British electronic auteur Richard Aphex Twin James is re-releasing his seminal experimental album ‘Selected Ambient Works Vol II’ as an ‘extremely limited’  triple gatefold record.

The occasionally unlistenable Brian Eno-esque album established James’ credentials as being one of dance culture’s most innovative and critically acclaimed producers, which he further enhanced by launching pointed attacks on 90s era EDM.

Chatting to genre overlord Simon Reynolds in 1993 he was right about drum & bass (then known as ‘jungle’) though signally wrong about the longevity of the already much mocked mainstream genre of trance.

“I hate trance and I hate jungle, but I’d rather listen to jungle cos at least it makes me laugh,” he quipped.

“But I can totally see why people get off on jungle. Trance is more of a trend thing, whereas jungle has its roots. It’s broken off its own branch of rave music, and it’ll probably always be there, cos there are enough people who like it,” he predicted. (The  Quietus; http://bit.ly/KYGR7j )

‘Selected Ambient Works Vol II’ is out now (on vinyl) on 1972 Records.

Windowlicker: video:   (NOT SAFE FOR WORK!!!):

Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff

English heritage have erected a blue (actually black!) plaque paying homage to David Bowie on the London street where he posed for the album cover of his seminal 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.

The blue plaque scheme was first instigated in the 1860s to commemorate a link between locations and a famous person or event, with most of the 850 odd London plaques marking residences where iconic characters (such as Karx Marx and George Orwell) lived.

Guardian writer Dorian Lynskey hailed Bowie’s new plaque as ‘a reminder of how powerful an electric current pop could generate in less enlightened times’ and paid tribute to his incredibly bold androgynous invention.

“To gay fans Bowie’s early 70s identity was a lifeline, while to those who didn’t identify as such it was a demonstration that sexuality isn’t a simple binary but a sliding scale,” said Lynskey, “Pop music was the perfect forum in which to explore and debate it.” http://bit.ly/HeRMrz

Bowie’s importance in reducing homophobia was previously recognized by the Sunday Times who hailed him as ‘a sexual trailblazer his importance can’t be exaggerated’.

“A good five years before the New Romantics, Bowie had spear-headed a fresh approach to the male psyche, “ the Times pointed out on 2005.

“After Ziggy (Stardust), young men, mainly teenagers- realised that a flamboyant appearance didn’t necessarily mean effeminacy. Perhaps more significantly, their girlfriends didn’t either,” the paper said.

More recently the Daily Mail speculated that his massive popularity over four decades was driven by him ‘inventing provocative sexual ambiguity long before the rest of the world caught up’ and noted that Bowie practiced what he preached with enthusiastic indiscretion.

“Friends from the rock star’s youth tell a disturbing story of how he pulled his van over one night to pick up an unwashed female vagrant from the roadside,” the Mail recalled, “And would gladly have had his way with her if the other members of his first band, the Mannish Boys, had not made her get out.” (Daily Mail: http://bit.ly/hGCvOW )

Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff

Gary Numan today (photo by Ed Fielding)

Electro-pop pioneer Gary Numan is inviting film makers to produce visuals to accompany five tracks he’ll be playing on his upcoming UK tour, with contestants asked to upload their films via the internet.

“We’re looking for ideas, however abstract, that illustrate the tracks via the on-stage projection screen as part of the show – please no images of Gary Numan – these are for the staging of the shows, not promo videos,” Gary’s management said in a statement this week.

“Gary will choose the best films to be screened at all the shows on the tour. If you wish to participate in this then please send links to your films to the management contact address on www.numan.co.uk.”

“Please don’t send us any files, as we won’t have time to look at them,” they stressed, “We just want to see your ideas on a You Tube or Vimeo link.”

The innovative idea reflected the Cars/ Are Friends Electric? star’s long history of experimentation with marketing, which led to him being arrested for espionage in India at the peak of his pop fame in 1981.

“We were flying from India to Thailand and we had engine problems going over the Indian Ocean and we had to turn back and land at this little military / civilian airbase in the middle of nowhere,” Gary told Skrufff in an interview in 2005.

“So it was all very frightening and scary then we landed and were relieved to be there on the ground and that’s when all the shit started; all these soldiers surrounded us asking ‘Why are you here?’

“They said to us ‘What are you doing?’ and I told them ‘we’re having an adventure’,” Gary recalled.

“I also explained ‘I’m a singer and I get media exposure by doing it, when I land at different places, people will talk to me about it and it’s a different way of selling albums. People talk to me about the trip and I’ll mention the fact that I’ve also got an album coming out and it will be an interesting way of promoting an album rather than just going out and doing gigs’,” he said.

Admitting he was initially ‘slightly belligerent’ his confidence turned to fear as he realized he was trapped.

“Every night at two in the morning, pretty much like clockwork, they’d come flying into the room, pounding down the door with their guns out screaming ‘what are you doing here? Why are you here?’ They didn’t believe a word we were saying,” he shuddered.

“It started out being a pain in the arse but very, very quickly became really quite frightening. I wasn’t cocky at all then; as soon as I realized that I was only a little bloke, completely out of my depth,” he continued.

Snubbed by the British Consulate (‘I spoke to woman whose name is Mrs McGregor, I’ll never forget it. I explained to her what was happening and she said ‘We are too far away, there’s nothing I can do about it’. Then hung up!’) he was eventually rescued by the Daily Star.

“They let us go into the town once a day, under armed guard, with a Land Rover in front and behind, and us two in the middle, all the soldiers kitted out with guns, to use the telex machine,” he explained.

“There was literally just one telex machine in the town. I can’t remember the exact details but one day they allowed me to make another call and the international operator happened to eavesdrop on my conversation.

As I was talking on the phone to whoever it was I’d called, this girl suddenly interrupted and said ‘Don’t put the phone down, this is the exchange, is there anyone else you want to talk to while you are making your one phone call?’

So she put me through to my dad, and I told him what was going on. This girl was absolutely brilliant, a fantastic girl, she really helped us out a lot. My dad then rang up the newspapers and The Daily Star was the one that got the most behind me.

They started a campaign saying ‘We are going to rescue Gary Numan from India’ and they flew out there.

“When that all started the Foreign Office got involved and all of a sudden the Indians couldn’t do enough for me and they let us go. Before that, they’d confiscated our passports and I was really frightened. They were very aggressive to start with, then by the end of it they were the nicest people you’d hope to meet,” said Gary.

http://numan.co.uk

Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff

click for me

Click below to see Skruff favourite (and regular contributor) Laurent Garnier’s latest visual opus. C’est fantastique? (mais ouu!)

Click below for one of the best dance videos ever:

Click for more on Jagz

Posh people’s etiquette organisation Debretts have recently issued fresh guidelines for mobile phones and ring tones so Skrufff asked a bunch of producers about their personal preferences including London rock/ dance uber producer Jagz Kooner (of Sabres of Paradise, the Aloof, Primal Scream, repute…)

Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): What’s your main ring tone?

Jagz Kooner: “My ringtone is the theremin from Forbidden Planet.  The scary/eerie sound is perfect for someone like me who rarely answers his phone.

Skrufff: When was the first time you bought a custom one? What’s been the best and worst one you’ve had?

Jagz Kooner: “I’ve never bought a ringtone, it’s pretty easy to make one yourself. The best ringtone I’ve had was the classic vintage dial telephone sound. The worst was the Benny Hill theme. I thought it was a genius idea but unfortunately it wore a bit thin after about a day.”

Skrufff: Have you ever been embarrassed by a ring tone?

Jagz Kooner: “I’ve never been embarrassed by a ring tone, no, (I’m not spending any hours worrying about that!) However, the Crazy Frog ringtone did send me (and pretty much the rest of the world) up the wall. Also I remember Sony made a ringtone of Primal Scream’s ‘Miss Lucifer (before the days of mobiles having audio samples) made of bleeps. That was pretty amusing (for all the wrong reasons).”

Skrufff: How important are ring tones for business these days?

Jagz Kooner: “I think ‘the industry’ realises that records sales alone are going to mean very little in the future. I know a lot of people are using ringtones as a part substitute for falling sales.”

Skrufff: Debretts say ‘Don’t make calls to people from inappropriate venues; a call from a bathroom is deeply off-putting’: have you ever done that? or had it done to you?

Jagz Kooner: “A few rock star pals of mine enjoying calling me whilst they are sitting on the toilet. Not sure why, a tad off putting for me.”

Skrufff: Do you have any links where people can buy your ring tones?

Jagz Kooner: “No”

Skrufff: What’s your next key release?

Jagz Kooner: “’I have no releases out at the moment instead I’m just mixing an album for a band called the Souls. It’s a really amazing album merging electronics/ psychedelics with great songs. That will be out next year.”

Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff

Alternet/ The Fix editor Walter Armstrong noted this week that virtually every mainstream obituary of Mac founder Steve Jobs ignored his well known enthusiasm for LSD, which he revealed in an interview in 2005.

Chatting to New York Times reporter John Markoff for his book ‘What the Doormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer’, he suggested Microsoft’s Bill Gates would ‘be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once’ and was open about his own youthful experimentation.

“Doing LSD was one of the two or three most important things I have done in my life,” he declared.

" Markoff describes many of the people and organizations who helped develop the ideology and technology of the computer as we know it today, including Doug Engelbart, Xerox PARC, Apple Computer and Microsoft Windows. Markoff argues for a direct connection between the counterculture of the late 1950s and 1960s (using examples such as Kepler's Books in Menlo Park California) and the development of the computer industry"

His enthusiasm for alternative culture and outsiders was also revealed in one of his best known speeches ‘Think Different’ in which he eulogized ‘the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes’.

“You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things,” he suggested, “they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

His most widely circulated truism since his death from cancer last week has been a quote from his stunningly inspiring address to the Stanford University in 2005, in which he chatted candidly about dropping out of college, being sacked from Mac aged 30 and diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the age of 49.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition,” he recommended.

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc (Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address: “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life . . .”)

http://bit.ly/b5TnL5 (Steve Jobs’ speech; the text in full)

Jonty Skrufff: http://listn.to/JontySkrufff

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