bring about?)<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">[How strange that Groove Armada suddenly insert the <i>Blade Runner</i> syth theme by Vangelis into their BBC mix I'm listening to as I write, at the very instant when I'm typing to describe this modern era in popular culture. I used to imagine the <i>Blade Runner </i>world could have pretend obsessions particularly made instead of music, for the masses to practise or merely enjoy their unparticular fauning on or something. But nicely. if that's possible, nicely - however personally misguided.Not with music that<span style="font-size: x-small;">, if examined truly, is s<span style="font-size: x-small;">o <span style="font-size: x-small;">unlikely to spawn any such attribut<span style="font-size: x-small;">able pers<span style="font-size: x-small;">onality cults. </span></span></span></span></span>-I remember fr<span style="font-size: x-small;">om the early 90s, </span>I liked very much <i>Blade Runner</i> and <span style="font-size: x-small;">imagined I <span style="font-size: x-small;">loved the world of <i>Blade Runner</i></span></span>. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(<i>G<span style="font-size: x-small;">roove Armada</span></i></span><i> 6 Mix</i>, 15.03.2013, available <span style="font-size: x-small;">free in Soundcloud.com)</span>].</span><br />
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In the post <i>Lost</i> age, even <i>the good parts</i> are defined by obsession with cultural phenomeons, making personality cults where possible, whether that be Bowie, Daft Punk or the constant recycling of<i> </i>The Rolling Stones, or a new boy band too insignificant in terms of what real culture means to actually listen to properly. (Unless you're 11 years old, maybe female, also for males, and just find attraction in the 'youth' spirit and energy of the age alone, regardless of what they do.) The latter is the more usual face of this fake era of<i> pretend obsessions</i> instead of music - from Lady Gaga to Perry, Eminem, Minaj, Beiber, things appear back with the obsessive cultural phenomenae of the era of Bowie and glam. But is there really anything serious in there now at all? Beyond the money and people somehow screaming at nothing, or to these ears, less than zero - whether they can control it or not?<br />
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Natalie Haynes mentions her era was that of <i>Under Pressure</i>, the Bowie collaboration with so-called rock gods Queen and that, that being the "worst of Bowie" and the "worst of Queen", she missed the opportunity to know the real phenomenon, what it had been all about, what it was, what it was like to experience, what it meant.<br />
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I felt myself seeing a clear definition of just what Bowie was (and, as said, must still be, this being inextricable), just how abnormal for such huge success in mainstream culture a year or so before he really established himself. Even how abnormal within a type of that time he existed within a clear set of - even though this kind of stance grew rather quickly. I found myself thinking about Haynes's remark that <i>Under Pressure</i> was the worst of both, and couldn't help quickly noting personally that it couldn't be the worst of Queen for me. To these ears Queen made countless abysmal records and their, to me sickening, sheerly attention seeking, theatrical paen in performance is every music hall show too far for me.<br />
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However, the point I want to make is that naturally I wondered if <i>Under Pressure</i> could be the worst of Bowie, and realised there was no answer really. If I were being true to what I saw and felt. With Queen I coudl easily see a catalogue of theatrical musical releases, and subjectively make a preferential analysis that, though I loathed <i>Under Pressure, </i>I could listen to it for maybe 40 seconds before running to switch the radio channel. Where with most other Queen songs, generally this time would be less than a second before my legs would take to the air, running to the radio for as quick a change as possible. But, what Queen were, in essence were musical showmen, yes, performers, songsters, crooners, if you will, still the old minstrels in some way even if they raked around your head with so-called energy and surprise, rather than settled, soothed and inspired it.<br />
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Now Bowie. The distinction is it didn't matter with Bowie what it could mean that a song could be the worst of him. (This is not at all suggesting I thought Bowie 'worse' than Queen, far from it.) It made no sense to say <i>Under Pressure</i> could be the worst of Bowie - there was no clear way to see, it meant nothing. Because, from the vantage of decades of relative removal, even though I can appreciate some of his music a lot, that was irrelevant. I couldn't even see him particularly as a musician, distinctly - good, bad or indifferent, a heartfelt performer or nonplussed, genuine nor fake.<br />
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No, he's art. <i>Art</i>. (I mean the man in his public work himself, nothing to do with him being an exhibition subject currently.) Art, merely that and even perhaps with him, it's possible for many to cut through the music and see him only as <i>art</i> - performance art as cultural phenomenon.<br />
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<i>to be continued ...</i></div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-45434948927248647722013-03-26T11:15:00.000+00:002013-03-26T11:25:42.484+00:00Some real, proper house; and to remember the late Kenny Hawkes.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #073763;">April 1995 house mix, by Kenny Hawkes, from his Girls FM show.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F1847805&color=f9e627&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true" width="100%"></iframe></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Kenny Hawkes, 14 July 1968 – 10 June 2011.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">R.i.P.</span><br />
<span style="color: orange;"><a href="http://www.residentadvisor.net/dj/kennyhawkes/biography" target="_blank"><br /></a></span>
<b><span style="color: orange;"><a href="http://www.residentadvisor.net/dj/kennyhawkes/biography" target="_blank">Kenny Hawkes biography at Resident Advisor</a></span></b><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">Which doesn't include an update since Kenny's death to include his death </span><br />
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<b><span style="color: orange;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Hawkes" target="_blank">Kenny Hawkes' notice of death at Wikipedia article</a></span></b> <span style="color: #073763;">has that.</span><br />
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<span style="color: red;"><b><a href="http://www.beatport.com/artist/kenny-hawkes/2106" target="_blank">Find Kenny Hawkes's releases at Beatport store</a></b></span></div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-15725765062355762832013-03-24T09:50:00.005+00:002013-03-24T11:17:53.153+00:00Deep house classic, "Missing You" in two version, by Larry Heard.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="color: #073763;">Old one. Never to be forgotten.</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="color: #073763;">(1999 / 2000 release, Trackmode Recordings / Alleviated Records).</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="color: #073763;">Or two old ones, maybe, as the same song in a cool, jazz style mix can sound like a different track to the 70s electro soundtrack influenced original version.</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="color: #073763;">I remember from a long time there are a few good mixes of this classic, cool cut.</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="color: #073763;">I think I remember this is one particularly amazing very long re-edit, no idea who by, I hope I can find it and post it here.</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="color: #073763;">The classic version is to be enjoyed, though:</span></b><br />
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<b><span style="color: #073763;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #073763;">... And here is the Jazz Café Mix (or "Larry's Jazz Café Mix"?) of "Missing You":</span></b><br />
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<span style="color: red; font-size: x-small;"><strong>BUY: Either version can be bought and downloaded from, say:</strong></span><br />
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<li><a href="http://www.residentadvisor.net/dj/larryheard/tracks" target="_blank"><span style="color: red; font-size: x-small;"><strong>Resident Advisor, good to very high quality MP3s & WAV music files in this list of Heard's tracks, click here.</strong></span></a></li>
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<li><a href="http://www.junodownload.com/artists/Larry+Heard/releases/" target="_blank"><span style="color: red; font-size: x-small;"><strong>Juno Download store, again choose from good or very high quality MP£s, also WAV music files, from a list of Heard's many great tracks, click here.</strong></span></a></li>
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LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-76916219944691398602013-03-07T22:23:00.003+00:002013-03-07T22:53:37.637+00:00The Nu- Clear vision, the symbol of the times themselves, the ultimate, you are being issued to grasp it.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Talks for EDF Energy to build nuclear plants 'could fail within weeks’</h1>
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Talks between EDF Energy and the Government over building Britain’s first new
nuclear plant in a generation are at “crisis point” and could fail within
weeks because of deadlock over subsidies for the project.
