My musical listening history is dotted with artists who went from being the next great inspiration to just having one early album as the defining moment in their career. The mark of the true artist is not one of a discrete act of creation, but of development and ascendency. The Kleptones had that one great album, A Night at the Hip-Hopera, an exercise at once both thematically complete and diversely eclectic. This was an album so popular it was stolen from the hi-fi while it was playing at our house parties. What marks them out is that they have built on this success with each subsequent release.

Their latest work, Uptime / Downtime, scoops up a great armful of my most favourite tunes for a hug that delights as much as it surprises with a continuation of the double album concept of 24 Hours. As my friend Joe would say, so retro, so future... to a point where the vital feeling I had when I first listened to these old friends is recaptured in these multi-layered self-referential slices of pop (culture). The Kleptones are successful at recycling the inherently disposable into something greater than the sum of their parts; making the tunes that really meant something into genre and time-spanning dancefloor fillers, whether that floor is a club or your own front room.

A lot of stuff got resolved in 2007 which made it really nice to reflect on the year that was and look forward to 2008. Cindy organised a surprise birthday party for me in a bar on the Dials attended by pretty much all my good friends from Brighton and London. I was truly shocked when I walked in and spent a good portion of the night in a dazed state. It was really lovely that people turned up to say hello and I really appreciated the effort she and everyone else had gone to. Here's my news headline of the year:

Brighton's local newspaper is the home of consistently lamentable journalistic editorial standards. Which makes it very occasionally downright bizarre.

1 original comment:

You’re being a little unfair to some of the Argus scribblers there… Consistently lamentable *Editorial* standards would be more appropriate, imho ;)
Comment by Eric — 8 January, 2008 @ 12:08 pm

The collective consciousness seemed to have selected Bestival as one to go to this year so we all duly trooped off to the Isle of Wight. Overall it was a pretty good weekend though I think it was feeling the weight of numbers moreso this year. With thirty thousand people to get on-site on Friday morning there were big tailbacks. Stupidly we didn't figure that this would be the same on the way out so missed our ferry and ended up stuck for eight hours; not so bad as we went to Butterfly World for a few of them. A lot of effort had gone into making the site look lovely and the music was a whole lot more to my liking than The Big Chill. In fact with the way the Chill was going when I last went two years ago you'd choose Bestival, no contest, it was developing all the same problems as it grew but with the sense that the atmosphere they were trying to promote was at complete odds with their desire to rinse as many people for the price of a ticket as possible. Next year... more festivals of a smaller size.

Eric Kleptone tearing up the House of Bamboo

As it has been one of the hottest and driest Aprils on record what better way to spend a lazy day than having a picnic? The setting is all important so on Sunday Cindy, Joe, Rose and I went to Wakehurst Place on a recommendation (good work Zoe!). The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew manage the property on behalf of The National Trust and the Millenium Seed Bank is also on the site. The grounds are huge, much more than we could manage to cover in a lazy afternoon so if the weather is fine you may want to take an entire day slacking in the gorgeous countryside.

Following another tip-off (Joe's dad) we requested a permit to the Loder Valley Nature Reserve. You can ask for these when you get your tickets but they only issue 50 a day as they want to keep the site fairly undisturbed.

You can gain access through a gate with the keycode they issue you with and, compared to the rest of the grounds, wander undisturbed through woodlands and meadows. Cindy and I had to turn back but Joe and Rose saw Kingfishers on their travels.

The bluebells were out in full force for that proper woodland glade look.

Here's a chance to get in on the ground floor with a brand new comedy podcast from the talented mind of Helen Zaltzman and friends. They're on episode three now so get your questions in before their listenership goes global and you have more chance of the Dalai Lama calling you up with a sage response.

Disclaimer: Martin the soundman is a schoolfriend of mine. Known him years I have.

I recently started learning Tai Chi. Matt, my teacher, is an all-round lovely person and the class size means we all get as much attention as we need. The great thing is that through the physical actions it complements and enhances a lot of what I feel are the more positive aspects of the way I think. I'd recommend it to anyone so check out the Wikipedia entries on Tai Chi Chuan. We're learning a style developed by Cheng Man-ch'ing which developed from Yang style as taught by Yang Ch'eng-fu.

The philosophy that surrounds this stuff is very interesting. This page on the Taiji at The Wikipedia goes as follows:

"...the Taiji is the infinite, essential, and fundamental principle of evolutionary change that actualizes all potential states of being through the self-organizing integration of complementary existential polarities. From their mutual existence a state of dynamic equilibrium comes into being, which is the expression of the Taiji."

Baguazhang also looks really interesting....

Update: It's a useful exercise to apply this to every situation that confronts you as it really benefits your critical faculties. Returning to this decade's most popular subject, the war on emotions, we have been told that there is to a be a war on terror which is also a fight against evil. To eliminate this 'terror' we have to understand that the source of this terror does in part originate from the hegemony imposed by the West on societies rich in resources whose leaders wish to resist exploitation as a springboard for their own will to power. In some sense this is therefore a war against ourselves; the forces that are seemingly in deadly opposition to each other are intrinsically linked as well as created by the 'other'.

Oops. Realised it has been nearly three weeks since I've written an entry on here. Been a busy old month. There was Tif's birthday where dorp played, George and Simon's birthday's and my friend Jo back from Nairobi for a month. This led to a camping trip last weekend in nearby woods that a few friends showed up to that I haven't see for ages; some who I went to school with. On top of that there have been a load of good nights that have seemingly come from nowwhere which have led to lazy Sundays in the pub or park in the summer heat... yum!

Currently reading: Five Fists of Science by Matt Fraction. What if Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain were buddies and taking on the forces of evil who comprise J.P. Morgan and Thomas Edison among others? What! You mean to say Tesla and Twain were friends? How much of the rest of this story is true?

