I know a kid who thinks he's hip hop cause he buys it
I know a kid who thinks he's hip hop cause he never buys shit
Underground or mainstream
Some are bound to change schemes.

     -- Sage Francis, Underground For Dummies

So I'm listening to Sub.FM a lot lately -- I first saw it mentioned on Warren Ellis' twitter -- seeing as dubstep and its related spinoffs seem to be the in thing of late, and for once I actually like the genre. (There's also the more obviously-titled Dubstep.FM, but I'm not so keen on that one; DubTerrain is pretty neat though.) The quality of the stream's not brilliant, but in a conversation elsewhere there was some talk of audio enhancers. Normally I'm skeptical of these, but mikosquirrel pointed me in the direction of the DFX Audio Enhancer, which (on certain types of music at least) works really well; with dubstep, you can crank the bass to obscene, bone-shuddering levels, as it should be.

From listening to Last.fm's 'dubstep' radio (basically all the music it has tagged with that) I came to the label Skull Disco, and I would totally buy all their stuff (although the only stuff I could actually *play* would be the two double CD's) if I wasn't pretty much tapped out. Still, there's a free mix on their site which is pretty good.

Of course, Pitchfork has a regular column on the genre, with this post from around this time last year being a particularly interesting reference to the then-emerging Glasgow scene -- aquacrunk? seriously? -- and even the Guardian had something to say about this subgenre of a subgenre.

With a bit of luck I'll hear back from Red Tape Studios soon -- perhaps sooner if I give them a call or email, though they're pretty lousy at responding to the latter -- about the computer music production course, and maybe I'll be able to make some dubstep of my own.

In reflecting on the music I've written (there's maybe half a dozen tracks I've written in the last four to six months that I've not posted anywhere) I'm still somewhat dissatisfied with it; the last track that I did and loved was in 2004, and a lot of stuff I'm deleting before it even reaches the form of an mp3, so maybe if I get on this course it'll be something of a kick start -- though I dare say having a new PC will help matters too.

On a largely unrelated subject, I've been exploring other cultural interests of mine lately, and I'm pleased to find that there's actually a word for one of them: Nihonjinron. "The term refers to a genre of texts that focus on issues of Japanese national and cultural identity," and it's a broad subject that I've had an interest in for a long time, particularly in older works from the late 1800's to early 1900's, such as those of Lafcadio Hearn.

I have a good number of books of this genre, mostly gleaned from Postscript Books; I feel that my recent attempts to learn the language will help me understand the culture more readily. Additionally, I've got another book on sumi-e, and I intend to try to learn this type of painting in the near future, as I already have all the materials, including inks of various colours -- though traditionally only black is used, I have ink sticks in a few other shades.

This is not to say that I don't have interest in other parts of the world, though. I recently got hold of an illustrated version of Le Morte d'Arthur at a cheap price, and followed up that purchase by ordering the Mabinogion and Seamus Heaney's version of Beowulf.

On top of that, I got a good deal on a couple of Michael Palin's documentaries on DVD: Around the World in 80 Days, and Pole to Pole. I also got the books that accompany these journeys, though (for obvious reasons) I think my favourite of his is still Himalaya.

Finally a couple of arty type things that I rather like: Multicolr Search Lab lets you pick up to 10 colours and use them to navigate a selection from "10 million of the most 'interesting' Creative Commons images on Flickr". It's a nice idea. Also, New Math is all kinds of awesome; reminds me a bit of one of my favourite artists, Jenny Holzer.