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Safe!

_web 2.oh my_

Second Life has, unintentionally but inavoidably, taken over my thoughts in the last couple of months – I see avatars and chat-bars, even though the summer has just begun, and I should probably be frollicking around a May Pole or something. It’s like an inescapable place you’re only allowed to leave when you stop thinking about it for too long, which doesn’t happen that frequently, but probably might have to at least for a bit, soon. SL, forums, blogs, messaging, emailing. We’ve never been so interconnected! It’s Web 2.0, it’s 3.0. It really looks like it has to reach breaking point soon. But why should it?

I took the job on the Second Life newspaper. I thought it would be a good idea, despite its brash and in-your-face tabloid style, the lack of any real substance, or genuine wit. Despite too, that I thought, as much as anyone, that virtual worlds were for the more bizarre members of our race. Nerds, if you will. And I feel like a real fool now. Maybe there are alot of bizarre folk there. A lot of pretenders, fakes, scammers, sociopaths, over inflated egos and probably paedophiles too. But that isn’t the point. They’re all learning.

I’m a convert, now. It takes a month or two full time. Eight hours a day, nine to five , on Pacific Standard time – Sl Time, in my case. I’ve seen what the hell is going in. A bit – like in any small community, to be fair, but not that much. There aren’t seven million people ‘in’ SL. There are usually 20-30,ooo, if the grid isn’t playing up, interferring. But it’s growing pretty fast. And the brands are coming too; Adidas, and Sky News, and Vodafone, and dozens more global giants, all cramming in (or not exactly, in a world where you could build your own plot too), and doing not much.

There’s hype, but if you go to the Vodafone or Channel 4 sim, you will see they’re virtual graveyards, already; they’re offering basically nothing new, most of them. A company like IBM, not to mention hundreds of SL start-ups, use it for meetings and R&D. This is bright. But if someone opened up a big empty air hangar with a logo on it in my town, and said you can ‘come have a look’ I might not waste my time. ‘We’re crossing boundaries they say’. They aren’t – it’s too late to be the first now. The reason usually given by firms is that they need to be where their customers are, and this is crucial. They might not be making any money now, but they are learning how they will need to make money in the future. In no time at all, we will be that one step closer to the ‘singularity’ as some in cyberspace like to call it – it’s not science fiction, it’s science very bloody likely.

Any individual, or worse, any marketing manager, who thought a company could go without a website when the 2D internet exploded in 1994 was better off denying they ever said it. It would be defy common sense to not think that SL’s decendent worlds will become the social, economic, and perhaps, bizzarely more than worryingly, spiritual hub of the lives of individuals, companies, charities, church or terror groups, in much greater numbers, and in not too great a time.

Riots at the G8 – No Surprises There

Writing this from Berlin, it’s hard not to be surrounded by news and coverage from the G8 conference taking place in the north of this semi-willing host of a country.

 Leaders of the wealthy world are meeting, discussing, in no uncertain terms, how to run the world. How to maintain their far from democratic grip on poorer nations, and whether this status-quo needs to be maintained. Undoubtedly, some are getting hotter under the collar than others. Despite the public facade, Blair will be annoyed that Bush is a non-budger on certain issues – even if he makes occasional grand claims on global warming.

The problem with this meeting, though, is that these self-proclaimed leaders of the free world are holding their meeting far, far from the thousands of diverse protestors who are opposed – not unfairly – to their way of doing things. Freedom of speech is, without a doubt, being supressed, as protestors are forced to gather behind a giant security fence located kilometres from the conference area. This is not acceptable. Each and every time the media condemns ‘stone throwers’ or ‘anarchists’ they refuse to accept that it is plain wrong that it’s been made illegal to protest the actions of this unelected quasi world government.

 The protestors have a right to protest the gathering, and at the same location. 911 did not change the world that much. If they cannot get to the location, then what can the authorities expect? They can expect rocks to rain down on the police deployed, and they can not be suprised by it.

Without a Poppy

You wouldn’s have to be an acute observer of the press in this country, the UK, to have noticed the level of debate that has raged on the issue of Muslim women’s dress over the past few months. Yet perhaps the wider issue being debated is the right to express opinion on subjects set to offend certain groups, this in a society where freedom of speech is so highly regarded.

Interesting then, the almost religious sanctity that surrounds the wearing of the poppy each Remembrance Day – a day to remember the people that fought for that very right to freedom, so we are told. Many British men were sent to terrible deaths in the first half of the twentieth century, but the horror of war transcends national identity. It was disappointing then, that an E-mailer to Radio Four’s Today show this week joined in the berating of a Christian speaker promoting the wearing of white poppies, something the host was having a fine job doing, as the guest attempted to promote this colour poppy as a symbol of pacifism (in place of the traditional red poppy) to remember the deaths of all sides in the aforementioned wars. ‘We may as well just wear swastikas and hammers and sickles’, the listener complained.

But as sad as it is to hear such voices of anger, the other point of note is the almost hushed arrangement surrounding debate on the issue of wearing the poppy itself. Detractors caught without the flower of honour may as well be dragged to the gulag. Seeing spokespeople from African nations discussing totally different issues on British news shows wearing the poppy means we have it all wrong. Why must these people feel they have to somehow go out of there way to say ‘yeah, as bad as the slaughter in my country is, you guys had it pretty bad in Flanders.’ The patriotism surrounding Remembrance Day will probably wane over the next ten or twenty years, and rightly so. If we really want to remember the horror of war, we must focus on stopping it happening again, not confusing the issue of innocent men, be they from Nottingham, Stuttgart or the Congo dying in war, with that of patriotism. Wearing a poppy goes someway to honouring those who have died. Yet shooting down those who don’t, as well as those that question the colour of the paper used, does not.

Bands, Dogs, Drugs and Rampant Nationalism

A review of the Sydney Big Day Out 2006, orignally on www.inthemix.com.au

We were somewhere in the middle of Olympic Park station when we spotted the dogs. Damn dogs, damn radio stations and newspapers scaring the crap out of people. Damn beefcake arms of the state standing round with otherwise safe-as-houses Labradors, nabbing liveforthemoment kids wanting nothing more than a laugh. But a laugh aint what she got, more a face white like a sheet, when pooch’s game got a little more fun on finding his treat, and her Big Day Out got a little less fun in just as little a moment. But we soldiers breached the first level of the gauntlet, no sweat bro, only to find security guards stocking up supplies for their big night out later on. Said dudes were also no match, and we was inside. Now stadia might not be the best place for music, but that’s where you fit thousands of punters, and Olympic Park shed it’s ghost town image for a day of music, debauchery, rampant over charging, sun, showers, unbridled patriotic fervour, and a few laughs too.

 

The line up for the 2006 Big Day Out was by no means the greatest ever. Classic headline Iggy Pop was there, while big namers like the ever-trendy Franz Ferdinand and the White Stripes stood out for many, but not all. For fans of electronica, at least of the live sort, (perhaps ironically better served in previous years), you may have been pretty well served if breaks was your interest, but other genres were left wanting. But hey, it was Australia Day, and what’s more Australian than fuck off loud guitar riffs? Hip hop, meanwhile, was not too badly attended to at all. One of the highlights had to be The Herd, coming on to one of the smaller stages with cheers of respect for the country’s indigenous inhabitants, with cheers from some, and repressed facial expressions of contempt from other tools draped in the ‘nation’s’ flag. The Herd, for the record, were as tight as they usually were, but the sound ate arse. Figuratively speaking, sure, but a big hairy one. But hey, stadia. They bigged up the Hilltop Hoods who had surprisingly been billed on the main stage, not long after so-called Erskineville kings Wolfmother had got down and dirty to the first monster crowd of the day, 55,000 according to some (arguably highly dubious) reports. They might sound a bit been-there-done-that for puritanical types, and the SMS message reading ‘ACDC played a good set’ on the giant screen was worth a laugh, but man, they rocked. Predictably; Great vocals and big balled Aussie rock, and the kids was moshing down at the front. The famed ‘D’ safety mechanism was also in effect, installed to prevent another death marring the event as in years gone by. But the funniest thing this drunken reveler notice from the windows of the atmosphere-free VIP area was this system breaking right down. Noise makers Mudvayne were just coming on as a black T shirt clad mob pushed ever harder to get past the gate, and the crush hadn’t been prevented, only moved. Eventually it burst, the guards were forced to open the gate, and kids flooded in, while others ran round the side and jumped the fence, the several employees on hand standing by. But what could they do? Sweet F.A., it would appear. One guard attempted to confront a fence-jumper, but fisticups briefly and amusingly ensued.

 

But I was outta there man, me mate wanted to catch Go Team, who were alright, y’know, but not as funny as Henry Rollins on right after. He acknowledged that when he gets up there with his hellfire brand of left wing quasi-comedy rants, he gets a few blank faces, but we almost proper shat our little selves when some shaved ape took offence to his jibes at not only the concept of a national day, but also Howard’s lapdog antics. Another plonker caped in the bloody flag screamed ‘fuck off’, I returned the favour, becoming a little too close to being over-embroiled, and he left. Rollins got a few good laughs from the crowd, but for the most part, it was preaching to the converted, and we scooted off. Fuck knows what the hell happened after that, but there was one dirty great highlight left, maybe a little later on, perhaps, but you know how it is.

 

And that highlight was Mars Volta. I had not tickets for the Friday gig at the Enmore, and if I was catching one band, ‘twas them. It was a pity they clashed with Common, sure, and the White Stripes too (is there any harm on putting some big names on earlier?), but I could live without Iggy Pop, despite my mate’s proposal of tackling him, licking his forearm, and getting high, which he did, allegedley. And ‘femcee’ Jean Grae had pulled out weeks before, so we were set. And, hey,  they made some nice fucking noise. Soaring vocals intermittently interrupted a great big wall of sound, a veritable one and a half hour jam session, with the two dudes back up by hella percussion, sax, flute, and Vishnu knows what else. Psychedelic rock lives on, and a couple of us stood there entranced for ninety Minutes. Well, my mate happened to be lying on his back surrounded by big-arse tree people when I checked, but I digress. And then, if I’m not mistaken, we took a quick sprint to see Jack White and some chick on drums, but they were done. Next thing I know we’re in the stands with some friends considerably more shitfaced than the last time I checked in, and all the lights were on. Dirty! ‘To the pub!’, we cried, and continued where we left off, the concept of a four day weekend gaining popularity as the chicken coup train ride ferried all and sundry back to town. There may well have been another flag based altercation, or a couple, but shit’s gotta be said. Australia Day is a day off work, hence the name of the festival. Stick yer nationalism up yer arse, let the music do the talking.

