What amounts to a dream anymore?
A crude device, a veil on our eyes
A simple plan, we’d be different from the rest
And never resign to a typical life

Common fears start to multiply
We realize we’re paralyzed
Where’d it go, all that precious time?
Did we even try to stem the tide?

Why should we waste it on
Buying into the same old lies?
The longer we wait around
The faster the years go by

- Burton, Mercer

Posted in Flatbeat on Sunday November 28, 2010.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a most excellent dance and woke up the next morning with a spring in my step I wanted to carry through the rest of the week. I threw down a quick mix, and cleaned it up the following week. I hope you enjoy listening to dude sweeter as much I did making it.

Tracks:

[Random Bangkok sounds]
Chemical Brothers – Another World
Calvin Harris – I’m Not Along (Deadmau5 mix)
Paul Kalkbrenner – Boom
Underworld – Bird 1
UNKLE – In a State (Sasha mix)
Kaito – Hundred Million Lighyears
Alphawezen – Deja Vu (Vocal joint)
Alan Braxe & Fred Falke – Most Wanted
Ellen Allien and Apparat – Do Not Break
D Ramirez & Underworld – Downpipe
Gui Boratto – No Turning Back
Martina Topley-Bird – Phoenix
Caribou – Odessa (Nite Jewel remix)
Royksopp – The Drug
The Flashbulb – Tomorrow Untrodden

Posted in Flatbeat on Friday October 15, 2010.

he laid down on his bed
with the front door open
and the sunlight flooding into the room
he smelled time
he laid back listening to a fly

he saw the washing hanging in the sun
he caught a fleeting glimpse of a man
moving up hill
pursued by a bus he saw a white church
with a three blue domed roof
a crucifix on the top and
an ant walked along the edge of his book he heard
another bell
and a grey mustache

A moped started up
sounding like a chainsaw
of tiny firecrackers
and he smelled the time again

- Hyde

Posted in Flatbeat on Monday September 13, 2010.

Awesome prince, get your sleep
Lose your heart in history
Make us laugh or nothing will
I set a fire just to see what it kills

Don’t be bitter, Anna
I know how you think
You’re waiting for Radio City to sink
You’ll find commiseration in everyone’s eyes
The storm will suck the pretty girls into the sky

All our lonely kicks are getting harder to find
We’ll play nuns versus priests until somebody cries
All our lonely kicks that make us saintly and thin
We’ll play nuns versus priests until somebody wins

Leave our excellent souls
Head for the coast

- Matt Berninger

Posted in Flatbeat on Sunday May 2, 2010.

I’m in the hole
Three thousand days
A buried soul
They live the dream
In terminal
No war too mean

I know the drill
Got cells to burn
I’m dressed to kill
A mortal coil
And time is still
On secret soil

Yeah pay the bills
Cells to burn
Mouths to fill
On Boeing jets
In the sunset make glowing threats

- Robert Del Naja
(Closing track on the stunning Heligoland)

Posted in Flatbeat on Sunday February 28, 2010.

This might the best use of the Techno Viking yet. See also Slap Chop.

Posted in Vidiot on Tuesday February 23, 2010.

We must blend into the choir
Sing as static with the whole
We must memorise nine numbers and deny we have a soul
And in this endless race for property and privilege to be won
We must run, we must run, we must run

We must hang up in the belfry
Where the bats and moonlight laugh
We must stare into a crystal ball and only see the past
And in the caverns of tomorrow
With just our flashlights and our love
We must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge

- Oberst

Posted in Shutterbug on Tuesday January 26, 2010.

The sound of Gilberto from the balcony, and a view over the garden as the black cat stalks moths in the tall, browning grass. She ducks behind the pot plants, until all I can see is the tip of her tail flicking back and forth. I’m finishing a bottle of Cab Sav, and trying to ignore that it’s Sunday.

This week I’ve been living and breathing Blockhead’s latest, The Music Scene, as a soundtrack to petty internal politics and long days and nights. It’s wildly inconsistent, completely eclectic, and altogether wonderful.

Mr Simon can genre-jump with the best of them, and during the sixty minutes of the record, he lurches between downtempo hip-hop, expansive soundscapes, a bit of drum and bass, and even samples a couple screaming obscenities at each other as they claw their way through a domestic, backed by gravely jazz. That’s pretty much where my head has been the past couple of weeks, and I’m glad to have found a soundtrack for it.

Now, which one of you jerks drank my Arnold Palmer?

Posted in Shutterbug on Sunday November 15, 2009.

On first listen I wasn’t sure what to make of Röyksopp’s latest effort, Junior. Other than the first track, the stand-out Happy Up Here (which also has a stunning video) the album didn’t seem to have either sense of fun (Eple, Remind Me) or the sheer get-on-the-floor danceability (Only This Moment, Beautiful Day Without You) of Melody or Understanding.

Then there was the feeling that guest vocalists Robyn and The Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson were being chronically underused. Witness Dreijer Andersson’s stunning vocals on her Fever Ray release this year and compare it to the nursery school chanting on Tricky Tricky (“six afraid of seven, ‘cause seven ate nine”) and you have to scratch your head and wonder what the grand plan is.

Each of the tracks are great individually, but as a whole there is an underlying sweetness to that left me wanting the downtempo and darker side to Röyksopp that balanced the first two albums so well. Then I read a couple of interviews with the band and discovered that the second part of the album, the more moody and atmospheric Senior is due to drop later this year.

I guess it’s a sum of all parts thing, then. Until then, I guess I’ll just keep listening to This Must Be It on repeat and wait for the remixers to get their hands dirty.

Posted in Flatbeat on Sunday May 31, 2009.

Listening to early Prodigy reminds of Montenegro; concrete-block pool in a bay overlooking the Russian submarine base, and the copper-bitter taste of blood in my mouth as I coughed and watched the stains turn brown on my towel. The pool had a shark-alarm, currents, and after we got out and old man in a worn orange beanie cast a line into the centre and settled against the stands to wait for a bite. We roamed the beach side stalls searching for pirate CDs and booze, and when I finally made it to the doctor he told me it was bronchitis and filled my hands with medicines I didn’t understand.

I listened to music for a jilted generation on loop as we rattled toward then Yugoslavia, the laser guns, whoops and radio chatter in stark contrast to the pockmarked and shattered countryside outside the windows. The legoland hotel we were staying at a gleaming white edifice in a sea of grey, scarred concrete.

Hard to believe that’s more than ten years ago, now. A different world, and one I’m not entirely sad I’ve escaped from.

Posted in Travel on Tuesday March 3, 2009.