SHE GOT A TV EYE ON ME

Telepathe @ Barden's Boudoir, London

2008-06-23T14:34:00.001+01:00

Chants and hisses and brutal kisses, middle distance stares, prog-punk samplers, killer hooks and loose percussion that delivers a hypnotic drum march from modern-day banshees who make you wanna dance. This is Telepathe, and they’re here tonight to get “dark on your ass”.

(Hard)core members Melissa Livaudais and Busy Gagnes, fresh from a US tour with The Kills, come on like yin and yang beat poet sisters/lovers. Their ethereal, cascading drone, disorientated harmonies and trance-verging-on-minimalist music draws heavy parallels with the likes of Brooklyn playmates Yeasayer and Gang Gang Dance. There’s a little bit of grime production, an injection of Can and some pure pop Björkisms thrown in for good pleasure too.

Performance-wise, Telepathe keep things simple. There’s a punky nonchalance that carries with it a surprising amount of charm. In some ways these girls, who are ably supported tonight by moustachioed daddio Ryan Licero from Mirror Mirror on guitar, embody a certain shambolic, anti-theatre quality that is so engaging precisely because of their jabbing carelessness with the instruments they play.

That’s not to say that the gathered Motherfuckers here tonight miss out entirely on a little interplay from a wired and clammy Livaudais, who several times during the performance drags her skinny butt onto the dance floor, clutching her mic and delivering her homebrew of undulated dub. Of course, this is a trick often conjured up by preppy, Dan Deacon-types who like to mingle with the fluorescent faces in the crowd. What’s markedly different here, though, is the visceral nature of her act that interweaves so well with the detached coolness oozing from Gagnes on stage.

The band’s final song, ‘Chromes On It’, with its repetitive, wraithlike lyric “falling down, coming out, on the real side” seems as appropriate a chant as any for Telepathe’s skewed extrasensory perception.

Words by Kelly Fiveash, published in the June 2008 issue of The Stool Pigeon

Björk @ Connect

2008-01-20T12:48:00.002Z

Björk photograph by Kelly Fiveash published in the December issue of Record Collector

Connect festival @ Inveraray Castle, Argyll

2007-10-11T23:32:00.004+01:00

Billed as a boutique music festival aimed at an older, oyster-loving, whisky-supping crowd, the first Connect drew to an impressive, albeit slightly premature, close with a blistering set from Björk.

Surprisingly, the Icelandic purveyor of quality industrial rave-tinged pop ballads didn’t headline; that honour was handed to LCD Soundsystem in what appeared to have been a last-minute change of running order. No matter: Björk stormed the grounds of Scotland’s Inveraray Castle with songs from her latest album, Volta, as well as crowd pleasers including a marvellous off-its-tits version of Hyperballad.

M.I.A. caused easily the sensation of the festival with a hot and rowdy set that was cut short after she urged fans to join her on stage during her performance of 'Galang'. Over 100 muddy miscreants did bringing the show to an abrupt end as she exited declaring: “We killed it.”

Other highlights included a smorgasbord of Scottish-heavy talent from the likes of Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub and Jesus and Mary Chain. Elsewhere, the Beastie Boys put on a riotous greatest hits headline set, while Bunny Man Ian McCulloch and Primal Screamer Bobby Gillespie struck slightly desperate, end-of-the-pier chords during their respective performances; the former for his potentially slanderous Pete Townsend outburst and the latter for his terrible taste in shiny black shirts.

The organisers of this event made a few mistakes, notably the one-mile mud-trudge to and from the car park as well as locating the campsite near stalls that blasted out Mika at a bastardly early hour. Despite all that, the sound, particularly on the main stage, was excellent and the glorious misty Highlands setting provided the perfect festival backdrop.

Words and image by Kelly Fiveash, published in the October 2007 issue of The Stool Pigeon

Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter @ Bush Hall, London

2007-06-30T13:29:00.003+01:00

“Women are just so stupid sometimes”, says Jesse Sykes as she tries to fix a problem with her acoustic guitar and a sound effect pedal. She’s been on stage a few minutes but, despite some technical difficulties, this graceful, sultry Seattle singer can’t put a foot wrong.

Yet, three albums in and Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter appear to be a well-kept secret. As though to underline this fact, Bush Hall is only half full tonight. It does nothing to distil the atmosphere however: if anything it just makes for a more intimate, relaxed set.

There’s plenty of interplay in between the songs too. At one point Sykes places a sock over her mic and, realising that the audience’s curiosity needs to be satisfied, explains that she does it to prevent electric shocks when playing 'LLL'. It’s one of the catchier tunes on her glorious new album Like Love Lust and the Open Halls of the Soul.

With the band’s music to date, it has been easy to get carried away with the obvious 'way out west' analogies, and in some ways the sound they create sits well under a deep red moon overlooking a very American landscape of cacti and cowboys. But for their latest offering, Sykes and band-mate Phil Wandscher have worked together on scratching out an expansive sound that is harder to pin down. It’s neither alt.country nor folksy pop, though elements of both can be heard.

The likes of Station Grey and The Air Is Thin, both played here tonight, capture the essence of an album that is delicately wrapped in the sorrow of empty nostalgia. Sykes strikes a powerful, almost beguiling presence on stage with her rustling, spectral voice, and what comes back at us on this unseasonably cold May night is her overwhelming desire to keep moving lyrically, physically and emotionally out from under the rain clouds.

Words by Kelly Fiveash, published in the Summer 2007 issue of The Stool Pigeon

F1, Scout Niblett, Iggy Pop and the Stooges - all in one day!

2007-06-24T12:48:00.000+01:00

Iggy and the Stooges performing at Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown

Scout Niblett in support...

F1 testing day @ Silverstone - BMW Sauber thunders out of the pit!

ATP 2007 highlights... shot by me

2007-05-28T13:36:00.003+01:00

Word!

Josh Ritter, album review

2006-12-31T15:00:00.000Z

JOSH RITTER
Girl in the War
V2
****
Like a bedtime story read by Simon and Garfunkel in the upstairs flat of a Dublin pub, this mini-album melds itself into that hidden away place of precious childhood dreams and fairy tales. But don't be fooled; there's an edge to Ritter's lyrics that are very much set in the grown-up world. Here are seven folksy songs containing a collection of released and unreleased work from the past year or so, including a wonderful Modest Mouse cover ('Blame It On The Tetons') and the rousing Mercury Rev-like title song, 'Girl in the War', which mixes allegorical and military imagery to great effect. These are ballads to keep under your pillow.

• Published in the Independent On Sunday's ABC magazine

Sonic Youth, album review

2006-12-31T14:53:00.000Z

SONIC YOUTH
The Destroyed Room
GEFFEN
*****
Take some 'Creme Brulee' and sprinkle with a 'Pinch' (Can) of Brian Eno-like electronica. In places this album feels like it's been recorded somewhere deep in the Nevada desert, elsewhere it shakes and throngs like the best kind of next-door-neighbours' house who play their music too loud, but have enough taste that you don't mind. You bang on their door and say, "turn it up"; after all this is Sonic Youth, my friends. Packed full of b-sides and rarities, hand-picked by the band, which perhaps aficionados of the SY sound have already, but for those of you that don't I'd be hard pushed to recommend a better alternative compilation for this festive season. This is post punk rock at its best.

• Published in the Independent On Sunday's ABC magazine

Loney, Dear @ Camden Enterprise, London

2006-12-31T14:29:00.003Z

It’s dark, everyone is sat cross-legged on the floor but there are no marshmallows on sticks and there certainly isn't a campfire to toast them on. There is an acoustic guitar though. And tonight, it seems, is all about making shapes out of shadows and surrendering to a sweetly emotive folksy Motown sound.

A power cut has rendered the band powerless to give the crowd the gig they might have been expecting. What we have here is a hushed, heartfelt slice of low-slung Scando alt.country tinged with the melodic infectiousness of The Beach Boys. It just so happens it’s unplugged and performed in the dark.

I’m watching Loney, Dear upstairs at The Enterprise in Camden and this improvised acoustic set is actually a real treat. Without his band to back him up, there’s an intense intimacy between Stockholm(boy) singer/songwriter Emil Svanängen and the gathered crowd. Once or twice the lights in the room flicker into action, signalling that the power is back on.

Quickly, the rest of the band – four tonight, but often nine in total – join in on their guitars and organ, only for the power cut to suddenly go out again. The band are left stranded on stage, watching us watching them watching Emil. Strangely, it’s okay and no one feels short-changed. Emil’s voice and acoustic guitar is enough to carry us through, and somehow his music captures the darkness.

Stand out song of the night is 'The Battle Of Trinidad And Tobago' with its haunting lyric "I’ve been watching you from the other side I know you so well", which brings to mind the gentler vocal moments of Conor Oberst. Elsewhere there are touches of Belle and Sebastian, the bewitching pathos of Smog, and the lo-fi scratchiness of Tuung.

Emil is showcasing songs from his latest album Sologne. Inevitably his Swedish roots throw him into the mix with the likes of Peter, Bjorn and John, I’m From Barcelona and The Knife. But Loney, Dear specialises in heartbreak and pleading as well as upbeat folksy acoustics and harmony.

"In with the dark nights," sings Emil on one of his songs. Based on tonight’s performance who am I to disagree?

• Words by Kelly Fiveash, published in the December 2006 issue of The Stool Pigeon

Are you getting your full digital pay cheque?

2006-11-02T12:57:00.000Z

Digital royalties feature published by Music Week
__________________________________________________

Now the digital music market is making money, the royalties should be flooding in. But in a fragmented, confusing market, the numbers are not adding up just yet, says Kelly Fiveash

The rapid expansion of legal digital music over the past two years has undoubtedly been a positive development for the music industry. Recent analysis from Forrester estimates that digital music will comprise 36% of European business in five years' time, as digital download stores have opened up new avenues of choice, immediacy and accessibility.

But the shift from physical to digital media is not without sticking points, especially when it comes to calculating royalties. Independent record labels, in particular, are feeling the strain as they try to keep on top of the multifarious income streams that digital music generates.

By comparison, tracking the royalties produced by traditional CD or vinyl sales is a relatively straightforward process: labels use a distributor to deliver their products to retail, retailers pass sales revenue back to distributors, who then take a cut and report back to the label. The label subsequently pays its artists and passes a share onto publishers. This is simplified, of course (and ignores complications, such as third-party licensing or overseas sales), but the overall process is easily quantifiable and income streams are few and manageable.

In the digital world, royalties are a more fragmented proposition. Not only are there many more music stores (the majority of which are two years old or less), but they operate with different business models, including a la carte track sales (such as iTunes), subscription services (such as Napster) and now, in reference to the headlines surrounding SpiralFrog and QTrax, the prospect of ad-funded models.

For labels, distributors and aggregators, this is a huge challenge. Even before a track is delivered to a download store, the metadata (the digital finger print, such as ISRC code, encoded in each track) has to be 100% accurate. And then, rather than a handful of income streams, sales come in on a "drip-drip" basis with little in the way of standardised reporting. Even with the a la carte model, where sales are split per track rather than per album, this can potentially mean a huge increase in the size of royalty statements.

According to Bob Kohn, chairman and CEO of US-based digital royalty software system Royalty Share, labels risk drowning in paper.

"Labels are drowning in digital revenue files," he says. "A year or so ago that didn't matter too much, because the amount of revenue involved with digital music was very small. Now that revenue is significant, and dealing with it has become an urgent IT need."

"Look at the way things used to be done for an artist like Frank Sinatra," he adds. "He would record a song by, say, Cole Porter, and release an album for Capitol Records. So the song is owned by Warner Chappell and Capitol have to pay Sinatra for the recording. When you sell the CD, you can easily get a spreadsheet from your distributor that basically says, "I'm going to pay 'x'percentage of the net revenue to Sinatra, and whatever units times whatever the statutory rate is to the publisher. Enter iTunes, eMusic, MSN, Rhapsody, Real Networks, MTV, and so on... the 180 or so global digital music services generating hundreds of millions of transactions.

"[Aside from a la carte sales], you've got the subscription services like Napster where a user pays a fixed fee for all the streaming they want, and each transaction is not £ 0.79, it's something less than a penny. The order of magnitude is greater than the number of transactions."

"Trying to get the digital accounting done is a significant addition to an already busy physical accounting run," agrees Matt Bristow, head of digital at Cherry Red. Initially the label negotiated deals direct with services rather than using an aggregator to cover the digital sector. Now the workload is intensive and software compatibility is, he explains, "a major challenge, as no two sets of reports are the same in format".

"Digital royalties have created quite a bit of work," adds Paul Sandell, head of digital at Domino Records. "For instance, with mobile revenue we might use four different aggregators and then they'll be reporting sales from the four different networks. It's not a huge problem, but it would be really nice if things were a bit more standardised."

The other predominant issue, he adds, is the lightening pace of the digital evolution, with different business models continually coming to market and shifting the goal posts - the latest being MySpace's announcement that it will start selling DRM-free downloads and YouTube's licensing deal with Warner Music Group. "Everyone is still finding their feet and there seems to be a new announcement and new rumours every week," says Sandell, "whether that's Google Video or SpiralFrog."

Of course, with limited staffing resources, most independent labels will rely on a distributor or aggregator to consolidate their sales data and supply coherent and timely digital royalty statements. "If you're a label and you've got to deal with multiple products, multiple prices and multiple VAT rates...it's an incredibly complicated monster," says Adrian Pope, head of Vital: Pias Digital. "For labels to collate that data and make sense of it is incredibly difficult and time consuming."

Though acknowledging that digital stores are getting - broadly - better at reporting, Pope says that they need to provide more transparent, detailed and timely reporting. "Ultimately, from the digital music stores, there needs to be a much greater recognition and empathy of what their reporting data means to rights holders. This is a track-based business, so labels need to be able to report transparently to their artists right down to track level - which means including the complete ISRC code, barcodes and publishing information.

"Digital is now a serious business that is impacting materially and the music industry as a whole needs better access to sales data. That doesn't necessarily mean royalty accounting - we can live without getting paid for three months - it's more about having a clue about what worked in a promotional and marketing sense and what didn't.

"The upside to getting this right is that the more information we get, the better we'll be able to market and sell our products. That's of benefit to everyone."

"Some digital stores are good at reporting and some are awful," adds Gareth Henry at Cadiz Music, who act as an aggregator for the likes of Nizlopi, and reveals that he has given up dealing with some stores because of sub-standard reporting. "The rubbish ones really scupper us," he adds, "as they hold up the whole accounting process.

"Admittedly, it's still early days for a lot of people and we've seen it improve over the past two years, but when you start with a new store then you get the same problems all over again."

Scott Cohen, co-founder of The Orchard, reiterates the crucial role of aggregators in making sense of the online jungle. "Working out how much a single digital track earns can involve hundreds of different calculations in a given quarter," he explains, "so what we did from the start was build a sophisticated accounting system that could handle that."

He adds that much of the accounting software used by many of the major labels is not adequate for calculating the intricacies of digital revenue. "We've lived in a fairly simplistic world for a long time regarding accounting... in the world we're dealing in now, it's not a simple business model."

Dean Marsh, who, under his Independent Label Scheme, offers advice for a growing number of small labels, also brings up the question of standardised digital reporting - or lack thereof. While he does not think government or EU regulation will necessarily provide a solution, he does advocate self-regulation with more transparent and fairer accounting practices.

Marsh also questions the concept of ad-funded stores and how this will affect artists. "Under a typical recording agreement, advertising revenue isn't something that is shared," he says. Have any of the artists he represents expressed concerns about the digital sector? "Yes, very much so - when you advise artists on the provisions of a royalty agreement and they see how much they're being accounted to on the digital side, and they work out how much they're actually going to get, it can be quite shocking sometimes."

However, with digital sales accounting for around 6% of record companies' revenues in 2005 (IFPI figures) and likely to become increasingly significant in the years to come, the facility to collate and consolidate digital royalties - no matter how multifarious the format - is crucial.

There are royalty software specialists such as Counterpoint, Korrect and Musicalc which have provided labels, publishers and accountants with bespoke accounting software on their PC desktops for some time. According to Asa Palmer, Musicalc's marketing director, although dealing with the influx of digital income has presented its challenges, it is important that the music industry looks at the bigger picture and treats online and mobile sales in the same way as physical products. "From an accounting point of view, digital is just another product," she says.

Having initially produced a loading programme for iTunes sales reports, Musicalc, whose clients include Beggars Group and Skint, has since created a generic digital loading programme. Consequently, labels only have to change the data fields in a spreadsheet before initialising a royalty run.

Counterpoint too has developed a digital downloads module to its Music Maestro software, allowing the user to administer artist and mechanical copyright royalties based on the sale of individual tracks. The module has the facility to flag sound recordings as available to be downloaded digitally - these are then linked to artist contracts and mechanical licenses in a similar manner to that of a CD or DVD.

A new player in this market is US-developed software system RoyaltyShare, which last week picked up a Popkomm Innovation In Music And Entertainment Award for most innovative product. Used by the likes of Epitaph and KOCH Entertainment and incorporating a web-based utility rather than locally installed software, RoyaltyShare allows users to access real-time financial data via a secure website. It is also free to install, taking a small percentage of royalties earned rather than charging a flat fee, and offers the facility to outsource accounting work. "Our system gives labels the freedom to focus on what they are good at - finding new acts and marketing and promotion," says CEO Bob Kohn.

Kohn, the co-founder of eMusic, claims that existing "legacy" software is insufficient to deal with the scalability and demands of the digital world - not only the increased volume of transactions and complex royalty splits, but also in terms of incorporating new business models.

Further down the scale, royalties is also an issue that affects upcoming musicians looking for a record deal. Billy Bragg has already put a magnifying glass over the small print of social networking websites and a number of bespoke portals - including 7 Digital's IndieStore, TuneTribe, PulseRated, Bandwagon, Arkade and now MySpace itself - all offer the opportunity for unsigned artists to upload and sell their music. As a result of Bragg's crusade, MySpace and Bebo changed their terms and conditions to clarify that content creators retain the ultimate ownership of their music.

The challenges of reporting royalties in a fragmenting digital world, as well as copyright ownership in general, look like they will continue unabated for some time; although it seems there is a consensus of opinion around adaptability, communication and standardising practices. As Scott Cohen says, "This is now a low-margin, high-volume business we're operating in, and everyone needs to wrap their heads around it."

It's all gone down the tubes

2006-10-11T01:26:00.000+01:00

So Google has bought YouTube for $1.65bn before the mish-mash video site has even started turning around a profit.

This hot on the heels of Murdoch's acquisition of social networking site MySpace, and it seems that the industry giants continue unabated when it comes to that relentless drive toward so-called media convergence.

It's interesting too that so many big players are embracing that contentious term Web 2.0 right now, especially seeing as the technology involved is nothing particularly new, big or clever.

What's different is that these sites are getting serious traffic; YouTube and MySpace are increasingly the new telly. We get home from work/school, logon and away we go. Who cares what's on BBC1 when you can get all the media content you ever wanted via a broadband connection?

Actually, that's not entirely true - after all around the corner the likes of Google and News Corp can expect to face huge lawsuits in wrangles over copyright and royalties, and now that these sites are mainstream, surely regulation will closely follow.

It's an issue affecting all digital media content right now. In this complex landscape it's difficult to determine ownership.

Some artists describe their work as being for everyone. Once published and out there, the artist no longer exclusively owns it. Instead it's there for everyone to enjoy.

Musician, Will Oldham aka Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, says that performing live allows his music to develop outside of studio constraints, and for this reason he cannot see the point in releasing a "Live" album, it's hard to capture spontaneity. YouTube, however brings us exactly that - and with moving pictures.

The novelist Jeanette Winterson is precious about writing insofar that she hopes to be read, and to her, ownership should never be seen as a commodity. Instead it's about how her readers interpret the work and she leaves that up to them, as Paul Auster would say, "it's not an audience, it is one to one."

I think this sums up the popularity of social networking sites, you feel alone and in control, but in fact everyone is in the room with you - albeit in a virtual sense.

And then we turn to the Tate Modern and it's wonderful live interactive art space, Turbine Hall and look what we have: yes, more tubes, this time to slide down.

I've yet to go along to see Carsten Höller's installation but it's a clever concept, audience participation using an updated fairground attraction theme. If that ignoble pursuit of attaining happiness is indeed where society is at, then this work of art surely embodies that spirit.

It remains to be seen whether online digital media represents a "brave new world", or is simply just another dotcom bubble waiting to burst. A bumpy, helter skelter ride for sure. But it's proving a fun fun fun spectacle to watch from the sidelines. And sometimes even, to join in.

'Google generation'

2006-09-26T16:18:00.000+01:00

So there we have it, Tony Blair's final conference speech as Labour leader. And what a speech it was.

He defended his corner so well in justifying the policies of New Labour over the last ten years that it's hard to imagine anyone comfortably slipping into his hot seat.

In fact the speech was so well delivered that it makes one wonder, will he really step down?

He spoke of "progress" and "difficult decisions", and of the very different world we live in now to ten years ago.

And it's true, when you look back to 1997 when Blair entered Downing Street London was riding on a tide of enthusiasm, listening to catchy Britpop and the dotcom bubble was yet to burst.

It was a very different place. Today the landscape is changed.

The "Google generation" that Blair referred to in his speech is one with different expectations to the 9-5, shops-shut-on-Sunday's style of service that older generations had been used to.

Increasingly, devotion is found not in the traditional sense of religion but through disparate groups online. Where people meet up across the geographical divide and open up micro possibilities reeling off endless ideas.

In other words they are no longer physically constrained by locality. We are truly global.

Chris Anderson, in his excellent book The Long Tail studies the phenomenon of "endless choice and unlimited demand" - be it MP3s or a bag of flour - in detail, looking at how the digital age is shaping a new economy.

There's a dent in the old Western model of supply-and-demand, and a sense that it will soon end up in the "knackers yard".

It's no longer acceptable to the consumer that the shelves are empty.

But there is of course a whole bunch of humanity frozen out of this new demand cycle where it still seems to be a given of life that the shelves are indeed empty, that is if they have anywhere to shop at all.

A major challenge for whoever becomes the next Labour PM has to be in addressing this economic imbalance.

Perhaps the time is ripe then for a Chancellor to move next door, non?

Come in number 9 - your time is up

2006-08-30T16:21:00.000+01:00

When is a planet not a planet? When it's a "dwarf planet" apparently.

Pluto, the little brother in the solar system, has had its status downgraded.

The 9th planet to be discovered in 1930, controversy has orbited Pluto and its classification from the start.

Now the International Astronomical Union has made the decision to demote Pluto because its orbital zone is messy, crossing paths with its big cousin, Neptune.

But not everyone is happy with the re-classification, with one senior scientist at NASA describing the vote as "embarrassing".

Others want members of the orbit to be an exclusive club however, and insist that a planet is only a planet when it is able to keep its backyard clear of solar debris.

Perhaps we should turn (tune) our minds to what the Beatles sang on Revolution 9:

"Great colours for the season
Number nine, number nine
Who's to know?
Who was to know?"

And go here if you fancy reproducing a mish-mash of the original song.

So it seems that 8 is the new 9 for this celestial season anyway.

Weather or not

2006-08-13T12:53:00.000+01:00

Today is unseasonably cold. Like a rush of autumn knocking at my door, it's breezy, wet and grey outside. My room is dark, it's midday and I need to switch the light on.

Illuminated by a yolky glow I get to thinking about that very popular topic of conversation right now - climate change. That's the new buzzword for it. We used to call it global warming, before that, when I was growing up it was the ozone layer that we were stressing over.

I couldn't work out what it all meant back then, and this growing hole somewhere deep in the earth confused me. The telly programme that my generation watched - The Ozone, further confounded my confusion. This had nothing to do with holes, and much more to do with pop and Saturday mornings and lots of oozing cartoony colour on the box.

Outside the sky is peeing all over London, lifting its cloudy skirt without even so much as a hint of a blush - no sunshine today my friends.

I've spoken to lots of people about climate change; it's a natural progression to that very British pass time - talking about the weather.

Some say that regardless of man's actions the planet was always going to hot up. It moves in cycles and has a much bigger master plan than anything controlled by little old us and our consumerist ways.

Others point to the vicious circle of air conditioning contributing to climate change while temporarily keeping heat at bay. And SUV's, and boilers, and batteries. And this laptop etc.

In fact the environment debate is now so popular that the Conservative party insists climate change is a key policy that needs to be embraced. And David Cameron "gets on his bike" sometimes - as if to prove the point.

So the Tories are now green (peace), the Lib Dems red (light district) and Labour blue (chip off the old block).

Now my internet connection has just packed up. I blame the rain, and The Sun and the stars.

Kazaa gets suited and booted

2006-07-27T21:49:00.000+01:00

Interesting to see another file-sharing website agreeing to tow the line and pay up.

Kazaa, the peer-to-peer network that allows users to download files and infringe copyright, has been incredibly popular among people wanting free access to media content.

On its homepage it boosts the impressive figure of nearly 390m downloads to date.

Software, music and film can be easily downloaded via the site. Successes of the likes of Kazaa and Napster (now a legitimate service) have hit the music industry particularly hard.

Previously Kazaa accepted no responsibility for how the site was used, but it's now game over after several legal wrangles. Arguably, it's decided to go legit at the very point when its popularity has plummeted.

But file-sharing sites offer a digital - albeit, illegal - service that record companies have been slow or reluctant to switch to.

The dynamic of tradional media fighting it out with a new, defiant kid on the block has proved a potent battle in the field of cultural content.

The irony is that had the record companies responded sooner with their own service, they would not now be competing with such an open market. And their share of the file-sharing community could have been a much larger slice of the corporate pie.

Of course, the corporate world is missing a key point here: People download content because it is free. That was Kazaa's raison d'être.

Would you visit the same site now and pay up, or do you look for a new illegal file-sharing site to get your instant cultural kicks from?

X and Y meets Z on a virtual street corner

2006-07-09T11:47:00.000+01:00

An odd group contacted me via MySpace today.

Called the Transhumanist Student Network (TSN), they appear to be a loose collective of (mainly) American youths who think that you can apply a mathematical equation to prolonging life. Something they refer to as "biopolitics", a term first coined by Foucault.

TSN claims to be both a "philosophical" and a "cultural" movement with the aim of "transcending limitations of the human body".

Politically the group says its neither left or right, but strongly states, "we do not accept racism or totalitarianism".

They believe that biopolitics offers a new variable on what we currently understand as the "human condition", and that technology can somehow set that condition free.

The group wants to meet students and youths, which it loosely defines as "anyone under the age of 36". They qualify this by saying that older people are welcome "if you are cool - or at least entertaining. Or brilliant. Or wealthy and generous."

TSN currently has nearly 3,000 members on MySpace. The profile lists interests that include a lot of -isms, nanos and cybers. In fact it reads a bit like a chewed up, spat out Matrix script. Mind uploading is referenced without even so much as a hint of irony.

In a deliciously postmodernist twist their MySpace ... erm, space got hacked the other day. How very savvy and "techno-progressive" of the hacker. Surely, he simply whole-heartedly embraced the concept of biopolitics and ran with the ball.

In other news, The Observer reports today that Regina Spektor has become the first artist to release a virtual record on the social networking website, Second Life.

Here you can create an online persona, which may be very different from your "real" self. You can chat to people while strolling along a virtual street, make money and meet your future love interest.

Of course, there isn't anything new about the concept, but what's different is the interaction of what is effectively a gaming platform with legitimate sellable services. Very clever, but I’m yet to sign up.

World Cup yelps

2006-07-04T22:33:00.000+01:00

If the sound of a family of Italians is anything to go by (they live in the flat below me), then Italy is on its way to the World Cup final.

I have to say that I haven't really watched much of this particular tournament, and that - coming from a self-confessed footie fan - is somewhat surprising.

Despite this, it's easy to get caught up in the drama as it unfolds and I sit here and smile as the clock counts down, quietly willing on my neighbours' team.

Some of the family are on the steps smoking, too nervous to watch the screen. And now a car whizzes by on the road outside beeping its horn, and all the while hitting refresh gives me a blank page as the final seconds of coverage reach a frenzy of activity.

A moth is catching my attention, swirling around my lamp, entertaining the corner of my eye. But what of the corner of the net?

About now millions of Italians loosen their belts, let out light sighs and raise cold beers toward the Cup of cups.

Oh yes, Italy. Oh yes.

Can you ever be too old for MySpace?

2006-06-30T15:06:00.000+01:00

Charlie Brooker thinks so. In today's Guardian he laments on growing old and not getting the point of MySpace. He says that entering a world essentially made up of virtual teenage kicks leaves him feeling perplexed and "like a blind man patting the walls for an exit he can't find."

At 35 he feels that it's a realm for the kids, but then he also describes himself as a "misanthrope" so of course he wouldn't get the collective experience of such a public space would he?

He has a good old moan about the blogosphere too. So my adding to this mountain of "rubbish created by idiots" is pollinating the atmosphere nicely, I'm sure.

Come on Charlie, we love TV Go Home, Screenburn is always a good read and you're a bit of a comedy genius too.

Anyway, I don't believe you. Secretly I think you're working in the backroom of a geeky hide-away in the outer reaches of Pluto, sipping on Xoxa-xola and hatching a plan for the web 3.0 revolution.

I imagine an excitable hat wearing, foul-mouthed all dancing all singing machine. It will have legs and wear rude badges. I can't wait.

Viva, Charlie, viva!

Catching some rays

2006-06-12T12:45:00.000+01:00

On my roof terrace last Saturday I was greeted by this large fellow:
A goliath beetle perhaps? No, this is London, not an African equatorial rainforest. It is of course a male stag beetle - the biggest insect to be found in England. Clumsy at navigation apparently, and always on the look out for a lady stag.

Garcia win strikes blow to new-left axis in Latin America

2006-06-05T11:32:00.000+01:00

With the Social Democrat, Alan Garcia appearing to have regained power in Peru with a 10% lead, the shift towards the left in the Latin American region has suffered a setback today. It's pretty remarkable to see Garcia reinstated as president after his first, tumultuous term during the late 1980s.

His track record isn't great - the economy was left in a poor state by the time Garcia was ousted from office. And given that he spent the best part of a decade in exile, well it's a surprising turn-around for this particular Latino comeback kid.

He returns to power with the economy in a much stronger position but tellingly is not afraid to speak out against the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. His rival in the election, Ollanta Humula campaigned for state control of the economy and was strongly supported by the anti-globalist, Chavez.

The Peruvian nation is divided on issues of democracy and state control as well as along class and ethnic lines, but this election result suggests a willingness to give Garcia a second chance. This despite the fact that last time he left office, the country was virtually bankrupt and suffering from a particularly aggressive insurgency at the hands of the Maoist movement, Shining Path.

So it will be interesting to see how Garcia will face up to the new-left axis in Latin America and what this means for the delicate balance of power in the region as a whole. He promises further economic reform and the creation of jobs. The US administration have probably breathed a collective sigh of relief this morning, but what this election means for a divided nation where poverty, political corruption and unemployment continue to be key issues, remains to be seen.

Technorati tag: Alan Garcia

Catchphrase nation

2006-05-20T15:33:00.000+01:00

Little Britain DVD’s are everywhere. Repeats on the BBC will run and run. Folks will look back a decade from now and David Walliams and his comedy partner Matt Lucas will stand alongside Ricky Gervais, as the definitive members of the noughties comedy era.

A comedy series that attempted to shock its audience by being anything but politically correct, and instead that constantly pushed the envelope in questioning common held stereotypes and sparked debate about issues of prejudice.

But this is not a discussion of The Office.

Little Britain was not that clever. It remained comfortably swimming in its own vulgarity, a puerile repetition of the same joke told in a subtly different way each time, with the audience always waiting for the punch line. And when it came, they could all join in.

As a comedy sketch show that moved quickly through the viewing echelons of BBC3 via BBC2 before landing a primetime spot on BBC1. It came dangerously close to offensive, lowest-common-denominator satire in its attempt to tickle the nation’s funny bone.

Walliams and Lucas offered the new “alternative”, for the New Labour world, and they had their finger on the pulse of a society switched off from politics.

It was unlike the alternative comedy of the 1980s where the (once) leftwing satire of Ben Elton et al thrived under a Thatcher government. Where being in support of the minority party encouraged a provocative subversion through comedy revealing the dark underbelly of a Britain as both powerful and powerless, depending on which house or high-rise that you hailed from.

Little Britain opted for a different comedic approach – to make people laugh, to provoke a reaction, it used grotesque caricatures of homosexuals, the elderly, and overweight people. It also played heavily on race, offering a xenophobia in the guise of a post-twentieth century “in-joke” for politically correct liberals living in Islington.

Sadly, not everyone did. Indeed many people took these uncomfortable portrayals at face value. In subverting centre, almost consensus politics and instead offering its audience a funny, peculiar dark side of British culture, Little Britain simply provided a modern-day Jim Davidson for our TV screens and instead of Chalky there was Ting Tong.

Vicky Pollard, an inarticulate schoolgirl and single mother living on a council estate, is perhaps the most recognised creation of the comedy series. And the bemused expression, stuttering vocabulary and overweight guise has got kids across the nation chanting “yeah-but-no-but yeah” in the playground like a mantra.

Of course, the characters in Harry Enfield and Chums also satirised the working class back in the mid-nineties, with creations like Wayne and Waynetta Slob. Then like now, the British audience found an affinity in laughing at the fat girl in the corner.

But there is a significant difference between the two shows. With Little Britain you can feel the dank allure of the end-of-the-pier and any moment now you expect Bernard Manning to appear with a cruel jibe thinly disguised as a joke. And like the “there was an Englishman, a Scottishman and an Irishman…” variety of funny story, the audience is able to wallow in trite familiarity, and that can only breed contempt, as the cliché goes.

As the “but I’m the only gay in the village” and “I’m a laaady” lines rippled through the pubs, clubs and workplaces of Britain on a giddy tide of surface laughter, Walliams and Lucas responded to the popularity by upping the crude content. By the final series a woman obliviously pissing herself in public was the punch line and oh how we laughed.

The Christmas special pulled in one of the biggest audiences of 2005.

Finally it was okay to let go of the suppressed giggles. We could now be sick over Johnny Foreigner and marvel at the audacity of all those Thai brides.

You could of course argue that other recent comedy shows have crossed the line already, Nighty Night and the League of Gentlemen certainly cut pretty close to the bone. But both stand out as twisted, leftfield sitcoms with a storyline built around a small group of characters. And there is also plot development to keep things moving along nicely.

The biggest flaw, and therefore success, of Little Britain was the catchphrase status that it thrived on. It was a catch-all-win-all formula that now seems to define all sketch shows. Or perhaps it always did? Maybe they were just cleverer back then in their delivery.

Spike Milligan always maintained catchphrases were the tool of a lazy comedian. It’s the repetition that gets a laugh not what’s being said. To prove the theory Milligan threw meaningless phrases into the Goon Show scripts. First just said in the background and then as actual lines – until “Ying Tong Iddle I Po”, “Needle Nardle Noo” and Little Jim’s “He’s fallen in the water” were met with howls of laughter. But he never let the catchphrase get in the way of the gags.

Since then shows like Little Britain have replaced the joke. Now the catchphrase takes centre stage.

Little Britain left our screens when its audience demanded an encore. The problem is that they came back on stage in their fat, piss-stained costumes, joking loudly until the lights went on and all that was left was the echoing din of thousands of teenagers screaming “yeah-but-no-but-yeah-but-no-but yeah ...” Fade to black.

This story will be published in the June edition of Square Eyes magazine

Goliath beetle | Good Friday

2006-04-16T22:16:00.001+01:00

... A funny thing happened when we moved to Hoxton street

It was a short-lived affair, just two weeks, a fortnight, 14 days - the equivalent of taking a holiday somewhere hot, with a beach and margaritas. But instead we had found ourselves in a cliquish part of town. Hoodies with asbos on the prowl, slipper-wearing OAPs shouting in your ear, and a mixed reception of over-friendliness and overt aggression as you ambled through the bric-a-brac market.

We got there optimistically enough, on a Sunday - the market's day of rest - and we moved our stuff in climbing up nose-bleed inducing stairs, we entered through a decidedly dodgy front door and passed a strong waft of spicy curries coming from the neighbour’s basement flat. The smell hung stale in the air, needing a virtual naan bread to mop it all up.

We had viewed the flat twice before renting it. That should have told us enough - if in doubt, bail out. But we needed a home in a hurry and it offered a quick solution and likeable gentrification, with its bars, Lars and tassel twirling stars on our doorstep. Holed up in the top two floors of a Victorian building, we found ourselves atop an African food store and 24hr mini cab firm.

Once settled in I got the first look out of my bedroom window in daylight, and I didn't like what I saw. I was greeted by a sheer drop into the oblivion of a "my mother never loved me" backyard, concrete, squalid and the perfect environment, it had suddenly struck me, for rats.

My vertigo kicked in at that point, and my unease and sensitivity to all things that crawl had made my skin prickle in horrible anticipation of what could be lurking in my new home. But I nonetheless persevered - putting my irrational, neurotic thoughts to the back of my mind.

The first five days went by uneventfully enough, though we learned of a murder and break-in that had happened just prior to our arrival. We had also started to uncover issues with the flat, such as temperamental heating and low water pressure. Despite it all we pushed on accepting the idiosyncratic borough of Hackney as our home. Afterall, we could wake-up, step outside and walk to work, carried there on a wave of bacon sarnies and black coffee from the hundreds of cafes that lined our street. It was a good trade-off.

But then the horrible surprise.

It was a Friday, I had returned home from the pub at around midnight - the flat was empty, dark and quiet as I unlocked the door and switched on the light. When from the corner of my eye I saw something scuttle across the kitchen floor. Thinking that the Guinness I had drunk that night had got me hallucinating, I gingerly walked into the kitchen to take another look.

And there it was.

A brown backed, German breed of cockroach, that if I examined it closely enough, I'm sure was smiling smugly up at me thinking to itself "I've invaded your warm cosy new home."

Now usually, at the sight of such a creature I would have ran several hundred blocks down the street - you could say I was good at overreacting to such a confrontation. In fact once, sitting in a wonderful, colonial courtyard in Havana as I ate a very agreeable meal of pork and black beans, the appearance at my table of a cockroach, of the large, Latin American kind, was enough for me to pay the bill and immediately get up and leave.

But perhaps the Guinness kept me there as my response was calm, even nonchalant. I knew I would be sleeping alone in the flat that night, yet I was unperturbed. Besides the solitary, offending little beast had quickly retired to a crack between the floor and the wall. Of course, I knew there had to be others and the thought of my own little Alien discovery pushed a Ripley-inspired resistance upon me. I made up my mind to nuke the buggers the next day.

I awoke the following morning with a fuzzy, stout-induced hangover and my mind took a while to register the bug from the night before. But when I did, my mood remained surprisingly unchanged. It was sobering to think that we had such unpleasant house guests but I also considered that perhaps it was just a rogue cockroach wandering through. Maybe like me, it had a very poor sense of direction. So I got ready and went out, checking the kitchen first of course and seeing that there was no sign of being overwhelmed anytime soon by the rush of a brown, hard-backed army of invaders.

I coffeed and croissanted locally, read the paper and then headed out to do some hardcore home shopping in Habitat. I remember that I was feeling house proud and bloody-minded that day. So I bought cream-coloured chenille mats and smelly candles. Returning to the flat several hours later, I expected all to be quiet on the Eastern front. But no. This time, there were three cockroaches strolling around the kitchen floor. I felt like saying, "don't mind me, make yourselves at home, have a bloody picnic!"

But at that point I knew we had little choice - it was time for us to pack our bags. The following day I told my flatmate and we contacted the landlady. We came to an agreement that bug people would come and assess how serious the problem was but in the meantime, if we were still unhappy we could move immediately. It took a few nights of random German bugs roving through our home to help us make up our mind. But here's the weirdest thing of all. I was working and needed to look up a word in the OED. I grabbed it, opened it, and the first thing I happened upon in the top left-hand corner of the page read, goliath beetle | Good Friday.

The writing was not just on the wall, but in the dictionary too.

So we left a day after Good Friday, with the market at its busiest, we negotiated our way out of the jam-packed street. As the van was being loaded up people kept peering in and one track-suited man in his early twenties said, "here luv, how much you selling that telly for?" It had been a hot mid-April day and I breathlessly replied, "it's not for sale, we're moving home", and he bluntly reminded me, "but it's market day, everything's for sale on market day." And I thought to myself, I wonder what the trade is like in this part of town for brown-backed bugs, but I didn't hang around long enough to find out.

Government considers sponsorship to drive hydrogen transport infrastructure research

2006-04-08T21:27:00.000+01:00

The government is pushing for research into infrastructure to support hydrogen-fuelled vehicles, the transport minister has said.

Speaking at the launch of the Intelligent Infrastructure Futures report, published by the government think-tank Foresight on 26 January, Stephen Ladyman said the government is considering sponsoring the technology with up to £500,000.

Describing the government as “technologically neutral”, Ladyman said, “Government sometimes can do things which accidentally push the market forward.” The hope is that the launch of the Foresight report will prompt interest in developing research into how materials are used in an intelligent transport infrastructure.

The government’s review looks 50 years ahead to see how science and technology can deliver safe and sustainable transport. It calls for research into practical aspects of introducing an infrastructure that supports hydrogen-fuelled vehicles including technological developments as well as economic, environmental and institutional factors.

Ladyman promised further announcements in the coming weeks to make it clear to the energy industry where the government is heading in terms of its commitment to ongoing research.

The chief scientific adviser to the government David King, who headed up the review, pointed to increased oil usage in middle-income countries such as China and said, “that illustrates rather well the sustainability issues that we face.”

“There will be shocks in the future which will affect our freedom to move and to move things, so we need to build an intelligent infrastructure to support people’s activities even at times of pressure or be willing to deal with the consequences,” the report states.

Speaking at the launch, Ladyman said: “We can stumble into the future and hope it turns out alright or we can try and shape it.”

The deadline for research proposals for the Horizon programme is 31 March.

This story was first published in Research Fortnight magazine

The e-vote question

2006-04-08T21:22:00.000+01:00

DCA minister Harriet Harman recently highlighted the government's continued interest in e-voting. Kelly Fiveash asks whether it would really make a difference

As we approach the May 2006 local elections there are no pilots in the pipeline for electronic voting, but it is still on the agenda for a government keen to modernise the electoral process.

In a speech to the Hansard Society in January constitutional affairs minister Harriet Harman outlined a strategy for stirring the enthusiasm of an electorate which has become less inclined to vote in recent elections. She said “democracy deserts” can only be overturned by ensuring that choice and accessibility are provided to all sections of society. Among a range of initiatives – including further reform of the House of Lords and efforts to increase voter registration – she flagged up the intention to press ahead with trials for e-voting.

So far it has only been tested in local elections, and there are arguments for and against its further development. But Harman said the government remains committed to the goal of multi-channel elections, and that it wants to give voters a choice that includes an electronic vote.

No date is yet suggesting a schedule for e-voting in a general election. There are complex issues to address around security, confidence in the system and how it would relate to changes in public administration. But some people are thinking seriously about the implications, and whether it really would boost voter turnout.

The Conservative Party has strong reservations about the prospects of an e-vote. A spokesperson highlights the problems with postal voting at last year’s general election and says this has implications for electronic methods.

“We are not very keen on e-voting,” the spokesperson says. “We think it is a bad idea to use it in major elections given that there are security concerns.

“We need to sort out the security aspect of that before we start extending it into possibly even more insecure areas.”

The party is in favour of more pilots, but stresses the need for “absolute reassurance” that the technology is safe before it can be a valid element of electoral reform.

“You cannot sacrifice security in order to improve the turnout,” says the spokesperson.

Alex Foulkes, press and campaigns officer of the Electoral Reform Society, says there are legitimate concerns about the security of e-voting, with arguments having arisen over elections in Ireland and the US, and the public will only use the method if they have sufficient trust.

He emphasises the need to iron out security issues and recommends that, while the systems should not use open source software, an expert group should be brought in to challenge it. This would provide independent scrutiny of e-voting at every stage of its development.

“Although manufacturers are producing good machines they need to be able to convince the public that the machines are safe,” Foulkes says. “Increasingly people are not going to take that simply on trust.”

He says that small scale trials can help to build this trust by making the margin of vulnerability to attack on the software as slight as possible.

“We would rather work incrementally, and would rather see small advances in low profile elections.”

There is a view that pilots should be run on a wider scale to provide a true test of the method’s validity, and that it should not be a stop-start effort. Malcolm Dumper, executive director policy and external affairs at the Association of Electoral Administration (AEA), says: “Although the AEA wholly supports pilots, there comes a time when we have to say that we have piloted enough. We now need to enact legislation to enable returning officers to conduct their polls in this way.”

He also says pilots can be frustrating and confusing for the electorate, notably when tests have been successful but then there is a return to the traditional method. There are also questions over the funding: local authorities are expected to foot most of the bill for running a pilot scheme when it is an issue in which central government has a major interest.

Dumper accepts that “some fine tuning needs to happen” along with “educating the electorate” to fully appreciate the choice of voting channels. He says the key to engaging 18-25 year-olds in politics is to enable them to vote from the their armchairs, as they would to evict a contestant in Big Brother or to support a performer on Pop Idol.

“In tackling the issue of disengagement and apathy, the e-voting process and modern techniques will solve part of the problem,” he says.

Alex Foulkes says the Electoral Reform Society broadly supports e-voting and believes the government’s tentative approach strikes the right balance: the review process should be ongoing.

“There needs to be more work,” he says. “We have no doubt that it will be possible in the future to vote electronically and there is the basis of capability there, but we still question the suitability for large scale roll out.”

Foulkes predicts the “techniques are going to be an additional add-on” for those who do not trust the security of postal voting and would make the process more convenient for the voter. But he is careful not to overstate the potential impact of e-voting on the electorate.

A more sceptical view is expressed by Stephen Ward, a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute who specialises in e-democracy. He says that while e-voting is perfectly sensible as part of a larger modernisation, it does not address the fundamental issue of voter turnout over a long period of time.

“People still find politics boring and uninteresting,” he says. “Fancy gadgets are not going to make them want to vote or turn out.”

He says technology is a “side issue” when it comes to encouraging people to vote. While it can improve accessibility for some, e-voting alone is not “sufficient stimulus” for engaging a public that is largely apathetic about politics. He describes e-voting as a “red herring” in the effort to increase voting turnout and cannot see how it will improve political participation.

Harriet Harman’s statement makes it clear that the government is still committed to multi-channel options for the voter. The possibilities of voting by mobile phone, digital television, touch screens and the internet are some way off for most people but remain on the agenda.

As things stand, the security concerns remain the biggest barrier. The experience of internet attacks and viruses suggests that when technology provides new forms of protection it is not long until new threats emerge. It would require a sustained effort by the IT security specialists to minimise the dangers and preserve levels of public trust.

Even then the question remains over whether non-voters would suddenly become enthused. If they are not it would prove that other factors are more important in encouraging political engagement.

This story was first published in the April issue of Government Computing magazine