I don’t think we’ve said anything on PCS yet about the massacre at Virginia Tech this week. It goes without saying that everyone here, and hell, everyone across the nation, is shocked and disgusted by what happened, and wishing the best for the victims and families of those affected by this.

But that hasn’t stopped some opportunistic assholes from attempting to use the emotions this tragedy has brought out in all of us, to further their own hateful agenda. And yes, I’m talking primarily about Jack Thompson, that wacky Ace Attorney from Miami, on a mission from God to protect the good American citizens from the corrupt morals of Italian plumbers everywhere.

I know gamer public opinion is divided as to how to handle Mr. Thompson. It’s not like we don’t see through his attempts to remain in the media spotlight by any means necessary, in an effort to become “the guy” network news calls when someone around a boardroom says “Hey, someone dig up a guy to talk about video games hurting America. Can someone find a guy?” And a lot of us see this attention whoring, for lack of a better phrase, and figure the best way to combat someone looking for attention is to ignore them. You know, like a child throwing a tantrum in a grocery store.

I must have been going to a different grocery store when I was a kid, though (or my tantrums were something else, something of legend, or so my mom would have you think). Because if I threw a tantrum, my parents didn’t ignore me until I got bored of screaming at no one. They’d slap the shit out of me. All I had to hear was my dad says, “I’ll give you a reason to cry,” and it was like pressing my internal mute button. Maybe that’s why, as an avid, habitual video game player in his 20s, I’ve never once felt the urge to go out and kill some hos, even though, as I’ve said many times, I do love me some Grand Theft Auto. I couldn’t even throw a good-natured public tantrum without my dad teaching me what I should or shouldn’t be crying about. I don’t even want to imagine what he’d have done if I was violent. It probably would have involved the words “I’ll show you some violence!”

Anyway, my opinions on Jack Thompson are the about same. We can’t afford to ignore this guy, thinking that we’re “beating” him by not giving him attention and showing him that we don’t care. Because Jack Thompson doesn’t really care about what we think. He’s not talking to us. We, and our opinions, even as good productive adults who contribute daily to society in a variety of ways, don’t mean a thing to him. When he gets on these cable news talk shows, he’s not talking to us, he’s talking to the rest of America, the people too ill-informed about video games to really know any better. These are people who have never YouTube’d Thompson’s courtroom antics, or read his absurd, hateful public letters to the gaming world. All they see is a nice looking man in a suit who says he’s a lawyer, saying something on a forum that gives him an air of authority. And the informed public (meaning, you know, us) being quiet and staying out of his way is exactly what he needs to keep being given a soapbox to preach from.

So this is what gamers do. They get their shit together. Kotaku forwarded their exposé on Thompson’s bold-faced lies to MSNBC before his latest interview, giving Chris Matthews a little harder Hardball to throw at him. It was the first time I’d ever seen anyone on these cable news programs take the guy to task, if only a bit. It maybe put a little more doubt in the mind of the housewife watching Virginia Tech news that video games could be to blame, and put a ding in Mr. Thompson’s credibility that people other than ourselves (who are already clued in to his lunacy) could see.

And May 5th, in New York City, a group of gamers going by Empire Arcadia will attempt to get their voices heard as well. So, via GamePolitics:

We will protest, mourn and show how real gamers play videogames peacefully and responsibly.

This demonstration is to show that gamers will not take the blame (for) this tragic (VA Tech) matter but we will do what we can to help put an end to terrible events like this.
We… urge that all leaders of gaming communities, organizations down to the last gamer to set aside 10 hours of this day to pay respect and come together not just as gamers but as HUMAN BEINGS for peace. Bring your Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and Playstation Portables. Bring your favorite games to link up and play with your friends. Tetris, Tekken DR, Mario Kart and more.

Here’s the MySpace event listing.

And there you have it. Saturday, May 5th, at 1pm, Bryant Park (42nd St & 6th Ave) in New York City. And seeing as we’ve got more than a few New York-based writers and editors here at PCS, we’ll be there to cover this event, let you know if it’s a positive public relations move on the part of gamers, helping dispel the image that we’re all overweight anti-social shut-ins waiting for our own moment to lose our sanity and murder innocent people because of our preferred choice of interactive entertainment, or this rally just a sad excuse to finally find 3 other people to play Contact with.

