This is something I have been meaning to do for a while: a list of some of our favourite podcasts to fill a rainy day downloading, as I do my bit to spread the word by way of thanks for all the fantastic music they have deposited on our server. I just hope your bandwidth can take it!
Marvin Suicide Marvin Suicide's half hour weekly show for London's wonderful Resonance FM is also available as a collectible take-home podcast; but what is most amazing about each top-notch tune-packed dispatch is that all of the music featured has been found for free and legal download on the internet (from netlabels and the like), without ever having to compromise on quality. Marvin has a funny farmer-voice too, although I suspect that he might be putting that on for the radio...
One of my favorites is Tycho's http://blog.iso50.com/ Not so much a pod casting blog but the Scott & crew posts some really great music along with its daily design posts.
Peter from the Laptoprockers website just sent me this rather amusing photo of our Border Community boys "doing" Barcelona, which he found during a (rather belated) rummage through his colleague Reinier's photos from this years Sonar extravaganza:
Left to right you can see: Ricardo Tobar, Nathan Fake, Petter Nordkvist, James Holden, and some mystery texter who has sneaked into the edge of the shot. They were papped hiding in the corner at the Beatport rooftop pool party which they all went along to the day after our Loft party. James tells me that the photo captures the precise moment that they were all contemplating jumping off the side of the building just to escape the minimal onslaught, with Petter seemingly volunteering to go first...
i didnt think minimal was even being played anymore. good shot, should have cropped the texter. better yet, cut/paste the head of abbott on the texter and cut/paste a banana in his right hand. or a sign that says 'minimal rocks my world'
Julie from Parisian promoters We Love Art just sent me a selection of photos from the special We Love Border Community soiree they organised for us in Paris a couple of weekends ago. The combination of the perfect location, an electric atmosphere and an all-Border Community line-up made for a wonderful evening for everyone involved: James Holden reckoned it was the highlight of his current mini-tour with Ricardo Tobar, and I reckon it was also coincidentally the gig where little Ricky got the most wasted, so it was probably one of his highlights too...
Anyway, on to those photos: the venue was a monumental seventies wooden building set in the Bois de Vincennes park right on the edge of Paris. Inside was your normal sweaty dancefloor with some hardcore lazer action:
Outside was a chance to cool off without missing any of the music in the wooded garden decorated with our ubiquitous clouds hanging from the trees:
A photo of Petter, who managed to open proceedings with a DJ set, in spite of Air France's best efforts to lose his record bag "somewhere in Charles De Gaulle":
When a particularly wasted stage invader took to grinding behind our little Chilean cutie Ricardo Tobar during his set, James' paternal instinct immediately kicked in and we began to make our way back towards the stage to relieve poor Ricky. But when said stage invader took to swinging James' DJ bag around by the handle before falling over into the lighting rig at the back of the stage, James' walk soon turned into a run, and the fuck-up was forcibly manhandled from the stage by our little stick-like and confrontation-shy James himself: I have never seen anything like it! But if you ask me, it was his desire to protect the precious record bag that motivated him, rather than his concerns for poor Ricky as the much more charitable Rosana (my only corroborative witness that this actually happened!) was inclined to believe. Ricardo meanwhile carried on regardless, and didn't seem phased at all:
A Nathan Fake live show really is a bit of an extreme sport, and the bizarre shapes that the techno contortionist throws during the course of a set always brings a smile to my face. I think these two photos rather ably illustrate my point - someone should turn them into one of those animated gif things, enabling a Nathan Fake live show simulation in the comfort of your own home:
Finally, James Holden handled the graveyard shift to round things off while the others got wasted, as is usual at these type of events:
Only for some reason tonight he decided to take his shoes and socks off to DJ, much to the entertainment of Petter and myself (and seemingly also the other photographer in this shot):
So there we have it: thanks to the We Love Art crew for everything, and thanks also to everyone who came along and embraced the full head-to-toe Border Community experience. We Love Paris too!
rich blogging, tron. nice coverage. good nattie flake art. the g forces actually pull his cheeks forward as he lunges at the controller. doesnt get more iconic than that. really good to hear about james going hellboy on that fuck. there is so much ass to kick but so little moments where its spontaneous and excusable. i tell you, its hard to not go taxi driver on some of these every day bitches. bare feet on deck, you just dont mess with the zohan. SMELL IT, SMELL IT, NOW TAKE IT!!!!
