dingdong battle

The Sea and Cake

2011-10-20T15:10:00.001+02:00

Stan Tracey

2011-10-20T14:57:00.000+02:00

The Necks

2011-10-20T14:08:00.000+02:00

Drummin.

2011-10-20T13:46:00.002+02:00

Hoverpacked (Radio show mp3 download)

2011-09-23T02:00:00.004+02:00

http://www.mediafire.com/?yve5ue7nmwytqlx

FeetBeat (Radio show mp3 download)

2011-09-22T02:08:00.001+02:00

http://tiny.cc/qaki6

PluggedIn (Radio show mp3 download)

2011-09-22T00:54:00.004+02:00

http://tiny.cc/7puzm

Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship

2010-02-14T16:19:00.000+01:00

Ahead of its release this coming Monday, June 22, Clash asked Tortoise’s Jeff Parker to provide us with an invaluable track-by-track guide to the seminal Chicago band’s latest album ‘Beacons Of Ancestorship’.

Look for a full feature on the influential post-rock-cum-jazz-cum-whatever-they-want band – completed by Dan Bitney, Doug McCombs, John Herndon and John McEntire – in issue 40 of Clash Magazine, and a review of ‘Beacons…’ on these very pages next week.

- - -

‘High Class Slim Came Floatin' In’
“This tune was introduced to the band by John Herndon. He played us a demo version he'd recorded of it at his home studio. The Tortoise reinterpretation remained relatively faithful to his initial demo, the only differences being that we added some more harmonies on the bridge, and stretched out the ending. He composed it in the Tortoise style, which is to take two or three different ideas for songs and then smash them together to try and make one song.”

‘Prepare Your Coffin’
“The initial melody and chord changes were introduced by John McEntire. He had a pretty good idea of the direction that he thought the song should take when he presented it to us. Doug McCombs' bassline ended up becoming the countermelody that serves as the introduction before the proper melody comes in. I doubled it up on guitar at practise one day, and Dan suggested we use it as another part separate from the melody. ‘Coffin’ is a lot of fun to play live...”

‘Northern Something’
“A holdover from the ‘BUMPS’ session that McEntire, Herndon and Bitney did for Stones Throw a couple of years ago. The bassline sounds like some type of a freaky keyboard, but it's actually a filtered bass drum.”

‘Gigantes’
“Another holdover from the ‘BUMPS’ session. This one was from Dan Bitney. The song went through a lot of transitional phases before we finally settled on the finished version. Once John McEntire put the hammered dulcimer part down, the whole thing really came together.”

‘Penumbra’
“Extrapolations on an idea that John Herndon came up with on the MPC 1000.”

‘Yinxianghechengqi’
“This was a holdover from the sessions for ‘It's All Around You’. John McEntire came up with the chord progression on a great little push-button chord organ called the Omnichord. We've been playing this tune at shows for probably about five years. It's nice to finally have it on one of our records. Employs use of ‘The Wilhelm Scream’. Look it up.”

‘The Fall Of Seven Diamonds Plus One’
“Introduced to us by Doug McCombs. This one kind of came out of nowhere. Very creative percussion work by Johnny Herndon. It started as a duet with Doug on guitar and Dan on bass guitar, and then we built it up from there. Josh Abrams plays a little bit of acoustic bass on this track.”

‘Minors’
“Introduced by Jeff Parker. This whole song is based on a minor chord (hence the title) that was sampled and then moved around. I came up with the chord progression while riding in the back of a van, up a twisty mountain road in Slovenia, which is why it sounds kind of twisty. I improvised over the chord changes, and it ended up becoming the melody of the song. The intro came later, and employs the ‘hocketing’ technique, which was interspersed throughout our last record, ‘It's All Around You’.”

‘Monument Six One Thousand’
“Basically just beats, a synth bassline and the melody comes from some sampled JP guitar phrases, which were later recreated in the studio by JP and McCombs. Inspired by the late, great James Yancey, a.k.a. J
Dilla.”

‘de Chelly’
“Introduced by Doug McCombs. A small guitar melody brought to life with great organ chords.”

‘Charteroak Foundation’
“Introduced by JP. Started out as the guitar arpeggio, recorded at home with Ableton Live. I dropped in a drum break, and the way said break was interpreted by the program set the rhythmic foundation of the tune. It was a happy coincidence and after that, everything fell into place. We came up with the bridge of the song during practise one day.”

Words: Jeff Parker

Jim O'Rourke

2010-02-13T22:42:00.001+01:00

Hooray for the Eye!

2010-02-12T16:35:00.000+01:00

Private Eye: circulation figures 'like John Terry's shorts'

Private Eye recorded its best sales figure since 1992 in the second half of last year, according to data published today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The fortnightly satirical magazine sold an average of 210,218 copies in the six-month period between July and December.

