So we’re sat in The Conservatory having a pint on a friday night. The DJ ends his set with I might as well plug the album. Its called Trouser Jazz and its been out a while.

BLOODY HELL! That’s Mr Scruff! Playing in our local!

About 24 hours later, Owen and myself are at the town hall for his proper gig. Pete was supposed to be joining us, but unfortunately he was stuck at some family do or other. Its safe to say that he missed out, big style.

We had a fantastic evening, spent chatting at the bar to various random people we hadn’t seen in ages and dancing to one of the most random mixes I have ever come across. A nice selection of classical jazz standards, mixed in with various cool rhythms from around the world. Then just when you thought it was safe he’d chuck in some big and bouncy hip-hop number or some classic techno. This was of course sprinkled with Mr Scruff’s own tunes — Spandex Man went down a storm. The graphics up on the big screens were ace too. Classic Mr Scruff imagery mixed in with a selection of fantastic slogans like Wobble Those Legs!, Drink Tea!!! and Big Up Cheltenham Massive.

Before we left Owen bought a tea towel and I got myself a nice mug. I’d probably have bought a teapot too, but they were a tad expensive.

All in all a quality night out, despite the lightning and torrential rain on the way home. It was quite amusing watching people absolutely jump out of their skin at the sound of thunderbolts.

I was reading Jeff Croft‘s latest post about just how much he thinks mobile companies are going to rip people off to download music over their networks. In the comments, Jared Christiensen asks a perfectly valid question:

Why on earth would anyone want to buy music and listen to it on a cellphone?

Well as of right now, I don’t think you would. But lets look forward a little bit.

There are current generation mobiles that are able to play mp3 (etc) music files, and have 32mb or so of memory on board. Some of these can even extend that with flash memory cards. What’s more, you can get 4gb flash cards these days. It won’t be all that long before they become relatively cheap.

Add those two together and you’ve got a mobile phone with 4gb of storage that’s perfectly capable of playing music. Do you see what we’ve made? That’s absolutely right: Its an iPod mini phone.

No doubt its got a colour screen, a camera, a basic organiser and some games on it too, not to mention the bluetooth capability. Its a wireless iPod photo mini phone. And lets be clear on this: It won’t be too long before these things sprout hard drives, giving them proper amounts of storage.

The iPod will be well and truly out of a job. After all, why would you carry an iPod (or whatever) and a phone about in your pocket when you can have one device that does the job of both? That is why Apple have hopped into bed with Motorola and created the iTunes phone. They can see exactly where the smartphone market is going. Its going to trample all over their biggest market.

Of course that doesn’t necessarily answer the question Jared posed. That one’s obvious: Because you can!

I’d never even heard of Starflyer 59 until Jon Hicks went mad and plastered them all over his site. I eventually caved in and had a look at their site, which has exerpts from their new album “Talking Voice vs Singing Voice“.

I think I’m going to have to purchase it. They sound a bit like a post Kelli Dayton Sneaker Pimps crossed with New Order … or something. I like it either way. I’ll let you judge for yourself.

Going Native by Descent World

The long awaited new DVD from Descent World came through the door this morning. If you’re not into your bicycles and your dirt you’re not really going to be up for this, bus as you may well be aware I’m somewhat fanatical about the things.

I’m happy to say its a pretty good video. Not quite up to the high standards of Earthed or The Collective, but pretty damn good nonetheless. There’s a little too much dirt jumping in there for my liking, but that’s offset by some lovely footage from Fort William, Innerleithen, Dunkeld and various other tracks around Europe. Its always nice ace seeing the professionals blasting down tracks and being able to say “I’ve ridden that!” in a way that you really can’t with most of the videos coming from the States and Canada. The only real problem is that its not long enough.

Luxembourg by The Bluetones

A while back, The Bluetones had the audacity to release a new album without telling me! The bastards! Still, I got a copy of it eventually, and the early signs are that its a stormer. Its edged Evil Nine out of my work PC’s CD drive for now anyway.

Its a different sound to their previous outings, this time they’ve gone a bit rocky and electro. For me that’s a good thing – it seems to work well with their dependably great lyricism. I’m not going to say any more until I’ve had a chance to listen to it a bit more, but thus far I’m enjoying it.

A while back I bought Adam Freeland’s album and visited the record label website on a whim. There I discovered Evil Nine, a couple of breakbeat djs who were working on an album. Unfortunately, the record label went bankrupt (apparently through no fault of their own).

Then a while back, Marine Parade records popped back up onto the scene – complete with Evil Nine and their fantastic single Crooked. The album “You Can Be Special Too” seemed to be available but I couldn’t find it and I forgot about it for a while. A couple of weeks ago I spotted it on Amazon, and ordered it.

I can’t be bothered to write a review – there’s plenty of others being complimentary about it (AllMusicGuide, PlayLouder, HKClubbing, InTheMix) and others who aren’t (TheScene.com.au).

Suffice it to say that I’ve been listening to it pretty much ever since. The new Chemical Brothers album that I bought at the same time hasn’t even been played all the way through yet!

You might well remember The Grey Album – where a DJ mashed up Jay-Z’s Black Album with The Beatles White Album.

Well now a certain “dj BC” has done the much the same thing, except that in this case they’ve mixed The Beastie Boys with the Beatles, to create The Beastles — and early indications are that it works quite well.

[Don’t be at all surprised when that link falls off of the face of the net… via Nick Bradbury]

Crooked Nines

I’m loving the current Evil Nine single, Crooked. Now its got an ace new video.

Gizmondo

Stupid name, cool gadget, nice looking website with some cool little features (just don”t look at the code beneath it).

Now, I know I said it was a nice site earlier, but its not. I clicked on the music link and got told “The site you have tried to enter requires Internet Explorer 6 (or better)” — the thing is, I am using something better than IE6! Rubbish.

The Marriage of Presentation and Structure

One for the web geeks amongst you: Ethan Marcotte‘s Presentation from Web Design World 2004. Built using Eric Meyer’s S5 – its like Powerpoint for the web.

Ten million users

Mozilla Firefox is downloaded 10 million times in just over a month. That is very very impressive work.

Google to buy lots of scanners

The libraries of five of the world’s most important academic institutions are to be digitised by Google.

All of my CDs are now in iTunes. Rock on, quite literally. Methinks I’ll be needing something slightly bigger than a 20gb iPod…