mis en scene

Now this is a wonderful spooky Hallowe'en treat, a blog that collects together the painted backgrounds to old cartoons. Abandoned by their cuddly residents, these haunted landscapes all feel decidedly uncanny.

call

Just a reminder for those that need it.
There's still another week to send something: LINK

fatality

Extract from Comte de Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror translated 1978 by Paul Knight:

Stanza 3

I will state in a few lines that Maldoror was good during the first years of his life, when he lived happily. That is that. Then he noticed that he had been born evil: an extraordinary fatality! As far as he could, he hid his real character for a large number of years; but in the end, because of the concentration required, which did not come naturally to him, the blood used to rush to his head every day; until, no longer able to bear such a life, he flung himself resolutely into a career of evildoing... a sweet atmosphere! Who would have thought so! Whenever he kissed a little pink-faced child, he felt like tearing open its cheeks with a razor, and he would have done so very often, had not Justice, with its long train of punishments, prevented him. He was no liar, admitted the truth and said that he was cruel. Human beings, did you hear that? He dares to say it again with this trembling pen. So it is a power stronger than will... Curse! Could a stone escape from the laws of gravity? Impossible. Impossible, for evil to form an alliance with good. That is what I was saying in the above lines.

alarm

Lately I've been playing this clip first thing in the morning as I wake up. It really makes me ready to take on the world.

superman

Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass. I remember exactly where I first heard it. There was a club in Leeds by the Corn Exchange called Liquid that hosted Haywire, an underground electro night. A group of us had turned out to see Andy Weatherall, a DJ of some repute, and towards the close my friend leapt out of her seat as the opening bars of the final song began to play. Everybody else there soon did the same, all throwing slinky robot shapes to that weird pinging melody with an incomprehensible sinister vocoder voice, a record beamed in from a galaxy far far away, utterly unlike anything from what passed for a rather parochial music scene back then. Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass was made by one Ferenc E. van der Sluijs, better known as I-f. Over the next ten years much of the music I listen to each day could in some way be traced back to this man. He would have made it, played it, influenced it or broadcast it through his online music projects (the Cybernetic Broadcasting or the new Intergalactic FM), kickstarting the Italo disco revival a full ten years before Hoxton hipsters were even aware that a bandwagon existed.

Here he is delivering a rare lecture as part of some corporate-sponsored soft drink junket, and if you’ve a spare few minutes you’d do well to take in at least a part of what is a very interesting and inspiring talk: LINK

high-roller

Last year the prolific record producer Steve Albini appeared on an online poker forum to field questions from assorted card and music geeks.

Max Raker: Was Phil Spector as innovative and important as Rolling Stone says he is?

electrical: Oh hells yeah. Most record producers are parasites on the careers of bands and artists, but Phil Spector was actually the creator of everything on the records he produced, regardless of whose name was on the credits. He was also an extreme sex perv freak, gun nut and paranoid coke fiend. he was about as high-roller as dudes like that can be, and it all drove him nuts. Unique character.

There's been a major BBC documentary on Spector broadcast last night, and the great man is surprisingly lucid. A unique character alright: iPlayer LINK

schadenfreude

Anyone who has ever worked for a bank, ever had a dislike of banks or anyone who has ever been fucked over by a bank (that'll be most of us, then) is directed to this page forthwith. Always guaranteed to raise a smile.