Milk’s Site

Going to Edinburgh for Fimbulvetr, and tomorrow, as my previous post mentioned, I’ll be dancing to Dave Clarke.

and I are considering doing the DJ Skills nightclass at Perth College (where I got my HND in audio engineering) which covers “Audio safety and system configuration; beats per minute (BPM); beat mixing (the first steps); pitching a mix (BPM matching); phrasing; scrathcing (incorporating the various techniques within); set construction; producing demo recordings; broadcast DJing; career options and an introduction to dance music production”, although we’d need to check if it’s vinyl or whatever and how much time we would actually get to give it a go ourselves. I’ve only done proper DJing once before at an afterparty where I used beginners luck to get a perfect beatmatch on the first mix, after which it all fell apart, but that was over three years ago now and I’d love to give it another shot at some point. I’ve been thinking about getting either CD decks or a controller so I can do mixing with audio files on, say, a laptop for a while now, it’s just the whole no-cash thing that’s holding me back ;)

While I’m on the subject (generally speaking), Reg Hardware is reporting that “PortalPlayer, the chip maker behind the Apple music player’s audio logic … courtesy of a tie-in with UK-based Bluetooth chip design pioneer CSR, aka Cambridge Silicon Radio … will integrate its PP5022 audio chip family with CSR’s UniFi Wi-Fi and Bluetooth controller. It will demonstrate a reference platform based on the combined technology next week at the 3GSM show in Barcelona.” So, new iPods from Apple with WiFi and Bluetooth functionability, which inevitably will force the hand of other suppliers in the portable music deice market to follow suit. Hopfully anyway, and then the phenomenon of people broadcasting the music they’re listning to and/or listning to the music of others nearby will start to appear. I’ve daydreamed about this for a few years now, would be great to see it become a reality. And I’m sure units could [eventually] be used as repeater units. The possabilities might even include mesh wifi access, but the one I’m most exited about is flash mob silent discos!

P.P.S. ; I will look into all that crap once I have some time at the start of next week.

So I was in Edinburgh at the weekend. Met up with on Friday, met and and a couple of other nice people who’s names I forget (sorry). Was great to be around people who trust each other enough to be able to take chide from each other without assumption that it was meant in a bad way. Finally got to see Rez in action, is probably something I’d have to sit down at for an evening to get into though. Didn’t get far on the level with the Freeland track Mind Killer (or ‘Fear’ as the Rez soundtrack calls it) anyway ;). Went out to a night at Studio 24 named Fuzz. Looking at the site now, it bills itself as “A new Rock, Alternative & Indie night, playing the better tracks often ignored by more repetative [sic] rock nights.”. Haha, more like a non-step four and a half hour set of Madchester [1] stylee indie rock. It was novel for a while and there were a few tracks to bop on the dancefloor to, but way too big a dose in the end. Also randomly introduced myself to and chatted about Infest for a bit which was cool. Will need to check out Cyberia at some point too. Went out on Saturday to shop for a few things, got a nice pipe, couldn’t find any damn shoelaces that wouldn’t snap after a few days wear though. Went back to the flat and chilled with and for a bit, got a bit stonned [sic] then managed to nod off and sleep through most of Ascension. Ah well, nm. Lazed about more on Sunday which was fun then headed for the bus station and home in the evening.

This evening (that is, the evening of Tuesday) , , and I watched Serenity. I had high hopes for it after seeing the first 9 minutes of the movie a few months back, and while it had an interesting enough plot it lacked a certain something and just dragged in places, plus when the going got tough towards the end there were a few annoying Hollywood cliches that soured the experience. I should probably watch Firefly at some point though.

Oh yeah, and I watched Doom on Monday evening. What a waste. What a god damn waste. Ugh, I’m not even going to start. Ugh. Thrice, ugh.

P.S. I am an ENTJ (Extroverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Judging), not that I actually have much faith in the results of Myers-Briggs tests as I feel there are too many false dichotomies that people hold onto in this world and that it doens’t help to try and class people by them.

P.P.S Y.A.3.D.D. This one looks kinda promising though..

Nya!

