unknown unknowns

50 People, One Question - Galway

2011-10-26T19:49:00.000+01:00

And so, in the shadow of another day-surf-trip, and with a new job starting in just under two weeks - here is one of my favourite ever videos on the web. 50 people, one question, in Galway, Ireland.

One question, but an amazing sequence of answers. My favourite answer? 6:00.

Thanks to Anna Oliwa for uncovering it.

Irish surf and nighttime revelations

2011-09-16T16:54:00.001+01:00

Wednesday 28th Sept. looks like the next chance. What I'd give for an accurate forecast for 2 or three weeks in advance right now. But Thursday 18th August was going to be this chance.

I had flicked open Magic Seaweed, and checked Bundoran. The forecast (which like any other forecast tends to become more accurate the closer you are to the time) says there will a very small swell - borderline, and the winds are going to be onshore - not favourable, as they will collapse the waves from behind, destroying their perfect shape and spreading turbulent whitewater everywhere.

I check again a couple days before. The swell is still borderline, but... the wind forecast is dropping. Wednesday 17th, I look again. The forecast winds for the very early morning are 2mph - almost nothing. High tide at 09:30. The board is brought down from it's ceiling abode, the wetsuit is dug out of the attic, everything is laid out, and the alarm is set for 03:40.

03:59. The yawning silence of the city in the dead of night. The board is strapped on the car, everything is packed. Gates are quietly opened, the car is rolled back out of gear with no engine, the gate is closed again. A quick turn of the key, and we are trundling out of the estate and across the West side of Dublin. The only other road users are taxis. Somewhere in the Atlantic, a low pressure system has been rotating, driving energy into the ocean.

There's a diversion on the edge of Dublin, so shortly after 4 I'm sent down a sideroad past a suburban shopping centre. 20 or 30 kids are milling about in the car park. Yesterday was leaving cert day in Ireland, and these kids have been letting loose all evening and night. Everywhere is closed now, but they aren't ready to go home quite yet. Who passed, and who failed? Who has the marks they need, for what they want to do?

Gone 5, I'm whistling down the motorway towards Kells. The home of bestsellers. The radio is on, the pressure of the sound helping the windows to hold back the immense weight of the blackness outside. Every few minutes a lone car flies the opposite way, towards the big city.

Past Kells, I pass through Virginia. In the middle of town the road forks, and on the apex sits a massive church. I've glimpsed it before, on one of these night raids West - set back, deep in the fork, brooding in the dark. One day I'm going to come back and check it out. I wonder if the baby is still asleep back at home. Did I wake him, sneaking the board out of the house at 4? Leaving Virginia, I pick up the first sign for Eniskillen, 70km. The other side of the border. Northern Ireland.

Twenty past five, and I hit Cavan - home to problematic insurance company Quinn. The whole story of what the Quinn family have been up to with the money is going to come out one of these days. Still black, everything is closed - but looking straight upwards, there's the very first hint that the sky might be starting to turn. It looks a bit more dark blue than black up there.

Half past five, and I'm in Belturbet. The sky is definitely lightening. It's amazing how quickly that happens, isn't it? All the shops are locked and dark, and the town is dead. I ghost on for Eniskillen, another 35 kilometres on. 2 or 3 minutes further on, I'm suddenly across the border, in Northern Ireland. The road surface changes, alien after 8 years living in the Republic, and familiar from my youth. The first village speed limits seem bigger than is sensible. Is this just the first town speed limits, or were the ones in the UK always this size? UK Radio 1 is on now, and a lightbulb moment suddenly strikes me: nighttime radio is so much better than daytime fare. The variation! There's some grinding driving hip hop track clattering out of the radio - raw in a way that wouldn't make daytime radio. The journey is getting good - revelations are starting to flow. There's something very interesting in the fact that this takes 90 minutes of driving to start happening - it harks back to the idea that I stumbled upon back here - that with repetition, the analytical portion of your brain that drives it while awake is slowly decommissioned, and something much more interesting starts taking place. Maybe this really is the revelation that the whole trip offers - but for the moment, the important thing seems to be that suddenly I'm fearing the return of daytime radio, with the tyranny of the playlists and mass appeal.

Enniskillen is reached at ten to six. A tiny bit of traffic, but not much. I was out of Dublin so early that everything is still closed so no breakfast roll here, which may complicate my eating an hour before water rule. How can you surf without a breakfast roll? I'm thinking of bacon (this is very distracting) hesitate for a millisecond, and get owned by a Micra at stoplights. I'm supposed to be in relaxed surf mode, so I let them go, mentally wishing them well on the way. I'm hungry. It's very light now, I could almost switch off the headlights. There are still some Union Jack flags flying defiantly, a reminder of how strange things have been in the past in the North. Left for Belleek.

Reaching Eniskillen escape velocity. By five past six I'm racing down the side of Lough Erne. I've raced down the side of Lough Erne before, but this time, it's very different. The sun is coming up behind it, making the whole body of water seemingly glow with early-morning radiance. There isn't a single ripple on the water, dead calm, a hugely promising portent. Jaw dropping beauty that I couldn't quite capture with the camera.

By six twenty-five I'm back in the Republic, and 13 miles to run to Bundoran. I'm a huge fan of the beach at Rossnowlagh, so I go there first. Unfortunately, the swell is too small to be causing anything more than a shoreline ripple there, so after hanging about for five minutes, it's back in the car, and down to Bundoran to have a look at Tullan Strand.

Tullan is reached around seven, and it's beyond perfect for me. A really small swell running, not a single person there, and amazingly, not even the tiniest puff of wind. Dead calm.

The swell is so well behaved, I spend four hours in the water. Some amazing waves (for me) caught, I even manage to weave my way through some people at a beginners surf school on a couple of waves later on, and due to the small size I'm able to manoeuvre myself all the way outside the breaking waves (still something of a novelty for me). This means I end up sitting, bobbing in the sea, watching in amazement as 3 dolphins appear a few hundred yards out to sea, leaping completely clear of the water, arching, stretching and diving back in, slowly leaping across Donegal Bay in the sun as I sit on the board and bob up and down on top of the water.

Now, if that's not worth getting up at half three for, I have no idea what is.

Music, Waves, and Jack Russell terriers

2011-04-21T08:09:00.012+01:00

Having not written anything for some time, there was a bundle of small stuff circulating trying to find a weak point in my brain and escape. Normally I'd separate them into some sort of structure and blog separately about each, but seeing as they were all in there mixed up together, they can all come out mixed up together. It's a more accurate representation, and it's been that kind of fortnight.

Frankfurt. Musikmesse. It's hard to believe that it's my 15th consecutive Musikmesse, but that appears to be the case. Juggling a huge list of companies to go visit with a sudden-onset migraine on Thursday morning was no mean feat, especially given the cloud of pulsating colours occluding part of my vision - but luckily some guy in a tiny tradeshow-shop-cum-barber outlet hidden in the Starwars-like Torhaus was able to help me out by fetching from some hidden (no doubt gimp-holding) cupboard a packet of horse choking paracetamol. They were of a mg size that I didn't previously know existed, let alone legal, and the packet and instructions were strangely all in Spanish. The barber assured me that 1 tablet twice a day would be unlikely to kill me, so I risked swallowing one and got on with business.

There were some cool things at the show - like Club of the Knobs (an impressive beast for sure, but where might sales come from for such a monster?), and Elektron, who are now bringing out a knob upgrade kit for the Machinedrum. This is particularly good news, as I find the knobs a bit hard and untactile - the new rubberised ones they were showing are a vast improvement. On the downside, us existing hardware owners have to pay to get the new knobs - bah! It should have been right in the first place, guys. Anyway. Nord have the Stage Piano 2 out which is rocking, and the Electro 3 HP (which stands for 'hammer action portable', obviously). Both units look absolutely stunning, play brilliantly and sound amazing, as is typical for Nord. I also found Innerclock Systems, who make a range of boxes for pushing and pulling MIDI Clock, MTC and Din Sync around the place. It's for lining up old hardware with new sequencers, but it's also solved (possibly) one of my longstanding problems with how I want to play out live... more on that in the long distant future.

A new company called Smithson Martin have a system out for DJing on a huge transparent touchscreen. It's called "Emulator", and is basically a MIDI controller software that sits on top of Traktor. It's as expensive as you'd expect a transparent multi-touch touchscreen to be though, and I can't see it getting bought by many normal DJs - it'll probably find a home in huge clubs full of questionable clientele, who will appreciate the DJ show. Less lights, deeper bass cabs if you ask me.

SPL (always the home of high-quality hardware) have a new desk out, the Neos. This thing is an analogue summing mixer, so no EQs, no aux busses, no bells and whistles - just straight line in and mixing on to a stereo bus. The difference - it runs internally on 120 Volts, which means it can generate astonishing amounts of headroom. I tried it, and it's really amazing - even with all the faders maxed and everything at Spinal Tap settings, you just cannot get the desk to overload. Even more important, with everything set to stun and nothing playing through it, you can't hear anything from the outputs - no hum, no hiss, no noise whatsoever. Incredible quality stuff, and highly recommended for anyone looking for an external analogue summing solution.

I also stopped by the Apogee stand, where they have two pretty well judged new pieces - the Duet 2 soundcard, which is a gorgeous piece of 2-in, 2-out industrial design, and the Jam, which is a brilliantly thought out Hi-Z input for iPad etc, so you can jack your guitar in with really good quality for only $99. Very nice stuff. This is where the Frankfurt show got really interesting, as I met by chance Sophie Kipner from Apogee, who was able to wax lyrical about the new stuff. I'm always a fan of finding out who is who when I get home, so running through doing the job on all the business cards from the show, I find that Sophie not only works for Apogee, she runs her own blog publishing strange and interesting illustrations and verse. Well that's more interesting than the geek dead ends that most of the business cards lead to. Following the rabbit through the net leads to Forth Magazine, some extended reading of which leads me to the most disturbing conclusion: there is interesting, kooky art in LA. To think that until now all I thought of LA was a great airport, NAMM, and some character-forming experiences at Sunset. When randomness leads you somewhere, follow it - there might be something interesting at the end.

So back from Frankfurt and just the dog in the house for a few days plus a promising swell forecast, means a one-day return dash to the West coast chasing waves. I've tried Tullan and never really got on with it - last time I was across, it was Rossnowlagh for the first time.

I loved the waves, although the water quality wasn't the best. I've tasted worse - the aforementioned Sunset being a prime example. This time there looks like a good bit of swell, 14 feet @ 12 seconds straight out of the North West, which in my amateur judgment may be a bit beefy for Rossnowlagh, and will certainly render Tullan a train wreck. Combined with a wind which is starting onshore, but likely to swing around from the South later, the die is cast - the South wind will be crossshore in Tullan and Rossnowlagh, but close to offshore at Streedagh, which will also be a bit more sheltered from the guts of the swell. 3 hours chase across Ireland later, I walk over the dunes at Streedagh to find that I've been spot on interpreting the forecast - there are waves heaving on to the beach, and spray ripping off the top of them in a near-offshore - beautiful! The only thing is that instead of peeling neatly one way or another, they are closing out and slamming shut in huge sections - one of the hazards of Streedagh.

Still, first surf of the year, so into the gloriously cold water of an Irish spring, followed by 50 minutes of battling with the elements. It would have been longer, but I started to get a strange sensation after a while - dog guilt. I didn't know that such a thing existed. With the rest of the family humans in Cork, and the dog home alone in Dublin, it started to feel wrong to be out there. I'm not sure if the dog needed me home, or if I needed to be home with the dog - but it suddenly felt very far away. Something karmic was not right, and I couldn't fight the feeling - so five minutes later I was heading back up the beach, packing up and roasting off in the car. When I made it back to Dublin, the dog, of course, was fine (if slightly desperate to get out to the toilet) - but things were definitely better just being there. Nearly 6 hours driving and 300 miles for only 50 minutes surfing might be considered a poor return - that's how I felt at the time - but in retrospect, it was worth it. I even attempted (just for my own personal amusement) to pop up on the board the wrong way around on one wave - right foot forward - and didn't fall in. Not for the first second anyway. Something I might pursue, as being able to pop up either way around would be a huge bonus if I ever get even half good.

Being prepared to be bad at stuff seems to be a skill that we lose as we get older, which is a shame, as it's so often a prerequisite for becoming good at stuff.

Iness Mezel - "Amazone"

2011-04-19T11:48:00.000+01:00

I heard Amazone by Iness Mezel on the unpredictable and fascinating RTE Lyric FM show, Reels to Ragas.with Gerry Godley. It's on 7-8pm on Tuesdays, and I was putting our 7-month old to sleep upstairs, as one does. Not with reels to ragas I might add, not exactly sleeping music good though it is. So anyway as luck would have it I was descending the stairs tentatively baby-monitor in hand, listening for the telltale rustle-clunk-pause-scream that denotes the loss of the soother during the critical going-to-sleep phase - and for some reason this night, sleep happened before the loss-of-soother incident. The point being, I was in the kitchen a few minutes short of 8pm, while Reels to Ragas was still on, and Mr Godley played "Amazone" as his final track.

It's been a long time since I've actually stood jaw-open at a track, but this one did it for sure. It's tempting to describe it as a car-crash collage of styles (which implies that it's a bad thing - which it most definitely is not). What is is, is a quite astonishing collage that (to my mind) draws the links between styles across thousands of years and thousands of miles.

It's the sound of Berber Africa looked at through a French lens, and (most compelling of all), is driven by the most African of all modern musics, pure Chicago house. The verses are the thing - that spinning loopy 1-bar feel, and the stomp of the kick and the claps together, the echoes of ancient Africa as only Chicago made them sound, with that North African vocal floating and imploring over the top as the beat grinds away.

Thank you Iness Mezel, thank you Gerry Godley. Cracking!

Larry Heard - "Alien"

2011-02-18T05:42:00.003Z

I always forget about Larry Heard. I'll forget for ages, and then hit on one of his old records, put it on, and I'm always blown away by how good they are. Flirting a bit with the 'proper' musicianship side of things (I like the dislocated emotion you get from stripped machines, alright?) - he still made just jaw-dropping soundscapes. From a production point of view, his tracks were always flawless as well - the mixes are so good, and he always chose the perfect noise for every part. Lush.

I came across Alien by him earlier this week, and knew immediately that this was the track for Friday. I think it's one of his greatest tracks of all time - the easy warm bassline, the open spacey pads, the clicking drum pattern, a mix that feels like there's so much space you could walk in and between all the sounds inspecting them from every angle, and piano and lead sounds draped over the top like a satin sheet.

Happy Friday!

Blowing Bubbles

2011-02-15T11:36:00.000Z

From time to time, I've had some small share stuff going on. Nothing that's going to buy me as much as a spare tube for my bike, which I seem to need on almost an every-two-days basis at the moment (thanks everyone breaking glass in and around Dublin!) - but as a result of having shares here and there, I preferred to have them through a company that knows what they are doing.

Anyway, said company (Edward D Jones fact fans) occasionally send out letters explaining the state of the world, the markets, etc. They don't offer to make you rich, which is one of the attractions (most people offering to make you rich actually intend to take your money and make them rich). But I digress. I've been trying to dig out one of the letters from Edward D Jones for ages, and I finally found it.

For context... the dot-com bubble in all stock prices Internet-related was exploding from about 1995 until 2000. The massive collapse of this bubble in prices occurred in spring of 2000, with the NASDAQ peaking on Friday March 10th. In the following three business days - Monday 13th - Wednesday 15th March, 9% of this peak value was erased.

In April 1999, one year before the cataclysm, I received one of the occasional missives from EDJ. It still stands today as a spectacular example of someone keeping their heads when everyone else was losing theirs.

Future lessons from the past...

Dawn Landes - "Young Folks"

2011-02-11T12:39:00.000Z

I came across Dawn Landes in an article about music production..... in..... Tape Op. The name may come as no relief to you, but I've spent the last *month* trying to remember after losing the magazine! Anyway, I digress and I've hardly even started. Landes has done a great deal of production and engineering herself, and really knows her stuff.

She's also got a great voice, writes great tunes, and radiates unaffected believable love of music. Here in honour of her brilliantness, are three Dawn Landes tunes for Friday. Well, actually two of them are the same tune, Young Folks. One version sung with young folks, and the other version sang with old folks. Pretty cool huh? And in fact Young Folks isn't even her tune.

Alright already, here's 1 Dawn Landes tune for Friday, and 2 different versions of Dawn Landes singing someone else's tune for Friday. Pedants.

Black Dub - "The Birth of Bellavista Nights"

2011-02-04T05:20:00.007Z

I came across the Black Dub project following a feature in the latest Sound on Sound. Black Dub is the latest project from Daniel Lanois, who produced The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby and a stack of other U2 and non-U2 stuff.

From Sound on Sound:

One very noticeable feature that unites both Le Noise and Black Dub is that they appear to be painted with fairly broad brush-strokes, using raw, free performances. In the past, Lanois has been responsible for his fair share of layered, very detailed, almost perfectionist records, works that seem to embody his one‑time adage that an image of beauty is greatly enhanced by the introduction of a piece of grit. On Le Noise and Black Dub Lanois appears to have reversed his maxim: they sound more like grit greatly enhanced by pieces of beauty.

“Thank you for noticing the qualities of grit and freedom in these new albums,” replies Lanois. “I like the broad brush-stroke analogy. It’s a very painterly way of looking at things, and I love for music to have pictures. That part of my work has never changed: I like things to be cinematic. I also think that the detail is always there in my work."

Lanois has always had interesting idea about music and art, and how to get there, and this is no different. There was lots of talk in the interview, both from Lanois and from his co-producer Mark Howard about the importance of capturing the actual performance of the instrument, and how the technology was really secondary to the music that you were recording. I hadn't heard of Black Dub before, but it was enough for me to go searching.

It's interesting stuff, and here's one great example - three and a half minutes of perfectly captured guitar nestled in those Lanois delays. Just an amazingly perfect guitar sound, a great rolling riff, and a story all in one noise. It's the sort of thing you want to have on vinyl, with an immensely expensive hifi to play it through.

Signature SP1200 project

2011-01-21T15:09:00.008Z

I've been quite lucky in salvaging a couple of things that were getting thrown out at work. Deemed surplus to requirements - one of them was an original SP1200 sampling drum machine. Killer 12-bit angry sampling, drum noises go in weedy and come out like a lump hammer. It's not hard to see why it's popular.

Then, in the course of an office clearout, I discovered that I'd also come in to possession of the full service manual for said SP1200...

Which was even more interesting. Component lists, circuit diagrams, engineering troubleshooting - everything that went into making this machine the legend that it is.

But then at the end, it got even more interesting - the credits page, not present in the end-user manual (not the end-user manual I have anyway).

I pondered over that list of people responsible for this most legendary of machines. Then I realised that I had buried in the house at home (another thing I got in trouble for bringing home!) - an unused overlay for the SP1200.

Never before stuck on a machine. Virginal. Still with the sticky back ready to go.

So this has me thinking. What if I could rustle up everyone on the list of original SP1200 credits? I know where to find four of them right now, another guy I'm sure I can track down through the first four - and I think I've located another four, which would leave only four heads to find.

What if I could get the overlay to them all individually?

What if they all signed it, and got it back to me, and I pulled off the overlay on my SP1200, and stuck the signed overlay on it?

Would I then have an SP1200, signed by the entire original team that put the machine together?

Is it just me, or would that be not only unique, but a physical piece of music and sampling history?

Lykke Li - "I'm Good, I'm Gone"

2011-01-12T10:48:00.003Z

It's Portuguese Government Bond auction time! But more about that later.

I've liked Lykke Li for a long time. Really, really good tunes, good singing, and catchy without being infuriatingly annoying. Music that (hopefully, probably) will still sound good in 10 years - and that's the trick.

It's also great to see someone who can *really* actually do it - who has real musical talent. You can tell the difference - the people who are trying less, and still producing more. The people who can do it without any technology fixing their mistakes and polishing out the human element. The ones who can just sing, with no amplification, and convince you.

Here's Lykke Li, in a toilet, no amplification, and again the song just shines through. I'm not sure about the need for the spoons, taps, etc, but when you're a kooky Scandi, you can get away with anything.

Happy New Year!

Pipeline Masters

2010-12-08T13:06:00.002Z

The most perfect wave in the world?

Starting probably today swell-dependent - the 2010 Pipe Masters. Here's the 2008 trailer...

The debt and the defacit

2010-12-08T11:29:00.003Z

I've got to admit, I don't get the IMF/EU bailout of Ireland. I mean, I understand it from the IMF/EU point of view - Ireland was about to take down the Euro due to systematic risk, sovereign default, bond jitters, etc.

What I don't understand, is why Ireland is taking the so-called "bailout". If the state needs to borrow in order to keep funding services, logic might suggest that there are too many services going on and that they need to be cut. To borrow in order to pay for them surely just means paying interest on the loans, as well as for services that we can't afford anyway.

So never mind the defacit (which I take to be the gap between annual revenue and expenditure) - if the overhanging total debt is not payable, would it not be better to default now, face all the consequences early and get it done with, rather than kicking the can down the road on a debt that will ultimately require default anyway - while we all make the money-lenders a bit richer via interest in the meantime?

Huge surf in Ireland

2010-11-10T05:57:00.000Z

From earlier this week - the remnants of a Hurricane finding an offshore reef somewhere off NW Ireland.

Mentioned on Andrew Cotton's blog here - he was out surfing it - and if you didn't see it in the Irish Times front page today, an incredible photograph from photographer Aaron Pierce's site is here.

Pulsate

2010-11-09T17:00:00.004Z

Where music, visuals, technology, UI and meditation collide...

Check out Andre Michelle's flash audio gadget, Pulsate. Click to make at least two circles, and then watch and listen.

Hypnotic, random and beautiful. Bravo!

Disco Nihilist - "Leaving Bull Creek"

2010-10-22T06:26:00.000+01:00

I found out about Disco Nihilist through the new Love What You Feel label - here is one of the tracks on the debut LWYF release, great circular trippy stuff.

