Blackjack, the magic detective cat.

Blackjack, the magic detective cat.

Every now and then a little memo card comes in the post for Blackjack the cat. He's always up before his owners so they don't know he gets the mail, it’s only the Postie who thinks a person called Blackjack is a bit queer but it’s another piece of his job. On this morning Blackjack got on such memo card... "Dear Blackjack, I would be humbled by your assistance since my Grandfather Waffles has gone missing and we've been unable to contact him. Yours Faithfully, Shimla."

She seemed desperate. Blackjack who stood strong to his true moral heart decided his bowl of Whiskers could wait a few hours and headed out of the house to the address on the card.

On arriving at the house Blackjack gave that native cat meow greeting to call out Shimla, who pottered out looking rather lost and upset. She explained that her Grandfather Waffles had been kidnapped and she had a ransom note demanding 1000 litres of fish paste. No cat apart from the Kitten of Brunei could afford 100 litres of fish paste!

On looking at the note Blackjack deducted it was a male cat from the aggressive tone and claw writing style. He decided however based on the lack of information in the note, further investigation would be needed and Fred owner of Das Tot Maus Bar would be the ideal informant...

Blackjack told Shimla to stay home and he'd sort the whole thing out. Das Tot Maus Bar was on the other side of town, a rough neighbourhood full of multiple seedy characters. The interior of the bar was dated and unclean, Blackjack however had himself a double Cream on the Rocks. He drank it in one and began to speak with Fred.
"How's business Fred?", "Slow Mr. ...jack, no one really comes here now. I only ever see you when you want information?", "I'm sorry Fred about the business, some information would be appreciated and I could give you some extra income for your troubles?", "What you wanna know Mr ..jack?" Blackjack shows Fred the note and it turns out he knows about the matter...

He's a mean one, don't know his real name. Everyone calls him 'No Tail' on the account of a bad scrap once, he lost his tail but the other cat's dead. I heard this old guy Waffles had created a crazy invention that will change the world of cats. All I can give you is No Tail lives down by Dockyard, dock number 17. Blackjack handed over some Kitty Treats, thanked him and headed towards the dockyard.

The docks were another notoriously rough area, stalked by Sailor Cats. There was a large group of Sailor Cats on the end of dock 17, it appeared the SS Pussy was back and its crew were on shore leave. The crew seemed ready to unleash pent up sea anger with a good bout of fighting, this didn't worry Blackjack who was a high level belt in the ancient art of Catjitsu.

One of the crew, Baggins, shouted at Blackjack and demanded some action fresh from his battles against the sea. Before Blackjack could reply Baggins was swinging his huge fists about like the huge oaf he was, a quick cat kick and paw swipe to the neck rendered Baggins unconscious The rest of the crew parted like the Red Sea when they saw what Blackjack was capable of, he continued his journey to the end of dock 17....

At the end of the dock was a large ominous looking warehouse. Blackjack found a backway in that was unguarded. He heard voices behind the massive crates. "Only you know how to work the device, you must tell us how to use it." "NEVER! You want to use it for evil!" "Haha, you know my kind too well. If you don't I will eventually kill you with all this torture." "I'd rather die than unleash your twisted mind on the world!" "Very well..." Some horrid electric noise was made and there was an awful smell of burning fur. Blackjack looked from above the crates to see No Tail with his henchmen flicking a switch which sent electric currents through a wire coat hanger Waffles was strapped to. On a table was the device they were talking about, it looked like a walky talky in a collar.

Time to put this mistreatment to an end, thought Blackjack as he jumped into the centre of the action.
"WHO ARE YOU?" screamed No Tail.
"I'm here to rescue a friend and put an end to your shenanigans. Now! You either let the device and Waffles go or else!" replied Blackjack.

"Oh hahaha, you are going to stop me and my henchmen? I'm keeping both and you're going to be dog meat. Henchmen attack!!!"

Half a dozen henchmen flew at Blackjack who sprang in the air and used the surrounding crates to bounce off and unleash chops and kicks. Within minutes him and No Tail were the only ones standing. "Right, time to finish you properly!"

No Tail ran straight at Blackjack who with a swift kick launched No Tail out of a window into the sea. Through the sea howls you could remotely hear No Tail screaming as cats do when dropped into water.

"Time for you to see Shimla!" said Blackjack to Waffles who was slightly burnt but very thankful to be going home. Blackjack picked up the invention, they left and walked along the dock which was getting misty now with sea fog.

