Wednesday, 22 June 2011
'Seroxat Taken On Trust' (Panorama BBC)
Seroxat is one of the world’s biggest selling and [we are told] most successful anti-depressants. But this Panorama investigation discovers the drug may have a darker side – the programme reports that people can get hooked on it, suffering serious withdrawal symptoms when they try to come off it.
For some it can lead to self harm and even suicide. But little warning of these possible side effects accompanies the drug.
These are accusations that the drug’s maker GlaxoSmithKline denies.
The programme follows one Seroxat user and charts her nine month struggle to wean herself off it.
Panorama also spoke to Dr David Healy, an expert on the drug who has had access to confidential Seroxat studies in the GlaxoSmithKline archives.
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simonowens Simon Owens
"Every magazine, television network, or radio station with an archive is sitting on gold." http://bit.ly/k9AIUM
"Every magazine, television network, or radio station with an archive is sitting on gold." http://bit.ly/k9AIUM
Bon Iver - Holocene (Fallon)
The Curse of the Crocodile: Russia's Deadly Designer Drug
Irina Pavlova, a recovering krokodil addict, at the Chichevo rehab center in Russia, rocking Artiom Tiomkin — the baby of another resident — on June 13, 2011
Mae Ryan for TIME
The new arrivals at the drug rehab center in Chichevo, a tiny village that is a two hours' drive east of Moscow, are usually given two weeks without chores to recover from the nausea, pain and sleeplessness of withdrawal. After that, between Bible study and prayer (the center is run by Pentecostals), they have to start chopping firewood, hauling water from the village well or otherwise helping around the old wooden house. But a lot more leeway was allowed in the case of Irina Pavlova, the only resident at the center who is addicted to krokodil, or crocodile, Russia's deadliest new designer drug.
There is no good medical explanation for why Pavlova survived her addiction. The average user of krokodil, a dirty cousin of morphine that is spreading like a virus among Russian youth, does not live longer than two or three years, and the few who manage to quit usually come away disfigured. But Pavlova says she injected the drug nearly every day for six years, having learned to cook it in her brother's kitchen. "God must have protected me," she says. But the addiction still left some of its trademark scars. She developed a speech impediment, and her pale blue eyes have something of a lobotomy patient's vacant gaze. "Her motor skills are shot from the brain damage," says Andrei Yatsenko, the house manager, who was addicted to heroin for seven years. "She'll try to walk forward and instead jolts back into something. So we try to be gentle with her."
As typically happens in Russia, Pavlova began her drug use as a teenager shooting a substance called khanka, a tarlike opiate cooked from poppy bulbs, then graduated to heroin and finally, at the age of 27, switched to krokodil, because it has roughly the same effect as heroin but is at least three times cheaper and extremely easy to make. The active component is codeine, a widely sold over-the-counter painkiller that is not toxic on its own. But to produce krokodil, whose medical name is desomorphine, addicts mix it with ingredients including gasoline, paint thinner, hydrochloric acid, iodine and red phosphorous, which they scrape from the striking pads on matchboxes. In 2010, between a few hundred thousand and a million people, according to various official estimates, were injecting the resulting substance into their veins in Russia, so far the only country in the world to see the drug grow into an epidemic...
There is no good medical explanation for why Pavlova survived her addiction. The average user of krokodil, a dirty cousin of morphine that is spreading like a virus among Russian youth, does not live longer than two or three years, and the few who manage to quit usually come away disfigured. But Pavlova says she injected the drug nearly every day for six years, having learned to cook it in her brother's kitchen. "God must have protected me," she says. But the addiction still left some of its trademark scars. She developed a speech impediment, and her pale blue eyes have something of a lobotomy patient's vacant gaze. "Her motor skills are shot from the brain damage," says Andrei Yatsenko, the house manager, who was addicted to heroin for seven years. "She'll try to walk forward and instead jolts back into something. So we try to be gentle with her."
As typically happens in Russia, Pavlova began her drug use as a teenager shooting a substance called khanka, a tarlike opiate cooked from poppy bulbs, then graduated to heroin and finally, at the age of 27, switched to krokodil, because it has roughly the same effect as heroin but is at least three times cheaper and extremely easy to make. The active component is codeine, a widely sold over-the-counter painkiller that is not toxic on its own. But to produce krokodil, whose medical name is desomorphine, addicts mix it with ingredients including gasoline, paint thinner, hydrochloric acid, iodine and red phosphorous, which they scrape from the striking pads on matchboxes. In 2010, between a few hundred thousand and a million people, according to various official estimates, were injecting the resulting substance into their veins in Russia, so far the only country in the world to see the drug grow into an epidemic...
