Somewhere along US 93

Somewhere along the Utah and Nevada border, a fat man wearing no shirt and hospital pants grills some steaks on the back of his dinged-up Airstream Classic trailer. A few old missile casings and rusted fuselages sit in his backyard which is an endless desert thundering out towards the Sierra Nevada range.

I pull over and take another picture of the sinking sun. He calls out howdy and I shout hey, our voices bouncing off the hills. The air is dead silent except for the sizzle of the grill fifty yards into the weeds. A screen door bangs and he disappears and returns with more steaks. I scan the horizon, thinking I can almost see New York and then down to New Orleans and across to LA. This country is too damned big. A small panic rushes up. Who installed these power-lines way the hell out here? Or are they telephone cables? I don’t understand how anything works.

406 miles to go. My rental car sprays dust and the fat man waves as I push south towards Vegas.

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Datacide - Flashback Signal
from Flowerhead. Asphodel/Rather Interesting, 1995
Sixteen minutes of golden atmospherics from an all-time favorite ambient album. A wavering chord slowly erupts into a badass muffler rattling breakbeat. More on Datacide here.

Rytmikaravaani poster on Vuorikatu street.

On July 31, AGF/Delay and Legowelt will perform at the Rytmikaravaani festival — and it’s free! Sponsored by the good people at Hytky and the Helsinki Cultural Office, the ‘rhythm caravan’ will bring some first-rate electronic music to Alppipuisto park and the Kuudes Linja nightclub and terrace. Vladislav Delay and Legowelt will also deejay under their Uusitalo and Astro Unicorn guises, along with live sets from Sähko’s Villa Nah, Sarana, Introvert, and others. 

I’ll be playing some techno songs, too, while projecting some photographs of American machinery and scenery. I also designed the dancing robot poster you see above, along with a simple site for the festival.

Friday, 31 July 2009
6pm - 4am
Alpippuisto Park & Kuudes Linja
Hämeentie 13, Helsinki
Free in the park; 10€ at the club

Check the internet site for the complete line-up. If you’re in Helsinki, you’ll probably see the poster peeling off the walls. 

If you haven’t already, spend the next 129 hours of your life with Astro Unicorn Radio. But first, here’s a promotional track from Uusitalo’s Karhunainen long-player and some classic Legowelt:

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Uusitalo - Korpikansa
from Karhunainen. Huume, 2007 | buy mp3s  
Stripped down and clicky frozen dub techno elegance.

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Legowelt - Are You Truly Debonaire?
from Wirtschaftswunder. Bunker, 2000 | buy mp3s
German for “economic miracle”, Wirtschaftswunder is an all-time favorite from the extensive Legowelt canon, which runs deep and heavy. Be sure to grab a copy of his latest release, Vatos Locos, a dark old-school acid workout that is easily one of my top-ranking albums for 2009.

Helsinki mannequin at Kamppi

Two new reviews for Resident Advisor: M-nus offers nine Louderbach remixes and Abstraxion delivers another four tracks of untethered electro with Temple of the Sun (read a write-up of last year’s Six-Eight & grab a copy of the bang-up ‘Chandler Bing’ here).

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Joker - Purple Wow Sound
I finally got around to listening to this jaw-dropping mix which has already been covered by Fact Magazine and the Guardian (for the record, I’m always about eight months late to any party). But the important thing is that I listened to it loud. Purple Wow Sound drags along the bottom of your bass-bin like a sluggish monster, hydraulics jumping and windows rattling. Featuring artists like Heny G, Skream, Silkie, tons of Joker’s own grade-A material, and dozens of unexpected moments such as a Spanish guitar floating across a laser show.

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Forage - Extinction and Inaction
Here’s a full-bore technology mix that kicks off with Giuseppe’s ‘White Waves’ from the top-shelf Astor Bell imprint and never lets up. When he’s not doing field work in the boreal forest of Alberta, Forage is a dj and producer who resides in Edmonton. With Extinction in Action, he delivers an organic blend of twenty-six tracks that includes a few favorite heavweights (Artifical Latvamaki, Jesse Somfay, Minilogue) yet primarily serves as an excellent introduction to newer artists such as Mario Miranda, Caspian Rabone, and Ciclofans. Terrific music for running around the suburbs of Detroit.

 
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Luke Eargoggle - Afterparty
from Audio Warriors. Bunker, 2003 | buy some mp3s
A short track from a solid and often overlooked electro long-player. After one minute, that tea-kettle synth will own you.

The town of Sodankylä isn’t much to look at. A few low-slung cinderblock buildings add up to two hotels, three markets, four restaurants, and several bars. There are no log cabins or walruses. I came to Lapland expecting polar exotica, but it looks a lot like any small town in Michigan or Wisconsin, except this town of of 8,800 never gets dark in the summertime and it hosts one of the world’s most unique festivals.

At two in the morning, people holler and grope along the streets while a cover band cranks out a relentless playlist that leans heavily on Billy Idol, Def Leppard, and Metallica. It’s typical Saturday night bedlam except somebody forgot to turn out the lights. A girl vomits into the bushes while her friends cheer; a man tips over and doesn’t get up. Rock to never neverland…

This quirk of latitude will shred your equilibrium if you’re not careful. Nearly one quarter of Finland sits above the Arctic Circle where it experiences several weeks of constant daylight in the summertime (also known as Black Sun). This strange play between light and dark makes Lapland an excellent place for a film festival; nothing feels finer than escaping the 3am daylight to sit in a darkened room.

On the first day of the Midnight Sun Film Festival, I saw Helsinki Forever, a terrific montage by Peter von Bagh (the festival’s artistic director), followed by a quick nap and then a noisy documentary about All Tomorrow’s Parties at 3:15am. The following day, there was Times and Winds, a stern Turkish film about the tragedy of childhood, and Grill Point, a nimble comedy about a love triangle in Frankfurt that features a parakeet named Hans-Peter.