For some reason last week, I was wandering about searching for Disco Nihilist to see what other stuff they had released, and stumbled on this track on Construction Paper records.

This is right up my street for dark playing-out club material. The kick seems a bit thuddy at first, but just try that through a big system and watch it go. Then there's the 2-beat synthy groove, which starts off almost inaudible and then growls and grows around the kick as it prowls on. Strident, moody, thudding walking-pace dark house, which just about suits a week full of strident, moody news - more on that later.

For now, happy Friday!

P.s. - another track from the 12" is here, and it's pretty nice too...

Live Music Project - Studio Rebuild

2010-10-13T16:39:00.003+01:00

I finally sold the beautiful mixing desk I had available for a few months. Baby on board, it was never really going to work out spacewise.

I'm going to miss the masses of inputs, and the incredible lightshow from the meterbridge when it was all running in the dark. I'm especially going to miss that warm 60Hz bass EQ.

With changes come opportunity though, and so in light of the fact that a change of mixing desk is on the cards, I'm now reassessing the entire music setup to try and squeeze more musical output out of less space. This is going to be a bit of an ongoing project, and I'm not quite sure what shape the final setup is going to be, but I'm going to cherry-pick the most crucial pieces of the studio, and rebuild a new setup from scratch.

The remit is - it must be physically small, it must be very fast to work with, it must produce great quality results, and - it needs to be robust enough that I can take it out live. To look at it from the opposite direciton - I'm going to build a 'live' setup, and then use that setup to be the writing studio as well. The old setup was amazing for in-house, but Logic Pro on a massive rack PC running through a big recording desk, was never going to be any way to go and perform the tracks live. And if you were performing from Logic, you might as well play a CD, right?

So first things first - mixing desk replacement. Flexible, small, good-quality, and gig-proof. I've pretty much decided on the solution for that problem - more news soon.

The second conundrum, which is the big one, is - how to sequence electronic tracks live? It needs to be a totally flexible solution, but it also needs to be a totally robust solution.

I'm wobbling between Ableton Live, and a hardware solution of some sort - options include the MPC3000 (expensive, rare, old, big), the RS-7000 (pricey, looks nasty, bit of an unknown quantity) and the ASQ-10 (floppy disks, old, rare as hens teeth, not cheap for what you get). I did even consider the Orbital Alesis MMT-8 solution, but you have to play everything in live when sequencing, which is a bit of a turn-off for certain experimental tune-writing in the studio.

I had thought about a Machinedrum, but it turns out it doesn't do polyphonic sequencing for external MIDI devices. I haven't written it off as part of the setup, as it does look pretty unrivalled as a modern drum machine if you don't want preset samples - but for sequencing everything, it's not going to work.

So what it's coming down to is - will Ableton be flexible enough, intuitive enough, and (crucially) robust enough to take out live, or do I need to go back and reconsider hardware options again...

S Express - "Superfly Guy"

2010-09-03T10:40:00.002+01:00

I had forgotten about this. What a brilliant main groove - 3 drum noises, a bassline, and a couple of micro samples - lethal stuff.

Happy Friday!

Man On Wire - tonight!

2010-08-31T14:44:00.004+01:00

Just a quick note for those in Ireland/UK - the epic Man on Wire documentary (probably my favourite film of the last few years) is on Discovery Channel tonight, 9pm.

If you haven't seen it - don't miss!

Lupe Fiasco - "Dumb It Down"

2010-08-13T06:17:00.000+01:00

I don't listen to a huge load of hip hop - an occasional work trip to LA means that a convertible and cruising the freeways to some chord-laden West-coast rhythms somehow suits the SoCal vibe - but when you really want some serious rap to make your brain stop and back up, Lupe Fiasco has got to be top of the game.

Try "Dumb It Down" from a few years back: an utterly hypnotic beat that keeps stepping up and down just by swapping the kick drum sound, a deathly dark synth line, and outrageously conscious lyrics implicitly lancing gansta rap and everything that goes with it.

You been sheddin' too much light Lu - you make them wanna do right Lu
They're getting self-esteem Lu - these girls are trying to be queens Lu
They're trying to graduate from school Lu - they're startin to think that smart is cool Lu
They're trying to get up out the hood Lu - I'll tell you what you should do...

Buy buy sell sell!

2010-08-02T12:26:00.003+01:00

I've recently been having a gander at stockmarkets and the like. There's something that I find utterly fascinating about it - it's clearly a casino and a place to lose a stack of money.

But more and more I can't help but wonder, is there any way that you could take a little slice of money out of it, if you were prepared to trade really quickly, pay huge amounts of attention, and weren't hungry for big profits?

I've been taking a look at the trading options offered by GFC Markets (you've probably seen the banner adverts all over the internet - profit from the falling Euro!). Ignoring the gold, oil, and normal stocks that you can do through them, one of the main things they offer is trading in currency pairs (i.e. buying euros against dollars, or selling Swiss Francs against the Yen - whatever). Just to clarify, crowds like GFC offer you 'leverage' - i.e. for $10 of your own money, you might be able to place a buy or sell order of up to $2000. This has an upside and a downside - the upside is that those microscopic swings in the market that are happening constantly, might therefore be exploited to actually make a measurable amount of money. The major downside of leverage is, if you get stung, you get really stung. Luckily with GFC (and I'm not trying to advertise them), it appears that you are never risking more than the money you put in - so you can't end up owing what you didn't decide to risk in the first place. You can of course, lose everything that you do put in - never gamble with what you cannot afford to lose!

One other thing you need to watch out for, is the spread. The price you can buy at is 3 points higher than the price you can sell at. What this means is, if you place a buy order, the price needs to increase by 3 points before you can break even by selling at the same price you bought at. This is the spread, as as I've found out, it's a killer.

So I've come to look at this like a sort of quasi-maths/stats problem: if you work from a presumption that the rate/price of the currency pair you are purchasing is *totally* unpredictable, is there a way that you could intelligently place buy and sell orders, in such a way that you could be in-profit, on average?

The orders you place are effectively 'positions' that you are taking, which remain open until you decide to close them. When you close them, then you either recoup the profit if the change has been to your benefit, or you are due for the loss! There are two major tools when you have placed a buy (expecting a rise) or a sell (expecting a fall) order. They are the 'limit' (a profitable price at which your order will auto-close), and a stop-loss (a loss-making price at which your order will auto-close).

So if goats are $10, and you place a 'buy' order on 10 goats with a stoploss of $7 and a limit of $12, then if the price rises to $12/goat, then your limit orders execute, closing the position and you get 10 x $2 as profit. If however the price falls to $7/goat, then your stop loss kicks in, your position is closed, and you lose 10 x $3. Easy right?

Well, I've been trying for a little while on the GFC practice account, and I'll put my hands up - I've given up.

I tried a couple of different strategies...

Chasing Momentum
This strategy was to "chase the momentum" on a tiny scale - place buy orders as the price was rising, and try to sell to cover those orders when the price had risen far enough to be profitable (and the reverse on the selling side - sell during little collapses, and then try to buy back and cover at a lower price). Great in theory, the problem being that sometimes the price reverses and never returns. So, it's going up, you stick on 2 or 3 buy orders, then it reverses before your positions are profitable, and keeps going down. You're then left with a choice - do you liquidate the unprofitable 'buy' positions for a small loss - or keep them open as the price plunges, and hope that it comes back up again?

Adjacent Hedging
This was an attempt to basically simultaneously place a buy and a sell order, both with limits and stop losses, and therefore make a tiny profit slice no matter which way the market moved. So if for example, you bought at 1.3000, then you were simultaneously selling at 1.2997. The issue here was that a limit order needed a minimum of 8 points distance, so on the 1.3000 'buy', the lowest limit you could have would be to sell and cover at 1.3008. As a result, the stop loss you needed on the 'sell' order had to be 1.3007, but as that equates to a 10 point loss, you need to make at least 11 points on the 'buy' order to be profitable. Which means the buy at 1.3000 needs a stop at 1.3011. And the reverse on the sell side. Ultimately, what it means is that the buying price going up, is going to bump the stop-loss on the 'sell' at 1.3008, but won't hit the limit to take profit on the 'buy' until the selling price gets to 1.3011 which is 6 points later. Or to put it simply, your stop-losses on both orders are several points closer to your current price than your limit orders, so the statistical likelyhood is that all the micro-volatility in the price will mean the price just drunkenly wandering about, nudging your stop-losses and accumulating you losses, and only rarely getting a limit that will make you tiny amounts. A good way to lose money.

My final attempt was based on something I noticed about the way the price behaved during a day of trading. The exchange prices wobble around set levels for a good while, not doing too much, and then at certain points, they 'break out' of the range they have been wobbling in, and take a quite visible 'step' upwards or downwards, where they then recommence their small volatile wobbles at a different level. So I came up with a new idea:

Capturing Breakouts
The idea here was to wait for the pattern of wobbling to emerge over time - look for a price that had been within a fairly obvious range for half an hour, or longer. Then, set a significantly large buy order several points above this range, and a similar sized sell order several points below - both with limit orders a few points away. The idea was that upon the market price undergoing a 'breakout' upwards or downwards, these automatically placed orders would 'capture' the breakout (while I cancelled the order in the opposite direction) and then as the breakout in price proceeded, the limit would kick in, and I would automatically collect the money. The big orders were a way to limit the need for trading - so that I would only have to capture 2 or 3 breakouts in a day to make the money I wanted. Safe concept, right? No. What I actually learned, is that there is no way to accurately estimate the 'wobble range' that a price will exhibit, so there is no way to safely set the order levels for the buy and sell. Similarly, there is no way to know how big a breakout will be, which means that often what happens is you get a little bust out of the normal range, which triggers the buy or sell order (depending on the direction of the bust out) - and then the price settles back into the range before it reaches your limit, leaving you with a very big bet that may be about to go badly south, taking a stack of your money with it.

In short, I've been unable to come up with a way of securing your positions, without the risk of leaving positions behind as the market price moves. The only guard against leaving positions behind is to always use stop losses, but my experience has been that stop-losses combined with the 3-point spread, effectively mean that you will, on average, lose.

I'd love to know if there is a way to exploit the random movements, but I can't help but feel that the spread between the buy and sell prices is the thing that tilts the odds fatally away from you.

Toto - "I can't stop loving you"

2010-07-09T09:49:00.003+01:00

I checked in the blog archives, and it was back in 2007 that I mentioned Danish superstar Bjarne Langhoff and his stunning stop-in-the-aisles demonstrations that year (and possibly the year before, I can't quite remember) at the NAMM and Frankfurt music tradeshows.

Bjarne was delivering unbelievable covers of a few songs, culminating with the double-act of "Man in the Mirror" by Michael Jackson followed with "I can't stop loving you" by Toto. Now I've always had a thing about proper, pure pop and songwriting, and one of the overriding principles I've taken has always been that you need to keep your verses under control (if not outright moody), and when you hit the chorus, it really needs to deliver. (pet hate - modern pop tracks that don't really go for it in the chorus)

Or as the KLF instructed, "always use the one you can't believe you're using".

Well here's that Toto track, and while I've got to say that Bjarne's version was probably even better (when you hit the first chorus, you really knew you'd arrived at a very important point), it's really a great song. The verses are perfectly crafted, and although the Totmeisters could do with a the totally open-mouthed power singing that Langhoff consistently delivered, the chorus is pretty epic.

Time passes quickly and chances are few...

The Stone Roses - "Ten Storey Love Song"

2010-07-02T06:42:00.005+01:00

Back in the 90s (and it's strange to think about how long ago the 90s actually were), I did all sorts of bits before, during and after university. One of them, was a temporary involvement with big-gig security, working for a company that provided security to lots of the huge English festivals. There were many funny moments that can't really be printed, but there's another one that occurred to me this morning that can.

Security was always a lottery at a big festival - you could end up doing anything from the easy and surreal (guarding doors backstage while famous people came and went), to utterly boring (directing traffic at the edge of the site on dusty trails for hours), to frantic (dealing with an entry gate, particularly the main gate). Somehow fate intervened when I decided to do the 10 hour overnight bus journey south for security at the Reading 1996 festival, and from nowhere, I was plucked to do main-stage security, standing in front of the main stage for 3 solid days in the pit.

The lineup is recorded on wikipedia, and my memory is of seeing The Prodigy, Terrorvision, Ice-T, Garbage, Dodgy, Super Furry Animals, Moloko, Kula Shaker, Sonic Youth, Ash and Reef. It's where my love of Billy Bragg started, I caught all of his set, and it stuck with me since. A guitar, a guy, belting out his songs, and some politics I was utterly in agreement with - evidently I'd started my drift to the left even back then.

I was in the pit when Sonic Youth closed it - that was an all-hands-on-deck set - I think they were last. It was one of the more disconcerting moments I had, after 3 long days, standing on the security plinth above the crowd in the front row in the dark, with blitzkrieg sheets of white noise pouring out of the PA behind for minutes upon minutes upon minutes, while nuclear whole-stage strobes caused the 80,000 odd faces in front of me to flick in the darkness like some deranged film, eventually bringing me to the edge of vertigo. And in the midst of this you were supposed to spot and fish out bodysurfers, many of whom were huge guys wearing heavy duty boots, and every time the strobes fired, they weren't where you thought they were last time.

(The barrier in front of the crowd was about 20 feet separated from the stage by the 'pit' - and had a raised platform on the stage side you could stand on, to see better, or fish people out of the crowd. It looked something like this, only the one at Reading was monstrous and had no 'separations' in the platform, so you could walk/run along it the width of the stage. Anyway, you would stand 'down' in the pit when it was daylight, when the crowd was reasonably under control, when nothing needed attention. When it got dark, you needed to help or retrieve someone, or have a careful look into the crowd, you would stand 'up' on the plinth)

Then there was my front stage security encounter with the crazed and fluorescent Julian Cope, who chose to jump through the pit and up on to the security barrier, saunter up to me, and lean on my shoulder in front of the crowd while singing a couple of lines. Which I thought was very cool being a Cope fan, although not only did I have to maintain the arms-crossed deadpan serious security face, I took some heat for it from my Glasgow security colleagues afterwards ("***t was wearin' a dress!"). Not to worry - they felt more of a man when they got with the herd - Julian - you can lean on my shoulder any time. (Oh - and if anyone who was in the front 10,000 people while JC was playing happens to have a picture of this moment, I'd love a copy. It was a pretty funny moment, so there's got to be a photo somewhere)

Then there was seeing Black Grape live. Even better, seeing Bez live. Never has a man looked so off his face, and jumped up and down in a Sergio Tacchini tracksuit to such massive crowd acclaim. Still a legend...

But the moment that still stands out for me, was seeing Stone Roses live. It's universally gone down in the collective memory as a disastrous gig for them, a shambles, and was the last gig the Roses ever played. But not only did it sound not bad to me, it had some amazing moments in it.

And the most amazing moment for me was standing up on the plinth, facing the crowd, while they cranked out "Ten Storey Love Song" - with the sound blowing outside in the wind, that heaving subterranean thud that you only ever get from a massive PA system, and that huge walking bassline. There was a girl in the very front row, clearly a fan, tears streaming down her face the whole song. It's never left me.

Soundstream - "Good Soul"

2010-06-25T03:21:00.001+01:00

Friday! Friday! Friday!

Epic good-times tune, from Erik & Fiedel of that wierd blue MMM record fame (latterly to become known as Donna - more on this one some other time).

Anyway, "Good Soul" appeared under the new name Soundstream, followed Donna and some other more obscure releases on MMM - this is a bit less wierd, and a bit happier. It's utterly superb walking pace thudding happy cut up disco-by-synths house. It's even got chords and stuff - works just as well through a massive system as it does in my car on a sunny day.

Happy Friday!

The 12 days of Chicness

2010-05-21T06:17:00.002+01:00

So I started running a "12 days of Chicness" series of videos on facebook. It seemed to be a good way of reminding myself of the utter brilliance of their songwriting back catalogue - both for Chic, and for other bands.

To avoid a blog post every day, I thought I'd collapse them here weekly - so today, 1 week until the gig, 5 days in, here's the first 5 days of Chicness...

Aphex Twin - Analogue Bubblebath

2010-05-07T11:13:00.003+01:00

Friday morning.

The UK managed to nearly-elect a conservative government, which is probably what will ensue. There is a honking financial hole to be dealt with, and a conservative government will almost certainly mean that the burden will fall most harshly on the poorest and least able to defend themselves.

The Euro is about to split up. And that's not hyperbole or metaphor. Effects on poor people - see above.

Turn it up and let it go.

Underground Resistance - Journey of the Dragons (UR)

2010-04-30T05:12:00.001+01:00

I love Underground Resistance, and Galaxy to Galaxy from 1993 is one of the most mindblowing releases (in my mind) that dance music has ever conjured up - 2 12" slabs of insane deep soulful electronics.

Somewhere in that doublepack is "Journey of the Dragons", a massive building swell of swirling emotions, clicking rimshots, pinned down with an insistent 808. Re-reading the label now, I find out that not only does it have Mad Mike's hands on it, but also features 'magic' Juan Atkins.

The writing on the label reads:

(dedicated to the memory of Chris Hani,
Bruce Lee, Brandon Lee & Yoshihiro Hattori.
May your journey through the stars be peaceful.)

Deep, deep, deep shit.

Ireland, the Housing Market, and the Future

2010-04-29T15:53:00.010+01:00

I've been a bit of a keen watcher of the Irish housing market - well - ever since buying an Irish house. Sinking yourself face-deep into negative equity tends to focus your attention like that.

Without having a crystal ball, and setting aside the possibility of a black swan such as a sovereign default, breakup of or expulsion/exit from the Euro, or some sort of economic disaster driven by an IMF package to avoid one of the first two possibilities, here's some random thoughts on what I (as an untrained eye) see happening and coming in the Irish housing market:

Prices - Achieved prices at the lower end of the Dublin market are probably now about 55% of peak asking prices.
Activity - finally, yes. Some sales are starting to go through again at the levels prices have now reached - probably a combination of some stability in prices for the first time in 2 years, and a glut of first time buyers who (a) have been waiting, and (b) can get finance at these prices. The employment situation and continued pricing stability is the only thing that will keep that wheel slowly turning.
The commuter towns - asking prices boomed fastest, and achieved prices have probably collapsed hardest in the peripheral counties to Dublin. It's going to be a long road back for equity in the area surrounding the city.
The city and the country - rural areas physically removed from Dublin (i.e. once you get beyond commutersville) probably see price changes lagging Dublin timewise. As people move less frequently, less urgently, and in smaller numbers in the country, the fall in house prices has much further to go in the more sparsely populated parts of Ireland. The fall in equity and prices in Dublin will eventually drag the rest of the country into line, but it is going to take time. (If I had a big paid-for house in the country, and wanted to swap it for one in the city, now might not be a bad time to take advantage of this presumably temporary differential)
No tradeup market - a lot of people are in negative equity, so anyone who owns a house not in the cheaper part of the market (i.e. not a first-time-buyers house) is going to be waiting a long time for someone able to trade up from below.

So if I had to bet any money, what would it be on?

The most likely scenario to me is a distinct two-tier market. As the housing market hits bottom (and there is always a bottom, though you probably won't know where it was until we're long past it), it will likely fracture into two sections

Houses in good repair, solidly built, in good locations, together with the best of the apartments, will start to slowly stabilise or recover some value.
Houses that are brand new, poorly built, insanely situated, and the vast tracts of apartments in the middle of nowhere (that never made sense), may never recover value.

I'm not sure that fracture has occurred yet, or that it'll even be a distinct event as opposed to a subtle, drawn-out process - but I can't see any other logical conclusion as to what's in our future.

U2 - "No Line On The Horizon"

2010-04-21T09:01:00.000+01:00

U2 albums always go through a process with me - from nonplussed, to interested, to fascinated, to amazed. The last few have been easier to get in to, but there's always a twist.

Their latest, No Line on the Horizon, opens with the title track - an amalgam of everything U2 have been. I know a girl, whose like the sea. Walking-pace drums, rumbling bass, verses squeezed through musical passes with vocals hanging on thirds and sheets of distorted guitars that hark back to Achtung Baby, while the choruses open out into plains of more relaxed lyrics and a New Years Day/City Of Blinding Lights piano line. I watch her changing every day for me. A decent chunk of the album was worked on and/or recorded in Fez, Morocco, and you can hear the first evidence in the first track in the form of an Arabic stringed instrument. There's a lot of more subtle percussive stuff happening as well - lots of toms, tabla-type bits, and the kick has been cut right back, managing to keep the rhythm driving while quietly changing the form - clever and subtle. Every night I have the same dream - I'm hatching subplots, scheming some scheme, oh yeah...

The next track, is Magnificent. By far the most commercial track on the record, it's an absolute belting epic of classic U2, featuring the most monstrous guitar line on the album, 4-on-the-floor kick, a thunderously anchored bass playing root lines, and the most celebratory lyrics. I was born... I was born to be with you. Everything here is right - all the sounds are perfectly chosen, and the mix is a killer. Obviously the mixing on every U2 track is amazing, but this one is pretty produced, and they really, really nailed it. I was born, I was born to sing for you. The arrangement (something people often ignore) is also in a completely different class here. In the verses, the guitar riff is history and you're left with Bono's vocals exposed over the bassline. The first verse backs the vocals with real background guitar chords, verse two adds soaring Eno synths and some organ pieces over the top. Backing right off during the verses creates acres of space for the melody to sing, and it also means when the guitar riff comes back in the chorus, it hits like a ton of bricks. The vocals and the guitar back each other from start to finish, stepping out of each others way at the appropriate moments, while the whole track rises and falls in intensity with the verses and choruses. It's a masterpiece of arrangement - if you are looking for the Beautiful Day on this album, you can stop searching here. Only love, only love unites our hearts.

