"we witnessed Patchwerk Man's first public engagement in over a decade. The old codger gave a good account of himself, with an uncompromising set of driving minimalism that built to a crescendo of droney/noise-based intensity. He brought along some fresh exclusives on cd-r but the management hadn't laid-on any cd decks for him so he just span vinyl, and even managed to entice some of the early arrivals up onto the dancefloor. The young lady who kept blowing him kisses made him very happy. Let's hope he gets a few more opportunities to play out soon, eh?" (Link)

Yeah erh... what he just said... I reckon ole Patchwerk was settlin' in for a quietly meditative set grooving the loneliness of the long distance warm up DJ, when folk mucked it up by getting up and dancing - One young lady was even giving it a few of the old 'shag the bass-stack' moves. Still he responded well to the pressure to actually keep folk moving with a blinding set. (I like Native in this regard - a proper old communal experience - everyone in it together.... a big square - none of the L-shaped bar nonsense you get at Cosies - or that U-Shape lark at The Croft). A cracking warm up - thoroughly enjoyed it - but Pendle Coven didn't flounder when so effectively passed the baton, playing a superbly unapologetic set of techno bangers.... Gutta is going on about there being MCs over in his write-up - I don't remember any of that, I was up the back nodding away oblivious... lovely stuff - found it quite hard to adjust to Appleblim's characteristic cerebrality when he came on.... but hey.... as Gutta insisted on telling everyone, we got six kids between us, and it was 3am man.....

Good to see that Loki has stopped hanging around with youths on street corners long enough to give us an interesting post claiming that the collapse of the housing market has been caused by dubstep.... In a cunning reversal of conventional marxist economic determinism, he proposes that it is culture that drives economy, rather than the reverse:

"And now we're heading into recession. Of course, we are. Critics will no doubt suggest that the music is reflecting this change but I'm not so sure that it's not the opposite; that the music is in fact prefiguring the change. Without the dark recesses of dubstep's clattering, there would be no recession."

Superficially, there could be something in this - It is clear, for example, that the release of Blur's first album in 1991, not only heralded the start of Brit-Pop, but also played a pivotal role in bringing about Black Wednesday and the total collapse of the Major government's reputation for economic competence.... In a similar vein, maybe the fact that nowdays the Guardian is running reviews of grime, dubstep and other such unsavoury electronica directly presages the collapse of the housing market.

But it's total nonsense of course. It would just make this whole Boris affair a mere pointless sideshow. Why, all the Cameron's Tories would have to do to utterly undermine Gordon Brown's hard-earned reputation for fiscal responsibility would be to get a grime single to the top of the charts......

Quick Iron Man for Doppelkid's fourth birthday card....

I didn't bother explaining to him that Iron Man is the perfect piece of capitalist ideology : Millionaire weapons magnate Tony Stark realises that the weapons he created are being used by shifty foreign folk in Afghanistan who are obviously up to no good and takes a stand by soundly roughing a few of these unsavoury chaps in a tin suit painted the same colours as his sports car. If only individual capitalist arms dealers were like our Tone... if only they could all be good guys and only develop weaponry for other good guys.... instead of bad guys, who like are only in in it for the money and willing to sell stuff to other really bad people.... Evil is explained by the pathologisation of the actions of individuals , even though their actions are entirely rational within the dictates of a system which itself remains unquestioned. It happens in the real world too - It's like all this recent middle east arms dealing malarky.... the moral weight and preoccupation is subtley shifted from the last two words to the first in the phrase 'illegal arms deal'. Clever eh?

Still , it's a bloody good film.... even Gwyneth Paltrow is pretty good and I was amongst those pleased to see her go in 'Se7en'

In my line of work it's all about 'engagement', 'participation',' inclusivity' - get involved, jump on board, be one of the gang, contribute, get in on the deal, get a sense of ownership. y'know... like feel free to comment - 'cos this is your blog as much as mine, we're a community, play your part, because without you we are nothing........ and, y'know what? In the case of Doctor Who comics, that is exactly the case.

Sorry to bang on about the guy, but Zizek is right on the nail about the dangers of community.... alienation IS a good thing - a degree of seperation, a bit of disenfranchised detachment - blimey it's all that keeps us sane and aloof from the mob. But no-one shared this insight with the Doctor Who comic meisters .... leap on board they cry, as the text merrily exhorts us to build a Cyberman head, design a monster, send in a photo, tell us when it's your birthday, enter a competition..... to which I say nay...... I don't mind the old-style comic letters page .... I myself sent in the odd 'Judge Weetabix' sketch to The Mighty Tharg back in the day, but he was kind of aloof wasn't he? I certainly never got any response...(In fact, I've stopped sending sketches to the Mighty Tharg now - instead I send them to John Eden, editor of Woofah Magazine - you don't get sent a badge or anything, but they do send round emails inviting folk to the pub every now and then, which is a lot more welcoming in my book.... mind you, a badge would be nice I suppose.... doesn't have to be a big one...).

