While doing a little digging around the K-referencing sections of the web, I found a couple of sweet things worth mentioning.

First off is this simple but very effective video combining one of the tracks from “Yoshimi Battles The Hip-Hop Robots” with some bizarre old newsreel footage from the Internet Archive. The end result had me chucking into my coffee this morning. Nice one, Shpilkis.

Second off was spotting that we’d been noted on Wiley Wiggins’ blog “News Of The Dead”. Wiley’s voice pops up in a few places on “24 Hours”, so we’re chuffed as punch to see the mention. Hope you like what we’ve done to you, WW :)

Finally we have to extend thanks to our Wikipedia-writing fans, who have extended our entry to incorporate info about “24 Hours” – If anyone feels like adding to the list, go for it – it’s always great to find out what we’ve been up to…

Yup, home again. Head in pieces, but body mostly intact. (hehe…)

Must first extend large warm-hearted thanks to The Birthday Party and On The Piste for working their asses off for the amazing week of frolics that was Trans Alpine XS.

A blur of snow and insanity from the get go, everyone involved rocked hard from start to finish, allowing us to play some great sets (including one, claimed by Jim All Time Top 100 to be our best ever, although you’ve probably sobered up and changed your mind now, Jim ;), along the way making some excellent friends. Thanks and greetings to the Tramp! boys, the It’s Bigger Than boys, the inspirational JD Twitch, The very wonderful Howard Marks (room-mate and a half for most of the week), the equally wonderful Clint Boon (and better half, hi Charlie!, room-mates for the last day), Martin Brew, Rob Bright, Laurie Laptop, Sean Smith… sure there’s more, but our brains are on a go-slow as the bodies digest the full English breakfast that is the traditional return-home meal for most Brits abroad.

So, back to reality with a bump to find that we’re out of bandwidth again, but there are new, working and better than ever torrents up, which should please most of you. The rest should look to your peers, and your peer-to-peers, or check the comments in the previous posts.

Also while we were away, found out about a couple of veeeeery interesting things, first the new DJ Shadow single, which will certainly raise some eyebrows, but jaws remain on the floor at the news that the multitrack parts for two of the tracks from David Byrne & Brian Eno’s seminal (i.e. as essential to your life as semen) album “My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts” are to be made available for free under a CC licence. Gentlemen, my hat, and other easily-removable pieces of clothing, come off to you! I’ll save the rest for when you make the full album available (hinty fucking hint). The future lies this way, folks – record companies looking for back catalogue interest please take note.

Quick thank you for all the feedback and kind words for “24H” – we’re mightly chuffed!!!

However, all this attention, and the lack of a kicking torrent tracker have weighed heavy on the site bandwidth, so things may be stop and start over the next couple of days. If so, we apologise.

If anyone can offer a mirror to the album tracks, as always, we’d be eternally grateful. If you can, please post a link in the comments of this post.

Zips, torrents, ID3 tags and a cherry on the top will all arrive at the weekend. You can wait a few days, can’t you???

;-)

Okay, so maybe it was a little over adventurous to attempt to get the album uploaded and working before leaving to go to the Alps for a week.

Apologies for the buggered torrent and the lack of full zips. We’re trying to find a connection with a fast upload so we can sort it, don’t know if we will, so it won’t be working till the weekend. Sorry!

In the meantime thanks for the feedback and enjoy the album!

And they do… they really do. Only seems a few days since the below post, but time just keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’…

So another meta-post. Is that the right word? Whatever.

First off, as usual, with the apologies – website and email has been down for the past week and a half due to an ISP collapse – indirect apologies for that – the silver lining there was that it seems to have killed off the virus attack that had been swamping the Kleptones inbox for the couple of weeks prior to that – the ol’ spam filters have been working overtime, but the upshot of all that is:

If you sent any email to us in the past three weeks, mailing list, chat, whatever – please resend it!!!

(And also, on a humbler note, if you sent us a concerned email following the horrific events of 07/07, as I know at least a few did – double apologies for the lack of a reply – due to the above we didn’t get them, but we’re all (thank fuck) fine, if a little shaken-up – just like the rest of the country.)

So, next up, fun things from the past weeks – the Webbys were quite phenomenal, as you may have gathered. It still chimes strangely that we’ve been awarded this accolade (and it looks like we’re not the only ones), but the amount of warmth and good company that surrounded the ceremony was quite touching and made me feel very much at home – so many excellent people from different areas of society, all hell bent on caning this ‘net thing for all its worth and succeeding. Big grins and toasts all round.

