links, images, sounds and filth can be transmitted to me at warrenellis@gmail.com [public "dump" account, gets checked a couple of times a day]

“emodancers never stop”

I cannot for the life of me get their website (or podcast) to play nicely for me lately, but this should work: new label Broken20 (whose podcast is fucking excellent, actually) have made their first release, and it looks to me like prime stuff.

The Village Orchestra presents an hour-long (and fully improvised) live album recording from The Hive Collective’s ‘Memories Are Brighter Than Our Digital Debris’ showcase, part of the Future Everything event in Manchester. Law took Hive’s title and ran with it, composing a meditation themed around the unstable, fragile nature of memory and recording. Occult, meandering and willfully fractious…

Extensive previews at the link.

Milky Words by ButterClock from S.B. Kids on Vimeo.

People keep asking, so: no, I’m not at the London MCM Expo this coming weekend. I’m still getting over this hideous flu bug, and the last thing I want to do to my immune system right now is expose it to thousands of coughing people. Conversely, the last thing they need is for me to be coughing Komodo Dragon Flu bits all over them. So I’m giving it a miss. Sad to be missing the drinking, especially sad to be missing my regular quiet evening dinner with Emma, Pud and Anna, which, funnily enough, is what I look forward to most at Expo.

Raise a pint of whisky for me on Saturday night, Brit-comics.

(image by Christopher Glenn)

Just got email telling me that the brilliant novelist Steve Aylett is doing a gig on Oct 29 2010 at Roxy Arts House, Edinburgh, wherein he will read, speak and probably worry the crap out of people. This will also be your chance to buy the insane mashup CATERER comic. I would also recommend the marvellous and mad LINT.

I’m listening to the first track right now. It starts like an outtake from "Fur Immer" (I’ve been listening to NEU! all afternoon, which made for a weird moment when I had to check if I was streaming audio or still in iTunes). And then it stops. And then they sort of go through a time-travel portal and put their other foot directly into 90s postrock while still strumming the motorik. At which point, yes, it’s total comfort food for old rockist tendencies, but by the time they start digging power chords out of their guitars with rusty screwdrivers, I’m off with the fairies. Thirsting Quench and the Captains of Industry, we salute you.

Templesmith:

Just heard from Bob Wayne at DC Comics, who’s discovered that the RED graphic novel IS now available from Diamond UK. The stoppage was apparently at the Titan Books end (Titan are DC’s licensee for UK book trade sales).

I got asked to write a thing for the Guardian film section about "the allure of the retired operative" in films. And they’ve put it online.

There is great emotional and dramatic power in the concept of the Hero Rising Again. Look at the recent Rambo film, variously titled Rambo and John Rambo. When we first meet Sylvester Stallone in that film, he frankly looks like a skinned heifer that someone left out in the rain for six weeks. He’s not Rambo. He’s "John", and he’s old, monosyllabic to the point of catatonia, defeated. Things have to get horrendous before he becomes Rambo again – much like the Bourne Persona asserting itself when Matt Damon is attacked by cops in The Bourne Identity – and the audience takes perverse joy in the retired man taking on that aspect of the demented Special Forces black-ops killer "asset" we know of old…

• Futuristic Judge Dredd smartguns issued to 101st Airborne
  "It's all go in the world of futuristic Judge Dredd style guns today. Reports suggest that a battalion of US airmobile* troops in Afghanistan are to be equipped with the XM-25 computing smart-rifle, able to strike enemies hiding round corners or in trenches. A successful "proof of concept" of a guided homing bullet for use in sniper rifles has also been announced."
  (tags:war tech want+one xmas thankyou )
• The Mire – Radio Art To Work By
  "Knut Aufermann, author of the Radio Art feature in The Wire 320 has compiled, in his own words ?a selection of radio streams to listen to whilst concentrating on other things, a kind of audible wallpaper that commercial radio aspires to, but much better.?"
  (tags:radio )
• Life on earth could be transformed by NASA space technology
  "For years, NASA has been developing technology to establish long-duration human presence in space. As part of this ongoing effort, NASA developed a closed-loop system that recycles urine and gray water into drinking water. In addition, recent research suggests that it also may be used to generate and store energy, which would not only benefit space habitats and travel, but may have application on Earth as well."
  (tags:space tech culture )

I’ve just heard, in the last ten minutes, from two retail locations in the UK – one a comics shop, one a bookstore — that it’s apparently impossible to order RED for their shelves.

NOT WHAT I WANT TO HEAR WHEN THE FILM OPENS HERE TOMORROW, DIAMOND COMICS DISTRIBUTORS UK.

Lili’s waiting somewhat impatiently for this. It’s not out in the UK until Guy Fawkes’ Night. But if you’re in the US, you can buy it now. If it’s even half as good as the first book set in the "Clockwork Century" space, it’s going to be the mad entertainment book of the autumn. Terrifying Steamwar Battle Trains, for god’s sake. Who doesn’t want one of those?

Whitechapel is my online community.

* Who Else Is Doing Longform Webcomics For Collection Like FREAKANGELS?

* FreakAngels Wiki Online!

* Online radio

* Lifehack: Small but Definite Changes

My friend the future doom strategist Jamais Cascio is spreading the word:

On Thursday, October 21, CBC TV will show Surviving the Future, an hour-long documentary on both the major challenges facing us over the next half-century and the amazing technologies and social shifts underway to meet those challenges… I’ve managed to pull out the bits in which I appear.

Surviving the Future: Jamais Cascio excerpts from Jamais Cascio on Vimeo.

I’m an absolute mark for post-MBV swoony drones. So, here, The Slaves have nailed me. Click through to buy the digital download for a lousy USD $5, or a CD-R in an eco-wallet thing for a mere $8.

Someone found this for me about three years back. And then I lost it when my computer died (also killing the old email archive, so I can’t even trace it back).

In 1985, Peter Blegvad released a couple of singles on Virgin. One was “Special Delivery.” This is NOT the version that turns up on later albums. The later version is very minimal. This version is not: from what I remember, it’s a full band and backing singers. It sounds a lot bigger than the later version (and a bit Eighties, obv.) It is specifically this single/12" version I’m looking for.

If anyone has an mp3 of this version, please email it to me at warrenellis@gmail.com. I would really like to hear it again.