Dom Davis (The Blog)

So for a while now I’ve been on the lookout for a track I’d head at Slimelight a few times. Sadly I had no clue who it was by, no idea what it was called, and rather got the lyrics wrong when hunting for it. To be fair it is in German and I had thought it was called ‘Stein Um Stein’, which to be fair is the name of a Rammstein track I have. A not so recent compilation purchase which took several weeks to get to me yielded excellent news. There, on the track listing, was a track by ‘And One’ called Steine Sinde Steine (Stones are Stones). Jackpot. Sadly it was a live version, however, 60 seconds later and I had the studio version downloaded an on my iPhone.

So I present for your listening pleasure, And One, Steine Sinde Steine:

Steine Sinde Steine

Lyrics (including translation) can be found here. Enjoy

The biggest problem I have with Amazon is it’s so damn easy to buy stuff. I’m already registered so there’s no faffing and it’s just a question of search, locate, buy now. Then comes the waiting which puts a disconnect between the buying and receiving, something that I hate. Then there’s the anticipation, is it what I hope it is, or is it two right shoes, neither in the style I’ve ordered (which has actually happened, although the vendor in question was most apologetic and sorted full refunds)?

With the loss of my unlimited data plan for the iPhone, ban on headphones at work and irregular club visits my source of finding new music has shifted away from last.fm and back to buying obscure compilations in the hope of finding some gems. I was made aware of one such compilation recently via Facebook and purchased it from, surprise surprise, Amazon (yes, yes, I know, optical media, how quaint, but it’s not on iTunes so one has to improvise).

My triple CD box set, including such delightful gems as Suicide Comando’s “Die Mother@&£%er, Die” (in this context the Die is the English ‘die’ not the German ‘the’), arrived yesterday. I wasted no time in ripping the packaging open and feeding CD 1 into iTunes. Minutes later and CD 2 was also ripped. The third CD, however, prompted a warning. Did I want to overwrite existing songs? Hmm, now I know I have some of these tracks already, but as part of different albums, surely it’s not going to complain about that? A quick look at my music library showed I did, indeed, have that CD on my machine. Assuming I’d messed up and started at CD 3 I put CD 1 into the drive. Same warning. So I took a look at the two CDs left in the box to see if I’d got them muddled. There was CD 2 and… CD 2. Well that explains it. Minutes later and the whole lot is back in it’s original packaging with a returns label on it. A replacement should be with me tomorrow. Hopefully, this time, with 1 CD 2 and a separate CD 3.

So Grendel are doing a UK gig! Yay! Gary Numan will be playing too. How cool is that? Oh, it’s a festival. Arse.

I’ve never really got on with festivals. They’re generally to sprawling with too many people and crap toilet facilities. That kind of thing was OK when I was 20 and a group of us would go get drunk in Roundhay Park while some band or other played in the background, but the thought leaves me cold now. I like my gigs small and intimate and my toilet facilities plumbed into the mains. Hell, the gig I’m going to this weekend is the after party one, not even the main do at the o2 Academy in Islington. Here’s hoping a proper UK tour¹ is organised when Grendel release their next album.

¹And if you’re listening JD, by proper I mean: at Slimelight, on a Saturday; Excile on a Saturday; or, at a push, The Wendyhouse, on a Saturday. Not somewhere miles away during the week.

This weekend is the first time I’ve driven a long distance on fast roads by myself whilst playing music (I usually don’t have anything playing so I can concentrate, but I’ve got at lot more confident driving). I can now attest to the fact that certain tracks do indeed increase the ‘leadness’ of ones foot, add at least 10mph to the proceedings (would have been more if it weren’t for the fact I’m paranoid about speeding, and that Po doesn’t really like doing over 80) and make you a much more aggressive driver, as the Audi driver who tried to cut me up will attest. Still, he was in a turn right lane and I did have +5 acceleration due to Banging Tunes so his attempt to cut in front of me was thwarted by a little red car with an engine screaming in pain while it’s driver shouted “Fuck you Mr Audi driver!”. I was, of course, summarily overtaken by him 400 meters later, but I think my point stands.

There was a downside though. I was listening to a playlist on my iPhone, which was mounted on the windscreen for use as a satnav, so changing track doesn’t happen. Being stuck in a queue of traffic behind a lorry doing 40 in a 50 is annoying. Add music that makes you want to do Mach 3 makes it near intolerable. They should allow you to rate music as motorway, main road, country lane or urban driving and then have the satnav serve up the relevant tracks depending where you are

So there I am, lamenting my return to work and desperately trying to summon up the motivation to get something done when up pops a tweet notification from VLRK:

Bit last minute, but: DJ VLRK + Live: DECODED FEEDBACK @ Slimelight’s Industek Floor/London/UK this Saturday. Be there!!!

