Positive K

I was always pretty much certain that it was a woman MCing in this great track from 1993, but apparently it's Positive K himself. Would have liked to post the official video, but embedding was disabled on all the various versions of it because the Universal Music Group is populated by cunts. Shame. Ralph1998 it is then. Great track though.

Vincent Gallo

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the gun-toting sell-out that is Vincent Gallo.


In what is possibly the most poorly-judged celebrity endorsement of all time, Gallo has signed on to be the new face of H&M. Although I have never been much of a Gallo fan, and his records with Warp are certainly nothing to write home about, I always kind of dug his give-a-fuck, "out of my cold dead hands", NRA tendencies. This however, is just a bit too much. That glint in his eye is the look of a man who knows he just sold his soul for a $10 cashmere jumper.

Helles

The best beer in the world.

Unite

I was under the impression that Archangel was Burial's best tune (followed closely by Raver). I was wrong. Unite is. It didn't make its way onto 'Burial' or 'Untrue', instead landing on the (quite frankly excellent) Soul Jazz Records 'Box Of Dub' compilation. Sensational.

Mash Head

Das ist der killer ja?

Fritz

A guy called Fritz (no joke) came round to my house on Friday, and introduced me to Piemont. A Hamburg-based duo, they make this quite funky techno that oddly, sits just as comfortably at a dinner party as it would in the club. I really like it.



One half of Piemont is called Phunklarique, and guess what, he is also really good. Listen to his first track on his myspace page, called 'Freak In The...' (Phunklarique RMX). I don't know who it remixes, but I've got a sneaking suspicion he may have just remixed himself. And if you can't be fucked with that, just listen to the below which is also good, but not quite as good as the 'Freak' tune.

Tokyo Drift

Girls in Tokyo are all so ugly that when the authorities find a genuinely hot one, they have this whole unveling ceremony and shit, and invite all the world's press to prove that they DO in fact have some hot chicks like this absolute knockout. From her perfectly manicured hands to her carbon-fibre exoskeleton, she demands to be desired.

Fitted as standard

I'm obviously getting really into things like this all over again. It's to be expected no?

Marc Romboy

This is nice.

Tabloid

I've been neglecting this blog now for a few days, firstly because I had a long and exhausting weekend (people don't even consider going to a nightclub here until AT LEAST 6am!), secondly because I don't have internet at home, and thirdly, because I'm pretty loathed to start writing in the evenings seeing as I spend all day writing about celeb gossip, footie rumours, and other tabloid odds and ends. You see I have embarked on a new profession - that most-hated of all professions - as a tabloid journalist. There are some benefits though, not least when your inbox gets bombarded with pearls like this. Paul Parker's face is a thing of wonder.

The White Tiger

Oxford killed reading for me. Or maybe dope killed reading for me. I’m not sure which. I haven’t smoked for nearly two weeks now, and I just demolished a 320 page book in less than 24 hours. Given that I have only finished one book since I left Oxford in the summer of 2007, that is quite an achievement. I’m not really sure what that is testament to – the lethargic constraints of a youth and young manhood spent smoking mind alteringly strong samples of Albion’s finest, or the fact that The White Tiger is an enjoyable read.

Either way, I’m back.

And I chose The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga for my comeback tour. OK that is a lie because I actually chose Arthur and George by Julian Barnes for my comeback tour. My mother (SAFE) recommended it to me as something that might make a good film and she was bang on. We (I say we, it was my boss at the time) passed on it eventually but I still stand by my previous convictions. If you’ve got a few million quid spare (which no one does any more – Ah, the nineties!) and are looking for a great British period movie to make, let me know.


Anyway, stick to the point at hand. The White Tiger. Won the 2008 Man Booker Prize. Must be good. It is good. Is it good? In all honesty, I couldn’t make up my mind. It reads very easily, and the story of the amoral entrepreneur is one that I’m sure resonates across India 2.0. I’ve been to India (twice, SAFE) and I am very fond of it. My only problem with the book was that it read like an example of how wealthy, educated Indian people wished their country to be viewed by equally wealthy and educated foreigners: this is a country of extremes, Adiga tells us, of rich and poor, of beauty and ugliness, and I know this; let me be your guide through this beautifully flawed nation of polarities. This is not a book for poor Indian people because there is very little they would find novel or entertaining in it. If they could read and write, they could easily have written this book. It is a novel for people who know that they are speaking to someone in Bangalore every time they try and call their energy supplier, people who think they know the new India.

I suppose that is what my problem with it is. Adiga writes with a target audience so closely in mind, that for all of his attempts to disguise it - Halwai’s anal fixation (a technique stolen quite blatantly from DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little) and obsession with buggery, the encircling cockroaches, and the vulgar trappings of success – he only succeeds in making more clear that which he so wished to avoid. Adiga has booby-trapped himself without even knowing it. Oh, and I won't even bother touching on how post-Slumdog it is...

Oh well. I'm 75% of the way through The Third Man by Graham Greene now which is without a doubt the best film treatment I have ever come across.

Barem

It was only a matter of time...

Techno is the heartbeat of this city (although there is a surprisingly large amount of Drum 'n Bass as well for some reason - answers on the back of a stamp addressed envelope please), the modulating pacemaker that keeps everyone in check and you hear it pretty much everywhere you go. Although I have mad love for techno, over the last year or two I had begun to think that lots of it, the minimal scene in particular, had started to consume itself. Too may producers, too much music, not enough quality control. A genre that had started out as a reaction to the ostentatiousness of house and the sheer uncoolness of trance, had quickly become that which previously it had most despised. People like Richie Hawtin, were doing tours more reminiscent of Tiesto, and Sven Vath's Cocoon night at Amnesia in Ibiza was the toast of the island. That's why it is good to come across people like Barem. A Buenos Aires native, he exemplifies the founding philosophies that min tech should stand for. By all accounts, the techno scene in BA is minute. Playing to a crowd larger than 50 is an acheivement, let alone actually releasing tracks. Therefore, there is something nice about a producer coming from such a scene, so far removed from the techno boulevards of Europe, and actually producing good music, music that manages to remind you why you fell in love with techno in the first place.



PS. And its not just Barem. Check out Ceph as well, an equally accomplished producer also from Buenos Aires.

Fixed Gear Berlin

The fixie scene in Berlin is pretty niche. Unlike London, you don't see every Tom, Dick and Harry (you know, Harry from HR) bouncing around on the ubiquitous Charge Plug, or the equally omnipresent LeMonde Fillimore. Mostly, Berliners ride around on beaten up old pieces of shit with big curvy handlebars, clackety mud-guards and those saddles designed for old women with fat asses. However, what the Berlin fixie scenesters lack in numbers, they make up for in sheer entrepreneurial chutzpah - they have their own brand of beer!

Reader, I moved to Berlin...