I have a new side-project, Diyar Supermarket. Denver's Alphabets (Colin Ward) and Deptford's The Atoms (Rob Sommerlad) have released their cool split tape under its aegis and I made the artwork (with the help of a neuroscientist friend). Each tape has a different cover and some really good tracks on it, and it's cheap. Buy the tape on the Diyar blog. Here's the blurb:

Alphabets' first European release. The Atoms' debut release. Diyar Supermarket's first release. 5 tracks plus each remixes the other. USA-UK collaboration. Denver-Deptford love. Recorded onto tapes taken from the basement of an abandoned recording studio. The studio which spawned 'Candle in the Wind' giving birth to a monster-foetus of futuristic pop music. Limited edition. Hand-made artwork with a variety of different covers.

So, I'm crap at blogging.

These are some things I've done a while ago: An illustrated Le Guess Who festival guide (November 24th-28th), new music column (p.18-21) apple crumble recipe (p.35) - Subbacultcha September issue, new music column (p.18-21) yam burger recipe (p.47) - Subbacultcha October issue, new music column (p.18-19) courgette roll recipe (p.48-9) - Subbacultcha November issue.

I will schedule some posts soon. Also, I am preparing something NEW and EXCITING, watch this space.

1. Simon Morris - The Road to the Unconscious / The aleatory moment (223,704 words traveling at 90mph) (2003)
In January 2003, eighty-three students from York College cut out every word from Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams and as every word was cut from its sentence it was spoken. On 1st June 2003, the artist Simon Morris threw the words out of the window of a Renault Clio on Redbridge Road, Dorset. The action freed the words from the structural unity of Freud's text as it subjected them to an aleatory moment.Maurizio Cogliandro and Dallas Seitz documented the action as 333,960 words erupted from the window of the car. Dr Howard Britton, a psychoanalyst, directed them to any slippages or eruptions of the real that occurred in the reconfigured text. 

2. Gold Panda - You (I like this a lot!)

Sorry about the blogging silence. I have been ill, lazy and busy this past week and I'm now in Poland for a few days. I have big essays to write and babies to kiss, so it might be quiet for a bit, but not for long.

I have a new cooking column and illustration in the May issue of Subbacultcha! magazine (p. 46-7).
I got this t-shirt from Times New Viking as a thank you.

The guy who made this is called Alphabets (Colin). He lives in Denver. He is cool and weird. You can download all his cool music files here. You can watch all his weird videos here. I hope you like him as much as I do.

We saw Lucky Dragons yesterday night at WORM in Rotterdam. I love Lucky Dragons. I love Lucky Dragons. I love Lucky Dragons. I love Lucky Dragons. I FUCKING LOVE LUCKY DRAGONS. THEY ARE THE BEST.
Thanks to the person who recorded this last night, I'm one of the blurs in the video.

Lucky Dragons are Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara, an experimental art/music group from L.A. Their interactive performance, 'Make a Baby', involves the participation of the audience to initiate, monitor, and meaningfully interpret the transfer of data through skin contact. In short, Lucky Dragons operate an array of homemade hardware and software which sends carrier signal-line level audio frequencies in a series of digital loops through touch conductive fabric sensors attached to various instruments. When one touches the touch sensitive instruments, it produces a sound. This signal is also carried through the human body, which means that if another individual touches the person holding the instrument, it will produce a sound. This spurs a chain reaction of interactions, where people experiment with variating types of touch to produce different tones. These social aural interactions are simulataneously mapped onto a visual display in the form of moving coloured patterns.

Referring to John Cage’s ‘A Year from Monday,’ 'Make a Baby' proves that the artist is “no more extraordinary than we are.” Fischbeck and Rara are the mediators between the artwork and the participants, “anyone who experiences a work of art is as guilty as the artist. It is not a question of sharing the guilt. Each one of us gets all of it.” Cage also questions the direction in which art is going and whether it will become a family reunion. In this sense, 'Make a Baby', confirms his supposition, as the performance forms family-intimate interactions through new acts of perception and cognition. An instantaneous 'art-family' emerges and, as the title of the performance suggests, gives birth to a unique art action.

(An excerpt from my unpublished entry on Lucky Dragons on the Art and Electronic Media website.)

And if you're ever at Rotterdam Centraal Station, get a bami kroket out of the wall from Smullers, it is THE SHIT.

Todd Cole (2010) - Aanteni
I refrain from fashion blogging, but an exception must be made for Cole's speechlesslyfuckingamazing video for Rodarte featured on NOWNESS.
And, AND, the score was written by NO AGE. NO WAY. There's so much good stuff wrapped into this; this has made my week, and it's only Monday.

My interview with DD/MM/YYYY is in the March issue of Subbacultcha! magazine. Read it here. (p. 25-7)
Shame I had a word limit, the band and I even talked about weeing on things. I love a good wee.

Daphne Oram (ca. 1968) - Oramics
I'm not going to host any downloads, but if you're clever enough, you will find her album lurking about in the big WWW. This is ear-opening good stuff. Apart from having impeccable taste in eyewear, Oram came from the Future. Oramics is the process of printing physical hand movements onto transparent film strips and passing them onto electronic photo sensors which then are converted into sound. Loadsa sciencey shit that I will never come to grips with, but the result sounds so cool.

Yesterday night, I had an epiphany when I saw Kania Tieffer. Not only is her logo a pixellated otter smoking a cigar, she screams in fake German, plays the craziest random shit off her ipod and covers Elvis' Hound Dog. Her sticker is never coming off my bicycle. Fucking hilarious and fucking brilliant.

Water Walk (1960) & Variations V (1965) - John Cage
Read this really cool, excellent, nice, interesting interview from 1987 with Cage by John Held, Jr.

I put a nickel into the phone, and I called the number that Max had given us when he visited the Arts Club in Chicago. This time he didn't recognize my voice. And he said, "Are you thirsty?" And I said, "Yes." He said, "Well, come over Monday for cocktails." And so that was the end of the conversation. And I went back to Xenia, and she said, "Call him back!" (laughs) She said, "We have everything to gain and nothing to lose." So I called him back, and he said, "Oh, It's you." And this time he recognized my voice, and said "Come right over. Your room is ready." And it was then that we met anybody whom anyone would want to meet in the artworld.

THIS IS THE SHIT OF THE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE.

1. Charles Csuri - Fragmentation Animations, Hummingbird (1968)
2. Das Racist - Rainbow in the Dark (FRESH ASS INTERNET THUGZzz)
3. Little kids pull the best faces. (Xmas 2009)

1. One of my homemade Xmas cards
2. Sleigh Bells - Infinity Guitars (live)

1. Presenting the uni-moustache, made out of a quality nylon stocking!
2. I will not post phone photos, but I/we saw three excellent gigs this past weekend - Little Women (obnoxious, scary, cool skronk jazz band), Thomas Truax (ace DIY instruments) and The Moi Non Plus (biggest surprise of the evening - excellent, excellent.) Have a listen, do your research.

1. Aa
2. Wavves
3. Male Bonding
Phone photos, Ekko, Utrecht, 29.11.09
Aa were fucking cool, Male Bonding were good, as always, Wavves seemed bored (no pun intended).
P.S. Utrecht is way nice, if you ever go, make sure you go to Broodje Plof for patat, eat a fresh stroopwafel by Hoog Catharijn, and play Connect Four in Coffee Company.

1. T-Rex in Amsterdam
2. Time travel in Euston Station
3. Connie Converse - How Sad, How Lovely (2009) (Ok, Connie Converse has been the Coolest Person Ever in my books for three weeks now. A singer-songwriter from the 1950s, she packed up her shit in 1974 and disappeared forever (FOREVER). Her music was dug up earlier this year and let me tell you, it is ace beyond ace.)
4. Also, if you ever need a haircut and are in Amsterdam, go to Mogeen. I know they pay them to be nice, but if the hair stylists offer you a bazillion types of tea, apples, sweets, biscuits, video projections and will give you a free trim a month later, they might also be genuinely nice.

1. Survival Research Laboratory, Increasing the Latent Period in a System of Remote Destructibility (1997)
2. Wetdog - Frauhaus! (2009)

I have neglected the music content on here lately, will improve, promise.

1. Loves of a Blonde/Lásky jedné plavovlásky - Miloš Forman (1965) (Yeah, this is way cool.)
2. The Witches of Eastwick - George Miller (1987) (Ridiculously ridiculous, the fashion is the shit.)
3. Madonna - What It Feels Like For a Girl (2001) (Good lyrics, really good early noughties bad hair.)

1-3. Teengirl Fantasy - Hollywood Hills EP (2009)
Their friends made 100 (one hundred!) different covers for this EP. Go to Pukekos and look/listen for yourself. Go to their website, it is ace.

(By the way - damn those who saw No Age twice in London this week.)