Random Elevator Memories, Random Access Floors (or as the song lyrics suggest, Bluebeard-esque rooms)

Random Access Memories

by Daft Punk

Going Up? Watch your head.
The Daft Punk stage specially commission by Sony for

 2013 Wee Waa Festival, Australia, the

live uncovering of the top secret album

Random Access Memories

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.

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.

It's awful.

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.

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".

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.

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.

  

Tron soundtrack days (2010 / 11)

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.

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.

 From the RAMs album live premiere in Australia, 2013

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 GQ 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 "it sucks", 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 "sucks".

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.

(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, Electroma. 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 Youtube 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.)

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 RAMs purely to be taken as art (Interstellar 5555, Electroma, Human After All 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?

I'm struck by the staged, absolutely still characters in the Capricorn One evoking Mars video set to Get Lucky 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?

Does the Get Lucky clip with frozen then suddenly moving figures seem like a Mars set?

 Mars in a warehouse studio, Capricorn One (1978)

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.

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. 

 Sasha Frere-Jones, New Yorker magazine, notes the robot mask allusion to art of Jackson's Thriller    

What is "deep house", the disagreements, and the reasons why.

 

Faced with a ridiculous Wikipedia article under the title of "Deep House" that actually goes down the route of trying to make concrete some old Frankie Knuckles (etc.) fan's eulogy that "Only Frankie Knuckles and related DJs ever made real deep house music", I have to do something.

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 "deep house" in The Web.



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.

What is "deep house", the disagreements, and the reasons why.

I'm hoping to resolve this age old dispute over the meaning of the term "deep house". 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.

I can find the disagreements about the meaning of "deep house" 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.



(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.)



Early trance (not later, faster, formulaic trance), Chicago house of disco origin, soul house, funky house, minimal dub house, even acid house (as included in a wider genre) have all been named "deep house" 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 "deep house" did mean that that genre was exclusively deep house. But other people naming a single genre of house music did not mean that that genre was exclusively deep house.

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 deep house by elements such as analysis of melody, using a funky, R&B based Chicago house model (which itself is actually only one part of what is distinctly Chicago house 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 deep house meant.

Before I go back in time to recall and describe the most sensible meaning of deep house, I'll say one more thing. Why should Chicago house be termed "deep house" exclusively? This is silly. Chicago house is the proper term for Chicago house. And Detroit house for Detroit house and so on. It was (and is and will be) a very important thing to outline the real meaning of "deep house". I remember, as house music got more followers in the 1980s, and as time went on, people began to think "deep house" 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 "deep house" music, but to find a type of house music they didn't like and maybe they left the club.
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 house music.

"Deep house" is a really loose term. It does not mean specifically Chicago house. (Though I also understand in a sense why some people made and make this mistake because the term "Chicago House" was also sometimes used to identify most to nearly any serious house music 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 "Chicago house" is a term used to describe distinct house music 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.

(Whether going on a tangent or not, one thing I want to say here is that not all "Chicago house" music - the house music 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, Chicago house 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 house music. 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 "Chicago house" music. Though it may be closer to styles associated with Detroit house 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.)

Going back to the wide genre of "Deep house", it does not specifically need to have a soulful basis, or be vocal house, or have any funk or R&B root tinge. I know that is a particular preference some people have for the meaning of "deep house" but it's not accurate. Just like the others house based on funk or jazz funk is simply funky house, or jazz house or jazzy house, or jazz-funk house.
The point is that these CAN all be identified by the term "Deep House".

Deep House means serious house music. Yes, it means Chicago house, it means Detroit house, it means New York house, it does also mean original British garage house (later UK garage or UK garage house may be distinct, I don't know). Deep house means French house music, it means Balearic house music, it means electro house, it means minimal dub house.

The point is that it is serious, house club house music. 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 house music. 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.

That is how and why the term "Deep house" developed in most places.

(As well as distinguish serious club music from standard discotheque music, the term deep house 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 house music 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 deep house music also, but these clubs were distinct from deep house clubs.)

There were some DJs and scenes which became particularly associated with the term "deep house" 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 early trance house music which for example Paul Oakenfold played in his very early years (nothing like later, formulaic trance music which Oakenfold also became soon known for). It was electro house, it was lighter rave or heavier techno but not fast techno and slow enough to be recognized as central or core house music, and it could include the fringes of acid house.

