Hello - most of the sort of nonsense I used to put here has migrated to Vox...

My Top 25 most played for 2005
looks like it was the year of The Arcade Fire...


Oi Frango: Super Furry Animals: Love Kraft
Good Vibrations: Beach Boy: The Very Best Of The Beach Boys
Neighborhood #3 (Power Out): The Arcade Fire: Funeral
Heroes And Villains: Beach Boys: The Very Best Of The Beach Boys
King's Lead Hat: Brian Eno: Before and After Science
Drink To Moving On: Grand National: Kicking The National Habit
Everything Flows: Teenage Fanclub: A short Cut to Teenage Fanclub
Dr. Wu: Minutemen: Double Nickles On The Dime
Boss On The Boat: Tosca: AIM's Stars On 33 Mix
Alive! / Skin Le Le: Alive: INCredible Sound Of Gilles Peterson (Disc 1)
Bam Thwok: Pixies: Bam Thwok
Good Dancers: The Sleepy Jackson: Lovers
Fire In The Hole: Steely Dan: Citizen Steely Dan
Pain Killer: Turin Brakes: Ether Song
Rebellion (Lies): The Arcade Fire: Funeral
live at dominoes: The Avalanches: since i left you
Horsemen: The Bees: Free the Bees
The Man With The Child In His Eyes: Kate Bush / DJ Andy Smith: The Document II
Hang on to Your Ego: Frank Black: Frank Black
Midnght Cowboy: Jonh Barry
Yes sir, no sir: The Kinks: DJ Andy Smith presents The Document III
Up With People: Lambchop: Nixon
Something's Cookin': Quincy Jones
Alive With Pleasure: Viva Voce: The Heat Can Melt Your Brain
Neighborhood #2 (Laika): The Arcade Fire: Funeral

The song remains the same

I am obsessed with what the post-modern motown of "Black & White Town" by Doves would sound like, sung by someone like Beyonce. I wonder what other songs I would like covered...

When they say "sustainable"

do they mean stay the same?

Homeostasis ain't an option.

What's "The Good Progress" like?

The architecture is attacking!

No!

Not the buildings. The architecture. Law and history and influence and culture calcifying around us in slow flows of control.

Can't... Escape...

Raiding the 21st century

The next step in cut-up culture
Arthouse biotech
Wetwork warhols
Nanobiological burroughs
Performance creationism
Xoological situationism
Some assembly required
Crick, Watson, double-dee, steinski.
Intelligent design as artistic statement
Playing god, 5 times a week with 2 matinees
Oryx
Crake
Cut
Splice
Mashup mammals
Rip/Mix/Birth