I don’t like doing big thanks lists here, ‘cos they get long and tedious and most unlike a webby speech, (“Kick out the jams, motherfuckers”, since you ask), but lots of appreciation and gratitude to the Webby & IADAS peoples, especially David-Michel, Tiffany and “posse” (and sorry about the karaoke, guys) ; Adam Kahan, Bob “Wes” Westerfield, and crew, for tireless production support and general hard sweat on the day helping sort our video, Leslie from CafePress, who took my drunken criticism and batted it right back at me, hard (and yes, I know I owe you lunch ;) ; The very honourable Joel Veitch from Rather Good, Jerry & Shelli from Yellowstone Park for being so damn gorgeous and friendly, Stewart from Flickr for being the only person to spot my CC referencing T-shirt; and finally Ian Hardy from the BBC, whose brief interview with me caused my phone to fill up with surprised messages as it was broadcast across the nation. Damn, now everyone knows what I look and sound like. Oh well.

The rest of the time in New York was equally spot on – thanks to Justin for quickly slipping me in for a DJ set the day after the awards at Nublu – quite a mellow set by my standards, but the hangover from the previous night, plus that day’s intense scorch and humidity left me in a, shall we say, gentler state of mind than usual. Top night though. And one last thanks to the rampaging creative insanity of the Levy family, masterminds behind the “1 more time for the 9” subway party that left me slack-jawed and drunk with the intensity of a spontaneously generated NY gathering. (Thanks to Brianvan for the pictures – why not play “Where’s Eric?” – I can spot three appearences in the set, hehe…)

Back on planet Brighton, there was barely enough time to catch breath before heading off to Glastonbury – intending to give a bit of mobile blogging as we moved through the Glastosphere, but, as any battle hardened glasto-fule kno, the best laid plans get forcibly removed from your brain at the gate, and are replaced with a mixture of cotton-candy and mud. Also the sludge seriously impacted on my ability to search out the free wireless hotspots and by then a cloud of alcohol-induced dunkirk spirit had enveloped me. Ah well, so it goes. Alan and Charlie at the London News Review did a pretty good job of documenting it anyway…

A crazy one, indeed. But fun, always fun. Even when this led to this, this, this and this, there’s still time for this.

Anf finally lastly, the other Friday saw the launch of the new All Time Top 100 clubnight in Brighton, which yours truly will be spinning (well, laptopping ;) at a couple of times each month (check the turntable experience page for info) – a splendind time as usual and boding well for the future, indeed.

So there we are. New York, Glastonbury, ATT100 growing and an ISP crash. For me, quite an interesting month, but now looking forward to kicking about the homestead for a little while. How about you?

Well, first and foremost, it looks like the torrent server has fallen over, and unfortunately, I’m out of town and the only one with the technological knowhow to kick things into touch. Having said that, I’m tring to get a message through to someone else with kicking instructions, but we’ll see what happens.

So if you’re tring to use the torrents – my humblest apologies – normal service will be resumed in a few days.

Secondly, it looks like some of the background graphics aren’t coming up on the site, giving it rather a bare appearence. The site files look fine, but again, someone’s taking an educated peek to sort it.

Why does all this always happen whenever I go away?

“Gone away?”, you ask? “Where has he gone?”

Well, I’m in New York, as some of you may be aware, to collect our wunnerful Webby award. We ‘ve kept it pretty quiet on the site, humble non-own-trumpet-blowing types that we are, but we’ve been bopped on the head by too many of our friends, all of them saying “You won an award, you dumbasses, tell people about it!”

So here you go. The wonderful International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences have deigned to give us the award of “Artist Of The Year”, for our contributions to the swinging beat of the internet drum.

Yay. And more Yay.

(Pauses to open bottle of champagne. No really, I honestly am. Me? In a New York hotel room with a bottle of premier champagne? With my reputation? What were they thinking?)

One pop, fizz, glug, swig, belch later…

Anyway, the ceremony for the awards is tomorrow night, at the rather fancy Gotham Hall, so we’ve broken our audiovisual duck and, with the nimble digital-fingered help of the wonderful Nhungsta, put together a little video to show.

Should be interesting to see how it all goes. I am, naturally, rather nervous about the whole thing, being sole ‘tones representative and all, so I’ve taken a couple of extra days to get into the New Yorkiness of it all before the insanity sets in.

And happily succeeded, due to the rather splendid nature of this fine city. Grabbing a last minute ticket to go see the Philip Glass Ensemble do a live score to “Powqqatsi” last night was a serious treat, especially as I’d never seen them before, and I love wor Phil. (The prelude to his opera “Akhnaten” is one of my all-time favourite pieces of music – highly recommended).