I am just in the process of mobilising the troops for this year's Glade Festival, which reminded me that I have yet to mention the lovely alternative-electronic Reading festival on here. So here goes: I know it is rather short notice, but next weekend (18th-20th July) my hero James Holden will be playing at the Glade Festival near Reading. Pretty much all of the UK-based BC-crew will be heading along for the weekend, and if you'd like to be there too, tickets are still available from Seetickets.
James was lucky enough to play at the first ever Glade Festival in 2004, when we were pleasantly surprised to turn up on the Sunday afternoon and find that the whole festival site was a refreshing picture of cleanliness and civilisation. Unfortunately we haven't been back since, so we thought that this year was high time for a return visit. Since then the festival has grown somewhat, witnessed flooding on a biblical scale, and then shrunk a little back to this year's capacity of 12000, but their admirable anti-sponsorship ethos has remained constant throughout. The only bit I am not really feeling is their no teenagers policy, which seems slightly at odds with the festival's one-big-happy-hippy-family vibe: the world's current tendency to treat teenagers like they are the scum of the earth seems highly ill-advised to me (big woolly liberal that I am).
Anyway, the running order for the whole festival has just been announced, and because I am bossy like that, here is my guide to what I reckon is worth seeing over each of the three days.
James and Ricardo Tobar will be in Belgium on the Friday night with Misstress Barbara for the Border Community event at 10 Days Off, but the rest of us should be heading along before them, hoping to get there in time to catch some Vitalic symphonies at 4.30pm on the Glade stage. The Bangface crew will be raving it up in the Overkill tent from 10pm into the early hours, but I will no doubt be dragged back to the Glade for some Pendulum action at 11pm, and we may also pop in to see what Slam are up to nowadays over on the Vapor stage at 1am.
On Saturday, perhaps we'll get up in time to catch Nathan Fake's old college mate Christopher D. Ashley at about 1pm on the Glade stage, before James joins us there to play in a Dreadzone and System 7 flavoured teenage-heroes sandwich at 8.30pm. Then we will most definitely be eschewing Dubfire's attempts to beam us up in favour of a spot of Autechre in the Overkill tent at 11pm, but very possibly consenting to Jeff Mills' attempts to keep everyone up from 2am on the Vapor stage.
Sunday demands another prompt start for the soothing melodies of Ulrich Schnauss at 1.30pm on the Glade stage, followed by a difficult decision between The Orb and Clark, who will be competing head to head for our attentions in the final set of the day on the Glade stage and the Overkill tent respectively.
Of course there are a bunch of other artists you might be interested in too, but you'll have to look up set times for these fellows yourself: Meat Katie, Billy Nasty, Red Snapper, Pathaan, Claude Von Stroke, Paul Woolford, Plump DJs, Stanton Warriors, Elite Force, Tayo, Plastician, DJ Scotch Egg, Vex'd, The Bug, Rob Hall, Lee Burridge and Mr C.
i know the office monkey, when not busy sewing james' shadow back on him, is busy rallying and forming the troops. but i must suggest you see YOU DONT MESS WITH THE ZOHAN when you get the chance. i wonder if they've got something like NETFLIX on the island. i think you can stream your movies. also, don't you think planes should have power outlets like bedrooms do? me too
A little advance notice for all of our Dutch comrades to set their tape player (if people even still have them?) to record Dave Clarke's White Noise radio show on 3voor12 this coming Saturday, which will feature a half hour excerpt from James Holden's set recorded at last week's 5 Days Off event in Amsterdam. And thanks to the proverbial wonder of t'internet, the rest of the world can also listen online, via the 3voor12 website.
As well as current tour buddy Ricardo Tobar, James was lucky enough to share the 5 Days Off stage this year with the charming Supermayer, performing only their second ever live show. It is always a pleasure to bump into Michael and Aksel on our travels, but catching their live set was a rare treat indeed for James. It being a school night, I unfortunately didn't go with this time, but I have it on the highest possible authority (well, James told me!) that the Supermayer live show is the definition of cute, managing to work a host of junior school instruments into the live techno format: triangle, tambourine, melodion and even a woodblock, on which they performed a remarkable 4-bars-at-a-time woodblock-solo battle-off.
