Daphne Oram, one of the leading lights of the stellar BBC Radiophonic Workshop designed and built the Oramic synthesizer beginning in 1957. Based on visual symbols drawn on paper and fed into a machine looking like something out of Wallace and Gromit, it has sat dormant since the mid-70’s until now.
This short film features Dr Mick Grierson, Director of The Daphne Oram Collection, acquiring the synthesizer from a collector in 2009.
The machine is now in the hands of The Science Museum in London and is currently being restored. It hasn’t been performed with since the 1970s.
Contact me regarding the film @street83 (Twitter)
Daphne Oram - Pompie Ballet
Daphne Oram - Snow
With thanks to Shannon Fields !
The name Alexander Robotnick should be familiar to fans of electronic music. An original disco pioneer, he scored a big hit in 1983 with the classic proto-Italo disco/electro cut “Problems D’Amour.” It was released in many different versions (the one below being the most popular), including a pressing on Sire Records that lead to much club plays in the States. “Problems D’Amour” was reputedly a big inspiration for the writing and recording of New Order’s “Blue Monday.”
Alexander Robotnick - “Problems D’Amour”
Almost 30 years on and Robotnick, real name Maurizio Dami, is still making and releasing music (his Rare Robotnicks album series of unreleased 80s tracks come very highly recommended). Although he abandoned dance music in the late Eighties and Nineties for ambient and world-fusion experiments, he has resurrected his old alter-ego and now tours with a hybrid dj/live set, mixing tracks old and new and providing live vocal accompaniment in his particular drawling style. Maurizio/Alexander has just put a new mix online in the style of his live/dj sets. It’s a blend of disco old and nu, with of course a lot of Italo—have a listen if you want to hear an original master at work:
Alexander Robotnick disco nudisco march 2011 DJ-Mix by Alexander Robotnick
Tracklist after the jump…
Has the Tea party movement burned itself out, save for all but the most fanatical types? It’s difficult to draw definitive conclusions from the attendance of just one (very) poorly populated event, but when the event in question is in Florida and they can’t even find the requisite number of cranky, dumb old Republicans to fill the seats for something called the “Save America Convention,” you can’t really help but wonder if something’s gone seriously off the boil:
With Fox News host Glenn Beck’s ratings down and the biggest tea party rally eclipsed by a recent pro-labor rally in Wisconsin, could the tea party be losing steam? One new sign: a big tea party convention in Tampa, FL this weekend — headlined by such conservative favorites as Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), Fox News Judge Andrew Napolitano, and former GOP Congressman Tom Tancredo — attracted only about 300 people. The Save America Convention’s website lists 25 guest speakers, meaning there was one speaker for every 12 attendees. If one includes the 13 musicians and other performers listed as entertainment, that ratio drops to one for every 7 and a half.
Joseph Farah, the founder of the birther news website World Net Daily, who spoke at the event, promised “lots of opportunities for interactivity between participants and presenters.” Indeed, this photo from the convention posted by Saint Petersblog suggests attendees would have little competition to meet Farah and the other speakers’
Aimed at the farthest right of the far right, the three-day event touted a sponsorship from the John Birch Society and an appearance by Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers militia. But this kind of uber-conservative fare has had no trouble attracting bigger crowds not long ago. There’s no video of the event — which didn’t include a single female speaker — since “video recorders and audio rendering devices are prohibited and would be grounds for removal without refund.”
Probably because they desperately didn’t want images like the above pic getting out. A videotape would only have made this wingnut micro-gathering seem even more pathetic. If a picture paints a thousand words, what would you title this one?
Via Think Progress
In the space of just over a week, the German deep house production team Snuff Crew have put together a whopping 45 track Japanese benefit compilation, with all proceeds going to the Red Cross’s earthquake relief operation. These guys aren’t messing around, they really have got the cream of European house and techno producers on board to help out. Have a look at the staggering tracklist:
01. Laurent Garnier – Cancel The Apocalypse
02. Joe Drive – The Delivery
03. Humandrone – Sun Pillar On the Debris
04. Zwei Of Snuff Crew – Fukushima
05. Billie Ray Martin and Hard Ton – Sold Life (Luke Solomon Remix)
06. Quinto – We Don`t Sleep At Night Part 1
07. KiNK – Memories From The Future
08. Neville Watson – Keep On
09. Patrick Pulsinger – 12a (Dub Version)
10. Dance Disorder – Future Retro
11. Legowelt – I Want Your Love
12. The Saint Petersburg Disco Spin Club – Birds Of Japan
13. DJ Gio MC-505 – My Face On Rushmore Mount
14. Marcello Napoletano – Acid Sunday
15. Morning Factory – Deepest Thoughts
16. Detachments – Holiday Romance (Andy Blake`s Mix For A World Unknown)
17. Photonz – Carnival Of Light
18. The Model – Bump And Jack
19. Hard Ton – Marilyn (Zoe Xenia Dub`n Pop Mix)
20. Elec Pt.1 – It´s House
21. Hieroglyphic Being – Siddharta (Part1)
22. DJ M-Traxxx – House Thunda (Unreleased Mix)
23. Roberto Rodriguez – The Girl Who Silenced The World
24. Discodromo – Bunraku
25. Romina Cohn – Follow Me
26. Meschi – Stay And Play
27. House Machine – Relief (Mix for Japan)
28. Demetrio Giannice – Untidled (One for larry) (Strictly For Japan Mix)
29. Moralez aka Telecommander1 – Life Time Groove
30. Simoncino – Japanese Heart
31. Pathetik – Accroupi
32. Roland Bassline – Ode To Mick
33. Ascii.Disko – Blues For The Red Sun
34. Joel Alter – Roll With Me
35. Andreas Henneberg, Marquez Ill, Leigh Myles – Thousand Paper Cranes
36. Eins of Snuff Crew – Kana Power
37. Remute – Worldfingers
38. Oliver Dodd – Tokyo Lovers
39. Lukatron (aka Luke Solomon) – Tommy´s Cream Soda
40. Renato Cohen – Silly Walk
41. Featherweight – Featherweight (Expanded Mix)
42. Kool & Duvall – U Lift Me Up (Craig Stewart Remix)
43. Fran Mela aka I.F.M. – Not A Game
44. Phil Moon aka Valyom – Einstein Romance
45. Mark Boombastik & Eduardo Delgado Lopez – Anders
Snuff Trax For Japan is available to download from What People Play.
