Journal

JOURNAL

26th July 2010

Izlaz A2, Belgrade Airport
Sitting in Belgrade airport in existential trip mode. It's so hard to focus at these moments. Apparently you can tell if you are dreaming if you can't remember how you got to the place you are at. I remember a plane, a sleep, a flat, dry cheese sandwich and a smiling old lady with blonde bone white hair. That memory and a slight chill on the lower part of my left arm from the air conditioning unit make me believe that this is real.
I am trying to learn the lines from the song but it's poetry won't flow from page to memory. I so admire actors who can perform these mental feats and make it look easy.
I have three hours here in limbo so I will try again and again. But it is so hard to focus.

Mediterranean Bar, Sarajevo
So it turns out that I am here, playing CDs in this place at the behest of ronhill (one word, all lower case, simple, sophisticated looking but not overly flashy typeface). That's ronhill, not Ron Hill, who is probably a very nice bloke who lives in Croydon, but ronhill, the cigarette brand that is sponsoring the Mediterranean Bar, which is a pop up bar that has popped up outside a venue in a large, slightly run down concrete square in a concrete city that is currently in the middle of it's (actually up and coming) film festival.
As a so called artist I can't afford to be touchy about working for fag brands, even though I don't smoke and think that I would approve of a complete ban on smoking if it were possible, I think, because surely people should have the right to get addicted to stuff and kill themselves, slowly, if they really want to. It's a tricky one.
Anyhow, the gig goes well, considering the temperature has plummeted to a very unseasonal 15 degrees centigrade and the bar is outside.
So I play a good bumpy, pumpy house set. ronhill has a girl dancing behind a screen so I take a picture of her shadow then sneak a peek round the side of the screen just to make sure she is real and not a video that looks like a girl dancing behind a screen. Yes, there she is.
And the set flows nicely, in that rather good, unfocussed, not really thinking about it way that good DJing has to be.
And I'm thinking: There are so many people smoking here. And I'm thinking: This city is so full of brutalist concrete architecture that even I, a person who loves brutalist concrete architecture, am a little overwhelmed. And I'm thinking: I wish I could stay and explore. And I'm Thinking: Boom, boom, boom.

26th July 2010

Gate H32, München Flughafen
Now, gliding over the manicured farmland of southern Germany, on the way home, I feel like I have been out on a limb, the frayed knee of the stonewashed jeans of Europe, where our shining, smart, smug, designer West starts to unravel. Where the post modern, post everything notion of caring little for an outward show and the trappings of wealth seems more than slightly ridiculous. Where show is important because show is all there is really. Where reconstruction is slow and belts really are tight; where really having no money is really real and not just some semi-imaginary construct of a bunch of posh millionaires.

Now, back in the big, fat belly of the Euro-beast, in Munich, it seems churlish to be disdainful, it feels a little insulting to share the arty shots of concrete blocks and busses that I managed to steal from Sarajevo.
But I guess I will, because that's what I do and I mean no disrespect. I find these images pleasing for their shapes and colours and textures and structure, like an abstract painting or a piece of electronic music, a tiny fragment of joy in a fucked up world.

21st July 2010

burning gold, glass ceiling and the ghost train

At 21:03, rolling past Chamomile Street on the way to London Bridge, the city canyon is in shadow, but the sun still illuminates the crane tops and scrapers. We stop in our tracks and I pull out the Leica, shooting beams and angles. It’s only a moment but it feels like magic, this play of light and shade on the concrete, steel and glass up above.

At 00:47 the long train begins to roll through. It must be heavy because it makes the rails squeal, sometimes it sounds like singing, sometimes screaming, depending on the wind direction and the mood I guess. I don’t know where it comes from, what it contains, or where it goes. But somehow, as I poke my head out of the window, the better to listen to the sound, it makes me feel more alive.

19th July 2010

Melodica, a pair of socks and the Blue Rose Code

I have been making the Melodica radio show for a year now. Here are some pics from the anniversary show. Blue Rose Code in session in the kitchen, making sweet intimate music specially for the show. And the socks that I wore for the making of the programme, hand knitted by Spilly Jane.