The specially-created accompanying visuals are an appropriate enhancement to the Supermayers' inherent cuteness factor, wherein the superhero stories from the metaphor-laden Save The World album artwork are further elucidated and expanded upon, the highlight of which sees a pair of felt Supermayer dolls pissing on the fire emanating from the burning Cologne cathedral. I had a quick look on Youtube for videos from the night, the best of which is below, but you are most strongly urged to catch the duo in the flesh at the Melt or Benicassim festivals, or else the annual Total 9 party in Cologne in August for the grand unveiling of the 2008 Kompakt manifesto.
ahhh woodblock-offs. a school night? you working on your Phd now? when will we see you on CNN.com? it was journalism right, gemma? shit i feel you, every night for me is a school night. and thats after a full day of trooping. i'm working on a degree in information systems security. pretty soon i will be unbanable. administrators and members of the RA, GU and 4four yea shall find yeaselves locked down, locked the fuck out. i wonder if having so much computer geek power means having to take an oath not to use it like black magic?
Yes it was indeed the definition of cute! Long time since i saw such a fun and creative live act. Mister Mayer and Schaufler always look like they are truly enjoying themselves. Great night allround!
May i point out that not only the Holden set can be listened to on line at 3voor12 but also Ricardo Tobars live set. And as soon as some rights issues get cleared the full Supermayer set at http://www.fabchannel.com/supermayer_concert/
Not content with wowing crowds across Europe with his shit-hot new live show, our Chilean recruit Ricardo Tobar (or Richie Tobarlobos as Nathan and Petter took to calling him during this year's Sonar-week antics) has also found time to turn in one of those lovely influence-showcasing podcast mixes for our bum chums Allez-Allez. I have been a little slow on the uptake this time as Ricardo's mix has actually been up on their site for download since last week, but because Sam and Steve are currently operating on summer slack-time there will be no new mixes for another full week anyway, so I think I just about got away with it...
That mix tracklist in full, then (download link is here): 1) Prodigy - Medusas Path 2) Chemical Brothers - Three Little Birdies Down Beats 3) Leftfield - Afro-Left 4) Aphex Twin - 0008900569 5) Miwon - Hush 6) Slowdive - Good Day Sunshine 7) Jess M - Coitus 8) Umek - Voices Of Africa 9) Unknown Track 10) Atlas Sound - Winter Vacation 11) Duo505 - Nochwas 12) Kero - 6.18 Multi Just 13) Arovane - Tascel 7
Despite being the proud possessor of one of those killer laptop-live shows that we are so fond of, Ricardo does also do a spot of DJing: indeed, it seems to be the preferred mode of performance for promoters in his Chilean homeland (next date August 2nd at Club Declive in Santiago). Thankfully, those arbitrary souls at UK customs decided not to deport him after all "for not having enough cash on him" last weekend as he tried to return to his between-gig base at his cousin Andrea's house in Brighton, so Ricardo is free to continue to showcase his live stylings around Europe for the rest of this month: do yourself a favour and catch one of his remaining shows in Amsterdam (tonight), Paris (5th), Aix En Provence in France (11th), Lake Balaton in Hungary (12th), Athens (13th) or Gent in Belgium (18th). For full details check Ricardo's Myspace...
And probably you have already realised this, but I think it bears repeating, if only to foil anyone trawling for free music blog downloads (Google Analytics is watching you!): Ricardo Tobar's wonderful new Boy Love Girl EP is always available to download here on mp3 for the eminently reasonable sum of just three of your English pounds.
Details of the location for the We Love Border Community blowout in Paris this Saturday 5th July (featuring James Holden, Nathan Fake, Petter and Ricardo Tobar) have just been revealed: the We Love Art team have secured the La Chesnaie du Roy salon in the Bois de Vincennes park right on the edge of Paris as the site for this special one-off. This info comes hot from an email from press agency Phunk, whose rather poetic French language description of the place actually came out in pretty decent English when I shoved it through Google Translate:
"Dans un lieu digne des contes de fees, une pagode en verre avec vue sur le parc floral et le grand jardin, une nuit exceptionnelle entre reveries electronica et dancefloor minimal sous les arbres."
"In a place worthy of tales of fairies, a glass pagoda overlooking the park and the large floral garden, an outstanding night between reveries dancefloor electronica and minimal under the trees."