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(The Telegraph online, UK, 4 March 2013.)<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><em>Good.</em>
<strong>The propositions really need to fail.</strong> This is a dim, dim government
who, if they will be able to take a step back in the future after their
term ends, each personally will feel very confused and ashamed at what
they have been trying to do. They are sleepwalking in nightmares. I
wonder if they'll be able to take a step back in the future, in this
life.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> I guess this well-known nuclear plant centre didn’t inform the
public about very real elements of British nuclear power right on the
site. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Read:</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-21298117" target="_blank">Sellafield clean-up cost reaches £67.5bn, says report. BBC News, UK, 4.2.2013</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I’m always disgusted when governments, for example David Cameron’s
current batch, despite the disasters such as in Japan recently, decide
to go ahead facilitating new nuclear power plants. Then, though, you
find out the more amazing truth that this country cannot even manage the
sites it already has. It’s amazing how keen some people are to hide and
make you forget the truth about nuclear power – the cancer, deaths,
birth defects, torturous conditions of so many people who have lived
within miles of nuclear power plants not recorded as ever
malfunctioning.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I live at the seaside, on the coast of the world's most contaminated
sea, the Irish Sea, nearly directly opposite Sellafield, in another
quarter of the UK, on the coast of Northern Ireland. I can really,
really feel things. I don't go swimming in there, myself. (I'm
vegetarian, so anyway I avoid the fish.) When I was a boy, my family had
a holiday home on the coast in the Republic of Ireland, a distance
south of the Sellafield location in England. As the children around grew
up, along with the adults, people started saying they weren't going in
the sea anymore. People stopped bathing, because of the water and
Sellafield. They made faces, their faces grew strange when talking about
the last times they went bathing in the sea.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;">Nu-Clear</span></h3>
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"></span></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><strong><em>"Nuclear"
or nu-clear, new reality, or issued vision.</em></strong> It's when - the time when -
power is anti-power; power is destruction - power and destruction,
power in destruction, destruction in power; destruction before power but
in the abstract conceptual realm, on the actual timescale the
destruction comes after the "power" or at least some of it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">(That is true with the home fuelling variety, the weapons grade
variety is perhaps more honest, as you indicate. The power IS the
destruction, they come at the same time. While, yet, even with that
real, symbolic reality, the power comes free at a time from the full
extent of the destruction, the destruction that happens closer to home
with one bomb sent to the other side of the world alone, is not felt,
and is hidden, until later.)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">"Nu-clear" - the symbolic definition of much of the times. The new
reality in the issued vision - it's unique - you're being told to seize
it - where power is more than just power, where power goes beyond power,
goes beyond what it possibly could be as it has become anti-power as
well - the essence of destruction. Where now, with power, you really
can, conceptually have your cake and still have eaten it, because power
is both what it is and the opposite. This is the new world.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span><br />
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LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-35198268975344904572013-02-08T03:54:00.000+00:002013-02-08T03:54:02.756+00:00My, you seem special to me.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H56vWOPiaog/UH7-_Ax1omI/AAAAAAAAEoI/s93Ifhu2DEQ/s1600/tumblr_mai3kyNYzb1rs8w78o1_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H56vWOPiaog/UH7-_Ax1omI/AAAAAAAAEoI/s93Ifhu2DEQ/s1600/tumblr_mai3kyNYzb1rs8w78o1_500.jpg" /> </a></div>
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I found this photo in a photo rich blog called Bleached:</div>
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<a href="http://levoici.blogspot.co.uk/2012_10_01_archive.html" target="_blank">http://levoici.blogspot.co.uk/2012_10_01_archive.html</a> </div>
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LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-57348101727717719342013-02-08T02:24:00.001+00:002013-03-24T10:12:29.034+00:00Film review: "The Ides of March" (2011)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Review: <b><i>The Ides of March</i></b> (2011</span></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></h3>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></h3>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">It's really not worth it.</span></h3>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">So empty it will make you sad, not from seeing a sad story, but a sad, sad film itself which can't know the story. </span></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Is it sorry?</span></h3>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
<i> </i></h3>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">(First use of star rating system. 1 star is not the lowest. There are also half stars, this could have been given no stars or half star out of five. 1 star = 2 / 10<b>,</b> or 20%.) </span></span></h3>
<br />
Brash, brazen, soulless political intrigue thriller
that is content, orientation and human perspective hungry. And, if you
somehow give in<span class="hidden_content" style="display: inline;">
and have sympathy somehow, the hungry film will eat you instead. It
makes cynical people. I suppose even most of them will not be aware.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="hidden_content" style="display: inline;">The basic thing to say about this film, which I've
read even of those who appreciate the film say, is that it has no
depth. Actually nor even really anything in there at all. There's
nothing in there, if you think, if you look. (But you don't have to.
Don't bother, I advise, check out something else. The good reviews for
this one are fallacious.)</span><br />
<br />
<span class="hidden_content" style="display: inline;">It is based on a true story and so it's all
the more annoying that a decent opportunity to tell that humanly was
wasted, thwarted and subverted in case anyone else was interested. Like a
decent Made for TV company - that would be good. It's the kind of thing that kind of film
company would make well, and there are a good number of good Made for TV
film companies and there have been excellent films made and I often think how well they do with very tricky subjects. Some excellent, really top films are in that domain.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="hidden_content" style="display: inline;">No, this thing is really annoying. It's the script, yes,
you can't escape that's the basic screw up with this version of telling
the true story. But things get worse after that - most of the acting is
juvenile, falsely testosterone filled, attention seeking, vacuous
entirely. Like prima donna premier footballers whose talent vanished
years ago, Gosling etc. know the script is a trashy waste of a decent
opportunity for a film and so they dishonestly divert your attention to
give the whole piece a crappy 'page-turner' suspense flavour. You're
supposed to need to know how it ends. But it doesn't matter, if you do
care and think it matters, you'll have missed that there's nothing even
interesting or out of the ordinary anyway about nearly all of what made
you sit to the end waiting for something to happen. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="hidden_content" style="display: inline;">There's nothing
really going on, if you look. Nothing in that film is really out of the
ordinary. The things which happen, until close to the very end, are all,
one suspects, typical and mundane for political campaigns. Mundane
anyway, for anything. Where's the interest anywhere there? No, the true
story would only succeed if set to film through a deep character
examination of a couple of the people, of course especially the main character,
here played by Gosling. <i>The Ides of March</i>, though is a
t<i>ough-kids-go-stage-and-'arts'-and-want-you-to-suck-their-loins-because-they-can-do-no-wrong-they-say</i> pile of nonsense.
It's really bad. It's really dishonest as how it's made probably will
actually hide it's emptiness and pointlessness and that even the subject
but for one incidental occurence near the end is completely
uninteresting and not worth five minutes in a feature film costing
£1000, let alone many, many millions of dollars. (Again, unless a
character approach had been taken, but this film takes a serious and particular
cardboard shapes approach, intentionally, it seems.)</span><br />
<br />
<span class="hidden_content" style="display: inline;">Gosling really is
awful despite how the guy typically tries everything to get you on side
but has so much going on, most of the masses he tries to brainwash
probably won't notice. (Are there hidden auto-suggestions in Gosling's
films? I always feel like that's all that I've been seeing.) Seymour
Hoffman is bad but at least shows he knows, has realised the thing is
going nowhere fast and actually nowhere, and feels there's nothing he
can do with his role in the company at that time.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="hidden_content" style="display: inline;">There are two show
stealing, excellently acted performances in minor roles by Paul Giammati
and Evan Rachel Wood. But they are so distinct from the rest of the
film that they appear to be actually laughing at it or pleaing for
anyone reading a resumé afterwards not to blame them for being connected
with the uncountables around them. Funnily, director Clooney also acts
very well in his tiny cameo role appearances - blink and miss nearly -
but unfortunately he was responsible for the waste of space that is the
rest of the film.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="hidden_content" style="display: inline;">Don't see. It's not worth it. It is most highly
cynical and tripe and even if you are aware to that - most will not be,
unfortunately, most want to buy anything that big names spew out - it
will still be an effort not to be made cynical by the film when you are
just watching it to see what they get up to and what they make of
things. Again, it's not really worth it. Go try something that may be
worthwhile. Everything in this film is fraud, it respects not honesty.</span></div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-33255486669444793422013-01-14T08:44:00.000+00:002013-01-14T08:44:43.017+00:00Basic, therapeutic clarification to help with to breathe and see. Usually this is something very obvious that's seldom stated.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">Life
is no journey. It's totally different. Journeys are always
distinguishable. Yes, there are elements of "journeys" which are also
elements of life. Or, you could say, some journey elements correspond
with or are similar to elements of life. But, if life were a journey, it
would be in the book with the distances and times and rail stops and
prices, whether the Thomas Cook European book or some North American
