Well, maybe not literally. Chances are my arms will have furled right back by then, and I’ll be asleep, but I wanted to change the top-post so it wasn’t so moody as the one below, as, thanks to Alex’s comment on the last post (cheers, El Duderino), we’ve just realised we’ve been linked on the Blogger homepage.

Shit, I thought we had a bunch of really chatty readers all of a sudden.

Anyway, as this is kind of a functional blog, more than a chatty, you’ll never guess what I saw today blog, or a you’ll never guess what I found on the net today blog, or a pay attention and listen to me and my opinions you assholes sort of blog, that I should skim up a introduction / reminder for you new free-clicking people.

We’re The Kleptones. We live here and we make new sounds out of other people’s old sounds. Sorta. Kind of like The Wombles do with trash, but better and infinitely more listenable. There’s tons of downloads and stuff. You’ll probably hate it, but you will undoubtedly know someone who will be blown away when you send them the link, and will forever think of you as a zeitgeist surfer deluxe. Really.

Thanks for stopping by, anyway, Mum, and I’ll ring you tomorrow, promise.

It sure is.

We’re compelled to respond to the postings in the comments of the previous posts and also the emails we’ve received from people offering payment for the albums that they have downloaded.

As all downloaders are aware, this stuff does not belong to us. We have virtually no right under current copyright law to redistribute the sources we use in the manner we do. It’s a debatable situation, and one we’d rather not be arguing in a law court, thanks. We’ve been very lucky so far that no-one has seen fit to make a determined effort to stop us. (Waxy’s C&D, we think, was an unfortunate shot across the bows. So it goes.)

However, the time that we have to do this is limited, as we have to convert a large chunk of that time into cash, so we can pay the rent, eat, and get the beers in from time to time, just like most other people. We’d like more time to do more stuff, but hey, wouldn’t everyone?

So, the conclusions we’ve come to are these:

If you want to donate some money in payment for any of the albums you’ve downloaded, we’re sorry, we can’t accept it. We don’t own the rights to the sounds we use, and therefore are risking infringing on people’s copyright in a far more personally damaging way if we accepted payment for it. We believe that people should have the right to make not-for-profit derivitive works, remixes, parodies, social commentaries, whatever, of music that they own, therefore accepting money in that way is virtually impossible, sorry. One day, things will improve (we’re optimistic), but till then…

However, what we are considering is, if you enjoy what we’ve done, and would like to financially assist us in the future to create more, bigger, better works of any description, both online and (soon) live on a stage, please email us and we’ll supply the details. We’re not asking for any set amount, but we want people to be aware of exactly what they’re donating towards, before they do.

We think this is reasonable, but we’d like to open it up to the floor. What do you think?

Yup, home again. Head in pieces, but body mostly intact. (hehe…)

Must first extend large warm-hearted thanks to The Birthday Party and On The Piste for working their asses off for the amazing week of frolics that was Trans Alpine XS.

A blur of snow and insanity from the get go, everyone involved rocked hard from start to finish, allowing us to play some great sets (including one, claimed by Jim All Time Top 100 to be our best ever, although you’ve probably sobered up and changed your mind now, Jim ;), along the way making some excellent friends. Thanks and greetings to the Tramp! boys, the It’s Bigger Than boys, the inspirational JD Twitch, The very wonderful Howard Marks (room-mate and a half for most of the week), the equally wonderful Clint Boon (and better half, hi Charlie!, room-mates for the last day), Martin Brew, Rob Bright, Laurie Laptop, Sean Smith… sure there’s more, but our brains are on a go-slow as the bodies digest the full English breakfast that is the traditional return-home meal for most Brits abroad.

So, back to reality with a bump to find that we’re out of bandwidth again, but there are new, working and better than ever torrents up, which should please most of you. The rest should look to your peers, and your peer-to-peers, or check the comments in the previous posts.

Also while we were away, found out about a couple of veeeeery interesting things, first the new DJ Shadow single, which will certainly raise some eyebrows, but jaws remain on the floor at the news that the multitrack parts for two of the tracks from David Byrne & Brian Eno’s seminal (i.e. as essential to your life as semen) album “My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts” are to be made available for free under a CC licence. Gentlemen, my hat, and other easily-removable pieces of clothing, come off to you! I’ll save the rest for when you make the full album available (hinty fucking hint). The future lies this way, folks – record companies looking for back catalogue interest please take note.

Quick thank you for all the feedback and kind words for “24H” – we’re mightly chuffed!!!

However, all this attention, and the lack of a kicking torrent tracker have weighed heavy on the site bandwidth, so things may be stop and start over the next couple of days. If so, we apologise.

If anyone can offer a mirror to the album tracks, as always, we’d be eternally grateful. If you can, please post a link in the comments of this post.

Zips, torrents, ID3 tags and a cherry on the top will all arrive at the weekend. You can wait a few days, can’t you???

;-)

Okay, so maybe it was a little over adventurous to attempt to get the album uploaded and working before leaving to go to the Alps for a week.

Apologies for the buggered torrent and the lack of full zips. We’re trying to find a connection with a fast upload so we can sort it, don’t know if we will, so it won’t be working till the weekend. Sorry!

In the meantime thanks for the feedback and enjoy the album!

As he was a lifelong member of the Noise Abatement Society, I’m quite sure that Ivor Cutler, of all people, will rest in peace.

As one of the many often left spellbound by the appearence of his quiet, thoughtful and absurd stories and songs alongside the clatter and boom of John Peel’s show over the years, I must gently whisper, “Thank you, Mr.Cutler”.

I’ll leave you with this thought.
No, I won’t.
It would not be fair.

Ivor Cutler – “No, I Won’t”

Here’s a couple of recent articles that are too excellent to avoid a quick mention. I don’t like to use this blog just to recycle links usually (check out the links section of the website to see a range of blogs and sites that may arouse you, if you’re so inclined), but these are really great reads.

First up is Kevin Kelly’s excellent summation of the web so far in Wired, “We Are The Web” – once past the clunky title (which can’t help but bring to mind a cacophonous chorus of charidee-minded bloggers turned pop stars), there’s a wonderful summation of the web wide world so far that charts it’s history and shows how most regular people came to end up wrapped and enraptured in it.

Second up (via BoingBoing) is Scott Kleper’s (good name!) “Introduction to Copyfighting” , a brief but informative introduction to the current online war of intellectual property rights. If you’ve ever wondered about the legal side of what we do, and what a lot of other similar types are doing (and, indeed, have already done), this is a great primer.

And they do… they really do. Only seems a few days since the below post, but time just keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’…

So another meta-post. Is that the right word? Whatever.

First off, as usual, with the apologies – website and email has been down for the past week and a half due to an ISP collapse – indirect apologies for that – the silver lining there was that it seems to have killed off the virus attack that had been swamping the Kleptones inbox for the couple of weeks prior to that – the ol’ spam filters have been working overtime, but the upshot of all that is:

If you sent any email to us in the past three weeks, mailing list, chat, whatever – please resend it!!!

(And also, on a humbler note, if you sent us a concerned email following the horrific events of 07/07, as I know at least a few did – double apologies for the lack of a reply – due to the above we didn’t get them, but we’re all (thank fuck) fine, if a little shaken-up – just like the rest of the country.)

So, next up, fun things from the past weeks – the Webbys were quite phenomenal, as you may have gathered. It still chimes strangely that we’ve been awarded this accolade (and it looks like we’re not the only ones), but the amount of warmth and good company that surrounded the ceremony was quite touching and made me feel very much at home – so many excellent people from different areas of society, all hell bent on caning this ‘net thing for all its worth and succeeding. Big grins and toasts all round.

I don’t like doing big thanks lists here, ‘cos they get long and tedious and most unlike a webby speech, (“Kick out the jams, motherfuckers”, since you ask), but lots of appreciation and gratitude to the Webby & IADAS peoples, especially David-Michel, Tiffany and “posse” (and sorry about the karaoke, guys) ; Adam Kahan, Bob “Wes” Westerfield, and crew, for tireless production support and general hard sweat on the day helping sort our video, Leslie from CafePress, who took my drunken criticism and batted it right back at me, hard (and yes, I know I owe you lunch ;) ; The very honourable Joel Veitch from Rather Good, Jerry & Shelli from Yellowstone Park for being so damn gorgeous and friendly, Stewart from Flickr for being the only person to spot my CC referencing T-shirt; and finally Ian Hardy from the BBC, whose brief interview with me caused my phone to fill up with surprised messages as it was broadcast across the nation. Damn, now everyone knows what I look and sound like. Oh well.

The rest of the time in New York was equally spot on – thanks to Justin for quickly slipping me in for a DJ set the day after the awards at Nublu – quite a mellow set by my standards, but the hangover from the previous night, plus that day’s intense scorch and humidity left me in a, shall we say, gentler state of mind than usual. Top night though. And one last thanks to the rampaging creative insanity of the Levy family, masterminds behind the “1 more time for the 9” subway party that left me slack-jawed and drunk with the intensity of a spontaneously generated NY gathering. (Thanks to Brianvan for the pictures – why not play “Where’s Eric?” – I can spot three appearences in the set, hehe…)

Back on planet Brighton, there was barely enough time to catch breath before heading off to Glastonbury – intending to give a bit of mobile blogging as we moved through the Glastosphere, but, as any battle hardened glasto-fule kno, the best laid plans get forcibly removed from your brain at the gate, and are replaced with a mixture of cotton-candy and mud. Also the sludge seriously impacted on my ability to search out the free wireless hotspots and by then a cloud of alcohol-induced dunkirk spirit had enveloped me. Ah well, so it goes. Alan and Charlie at the London News Review did a pretty good job of documenting it anyway…

A crazy one, indeed. But fun, always fun. Even when this led to this, this, this and this, there’s still time for this.

Anf finally lastly, the other Friday saw the launch of the new All Time Top 100 clubnight in Brighton, which yours truly will be spinning (well, laptopping ;) at a couple of times each month (check the turntable experience page for info) – a splendind time as usual and boding well for the future, indeed.

So there we are. New York, Glastonbury, ATT100 growing and an ISP crash. For me, quite an interesting month, but now looking forward to kicking about the homestead for a little while. How about you?

Well, first and foremost, it looks like the torrent server has fallen over, and unfortunately, I’m out of town and the only one with the technological knowhow to kick things into touch. Having said that, I’m tring to get a message through to someone else with kicking instructions, but we’ll see what happens.

So if you’re tring to use the torrents – my humblest apologies – normal service will be resumed in a few days.

Secondly, it looks like some of the background graphics aren’t coming up on the site, giving it rather a bare appearence. The site files look fine, but again, someone’s taking an educated peek to sort it.

Why does all this always happen whenever I go away?

“Gone away?”, you ask? “Where has he gone?”

Well, I’m in New York, as some of you may be aware, to collect our wunnerful Webby award. We ‘ve kept it pretty quiet on the site, humble non-own-trumpet-blowing types that we are, but we’ve been bopped on the head by too many of our friends, all of them saying “You won an award, you dumbasses, tell people about it!”

So here you go. The wonderful International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences have deigned to give us the award of “Artist Of The Year”, for our contributions to the swinging beat of the internet drum.

Yay. And more Yay.

(Pauses to open bottle of champagne. No really, I honestly am. Me? In a New York hotel room with a bottle of premier champagne? With my reputation? What were they thinking?)

One pop, fizz, glug, swig, belch later…

Anyway, the ceremony for the awards is tomorrow night, at the rather fancy Gotham Hall, so we’ve broken our audiovisual duck and, with the nimble digital-fingered help of the wonderful Nhungsta, put together a little video to show.

Should be interesting to see how it all goes. I am, naturally, rather nervous about the whole thing, being sole ‘tones representative and all, so I’ve taken a couple of extra days to get into the New Yorkiness of it all before the insanity sets in.

And happily succeeded, due to the rather splendid nature of this fine city. Grabbing a last minute ticket to go see the Philip Glass Ensemble do a live score to “Powqqatsi” last night was a serious treat, especially as I’d never seen them before, and I love wor Phil. (The prelude to his opera “Akhnaten” is one of my all-time favourite pieces of music – highly recommended).

Was very interesting to see a more electronic side to Glass’s work being performed live, too, as the score features quite a bit of sampled percussion loops and vocals. Cueing these accurately proved very tricky for the ensemble to integrate into their live playing, overwhelmingly so for the two percussionists, who seemed to lose the groove quite badly at one point when a sampled loop came in, doing a good impression of someone having a really hard time learning how to beat-mix. They picked it back up well though – overall an incredible performance.

From there downtown to Misshapes, for the afterparty to the Killers / Louis XIV show in Central Park, which was a swell do, plenty of beer, beats and pogoing. Good to see a fine dose of 80s poptasms being blended in with the electroclashes and new no-waveisms. Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop” has never sounded so good. What do you mean “It never did sound any good?”… get yourself into the remedial “Quality 80s cheese and how to appreciate it” class, immediately…

Suffice to say now , I’m now feeling a little tender-headed, but find myself having been suitably formatted into a New York State Of Mind. Hurrah.

Right, I’m now going to and see which of the million open wireless networks here will let me in to post this up. There are so many hotspots here now that it’s a wonder you can’t actually feel the air being weighed down with the transmissions.

But in the meantime, once again, thanks to everyone for the feedback, blogging, words of support etc… We’re chuffed well beyond chuff level 100. Couldn’t have done it without all of you. New stuff is on its way soon, rest assured.

sip, belch, repeat to coda.

…well, apparently not. In one of those moments that makes it seem like your whole world has just gone and eaten itself (and ended up looking a bit like a haggis), news reaches us that The Flaming Lips have just completed recording a cover of “Bohemian Rhapsody” for a future Queen tribute compilation album.

No, I am not making this up.

If any of you weren’t on our Xmas card mailing list, you will have missed our little tribute to the wonder that is “Bo Rhap”, so in honour of this excellent, if somewhat disturbing news, I’ve stuck it up again here.

Personally, I’m just a teeny weeny bit miffed that we never got asked to get involved… I wonder why? I mean, they must have got the idea from somewhere…

;)