silverdollarcircle

www.milelongshadowofacoolingtower.blogspot.com - my friend paul's got a blog and its super-excellent. go and have a read...

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its going to get much more busy round here, i'm feeling oddly motivated at the moment.
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i overheard someone the other day saying 'you know, i think you can know everything about a person just by looking at their face'

i wish i had heard more of that conversation.

imagine mark e smith on 'i'm a celebrity get me out of here'
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apparently rephlex are putting out a compilation entitled 'grime'. the website suggests its mainly the plasticman/ mark one/ hatcha sound. which i guess makes sense, since thats the 'intelligent' side of garage/grime/sublow in just the same way that rephlex and the rest of the IDM crew are the 'intelligent' side of techno and rave.

its going to be quiet round here for a week or so [even more quiet than usual] cuz we've just lost our internet access. hopefully we'll set it up soon, but you know, we're lazy and incompetent. and i don't really like writing blogs anywhere else except my room. you need peace and music, don't you?

so HOLD TIGHT!

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somedisco is back! and what a way to come back. first, with a delicious air of mystery scott posts a brief comment on the spurs vs. city game and link to to mt ararat. the calm before the storm. then he lets loose a torrent of links and text and its all back to normal. huzzah. big up to you too scott!

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talking about calm before the storm; LOVE nicky forcer's way of inserting himself in to the clanging grime matrix of pirate shows- he always starts with
"F.
F O.
F O R.
F O R C.
F O R C E R its forcer"
its the way he says it, you know, there's real beauty there, a playful confidence.

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my favourite venue in london currently; the walk to the northern line platform at tottenham court road. its a massive long tunnel with [usually] a busker at one end, so that the sound gets all distorted and twisted as its moves through the tunnel. if the busker in question is playing, say, a violin, it can sound like a wonderful choir of discordant angels, celestial and somehow geometric in its sound, refracting and curving through the air.

everybody sings to themselves in london. if yr not from these parts its really noticeable. nobody really sang in oxford, except the drunk guy who sits otside the bodleian singing kinks songs, and the crazy guy who does the two ronnies sketches and occasionally breaks into operatic vocals [i met him once and he was worringly sane]
but here, everybody seems to sing. the streets are alive with the sound of music and all that.
its quite joyful really, this communal world of sound.
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and happy valentines day to you all in advance! i'm gonna listen to the 'love below' tomorrow, cuz i reckon if i don't like it then i'm never gonna like it...

"yr cheesy like quavers kid,
nine out of ten ravers say 'quit' "
-someone on rinse fm tonight [ it sounded like they said 'live agents', may be?] anyway, genius!
whoever it was, they were amazing, and its 7-9 pm fridays rinse 100.3
oh, and they said explicitly 'THIS IS GRIME!'
so that's settled.

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http://rubberring.blogspot.com
-smiths fan
-ramones and david byrne fan
-writes about oxford amnesty lectures, cary grant and elizabeth anderson [i did a whole undergraduate thesis on her, mainly disagreeing with her, but i think she's great- the first paragraph of 'what is the point of equality' in particular is classic; that line about if current egalitarian political philosophy was written by conservatives it couldn't have a more negative impact on egalitarian political movements...reminds me a bit of Marx, that does: similar sardonic savaging of intellectual opponents. excellent stuff.]
anyway, to go back to the blog; as i believe fashionistas say, 'What's not to love?'
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ha ha, i like the virtual stoa's comment about my 'streams of consciousness' on this blog, as it seemed to confer a bit of artistic legitimacy on what is largely lazy, grammatically disastrous writing by me.
honestly, punk and lo-fi aesthetics are a god send to people like me.
it's all intentional! its MEANT to be scrappy!

notice that touch of spring in the air today?


lushy.

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finally bought johnny cash's live at san quentin the other day. its excellent, of course, but you don't need me to tell you that. so i'll just say this: when johnny starts proceedings with a 'hello, i'm johnny cash, alright...' in a voice that manages to be both cheery and graveyard sombre you just know right there and then that its going to be a wonderful record- there's no way that someone who opens as johnny cash does can fail. these little magical starting moments of perfect harmony and grace are quite common in great art- catch 22's opening line might be another example, also the opening 30 seconds of 'i luv u' and the way dizzee rascal says 'yo...' at the start, also the first few oppressive pages of 'crime and punishment', perhaps the zither intro to the 'third man' as well. actually, talking about 'the third man', a friend of mine once said that when orson welles first appears in that film it makes you want to stalk him. and johnny cash seems to cast a similar spell at the start of live in san quentin, drawing you in and not letting you go.

also, the audience-noise on the record is an excellently large part of it, a thundercloud of energy, rage and joy, that breaks through the amplified noise frequently. but even when the audience is silent, the silence is a tense, concrete presence [didn't sartre have a word for things like this? Neants, or something?], a reminder that the next crescendo will be coming soon. Cannonball Adderley and the Quintet's 'why am i treated so bad?' live lp has the best audience noise i've ever heard though- absolutely constant, searing, tearing yelps and whoops, claps and cheers dragging and pushing the music forwards.

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the virtual stoa [written by johnny cash fan chris brooke] has another excellent demolition of paul 'the thinker' richards MP. search and destroy!

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Massive B's greensleeves mix tape 'mad sick head nah good' is also excellent, but again you probably don't need me to tell you that. so i'll just say this: the first 5 tracks on the diwali rhythm sequence are meltingly beautiful. listening to it is like being in a soft whirlwind of diamonds, the music glitters and swirls, stretches and enfolds. particularly love the ravey keyboards on the first track of the sequence, which are so gentle and misty its almost heartbreaking.

on a more practical note, the record's a good way to get to know recent dancehall tunes and rhythms without buying those headfucking rhythm albums [whenever i listen to one even half-way through i start to feel worringly altered]

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whats up with lethal b at the moment? he seems to be everywhere on the radio and he's absolutely on fire. LOVE that 'pow pow POW!' thing he does...i was never majorly in to more fire- 'oi' left me a bit underwhelmed, which i know marks me out as a weirdo, and the album was well patchy, but lethal b seems to be just totally unstopable at the moment.