radio babylon,

2006-02-27T22:53:00.000-05:00

This could potentially affect most of our blogs, and blog readers. Please read.
"The End of the Blogosphere?"

More info here: struggle for net neutrality

Take action.

More coming soon,

2005-10-23T16:51:00.000-04:00

136: Nicolette

I have to admit that I have something of a crush on Nicolette. The cover to her album, Life Loves Us, doesn't do her justice. At all. Try this or this. But cute as she may be in those pictures, what draws me to her in that voice. The style is influenced in equal parts by her musical and cultural upbringing. Her parents were Nigerians living in Scotland, her father was obsessed with music, which clearly rubbed off on her. I had heard about her because of her collaborations with Massive Attack and Plaid. Then I came across her release on K7's DJ-Kicks series. To this day, it's still my favorite mix CD. The diversity of the music is brilliant spanning everything from Atari Teenage Riot's Alec Empire to Roni Size to Aphex Twin. Every track is brilliant (even if her choice of Aphex Twin's Ventolin can be a little bit grating to listen to). Since then, I've followed her career. Her first solo album, Now is Early, created with the assistance of production duo Shut Up and Dance, is something of a forgotten classic. I hate to call the music on that album a sort of deep bass house because it would belittle it. Production wise it almost sounded that way, but with a worldly sound, eccentric rhythms, unique instrumentation, and the soulful voice of Nicolette (something she considers nothing special). The following album, Let No One Live Rent Free Inside Your Head, was more experimental. Plaid, from Warp Records, played a major production role, as did Alec Empire. The result was an eclectic, something dark, but oddly playful record.

Then sadly, since 1996, we didn't hear much from Nicolette (other than her appearance on Plaid's Not for Threes). I doubted that she'd ever release another album. But now, on her newly formed Early Records, she's returned with Life Loves Us. I have to admit that it's a more challenging record. It takes a few listens to really appreciate it. The second track, Sunshine, particularly reminds me of the strange ambient textures of The Irresistable Force (another brilliant musician who seems to have disappeared from the scene). Down Day starts with an unusual downtempo beat before breaking down into a flange soaked synth line. The single, Wholesome, as well as I'm Where the Party's At and High Wave are a bit more upbeat and at points even more accessible. Unfortunately, if not for my loyalty to Nicolette, I might have been tempted to cast this aside with giving it a proper time to develop.

There's more samples (and pay per downloads) here. There are also explanations behind the creation of each track. If you'd care to give it a chance, I don't think it will disappoint.

2005-10-16T21:21:00.000-04:00

135: AGF/Delay, QUIO, Safety Scissors, The Dolls, Lappetites

For a while now I've been wanting to post something about Helsinki producer Vladislav Delay and his collaborations with Antye Greie-Fuchs (AGF) as agf/dlay. While both of them have a lot of side projects going on at the moment, so I thought I just try to combine them all into one long post, with a ton of mp3's to go with it. This is a pretty big post and it was done a bit hastily, so I apologize for any errors. There's definitely a lot more that these artists have done and if you follow the links around, you can find more downloads if these aren't enough for you. Now to the music.

First, Vladislav Delay's solo work. The sound ranges under the different names he goes by. As Vladislav Delay, the sound is a Mille Plateaux style of blip hop, very mental with ambient textures thrown in. As Uusitalo, his music is more along the lines of the Berlin DJ's who lifted the Detroit techno sound of classics like Model 500 and gave it a minimalist slant. His last album was called The Four Quarters and is out now on Huume Recordings. There is a pretty impressive back catalogue of his works though, a sampling of which I've included here:

Vladislav Delay - Raamat
Vladislav Delay - Viite
Vladislav Delay - Karrha
Vladislav Delay - The Super Has Left the Model
Vladislav Delay - Huone
Vladislav Delay - Putki
Uusitalo - One's Groove
Uusitalo - Dutchwallpaper
Luomo - We Melt
Luomo - Body Speaking
Luomo - Could Be Like This
(source)

On top of the last album, Delay did some work on a new Safety Scissors album called Tainted Lunch on Scape. It's a bit more tongue in speech blip hop (evidence of this can be found in the title of the opening track, I Am the Cheese), but not enough to turn King of Convenience, Erlend Øye, away from collaborating on Sunlight's On the Other Side. The album is a refreshing way to escape the seriousness and inaccessibility that you sometimes find with IDM or other experimental artists. Audio samples are available here. I recommend Breastbone.

But the more famous collaboration was probably with producer and musician AGF as AGF/Delay. I don't know very much about AGF, other than that I love her voice. Together, they move in more of a trip hop direction, though with a hauntingly deep and minimalist bass that keeps the mind wondering and thinking. My favorite track, which is a little more trip hoppy, is Break Doors from the album, Explode Baby. Another collaboration between the two was Luomo, which did pretty well on the CMJ charts a couple of years ago. This is Delay displaying a kind of funk. It's more human sounding, even incorporating more vocals from himself and AGF, but without losing too much of the experimental side of his work.

AGF/Delay - Break Doors
AGF/Delay - Return to Us 2002
AGF/Delay - Still Eatin
(source)

For an even more mellow version of AGF/Delay, one need only add the talent of composer Craig Armstrong to form The Dolls. Armstrong, who has previously composed music for Moulin Rogue and Romeo & Juliet (though he sticks in my mind as the guy who played piano on Massive Attack's Protection) adds some stability to a couple of experimental producers, but their self titled album has still impressed me a lot lately. One of the best albums I've heard in a while. Martini Never Dies is a good example of what to expect from the rest of the album. This version of Choices is more piano based than the album version which includes a sped up version of the beat from LCD Soundsystem's Losing My Edge (that's what it sounds like at any rate).

The Dolls - Martini Never Dries
The Dolls - Choices (web exclusive version)
(source)

But AGF is much more than the vocalist for Vladislav Delay. She's also done quite a lot of her own work on her own record label. On top of her solo material, she's become a part of the Lappetites, an experimental, all female group. Each of the four members comes from a different culture and generation. AGF herself is German, Elaine Radigue is French, Kaffe Matthews is British and Ryoko Kuwajima comes from Japan. Together they've engaged in "sonic linking games" as they call it. The results are a pretty interesting, cross cultural project.The Lappetites album, Before the Libretto, comes out on Oct 25th on Quecksilber Music.

And finally, another personal favorite of the moment, the AGF produced QUIO. This is perfect for anyone who loves M.I.A. but doesn't think she's grime enough. Maybe a better comparison would be to the Grime compilations on Rephlex, but with female vocalists. A bit dirtier sounding than the Run the Road CD on Vice, but no less impressive. Highly recommend downloading Great.

QUIO - Great (featuring Lise)
QUIO - So Dazed
QUIO - Gliding (featuring Lise)
QUIO - Gazon Gasolina
QUIO - So Dazed (Minimally Dazed Rmx by AGF)
(source)

2005-10-15T17:43:00.000-04:00

134: Björk & Bogdan Raczynski

A while back there were rumors about Björk and Polish idm artist Bogdan Raczynski doing some music together. It was a little disappointing to see that it didn't make it onto Medulla, though I wasn't very surprised. Even though Björk was willing to add a extra layer of silliness to the album in the form of Japanese beatbox artist, Dokaka, his input was minimal. Bogdan, on the other hand, is no minimalist. Having him on the album would have alienated a lot of fans who can't keep up with the energic 200+ beat per minute, high pitched drum n bass that he is famous for. Well now Rephlex is putting it out. But their usually, cryptic way, it's being released simply as Who Is It (Shooting Stars & Asteroids Mix), with no publicity given to the fact that it's a collaboration between Björk and Bogdan. Fortunately, Björk's web site fills in the gaps for us, explaining that this song, originally called Embrace Fortress, was the original version of Who Is It, created with Bogdan Raczynski. A couple of mp3 samples are below. The release comes out on Rephlex on Nov. 21.

Björk & Bogdan Raczynski - Who Is It (Shooting Stars & Asteroids Mix) (sample 1)
Björk & Bogdan Raczynski - Who Is It (Shooting Stars & Asteroids Mix) (sample 2)

(source)

2005-09-19T22:37:00.000-04:00

133: Hauschka

Every since I first heard the piano tracks on drukqs, I've been interested in the prepared piano. As the story goes, the legendary composer John Cage was asked to create a percussion based soundtrack for a modern dance ensemble. The space he was given for this performance was not large enough for set he usually played with, but it could fit a grand piano. Cage's answer was to turn the piano into a percussion instrument. The piano was opened up and objects were placed inside. Screws were wedged in between strings. Objects would be placed in the way of the strings and the hammers. Anything to alter the sound of the instrument. Since then the prepared piano has been used by some of the more ambitious composers of the past few decades, as well as prepared guitars, violins, or whatever other instruments we can alter.

Now Hauschka (aka Volker Bertelmann) has created an album called Prepared Piano which, as the name suggests, uses little else (although you can hear some synths, bass and drums as well) to create some incredible music. This is music that could fit perfectly to a melancholy yet eccentric movie. It's almost jazzy, almost classical, almost freeform, but all of these terms belittle it. A previous album, Substantial, explored single note, sustained piano notes. Below is an unreleased track from the Substantial sessions.

Hauschka - untitled
(source)

2005-09-19T20:28:00.000-04:00

132: DJ Pierre (AFX Remix)

It seems that Rephlex has been nice enough to give us some free music. Maybe Aphex Twin is following through with some reported rumors that he would one day start offering his music free on the internet (although trusting Aphex Twin rumors is not always the safest bet). While there's no track info included with this file, it appears to be a reworked version of a track from 2 Remixes by AFX (now out of print) that wasn't included on 26 Mixes for Cash. It's actually a remix of Box Energy by DJ Pierre. This should hold me over until Warp re-releases Hangable Auto Bulb.

DJ Pierre - Box Energy (New Remix by AFX)
(source)

2005-09-19T20:25:00.000-04:00

131: DMX Krew

It's been about a month since Ed DMX completed the Collapse of the Wave Function series, five 12" records inspired in equal parts by quantum physics and the Rephlex braindance style. Definitely, his most experimental stuff to date. The first two releases were anonymous and then later revealed to be a new incarnation of DMX Krew. Later releases started to sound a bit more familiar with minimalist pop vocal tracks like William the Conqueror. For those who prefer CD's, now there's Wave, a best collection from the last three EP's with some exclusive vocal versions. A bit more exciting is the bonus CD for this release, which is closer to a proper Best Of collection called Our Most Requested Records. The best of DMX Krew from the past nine years on Rephlex Records, with 8 songs re-edited for the release. This is an ideal release for anyone who's never heard DMX Krew before, the perfect collection of experimental electronics balanced out with the braindance pop that Ed DMX is known for.

I posted this mix before, but to anyone who'd rather heard a bit of the style first, here's a dj mix by DMX Krew, tracklisting is here.

eDMX - on the mix
(source)

2005-09-08T00:41:00.000-04:00

130: Bloc Party Remixed (Contest)

I'm still hosting the contest for free Bloc Party swag. Read about it below this review.

There's a handful of bands that I've always considered to be sort of blogger success stories, that is favorites among the blogosphere that have gotten pretty big and gained recognition across the music scene. Often I'm tempted to stop paying attention to a band when they become too big. It's not so much a mainstream thing, as much as a sign that maybe they've run their course on my iPod. But I still like Bloc Party.

The second curse is sometimes the remix album. Silent Alarm Remixed is coming out this tuesday and while I can't claim that these are the most drastic re-inventions ever, they tend to compliment the original songs pretty well, something that's often lacking in a remix album. Besides the fact that the remixers include the likes of Ladytron, Four Tet, M83, Phones, Mogwai, DFA's Automato, and Death from Above 1979. To sweeten the deal, they've included b-sides and acoustic tracks, for the less remix inclined among us.

[Contest is done, thanks for entering. If you did]

[Sorry, I had to take the link to download the album down. I had agreed to only host it for a limited time. Suppose you should have gotten here sooner, eh?]

2005-08-30T22:44:00.000-04:00

129: Pellarin

Experimental dance music from Pellarin. This strikes me as music for when you have insomnia, but you don't really care. These tracks are only available for the next month though before they'll be taken down.

Pellarin - Tango for Berlin
Pellarin - Combing
(source)

And another video. The song's more upbeat than the tracks above. Reminds me of the early EBN stuff.

Tape vs. RQM - Rainy Summer (video)

2005-08-29T21:51:00.000-04:00

128

Also.... just in case you were a little behind on the times (like me at the moment) and missed this.

2005-08-29T21:03:00.000-04:00

127: Cut Copy

I got a link to a Cut Copy dj mix set from the good people over at AddVice the other day. After a bit of searching, I came across this tracklisting which seems pretty accurate

Fleetwood Mac - Tell Me Lies
The Presets - Truth and Lies
Daft Punk - Around the World
Cut Copy - Future
The Pixies - Gouge Away
A Touch of Class- The Bullett (Silvercity-Bob Remix )
Billy Idol - Hot in the City (Dub)
Soulwax - E-Talking (Tiga's Disco Drama Remix)
The Faint - Your Retro Career Melted (Ursula 1000 Remix)
Les Rhythmes Digitales - Hey You (12" Remix)
Linus Loves - Stand Back (Mylo Pastel Bronco Remix)
New Order - The Perfect Kiss
Explorer - Yellow Power
Seelenluft - I Can See Clearly Now (Tiga Remix)
Chinkiki - Tell Me Something More
The Stills - Still in Love Song (12" Extended Mix)
Alan Braxe & Fred Falke - Chrystal
Guided By Voices - The Flying Party
Roxy Music - Virginia Plain
Cut Copy - Going Nowhere
Franz Ferdinand - Matinee (Headman Vocal Remix)
Vitallic - Dance Like a Machine
Chromeo - Me and My Man (Whitey Remix)
Hybrid Funk - Everybody (Headman Remix)
Cut Copy - Saturdays

If you know of any corrections, feel free to add them. And if you don't know Cut Copy yet, then experience them now, sandwiched in between the likes of The Pixies, The Faint, Soulwax, Alan Braxe, Roxy Music and others. One of the best mixes I've heard since Erlend Øye's DJ Kicks release.

Cut Copy - Radio 1 Mix

...and more Cut Copy fun, here's the video for Saturday and here are their new tour dates.

2005-07-01T23:04:00.000-04:00

126: DJ Olive

A C&D, a war blogger turned music blogger, and a master's thesis have all encouraged me to get an update up here. I've been away for a little while now, part of the time being out of the country and the rest of the time, working longer hours. But I've missed the blogosphere, so I'll try to get some more updates up here soon. For one thing, I have a back catalogue of music needs reviewing (apologies to anyone's e-mails I haven't answered by the way).

So long overdue for a mention is DJ Olive, a member of the very underrated WE(tm). The style is a kind of 4am downtempo electronic jazz. These tracks are from DJ Olive's new solo LP, Bodega.

DJ Olive - Cross Under
DJ Olive - Round Fire Strut
(source)

DJ Olive - Rooster Rooster
(source)

2005-04-21T18:31:00.000-04:00

125: Pierre Bastien

Ok yeah, I've posted Pierre Bastien before, but I am a big fan of his. He's avant-garde enough to keep his music really interesting, but not so inaccessible to alienate all but five listeners a la John Cage (for the record, I like John Cage, but his music was more interesting to read about than to actually listen to sometimes). For those who missed the last post, Pierre Bastien makes music with robots. They're not particularly advanced robots. They're about as advanced as the old erector sets that came with motors so they could perform rudimentary tasks. The result is that they can only play is simple patterns, which are played in a very perfect, mechanical rhythm. The track titles for all the songs on his last album, Mecanoid, were all written as palandroms, the same way the mechanical music is played. The same music is played forward and backwards. Half the instruments are played this way, the others played by Pierre himself. The range of instruments is also pretty eclectic too, including a godje, bendir, and yuen ch'in, alongside horns, pianos and vinyl discs. With a new album, Pop, being released this year on Rephlex, there are some new downloads available. The first two are from Mecanoid, the third is from an album called Musiques Paralloidres, and the last one is a repost from the last time I blogged about Pierre Bastien.

For anyone wondering, here's the breakdown of instruments for the first two tracks, according to the Mecanoid linear notes:
-mechanically played instruments on Damn Mad: castanets, marimba, discs
-instruments played by Pierre Bastien on Damn Mad: bass, bala, tama, organ
-mechanically played instruments on Avid Diva: piano
-instruments played by Pierre Bastien on Avid Diva: sanzas, kundi, godje

Pierre Bastien - Damn Mad
Pierre Bastien - Avid Diva
Pierre Bastien - Odovinil
Pierre Bastien - L'Orchestre Thermo-Dynamique (repost)
(source)

2005-04-20T23:47:00.001-04:00

124: Dresden Dolls

Something a little different today. It was actually a couple of years ago that I first heard the inde-cabaret scene and its headliner, the Dresden Dolls. For a second, you're surprised to hear indie kids listening to cabaret music, but then it starts to make sense. It grows on you. Now they've done quite well for themselves, earning an opening spot on the current Nine Inch Nails tour. It's not a typical Radio Babylon post, but if you haven't heard this yet, give it a chance.

(By the way, last friday was the official one year anniversary of Radio Babylon. Thank you all for reading, writing and listening, and giving me a way to stay active in music even when most of my time is now sadly diverted away to having an actual job. I know updates have gotten less frequent lately, but I've still got more blogging left in me)

Dresden Dolls - Girl Anachronism
Dresden Dolls - Missed Me
Dresden Dolls - Bad Habit
Dresden Dolls - Half Jack
(source)

2005-04-10T21:01:00.000-04:00

123: Ellen Allien

Been a while, eh? Yes, things have been busy here lately but I haven't forgotten about the blogosphere. Here's still quite a bit of blogging that needs to be done, a back catalogue of new music, fixing a few problems here and there, updating my blogroll. But for now, I've just come to pass along a little bit of news.

First, thanks to everyone who gave me suggestions of where to go I should go this summer. Unfortunately, airfare to these places turned out not to be in my budget, so we've decided on the less expensive, but still quite nice choice of Belize. Anti-climatic, eh? But money aside, the winner, suggested to me by about 5 people, was the Sonar festival in Spain, which will remain in the back in my mind as a potential destination for next year. But just to be a good sport about it, the random mix cd will be going to the first person who suggested Sonar to me.

Some recommended viewing that was just released this week was The Corporation. This is probably the most important documentary I've ever seen, and one of the most well made. The purpose is to examine the role of the corporation as the dominant institution of our times, but is careful to give both sides a say (even though it is admittedly a leftist film). It was probably one of the best films I saw all of last year. The DVD also includes two commentaries and over 5 hours of additional footage. It is available here via a corporation.

And since I haven't posted much music lately, I'll leave you with a little something that's found its way onto my iPod lately; a 23 minute live mix by rising electronic star, Ellen Allien. From what I've heard, she's incredible live. Here's a taste.

Ellen Allien - live mix 10/2003
(source)

2005-03-17T22:33:00.000-05:00

122: Radio Babylon contest

The Decorate Kevin's Passport 2005 contest:

[UPDATE: CONTEST CLOSED, THANKS FOR SUGGESTIONS]

Ok, so this summer I'm planning on going somewhere, only I haven't decided where yet. But wherever it is, I really want to go some sort of music festival/event (although I'm open to other ideas to). So I've decided that since you, my readers, are such a fine and cultured group of people, I thought I'd open this up to you all and offer an exclusive(-ish) prize for the winner. All you have to do is tell me where to go on vacation and what to do when I get there. This can be anything from a festival of Mongolian throat singers to your friend's punk band playing in Oslo, as long as you can make it all sound interesting. Here are the rules:

1) The place must be outside the US (hence decorating my passport), anywhere else is fair game. Don't take this as "anti-Americanism", but I spend the rest of the year here, so I want a change of pace.
2) Ideally, I'm looking for some music related (any genre), but if know of anything else interesting that I won't find in any tourist books, that's cool too. Anything where Aphex Twin is playing gets bonus points, I can never seem to track that fucker down.
3) If you know of anywhere that I can get extra information (web sites, etc.), please include them.
4) Events should be for June or July, somewhere around there, preferably June.
5) E-mail responses to radiobabylon@gmail.com

The Prize: A mix CD made by me, with tracks chosen more or less at random. Be sure to include an address to send this to.

I know I've got at least a handful of international readers, but this is open to anyone with an idea of something for me to do this summer.

2005-03-08T22:31:00.001-05:00

121: Sweet Billy Pilgrim

Been a rather busy couple of weeks for me, but my lack of updates has been because of anything except for lack of new music to write about. So while I've got a little more time at the moment, I thought I should post some new music and a few little nuggets of music info I've got. Still some hosting problems I'm afraid, perhaps this weekend will resolve that.

I don't really see much about Nine Inch Nails on any of the blogs, unless I've missed it somewhere. Anyway, while I'm not too big into hard rock and I don't listen to much industrial any more (aside from Einsturzende Neubauten), I've got a lot of respect for Trent Reznor, regardless of how long it takes that guy to make new albums. Evidently, there are enough other loyal fans out there to keep him going. Congrats to anyone who managed to get tickets to their tour. At the moment, unfortunately I've got nothing to post from the new, With Teeth, there mp3's of The Hand That Feeds and The Line Begins to Blur are still floating on the internet. If there's any indication of the what the album will sound like, I'm expecting something musically like LCD Soundsystem, with that same stripped down music and rough vocals, only much more brutal sound and you can't dance to it.

The sound of stripped down intensity seems to be big for 2005. I'm getting the same sort of impression from what I've heard of the new Daft Punk album, Human After all (samples available here). And while I'm happy Daft Punk are returning more of a Homework sound than the poppier Discovery, so far there are only really a handful of tracks that have impressed me. Robot Rock and Make Love are the standout tracks as far as I'm concerned. So if this is turning out to be the sound of 2005, I'd say it's good. Certainly a nice change of pace, but it makes me want to hear something more complex and different.

...different, kind of like a Balkan Brass Wedding Band. I'm actually pretty interested in this, just for doing something a little different. They're performing at a Six Degrees show tomorrow night.

Of course, if none of this is your thing, what about some folktronica? Newish band from the UK that you'll hopefully be hearing from again, is Sweet Billy Pilgrim. It's calm music from a variety of influences (Iron and Win, Four Tet, Eno, etc.) with small electronic samples that fit themselves in, such as in God in the Details. But to me, the highlight of this band is a track that might be in danger of going unnoticed at first. That is to say, Experience is not a single track the way the others might be, but I think it's the most powerful. It's something that you can find yourself unconsciously replaying on your ipod and comfortably resting in your head while your at work and trying to mentally escape for a while. So have a listen, see what you think.

Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Experience
Sweet Billy Pilgrim - God in the Details
Sweet Billy Pilgrim - Ain't No Jesus in Here
(source)

2005-02-24T20:51:00.001-05:00

120

Evidently, after about a week of having my own hosting and posting only one track on it, I ran out of my monthly bandwidth. Apparently when I was purchasing my web space I underestimated my readership on this blog (thanks for that by the way). So I am debating upgrading, since I have a ton of stuff that's currently very blog-worthy. But unfortunately, for the time being, downloads of AFX or Meat Beat Manifesto probably won't work. Apologies for the inconvenience. I shall try to make it up to everyone soon.

2005-02-21T15:13:00.000-05:00

119: AFX,etc

Ok, it's been a little while and I have the day off today, I'm sticking four updates worth of material in one post today, but with some shorter reviews than usual.

First up, punk-funk. I've resisted the temptation to post an mp3 by LCD Soundsystem, for the simple reason that between all the blogs, it was getting to the point where almost every track had been posted (although if I were to post one, it'd be Too Much Love, which I don't think has been getting the attention it deserves). Fortunately, The KBC fits in nicely with the current DFA-esque dance punk scene. Rumor has it that this one of James Murphy's current favorites. (side note: I'm seeing LCD at Bowery on April 2nd, how else is going?) These are both demos from the band's site. I particularly like Poisonous Emblem.

The KBC - Poisonous Emblem
The KBC - Best in the Business
(source)

German post-krautrock. Music AM reminds me of the same kind of chilled out, glitchy almost trip hoppy sound that I've enjoyed from To Rococo Rot for years. Pandatone doesn't excite me as much, but it's still good and I'm throwing it in there because it's along the same lines.

Music AM - Supercharger
(source)

Pandatone - Night to Play
(source)

Glitch hop. I don't know too much about Apparat, except that he's been involved with electronic music for over a decade and he was one of the last artists to be features on John Peel's show. This is a 48 minute live set from Barcelona.

Apparat live in Barcelona, December 2003
(source)

UK Acid. Aphex Twin's Analord series has been progressing nicely with 2 new EP's out every month. The only place that I've been able to pick these releases up has been Other Music, so I've been stopping there a lot recently to pick these up. It looks like these EP's could turn out to be a good investment too. The now sold out limited edition of Analord 10 with the collector's case is already selling on eBay for up to $400. It's possible that Richard James might do what he did with the Caustic Window EP's and release a CD compilation of the best tracks from the series in the future, but even if he does, it might not have every track included. So far I've picked up the first four in the series and each one tends to be better than the last. Analord 1 has some of the fastest (and shortest) tracks so far, but overall the songs are less experimental than some of his recent work, like drukqs or the Windowlicker EP. These are, in my opinion, the best tracks from the series so far. Crying In Your Face, from Analord 4, is Aphex Twin at his best, the type of song that lets your mind wander while you dance. Boxing Day, the opening track on Analord 3, shows a hint of sonically complex and beautiful this music can be, particularly that brief piece of feedback that was begging to fit its way into the song at that moment. If you haven't up anything from this series yet, I highly recommend it. Analord 5 should be out in a few weeks.

(note: Hosting is down right now, sorry)
AFX - Crying In Your Face
AFX - Boxing Day

2005-02-12T18:31:00.000-05:00

118: Meat Beat Manifesto

This blog now has web space, I have converted from being a purely link-based mp3 blog to have my own hosting. I never did it before because I felt like there was plenty of great music on the internet already, that could benefit just being pointed out. I still think that's true, in fact I've still got a nice list of linkable music that I haven't had a chance to blog about. So I'm going to continue to post those too. But frankly, there are a lot of amazing artists who I can't find online. Also, I occasionally receive albums from various labels looking for reviews, some of which is amazing. I'm happy to happy, but it helps to have some audio I can share with people. Now I know you're all blog savvy people and everything, but just to be clear, I feel obligued to add a little downloading disclaimer on the sidebar, which will go up shortly (something to the effect of they're just here temporarily and if you're the artist, label, etc, bug me and I'll take them down) along with some new links for the blogroll that I've been meaning to put up. Any other link blogs converted so far?

And I think it's only appropriate that my first hosted track be from Meat Beat Manifesto, one of the favorite artists. Originally recorded in 1989, this version was remade in 1997 for the Original Fire EP. This track, among others by MBM, was influential for Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers. That and it was the song that was playing on my stereo when I first started this blog, although that's probably a bit obvious.

(Note: hosting is down right now)
Meat Beat Manifesto - Radio Babylon

2005-02-12T16:13:00.002-05:00

117: Problem solved

My mp3 quiry has been taken care of, thanks for the very quick responses. Incidently, the nmp3_ripper program was one of the ones that gave me some problems, so iTunes it is.

2005-01-23T20:44:00.000-05:00

116: LCD Soundsystem stream & article

Better Propaganda have a stream of Disco Infiltrator from the new LCD Soundsystem (no download though, unfortunately). There's also a nice article about the DFA (Death From Above), their backgrounds, the NYC punk scene, and failed attempts at collaborations with Janet Jackson and Britney Spears. It all awaits you here.

2005-01-23T15:28:00.000-05:00

115: Lewis Taylor (Kruder & Dorfmeister Mixes)

There's been a lot of questions about why much of the world hates the US. Well, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that our willingness to send killer robots into innocent third world nations for no good reason could be part of the problem. There are of course many benefits to having a robot soldier that "does not require food, clothing, training, motivation or a pension." That's right, no pension necessary. Perhaps this is the Bush administration's subtle first step towards their eventual slogan: "If you complain about not having social security, we'll just replace you with a robot." That is, if it's not the first step towards our Terminator-esque, robot dominated planet. Speaking of which, it looks like a vacancy may been opening up for the position of world's most prominent Austrian. May I recommend Kruder & Dorfmeister?

Lewis Taylor - Lucky (Kruder & Dorfmeister D+B Mix)

Lewis Taylor - Lucky (Kruder & Dorfmeister Suicide Mix)

Lewis Taylor - Lucky (Kruder & Dorfmeister Reprise)

(source)

2005-01-18T23:32:00.000-05:00

114: 2005 Albums

Some of the albums I'm looking forward to this year, US release dates have been included for the ones I know so far:

LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem (2/15)
Chemical Brothers - Push the Button (1/25)
Bright Eyes - Digital Ash in the Digital Urn/I'm Wide Awake It's Morning (1/25)
Amon Tobin - Chaos Theory: Soundtrack to Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell (1/25)
Airborn Audio - Good Fortune (2/22)
Daft Punk - Human After All (3/22)
Prefuse 73 - Surrounded by Silence (3/22)
Out Hud - Let Us Never Speak of It Again (3/22)
The Mars Volta - Frances the Mule (3/1)
M83 - Don't Save Us From the Flames (2/8)
Pierre Bastien - Pop
Bibio - Fi
Boom Bip - Blue Eyed in the Red Room
Animal Collective - Prospect Hummer
Aphex Twin - Analord 1-9
Fog - 10th Avenue Freakout
Luke Vibert & Jean-Jaques Perrey - Moog Acid
Harmonic 33 - Music for Film, Television, and Radio Vol.1
Themselves & The Notwist - 13 + God
New Order - Waiting for a Siren's Call
Daedelus - Exquisite
A Guy Called Gerald - All Things What They Need

and maybe some of these will finally come out this year too:
Konono No.1
Portishead
Zach de le Rocha
Nine Inch Nails (supposedly the new album is finished, but you never know with Trent)

2005-01-17T22:55:00.000-05:00

113: Hersh//Marjane Satrapi//Leila

Well it's been a little while since I've done a political rant here, but this was important to me. By now many of you may have seen or heard about the recent article in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh. Hersh is the author of Chain of Command and helped to uncover the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. He's also written similar things about the conditions at Guantanamo Bay. The new article concerns Iran and the possibility of a US invasion. According to Hersh, operatives are already in Iran planning for an invasion. The White House has responded to this by saying the article was "riddled with inaccuracies," without specifically saying it was untrue (if for example, Hersh is incorrect about what division is being sent into Iran, but correct about the Bush administration planning an attack, they can still say that his article is "riddled with inaccuracies" but personally I don't any more secure about it). Now when Bush was (*sigh*) reelected, I didn't actually think that his administration could possibly be myopic enough to invade another country, so I hope and pray that this isn't true. But if it does happen, I personally can't see any option that they'd have other than a draft and despite what Bush may have said during the debates, the possibility of there being another, stricter reenactment of the Selective Service Program has not been entirely dismissed yet. Also, a war with Iran will be a very different war than Afghanistan or Iraq and it will almost certainly intensify the violence and terrorism that we've become so paralyzed by.

As today is Martin Luther King Day (currently the only federal holiday for a single American by the way), it seems appropriate to quote his words here:

"We hate others because we fear them.
We fear them because we don't know them.
We don't know them because we don't communicate.
We don't communicate because we can't hear them.
We can't hear them becuase we don't listen."

So instead of just posting more anti-Bush links, I thought I should use this post to help people get to know my two favorite Persian women. First if Marjane Satrapi who has written a series of graphic novels about growing up in Iran, including Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return (you can also buy these books and view samples here). There is a third book in this series, but it's yet to be released in the US, although I believe it's available in Europe. These books are a great insight into the progressive and traditional movements in Iran, the depth and scope of their culture and a little recent history of the country. They're also two of the best books I've read recently and I would highly recommend them even if it wasn't getting to be an issue at the forefront of American politics.

Then there's the Iranian born electronic musician Leila. From a young age she's been living in London where she started recording for Rephlex Records her own style of heavily IDM-influenced soul/ambient music. An early Rephlex release called Like Weather was rumored to be lost Prince record, no doubt partly because of her collaborations with vocalists Luca Santucci and Donna Paul. While in London, she met Bjork and became a part of her live band, going live remixing and playing keyboards (unfortunately, she was absent from Bjork's last US tour because she was unable to get a visa into the country). Leila (born Leila Arab) has also recorded under the alias Grammatix (where she is credited as Aliel Bara) to record even more experimental and rare music. The following tracks come from her internet b-sides album. The whole thing is incredible and can be downloaded here. These are some of my favorites.

Leila - Five

Leila - Misunderstood (After Eight Mix)

Leila - Have I Had You

Leila - Outro-Vert (LWT Remix)

Leila - Heaven on Their Minds

(source)

2005-01-16T21:14:00.000-05:00

112: Radio Babylon not-so-live

Apologies to anyone who tried to listen in to my show earlier today. The internet connection apparently crapped out. Figures. Well, the station just started webcasting recently, so I'm sure things'll be up and running again soon. I'm tentatively planning to reschedule the show on an as-yet-to-be-determined date when we work out another time that fits into their broadcast schedule. We'll see what happens. Anyway, sorry again.

2005-01-13T23:52:00.000-05:00

111: Radio Babylon live (slight update)

This Sunday from noon(ish) until 3 pm EST, I'll be doing a live internet radio show from my old radio station. The reason is that there was some open time on the schedule, we didn't have webcasting abilities before and I've still got a lot of music love to give to my old listeners. Listen in at http://www.live365.com/stations/wmsc/

If there are any changes/problems, I'll give prior notice here. So listen in if you're around and by a computer.

Full tracklisting will be posted here on Sunday evening.

2005-01-12T21:54:00.000-05:00

110: Amon Tobin//Airborn Audio

Often times I'm asked by young, bright eyed new bloggers what advice I would offer them as they start off. I usually say how important it is to update on a regular basis. If you only update every once few weeks or so, people tend not to read your blog as much, I tell them. People may also think that your lazy or undisciplined in your blogging habits. Ok, so I'm a litte late with my first blog of the new year, partly because of work, partly because I now have a new computer and I'm still transfering all my old files on here. But when I found these new tracks from Ninja Tune, I knew it was time to blog again. Despite, my slipping a bit, if you'd like to nominate me (or perhaps someone a little more deserving, like Fluxblog) for a bloggie, you can do so here. Oh, and I'm tentatively planning to do an internet radio show this weekend. The time is yet to be determined, but I'll post it and the address to listen in by friday.

New music! Amon Tobin, the Brazil born master beat sampler and creator of one of my favorite albums (Supermodified), has got a new one coming soon called Chaos Theory. In my opinion, Tobin is right up there with Squarepusher for mastery of electronic beats. His new single is The Lighthouse.

Since the breakup of Anti Pop Consortium, Beans has had several releases on Warp Records. Now APC's High Priest and M. Sayyid have returned with Airborn Audio, which reminds me of the experimental hip hop sound of Anti Pop's Arrhytmia more than Beans' solo work, which is a little poppier to me. Bright Lights has been growing on me with every listen.

Amon Tobin - The Lighthouse

Airborn Audio - Bright Lights

(source)

2004-12-23T18:41:00.000-05:00

109: Hell Interface

This will be my last post before I to go stay with my parents for a few days. Figured it's only fitting to put some holiday music up. Last year, I did a radio show before Christmas where I played about an hour of experimental, thrashy sounding electronic Christmas sounds from the various Christmas releases on V/VM Test Records. With the responses to that show in mind (some of the most interesting I ever got during my four years on college radio, although not all positive ones), I've decided to post something from the V/VM collection, Whine & Missingtoe, that's a bit more mellow than the others. Kind of an ambient Christmas. Hell Interface is an alias of Boards of Canada, although it's a little hard to find their music. If you'd like something a little more challenging to the ear, you can download the rest of the CD at the link below.

Hell Interface - Soylent Night

(source)

2004-12-21T21:02:00.000-05:00

108: Global Goon

Today we have something from Aphex Twin's old roommate, Johnny Hawk, otherwise known as Global Goon. Apparently living with Richard James rubbed off a bit on him. When he first started recording his downtempo leftfield electronica on Rephlex Records, rumor had it that it was actually another Aphex Twin's many aliases. Hawk's new album, Family Glue, is his first break from the Rephlex crew, being released on Audio Dregs.

Global Goon - Dead Weird Keks

(source)

2004-12-15T22:33:00.000-05:00

107: Phoenix

Pop music from France. From Alphabetical, one of the best albums I've heard this year.

Phoenix - Everything is Everything

(source)

2004-12-14T21:54:00.000-05:00

106: Solotempo

German made glitch-hop/pop. Along the same lines as Funkstörung, etc.

Solotempo - Egoist (Raf La Spoink & Superdefect Rmx feat. Mark Boombastik)

(source)

2004-12-13T21:41:00.000-05:00

105: Bostich

Percusive, downtempo electronica from Tijuana.

Bostich - Autobanda

(source)

2004-11-24T17:09:00.000-05:00

104: Subtle

So I've decided that Radio Babylon should be a weekly blog for the time being, with the intent of going back to three or four posts a week. It's nothing personal you understand, there's just been a lot on my plate lately and I'm about to go away for the weekend, and blah blah blah. No excuses, let me post some music before I head out. Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving by the way.

New on Lex Records is a new LP from a side project of cLOUDDEAD frontman Dose One. Subtle has a bit of that Lex/Anticon/Mush Records sound except, well, more subtle. Kind of a simpler, easier to digest version, but no less impressive. New album, A New White, is out now.

Subtle - F.K.O.

(source)

2004-11-18T23:44:00.000-05:00

103: Blog Links//The Ripoff Artist

Again, I have no time to blog, but I'm blogging anyway, because I've had to skip it so much lately. So unfortunately, this is gonna be a real quick one. The goods news is that I've updated my blogroll, so check out Lickety Spit, Selector de Frecuencias (Mexican music blog, in Spanish), and Byron Bitchlaces (I know this is an old one, and I don't know why I never added it before, but in case you missed it before, here it is). Also the address for Fluxblog has changed, he's dropped the blogspot out of it. More blogs coming to the sidebar soon.

Today's music is the glitch pop of Kid 606's label mate from Tigerbeat 6. And sadly, that's all the time I've got for reviewing, but dammit we needed another update. Sorry, more coming later.

The Ripoff Artist - Vibrating Vegetable

(source)

2004-11-14T23:39:00.000-05:00

102: Untitled//The Real Tuesday Weld

This week I hope to be updating a little more than I have been. The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy, so that when I get home, my natural instinct is to walk through the door and then collapse, preferably somewhere away from the door so that I'm not inconveniencing my roommates. But there's a ton of music that needs to be blogged about, so I'm gonna try to get to a lot of it. So fingers crossed, let's see what happened.

At any rate, I have some music for you today from The Real Tuesday Weld. The first time I saw the video for Bathtime in Clerkenwell, I was impressed, but to be honest, I didn't think rest of the album would be any good. I have to say though, the more I hear of it, the more it grows on me. I, Lucifer is the debut album from this London based artist, based on the book of the same name by Glen Duncan. I was immediately reminded of the novelty that first surrounded the Squirrel Nut Zippers (remember them?) when Hell came out, but The Real Tuesday Weld has a more electic sound, mixing synthesizers (including 303 basslines) and samples into the album. At it's most upbeat, it sounds like something Mr. Scruff might play live. But the album is unique, part novelty act, and part soundtrack to a story about the devil. I'm debating with myself whether this is something that the novelty will wear off from pretty quickly. Either way here are a couple of live tracks from I, Lucifer as well as an alternate version of The Ugly and The Beautiful. To really hear what the deal is, I recommend watching the award winning video for the single, Bathtime in Clerkenwell, which you can see here.

The Real Tuesday Weld - The Ugly and The Beautiful (Cha Cha Cha)

The Real Tuesday Weld - Terminally Ambivalent Over You (Live)

The Real Tuesday Weld - La Bete et La Belle (Live)

(source)

2004-11-10T09:19:00.000-05:00

101

More apologies. Yes, I did accidentally confuse the names of Richard and John Ashcroft. Richard Ashcroft was of course the lead singer of The Verve, and has never (to the best of my knowledge) served as part of any presidental cabinet. Whereas John Ashcroft is a douchebag. I hope this clears up any confusion.

2004-11-09T22:49:00.000-05:00

100: Post-post-election blog//Boom Bip

First of all, apologies for not blogging more lately. I still haven't moved to Canada, I've just been a bit busy. That and, yeah, I was upset about the election and everything that's happened since. But first, let me say that everyone who supported Kerry still played an important role here. The worst thing that could have happened would have been Bush winning by a landslide, but his victory was narrow, even discounting all of the glitches that have been brought up in the past week. Unfortunately, Bush doesn't seem to see it this way as he has been refusing to answer questions in press conferences. Of course, he always did this, but now he's calling it "the will of the people." Even the most die hard Republican supporters should be upset that a single day after his reelection, he has basically said that it's the people's choice to have a repression of information. I'm sure most of them have not intrepreted it this way, Bush's invoking "the will of the people" for all of his unpopular decisions is fiercely undemocratic. Bush is also saying that he's earned "political capital" that he intends to use, implying more conservative decisions on his part in the next four years. In other words, Bush ruining the environment, losing over a million jobs, giving the biggest tax breaks to the wealthiest 1% of the country, and violating international and attacking an innocent third world nation in the pursuit of the world on terror inc., if all of this was Bush being a "moderate," I don't want to think about what's going to happen when he lets his ultra conservative heart sore. It seems telling to me that one member of the state department (specifically, Bush's "point man for counterterrorism policy") and two members of Bush's cabinet have already resigned after his reelection. And this even includes Richard "That Topless Statue of Justice Has Gotta Go" Ashcroft. Not to mention all those who resigned in his first four years, mostly notably former terrorism czar, Richard Clarke. This is my reaction to people who said Bush deserved another four years for continuity in the war on terror. Actually because of his policies, we'd had much less continuity with so many key figures resigning. I'm wondering how many people will come to protest his inauguration. I understand the White House is already preparing. Sorry if some of my posts in the near future sound a bit cynical, but this guy's a lot worse. I'm not going to take it to the extreme that he is, there are some good people in south and the other red states (wasn't it relatively recently that being "red" was considered a fate worse than death?).

A reminder that Ohio isn't all bad (apologies to Ohio residents, but the wounds are still fresh) is Columbus resident, Bryan Hollon, better known as Boom Bip. Having started early on collaborating with vocalist Dose One, his own music came to the forefront as one of Lex Records' top artists in the wake of cLOUDDEAD's success. The sound has some similarities, but Boom Bip has more of a dynamic instrumental sound where cLOUDDEAD focuses on vocal performance. The first mp3 is from the upcoming Young Machines remix album from Her Space Holiday (also to feature remixes by Matmos, Dntel, Blockhead, Broken Spindles, Stereolab - in other words, it looks effing good). The other two are from his first collaborations from with Dose One, featured on the album, Circle.

Her Space Holiday - The Luxury of Loneliness (Boom Bip Remix)

Boom Bip & Dose One - Dead Man's Teal

(source)

Boom Bip & Dose One - Me and People

(source)

2004-11-08T22:42:00.000-05:00

It's been one set back or problem after another the last couple of weeks. Returning shortly, hopefully tomorrow (fingers crossed), there's much to discuss.

2004-10-29T01:18:00.000-04:00

Election Post

5 more days until the election (as evidenced by the amount of e-mails I've gotten from moveon.org, asking me to call Kerry supporters in swing states), so today I've gone blogging crazy. I'm putting aside my mistrust of the two party system for the moment and supporting Kerry (and by Kerry, I mean "Not Bush"). But first, let's start with the nonpartisan stuff. Even though no one has any excuse what-so-ever to forget to vote, let me just say again, go out and vote. Newly registered voters should be aware that there has been speculation that many people may not be able to vote because of "honest mistakes," like what happened to many minorities who happened to have similar names as convicted felons in Florida in 2000. The fact that many people don't know about this means that it could easily happen again. So bring your cell phones if you've got 'em. If you're given any problems, report all the details to 1-866-MYVOTE1. If it's an emergency and you need legal assistance, call 1-866-OURVOTE. Keep these numbers with you, you never know. Even if you don't have any problems, someone else might when you're there. Do what you can for them.

Now, because of a bit of confusion, I somehow made it to a list of "conservative bloggers" (apparently, I've been too ambiguous on this blog) and was sent an e-mail of documents about Bush and Cheney, including DUI's for both of them, the Bush twins' possession of alcohol, personal memos between George W. and Ken Lay from Enron, etc. They were asking me and other bloggers to try to prove them as false, despite the fact that some of these documents have been undisputed since the 2000 election (also despite the fact that I've never done anything like this, and am therefore probably not that qualified). Unfortunately, the site (which was hosted as yesbushcan.com has now been redirected to the official web site for re-election of Bush and Cheney, so I can't share them with you. But I'm assuming this means that they didn't have a great deal of luck with the other conservative bloggers either. Oh, by the way, in case you missed the few hours when their site was hacked into, you can see the spoof site here.

Ok, remember those couple of weeks where I was blogging much? Well this is my way of making it up to you, by providing a soundtrack for your trip to the polls on election day. I've dug up all the relivant political stuff from posts past, as well as some new stuff. There's tons out there, so keep an eye open. I may be adding to this post this weekend if I find enough to add to it, otherwise, I'll probably leave it as the top post for a couple of days (probably after the election results come in, or November 3rd, whichever comes first). There's a ton of mp3's here, both music and spoken word tracks, so unfortunately I haven't included a source link for all of them. But a lot of them come from Thurston Moore's Protest Records and the satirical group, Billioniares for Bush. On my way out of work today, a man was listening to a cassette teaching him to speak English and learn American customs. The recording said, "The President of the United States is George W. Bush." To this, the doorman laughs and said, "Your tape is outdated." So enjoy, vote, and let's all hope for the best.

2004-10-26T23:36:00.000-04:00

A farewell to a legend

R.I.P. John Peel. One of BBC Radio's most important DJ's has died of a heart attack at age 65. He helped bring a lot of important music to the forefront in England, many of which have songs available here. This is a collection of songs recorded as part of various Peel Sessions for Radio 1. In tribute, I'm going to also add this link to the sidebar.

I've been slacking a bit again, I know, but a longish post will be up in a day or two with a ton of stuff.

2004-10-24T22:36:00.000-04:00

To All Fans of The Daily Show

For anyone interested, the media company that I work for has produced a show about presidential campaigns hosted by former Daily Show corespondent, Mo Rocca (he was also on a bunch of VH1's I Love the 80's shows). I did some work for the show a couple of months ago, mostly research and post-production, so I didn't actually get to work with Mo Rocca or anything. But from what I've seen for it so far, it should be a good show, especially if your a fan of his. Very tongue in cheek humor about deciding on a presidential based on their hair, choice of pets, etc. The show's called How They Won and it will be on this Tuesday, October 26th at 9pm (EST) on the History Channel.

2004-10-21T22:31:00.000-04:00

Jimmy Edgar

Very quick post today, sorry about that. Just felt like I should get something up here since I missed a couple of weeks of posting. That said, Jimmy Edgar really furthers my belief that one day I should take a pilgrimage to Detriot. I feel like you can generally tell a lot about a place from the music it produces and between Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Carl Craig, I've always wanted to see the place anyway. But Jimmy Edgar combines the styles of Detriot; the own brand of techno, early hip hop, electro, etc. I posted a track from him a little while back until his Morris Nightengale alias. This one comes from his new Warp Records release, Bounce, Make, Model.

Jimmy Edgar - I Wanna Be Your STD

(source)

2004-10-19T22:22:00.000-04:00

Untitled//Tarwater

First off, to John at Tofu Hut, sorry about pointing out the skanky remark and taking it out of context a bit. I kid of course. It was too good not to mention, but I have nothing but respect for the Hut.

Oh, an update on a track the 808 State tracks that I posted a little while ago (I meant to post this since my brief hiatus started). Rephlex recently released some old stuff by them, including an EP of New Order remixes they used to play live and Prebuild, a collection of early demos from the days when Gerald Simpson was still with them. I got a copy of Prebuild (which takes its name from the first 808 State release, Newbuild, also available on Rephlex) and it's an incredible cd. The Gerald Simpson tracks are some amazing lo-fi, particularly Cosacosa. A must for any 808 State or acid house people out there. I think it actually rivals Newbuild.

In my searches for some new To Rococo Rot tracks, I came across Tarwater, a side project from TRR's Ronald Lippok. These are the bands that become the logical extension of German krautrock, like a current day Can. But the sound isn't Can, Neu, Kraftwerk or any of the original krautrock artists. Instead it draws some its influence (along with those artists) from modern, minimalist electronic experiments. So while it can be pretty glitchy, there's a familar feel to it, more of a human fault than computer error.

Tarwater - Visit (To Rococo Rot Mix)

(source)

2004-10-18T22:09:00.001-04:00

Jon Stewart on Crossfire

For those people who, like me, missed The Daily Show's Jon Stewart appearing on CNN's Crossfire, Stereogum was good enough to post some highlights and an mp3 of the audio from the program. If you read the comments on the post, there are also some links where you can find the video too. It's a really amazing interview. I have a lot of respect for Jon Stewart to be saying the things that he is; it needs to be heard. Read/listen/watch here.

2004-10-18T21:16:00.000-04:00

Blogger News//Beans

Back to blogging on a regular basis (with music again). I have a lot of stuff that I've missed out on updating, so I'm going to try to catch up with it all. First of all, blogging news and some new links I've added over the past few weeks. Please take up some of your disk/ipod space with downloads from Aurgasm (listen to Cinematic Orchestra and Skalpel), Dozer (To Rococo Rot and Venetian Snares) and Edit 209 (bootlegs!). New nonmusic blogs include Loveecstasycrime, sort of a blog of a blog addict, with postings about politics and music too. And who knew that Salam Pax has had a new blog for a few months now. It doesn't update as often as the old one, but it can offers some good insight into the current state of a Iraq from someone who's been living in Baghdad. The new one is called (admittedly somewhat less poetically) Shut Up You Fat Whiner!

Also, today John over at Tofu Hut posted his interview with me, as part of his Meet the Neighbors blog reviewing. You can read it here. In it, he describes my method of blogging (ie: not paying for hosting and getting my mp3's from elsewhere) as "skanky." And well, I suppose he's right. But here's my reasoning, there are a ton of great mp3's online already. I just put some of my favorites together in one place. That and the fact that most of my money was going towards playing rent, etc. for a while. But admittedly, there's a lot of great stuff that I'm not able to post because it doesn't exist online, so maybe the future of Radio Babylon will include some host based stuff once the money's a bit more steady (it's getting there). Until then, I'm still finding a ton of good music online, so I will continue to skank it up for a little while. (By the way, that interview appears in the same post as some amazing songs by DJ Shadow and Kraftwerk, which should be heard by all).

Which brings us to today's song, a new track from Beans. Unfortunately, Beans usually makes me nostalgic for the old days before Anti-Pop Consortium broke up. After going their seperate ways, Beans seems to have focused on a more accessible hip hop song. Not quite as exciting as the experimental Anti-Pop sound in my opinion, but every once in a while he can still make an amazing track. Diamond Halo Grenade has more of a glitch hop feel that most of the tracks on his solo album. It reminds me a little of the Prefuse 73 remix of his track, Mutescreamer.

Beans - Diamond Halo Grenade

(source)

2004-10-13T22:06:00.000-04:00

More of my liberal bias

Ok, well there's a lot to comment about again, but I'm keeping this session of my debate commentary shorter. This is from the third presidential debate. I promise that my next post will be coming soon (and it'll actually have music on it) (really).

-Did anyone else hear this or was it just me? Bush said that Kerry has not voted on any health care reforms and I swear I heard someone cheer. My understanding is that under the rules of these debates, Bush should have had time taken away from his closing arguments, as the debates are supposed to be completely silent from the audience.

-My current favorite Bush quote: "With all due respect, I don't think it's wise to trust leading news sources on... oh, nevermind." Oops, almost offended your buddy Rupert there.

-Bush: "Look at other countries who have tried government funded health care." Yup, he's now officially insulted every single other industrialized nation in the world, but suggesting that universal health care is a bad move. And exactly who is envious of our health care system?

-Remember back in the mid-90's when the phone companies were fighting with each other. Everyday you'd see a new commercial from company X about how company Y was lying to you about their phone plans, followed by a commercial from company Y about how company X was lying to you much worse. And this would just keep repeating with additional phone companies coming into the fight, until finally you just gave up completely and isolated . That what these debates remind me of. So if you want to know how each side is slanting these arguments in their favor, I recommend spinsanity.org

2004-10-09T01:07:00.000-04:00

"Town Hall" Debate

OK, this is going to be a long one. These are things I noted during the second presidential debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry:

-OK! First question of this democratic "town hall" debate! Alright, so everything is predetermined and controled, so it may put a limit on how tough these questions are can be. Even so, here is it, the people's chance to finally look these two candidates square in the eye and ask the things that people really want to know about the war in Iraq, the questions of homeland security, sky rocketing health care costs and unemployment rate. First question: "Senator Kerry, why do my friends think you're wishy-washy?" And that ladies and gentlemen was the point when our political discourse plummeted down to a question of wishy-washyness. Fuck, this is going to be a long debate...

-We now move on to candidate confidence building questions, because obviously they both need a break after spending the last few minutes trying to look dignified while using the word "wishy-washy" over and over again. Instead they got questions these questions. To Bush: "Was and the War in Iraq justified?" To Kerry: "Would you do anything different in Iraq?" They could have made this a lot easier by just asking them both to paraphrase the same things they've said since the beginning of the Democrat primaries. Apparently, these questions were intended for people who have been living alone in the woods, Thoreau-like, for the past three years.

-So Bush was forced to admit that Iraq is now officially reported to have no weapons of mass destruction. His response, that the intelligence community and even John Kerry himself also thought they had those weapons. So, our intelligence community and both major candidates for president were catastrophicly wrong, leading us into a war for no reason and distracted us from the real people who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon, as well as increasing the potential for further attacks on America. I feel safer already! This could be a good approach for Bush, suggesting that Kerry will make all the same mistakes. So, as they say, why change horsemen mid-apocalypse?

-Well the questions are improving anyway. Bush is asked about his plans to work with other nations. He points to his unpopularity in Europe and says that he can't change his mind because of political pressure, although I imagine his inner monologue at this point sounding like a broken record of his old "If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists" speeches. He hasn't used that one in a while. I guess that's not great for the campaign trial.

-Kerry's plan to remove all the enriched uranium from the former Soviet Union in 4 years instead of 13. Mr. Bush, your response? "That answer makes me want to scowl." Moving right along...

-The inevidable question about another draft. Bush hears "there's rumors on the internets." Yup, he said "internets." Plural. Of course this really isn't the issue. You know, Kerry should really use this oppurtunity to point out that there is an active draft for enlisted men and women who think they've finished their service and then get sent back for second and third tours. Wait, did he just say it? I think he did! Points for Kerry!

-Bush says the best way to secure America is to stay on the offensive. I see two flaws with this logic. First, it makes it seem like you're simply using our men and women in uniform as a human shield to protect the homeland. Why go attack America when Americans can come to you? America is a lot safer until you count our military loses. Second, does this mean that we're potentially fighting wars forever?

-Bush asks how we can build a coalition is we say that the war was a mistake? Well I'm no politician, but I would think that Kerry might want to say something like, "Listen, you didn't support our last president's decisions and neither did I. However, I think that we can agree that there is a humanitarian crisis going on in Iraq which is much more important than a question of what corporations are helping to rebuild the war-torn country. We know that we can no longer go at this alone and we'd like to get your support and input on how we can stabilize Iraq and truly give them a nation they can be proud to call their own instead of one that the West created for them." I don't know, maybe that's too long winded. Something more sound bitey might be better, like "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists" (who was I kidding, it's a still a classic line).

-Bush just said "Missoura," didn't he? Oh what the hell, I'll give him a point for that one. Everyone should get at least one in these things, right?

-OK, Kerry and Edwards with their poor Senate records. I'm wondering, Senators who have run for office in the past, what have their Senate records looked like, considering that they all have to tour the country campaigning? Especially in an election year like this one. And what about all that time Bush spend on vacation in August 2001? Just a thought.

-The environment! This is a good one. Bush says that the air is cleaner and that less people have complained about the quality of water. I seem to remember very early on in the Bush presidency when Bush signed a bill allowing a higher level of arsenic in the nation's drinking water. This was relatively big news at the time and many people were against it. Then shortly after 9/11 (when people had more important things to worry about), there was a tiny article in the paper saying that Bush had repealed it and set the standards back the way they were. Remember the way the game goes now, everytime Bush refers to Kerry as a flip flopper, everyone takes a drink.

-For anyone interested, the comment about Bush owning a timber company refers to his owning a large amount of stock in a timber company. I think that Bush's hesitation there was so that he wouldn't accidently end up making about wood that could be considered sexually suggestive.

-How many people in the audience do you think lied about being undecided in order to get into the debates?

-Bush doesn't think that the Patriot Act waters down the rights of Americans and doesn't seem to understand why some Americans think it does. Yet it's "the most liberal senator" John Kerry that's out of touch with the people of this country.

-Stem cell research. This is a tough one, but Kerry can do it. Talk about the advances that doctors are expecting to find by using these frozen (not living) embryos to cure all kinds of diseases. Go, John Kerry, Go!! NO, DON'T JUST STARE BLANKLY AT THE AUDIENCE!! Oh, I know. What about how first lady, Laura Bush, spoke against their use on the grounds that they were giving false hope to patients who think that the results would be immediate. She basically told the American people that any scientific discovery that wasn't immediate wasn't worth pursuing. Come on, John Kerry! Attack! Crap, let's move on...

-Ok, appointing judges on the Supreme Court, Kerry's doing better. I want to go up to him and whisper in his ear that he should mention how Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been suffering with cancer but doesn't want to step down because she's afraid of who Bush would replace her with. I tried shouting at the TV. It didn't help.

-I really wish Bush would stop talking about the new jobs he created. Didn't he lose more than he created? Anyone have an accurate figure on this?

-"Mr. Bush, can you give three instances where you made mistakes and admit what went wrong?" Bush made it clear that that was for the historians to worry about and then went on to defend his invasion of Iraq, yet again. In other words, he admitted that he probably has made mistakes, but that he doesn't want to admit that he's learned from them, least he appear to be flip-flopping. Perhaps it's just me and my liberal bias, but I would think that part of learning from the mistakes of history is admitting what you did wrong yesterday.

-So that was the debate. My prediction of what the polls will look like: the Republicans will say Bush won, the Democrats will say Kerry won and the undecideds will still be undecided.

-One more debate next week. And I swear I'll get back to posting music and everything else very soon.

2004-10-06T22:16:00.000-04:00

An apology. Lots of stuff that needs to be blogged about, but no time for updates. Radio Babylon will return shortly.

2004-09-30T20:04:00.000-04:00

More Political Ramblings//Howie B

Apparently mentioning third party candidates on this blog is an easy way to get a lot of e-mails. I mentioned yesterday that I was undecided about who I was going to vote for. I'm between Kerry, Nader and Cobb at the moment. First of all, I'm sorry if this upset anyone. We've probably all heard the "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" line. But I don't think this is true. No candidate has a right to my vote until I give it to them, although I can understand why third parties aren't going to come in too strong this time around. The thing is, there are a lot of changes that I would like to see that neither of the major parties will endorse. But maybe right now is, unfortunately, not the time. Although I think this election does run much deeper than Kerry and Bush, I will probably end up voting for Kerry anyway, even though I suspect we'll do well in New Jersey as it is. I don't know that John Kerry is the best man to run the country (hopefully I'm wrong about that), but Bush is too far outside of my political views. Also, I don't want to think what the world will be like after another four years of Bush. The important thing, I think, is what happens after the election, regardless of who wins. The involvement of the people shouldn't just be once every four years; a lot happens in between that time. Ok, that's my two cents on everything. I'll try to stop the political ramblings for a little while.

Mp3 today from Howie B, one of the best I've heard from him in years actually. Over the years, Howie B has contributed his style of dark trip hop to many other artists. He's done production work for Tricky, U2, and Björk (yup, another Björk producer on here) as well as his album with Sly and Robbie, Drum n Bass Stripped to the Bone. Because of the Weather features Crispin Hunt and Will Donovan and is from the new album, Mayonnaise.

Howie B - Because of the Weather

(source)

2004-09-29T21:55:00.000-04:00

Untitled//808 State

If you've been reading this blog a lot, it's probably no surprise that I'm not a fan of George Bush. Actually, to be fair, I don't like everything about John Kerry either, although I may vote for him anyway. I'm undecided between him and one of the third parties at the moment. But regardless of your political position, I think it's important to know what's going on if you want to participate in the system of our democratic republic. So tomorrow (thursday) night at 9 PM EST, when the first of the three debates is on, I think people should really watch them. Three debates really isn't a lot when you consider how much there is a debate. But, whether you think the media is too liberal or too conservative, you don't need commentary from CNN, Fox News or any of the others tell you what you should think. If anything, watch the debates on C-SPAN, which is probably the closest thing we do have to a "fair and balanced" media source. Also, it's kind of sad to say, but "freedom" has become something of a buzz word in this campaign on both sides. Of course everyone loves freedom, but remember that people have different ideas about what freedom is. So at the risk of sounding like a bad assignment in the a grade school history class, when a candidate uses this word (and they will) think about what you think it really means, and what it means to the rest of the world. Ok, that's my input into it. So now I'll stop with the politics and get onto the music...

More tracks from 808 State. I posted a handful of them back in the early days of Radio Babylon. The more I listen to them, the more I think that they are actually a pretty important band in the history of electronica. They never had huge hits, they're not written about as much as someone like Derrick May or Juan Atkins really. But they've always pushed the envelope further into what electronic music is supposed to sound like, sort of removing the borders and creating something that picks from other genres and brings it all together into a the beginnings of a potentially universal sound. Maybe it's just me, but they were a big influence of Björk and Aphex Twin too. Either way, I think they're fairly underrated in their genre.

808 State - Saxasalt

808 State - Sticky Hop

(source)

2004-09-28T22:16:00.000-04:00

Shlomo

Human beatboxing is still alive and well it seems. Shlomo provided some of the beats on Björk's new album. The more I think of it, her choice of collaborators seems funny on Medulla. On one hand, there's Tagaq, the throat singer from Greenland, and then there are the more pop sounding artists like Razhel and Shlomo. There's even Dokaka, which is almost a ridiculous form of pop music, a pretty far cry from Tagaq anyway. I feel like she's simultaneously moved in both a pop and avant garde direction at once, to the point where Medulla is almost two different albums (compare Who Is It with Ancestors, and it's almost hard to believe they're on the same CD, other than the all vocal idea). I still actually like the album a lot though, even though it's gotten a lot of mixed opinions. Anyway, this was one of the beatbox collaborators, with some of his solo stuff. Shlomo performed on the single, Oceania.

Shlomo & Lay-Z - Lay-Z Bones

Shlomo - Freestyle 1

Shlomo - Drum n Bass

Shlomo - Freestyle 2

Shlomo - Trance

Shlomo - Freestyle 3

Shlomo live on Radio 1 (interview and live beatboxing)

(source)

2004-09-27T21:38:00.000-04:00

Chromeo

Chromeo makes vintage, danceable funk. I used to think they were a love it or hate it kind of band, but I have to admit they're growing on me, so there goes my theory. But they've definitely gotten the attention of the people over at DFA Records, with some electro-punkish remixes from both the DFA themselves and from label mate, Juan Maclean. These are them, along with another Chromeo track, Needy Girl, and another remix of Me & My Man.

Chromeo - Me & My Man (The Juan Maclean Mix)

Chromeo - Destination Overdrive (DFA Remix)

Chromeo - Needy Girl

Chromeo - Me & My Man (Fly Whitey Mix)

(source)

2004-09-26T21:33:00.000-04:00

Afrika Bambaataa & Gary Numan

Sorry it's another late update. So I was searching betterPropaganda for a track to post here this week and when I saw this first track on the homepage, I knew I didn't need to look any further. Afrika Bambaataa + Gary Numan = an amazing electro hiphop cover of classic synth pop song. Admittedly, I like the Nine Inch Nails cover of Metal better, but Bambaataa just gets respect because he's Bambaataa (and because he brought Kraftwerk to the dance floor in the 80's). And as a bonus, I'm posting another track from Bambaataa's new release, Dark Matter at the Speed of Light.

Afrika Bambaataa featuring Gary Numan - Metal

Afrika Bambaataa - Got That Vibe

(source)

2004-09-22T21:21:00.000-04:00

Ulrich Schnauss

Ulrich Schnauss sounds like the type of artist who just had too many musical influences growing up. So when it came time to record his own music, rather than pick one style, he just had a go at it all, blending it all into the same songs. The result is the general feel of Casino Versus Japan with the production style of Manitoba, but with an energy that can just naturally change where it's necessary. His new single, On My Own, is one of my current favorite chill out records, but here is some older stuff, including songs from his many aliases.

Ulrich Schnauss - A Lie for Breakfast

Ulrich Schnauss - Attraktor part one

Ethereal 77 - Dawn

View to the Future - Sirius

Police in Cars with Headphones - Tetrapek

(source)

2004-09-20T21:29:00.000-04:00

Eyes Upon the Eyes//DJ Shadow with Zach de la Rocha

Listening to the new Saul Williams cd the other day, I was thinking about Zach de la Rocha's vocal contribution to the song Act III Scene 2 (Shakespeare). It got me thinking again, is Zach's album ever going to come out? I'm actually quite surprised that we haven't heard more from him lately considering now is definitely the time that people would be listening. So I took a visit to his web site to see if anything was up. Turns out that he's got a new single, available on iTunes, that will be featured on an upcoming Fahrenheit 9/11 compilation cd (which is by the way, the only compilation I know of featuring The Clash, The Dixie Chicks, and Justin Timberlake, although fortunately not all on the same track). The track is called We Want It All and was co-produced by Trent Reznor. I also stumbled across a new poem of his, called Eyes Upon the Eyes written during the Fox News protest during the Republican National Convention in New York. I was at that protest, so it's funny to read something by Zach de la Rocha and realize that you're one of the people he's writing about. But since we haven't heard from Zach in a while, I thought I'd post an older track that he did with DJ Shadow before the Iraq War started. It was available for a while on marchofdeath.com. The lyrics are still on the site, and I have the mp3 here for anyone who missed it before.

DJ Shadow and Zach de la Rocha - March of Death
(source)

2004-09-16T22:58:00.000-04:00

Untitled//Drums & Tuba

First day of work down. It's incredible how well my employers have been able to create a job with so much responsiblity and that's yet be so low on the company totem pole. No matter though. My desk is conveniently located away from just about everyone except for a woman whose job seems to consist of making arts and crafts (I assume they will one day be props on a show). I'm also have a rather larger desk for someone who just started, but I understand that it will soon be buried underneath a mound of production binders (each with their own mistakes in them that I must fix). Much of the paperwork that I'm working seems to be encoded so that no human being can actually read it. Well, one day down, 120 or so days to go, possibly more if it becomes a permanent position.

The name Drums & Tuba says a lot about the sound, but really there's a lot more going on there. Their last album came out on Ani DiFranco's Righteous Babe Records label. The sound consists of drums, tuba (obviously enough), guitar and electronics to create a very diverse groove sound. They remind me a bit of Stereolab and even more so Tortoise, but really Drums & Tuba have their own sound entirely.

Drums & Tuba - The Mummy

(source)

2004-09-15T23:30:00.000-04:00

Untitled//Luke Vibert

Fluxblog posted some effing good songs the other day. Download new stuff from Euro-pop star Annie (I'm guessing she's European anyway) and the incredible Saul Williams here.

I've been meaning to post some Luke Vibert music and considering the new Aphex Twin release (see previous post) reminded me of him, it seemed like a good time. Vibert's never been that big compared to the likes of Aphex Twin or Squarepusher, but he's still ubiquitous among the electronic music scene. He's recorded under a number of aliases (Wagon Christ, Plug, Amen Andrews, etc) for a number of labels (Rephlex, Astralwerks, Ninja Tune, etc). He's also experimented with different subgenres over the years, everything from trip hop to acid house. These are some of his more downtempo songs.

Luke Vibert & BJ Cole - Swing Light, Alright

(source)

Wagon Christ - Bend Over

(source)

2004-09-15T03:01:00.000-04:00

New Aphex Twin!

I've just noticed that Rephlex has a page about a new release by Richard James called Analord 10 and will be out in the next few months. The good news about this speaks for itself. The bad news, it's only available as 180g Audiophile vinyl, which means that the sound quality should be fantastic, but it will probably also be expensive. And for only two tracks too. It's also packaged in a binder which will also hold future editions of the Analord series. As nice as the idea sounds, it'd be nice to get them all put together on one CD, wouldn't it? The unfortunate thing about Aphex Twin is that he's gotten quite good at making money lately but he's also talented enough to get away with it. So depending on how much he's looking for for this result (the line "Price: t.b.a." seems like a bad sign to me), I'll probably end up springing for it anyway. Of course there's also a bit of debate over the title "Analord." Despite the fact that it's also the name of a Wagon Christ track, is it a reference to the fact that these tracks may be refined versions of the back catalogue of his old analog work? Or is it... well I'll leave it your imagination. Considering this is Aphex Twin, I'm going to guess that it's a little of both.

2004-09-14T23:38:00.000-04:00

The job hunts has come to an end//The Streets

Internet's been having some issues here lately. That seems to happen every so often. It's apparently a built in feature with my internet service provider. Every once in a while, they like to throw you off by not allowing you to get online for a day or so. So when you go to try to find jobs to apply for online or reply to important e-mails, instead you get a cultural perspective on things. Every few months, they like to remind you what life used to like before the days of the internet, so that when the internet famine is over, you can appreciate being online even more. And they don't even charge you extra for this feature. I wish I could have blamed them for a job I didn't get recently, but in truth it was my own fault. Last week, I came across an ad for a video production job, a one day shoot with a few days of preproduction. Unfortunately, they were interviewing for the job last tuesday and I had the misfortunate to not find the ad until late monday night. Needless to say, I wasn't called. Now normally this wouldn't bother me too much. I've put in a lot of applications that I haven't heard back from, it's be expected. What made this particularly upsetting was that the director of this shoot was none other than Michel Gondry. That's right, had I seen that site a day or two earlier, I might have gotten to work with Michel effing Gondry. For those of you unfamilar with Michel, let me just state that he is an absolute genius and one of my favorite directors ever. He's mostly done music videos (Cibo Matto, The Chemical Brothers, Beck, Daft Punk, a ton of Bjork's videos, Massive Attack, etc.) and also a couple of films including Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And I could have potentially been working with him. The latest of my finding out about this news was considerably distressing. The good news is that I did finally get a job in the media industry. It's at the same place that I interned at, so I still get to work on documentaries. Unfortunately, the job mostly involves a lot of paperwork, as opposed to actual production work which is what I want to do, but hey, a job's a job, right? Oh, and new images will be up soon, I just got kind of behind in making new ones lately.

Today's tracks come from my current favorite British b-boy, The Streets (sorry to Dizzee Rascal). Mike Skinner's gotten a lot of attention since his first album, Original Pirate Material, but if you haven't heard his style of hip hop, it says a lot about being young in England. These are some rare songs from the sessions of A Grand Don't Come for Free, including alternate vocal versions of Fit But You Know It and Get Out of My House and a new b-side track, Soaked by the Ale.

The Streets - Fit But You Know It (feat. Kano, Doneao, Tinchy Strider and Lady Sovereign)

The Streets - Fit But You Know It (feat. The Futureheads)

The Streets - Get Out of My House (feat. Demon, Bruza, Kano, and D Double E)

The Streets - Soaked By the Ale

(source)

2004-09-08T16:04:00.000-04:00

Untitled//Solvent

No update for the next couple of days, so I'm posting the betterPropaganda track for the week a bit early. Why no postings, you ask? I'm off to the Jersey shore for a few days to my parents' house to watch the dog while their away. They have a Packard Bell computer. For those of you who don't remember Packard Bells, they were more or less the standard for PCs among people who didn't want to pay a lot back in the mid-90's. Some days I just can't get on the internet at all there. So in order to save myself some frustration, I may not bother posting again until next week.

So the betterPropaganda track this week comes from Solvent. This is good music to work on a computer with I think (assuming of course, you're not using 1995 Packard Bell, in which case I'd recommend Atari Teenage Riot so that you'll feel better when you yell at it and put your foot through the monitor). Solvent is maybe a little too downtempo to dance to, but too upbeat to sit completely still. Fits in nicely with the whole Ghostly International scene, Matthew Dear and similar artists. [Also, betterPropaganda has the new single by Radio 4 online. Unfortunately, it's stream only, but if you haven't heard Party Crashers yet, it's worth taking a few minutes to check it out.]

Solvent - Operating Ease

(source)

2004-09-08T14:54:00.000-04:00

Get to know your bloggers//Explosions in the Sky

Brief update today. Tofu Hut is interviewing a bunch of the mp3 bloggers to help get to know the people behind the blogs. The story of Fluxbog is up now.

You know those bands that everyone and their mother tells you to listen to, but you never really get around to it? Well after a couple of weeks, I finally got around to hearing Explosions in the Sky. In a similar vein of Godspeed You! Black Emporer, they've got the large scale, orchestral, instrumental, almost rock sound. This is a live track, I'm currently hunting for more.

Explosions in the Sky - The Moment We Were Alone (Live in Akron, Ohio)

(source)

2004-09-06T23:33:00.000-04:00

RNC pictures//DJ Vadim

The last day of the RNC protests was on Thursday and my sister came to visit. We went to the protests together. It was a nice bonding experience really. Anyway, she took pictures, some of which I've posted online today. Most of these are from outside of Madison Square Garden just before the President's speech. Here are the links for anyone who's interested, I may have more coming soon:

RNC picture 1

RNC picture 2

RNC picture 3

RNC picture 4

RNC picture 5

Music today comes from Russian hip hop producer, DJ Vadim from Ninja Tune. He's probably best known for his collaboration with vocalist Sarah Jones, the ultimate femanist hip hop track, Your Revolution. That track was one of the best examples of free speech in music I ever heard of after a radio station won a legal battle with the FCC over the right to play the song. I think it's an important song with a good message to it about not selling out your body. So all you college radio DJ's out there, remember it's now considered FCC-clean. But here are some other Vadim collaborations, not released on CD.

DJ Vadim featuring Mucho - T'es Importante

DJ Vadim featuring Promote - Hold Up

DJ Vadim featuring Adao - Headline News (Revisited)

DJ Vadim - Y2K

DJ Vadim featuring Motion Man - Til Suns In Your Eyes (Prunes/Pelding Remix)

(source)

2004-09-02T11:28:00.000-04:00

Dissent//Jello Biafra

Sorry for the lack of updates this week. Being in the NY area, I had planned to do a special RNC week of Radio Babylon, not so much out of my distrust for the Bush administration, but more so because I think it's good that people are speaking their minds, on all sides of the political spectrum. But I've been going to a lot of demonstrations this week, getting footage and I've come back each night pretty dead to the world. I'll have a recap this weekend sometime. But yesterday, while at the big media protest outside of CNN and Fox News, I was very surprised to Dead Kennedys frontman, Jello Biafra speaking to the crowd. In light of this, I thought I should post some betterPropaganda hosted excerpts from his last spoken word album, Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand. On this album, he says a lot of the stuff that he said last night. Sorry I'm doing another post without music, but Biafra has a lot of good points and it's worth hearing him speak. [update on my post from week about Mouse on Mars and Bjork: both albums are available to preview or download on bleep.com]

Jello Biafra - Beat Around the Burning Bush

Jello Biafra - Miscue 911

Jello Biafra - Propane and Propane Accessories

Jello Biafra - The Big Ka Boom

(source)

2004-08-26T23:46:00.000-04:00

Mouse on Mars & Bjork Reviews

The two CDs take look like they're not going to be leaving my stereo anytime soon: Mouse on Mars' Radical Connector and Bjork's Medulla. First Mouse on Mars. I think this album is their best one to date. It's solid, not one bad track. It's also their first album without any instrumentals, with vocals from Dodo Nkishi and Niobe. So far, everyone's been talking about the opening track, Mine Is In Yours (previously called Mine Disappears), but if I had more web space to use for mp3's, I'd post Send Me Shivers. It's not their most complex track, but Niobe's vocals are perfect.

And speaking of vocals, then there's Bjork's new one, Medulla. The truth is, it's not as reported, an entirely vocal album, although it's pretty close. But there are a few instruments on their. There's a piano on a couple of tracks and with some of the electronic sounds, it's hard to tell whether the source material was a human voice or synthesizer. That said, I do like the album a lot. The influence of Bjork's collaborators is always obvious. Fortunately, she picks really good people to work with. In this case, they include Matmos, Mark Bell, Dokaka, Razhel and Olivier Alary from Ensemble. There's a pretty wide range on this album, from more electronic sounding tracks that could all be potential singles, to the more serious acapellas, many of which are sung in Icelandic (I think it's the first time in her solo career that she's put any Icelandic songs on a full album). A lot of people don't know how to feel about it after the first listen. I say, give it a chance. I don't know if I can call Medulla her best album, but it's very honest and Bjork did an incredible job with it overall. If nothing else, it's at least an interesting angle for an album. My only complaint is that she apparently doesn't want people to have an easy time reading her lyrics, what with that black on black style she's got with this one, but in a weird sort of way, I think her hair actually makes up for it. Standout tracks are Mouth's Cradle, Ancestors, Desired Constellation, Vokuro, and Oceania. I think the album deserves a listen, so this week my betterPropaganda pick is a streaming file (no download, sorry) of Oceania, which Bjork played at the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Athens.

click to go to stream: Bjork - Oceania

2004-08-24T20:55:00.000-04:00

Roommate stories//DJ Spooky

I've told a few people about my roommate search and the Vietnam guy. A lot of people have reacted to them by either saying that it has made them feel better about their problems or by telling me far worse stories of roommates past. So I'm gonna you all a chance to vent, quasi-publicly, about your experiences. So if you have a good story, post them in the comments section of this post. I'll start. My past roommate, a friend of mine previously, decided to get married and have his wife move in (with her own key and everything), without really considering the lease violation this involved. Mind you, weddings are usually a hectic affair and somewhere in the craziness of the planning everything, they sort of forgot to tell my other roommate and I certain small details, such as the facts that they were getting married or that she was moving in. Needless to say we weren't invited. Perhaps our invitations were lost in the mail. So who else has got a good story?

Recently DJ Spooky showed Rebirth of a Nation in New York. It's something interesting that I'm very sorry to have missed actually. The idea was to remix D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, a classic of early American cinema but sadly, filled with racist ideas and a very misguided view of America's beginnings. By remixing the film, he "hoped to create a counter-narrative, one where the story implodes on itself, one where new stories arise out the ashes of that explosion." Essentially, the idea was to counteract the racist content. And of course, there was also original music composed for the film. Here's a piece of it.

DJ Spooky - Rebirth of a Nation, Movement 1 (Rough Cut)

(source)

2004-08-20T02:02:00.000-04:00

Why God Hates Me Today//RJD2

Avid readers of this blog may have noticed the disappearance of a recent post about my roommate search. The short version of the story is this, one of my roommates left without giving us very much notice, so we scrambled to find a new one. I had a Vietnam veteran call me with interest in the room. He was a little strange (the age difference alone was a little strange) (to any veterans, I don't hold it against all veterans, just this guy creeped me out a bit). That was basically the concept of the old post. I took it down because he was starting to freak me out a bit, and suddenly I didn't feel like taking the one in a million chance that he actually knows someone who reads this blog and that it might cause him to snap. The reason he was freaking me out was that he wouldn't stop calling me, even after I asked him to stop and told him that I'd get in touch with him. Yet this still did not stop him from calling me four times in the span of a half hour. By the first call of the night, I called him back and told him that we'd found someone else (a lie). He need told me that he had already changed his address to reflect ours despite the fact that we did not give him the room and I had told him repeatedly that other people had been looking at it. Apparently he has mail coming here, but I told him not to pick it up, that I would forward it. So that's some background for this situation.

But God hates me, you see. No, that's not really true. He just likes to create funny little scenarios, many of which involve me, because He knows I'll blog about them. So my friend and her boyfriend were considering taking the room. I told them to come over tonight to see the place and meet my other roommate. We agreed to all meet about 8 pm. So I'm at work and I was asked if I could work late. I agreed with the condition that I be out of there by 7, giving me enough time to get to Penn station and catch a 7:30 train. They said that would be fine. Next, my roommate calls me up and says that he may be late. Next, my friend calls me up to ask me if they can come early. I tell her that the earliest I can get home is a little after 8:00 and that my roommate won't be home until later. So we agree to keep the same meeting time. (This is all building up to something, I promise) So now, I must be home by 8:00. Further complicating this is that I'm going to out of town for a few days, and since there's no other time to show them the room, it's between me being home at 8:00 or living with the creepy Vietnam veteran. It gets to be 7 and I'm getting ready to leave. By this time, most everyone has gone home. Only a few people are left in the office. Among them is the cutest girl by far that my company had the good foresight to hire. She comes up to me and in an appaling lack of good timing, tells me that they're going for drinks that I really should come with them. Immediately my mind starts screaming profanities while evaluating this situation. I could go and have a really good time with an amazing beautiful girl. Unfortunately the price to pay for this is a huge let down for my friend as well as paranoia of potentially putting my and my roommate's life in danger for the duration of our year long lease. So... I made my decision (damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it) and the good news is that I may have some good roommates soon. But the bad news is... Well, let's not talk about the bad news. I'd like to take this oppurtunity to publicly apologize for all awful things I must have done in previous lifetimes. But let's have a good betterPropaganda track to cheer things up.

To anyone who says that hip hop is dying, I present to you RJD2. I saw this guy perform live, opening for Prefuse 73. Admittedly, Prefuse overshadowed him a bit (but hey, it's Prefuse 73 after all). Still RJD2 should not be discounted, as he's been gaining notice in the underground hip hop community over the years. BTW, there may not be any updates until next Tuesday as, like I said, I'll be out of town. So if you haven't already, that should give you time to hear the eDMX mix from yesterday's post.

RJD2 - Exotic Talk

(source)

2004-08-18T23:55:00.000-04:00

Untitled//eDMX

Google, in their constant attempt to keep us all from getting anything productive done has added a new feature to Blogger. As you've probably noticed already, blogspot blogs now have those toolbars on the top of the page. It's kind of cool that we can search them now, but what really upsets me is the "Next Blog" button. Because of this, I know that I'm now going to constantly be going to all sorts of random blogs that I would have never bothered with before. It's just too damn easy. Of course, because it's a random system, I usually end up on some pretty bad blogs and after a few hits, I'll get very bored. But there's always that possibility that if I hit it again, I'll discover the most amazing blog ever. A blog that will answer all my questions in life. Unfortunately, the most stimulating thing that the "Next Blog" button has brought me to so far as been pictures of Angelica's garden, so the search continues (Damn you Blogger!). Of course if you're getting sick of the "Next Button" madness (it doesn't take long), you can check out the new mp3 blog in the blogosphere, Heraclitus Sayz. For your regular fix of nice, lo-fi indie rock.

Stop me if you've downloaded this one already, but for those of you haven't, here's eDMX from DMX Krew. I still maintain that this guy does some great pop music. Not something that's going to find itself soon compared the Britney's of the world, but still completely and unashamedly pop. His new release, Collapse of the Wave Function, can be found over at Rephlex Records (yes, I do link to them a lot). This is a 70+ minute continuous mix that he did a little while ago.

eDMX - dj mix

(source)

2004-08-17T00:23:00.000-04:00

RNC & Billionares for Bush

Sorry this blog does tend to get a bit political from time to time, I've just had a lot of stuff on my mind. Like this... They're building these bridges for commuters to use during the Republican National Convention in NYC. See, Penn station inconveniently spits the commuters out right where the convention is. And since these politicans don't seem to want to mingle with the commuters, these bridges are being built. Looking at this image, three things come to mind: 1) Perhaps there are other cities that they could have gone to where the security threat wouldn't be quite so high, because let's say they're more welcome there, 2) How much is going to cost to build these things? Granted, they're not the most elaborate bridges or anything, but still. And who's ultimately paying for it? and 3) I really hope that MSG still has that Alien Vs Predator poster up during the convention.

Billionares for Bush, a satirical group whose goal is be mistaken for hardcore Bush supporters, is planning The Million Billionares March the day before the election. Click to see how you can join and how you can be a billionare too. They also have some radio ads that they're trying to get on the air .

2004-08-16T23:46:00.000-04:00

Stereo Total

Today's downloads come from kitschy, multilingual pop rock group, Stereo Total. You know those albums that you hear the first time, kind of forget about it, and then later when you hear it again it suddenly strikes a cord with you? Well this happened to me with Stereo Total in a sort of unfortunate way. I was given a copy of their album, which I listened to once and then forgot about. Then one day, back when I was working at a CD store, I decided to clear out my collection a little bit to make some room. So I sold the Stereo Total CD along with a few others. But then I would see my used copy of this CD sitting on the shelves while I was at work and I started to regret selling it. I had even briefly considered buying it back even though I would just been throwing my money at the store for no reason really. One day a couple came in and started browsing the used section, looking generally uninterested, until they came across my CD and talked about it like it was a sort of Holy Grail of used CDs. I had to ring them up for their purchase. There was a part of me that didn't want to sell it to them, but they seemed like nice people so I didn't have the heart to tell them no. Anyway, this is the band that I foolishly let slip away from my collection. There's more available on their web site.

Stereo Total - In/Out

Stereo Total - Ex fan des 60ties

Stereo Total - Party Anticonformiste

(source)

2004-08-15T21:49:00.000-04:00

Anti-Bush Game//Gravenhurst

When you don't blog for a little while, you tend to miss a lot. Like the break up of the Beta Band, leaked Bjork tracks (Mouth's Cradle being my current favorite, and this. An anti-Bush video game. Here's the premise, the Bush administration has a plan to unveil their new secret weapon, Voltron, which is controlled by the five keys of the black lion. Each key is held by a different member of Bush's cabinet (but what, it gets better). So Hulk Hogan, a cancer-ridden Mr. T and "fat-ass He-man" must get the keys and defeat Bush, along the way teaming up with leftist politicans and celebrities and learning about how Bush basically been fucking up the world. In other words, it's an educational video game that features a character named "fat-ass He-man." It's an amusing game if you have an hour or so to sit and play it. I think there should be a link to this on John Kerry's web site. (thanks to Scissorkick for finding that)

Things have been sort of hectic lately and probably will be the rest of the month, so lately my mood has called for some lighter music, more of an acoustic folk sound. A bit like Kings of Convenience, but slightly darker. Enter Gravenhurst, one of the newest signings to Warp Records. This is from their new album, Flashlight Sessions, available at Warpmart and bleep.com.

Gravenhurst - The Diver

(source)

2004-08-11T22:54:00.000-04:00

Exploding Dog//cLOUDDEAD

Exploding Dog used one of my title suggestions last week (btw if you don't know about this site, may I recommend that you visit right now and see what it's all about). I happened to be listening to LCD Soundsystem at the time. I think this could have made for some good cover art for Losing My Edge single.

In the spirit of telling you about things that a lot of you probably already know, I present (like many of the other blogs before have) cLOUDDEAD. I'm presenting it for anyone who might have missed them when their last album came out on Mush Records, or for anyone who heard Dose One's voice or cLOUDDEAD's unique style of hip hop and didn't quite get it the first time around (to be honest, I didn't love it the first time I heard it). So here it is, again. Because, dammit, I'm still pretty into that album.

cLOUDDEAD - The Velvet Ant

(source)

2004-08-10T23:45:00.000-04:00

Democracy and rhythm/Screamin' Rachael

Well it's been a rather hectic (both good and bad) week for me, so again I'm late with updates. But as it appears that my job hunt will probably not produce anything before the Republican National Convention, a-protesting I will go. But I'd really like to do something different with this protest. I've been talking about this with a good activist friend of mine. She lives for protests. Never does she seem happier than when we are criticizing Bush, Fox News, or many of the major corporations. So we were talking about the idea of bringing music to the event, to entertain and inspire the others there. We're planning out mix cds that we can play on a portable cd player during. The cds may have either political, experimental, or world songs, each with there own purpose. The exact details have yet to worked out, but she has an idea of where she wants to be when that week. But I thought this would be a good thing to blog about, to see if anyone is interested in either joining us or starting their own. To me, this protest isn't about being anti-Republican. It's about the people's rights to choose their president. It's about having an honest leader who remembers that we are technically a democracy. And it's about having someone in office who can actually address the threat of terrorism and its roots, rather than just invading any country we please. Thoughts, interest, criticism, song suggestions? E-mail 'em all to me. More details as we work them out.

Back in the days before Aphex Twin, before Squarepusher, before Josh Wink even, the Chicago house scene gave birth to something new. Many of you have probably already heard the stories about Roland's failed attempt at a bassline synth that sparked the acid house movement in the mid 80's. It was a exciting time for dance music. The sounds both confused and excited the crowds. Sadly, before Rephlex came about to breath new life into it, the genre quickly died out. The originals, done by the likes of Phuture, DJ Pierre and Farley Jackmaster Funk, are very simple and at times a bit ridiculous, but the new release on Trax Records has decided to bring you back to the old days, where you could let yourself get in the strange new sounds. Here is a track that didn't make it on the album. Not an acid house track in the traditional sense, but the TB-303 sound makes it clear where this song came from as far as influence.

Screamin' Rachael - Extacy

(source)

2004-08-10T23:33:00.000-04:00

rapture

These images didn't turn out to great, but this was something I saw yesterday. I passed a Starbucks in Manhattan (at 35th & 8th I think) where water was literally pouring out into the streets. It looks like a pipe had burst inside, sending water gushing down to the floor, pouring like a facet on full blast and ripping a hole through the ceiling on its way. I personally had always figured that it was only a matter of time before God started to punish us for having too many Starbucks, so I posting the images as prove that the rapture against the coffee giant may have begun. Watch out for your frappuccino light blend turning to blood.

2004-08-05T21:01:00.000-04:00

Prime Time Debauchery/Mouse on Mars

Obviously Atlantic City has its fair share of trashy shows, but I think this was one of the worst I saw down there last night. Although I didn't actually go to see it (it doesn't start until tomorrow), but the very concept speaks volumes. Anyway, a night in AC has left me pretty tired, and seeing as how I've got a 7 am shoot to go to tomorrow, I think I'm just going to skip right ahead to the mp3...

As amazing as Prefuse 73 is, Mouse on Mars had the glitch-pop style down for a lot longer, although in slightly a different way. Their upcoming album, Radical Connector, seems to have some of their most accessible stuff to date, with vocalist Dodo Nkishi now considered the third member of the group. The original verison of this track, called Mine Disappears, was featured on a Thrill Jockey sampler cd that came out a while ago. This new verison is set to the opening track from the new album.

Mouse on Mars - Mine Is In Yours

(source)

2004-08-03T20:26:00.000-04:00

Untitled

Today has been a crazy hectic day, so unfortunately I don't have time to search for some good mp3's. Fortunately, Music (for Robots) posted some amazing Aphex Twin tracks yesterday, Xtal and his remix of Saint Etienne's "Your Head My Voice." If you don't know these tracks already, you really need to download them.

No post tomorrow. My company is doing a shoot in Atlantic City at the Taj Mahal (which is what I was busy preparing for today). It's a two day shoot, which means the hotel room's all paid for. Sometimes being an intern isn't all that bad. But I'm planning some (nonviolent) activity for the Republican National Convention, so I'll have more about that later in the week (as well as more music).

2004-08-02T13:03:00.000-04:00

Freelance subversion/Alias

A bug was in my apartment. Well, it still is, but it's dead now. It fell from the ceiling and landed right inside my printer. I witnessed this, it looked exactly like the scene from the beginning of Brazil (which if you haven't seen, you really should). I'm not really sure what to do about it. I tried to shake it out, but it's really in there. I'm not sure what would happen if I tried to print something. I've decided not to worry about it at the moment. So chances are I'm probably doing to forget about it until one day, I go to print something and discover a large squished bug splattered across my new resume. I'll be sure to blog about it. But on to the music...

Somewhere in between hip hop, glitch and indietronica lies Alias. These tracks come from his releases on Anticon, the label that cLOUDDEAD uses to release their solo records. Unseen Sights, my favorite of these tracks, features Markus Acher of Notwist.

Alias - Unseen Sights

Alias - Eyes Closed

Alias - Pill Hiding

(source)

2004-07-30T20:06:00.000-04:00

Gyards/Ralph Myerz

Today I was working on a show for the History Channel. I was asked to do some research and try to find a public domain image of first century Saxons wearing "sashes across their midsection called a 'gyard' which doubled as a measuring device." There is a fear in making documentaries that perhaps enough has already been said about the subject matter and that you really can't add anything new. But sometimes, when you have to go that extra mile to get what you're looking for, you know that you're doing something different. I think I can safely say that the measuring sash worn by the first century Saxons is not an overused topic, as evidenced by my search today. After two hours of searching the internet, this image was the best one I could find, in so much as, they are technically wearing sashes. I showed this to the other intern who was working on this project and we submitted the picture to the associate producer to show the extent to which we failed. She laughed and said (jokingly, I think) "We might have to have a little talk." Personally I would have been very impressed if they had used it anyway.

And we end this week of Radio Babylon music with some Norweigan downtempo. It's the very special music of Ralph Myerz and the Jack Herren Band.

Ralph Myerz & the Jack Herren Band - Casino

Ralph Myerz & the Jack Herren Band - Clouds

(source)

2004-07-29T23:58:00.001-04:00

Euphemisms/Boom Bip

So my backup plan for my job hunt was to try to get something fulltime out of my internship. I was told a few weeks ago that they might have something for me in administration. I really want to work more in production, but a job's a job after all and I do like the company, so it seemed like a really good backup to have. Today I asked what the status of that was and if there was still a job that might be available to me in September. I asked the woman in charge of operations, the same woman who told me that there was a possibility a couple of weeks ago. Her response (and here I have done a public service to my readers and translated about half a page of corporate euphemisms into a more readable, concise statement written in modern day English) was "No." But I half expected that this might happen, so I'm not bitter about it. To be honest, I still actually like the company for the most part, which is why it's kind of disappointing that it's not going to last a little longer.

Oh, an update on the whole Republican National Convention mess and getting to the company. We are currently making photo ID cards for everyone there, so they can get pass the police barricades. In 15 years, the company has never needed photo ID cards. We're making them just for that week.

When Warp started up Lex Records, one of their first releases was from Ohio based artist, Boom Bip. He had previously recorded on Mush Records and frequently collaborates with Dose One from cLOUDDEAD. His new release, the Corymb EP is out now and features a new remix by the ambient geniuses of Boards of Canada. I'm convinced that everything they've remixed is brilliant (ok, so the Meat Beat Manifesto remix wasn't there best, but give it a chance, it's not bad either).

Boom Bip - Last Walk Around Mirror Lake (Boards of Canada Remix)

(source)

2004-07-27T00:49:00.000-04:00

Untitled/Nobukazu Takemura

The newest link on my blog roll goes to An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming. I was reading it the other day, and I saw the Kate Bush is Björk post. Anything Björk related immediately gets my interest but I was skeptical. People get compared to Björk a lot, but I tend to think she's in a class all her own. But still, I figured I'd give her a fair change, considering I don't know very much about Kate Bush. But I'm very impressed by the very idea of someone covering the theme to Brazil, one of my favorite movies of all time. Kate Bush isn't quite Björk, but An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming has convinced me that she at least deserves my respect.

And if Kate Bush, Björk and Brazil seem too familar and you happen to be looking for something a bit more out there, let me direct your attention to the very unique Nobukazu Takemura. This music makes me think of a small Japanese child trapped inside a synthesizer and coming to terms with it.

Nobukazu Takemura - turutiksbinbon (Fr ver)

Nobukazu Takemura - uuru

::source::

2004-07-26T20:27:00.000-04:00

Job Hunting/Slipper

With exactly one month left of my college career (i.e: my current internship), it's occured to me that I am well overdue to start seriously looking for a job. I started searching this weekend for media jobs in the area. It's a little rough at the moment. Maybe I'm a little picky, but I just can't get myself to apply for a job at, say, Radio Disney. Can't do it. And of course, Fox News is out (see previous post). Well, this is what's currently occupying me. I'll update my progress on this when something starts to happen.

A former artist on Aphex Twin's Rephlex label, Slipper creates his own form of "psycho" jazz/lounge music. All the reviews I've seen for his have included the word "bizarre" in there somewhere. These are some demos from the Zoon Sandwich album, that can still stand on there own as tracks.

Slipper - Obsession

Slipper - Tooth

Slipper - Lull

::source::

2004-07-25T14:55:00.000-04:00

Outfoxed/Two Lone Swordsmen

In case you haven't heard about it, there's a new documentary out called Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. It's about the biases of the "fair and balanced" reporting of the Fox News network. If you're interested in this and if you agree that there is a bias, there's an online petition that going out on wednesday to try to stop Fox News from using the "fair and balanced" ad campaigns, which are arguably false advertising.

This week's Better Propaganda track comes from Two Lone Swordsmen. Between the two members, Andrew Weatheral and Tenniswood, they've had production connections with The Orb, Primal Scream and David Holmes, among others. While their last album, Tiny Reminders continued in an acid house influenced ambient style, the new album, From the Double Gone Chapel moves in a more dirge/alt rock style, but is still noticably the same band. This is the first single from the album.

Two Lone Swordsmen - Faux

::source::

2004-07-21T21:24:00.000-04:00

Untitled/Gotan Project

Today while doing some research for a show, I came across this quote from George Stults from 7th Heaven, when asked what he likes to do on the fourth of July: "My favorite thing to do for the fourth of July is to watch the fireworks; I love fireworks and downtown Detroit has one of the best fireworks display in at the least the country that I know of. I don’t know about the world" [shakes head] There are times when I hate my internship.

Gotan Project is a French band that combines the house sound of Paris with the tango sound of Argentia.

Gotan Project - Santa Maria (del Buen Ayre)

::source::

2004-07-20T23:38:00.000-04:00

Blogging Digest/Thavius Beck

mp3blogs.org is the newest in the whole wget trend. Radio Babylon is included, among others. I like the site, the way it's taking excerpts from each of the blogs (and they pick from some of my favorites). So if reading all of these blogs everyday has gotten to be too much, now you have a nice centrally located place to get them all at once. Just remember to check back at the originals and read the whole reviews and/or rants that we write out all the time.

The selection today comes from Mush Records and Thavius Beck. It's sort of a hip hop track (if you can call it that) with some kind of dark atmospheres to it. The lyrics remind me of Losing My Edge by LCD Sound System, but with a lot more pop stars rolled off, reminding us why music will be the death of us all.

Thavius Beck - (Music Will Be) The Death of Us All

::source::

2004-07-19T22:16:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about the Republican National Convention in New York and how much it's going to suck. I'm trying to find out what the exact plans are for the convention, but I know that it's taking place at Madison Square Garden, which makes it seem like Penn station may be shut down (or if they do have a plan to keep it open, I'm sure it will be a mess), which is going to cause problems for me and a hell of a lot of other commuters. Then I hear that they're planning on blocking the streets within a mile radius of the convention, an area which my job falls into. Then of course around that will the protesters. I was in the protest against the Iraq war in February 2003, and if that's any indication, this will be a very, very big protest. People I know who don't seem to even be that interesting in politics are planning on being there. So I like the fact that people are going to exercising their democracy at such a crucial time, but I'm starting to wonder what that's going to mean for other ways of getting into the city. Port Authority isn't too far away from MSG, so taking a bus might be difficult too. The PATH will probably be packed. Ok, so all of this has a while before I really have to worry about it, but it does look like the Republicans are doing a very nice job of shutting down a nice chunk of Midtown Manhattan. Really I'm just hoping that I can get that week off, in which case I'll probably go anyway to see the protesters (I'll try to post some pictures if I go), but at least I wouldn't have to worry about being somewhere. Well, there's still time to worry about it, but I really do find myself wishing they'd gone somewhere other than Manhattan.

Today's mp3 is for fans of Aphex Twin styled acid/drum n bass/ambient. If you don't know µ-ziq, be sure to give this a listen.

µ-ziq - Meinheld

::source::

2004-07-15T22:52:00.000-04:00

Radio Babylon has a sponsor, sort of

A little while ago someone from Better Propaganda had asked if I would put a link up here for them and then started talking about the idea of an occasional Better Propaganda sponsored track on here. I kind of like the idea, mostly because it saves me from having to get more web space for a while (I've been considering it on and off). So no money is exchanging hands or anything, they're just making my life a bit easier, and they have a lot of good music up. So my plan is to post some of their tracks on Thursdays. And there are a few other little details that I might have to work out, but that's the basic idea.

After seeing The Corporation last week, I've been thinking more about the state of the world, US foreign and economic policy, etc. So instead of getting music this week, I'm posting some excerpts from a question and answer forum with Noam Chomsky. This is from a CD on Alternative Tentacles that was recorded in 2002. He's been called the most important living intellectual in America today and I don't think that's undeserved. So today it's about learning that's going on in the world, and next week we'll have more music.

Noam Chomsky - Big Business And The General Population - A Nation Divided

Noam Chomsky - Latin America, The U.S. And Globalization

Noam Chomsky - The Problems With Iraq

Noam Chomsky - U.S. Doctrinal Constraints On Middle East Peace

Noam Chomsky - Why Do They Hate Us?

::source::

2004-07-14T20:20:00.000-04:00

There was no update yesterday because Blogger was doing maintainence. Sorry about that. I guess it needs to happen every once in a while.

I don't know much about this artist, but I like these tracks. They sort of remind me of some of the solo work by Björk-producer, Howie B. Kind of dark, experimental, ridiculous and completely serious at the same time.

UM - A Personal Revelation

UM - Dracula's Lunch

UM - Jim O'Rouke Was In New York

::source::

2004-07-14T20:19:00.000-04:00

2004-07-12T23:49:00.000-04:00

USA Today ran an article from Reuters about mp3 blogs. They listed a few blogs (unfortunately not Radio Babylon) which reminded me that I've been meaning to update my sidebar links a little. So I'm adding The Suburbs Are Killing Us, Royal Music, and a handful of other links worth spending some time at. And if you want to read more about mp3 blog thing, check out the article too.

I thought it was about time to post some avant-influenced vocal techno from Underworld. I still think Underworld. These are a couple of alternate versions from underworldlive.com. These are from before Darren Emerson left the band.

Underworld - Mmm... Skyscraper (Jam)

Underworld - Something Like a Mama/NUXX (Jam)

::source::

2004-07-08T22:27:00.000-04:00

Worst Ad Campaign... Ever

Among the TV shows that I'm working on for my internship, there is one about the history of presidental campaigns. I was doing research for this show last week and I was watching Bush and Kerry political ads online. The biggest tradegy of my not blogging last week is that I didn't get to include a link to one of the Bush ads, because it amazed me. Unfortunately, georgewbush.com has taken it down since then, which doesn't surprise me, but I'd like to give a description of this 60 second ad as best I can remember it. It begins with John Kerry and other democrats talking about how bad a president he is. Ok, I think, he's setting this up for a rebuttal. So Kerry and company go on about his poor diplomacy skills, his misjudgements about counterterrorism before 9/11, how he misled the American people into a war with Iraq, etc. About 45 to 50 seconds in, this is still going on and now Michael Moore has joined in the fun. So now I'm starting to wonder if I'm on the right web site or that maybe someone has hacked into the site and replaced the ad. But then finally the tone changes and a smiling image of Bush appears. Ok, this is it. I'm by means a fan of Bush, but I have to hand it to his campaign team, they've piled most of the major criticisms of his administration together into one package and now they're going to refute it all in less than 10 seconds. That can be no easy task. They must have something great lined up to be so confident in their abilities. Perhaps something that can even make me reconsider and think maybe he's not quite as bad a president as I thought, just someone who's doing his best in a very difficult position. Then here comes the voiceover... "George W. Bush doesn't believe in such pessimism in his campaign. Vote Bush, the optimistic candidate!" .... ? .... ! .... ?.... Is that it? Heapfuls of testimonials basically calling him one of the worst presidents this country has ever had, and that's your response? He may be a terriblely undiplomatic speaker whose lack of foresight resulted in the death of thousands of innocent Americans, a plummit in the economy, and a seemingly unnecessary war with an unrelated country, but damn it, he can still start the day with a smile! I'm guessing this is why it was taken off the web site and replaced by another one, again with the optimism message, but less damaging to his own campaign.

This has inspired me to post Two Minutes Fifty Seconds Silence for America by Matt Rogalsky. This track is simply a recording of George W. Bush announcing to the world that he was giving Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq before US forces would invade. Rogalsky then used editing software to remove any point where Bush was speaking and then raised the volume of the recording. The result is a thunderous sound as Bush's words reverberate in the White House. According to Rogalsky, many people have likened the sound to something like "drums of war" and it definitely adds a new dimension and commentary to that speech.

Matt Rogalsky & George W. Bush - Two Minutes Fifty Seconds Silence for America

::source::

2004-07-07T20:46:00.000-04:00

An American I-Matang in Kiribati

Suddenly while I sit here reading through mp3 blogs and listening to music in my air conditioned apartment, I feel thankful that I was not born in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. At least this is how I feel now that I have finished reading a book by J. Maarten Troost. For the last month or so I had been meaning to do some reading. I kept thinking to myself that I was really going to sit down and read a fine work of literature, something like Walden or Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But somehow everytime I started to read one of these books, I wouldn't get that far before I would end up getting sidetracked and putting them aside. I attributed this to my being pretty busy with everything else in my life right now. That is until my sister told me about this book by Troost. And so I shelved The Unbearable Lightness of Being for a while and began reading what I feel is an equally important work in the literary world. That book was called The Sex Lives of Cannibals. I just finished it, and as I said, it has made me very grateful to be living in a place where I have access to the wealth of recorded music that is so important to me, and not limited to, say, La Macerana and Ice Ice Baby. This was the unfortunate fate of the author, who spent two years of his life on the small island country of Kiribati, smack dab in the middle of the Equatorial Pacific. Now it's not that the other books I tried to read weren't good, they were just a bit more serious that I'm really interested in at the moment. That said, I would have to recommend The Sex Lives of Cannibals, if for no other reason that to read about the Poet Laureate of Tarawa, a young, drunk British man whose poetry is... let's say lacking. It's a good read and it will make you grateful for, among other things, any meal you've ever had without fish in it.

Music today comes courtesy of Bubblecore Recordings. Two tracks by electronic influenced indie jam band, The Dylan Group. The first is a cover of Aphex Twin's We Are the Music Makers, and then a remix by We. If you like the tracks, Bubblecore's web site has the entire album (and the remix album) available as a free download. They do ask for a donation through PayPal if you're feeling generous, but you're not obligated.

Dylan Group - We Are The Music Makers

Dylan Group - Bittersweet (Hot & Sour Mix by We)

::source::

2004-07-06T23:48:00.001-04:00

Polydactyly

A conservation from behind the scenes at the autopsy show:

Editor: "I need you to find me some pictures of polydactyly that we can get licensing for. It's a condition where people have either six fingers or six toes."

Me: "Can't we just photoshop that? Take a picture of my foot. I'll sign the release form and then you can add as many toes as you want."

Editor: "Ha ha ha! (pause) Are you good with photoshop?"

And now for To Rococo Rot, the indie rock band that sounds like an electronic group. Their new album, Hotel Morgan is out now on Domino Records. This track comes from one of their earlier releases, and it's also featured on the Modulations soundtrack.

To Rococo Rot - Kritische Masse 1

::source::

2004-07-05T23:29:00.000-04:00

Back with the Braindance

Ok, so last week was a slow one for Radio Babylon. It was a combination of being sick and having to work late one night. At my internship I was asked to stay a couple of hours late to work on a show for the Women's Entertainment channel. There was quite a lot of transcribing to do for this show which people have been working on for weeks now. So I was asked to stay late and finish all the rest of the tapes, transcribing the final hours worth of interviews needed for this show. Now transcribing is not a particularly fun job. I'd witnessed many people getting ready to rip their hair out after a few hours at the viewing stations. So I felt good about doing this because afterwards, it would be done forever (for this show anyway). So this is why I agreed to it. Well that and they paid me extra for it. Now this wouldn't be too terrible a task if the the subject matter of the interviews was interesting. Sadly, this was not so. I've never watched anything on the Women's Entertainment channel before, but after this experience, I can say that if I was a woman I would hate this channel for giving pandering to all the stereotypes of their gender-biased demographic. In other words, this was basically a show about gossip. Where was this or that famous person last seen eating? Who are they dating now? When is their new clothing line coming out? Maybe I'm just a little bitter because I had to watch this for hours (the girl who paid me to work overtime also apologized to me many times), maybe it's because after seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 I really wanted to punch Britney Spears in the face, or maybe it's because this show has inspired Radio Babylon strange dream #1. In this dream, I am eating lunch with the Olsen twins who are devouring starving Ethiopian orphan children and then vomiting them back up to maintain their twig-ish figures. At any rate, that's why I haven't been blogging as much lately.

Elsewhere, I've become very impressed with The First Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. As the name suggests, these guys have created all of their instruments out of vegetables. The web site also has a lot of pictures of the instruments and some excerpts from their albums. Granted, the music isn't something that's going to start any movements or anything, but I give them a lot of credit for trying something different and doing it with such a passion. I'm currently trying to find an album by them. Anyone know of anywhere that I can order it without having to place an order to Austria?

Also, the message boards at We Are the Music Makers is back online. A while back, WATMM was one of the best resources for information about Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Boards of Canada, Autechre, and all things braindance. Which brings us to today's music (6 tracks today to make up for last week). Today's music is all unreleased from Cylob. The mixture of ambient, idm, drum n bass, UK acid, and the general experimental braindance sound is what defines Aphex Twin's Rephlex Records label. So here's Cylob's Braindance Anthem and some other tracks that weren't included on any album (or the porno soundtracks that he supposedly produces).

Cylob - I Believe in Braindance (The Braindance Anthem)

Cylob - Eldritch

Cylob - Grandular Psychosis

Cylob - Set Off Gamelan

Cylob - Cutting Remarks

Cylob - Rewind (live at Bayside Jenny, Osaka, Japan 1998)

::source::

2004-07-05T00:48:00.000-04:00

2004-06-30T21:56:00.000-04:00

a brief hiatus

Sorry for the lack of music lately. More coming soon.

2004-06-30T21:54:00.000-04:00

2004-06-28T22:25:00.000-04:00

Petri Dish Music

I was just checking out the web site for Jakalope, the new project from Skinny Puppy producer, Dave "Rave" Oglivie. He's been working with the likes of Katie B, the Sons of Freedom, and unfortunately, Trent Reznor. I say unfortunately not because I don't like Trent Reznor. Actually Nine Inch Nails was one of my favorite bands growing up. But it seems that everything that Reznor touches ends up getting delayed over and over again. Remember when Zach De La Rocha was working on his solo album? But maybe we'll get lucky this time. Anyway, I was on the site and I was pretty impressed by the music in the background. I'm hoping that a lot of the album will sound like that. Just simple, calming, ambient texture music. Perfect music for a petri dish, which is the only other thing on the web site.

Riz Malsen, better known as Neotropic, is one of those names that you don't hear often enough. There's something very interesting, very different about her music. It sounds organic, but not in anyway that I've heard before. If Jakalope is the music that looks at a petri dish, then Neotropic is being inside it. Alternating between wide open spaces and microscopic points. She was originally signed to Ninja Tune's N Tone label before making her new home on Mush Records. This is from her new album, White Rabbits.

Neotropic - Inch Inch

::source::

2004-06-24T21:53:00.000-04:00

You know that Aphex Twin song, Milkman? Ever wonder what that voice is saying at the beginning of the track? Imagine what could have been had Richard James made it to Top of the Pops.

I've been meaning to post something by Oval for a while now. Although Oval is a full band (their first album featured full vocal tracks), it is really the creation of Markus Popp, one half of Microstoria with Jan St. Werner from Mouse on Mars. The source material for Oval's sound is sampled from compact discs with scratches or paint on the surface. While this may sound like of gimmicky at first, there is something kind of sublime, mysterious and relaxing about the result. Lately the sound has become more computer based and even more complex, as was Popp's latest side project, So, with Japanese artist, Eri. Anyone who understands this sound (or at least enjoys it) should do themselves a favor and check out the rest of Oval's back catalogue, he doesn't disappoint.

Oval - Zentrik

::source::

2004-06-23T23:05:00.000-04:00

Balk Errors

Because of a lack of time, I'm cutting right to the mp3. Here's a couple of remixes of Speedy J. I'll probably have some more up soon. These two come from Cocoa Wild Boars, who I don't know anything about. They sound to me like some of Funkstörung's less abstract work. Think a more straight forward version of Autechre. The second remix is simpler, Speedy J's textures with some distorted drum beats.

Speedy J - Balk Acid (Cocoa Wild Boars' Balk Error 1)

Speedy J - Balk Acid (Cocoa Wild Boars' Balk Error 2)

::source::

2004-06-22T21:51:00.000-04:00

It's jazz for your trousers

I like concept blogs. Lacunae has a simple concept, all mp3's come from 7 inch vinyl from the 80's and 90's. They're also all on there with permission from the artists, so if you've been feeling guilty about downloading, these tracks are legitimate.

Today's download comes from one of the best performances I saw at Homelands this year, Mr. Scruff. I only have one challenge in trying to describe this music, which is that Andrew Carthy (the man behind the scruff) has already chosen perfect titles that already describe the music better than I ever could. The title of his last album, Trouser Jazz, seems to fit his style better than any genre I could come up with on my own. And everytime I hear this song, I do actually picture shrimp dancing at the bottom of the ocean, enjoying their pies. If you haven't seen the web site yet, take a moment to go there and watch the cartoons. They're definitely part of Mr. Scruff's success story.

Mr. Scruff - Shrimp

::source::