The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Samples and sampling, a resource. October 17, 2015

Writing the This Weekend this weekend I found this very helpful, a site that lists samples from Bassomatic songs. It appears to be user generated so it may not be entirely definitive but it’s kind of addictive for all that. Here’s a Bass-o-matic listing. See if you can hear the relevant snippets. And here’s New Order. Quite a few there one sees. Some useful tools too. You can break it down by years and it’ll take years to get through it all!

Speaking of Star Trek October 17, 2015

This is a remarkable testament to just how good CGI is today, a ‘fan-made’ (Paramount allows this sort of a thing as long as nothing is sold, not tickets, merchandise or whatever) short film from 2014 that includes actual actors who have appeared in ST and other TV shows.

From this it is but a hop skip and jump to an actual feature film. No, seriously.

Star Trek, fandom, lgbt and minorities… October 17, 2015

Interesting Random Trek podcast recently. This was with author Manu Saadia, who has written a forthcoming book on the economics of Star Trek. Got to admit I enjoy Star Trek, and seen pretty much all episodes of everything, but while I think Deep Space 9 was a genuinely excellent series, and the others have their virtues, particularly Voyager, I’d always be much more in the Babylon 5 (and to an extent the BSG) camp. My fandom for ST, such as it is, extends to the programmes and films and more or less ends there – though, cough, I have been to one Star Trek convention in my time. Not sure I’d do it again.

I enjoy the Random Trek podcasts too – in them they walk through a random episode of one series or another of ST. Anyhow this one dealt with an Enterprise episode. Enterprise is an odd one. Least loved of all the ST series, perhaps slightly unjustifiably – it certainly improved markedly in Seasons 3 and 4. But, there’s not getting away from it that it was pretty clunky overall.

Anyhow Saadia had a most intriguing point. He told how David Gerrold back in the Next Generation days suggested it was time to go with a gay character, but that idea never flew. He points to how in DS9 there were less hetero-normative characters, albeit played as comedy.

Scott McNulty noted that ST had to engage fully with non-heteronormative characters should there be a new tv series on foot of the recent reboot films, to which Saadi suggested that ‘honestly, they have no choice.’

Saadia continues, ‘The other interesting thing is that in the history of fandom itself fandom was queer, fandom was gay, fandom was black and like a lot of people and great figures of ST fandom were minority people, and lgbt and this was never fully recognised by fans today or the show runners or producers.’

Interesting isn’t it, given how ST has tended to congratulate itself on its own progressively in relation to race and gender. Worth noting that that too – the point about fandom being queer, gay, black and so on – was true of SF fandom in general.A reality that has perhaps been somewhat lost in the current culture wars that have flamed through it.

Strange measurements from an alien star October 17, 2015

Here’s a curious one. Phil Plait on Slate, a man not given to wild imaginings, covers a most interesting story. The Kepler mission, whose purpose is to observe dips in the light from stars in order to find planets orbiting them, has found something very intriguing. KIC 8462852, about 1,500 light years from here, is exhibiting some very strange behaviour.

The dips in the brightness are massively greater than would be expected from
planets – up to 22 percent, whereas a large Jupiter sized planet would perhaps block 1 percent of the light from a given star. The dips aren’t periodic, they’re not symmetric. They’re not planets.

What are they? Who knows? Various possible reasons have been eliminated – some ideas have been examined, planetary collisions – but there’s insufficient infrared which would be inevitable in such a context. Comets, possibly, but as Plait notes, 22 percent of the light from a star occluded by comets – unlikely.

Evidence of alien structures orbiting the star – the product of advanced civilisations?

What sort of structures? Dyson spheres could be one possibility.

Of course if it is a Dyson Sphere we’re talking a Kardashev II type civilisation. Now that would be advanced.

It’s not entirely implausible, though Plait cautions that the likelihood of a natural explanation is much much greater.

But, whatever the outcome this surely demonstrates yet again both the necessity and the utility of astronomical observation. And the sheer fascination of same. KIC 8462852 is important, whatever the reason for these phenomena, and no doubt is going to be scrutinised closely from here on out.

Meanwhile here’s more. From the star AU Microscopii – curious ripples in the dust disc around it. These almost certainly have to be natural, but again, no less fascinating for same.

This Weekend I’ll Mostly Be Listening to… Bass-O-Matic October 17, 2015

Here’s an album I’ve long thought about posting up in this slot – the William Orbit led dance/pop/electronica outfit Bass-O-Matic who appeared in 1990, released one great album, one album only slightly less great and that was that. Of course it’s not quite that simple for Orbit’s career was already well established and would continue to be so, though perhaps this is where he really surged ahead for it dates from that interesting period before Orbit became the go to guy for Madonna and other worthies for song co-writing and production and after quite a long solo career (he’d been releasing albums since the mid 1980s, some of which went under the Strange Cargo moniker).

A friend gave me a tape of this in 1990 – along with KLF, the first Massive Attack album and a remix album of Cure tracks – attempting to open me up to all things house, dance and electronica. And you know what, it worked! When grunge broke big the next year while I liked parts of it, the truth was that it felt more like metal for people who didn’t want to say they liked metal, and I was already captured by dance.

Another thought, when I saw the cover I was blown away. It was like dancey space rock – sure, a completely different direction to space rock but with odd nods towards it. How could it be otherwise with the playfulness around Set The Controls for the Heart of the Bass, a vivid re-imagining of Pink Floyd’s Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun for the 1990s which takes the good bits from the original and makes the resulting track better than its precursor. And the sense of enjoyment was…well…new.

This is without question up there amongst my favourite albums. In some ways it’s perfect, with pop highs – Ease on By comes to mind – interspersing long but not tedious ambient instrumental passages (not so different from Hawkwind there either).

Then there are the samples. Set The Controls For the Heart of the Bass for example nods at Star Trek with a sample from the Motion Picture. Elsewhere there’s a profusion of samples from probably not great 50s SF films, the snippets from old British melodrama’s on Wicked Love and so on.

Fascinating Rhythm is a classic, there’s just no question about it – and it sounds, as is noted elsewhere, remarkably baggy in its shuffling rhythms. Sharon Musgrave’s voice glides across the song (which she co-wrote) The lyrics essentially perfect – the everyday and the mythic aspects of dance combining in the personal. Freaky Angel, another classic.

Just on Musgrave, her voice predominates, it is, as it were, the personality of the album and it makes it very much her album – she sings on at least four of the ten tracks, certainly as much so as Orbit’s. Her voice works perfectly on the more ambient tracks and equally well on the poppier tracks. And that’s an important point, it’s an album with each track blending neatly into the next to provide a cohesive collection.

There’s the small touches, the sequencers on Freaky Angel that lead into an almost bucolic synth line and then onto a none-more-early 1990s piano, the dubby thrust of My Tears Have Gone, the sense of possibility implicit in the instrumentation. It’s funky, knowing, carefree and danceable.

A second album without Musgrave was released in December of the following year, and while it’s very good somehow the moment had passed. That bright breezy pop was already on the way out shifting to trip hop and points various. The day glo colours were darkening somewhat. I always think this album is of a piece with his Strange Cargo III – another classic, the same sort of experimentation but again darkening somewhat, the pop fizz dissipating into more reflective approaches.

By the way, Orbit has a characteristic synth sound, you can here it at 3.01 on In the Realm of the Senses and at the beginning of Set the Controls…, as well as all over the shop on other tracks. I’ve often wondered how one could replicate that in Logic Pro, or whatever, and if anyone knows – answers gratefully accepted.

