Anything goes

Found a great video today about where breakdance may have come from. Truly hilarious:

Via

Well, not so much repeating as very well completed and superseded by a better presentation.

If I got you confused, I’ll clear it up: my small post about acid is eclipsed by another clip I found on the internet on the history of the TB303. Here it is. Enjoy!

Note: the embedding here is from the excellent project of archive.org called Open Source Movies, where you can find all kinds of amazing stuff (even full old movies). Even though the quality is not so great, I like promoting this project because it is very close in philosophy to open source software and resonates with my own beliefs about copyright. Another thing is that it doesn’t always work, so if it doesn’t, please try again later. It’s worth it. The original page of this clip is by Nate Harrison (remember the history of the amen break?).

I came across this very interesting list on the Internet today. I must admit I have no idea who Robert Dimery is, but I figure anyone who can make a selection of 1001 albums from the ’50s through to the 2000s must know a thing or two about music.

I haven’t had the chance to go through the whole list yet, but because I don’t generally focus on buying and listening to full albums, I doubt I have listened to even a fraction of those listed there. You will notice, though, that Goldie’s Timeless is in there. Also, from the electronic scene, we can find:

• Afrika Bambaataa & the Soul Sonic Force: Planet Rock: The Album (interesting because it is considered as both a very good old school hip-hop album and as the first of the electronic genre known as electro, which is the initial style for breakdance - the sound is very distinct, but also very recognizable today, because some songs of this style have entered the mainstream)
• 808 State: 808:90
• Coldcut : What’s That Noise?
• Jungle Brothers: Done by the Forces of Nature
• Massive Attack: Blue Lines; Protection
• Shamen: En-Tact
• Aphex Twin (this one really is unexpected but totally justified, I think): Selected Ambient Works 85-92
• Orbital: Orbital [aka Brown Album]; Snivilisation
• William Orbit (hm… I feel like Water from a Vine Leaf…): Strange Cargo: III
• Chemical Brothers: Exit Planet Dust; Dig Your Own Hole
• Fatboy Slim: Better Living Through Chemistry; You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
• LTJ Bukem (again, very unexpected but totally justified): Logical Progression
• Prodigy: Music for the Jilted Generation; Fat of the Land
• Daft Punk: Homework
• Roni Size feat Reprazent: New Forms (Brown Paper Bag from this album is really great)
• Moby: Play
• Basement Jaxx: Remedy
• Röyksopp: Melody AM

Here’s an interesting thing: from the entries above, the first 4 artists are from the ’80s. Then, all the rest except the very last one are from the ’90s. So there is only one from the years 2000. I must say I agree with this and there has been little innovation during the past years. I am hoping things will change.

And why do I say about some of them they are unexpected? Well, simply because they are very far from the mainstream. Why do I think they are justified, though? Because they really innovate. LTJ’s Logical Progression is considered by some as the start of Intelligent DnB (although the artist himself doesn’t like the name because it brings the implication that other DnB styles are stupid - Atmospheric DnB is another name for this) and Aphex Twin… well, his style is difficult to name. All the more reason he should be on such a list.

Now, about 808state… remember acid? They are considered pioneers of acid house. This album was not quite there yet, but they certainly were on the right track. Here is an example:

You can hear what sounds like a TB303 in the background, although the characteristic squelching sounds of acid house are not present (yet). By the way: they offer many of their songs as well as demos and other stuff for free download on their web page.

Anyways, it is an interesting list and would make for a challenging project to try and listen to the albums listed there. I wonder if it is possible…

Who knows? Perhaps, some day…

… one of the pieces that I remember the best and still listen to with great pleasure is the truly timeless piece by Goldie, called…. Timeless. This, too, I heard for the first time in 1996, from the same radio show where I was getting all my music from at that time.

Timeless was an album from 1995 by Goldie, considered by many to be the finest Drum and Base ever. I must admit I never had the chance to listen to the whole album, though. Anyways, it contains the song also called Timeless, in 3 parts:

1. Inner City Life
2. Inner City Pressure
3. Jah

This is really an unforgettable song and I recommend it to everyone, even people who are not fans of DnB to listen to it. I was only able to find Inner City Life on Youtube, which sounds great, but the other 2 parts and the seamless way of going from one to another, while leading the listener through the different soundscapes are even better. Here is the youtube clip, but I suggest you also search and listen to the rest.

Writing about the blog is kind of beginning to *be* the blog.
Here is a picture:

See the difference?

So, what do the posts have in common? They are written in the same day. If you look at the blog, you will see that this always happens: for several posts from the same day, only the last post has the day added.

It seems like a bug of the theme. I will try to find a solution. The list is growing… grrrr!

One of the most enlightening things I have ever heard and/or read is this very informing piece about the Amen Break. Apart from being a very educating clip about part of the history of Jungle, Drum and Bass and Hip-Hop, it expresses in the best possible way my own feelings about what is happening today in the world of copyright and in the music industry as a whole. I plan to cover such topics individually in the future, as they happen, but this really is a very good general introduction.

The clip speaks by itself. I know it is fairly long, but I believe it is totally worth listening to it.