book. But "life" is simply not in those books. That's because, actually,
life has never been a journey. Just as you cannot find life or any part
of life in books of games - any part of life that is not actually a
game in those books, with names like Basketball, I Spy etc.</span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">No game. (Or would be in the books of games, with a name and description.)</span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">No journey. (Or would be in those travel route compendiums.)</span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">Honestly. </span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"><i>So what it is it?</i></span></span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"><i>So what is it?</i></span></span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">So what is it?</span> </i></span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"><i> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">So what is it?</span></i></span></span></h5>
<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent"><i> </i></span></span></h5>
</div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-73391748595734683042013-01-11T19:28:00.000+00:002013-03-24T11:05:40.236+00:00LINDSTRØM, Ra-Ako-St (Todd Terje edit)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="color: blue;">A real club classic.</span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"><em>What is disco?</em></span><br />
<span style="color: blue;"></span><br />
July 2012.<br />
Label: Feedelity Norway (FEED 046)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F55051291&color=fdd000&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true" width="100%"></iframe><br />
<br />
<br />
<strong><span style="color: red;">Buy "Ra-Ako-St" by Lindstrom, Todd Terje edit:</span></strong><br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://www.residentadvisor.net/track.aspx?471668" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: red;">Music file download from Resident Advisor store</span></strong></a></li>
</ul>
</div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-78405914060361162462013-01-01T20:41:00.000+00:002013-01-04T12:14:17.637+00:00Shoom Shoom Shoom: Happy Birthday Shoom, You are 25.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
I meant to post this in December but couldn't. Videos etc. to follow. Deep felt good wishes to Shoom.</div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-82901730391317949302013-01-01T20:40:00.004+00:002013-01-04T12:22:29.587+00:00This mess we're in ...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Imagine. You wake up on the first day of the new year, number 13 and 2 thousand since, roughly, somethng truly awful, you are in some kind of very detatched trance. Comatic, maybe. But functioning in some way and when clicking in to function for a short time in the most limited sense, unfortunately, you're not aware then of the original situation.<br />
<br />
And so the machinery, cogs and wheels, of various comatic states click in and whirr away, one subsuming as the next drops like clockwork, each detatched from being with them the awareness of the coma itself. Like then you're trying. Because everything's all right isn't it?<br />
<br />
That was me today, and many days. Today was kind of worse than normal, maybe much worse. I didn't go out revelling. My mother had promised to take me out for a Christmas dinner, and I was ill on Christmas day and before, stuck in bed at home in the "sticks", when I'd intended to come to the city to stay at my mother's place. So the Christmas dinner out happened last night, NYE, nice French restaurant, nice food, relaxing, and I am glad I was too ill to go to a club or whatever and drink lots. Two glasses of the house Chardonnay and an attempt at a beer when I returned (it didn't work), early to bed after strange uncontrollable movements, and I was pleased I didn't try to effect some kind of expected mental pleasure mechanism for expectations of the cross of the year time. Just so that a tradition is a tradition or something, because, subconsciously, people get killed when traditions die and one is always to blame for the potential of a tradition dying.<br />
<br />
My main point of this post was to write the title, a little about me, but actually most not about me - yes, about me, not what I've written so much, but about anyone and every one. Think of what it means. Go deep. Especially think of paranoia and categorical errors, paranoia and loss of identity and the strange balance of wanting and trying to be on track or recover with knowing effecting that or "indulging" in that or getting swept away by that can be the problem itself or the hiatus of a problem that maybe otherwise wouldn't matter.<br />
<br />
Think about this.<br />
<br />
Think, maybe write thoughts:<br />
<br />
<br />
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
</h2>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
<em><u>"This mess we're in ... "</u></em></h2>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<br />
<em>Are you running around (or lying still) "like a chicken with its head cut off?"</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>Stop, relax, think. About you. About others. About everything.</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>Take a whole year.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Maybe, be aware you can be aware at some point - don't think this stops, either. Maybe.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
A network contact wrote this today:<br />
<br />
"<em>a new year is like a blank book. the pen is in your hands. it's your chance to write a beautiful story for yourself</em>."<br />
<br />
</div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-35461504402656874262012-12-04T02:26:00.002+00:002013-03-24T10:23:13.158+00:00Nothing lingers on, ideally.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="text-align: left;">
Just some thoughts, made quickly, today. It's been a while since a post, while I've thought a lot about posting a number of things that would mean a normal weblog was continuing with some interest and attatchment, perhaps even a bit of excited zeal on my part. In the normalness of it all. I never thought I'd write a weblog. And so the unfamiliarity of the notion can seize me, despite that I am prevented doing much by my consistently driving ill conditions.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
So, back to the start. Nothing new. Just some thoughts, made quickly, today.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I've thought them many times when I came across this nursery rhyme type song with disco beats.</div>
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(This is not in the House Music series of tracks I share and write about, it's pop music but works for many in a club.)</div>
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</div>
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</div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Kleerup featuring Titiyo, </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<em>Longing for Lullabies</em> (2009)</div>
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To begin this strange thought-sharing seminar, listen to <em>Longing for Lullabies</em> <em>-</em> play the video (buy if you are taken) - and particularly listen to the lyrics.</div>
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</div>
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Now, here I go ...</div>
<ul>
<li>It's not true.</li>
<li>All we leave behind does not linger on longing for lullabies.</li>
<li>It all goes to a nice place unless it deserves to go to, & only fits in, a bad place.</li>
<li>I think only the latter would be longing for lullabies.</li>
<li>And, in that case, aw, yes, unfortunate bits ought to get lullabies, truly.</li>
<li>Give them their lullabies. Reform & revive.</li>
<li>But, no, please don't insist they linger on here in this world of increasing illuminati led class wars & social victimisation leading to confused people.</li>
<li><div class="metadata">
While it is a nice song, if not typically the kind of song I'd listen to.</div>
</li>
<li><div class="metadata">
I return to it at times.</div>
</li>
<li><div class="metadata">
Whether the words make a silly, empty, harmful "emo" notion - or - cute, comforting, positive platitudes.</div>
</li>
</ul>
<div class="metadata">
This short context in human communication (if anyone is out there, otherwise it's mind organisation for myself) I think is very worthwhile. For illuminating, more than sizeable, no - huge - chunks of just what the world is and means in this part of the world right now. And probably in a much, much larger area of the world.</div>
<div class="metadata">
</div>
<div class="metadata">
OK. Don't forget that. It's good. That's what Titiyo, Kleerup, whoever wrote <em>Longing</em>, and the song itself can do which is positive.</div>
<div class="metadata">
</div>
<div class="metadata">
And maybe I'll do this context again, sometimes. Take some lyrics to shine a light on something or some things or much of everything ...</div>
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<strong><span style="color: red;">Buy "Longing for Lullabies" by Kleeryup feat. Tityo:</span></strong></div>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.beatport.com/#track/longing-for-lullabies-feat-titiyo/1725157" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: red;">Original track, Beatport download store</span></strong></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.7digital.com/artist/kleerup/release/longing-for-lullabies-1" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: red;">Original full Kleerup single / E.P., 7 Digital download store</span></strong></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.7digital.com/artist/kleerup/release/longing-for-lullabies-remixes-2" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: red;">"The Remixes", 7 Digital download store</span></strong></a></li>
</ul>
<div align="center" class="metadata">
...</div>
<div class="metadata">
<br /></div>
<div class="metadata">
(So, <em>Longing for Lullabies</em> exposed. Next up, how about <em>We Wish You a Merry Christmas</em>? </div>
<div class="metadata">
<br /></div>
<div class="metadata">
What exactly is <em>figgy pudding</em>, does it exist and / or is it a convention to ask this stupid qustion when most people must know that you are talking about a cake largely made of figs? Well, is it? Can a true Chrismas Carol legally include the verse, "And we won't go until we've got some [figgy pudding I suggest]" and why are people, including young children, who would never consider saying such a thing forced to sing it out loud in front of people with a smile? It's the devil again, isn't it?</div>
<div class="metadata">
<br /></div>
<div class="metadata">
<em>We Wish You</em> was conceived by an old illuminati composer. But perhaps the meaning is the other way around. To expose what <em>We Wish You</em> actually is, it takes a realisation that it is an exposé itself. An exposé of the real, actual (meaning common usage) meaning of Christmas. Christmas is not about worshipping some cultish chosen one who is lovely and king of forever or son of king of forever or both and without the "or"s. Nor is Christmas about giving gifts. No Christmas is bloody well about ME, ME, ME, ME, ME and, wait for it - AND MY BLOODY ILK. "NOW BRING ME SOME FIGGY PUDDING AND WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE'VE GOT SOME." </div>
<div class="metadata">
<br /></div>
<div class="metadata">
