2. Frank Lampard
3. Mark Bosnich
4. William 'Fatty' Foulkes
5. Thomas Brolin
Thursday, 30 April 2009
Top 5 Fat Footballers
1. Neville Southall
2. Frank Lampard
3. Mark Bosnich
4. William 'Fatty' Foulkes
5. Thomas Brolin
2. Frank Lampard
3. Mark Bosnich
4. William 'Fatty' Foulkes
5. Thomas Brolin
Berlin Velodrom
Sydney just pipped Berlin to the 2000 Olympics, but that didn't stop those efficient Germans from putting in place a great deal of the necessary infrastructure to host such an event. Probably the towering achievement of this rush to build (take note Seb Coe, Tessa Jowell, Boris et al) is the Berlin Velodrom (no 'e').
Designed by Dominique Perrault (who also designed the Habitat Sky Hotel in Barcelona and the Cocon series), the Velodrom has Europe's largest steel roof with a diameter of 142 metres. It sits in its own sunken trough which gives it the appearance of a mothership that has landed on earth and left its impact imprinted on the ground.
Those in the know assure me that this bad boy is fucking fast. In fact, it is supposed to be the second fastest circuit in Europe. At 48 degrees, only Moscow has a steeper incline. In fact, its so fast, that you need to get a licence to ride here, which takes four weeks to arrive. Having sent mine off, look forward to a review soon.
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Dave "the rave" Cameron
Our future PM (save us dear Lord) raving it up in the summer of '88 between 0:13 - 0:15. Heavy.
Monday, 27 April 2009
How annoying is this?
Taken from today's Guardian:
Long dismissed as a fading east London suburb with a chaotic daily market, a strip of cheap Turkish restaurants and a rudimentary relationship with street hygiene, Dalston E8 now finds itself the unlikely owner of Britain's coolest postcode. Its roll call of fashion habitués reads like a Who's Who of past and present design figureheads - Christopher Kane, Gareth Pugh and Marius Schwab have set up shop there, while old guard visionaries Pam Hogg, Terry De Havilland and Jimmy Choo are frequently out and about.
Dalston nightlife has been blessed with a series of pop-up club nights at crumbling 80s nightspots Passions, Blushes, Visions and Passing Clouds. Wander around at 11pm and the feeling is not dissimilar to being in the lower east side of Manhattan at its mid-90s peak.
Dalston has its own music magazine, the Pix, edited from a basement in the Bootstrap, an EU funded creative enterprise that also rents space to Pugh and the artist Matthew Stone, while pop stars Lightspeed Champion, Jack Penate and Big Pink all operate from corners of E8.
Unlike Hoxton - the East End enclave that last drew in London's up-and-coming creatives - Dalston has always been a vibrant place, thanks to its Afro-Caribbean and Turkish communities. "There was already a night-time street culture here. Throwing another demographic at it hasn't hurt," says Dan Beaumont, who has run London's most feted monthly club night, Disco Bloodbath, in the area and has just swung open the doors of a new bar unapologetically named the Dalston Superstore. "Everyone's surprisingly accepting," he adds.
After the opening of posh members' club Shoreditch House and Terence Conran's Boundary Hotel in nearby Shoreditch, Beaumont felt the shift eastwards and followed his nose to Dalston. "Not everyone wants to drink fancy cocktails on roof terraces," he notes - and there's certainly a local lunacy to the area that has so far escaped the gentrifiers sweeping across London's other less celebrated suburbs.
"You can walk down the road and see everything from Pam Hogg squeezing a melon in the Ridley Road market to a man wearing a sack preaching to the traffic lights," says Hanna Hanra, editor of the Pix. "Everything is possible. It's a fabulous, optimistic place."
Hanra thinks E8 is unquestionably the best postcode in London. "For architectural beauty, cleanliness, stench factor, road safety and trying to walk at a normal pace down the pavement, definitely not. For being somewhere exciting, absolutely."
Long dismissed as a fading east London suburb with a chaotic daily market, a strip of cheap Turkish restaurants and a rudimentary relationship with street hygiene, Dalston E8 now finds itself the unlikely owner of Britain's coolest postcode. Its roll call of fashion habitués reads like a Who's Who of past and present design figureheads - Christopher Kane, Gareth Pugh and Marius Schwab have set up shop there, while old guard visionaries Pam Hogg, Terry De Havilland and Jimmy Choo are frequently out and about.
Dalston nightlife has been blessed with a series of pop-up club nights at crumbling 80s nightspots Passions, Blushes, Visions and Passing Clouds. Wander around at 11pm and the feeling is not dissimilar to being in the lower east side of Manhattan at its mid-90s peak.
Dalston has its own music magazine, the Pix, edited from a basement in the Bootstrap, an EU funded creative enterprise that also rents space to Pugh and the artist Matthew Stone, while pop stars Lightspeed Champion, Jack Penate and Big Pink all operate from corners of E8.