SPANKROCK

Originally published in the Brag magazine (www.myspace.com/thebrag)

‘He’s off doing the rock and roll thing’, laughs the Big Dada employee. ‘He’s disappeared with some girl’. Considering that ancient adage of ‘keeping it real’, it’s actually a relief to know that MC Naeem does indeed talk the talk. Because for all the hype of the post-revolutionary sound the tech-ridden beats of Spankrock’s new album YoYoYoYoYoYo are drenched in, Naeem’s rhymes are that tried and tested old skool formula – one part sex with two parts filth. If the man’s saying ‘put, put, put, put that pussy on me’, then chasing skirt is, I concede, a more than satisfactory reason for him not to be anywhere within earshot of the phone for the scheduled time of our interview. But life on tour is to be soaked up, and for these three Baltimore dudes, the temptations of a European road trip are taking their toll, as producer XXXchange and the amiable and talkative DJ Chris Rockwell explain. ‘Yeah man, we got big hangovers, we got up to some bullshit last night’ says XXXchange when I enquire as to Naeem’s whereabouts. ‘We just did an interview with radio, but Naeem needs like a LoJack, you know, one of them fuckin’ things you put on turtles, like a GPS.’ It’s sure different to Maryland, admits Chris, where the bars stop serving drinks at 1.30 and hurl the patrons out at 2. By all accounts they’d ‘been hanging for along time’ for this tour, and so they’re making the most of it.

‘Alex (XXXchange) was into jazz and drums, and was getting into down tempo and trip hop and post-punk stuff’, explains Chris when I enquire as to how it all got started. After XXXchange hooked up with budding Baltimore MC Naeem Juwan, who’d previously been rubbing shoulders with Shaun J Period and Rawkus Records artists, the formerly seminal indie hip hop label from NYC, they teamed up with Rockwell to giver their live performances that extra edge. ‘Basically’, sums up Chris, ‘We were all just wanting to go out and have a good time’- and fuck, it comes through in the music. For these US b-boys being in Europe makes a lot more sense than it might. Signed to Ninja Tune offshoot Big Dada, they possess a sound more at home in that continent’s more diverse modern musical landscape than their native US. ‘Yeah I listen to a lot of European music’ says XXXchange when prompted. Although the early nineties sounds of US booty-bass and ghetto-tech styles are more than evident in the tracks that have journalists from the Guardian to NME, and from the SMH to respected rap-rag Hip Hop Connection jizzing their loads with joy, XXXchange cites producers from a wide range of spectrums as influential to his wigged out soundscapes. ‘Yeah, you got some people in the states doing stuff like that, but I listen to a lot of stuff by the guys from Modeselektor (techno), Maurice Fulton (electro) and different sorts of European stuff.’ But when I ask if its exciting to be on Big Dada, home of Roots Manuva and New Flesh amongst others, he laughs that he’s far more excited by UK garage rude-bwoys and So-Solid aficionados Roll Deep than his dubbed out label-mates.

The unwillingness to fit into a box, or rather the subconscious desire not to, have had varying effects on hip hop crowds worldwide. ‘For our first show in New York’ Chris laughs, ‘we had all of our drummers and dancers on stage, we we’re like rocking out in the booth, with Naeem jumping all over the tables, and then people were like asking Alex (XXXchange) to move because they wanted to drink!’ Certainly not what you want when performing, but New York is New York, and Amsterdam proved a different experience- ‘We opened up for KRS One (the ‘Blayst-Master’ he chortles in an amusingly mocking Dutch accent) and people definitely didn’t know what to expect, but after a bout five songs they started to kick it off.’

When we chat they’re in the London offices of Big Dada, only a few hours off from playing ‘super-club’ Fabric, where they’re to hit the stage following the UK DMC finals, but what with the previous night’s hangover still weighing heavy they’re perhaps understandably less than hyped. Whatever the receptions they’ve had, reputation should mean there is ample enthusiasm to welcome them to an open-minded Sydney for their Basement gig, accompanied by Spaserock, on June 18. Rocking out with Chris on the decks and a sampler, with another effects box and Logic running on a laptop to the side, Spankrock live sounds like an impressive far from sit-down affair. ‘Yeah we heard a lot about Sydney, some good friends of mine just moved from there to New York. They’re a punk band called Deathset. We’d really like to tour with them’. How that might turn out is anyone’s guess. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any messier.

