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"Wire contributor, semi-mythical pop svengali, erstwhile thespian, sampler troubadour and untidy kitchen user" - Owen Hatherley of Sit Down Man, You're a Bloody Tragedy

"Your songs are pretty little paths - take us somewhere nice." - Elodie Amandine Roy, Applejack Zine
"We seem to have the bird by the bush in the hand."

With a plot revolving around union resistance to Taylorism, I’m All Right Jack (1959) should have plenty to interest someone I know. Margaret Rutherford, Terry Thomas and John Le Mesurier all…

9 years ago
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Watch The Pipettes online today - we are playing at the Turning Point Festival at the Roundhouse, London, at around quarter to seven this evening. Click on the image above to see the live stream.

Watch The Pipettes online today - we are playing at the Turning Point Festival at the Roundhouse, London, at around quarter to seven this evening. Click on the image above to see the live stream.

9 years ago
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The Noughts and Crosses Band at Catch this Wednesday, plus Hissing at Swans and Gresham Flyers. Four pounds. 8pm.

The Noughts and Crosses Band at Catch this Wednesday, plus Hissing at Swans and Gresham Flyers. Four pounds. 8pm.

9 years ago
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I am playing at the Zenith Bar, Islington, this Saturday.

I am playing at the Zenith Bar, Islington, this Saturday.

9 years ago
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Link


“Will you walk into my parlour?”
Said the spider to the fly;
“‘Tis the prettiest little parlour
That ever you did spy.
The way into my parlour
Is up a winding stair;
9 years ago
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A few hurriedly written and barely structured thoughts on file sharing.

It would seem that arch-debunker of the dubious use of statistics, Ben Goldacre, has himself become the victim of a rather dubious use of statistics, for in Goldacre’s recent twitter posting (in…

9 years ago
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Sellafield, “The most hazardous industrial building in western Europe.” (via The Guardian )

Sellafield, “The most hazardous industrial building in western Europe.” (via The Guardian )

9 years ago
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Radio's Uncanny Origins
If Guglielmo Marconi had once considered the possibility of using his wireless telegraph as a means of contacting the dead, it would not be long before the same technology was being put to…
9 years ago
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"The international economic system didn't work - and it didn't work in very dangerous ways."



As The Observer’s Will Hutton and the Financial Times’s Martin Wolf took to the stage of the Old Theatre at the London School of Economics today, in order to revisit…
9 years ago
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Police lines cordoning off the whole Heygate estate, near Elephant & Castle, this afternoon, right up to the Coronet. There appears to be just one resident left in the entire block.

Police lines cordoning off the whole Heygate estate, near Elephant & Castle, this afternoon, right up to the Coronet. There appears to be just one resident left in the entire block.

9 years ago
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Shock Treatment (1981): What Richard O'Brien’s electrifying Rocky Horror sequel lacks in tight, coherent plotting (not helped by the American Screen Actors Guild strike, that left them forced to relocate the action from the real life town of Denton, Texas, to a television studio), is more than made up for by the effervescent production design and at least three great songs, including this one.

9 years ago
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21 plays

Six Bagatelles for Music Boxes and Electronics. I. Massig

This will be the first of six short pieces I am recording in tribute to one of my favourite pieces of music of all time: Anton Webern’s Six Bagatelles for String Quartet. Unlike Webern’s bagatelles, mine are not written using tone rows (but they are atonal), and could not be played live (due to the large amount of post-recording electronic and digital manipulation) but hopefully they have something of the spirit of Webern’s work, of which Arnold Schoenberg wrote, “Every glance can be expanded into a poem, every sigh into a novel. But to express a novel in a single gesture, joy in a single breath: such concentration can only be found where self-pity is lacking in equal measure. These pieces can only be understood by those who believe that sounds can say things which can only be expressed by sound.”

9 years ago
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Dr Who - The Armageddon Factor
…bears several distinct resemblances - from John Woodvine’s Jack D. Ripper-esque Marshall to the ‘Armageddon Factor,’ programmed into the Mentalis computer, itself - to Dr Strangelove. Best special sounds to be found in...

Dr Who - The Armageddon Factor 

…bears several distinct resemblances - from John Woodvine’s Jack D. Ripper-esque Marshall to the ‘Armageddon Factor,’ programmed into the Mentalis computer, itself - to Dr Strangelove. Best special sounds to be found in the tremulous low frequency oscillator in the main computer control room on Zeon.

9 years ago
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1. The event of the ‘fall of socialist regimes’ was not an event. These regimes had in fact been dead for a long time.
2. In no way did this death signify the failure of communism. Communism had already often failed and it will fail again. But it is also continually victorious. It is the only available Idea in the history of human beings.
3. The failure should not be attributed either to the despotic character of socialist states or to their economic shortcomings. It is the withering away of politics which made these constructions untenable for their own leaders. And in all this, people played practically no part.
4. The political crisis that these collapses bear witness to is a crisis in the West just as much as in the East. It is a general crisis.
From Alain Badiou’s new foreword to his book, Of an obscure disaster, on the fall of communism in the eastern bloc (via Infinite Thought)
9 years ago
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from the Dallas ‘teabagging’ protest (thanks to @Glinner & @Cynicor)

from the Dallas ‘teabagging’ protest (thanks to @Glinner & @Cynicor)

9 years ago
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