My top 20 for 2004, according to iTunes

Another Green World
Brian Eno
Another Green World
"I loved this tune before I loved Eno. It was the theme music for 'Arena' I think, an arts show on the BBC in the 70s and 80s, which came on around the time I was meant to go to bed. I associate it therefore with sleep, dreams and art - the immateria. We played this as background music as the guests entered our wedding ceremony."
---------
Last.fm
"This was the year of last.fm as soundtrack to life. If I could have it mobile, I would. Fantastic as a service, sucky as an interaction design piece - it introduced me to more music in a shorter time than the music press, my peers or broadcast media ever had. If they can scale it's success and make it more reliable and more mobile it should be the makings of a revolution. Hell, I think it already is."
---------
Portland Oregon
Loretta Lynn (with Jack White)
Van Lear Rose
"Heard on west coast radio stations while driving up the 101 to san franscisco from los angeles, May 2004. Perfect pomp--country-rock soundtrack for pretending you're some stimulant-addled entertainment exec driving up the PCH""
---------
Junior Kickstart
The Go! Team
Junior Kickstart - EP
"First heard in the middle of a Lo-Fidelity allstars mix they did for Xfm, where I thought it was some Barry Gray 70's TV vigilante theme. Later discovery of the Go! Team led me to the truth."
---------
The Pretenders - Kid
"I love the early pretenders singles. That's all."
---------
Kevin Rowlands 13th Time
Dexy's Midnight Runners
Don't Stand me Down (The Director's Cut)
"A discovery via Jem Stone's weblog. Love the rambling 'concept' chat through the album, and along with "what's she like?"; this particular 'story song' is my favourite, especially Rowlands rambling about middle-class bullshit poetry then bawling "I was never very sure" to big-band backing. Indescribably terrific.
---------
Someday We'll All Be Free
Donny Hathaway
Back To Mine - Everything But The Girl
"Literally, awesome, soaring protest soul from the late 70's. Beautiful."
---------
Mr. Blue Sky
Electric Light Orchestra
Out of the blue
"Blame it on Charlie Kaufman"
---------
Ladyflash
The Go! Team
Estuary English (Music from Memphis Industries Volume One)
"Don't remember where I first heard this, but it blew me away. First thought was that it was new material from The Avalanches: dense-layered charming hip-pop. It didn't sound quite like them, and also it wasn't the usually very smooth production you expected of them. It turned out to be the Go! Team, a pop assembly so style-mag friendly and memetically tuned that Malcolm McClaren must be involved somewhere. Ladyflash is just a mess of hooks, like windows is 'just a bag of drivers'."
---------
All These Things That I've Done
The Killers
Hot Fuss
"Another pompous lighters-aloft anthem, but so help me I enjoyed it - especially the stomping sing-a-along of 'I've got soul bit I'm not a soldier', and my misheard lyric: 'I want to mean it from the back of my throat' which in reality is the less belligerently-exciting 'I want a meaning from the back of my broken hand'"
---------
Picture Book
The Kinks
The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
"I met a delightful Newyorker in Washington DC who made a living from 'music coordination' (finding songs for movie soundtracks or ad-campaigns) a few years back, and perhaps it might be correct to despise what these people do; they do it so very well. Picturebook was in heavy-rotation prior to Christmas 04 on a HP digital camera ad, and it worked wonderfully. The song is fantastic as well, but then I'm a sucker for a slice of Kinks/Zombies close-harmony pastoral/suburban whimsy."
---------
Sound And Vision
David Bowie
Low
"Prophetic Bowie groove that gets heavy-rotation as walking into work soundtrack"
---------
Obstacle 1
Interpol
Turn on the Bright Lights
"Derivative, maybe. Powerful, undoubtedly. Invades my head everytime someone receives an SMS, as the 'doot-doot, doot-doot' segues into the stacatto guitar wonderfully"
---------
Everything Is Everything
Phoenix
Alphabetical
"Heard on The Blue Room, played a lot... played it out... then the LP came along, and started playing it again"
---------
Pale Shelter
Tears For Fears
Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits)
"I was on a plane from Beijing to Tokyo, and there was a Japanese 'vh1' style oldies channel called, I swear, 'Time Machine Go', which played this; and I remembered instantly the time when popstars wore arran sweaters."
---------
A Minha Menina
The Bees
Sunshine Hit Me
"Second song played at our wedding... The Bees version is better to dance and sing along to than the more authentic Os Mutantes version... which we danced to at Al & Jo's Wedding..."
---------
Karma In The Life
Go Home Productions
"Heard on ex-Pistol Steve Jones drivetime show in La when i was there in May for e3... very good mashup, if a bit gloomy and missing out the best bits of 'Day in the life'"
---------
The Ice Storm
The Go! Team
The Power Is On - EP
"Got this while binging on Go! Team after discovering, but didn't really get heavy play until Keiron Gillen nominated it as an alt.Christmas song"
---------
The More You Ignore Me
Morrissey
"No idea why I played this so much this past year. I must be in touch with my inner-6th former"

Enclosure acts

We caught the later half of "The Corporation" on Finnish TV this weekend. An interesting documentary, which only somewhat fails in it's somewhat preachy presentation of some disturbing facts.

The passages that had the most impact on me, were somewhat predictably, the discussion by talking heads such as Jeremy Rifkin on the extension of 'ownership' and acts of enclosure from physical property and land to concepts, ideas and life itself.