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Portishead - ATP I'll Be Your Mirror London Mixtape
00.00 "...They Don't Sleep Anymore on the Beach..." / Monheim - Godspeed You! Black Emperor
13.19 We Carry On - Portishead
19.44 A Cold Freezin' Night - The Books
23.04 Gazzillion Ear - Doom
27.15 You Fucking People Make Me Sick - Swans
32.20 Yang Yang - Anika
35.11 Real Love - Factory Floor
42.32 Infinity Skull Cube - DD/MM/YYYY
45.51 Untilted - Helen Money
51.42 "Four Spirits In A Room" Excerpt - Alan Moore & Stephen O'Malley
56.50 Plaster Casts Of Everything - Liars
60.43 8 Steps To Perfection - Company Flow
65.23 Written On The Forehead - PJ Harvey
68.49 Arabic Emotions - The London Snorkeling Team
71.27 Wulfstan - BEAK>
77.28 When My Baby Comes - Grinderman
84.09 Paris Signals - S.C.U.M.
88.30 Lovers With Iraqis - Foot Village
92.18 Gratitude - Acoustic Ladyland
96.29 Violence - The Telescopes
100.01 Hannibal - Caribou
106.15 Walk In The Park - Beach House
13.19 We Carry On - Portishead
19.44 A Cold Freezin' Night - The Books
23.04 Gazzillion Ear - Doom
27.15 You Fucking People Make Me Sick - Swans
32.20 Yang Yang - Anika
35.11 Real Love - Factory Floor
42.32 Infinity Skull Cube - DD/MM/YYYY
45.51 Untilted - Helen Money
51.42 "Four Spirits In A Room" Excerpt - Alan Moore & Stephen O'Malley
56.50 Plaster Casts Of Everything - Liars
60.43 8 Steps To Perfection - Company Flow
65.23 Written On The Forehead - PJ Harvey
68.49 Arabic Emotions - The London Snorkeling Team
71.27 Wulfstan - BEAK>
77.28 When My Baby Comes - Grinderman
84.09 Paris Signals - S.C.U.M.
88.30 Lovers With Iraqis - Foot Village
92.18 Gratitude - Acoustic Ladyland
96.29 Violence - The Telescopes
100.01 Hannibal - Caribou
106.15 Walk In The Park - Beach House
Zomby - A Devil Lay Here (Free Download)
The next single 4AD are releasing from Zomby's upcoming album is "A Devil Lay Here", which is available as a free download (MP3 or WAV) via the 4AD site. It's also being released as a limited 7", which carries B side "Basquiat". "A Devil Lay Here" is the second single to be released from the album, Dedication, which is due for release on 4AD on 11 July. Get it here.
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pkelso Paul Kelso
Hold on a moment - @Scottish_FA says "No "historic agreement" on Team GB and no discussions with BOA. Seeking clarification!" Shambles ahoy!
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
SBTRKT – SBTRKT (2011 - Albumstream)
SBTRKT made his name hiding behind a mask, remixing the likes of M.I.A., Basement Jaxx and Modeselektor. And here, he’s kept the veneer while doing somewhat of a showy back-flip – by bringing in an A-grade line-up of guest vocalists, he’s given his own music the stage and produced a debut album almost unbelievably bursting with ground-zero moments, unexpected side-turns and slinky promises. This set packs the kind of hustle biologically required to (hopefully) scale the charts and explode into new places.
It’s a both timeless and timely album, for the mix of right-now production – a haughty brew of clean-but-intricate beats, squeaks and wobbles – with chart-ready choruses. On headphones, it’s fixated on the image of a desolate figure lugging their emotional haul through the dancefloor while the night goes on around them, free of fluff and full of power. Through the right PA, its mini-breakbeats fly across open space like strobe-lit ping-pong balls. Each trick is as impressive.
Sampha’s vocals are striking, frequently courting the edge of tears – especially on Hold On where he pleads, “You’re giving me the coldest stare / Like you don’t even know I’m here”. And so it continues, with other such imagery, of “ghostly enemies” on Trials of the Past and breaking down the blockade of “Pharoah’s guards, Kings and Queens” on Pharoahs, featuring the blindingly impermeable vocals of Roses Gabor. On Right Thing to Do, Jessie Ware comes through even stronger than the twisted bass and thumping 808s, mournfully purring “Let me eat all these lies up / Let me hide, let me hide them”. It’s simple heartbreak, unusually matched with such an upbeat arrangement.
But as the pace drops and the cycle restarts, sobriety creeps back in. This album is paced like a perfect DJ set – it reads the listener with incredible insight, combining the immediate and familiar with intense passages of warm-up, breaking to allow for moments of blank space and reflection. The mix of shiny vocals with tight, accelerated textures is steeped deep in a glorious combination of two-step, UK funky, dubstep, US RnB and Chicago house. Add that to the compendium of a killer pop sensibility, infectious bubbling rhythms, unbridled energy and astounding curation from the man in the mask, and what we have here is the promise of this decade’s Timbaland.
(BBC Reviews)
It’s a both timeless and timely album, for the mix of right-now production – a haughty brew of clean-but-intricate beats, squeaks and wobbles – with chart-ready choruses. On headphones, it’s fixated on the image of a desolate figure lugging their emotional haul through the dancefloor while the night goes on around them, free of fluff and full of power. Through the right PA, its mini-breakbeats fly across open space like strobe-lit ping-pong balls. Each trick is as impressive.
Sampha’s vocals are striking, frequently courting the edge of tears – especially on Hold On where he pleads, “You’re giving me the coldest stare / Like you don’t even know I’m here”. And so it continues, with other such imagery, of “ghostly enemies” on Trials of the Past and breaking down the blockade of “Pharoah’s guards, Kings and Queens” on Pharoahs, featuring the blindingly impermeable vocals of Roses Gabor. On Right Thing to Do, Jessie Ware comes through even stronger than the twisted bass and thumping 808s, mournfully purring “Let me eat all these lies up / Let me hide, let me hide them”. It’s simple heartbreak, unusually matched with such an upbeat arrangement.
But as the pace drops and the cycle restarts, sobriety creeps back in. This album is paced like a perfect DJ set – it reads the listener with incredible insight, combining the immediate and familiar with intense passages of warm-up, breaking to allow for moments of blank space and reflection. The mix of shiny vocals with tight, accelerated textures is steeped deep in a glorious combination of two-step, UK funky, dubstep, US RnB and Chicago house. Add that to the compendium of a killer pop sensibility, infectious bubbling rhythms, unbridled energy and astounding curation from the man in the mask, and what we have here is the promise of this decade’s Timbaland.
(BBC Reviews)
Monday, 20 June 2011
Psychic TV - B.K. Scum (Free Download)
The B.K. Scum mix traces the musical history of Psychic TV, showcasing hits and rarities in equal measure with exclusive vocals from Genesis. Released in conjuction with the 3/4/11 Mishka Psychic Tv clothing launch.
Via
G20 death Pc sent for trial at Old Bailey
A police officer accused of killing newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson during the G20 protests in London in 2009 is to stand trial at the Old Bailey.
Scotland Yard Pc Simon Harwood appeared at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court charged with manslaughter. He was bailed until 17 October. Last month, an inquest jury found 47-year-old Mr Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed on 1 April 2009.
He collapsed and died on the fringes of the G20 protests in central London.
Mr Tomlinson's widow, Julia, was in the public gallery of the court for the two-minute hearing on Monday.
Pc Harwood, 44, of Carshalton, Surrey, spoke only to confirm his name, age and address. Wearing a black suit and grey tie, he had his right arm in a sling.
Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer decided to charge Pc Harwood after the conclusion of the inquest into Mr Tomlinson's death.
The Crown Prosecution Service had previously decided against bringing a prosecution.
But, following the inquest, Mr Starmer said: "The difficulties that would now confront any prosecution have changed in nature and scale from last year when a decision was taken not to prosecute, although it is clear that real difficulties remain."
@'BBC'
Ricardo Villalobos, Max Loderbauer - Re: ECM (2011 - Albumstream)
This June, German avant-garde label ECM will release a double album of remixes byRicardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer (of nsi., Sun Electric and the Moritz von Oswald Trio), entitled Re: ECM.
Described by one magazine as “the most beautiful sound next to silence,” ECM has been at the vanguard of contemporary jazz and classical music for nearly half a century. Villalobos and Loderbauer are among the many electronic artists who consider the label an essential influence. “Immersing oneself in the productions of ECM, one learns a lot about the optimum sound experience,” they say. “We too have the paramount rule of making no compromises where sound is concerned.”
The upcoming release shows Villalobos and Loderbauer channeling their love of ECM into a batch of new productions. All of the 17 tracks use ECM’s catalog as source material, drawing from pieces by Arvo Pärt, Christian Wallumrød, Miroslav Vitous and Louis Sclavis among others. The result carries the organic feel of the originals, while also bearing the distinct mark of two electronic artists at work.
Re: ECM is by no means the first time Villalobos worked with this kind of material–ECM productions have long been fodder for his DJ sets. “It started with Arvo Pärt’sTabula Rasa and went on with music of Alexander Knaifel and others,” he says. “If one combines the functionality of reduced electronic structures with the living textures of ECM productions, it ignites new passions on a subliminal level… The most important thing is to harmonize these two worlds, without them aspiring to mutually deactivate each other, to keep both–the organic and the electronic–in balance.” (from Resident Advisor)
Tracklist
CD1
01. Reblop (from Christian Wollumrød’s Fabula Suite Lugano)
02. Recat (from Christian Wallumrød Ensemble’s The Zoo is Far)
03. Resvete (from Alexander Knaifel’s Svete Tikhiy)
04. Retimeless (from John Abercrombie’s Timeless)
05. Reemergence (from Miroslav Vitous’ Emergence)
06. Reblazhenstva (from Alexander Knaifel’s Blazhenstva)
07. Reannounce (from Louis Sclavis’ L’imperfait des Langues)
08. Recurrence (from Wolfert Brederode’s Currents)
09. Requote (from Christian Wallumrød’s Fabula Suite Lugano)
ALBUMSTREAM DISC 1
CD2
01. Replob (from Christian Wollumrød’s Fabula Suite Lugano)
02. Reshadub (from Paul Giger’s Ignis)
03. Rebird (from Paul Motian’s Tati)
04. Retikhiy (from Alexander Knaifel’s Svete Tikhiy)
05. Rekondakion (from Arvo Pärt’s Kanon Pokajanen)
06. Rensenada (from Bennie Maupin’s The Jewel in the Lotus)
07. Resole (from Alexander Knaifel’s Svete Tikhiy)
08. Redetach (from Christian Wallumrød Ensemble’s The Zoo is Far)
ALBUMSTREAM DISC 2
ECM has released Re: ECM on June 17th, 2011.
HA!
In a landmark new documentary produced for YouTube, Adam Curtis has not examined his career and laid bare his style in the light of some confused academic papers he stumbled across on the internet. Instead, I have plundered various video archives and ripped him off, up, down, left, right and back again.
(For DJ Pigg!)
'Hackers Wanted' – An Unreleased American Documentary Film (Directed by Sam Bozzo, Narrated by Kevin Spacey & Featuring Adrian Lamo)
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The Big Business of Synthetic Highs
From the outside the place looks abandoned. The only sign of life is a lone security camera. Inside, two flags hang above a makeshift assembly line. One shows a coiled snake and reads "Don't Tread On Me." The other has a peace symbol. The work space consists of a long, foldout table containing a pile of lustrous, green vegetation, a pocket-calculator-size electronic scale, a stack of reflective, hot-pink Mylar foil packets, and a heat sealer. Each packet has the brand name, Bombay Breeze, and is decorated with a psychedelic logo featuring a cartoon elephant meditating among abstract-looking coils of smoke and stars.
Upchurch supervises as Harness weighs out portions of the crushed foliage, dumps it into a packet, and slides the top through the heating machine to create an airtight, tamper-proof seal. He finishes about a dozen in 10 minutes, topping off what they will need for their deliveries: two shipments of more than 1,000 packets each. Upchurch points to a disclaimer near the bottom right-hand corner of each package that reads, in all caps: "NOT FOR CONSUMPTION." Says Upchurch: "That's to discourage abuse."
His protests and disclaimers to the contrary, Pandora is getting smoked—it's being packed into bongs and reviewed on sites such as YouTube (GOOG)—for its ability to alter the mind. Like many others, Upchurch is repackaging experimental medical chemicals for mainstream store shelves, most often with some clever double-entendre in the branding. He says he sells about 41,000 packets a month, delivering directly to 50 stores around the country and shipping the rest to five other wholesalers, some of whom use Pandora's products to create their own brands. Upchurch says he ships mostly in bulk orders for larger discounts. He projects his company will earn $2.5 million in revenue with $500,000 in profits this year, depending on what federal and state laws pass. "I think my business model is based less on charts than it is on guts, or something," he says.
"Incense" such as Upchurch's, along with "bath salts" and even "toilet bowl cleaner," have been popping up at gas stations, convenience stores, "coffee shops" that don't sell much coffee, and adult novelty stores. Today, Upchurch's shipments—he uses UPS (UPS)—are headed to places called Jim's Party Cabin in Junction City, Kan., and the Venus Adult Superstore, in Texarkana, Ark. Instate, Upchurch sells to Coffee Wonk, a coffee shop in downtown Kansas City, Mo. There, 28-year-old owner Micah Riggs writes the names of his offerings in multiple colors on a dry erase board near the register. The packets themselves are kept beneath the counter. While Riggs doesn't mind his customers talking about how they will use the incense, he's as circumspect about what he is actually selling as Upchurch. Nearly everything he says is in code. He'll say things like, "Is this your first foray?" and "There are different potencies of aroma..."