A year-on-year increase of 3.4% took the magazine – which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year – over the 210,000 mark for the first time since 1992.

More than 99% of copies are actively purchased – sold at newsstands or through subscription but not given away as bulks or through controlled circulation.

"The Eye's circulation figures are like John Terry's shorts," said editor Ian Hislop. "In the past they may have been down – but now they are firmly up again."

The Oldie, the magazine edited by Private Eye's founder and former editor Richard Ingrams, also did well, adding 14.6% year on year to record a sale 35,965, which was up 4.8% on the previous six-month period to the end of June.

The Week was up a solid 9.8% year on year to 169,690, while monthly magazine Prospect grew its circulation 3% to 28,446.

However, things were less rosy for rightwing political weekly the Spectator, which lost 8.9% of its sales from its record high in the second half of 2008 to hit 70,300.

The Economist's ongoing growth continued, albeit at a modest rate.

The UK edition added 1.2% to reach 189,201, while the continental Europe edition lost 0.2% to 238,704.

MoneyWeek, whose sale is dominated by subscriptions, was up 10.4% year on year to 42,953.

Investors Chronicle, from FT Business, slipped 1.4% to 30,006, although this was a mere 21 copies fewer than in the previous six-month period.

Time magazine's British Isles edition lost 3% year on year to 130,264, while the Europe edition of Newsweek was down 10.2% to 192,239.

Worldwide sales of the New Scientist, excluding Australasia and North America, fell 7.5% year on year to 101,060.

Leftwing weekly current affairs magazine New Statesman did not submit an ABC figure.

Tortoise

2009-09-25T12:47:00.000+02:00

Tortoise - Prepare Your Coffin from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

2009-09-22T20:44:00.000+02:00

Mayer Hawthorne

2009-09-22T19:50:00.000+02:00

For the cosmic cowboy Killian

2009-09-21T15:47:00.007+02:00

http://www.zshare.net/audio/6596772575e771f1/

http://www.zshare.net/download/659648265464a50d/

http://www.zshare.net/download/659059631e7acc0f/

http://www.zshare.net/download/65963290fc42059f/

http://www.zshare.net/download/659285824fdb6a32/

http://www.zshare.net/download/659299160237c7cb/

http://www.zshare.net/download/66003940d727ebce/

2009-07-28T23:19:00.001+02:00

2009-07-28T23:08:00.000+02:00

2009-07-28T16:40:00.002+02:00

RIP - He-eeeeeeh!

2009-07-28T15:45:00.002+02:00

2009-07-28T15:25:00.002+02:00

The greatest TV comedy show

2009-07-02T15:52:00.000+02:00

RIP Karl Malden - an under-rated actor

2009-07-02T15:29:00.002+02:00

Lee Fields - Live!

2009-06-30T21:59:00.000+02:00

Last fm

2009-06-23T20:18:00.001+02:00

http://www.newstatesman.com/music/2009/06/music-jones-stiksel-cbs

Howlin Wolf

2009-06-22T22:59:00.001+02:00

Charlie Brooker

2009-06-22T13:26:00.001+02:00

To some, pets are a source of cute, absolute love. To me, they're a perpetual looming spectre of death

Sorry to brag, sorry to lord it over you like this, but I've got a cat flap. Yeah. A little feline-sized door-within-a-door for a cat to walk through. A cat flap! Beat that. I didn't even have to install it. It came with the flat, courtesy of the previous owners. As a child I never dared to dream that one day I'd own my own cat flap, and even now that I do, I sometimes have to pinch myself and remember that yes: this is real. This is my cat flap. And it lives in my door.

I don't have a cat though.

I don't have any pets. Yet people keep telling me to get one, just like they keep telling me to get a wife. (Incidentally, before Alison Donnell from the department of English and American literature at the University of Reading writes another impenetrable article for Comment is Free in which she humourlessly over-analyses one of my throwaway sentences, I should perhaps point out that I'm not equating wives with pets. For one thing, you can't bury a wife in a shoebox. In several shoeboxes, sliced thinly, maybe - but not one. I should also clarify that when I mention "burying a wife in a shoebox" I'm not making light of murder or anything like that; I'm talking about a hypothetical wife who died of natural causes - and that furthermore, said hypothetical wife was a postoperative transsexual who'd been born a man, and that her dying wish was to be sliced thinly and lovingly placed in a series of shoeboxes. Finally, I'd like to point out that in her will, she bequeathed everything she owned to an institute of gender studies run by a team of hermaphrodites. It's actually a bloody inspiring story, OK?)

