Alright, so I’ve been talking with a number of acquaintances recently about The Beatles and their artistic merit. Now, let me explain that The Beatles were the first musical group I ever remember listening to and also the first I was ever obsessed with. However, over the years, I seem to have “matured” perhaps, and I lost my love of The Beatles. Its not that I don’t like them anymore, its just that I’ve found so much more music that I think is so much better.
This pretty much sums up my ideas on The Beatles
I really do not like it when people decide to worship the Beatles (or any musical group, really) and I don’t like supporting a group that are, at best, extremely influential and very inconsistent, and at worst are pretentious and boring. I was trying to imagine how I could possibly reconcile my current view of them with my childhood love of the Fabs, and I decided that their biggest problem was the inconsistency and their lack of coherent album visions. If I could somehow take all of the things that seem not to fit on Abbey Road and put them with much more similar songs from other albums, to create a consistently psychedelic (or symphonic, or experimental, or whatever style best fits that song) album I think that it would greatly improve The Beatles’ catalogue and perhaps even rekindle my jaded heart for them.
Son, the Fab Four are disappoint
So, in the following months, I plan to listen to all twelve of the Fab Four’s albums very carefully and rearrange and reassemble them into some as-yet-unknown number of new albums that will provide a more linear, coherent view of John, George, Ringo and Paul as music-makers. I will post up my results on this website when I finish. Please stay tuned!
Have you guys ever played any of the Civilization series, or Spore, or any similar game? These games are all about world domination. They’re all about coming to some sort of stasis in the world, achieving some sort of universal balance. This usually happens one of two ways.
First, and easiest, you can just kill everyone. Really hard. Really fast. You’re the human, playing against computers. Chances are you’ve set it on a rather easy setting, and if you haven’t, you’re experienced enough with the game to win. The easiest and fastest way to win in Civilization is to build up an army and conquer the world. Even when conquering the world in Civilization, sure, you negotiate sometimes. But there’s usually an ulterior motive. You’re going to backstab Stalin when you’re done getting all of his spice.
This dude has no chance.
Some people try diplomacy. It ends up sometimes working. It’s a long, hard road, with many sacrifices, and your civilization ends up less territory, less expansion, less population. You achieve world peace, sure, but have you really won?
World peace truly existed, I think, when no one actually knew each other. Way before England tried to go and kill everyone and take over the world with their tea and meat-guns, everyone on the world lived in isolation. There were warring tribes, sure, and perhaps our primitivity was more prone to warfare, but if there was any chance for world peace, I think it would have had to be then. There was hardly a reason to war back then aside from greed. I think modern humanity comforts itself with thoughts that war now has much more moral basis.
We’re just killing because we have to, right guys?
This game is called “What’s the connection?” If you know me, or want to know me, prepare to play this game a lot, because it is one of the highest entertainment value. Yes, it may be filler while I finish up my next articles, but I’d like you to think of it as something more, an “intuhlekshewal chalinj”, if you will. I now present the clues:
First:
Then:
Soon after:
Penultimately:
Finally:
Ok brave detectives, the hunt is on. Find the connection and you will have found the basis for my next few posts. Prepare yourselves.
So it would appear it has been a while since you fine people have been graced with the stroke of my pen. So allow me to make up for it with a subject that everyone loves: American History! Wooo!
Sure, whilst the thought of reading about the USS Maine or the dastardly Barbary corsairs might not fill your loins with with kiloamplitudes of excitement like it does me, I’m sure everyone can agree that reading about the wild antics of awesome historical people never gets old. So I’ve decided to impart upon you all my five favourite figures in American History. In FIVE different parts so that the excitement factor stays high.
Thomas Jefferson
Oh man. Look at that coat. I imagine that Jefferson immediately went out and popped a cap in some Federalists for disrespecting him after this painting was produced.
The only person on my list who isn’t some sort of insane military general, rather, Jefferson was the sort of man who played by his own rules when it came to writing the single most important document in the formation of America.
John F. Kennedy was once quoted as saying ”I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.” While this was almost certainly a subtle jab at some of the winners like Dr. Melvin Calvin (Seriously? They hand out Nobel Prizes for plants? Chlorophyll? More like BOREophyll) it also helped to illustrate just how intelligent TJ was. A polymath, Jefferson excelled in such things as architecture, paleontology, archeology(he’s sometimes called the “father of archaeology), horticulture, as well as having invented a few things here and there. Monticello, his abode, contained such things as the first swivel chair, and automatic doors.
His biggest interests were reading and wine, and when the first Library of Congress was burned by the fiendish book-hating British during the War of 1812, Jefferson, who was in debt for almost all of his life, offered to sell Congress his personal library of 6,487 books, almost double of what the Library originally held. So what did Jefferson do with the $23,950 Congress gave him for all his books? Well, like any self-respecting genius, he just bought even more books and even more wine. And after his wife Martha died, Jefferson had six more kids with Sally Hemmings, one of his slaves.
"The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead."--Thomas Jefferson, in response to a question about the likihood of a zombie invasion in America.
I’ve been sick the past two days, which, surprisingly, has given me more time to do things, so I guess it’s a little unfair to get all over the rest of the D-Syn team, but seriously, you guys. Seriously.
Anyway, I have been spending my days of illness working primarily on my DJing skills and amassing from the far corners of the tubes samples galore, and all of it has come to fruition with the release of the following DJ mix. No post production. I recorded it while performing, exported to WAV, didn’t touch a thing. All of it was done with Ableton Live.
Full track list:
0:00 Deep Thought Sample
0:12 I Like Rhythm - Adam K, Soha
3:57 Peep Show - Tall Paul
8:39 Bass It Up - Groovy Cuvy
14:24 What’s The Difference - ** Original Track **
24:25 Charlotte - Booka Shade
27:29 Redemption - Booka Shade
31:11 To Hell With Our Orders - ** Original Track **
35:56 Electro Music Sex - Purple Project
38:35 Hip Rave Anthem - Rico Tubbs
42:05 Precinct - Stanton Warriors
46:40 Sarcacid Part 1 - Squarepusher (just for fun)
52:40 You Wanna Try It Pokey? -No Thanks, I Prefer Grass
