"Look there's Paris! It's official: copyright infringement is HOT"

I am posting an open source documentary on intellectual properyright and remix culture. The documentary is about how big media companies like Warner Bros, Sony BMG, Disney, ...

are threatening the creativity of musicians and scientists by holding on to patents and prohibit to copy ideas or use ideas to make better ones.

An open source documentary means that everybody can contribute, can remix it in a way. Actually, they do what the documentary is all about.

They take the US copyright model as an example. In this country little people have to pay huge amounts of money just for illegal downloading some songs. That money doesn't even go to the artists. The alternative is Brazil where they ignored an international copyrightlaw to make cheaper drugs against HIV.

First chapter of documentary...other chapters here.

"So go and pack your bags

For the long haul"

My dear followers

I have been asked to contribute to a new blog. It's called "The Worlds Below 100Hz". The blog is about music drenched in bass. As we don't believe in narrowing down music in labels and genres we just post anything we like, being minimal techno or deep down dubstep.

Here's the link http://www.worldsbelow100hz.com/

We are a new blog but you can already become a fan on Facebook. This way you can follow the blog on Facebook. I must say I find fanpages easy to follow people or organisations.

The Worlds Below 100Hz

The other authors of the blog are true music aficionados.

You may know them or not, it doesn't matter but wanted to introduce them to you anyway:

Whizz: dj, bassculture.org

Nojzz: dj, founder of bassculture.org

Esco: kindamuzik.net and one of my personal music informants ( his old blog )

and me, to add some female flavour to it.

Time for some tips

Washed Out has been on the playlist for some weeks now. The raw sound and unmastered productions feel like you came across an obscure 80's mixtape with some forgotten romantic synth songs on it. I want to hear this in summer, at the beach with a caipirinha, seeing the sun set.

Myspace Washed Out

Sidwho? I have no clue either. I think it's a one man project. It's apparently huge already, picked up by Beats in Space and co, but very new to me. Good stuff!

Myspace Sidwho?

Amazing resemblances IV

Kajagoogoo - Too Shy (1983) ( youtube link) at 2"00

( Sorry but there was no embedding allowed. Is it me or more and more videos are not allowed to be embedded? In The Netherlands embedding from youtube will cost you 130 euro for 6 videos in 2010. Read here and follow discussion. Does anyone know how this is in other countries? So maybe the fact we can't embed some videos is a consequence of these rules? )

Washed Out- Olivia (2009) (hypem)

( I can't steal bandwidth from other bloggers either. You will have to click through. Sorry!)

by Arik Levy ( series Hoop at Living Divani)

Did you know that you can follow courses how to be a trendspotter? Ridiculous right?! + The moment the institutionalized press starts talking about it, the trend dies anyway.

I am not a press official so

Africa bambata

Luciano

This summer we heard loads of African influences in pop music.

So maybe after the whole Latin vibe that has been dominating the minimaltechno landscape we can expect even more explicit African rythms and sounds there, like Luciano's Mousa Big Band ( Nov 2008)

Tinariwen

If you want to get some inspiration, go and have a listen at Tinariwen's space (Mali). They are the only real Africans listed up here.

Fool's Gold

And straight out of Africa sounds Fool's Gold-Surprise Hotel.



Myspace here

Vampire Weekend

And of course Vampire Weekend must be the most know example of the Africa revival.

Resident Advisor

RA. Resident Advisor has always been a key reference in the electronic music scene. But now as people are travelling more and more to party in Europe's hotspots, your local partysite doesn't quite fill the needs. I'm using RA more and more these days to get insight information on what's going on worldwide. With an easy search engine you can consult where your favorite dj is playing or which parties to go to when abroad. And while more people are posting their parties, RA could even become your local partyportal too. Interviews are in-dept and at RA they are allergic to cheap music. Not to mention the fabulous RA-podcasts!

RA also works with a system that it's readers can post interesting url's themselves ( The Feed) with a chance to get posted on the homepage if your posted url passes the RA approval team.

The Drums

And then, personally, I would like this trend: I want to go surfiiiiing!!