Anyway, back to pets, and people telling me to get one. Assuming the stone's being thrown by a powerful robot, I live a stone's throw from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, a building full of lonely looking furry creatures with gigantic pleading eyes. I could go in there and walk out with armfuls of puppies and kittens. But I won't. Or rather can't. I just can't. Why?

Because animals die, that's why. And they die too soon. They've got short life spans. I had a cat once. And I loved that cat. But eventually the cat died, and I don't know if I want to go through that again. Literally every time I stroke someone else's cat or dog, all I can think is, "Yes, it's lovely, but it'll die". Every time I envisage myself owning a pet, my mind immediately floods with pre-emptive grief. What if it got run over? Or it choked on something? What if I tripped and fell and dropped a Yellow Pages on its head? I just couldn't bear it.

Yes, I know humans die too, and usually leave even sharper grief in their wake when they do so. But you can't go through life without becoming at least vaguely attached to at least one or two humans in some form or another. The pain they'll cause is unavoidable. Whereas pets seem easier to cut out.

I know, pet lovers, I know. The joy your pets give while alive far outweighs the grief of their passing. You might even argue that foreknowledge of your pet's future death actually lends your delight in their comparatively fleeting existence even more resonance. That's all very well. I still don't want to come home one night to find a dead cat on the floor.

When I asked the internet whether I should get a pet, I got a variety of responses. One person suggested buying something dangerous, like a scorpion or a tiger. That way, rather than worrying about its death, I'd be worrying about my own. Our day-to-day existence would turn into a nail-biting contest in which only one of us would make it out alive. But I live in London. My stress levels peaked some time ago, thanks.

Someone else suggested a virtual pet, like a Tamagotchi. I had one of those years ago: accidentally put it through the washing machine in a jeans pocket and felt like a murderer. Taxidermy also got a mention. True, a stuffed pet wouldn't die. But it would stand around in a glass box, advertising death. And that's what I see when I look in the mirror. I see death. The ageing process and death. And a mop. The mop's often propped up against that wall at the back I can see from the mirror. It's not relevant to the discussion. I just threw it in to lighten the mood.

I suppose what I'm getting at here is I'm just too damn angsty to own a pet. Which is a pity because, like I say, I've got a cat flap. And whenever people see it they go, "Ooh, have you got a cat?" and I have to explain that I don't, because of death and everything, and it's a bit of a conversation-killer to be honest. And it's happened so many times now that every time I see the cat flap, I think about the cat I don't have, and how much I'd like one if only it wouldn't die, and then I realise I'm mourning a theoretical cat, which in turn leads me to contemplate how little time I have in my own life, and how I shouldn't really waste it in morbid mental cul-de-sacs, and that makes me sad. The cat flap makes me sad.

Which is why I'm going to stop typing now and brick the bastard up. Who's laughing now, cat flap? WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?

• This week Charlie decided throwing eggs at Nick Griffin is counterproductive. To really confound him, the protesters should arrive in an open-top bus filled with 200 incredibly pretty FHM "high-street honey" type glamour girls who simply point at him and laugh derisively at the end of every sentence. Can someone please make this happen?

Henry David Thoreau

2009-06-22T13:18:00.000+02:00

If you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.

2009-06-22T12:40:00.002+02:00

On the Record mp3 download

2009-06-22T12:23:00.006+02:00

http://www.zshare.net/download/6170540174704e4f/

Playlist:
LAMBCHOP - Under A Dream Of A Lie
JIMMY REID - Baby, What You Want Me To Do?
ODETTA - Paths Of Victory
PENTANGLE - Pentangling
PENGUIN CAFE ORCHESTRA - Perpetuum Mobile
NUMB - The Art Of Kissing
BECK -Pay No Mind
PAVEMENT - Spit On A Stranger
ROLLERSKATE SKINNY - Ribbon Fat
BILL CALLAHAN - Live As If Someone Is Always Watching You
SUFJAN STEVENS - The Transfiguration
SIGUR ROS - Sven-Englar
INTERNATIONAL KARATE - Falling Water

On The Record

2009-06-18T18:17:00.004+02:00

http://www.zshare.net/download/615471728adb11ba/

Playlist:

AND SO I WATCH YOU FROM AFAR - Don't Waste Time Doing Things You Hate
GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT - Echoes
DEAD MEADOW - Heaven
AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD - Insatiable Two
DALEK - Abandoned Language
YAGGFU FRONT - Roll With Yaggfu
VIGGO MORTENSON - Moonset
GODSPEED! YOU BLACK EMPEROR - New Riot For New Zero Kanada (Track Two)