Regardless of how it turns out, I consider this rally to send a much more positive message than the attempted “No playing FPS” memorial day some other gamers had planned (which, in my mind, implies that there’s something negative about playing an FPS in the first place, that we should feel guilty enough to stop for a day in memorial). And seeing as I’m usually in the park playing my DS on lazy spring Saturdays anyway. . .

I don’t know if we’ve got any sneaker fiends out there, but I just came across this on some website that probably has something to do with music or fashion. Looks like Puma will be collaborating with A Tribe Called Quest to release a Tribe-themed Puma Clyde. It’s going with the red, black, and green lines you see on the Tribe character, kind of what you’d expect.

I mean, personally, some of these kinds of shoe designs I like, even if I know I can’t actually pull them off myself. I mean, that picture above? In the header? The guy playing pool in a bar? That’s me. I just don’t know if I can rock the red, black, and green. It’s not like my MySpace name is Spear of Africa or anything.

Still, sorry for the weak picture of the Tribe Clyde, seems to be the only one I can find. I’ll see if I come across any better images during my usual attempts at dodging the Friday drudgery at work by looking up footwear.

And, hell, because I hate posting anything that doesn't have a song or two to check out, here's some Tribe, compliments of YouTube. First, in honor of my new(ish) iPod. . . notice anything in the "Bonita Applebum" video similar to a certain ad campaign? Too bad they didn't just use "Bonita Applebum" for the commercials, it sure as hell would have beat that shitty U2 song they were playing for a while. Not that I want to ruin this moment with talks of U2.

Then how about a little “Oh My God”? I just put it in one of my own mix-sets the other day (the vocals go nice with a certain Dabrye track, though we can get into that another time), so I’ve been listening to a bit of Midnight Marauders again lately. And the video has Busta going kind of crazy. Work checking.

And, even though I don’t have any real story behind it, hell, “Electric Relaxation” is just a nice track.

These days, with the Big 3 hardware manufacturers out-hyping themselves in addition to each other (see: Sony) in an effort best convince the public that there’s a console war going on here, you can’t swing a dead cat by the tail anywhere on the internet without hitting a forum full of fanboys showing off the latest in lame console case mods and paint jobs. I mean, really. It’s like graffiti. Just because I respect the meaning behind it doesn’t mean there aren’t still a lot of really shitty pieces out there for every nice burner you see (sorry, it seems I’ve been watching Style Wars again lately). Hell, I guess that’s a lot like music too. Or anything, really.

Also, does this mean I can call myself a “war reporter” now? Always wanted to do that.

But I’ll leave the “deeper meaning in art” discussions to my hipster roommate who works at a fine art gallery in Chelsea. He likes that stuff. For those of us who don’t need to put the word “fine” in front of “art” to make it meaningful, there’s these custom, hand-painted Wiis. As part of a joint project between Udon, Magic Pony, and Nintendo of Canada, these gorgeous pieces of Wii-art will be given away in a sweepstakes exclusive to you Canaidions. Which is a real downer for those of us here in New York City with kind of a thing for video games and maybe more than a few Street Fighter comics lying around our apartments. If you know anyone like that. And I’m not saying you do.

I’ve cut out the images and artist blurbs below, so you can check these brilliantly styled Wiis out while side-stepping the need for any further clicking. Unless you want to pick around their their rather suave (but Flash) website, or are one of our lucky neighbors to the north that actually gets to enter into this contest, then you can head right on over to http://theartofwii.nintendo.com yourself. And if you do live in Canada, enter this contest, and happen to, you know, win two of these Wiis (it could happen!) and are feeling a little guilty about your luck and feel compelled to give it away, you can reach me at dylangarret (at) gmail (dot) com. Or my home phone number. I mean, I’ll totally give it to you. I really like that Tsang Wii. I know beggars can’t be choosers, but I’m just saying. . .

Enough of that. Let there be jpeg:

Man, is this a painful Monday morning or what? It’s 11am and my body is still failing to get it’s shit together. I don’t know what to tell you. My usual gigantic morning coffee from the bodega below my apartment didn’t really do anything, and neither did the fact that there was no cigarette to go with it while I walked to the subway because of something I told someone over the weekend about me and smoking cigarettes. I won’t get into what I said, just that it was something alright, and something that means I won’t be having cigarettes with my morning coffee anymore, because, really, who the hell needs one that early anyway? This isn’t Cowboy Bebop. I’m not Spike Spiegel. Hell, Spike Spiegel isn’t even Spike Spiegel. You think anyone could smoke that consistently and still pull all those aerial moves without getting a little winded during the second half of the episode? Christ.