A 3 minute flow of thoughts

I was on my way to the station on my bike this morning, totally sweated and out of breath because I always seem to leave last minute even when I could have left 10 minutes earlier and arrive elegantly and not in need of deodorant and able to fill in my ticket without having to catch my breath first. Period. Ok my sentences are too long. That’s not really a good writing style. I guess I am still influenced by the Latin courses I had on this catholic nun school when I was a blossoming teenager which was not really appreciated then. Luckely that changed when we were allowed to go to the higher years. Other building, the nuns were far away and a woodstockanian air of anything goes in the form of “you can sit on the ground but please lift up your ass when the teacher let’s you in the classroom so that you can actually deplace yourself into classroom”. I have good memories about secondary school and the Latin courses. In specific the Greek courses which involved Greek cookery ( I had my first olive on school) and fantasies about Greek hairdo’s because we were so fascinated by the fabulous ancient Greek women’s hair on the old pottery. We decided we’d become hairdressers if we would flunk. Recently I heard one of the ten pupils we were back then, is actually a hairdresser now although she didn’t flunk secondary school. She did stop her university courses so in a way I could say she respected the vow. Or maybe she remembered the vow and then had to stop her studies. But I guess she was dead serious about it back then. So were we because we knew we wouldn’t flunk and we could invent stories and impossible conditions this way. But the relaxing head massage and female worryness in the hair salon always makes me wonder why the heck I didn’t became a hairdresser! Then I wouldn’t be writing long sentences but instead having long conversations and I would earn honest money. That is if I wouldn’t sell hair extensions made of Indian women’s hair. I would pay 450 euro and the women in India would get 20 dollars. And then maybe I would have to cut the hair of people owning those ridiculous big 4x4 monster cars. The people who annoyed me sitting on my bike, in a hurry to catch my ecological trainride. I would have serious problems with cutting a person’s hair who is convinced they need a big car like that to for example transport their kids to school. Especially if they think their kids are safer that way while they probably have more statistical chance in hitting another kid on an ecological bike with a fluo jacket and a safety cap on. The transported kid get’s a huge sense of unsafety when not sitting in the monstruous killer car. It get’s the feeling it is living in a hostile world which in the end leads to buying an even bigger car when grown up and vote for the political party that wants to have clean and peaceful streets having no ‘strange(r)’ people. If the political party also is pro discarding speed limit and lowering speeding fines and taking down speed spying cameras then it is a vote! After dropping the kid at school where the kid needs to be taught another worldview and where the teacher has to be 100% pedagocic justified, the parent in the 4x4 car, with or without status anxiety, is posting on Twitter on his iPhone, having a laugh with one of his people he follows who is complaining about a delayed train. Or the mother could be calling her hairdresser saying she is in desperate need of an ammoniac hairdyeing for the annual green benefit. At the time when the old Greeks reigned the world,...back then some people also feared they would lose what they thought they possessed forever. Next to money and power they would utimately lose the beauty of their youth. That’s why the painted marvellous hair on their vases and depicted muscled men sometimes with young naked boys. Pretty much the same now ... the world. You could just skip your university years if acknowledging some very easy principles of life and mankind. You could open a hairsalon where you spread out this simple view on life, warning everybody for little green monsters on your shoulder and the big not so green car they drive in. I wonder if this would have more effect than spreading out pamflets or writing blogposts about the world that is dying. Tomorrow I will be again riding my bike, so will I next week and next year and I will curse some people with my red head and almost flat tiers because I had to leave instantly. And in the evening I would eat an olive and feel safe.

And oh yes I watch The Hills!

I am quite amazed how quick people are uploading their festival footage on Youtube. I mean I have found the most gigs I saw just hours after the festival ended. So because of that, here's the first compilation of my highlights of Pukkelpop 2009 @ Kiewit, Belgium taken from those very arduous and kind people who had their digital camera with most of the time crappy built-in-microphone with them and found the energy to upload it right away.

Perfect sing-a-long gig! The crowd needs to study more on the lyrics though

This time baby I beeeee bulletproof! Now everybody could sing that a-long but the gig itself was way too short. #downside

Wegue-wagga-wiggle. Big tunes. Trend of the year: favela sounds!

Did somebody actually see Karen Dreijer Andersson?


And the absolute electronic highlight!!

How about some trained musicians from some of the best bands united in just one superband?! This was :o



Coming up : sweet electropop of Passion Pit, surf riffs of Crystal Antlers , our man of Chile Luciano and the boob of Yo Majesty!

