Saturday
THIS WEEK'S BEATS: 24/10/2009
First up we've got Profisee's collaboration with Eprom, on Cloak & Dagger. Eprom's beats are lush and funky - hailing from San Francisco, he seems to have a similar sonic palette to the LuckyMe artists such as Hudson Mohawke and The Blessings (who provide a BMore-influenced remix of 'Zoning' on the flip.) On 'Zoning' - the EPs title track - Eprom drops some crunchy digidesign synth sounds. They ride a classic boom-bap beat with applied glitches, while Profisee drawls a low-slung, philosophical verse. Simultaneously claustrophobic, dirty, funky and widescreen, 'Zoning' would fit well into any kind of purple / wonky / dubstep set. The b-side, 'What it Seems' is on a squelchier tip - heavy bass and tweaked out cymbal rushes colouring Prof's restrained raps. The other remixes (by Vigilante, Nasty P and RVLT) are also strong.
The Zoning EP by Profisee & Eprom is available as a download, and on vinyl (links TBC).
Next up there's the first single from Edinburgh hip-hop / jazz funsters Stanley Odd. 'The Numbness' is another classic celebration of slacker ethics and Scottish humour from emcee Solareye (ex of D.O.P.E.), and features a lovely summer-y vibe from the Stanley Odd combo's full live band. Solidly commercial but without a whiff of cheese, this is a promising start. Recently, WPNZR watched the band perform at Edinburgh's GRV - they rocked the place and it was packed to the gunnels. Catch these guys live if you can, or:
So apart from these, what else is shaking the walls of the WPNZR headquarters?
Well, we're rocking the cut-up Prince funk and 8-bit thunder-crunk of Hudson Mohawke's new LP 'Butter' on Warp. Speaking of Warp, we've been thoroughly enjoying exploring our electronic roots with the Warp 20 boxset, and we've got some mini-features coming on a few seminal Warp artists (watch this space!). The November issue of The Skinny will feature Texture's cover feature on Warp, including interviews with Nightmares on Wax, Battles, HudMo, Tim Exile and more. Look out for it.
Plus we're still brocking out majorly to Thavius Beck's 'Dialogue' (Big Dada) - read Texture's interview with him for The Skinny here.
We've just started bumping the new record by The Slew (Kid Koala and members of Wolfmother). We'll be interviewing Kid Koala about Slew very soon!
The most exciting thing is, of course, the imminent launch of our own netlabel, Black Lantern Music. More news on that soon - we're approaching the slightly delayed D-Day, and will be spamming the fuck out of you when it launches (not really... we're not spambots, don't stress!).
If you're in Edinburgh tonight, come down to Bar 9 & Reso at Volume! It is going to be loud. Very, very loud.
If you would like to see us review your music on This Week's Beats, please email a download link to editor.weaponizer@gmail.com. This Week's Beats focuses largely on music from netlabels and independent artists.
Tuesday
FLASH - KROKE AND HULDRA
The rather lovely Will Ellwood has just contributed this story - it is the first piece of fantasy writing on Weaponizer! How awesome is that? To quote one of my favourite poets: "...fauns and shit." Yeah!
Magnus stood in the depths of the Northern Forest looking at a giant blue wooden door which had been embedded in the side of a moss covered boulder. He feared this part of the forest as it was the home of the trolls and was the wild heart of the woods ...READ MORE
Ever wondered where the WPNZR lot get their mad ideas from? If so, we've got a special treat for you: if you donate some small change to the site via our Paypal button, Will will release a podcast describing the creative process that went into writing 'Kroke and Huldra'! The podcast will be released when we reach £15 in donations. But wait... there's more! Email us your questions at editor.weaponizer@gmail.com and we will get Will to answer them in the podcast.
Sunday
SLOW NEWS WEEK / LAPTOP DETH / FAIL
This post is by way of an apology - I intended to upload new content to the site every few days, but unfortunately my computer died last week, hence the sporadic updates. I have a Mac here, but I don't know how to use it really... Plus it has none of the useful programs I need on it like Photoshop and FTP Surfer, and being a clueless person when it comes to Macs, I haven't the faintest idea where to get analogues of these for Mac.
Anyway, the laptop is in the post to be fixed, and after this week we should be back up to speed.
Look out for new writers Allan Wilson, Nathaniel Robinson and Grant Wamack in the next two weeks, and the thrilling debut of our new serial 'StillettoEye and RazorGut' by Dwayne Colrtrane and the HyperDeathPsychoRock Three. Plus new stuff from Fran Flett-Hollinrake, Harlequinade, and the mighty Will Ellwood.