East Timor and Australian inter-vention-ference

A Case For Australian Intervention?

www.vibewire.net.au

In a week where the issue of abuse and lawlessness in some aboriginal communities consumed large parts of the media, the only issue to pip it at the post was the comparable level of lawlessness taking over the streets of East Timor, which led to Australia’s subsequent intervention. Many observers, including former Australian Of The Year Galarrwuy Yunupingu, questioned the effort and costs involved in intervening in the law and order issue of a foreign country, while those of a community in the Top End went untouched. Yunupingu suggested the driving factor of this intervention was cultural arrogance on behalf of a conservative Anglo government, and even went as far as calling the deployment of troops to East Timor a ‘waste of money’. There are some on the Australian left in agreement with Yunupingu, and they have a right to be suspicious when it comes to intervention in the affairs of sovereign nations.

Since the events of 911, the Howard government has eagerly sought opportunities to project Australian power and influence. Howard and his cabinet were quick to support the Bush administration in their oil wars, not least because he reveled in playing the loyal ally to a man with whom he remains ideologically so in tune with. Of course, Bin Laden has not yet been found in Afghanistan, or indeed anywhere else, and the reasons expressed for going to war in Iraq shift as frequently as the Babylon sands, if we put our fingers in our ears and pretend that oil was never the driving factor.

So do we give credit to the Howard government for intervening in the Solomon Islands and East Timor this year? Perhaps, although the issue is clouded when it comes to measuring Australia’s treatment of Timor Leste in recent history. Australia stood by when Indonesia invaded East Timor only days after the former colonial power Portugal pulled out in 1975. Following the US’s lead, nothing was done to prevent President Suharto’s rampage, all in the name of supporting an anti-communist ally – a valuable asset for the West in the South East Asia of the time.

Australia led the UN force following independence in 1999, but once again, one could be forgiven for being suspicious of the motives for further (albeit UN-approved) intervention following the Howard government’s abominable behaviour over East Timor’s rights to the Greater Sunrise oil and gas fields. Indeed, for all the talk of Australia playing a regional policeman in order to bring peace and stability to its neighbours, policemen can of course be corrupt bullies as well. From independence until the turn of this year, Australia steadfastly refused to recognise East Timor’s right to reap the rewards from the Greater Sunrise fields. For a country with the lowest per capita GDP in the world, these vast fields, if properly exploited, would represent real change for the people of this tiny nation. However, although international law stipulates that the fields lie within East Timor’s waters, as they are situated on East Timor’s side of the 400 nautical miles that separate the two countries, Australia has, much like on the issue of the Kyoto Protocol and to a lesser extent the Iraq War, taking the pariah’s role, and attempted to claim sovereignty over the fields by virtue of the fact they are located upon Australia’s vast continental shelf. Pulling out of the maritime division of the International Court of Justice, the Howard government, not for the first time, found itself in the moral bad books of many. After fighting the impoverished young country for 80 per cent of the revenue from the fields, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer finally agreed to a compromise, whereby profits from the project would be spilt fifty-fifty, and the dispute over maritime boundaries postponed for another 50 years. For all the current claims of altruism in dealing with East Timor, there was no pretending at the time of the oil grab. In his dispute with East Timorese Foreign minister Jose Ramos Horta, Downer said ‘ I always make the point as the Australian Foreign Minister (that) I vigorously stand up for Australia. I’m a very, very proud Australian. And it’s not my job to stand up for other countries.’

If these are the foreign minister’s words, then we must assume Australia is currently acting in its own interest-yet it seems as if many would argue that the desires and needs of the two countries cannot be congruent. When asked by a typically poorly-informed John Laws why Australia needed to send troops to deal with the situation in the Solomon Islands, John Howard stated that it wasn’t in Australia’s interest to have ‘failed states’ on its doorstep. That is, that without intervention from another country, parliamentary democracy in the Solomons may crumble. Of course, despite the truth behind the now-aged call that ‘the world changed on September 11’ the chances of the Solomons or East Timor becoming bases for Islamic terror remain far-fetched. The failure of law and order in either leaves behind the small chance either could become a base for narcotic or people smuggling, but essentially, it is an expression of regional might. There is the chance that were the government in East Timor to fail, its replacement may not be so favourable to the oil and gas deal many international observers have deemed grossly unfair, perhaps re-challenging Australia.

Hobbesian theory suggests that states only ever act in their own interest, but in the case of sending troops, despite the fact Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta seemed at first to suggest he had not been asked by Downer if intervention was required, the fact that many on either side of the conflict in East Timor favour assistance on the tricky road to ‘nation building’ (to use the language of the Bush administration), makes it hard to claim Australia is acting purely in its own interest. Yet the fact remains that this government revels in playing the regional hegemon – it’s certainly no simplification to imagine Howard in the role of Robin to Bush’s Batman. The biggest problem is for those who rightly questioned Australia’s role in the US’s oil wars, in that they must decide which side of the fence they now stand on. We surely cannot blindly criticise Australia for sending troops overseas at every opportunity. Most in parliament favour such ‘humanitarian’ intervention, but there are still many, like Yunupingu, that baulk at the suggestion Australia should be performing the role of a regional hegemon, suspicious at numerous misled or devious troop deployments. But maybe the interests of two very different neighbours can be congruent after all, at least in the short term.

Bill Code, 31.5.06

Keep Our Troops There, Now!

