Justice Xmas Mix…Featuring the FUCKING CHAMPS!!!

Wow! The mighty indie-prog-metal heads Fucking Champs are now featured on a mix by the mighty electronic club rockers JUSTICE!!! The mix also includes music by the Sparks, Goblin, Chic, Justice, Daft Punk, Todd Rungren, etc…what a treat! This mix was rejected by Fabric which produces the FabricLive mix series… um, what on Earth were they thinking, this is great mix! It features lots of acts I’ve never heard of before but which have pretty great songs on here such as Korgis, The Paradise, etc…The Todd Rundgren song was featured in Daft Punk’s movie Electroma.

Ah, it would be lovely to have a Fucking Champs/Justice album–check out all the electronic songs on Champs III. And check out this Justice intervew on Pitchfork last year:

Thu: 07-05-07
Guest List: Justice

“>> Favorite New Band
Midnight Juggernauts, who are an electronic pop band from Melbourne; and the Fucking Champs, a highly technical baroque metal band.”

Wow, the Fucking Champs is one of Justice’s favorite bands! Okay, it’s time for an album by the “Fucking Justice” as a sequel to the Trans Champs and Fucking Am. I bet the Fucking Champs would like that guitar solo in Daft Punk’s Aerodynamic…

Here’s the mix:

http://www.78s.ch/2008/01/13/justice-xmas-mix/

http://stereogum.com/archives/mp3/justice-leaks-rejected-fabric-mix_007693.html

Here’s Justice mixing up Metallica’s MASTER OF PUPPETS live…great show!

The tracklist:

Tracklist:

01 Sparks – Tryouts For The Human Race – Virgin
02 Rondo Veneziano – La Serenissima – Universal
03 Goblin – Tenebrae – Cinevox
04 Daft Punk – Ouverture – Virgin
05 Surkin – Next Of Kin – Institubes
06 SymbolOne – Love Juice – SymbolOne
07 Korgis – Everybodys Gotta Learn Sometimes – Angel Air
08 Midnight Juggernauts – Ending Of An Era – Mindight Juggernauts
09 The Paradise Ft Romauld – In Love With You – Vulture
10 Justice – TTHHEE PPAARRTTYY (Acapella) – Ed Banger
11 Chic – Everybody Dance – Atlantic
12 Frankie Valli – Who Loves You – Warners
13 Das Pop – Underground – Das Pop
14 Julien Clerc – Quand Je Joue – EMI
15 Daniel Balavoine – Vivre Ou Survivre – Barclay
16 Richard Sanderson – Reality – Barclay
17 Zoot Woman – Grey Day – Wall Of Sound
18 Fucking Champs – Thor Is Like Immortal – Drag City
19 The Rave – Mother – The Rave
20 Fancy – You Never Know – Fancy
21 Frank Stallone – Far From Over – Universal
22 Sheila – Misery – Warners
23 Todd Rundgren – International Feel – Warners

Here’s a great Remix interview with Justice, where they describe liking Francis Lai, sampling Slipknot and Queen in the same song, and making most of their album with the sound libraries in Cubase and Garage Band.

CSS-Cansei de Ser Sexy–Alala and Music is My…

Ah, they’re sort of like the Brazilian Talking Heads?  Pretty cool…even before their huge iPhone ad song-tie-in!

DJ Dub and Saigon – The Medicine

Not much exciting in hip hop right now, while the music industry is dying–but this Saigon mixtape is actually really nice. I never got around to listening to too much of his stuff before, but this mixtape brings together a great mix of songs, showcasing Saigon’s lyrical skills and a great beat selection (Just Blaze, 9th Wonder, Scram Jones, etc). The whole thing clocks in at around 70 mins!

Hopefully his to-be-released album, produced mostly by Just Blaze (whose blog themegatrondon has seemingly disappeared) will come out sometime soon–it’s approaching Detox ETA status at this point.

The whole 70s minutes is quite listenable and way better than most hip hop I’ve heard in the last few years. Saigon has made some weighty claims of his new album being better than Illmatic or something–this mixtape actually does evoke some of those feelings of listening to some old Illmatic, Reasonable Doubt era-stuff. Listening to this mixtape, it feels like these songs could be wafting out at you from some car passing by in New York City around 1994 or so.

mp3s: DJ Dub and Saigon – The Medicine

Great Post on Economic Meltdown: “Economic Oversteering”

Economic Oversteering

“Historians may well lay the real blame for current distress at the door of Alan Greenspan, who pioneered the use of morphine to dull economic pain, but they will probably also credit him with a certain level of discretion in its prescription. During Greenspan’s tenure at the Fed, economic leaders became convinced that the solution to market distress was to ensure that the financial system had access to easy money.”

….

“When the dot com bubble burst, Greenspan kept the financial system energised by lowering rates so far that they were, for a substantial period, at negative levels.

A negative real interest rate means we are effectively paid to take out loans. That might sound good, but how would you feel if I used the words “paid to take a few more hits of crack cocaine”? The underlying problem was that people had become accustomed to high rates of return and did not want to accept that real rates of return in the US were moving down. They had become accustomed to easy money, and Greenspan’s policy ensured that money remained accessible at a time when people had demonstrated a low ability to invest that easy money well.”

….

“Now, with hindsight, it appears that the real reason for the absence of inflation was that the Chinese were increasing their productivity dramatically, and that US consumers were spending so much on Chinese goods that Chinese productivity growth, not US productivity growth, was keeping US prices low.

When tech came off the boil and people should have been using the pause to clean up their affairs, Greenspan made it easy for people to get themselves into a worse position. Easy money made stock market prices artificially high, so stock market investors felt rich. Worse, easy money made house prices artificially high (by about 45%), so everybody felt wealthier than they had planned or expected to.

To make matters worse, a series of financial innovations created a whole industry designed to help people go back into debt on their houses. I remember trying to watch TV in the US and being amazed at the number of advertisements for “home equity withdrawals”. They made it sound like turning your major personal financial asset – your paid-off house – into an ATM machine was a good thing.”

Mmmm Hot Chocolate

My favorite hot chocolate is Organic Valley Chocolate Milk heated up via microwave…quick and delicious, better than most hot chocolate products on the market!!!

Freakanomics: What Do Real Thugs Think About the Wire

Ah, this is great, funny analysis of the awesome show The Wire:

Freakonomics: hat Do Real Thugs Think About the Wire

By Columbia Sociology professor and author of OFF THE BOOKS: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor and several other books, and whose research was featured in the book Freakonomics.

More on Sudhir Venkatesh

Fire Kelly Tilghman

Golf Channel and Golfweek Lynching Comments Fiasco

“The episode began Jan. 4 during the second round of the season-opening Mercedes-Benz Championship when Tilghman and analyst Nick Faldo were discussing possible challengers to Woods.

Faldo suggested that “to take Tiger on, maybe they should just gang up (on him) for a while.”

“Lynch him in a back alley,” Tilghman said, laughing.

Golf Channel issued a statement four days later to say it regretted the comment and that Tilghman had apologized to Woods. But when the Rev. Al Sharpton demanded on CNN that she be fired, Golf Channel suspended Tilghman for two weeks.”

Um…anyone who even thinks of the using the concept of “lynching” in a joke has got serious, serious problems. Even the thought of it is inappropriate. Wow. And then for Golfweek to put a noose on their cover? Shows that Jena 6 type controversies have deep-seated racial roots in our country that can’t just be glossed over…

Monkey Controls Walking Robot: Gundam and Firefox (movie/game) are real…

NY Times: Monkey’s Thoughts Propel Robot, a Step That May Help Humans

Article about Idoya, a monkey, controlling a robot named CB, Computational Brain. Get this: the monkey was in a lab in North Carolina, the robot in Japan, remotely controlled over a high speed internet connection:

“The video and brain cell activity were then combined and translated into a format that a computer could read. This format is able to predict with 90 percent accuracy all permutations of Idoya’s leg movements three to four seconds before the movement takes place.”

“As Idoya’s brain signals streamed into CB’s actuators, her job was to make the robot walk steadily via her own brain activity. She could see the back of CB’s legs on an enormous movie screen in front of her treadmill and received treats if she could make the robot’s joints move in synchrony with her own leg movements.”

“As Idoya walked, CB walked at exactly the same pace. Recordings from Idoya’s brain revealed that her neurons fired each time she took a step and each time the robot took a step.”

“In the near future, Idoya and other bipedal monkeys will be getting more feedback from CB in the form of microstimulation to neurons that specialize in the sense of touch related to the legs and feet. When CB’s feet touch the ground, sensors will detect pressure and calculate balance. When that information goes directly into the monkeys’ brains, Dr. Nicolelis said, they will have the strong impression that they can feel CB’s feet hitting the ground.”

“Dr. Nicolelis and his colleague, Dr. Manoel Jacobsen Teixeira, a neurosurgeon at the Sirio-Lebanese Hospital in São Paulo, Brazil, plan to demonstrate by the end of the year that humans can operate an exoskeleton with their thoughts.”

So, in the near future, wars will be fought by monkeys in a lab remotely controlling giant robot war machines…NICE!!! Let’s hope they don’t get any ideas…what about that rat controlling the boy cook by pulling his hair while hiding under his cook’s hat?

Photo by PT

The Quants Who Blew Up Wall Street

 The Blow-Up, Part I, Part II

Thought I’d finally post something economics related again…

Moogs, Library Music, Easy Listening, Exotica, Soundtrack Musicw

Ahh…this is the sound I love…bring the horns and the cushy strings…Francis Lai, Peter Thomas, Jerry Van Rooyen, Dorothy Ashby, Syd Dale, John Keating, Nick Ingman, James Last, John Fox, Jack Arel & Pierre Dutour, Brian Bennett, Mike Vickers, Mort Garson, Lex de Azevedo, Hollywood Cinema Orchestra, Keith Mansfield, François de Roubaix, Alan Hawkshaw, Steve Gray, Hugo Montenegro, Georges Teperino, Accadde A, Riz Ortolani, Tony Hatch, Francis Coppieters, Daniel Janin, Camille Sauvage, Monk Higgins, Lalo Schifrin. Do a “Jack Arel” similar artists station listen on last.fm…Bascially, a lot of this stuff sounds like that one Lalo Schifrin Portishead sample…soundtrack music…

Library music: funky bass and drums and guitar, insane moogs and other synths, strings, horns, and that strange feeling with some of this stuff where it starts to border on…muzak or easy listening…but then gets good again…last.fm has a lot of this stuff to listen to, it’s great! That Further Nuggets compilation sounds especially excellent. Psychadelic, exotica, jazz, blaxploitation, the roots of a lot of italo sounds and modern stuff like Stereolab, fountains of good hip hop samples too…a lot of this stuff can be found on the Dusty Fingers record series. I think we can extrapolate that Krautrock, Can, Faust, none of that would exist without this stuff. Compare Dorothy Ashby’s “Soul Vibrations” with a lot of Can stuff for example…Just Blaze sampled some Nick Ingman for example. I’m sure Madlib has a bunch of this stuff. But you know what, the real stuff sounds better anyway: hip hop, without live instrumentation, is getting kind of old.

Easy listening/exotica/big band: Frank Pourcel’s Similar Artists station on Last.fm

The more easy-listening side includes stuff like Percy Faith, Bill Pursell, Franck Pourcel, Frank Chacksfield, Edmundo Ros, Billy Vaughn, Nelson Riddle, Eddie Cano, Ray Conniff, Les Baxter, Tuby Hayes, Esquivel, etc. You can hear a lot of this stuff on the Escape channel (formerly the Sunny channel, which now plays different stuff) on XM Radio–also on last.fm. Favorites are the Gary Pacifc Orchestra and Jack Arel similar artists stations on last.fm.

Some highlights:

Accadde A-Accadde A Bali
Georges Teperino-Minor Mind
Daniel Janin-Fat Fat Fellow
Francis Coppieters-Sales Talk
Francis Lai-Rapt
Les Baxter-Pyramid of the Sun
Dorothy Ashby-Soul Vibrations

F. McDonald-Night Moves

Fred Bongusto-Una Rotonda sul mare

Generique-Dernier Domicile Connu

Gianni Ferrio-For Whom the Bell Tolls

Georges Garvarentz-Hashisch Party

Syd Dale-Let me take you there

Jerry Gold Smith-Crossing the Border

Janne Schatter-Atlanta Inn

Nancy Priddy-You’ve Come this Way

Billy Brooks-Fourty Days

Intimate Strangers-Love Sounds

Gary Pacific Orchestra-Soft Wind

Ed Scogillera-Compression

Danielle Patucci – La Dimo Strzione

Harnell-Jamie’s Theme

Hysear Don Walker-Children of the Night

Absolute Elsewhere-Future Past

The Pheonix Authority-

Not quite library music but equally enjoyable:
Gabor Szabo – Keep Smilin

Minnie Ripperton – Black Gold of the Sun

Lafayette Afro Rock Band–Darkest Light

Methinks they have a lot of this stuff at the venerable Dusty Groove

Some pretty fun easy-listening type library music by the Hollywood Cinema Orchestra can be found at:

pt 1
http://www.zshare.net/download/179707068ef9114b/

pt 2
http://www.zshare.net/download/17971030bbc8e590/

frank chacksfield–you are my destiny