Eric’s in LA, checking out some downtown action prior to Bootie this Saturday at the Echoplex, but the Videotones team march on regardless… This time Instamatic is back, cutting up a metric crapton of different films with a pertinent common thread to make his excellent take on “Mad Groove”:

Who knows… but this is Reborn Identity’s excellently tripped-out re-interpretation of Downtime’s “Untired” – The latest release from The Videotones project.

As always, make sure you watch full screen!

Greetings from San Francisco! Despite the fine drizzle outside today, we’re having a mighty fine time entertaining the Californian Bootie troops out here – already two highly memorable shows in Portland and SF, and one more to go this Saturday 3rd April in LA! (although don’t forget we’ll be zooming home for Bootie London on Friday 9th April)

In the meantime, if you want to hear it straight from the animal’s oral cavity, tomorrow Eric will be the special guest on The Evolution Control Committee‘s “The Sound Of Plaid” radio show.

If you’re unfamiliar with ECC’s work (and shame on you if so!), check out the many fine tracks on their download page, or to hear an example of their influence on the K-Sound, Eric recommends checking the classic “Rocked By Rape”.

The show airs tomorrow live 8-10pm PST, and there’s also several repeats on Thursday including ones at more Euro-friendly times. If you can’t catch those though fret not, as the show will also be archived on the ECC site. Full details of all the times and locations can be found here!

So tune in or miss out!

Happy early days of spring in the north-western quadrasphere (or something) to you. More gigs and Videotones news for you – read in!

Straight in with the gigs – frist up, a rather overdue hometown show here in Brighton on Friday 19th March, as part of the Synthetiquette night at The Hope – also playing are Neon Highwire and Officer 82. It’ll be a great way to blow off the cobwebs before we head off to the USA, but get down early as it’s not a huge room!

Second up, speaking of the USA, we’re delighted to be extending our existing Californian excursion into the fine county of Oregon – That’s right, we’ll be touching down in Portland on Friday 26th March for Bootie Portland! Really looking forward to this one as we’ve made some fine contacts in Portland over the years, so it’ll be good to finally hook up!

Not in Portland or Brighton? Whimper not, for here is the next installment of the Videotones project – The director is Brad Mackey of Crappy Logo Productions, who adds a splendidly psychedelic edge to “MKY Da HVN”:

…then you’ll be needing Instamatic‘s beautiful interpretation of Downtime’s “Stay”…

Check it full screen for the complete HD experience!

Next Videotones installment! Major thanks to BorisB for nailing this one – seriously awesome job! There’s plenty more on the way, but still room for more collaborators, so get in touch if you want to join in…

Probably the most obvious pun I’ve ever used as a post header, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me as there is big news to impart!

Yup, that’s right, for the first time in quite a while, we’re off to the USA for a couple of shows in jolly California, by invitation of the good Bootie folks! Dates are:

Sat 27th March : Bootie SF @ The DNA Lounge, San Francisco
Fri 3rd April : Bootie LA @ The Echoplex, Los Angeles

Unfortunately Bootie residents A+D won’t be at the LA show (although fellow resident and all round man-of-awesomeness Paul V will be cloning himself especially), because they’ll be zooming their way about on their European Tour, but the upside of all that is finally there’s going to be a one-off Bootie London, featuring not only A+D, London host DJ Payroll and The Bootie Berlin Crew, but also Our Very Good Selves as special guests. Friday 9th April is the date for that one – remember it now, because it will end up in your grandkid’s history homework.

As if that wasn’t enough, assuming everything goes according to plan (get out clause ahoy!), at Cargo we’ll be debuting/previewing the Audio/Visual show that we’re currently putting together with the rather talented chaps at Butch Auntie. You lucky, lucky people!

If you’re within reach, there’s really no excuse – if you’re not, go find a convenient scout hut and drop us an email to let us know where it is – we’ll be there.

So… ultra-pleased to announce the Videotones project, the mission being to create a video for each of the tracks on “Uptime/Downtime“. We’re lining up a diverse array of visual talent, each of whom will be interpreting a track or two in their own inimitable styles. Below you can see Instamatic‘s ace take on “Welcome Back” – huge thanks to him for proposing the project and kicking it off in spectacular style!

More videos will be appearing over the next few months! We’re also on the lookout for more contributors, so if you’d like to participate, please get in touch and let us know – it would be great to have you on board!

A few additionals to the below!

First off, thanks for all the feedback, here, on facebook, on twitter, and around the blogs – very very much appreciated – please keep going – if you like what you hear, let people know – mates, radio DJs, promoters, whoever – every single bit helps, and we will be eternally grateful to you for doing so!

OK, Del Boy moment over, the full-length mix MP3s are now up on the download page, so if you like your Uptime/Downtime action uninteruppted, or simply want to drop them onto smooth-playing CDs for your gramophone, now you have the option.

We’re laying off the torrents for the moment, as the bandwidth seems to be holding up (although the speed isn’t the best, so sorry for keeping you waiting). We’ll see how things go…

Also, as you may have noticed below, we’ve put a fair chunk of the back catalogue up on SoundCloud, so you can now embed album players in your own pages – sweet! We’ll be adding some more trinkets on there soon, so keep an eye if you’re a cloud type of person.

Finally, the album tracks are almost nearly up on last.fm, though we’ve been having some grief with their uploader – hopefully that will be sorted very, very soon.

That’s it for now – Pip pip!

Happy new year to you all!!!

“Uptime / Downtime” download page

Hope you like it – feedback always welcome, either in the comments or by email

photography by Sam Javanrouh, made available under a Creative Commons licence.

(sorry this was supposed to autopost yesterday but I ballsed it up somehow – apologies! EK)