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the Highpoint Bloglife

Friday, June 13, 2008

mighy praise


Warren Ellis is perhaps the best writer in comics these days, certainly one of the most creative and out-there storytellers, with themes and ideas more akin to those explored by the minds of technologists and contemporary sci-fi writers like Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, than your usual comic book author.
Apart from that, he's very into his music, which is a constant topic of his excellent blog postings.
I sent him over a copy of Funckarma's upcoming Dubstoned EP, and was mightily chuffed to receive an email from him yesterday saying that he loved it, and that he posted this review:.

"It's an evil, lurching, jagged piece of science fictional noise that shoves about eight different kinds of music into a centrifuge in order to spit out a life form configured for life in the last city on earth when the next ice age comes. Or something. Any fifteen second stretch of any one of the five tracks can include hip hop, crackle, 1983 videogame noises, industrial grind and dubstep mutations. It evokes the image of mad scientists doing live mixing with DNA. I like it."

Check out some free Warren Ellis goodness at Freak Angels, a weekly webcomic set in a post-apocalyptic steampunk London. its fuckin' great!
Theres a load of his work to recommend, but some of my favs have been his runs on Hellblazer and the Authority, his superhero stuff Ultimate Galactus, Iron-man: Extremis, some of his own creations like Desolation Jones, Fell, and his recent novel Crooked Little Vein. Check his wikipedia entry for even more info..

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posted by sideb0ard at 10:58 AM 0 Comments

Monday, June 2, 2008

dubstoned EP preview

i have a wee Funckarma mp3, sort of like a megamix of their current Dubstoned project, including the upcoming EP1 plus stuff from EP2. Grab it from here.

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posted by sideb0ard at 4:59 PM 0 Comments

Monday, May 12, 2008

milk factory review and funckarma release + shows..

yo, bit of quietude on here - just back from a lovely five day trip to glasgow.

straight back in at work today which was like a cold shower wake up call! Actually it was pretty fscking warm in the office, so thats not the best analogy. but aye, loads going on!

magnetism is moving out - lovely review over at The Milk Factory - "Not quite a compilation but more than just a simple roster showcase, Magnetism, That Electricity demonstrates the wide angled approach of Highpoint Lowlife and its utterly modern vision. With only three hundred copies of this double EP pressed on vinyl and a hundred CDRs, this is yet again a released that should be snapped up before it’s gone for ever.". A few others in the pipeline too, which i'll post up as i hear.



Funckarmas' "Dub Stoned EP 1" is now underway. Mat finished the artwork yesterday and i received the audio masters tonite, so i'll check over everything and get that sent off by wednesday. I want to make sure we have that pressed and ready in time for the June show. I've managed to confirm a Bristol show as well at The Cube cinema - same lineup with Ikonika and Fisk Industries too. I'll confirm all detail on it and post more details, date should be friday the 27th June.

aight, well, i've been packing orders all evening and fancy a wee sit down relax for a while now!

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posted by sideb0ard at 11:55 PM 0 Comments

Friday, May 2, 2008

On Air



we had a lot of fun doing the Wire show on Resonance last night! thanks loads to Susanna for having us along. We were on for about 40 minutes, talking shite and playing some music! I'll see if i can get a copy of the show from Susanna and post up an mp3 of it at some point.

Got another gig booked for Funckarma today - They're going to be playing in Bristol at the Cube Cinema on June 27th. I'll post more details as i have them..

I downloaded something from Boomkat the other day, which i've been playing obsessively - Daru & Renas' "Turn It On" - its totally R'n'B pop, but the production is awesome, its like Flying Lotus with En Vogue singing over it. Prob not everyones' cup of tea, but yeah, i been bumping it from first thing in the morning and all day at work! It reminds me of Lucy Pearl, an RnB supergroup from back in 2000 that i first heard on holiday in Hawaii and fell in love with. Hmm, need to dig that album back out..

mm, long weekend ahead and then the Magnetism vinyl is due to arrive tuesday! rar!

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posted by sideb0ard at 6:13 PM 0 Comments

Saturday, April 19, 2008

magnetic news and requirements of a modern

I received the "Magnetism, .." testpress copies yesterday - they sound marvelous, so i've given the go-ahead to the pressing plant. Assuming it all goes well at that end, finished vinyl should be back in 10 working days, and on schedule to be mailed out end of April. dang, i can't wait. I went round to my friend Bills house to give the vinyl a listen as he has an excellent sound system - the bass is amazing and the production sound of everything has come out really well. rar!

... and Future BIG news - i got confirmation for booking Plastic People. Date is wednesday June 25th, and its going to be a launch party for our upcoming Funckarma release called "Dubstoned EP". I'm really excited - without a doubt Plastic People has the best sound-system in east london, and it was the only place i wanted to host the release party. I have Ikonika and Fisk Industries confirmed for support too. The event will be called "Requirements Of A Modern", a snippet of a sentence I nicked from the pages of a Nikola Tesla book i'm reading - I thought it sounded kind of vague enough to be interpreted as you like, but also has a ring of futurism befitting the music!

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posted by sideb0ard at 4:30 PM 0 Comments

Friday, February 29, 2008

upcomings and a month of gigs



First thing: "Magnetism, That Electricity.." is now well and truly under way!
I got all finished tracks, and they're all damn ace! They're now with Twerk being mastered for vinyl. Approx timeline is around 6 weeks - they'll take about a week to be mastered, then the redbook discs will be sent back to me, i send them on to the pressing plant, and if everything goes well, we get 300 copies of shiny double disc heavyweight audio goodness back!
I got some supernice flyers printed up for the release, which should be in the Hyponik flyer packs at the upcoming Bloc weekender - look out for them in your chalet if you're there.

And... super BIG news! I've been dying to announce this, but wanted to make sure we had it all in hand first - FUNCKARMA - yes, the genius Funcken brothers, Don and Roel, also known as Cane, Shadow Huntaz, and Quench - we have a 5 track 12" EP in the works by them named 'Stub Dane EP', which should be out very shortly after the "Magnetism.." release - all the tracks are finished, and are so fucking good its unbelievable - dark, off-kilter, heavy instrumental hip hop with a unhealthy overload of bass. Riffing on the idea of dubstep, basically these 5 tracks are Funckarma's take on dubstep.
If you head over to their site at http://www.funckarma.com/ you can hear one of the tracks in their flash player on the site. Again, its gonna be another heavyweight vinyl release!

aiight, well, almost time for the weekend! In fact, this is the start of a rather amazing month of music coming up - tomorrow sees Rustie here in London with Cylob, sunday Ikonica is playing; tuesday is Autechre; wednesday is the Magnetic Man gig, a collab between Skream and Benga which could be either amazing or total shit!; friday i'm off up to glasgow for Redshape at Numbers with Production Unit and Village Orchestra; and then the following weekend in Bloc! ouch!

[photo taken by Merlijn Hoek]

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posted by sideb0ard at 3:26 PM 0 Comments

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