So far, so optimistic but "Moment of Surrender" takes a much gloomier turn, opening in a Thomas Brinkmann style scuffle of looped glitching and resolving into a sequence of strings that heralds the darkest track on the album, an agonising work revolving around getting the wrong side of addiction. I tied myself with wire, to let the horses run free. It's one of Clayton's great moments too, because while the bass work is unspectacular, it's perfectly judged, and (like the verses in Magnificent) without the bass, this song simply doesn't exist. We were barely conscious. Whether the song references Clayton's difficulties isn't clear, but someone writing knows what they are talking about. I've been in every black hole. Horses are always up for a run, but it's difficult to know whether can you get them back in the stable before you take them out. Life, from leaving the house, crossing the road, to playing the stock market, has something to do with judging your own comfort in the face of risk. It's an unremittingly bleak song: I was punching the numbers at the ATM machine - I could see in the reflection a face staring back at me.

This bleak darkness sets the stage for one of the great moments of the album.

Birdtweets, happy muted chimes, clean wake-up guitar arpeggios... Sunshine... Sunshine. Welcome to Unknown Caller. I was lost between the midnight and the dawning. There is a story being told here, and it's not just a series of single songs. Bono carries the pensive verses as he explains the depth of where we've just come from. In a place of no consequence, or company. And over and over again, Bono keeps finding the head of the nail (rusty or not)... I had driven to the scene of the accident, and I sat there - waiting for me... The verses having outlined the troubles of the past, the choruses talk of a hope for the future: Go - shout it out - rise up. These two songs together are the addiction analogy of the lift plunging down, where every so often you pass a floor where, if you are ready, you might be able to get out. Restart and - reboot yourself - you're free to go. The corner around these two songs is a gobsmacking illustration of the power of the album, and it's a stunning reminder of what you will forever lose with single-song download models. It proceeds into riotous ecstasy, bombastic organs and brass heralding the hope of tomorrow. Deep in the second song of this story in two parts, corners are being turned and chances are getting handed out. Shout for joy - if you get the chance. Jaw-dropping.

That done, we're into "I'll go crazy if I don't go crazy tonight", which is a journey into surviving as a couple dressed up as an ode to - well - an ode to going crazy tonight. Every beauty needs to go out with an idiot. There's much revisiting here of ground covered in "A man and a woman", and one understanding the other. It's not a hill it's a mountain, as you start out the climb. Musically it's more straight U2 in the vein of the last two albums, and you have to pinch yourself to remember that while this doesn't stand out on this album, most other bands would kill to have one track like this on their record. We're gonna make it all the way to the light.

Sixth is "Get on your boots" - the lead single from the album, the one that sounds least like the rest of the album, and the one that always made least sense to me. You free me from the dark dream. Heavy distorted bass riffing, drum machines, synth noises battering around, some semitone tuning and weird harmony vocals that certainly aren't straight out of Dalkey - and walls of distorted guitars. I don't wanna talk about wars between nations. Less commercial than much of the rest of the album to my mind, it's got one of the more odd vocal references I've ever heard from U2 on record, when towards the end, Bono starts intoning an unmistakeably Shaun Ryderesque "Yeah hey hey". Madchester referenced in a new U2 record? Perhaps not for the last time!

Next is Stand Up Comedy, a stunning full-blooded emotional call to arms. I gotta stand up - the wire is stretched in between our two towers (surely a Man On Wire reference?). Again maybe it's me, maybe it's just the dominant 7th, but every time I hear Bono yelping Come all ye people, I'm hearing Shaun Ryder again and the drugged out bawling of Reverend Black Grape. Which is weird because at the back end of the instrumental break, the "God is love and love is evolutions very best day" is set back and positively reeks of Stone Roses era Brown. NLOTH Manchester influence - in my head only, or on the album?

As we progress into "Fez - Being Born", it does feel like we're leaving the classic widescreen U2 behind as a half-speed sort of almost William Orbit-esque dub thing winds slowly along with Bono, a million miles away in fields of reverb intoning "let me in the sound". Then suddenly the track breaks, and it's into more classical U2 stylings. Atlantic sea cut glass... It's not a track that immediately grabs you (which probably means it'll be a stone cold classic in a few years) - but it's a pretty amazing mood. African sun at last...

White As Snow follows, and it's a slow, lyrical walk through heart-wrenching territory. My brother and I would drive for hours - like we had years instead of days. It's another strange track, which has been in some corners ascribed to the feelings of a soldier dying in Afghanistan following a roadside bomb. Only poppies laugh under the crescent moon... Loaded with suspensions and emotive harmony vocals (how come the Edge can sing so high?!), it's both absorbing and uncomfortably emotionally claustrophobic at the same time. Now the wolves are every passing stranger - every face we cannot know.

Breathe is the penultimate song, and it's a triumphant return to the joyous best of the sound of Pop. The verses are nearly scat/rapped in an uncontrollable torrent of ideas (Doc says you're fine, or dying, Please, Nine 0 nine, St John Divine, on the line, my pulse is fine, but I'm running down the road like loose electricity) - while the choruses are transcendent thanksgiving (Walk out into the street, sing your heart out, the people we meet, will not be drowned out, there's nothing you have that I need, I can breathe). If you didn't like old U2, you're not going to like this - and if you love old U2, you need to get yourself a copy of this album.

The eleventh track, Cedars of Lebanon, brings the tempo right down, and closes out the album in a contemplative and densely pensive atmosphere. I'm pretty sure it's been put out there that the lyrics on this album were written from the perspective of different people, and from the lyrics here, it's only possible to conclude that Bono is thinking of veteran Middle East columnist Robert Fisk. The evidence is everywhere - Yesterday I spent asleep, woke up in my clothes in a dirty heap, spent the night trying to make a deadline, squeezing complicated lives into a simple headline. See this brief interview with Fisk (he actually doesn't say he's retiring, despite the title). Child drinking dirty water from the river bank, soldier brings oranges he got out from a tank... Following the greatest studio reference I can remember (the worst of us are a long drawn out confession - the best of us are geniuses of compression), the song and the record close out with cryptic advise - Choose your enemies carefully 'cos they will define you, Make them interesting 'cos in some ways they will mind you, They're not there in the beginning but when your story ends, Gonna last with you longer than your friend.

An awesome album and (I suspect) a massive grower, I expect songs from this to be getting discovered by people long in to the future.

For my money and despite some incredible U2 records in the intervening period, No Line On The Horizon is possibly the best U2 record since Achtung Baby. Don't believe me?

Come back to me in a few years.

Schatrax - First Heartbeat (Schatrax)

2010-03-19T11:54:00.005Z

A deep one for Friday.

The mythical Schatrax (one of the only labels which I've ever fallen so in love with I've become a completist - mentioned once previously), and the amazingly deep and underdone "First Heartbeat".

I love this track - it's a gorgeous mood. I love the really muted bassline buried around the bass drum (works so well over a PA), and the synth sounds are just gorgeous, and that sort of early 90s UK-style shuffling hat/cymbal/brush thing going on - you're never sure what bit is what, but it grooves.

It was also one of the first tracks on the first DJ mix I ever did back in 98, which scored me my first DJ gig ever. Great times, great memories. Another label that stopped before they put a foot wrong (see also Bluespirit, Basic Channel, Emoticon). Schatrax - thanks for starting, and thanks for stopping.

Schatrax weren't always easy records - some of them were angular and difficult - but when they did sublime, they really did it perfectly.

Rudder - "Floater" (live in Amsterdam)

2010-03-15T17:01:00.001Z

I posted a while back about Rudder's great album "Matorning" - well here they are playing "Floater" live in Amsterdam...

Thunderous, driving jazz for the next century - turn it up... get some!

Maas - 911 Angel

2010-03-05T06:32:00.001Z

Early Soma records had a sound. Some of them were tough, thumping even, but there was something about the synth sounds - always - sort of smooth. Sophisticated.

Some of them have dated a bit.

Some of them you could release tomorrow and they'd sound just as fresh.

Here's one of the ones immune to dating. Ewan Pearson aka Maas, in 1995, releasing an incredible EP of emotive electronics - and 911 Angel, a gentle odyssey in depth

The start is the thing - the winding portamento synth bass that practically talks to you, then the two-note breathy guide tones with the offbeat brush, with the filter on that winding synth still opening... then the chunky percussion, and the breathy tones moving higher again...

A break and into the 4-on-the-floor section (but with the kick drum ultimately suspended above an articulated percussion groove), and a clanging synth bell, and a crashing/reversing synthetic snare that rhythmically recalls the Positive Education handclaps. More on Positive Education some other time. Things seem getting tougher, more stripped. But then from above, those breathy chords, laid gently down on to the beat... and the chunky percussion, and the sinewy bass line starts grinding away again, and up and away you are taken.

Today is Bundoran, for the first time, and an 8 hour driving round trip to Tullan Strand. Small waves, clean, sunny, clear, and water temperature that should be hitting it's punishing annual low point.

A fragile tune, and a crisp early morning crossing Ireland oceanwards as the weather clears and people wind their way to work.

Ageless sounds for yesterday, today and tomorrow.

For Sale - Soundcraft Ghost 24LE

2010-03-03T16:52:00.007Z

I posted a few days/weeks back about my mixing desk for sale... all relevant details for interested parties in the previous post here.

Anyway, I finally got some pics of the desk itself, the actual one, the big kahuna, the evil wotsit.

So for anyone tempted, here's what she herself looks like...

Tune for Friday!

2010-02-19T07:05:00.000Z

Just because I listened to it yesterday.

A second date now added to May in Dublin. Which presumably means the first date is sold out. If it's sold out with a fraction of the people that were melting in the white-hot heat of the EP tent when these guys blew it apart... well...

Turn it up as loud as you can get away with. The bassline, the piano and the chords, the lyrics - that brassline later on...

Fuck.

Happy Friday!

Learning to surf part 2 - West Cork Surf School

2010-02-16T08:52:00.001Z

So where was I - oh yes - struggling to paddle back on to the beach in Santa Cruz, California. First time in the water, almost no waves around, and a 5-8 minute paddle clear across the bay in front of Cowell's Beach to get to the only area where small waves were breaking. Still, I had stood up on one.

Back in Ireland and the agonising pain in my arms subsiding, there was no way I was going to let the lack of a surfboard, a wetsuit, any fitness whatsoever, and living in Dublin (on the East coast of Ireland - the only completely wrong coast to be on) put me off.

As it turned out, my now brother-in-law (living in West Cork) had been interested in giving it a bash for some considerable time, so on the next trip down to the rebel county, we booked ourselves in with West Cork Surf School for a lesson.

It was here we learned the sacred art of struggling into a cold, damp wetsuit in the middle of winter, discovering halfway on that the knee pads are on the back of your knees. Swearing quietly, glancing around hoping no-one has noticed, then struggling back out of a cold, damp wetsuit. Turning it around, and then struggling back into a cold, damp wetsuit again. By the time the wetsuit is on, you've nearly had enough exercise for one day.

That done, the WCSS guys take you down to the beach with their super-safe foam-topped boards, and give you a long run through on the beach of what is involved once in the water. Starting off easy, the basic aim is to lie on the board in the whitewater (long after the wave has broken), and either paddle or be pushed into a wave, while lying down, just to get the feel for it. The first thing that strikes you as you start doing this for the first time, is the power of a seemingly small wave. When you don't 'catch' the wave, you get a nudge from behind, and then a torrent of whitewater burbles under you and the board, and the wave is gone. And you generally fall off the board in excitement/panic/stupidity. When you paddle fast enough at the right time, or the correct push is administered as the whitewater comes to you, then you catch the wave properly - that is to say, the wave catches you, and administers the most astonishing burst of forward speed. I defy you to try it and not get a huge grin on your face.

The rest of the first hour is spent doing that - walking the board out in the shallows through incoming waves (and boy does that sound like less work than it is!), turning around, lying on the board, and getting pushed, or trying to paddle at the right time to be caught by onrushing lines of whitewater.

Halftime sees the surf school lads haul everyone back to the beach to regroup, and go over the next part. The standing up part. Ha ha. So the idea is, that you want to be lying on the board, and then at the right moment, be pushed (or preferably paddle yourself) beachwards to be 'caught' by the incoming whitewater. And then, when you feel that rush of speed from the wave catching you, you then quickly and smoothly push up (like, uh, a push-up) on the board, and quickly and smoothly jump from lying down, to standing up crouched on the board. This ninja-like maneuver is the pop-up.

You practise a good few times on the beach, just to make sure that you have it right. And then it's back out in to the water to give it a go.

And in your first lesson, you can take it as read that you're going to get it wrong, a lot! Doing a pop-up on a board in the beach seems so easy. When your board has just been hit by whitewater, and you're shooting across the surface of it on your board at a speed you couldn't have imagined, the thought of doing anything as stupid as trying to stand up couldn't be further from your mind (holding on tight and enjoying the ride lying down seems like a much better option). But you give it a go a few times. And hopefully, with a bit of luck, a bit of timing, and a bit of what-the-hell attitude, you jump up once at the right moment, you don't lose the wave - and suddenly, you're standing on the board as it is driven smoothly forward across the water by the wave.

Nothing beats that. And once you've got your first one (and if you persevere, you will get it) - you will be back...

The Irish housing market - another moment of truth?

2010-02-03T20:23:00.002Z

I took a moment this week to update my ongoing tracker of asking prices in our area of Dublin, and staring at the graph that gets spat out by my figures every time I update them, a bit of a pattern seems to be starting to emerge.

As a disclaimer - you've got to be careful with patterns - too much staring and you see patterns everywhere, but this one does seem to be reasonably clear.

My figures are sorted by house size and street, so there's a trace on the line for every street in our area, and where there is more than one house size, an extra trace per street for each size of house too. So the actual graph spat out is a messy splatter, resembling a rats nest of cables... something like this:

So it seemed to me the longer I looked at this, that there was a fairly clear "stepping down" thing happening. I took the average of all the streets on a clean graph, and tried to get a "line of best fit" happening that would bring out the steps. In other words, could I find discrete sections where the price was quite stable, and discrete sections where it was plunging?

The totally unscientific messing about seems to reveal something like this:

2008
up to Jan - Stable
Jan to Apr - Falling
Apr to Augt - Stable
Aug to Oct - Falling
Oct to Dec - Stable

2009
Jan to May - Falling
May to Dec - Stable

Or in terms of the monthly length of the stages: falling (4), stable (5), falling (3), stable (3), falling (5), stable (7).

The falls are precipitous, and the stable sections are wobbly, but the pattern does seem to be there. Whether this indicates general human nature (when prices are dropping, you'd better undercut your selling neighbour if you want out fast), estate agent strategy (hold fire on price reduction every 2/3 months and test the market resistance to asking price) or something else altogether, I don't know.

What seems reasonably clear though is that every fall is ultimately arrested by at least a brief ledge - and every ledge for the last 2/3 years has eventually collapsed into another precipitous step down.

The question in my area now, therefore is - after a half-year of relative stability, is this something of a bottom - or another ledge?

The recent (2-year) record would suggest that after 6 months without a major fall, we're likely to find out soon...

For Sale: Soundcraft Ghost 24 LE Mixing Desk

2010-02-02T10:47:00.005Z

So for anyone that is in need of a pretty big, fantastic-sounding and visually impressive analogue mixing desk, let me sort out your problem.

I have a Soundcraft Ghost available for sale - pickup in Dublin, Ireland (it's heavy!).

Looks a little bit like this:

That's not a picture of my actual one, but I can get high-res pics of the desk and any individual bits you want to see for anyone that's interested.

EDIT - pics of the actual desk I'm selling are now here...

Anyway, it's a serious 8-bus desk for someone that wants to do serious music. 24 channels inline means you get 48 line inputs (up to 24 Mics), plus 4 stereo FX returns gives you 56 inputs on mixdown.

Individually switchable phantom power per-channel, channel, group and mix inserts, HP rolloff per-channel, 4-band EQ on every channel (2 shelfs inc. a super-warm 60Hz bass shelf and 2 fully parametric mids), 8 Aux busses (6 mono, 2 stereo), PFL or Solo-in-place, built in talkback Mic, level and peak LEDs on every channel, full level metering for all groups and master bus.

The desk sells now for around £3150 sterling new, and in addition to the desk and 2U rack PSU/cable, included is the 24-channel meterbridge, which gives you full LED metering for every channel and is worth another £500 new... plus a Proel mixing desk stand for it if you wish.

Home non-smoking studio use only, gorgeous desk but I need the space so I'm downsizing to something slightly smaller!!

€2,200, or make me a very near offer... available now!

Surfing Sunset Beach LA

2010-01-16T14:53:00.008Z

Here's the beach (Sunset) I was attempting to surf Wednesday morning after arriving in LA. It was a bit much for my whitewater beginner status, with boulders on the shoreline meaning you had to jump in between waves and then paddle like crazy just to get out before the next wave claimed you on the rocks. I spent a couple hours giving it a go, and mostly got paddling practise - either paddling out of the way of the larger sets coming through, or attempting to paddle for waves, and not quite having the positioning right.

Here it is working - a near perfect Southern California righthand pointbreak...

Generally, as the waves jacked up underneath me I was pretty glad that I didn't quite get them, as I ended up on a good few balanced on the top as it feathered looking down the front of the wave, and muttering swearwords to myself about the carnage that would ensue if I actually tried to throw myself down a green face that large, and then in my inept beginner phase try to struggle to my feet in the half a second before it detonated on my head.

I'm free on Sunday afternoon and the swell is supposed to be much smaller (in fact, I'm not sure there'll be anything), but I expect I'll give it another go and see what happens.

Here's one of a stand up paddle surfer making their way outside, with Santa Monica in the background.

747 @ Schipol

2010-01-16T14:43:00.003Z

Here's the 747 that kindly and without breaking sweat transported me the 5500 miles from Amsterdam to LA on Tuesday, sitting in the snow at Schipol prior to the journey.

Without doubt the most beautiful airliner ever, this shot was an attempt to somehow capture the grace and massiveness of it.

NAMM 2010 - Eigenlabs Eigenharp

2010-01-16T02:17:00.004Z

Here's a slightly different but very impressive looking offering:

The Eigenharp is a new musical instrument from a company by the name of Eigenlabs.

There are two models - the Alpha, which is a pretty tall thing, and looks like a thin fretboard almost, except it's populated with a vast array of buttons which are astonishingly touch-sensitive, pressure-sensitive, and can detect both roll and yaw (so effectively every button is a 3-dimensional controller). To add to that, there's a ribbon controller down both sides, the whole thing is driven by a breath input (not unlike a bassoon crook) at the top, and supported by a cello-style spike at the bottom. Confused yet? Don't be - despite an eye-watering $5,900 price tag, it's a stunningly gorgeous piece of design, especially in the custom-available dark wood variations (to see one is to want one). It's great to see companies coming out with genuinely new ways of physically playing live music.

The other model is the Pico, which is a cut down version, much smaller with less buttons (but just as sensitive), also featuring a breath controller and one ribbon controller up the back - all for just $590.

Both units have a cable that runs to a main brain, that then feeds to a computer - but the physical unit you play really does look amazing, especially the big one, and both are shipping now.

Nicely done!

NAMM 2010 - Teenage Engineering OP-1

2010-01-15T16:36:00.006Z

First cool thing from NAMM 2010 - the Teenage Enginering OP-1.

I mentioned this last year, and it's looking cooler all the time. There's a new tape function which seems to basically work like an old-school 4-track, talk of multiple sequencing modes including "very basic" and possibly some "quite random" variations, and the whole unit just seems extremely immediate and exciting. I'm planning a massive studio strip and rebuild (if anyone wants to buy a large mixer in Ireland, please shout - more on that soon) - new ways of working are the order of the day, and anything which strips out administrative overhead and allows you to get the music down fast is going to be a winner. The OP-1 sounds awesome in it's current format, and the emphasis on a slick and fast physical user interface and quick results puts it very high on my list.

The question now is, how long is it going to take to ship? TE currently say they're shooting to get into beta this year, but notwithstanding the fact they need to get it correct before they ship, they also need to get it out before some larger company cherry-picks the best part of the idea and eats their lunch.

Come on TE, get this thing shippable and get it out there - as long as it's a viable proposition at shipping, you can add more bells and whistles as future updates!

98 Toyota Avensis - Spinning Key / Central Locking problem

2010-01-14T14:13:00.002Z

So in the hope that the wonders of blogger's high google search rankings might bring someone knowledgeable to stumble on this... I've got a problem with an Irish 98 Toyota Avensis.

The issue seems to be that the key is spinning endlessly in the drivers door, without ever 'catching' the mechanism to lock or unlock the car. It's been getting progressively worse over the course of months, and it's finally refusing to actually lock the car full-stop today - it just won't catch the locking mechanism or engage the central locking at all. It either spins endlessly, or if it ever does 'catch', then it jams and won't turn the mechanism.

Has any wonderful person out in internet land ever come across this problem, and a solution? It has been degenerative, so it's gotten slowly worse and worse over time, but it's just suddenly jumped from really bad to totally broken today. The garage (who are normally very very good) have said it can be fixed but it's the barrel in the door that needs to be replaced, and that's the thick end of €900... could it really be that?

The key will start the car perfectly, so there's no problem whatsoever using the key in the ignition chamber - but it just will not work now in the drivers door, which is the only way to get in/out of the car and lock it. The car was 2nd hand, and never had an electronic key fob for remote central locking, so there's no way to try that. (Though that'd be a great solution if there was a way to get a fob for the car and program it to work with this specific 98 Avensis... is there any way to do that?)

Anyone? Is there a reasonable cheap solution to whatever this problem actually is?

Theo Dorgan on West Cork

2009-12-11T16:35:00.007Z

I was on a flight between Edinburgh and Dublin this week, and picked up the Aer Lingus in-flight magazine, Cara. Thumbing through it to while away the 45 minute flight, I came across an article on West Cork in Ireland - from where my wife comes.

It's actually more of an homage than an article - written by poet Theo Dorgan, it's an amazing hand-held walk through the emotions, magic, mystery, and enchantment of West Cork. Maybe I'm just getting more emotional in my old age, but I got a huge lump in my throat reading it. I love West Cork, and Dorgan's writing is really a perfected example of the type of writing I try and fail to do occasionally - evocative, heady emotional and slightly ambiguous journeys through subtle hyperbole.

