Shannon O’Neill

Bettered by the borrower - copyrights and music composition

Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project

Famous Cannabis Users

Google Idol

THE MARRIAGE OF CADMUS AND HARMONY FOR CHILDS

The Mercury Theatre on the Air

Nyet

sCrAmBlEd?HaCkZ! (awesome software!)

SONY admits that CD/44.1PCM is inferior

Stagg Chili Recipes

Video Downloader

xTal - free mp3 DJ VSTi plugin

Zaatar Mix

These were given out at Max’s funeral. I wanted to post them earlier, but my scanner stopped working and I’ve only just got a new one.

Click on this image to read the story of an amazing life:

Just woke up, made a cup of tea and switched on the tv news, as is my morning routine.

First story about violence at Bondi saw NSW Opposition (Liberal) Leader Peter Debnam complaining yet again about “Middle Eastern thugs”, clearly and cynically inciting racial hatred.

Next story was Donald Rumsfeld boasting of the success of American psyops in Iraq ie the deliberate corruption of the Iraqi media to serve US propaganda.

Now, I don’t identify as left wing (although on the political compass, I’m supposedly an extreme left-libertarian) but I sure as hell will never sympathise with the right while these disgusting people are its representatives.

Sydney Big Day Out 2006. Photo by Mr Walker.

SMH letters 2006-01-28:

There has been a decline of the Big Day Out from being a good-natured, inner-city indie gathering to a field day for drugged-up bogans - some of whom were reportedly forcing other attendees to “kiss the flag” and punching those who didn’t comply. I understand that the BDO is very mainstream these days. Yet don’t you find it sinister that it has become a day out for the kind of patriotism that involves bulging veins in the neck and the ever-present threat of violence? This is John Howard: The Next Generation, and I’m not sure I want to be around when they’re all grown up.

Richard Martin Glebe

As Bernard Zuel’s article mentions (”Manners maketh music’s big day out“, January 27), there were many flag bearers at the Big Day Out, but I don’t agree with Zuel that this was a positive statement of unity.

I saw lots of frightening behaviour, including flag wearers pushing into an ATM line, people berating them for being “unAustralian”, they claiming to be more Australian than any of us. One person was asking people to kiss the flag he was wearing, and people who refused got a punch in the face. The flag is not a fashion accessory, and you’re better than no one for wearing it as a T-shirt. When you start seeing flags, that’s when nationalism is getting out of control.

Danny Yau Belfield

It’s so damn obvious. The current Australian flag, with its Union Jack, will never be the flag of all Australians, and will continue to be exploited by ‘anglo’ racists. The sooner it is changed, the better. But to what? Yet more from today’s SMH:

The reason, Dylan Sanders (Letters, January 27), that I would not accept an Aboriginal flag as the Australian flag is essentially the same reason I would like the present flag changed. The Aboriginal flag does not belong to me because I am not Aboriginal. I am not English and therefore the Union Jack does not belong to me, either.

It is about having an Australian flag - for all of us. And, don’t worry, when the inevitable change comes, the historic ties to Britain will not be “erased” - you could read about them in any number of history books.

Russell Edwards Ultimo

Dylan Sanders challenges “conservative society” to adopt the Aboriginal flag as the Australian flag. It is perhaps telling that conservative Australia would consider appropriating a flag that has for a long time belonged to someone else.

I am no expert on indigenous affairs, but to me the Aboriginal flag is a symbol of strength, unity and identity for a particular group of Australians - but not all Australians. (And there’s nothing wrong with that, by the way.)

That more recent arrivals would consider stealing it and using it as their own is … well, now that I think about it, maybe you can’t get more Australian than that.

Peter Harrison Camperdown

But whatever the flag is changed to, there is still the danger that it will be exploited by that peculiarly insecure Australian form of nationalism. That will be much more difficult to change than a flag design.

