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 Electro Lab 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].

Listen to this f*cker

Breakage feat. Roots Manuva - Run'Em Out.

Outstanding.

We're Romanians, We Don't Give a Fuck

Every so often I wonder about human nature: if it is human nature to be greedy, or selfish, or evil; if it is human nature to envy, to lack compassion or mercy; or on the contrary, if we're all good by default, but somehow the environment (our family, the way we're brought up, the society we live in and its shortcomings) makes us greedy, or evil.

The fact that Madonna was booed in Bucharest after she sent a short, simple message of tolerance has already made the headlines around the world. In the past, I'd blame this kind of behaviour on the stupidity of Romanians; I used to say - yeah, we're a medieval nation of people that don't understand today's world, that are generally dumb and that are more concerned with their bellies than anything else. Quite narrow-minded of me, really.

How wrong I was. What this people lacks, on a gargantuan scale, is not intelligence, but rather compassion. We aren't compassionate - we're Romanians, we don't give a fuck! We complain that our roads are bad, but an SMB-owner avoids paying taxes. We cheat the system at every turn, and that only means we cheat everyone else around us.

In Romania, everybody steals from everybody. Yes - I mean actual stealing. Our tax money are controlled by a gang of douche-bags that are upset now because there's hardly anything left to steal, that's why their arguing so much (back in the day, when there was enough for everyone, nobody complained). That construction company that doesn't declare the right amount of money it pays its workers is stealing money right now from you and me.

And so does that other company that deals business with the Romanian state and charges three or four times the price for its goods or services. Technically, they may not be breaking any law (yes, we have stupid laws), but that doesn't make it moral.

This is a no man's land (cheers, Ada Milea - how right you got it!), where you will be ripped off if you give people the chance to do so.

And we come to the problem of tolerance. Romanians don't really hate gypsies, or gays, or jews for that matter. We hate everybody. Of course, everybody keeps a lid on it - being perceived as a hater is still a no no (we're a nation of hypocrites, in case you were wondering). But in the case of gypsies, or gays - well, it's ok to hate them. The gypsies - damn thieves, they are going to multiply so much in 30 years there will be too little of us good Romanians to defend ourselves. The gays - well.. they wanna fuck our asses, and they dress like women, fucking abominations.. Everybody hates gypsies and gays in this country, so that's acceptable. The hate spills out on gypsies, gays, hungarians. On anybody that's not "us" (which is just another way of saying anybody that's not "me"), pretty much.

And we come to Madonna. Poor thing.. she made the mistake of pointing out to Romanians that they should stop hating. Well, stop hating gays and gypsies, but that was just the afterthought for many people there. Somebody had the nerve to tell them to stop being haters. Somebody they were paying (in Romanian society now, money talks, bullshit walks; in our newly discovered capitalism, money is all that matters; money and clout) to entertain them.

So naturally, they're bashing on the organizational aspects of the concert now. That there was too much dust, that there was always a cue at the bar, that the toilets were this way or the other, that they couldn't see Madonna (because she wasn't tall enough), that they couldn't hear her, that the security people were sitting down, that the security people were standing, that the weather was too warm, or too cold, that some people were sitting on the ground and that the sun was not shining anymore. I haven't been to that concert, however I happen to have attended quite a few other concerts organized by Emagic, the team that organized the Madonna gig. And unless they went crazy in the head in the meantime (which I seriously doubt), I'm sure the concert had the best organization possible.

But aah... we're Romanians, we don't give a fuck; we love Jesus and fuck our spouses. HATE FTW!

The Herbaliser and Gojira Interviews

I interviewed Jake Wherry (The Herbaliser) and Gojira for feeder.ro.

Heineken Electro Lab

Electro Lab is my little attempt at pushing good electronic music to Romanian mainstream audiences.

Watch out for the Electro Lab podcast that will feature some of the best (I hope) Romanian electronic artists.

This is risky. Wish me luck :)