Repost for anyone who doesn't have the luxury of spending this time of year with family.
Merry belated Christmas, seasons greetings to everyone. Peace, advancement, happiness and the best of health in the New Year and anon.

What download limit?

Here's Every BBC Radio1 Essential Mix from 1993 - 2007 for your listening pleasure.

On that final note for 2008 - a toast to a great, productive, safe, adventurous, awesome New Year for everyone out there, cause there's no way I am going to be in Cyberspace come midnight tonight. See y'all in '09!

Truth Hurts

With that said, here's a list of a bunch of tunes that were on repeat from this year. What were yours?

Here's my list:

Fusion UNLTD – The Sun
Reks - Stages
Royce Da 5'9 - Shake This
David Banner - When You Hear What I Got To Say
Blu – Never Be Another Me
Dj Revolution - Do My Thing feat. Guilty Simpson, Royce Da 5'9
Terrace Martin - Martin & Blake
Raphael Saadiq – Sometimes
Nacho Lovers – Go On (Blu Jemz remix)
MGMT - Electric Feel
Q-Tip - ManWomanBoogie feat. Amanda Diva
Rob Threezy - Love to the World
Technics - Everything In It's Right Place (Supa mix)
Dam Funk – Galactic Fun
Bag Raiders – Shooting Stars (instrumental)
Munk - Down in L.A. (Shazam remix)
Friendly Fires - Paris feat. Au Revoir Simone (Aeroplane remix)
Hercules and the Love Affair - Blind (Frankie Knuckles remix) (dub)
The Juan MacLean - Happy House
Holy Ghost! - Hold On
Jason Forrest - Dark New Ages (Polvo remix)
Anton Zap - Movin'
DMX Krew – Radio Bliss
Jamtech Foundation - Pounds of Dro feat. Busy Signal
Drums of Death – Midnight Stalker

Hope everyone has a stress-free, safe, laid-back Christmas. Peace out

Psychedelic Harmony appreciation

I have been listening to a bit of progressive and psychedelic rock lately. Whether some of The Move's back catalogue or perhaps a bit of Santana, maybe some John McLaughlin, get high off the music and drift off to the meandering, cascading, rolling waves of sound.

Who You Are?

Flashback to the time during your childhood when you proudly wore a t-shirt with your favourite band on it, sought out a pair of kicks that only you and a close circle o like - minded addicts knew about. What about when you first heard a particular genre of music. It may have been uncool to your peers, but it rocked your world. It allowed you to forget all the superfluous directions from teachers, parents, authority-figures, advertisers and so on. Albeit, even if it was for just a few hours allow yourself to be taken over by the soundtrack to the years when you weren’t quite an adult but far from a child.

Gone are the days when your subculture (at least you were convinced it were) was something original, rebellious, distinct, raw, brash. A way of life that you took part in, solely because you could identify with the success of your idols (whether in the street or in the mainstream) and all they and the art form they partook in represented. Take any major teenage subculture, hobby, form of popular music of the past twenty odd years – whether punk, heavy metal, graffiti, hip hop, skateboarding, house music, they have all been exploited to sell goods. The trend watchers take whatever movement has some sort of underlying sense of integrity, strip of it of it’s original meaning and then market as something 'cool', 'exciting', 'daring', when really what that culture that once seemed so pure has just been manipulated, pre-packaged, wrung till it’s last drop of life and then spat out and abandoned, only to have the next so called 'trend' (whatever the cool merchants deemed was so popular amongst the kids these days), go through the same cycle.

To be blunt, sneaker and clothing companies never wanted to be associated with a “ghetto” subculture till they saw how desired their garments were by impoverished kids, and even then a handful of luxury brands want nothing to do with successful rappers who don’t fit the clean-cut stereotypes their brand perpetuates and endorse. That’s just one example, in brief how can you forget when head-bangers were seriously uncool (no signs of the rip off faded, mass marketed, cheaply designed fashion unauthentic retro band homages of today), skateboarding was hated by the metal heads, writers, punks and the homeboys at your local Westfield shopping complex, not to mention the jocks and every authority figure you could think of. As for graffiti, it was the scourge of society, a sign that lawlessness was rampant and that the youth had no respect for anyone, anything, they were a generation whose morals had gone to hell.

Well if you believed what you see on billboards, in magazine advertisements and on television commercials, skateboarding is so cool, graffiti is acceptable and hip hop is summarised by material wealth and it’s all so chic, great, acceptable? Oh, how times have changed? Hardly, the truth is no matter what the culture, the ones that live for it will always be doing what they do, regardless of the stigma attached to it, in the mainstreams consciousness. You can’t identify with something truly if there is no connection between whatever culture you engage in and what it means to you. It’s a free world yes, but really if you think that engaging in a subculture and its affiliated clothing, style that is currently “hot” in the marketers eyes will provide some glint of happiness in your life, you are bound to remain unfulfilled, empty and always craving more.

My point is corporations aren’t interested in culture being a unifying force for its participants. They are interested in money, that’s all. So all the mixed messages your exposed to on a day to day basis in a world where advertising is all around us -on the billboards we walk past, on the television screens we tune out watching when we crash on the couch after work, throughout our email accounts, all over social networking sites and video sharing sites, it is easy to become overwhelmed by how inadequate we are constantly being told we are if we’re not wearing, drinking, driving, engaging in whatever activities featured in the advertisement onslaught we are subjected to during out daily movements. Brand name clothing, obscure trainers, good wines, fast cars…. – we all desire the finer things in life. The trick is realising that no amount of material items can solely define you as a person. It is not what you own but it’s what you make of one life that you have that counts. Far from suggesting laziness, complacency or a nostalgic spaced out hippy lifestyle. It is the determination to succeed at whatever it is that drives you in life through hard work, passion and the buildings of skills relevant to the goals you are working towards There is nothing worse than sacrificing or putting a lid on your interest’s, only to become another sheep in the herd breaking your back to keep up with what’s deemed cool by companies who have their sights set on making a profit and market saturation.

