London Calling: The Guardian's Tim Jonze meets Don Letts, Jon Savage and Geoff Travis (Rough Trade) to talk about Notting Hill's punk heritage...
HERE
HERE
SPEW 5 Various Artists 1994
35 minutes ago
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Mickey Hart: How can we record the cosmos?
Grateful Dead fans may remember the lyrics, "Dark star crashes, pouring its light into ashes." Mickey Hart, a drummer for the Dead, is still thinking about the cosmos, and he recently contacted Smithsonian Under Secretary Richard Kurin to arrange a discussion with distinguished astrophysicist Margaret Geller of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, science historian David DeVorkin and ethnomusicologist Atesh Sonneborn; I also participated. Our question: How might Hart perceive and record the "music" of the universe? Can lightwaves reaching Earth after traveling hundreds of millions of light-years speak to our creative, as well as our scientific, selves? Geller answered yes, and offered ideas for how Hart might translate what we observe into music. She suggested that a musician she knows—a person who also has superb computer skills—could help Hart convert strings of numbers representing star formation, gamma ray bursts, black hole binaries and other astrophysical phenomena into music. In an e-mail, Hart reacted to his Smithsonian visit: "Exciting....As Soupy Sales would say, 'My brains are falling out.'" Such intersections of science and the arts occur frequently at the Smithsonian. At a recent materials science workshop, Julian Raby, the director of our Freer and Sackler Galleries, described the ongoing collaborative research being conducted on ancient Chinese metalwork and ceramics by the Freer and Sackler with Chicago's Field Museum and China's Shaanxi Research Institute for Archaeology. And at the National Museum of Cambodia in Phnom Penh, Freer and Sackler conservators have created a lab to treat the museum's collection of bronzes; a U.S. exhibition of some of them is being planned. The Freer and Sackler Galleries have also partnered with our Museum Conservation Institute (MCI) to analyze the paint on sixth-century Buddhist sculptures. Currently Freer and Sackler staff are using radiography to study Japanese writing boxes. Used by aristocrats between 1392 and 1868, these intricately decorated lacquer boxes all stored calligraphy tools, but they vary in construction. Is it because of their function or their date? Radiography may help answer the question.
With the National Museum of Natural History, the Conservation Institute is also helping preserve, in their natural settings, Mongolia's deer stones—3,000-year-old plinths carved with elaborate flying "spirit deer." MCI specialists are also capturing pictorial information about these monuments with 3-D laser scanning. And Conservation Institute director Robert Koestler is helping investigate rapidly growing soil mold that threatens one of the world's great treasures—the Paleolithic cave at Lascaux, France, and its nearly 2,000 animal images painted 16,000 years ago. Science and the arts are unusual partners at most places, but not at the Smithsonian.
(Thanx BillT)
Animal Collective sample Grateful Dead on new single
Animal Collective have confirmed details of a new EP, 'Fall Be Kind' which will be released digitally on November 23.The five track EP will also be available on 12" vinyl and CD from December 14 and is the band's first new material since releasing the highly acclaimed
album 'Merriwether Post Pavilion' in January.
The track "What Would I Want? Sky" features a sample from The Grateful Dead's "Unbroken Chain" - it is the first time the 'Dead have officially licensed a sample to anothert artist.
The 'Fall Be Kind' track list is:
"Graze"
"What Would I Want? Sky"
"Bleed"
"On A Highway"
"I Think I Can"
Download new Carbon/Silicon album
Mick Jones has made the fourth album from Carbon/Silicon available as a free download via the band's website this week (November 14).The band, whom the former Clash man formed with Sigue Sigue Sputnik's Tony James are renowned for publishing their material online for free, and latest album 'The Carbon Bubble'
Download your copy of the album here:
CarbonSiliconInc.com
Tracklisting:
'Fresh Start'
'What's Up Doc?'
'Reach For The Sky'
'The Best Man'
'Unbeliebable Pain'
'Make It Alright'
'PartyWorld'
'Shadow'
'Don't Taser Me Bro!'
'That's As Good As It Gets'
'DisUnited Kingdom'
'Believe Or Leave'
Is there anyone out there with copies of the three previous albums "A.T.O.M", "Western Front" and "The Crackup Suite"? I did have them but cannot find them at present and they have been removed from the band's site. If you can help please get in contact. Thanx
Peter Schmidt: artwork for Eno's 'Before & After Science'
The four watercolours on this page were done by Peter Schmidt were originally printed as lithographs and included in the very first copies of Eno's LP "Before and After Science." Later, they were available for purchase through EG.
They're briefly described in an article in Melody Maker article from January of 1977:
This evening I visited Peter Schmidt (the painter who did the cover for Tiger Mountain and Evening Star, and with whom I published Oblique Strategies).He has just returned from a holiday in Madeira, and we look at the 12 watercolours he made there. The last three of the series are quite exceptionally beautiful - a tiny road winds down the side of an almost vertical mountain whose peak is lost in the clouds.
Peter describes his walk from the top of the mountain, and says it was frightening since there were man-sized rocks fallen on the road. We discuss the idea of fear as an aid to perception. I describe an experience I had in Scotland recently where I climbed a very steep hill at twilight - absentmindedly not paying much attention to where I was going - and came to a halt, breathless and exhausted, on a small plateau near the summit. For the first time I looked to see where I was.
The plateau was covered with dead ferns, which glowed a brilliant fiery orange in the dusk. I was tired enough not to try to reduce the experience to words and concepts, so I just stood open-mouthed for some minutes.
This was an instance of exhaustion as an aid to perception - presumably the conscious mind resigns this continual obsession with classification and the attendant reassurance at times like this, and so the quality of the experience is unfiltered.
Later in the evening we talk about the work of Die Brucke, the group of German painters active between 1905-25, who impressed us all so much in Berlin. I particularly liked Otto Mueller and Karl Schmidt-Rotluff.
Peter posed the question: "What could one do now that would have the sense of daring which those works had?" I reply that I think the answer must lie in doing things that are very quiet, which make no assault, and perhaps do not obviously trade in novelty. Like watercolours. At a time when drama is at a premium, reticence and delicacy communicate best.
Before I leave, we discuss the possibilities of marketing visual objects in the way that records are sold. We both agree that this would drastically alter the nature of contemporary painting, since it would once again put it in touch with demand on the level of a genuine response to the work itself, rather than to its "value" (be that financial or "cultural").
I walk from Peter's in Stockwell to Victoria station. It is a cold, exhilarating night. I am thinking about writing a song called "Man Making Measurements And Dancing." I can't sleep until 4.00 am because I have a flurry of ideas which won't wait their turn. It is most annoying.
See also Eno's appreciation of Peter Schmidt and more on 'Oblique Strategies' here.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
Drug clans take control in shanty town where Madrid's politicians fear to tread
Two men are asleep on a filthy mattress under the weak autumn sunshine. Another, in ragged clothes with his skin stained dark by the sun and dirt, lies motionless on the concrete strip surrounding the small church of Santo Domingo. In the dusty, rubbish-filled esplanade in front, dozens of addicts sit among the garbage, shooting up doses of heroin.On the outskirts of Spain's capital city, Madrid, one of Europe's biggest drug supermarkets thrives in a precarious settlement of some 30,000 people strung along an old cattle-herding path, the Cañada Real Galiana.
About 10,000 drug addicts come every day to this stretch of shambolic housing, where lawlessness has grown in a legal void that local politicians have failed to tackle.
Addicts stumble down the Cañada's wide main street, looking for their dose. Others, employed as look-outs and hustlers, call them in past the high metal gates of the compounds owned by the drug clans.
Thickset men sit out on fold-up picnic chairs, watching their business enter the compounds, which – in some cases – are dominated by huge houses built with money from heroin and crack cocaine. The odd police car drives past, but little disturbs the relentless business of buy and sell...
Get sick of saying it, but the answer is so obvious...you might want to listen to this!
Ketamine drug use 'harms memory'
Frequent use of ketamine - a drug which is popular with clubbers - is being linked with memory problems.The University College London team carried out a range of memory and psychological tests on 120 people.
They found frequent users performed poorly on skills such as recalling names, conversations and patterns.
Previous research has suggested the drug may cause kidney and bladder damage. Experts said users should be aware of the risks.
Ketamine - or Special K as it has been dubbed - acts as a stimulant and induces hallucinations.
It has been increasing in popularity, particularly as an alternative to ecstasy among clubbers, as the price has fallen over recent years...
The KSM Trial Will Be an Intelligence Bonanza for al Qaeda by John Yoo
'This is a prosecutorial decision as well as a national security decision," President Barack Obama said last week about the attorney general's announcement that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other al Qaeda operatives will be put on trial in New York City federal court.No, it is not. It is a presidential decision—one about the hard, ever-present trade-off between civil liberties and national security.
Trying KSM in civilian court will be an intelligence bonanza for al Qaeda and the hostile nations that will view the U.S. intelligence methods and sources that such a trial will reveal. The proceedings will tie up judges for years on issues best left to the president and Congress.
Whether a jury ultimately convicts KSM and his fellows, or sentences them to death, is beside the point. The treatment of the 9/11 attacks as a criminal matter rather than as an act of war will cripple American efforts to fight terrorism. It is in effect a declaration that this nation is no longer at war...
Renouncing Islamism: To the brink and back again
Ever since I started meeting jihadis, I have been struck by one thing – their Britishness. I am from the East End of London, and at some point in the past decade I became used to hearing a hoarse and angry whisper of jihadism on the streets where I live. Bearded young men stand outside the library calling for "The Rule of God" and "Death to Democracy".
In the mosques across the city, I hear a fringe of young men talk dreamily of flocking to Afghanistan to "resist". Yet this whisper never has an immigrant accent. It shares my pronunciations, my cultural references, and my national anthem. Beneath the beards and the burqas, there is an English voice.
The East End is a cramped grey maze of council estates, squashed between the glistening palaces of the City to one side and the glass towers of Docklands to the other. You can feel the financial elites staring across at each other, indifferent to this concrete lump of poverty dumped in-between by the forgotten tides of history. This place has always been the swirling first stop for immigrants to this country like my father – a place where new arrivals can huddle together as they adjust to the cold rain and lukewarm liberalism of Britain.
The Muslims who arrive here every day from Bangladesh, or India, or Somalia say they find the presence of British Islamists bizarre. They have come here to work and raise their children in stability and escape people like them. No: these Islamists are British-born. They make up 7 per cent of the British Muslim population, according to a Populous poll (with the other 93 percent of Muslims disagreeing). Ever since the 7/7 suicide bombings, carried out by young Englishmen against London, the British have been squinting at this minority of the minority and trying to figure out how we incubated a very English jihadism.
But every attempt I have made up to now to get into their heads – including talking to Islamists for weeks at their most notorious London hub, Finsbury Park mosque, immediately after 9/11 – left me feeling like a journalistic failure. These young men speak to outsiders in a dense and impenetrable code of Koranic quotes and surly jibes at both the foreign policy crimes of our Government and the freedom of women and gays. Any attempt to dig into their psychology – to ask honestly how this swirl of thoughts led them to believe suicide bombing their own city is right – is always met with a resistant sneer, and yet more opaque recitations from the Koran. Their message is simple: we don't do psychology or sociology. We do Allah, and Allah alone. Why do you have this particular reading of the Koran, when most Muslims don't? Because we are right, and they are infidel. Full stop. It was an investigatory dead end.
But then, a year ago, I began to hear about a fragile new movement that could just hold the answers we journalists have failed to find up to now. A wave of young British Islamists who trained to fight – who cheered as their friends bombed this country – have recanted. Now they are using everything they learned on the inside, to stop the jihad...
Johann Hari @'The Independent'
Monday, 16 November 2009
Sebbo/Moritz von Oswald - Watamu Beach 12"
Catalog#: Desolat 003
Format: Vinyl 12"
Country: Germany
Released: Mar 2008
Mastered at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
Side A - Sebbo - Watamu Beach (45 rpm)
Side AA - Moritz von Oswald - Watamu Beach Rework (33 ⅓ rpm)
Format: Vinyl 12"
Country: Germany
Released: Mar 2008
Mastered at Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.
Side A - Sebbo - Watamu Beach (45 rpm)
Side AA - Moritz von Oswald - Watamu Beach Rework (33 ⅓ rpm)
How green is your pet?
Should owning a great dane make you as much of an eco-outcast as an SUV driver? Yes it should, say Robert and Brenda Vale, two architects who specialise in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. In their new book, Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living, they compare the ecological footprints of a menagerie of popular pets with those of various other lifestyle choices - and the critters do not fare well.As well as guzzling resources, cats and dogs devastate wildlife populations, spread disease and add to pollution. It is time to take eco-stock of our pets.
To measure the ecological paw, claw and fin-prints of the family pet, the Vales analysed the ingredients of common brands of pet food. They calculated, for example, that a medium-sized dog would consume 90 grams of meat and 156 grams of cereals daily in its recommended 300-gram portion of dried dog food. At its pre-dried weight, that equates to 450 grams of fresh meat and 260 grams of cereal. That means that over the course of a year, Fido wolfs down about 164 kilograms of meat and 95 kilograms of cereals.
It takes 43.3 square metres of land to generate 1 kilogram of chicken per year - far more for beef and lamb - and 13.4 square metres to generate a kilogram of cereals. So that gives him a footprint of 0.84 hectares. For a big dog such as a German shepherd, the figure is 1.1 hectares.
Meanwhile, an SUV - the Vales used a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser in their comparison - driven a modest 10,000 kilometres a year, uses 55.1 gigajoules, which includes the energy required both to fuel and to build it. One hectare of land can produce approximately 135 gigajoules of energy per year, so the Land Cruiser's eco-footprint is about 0.41 hectares - less than half that of a medium-sized dog.
The Vales are not alone in reaching this conclusion. When New Scientist asked John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, UK, to calculate eco-pawprints based on his own data, his figures tallied almost exactly. "Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat," he says...
Australia 'sorry' for child abuse
Australian PM Kevin Rudd has apologised to the hundreds of thousands of people, some British migrants, who were abused or neglected in state care as children.Mr Rudd said he was "deeply sorry" for the pain caused to the children and their extended families.
He said he hoped the national apology would help to "heal the pain" and be a turning point in Australian history.
Some 500,000 "forgotten Australians" were abused or neglected in orphanages and children's homes from 1930 to 1970.
The Canberra ceremony was attended by hundreds of people forced to migrate to Australia when young, some 7,000 of whom still live in Australia.
Some wept openly and held each other as Mr Rudd shared stories of survivors he had spoken with - children who were beaten with belt buckles or sexually violated.
Kevin Rudd also offered an apology to child migrants taken from the UK to Australia after the war, often without their parents' consent.
On Sunday, the UK government said the British prime minister would apologise for the forced migration policy next year...
Koalas may be extinct in 30 years
Australia's koalas could be wiped out within 30 years unless urgent action is taken to halt a decline in population, according to researchers.They say development, climate change and bushfires have all combined to send the numbers of wild koalas plummeting.
The Australian Koala Foundation said a recent survey showed the population could have dropped by more than half in the past six years.
Many have been killed by the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia.
Previous estimates put the number of koalas at more than 100,000 - but the latest calculations suggest there could now be as few as 43,000.
The foundation collected field data from 1,800 sites and 80,000 trees to calculate the numbers...
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Wikipedia sued by German killers in privacy claim
Two German men who killed an actor in 1990 are suing the charity behind the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia, claiming that its inclusion of detail of their crimes infringes their right to privacy.
The case has become an instant online cause celebre – with one lawyer saying that the integrity of history itself is at stake – because it ranges the US's First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech, against German privacy and criminal laws, which dictate that after a certain period a crime is "spent" and cannot be referred to. The UK has similar rules on the reporting of lesser crimes.
The two men, who cannot be named here because the Guardian is available in Germany, became infamous for the killing, for which they were sentenced to life in prison in 1993. They were released in 2007 and 2008. But Alexander Stopp, the lawyer for the two men, noted that Germany's courts allow a criminal's name to be withheld in news reports once they have served a prison term and a set period has expired.
"They should be able to go on and be resocialised, and lead a life without being publicly stigmatised" for their crime, Stopp told the New York Times. "A criminal has a right to privacy, too, and a right to be left alone."
German editors of Wikipedia, which is available in multiple languages around the world, have already removed the killers' names from the German-language version about the victim, Walter Sedlmayr. But Stopp has also filed suit in German courts to demand that the Wikimedia Foundation, which funds and runs Wikipedia, remove their names from the English-language article...
Cymatics Scientist Says Sound is a Bubble, Not a Wave
John Stuart Reid proposes that sound is not actually a wave, as has been thought for centuries, but a “bubble” and that this is what creates the amazing patterns we see captured with cymatics. In his article, The Physics of Sound, Reid says that sound has previously been thought to travel as a wave because of the graphical, wave-based representation we have used to capture sound visibly in the past…
“The graphical representation of sound ‘waves’ in the past is why the term ’sound waves’ is used, causing the false impression that sound travels as a wave.”
…but that cymatics allows us to realize that the true form of sound is actually spherical, or bubble-like, in nature:
“Sound in air is the transfer of periodic movements between adjacent colliding atoms or molecules. This sonic energy typically expands away from the site of the collisions as a spherical or bubble-shaped emanation.”
In this fascinating article he also discusses the nature of light, and why his studies in cymatics have led him to believe that in certain cases, sound could actually “create visible light.”
To read more about John Stuart Reid’s studies in cymatics, sound bubbles and the connection between sound and light, go here.
To start conducting your own cymatics experiments using 3 common household items, download your free video instructions here.
Julian Cope - Krautrocksampler: One Head's Guide to the Great Kosmische Musik - 1968 Onwards, (PDF)
Krautrocksampler: One Head's Guide to the Great Kosmische Musik - 1968 Onwards, written by former The Teardrop Explodes singer, Julian Cope, is a book describing the underground music scene in Germany from 1968 through the 1970s. The book was first published in the United Kingdom in 1995 by Head Heritage, and was later translated into German and French. It is now out of print with original copies exchanging hands for surprisingly large amounts.Krautrocksampler gives a subjective and very animated account of the phenomenon of krautrock from the perspective of the author:
"I wrote this short history because of the way I feel about the music, that its supreme Magic & Power has lain Unrecognised for too long."
The book comprises a narrative of the rock and roll culture in post-WWII West Germany, along with chapters focusing on individual major artists, including Faust, Tangerine Dream, Neu!, Amon Düül I and II, Ash Ra Tempel, Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser and the Cosmic Jokers and advocate of psychedelic drugs Timothy Leary. It also has an annotated appendix of "50 Kosmische Classics." Some chapters appeared previously in the UK music magazine The Wire and in the German music magazine Spex.
(PDF)
See also HerrB's post of the recent BBC documentary on Krautrock
HERE
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