Tuesday, 3 May 2011

GregMitch Greg Mitchell

Next: special ops "snatch" of Assange from English manor?

'Tango Down'

Obama and National Security team during Osama Kill Operation

Via
Original
'The photograph may not be manipulated in any way' (OOPS!)

Stephen Harper breaks election rules, campaigns on radio on election day

David Byrne - Air / Houses In Motion (One Shot Not 05/01/2011)

Two experts of English language

Roman Weidenfeller, goalkeeper of new German Football champion Borussia Dortmund, interviewed by a reporter of Dubai Sports.

The 10 Tools of Online Oppressors

The world’s worst online oppressors are using an array of tactics, some reflecting astonishing levels of sophistication, others reminiscent of old-school techniques. From China’s high-level malware attacks to Syria’s brute-force imprisonments, this may be only the dawn of online oppression. A CPJ special report by Danny O’Brien

READ IT HERE

13 and God – Own Your Ghost (2011 - Albumstream)

13 & God is an American and German electronic collaboration group between Weilheim, Germany-based The Notwist and Oakland, California-based anticon members Themselves. The group is signed both to anticon and Alien Transistor. They are joined live by Jordan Dalrymple who now plays Dax Pierson's parts following a 2005 Subtle tour accident which left Dax quadriplegic.
The band's name stems from the concept of the 12 apostles and Jesus Christ forming a group that comprises 13 mortal men as well as God. Distinguishing between The Notwist and Themselves in the context of which group is the '13' and which is 'God' is thus disingenuous; in the example above, God is inherently contained within the '13', creating a symbiotic relationship so strong it is unable to be severed. As 13 & God are not a Christian group, but do explore elements of philosophy, spirituality and existentialism, the name 13 & God is generally considered to be more of a reflection of those elements, as well as the concept of 'identity' itself.
In a recent interview with Pitchfork, Doseone was quoted as saying "in 2010 there will be a brand new shiny 13 & G record out in the world."[1] On the third of February 2011, a new album entitled "Own Your Ghost" was announced to be released on Anticon on May 17th 2011. The album is set to feature ten tracks, including a song written and performed on the 2007 tour, entitled "Sure as Debt" This announcement was accompanied by a preview clip of the song "Armoured Scarves" from the album (wikipedia)

As a seven-headed conglomerate comprised of two genre-pushing bands, 13 & God are admirably accessible and ego-free. Adam “Doseone” Drucker of Themselves keeps his scene-stealing vocal delivery succinct, stepping out altogether at times and even singing it straight at others. The recompense is the occasional, well-timed breakout of his galloping, head-spinning prose. It’s countered by bucolic vocals, acoustic guitars and glitch electronics from The Notwist, laying down some typically sublime cuts.
Album highlight Armored Scarves is indicative of what works best with this side-project, a rich tapestry of disparate vocal harmonies and staccato percussion that would fall apart with any attempt to study its constituent parts. At other times the delineations are clearer. It’s Own Sun will be pure Notwist to most ears, with follow-up Death Major much the same story for Themselves. No bad thing of course, and with 13 & God being touted as a bigger concern by both parties, Own Your Ghost should stand as a solid bedrock. [Darren Carle]

1. Its Own Sun (2:44)
2. Death Major (4:26)
3. Armored Scarves (4:29)
4. Janu Are (3:32)
5. Old Age (3:24)
6. Et Tu (3:18)
7. Death Minor (3:56)
8. Sure as Debt (3:49)
9. Beat on Us (5:06)
10. Unyoung (3:39)

