The Blog




bOing-bOing's gift guide. I'll take one of each please!
http://boingboing.net/2012/11/28/giftguide2012.html
Gift Guide 2012 - Boing Boing »
Is That All There Is?,. o. I discovered the work of Dutch cartoonist Joost Swarte before I read Hergé's Tintin, even though it's now clear to me that Swarte's style was inspired by Hergé. But I would ...

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Clubbing in Shanghai
http://www.residentadvisor.net/feature.aspx?1568
This is not Shoreditch! Makes me wonder what clubbing in Kazakhstan might be like and I might just have a route to find out.

Hey, Bruce, you need to add that RA article to your occasional "Musica Globalista" tag.
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/category/musica-globalista/
Clubbing in Shanghai »
The Chinese metropolis has never had a club culture before, but as RA's Sanjay Fernandes explains, that's slowly changing.

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So, is there any truth in the rumour that Skrillex is playing the Glastonbury Sat night closing slot on the Other stage.
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Eagerly awaiting this album.
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17445-jummy/
"Art-House". How is this not a thing, yet? Amazingly, it's barely used on last.fm with only about 10 taggers. Compare http://www.last.fm/search?q=art-house&type=tag with all these myriad variations and sub-genres off House music http://www.last.fm/search?q=house&type=tag
Gerry Read: Jummy »
The 20-year old British art-house producer's debut reveals a dedication to haze and clutter mostly absent on his early singles. Mixing big, wet drum sounds with short, cloudy bursts of piano and mumbl...

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Ben Hammersley's speech to the IAAC, last year.
Stumbled across this article again due to a technical quirk of my news reading. And while re-reading it I discovered this wonderful slogan that comes straight out of the Situationists!

Expect everything. Expect it on your own terms.
My speech to the IAAC | Ben Hammersley's Dangerous Precedent »
Ben Hammersley's speech to the IAAC, given on the 6th September 2011

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Retrophagísta, The Retrophagists, Retrophagy.
An imaginary (currently) art movement that uses the deliberate and conscious consumption, rumination, recombination and regurgitation of the past to create the future and the new.

A positive counterpoint to the negative, expensive ugliness of the cocaine decision that is Retromania. That just mines the past out of a fake hip nostalgia or cynically recapitulates the past for profit without adding anything new except context.
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Unknown #001-004
I was irritated by the name, by how hard it makes it to find any information in the usual places. And this is a great review Angus, with a point elegantly put. Especially the last line. "Well, sadly, some of them just aren't very good."

Except that, I like all the tracks that I've heard so far. It's inoffensive IDM armchair dance music. It's well put together. It may be lacking in pizazz but it's not bad. 2/5 seems a bit harsh. It gets 3.5/5 from me.

There's a strong possibility that Unknown is actually Ryan Vail from N Ireland. Perhaps after the hype of "Unknown" Ryan will emerge under his own name. I've been trying to find his Colours EP to see if that's any good or different.
Review - Unknown - #001-#004 »
Remember "Sicko Cell"? Remember how we all huddled around forums and YouTube comment threads as if they were oil drum fire pits in an urban wasteland, trading rumours, speculating, stoking the flames?...

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This.
A Thanksgiving Prayer by William S. Burroughs »
We now bow our heads as Uncle Bill leads us in A Thanksgiving Prayer.

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A more than usually fascinating interview with Bruce Sterling. http://stirling-westrup-tt.blogspot.fr/2012/10/tt-bruce-sterling-atemporality-and.html

The core argument is that modern life has taken on an atemporal quality in that the sheer quantity of mankind's creative noise is making socioligical cause and effect hard to see. Along the way he looks at questions around the difference between the reality of 1955, analogue remnants of 1955, digitised renmants of 1955 and 1955 as seen though the usual historical revisionism of both popular culture and historians. One aspect I think is missing in the argument is the effect of exponential growth in content. We are both creating quantities of content and forgetting it along an exponential growth curve. So content from 1955 is becoming a smaller and smaller part of the whole at that same exponential rate but also it is viewed through the filters of the ever increasing pile of content produced between then and now where half of all that content is less than a year old, 3/4 of it is less than 2 years old.

I really want to paraphrase one sentence in the article, thusly:- One tires of this corny new-media rhetoric where things are always pre-fixed "post-, future-, new-, or neo-" Of course they are post and future and new, but not for long.

Bruce has thing about Brazilian Anthropophagy and the Anthropophagics. This was an art movement starting in the 1920s in Sao Paolo that consciously ate European and American influences in order to ruminate on them and then regurgitate them as something new. More recently the abravanista movement around musical artists such as Suba and Cibelle have resurrected this idea. This plus the inimitable Simon Reynolds make me want to coin another neologism based on his ideas around retromania and hauntology. I think we need "Retrophagy"; The conscious consumption of historical ideas and approaches as source material for rumination, combination and then regurgitation as something new. This is not the laziness of simply repeating or glorifying the past for profit but rather the deliberate use of it as part of the creative process.

On which subject, this is one of the better interviews with Simon for explaining what he's on about. http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/is-our-retro-obsession-ruining-everything/ via http://boingboing.net/2012/11/19/is-our-retro-obsession-ruining.html
[tt] bruce sterling: atemporality and social networks. »
----- Forwarded message from nettime's avid reader ----- From: nettime's avid reader Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2012 08:57:08 +0200 To: nettime-l@kein.org Subject: bruce sterling: atemporality and social ne...

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The analog culture destroyed by digital culture does not come back. Commenting has been disabled for this article

((( Why? Bruce Sterling has a lot of worthy things to say but there's always a rejoinder. However, Wired apparently doesn't think its safe to let anyone talk back. )))

Meanwhile, the old intermediaries were forced out via dis-intermediation and replaced by the new intermediaries in the great internet re-intermediation. Told you so.
The analog culture destroyed by digital culture does not come back | Beyond The Beyond | Wired.com »
*Let's face it, buying this guy's magazine might be a good idea. http://www.thefader.com/2012/11/19/arthur-founder-jay-babcock-on-the-magazines-return-t

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Dear artist,
Please make me feel again like I did when I consumed my first piece of your art.
Yours etc., a typical vampiric consumer.
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Damn, this is some good stuff. Looking forward to "Relapse" due next week.


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Ultraísta is a pretty cool name for a band. Adding ísta to a word adds a frisson of danger, conjuring mental images of Che Guevara and other romanticised revolutionaries. Which means there's a word in here somewhere combining future(s), edges, hipsterism, "post", Modern and ísta that we can use to accentuate our smugness of knowing and seeing just a little more than the average joes. (grin!) So what are we, Modernístas? Futurístas?

Ultraísta - Smalltalk (Four Tet Remix)


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In Soviet Russia, Bass Drops You!

SeeAlso: http://insovietrussiajokes.wordpress.com/
SKRILLEX @ DUBSTEP PLANET III! ARENA MOSCOW! »
08.12.2012 SKRILLEX @ DUBSTEP PLANET III! ARENA MOSCOW!

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Cocktail of the week: The Sazerac

This week's cocktail is one I was introduced to last week (thanks Mark) but is one of the oldest cocktails in the book. It dates to 1859 when John Schiller christened it in his bar the Sazerac Coffee House. It's named after a Cognac popular then in New Orleans mixed with Peychaud bitters. There are three variations based on Cognac, Whiskey or as in this recipe from Dale deGroff a mix of the two.

If you haven't got any Peychaud bitters then get yourself given a present of the Bitter Truth Travel Pack and use the Creole Bitters.
http://www.gerrys.uk.com/CatalogueAndCartOct07.aspx

Get two rocks glasses and put one in the freezer. In the other, splash of Absinthe, Pernod or Pastis; swirl and then pour away. Then assemble in the glass:-
Ice cubes
25ml Cognac
25ml Rye Whiskey
12ml Simple Syrup
2 dashes Peychaud (or Creole)
2 dashes Angostura (or Aromatic)
Stir with the ice cubes to dilute and chill to taste
Retrieve the other rocks glass from the freezer and strain the cocktail into it.
Garnish with a flamed lemon peel.

The finished cocktail should be clear, faintly pink and have no ice. Its for sipping. It's only really a double shot and a bit of liquid so the serving glass can be quite a small tumbler. It's got lots of old fashioned and complex flavours and makes a great change from the usual sweet and sour or spirit and vermouth.
Gerry's Wines & Spirits - At Gerry's You Can Buy Almost Any Drink Under The Sun!! »
Prices and product availability may vary in store. Home | Contact | info@gerrys.uk.com · Website terms & conditions | Website privacy policy © 2008 - 2012 Gerrys - Wines & Spirits Website by S...

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Counting down the time till the Mayan calendar rolls over into a new Aeon.
http://countdowntoapocalypse.com/ 34 days to go.

And here's some appropriately retro-futurist music from 1972 Neu! to go with it. NEU! - Hallogallo
Countdown To Apocalypse - CountdownToApocalypse.com »
When will the World End? You can find the answer here.

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Another Google Plus to Atom/RSS service has turned up.
http://pluss.aiiane.com/

Discovered on the Google Issue tracker request
http://code.google.com/p/google-plus-platform/issues/detail?id=139

To go with my own PHP attempt.
A single file PHP script which serves public posts to a Google Plus account as an Atom feed. https://gist.github.com/3938374

Why, oh, why has Google still not provided this ?
pluss - Feed Proxy for Google+ »
pluss - Feed Proxy for Google+. Before pluss can proxy your Google+ public stream, you'll need to authenticate with Google. This process is done on Google's servers and does not reveal your Google aut...

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This is genius. 10 minutes of BBC archive of people dancing set to two pieces of contrasting music to show the way the soundtrack alters our perceptions of the same images.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2012/11/while_the_band_played_on.html

Found via http://www.scoop.it/t/hauntology

ps. Bring Back Retro-Futurism!
BBC - Adam Curtis Blog: WHILE THE BAND PLAYED ON »
Online films, text and selected images from Adam Curtis, maker of The Power of Nightmares, The Century of the Self, The Mayfair Set, Pandora's Box, The Trap and The Living Dead.

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Vote for Peace: And nobody gets hurt. 
Peace News »
Welcome to Peace News, the newspaper for the UK grassroots peace and justice movement. We seek to oppose all forms of violence, and to create positive change based on cooperation and responsibility. S...

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