About 18 months ago there was an in-depth supplement to The Guardian which looked into the privatisation of life itself through the protection of intellectual property related to genome research.

Time to revisit this I think, as it was the conceptual backbone of a comic I've been writing for some time with the working title of "Saviour Complex"

Slight Return

I went on a mini-spending-spree this weekend on the iTMS. I bought the Bluetones singles collection. The Bluetones were hyped by the music papers, well-regarded, but no-one bought them.

"Slight Return" - one of their only singles to bother the higher ends of the charts - is however a heart-tuggingly beautiful piece of plaintive pop genius that has stood the test of time well.

Break.

I didn't go straight to work this morning.

First discontinuity: the book. The ending of the book.

The gripping, confusing, ending of the book.

Second discontinuity: Ending the end of the book was stopped by the arrival of the tram at the stop where I stop to start the working day.

I stopped before I started so I could end the ending.

Third discontinuity: I went to the cafe. I sat.

Coffee, orange, croissant, book.

People rushed past to start work.

I felt like the leader and only follower of a little rebellion.

I ended the book, the croissant, the orange and the coffee.

I left the cafe, and I started work.

Break the day, or it'll break you.

Draw her near,
draw a breath,
think how little
there is left
of that which makes her not you -
and be the one that once was two.

The rubbishest skateboarder in the world

"Hard as people try to build dikes on the river of meaning, to shore up those barriers with all sorts of reinforcement, still significance pours over the retaining walls and floods our homes and fields" - AKMA on Semiosis

Where I've been...



create your own visited country map
or write about it on the open travel guide

We are so rock and roll.

Pictured above, the gold disk of New Order's Republic LP, cover design by Peter Saville and Brett Wickens, in our smallest room...

Thanks to Yoz...

Barely remembered sci-fi, part 47: Into Infinity

Good Philip Pullman interview, perhaps interestingly, by a Christian website

The media is the message
and thus:

The idea is the issage.

and further more:

The "my dear" is the mossage.
The "oh dear" is the ossage,

and

The "so, dear" is the sausage.

Warren Ellis asked a few people to mail some predictions for 2004 to him to post on his DiePunyHumans blog. Here are mine.

2000 + phwooar.
The freed-back loops of pro, semi-pro and amateur global media assume a topological configuration that requires the grid-computing efforts of your Google-toolbar just to figure out what to settle down on the sofa in front of. A resultant crash in fashion results in an impoverished, desperate, ultraconnected global nomad class who can survive on very little other than Ty Nant and some frisé . Epidemic of supermodel gangs smuggling aluminium out of Argentina in their colons. Consequent terrible accident involving experimental MagLev in Osaka. The beautiful and criminal should remember what Maceo said: "Don't cross the tracks".

It's worrying what no sleep for two days and a couple of mugs of glögi can make you say in polite company.

Kashmir
By the Zeppelin would have to be a desert-island disc of mine. It's ridiculous and overblown, but IMMENSE. I dig immense. I have a huge post about immensity, inspired by writings on Al Queda, writings of J.G. Ballard and Grant Morrison, travels in the USA, a window display in UK high-street fashionpalace Top Shop and a music video by The Doves [grabs, dvd].

It is in itself immense, and as a result I have never finished it. Finishing it would of course diminish its immensity.

Oh, let the sun beat down upon my face
Stars to fill my dreams
I am a traveler of both time and space
To be where I have been
Sit with elders of a gentle race
This world is seldom seen
Talk of days for which they sit and wait
But, all will be revealed

Talk and song from tongues of lilting grace
Whose sounds caress my ear
Though, by a word I heard could I relate
The story was quite clear
Whoa-hoh, whoa-oh, yeah

Kashmir - Led Zeppelin

Oh good grief!!!

Snowcrashed.

Gloved hand raised, and snowflake settled.
Fractal focus becomes fixed point.
The beautiful basis of a moment.