The Bois de Vincennes park in the 12th arrondissement is the largest green space in Paris, and We Love Art have held a couple of parties in La Chesnaie du Roy in the past, taking full advantage of its indoor dancefloor with a view to the garden and accompanying outdoor magical woodland space for dancing in. They kindly sent me a few sneak preview photos, taken at their We Love Fantasy and We Love Get Physical events:
So as you might expect, we are all pretty excited as we prepare to descend on Paris tomorrow for a weekend of fun! The weather on Saturday evening is supposed to be warm and rain-free, if perhaps a little on the cloudy side, so all the signs are good!
what am i thinking? this location and occasion has some real fucking gravitas. i see alot of northern techno alliance in this. this could be big for paris and the future of how to experience the BC. kind of like the discovery of a rat that can cook and then tasting the fruit of its a labors as you fast backwards to the better times of innocence
I have just been sent the finished flyer for the upcoming special We Love Border Community party in Paris, for which the We Love Art crew seem to have constructed some kind of amusing imaginary midi-controlled handcrafted windmill:
Full marks for doing their research, as the particular midi-controller featured is the preferred model of party guests Nathan Fake (when playing live) and James Holden (in the studio, although his is currently serving as a handy surface on which to rest his Monome and voltmeter): the trusty Evolution UC-33. But that is not really such a strange coincidence, since the fact that it offers lots of knobs at a reasonable price meant that the Evolution UC-33 became pretty ubiquitous: the company were eventually bought out by M-Audio, who still sell the rebranded UC-33e should you have the urge to add one to your own music gear collection. James Holden has kindly provided me with his own mini-review: "It was great with Buzz, is OK for Ableton / Traktor, and shit for Cubase". (But if anyone has managed to find something useful to do with it in Cubase, James would dearly love to hear from you in the comments...)
Putting the nerd talk back to one side again where it belongs, the We Love Border Community party takes place on Saturday 5th July in Paris, featuring live sets from Nathan Fake and Ricardo Tobar, and James Holden and Petter on DJ duty. We Love Art have found a fabulous indoor-outdoor woodland location to host the party, exact details of which will only be revealed closer to the time: for tickets and more information, keep your eye on their website and Myspace. Should be a good one!
nice usb controller. sniped the same one on ebay a few years ago. nath said they break easy, but perhaps has was using his to stone that bird with that kept flying away from him and olly in the wideo. something tells me that this year is the year of the table full of wires, controllers and noise makers. i know abbot and my man deacon are riding them like golden chairots at the moment, that means the geeks will be humping the concept by 2009 or 2010 depending if we run out of oil in the mean time and the world ends. so disregard geeks, this is not the trend you are looking for *waves hand and uses the force*. i say we start building the tables of wires, controllers and noise makers at hq and selling them through this website. you could have a link below the blog button for them. of course we will include into the table a brick of C 4 plastic explosives that will be set to detonate as the geeks gather around said purchased trend object at one of their fuck a trend in the ass-athon fests.
Our Chilean chum Ricardo Tobar has just created a playlist of some of his tracks of the moment for new tastemaking interactive music community Fairtilizer, which you can stream from the player below or on the Fairtilizer website. Full tracklisting as follows, then the nifty player for listening:
1) Vale Poher - Peacemaker 2) A Sunny Day In Glasgow - A Mundane Phonecall To Jack Parsons 3) Midnight Juggernauts - Shadows (M83 Remix) 4) Dwayne Sodahberk - Every Morning 5) Film School - Lectric 6) Air Formation - Adrift 7) Deerhunter - Spring Hall Convert 8) White Rainbow - Mystic Prism 9) Seabear - Arms 10) Aphex Twin - Green Calx
Ricardo's playlist also comes accompanied by a brief interview, as well as a sneak preview of EP track Computers (available to buy in our mp3 store from Monday when his 'Boy Love Girl EP' is released).
For those of you not yet familiar with the Fairtilizer concept, the idea is that you use the site to discover more of that there new music, collecting your favourite tracks together into playlists to share with your friends if you so desire. Selections are uploaded daily by key artists, labels and media outlets, but ultimately it is the actions of the everyday users that gives the most deserving tracks the best promotion.
One playlist with a difference recently added to the site is a selection of exclusive live tracks from Tigersushi's dashing Poni Hoax, recorded at the Art Rock festival in St-Brieux. Franz Ferdinand are apparently big fans, but our own James Holden likes them too: luckily his favourite Paper Bride is amongst the live offerings provided by Joakim for the Fairtilizer playlist, just in case listening to the original on repeat for a whole day wasn't quite enough for him.
i like this fairtilizer thing. gives you something to do between fits of swinging the lucky club around your bedroom. not that i can be arsed to upload the same indie tracks everyone else is, just in different tastes but with coincident lines. i mean, x-2y=-2 will always be 4x-8y=-8. i still favor mixing together the more open to interpretation instrumental 4/4 tracks like potzblitz and donner wetter in a mix simply because a bunch of intrumental tracks actually mixed into each other has a greater potential for the carefully constructed to be un-obvious yet powerfully suggestive presence of a hidden agenda directed by the mixer. anything less is just a jessica simpson itunes favorites mix. does no one at hq remember the great 2002 live mashup of solstice and passive aggressive remix? i remember, brother doo doo. i always remember. you can't do a meaningful mashup like that with two gay ass emo tracks. at least not live on bucking wild pair of decks. unless you are agoria. but i hope this mashup to unexpectedly occur on your asses at some future venue shake down. i am calling for it. then you will know what real troopers can do.
