on the shore of the ultimate sea

With a flyer boasting quotes from both J.G. Ballard and Colonel Kilgore of Apocalypse Now, by the time my chum Luis and I arrived at NYU a few weeks back for a special lecture we knew we’d be in for an interesting discussion.

Steve Goodman, aka Kode9, dubstep producer and owner/chief curator of the massively great Hyperdub record label, was talking about his new book Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. (MIT Press)

Introduced as a “rogue academic” and member of the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit, it wasn’t immediately clear if the talk was going to be highly abstract or grounded, but it turned out the latter–lucid, well researched and informative. Here are some notes.
Read more on Steve Goodman's Sonic Warfare talk at NYU

97.9 FM in Detroit has long been home to WJLB, one of the finer R&B/’urban contemporary’ radio stations in the country. While kicking around on the excellent Detroit Radio Flashbacks I found the website featured weekly charts, “hip pocket surveys,” for much of 1984-85. These were the final years legendary DJ The Electrifying Mojo was at the station, so I thought it might be fun to take a look at what was getting played just about 25 years ago. I mostly missed the Mojo era, but JLB was a hugely influential radio station for me; it played loads of local records and was one of my first exposures to live turntablism, with a party/booty show every Friday night. So, I hope you enjoy these tunes. There are some hometown favorites here, stuff that stayed pretty local, and things from the last throes of Motown. Not surprisingly, Rochester Hills’ own Madonna is the only white performer on the list. Also not surprisingly, Prince, a Mojo favorite, appears a few times, both in his own work and through Apollonia 6 and Vanity. Pardon the dodgy embeds, Most of the record companies don’t like it enabled on their YouTube offerings…

24. You Get The Best From Me – Alicia Myers

23. We Don’t Work For Free – Grandmaster Melle Mel & The Furious Five

No video…but here’s a taste of the song.

22. The Jacksons – Torture

21. Tonight – Ready For The World

See the Top 20 singles from Detroit's WJLB on October 15, 1984

MC Hammer, of all people who’ve mastered the dark arts of social media, wrote an Op-Ed piece for Ad Week extolling the virtues of Twitter for connecting to fans without intermediary media. (Though some have suggested it was the work of a ghost writer.)

While new social media platforms seem to pop up every day, I’m strongly behind Twitter, a micro-blogging tool that has become a game changer for me. The platform offers celebrity brands the means to build and develop relationships in an intimate and personal way. The friendly and efficient interface links to video and audio and integrates with various other social media outlets with ease. That means my brand can live on a wide variety of platforms where fans might find me.

(Emphasis mine.)

Unfortunately, ten days later, his cousin, a co-star of his reality show, is accused of raping a woman who he met via Twitter in a Livermore, CA hotel room. I will refrain from a lay-up, empty-netter of a joke out of respect for the gravity of the situation.

photos by Billy Whitfield

It’s always interesting when punks get old. That’s why my emphatic finger-point this week is towards a story in Vice by former Born Against frontman Sam McPheeters. McPheeters ventures into one of the Midwest’s  strangest regions, the wealthy suburbs of Michigan’s capital, Lansing, to profile Doc Dart, former frontman for hardcore group Crucifucks. Dart, who calls himself “26,” appears to be suffering from several forms of mental illness, and has become a suburban pariah in the Mason-Okemos area.

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Move D Looks Up, originally uploaded by nparish.

Here’s Move D, from his appearance earlier in the summer at Brooklyn’s best techno party on the Gowanus at The Yard. Read more about it in my Earplug review. But don’t take my word for it’s dopeness–listen to the set at the Sunday Best downloads page.

There’s only one place I’d rather be in a few hours, and that’s good old Köln for the Total 9 party. The compilation itself comes out next week, and buying it is the smart thing to do. It’s very, very good.

My good pal Jimmy told me a fun Total story from a few years ago, when his friend ran up to Wolfgang Voigt, maybe a bit intoxicated, and surely in awe of the whole affair, and told him “Wolfgang, you’re my hero.”

Wolfgang gave him a smile and calmly said “When we make a party, we are all heroes.”

Ain’t that the truth.

Partizan Lab’s Erik Lerner has directed this cute little animated video for one of my favorite artists, Rex the Dog. The song is “I Can See You, You Can See Me.” Rex’s debut album, which may be called “I Can See You, You Can See Me” (at least that’s the title on the drawing of a CD on his MySpace page) The Rex the Dog Show, is out soon.

Of course you remember Rex from his big big song “We Live In Daddy’s Car” from a few years ago, as well as his aural affinity for the KORG 700S synthesizer.

Follow along at his site. There’s even a nice little preview mix and stickers, too, for the faithful. Just sign up for Rexy’s fan club.

Oh, you know, just another day at the office writing about Radiohead, lasers, and the folks that love them. Last week I talked with James Frost, the director of Radiohead’s new “House of Cards” video. I’m seeing the group play for the first time at All Points West next month; I’ll report back if the stuff from the video is used at all in the live show. It’d be a bit of a shame if it wasn’t; this look is too closely connected to this song to be utilized in a fresh way anywhere else. So Radiohead might as well keep trotting it out with “House of Cards” when they play it live. Come to think of it, as amazing as applying this technology to film the crowd and band during a live performance would be, it’d probably be impossible to render the data in time to produce anything but the crudest preview. But I’m sure you stopped at the link to read Frost say that in our talk and have already ruled out that possibility.

Good thing, too, as who knows whether that LIDAR stuff might cause some impromptu LASIK for audience members, like these dodgy Russian rave lasers.

Oh Wighnomys.

My favorite technarchists from Jena are back with a great mix.

But Metawuffmischfelge? What does that mean? Well, it doesn’t hurt to ask (along with a technical Q):

from Wighnomy Brothers
reply-to Wighnomy Brothers
to nick
date Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 1:59 AM
subject AW: a quick question for Gabor…

good morning nick …

i recorded the vinyls but i mixed the hole stuff in the computer!
metawuffmischfelge? it´s a fantasy word!

greetings!
robag

…in other news…a cool change at earplug; DJ charts now include bits about the records written by the DJs charting them. And no one knows why dance records work better than those playing them to make people dance. The linked installment is from Justin Simon aka Invisible Conga People (on Italians Do It Better). Don’t confuse him with Mike Simonetti, IDIB’s founder (and I’d say one of the people instrumental in getting those punk kids dancing when he was doing Troubleman). One of my favorite reads, Cosmic Disco, did an interview with Mike and is hosting a guest mix I’ve been enjoying. Check ‘er out.

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At Soul Skate, originally uploaded by nparish.

I can easily award my ‘favorite weekend’ crown to Memorial Day; since the inception of Detroit’s electronic music festival, whatever you might call it (DEMF, Movement, Fuse-In) I’ve been in town catching up with lovely friends and family, hearing amazing artists and stomping around one of the world’s most intriguing cities. I take a little pride in only missing one festival, in 2001, and have seen it go through all sorts of changes. Compared to previous years, 2008 was professional in concept and execution, with Paxahau, the party promotion company which took reins over last year, honing an already strong element of expertise to managing the three-day event. Each year is a little different, but this was on balance one of the best yet, with a huge array of options.

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