[I'm reproducing the entire article here without the permission of Aer Lingus, Cara, or Theo Dorgan. As far as I'm aware I'm not infringing any copyright. Anyone concerned should feel free to contact me for removal]

It's an astounding piece of writing - more of this please, Aer Lingus.

West Cork really is amazing. Thank you Theo Dorgan.

- - -

WEST CORK IS a mountain fastness on the edge of the world, a land of secrets and dreams, of immemorial communities, standing stones, ruined monasteries, a deep-indented coastline washed by the long bulk and sprawl of the Atlantic. Small farms in hollows and valleys, prosperous knowing towns curled in on themselves and their mysteries, roads that jink and jive between high hedges, sudden dizzying views of mountains folded back as far as the eye can see.

Drive west from Cork through Bandon, that solid market town set among fields of grain, and small town by small town you are fed down to the sea at Bantry, the broad acres with their fine trees giving way to thin soil; pinched fields on the sides of hills; thick hedges where moments ago there were white painted fences. The colours brighten as you slide west and south, blues and reds on doors and windows, white gables, mauve of tall foxgloves, the flash of gorse in the high sun. You see the mountains in the distance, rank after rank, solid and blue and grey, and perhaps you get a sense that you are entering deeper and deeper into some half-remembered version of your life.

Or, leave Cork towards the northwest, along the rich valley of the River Lee. Beyond Macroom, you might start drifting north bit by bit until with a sudden instinctive resolution you pull the wheel to the left and feed yourself over Ráth an Ghaiscígh, the Rath of the Warrior, down through Tír na Spideoige, the Land of Sparrows, into Inchigeela and then Ballingeary, and you are solidly in the heartland again. On up the road to Gougane Barra, wellspring of the Lee, then down the long, winding road through sheep pastures and pine plantations, past the Hobbit-like buildings of Future Forests, a garden nursery, until you meet the easternmost inlet of Bantry Bay.

The sea again. The mountains again, this time shouldering you, leaning over you. Or you take the third way, south from Cork airport to the bustling, colourful harbour of Kinsale. A cosmopolitan town, studded with busy pubs and gourmet restaurants, the clash of halyards on masts in the harbour where yachts from all over the world are constantly making in, making out. You follow the Bandon river for a while, going left when you can, keeping to the swooping coastline; you make for Baltimore, perhaps, then Schull – the yellow gorse, the red fuschia beckoning you onward until Bantry.

Oh, but there are pathways into West Cork not laid down on maps. Maybe you’ll walk in, through Cúil Aodha, for instance, that hidden Gaeltacht the far side of Macroom. Maybe you’ll get the bus to drop you at Gougane Barra and hike up to the lake, where Finbarre’s stone church sits on its island, in a forest quiet. Or perhaps you’ll come in from the sea, spray-lashed, salt-crusted, working the helm and the sails, making in under the white beacon, Lot’s Wife, standing sentinel over Baltimore harbour.

You must understand this: West Cork is not just a territory on a map, a piece of real estate to be surveyed, traversed, absorbed and filed in your memories. This is a dangerous place for the unwary. I may have lost you already. We were coming down through the Land of Sparrows, remember? We stopped in Creedons for a pint and a sandwich? And you started thinking, I could feel the drift begin inside you, you started thinking ‘What if I didn’t go home? I could live here, in this steady quiet, I could find a small house under the ridge and be peaceful here.’ I heard the words stirring inside you, I saw the signs. Or, maybe, coming up from Schull we turned off for Mizen Head before Bantry and as we drove out and west through that high stony land you had a sudden illumination: you thought of your life and decided, with sudden clarity, I need to change. I saw it happening, saw you step out of the car and look around, the weight and beauty of that wild place settling inside you. You’re not the first, you won’t be the last. So many thousands have settled here in my lifetime, so many thousands who came with maps, plans, itineraries...

Ah, but you think you are made of sterner stuff than that? Perhaps you are. There are no flying columns ghosting through your ancestral memories, no Spanish fleets flying west from Kinsale, no ships of the French Revolution storm-beaten in Bantry Bay. Perhaps you are the sort of person who says, approving the wisdom, you can’t eat scenery. You notice the heavy traffic on the roads, you look for and find reassuring signs of normal life in the present day.

Let me bring you on west from Bantry through the storybook beauty of Glengariff, and west again through Adrigole, the minatory bare bulk of Hungry Hill shadowing us to the north. I land you down in Castletownbere, and you approve of the bustling busyness of the place, the fishing fleet, the ice plant, the trucks from France and Spain backing and filling in the busy harbour. And then I lead you quietly away down the pier to where the painter Sarah Walker has built herself a studio and gallery at the water’s edge. Did you linger there a little longer than you’d meant to? West again, the sun beginning to slant down towards the sea. I bring you to Dzogchen Beara, a Buddhist monastery in Beara, perched high on a cliff, and suddenly you are gazing out over an ocean without limits, you are gazing out into sunlit eternity. And now you get it. I see it in your eyes as the journey catches up with you. All those small fields, those dim sunken roads, the small hills and the sudden bulk of mountains, the dark world of the forestry, the bright, busy banter in shop and pub – vista by vista, moment by moment, unheard, unfelt, unnoticed, West Cork has been winding you into its spell, laying its enchantment deep inside you until now it owns your very breath.

Well, what am I to do with you? You have a life elsewhere, work, family, responsibilities. One last short journey, then, before you turn for home. A few miles more and we stop where the road curls round into a final vision for you. Below and to the left a bright-gold beach. Neat fields, long grasses, cows, horses, two cars stopped side by side, neighbours having a chat down there beneath us. You lift your eyes and you see the village of Allihies, its multicoloured houses piled in a bright pyramid on the far slope, under the mountain with its copper-mine chimneys, its glinting, water-bright ridge. The last of the sun gives an otherworldly light to the panorama before you, broad bands of red and orange and black to the left, the unkempt grasses a brilliant green below us, the far off houses bright with promises. Skellig on the horizon, appearing, disappearing on a whim.

I am taking you to my favourite pub in all the world, Jimmy’s. It might be a well of quiet this evening, or perhaps Ecky will be in, our German musician friend, long-settled here, or the poet O’Leary, or Mighty the raconteur. We could settle into conversation with Eily the postmistress, with the artists Charlie Tyrrell or Rachel Parry, the ceramicist Cormac Boydell. We might sit by ourselves, without speaking. I’ve brought you here so that you can settle yourself over a pint or three of Murphy’s stout, so that you can ease down and persuade yourself that after all it’s only a holiday, only a place you will have visited. How do I explain to you what you are already beginning to sense, that you may indeed go home, tomorrow, the day after, but now you will never leave West Cork?

Dirty Projectors - "Stillness is the move", Chic in Dublin & chasing the dragon

2009-11-27T11:05:00.010Z

It seems like a long time since I enthused about Chic's epic performance at Electric Picnic 09. Well it turns out - they are coming back.

Chic play Tripod, Dublin, Friday 28th May 2010. Tickets available as of this morning through monopolising rip-off service ticketmaster. Despite my concerns that following EP this gig would immediately sell out the second it went on sale at 9am, and harbouring reservations that I might negligently be swapping the righteous funk of Nile Rodgers for bacon and sausage, I still stopped on the way to work for 4 minutes to grab a breakfast roll. Thankfully the trotters of fate intervened, and shortly after 9 I was able to secure the priceless tickets.

Having found out a day or two before (thanks to the Rathcoole hubcap appropriation loyal), I had a day to engage in something of a philosophical dilemma. On one hand - the hand wringing itself with existential angst - when you have only experienced something one time, and the experience has been as near-perfect as the Chic happening of EP09, is the only way to respect and protect that perfect experience to avoid attempting to repeat it?

On the other hand - the hand of realism - if a band is that amazing, and you wouldn't go see them again - what would you ever willingly do twice?

Realism, hope, and the impossible dream won the argument. Come May 2010, I will be chasing the Chic dragon.

Which brings me in a sudden and unlinked way to something musical but very different indeed.

While perusing my favourite ex-colleagues music and technology based column, Riot Gear, I stumbled across a review of a band I'd never heard of, called Dirty Projectors. Intrigued, I did a little digging.

It seems like la projectors are a bit of an oddball art/vocal project from New York city - a guy called Dave Longstreth running the show, Brian Mcomber on drums, Nat Baldwin on bass, and three wonderfully gorgeous girls (Haley Dekle, Amber Coffman, and Angel Deradoorian) singing harmony vocals which are alternately entrancing, enticing, intriguing, and occasionally terrifying.

As all music reviewers know, the best and fairest way to describe acts is as a metaphorical artistic collision of totally unrelated other acts. (That's sarcasm, incase you weren't sure). So, in keeping with the tradition, Dirty Projectors strike me as an oddball collision of Bjork, The Corrs, and the Beta Band. Stick that one in your metaphorical pipe and smoke it.

So here's the official video for "Stillness Is The Move" - a video that added heavily to the Beta Band element in my imagined metaphorical smashup. In the vid they're up a hill, the main man is alternatively leading some sort of yak-type animal around, or standing on a rotating platform playing a vintage/ethnic stringed guitary sort of thing. I'd call it a zither, but I googled zither and confirmed it's not one. It still sounds a bit zithery though.

Anyway, while he's playing the non-zither or leading the possibly-a-yak around, the three girls are singing like good things - either dressed in a white wraparound thingy and bridesmaid type dresses (not necessarily a bad thing), or medical-coloured MC-hammer cut overalls. The possibly-a-yak pops it's head up about 70 seconds in like it's wondering what the hell is going on. I know how it feels. There's a kind of wolf thing that appears - in fact there's more than one, and ultimately the girls end up taking the wolves for a bit of a run in the MC-hammer overalls.

It's great. I have absolutely no idea what any of it means, but the more you listen and watch, the better it gets.

Happy Friday!

Scotland in November

2009-11-17T13:40:00.022Z

Glencoe is my favourite car journey on earth.

Last week I was able to make the journey for the first time in several years, on a crisp November day that blended blinding winter sunshine with thick blankets of fog.

It was an unusual route for me, not starting from Edinburgh or Glasgow. Instead it was north from Fife, cutting west at Perth on the Loch Earn road. Socked in fog all the way down the valley with nothing but the babbling stream for company, we finally emerged after St Fillans down the side of Loch Earn itself into the blazing sunshine.

Looking south across Loch Earn, with the late morning sun lighting up trailing wisps of fog.

Turning back the way we came, this is east down Loch Earn with St Fillans eclipsed, and a think finger of fog floating west over the loch.

Back in the car, and further on we’re back into the fog, and then north through Crianlarich with the amazing scenery hidden behind an impenetrable veil. A few miles on at Tyndrum, the perishingly cold car park at the obligatory Green Welly Stop is just starting to hint that there are hills around.

The edge of Tyndrum sees the weather break again, and up here it turns out to be freezing fog, with all the trees within eyesight encased in a dense layer of frost.

Plants closer to the ground have really been getting the treatment.

Free of the fog and making the turn for Glencoe, there’s time for one last look back at Tyndrum, sitting encased in the cold.

Here, nearly three hours in, the proper journey begins. Dragging up the endless hill from Tyndrum, you immediately feel tiny skirting the immense wall that is Beinn Dorain. Then it’s on to a crest, cruising past Loch Tulla, and the train line departs on a massive detour (it can’t make the grades to come) – clanking across the little bridge, a sweeping bend, and now we’re really clambering hard up the side of a slope, until we reach the viewpoint short of the top.

Jumping out here (seriously windy, but not as cold as it was), the view is epic back towards Beinn Dorain and the loch.

This view always reminds me that I had the motorbike through Glencoe once – I remember driving back towards Tyndrum, waiting forever to get past a long line of cars and carvans, and finally making it past the last of them on the hill further down from this viewpoint – sweeping around the bend at the bottom, and then charging out ahead of everyone, thudding across the bridge (lower left in the picture above), and whistling away across the moor alone. Still the three best minutes of my motorcycling life.

Back in the car and beyond the viewpoint, the top of the hill takes you on to Rannoch Moor. No matter how many times I come over that rise, it is always like landing on the moon – one of the most desolate, bleak and awe-inspiring places I know.

A few miles across the moor and Buachaille Etive Mòr rears up - a heaving cone of rock marking the start of Glencoe proper.

The road skates around Buachaille Etive Mòr, and into the glen.

Glencoe itself is the most monstrous sweeping glen with the road taking cars like toys through it, hemmed in by mountains that become closer and more claustrophobic the further you head west. It’s a daunting and imposing place.

As you come to the most narrow section (the actual pass of Glencoe), you tread carefully down the hairpins and then you are out, easing down across the valley floor to the Atlantic and on to the shore of Loch Leven. Here’s Loch Leven as the sun comes up on a beautiful November morning, the mountains of Glencoe simmering in the clouds.

Often, we stop here – but this time it's pastures further west on our mind, so on we went. A few miles further on, the Corran Ferry plies endlessly forwards and backwards, bridging Loch Linnhe for those that want to head to Ardnamurchan.

If you ever get the chance, you do want to head to the empty and mighty spaces of Ardnamurchan. Here’s the Corran lighthouse at sunset, with the mountains of Ardnamurchan behind.

Past Fort William and the brooding hulk of Ben Nevis, the Road to the Isles begins properly, darting west to Glenfinnan at the ridiculously scenic head of Loch Sheil.

Further on, you move up and over hills again, passing Loch Eilt – which was so still on our mid-day return trip, it was like polished glass.

A few miles further on, we’re finally descending out of the hills for the last time to the sea again, where rough and wild rocky countryside meet several miles of the most amazing tiny silver sandy beaches, and the small islands of Eigg and Rùm peeking out of the rain offshore offset the brooding cloud-shrouded presence in the distance of the Cuillin on Skye.

And here, finally, is where my new favourite hotel is.

Caledonia

2009-11-13T07:03:00.001Z

Certain adverts from your youth stick with you - and none stuck with me more than this one.

Notwithstanding the fact that Tennents is drinkable but pretty ropey lager, years later, this ad still sums up pretty much how I feel every time I'm in London - and as the guy walks out on Princes Street under the castle, it sums up pretty much how I feel every time I get back to Scotland.

Aslan - "Jealous Guy"

2009-11-06T08:47:00.002Z

Aslan have been around for ages in Dublin - something of an Irish institution. Apparently they were on the brink of breaking America with one of their best albums, and pretty much on the eve of the tour the entire band self-destructed, including lead singer Christy Dignam zipping off into something of a heroin habit.

Now, I went to see them a year or two back in Dublin at the mighty Vicar Street (one of my favourite venues in the world as it happens) - and what an experience it was - they're an absolutely brilliant live band. As I've opined before on here, I think in live music the difference between great and not-great is often the believability of the folks up on stage doing it. You can be technically brilliant, note perfect, but still look like you're up there either giving a music masterclass, or just going through the motions. But it's different when you have people who are absolutely, utterly believable, who really appear to be living the music. Dignam has as they say been around the block ("we never sold out" as he pointed out to the crowd - I can't imagine who he's referring to!), and whether that adds to the authenticity factor is an argument all of it's own.

What I can say is that you can feel the difference when someone who is that convicted by their music steps on stage. They aren't singing the track - they are singing to you.

Here's one from this year - a cover of Jealous Guy by John Lennon.

Freefall and denial in the Irish Housing Market

2009-10-27T17:16:00.015Z

The Irish housing market (and the ongoing attendant commentary) is pretty interesting.

I purchased a house with my better half (deciding that we couldn't wait forever) early in 2006. As luck would have it, that turned out to be very shortly before the peak of a historically insane price bubble, which is now in the process of bursting in an extended and messy fashion. They say the secret of comedy is in the timing.

Since 2006 or 2007, there's been an ongoing fall in the value of houses here, but recently there's been intermittent talk of green shoots of recovery, a bottoming out, a slowing down in the rate of descent (you always know you're in trouble when things getting worse at a slower rate is presented as an improvement), the start of a recovery etc etc.

For some reason connected no doubt to my interest in economic trends, statistics, truth, and a desire to view life-changing financial crisis through the prism of small, cute coloured Excel graphs, I started tracking the asking prices in our immediate neighbourhood in September 2006, about 6 months after we purchased.

Since then, every month (or thereabouts), I tap in the asking price for every house in about a half-mile radius that is on the market. While this doesn't give an accurate picture of prices achieved, it's a good guide to the trend. You can also make a reasonable assumption that when prices are falling, the achieved prices are below the asking price, and the opposite when prices are rising - in other words, the achieved price most likely drags the asking price around kicking and screaming behind it.

So based on the figures I have for my own area of Dublin (old settled low-density ex-council estate close to the town centre, for those seeking Irish context), from Sept 2006 to October 2009, here is what has happened.

Asking prices stalled in summer-autumn 2006, and remained static until Feb 07, when I recorded the first fall in my area. (My guess: achieved sale prices stalled somewhere around summer 06, and started to fall back prior to that Christmas.)

Between Feb 07 and May 08 asking prices fell slowly and steadily, shedding around 8.6% from the peak during this 15-month period (averaging a 0.7% drop per month).

Something went seriously to hell in spring 08, because around May prices started falling off a cliff. In the 17 months from May 08 to Oct 09, asking prices dropped 31% from the May 08 figure (averaging a 2.5% loss every month).

So where are we now?

Well my figures from the official asking prices (which come from a variety of estate agents) say this: we are currently in a situation as of Oct 09 where asking prices are 39% off their late 06 peak. So the next time you hear a news item telling you that house prices might fall by up to 40%, it's worth remembering that in reality, they already have. Not only that, there's nothing in the figures I've collected in my area to even hint that there's a floor in sight - the asking prices this month have fallen as much as any other month in the last 12.

Apart from the rash of unemployment in Ireland, a major reason for the continued express-elevator treatment house prices are undergoing, is the fact that the banks have abused their position as lenders, speculated wildly in markets and products in which they had no understanding of the risks, and now we the public are supposed to be paying through our taxes to keep them afloat.

As a result of the fact that the banks and financial houses are sitting on a carelessly stacked wobbling deck of completely opaque financial products, nobody knows where all the debt is. It's sort of like playing pass the parcel where everyone has a parcel, and a few of the parcels have booby-trapped bombs inside - except nobody playing the game thought to check before starting. The music has stopped, everyone has been left holding a package, and nobody wants to open theirs. Everyone wants to pass their package on, but nobody wants to take anybody else's. Endless stalemate - and the dissipation of trust that results means that the banks are not lending anything, to anybody.

In short, the banks totally irresponsible game of pass-the-parcel in the hope of astronomical profits has led them into a cul-de-sac where they are terrified to loan to anyone - they may need all the cash they can possibly lay their hands on when they are finally forced to take their grubby little grabbing hands and open their little parcels.

Without banks prepared to loan, there can be no mortgage approvals. Without mortgage approvals, the only way is down.

Minus 39 percent, and falling...

Carl Craig - At Les

2009-10-23T11:43:00.004+01:00

There have been many good electronic records, but I'm not sure that anyone has ever written one greater than Carl Craig's Detroitian masterpiece "At Les".

I've lost count of how many times I've listened to this tune, and it still never fails to blow me away. A grumbling breathy 5th counterpointing the sighing chords, the most subtle of lower notes here and there, a tough pinned down synth eventually riveting the beats in to place to prepare for the shuffling quasi-acoustic breakbeats, electronic china cymbals heralding the arrival of a buried kick drum - and that haunting wind motif falling, falling, falling...

The Timewriter - Flicking Pages

2009-10-16T11:07:00.004+01:00

Something about the Friday tune is becoming a bit too structured for me - the output here is supposed to be slow and random, and having a weekly predictable post on the same day every week seems to fly in the face of both slowness and randomness in the output stakes.

But then I heard the latest mix from Mick Chillage, and this track stood out so heavily that I couldn't let it go. The Timewriter, who I'd never heard of before - seems to have a fairly impressive career in spitting out tracks and releases, and after hearing this track on Mr Chillage's mix, it shouldn't come as any suprise to find Mr Writer with top friends on Myspace including David Alvarado. It's that sort of sensuous super-deep powerful sound.

Anyway here's the track. A little introduction, and then the most mindblowingly powerful deep block chords, ultimately backed up with some vocal wisdom being intoned. I'm not that mad a fan of the listen-to-me vocal stuff, although I do make exceptions - and this is one of them. I can't help but think that Kevin Saunderson discovered something special when he stuck those solid drone basses over thudding house beats - particularly thudding, mid-tempo, strident house beats. (Strident house is in fact a term I've coined in my own head, in a vain attempt to capture some of what it is that makes Orde Meikle's DJing so special).

In any case, this is the destructive groove of E-Dancer Saunderson combined with the oceans-deep atmospherics of Alvarado at his best. Deep, powerful, emotional late-night material.

5am moment anyone?

As we begin to grow older - life is not the same...

Maurizio - M4 (M)

2009-10-09T10:51:00.004+01:00

Friday, and another epic slab from the Basic Channel vaults. This time, it's the ultra minimal M4, part of a chain of M-numbered releases on the suitably titled BC-offshoot label, 'M'.

It's another one that I couldn't really get my head around at first, but the more you listen, the more amazing this record becomes. The two wobbling and chugging main synth sounds come and go in washes of delay and filtering, twisting in and out of each other in an endless dance that initially seems like a one bar loop, but slowly reveals itself to be a constantly contorting reimaging of itself.

A crisp offbeat hihat and a backbeat clap provide the upper drumbeats. The clap in itself you could be studying all day - it has a perplexing ambience going on - not only does it sound like it's a little way back from you, but it's got this strange feeling that it's round a corner or something, although it's actually panned dead centre. It's almost like there's an obstruction directly in front of you, and the clap is coming from just behind that. How did he manage that?

As for the kick drum, it effortlessly outclasses any rivals. An unremarkable thud (or so it seems) is articulated by a deep tuned bass note, and the combination of the two together makes the entire beat push and pull and give and take.

