Music For Your Tape Recorder

This year was by far the most contemporary year I've had since I stopped listening to Radio 1 - only two songs from this year's selection pre-date my living memory. This is probably because I stumbled into the "chillwave" genre and am currently consuming all the in-print material available. The lack of releases from the eighties or earlier is also because I haven't obtained any offbeat and out of print albums. Or rather, I'm not willing to shell out £30+ for an out of print album (again) and can't get it by 'alternative means'. As such, there is no now-out-of-print-good-band-your-parents-shunned award this year. Since this is the year of chillwave, I will instead present the Roygbiv-eargasm award to Imprint After by Toro Y Moi. Not since said BoC track has a song withstood incessant listening and accelerated toward the top of my most played Top 50.

Waking Up And Getting Up Has Never Been Easy

Postmen in the Snow, Rupert Brun, 2010

Throughout this productive year I've maintained the post-a-week pace of writing by planning out the following month in advance. Usually there's around ten drafts in varying levels of completion If I'm struggling to bring a scheduled draft up to standard I'll postpone it a month and bring forward a more complete one. December was to be no different, only accommodating a two week gap between the first week and the Christmas week for obvious employment reasons. Unfortunately I fell ill in the first week which scratched the first post and the past two weeks has seen the Royal Mail network buckling under the strain of the seasonal post and periodic blizzards. I've been waking up early, on the streets till late and going to bed early - rinse and repeat. As such, I've neither had the time nor energy to write.

You Won't Have to Follow Me, Only You Can Set You Free

PART TWO OF A PROLOGUE TO A SERIES.

Nelson Mandela, Frames-of-Mind, 2007

The Marxism essay for politics class was a by-the-numbers 'name the core aspects of theory-x' test like most class assignments. There were a few reasons I bothered to finish and hand in that particular essay - setting it apart from all the others due at the same time. I really enjoyed the politics class - the lecturer, the free flow of the classes (compare the rigidly planned psychology class, which I hated) and the subject matter.

The essay was also an opportunity to coherently express my knowledge and ideas on the subject and perhaps gain a greater understanding through arranging it on paper. Though discussing Leninism and identifying the Russian Revolution as a keystone event of the movement were explicit requirements of the essay, I can't recall whether determining an initial cause for the eventual failure of the Soviet Union was part or something I threw in to show off. Based on the conclusion I reached, that the implementation and continuation of War Communism undermined the revolution's own internal support and led to increased centralisation of power, I wonder whether the latter was true. Having stated that Imperial Russia was still a largely feudal state, only to then dismiss the idea that this was why the Soviet Union could not make the transition to socialism by leap-frogging the capitalist epoch, I perhaps wrote myself into a corner and then wrote back out of it in order to increase the word count. The essay also got a straight A!

Q: Are We Not Men?

In the past this information has been suppressed, but now it can be told. Every man, woman, and mutant on this planet shall know the truth about de-evolution

Collage (top to bottom, left to right):
[1] (Unknown)
[2] Peacock @ Delhi Zoo, Hi Pandian [CC:BY-NC]
[3] Pulled Pork Sandwich in progress, Marshal Astor Food Pornographer [CC:BY-SA]
[4] African Lion Feeding on Horse, Luke Robinson [CC:BY-NC-SA]
[5] hypnotic, procsilas [CC:BY]
[6] gato televito, Walala Pancho [CC:BY-NC-SA]

Imprint After

unidentified compact disc, Janesdead, 2005

I hate being subjected to Radio 1. Either my tastes have evolved considerably, or pop music's standards have dropped considerably. Yes I know, I'm twenty-three so that probably puts even me far outside its tweeny demographic; but I swear we've witnessed the idea of the musical composition known as a 'song' eaten from the inside out by the refrain. The refrain - often called the chorus - has always been the catchy part of a song, often where the hook resides. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before the chorus came to form an entire song whereupon the hook ceases to be a means to catch the listener's ear and instead acts more like the little slots on a cheese grater. Coupled with a gratuitous looped sample being shouted over, the whole concoction shreds my eardrum over the course of three minutes.

Hexadecimal Genome

Eye-Bee-M, Paul Rand, 1981

I mentioned in October that my first computer was an IBM PS/1. In fact, I also had a used Commodore 64 for a few years, though I can't remember which came first; plus, I never really thought of the C64 as a computer. Like a console it plugged into the tv and it had a tape deck which to my young mind was equivalent to a game cartridge but with excruciatingly long loading times.

The interface of the 64 made it difficult for me to accidentally break it - the command for loading a game was written down on a piece of paper, and that was as much as I knew. By comparison, a technician had to be called out at least three times to reinstall Windows 3.1 on the PC. This was the same OS that came with a tutorial for using a mouse, so it was simply a case of double clicking the wrong thing. I used to explore the System and Windows folders looking for interesting hidden stuff (ooh, regedit.exe), but I only remember one particular time now in which I went into the Control Panel and decided to change the theme settings to something more Christmas-y. Unfortunately when it was next booted, Windows failed to load because my Christmas theme exceeded the video card's colour limit. You live, you learn.

The Artist Pretending It's Art, The Question is: Where Do You Pay?

Penny Black Printing Press, takomabibelot, 2009

What separates entertainment from art? If "all art is quite useless" then the last blockbuster you saw in the cinema is probably more so. But it makes a hell of a lot of money for those who control the media, hence these quite useless products are copyrighted for nigh a century. Our culture is far from ours in possession. How can it be called culture if can't share it? Last month I asked Who will be the first to give it all away, and Who will be the first to take it all for nothing?

 The web was the first gift, it's architecture free from commercial claims. The second question has already been answered by the millions running torrents over the global network, and the unlucky few who have been subject to legal action (that often never goes to trial). The latter is a direct result of the disruptive innovation of the former. The buying and selling of music is a very recent development in the history of music (which is entangled with language and similarly as old) made possible by the invention of recording media in the late 19th century - only then forming a concrete object with value.