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.

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.

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.

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.

The MCM expo is bi-annual event held at the Excel arena in London. It is billed as an event for Movie, Comic and Anime fans but it should probably add cosplayers to that list too, given how a good half of the the people there were dressed up for the occasion.

It had a rather interesting atmosphere to it, not being too focused on one aspect or another and having that rather British feeling of being “cobbled” together and trying to fill as much of the exhibition hall with as many things as they could find. I’m sure that certainly wasn’t the case and the organizers spent many months trying to get as many people to exhibit and appear there as possible, but that wonderfully British feeling was still there. And I liked it.

The day itself was a bit of a blur and while at the time I wasn’t keen on staying there too long, I would go back there without too much hesitation. Probably not as a cosplayer though. Certainly whets my appetite for going to something like E3 in the States but not any time soon.

I would just like to say a big thanks to Tim Maughan over at his eponymous site for getting me in on a press pass. Didn’t perhaps get me anywhere “behind the scenes”, mainly cause there weren’t any, but it meant that I had a hassle free time getting in. Which given how many people were there and the line for the queue to get in, is definitely a good thing. I’m pretty sure a few of the pics in this set will appear over on his site in due course. And rightly so.

To view the full set yourself, please follow this link go to the Flickr set. Enjoy.

However, in this instance, it’s nice to get some clarification on whether or not there is a space between the words.

Thank you Steve, thank you so much…

I really am….

So, let’s see if this whole thing works shall we? Cause if it does then my productivity around here could go up quite a bit…

Mainly in no small part to Modern Warfare 2. Predictions that it was going to sell “shitloads” proved to be accurate and most of the major games that were scheduled for launch late last year quickly decided that going up against Infinity Wards behemoth wasn’t for them. So instead we now have a wonderful situation where in the early stages of 2010, we have AAA games being released on a monthly basis (though why the American Automobile Association is doing releasing games I’ve no idea.

Two of them, Perfect Dark Arcade and Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker, were two of these games and I must admit that I am looking forward to them, particularly as both series hold a place in my heart.

Perfect Dark Arcade is a semi-remake of the N64 original and as you can see in the vid below, it finally lives up to some of the promise it showed 10 years ago. I played my original cartridge of it recently and lets say once the rose tinted spectacles came off, things weren’t as I remembered them.

I was looking forward to this before; Almost obscenely looking forward to this now. Arrives on Wednesday for a not at all obscene £7.

Next up is Metal Gear Solid : Peace Walker. Now my feelings on this were the complete opposite; the last PSP MGS (yes, it’s acronym central from here on in) didn’t inspire me at all, particularly when it came to controlling the camera. But this gameplay video looks like a hell of a lot of fun. It’s obvious that Kojima’s direction is helping to firm up the gameplay a lot. And that soundtrack? Want a copy of that on CD ASAP. Certainly makes a change from the endlessly looped 2 minute tracks that were in Portable Ops (another major annoyance I had with the game). So very much a want now from me.

Metal Gear Solid : Peace Walker is out late May, and hopefully in time for my birthday. Which would be nice.