As they walked Blackjack's Great Uncle Jasper suddenly appeared in a fog. This was bizarre because he'd been dead the last 2 years however in Blackjack's line of work nothing surprised him anymore. Great Uncle Jasper said that kitty heaven was great but he'd foreseen a horrible future where Waffle's invention had been used for evil purposes and cats had enslaved the human race! Some humans are indeed evil to their pets however the majority are not and we should live in harmony. The invention needed to be destroyed! Waffle's agreed with Jasper, if one evil cat wanted it for bad uses imagine what the rest might do. And with that Waffle's took the invention from Blackjack and tossed it into the sea, the caustic seawater instantly blew up the invention’s circuitry.

Blackjack and Waffles walked to Shimla's house talking about the whole ordeal. When the pair got outside the house Waffle's asked how he could repay Blackjack, to which Blackjack replied "Its my job, as long as you're safe and sound that's my repayment." "There aren't many cats left like you", was the response as he went in the house. As Blackjack walked home he caught a glimpse of a happy Shimla hugging her Grandfather, which warmed his heart as did the thought that his bowl of Whiskers was waiting at home for him. Fini.

Von Rutter Ping Pong Delay

Ping Pong Delay is a digital delay that uses two short digi chips in conjunction to give a longer sound.
Although digi tends to = cheap Mr Rutter has tried to play to digitals advantages, get analog type sounds and attempted to deliver additional benefits/functionality not always offered by digital or analog delays. Its a complex little beast to get a grip of espically if you've only used a basic MIX/REPEATS type echo.

There are two on/offs a true bypass for tone clarity and effect on/off, both must be on for it to work however the effect switch off allows feedback trails to continue and fade off.

An Expression Pedal is offered to remote control the feedback level of one delay chip, allowing for self osc craziness.

The size is nice, about 2 MXR style boxes stuck together. Gives enough space to allow both foot switches to be depressed but allows it to be small enough to fit on a crowded pedal board.

Having the two chips allows for dual repeat times and adds a bit of complexity to the standard setup, they are both linked to the same feedback.

There's a few toggle switches to add features. A bright/dark switch (a low pass filter) to change the sound of the echoes, the dark effect gives something like a tape delay repeat. A type switch, selecting an echo type gives echo echo echo trails and a ping pong type sound with a single repeat.
Finally a switch to select whether to use the effects loop or not. The effects loop, like you would find in an amp, allows a series of pedals go before the delay circuitry (allows tone junkies to open up all kinds of possibilities and end with the delay as you'd expect). Its a shame the effects loop isn’t a stomp switch since being able to select the loop without bending over would have been handy, its a nice feature though.

With all these functions its a nice little delay that's different enough. Overall it does feel like its not totally sure what it is though, a digital delay like the Akai E2 provides a low pass filter, trailing echos with tap tempo or a MXR Carbon Copy provides similar length analog delays with dark delays. The Akai doesn't have true bypass, the MXR doesn't have trails so maybe a half way house like this is a gap.

Being from such a limited edition batch (this was among the first he produced) its not likely many of these will ever come up but its nice to have something documented on it somewhere.

Von Rutter produces all kinds of pedals now either singly in MXR style containers or dual ones like this in the bigger enclosures, he seems to have rectified some issues with this pedal on newer ones. He allows you to mix and match various circuits from what he's produced (e.g. a fuzz into a delay). You could do worse than to check out his current range ...

Burford Electronics 'Cybertron'

I recently came across this little beast on an ebay mission, described as ring modulator esq sounds with a filter sounded like a good addition to a skronkers pedal board.

Having now got it, the 'ring mod esq' is firmly in the 'esq'. The 'Cybertron' takes your guitar signal and modulates it with an internal oscillator, giving a synthetic quality to the original guitar signal.
"What are you talking about? Your ring mod article a few months ago described this concept as ring modulation." you say to yourself. True this is ring modulation; however there is some additional circuitry at work.
There appears to be some find of mild fuzz circuitry in the mix along with the VCF (voltage controlled filter). Unfortunately you cannot adjust the fuzz level, gain or colouration.
A gain control overall would have been a nice addition since there is a slight volume drop, but on the plus side there is a noise gate in there so no osc sounds leak out while you don’t play.
The VCF switch adds a sweeping sound based on the pitch you play at, it adds a bit of variety to the box and definitely helps make it a more skronky number. When the VCF is off its usable as a half way house between modulation and fuzz, plus it doesn't sound exactly like anything else you'd have got your teeth into before. It seems to work best picking individual notes or power chords, however it isn’t monophonic so you wont get confused circuitry sounds if you hit two strings at the same time.

To my mind the 'Cybertron' feels like the guitarists useable mxr blue box, its doesn’t do the octave down thing but you can make weird noise that still sounds like a guitar. Alan Exley at Burford Electronics has designed this specifically for guitar it feels, unlike similar effects (refering to the blue box, again) you can't use that many other instruments on it other than stringed numbers with a pickup or a keyboard (i tried an analogue casio number and it sounded sweet).

The 'Cybertron' is no longer made as 'Cybertron', probably due to the Transformers franchise connotations. Reading up on the Burford Electronics site at projectguitarparts.co.uk I think 'Techno lo – fi' is probably the closest match, it seems the VCF on/off is now an adjustable pot, which would be better, and you have some control over the fuzz colouration.

I think if you're after something a bit different there are plenty of options out there, however a gander at the Burford site might be a starting place, esp when Alan's boutique pedals are available at a reasonable price compared to the Z Vex

The Internet Hates You...

The Internet Hates You And Everything You Do. James Cole.
You used to be a little band, playing a few gigs locally, building up fans, working on your material. You were aiming for bigger gigs in bigger cities. You wanted to get noticed, first by journalists, then by the record labels. Maybe not the big ones, but you thought you had a fair shot at a credible indie label. You were a growing fish in a small pond and you had every intention of being in the right place at the right time to upgrade to a bigger pond, with gravel, and bitches. Then you posted your music on the internet.
It seemed like a good idea, didn’t it? The Arctic Monkeys did it and went straight to number one. Besides, it can’t hurt to let people hear what you do. Maybe a few more people will come check you out live. Perhaps even a journalist or label scout will come across you and accelerate your rise to that coveted third slot on the Rhombus Stage at Glastonbury. You never know your chances, right?
True. And it’s entirely possible that these things could happen. However, let’s have a closer look at those chances. Roughly 1.8 billion people have access to the internet at this moment in time. Even acknowledging that the bulk of those come from Westernised democratic countries (sorry Somalia, you can have broadband when the last man standing lets us know it’s calmed down a bit), it seems reasonable to assume that a screamingly small percentage of those 1,800,000,000 people are music journalists or record label minions. It’s much like real life in that respect, only in real life you’re still far more likely to be in the right place at the right time. Stepping up to the internet and hoping you’ll be noticed is like taking a piss in the Atlantic and hoping it gets to Boston. Two years ago Google announced that it had found and cached one trillion unique urls, and the indexable web as it stands has a minimum of 25 billion pages. It’s a big place.
At this point you might be thinking “Shit. I’m going to need to stand out in some way”. You would be right. In my personal opinion this boils down to one of two things, either:
a) A gimmick, which you create, send to your friends, post wherever you can and which, you hope, will go viral and get you noticed, or:
b) Being really fucking good.
Guess which one of these is most popular. Now guess which one works. Hint: it also works in real life, too.
Any number of bands have gone online with their music and their gimmick and had a crack at winning the hearts and minds of everyone who sees it. Well done them. Every time I get an email with the subject line “OMG you HAVE to see this band video!!” I know I’m about to have an encounter with a group of wannabe rock stars and the things they’ll do to their dignity in order to make it. It will be buried under a ton of After Effects ‘magic’, and it will probably feature some attempt at humourous self-deprecation, which I guess at least cuts out the middle man. Even the best gimmicks rarely work, the classic example being Ok Go. They’ve released two excellent YouTube videos, one featuring a treadmill dance, the other a Rube Goldberg device timed to the song’s beat. These guys are clearly bright and creative, but did it benefit their music? No. The first video helped Here It Goes Again to creep into the bottom of the top forty, the second is widely considered to have had a negligible effect on the sales of both the single itself and the album it came from.
At this point you might justifiably be thinking that some successful bands have gimmicks. To some extent I would agree with you. I would, however, point out that none of those gimmicks were created for, or based on, the internet. They also tend to belong to those who also fall under the category of being really fucking good. Kiss dress like tin foil wizards on stage. Is that their gimmick? No: their gimmick is looking like Hogwarts Vice and being really fucking good. David Bowie used five or six different personalities in the seventies. Was that his gimmick? No: his gimmick was a slightly cracked mind and being really fucking good. Gimmicks work if, and only if, they are part of the character of the band and backed up by genuine talent. Kiss are show-offs, and it works, because they’re very good at what they do. Bowie is a chameleon, and it works, because he took that side of his personality and used it as a channel for his musical gifts.
Back to the internet, then. What happens to the average gimmick? If you’re lucky, it does go viral. People pass it on, watch it, are entertained by it, and then forget about it. If you’re unlucky, well... Remember those 1.8 billion net users? A significant proportion of them will delight in your inadequacy. I know. I’m one of them. And either way, you lose, because the entertainment value is all right there in the gimmick itself. Whether it works or not I don’t need to click on your homepage and listen to your music, because the gimmick gave me all the amusement I needed and it didn’t cost me anything. Why should I pay for your product when I can just wait for the next viral video to entertain me instead? The internet has plenty of advice on how to create your own gimmick, so I can reasonably assume I won’t be waiting long.
I don’t understand where this desperate ‘look at me’ style of internet marketing has come from. I genuinely believe you are no more likely to be noticed on the internet than in real life, and significantly less likely to be noticed at all unless you fulfil the really fucking good clause. There are constant references to the Arctic Monkeys being the start of a period of internet discovery, but they weren’t. And they didn’t need a gimmick. They just put their songs online and enough people thought they were really fucking good. If they’d turned out to be a fifty-something man who liked the adoration of teenagers we might be telling a very different story, of course.
None of this means that I’m in any way against the use of the internet for musical purposes. I just don’t think it’s being used properly. By all means maintain a website and have your songs online to listen to, even to download if you want. A free song for your new fans isn’t going to hurt you at all. Just don’t go online expecting to get discovered, and definitely don’t go online with the intention of ramming your gimmick down people’s throats. I hate that, and by extension, so does everybody else. The internet has opened up a million useful possibilities for your new band: you can create band merchandise, get your records duplicated and packaged, get your recordings properly mastered, and get in touch with venues and promoters much more easily. The internet has given every band the advantages previously only available to the wealthy or to those on labels, and it has had the added bonus of increasing competition and thus lowering prices. This means you can get out there gigging, making real fans, and attempting to beat the real competition of other bands by doing the one thing you can do that makes you stand head and shoulders above the 1,799,999,999 other people online.
Being really fucking good.

