The Astronomy Mod

Everybody's doing it, I'll do it... too

2009-12-22T12:13:41Z

1. What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
Had a DJ Residency. Oh, and NaNoWriMo! Quite proud that I won (even if I didn't finish the novel)

2. Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I made a resolution in 1989/90 to never make another resolution again, and I never have

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Lots of people had babies. It seems to be kinda fashionable this year

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Yes. And the shattering realisation that the suicide of someone you've never "met" but only know through the internet, talking to every day for up to 8 hours a day, can be just as painful and raw as someone you know in the flesh.

5. What countries did you visit?
I went back to NYC for the first time since 9/11. So much nostalgia and so much change.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Sex.

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory?
None, really. Oh, I guess 9-10 April which may have been the best (and the last) birthday celebration ever.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Getting a job. Keeping that job.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Failing to get Shimura Curves back together, despite an album deal.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
SWINE FLU

11. What were the best things you bought?
Loads and loads and loads of music. I've been on a permanent CD buying binge since getting this job. Oh, and my beautiful PARKA. It is the warmest thing I've ever owned and I love it.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
fucked if I know

13. Whose behavior appalled you?
certain vultures on the internet who shall remain nameless

14. Where did most of your money go?
iTunes, HMV, Rough Trade

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
various Erol stuffs

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
not a *song* per se, but Aeroplane remixes. Especially Kilometre. RIGHT OVER THE TOP

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. Happier or sadder? Happier definitely. Having settled and steady employment takes a great deal of angst out of life.
ii. Thinner or fatter? Fatter. The downside of having a desk job.
iii. Richer or poorer? Much, much, MUCH, richer. This job pays me so much money I don't actually know what to do with it all.

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
could probably have stood to do more socialising

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
clubbing. I'm too old for that shit. Seriously.

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
By myself, with the phone turned off, eating crap, watching last year's entire series of Doctor Who back to back. It's becoming kind of a tradition.

21. How will you be spending New Year's Eve?
Not a fucking clue. Waiting to see if anyone invites me to any parties, but I strongly doubt it. I haven't even been invited to a single Xmas party, by *anyone* so I'm doubting anyone will remember me at New Years.

22. Did you fall in love in 2009?
Yes. Unfortunately not with any "real" people.

23. How many one-night stands?
None.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
I don't own a tv.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
I don't think so, but I'm certainly hated by people I wasn't hated by this time last year.

26. What was the best book you read?
My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk. It was so amazing I went out and read everything he's ever written.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
That I fucking LOVE dance music. Well, I kinda knew that already. But I have discovered so much much much more of this than I ever knew existed. Cosmic Disco, Balearic, Acid, Minimal, Progressive... it's like candy to me.

28. What did you want and get?
A job.

29. What did you want and not get?
Sex.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
I only saw one film in the theatres this year. I went with GiaScala for her birthday to see this art film about a bunch of mad Anatolian villagers who decided to fly to the moon.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I went to see Erol Alkan do a 6-hour set and danced til I physically could no longer move. My god, it was fun, but never doing that again.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Sex, sex, sex, ssseeeexxxxx...

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Psychedelic bag lady gets a job in IT.

34. What kept you sane?
The same thing that drove me mad. The internets and my wonderful friends on it.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
First half of the year: Erol Alkan
Second half of the year: Richard D. James

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
It was the year I kind of rediscovered feminism. Mainly through working at a job which totally violated so many feminist principles I kind of took for granted - this whole experience has made me see gender issues in such a different way.

37. Who did you miss?
Someone I'm not going to mention on LJ. But this was the year that I finally accepted that a really important (and I thought) long-term friendship really was over. Or rather, I stopped trying, and she stopped even noticing.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
My colleagues! My boss, Gora, the sys admin, Adam and the general crawling-under-desks IT lad, Gavin. We are the IT Team. We ROOOOOL. We download MP3s and watch Predator vs. Alien clips on YouTube all day long, and occasionally fix computers and it is ACE working with them.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
Compromising on politics and philosophical beliefs isn't necessarily the same thing as "selling out". You can survive.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
"YOU DON'T FUCK US, N****R WE FUCK YOU" - Electrik Red

eh?

2009-12-11T16:37:44Z

And the whole world has to answer right now
just to tell you once again who's masonic boom.

Which song was this lyric from?

I blame sinkah.

