Archive for December, 2008

Aside from decent human nature, few things in life are free. Almost every product and/or service must be purchased or exchanged for a currency, sheep or a deck of cigs… depending on whether you live in a developed, developing or confined space on earth. Then, there’s the second thought of even if something is free… is it any good? Will effect me in a positive, negative or neutral way? Sex is free…. for most of us… that’s pretty damn great… so is picking berries in the wild… not quite the same, but do you see my thought process? And then there’s the podcast; something I personally think is one of the greatest inventions to date. I currently subscribe to 35 on completely different topics, ranging from dance music across to weekly media updates from the Guardian, marketing tips from WOMMA, sports analysis and comedy sketches. The point is, if a podcaster gets their shit together and keeps up with fresh monthly content, you’re onto a total winner. For example: If you want to find out which tunes are hitting the top ten on Beatport downloads… then listen to the weekly ‘Beatport Burners’ show… a quick round up, with decent length clips of each track with full artist, tune and label info. I think that aside from the obvious free aspect, podcasts allow consumers to absorb more information at times when they would normally not be able to do so – so for me, I guess it’s about convenience as much as cost.

Anyway as 2008 comes to an end and as a little hats off out of respect, I wanted to put together a quick top five (excluding of course the Chris Lake podcast series…. that’d be a tad biased), highlighting quality, varied and reliable content from the whole year. Here goes:

5) In FIFTH place comes the globally recognised Giles Peterson, and his ‘Worldwide’ series. A true legend of discovery.

4) FOURTH goes to the aforementioned Beatport and the reliable ‘Burners’ series. A great way to keep up to date on who’s topping who of the most popular electronic chart.

3) For THIRD place I’ve gone with the people from Allez Allez. I posted about them earlier in the year with much new found respect. Their production continues to impress me, Mikhail Faria making me smile the most.

2) SECOND spot goes to Ben and his team at Data Transmission. I like the fact DT seems to be having such success with its online publication… setting standards and all that. John Dahlback and the Plump DJs were two episodes that stood out from what was by all accounts a great year of music.

1) At the top of my humble chart in FIRST place is the Bodytonic Music Podcast. Qool DJ Marv, DJ Yoda, the Unabombers… etc etc etc… suitably eclectic, hugely entertaining and bang up my street. Great work! Just please keep them coming!

Have a good New Year people and I’ll catch you in ’09!

“Hello”… I say sheepishly.. well, I knew this day would come, and my God have I been dreading it. I guess officially this is my second one, but I’d imagine most people who know me are aware I had absolutely jack-all involvement with the ‘Changes’ music video. Anyway, during the last summer we shot the video for “If You Knew“.

Now, the plan wasn’t always for me to have a stab at the old acting malarkey, but things kind of just panned out that way. So please don’t give me too much shit… I know my place, and it’s certainly more suited behind Ableton Live or the decks, than it is the camera.

Never the less, a big thank you to Paul, Hannah, Brodie, all of the crew at Poison Pen and everyone else who helped in one way or another on what turned out to be a very, very long day.

Pete gave up a short clip last week, but now the guys at Data Transmission are showing the whole lot. So, without further ado, here it is… Me aka Chris Lake feat. Nastala ‘If you knew’… I hope you like it:

Not that I'm turning my back on YouTube, but check out the quality of Royksopp's music video's on Vimeo.

We're setting up a channel asap and will be showing Chris' new music video for "If you knew" around about mid December. I'll keep you posted. Until then, I leave you with "What else is there" featuring The Knife's Karin Dreijer Andersson.

…. has climbed from its entry point, no.8, to the top of the Cool Cuts Chart! Click here to see this week's full list. 

Rarely do I feel like posting rants about things that annoy me. I'm not that kind of person and to be honest, I find that some people who blog about their issues should stop typing and deal with the problem face-to-face.. .well as far as possible anyway. Were I back in my old office I'm sure this would spark debate, but that's just how I feel. 

So.. Zavvi.. the BBC reported yesterday:

"Woolworths' move into administration has forced fellow retailer Zavvi to stop taking new orders for CDs, DVDs and computer games via its website."

The question is, should we the consumer be shopping online with companies who fail to deliver items as you'd expect to find them in store? I think not! Rather than sticking an iTunes gift certificate in an envelope and in an attempt to boost the 'under-the-tree' activity, I thought buying some CDs for my lady and family would be a great idea.

Now I'm cool with the fact it's having issues at its end, but nowhere in this email….

"Dear Mr Sebastian Mysko

Thank you for placing an order with zavvi on 29-11-2008. Your order number is 2508xxxxx. A list of recently refunded items in your order is shown below.…..blah blah"

…..does Zavvi say: "apologies for sending you four out of the five requested albums in such poor packaging that not one has survived the journey up to Leeds…" I know I'm up north, but for fuck's sake… a 20% hit rate… that's shocking.. and they were all in separate packets… how did all share in such poor fate?! And how crap does that look as a present? An unsealed, scratched, broken CD case… which when opened has a magical CD that jumps out at you! What a load of rubbish! I can't help but wonder if these were packed by angry workers putting in their last 20mins in after Woolworths made the corporate announcement. Poor sods…

So I guess this is me warning you readers that if you're going to buy material online in the future, you might want to re-consider CDs… For me it's just another reason to stick to digital downloads. Sorry about the rant. As a sign of good will and festive spirit, here's a cheeky November mix from our main man.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaa humbug!