Was very interesting to see a more electronic side to Glass’s work being performed live, too, as the score features quite a bit of sampled percussion loops and vocals. Cueing these accurately proved very tricky for the ensemble to integrate into their live playing, overwhelmingly so for the two percussionists, who seemed to lose the groove quite badly at one point when a sampled loop came in, doing a good impression of someone having a really hard time learning how to beat-mix. They picked it back up well though – overall an incredible performance.

From there downtown to Misshapes, for the afterparty to the Killers / Louis XIV show in Central Park, which was a swell do, plenty of beer, beats and pogoing. Good to see a fine dose of 80s poptasms being blended in with the electroclashes and new no-waveisms. Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop” has never sounded so good. What do you mean “It never did sound any good?”… get yourself into the remedial “Quality 80s cheese and how to appreciate it” class, immediately…

Suffice to say now , I’m now feeling a little tender-headed, but find myself having been suitably formatted into a New York State Of Mind. Hurrah.

Right, I’m now going to and see which of the million open wireless networks here will let me in to post this up. There are so many hotspots here now that it’s a wonder you can’t actually feel the air being weighed down with the transmissions.

But in the meantime, once again, thanks to everyone for the feedback, blogging, words of support etc… We’re chuffed well beyond chuff level 100. Couldn’t have done it without all of you. New stuff is on its way soon, rest assured.

sip, belch, repeat to coda.

I must extend exceedingly warm thanks and praise to the good folks of The Birthday Party in Manchester, who did an splendid job in putting on one of the most excellent parties I’ve had the pleasure to play at in some time this Saturday.

From the delight of seeing Tony Wilson scowling over a pair of CD decks (apparently for the first time ever!) whilst delivering a set that ranged from Patti Smith and “Venus In Furs” to some decidely evil sounding electro tinged hip-hop, to the gallic-erotic delights of The Lovers and the hardest working Samba/Funk crowd-surprise you’ll ever see in your life (alright, Johnny!), I spent the hours before my own bout of laptop scowling constantly scooping my jaw off the ground at the wide ranging intensity of it all, lapped up by a splendid, more than up-for it sold-out crowd.

Oh, and they seemed to like my contribution a bit too. Which was nice.

…but by golly, it feels like an old year right now, doesn’t it?

First up, a belated happy new year to you all, and as we said on the site, thanks to all who came and frugged 2005 into existance at the All Time Top 100 Blow out – a damn fine party to be sure…

Secondly, I’ll extend the new year’s honours that we gave to our mailing list (along with a little xmas present – see what you’re missing out on?), and give a loud and hearty thanks to everyone that has listened to, talked about, blogged about, emailed comments about, given the finger to Disney on behalf of, hosted, mirrored, written about etc… anything that we’ve done this past year.

(And double thanks to anyone who stuck us in their end-of-year charts – we’re honoured)

We could blather on about it and single people out for praise, but we want to keep this short. You know who you are, anyway, and it’s all really really appreciated, maaaan.

Next up, the reason for our recent quietness is that we’ve been a little hive of industry, and have been locked away polishing off 60 minutes of new stuff for an exclusive radio mix for James Hyman’s “The Rinse” show on XFM here in swinging Londonengland..

The show will air on Sunday 23rd January at 1am GMT – You can listen on their website, so if you fancy a spot of new New Year sounds direct from Kleptonia, please tune in – we’d love to have you along…

(Also following our mix at 2am is an hour mix set from the legendary Jazzy Jeff – an honour to be warming up for the man, to be sure)

That’s about it for now, I think…

..and we thank you.

The last couple of days has seen a flurry of comment and debate sparked by yesterday’s incident. To the many of you who blogged, posted comments, emailed cunning methods of protest, debated the situation and above all, offered mirrors and posted links up, we doff our caps and thank you for your support.

It is very, very, very, much appreciated.

As people have been asking – no, we haven’t had any mail from Disney. But we’re approaching our mailbox with trepidation, to say the least.

No… not that one, although if you haven’t seen it yet, go check out the Grey Video… an excellent piece of work, made by as yet unknown hands.

The dangerous mouse in this case, sadly, is Disney, who, as owners of Hollywood Records, are the controllers of Queen’s catalogue in the USA. Disney have issued Waxy.org with a cease-and-desist order, due to their mirroring of our “Hip-Hopera”. They have been asked to remove all links to the 23 tracks by the 23rd November.

However, as Boing Boing and Waxy have both already pointed out, Waxy aren’t actually hosting the files themselves, just linking to them, which isn’t the same thing at all.

Naturally, this is unfortunate, if not wholly unexpected, news.