100 things we didn’t know this time last year

AudioMulch 1.0rc1

Behringer B-Control Presets & Templates

Dungeons & Dragons

Increasingly Clear

Stuckism

Traveller (role-playing game)

The University and the Undercommons

X-Men

s0metim3s has given us her favourites of 2005. I wasn’t going to do this, but since I’m waiting for South Africa to be bowled out before I head out for the rest of the day…

Favourites of 2005

I’ve restricted this to things that were published/screened or events that happened in 2005.

Albums

50 Foot Wave - Golden Ocean
Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
Kate Bush - Aerial
Coil - The Ape of Naples
Dressy Bessy - Electrified
Luke Haines - Luke Haines is Dead
Jackson & His Computer Band - Smash
Lady Sovereign - Vertically Challenged
Konono No. 1 - Congotronics
Metric - Live It Out
M.I.A. - Arular
The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
Puzahki - Daddy’s Little Skint
Rhythm & Sound - See Mi Ya
Sleater Kinney - The Woods
Smog - A River Ain’t Too Much to Love
Venetian Snares - Rossz Csillag Alatt Született

It was mainly pop/rock for me this year - I even bought a guitar (which I still can’t play)! The sort of experimental music that I’d usually obsess over, this year I’d generally listen to once or twice before moving on. See Utility Fog for all the postfolkrocktronica that I should’ve been listening to.

Blogs

Too many - see the blog roll. It has been a privilege to have participated in the blog phenomenon and to have met so many amazing people. Extra love to those who have commented at, or linked to this humble blog.

Films

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Howl’s Moving Castle
Me and You and Everyone We Know
The Proposition
Wolf Creek

I didn’t go to the cinema nearly enough this year.

Games

Dragonshard
X-Men Legends 2

Live Music

Ben Byrne & Clayton Thomas @ Disorientation
Dereb Desalegn @ What Is Music, Sydney
DJ Olive @ Liquid Architecture 6, Melbourne
DJ Z-Trip @ The Metro
Lieutenant Colonel Spastic Howitzer @ Electrofringe
Machina Aux Rock @ Liquid Architecture 6, Sydney
Peter Newman @ Electrofringe
The Residents @ The Metro
Smog @ The Metro
Social Interiors @ Liquid Architecture 6, Sydney
Thembi Soddell @ Liquid Architecture 6, Sydney
Wet Gate @ Liquid Architecture 6, Melbourne

I also played live more often this year than any other. Highlights included a solo performance at the National Gallery of Australia for Liquid Architecture 6, Canberra; a technically disastrous but well-received set with WUAL for Liquid Architecture 6, Melbourne; better WUAL performances at Disorientation and Electrofringe; duo performances with Rik Rue (at if you like improvised music…), John Jacobs (at e)scapes) and Ben Byrne (twice, at the NOW now, and a VJ performance at Science Fiction); a solo performance at The Night Air Audiotheque; a solo performance and a Time Being DJ performance at Disorientation; performances with the Splinter Orchestra at Liquid Architecture 6, Sydney and Science Fiction.

TV

Arrested Development
Dateline London
Deadwood
Green Wing
Late Night with Conan O’Brien
Lateline (ABC)
Nathan Barley
Nighty Night
Peep Show
Rome
Something in the Air
The Thick of It
Trailer Park Boys
We Can Be Heroes

Thank goodness for broadband.

What’s In / What’s Out

What’s out:

CDs
Censorship
Copyright
Free to air commercial TV
Newspapers (in print form)

What’s in:

TEH INTERNETS!

Disfiguring the ‘Means of Production’: Sound and Power in Late Capitalism

GamEnd and MamEnd

High-Definition Multimedia Interface

Humility and the Guest: Tarkovsky’s Critique of the Subject

Living Dangerously: Kierkegaardian Faith and Deleuzean Becoming

Oh Good

Overview of all HTML elements

Project Pterosaur

Reggaeton Flows Through Musical Genres

Zipf’s Law

YaCy

Can someone please explain to me the point of this?

Without context, such as comparisons with other time periods, analysis of conditions, circumstances, etc. it is basically meaningless. A bizarre, ghoulish competition. Road deaths aren’t treated this way at other times of the year.

