Broken Fader Cristmas Present: Cassette Boxers

These were the most Broken Fader holiday gift I received this year. Cassette Boxers. Now, that clean analog sound and warms of tape is right next to my balls. and yes, Tiff got them for me.

Phone? Pffft. Effects Box!

I think I've just fallen in love.

This app for the iPhone is essentially a PD (PureData) patch player (like the Max Runtime app), with defined inputs of a mic, an accelerometer, and a touchscreen. This may be the thing that makes me actually decide to give PD a try, fully 3? 4? years after Jon Lamm told all of us it was the best shit since sliced bread. MAKEblog tutorial here. In that article, Mike mentions that the only way to get your patches onto the iThing (as the rjdj devs call the generic i*) is by jailbreaking and using ssh, but on the developer wiki someone has written a little webserver in Python that does the job nicely. The app seems to be hard-coded to only accept http downloads starting with the "rjdj://" protocol string, and only from the host rjdj.me, but you can get around that by using proxy settings on the device's wifi connection. Instructions here. (scroll near the bottom)

The patch I've been rocking nearly non-stop is called Eargasm. It sounds like the mic input is acting as the modulator to excite a vocoder, where the carrier is this lush pad that sounds like a major-7th chord (or interval). Top that off with dotted-eighth delay where the echoes alternate between the left and right channel and a highpass filter whose cutoff rises as you get further into the delay feedback. In other words: turn on the faucet or step into the wind, and you have instant acid flashback. Tap on some shit with a pencil or type on a keyboard, and you have instant dub plate backing track. I'll try to post links to some recordings of this stuff soon. (Oh yeah--the app records .wav files of live + processed input.)

Maybe this is somehow connected to the "space cake" guy.

the movie question

I have recently discovered the Netflix app for the Xbox 360, which is one of the first telemedia-based things in several years to make me go "ohhh sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit!". Since then I have gorged myself on (arguably) bad TV like 30 Rock and the American incarnation of The Office; I partially blame Faye for this. Wait, I take that back, but I *do* blame her for the near month-long Project Runway glut that occurred at some point this year. Also, I have watched Ghostbusters like 5 times, and half-watched about 8 documentaries about how fucked up the war in Iraq is and what a bigass dummy the President is / was / will continue to be.

Probably the movies that will stick with me the most out of any I've watched this year are Chan-wook Park's trilogy on revenge: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance. Especially Oldboy. Brian, you especially must watch Oldboy. Now. It's so fucking disturbing, and you see the disturbing part coming, and you think you're ready for it, but you're not. In more concrete terms: the camera work has a nice hint of disjointy fracturedness to it, and the narrative arc of the films always feels tighter than Brooke's Calvins. It's not really an action movie, not really a thriller, not really a drama, not really a Sophocles retooling, but something in between all of those.



Honorable mention goes to A Certain Kind of Death, a documentary about what happens to people when they die with no next of kin. The best part of this one is there are no titles with "This is Jim Fucktard. Jim just died of cancer."..[blackout].."There's only one problem..."..[blackout]..."Jim has no living relatives or friends." That gets pretty heavy-handed in a documentary reeeeeeeally fucking fast (cf: all those Iraq documentaries), and is only a few short intellectual steps removed from the shit this video lampoons. A Certain Kind of Death just shows film of documents, people talking, scenes from the deceased's room, etc. to tell their version of a story -- no overt exposition. And there's no morality play encouraging you to go out and have tons of babies so This Doesn't Happen To You, which is also (somewhat) uncharacteristic for a documentary, in my experience. And welcome.

Fanz, I've been meaning to watch the Kenneth Anger collection for months now. Maybe I need to do some AMT or something to get me in the mood. Instead I'm (probably) wasting my time right now watching Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (the first animated series that came after the first two movies). Not nearly as good or weird as Lain (which I also watched this year) but explores a lot of similar issues with technomeat blur / [insert some other madeup lingual characterization of cyberpunk Jean Baudrillard things here].

Also worth checking out if you haven't: the Kieslowski "Three Colors" trilogy (which, like the revenge trilogy above, aren't *really* interrelated in the narrative Harry Potter sense, but more of a pairing of similar thematic explorations) , and The Double Life of Veronique, which is more digestible than the trilogy. I am betting that Kevin is also nursing a secret crush on Irene Jacob, or will soon be. Kieslowski is a Christian (I'm betting most of you will want to know that going in), but he doesn't beat you over the head with it or even really mention religion at all. Not in these movies anyway.

