These two posters are currently on view on Liberty Street, Stanmore, near the railway bridge. I can’t help but think there’s some sort of connection… but what?
The Future was 1993
Back when I was cool (roughly 1990-1995), I was executive producer of a four-track vinyl release of new Adelaide dance music: The Core EP, named after our magazine The Core. The lead track We Are The Future was by DAMC (Dave McCann) and DJ Brendan. And here it is.
If that YouTube player doesn’t work for you, try directly at YouTube.
Dave writes:
[It] then got licensed to Rabbit City Records UK, released on the Australian EP 12″. You can also find it on a Vicious Vinyl CD compilation. Carl Cox gave this track a lot of spins in 1994.
Dave has also posted a list of all the music he made as DAMC.
Other tracks on the EP were by Aquila (Matthew Thomas), Quantization (Mat Farrington) and Maas Unconscious (a duo whose names escape me just now).
Safely home in Sydney
’Pong and I have returned home safely from Cowra, a 655km round trip, thanks to the wonders of Matthew Hall and the Success Whale. All hail the Success Whale! (Except Stephen Stockwell, unbeliever.)
The journey home was enlivened with an interesting experiment. Instead of me broadcasting Stilgherrian Live — bright TV lights in a moving car at night would be a plan full of FAIL — we created an inside-out radio station. Some of my followers on Twitter took up the offer to send us links to music — which we streamed live from YouTube. The audience chose the music and we listened to it.
This experiment in crowdsourcing a playlist was remarkably successful. I’ll publish the music later. But even more remarkable was the power of the hyperconnectivity. Even though we were driving through rural New South Wales, we were still in touch with our friends — wherever they were too — doing the usual things we do of an evening, like swap links and tell each other bad jokes.
I’ll have much more to say about this soon. But for now I must rest.
My week through Twitter
As we begin a new and somewhat rainy Monday here in Sydney, it’s worth reflecting on my world as revealed through Twitter.
- If only cats ate cockroaches my two most significant household chores would cancel out.
- The only thing a VCR is good for is to watch old porno movies.
- “Luxurious possum fur” is an oxymoron.
- Twitter is (like all networks) just an amplifier. Natural news-bringers bring news. Natural wankers wank.
- Total Eclipse of the Heart has the most sensible music video of any song ever.
- “Wynyard Hotel, the sign saying ‘restrooms maintained to highest standard’ doesn’t stop stale urine smell.”
- As we all know, cardio fitness is improved through gin.
- “Do not insert in ear canal” is sage advice.
Now what sort of impression of me does that give? And what will this week bring?
[Credit: Cartoon Twitter-bird courtesy of Hugh MacLeod. Like all of Hugh’s cartoons published online, it’s free to use.]
Eurovision at the Pub tonight!
Only hours to go! Eurovision at the Pub is tonight at our local “Irish” pub, Kelly’s On King, 258 King Street, Newtown. The SBS broadcast starts at 7.30pm, but we’ll be there from 5pm or so to, um, ensure sufficient fuel for a long evening of big hair, tacky costumes and dodgy choreography.
There’s a Facebook event page, but even if you don’t use Facebook please RSVP here or to my Twitter stream or somehow. The more confirmed guests, the more free stuff the pub gives us.
I’ll be Twittering the event, as will many others, with the tag #eurovision. If I have enough bandwidth, I’ll also provide an audio commentary via Ustream.
Vale Tristram Cary, 1925-2008
The godfather of British electronic music, composer Tristram Ogilvie Cary OAM, died on 24 April 2008. He was aged 82.
Cary’s story is told in his Wikipedia profile and the Times Online obituary. If anyone outside the “serious music” world knows him, it’s usually for writing the soundtracks for early Doctor Who episodes and films (which he hated talking about), or the Hammer Horror movies Quatermass and the Pit (1967) and Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971).
However Cary was also a pioneer of music synthesisers. Trained as a radar technician in WWII, he co-founded Electronic Music Studios (EMS), which created the first portable synthesiser, the VCS 3.
I worked briefly with Cary one summer as a programmer. He was director of the electronic music studio at the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide. I wrote a digital filter in PL/1 (!) for what I think was the Synclavier synthesiser — though it may have been something else, because as a hardware hacker Cary was well wicked. In his studio, it was difficult to see where one machine ended and the next began, they were so cross-linked.
I remember he was particularly fascinated with the sounds of bells, which then were starting to become achievable through digital synthesis. It was the first time I’ve ever found my applied mathematics knowledge of Fourier Transforms to be even remotely useful.
If you enjoy any kind of electronic music, you should take an hour of your day to learn more about Tristram Cary. He made your world.
[Footnote: I found out about Tristram Cary’s death from a most unusual source: the end credits to Shaun Micaleff’s program Newstopia. The more I discover about you, Shaun, the more I think my initial assessment of you as an arsehole was a mistake.]