Download here.
1: Steve Bug – Trust In Me (John Daly Remix) [Poker Flat]
2: Lindstrom – I Feel Space (M.A.N.D.Y. Remix) [Playhouse]
3: Slacker – Turning To Air [Jukebox In The Sky]
4: Petter – All Together [Border Community]
5: Holden – Lump [Border Community]
I’m watching you now. I’ve been watching you for a long time. Can you believe that it took me this damn long to get All Together, Lump, AND that mix of I Feel Space down in a set?
CYCLONOPEDIA might be the single weirdest book I have ever read. A pseudo-academic Cthulhuian treatise on the Middle East, oil, and demonology, it is by no means for everyone (and isn’t really totally for me, to be honest). Read the first two chapters: if you’re enthralled, you’ll love it. If not, move on to brighter things.
SOLACE, on the other hand, is a game that you will get pretty much from the word go. It’s a vertical shooter about grief. Simple enough, right?
And, in music, the Future Times label mix for Resident Advisor is sassy as all get out, the Traversable Wormhole RA podcast is good but drags a bit, and I myself have something like four sets in the pipeline. More as it breaks.
The detroit EP is done. This makes me happy. I am now debating distro options. I could SoundCloud it up, I could put it on a USB key and throw it into the ocean. I feel there’s a healthy middle ground somewhere, however.
…Welcome to Russian (film) Minute!
.THE RUSSIAN ARK is a 96 minute single-shot masterpiece. If you have only the slightest bit of interest in media and the effect of media on people, you need to see this film. If you like period work, Russians, Russian culture, or history in general, you really, really need to see this film.
On the other foot, I finally got around to watching STALKER, after walking past the UN checkpoint in Tallinn over the summer. It likewise fetishizes the long, long take, but does so in order to build heartrending tension. For a movie that is basically three men talking, STALKER is profoundly gripping.
Music of the day is a box set of Gene Krupa’s band recordings. It is instructive how much and how little popular music has changed.
I also wanted to write two words about Osmos, which is a brilliant variation on the classic “eat things smaller than you and avoid things bigger than you” game. Specifically, your size is used as reaction mass to move your avatar / orb around. This tweak changes the gameplay from utterly trivial to utterly deep. Every move you make has to be considered, and some levels give you very little time to consider. Highly recommended.
Got terribly, terribly sick. Cool things continued to happen on the internet regardless.
Listening Room – listen to music with your friends online. It’s about damn time someone built this.
Jams I am feeling these days:
– The Symphonies of Mahler & Sibelius. Whoooosh.
– Caribou’s SWIM. I need to stop sleeping on records for like a year.
– Petter. Seriously, what a guy.
– James Blake, still.
– Instra:mental, to my surprise. Not the drum & bass, but the kind of “where do we put this?” tunes.
CRUSH does it again at Sunset, on January 15th:
Myself and the legendary Davin ‘AFK’ Greenwell will be tagging from 10 to 0200, followed by Nima, then Toby. If you like the technos, this one is for you.
And then, only slightly related to techno, I recorded a new set for you!
Fractal – Bristol
It’s the shining, synthetic side of current dubstep, obviously represented here by Punch Drunk, straight outta Bristol. My mother was born in Bristol, and I’m sure she’d dig this. Isn’t that right, Mom?
1: Guido – Beautiful Complication [Punch Drunk]
2: Forsaken – Hypnotise [Punch Drunk]
3: Wedge – Runnning Away (Guido Remix) [Punch Drunk]
4: Joker – Stuck In The System [Punch Drunk]
5: KZSS – You & I []
6: Guido – Cat In The Window [Punch Drunk]
7: Guido – You Do It Right [Punch Drunk]
8: Hytael – Pixel Rainbow Sequence [Punch Drunk]
9: Phoenix – Girlfriend (Limbo Remix) []
We could subtitle this one: “oh god, Berlin”, really.
Sub:stance Two Year, Berghain / Panorama.
Did you see that lineup? No, look again. Did you see that lineup? Appleblim might be my favorite DJ of the last two years, Mount Kimbie have a boring live show but make beautiful music, Mala killed it, and Monolake played jacking, jerking metallic techdubstepsocano on two laptops in six point surround on Berghain’s immaculate soundsystem, followed by Scuba himself bringing the depth…but by then I was upstairs sweating it out to the end MJ Cole’s perfectly shameless set, which closed with my first experience of the Panorama Bar curtains. An amazing night.
James Holden & Margot, Watergate
I must big up mr. Hrdvsion for getting me into this shuffletech freakout. Margot did their massive, massive live thing, then Jimmy got on the decks for three hours and blew my mind inside and out using a prototype of the Traktor controller he’s been working on. The important lesson to learn from Holden is restraint: you don’t have to kill it all the time, especially not from 0400 to 0700.
Nick Hoeppner, Dan Wang, DJ Harvey, Panorama Bar
And then this was the day I went to bed, woke up and walked through Treptow, then went to Panorama at 0900. Caught the last 15 minutes of Alex Under’s neotrance set, and then got lost in the amazingly varied deepness of Nick Hoeppner, who played maybe the best single DJ set of the year, laughed and boogied at Dan Wang’s old disco, and stood and nodded for an hour and a quarter of DJ Harvey’s long-term planning. Then I left at 1515 and went to flea markets for the rest of afternoon. Oh, Berlin.
Honorable mentions to the Wagon Repair record release birthday party on a train, Hybrid Live in Budapest, and countless nights at Badeschiff, Der Visionaere, Farbfernseher, and Kleinereise. (Special bonus mention to the mojitos at Kleinereise, to the Irish girl who I accidentially offended, and to Mano, Mark, Dara, and Paul for being wonderful to me in general.)