Unlike Hoxton - the East End enclave that last drew in London's up-and-coming creatives - Dalston has always been a vibrant place, thanks to its Afro-Caribbean and Turkish communities. "There was already a night-time street culture here. Throwing another demographic at it hasn't hurt," says Dan Beaumont, who has run London's most feted monthly club night, Disco Bloodbath, in the area and has just swung open the doors of a new bar unapologetically named the Dalston Superstore. "Everyone's surprisingly accepting," he adds.
After the opening of posh members' club Shoreditch House and Terence Conran's Boundary Hotel in nearby Shoreditch, Beaumont felt the shift eastwards and followed his nose to Dalston. "Not everyone wants to drink fancy cocktails on roof terraces," he notes - and there's certainly a local lunacy to the area that has so far escaped the gentrifiers sweeping across London's other less celebrated suburbs.
"You can walk down the road and see everything from Pam Hogg squeezing a melon in the Ridley Road market to a man wearing a sack preaching to the traffic lights," says Hanna Hanra, editor of the Pix. "Everything is possible. It's a fabulous, optimistic place."
Hanra thinks E8 is unquestionably the best postcode in London. "For architectural beauty, cleanliness, stench factor, road safety and trying to walk at a normal pace down the pavement, definitely not. For being somewhere exciting, absolutely."
Friday, 24 April 2009
Thursday, 23 April 2009
Mangal
You'd think what with Berlin being the fifth largest Turkish city in the world, you would be well within your rights to expect some excellent Turkish food. So far, nothing I have sampled has come anywhere near this place.
I miss you so much...
I miss you so much...
Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Blue Notez
This is a fucking deep tune from Digital Mystikz (and not just Mala as the video claims). Always been a massive Blue Note fan, so nice to see this little reinvention.
Tuesday, 21 April 2009
All Black
Haven't posted a tune for a while, and some of the posts were getting a little, um, well whatever. So here is banger from Big L.
Rhydian
There's a bit of a talent show theme running through previous posts, and I'm afraid you must allow me one more brief foray into the world of populist viewer-voted format programming, as I want to talk about the scariest man known to, well, man. Ok, I'm sure Rhydian Roberts isn't scary in real life, but some of his press shots, and his stage get-up in particular, make him look like the missing link between Arnold Schwarzenegger's Iceman in 'Batman and Robin', and some unused baddy from an as yet uncommissioned Buffy musical spin-off. Nonetheless, it does go to prove that commercial classical music, as posited in a previous post, is essentially the best thing going.
Rhydian at work.
Iceman
Rhydian plotting how best to kill Nicole Kidman
Rhydian at work.
Iceman
Rhydian plotting how best to kill Nicole Kidman
Saturday, 18 April 2009
Friday, 17 April 2009
Only Men Aloud!
Seriously, this has got to be a fucking joke, because if not, it is the greatest collective musical name since Bob Dylan decided to team up with some guys called 'The Band'.
Room full of mincing Aled Jones/Billy Elliot wannabes scooped up from the desperate pit towns up and down "the valeeeeys": CHECK
Selection of Moss Bros, Ciro Citterio, and Savoy Taylor's Guild suits, jazzed up with the odd Topman midnight blue shirt-and-bow-tie combo: CHECK
Shamefully derivative name tinged with unfulfilled homoerotic longing (which could only have been bettered if they'd opted for 'Only Boys Aloud'): CHECK
What does it add up to? Probably the most exciting experience in commercial classical music since Il Divo first rocked my world.
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Leona Lewis
One could easily vent untold amounts of vitriol towards Simon Cowell's money-spinning talent shows, but two notable exceptions stand out amongst the list of distinguished alumnae. The first, Jennifer Hudson, did not actually win American Idol, but I'm pretty sure an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Dreamgirls worked OK as a consolation prize.
The other is Leona Lewis. I am a massive fan of hers. She's the closest us Brits are going to get to Whitney Houston, but thankfully, without all the Bobby Brown influenced crack dabblings. Sure Jamelia can sing a little, and I guess the Eternal girls had some lungs on 'em, but there is something magnificent and noble about Leona.
Anyway, it seems a tad hypocritical to then go and post a Leona remix after singing her praises, but hey, its not like she writes her own material so fuck it. Although not quite as good as Burial, this bears similarities with his oevre. The beat is nothing to write home about, but I do like the samples, and I'd listen to Leona cooking breakfast in all honesty.
The other is Leona Lewis. I am a massive fan of hers. She's the closest us Brits are going to get to Whitney Houston, but thankfully, without all the Bobby Brown influenced crack dabblings. Sure Jamelia can sing a little, and I guess the Eternal girls had some lungs on 'em, but there is something magnificent and noble about Leona.
Anyway, it seems a tad hypocritical to then go and post a Leona remix after singing her praises, but hey, its not like she writes her own material so fuck it. Although not quite as good as Burial, this bears similarities with his oevre. The beat is nothing to write home about, but I do like the samples, and I'd listen to Leona cooking breakfast in all honesty.