Some Things I Have Been Listening To In 2009

2009-12-09T12:24:35Z

A "top 10" list that tries not to be a "top 10 list"

So this is really not going to be a Top 10 list because, quite frankly, I find the idea of "Top 10" lists absurd when it comes to music. Yes, I know, this is very unlike me. I have a mathsbrain and I just LOVE putting things in order, making lists, in fact half my job involves tabulating league tables. The problem is, my mathsbrain revolts at the idea of trying to quantify something which simply does not involve numbers. A proper Chart is one thing - I'm perfectly happy to discuss who has sold the most records or who has garnered the most plays, on radio or iTunes or Last.FM or wherever. These things are quantifiable and orderable.

But aesthetic quality? Emotional impact? "Importance" (either in one's own life or in general cultural terms)? These things are not quantifiable.

Also, what on earth is a year-end (or decade-end) list supposed to be tracking? "Best Of" - as in, representative of the finest musical offerings your culture has to offer? How on earth is one supposed to judge that, given that most of us can never even hope to listen to *every* record that comes out in a given year. (And that's not even getting into the complex layering of gender and race biases that dictate what is even released, let alone critically lionsised or Rated - and how those race and gender biases interplay with notions of "genre" and pidgeonholing and ghettoisation etc. etc.)

Or is it just "Favourite"? I'm going to try and go with favourite, and try only to worry about how the music I select is representative of *myself* rather than make some sweeping statement about What Music Was Great In 2009. (especially because there are quite a few records that I have *not* heard this year, which I am convinced might have been "best" had I got to hear them in time.)

Here are some albums I really loved this year, in alphabetical order.

Black Meteoric Star - Black Meteoric Star
Techno/dance music interpreted in a way that a dirty dronerock girl can understand.

Broadcast & The Focus Group - ...Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age
Odd, warped radiophonic record about EVP. It doesn't sound like an album, it sounds like an artefact you discovered in a dusty library.

Electrik Red - How To Be A Lady Vol. 1
Super-joyous, sex-positive girl group singalongs with utterly lush production.

Fever Ray - Fever Ray
The creaky, claustrophobic sound of losing your mind from cabin fever in a deep Norwegian winter.

Lindstrom & Christabelle - Real Life Is No Cool
How could Linstrom's yummy kraut-drone-cosmic-disco possibly get any better? He could add a female singer and lashings of classic 80s girlpop.

Little Boots - Hands
Bouncy electro disco-pop with songs about maths. Come on, this was made for me.

Memory Tapes - Seek Magic
Like all those odd shoegaze-tronic 4-track tapes my sisX0r and I made in my bedroom, with a chorus pedal and a 505, only much, much, MUCH better.

Phantogram - Eyelid Movies
Nu-gazetronica that actually manages to both capture the woozy boy-girl vocals and textures that I love about shoegaze *and* still hold up as a decent electronic record.

St. Vincent - Actor
The most "grown up" record on this list, but still proof that being a grown up doesn't mean you have to become boring. A real sleeper of an album full of unexpected moments of beauty.

The xx - The xx
One of those landmark "important" records that actually seems to unite disparate groups of critics coming from completely different ends. How can so many people read so much into such minimal music?

There are other records that should have been on here, had I spent more time with them (Lightning Dust, the new Raveonettes). There are artists who were omitted simply because their record was too similar to a record I had already included (I could have tipped the Annie record over Little Boots - or ASDIG or the Telepathe record over Phantogram) There are whole genres missing - despite the education about say, R&B I've got from The Lex, and about dance... bobbins from the Erol forum - firstly because those are such single-oriented genres*, and secondly because I don't think I really *know* enough about them to make an informed choice. There are people who couldn't get it together in time to get a proper album out in this year (Aeroplane, Beyond The Wizards Sleeve, I'm looking at you.) This isn't supposed to be complete, or canonical. It's just some records I really loved.

*That's another list all together

Writer's Block: Go it alone

2009-12-09T10:15:13Z

Do you think society puts too much pressure on people to be in relationships and/or have children? Do you think this ostracizes people who would be perfectly content to remain single and/or child-free? Is this pressure worse around the holidays?

View 1416 Answers

Yes.

Yes.

And a thousand times yes.

Meme Thing

2009-12-02T17:49:35Z

You know how sometimes people on your friends list post about stuff going on in their life, and all of a sudden you think "Wait a minute? Since when were they working THERE? Since when were they dating HIM/HER? Since when???" And then you wonder how you could have missed all that seemingly pretty standard information, but somehow you feel too ashamed to ask for clarification because it seems like info you should already know? It happens to all of us sometimes.

  Please copy the topics below, erase my answers and put yours in their place, and then post it in your journal! Please elaborate on the questions that would benefit from elaboration. One-Word-Answers seldom help anyone out.

  1. FIRST NAME: I can't keep track of the number of names I go by, but you can't usually go wrong with "Kate"

  2. AGE: None ya damn business. I was born in the early 70s, that's all you need to know.

3. LOCATION: Currently, London, UK (pissed up in SW16) But I lived on 3 continents by the time I was 10, so don't be surprised if I go talking about a childhood in Africa or teenage drinking on the streets of NY or anything.

4. OCCUPATION: I earn a living as a Data Analyst. It's kind of like half statistical mathematician, half computer programmer (mostly SQL, Crystal and the like). What I AM is myriad. I'm a writer, a former journalist, an artist, illustrator, painter, musician, songwriter, producer.

5. PARTNER? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, lost it at the laundrette. I know enough not to say "never again" but seriously, I doubt it will ever happen again.

  6. KIDS? Left it a bit late for that. Which is kinda awful as I had a miscarriage at age 31 that made me realise how much I *did* actually want one.

7. SIBLINGS: I have one biological brother, 2 years older than me. If you hear me talk about my "sisX0r" or my twin, that's my childhood best friend, Dara, who was born on the same day as me, and we've claimed to be twins ever since.

8. PET: I'm not really home enough to have pets. I tend to name laptops, guitars, synths, etc. instead of having pets.

9. 3-5 BIG THINGS HAPPENING IN YOUR LIFE: 
1) working on turning a kind of NaNoWriMo spin-off gone wrong into a proper novel. Maybe I've written about 11 or 12 novels in my life, and never done anything with them, so why should this be any different?
2) The Great Lost Shimura Curves Album. Yeah, it will come out, eventually, if my record company have to pry the masters from my cold, dead, hands
3) I'm going to Istanbul for Xmas. Yeah, I've been kind of obsessed with Turkey and the Ottoman empire for a while now, so I thought I'd go.

10. PARENTS: divorced. well, not quite divorced, but separated for, like, nearly 20 years or something. My dad's an atheist computer geek, my mum's a priest. They would never have got together in the first place if they hadn't just both been born to the only two anglo families in the same small village in South Africa. I'm honestly surprised they lasted long enough to raise us. Mum has a parish in rural Vermont, Dad has just retired from Silicon Valley to somewhere in the wilds of Northern California.

11. CLOSEST FRIENDS: There are only a handful of people I've known long enough (20+ years) to consider "close". They know who they are.

This Is Sandy P

2009-11-30T22:48:12Z

Apologies for sticking this here, I just need a place I can access/edit from work and home and considering so much of the novel is on LiveJournal already, this is the easiest place to reference it.

I'm trying to

1) compile the discography/biography or a fictional artist
2) get some of my music journo friends to come up with "interview questions"

Sandy Percy was born 18 August 1971 in SE London, adopted by the Percy family of Bexleyheath, Kent. Her father was an engineer, her mother a librarian. As a child, Sandy showed a precocious interest in music. She has claimed that she "learned to read music before she learned to read" due to a colour coded instruction method. In interviews, she referred to herself as "classically trained," having had both piano and voice lessons. As a teenager in the 80s, she became obsessed with synth-pop (citing her favourite artists as "Kate Bush, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra and Philip Glass") and obtained her first synthesiser, a Roland Juno-6, as a gift for her 15th birthday. After rewiring a cheap stereo so that she could record channels separately as a primitive 4-track, she started recording her own compositions.

She claimed to have been "discovered" after sneaking backstage at a Thomas Dolby concert, and giving her idol a demo tape. She was signed to EMI in 1986, however, during the process of recording her debut album, "This Is Sandy P" her record company, hoping to emulate the success of singers such as Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, tried to push her in a more teen-pop direction. Her first single, "Space Babe" reached number 6 in the UK charts in 1987, prompting a legendary Top of the Pops appearance wearing a revealing silver minidress, but the second single stalled at 56. After a series of confrontations with her label, most notably over her refusal to wear a plastic bikini in video for the followup single, Percy was dropped before her second album was completed.

After a couple of years "officially studying music production and unofficially just hanging around Goldsmiths smoking a lot of dope" Percy resurfaced again during the Riot Grrrl movement in the early 90s. Together with fellow Goldsmiths student, Suzanne Leigh-Berry, they formed the "anarcho-syndicalist feminist musicians' collective" The Alexandrian Library. Early shows were often chaotic affairs, alternating between harsh electronic noise and political dialectic, yet they supported early incarnations of Huggy Bear, Stereolab and Elastica. By the second album, tensions were starting to develop within the band, with Percy pushing in the direction of dance music, experimenting with breakbeat and hardcore rave, while Leigh-Berry preferred a more traditional stripped-down garage punk sound.