Fascinating Rhythm

Set The Controls for the Heart of the Bass

In the Realm of the Senses

Freaky Angel

Ease on By

Rat Cut-a-Bottle

Irish Left Archive – All Party Peace Talks Now, poster. Sinn Féin, 1994 October 16, 2015

This poster joins the collection of photographs and posters held by the Archive. All donations of similar materials gratefully accepted. Hi resolution photographs of such materials are idea. In relation to photographs please read these guidelines here in relation to copyright and other issues.

After allegations October 16, 2015

Tom Watson, deputy British Labour leader is getting some stick over his support for investigations into allegations of child abuse by political leaders in the UK. I’m not much of a fan of Watson but while he may have been overly strident in what he said it’s difficult not to think he had and has a point, and some of the attacks against him have been particularly noxious (not least Nick Cohen’s contribution in the Observer at the weekend, part, one fears
of his Corbyn delenda est idée fixe, and lacking in some basic sense of perspective as to why Watson might on occasion drift into intemperate rhetoric – particularly given his treatment by the press).

This though by Michael White is a lot more measured gently pointing up both contradictions and hypocrisies as well as noting that Cohen et al may have this terribly wrong. I like White, always have. He’s old school in many ways and has positions on a number of issues that I’d fundamentally disagree with, but he’s a good observer and always worth a read and often – as in this instance – not afraid to take a potentially unpopular line.

It’s also going to be interesting to see if Zac Goldsmith – Tory candidate for Mayor of London runs into the same level of vitriol given that he has very publicly run on much the same issue.

Responsibility for the crisis and crises October 16, 2015

Meant to post this up before now, but events, events! Anyways, on the subject of the corporate malfeasance of a certain large car manufacture, Elaine Byrne makes a sensible point in the SBP a week or two ago. She notes that still, after everything, fines remain the instrument of choice by states in regard to punishing corporate misbehaviour.

The Libor rigging scandal, currency market manipulation, belligerent mortgage practices in the US, money laundering, payment protection insurance mis-selling and tax evasion by HSBC cost ten banks €228 billion in fines and settlement fees between 2009 and 2013.
The Irish Central Bank has also applied this strategy of fining the institution rather than holding individuals to account. Regulatory breaches have cost Irish financial institutions €8.5 million in 2012, €6.35 million in 2013 and €5.4 million last year.

And:

Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, has described the “repeated nature of these fines” as evidence that “financial penalties alone are not sufficient”. A sentiment shared by Patrick Honohan in his Paris speech to central bankers during the summer. Martin Wheatley, chief executive of the British Financial Conduct Authority, has gone one step further. Wheatley believes that reckless bankers should be held responsible for misconduct by fining them individually, not just the institutions they work for.

Byrne concludes that:

Patrick Honohan retires shortly as Central Bank governor. Maybe that freedom will give him greater scope to say publicly exactly what he thinks of how accountability is defined in Ireland. People make mistakes, not institutions.

Ish. Some of us would argue that it shouldn’t be either or but both – and I presume she would too. The corporate entity must pay a price and those who made the decisions involved in such misbehaviours must also pay personally. Otherwise the institution can place responsibility on a limited number of individuals within it – essentially hang them out to dry, while not feeling any particular sanction themselves. That’s a recipe for further disaster, it it not?

A prejudice that dares somewhat to speak its name October 16, 2015

Reading this today, from IEL, with examples of anti-Traveller leaflets was a reminder of a certain aspect of life in this state. The events in the aftermath of a fire that saw 10 people die at a halting site in Carrickmines are depressingly predictable. The estate beside a proposed emergency halting has seen residents protesting against the very idea. There’s been a smaller counter protest.

How that is worked out remains an open question but here’s a small anecdote. I was talking to someone during the week in the context of work. I was kind of stunned to hear a reel of anti-Traveller jokes, some which directly referenced the fire. And I was thinking that in a week where we saw the funeral of a Garda shot to death it would literally be unthinkable for that person – given their class position, their outlook, whatever, to make jokes about that.