Film of the moment: Coffee and Cigarettes by Jim Jarmusch. Particularly enjoyed the Jack and Meg with a Tesla Coil scene and the GZA, RZA and Bill Murray having a chat.

Busy, busy so little time for blogging recently. I had to be in Cardiff the other week for work so stayed the night with two friends of mine who live in the wilds of Wales. Oh. My. God. They've built a straw-bale house before but I wasn't prepared for the fact they'd almost finished this one and that it was so gorgeous.

While I was lying in a hammock looking out over the woods in one of the big windows I thought about how expensive buying property is, especially in Brighton. Location is a factor, but property is generally expensive. The way we've become accustomed to the concept of such exorbitant expense is really rather strange, given that I don't place a great deal of worth on most of the buildings I see.

The materials of a straw bale and wood construction are lovely, the shape is organic, the space as big as you're prepared to build and above all it is yours, designed and built, thought and crafted with your own hands. This isn't an investment opportunity or a machine for living in, but a breathing space.

These buildings are 'reversible'. You could take them down and leave nothing behind. They could last a year or tens of years. They can be modified infinitely. I think they also teach you how you can live, sustainably and in harmony with your surroundings. They make me feel calm and content. My day of being an enlightened peasant can't come soon enough.

Update: There's more information over here on Simon Dale's website about this low-impact woodland home.

Update: Kevin Rose picked up Simon's website. This submission picked up 1,898 diggs. Not bad!

I got some really, really bad news on Saturday. On Friday night our friend Wendy was hit by a car and killed crossing the road down by The Level in Brighton.

As you can appreciate the emotions generated from this horrific event are hard to untangle. For me it is a sense of awful and total disbelief and pointlessness. I considered Wendy a friend and she was really good friends with Soph and with my housemate Joe and a whole load of people I'm really close to and think of as my family down here. These are all people I've spent the happiest times of my life with, who if I'm with I know nothing can go wrong and for someone to take away one of those special, important people is heartbreaking.

It doesn't even feel real writing this now. When Matt told me she had died my first thought was "but she's going to be all right". I nearly said it to him but stopped myself. What a fucking stupid thing to say. I think everyone who first heard thought it was a bump and a scrape, but not death, not at our age.

I'll try and remember her as I last saw her, the week before last, at our house party for Joe's birthday with Jari, her boyfriend who is such an amazing person I just keep feeling so upset for his loss.

We miss you Wendy.

I can deal with the 'why', that however hard it is to accept life is random and chance can be brutal and that is a part of the world we inhabit. However I inevitably get tangled up with 'what-ifs' and 'how'. Late yesterday afternoon we laid flowers at the place where it happened and I was shocked at how far Wendy had been thrown by the impact.
We aren't sure about the exact details of what happened but we do know that she was hit by a 4x4. I already think these bullshit excuses for transport should be banned on environmental grounds so a quick check only confirms what I already suspect: compared to other cars these vehicles are horrendously unsafe for other people in a collision. In fact, as a pedestrian, you are twice as likely to be killed if hit by one. There is a legitimate reason for owning a four wheel drive designed for off-road use on difficult terrain and that is if you need to go off-road. As of this moment I am unaware if the driver of the vehicle involved was a farmer, but I am fairly confident he isn't. Owning one of these vehicles is a selfish act and socially unacceptable. For environmental reasons alone you're delivering a big fuck-you to the rest of us and as an owner you should be aware of the risks should you be involved in an collision. In fact Admiral Insurance released figures that state that 4x4 drivers are 27% more likely to be at fault in the event of an accident.

There is no need to drive one of these types of vehicle in an urban environment and I think the above firmly establishes that the desire among some people to drive these vehicles is far outweighed by the danger they pose to the rest of us. As the government isn't going ban them any time soon perhaps the council would like to consider not renewing and not issuing parking permits to people who do own these vehicles within the environs of Brighton as there is no provable need for any Brighton resident to drive one of these things around our streets.

What on earth led us to a situation where the areas where we live are riven by tarmac canyons that bring such serious risks? What is laughably termed urban planning seems to think it heretical that the car should be entirely removed from residential areas and, indeed, any area where large numbers of people are moving about on foot. Our right to convenience, to not have to walk more than a few feet at either end of a journey costs us serious injury, death, harm to the environment and ugly places in which to live. It is insane that so much usable space is given over to the car when pedestrians and cyclists are squashed out to the sides of the street where, paricularly in Brighton, you can barely walk two abreast on some pavements and the lines of cars run for miles between terraced houses.

I took a very specific choice in living where I do, in that I regard travelling to work to be a real imposition on time I could spend doing something enjoyable. Therefore I have a job I can comfortable walk to whatever the weather. Getting somewhere quickly is a privilege, not a right and besides all the costs listed above you can add the bad mood most drivers seem to get in when the traffic stacks up. The kind of bad moods that lead to frustration and terrible consequences for a few seconds off a journey. Car culture is destructive both in terms of the physical damage it does to people, to the environment and to us psychologically as it is a problem disguised as convenience.

The government does take road safety 'seriously' though. I've just read their 'Tomorrow's Roads: Safer for everyone' and it does, unsurprisingly, talk largely of setting targets and establishing committees but does NOTHING to address car use, our reliance on the car and the impact they have on the places we live.

I remember my friend Tim saying that seatbelts and airbags were a lot of bollocks and the quickest way to safer roads for pedestrians and cyclists was to make it the law that all vehicles had to have a spike coming out of the dashboard that would gently rest against the driver's forehead. A rather harsh point, if you'll forgive the pun, but illustrates the psychology of someone moving around in something that is warm, comfortable, powerful and that they are told is 'safe'. Not for the rest of us it isn't.