Journey to the UWS

UNS 002 – UWS

This one is a bit belated by totally worth it. Trust me. 🙂

The next installment of UNS took me to New York’s Upper West Side. It was a lovely warm day in spring and the sun was shining. Cruising along Broadway, eating at Papaya’s, chilling with Tom and imaging Kramer walking in and Elaine complaining about her hair and finally having a lie down at the Colombia campus benches.

I’ve never really been a through and through UWS type of dude. It’s always felt like a poor man’s UES to me, and you know how much I love the UES. Well you don’t, but I am telling you now, I fucking do, and I will find Woody Allen one day.

Anyways, here you go, enjoy!

Tracklist:

1. Lemon D – I See Sunshine
2. Vtgnike – U Tebya Takie Glaza
3. Lemongrass – Cafe De Paris
4. Paul Hardcastle – It Must Be Love
5. Patrice Rushen – Where There Is Love
6. Gentle Persuasion – Gotta Lotta Love
7. Tassel & Naturel Feat. DJ Cam – Drivin’
8. Double Dee – Found Love (Reprise)
9. Mary J. Blige – Good Woman Down
10. Swamburger – Womanside
11. Jay-Z – Moment Of Clearness
12. Problem Kids Feat. Ashley Beedle – Mardi Gras
13. Joss Moog – Room 27
14. Adrian Hour – The Reason (Desos Remix)
15. Curtis Hairston – I Want You (All Tonight) (JM After-Session M&M Mix)
16. Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King – Love Come Down (12″ Version)
17. Candi Staton – Young Hearts Run Free
18. Streetlife Originals – Sidewalk Story
19. Hackman – Carry On (Dub)
20. DJ Koze – XTC
21. WILLIAMS, Boo – Teckno Drome
22. Pascal Viscardi – Lakefront (Worker Union Remix)
23. Profundo & Gomes – Sexophonic
24. DJ Qu – Loveboxx
25. Mood II Swing – Move Me
26. DJ Qu – SS1
27. Jacob B – Rave In The Cave
28. D FUNC/MARCEL HEESE – Patience
29. MUNK – Purple Dust
30. Hefner / Cosmos – Dive Into You (Tom Middleton Vox)
31. Billy Shane – Hold Yor Heart
32. ANDRADE – Optimistic
33. Streetlife Originals – Sidewalk Story
34. Mountal – Would You Be Mine?
35. Eli Escobar – NY So Hi
36. Butch – Praise The Lord
37. Steffen Deux – New York Sun
38. DJ W!LD – All About You
39. Jazz-N-Groove – Do Ya (Tribal Jazz Mix)
40. Life On Earth – Can’t Give You Up (Joey Negro Club Mix)
41. Palms Trax – People Of Tusk
42. Entro Senestre – Rosegold
43. Art Of Tones – Queue De Cochon
44. Sello – Bla Bla Bla
45. Kim Brown – Ternevej
46. Theory Of Happiness – Relax (Soothing Club Mix)
47. Toni Martin – Deeper (Blaze Deep Mix)
48. Brothers’ Vibe – Take Me 2 The Raw
49. Munk – Hot Medusa (Kai Alcé Dub)
50. Pal Joey, Beautiful People – I Got The Rhythm (Club Mix)
51. Helvert Feat. Elif Bicer – Neu
52. The Bird And The Bee – Runaway
53. Grant Nelson – Season Of Jack
54. Grant Nelson – Spellbound
55. D. Ramirez & Mark Knight – Colombian Soul (Gabriel And Dresden Tuscan Soul Reconstruction)
56. Red Grey Purple – Music Matters (Mark Knight Remix)
57. Moodymanc – Joy
58. The Far Out Monster Disco Orchestra – Mystery (Instrumental) [Feat. Arthur Verocai]
59. N.U. – Do It Again (Touchsoul Edit)
60. Jack J – Something (On My Mind)

Urban Nomads – We Make Music

Folks, its not hidden a secret that I am a part time Urban Nomad by profession.

Urban Nomadic Sessions 001

What do us Urban Nomads do I hear ya ask?

Simple, we traverse urban settings, admiring cities, architecture, noise, markets, music, people, shops and most importantly, our built environment.