18th July 2010

RT
Saturday includes the customary trip to Rough Trade East to pick up booty for next week's shows and general listening pleasure, and to view the Album Of The Week. It's strange to see the albums that have been boxed in my kitchen for so long in an actual shop.

17th July 2010

Star
Melodica anniversary party at the Star Of Bethnal Green begins with Nikhil from Mixcloud on the decks and an art b/w through the window and ends, almost inevitably with a little dub and reggae from Coco, a rendition of happy birthday and the mildly embarrasing group photo.

12th July 2010

8th July 2010

DJing in a chocolate shop
{opening of the desert counter of William Curley, Pimlico, deserts by William Curley, music by Chris Coco}

How ridiculous.

How delicious

6th July 2010

Beware of Trains...
...It says on the sign. but to Bristol and back it's by far the best way. It's a swift trip for an interview with IDJ Magazine, but I also buy a record from a shop, real vinyl actually, from DJ contemporary John Stapleton. The man in charge.

It's Stereo Test Record, Model 211, for home and laboratory use. I think it will prove useful in forthcoming and ongoing projects.

4th July 2010

Alta Velocidad A Balearas
Overheard conversations number one: at the airport (lady from seat 19A on the phone, going through passport control)
“As long as there’s a budget, don’t let them think that I’m doing it for free, just because it’s Paris Hilton...”
Welcome to Ibiza. We are here for a work / promo / holiday trip. Here on the island of love and money all lines are blurred, everything is work, everything is pleasure, everything is everything.
Whatever, a few days of the joys of OPM, Rosado, Tagliata, Sonica and all round general sunny Balearica will probably good for mind, body and spirit, if not for the bank account.
We start the day with a little run round the port and up to the top of Dalt Villa. Like it’s nothing but beautiful. The ferry pulling in to the harbour says peace and love down the side, all smiles on top for the tourists, dripping sweat and feeling fine.

There’s a first trip to Ibiza Sonica, first home for Melodica, my radio show, to play in the studio, that turns out to be a rather fine room with a view, next to the petrol station but overlooking the countryside. A chat with Andy Wilson, a dip into the goody bag to dole out copies of Feel Free Live Good and Lazy Summer and a little mix. And I find this quote on a book of photos of the island. It’s all about the light, which I try so hard to capture with my Leica, the light which has inspired photographers since the beginning of photography, poets since the beginning of poetry.

And the whiteness that strikes you as you arrive is so brilliant that all other towns seem by comparison to live in the dusk. From creamy-white to agate-white, from seagull to snow, from swan to marble - each little house has it’s own whiteness giving it individual form, so that seen together they appear like a box of miraculous sounds, tuned to various quarter tones in the key of say G-major. And as they have the sea to reflect them - which they in turn reflect - the buildings take on the colours of precious stones such as cannot be found in any other place. Ibiza can be compared to excavated glass; it has an iridescence which draws on every colour, and a mother-of-pearl sheen which contains every possible hue. (Santiago Rusinol, ‘L’illa blanca’ (1913)

4th July 2010

Overheard conversations number two: on the beach (man on a bed, on the phone)
“And he, like, put the whole thing on Facebook and it was, like, soooo embarrassing.

And so to the show. At Space. In El Salon. I play CDs. People come in. People move. People go out. Teki Latex ‘Answers’ is one of the tunes of the year, it’s so funny. My useful edit of Caribou works a treat, now I can mix in and out of the track without bumping. Our green wristbands take us to places that we didn’t know existed. The back stairs, the side door. These are the bits of the club that I love. The calm around the chaos. The fire exits, the back stairs, the sinews, the arteries, the organisation.

Then we dance, vodka limon in hand, Metro Area on the decks, playing disco, on vinyl; then Tensnake, playing disco, on a laptop.
Meanwhile, in El Salon, it’s format wars. One DJ wants to play vinyl, there are two more with different and conflicting laptop systems, the tech stands and stares at a handful of leads flopping over his clenched fist like wilting daffodils.
For now I’m sticking to editing at home and CDs in the club. Some fine grooves here but not much poetry. Maybe tomorrow.