In short, though a confusingly annoying carol to sing or hear, one that perhaps in a brainwashing style messes up peoples' minds who sing or hear this, <em>We Wish You</em> is merely a cold, hard, disappointing and bitter relevation of the time of the most smiles. Some people say most smiles are faked anyway. So, if true, and you don't like it, perhaps take Christmas with every pinch of salt you can muster.</div>
<div class="metadata">
<br /></div>
<div class="metadata">
I was quite happy to leave this post with the <em>Longing for Lullabies</em> analysis widening to be suggestive about the modern day illuminati dominated world. But when I start waffling, some times I just cannot stop. Horrible prose style I'm developing, sorry, like a instruction booklet for PAYE machine maintenance people.</div>
</div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-16265804654787748452012-11-05T11:01:00.002+00:002013-03-24T10:58:35.138+00:00Dancing Girl (1973) by Terry Callier<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
R.i.P. Terry Callier.<br />
<br />
I'd not remembered this person's name or music when first coming across a tribute (by Giles Peterson) today.<br />
<br />
I remember now. The last time I think was when I was a teenager I knew the greatness of Terry Callier.<br />
<br />
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<strong><span style="color: red;"> </span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: red;">Buy Dancing Girl (Live):</span></strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: red;"> </span></strong></div>
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<li><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://www.7digital.com/artist/terry-callier-(1)/release/terry-callier-the-mr-bongo-years-1?h=08&partner=264" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: red;">Music file download from 7 Digital store £0.99 (from stunning 50 track, 4 hours plus download album collection, "The Mr Bongo Years" for £7.99)</span></strong></a></div>
</li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;"><strong><span style="color: red;">
</span></strong>
<li><a href="http://www.mrbongo.com/products/alive-1" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: red;">C.D. "Alive" featuring "Dancing Girl" live from Jazz Café, on live album of 2000 Jazz Café, London performance, physical, 10 track class gig disc from Mr. Bongo store for £6.99</span></strong></a></li>
</ul>
</div>
LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-46792960639141158362012-11-05T05:50:00.000+00:002013-03-24T11:21:32.357+00:00Some timeless cuts ... and ... That's The Way Love Is ... the love from of and for Ten City<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On the one hand, I wax lyrically. I find myself indulging in rambling about personal, deep loves, real core tickles that light up sunspots with simultaneously occuring <em>Close Encounters </em>chimes. Or, with increasing softness of the brain, memories invade and take over as I lose grasp over the concepts of relevance and present. No, stop that now, though. <em>Memories are so important, ken.</em><br />
<br />
I happened to be in a remote bar last night, perhaps reward after abstaining from drinking for most of a week, last when my mother brought me out for a birthday dinner (weeks after my birthday) and I had some nice wine then, last week. Last night, the remote bar, a hotel bar, kept serving until after 4 a.m. on a Thursday night. A tiny bar with locals and myself, a stranger who is not a local, it was a lock-in I suppose or something like it. Usual enough around there, I think. One of the men drinking was staff there usually but not at that time. He was asking the few people staying on what their music requests were as he found them from what was available in online services and played whatever he could. What a nice soul he was.<br />
<br />
So, I'm just posting to, firstly, mention some music which last night, OK in a surprisingly and unplanned gone state. It all sounded great to me when offshore, better than on the mainland and in the norms of life. Secondly there's a chance to celebrate one particular group of musicians of blinding (and not blingding as I first typed, it was before that era), timeless brilliance. When last night it came across to me how utterly, undilutedly great these tracks they made from up to 25 years ago were and are, as the bar played one request of mine by <strong>Ten City. </strong>You know, a real legendary group I saw live early this month for the first time in many years.<br />
<br />
Briefly, though, the first part, a chance to mention some other songs I think great, separate to the hotel bar requests. It was a doting night of memories in pop music. Before the hotel bar I was in another bar across the way, at the end of the night, two other persons, myself and the bar lady were left. I went to the jukebox, not expecting much, wondering if this was not to place the bar out of character of itself, but I was bored and couldn't care. I was really pleased to find some unexpected great songs again. It left me happy about really great tracks that have either been overplayed, half forgotten, or, in at different times over the years, both.<br />
<br />
4 great pieces of music found rather quickly on a jukebox last night:<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li><em>Dream On Dreamer</em>, The Brand New Heavies.</li>
<li><em>Together Again,</em> Janet Jackson. Maybe it was the version, not standard, maybe it was the standard version sounding different, but it sounded so lovely last night, and like the great classic I knew it was when it first came out.</li>
<li><em>The Real Thing</em>, Tony Di Bart. At the same club night I'm mentioning after, early this month, old time favourite Soul DJ Iain 'Boney' Clark (think soul weekenders 20 to 25 years ago) played this track, which I'd been playing myself sometimes this year. And it was nice to see people my age, a bit younger, and older, who knew all of the words - club fanatics, they knew the words to all of the tracks, classic soul house from 1987 or so to the mid 1990s. It's not often I see a place like that anymore. Last night, the mix, or the version was not the usual, it was sultry and cool with slight big band jazz elements, and it was amazing. And I do remember the version, but it was so long ago. From the jukebox card, you'd think it was the original version, but it was not the chart version which was a number one hit in the UK - maybe the American verson at a guess. I can't find this version, hunting online, including in the versions shared in Youtube.</li>
<li><em>You're The Best Thing,</em> DReam. <em>Things Can Only...</em> was a piece of pop that people went wild for, but grated and smothered your head soon enough. <em>You're The Best Thing</em> though is perfect pop-house-soul and will always be a classic club track of its time. This few minutes of pop club music is so infused in optimism, positivity and a kind of euphoria that can seem to fit into the everyday while being most spiritual - something that would only make every day so special, lifted, always ascending, naturally.</li>
</ol>
Then, across at the hotel bar, a few tracks that have been "my favourite ever" in times gone by, the bar requests.<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li><em>Wild Wood, </em>Paul Weller. I so loved this, for a long time, it was so deep in me.</li>
<li><em>Big Love, </em>Fleetwood Mac. What a classic slice! In fact, I remember, I had to freshly make two different favourite ever track lists at the time, just to have the album and single version of <em>Big Love</em> at the top of one, the more normal one. And to have the Arthur Baker remix of <em>Big Love</em> at the top of the other. Baker's cut was made the top of a new, totally transcendental favourites ever list, that suddenly was light years beyond the normal (and eternally brilliant anyway) favourites ever chart, in sheer radiance and, I dunno, sheer, actual essence of sun. Anyway, last night and tonight I'm thinking of the original version.</li>
<li><em>Room's on Fire,</em> Stevie Nicks. Aw, it was great when it came along, and what a grower, it just licked you all over after a couple of months with the biggest tongue ever.</li>
</ol>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong><u>4. <em>That's The Way Love Is, </em>Ten City.</u></strong></div>
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<strong></strong> </div>
<strong>"</strong>Ah, what can I say", radio DJs of a certain age now used to seem to say of some songs blandly, time and again, but perhaps in truth letting the unsubstantial, perhaps lacklustre cliché hopefully carry the weight they feel personally. Ah, what can I say?<br />
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At the club night from early this month which I mentioned above, where Iain 'Boney' Clark Djed, <strong>Ten City featuring Byron Stingily</strong> were one of the headliners. This was the 23rd birthday party of the old school club <em>Streetrave</em> in Glasgow at <strong>The Arches</strong>. This annual night has over time brought back legends such as Inner City and a top ambassador of earlier popular house music, C.J. Mackintosh, foundational underground DJs such Graeme Park and John Digweed to Shades of Rhythm and, this year also, FPI Project.</div>
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So, unfortunately I have to mention the awful sound. A convention of<em> not saying</em> regarding The Arches might be so entrenched it may even be a partially forgotten convention of the UK's constitution. (I guess, I don't know Arches goers, really. But I can't remember in my life ever hearing anyone echo the baffled concern I had.) A complex or double constitution of <em>not saying</em> this might be, the secondary convention being never to speak of this convention itself as a convention.</div>
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I dunno, maybe people talk about the awful noise in The Arches, but does it never get back to the organisers? Is there no see-through foam or soft, clear, thick plastic film available to cover those bare brick arches with? I had the same thoughts 23 years ago in The Arches and probably every time I have poked my head in since, which is only a few times.</div>
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Anway to see a legend, like from Greek legends after all this time, is so amazingly restorative - the world still is. Byron Stingily was still singing like a Greek angel (strange I've thought this before on seeing Byron live, then and now not really knowing what a Greek angel, particularly, might be). Even if we only got a few actual Ten City classics (there are numerous), and the band moved on to really boring covers. Poor choices for a night celebrating old school house music, and not the 10 years since Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder and Village People etc. before those times (poor choices any time, to me).</div>
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We got Sylvester's "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)", and another, similar very overplayed disco classic number known for both high camp associations and being played in every single Friday night hall in every land for years and years. I can't remember which one, now, perhaps it was a Gaynor track. Anyway, it was the reality of seeing Ten City with Byron, and knowing he was singing as well as ever that mattered. Just the knowing really, for the aural experience so sharply resounding in those torturous, brick railway caves was not pleasant in itself, thanks only to the space itself and poor volume control. I know I wasn't well at all that night, and was close to not going, and my experience is in part that, but the sound was killer shrill. It really was.</div>
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Also, I have to mention the loveliness of <strong>FPI Project</strong>, so cool on stage, after all that time. So fresh. So stylish. Like the vespa only just taken out of its 1960s box again, opened a few times, and stored for posterity.</div>
