Com Ocean (Sacred Animals remix) by Outlands
When I was in my early teens I used to play a game called Donkey Kong Country on the Super Nintendo incessantly. This game meant a lot to me (producer/blogger Ryan Hemsworth recently released a Donkey Kong sampling bootleg, which you can listen to here – I was almost in tears).
What has this got to do with today’s MPFree, a reworking of a track from Virginia duo Outlands’ (pictured) new self-titled EP? Well, the main synth line triggered an almost hallucinatory flashback: for a minute I felt I was back in that ice cavern, collecting bananas with my monkey pal. Perhaps not the kind of memory Irish studio whizz Sacred Animals was hoping to trigger, but a happy memory nonetheless.
20 Sep 2012
Dirty Projectors - About To Die
The standout track from The Dirty Projectors‘ ambitious new album Swing Lo Magellan gets a single release this November, backed with three unreleased tracks. See them play live at The Roundhouse on October 17th.
20 Sep 2012
VIDEO: Oliver Lynton shows us the mesmeric craft of gilding
Skills and Traditions; Gilding from Oliver Lynton on Vimeo.
The gilder is Sophie Levene who works in Highgate, North London. I stumbled across Oliver Lynton’s video of her at work on Vimeo, and think it’s rather lovely.
I defy you not to be charmed by the sudden way the thin gold flattens in response to the gilder’s breath.
Here’s Oliver Lynton’s Vimeo profile.
20 Sep 2012
Pepita, Queen of the Animals (Derby Sunshine remix) by Vadoninmessico
Sometimes something pops into your inbox that makes you smile instantly and I’m not talking about doctored kitten photos here. London based producer Derby Sunshine, aka Luigi Buccarello, has had a pretty stonking stab at reworking this track from Vadoinmessico’s recently released debut Archaeology of the Future, with predictably ‘sunny’ results.
19 Sep 2012
Wave Machines - Ill Fit
Liverpool’s Wave Machines are back with an on-trend R&B influenced pop number that sidles up alongside you on the dancefloor and starts noodling around like a tipsy Kevin Barnes. See if that’s what happens at their Shacklewell Arms gig on October 23rd.
19 Sep 2012
VIDEO: 1960s businessman rides amphibious scooter down the Thames
“It might seem improbable, these ski scooters using dear old father Thames as a waterway for workaday businessmen…”
Nothing improbable about it. Nothing improbable about it at all.
Via the brilliant British Pathe YouTube channel. Although I detect in this commentary that a certain ironic knowingness had crept in to the Pathe newsreels by the 1960s. The end was beginning.
19 Sep 2012
Map showing London's air ambulance callouts by postcode. Now give them money
This is a map which shows the callouts London Air Ambulance has made in 2012, broken down by postcode. So far in 2012 my postcode has 2x “pedestrian vs car”, which tells me something. Have a look to see what’s going on where you live.
View London’s Air Ambulance – Mission data 2012 in a larger map
The air ambulance service is a charity and it needs your money and awareness. They are throwing a “wear red” day on 28th September (deets here) to raise awareness and that would be a great thing for you to do. And if red really doesn’t suit you or want to just cut to the chase you can donate online here and wear whatever the hell colour you want.
The charity gets bonus marks for having the following postal address:
London’s Air Ambulance, The Helipad, The Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, E1 1BB.
19 Sep 2012
Boxing Day by Dark Horses
More bands should wear clothing emblazoned with group monikers and motifs, it purports to a gang mentality, and all bands should be gangs from the outset really shouldn’t they? Boxing Day sheds layer after layer of minimal, industrial gloom-pop over it’s six minutes, like a Russian doll fashioned into a caricature of Siouxsie Sioux and in doing so consistently maintains the element of surprise. Dark Horses’ Richard Fearless produced debut, the fittingly titled Black Music, is released October 29.
18 Sep 2012
Annoying habits of Londoners #10: Being unable to order pub food unless it's a burger
Burgers have long been a popular option for the hungry pub-goer, and with good reason. They arrive fast, are predictable in nature, and can easily be rescued from disaster by the application of reassuringly familiar condiments. They are a worthy, perhaps even a necessary, part of any pub-diners portfolio.
