Unintelligent Design

I heard the Dizzee Rascal song 'Dreams' today. For the first time. And yes, I now know it's at least a year old. But...

He's sampling Captain Sensible's "Happy Talk". Dear Gawd. A number of interviews done at the time seem to have picked up on this, mostly with Dizzee saying it was just something he saw on TOTP2 and wanted to play with?

Odd. Now, how about a Captain Sensible version of Dizzee Rascal's 'Dreams', then? Just to bring it full circle. :)

"At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services."

( That's an excerpt from a telegram sent to the Foreign Office by Craig Murray, who was our ambassador to Uzbekistan at the time. It seems that the UK government is not keen to see these published - and is NOT going to be happy to see them on the web. So let's spread the word, shall we? )

Heading off in a South-Easterly direction. Back Mon or Tues.

Merry Wotsit, all of ye.

It's a new Burger King ad line, intended to tie in with the King Kong movie. Really.

Now, I might think it actually sounds closer to a line from a certain Chris Morris 'Blue Jam' sketch, but I'm sure that's just my warped mind.

...isn't it?

Back in Coventry. Back on LJ too, at least for the moment. Less stressed now.

It seems to be a weekend of unexpected musical links...

The latest edition of Songlines, a 'world music' magazine, arrived on Friday. It's usually quite a serious publication - and normally quite some distance away from goth/industrial, as you might expect.

Two points of interest in this one, though...

1)Ukrainian/NYC crazies Gogol Bordello, who get a track ("I Would Never Wanna Be Young Again") on the cover CD. Frontman Eugene Hutz also gets profiled inside, with some interesting results:

What was your first (world music) album?
US punk band Dead Kennedys' Plastic Surgery Disasters - where I come from that's world music.

Class. A quick google confirms that Gogol Bordello are starting to appear in some US deathrock playlists, too - which makes perfect sense to me (out of interest - caveynik, have you heard of 'em? What d'you reckon?).

2) Crossing the Bridge - the story of music in Istanbul. A new documentary film from award-winning Turkish-German director Fatih Akin. Covering a wide range of music, from classical through to Kurdish, Armenian and Gypsy music... and the local rap scene. Oh, and it's presented by Alexander Hacke. Yes, the same Alexander Hacke who's part of Einstürzende Neubauten. (Looks like it's also featuring the music of Mercan Dede, which is definitely a good thing).

[Go. Follow the Mercan Dede link. Listen to the music on his site. Some of you will undoubtedly hate it, but hopefully someone else will like it as much as I do...]

Time to take a break from LJ, I think - the usual news and "who's in the pub" announcements may still surface here, but probably not much more than that.

Too many things that aren't worth mentioning - plus a couple where I'm struggling to find the words.

Let's leave it at that.

Aha. We have a dont_bomb_us feed. Should make for interesting reading...

Farewell, Slashgoth.

That came as something of a surprise.

Full list of Labour rebels. Special mention to Bob Marshall-Andrews and ex-minister Frank Dobson.

I was sure Blair would - somehow - get that clause through. I'm immensely glad that he didn't.