Ultralighters choose thin layers of man-made fibre for clothing; never cotton, which never dries. Talking of which, there’s nothing worse than chafing and now that rugby players wear Lycra under shorts, it’s acceptable to admit that wearing them on long hikes is essential.

Read Will Robinson’s advice on hiking in the UK before heading out as well though,

I have hiked and camped in the Loch Hourn region of northwest Scotland, and trainers, a poncho and the shelter of a nylon sheet are not appropriate for this wet and windy region. Boots, lightweight full waterproofs and a tent are required to hike in comfort and safety.

Kevin Maher blunders badly in today’s Times two-star verdict on the movie 21. Under the headline Not just a poker face he writes,

Unfortunately, for large chunks of the Spacey poker drama 21 the scenes are all about what the scenes are about - ie playing poker.

Unfortunately for Maher the film is not about poker, but blackjack. This is rather like reviewing a movie about rugby; thinking it being about football.

The editor must have told him though, the online version of Maher’s review on 21 has the right game.

From the Evening Standard,

London cyclists are investing in helmet-mounted cameras to record their daily commute, so they have video evidence against careless drivers if they are knocked off and hurt.

From last week, but worth the read (even if John seems to like two other pet hates of mine — The Stones and old Zimmerframe himself).

If you’re like me, and you hate U2 more than Satan, Hitler and Walt Disney combined, then the imminent arrival in cinemas of U2 3D offers another chance to ponder why millions of people worldwide should be in thrall to the band’s blandly hectoring strain of bombastic stadium-rock, or to muse on why anyone would ever need to hear Sunday Bloody Sunday again.

…

They wag their collective finger at tyrants and evil corporate bastards all the livelong day (though creditable politics don’t improve their music one iota), and trot out all their stale old hits, each about as musically distinguished as the average Level 42 album, and still the punters will pay good money for the experience - and in 3D! What has the rockumentary come to?

The silly season is not over. Paul Morley put U2 3D as recommended viewing in last week’s Observer.

Some of the photographs can be seen at Selfridges in London until late April 2008. Telegraph article on the Exactitudes (exactidudes?) exhibition.

The poisoning was not uncovered by the state but by Giroud, who sells his catch to African, Asian and eastern European immigrants in the local markets of Lyon’s grey suburbs and old industrial heartlands. Giroud, 35, is the only commercial fisherman on the Grand Large in Décines, bringing in 10 tonnes a year and selling it himself. …

Then in 2004 birds started dying around the Grand Large. Tests showed it was avian botulism. “Although there was no effect on my fish, customers who had seen dead birds were wary,” said Giroud. “Off my own back, just to reassure them, I sent my perfect-looking fish to the lab. I expected excellent results.”

But the tests found a different, murkier poison - the fish contained PCBs between 10 and 12 times the legal safety limit. Fish from the Grand Large was banned at the end of 2005 and similar bans have progressively spread to other areas.

Rolling down that hill (in a transparent inflated ball).

This time around the SXSW music torrent has been created by Greg Hewgill (thanks). I have no idea why SXSW itself did not bother. Not all torrents are evil and I wonder how UK ISPs will deal with legal torrents like these in the future.

Listening to some old 12″s found in the basement.

The excellent NonPop podcasts presented by Scott Unrein are back in tune (and with a new design) after almost almost a year of hiatus. The music is mostly modern classical.

Time to dust of my own microphone and get Acecast running again.

Karlheinz Stockhausen obituary in The Times.

The Battles are namedropped in both a Sunday Times piece on underground dance music and are strangely called “post-punk revivalists” by Emma Warren in The Observer’s 50 top albums for 2007.

Mirrored rightly belongs in a year end list, but let’s call the music for what it is. Prog rock. Mirrored is late King Crimson (Discipline) , Bill Nelson’s Red Noise (Sound on Sound) with a dash of Gentle Giant vocal effects. Prog rock updated for a new audience.