Hell, I don’t know what I’m saying. Man, I’m tired. Mondays. God.

Anyway, dublab really came through for me in kindness this weekend. Got a nice little care package with some beautiful things, a nice hand-made silk-screened dublab tote bag, some assorted CDs from Stones Throw and Plug Research, and a small pile of Stones Throw swag. Not that all the stickers and tote bags in the world can do a damned thing to this Monday morning. No, for that I’ve been kicking it with an mp3 CD the Labrats sent me holding most of their regular DJs’ “Best of 2006″ sets.

So that’s where we’re at today, on this Monday’s edition (hah, makes it sound like a regular thing) of The PopCultureShock Soundtrack. Been battling a Monday morning hangover to some smooth beats from Kutmah’s 2006 retrospective. It’s perfect for this kind of morning, a morning overcast with a little bit of rain, and a morning in serious need of some low-end.

So check this set from Kutmah. I mean, really, it’s that good. If you think you got an idea of what the guy was about from the last set of his we posted, really, you’ve got to click that little embedded player below and hear what this new set is about. You might pick up on some nice tunes from last year you didn’t otherwise hear. He mixes pretty nice too. A lot of downtempo electronica, a lot of hip-hop instrumentals (some of them so funky you’re not even sure if they were ever even supposed to have vocals), a lot of smooth, chunky beats in the vein of Dilla, Sa-Ra, Umod, Ammoncontact, and the like, though seeing as this is the one set I don’t have a playlist to, it’s your guess if any of those guys are actually on this set (I just remember hearing a couple of Dilla songs). And if Mondays need something, it’s a little bit more of the smooth and chunky.

For those still a little green around the record crates, for this set try and think, maybe, about something that sounds like it could have been pulled from an episode or two of Samurai Champloo. It’s nice. And he does this crazy little bit during the second-half where he puts together a bunch of 45 RPM records at 33 1/3, to give it this crazy sort of downtempo tip (never played Nomo’s “Nu Tones” at 33 myself, though I love the track so it was kind of crazy to hear sneak up in the set). But rather than sit here explaining it, it would probably be easier to just give it a little click and see for yourself.

So here you go:

Kutmah’s Best of 2006 from dublab.com
kutmah_best_of_2006.mp3

I’ve got a lot more of these sets, though I’ll probably be hand-picking good ones every now and then to put up here in the PCS blogroll, try and give you all a little something to freshen up your playlists, and a new soundtrack to waste time on the internet to. Myself, after playing out this Kutmah, I’ll probably be putting on some more of this Guther album I’ve been telling myself to check out. Never was too big on the Morr stuff at first, but it’s been growing on me. Then again, it’s definitely a Morr Music kind of Monday Morning.

Keep it easy, and hope you all have some good listenings this week.

Updated: 04-02-06

Well, it looks like the NiGHTS sequel is now officially official, not just the result of skillful internet detective work. NiGHTS producer Takashi Iizukia gives today’s quote:

“It’s been 11 years… A long silence is broken, and NiGHT flies into a new dream world with a new story and on a new platform called the Wii…”

Though the source page is in Japanese, you can catch Kotaku’s blurb here, which basically says exactly what you just read.

Now. . . REJOICE!

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Hot off Kotaku, it looks like all fear and speculation can be put to rest, as the sequel to the Sega Saturn un-classic NiGHTS Into Dreams has been (more or less) announced. As stated in the article, no hardware has been announced yet (just some teaser images that are seriously not a joke for real now), although industry speculation (and an upcoming NiGHTS-themed issue of Official Nintendo Magazine in the UK), have it leaning towards the Wii.

I repeat, NiGHTS. . . on Wii.

Man, I have such good memories of biking three miles to the nearest Toys R Us every day after school to play the demo of NiGHTS as much as I could before sunset, back when the Saturn came out and I was a poor young man without the means to get my own. NiGHTS was the only thing that could make that bike worthwhile. I mean, it certainly wasn’t the Taco Bell next door. And on the Wii, the only system that could still make NiGHTS still seem as fresh and original as that special day back in 1996 when we each grasped that oily demo Saturn controller for the first time, and started flying through rings.

Hell, here’s some old-school gameplay footage via YouTube, just to kick up some memories. Check back for more updates as they come.

Thanks to my boy minusbaby for the heads up on this one. The classic 1983 graffiti/hip-hop documentary, Style Wars, is up in its entirety on Google Video. I guess it makes sense, it was made as a Public Arts-sponsored/PBS project after all.

I watched it again last night, probably my 4th or 5th time seeing it, and it’s still brilliant. Comics (which this website has deals with more than a little bit) are obviously about the art, and have their own unique connections to urban culture. And now, compliments of the internet, you can get down with a pretty legendary film about one of the most important underground artistic movements in New York here. I think I might pick up the DVD when I get the chance, I hear it’s only $15 these days. A nice look at graffiti and hip-hop culture in the early 80s.

Now I just have to finally get around to seeing Bomb The System. Hey, El-P did the soundtrack, and I hear it ain’t half bad.

Anyway, after you catch the movie, or before, if you’re interested, you can check the new Style Wars website, winner of a few web design awards itself. You can buy the DVD there, if the movie interests you.

I’ll embed the video below, along with a link to the Google Video page itself, in case you’d like to watch it with a better screen-size. If you’ve never seen Style Wars before, here’s hoping you have time to check it out.

Style Wars (1983) on Google Video.

So I’m sitting here at work, at a desk in a warehouse in New York City, where I just took an extended lunch break that wasn’t so much spent eating lunch as playing Lost In Blue 2 for the Nintendo DS.

The game found its way into my dirty little hands a short while before the official release date. It’s not so much that I have deep rooted connections in the video game industry, dodging journalistic embargo dates like a man with a mission to spread the gospel of good games. I’m just a guy in New York City who just happens to frequent an underground game store here or there, game stores that don’t mind hooking a guy up with an early copies of of a game or two, as long as that guy is the type of guy who already stops by a few times a week to sink what’s left of his pitiful paycheck into reasonably priced imports.

I. . . feel like I’m projecting there, a bit, about that paycheck. I did say I was at work. Anyway.

So! Lost In Blue 2! I’ve checked GameRankings where, at the time of this writing, one review has been collected. It was from GamePro, a site so goddamned ridiculous in an unentertaining sort of way, I won’t even bother making a link of it here. The score was a 1.5 out of 5. The author’s byline says, and I’m not making this up, “Hamster4Sale”. I don’t know. Call me crazy, but I have a tough time looking for thoughtful games critique by a guy who signs his articles “Hamster4Sale”.

Not that you should look for thoughtful games critique here either. This is just a blog post. But there’s some content in there somewhere.

So how about some first impressions? I mean, at the very least, I can jump on the main problem our hamster-selling friend had with Lost In Blue 2; this game is pretty hard. Or maybe that is to say, it’s got a steep learning curve. For those who haven’t been keeping up on their gaming news, or maybe didn’t get a chance to play the advanced demo at the New York Comic-Con this year, I’ll try to break it down for you.

Lost In Blue 2 starts off with a shipwreck. Your ship. Or the ship you’re on. It doesn’t really matter who owns it, the point is, the pretty boat sinks, and after a few cutscenes you wash up on the beach of a deserted tropical island (is there any other kind?). Walk a few steps and you’re greeted with another cutscene. You meet a girl who was also on the same boat. She just so happens to be a senior in high school. Hey, that’s your age too! What. . . what are the odds?

I bet she’s single. I’m still early in the game, but I’ve got a hunch. As an aside, I’d love a game where I was trapped on a tropical island with a beautiful woman my age, only to be told halfway through the game, “I’m sorry, I already have a boyfriend.”

Anyway, so you’re there, she’s there, and then you’ve got to. . . survive. That’s what this game is about. Lost In Blue 2 is a survival game. I hear the first Lost In Blue was too, but I never played that myself, so I can’t really say much about it.

“Survival” is represented by three meters on the top screen of the DS, telling you each character’s hunger, thirst, and stamina. The percentages shown over these icons decrease with time, until you can barely see that coconut you were attempting to eat because it’s covered by the constant word-bubbles from your character saying, “She is starving!” “She is thirsty!” “You are worn out!”. This isn’t really a complaint, it’s just how the game works. When one of your survival meters bottom out at 0%, you start to lose HP. If more than one bottom out at the same time (stamina and thirst, or hunger and stamina, or, god-forbid, all three), your HP falls faster. If either character’s HP reaches 0%, you’ll be back at the title screen in no time, forced to watch the same prolonged boat-sinking cut-scene over again, unless you were smart enough to hit the quicksave button before realizing you don’t know how to start a goddamned fire.

