HOUSE

Been quiet recently as we've been getting this ready...

Quite simply the bestest, most HOUSE publication out.

Available next week from the usual suspects.

Squash News

Squash? In my 30s? I think it's a bloke thing. I actually panic if I don't have any in.

What is not ace about Quentin Blake illustrations on Roald Dahl drinks though?

ART ATTACK!

Went to the Imperial War Museum to see this today:














Seriously one of the best exhibitions I've caught all year. No pics (they weren't allowed) but the catalogue contains the lot and is only a score. Restores your belief in the power of good design.

Whilst I was there I also saw the Steve McQueen exhibit. Proper moving piece called Queen & Country - he's made postage stamps out of the faces of soldiers who have died in Iraq. The idea is to relate what is happening over there to the everyday here. All the families of those included gave their permission to the artist and it's a truly moving exhibit whatever your politics.

Real "something in my eye" material:



































Finally I had a (solemn) walk through the Holocaust exhibition. Again, powerful stuff and an excellently curated exhibition treading the line between interactivity and documentation perfectly.

The showpiece for me was the scale model of Auschwitz with added audio testimony from real life detainees.



















http://www.iwm.org.uk/

Mo' Money

I went to the Claw Money party last night @ Blink.
It was mainly for fellas to check each others trainers out, but also to promote Claw's new Vandal.




















Claw is hot shit.
The shoes are in Foot Patrol from today.

http://www.foot-patrol.com

Back to the Fluoro

New shit from Dixon and the boys at Innervisions. Also a black, knocked-out version available - pics to come.

Available soon from innercityvisions.com

Good enough for Lance...

My new baby:

Homer

Sometimes, Supreme get things so right it's almost annoying.

BLACKOUT

No, not Lil Louis but paps favourite Britney and her comeback album.

Don't crawl under your duvet, don't smear your mascara with tears and definitely don't "leave Britney alone" because Blackout is worth your ear.

Celebrity culture (if that isn't an oxymoron) throws hundreds of lambettes to the slaughter - and the arguments about who's using who are as interesting as a Naomi Klein essay - but no matter how many times Paris Hilton gets her back doors smashed in on video, she still can't make us interested.

Like all quintessential pop muses, Britney is a canvas for image makers, producers, writers etc. So far so Kylie, but Britney is also a tragic modern female in the tradition of Christine Keeler and as such is a far more fascinating personality. If you wanna be a diva you have to fuck up, and don't we just love a fuck up eh Miss Winehouse?

Britney's status is compounded by the roll call of producers and writers on the album, from Swedish hitmakers Bloodshy & Avant, Timbaland protege Danja and (of course) The Neptunes.

Luckily for Britney, she may have forgotten her knickers and how to dance but she still knows how to make pop records. In fairness, on most of the album she serves as not so much a singer but a vocal instrument, her voice slots into place amongst the other finely tuned pieces of the glossy pop jigsaw. It's the next step of a sonic adventure that saw Toxic being played by Gilles Peterson as well as that cunt Chris Moyles.

The spin may have you believe that Jive's decision to bring the release forward was down to all the tracks being posted on blogs already, but on the strength of the material everyone should be chomping at the bit. No need to intellectualise (badly) anyway, she makes pop music after all. When you hear her serenading your trip through TOPSHOP - and you will - it'll be all the affirmation needed to at least shut that 'What The Buck' nause up. Just a pity 'Got Me High' never made the final cut.

No links here...but it's all out there.

Rebel, Rebel!

Spotted on the way to the Griffin public house today:



















At least we can all rest easy now, knowing that punk's not dead (oi) when such biting satire is still on the streets.

The same artist is also working on a massive 'Tony bLIAR' banner to hang under Kingsland Rd bridge.

London Fashion Week

Find a better outfit than this.

You obviously can't.

Picking Boogers / Direct Action

You have to love the fact that someone in an office was so offended by the actions of another that they made their own protest sign.

The first one is from a male office toilet and refers to a bogey (or should that be 'bogues') gallery on the wall about the urinal.

The second is pretty self explanatory...but it was in a women's bog which makes it WELL funnier.

Trick of the eye

This car hire company has created this clever tromp l'oeil to show a car reversing into the delivery van. The idiots.

Beat Hotel

Coming up this Saturday is this little spectacular;

Artowrk by the fabulous Rik Moran

London Freewheel

I've always been into cycling, so with that in mind I pushed past the yoyo, pogo stick, and parasail to get my bike out the cupboard and did the London Freewheel yesterday.

Basically the roads in Central London were closed to cars etc so cyclists had the rule of the road. The sight of thousands of cyclists pedalling round Westminster was something to behold but it didn't detract from the fact that it was full of knobheads.

The party line for cyclists in London seems to be 'Four (or more) wheels BAD, Two wheels good'. What this fails to take into account is that 99% of committed cyclists are tits of the highest order. Looking at the assembled scruffbag, trustfund eco-warriors, the tech-sandalled geography teachers and commuter bike-riding River Cottage types I longed for a bendy bus to take someone out...particularly the Highbury Fields resident calling for her hideous offspring "Oscar...Oscar darling!"

The final insult was the group stopping to chat to Boris Johnson. As far as I can tell, you can be as much of an incompetent, right wing shitehawk as you want - as long as you ride a bike your sins are forgiven. Chairman Mao likes a cycle - ok some of his ideas are a bit rum, but he wouldn't subject us to the number 73 on our way back to Stokey would he eh?!

Combat 88 'grace the decks'

Proper taxidermist house music from the Combat 88 bunker. A much needed fix till the new blog is up and running.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/z7tnq5

Full on disclipinary action.

One of them pagan turnouts

Fact - Jacqui McShee is my dad's cousin.
I always knew this but for some reason never bothered to actually listen to any of her music. By all accounts that was a mistake, especially since the British Psychedelic Folk movement is undergoing something of a glowing re-appraisal right now.

Pentangle - Bells

http://download.yousendit.com/DBDAFC866F4EA4F3

If DJ Harvey played this you'd soon have people pushing up the price on ebay...in fact the recent feature in WIRE has probably made sure of that already.

The soundtrack to a mead-fuelled goat rape, with flowers in your hair.

Goldie is a nause...

but he has made some amazing records...like this one from 2001 - 'Beachdrifta' (note urban spelling)


I know this isn't real appealable house music, but it IS deep so at least relates to the current house zeitgeist.


http://download.yousendit.com/E7783AEF70798285


I have a few mates whose livelihood depends on the SALE of music so I'm gonna at least try to only post stuff I've bought and recorded myself. Apart from mixes, but everyone does that...so two wrongs make a right.

Supreme

The Supreme webstore opened today

*cue mass hysteria from men who should know better

Supreme, hyped as they are do make some lovely stuff and I like many other sad, white males of a certain age have queued up on Layfayette and Upper James for the latest 'drops'...but I know I'm a cunt for doing it.

So in a related, half-baked idea I present


















The Top Five Things To Carry Around In Your Supreme Rucksack:

1) a 'fresh' pair of 'sneaks'

2) Wipe-clean photo of Rakim

3) Packed lunch

4) suicide note

5) a bomb

Control

Last night I was fortunate enough to catch a screening of Anton Corbijn's 'Control' (thanks to my man Mozzer on the inside).

Known to most as 'The Ian Curtis film' the movie is actually based on Deborah Curtis' book 'Touching From A Distance' and is just as much her story as Ian's. In fact Debbie (played with incredible combination of vulnerability and stamina by Samantha Morton) is central to the whole thing, and as such becomes a central figure in the history of Joy Division and New Order, if only by virtue of her life with Ian and its effect on him.

Ian and Debbie married young, and whilst the home life in Macclesfield suited Debbie, it's clear that Ian felt tethered by the link. The Cyril Connolly quote that "there is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hallway" has been thrown about in relation to Ian and the film makes you aware of that. I think it's a male thing, certainly a male dreamer's thing.

Sam Riley is iconic in the lead role, so much so that he's moved to Berlin to live with the actress who plays Annick in the film...which is weird and/or hilarious. Morton shines like the class actress she is but for me it was Toby Kebbell who stole more than a few scenes with his portrayal of manager Rob Gretton. Played by Paddy Considine in 24 Hour Party People, Kebbell (who was Anthony in Dead Man's Shoes) brings a humour to the story that reminds you that being young and in a band is actually fun.

As art the movie is breathtakingly beatiful - the decision to shoot in black and white is immediately vindicated despite the romanticising nature of it. Corbijn's photography captures the drudgery of the 70s north, but paradoxically gives it life, making the melancholy streets and landscapes more reminiscent of his later work for U2 than Lowry paintings.

Apparently there was a lot of studio wrangling over the film in regard to the final cut but I don't really see how it could be shorter - it certainly didn't need to be.

I give it a maximum 5 Spunk Ups out of 5.

Go and listen to 'Disorder' right now and spend the winter in monotone.

Control opens in the UK on Oct 5th.

New Dawn Will Probably Fade...

Welcome to Clubbed For Heroes, a place for me to pompously pick through the bones of modern life with an inflated sense of self importance.

Whether this new internet dawn will fade as soon as I get bored with it - bearing in mind it's taken me three months to write the first post on it - is a matter for the future.