Dix-sept Fois Cécile Cassard (2002)

The film boldly works with a considered palette of colours, deliberately artful framing of shots and a soundtrack which is, by turns, emotive and ambient, letting Beatrice Dalle's performance carry the dramatic weight. Well worth a look.

Arab Strap & Khaya

A couple of 96 / 97 era British indie tunes for you today plus lyrics, both showing a similar vocal and lyrical style...

The first above is from Arab Strap, called The First Big Weekend. The second from Khaya, who aren't even on Youtube right now and their track Summer/Winter Song, which you can check out here.



THE FIRST BIG WEEKEND

So that was the first big weekend of the summer...
Starts Thursday as usual with the canteen quiz and again no-one wins the big cash prize.
Later I do my sound Bloke routine by approaching Gina's new boyfriend to say that he shouldn't feel that there's any animosity between us and then I even go and make peace with her Shouldn't have bothered.

Then on Friday night we went through to the Arches...

There was only one car going so some of us had to get the train. We got through quite late. Then we went to a pub to take the gear.
There was no problems getting in - we saw some others waiting down the front of the queue so we skipped in.
It was a good night - everyone was nutted and I ended up dancing with some blonde girl.
I thought she had been quite pretty until last night when Matthew informed me that she had, in fact, been a pig.

When the club finished we wandered the streets for a while until we got to this 24-hour cafe.
I didn't like the look of it so we left and got a taxi back to Morag's flat.
I couldn't sleep so I sat about drinking someone else's strawberry tonic wine and tried to keep everyone else up.

Then at ten o'clock in the morning we went downstairs to buy some drink. We had intended to watch the football in the afternoon but we'd passed out by then and slept right through it, awaking to find that England had won two-nil.
Then we went to get the train home and had a few in the Station bar.
We had some stuff left from the previous night's supplies so when we got home we decided to go down to John's indie disco.
Same story as Friday - lots of hugging, lots of dancing etc. etc.
I couldn't sleep again so went to the park to look at the toon, taking a detour through the playpark.
To get in we had to climb over a ten foot steel fence, which resulted in severe bruising of our hands, legs and groins, but we had a good laugh on the stuff, especially the tube-slide, which probably doubles up as a urinal for drunk teens.
Then we walked through the woods to have a look at the toon. Big disappointment, but the mist on the lake was cool.

Sunday afternoon we go up to John's with a lot of beer in time to watch the Simpsons - it was a really good episode about love always ending in tragedy except, of course, for Marge and Homer. It was quite moving at the end and to tell you the truth my eyes were a bit damp.

Then we watched these young girls in swimsuits have a water fight in the street.
We went up to the pub about ten.
It was busy for a Sunday night, lots of people we know, including my first ever girlfriend who I still find very attractive, quite frankly, but I didn't really speak to her
She's probably still a bitch, anyway.
Her friend Gillian was there, I had a chat with her, she was still quite pleasant.
At the same time I watched Malcolm make some terrible attempt to try and chat up a girl we know called Jo. He made some remark about her skirt that was barely there the previous night or something.
I couldn't sleep again that night, thanks to some seriously disturbing nightmares...Matthew says I should cut down on the cheese.

"Went out for the weekend, it lasted for ever, high with our friends it's officially summer."

I got some sleep eventually on Monday afternoon.
It was a beautiful day, and later that evening Malcolm introduced me to the power of Merrydown - ■.79 a litre, 8.2% - mmmm.....
Judith and Laura came round later and we sat in my back garden and drank.
Then Matthew came round and we went up the town.
It's officially summer.

SUMMER/WINTER SONG

We went round 2 Dan's to get some beer
John came round and we got drunk.
Dan was singing U could make me die music
So we did some 4-track stuff.
At about 10 Beth appeared.
She wasn't happy about working in a bar
Dealing with drunk people
And coming home to find her friends drunk too,
But that's the way it's been lately.

We went out and if it was a good night
It wasn't the first but it meant more
And I don't think I was acting too clever
But I don't care
And I suppose you could let me off
Because what difference would a few more miles make.
What difference does a few more miles make
When homes so far away.

Dan seamed happy that night
He said he always felt like this
It's only the people that change.
One group. Two group.

Do you remember that Leonard Cohen song 'Suzanne'?
Do you remember that Leonard Cohen song ?
Do you remember that Leonard Cohen song 'Suzanne'?
Do you remember that Leonard Cohen song ?
Do you remember summers?

It happens in the summer.
It happens in the winter.
It happens in the summer.
It happens in the winter.

Play Dusty For Me

Dalston Mix 2 named 'Play Dusty For Me' in honour of Dustytape, where I think a couple of tracks came from though 3 tracks also come from the superb Ghost Capital. You will see some more familiar names as well as some total obscurity (track 12 is from my mate which I had a hand in creating) and I hope its a pleasurable nugget hunt. Mediafire link here.

01 Kamlat MAURITIAN ORCHESTRA
02 Go Go Go CHBB
03 Cause Is Aid It Right CLARENCE G
04 Unknown (c008-1)
05 Quere Mas ADNY PRESENTS LEIVA
06 It's Alright ESG
07 Shoplifting SLITS
08 Stop The Drums LE LONDON ALL STAR
09 Mistura No2 MESTER GERALDO
10 Santa Cruz VDB JOEL
11 ACC ROBERT RENTAL
12 Complow PALGONE
13 Kpalamule MIKI JAGA
14 Rebel Disco BRENTFORD DISCO SET
15 Requiem Pour Un Con SERGE GAINSBOURG
16 Air War CRYSTAL CASTLES
17 Venus TO ROCOCO ROT
18 Night Moves (Tokyo Mix) BOB SEGER
19 Relections BILL CONTI

Nightdriving Part Deux

A long-planned sequel to this mix made back in the day. Bit more 'balearic' but gets deeper along the way... Download from Mediafire here

My computer is heaving with old folders of mp3s so I'm going to be merging them and uploading them to probably no comment in the near future. This is also the first in a series called The Dalston Mixes as I'm playing the warm-up set at Happenstance's bi-monthly event at The Junction Room in Dalston. Next one is tomorrow (at the time of writing) Wednesday 14th September!!

01 Set Adrift On Memory Mix - ENYA / ENIGMA / PM DAWN
02 M.I.A - RECLOOSE
03 The Good, The Bad And The Ugly - SWELL SESSION
04 Wide Vice - KERRIER DISTRICT
05 Shelter (Eligia Mix) - LU & JII HOO
06 Autosoul - CUBTRIBE SOUND SYSTEM
07 The Way - GLOBAL COMMUNICATION
08 Dragon Loop - MARCUS WORGULL
09 Analogue Expressions - FLORENCE
10 Les Antipodes - CHATEAU FLIGHT & BERTRAND BURGALAT / JOAKIM
11 Knight Rider Theme Tune
12 In The Air Tonight (Instrumental) PHIL COLLINS

Chateau Marmont - One Thousand Realities

Monochrome psychedelia in this wonderful video for Chateau Marmont from Shinya Sato.

Jan Svankmajer

Been discovering the work of stop motion animator Jan Svankmajer this afternoon. The kind of thing that would've been schedule fillers on Channel 4 back in tha day. Works well as visuals for your faivrit choons...

Voices From The Lake

'...Wisdom and poetry seek for final answers, but our human world is made of energy that never rests, never stops changing. Our world is an endless rearrangement of the same variables.
Love is the pleasure of the universe.
All feelings are variations of love or the absence of it. Love is any agreement between entities or systems....
Since we humans live in a material/energy reality, the occurence of pain is frequent and common, and enduring it is necessary for our survival.
Therefore, love is not the universal answer to all our problems, since material systems must maintain their differences from other systems.....
Feelings never lie. Emotions always tell us exactly the degree of our agreement or disagreement with others....
Agreements can be felt and known but cannot be perceived, which is why we sometimes doubt our good feelings....
To love consciousness, we must be space. To love energy, we must not only be energy, we must be synchronised energy. To love mass, we must be unconscious.'

From Thaddeus Golas' 'The Lazy Man's Guide To Enlightenment' (Gibbs Smith)