You've got water, but he's got holes.

Thus is the eternal battle of rock, paper scissors. And so, regardless of all conceivable efforts, something will always trump your greatest play. What is this in reference to? Well, I don't have tell you that, but it's a motif that is perpetually applicable. The meander through life inextricably leads to competition, and we inevitably can't always win. This seems ill-suited to questions of confidence, but aside from capricious splatterings of emotion, it's also coincidentally true for the coming "job-hunt", a phrase I find rather perterbing, in part due to the fact I hope not to be roasting my future employer over an open campfire with a fork and pot of pepper readily available.

Anyway, now that musing has gone, which may have been interesting for some, but more likely confusing for most, I'll get on to points of interest from my amazing life.

First off, shops. People often wonder where to buy clothes from. For women it's pretty easy, for blokes, not so, especially if you grew up in somewhere with a population less than half a million. Though, if this is the case, you're probably happy with your body warmer, big hair and polo-shirt collar turned-up. A complete generalisation, but if you currently reside in some shit-pot of a so-called "university town" masquarading as a centre of culture (yes, Reading, I'm looking at you), then you'll understand.

Well, fear no more.

Here's a few beauts for you to be going on with: first off, simples. I'm talking kicks. If you haven't heard of Size? by now you've got problems. Probably the best "high-street" store to buy sneeks. You can also find a selection at Urban Industry, which is a generally good all-round clothes shop anyway. For t-shirts check out SP:UK. These guys print the best designs that get sent into them, so you can not only buy cool shirts, but also get your own printed, and paid for, nice eh? Pretty sweet as well is Super Superficial, though you're better off tripping down to their store on Carnaby Street, as the online shop is pretty wank.

My all round favourite shop of the moment though has to be Lazy Oaf, infamous makers of the burger hat. Not only do they sell some fresh to death shit, but they're pretty damn nice people too. I mean, check this e-mail they sent me about the impending arrival of a sweater I ordered:

"Hi Jonathan

Thank you for ordering from Lazy Oaf. We have packaged up your goodies and have sent them out to you today. Most items are sent recorded delivery and will require a signature so please keep an eye out for your postie.

Love Peace and Hair Grease,

Lazy Oaf"

Just great.

Finally, some interesting stuff to wet your whistle.

Trailer for the upcoming HBO mini-series The Pacific, from the creators of the fantastic Band of Brothers.


An unreleased tune from the man of the moment, HudMo.


A video for my favourite song of all time.


Love, peas and gravy.

Onedeck; Mix One.

Woop! Finally finished my first mix. Ableton went a bit spazzy in the middle and messed the tempo up, but apart from that it sounds OK. It will be on Soundcloud soon, but the faulty uploader coupled with my crappy internet is causing all sorts of problems right now.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1) Blue Daisy ft. LaNote: Space Ex
2) Loops Haunt: Joplin
3) Shlohmo: Post Atmosphere
4) Bullion and Paul White: Get Familiar
5) Hudson Mohawke: Star Crackout (intro)
6) Jose James: Blackmagic (Untold Remix)
7) Om Unit: Lightgrids (Illum Sphere Remix)
8) Hudson Mohawke: Star Crackout (exit)

Download or listen to it here!

Something or nothing.

I'm not sure which. Depends on what you think of my capricious ramblings. Anyway, much belated news (you can't blame me, I've already stated I'm a slacker), I have a radio show! With my friend/housemate/personal slave Jim. Just did you second show, which if you listened, you'll know was quite the disaster. Mainly due to technical difficulties, and in part to my caffeine addiction. Regardless we played some bangin' beats as is our style.

You can listen, every Thursday at 11am, here.

Apart from that, I haven't been up to that much. Been dissertation-ing away, improving my culinary skills and generally straight west coasting. Thus, this will be a rather short post, as I am relatively uninspired right now, but I assure you I'll update as soon as the next epiphany strikes me. I was going to write something about my recurring dream of my teeth falling out whilst talking to hot girls, but I think that deserves a topic in it's own right, before I go all Freudian on your ass. So, here's some interesting shit to keep you all entertained:







That is all. Peace and love.

Oh snap, it's 2010.

Yeah, so it's 2010. I forgot/couldn't be arsed to list a load of great things about the past year, or how my birthday was. So here is just a general ramble with little in the way of epiphanies or philosophical thought.

I did however see Hudson Mohawke for the first time at Fabric last Friday, and he literally blew my socks off. I think dubstep is dying; it was a good "stepping" (get it?) stone for a plethora of new genres, but it's pretty lame in comparison to said offspring now. Thus I've been delving deeper and deeper into the realms of the weird; genres that don't even have an official name yet. One such genre is what people are calling autonomic. I don't really wanna DJ this stuff, but wow, it's good. I got bored of D'n'B when my poor ears and braincells were being pilfered by horrendous "jump-up" and that's when the transition to dubstep began. However, this kind of drum and bass, more influenced by techno than Hype and the like, is just plain awesome. Artists like Alix Perez, Spectrasoul and Calibre are really sending this genre places, and if you haven't yet checked it out, do so.

Mainly though I've started spinning, well, I don't know what to call it. Collectives like LuckyMe don't really like giving it a name. It's been called post-hiphop, leftfield hip-hop, and "wonky"...which is a pretty gash name.

Whatever, it's great.

I don't know where it began, I don't know where it'll end. As someone recently asked a quantum physics professor, "How long is a piece of string?", to which said proff responded: "However fucking long you want it to be, to be honest." And that wasn't even a piece of string random in length, it was a certain length, like, 10 inches, but apparently that doesn't matter. It's all perception, like, a blind person can't even see the bloody string, let alone measure it. Well, he could, but then he couldn't see the measurements, so he couldn't. Unless they were in braille. Anyway, I digress.

I'm talking about artists like Hudson Mohawke, Rustie, Slugabed, Jamie Vex'd, Heralds of Change, KenLo Crqnuques, Zomby, maybe like James Blake, FMF, Nosaj Thing. See, I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure it's all J Dilla's fault though. Just go to Numbers in Glasgow and have a look.

In other news, look at this:



Wow. I'll be back with some more hyperbolic bollocks some time next week. Till then, take it easy.

Festive fatigue; and where's my dinner.

I apologise for a lack of recent posts; I have enjoyed an extended period of hard-work, much sleeping and solving of imaginery problems, but I am now delighted to say that on this fateful Christmas day I have now again found the least division of an hour to once more rattle personal agrievements into public ears.

I love Christmas, and not for the presents, it's all a huge capitalism conspiracy anyway. No, it's for the little things. The gathering at stupid-o'clock to open aforementioned gifts, wrapping over-sized ribbons around my under-sized dog's necks (pictures to follow; I left my camera cable at home) and being forced to listen endlessly to the entire oeuvre of Mozart or Handel. Other highlights include crying with my sister to the emotional heights of Lost and Found, watching my Nan getting steadily intoxicated from 4pm onwards, and joining my friends at around midnight in some forsaken haunt manned by confused bar-staff. All these little things make Christmas, not the fucking indoctrinated philosophy that western society seems to believe it's all spend, spend, spend, when in actual fact it's more drink, drink, drink.

In general I love the little things in life, these are, in my opinion, happiness embodied. Grand displays of love or affection to little for me, it's your mate buying you a pint, it's holding your girlfriend's hand, it's noticing that BBC iPlayer's volume goes up to eleven. On that note I'll leave you to all get riotously pissed. I'll make a post sometime around New Year's Eve about all the great bollocks that's happened this year and how happy I am to be getting older. Not. (Insert generic Jonnie's-an-old-man joke here).

The aesthetics of athletics.

And this is why we shall all be more interested in next years Olympics.
Dear lord.

Oh; & this.

Before I forget, some more interesting tunes for your ears.

An odd rework of Florence + The Machine with dubstep undertones, by The XX.

Engine-Earz - 'Kaliyuga' ft. Jenna G, performing live.

For all you mooks going on like Emalkay's 'When I Look at You' is the best dubstep track since 'Hyph Mngo' (admittedly not that old, but what a banger), please realise that the B-side kicks the absolute shit out of it.