Everything is very quiet, Everyone has gone to sleep.

I’m wide awake on memories, These memories can’t wait.

Yup. Jetlag. Wide awake, drinking duty free bourbon… and it’s morning. Serious attempts to sleep (“Take the blue pill”) sadly failed on the flight back, so a pile of in-flight movies numbed my floating brain instead. Despite that, had a lovely chat with my seat neighbor, the American soprano, Marnie Breckenridge, who was on her way out to perform Leonard Bernstein’s “Candide” in Prague. It’s always fascinating discussing what we do with performers and musicians from different genres – hope you liked the CDs, Marnie!

There’s a party in my mind…And I hope it never stops

There’s a party up there all the time…They’re gonna party till they drop

Bootie LA was a dynamite experience – there was definitely a little apprehension in the air at first, as although Adrian, Deirdre and Paul V are into what we do, they had yet to hear the proof of the DJ pudding. Suffice to say I was a little nervous for likewise reasons, but a swift blast of a couple of new tunes during the soundcheck put all minds at rest. Feeling a little more confident, I chilled in the outside zone of the club (what is that called anyway, a smoking patio?), chatting to a few fine people, including Buck from The Mutaytor, who, once we’ve got the requisite Ableton chat out of the way, regales me with tales of jamming with Mickey Hart and Baaba Maal. I’d advise you to check their site, especially if you’re not from the US, as you won’t have seen nada like this before – and admittedly neither as yet have I, as we were both sadly playing on the same night in SF! Next time, next time… And muchos good luck with getting the ‘taytors over to Europe soon, Buck…

Still, time flies, and it’s soon time to cross all extremities and patch in. It’s a little freaky at first, but the crowd are grinning and shimmying, and soon the couple of aces up my sleeve actually *feel* like aces. The set zooms by, highlighted by one wonderful moment when I could see several people right in front of me almost doubled-up laughing their asses off yet dancing madly at the same time (anyone at the shows can hazard a fairly accurate guess to which tune *that* was), and then suddenly I’m back in the fresh air breathing releif and nicotine as the hosts wrap the night up. A few after-beer beers and then I’m a straight to bed good boy for the flight to SF the next day.

Take a walk through the land of shadows, Take a walk through the peaceful meadows

Try not to look so disappointed, It isn’t what you hoped for, is it?

Los Angeles, I have to say, I found very, very disorientating, as I hinted before. To the small-land mentality of an Englishman, LA just does not compute. The sprawl suggests that it must be tough for peeps to keep new community culture locked in place amongst it all, and it’s mighty tough to get a quick reading through the streetlife, as everyone is in a damn car most of the time! But I was reassured by many folks that it’s worthwhile, so looking forward to going back and digging a little deeper, for sure.

San Francisco, on the other hand, has much that immediately resonates with the English (and more to the point, Brighton-toned) psyche. The Speakers Corner meets Leicester Square chaos that lives at the base of Powell Street felt rather reassuring, as I lugged my case past the militant vegetarians, street performers, panhandlers and god-botherers towards The Palace Hotel for the Web 2.0 conference.

I’m stuck here in this seat… I might not stand up…

And you may find yourself, living in a shotgun shack…

Well I don’t know if I could really call the Comfort Inn on West Sunset a shotgun shack. Wouldn’t really be fair, although a little bit of me wishes it was, so I could take one of them there shotguns and force someone to fix their poorly internet connection NOW so I can find out where the hell I am…

And you may find yourself, in another part of the world…

Yup. LA. Looks like two totally different places, depending on whether you’re looking from the air, or the carpark of the aforementioned Comfort Inn. I know which one I prefer.

Even in the outskirts, there are concerns here that have signs that are larger than their actual premises. And they rotate. I figure one day everyone is going to wake up here to find they’ve been completely hemmed in by advertising overnight, and can no longer get out of their houses. But there will be no fighting back, merely acceptance of another occupational hazard of LA life.