For more info on the project, and Snuff Crew, visit their website.
Hotly-touted, Tony Visconti-produced “dirty showbiz” rockers, Semi Precious Weapons, have been touring with Lady Gaga as her opening act since 2009 with her “Monster Ball” extravaganza.
As if it’s not enough to be the bass player for a group produced by the famous Bowie and T-Rex collaborator, or to be a part of one of the biggest rock tours of recent years, bassist Cole Whittle is also a visual artist. The first show of his unusual artwork will be on display (along with Austin Young’s fab portrait exhibit YOUR FACE HERE, so you can take in both shows) at the Pop tART Gallery in Los Angeles and opens this weekend.
Whittle’s installation, titled ALL THE KICKS consists of mixed media pieces, freaky clothing, new music and video and, as they say… more.
Cole Whittle’s ALL THE KICKS opens Saturday March 26, with reception from 8pm to midnight. Curated by Lenora Claire.
Pop tART Gallery, 3023 W. 6th St. Los Angeles, CA 90020
Okay, this is just getting silly now. First there was the Prince William and Kate Middleton condoms from Crown Jewels, and now there’s a freakin’ wedding souvenir refrigerator distributed by GE! Who in their right mind would spend their hard-earned money on this monstrosity?
(via Time Newsfeed)
From our friends at the wonderful Network Awesome comes this tight little collection of psuper-psychedelic animation from the pseventies by Vince Collins. The first of which was commissioned by the U.S. Information Agency to commemorate the bicentennial in 1976. The freaky final clip Malice in Wonderland is a bit NSFWish.
Halloween 1986 The Dead Boys re-unite and tear the roof off of The Ritz.
Stiv Bators, Cheetah Chrome, Jimmy Zero, Jeff Magnum and Johnny Blitz got it together for one more show in their old stomping ground of New York City. Starting with an introduction from long time supporter Joey Ramone, to the power riff of the honest-to-god anthem Sonic Reducer (played twice!) to an unreal cover of the Stooges Search and Destroy, the Dead Boys put the boot to the notion that all reunions suck.”
Dead Boys forever!
In 1992 I attended a lecture by Noam Chomsky at a high school auditorium in Los Angeles. During the Q&A Professor Chomsky was asked what televised news sources he recommended and he said said none of them. He had particularly biting comments to make about how CNN “packaged” the (first) Gulf War as infotainment with clips of military jets taking off, waving American flags and footage of targets being hit that looked like video-games with a martial beat soundtrack. How can you expect the public to have an objective view of the country’s foreign policy and military actions, he asked the audience, when they’re fed images from the military itself via a tightly controlled press pool designed to foster an “us vs. them” mindset by a for profit news outlet who find their highest ratings in the midst of war, scandal and crisis? And NBC was at this time owned by General Electric, the #1 company in the world to make money from war. Who could you trust?
I used to be an absolute TV news junkie, but after his words sank in, I found the more and more I drifted away from it. I did most certainly feel manipulated whenever I was watching CNN. It became really fucking annoying to me once it had been pointed out so bluntly what they were up to and how far up the White House’s asshole they’d climbed. It’s worth mentioning that it was four years prior to the launch of Fox News when Noam Chomsky made these observations. To satiate my infomania, I was soon subscribing to five daily papers and 70 monthly magazines that ranged from far-right and far-left conspiracy theory zines, to Vanity Fair and everything in between. In addition to things like In These Times or Z magazine, I also subscribed to The National Review (before it became absolutely worthless on every level) and Free American and various libertarian publications. I picked up anarchist monthlies, eco warrior magazines and just basically everything. Extreme perhaps, but at least my information sources did not have an emotionally leading soundtrack and ludicrous music video montages of saluting soldiers, missiles being fired to slaughter people at a distance and red, white and blue flags flying in the wind.
Much of the time, TV news just felt like I was being shouted at by idiots. It was infuriating. By 1996—the year Fox News launched although I was barely aware of it at the time—I cancelled cable because I never ever watched it and it was just a waste of $70 bucks a month. If it wasn’t for my wife, I’d have never had it since (and I still never watch TV news unless there’s something really significant happening).
The brilliant and sardonic British writer and TV presenter, Charlie Brooker performs a parallel service for BBC viewers that Professor Chomsky once did for me, to illustrate a similar point he made recently—with well-chosen clips—about the despicable way the news media is treating the crisis in Japan. Watch this, it’s really good.
(via Cynical-C)
Previously on DM:
Charlie Brooker’s How TV Ruined Your Life.