Kraftwerk-Aerodnamic

Eagles-Witchy Woman

Gimlour and the orb

Such heavy rotation on my computer and hifi at the moment, love the dance feel combined with Gilmours guitar work. Youth is playing a big part in the production. Absolutely brilliant record.

Killing Joke-European Super state.

from their last album

Cabaret Voltaire-the Legacy

With all the recent thing in the press about 80s music and the resurgence of bands from that era, there is always one band that gets overlooked in my opinion and that is Cabaret Voltaire. To Be honest my knowledge of the cabs only starts on from about 1984 with the Microphonies album, however they had a recording career that went as far back as 78 and they existed in various forms from 1973 onwards.
Cabaret Voltaire were Stephen Mallinder(bass and vocals) and Richgard H Kirk(synths)and Chris Watson. Chris Watson left in 1981 and went onto form the Halfer Trio. For me Cabaret Voltaire were a revelation in the 80s and 90s. In the 80s there was a massive thing in the press that with the punk revolution and particularly in the mainstream music press there was very little being mentioned about music from before the late 70s, the only band at that time that I remember being reviewed favourably was the velvet underground. Bands like Pink Floyd and even Roxy Music were sort of seen as dinosaurs in music terms even though there music had been truly groundbreaking only 10 years earlier.

Cabaret Voltaire's early records had a feature of distorted vocalks often treated through things like a vecoder which almost synthisised the voice. The very early records were almost like stripped down funk. At the time the indie scene was like cottage industry with labels popping up everywhere and music being accepted on to various labels like Rough Trade and 4AD. Cabaret Voltaire toured with Joy division and were briefly assoicated with factory records, With the loss of Chris Watson they still recorded in a similar style but it was with the 1983 release the crackdown that they embraced the new technology and samplers that were availble at that time. What makes Cabaret Voltaire's music so brilliant of that time was they were using their cut up techniques and old sounds and merging them with hard hitting synth and drumbeats.



They released some other brilliant records like 'the covenenat ' album in 1985, in 85 and 86 the released 12" eps like The Draintrain and Drinking Gasoline. One thing of note worth adding is that where as the mid 80s album 'Mircophonies ' had a bit of record company muscle behind it at that time, Virgin If I recall. However by 1986 they released records indiependantly. Drinking Gasoline which came out in 1985 was a brilliant record and I have to admit the first record I brought by them, what was appealing at the time was that it was a 12" record(double) which was quite rare, it was also cheap to buy.

By 1987 They had managed to get signed to EMI and released a good album in Code, but after another album after that they were back to releasing albums on indie labels again. The sound of the last few albums incorparates the sounds of the dance music at times, but the drum sound had gone slightly lighter as opposed to the harsh drum sounds of the 1984-1987 era.



Cabaret Voltaire Split in 1994 . Which was probably the right thing to do, all though they had influenced many artists theyt had gone from experimental to dance to techno , from self financing record labels to indie labels to two major labels.

I see on a art site Stephen Mallinder is contruting articles and remixes of Cabaret Voltaire tracks from 2009 and Richard H Kirk is still releasing solo albums under various alias's.

Although I still like the occasional techno track, remembering Cabaret Voltaire and what they released of the time renders everything that followed after as slightly redundant.

Simple Minds-Spakle in the Rain Demos

http://symphonyofghosts.blogspot.com/2009/02/simple-minds-sparkle-in-rain-demos-1983.html

Not hosted on my site, but discovered this on the above web site, I like Simple Minds early work alot, from about 1980-1987 the released some groudbreaking albums. Its easy to forget how big they were in the mid 80s. This album above is basically a recording of the sparkle in the rain albumas work in progress. I think its might be recorded from the monitors, but it also sounds like this was what the album was to soundlike, of course they brought in Steve Lillywhite to produce and he gave the songs a more rockier feel. Two of the tracks are almost dance trance like, where Burchills guitar really soars above the mix. These tracks ought to be reproduced and reworked, would make a brilliant record. These kind of recordings are fascianting pieces of music as you realise what gets discarded in the recording process and what gets kept.

Fedora - New operating system, Linux...

About two weeks ago I finally had enough of working with Windows as an operating system, a few years ago I would of happily worked with XP which truth be told was quite a stable operating system however over the last few years with the advent of windows vista and windows 7, there seems to be a greater increase in ram usage and also in security issues. In the later case I had reinstalled vista about three times due to the fact that it was only letting me install the proper graphics if I installed the updates, but then obviously it would then make the system slow and unresponsive at times. I currently run a AMD computer which was also having problems with booting up, actually sending the picture to the monitor.

Anyway getting back to the point , I had tried many linux distributions over the years some good ones come to mind like Xandros and Ubuntu. I used Fedora before but I must say it is quite a good linux operating system and its very easy to install. Firstly I went to a Linux Distribution site and downloaded the ISO file. Then you use a software package like CDburner XP (which is free). Once you have the downloaded ISO file, just burn it to disc using the burn iso option. Once your disc is ejected from the drive. Restart your computer and make sure it boots from the CD drive and not the hard drive. This normally means pressing f2 of f12. The beauty about linux distros is that they run straight from the CD and mean that you can try the operating systems without losing your windows operating system. Which to me is a good way to go through all the various operating systems till you find the one best suited.

With Fedora I found it pleasing to the eye. The good things with fedora is that sound worked straight away. It also has flash player support(you go to flash player site and download rpm version). That was a little tricky to be honest but from then on its been really good. The plus points I would say would be ease of use, soundcard support, fast web pages speed, organisation of folders is cool as well. The only down sound is that to configure a sound site like Spotify is very complex, however sites like Last FM and Grooveshark and We7 work, but in a ideal world there is not a operating system that is completely faultless.Also its only compatible with certain printers.

A very good feature of note in Fedora is the add/remover programs feature which takes alot of the hard work out of installing new packages. For instance I wanted to play music so downloaded last fm application and then I wanted a word processor, two or three clicks they are there.

All though we have windows on a laptop, Linux exists on the base unit. I think Linux is almost there , I think it needs one distribution to come along with such easy ease of use and full windows and flash player capabilities to really take over the windows crown.