Essential clicks 02

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    Thu, Jul 13, 2006, 13:00
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  • RA bookmarks the best features, opinions, websites and videos out there in the electronic music community. This week: Flying dogs, the history of house music, and Villalobos bites back...
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  • It’s not all about shaking your ass at clubs, there’s also staring at your computer. Each Thursday RA bookmarks links best features, opinions, websites and videos out there in the electronic music community. This is what caught our eye this week: Villalobos interviewUncontrollable monster: Techno star Ricardo Villalobos doesn’t have a webpage and checks his email only once a month. So why doesn’t he like the Internet? In a new interview with Japanese site Higher Frequency Villalobos calls the web "an uncontrollable monster”. In particular, those notorious snaps that did the rounds last year are still on his mind. Ricardo reacts: “Sure I am sweating, but I am just closing my eyes and he takes the photo in this moment. Then he puts the photo on the internet, ‘Look how fucked up Ricardo is!’ Then people call me two weeks later, ‘Ricardo, I am really worried about you. I saw a photo on the internet’. Fuck off, you know me. Every normal intelligent person in the world knows that this photo was taken exactly in the moment where my eyes were closing not because I was completely fucked up.” Blinking or baked, that is the question. Don't look here for the evidence though - we're too kind to link to it.
    History of House MusicLet there be house: Some wag has posted the whole of 'Pump Up the Volume: A History of House Music' to Youtube where you can watch it in easily digestible nine-minute chunks. The three-part documentary series originally aired in the UK in 2001 and it’s very informative, especially on the origins of the genre in Chicago (we love the DJ lesson from Farley ‘Jackmaster’ Funk). The latter parts skew more towards a British perspective (The Hacienda, raves, acid house) - this is a must-see for dance music fans. Apologies for the YouTube link. We’d like to buy the DVD, but it ain’t for sale. [via bootness] Red Bull techno schoolTechno school: Red Bull Academy go around the world teaching youngsters how to DJ and produce, and they put the evidence up on the net for our pleasure. But these aren’t your usual boring music lessons: take a look at the schoolteachers – Atom Heart, Carl Craig, Dixon, Ewan Pearson, Larry Heard, Mathew Jonson, Michael Mayer, Morgan Geist, Tiga… The interviews cover DJing, producing, the business and other bits and bobs. The transcripts have the info but check out the videos or you’ll miss the best stuff like Mathew Jonson's amusing 100-mile-an-hour description of his studio setup – he’s the very picture of an obsessed techno scientist.
    Pink Floyd on Look of the WeekWish you were here: His music wasn’t electronic, but it was psychedelic, and the influence of one of the originators of the genre looms over the more transcendental end of dance music even today. Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett died this week at the age of 60. Sadly, Barrett’s life was testament to the perils of drugs – his experimentation with LSD led to a mental breakdown, his expulsion from the band and eventually a permanent withdrawal from public life. For twenty years his whereabouts remained one of pop music’s great mysteries, until he was tracked down to his mother’s house in Cambridge where he’d been living as a recluse. The psychedelic prime of Barrett-era Floyd is captured here where you can see Syd performing with Pink Floyd and doing battle with an old square of a telly presenter. Rest in peace, Roger Keith Barrett.
    Vitalic videoDogs in space: Electro-rocker Vitalic’s Poney Part 1 was released waaay back in 2001 but it was included on his 2005 album OK Cowboy and if the video for it slipped under your radar this year, or if you’re a dog lover, or if you just love freaky shit, check it out. The vid was directed by the Pleix group out of Paris who have a swath of other clips at their website including efforts for Plaid, Basement Jaxx and Kid 606.
    *** Transmission ends. If you have any interesting links that you think might fit here (no promo spam please, we beg you), post them in the forum or send them to us at info (at) residentadvisor.net with the subject line 'Essential Clicks'. Archive Essential clicks 01
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