I. . . wasn’t so lucky.

Notice, back in that last paragraph, I didn’t write, “The percentages shown over these icons decrease slowly over time.” There’s nothing slow about how fast your stamina, hunger, and thirst gauges fall. In fact, it’s obscene. As a person who gets very hungry on a daily basis here in New York City, well hell, it’s kind of patronizing. Someone who can’t deal with eating less than 17 meals a day while shipwrecked on a deserted island doesn’t deserve to escape. Though I’ll be damned if that’s gonna stop me from trying on their behalf.

That’s because I’m really not bitching about Lost In Blue 2. I like this game. I like that, within 10 minutes of turning the game on for the first time, I was sending a text message to my girl saying, “Both my characters just starved to death. Or dehydrated. Or something. It’s a goddamned toss-up with these bastards.” I couldn’t figure out how to make a fire. I figured there was some sort of flint involved, but I was wrong. The instruction manual, which the same girlfriend is always telling me to actually start reading (I know, I know, I should), wasn’t very helpful. It tells you how to walk, run, and maybe dig around in the sand for clams or other edible things. The rest is basically up to you.

So what I’m trying to say is, Lost In Blue 2 seems to be a game for people who like steep learning curves. I’m that kind of person. I mean, I feel like I get it. The game is trying to tell me there is no goddamned instruction manual for being lost on a deserted island. I’ve been playing the game the same way I’d play out that sort of situation in real life; make it up as I go along, and try to assume what the next step would be through some measure of common sense.

After finally building a fire and grasping the basics of harvesting food and water, the game became a hellish sort of juggling act. While you’re running down to the stream to fill up a bottle of water for the girl who is sick in the cave (after you cooked up some bad mushrooms for lunch), you have to be aware that your own food level is decreasing as well. And so is your stamina, from all that running. Maybe you could walk a bit to conserve energy, but take too much time, and she’s going to start losing HP. And once you get back with that water, and you’re both all nice and hydrated, you think maybe you’ll rest for a minute to recharge your stamina, only to find that doing so makes you use up all the water you just drank, as well as whatever menial food credit you got for those bad mushrooms. For the first few hours of play (almost a week in game-time), I don’t think I managed to bring a single character’s food level above 20%, not even once.

But you get the hang of it. Soon you’re looking for fire wood one day, and maybe you have the gall to explore a little further out there on the island, and you find a stick that’s a little different from the other sticks you’ve been using to build fires. You sharpen that stick and are surprised to find it makes a hell of a spear for fishing. So after a week of being stranded on a desert island, you get to lay off your steady diet of roasted seaweed and coconuts, and get some grouper up in you. You may notice your hunger level has improved dramatically. And maybe you found a bottle to keep some spare water in, and this makes you feel a little bolder, and you wander a little further away from your home base (a cave) on the island. Soon you’ll be finding better food, and more tools, and maybe you can start to think of a way to get off this island, instead of worrying about what you’re going to eat or drink all the time. Maybe, you’ll finally think of a way to ask that girl if, when you get off the island, she might just want to go out and get a real dinner with you sometime.

Or maybe just find out if she already has a boyfriend.

But, hell, it’s still pretty early in the game for me. Maybe something about it will drive me crazy later on. For now, it’s been worth the $30. I mean, it’s not like we’re talking about an overpriced 360 or PS3 game here. It’s the DS. You can afford to take a little risk here and there on a strange sort of game that seems kind of interesting.

The graphics aren’t bad to look at. They can even be downright pretty here and there. The controls and menu options are pretty intuitive. The concept is lovely. And the minigames, which make up most of the “action”, are pretty entertaining; I never feel annoyed at spending a few seconds digging around in the sand with the stylus to find that freshwater clam, instead of just pressing a single button, a la Animal Crossing. Spear-fishing is a pretty fun way to earn your meals, and you’ll probably feel kind of hardcore when you get the hang of it and start picking off grouper with lighting-fast reflexes, and start bragging to your girlfriend who lets you know, as politely as she can, that she really doesn’t care because she’s busy playing her new copy of Cooking Mama for the Nintendo Wii. Having to play the fire-starting minigame each time you want to cook or sleep, well, it makes you feel, if only just a little bit, like you had to earn that meal.

And that’s what it’s about — feeling like you’ve had to earn what you get out of the game. You have to work your ass off just to enjoy the privilege of being able to explore the island a bit. You could say it’s the yin to Grand Theft Auto’s yang. Grand Theft Auto rewards you for simply buying the game. It rewards you for being a person who loves the sheer act of playing video games. Getting a fast car requires no more effort than standing in an intersection and looking for something fancy, then pressing the “Jack Car” button. And god knows, I love me some GTA. GTA and I have had some very tender moments together, over the years.

But, while GTA is about thanking the player for being a person who plays video games, by giving them a game where they’re entitled to do anything they want at any given time because it’s a video game, Lost In Blue 2 is about teaching the player that every decision they make comes at a cost, even in a video game. If you’re not ready to understand the cost of each action you make, of every step you take further away from your home cave or the freshwater river, well, you’ll find yourself back on your ass at the title screen in no time, without even a simple “Game Over” for your efforts.

So I guess what I’m saying is that Lost In Blue 2 may be your kind of game, if you like the kind of game that can make you frustrated and tired and feeling like you really need a cigarette after you finally make it through another day. It’s like watching an episode of ER, based on the two or three episodes of ER I’ve actually watched; afterwards, you feel like you just got off work yourself. Some of us really like that in games. Games that make us angry. Games that make us feel like we’re failing because we, as players, aren’t doing our jobs properly, not because poor design cheated us out of anything. Games that make us think about each action we take, before we take it.

So far, Lost In Blue 2 isn’t a shining example of all these ideals, but hell, it’s a start.

Shock Value, based on, you know, a few hours of play. . . B-.

Well, it’s finally happened. Flying Lotus has been signed to Warp Records.

Look, as a man who links all things Dublab (whose In The Loop series always seemed to be a precursor to the Sound of LA series that first introduced most of us to Flying Lotus with the stellar “Two Bottom Blues” – I’ve never been quite clear on the business relationship between Dublab and Plug Reasearch, but you can check the track here on this live DJ mixset I recorded last year in SoHo, NYC), a man who is also a staunch supporter of Plug Research, I’m not going to act like I’ve been on the edge of my seat waiting for this guy to move to greener pastures. I like Plug Research. I think Flying Lotus was the perfect fit there.

But hell, we’re talking about Warp here. Warp goddamned Records. Let’s be honest with ourselves; Warp has always been one of the most consistent independent labels regularly putting out music. They misstep here and there, but hell, I’m not going to act like I’ve never trainwrecked at a club in my life either. All in all, Warp is about as solid as a label in their position can be. They make pretty good on what’s expected from them. And it can’t be easy dealing with what’s expected from Warp goddamned Records.

I’m playing with the italics a bit there. You know, for tone.

Anyway, the point is, Flying Lotus’s debut album, 1983, was one of the best albums of 2006. Yes, the buzz was nearly louder than the album itself, louder than when you get to that really good part of “Pet Monster Shotglass” (you know that part with the chimes?) where you have to crank it the hell up. I mean, what can you do? Even Lotus’s aunt (sadly, recently departed) is the too-brilliant-for-adjectives Alice Coltrane. There’s some musical pedigree at work here. And his album deserved it. Hell, I’m still listening to the thing pretty regularly, and I may possibly have the shortest attention span for music in the history of ADDJs. The point being, I’m taking this move to Warp on good faith, and you probably should too. Good things will happen.

However, this is supposed to be setting up a news post, not an album review. But you know how we do. There’s gotta be some free beats involved. So let me toss this one out there first, Flying Lotus’s remix of Mia Doi Todd’s “My Room Is White”.

Mia Doi Todd – My Room Is White (Flying Lotus Remix)
Mia_Doi_Todd_-_My_Room_Is_White_(Flying_Lotus_Remix).mp3

And in case 3 minutes and 3 seconds of music isn’t enough, check this DJ set from Flying Lotus and Samiyam, otherwise known as FLYamSAM, recorded live on BTS Radio .

FLYamSAM – BTS Radio Recording, Feb 20th 2007.
flyamsam_special.mp3

You can grab the playlist and graphics for that set are up on Bridge & Causeway, or BTS Radio’s own site.