5 things that happened at ATP.

1 Whilst being stoned off my face and mid-taking a shit, someone kicked the door open to see me vomiting into their toilet, with my jeans around my ankles. When I encountered her later we pretended nothing had happened. It was horrible.
(Even so, I would still rather have seen this debacle than the one gig of theirs I went to - especially if he drowned in his own chunks for an encore...)
2 Not a good thing - sleeping with my ex-girlfriend who I had split up with a month ago, then went out with again 3 weeks later, then split up with again one week before this happened. Then I tried to get back with her the next day. Kind of ruined the festival...
(No, not a good thing - still, tell anyone and everyone about it anyway, including the millions of readers of this fanzine. Cocksucker.)
3 Discovering my ex-boss was a bit of a wanker. He met two girls and they invited him to their chalet. He then returned, angrily mumbling that ‘the least he expected was a fucking blowjob’. I avoided speaking to him for the remainder of the weekend.
(Yeah, what a complete cunt - he sounds like the sort of heartless prick who would sleep with his ex-girlfriend who he had split up with a month ago, then go out with again 3 weeks later, then split up with again one week before this happened.)
4 Watching my friend Pierre get his haircut by his friend (Andrew from Youthmovies) who was stupidly drunk. He grabbed his fringe and cut it from about 1cm away from his head then made awful progress with the rest. We said it looked good and ‘a bit Eastern European’. It was shit. Basically just shit.
(Considering how stupid their chosen hairstyles currently look, one can only imagine what kind of turmoil Andrew from Youthmovies must have inflicted on their spotty bonces - unless that is the haircut they're talking about. You have to give them credit for not beating about the bush when it comes to name-dropping though - most people would have chosen a decent band, or someone who was still actually relevant.)
5 Wrestling with my friend Tom in various places. Like at the bowling alley, where we somehow evaded the clutches of the security guards by running and jumping over nearby slot machines. We also wrestled in the chalet and upon knocking my friend’s White Russian over, started the biggest argument over a drink I’ve experi- enced....We’re all friends now though.
(Discuss the homoerotic undertones in the above passage - two gawky teenagers grappling with each other, resulting in the spilling of a milky liquid over the carpet. Also, experienced isn't hyphenated.)
About the band:
Ice, Sea, Dead People are three students who occasionally play a recognisable riff amongst some white noise and screeching. Their hobbies include wanking into the free posters in NME, getting their mums to iron their jeans, and buying signed photographs of Tony from Hollyoaks on eBay. Despite this, they are still preferable to Shield Your Ears.