On The Record

2009-06-17T22:37:00.004+02:00

http://www.zshare.net/download/61509686bc251947/
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE - My Girls
KOUSHIK - Coolin'
SERGIO MENDES & THE NEW BRASIL '77 - Zanzibar
NESTOR TORRES - Terra Colora
OS ORIGINAL DO SAMBA - Tenha Fe Pois Amatina
HORACE ANDY - Fever
THE TWINKLE BROTHERS - Since I Threw The Comb Away
MYRON & E WITH THE SOUL INVESTIGATORS - Cold Game
MOR THIAM - Ayo Ayo Nene
JIM O'ROURKE - Something Big
SERGE GAINSBOURG - L'Ami Caoutte (My Pal Peanut)
GRANT GREEN - Sookie Sookie

On the Record

2009-06-17T22:26:00.003+02:00

http://www.zshare.net/download/6150812015b14219/

Playlist:
DAFT PUNK - Robot Rock
HOLY FUCK - Royal Gregory
JAMES PANTS - Kash (Trizzy&Xchange remix)
KELPE - Sickly Situation
THE KNIFE - Neverland
IZU - Get UR Fleece On
CORNELIUS - Another Point Of View
CLARK - Dead Shark Eyes
MY BRIGHTEST DIAMOND - Freak Out
SUPER COLLIDER - Darn Cold Way Of Lovin
AFX -XMD 5a
CASINO VERUS JAPAN - It's Very Sunny

Beirut - Nantes

2009-06-17T21:28:00.001+02:00

On the Record

2009-06-17T21:17:00.006+02:00

http://www.zshare.net/download/61506721f273e7a5/

Playlist:
BERUIT - Nantes
JIM O'ROURKE - Fuzzy Sun
PAJO - War Is Dead
BAND OF HORSES - Part One
LOVE - Andmoreagain
THE UNDERTONES - Kiss in the Dark
THE TYDE - Seperate Cars
TALKING HEADS - This Must Be The Place
MERCURY REV - Night and Fog
SUFJAN STEVENS - Jacksonville
JOHN LENNON - Look At Me
RON SEXSMITH - Coming Up The Road
NICK DRAKE - Hazey Jane I
PENTANGLE - Reflection

Buy this record!

2009-06-16T12:25:00.000+02:00

Listen here:

http://truthandsoulrecords.com/storefront/full-lengths/enter-the-37th-chamber.html

2009-06-09T13:48:00.002+02:00

Abysoma Records (Madrid)

2009-05-26T00:01:00.003+02:00

http://www.myspace.com/abysoma

Listen to Baboops Yes We Can - the Luis Junior Remix - mind blowing!

On the Record mp3 download 28 May

2009-05-18T22:13:00.005+02:00

Playlist:
VELVET UNDERGROUND - Who Loves The Sun
TOOTS & THE MAYTALS - Let Down
GIL SCOTT HERON & BRIAN JACKSON - The Bottle
ROY AYERS UBIQUITY - The Golden Rod
THE EXPLOSIONS - Garden Of Four Trees
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & THE MAGIC BAND - Full Moon, Hot Sun
DAVID CROSBY - Cowboy Movie
BEACH BOYS - Long Promised Road
TOWNES VAN ZANDT - You Are Not Needed Now
ANDREW HILL - Grass Roots
SHAUN ESCOFFERY - Breaking Away (Koop Remix)
EASY STAR ALL STARS - Karma Police/Fitter Happier
VELVET UNDERGROUND - Oh Sweet Nuthin'
http://www.zshare.net/download/6049739986cb9faa/

2009-05-18T22:10:00.001+02:00

Mitch

2009-05-18T22:02:00.000+02:00

On the Record mp3 download 21 May

2009-05-18T21:37:00.004+02:00

http://www.zshare.net/audio/601975573d99e2e9/

Playlist:

MY BLOODY VALENTINE - Glidder (Andy Weatherall mix)
PLAID - Boo Bootch
KING OF WOOLWORTHS - The Watchmakers Hands
AFX - Analogue Bubblebath Tr 8
FIZZARUM - Bionic Boogie
I'M NOT A GUN - Make Sense and Loose (Smigglyssna remix)
BOARDS OF CANADA - Oirectine
ANDREA PARKER - Unconnected
LUKE SLATER - Are You There?
MODESELEKTOR - Dark Side of the Frog/Moon