Thursday, 9 April 2009
Gabber
Gabber. Can't really in all honesty say I have much time for it. Whatsoever. But...
I used to have a very faddy friend who got quite into it for a brief period of time, and he would get so excited by those terrorcore drum loops that you somehow couldn't help but partake in his enthusiasm for it, even if you were shielding your ears from the onslaught.
The gabber scene is an odd one as well. Rotterdam's the spiritual home of it, and Lonsdale hoodies the uniform. In Holland at least, it has always ridden piggyback on neo-Nazism, and although by all accounts that is starting to change, the link remains between the two. American neo-Nazis have always been more into metal - death, thrash, hardcore - and the two genres share more than a passing similarity. I think that has always been my beef with gabber. Aside from the fact that it is a painfully simple form of dance music, and ear-shatteringly repetitive (not that repetitive is a bad thing), it has always been too close to metal for my liking. I have quite a lot of time for the metal aesthetic, but the music has always left me cold. I have less time for the gabber aesthetic, but I do quite like this tune. Its probably because it is barely even a gabber tune, more a hardcore techno track. Anyway, voila.
I used to have a very faddy friend who got quite into it for a brief period of time, and he would get so excited by those terrorcore drum loops that you somehow couldn't help but partake in his enthusiasm for it, even if you were shielding your ears from the onslaught.
The gabber scene is an odd one as well. Rotterdam's the spiritual home of it, and Lonsdale hoodies the uniform. In Holland at least, it has always ridden piggyback on neo-Nazism, and although by all accounts that is starting to change, the link remains between the two. American neo-Nazis have always been more into metal - death, thrash, hardcore - and the two genres share more than a passing similarity. I think that has always been my beef with gabber. Aside from the fact that it is a painfully simple form of dance music, and ear-shatteringly repetitive (not that repetitive is a bad thing), it has always been too close to metal for my liking. I have quite a lot of time for the metal aesthetic, but the music has always left me cold. I have less time for the gabber aesthetic, but I do quite like this tune. Its probably because it is barely even a gabber tune, more a hardcore techno track. Anyway, voila.
Terminal
Great track from Brazilian producer Gui Boratto. Also a trained architect whose wife appears on the absolutely lovely 'Beautiful Life'.
Wednesday, 8 April 2009
Kreuzberg
Location one out in the end, and Kreuzberg it is. Wonder if I'll ever get to meet these lads?
Perhaps not quite as rebellious as some of these other Kreuzberg bad boys though.
Let's be avin yaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...
Kreuzberg or Mitte?
Stressssssssssssss.
After weeks spent thinking I wouldn't ever find somewhere to live, I have just been offered two places in the space of one day. So here are the options.
1. Live in Torstraße, about 200 metres from Rosenthalerplatz with a very nice guy called Murphy in a nice Altbau apartment.
2. Live in Kreuzberg, with 4 or 5 (I forget) quite friendly people from an array of different European countries. They are all older than me and have a definite hippy vibe (they've got a dog). Location is very cool if not beautiful.
What to do?
After weeks spent thinking I wouldn't ever find somewhere to live, I have just been offered two places in the space of one day. So here are the options.
1. Live in Torstraße, about 200 metres from Rosenthalerplatz with a very nice guy called Murphy in a nice Altbau apartment.
2. Live in Kreuzberg, with 4 or 5 (I forget) quite friendly people from an array of different European countries. They are all older than me and have a definite hippy vibe (they've got a dog). Location is very cool if not beautiful.
What to do?
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Friday, 3 April 2009
Bad Boys
MASSIVE PROPS to Cops. Going since 1989, it has provided a generation with unrivalled access to the unique policing methods of America's finest. It also has the BEST theme tune of any show I can think of. SAFE
Grand National
It's Ladies' Day in Aintree today and the fashion foward fillies of the North-West can be seen in all their orange finery across the front of every British news website. Chardonnay in the psychedlic maxi dress, India in the strapless number with leopard print trim, and at the front of the queue, Colleen with her precious baby bump in something even Roberto Cavalli would warn against. For all their efforts though, they will never come close to that fine day in 1987 when power dressing and millinery combined to create this lusciously practical thing of wonder.
Thursday, 2 April 2009
Louie Vega
I love pretty much all things Louie Vega. I love the fact that he was half of Masters At Work, I love that he has released both house and salsa tracks (under the Nuyorican Soul moniker), I love that he was married to La India, and I love his tunes. New York house has always been split between the Latino kids and the Jersey boys, and Little Louie managed to straddle that divide for me in a way no other DJ and producer could, blending elements of the Jersey "garage" sound (Todd Terry, Todd Edwards) with the Latino penchant for musical pomp and splendour.
I'm not here to argue that his sound is particularly relevant or necessary anymore. I just like it. However, as musical styles drift in and out of fashion, you always know where you are with a Little Louie track, and there is something quite comforting about that. This track must have meant quite a lot to him because the vocalist, Anané, went on to be his second wife.
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