Masterchef Recipe Ideas

Idea 1

For her starter, Pernicious is cooking black mermaids covered in mustard.

Her main consists of chargrilled elephant bladder with confit oesophagus, a train ticket puree and Coors Light jus, accompanied by breaded glove on a bed of Brita-filtered marrowfat peas.

Idea 2

Delacroix is cooking a handful of earthworms, marinated in safety pins with chervil and linseed, 

boiled in One Coat gloss emulsion from B&Q, and served with loaded dice, ground horse teeth and confit of the nipples.

To start, he’ll serve corn on the cob flung out of an upstairs window, onto a watercress and West Wing box set salad.

Idea 3

Allspice is constructing some meat steps, with a tweed bisque, a dead skin tuille and Pocky bannisters.

Idea 4

Orrery is cooking a fennel insurance scheme, marinated in a cervix and cement reduction, served with diced porcelain, salted benefit claimants and a hot crab.

For dessert, he'll whisper quietly into your ear while spooning individual skittles into your mouth.

Idea 5

The population of Winchester is cooking a large bat in between two heated tube train doors, served on a teleported onion, Pogs three ways (melted, whole, blessed), and suspicious fish eyes, all drenched in an imaginary jus with silly croutons.

For dessert, the entire town will perform Les Miserables with home-made shortbread.

Idea 6

Slippery Pete is ignoring his parents’ advice, while fishmongers perform an ancient fertility ritual, a dirty boy rolls freshly dug beetroots across a lubricated surface, and Jenna Jameson plays drums.

For the main course, he’s constructing a scale model of the Dorchester hotel out of Hydrogen molecules and serving it on a slab of reformed ham.

Idea 7

Everyone you know and love is projectile vomiting into an airing cupboard, while Ringo Starr narrates porn through a loud-hailer and Jilly Goolden maintains eye contact with your Dad. To accompany, they’ll be breading golf balls and driving them from the 9^th at Gleneagles, served on a bed of dead kestrels.

For dessert, you can’t look directly at anyone you speak to for the rest of the week, with custard.

Best of 2014 Part 2

James Hassall Best of 2014 Part 2 by James Hassall on Mixcloud

As promised, here is part 2 of my 2014 underwear drawer.

Part 1 was a more sombre affair (listen to it here), full of melancholy tunes, eerie electronica and avant-garde noise. This creature brings together a bunch of last year's more dance-floor friendly lingerie, including some amazing second-hand tights from Bourbonese Qualk and Liaisons Dangereuse.

It's mostly machinist techno and no wave from the likes of Silent Servant, An-I and Kangding Ray but there's also a squirt of rock 'n' roll panties from Perfect Pussy; some day-glo electro knickers from Maria Minerva and Peaking Lights; downbeat garters from Swans and Tony Allen; and misshapen sports bras from Actress and Hieroglyphic Being.

Sniff them, hold them close, think of your loved ones.

I played a lot of this stuff at various Kling Klang nights throughout the year, so you may recall some of the musty odours and unsightly stains if you were in attendance.

As with Part 1, the mix closes with my absolute special favourite little pink pants that make my bum look good. Shackleton's Freezing Opening Thawing never failed to excite, with absolutely no VPL.

Here's to 2015.

Kiss me.

Best of 2014 Part 1

James Hassall Best of 2014 Part 1 by James Hassall on Mixcloud

Good morning 2015.

In place of an end of year list, here's an end of year mix.

This is part one (of two).

Do you like dust? Have you ever licked a battery? What does the sound of a helicopter mean to you? Empty submarines, spiders on keyboards, the light on your laptop blinking.

The mix is punctuated by excerpts from Marc Baron's Hidden Tapes, a fine collage of unearthed cassettes, and ends with a track from The Lowland Hundred's astonishing self-titled release; it sounds like a dream about Robert Wyatt singing in the Welsh countryside, and it's one of the most beautiful things I've heard in years.

There are also some noisy bits from Valerio Tricoli and Stefan Jaworzyn, nice songs from Peter Escott, Dean Blunt and Amen Dunes and a reissued gem from Woo.

Electronics are provided by Alessandro Cortini, Hands and Ron Morelli, among others, and there are even more things that I haven't mentioned (that you might recognise).

Keep your nips peeled for part two, which will be full of funky, dancy, sexy stuff - a lot of which has been making people smile/bleed at Kling Klang this past year.

A brilliant year for new music, as this selection hopefully testifies.

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I'll sort a tracklist out soon

The Most Out-of-Date 'Record of the Year' this Side of J-Lo's Ass

Sorry.

It's nearly the end of two thousand and fourteen (FUCK) and I thought about writing another top 20 records of the year list.

And then I remembered that I didn't actually finish last year's.

So here's the top 5:

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5. Haxan Cloak - Excavation
4. Julia Holter - Loud City Song
3. The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
2. Tim Hecker - Virgins

1. Oneohtrix Point Never - R Plus Seven

Daniel Lopatin keeps delivering, and on R Plus Seven there’s a real sense of him trying to do something more consciously important and high-concept than previous releases. The album is more cohesive – texturally – and more overt in its groping towards grandiose sentiment in a strange and disorientating digital environment.

The album features Lopatin’s definitive jittery structure that applies on both the macro and micro scale; clipped, repetitious vocal samples that dart about the mix are woven into a fabric that never quite settles in one place. A consistent mood is achieved from extremely fragmented components – the mark of excellent abstract art of any stripe – and our listening experience is one of almost constant tension and surprise.

Inside World, for example, prods at us with really strange synthetic vocal ‘ahs’ that seem to meander and peter out, before a sumptuous string line, backed by lush digital hiss, bleeds in and – just as we’ve adjusted to its relative calm – gives way to another series of bubbling, stop-start samples. The experience borders on frustration, but it keeps the ear focused and re-contextualises every little thing we hear into a singular revelatory moment.

The aesthetic is akin to James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual in its hyper-digital glossy sheen but the irony is stripped away to reveal some genuinely beautiful moments of euphoria, melancholy and sensuality. Zebra threatens to burst into a hands-in-the-air house track at any moment but becomes subsumed in a cascading barrage of synth layers and, once again, tantalisingly rejects the economy of set-up and pay-off for a more complex and jarring arrangement that revels in the diverse qualities of synthetic sounds.

There’s a conscious religiosity/spirituality in the effects that Lopatin utilises – uplifting choral vocals, hypnotic church organ pieces – and this feels entirely appropriate for the strange magic at work in this album. Lopatin has allowed the music to cover extraordinarily wide ground in its aural symbolism and, therefore, unlocked a sense of infinite complexity, primitive humanity and revelatory wonder in the journey through brief flashes of experience and sustained, elegiac, hymnal passages.

In utilising a truly odd combination of new-age meditation sounds, commercial muzak gloss, synthesised baroque horns, religious harmonics and jazzy erotica, Lopatin has possibly created something of a definitive album that plays on the still unknown nature of the relationship between ultra-consumerism, hyper-connectivity, spirituality, nature and humanity.

----------------------------------------------------

I had only written the review for Oneohtrix Point Never's deserved winner, so there it is. I won't bother writing about the others; I ain't gonna waffle on about records that are a whole year old now. We've moved on. Andy Murray won.

Look ahead to a shimmering future with hundreds more end-of-year lists and global tragedies.

Who will it be this year?

Kanye?

Tay Tay?

Bill Maher and guests are so wrong on Gaza

Bill Maher and his guests should be ashamed of their horrible portrayal of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza on Realtime (19.07.14 – view the full episode here).

As a proviso – I’m intending to criticise the show’s particularly awful moments and not attempting a balanced assessment of all the guest’s points. There is, of course, truth in their criticism of Hamas; I’m pro Israel and pro Palestine, but this ‘debate’ was particularly one-sided and bizarre for something outside of Fox News.

Some of the misinformation and opinions presented were bordering on offensive – to my intelligence, not my sensibilities. I like Bill Maher, I like the show. Consider this a friendly reminder.

Absurdity No. 1: Israel ain’t that bad

Maher begins by suggesting that Israel is actually demonstrating restraint in its invasion by not simply destroying Palestine:

‘Israel has the opportunity to kill way more, and they do not. It seems like they are victims of the soft bigotry of high expectations.’

This is ridiculous. And delivered with that little look that Maher always has on his face when he’s done a nice sentence. Israel has the opportunity to kill way less, and they do not. If Israel was purely defensive in their military operations in Gaza, then over 800 civilians would not be dead.

Plus, the international community would undoubtedly not allow Israel to commit full-scale genocide or decisive ground invasions, so they are not as free to ‘kill way more’ as Maher suggests; they get away with what they can (which Hamas does too).

Absurdity No. 2: Jews are superior

After opening with this interesting angle on Israel’s ruthlessness, Maher asks why it is that ‘Israel wins every war’ and, hence, ends up killing many more Palestinians than it suffers Israeli casualties.

Shockingly, he puts it down to the amount of Nobel prizes Jews have: ‘A big advantage to team Hebrew’. This not only implies that Arabs are inferior, which is pretty dangerous ground, but also overlooks a pretty significant fact: the unwavering support and monumental financial backing of the world’s largest military superpower.

Does Maher really think Israel’s ‘atheist’ (!) scientific community gives it the edge over oppressed, destitute, isolated, barricaded, sanctioned and blockaded Palestine? Maybe it’s got something to do with the fuckload of weapons and money they get from the US.

Absurdity No. 3: Gaza isn’t occupied

Next, one of Bill’s guests, Jane Harman – a former Democrat member of Congress – points out that ‘Israel doesn’t want to be in Gaza’ and that Gaza hasn’t been occupied since 2005, implying that Palestine has no claim to being oppressed and, therefore, enacting ‘resistance’.

That’s a nice line for apologists to repeat as it suggests that Gaza is actually a free, independent state since Ariel Sharon ‘disengaged’ 9 years ago but it masks the truth. Occupation is a legal designation and, by many accounts, Gaza is far from unoccupied. The UN has noted Israel’s ‘effective’ control of Gaza by way of:

1. substantial control of Gaza’s six land crossings
2. control through military incursions, rocket attacks and sonic booms, and the declaration of areas inside the Strip as “no-go” zones where anyone who enters can be shot
3. complete control of Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters
4. control of the Palestinian Population Registry, which has the power and authority to define who is a “Palestinian” and who is a resident of Gaza.[1]

Palestine is definitely not a free, independent state with no legitimate gripes.

This is a particularly pernicious lie because Harman, as a high profile politician who is presumably aware of diplomatic history and international law, must know that calling Palestine an unoccupied territory is contentious at best and completely disgusting at worst.

Absurdity No. 4: Israel’s military action is wholly defensive

Harman goes on to say that ‘the purpose’ of this current incursion, the purpose, is to take out Hamas’ tunnels and missile launchers. The shelling of schools and hospitals, alongside the UN’s suggestion that war crimes may have been committed, completely undermine this argument.

This is disproportionate, psychological and inhumane warfare, whether you think some level of Israeli military action is justified or not.

Plus, just two days ago the US posted the only NO vote on a motion in the UN General Assembly to set up an independent inquiry into Israel’s potential human rights violations. This would suggest that the US is not entirely confident that the result will be in Israel’s favour or, as a Washington State Department spokesperson put it: ‘[the US] will stand up for Israel…even if it means standing alone’[2] – a more candid admission of blind support.

The Times of Israel suggests that the US didn’t back the motion because it was one-sided and doesn’t mention Israeli deaths or Palestinian attacks, but that’s not true; sections 3 and 4 explicitly include condemnations of Israeli civilian deaths.

Once again, Israel is disproportionate, ruthless and murderous in its ‘retaliation’ to Hamas attacks and American apologists claim the military action is purely defensive before vetoing any UN action. This happens all the time. I put ‘retaliation’ in scare quotes since the 3 Israeli deaths that apparently sparked this conflict were actually preceded by 2 Palestinian deaths at the hands of the IDF that went unnoticed.

If Israel’s behaviour isn’t completely inexcusable, then its justification is at least questionable, while Maher’s panel doesn’t even discuss the possibility that targeting civilians might be problematic or that Israel might not have carte blanche to eviscerate whole communities.

Absurdity after absurdity after absurdity

There are more hilarious/disgusting distortions in the programme and this is only a short 15 minute segment.

Palestinians are referred to as ‘professional refugees’ who are used ‘as a symbol of propaganda’ by Jamie Weinstein, senior editor of the Daily Caller, and trusty Jane Harman claims that the million and a half Arabs living in Israel are ‘treated as Israeli citizens and afforded democratic rights’. I don’t even need to rebuff this Ministry of Truth bollocks.

It is amazing (or perhaps, sadly, not) that this passes for acceptable debate on US television. You’d expect this shit from Jamie Weinstein, but Bill Maher is apparently a liberal/libertarian and Jane Harman is a Democrat; not that I expect Democrat politicians to express pro-Palestinian sentiment, but at least not to resort to Bill O'Reilly levels of bull. 

Realtime is a show for the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert demographic and, while I don’t expect members of the American political elite to be wearing Keffiyeh’s, I was shocked by the way this level of extreme rhetoric went unchallenged (I suppose Maher’s audience are the most sycophantic and clap-happy morons around) and elementary falsehoods were fired around so rapidly.

I’m no scholar on Israel-Palestine and nor am I a hardened pro-Palestinian, but I recognised much of what was said by apparently educated and knowledgeable pundits as heinous.

We will not see peace between Israel and Palestine until the US allows it to happen, and the US won’t allow it to happen while this sort of self-censorship abides. At least Maher recognises the Israeli gag placed on the whole of America’s political class at the end of the segment, but he, unfortunately, seems to be wearing it too.

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[1] http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8807/is-gaza-still-occupied-and-why-does-it-matter

[2] http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/24/headlines#7246

Berlin

Berlin

It’s a great word, visually. It feels composed.

With a proud B followed by a subtle curve, formed by the peak of the l, sloping into in.

Austere and romantic, assertive and seductive – Berlin.

  

Berlin is great art.

It’s not effusive like Paris or rarefied like Vienna, but elegant and tragic; its absurdist logic imbues the steely exterior with an intoxicating poignancy. It’s turgid with potential energy – the echoes of horror; restrained tears; austere concrete veined with graffiti arabesques (matte neon, dulled vibrancy); serious fun.

Muffled kick drums, silver noise, beautiful bludgeon, concrete flowers, murdered gypsies in as-far-as-the-eye-can-see park, white sun, a flash of gold at the edges.

The tears are brought on by beauty, by spectacle, by death, by love, by endless possibility.

Hedonism is no vacuous escape here – it’s meaningful immersion.

That sunset orange stays long.

10-6 of The Records of the Year of My Choosing

It's the top 10! Which feels significant because our mathematics is predicated on a decimal base! Because we've got 10 fingers! How many fingers will we have in the future?

10 Deerhunter – Monomania

Deerhunter have produced excellent albums from day one, but it took Monomania for me to appreciate them as more than just another decent guitar band.

It’s a weird turn in their discography and one that could have come across as too self-aware and corny, in the sense that there’s a new braggadocio in their style and posturing in the lyrics that is, essentially, an introspective indie band playing at being proper rock ‘n’ roll.

But, in the stripping away of their noisy/ambient characteristics and the dreamy romanticism of Halcyon Digest they demonstrate the same attention to detail and texture, albeit applied to engineering a grinding, sleazy sensibility full of sawing guitars and delayed vocals. It’s like a studied exercise in notching up classic rock references (shitty bars, neon lights, leather jackets, motorbikes) that manages to appear both postmodern/wryly humorous and immediately believable.

Tracks like T.H.M. showcase their ability to encapsulate simplistic cool (an excellent bassline always helps), while Back to the Middle is a shit-hot garage pop tune and The Missing nods back to previous albums’ indie balladry.

9 Powell – Untitled EP

Powell makes the kind of music I’d make if I made music.

I think Boomkat described it as ‘techno for people who like rock and rock for people who like techno’, and I agree. This sense is largely produced by the extensive use of No Wave samples and Powell’s narrow but signature palette of drum sounds and effects – it satisfyingly combines a knowledge of its underground heritage with a rawness in its surface and a neck-snapping rhythm that places it in that murky territory between dance and rock.

Techno, at one extreme, can be obsessed with production and structure in such a way that it consistently ossifies conventions and appeals to tutting specialists who wear expensive headphones.

Rock can also too easily forget the importance of dancing, hypnotic rhythm and the texture of sound - but No Wave and Powell shrug off those potential flaws in both genres, with No Wave artists introducing repetitive rhythm and electronic noises to a punk shell and Powell reinserting the punk aesthetic into the often mechanically flawless surface of techno.

It results in a really filthy industrialism that’s got way more swing than much that’s previously been released under that banner - A Band being a fine example of an almost funky rhythm being wrought from clangs and clatters, and stand-out track Oh No New York directly referencing its No Wave heritage with foot-stomping beats, steampunk hisses and dissonant synth buzzes.

I say it’s the kind of music I’d make because I love this fusion of Industrial dirt, sonic innovation and rock 'n’ roll abandon, but also because that punk aesthetic feels inexpensive, DIY and approachable in that it wrenches something admirable from simple and unassuming components.


8 Vatican Shadow – When You Are Crawling / Remember Your Black Day

Dominick Fernow is no shrinking violet. As Prurient, he makes uncompromising Noise with a ferociously political performative aspect and he has explored the nexus of ritualistic spirituality and mass murder in his guise as Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement.

As Vatican Shadow, Fernow continues his commitment to imbuing traditionally nihilistic and self-contained genres with an explicit content. In this case, he utilises the repetitious and structured nature of techno to invoke the conformity, relentlessness and violence of the military-industrial complex.

The success of this project could be called into question since, ostensibly, the legibility of his message appears to rely on the excellent imagery on his album covers and the poignant and evocative track titles (Contractor Corpses Hung over the Euphrates River, Jet Fumes Above the Reflecting Pool). Nevertheless, the music manages to capture something of that weird marriage of beauty and horror in military imagery through wrenching some melancholic resonance out of industrial soundscapes.

There’s an element of satire in the use of sonic aesthetics that might just about fit in a Call of Duty soundtrack, but they’re lent a sinister malevolence that brings a reflective quality. The collagistic anti-propaganda that was explicit in the early cassette releases has matured into a subtle atmosphere of distant dread – of atrocities committed far away that scratch at the Western conscience.

When You Are Crawling is an EP that acts as something of an addendum to the full-length Remember Your Black Day and – with Silent Servant getting production credits – it packs a more immediate punch as out-and-out techno.

Both releases, taken together, present a compelling, thoughtful and resonant body of work that navigates a minefield of extremely serious subjects.

There are few people attempting such high-minded, coherent and controversial music around; it’s extremely hard to ignore.


7 Laurel Halo – Chance of Rain



I have to admit, I didn’t quite get Laurel Halo before. I found Hour Logic a bit stark and disjointed and, although I appreciated Quarantine’s scope and originality, it left me cold.

Chance of Rain adds a lot of physical depth and some darker shades to Halo’s sound, giving it far more traction than previous efforts. She’s removed the vocals that were foregrounded in Quarantine, but the album somehow presents a more engaging face and, true to its place in Hyperdub’s stable, adopts a more rhythmic focus.

The title track’s a belter, perfectly encapsulating everything that works about this album. High tempo kick drums are given a huge amount of momentum by filtered arpeggiations that climb up and down in the mix – and it’s given some serious bite by whip-crack snares that sustain throughout – but the whole thing segues into a melancholy keyboard phrase that sounds like it’s been lifted out of In a Silent Way.

The entire album revels in this sort of oscillation; between hard-edged metallic sounds that are expertly modelled into jittery digital rhythms and a warm, blue-filtered jazz sensibility that only occasionally flickers into view.

The album comes across, therefore, as lurking in that territory where the bleak landscape of fragmented digitalia and mechanical dance music – disjointed rhythms and stark sounds (think Mouse on Mars circa Glam) – meets an irrepressible musicality. It’s easy to identify the former with sinister, mindless process and the latter with human warmth and creativity, but Halo brilliantly blurs these distinctions by delighting in the rapturous possibilities of anonymous sounds.

6 My Bloody Valentine – m b v

Probably the only reason this isn’t higher in the list is that it was so bloody late and I’ve penalised it for tardiness. Some of the textures and influences on this album do sound too 90s for an album that was released in 2013 (like the vaguely D&B clamour of Wonder 2), giving the whole thing an atmosphere of curious distance.

But My Bloody Valentine transcends all that nonsense about time and space. Coming after 17 years of Shields’ digestion and monkish crafting, m b v blew most other records in 2013 out of the water; it hopefully made swathes of half-arsed indie bands realise that transcendental aural experiences can make people physically shit themselves, and that they should be attempting to elicit this most flattering of responses from their listeners too.

Some of the tracks on this album are up there with moments on Loveless, and I really didn’t expect that. Who Sees You achieves that characteristically stirring, queasy beauty that can make both tears and blood stream down your face like Eisenstein’s screaming nurse, and If I Am manages to sustain a real groove behind its ephemeral vocals and gorgeously subtle guitar line.

Nothing Is takes the record somewhere a little different, spearheading its riotous close. Something of Shields’ love for balls-out rock ‘n’ roll creeps out here and it’s the only track I actually remember from witnessing them live (virtually unconscious for 80% of the gig). I remember the stage looked like the mouth of hell and I was about as happy as I’ve ever been.

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There ya go; eat yer cauliflower and you'll get the next lot fer afters...