2009-05-18T20:10:00.002+02:00

The Yoof

2009-05-14T23:23:00.000+02:00

On the Record 14 May - mp3 download

2009-05-14T12:09:00.006+02:00

http://www.zshare.net/audio/60004406557c0754/

Playlist:
MAYER HAWTHORNE - Maybe So, Maybe No
JAMIE LIDDELL - Multiply
MOR THIAM - Ayo Ayo Nene
KEITH HUDSON - Civilisation
LEE FIELDS & THE EXPRESSIONS - Ladies
BORIS GARDNER - Melting Pot
MADVILLAIN - Boulder Holder
KING JAMMY - Dub It In The Dancehall Dub
J DILLA - Nothing Like This
LIKKE LI vs KINGS OF LEON - Knocked Up
TWO LONE SWORDSMEN - Lurch (Simon Heartfield remix)
LACKLUSTER - Too Loose
MILEZ BENJAMIN - Hold Your Head High

fLIM

2009-05-07T12:49:00.000+02:00

Concerts Held To Wish World's Poor Good Luck

2009-05-06T13:48:00.000+02:00

ROME—More than 40 artists, including U2, Death Cab for Cutie, Rihanna, and Rage Against the Machine, performed at six simultaneous concerts across the globe Saturday as part of a new benefit show to wish the world's desperately impoverished the best of luck. The $200-a-ticket event raised more than $80 million, which will be put toward thousands of good-luck cards and balloons for developing countries and a fund for future charity performances. "I hope you will all join me in extending a hand of friendship to the have-nots, shaking their hand once, and walking away," Al Gore said in a special message via satellite. "You've had it pretty bad, and it's not likely to get better. May God help you all. See ya!" Producer Quincy Jones also brought all the participating artists together to record an all-star track that will be made available to the poor through iTunes.

Now there is no reason to watch ITV...

2009-05-06T13:16:00.000+02:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/06/itv-the-south-bank-show-melvyn-bragg

Northern Soul

2009-05-06T12:27:00.000+02:00

Don’t sell me your dream by Tom Hodgkinson

2009-05-05T15:33:00.000+02:00

Far from liberating us, technology isolates us and makes us stupid. I want no part of your sterile, bloodless brave new world

Ever since Hobbes, man has been using his ingenuity and energy in an attempt to create a technological utopia. Perpetually dissatisfied with the present, we have invented spinning jennies, steam power, canals, railways, motor cars, flying machines, the wireless, television, computers, mobile telephones. We have been taught in schools since the late 18th century, and by the culture at large, to revere technology and to place faith in it as a liberator. Soon, soon, it seems to say, soon you will be free.

I have a different view. I hold in supreme contempt 90 per cent of modern technology. The whole sorry shebang is actually a costly distraction, which isolates us, makes us stupid and is never going to free us.

Take that digital manacle, the BlackBerry. My first objection to this bleeping distraction is its name. To me, the blackberry is the fruit of the bramble, best picked in September and made into a crumble. It is not a portable telephone and emailing device. It is a strange fact, by the way, that new technology loves to appropriate words from nature. Orange, Apple, Twitter, Amazon, Safari and O2: all companies or products that in fact separate us from messy nature.

But back to the infernal BlackBerry. You are with a friend and you notice that her attention starts wandering. She is writing an email! Surely that is just plain rude. It is also a clever way for your employer to be able to call on you at all times.

Far from making good on its promise to release information to the people, technology makes us into stupid slaves with the concentration span of a two-year-old. No longer can we read drama or poetry; information has to be condensed into bite-sized PowerPoint chunks. Instead of bicycling to the library and getting down three books to help us in our research, we remain in our chairs and lazily consult that dubious, low-quality oracle, Wikipedia, which ensures that not only does the whole world get the same answer, but also that it is a very poor one.

It is also important to remember that technology is not altruistic. Facebook and MySpace are ad sales scams. They get free content and demographic data from their members, then sell it to advertisers. And technology is not neutral: it is one manifestation of a certain sort of techno-utopian world-view, which Aldous Huxley, writing The Perennial Philosophy (1946), described as follows:

"Salvation is regarded as a deliverance . . . out of the miseries and evils associated with bad material conditions into another set of future material conditions so much better than the present that . . . they will cause everybody to be perfectly happy, wise, virtuous. It is drummed into the popular mind, not by the representatives of state or church, but by those most influential of popular moralists and philosophers, the writers of advertising copy."

Technology, like most capitalist constructs, advertising included, appeals to our self-importance (“because you’re worth it”). The mobile phone makes you feel like someone. Witness also the “i” that has been so successful for Apple. In a world where many of us have little control over our work lives, technology makes us feel important. And the BlackBerry promises to make us even more busy and important. A recent advertising campaign showed an unsmiling Teutonic supermodel under the legend “Superhuman”. The ad implied that the purchase of a BlackBerry would transform a mere mortal into something altogether superior. It’s the same with the dreadful Twitter. No longer are you a corporate slave in your cubicle: now you are a coffee-house wit. When I interviewed the Canadian writer Douglas Coupland in 1994, he was already complaining about how the internet was helping all those “wannabe Oscar Wildes just waiting to spew their bons mots into the ether”.

Technology is in the business of selling dreams. And the most influential peddlers of these dreams are the Californian futurologists who, rather in the same manner as naive utopians such as H G Wells before them, are still hoping for jetpacks, eternal life and libertarian communes on ships floating in the Pacific Ocean.

