GWSP Mix 0909 - Kapitolina

New mix from Kapitolina featuring some new Fluorescent and Kapitolina tracks along with Glass Candy, Rude 66, Legowelt, Front 242, DJ Hell, Renegade Sound Wave, Trans Am and more.

Tracklisting
The Chameleon - Glass Candy
I Found My Shit At the Metro - Fluorescent
Cocaine Sex - Renegade Sound Wave
Touched By The Hand Of Dub - New Order
They Walked In Line - Rude 66
Headhunter - Front 242
Shogun (Serge Santiago Remix) - Marcello Giordani
Control (I'm Here) - Nitzer Ebb
Molecules - Trans Am
Exotic Ladies Of Birobidzhan - Kapitolina
Kick In The Eye (Fernando Mix) - Bauhaus
Black Bass (Dirty Version) - Legowelt
U Can Dance (Featuring Bryan Ferry) - DJ Hell
I Lost My Shit At Transformers - Fluorescent
Sensoria - Cabaret Voltaire

Awake (Extended Mix) - Fluorescent

Fluorescent have contributed a re-edit of 'Awake' for the soundtrack to Australian designer Lui Hon's Summer Spring 2009/10 collection. You may remember him as a contestant in Arena's Project Runway Australia season 1.

Link > Lui Hon

Awake - Extended Mix by Girls Who Smoke Poke

Running up that Putin - Kapitolina

Sampling iconic imagery and fucking with context is one thing avant guard artists like Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol gave us. 80 years on, sampling is certainly a lost art.

Just ask the Avalanches how much of a cunt it is to create an album from samples in a litigious world. But back in 'the day' it was a piece of piss to make a career from sampling. That was until dudes like De La Soul were getting their asses taken to court by looser old singers who felt like their artistic integrity were being stolen - yeah right.

From the mid 80s, pasty white british boys from Cabaret Voltaire to The Smiths, Renegade Soundwave to Pop Will Eat Itself were doing some fine versions sample based tracks - which sat aside from more well known hip hop bands in LA or NYC. I used to get such a buzz when you'd be watching an old film like Withnail & I - you'd instantly recognise a part of it from, sit up and say 'That's on that Ride track! - that was awesome!'.

Nowadays it needs to be more obscure - like geeky documentaries or foreign language television - so you don't get yo bitch-ass burned (or write about it in music blogs, even).

But I think its fucked that any photographer, designer, artist or musician would want to take somebody to court for royalties lost from sampling. While plagiarism will always be the last bastion of the untalented - referencing, sampling or re-appropriation of any released audio are artistic statements with their own integrity and should be treated as new creative statements free from fear litigation. Be flattered and take the good with the bad - pop should eat itself.

So allow me to mix Peter Gabriel's vocals from Kate Bush's 'Running Up That Hill' with samples taken from 'Putin's Russia' over some big ass acid house beats.
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Coast Is Clear (Kapitolina's Pills, Now I'm Sick Mix) - Curve

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Originally released in 1991, 'Coast Is Clear' was one of the most amazing tracks from the early 90s 'shoegaze' era. Curve consisted of guitarist Dean Garcia and british goth beauty Toni Halliday on vocals, who's husband also happened to be one Alan Moulder - the curator of all things shoegaze - famous for his production with The Jesus & Mary Chain, Ride, My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver, Depeche Mode and (...gulp) NIN.

What is unique about this track is how Moulder sculpted the electronics, guitars and vocals - it was the one moment of this genre when these three sounds actually melded together as a cohesive texture; perhaps the Underground Lovers' Leaves Me Blind, Cocteau Twins' Heaven Or Las Vegas or MBV's Soon achieved this - but I don't think to the same stadium effect. Taking the 90s wall of sound interpretation to a more futurist context with electronic beats was a necessary investigation in 1991.

Moulder was assisted by Flood on the first Curve eps - who interestingly had worked with Martin Hannett on New Order's dark and beaty 'Movement' LP and Douglas MacCarthy's Nitzer Ebb in the late 80's. The temptation to fuse acid house and techno with guitars has always been fraught with danger with good reason; while Curve's early records were quite successful it would unfortunately lead to that defining sound of NIN that would send goth into the dark ages and sadly consume good people like Gary Numan.

The airy and angelic vocals of Halliday defined a femme vocal style that would sit alongside bands such as Lush, Cocteau Twins and Underground Lovers. Halliday would later appear on a track from Leftfield's debut album. But Curve would soon become to rely too heavily on the potential mass appeal of her vocal, and when the songs ran out - the tracks were just bad goth.

Bloody hard track to dj out nowadays with all the high-mid range frequencies flattening out the track and becoming razor blades to the ears on a big PA - but that was point, no? Pretty slow for dance music at around 98bpm - but I often forget how slow late 80's dance - like Belgian New Beat and Acid House was. But maybe that's a good thing. While this edit struggles to provide any definition to the afore mention noise, it does provide a little more bottom end for beat mixing for those moments when you just want to louden things up.
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Thriller (Kapitolina's Homage) - Michael Jackson

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Here's my contribution to the impending onslaught of MJ rip-off. One bar from his 1983 Thriller single is worth getting on repeat for at least seven minutes for some Jackson dancefloor mutual masturbation. You'll know it from the video version of Thriller - while you're thinking about that video, do check out the indian version on YouTube - it's Kapil Dev with yellow table tennis balls for eyes - what a legacy. RIP MJ.
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Kapitolina on Good Machine Bad Machine - KISS FM

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Kapitolina guests on Kiss FM Melbourne's Good Machine Bad Machine with Not Happy Jan, Tuesday 19th May. Check out downloads section for the 90 minute mix featuring Trans Am, The Horrors, Mount Sims, Alec Empire, Serena Maneesh, Psychedelic Furs, New Order, Fluorescent and some re-edits from Kapitolina's record bag.

Running Up That Putin - Kapitolina (GWSP)
Sleeping Gun - Kapitolina (GWSP)
Pills, Now I'm Sick - Kapitolina (GWSP)
I Was Right - Underground Lovers (Guernica)
Thrash Me - Malaria (Monitorpop Entertainment)
Music For Dogs - Trans Am (Thrill Jockey)
Senses - New Order (Factory)
If You Live Or Die - Alec Empire (Eat Your Heart Out)
Only Shallow - My Bloody Valentine (Creation)
Sister Europe - Psychedelic Furs (CBS)
Graves - Mt Sims (Hungry Eye)
Street Commander - The Voices (Plant)
A Sea Within A Sea - The Horrors (XL)
Your Blood In Mine - Serena-Maneesh (Playlouderecordings)
Unfamiliar - Fluorescent (GWSP)
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So Fine (Kapitolina Mix) - Telepathe

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Telepathe are a curious art-school-pop monster, they tick all the boxes. In fact pick up any 'chic' magazine from summer 2008/09 and you will find them in a four page photo essay, bad jumpers and a glowing elitist review of their debut Dance Mother album. It's a great record - it takes a tangent from the nightclub scene in Blade Runner, when Dekard is trying to get Rachel down to Taffy's Bar - in the background is some egyptian disco-pops that I don't think anybody took seriously as a sneak peak into the music of 2017. But Blade Runner is like that - so is Telepathe - right on the cash for perhaps the first pure modern cultural statement that reflects the futurism of 21st century.

They have an apocalyptic use of synth pads that sits well with their 'I cant sing good and I don't care' vocal style, delivering a boring and disinterested enthusiasm that makes me really excited. They sound like they don't know what they are doing at all and it works so well - only the kind of irony you would expect from from art-school pop; an inspiration for try-hards like myself.
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Kapitolina at Trough Sydney Mardi Gras weekend

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Simon Kapitolina will be djing at Trough Sydney for this year's Sydney Mardi-Gras weekend at Oxford Arts Factory in Darlinghurst, along with Seymour Butz, Matt Vaughan, Sleater Brockman, Dam Arms Djs and Bromance.

Link > Trough Faggot Party - Sydney

A resident dj at Melbourne’s infamous Trough Faggot Parties with an eclectic style of indie dance fused with italo disco, Kapitolina has just begun releasing mash-ups and re-edits through his online label ‘Girls That Smoke Poke’.
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Unfamiliar (Redux) - Fluorescent

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Unfamiliar is the only single taken from Fluorescent's 2008 album 'Winter'; an unusually short song, inspired by the synth bass/drum machine arrangements on Jesus & Mary Chain's 1989 album 'Automatic' and the guitar riffs from Ride's 'Smile' ep. While Fluorescent's music is often intentionally derivative, reviews making more of a link to Gary Numan or The Cure miss the point. Then big american bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Metric come out with the same synth/drum intro and get heaps of airplay, one of the joys of being a minority band ignored in a indie/art/rock city.

"You see, if you're going to do an '80s throwback, instead of subscribing to some falsified chintzy Barbie & the Rockers ideal, why not do what Fluorescent do and scare the Supre kids by pursuing the darker edges of melody, the punchier refrains and the stadium pop impact of the whole array of synthesisers playing the archest riffs this side of gary Numan's on-hold music? This is delish." Clem Bastow, InPress.

Thanks Clem - Synths rock.

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