Gaza

Statement. Add my name to the bottom of that list.

Just another lie

Completely unrelated to the current horrors making headlines these days, but this is a good reminder of how willing the US government is to knowingly tolerate the targeting of civilians as long as it aligns with their (often rather questionable to begin with) ideological goals. Government support of death-squads and institutionalized murder of innocents? Don't worry about it! They were probably standing next to drug-traffickers anyway.

Afro House<-->UK Funky

Just downloaded this mix of african house & uk funky (plus other bits).  It's great for several reasons:
1. The music's great
2. It has almost all the good african house tracks I know of, from Dr Duda and Dr M-bee, DJ Cleo, and DJ Mujava (almost all downloaded off some dissensus thread last year, prob the same place this guy got them from).
3. In addition to having some great UK Funky, it also neatly demonstrates why I wasn't quite as blown away as some other observers when Funky started to be really noticed in the last half of 08: funky really ain't that much different from a lot of afro/caribean house sounds. The main difference being that funky is made by black youths from london and is therefore the new IT super important and inovative music (fuck an anglophile!). That said I am liking a good chunk of the funky I'm hearing and could easily see myself falling in love with this stuff over the summer. It is definitley summer-time music!


(Final side note: I like how Funky, like Minimal before it, has dispensed with the noun and just gone with the adjective as genre name. I'm looking forward to Speed, Hard, and Juicy coming up in the future...)

Cancel, Abort, Retry?

Let's go with retry.

My goal this time round is to keep it short, simple and frequent. Not too heavy on the images or the downloads, maybe a link here and there but not much more. The idea being to jot down what's on my mind quickly and move on. (Isn't this what twitter's for? I don't really understand twitter)

Since I'm sure I've lost what minimal audience I had originally this is going to be real shouting into the void-like. But if you shout long enough into the void, the void shouts back right? Right???

A good reason to buy the physical album

Holy shit I could not believe the price of these Gas cds. I have all these albums!! This is the first time I've ever noticed any of the cds/records I own appreciate in value, especially like this! I feel like a real record collector nerd now :D

Gas - Gas $49.00, £48.90
Gas - Zauberberg £35.00, $99.98, $272.98!!!
Gas - Konigsforst €55.00
Gas - Pop €65.00, $79.97, $125.00


They're are great by the way. Here's one for you:

Gas - Konigsforst 05

Not really returning

Blog heartbeat rather faint right now...

But nevertheless, I note this, which is some next level shit.

We Shall Return

I would play all this songs on a field full of alpacas

Photo from here

Suddenly very relevant song for my life (also catchy as hell) (also, watch out for the scary bit!):

John Maus - Too Much Money

Also, 20JazzFunkGreats has been REALLY good recently, most especially the two tracks in this post and the Aeroplane remix of Coyote in this post. GET EM.

Ewan Pearson This Friday Dec 7 @ Celebrities

Party alert! Ewan Pearson is DJ'ing this Friday at Celebreties. We should go ya? Not the least because I has a new job, and thus need some celebrating.

Ewan's broadly electro-house, though his sets seem fairly eclectic, with a wide range of house, techno and more pop-ish tunes. He probably won't be head-bashing commercial electro-house nor wimpy plink-plonk minimal--I'm expecting something in between there, though I'm not sure what exactly. I have his Sci.Fi.Hi.Fi. _01 mix from two years back, and it's fairly straight ahead (though excellent) electro-infused tech-house, while his recently released Fabric 35 mix, which I haven't heard, seems to have a much more varied tracklist (it even has some old post-punk on there). Whatever the fuck this all means, by all accounts he's great dj and knows how to rock the party and is not afraid to venture into more vocal poppy territory and mix things up. Hopefully the system at celebreties is up for it (I thought it was kinda flat for mathew jonson, or at least the parts I was sober enough to remember...), but I'm sure it'll be great regardless.

Alright come party! Go here for tickets, youtube clips, bio. (btw, is it wrong that i would actually go to the next THREE friday nights a celebrities? Tiefschwarz, Sharam, MSTRKRFT would all also be dope, though Pearson's definitely my pick of the litter).

Here are two pearson remixes (both from this comp), one loud and upfront, the other more moody:

Freeform Five - Perspex Sex (Ewan Pearson's Hi-NRG Mix)

Ladytron - Evil (Ewan Pearson Radio Edit)



Completely unrelated bonus for those who scrolled down! Rihanna - Don't Stop the Music (The Wideboys Radio Edit)

Other fronts in the war of terror

(img by Barnaby Furnas)

Time to take advantage of my privileged position as armchair critic to be smug and self-congratulatory in pointing out that I basically called this back in January, but now even the Times agrees with me: Somalia's in real-bad shape, thanks in good part to the invasion of the largely foreign sponsored (mainly US and Ethopia) "transitional government".

