Stumbled across this gem of a producer today – Milton Channels. Despite his deep/progressive house roots and slightly cheesy appearance his recent stuff is glorious funky tech-house and electrotech. Black is Black has one of the biggest tribal drops without sounding like someone who just got over-excited after a gap-year in Gambia. I suggest you check him out.
In the light of the devastating earthquake in Haiti yesterday I found myself listening to Kimya Dawson’s 12 – 26 about the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004. As with most of Kimya’s music, it is a beautifully simple, stripped piece of folk. The lyrics are haunting.
When we’re complaining about 4 inches of snow in Britain, it makes you think about what happens when 3rd world countries are hit my such natural disasters.
Revising for exams offers the perfect opportunity to scour the interweb, mixes, beatport, your cds, etc. looking for new music. Since learning about local government structure is as fun as repeatedly setting fire to your face I’ve found some lovely musical gems in the past two weeks.
Gramophonedzie, a Serbian producer, draws a beautiful retro tech-house feel from Benny Goodman and Peggy Lee’s Why Don’t You Do Right? to create a refined piece of the dancefloor, Why Don’t You?. If there’s one thing the world needs more of, it is dance music made with jazz from over a half a decade ago. Jazz cuts and stabbing house beats present a beautifully daring track.
Delphic have been the bands on everyone’s lips of late, literally, well not literally. Anyway, dig past their new album ‘Acolyte’ and you see that techno-wizard Paul Woolford has been given remixing duty on their track, Counterpoint. A beautifully balearic slant on the electronic single works wonders – stabbing synths cut up techno bass leaving just enough disco to create a perfect blend. There is a dub mix as well for those afraid of those indie lyrics. Riton has also worked his magic on Doubt here
Joe and Will Ask? are two of the freshest producers around at the moment. They can not put a foot wrong. Their early work, like the throbbing electro track, Surge, seemed to be them finding their feet, whereas their latest work is some of the most accomplished crisp dance music I’ve heard in a long time. Christ Martin is thumbing tech-house incorporating the subtle disco sound that Joe and Will Ask? work so well. I read once their name was in relation to them asking what music has become and where they can take it. They have definitely forged their own path over the past few years and I will be very surprised if their brand of disco techno does not take off in a big way for 2010. Superb.
More revision-spawned music to follow in the next fortnight I’m sure.
Merry Christmas all. I did not really want to do a Christmas post so this is as close as i’m willing to take it.
First up, Manchester Orchestra have indulged their seasonal side by putting up a ‘12 days of Christmas’ live acoustic version of their most recent album. It is truly beautiful. I suggest you give it a listen.
Mumford and Son’s most recent single, ‘Winter Winds’, is my most listened to song this festive season. It just makes you want to be battling against cold winds in a field somewhere circa 1920s. No? A brilliant band, Mumford and Sons seem to have risen to acclaim on the back of the slow-burning folk revival which has happened over the last several years. Noah and the Whale can absolutely do one, this is the good stuff.
Next up, is the Christmas treat we were lucky enough to receive from Mr. Erol Alkan this year. The previously unreleased Disco 3000 edit of In Flagranti’s ‘Brash and Vulgar’. I defy anyone not to dance their little festive socks off when hearing this. The Disco 3000 edits pretty much just extends the track and puts it in some Erol-esque drums in (see Waters of Nazareth (Erol Remix)) – a lovely present. Download it here.
The people went mad when they heard that.
And finally… The Twilight Sad. A band i cottoned on to a few years ago but only really took notice of when I bought their new album Forget The Night Ahead. A brilliant collection of dour Scottish sadness. Intense noise, a soft Scottish tongue, beautiful melodies and an impending sense of tread and doom make this excellent Christmas listening. It will probably be good until April or June considering the British weather. Listen to it in the dark, preferably still damp from the elements.
The combination of pride and modesty that exudes from Kevin Devine as he talks about his music is incredibly endearing. He is on the third date of the first leg of his Big Scary Monsters Holiday Tour promoting his new album, Brother’s Blood. There is not a particularly festive mood in the air but one of a relaxed, close-knit tour driven by the desire to have fun and give the fans a treat.
