After Action Report: Renegade Hardware 19/12/09

Braving the snow and the travel disruptions, we headed back to Area for our first Hardware night since June, and it was certainly worthwhile. Last time was a total blast, mainly due to the awesome presence of Black Sun Empire, but the 19th had an equally strong lineup, with Spor B2B Chris Renegade and the ever delightful pairing of Calyx and Teebee. I have so much love for these two that it's slightly terrifying, and as per usual they managed to fire off an awesome, furious, uplifting neurofunk set. Wonderful.

You know it's been a good night when even Friction does a good set, but this time round the time seemed to fly by, and the uglylights seemed to come on incredibly early. After all my whinging about how Hospital nights just ain't what they used to be, it was nice to be down with a more serious crowd of dnb nerds/chavs/thugs, and Area is certainly a strong venue with plenty of space to crowd round the dj booth and dance. I think we missed Prolix, which was a bit of a shame, and it'd have been nice to check out Room 2 a bit more, but overall, fifteen thumbs up, will have to reach it again in February!

High Contrast!!

I love Lincoln Barret. Everything he touches turns to gold.

Check this:



Shit the bed!

Avalanches - Since I Left You

So out of sheer boredom I was browsing through the NME Top 100 Greatest Albums of the Decade, which is largely disagreeable bollocks (I don't know what I was expecting to be honest*) but in at number 45 is the Avalanches' debut Since I Left You.


I used to love this CD back in the day, but I've not listened to it for years, and seeing it halfway down the list got me keen for a reload. Having finally managed to dig the album out of a shoebox of long-unplayed CDs, fucking hell does it still sound fresh. The production on this thing is just top notch. Wikipedia would have you believe that there are over 3500 individual vinyl samples on the ingredients list, and it's just great fun. Even the boring bits are cool!

Frontier Psychiatrist is probably the stand out track on the album, being one of those tracks that almost everyone appears to have heard, without knowing who produced it or where it came from. It seems that even these days when you're picking your way through someone's iTunes library at a party it'll be on there, and everyone loves it. My favourite track has still gotta be Electricity, but the breaks under Flight Tonight are also bloody lovely. Makes you appreciate French hip hop too, even though listening to it makes you look like a bit of a bellend.

The Avalanches are one of those bands that I check in on every few years when something reminds me they exist just to see if they're still working. Been waiting for a follow up to Since I Left You for almost eight years now. Apparently it's been in production for a while, but the band are struggling to clear all the samples and whatnot. Word on the streets is that it's coming out 2009, but with less than a month til 2010, this is looking unlikely.

Yet another reason to be pissed off with copyright laws really. Obviously, people producing the original samples have gotta get paid, but they're hardly being ripped off here. The Avalanches are simply taking what they did, combining it with a load of other people's work and producing something greater than the sum of its parts. If the people who dreamt up the original copyright laws back during the time of the Sumerians had imagined the existence of sampling, perhaps we'd be better off? Surely there must be a happy medium whereby producers can produce and artists can make cash money?

Ah well, give Since I Left You a spin and then check out The Go! Team for more crazy sample insanity.


*I know that picking on the NME is an easy target, but seriously, who is it being marketed to these days? When I was a kid it seemed to be aimed at middle-aged people who still listen to Radio 1 and nowadays its demographic has shifted to the same sort of age group as Newsround. Scroobius Pip had it right.

After Action Report: Warp20 London

So...

Warp20. Has it really been 20 years? That makes it almost the same age as me. Whilst it seemed like all the UK Warp love got dropped up in Sheffield (the label's hometown) what with the likes of Clark, Squarepusher, Harmonic 313, Hudson Mohawke (Hell's Bells I wanna see that guy live) and Andrew Weatherall bringing the noise, the London lineup wasn't half bad.

Highlight of the night had to be Flying Lotus, who more or less shredded the place, but the Plaid classics set was a treat too. I really enjoyed Nice Nice, having not really heard anything by them before. Definitely another band deserving of further investigation. Battles were probably good, I dunno. There's been a lot of hype round these guys, but I can't remember a thing about their set. It's quite likely we missed it completely anyway...

Up in Room 2, Nightmares on Wax and Strictly Kev were both fantastic. I could quite happily have stayed there all night if it hadn't been for the lure of Room 1. Kev is seriously awesome and has never failed to impress. If you've never seen him doing the DJ thing, then you really oughta do something about it. Nightmares on Wax will always hold a special place in my brain, having had his stuff on almost non-stop rotation during my first year at university, and it was pretty brilliant to finally see him live.

Also packaged with the ticket cost was a Warp20 compilation CD thing, which I've still not had a chance to check out. Whilst it's a nice touch, I kinda feel they just threw it in there as an excuse to bump up the ticket prices for the night, which is a little cheeky, but it's still a nice souvenir!

S.P.Y Triple J Mix

Got a million things to rant and rave about, but been a bit busy recently. Have no fear, I'll get it down at some point :/

In the meantime, here's a S.P.Y mix chock full of laser cut rollers. Apparently it was recorded off some aussie radio station. Enjoy!

http://www.dnbshare.com/download/S.P.Y_TRIPLE_J_MIX_27-11-2009.mp3.html

Link unfairly jacked from http://www.dubplatedigest.net

Randomer November Mix

Totally digging Randomer right now. Always seem to miss his live sets when we're out and about, although he did serious damage at the Logistics launch down at East Village back in September.

http://www.thefatclub.com/music/Randomer-November09mix.mp3

Zombie Disco Squad - The Dance
Joe - Claptrap
Untold - Just For You (Roska Remix)
Randomer & Jonny5 - Too Many Times
Martyn - Mega Drive Generation
Untold - I Can’t Stop This Feeling (Pangaea Remix)
Untold - Palamino
Drop The Lime - Set Me Free (Lil Silva Remix)
Lil Silva - Different
Randomer - Bleep Loop
NB Funky - Frequency
Randomer - Scapegoat
Toasty - Full Clip
Randomer - Soft Focus
Instra:mental - No Future
Randomer - Junk
Danny Breaks - Outro
Randomer - Easter Island
Enei - Z-Grab
Randomer - Down in the Woods
Randomer - Down to the Club
Randomer - Synth Geek
Randomer - Trogs
Randomer - Synth Geek
Dan Harbarnam - Zoom Back Camera
Danny Breaks - The Big Bossa
Commix, Nutone & Logistics - Soundbyte
Randomer - Puzzled
>>Hunchbak - Peace Wip
Randomer & REDS - Modem Jazz
Hunchbak - Peace Wip
Decimal - Circle Of Nine
Sabre - God Fearing
Randomer - Appetite
Martsman - Halow
Randomer - Rough Sex

Boosh!

Reload: Tribes Vengeance

Tribes Vengeance (2004): I never really played Tribes back in the day, and until T:V, my only real experience with the franchise was Starsiege from way back in 1999. I first picked it up for about four quid or something in 2005 after reading some generally positive reviews and having a go at the demo (whilst playing catch up for the previous four years of PC games that I'd missed out on from not upgrading).

At the time, it was actually pretty stunning. Flying round the huge maps by jet pack and skiing down almost vertical slopes at 5000 mph was fantastic fun, even though the weapons were either bit shit or completely redundant. The Unreal 2 engine made everything look lovely and shiny, and the space-opera storyline was actually rather compelling as well, despite being painfully cheesy at times.

It was only when I started exploring the online and multiplayer options that it began to become clear how pissed off most of the Tribes community seemed to be with T:V, the game's developer Irrational and its publisher VU Games. After its launch in 2004, T:V failed to sell for a number of reasons and support for the game was quickly abandoned by VU. Existing Tribes players seemed to think that T:V moved too far away from the original games and stuck with them, rather than moving on to Vengeance. Also, 2004 was not a good year for rebooting PC franchises, with UT2k4 and Half-Life 2 occupying most gamers' free time. I can't help but feel that it was also the beginning of a transition from mainstream online gaming away from PCs and towards XBox Live. If Vengeance had been launched a year later on the 360, perhaps it'd have fared a bit better. In any case, by 2004 there really wasn't room for what was essentially a new online FPS franchise.

The failure of Tribes Vengeance is a pretty sad story overall, and whilst the multiplayer may not have made the grade considering the game was essentially a multiplayer game, the single player campaign is still worth a play through if you haven't tried it before (despite the fact that its really only there to provide training for the multiplayer). The Unreal 2 engine is certainly showing its age, although I still prefer its post-processing to the over-blown plasticiness of the Unreal 3 engine.

As previously mentioned, the T:V storyline is pretty good and Irrational certainly managed to do an impressive job of telling it from various different points of view, switching between the past and present.I doubt there's anyone playing it online these days, but as a single player game, Tribes Vengeance is definitely worth giving a spin if you haven't tried it before, and still worth a replay if you have.