Despite my best efforts, I dozed off in the middle of each film — my exhaustion was no match for any director. The festival also honored John Boorman by screening Point Blank (not Point Break), Excalibur, The Emerald Forest, and Deliverance (which I imagine takes on a strange new resonance in remote Sodankylä). For better and worse, the film programming was across the board and I wonder if the idea of a cohesive vision is sacrificed to the novelty of watching a movie — any movie — in a tent in Lapland.

Regardless, my weekend in Lapland delivered on its promise: I ate reindeer pizza, watched some unexpected films, lost track of time and space, saw a thrilling performance by a cross-dressing no-wave band, played a freakish amount of backgammon with Oliver Blank, and watched pine trees and rivers streak past my window on the 13-hour train ride back to Helsinki.

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Ratatat – Lapland
from Ratatat. XL Recordings, 2004

My view of the Turkish film about goat herders, thanks to a woman with frighteningly perfect posture.

New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC, San Francisco. Mention these cities and vivid images come to mind, even if they’re cribbed from postcards. Or try Detroit, New Orleans, Boston or Houston. Most American cities play distinct roles in the American psyche: they’re busy, violent, brainy, hip, sprawling, or tragic. But what is there to say about Cleveland? Although it is yet another industrial port city that failed to recover from decades of redlining and outsourcing, it’s also the quintessentially banal American city. Characters on TV shows are often given roots in Cleveland to score jokes about their naivety; despite its storied history and recent struggles with crime, Cleveland remains shorthand for bland Midwestern American-ness.

St. Louis, Wichita, Biloxi, Memphis, Kansas City, Boise. I’ve visited a lot of mid-sized American cities in the throes of redevelopment, but I haven’t seen anything approaching Cleveland’s aggressive effort to resuscitate its downtown and reconnect its ruptured arteries. Most cities simply install a new sports stadium, maybe a new office park, and then cross their fingers and hope for the best. Judging from the Quicken Loans Arena (possibly the most awkwardly titled venue in America), Cleveland also believes in stadiums, yet it’s also gone much further by rezoning several districts into mixed-use neighborhoods, aggressively marketing its historical areas, and transforming Euclid Avenue into a pleasant thoroughfare with a dedicated bus lane, space-age bus shelters, and a single 25mph lane for cars. Simple touches like lower speed limits, mown lawns, and pedestrian right-of-way make more of a difference than any stadium or casino.

To borrow from Fitzgerald, do American cities have second acts? Would it be possible for Cleveland to someday rival, say, Chicago? In 2005, Cleveland was voted “the most livable city in America” by The Economist (sharing the honor with Pittsburgh). On the surface, this selection is surpising − but if a city has nothing to lose, perhaps it’s possible to truly innovate while offering a low cost of living. The image of Cleveland as an edgy arts mecca is probably a ways off: The Economist also named Cleveland as “the best place for a business conference”.

Also known as the Forest City and the Mistake on the Lake, Cleveland is no model city. Like many rust belt cities, the dividing line between rich and poor is razor thin. University Circle is dotted with schools and research centers, winding paths, and green parks while just a few blocks on either side, the landscape abruptly shifts to liquor stores and vacant buildings. But if Cleveland continues to reclaim its older buildings and place a premium on mobility, infill, and aesthetics rather than office parks and tourist attractions, it’s possible to envision a functional city a few years down the road. Regardless, it feels good to show up in a city prepared for a tour of the usual blight and sprawl, yet discover that the people in charge really do care.

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The Ohio Players - Skin Tight
from Skin Tight. Mercury, 1974

A handsome Finnish-to-English dictionary

“Where did you say you live?”
“Finland.”
“Oh, Findlay. That’s just a couple towns over. I got a cousin there.”
“No, Finland.”
“Fin Lake? Is that near Lincoln Village?”
“No, Finland.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a country.”
“Right . . . where is it?”

And for the first time, I understand the pain that the rest of the world sometimes feels.

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Nostromo - Around the World in 80 Seconds
from Alien 7″. Bronze Records, 1979
Named for the spaceship in Ridley Scott’s Alien, Nostromo reworks the film’s soundtrack into full-tilt disco kitsch on the title track while the b-side delivers this blast of swirling intergalactic disco from twenty years back. And grab some Space-Kudu edits here. 

thanks Another Night on Earth

Istanbul Rose

Here’s some Sunday morning music for the 1960s poolside with Pan-Am jets flying overhead in a cloudless sky. The internet says Jeanette is a half-Belgian, half-Spanish, English-born, American-raised singer born in 1951 who lives in Spain — so retro-global visions make sense. Drenched in reverb, Jeanette’s voice moves across the ballroom like a druggy Connie Francis with gliding strings and folk guitar. This is the sound of tall grass, sprinklers, and sepia-tinged photographs with solar flares. Beautiful dream pop. 

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Jeanette - Amanecer
from 15 de Coleccion 1968 - 1976 | buy mp3s

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Jeanette - Oi Tu Voz
from Oi Tu Voz / Callate Nina 7″, 1967 | buy mp3s

thanks to Stefan

Come out and see a techno heavyweight tonight: radio dj, producer, and co-founder of the top-drawer Mobilee imprint (Pan-Pot, Sebo K, etc.), Berlin’s Anja Schneider plays the Rose Garden in Helsinki.

Friday, May 29
1am - 2:30am / 12 €
Iso Roba 10, Helsinki

Grab an excellent two-hour set in Brussels here. Perfect caffeinated music for finishing off your Friday. (And if somebody can identify the track around the 22:00 mark, I’d appreciate it — haven’t heard it in a while and it’s driving me nuts).