The brilliant investor and hedge-fund manager Peter Thiel is one such character. He was he first backer of Facebook and before that co-founded PayPal, but also believes in a piece of Californian mumbo-jumbo called “The Singularity”. This is the idea that soon computers will become cleverer than humans. He is also a fan of life-extension research, and gives money to an English scientist called Aubrey de Grey, who believes that technology will help us to live to be a thousand years old.

The great myth is that some time soon there will be a technological breakthrough that will lead us to the promised land. But, of course, this will never happen, as Huxley pointed out:

"Because technology advances, we fancy that we are making corresponding progress all along the line; because we have considerable power over inanimate nature, we are convinced that we are the self-sufficient masters of our souls; and because cleverness has given us technology and power, we believe, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that we have only to go on being yet cleverer in a yet more systematic way to achieve social order, international peace and personal happiness."

Brave New World (1932), Huxley’s eerily prophetic novel, was conceived as a riposte to H G Wells’s faith in technology. Huxley’s intention was to warn where we might be heading if we continued to chase the technodream. In Brave New World there are no books: Shakespeare and Keats are banned because they disturb people. “Everyone’s happy now,” boasts the Controller, Mustapha Mond. Instead of art and truth and beauty, the brave new world gives its people comfort and happiness. They have as much sex as they like, and when life gets difficult they take the tranquillising drug soma. This is a result of man becoming too clever for his own good: a sterile, antiseptic, bloodless paradise.

But we are already part of the way there. Instead of buying books, schools buy computers, forgetting that most households have a computer but not many books. The computers will also go out of date very quickly, creating piles of landfill. Nothing dates so fast as technology.

On a severely practical level, technology is hugely frustrating. It doesn’t work very well. It breaks. It suddenly starts going slow. The gap between the elevated promise of the gadget and the messy reality can lead to bursts of techno-rage. But not working is good for business: when existing technology lets you down, just upgrade.

It’s a strange fact that the more you cast this stuff off, the freer you feel. It is a treat to be without a mobile phone or computer or television. Try it for a day – you suddenly realise how much in thrall to this stuff you have been, a slave to the things that promise to free you, but never do.

Badmeaninggood

2009-05-05T14:41:00.001+02:00

Great beards

2009-05-05T14:37:00.004+02:00

So bad...

2009-05-05T14:20:00.001+02:00

An Taobh Tuathail - Happy 10th Birthday!

2009-05-01T20:41:00.002+02:00

One of the best radio shows around:

http://www.rte.ie/rnag/antaobhtuathail.html

2009-05-01T02:14:00.000+02:00

Autechre - plyPhon from lucio arese on Vimeo.

Prefuse 73 - this is so good!

2009-05-01T02:04:00.000+02:00

Prefuse 73: The end of biters - International (2004) from Aleix Pitarch on Vimeo.

Lee Fields & The Expressions

2009-04-29T23:47:00.001+02:00

The album My World, dropping June 2

Lee Fields is a bona-fide, 100%, unadulterated, pure, gut-bucket soul singer. His "legendary" status owes to his undeniably solid series of rare 7" singles (and one LP) recorded and released on his own independent labels in the 70s. Madlib recently jacked his “Flim Flam” drums for the TV on the Radio remix he produced. Now, the New York label/production team Truth & Soul currently in the studio with Aloe Blacc are ready to bring him to light with a brand new album of beat-heavy, deep soul ballads that will show soul-revivalists the world over what real soul is.

Recorded over four years, Lee Fields & The Expressions have successfully created a unique and personal sound that can hold court with the bands they set out to emulate. However, what they’ve created in the process goes beyond just a carbon copy of a sweet soul music from the 60's and early 70's. The formula has remained the same but the style has been adapted for the ears of youngsters whose experiences with soul began with Amy, not Al, Otis and Marvin. Thirty years of retrospection has colored this cross-generational melding of the minds. It sounds odd on paper, but the results are classic: hip hop-reared record collectors come full circle to produce an album of beautiful soul music with one of the progenitors who made it all possible.

2009-04-29T23:42:00.001+02:00

Mayer Hawthorne - Just Ain't Gonna Work Out

2009-04-29T23:38:00.002+02:00

Roy Haynes

2009-04-29T23:07:00.001+02:00

Check out that drum solo!

Ya fuckin' mook!

2009-04-28T13:02:00.000+02:00

Good

2009-04-28T13:01:00.000+02:00

80's style

2009-04-28T12:35:00.000+02:00

2009-04-28T12:23:00.001+02:00

2009-04-28T11:32:00.001+02:00

Madlib- Slim's Return from Alex on Vimeo.

2009-04-28T11:24:00.000+02:00

Dubstep VJ Showreel from VectorMeldrew on Vimeo.

Don't litter, friend

2009-04-28T10:31:00.003+02:00

AntiPop Consortium

2009-04-28T00:58:00.000+02:00

ANTIPOP CONSORTIUM in series: Live From Other Music from Dig For Fire on Vimeo.

Hurricane

2009-04-27T23:49:00.001+02:00

Worst album cover of all time?

2009-04-27T23:04:00.003+02:00

2009-04-27T22:51:00.000+02:00

PARISien
Uploaded by prospective

Buckethead - he looks strange but he makes sweet music

2009-04-27T21:41:00.002+02:00

http://www.bucketheadland.com

2009-04-27T15:35:00.001+02:00

cLOUDDEAD

2009-04-27T15:23:00.002+02:00

Paddy Kavanagh

2009-04-27T15:10:00.002+02:00

http://www.rte.ie/laweb/ll/ll_t03_main.html

The Last Mix? click here to download

2009-04-24T01:01:00.006+02:00

http://www.zshare.net/download/5909179425a762e2/

MOS DEF - Champion Serenade
TALIB KWALI - Soul Rebels
MADVILLAIN - All Caps
EDAN - Promised Land
NWA - If It Aint Ruff
DE LA SOUL feat BUSTA RHYMES - I C Y'all
DILATED PEOPLES - The Last Line of Defence
NEXTMEN & KEROSENE - Global Warming
ROB SWIFT - A Terror Wrist
BLUESKY BLACKDEATH - Street Legends
BEASTIE BOYS - Jimmy James
CLIPSE - When The Last Time
PREFUSE 73 feat GHOSTFACE KILLA & GZA - Hide Ya Face
MF DOOM - Hoe Cakes
ANTIPOP CONSORTIUM - Nude Paper
PUBLIC ENEMY - He Got Game

2009-04-24T00:59:00.002+02:00

A Wookie?

2009-04-21T15:00:00.002+02:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/21/iranian-sniper-wookiee-star-wars

2009-04-21T14:52:00.001+02:00

Madlib the bad kid

2009-04-21T14:48:00.000+02:00

Summertime funk! Mayer Hawthorne

2009-04-21T14:41:00.001+02:00

http://www.stonesthrow.com/jukebox/maybesomaybeno.mp3

Plaid

2009-04-21T14:40:00.001+02:00

A masterclass in film

2009-04-21T14:21:00.004+02:00

Sabres of Doom

2009-04-21T14:06:00.001+02:00

The Mighty Diamonds

2009-04-21T13:35:00.000+02:00

The greatest radio dj on the planet? Do your ears a favour, click here

2009-04-21T13:21:00.002+02:00

Word Up to The Kevlar Mausoleum! Click here

2009-04-20T22:53:00.013+02:00

http://thekevlarmausoleum.blogspot.com/

Way back!

2009-04-20T22:45:00.001+02:00

Was Not Was - Shake Your Head
Uploaded by Hakunamatata67

Police delete London tourists' photos 'to prevent terrorism'

2009-04-16T18:42:00.000+02:00

Like most visitors to London, Klaus Matzka and his teenage son Loris took several photographs of some of the city's sights, including the famous red double-decker buses. More unusually perhaps, they also took pictures of the Vauxhall bus station, which Matzka regards as "modern sculpture".

But the tourists have said they had to return home to Vienna without their holiday pictures after two policemen forced them to delete the photographs from their cameras in the name of preventing terrorism.

Matkza, a 69-year-old retired television cameraman with a taste for modern architecture, was told that photographing anything to do with transport was "strictly forbidden". The policemen also recorded the pair's details, including passport numbers and hotel addresses.

In a letter in today's Guardian, Matzka wrote: "I understand the need for some sensitivity in an era of terrorism, but isn't it naive to think terrorism can be prevented by terrorising tourists?"

The Metropolitan police said it was investigating the allegations.

In a telephone interview from his home in Vienna, Matka said: "I've never had these experiences anywhere, never in the world, not even in Communist countries."

He described his horror as he and his 15-year-old son were forced to delete all transport-related pictures on their cameras, including images of Vauxhall underground station.

"Google Street View is allowed to show any details of our cities on the world wide web," he said. "But a father and his son are not allowed to take pictures of famous London landmarks."

He said he would not return to London again after the incident, which took place last week in central Walthamstow, in north-east London. He said he and his son liked to travel to the unfashionable suburbs.

"We typically crisscross cities from the end of railway terminals, we like to go to places not visited by other tourists. You get to know a city by going to places like this, not central squares. Buckingham Palace is also necessary, but you need to go elsewhere to get to know the city," he said.

He said the "nasty incident" had "killed interest in any further trips to the city".