By 1994, Percy was performing solo at raves and warehouse parties, playing a mixture of acid house and ambient techno. After supporting Aphex Twin, she signed to Richard D. James' Rephlex Records, allegedly "on a bet, after beating Richard at a game of Tekken." Percy released a number of records under various project names on Rephlex from 1994 until 2006. Most notable were:

Albums as Xandrine Dream (the ambient and "radiophonic soundscape" material)
-Landscapes
-Cityscapes
-Earthworks
-Axiomatics (a double album featuring 23 songs based on Euclid's Elements)

A series of five 12" singles as Lexa Pro (happy hardcore and acid house) which were later re-released with B-sides and remixes as a three CD set.

The Imaginary Numbers - an international all-girl electro "supergroup" featuring Percy, Emma Noguchi (of The Charms), Chantelle Gonzales and Lena Jung. With members in New York, Tokyo, Berlin and London, the group mainly recorded via file-swapping on the internet, putting together multi-media shows and multi-continental "events." The band recorded two albums of "electropop lovesongs to mathematics and technology" before splitting acrimoniously after Percy's husband, French film-maker Michel DuMonte, divorced her, moving to Los Angeles to marry Gonzales.

Madame Curie's Cabinet - a white label 12" released by Replex in 2006 with no biographical information. Internet speculation was rife as to its authorship, with the general consensus being that it was another Richard D. James side project. In 2009, Percy revealed that she had written the track (then remixed by James) on a £20 dare, which James apparently never paid up on.

In 2009, Percy returned to the music industry, recording a series of singles with Erol Alkan. A full length album is rumoured to follow in 2010.
-Pulse
-Batsqueak Disco
-Earthshake

-------

I'm sure I've forgotten something, I'll re-read both novels tomorrow and check for details.

I would really *love* to have people interview "Sandy" at various stages in her career in the hopes of putting together a Sandy Percy website or even press kit. Please get in touch if you'd like to contribute questions or even write a phony "piece" on her.

theastronomymod @ 2009-11-24T01:17:00

2009-11-24T01:17:41Z

I've just been "suggest banned"

Just completely out of nowhere. I haven't had a flamewar with anyone, I haven't said or done anything the slightest bit provocative in a month.

In fact, I *asked* after that whole row on the P4k thread a month ago, if I'd had any kind of surge in suggest bans - NO ONE actually got back to me sending a number, someone just told me, no, I hadn't had any huge amount of SBs.

So how do I suddenly pick up 51 bans in a month? When all I've done is talk about sea arches and Lindstrom and the usual nattering.

This is just complete fucking bullshit and I've devastated. I've been so proud of myself that I've managed to keep my head above depression for quite some time now. I was thinking that since coming back from holiday how much calmer and happier I'd been. And this is like a slap in the face and an EVERYONE HATES YOU and I'm right back down in that awful, awful place.

If you ever wanted proof that the SB system was total bullshit, this is it. It's arbitrary, there's no warning, no explanation, just a cold hard kick in the teeth. It does not serve the purpose of controlling behaviour if you do not even know what that behaviour is. It just encourages paranoia and backstabbing nastiness.

I feel isolated, alone, persecuted and terrified that the next RIP thread on ILX will be mine.

I keep repeating to myself, "you have a choice, you have a choice" - you cannot control how other people treat you, you can only control how you react to them. But right now it feels like my sanity, my sense that all is fundamentally "well" with the world has been stolen from me, wrenched away. If you hit that button, my blood - my pain and psychic distress - IS on your hands. You really want to live with that, for shits and giggles?

After the dawn call to prayer, Galip dozed off in the sitting room

2009-11-16T10:49:40Z

Book meme, via Mark S

Grab the book nearest you. Right now.

• Turn to page 56.
• Find the fifth line.
• Post that line AS YOUR SUBJECT LINE. AND POST these instructions in a cut-tag to this status....
• Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST book...

The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk

Tom's Meme

2009-11-06T18:00:41Z

"This is Acclaimed Music's aggregate list of the top 107 albums of the 1990s (as of now). Put any that you own in bold. Put any that you have heard all through or used to own in italics. Put a strikethrough any that you hate (whether you've heard them or not!). Underline any you want to hear. And put an asterisk by any that you would count as one of your own favourite albums of the 90s."