It also appears to be a peculiarly Australian phenomenon (Googling ‘holiday road toll‘ returns mainly Australian media web sites). I’ve grown up with this and have always wondered wtf it’s all about.

Happy holidays. Look out!

From ‘Invisible Jukebox’, The Wire #261, November 2005, pp. 21-22

SUSMU YOKOTA
“GEKKOH”
FROM SAKURA (LEAF) 2000

I’m interested in your reaction to this.
[Immediately] Well, I know that. [Percussion comes in] Whoops, I don’t know that after all. Uh-oh, time to call the lawyers! [Laughs]. Gosh, I thought I was aware of all the various samplings but this is a new one. OK, folks, it’s the beginning of Music for 18 Musicians, “Pulse”, pretty much staying on the one chord and added percussion, and let’s see what happens. Is this recent?
Yes, 2000. It’s by Japanese musician and DJ Susumu Yokota.
[Reads press quotes on sleeve] ‘Electronica album of the year.’ Hey, I want a piece of the action. And you said it - The Wire. Hey, guilty as charged, man. Get two lawyers! Ah, he’s reharmonising my harmony, different bass. It’s nice. I like his choice of reharmonisation. Well, you know, this is pretty. As a track it’s nicely done and I guess my attitude to all this stuff in general is that I write a piece of music and if people listen to it and love it, I feel good, right? Now, if other musicians hear it - aside from all the legal issues - and they get something out of it, that’s even more so. In and of itself, they say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.
But wouldn’t you make the distinction between imitation and someone actually helping themselves to a piece of your music?
I think here he’s obviously taken off in his own direction. He liked the idea of a pulse and chose one of the chords, and from there went on his own way. Even when I heard “Little Fluffy Clouds” by The Orb [which samples Reich’s Electric Counterpoint], we never sued them. Years passed and then there was the Reich Remixed album. And all these people volunteered the rights to me. Basically, it wasn’t my music, it was their music, but I was the beneficiary of it, so it all works itself out in the end. I wouldn’t get all hot and bothered about this in a negative way at all. In fact, I get a kick out of it, and I enjoyed the track. You picked a provocative one that was a very good choice. I hadn’t heard it. I’m glad I have heard it.
Your own use of sampling is different in that you only use sounds that you’ve recorded yourself.
I’m not interested in sampling music. I’m interested in sampling things that are non-musical and bringing them into the music, so I never have that problem. I’m interested in bringing in the world, as in City Life and as in The Cave, into the concert hall and the opera house. My attitude to sampling? I see it as sort of folk music of our time. So this Japanese DJ is sampling music around him and then arranging it. People were taking other people’s music and rearranging it in the Middle Ages. “L’Homme Armé” was an enormously popular folk tune and composers from Dufay all the way up to Palestrina - that’s 200 years - all wrote masses for the church, hidden away inside of was “L’Homme Armé”. [Reich sings the melody] A really good solid tune. As a matter of fact, in You Are (Variations), squirreled away inside of the third variation is “L’Homme Armé”. Yeah, I put it in the programme notes: mea culpa. If that guy still had a copyright man, he’d be making as much money as James Brown [laughs]. Anyway, Susumu Yokota, I enjoyed your music.

I watched all six 30-minute eps of this show the other day. It’s a brilliant dissection of contemporary British politics’ obsession with spin (one of the main characters is clearly based on Alistair Campbell).

It’s basically Yes Minister meets The Office, and was devised and directed by Armando Iannucci, the comedy genius who was Chris Morris’ main collaborator in the early ’90s.

Chris Langham is perfect as the hapless Minister for Home Affairs. Langham is perhaps best known for playing (the voice of) Roy Mallard in the classic mockumentary series People Like Us. Apparently he also used to be a writer on The Muppet Show!

And now I discover that Langham has recently been arrested over child porn. Oh dear… What is it with the prurience of British celebrity culture?

Anyway - check out The Thick of It if you can - you’ll probably have to download it as it’s not on DVD yet, and like most good recent British TV comedy we’ll be lucky if it screens on Australian TV any time soon.