2012-11-27
post/36633452575
The seventeen and a half minute long version of New Order’s Elegia.
Somehow the first time I properly heard the short version (from 1985’s Low Life) was on Friday evening, and now I find that there’s a legendary extended edition that’s finally been released. This is that.
2012-03-31
post/20204828678
You never forget the first time you see RAF Fylingdales, usually as you’re tootling along the A169 gently in thrall to the natural wonders of the North Yorkshire Moors. Could anything be more incongruous than those vast, dimpled radomes, those eerie ’golf balls’, blistering out of the green surroundings? It’s a sort of rude-awakening, where you’re reminded the world is less a James Herriot novel and more a Noam Chomsky essay. As the comedian Mark Thomas famously said, “It’s like giant Tarby has found his pitch and putt.”
For a 10-year-old, the sight is disconcerting and strange. But when the coach driver passes as close as the barbed-wire and steel allows him and, with a certain devilish glee, slows right down and turns his radio up, revealing a barrage of crackling static, stuck signals and unworldly whistling, strange turns to frightening.
”2012-03-22
post/19730023540
Ripping old records.
I love this track for many reasons (personally I think it’s just beautiful), but I’ve always been fond of the moment right at the beginning where you can hear that it’s been copied from a cassette tape. Those of us who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s can hear the slight dropout as one of the artefacts of tape slipping, and I’ve always liked it.
This rip adds to that the gentle hiss of a needle dropping onto vinyl, so you get two analogue moments for the price of one. Fantastic.
2012-02-01
post/16879760497
This will tell you something about my day job. I now recognize “ums” in waveform. I don’t need to hear it, I only need to see this shape. This is the shape of an “um” or an “uh”.
I want to remove it from every ones speech patterns, including mine.
(via notational)
2009-05-19
post/110037483
Moby (yep, Moby)
Theme
The Matrix (1999)
Er, that’s not Moby, that’s Rob Dougan, and the track’s Clubbed to Death. First came out on Mo Wax back in ‘94 or so.
I’d also quibble that it’s not “The Matrix theme”, although it is used in the movie. (It’s also used a lot in a film called, er, Clubbed to Death, which I’m not sure I’d recommend, but I’d quite like to see again - it’s over ten years since I saw it.)
Still, it is a good tune - it made it to Simon Wistow’s ’90s Music Monday and everything. (As he notes, it also steals liberally from Elgar’s Enigma Variations, which as an uncultured heathen I didn’t notice for far too long.)
