Random Etc. Notes to self. Work, play, and the rest.
DARTZ! - This Is My Ship
I've been following and supporting (and occasionally sheltering) my brother's band DARTZ! on and off now for nearly two years. It's been a while since I read the NME, and I was never one to hang on every word inside, but it's moments like these that make you proud:
"It's been said that the Ramones only had two kinds of songs. Songs for punk rockers to go nuts to (the fast, agitated ones), and songs for punk rockers to smooch to (the slow, romantic ones.) It's fair to say that Stockton-born wobble punks Dartz!, on the other hand, only have one kind of song - ones for punk rockers to get the fuck down to (the fast, giddy, heart-bursting, dancable-as-shit ones).
The beyond-brilliant 'Once, twice, again!' twitches like the fleshy stump of a recently decapitated cadaver, while recent single 'St Petersburg' manages to sound like scene godfathers the Minutemen playing Chic songs. Nerdy, snappy and smart; this is jerk-punk played by real live jerks.
They've only got one kind of song, but hey, that doesn't matter one bit because it's a fucking brilliant one. 8/10" -- NME
There are many more reviews, and links to buy the album and singles, on their myspace page. An album launch party of sorts is happening at Borderline in London on Monday.
Congrats to Henry, Phil and Will for keeping their heads down and doing what they do best - writing excellent, intelligent rock music and taking it to the people. I miss them loads and I wish I could be there for the album launch. Fingers crossed they come to San Francisco soon.
Five Things Most People Don’t Know About Me
Matt Webb tagged me with this one. Thanks Matt.
Of course, most people don't know anything about me, so let's go with 5 things most people who know me don't know about me:
1. I have an older brother, Nev. He's my foster brother, 5 years older than me, and my parents fostered him a year before I was born. Since his dad (whom we've never met) was Afro-Caribbean, he's a black guy and occasionally he's grown a mean afro (though he mostly keeps it short). He has cerebral palsy which means he's spent all his life in a wheelchair but it doesn't stop him sharing the same sly sense of humour as the rest of my family, or memorising entire Star Wars scripts or Guns 'n' Roses albums. If you think Jimi Hendrix, in a wheel chair, with a Yorkshire accent, you won't be far wrong.
Growing up with Nev gave me an interesting perspective on life, strengthened by the fact that my dad also works in special needs education. (It's also the case that having a black brother in a wheelchair gives you a weird kind of leverage in arguments, especially with racist and ignorant people).
Here's a picture I stole from my younger brother Henry's myspace page (I go on about Henry's band DARTZ! here from time to time) . It's Nev and Henry with my grandma's dog Lassie, from around 1986. Sorry guys.
2. I used to play classical guitar. I haven't played seriously for years but I can still sight-read music and work things out by ear (I recently scored pretty highly - 88.9% - in this test). I was OK I suppose, but never particularly accomplished. It did come in handy when I wanted to learn bass so I could play in Puppet Show, the grunge band I was in until university mercifully got in the way. (Lead singer Robert went on to be the guitarist in Executive Distraction Tasks but we didn't sound much like that!). My musical dabblings also stretched to an unreleased (and long forgotten) album of music made with Buzz, an early free software synth package. That was my introduction to the demo scene and the world of generative computer graphics, so it's not all bad.
3. The first time I got in an aeroplane I was 20. Later that summer I wrote about it here in excruciating detail.
4. I'm vegetarian, an atheist and I don't (can't) drive. I realise this is actually three things you probably don't know about me but I just spent two weeks in Dallas, Texas where all three things mark me out as different. In the epitome of automobile-centric, bible thumping, meat-eating America, in some ways I'm the anti-Texan.
My vegetarianism is only through a general antipathy towards meat, rather than a particular philosophical/economic/political/moral stand. If it's a question of me vs the cow then the cow is going down and if I ever have the space then I might keep chickens.
My atheism is a product of being left to my own devices when it comes to religion: if you give a naturally skeptical person a blank slate, they're not wont to let people fill it with anything.
I don't drive partly because I don't need to, partly because I think the world would be better if everyone drove less, and partly because when everyone else was learning I found the endless stories about driving lessons completely unbearable.
5. I can't say anything useful in any language other than English. This is probably my biggest shame as a wannabe intellectual. In other countries I pick things up quickly and have a great memory for words and phrases, and sounds (I like to think I'm a natural and compulsive mimic), but I've never stuck to it with languages. Fixing this one is a perennial new year's resolution but this year I've already resolved to learn T'ai Chi. Maybe next year?
I suppose it's time to tag 5 more people. Mikel already went and tagged Steve and Wilfried, and Ben and Eric both seem dormant so they all escape my gaze today. Let's see if we can't get something out of Mike Migurski, Karsten Schmidt, Rev Dan Catt, Rod McLaren and Andrea Lau.
Nothing is taboo here on the edge of science…
Jarvis Cocker, Neil Hannon and Air should write for sultry breathy French women more often. Air should be everybody's backing band.
DARTZ! - St. Petersburg
My younger brother plays guitar in a band called DARTZ! (myspace.com/darts). They recorded an album in London this summer and the first single is out this time next month. There's now a rather swish video for it on youtube*, and local radio recently played it twice.
In other news, a fan of theirs put some of their lyrics on Newcastle's Secret Flickr Wall. If you obsess over Flickr for long enough, eventually Flickr will obsess over you.
* Not embedded because Wordpress is too damn opinionated to let me post invalid HTML dammit.
The Personal Touch #1
Paul Marshall makes beautiful music and sings beautiful songs. I ordered his CD and he hand wrote a little note to go with it letting me know when he'd next be playing London and what he was up to at the moment. Nice!
One half of Paul's album is by Tascam Tapes, who also makes beautiful music and sings beautiful songs, alone and with her band The Minor Fall.
Browsing all these connections again on myspace is a little strange, because I never remember where I find these things. It turns out they all have releases on Seduction Records alongside a band called Whores Whores Whores who my brother has done a bit of PR for recently. And then I find my brother's band recommending Paul Marshall to Marsha from XFM as a response to her podcast where she recommends them, and it's all neatly tied together.
The Month Ahead and The Weekend Past
Last weekend, I attended day two of dorkbot Ghent's dorkfest. Due to a few people over-running and a later than expected start, I didn't actually speak for anywhere near as long as I had planned. I even missed out my tube maps in the rush which was disappointing. I hope to return and give a better presentation another day because I definitely liked Ghent and lots of things caught my eye.
Many thanks to Lieven and friends for inviting me, and to all the participants for showing their excellent and interesting projects. Highlights for me were Sven Koenig's sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ!, Heiko Hansen's overview of HEHE's work and the increasingly impressive NodeBox - think Processing meets Python plus lots more, sadly Mac OS-only right now but work on porting it is in progress.
This weekend, I hope to catch the end of the RCA Summer Show (particularly Interaction Design as covered by Tom at plasticbag) and the Bartlett Summer Show (alas I missed the MSc AAC show last weekend due to the clash with dorkbot Ghent). With luck, I'll also make it to Future City at the Barbican.
Looking further ahead, I'll be in Manchester for Futuresonic from 20th-22nd July. I'm taking part in a panel for the Social Technologies Summit with Stanislav Roudavski and Matt Webb entitled Iterative Architecture (Built On An Internet Of Things). The rest of the festival is shaping up nicely, I'm pretty excited about seeing Battles again on the Friday night.
One of my fellow EngD students at the Bartlett, Karen Martin, is helping to organise Why Wait? (a workshop on place, time and future technologies) to be held on the 27th and 28th July. You might also like Karen's blog, Mr. Watson. I'll be at the first day of the workshop before I leave London on the 28th for two weeks in Chicago, New York and Boston. If you've read this far and you live in any of those cities, let me know - we should probably meet!
Gnarls Barkley Download Hits Number 1
This Gnarls Barkley thing has me thinking about music distribution again. My previous thoughts are here.
I don't understand why CD shops don't offer a 'burn on demand' service (and do nice glossy artwork prints) or a 'top up my ipod' service for the tracks they don't physically stock. HMV in Islington only had 50% of the things I wanted today, and I'm still looking for the odd thing that I know is out of print (Coffee & Cigarettes soundtrack, anyone?).
Frankly, an entire record store could be replaced with one of those little buggies that people kit out to serve coffee (like this one). Mount an array of touch screens, provide USB jacks and charging points, scoot around looking for a captive audience. Why not put the same hardware on tube platforms, bus stops, or in the back of aeroplane seats.
I'm thinking of a mobile data centre, but it could be done through a network instead. Without the restrictions of a shop, where would people be open to buying download tracks? Could I walk along the beach with a custom laptop and sell you things for your ipod? What about parks? Nightclubs? Why aren't pubs and clubs offering a bluetooth-powered 'get the ringtone' service for the current playing track (why do they let services like Shazam have that potential business?).
The totally untethered version doesn't even need much in the way of upstream bandwidth - a 3G phone could serve the requests and they could be delivered from the iTunes store by satellite. For one user at a time, a 3G data connection alone would be enough.
How long before the iPod can access the iTunes store all by itself over GSM/3G/WiFi/Bluetooth and all of this speculation is rendered moot?
Similar Music to Saul Williams
Last.fm's similar music to Saul Williams station is the most consistent seam of laid-back, groovy and intelligent music I've found in a long while. Thanks, fans of Saul Williams, for cross-fertilising on last.fm so effectively.
Glastobury Barrel Walker
Some kids making the most of the 2006 Glastobury rain, balancing on some overturned bins, at youtube.
Joined Up Thinking
Please can I twin my del.icio.us account with my last.fm account and keep a record of the things I stream with the del.icio.us mp3 widget?
Whilst you're implementing that for me, can you do the same thing for myspace bands, purevolume bands and so on?
Could this be done with a Greasemonkey script or a Firefox extension?
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