ALBUMSTREAM

Via

Labor foiled bomb treaty

Australia secretly worked with the United States to weaken a key international treaty to ban cluster bombs, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.
Despite taking a high-profile stance against cluster munitions - condemned as the cause of large numbers of civilian casualties - Australia was privately prepared to pull out of international negotiations for a global ban of the weapons if this threatened ties with US forces.
The US continues to claim cluster munitions are ''a legitimate and useful weapon'', including for use in Afghanistan, and has affirmed that it will not sign the treaty to ban the bombs.
The disclosure comes as Federal Parliament prepares to consider a bill to ratify Australia's signature of the cluster munitions convention.
The draft legislation has attracted sharp criticism from non-government organisations for not meeting the spirit of the treaty to ban the weapons.
Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic complained the legislation could be interpreted to ''allow Australian military personnel to load and aim the gun, so long as they did not pull the trigger''.
Diplomatic cables from the US embassy in Canberra passed on to to WikiLeaks and provided exclusively to The Age reveal that, in 2007, Kevin Rudd's newly elected government immediately told the US it was prepared to withdraw from the negotiations if key ''red line'' issues were not addressed - especially the inclusion of a loophole to allow signatories to the convention to co-operate with military forces still using cluster bombs...

Continue reading

Phillip Dorling @'The Age'

We must do more to help rid the world of these foul weapons

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries

G'night

ReallyVirtual Sohaib Athar

Bin Laden is dead. I didn't kill him. Please let me sleep now

Monday, 2 May 2011

Bring me coffee or tea

Last week, 29 April, would have been the 63rd birthday of Michael Karoli, the German musician who died in 2001 at the age of 53, after a long battle with cancer. A talented and creative musician, possessed of the rare gift of being able to get a tune out of any instrument he picked up, it is nevertheless his work as the guitarist in Can which for me, at least, is his most enduring legacy.

Can was an experimental rock band formed in Cologne, West Germany in 1968. Later labeled as one of the first "krautrock" groups, they transcended mainstream influences and incorporated strong minimalist and world music elements into their often psychedelic music.

Can constructed their music largely through collective spontaneous composition - which the band differentiated from improvisation in the jazz sense - sampling themselves in the studio and editing down the results; bassist/chief engineer Holger Czukay referred to Can's live and studio performances as "instant compositions". [Wikipedia]

I remember buying the band's 1971 album Tago Mago pretty much 'on spec' after reading the (admittedly hyperbolic) sleeve notes which namechecked other bands I liked at the time, but it took only seconds from dropping the stylus on to side one, track one, to realise that the music was like nothing else I'd ever heard. Even now, forty years later, it's impossible for me to pick out just one favourite track from that album - but I still remember two distinct 'click' moments from that first listen. The first is Michael's lead guitar break at around 5m 45s into side two's Halleluwah; the second is in the middle of Bring Me Coffee Or Tea, the closing track of the album: the combination of Michael's acoustic guitar and the plaintive murmur of Damo Suzuki nearly reduced me to tears. I can't really argue with Julian Cope's description of Tago Mago in his 1995 book Krautrocksampler, that it "sounds only like itself, like no-one before or after".

From there, I began to delve further into Can's back catalogue and bought all their official releases from then on, always finding something inspiring and uplifting on each of them, invariably something played by Michael. I was fortunate enough not only to see the band play at the (long since demolished) Liverpool Stadium in March 1973, but also to actually meet them all backstage before they played. Suffice to say, the evening is etched into my memory as one of the best in my life.

Over the years, time and distance hasn't dulled my love of Can's music and the coming of the internet has, from time to time, enabled me to add various unofficial recordings to my collection - and my sense of anticipation and pleasure at hearing Michael play has never dulled, be it a not-great quality live recording made by another fan, or a leaked outtake from a recording session, or an official recording by another artist on which Michael guested. It also has to be said that Can's output was prolific; they seemed to tour endlessly with the time between tours spent jamming for hours on end in their own Inner Space studios in Köln.

I can think of only three albums that I've loved unconditionally (uncritically?) from the moment I heard them and Tago Mago was the first - the others being John Martyn's Solid Air (1973) and Lee 'Scratch' Perry and The Upsetters' Super Ape (1976). Each of the three profoundly affected my own approach to making music, each in its own way - although, with the benefit of hindsight, it's perhaps the importance of the spaces in music that has struck me most and stayed with me longest. Julian Cope again: "Writers often celebrate the musician with sense enough to leave space in music, but Michael Karoli was one of the very few real masters". And with that in mind, it's time for me to leave some space in this vaguely elegaic, very personal, retrospective piece and go and listen to the music of one of the greats: Michael Karoli.

Can - Oh Yeah