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As for the DJs, the sound in the caverns were not good enough to really comment. I know they were playing great tracks, in both caves, and the atmosphere was good. But I couldn't really have enjoyed it, the sound was not good, and for me hard to bear long. (This is not typical for me when I'm well enough to go to a club as a migraine sufferer. I usually find the loud house music helps.)</div>
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<span style="color: red;"><strong>Buy "That's The Way Love Is", by Ten City:</strong></span></div>
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<li><span style="color: red;"><strong> </strong></span><a href="http://www.7digital.com/artist/ten-city/release/foundation" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;"><strong>Music file download (from full album, "Foundation") from 7 Digital store</strong></span></a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: red;"><strong>("Foundation" also available on C.D. or 2nd hand vinyl elsewhere.)</strong></span></div>
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LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-66670268519177200702012-10-24T08:38:00.001+01:002013-03-28T20:35:36.196+00:00Lillian Lopez is around the corner but not here<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This is a meandering post. Of thoughts from one occurence.<br />
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/news/rip-lillian-lopez-founding-member-and-vocalist-of-dance-group-odyssey" target="_blank">News of the death of Lillian Lopez</a></div>
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<span class="userContent">I think I was late to hear of the death of Lillian Lopez of Odyssey, over a month ago. Mid October I heard. And I cried that night.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWhSK9Fx5_f0lvvmxHCtzXqXkUCZfrisQSQL9PQGvSZjBRMVTHy3UXd5lrqNlVp2ZC8yM89cGZbLzZCxwGXI7q_pfqE0Hxk4O9496rkf-MezIkyQ2CpniqKB5Kmu19XAL9FQpF725Qln0/s1600/Lillian-Lopez.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWhSK9Fx5_f0lvvmxHCtzXqXkUCZfrisQSQL9PQGvSZjBRMVTHy3UXd5lrqNlVp2ZC8yM89cGZbLzZCxwGXI7q_pfqE0Hxk4O9496rkf-MezIkyQ2CpniqKB5Kmu19XAL9FQpF725Qln0/s1600/Lillian-Lopez.jpg" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4CV0c2v2derO5RxTF5jQTXjNF4zP48ii9l4M0QwvE9F-hME1IUNwzZF4gsS0SBP_lnfNPAgwx2NQLSDy6_VCUfxVT9R_0vn2aWqUSyKQeE_7213qOrKR0J4fZ-53SbH6WuB9lrxyC68w/s1600/LillianLopez1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4CV0c2v2derO5RxTF5jQTXjNF4zP48ii9l4M0QwvE9F-hME1IUNwzZF4gsS0SBP_lnfNPAgwx2NQLSDy6_VCUfxVT9R_0vn2aWqUSyKQeE_7213qOrKR0J4fZ-53SbH6WuB9lrxyC68w/s1600/LillianLopez1.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span class="userContent">But, kind of no. I was not so late to hear of the lady's death. I remember I saw a news report headline as I was rushing to close the computer down, rushing out somewhere or something, and I thought, "Who's that?", bored, but honest, strangely sure this meant nothing to me. But I questioned that and it was not accurate. It was from a strange land, and I questioned why I would think it then. The stubborn thought remained and instantly I was brought back to studying philosophy and the very confusing stuff dealt with seriously, pertaining to the very core of existence, consciousness and identity, such as, "How does one know a thought belongs to one, is made by one?" (In my course this had the taught suggestion which really was the philosophers' conclusion, that "Essentially, one doesn't. Ever.")</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">But part of my subconscious was crying at this same time, a part my active conscious was not linked to. And I still persevered "Who's that? I can't remember any Lillian Lopez. I know not that name." A split second later I saw "of Odyssey", and I thought, quicker than an electrical impulse from the mid body, "No, it couldn't be. I couldn't handle that." I really couldn't. My whole being changed, quickly again, not as quickly though. I changed my orientation, how my consciousness was. I seemed involuntarily to pretend I was someone else, to get by, because something wouldn't materialise perhaps. It was very strange. I wouldn't normally allow myself to do that, and would consider it Sartrean bad faith and would loathe myself if I would ever do something like that - pretend something other than the great, bare truth (whatever on earth it was, however horrible, blindingly brilliant or emotive). And so I would never, ever, kind of on pain of bridge jumping, let myself do that, if I could choose.</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">Then I lost this, in my aging state, I couldn't place the name with the lady. I couldn't believe she is dead, this lady whom my active conscious couldn't remember in part, while there was so much emotion, immediately and I didn't quite know what for. Then my head went blank - everything went. A part of my that didn't remember anyone was strong and thought "Isn't it totally right that someone called Lillian Lopez should die? Everyone, of any name, dies. What's wrong? Nothing. It's great (if there is great, maybe there is) and normal. Death is only as natural and brilliant as being born can be, without a shadow of a question. It's all part of something or a part of nothing, but each is something and one can't be without the other. Don't get so <em>emo</em> over the details.</span><span class="userContent">"</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">But I was also suppressing acceptance completely, deeply emotional inside, and half of me deeply ashamed because I couldn't place the name with the person, and half of me not remembering and thinking there's no personal association here anyway. Then I suppressed all thoughts, not by choice, it just happened, as I walked away to do something or go somewhere, changed though, not comprehending at all, disturbed but I couldn't place why. And I couldn't remember not long after that.</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">So, later, over a month later, around a week or so ago, I found the articles by chance, watching some Odyssey songs in Youtube videos, and reading the R.i.P. comments which Youtube watchers had posted. I cried that night, I couldn't believe it. For some time, I could neither accept nor believe the death of someone I did not know. It seemed impossible. And I suppose it was because, though I didn't remember at the time quite the significance, I loved Odyssey and their members so deeply at such an early age, and times when I was very sensitive and very alone and myself. A myself, part of <em>the</em> one myself my life is usually all about searching for nowadays, as I slip down chasms of quicksand and vortices of time or space or something in between, overlayed or under sodden soil.</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">Whitney Houston and Donna Summer died this year, and in both cases, when I first heard and realised, I found I could not accept the news as true, when I haven't really followed either singer much recently. (Though I bought an old, great Whitney soul album from a time when she was not moddish last Christmas and played it even in the hours before I heard on the radio she passed away during the night. Donna also, unfortunately, went moddish in recent years, with stuff I could hardly listen to mostly. My reactions to these deaths surprised me for, as much as I liked and respected these singers (I thought not as much as a typical real 'fan' would), I can't remember a time when I loved them. That was when I really was young. A person forgotten now. But it was that person who came back in emotions at the deaths. I was younger when a fan who loved Donna Summer, a real young kid, than with Whitney, who was there for so many people for so many years.</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">But neither death was as much as this, as Lillian Lopez in the immediate reaction (second time around, the weeks after the surprise, confusion and complete supression). As if the lady were someone known and very close. Whitney came closest I suppose to how I felt with the death of Ms. Lopez, but Whitney was for decades a part of so many persons' lives, you simply couldn't help that. Watching her funeral live really helped. I suppose I was deeply affected, as I remember thinking, how on earth are the members of that choir whom knew her, and her family and friends, and so on, so collected, normal, positive and celebratory? It seemed impossible to me. (I'm not usually like this at all, and would never think I'd be the person that would be anything, remotely like this. So I was lost, but, increasingly happy at this strange difference, seeming so different to my habitual emotionless, sensationless self that I began to appreciate the new, nearly totally unformed, person.)</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">Rest in Peace, Lillian Lopez.</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">It's strange. Just one week before Ms. Lopez's death I had just been talking briefly to a DJ I didn't know in the bar club Le Frappé in Nice, France, as he played a version of "Inside Out". I asked him who covered it, because I said it was made famous by Odyssey. And his eyes lit up. Though I think he was just a bit too young to have known Odyssey as I did when I was a young boy, he seemed to make some connection with experience and he repeated the name and a sense of love of the name and wonder. There was some recollection but he was being searching and still there was a rapturous recognition in his eye and in his voice. He suggested he thought they were good. I was slow to translate - my small bit of French can be realised some half a minute or more after something is spoken to me.</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">This DJ looked up on his database any danceable tracks, but the database available to him for playing in the club (I don't know, MP3s he had bought from a service which catalogued, or those which were available on a subscription service) only had a very slow track, by the displayed BPM. This night in Le Frappé was a mid tempo very, very minimal early Chicago style funk night, so he could not play that.</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">In this quickish exchange, just 2 or 3 minutes, though which had a sense of loving dwelling over, even as a mark of slowed down, natural, unavoidable respect which grasped you and you could not avoid, we both agreed what a good song "Inside Out" was. It was a really nice cover version, I think he told me from 2007 or so.</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">I laughed to myself that night, because once you've sat through one, or maybe at most two of the club nights hearing those particular really minimal base funk tracks (the funk equivalent of the most minimal techno, but it has this strange edge to it), as I have moons and moons ago, it's hard ever to bear hearing a whole night of them again. They are very boring and grating, though can be well appreciated once only. I think I remember this was specialist stuff mostly from the early 80s, some from the late 70s. Underground funk stuff. Maybe to me it was like a really, really, interesting artisan cheese that harms you if you have enough - second slice - that kills you on the third. Even for someone who used to be a big funk and jazz funk and soul jazz and even big band funk fan, I could hardly take it, yet I enjoyed the memory while being killed, enjoyed the idea, from a time of connoiseurship gone by, sampled once or twice in hithertothen forgotten history. This is all partly me and what I can handle, of course, but, in substantial part also, I'm right about the music.</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">I'm meandering. You know, two or three months before the death of Ms. Lopez, I knew whom the name referred to, who she was and what she meant. Naturally. The stature of exactly what she meant. Senility or something worsens perhaps more and more in me.</span><br />