4th July 2010

Three days in one or how we run from tower to tower to tower or how to do a sunset or nightclubbing, we’re nightclubbing

1: How we run from tower to tower to tower.
The plan today is to get up early (fail) and run. We are staying in a hotel called Torre Del Mar (the tower of the sea). It’s a pretend tower, in the middle of a swimming pool, pretending to defend us from pirates. But down the beach there is a real one, the Pink Salt Tower, built in C16, for just such a purpose.
So, after breakfast, and stacked up with stolen fruit and water, we leave, hot foot in the morning heat, sweat turning to pink salt on our arms and legs. The beach passes by. It’s more acceptable at this pace, the stasis, the tourists, the European chav nation on their holidays, basting in the sun.
Push, sweat, it feels like fun, sea to the left, promenade to the right, tripping over sand castles, navigating round bat and ball and snoozing walrus-shaped humans staring out from their steady, dead eyes, all confusion and sadness.

And on to the tower itself. And the tower is magnificent, restored beyond its former beauty, with a six second echo in the main room that builds and dies in an instant. I guess that’s due to the dome shape of the roof.

The man on the top tells us to take the hill path, through the woods, by the sea. It’s not running terrain, but it’s a tough walk in the midday heat, smells of the sea replaced by pine, like climbing a path in a sauna sometimes, and the rolls and folds of the rocky outcrops are numerous. There are signs on the way, small piles of stones and wood, a little order in nature’s chaos, a little security, saying, yes you are on the right path, yes it has been travelled before, yes you will reach your destination safe and sound.

4th July 2010

Eventually a final scramble down stony track and we are back on the beach, hard running now in sand and heat, salt spray from the sea coating salt sweat skin, all salt and heat, wind and heat, grain and heat, hot sand on hot sand. Past the naked and the not quite naked, the beautiful and the not so, but all oh so human, except for the occasional twenty year old tits sitting upright on a fifty year old chest, like the dome on the top of the tower at the end of the peninsula.
Past Chiringuito and Chiringay, the first translates as small beach bar, the second, well, the clue is in the name; past men standing proud in the scrub, eyes staring, shiny, bright, alive, as the action proceeds, back and forth, out of sight, below the waist.

And finally we arrive, at the third tower, at the far end of the beach, looking out across the waters to Formentera via the islands inbetween, kind of exhilarated, extremely hot, but strangely, definitely not tired, just, we made it here, in a fantastic state, we made it from tower to tower to tower.

4th July 2010

2: How to do a sunset
Well, you don’t exactly do it actually, it just sort of happens, but we are here at Mambo, not really expecting anything, just playing and watching and waiting and listening and drinking a little too much Mateus Rosé.

And slowly it does happen. There is cloud and a little haze which means that it feels like it’s near the end for about an hour; the orange glow, the slight sense of otherness, brightness through a filter, like giant nets held up over the water, so the music slows early - My Beach House, Kenneth’s remix of Kate Bush, Love Is Contagious. Golden Light, the boats’ orchestrated dashes across the bay, golden light, smiling, everybody shining and orange and beautiful, everybody still as the world moves just a little, Shoes - So What, Gregory Isaacs - Cool Down, then the moment, Beck - Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime, because it resonates - “I need your loving, like the sunshine...” Because we heard Paloma sing it at Glastonbury, because it’s a classic Balearic thing, because the version by The Field is on my Lazy Summer compilation, because now, because of what’s happening, it’s our song, because there doesn’t have to be a reason for everything, because this is a special moment and at this moment this is the special something that is required, and then after the customary but not obligatory round of applause as the sun disappears into the last bank of cloud, another cover, Hafdis Huld’s version of Who Loves The Sun, well that’s obvious, and on into the night with Ain’t No Stopping Us Now. Perfect.