The end result, is an incredibly powerful, hypnotic work in minimalism. And if you think it's good over headphones, you need to try it over a big club system.

All under control?

2009-10-07T11:22:00.013+01:00

One thing I've been trying to work out for a good long time, is how to track all the little tasks I have at work. User Interface is a huge issue for me (maybe I should have made that my line of work), so bear with me.

I find computers painfully slow to use - there's generally just too much clutter between you and what you're trying to do, and (for me) anything that slows down the process just makes it frustrating, which generally ends up in poorer results. So one thing I've been looking for is a kind of task-organiser.

The problem is, I want to have my cake and eat it - effectively, I want several things. I want to be able to have a sort of top-level overview of the tasks I have on, where everything is very clean and very simple. And I want to be able to change and reorder the tasks at will, without 'editing' the tasks in a computer, changing a value field, or anything. Effectively, I want to be able to physically change the order they appear in, just by dragging and dropping.

If that was all it was, and I was less worried about interface, then my ideal thing to use would be the old-school air traffic control strips system - an actual physical 'to do' list. These strips seem to me like the ultimate quick and dirty, always-visible, immediately-resortable list system, and whatever bright ideas I have, I keep coming back to thinking about some physical variant on this system.

However, it would be great if I could somehow harness the power of the computer (seeing as I have to use the infernal things all day anyway), and make it a bit more powerful and flexible. In other words, could I have a top-level list in a flight-strip format, that was draggable and droppable in any order I wanted, but also let me 'explode' a task, to show a much more complex table of tasks beneath?

One program that I am perpetually in love with, is Filemaker Pro. Not being technically a database programmer, this is probably the greatest software aid to everything that I do at work. I keep customer lists on it, personal contact lists, a stock database system for spare parts (that shows stuff like monthly run rates, estimated time in weeks to part number depletion at current rates of consumption), all sorts of stuff. FMP is really databases for dummies, and anyone with the slightest computer competence can learn the basics on it really fast. Plus, it's extremely visual, and extraordinarily fast to use, two of my big bugbears. The problem with it is, despite the fact it's visual, I can't just drag and drop records around the screen willy-nilly (as you could with physical flight progress strips). I still need to predetermine the layout, and then stick with that when I'm using it. I can change the layout whenever I want, but I don't want to have to redesign the layout, just to drag some tasks around the screen - so it's missing that final top-level near-freeform physical interaction that I'm looking for - in the version that I currently have, at least.

So I went on a search about a month ago, to see if anyone else has solved this problem. I found a few things.

Firstly, I found RIPT. This is basically a digital scrapbook, and it really does answer the very top-level of my problem - being able to engage in freeform dragging around of notes, and organising things in that way. Unfortunately, it's not cut out for the other end of my organisational problems - that is, expanding much beyond a 'heading' on the scrap of paper, and there's no way to link records, because all you're collecting is scraps of text or pictures. So good on the top-level UI, but no guts underneath it all - effectively, RIPT is the 'missing piece' for me in Filemaker, but there's no way to marry them together.

So... next - a little app called Goal Enforcer. I wasn't so keen on the name - it sounds a little bit domineering for my liking, but I tried it anyway. Goal Enforcer is more of a "linked bubbles" type of task manager, and while it is visual (you put your tasks in bubbles), it's a bit to rigid for my liking. Plus, you have to have links between bubbles (what if I just want to have a free floating bubble I drag around some place?), and even worse - it's very much deadline-oriented. I don't need my deadlines enforced, I just need to be able to see what is going on thanks.

So, on to the last of my current search - the Brain. (You wouldn't be the first to suggest that this is the software I've always needed). The Brain is more of a kind of loose relationship-based idea management software, where you generate bubbles of sorts (like goal-enforcer), that are then linked to other bubbles. The nice thing about the Brain is that the links can be in multiple directions, there's no obligation to have deadlines (woohoo!), and even nicer, there's a kind of visual 'radar' function which allows you to see only on the next couple of levels up and down from where you are. This means as you click on bubbles to take you further into a task as it's broken up, the stuff back up at the top level disappears from the screen. So you only see the stuff around the level you are on - either top level tasks when you're up at the top, or stuff 'inside' a task when you delve in. It's a neat way of doing it, and it looks very much like it is based on the old Visual Thesaurus, which had an even nicer UI.

Overall, the Brain is the best top-level "task manager" program I've come by so far. However it's got drawbacks too. For one thing, despite the really friendly UI, you lose all that power that you get from a database engine like Filemaker when you want to really get inside a task. Secondly, you can't have free-floating ideas, like the air traffic control strips. What if I just want to rip out a bubble and put it to the side for a day - in sight, but not in a list? What if I want a bubble that's not linked to anything, but just hanging around?

In other words, I've yet to find the solution for organising that I need. But someone out there, surely, has done something which marries powerful organised database functions to a chaotic, freeform drag-and-drop UI. That's possible. Isn't it?

Lisbon 2

2009-10-02T15:31:00.003+01:00

Ok I'm stumped.

For those that don't know, today is the second referendum on the proposal that Ireland sign up to the Lisbon Treaty, which is a European wide treaty. It's worth mentioning at this point that it's an absolute and utter disgrace that a second referendum be held on the same treaty, with the same question to the population only 1 year after the Irish were asked the first time. There was a valid referendum, to which a valid answer was given on a high turnout - to be ignoring that outcome and asking the Irish people to vote again is only a tiny step above outright fixing of the first vote on the scale of democratic abuses.

Deep breath, calm down. Ok.

Those that are for the treaty say it will safeguard jobs and workers rights, stop human trafficking in the EU, rescue Ireland from recession, and generally hold off the threat of Europe hating us at any point soon. Those against it say it will increase military spending, break trade barriers, lower worker rights and protections, and generally mean the end of all good life as we know it.

I find it hard to trust either side to be honest (although I'd without a doubt come down on the 'No' side if I had the choice to make).

The greatest conundrum I have with Lisbon is this: Michael O'Leary (head of Ryanair), has reportedly spent half a million Euros supporting the "Yes" side. Now, Michael O'Leary wouldn't spend one of George Galloway's thin dimes on a life jacket if one of his planes was going down in the Irish Sea and he thought he had a chance of swimming to shore for free. What does this mean? It means that when O'Leary is prepared to blow half a million Euros on what is seemingly a political event, something very very big is up.

I can't figure it out - what is there hidden in this treaty, that makes O'Leary so desperate to see it go through?

Nuyorican Soul - "It's Alright, I Feel It"

2009-09-18T08:04:00.005+01:00

Back in 1997 peerless NYC production and DJing duo Kenny "dope" Gonzales and "Little" Luis Vega (aka Masters at Work - also responsible for the epic Sensational Beats) put together a project with the best musicians they could lay hands on.

Nuyorican Soul the album is amazing from start to finish, but one of the standout tracks (and a massively popular dancefloor track to this day), is "It's alright, I feel it". In truth, if you want to hear it in the best possible context, you have to listen to the album, where it's preceded by another amazing track: "Black gold of the sun". The genius in this part of the album is that there is no gap between these two tracks, but a continuous segue - the brooding slow shuffling groove of Black gold of the sun sort of dissolves in a pool of piano tones from which emerges the euphoric chords of "It's alright, I feel it". The best bit is, the chords are exactly the same in both tracks - it's almost like two completely twists on the same track. It's almost the same track, except it's definitely not. Both tunes are incredible, but that junction between the two songs is a rarity in modern music, and it's one of Masters at Work's finest moments.

I can't embed it (why not? Universal Music Group says so!). But I can link to the official youtube upload.

So here is the second track in that magical sequence, in it's glorious euphoria. Get up and shake it.

It's alright - I feel it!

Chic - "Good Times"

2009-09-11T10:01:00.002+01:00

Happy Friday.

6 days later, and it feels like they came off stage 5 minutes ago. I can't remember any gig that ever had this impact on me.

If you're not sure why, read the last post. Otherwise, just play the tune - the answers are all the same.

Chic, Billy Brag, and Electric Picnic 2009

2009-09-09T14:47:00.013+01:00

Last Friday was the first one in a while with no Friday tune – the reason being that I was out of town, visiting Electric Picnic in County Laois. If there was a weblink for County Laois, I'd link it - but Laois isn't that sort of place.

I haven’t been to a festival for years – in fact I haven’t stayed as a punter overnight at a festival ever (only when I’ve been working) so it was interesting to see it from the other side.

The EP forums show a mixture of reviews, from great reviews of bands to dodgy reviews of the sound on some stages, and some concerns that there were less random art happenings going on than recent years, prices of food were high, the bad weather was dealt with too little and too late, and security was arbitrary and didn’t seem knowledgeable. Some of these things, EP may have to look at for next year – particularly some unsavoury crowd elements who people seemed to think were a bit more in evidence this year than last year. The beauty of the festival is that it’s not like rival festy Oxygen - it's more chilled, more arty, appears less commercially inclined, and has a friendlier crowd - they need to work hard to keep it that way. Reducing the capacity slightly, and turning the lineup slightly more non-mainstream might be a couple of subtle ways they can influence the crowd that are attracted.

That said, I had a great time. Great music, good sound if you stood in half-sensible places, lots of different stuff going on (like the tent with the Hookah on the right - I didn't get a Hookah, but we did grab some Brandy Chais later on Sunday when the relentlessness started to tell), and what I thought was reasonably priced food etc. I would also say that the €3 deposit on the plastic beer glasses was a brilliant judgment – I didn’t see one left around all weekend, so loud applause on that front.

Another great thing is being with an Irish crowd, particularly at a 'boutique' festival like this - it's very, very friendly even when it's massive. Generally, it's just lots of people having a great time.

To the music, and first up was Lykke Li. I’d never seen her before, and she was wearing some weird black thingy that didn’t really stick out in a dark tent with a dark background, but… she was really good live. Fascinating tunes (she’s a bit nuts), loads of energy, and really interesting. She’s got a mad haunting voice. I’d go see her again in a second.

Then we caught a bit of Seasick Steve on the main stage. The main stage didn’t work quite as well as the tents – the atmosphere wasn’t contained and amplified in the same way, which may have been something to do with the weather not being amazing, but he’s got mad energy and is a lot of fun.

Next up were Rodrigo y Gabriela, a duo from Mexico City with amazing acoustic guitar skills. They had the tent up and rocking, although for some reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on, it didn’t feel quite right. I think it’s that they would have been much better in a smaller venue – there was a weird mismatch between the music and the size of the tent, and it didn’t ever sit quite right, despite the fact that they were great.

Last act I grabbed on Friday night was Orbital, who somehow I’ve managed to avoid seeing live for the last 10-15 years. A properly seminal duo from the fledgling UK house scene of the late 80s and early 90s, they backdropped broken jackhammer machine beats with surprisingly melodic weaving synthlines, and it was this accessible sound that helped them to propel house and techno into the consciousness of the public at large. They were good, very slick, and played all the big tunes. My only problem with them now is that they are living off a back catalogue from a decade ago. It’s already a bit nostalgic for a music act - they need to write some new tunes, or they will turn into a touring glass museum case. And they should write some new tunes, because they do the live electronics thing more engagingly than nearly anyone else when they are on it. Here’s vintage Orbital – booked as the first ‘dance’ act ever to headline at Glastonbury in 1994, they shredded the place. Amazing times - this is "Chime"...

Apart from that, I saw a tiny bit of Madness on the main stage, who were doing the Madness thing – you’d probably have to be down the front for it really to work. Or perhaps better weather would have yielded a more Madness-friendly atmosphere...

Practically my only must-see of the weekend was Billy Brag, and I managed to see his entire set. He was as usual, direct (just him and a guitar), soulful, and of course had a little bit of politics sprinkled about, including a couple of digs at the second Irish vote on the European Lisbon treaty that’s upcoming, a vote of confidence on Obama’s ability to deliver universal health care, and loads of other stuff. And as usual, he was absolutely brilliant – I just never get tired of seeing him and listening to him.

Here’s Billy playing at SXSW, with a nearly completely rewritten version of “Great Leap Forwards” for the US audience. He lasts on the original for about one verse, and then suddenly he’s off into military spending, universal healthcare, double standards in democratic participation and media complicity. Mostly without missing a beat on the guitar either.

Billy Brag is a legend, and he's a knowledgeable and an active one at that. An inspiration.

Saving the best till last – playing inside a huge tent on Saturday evening, were Chic.

There’s not much I can find to say about this – they were one of the most amazing bands I’ve ever seen. Masses of people on stage, phenomenal singers, great drums and bass, horns, seriously funky guitar, and I’ve nearly never heard a band sounding so tight and rehearsed – they had it nailed.

And the back catalogue – to die for. Chic were famous for their hits “Le Freak” and my personal favourite “Good Times”, (which in it’s later sampled format helped the Sugarhill Gang drag hip-hop off the block and launch it kicking and screaming into the stratosphere with the outrageous sampling lift that was “Rappers Delight”). But aside from music that Chic actually recorded, they also produced the Sister Sledge album “We are family”, Diana Ross’ “Diana” (featuring the stunning ‘Upside Down’), David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” (could they write basslines or what?!), Duran Duran, Madonna. On and on it goes.

And they played half of these in the tent. We are family, Upside Down, Let’s Dance, Le Freak, Good Times, just insane. They were instrumental in disco, one of their tracks helped put hip-hop where it is, and together with Bootsy, Kraftwerk, Roland and Yamaha, they are partially responsible for birthing house and techno. It’s long past time for Chic to get some serious recognition.

So seeing as a nice person already has it up on youtube, here (while it lasts) is a recording from inside the tent. The camera mic clearly isn’t up to the bass, but you get the picture.

And dance we did. We all did. Come back Chic…

Schatrax - "Aliena's Journey"

2009-08-28T07:47:00.000+01:00

There's an interesting conversation going on over at Little Detroit at the moment, regarding the benefits or otherwise of faceless or anonymous artists, something which has long happened in dance music.

I'm not sure how I feel about it - on the one hand, some labels (and it's difficult not to think of the peerless Underground Resistance and related labels when talking about this) have made some astonishing music working behind anonymous artist monikers.

But often some of the greatest music has been written by people not even working behind artist aliases, but behind label aliases, with not even a hint of which or how many artists were involved.

One of my favourite of these labels was Schatrax, which (as well as being one of the coolest sounding label names ever) over the mid-90s issued 10 separate releases, all simply labelled with the Schatrax logo, and with tracknames scratched into the runout groove. I stumbled into one of the releases at the late vinyl section of Fopp on Byres Road, Glasgow back when Lars lka Funk D'Void was doing the ordering. I was instantly hooked on the Schatrax sound, and I think it's one of only three or four labels I ever deliberately collected every release on.

With loping synthetic drums, immensely warm but lonesome synth textures, and a big sense of techno soul, Schatrax was probably one of my favourite labels of all time.

Here, from the final release of the original 10, is "Aliena's Journey".

Glenn Underground - "Beyond"

2009-08-21T10:16:00.002+01:00

Another one from the Chicago Relief/Cajual stable - this one from the more housey Cajual side. It's a lot happier than the tracks I normally play (it's got a trumpet tune of sorts!), but there's just no arguing with how good it is. I do find it a bit scary that this was released in 1995 - it seems odd that tracks this vital should be nearly 15 years old, but I guess time stands still for noone.

This was a huge tune down at the Sub Club in Glasgow back in the day, and it really fits that small special place perfectly. Deep as you like, with synths (sounds like FM to me) that alternatively circle and break in to huge stabbing breaks, hanging string lines, a great portamento synth lead line, and what can only be described as a bumping house beat. It's amazing for lifting an atmosphere anywhere - club, bar, party - and if you can stay up long enough in any location, then this track somehow perfectly bottles that sensation of dancing into a new day while the rest of the world is asleep. A perfect sunrise record.

Beyond reasonable doubt in Scotland

2009-08-20T19:29:00.005+01:00

Today, the Scottish Justice Secretary announced that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the man jailed for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 was to be released “on compassionate grounds”. After serving years in jails in Scotland al-Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, will fly home to die.

Who coordinates how public discourse is shifted? The news of his release happened only today, but already it is well established by the media that we are not to discuss whether he committed the crime in the first place, and we are not to discuss whether he should have been imprisoned. We are not to discuss the huge holes in the evidence, and we are not to discuss the fact that even a cursory reading of the judges verdict would have led you to believe that this man should never have been convicted.

The only question we are apparently supposed to discuss is: should this dying man have been released “on compassionate grounds”?

To assess how reliable the conviction was, it’s instructive to go back over excerpts from the transcript of the original trial verdict.

One of the key factors in the conviction of al-Megrahi was his identification by a Maltese shopkeeper called Tony Gauci. Gauci gave evidence that al-Megrahi purchased clothing from his shop, later allegedly found in close proximity to bomb components from flight 103. From the trial verdict (with my emphasis):

A major factor in the case against the first accused is the identification evidence of Mr Gauci. For the reasons we have already given, we accept the reliability of Mr Gauci on this matter, while recognising that this is not an unequivocal identification

In other words, the judges acknowledge the crucial importance of the identification by Tony Gauci (a Maltese Shopkeeper) of the accused, and then go on to say that while it is not an “unequivocal” identification, the judges accept its reliability. And why do they accept its reliability? From earlier in the judgement, they explain the sequence of events (edited here) with Mr Gauci that leads to them judging this identification as reliable:

Gauci is first interviewed by police on 1st September 1989, where he describes the gentleman he sold clothes to as 6 feet tall or greater, with a big chest and a large head. On 13th September. Gauci clarifies the man’s age as “about 50”. On 14th September, Gauci is shown 19 photographs, and he indicates that one of the photographs (which was not al-Megrahi) is of a man who appears “similar” to the man who purchased the clothes, but is too young. On 26th September, Gauci is shown 24 more photographs, and he indicates that the man he sold the clothes to is not present, but that one man in the photographs has the same shape of face and style of hair, and three other photographs are of men of the correct age. On 6th December, Gauci is shown another selection of photographs, and does not identify anyone from them. Some time around the end of 1989 or the beginning of 1990, Gauci’s brother shows him a newspaper article about the Lockerbie disaster, which contains the word “bomber” across a photograph of the wreckage of Pan Am 103. In the article are also images of two men – one of which was also marked with the word “bomber”. Gauci thought that one of the photographs showed the man who had purchased the clothes from his shop – the man he identified in the paper was Abo Talb. On 10th September 1990 (a year after the first interviews), Gauci is again shown 39 photographs, and does not identify anyone from these pictures – stating that he has never seen a photograph of the man who bought the clothing. On 15th February 1991 (a year and a half after the initial interviews), Gauci is shown 12 photographs, and says none of them are of the correct age. When asked by police to look carefully and allow for age difference, he pointed out one of the photographs, saying the face was “similar to the man who bought the clothing”. He also said “It’s been a long time now, and I can only say that this photograph 8 resembles the man who bought the clothing, but it is younger”. The policeman concerned (DCI Bell) later gave evidence that the person in photograph 8 was al-Megrahi.

So this is the eyewitness that is “reliable” in the opinion of the judges – an eyewitness who after at least 6 separate interviews and identification sessions, and being shown over 94 photographs over a period of 17 months, is only able to say that a single face is “similar”, and “resembles” a man who bought clothing in his shop. On this account, the entire case hangs.

So how were the judges able to take this “reliable” account, and plug it in to a watertight prosecution case?

From the judgement again (with my emphasis):

From his [Gauci’s] evidence it could be inferred that the first accused was the person who bought the clothing which surrounded the explosive device. We have already accepted that the date of purchase of the clothing was 7 December 1988, and on that day the first accused arrived in Malta where he stayed until 9 December. He was staying at the Holiday Inn, Sliema, which is close to Mary’s House. If he was the purchaser of this miscellaneous collection of garments, it is not difficult to infer that he must have been aware of the purpose for which they were being bought. We accept the evidence that he was a member of the JSO, occupying posts of fairly high rank. One of these posts was head of airline security, from which it could be inferred that he would be aware at least in general terms of the nature of security precautions at airports from or to which LAA operated… It is possible to infer that this visit under a false name the night before the explosive device was planted at Luqa, followed by his departure for Tripoli the following morning at or about the time the device must have been planted, was a visit connected with the planting of the device.

In other words, al-Megrahi could be the person that purchased the clothing. And he was staying in Malta, close to the clothes shop. And if he bought the clothes that ended up in the bomb, he probably knew about the bomb. He might know about general security arrangements at “airports”. It’s possible his visit to Malta was connected with the planting of the device [bomb].

Do the words “beyond reasonable doubt” keep ringing in the ears of anyone except me?

A matter of perspective

2009-08-20T09:32:00.005+01:00

I've a habit of keeping half an eye on the NHC site from June to November. I don't know why - there's something fascinating about the genesis of hurricanes, and the way they track across the oceans, rising and falling in strength, appearing, disappearing, occasionally reforming, and so on.

Anyway I was checking out Hurricane Bill this morning (a juicy cat. 4 hurricane), which having crossed the Atlantic westwards as a depression from Cape Verde (actually part of a tropical wave, but let's not be picky), is currently veering North-Westwards in front of the Leeward Isles, and looks like it's going to spin offshore right up the East Coast of the US. Incidentally, this track is ideal for spewing out high-quality swell on to the East Coast of the States - and what made me laugh this morning was the difference in the take on this depending on where you read about it.

The NHC's latest bulletin (my italics) warns:

LARGE SWELLS GENERATED BY THIS HURRICANE WILL AFFECT THE NORTHERN LEEWARD ISLANDS... THE BAHAMAS... BERMUDA AND MOST OF THE EASTERN U.S. COAST DURING THE NEXT FEW DAYS. THESE SWELLS WILL LIKELY CAUSE EXTREMELY DANGEROUS SURF AND LIFE-THREATENING RIP CURRENTS.

Anyway, what made me laugh was a trip over to Magic Seaweed to check out how the forecast for Europe is shaping up. And so how did MSW herald the potential arrival of the "extremely dangerous surf" and "life-threatening rip currents"?

LOL!