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<span class="userContent">And that's OK. I've nothing to write about Lillian Lopez. There's nothing to say. She was so beautiful. She was. She is somewhere else. There it is. I loved her. She seems so pure, true, such a piece of pure, Godly reality that saying anything in particular at all about her is so irrelevant and pointless. She lived. It's so sad, though, while I'm feeling better now, a bit more removed.</span><br />
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<strong>Lillian Lopez. 16 November 1935 – 4 September 2012. Rest in Peace.</strong></div>
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<strong><span style="color: red;">Buy "Inside Out" by Odyssey:</span></strong></div>
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<a href="http://www.7digital.com/artist/odyssey/release/native-new-yorker-the-very-best-of?h=03&partner=264" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: red;">Music file download from 7 Digital store (from "Native New Yorker, The Very Best of Odyssey E.P.")</span></strong></a></div>
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LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-57604733151622661732012-10-18T02:12:00.001+01:002012-10-24T02:09:29.432+01:00The Classical Twits - Paul Morley's unexpected, very funny article at Sinfini Music blog (owned by Universal Music Corporation)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Sinfini Music is a classical music blog I've just discovered and have read little of. I'm really just sharing this one, very funny, very accurate (at last) article by long time serious art and popular music critic Paul Morley, exposing The Classical Brit awards for what it long has been. (A James Rhodes article alerted me to this.)<br />
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I really have to share the article in Thinks Murmurs Stuff, for it must be a landmark article, to become the stuff of legend - one hopes for the change it may bring rather than a sole, lone voice lost in time while fondly remembered.<br />
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I don't follow the world of classical music more or less at all, and I seldom listen to classical music anymore, that which used to be the love of my life, I suppose. Or at least which consumed so much of the time of my life. A love of my life, is correct. I think it's factually incorrect actually to say the love of my life, it can only be a totally wrong description. Things just were as they were. I used to play. I can't play anymore, in significant part due to being ill. <br />
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Anyway, here's the link the the very funny and long overdue article this post was written to lead people to, by Paul Morley:<br />
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<a href="http://blog.sinfinimusic.com/paul-morley-reviews-the-classic-brit-awards-2012/" target="_blank">ARTICLE: Paul Morley reviews the Classical Brit Awards 2012, Sinfini Music</a></div>
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Aside, I've been thinking of writing a long blog article on the wonder and marvellousness of a piece of classical music, the second symphony, "Ressurection", by Austro-Bohemian composer of the early 20th Century Gustav Mahler. The power and meaning of that piece in this world is so great that I can only think of it as something that lies in wait for as many people to discover it as possible. So I hope to write what I can about it within the next couple of months or so.<br />
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LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-38043402955047732072012-10-16T00:39:00.003+01:002013-03-28T22:55:11.340+00:00Web trolling, publishing abuse, online satanism and the late Amanda Todd<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
James Rhodes had written this article in The Daily Telegraph, which I have been reading online a few days every week to every day over the last few years.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUIrMsXaLIzRj_0OTuBsPjn2ZoLH0-8Zmqb_Gl5dN33vNTbPyhgC5jtGWSlmXT_60OyyOrrNgc1eKvm-3nYDRPRUMVzuWYlJquSdOQhqMmKBi5I0HUtvme9kF9NXmmdJRIra8jziO6qeQ/s1600/The+aliens+stole+my+dental+floss!.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUIrMsXaLIzRj_0OTuBsPjn2ZoLH0-8Zmqb_Gl5dN33vNTbPyhgC5jtGWSlmXT_60OyyOrrNgc1eKvm-3nYDRPRUMVzuWYlJquSdOQhqMmKBi5I0HUtvme9kF9NXmmdJRIra8jziO6qeQ/s320/The+aliens+stole+my+dental+floss!.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><b>James Rhodes article, <i>The Daily Telegraph</i>: </b><b>"In defence of trolls: the fearless internet sages who bring us the truth at the expense of personal hygiene."</b></span></div>
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The article humourously, though with some serious basis also, supports the internet troll. It is not an intellectual article by its bare words themselves in any degree, but, if it was intended to make any sense, it is partly a paean that uses surreal humour to be provocative and bring light upon a current social issue of importance. These kind of things can be important, especially at times when politic in bare print itself may be likely to turn to have all the value above the water of a coffin in a sea burial.<br />
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<b><i>(Lots of digression ... yawns perhaps ... but I guess a good part of what a genuine Weblog - personal diary for self and others - is ...) </i></b>James Rhodes is not someone whom I know, but someone who I met a long time ago and knew superficially, briefly long before he became famous as a pianist. This was when he had decided to try to study music full time after school, and before he threw in his stride on the serious route to become a concert pianist and became a full time stockbroker for years. I remember his enthusiasm to live as a pianist, the desire to make it his life and paying, and playing to so many, "as many as possible" he said.<br />
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Unfortunately, James was at the wrong place, the place where I unfortunately found I had ambled along to, half or mostly in sleep after school, Edinburgh University. Despite this institution's apparent amazing international reputation, when a number of international study lists place it within the top 50 and top 30 universities of the world in recent years, as of my time there, this is a very false reputation indeed. (It held a similar reputation and ranking then in national terms, before the days of alleged international college comparison charts, the place was usually ranked 3 or 4 in The UK, Edinburgh, Durham and Warwick being the three alleged Oxbridge pretenders. In the case of Edinburgh at least, pretence was all there was to do with it. This was at a time before the London University colleges made the so-called "top 5" much.) Luckily James realised well before I did how this place was just not right by some large distance, and a facade, and left within a few weeks of coming up to stay.<br />
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Due to my slowness, and being fooled by the Scottish "foundation year" system (or Level 0 in 1st year), as Scottish students begin tertiary education at 17, after only 6 years of secondary level schooling, I had to grin and bear the bloody ****hole for four years. When one gets to a certain distance of a four year project, pulling out can seem to become a rather fatal option for one's imagined future. Nowadays, what can seem worse than that four year perseverance is putting with the ridiculous smiles of people who seem to know the place (or know something strange) when you reply to their question saying that that is where you "studied". (That last verb is not appropriate for any 2:1 "degree" I know about which they issued in my time, or indeed any result of "degree", hence the quotation marks. But what else is there to say?)<br />
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A natural disclaimer is that it was sometime ago that I was at the institution, the company claiming itself as a university. And that in these latter times, I cannot claim to know what the place may be like. While I must say, I wouldn't bet a single cent, penny, dinar or even sostinki (or whatever the worlds lowest value coin by dollar exchange value) on the reputation of the place being anyway accurate or true whatsoever. I am one of the tiny, tiny minority who speak. Vastly most will never nor entertain a true reply to what I speak of.<br />
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Whether or not all of that is interesting, and I am very pleased I wrote it and it does have a social value though will probably be read by a handful of people only, ever (who will probably believe none of it), it is nothing to do with the main subject of this post.<br />
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<b>Anyway (!) ... ... </b>it is significant that an article about the value of agressive, perhaps destructive Web network commenting (whether in social media or wherever) is written today. It is published during a time of strangeness in that and a time of social worry about what it all means and if the medium itself is wrong. (I never understand the latter notion, but so many think the problem is with Facebook, Myspace etc. and not the people who write things on these blank noticeboards or even what they write. One supposes there are many people out there who will use any excuse to swing arguments against enterpreneurs legally resting upon the millions of pounds they have made.)<br />
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So, in response, I thought it was very relevant to move from the article to talk about the very sad Amanda Todd occurrence in a town by Vancouver, Canada.<br />
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Ms. Todd killed herself last week. She made a video before she did that and published it in the Web and you can see it now in Youtube:<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRxfTyNa24A" target="_blank">Amanda Todd's video in Youtube</a><br />
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The video explains how her life had become unbearable as the victim of bullying, being hounded by a mob who intentionally, fervently drove her to suicide after a previous, unsucessful attempt she had made that became well known and a source of mockery. The mob was not going to settle for an unsuccessful attempt, it seems.<br />
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Here is my response to James Rhodes' seemingly humorous defence of the internet troll.<br />
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After <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/jamesrhodes/100066855/in-defence-of-trolls-the-fearless-internet-sages-who-bring-us-the-truth-at-the-expense-of-personal-hygiene/" target="_blank">James Rhodes, The Telegraph: "In defence of trolls: the fearless internet sages who bring us the truth at the expense of personal hygiene"</a><br />
