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Voting is November 4th I believe, if you’re going down to Cali (cos you live there!), please vote ‘No’.

Oh and one little thing, if you’re in the US vote for this man, otherwise a kitten cries. He’s your only hope, and you know it. And partly mine, because it’s not all separate anymore:

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Oh and closer to home:

Depression, recession, repossession: and they want to ban happy hours and cheap alcohol?!?!

Gordorn Brown is an asshole. Well you knew that; but it would be nice if he stopped the Presbyterian moralising such as possibly banning anything fun happening in this now depressing little country, and proclaiming about stupid and unfunny radio hosts, and maybe, like, ooh, little things like concentrating on the fucked up economy and a fucked up war like he’s supposed to?

Would be nice.

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And Cameron stop grinning at the back there. You’re just as fucking bad.

From bangin’ Indian Bhangra to Brazilian Baile Funk, crazy champeta from Columbia to Puerto Rico reggaeton, to Japanese hiphop and Arabian rap, we’ve got it all in the final part of our international journey through hiphop.

And not once did I mention Rigodon or Willy Fog! I’m proud of myself.

Hey now the story must go on ‘cause a lot of time has gone we must be ready to go away (67Mb, 93Mins)

Tracklisting:

• Da Arab MC’s – Born Here (Hebrew vers) (Palestine)
• Ramallah Underground – Tales From The Frontline (feat. Paracat) (Palestine)
• Invincible – People Not Places (Feat. Abeer) (Israel/Palestine)
• Amarjit Dhanda – Bhulgi (Punjab, India?)
• Baba Sehgal – Welcome To Mumbai (Bhangra Mix) (India)
• Shamur – The Power of Bhangra (Snap vs Motivo) (Italy/India)
• Jassi Sohal – Phullan Wangu (Punjab, India)
• Lorna – Papi chulo… te traigo el mmm (Panama)
• Daddy Yankee – Metele con candela (Puerto Rico)
• Julio Voltio – Mambo (Puerto Rico)
• Residente Calle 13 (featuring Orishas)- Pa’l Norte (Puerto Rico/Cuba)
• Orishas – 537 Cuba (Cuba)
• Doble V – Vicos y Virtudes (Spain)
• Racionais MCs – Negro drama (Brazil)
• Dennis Dj – Vasco 2000 (Brazil)
• De Falla – Popozuda Rock’n'Roll (Brazil)
• Bonde de role – melo do vitiligo (Brazil)
• Vanessinha Picatchu – Pega Pega (Brazil)
• El Aguita De Coco (Columbia)
• El Agua (Columbia)
• Denki Groove with Scha dara parr – Numbers (Japan)
• Illmatic Buddha MC’s – Top of Tokyo (Japan)
• Rhymester – Dnanm` (Japan)
• Magic System – T’endors Pas Feat Youssoufa (Ivory Coast)

BBC Radiophonic Workshop (something that regular listeners and readers to the show shouldn’t need any introduction to) hit 50 this year, and you might have seen or heard various events at the Electric Proms relating to this (listening to Coldcut remixing the works of the Workshop as I type this).

What you might not know is that next Monday 3rd November (despite what Stuart Maconie said on the Freak Zone) Mute are releasing a retrospective 2 CD set of the usually hard to find Radiophonic Workshop.


Even better – they’re re-releasing several album including the legendary pink album. This has been changing hands for upto £500 quid (!) as it was only briefly re-released in the early 2000’s. And another album of later work.

Don’t really have the money but guess what I’ve ordered!

Coincidentally I’m working on a Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram podcast for digitaldebris; so I will put out a show related to this, hopefully before 2008 is out!

Your back’s against the wall
There’s no-one home to call
You’re forgetting who you are
You can’t stop crying
It’s part not giving in
And part trusting your friends
You do it all again
You don’t stop trying

Standing in the way of control
We live our lives
Because we’re standing in the way of control
We will live our lives

I’ve posted profkampf’s graphic here – and twittered about this – but not really said here how disturbed I am about the division not only in the McCain/Palin camp, but also the dividing lines brought up by Proposition 8. And it deserves saying.

Love knows no gender, race, country or age, so I don’t see how true Xtians could ever ever support this. Stop playing political baseball with mine and other’s lifestyles – you can’t choose who you love. You, or more likely others, can choose to make it easier though, and lose their intolerances and just accept others for who they are.

I said recently about this ‘I’m fed up of being tolerant’ – fed up of being tolerant of idiotic nutters who say I should be dead, go to hell, or live my life – then turn around and expect me to be tolerant of their nutty beliefs. Nope it doesn’t work like that – respect and tolerance are a two way street.

So I hope the citizens of California see sense and get rid of Proposition 8 – I really do.

I found this ironic:

“If you change the definition and have no moral standard, then honestly what is wrong with polygamy?”

Yeah what IS wrong with polygamy, exactly? And polyandry and polyamory…? We have a long way to go, methinks.

I hope Obama gets in, and although he’s not great on the gay marriage question, the whole politics of control and lifestyle interference gets dropped for, you know, the small little things, like the economy, and war. Would be nice.

Why does that affect me? Well it has a knock on effect – we already have civil partnerships here in the UK, it would be nice if the U.S. could honour those, or the U.S. lead the way in showing the supposed freedoms of it’s people, rather than being second fiddle to Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, Canada, Norway, South Africa, Andorra, Australia (with limits), Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Israel, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay (and soon to be Hungary too).

And I know people who have got married and I want them to stay that way

There was an era in the mid to late 80’s where videos weren’t cheap. So when rave and hiphouse/hiphop came along they needed something for MTV and Top of the Pops etc – so enter the stand in front of a screen video, usually with graphics ‘genlocked’ (aka ‘keyed’) ie. placed digitally behind them, or stock video, even more cheaply projected behind them…and loads of silly dancing. Like this (Keith Haring a B movie inspired):

Other ones include A Guy Called Gerald’s Voodoo Ray, which owes rather a lot to Len Lye’s Colour Box, uses computer animation and projection, and suddenly I feel an unusual desire for Sanatogen, not MDMA:

Neneh Cherry might be more famous now for cookery programmes, but in 1987 she was standing in front of a screen with some very embarassing earrings. Am I bovvered?
Pointless fact: it was produced by Tim Simenon, aka Bomb the Bass hence the reference to Tim and Timmy, you might hear from that person shortly…

Obviously one of the problems was the complete anonymity of the dance music at the time – few vocals, no ’stars’, just rhythm. What to do? Well what about constructor worker garb, ripped video game graphics, weird building shots (cos it’s house! geddit?) and dodgy mosaic effect (cos it’s the nu digital age, right?). Erm…

ACCCIEEEDDD! Certain Residents inspiration to this one – the tune was banned in the UK so never shown fully:

And as rave took over, the videos got cheaper and more like Amiga demos, which is funny because they were probably produced on the Amiga:

And FSOL aka Stakker Humanoid were making their own 3D videos (Amiga probably too ) which seem very ahead of their time:

And apparently you should move your body over glowing radioactive lava fields:

and some actually became soundtracks for Amiga games:

Also pop got in the act twith bigger crowds but basically the same idea (1990)

As an aside, it’s interesting because I remember seeing videos by Cerith Wyn Evans using these overlay techniques from the early 80’s, and of course one of Leigh Bowery’s videos which was shot purely in a video booth at the Tropicana in London using the same idea…sadly neither are on YouTube but I’ve had a lot of fun looking at video of Leigh, he was a lovely man.

Anyway back to the (day)glowing outline 90’s – what’s interesting is that those with bigger budgets co-opted that ‘dance in front a screen’ style but maybe lost something of the original charm:

And then you have modern day, were the whole thing was co-opted by the new rave scene – such as the pisstaking Trashfashion:

and the MGMT Time to Pretend video which I refuse to link because they’ve obviously asked everyone who posted the video to disable embedding – they or their record company REALLY don’t understand new media and should be slapped. So there.