This process reaches its nadir in the request for small, wretched boys to send in photos of themselves wearing hastily adapted Harry Potter outfits and specs to masquerade as David Tennant. There's this and quizzes and mazes and prizes and even, as the cover proudly proclaims: 'Facts!'. Did they not learn from the demise of 'Look 'n' Learn'? Facts don't sell comic books - comic strips do....

So where are they?

The one comic strip there is this week has, you guessed it, a monster designed by a reader...

I say stop this now. I call upon the youth of Britain - send no photos, enter no competitions, provide no content..... send but a pencil and shout together:

'Here we are now, entertain us!'

Doppelmix Download - courtesy of Gutta

MP3: Download Doppelmix here...

Tracklist:
A Split Second - Flesh (Remix)
E-Zee Possee - Everything Starts With An "E"
Mory Kante - Ye Ke Ye Ye (Afro-Acid Mix)
Bam Bam - Where's Your Child?
S'xpress - Hey Music Lover (The Glass Cut)
Illusion - Why Can't We Live Together (Danny Rampling's Love & Unity Remix)
Nitro Deluxe - Let's Get Brutal (U.S. version)
Royal House - Can You Party (Club Mix)
Reese & Santonio - Structure
Bananarama - Venus (The Greatest Remix)
Cookie Crew - Got To Keep On
Kiss AMC - The Raw Side (The Makesure Side)
Tru Funk Posse - Break The Beat
Bomb The Bass - Beat Dis (Bonus Beats)
Sugar Bear - Don't Scandalise Mine (Vocal Mix)
Eric B. & Rakim - Chinese Arithmetic

How good is this? Restores your faith in human nature it does sir.... I offloaded a box of old vinyl onto Gutta as part of the extensive Doppelbase relocation project. It's good - I don't mind... a little bit of culturo-material detriutus floatin' away... a bit of the past relinquished..... positively Buddhist it felt.... it's ok.. And then, like something dredged up from the Jungian collective conscious, a bare two days later, Gutta pops up with a bit of mp3 mixery-wizardry and there it all is: history resurrected shiny and new. Three cheers to you Gutta sir!

Bits of acidy, new beaty cheesy nonsense, whipped up with a few dollops of total embarrassment - This all seems to come from a time when I'd swerved out of the indie doomster ghetto, couldn't be bothered with rare groove and found myself washed ashore with my brother and his mates (that's what happens when you're the only one of your mates to fail his A-Levels) and suddenly embracing my Essex heritage. There was stuff going on they were having to make little gaps and allowances for in normally slick and smooth Essex Nite Klubs - little bits and pieces nicked from the serious hip-hop kids in the year above at school, but turnin' up via Coldcut in flimsy Yazz chart-toppers. .... how apt to resurrect all this just as I'm about to close a big long west-country loop and head back to my roots....And whilst we're diggin' up history I might as well dredge up my recollections of this period from the old abandoned Psychbl*ke archives: (back from Jan '06)

"I was going clubbing every week at the age of twelve. (Damn you say, not only is he gonna give us a load of fake Essex boy inverted snobbery, he’s also gonna give us some pack of lies about champagne and cocaine up west with Patsy Kensit). There was a club called The Shannon. On Tuesday night it opened it’s doors to under sixteens and provided them with the authentic Nite Klub experience. They served no alcohol, but all of the other intoxicating aspects of clubdom were in place – the smoky, murky interior, the ‘slowies’, the brooding air of barely-suppressed violence. (Do they still have ‘slowies’? – Is a whole generation to be deprived of the experience of trying to mop yourself down a bit in the gents in case someone would dance with you?). This was when jazz funk was just coming in: Tell me, honestly, is there a better record than D-Train’s ‘You’re The One For Me’? A slow, little soulful vocal intro, before that insistent repetitive piano bit that precedes one of the mightiest hooks ever to infect a dance record. Tell me that record doesn’t make you want to roll your head and shoulders in opposing directions and mouth the chorus even though you don’t really know the words, and I say to you: begone then sir to the dark corners of the blosphere! Or how about ‘Walkin’ on Sunshine’ by Rocker’s Revenge ? – thas right…get there….evreebuddy to the sun! My Dad took my copy of this to a party a few years later and left it there. Aaaaah!…this goes deeper than oedipal resentment– fat chance of any of my kids bein’ named after him......The Shannon is still there- my brother organised my stag night at the place – I think most of the original members had kept up their annual subscription. Certainly someone, somewhere is keeping open a branch of Mister Byrites fashion clothing emporium.I tell you what isn’t there anymore is ‘The Kings’. They used to have ‘legendary’ soul nights, but, to give you an idea of the sheer polymorphous perversity of the place, when I first went it was on a Sunday with my Dad. They had stripper and boxers on for two quid. Periodically, a woman traipsed round removing a cheap nightie for a bit then thrust a beer glass under your nose. Between all this, guys from the bar got up, left their shirt with their girlfriend and went a few rounds with semi-professional boxers bought in ‘specially. It’d only last a few minutes, but the girls entered into with more gusto than the boys as they screamed: “’it ‘im Neville! ‘It ‘im 'ard!” from the sidelines, before boyfriend wandered back to his pint with varying degrees of dignity. In the late eighties, in the days when only old people used the word ‘rave’, this place responded to the acid-fuelled wave of dance-fever that swept across the land by introducing a ‘jeans permitted’ night on a Thursday (only smart jeans mind – and still no trainers). They also got in a ‘dance’ DJ. Thus Essex lads could whip on a bandana in the toilets, unbutton their sensible shirt to show a smiley beneath and gesticulate away to ‘Don’t Believe The Hype’, mouthing along to words they barely knew – if that ain’t a pen portrait of post-modernity, then you tell me what is mate….. (Close your eyes and you could almost be up west in The Wag - which was lucky really, ‘cos west end clubs had their eyes out for gangs of lads from up the undesirable end of the Central Line. We could never get my brother’s mates in anywhere up there, even if we split up in the queue, the ‘smart shoes with jeans’ look always gave ‘em away). Anyhow, I was buying acid-trax and all that, but the big tune was ‘Can You Party?’ by Royal House. If all life must mutate to survive, this track proves that the drive to increased complexity is the wrong route folks. Basically, it’s a vocal sample of some demented guy yelling “CAAAN YOOU FEEEEL IT!” over a simple backing track. They loop him round and round….and well, that’s it really….See, I told you I didn’t have the vocabulary for it – no conceptual framework you see……… And this is nothing to do with drugs either - As my brother used to say: 'Fifty quid for coke?! - you could get a shirt for that...'But, there’s nothing wrong with albums called things like ‘Awesome Dance Mania 37’ and next time we have an ‘Idiot’s Guide..’ night out we’re all going down Kickers........ OK?

Who's up for it? "

In a bit of Freudo-Marxian magickry, Zizek calls this thing 'fetishistic disavowal': It's when you create something - a part of you - an expression of your innermost self, and then, like some modern-day Doctor Frankenstein, you disown it, divorce it from yourself, cast it out into the night: alone and unloved. But of course it is you. It dogs you and pesters you. Looms at every corner, punishing you, claiming you..... like the superego, the voice of conscience, Jiminy Cricket, Churchill's Black Dog snapping at your heels. Your own anxiety and neuroses made undead flesh and blood and stood blinking in the sunlight. Its' pursuit ails you and saps the very marrow from your bones...... and that's pretty much Portishead and the first two albums isn't it? - Here they are back again, whinging on 'cos like too many of the wrong people bought 'Dummy' and played it at their sad little dinner parties and sang along to it and shagged to it and used it as the backdrop on 'This Life' - a series about mentally ill people in a flat who believed that they were solicitors, and probably danced to it and... I dunno.... liked it... and they didn't want to be part of 'trip-hop' anyway.... and it wasn't supposed to be like that 'cos they y'know recorded their own vinyl so they could sample little snippets of it like voices from the dead of their own subconscious sneaking thru in a Victorian parlour seance... and it's all so 'complex' and everything. So we could say hey.... you got the success millions of people twiddlin' their knobs on MySpace can only dream about - ya don't like it, why not head off and make hiphop records on a beach in Australia for a decade? Which, of course, they did..... and now, back to bear witness to the birth of a difficult third child... how to express the rejection and dissatisfaction? How to ensure the disavowal? What chances do we give this 'dark and difficult' child? Could it be harder to like?.... a machine gun overset with positively folky vocals... Solicitors of the world, he awaits your embrace

Haven't doodled a Cyberman in ages, but jeeez... those were loooong meetings....

Where's the Whoah! Whoah!?