United Nations officials now concede that the country was in better shape during the brief reign of Somalia’s Islamist movement last year. “It was more peaceful, and much easier for us to work,” Mr. Laroche said. “The Islamists didn’t cause us any problems.”

Mr. Ould-Abdallah called those six months, which were essentially the only epoch of peace most Somalis have tasted for years, Somalia’s “golden era.”

Yay, the Whitehouse's blatant Islamophobia and singleminded desire to force their needs and fears onto other countries has fucked over yet another poor, desperate nation filled with easily forgettable others! Hooray for democracy and freedom!

Better and better...

Well I've gotten myself on a bit of kick on various traditional musics from some different places. After last weeks Gamelan discovery, I've been feeling strongly the desire for some different rhythms, a desire which has been temporarily sated by some great traditional music from Madagascar. Here's a couple:

v/a (Madagascar, Pays Antandroy, Cote Sud-Ouest) - Gorodo

Antsan - Jejo Lava, Chant Pour L'arc Musical

These two both come from discs of the French Ocora label (hence the titles), which seems like a real goldmine in terms of interesting different sounds from accross the globe. The first track is just a blindin, sunny-as-hell piece, paced by a quick percusive rhythm, lively guitar (or something similar), and absolutely joyous singing and yelping. Just happy, beautiful music. The second track is apparently just a man playing a single string tied to a stick and singing along. Ha ha you say, but wait untill you hear it. Simple, repetitive and--hauntingly beautiful. The man 's voice is a thing to behold, and he creates a surprisingly engaging and haunting melody with such a simple instrument. The thing that's getting me with this (and thanks to zhao from here for banging on about this, and for the tunes!) is how sonically advanced so much of this sounds (same for the Gamelan). For "traditional" music, its actually much more sonically adventurous and interesting than the vast majority of western music these days, even the more "indie" stuff that's supposed to be pushing the boundaries. Makes ya think....

Okay, and because I'm still listening to house/techno too, here's a pair that have caught my ear this week. The first is by the revived ex-Chain Reaction duo of Substance and Vainqueur, laying down some deep thundering dub techno. The second is some lovely upbeat minimal house featuring everyones favorite sound. warped house piano! Enjoy! :D

Substance & Vainqueur - Libration

Rejected - Let's Go Juno

I did not know it would be this good

Music For the Gods - The Fahnestock South Sea Expedition Indonesia



Mesmerizing, beautiful stuff. Indonesian Gamelan, which is something I've heard mentioned before but never had a chance to look into--turns out this was a fairly major mistake! This disc is a collection of recordings made by a pair of American brothers lugging recording equipment around Indonesia circia 1940, and apparently stands as one of the best documents of gamelan music as performed by the original masters. Gamelan was "forgotten" for a while before being rescued by various musical ensembles and cultural institutes. Whatever the backstory though, this is some seriously ethereal, stunning music. I've been listening to this a lot since I got it. Very peaceful trance-inducing music. I HIGHLY recommend a download (it's okay to like "world music" people, as terrible as that term is).

A Third Thrilling Thumper

I noticed my grammar kinda went south in that last post, comma splices ahoy! But these things can't be helped sometimes. Ninjas be all up in my language steez. Nevertheless, here we have Track of the Week, Part The Third:

Aeroplane - Caramellas

Fantastic piano! Swoonsome buildup around the third minute completes disco wundertrack euphoria! OH EMM GEE!! Love it, you check Aeroplane myspace and listen to other lovely tracks, k? Mulchy! Soon come Beardo Mix The Part The Two, me thinks...

A Brace of Balaeric Beauties

A Mountain Of One - Brown Piano (Remake by Studio)

Peter Visti - Dolly

Start the week off with some slow-grooving beauties. First off Studio's remake of AMO1's newest single is everything you could hope it would be, massive slow-kick bassline and shimmering neo-western guitars unfold over an epic 10-minute span of ghostly disco. Peter Vistsi gives us a re-edit of Dolly Parton's "Jolene" which mostly just steals a guitar lick and the the eponymous chorus re-sung by male vocalist, adds haunted synths, drum kick and handclaps, repeats into krautrock oblivion. Just put these two songs on repeat and drift away...

Turkey Shells Northern Iraq

Can you imagine the absolute shit storm that would happen if this was Iran shelling Iraq?? Oh double standards. But the Americans have long ignored (condoned?) the Turks campaign against the Kurdish people anyway...