Kevin recognises with a smile that there has been an incremental increase in his popularity over in the UK. Big Scary Monsters, an Oxford based label, have given him the chance to have a British base as opposed to the previous occasions where he just “came over because fans invited him.” As he speaks of the ‘kids’ that come out to his shows a paternal pride can be seen on his bearded face.
“The last year I’ve watched it get bigger with everything i’ve done. It’s been the most successful year in terms of establishing myself in the UK.” Kevin Devine and the Goddamn Band, or Kevin Devine, in any other variation, has definitely got a footing in Britain now. Tours and friendships with Brand New and Manchester Orchestra has increased his profile greatly. When asked what he puts it down to he is obviously very proud of his work and success, yet modest, attaching a caveat to any statement that may be perceived as selling himself.
He fills the minutes assessing himself and explaining his musical progression. He is very keen to explain himself, as someone with such a beautiful product as ‘Brother’s Blood’ should be. “It’s maybe the best record i’ve made. People are responding to it internationally in a way they never had before, but also playing 300 shows…it’s a case of ‘if you build it, they will come.’”
Despite this success Kevin speaks excitedly about the prospect of 30-date tour with just a car as his transport. Thankfully for all the venues, this mean they will be witness to a brilliant acoustic set. He feels ‘Brother’s Blood’ is record that most combines energy and low-fi grit with a professional well-rounded sound. Because all the music is written with such passion and commitment, even when it is just Kevin and his guitar there is no conviction or emotion lost. This is a case of less is more.
“When it is just me it is to present something that isn’t just standard finger picking talking about the sad weather or lost love, but doing it in a way that has some ‘teeth’ to it.” If you strip Kevin’s sound down, you see the raw aspects of his work. He sings the praises of early ‘Make The Clocks Move’ for its primal nature and notes that, although the studio is a somewhat sterile environment, he is still singing his songs which he wrote and loves, and consequently, nothing can be removed from the music.
Though success is now within reach and he has been touring religiously for the past year or so, it seems like it was originally slow to take hold for him. He responds to questions about the history of his music with an air of nostalgia, recalling for himself how it all started – delivering a comprehensive story and how and why he got where is today. The sense of enjoyment and pleasure is visible. He toured haphazardly through his first three records and did not quit his day job until going into Put Your Ghost To Rest. He humbly suggests that he does not know if there will not be day when he has to go back to it.
Any barriers between singer and fan seem to fall as his modesty leads him to discuss how his live shows have developed his voice over the past years. Though he has always had the voice to hit the notes, his confidence has not always allowed him. He tells how he was told not to “do that goat thing” and shake his voice when recording. His recent success and the massive respect he derives from crowds means this now is a thing of the past.
This is obvious when he takes the stage. When playing live, Kevin tries and succeeds in bringing “the spontaneity of jazz and the energy of punk to our folk rock pop songs.” His diverse musical background – hardcore, Dylan, his Mum’s “hippy music”, his Dad’s big band – lends an unique sound to his acoustic teeth.
The crowd sit on the floor – respectful. Kevin Devine displays why he is the one of the special artists to be playing music today. His politicised acoustic, folk, rock, pop and desire to maintain a close relationship with music results in a success that can only grow. Mid-set, as he closes a reprise of ‘Cotton Crush’, he breaks for applause but everyone is too stunned to move. He accepts this response inwardly and begins the next song.
The perception that the prefix ‘legal’ gives drugs can be a deadly one. One by one, more and more ‘legal highs’ are becoming illegal – two, GBL and spice, are set to become illegal this month – but the market is far from regulated.
‘Legal highs’ is an umbrella term for anything that gives the rush or feeling of an illegal drug but is not against the law. This gives users a relaxed perception of them, believing anything legal could not be of harm.
The ease with which they can be obtained ranges from high street shops to internet couriers. Why risk being thrown in jail when you can get the same buzz easily and legally?
This is what is happening in Cardiff. The users are mostly aged between 18 and 30, however, I did come across several users under 18. The most popular are salvia, a herbal product which is smoked to induce a similar effect to cannabis; similarly, the aforementioned spice, also smoked to the same effect; and mephedrone, a white powder, snorted to induce the effect of ecstasy.
Blue Banana, a shop on Queen Street in the centre of Cardiff, sells legal highs. Alex Ibsule, the manager, said: “Salvia is the most popular. We get pretty good business from them as kids who buy them tend to come back in and buy again.” She hastens to add that they are strict about identification and under 18s are refused service.
Blue Banana, Queen Street
She explains that ‘kids’ is a subconsciously condescending term for the people who would spend £15 on four ‘party pills’ that are, essentially, caffeine. Salvia, on the other hand, is a fairly well established ‘high’ and not so much a legal alternative for cannabis but more a different effect.
Miss Ibsule said: “The stuff we sell in here is fairly harmless. Research chemicals and drugs not intended for any kind of human use are the real worries. People come in asking for mephedrone but we don’t want to sell it.”
Salvia x5 strength
In Blue Banana, salvia ranges from £9.75 for a gram of x5 strength to £25.75 for a gram of x20. 3g of ‘Hash’ smoking mix is £35 and four Diablo ‘strong as hell’ tablets are £14.95. A legal high lifestyle is by no means cheap, yet many live it.
Rebel Rebel, a shop that sells salvia and other spice mixes in Wyndham Arcade, refused to make any comment. Citing the trouble they got from police the last time they spoke to the media, they would not talk to me. This seems to be in contrast with the friendly nature of Blue Banana, however, it displays the legal ambiguities involved in some of these drugs.
'Party pills' on sale in Blue Banana
Though there are health risks with such herbal highs, the problems arise when man-made chemicals blur the line between research and recreational drugs.
Mephedrone, known as M-Cat, Meow, or by its chemical name, 4-Methylmethcathinone, is sold on the internet for as little as £11 a gram, or a kilogram can be purchased for an arranged price (500g is around £2000). Sold as ‘plant food’ not for human consumption, the drug is as easy to get hold of on the streets as it is on the internet.
Jon Scott, a bio-medial PhD student talks about the science of analogue drugs:
In the smoking area of a Cardiff nightclub I was able to speak to people who had experiences with the drug – many had taken it that night. Groups of friends huddled together for warmth, cigarettes in mouths, discuss how their ‘come-ups’ have been and their ‘come-downs’ might be.
Jack Wakins, 23, on using mephedrone:
One user, who did not want to be named, said: “Mephedrone is brilliant. I can have a great time on it. It’s much cheaper than a night out on alcohol.” When asked whether she thought there was a scene for it in Cardiff she said it was really easy to get hold of it and knew personally several people who dealt.
Wide-eyed and chatty, her jaw tensed, she said: “It’s much more subtle than pills so the come-down is not as harsh. You cannot just walk into the club with it. It is still seen as a drug in clubs because it’s people snorting a white powder. It’s worth it though.”
The drug has a high profile in the Cardiff clubbing scene and much reaction is positive. It is a designer drug in more than one sense; the kids all want it, while the scientists can make it to fit around the law.
Sharon Griffin, 49, tells of her worries about chemical abuse:
There have been several deaths linked, but not attributed, to the drug – the most recent being only last week a girl died after taking it in a house party in Brighton. The problem with a drug that was born in 2007 is its effects are by no means documented.
There is no saying what the future of these drugs is. Logically, there is no reason most herbal highs should be classified, however, the worrying use of research chemicals in Cardiff clubs must be regulated. As long as the users and scientists stay ahead of the curve, drugs that represent an unknown quantity will not cease to be abused – education, however, is more important than regulation for those putting their lives at risk.
Just when it seemed the only thing holy left in journalism was that at least human beings are doing the leg work. Whether the results are printed or posted, we still held the quill and we still pulled the strings. Well, enter CAR – computer assisted reporting. Now, i’m not one for drama, but it seems inevitable that in about three years all news reporting will be done by the News-a-troninator 3000, no? I’m being facetious. In fact this CAR lark is quite a useful, empowering tool for journalists.
More-so for long term projects or investigations as its ability to conjure up graphs, charts, and what-not is second to none. For those of you do not know what CAR entails, you should be on this course – we’re all well clued up. Just kidding. It is the analysis of statistics by programs such as MS Excel, My SQL, MS Access, and other silly acronyms to produce manageable results. Basically, you can run any data you want through these programs and come out with a product that any human brain could analyse. This is the computer bit, so failing the ineptitude of the controller, it will normally do its job.
The tricky part lies in sourcing the data, wrangling the data, and generally knowing what you want when you begin. CAR is much bigger in the US because freedom of information is much bigger in the US. Much of CAR is used to work with information found out through Freedom Of Information requests. For this reason, journalists must be trained to use this integral act to its potential. Appropriate questions must be asked and in the right direction, however, one must not ask for the answer, one must ask for documents relative to the answer.
This is vital. If you want to know who the most corrupt politician in the North West is, they may very well turn round and tell you it is Mindyour Ownbusiness MP, however, if you ask for expenses forms etc. and do the research yourself, you can come to your own conclusions on the issues you want to highlight. Knowing the ins and outs of the Freedom of Information act is as, if not more, important than understanding CAR. Once you have worked the data and CAR has done its job, the trick is communicating the data; turning the data into a story.
Now we return to the man in the newsroom. The man who chops wood, smokes cigars, and fights over meat with other men. Yes, the alpha journalist. He, or she, writes up the story to singe the eyebrows of the stunned public, sits back, and waits for rapturous applause. Well, not quite, but you catch my drift.
Contrary to the luddite-inspired introduction, CAR is nothing to be afraid of. It is to be embraced. I have not put the FOI act to the test but when I do CAR will be the first thing i consider, well, second, after finding someone who knows what MS SQL, then back to CAR. Though internet-burdened-computer-machines may be threatening the old ways of the newspaper, this computer-related-analysis-buffer could well give power back to the hacks.
From the evidence of this video, no. My original idea was a cracker – stand in the middle of town with a camera and a sign and get people to tell me lies that they have told and then say whether they were sorry or not. It would have been an emotional roller-coaster of a film. On setting up in Queen Street, it became immediately clear that this was not going to work. People were not willing to tell lies they have told, or they did not understand what I wanted. Consequently, the public used this opportunity to make hilarious lie-based jokes such as, “Your hair looks good”, “I like your scarve” and other blinders. This backfired for some of the more intellectually challenged when their own wit caught them out and they ended up complementing me; “your breath stinks.” Well done.
The plan was ambitious but I had hoped to get some insight into the frequency and bitter-sweet approach to lying. Everyone lies but nobody wants to admit that. In the end, I got a series of poor, poor jokes cut with pictures of Patrick Stewart face-palming. I had fun, it was an experience, and I learnt a little about video-editing. Oh, and I ended up with a mildly comical video about nothing. Enjoy.
It seems strange and almost pathetically romantic but when the conversation of how journalism is to make money crops up I feel, not uncomfortable, but more ‘why do we need to make money, anyway? Let’s just do it for the news. Yeh!” *Pumps fist in the air to complete call to arms* Then I realise that it is not about journalists being rich, it is about journalism surviving. This is not about luxury, this is about subsistence.
The industry needs money to support itself, not to keep hacks in the middle class. This is the scary thing. As more papers close or cut staff it is becoming clearer that this profession will disappear or be no longer recognisable in a decade. Now people may point to online advertising as our white knight but advertising is not making up for the shortfall in the loss of newspaper sales. Where do we go? It is unlikely newspaper sales are going to pick up enough to support revenue single-handedly and so, another solution must be sought.
As much as ingenius, revolutionary advertising methods may help, and this is indeed crunch time for that industry too – the pressure to remain fresh and interesting is high – the word(s) on everybody’s lips in the media world is… wait for it… paywall.
Are the public prepared to pay for news? As Rob Andrews, our guest lecturer last week, told us, essentially, no. Surveys show they are not. This can be tinkered with – online access with the paper, yearly subscriptions, pay-per-article – but let us consider the issue at large. If people are not prepared to pay for news and the sources of free news are becoming bigger and better what is to become of journalism?
