quinta-feira, abril 23, 2009

Setting Something Straight / Rectification

Shark Bay Stromatolites


A while back, as you may recall, I made amusing but in some way hurtful remarks about our numerous co-inhabitants of this planet called bacteria. Thanks to Bill Bryson’s bestseller ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’ I realized just how much we owe to these nifty little creatures.

In the beginning, in the ancient Archaean world going back as far as 3 billion years, the Earth certainly wouldn’t have suited us. If you were to step from a time machine you would very swiftly scamper back inside, for there was no more oxygen to breathe on the Earth back then than there is on Mars today.
It was also full of noxious acid vapours powerful enough to eat through clothing and blister skin. The chemical stew that was the atmosphere back then would have allowed little sunlight to reach the surface. What little you could see would be illumined only briefly by bright and frequent lightning flashes. In short, it was the Earth, but one we wouldn’t recognize as our own.

Anniversaries were few and far between in this Archaean world. For two billion years bacteria were the only forms of life. They lived, they reproduced, they swarmed, but they didn’t show any particular inclination to move to another, more challenging level of existence but at some point in that first billion years of life, cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, learned to tap into a freely and widely available resource called hydrogen and that exists in spectacular abundance in water. They absorbed water molecules, supped on the hydrogen and released the oxygen as waste. In so doing they invented photosynthesis and produced the air we now all breath in.

They laid the foundations for all living things that came after them.

Photosynthesis is ‘undoubtedly the most important single metabolic innovation in the history of life on this planet’ and it was invented by bacteria and not plants.

As cyanobacteria proliferated the world began to fill with oxygen to the consternation of those organisms that found it poisonous, which in those days was all of them. New oxygen-eating organisms had 2 advantages. It’s a more efficient way to produce energy and it vanquished competitors.

So the next time you hear someone say something nasty about bacteria you know what rub them in their face.

Akron Family – They Will Appear, Behold
Circlesquare – Hey You Guys (The Juan MacLean remix edit)
Gillian Welch – Caleb Meyer
Gillian Welch – Whiskey Girl
Kleerup Feat Titiyo – Longing For Lullabies (Joakim Remix) Just awesome… this is what Glass Candy should be doing right now
Moderat (Apparat+Modeselector) – Rusty Nails (original mix)
Philadelphia Grand Jury – Going To The Casino (Tomorrow Night)
School of Seven Bells – Connjur
School of Seven Bells – White Elephant Coat
Sebastien Tellier - Kilometer (Aeroplane italo 84 mix)
Sebastien Tellier – Kilometer (original radio edit)
The Chain – Geo (original mix) for those who didn’t know, the R&S label is back
The Chain – Letting Go (original mix)
The Chap – Ethnic Instrument (joakim remix)
Tiga – Turn The Night On
Wizards of Ooze – Fuzzball

quinta-feira, abril 02, 2009

Birthdayboy


I’ve been out en about and abounded this blog for far too long. Shame on me… I’ve been quite occupied spending the greater part of my time working and some spare time partying and catching the first rays of the sun.
But at night I’ve been clubbing to see InFlagranti DJ in Café Capital last weekend and Döpplereffekt play at a music festival in bozar in Brussels which was historic for many reason. The first Belgian gig in their long career and the fact that it was historically… boring. Man, I’ve found a new absolute zero tolerance point of no return for total boredom. 2 dummies doing playback. One could also look at it as some conceptual performance but still it all looks and sounds the same to me. Luckily they had some visuals.
Just before the gig I had a small chat with Stijn. A local pop star deluxe :) he’s a fan of Döpplereffekt and sounds like Döpplereffekt + Sex circa Prince and he was sitting just in front of me on the first row. Turns out that he has ADHD if you ask me. He couldn’t sit still, talking with everybody around him, adding comment to everything. Especially the people passing by. As you might have guessed the Boreffekt was too much for him, so he left.

Another disappointment was The Animal Collective at AB. Nice music on record but not much of a live band. A nice surprise was a guy called Matias Aguayo. He too played at BEMF (Brussels electronic Music Festival). Good thing that I keep this blog ‘cos otherwise I would have forgotten to check him out. That’s what I’m going to do right now.

Since it has been the third birthday of this blog a couple of weeks ago, I should have made the effort of making a special post but thanks, no time. There’s a pretty nifty mix in here somewhere but nah, as almost everytime lately it seems… a random mix of various styles and moods + a nice picture.

Abdel Gadir Salim All-Stars – Bassama
Agoria – Dust
Agoria Feat. Sylvie Marks – Spinach Girl
Arto Lindsay & The Ambitious Lovers - Let's Be Adult A recent favorite from my personnel reissues out of the cassette vault
Asiko Rock Group – Lagos City
Augustus Pablo – Sassava Piece My all-time favorite piece of Dub
AWA Band – Timba (Tiefschwarz Dub)
Bat For Lashes – Daniel
Ben Klock - In A While
Ben Klock Feat. Elif Bicer – OK
Bim Marx – Strong Arms + Love Me Baby Thanks to 20 Jazz Funk Greats
Chaka Khan – Tearin' It Up (Extended vocal mix)
Cécile feat. Dennis Coffey - Una Domenica Italiana
Daniel Merriweather feat. Wale – Change
Danny Howells – September (Future Beat Alliance remix)
Deep Collective – Lies (original mix)
Fever Ray – When I Grow Up
Golden Bug – LookLookLook (InFlagranti mix)
I, CED feat. Coultrain – Love... Meaning As heard on Gilles Peterson Worldwide Show
Joni Haastrup – Greetings
Micachu & The Shapes – Calculator I’m definitely going to see them play live at Les Nuits
Milton Jackson – Backwards Disco (original mix)
Milton Jackson – Ghosts In My Machine (original mix)
Morten Sorenson – Start Something
New Age Steppers – Fade Away
New Age Steppers – Nuclear Zulu
Peter King – African Dialects
Pigeon Funk – Alma Hueco
Roxy Music – Angel Eyes the disco single version and not the album version
Sheila E. & Prince – Love Bizarre (album version - 12 Inch mix)
Sir Shina Peters and His International Stars – Yabis
Tesla Boy – Neon Love
The Jets – Crush On You (12 Inch version) 1986
The Raincoats – No Side to Fall In
Yeah Yeah Yeah's – DullLife From the new album, still puzzling