Apologies for the delays - normal service will soon be resumed. And if you live in Edinburgh and have a working PC with Photoshop - give me a shout! I'll bring the whisky, we'll have an upload party.
PEACE!!!
Thursday
WPNZR & THE PAPERNET
I'm quite excited about this, not least because it's always satisfying to see our web designer come up with bits of (to me) enormously complex code that perform a simple function elegantly (and work!), but also because a lot of you have been saying that you would read more of the stories on the site if you could print them out and read them in your armchair with a cup of tea.
Well now, you can!
Furthermore, this is the first step to engaging with what Warren Ellis has called the Papernet, a burgeoning DIY / zine movement that aims to produce readable, well-designed and desirable offline content. Our eventual goal with this is to have a monthly PDF-format WeaponZine, which you could then print out and litter pubs, cafes and galleries with at your leisure. For now, the print button simply gives you the story text, with a graphics-free header showing the site and story urls. It's not a desirable Papernet object as yet, but it does exactly what it needs to do.
Hope you find it useful!
HUDSON MOHAWKE
Hudson Mohawke is so hot right now... His debut album Butter is soon to be released on Warp records, and its an ungodly fusion on purple synthfunk, wonky dubstep, low-slung hip-hop and hypercolour neon pop. If there is any justice in the universe, it should be a massive crossover smash, appealing to heads who like their dance music uncompromising and inventive, and mashed-up pillhead fifteen year-olds alike. I'm talking to HudMo for The Skinny today, so you may see the unused parts of that interview appearing on the site soon. For now, go check out some HudMo, and whjile you're at it, check out the LuckyMe crew as well (one of the first music groups we covered here on WPNZR back when it was just a blog).
Wednesday
FLASH - ON THE FUTURE ON A BITE
Ladies and gentlemen, the undescribable, inimitable Harlequinade: rhymesayer, mask wearer, noise merchant, cubist pontomime artist and all-round nice guy. Drop some science fiction, Hq.
His veins burned and the city lights around him swirled into a delirious blur. He fell against the wall bouncing into a pile of ripped rubbish and strewn bin bags; and howled in pain. His eyes bloodshot and veins bulging, he pulled himself up. Not yet, not now. The poised coursed through his veins, outwards from his heart and he knew that he didn’t have long, this was it. But he must get to the Council, they would be about to phone authorisation to fund for Herr Stubbe’s Electinsect Corp., and they must not, they can’t; he needs to show them what will happen, he must persuade them to overturn their decision. The future and the lives of millions depend on it ...READ MORE
FLASH - HERE WE GO AGAIN
Andre Navarro is not only a very talented artist (he even drew the image for this story, what a dude), and our current cover star, he is also a badass writer. He is also from Brazil, and has a mustache that Clark Gable would envy. Which means that effectively, he's cooler than any of us.
"You are going to be born now," said the angel. "So we need you to get ready."
Randy had been enjoying his third daily blowjob and was caught completely off-guard by that ... READ MORE
FLASH - WORK & HELL
Do you hate your job? Not as much as the narrator of Murray Morrison's first short story for us does... Murray went on to write some more stuff for us, most of which is so funny it makes you spit Red Bull all over your computer. That's what it did for me at any rate.
What a fucking trip man. I don’t think I realised till now how many hooman beans Hate their work, how many folk just all but shut down and shoot a great wedge of their lives in the head.
BANG.
I might add that my job is not all sweetness and light… but I inhabit myself while there, it is a continuing part of my story. The sickness is rife though, thousands of us ...READ MORE
FLASH - SOLSTICE CAKE
An old one from the vaults - the first submission from historian and writer Fran Flett-Hollinrake. Just to prove that not everything we publish is extreme and bizarre!
My mother used to make Solstice cake. The recipe was never written down, because my grandmother, who gave it to her, couldn’t write ...READ MORE
Friday
FLASH - IN MEMORY OF MISS SARA SPOONER
Yet another new writer, C. Brian Hickey, debuts on Weaponizer today. 'In Memory...' is a dark, post-modern psychodrama with an interesting twist.