So, for a while, when I forgot the purpose of the term, this was deep house for me and many others. While many others still in the UK who associated their music exclusively with the term deep house thought the term meant exclusively garage, and others exclusively more R&B rooted Chicago house. And so on.

The truth is, though, it meant all of these.

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 "This is deep house." Many DJs and clubbers went a lot further and said things that seemed to be defining things, such as

"This is the real deep house music", and,

"This is what Deep House means", and things like,

"Other DJs [in the city / elsewhere] don't play deep house. This is the only place where you will find real deep house music.", and,

"That other stuff is not deep house music. They get it wrong. This is real, deep house."

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.

"Deep house", 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 acid house music, though generally acid clubs listed themselves as playing acid. But, even then, the term deep house could apply because, to many people, it distinguished the club as a serious house club.

At the time what became known as handbag house clubs were growing more popular. That was most often not thought of as deep house. There were many clubs which played remixes, house style remixes of popular songs and called themselves house clubs. They were not deep house clubs. Some of the house music played at such clubs was not deep house and some may have been, or, otherwise, simply these clubs didn't play any deep house. The Disco Mix Club 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 deep house music. Some DMC nights did include deep house music. (DMC remix record releases, though, did tend much more to be deep house music from the late 80s and especially into the 1990s, as well as some being non-deep house and disco club tracks. The DMC compilation albums of the late 80s and onward, however, were usually a very good example of what should never be mistaken as deep house.)

In the very early 90s when trance house music turned from the best part of house music in the centre between techno house, lighter electro house, acid house, Balearic house and other styles (and very occasionally soulful house and funky house) into a completely new type of club music, I had to conclude that that probably wasn't deep house. I don't know. It just became so far removed from standard house music. Later trance became music that was most often very little like early trance house music. The thing with serious house music up until around 1990 / 91 (and this includes quite a good lot of what was called rave music 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.

I guess some people would disagree with me. Some people will still say that the really fast trance music with the typical breaks in the middle and, typically, white race women vocalists is 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 deep house.

From around '90 (or just before in certain quarters), some things began to change and the biggest change seemed to be the new trance music. It was very different. Some core (and even foundational) deep house DJs such as Oakenfold actually followed the change (to my dismay) and copied the immense change that happened with the type of house called trance - which transformed into something completely new.

Now I can hardly see the later trance style as house music at all. From around the same time, you may be able to say the same thing about a lot of rave music, and harder techno music. These three scenes all had styles which developed far away from what was reasonably recognizable as core house music. Yes, there was still rave music that was clearly house music, and the same for trance and techno (the three were core parts of house music 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 house music began to lose its grip. Then, quality, serious rave, techno and trance 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.

To finish - "Deep House" 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 house music and meanings seemed to seem made from that. They identified the meaning of "deep house" as being that type of house exclusively. It's a mistake, though. The term is a general term for serious house.

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 house music elements (rave, trance and some techno scenes). My feelings are that those later developments in dance music could not be called "deep house". 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 "deep house" tracks. However, in my experience, especially with trance, generally there was a real breakaway from the past and there was not much significant incorporation of the old "deep house" style, feeling or attitude at all.)

Of course, there was still a good amount of techno, rave and original style trance house music made from around 1990 and after which was easily core house music - serious house, or "deep house" (but harder to find).

I hope this helps.

I feel it's important, to clear up the confusion. To think that "deep house" refers exclusively to one type of serious house music, whether Chicago house, or soulful vocal house, or minimal dub electro house, is inaccurate.


"Deep house" just means serious house of the kind that emanated as core house music from the explosion of house music from the mid to late 1980s.




Finally, to people involved in or around or informed by a scene from the early days, you will find that, to them, deep house 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 "deep house" as a Chicago, more melodic, soul and R&B based house music will always be identified as correct by those people who live deep in the jelly of Chicago house music.


Larry Heard himself may indeed validate the current Wikipedia article as being true of deep house. (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 deep house.) Larry Heard and others may actually feel rather strongly that the current Chicago orienatated, soulful, melodic house basis of "deep house" is the exclusive definition of deep house music.


