Mircea Geoana's Speech After He Thought He Won The Elections

Major Lazer Still Going Strong

Appleblim and Ramadanman

Appleblim and Ramadanman have been releasing some really good collaborative tracks this past year. Absolutely loving the one above, I've been listening to it for the better part of today.

Courage

The one thing that somebody told me that changed my life: "Charge at your dreams and never look back!".

I wish I could say all the things that need to be said when it comes to courage - from its general absence in my fellow citizens, to how dear friends of mine waste their lives doing shitty jobs or shitty relationships or shitty careers because they lack the courage to say "no", or "stop", or "I want something else".



But it seems my time for writing exhilarating blog posts describing my thoughts and feelings on different subjects is over. All I can hope is that, when the time when you have to make your choice arrives - you do it well..

I feel like a prophet that experienced an epiphany and is now trying to prophesize even though he is mute, or his crowd is deaf, or maybe both.

I'm absolutely in love with this playlist..

that I've put together for Electrolab.

Read about and give it a listen here.

Oh, and keep your years open for the next episode of our podcast - The Model's megamix is seriously going to hit you in the back of your head.

New Rule: visit twitter and facebook only once per day

For the last 9 months or so, I've written less and less on undefined, but I've been increasingly active on twitter and facebook.

I've gotten to a level where, whenever I fire up a blank browser window, the first address I have the urge to type is facebook or twitter; also, no matter how busy I am, every 5 minutes, compulsively, I'll fire up a browser window and type the address of twitter or facebook automatically, as if taking some kind of a break from the task at hand. Or if I'm away from the computer, I constantly check facebook and twitter on my iPhone: I reply to tweets and comments on facebook wherever I may be. I'm "connected" all the time, everywhere, anywhere.

I follow 50+ people on twitter and almost 150 people on facebook, and the content they generate is huge; on twitter, on a regular day, the people I follow will post more than 100 tweets (it can get to much, much more than that if feeder has a good news day, or if diplo gets an urge to tweet every 5 seconds before his show), and I haven't even bothered to count on facebook - the volume of links, notes, status updates, photos, videos, whatnot there is staggering.

On twitter I follow some of the people that I most dearly admire and respect, but I don't know half of them in person; on facebook, I've met almost everyone there at least once, but I'd say more than 80 percent are just acquaintances I've made over the years. This is madness on my part - it means that the amount of useless information about other people's lives that I'm fed every day is huge. The time I spend just reading that information probably amounts to something like 30 minutes to 1 hour every day. I have to find a better way to waste my time. And I've developed some sort of ADD, where I can't concentrate on the task at hand for more than 5 minutes; my work performance lately has been rubbish, and I can't seem to correct that in any way.

I need a break from all this. So here we go: New Rule - I shall henceforth visit facebook and twitter only once per day. Let's see for how long I can keep it up :)

Goldie - Sine Tempore

Legendary drum and bass producer Goldie composed "Sine Tempore", a short piece performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra in Royal Albert Hall in August 2009.

Bogdan live set @Electro Lab

Bogdan has done a wonderful job for our first Electrolab mix. I'm proud to introduce him as our first special guest on the podcast.

Harry Potter Movies

It's quite odd what fatigue can make me think about; fact is, I've seen somewhere the movie "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" mentioned, and I couldn't contain my sadness.

Sadness because I feel the last two movies, Order of the Pheonix and Half Blood Prince lack personality (well, I could say they're full of bad acting from the young actors, bad direction, etc etc, but I don't feel like a movie critic tonight :D). I've watched them both on the big screen, and I was left disappointed every time. It feels these movies have lost some of the best touches that Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire brought about.. I'm sorry to see these wonderful books turned into such ordinary movies..

I wanted to express this disappointment somewhere appropriate, not on facebook or twitter, where everything just becomes a part of a news feed that is consumed on fast forward..

Breakage interview

I had a chance to talk to the wonderful Breakage at Urban Festival in Iasi. Read the English version of the interview below [originally published in Romanian on Heineken Electro Lab].

Alex: Do you like cats? On your myspace you've got a picture of a cat..
Breakage: Oh yeah, I've got a cat, I've got a cat at home. My cat's called “Cat”, actually. Well, I say it's my cat but it's my mom's cat, I've got a dog called Charles.

Alex: So why is the cat on the myspace page?
Breakage: Because I love that little cat, I love it!

Alex [seeing some tattoos on his hand]: Are those tattoos on your hand with the Led Zeppelin logos?
Breakage: Yeah, they are. They are my favourite band, I grew up on Led Zeppelin, and it's the first tattoo I ever got!

Alex: Tell me about your new album, tell me about "Foundation"
Breakage: The album is called "Foundation", featuring Roots Manuva, Skream, Burial, loads of people - I can't even remember right now.

Alex: The track with Roots Manuva is absolutely unbelievable! How did you get Roots Manuva to work on the track?
Breakage: Just asked him very, very nicely [laughs]

Alex: You've also remixed a song of Flying Lotus's - Testament. How was that experience?
Breakage: Yeah, it's cool, we checked each other - where I used to live in LA, I've met him for a bit and I was like - "Oh big up on the new album, bro', I really like Testament"; and he was like "Would you like to remix it?", I was like "Yeah, sure, whatever!" And it was just that. I mean, he's got a remix for me down the line, and..

Alex: So - where you hanging out in Low End Theory?
Breakage: Not really, I'm not even gonna lie. I don't really go out much unless I'm DJing.

Alex: Well - except for Plastic People every now and then..
Breakage: Yeah, sometimes.. Sometimes I'm down to Plastic People, but it depends how I feel, I have to be in the mood to go out.

Alex: I was honestly very impressed with your set. For some time now, I've lived with the impression that drum'n'bass was done for, but now I see there's still some really good new drum'n'bass flowing our way. Where do you think this music is going to?
Breakage: Jungle, it's going back to jungle - that's what I think.

Alex: Really? Jungle?
Breakage: yeah, you've got many.. you've got drum and bass, you've got minimal, you've got.. I like to say a bit of everything, but I think it's all going back to jungle now, which I'm really excited about - I miss jungle, I miss it very much. For a second I was very close to making jungle on this album, so now I'm very happy.

Alex: How was the crowd tonight?
Breakage: It was great, great, I had a really good time.

Alex: I was a bit surprised they didn't particularly seem to go for dubstep..
Breakage: Yeah, if you go somewhere and play music that people haven't really heard before, you're not gonna get the response that you're used to, but after a while they start to understand it a bit more and, you know, it's a learning experience.

Alex: For how long have you been making music?
Breakage: since I was about 11.

Alex: But you're quite the chameleon, aren't you? You've produced breakbeat, d'n'b..
Breakage: Yeah, I do dubstep.. I do.. all sorts, really, it just depends wether it comes out or not. I haven't got the attention to make just one kind of music.

Alex: That was a bit of a surprise - Breakage producing dubstep, that was something new.
Breakage: I'm from the Croydon area, so.. You have to! It's a law in Croydon that you have to make dubstep :)) No, I'm joking, you don't have to - but where I'm from, really, it's a big achievement for Croydon, and everyone's really young and fresh, I really like that.

Alex: OK, so coming back to freshness.. do you feel there's more innovation right now in dubstep than in drum'n'bass?
Breakage: I think they're about even right now, I think dubstep did motivate a lot of people to think differently, but a lot of people are saying dubstep is sort of becoming formulaic, which is going to happen to any style of music, it can never be avoided - it's like saying "I'm getting old!".. Of course I'm getting old, I'm not getting younger; and the older it gets, it gets like that, until someone sparks it up. The thing is with dubstep - it evolved so much in such a short space of time, and it's on a par with drum'n'bass - just when you think drum'n'bass is stuck, something new comes up and gets everybody excited, and I think that's the same way with dubstep really, I mean somebody comes along, fresh, brings life back into it, reminds people "Oh, this is why I love it".

Alex: OK- so what are your plans for the future?
Breakage: I want to release the album, tour the album, then get to work on another album, that's pretty much it. I don't like to plan too much far ahead, and if I had planned ahead I wouldn't really share it [laughs].