Getting wierder here. Like it!

No love lost is awesome just as a table of contents. It should be left there, like a magic nodal mirror of our fears. Narcissistic feedback overloop, baby. Begin campaign for Rageboy vs Grant Morrison iambecomedeathmatch memestorm face-off, soonest.

The things you learn on 6music
Like that one of your favourite songs of all time "Hanging on the telephone" by Blondie was a cover version of the original, written and performed by The Nerves.

Solar storm tonight cme_c3_big.gif (GIF Image, 256x256 pixels)
[via 2lmc spool]

Word of the Day
Autochthony
[thanks Tom]

"There is a line among the fragments of the Greek poet Archilochus which says: 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing'. Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general."

» The Hedgehog and the Fox

Dylan Thomas - The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

"Rock Man
he's just made of bricks
and King Boy lost his cruise.
The JAMs don't need no master plan
to do whatever
ever they can."

RIP Johnny

As my mate Bert said "I hope this was his passing shot"

Gigantomachia

The third party in the conflict, the child, 'holds to both'. Its position is trinitarian because it adds an all-important third element to the two extremes it embraces: their capability of belonging together in peace.

Map: Logic (how the battle unfolds) Archives

This charming man
is playing on The Blue Room. Chris Coco and Rob Da Bank prove the existence of the divine at work through man and msuic, weekly. Chris Coco has played a record by "Rolled Oats" called "Oats", of which there are only a thousand golden vinyl copies in hessian covers, changing hands for ludicrous amounts of money. It's apparently the work of the Lemon Jelly boys, and features a lovely little George Michael sample, looping hypnotically - much in the manner of "Soft": Ver Jelly's magnificent mangling of Chicago's "If you leave me now". If anyone knows how to get hold of a copy of "Oats", or indeed how much Robbie and Chris expect to be paid in oxen and beads to play a wedding reception, then let me know...

LITE ROCK, LESS TALK
Genius van from Richard Schatzberger's fotolog

Shubbbla-lubba-lubba
kuro5hin.org || Introduction to the Cthulhu Mythos

I'm wierd, part #467
Y'see this story about 8,000 protest signatures in Porthcawl South Wales against a wind farm planned off its shores [found from a Google news alert I have set up watching for "porthcawl"]. I'm from Porthcawl and I see the simulated pictures of elegant mega-engineering generating green electricity in the distance and think "Cool!".

But then I was raised by an engineer and his wife, and on books with images of orbital homes of the future like this in.

Fermi Surface
Of one her favourite elements:

• Platinum
  

A periodic table of Fermi surfaces is quite, quite beautiful.

I don't have a religion, but I have a lot of respect for those who do, and interpret/follow it wisely
[via Danny]

At the park, in the sun.
Where I'd asked her to lunch that time.
When I bought her something she didn't like - and she ate it.
When we talked like a dance.
Displaying and decoding each other a piece at a time.

It hasn't been long, but now our talk can be the commonplaces, the logistical.
She'll tell me if she doesn't like what I bought her.
She'll tell me if she's scared or annoyed.
We're together. A team.
Meshed needs and movements.
It works well.
It's fun!

But - mind at rest, lunch at hand, thoughts of her return.
As a perfect thing apart from me when I'm apart from her.
At the park, in the sun.
Where I'd asked her to lunch that time.

The literature accelerator
First we built websites, then webrings. We connected and conjoined ourselves. Our hobbies, our stories, our passions.

It wasn't enough for us.

A small number of small changes in small things, that made other small things just a small amount more difficult to do than they might of been, in order for us to talk to a small amount of people; after a time gave us weblogs.

Together, alone, we connected the weblogs - and created the literature accelerator.

The literature accelerator: a network-scale machine, the biggest known to man; that both attenuated and amplified meaning. A Blog-beaten and word-welded torus of the culture was forged, through which all could be accelerated.

Chinese-whispers in reverse - the strongest, most common memes become stronger.