Our activities include but not limited to:

• Finding cool hidden gems, in my case the focus is on architecture and food.
• Chilling in coffee shops and coffee related establishments. We can spend tons of hours in these places.
• Walking in unknown parts of whatever city we happen to be in. We do that to discover new things, but also because it expands our understanding of our environment. It sometimes puts me in trouble. Worth it.
• Our nomadic nature means we cannot get too attached to one city, place or setting. But we often do.
• Running new routes around the city and seeing things at 20 km/hr while your heartbeat is at 100 bpm.
• Attending gigs, going to museums, enriching ourselves culturally.
• Airports
• Metro/Subway/Tube inspiration
• Finding cool hidden gems when we run of things to do
• Make/be music as you listen to music.

And this brings us nicely to my latest project.

You might have been with me long enough to know about Kay-Ville, District Funk and then Disco Blasphemy. These were awesome shows which were broadcast and had their fun in their sun. Time for something new.

My latest is a no brainer. One of the main accessories of the discerning Urban Nomad is his headphones and music selection. It is highly unusual to find me walking random parts of Paris’s Courbevoie or New York’s Lower East Side without my headphones on, banging tunes, taking it all on.

When I often playback some tunes, it elicits such a strong feeling of a particular setting that I often can no longer but associate that track with that place. And hence my idea – put together tracks I play while hopping about places in one mix and see what that sounds like. And thus ‘The Urban Nomadic Sessions’ is born.

The first session takes us to one my favorite parts of London and where I have so many fond memories, Islington, up Naaarrffff.

Representing N1, N4, N5, N6, N7, N8, N16 and N19, with a silent ode to the gunners! Here we go!

Tracklist:

1. Grüün – GrüünGrüünGrüüün
2. Deetron Feat. Ovasoul7 – Out Of My Head (Dub)
3. Roman Flügel – More & More
4. Aaron FIT Siegel – Tonite (DD Mix)
5. Rachel Row – Follow The Step (KiNK Mix)
6. Doc Daneeka – Everyday
7. B.G. Baarregaard – Tocame
8. Olivier Giacomotto – Together
9. Martijn – Strada 23
10. Flori – SU-3150
11. Moodymanc – Joy (Ralph Lawson Dub)
12. Dave Seaman – Private Education
13. JC Williams – Need No More (NY Stomp Remix)
14. Koelle, Elli – All You Got (Richard Seaborne Dub)
15. Prok & Fitch – One Of These Days
16. P A U L I E – Spread Love (Holmes Price Remix)
17. Climbers Feat. Yasmine Azaiez – Left Your Love (Director’s Cut Signature Mix)
18. Jacob Bech – The Kibosh
19. Pablo Bolivar – Destination Novgorod
20. Softwar – Believe
21. NY’s Finest – I Can’t Wait Till Tonight
22. James Welsh – Horse Fight
23. JimmyTheTwin – Party Down
24. Surrealism – So Much
25. Matthew Collins – Nobody’s Fool (Young Hand Remix)
26. System Of Survial – Iper Island
27. Jesse Rose – Alone
28. Benoit & Sergio – House With 500 Rooms (Dub)
29. Sasse – Flushing Meadows (Mark E Remix)
30. Jens Bond – Two Seconds Of Silence
31. Chamboche – Into The Murk
32. Phil Weeks – Stay Stayin
33. Daniel Steinberg – 1981
34. Dalson – Back Home
35. Joe Morris – Elysium
36. P. Laoss – Play My Music
37. White Wolf Worx – MFED
38. System Of Survial – Shaking Slow
39. B.G. Baarregaard – C.R.A.Z.Y
40. Alkalino – Have A Ball
41. Crazy P – Cruel Mistress (Ron Basejam Remix)
42. The Groovers – Make Me Feel
43. 78 Edits – Don’t You Know
44. Mario Basanov – More For The Less (Pablo Bolivar & Maurice Aymard Remix)
45. Closed Paradise, Tesla Boy, Sasha Anastasov – The Daulphin
46. Martijn – Sestriere
47. The Groovers – Where You BelongB

Jazz Cognoscenti Move To The Incessant Disco Rhythm – Disco Blasphemy 017

Jazz Cognoscenti Move To The Incessant Disco Rhythm [Disco Blasphemy 017]

In an ode to one of my favourite paintings of all time, and inspired by the changing of the seasons, the new Disco Blashpemy is now up!