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 deep house music, all they are in fact doing is what the old DJs used to do, in saying, "This is the real deep house music, the others don't have it." To them, it is true and perhaps always will be, "deep house" only means their particular style or styles of house music. Thus to many Chicago people, "deep house" is Chicago house and soulful Chicago house 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.


The current Wikipedia definition would find it very difficult to include L'il Louis in its definition of deep house, for example. While L'il Louis is called by many "the father of house music", a founding father of Chicago house music and is known himself to have stated numerous times that he plays deep house and that his music is deep house, 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 deep house is a different style of Chicago house music to his own, and how he accepts that these people have their own definition of deep house and Chicago deep house. Louis has said that while his music is deep house and Chicago house, "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.


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.


Again, I've said it many times in this text, and I'll end with the true definition of deep house, yet again, though it may disappoint many people involved in many different styles or scenes or house music. Deep house music is not any exclusive style of house music, but simply means serious house music.


The best thing to remember is this:


"Deep house" means just serious house of the kind that emanated as core house music from the explosion of house music from the mid to late 1980s (or, in a very few places in the world, such as parts of Chicago, Illinois, the origin of house musics before the mid 80s ).

The 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.

Julian Assange and the future: The potential rescue opera.



A 2013 perspective (late June) given the upscaling of things due to the Snowden situation.



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).

Part 1: KIDNAP.

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).

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.

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.)

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.

Here's a proposed situation.

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!).

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 (it does, is blown up, no-one is injured, or at least you don't see it like in the original A-Team episodes).

 

 

 

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.

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.

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).

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?)

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?

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.

From a site in the first google search result, this ex army machine

is going at the reasonable price within the range of £150,000 to £200,000,

necessitating wealthy organisation members or donors.

The small factor of an expert pilot able to descend

within the towers of Knightsbridge

and ascend once more within seconds in darkness

ought not be overlooked also.

Heck, this notion is so 'captivating',

it ought to become a fictional movie at the least:

"Escape from Killer Drab Victorian Tower Land" (inspired by

a true situation involving celebrated / reviled human rights, liberties,

state accountability and openness of information

journalist / activist, Julian Assange.)

 

 

 



...

...

Oh dear, how could this cabin fever predicament be resolved?

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, but Godammit, is it something so hard! Yes. So very, very hard.

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.

The Edward Snowden situation could not leave anyone in any doubt whatsoever that as soon as Mr Assange would be walking on British or Swedish soil, the Americans would have diplomats arriving to further the goal of the US extradition papers faxed literally within seconds of the news (or silently already waiting, accepted and agreed to, in some particular cupboards somewhere in Europe).

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.

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.

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.

...

...

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.

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.

 

For those who are not aware,

this fanciful but possible, yes, possible, hypothetical situation

thus far has hidden the fact that Ecuador's London Embassy

lies on the ground floor apartment of the building in

Hans Crescent, Knightsbridge, simply standing a few metres away

from the trained (probably specialist) police

on the ground, outside. Hence the demands are increased

for the right kind of helicopter pilot than would be required

for higher floors, let me say, um, well, really, really, really

substantially. But, yes, yes, possible, still possible.

Maybe.

A further, adapted, realistic situation may involve knocking out

more than just Mr Assange with an injection, but funny gas and masks

or the liberating proletariat of the non-borderless world.

 

 

Such a shame, perhaps, that Ecuador's Embassy in London was chosen for a ground floor in a high, old mansion block.

 

Still there are ways around this. There must be for God only makes answers, of course, never the complete dearth of them.

 

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.

 

The stuporific Mr Assange is hoisted quickly by winch a few floors, out of quick reach of the police on the ground.

 

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.

 

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.)

 

     

 

 

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.

 

 

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.

 
Possible, remember. Possible. 

You know what's funny about Scotland?

Tell me.

May there be life in the Liberal Democrats yet? Is it even possible after the Qutada & human rights sale to potential torturers for "smiles"?

The media report: Nick Clegg blocks Tory plans for a 'snoopers' charter' (as in the headline of a Telegraph article).

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.

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.

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, to head straight for 1984, to exactly go one more than the terrorists, to get there first, to beat them at their own game, leaving nothing genuine to terrorise.

As regards the pulse of the Liberal Democrats, unfortunately I've just watched Simon Hughes in tonights' BBC Question Time programme go with the "we'll do anything to get Abu Qutada on a flight to Jordan" gang. Just like Clegg did before him.

This issue seems to really test the plebs - they can escape other issues, but this one shows who are plebs and who aren't.

It's so basic:

- there are human rights,

- they are inalienable otherwise they become meaningless if on a pick and choose basis, or "only if you do x" basis,

- 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,

- 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,

- 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),

- 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),

- thanks to people like Theresa May and tabloid editors this one man is Qutada,

- the worst politicians realise how vociferous, stupid and goal orientated (and popular seeming) this rabble is,

- 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.

On Question Time, 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.

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?

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.

But it's horrid to think of it as a British court.

For the judge and jury in the court were instructed

- they may not hear Mr Shaylor's evidence AT ALL for it breached these so-called treachery laws of a certain statute,
- 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",
- 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.

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.

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.

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.

Real beauty; balearic ambience from Francois Kevorkian

I cannot resist sharing this one.

This is so beautiful.

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.)

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.

The Time Is Now by Moloko, Francois K's Blissed Out Dub

 

 

BUY The Time is Now (Francois K's Blissed Out Dub) by Moloko

• From 7 Digital download store, track from All Back to The Mine Moloko remix LP
• Find All Back To The Mine  C.D. here, best-cd-price.co.uk [** see below]

** ... 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.

Classic of our times: Todd Terje's "Ragysh", my Italo-Disco samsara & modern, norse, zen take on Italo-Disco

A break from Bowie for a while.

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 ...

... 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.

From when the word techno meant, yes what would be identifable now to techno fans as techno - LFO and all that, 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.

A true classic of modern instrumental house, Ragysh.

Promoted in the video above is a recording of the vinyl pressing of Ragysh.

Because just because, I'm also sharing a share of the digital recording:





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.

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 (Shine) 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 Shine 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.)

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 is Belfast, give us more of a chance. But I think it's just as much or more that things really may have changed.

On Easter Monday, while Todd Terje, Bicep & Space DC come to The Limelight, paces away Sasha is playing at The Stiff Kitten, and the Subculture team from Glasgow's Sub Club are lined up for the mega club at Shine 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 not trance fast, I think, nor really trance, I think, but techno house, and not moddish d&b or snare-insanity-stadium-synth crap either maybe - would hope).

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 Shine a few years ago and missed nearly all of his set, listening to 808 State's set with SDC (in previous blog post "House, house, house, house house".) I was thinking I'm not ready for Todd Terje.

Some of his stuff, not just Inspector Norse, 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 serious, 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 even be hard going in the 1980s?" That seems to suggest the beast is easier than it is. Those times with Italo were hard, they were hard, they were hard.

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. What it was (one's consciousness). What it was (Italo-disco). What the context / contexts was or were (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). What it all might mean. 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.

(I know many might find themselves looking at me in a confused or worried fashion, thinking 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?)

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.

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.

Disco should be fun. Italo-disco sounded serious to me. I could see fun, but only knowing it is serious first, and never discarding that.

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 trying, attempting, maybe forcing somehow, 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 "Spagna knows", just for being in such bad faith in its presence.

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.

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 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.

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, necessary 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, but, aaah, only pretending.

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.

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 way available for most times, or could conjure it easily from far reaching climes to the here and now at will.

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.

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 Lanzarote, and in good part it sounds pretty like Italo stuff to me).

I know that some (or many) people won't find Terje's stuff reminiscent of Italo-disco much or at all. 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) 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.

"If it be now 'tis not to come, if it be not now, yet it will come."
Coping with life and Italo-disco.

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 Inpsector Norse. 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 once anyway for the year, ya have to drag it out somehow. If not all of the time.

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 don't 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.

Perhaps just the thoughts of the subtly, esoterically, but copiously benevolent, wise and caring Italo-disco animal (or the iced zen version) 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.




Conceptual portrait of Iced Zen Italo-disco animal, sex not known
(which is not the reason for the question marks)

Buy "Ragysh" by Todd Terje

• From the Beatport download store