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(<i>You may find this text in a reader comment after the article on its webpage, which is how it started life.)</i><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;">This article is quite funny, in the realm of rather surreal humour. In the parts of that which have a genuine foundation, it is borne of a good smidgen of a valid point in the validity of trolling, combined with a very natural reaction against the prevailing modern day, thoughtless, threatening, pseudo-fascist "establishmentarianism". (Blue rinsers with attitude and no idea of subjectivism arise before 37 weeks nowadays and appear at birthing, coming in either sex variety, and not more exclusively at around 52 years like in the old days. Every age and walk of life is included, in each gender.). That culture is so widespread and in every thing you can do, every place you can look. And it seems if you have not laid your knife and fork correctly today, even when eating at home alone, you will suffer for it on the bus or somewhere else soon enough. Or if you have laid your knife and fork correctly, for the nouveau establishmentarianism is a facade, and a facet of something bigger.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">Therefore, I must enjoy the angle Mr. Rhodes has taken in humour.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">However, there are very serious issues indeed, of course. And I don't know if Mr. Rhodes was aware of what seems to be the unfortunate timing of his article being published, subsequent to the suicide of young Canadian woman Amanda Todd.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">I was very annoyed two days ago, watching the touching "suicide video" which the young woman made. This was a personal film made just being Ms. Todd was finally hounded to her death in conditions that very few, young, sensitive people who would never cave in to join the lynch group mob against them, could have coped with. It can be seen in Youtube (search with the name).</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">The thing is that the bullies have not stopped with her death. Nowadays, unfortunately, one may expect a few comments saying the woman deserved to die - comments without any foundation in sense as the alleged reason for her bullying was simply that she allowed herself to be seduced by a young man who had a girlfriend at the time. These kind of comments are par for the course in today's world, usually in small numbers.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">Most people posting in the Youtube page who do actually say she should not have been bullied still claim that the young woman "made a mistake" and "anyone can make a mistake". The alleged mistake was in allowing herself to be seduced by the male who asked her over, who's girlfriend was not there. In this affair, even in the people who do not claim the girl was a waste of space for too long, we can see the deeply, deeply, deeply set, nouveau establishmentarian prejudices, similar to social norms of hundreds of years ago. The clear thing that came across to me about Amanda Todd is that, in the face of such terror against her in her life, she made no "mistakes".</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">However, the comments made in the last few days specifically against the late Ms. Todd and in support of the bullies, saying that she should indeed have died, were not in the expectable small numbers, not at all. The most surprising thing to behold was / is the sheer number of people in the last days and today and even now supporting the bullies in intentionally and fervently having forced Amanda Todd to her own death.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">When I first went to the Youtube video page, the comments seemed to be close to roughly half and half; half in support of the bullies and that Ms. Todd killed herself, half thinking those people were wrong. The percentage seemed to change later, more against the bullies but there was still a very, very high proportion supporting them. It is a strange, damning social snapshot. A satanic society, it can appear, even clearly. Really that has to be an accurate analysis, as the question, "What else can we be seeing?", has no real answer.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">I remember a visit to Vancouver 12 years ago, where I stayed in and around for a few weeks, over the new millenia eve, and, as many do, I liked it so much it I thought it would be nice to live in, to move to. Things have changed so much everywhere since then.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">Considering that this situation seems to me much more likely to be an outright case of first degree murder rather than manslaughter (whether or not enough evidence can be found to bring a case and achieve that verdict), the sheer scale, the stark percentage of the online comments supporting the lynching to suicide of Ms. Todd is very significant indeed. </span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">Of course, it is apt to point out that this phenomena can have, in essence, very little indeed to do with the internet, the web network, social media sites, social networking, mobile communications etc. For they are only tools for people, as mastering a spoken language is a tool. It is what people communicate that matters, not the means. The Web network in itself had nothing to do with Amanda Todd when she was beaten up by a gang. Just as it in itself is irrelevant as to the meaning of acts when online comments commanding her to kill herself were made. Just as it in itself is irrelevant as to acts when the satanic support of the satanic hounding to death started a few days ago in Youtube etc. etc. etc.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">The Amanda Todd situation is a spotlight upon a society that is in very significant part, effectively satanic. Satanic and effective in satanism.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">In the light of this current social spotlight, Mr. Rhodes's comments which I hope I have gauged correctly as palatable and of a positive, typical context in the first paragraphs of this response - humorous and provocative to illuminate a situation - are however, at least partially, inappropriate.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;">They do not see the real picture or seriousness of it.</span><br />
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R.i.P. Amanda Todd (November 27, 1996 – October 10, 2012)</div>
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LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5057903813967632836.post-2718028032758748532012-09-16T02:31:00.000+01:002012-10-13T21:56:14.551+01:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="color: #073763;"><b>HOUSE! HOUSE! HOUSE! HOUSE! HOUSE!</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">(<i>Giving a warning that this POST is all about House Music,</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><i>as this is not at all a specialised house, dance or music blog.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><i>And I don't want to alienate anyone just dropping by to read otherwise.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;"><i>!While you could give it a go! :) </i>) </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">There has been & is good stuff around at the moment, so time for some stuffing of stuff onto blog.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">I should do a couple or more of HOUSE! posts per week, and at least one anyway.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">3 HOUSE TRACKS in this post today (or tonight, rather, it's late and I've been ill unfortunately).</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">(1) One track I've only heard a few times and clearly already, to me, is a classic of early this year ("<b>Wayne County", Omar S remix, by Omar S</b>).</span></div>
<span style="color: #073763;">(2) One track has been around for a few months (though I heard it around 5 months ago first), has been popular, is getting very popular, or already is, and is still growing, house of the moment</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;">(<b>"Preset" by Crooked Man</b>).</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763;">(3) One track I regard as a classic from last year which reminds me of Old School early house days (the <b>Screendeath remix of "Song For Lisa" by The Japanese Popstars</b>).</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">(1) <b>"Wayne County" or "Wayne County Hill Cop's (Part 2)", Omar S, Omar S Remix</b>. Early 2012.</span></div>
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<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F56715289&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true&color=feff00" width="100%"></iframe>
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<span style="color: #073763;">An excellent track, find yourself suddenly in the middle of Detroit, listening to classic Detroit Techno from the mid to late 80s. Wayne County is an area in Detroit.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">A sample of the vinyl, the analogue sample rather than digital, had me feeling like it was 1988 again. Or even '86, I'm not sure and I was young though living on house with every chance. Not young enough to miss ALL the clubs! :) If you ask, I don't really remember.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">The Omar S remix is featured on the release with the original mix (available to buy from the links below). The original mix is more classic house, and IS so classic, and I love it and probably prefer it, but I share the Omar S mix here anyway, as it's what I'm listening to. It was a shorter version that got me sharing this, some time after I'd heard it a few times before (though I've not been out much anywhere this summer past, or Spring for that matter). That shorter version, mix, or a radio cut / edit, that has me sharing this, was played by Seth Troxler and Jamie Jones on their Essential Selection show on Radio 1 (BBC, UK) this summer. Certainly a best classic of 2012. That much was sheerly obvious right at the start of the year.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Follow these links for more info and to buy the music:</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=10464" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;"><strong>Info (R.A.)</strong></span></a><span style="color: red;"><strong> ... </strong></span><a href="http://www.residentadvisor.net/track.aspx?410269" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;"><strong>Some basic R.A. track history</strong></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.beatport.com/release/wayne-county-hill-cops-part-2/858712" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;"><strong>BUY digital download (Beatport)</strong></span></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.phonicarecords.com/product/view/103987" target="_blank"><span style="color: red;"><strong>BUY vinyl (Phonica)</strong></span></a></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">(2) <b>"Preset", Crooked Man</b>. (From "Preset" / "Scum" E.P. on Crooked House label.)</span></div>
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<object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F60067129&show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=fffc00"></param>
