I went to Pride here in Manchester a few weeks ago too - well it is kind of my duty, isn't it? I managed to get in on the blag (thanks again Joe!) as I really couldn't be arsed to pay £17 just to walled in to the village. I will write about that in another Manchester Calling post soon. I did get to see the Divine David performing at Club Brenda, and I managed to see Kelis live, which was great:
I uploaded the entire Disco Beard back catalogue to sendspace for someone to hear about a month ago - so if you haven't got any of this music now's your chance! Not sure how long more it will last up there, so if you want it grab it now. It's comprises the Beardism album, the Beardiality EP, and a couple of previously unreleased edits. So you get Giorgio Moroder, Bonzo Dog Band, Musique, Donald Byrd, JJ Cale, Claudio Simonetti, Stereolab, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Rapure, Annie, Citi, Earlene Bentley, Clifton Dyson, Richard T Bear, LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, Divine & Daft Punk. Click the pic above. Here's Stereolab's "One Finger Symphony (Re-Edit)":
IDJ Magazine also sent through a list of questions for DB to answer for their special "Beards" edition. We don't know yet if this ever got used, but here are the answers in full:
You can’t tell me who you are, but are you known to the music world in your regular lives?
DB1: Not really - or maybe we just want people to think that.
DB2: Um, yes, in a word.
Disco beards: an institution since Mancuso. Do you have beards yourselves? Who’s got the best beards in dance music?
DB1: Well, Mr Mancuso has set the template of course, he's rocked a beard since the early 70s. However the term "disco beard" started off as being derogatory - it meant a beard that was too well kept, not scruffy enough to be seen as truly "macho" or a rebellion against shaving. That was in the disco era, and it has a slightly homophobic undertone. Since then everyone from Danny Krivit to Balearic Mike has grown a beard, as a symbol of being musically "serious", which is kind of ironic!
DB2: We have been known to sport facial hair, yes. And we haven't seen it in a while, but Conrad Idjut Boy has had some proper gnarly bird's nest beards over the years.
DB1: Personally, I consider ZZ Top to be dance music, so I would have to go with them.
You’ve got a tongue in cheeky attitude to the tracks you’ve chosen to edit… Tell me a moment when you’ve surprised yourselves at the success/outcome of your editing.
DB2: "Surprise" hasn't really been an outcome, cos we only begin with tracks we really like and know we can edit.
DB1: I'd say the edit of Giorgio Moroder's "Utopia - Me Giorgio", as I could listen to that track for ever and ever!
DB2: Funnily enough that was the first track we ever edited...
And tell me a tune that just can’t be edited
DB1: Hah, not being able to edit a track hasn't stopped some people in the past! We've got a pretty old-school approach to editing tracks - for instance, we won't add anything to it that's not already there, because technically then you are creating a new version, you're not just editing the original. I mean fair play to Erol Alkan and Optimo and the like, but we're a bit more choosy about the terminology.
DB2: Yeah we like to keep it to the basics - as if we were editing tracks on a reel-to-reel tape like Greg Wilson or Danny Krivit or whoever. Sometimes the reaction to this can be funny, like "This sounds the same as the original!?" - um, it's a re-edit, what did you expect?
DB1: In terms of not being able to edit a tune, that comes down to the arrangement already being perfect. There's a track by Duke Ellington from 1920 we've got that is incredible, with a big dubby bassline and a swung 4/4 beat, and we've been thinking about editing it for years. However, the more we listen to it the more we reckon it's already perfect, so why bother?
DB2: Yeah, but we'll still probably have a go!
Does keeping your identity secret cause you problems getting gigs?
DB2: Well, Disco Beard wasn't started to get gigs, it was to make certain tracks more playable in clubs.
DB1: Yes, and to create new versions for the gigs we already had.
Beardism was released a while ago… can we expect another album?
DB1: Hmm, not in the near future, but it's not out of the question.
DB2: It depends on work really, and if we get the time off to do it. Cos it's all non-profit, it can take a back seat sometimes. Also, some tracks we would like to edit often get edited by other DJs before us. Todd Terje is a good example, he's pipped us to the post many times! :-)
DB1: Having said that, we do occassionaly do new things for friends - like the Niallist asked us to do an edit for his new night Menergy. We decided to edit Richard T Bear as we thought Niall would appreciate the bear reference!
DB2: Yes, and we all know that bears love their beards.
DB1: And the men who wear them.
Have you had any legal scrapes yet or have you managed to stay under the radar?
DB2: We've been under the radar so far... wait, what's the circulation of IDJ?!
Tell me about your next release…
DB2: There's nothing planned as Disco Beard unfortunately, but you never know. Although Little Rock do still have a few old things of ours that have never come out, so some of that might see the light of day.
DB1: And there has been very vague chat about doing a one-sided, limited vinyl run of Utopia - Me Giorgio for the relaunch of the Discopia site, but there's nothing definite there.
DB2: Yeah, we have been discussing this because the whole point of giving these tunes away for free in the first place is that we don't own them. We know a few label owners who have been screwed over by illegal re-presses of tracks they were trying to re-issue legally, and that's pretty snide. So we don't wanna add to that.
DB1: Discopia's a great site though, so that would be a good cause we think. It would be more a one-off than a series like Automan or whatever.
DB2: Anyway, we will have things out under other names. Unless we get busted for this!
IMO Arthur Baker has the best disco beard - because it walks the line of being actually a disco beard (neat, trimmed) AND a muso beard, all the while being totally woofy:
From the Facebook event page, I am quite happy with this. :-)
Did you have a brain tumour for breakfast?
Does your teen angst bullshit have a body count?
But most of all, are you a Heather or are you a Veronica? ... This September Menergy are killing off Lock Up Your Daughters in a fake suicide pact and bringing you a very special party - come join the Swatch dogs and diet Coke heads to celebrate the greatest high school film of all time!
It'll be very!
Residents Kid Zipper & The Niallist will be joined by special guest DJ TEAMY (Wrong Island, T&A), with a thermal-pack of Hi-NRG, Italo and disco downstairs, while mega-bitch Lady Munter hosts the petition to blow up the club - oops, we mean to get Big Fun to play! Meanwhile in the backroom Kurt & Ram AKA Spill will have more to offer than date rave and acid rock.
It's so '87.
Our damage is only £5, but if you can prove your name really is Heather then you can get in for free - it's better than boning away on your neighbour's swing set! So don't become a statistic in USA Today, lock your paws at the Flying Duck on Friday 17th September, doors open 11pm. Anyway, we better motor if we wanna get ready for that funeral...
We fuckin LOVE Heathers at Menergy - the film, not the people (though they are pretty cool too) - so much so in fact that our next event is going to be a Heathers Party at the Flying Duck on Friday September 17th.
So why do we love it? It's funny, it's dark, it's sexy, it's classy and it has one of the best screenplays ever. EVER! Winona Rider and Christian Slater are both dynamite - the chemistry between them is so electric we assume they were a couple at this point - but the script is the real star. It shits on Tarantino in terms of delicious quotability, and has added so much new terminology to the modern lexicon as to be postively Shakespearean. Oh yes! "What's your damage?", "How very", "fuck me gently with a chainsaw"... the list goes on and on. It's the best written teen/school movie of all time!
And if you have not seen Heathers before - well, did you have a brain tumour for breakfast?! Get your eyes and ears to Youtube and clear the next 90 minutes of your life - you'll be glad you did!
A few weeks ago Che Camille had their debut fashion show at Edinburgh's Fringe Festival. Both Lady Munter and the Niallist performed as part of the show, to some RAVE reviews no less! Fashion blog Bee Wait For No One had this to say: "It really was the extra touches that really set this apart from other fashion shows on the fringe. The Niallist performing "Rock the Shop" was pretty magnificent....and I can't lie, a wee cheeky Ru Paul reference from the uh-mazing Lady Munter (YOU BETTER WORK!) kind of made it for me." Read the rest of the review here.
For more photos (and info on the show) check out the Che Camille website. With 14 designers and 10 models involved, it was truly epic, and as usual Camille pulled it off with aplomb. The show was streamed live over the internet, and you can watch it in it's entirety right here:
Sunday's fashion show by Che Camille (at the Edinburgh Fringe) was streamed live on Usteam, and has been recorded for posterity. You can watch it here - I perform Rock The Shop at about 48:00. The sound quality is pretty dire though, so best to just turn it off. It was an epic show (2 x 90 mins, 14 designers, 10 models) with a fair amount of stress, but it all worked out very well in the end.
Forgot to post this here the other week - originally on Shallow Rave. Natch.
Listen online, stream and download the Little Rock podcast every week on Radio Magnetic from the people behind Little Rock Records and ShallowRave.blogspot.com.
I went to see Toy story 3 yesterday - suffice to say that I loved it, even the evil Lots-O'Huggin' Bear. All he really needed was somebody to love. Awww. Fans of the first two films will definitely like it, and there's quite a few genuinely moving moments among the stunning animation.
What makes me write this post however, is the work of the NY Press film critic Armond White. Mr White is taking a lot of pelters online at the moment for writing deliberately "contrarian" reviews where he hates films that everyone else loves, and vice versa. So much so, that there is a campaign to get his reviews banned form the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. He also gets quite ranty about non-professional online film criticism and how it cheapens his work.
Personally I don't think he should be banned from Rotten Tomatoes - opinions should be allowed to be expressed on the internet, contrarian or not. I think a quick read of some of Mr White's very badly written (and thought out) reviews should be enough to discredit him from the film review community, whether online or in print. Case in point:
I spent a day in London last week recording vocals with the wondeful Shunda K of Yo Majesty. That girl is fast, professional and very talented! We worked on a version of I Came that is sounding shit hot, hopefully we will have some male input on it too from a rapper we both know. Shunda's a great MC and I look forward to working with her again in the future. In the meantime, here's a remix I have done of her next single "I'm Da Best", and a dub version of that mix too.
My House Machine gig for Men & Machines was great fun. The audience seemed to get it, which is cool, as last minute problems with my set up meant that I had to abandon the laptop and just use both groveboxes raw, manually punching in the start and stops. This is how I have been doing the HM sets for a few years, but I can't wait to get the laptop out with them too, as there is so much more that can be done. Like sampling! Until then though, the raw, 2 box sound is still working, as on this set I recorded at the start of 2009:
