The
happiest time of the year is that magical week between Christmas and
New Years. The sales are on, products are cheaper, lines are
smaller, and mail gets there quicker. If you have anything to send
someone by snail mail, this is the time to do it.
Recently, I navigated over to the mashup blog (www.mashuptown.com) (as I am wont to do), & I saw one of my favorite bootleg mixing acts had released a new collection. It was the Kleptones' "Live'r Than You'll Ever Be - The Kleptones At Bestival 2007". On the new release you'll find the finest Kleptones' tracks all performed out of the studio & jamming to beat the band!I had to write them & tell how great it is. Well, to my delight, I received permission for an interview. It commences now -
Q1: From hearing your music, one gets the strong impression you mainly please yourself while mixing, with the happy result of popular acceptance an after-thought. Do you take the audience into consideration during the mixing process? Would you advise people to strive towards satisfying themselves as a means to delighting the listeners?
Hey, starting with the easy ones? OK... Well everything has to please me, obviously, otherwise it wouldn't get out the door, so to speak, but that doesn't mean I don't think of an audience. Often I'm usually thinking of a *select* audience - it can be as little as one person, friends usually. Something clicks with a tune and I can visualise a certain person hearing it and grinning, or a particular club or bar (or festival!) that it would fit into, and that spurs you on. "Yoshimi" was very much like that, as many of my friends are Flaming Lips fans. I thought they would appreciate it, even if no-one else did. "Careless Or Dead" from "24 Hours" was another. I'd had that kicking around for ages but every time someone came over and heard it they ended up rolling around on the floor laughing, so that gave me the confidence to work it into the album. You've got to trust your friends sometimes, you know.
It's also a question of confidence in your own tastes too, though. One can be working on something special and think "no-one is going to like this, not even my friends" (sometimes especially not your friends ;), so even though you love it, you stick it in a folder and forget about it, which may not be the right thing to do. "Hip-Hopera" was like that at the start - it was very personal, encapsulating many of the things that I thought about music at that time, and using material that was in no way trendy, so I was nervous about playing it to even my flatmates at that time - not like they were going to be seriously offended because they weren't major Queen fans, or Hip-Hop fans, but it just seemed too far out. But they grokked it immediately, which encouraged me, so I allowed the concept to develop. "24 Hours" was even more personal - very little of that got played to anyone until it was completely finished, which maybe had something to do with the EPs coming out before the full album - to get some quick feedback before unleashing the full thing.
So maybe there is a progression there, and I think it's holding true for the next album so far, but we'll have to see how that progresses. For sure though I certainly wouldn't bin something if no-one liked it, yet I believed in it - that's the joy of online distribution, you can stick it out and let it find it's own audience - It might be small, but they'll love it for the right reasons, not just because it's cool, or this season's thing. I'd rather have that sort of crowd anyway. If you don't feel initially comfortable releasing something... err... do it under a pseudonym ;) "Works for me", as a great man once said.
Q2: I hear your releases mentioned a lot when discussing bootlegs with other mixers. Many regard you as an inherently gifted producer with extra-talented abilities. Any reaction to hearing this info? How much of your success is natural ability, & how much is practice, & hard work?
Flattered, and often humbled - there're some very clever mixers out there, you know. I don't know about "natural ability" but I do consider myself to have good musical intuition - I can hear a good thing and a bad thing very quickly, but I always know where to spend my time. The practice and the hard work, I guess, just comes from knowing your tunes and your arrangements. I have a voracious appetite for music, and I'm a incurable samplehead, so it's good to find a use for it all.
Q3: Your very first release,"Yoshimi Battles The Hip-Hop Robots" sounds like the work of an experienced artist. How did you manage to begin with that level of high craftsmanship?
Well, I'm definitely not a stranger to a sequencer - I've been quantizing happily since Cubase 2 on my Atari ST. I actually started DJ'ing properly only as a result of producing my own tunes first, just as a way of getting them played out. Not that it was very successful at first, but it gave me enough boost to keep going. Also "Yoshimi" had already been well crafted by the Lips, so I had a solid musical flow to start with. I knew I didn't want to ruin that flow by chopping the album up and sticking phat beats over it - it was already phat.
Q4: When "A Night At The Hip-Hopera" came out,I played it till it was memorized. The Queen tunes really shone with your arrangements. They seemed to point out how good the hip-hop material actually was. What was your inspiration for that particular stylistic pairing?
I guess the inspiration, as partially with "Yoshimi" was the lack of Hip-Hop around that I liked - there were some great lyrics to be found, but the music for the most part did very little for me emotionally - not saying it was bad, but it didn't engage me like certain other music did. Also Queen had such a wide range of styles, and had a fine sense of humour, so I thought I could make something CD length without things getting too dull or repetitive. Some of the things on that like "Plan", "Save" and "Come" were such a joy to make because they sounded so fresh and different to me - the music really made the words come alive in a new way.
Q5: When your double-album "24 Hours" made it's appearance, it seemed as if many of the bootleg tracks coming out shortly after were influenced by it. Are you in contact with many home mixers, or do you think it was your actual material that got such a reaction?
Erk, that's so difficult to say from my perspective. I do know a few other mixers, and one or two have told me they've been influenced, but it's not like anyone can flat-out copy this sort of stuff anyway (irony alert!). It's gratifying to find that people think there's enough of a style there that's worth investigating within their own music, whatever the effect may be. One influence that I hope 24H had was to show that you could stretch the range of music that gets used without losing people's attention - too many mash-ups rely on people knowing one or other of the tunes, if not both, and that can sometimes alter the perception of the listener too much - it stops being "listening to music" and more like waiting for a conjurer to pull a rabbit out of a hat. He dips in, fiddles about, grins to the crowd and hey! It's Beyonce! I wanted people to be able to listen without just waiting for the rabbits all the time - to get into the less familiar stuff along the way. Sure there's rabbits, but not as many recognisable ones, but that shouldn't spoil it - for me it makes it better, but it takes all kinds, you know.
Q6: I'm majorly fond of your podcast, "Hectic City". Is that an area of release you intend to pursue further?
Hell yes! I wish I'd had more time to pursue it recently, but real-life matters have been more at the forefront of the last year - these things happen. And again, I don't want to stick out substandard mixes. It will be back though - it's something I want to develop a lot more this year - I'm stockpiling too many half finished mixes that I'd like people to hear. Let me know if you have any requests for themes - I want each one to be different.
Q7: Here's a question from a reader of "M Is For Mashup" - Little Jimmy Mael of Pasadena asks "Will you ever make a mashup album with hip-hop music & rock vocals?"
Probably not, for reasons stated above - I'd get a bit bored after the third track. Not that I don't like Hip-Hop beats, if they're good it's quite the contrary, but I don't think I'd be able to keep the momentum enough to finish a whole album of it. Maybe an EP or something, though - I never say never...
Q8: Standard mixing technique question here.What software do you like to employ? Do you start with an idea, a mental, or a pella?
Software is Acid and Ableton, rewired together. Each has its own good side and bad side, and different kinds of tracks are better suited to each. I've been almost exclusively using Ableton recently, especially with all the gigs, as it's far more suited to live mixing, but I'd never bin Acid - it takes far less preparation to be up and running with that - Ableton takes a lot of preparation to be fully flexible.
As for the start of a track, it can be anything - whatever gets the motor running. It's great when you're walking down the street playing through something in your head, then you get back, drop it onto a grid and have it sounding equally fine, but sometimes I'm just sitting there flicking through tracks looking for inspiration. No different to anyone else, I guess.
Q9: Please tell us a bit about "Live'r Than You'll Ever Be - Bestival 2007". It's fantastic music, & plays even better at high volumes.
Ah that's good to hear, it was intended to be played loud - it's mastered a lot more up-front than the other albums for that reason. Basically "Live'r" is the recording of probably our favourite show of this year, at Bestival in the Isle Of Wight here in the UK, which is probably the second best festival I've ever been to in my life (Glastonbury wins that one, folks). Absolutely everything we planned for it came off, the sound, the video, the mix, the performance, from the biggest crazy ideas to the tiny little silly ones, and the crowd were absolutely exceptional, so I really wanted to document it while it was fresh. Also it's a good advert for the show - I want people to see what they missed!
Steve B agrees with KevKev, answering:
President Al Gore
Buz agrees with KevKev and Steve B:
I bet you will say I am wrong, but it was Al Gore.
Alan J was right with:
Benjamin Harrison
And, Sally also got it right:
While all four candidates in this quiz wore beards, the last US president to sport a beard was "C" Benjamin Harrison.
