written in the dark

and then and then and then and then

ideas i'm never going to use, 1

There was a rumour a while ago that Technics were about to cease production of the 1200 and 1210 - a rumour that seemed all too plausible at the time, even if it was subsequently proved false.

It reminded me of an idea I had years ago, and might as well admit to myself that I'm never going to carry out.

The idea was: produce two records in a gatefold sleeve, the content of which was to be designed to be played simultaneously on two turntables through a mixer.

The tones, the tempos, all would be based on the ratios inherent to the technology: the ratios of 33'/3 to 45 rpm, the facility for pitching playback speed up or down 8%. The listener would have four sides of music, giving the following combinations: side A with side C or D, and side B with C or D. Within those permutations would lie and endless field of adjustments that could be made according to the listeners whim by using different start points, different speeds, etc. Everything about the two discs' content would be made with the possibilities created by identity / contrast in mind.

I never quite worked out the question of difference vs doubling. ie, with two records, each having two sides, should sides A and C be sonically identical, enabling all the strange phasing effects that arise from minute variations of speed? Or should the doubling be limited to patches on each side? Or should side A, B, C, and D all be completely different? What about using locked grooves?

I also never resolved the major difficulty: that it would only have appealed (or at least been readily available as an experience) to those with two decks and a mixer... so essentially amateur/hobbyist/would-be/poseur DJs upwards. If anyone wants to actually do this, please send me a copy when it's done.

hiphop in the cold world

This isn't so much a post as a home for a comment that kept getting swallowed by the form over at Poetix, where Dominic posted Cannibal Ox's 'Iron Galaxy', noting the 'cold world' sample.

Imagining a hiphop appendix to Cold World, you would have to start with the GZA. And there are innumerable references to ice as diamonds in the millennial burst of bling. But those, like Raekwon's 'Glaciers of Ice' and 'Ice Water', have nothing to do with the cold world as Dom discusses it. MOP are getting there. The first Company Flow album is Can Ox's obvious precursor, both produced by El-P, both radiating toxic coldness, sensibilities profoundly disturbed, not just out of tune, but at war with, mainstream normativity. The first two Mobb Deep albums have a brutalized sociopathic chill to them. I can sort of imagine Ulrike Meinhof nodding her head to them, despite the get-money mindset. And more recently (ish), two Clipse tracks have especially cold veins. Ride Around Shining:



...there's a highly synaesthetic (to me) overlap between the coin-scraped-over-piano-innards sample, 'ice' in the lyrics and the affectless chill of the delivery. It's about a certain joy, a certain exultation in success, but it articulates that pleasure through a sonic lip-curl: no fanfares, no choruses, no excess, just that refrigerated skeletal production. And equally, Mr Me Too I think screams materialist anhedonia and disenchantment: