tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-169242952024-03-18T03:03:39.430+00:00dan hancoxa miasma of lunatic alibisdan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.comBlogger198125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-10169773824695152992015-06-26T13:02:00.003+00:002015-06-26T13:04:02.676+00:00Skepta, grime, resistance, Francoism and taking back the city<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_Rqe-eITGe0/VY1F9NM27JI/AAAAAAAAAXI/fXfhDEtAAzM/s1600/Skepta%2BFader%2Bcover.jpg" width="100%" />
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My 4,000 word <a href="http://www.thefader.com/2015/06/04/skepta-cover-story-konnichiwa-interview">Skepta cover story for The Fader</a>, on his remarkable journey, on Tottenham, grime, confidence, and why England is like a burger with nothing on it. This was a joy to write and research - albeit, the research started over a decade ago in the dingy, smoke-filled basement of Plastic People, watching him <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYsTKo4wjm0" target="_blank">spit over Skream's Midnight Request Line</a>. The first time I interviewed Skepta it was 2007, everyone was certain grime was 'dead', and I wrote it up for the much-missed grime, dubstep and reggae zine Woofah.<br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s6_4fqz6Auk/VY1F_bynnnI/AAAAAAAAAXQ/y5BS9JLu2ls/s1600/GrimeRap-page-001.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s6_4fqz6Auk/VY1F_bynnnI/AAAAAAAAAXQ/y5BS9JLu2ls/s200/GrimeRap-page-001.jpg" width="134" /></a>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PokQJpPM5S0/VY1GApc3g0I/AAAAAAAAAXY/HxZILi33S3g/s1600/GrimeRap-page-002.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PokQJpPM5S0/VY1GApc3g0I/AAAAAAAAAXY/HxZILi33S3g/s200/GrimeRap-page-002.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />
And a well-time spread on the Observer New Review's music cover about <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/31/british-mcs-stormzy-jammz-little-simz-krept-konan-novelist" target="_blank">the next generation of grime and UK rap MCs</a>, the kids who grew up watching Dizzee when they were just starting secondary school - featuring interviews with the remarkably talented <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqQGUJK7Na4&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Stormzy</a>, Novelist, Krept & Konan, Jammz and Lil Simz.<br />
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A <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/28/jam-city-interview-dream-a-garden-music-place-freaks" target="_blank">Guardian interview with Jam City</a> in which he perfectly captures the mood of London and its embattled music scene - of vestiges of hope, love and resistance in the age of Foxtons and SSRIs.<br />
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<span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">AND ON SPAIN...</span><br />
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<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IMbgPxfqWck/UKL-7PhF7YI/AAAAAAAAANw/WkTgv3IJT7w/s1600/Porto+June+2012+Madrid+HG+2012+265.jpg" width="46%" /> <img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CvFF-UXJ5ZM/UKL-0VGnSPI/AAAAAAAAANo/oYok6xC6pHA/s1600/Porto+June+2012+Madrid+HG+2012+264.jpg" width="46%" /><br />
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An <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n13/dan-hancox/race-god-and-family" target="_blank">essay for the London Review of Books on the legacy of Franco in modern Spain</a>: ostensibly, a review of the book Franco's Crypt. This was months of work - so much to think about, on memory and forgetting, on fascism still rearing its head, on mass graves and grave symbols.<br />
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A <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/2015/04/podemos-vs-clowns" target="_blank">report from Seville for the New Statesman</a> about the tensions between the 'electoralistas' of Podemos and their refusenik comrades in the radical social movements; featuring a disproportionate number of clown jokes, for a serious political magazine.<br />
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A <a href="http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/dan-hancox-barcelona-en-com-take-back-the-city-284" target="_blank">piece for VICE on the hugely significant results in Spain's May elections</a> - perfectly dovetailing so much of what is important in 2015: gentrification, post-representative politics, Pasokification, David Harvey's theories on resistance after the factory, and why we have to <a href="http://takebackthecity.org/" target="_blank">Take Back The City</a>. The new Mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau is the former spokeswoman of the radical housing group the PAH; this is the way the wind is blowing...<br />
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dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com555tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-11551352729289431992015-02-21T16:28:00.002+00:002015-02-21T16:28:55.284+00:00More Podemos, more gentrification<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ORoGzAAHayo/VOioEDQHfYI/AAAAAAAAAWc/Qw96YdPrnfI/s1600/IMG_20141018_104017228.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
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A bit slow on the update here - remember there's more regular updates on my <a href="http://dan-hancox.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/danhancox">Twitter</a>.<br />
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So, Podemos are about nine months away from changing everything. In October <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2014/10/31/podemosradical-party-turning-spanish-politics-head-279018.html">I went to Madrid for Newsweek to cover the Podemos founding conference</a>, a mass-participation "citizens' assembly" in the Palacio Vistalegre (above, before the citizens arrived). The sense of destiny was palpable - that they would overturn la casta, the 'regime of 78', was deemed both necessary and inevitable. I began my dispatch:
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<blockquote>
To celebrate his 36th birthday last weekend, Pablo Iglesias declared war on the Spanish establishment. “Heaven is not taken by consensus,” the de facto leader of Podemos declaimed to a raucous reception in Madrid’s Palacio Vistalegre bullring, “it is taken by assault”.</blockquote>
One week later, they were leading in the polls for the first time.<br />
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I've since written <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/09/ernesto-laclau-intellectual-figurehead-syriza-podemos">this for The Guardian, a piece on how the late philosopher Ernesto Laclau paved the way for a new left-wing populism</a>, rescuing it from is many <a href="http://dan-hancox.tumblr.com/post/111369066044/memo-fao-the-all-populists-are-xenophobes-gang" target="_blank">detractors</a>, like, er, the people writing The Guardian leader.<br />
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Some more pieces on gentrification:<br />
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* <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/london-regeneration-videos-dan-honcox-374">A long piece on a series of painfully bad, painfully revealing property developer videos for VICE</a>. ~Urban villages, bursting with creatives~ - that kind of thing.<br />
* Also for VICE, I spent some time with the wonderful charity Z2K who are helping London's forgotten victims of gentrification: <a href="http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/poverty-exile-in-london">the homeless 'poverty exiles' who are pushed further and further out when the developers and artisan bakeries move in</a>.<br />
* <a href="http://dan-hancox.tumblr.com/post/109521517914/my-cover-story-on-last-weeks-review-section-of">My cover story for the Review supplement of The National</a> about how the super-rich will be the death of democracy in the cities of the future.<br />
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Some other bits:<br />
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* <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/dan-hancox/adam-curtis-in-emperor%27s-new-clothes" target="_blank">A column on why Adam Curtis wears the emperor's new clothes</a> for openDemocracy.<br />
* <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/art/va-museums-new-exhibtion-showcases-pieces-of-resistance#full">A review of Disobedient Objects</a> at the V&A for The National.<br />
* <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/music/a-sound-of-freedom-a-compilation-of-mestre-cupijs-music-introduces-the-brazilian-fusion-of-escaped-slaves#full">A review of a compilation of the music of the quilombos</a> for The National - Brazil's escaped slave communities.<br />
* <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/the-review/album-review-the-cambodian-space-project--whisky-cambodia#full">A review of some golden-age Khmer pop music</a> for The National.<br />
* <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/the-review/letters-from-abroad-how-taormina-in-sicily-has-attracted-writers-from-around-the-world-and-across-the-centuries#full">A travel piece on Sicily's literary heritage</a> for The National.<br />
* <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-lifestyle/the-review/tate-modern-exhibition-turns-the-camera-on-conflict-and-the-ways-we-remember--and-forget#full">A review of Conflict.Time.Photography</a> at the Tate Modern for The National.dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-2676371384933082872014-08-01T14:36:00.001+00:002014-08-01T14:37:07.621+00:00Newsweek cover and a regeneration supernova<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NqJsXROdq5g/U9ue6MkLnpI/AAAAAAAAAVk/WCwdVsmGBLw/s1600/Newsweek+Valdeluz+cover.png" width="100%" />
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Here's my <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2014/07/11/nobody-gets-out-here-alive-255733.html" target="_blank">Newsweek cover story</a> on the Spanish ghost town of Valdeluz - and why their extraordinary mayor is determined that it shake off its ghosts.<br />
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The web version of the story above is slightly truncated, but to be honest there was always going to be more to say. There was a multitude of layers to this story that I could only touch on: including the reluctant bankruptcy proceedings undertaken by Reyal Urbis, the construction giant whose <a href="http://instagram.com/p/nYGxZ1M9M_/?modal=true" target="_blank">extravagant Madrid offices</a> I discovered bore little hallmark of the misery they have inflicted on others.<br />
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Then there was the remarkable discovery that the town was - unbeknownst to almost everyone there - home to the Saldon Posición, a huge, hugely significant Spanish Civil War bunker, where the leader of Republican Spain, Juan Negrín, spent the last year of the war, trying desperately to hold up the country's fading resistance to the fascist coup. The mayor of Valdeluz kindly took me to see it, through a copse of blossoming trees, down a dirt path, on the grounds owned by a local golf course. You could walk by and never give it a second look - it wasn't even locked. Such is the commemorative attention given to so much of Spain's painful 20th century history:<br />
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<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WWtI38-HjB8/U9uhFlVoudI/AAAAAAAAAV4/zXbrdKlwGYE/s1600/IMG_20140427_173344385.jpg" width="47%" /> <img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1UgR0V32M18/U9uhDuBXH6I/AAAAAAAAAVw/9OziFvYk7OU/s1600/IMG_20140427_172133237.jpg" width="47%" /><br />
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Of course, the Spanish 'brick crisis' is not about one small exceptional town, it's about an entire country - as I found out in the nearby city of Guadalajara:<br />
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Of the various other things I've been working on recently, I'd like to point you to <a href="http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/dan-hancox-regeneration-supernove" target="_blank">this long, long-researched piece for VICE on Newham's Regeneration Supernova</a>, the aesthetics of the gentrification industry, and the Asian Business Port that will soon become Britain's "third financial centre", on the prime site of the Royal Docks.<br />
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Also, <a href="http://www.versobooks.com/books/1582-the-village-against-the-world" target="_blank">The Village Against The World is now out in paperback</a> - only £5.99 here. And later this year, also in Japanese! More soon...dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com34tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-60368257326463452432014-04-09T12:33:00.002+00:002014-04-09T12:40:45.365+00:002014! Asturias, mass graves, regeneration, pop-up shops, the fight for the city, Afrobeats and Stuart HallOkay, a long overdue (but not overly long) update. The Village Against The World's doing humblingly well in hardback, in reviews and in the Spanish version. Paperback out through Verso June 2014. Some excerpts and reviews <a href="http://dan-hancox.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/the-village-against-world-reviews.html">here</a> - oh and it's <a href="http://www.versobooks.com/books/1490-the-village-against-the-world">50% off on the Verso website</a> right now.<br />
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Otherwise, I wrote the London Review of Books Diary about my time chasing the past in Asturias, about the legacy of Franco and the Fascists' mass graves, about the coal mines and the legendary <i>dinamiteros</i>, and the remarkable story of the 1934 workers' revolution in Spain's beautiful northern region. LRB subscribers can <a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n03/dan-hancox/diary">read the essay here</a>.<br />
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I've also written three pieces about gentrification, regeneration and the physical language of neoliberalism in the ever-changing city, all for VICE. More to come.<br />
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1) On <a href="http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/Newham-single-mothers-protest-gentrification-olympic-inspire-a-generation">the campaigning of the Focus E15 mums</a>: single mothers being told by the Olympic Borough of Newham to leave London, because there's just no room for them here.<br />
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2) On the meaning of Elephant and Castle's pop-up shipping container mall, aka the piece that went viral as <a href="http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/shipping-container-elephant-park-dan-hancox">'Fuck Your Pop-up Shops'</a> (eye-catching headline, cheers VICE).<br />
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3) On the demolition of Glasgow's Red Road flats as part of the 2014 Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. Aka <a href="http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/dan-hancox-commonwealth-games-opening-ceremony-flats-destroyed">regeneration as live TV entertainment</a>.<br />
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Here's an essay for The National's weekly Review section <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/music/woody-guthries-new-box-set-dusts-off-the-us-singer-songwriters-archives#full" target="_blank">on Woody Guthrie's remarkable 'government recordings'</a>, and what being the voice of the people really means.<br />
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And <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/the-review/street-life-humanitys-future-depends-on-ability-to-negotiate-and-sustain-public-space#full" target="_blank">a longer Review cover story</a> about the exploding size of world cities (3bn new city-dwellers by 2050!) and the ever-more-vital battle to be able to protest - and to party - in public space. Did you know they removed an entire roundabout in Bahrain, because it was a politically provocative roundabout? Fuck ur neo-Hausmannisation, basically.<br />
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Joining the dots, here's <a href="http://www.factmag.com/2014/02/11/million-pound-sound-fuse-odg-and-the-remarkable-rise-of-afrobeats/" target="_blank">a piece for FACT where I interviewed Fuse ODG</a> about what it means to feel alienated in London and in Ghana, and how this contributed to his dazzling, uniquely 21st century pop music. Finally, and relatedly, given the challenges and benefits of diasporic multiculturalism and the joy of collective culture, here is <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/02/remembering-stuart-hall" target="_blank">a short piece for the New Statesman in memory of the late, great Stuart Hall</a>. What a terribly long shadow he casts; what a reminder his death is that we must think, fight and play harder, together. Innit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhYhX7c2KlQ" target="_blank">Fuse</a>.dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-13584038092696581082013-11-14T11:55:00.003+00:002013-12-09T12:15:12.944+00:00The Village Against The World - reviews<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3-OIGEvCZNM/UqWzgAfjoxI/AAAAAAAAAR4/OgeoWBGbuUU/s1600/Hancox_Village_Village_Against_the_World_300dpi_CMYK+(2).jpg" width="100%" />
So, my book about Marinaleda came out a month ago. It's had a lot of great reviews, I'm pleased to say:<br />
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"A thoughtful, take-nothing-for-granted account ... this engaging book is as much a study of idealism in practice as it is of life in a highly unusual pueblo. The respectful, intelligent writing places the villagers at the centre of their own story – and that story is fascinating." (<a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/11/power-pueblo">New Statesman</a>)<br />
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"(The) book is full of lively and genuinely inspiring detail ... Most importantly, the co–operative answers Slavoj Žižek's warning to Wall Street Occupiers that "what matters is the day after, when we will have to return to normal lives". As Hancox makes clear, socialist Marinaleda has defined the fabric of the normal life of its residents, day after day, for 30 years." (<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/10/village-against-world-dan-hancox-review">The Guardian</a>)<br />
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"Dan Hancox's The Village Against the World' is, for lack of a better word, awesome ... Hancox’s book reads like something one might find on the New York Times best-seller list if it weren't for its subject matter: the anti-authoritarian shenanigans of a Communist village and it's Robin Hood mayor. It's a must-read for anyone interested in radical movements like Occupy Wall Street or the Zapatistas." (<a href="http://critical-theory.com/story-marinaleda-communist-village-world/">Critical Theory</a>)<br />
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"A fascinating recent history of the region - part prettily written travelogue, part political commentary. A delightful counterpoint to the tales of woe that have emerged from Spain post-<i>la crisis</i>, this story of Marinaleda's battle against all odds to survive self-sufficiently will delight anyone with a revolutionary heart." (<a href="https://twitter.com/danhancox/status/389456315057053696">easyJet Traveller</a>)<br />
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"Citing Orwell's reflections on ''that strange and moving experience' of believing in a revolution,' Hancox offers the reader a rare chance to believe, to relive his own encounter with the village and the mayor who 'drained the capitalist-realist defeatism out of me and carried me halfway back to adolescence.'" (<a href="http://jacobinmag.com/2013/11/socialism-in-one-village/">Jacobin</a>)<br />
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"In his captivating new book, The Village Against the World,” Dan Hancox shows, in lyrical and penetrating prose, that not only is it possible, but 'an observable fact.'" (<a href="http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_village_against_the_world_20131108?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%253A+Truthdig+Truthdig%253A+Drilling+Beneath+the+Headlines">Truth Dig</a>)<br />
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"This provocative depiction of the vision and tenacity of this social experiment should stretch the imaginations and raise the hackles of progressives and entrenched capitalists alike." (<a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-78168-130-5">Publisher's Weekly</a>)<br />
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"Takes us beyond the wavering attention of the mainstream media to offer a substantive understanding of the actions, politics, history, and daily life of the marinaleños. The marinaleños actions, principles and tenacity are inspirational ... [the book] will ... hold fascination for all those in search of a utopia." (Red Pepper)<br />
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"With late capitalist malaise so prevalent and chronic that people have stopped believing in cures, this well-observed account of a village of 2,700 stout souls who think and live otherwise is a tonic." (New Internationalist)<br />
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A couple of interviews still online: In <a href="http://www.vice.com/es/read/dan-hancox-marinaleda-la-utopia-de-un-pueblo">Vice Spain</a>, where "the definitive book about Marinaleda has been written".
<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/a-village-in-spain/4980256">On ABC</a>, Aussie national radio for a long, 40 minute interview, where I was awarded a coveted Koala Badge (really), for being interesting. And most recently, I was on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03k21nl" target="_blank">BBC Radio 4's Thinking Allowed</a>.<br />
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<b>Numerous buying options <a href="http://www.versobooks.com/books/1490-the-village-against-the-world">here</a>. Spanish version is <a href="http://image.casadellibro.com/libros/0/marinaleda-la-utopia-de-un-pueblo-9788423417629.jpg">out now</a>. Korean version to follow.</b><br />
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Thanks to everyone who came to the London and Bristol launch events - I'm talking about Marinaleda <a href="http://www.thersa.org/events/our-events/a-future-beyond-capitalism">at the RSA</a> on Thursday 21 November, 1pm, it's free but ticketed.dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-81735224158942755792013-09-08T21:48:00.000+00:002013-09-08T21:50:23.161+00:00Grime ebook round-up: extracts, interviews, reviews, audio<img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XZ44GiV6hKo/UfeaHAAh8CI/AAAAAAAAAQw/Pph1CDputRo/s1600/Absolutely+final+Stand_Up_Tall_High_Res.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
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My £1.99 ebook Stand Up Tall: Dizzee Rascal and the Birth of Grime came out as a Kindle Single on <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stand-Up-Tall-Dizzee-ebook/dp/B00E96DOT0/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375347638&sr=1-6" target="_blank">Amazon UK</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stand-Up-Tall-Dizzee-ebook/dp/B00E96DOT0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1375274815&sr=1-1&keywords=Stand+Up+Tall%3A" target="_blank">Amazon US</a> a month ago, and I've been overwhelmed by the response (thanks!). I'll remind everyone here that <b>if you don't have a Kindle</b>, there are free, easy-to-use Kindle Reader apps for PC/Mac/iPhone/Android/iPad at those links above.<br />
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Here's some of the coverage that followed:
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*As a taster, an exclusive book excerpt in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/aug/19/stand-up-tall-dizzee-rascal-grime-extract" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.<br />
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*A thoroughly enjoyable round-table pub discussion I did with Mr Beatnick and Tom Lea for <a href="http://www.factmag.com/2013/08/22/stand-up-tall-a-round-table-debate-about-dizzee-rascals-boy-in-da-corner-and-the-birth-of-grime/" target="_blank">FACT Magazine</a> about grime, Dizzee, and the legacy of 2003.<br />
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*An <a href="http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/dizzee-rascal-and-the-birth-of-grime-10-years-on" target="_blank">NME</a> piece in which I was asked to tell the story of grime via 5 essential grime YouTube videos.<br />
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*A 10 minute interview for the BBC World Service in which I tried to explain grime and its unique London geography, sound and politics to the whole world:<br />
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<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F104234914" width="100%"></iframe>
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There's also an interview I did with east London local newspaper <a href="http://www.wharf.co.uk/2013/09/how-the-gleaming-towers-of-can.html#more" target="_blank">The Wharf</a> about what grime meant to the area; a decent-sized review in <a href="http://www.dummymag.com/reviews/dan-hancox-stand-up-tall-dizzee-rascal-and-the-birth-of-grime-review" target="_blank">Dummy Mag</a>; another review from the <a href="http://dagrimeprincess.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/review-dan-hancox-stand-up-tall-dizzee-rascal-and-the-birth-of-grime/" target="_blank">Grime Princess</a>; a great US perspective on Dizzee in this review on <a href="http://wokeuplate.tumblr.com/post/57156275755/stand-up-tall-dizzee-rascal-and-the-birth-of-grime-by" target="_blank">Woke Up Late</a>; and selected in <a href="http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/16824/1/books-news?utm_source=Link&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=RSSFeed&utm_term=books-news" target="_blank">Dazed and Confused's</a> books of the week. Get the ebook and let me know what you think.dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-43066517042783372142013-07-30T11:50:00.001+00:002013-08-01T09:20:07.186+00:00NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT - Stand Up Tall: Dizzee Rascal and the Birth of Grime<img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-XZ44GiV6hKo/UfeaHAAh8CI/AAAAAAAAAQw/Pph1CDputRo/s1600/Absolutely+final+Stand_Up_Tall_High_Res.jpg" width="100%" />
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In August 2003, in a makeshift pirate radio studio on the roof of a Stratford towerblock, the stars of London's grime scene gathered to show their skills on the mic. A decade later, Dizzee Rascal, Wiley and Tinchy Stryder are among Britain's biggest pop stars, while Dizzee's adversary Crazy Titch is serving a life sentence for murder. The towerblock was demolished to make way for the London Olympic site.<br />
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Ten years ago this summer, an extraordinary new sound exploded out of London's council estates that would change music forever. While New Labour were flooding urban Britain with ASBOs and CCTV, teenagers like Dizzee looked up at the gleaming towers of Canary Wharf and contemplated their own poverty; telling stories of devastating bleakness, backed by music that shone with the futurism of a brighter tomorrow.<br />
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It's entirely possible that <i>Boy in da Corner</i>, Dizzee's Mercury prize-winning debut, was made on a hand-me-down PC donated to Langdon Park School by Lehman Brothers.<br />
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Over 15,000 words, this is the story of that remarkable musical moment, seen through east London's unique history of opulence and inequality, violence and aspiration, and how a teenage genius with nothing to lose made the best British album of the 21st century.<br />
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Available on Amazon as a Kindle Single <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stand-Up-Tall-Dizzee-ebook/dp/B00E96DOT0/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375347638&sr=1-6" target="_blank">RIGHT NOW</a> - or on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Stand-Up-Tall-Dizzee-ebook/dp/B00E96DOT0/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1375274815&sr=1-1&keywords=Stand+Up+Tall%3A" target="_blank">US Amazon</a>. If you don't have a Kindle, there are free, easy-to-use Kindle Reader apps for PC/Mac/iPhone/Android/iPad at those links. Here's a Dizzee rarity from the old days to keep you company:<br />
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<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F103231179" width="100%"></iframe>dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com98tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-17695077362311170272013-07-07T19:48:00.001+00:002013-07-07T19:52:43.303+00:00Tesco Welfare and the Poverty Pay Industrial ComplexI noticed this new sign outside the entrance to my local Tesco on Friday:<br />
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<img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zdVPEhUaZZ4/Udm7ukE8u7I/AAAAAAAAAQg/4DrtNleTqDU/s1600/IMAG2722.jpg" width="100%" />
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Food bank collections inside supermarkets are not a new phenomenon, but they are a growing one, as demand at charitable food bank organisations like the Trussell Trust sky-rockets. I wrote a little bit about the incredible rise in the use of food banks <a href="http://www.opendemocracy.net/dan-hancox/let-them-eat-cupcakes" target="_blank">here</a>, in my (somewhat sporadic) openDemocracy column - anecdotally, a lot of the families forced to use food banks for the first time in the last 18 months do have<i> </i>earned income coming in, but it's just not enough, as the scourges of underemployment, welfare cuts and widespread wage suppression take their toll.<br />
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Of course, it does Tesco PLC, the second-largest retailer in the world after Walmart, with over 3,000 stores in the UK alone, no harm to be associated with this Victorian-style charity-not-social security regression David Cameron is implementing - with the enthusiastic support of most of the British media and large portions of the Labour party. It's particularly important they're not seen as a heartless profiteering behemoth when <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2045430/Tesco-UK-sales-worst-20-years-shoppers-tighten-belts.html?ITO=1490" target="_blank">their recession-stricken customers are starting to leave them</a> for budget chains like Lidl and Aldi. So why not watch <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_p-UPqUs5s" target="_blank">this heart-warming Tesco PR video</a> with some words from Tesco's smiling Dan Jones, who is the Group Future Coach for the Tesco stores in the South West (his actual job title)? In a wonderful management-speak Freudian slip, he says "it's a great way of putting something back", acknowledging, uncontroversially I guess, that the rest of the time they are taking things away.<br />
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When you're done basking in the warm "buzz" of the video. why not hit up the <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23everycanhelps" target="_blank">#EveryCanHelps</a> Twitter hashtag to find out how Tesco have been positioned as the moral conscience of post-welfare state Britain?<br />
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We've seen some great photos today of food collections across the UK - amazing effort from all who have volunteered & donated <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23EveryCanHelps&src=hash">#EveryCanHelps</a><br />
— Tesco PLC (@TescoMedia) <a href="https://twitter.com/TescoMedia/statuses/353546603702927360">July 6, 2013</a></blockquote>
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If you're stocking up for a BBQ today why not put an extra can in your basket and do your bit to help feed people in need? <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23everycanhelps&src=hash">#everycanhelps</a><br />
— Tesco PLC (@TescoMedia) <a href="https://twitter.com/TescoMedia/statuses/353427613882126336">July 6, 2013</a></blockquote>
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Have you donated to the <a href="https://twitter.com/TescoMedia">@TescoMedia</a> food collection today? <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23foodbanks&src=hash">#foodbanks</a> helped 346,992 people last year & need your support <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23everycanhelps&src=hash">#everycanhelps</a><br />
— The Trussell Trust (@TrussellTrust) <a href="https://twitter.com/TrussellTrust/statuses/353453322910445569">July 6, 2013</a></blockquote>
According to their Twitter feed Tesco were collecting in every single store in the country on Friday. Who needs a welfare state, right?<br />
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<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>This won't be news to any of the millions of people who've worked in a supermarket in Britain, but Tesco (like Sainsburys and the rest of the big four chains) pay <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/supermarket-staff-live-in-poverty-6291599.html" target="_blank">substantially below the living wage</a>. For a powerful elaboration of what that actually means, and how it dovetails perfectly with the rise in the need for food banks, I implore you to watch this excellent 10 minute video on poverty pay in supermarkets from Paul Mason on Newsnight:<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/WxFQPT1L7Jw" width="410"></iframe>dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-66743185339238679472013-02-11T00:14:00.002+00:002013-02-11T00:46:05.687+00:00Coffee for nobody: Catalunya, la crisis and the end of Spain?<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jbPgEcpejdw/URg0j5v8Z7I/AAAAAAAAAPk/xPe_-Be70Mc/s1600/The%2BNational%2BCatalunya%2BCOVER.jpg" width="100%" /> <img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9LRu4ko_ymI/URekNipcKNI/AAAAAAAAAOw/RwkqH7IA-2g/s1600/Spain%2Bscan%2B1.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
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<i>It seems strange for a nation famed for its exuberance, but Spain's national anthem, La Marcha Real, is one of only two wordless anthems in the world. It seems strange, but this reluctance to declare what Spain stands for and where it came from speaks volumes about the country's discomforting recent past, and its increasingly volatile present.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>La Marcha Real was not always wordless. Until the country's fascist dictator, Francisco Franco, died in 1975, it was full of the patriotic bombast that characterises most national anthems. The words were removed in 1978, during the country's uneasy transition to parliamentary democracy. As a mark of this uncertainty, nothing was written in their place.</i></blockquote>
I wrote <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/catalonia-independence-movement-causing-pain-in-spain#full" target="_blank">the cover story for The National's weekly Review section last week</a>, about what the Catalan push for independence means. Photos for that piece by the superlative <a href="http://davestelfoxphotography.foliosites.co.uk/" target="_blank">Dave Stelfox</a>, and you can read some of Carlos Delclós's terrific writing (in English) from Barca <a href="http://roarmag.org/author/carlos/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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Also, if you missed it, my November essay/reportage for The New Inquiry about <a href="http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-streets-of-spain/" target="_blank">the Spanish general strike</a>, also republished in Salon <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/11/25/spain_dances_with_chaos/" target="_blank">here</a> (The New Inquiry version is better, cuz it's accompanied by my strike pictures - also, you should <a href="http://thenewinquiry.com/publications/magazines/subscribe/" target="_blank">subscribe</a>, it costs a ridiculous $2 a month). I'm in Spain again at the moment, working on The Village Against The World, to be published by Verso this autumn.<br />
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<img src="http://thenewinquiry.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Madrid-HG-2012-pt-2-134-383x287.jpg" width="100%" />dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-87906989593673693902012-11-14T03:42:00.001+00:002012-11-14T03:50:34.071+00:00Flying pickets at midnight: general strike in MadridToday's #N14 general strike is a one day strike, beginning not with pickets in place for 9am, the start of the average working day, but at midnight - ie over four hours ago. In fact it started with a rally at 8.30pm last night in Puerta del Sol, called by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workers'_Commissions">CC.OO</a>, Spain's largest trade union. After speeches about Rajoy, labour reform, the Troika, capitalism, unemployment, and eviction-prompted suicides;(more on all this later, as it's way past my bedtime), about 4,000 people went to CC.OO headquarters for some rhetorical and actual nourishment - more speeches, plus piles of free bocadillos, coffee, non-alcoholic lager, and coca cola, the necessary fuel for a night of flying pickets.<br />
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Everyone piled up on flags, stickers, fire-crackers, horns, whistles and flyers, and at 11.45pm, set off to shut down the capital of Spain.<br />
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As I write, I think it's fair to say that every ATM machine and shop window in Madrid now looks like this (although some of them have superglue and spraypaint on, too). The stickers say 'CLOSED: GENERAL STRIKE' and 'WE ARE LEFT WITH NO FUTURE':<br />
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<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-F2zcxyWCWoA/UKL-CPlynRI/AAAAAAAAAMk/edmjoUTytxA/s1600/Porto+June+2012+Madrid+HG+2012+223.jpg" width="100%" />
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After the violent clashes following the attempts to 'occupy congress' in September, the authorities obviously aren't taking any chances this time.
Nothing like two layers of fencing and one layer of riot police to demonstrate the health your representative democracy is in:
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<a name='more'></a><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-B8NxsQTYxw8/UKL9hXtwgbI/AAAAAAAAAMI/i2s3b21ttgg/s1600/Porto+June+2012+Madrid+HG+2012+209.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
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Congress aside, generally the riot cops shadowed the few thousand marchers at a distance, allowing for plenty of new licks of paint to be added to Madrid's infamous art corridor, the Paseo del Prado:<br />
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These two motorcycle cops had been positioned defending a branch of Barclays, and were outnumbered by a ratio of about 1000:1. So they got stickered.<br />
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<img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aVzzgbTMuio/UKL-QNNzK_I/AAAAAAAAAM0/krApvqwtUsc/s1600/Porto+June+2012+Madrid+HG+2012+232.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
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Stopping the traffic on Plaza de Col<span style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 19.196969985961914px;">ó</span>n. These taxistas were predictably unimpressed - although others had joined the strike, and were driving around waving red flags.<br />
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<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gNDI1Xhh0-4/UKL-fLiCPWI/AAAAAAAAANE/dEhAl5xhvnA/s1600/Porto+June+2012+Madrid+HG+2012+237.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
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The few businesses who had not got the memo, and not only had their shutters up but were <i>still open</i> after midnight, received very short shrift (it's worth bearing in mind how much of Madrid is normally open after midnight - specifically, large swathes of it). In some cases this involved a bit of stickering, heckling, and a generally friendly inducement for the shoppers/late night pizza eaters to join us, in others it was slightly more intimidating, with shutters being forced down and the remaining employees and customers shut inside.<br />
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Positioning anyone still working after midnight as a scab, essentially, is not very fair on the minimum wage McDonalds employees whose chances of unionising are somewhere around nil, if you ask me. But as was becoming abundantly clear by this point (around 1am), those on strike are determined - after the relatively mild intervention of 29 March - that this time, the general strike will be as <i>general </i>as humanly possible. This book shop was one business that dared to still be open after midnight.<br />
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It wasn't open by the time the march had passed - nothing was.<br />
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<img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fT7zahzNsVg/UKL-mOe_pvI/AAAAAAAAANY/dxZVCQzTyBM/s1600/Porto+June+2012+Madrid+HG+2012+241.jpg" width="100%" />
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A girl of about 16 was pretty clear on her feelings on consumerism. She kept writing NO CONSUMISMO on shop windows. Sadface.<br />
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The only thing we couldn't get close to was the Partido Popular headquarters. So some of the youngsters - one with the flag of the Spanish second republic (more of this later, too) - decided to sit down and chant their disdain.<br />
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The fascist Nudo Patriota Espanol decided it would be terribly funny to pun on huelga general and swap the huelga (strike) for vuelva (return) - making the imperative <i>RETURN GENERAL</i>. General Franco. Come back, o Fascist dictator. Obviously, they got stickered.<br />
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<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IMbgPxfqWck/UKL-7PhF7YI/AAAAAAAAANw/WkTgv3IJT7w/s1600/Porto+June+2012+Madrid+HG+2012+265.jpg" width="46%" /> <img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CvFF-UXJ5ZM/UKL-0VGnSPI/AAAAAAAAANo/oYok6xC6pHA/s1600/Porto+June+2012+Madrid+HG+2012+264.jpg" width="46%" /><br />
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This was the front line around 1.30am, as a thousand or so picketers continued on the path towards the appropriately named Gran Via. At one point the young CC.OO woman at the front with the loud hailer turned to her comrade and asked off mic 'which way shall we go next'? 'Left', he said confidently. She turned the mic back on. 'We're going left - always to the left!'<br />
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We kept going for over two hours - I found a friend who'd been with the anarchist bloc earlier, responsible for shutting everything that had still been open in Gran Via. The communists wound back to the iconic home of the 15m, Puerta del Sol, the centre of the city, singing <i>La Internacional</i> and songs telling Rajoy where he could put his hated <i>reforma laboral </i>- labour reforms which are screwing a nation already scuttling upwards of 23% unemployment. As 3am approached, I decided it was time to try and get some sleep, to conserve <i>some </i>energy for tomorrow - and on my way home I stumbled across <i>another </i>substantial flying picket group, a mixture of CC.OO, UGT and anarchists.<br />
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They had managed to acquire some followers.<br />
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Anyway it's 4am - time for bed.dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-31087220518776346822012-10-10T14:59:00.003+00:002012-10-10T15:06:41.007+00:00Utopia and the Valley of Tears coverage round-up<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PvII_ZHzRAE/UCyzdoLKhjI/AAAAAAAAALs/QlTemC4-cak/s1600/utopia+and+the+valley+of+tears_cover_01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PvII_ZHzRAE/UCyzdoLKhjI/AAAAAAAAALs/QlTemC4-cak/s200/utopia+and+the+valley+of+tears_cover_01.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
My ebook about Marinaleda and the Spanish crisis - <a href="http://amzn.to/utopia2012" target="_blank">only £3.60, available here</a> - came out in late August and has been doing very well, thank you for asking. I'm going back to Spain this winter to research a longer book, for Verso, about the history of the utopia - about the communist village as an ecosystem. Until then, here's a quick round-up of some of the fall-out:<br />
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Here's an extract in <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/15/spanish-robin-hood-sanchez-gordillo" target="_blank">The Guardian</a>.<br />
Here's an extract in <a href="http://elpais.com/elpais/2012/09/18/inenglish/1347968259_513226.html" target="_blank">El País</a>.<br />
Here's an extract in <a href="http://theoccupiedtimes.co.uk/?p=6879" target="_blank">The Occupied Times</a>.</div>
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Here's an interview I did for <a href="http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/14595/1/utopia-and-the-valley-of-tears" target="_blank">Dazed & Confused</a> (print), here's an interview I did for <a href="http://www.monocle.com/monocle24/?openepisode=10800213" target="_blank">Monocle</a> (radio, 18mins in), and another interview about the #25s protests for <a href="http://www.monocle.com/monocle24/?openepisode=10800238" target="_blank">Monocle</a> (radio, 11mins in). There was also <a href="https://twitpic.com/azee18" target="_blank">BBC Newsnight</a>, which is no longer online, and Novara on Resonance FM, which is not yet online.</div>
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Here's a review in <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/utopia-and-the-valley-of-tears-hallucinating-the-perfect-society" target="_blank">The National</a>, a review on <a href="http://searchforthemastercopy.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/review-utopia-and-the-valley-of-tears/" target="_blank">Search for the Master Copy</a>, a long review-essay in Greek for <a href="http://www.lifo.gr/team/gnomes/32618" target="_blank">LiFO</a>, a review on <a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/dan-hancox-on-marinaleda-utopia-by-tapani-lausti" target="_blank">Z Blogs</a>, and a shout on <a href="http://boingboing.net/2012/08/22/spains-pocket-communist-utop.html" target="_blank">Boing Boing</a>. (If you want a review copy get in touch at the usual address.)</div>
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I'm doing a talk about utopias and the Spanish crisis at the Cuts Cafe in London on 18 October at 6pm - <a href="http://cutscafelondon.wordpress.com/events/" target="_blank">details here</a>.</div>
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And finally, it's going to be translated into Spanish and published as a physical and digital book early next year by Artefakte. The Verso book will be out autumn 2013.</div>
dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-41761916003028197902012-07-11T00:19:00.000+00:002012-08-16T08:54:53.301+00:00New book announcement: Utopia and the Valley of Tears<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PvII_ZHzRAE/UCyzdoLKhjI/AAAAAAAAALs/QlTemC4-cak/s1600/utopia+and+the+valley+of+tears_cover_01.jpg" width="100%" />
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<i>“I think there is a cultural point in Spain, there is a Catholic way of thinking. They say that life is... a valley of tears. We have been in all this richness!” Juanjo exclaimed, gesturing at the river, and the ornate city around him. “But now! Now the people think: it is time for the valley of tears.”</i></blockquote>
A worse unemployment rate than Greece. A Spanish economic miracle turned catastrophe. A lost generation of <i>indignados </i>with no homes, no work, and no faith in the system<i>. </i>An austerity government who in six months have pushed miners to armed conflict, firing home-made rocket launchers at riot police. An Economics Minister whose last job was director of the Spanish branch of Lehman Brothers.<br />
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And right in the middle of the Andaluci<span style="background-color: white;">an countryside, a little-known communist utopia led by a charismatic poet-rebel, a town of landless labourers who for over 30 years since the death of Franco, have fought capitalism - and won.</span><br />
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<img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0bve7u76u1rr1pcuo1_1280.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">My new book, <i>Utopia and the Valley of Tears: A journey through the Spanish crisis</i>, will be published digitally on 20 August 2012. </span><span style="background-color: white;">A longer, different, paperback version will be published by Verso next year.</span><br />
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For enquiries, or to register your interest, email valleyoftears2012 @ gmail.com, and you will receive one reminder when it is published - and that will be the only one, I promise.<br />
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***<br />
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“It sounds like science fiction: a small rural town led by a charismatic mayor tries to turn itself into a communist utopia. But it's fact - it's happening right now in Andalucia, and colliding with the region's real-world history of violent rebellion and radicalism. Hancox's book could not be more timely - with Spain on the brink of social crisis and the shadows of the past emerging.”<br />
<br />
- Paul Mason, BBC Newsnight Economics Editor<br />
<br />
“As the crisis of neoliberalism smacks Spain in the face and tear gasses its young, Dan Hancox ventures to Marinaleda a tiny Spanish ‘utopia’ with a charismatic mayor. The struggle to take back land and create jobs, he tells us, is the most noble of dreams. Right here in the sacred heart of resistance and anarchism, the battles of the past merge with the future. Unemployment mounts, houses are repossessed. A generation migrates. Surely this tiny paradise is just a mirage?<br />
<div>
<div>
<br />
“Hancox captures the optimism necessary for alternative ways of doing politics, economics and living together. As the borderline between dream and reality shimmers in the heat of Andalucia, we begin to wonder if living as if change were indeed possible is the very key to making actual change happen. Do we really have any other choice?”<br />
<br />
- Suzanne Moore, The Guardian</div>
</div>
dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-34564535398926340232012-07-10T23:31:00.000+00:002012-07-10T23:32:57.637+00:00We wanted to be the sky: a DDR fishing boat, Nas, and Bloc chaosHi, sorry I've been a bit quiet on here. I've just finished a book on Spain, I'm editing a website called <a href="http://opendemocracy.net/ourbeeb" target="_blank">ourBeeb</a> full-time til October for openDemocracy, about the future of the BBC, and somehow I've still found time recently for these three Guardian music features. So here they are!<br />
<br />
<img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2012/6/21/1340289568375/Projections-on-the-side-o-008.jpg" width="100%" />
I was lucky enough to go to Hamburg with ace photographer (and mate) Dave Stelfox to spend a weekend on a 1960s East German herring boat, the 80 metre long MS Stubnitz, to see the engine room, sleep in the bunks, and find out how an incredible Swiss sound artist called Blo saved the boat from the scrap heap, to turn it into an incredible cultural powerhouse, roaming the high seas. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jun/21/the-boat-that-raved" target="_blank">Here's the feature about the Stubnitz</a>, ahead of its first ever visit to London, for the ill-faited Bloc Weekend.<br />
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<img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2012/7/5/1341505624126/Nas-008.jpg" width="100%" />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Ahead of his new album I went to meet the legendary Nas to talk about what it's like when you're considered the greatest rapper alive, but you're pushing 40, you've seen hip-hop change beyond all recognition, got close to Amy Winehouse over Skype, and had a long, messy break-up with Kelis. He was very philosophical, and said some weird things about cows. </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jul/05/nas-hiphop-belongs-to-all-of-us" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">Here's the piece.</a><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"> </span><img src="https://p.twimg.com/AxKa-cLCIAAKNql.jpg:large" style="background-color: white;" width="100%" /><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">What happened at Bloc? I was there, and I don't really know where to start, but Friday night's debacle involved two and a half hour queues, dangerous crowd surges, panic, police lines, a cancellation in the small hours of the morning, Steve Reich, and music made by a mass improvised shipping container drum orchestra.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jul/09/bloc-weekend-2012" style="background-color: white;" target="_blank">There's video and audio, pictures, tweets and 1500 words in this epic collaborative report</a><span style="background-color: white;">, with mad love to combabes Chris Wood, Nick Wilson and Dave Stelfox for the bits that weren't the words.</span>dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-21375802322376267112012-03-22T10:44:00.003+00:002012-03-22T10:50:38.636+00:00Shostakovich to Plan B: How to defend a great city with violins<object height="360" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/W2f1G7qCSm8?version=3&hl=en_GB&start=307"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/W2f1G7qCSm8?version=3&hl=en_GB&start=307" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="410" height="300" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object><br />
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A quick note on the source material for Plan B's controversial new single about the London riots, Ill Manors (quick link catch-up: <a data-mce-href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/mar/15/plan-b-ill-manors" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/mar/15/plan-b-ill-manors" style="color: #007bff;">Dorian Lynskey</a> on why it's the best protest song in years, and <a data-mce-href="http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2012/03/plan-b-is-not-your-saviour/" href="http://www.thelineofbestfit.com/2012/03/plan-b-is-not-your-saviour/" style="color: #007bff;">Josh Hall</a> and <a data-mce-href="http://richardosley.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/plan-b-ill-manors-and-the-camden-ripper/" href="http://richardosley.wordpress.com/2012/03/21/plan-b-ill-manors-and-the-camden-ripper/" style="color: #007bff;">Richard Osley</a> on the problems with making Plan B a political poster-boy).</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The instrumental for Ill Manors was lifted from a German pop song, Peter Fox's <a data-mce-href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD0A2plMSVA" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD0A2plMSVA" style="color: #007bff;">Alles Neu</a> (produced, amusingly, by 'The Krauts'), but the original source is this violin riff above from Shostakovich's 7th, generally known as the Leningrad Symphony. Why do I bring this up? Because Shostakovich's 7th is a tremendous example, decades before hardcore or jungle or grime reshaped Britain from the dancefloor upwards, of why political music needn't have vocals in it, shouting in your face about exactly why and how it's political. It's a symphony with a direct, descriptive narrative, quite specifically about the defence of Leningrad from the Nazis during WW2; a stirring call to arms in the face of a relentless, brutalising assault on the collective body. Listen to those artillery-fire drums from the 5:20 mark!</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It's about a great city under siege, and the ordinary people who suffer in its heart frantically trying to resist. A situation </span><span style="background-color: white;">I </span><a data-mce-href="http://dan-hancox.blogspot.com.es/2011/12/kettling-20-olympic-state-of-exception.html" href="http://dan-hancox.blogspot.com.es/2011/12/kettling-20-olympic-state-of-exception.html" style="background-color: white; color: #007bff;">would argue</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"> shares some - albeit thankfully less fatal - similarities with</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"> London 2012.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<object height="300" width="410"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/s8GvLKTsTuI?version=3&hl=en_GB"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/s8GvLKTsTuI?version=3&hl=en_GB" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="410" height="300" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The opening shot of the Ill Manors music video sees Plan B standing high up on the edge of a London towerblock roof, playing air violin, and looking out over the smoke rising from the city beneath him - surveying the battlefield much like a Soviet general might have done, as the Nazi troops moved in.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">How's that for long-lasting political currents in music?</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">***</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">PS has anyone else noticed that Ill Manors (the full length film around which the album is based) was green-lit in 2009? Casting took place in August 2010, a year before the UK riots. Makes me think that this whole project is a bit less opportunistic than it first seemed.</span></div>dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-14014471275482611012012-03-11T20:51:00.000+00:002012-03-11T20:51:35.764+00:00A short note from CatalunyaI'm in a small village near Barcelona for a month, working on something big on Spanish utopianism, its anarchist history, the <i>indignados </i>movement, and the mega-crisis that is slowly engulfing one of my favourite countries.<br />
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<img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QJmt1RJi2cs/T10N6FxpzNI/AAAAAAAAALQ/o8EIIYiPDqI/s1600/Catalunya%2BMarch%2B2012%2B160.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
(CGT offices. The Spanish anarchist trade union once had 1 million members, in the early 20th C)<br />
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<img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RoiLnCADmAI/T10N5btE3KI/AAAAAAAAAK8/vMTLNup2rkE/s1600/Catalunya%2BMarch%2B2012%2B127.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
(Three generations of the 2nd Republic. Demo against labour reform, 11 March 2012)<br />
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<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xNVnPsixRuM/T10N5zYFPAI/AAAAAAAAALE/GzQEiLFJmG0/s1600/Catalunya%2BMarch%2B2012%2B092.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
(Capitalism and crisis, old friends. This poster is from 1979, the exact moment of neoliberal escalation)<br />
<br />
There is lots more <a href="http://dan-hancox.tumblr.com/post/18681533788/la-libertad-no-se-mendiga-se-conquista-con-el">to come</a>. In every sense.dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-75642595770263036562012-02-20T22:51:00.000+00:002012-02-20T22:51:02.564+00:00DSG: The Final Interview, plus Frieze essay<img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2011/12/15/1323959740953/A-self-portrait-by-the-De-007.jpg" width=100%><br />
<br />
I was lucky enough to meet the shadowy, secretive collective of 'IKEA Anarchists', the Deterritorial Support Group, who transformed protest propaganda in 2011, and spoke to them for hours and hours and HOURS, for The Guardian's g2 section. One day I will publish the full interview, maybe. It's about 10,000 words long. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/15/ikea-anarchists-derritorial-support-group">Here's the much more concise Guardian feature</a>.<i><br />
<blockquote>"Some people asked me what it meant, but it means exactly what it says: the post-political is the most political. It hits the nail on the head. Mainstream politics is over. It's over! It's us, capital and the fash. That's it!"</blockquote></i><img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/12/15/1323966500925/The-Post-Political--The-M-006.jpg" width=100%><br />
<br />
A week or two later, they closed down their blog, to a stunned response. Read <a href="http://deterritorialsupportgroup.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/autonomy-tonight-utopia-tomorrow-dsg-is-over/">their farewell statement here</a>, and heed their call to carry on the struggle into new territories: here are <a href="http://deterritorialsupportgroup.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/ten-growth-markets-for-crisis/">ten of their exciting suggestions</a>.<br />
<br />
<img src="http://www.frieze.com/uploads/images/middle/and_then_1.jpg" width=100%><br />
<br />
Relatedly, <a href="http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/and-then/">my essay for Frieze about the "graduates with no future"</a>, thinking big, and about the forging of a new utopianism, is now online. It's been wonderfully titled 'And Then?'.<br />
<i><blockquote>Jamais Cascio, a leading thinker on geo-engineering and scientific futurology, recently coined the term ‘charismatic megafutures’, which he defines as ‘grand visions of tomorrow that are more evocative than they are meaningful’. While obviously no-one should strive to be lacking in meaning, charismatic megafutures are exactly what we should be looking to create; if they are more evocative than they are workable for now, then so be it. This is the necessary next step in the emergence from the shadow of capitalist realism; first, to be able to imagine another world – then, to create it.</blockquote></i>dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-65738361941793366722012-02-20T22:17:00.001+00:002012-02-20T22:23:48.462+00:00MUSIC WRITING ROUND-UP KLAXON<img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/taramascara/pic/0025pzd8" width="100%" /><br />
<br />
Here's several 1400 word album review essay pieces for The National.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/music/with-music-for-the-people-pulp-firmly-on-the-comeback-trail#full">Pulp's 80s Fire Records re-issues</a>, socialism, lyric-writing and Sheffield.<br />
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<a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/music/grassroots-musicians-provide-soundtracks-for-the-revolution#full">2011: a year in grassroots protest music</a>, or how technology and the networked revolutions changed protest music, from Tahrir to Wall Street.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/music/rustie-glass-swords#full">Rustie's 'Glass Swords'</a>, hoverboards, and Glasgow architecture.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://t.co/mxK6c0uJ">Wiley's 'Evolve or Be Extinct'</a>, creative compulsion, Wil's mortality, and modern auteurs.<br />
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<img src="http://www.thisisafrica.me/data/thumb/abc_media_image/4000/4571/w430.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
<br />
Here's a feature about <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/19/the-rise-of-afrobeats">The Rise of Afrobeats for The Guardian</a>. Seriously, check out that Abrantee mixtape and tell me it's not amazing.<br />
<br />
And at the front-line of, er, silly major label PR stunts, here's what happened when <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/feb/10/watch-throne-kanye-west">The Guardian sent me to try and find Kanye West in Shoreditch</a>.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/audio/2012/feb/03/music-weekly-podcast-adam-harper">On The Guardian Music podcast</a> talking about Adam Harper's Infinite Music and playing/discussing Wiley's incredible new African-style riddim 'F Off'.<br />
<br />
I also did talked about grime and politics at Exeter University, and they hilariously ripped off one of my g2 covers for the flyer (oh and <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/sep/01/mobos">the g2 piece itself is here</a>):<br />
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<img src="http://a1.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/374615_324527097559534_295621753783402_1299850_44892249_n.jpg" width="40%" /><br />
<br />
Oh and I did a conference in Sweden on modern protest music (with Peaches!) - here's me and fellow Guardian writer Dorian Lynskey at the conference looking like, in my housemate's words, a <a href="http://right11.se/sites/default/files/images/photos/l_MG_2851.jpg">Nordic metal Right Said Fred covers band</a> (thanks Paul). Here's the video of our panel:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/32531459?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/32531459">Songs of protest - The political power of music in 2011</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/skap">SKAP</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-33439504684146146262012-02-20T21:27:00.000+00:002012-02-20T21:27:50.808+00:00The Futurist Cook-Book<img src="http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/316644_10150777063190471_5851548_n.jpg" width=100%><br />
<br />
Right. I haven't updated links on here for way too long, so here's lots at once. This is <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/lifestyle/food/the-futurist-cook-book#full">a feature for The National</a> about the Italian Futurists, and what happened when they took their notoriously radical art, wit, wisdom and proto-Fascism into the kitchen. I even tried out some of the recipes. And they took pictures of me wearing an apron.<br />
<i><blockquote>You just can't buy camel meat in my local supermarket - and I don't have the right equipment in my kitchen to pass an electric current through a cube of beef before serving it. I was also dubious about the effects of filling candied citrons with chopped cuttlefish, or stewing meat in a mixture of coffee and eau de cologne.</blockquote></i><br />
Thanks to Alix Campbell, of the awesome <a href="http://vintagecookbooktrials.wordpress.com/">Vintage Cookbook Trials blog</a>, for the loan of the book.dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-8794609777048683052011-12-23T17:17:00.000+00:002011-12-23T17:17:43.737+00:00Re-post from 2009: A Buffoon Empiricist Manifesto<i>[This was originally posted on Lower End Spasm on 21 May 2009, in response to a debate which is now too old, dead, and settled (we won, lol) to be worth recounting... a few months ago Alex Bok Bok, Lower End Spasm proprietor, took the blog down to concentrate on Night Slugs, and I think I can safely say I've moved on too... but people keep asking to see this - for their uni dissertations, of all things - so here it is.]</i><br />
<br />
Buffoon Empiricism is a response to the terrible perseverance and proliferation of information and music online. Everyone can access everything, all of the time. Every message board post has a download inside. Every riposte has another riposte. Club music has become more of a spectacle than ever in the last five years; regarded, consumed and critiqued from a metaphorical and physical distance.<br />
<br />
FWD>> is now being streamed live around the world from Curtain Road.<br />
<br />
We admire the futurist beauty of being able to smash great distances with technology, underground music seeping up through the global soil. We admire the fact that you can listen to one of London's most seminal club nights as it happens in your bedroom.<br />
<br />
We admire all of this, but we'd prefer to admire it from the dancefloor of Plastic People.<br />
<br />
RSI hurts. Dancing heals.<br />
<br />
<img src="http://f.imagehost.org/0771/gone_raving.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
<div class="im"><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Ten Commandments of Buffoon Empiricism</span><br />
</span></div><br />
1) Thou shalt go to raves.<br />
<br />
2) Thou shalt dance.<br />
<br />
3) Thou shalt flash thy lighter.<br />
<br />
4) Thou shalt give some serious thought to trying <a href="http://melissabradshaw.net/?p=254">socaerobics</a>.<br />
<br />
5) Thou shalt invent ridiculous new skanks in funky dances (and in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph8dphU1QSA">IKEA</a>), if only to annoy the purists (and IKEA). Thou shalt put videos of yourself doing these skanks on the internets, but only if you've first performed them in a rave, or the food hall of a Swedish furniture store.<br />
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6) Thou shalt aim for a 35% reduction in the time you spend on internet message boards by 2012.<br />
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7) Thou shalt feel free to document the music you hear and the things you see in new and interesting ways. Tweeting from raves is okay.<br />
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8) Thou shalt also feel free <i>not </i>to document the music you hear and the things you see. Someone else probably is, in any case.<br />
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9) Thou shalt be justifiably proud of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jester">long tradition of buffoonery</a> that precedes you<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jester" target="_blank"></a>. Don't worry, you don't have to wear the jester's hat.<br />
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10) Thou may have other gods besides buffoon empiricism – theoretical gods, rational gods, scientific gods, gods with throats of fire and hair made of twine. Buffoon empiricism is not a jealous or vengeful god.</div><br />
*****<br />
<br />
Post script: <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2010/01/dancing-ehrenreich-mark-watson">DANCE OR GET EATEN BY TIGERS</a>, a rather silly piece I wrote for the New Statesman in 2010 on a very much related subject.dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-63640201663858411132011-12-07T17:29:00.005+00:002011-12-08T01:15:22.555+00:00Kettling 2.0: The Olympic State of Exception and TSG Action Figures<img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/30/article-2068180-0F00A6FF00000578-344_964x572.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
<br />
<b>After the kettle, the cordon</b><br />
<br />
The 2 million-strong public sector strike on 30 November was accompanied by a march of 30,000 through central London against pension reforms, and against government austerity; along the way many marchers, myself included, were surprised to see a 10-foot high steel fence erected across Trafalgar Square. ‘Met unveil revolutionary police barrier’ read the Daily Mail headline – they were the only newspaper to realise its importance. This is what counts as revolutionary in 2011 Britain: a revolution against free assembly, against freedom of movement, against the commons, and further towards a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Exception_%282005%29#State_of_Exception_.282005.29">state of exception</a>. (I advise clicking the link if you haven't heard this term before - I hadn't a year ago.) From the Mail article: “The police cordon was erected at the north end of Whitehall near Trafalgar Square yesterday afternoon in an attempt to stop anti-cuts protesters heading towards Parliament. The Metropolitan Police said the barrier of steel structure is put in place when a potential public order situation is likely to develop and they need a physical barrier to block cars and people.”<br />
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<img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/30/article-2068180-0F00E62C00000578-722_964x642.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
<br />
After the TUC march peacefully dispersed on the Victoria Embankment, I tracked back towards Trafalgar Square – there at the edge of the steel cordon, two uniformed officers were acting like bouncers, admitting tourists and office workers into the square in single file; admitting everyone, in fact, except the four women aged around 35-55 in front of me, carrying modest union-issue placards about teachers’ pensions. The cops were clear about the policy: if you discard your placard at the entrance to the square, you can come in. “That’s ridiculous”, the women objected. “We’re trying to prevent any potential protest from re-forming in the square” the cops explained. The women objected a bit more, and eventually, shaking their heads as tourists filed past us, they dropped their placards at the gate, and walked in as well.<br />
<br />
While all this was going on, one young man who’d walked ahead of us, and was already past the cops, reached back and sneakily took a placard off the top of the pile – it was just a quick, cheeky kick against the pricks. One of the cops spotted him out of the corner of his eye, yelled “OI!”, grabbed him aggressively by the shoulder, dragged him back, and, with great force, yanked the placard out his hand, then shoved him back into 'the sterile zone' – having forcibly sterilised him, I suppose. Whether there was any suggestion that protest might “re-form in the square” is neither here nor there, but I hadn't heard any rumours to that effect. Heaven forfend someone should put a sticker on the Olympic clock again; an event which induced riot police to pretty much truncheon everyone on sight, on the evening of 26 March.<br />
<br />
<b>About the new ring of steel</b><br />
<br />
The revolutionary new steel cordon ‘unveiled’ on #30Nov in Trafalgar Square is not, in fact, new. From police blogs and various other sources, this is what I’ve gathered (quotes are from anonymous police blog comments):<br />
<br />
* The portable steel cordons were designed to be used not for public order situations like political protests, but for dealing with CBRN incidents, “where they can obviously very effectively direct the crowd”.<br />
<br />
* 200 of them were purchased by the Home Office in 2008 for CBRN preparedness, but they're now available for any police force in the country to use, for any purpose at all.<br />
<br />
* From the small van-capsule, they open out like Transformers. Beyond what can be seen in the pictures I've found, they also have “a large screen which can be raised up above the top of the barrier to provide textual directions/instructions to people and a (very) powerful PA system with remote management, syncing. A fantastic bit of kit all in all. They're very robust and effective, even at their full extension (which is very wide).”<br />
<br />
* While they’re portable, and that seems particularly alarming – the prospect of something as mobile as a group of TSG officers, but literally made of steel – they’re not <i>that </i>responsive. “They are extremely heavy and can just about be towed by a standard 4x4. They are very unforgiving and too much speed when towing one will destabilise the towing vehicle. I think the maximum speed for them is 30mph, therefore not easy to deploy in quick developing situations... but planned ones like the student protest they could have been used more effectively.”<br />
<br />
* Prior to the Met ‘unveiling’ them on #Nov30, they’ve already been used by Leicestershire Police for separating the EDL and anti-fascist protesters, by South Wales Police to separate Cardiff and Swansea football fans (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWVAXhbnW7Y&feature=player_embedded">video</a>), by Greater Manchester Police at Tory conference:<br />
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<img src="http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6209/6210647320_d2fac158ee.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
<br />
in south Yorkshire at a Sheffield derby:<br />
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<img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/10/16/1318786401102/Sheff-Utd-v-Sheff-Wed-008.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
<br />
I deliberately avoided spelling out what CBRN means above, because I think it’s pretty astonishing and worth emphasising here:<br />
<br />
<i>CBRN stands for Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear. These steel cordons were designed not for protesters, or football fans, but for the Britain of 28 Days Later. The reason they look so terrifying, is they were designed to be used in genuinely terrifying situations.</i><br />
<br />
Here is your state of exception, already in place: steel cordons which were purchased to deal with the unthinkable, to deal with a nuclear holocaust or an erm, zombie apocalypse, are now being used to prevent middle-aged teachers from strolling into Trafalgar Square, because they're carrying a political placard.<br />
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<b>The (ahem) performativity of the neoliberal balistraria</b><br />
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<img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/30/article-2068180-0F00A72600000578-302_470x423.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
<br />
I used the word ‘unveiling’ above, and put it in inverted commas: as we’ve seen, these cordons are not new at all – but their ostentatious display in Trafalgar Square was, I’d argue, even more important than their stated practical function, ‘to prevent protest re-forming’ after the dispersal of the TUC march. I was recently sent an excellent geography paper entitled <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2011.00954.x/abstract">Rethinking Enclosure: Space, Subjectivity and the Commons</a> about enclosure in the neoliberal age, about the way capitalism requires that “privatised, secessionary enclaves of infrastructure and services splinter from the city”, and about the way that inequality, and freedom, are manifested in a battle for space, a dialectic of enclosure and the commons. Here’s the key passage about capital’s very physical need to bare its teeth in – and against – the public:<br />
<blockquote>“Neoliberal globalisation has undoubtedly prompted a shift in the way in which sovereignty is spatialised. The exercise of sovereignty increasingly depends on a more complicated geography of transnational assemblages, flows and enclaves. Walling is an anxious, sometimes desperate icon of this new predicament… what interests us with respect to walling-as-enclosure is its insistent performativity. Walls are often not particularly effective. If anything, they can serve as important theatrical devices.”</blockquote>This relates directly to some of the key emerging, post-Millbank themes I wrote about in Kettled Youth: the physicality of protest is itself politically transformative, and radicalising – and its tactical antoganist, the kettle, provokes it further precisely through its demonstrative act of oppression. Kettling is designed to boil the blood, and walling is designed to make you feel trapped. Walling, of course, is not new – but has seen a marked resurgence across the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall (there's a cracking quote from Badiou about this in Rethinking Enclosure). The new walls have risen in tandem with their political economic analogue: neoliberalism. Like neoliberalism, which will soon return British wealth inequalities to those of the Victorian era, walls are erected to support inequality. The paper quotes Davis and Monk:<br />
<blockquote>“modern wealth and luxury consumption are more enwalled and socially enclaved than at any time since the 1890s… the spatial logic of neoliberalism revives the most extreme colonial patterns of residential segregation and zoned consumption.”</blockquote>Gated communities are little more than the geographical reconstruction of medieval city states, the paper continues – in fact, the word medieval crops up on numerous occasions to describe the processes of enclosure now being used. And in quite a profound way, this links back to the police cordons. Responding sarcastically to the Daily Mail story about the ‘revolutionary new wall’, one cop from a rival police force said: “Excellent, I am pleased that the Met have finally caught onto the tactical advantages of the medieval balistraria.” Except, instead of firing arrows through the holes, the cordon serves as a panopticon for surveying the protesters (as if it wasn’t enough that we are already the most CCTV heavy country in Europe).<br />
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<img src="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/11/30/article-2068180-0F00BB3600000578-94_470x423.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
<i>“The beneficient Oz has every intention of granting your request”<br />
</i><br />
One aspect of the performativity of the 'unveiling' of the #Nov30 wall stands out: its timing. It marks the end of a year of unrest, in which the Met have been accused by the right in slacking in their response to the student and 26 March protests, and accused by the liberal left of slacking in their response to the riots. More importantly, it marks an authoritarian escalation ahead of a 2012 which promises more poverty, more inequality, more unemployment and more unrest: and with it, a state of exception of truly Olympian proportions.<br />
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<b>London 2012, aka jesus fuck, the fucking Olympics</b><br />
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<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ON2z_n7arLw/Tt-fo5AdB6I/AAAAAAAAAKw/1lN-VzrjhdM/s1600/IMG00308-20111120-1257%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
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I took this picture in the Official 2012 Store in Heathrow Airport last month (on my way to a conference about protest music and freedom of speech). It is of course a kettle line of Wenlocks: Wenlock the London Olympic mascot, dressed as a police officer. Little commentary is needed. Here, for only £10.25 (not including shipping), is a FUN! toy version of your instrument of discipline, already equipped with a single panopticon eye. Water cannon and steel cordon sold separately. Baton rounds may be unsuitable for small children. A more perfect visual metaphor for 2012, I cannot imagine (not even <a href="http://i43.tinypic.com/34exc05.jpg">this</a>).<br />
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Think this is hyperbole? Here’s how Westminster is planning to defend your much-lauded democratic right to protest during the Olympics, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/demonstrations-to-be-banned-during-olympics-6265121.html">from The Independent</a>:<br />
<blockquote>“Ministers are planning legal action to restrict public protests during the Olympics... plans includes identifying “exclusion zones” around key locations, and fast-tracking the removal of protests that do not have the blessing of the authorities... Police have been given enhanced powers to act against protests at the Olympics since the Games were awarded to London six years ago, including the right to enter private homes and seize political posters.”</blockquote>And here’s what the Olympics will bring to London at large, from a <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c3c577fc-03b7-11e1-bbc5-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1fa385gmH">stunning piece in the Financial Times</a> by Philip Stephens:<br />
<blockquote>London is promised an exercise in authoritarian elitism to rival Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union. The people’s games have been turned into the apparatchiks’ Olympics. The stadiums and arenas will overflow with politicians, bureaucrats and corporate sponsors. More than 1m ordinary families have failed to secure a single ticket even to the opening stages of the most obscure Olympic sports.<br />
<br />
Civil liberties are to be suspended for the duration of the games. David Cameron’s government is promising draconian penalties for anyone who dares jeopardise the exclusive rights of commercial partners such as McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. Advertising sponsors have been promised what is chillingly called a “clean city”, handing them ownership of everything within camera distance of the games. Wear a T-shirt expressing a preference for Burger King and Pepsi and you may be thrown into the Tower. The crackdown extends to what the Olympic Stasi call “advertising on the human body”.<br />
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All this is to one purpose: to make life comfortable for the 40,000 Olympic bigwigs, national bureaucrats, commercial sponsors, hangers on and politicians who are preparing to slip into all the best seats at all the best events. These oligarchs of sport will whizz from their Park Lane suites to the Olympic venues along 100 miles of dedicated Zil lanes carved from an already congested road network. Traffic lights will be programmed to turn green as the limousines approach and red again as they pass. Ordinary folk who inadvertently stray into the reserved lanes will face draconian fines.</blockquote><b>The march of the dead: the wanderkessel</b><br />
<br />
This post is probably already too long, but I can’t not mention the response to the 9 November student march, as it further demonstrates the same pre-2012 escalation. #Nov9 was supposed to see a rebirth of the spirit of Millbank (“ANOTHER MILLBANK IS POSSIBLE” said one superb placard). Instead, it saw such a heavy deployment of police, relative to the student marches of November and December 2010, that the entire day felt less like a civic swarm and more like a slow-step drudge to the gallows – with riot cops all around us, literally herding us to the end location, it felt like we were <i>being marched</i>, not marching. Indeed, #Nov9 was essentially what is known in German as a wanderkessel (the TOTAL FREEDOM pics are from Hamburg in 2007):<br />
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<img src="http://media.de.indymedia.org/images/2007/05/178961.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
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<img src="http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b159/PunkDub/g81.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
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<img src="http://media.de.indymedia.org/images/2010/04/278307.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
<b><br />
The Olympic State of Exception</b><br />
<br />
Let’s go back to the day of the strike, to 30 November, and the shocking story of the 40 odd people kettled, "beaten up" and violently arrested by riot cops with dogs, on a picket in Dalston. A full account is <a href="http://www.solfed.org.uk/?q=repression-in-dalston">here</a>, and well worth reading - but it's this witness statement in the Daily Mail, from the owner of a nearby cafe, which perfectly articulates the logic of the Olympic state of exception:<br />
<br />
“It seemed quite heavy handed but it contained them well. People were upset because they didn't think they had done anything wrong, but it did stop things escalating.”<br />
<br />
It stopped things escalating in the immediate short-term, anyway. <br />
<br />
Have a great 2012.dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-59851671384161250582011-11-11T10:21:00.004+00:002011-11-11T10:26:36.436+00:00Japan 3: Udon't even know me (or my udon cat)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">On the way from Osaka to the art islands of the Seto Inland Sea - a journey which took two boats, two trains, and two buses - we had a two hour stop-over in Takamatsu between ferries, at 5-7am in the morning.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We knew exactly what we were going to do with this two hour break. Takamatsu is legendary across Japan for its udon - known as the 'Udon Kingdom', in fact. The thick, chewy white noodles prepared here are, it should go without saying, a different animal altogether to the slobbery tentacles you might have had in Wagamama's or similar. We went into this place the minute it opened, at 6am. The head chef had udon-coloured clothes and an udon-coloured cat.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bHgDMIUL7Co/TrWHm6G2FLI/AAAAAAAAAKM/ADw3GxfDD2c/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110426.JPG" width="45%" /> <img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-DrXeL8yVQjo/TrWHwNfb7aI/AAAAAAAAAKc/fyRF5QSbiPU/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110429.JPG" style="text-align: -webkit-auto;" width="45%" /></div><div style="text-align: left;">To make the noodles (fresh, on site, <i>obvs</i>) they mix the flour and water in big buckets, before tipping it into a big rectangular machine (on the right in the picture below). The resulting balls of dough are then placed on plastic sheeting on the floor, and - donning his special white <i>udon socks </i>- the chef then flattens them out with his feet, doing slow 360s to ensure the shape is perfectly even.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QC3uNOJS5Kc/TrWHiQp6n1I/AAAAAAAAAKE/U_NixZkPPis/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110421.JPG" width="100%" /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Once the noodles have been flattened, cooked and cut, they are left just sort of sitting in a big crate on the side... and when you want some, they are dunked in a hot bath to heat them up (everything in Japan gets a honsen), then rinsed, then served up in a bowl. The soup, a broth made from dried sardines, comes from a big urn on the counter. The topping options are numerous - including tempura octopus, pumpkin, white fish, mushroom or aubergine; a soft-poached 'honsen' egg, or a raw egg (!) broken into the bowl and then stirred in; half-moons of sweet tofu; and then bowls for scattering chopped spring onions, chopped ginger, sesame powder, chilli, soy sauce, wasabi paste, and tempura shavings.<br />
<br />
<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7YDUH0mBV9U/TrWHd-VRi_I/AAAAAAAAAJ8/Xrb__lO6y8E/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110418.JPG" width="100%" /></div>I had mine fairly simple, with raw egg, chilli and spring onion.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-c9mHsGdMwP8/TrWID0nlrHI/AAAAAAAAAKk/hiikPN2-EpU/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110420.JPG" style="text-align: -webkit-auto;" width="100%" /></div>The chewy, slime-free noodles, the refreshing, fresh fishy broth and the combined package together made for an absolutely superb breakfast. Then we went to catch the 7am ferry to Naoshima, the first of the art islands.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BGntjvfGScw/TrWHZaU9uEI/AAAAAAAAAJ0/KYCZFozHHoc/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110498.JPG" style="text-align: -webkit-auto;" width="100%" /></div>dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-30506458566825530252011-11-08T00:17:00.005+00:002011-11-08T00:22:49.556+00:00Japan 2: Kyoto and The City of DeadHigh up a steep hill, overlooking Kyoto, we found another, much quieter city.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-as3_UuICaiQ/TrV6DKmoezI/AAAAAAAAAJU/DND3ciTstNE/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110152.JPG" width="100%" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QluFhDQt-Qs/TrV6H3xDp5I/AAAAAAAAAJc/yXxlL04KSfE/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110157.JPG" width="100%" /></div>The only break from the stillness was the occasional sorties of the graveyard's sentinel-crows.<br />
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<div style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C0ZQcjjYG90/TrV59vtGBvI/AAAAAAAAAJM/RTxQGsoAkm0/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110216.JPG" width="100%" /><br />
It was like a terrace in a huge stadium, the dead silently watching over the city below, making sure everyone in Kyoto behaves themselves.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lf5Dv1vjL7M/TrV6SUAuu_I/AAAAAAAAAJs/nMsvLTMJrbg/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110196.JPG" width="100%" /></div>When you get to the very top, you get an incredible view over the city of the dead, and the city of the living beyond it, with only a thin layer of trees separating the two.<br />
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<div style="text-align: left;"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GI-A5o86PBU/TrV6NN1cf-I/AAAAAAAAAJk/HakI21pAOls/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110164.JPG" width="100%" /><br />
Forgive the pretentiousness, and my ignorance of appropriate Japanese cultural references, but it made me think of 'The Dead' by James Joyce (minus the snow).<br />
<br />
<i>Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.</i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.</span></div>dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-46239883143654727192011-11-06T08:52:00.004+00:002011-11-08T00:15:15.766+00:00Japan 1: Rokko MountainI've just been to Japan for two weeks. One day, we went up a mountain near Kobe in dense fog.<br />
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<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6ebFtdj8nB4/TrU7cvMb13I/AAAAAAAAAHs/fU4pC0QOf7M/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110351.JPG" width="100%" /><br />
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The funicular ride up Rokko Mountain trickled through the fading light and hazy tunnels. The machinery grinding loudly and slowly, to let you know how hard it was working, was kind of reassuring - is there anything more unsettling, more phantom, than car adverts boasting of noiseless vehicles? It was late afternoon on a week-day, off-season, in driving rain - so unsurprisingly, this tourist attraction was almost completely deserted. Everything in Japan has a theme or audiologo, and on the funicular a soft but cheesily emotional tune played, stirring strings straight out of a David Lynch film (advance warning: everything felt like it was out of a David Lynch film).<br />
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<img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-58sPWbfcwSs/TrU7UF3KKSI/AAAAAAAAAHk/7L7sl9E1YzE/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110349.JPG" width="100%" /><br />
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At the top we got to a kind of half-way house, with look-outs and coin-operated telescopes. We could see nothing but rain, in any direction. "The view is normally really beautiful" laughed Junichi, as we looked out on an ocean of grey sky.<br />
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<img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-aLso94V86IQ/TrVwgIzuDXI/AAAAAAAAAJE/UhSwYhxmJqE/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110355.JPG" width="100%" /><br />
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In a cafe by the view-point, they were preparing for a gig later that evening, and playing a cover version of 'Wonderful Tonight'. This welling emotion in a well-lit building, isolated warmth amidst such sparse, unpopulated space creeped me the fuck out. It sparked the same kind of unease as the use of 'Llorando', the Spanish version of Roy Orbison's 'Crying', in Mulholland Drive. Meanwhile, the sonic effect of the downpour outside was like the muffling effect of snowfall: the heavier the rain, the more silence it generates, drowning out all other natural noise.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="308" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Ta13bA6ywBk" width="410"></iframe><br />
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With nothing to see except our reflection in the puddles, we took another bus, even further up the mountain. Here we found a hill-walk garden with a path through the middle, which you can see in the next video. At the bottom of the hill was the lodge from Twin Peaks.<br />
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"This is perfect light for cinematography" Chloe told me. "The light is completely flat. There are no shadows."<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="308" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kl7UMlzOkvo" width="410"></iframe><br />
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The pre-dusk greylight was even more powerful than the rain, drowning all its victims – though this didn't stop the life beneath it trying to fight back. A brown ferret type creature darted under the raised wooden walkway, the leaves sprung back under the weight of the raindrops. In the distance, at the bottom of the hill, fog rolled across the path. To the left, a couple of lights from the lodge glow dimly in the mist. 'The Hall of Halls' is a rococo relic from another world, crafted with deliberate Japanese care, a spaceship from 19th century Switzerland which has (gently) crash-landed out of the blank sky.<br />
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<img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-po-Zywdqt70/TrVwasq-yuI/AAAAAAAAAI8/-simyZjuVqs/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110368.JPG" width="100%" /><br />
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It only got more creepy when we got inside - The Hall of Halls is, we discovered, a music box museum: celebrating self-playing-pianos, wind-up music-boxes, and other weird, weird stuff from 19th century Switzerland, Austria and Germany. In Japan. In 2011. When it first hoved into view my main thought was ‘we’re definitely going to get killed here’.<br />
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Here's a bit of what it sounded like:<br />
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<object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F27238727&show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=4f932d"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F27238727&show_comments=true&auto_play=false&color=4f932d" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object><br />
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They really didn't miss a beat making sure everything fitted the theme just right: from the cafe serving chicken schnitzel, to the postcards of medieval European banquets and maps of Austria in the gift shop.<br />
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<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kUZMMPWINQY/TrU8U0qU-GI/AAAAAAAAAIM/rJ2-5XO88vY/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110384.JPG" width="100%" /><br />
<br />
In the high-beamed main exhibition room (presumably The Hall of Halls for which it was named), the museum attendants, all young Japanese women, wore round-toed fat black sandals with black stockings and festive green and red fin de siecle German smocks and aprons. It had player pianos, harpsichords, a ‘maccordian’, a ‘polyphon’, about 20 in all, ranging from modest liquor cabinet-size, to grandiloquent church organ. The baroque wooden ornamentation and stately church organ pipes stood out against the high beams and the plain white gloves of the museum attendants operating them. From the machines came The Carpenters ‘On Top Of The World’, 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow', and a Sound of Music medley, plinking and plonking with barely disguised aggression.<br />
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<img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bDN_jEaUA3I/TrU_NUS89DI/AAAAAAAAAIs/lStVjebP3pI/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110380.JPG" width="45%" /> <img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fRDe96w8Bzg/TrVwV73ad3I/AAAAAAAAAI0/2OpzB9NZr1g/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110375.JPG" width="45%" /><br />
<br />
Outside in the corridor, there was a framed black and white billboard reproduction of an old advert from a periodical called The Music Trade Review: ‘THE AMERICAN PLAYER PIANO IN THE HOUSE is the Delight of the AMERICAN GIRL’<br />
<div><br />
It was accompanied by a drawing of an American girl, looking Delighted.<br />
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</div><img src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6104/6283018050_ac5f55b749.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
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In another room there were frayed-edged black and white pictures of children, with one or two features of each coloured by hand – a red flower here, and a blue trim on a night-shirt there: flashes of life in a time-worn cadaver of another period. Artificial attempts to bridge life and death ringing out everywhere. Next to them in the display case were several big blueprint-style drawings inspired by the music boxes, with phrases like ‘phantoms of premonition’, ‘unknown memories’, and ‘at the tarminal, the extention of their paradoxical rhythm’.<br />
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“In Japan, tapirs eat your nightmares”, Junichi chipped in as we looked at a pencil line-drawing of a tapir.<br />
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<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bQzhcbKtGQI/TrU8Mcy7pQI/AAAAAAAAAIE/z4YKn6AE9qc/s1600/2009_1030bedford-osakaOCT20110382" width="100%" /><br />
<br />
The question that was bothering me was just 'why?' Why this particular museum, up a mountain in Japan? In 2011? I worked it out while trying to sleep on the floor of a ferry later that night. Some of Japan's main obsessions: with cuteness, with the literal mechanics of progress through technology, with the futurism of miniaturisation, meant it made perfect sense. Japanese innovation in technology – especially entertainment technology – defined the 1980s and 1990s, and did wonders for the country's economy and presence on the world cultural stage. So of course they'd want to look back fondly on a time when another culture sought to do the same.<br />
<br />
Why would you play the piano when it can play itself? Why would you play tennis when you can play Wii Tennis? Dead labour, live entertainment.<br />
<br />
We were the last ones to leave.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="308" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XnA19d76UzU" width="410"></iframe>dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-43772503749402249992011-09-21T13:59:00.005+00:002011-09-21T14:08:38.685+00:00Deja Vu: pirate radio and digital decay<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object width="410" height="300" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://3.gvt0.com/vi/O_nDJWEsT3s/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/O_nDJWEsT3s&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed width="410" height="300" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/O_nDJWEsT3s&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></div>This grainy recording of a grainy recording of an illegal transmission - south London's finest, Essentials, on Deja Vu 92.3 FM - has almost 2,000 views. A tape cassette recording of a pirate radio show, filmed with a lo-fidelity camera, compressed and now hovering spectrally on YouTube.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It's the essence of grime unspooling over its decade-long history; a decade of exhaustingly fast technological progress, each development finding a new source of completely unpolished, unofficial peer-to-peer technology (pirate radio -- tape sharing and copying -- youtube). And to my ears at least, it sounds fucking brilliant. For best effect listen through your laptop speakers (kidding - sort of).</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Amidst several dazzling performances crammed into 9 minutes, not least from Kidman and Jendor, there's something unsurprisingly poignant about New Era's contribution, especially his catchphrase: "I might not be the best / but I'll merk any crew who come try test". Years later I still can't quite get over the idea of a grime MC who's lyrical punchline acknowledges his relative mediocrity compared to his peers - but like this video, it's a testament to the power of passion over perfectionism. I think you can almost hear an actual echo when he hits his rewind, around 2:00-2:30mins. “I’m the man, N.E. is the man, New Era’s the man...” The vinyl is wound back; the cassette just winds on.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">RIP New Era, still haunting the magnetic tape.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
<img src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Music/Pix/pictures/2011/9/7/1315399352716/Mike-Finch-with-hundreds--007.jpg" width="100%" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Here's my <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/sep/08/pirate-radio-rave-tapes">Guardian Film&Music feature on Tape Crackers</a>, the DVD about these very same pirate radio echoes.</div><blockquote><i>One of the most poignant scenes sees Finch cue up a recording of one of his favourite unreleased happy hardcore tunes ("straight away I'm getting goose bumps"). He proceeds to tell the camera he never heard it again in a club or on the radio, never found out what it was called, who made it, or which DJ was playing it. There's a lot of romance to pirate radio, as anyone who's ever waltzed across their bedroom floor with a radio aerial trying to get a clear signal can testify.</i></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Yesterday I was in the weird position of playing an mp3 of a 2005 Deja Vu Ruff Sqwad radio show to Rapid and Dirty Danger, who were on the mic during that very set. They loved hearing it, quite frankly, it was clearly such a memory-shock to be put back in that place, when grime has come (or gone?) so far since then. They wanted to know where they could get these mp3s; Rapid mentioned something about going back through them for inspiration for the crew's new material. Deja Vu all over again: <a href="http://bit.ly/grimetapes">http://bit.ly/grimetapes</a>.</div>dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16924295.post-87051476580787143832011-08-18T21:34:00.001+00:002011-08-18T21:39:34.751+00:00British riots 2011: grime, history and the big picture<img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-myIVDzzez-c/Tk19bZmOn3I/AAAAAAAAAHM/TZrrpFnd138/s1600/national+riots+review+cover.jpg" width="100%" /><br />
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A lot's happened in the last two weeks. <a href="http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/europe/britains-summer-of-discontent-simmers-but-what-have-we-learned?pageCount=0">Here's my cover story for The National's Review section on the riots</a>, trying to explain the context for overseas readers, or indeed for British residents who don't understand what 'context' means (there are a lot of them in Britain, it seems, many of them working in the media). Here are a couple of key passages:<br />
<blockquote>Historically, austerity measures in times of crisis provoke this kind of upheaval. An almost eerily timely analysis published last week by the Social Science Research Network, entitled Austerity and Anarchy: Budget Cuts and Social Unrest in Europe, 1919-2009 found "a clear link between the magnitude of expenditure cutbacks and increases in social unrest. With every additional percentage point of GDP in spending cuts, the risk of unrest increases."<br />
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..."Keep Calm And Carry On" is an exemplary piece of modern British myth-making. A propaganda poster created by the British Ministry of Information in 1939, the slogan sitting beneath the crown, it was intended to provide reassurance in the event of a Nazi invasion. Incredibly, given its total ubiquity in British pop culture since its rediscovery in 2000, it was never officially put on display during the war.<br />
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The message speaks to centuries of national self-delusion peddled from the top down - the stiff upper lip in times of crisis, the stoical acceptance of one's fate and the Whiggish history popularised in the colonial period, which sought to write British history as a smooth, peaceful progression towards enlightened liberal democracy, eliding and gliding over foreign and civil wars, grotesque imperial brutality and domestic revolutions, riots, uprisings and repression through the ages.<br />
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Its popularity is situated in the long history of the British iconography of denial but its recent popularity is somehow especially worrying, particularly in the face of a second financial crisis in three years, devastating austerity measures and now riots on the streets.<br />
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Appropriately, in 2011, "Keep Calm and Carry On" has a consumer edge - it is possible to buy the poster image on clothing, mugs, tea cosies, deckchairs, cuff-links, even a First Aid kit. After all, why treat the disease when you can just cover it up with a sticking plaster? Sweep up the broken glass and, with it, sweep the underlying causes of the riots under the carpet.</blockquote>And I want to quote <a href="http://www.viceland.com/wp/category/alex-hoban/">Alex Hoban</a> about looting and the free market, because it's very pithy and alas got cut from The National piece (I wrote too much, unsurprisingly):<br />
<blockquote>Point on Newsnight about rioters' anger being expressed in acts of 'violent consumption.' I'll buy that. An articulation of some sort of distilled capitalist spirit, torn from the hands of its Faustian creators, themselves stripped of authority as it's usurped by those who were denied it longest. The ultimate neoliberal return of the repressed / the truest expression of the consumption ideal which, for rioters, culminated in a market that truly was 'free'</blockquote><br />
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And here's my <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/aug/12/rap-riots-professor-green-lethal-bizzle-wiley">3,500 word piece for The Guardian</a> talking to Wiley, Professor Green and Lethal Bizzle about the relationship between grime, rap and the riots, and looking at the incredibly quick musical response of the grime scene in documenting and responding to what was going on.<br />
<blockquote>"They want to know why there's all this anger, all this pain/ They want to know why I talk that violence, talk that slang …" Rival spits, before moving into a chorus that is sung with such stymied emotion that it's all the more poignant, because it's so flat: "I just say, 'It's all I know."<br />
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It's an age-old argument – one that most will never change their views about – but the case that music with morally unpalatable messages merely reflects reality, rather than glamourises or incites amorality, needs to be reaffirmed more than ever. If, as Martin Luther King wrote, "a riot is the language of the unheard", a result of "living with the daily ugliness of slum life, educational castration and economic exploitation", then this is Dr King's language rendered as art, and set to music.</blockquote><br />
<object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F20864663"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="http://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F20864663" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <a href="http://soundcloud.com/guydemaupassant/novara-tuesday-9th-august-2011">Novara Tuesday 9th August 2011</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/guydemaupassant">guydemaupassant</a> <br />
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Finally here's an hour - all that we could fit into an hour - of discussion of the riots on Aaron Peters' Resonance FM show Novara, with the excellent James Butler/Pierce Penniless - read <a href="http://piercepenniless.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/aftermath-the-new-normal/">his response to the riots</a>, with some great 18th Century insights into the judicial crackdown that is now underway.dan hancoxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14335192225001443427noreply@blogger.com0