Rugby player died after eating 'pot cake' to boost sex drive

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-414289/Rugby-player-died-eating-pot-cake-boost-sex-drive.html

Rugby player died in a police cell after eating a marijuana 'space cake' to boost his sex drive, an inquest heard.
Father-of-two Malcolm Flockton turned blue, collapsed and died after eating the cake.
Earlier in the evening he put a sheepskin rug on his back then walked 1km dressed in nothing but a fleece, his fiancÈe Sandra Stringer said.
The couple started using the drug to improve their sex life. Usually it turned 41-year old Mr Flockton into a 'tremendous' lover, Miss Stringer said.
He would perform striptease using his belt as a 'feather boa' and frolick dressed as a sheep, bleating.
She said of his final evening: "He was being so funny. He put the sheepskin rug on his back and pretended to be a sheep. It was at this point I thought that the cannabis was having a reaction.'
Shortly afterwards he began to feel sick.
When Miss Stringer, 47, went to check on him, he said: "I've got you sussed", before 'growling' at her.
Dressed in only a fleece jacket, he walked to Mrs Stringer's ex-husband's house and threw a brick through the window.
Mr Flockton, of Killingworth, North Tyneside, was arrested following a struggle and taken to Wallsend police station in May2003.
But as they took off his handcuffs in the cell, he died. The inquest in North Shields continues.

8-Bit Jesus

Doctor Octoroc's 8-Bit Jesus is an interesting bit of Christmas chiptunes now available for free download. The good Doctor deftly/blasphemously applies classic nintendo style to popular christmas carols with astonishing results.
via retroist

8-Bit Jesus

Broken Fader Summer Camp

You haven't seen this yet?!

So these dutch guys made a video. Serge Fabergé is singing. Piet Parra did the illustrations. You get to kick back and do all the enjoyin'. I'm not going to hyperlink their names or anything. If you are so inclined you can CTRL C and CTRL V that shit into your search browser of choice. The take home is that by now this video is on everyone's computer and DJs are slipping it in at house parties like whoah. Pretty soon that dumb girl at work will be walking around singing "You the cheese on my baguette, the jelly on my bread" on the way to the fax room. Then you can pretend to hate it. Until that happens I'm sure you'll be tacitly humming it while you are on the way to the fax room, pausing by the dumb girl's office just long enough to whisper: "Bitch, You breakfast"




PS... here is a copy of the the MP3 to add to your holiday mixtapes:

Bitch, you Zshare

Broken Fader, Anthony; "WELCOME ABOARD!"

Hey Gang!


Last night Andrew asked me if I would contribute to this review column. I said yes. I have (lots of) jokes and stories and need a conspicuous and public forum to communicate them to Ian, whom i haven't talked to in a while.

At the moment I'm working hard on my first opinion. It's exhausting, but as soon as it's complete and the sweat has been mopped from my brow you will all be able to enjoy the experience of my sensibilities and crap. I think I'm going to review someone's face later, so stick around for that.

Love you
agl

Jonathan Swift "A Modest Proposal" link

A Modest Proposal

For Preventing The Children of Poor People in IrelandFrom Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, andFor Making Them Beneficial to The Public

”I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ...”

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

I posted this cause I thought everyone might need to re-read it. and because no one has talked about eating babies yet on this here blog.

The best movie I saw in 2008 that was not kung fu

I am sure this is old, but I saw it in 2008 with Kevin in an understore art space in Lawrence. They had movie night, and this is one of the shorts they dropped. Animated Graffiti.
Notes on MUTO-
The new short film by Blu:
an ambiguous animation painted on public walls.
Made in Buenos Aires and in Baden (fantoche)

On another note...

my vote for one of the best albums of 2008 is the new Brightblack Morning Light. Motion to Rejoin is a complex and more accomplished undertaking than the previous self titled album. Using the same drawl and slow jam format, they seem to have uncovered something with more luster. Granted, some might consider this a hippy ass record, i wouldn't fault BBML for it. Sometimes things are just good. That thick Rhodes should be enough to satisfy any genre biased audiophile.

their website HERE

kenneth anger

I don't really remember anything that blew my mind as far as proper cinema goes...but i saw a collection of Kenneth Anger films that was pretty amazing...Lucifer Rising being the most well known i think...
twisted ass 70's psychedelia...jodorowski on some different drugs.

What was the best movie you watched in 2008.

Easy.

It was called Krush Groove.

I saw better made and better acted movies this year. I might've watched literally hundreds, awesome cult horror, french and british new wave, Iron Man, Wall-E, even both Bill & Ted movies back-to-back.

However-
None of these movies, these films, if you will, have a scene where anybody, even Heath Ledger, gets sent to the principal's office for beat-boxing.

Also, does anybody in any movie just ruin a Sbarro like this? Like, will there be a deleted scene special feature on the Dark Knight DVD where the Joker is all running down the street with hams or wheels of romano over his shoulders?

No, the Fat Boys were what was missing from entertainment in 2008, except for after I watched a shitty VHS copy of this movie although it is available on DVD, and then nothing was.

Reactable

Today, while visiting the museum of science and industry here in hyde park i discovered a little jewel of musical interface. The Reactable, developed by Sergi Jorda' and cohorts, allows users to physically manipulate samples and filters via a table top and little plastic blocks. This thing blew my mind.

here's a link to the Reactable

Intro

So i thought this might be a good format for us all to share what we've been into for our own purposes of staying up on the new and also to illuminate some other folks. Let's link it up, generate some content, and enjoy.