P.S. Cable ties are great for when shitty shoelaces snap on you half-way through the day. Until, that is, you need to take your shoes off. *reaches for his toolkit*

P.P.S. I’ve recently turned my hand on Wikipedia to articles on record labels that purvey some of the harder, darker and more experimental styles of electronic dance music, generally on an as-I-listen-to-their-stuff basis. So far I’ve started Hymen Records, Future Sound Corporation, Ad Noiseam and Enzyme Records. I’d be grateful to anyone who could contribute any knowledge to these.

P.P.P.S Why do I keep clicking the new tab icon with the middle mouse button? Any thoughts on what that should actually do in Firefox?

Dave Clarke is playing at UFREAK in Edinburgh next Saturday for his World Service 2 tour. He’s the guy that did the cover of Bauhaus’ She’s In Parties that featured Chicks On Speed. Anyone interested?

Gender-Liberal
You scored 100% Gender-Abolitionist, 80% Sexually Liberal, and 0 % Socialist

You are the Gender-Liberal. This means that you share qualities with both Liberal Feminists and Gender Abolitionists. Like the Liberal Feminist, you feel political change needs to be done on a small-scale level through legislative change, not necessarily through a massive destruction of class society through the adoption of an extremist socialist stance. You are also very concerned with sexual liberation, and feel that women should be free to do what they please sexually without criticism, just as men should be free to do. However, you differ from the Liberal Feminist culturally, because you see gender as a social construction that needs to be destroyed. Like the Gender Abolitionist, you realize that gender is often perceived as one’s identity, when it should only be perceived as a small, insignificant part of that person. We shouldn’t be able to say “This person IS a woman”. Rather one should say something more akin to “This person HAS the physical traits of a woman”. This way, we wouldn’t be assuming someone’s physical traits are a part of their identity, and we couldn’t use this difference to oppress them or categorize them. In short, you advocate extreme cultural change through the destruction of gender roles, but politically you are less extreme, instead focusing on individual or legislative change as opposed to a massive change of ideology.

Holy cheesesticks, a whole load of tracks from Madonna’s latest album Confessions On A Dance Floor were produced by Stuart Price aka Les Rythmes Digitales, who is also a member of Zoot Woman. I love that kind of pop that draws stuff from more dancible and funky styles of music, stuff like Gewn Stefani, some Britney Spears, Girls Aloud, Kylie Minogue, etc. So close to stuff like Echo Image, and some of Covenant and Apoptygma Berzerk’s bouncier futurepop stuff.

So who’s going for Infest halls this year? What are all the Dundee/Scotland/wherever peeps doing, and is anyone already involved in going for a mass booking? Anyone who’d like to get rooms together please reply to this so we can get something sorted out.

Here’s this and that for myself. I know the in the end people put their subjective views of me, but be honest please :)

P.S. “I got to my feet and regained my composure. I stomped over the hostess cupcakes and other misc crap he had lying on the ground. I would limp every time I remembered I had a hurt foot, but really, by this time, I didn’t give a shit about the pain. I heard the shrieking from inside the bathroom, like some kind of high pitched wailing, and the strange bass resonance. I kicked open the bathroom door and screamed at the top of my lungs, ‘YOU FUCKING FUCK SHIT‘”.

Here’s a rough list of things I’d like to do in the coming year. The dates for some club nights are educated guesses and the months for these might swap around depending on the specifics of the nights/how much cash I have at the time.

Febuary
18th: Ascension (Edinburgh)

March
17th: Chains On Velvet (Norwich)
31st: Implant (Manchester)

May
12th: Judder (Cheltenham)
26th – 28th: Dark City (Edinburgh)

July
15th: Wendyhouse/Mutate (Leeds)
28th – 30th: Lexx-o-Rama (Stockholm)

August
25th – 27th: Infest (Bradford)

Other things I’ve been thinking about include Wave Gotik Treffen, M’era Luna and Maschinenfest, although I’m pretty sure I’ve left it to late for WGT (and probably M’era Luna too). Meh.

From here; Front Line Assembly, Rotersand, Stromkern, Reaper, Unter Null and Frozen Plasma. I rather like the first three but out of the others have only heard bits of Unter Null which sound fairly terror embish. Still more info to come but this should be a good one :) I wonder what noize bands will be announced?