The original piece done by an unknown Flemish artist sometime around 1620 is an absolute marvel. A series of paintings and art works within one massive painting that visualized an imaginary setting where many of the artist’s favourite paintings lied. It’s currently on display at the ‘National Gallery’ in London.

The tracklist will be posted online shortly. In the mean time, jack in and chillout!

https://soundcloud.com/inhead-kay/jazz-cognoscenti-move-to-the-incessant-disco-rhythm-disco-blasphemy-017

Finsbury Health Centre – An Idealist’s Modernist Dream

There is something quite intriguing about the way modernism seems to fit perfectly with certain building types. Indeed, some architecture movements do tend to find a niche and that’s mostly to do with governments contracting certain practices to do public buildings and then a trend emerges. A good case study would be the USSR where brutalism seemed to be the de-facto go to style for everything governmental. Whether it was city halls or plain old gargantuan mammoth structures to reflect the might of the empire during the cold war, the Russians loved themselves some concrete (much to my amusement and delight). That’s another topic that we’ll go into some other time hopefully.

Warner House

Yesterday I was wandering the beautiful streets of Clerkenwell and Finsbury, an area that has been a playground for modernist architects (alongside all of North London) since the movement emerged. And while the British government of today is very reserved and lacks any sort of ambition (and frankly has no cash), the days of post WWI and WWII Britain were all about grand statements. Governments built entire new cities from scratch in attempt to tackle London’s massive population bubble (Milton Keynes, WGC, High Wycombe etc) – I’ve written extensively about this here. And modernism was the weapon of choice at the time, hence we are now blessed with an abundance (though not merely as enough as I’d like) of mid-century delights dotted throughout London. So as I was walking in search of the recently renovated Warner House (which I eventually found and admired for about 15 minutes as passers by wondered what the hell I was so interested in), I stumbled across one of the most amazing buildings I’ve yet to come cross in this fair city.

Revolutionary architecture – redeveloping a slum (c20 society)

Tucked in a small corner between Pine Street and Vineyard Walk, just as you exit the amazing and as I was about to later find out same architect designed ‘Spa Fields’, you get a peak of the elegant ‘Finsbury Health Centre’. At first I was immediately taken a back by the symmetry of that marble tiled facade with the beautiful grid patterned glass block windows. I’ve never seen this type of front before, not in London, it was quite inspired by the work of Le Corbusier, but not fully. Really, it was it’s own thing. Then I took a step back, and suddenly a new angle emerges, now you can see the beautiful interplay between a central structure and the extension wings on each side, they’re like a hand holding a pearl gently afraid to let go. As the sun shines, the marble and glass tiles reflecting positive energy, I start to contemplate the building’s almost sultry curves. They gently twist and turn as the details of the balcony and the first floor start to emerge. Now you know it’s not quite Le Corbusier! You can just imagine how unbelievably cutting edge this was at the time. I would say it still is as sadly today’s architecture lack any sort of ambition or vision (again, another topic for another day).

I’m so intrigued, I need to find out more. So I start doing some research, and my suspicions are immediately ratified. This was indeed part of a governmental project for the area between WWI and WWII, it was a bid by the socialist Labour run local council of the time to regenerate the entire area through its socialist vision (Finsbury was a slum those days – imagine). Those of you who don’t quite know, this part of London has always been staunchly leftist. Every anti-cuts pro-unionist movement that ever materialized in the city had its roots from the area stretching from the aptly named Red Lion square to Clerkenwell, and from Upper Street down to Bloomsbury. These are the red and proud areas of London (at least they were before the super gentrification of the 90s and 2000s). And through modernism, the vehicle for social change was set.

The architect chosen to take on this massive project was none other than Berthold Lubetkin, the man widely accredited with making modernism mainstream in the United Kingdom. His practice Tecton was a government favorite, designing everything from the now legendary Penguin Pool at the London Zoo, to the amazing Highpoint I tower in Highgate. And through the FHC, Lubetkin was able to mobilize modernism’s social function by providing free health care to all. Furthermore, he achieved another of modernism’s goals, providing upscale dreams (through concrete) to the underprivileged. And this was no charity, thus a political goal was also struck, a government owned and operated universal health care centre. What more can an aspiring modernist architect ask for?

Gentle curvature keeps window tiled symmetry perfect. (Avanti)

It was therefore such a devastating loss to this part of London when WWII started and all of Tecton’s plans for the area were thrown in the bin. Luckily Finsbury Health Centre was well and kicking by that time, and so was the amazing ‘Spa Fields’ next door.

A part of me can’t help but wonder what if WWII didn’t ravage London, would we now have an area that is completely modernist?! Dreams indeed, but one thing is for certain, no architecture movement has quite managed to fulfill its social and political goals like modernism has. Call it elitist and you fail, because although 50s and 60s villas and mansions through America’s west coast are staunchly modernist, European social housing, just as modernist, refutes this. Call it oppressive and fascist and you fail, because just as governmental as it was (a certain Oscar Niemeyer pops to mind), it was also the vehicle for rebellion against governments, just look at Bauhaus. The real question is, how calm the quality of architecture and design has deteriorated so rapidly in the past 4 or 5 decades?

Though the building is indeed Grade I listed, the highest possible protection in the UK, it is suffering on the outside and can indeed use an uplift. In 1995 Avanti finished a partial rework of the interior, but as a recent case study by c20 reveals, in order to preserve the future of this building some pertinent work is needed. Let’s hope that the government or local council manages to set aside some cash for this so that it can continue to serve all its intended functions, socially and aesthetically. One thing lives on though, and that is Lubetkin’s ideal: “nothing is too good for ordinary people”.

The Day I Climbed The Egg – Beirut

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The Egg – c. 1995

Affectionately known as ‘The Egg’ by the locals, this is all what remains from what was once an architecturally ground breaking multi-purpose complex in Beirut, designed by the modernist genius that is Joseph Philippe Karam and built c. 1965 – called ‘Beirut City Center’ at the time.

On a recent trip to Beirut, I made it one of my must do goals to climb up the Egg (legally or illegally – had to be done). And so I did!

The complex was a concatenation of office and residential space, combined with a mall on the 1st three floors that could be reached by escalators from the ground.

The hollow, soap like structure was actually the complex’s multi-purpose performance space, mostly used as a theater and a cinema. It was built around the time when Arab cinema was at its golden age and Beirut was the pioneer of the dream sequence technology. Be it actors, technicians, studios or just good old cinemas, where Beirut went the Arab world followed. As the old saying went: “Shot in Egypt, made famous in Beirut”.

After the civil war broke out, the complex, situated right on the ‘Green Line’ that separated east and west Beirut, suffered extensive but certainly repairable damage. Shortly after the war ended however (in the mid-90s), the Ministry of Finance bought the lease of the land and destroyed the main building with the aim of rebuilding its own ministry premises. The plans were later abandoned but not without leaving ‘The Egg’ as the only remaining structure of a once ground breaking plaza.

Ever since then plenty of plans have come and gone and the structure has been threatened several times. Lebanon’s laws on architectural heritage are lax, and they hardly ever protect modernist and art-deco era 20th century era buildings. The focus tends to be on much older buildings leaving a country with a wealth of modernist structures in danger of losing some of its most important assets.

And so here I am on a hot summer day in June. I make my way up, one broken step at a time. I am not the first person to do this, in fact in the late 90s all the way until quite recently the space was often used as an art gallery, impromptu theater and sometimes as a good old raving spot. But having been sealed off since 2007, I was pleasantly surprised that this time the barriers were removed.

A few short hops and hikes, and a dirty suede shoes later, I made it. The incredible smooth concrete finishing was right there, riddled with bullet holes of various sizes and idiosyncratic graffiti. Those curves in all their beauty, the iron clad pillars holding this alien like structure, all there. This was urban raw Beirut as I’ve come to fall in love with it ever since I was born. The city of dreams, resistance, resistance to resistance and where icons are made and crushed.

