Return to Paris
I slid the "Music Therapy for Irritable Bowel Syndrome & Peptic Ulcers" CD which I had picked up in a music store in Bombay over Christmas into my laptop, and much to my surprise,
the artist showed up as DJ Shadow on iTunes. A hundred questions rushed to me at once: What does this all mean? Has there been a mistake? Is DJ Shadow really Dr. Akhilesh Bisaria by day? Do his powers extend to healing ailments via music? Is there more to this man that we don't know of? Or is it a conspiracy involving a nexus of medical and music industry tycoons? Perhaps the WTO? How safe are we in all of this..?
The past few days in London had been very lazy. I finished Murakami's "Dance, Dance, Dance" in 3 days, which is quite a feat for me, being a slow and unfocused reader and all. I spent a lot of time on Last.fm discovering bands such as OOIOO, Melt-Banana, Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Merzbow, Deerhoof, and Arab on Radar, whom I had heard of but not heard any of their stuff.
I met with a friend who is a neuro-scientist at the UCL for lunch at the Princess Lousie pub in Bloomsbury. The food is not excellent, but it's not a sandwich bar and the upstairs is quiet, so it's easy to have a chat. The evening before I met up with my friend Will, from Paris/New York who was in London for 3 days to do research at the Bristish Library (on the London plague in the 18th century). We saw Kelpe at the Macbeth on Hoxton Street, a solo act of electronic post-punk music. I'd never been to a post-punk gig. Now I have. He was obviously talented, but I can't really say more. Put it down to personal taste. The next act was a drum & bass duo - Elite Barbarians, which was quite good, but we didn't stay on to see it all, due to the implicit cinderella-curfew imposed by the London transport authorities.
I'm back in Paris now. Laundry - cinema - job applications - university applications - catching up - cinema - small claustrophobic flat - cinema - bills - ...
the artist showed up as DJ Shadow on iTunes. A hundred questions rushed to me at once: What does this all mean? Has there been a mistake? Is DJ Shadow really Dr. Akhilesh Bisaria by day? Do his powers extend to healing ailments via music? Is there more to this man that we don't know of? Or is it a conspiracy involving a nexus of medical and music industry tycoons? Perhaps the WTO? How safe are we in all of this..?
The past few days in London had been very lazy. I finished Murakami's "Dance, Dance, Dance" in 3 days, which is quite a feat for me, being a slow and unfocused reader and all. I spent a lot of time on Last.fm discovering bands such as OOIOO, Melt-Banana, Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Merzbow, Deerhoof, and Arab on Radar, whom I had heard of but not heard any of their stuff.
I met with a friend who is a neuro-scientist at the UCL for lunch at the Princess Lousie pub in Bloomsbury. The food is not excellent, but it's not a sandwich bar and the upstairs is quiet, so it's easy to have a chat. The evening before I met up with my friend Will, from Paris/New York who was in London for 3 days to do research at the Bristish Library (on the London plague in the 18th century). We saw Kelpe at the Macbeth on Hoxton Street, a solo act of electronic post-punk music. I'd never been to a post-punk gig. Now I have. He was obviously talented, but I can't really say more. Put it down to personal taste. The next act was a drum & bass duo - Elite Barbarians, which was quite good, but we didn't stay on to see it all, due to the implicit cinderella-curfew imposed by the London transport authorities.
I'm back in Paris now. Laundry - cinema - job applications - university applications - catching up - cinema - small claustrophobic flat - cinema - bills - ...