1 Nirvana - Nevermind 1991
2 Radiohead - OK Computer 1997*
3 Massive Attack - Blue Lines 1991
4 R.E.M. - Automatic for the People 1992
5 Beck - Odelay 1996
6 Primal Scream - Screamadelica 1991
7 My Bloody Valentine - Loveless 1991*
8 Portishead - Dummy 1994*
~~9 Oasis - (What's the Story) Morning Glory? 1995~~
10 U2 -Achtung, Baby 1991
~~11 Oasis - Definitely Maybe 1994~~
12 Radiohead - The Bends 1995
13 Jeff Buckley - Grace 1994
14 DJ Shadow -Endtroducing..... 1996
15 Tricky - Maxinquaye 1995
~~16 Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted 1992~~
17 Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet 1990
18 Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill 1998
19 Air - Moon Safari 1998
20 Nirvana - In Utero 1993
~~21 Pulp - Different Class 1995~~
22 The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin 1999*
23 Dr. Dre - The Chronic 1992
24 Björk - Debut 1993*
25 P J Harvey - To Bring You My Love 1995
~~26 Pearl Jam - Ten 1991~~
27 Blur - Parklife 1994
~~28 Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream 1993~~
29 Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) 1993
30 Bob Dylan - Time Out of Mind 1997
31 Metallica - Metallica ("The Black Album") 1991
~~32 The Verve - Urban Hymns 1997~~
33 R.E.M. - Out of Time 1991
34 Moby - Play 1999
35 Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs 1999
~~36 Red Hot Chili Peppers - Blood Sugar Sex Magik 1991~~
37 Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road 1998
38 Mercury Rev -Deserter's Songs 1998
39 Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral 1994
40 Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville 1993
41 The Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole 1997
~~42 The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness 1995~~
43 Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine 1992
~~44 Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain 1994~~
45 Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjun 1999
46 Beastie Boys - Ill Communication 1994
47 Hole - Live Through This 1994
48 Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space 1997
49 Soundgarden - Superunknown 1994
50 Beck - Mellow Gold 1994
51 Nirvana - MTV Unplugged in New York 1994
52 A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory 1991
53 Fugees - The Score 1996
54 Happy Mondays - Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches 1990
55 Björk - Post 1995
56 Daft Punk - Homework 1997
57 Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die 1996
58 Massive Attack - Mezzanine 1998
59 Bonnie "Prince" Billy - I See a Darkness 1999
60 Leftfield - Leftism 1995
61 Slint - Spiderland 1991
62 Belle and Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister 1996
63 P J Harvey - Rid of Me 1993
64 Beastie Boys - Check Your Head 1992
65 Johnny Cash - American Recordings 1994
66 Sinéad O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got 1990
67 Fatboy Slim - You've Come a Long Way, Baby 1998
68 Basement Jaxx - Remedy 1999
~~69 Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill 1995~~
70 Buena Vista Social Club - Buena Vista Social Club 1997
71 Jane's Addiction - Ritual De Lo Habitual 1990
72 The Prodigy - Music for the Jilted Generation 1994
73 P J Harvey - Dry 1992
74 Björk - Homogenic 1997
75 The Prodigy - The Fat of the Land 1997
76 Nas - Illmatic 1994
~~77 Green Day - Dookie 1994~~
78 Roni Size/Reprazent - New Forms 1997
~~79 Eminem - The Slim Shady LP 1999~~
80 The Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die 1994
81 The Orb - The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld 1991*
82 Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92 1992
83 Suede - Suede 1993*
84 Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go 1996
85 Neil Young and Crazy Horse - Ragged Glory 1990
86 Wilco - Summer Teeth 1999
87 Pet Shop Boys - Behaviour 1990
88 Tori Amos - Little Earthquakes 1992
89 Bob Dylan - Live 1966 - The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert 1998
90 Weezer - Weezer ("The Blue Album") 1994
91 Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque 1991
92 Sonic Youth - Goo 1990
93 Tom Waits - Mule Variations 1999
94 The LA's - The LA's 1990
95 Goldie - Timeless 1995
96 The Chemical Brothers - Exit Planet Dust 1995
97 Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - The Boatman's Call 1997
98 The Breeders - Last Splash 1993*
99 Madonna - Ray of Light 1998*
100 Depeche Mode - Violator 1990
101 Missy Misdemeanor Elliott - Supa Dupa Fly 1997
102 Manu Chao - Clandestino 1998
103 Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane over the Sea 1998
104 Talk Talk - Laughing Stock 1991
105 OutKast - Aquemini 1998
106 Blur - Blur 1997
107 TLC - CrazySexyCool 1994

Funny how so many of the albums I consider my "personal favourite" of the decade are just not on this list.

L is for...

2009-10-23T21:24:16Z

Comment to get a letter, and make a list of things you like beginning with that letter.

Comicdancer gave me an L

Lindstrom - everybody's favourite dirty dronerock Scando-Balearic prog-dance-spacedisco producer. Also, he is hott. Though he sometimes looks quite disturbingly like my former partner. Though obviously, I would not have been with said partner had he not been hott. It's complicated. But whatever. Just listen to the amazing noodly prog space-disco and marvel.