Jenny Jones, a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and a Green party member of the London assembly, said she would raise the incident with the Met chief, Sir Paul Stephenson, as part of discussions on the policing of the G20 protests.

"This is another example of the police completely overreaching the anti-terrorism powers," she said. "They are using it in a totally inappropriate way.

"I will be raising it with the commissioner. I have already written to him about the police taking away cameras and stopping people taking photographs and made the point that if it was not for people taking photos, we would not know about the death of Ian Tomlinson or the woman who was hit by a police officer."

A spokeswoman for Metropolitan police said: "It is not the police's intention to prevent tourists from taking photographs and we are looking to the allegations made." The force said it had no knowledge of any ban on photographing public transport in the capital.

2009-04-14T13:36:00.002+02:00

Happy 70th Seamus!

2009-04-14T13:31:00.001+02:00

DIGGING

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun

Under my window, a clean rasping sound

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flower beds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,

Just like his old man.

My father cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner's bog

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his, shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I've no spade to follow men like that.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests

I'll dig with it.

On the Record - Motown 50th anniversary special - mp3 download click here

2009-04-05T17:34:00.005+02:00

MARTHA AND THE VANDELAS - Come And Get These Memories
STEVIE WONDER - I Wish
THE MARVELETTES - Locking Up My Heart
THE TEMPTATIONS - Say You
MARVIN GAYE - (At Last) I Found A Love/ Come Get To This
THE FOUR TOPS - Still Water
ARETHA FRANKLIN - Daydreamin'
GLADYS KNIGHTS AND THE PIPS - Didn't You Know You'd Have To Cry Sometime
4HERO - Les Fleur
CHRIS BOWDEN - Crockers and Killers

Have It!

2009-04-04T15:53:00.001+02:00

On The Record mp3 download - click here

2009-03-31T21:31:00.004+02:00

ANALOGUE BUBBLEBATH PT.2

RY COODER - Theme From Southern Comfort
ISOBEL CAMPBELL - Dusty Wreath
CHOPIN - Nocturne In E Flat
SIDSEL ENDRESEN & BUGGE WESSELTOFT - Birds
PHILIP GLASS - Metamorphoses Two
THE BEATLES - Because
PLANXTY - The West Coast of Clare
GRIZZLY BEAR - Shift
ROBERT JOHNSON - Come On In My Kitchen
LEADBELLY - Sylvie
NINA SIMONE - I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)
BACH - Aria From Goldberg Variations
SHIN TAKAI - Soundtrack For A Film "Pilgramage"
AUTECHRE - Garbage Track 1

On the Record mp3 download - click here

2009-03-31T21:16:00.004+02:00

KARL HECTOR AND THE MALCOUNS -When The Sun Breaks Through
LABTEKWON - No Time To Chill
THE ROOTS - Criminal
CIRCUS vs ANDRE AFRAM ANSAR - Sex in Space
JUNGLE BROS - Jungle Bros (True Blue)
BEAT KONDUCTA - Movie Finale
MULATU - Yegelle Tezeta
YESTERDAY'S NEW QUINTET - The Horse
CURTIS MAYFIELD - (Don't Worry) If There's A Hell Below We're All Gonna Go
THE HERBALISER BAND - Ginger Jumps The Fence
JOHN HOLT - I Dont Want To See You Cry
BOOKER T & THE MGS - Booker Loo
LOU DONALDSON - One Cylinder
CHARLES MINGUS - My Jelly Roll Soul
KOOP - Whenever There Is You

2009-03-31T20:31:00.002+02:00

Fly damn it!

2009-03-31T20:16:00.001+02:00

Free Gaslamp Killer Live Mix at Hella - click here

2009-03-31T19:48:00.000+02:00

On the Record mp3 download - click here

2009-03-31T19:31:00.003+02:00

ANALOGUE BUBBLEBATH PT.1

PENGUIN CAFE ORCHESTRA - Oscar Tango
SAINT SAENS - The Swan From the Carnival of Animals
BILL EVANS - Some Other Time
MARK MURPHY - I Get Along Without You Very Well
THE CINEMATIC ORCHESTRA - Music Box
SQUAREPUSHER - Goodnight Jade
DIAGORO - Sleepy Fish
LABRADFORD - Track 3 of Fixed Content
HANS ZIMMER - God U Tekem Laef Blong Mi
ENNIO MORRICONE - Poverty (Once Upon A Time In America)
ARVO PART - Summa for Choir
BRIAN ENO - Track 4 Music for Airports
SUSUMU YOKOTA - Amai Niyoi
BLADERUNNER OST (VANGELIS) - Tears in the Rain

Fool

2009-03-29T15:07:00.002+02:00

2009-03-29T15:02:00.002+02:00

2009-03-29T14:55:00.003+02:00