We were very excited to have Norfolk's latest bright young hope Luke Abbott play his first show for us at The End on Saturday, and he didn't disappoint, although he did leave James wondering what on earth he was going to play during his set after all his favourite Luke Abbott current DJ set staples had already received a rinsing in Luke's own live show. Luke himself proper enjoyed playing on The End's quality soundsystem, which seems perfectly suited to his brand of deep and interesting raw computer noise. He was also pleasantly surprised at how far away from straight-up dance music a Border Community crowd are prepared to go, and the encouraging noises during his more experimental moments have given him the confidence he needed to mess around with the dancefloor blueprint even more next time...
That next time for Londoners comes around on Saturday 21st June, when Luke Abbott is lined up to play in Shepherds Bush at bohemian ex-toilet Ginglik. The night in question promises to be a bit of an audio-visual extravaganza, with Luke teaming up with old partner in crime Dan Tombs for a re-run of their Tape Tokyo video installation, and event hosts the Creative Cloud Collective debuting their Under Over The Clouds film project. Additional music comes from Nintendo Wii musician Micromattic (aka Microwave, who provided the music for the Under Over The Clouds project), Finnish IDM-er Recue, and the multi-disciplined Barbara Kalaschnikoff, tonight putting on her DJ hat.
As well as being in our hood, the lovely Ginglik (which has just celebrated its 6th Birthday - doesn't time fly!) also seems to be a bit of a pet favourite venue for the Border Community massive, so you can expect to run into plenty of us down there. We'll be making a whole weekend of it in fact, heading on to Ricardo Tobar's first UK gig for Sonic Cathedral at The Social the following Sunday afternoon (where James Holden will also be on alt.dj duties). And at just five pounds a piece for tickets for each event, I don't see much reason why you shouldn't join us too!
A quick heads-up for my blog-reading homies: tickets are now available from We Got Tickets for a special collaboration with legendary London promoters Sonic Cathedral on Sunday 22nd June. The Sunny Sunday Smile shindig aims to tempt you into The Social from 3pm until late with the offer of our own Ricardo Tobar (live) and James Holden (DJ) alongside James Rutledge (DJ) and Winterlight (live) for the very reasonable sum of five pounds. (This info is so hot it has yet to hit Sonic Cathedral's own website, so you really have a decent head start on making sure you get in.)
A bit more on the Sunny Sunday Smile concept: one day later on June 23rd, Sonic Cathedral's record label wing will release a white 7" containing a pair of My Bloody Valentine songs as played by cover-merchants Japancakes and remixed by Ricardo Tobar and James Rutledge, and this show at The Social serves as the launch party for said release. Sunday June 23rd also marks the mid-point of My Bloody Valentine's five-night Roundhouse residency, and Sonic Cathedral just so happen to be offering discounted entry to all My Bloody Valentine ticket holders, and have also conveniently promised that the Ricardo Tobar and Winterlight live sets will finish just in time to facilitate your onward travel to the Roundhouse show later that evening. All those not lucky enough to have scored tickets to the MBV blowout meanwhile can think of this little soiree as a timely shoegaze fix, so everyone is a winner...
Rather coincimentally, 23rd June also happens to be the release date of Chilean cutie Ricardo Tobar's new 'Boy Love Girl EP' on Border Community, which might explain why he will be hanging around in London-town in June to play this UK debut show at The Social. We have also lined up a series of Ricardo Tobar club dates across Europe throughout June and July alongside tour-guide-dog James Holden: more info on Ricardo's first European tour coming to this space just as soon as it is all confirmed.
And the coincidences just keep on coming: the other James (Rutledge) who will be DJing at Sunny Sunday Smile may be better known to some of you as Pedro of the Melodic label fame, but it is probably less well-known that he was at Oxford University at the same time as erstwhile maths scholar James Holden (with whom he shares the Sunny Sunday Smile bill) and myself. Although back then we sat on opposite sides of the fence, with James Rutledge in the role of Music Editor at the Cherwell whilst I did the same job over on rival paper The Oxford Student, and naturally roped in a dreadlocked young James Holden as one of my review writers. The old boy network extends into every possible industry, it would seem...
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