This is the best Kate Bush song I've heard in a long time. Kleerup together with Robyn. I must confess that I'm a bit surprised. Seems like Robyn is moving further and further away from her pop and R&B roots. I don't mind.
When I played at Snottys yesterday I played a lot of Simian Mobile Disco. They are one of those bands that people always come up to me and ask who they are. Simian Moblie Disco has its roots in Simian which split up in 2005. Simon Lord started a new project called Garden and James Ford and James Shaw started Simian Mobile Disco. Their new album Attack Decay Sustain Release will be released on June 18. That's almost now!
School's out for summer! After the kids had left we had a really fun party. We started out on the back of the school with strawberries, cake and sparkling wine.
human league - path of least resistance (live BBC 1979)
cabaret voltaire - nag nag nag (1979)
cabaret voltaire - yashar (1983 remix - original came 1981)
In Düsseldorf, Germany, did Kraftwerk make five very influential albums between 1974 and 1981. Their music was totally electronic, clean and machine like. Often did their music celebrate different aspects of the modern world - the autobahn, radio, trains, robots and computers. In Sheffield, England, Richard H. Kirk - a member of the Young Communist League - and Chris Watson formed Cabaret Voltaire in 1973 and four years later Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Mars formed The Human League together with Philip Oakey. They were all influenced by A Clockwork Orange and Wendy (then Walter) Carlos electronic soundtrack to that movie. Other big influences were William S Burroughs, the British New Wave SciFi writer J. G. Ballard - especially his book The Atrocity Exhibition - and Brian Eno. Cabaret Voltairs and The Human Leagues music were much darker than Kraftwerks music. It showed the dirty backside of industrialization. When I listen to these four songs now - almost thirty years later - I'm surprised how vital and modern they still sound.
I crawled down to Holmen on Sunday morning. Super tired. After laying there in the grass for a while I saw that we have a new buoy in the water. If you look closely to the right in the water you can see it.
I'm sure no one's surprised that I went to Snottys last Saturday. Went there with Per, Karin and Freddex2. As always it was fun but very warm. I'll play there next Saturday - if you're in town come by and say hello.
I like Berberisvägen (Barberry road). It reminds me of Hittarp where my grandparents Malte & Ida lived and where I spent my summers as a child. Sometimes nostalgia rules.
It's June 6 and I didn't have to work today because it's the National holiday of Sweden. It's a stupid nationalist holiday that the government forced upon us in 2005. Why do we have to celebrate the despot Gustav Vasa? It's just stupid. But it has been a great day. Lot's of sunshine.
Finally the first trailer from the Golden Compass has arrived. Since I'm a Sci-Fi & Fantasy nerd I care for things like these. I really enjoyed Philip Pullmans trilogy of books called His Dark Materials. They added something new and interesting to the Fantasy genre. Mixed it with a typical Sci-Fi theme like a multiverse of parallel worlds that you can travel between. One of those worlds is ours. The book also brings up a very dark view of organized religion. In a parallel world to ours the Church is very powerful. It's a world where magic, witches, talking animals and dæmons exist. In this world the girl Lyra Belacqua grows up at Jordan College, Oxford not knowing who her parents are. The world outside Jordan College is like a steampunk version of the Victorian era England. In this world the Church and the scientists have discovered the existence of something they call Dust. The Church believes that Dust is a manifestation of Original Sin and that there's a relation between Dust, a persons dæmon and sin. Because of that they start a series of horrific experiments on childrens dæmons. At the same time Lord Asriel, a highly respected member of the Brytish aristocracy and an explorer and a experimental theologist, has done his own research about Dust. He attempts to overthrow the Authority's divine monarchy and replace it with a Republic of Heaven. Quite a heavy theme for a book targeted at "young adults" and it made the Christian Right shit their pants. First Harry Potter and then this!
So, what about the trailer? It looks pretty nice. I like the look of the panserbjørnIorek Byrnison, at least in the close ups. The running scene at the end was a bit to much Coke commercial. But what the hell. Daniel Craig looks great as Lord Asriel. The same goes for Nicole Kidman as Marisa Coulter, Sam Elliott as the aeronaut Lee Scoresby and Eva Green as the witch Serafina Pekkala. But I'm a bit doubtful when it comes to Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra Belacqua. I really hope she can act otherwise the movie will be hard to watch. The look of the Gyptians also worries me a bit. I hope they won't look and sound like a bad stage version of Oliver Twist.
Satoshi Kon, the creator of classic animes like Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress and the strangely beautiful series Paranoia Agent has released a new movie called Paprika. It explores similar themes as his earlier movies. The subconscious, dreams, myths, movies and their influence on our lives. The animation is beautiful and the script is well written and thought provoking. Sometimes I think about Jeff Noons books about the drug Vurt. In those books dreams, myths and peoples subconscious seems to invade reality in the same way as in this movie. This is intelligent grown-up anime that's light years ahead of most western animated movies.
Discovery Channel has produced a series about the history of video games called "I, Videogame". So far I've seen three episodes and my feelings are mixed. They have interviewed almost all the major players in the video game history - Steve Russell, Ralph Baer, Nolan Bushnell, Toru Iwatani, Shigeru Miyamoto, Alexey Pajitnov, Sid Meier, John Romero etc etc. But Discovery Channel doesn't let them speak. They cut the interviews to pieces and turn the material into simple catch phrases. Personally I don't believe that everybody who's interested in video games are speed addicts. I'm sure that most of us would actually manage to watch a programme that doesn't have cuts and sound effects every second. It would be nice if they had raised the bar a bit higher. A "serious" programme doesn't have to be boring. Here they have interviewed loads of interesting people involved in the video game industry but reduce the series to something they seem to believe will interest 14 year old kids addicted to Red Bull and Jolt Cola. I think that's a mistake and I'm still waiting for the definitive history of video games.
If you haven't checked out Chromatics, Glass Candy, Mirage and Farah then it's time to do so. They are all on the New Jersey based label Italians Do It Better. Minimalistic chilly music inspired by Disco, Italo disco and old John Carpenter/Claudio Simonetti/Goblin soundtracks. Unit Black Flight and datA are kind of in the same area. Especially Unit Black Flight who sound a lot like John Carpenters Assault on Precinct 13 soundtrack. Perfect music for the commuter. Now it sounds like I'm on my way on some dark adventure. Pretty damn cool.
My body has turned into a Pac-Man game. Every morning I take a little Pac-Man (Doxyferm, an antibiotic) and hope that he will eat all the little evil bacterias that have invaded my body. I'm tired of being sick. Go Pac-Man, go! Eat all the little bastards!