Percy Grainger - "Irish Tune from County Derry"

2009-08-14T10:15:00.001+01:00

This is a departure, but it's a deserving one.

Back in school, we had a couple of regional bands, and one of the tunes we played was Percy Grainger's masterpiece "Irish Tune from County Derry", known world wide as "Danny Boy".

Here's a rendition by the Illiana Wind Ensemble in Illinois that's very similar to the wind orchestra version that we did. After running through about 20 youtube versions, I chose this one for several reasons. Firstly, it doesn't involve strings, and I think strings strangely take away from this piece. Secondly, the balancing of the instruments is really nice on this version - some of the others are bit brash. It's not quite as buttery smooth as I remember us playing it, but that might be rose tinted spectacles, or it might be down to us having the most astounding conductor who gave me (and hopefully everyone else) a sense of grasping for perfection in a way that nobody else ever has.

Or it might be the phrasing - and for that, this is the best performance of it that I can find by a mile. I remember our conductor actually instructing us that he wanted us all to take a sniff at the end of the long phrases, and really put that silent gap in on the first beat of the bar. I think he actually started us sniffing out loud, then told us to do it silently later - and you can really feel that gap here, like a chunk of silence driven right through the heart of the music. It makes it special.

And finally, the whole piece has great shape. It's one of the recurring themes I keep coming back to across all genres of music - is there shape? Is it going anywhere? Well this does, and it does it subtly, gently, despairingly and hopefully.

Here it is - four breathtakingly emotional minutes of an orchestra pleading with you.

Green shoots, turkeys, and endless deleveraging

2009-08-12T14:13:00.014+01:00

Back to the talk of “green shoots” in the economy – this is getting talked up a bit both in the US and Europe at the moment, and it’s worth taking a look at how valid it might be.

Counterpunch and many of the writers on it have really been hitting the nail on the head the last couple weeks – start with Dave Lindorff, who explains that the collapse in house prices in the US has destroyed the equity that consumers were able to borrow against. In effect, much of the economic activity in the US in the last decade was spending done with borrowed money – money borrowed against houses on the understanding that the price rises would stick, and money borrowed on credit cards on the understanding that jobs could be used to pay off the balance down the road. Now that jobs are being shed indiscriminately, and the real estate market is shelled, how can real spending-driven economic activity recover?

Where is the consumer spending supposed to come from that used to represent a whopping 70% of economic activity in a United States that long ago stopped making things? The answer is: nowhere.

Lindorff also refers to the fact that consumers simply could not borrow if they wanted to – the banks are not lending. Do they know something they don’t want to tell us? Lindorff again (my bold):

That’s why card companies like American Express and many Visa and MasterCard issuers, instead of just charging a late charge when card-holders miss a monthly payment deadline as in the past, are now just jacking up the interest rate they charge, --in American Express’s case to 28% or over 2% a month! That’s not the action of a bank that is expecting to get repaid by a valued customer—it’s the extortionate action of a usurer that wants to extract as much money as possible from a borrower that it expects to have go bust.

The ever reliable Mike Whitney also talks eloquently about the Federal Reserve in the US pumping money in to banks with the full knowledge that this will likely result in stock market speculation, driving the recent rally in the States. This means that the run up in the stockmarket stateside is not based on any fundamentals (employment, housing market, spending by joe public) whatsoever, but is simply the government funnelling money to financial institutions knowing that it will likely end up in the stockmarket, inflating values against the fundamentals – a game that can have only one conclusion. To add to that, Whitney highlights another problem that has been bubbling under for some time now – that is the trouble that the US is starting to experience in getting foreign governments and central banks to participate in the auctions of US dollar bonds. This (auctioning off US government bonds) is how the US has been funding its astonishing national debt for some time now, but unfortunately it does require confidence on the part of foreign governments and investors that the dollar won’t collapse, rendering the bonds they have purchased near-worthless.

As the fundamentals of the US economy get in to worse and worse shape, the likelihood of a dollar collapse gets closer and closer. Foreign governments would prefer not to have a sudden dollar collapse – they (China particularly) have so much money tied up in the US that a sudden collapse would be catastrophic for them also, so there is an element of chicken and egg. However, while nobody wants to be the one to cause the panic and run for the exits first, people (similar to the end of a large sporting event) are starting to put their things in their pockets and silently slip on their coats, hoping that nobody notices and they can be out of the door before they get trampled in the stampede and lose everything. The day of reckoning comes ever closer.

Finally, Whitney talks here about the roots of the destruction of the US economy – something that should have resonance in every other economy with over-extended consumers, rising unemployment and a housing market crash (here’s looking at you Iceland, Ireland, the UK, Spain, Eastern Europe, who knows where else):

A careful reading of the FRBSF's Economic Letter shows why the economy will not bounce back. It's mathematically impossible. We've reached peak credit; consumers have to deleverage and patch their balance sheets. Household wealth has slipped $14 trillion since the crisis began. Home equity has dropped to 41 per cent (a new low) and joblessness is on the rise. By 2011, Deutsche Bank AG predicts that 48 per cent of all homeowners with a mortgage will be underwater. As the equity position of homeowners deteriorates, banks will further tighten credit and foreclosures will mushroom.

In other words, the borrow-to-spend game relied upon the public having confidence that they would have the money from a job to pay back the borrowings, and that they would remain in a position of strength to pay back their mortgage in a house rising in value. There is now no confidence, for many people there are no jobs, and for many there is nothing but a vast collapse in house prices.

It’s going to take a very long time for the public to start to pay off the debts that they have personally accumulated, and until that time, it seems unlikely that they will be willing to stimulate the economy by spending unnecessarily. The game is up.

On a related tip, there’s a slightly heavy but quite interesting article here by hotshot of the month Nassim Nicholas Taleb, exploring the limits of statistics as a tool and parts of life where statistics are used with disastrous results. It’s particularly interesting because he talks at length about banks using statistics methods to analyse risk, without really understanding the statistics or the risks.

Here’s his somewhat hilarious metaphor for a turkey using statistical methods incorrectly to analyse it’s own risk:

A Turkey is fed for a 1000 days—every days confirms to its statistical department that the human race cares about its welfare "with increased statistical significance".

On the 1001st day, the turkey has a surprise.

Which begs the question - if we are the turkeys, is day 1001 in our past - or is it still to come?

Metro Area - "Miura"

2009-08-07T12:35:00.003+01:00

I was going to post something a bit more morose today, but I had a great moment in the shop this morning on the way to work that completely changed my mind.

I was in getting the infamous Irish breakfast roll on the way to work (no canteen any more, which means no fryup on a Friday - out/insourcing is not a victimless crime!), and standing at the counter in the motorbike gear with the roll and a drink waiting to pay, the guy behind the counter asked if I was going on "a long drive".

No, unfortunately I'm off to work I said. He responded "Ah". Long pause. "Nice day today though. Long drive, you get a bit hungry, stop the bike and have some of the roll and a drink."

I couldn't argue with the simplicity of his vision. One man, the motorbike, the road, the sun, and a breakfast roll. Emerging into the bright clear Dublin sunlight, suddenly there was only one tune for today - the retro-disco of Morgan Geist and freinds from a few years back.

Classy stuff, and a reminder of how easy it is to change someone's day.

Chemical Brothers - "One too many mornings"

2009-07-31T13:03:00.002+01:00

Friday tune is this great old chillout classic by the Chemical brothers (before they went uncontrollably big-beat).

It won't win any fans in the underground techno purist category, but who cares - great atmosphere, and every single sound is perfect... plus it's perfectly arranged. Amazing 7am vibes.

Nationalise the banks!

2009-07-30T15:20:00.014+01:00

It's pretty obvious at this point that the banking system worldwide is in a vast mess, and (despite what they may tell you), it's not looking any rosier for the near future.

The "green shoots" in the US seem to constitute a speculative stock market run due to the massive multiple stimulus actions (paid for by the taxpayer), which have underpinned a bounce (of the dead cat variety?) in the market which isn't based on any fundamental health in the economy. In other words, when this stock market bounce runs out of steam and investors (realising that there are no sound fundamentals) run for the exits again, hold on tight.

We've heard many times that the banks are "too big to fail" - that they are of such systematic importance to society as a whole, that they simply cannot be allowed to go bankrupt - and that this systematic importance is the reason that we (the taxpayers) have to underpin the banks balance sheet when push comes to shove. Now, I can accept the premise that the banks are so important that they cannot be allowed to fail, and therefore, that we as a society may have to support them, financially if necessary.

What I cannot understand is - if we as taxpayers accept there is a need to support a crucial industry such as banking with our own money when the going is tough for them, then why would we allow our interest in the banks to be sold for a moderate profit when the banks return to health, and leave the serious money to be made by corporate interests when the banks are back to printing money off our backs as we struggle to repay our own private debts to them?

In other words - if the banks are of such societal importance, why are they not permanently nationalised? This way, when times are tough, we back the banks. When times are good, the profits from banking would benefit all of society, not just shareholders and vastly overpaid board members. I guess the answer is in the italics.

If we are going to socialise the risk, can we at least socialise the profit too?

--

The other thought that occurred to me recently was that it is very odd that when there is a balance-sheet crisis in the health industry (the industry that keeps us alive), it requires either new work practices, more efficiencies, less/more management, or best of all, more privatisation.

Contrast this with when there is a balance-sheet crisis in the banking industry (the industry that keeps us in debt), - this type of crisis requires a eye-bogglingly vast bailout with your own money (and your children, and your grand children's money) to ensure its continued survival in its present form.

Jordi Forniés - "Tír na nÓg" (land of eternal youth)

2009-07-27T15:01:00.003+01:00

Dublin people - you will need to be quick to catch this, but I highly recommend you do go and have a look.

Jordi Forniés is exhibiting again in Dublin, for the briefest of times, and his stuff is really great.

Mixed media paintings, with a variety of materials (canvas, paint, latex, plastic, concrete, gold leaf, you name it!) used in ways which makes the paintings amazingly physical and three-dimensional.

I bought a "Jordi" last year, and ever since it has formed the inspirational backdrop to my work in the music studio. Highly worth it, and much more compelling in the flesh than you would imagine, even if you're not an art person (and I'm not, really).

The latest exhibition, "Tír na nÓg" (which translates as "Land of eternal youth") runs in Filmbase, Curved Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, from July 26th to July 30th.

Primal Scream - "Come Together"

2009-07-24T10:48:00.003+01:00

The tune for Friday - Primal Scream at the peak of their powers, getting worked over by Andrew Weatherall at the peak of his powers. This is brilliant.

"Today on this program you will hear, Gospel, and rythym and blues, and jazz - all those are just labels - we know that music is music..."

Kemp Folds!

2009-07-23T16:43:00.003+01:00

Does the internet get any better, stupider, and more pointless than Kemp Folds?

(Answers: yes, yes, yes)

The evolution of a Ryanair fare

2009-07-21T17:36:00.028+01:00

Thinking about a flight in Europe? Why not choose Ryanair, the self-appointed "low-fares airline"?

Now the thing is, Ryanair was cheap - you could get genuinely rock-bottom fares, reasonable service (well, it was good enough!), it ran to time, check-in bags were free, and so on. Well things have changed - and with the airline industry in turmoil, and Ryanair cutting routes and grounding planes this year, it does somehow seem that they are pushing passengers to squeeze the last bit of margin out that they can, and see how far they can go before they strangle the golden goose.

I decided to have a look for a return flight from Dublin to Edinburgh recently, and see how it stacked up.

So first step - give lots of notice - so I chose October, a clear 3 months away. Secondly, shop around for a cheap day, and a cheap fare. And I got them - going out on a Friday, and back on a Sunday no less!

So what is the fare? €9.99 each way. €19.98 total - beautiful!

Well... not quite. You see, I forgot that that does not include "taxes and fees". It turns out that "Taxes and Fees" amount to €33.37 on the way out, and €30.65 on the way back! Hold on - that means my €19.98 fare is now €84?

If only.

Here's the breakdown of the extra taxes and fees for both directions:

And nicely summarised:

Ok, I see the Taxes/Fees (whatever they are - I'll come back to that). But €94? Where did the extra €10 come from?

That would be the Ryanair web check in scam. A bit of history needed here...

On Ryanair flights originally you checked in at an airport checkin desk, like a normal flying human. Then, they brought in the amazing web check in, so that you could print your own boarding pass, thus not needing to check in at the desk at all. Major staff cost-saving for Ryanair! So, to thank the passenger for checking in online and saving the airline money, they gave you a saving (or rather they penalised the normal check in passenger), by making it free to check in online, but introducing a charge for a normal desk check in.

Well, fair enough - a bit mean, but you have the choice. Well not any more - they have just done away with the check in desks altogether. So the vast majority of passengers now have to check in online. Ok, but online check in is free so that's not so bad, right? Wrong - because now that you have no choice, Ryanair charge you €5 per-flight to check in online.

So having saved the staff costs (that means reduced hours or lost jobs to me and you) involved in a check in desk, and bribed you to help them do so by incentivising you to do online check in, Ryanair are now going to stick it to you by charging you €5 per flight, per person, for the privilege of printing your own boarding pass. Brilliant.

While we're on this little scam, here's another thing - the ticket price is €9.99. If I have to online check in, and I have to pay the €5 for my own time and effort in doing it, why is the €5 check in fee not built in to the ticket price? This is the last straw for me with Ryanair - the stage where deliberate opacity becomes outright deception. The €5 is a known, predictable cost, and effectively a non-tax, non-optional part of my ticket price - so it should be built in to the ticket price, so I can see immediately what I'm actually paying.

Next, you'll notice in the above summary of charges image, that there's a little blue link next to the "Taxes/Fees" line item, so that you can get details [sic] on what the taxes and fees are. Me being the curious sort, I clicked on it - and here is the genius explanation of the taxes and fees that go to make up the €33.37 on the outbound flight:

So, for those that are curious about how the €33.37 Taxes and Fees break down, this should forever answer all your questions. €27.38 of that "Taxes and Fees" total is... Tax and Fees. I'm not sure it could be more of a deliberate non-explanation if it tried. Either Ryanair have mislabeled the window, and €27.38 is pure tax - OR they are deliberately or otherwise concealing the fees details from the customer.

As for the €5.99 "Insurance/Wheelchair Levy/Aviation Insurance", I have a couple questions - firstly, why are two types of Insurance listed, and secondly, if this is a constant cost, why is it not included in the basic ticket price?

Anyway, with my €19.98 ticket running at €94, it's time to get this thing booked before I choose "Priority Boarding" or something stupid.

So - it's on to baggage and Insurance (hold on - haven't I been charged for two types of insurance already?). Anyway:
Trying to keep costs down, I decide to check in no bag, and take no travel insurance. (Incidentally, a single check in bag would be €10 each way, catapulting my ticket to €114). As for the travel insurance, it no longer selects travel insurance by default, but it does make you select from a drop down list, with "No Travel Insurance Required" buried in the middle. Maybe ok for younger types like me, but the no-insurance option should really be the default - for an older person trying to book a flight, what are the chances of them inadvertently purchasing and paying for travel insurance they don't need?

Ok, so we are done - time to check out. The checkout section is ready to go, showing our €94 total:

So I choose to pay by Visa...

And it's suddenly €104. Another extra €10. And the explanation for this, would be what exactly?

Oh - it's a handling fee. One of those handling fees that only applies to a Visa transaction (although there are lower fees for bank debit cards etc). The thing that I cannot figure out, is this: if it's a charge for going through Visa, then how come this charge is applied once for every person, for every flight? For instance, if I buy a return for two people, I'm charged four Visa handling charges!

Are Ryanair so inefficient that they process my card two separate times to get the payment for a return flight? (I checked my statement, no they are not - they are simply charge you two Visa handling fees, for one Visa transaction)

Anyway, flight booked, and I can only be glad that I started out with the cheap €9.99 fare.

Because even with no check-in bags, online check-in only, no travel insurance, and no priority boarding, a €19.98 ticket is equal to a €104 charge when you fly with Ryanair the "Low Fares [sic] Airline"

Pink Floyd - "Shine on you crazy diamond"

2009-07-17T07:15:00.003+01:00

Tune for this Friday is the Floyd. They had a massive influence on me musically when I was growing up. I remember my first album I ever purchased was Dark Side of the Moon - on cassette. (Has anyone listened closely to a cassette recently? Do you have any idea how good it sounds compared to MP3?) When I finally folded and got a CD player, it was also the first album I got on CD. Even today, some of the stuff on that album still blows me away. And after hundreds of listens, yes, the alarms going off still makes me jump three feet in the air!

Another epic album Pink Floyd released was a live album titled "Delicate Sound of Thunder". There's something about the production on this that just draws you in - it's so three-dimensional and shimmery, you kind of feel yourself sucked into a sphere of noise.

From Delicate Sound of Thunder, here's "Shine on you crazy diamond" live at Knebworth. It's worth opening in a new youtube window and clicking on the HQ button, as the stereo audio makes a vast difference.

Check also "On the Turning Away" from the same album - the levels are bit jumpy in this live version, but the song is another classic, and dissapointingly still relevant.

Is it only a dream that there'll be no more turning away?

Learning to surf part 1 - Santa Cruz surf school

2009-07-16T19:03:00.000+01:00

I’m not sure what started my surfing bug, but most likely, it was the succession of January work trips to California. Every year, I would be across to Los Angeles with work for the NAMM tradeshow, and most years I would end up spending a couple of days up in Scotts Valley where my company was based. As luck would have it, Scotts Valley is five miles up the road from Santa Cruz, and staying in Santa Cruz it can only be so long before you stumble across the surf.

On the trip out to LA in 2005, I ended up bagging a nice Canon camera at Samy’s Camera in Santa Ana – highly recommended if you are looking for a camera in Southern California. A year later I was back in CA, and in Santa Cruz alone one cool and sunny winter Sunday I decided to take the camera down to the shoreline and take some snaps. As fate would have it my walking trip coincided with a decent swell, and what was to be a curious photo-expedition turned in to a 5 hour odyssey along the Santa Cruz shoreline.

Starting at the point at the mouth of the San Lorenzo river, I sat up on the point for a long time and watched these beautiful tubing waves erupting off the point, while surfers paddled around (and sometimes through) the waves to get out behind them, and then came sliding back in on the next waves coming through. I’m not sure I had ever seen surfing in person before, and it was completely transfixing.

After a long time up on the point, I started the walk across to the other side of town, to West Cliff above the world-famous “Steamer Lane” surf spot, and it was here where the swell was really hitting. I spend another 2/3 hours on the cliffs, watching and shooting pictures, and one of the pick of the bunch is this pic – a nice meaty “Middle Peak” wave coming through, with some surfers paddling out to give some sense of scale. It turned in to to one of my favourite pictures I’ve ever taken – the offshore wind driving the spray backwards off the top of the wave, the lip, suspended and about to crack down like a jackhammer, all three surfers paddling out having turned to watch the wave do its stuff…

After that afternoon, I couldn't put the idea down. Life being what it is, it took the full year until I got back to Santa Cruz in 2007 for me to take solid action, and book myself in for a surfing lesson. The people who were unlucky enough to have to take me out my first day, were the utterly brilliant Santa Cruz Surf School. It was pretty quiet – another couple were supposed to be having a lesson as well, but they cancelled, so it was just me – and so the guy from the school (who was several years younger and vastly fitter than me) had the unenviable task of trying to get me on my feet.

The day in question (and from consulting the calendar, it was probably Sunday 21st January 2007) was, typically, nearly completely swell-free. On walking down to the beach, the guy from the school expressed some surprise that it would be that flat in January. The normal beginners surfing spot – Cowell’s beach had hardly even a ripple. I was determined to do it though, so he agreed to take me out to “Indicators” (the most protected and least intimidating part of the Steamer Lane surf corridor), which was catching a tiny bit of swell and did have some small waves rolling through occasionally. Unfortunately, that meant 4-5 minutes of paddling the surfboard across the bay in front of Cowells – which as an absolute beginner, was crucifying on the arms. Nevertheless, I did get there in the end, and managed despite myself, to paddle for and stand up on a wave as it rolled in. I guess I stood up for about 3 or 4 seconds, which was hailed (somewhat generously perhaps) as a great achievement for a rank beginner on their first time out. It was the only time I stood up in over an hour of attempts, but if I wasn’t completely taken with surfing before, the amazing magic-carpet feeling of gliding in pushed by the wave was more than enough to do it.

The paddle back in to the beach, however, was nearly fatal - I was so tired by this point that I could hardly lift an arm, let alone paddle a 9-foot board through the water. In any case, after the longest time, with the surf school guy watching me carefully the whole way in, I did get back in to the beach.

Notwithstanding the fact that my arms ached so badly I couldn’t cross them without being in agony the next 2 days, I was hooked...

U2 - "Red Hill Mining Town"

2009-07-10T11:15:00.004+01:00

I'm off for the weekend - West Cork, which means pints of Murphys, hopefully some surf (MSW seems to think so), and the main point of the trip - collecting the wedding album. It'll also be the puppy's first ever trip to West Cork, which should be interesting!

So, in tribute to the collapse of the Irish economy, the implosion of the house market, and the crippling debt burden that we have taken on (and anyone who thinks there are green shoots coming, either wake up and smell the coffee, or close your eyes so you don't see what the dollar is going to do in the next few years) - here is the tune for Friday.

Another album, another moment of genius. Apart from those of us who have serious paid-for assets behind us or are very cash-rich, we're all in Red Hill Mining Town now...

Cajmere - "Preacherman" (Relief Records)

2009-07-03T08:06:00.000+01:00

Posting a tune for Friday (the awesome Benji Candelario, for those of you who missed out) seemed like the thing to do last week, so I decided I'd have a go at a tune for Friday, every Friday. Sort of like a Friday institution, that will last at least as long as it takes me to get tired of doing it. Which may be next week.

So, this long standing institution continues into its epic second week today with the tune for Friday: Preacherman.

