ZX SHED

ZX SHED: the ZX Spectrum on-line fanzine.

ZX Shed Reloaded: (expanded) downloadable paper edition here.

There was a rumour they were going to do a 'proper' POD paper fanzine via LuLu...dunno if that ever happened.

AMOS JUGG

HACKER FARM PRESENTS JUNKCRUNCH

Here we go again!

Junkcrunch is a new project/band thing formed by Farmer Glitch and myself. It's intended as a sort of lead-in/prelude to Hacker Farm, but mainly it's a bit of a laugh: improv electronics using toys/junk, discarded/obsolete tech, hacked circuitry, etc.

We're playing at the Yeovil Live Weekender event in a coupla weeks time (sat 13th) and - amazingly - they're letting us play in the middle of town, thru a PA, to pedestrians and bemused shoppers. Musically dicking around in yr own home town on a saturday afternoon: it really doesn't get much better than that.




So, we decided we'd better plug everything in and see what it sounded like; have a bit of a play around n see what worked. Extremely impressed by The Farmer's collection of homemade sequencers, rebuild McDonald's HappyMeal toys and handwired syntheticsquelchboxes - there was one that made uberphat Bernie Worrell-like moogpharts and another that reset itself with sonar-like pings. He was also toting a three-string vintage Casio MIDI-gtr which he used to get Cluster/Harmonia-like quasi-melody-lines which you couldn't work out if they were being played on a guitar or a keyboard. His dad has been helping him fix up the Casio! Glitch Snr is, like, King of the Dudes or something, I reckon.

I've never used a laptop live before - it's not really been my thing - but this is a junked one I got for £20 a few years back made from a 50kilo slab of metal, and I'm running a piece of antique software on it from the mid-90s, so that kinda fits in with our ethos. Also using a bunch of cassette-recorders, contact-mic'd junk, etc, which is my more usual bag.

There were some bits that sounded like Krautish deep-space drone crossed with that Hula live installation album from the late 80s - a sort of semi-psychedelicised Industrial sound - and bits where it turned into an ominous, dubbed-out form of improv Machine-Funk: spazzy, broken riddims underpinning space-violin, electronic swirls, e-static and nasty-sounding hard-drive crashes, crunches and detonations. Lovely stuff - quite different to both Ice Bird Spiral and Orchestra Intangible '73.

The Farmer dumped the jams down onto Ableton Live for us to deconstruct at a later date.

It was every bit as easy as I expected and a fucking lot of fun!











Right, I'm off to get drunk with my wife. I'll post our manifesto/press release later.

LOWTECH

Lowtech - The Redundant Technology Initiative, based in Sheffield.

"Grow your own Media- Lab" Love where these guys are coming from!

SYMPHONY FOR DOT-MATRIX PRINTERS

Totally forgot about this:

The User: Symphony for Dot-Matrix Printers. (Click on "Project Information")

Mp3s here.

MUSIC FOR SCANNERS

Okay, so this post is kinda peripherally related to the recent Werneck - Wretchmond computer peripherals project...

(...and a hearty thanks to everyone who supported - and continues to support - this release: to those of you who blogreviewed it; to ChickenFish and Mr. Ellis for the props n shout-outs; and Pete Um, Dan P & Co. for the kind words and support. I was kind of aghast that it took 4 weeks to reach Brasil, even though I've been sending copies via airmail; so slightly worried that some of you out in The Great Dominions of Canada, Aus & NZ maybe still haven't got their copies yet (tho they're def. on the way!); I'll do a mass email-out in a week or two and make sure all have safely recieved their goods. A sort of After-Sales Care Follow-Up. Still, I was much amused to hear that the CD was recently used in a "Value of Art" seminar, as part of a Philosphy of Art course where the students had to debate whether something was "Art" or not, and "Oneiric Hardware" got used along with a Rothko painting (not an original, I hope!) and sundry other art limbo-zone objects. Still chuckling to myself about that... )

...anyway, CyRus Da VyRus tracked down the following via a Norwegian FTP-site and brought it to my attention: music made by a scanner.

Check out the vid of the scanner playing Beethoven!

Apparently, certain varieties of old HP scanners have a techie 'easter-egg' of the tune-playing variety: using Scanner Control Language commands dumped into the scanner's buffer via SCSI you can change the speed/frequency of the scanner's step-motor, and thus alter its pitch. A series of commands can therefore create a tune. See?

Didja know the HP ScanJet 3C/4C series has a three-octave range! (Two more than me!)

Man, I love stuff like this.

5000 VOLTS: "DR. KISS KISS"

Specially for Gothic Raymond and the other folks at The Human Hangout ( = Human Debris HQ):

DON MARVEL

Don Marvel, (accidentally) via Lieven Martens.

Trying to find out more about the dude.

ORCHESTRA INTANGIBLE '73

(Pics courtesy of internationally-acclaimed wildlife photographer Skipper Webb. I kept the date-stamps in cos it made it look like it was from some really strange cctv-footage or an old 80's vision-mixer lol.)

It's hard for me to express just how much I fucking enjoyed playing at this. My wife never ceases to totally amaze and inspire me; she's a complete natural; an intuitive.

Thanks to Rasha, Matt, Chiz, Mark and the gang for inviting us. Wish I had an audio or vid-recording of it, but the studio album's sounding mighty fierce and fine to me right now.

Yes, Orchestra Intangible '73 is my new/latest schtick, though is still evolving. The show was underpinned by the live, improvised manipulation of parallel streams of found-sounds generated by me three months ago, the mid-90s and 1979/1980 (I had no idea what was coming at me at any given moment, so had to build it all on the fly; it was like wresting an invisible octopus, but terrific fun). I also channelled myself aged 11 playing the clarinet (rehersals slightly scuppered by a heavy cold which played havoc with me lung capacity). Chris was absolutely superb, I thought, on contact-mic'd toy-kettle and out-sourced eukele bow-werk.

The '73 in the band-name has NOTHING to do with nostalgia; it's a Personal Totemic Power Number. Also a nod to The Discontinuum and various African musical groups. Plus: it sounds cool. The project is all about, er, healing, self-reconciliation and ego-surrender; fwd-movement and anti-nostalga, even though the hemi-karmickal reincorporation of my own previous incarnations may superficially appear to be a backward-looking geasture. Heh.

Very chuffed to be on a bill w/ some extremely cool artists - a bunch o'talented folks who are able to express themselves confidently in ways that I never could: more on them soon as I get a sec. I just loved those photos sooo much I wanted to put them up asap.

THE LEGENDARY 64 SPOONS: LANDING ON A RAT COLUMN

Those of you with an aversion to Things of a Prog Nature, avert thine eyes now!

Thanks to my pal Chris for lending me this, a rather wonderful compilation of unreleased tracks (dated '78 - '80) by 64 Spoons, a Late Era Prog band (the band clearly prefer the term "Jazz-Rock" and, given the hostile time-frame they briefly existed within, I can totally understand that, since any whiff of The Dreaded Prog woulda been a death-knell...) who attempted to swim upstream in the opposite direction to the Zeitgeist. And more power to them for doing it.



This really is one of the best Proggish things I've heard in quite a while. They've def. got the Funk, these boys; it's like a weird Brit.amalgam of National Health, Gentle Giant, The Blockheads and mid-70's Mothers with some very Holdsworthesque guitar-runs. The vocals are pretty good too (usually the weakest link on even the best of Prog records) - sounding like a kinda Punkier version of Robert Wyatt. The lyrics on "Tails in The Sky" are oddly poignant, I reckon. Other songs are littered with references to "signing on", drinking, checking out porn mags and other very 70's English college.rock preoccupations. Blokey, rather than whimsical. The best tracks are both musically and lyrically witty.

The band never released a proper album, far as I'm aware, so this is an after-the-fact comp. But, by all accounts, they were an excellent live band with a small, but devoted following. The bonus live tracks confirm they were far more ferocious (and strange) on stage.

The opening synth live-intro-tape piece "It's All Overture" reminds me of one of the reasons why I'm not so fussed about Ghostbox releases as some of my colleagues - why buy wry-ronic post-millennial recreations of music-forms when you can check out the unbridled strangeness of 1st-gen originals like this?

If you have any interest in Brit.Prog / Jazz-Rock / Fusion then this is an essential, ear-pleasing purchase.

The band eventually quit swimming against the tide of history and called it a day (shame!), but most of them went on, unsurprisingly, to have very successful careers as sesh-guys on a number of 80s/90s records that you probably own/love.

Trumpet-player Ted Emmett's name rang a vague bell until I Googled and the penny dropped that he was one of The Teardrop Explode's horn-section back when you used to follow them round on tour. Here, though, he unleashes some truly mouth-warping horn-licks worthy of prime-time Zappa.

Guitarist Jakko Jakszyk has surfaced off n on at various points in the musical sea-bed - and what a terrific player he is too! - most famously as a member of Level 42.

The CD came out in the early 90s, but I think you can still pick it up via Burning Shed.

SHERMAN ADVERSE

From Human Debris #2:



"Yes it was true: Sherman Adverse was turning into a Post-Industrialist Cabaret Voltaire poser!" lol

I guess if we were doing it now, he'd be "turning into a mullet-haired, middle-class internet music-pundit!" Lol

...or, worse: a Web-designer.

ONE WAY TICKET / STAR

NEURAL CIRCUS: "NEURAL CIRCUS" (1980)

WINSTON TONG: "REPORTS FROM THE HEART" (1986)

SPK LIVE AT SYDNEY BRICKWORKS 1982

STRIPS

Man Like 2ND.FADE mails in what will be the third episode of our OPEN UNIVERSITY comic-strip and - my! - terrific stuff it is too. Starting to see the characters fall into place; roles being assumed; the beginnings of a disfunctional family unit. It's lovely when things like this happen; when the unexpected puts in an appearance; things evolve...

I say it's the third episode, but it's not the third one chronologically speaking - we're doing samples, see? Trying on clothes for size - so the little micro-arcs we're tentatively putting together are appearing out of order at first, but this is all good...

I'd love to show you some teasers, but...well, soon, but not quite yet....when we're ready; when this has finally found an official home...

Lovely to see Vic from the Colin Tubb strip putting in a guest appearance. An accidental cross-over lol!

This would be a good time to re-mention the fact that I'm still looking for artists for a couple other strips I've got in the pipe-line. They're both short-ish things...

The first is a series of interlinked stand-alone one-pagers - roughly 5 panels per episode. I'm looking for someone who can draw gawky 17 year-old college girls in a non-sexualised manner: y'know, the first year college girls you see trudging round town in their moon-boots and bangles and armfuls of folders, tapping on phones, chattering about boys and the unfairness of life; someone who can capture that gauche, self-conscious, self-absorbed coupla years that we all go through. I need you to be an up n coming Brit Hernandez Bros: clear-line, semi-naturalistic, good eye for character and clothes detail; suck in all that Indie.Pop/fashion paraphernalia, enjoy drawing chip-shops, small-town high-streets, college corridors. Teenage girls endless walking, walking, talking (but with a twist I can't go into here). I think this would be a Black n White strip, maybe with tones.

Could you be that person? If you are, then contact me.

I had my eye on Kev Levell (here's one reason why); but he's too busy. He's going to be a guy to watch over the next year or two, I reckon.

I also have a need for someone to draw a 3-panel newspaper style strip in a slightly more cartoony/minimalistic style. Think: a punkier/rawer take on Berger & Wyse. The successful candidate would need to be able to draw semi-convincing 'toon takes on assorted celebrity ninny-actors. I think this would be a colour one, but I'm keeping my mind open. Black n White first and see where it goes.

Send me some head and shoulder-shots of Matt Damon, please. Slightly quirky obv., but try'n be professional about it; imagine yr pitching to a quality newspaper or magazine rather than self-publishing a photocopied fanzine. Imagine you have a breakfast-table, slightly left-of-centre readership. Let's try and actually get fucking paid for these things, okay?

Dan Poeira would be good on this one, I reckon. I just can't get his Mickey Rourke pic out of my head.

THE SQUARES OF THE CITY

John Brunner is an much underrated/over-looked Brit SF writer who stood slightly to the side of the late 60's/early 70's New Wave, which may explain why he's perhaps not remembered as well as some of his contemporaries. He lived in the village of South Petherton (about 7/8 miles from Yeovil and home to Farmer Glitch!) for a while in the early/mid-70s. Almost impossible to imagine now that there was once a South Petherton SF Writers Group / Association (dunno if it ever had a formal title), who used to sometimes assemble round Dom Zero / Lurch's folk's house, with various writers like Christopher Priest, James Blish and Sam Delaney dropping in for drinks, etc when they were in the area.

I told you it's kinda strange around our way.

FOLLIES

"Under the influence of Hindu cosmology, she is calmly sawing the 18th of February off of 3102." - Robert Nowhere.

WOOFAH #4

Woofah #4: on sale now!!!

The UK's premier Dubstep/Dancehall/Grime/Bashment magazine: 92 fucking pages for £4 - awww, c'mon: you'd be crazy not to buy it.

Features the live debut of "Colin Tubb, He Talks in Dub" by yrs truly and artist 2ND.FADE.

Why're you still even reading this post?

Anyone round here play the oboe?

Just wondering, is all.

I'd 'forgot' that Don Cherry played on Steve Hillage's "L". Suddenly remembered today.

Just thought I'd mention it.

EVERYTHING SOUNDS LIKE TALKING HEADS

"Everything sounds like Talking Heads."

Well, it does, doesn't it. And not usually in a good way, either.

Of course, I don't necesarily mean this in a literal fashion, more as a shorthand metaphor for a certain form of East-Coast Post-Post-Punk Laziness; the co-opting of certain strains of faux-ecstatic AfroFunkEthnoGospelPop. Marketing in place of innovation.

Byrneisms: I'm bored with 'em.

*Sounds of kitchen peddle-bin opening and slamming shut*

Apart from Gala Drop, where's all the Fifth World music I so gamely predicted a couple years back? I'm not going to have to go and do it myself, am I, you fuckers?

I only mention this because I detected a certain unquantifiable...something in the recent rehersals for Orchestra Intangible '73 (wh/ I wish I'd bloody recorded): there was a weird bubbling echo of something I couldn't quite put my finger on initially...in amongst all the smeary, bleary psychfrottage, broken loops and echoblur I could hear traces of something that sounded like a weird third cousin-by-marriage to John Hassell's "Earthquake island" - the stuff he did before he hooked up with Eno and was still in thrall to the ethnodrone of Riley, Young and Prandit Nath. But when I listened I realised it was my wife making those sounds. Chris has no knowledge - or interest, for that matter - in Hassell or Miles' PreWorld Musics, so it's my own imagination/audiolobe that's making the connections and projecting my prejudices onto a set of random sound interjections...but, fuck me, I'm hearing Hassell and Miles in those echo/verb'd contact strokes on a toy kettle; I'm hearing woozy space-trombones when she bows the ukele...and I'm starting to hear grooves...wrong-as-fuck, fer sure, but I'm hearing grooves, nevertheless...

"Everything sounds like Talking Heads."

See, now hard it is to escape their orbit, to not be drawn into certain conclusions?

But now...now, I've got a jagged path that takes me back from Talking Head / Byrne/Eno via Jon Hassell's earlier material into something more interesting, back to the 60's NY loftdronescene. Back towards the source. I can now see how to psychelicise this stuff. How to stamp my own paw-prints on it.

Hassell says: "From 1973 up until then [the late 70s] I was totally immersed in playing raga on the trumpet..."

See: another example of The Discontinuum reveals itself unexpectedly.

On monday morning I heard the best piece of music I'd heard in ages. I was getting coffee take-outs in a cafe on Park Row, Bristol, and they're playing some music too quietly to properly hear through a tiny speaker parked on top of a cold-drinks chiller which is going Hurmmmmmm...hrmmm.whrmmmm...and the expresso-machine is going Bwusssshqqh.fwusssmssh...

(And it's fucking Brian Eno all over again, laid up in hospital, unable to hear the record Judy Nylon brought in for him to listen to - Pachebel thru a single broken speaker/rain pitter-pattering against the window, so he invents Ambient Music - bloody fucking Brian Eno again: "Everything sounds like Talking Heads".)

...except this...this is, like, Funk, but Funk gone wrong : bubbling bass-line, a sudden surge of vocal-chorus you can't quite hear, clattering percussion pushing against the fridgenoise and the expresso-machine hissss: it sounds like a mutant.funk version of "You Have been Duplicated" by Chrome dubbed off a cassette in Western Africa and played as Muzak in a foundry in Chicago. Pop sabotaged by circumstance. Transformed by accidental alchemy.

"Everything sounds like Talking Heads."

Blessed Be. But it was beautiful. Bewitchingly alien.

I stood there completely transfixed, wishing I could HeadTape it. Fifth World music, for sure.

And yet another piece in a never-ending puzzle suddenly slid into view.

I asked the waitress what the music was and she apologised for it being so loud.

It wasn't Talking Heads.

It was **** ******.

Fuck me.

COMPANY FUCK @ THE CUBE

A bit early, I know, but m'man Scott aka Company Fuck is back from Berlin for a show at The Cube, Bristol, with Alexander Thomas and some other dudes in March. You should go. Fuck, yeah.

Love the poster.