My trek up the Egg was magical, sad and wildly invigorating. I learned that man-made structures, through our own perception of our reality as humans, become an almost indispensable intrinsic part of our internal psyche. They are so closely weaved with our identity, our culture and what we come to call our home. That was the day I got close to the structure that I’ve always admired and drove me to obsession as a young kid – just ask my parents who had to constantly deny that it was an alien space ship that had landed in Beirut and no one is allowed in because the government is protecting it.

Public perception of modernism in Lebanon is unfortunately quite mis-guided. The abundance of these buildings from the early 20th century all the way to the mid-80s meant that they have become part of the Lebanese urban landscape and in no way seen as endangered. But they are dwindling and are being eroded by the day to be replaced by soulless blocks of bland stone bricks that have little design quality and are built with little care about their surroundings.

Back in the Egg I stare out of its well crafted big square ad-hoc windows. I’m seeing the massive construction boom that Beirut is currently undergoing as the city becomes a play ground for real estate realtors, developers and mega rich property investors. And then in the middle of all this commotion a lovely derelict church, Mar Mansour, stands there idly and powerfully in the face of a briskly changing landscape. It too is undergoing its own battle for survival. Such is the case in Beirut, a place where only the strongest and fittest (but also the most corrupt) survive and I ponder what this place will look like in a decade from now. Twenty years ago this was a decrepit pit hole of rubble and destruction, now it is one of the most expensive square miles in the world.

Recently some civil society and architecture groups have managed to bring this issue back into the forefront and The Egg in many ways is the symbol of this fight. Lose it and very slowly but surely, we will lose all of Lebanon’s modernist history. Win it and we might, just might, have a chance at preserving the dreams and identities of not only the men who designed and built an era, but the countless people whose lives have become defined by these familiar buildings that have become as Lebanese as Tabouleh.

View from the Egg: Beirut continues its phenomenal growth while some struggle for survival

Blasphemy On the Disco (Bunnies call to action)

Hola fellow horsemen, mermaids and mermasters (cause maids are so 20th century),

For those of you who have the dis-pleasure of knowing me in some form or another know quite well that I do dedicate quite a big chunk of my menial majestic existence to music. I always feel the urge to share all the good vibes I come across (legally ofcourse, FBI I am serious, never ever gave anything for free – virginity included). So culminating this incredible year was Disco Blasphemy 2012, a nice cap on one hell of a blasphemous podcast series that I launched back in July of last year. That followed District Funk which if you’ve been reading this esteemed rantatious blog for a while would know all about.

So without further ado, here comes the best tunes in my sleeves this year. Get your freak on, grab a disco bunny and do blasphemous stuff. Just do it (be safe though).

Tracklist

01- Dexter Wansel – Time Is The Teacher
02- Billy Paul – Let’s Make A Baby
03- Jazzanova – Rendezvous
04- Patrice Rushen – Where There Is Love
05- DJ Jazzy Jeff – The Definition (ft. Kel Spencer)
06- Ryo Murakami – Just for This
07- Skudge – Ontic (Rolando Understands Remix)
08- Moomin – Raw Like 97
09- James Mason – Nightgruv
10- Tiger & Woods – Gin Nation
11- Dusky – Henry 85 (Fcl Weemix)
12- Blawan – Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage
13- youANDme – Mouche (Luke Hess Electric Dub)
14- Mic Newman – Knickerbocker
15- Smallpeople – Move With Your Vision
16- Detroit Swindle – Guess What (Leftside Wobble Remix)
17- Homework – Cmon Start Moving
18- Drew Sky – Razzmatazz
19- Hodges, James & Smith – What Have You Done For Love
20- First Choice – Let No Man Put Asunder (12″ Remix)
21- Leron Carson – Dedicated
22- Rene Bandaly Family – Tanki Tanki
23- Objekt – Porcupine
24- Wil Maddams – My Turn
25- Phors – Fading Away
26- Phors – Shining Star
27- Everything But The Girl – Compression
28- Detroit Swindle – Jick Rames
29- Chasing Kurt – Galaxy Hero (Deep Space Orchestra Remix)
30- Pan/Tone – Stay (Nikki Gibler Remix)
31- Andrés – New For U
32- Joy Orbison – Ellipsis
33- WK7 – Do It Yourself
34- Tony Lionni – Afterhours
35- Green Velvet – Never Satisfied (Studio 54 Re-Re Mix)
36- Bicep, Ejeca – You (Steffi Remix)
37- Azuni – Raw Chord
38- Midland – What We Know (Motor City Drum Ensemble Remix)
39- Groove Armada – Don’t Take Your Love Away
40- Lee Jones – Moment (George Fitzgerald Remix)
41- Deep Future – You Need It (Detroit Swindle’s ‘Never Enough’ Interpretation)
42- Chris James – Kind of Heavy (Andre Crom Remix)
43- Jask – Life
44- Rahbani Brothers – La Tehtab Alayeh
45- Ziad Rahbani – Abu Ali
46- Erol Evgin – Sevdan Olmazsa

