Slacking, slacking, dammit. Actually, over on the Double Shot blog Justin and I have been pretty busy; our preparations for talks to the BBC about "digital" marketing and to IT4Arts about the impact of IPR issues on artistic creation have led us down intriguing paths. Some of these are pointed at with something of catch-all post on the DS blog, but here I do feel duty-bound to point to this wonderful essay on plagiarism from a couple of years back in the New Yorker by novelist Jonathan Lethem.
Meanwhile, in a somewhat scatter-gun way...
Friends and family news.... We were lucky enough to get out to Madrid to see Paul Schütze's latest photography show, Matter and Memory at Galleria Estiate. And Josiah McElheny's film Island Universe - with a score by Paul - fresh from its run at White Cube, Hoxton is now installed at the wonderful Reina Sofia gallery. (The film is a companion piece to a wonderful sculpture installation now mounted in a beautiful glass house in the Parque Del Retiro; that's one of PS's shots of it above.)
Franck is running off in fresh directions. His latest incarnation is Sketchdub, a full-on dub-step project. Check his Justin Timberlake remix and the weirdly early 80s electro-pop anthem "Jittin' Out Bruv"
On the subject of electronica, Mary Anne Hobbs turned in a stunning Radio 1 show a couple of weeks back; West Coast Rocks took a peek at the scene emerging in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Of course, the 7-day catch up limitation of the iPlayer means you can't get the show, not legally anyhow. But MAH did make a (decidedly home-made) video accompaniment to the show.
In my Double Shot guise I'd have something to say about the collateral material coming out of broadcast outliving the original material, or something, but here I'll say instead that a. MAH really is a bit of a broadcasting treasure, going from strength to strength and b. I want to go to Low End Theory really rather badly. There you go.
Anyway, might not have made it to Low end Theory just yet, but we did have a real dancing treat this weekend just gone. Pioneering early 80s DJ Greg Wilson is well and truly cracking along with his comeback. His recent Essential Mix for Radio 1 was a corker and got us very excited about his appearance in Brighton at the Jazz Place. In the event, the night was so popular it shifted upstairs to The Loft. Wilson is the perfect party DJ - and I mean that in the most defiantly positive sense. The Loft on Friday was a heaving mass of very, very happy people (of whom we were not from the oldest - a rarity, it chagrins me to admit), as Wilson plied us with Chic and Amerie, Grace Jones and Freeze (A E I O U, anyone?) There's a little film of the event up on Facebook... and Wilson's own Electro Funk Roots site is something of a treasure trove - and a bit of a loveletter to a bygone era. In the meantime, this looks set to be the first of a series of monthly nights at the Jazz Place going under the rubric Disco Deviant. We are massaging our shins and ankles in expectation.
I mentioned some of the work Justin and I are doing at the top; I can't say exactly why we're thinking about such things as airport and railway station announcement chimes at the moment - nor for which client we're doing so, but I can point you at this fantastic collection of such sounds on YouTube. Charles De Gaulle wins hands down of course, if only for being the sound of a future which never was.
Also mentioned over on DS... "Tribes" guru Seth Godin takes a bit of a pop at the record industry. But get this... He sets up a distinction between the impact comms tech has had on music as opposed to the industry, concluding that for the former it's been pretty good. "This is the greatest moment in the history of music if your dream is to distribute as much music as possible to as many people as possible, or if your goal is to make it as easy as possible to become heard as a musician. There’s never been a time like this before. So if your focus is on music, it’s great. If your focus is on the industry part and the limos, the advances, the lawyers, polycarbonate and vinyl, it’s horrible." Well hold on Seth.You're not setting up the distinction you think you are there; rather you're setting up a distinction between two different levels of business. Of course, the advent of digital has positively affected the music itself, not least in the speed of ideas-transmission between learning musicians discussed here last March. Instead though, Seth rather disappointingly goes on about pop stars and their limos, which frankly is as tired as banging on about bankers' private jets.
Various bits of metal news getting me excited... French Prog-Death specialists Gojira are back in the UK later this month... Mike Patton has scored his first feature film, Crank 2: Hight Voltage and confirmed that the Faith No More reunion IS happening this Summer. Tool are writing a new album, which is heartening, although I'm not sure where James Maynard Keenan is going to find the time given that he seems to be performing live with Puscifer and embarking on a documentary film about the vineyard he owns. And the metal-but-not-really-metal Amplifier will be back this Spring with a double CD, The Octopus, which we await with baited breath - they haven't put a foot wrong on the recording front so far. Oh, and how cool was it to see Meshuggah as the front page featured article on Wikipedia last week?!
Hot on the heels of Charing Cross's Astoria closing, The End - just around the corner and perhaps the West End's finest club back in day - has also, very sadly, closed down.
I love the idea that avant-funk trio Medeski, Martin and Wood run their own Summer camp. A very nice way to spend a week or so, I should think.
Lastly a bit of FX pedal fetishism as Boing Boing (CHECK!!!!!) take a peak at the Electro Harmonix factory. Just how excited can one man get about valves? Very, apparently.