But for many Londoners, especially the hip young trendsters of the Eastern fringe, the burger is no longer an occasional choice. It is the only choice. That means it is no choice at all.
There’s no need to look far for evidence of this trend. Maps and apps devoted to London’s burger scene proliferate like so many scattered sesame seeds. Evidence? The whole city is a smoking bun.
Following this trend to its logical conclusion, some pubs in Hackney (where else?) have dispensed with other food entirely. Not for them the fading laminate and unlikely juxtapositions of a traditional pub menu. Instead, The Sebright Arms and the Three Compasses have turned their whole kitchens over to gourmet burger grillers. In these pubs, it’s pretty much burger or nowt. You don’t want to make a choice? Don’t worry, they’re not about to let you.
This burger obsession could easily be dismissed as a craze. That would be to understate both its significance and its staying power.
Crazes begin capriciously and end abruptly. Burger-love, on the contrary, is firmly established and deeply rooted. It’s causes are these:
1. A hungry inner child
The twenty-something generation, exposed in its early years to relentless promotion of fast food burger brands, and in its later years to relentless denigration of the same, is a generation confused. It wants the Happy Meal without the heart disease. The pub burger answers this call. It’s a variation on a Big Mac, but made from organic heritage beef and bearing a £7 price tag. With such a meal, the inner child is both fed and reassured.
2. Rank cowardice
For the casual diner (and what other diner is there now?), a burger on a menu is a beacon of certainty in a shifting world. Popping in to this pub or that to meet this friend or that, adrift in places they only pretend to know, the diner welcomes a burger like a lost-lost friend.
Often, trends are novel only in their timing. The burger fetish is actually deeply conservative. It clings to what it knows. The hip young burger eaters of today are the Tory councillors of tomorrow.
3. A crippling lack of imagination
I know why you do it, because I know why I do it. To order a burger is to decide not to make a decision. It’s an abrogation of thought. I may not be certain that I want a burger, but I know for sure that I don’t not want one. So I’ll have the burger, because the burger is there to be had.
I’m not pointing fingers. We’re all of us to blame. The reliance on burgers to solve the problem of feeling hungry in a pub is a collective failure of imagination on the part of a whole generation. The pubs have responded to this in the the only way they know how: with a collective failure of imagination of their own. This results in burgers, and nothing else. Amongst the diversity of the city, a monoculture thrives. We aren’t eating the burgers. The burgers are eating us.
Image – A burger, by Simon Doggett on Flickr under Creative Commons
See also:
The secret shame of London’s fried chicken shops
Previous annoying habits of Londoners, including applauding at the cinema and keeping spreadsheets of their dates, can be read here.
18 Sep 2012
City history: Slaver over English Heritage's round up of London's newest listed buildings
Embedded below is a nicely produced booklet from English Heritage telling you which London buildings were given legal protection in 2011. It’s a pleasingly mixed selection, and a nice cross-section of the city’s architecture.
Many different sides of London are represented here, and the buildings resound with the concerns of today.
Behold the privileged history of the Royal Kitchens at Kew, and wonder whether much has changed.
Contemplate the glinting hubris of Lloyd’s, and sigh for the unlearning arrogance of man.
See the postwar council blocks of Bayswater, and muse on the challenge of housing us all.
Think, for a moment, on the pair of public libraries, the like of which we may not see again.
Find out more on the English Heritage website.
18 Sep 2012
Snipe Highlights
Some popular articles from past years
- Margaret Thatcher statue rejected by public
- 9 poems about London: one for each of your moods
- The five best places in London to have an epiphany
- Nice Interactive timeline lets you follow Londoners' historic fight against racism
- An interview with Desiree Akhavan
- Number of people using Thames cable car plunges
- Hope and despair in Woolwich town centre
- London has chosen its mayor, but why can’t it choose its own media?
- Diary of the shy Londoner
- Only 16 commuters touch in to Emirates Air Line, figures reveal
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