Tina rolled into the house as she had dozens of times before—her shopping bags in her arms, baguettes and pasta boxes peeking out of the top like naughty children, keys jangling. She had lived with her sister Molly and her brother-in-law Chester for about three years now, and she made an unconscious note of how quiet the house was. She flicked the light switch, but the kitchen remained dark ...READ MORE
FLASH - BLACKTOP
Meet our newest addition to the site, Ruzkin. This Cormac McCarthy-esque piece of flash really set my spine tingling when I read it... Hopefully we'll be seeing more from Ruzkin in the future!
We'd been hiking two weeks, inching our way north from Fort Wayne. A man in a rattling old truck picked us up on the side of Highway 24 and took us as far as Toledo. The remaining 70 miles was ours to bear. Hot days getting hotter. The constant tickle of sweat between my shoulder blades ...READ MORE
Tuesday
FLASH - CUISINE MACABRE
"This way then Mr Riva," the maître d' says, leading us through the doors into a room with art gallery-white walls and perfect wooden floors. Every table is full of well dressed diners eating haute cuisine. I feel entirely out of place and become spooked when I see a young man pass out. A waiter calmly walks up to the man and injects him with a hypodermic needle to revive him ...READ MORE
Monday
FICTION - GONE FISHING
Its just gone dawn and in two hours the girls will be arriving to meet each other in ball-based indoor combat. The first games start at a quarter to eight, the first girls will have only twenty five minutes to change into their official tournament kit and get out onto the courts. From that point onwards, however, at least two teams will be showering at any point, either before their matches or afterwards ...READ MORE
NONFIC - ELLE MATHEUSE: FUCK YOU, TWICE
Elle Matheuse has been writing a column for us for several months now, and it is one of the most important parts of Weaponizer. We get a lot fewer non-fiction writers coming our way, so to work with someone of Elle's intelligence and caliber is an honour. Her rapier-like arguments are often controversial but never dull. This particular piece, on the morality of victimhood and tabloid voyeurism, is one of the best things she has ever written.
An elderly woman is thrown to the ground, her handbag ripped violently from her arm, her body left heartlessly to its fate. A hateful act for sure. But let’s consider the facts: she was 82 and visibly frail with it; she hadn’t told anyone she was leaving the house and wasn’t quite sure where she was going; she was alone and smiled at anyone who walked by; she wasn’t used to being in the city and she was wandering around a crime hotspot with a Jenners bag and a walking stick – what did she expect?! ...READ MORE
FLASH - A WALK TO WORK
As you've perhaps guessed, that weird guy was me. I had a really awful job at the time!
The other commuters are pasty and as nicotine-scarred as I am. There is a brief respite from my fellow cancer-chasers as a soft swish of lined coats and a click of kitten heels announces a crowd of secretaries -they stutter past on a cloud of cheap perfume. Theirs is a schizophrenic drudgery- the clarion calls of gossip that they hoot across the office are sustenance to them. They feed on it, while complaining about their lot. Like flamingos dipping for shrimp, today they will stand, one leg cocked, by the photocopier, fluttering curled eyelashes and tossing platinum tresses ...READ MORE
FLASH - THE CRACK
Back again folks, after some site re-structuring and various unpredictable Real Life Events, with more new content to upload, plus some classics from the vaults.
Shane muttered wordlessly in his sleep and rolled over, smacking Jenna with his arm and startling her from her dozing state. His sweating body smelled like vinegar, every molecule of processed, chemical crap in his body forcing itself out through his pores to soak the bed sheets in rank, comedown effluent. She gazed at the ceiling, at the crack which had appeared there above her sleeping form in the cold winter months ...READ MORE
Saturday
Thursday
FEATURE: ANTI-POP CONSORTIUM
In the second part of this week's focus on the best and brightest artists on Big Dada, we're proud to bring you an interview with one of the most influential and respected bands in the history of hip-hop.
There aren’t many other names we could have been called. We couldn’t have been the Whatevers. We have to be called Anti-Pop because it’s a statement about the music we continue to try to make, which is forward thinking and experimental to the core. - BEANS
This is a companion feature to an interview with the band which I wrote for The Skinny.
I also reviewed Fluorescent Black for the paper.
FICTION: UNLIKELY FRIENDS OFF
I have to admit to being especially partial to Dan Black's distinctive brand of imagery-crammed cut-and-paste weirdness. Today's offering, Unlikely Friends Off, is a lucid and bizarre dream-piece: wistful and elegaic, and incredibly evocative.
“Everything’s sacred”, she admits, “From statues of ancient civilizations to cell-phone towers. The rotten diseases and the old Bessie Smith records.” ...READ MORE
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Follow Us