And finally, here is a cool widget with all the Disco Blasphemy sets so far:

Case Study – Sex Panther: 60% Of the Time, It Works All The Time?!

Folks, I’ve been baffled by this conundrum posited by the great San Diego’s KVWN-TV Channel 4 Evening News’s field reporter Brian Fantana in the bible of a movie that is ‘Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy’ around 3/4 of a decade ago and I’ve decided it’s about time we address this highly politically charged revolution-inducing issue once and for all.

Let us firstly look at the direct excerpt from the movie:

Brian Fantana: [about Veronica] I’ll give this little cookie an hour before we’re doing the no-pants dance. Time to musk up.
[opens cologne cabinet]
Ron Burgundy: Wow. Never ceases to amaze me. What cologne you gonna go with? London Gentleman, or wait. No, no, no. Hold on. Blackbeard’s Delight.
Brian Fantana: No, she gets a special cologne… It’s called Sex Panther by Odeon. It’s illegal in nine countries… Yep, it’s made with bits of real panther, so you know it’s good.
Ron Burgundy: It’s quite pungent.
Brian Fantana: Oh yeah.
Ron Burgundy: It’s a formidable scent… It stings the nostrils. In a good way.
Brian Fantana: Yep.
Ron Burgundy: Brian, I’m gonna be honest with you, that smells like pure gasoline.
Brian Fantana: They’ve done studies, you know. 60% of the time it works, every time. 
[cheesy grin]
Ron Burgundy: That doesn’t make sense.
Brian Fantana: Well… Let’s go see if we can make this little kitty purr.
[snarls]

Analysis:

The logic behind this statement is the following:

Wise yet baffling advertising, has Sex Panther fooled us?!

In a pool of randomly chosen women, a man who has musked up with Sex Panther (a cologne illegal in 9 countries and made with bits of real panther, so we know it’s good) will guarantee that from that pool at least 60% will be 100% attracted to the musked man.

However, on a second glance, this cannot be the full premise, as Ron Burgundy himself notes “that doesn’t make any sense”. This means that another deeper re-evaluation of the statement needs to be conducted!

Deeper Re-evaluation that NEEDS to be conducted:

Could this camel have musked up with Sex Panther? We may never know!

For starters, let’s look at the second part of the statement ‘it works every time’. This implies a definitive result, 100% of the time, so there is no room for failure and any man on sex panther will get action regardless of the 60%. So why the need to mention the 60% in their advertising. Are Sex Panther hiding something here? How could they have gotten away with it? And if so, what could it be? Also, did I forget to wear my pants this morning?

In theory, Sex Panther have not disclosed how their testing was done, one wouldn’t be sent to bedlam if they proclaimed that it is at least a slight possibility that Sex Panther might have included non-humans in that study. Taking that into account, could Brian Fantana actually be saying that 60% of the time, a living thing on Sex Panther will get females of ANY other living species 100% of the time?

Brian Fantana’s cologne cabinet, never seizes to impress Ron Burgundy.

In reality it actually makes perfect sense, because what Brian Fantana is actually hinting at is that 60% of ALL time (till infinity and beyond), it will work 100% of ALL the time. And as you know from your mathematics class:

where x is all time.

Therefore, one must come to the conclusion that as time approaches infinity, you will continue to have a 100% chance of attracting 60% of all living things of all time, which practically means everything you know, statistically.

