Gaming, Music, The Internet, Whatever….

One of my favourite sites of the year has arguably been SoundCloud, one of the ever growing number of “targeted” networking sites. Where as the quite well known YouTube and slightly less well known Vimeo deals with video and it’s various forms, SoundCloud deals with Music but as opposed to the likes of Spotify or Last.fm that help established artists, SoundCloud is there for some of the more “experimental” or “legally dubious” pieces that 20 years ago would have been passed on White Label vinyls or 10 years ago on unmarked CD-Rs.

There are many, many well known electronic artists on there and my current personal favourite is West Country legend, legally denied Jedi Knight and all round genius Tom Middleton who’s uploaded many of his remixes, both official and unofficial to the site. But two of my favourite pieces up on the site at the moment are at both ends of the musical spectrum and show just how much variety there is on the site.

First up is something done by my friend Tim Maughan over at his eponymous site Tim Maughan Books. Here he’s done a mix under his pseudonym Shinohara Heavy Industries, which I’m sure is a reference to a particular company from an Anime. Better ask him, he’s the expert after all, something you’ll realise after a visit to his site. He’s put together a deep house techno mix with just a hint of minimal here and there, so gets a solid thumbs up from me.

Girls and Mechs and 909s – Part 1 by Shinohara H-Industries

The second one is perhaps slightly more well known in that it’s been linked by every man and his dog on Twitter but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthy of even more exposure.

Here’s a thought. What if we took this guy and slowed him down to 1/8th of the speed so that one of his songs took 35 minutes to play? Would sound awful, no? Surprisingly not. The whole track was stretched using a program called PaulStretch, something that was used to create the 9 Beet Stretch project, one which played Beethoven’s 9th Symphony stretched out over a 24 hour period. Which I’ve heard and is an odd experience, I can tell you. This however, is beautiful and just about the right length.

J. BIEBZ – U SMILE 800% SLOWER by Shamantis

The bit around the 21 minute mark pretty much stopped me in my tracks. Well, it would have if I hadn’t been sitting down but it’s still pretty epic.

So there we are. A wide world of music out there and all of it free to listen without adverts. One in the eye for Spotify I think. And Mr. Tim Maughan shares a blog post with that Beiber Boy. He’ll be so thrilled.

Probably.

During the recent UK General Election, Diddy David Cameron kept telling us at almost every opportunity that the new Conservative party was open and inclusive to everyone and that the narrow minded views of his party were very much a thing of the past.

He also seemed to spend his time doing a weak impression of one Mr. B. Obama, weak in the sense that all he thought he needed to do was say the words “hope” and “change” at some point in every sentence and that would secure the vote for him. Of course, it didn’t and we all know what happened next…

So, to my surprise, I received a letter in the post the other day from The Conservation Party Foundation asking me if I’d like to make a donation. Given that I’m not currently a made man in the business world ie the Average Tory Party Donator, I found this quite surprising. However, as I looked through some of the material provided, I noticed that perhaps the Conservative party hadn’t changed quite as much as it thought it had….

The Conservative Party "Spectrum"

LOOK! A WHITE MAN! AND A JEWISH WHITE MAN! AND IN THE MIDDLE THERE! A WOMAN! Who says the Conservative Party isn’t making strides to be all inclusive in the 21st Century?

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, everything they sent me went straight in the shredder. I didn’t vote for them, so sure as hell not giving them money.

Earlier this week, the UK shit rag/newspaper The Daily Star printed a “shocking” story about how Grand Theft Auto developers Rockstar North were going to base the next version of their incredibly popular series in the sleepy Northern England town of Rothbury, scene of the recent fatal stand off between Northumbria Police and Raoul Moat.

Expect of course it wasn’t. Someone at The Star had clearly been on the Something Awful or B3ta forums and decided that someone’s mock up was a real game and ran with the story, without first bothering to do anything important like fact check. The story was pulled from the website within hours of publication but not quickly enough for Rockstar Games’ lawyers to ask the Star for an apology.

What’s most interesting about the apology (link here) is the bit at the very bottom.

The Daily Star. A "news"paper, clearly?

If ever there was a more appropriate use of punctuation, then I’d like to see it.

Boards Of Canada are renowned by fans for being a) being hugely secretive about themselves and b) their pathological refusal to do videos for their tracks.

Which while on the one hand is a bad thing, it does mean that their are some fantastic “fake” vids on YouTube. A lot of these videos contain out of copyright material with Boards tracks over the top, which given that the band themselves are named after the National Film Board Of Canada, means that there is a wonderful symmetry to the whole thing.

One of the best is this wonderful video for one of their earliest released tracks, Everything You Do Is A Balloon. It also happens to be one of their most beautiful too and I played it lots when my cat passed away last year. Thought I’d share anyway.

Paris is generally considered to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world and having just had the pleasure of a few days there, I can understand why. It’s not the first time I’ve been there but it is the first time in nearly 20 years and the first time I’ve ever been there on my own and had the pleasure of using Paris’ wonderful Metro system. Which makes London’s Underground system seem like the lap of luxury.

It may well have only been for a couple of days but with 75% of Paris being within walking distance of my hotel, getting everywhere on foot seemed like the right thing to do. The metro may well take you everywhere but you don’t get the flavour or the ambiance that you would by walking around.

There are 4 Flickr sets to look through;

First is the trip to the world famous Louvre, famous of course for having the Worlds Most Boring painting, the Mona Lisa (Pictured above, as underwhelming in this photo as in the flesh);

Second is a very sunny trip to Sacre Couer and Montmartre, famous for being the location of many french films including the ending of the seminal short film C’etait un Rendez-vouz. Though it was alot busier when I went there than in the ending of the film (embedded below). Probably didn’t smell quite so much of piss either back in 1974 (homeless people are very visible in Paris, more so than in London and New York)

C’etait un Rendezvous – Watch more Funny Videos

Thirdly, The Eiffel Tower, which shouldn’t really need any explanation and offered arguably better views than those at Montmartre;

And finally, everything else which includes one of my new favourite photos, something which someone has now dubbed Picard BC. One for the geeks/trekkies out there…

All in all, a very nice few days but much like everywhere else you need a good week to really see everything. But on the basis of this trip, would happily do so.