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<embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F60067129&show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=fffc00" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/lcb/preset-crooked-man-promotional">"Preset", Crooked Man - promotional from radio mix Ben Watt (BBC 6 Mix, UK)</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/lcb">lcb</a>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=11521" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: red;">Info (R.A.)</span></strong></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.juno.co.uk/products/preset/448902-01/" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: red;">BUY digital download (Juno)</span></strong></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.phonicarecords.com/product/view/105971" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: red;">BUY vinyl (Phonica)</span></strong></a></li>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Good luck finding the track to purchase, online stores still say it is sold out (mid September 2012) for both MP3 and vinyl. It's a brilliant house track, sounds like a classic or anthem to me, so is worth looking around for. It was released in April this year, as far as I know. Yet I checked a few times in the last 4 months or so and the online stores said sold out. Maybe it was released for a week or something, just for DJs, or something, a digital equivalent of a white label, or something, or something.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">Mysterious - I don't know anything about this track by Crooked Man, who've published on their own label, also called Crooked Man, it seems. They've been around for a while and I think are lead by an old shool DJ from the north of England, from a club I think I must have poked my head into when I were a little teen. Or something. While those are serious house - jazz vocalists on that recording, sounding like a soul groove house classic within a very few listens. It's not just a man in a studio with electronics. While said man really does have the most amazing, incredible digital percussion production facilities - it's beyond most serious balearic stuff, while also a bit minimal acid and more mainstream Chicago at the same time. I can't tell if it's real percussion bars sampled and looped, or all created from some amazing digital boxes. (Some sources online refer to the label as Crooked House.) And the record seems to have been unavailable for some time. Would love more information.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">*** Added in a post edit, 17.09.2012: Here's some information now, including vocalists names found on the vinyl record itself:</span> <a href="http://www.ibiza-voice.com/story/news/4286">Info - Crooked House</a><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">(3) <b>"Song For Lisa", The Japanese Popstars, Screendeath Remix.</b></span></div>
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<object class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://3.gvt0.com/vi/WrQc_ILlNeM/0.jpg" height="266" width="320"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WrQc_ILlNeM&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WrQc_ILlNeM&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">The Screendeath remix is classic house from 2011. It brings me back to a time of classic after classic, week after week, weeks full of classics, from the mid to late 80s through the around the mid 90s or so. Things aren't really like that anymore.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763;">Screendeath is a Northern Irish DJ and producer, still based in Belfast, I think, who I've seen some at local house clubs in the city. Really cool. After hearing his "Song for Lisa" remix and being amazed and falling in love with it (some time after I'd thought "Song for Lisa", JP's, was kinda shelved in current club stuff), I saw him do a set and I wasn't disappointed. Brilliant. I think he was one of the names before Ben Klock's visit to The Stiff Kitten club last year (or Steffi from Panorama - Berghain). (Ben Klock back next week at SK.)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">The Japanese Popstars are also musicians from this region, DJs and producers, still based in Derry I think. They had a remix featured in "Tron Legacy Reconfigured" (2011), the remix album of Daft Punk's 2010 film soundtrack. (Added 13.10.2012: I forgot to mention they have a really good global name as a live dance act, particular in stadia and festival stages.) They were one of the names at the last time I went to Belfast's huge club SHINE. You might call ir a superclub but it always has been and is based in a perfectly nice, but typically basic (but for a nice back bar) students' union - it's not a student club though.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Unfortunately, I missed The Japansese Popstars completely that night, and nearly all of the headliner Alex Metric, as the DJs in the very back bar were playing great house all night and I couldn't move away. Anyway that's typical for me at Shine, where I went to see Paul Oakenfold last year, but spent most of the night enjoying an amazing set by Questhouse DJs in the first bar (Questhouse have their own club in Belfast, "Questhouse", formerly The Warehouse, Boucher Rd.) That was surprising as Questhouse are fast, trance, techno - not so much my thing, but the set was SO cool, amazing. And Oakie was not doing so well on that night (and the place was absolutely heaving). And the main hall speakers sounded really bad by the time he came on anyway. That's unusual for Shine, in recent times at least, for the times I've been, the sound is usually at least good.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">I made it to check out the Questhouse club this summer, actually too tired to bother going anywhere after a few drinks in the bar downstairs, and feeling like a few more beers. The techno was so fast, not my scene, a nice venue though. Maybe it looked fun for those into that. Maybe, as a long time total house head, I thought they need real house music at a danceable tempo. Or a whole night of Ce Ce Roger's "Someday", repeatedly (OK all mixes that can be found, to root the place in something with roots.) This was a Friday night, and from what one of the promoters said, I got the feeling that Saturday should be more housey techno, or that week anyway. (Though checking out one of the DJs online, Moog I think, his stuff can be really fast.)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">I remember I missed Paul Van Dyke at Shine the week afterwards, quality trance if you want. Illness can be really annoying at times. While for classic later - noughties trance house - rave, Eddie Halliwell is headlining Shine in a week or so from now. I don't know if I can do rave anymore. I think it died in me soon after a few visits to 'Rez' near Edinburgh in the late 90s. While earlier classics live on. There was a time when many types of mainstream house and even pop house and techno and rave were often kind of married in tracks (tracks like Sunscreem's "Love You More", Sunshine Valentine Mix or others, even the original). And even before that when tracks of each genre were all often - indeed probably mostly - kind of married in clubs, along with slower dance such as Soul II Soul and Movement 98. There were the genre clubs - a lot, just like today - house, garage, techno, rave etc. And there were many dance clubs which incorporated charty RnB (meaning swingbeat - swingbeat was OK or at least OKish at the start) and the dance clubs with all of that without the swingbeat (which I much preferred). That kind of thing is really hard to find now. It seems there are underground dance genre clubs, and a commercial play anything or most things nightclub / pop disco, that's that. With recent pop music, the latter aren't worth even directing your mind to. Common or garden discos used still to be nice fun. Once upon a time. Nowadays torture is the name of the "game" in popular music and the lives of those who are somehow attatched to it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">Returning to Shine and my missing huge names in the main hall, last year Sasha was a headliner, who of course I'd thought was a really cool DJ, since a mid teen at the beginning of the 90s,and he played a long set. Of which I heard one track early on and the end of his very last track at the end of the night. Because 808 State were playing in the first bar also that night, and it was an amazing set, with guest appearance by one of the biggest current names in house in Belfast, Space Dimension Controller (getting a big name in the wide world). He also played WITH 808 State. It was a highlight to see the amazing 808 Sate play along together with SDC, great sets and combination. I made a promise to myself to see Sasha again, somewhere, wherever.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">But illness means nothing is sure. I usually don't buy tickets in advance. The last I bought in advance, for Kerry Chandler in Belfast (Stiff Kitten) I couldn't go to and lost. I even waited until the morning of the night, thinking, I can force myself to go tonight, I'm not too bad, but there's no predicting.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">The Japanese Popstars are playing at the upcoming Shine birthday night in Belfast (is it 17 years old, now? While I always thought Shine went back to nights I sometimes went to at Belfast Art College in the 80s, when underage, house nights I thought people "called" Shine. Or maybe they were telling me to shine, dunno.) John Digweed is the headliner (really looking foward to this), and Julio Bashmore is playing. I saw one or two sets by Bashmore last year and I loved them. But his "Au Seve" is absolutely killing me, I hate it. It literally kills me. Dead. For weeks or longer, with just 1 minute or less of hearing it. Piece of mod retro crap.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763;">There is also an excellent Pete Tong remix of The Japanese Popstars' classic, "Song For Lisa". The original anyway is a lovely electronica - maybe indie - house piece.</span></div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><a href="http://soundcloud.com/screendeath" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: red;">Screendeath in Soundcloud</span></strong></a><strong><span style="color: red;"> ... </span></strong><a href="http://www.residentadvisor.net/dj/screendeath/tracks" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: red;">Info - Screendeath, R.A.</span></strong></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.thejapanesepopstars.co.uk/"><strong><span style="color: red;">Info - Japanese Popstars home site</span></strong></a><strong><span style="color: red;"> ... </span></strong><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Japanese_Popstars"><strong><span style="color: red;">... wikipedia</span></strong></a><strong><span style="color: red;"> ... </span></strong><a href="http://www.discogs.com/artist/Japanese+Popstars"><strong><span style="color: red;">... disography (discogs)</span></strong></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.beatport.com/en-US/html/content/release/detail/378297/Song%20For%20Lisa%20%28The%20Remixes%20Pt.%202%29" target="_blank"><strong><span style="color: red;">BUY digital download (Beatport)</span></strong></a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=8567491&style=music"><strong><span style="color: red;">BUY digital download (C.D. Universe)</span></strong></a></li>
<li><strong><span style="color: red;">(No commercial vinyl) </span></strong></li>
</ul>
<br />
<object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F11816113&show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=f6ff00"></param>
<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>
<embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F11816113&show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=f6ff00" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/screendeath/the-japanese-popstars-song-for">The Japanese Popstars - Song For Lisa (Screendeath Remix)</a> <span style="color: #073763;">by </span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/screendeath">screendeath</a>
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LCBhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11053014684827969547noreply@blogger.com0