Silver Bells are ringing in rainy New Jersey - And, Santa's on his way - hope HE's sporting an umbrella! Hahaha...
is it just me or does the picture that zen man took of that tree stump look like the legs of a very big animal? just the legs from around the calves down to it's feet. Standing like it's doing some kind of ballet movement. (3rd position?)
CBS opens the night with a RERUN'How I Met Your Mother', followed by a RERUN'Big Bang Theory', then a RERUN'2½ Men', followed by a RERUN'Rules Of Engagement', then a RERUN'CSI: The 2nd One'.
Dave is pre-empted
Craig is p re-empted.
NBC fills the night with the movie 'It's A Wonderful Life'.
Leno is pre-empted.
Conan is pre-empted.
Carson 'The Scab' Daly is pre-empted.
ABC starts the night with the chestnut 'Dr. Seuss' How The Grinch Stole Christmas', followed by the movie 'Madagascar'.
On a RERUNJimmy Kimmel (from 11/22/06) are Regis Philbin and Jay-Z.
The CW offers a RERUN'Everybody Hates Chris', followed by a RERUN'Aliens In America', then a RERUN'Girlfriends', followed by a RERUN'The Game'.
Faux fills the night with the movie 'Cheaper By The Dozen'.
MY fills the night with the movie 'All The Pretty Horses'.
A&E has 'CSI: The 2nd One', followed by the movie 'Forrest Gump'.
AMC offers 'Santa Claus: The Movie', followed by the movie 'A Christmas Carol', then 'Santa Claus: The Movie', again.
BBC -
[12:00 PM] Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares - Ep 4 La Riviera;
[1:00 PM] Cash in the Attic - Episode 5;
[2:00 PM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 13 Wetherby 5;
[2:30 PM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 15 Ardingly 16;
[3:00 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 3;
[3:30 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 4;
[4:00 PM] You Are What You Eat - Episode 17;
[4:30 PM] You Are What You Eat - Episode 1;
[5:00 PM] My Family - Ep 1 Fitting Punishment;
[5:30 PM] Coupling - Episode 5;
[7:00 PM] BBC World News;
[7:30 PM] How Clean Is Your House? - Episode 4;
[8:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 6;
[9:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 5;
[10:00 PM] BBC World News;
[10:30 PM] You Are What You Eat - Episode 4;
[11:00 PM] Top Gear - Episode 6;
[12:00 AM] Top Gear - Episode 5;
[1:00 AM] Coupling - Ep. 2 Size Matters;
[1:40 AM] The World Stands Up - Episode 1;
[2:00 AM] The Weakest Link - Episode 1;
[3:00 AM] Changing Rooms - Ep. 7 Woodford Green;
[3:30 AM] Changing Rooms - Ep. 20 Fulham;
[4:00 AM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 11 Derby 34;
[4:30 AM] Bargain Hunt - Ep. 12 Wespoint 14;
[5:00 AM] Cash in the Attic - Episode 1;
[5:30 AM] Cash in the Attic - Episode 2;
[6:00 AM] BBC World News. (ALL TIMES EDT)
Bravo has 'Radio City Christmas Spectacular', 'Inside The Actors Studio', and the movie 'The Godfather'.
Comedy Central has 'Scrubs', another 'Scrubs', still another 'Scrubs', yet another 'Scrubs', followed by the movie 'Bad Santa', then the movie 'Bad Santa', again.
Jon Stewart is pre-empted.
Colbert Report is pre-empted.
FX has the movie 'Robots', followed by the movie 'Robots', then the movie 'Robots', yet again.
History has 'Modern Marvels', 'Bible Battles', and 'Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed'.
IFC -
[06:30 AM] Swingers;
[08:15 AM] Strictly Ballroom ;
[09:55 AM] The Henry Rollins Show #315: Christopher Walken/Shane Macgowan;
[10:30 AM] Picture Bride;
[12:15 PM] Swingers;
[02:00 PM] Strictly Ballroom;
[03:35 PM] Picture Bride;
[05:20 PM] Swingers;
[07:05 PM] Primer;
[08:30 PM] Framed on IFC #2;
[09:00 PM] November;
[10:20 PM] Media Lab Results;
[10:30 PM] Night at the Golden Eagle;
[12:10 AM] Short: Disposal;
[12:30 AM] Framed on IFC #2;
[01:00 AM] November;
[02:20 AM] IFC News Special;
[02:30 AM] Night at the Golden Eagle;
[04:05 AM] Primer;
[05:30 AM] Picture Bride. (ALL TIMES EST)
Sundance -
[04:45 AM] Gridlock'd;
[06:30 AM] Who Gets to Call it Art?;
[08:00 AM] It's All Gone Pete Tong;
[09:45 AM] Coney Island Baby;
[11:45 AM] Fela Kuti - Music is the Weapon;
[12:45 PM] Molly and Mobarak;
[02:15 PM] The Rock and Roll Kid;
[03:15 PM] Trudell;
[04:35 PM] We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen;
[06:15 PM] Commune;
[07:45 PM] Kill Your Idols;
[09:00 PM] Touch the Sound;
[11:00 PM] Mike Myers + Deepak Chopra;
[12:00 AM] Ray LaMontagne, The Zutons, Shawn Colvin & Nerina Pallot;
[01:00 AM] At Play In the Fields of the Lord;
[04:15 AM] Cries and Whispers. (ALL TIMES EST)
Comedian Chris Rock, right, gestures as he sits beside director Spike Lee during the Knicks' 95-90 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers in their NBA basketball game at Madison Square Garden in New York, Sunday, Dec. 23, 2007.
Photo by Kathy Willens
Argentine ballet dancer Julio Bocca performs in "The Corsair" during his farewell performance at an open-air stage in Buenos Aires, December 22, 2007. The 40-year-old ballet legend, who has danced everywhere from Montevideo to Moscow with some of the most distinguished companies in the world, says he has needed a change of pace for some time.
Photo by Enrique Marcarian
British comedian Rowan Atkinson, known for playing the bumbling television and movie character Mr. Bean, made a mistake of his own when he backed an SUV into an Aspen woman's car.
Atkinson was moving from a metered spot Thursday when he struck the Volkswagen Jetta, police said.
"He was backing out of a parking spot and didn't see the car behind him," said police Sgt. Dan Davis. "There was a little bit of damage to the car. He put a ding in it."
Davis said the accident was minor, and no citations were issued.
Katherine Heigl has married musician Josh Kelley at a resort in Park City, Utah.
Heigl, who portrays Dr. Izzie Stevens on "Grey's Anatomy," and the recording artist tied the knot Sunday in front of a small group of family and friends in a tent outside the Stein Eriksen Lodge, according to CelebTV.com.
Heigl's "Grey's Anatomy" co-star T.R. Knight was part of her bridal party, and guests included cast members Sandra Oh and Kate Walsh.
Singer Chubby Checker, left, performs at halftime of an NBA basketball game between the Milwaukee Bucks and Charlotte Bobcats Saturday, Dec. 22, 2007, in Milwaukee.
Photo by Morry Gash
Israel's national passport office could have done with a good spellchecker.
First it stamped "Ministry of the Intrerior" in English in new batches of passports. Then it advised Israelis of the misspelling in a jumbled newspaper advertisement Thursday that only compounded the mistake.
"Due to a technical error in some of the Ministry's stampsthe document you received may have been stampedwith an flawed stamp," the Interior Ministry said in a notice in the English-language Jerusalem Post.
The newspaper said its advertising department was responsible for mistakes in the ministry's ad, which urged people with the faulty passports to apply for new documents.
High-priced reunion tours by the Police, Van Halen and Genesis failed to prevent the North American concert industry from posting its worst year since 2004, according to a music industry trade publication.
The top 20 tours generated $996 million, down 15.6 percent from the year before, according to preliminary data issued on Friday by Pollstar, which covers the concert business. The previous low was $951.1 million in 2004, when Prince and Madonna topped the box office, it said.
The comeback tour by Anglo-American rock trio the Police was the top draw this year with ticket sales of $131.9 million, followed by country star Kenny Chesney with $71.1 million, and pop singer Justin Timberlake with $70.6 million.
Rounding out the top five of 2007 were Celine Dion's just-completed exclusive engagement at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas ($65.3 million) and rock band Van Halen ($56.7 million) with original singer David Lee Roth at the helm for the first time in two decades.