Here's something new. Now remixers are starting to remix a whole album. And then they try to convince the artist that they are the ones who should produce their album the next time.

It's very brave but also presumptuous at the same time, changing the whole mood of the album. Here's how Doctor Rosen Rosen turned Lily Allens album into something completely different! Anyway this one is not badly done ( darker and melancholic) And it comes as a nice alternative, having heard the original 'it's not me, it's you' probably too much by now ^^

Can be downloaded here

The creative lazy bones

Who is the perfect employee? A very flexible person who is easy to be manipulated, dresses neatly, always ( preferrably one hour in advance) on time, has done 20 free internships, has experience but is in the meantime also very cheap for the employer. They even have names: the flex-mob-workers. Yes they sound like they are extraterrestrial! High paced businesses need those kind of workers, who devote their lifes to their company. This person is defenitely not someone of whom you can expect some feedback or thought-through philosophy on life.

On the other end of the spectrum you have the creative rather lazy person. I recommend you hire this person. You will have loads more fun and he or she will not feel so fake and over-arduous ( which will make YOU feel lazy eventually). The creative person will in the end have the same results as our employee from Mars because creative lazy will all of a sudden work very efficient when the deadline is near.

Based on 'hibye' exhibition by Mart Guixé who designed pills for the perfect businessman and an article in Knack by Jan Braet

Mart Guixé and other artists are exposing ( Werk Nu) at Z33 Hasselt Belgium

Lighted clouds

Rare nature phenomenon as seen above Ghent.

These are clouds that are hanging at about 80km in the outer atmosphere of the earth so they still catch some light from the setted sun.

copyright Dominique Dierick

My mind right now

9 days by Black Fog

Amazing resemblances III

Ever since Vice Magazine wrote this article about 'twinning' ( sorry can't seem to find the article anymore) I see more and more cases of this hilarious 'phenomenon'. Basically you have to be two persons or more who dress the same and look like you could be twins. You don't have to dress exactly the same, just your looks, let's say, have to evoke "haaaa, have you been shopping together?" Examples here, here and here .... and then also here 

You can actually apply twinning to all sorts of things. There is for example an exhibition in S.M.A.K. Ghent that is called "Faux Jumeaux" ( fake/false twins). Basically it's about objects that look the same or things you have seen in real life, in adds or in magazines that resemble eachother... If you start paying attention to it, it's quite scary how many things look the same!

So, in this definition, twinning is everywhere. 

I, personally, get a huge sense of twinning with big square office buildings, thanks to their symmetry and the tons of the same grey concrete.

Berlin - Alexanderplatz

Paris - La Défense

Copying is in the end twinning at it's best! 'Thee' most sublime form of twinning. 

In music, copying is also nihil novi : the new release of Pantha du Prince reminds me of a Soniculture release. Have a listen ... 

1"30: Frozen Frog by Pantha Du Prince ( on Dial Records) 

1"30 : Sardines by Jake Fairley ( on Soniculture)

Entire track : Sardines by Jake Fairley ( on Soniculture)

Looking forward to see some of your twinning pictures!

Daniel Goleman, author of the immensly popular 'Emotional Intelligence', has written a new book. After introducing 'EQ' ( and nothing was ever the same ) and 'Social Intelligence' he now comes up with " Ecological Intelligence". This book comes as a true gift to me as I have been struggling with my consumer behaviour since I started reading on how big industry effects the world's natural ressources and labour all over the world.  

His book is on how we can adjust our buying behaviour into making the world a better and greener place. And gives answers to questions like if glass bottles are really better for the environment than plastic ones and if your organic cotton T-shirt is as eco-friendly as it sounds...Looks like Goleman is also a good entrepreneur as he publishes this book in full "ecomania".  Luckely Goleman also warns for those companies who put on an eco-green sticker only to sell more. 

( picture taken in Thailand,  Erawan Waterfalls, Kanchanaburi)

I am hoping that Goleman's book will effect a lot of people and that again, nothing will ever be the same . I am definitely going to read it and post a lot about it here. I am searching for a European website that evaluates a big range of products on their sustainability and rates these products if they are safe, green and healthy. 

Anyone who can help me on that? A website like this one 

This is how effective Facebook is for starting virals ... But then again who can resist a quiz that 

tells you which kind of tractor you are ^^