Laurie Spiegel - who has, coincidentally just come up on my iTunes random. Electronic synth pioneer of the 70s and totally amazing and inspiring.

Leather jackets - I know I'm a vegetarian and all, but it's still totally hott when boys wear these. Though I have actually stopped wearing them myself because I can no longer live with the hypocrisy, I lived in mine for years.

TC Lethbridge - archeologist, proto-psychogeographer, into dowsing and hauntings and all sorts of interesting things. He came up with a very interesting theory about underground water, especially trapped water, creating a sort of psychic tape-recording of emotional events.

Libraries - God, I love them. Really, I should have been a librarian. All those books, all that knowledge, the silence and the studying and the stacks. Bibliophile heaven.

Light - you wouldn't have photosynthesis, pretty much the basis of all life on earth without it. I, however, am pretty fond of the coloured kind, especially of the kind of fairy lights variety. I've got bright pink and purple ones in my living room.

Loveless - an album by My Bloody Valentine, of which I am very fond. (Though really, I probably like Isn't Anything better.)

HP Lovecraft - early 20th C. American horror writer who invented Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth and all those wonderfully creepy and scary Old Ones. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"

Letters - yeah, as in the Alphabet and typography and calligraphy. I mean, isn't the written alphabet one of the most astonishing inventions of human history - up there with The Wheel and Agriculture, if you think about it.

5 Tracks I Think You Should Hear

2009-07-13T13:32:27Z

So I'm trying to put this together for the old Erol forum, and because I don't have my whole CD/MP3 collection with me here, I'm going to just jot down random things here, so I remember them when I get home.

This will totally change entirely over the next 24 hours, of course...

* Duran Duran - Planet Earth (Night Version). The US version of the first album started with this, and it pretty much set the template for what I'd love in music for the rest of my life. The LFO throb of the synth, the phased out guitar stabs, the octave-hopping bassline and, of course, completely unintelligable lyrics with a "space" theme and some bubblegum "ba ba ba" in the background.

* The Fenwyck - Mindrocker. Oh my god, listen to that tremolo. No, really, just listen to that tremolo, and the way the vocal harmonies go all bubblegum when they sing "ten feet high..." Two chords, that stomping apache beat on the toms, and that weird eeeeeeeeeooooooaaaaoowwwww sound as it builds to a frothy conclusion. Three minutes of utter and complete bliss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPxoWMJzfuU

* Harmonia - Immer Weider. After NEU! disbanded, Michael Rother went off to the Black Forest with Cluster to make weird electronic music. There's so much Krautrock that could go here, but there's just something about this track, so stately, so... weird and alien, like music beamed from outer space. The synth tone. The shuffly analogue drum machine - I once had a Bently Rhythm Ace that made that noise if you pressed two buttons at the same time. Or maybe I'll put something by La Dusseldorf, I don't rightly know yet. Or Ruckzuck. ARGH.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd1BH7Nbk8c

* Hawkwind - Opa Loka. And this is what a bunch of hairy English druggies did when they got hold of those NEU! rhythms. Oh yay, it's finally on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAy_ePlMtb8

* Stereolab - French Disco. How could you possibly make the driving motorik pop of NEU! any better? You could stick on sexy French girl harmonies on it, and some mysterious lyrics that might be about Marxism.

* Spiritualized - Run. I have learned to accept that the first Spz album isn't really a Spz album so much as a bunch of Spacemen 3 outtakes. The greatest bubblegum song never recorded. That same driving tremolo from the Fenwyck record.

OH GOD I NEED SOME GIRL GROUP STUFF NOW BUT I'VE GOT A MEETING.

There's no way I'm going to be able to edit it down to 5 songs. Better cut out all that krautrock, then.

reminder to self: SHOP ASSISTANTS VERSION OF TRAIN FROM KANSAS CITY!

OH AND SWEET TALKIN SWEET TALKIN SWEET TALKIN GUY... because that is the best harmony vocal EVAH.

Though oh god, He's A Rebel. There's just too much amazing music out there.

Everything, everything, all the time

2009-05-13T13:09:05Z

Sometimes the sheer... mass of the internet is utterly overwhelming to me. Is it really *good* for human beings to have the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica, a record library of every song ever made, and an image bank of staggering proportions... all at one's fingertips all of the time?

