Very personal post which nobody will really get anyway.

(I'm actually surprised i'm still logged into blogspot after over two weeks of not touching it, besides a single aborted attempt to post pictures of Danger Mouse's equipment for the Gnarls Barkley tour)

Small post just to say that the Cristina Donà poster on my door just slumped over on itself and apparently died due to the bizarre phenomenon of my door expanding a bit during the hottest days of the year, also causing it to be much harder to close and to sometimes open in a manner completely independent from human (and sometimes even feline) touch.

This is the same Cristina Donà poster i took off a wall while wandering through Rome at 2 or 3 AM with Andrés, Cristobal and Agi back in autumn 2003. The same one that has since been visible on various parts of my room since, including when i first made M. listen to the Goccia EP (ft. Robert Wyatt) the following year or so and when, last year, i was preparing to interview her for Fucine Mute. An instant after turning my sound recorder off, she proceeded to say something about my features being handsome. If i had left the recorder on a few more seconds, you would have been able to hear the sound of me blushing. The poster was also on my wall when i first listened to her sing TTD's song Sign Your Name, which was one of my favourites as a teenager (and let's admit it, it still is), on her 2008 Piccola Faccia album.

That's all, i just wanted to capture this little train of thought and send it out somehow. No big messages or morals or anecdotes, more like just the outline of an object i hadn't paid attention to in quite a while and the thought processes it activated by, well, slumping onto the floor.

UPDATE: And why, i hear you asking, haven't you just stuck the poster back up? Well, my dear reader who makes non-clever questions, the answer is that i've tried. And failed. I tried sticking it back up with the original sellotape, it flumped to the floor after few minutes. So i tried with new sellotape: same result. Further attempts involving blu-tack and industrial black tape (both of which i have a discreet supply of which i hide religiously in an undisclosed location somewhere within my room, considering they are two of the most requested human necessities on earth) were of no consequence. I have therefore resolved that the poster is no more, it has lost its will to live, and shall soon be rolled up and placed in the dark place where unused posters are placed, which in this case is not dark at all because i have no space left in my wardrobes or cupboards. How sad.

And then suddenly, a weekend download.

Since i've already had to email it around three times, i've decided to make this a weekend download. Exceptionally, it's actually being posted on a weekend. Huzzah!

A bit of backstory. I first heard this song a couple of days ago in the latest edition of Polypunk, the sort-of-monthly podcast by Digiki which i listen to regularly and often repeatedly much to my hard disk's chagrin. This time around the podcast was Daft Punk themed, so i suggested it to people via Twitter.
The item which captivated most people's interest is the one i'm sharing here today, a completely acoustic cover of Daft Punk's Digital Love by Alphabeat, a scandinavian band i was previously unaware of.

Alphabeat - Digital Love (128kps Mp3, 2.7Mb - Right-click to download) File removed because it was taking up loads of bandwidth even going past googlepages' limits, which is quite impressive but also means you've probably all downloaded it by now and i might as well upload something else instead.

As i was saying elsewhere the other day, it's the kind of thing that makes you feel like learning those three or four chords on the battered-up guitar you keep on top of the wardrobe and go out and entertain people on beaches. Possibly people with an attention span short enough to be entertained by the same song over and over.

In completely unrelated news, the webmaster has once again entered an only-listening-to-kahimi-karie loophole and is actually thinking of devoting an entire week of posts to her works. He will gladly accept bribes to keep him from doing this.

My Awesome Mixtape Live@MagazzenoBis

I didn't think i'd be linking to video again so soon, but i just found out that tonight's concert of one of my favourite bands, My Awesome Mixtape, performed for one of my favourite radio programmes, Magazzeno Bis, will be filmed and shown live on MTV and on the Mogulus Player embedded below.


EDIT: player would rather annoyingly start playing on its own. Here's a link to the channel instead. And yes, the concert i was yapping about in this post still blocks 2 minutes in. The rest of the stuff is good though.

Concert begins at 22hrs GMT+1 of the date this post was created (which i can't be bothered to remember for the obvious reason that it is a saturday morning). There is an offhand chance you might catch a glimpse of myself+friends since we will also be attending the show.
In all other moments you will see reruns of previous concerts by the band, and The Lord only knows what else.

This is only temporary.

You may notice some differences on this blog today. The not-exactly-new-just-very-temporary header, for starts. Thing is, the time has finally come for me to change this antiquated template and put something more up-to-date in its place. So for the next day or twenty this blog is going to look extremely wonky, since i haven't really made my mind up yet about what i want it to look like.
In the meantime, check out the search button i added in the sidebar. Unlike all previous attempts (all one of them), this one actually works! Hours of fun.

Blogging explained in one sentence

Dear internet, my cat just farted.

You still can't use a blog to swat a fly, but rss is a step in the right direction.

(Actually, it's Atom)
After at least two years of "yeah, i'll do it tomorrow", i finally added a link on the sidebar to this site's feed. So now you all know where to point your feedreaders and proceed to party like it's 2004. Yes, i'm also not very good at maths.

Two-in-one

My Father, in the car:

"I was writing (...) about this thing that happened to me back when I wrote the book, History Of The Chilean Socialist Party. It was the Party's 49th anniversary so for the fiftieth there was a big celebration. Allende was in power, the party was strong, it was held in the Estadio Nacional. It wasn't full, but almost. People were going around selling my book, carrying whole baskets of it. I was sitting there in the stadium and two guys came to me, with the baskets, offering to sell me my own book. I said,
'No, sorry.'
'Why not?' They asked.
'Well, I'm one of the people who wrote the book.'
They went quiet. Then they looked at each other and went away. As they left, one of them turned to me and said,
'Nice excuse you came up with, bullshitter.'
It was the shortest and strongest critical commentary I've received in my life."

Later:

Him: "So, need anything from the supermarket?"
Me: "Actually, i think i need a new toothbrush."
Him: "Ok, possibly one with a different color from mine."
Me: "Yeah, for months i've suspected we've been using the same one."
Him: "Another thing that bothers me is, how come there's three of us at home but there are always four toothbrushes in the bathroom?"
Me: "You're right!"
Him: "I'm starting to suspect there might be someone hiding in the house. Somebody who creeps out at night when we're all sleeping and secretly washes his teeth."

Joyeux Joel

I was fiddling with a couple of soundfiles this morning when i came across something unexpected. What i needed was 2 minutes of white sound, interference or just noise in general. Since i was feeling rather on the lazy uncreative side, i just told myself "Huh. That useless Joe's X-Masage Zappa album had two one-minute musique concréte pieces. Nobody'll notice if i take one of them and extend it to two minutes." Yes, i was feeling very lazy. The endproduct wasn't really for me, anyway.
So i took a 56 second track ("mousie's first x-mas") and arbitrarily extended it to 2 minutes. While i did this, i noticed something wierd: the left and right channel were two completely different tracks altogether. Once doubled in length, what was going on became clear: the composition had a completely electronic/manipulated magnetic tape left track, while the right track was part of a hitherto unheard orchestral composition. All this at double speed.*

The other short musique concréte track ("The Moon Will Never Be The Same"), which proved to be much the same in style, especially when extended from 1:10 to 2:20. Approximately.
An example can sort of be seen in the screenshot below:


Goldwave dealing with Zappa. Two channels, different lengths.


All i could do now was save the soundfiles, put them on the internet and look for something else to sample, splice, dice and maim for my own filthy plans.
So, for all you scholars out there...

Frank Zappa - Mousie's First X-mas(extended 2x) - 128kps 2min Stereo Mp3
Frank Zappa - The Moon Will Never Be The Same(extended 2x) - 128kps 2min20sec Stereo Mp3

And furthermore:

Mousie's First X-mas (extended left channel only) - 128k mono that sounds like stereo mp3
Mousie's First X-mas (extended right channel only) - 128k stereo that sounds like mono mp3
The moon will never be the same (extended left channel only) - 128k stereo that sounds like mono mp3
The moon will never be the same (extended right channel only) - 128k mono that sounds like stereo mp3

All recordings approx. 1962-63.

Edit: Tracks now hosted on a more powerful and trustworthy server. Grazie Pelodia signorFurpo!

*my reaction upon discovering the accelerated tracks: "Cool, i do that all the time."