And, while you listen, you can catch the official, much more sterile press release below.

. . . via Warp Records:

We are delighted to announce the signing of L.A. based musician ‘Flying Lotus’.

From Flying Lotus: “Warp is the absolute best home for my work. They know that there’s a lovely thing goin on in L.A. so by being their first L.A. artist… I got a lot of work to do.”

www.warprecords.com

Reposted from the Bridge & Causeway, and hot on the digital heels of dublab.com’s “Bring Us Back To Broke” fundraiser (whose goal it was to simply bring dublab’s bankroll back up to $0, and no longer in the red), I’ve got three new mixes to prop here, compliments of the Labrats. Hopefully they won’t mind us linking these “Proton Only” sets here on PopCultureShock (intended for people who donated to the last fundraiser), because there’s some really nice tracks in here. Check about 8 minutes into Frosty’s “Mutantes” set for the tune I’ve been rocking here in the office all morning, trying to stay warm dancing to while a late-winter sleet-storm ravages New York City outside my window.

Seriously, it’s cold out. Here’s the means to stay warm:

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Frosty’s “Mutantes” Proton Mix

frosty_proton.mp3

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Kutmah’s Proton Mix

kutmah_proton.mp3

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Nobody & Plastic Nancy’s “Holiday 2006″ Proton Mix

nobody_plastic_nancy_proton.mp3

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(Pictures taken from the dublab Flickr.)

And there it is. Really, I have a longer post/article in the works about dublab. It was meant to prop the “Bring Us Back To Broke” fundraiser, but seeing as that’s now passed, I’ll try and find another reason to wax philosophical about local music fighting injustice in cities unfairly stereotyped in one way or another (coming from Miami, I’ve definitely got some feelings about that). But we’ll save that for next time. For now, just enjoy a few hours of nice tunes you might not have heard otherwise. And really, listen to that song 8 minutes into Frosty’s set. It’s dope. And if you know it (or want to sell me the 12″), hey, feel free to drop a comment with the name. I’d like that.

So, I was heading home from Queens late last night, after catching another outstanding episode of Heroes, and the season finale to the generally-hokey but well-meaning White Rapper Show. I don’t have a TV, you see, so I have to soak up as much pop culture as I can when the opportunity arises, to, you know, try and keep myself relevant.

Nearing home, I walked past Barcade, a local Brooklyn bar/arcade, and it made me think of something that needed to be posted on PCS. Barcade, for those not in the Brooklyn-know, is a bar with a wide-selection reasonably priced microbrewed beers, and a slew of old arcade machines — Donkey Kong, Rampage, Tetris, Smash TV, etc. My favorite might be the old-school Star Wars cabinet (remember, with the wire-model towers and the “trench run”?). It’s two-credits for a quarter. Pro-tip: Most people don’t know they actually get two-plays per quarter, so they leave after just one. Most of the time, you can just walk up to the machine and find half-a-dozen credits already built up by however many drunken hipsters attempted the trench that night. Barcade is just that kind of lovely.

What I’m trying to say is, if you haven’t seen it already, you should really watch the CollegeHumor original series, Street Fighter: The Later Years. It’s filmed in my neighborhood, you see. The arcade Part 1 opens up in, that’s Barcade. It’s something that gives me a little rush, though I suppose you should watch it because it’s a surprisingly funny series made by some cool, geeky, and yes, talented people. I mean, really, this thing is much more well shot than your average YouTube video-blog. And having it set in my neighborhood made me love it a little bit more. I imagine it’s like a band turning on the television and hearing one of their songs as background music in a television show about something else entirely.

Only, you know, I didn’t actually do anything. I just live here.

Anyway, enough talk. If you missed it the first time around, here are all three parts of the very click-worthy Street Fighter: The Later Years. Who needs a TV these days anyway, really? You may have seen it already, but this post is sort of my own little silent offering, a prayer in hope that Part 4 isn’t too far off. And Capcom, if you’re out there listening, please hire these guys to make your next Street Fighter: The Movie. I mean, you’re writing about a mutated Brazilian beast-man who electrocutes people with his body. You cast Van Damme in the lead roll last time around. You don’t have to try to make this shit Shakespeare. No one ever played Street Fighter II to completion because its plot. Try to have some fun with it.

Street Fighter: The Later Years Part 1

Street Fighter: The Later Years Part 2

Street Fighter: The Later Years Part 3