Download Blogariddims 31, MP3@192Kbs, 60:00 minutes>

This is one hour of straightforward avant-garde electronic goodies, treated and non-treated voices, some phonography, computer code noise and the old pause signal from the Norwegian radio. There’s at least two tracks running at the same time throughout the one hour mix and if you don’t like it at first, try it again later or when in a different mood — it might grow on you.

I started out with several ideas for my second layered mix for the Blogariddims project (an “English Organic” mix with ie Virginia Astley and John Foxx’s The Garden? an all-female mix?). After compiling tracks for a couple of months and reducing the running list to around 20 tracks I ended up with a pretty much full-on electronic mix to go with my Blogariddims 9 effort.

Blogariddims 9 consisted of 100% Norwegian tracks; but on this one I have restrained myself to a handful of current homegrown artists like Nils Petter Molvær and last year’s big releases from 120 Days and Lindstrøm.

The exception is Arne Nordheim’s pause signal/music for the Norwegian Broadcasting from 1970. Arne and the recording engineer were working on a different project. The engineer had a dental emergency, so Arne decided to have a play with the kit in the studio to make his entry for the 1969 competition for the broadcaster’s pause music. It is one of the earliest electronic pieces I can remember hearing as a kid (Hot Butter’s Popcorn being another one). Even if the quality of my sample is not the best I wanted to include it (I make these mixes mainly for my own enjoyment).

I’ve put in some classic modern music from Stockhausen and Reich plus a voice piece from Bernard Parmegiani (unknown to me a month ago, but an editor’s choice at the newly discovered avantgardeproject.org). There’s also an extract from a longer interview that Stockhausen did in the US in 1964.

Noise, found noise and flat out experiments. I like it. So for added spice there’s JJ Burnel’s Triumph Bonneville revving up, Pete Shelley’s computer code for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum (sounding like old-fashioned “modem breath”) and Bernard Szajner’s (Zed) reversed half-speed track from the tapes used for the recording of Visons of Dune (mixed with Fremen from this album. Vangelis is probably best known for his more accessible works (and soundtracks), but I remember buying Beauborg on cassette around 1980 and it made a lasting impression of being enclosed in an electronic space, so here it is. Vangelis is currently involved in space issues of his own with the new Acropolis Museum.

The mix takes its title from Rachel Sweet’s debut Fool Around from 1978. An album I picked up a year later to go with Jona Lewie and Lene Lovich. The album (on white vinyl that does not exactly improve the audio) is varied (courtesy of producer/writer Liam Sternberg) and still quite charming. The standout track is It’s So Different Here. Although I doubt many of today’s kooky Scandinavian female artists (from Stina Nordenstam to Hafdis Huld) have heard of Rachel Sweet the song in some ways preempt their music with a good 30 years.

There’s also a long Harold Budd track (from a release on the short-lived Uniton label), Fripp’s Exposure and a free online tune from the wonderful Lomov.

I finish the mix with Anja Garbarek’s Stay Tuned again. It’s quite simply the best track Kate Bush never wrote and the perfect tune to finish a mix with.

Tracklisting.

• [00:06-03:56] Kakonita (Deathprod Mix) - Nils Petter Molvær (2001)
• [00:33-04:44] Croydon Streetnoise (phonography, soundtransit.nl)
• [00:39-08:19] part 4 of interview with Stockhausen (www.stockhausen.org)
• [02:56-13:38] Abandoned Cities - Harold Budd
• [06:23-09:43] Friday Temptation (Tone scene 1) - KH Stockhausen (www.stockhausen.org)
• [08:59-13:05] Kind of Pale - Lomov
• [09:52-10:22] Pause Signal for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation - Arne Nordheim
• [11:38-20:29] Come Out, Come Down, Fade Out, Be Gone - 120 Days
• [12:58-15:05] ZX Spectrum Code - Pete Shelley
• [15:26-24:16] Superficial Music - Bernard Szajner
• [20:45-24-52] Fremen - Bernard Szajner
• [24:25-28:57] Exposure - Robert Fripp
• [26:01-33:59] Monomoods - Maja Ratkje
• [31:37-34:28] It’s So Different Here - Rachel Sweet
• [33:30-42:38] Beabourg - Vangelis
• [34:35-39:06] Triumph - JJ Burnel
• [40:07-46:26] Ponomatopees II - Bernard Parmegiani (www.avantgardeproject.org)
• [43:18-45:39] John Peel - Delia Derbyshire/Brian Hodgson (www.delia-derbyshire.org)
• [45:49-51:02] Further Into the Future - Lindstrøm
• [46:10-51:53] Pulses - Steve Reich
• [51:17-55:10] Why She Couldn’t Come - EST
• [51:43-54 :48] Sky Island (phonography, www.soundtransit.nl)
• [54 :48-59:04] Stay Tuned - Anja Garbarek
• [59:15-59:45] Pause Signal for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation- Arne Nordheim