Conclusion

Blackbeard’s Delight … a safer alternative.

Sex Panther is therefore a very dangerous potentially fatal tool, pungent enough to smell like Indian food in a used diaper but also musky enough to make the females of an unknown number of species (even potentially including humans) fall at your knees with deadly desire. It is therefore highly un-recommended and most probably kill you (don’t want to be eaten by a female Lioness). My advice would be to stick to lamer but safer alternatives such as London Gentleman or Blackbeard’s Delight and you could (further studies might need to be conducted here) be fine.

The West London Tube Station Conundrum

Turnham Green Church on one cold and creepy foggy January evening.

Greetings humanoids!

One of the things that has intrigued me for quite a while is this strange supernatural phenomenon that seems to have befallen West London decades ago but no one seems to care / give a ‘flying lizard humping a crab in the air’ about. Allow me to elaborate…

I have been inhabiting this part of Londinium for long enough now to know what airline is hovering above my head purely based on the time of the day and sound of the engine (and I pseudo-support a 3rd Heathrow runway). And this breadth of experience as a West Londoner, as handy as it is in day to day life, means that I do indeed spend most the time in the shower thinking of this particular conundrum.

Keep this map as a reference, you’ll need it as I ramble along (click on each place-mark for more info).

Let us start from the beginning and introduce several lemmas directly correlating to the map above.

Lemma 1: Turnham Green station was named after Tunham Green the park
Lemma 2: Chiswick Park station was named after Chiswick Common
Lemma 3: Chiswick Park the business park (a dystopian Orwellian-esque village like place), was name after Chiswick Park station
Lemma 4: Gunnersbury station was named after Gunnersbury Park

Now according to a Freedom of information request by some awesome individual back in 2008, Tfl responded with this extremely informative spreadsheet outlining the distance between every two outstanding stations on all ‘London Underground’ lines. Couple that with my out of this orbit spreadsheet data skills, I was able to calculate the average distance between any two stations on the same line, and it turned out to be 1.31km (0.81 miles).

District Line – West London

If we were to follow the natural sequence of stations on the two branches of the district lines (picture above), it would go like this:

Ealing Broadway branch (westbound w/ distance):

TURNHAM GREEN	CHISWICK PARK	0.95
CHISWICK PARK	ACTON TOWN	1.22
ACTON TOWN	EALING COMMON	1.03
EALING COMMON	EALING BROADWAY	1.50

Richmond Branch (westbound w/ distance):

TURNHAM GREEN	GUNNERSBURY	1.59
GUNNERSBURY	KEW GARDENS	1.71
KEW GARDENS	RICHMOND	2.14

Taking into consideration the average distance mentioned above it would seem that the distance between Turnham Green and Chiswick Park is indeed rather strange, could it be that Chiswick Park was never meant to be there? Was it a fluke?

The station was opened in July 1879 whereas Turnham Green station came 10 years before that in 1869!

Confused? So am I. Let’s solve this b*tch:

It turns out that it was not ‘Turnham Green’ that is at fault for causing all this solid and extremely life changing confusion. It was actually ‘Chiswick Park’, which in it’s early days was actually named ‘Acton Green’, in reference to the adjacent park. Taking into consideration that Turnham Green was the only station serving the area 10 years earlier, it just made a whole lot of sense that it was named after what then was the closest church and park (because people have like little imagination sometimes).

Gunnersbury Manor

This brings us to our final piece of the puzzle, Gunnersbury. This was quite strange, because for quite a while it was evident to everyone living on the west side of Chiswick that Gunnersbury was really the park and the park took it’s name after the manor (later turned museum) on the site. So how can a park, roughly a mile away, closer to Acton Town and Kew Bridge give its name to Gunnersbury? The answer is we just don’t know, but what is now known is that the station actually opened as ‘Brentford Road station’, in a clear reference to what is now Chiswick High Street which on a straight path will probably take you straight to Brentford (or Sao Paolo, if you make it to Heathrow and sneak on a plane).

So there you go my minions, hours spent in the shower, flying my own rocket and even cleaning my own dishes pondering over this conundrum have finally yielded a result. Eureka!