Here is where the punch of this rant comes in, the really cool thing about all the creative, beautiful renegades creating art in whatever shape, way or form currently is that rather than be only sucked in by the culmination of overly, photo-shopped, retouched up, unobtainable images they’re bombarded with on a daily basis, they’ve taken these and through manipulation and their own ideas, opinions and urges they’ve created something original, subversive, often controversial but most of all exciting, lasting and thought provoking. thanks to technology and individuals tired of operating in a corporate dog eat dog hierarchy, the rulebook documenting how we operate as individuals in society, what we consume and the control that multinationals have over us is being torn up and rewritten, one page at a time. We live in an exciting time. A time when for most of us, are only limited by self-doubt, excuses and keeping up with those at the forefront of our celebrity obsessed culture. Keep on grinding, keep on striving, cause if you devote enough energy to what it is you believe in, what you live for, then who knows what may happen.

Mothership Reconnection Radio

Whatitis: DJ Myme and myself (aka Size 13) have begun doing a radio show again. We're recording it on to Cool Edit Pro and putting it up on zShare. To be honest when each show only gets around 17 or so downloads, the question that pops up is what's the point of doing the show each week? So feel free to leave a comment, request, shout outs, criticism or praise. We will then get an idea of what people think of the show and where it needs improving.

Props to everyone who's checked it so far!

In Motion

Alright so it's going down like this. Randomly going to think of a video, an artist and then post it up here for you to see.

First up, Josie Stingray - 'Doin' My Thing' live (courtesy of Prefix Mag)



Ed.OG & Da Bulldogs - 'Be A Father To Your Child' (Embedding disabled by 'Universal Music Group').

I've gotta speak on this track. Seriously, it's rare that someone makes music as meaningful as this in 2007.

Apart from a few artists, Rap is a cesspool right now. All the record labels, so called dj's, magazines pumping out, supporting garbage and that's what it is. You want to know why music sales are falling (this has been said everywhere ad nauseum, but needs to be said again), it's because honestly the majority of this music released is garbage. It's throw away. Worse for the listener than fast food. Yet the same videos, the same parody's of what white rich men heading these organisations deem popular seem to flood every nook, cranny, airwave, video show out there, over and over again.

In a Cool Eh interview with Hank Shocklee (Bomb Squad / Public Enemy), Shocklee said it best in when he stated that consumers are much more music savvy then they've ever been and that this is reflected in the way that music is bought and the manner in which it is taken in, in 2007.

Who remebers the excitement of going out and copping an album on the day it was released? That energy is dead. The feeling is non - existant. The listening experience, the ripping the shrinkwrap off the cover...those days are a thing of the past. Yo buying a song for a dollar or two off 'iTunes' isn't the same as going to store and knowing that what you're about to cop is dope from the intro to the bonus track. Listening to a classic on vinyl for the first time, particularly a (newly discovered '12, you find great) beats buying an album just because you're bombarded with songs and video's off the album and spending hours looking through old records just to find one you've thirsted for for years or didn't know about....that's (you know the rest). It's a feeling that can never be duplicated by being told what to buy (no matter how convincing the press is).

Think Back.

Woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, stumbed out and got rid of any plans that had been made for the day in the process.

Next to everything, that I'm striving for right now, is giving me a headache (pissing in the wind), is the equivalent phrase that comes to mind. Far from complainng about it, though.

Been speaking to a friend who's doing her HSC (High School Certificate). Just thinking how life has changed. That whole time is one giant blur (except for memories of copping the Lootpack LP - 'Da Antidote: Soundpieces' on wax from 'Next Level Records' (highly influential haunt, spot that became defunct a few years back now, Sydney's got 'Soul Clap Records' holding it down in 2007). From memory I went to a film beforehand, but that's all hazy. Was it a James Bond flick?). Honestly, it took real long to sink in that six years of High School were a wrap.

Thinking back to the dreaded exams, back in 1999 when Shakespeare quotes were intertwined with all sorts of posters on my wall. The HSC was a mountain akin to Mount Kilimanjaro (refuse to reference Everest). But despite all the study, the stress and the ocassional sleepless night, things seemed simpler then for real. There were no mobiles, no internet, no 'My Space', no mp3's, no blogs. You get the picture.

It was hard enough putting a lid on an obsession with Hip Hop that was fairly out of control at the stage, only to become off the wall, even further as the years went on. That time is still vivid, it was a juxtaposition of longing to hear 'Stretch and Bobbito' on the air, rap magazines, scattered 'TDK's', 'Maxwell's' and 'BASF's' on the bedroom floor, songs that had you saying ' what the hell is that', 'who's that group' and maybe the ocassional piece of good clothing.

Polo wasn't as common in Sydney then as it is back now. Remember being in awe of all the dope gear when I was in London and then Edinburgh (Scotland) in 1998. There were stares from the locals in Harrods when we went in for a browse (a few back - packers (not referring to the overused, cliched, rap termanology).

In those same years I was skating in the CBD. Good times. 'Half Cab' was the first trick of the day. 'The PIT' was the place to be.

Shout out to Gibo if you're reading this. He put a lot of people onto (lo). Have to also send a shout (in no order) to Ben, Mark, Rod, Evan, Jamahl, Taizo, Dean, Asuka, Danny, Alfons, Benny, Nobu, Davo, Mick, Sid, Dean, Aaron, Jesse, Charlie, Stafford, Brendon, Daine, Ari, Steven, Dixon, Mike, Sean, Gene, Simon, to name a few. Hope you're all doing well.