As a child who grew up in the back of libraries, constantly researching, looking things up, sucking up knowledge like a sponge, letting one reference material take me to another, via bibliographies, card catalogues, encyclopaedias, etc. - I freaking LOVE it. The ability to google it/wiki it/look it up on YouTube etc. is intoxicating and addictive. There is no longer any excuse for NOT KNOWING something. Confused about who fought in the Peloponnesian Wars? Google it! Have the sudden urge to hear I Think I Love You by David Cassidy, or Chewing Gum by Annie? No need to go to a record shop, just look them up on YouTube.

Instant access. Everything, all the time.

And yet, it comes almost as a shock when there is something you can NOT find out by googling.

WTF, exactly, is Simon Reynold's Hardcore Continuum? I have to confess, I've never read any Reynolds - not, not even "Rip It Up And Start Again" (and don't mention that Shimuras namecheck in Just Like Friends, OK?) But after seeing The Lex referencing it on Poptimists this morning, I thought... surely, this has to be something that the blogosphere is useful for?

Actually... no. Thing is, the Blogosphere buzzes with references *to* it, but it just seems to be one of those things that people discuss, safe in the knowledge that, if you have the cultural capital to be discussing it, you already know what it is.

I have a vague feeling from the references that it's something of which I would DISAPPROVE (1. it seems to stand against everything - melody, femininity, joy - that The Lex and I agree on in music and 2. it's some middle-aged metacritic wanking on about dance music and what it should be despite never having set foot in a club - this meme gets repeated more than any explanation of what the HC actually *is*.)

So here I am, none the wiser. Like Erol Alkan secret gigs, if I was the Kind Of Person who was supposed to know about them, then I would already know. Clearly, then, it is Not For Me.

Writer's Block: How Soon Is Now?

2009-03-30T09:36:36Z

What scientific or medical breakthrough do you most want to happen in your lifetime?

View 500 Answers

CERN - Large Hadron Collider - HIGGS BOSON here ->.

Writer's Block: GIP (Gratuitous Icon Post)

2009-03-29T13:10:43Z

You finally have an excuse to use it—what userpic do you not get to use very often but can't delete because it's just that awesome?

View 501 Answers

COME ON, IT'S WELSH GLAM SLASH, HOW IS IT NOT GRATE IN EVERY WAY?!?!?

Made mainly because "dudes" said in a Welsh accent is the most hilarious thing on earth.

Writer's Block: First Things First

2009-03-25T09:03:22Z

Who (or what) do you consider to be your first love?

View 500 Answers

Music. Duh.

Writer's Block: Things You Don't Want to Know

2009-03-23T08:20:07Z

If you knew that a friend's significant other was cheating on him or her, would you tell your friend the truth or keep it to yourself?

View 503 Answers

Oh god, erm, ARGH, depends on the situation. My first impulse would be, yes, I would tell - but I've been in situations like this before, and the messenger gets shot. So I probably wouldn't unless it was a REALLY close friend - close enough to know how they'd take it.

Obviously, _Pulse_ is making me think about adultery and cheating right now, and it's doing my head in.

Writer's Block: Take Your Chances

2009-03-22T14:26:53Z

Do you think people deserve second chances?

Submitted By drea12301994

View 500 Answers

There is no one-off answer to this.

Depends on the crime. Depends on whether it was a one-off aberration or persistent behaviour. Depends on whether they have actually shown signs of recognisances or reformation. Depends on the circumstances.

There are some people I will always give another chance to, no matter what. (I guess my brother falls into this category.)

There are some people I will never give another chance to, no matter what. (Most ex partners fall into this category.)

The rest of the world falls somewhere inbetween. But one has to be careful where one draws the line - as Dear Abbey once said, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

Writer's Block: Really, Truly

2009-03-13T14:09:57Z

Do you believe in true love? What about love at first sight?

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Answering the second part first, of course I do. I fall in love at first sight 3 times a day. It doesn't mean a thing beyond that Malcolm Gladwell "Blink" split second intuition thing. It's not the only way that people can fall in love, certainly - and that instant click is no guarantee that it will last, or even be mutual, but there's no denying it happens. The Great Lost Love Of My Life was instant and total love at first sight. (It just took several years for us to both be single at the same time - and still, even then, we couldn't make it work.)

As to true love, nope, I don't believe in that. *ALL* love takes work, all relationships take compromise and effort and working together. This idea of "true love" seems to involve the idea that it's somehow instantaneous and effortless, and I don't know anyone, in the history of forever, that has actually had a long-term love that was like that. But then again, maybe "true love" means that this is the person you're willing to work on things *with* - and vice versa.

I don't believe in it, though. I really don't. Maybe because it's never happened for me.

Writer's Block: Close Encounters of the Celebrity Kind

2009-03-08T08:49:29Z

Have you ever met a celebrity in real life? Who was it and how did your paths cross?

