Word The Cat

finally back in front of a computer after sonar… personal highlights were bass clef’s new soca tune (and him bashing a cowbell along to it) as well as scotch egg beating several shades of scotch shit out of the sound. what’s funny is that I could have seen both these acts in London and Brighton respectively at any point in the past year (though obviously not with the same vibes).

On the other hand/hemisphere, I was looking forward to seeing konono no.1, but they weren’t there. must be visa problems i thought. sadly it was. a statement from the group’s manager:

“This is the Schengen zone. The countries pass the buck to each other and each one asks for different documents. They are stopping a group which earns money, feeds dozens of families and has no intention of living anywhere except for the Congo from travelling to Europe. The proof of that is that they have all returned to their country after numerous international tours.” via.

Biometric visas are soon to be EU-wide, but the UK is ahead of the game. Each member of the band must travel to the nearest UK visa office to be fingerprinted. In Konono no.1’s case the nearest office is 1500 miles away in Kenya. This proved financially and logistically impossible despite the intervention of Congo’s interior minister and the contingent factors that the band are veterans of several international tours, have the high profile of having recorded with Bjork and been put on a pedestal by the BBC. As in the case of Les Amazones de Guinée the UK still retains the right to turn musicians with visas away at the border. (via). Precedents such as Papa Wemba’s entourage might provide an excuse, but mass-fingerprinting (for both now and held for posterity) whether it happens to anyone (non-EU) who wishes to enter the UK or to every Roma person in Italy – link -(with the echos of fascism and extermination that invokes) is terrifying, driven in no small part by the political logic of a permanent and total security emergency (”emergenza di sicurezza”) and the massive post 9-11 bubble economy that benefits from producing the technology such a situation claims to necessitate (you know that checking UK biometric visa applications is privatised and outsourced right?)

I should mention that in konono no.1’s absence el guincho stepped up and did a heavy percussive live set, but in the end that’s little comfort – especially for African musicians who don’t have konono no.1’s profile and who want to play in Europe. to explicate from one of the links buried above:

how can fingerprinting all visitors and EU nationals be considered proportionate? How can a system designed for the broad purpose of border management be limited in purpose? How can the European Commission ensure the quality of data when fingerprint and facial recognition processing is so unreliable? With no clear goal other than to use new technology how can this be seen as necessary? via.

—-
Konono no.1 at the Barbican, London in 2006. have old bald man must shock out.

they’re feeling tanya stephens in Greece. cover from last year:

Tanya Stephens – It’s a pity (darling riddim) 192k 5.8mb

Alkistis Protopsalti – Pame Havai (It’s a Pity) 9.5mb 320k

a cursory youtube search reveals alkistis protopsalti “celebrating 35 years of diplomatic relations between the hellenic republic and the people’s republic of china… the music is not from the concert itself.”
—-
next! night train to barcelona – lows of 19 degrees.

last night this was the ham for the cheese:

Spain’s pop-reggaeton entry to the eurovision song contest – a stain of floor lighting in central Madrid.

the world is always ending. sometimes it just ends quicker.

the US is currently holding 26000 people without trial reprieve reports, in a global network of outsourced captivity and torture that takes in or has used kenya, somalia, djibouti, albania, poland, thailand and 17 ships, 15 of which have operated around diego garcia, a UK colonial possession whose population was expelled in 1973 and which is now used as a military base. the UK government has admitted it has lied over the use of diego garcia as a site of prison/torture flights. next week it will try to push through legislation that will allow it to imprison people without trial for 42 days (that’s here, in plain sight, not hidden somewhere on the open sea). the BBC are currently reporting that enough concessions could be made to allow the legislation to pass. the political establishment rarely looks outside itself for answers. think of it as the left and right brain pan having an argument. this goes some way to explaining why anyone would think any amount of concessions would make 42 days of detention without trial acceptable. schizophrenic logic or the institutionalised believing their own terrifying bullshit depending on your choice of metaphor. its the same logic that allows systematic imprisonment and assault of people fleeing war.

the press release of the bug’s new record quotes Gibson’s Neuromancer and goes on to tell us we’re living in “end times indeed. Best start building the Marcus Garvey tug now.” although it doesn’t mention how the beast is manifesting itself. how do we feel about using (a vague sense of undirected and culturally divorced) apocalypse as a marketing strategy? is this really OK?

bear in mind that this reflects on the intentions of the publicists rather than the artists (although it’s bound to reflect on its reception as a cultural object).

but enough beating around the bush. the sound is STRONG>>>.

the bug f/ space ape – fukkaz 160k 6.6mb