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We Could Build A Better Robot, If We Only Had Arms

How long that wild rush lasted I have no means of judging. It may have been an hour, a day, or many days, for I was throughout in a state of suspended animation, but presently my senses began to return and with them a sensation of lessening speed, a grateful relief to a heavy pressure which had held my life crushed in its grasp, without destroying it completely. It was just that sort of sensation though more keen which, drowsy in his bunk, a traveller feels when he is aware, without special perception, harbour is reached and a voyage comes to an end. But in my case the slowing down was for a long time comparative. Yet the sensation served to revive my scattered senses, and just as I was awakening to a lively sense of amazement, an incredible doubt of my own emotions, and an eager desire to know what had happened, my strange conveyance oscillated once or twice, undulated lightly up and down, like a woodpecker flying from tree to tree, and then grounded, bows first, rolled over several times, then steadied again, and, coming at last to rest, the next minute the infernal rug opened, quivering along all its borders in its peculiar way, and humping up in the middle shot me five feet into the air like a cat tossed from a schoolboy’s blanket. – Gulliver of Mars

The beep beep list.

01. Simone WhiteThe Beep Beep Song
Ministry of Sound: Chilled Acoustic 2010 Disc 3 (2010)
02. Lali PunaMove On
Our Inventions (Morr Music, 2010)
03. Pantha Du PrinceAbglanz
Black Noise (Rough Trade, 2010)
04. Brian EnoBone Jump
Small Craft on a Milk Sea (Warp Records, 2010)
05. kangding rayapnee
automne fold (2008)
06. Bombay Bicycle Clubyou already know [feat. kathryn williams]
Om Lounge (15 Year Anniversary Edition) (Om, 2009)

note: Experimental pop of sort. I made this last year actually, trying to make glitch tech more palatable and not so cryptically futuristic, more pop-ish while not being kitschy. I declare it a success and move on. It’s hard to do you know. Well, think of it as retro futuristic lounge for lazy day.

image: Rob Sheridan

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Category: Electronica, Pop

Dirty jaded diamond

Photo: Carl W. Heindl.

Troubled by wild fire and your heartless, raging music.

Nothing can touch me now. I’m thirty feet tall and made of diamond. I’ve traded confidence for warmth. I am an engine running on cool water. A tungsten pyramid floating in the sky. I am the ruler of this land. I sit down in my throne and watch the ground below me. I realize I should probably clip my toenails and it’s been weeks since I last cleaned my room.

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Category: Pop, Rock

Island Music

“27th day. Have rested and am moving south. All is well. Kerans.”

So he left the lagoon and entered the jungle again, within a few days was completely lost, following the lagoons southward through the increasing rain and heat, attacked by alligators and giant bats, a second Adam searching for the forgotten paradises of the reborn sun.

J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World (1962).

1. Mandre – Isle de Joie
– Mandre4 (1982)
2. Marcos Valle – Fogo Del Sol
– Marcos Valle (1983)
3. Ethel Beatty – It’s Your Love
– I Know You Care (12″) (1981)
4. Eliza Waut – Russia
– Eliza Waut (1985)
5. Kraftwerk – Ananas Symphonie
– Ralf & Florian (1973)
6. Nite Jewel – Falling Far
– Am I Real? (Ep) (2010)
7. Sun Palace – Rude Movements
– (12″) (1983)

It’s turning to summer in Melbourne, but a summer plagued by long periods of rain, flooding, and humidity. The nights are disturbed by noisy insects, and the sun sets late and rises early. I’ve been playing with a old drum machine from the early 70s, and the tinny ‘rumba’ and ‘bossanova’ beats it spits out provide a rhythmic backdrop to these sunny soul/disco/exotica songs. Nite Jewel is worth a mention here, effortlessly making music that complements an otherwise 80s dominated playlist.

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Category: Electronica, Exotica, Pop

I know that she is made of smoke

Photo: Candy Black Studio.

Sadness round at the hollow of the throat—inside, and one good thing: it makes you horny.
- Priscilla Becker.

Seems like I’m not satisfied. I have too much on my mind. It seems like I have more temptations put on me than anyone. Course, that’s what the Bible said, that’s the way we’d be tried out. And every time I ask God to remove this awful burden off of my heart, he does.

- Excerpt of a conversation with Nettie Featherstone.

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Category: Electronica, Pop, Rock

Plaça de Mossèn Jacint Verdaguer

Photo: Luca Mariani

Trying hard to make the feeling last before the autumn takes over and ruins it all.

“I don’t get it. Why would anyone paint a picture of a door over and over again, like dozens of times?”

“It was the same subject, but it was different every time. The light was different, her mood was different. She saw something new every time she painted it.”

“And that’s not psycho to you?”

“Well then, why should we do anything more than once? Should I just smoke this one cigarette? Maybe we should only have sex once if it’s the same thing. Should we just watch one sunset? Or live just one day? Because it’s new every time. Each time is a different experience.”

“But… a door?”

“Why not a door? Sometimes you get fixated on something and you might not even get why. You open yourself up and go with the flow, wherever the universe takes you.”

“Ok so, the universe took her to a door and she got all obsessed with it and just had to paint it 20 times until it was perfect.”

“No I wouldn’t say that. Nothing’s perfect.”

“Come on that O’ Keeffe lady kept trying over and over until that stupid door was perfect.”

“No. That door was her home and she loved it. To me that’s about making that feeling last.”

Breaking Bad, episode 3.11

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Category: Pop, Rock

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
And out of a fabulous story
We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
Can trample an empire down. [1]


Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end! `I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?' she said aloud. `I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think--' (for, you see, Alice had learnt several things of this sort in her lessons in the schoolroom, and though this was not a very good opportunity for showing off her knowledge, as there was no one to listen to her, still it was good practice to say it over) `--yes, that's about the right distance--but then I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?' (Alice had no idea what Latitude was, or Longitude either, but thought they were nice grand words to say.) [2]



O long-silent Sybil,
you of the winged dreams,
Speak out from your temple of light
as the serious constellations
with Greek names
still stare down on us
as a lighthouse moves its megaphone
over the sea
Speak out and shine upon us
the sea-light of Greece
the diamond light of Greece

Far-seeing Sybil, forever hidden,
Come out of your cave at last
And speak to us in the poet's voice
the voice of the fourth person singular
the voice of the inscrutable future
the voice of the people mixed
with a wild soft laughter--
And give us new dreams to dream,
Give us new myths to live by! [3]


So our princes who have lost their principalities after many years’ of possession shouldn’t blame their loss on fortuna. The real culprit is their own indolence, going through quiet times with no thought of the possibility of change (it’s a common human fault, failing to prepare for tempests unless one is actually in one!). And when eventually bad times did come, they thought of •flight rather than •self-defence, hoping that the people, upset by conquerors’ insolence, would recall them. This course of action may be all right when there’s no alternative, but it is not all right to neglect alternatives and choose this one; it amounts to voluntarily falling because you think that in due course someone will pick you up. If you do get rescued (and you probably won’t), that won’t make you secure; the only rescue that is really helpful to you is the one performed by you, the one that depends on yourself and your virtù. [4]