PressPausePlay

I recently watched the Transcendent Man documentary. Then today,  I found myself experiencing a bit of cognitive consonance when I watched PressPausePlay, and it moved me to share. The messages expressed are in many ways apart, but the vision of the future they paint melds easily in my mind.

There's a clear interplay between technology and humanity, the lines of which are beginning to blur. It seems we are drawing a more and more symbiotic future closer each day, a future in which we may no longer recognise ourselves. How you feel about that is up to you.

The Mindscape of Alan Moore

This post got yanked from Dangerous Minds due to copyright issues - don't worry, it won't happen here!


Alan Moore portrait by Christian Kaw

And what an incredibly vast landscape that is, full of outcrops of ideas about religion, spirituality, information, history, education, sexuality, magic, drugs, art, love, creativity and lots, lots more.

The Mindscape Of Alan Moore is a 2005 feature length documentary about the British comic book magus directed by Dez Vylenz, and while it's been floating around online in various cut-up, truncated and editted forms for a few years, it's now available to watch in its full 78 minute glory. Most Moore fans will be familiar with this film, but even if you have seen it (or parts of it) it's always worth another look. You'll be hypnotised by Moore's voice and his huge, spell-binding mindscape in minutes.

The DVD of this film is still available to purchase (just go here) and as I reckon you'll want to watch this more than once, that's an investment that comes highly recommended. And at least it means you'll be able to turn off the subtitles:
 

 

Firecracker Records printing sleeves

Edinburgh's Firecracker Records release some seriously lush deep house by the likes of Linkwood and Fudge Fingas (check out their sounds at their Soundcloud page), but they are just as well known for their awesome screenprinted superhero sleeves. If you've been anywhere near a decent record shop in the last few years you're sure to have noticed one of these bad boys staring at you from the racks. Here's a short (and sweet) documentary by the boys showing their Linkwood Family "Miles Away (Intrusion Dubs)" singles getting printed up:

Whatever happened to Hip-House?

Sometimes I think hip-house is the best genre ever known to man - the perfect blend of old school dance sounds with rapping on the top. It was fast, it was funky and it was fun - the tempo of the music made the MCs concentrate on a different meter, one that was more rhythmic and inspirational rather than heavy and polemical. Both genres were new and exciting at the time, and fitted each other like a hand in a glove (lest we forget that house music originally started as a black, ghetto music too).

How could it fail? WHY did it fail? Was it something to do with a perception amongst the hip-hop communtiy that house was too gay? The fact that house came from gay clubs like Frankie Knuckles' Warehouse or Ron Hardy's Music Box perhaps didn't square well with the uber-macho posturing of rap. Or was it seen as too faddish? Perhaps a hangover from the "disco sucks" years and rejection of yet another hijacking of a black musical form by white folks?

Whatever the reasons, the music still kicks ass today - drop something like Tyree & Kool Rock Steady "Turn Up The Bass" or KC Flightt's "Planet E" on a modern dancfloor and watch them tear it up. Now that we have gotten past an era where hip-hop was alligned in direct opposition to house, where all these different sounds are now simply conceived of as "retro", younger crowds are more open to this music and respond to the upbeat, party vibe and the combination of simple key elements in a fresh, different style.

Here's a short documentary on hip-house from 1989 featuring pretty much all the key players in the game. Some comissioning editor somewhere obviously thought this genre was gonna break big! But you've gotta be glad that footage like this still exists to document a sadly forgotten scene:



BONUS!

Here's a clip of Fast Eddie performing "Yo Yo Get Funky" live for a super-square and uber-white show called "Nine Thirty" (this clip also features an interview with the legendary founder of DJ International Records Rocky Jones, sporting a bad-ass shellsuit):

Fela Kuti - Music Is the Weapon

Set against a backdrop of Nigeria in the early 80's, this documentary provides an interesting insight into the mind of musical and political renegade Fela Kuti as he struggles to maintain his self-proclaimed republic against the increasingly violent interventions of the country's corrupt regime.

In addition to his brave and uncompromising political stance against brutal military rule, Fela also had a mighty package -shown here in the possibly the smallest pair of briefs known to man- which could easily defeat anything in Niall's post here.




Plus some Yellow Fever, for it is awesome:

Two excellent Rave docs

Check these out quick before I repost them on Dangerous Minds with expanded text. They're two different BBC documentaries about rave culture, the first a World In Action special from 1988 (some of this footage has been widely circulated, such as two old cockney ladies talking about flashing lights), the other a BBC North production form 1992 following the set up of a legal rave in a field near Newcastle.

Coming from the BBC, both these programmes contain a typically patronising voice over, but it is interesting to note the difference in tone in both shows. The earlier World In Action special, while coming form 1988, has a more balanced approach, with even a spokesperson for the police admitting that ecstasy use is not that widespread, certainly not as much as the press suggest. The "Rave" programme, even though it is covering a fully legal, licensed rave, is more obviously influenced by an anti-rave/anti-drug press bias that the figures in the show feel they have to counteract.

This being the late 80s/early 90s there are some BAAAD clothes on display, and of course the music is pretty damn aweosme:

WORLD IN ACTION "A Trip Round Acid House" 1988 Part 1



WORLD IN ACTION "A Trip Round Acid House" 1988 Part 2

WORLD IN ACTION "A Trip Round Acid House" 1988 Part 3

BBC North "Rave" 1992 Part 1



BBC North "Rave" 1992 Part 2

BBC North "Rave" 1992 Part 3

How-how-how-how-house-house-music

This 90's documentary on House is slightly marred by an irritating tabloid voice-over, but features some great footage as it traces the roots of house from Disco at the Paradise Garage through to its inception in 80's Chicago.

Shakedown - a film by Leilah Weinraub

Give these black lesbain strippers some money. Go on. You know you want to.



Srsly tho, this film looks like it could be amazing, but the producers need to raise another 15 grand from the public by the end of next week or it will never see the light of day. Unless we make it happen!

High on Crack Street

Made for HBO in the early nineties, High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell saw documentary makers Maryann DeLeo and Richard Farrell follow a small group of crack addicts for 18 months in the depressed town of Lowell, Massachusetts. Its atmosphere enhanced by a plain shooting style and the yellowed hues of video, the film ably depicts its characters floating in the limbo of addiction.

Dickie was a young boxer with a promising career before it was curtailed by crime and addiction. He did, however, go on to coach his brother Mickey on to success, and these two characters are soon to suffer the indignity of being portrayed by Christian Bale and Mark Wahlberg in The Fighter, which is released in February. Check out the full documentary below:

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John Pilger "The War You Don't See"

Originally broadcast on ITV1 last Tuesday, here's a brilliant documentary by the veteran journalist John Pilger about pro-war bias in the mainstream media. Watch the heads of BBC and ITV news squirm as they are confronted with the facts of their own unbalanced coverage - these people come off just as bad (if not worse) than the politicians they love to skewer. I don't have a TV anymore, so I don't have the pernicious influence of mainstream news reportage in my life (thank God) but if you still swallow the myth that our TV news outlets are un-biased, read this interview with Mark Thompson, director general of the BBC, where he calls for impartiality regulations to be dropped, and for TV news to become "more biased".

The Bucky Code

\m/ Meh-tolll vidz \m/

I spent far too long last night watching old school metal videos on Youtube, so much that I ended up dreaming about metal-y thing in my sleep. It was worth it though as I discovered some priceless gems I would like to share.

I hadn't heard Saint Vitus before, but I will be hella checking them from now on. They were one of the very first doom/stoner metal bands. Their primary influences were Black Sabbath and Black Flag, which says it all. The sound's not great on this but as a performance video it's awesome:



On a slightly more ridiculous tip, but no less entertaining for that, is this 7 minute epic video for Candlemass' "Bewitched". A bit less rough and ready than Saint Vitus, with a more operatic feel and a knowing sense of humour, it's worth sticking with this video all the way to see the "doomdancing" and also the coffin-surrounded-by-headbangers moment too.



There's a metal doc floating around on Youtube too called "Get Thrashed", which is a great primer for the US 80s (mostly) West Coast thrash scene, covering as it does Anthrax, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and more. It's disjointed as it's not been uploaded in full, but worth seeking out in its fragmented form. Here's a a segment on Exodus:


I came to these clips in a roundabout way after looking up Heavy Metal Parking Lot, and then moving on to the Decline of Western Civilization Part 2. Both these docs are on Youtube in full, and come highly recommended.

Off The Grid: Life on The Mesa

Burned-out war veterans, aging hippies and teenage runaways populate New Mexico's Mesa - a rugged desert community filled with individuals escaping modern America. Living in crude shacks without even the most basic amenities, they struggle to maintain their own society. Jeremy and Randy Stulberg's sensitive portrait of an outlaw community provides another facet to my imagined America, a country I've never visited, that only exists within the moving image.

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When You're Strange: A Film About The Doors

I went to see "When You're Strange" last night, the documentary about the rise and fall of the Doors by director Tom DiCillo. It's a pretty long review, so rather than post it all here I have posted it on Niallism, where you should all go and read it!