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See you in a couple of days/weeks on a brand new on-point (which for the moment is only running the default wordpress theme, sorry for that)
In case you didn’t know already, check the Summerbreak post to know what’ll be up in the ver near future!
cheers!
=lloyd=
I’m taking a break. Everybody seems to be taking breaks lately so I feel my time has come to take one too.
However, a new podcast will be up this week and expect some newsflashes every now and then too.
Saturday July 28th vic&lloyd are mixing an allnighter at Café St.Georges in our very hometown, Roeselare that is. Which might just be considered as somewhat of a come-back gig for us (yes, it’s been this long - over a year- so shame on you rsl promoters!) And we’ll bring a very special extra guest, by the name of Shimmy Timmy, our Brother on the Harmonica!
On-point tv will see some updates, maybe a stand-alone site too, stay tuned for that.
After Summer I’m joining a groupexpo in Antwerp which seems to be quite a big thing, more info will follow when I’m back, after my break.
VanWidderVoeGidder Tape2 is still in the making too, and should be finished end of August, fingers crossed.
The vinyl+poster packages of The Sedan Vault are selling fast, give me a yell at lloyd@on-point.be if you’d want to secure your copy (12 euro only, ltd. 330 copies edition!)
That being said I’m working on a major project to be launched in 2008, in order for me to focus on that, I need to take some distance from the blogosphere.
I hope you don’t mind… Hell, I hope you do mind, like I’m missing my commentors! Rest assured though, I’ll always be here, only now less frequently, definitely no four-posts-a-day style anymore.
Stay on-point and see you after the break!
About to lift off for another brilliant evening at BlueNoteRecordsFestival in Ghent. Wednesday was very nice, almost succeeded in convincing Shadow to do an interview, but the tour schedule was just too damn tight, too bad.
Thusfar I’ve only managed to properly arrange one interview, the rest of the bunch seems to be in superstarstatus. Which I can only respect.
However, I will still be knocking on management’s doors of the likes of Zap Mama, Guru and Sly Stone. Although chances to interview that last one are extremely small, but then again same went for Roy Ayers last year, when numerous attempts of setting up a meeting ended up in a nice long chat with Roy, about his sneakers, amongst many other topics - you’ll get the whole interview in one of the future podcasts, don’t you worry about that!
Anyway, I’m all into Sly & the Family Stone nowadays. Particularly this tune called “Babies making babies”, as featured on one of my favourite mixtapes, by Rob Swift.
And on that note, I’ll let Sly (on the photo to the right) himself do the rest of the talking. Read the Vanity Fair story on where he’s at nowadays, Or let’s go back, way back, back into the time:
There’s more Sly, here’s the man, the myth, living the life, basically:
Last month I joined Jan Peeters to interview Ben Westbeech, protégé of Gilles Peterson on his new label Brownswood Recordings.
A couple of hours before Ben Westbeech’s gig in Leuven, we join him for a beer and a relaxed chat in front of Leuven’s train station.
After having launched our joint criticism on the strange and not that well succeeded architectural combination of the neoclassical train station, its ultramodern canopy and the red brick bus station, our conversation takes of with Bristol, a safe haven for new electronical sounds coming from for instance Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead and Roni Size. Bristol seems to be quite a heavily bass-influenced town… (Read the rest of the interview.)
And/or tune in right here:
Ben is performing live in Kortrijk this Saturday the 14th of July, sharing the stage with Jimi Tenor, all for free, so go check that out!
He’s also playing at Dour Festival, which is sold out for the first time, apparently.
Previously on on-point tv:
Dave Decat - Carhartt feature
Martha Cooper Interview
Soul:ID - epk
Damn, what can I say, here’s Baloji with Amp Fiddler in the studio. And then the third killer steps in the spot, and he goes by the name of Peter Lesage! It’s brilliant!
Baloji Live at BlueNoteRecordsFestival this Friday, can’t wait to see that show!
More Baloji video material:
Congo Music Video
SozyOne Gonzalez on the Album Artwork of Hotel Impala
Don’t know how many of you have seen Ricky Gervais’ stand-up performance, but I hadn’t. But guess what, it’s put online for us to enjoy. Entirely:
The rest of the chapters are to be clicked through, or you’ll find them right here.
More Ricky Gervais:
- Ricky Gervais on Letterman
- One Love - Ricky Gervais in Kenya
- Ricky Gervais leaked video for Microsoft
Last month I’ve made the EPK that’s accompanying the release of Soul:Id’s highly anticipated debut album ‘Sex, Love and Philosophy’
I’ve had some great times getting to know the band and I must say I’ve rarely seen such dedicated people, focussed on doing things the right way. Seeing things happen made me realise it actually is not so surprising they’re debuting on the infamous ABB Soul label in the States. (with releases in Japan and the UK following shortly after)
The album is a killer, it was featured in Billboard. Still, no press interest in Belgium, strange, isn’t it? I guess it’s the stereotypical story, you’ll have to succeed abroad before you get noticed. As you’ll see in the video though, the band has been touring internationally already.
ABB Soul made a nice e-card, in which the EPK is nicely featured, which is nice!
A video interview with tons of exclusive video material will be featured on on-point tv somewhere next month. Busy times on the editing tip, learning a lot of new tricks. Stay tuned for more tv, and needles to say, please spread the word. Because here’s what to expect:
- Graffiti Royal Video (ft. SozyoneGonzalez, Shake, Rekto, Olivier Stak, etc.)
- Ben Westbeech Interview
- Dave Decat Interview
- Soil&Pimp Sessions Interview
- BlueNoteRecordsFestival Interviews
- etc. etc.
And after that I’ve got another round of jobhunting to do.
Time for me to plug some more music. Live music. Funk music. Straight outta Brussels comes The Peas Project: an 11-piece live funk outfit, influenced by a dozen of genres and known for their strong live reputation.
I still have to edit the footage over their blazing gig at Jazzbreak just a while ago. I missed out on their Brussels Jazz Marathon show on the Grand Place but looking at the pictures on theirspace it looks like Brussels sure was put on fire that night!
Their debut album “This Is Our First Record” is in stores, I’ll hit you with some live footage later on, but for now, here’s their new clip: “Our Funk Process”.
For live dates, check their myspace, and to all bookers outside of Brussels, Book these cats!
Baloji is going strong. Another video was just uploaded. This time around a high-quality 9-minute feature. Listen and feel the vibe, it’s quite heavy if you ask me:
Love the camerawork and the editing too. More info on Baloji’s Hotel Impala album soon!
Lately I’ve been feeling the need to share some serious topics with you. About online and cultural trends, to be specific.
Some of you will probably find this quite boring, just know that these topics in fact àre all about you, so they do concern you. I’m sorry to say so but you won’t escape marketeers, you won’t escape the media, and since you’ve read this far already you’re damn far from escaping the web.
Introducing Andrew Keen, whose book “Cult of the Amateur - How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture” seems to be growing into becoming the hype of the year.
Basically the web2.0 revolution (read: blogs competing newssites, youtube killing traditional tv watching, etc.) has always been looked at as being the democratisation of content.
The user taking over, making his own decisions, therefor liberating himself from the big corporations, serving other users with what they really want, not with what is dictated by major companies.
Keen, however, believes this is all a bunch of crap. Amateurs have indeed partially taken over the content-monopoly once driven by professional journalists, tv-makers, designers, etc. But this hasn’t given us the cultural revolution so many had hoped for.
Web2.0 has given opportunities to certain talented people, but the really big successes are, for instance, webcam videos about nothing, blogs about nothing, etc. So how does this justify the demonisation of classic media?
Being an amateur myself, I must say I don’t feel offended. On-point is not a political blog and I don’t think I ever pretended holding the truth.
I think it’s good to finally see someone stand up and take a stance against the crowdsourcing trend, a trend that is nice, but isn’t holy, I think.
Anyway. Stay tuned and think about it, these are the times we’re living in!
Here’s a Andrew Keen speaking at ‘Authors@Google’. I’ve made you a small selection of quotes, just for you to think about:
- “If we’re going to use the internet as a self-publicating platform, we nééd to have something to say. Otherwise it degenerates into a state of digital narcicissm where everything simply becomes a reflection of ourselves. We Twitter ourselves to death and we use the internet to tell the world what we had for breakfast or what we watched on televsion and that’s not valuable for ourselve or for any type of collective conversation.”
- “We need middlemen. We need experts. Whether experts are in marketing or in creativity, whether they’re in finding talent and figuring out how to polish it and distribute it. These are the core players in every media system..
- “The flattening of culture, the idealised web 2.0 system, where the intermediarists go away has profoundly unfortunate and often dangerous consequenses.”
- “Media literacy is the thing we need to build now. We have this open system, the challenge is to read it critically. The challenge is not to believe everything that is posted up on Wikipedia. The challenge is not to think that this sort of idealised media system can deliver us truth. -…- Truth is even harder to find.”
“The great seduction of the internet is to become a broadcaster ourselves, to use it as a platform to express ourselves. -…- I think we need to remind ourselves that there are many times where we need to remain silent, where we need to remain in the audience.”
Very much looking forward to hearing your opinion on these statements. I hope you still dare to comment after that last statement though.
Kind of lost touch with Good Magazine, my bad, I shouldn’t have. Not only did these people learn us about Object Orange, in Detroit, a while ago. By now they seem to have built a collection of, well, really Good Videos. Check all of them, or let’s just start with some favourites:
For my photographylovers: NYChildren.org:
For my recordlovers: Bob George - the Archive
For all lovers: Internet Porn:
Well I’ll be damned! Just today I asked him when the video was going to be uploaded, and guess what, there he is: SozyOne Gonzalez speaking upon the artwork he’s done for Baloji’s upcoming album.
From what I’ve heard the album is one master listening experience, haven’t heard anything but the intro yet, but I’m already hooked.
On-Point Podcast