Researchers have now been able to show not only that the fish sleep, but that they can suffer from sleep deprivation and insomnia.

Mechanism design theory looks at the paradoxes that result when economic actors withhold information about their preferences. When one person wishes to buy a unique item, and another is happy to sell it, they both may have an incentive to lie about the true price they would be happy to trade at. As a result, trades that ought to take place often do not do so. The Nobel winners have investigated how no auction, however designed, can truly create a perfect outcome for everyone concerned. While abstract, the theories have applications in the real world, as they suggest that markets may not be the best way to provide so-called public goods, such as roads and television programmes.

The claim would be in defiance of the spirit of the 1959 Antarctic treaty, to which the UK is a signatory. It specifically states that no new claims shall be asserted on the continent. The treaty was drawn up to prevent territorial disputes.

…

The Antarctic submission reflects the UK’s efforts to secure resources for the future as oil and natural gas reserves dwindle over the coming decades.

The Avant Garde Project is a series of recordings of 20th-century classical-experimental-electroacoustic music digitized from LPs whose music has in most cases never been released on CD, and so is effectively inaccessible to the vast majority of music listeners today.

The analog rig used to extract the sound from the grooves is near state-of-the-art, producing almost none of the tracking distortion or surface noise normally associated with LPs.

I am downloading the sampler/editor choice selections to get a taste for what this is (now that the NonPop podcasts have taken a break).

After a year’s break from podcasting at Acecast I have decided to revive the site and my half-hour shows of free and legal music. The tracklisting has been ready for months and it shows. One of the bands on the show, Headless, have split (ouch). Hopefully we’ll hear some of the members in new bands in the future (The Ivories broke up shortly after I found out about them as well).

The tracklisting is below, head over to Acecast to download the show or subscribe in iTunes. I’ll freshen it all up with pictures and download links in the days to come.

• Wildspot — Belbury Poly (signature tune)
• Danza 3 — Night-Time Epitome
• 21 to 35 — Boom Bip & Doseone
• Sway (demo) — Headless
• Acid Reprise — French Theory
• Sonic Infusion — Mudhoney
• Everybody Daylight — Brightblack Morning Light
• Dogwood Rust — Comets on Fire
• The Greatest — Cat Power
• London, Leicester Square, Musicians — Dallas Simpson (ambience)

Although I have never read Nobelist Naipul, I am with him on Jane Austen,

I thought halfway through the book, ‘Here am I, a grown man reading about this terrible vapid woman and her so-called love life.’

In a nice piece of symmetric marketing over the weekend Naipul is interviewed in The Sunday Times

“After nearly 170 years, starting with Dickens, everything that a novel could do has been done …” He pauses. “These are private views.”

and found over in The Guardian writing about Derek Walcott,

My copy of 25 Poems is beside me now. The cream soft cover is brown at the edges, though the pages with the poems are in fair condition. The very narrow spine is frayed: more the effect of bookshelf light than of handling. Fifty years on, I see more than I did in 1955.

Siouxsie is newly divorced, fifty and with her first solo-album Mantaray soon out. She does not think much of technology though,

“YouTube,” spits the high priestess of punk, “technology – I hate it.”

…

People doing their own thing – that’s punk.

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