Continur reading
Ben Paynter @'Bloomberg Businessweek'
Rhythm from Within (Photographs by Michael Philip Manheim)
Michael Philip Manheim has been a professional photographer since 1969. A chance encounter with photography, at the age of 13, locked him onto a life-long pursuit.
Intrigued with the themes of change and transformation, Manheim developed a signature style of layering whole phases of movement onto a single frame of film. This approach transcends a literal interpretation. He calls this series the "Rhythm from Within".
Michael Philip Manheim's work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Germany, Greece and Italy. His work has been featured in magazines such as Zoom (U.S. and Italy), Photographers International (Taiwan), La Fotografia (Spain), Black and White magazine, and numerous other publications.
He has been Artist in Residence at Bates College in Lewiston, ME and Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH.
Manheim's photographs are held in public and private collections, including the Library of Congress, the International Photography Hall of Fame & Museum, the Danforth Museum of Art and the Bates College Museum of Art. He has had over 15 solo exhibitions.
Julian Cox, curator of photography at Atlanta's High Museum of Art, noted that Manheim's photographs "have passion and beauty, and clearly considerable skill has gone into their execution."
Music by Budd/Foxx, 'Here and Now'
Intrigued with the themes of change and transformation, Manheim developed a signature style of layering whole phases of movement onto a single frame of film. This approach transcends a literal interpretation. He calls this series the "Rhythm from Within".
Michael Philip Manheim's work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Germany, Greece and Italy. His work has been featured in magazines such as Zoom (U.S. and Italy), Photographers International (Taiwan), La Fotografia (Spain), Black and White magazine, and numerous other publications.
He has been Artist in Residence at Bates College in Lewiston, ME and Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, NH.
Manheim's photographs are held in public and private collections, including the Library of Congress, the International Photography Hall of Fame & Museum, the Danforth Museum of Art and the Bates College Museum of Art. He has had over 15 solo exhibitions.
Julian Cox, curator of photography at Atlanta's High Museum of Art, noted that Manheim's photographs "have passion and beauty, and clearly considerable skill has gone into their execution."
Music by Budd/Foxx, 'Here and Now'
Eisenhower's worst fears came true. We invent enemies to buy the bombs
Joe Magee: Guardian
Why do we still go to war? We seem unable to stop. We find any excuse for this post-imperial fidget and yet we keep getting trapped. Germans do not do it, or Spanish or Swedes. Britain's borders and British people have not been under serious threat for a generation. Yet time and again our leaders crave battle. Why?
Last week we got a glimpse of an answer and it was not nice. The outgoing US defence secretary, Robert Gates, berated Europe's "failure of political will" in not maintaining defence spending. He said Nato had declined into a "two-tier alliance" between those willing to wage war and those "who specialise in 'soft' humanitarian, development, peacekeeping and talking tasks". Peace, he implied, is for wimps. Real men buy bombs, and drop them.
This call was echoed by Nato's chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who pointed out how unfair it was that US defence investment represented 75% of the Nato defence expenditure, where once it was only half. Having been forced to extend his war on Libya by another three months, Rasmussen wanted to see Europe's governments come up with more money, and no nonsense about recession. Defence to him is measured not in security but in spending.
The call was repeated back home by the navy chief, Sir Mark Stanhope. He had to be "dressed down" by the prime minister, David Cameron, for warning that an extended war in Libya would mean "challenging decisions about priorities". Sailors never talk straight: he meant more ships. The navy has used so many of its £500,000 Tomahawk missiles trying to hit Colonel Gaddafi (and missing) over the past month that it needs money for more. In a clearly co-ordinated lobby, the head of the RAF also demanded "a significant uplift in spending after 2015, if the service is to meet its commitments". It, of course, defines its commitments itself.
Libya has cost Britain £100m so far, and rising. But Iraq and the Afghan war are costing America $3bn a week, and there is scarcely an industry, or a state, in the country that does not see some of this money. These wars show no signs of being ended, let alone won. But to the defence lobby what matters is the money. It sustains combat by constantly promising success and inducing politicians and journalists to see "more enemy dead", "a glimmer of hope" and "a corner about to be turned".
Victory will come, but only if politicians spend more money on "a surge". Soldiers are like firefighters, demanding extra to fight fires. They will fight all right, but if you want victory that is overtime...
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