Latest Transmissions

Couple of band-related items - firstly, and despite the misspelling of the name, Bubblegum Cage III gives a very nice account of 'Grazed Red' from a UK post-rock-y perspective (well, it is Postrocktoberfest). Couple of things worth noting - there is going to be a vinyl release, on a label, and that's not unrelated to the fact that you can no longer freely download the album from Bandcamp. You can however go on there and listen to it as many times as you like.

Also, our involvement in a project where local producers remix local artists has resulted not only in a remix but also this video, featuring members of a Cambridge dance school. Had very little to do with this apart from being filmed miming some of the words (that aspect is slightly embarrassing for me!). It's an entry into a BBC music video competition, anyway. It's an odd little detour for us but I kind of like it. Something for the kids, I think!

On that note, went to Warning on Saturday night, Cambridge's venerable jungle/drum n bass institution. Room1, the big room, was the 'new stuff' - what dnb has become now, while room two was for more the old style, for the older lags or old-headed youngsters. Just ended up in the latter for most of the time - Fabio and a bit of DJ SS who didn't get much of a set (I think maybe Fabio went on for too long). SS even Started with Super Sharp Shooter... Contrast with Hype in the main room, who has clearly stayed alive by embracing the ADD dnb styles. It's not all bad to be honest, and there was a high quality of MC-ing in the main room but the way I was drawn to room 2... it has to be an effect of age, that was the sound I wanted to hear. When SS dropped several old-skool classics in a row I just felt "ahhh (just easing into it like a bath that you've got to just the right temperature) this is what I came for." Just like an old blues purist or something.

Going Postal

Generally very laudable piece here.

Been relistening to Laika a lot recently, perhaps my favourite band of that 'lost generation', particularly for the first two albums. I think 'Silver Apples of the Moon' pips it, it has more sharp edges, more urgency, but 'Sounds of the Satellites' also, with its wonderfully amniotic textures, and it's musically more of a piece. Some later stuff is decent too, though 'Good Looking Blues' comes over, in places, like Suzanne Vega rapping over 'On The Corner.'





To contrast them with Disco Inferno, whose melding of indie/guitar pop and sampling could sometimes feel a little gauche (perhaps occasionally even gratuitous), I felt that with Laika the samples, synths etc were fully folded in, absorbed, so that they seemed to be coming from the inside out rather than layered on the top. That's something DI attained with 'Lost In Fog' (their best moment for me). Mind you, I like DI's gaucheness as well.

A Limerick

with help from Ultrafoetus, who contributed via Twitter

There once was a man called Dave Starkey

Who was scared we would all become darkies

He appeared on Newsnight

Started talking bare shite

And got paid for the shameful malarkey

If someone says "I'm not condoning their actions but I think I understand where this is coming from" and you hear that as "I condone their actions" then that is your intellectual failing. For you, stage-managed images of Boris with broom and calls for water cannons, the 'natural' economic pecking order and the primacy of property restored, and no lessons learned.

There's definitely a problem with the word 'excuses' isn't there - 'oh you're just making excuses for them'. Actually it's things like 'it's just the fault of the parents/the school holidays' etc that sound more like excuses (expedient justifications) as opposed to any deeper reflection on the causes/context.

20/20 Foresight

Baotou to Shanghai

Video for Kelvox1's Drugsbox by Matt Tompkins, who I last visited out in Shanghai in 2006.

Kelvox 1 - Drugsbox from GreatOne on Vimeo.

He explains a little about the video here

The Real Rupert Murdoch

A little review I wrote of a Cutting Edge documentary on Rupe around 2004, I think

"By his own standards of character assassination, everyone's favourite Australian media magnate got an easy ride in Tuesday night's Cutting Edge, "The Real Rupert Murdoch."

Newspapers were in the blood (along with gambling and Presbyterianism). His father Keith, a journalist of principle and creator of the Melbourne Herald Group, was delighted to see that his son appeared to be following in his footsteps. Through jaunty sketches, we watched young Rupert progress from employing his sisters as cut-price labour, to sacking his friend Rowan Rivett, heading off Robert Maxwell in London to gain control of The News of the World and eventually relaunching a union broadsheet, The Sun, in 1969 - the end of the idealistic sixties and the dawn of modern tabloid journalism.

The account finally heated up during the Thatcher years, when the one-time socialist found that Maggie's championing of the free market was exactly the excuse he needed to bypass the unions and set up News International HQ in Wapping.

The programme found many advocates for Murdoch's business 'philosophy' and publishing style but any critics - "Guardian readers" Murdoch called them - were noticeably absent. Andrew Knight, ex-chairman of News International, considered him a "facilitator", while others praised his libertarianism and his challenging of the establishment.

In fact, the only person who seemed to have a bad word to say about him was his mother, Dame Elisabeth, who admitted: "I'm not keen on digging into people's personal affairs."