I am quietly confident/blindly optimistic that our profession can not collapse. The lower it goes is potentially the higher it will bounce back. If journalists drop off one by one then the quality, and maybe, but not necessarily, the quantity, will decrease dramatically. Hopefully, to the point where the public will crave for professional accurate news. News aggregators will be a thing of the past as men fight to give their credit card details to paywalls higher than Icarus, and hopefully more successful.
Murdoch is toying with paywalls as are a group of six or seven local papers, the Guardian have said they will not introduce one, however, I can not help but feel it is inevitable. Whether this will increase media revenue or force potential newsreaders further into the hands of Yahoo is hard to say. I like to consider these times an uninvited purge of the profession. It’s flood time and Noah is inviting anyone who cares enough to get on board the boat that has not yet been built. As a new generation of journalists come through, hopefully, we will have the tools and the time to build this ark before, god forbid, we all drown.
As the decade comes to a close, debate rages in the media as to what was album of the decade. Well, let me tell you.
The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me – The most intelligent, emotional, tour-de-force since Napoleon stormed into Russia then got a little upset. Ranging from shrieked guitars and vocals to the closest you can get to crying in song-form. This is not emo. This is ridiculously emotive music where the band have put their hearts and souls into a record. This is the album of the decade because it means the most.
TDAGARIM is the most emotionally intelligent album of the decade. Brand New, within the space of two records, turned their sound from angsty-bored teenage punk rock into sinister, pained, truly emotive music. To define them as emo, or rock, or indie, or anything, would be inaccurate. TDAGARIM, written predominantly by frontman, Jesse Lacey, with a little help from lead guitarist, Vincent Accardi, consists of 12 tracks and one reprise.
The music is beautifully discordant – the realism in the record shines from an avoidance of squeaky clean studio songs. In my opinion, the strength of an album comes from the lyrics. Though the guitars and song structures are mature and diverse, the lyrical content and context is unbelievable. Opening track, ‘Sowing Season’, borrows from Rudyard Kipling’s ‘If” and suggests the tremendous effort Lacey and the band put into writing the record.
Losing all my friends/losing them to drinking and to driving/losing all my friends but I got them back
The personal touches in the songs are what makes the album. It is not a detached piece of money-spinning – when the demos of the album leaked it affected Lacey greatly, and only two of ten of the tracks made it onto the released album.
Some have suggested the album is a concept piece charting the conversations and thoughts of a drink-driver, a victim, and victim’s mother. I think this is a bit off, but nonetheless the stories and emotion poured into the tracks make hairs stand on end. Single, ‘Jesus Christ’, sheds light on the depressing state of mind of someone struggling with life and death. The way the subject addresses Jesus is extremely powerful. There is a real sense of vulnerability and desperation.
I know you come in the night like a thief/but i’ve had some time alone to hone my lying technique/ i know you think i’m someone you can trust/ but i’m scared i’ll get scared and i swear i’ll try to nail you back up
‘Welcome to Bangkok’ is an instrumental interlude that holds the album together as a journey. This is the strength of the album – it is not just a collection of 12 songs, it is a story in 12 parts. The pained shrieks of ‘You Won’t Know’ leaves the listener genuinely terrified by what Jesse has done. Likewise, the suggestions in ‘Handcuffs’ are darker than Your Favourite Weapon ever was.
I’d drown all these crying babies if i knew that their mothers wouldn’t cry/ i’d hold them down and i’d squeeze real soft and let a piece of myself die
Reviews from other websites from varied from those you may guess only listened once – Rolling Stone – to those who must have given it thought – Sputnik. I am not being close minded, however, I find it hard to believe that any one who truly listens to this album can not rate it highly.
Words can not describe just how good this album is. The intelligence and innovation that shines throughout, teamed with guitars bleeding delicacy yet strength, make a musical masterpiece. This album changed the way that emotional music should be written. It also demonstrated that a band that struggles with its directions needs to look at Lacey et al for inspiration. Without a doubt, the most compelling, powerful album of the decade.
Vote for this as album of the decade below or here…or else. Nah, just joshin’… but really.