(This was written for www.vibewire.net.au in September 2005. As such, my views may have altered as the insurgency gathers popular support in the face of the occupying forces’ inability to offer security and basic living standards. In other words, CUT AND RUN CUT AND RUN OH JESUS CUT AND RUN, RUN FOR THE HILLS, RUN FOR STARBUCKS, JUST RUN RUN RUN. Just kidding.)

Early 2003, and millions of people the world over found themselves marching in the streets, many of them for the first time in their lives, united in their rage at a war the United Nations would not endorse. History has taught us what we already knew: No weapons of mass destructions. Of course, there was lots of oil, and lots of contracts for Halliburton, but no WMD.

Yet as much momentary satisfaction as the phrase ‘I told you so’ can provide, it can’t turn back time. I, like many others, was just as disgusted with governments prepared to follow the neo-conservative line, and send troops, not to mention their tax payer’s money, to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Any political commentators worth their weight in salt predicted the quagmire that would remain for the US and it’s at best lap-dog, at worst stupid allies, bogged down trying to force democracy upon a land that had never had it.

The event, as it happens, is proving just as difficult as the most pessimistic suggested it would. Foreign fighters/terrorists/jihadists flood in across Iraq’s porous borders, and the carnage continues. The ‘collateral damage’ inflicted by the invading armies has been surpassed in terms of pure numbers by murderous thugs intent on sewing the seeds of religious hatred; not merely against the infidels, but between the different sects within Iraq. Despite the protestations of US officials, civil war looks decidedly more likely than successful elections. Even the Saudi’s are expressing their worry that the Iranians, the Turks and whoever else may yet be dragged into a wider regional conflict.

But strangely, many of the people who called for restraint in the use of military action, in favour of peace, now call for the troops to be withdrawn, with one outcome; no peace. It may at first seem the logical continuation; to at first oppose war and then continue to oppose foreign occupation, but the only reasonable option is to keep foreign troops there until some semblance of semi-functioning state remains. UN troops may be more desirable for all parties, but at the moment, it’s not happening. Many argue that it’s the very presence of foreign troops(re; non-Muslim, as many jihadists within Iraq are not Iraqi citizens) within Iraq that leads to the continued mayhem. Yet it’s unlikely that the mayhem that would be left behind after a hasty withdrawal would look any better for those Iraqis that simply want to live in peace. The choice, at the moment, remains choosing the lesser of two evils. And the puppet government installed, the same one entirely reliant on the alleged supremacy of US military might for its mandate to rule, remains the one with the best intentions, regardless of its shortcomings and lack of ability, for the moment, to answer back to its master.

“Regardless of what the international community thinks on whether it was right or wrong to overthrow Saddam (Hussein), we can’t turn our backs on the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi population who want to see freedom, democracy and prosperity”.

Unlike Blair, who now seeks the removal of British troops early next year, Downer has spelled it out correctly. Unlike Howard, George Bush’s presidency may yet be ended by the ‘new Vietnam.’ But unfortunately the voters that may decide his fate will do so for the wrong reasons. They will do so because US soldiers are dying, not because Iraqis are. It is harsh, but the mothers that go on TV denouncing the war in Iraq should have spent this energy convincing their sons, or daughters, not to join the sanctioned killing team to start with. Similarly, point scoring populist politicians in all ‘allied’ countries have no right whatsoever to call for troop withdrawal if they themselves lacked the courage to speak against it when it mattered most.

I don’t know if I’ve ever agreed with Alexander Downer, and whether I will in the future, but he is right when he says that ‘we’ (the liberal government that committed the crime of invasion, not the populace) can’t turn our back on the people of Iraq. Of course, the government would love to withdraw, as would many Republicans, but that would be a political faux-pas on the grandest scale.

To conclude, those that call for the withdrawal of foreign troop with no credible alternative, and no suggestion of how to create a functioning state or three, show no compassion for the people of Iraq. More people will die, and those that called for the troops to be removed will have blood on their hands. Not as much as Cheney, Wolfowitz or Rumsfeld, but they will be semi-responsible for the mushrooming mess that needs fixing, not desertion, at the point when it most requires assistance.

God damn it’s a DJ SHADOW interview

It just so happens I’m drenched to the bone as I sit down with a relaxed Josh Davis in the club lounge of the Intercontinental Hotel. Our gazes wonder away from the well-dressed breakfasters, across the spectacular harbour, through the rain towards the Tasman Sea. I’m here with a man who has probably done as much for popular music as anyone else in the last ten years, a producer who, on the previous night, played to a packed Hordern Pavilion with an audiovisual display that left most of the crowd astounded. Nine mega-screens broadcast a plethora of eye-candy to thousands of eager fans, from hip hop heads to goths, many of whom spoke of this master of sample-driven atmospheric music in an almost god-like manner. Funny; I’d planned to ask him if he felt he was perhaps overrated. If, despite the status of the universally-acclaimed Endtroducing (‘First album to make the Guinness Book of Records for containing nothing but samples’ etc), the hype placed on ‘DJs’ in our day and age, himself included, is somewhat unwarranted. Yet after seeing an intrinsically detailed, impeccably well planned, and downright fucking fantastic show the night before, I decided, probably rightly so, that it might appear churlish.

‘The thing that’s hard is that I’ve done quite a few tours, and particularly as I’m working with songs from Endtroducing right now it’s hard to come up with better ways than you’ve done before’, he explains as a bowl of bran flakes is swiftly ushered towards the table. ‘So in the case of some parts of the set like what I did with ‘Organ Donor’, I was like “fuck it, I’m just gonna do what I did last time, ‘cos there’s nothing that could work as good as that” – that’s always the highlight. I try my best- the encore took like a week and a half to put together, just trying to figure out good ways of doing it’. And a great encore it was, like much of the show, welding together huge chunks of music from Endtroducing, The Private Press, music from Shadow’s Unkle projects with James Lavelle, and tantalisingly, sneak previews of his latest work The Outsider.

For despite having Mos Def in the support slot, you could be forgiven for letting it slip your mind that DJ Shadow is in fact a hip hop artist, so thorough is his genre-transcending. It was Shadow, along with buddies Latyrx and Blackalicious’s Gift of Gab, that set up Solesides, now Quannum Projects, the constantly expanding Bay Area label. And the Outsider, unlike earlier albums, has rappers on it. Crazy. ‘I just didn’t want to soften it this time, and wasn’t worried about people not being able to follow the thread.’, he explains. It almost seems as if Shadow may in some way be burning some bridges, so likely is the alienation of large swathes of his fan base. But power to the man – he’s just not that bothered. He denies, however, that it’s more of a straight hip-hop record. ‘No, it’s just very diverse’ he answers. ‘There’s rap, all different types, with Phonte from Little Brother, Q-Tip, E-40, David Banner, all kinds of different artists. Then there’s also rock music and folk music, and very ‘Shadowey’ sounding music’

Indeed, as amusing as it is to hear this modest man describe his own music as ‘Shadowey’, you know exactly what he means, in the same way ‘Pharelley’ or ‘Aphex Twinney’ could be applied to the music of those artists. Following the ominous introduction, the first of these ‘Shadowey’ tunes, This Time, provides a warning of sorts for what’s to follow. ‘This time, I’m gonna do it my way’, the sampled crooner explains. Once this short track hits its end, the barrage of hardcore Bay Area ‘hypie’ rap that takes up almost half the album starts in earnest. Not only is it unlike earlier DJ Shadow material, it’s miles removed from other Quannum artists, as well as other so-called ‘underground’ hip hop often placed on a pedestal. When you realise the first US-wide hypie hit was produced by crunk big-timer Lil’ John, with Bay Area veteran E-40 on vocals, along with young buck Keak da Sneak, both of whom also feature on The Outsider, you get a better idea as to how different this album is to either Endtroducing or The Private Press.

‘The type of rap I’ve been listening to for the last five to seven years is not the Jurassic 5/Quannum rap, it’s the hardcore gangsta stuff’, he clarifies when I look surprised. ‘That’s the music that’s been influencing me lately, and I wanted to make sure it was represented on the record.’ And to dispute the likely claims there was a commercial aspect to the decision, that of including radio-friendlier hip hop (he himself admits that ‘for the first time in my life I’m getting radio play’), one needs only to look at the rappers used to ‘slap’ the beats, as he puts it. With the exception of E-40, Q-Tip and Quannum’s Lateef, most are relative unknowns. ‘I was making beats which I put tried and tested MCs on who I’ve known for years, and it just didn’t sound right. It was only when I reached out to the kind of people I was listening to on the radio that it all kind of started to make sense.’ Funnily enough, despite Shadow’s global reach, the rappers contacted turned out not to be too familiar with his work. ‘Everyone in rap knows my name and knows who I am’, he puts it matter-of-factly, ‘But when you talk about people like Keak Da Sneak and Turf Talk, who are ten years younger than me, they know the name but don’t know my music. They don’t remember Endtroducing, they were too young, and everything I’ve done since then hasn’t been in a rap vein. Even stuff like Quannum – hardcore gangsta-rap dudes in the Bay maybe don’t even know who we are…Keak Da Sneak is huge in the Bay Area, he can’t walk down the street – he’s like the Pied Piper.’

Halfway through the album, The Outsider starts to move away from the hypie sound, with acoustic rock-inspired instrumentation resulting in music that Unkle fans might be pleased with, in the form of collaborations with UK vocalist Chris James. Yet work with Unkle-partner James Lavelle, perhaps disappointingly, appears unlikely. ‘What happened in 1998 when Mo’ Wax sorta got pulled out from underneath him, he sort of lost everything in a sense, and I think he became quite disillusioned with the way he had been treated by the majors, and unfortunately to some degree he has a hard time relating to all his old artists. I think he feels in a way that we all abandoned him or something. …He’s a passionate guy – I still consider him a friend but we don’t see each other that much.’ The same sort of label-mess that resulted when ‘a Liquor company bought a cigarette company or something’ in 1998 means Shadow now appears courtesy of Universal Records, and not Universal Music. After a long-winded explanation he describes the situation as ‘complicated and convoluted’, but is, essentially, satisfied as to how it turned out. ‘What happened recently is I ended up on Geffen’s doorstep, and I didn’t really want to be there. I was tired of being dumped off on people, and I feel it’s much better if somebody has to fight for me to be there, because then there is a vested interest in America for me to be a success – so I put my foot down and said no. So Universal Records, a part of Universal Music, said ‘Ok, we want him’.

And now that they have him, it remains all about the music for DJ Shadow. Fans will be aware of the obsessive record collecting, the work of a man in love with sounds. For him, the fame people perceive he experiences means even less than it used to, especially in light of the traumatic time he and his wife went through with the complications involved in the birth of their twins. ‘I’m not the type of person who walks down the street and gets recognised’, he explains, ‘I like the anonymity, I don’t wanna make millions of dollars, just enough to continue to do what I do. You always hear people like Woody Allen or Spike Lee say that they only wanna make enough in the movies to make the next one. I feel the same. I want to be in a position to make records and get them to as many people as possible.’ It’s the kind of laissez –faire, modest, confident and satisfied response he provides to all my queries. Apart from the shame he expresses at the actions of President Bush and Governor Schwarzenegger, and the annoyance he says he feels when predictable questions from uninterested journalists are fired his way (‘Does Hip Hop Still suck in ’06?’), he’s a relaxed and amiable dude. ‘I’m not gonna pretend that I don’t wanna be here,’ he says almost coyly, as two suits march past the table, gazes peering down their noses at the bloke in scruffy wet jeans, across the table from the slight American in tilted cap and baggie-pants. ‘Actually, he’s probably one of the most important recording artists of or our age, you nob.’ At least that’s what I thought of saying, but only afterwards when I’m making the thirty-floor descent in the lift.

A piece on Seoul which may or may not appear somewhere more important/interesting than this obscure out of the way blog. Mmm.

Over the last ten years or so, the amount of Western travelers heading to East Asia has increased massively. South East Asia – in particular Thailand, Vietnam and others – swarms with Western tourists eager to travel to countries they perceive as being exotic, welcoming, safe, and of course cheap. There’s nothing quite like stocking up on oh-so-hilarious slogan T-shirts for the next few years. Travel in China continues to flourish, while Japan continues to hold a special place in the imaginations of young Westerners – A land of unparalleled technological prominence and wealth, further popularised by the recent cinematic success of Lost in Translation.

Recently, I planned to purchase a ticket from Sydney to London. A hell of a flight, as anyone will tell you, and as good a candidate as any long-hauler for an extended stopover. Why fly over half the planet, I figured, and not stop to see some of it? So when my request for a list of cities that could be stopped in without an extra charge forced upon me turned out to contain less intriguing destinations than I had hoped for, I handed over my cash to Asiana Airlines, keen for a week in Korea and its beehive of activity, Seoul. James Brown jokes at the ready, I arrived on a warm September night at the end of a hot summer.

But, like most of the friends and colleagues I spoke with about my impending jaunt, I knew little about South Korea or its capital. Apart from the war and the ongoing ‘Neighbours From Hell’ episode that is the relationship between the Republic of Korea (in the blue, southerly corner) and the Democratic People’s Republic (in the red, northerly corner), as well as the Olympics in ‘88, the World Cup in ‘02, barbeques and car production, not much at all, in fact. I did know, however, that Korea was indeed a wealthy country (12^th biggest economy in the world, it turns out), and upon stepping out of Seoul’s newly built Incheon airport (the scene of the Dunkirk-esque landing seen by many as the turning point in the Korean war), this was soon evident.

It was also quickly evident that I should have spent a little more time learning the local tongue, (apparently, as Korean is based on an alphabet, it’s not as tricky as one might think) bbut I located the bus stop to the city, impressed by their frequency and the amount of men in official looking clothes milling around, intent on helping a bewildered and jet-lagged foreigner with a comically large backpack. Once on the bus, the onboard computers, for entertainment purposes, as well as the compulsory seatbelts (hey, that’s progress), the American sounding lady that piped up through the speakers before each stop, and the tractor-sized cars that overtook us on all sides, further impressed me. And while I take little interest in most things automobile, I know Daewoo, I know Hyundai, I’m even familiar with Kia But the Korean car industry is evidently booming, considering the variety of names roaming the multi-laned highways- what were these strange cars? The whole time I was in Korea, in fact, I barely saw, at least barely noticed, any foreign cars, apart from the odd novelty-value modern Mini. Soon enough, after passing through what appeared to be endless inner-city (the concept of suburbs with a well manicured garden doesn’t appear to have taken off too rapidly), with road after road of well-lit advertising billboards, not to mention block after block of apartments, completer with LG or Samsung branding, I was at my hostel (one of the few in Seoul). I had found Seoul Backpackers in the closest thing Seoul has to a touristy area, Insadong, with surprisingly little trouble. For locating places for the first time in Korea is no mean feat, for one glaringly obvious reasos – no street names, and often no numbers. Indeed, it seems it may only be for the proliferation of the internet in South Korea that people know where on earth it is they are going. Almost every company has a website, and those that know what they’re doing put a detailed map with directions on the site, lest they be relegated to obscurity. This proved tricky once or twice, but on the whole, you quickly get used to procuring detailed directions before heading anywhere in the city for the first time.

Next day, a trip on the smart, speedy and well-priced Seoul subway had me fascinated at the level Korean telecommunications is at. ‘Is that me?’ I thought, ‘or is that bloke actually watching gameshows on his phone?’ I was well prepared for a technological shock to the senses, but when a friend at Vodafone UK suggested that Korea was in fact up to 18 months ahead when it comes to this sort of intense gadgetry, such as digital TV in handsets, I was dumbfounded. Tokyo, eat your heart out. As the excessively-featured handset would not work upon leaving Korea, I decided some other techno-tastic device would be a suitable souvenir, and took to locating Yongsan electronics market. Well, what an experience that was. Yongsan is, they say, the largest electronics market in Asia. Whether this means there is a bigger market somewhere else, I don’t know. But you’d hope not. For Yongsan is not for the faint-hearted, the easily intimidated, or the foreigner who has not bothered to study Korean. Four multistoried buildings tower over a courtyard where a Korean punk band of sorts played, on top of its own train station, below the inbuilt Imax cinemas, complete with the fairground rides and crazy golf on the roof. I picked up a fancy iRiver MP3 player (Made in Korea, where else) for slightly less than in Sydney. Considering the amount of haggling I put in when I located a trader with decent English, it wasn’t as cheap as I’d hoped. This was though, admittedly, the one day I could have done with a guide.

Yongsan market, however, is by no means the only monster-sized market in the capital. Seoul is a young city, and young Koreans appear to love shopping. This format of the mall/market hybrid is repeated to dizzying affect right across town, with certain areas literally buzzing at night. More than once I became totally engrossed and suitably lost in the modern day-bazaars of clothing stores, neon lights, food stalls, and the almost nauseating K-Pop bands set up to entertain the thralls of teenagers. I spent only a single week in Korea, but it was enough time to realise that the city barely sleeps. Some areas tingle with activity to the wee hours, with ‘Hof’ bars (beer and fried chicken, hell yeah)) squeezed in between countless small restaurants across the city. Other areas feature so many restaurants and bars of all sizes, including the happening borough around Yongik University, that it’s hard to understand how they possibly make any money. Yet food is an important part of life in Korea. Traditional cook-at–the-table BBQ joints are almost as numerous as the market stalls that proffer affordable nibbles, from dried squid to Korean style sausages, while small family run restaurants squeeze themselves in, enticing the visitor in with their myriad small bowls of Kim Chi offered with each dish. In fact, by the time you tuck in to eat in Korea, there are so many small dishes provided with each meal ordered it’s hard to know where to start. In addition, Kim Chi (roughly, pickled vegetables, although almost anything can be thrown in) is such a part of life that there is a museum dedicated to it. Perhaps if I’d stayed another week I would have made time. Maybe two weeks.

Yet the glory of Seoul is that, as you might expect from a city of ten million, the amount of cultural attractions far surpasses the amount of trips one can make in a week. While there, I visited countless palaces, many reconstructed to their pre-Japanese invasion levels of glory, not to mention various Buddhist temples and pagodas squeezed in between glass and steel skyscrapers. A hike through a building site up to the old city wall to sit in the forested hills overlooking the sprawling metropolis proved a highlight, as did one of the various modern art galleries Seoul has to offer, not to mention the huge, overbearing, intrinsically detailed, and only slightly propagandistic war museum, located next to one of the world’s largest concentrations of US troops in the borough of Itaewon.

And this brings us to the one issue that dominates domestic politics in South Korea- the issue of the North. It’s easy to dismiss the issue as an international one, but for many Koreans, it is an issue of living in a split nation, where progress towards unification often takes the form of ‘one step forward, two steps back’, particularly since a certain President Bush took office. I left Seoul on two occasions – once to stay overnight and visit the remains of the glorious ancient Silla kingdom in the town of Gyeongju, (whereupon I met a friendly Dutch cyclist who had just taken 18 months to cycle from the Netherlands, but I digress), as well as a day-trip to the Demilitarised Zone between the Stalinist North and capitalist South, the last and meanest cold war frontier. Korean nationals may not visit the DMZ nor the actual border which dissects it, but I, along with a busload of Japanese, was ferried in and handed over to a mixed group of South Korean and US troops, who promptly shouted orders at us, kept us in formation, and frequently prevented us from looking anywhere but straight ahead. This was, of course, after signing a waiver disallowing me from suing should Northern soldiers shoot me. Fair enough, I thought. It was group tourism with a difference, but worth it, just to stand inside the UN treaty buildings on the border, spy the world’s largest flag and pole (trust me – big), and get a few sneaky zoom-pics of North Korean soldiers marching around in their pointy Soviet era hats. Of course, it was all over far too quickly, but it was nonetheless astonishing. For 50km down the road form this ‘axis of evil’ stalwart we were back in Seoul, again amongst the multistory electronic billboards, the unimaginable wealth, the carefree youth and unending shopping centers. I wanted to go up and grab people to tell them what perils lay half an hour to the north – if only I could have prised their attentions away from the phones with the tellies on them.