Edit (February 2016): I have now moved away from West London to somewhere else (no longer sharing due to fear of Tim Cook giving my location data away). As such I am no longer an expert on all things West London and would not recommend you take the analysis above as conclusive. In 4 years, Chiswick has probably changed (right?) and so everything above makes no sense. Whatever.

Album in History: Shakatak – Night Birds

'Night Birds' - Sounds ahead of their time (from space?)

In the long, diverse and sometimes even seemingly pedantic world of Jazz history there have been certain artists that have gone on to be so instrumental in expanding and diversifying the genre that they have created sub-genres solely revolving around their sounds. And while obvious names like Herbie Hancock, George Duke, Frank Zappa and Bob James immediately spring to mind, other relatively low-key performers like Shakatak have been just as influential. It is that very notion which makes defining Shakatak’s sound such a difficult task, not that I believe in “defining” and “labelling” sounds anyways!

After the racially fuelled disco-demotion nights, which exposed deep social problems that characterized much of the late 70s / early 80s period in mainstream America, a sound which fused the four on the floor electronic time signatures with elements of jazz, funk and disco was born, we now refer to it as post-Disco! At the time it was just a natural reaction to a movement characterized by its rejection to the notion that cultural America was changing, and that racism and homophobia were on the decline! Counterculture was taking over the American youth, culminating in anti-globalization collectives which had already established itself in the 60s largely as a youth movement sprawling from the disenfranchised social fabric destroyed initially by Nixon and later the Raegen years, or as brother Gil Scott-Heron called him, Rae-gun!

Musically, this was perfect fertile grounds to develop Disco, which hate-riddled demolition nights aside, wasn’t really developing all that much as it was. That’s not to say that several offshoot genres hadn’t already taken a life of their own by then. Giorgio Moroder had already developed his own brand of Hi-NRG Disco (exemplified in his collaborations with Donna Summers), and kids in Detroit and Chicago were listening to Kraftwerk and already discovered that 808s and 303s are more than just pretty Japanese machines that make robot sounds. What the disco demolition nights did however, was exponentially speed up that process, and in a matter of years dance music witnessed arguably its greatest evolution to date.

In England, that change was profoundly felt, and while in the later years of the 80s it was manifested in the meteoric rise of Synthpop, especially in northern parts, Jazz-Funk was the genre of the moment in the early to mid-years of the decade. ‘Night Birds’ in many ways exemplified that era, yet somehow came at a time when Jazz-Funk was both quite unknown to the wider public and largely rejected from Jazz’s inner-circle. Smooth Jazz pioneer Bob James faced similar objections from the Jazz community when One, Two, Three and BJ4 were released, even though he never claimed them to be Jazz in the first place!

‘Night Birds’ as an album achieved limited commercial success initially despite it’s quite obvious pop connection (and one hell of an awesome cover art work!). But this was never about sales, what makes this album so special is the ineffably rich compositions and instrumental innovativeness spearheaded by the band’s pianist Bill Sharpe. George Anderson on the other hand provided that killer brass so evident in Streetwalkin’. A spectacularly well harmonized eclectic album with just the right amount vocal hooks covers everything from early day Bossa jazz to swanky jazz-funk, which it largely put on the map!

Shakatak – Streetwalkin’ – Kay’s ‘One Very Cold Yet Funky Morning’ Edit

Fiat: We are all fine with Sexual assault now!

Fiat: Mamma mia!!

Folks, I don’t know about you, but last I checked (which was last evening), we were not all fine with the idea of hoards of horny young men chasing women in their cars and physically removing them from the vehicle like a prey (and breaking into dance). Sounds grotesque? Tell that to Fiat, whose new commercial sees ‘Jenny from the block’ driving around in a Fiat 500 while being chased by hundreds of men, the ad then takes an interesting twist when she gets pulled out of the car, and breaks into dance?! I’m sorry my Italian friends, but in real life that could have very well taken a turn for the worse (Lara Logan anyone?), just sayin…

Maybe that’s just Jenny’s new idea of getting over her divorce, maybe it’s just her midlife crisis, maybe I left the oven on in the kitchen yesterday and it could even be that Zombies are real. In any case, here it is: