Tuesday 24 November 2009

In Madrid this Saturday?


(Click on image to enlarge)
ARTISTA :      SACE 2       
INVITADOS :  ELECTRONAUTAS, DOWNROCKS, JANINE, KOA, ...
FECHA :        28 NOVIEMBRE 2009 a las 22:00 CLUB TEMPO(c/ Duque de Osuna 8,Metro Pza.España)

Rolling Stones VS Susan Boyle? I don't think so...

Rolling Stones have re-released their song ‘Wild Horses’ after Susan Boyle’s rendition on The X-Factor was viewed by approximately 15 million viewers last night.
The track, originally featured on the Stones’ 1971 album ‘Sticky Fingers’, has been released as a digital package featuring the aforementioned album version and a live cut taken from their ‘Voodoo Lounge’ Tour in 1995.
‘Wild Horses’ is released today on all major download sites, whilst Boyle’s version appears on her debut ‘I Dreamed A Dream’, which became the most pre-ordered album of all time.

Say "No" to Bono (part...)

"U2 will be headlining Glastonbury for the first time next year, after being rumoured to appear many times in the past. Festival organiser Michael Eavis has said: "At last, the biggest band in the world are going to play the best festival in the world. Nothing could be better for our 40th anniversary party. And there are even more surprises in the pipeline..."
A good enough reason for me to give Glasto a miss next year...

Frida Hyvönen & Jenny Wilson - Shadow Of A Doubt (Live Kobra 2009)


A truly bizarre but brilliant cover of the Sonic Youth song!
Check out the SY video here.

Don Cherry / Krzysztof Penerecki - The New Rythm Orchestra - Actions (1971)


Wow! I had no idea that there was even such an album...featuring Don Cherry, Tomasz Stanko, Albert Mangelsdorff, Peter Brotzman, Han Bennink, Terje Rypdal, Kenny Wheeler, Willem Breuker & Gunter Hampel and if you don't know who they are...well!
...and while you are there, do check out some of the other offerings. This is a really superb blog.

Kitty, Daisy & Lewis show us around


(Thanx Evan)

...moving at the sound of speed!

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Monday 23 November 2009

Trevor Brown's Black Eyed Madonna


Crystal Castles used this artwork without Trevor Brown's authorisation, which you can read about

Want



As deaths in Afghanistan rise, so does the growth of opium



A US Marine secures an opium poppy field in southwest Afghanistan
Attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan are at record levels and threaten to derail efforts to rebuild the war-torn country, while an unholy alliance of Taliban drug dealers and corrupt government officials has made a mockery of coalition forces' attempts to stem the export of heroin.
The findings, from new reports looking at the current situation in Afghanistan, highlight key areas in which, contrary to the assurances of Western military leaders, the war is being lost.
A series of secret Government documents have also laid bare the "appalling" errors that contributed to Britain's failure in Iraq. On the eve of the Chilcot Inquiry into the operation to remove Saddam Hussein, The Sunday Telegraph claimed it had hundreds of pages of documents setting out "significant shortcomings" at all levels of the mission.
The papers are believed to reveal that Tony Blair was planning for an invasion more than a year before it took place, and detail supply problems which left some troops going into action with only five bullets each, while others had to travel to the war-zone on commercial airlines.
In Afghanistan, there were nearly 13,000 attacks between January and the end of August this year – more than two-and-a-half times the number experienced during the same period last year and a fivefold increase on the total in 2005. "The most recent data available, as of August 2009, showed the highest rate of enemy-initiated attacks since Afghanistan's security situation began to deteriorate," according to a new study published by the US Government Accountability Office this month.
The ferocity of the fighting has seen almost 100 British service personnel killed and more than 400 wounded since the start of this year. According to the report, distributed to the US Congress and senior Pentagon officials, security has "deteriorated significantly" since 2005, "affecting all aspects of US and allied reconstruction". A resurgent Taliban, weak Afghan security forces, a thriving drug trade and threats from safe havens in Pakistan are all cited as factors...


Irvine Welsh: ‘Let’s tackle Scotland’s cheap bevvy culture’

Trainspotting author backs alcohol minimum pricing


He is not normally associated with moderation, but Scots novelist and provocateur Irvine Welsh ­yesterday intervened in the politically charged debate over how to tackle Scotland’s drink problem.
On the eve of the SNP government’s bill on minimum prices for alcohol, the author of the drug and drink-fuelled excesses of Trainspotting and The Acid House called for an end to the nation’s “cheap bevvy” culture.
Welsh urged politicians to “stand up and be counted” on tackling the problem of alcohol abuse which costs Scotland an estimated £2.25 billion a year in healthcare, crime, the fall-out from social problems and days lost at work.
He also took a swipe at the drinks industry, which is fiercely opposed to minimum prices, as it fears other countries could copy the Scottish example.
Welsh said: “Scotland has a growing problem with alcohol abuse. More people, younger people and more women than ever before, are at risk from being encouraged to over-consume this drug.
“We know that the price and availability of alcohol products have a strong relationship to the amount of alcohol consumed.
“This is a major social issue and needs to be tackled as such by our politicians in a democracy, and this should transcend the concerns of those in the alcohol industry who feel their profitability will be compromised.
“Very few would want to go back to the days when the tobacco industry determined policy on smoking.
“Now politicians should stand up and be counted and move us on to a new era where how much we drink will not be determined by the alcohol industry lobby.”
The statement was issued on Welsh’s behalf by the advocacy group Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems (Shaap), which was set up by the royal medical colleges.
Although Welsh, who now lives in Ireland, did not explicitly mention minimum pricing, his comments were made with the current political debate in mind, a Shaap spokeswoman said...

What Earth Would Look Like With Rings Like Saturn

Sunday 22 November 2009

Foton's 'Instant Present' Mix

It´s not a big secret that without dub there would have been - amongst other things - no drum´n´bass, no remix culture and no techno music.
The last years saw the latter returning to production techniques of the first: the heavy usage of reverbs, echoes and phasers alongside four-on-the-floor beats even made a new sub-genre of techno, called dub techno, emerge.
The label pushing this sound the hardest probably is Thinner from Germany:
… select an available release from the extensive Thinner discography and there’s a very high probability that the sounds on that album can be broadly described as “dub-inspired” i.e. some permutation of a fusion of dub with house, techno, or even ambient music. it’s also quite possible that the album could be further redefined as belonging to the sound departments of either “dubby techhouse“ or “intelligent dub” …
One of Thinner´s artists is Das Kraftfuttermischwerk. Recently, they posted a link to a dope mix from Foton
01. Basic Channel – Round Four
02. Chet – Urban Dharma
03. Maurizio – M5
04. Quantec – Hidden Persuasion
05. Basic Channel – Round Three w/ Paul st Hilaire
06. Fluxion – Inductance
07. Deadbeat – Abu Ghraib
08. Jorge Gebauhr – Strange Fruits
09. Mildiou – De Natura Rerum
10. Substance – Relish Shed remix
11. Marko Fuerstenberg – Far Out
12. Lowtec Sound System – Stella Polaris
13. Marko Fuerstenberg– Site 312
14. Basic Channel – Phylysptrakit
15. Luke Hess
16. Cv313 – Dimensional Space

Download Foton´s “Instant Present” mix
@'Seen'

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ORNAMENTS SYMPHONY
mixed by youANDme
This CD contains all songs of ORNAMENTS 001 - ORNAMENTS 010.
Limited to 333.

PLAYLIST:

01. Intro - Peak: Darksuite (youANDme Remix) / ORN008
02. Peak: Darksuite / ORN008
03. Dubsuite: "Eigenleben" (Marko Fürstenberg's Eigendub) / ORN001
04. Sven Tasnadi: "Our Destiny" (Weisemann's Shuffle On Mix) remix by Sven Weisemann / ORN005
05. Sven Tasnadi: "Our Destiny" / ORN005
06. Thabo: "Downstream" / ORN006
07. Martin Schulte: "Cold Heart" (Marko Fürstenberg Remix) / ORN001
08. Rhauder feat. Paul St. Hilaire: "No News" (Marko Fürstenberg Remix) / ORN009
09. Rhauder feat. Paul St. Hilaire: "No News" (Daniel Stefanik Remix) / ORN009
10. Rhauder feat. Paul St. Hilaire: "No News" / ORN009
11. Thabo: "Berlin" / ORN006
12. Mod.Civil: "Einfachheit gewinnt" / ORN004
13. Mod.Civil: "Einfachheit gewinnt" (Marko Fürstenberg Remix) / ORN004
14. Frank Biedermann: "Warrior_wasp" (Marko Fürstenberg Remix) / ORN001
15. I-Robots: "Perfect Logic Circle" (G.Digger Edit) / ORN002
16. I-Robots: "Perfect Logic Circle" (Club Edit) / ORN002
17. youANDme:  "Close to me" (Robert Hood Remix) / ORN010
18. Marko Fürstenberg: "Valentino" / ORN007
19. Peak: "Darksuite" (Soultourist Remix) / ORN008
20. Peak: "Darksuite" (youANDme Remix) / ORN008
21. Marko Fürstenberg: "Tiffany's Case" / ORN007
22. youANDme: "Close to me" / ORN010
23. Sascha Dive: “Deepest America” (Samuel Davis Dark Soul Mix) / ORN003
24. Sascha Dive: “Deepest America” (Moodymann Remix) / ORN003

Lou Reed: Photographer


 A walk on the wild side: Reed captures his wife, the performance artist Laurie Anderson, in the only image in 'Romanticism' featuring a human figure

 Lou Reed may be a rock legend, the founding member of the Velvet Underground, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a man so cool that fans keel over in the reflection of his mirrored shades. Yet he has an alter ego, a solitary figure, a man who retreats quietly into nature to observe the light and make elegant, romantic photographs, far removed from his life at the heart of New York City. The process could not be more different but there are parallels between his music and his photographs. Putting together a book of photographs is, says Reed, like sequencing a CD. It is intuitive, an indefinable way of working where things happen not through planning and preordained ideas, but because they feel right. He approaches photography with the qualities of a musician. "The response is emotional. That's all I want; they are taken with emotion and put together with emotion, equal emotion," he says.
Romanticism is Reed's third book of photographs. It is a series of landscapes, entirely in black and white. Inspiration for the title came from the 19th-century Romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich. "We had lined up the photographs we liked and I was shown a painting, by him. I said that's it, that's Romanticism. That's not to say that I think I am him, but it was the impetus for the idea."
As in Friedrich's painting, there is an ethereal quality to Reed's work, a sense of the divine in nature. The light in Reed's photographs has a silvery tone, which creates a sense of fantasy. They do not seem to be of this world. "They are very three-dimensional images. I have them up on my wall. The silvery translucent quality, that makes me crazy. I really love it," he says.
Rarely is there a human mark on the scene; for the most part, his photographs are of nature untouched: woods leading down to the edge of the sea, a layer of thick mist covering the earth. The branches of a tree are abundant with fruit, another tree is dead; the trunk splinters as it disintegrates. "I have never seen a tree that is not graceful," he says.
Only one photograph, towards the end of the book, shows a human form. It is an androgynous grey figure, with short hair, facing away from the camera and outlined with light. Light ripples across the top of the scene, suggesting water, and the rest is a mass of grey. The figure is Reed's wife, the musician and artist Laurie Anderson. They married last year and the only line of text in the book is dedicated to her: "These are pictures from around the world dedicated to my love & passion for my wife, Laurie Anderson."
Reed will only give laconic explanations for his photographs. There is a single photograph of boats in the book; it is a striking anomaly. Why is it in the collection? "The boats. They were there because they were there. It doesn't matter. It's all the same. It was just the light and the moment. The light was perfect. There happened to be boats there; I wished they weren't there."
He won't give specific information about where or when the photographs were made. The book is purely images, no text, all of which were made over the last two years and in many different places: Scotland, Denmark, Spain, Rome, China. No image has a title or any kind of reference point. It is a brave decision that not every photographer would get away with – but, then, it is Lou Reed: a god can ignore the needs of mortals. And he has his reasons. "There's nothing to say. A picture is worth a thousand words, to quote a cliché. What am I meant to say: 'There's a tree in a storm in January'? The response is emotional. That's all I want."
Reed has been taking photographs since the 1960s, when he and Andy Warhol were close and Reed was performing with the Velvet Underground. He developed his photographic style and learnt by watching those around him. Over the years, he has been influenced by some of the most creative talents around, people he knew and used to hang out with.
"I like to reinvent the wheel. I like to discover something for myself as opposed to being told it. Wim Wenders, there's something he showed me that I found useful. Billy Linich, he also called himself Billy Name, was at Warhol's factory, his pictures were very high contrast. And there were things that Andy Warhol would do. And Larry Clark, I still remember when I first saw "Tulsa"," he says.
Outside of music, there is something of the gifted amateur about Reed and it's an endearing quality. He has not forgotten his roots and the people he knew as a child. He recently made a film about his cousin Shirley who is 100 years old. She lives in New York City, in the West 20s, where she has been for the past 70 years.
He explains: "She is a remarkable person. I wanted to talk to her on camera, about things that only she could know: what it was like being in Poland through World War One and World War Two, being smuggled out of Canada, or working as a seamstress in the union. What she had to say is remarkable. I made the soundtrack for it with my band, Metal Machine Trio." It's an interesting contrast – his centenarian cousin Shirley and Metal Machine Trio and it's a shame that he has yet to find a place to show it.
Last year, he was guest designer for the Winter 2008/2009 issue of All-Story, a literary magazine founded by Francis Ford Coppola. Contributors have included Rachel Cusk and Woody Allen, while Zaha Hadid and Guillermo del Toro have also designed an issue. For the cover, Reed used one of his landscape photographs, in colour. It is an image that he was unable to use in his book and it is utterly romantic: pale gold light falls across a summer woodland scene. The light has a particular quality that he captures using a technique which involves hacking up the camera, although he doesn't explain precisely how this is done.
"It is instinct tempered with technique. I have been photographing a long time. All my life, I was scouring around with it, playing with it. All my life I had wished for something; it turned out to be digital. That finally came out. I could take the picture 100 times. I got it with the light the right way, not just one or two shots. I loved it. I am not using photoshop. Everything is in the camera and that's because it's digital," he says.
He denies it, but Reed is a camera geek. He can quote camera names and models with an intimate knowledge: "I have a Leica medium format – just the body cost $24,000. I have been waiting around for the M9. I love this camera. I love it that they are digital. I love the Alpa, they're quite the little company, you should check out their website. I use it with a Schneider lens. And the medium format Hasselblad, and they went into Fuji lenses. Why are some lenses so much better than others? What is it about the way they polish glass?" It's difficult to get him off the subject. "I'm not an obsessive," he says. "It's just like guitars."
(Thanx Don)