Submitted By klutzy_girl

View 500 Answers

OH. FOR. FUCKS. SAKE. HASN'T CELEBRITY CULTURE GONE FAR ENOUGH THAT WE DON'T HAVE TO HAVE IT IN SODDING LIVEJOURNAL AS WELL!?!??!

WORST. WRITERS BLOCK. EVAH!

Writer's Block: Comped

2009-03-07T08:46:53Z

What's the best compliment you've ever received?

Submitted By krizzzie

View 501 Answers

"Sounds like Stereolab!"

(Actually, the first time this was said, it was meant as an insult I think - I was playing Peng for a friend and she said "Oh stop it, this isn't a real band - this is your demos again, isn't it?" Which remains the nicest thing anyone has ever said about my music.)

Writer's Block: Miss Manners

2009-03-06T09:33:42Z

What recently developed technology—cell phones, wi-fi, laptops, handheld gaming devices, etc.—do you think has had the worst influence on how people behave in public?

View 501 Answers

MP3 players / mobile phones with out loud speakers.

Dudes, not everyone in the world shares your taste in music. And not everyone in the world can BEAR to listen to music made to sound UTTERLY SHITE by terrible compression and little itty bitty speakers that turn even the most beautiful songs to utter mulch.

It's not even the noise so much as the poor sound quality that bothers me!

ADA. LOVELACE. DAY.

2009-03-04T12:30:02Z

Here's one for the girl geeks of the world. (Thanks to @rarepleasures for the tip):

Ada Lovelace Day

Basically...

“I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if 1,000 other people will do the same.”

— Suw Charman-Anderson (contact)

It's named in honour of Ada Lovelace (who will be familiar to readers of The Difference Engine) - colleague of Charles Babbage and one of the first computer programmers - yeah, let alone first *female* programmers. She called herself called herself "an Analyst (& Metaphysician)," and was known as "The Enchantress of Numbers" - SURELY a hero for any age. (Can I have those as my job title for my next role, please?)

Since I'm such a music geek, I plan on writing about Delia Derbyshire, my idol, in terms of electronic music and production.

I know that ALL you girls who read this blog are technologically aware and literate - in many technological fields - photography, digital art, electronic music, blogging - so please join me and do this.

DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT.

Writer's Block: Chatty

2009-03-04T09:15:34Z

Do you prefer texting or talking on the phone?

View 502 Answers

Texting, duh. Does anyone actually prefer talking on the phone if they can possibly avoid it?

These questions have been LAME lately. Methinks the Writers Block people have Writers Block.

I am actually incredibly phone *phobic* - picking up the phone and calling someone I don't know is one of the hardest things I can possibly imagine. Hell, it's hard enough to ring people I *do* know. I don't know what I'm afraid of, I know it's totally irrational, but still, it gives me the willies, talking into thin air to people I cannot see and don't know how they're reacting or what they're doing and ARGH.

The only thing worse is having to talk on the radio. It makes me swear like a trouper through sheer stress.

Writer's Block: AKA

2009-02-27T13:17:25Z

What's the story behind your username?

View 503 Answers

It was originally a song I wrote about a beautiful boy who was into 60s music and astrophysics.

But then, in the 90s, when I was curating a pop music fan fiction site, it just seemed kind of appropriate, as my epic soap fic was called "The Deep Field" (an astronomy reference to the Hubbell Space Telescope) and I was the Moderator of the site, ergo...

I only ever use it for fan fic, as I don't really want it associated with any other online or IRL activity. As, as much as I defend FF as a folk art and genuine expression of female creativity and sexuality, there are still lots of bigots that don't understand.

Writer's Block: Self-Indulgent

2009-02-25T11:19:53Z

If you had to give up one indulgence for 40 days, what would it be?

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Dude, it's not "an indulgence" it's called LENT and I'm giving up Sainsburys for Lent.

I'm going to try and shop local for the next 40 days. I'm going to get to know the Streatham Fruiterers and the local Turkish supermart really really well. (Can I find ANATOLIAN BREAKFAST in Streatham? That would be awesome, don't think they sell it outside of E8.)

I'm also giving up Booze, but I do that every year - it's OK if you do the protestant cheat and say you can do it on Sundays. Quite good for me, too.

Yeah, despite being raised super-Christian, I'm not particularly religious (Church of England - do we worship god, no, we worship England) but Lent is one of those things I've really hung onto. Because, well - I think self denial is good for you. Even if you go back to your bad old habits once the 40 days are over, it does make you think. Last year I gave up food miles for Lent, and only ate fresh food from England. In March, that meant mainly Kale and Leeks. My colon was happy - the people who had to sit near me, less so.