Cinnamon farmers carry virgin quills to a temple in the southern Sri Lankan pilgrim town of Seenigama 22 December 2007 as offering to the gods in exchange for a better harvest and prosperity. Sri Lanka at the weekend revived an ancient ritual of offering the first cinnamon harvest to the gods, three years after a devastating tsunami wiped out centuries-old plantations.
Photo by Lakruwan Wanniarachchi
Ingrid Betancourt was smiling ear to ear. It was 1998, and she had just emerged as the biggest vote-getter in Colombia's congressional elections.
Betancourt cut an elegant, forceful figure. Her clean-government crusade had badly rattled bought-and-paid-for careerists in Congress. Now she was reeling off ideas for countering drug trafficking, corruption and the leftist rebel FARC, or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Nine years later, an ashen-faced, spindly-armed Betancourt barely moves her bowed head.
A video delivered by her kidnappers shows her sitting in a jungle clearing on a roughhewn bench, legs crossed, hands motionless on her right knee over shapeless dungarees. Her chestnut hair drops over a shoulder to her waist.
She has been a prisoner of the FARC for nearly six years since venturing into rebel territory while campaigning for the presidency, and this is the first proof that she is alive to surface since a 2003 video. Meanwhile, Betancourt has become an international cause celebre, with foreign leaders from Nicolas Sarkozy of France to presidents across Latin America pleading for the release of the French-Colombian dual national.
Paul Brant, 70, used more than $25,000 in change to help buy a new Dodge Ram half-ton pickup truck Friday - 13 years after buying another truck with spare change.
Brant has been storing his change for years, and estimated he had about $26,000 in coins for Friday's purchase. In 1994, he bought a Dodge pickup and a Dodge Neon using about $36,000 in quarters.
Brant stored his change in coffee cans, water jugs and piggy banks over the years, and was escorted by sheriff's deputies as he brought the rolled coins to the dealership.
A Mike Raisor Chrysler Dodge and Jeep employee who sold Brant the truck said the dealership called in an armored car to count and handle the coins. "No bank wants to take them," Keith Gephart said.
Less than two weeks after a man put 30 $100 bills into a Salvation Army kettle, someone decided to do one better.
On Saturday morning, someone put 31 $100 bills in a Christmas card and dropped it into the tambourine held by Salvation Army volunteer Margaret L. Wetefsky at on Orwigsburg supermarket. The card had a note inside saying, "I want you to be known as the person who collected the largest donation. May God shine on you." It was signed, "Leo."
"I don't know his last name. I only know him to see him. He had given me money last year, five $100 bills for the last four years straight," Wetefsky said.
Nicolas Cage followed his secret treasure map to another fortune at movie theaters. Cage's "National Treasure: Book of Secrets," the Disney sequel to its 2004 hit, opened as the weekend's No. 1 movie with $45.5 million as Hollywood continued a holiday spree at the box office, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The previous weekend's top flick, Will Smith's "I Am Legend," slipped to second place with $34.2 million, the Warner Bros. hit raising its 10-day total to $137.5 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Wednesday.
1. "National Treasure: Book of Secrets," $45.5 million.
2. "I Am Legend," $34.2 million.
3. "Alvin and the Chipmunks," $29 million.
4. "Charlie Wilson's War," $9.6 million.
5. "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," $9.35 million.
6. "P.S. I Love You," $6.5 million.
7. "Enchanted," $4.15 million.
8. "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," $4.1 million.
9. "The Golden Compass," $4 million.
10. "Juno," $3.4 million.
Julien Gracq, a reclusive French writer known for surrealism and who famously turned down France's highest literary award, died at age 97 on Saturday.
Gracq, considered one of France's greatest writers of the 20th century, spent most of his life in retreat in the small village in western France where he was born.
Novelist, poet, drama author and critic, his literary debut came with 'At Argol's Castle', which sold only 150 copies and which he published in 1938 at his own costs.
Fiercely private, he stunned France for declining the Goncourt prize in 1951 for his masterpiece novel "The Opposite Shore" ('Rivage des Syrtes') -- a tale about collective suicide in an imaginary landscape.
Gracq, whose real real name was Louis Poirier, was born on July 27 in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil, on the banks of the Loire river in the west of France.
He spent much of his life there in the house of his grand father and died in a hospital in Angers. He had been living alone since his sister died in 1996.
Gracq, a school teacher, was a rare writer to be published in the prestigious 'Pleiade' series while he was still alive.
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