Quite impressive, isn’t it? For more completeness, here is the full song by The Winstons:

For more information, visit:

• Nate Harrison’s original page of this project
• Wikipedia entry on the Amen Break

This here is the very first trance song I’ve ever heard: Cybordelics - The Adventures of Dama. It’s from 1993, but I only heard it in 1996. I still remember very well listening to it. Back then, the only source of electronic music I had was a weekly radio show made by DJ Horace Dan D. I remember staying late at night to listen to the show, even though I was always supposed to go to school the next day - the show was on Wednesday nights, from 22:30 until after 2:00 sometimes. Because of technical limitations, I had an awful contraption for recording it and the quality of the sound was appalling, but it felt great being able to listen to it later! I would listen to it every moment I could and I remember I would always run out of tapes to record on.

Before discovering electronic music, I had gathered tapes with all kinds of music, but then I erased them all to record the show on them. Horace Dan D had the very healthy habit of making a short introduction and history of an electronic genre during each show and I really owe my passion for various styles to that single fact. I think my interest in the history of all these things also comes from there.

It sends shivers down my spine when I listen to it. I had forgotten the title of the song until I heard it by accident on Digitally Imported’s Old School Electronica a couple of months ago and then I was able to look it up on youtube and I am really glad (and amazed) to find it there.

Boy, it’s great being able to listen to it again!

We can see in the song the very early ideas of trance and how it should be. I just love the way the song just takes its time, leading you into it, without any hurry (the first drum in the song is at 2:30!), and the minimalistic structure of the sounds. It really creates a trance inducing stream of sounds.

Perhaps I’m old fashioned, but having grown up with music like this, I don’t really like most of what is going on in mainstream trance nowadays. Of course, the fact that it is getting more and more commercial doesn’t help either, but the most important thing is that sometimes it really sounds awful.

Also, good as it may sound when listening to it in earphones going down the street or on TV, trance is not meant for meaningful vocals. It is just not compatible with the state it is supposed to induce while dancing. Listening to lyrics, sometimes even singing along, just takes that away because it forces you to focus on the music, whereas dancing to trance should be an unconscious experience, where you let yourself simply be swept away by the stream. From this point of view, I haven’t had the chance to dance to a good set of trance for a long time. The last good one I heard was DJ Sterbinszky some 4 years ago, the first time he was in Obsession in Cluj (I think the club was still called Tutankamon then). I think that may have also been the best , too. But I digress…

Anyways, this here is a great song.

I was writing the other day about the trouble I was having with the XHTML validation of the blog. And I must say: at one point I was getting pretty mad, going through the output of the validation and trying to solve issues one by one.

I mean, I understood that the code provided by youtube was not standard compliant, but then I tried to validate a post without clips and it failed too. I kept getting these errors about target=”_blank” in hyperlinks and that kind of cut my enthusiasm, because it all seemed just too complicated. I mean, I *am* an engineer, but I work with embedded stuff and that just seems more simple than all this XHTML stuff! This is not true, of course, but I was mad then and was feeling this way.

In fact, I had removed the link to the validation altogether at one point. I had understood the solution was not in removing all the reported errors, but the fact that the page was declared as Strict XHTML 1.0, but I really didn’t feel like modifying the template to Transitional. I had just tried too many things and was getting too tired to try this last one, too, which I wasn’t 100% sure about anyway.

But all that has changed, thanks to some very useful help from fellow Romanian blogger SaltwaterC. It was his comment for that post that convinced me to modify the template to Transitional. In the end, the change wasn’t very difficult and involved 2 fairly simple steps, both on a single line in the file header.php from the theme. Basically, it is just replacing Strict/strict with Transitional/transitional respectively in 2 places in the file. This simple thing made all the target=”_blank” errors go away.

Next, youtube embedding.

Again, SaltwaterC saved the day, with his cool plugin XHTML Video Embed. So I just installed the plugin, made small changes to the posts and voila: perfect validation for the whole site. So now I am able to place the XHTML validation link back on the page.

Let’s move on, then. There’s work to do, still.

I gotta say: this blogging thing is turning out to be quite an adventure. After the technical quirks and down right problems I had, here is another one:

Notice anything strange? Yeah, I know. And this is the new and better version. Previously to this, comments were all with a light gray on white background. So I put some good hours into figuring out how to work with css and get this result. Not too good, is it? Still, being the first css editing I ever make, it’s not bad either.

But here’s the thing:

This is how the comments for another post look like. See the difference? I wonder where it comes from…

But don’t get me wrong! I really love the Freshy2 theme, even though this issue came with the original Dark Drax skin of the theme, from which I modified mine. I just wish things were simpler. I’ll keep trying during the next days, but it may take a while.

PS: also related to this, you will notice that if you try using the search on the blog, you will not be able to see the writing. This seems strange to me, because the comment blocks and search box seemed to have the same entry in the css file of the skin. I mean, initially they were changing together. Then, just when I got the comment blocks right, *this* happens… I will work to fix this, too.

PPS: I am also working on adding some borders to the images I place in posts, so they don’t blend quite so much in the background. All in good time…

It’s official: Youtube is part of Google!

You may think this is old news, but until now I always had the feeling that, aside from the occasional AJAX improvements of the interface and references to the mother company here and there on the site, Youtube was not bought by Google.

So how do I know? Well, one thing Google is known for is their theming of the logo to mark special days. For example, here’s the one they have today, to mark Earth day:

But this time, for the first time, to my knowledge, Youtube has adopted this approach too. Here is their logo:

So this is an interesting development. Have they done something like this before? Because this is the first time I notice it. Next, we are waiting for an April Fool’s hoax next year and some Easter Eggs and the picture will be complete.