KLF Vs Richard Villalobos

"What Time Is Love?"

How to pathologise penury - debt becomes disease in one simply step: I saw a documentary a few days back that informed me that the credit crunch is down to the international banks unwillingness to lend to each other, as they don't know (and I quote) who has 'come into contact with the sub-prime market'. (Translation :- They lent money to people who couldn't afford to pay it back, and then sold those debts to each other so often they lost track of who was holding them....). Note the language of disease and infestation. Classic psychoanalytic externalisation: - the projection of inner fears and inadequacies into the external world, and their transformation into demonic, alien forces. I imagine them all sitting around, sharp-eyed and sweating, like the guys in Carpenter's 'The Thing' - afraid to stick a hot wire in each other's blood sample in case the alien horror erupts forth and engulfs them.

Pole - Steingarten Remixes - CD Review

There's a moment in 'The Professionals': right at the start of the opening credits (see it here) ... The silent city hangs there impassively reflected in dull grey glass and the timing is just right: A split second before recognition, however many viewings... a car smashes right through it and the theme tune kicks in

- gets me every single time.

It's ok to compare a techno remix album to The Professionals. It's legit... you just have to strip away the veneer of ironic nostalgia - mainline on that bassline. There's no George Cowleyesque Schopenhauerian epigrammatic wisdom here (never send a boy on a man's errand - they'll steal his bike), but there's a sly intelligence lurking on mixes by the likes of Peverelist and Melchior. Most of all, there's a rugged Bodien masculinity on tracks by Shackleton and Gudren Gut, with maybe a little Doyley perm flickering away there on Dimbiman's track and elsewhere... But it's Deadbeat who captures the car chase cheezery and, more than anything, Pferd who nails the ominous little three note deep bass sample.... just like the moments in spy capers where some chancer half-inches the brass fittings in the theme tune and leaves the exposed bass engine stripped bare and slowly turning over.... - Guv, I'd lurk the streets tailing The Coogans ('Big John ... and Paul if you want 'im...) to that little choon...

(When I was about ten, long before Beckham's metrosexuality or time spent at 'the university' - I read one of those inane question and answer articles in my Christmas gift Fleetway Professionals Annual 1978 in which Lewis Collins explained that he used to be a hairdresser and still cut his own hair. I remember this arousing complicated feelings of male identity in me in a way I struggled to accommodate at the time....)

Listen here

Then buy here

I don't know how it panned out like this: I coudda gone to see Peverelist and Bass Clef at Tape with Dan. I coudda gone to see Does It Offend You Yeah? with Loki or with my sister... (I didn't tell Loki my sister was going - he's not the sort of person you introduce your baby sister to ;-). I really wanted to go and see the guaranteed superb Moving Ninja at the ever excellent Ruffnek.. Instead I end up in the Dojo Bar listening to one of Gutta's shady mates play commercial house and techno, cos he'd got himself on the guest list...... but I tell you what: gold chains, balloons, gangs of girls.... you don't get many balloons down Ruffnek.... doncha want ma doncha want ma doncha want ma luuuurve.... doncha want ma luvin!.... superb.... no idea what Gutta and I looked like arms aloft down the front there, but maybe Essex ain't gonna be so bad after all.... Gutta I know looks for something a bit educational to savour in the mix, but down in the bottom set I had a great night....

Process theologian Alfred North Whitehead believed that every single subjective moment has its' own creative potential to nudge the universe towards harmony and intensity. Each moment presents us with a choice, a peek into a parallel universe, a glimpse of other paths to should've been and would've been. I draw comfort from this.

It means that, somewhere on another branch of existence, a single seperate bifurcation, hangs another universe, where someone at the BBC ran with the original script proposal for Doctor Who:

"A paranoid fugitive who travelled the galaxy in an invisible flying saucer, suffering from LSD-style depressions and trying to halt scientific progress."

Or maybe, in another place, dwells another you, smugly disparaging the film 'Carry On Doctor Who'

Or, even better, one change, one flick in another direction, a nod, a wink, and Tim Burton and Nicholas Cage really did get it together enough to make 'Superman Returns' and that superb Brainiac sketch on the left saw life on the silver screen. (see more pics here)

(Talking of alternate universes: I've finally slunk onto MurdochSpace - a desperate bid to surround the forthcoming Doppelbase mkII with friends and allies. Am I too late to join this cultural trend? Why can't we all just go back to CB radio? So, anyway, feel free to come over and give me a prod, or whatever it is you are supposed to do. It's gone ok so far, I've got three friends: Kek, Cloudboy and a woman who sent me a photo of her arse...)