Snake Year

Went up  town yesterday for Chinese New Year. Always go every year. No fan of fireworks or noise but with the bustle there and drums it's OK. 

Managed to win my money back on slots but got Jewed out of 50p by the machine so all I got back was a fiver, and had a meltdown in Sounds of The Universe. A mix of Caffeine and various things, not good. But managed to hold it together enough to get out, shame really as they were playing classic dub reggae. 

Finally have been taking a look at old posts I've done and revising them so that they now have proper paragraphs and shit. I'll leave you with a nice shot of the dragon lion.

Dragon Year 2024

 Don't normally write this up as such, but I do enjoy going up town and watching the lion dance at Chinese New Year. I hate fireworks and such but this guy dancing around and the drums pounding is my jam.

The past couple of years I've missed out either due to Covid or missing entirely,  and this year is no exception, we came to early and they weren't set up in time. Havea shot of the Lion dance team that I though look good enough to post. Hope you danced your asses off. 

New year and Login.

Happy new year everyone. Hoping 2021 doesn't suck balls like 2020 did. I have a final recommendation before I get into the main topic. 

Omitted from the best music of the year and released actually at the end of 2019, but with a further release on R&S records last year is... Special Request. A.K.A. Paul Woolford. I know he had a bit of a commercial success and hope he did well out of that but for me Family Doggo was the better track.

Also don't overlook Zero Fucks EP either. With it's expert filleting of commercial rap, with drum n bass. Epic.

Login Magazine aka ﾛｷﾞﾝ 

Something I got a long time ago from a long defunct bootsale. It was free, if I recall right. as it was all in Japanese.  I got a few things from bootsales that way back in the 90's paid cheap too. 

Anyway I have scanned bits and pieces from this a long time ago for posting elsewhere but have decided to scan the whole thing at 400dpi. Its going to take ages as its huge, but should be worth it.

It was produced by the ASCII corp as a PC gaming magazine from the 90's covering all of Japan's main computers and genres. Mainly the PC98 line and dealing with the whole spectrum of porn games and RPG's that that platform seemed to generate. 

My edition is April 96 and it seems that Windows had finally supplanted the various weird and wonderful home micros that Japan used, with a few hold outs for FM Towns and PC98 stuff.

I'll leave you with something from the old scans I did (not comprehensive, just things I found interesting)

Hopefully much better scanned now.

End of year missed flipped and skipped edition.

This is our customary missed pile of stuff, stuff I'd forgotten existed until now and with the dance stuff, possibly not my final favourite thing of the year.

TV.

X Company.

Impressive WW2 drama showing for the first time in the UK.  A select team of commandos work behind enemy lines as a resistance cell, to  conduct sabotage or just to kill off Nazis which is always cool.  They have a memory / savant style dude who can memorise data taken in the field and overcomes his reluctance to fight to become a productive member of the team.  Sadly the only drawbacks are they are all Canucks and not based at Bletchley or Whitehall, apparently there was a real Camp X in Ontario, where this was based.

Red Dwarf.

Series ten or so of the space sitcom and its long past its prime.  Not sure why Dave keeps it going now, as this season is the worst its been in ages.  I slept through most of the shows mind which isn't cool but what I was awake for was merely average.

Dr Who.

This has also dragged this season and its not due to the new doctor being a woman.  To be honest my Mum is the only person pissed off that the new Dr is a bird.  Me I couldn't care less, its already nosediving into the ground thanks to a political slant to most of the shows.  I don't need a fucking lecture on social inequality in Regency Britain, or badly shoehorned in gay characters (Bill Stickers), but rather wished the doc had Nardole as his companion.  Best episode was Poirot as a creepy landlord, to a place overrun with space bugs, some real nice audio stuff there.

Ed Stafford Left For Dead.

Final TV pick is this, Survivalist Ed Stafford is dropped with a drone, sat phone and cameras but no survival gear into the most inhospitable places in the world.  He has to make it to a pre proposed rendezvous point within 10 days or he's toast.  Its good stuff, see him eat yams in Madagascar, catch fish with llama sinew line in the Andes and barely make it out alive from a dark cave in Laos.

There is a trailer here if it plays in your country, but will say this check it out, he only has to call to be rescued once the whole time and I'll leave it for you to find out where that is.


Music.

Ed Sheeran Galway Girl / Shape of you.

This is the year, he went from annoying but bearable on Drunk to full on terrible.  Some would say that it has been that way for ages and ages but I did actually enjoy drunk, especially the version Kiss played.  Galway Girl is terrible, Irish pub cod Emerald isle levels of bad, I've taken  to changing the lyrics  to say he fiddles kids in a transit van to get any pleasure out of it.

Advertising.

Nationwide Adverts.

So farewell then Nationwide Adverts

With you awkwardly espoused prose

And ill timed slice of life observations.

On matters family and financial

We never banked with you
And Judging by the ads never want to. 

 E J Thribb. 17 1/2 p overdrawn.

New Year.

Still  getting a shed load of spam, here something I've never gotten before, mainly pron and gift card / iphone spam fuckers.

Anyway happy new year to all my readers and that, here is the traditional missed and flipped articles.

Music. 
Kanye West Pissing over Mysteries of Love.
Do you hate Kanye West or to give him his full name that cunt Kanye West then his tiresome crate digging exercise fucked over Fingers Inc Mysteries Of Love and Harddrive Deep Inside for his shitty ego tripping. Aquaman's best friend indeed.

Matt Whitehead. Bombing EP. 
Not only for bringing back 80's electro on We're Bombing but some excellent acid on the a side as well.  Its been a really good year for acid house, despite losing Spanky and Andreas Gehm so as I've long said before this is a tribute.

Nina Kraviz Fabric 91.
Crate digging techno mix for the troubled club and a belter.  Its got unreleased stuff but isn't hung up on that like it can be and some obscurities but gels together rather well.  Can't wait to see what they'll do for Fabric 100.

Aphex Twin Cheetah.

A new Aphex Release that isn't too bad not Syro bad but with a few great tracks and best of all relegating the video to an Irish fan to basically film him and his mates dancing about.  Based on a drum machine produced by a joystick manufacturer. 

Ads.

A few good ones such as the Clearscore ad and the Beagle street ad that is mostly about destroying trousers.  The continued pox of Money Supermarket and House of Fraser continues.  And some xmas whimsy from Waitrose with their strange migrating robin advert.

YTP of the year.

Youtube has nixed its supremely helpful all list for a horrible trending that hosts nothing but vile trash from vloggers so all I can remember here is some new CS188 stuff and the septic foundary poops.  No Michael Rosen (though Bear Hunt was on over Christmas) and I've been mostly watching Drew Pickles goes to videos.  Did have Speakonia on the old PC but genuinely enjoy some of the retarded antics of the worlds gayest man.