MIST OVER GURNEY SLADE

Random pic from car window on A37. Wife and I returning yest.am - drool-jawed and foggy-minded; r brains all a-swirl - only to find landscape psychogeographically mimicking/mocking us.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YA, AQUARIAN SCUM

Many happy Returns to Matt Valentine ("I'm always playing England on my birthday!") and Warren Ellis ("Waitress! Bring me more nerve gas.")

Both mere lads, tho - barely able to tie their own shoes, string their guitars, etc. And I have a mounting horror that it might have been Farmer Glitch's b/day yesterday/today/tomorrow.

I get a telegram from the Queen on thursday. The daft old bat.

We're Aquarians, suckers. And you're not.

Deal with it.

HAPPY MATT VALENTINE'S DAY

Radio silence for next day or so - no real difference here then, except a sense of impeding significance that seems to hover over me lol (My ShirtSense is tinglin' !) - as I head off to this....

Rehearsals have gone incredibly well...but I'm v. superstitious, so that means the live show prob. won't, huh? So, now I have to take assorted obsessive-compulsive fetish-objs, talismans (talismen?), curse-shields, etc, etc to ward off inverse.vibe.storm, heh.

Valentine's Day, so instead of taking my wife to some cheesy supper-joint or pint-and-a-roast-for £4.99 balsa-wood grub.pub I get mine to dress up as a giant [you'll have to come along to find out] and perform on stage. Who says romance is dead? Actually, dressing up as a giant [you'll have to come along to find out] was mostly her idea....I threw some stuff up in the air and she ran with it. She's a pretty amazing chick.

Bundling kids off to unimpressed relative in a minute. This is only about the 3rd time ever they've been on a sleep-over, ever since Kid Kid Shirt built a particle-accelerator from some chucked-away stuff she found in her auntie's dustbin. The village is now completely radioactive and abandoned to a handful of M.O.D. personnel in ABC suits. It's like a new episode of Quatermass.

Kid Kid Kid Shirt likes to sing all night in her bed, so no one - apart from the deaf and the senile - will give her lodgings. I will stop now before I start sounding like Tim fucking Dowling.

HUMAN DEBRIS

This is what all the fuss is about. 1980, I think....



...so maybe we should do the third ish thirty years after we left off. Same paper, still priced at 20p, even though that will pretty much bankrupt us cos it won't even cover the postage lol. I think it's important that it's "still 20p".

I tried to explain the concept of Sherman Adverse to Fritz Bogott last night, but couldn't.

The mag was also kinda (in-)famous too: Lurch used to house-share with Jim Thirlwell and there were unsold copies of HD everywhere, so I think that prompted the line "...getting buried under a pile of Human Debris..." in the Foetus song "Descent into the Inferno."

Not bad for some clueless hick-kids from the sticks.

I'll dig out a copy of # 1 sometime.

Big up Pete Um, who's supporting some bloke called Thom Yorke on the 25th Feb. Go an' support him. He's a good lad.

He's been rummaging thru my blog's back-pages recently. Pete, I mean, not Mr. Yorke.

Pete's also on the "Local Horse Artist" comp. CD that I'm putting out v. soon on 19F3, tho I'm still ummmin' and ahhhhin' about which track. There are lots of other really great people on there too - Vluba, Dolphins into The Future, Roope Eronen, Buffle, Company Fuck, Ekoplekz, Medroxy Progesterone Acetate, Pop Parker, Kompleksi Vs The Boys of Scandanavia, etc, etc (that's just a few of them) - I wish they were all supporting Thom Yorke too.

All of them at the same time.

The sleeve notes are going to be a pig to do.

WOOFAH #4

Finally! It appears that Woofah #4 is now (almost) in-country...okay, Dublin, then...

(Hopefully - fingers crossed! - containing the now near-legendary Colin Tubb comic-strip by yrs truly and 2ND.FADE)

And so it begins...

A new blog by my pal - Texan underground film-maker and uberdude Jayson Densman.

HACKER FARM LOGOS

Oh, there's been some right ol' schemin' been going on up our way these last few days...some proper crazy plans flying around 'tween Farmer Glitch and meself.

Meanwhile, here's a couple of v cool Hacker Farm logos put together by the ever-remarkable Ultragirl Z-Glitch (who's been working furiously behind the scenes to help make things happen):

DISCOVERING LONDON'S GUILDS AND LIVERIES

Considerably weirder than most modern SF.

It's already given me 18 completely ridiculous ideas, none of which I'll probably have the time to do anything about.

KID SHIRT BTI INTERVIEW PT 2

With everything else going on at the moment, I hadn't got round to linking to the second part of the Beyond The Implode interview with me.

Many thanks to Martin for being such a sport and taking the time and effort to do this, and for hosting my various windbag pronouncements. An uberdude no-prize is currently zigzagging its way thru Q-Space towards his Punk Rock Bunker.

Meanwhile, Matt Badham's currently doing a piece on me for - ye Gods! - an upcoming issue of the Judge Dredd Megazine - cheers to Matt for his time and patience! More info on that, as and when. I've got this terrible fear I'm going to turn into the internet equivalent of Peter Ustinov now, constantly doing interviews and appearing on chat-shows without really ever having done anything...lol.

I'd better get busy, then.

Back to work!

ORCHESTRA INTANGIBLE '73 @ LOVE'S SECRET DOMAIN

So, yeah, looks like I'm playing next sunday at this - which is one of the reasons the blogging's been a bit sparse; been trying to get stuff sorted, etc, innit:

MV & EE + THIS IS THE KIT & JESSE MORNINGSTAR + GOLDEN GHOST FAMILY ELAN + MOUNTAINS OF JESUS + THE DOOZER + KEK-W & ORCHESTRA INTANGIBLE '73 + GEORGE THOMAS & THE OWLS

(The Cube, Bristol, SUN 14th FEB / 3pm – 11pm (Extended Version) / £7 adv)

Fabulous line-up - Matt Valentine & Erika Elder!!! (Feb 14th - Valentine's Day - geddit! ) Plus various luminous West Country and Cambridge luminaries. Like a mini-fest. Honoured to be playing, etc. Not exactly/entirely playing solo...since it's a couples-themed event, I'll be drawing-dn some female assistance of my own for this one. Suitably weird and twisted, hopefully, but in a good way.

Some blurb:

"A Sunday afternoon and evening session of windswept and ravishing music from an epic selection of acts. Maximum arousal... so leave your keys in the pot. Real erotic American guitar song-cycles with MV & EE (Ecstatic Peace), west-country and Parisian folk via This Is The Kit and partner Jesse Morningstar, bucolic and dreamy trks from Golden Ghost (featuring Viking Moses). They ask “what's in a name”? Well it's Silver Stairs of Ketchikan teaming up with Team Brick in a rare outing as Mountains Of Jesus.

"Normally The Doozer (Picked Egg) is solo, this time his warped English psych-pop maverick has a partner. Weirder still, Kek-W & Orchestra Intangible '73 might be solo, but then Ice Bird Spiral always channelled multiple spirits. That leaves George Thomas & The Owls, but bestiality is illegal on earth as it is in heaven."

Stage times:

3.30 George Thomas & The Owls
4.30 Mountains Of Jesus
5.30 The Doozer
6.30 KEK-W and ORCHESTRA INTANGIBLE ' 73
7.30 Golden Ghost
8.45 MV & EE
10.00 This Is The Kit & Jesse Morningstar

There's food, booze and plenty of music and good people.

HACKER FARM

The first rule of Hacker Farm is you, uh, don't talk about Hacker Farm.

It's not happened yet - Hacker Farm, I mean - but when it does I'll tell you about it. I'm almost scared to mention in case I jinx it in some way.

The idea kinda drifted out of some conversations Farmer Glitch n I have been having about stuff...and then some weird coincidental things started drifting n clicking into place, then a thought started congealing in the Farmer's hay-stuffed head and - blugger me - he started running with it.

So, uh, Hacker Farm. I can't talk about it. Yet.

But I'm hoping if we can will this thing into existence, then...

Remember all that hot air n guff I spouted here and on Beyond the Implode about how the best things are usually right under yr nose, and how every small town has its compliment of bedroom tape-manglers, outsider musicians, wannabe electronics boffins and noise-ists? There's a few round here and they've been moaning for years that there's nowhere for them to play or hang out. Well, suppose there was? Suppose there was a place they could go to meet like-minded weirdoes, socialise n network, learn new skills and methodologies (and teach us theirs) and build stuff...

Well, a place like that might be, well, a Hacker Farm.

Of course, there are places like that in cities - arts centres, workshops, co-operatives - but nothing like that in the glorious microblip of a town I live in.

So, imagine what might happen when you start bring interesting local people together, fire them up - give them permission to do something - and give them resources.

That'd be a Hacker Farm, I reckon.

It's just a silly, impossible dream, I know. I'd love to talk about it, but I can't.

Not yet.

SUBLOADED @ CORSICA

This saturday. Bristol invasion!