Back in the 90s, when the clubbing house music world was ruled by cleanly produced European "techhouse" and the nth wave of Detroit styled techno, it seemed like house had forgotten its spiritual home of Chicago. Then from out of the blue, the jamming vocal label Cajual Records and it's heavier trackier brother Relief records erupted on to the scene from Illinois. Like a breath of fresh air, Cajual and Relief sprayed boxy, tracky disposable party records across a scene heavy on shoe-gazing and short on partying.

Here's one of the all-time classics that emerged - party animal (later to become hardcore Christian) and Cajual/Relief label owner Cajmere (aka Curtis Jones), with the monsterous Preacherman. Defying every possible rule of how to make a record, it's a furious and ultimately screaming religious rant layed across 8 minutes of punishing jackhammer distorted house drums. These meter-bursting drums would go on to become a feature of Cajual and particularly Relief releases, and while they sounded odd and off at first, it only took a couple of times hearing them on a big PA to realise what was what. Apart from that, all there is in Preacherman is a single synth noise that plays the same note in triplets across the beat the entire way through the track, getting slowly bent further and further out into FM synthesis psychosis as the fury of the preacher rises and falls.

Insane, powerful, unique, and unstoppable on a big system. Is it nearly time to ditch the new Berlin minimal sound, and get back to some old-school Chicago jack-tracks?

A kiss ain't enough!

Live ATC Radar

2009-06-30T18:25:00.005+01:00

Ok, so it's not the actual radar image the ATC guys get, but it's still pretty cool.

You can watch live radar of JFK airport traffic (as in flying traffic) in New York here...

Here's a JFK example - you can see the arrivals (blue planes) getting routed out over the Atlantic to circle and lose height, then coming back in to Kennedy "in trail".

Green aircraft are the departures. Anything else, isn't a JFK related aircraft (but most of those are for the adjacent La Guardia or Jersey airports)

LAX (Los Angeles) is also available, here...

Here's an LAX screenshot - lots of parallel-runway departures out over Santa Monica bay in green, and a great illustration of the routes they come in on for the parallel landing runways. Most flights from the East and South end up coming in over the East of the city, and getting lined up for one of the southerly two runways. Aircraft from the North and West (which means most flights from Europe) come in over Malibu and Santa Monica, and fly a U-turn just past LA city centre, to line up for the northerly runway.

So if live JFK and LAX radar doesn't satisfy your plane geek factor, why not hook up your audio with the accompanying ATC transmissions?

LAX tower is here, and JFK tower is here.

Benji Candelario - Central Park / Rum de Coco (Released for Pleasure)

2009-06-26T08:03:00.001+01:00

Seeing as it's Friday, it's time for a Friday sort of track. Here is one from New York, from back in 1996 - the occasionally incredible Benji Candelario, and Central Park (Rum de Coco).

Back at the tail end of the time when NYC was really doing it for house music (who remembers those days?), it comes from the post-Strictly Rhythm era when Candelario, MoodIISwing, and Masters at Work were in their prime. This really is one of the best examples of the era, and it's nothing short of awesome. A deep hard-hitting house beat, and a pounding bassline in fifths and octaves are a gift to get a more musical tune on to the tougher dancefloors.

Then there's the break that introduces the organ solo, and then the drop back in to the kick drum. Not only is it musical, it's thunderous.

When you've been playing darker and tougher house tracks in a set, there is absolutely no record that is guaranteed to lift the atmosphere like this one - and consequently, you can safely drive into darker territory with a less 'techno' crowd, ready to slam this in as the payoff when the moment is right. In fact, nothing makes this record work better than approaching it through a couple of austere tracks.

I'm not sure I can remember a single time that I've played it out in a club where someone hasn't come up to me and asked me what it is. It doesn't get much better than this.

What actually is going on in Iran?

2009-06-23T12:16:00.004+01:00

There are some fascinating thoughts from Paul Craig Roberts on Counterpunch.

The full article ("The U.S. Regime-Change Recipe for Iran") is here - my excerpts of the most interesting nuggets are as follows...

On May 16, 2007, the London Telegraph reported that Bush regime official John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”

We are now witnessing in Tehran US “attempts to foment a popular revolution” in the guise of another CIA orchestrated “color revolution.”

---

Even if the mullahs hold together and suppress the protests, the legitimacy of the Iranian government in the eyes of the outside world has been damaged. Obama’s diplomatic approach is over before it started. The neocons and Israel have won. ... One cannot avoid the conclusion that the West wants the 1978 Iranian Revolution overthrown and intends to use deception or violence to achieve that goal.

According to a wide variety of news sources (for example, London Telegraph, Yahoo News, The Globe and Mail, Asbarez.com, Politico), “Before the polling closed Mr. Mousavi declared himself ‘definitely the winner’ based on ‘all indications from all over Iran.’ He alleged widespread voting irregularities without giving specifics and hinted he was ready to challenge the final results.” ... Mousavi’s premature claim of victory before polling was over or votes counted is clearly a preemptive move, the purpose of which is to discredit any other outcome. There is no other reason to make such a claim.

In Iran’s system, election fraud has no purpose, because a small select group of ruling mullahs select the candidates who are put on the ballot. If they don’t like an aspiring candidate, they simply don’t put him on the ballot.

---

Neoconservative Kenneth Timmerman let the cat out of the bag that there was an orchestrated “color revolution” in the works. Before the election, Timmerman wrote: “there’s talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” Why would protests be organized prior to a vote and announcement of the outcome? Organized protests waiting in the wings are not spontaneous responses to a stolen election.

A writer on pakalert.wordpress.com says that he was intrigued by the sudden appearance of tens of thousands of Twitter allegations that Ahmadinejad stole the Iranian election. He investigated, he says, and he reports that each of the new highly active accounts were created on Saturday, June 13th. “IranElection” is their most popular keyword. He narrowed the spammers to the most persistent: @StopAhmadi, @IranRiggedElect, and @Change_For_Iran. He researched further and found that On June 14 the Jerusalem Post already had an article on the new twitter. He concludes that the new Twitter sites are propaganda operations.

---

The unexamined question is Mousavi and his motives. Why would Mousavi unleash demonstrations that are obviously being used by a hostile West to discredit the government of the Iranian Revolution that overthrew the US puppet government? Are these the actions of a “moderate”? Or are these the actions of a disgruntled man who kept his disaffection from his colleagues in order to gain the opportunity to discredit the regime with street protests? Is Mousavi being manipulated by organizations funded with US government money?

Rudder - "Matorning" (Nineteen-Eight Records)

2009-06-16T17:49:00.004+01:00

So I recently got a copy of “Matorning”, the new album from NYC based group Rudder on Nineteen-Eight Records. I’ll get the interest declaration out of the way right now, and state that I’m related to one of the band. Whatever about that, I’m not one for plugging stuff that I don’t like, plus you can get audio clips on the web and decide for yourself.

Where was I – oh yes, the album. So, they are all great musicians, and they’ve got a sense of humour. Rudder are a four-piece, composed of Keith Carlock on drums, Tim Lefebvre on bass, Henry Hey on keyboards, and Chris Cheek on saxaphones. They’ve all done various famous stuff, including Steely Dan, Saturday Night Live, Rod Stewart plus their own projects - you name it.

To the album. The band claim to “feed the intense craving for [an] organic and phenomenal groove experience". Now I'm all about phenomenal groove experiences (although they typically are more likely to be supplied by rigorously quantised machines, but that's a subject for another day) - so giving the ten-track “Matorning” a spin is particularly interesting, as my 'phenomenal' threshold for grooves is set pretty high.

First to hit is “3H Club”, and within 3 seconds it’s an experience alright, with an insistent groove getting hit from here to next week while the edge-of-distortion bass grumbles over the top and the keyboards vamp around. It’s difficult to describe the genre, but it’s a good genre whatever it is. Just when you think it’s going to be a pure bass groove, the sax appears and leads the whole track in to a more classical jazz mode, joined in a second by an organ. Every so often it breaks, and every time it comes back (for an organ solo, then a stomping building jam, then a sax workout, then the main tune again), the groove seems heavier and more insistant. 3H Club runs for a touch over 7 minutes, and every time you think you have a label that you could pin on it, something happens to make you think again.

If you weren’t sure about the electicism after the first track, then the rest of the album will definitely sort you out. While the theme of jazz and jamming runs across the whole album (although this is udpated jazz - without being different-planet unlistenable), the extra ingredients are always being mixed. “Toyko Chicken” adds electrified and cheeky ska-punk, “Lucy” distills a stunningly contemplative downtempo track into the most plaintive sax melody, “One Note Mosh” is an urgent and musical car chase.

Usually anything with 7 beats in the bar sounds horrifically indulgent, but on “Jackass Surcharge”, Rudder manage to get those beats in (or take them out) to come up with a stunningly funky looping monster, without sounding deliberately clever – it’s good solid fun.

The second half of the album is just as good – from the deranged offkilter “Innit” (where did that title come from - aren’t these guys supposed to be American?) to the hilariously titled “Lucky Beard” which seems (amongst other things) to have a time signature which simultaneously leans two ways. Devastatingly funky. “Daitu” comes across almost like a sub-acid-house jam, all distortion and looping, loping bass – custom made for a big PA. Then it’s in to the last two on the album, with the frantic and claustrophobic 2 minutes of jamming that is “Neppe” leaving on to the finale, “CDL”, which appears in a sweep of pads and effects, until a repeating bassline and piano motif opens up the track and reveals (together with “Lucy”) the most commercial sound on the whole record, as straight powerful chords underpin an arching sax tune as the band drive inexorably towards the end in a deliberate and articulate full stop on the ten tracks.

The music itself really is great, and suprisingly easy and engaging to listen to for something that has so many ideas. The mix of players sounds right too - if you haven’t noticed by the end how well the band work together, then you need to listen again – the effortless and easy flow of the sax, the always-in-the-right-place stylings of the keyboards, the busy and hugely effective work going on all the time in the bass, and the freakishly metronomic and funky drums, it’s effortlessly musical, and highly recommended. Just don’t ask me what to call it.

Tuneful, thought-provoking, and funky to the point of uncontrollably danceable, Rudder supply music to snap genres by.

If they are this heavy, engaging and funky on record, you wouldn’t want to miss them live...

The KLF / JAMS - It's Grim up North

2009-06-14T19:40:00.001+01:00

Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty have always been up to wierd stuff. Cauty is from Liverpool, and Drummond is from Scotland. For a few years in the 90s, they formed "The KLF" together, and launched in to a bizarre and temporary career as art-pop terrorists, foisting a unique, strange and fascinating series of pop/dance singles on the charts.

One of their later singles was "It's Grim up North", and although I didn't understand it at the time, it's come to seem more and more significant to me as I've grown up.

The "North" in the song refers to the North of England. A place of stunning scenery, post-industrial waste-towns and cities, riven with unemployment, it's generally experienced from one of the few major motorways that arc across this part of England. The main artery (the M6) runs from Birmingham directly North, passing between Liverpool and Manchester before trailing up all the way to the border with Scotland. On the other side of the country, the oscillating disaster that is the M1/A1 grinds slowly up the East Coast, passing Hull, and eventually reaching Newcastle, before snaking up and around in to Edinburgh.

Linking these two is the M62, which cuts directly East-West from Liverpool to Hull. Driving from, to or through "the North", you spend a lot of time on these motorways, gliding past parts of England forgotten or deliberately neglected for huge parts of the 80s by London and Thatcher, with the attendant social problems and unemployement that resulted.

In "It's Grim up North", the KLF somehow captured this atmosphere in one of the most surreal tunes ever to make the UK charts. Set entirely in front of a rain-drenched motorway underpass, a searing industrial kick drum thunders out underneath klaxons and horns, as a litany of distored Northern English placenames is intoned from a guy standing in the driving rain in front of the biggest pile of back-floodlit speakers. Political parties seeking to fight the BNP should at least have to watch this video and soak it up a little bit.

It somehow captures the bleak and resiliant spirit of the North, in the context of the never-sleeping dirty motorways that constantly stream through it. The most amazing moments of the tune are halfway through, as the grinding industrialism breaks and slowly melts into the plaintive and powerfully epic "Jerusalem". Tied up in "little England" psychology (check Jerusalem at the last night of the Proms from London for some idea), nothing is guaranteed to fill the hearts of middle class England with more pride.

Two completely disparate atmospheres, one track. As musical pivot it's incredibly skilfull - as a cultural counterpoint, it's jaw-dropping.

Arthur Kade

2009-06-12T14:28:00.003+01:00

Forgive me for posting this, but have you met Arthur Kade?

Or perhaps, seen his Twitter page?

I'm not sure what constructively I can say about this - except, please send help.

Kade in his own, inimitably self-obsessed Twitter words:

"All of my female friends are hot and have implants and the unattractive ones at least have successful, high paying jobs."

"Acclaimed casting director Mike Lemon says my performances are cool and effortless and that I'm a "once in a generation" talent."

"I am too good looking for radio, but I think I have a diverse, powerful, and interesting enough personality, that I could be great at it."

"Just finished an amazing radio appearance with Danny Bonaduce. He mentioned several times how good looking I am"

"Went to my ex's bday party and had to be careful not to monopolize the whole party with my good looks and celebrity stories. Impressive."

"People don’t realize the effort that goes into getting perfect pictures. I have had times where a look was so hot, I just look amazing."

"I just hired an acting coach (Pat Jordan of Philadelphia) and I could tell she was shocked by my good looks and innate acting ability."

"My beard is really looking amazing. I think it gives me that leading man/tough guy look, like Colin Farrell."

"Changed my Twitter backgrounds today with head shots because I think it better perpetuates the "Kade brand"."

And my own personal favourite:

"I'm blessed with thick, full hair that looks amazing straight or curly."

Just for some fan perspective, here are some snippets from the comments people have left on his webpage:

"I might have to just stop posting, because there are no words whatsoever for the trainwreck that is that commentary video at the top"

"I started to watch the ‘autograph’ clip and had to stop :10 in . . .
ARE YOU F*CKING RETARDED?
again Arthur,
ARE YOU F*CKING RETARDED?"

"someone needs a severe douching of the soul i thinks."

"he is truly a perfect storm of douchebaggery"

"The decline of western civilization has finally happened."

"The pig in Babe had way more highly evolved acting skills"

If you don't feel uncomfortable already, then be sure to check out the Kade Scale (his rating system for women).

And if that doesn't do it, then his Youtube Channel surely will.

Perhaps the Final Dance Rehearsal will do it for you. Or mabye even seeing the "Kade Dance" go down live in a nightclub...?

If none of that works for you, then could I suggest that you try the poolside danceoff?

Across 110th Street on the Emerald Isle

2009-06-10T08:15:00.000+01:00

Here's a stunning performance by Bobby Womack, with a double-header of songs - California Dreaming, and the incredible "Across 110th Street", which is as relevant today as it was the day it was written (1973).

I've always found something quite magnetic about "Across 110th Street" - it explains urban decay and what follows more accurately than any dry text is likely to, and it's an amazingly soulful song. With Womack's voice, it's even better, and this performance with just an acoustic guitar is about as good as it gets.

It's a timely song as well, and it's a warning following the insane property bubble and unhindered development that's been happening in Ireland for the last 15 years. This frenzy of development was one of the first things that struck me when I moved to Ireland in 2003 - building of shoddy housing estates, on the extreme periphery of cities, and some of the larger towns. This is exactly what happened in Scotland back in the 60s with the concrete tower blocks - which were the great new thing at the time. The problem is that the estates typically don't get finished, you can't walk to anything or anywhere, public transport is patchy, and viable and plentiful services such as schools, shops, and a proper sense of community are never developed.

Take a very poorly positioned housing estate that sprawls for miles and is walking distance to nowhere, fail to complete it, fail to put in public transport, fail to add shops, gardens, parks and community, and then throw in a price crash trapping owner-occupiers on the estate, and a recession with job losses sapping them of any money they might have remaining, and watch the inevitable outcome.

A lot of people in dream housing estates are going to find themselves across 110th street in the next few years...

Regina Brett's 45 life lessons

2009-06-08T10:08:00.002+01:00

I got this as a circular email recently. I usually bin them, but this one ties in with a lot of stuff I think about life too. It reminded me in places of Walter Payton (if you haven't got his book yet, get it) - and some of the ways that he talked about life.

Anyway, here it is - 50 pieces of life advice from Regina Brett, columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Ohio.

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.

2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.

3. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.

4. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.

5. Pay off your credit cards every month.

6. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.

8. It's OK to get angry with God. He can take it.

9. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.

10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.

11. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.

12. It's OK to let your children see you cry.

13. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about.

14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.

15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.

16. Life is too short for long pity parties. Get busy living, or get busy dying.

17. You can get through anything if you stay put in today.

18. A writer writes. If you want to be a writer, write.

19. It's never too late to have a happy childhood. But the second one is up to you and no one else.

20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don't take no for an answer.

21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.

22. Overprepare, then go with the flow.

23. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.

24. The most important sex organ is the brain.

25. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.

26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: "In five years, will this matter?"

27. Always choose life.

28. Forgive everyone everything.

29. What other people think of you is none of your business.

30. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.

31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.

32. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch.

33. Believe in miracles.

34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn't do.

35. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.

36. Growing old beats the alternative - dying young.

37. Your children get only one childhood. Make it memorable.

38. Read the Psalms. They cover every human emotion.

39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.

40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.

41. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.

42. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.

43. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

44. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.

45. The best is yet to come.

46. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.

47. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.

48. If you don't ask, you don't get.

49. Yield.

50. Life isn't tied with a bow, but it's still a gift.

Air France 447

2009-06-03T11:23:00.004+01:00

The disaster involving Air France flight 447 is a very odd one. A widebody airliner, running a regular scheduled oceanic flight, suddenly dissapears with no distress calls. A debris field has been found, so it seems certain that the aircraft is destroyed - whether this happened prior to or after contact with the water is to be determined.

I've been sifting the web - there are a million theories out there, but here's a super-condensed version of what seems to be known, and the most reasonable conjectures out there.

Firstly - what seems to be known (with UTC times).

A couple of notes - aircraft fly 'routes' in the sky that are marked with 'waypoints' at specific locations. Over the ocean, there is no radar coverage (it only extends a certain distance from land due to the horizon). So normal procedure is to radio in to Air Traffic Control as you pass a waypoint, advise them of where you are, and advise them of your estimated time at the next waypoint. These reports from aircraft allow ATC to track aircraft they cannot see, and to keep adequate separation between aircraft over the ocean.

The waypoint TASIL mentioned below is the halfway waypoint between South America and Africa. At this point, the flight would be 'handed over' from Atlantico ATC (CINDACTAIII - covering the South American side) to Dakar ATC (covering the African side). HF radio communications over the ocean can be a bit tricky, and other pilots have indicated problems in establishing communications when transitioning from Atlantico to Dakar, so just because no radio transmissions were received, does not mean that none were made.

22:03 (19:03 local) The Aircraft (An Airbus A330) left Rio de Janeiro, heading for Paris Charles de Gaulle

01:33 Flight reports to Atlantic Area Control as it overflew the INTOL waypoint, indicating it expects to arrive at the TASIL waypoing at 02:20

01:48 AF447 leaves the radar of CINDACTAIII at Fernando de Noronha, as expected. The aircraft is flying at 35,000 feet, and 453 knots as it leaves radar coverage.

02:20 The aircraft fails to report at waypoint TASIL. Atlantico ATC raise the alarm, and inform Dakar ATC also.

05:33 No further radio or radar contacts from the aircraft. A search is initiated by the Brazilian authorities.

The above, seems to be fact. What follows is less solid - but it seems to me the "most useful" info and the "most likely" scenarios that I can glean from the torrent of information, theory, supposition, and wild-eyed conspiracy flying around.

According to the Aviation Herald, "sources within Air France" suggest that the aircraft emitted a stream of ACARS messages, starting at 02:10 and ending at 02:14. (ACARS is a system for transmission of simple, short messages between the aircraft and ground, which can also be automatic). The unconfirmed sequence of ACARS messages is alleged to be:

02:10 Autopilot had disengaged, fly by wire system had changed to Alternate Law
02:11-02:13 A flurry of messages issued indicating faults with both ADIRU and ISIS systems
02:13 PRIM 1 and SEC 1 faults indicated
02:14 An advisory is issued regarding "cabin vertical speed".

The final ACARS report on "cabin vertical speed" pretty much speaks for itself. The most interesting one is the first one - the deselection of Autopilot, and the selection of "Alternatve Law" for the flight control system. Normally on the A330 (and other Airbuses), the flight is controlled by the pilot, via flight control computers (two of which - PRIM 1 and SEC 1 - started to get cranky at 02:13). Normally there are quite a few protections built in to these computers - they stop you getting the aircraft in too wierd positions, basically.

In "Alternate Law" mode, a lot of the protections are removed - you can stall the aircraft, you can put it in to extreme banks left or right, and you can fly at extreme angles of attack.

What is interesting is, under what circumstances would Alternate Law be engaged? It would seem that it's caused by "multiple failures of redundant systems". One other site suggested that Alternate Law can also be engaged if the aircraft gets in an attitude that is abnormal (i.e. pointed way up or way down, or banked left or right to an extreme degree).

So IF Alternate Law was in fact one of the first problematic ACARS transmissions, it could be supposed that the aircraft was in a highly unusual position *before* the other failures (ADIRU, ISIS, PRIM 1, SEC 1) started.

What could have gotten the plane in a highly unusual position? There's a fantastic weather analysis by Tim Vasquez here (it's a must-read if you are curious about this disaster) which for me comes the closest so far to putting a finger on a likely start to the problems. The plane had to fly through the ITCZ, and the thunderstorms there are not your average animal.

If you combine Vasquez's moving animation of the expected aircraft track, together with the times of the error messages, it does start to look more likely that extreme weather may have been where this problem started.

People are also pointing to the possibility of a dual engine flamout. On another forum, a pilot alleges that the aircraft had CF6 engines, and that they have a history of rollbacks (uncommanded reductions in power), including ones caused by super-cooled water droplets in the vicinity of thunderstorms.

Could it have been a double-engine failure?

Others are pointing out the possibility of a rudder failure, which Airbus may have had a couple of in the past, particularly when extreme rudder deflections are called for from the flight deck. Mabye. In response to extreme weather?

Finally - as of writing it seems to be a debris field of up to 35 miles in length. If that's the case, it strongly suggests the aircraft broke up in the air, not upon impact with the water. That's an interesting investigative point, and also it might provide some small solace to the families of those involved. If the aircraft broke up in the air, it would (together with the very quick flurry of ACARS error messages) point to something going wrong very very quickly.

One thing is for sure - I don't like 2-engined aircraft flying ETOPS long haul flights, no matter how reliable modern engines are. And I definitely don't like fly-by-wire either. Not only is the computer modifying what the pilot is trying to get the aircraft to do, but if for example the pilots were still concious and attempting to control the plane in the 02:10 - 02:14 timeframe, then not only were they trying to cope with extreme weather, and a huge aircraft getting out of control in the dark, but their systems were bombarding them with error messages - Alternate Law engaged, ADIRU faults, ISIS faults, PRIM 1 fault, SEC 1 fault - all this at the same time as trying to figure out what way up they were (it was dark) and how they could rescue the plane.

The area where the debris has been found is several thousand feet deep, and the locating transmitters on the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder only function for 30 days. Let's hope they can find the two boxes before that time is up, and a bit more light can be shed on what happened in the last few minutes of the flight, and doing everything possible to prevent a repeat.

Mick Chillage - "Pure Blue" [Dave Anderson remix]

2009-05-28T14:05:00.005+01:00

After a bit of quiet on the music front for a couple months, I've a new remix out today...

Mick Chillage - "Pure Blue" [Dave Anderson remix] (Nice & Nasty)

This is a remix I completed a couple months ago. The original track by Dublin man about town Mick Chillage is a gorgeous piece of chilled out bluesy electronics, whereas my remix is a 10 minute walking pace thudding deep house reworking with jazzy overtones. Or something like that. As I added a big breezy jazzy melody, I had actually labelled it my "Pure Blues" remix (Pure Blue, Pure Blues, you see what I did there?) - but the title got lost somewhere in the process of releasing.

The label (Nice & Nasty) says this about the release:

2009 has witnessed the rise of Mick Chillage. After two decades of purveying the finest ambient techno and abstract dance across the airwaves of Ireland and in various clubs, his star as a producer has finally risen due to the Departure EP and its' subsequent remixes.

The third remix pack from the Departure EP is Pure Blue and features the talents of Finland's Lackluster, Anglo-Irish star Dave Anderson (Ferox records); and Andrew Duke of Canada.

Lackluster goes deep into abstraction with scattered sounds and anti-rhythmic beats full of fx and weirdness whilst Dave Anderson delivers the finest Detroit style techno and one of the most club friendly Chillage trax to date.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out anyway - you can download it, now, from here:

http://www.junodownload.com/ppps/products/1408906-02.htm

(for contrast - the original of Mick's "Pure Blue" is here)

Enjoy :)

Stars and stuff

2009-05-22T08:03:00.000+01:00

This is pretty amazing - the milky way rising above the horizon at night, shot in time lapse with a Canon EOS-5D...

Max Mobley - "Riot Gear!" (Crawdaddy)

2009-05-21T17:09:00.002+01:00

Here's a column that's worth a look - my ex-colleague Max Mobley is writing for the online reincarnation of legendary US rock magazine, Crawdaddy.

The column is called Riot Gear!, and offers humerous occasional musings on music, technology, humanity, and the places they meet in the middle.

There's some pretty good stuff on there - for instance, Max's recent review of a Beatles based show, or his hilarious (and all too familiar) take on how recording sessions become consumed by technical difficulties.

It's great stuff, and definitely worth a look if you like a bit of music and a bit of techy stuff.

BBC 2 - South Pacific

2009-05-19T11:02:00.000+01:00

Here's a great bit of new footage of a surfer riding in a pretty big barrel in the South Pacific.

Great thing about it is, it was shot with a super high-speed camera, and in HD. The surfing is alright, but for some reason I find it even more addictive watching the death-sentence lip of the wave coming cracking down the reef like a guillotine, blowing huge whitewater explosions into the air (must be quite a shallow reef I guess), and forcing foam back in to the barrel.

Impressive!

Tariq Ali - "The Clash of Fundamentalisms"

2009-05-16T15:01:00.003+01:00

I've read "The Clash of Fundamentalisms" by Tariq Ali over and over, and it really is (so far) the best single book I've found for anyone who wants the non-rocket-science overview of what is really going on in the Middle East.

It covers the origins of Islam and its spread, Jerusalem and the crusades, the Ottoman empire, the schism between Sunni and Shia Islam and the place of women within the religion, Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism, the formation of Israel, Zionism, Palestine, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Bali, and 9/11.

I cannot recommend this highly enough - it sounds like a lot of heavy subjects, but it's split into neat chapters on each one, well written, easy to read, and a good balance of little historic titbits, quotes and stories.

It's utterly illuminating, and a very honest and straightforward picture of the situation in all of these countries. Fascinating stuff.

Powers of Three

2009-05-11T16:11:00.006+01:00

More surf stuff - a new film out with the latest Carve magazine. Looks incredible from the trailers - I can't wait to see it.

Also finally a film of heavy surf (and heavy Irish surf) which is soundtracked by the kind of epic widescreen stadium sound that I think these monsterous scenes deserve, rather than the heavy rock that seems to be the backing in every other surf film.

(I have no idea how to get this little behind-the-scenes film to go to the correct width, so if you want the full size version, get it on the film site here.)

Update - the clip that I had embedded here seems to have cropped out the transport controls, and just plays uncontrollably on the blog even if you're not looking at this post - so I've deleted it. Click on the little italic link above if you fancy it...!

<>

Alison Limerick - "Time of our Lives"

2009-05-08T13:02:00.002+01:00

Time for another oldie - well - I'm not sure how old it is, but it must be early to mid 90s at least, which in dance music, is forever. Could I get any more commas in a sentence? Stay tuned.

Where was I? Oh yes, an oldie, and one with vocals at that. I typically shy away from vocals in dance music (but sometimes towards them in other types of music). It's something to do with imagination versus explicit statement - sometimes I prefer the ambiguity that allows my imagination to figure things out. Also, so many dance music vocal tracks sound twee or weak or something.

Well here's a track that is very vocal. It's by Alison Limerick, and the original (a horrible weak poppy thing) is here. I think the original is a David Morales effort - the drums have that early 90s New York sound about them - in fact, there's a much more dancefloor version by Morales here, which has a bit of the wild pitch NY feel going on, and is a lot better than the original for it.

But - the killer remix is the "Lifetime Vocal Mix", which according to Discogs is (and I just found this out myself) by The Beloved. Thinking about it now, that's not too difficult to believe, as it's got emotional qualities that aren't so far removed from what The Beloved were up to back in the day (who remembers Sweet Harmony? Damn that was a great track)

Anyway - The Beloved took "Time of our Lives" by Limerick, and completely reconfigured it. Centered on a loping drumbeat, it's hugely understated with the deep thud of the kick, off beat hats, a ricochet double-snare and a couple bongos. The bass is just a rumbling wobble under the kick, but it's interesting in that it seems to be constantly playing the 5th - which as vocals and chords come in means the entire track hangs over a harmonic suspension.

Then there's the vocals. The vocals were always great, but they were neutered by the original pop mix. But here, they float free and easy over the rumbling bassline all the way through the first verse - walking pace soul that would shoot light and smiles straight through a club. And then at the first chorus, it changes from ordinary to extraordinary. From somewhere up above, the simplest 2-note chords fall down on the track, and in a short second it's transformed from a decent vocal track, into the rarest communal moment of catharsis. It's the sort of thing that if you were dancing, it might actually make you stop and stand still.

I heard this on the radio years ago, was blown away then, and it was a good while before I found it on vinyl. I've never got the opportunity to play it out (it's a long way from the sets I normally do, and the clubs I normally play), but I've always refused to throw it out or move it on, despite numerous clearouts of vinyl for space reasons.

Somewhere in the future, there is a dancefloor that will have been built up at the right pace, and held at the right pitch all night, and come 4am, it will be time to unleash this emotional bomb.

Richie Hawtin, Traktor and Twitter

2009-05-05T17:46:00.002+01:00

An interesting development in the world of music technology seems (to me) to have happened.

Infamous DJ/producer Richie Hawtin has done something quite interesting – hooking up his Traktor DJ setup to his Twitter account. The result? You get a non-stop live stream on twitter of every track he’s playing on Traktor. As a lot of the stuff he plays is downloads and digital obscurities, this is a pretty amazing way to trawl through what he’s playing and find out odd bits and pieces.

As usual with all things Hawtin, it’s ignited fierce debate across the blogosphere. Some people think it’s the worst thing ever – that he is purely publicising himself without offering anything useful musically. Others think it’s a genuine leap forward.

I’m no big fan of Mr Hawtin’s current direction – it seems to be more and more of the same sub-Berlin minimal plodathon that is flavour of the month at the moment – records full of suspense and mid-paced tension, but without the set phrasing that suggests that it actually ever goes anywhere, or delivers anything at the end. That’s what I get from the ‘minimal’ scene anyway – it seems to me to be lacking dynamics to say the least.

But one thing that the ex-Plastikman does that is to be highly commended is that he seems to put much more stock in a sense of ambition, rather than acting with what some would see as authenticity. While others are revering the original techno formulas and the first wave of Detroit artists (and these guys deserve their due, but music is a living thing not a museum piece), Richie is out bending the formulas and pushing the technological boundaries.

Granted, sometimes he seems more interested in pushing the technical boundaries than actually progressing the music – but technical progression and new techniques tend to give birth to new types of music (Karl Steinberg didn’t invent house music, but he certainly helped), so he doesn’t have to write it himself to have a profound effect on what is happening artistically.

I think this is a great new example of someone putting collaborative web tools and new digital music technology together in an interesting (and highly accessible) way. The fact that I hate digital Djing, and dislike Twitter does not take away from the fact that this is a really interesting development, and anyone that values mutation and experimentation should applaud anyone that is out there trying new stuff.

dave anderson - FH09 mix

2009-04-26T17:17:00.004+01:00

Here's a mix for the spring and summer. Much different from my previous dancefloor-oriented efforts, it's more of a chilled out "back to mine" type effort, and as we move (hopefully) into summer, it's for those sunny outdoor afternoon moments, or for those late party sunrise moments.

Tracklist is as follows:

plaid - "undoneson" - (warp)
cim - "comfort control" - (delsin)
bitstream - "monolith" - (signal)
cyrus - "inversion" - (basic channel)
the monsters from id - "bingo" - (signal)
move d - "in/out" - (fifth freedom)
marco bernardi - "trane" - (emoticon)
digitonal - "drencrom" - (toytonic)
digitonal - "carcause" - (toytonic)
future beat alliance - "void" - (delsin)
bola - "vespers" - (skam)

Grab it here - enjoy!

U2 - Magnificent

2009-04-21T13:57:00.005+01:00

In Europe, it's pretty cool to not like U2 any more.

If it's not that they don't pay their taxes, it's Bono's preaching about poverty. If it's not that the "new stuff" they are trying isn't as good as the old U2, it's that the new stuff sounds too much like the old stuff. I guess when you reach the mega-pervasiveness that they now have, you are likely to get hung no matter what you do.

I've always found it a fascinating experience to slap on a new U2 album, and (almost invariably) end up a bit confused and disappointed as I go through it. It's not half as good as their last one is it? Naaah. There are flashes, but generally a bit too weird. Then I listen to it again. Yeah. Maybe it's got a song here and there... still loads of stuff I don't really get. Then I listen to it again. Huh. Maybe it's more like half and half - not at all the disaster I first thought. And again. Man. That track is actually pretty good isn't it? There's possibly only one or two dodgy ones on here. And then. Woaah. The whole thing is pretty amazing actually - and so on. Every time it happens this way - for me at least.

And while I like them doing new things which they've been tinkering with really ever since Achtung Baby - and many of the new things are the most interesting - there's still a part of me that hankers for that huge traditional U2 sound, the widescreen rock that nobody else can touch them at. I love it when they unashamedly seem like they're trying to write a deliberately big track. Usually, these are the moments that start out as the comfortably familiar 'flashes' of U2 in a first album listening, and end up almost too played out.

Well here's a flash of classic U2 from the latest album, No Line on the Horizon. Captured on Letterman in the States, it's pretty amazing I think.

There's something just brilliant about the whole presentation - how you get the feeling you're simultaneously watching an intimate gig to a handful of people, and at the same time witnessing something of epic proportions.

The music is really the amazing bit though... the guitar lines in the chorus sections (1:00 - 1:22 for example) are just stunning, and a fantastic counterpoint to the bassline. It's actually really clever the way the bass and the guitar between them imply and then fill in the chords.

And then the verses. Whatever you say about Bono, when he's singing he really does have an amazing voice. The arrangement helps - if you listen in the verses, the guitar is buried completely in the mix - and the Eno synths are just hovering over that solid thudding Mullen/Clayton bass end. It leaves so much space for the vocals. It also means when they hit the chorus and that guitar riff comes in, it really lifts the whole thing into the stratosphere. Another thing is when they hit the chorus and the guitar is back in, the vocal line goes way up in pitch - which means the vocal melody and the guitar aren't stepping on each others toes. It's amazingly well worked out: when the guitar is in the way, Bono is soaring over the top, and when he comes back down, the guitar makes space.

It goes all the way to the guitar solo - when that starts out, the guitar becomes the melodic top line - and Bono is filling in below with harmonies. All the way through the song, the bass and the drums provide the backdrop, and the guitar and vocals just weave in and out of each other.

And that's before you even start on the lyrics. While Bono has had his questionable lyrical moments, when he can avoid the trademark outrageous couplet he can come up with the goods.

"I was born, I was born to sing for you..."

What a band...

Speaking in Code

2009-04-15T11:10:00.005+01:00

There's been a little bit of chat recently about upcoming electronic music film "Speaking in Code". Revolving around a group involved in the techno scene, it looks (from the trailer) like an attempt to do some contextualising of techno - almost like an attempt to answer the "what is the point" question.

Pipecock over at ISM takes issue with the selection of artists in the film as shown on Philip Sherburne's blog, on the basis that the film appears hugely Eurocentric and misses out most of the American forefathers of the modern techno sound. He (Pipecock) singles out Mad Mike Banks, but I'm presuming that the criticism extends to the rest of the first couple waves of Detroit artists such as Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, Jeff Mills, Carl Craig, Eddie 'flashin' Fowlkes and so on, who also look very much like they are not included in a major way.

Pipecock is right in one sense - if the film is meant to be a definitive history of techno, then the Detroit guys should for sure be in it - and that's not counting Chicago house or the NYC/Jersey Garage thing, which were (I think) as critical to the future of dance music as anywhere else. However, I'm not sure I completely agree with the point - while the film does look massively skewed in a Euro direction (most of the artists mentioned seem to rotate around the central European scene), I don't think it's the case that every film that aims to give a glimpse inside the world of electronic dance music has to be an exhaustive history of its roots. The story of Detroit has been told so many times that it's a matter of record at this point, and there's nothing wrong with moving on a bit and giving a snapshot of people's experience of the scene as it is at the moment. That's not withstanding the fact that a lot of the German/minimal stuff that is all the rage at the moment completely does my box in - but that's another rant for another day. The point is, every film about techno doesn't have to be reverentially focused on the original Detroit artists.

One interesting thing that I did notice on Sherburne's blog is the quote from Akufen, where he alludes to techno as a means of "speaking in code", referring to the feeling of the electronic scene being one which is very marginal to mainstream life, and in effect a semi-secret subculture. While I understand what Akufen means, to me the idea of techno as some sort of secret code is a major can of worms. Taking pride in the secrecy of an experience smacks of elitism for one thing - it's almost like saying, "the great masses don't deserve to have this experience", which is an unspoken contradiction of the "come one, come all" ethos that makes the best dance nights so special.

The other factor is that the experience that a great night engenders is one which breaks down the barriers that society puts between people, breaks down the barriers inside your head, and quietens the analytical mind which would prevent us from directly experiencing the world without constantly trying to analyse what we are experiencing. Mankind has long understood the power of rhythm in transcending the basic analytical state we need to survive the hazards of daily life - modern culture has simply obscured this understanding with layers of possession, debt, occupation, and "must have" physical artifacts.

Akufen's analogy is actually back to front: modern life is the abstract and unbreakable code, and music and rhythm is the open door to what is really real.

Teenage Engineering - Operator-1

2009-04-11T10:14:00.000+01:00

This has to be one of the most interesting bits of studio kit that I've seen in a long time. A new company (seemingly from Sweden, although loads of their website text is oriental) called Teenage Engineering, were showing a new product called Operator-1 at Frankfurt Musikmesse this year.

It's going to be a super portable controller/sequencer, that you can use on the road. One of the most interesting things for me, is that it is going to include a proper (hopefully!) synthesizer, and functions for drum noise generation as well. From talking to the TE guys, they say it's going to have some type of sequencer function, but they weren't clear whether the paradigm was going to be a Cubase/Logic/Sonar type, step, Live, or multiple types.

Either way, it looks really exciting - it's a really slim, Mac-looking unit in a sleek aluminium case, with an absolutely gorgeous OLED display. They reckon it'll run for mabye 8 hours on battery power, and you can use it as a controller for your main computer when it's hooked up.

No idea on price (they made a guess when I asked them, but as I'm not sure they have their pricing and distribution model hammered out yet I'll do them the courtesy of not publishing their guesstimate) - but they plan to ship within the year.

It really does look like very cool technology, and for my money, was probably the coolest new hi-tech MI product at Messe this year.

Waveriders

2009-04-09T10:19:00.006+01:00

Went to see Waveriders last night - it's a film about surfing in Ireland, and particularly, the journey of the son of an Irishman in Hawaii who came back to California, popularised surfing, and nearly invented lifeguarding.

It's a good film - there are some great moments, like the multi-year world champion Kelly Slater taking to the Irish water (how easy does he make it look?). There's also epic footage of Aileen's at the base of the cliffs of Moher. Is there a more shapely big wave on the planet?

Anyway it's all great stuff, and I highly recommend going to see...

Amsterdam, Paris, Beer, and Genius.

2009-04-01T18:08:00.004+01:00

Having just returned from an insanely chaotic weekend in Amsterdam, following Scotland amidst thousands of Tartan Army, it seems like a great time to post this incredible video compilation of Scotland in France, 2007, and particularly the journey of the Dublin tartan army to get there.

If I live to 80, I'll be unlikely to ever see a better Scottish goal.

Kenlou - "Sensational Beats" (Masters at Work)

2009-03-26T14:56:00.004Z

Is there a “greatest house track ever”? Could there be?

I don’t know. I don’t know if you can pick one above all others – but if I were forced to try and do so, I’d probably have to go with “Sensational Beats”, by peerless NYC production duo Masters At Work. It’s a stripped out drum-only flipside to the far more commercial “What a Sensation”, with all the instrumentation removed. This track blew me away when I first heard it (I still remember the irresistible feeling of that groove powering its way through the Arches), and blew me away every time I heard it afterwards. It blew me away when I finally got a copy, and nearly 15 years later, it still blows my mind.

Fundamentally, house and techno music are all about the beat, and ultimately, the kick drum. Everything else in the track is there as window dressing. The beat as a whole is the groove, and when you are dancing, the groove is everything. The most compulsive part of the beat is indisputably the kick drum – it is the magnetic element that makes the entire experience work.

For some, the “mindless” release that dance music offers can only be properly experienced with chemical assistance. For others, a beer, a big PA, and a bit of dark is enough to let their guard down. Some can manage to let go in the bright midday sun. Whatever, what is happening when things are at their best, is that the conscious and analytical part of the brain is slowly, wilfully being decommissioned. When that starts to happen (and I’m convinced that repetition plays a vast role here, and it doesn’t have to be music – another time, another post), something deeper in your brain takes over. You transition from analysis and evaluation, to direct experience.

But what has this got to do with Masters at Work? The point is, that in dance music, the groove, the beat, is the element that communicates with that deeper, subconscious part of your brain. The other elements – the basslines, keyboard parts, strings, vocals and so on – all of that is window dressing – these melodic elements give your awake, analytical brain something to distract it, while it can slowly be switched off. While your analytical self is distracted, your unconscious and the kick drum do the heavy lifting.

House and techno span a huge range of acoustic “busyness” – from downright minimal, to outright walls-of-noise. For some people, they can directly connect with the tough and tracky side of house – the bare percussive tracks, the locked grooves, the endless repetition and the trancelike effect that it has. Other people are less comfortable – the dropping of the analytical alertness that is a presumed necessity of our daily life is not second nature, and the contact with the deeper part of your brain has to be dressed up as something else. Musically, the dressing can be basslines, vocals, melodies, and other elements to disguise and decorate the unconscious prerogative of the groove.

I pick “Sensational Beats” as my greatest house track ever, because it has less of this window dressing than almost any other house track, but at the same time delivers more musical quality than most tracks that have far more going on.

It’s a full nine minutes long, and has a kick drum, a handclap, an open hihat, a bongo and a couple other tuned drums, and a few sound effects here and there. That is it.

The kick, clap and hihat provide a completely plain four-on-the-floor beat – nothing could be simpler. On top of this, a single drum sound is the entire track.

This single drum provides all the phrasing - all the ups, all the downs – everything. Neither is it a drum filler track - there is real phrase here. Immerse yourself in it as it progresses, and imagine the drummer taking a pause and a breath at the end of one of the sections, before launching in to a new one. You can hear it, and you can feel it. The entire story of the track, which is significant, is told by that one single sound.

It's stunningly produced. It makes cohesive sense as a track in it's own right – something almost unheard of in drum-only tracks (which are usually regarded as filler or DJ mixing tools).

It sounds interesting in the cold light of day.

In the dark on a big system, it sounds positively primal.

It jacks like crazy.

I can’t think of anything that even comes close.