Archive for July, 2005

While try­ing to dig into the Berlin elec­tron­ica scene, the good record stores etc., I came across Berlin Dig­i­tal as I was brows­ing the shelves of Dense (which is also an excel­lent record store — lots of Mille Pla­teux, Staub­gold, dub, breakcore).

It’s an 2004 DVD (175 min­utes) shot in ten days, high­light­ing some of the Berlin elec­tro scene, fea­tur­ing labels like !K7, Shitkat­a­pult, Sonar and Hard:Edged, clubs like Water­gate, peo­ple like Gudrun Gut and much more. It gives a good pic­ture of what you’ll be able to find if you dig a little.

As extras there are a 5 minute run-down of good record stores, list­ing their genre, loca­tion the vinyl/cd-ratio etc. Prob­a­bly hope­lessly out of date, but very use­ful nev­er­the­less. And a look behind the scenes at a dub-plate pro­duc­tion plate. Nice imagery of peo­ple tak­ing cut­ting foil seri­ous — and a lit­tle the­ory of the game of dub-plating as well. Interesting.

It’s all well-produced and the inter­views take place all over Berlin, giv­ing the artists an excel­lent oppor­tu­nity to tell a bit about the city, their neigh­bor­hood, the best places to eat.

It got me think­ing about an idea I’ve had for years; try­ing to por­tray cities from the point of view of peers. I’d like to have, not only a city guide, but a city guide made for peo­ple like me — by peo­ple like me. I couldn’t care less, say, if some bridge was built dur­ing the thir­ties or fourties — but I would thor­oughly enjoy like-minded peo­ple shar­ing their knowl­edge of good places to eat, catch a good per­for­mance, good the­ater, good clubs, the best wifi-cafes etc. If it makes sense for this par­tic­u­lar scene, make it look pretty as well. I’m sick of lists on old web­sites and cheap ‘in the city’-magazines with focus on main­stream entertainment.

I’d rather know about the afore­men­tioned things as well as places in the city where you nor­mally wouldn’t go as a tourist. A Copen­hagen guide of this type would high­light the outer parts of Hol­men, pro­vide direc­tions to the area behind the rails, list the best places to catch a cheap break­fast etc.

The record store part of the DVD should be online some­where and get updated every sum­mer, it should be hooked up to Flickr, Plazes or what­ever. I know about 43places, but some­how that doesn’t cut it.

I’m think­ing of doing soemthing about it as soon a sI return home, in the mean­while, thoughts and ideas are very welcome.

Berlin Dig­i­tal in Berliner Mor­gen­post.

In an ongo­ing attempt to come across as an arro­gant, know-it-all, bad-apple-of-the-creative-class prick, I’ll hereby point you to: Flickr, Pho­tos tagged with under­achiev­ers.

(also known as the ‘come on, you can do bet­ter than that and avoid being a pain, no really’-group).

Spent a lit­tle time yes­ter­day look­ing for wifi around Kreuzberg using the nifty lit­tle Canary Wire­less — not much luck. To lit­tle, too secure.

Morena to the res­cue. It’s lit­er­ally across the road from where we live. The wifi’s free (and slow), the break­fast great, the music cheesy, the peo­ple seem nice — and they’ve got a wifi-policy: Wifi is avail­able between 9am and 7pm — and not on Sun­days. And half the place is a no laptop-zone. Noone’s sit­ting over there now, though; it’s the usual mix of lots of Macs and a few hard­core PCs with wifi cards stick­ing out the side.

Oh, and MAKE is now avail­able for down­load, so I can read it while I’m here. Great.

But: Ger­man coffee-making sucks. What is it with Ger­mans and UHF-milk? And just keep cheap cocoa-powder from the top of my lattes, ok? If any­one sees Ricco, send him down here.

[via]

To those attend­ing Code­gar­den, it will come as no sur­prise that I totally saw this com­ing: Spe­jdere beredte til cyber­space (arti­cle in Danish).

I did a pre­sen­ta­tion enti­tled “How to fas­ten your Umbraco imple­men­ta­tions using web­stan­dards and css — and save the scouts in the process” (cor­rect title to be added later when I get to my Powerpoint-machine).

