Daves media roundup
'Date My Mum'
a guy dates 3 mothers in order to gauge which daughter must be the hottest, and then he dates her.
I didn't make that up, it's a genuine program. I was just indulging in my daily routine of flicking through the dozens of digital TV stations broadcasting depthless drivel for the desperately unintelligent, shaking my head and lamenting at the state of popular culture, when the intro for Date My Mum presented itself. It was at this point I felt a passionate loathing for my species and a growing urge to die, so I turned off the box to be safe. After all, the next station might have been showing that 'celebrity' hairdresser rubbish or some other total waste of time featuring oxygen-wasting, talentless fuckwits with saggy careers. And at that point I'm quite sure something would have snapped inside me.
On Saturday I bought a 12" by Ricardo Villalobos, the German glitch-house afficionardo with the 7 syllable name. It's called Fitzheuer Zieheuer and it's 40 minutes long. The full mix, apparently, hits the hour mark. It's kind of a house remix of the Chillian national anthem, or at least it features excerpts throughout its duration. All Eastern European-sounding horns oozing with pomp and grandieur. It's amazing, at least for about 15 or 20 minutes. The rest takes some dedication to get through, but Villalobos certainly explores every nook and cranny of the sounds he's using and every conceivable variation of the 4 to the floor beat. I can't help thinking he's getting a tad pretentious in his old age - I don't think I've heard a tune of his come in at below the 15 minute mark for some time, and most of them are techy, noodly and quite ugly. Still, there is something quite addictive about the Chilean national anthem tune, and boy does the groove get in your head. But then anything would after 40 minutes of repetition I suppose!
Went to see Pan's Labyrinthe at the weekend, the posters having led me to believe it was a nice fairy tale fantasy. Wrong! That'll teach me for avoiding promotional material and reviews once I've decided to see a film! Essentially it's a truly horrible war film - very graphic, utterly joyless and quite numbing. A good film no doubt, but one that is woefully mis-advertised and quite horrific. The fantasy element, while stunningly visualised, seems to be saying "forget it people, dreaming is bollocks - life is pain". I was totally unprepared. It was like being promised something delicious and sweet and then having your face caved in with a broken bottle infront of your father (borrowed imagery from the film there, folks!) I suppose it did it's job - it prompted a very emotional reaction in me and I tell you, I've never wanted a baddie to suffer so much as the one in this film. I actually cheered when he was injured!
So, if you like a good, harrowing reminder of just how disgusting human beings are, go and see it. Me, I wonder why so few people make nice films. And if the answer to that is 'people won't go and see them', I wonder why people are so obsessed with misery, suffering, death and horror and feel that cynical 'we're all fucked' mindset coming on again.
On chilling
Tonight I have that stupid feeling that comes as a result of doing too much that says I should be doing something . It's one of them vicious circles. You do loads, really need to chill, but you're used to doing loads so chilling seems unproductive and wrong. Its a feeling I hate! I've been sitting here, idly surfing the net, reading blogs, checking emails, etc, and my subconcious is obviously thinking "right, just this one last thing then we'll do something useful". When my concious and my body both know that doing something 'useful' is a damn fool idea. But the subconcious has the upper hand as ever and it's spazzy reasoning is giving me that butterfly'y feeling. So I'm writing a stream of conciousness blog entry to smother it!
So I've been ridiculously busy lately building this Flash game with Andy. It took 3 weeks, shit loads of work, many all-nighters and several trips to London. But we pulled it off and await our handsome paycheque! Wahey! The result of being immersed in 1 project for 3 weeks is that I'm slightly behind in other things and have the above-mentioned 'Chilling Anxiety'. To top it all, this week is silly busy too.
I'm not used to working this much! It's literally the hardest I've worked since I quit my job and went travelling 2 years ago. That's not a bid for sympathy, by the way, infact I'm extremely impressed with myself that I managed to go 2 years without really stressing over a bout of really hard, intensive work. Excellent!
What else characterises planet Dave at the moment? Umm, I've updated my music site with some of my older tunes - click here. ("No! You will not relax and do nothing, you will update your music site dammit!") and I'm now 4th on the UK Google search for Dave House after, of course, The Other Dave House. I'm currently in the process of trying to make a Tech House tune for a genre-specific production challenge on a Discogs forum. That particular community recently remixed one of my tunes, too, which was interesting. It was cool to hear how other people interpreted my sounds (they were all recordings from my travels) - some of the tunes were great, others deviated from the original so much that remix isn't the word, not that that's necessarily a bad thing.
I like things with titles following the format of this post. 'on so and so'. It's kind of old-school scientific / philosophical.
I also like it when solids are measured by units traditionally associated with liquids.
I might be buying a king size bed.
Go and see Borat's movie film. It's very, very funny.
Well, thats about all I can think of for now. It seems to have done the trick - I'm no longer thinking I should be doing something useful. Infact I'm just tired now. So I'm turning in. Which is pretty useful in itself I suppose!
name me
for fucks sake.
The Other Dave House is well documented in these pages, he lives in Surrey and is a successful musician playing guitarey stuff.
The Other Other Dave House has also been mentioned, he is a graphic designer from London (I think).
Now please welcome onto the scene the Other Other Other Dave House, a fucking house DJ from London! Look here
Dear god! What the hell is going on with my name?!
So anyway, enough is enough, I need a new name for my DJing and production antics. Suggestions most welcome. I thought maybe 'dhouse' as thats still my name and is also the URL of my music website. Its more housey (as in the genre) than Dave House though and I've already had non-house fans put off by my name.
The other option is to kill the Other Dave Houses. I will pay handsomely.
too dull for a title
Its been a while, eh? Normally my blog posts are somewhat themed as I've decided to write about something (more often than not something thats got on my nerves). This, however, is simply a post to reset the 'time since last entry' counter and has no predetermined direction. Perhaps a metaphor for... good evening.
So, I've been fucking busy lately. In no particular order, I've been suffering from the never ending cold, I've been to Amsterdam and I've got a massive new work project on.
Errr, thats it.
See, when it comes to diary type entries I can't be arsed really. Maybe I'll write a post soon concerning my thoughts on the red light district in the 'dam, or my shock at doing several full days work on the trot.
Until then though, thats it.
Bet you're glad you read this.