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile…

Ah. No. LA without internet is not easy. LA without a car, a map, or internet is just one more thing to shock and amaze natives and fellow travellers. It’s a lot of fun, kinda like pinball, but with pit stops. It’s a good test of faith too. Travel long enough on a bus, anywhere, and you will eventually go past a Virgin record store, a cafe with internet access, or even the Remix Hotel LA. You just have to be patient. And listen carefully to the announcements.

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife…

Hmm. There are some beautiful houses here. And some beautiful wives. But I sadly don’t have time to find myself within them.

And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

Only if I was on a philiosophical tip following a fair dose of quality malt. I’m more interested in why I’m here, which is to DJ at Bootie LA. And have a damn fine time doing it, playing some crazy new tracks, getting people to dance and smile and hopefully making the acquaintance of some good people along the way.

Actually, maybe this has already happened.

Maybe then I’ll get to travel up to San Francisco, attend the Web 2.0 Conference, have a public discussion with the Chairman of EMI and then play a couple more shows, maybe one for the CC folks, and another Bootie?

Maybe this is yet to come. The sun is coming up.

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was…

Rumours abound that we will be playing a DJ set within Second Life as part of the launch party for Wired magazine’s new SL office this coming Saturday (4-7pm PST)…

Are the rumours true? Well, you’ll just have to teleport in and find out!

Yes, that’s right – a new look for the blog, and a new name! May “Pot Kettle Black” rest in peace, as we accelerate into the “Hectic City”.

(OK Well maybe it’s not such a new look, but the red is different! And it’s Word Press!)

Some of you may be aware that there is a Beatles authorised Cirque Du Soleil show, “Love”, recently opened in Las Vegas.

Now, regardless of what you think about Blockbuster shows such as this, it’s amazing to find out that for the soundtrack of the show, Sir George Martin and his son Giles, with the blessing of McCartney, Starr, Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, have mashed themselves up to provide the soundtrack.

…Mr. Starr’s childlike “Octopus’s Garden” gets a fantastic restructuring that begins with the string introduction to “Good Night” and then places Mr. Starr’s vocal, unaccompanied, in a foggy ambience (using effects from “Yellow Submarine” and drums from “Lovely Rita”) before the full band kicks into the more familiar arrangement. And a juxtaposition of the drum figure from “Tomorrow Never Knows” and the vocal line from “Within You, Without You” creates a link between those mystical songs, recorded nearly nine months apart…

Now, we’ve never used The Beatles as source material for private reasons, but I thought it worth congratulating every remixer and producer that has – I bet none of you thought you’d end up actually influencing the authorised output of the band themselves, did you?

It will be interesting to hear the soundtrack album when it arrives, no doubt, but in the meantime, I can’t think of a higher and more convincing justification of the benefits of remix culture.

Not a regular gig reviewer, me, but sometimes a concert moves you to want to jump up and down and shout from the rooftops “This was fucking great!”

Such was the performance I saw last night by John Cale and his band, in the relatively small Concorde 2 in Brighton. An intimate setting for one with such a history, and Cale didn’t waste any time in filling the room with his mischievous brooding personality and songs. Cale’s current trajectory is loud and hard (check his latest album “Black Acetate”), and he delivered that in spades, scowling at the crowd as he chopped at his piano and guitar. No room in this set for the more cerebral end of his work, instead he went straight for the gut, rocking as hard as anyone I’ve seen. Absolutely excellent back up from his band too, three immaculate players that were equally at home with their electronics and atmospherics as with slabs of riff and rhythm. (I immediately wanted to kidnap them and force them to do my musical bidding.)

Highlights? a killer “Helen Of Troy”, the histrionic falsetto of “Outtathebag” (from “Black Acetate”), a trance inducing “Pablo Picasso” and an insane re-rendering of “Femme Fatale” incorporating the words of “Rose Garden Funeral Of Sores” that succeeded in turning one of the prettiest Velvets tunes into a deep howl of juxtaposed affliction. A man unafraid to merge his many pasts into a new form. I’m naturally deeply impressed.

No encore, which was a hell of a shame, but still the best concert I’ve seen all year, if not longer. If I can rock half as hard as this when I’m 64, I’ll be delighted. Mr.Cale? You’re an inspiration.

News comes down the Yahoo wire of the launch of a new website, DreamMusician, which is offering pay-downloads of well-known songs that have been stripped of individual musical parts (say minus the drums, bass, guitar or maybe even vocals), or even to purchase those individual parts in isolation or “packs” containing all the individual parts of a song.

The initial bunch of tracks, seemingly all licenced from Universal, are available for $2 each, and are offered in Windows Media Audio format. (DM claim that Mac compatibility will be addressed in the very near future).

Tracks are also currently only available for residents of Canada, and apparently the US, although no mention of this is made on the DM frontpage. On navigating through, we found that track download sales are managed by another site called Puretracks, but we were unable to get any further than a default message which blocked our progress (assumedly because of our location), so we couldn’t view a list of available tracks and parts. However both the DM site’s FAQ page and Puretracks site state that the tracks would be DRM encoded.

Whilst on the surface this looks like a very interesting idea indeed, the main focus of the site seems to be presenting the tracks as a kind of “Deluxe Karaoke”, allowing musicians to jam or sing along with the real versions of tunes (a ploy which has already been used successfully in the Karaoke world by Singing Machine, who offer a range of karaoke CDs using original backing tracks of classic Motown tunes). We reckon that the novelty of playing along to a piano-less version of “What’s Going On”, or a guitar-less version of “Achy Breaky Heart” (well, whatever floats your boat, y’know) will pale considerably after a few goes, but what do we know? It still might be worth $2 a pop, and the company, naturally, envisions large expansion of their range, and could eventually offer the same service for an enormous range of current and classic tunes.

However, us being us, we think the real long term use of breaking down the tracks and supplying acapellas, solo parts and instrumentals will be for personal remix use (and maybe this could be a long term, as-yet-unspoken goal of the site), but so far, the only direct music copyright comment on the site is a “Message from the Founders” on the site’s homepage, which states that:

“We respectfully ask you to join us in honoring the copyrights and creative works provided to us by our artists and labels. All music is for non-commercial use only.”

There is also a link to a longer copyright text at the base of the homepage. This text mainly concerns itself with the actual content of the DM site and their trademarks, although it does state that the user is unable to, amongst other things, “…adapt, modify, rewrite, create derivative works from, transfer…” anything on the site. (Regardless of that, the actual downloads are held on a separate site, PureTracks, and as we couldn’t get into PureTracks, we don’t know what other terms may be imposed before purchase).

Notwithstanding the site small-print, this “Message” still seems a very vague comment indeed, and could be open to a variety of interpretations – are they really saying that someone could, for example, make a new version of a track or remix using their purchased parts and, say, copy it onto CD for their friends or publish it on their website for free? (“non-commercial”) Surely not. (After all, we’re told we can’t “…adapt, modify, rewrite, create derivative works from, transfer…” etc. anything from the site.)

Well, actually in their FAQ they do helpfully suggest that the Windows Media DRM can be circumnavigated by burning the tracks to CD and then re-importing them into your computer, converting them to MP3 and sticking them on your iPod. Although it kinda defeats the point of having it in the first place, the DRM is most likely a condition placed upon DM by the rights holders to allow them to use the tracks in the first place, so it’s very kind of DM to let customers know that the DRM shouldn’t stand in the way of anyone getting the full use out of their purchased downloads! (regardless of any other stated restrictions stopping customers from attempting to “…adapt, modify, rewrite, create derivative works from, transfer…”, eh?)

Having to copy purchases to CD and back again would particularly come into play when dealing with the “packs of tracks” – I can’t think of many (if any) audio utilities that will allow loading of DRM-ed WMA files into a multitrack setting (Anyone know any better?), and regardless of that, the use of a compressed format would make re-synching the tracks very difficult, as tiny variations in the lengths of silent parts of tracks introduced during the encoding process (particularly at the start and end) tend to easiily render them out of sync (as anyone that’s dealt with the problem of synching up MP3 parts offered in remix competitions will be aware).

Anyway, hey, as the parts aren’t intended for remix in the first place, it’s a minor quibble, and it probably won’t be much of a concern to DM.

Still, it will be interesting to see how the site develops, for sure…

PS Anyone in the US or Canada that fancies trying to (or already has) get into the Puretracks site and reporting back their findings to us would be appreciated; please get in touch if you fancy a dig on our behalf. It’s not that we want to do anything with the contents (with our reputation? hemhem…), we’re just curious about the terms of purchase and the DRM before we dust off our axes, honest!!

Couple of quick new bits and pieces to pass on to you – first off happy to announced that our Eric’s been invited to speak at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco! More news on this one as we get it…

Second up, we’ve put together an exclusive extended version of the 24 Hours track “Careless Or Dead” (yes, that one…) for the lovely Adrian & The Mysterious D to play out for the smoochers at the wonderful Bootie SF. They seem pretty pleased with it and have stuck it in their Top 10 for the month – if you want to hear it you can find the download link half way down their frontpage.

Hmm. Bootie in San Francisco… Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco… Are you thinking what we’re thinking?

We’re delighted to announce that we’ve been asked to participate in the amazing, Creative-Commons licenced movie project A Swarm Of Angels as Soundtrack Producers.

ASOA’s own site sums it up best:

“A Swarm of Angels reinvents the Hollywood model of filmmaking to create cult cinema for the Internet era. It’s all about making an artistic statement, making something you haven’t seen before.Why are we doing this? Because we are tired of films that are made simply to please film executives, sell popcorn, or tie-in with fastfood licensing deals.

To do it we need your help.”

And need your help they (and indeed, we), do. As summarised by advisor Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing:

“The Swarm of Angels project will produce a £1,000,000 picture funded by 50,000 “angels” who each donate £25 and participate in script-doctoring, pre- and post-production, and promotion for the film. The Angels are being invited in batches — first 100, now 1,000, next 5,000, 25,000 and 50,000. The 1,000 Swarm is still open, but filling up fast…”

We think this is an amazing idea and an incredible opportunity, to put it mildly.

The project is being masterminded by Matt Hanson, founder of One Dot Zero, filmmaker and author. Already on board is Grant Gee (director of the Radiohead documentary “Meeting People Is Easy”, all-round music video genius and most recently Director Of Photography on the soon-come documentary about Scott Walker “30 Century Man”), and alongside Cory Doctorow as advisors are Tommy Pallotta (Producer of “Waking Life” and the much anticipated “A Scanner Darkly” ) and Warren Ellis (comic writer, graphic artist and creator of “Transmetropolitan” and “Global Frequency”). More team members will be announced as the project develops.

We think A Swarm Of Angels is a giant step towards a forward-thinking alternative system of movie production, and a mighty opportunity to show the combinable, combustible power of remix culture. And you can quote us on that.

If this is something that tickles your synapses, come along for the ride, it’s going to be a good one :)

We’ll see you there.

While doing a little digging around the K-referencing sections of the web, I found a couple of sweet things worth mentioning.

First off is this simple but very effective video combining one of the tracks from “Yoshimi Battles The Hip-Hop Robots” with some bizarre old newsreel footage from the Internet Archive. The end result had me chucking into my coffee this morning. Nice one, Shpilkis.

Second off was spotting that we’d been noted on Wiley Wiggins’ blog “News Of The Dead”. Wiley’s voice pops up in a few places on “24 Hours”, so we’re chuffed as punch to see the mention. Hope you like what we’ve done to you, WW :)

Finally we have to extend thanks to our Wikipedia-writing fans, who have extended our entry to incorporate info about “24 Hours” – If anyone feels like adding to the list, go for it – it’s always great to find out what we’ve been up to…