At best this means very little to you lot, but if I explain that VLRK is the artist who is basically Grendel (one of my favourite bands) and Slimelight is the club I go to it does give one pause and consider if they might like to toddle along for this.

That said, however, I am away the weekend after and two weekends going out might be a bit much (both from a lack of sleep and a lack of seeing The Zozo perspective). I guess the first question to answer is: are there any trains running? If there aren’t then it will put the kibosh on any plans.

“Do you know where your teenager is at five o’ clock in the morning? The after hours club. The clubs attract thousands of Chicago area young people. Some say they come looking drugs, dirty dancing, and pounding, pounding techno music.”

I have a track that’s part of a set put together by one of the Slimelight DJs that contains that sample. I have no idea who it’s by or what it’s called and Google isn’t being much help. In the 90′s Soulwax, who aren’t exactly a mainstream band, did a side project called Samantha Fu and a track called Theme From Discoteque. While it used that sample it’s not the track I’m after. It could be a remix, or it could be an entirely different track by someone completely unrelated. And, no, Shazam doesn’t have a clue what it is either. The last time the Internet was this unhelpful with locating a track it took me 10 years and in excess of $100 to obtain it. I’m rather hoping this will be quicker, even if I have to track down which DJ, go to Slimelight and physically ask him.

For all it’s geeky goodness the iPhone has one major flaw: it comes with Apple headphone which are, to be blunt, crap. They fall out of my ears and leak sound like a bugger. With the original iPhone the headphone socket was recessed meaning only a certain subset of headphones would work with it, plus I really wanted some with a mic so I could make calls with them.

While hunting for headphone I had a number of friends suggest in ear noise cancelling ones. I had tried these previously and didn’t get on with them, however, I was assured that if I didn’t get a cheap pair I’d have a much better experience. A quick look on the mac store shows these headphones which fitted the phone, looked good, had a mic and sounded awesome. There was a problem though, the cable broke. Within a month. So I sent them back for warranty repair, only to have the replacement break weeks later. I don’t expect headphones to last forever (the cables always break) but I expect them to last at least 6 months. After about the 5th breakage I got pissed off and decided to get something more robust.

After much research, much consideration and much asking of friends I decided to treat myself to a pair of these. They are, hands down, the best earphones I’ve ever heard. In fact I ended up having to re-rip my entire CD collection because, for the first time in my life, I could understand what people were going on about with lower quality MP3s. Although my shiny new headphones didn’t fit my iPhone out of the box Shure did sell an adapter cable that gave a mic and fitted the iPhone perfectly. The great news was the adapter cable was also the part that gave up the ghost quickest so, while I was back to cables breaking every 6 months it was a relatively cheap adapter and not a phenomenally expensive pair of headphones. In the 3 years I’ve had my headphones I’ve only had to replace the earbuds once, after about 18 months of use.

Shure also have a great reputation for customer service. Their two year warranty is generally no quibble and you send them back the broken headphones and they send you a brand new set. Since it’s a new set they come with a new two year warranty. In theory these should be headphones for life. This warranty is possibly going to be my saving grace as today I did something rather stupid: I washed my headphones. After a bit of testing I came to the conclusion that I was going to have to get my backup headphones out, hunt for the warranty documentation and hope I could get them replaced.

The good news is that I found all the relevant paperwork, everything should still be in warranty and now I just need to contact Shure and see what they say. Fingers crossed I’ll soon have a shiny new replacement set and will be enjoying fantastic sound reproduction once again.

It occurred to me today that, as far as music is concerned, I’m a bit of a polyglot. While the vast majority of my music is in English (or just instrumental), there’s a load of other languages in there too, including:

• German – The Germans seem to be very good at Industrial, most famously with Rammstein. I’ve even got tracks sung in German by the German sounding Hanzel und Gretyl who are in fact American. Everything just sounds harsher in German
• Spanish – Nowhere near as many tracks as those containing German lyrics, but there’s a fair few tracks, mostly from South American bands (Brazil seems to spawn the odd seriously heavy outfit every now and then). While I can speak pidgin German thanks to much of the music I listen to I have no idea what most of the Spanish is.
• Latin – For someone into fairly extreme music I seem to own a fair amount of classical music. Oh, and Enigma. All of which amounts to quite a few tracks.
• French – Less numerous still and mainly due to one artist: Jean Michelle Jarre. There’s a sprinkling of French words in other tracks, mainly from the 80′s it seems.
• Romanian – Not so odd if you think about it. One track (well, three, but two are remixes). A guilty pleasure that I’ll let you work out for yourself to spare me the shame
• Russian – Ironically enough this is thanks to Rammstein, a German band. One track that I’m aware of, and that only has it in the chorus. There is also the mad take on Korobeinki (the Tetris theme tune) done by Eisenfunk, although that is instrumental
• Elvish – Lord Of The Rings Soundtrack. ‘Nuff said.

I think that’s it (I’m not sure what languages the Gladiator Soundtrack uses, but I’m guessing I’ve got them covered). I also never know if The Cranberries break out the Gaelic or not, or if that’s just her wailing a bit.

If we’re really going for it the album Zoolook, by Jean Michel Jarre includes samples of some 50 different languages (most distorted beyond recognition), including some very bizarre ones, but that feels a bit cheaty.

Oh, I also have one album that has a Greek title, but that’s just Ministry dicking about. Everyone just calls it Psalm 69.

I lost a glove yesterday. This is probably a deep and meaningful metaphor for something which, hopefully, will have a profound twist when I locate it tonight in the Lost Property at Morissons. I’m not interested in whatever fable not finding my glove has to say.

No doubt today’s single carriage train is also an allegory for something, although I suspect it’s simply trying to say that, no matter where you live, or how much you pay, the train companies will stiff you. They’ve made up for it though with two conductors¹. No idea why, they’re going to give up checking tickets in two stations time due to an inability to walk down the carriage as it’s having to hold enough people to fill a train with twice as many seats. The fact that I would usually have my ticket checked already by a single conductor working a two carriage train tells you something about ease of movement at the moment. At least I’m not stood up, or worse, sat on the floor in the vestibule like I had to do from Colchester. At six times the cost of my current season ticket for only an extra 10 minutes travel time (albeit on much longer, faster and more frequent trains) there was a definite lesson to be learned there.

So what does all this mean? Well for me it means I get to bitch at you lot. If you want anything more deep, meaningful or profound then you’re looking in the wrong place. I could suggest turning to the lyrics² of songs which, currently, are informing me that “No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world” and that “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future”, however, be warned, they could have just have easily informed you that “I am not your dad! I am: Electric Man!”. You makes your choice and you takes your chances.

Footnote

I’m not even sure where to begin with just receiving an email saying @diabetesfacts³ is now following me on Twitter and what that is trying to say. Dealing with lifes troubles by consuming vast quantities of refined sugar is, as far as I’m concerned, a key tenant in my life philosophy and not something that should be questioned. To them I would counter with one of musics most profound statements: I’m a firestarter, twisted firestarter⁴.

¹ I think one may be in training. There seems to be a lot more in the way of detailed announcements which serve little point and I’ve never seen the second conductor before. I suspect today’s lesson is “how to deal with a rammed train full of annoyed people wanting to know where the extra carriage is”. You kind of have to feel sorry for him.

² So technically samples in this case rather than lyrics, but that’s just the nature of the particular genre of music I like. The point, such that there is one, remains valid. If we were going to wait for actual sung lyrics (bearing in mind we’re on random here) I’d be advocating “Just one fix” which is probably not a good life strategy.

³ Link withheld because, deep down, if we search our souls, we know said person is just fishing for follows, a spammer, phishing, trying to peddle something or all of the above.

⁴ Still on random, what can I say? Although if we’d waited 30 seconds or so it could have been something very profound⁵

⁵ Suicide Commando, God Is In The Rain. Google it if you’re interested but be warned it’s not quite as pro religion as the title might at first suggest. We are, after all, talking about a man that wrote the album Bind Torture and Kill which is inspired by Dennis Rader (also see the film BTK), to which we can only ask: Annie, are you OK? Are you OK? Are you OK Annie? (Alien Ant Farm version)

You know those days where you’re just flat? Today is one of those days, or at least this afternoon is. I blame it entirely on the fact that this morning was a bit of a shock to me, I’ve had two massive anti-climaxes at work over the past two days, I’m going away in just over a week and, frankly, I can’t be arsed with being in work at the moment. Not the worlds best attitudes, I know, but we all have days like that.

It didn’t help that someone has dicked about with the network at work which means I’ve had to take my iPhone off it and leave it on the mobile network for it to work¹. That said it has helped with one of the solutions used to lift me from my funk. I was sat flicking through my music collection in that ‘nothing really hits the spot’ frame of mind which results in about 4 seconds of a song getting played before you hit next… next… next… next…

Sod it.

My phone wasn’t on the office WiFi so getting and downloading some new music wasn’t going to hurt anyone, and I’ve been thinking it was time for new tunes for a while now. Time to investigate Solitary Experiments in a ‘buy and download a couple of the highest rated albums and see what we think’ type way. A mixed bag thus far, although the good tracks are fitting my mood nicely and helping lift it a little. I’ll give it all a good listen over the next few days and sort the wheat from the chaff.

Anyway, all this will be a moot point shortly as my future wife² and I are going out for dinner tonight which is guaranteed to lift the mood. Just need to get home first.

¹ And by ‘work’ I really mean download my email because the same network change means it’s not working on my laptop.
² 9 days baby, we’re into single digits!