Ever more polarizing and ever more unifying - the same stories played over and over from infinite perspectives still give you the same stories. My hero with a thousand faces is your legion of supervillainy.

A network-scale machine. Monitored and maintained by each of us, every day. Growing with every new storyteller that contributes a patchwork piece of a particle to be accelerated.

An accretion disc of afterthought around the event-horizon of events.

Spinning us into the singularity.

Hyperasychronising human history into

one

repeating,

pervasive pattern.

Delivering the unified theory of human storytelling.

The end of Buffy
Was good. I am content.

William Gibson on Steely Dan

The lure of the illusion of plan is that felt by the illusionist.

I Got Plenty of Nothing (Gershwin)

I got plenty of nothing
And nothing's plenty for me
I got no car - got no mule
I got no misery

Folks with plenty of plenty
They've got a lock on the door
Afraid somebody's gonna rob 'em
While there out (a) making more - what for

I got no lock on the door - that's no way to be
They can steal the rug from the floor - that's OK with me
'Cause the things that I prize - like the stars in the skies - are all free

I got plenty of nothing
And nothing's plenty for me
I got my gal - got my song
(I) Got heaven the whole day long

- Got my gal - got my love - got my song

Nothing defines one more than the things one is not.
Open, positive, pensive.
She is not me.
I stand defined.
Definite.
Happy.

I am a freak, part 47
I'm kerning the type in my wireframes.

Linked: The New Science of Networks Albert-L�szl� Barab�si I read "Linked" while on holiday in South Africa, and found it a very easy, quick read, with it''s central concepts and tenets well explained. Much of what he covered in terms of power-laws, scale-free networks and the science of networks; I had read on the web, and the style of the book was an annoyance. Perhaps punning on the books title, the chapters are heavily and ponderously linked, with the last paragraphs telegraphing the subject matter of the next with mock drama. Over a month has passed since reading it and I can recall facts, but not anecdotes. A dry recollection, not a pleasurable one. Perhaps I demand too much from my popular science.

Proposal #2
This from Jason Kottke:

"It's all much more complicated than this. All the arguments out there for and against are necessarily shallow. We're getting very small pieces of the whole story from TV reports, newspaper articles, weblog postings, and magazine pieces. No one has the time to read or write a complete analysis of the situation (which would be a social, political, religious, scientific and economic history of the world from 5000 B.C. up until 2 minutes ago...basically all human knowledge)."

Reminds me of a thought I had (in a pub) about a week ago. Start all news bulletins in the manner that we are accustomed to from watching "24", "The West Wing" or "Buffy": with a sonerous, portentious:

"...previously, on The News"

followed by a jump-cut montage of the aforementioned "...social, political, religious, scientific and economic history of the world from 5000 B.C. up until 2 minutes ago..." to show the major, salient points of the story arc.

I think that would make things a whole lot better for everyone.

Proposal #1
Mail from Dorian:
---------

on 18/3/03 9:36 pm the person going by the name Matt Jones at
matt _at_ blackbeltjones.com spake :

> So, the united nations is pretty screwed right?
>
> I propose a rebrand.
>
> Looking at what it will take to reunite the two main protagonists, I propose
> a reconfigured forum, participation based not on fairness, deliberation,
> international law or cooperation; but one that decides things on puffery,
> trash-talkin', arrogance-founded-on-empires-past-or-future, spandex
> costumes, and of course, SMACKDOWN.
>
> I propose...
>
>
> "Ulitmate Nations"
>
>
>
>
> http://www.blackbeltjones.com/un.jpg
> [couldn't find any "wings of freedom" to apply, but... You have a go at a
> logo for a new UN!!!|

You've been taking lessons from the BBC Three school of branding then.

I think I'd go a bit more like this :

http://www.dorianmoore.com/video/UN.mov

[ http://www.dorianmoore.com/video/UN.mpg]

You'll have to imagine the lift music/record scratch/power chord stab
soundtrack for the time being.

Thanks to her: "Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism "victimless collecting", as it were ... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage." (Susan Sontag)