Might not make that much sense, but I’m telling ya: Cor­po­rate remix­ing is the next big thing.

Any­body know any good DVD-ripping soft­ware for Mac?

I’m sup­posed to rip a few min­utes off a DVD for a client to go on a site in an inte­grated player.

I’ve already seen the var­i­ous ‘how to steal the lat­est stuff from Hollywood’-software, intended for rip­ping com­plete DVDs and burn­ing them to CDs, but they all seem to focus on tak­ing every sin­gle bit — which takes pretty much forever. 

I’m look­ing for some way of grab­bing a spe­cific 3-minute part of a DVD, drag it into iMovie (or some­thing along those lines) for trim­ming the bits, do a decent fade or what­ever. After that, it’s export for web using iMovie, Quick­time Pro or what­ever turns out to be the best choice (it should be clear now that I don’t know what the f**k I’m talk­ing about.

Any help would be greatly appre­ci­ated. And as my com­ments aren’t work­ing (and won’t be before I go on vaca­tion — which I won’t be able to until I solve this DVD-problem — I’d be thank­ful for an email.

Update: C.K. Sam­ple, III from the great blog TUAW picks it up. I’m already look­ing into the first answer in the com­ments — and answers seem to be poor­ing in. I wouldn’t be sur­prised if they got more read­ers than me over there ;-) Thanks a lot!

Update II: Prob­lem solved — in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent ways. Check the post over at TUAW for some excel­lent point­ers to solv­ing your clip-ripping prob­lems.

Friend of the house and elec­tron­ica wiz Marc Kell­away recently released Run­ning Uphill on Radio Khar­toum under the alias The Cat Box Quar­tet.

The Cat Box Quar­tet is the alias used for his pop­pier acoustic-oriented elec­tron­ica. As opposed to the rock/noise he makes with Vinyl Dog Joy, the drone stuff with Exquis­ite Russ­ian Brides, the folky Ten­der But­tons, or improv out­fit 75 Magic Tricks..

Catched a most excel­lent per­for­mance by pic­tures over at 23people ear­lier this month; pic­tures over at 23people. Oh, and the Ten­der But­tons — inter­pre­ta­tions of Gertrude Stein, recorded in a for­est — is pretty damn beau­ti­ful if you ask me.

A cou­ple of months ago we launched aux.dk, the online pres­ence of our sond/sound art group.

We’re pas­sion­ate about sound; music, radio, sound art etc. and towards the end of the year we’re doing an online exhi­bi­tion accom­pa­nied by lis­ten­ing sta­tions on dif­fer­ent loca­tions in Copenhagen.

I’ve been mean­ing to blog this way ear­lier, but reboot and Code­gar­den and clients and sum­mer and… got in the way. And the site isn’t even fin­ished. Major over­haul com­ing up. Includ­ing an Eng­lish version.

But for now: Check out the open call. If you got some great stuff in your drawer (or whereever you keep your stuff), let us have a listen.

LOUD is clos­ing at the end of August after 12 years of vinyl push­ing. Gotta respect their wishes to move on, but I’ll miss their stock vari­ety — espe­cially as a few of the other water­ing holes have closed down in recent years.

I’ll skip the thanks for all the music-bit and just note that I’ll have a few hours to spare each Sat­ur­day from now on … just in case you wanna hook up and go hunt­ing for records somewhere.

I’m dis­ap­pointed. To say the least.

I was expect­ing dis­heart­ened teens with painted faces, dri­ving beat up old Cadil­lac Coupe de Villes with chan­de­liers for head­lights, Sis­ters of Mercy blast­ing from a cheap japan­ese ghet­to­blaster, lay­ing the per­fect sound­track for peo­ple devoted to ven­ti­la­tion despite of their black hearts. And all I get is this?

Also:

Gothic Babe of the Week
The Goth F.A.Q:

Q: Does it have to be black?
A: …
All black is bor­ing. And some­times, depend­ing on your skin col­orations, black is not a color for you. It might even make you look sallow.

Diller Trans A/S