Craig Sharp. Additional Critic by Judge DamnAtioN.

Misogyny v Feminism, we thought having a look at the two polar opposites would be fun…

Bukowski’s Women.
This novel is Bukowski at his most misogynistic where he has had some success with his writing, no longer need do menial jobs to pay rent and mainly involves around several long relationships and multiple one night stands under Bukowski’s Henry Chinaski pseudo name.
There’s parties, there’s girls, there’s the horse track, there’s women but above all there is a lot of drink and not a lot of references to continued writing.
Some of the misogyny is fairly tame compared to authors such as Henry Miller, William Burroughs or even the authors own short stories however I picked it for this article since he occasionally flips position to a few of the ladies points of view where he is regarded as just a lecherous drunk or when visiting a lover upstate and fails to ‘get it up’ one even he is sent back home like a dog with his tail between his legs.
The famous Bukowski humour is in there as always for instance where his psychotic ex ‘Lydia’ find out where his new girl friends place is;
“I’ll go and buy more liquor. I’ll stay the night with Nicole, maybe a couple of nights.
I bent over picking up the glass when I heard a strange sound behind me.
I looked around. It was Lydia in the Thing. She had it up on the sidewalk and was driving it straight towards me at about 30mph. I leaped aside as the car went by, missing me by an inch.”.
When you begin to add up the number of girls who randomly turned up at his door you begin to wonder why considering he was relatively unattractive, liked to argue, a drunk however he was a mean street beat writer and told it how it was from his view point.
Despite Women being notorious and Post Office being his most acclaimed work I’d recommend Factotum, Ham on Rye and his short stories as Bukowski’s more essential and initial reading, but this is from someone who likes a good pop song and places ‘Women’ in high regard.

Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.
Mystique is touted as one of the 1960s most prolific insights into feminism. The concept is that housewife Betty Friedan investigated what her college mates got up to post college via an open answer survey and interview questions.
Her conclusions were that although the suffragettes had won the women’s right in the 1920s the girls who grew up post world war two had taken many of them for granted.
She puts across many good arguments in favour of this with her primary source material and secondary sources from other anthropological, sociological and psychological studies. Regarding the parts of the psycho analytical material “Finally!”, I thought to myself, “This middle aged woman has managed to explain some Freud in layman’s terms!”
The section that is often quoted is goes along the lines of housework done by a housewife needs the intelligence of an 8 year old child, therefore additional productive tasks should be done by a woman to give strength and growth.
One piece of secondary source material she quoted I found intriguing was;
“Many girls will admit that they want to get married because they do not want to work any longer. They dream of being taken care of for the rest of their lives… it usually concerns a man who has the strength of an indestructible, reliable, powerful father, and the gentle , givingness, and self sacrificing love of a good mother. Young men give their reason for wanting to marry very often the desire to have a motherly woman in the house, and regular sex just for the asking without trouble and bother…”
I feel this is still true today if you were to interview the readership of The Sun.
Perhaps due to the age, started in 1957, of the book aspects such as Autism are not fully explained and she has a bizarre argument on homosexuality beginnings (but does not end the argument) by explaining it is due to over mothered sons. I found this latter debate particularly bizarre, especially considering there is no reference to female homosexuality.
The first half of the book starts well, giving a relatively unbiased approach (in that women are sometimes as much to blame as men) however it goes astray along the way but the last two chapters are excellent reading.
Overall this is a good introduction to feminism but should be read with a large healthy pinch of salt.

Gakken Analog Synthesizer. SX-150.

Gakken are an educational company based in Japan who among other things produces a magazine line where the reader gets a project each issue. Unlike the tat English equivalents where you build a boat over 100 issues these contain the full project and an encyclopedic style guide with Hello magazine style interviews with Japanese celebrities who demoed the project.

The issue I bought was the SX150, an analog synth gakken had built from scratch.
Its very easy to assemble (screw the wires onto the board and plug in batteries), the magazine had lovely pictures and histories of analog synths but I don’t read Japanese so its wasted on me, but the synth is what I wanted to demo.

The size is that of a Stylophone and control is similar, there are no specific notes (vague black arrows pointing towards low/mid/high) on a pitch based ribbon controller (a carbon strip you touch the pen on).

You can set the Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO) to Triangle (higher tones) or Sqaure (bassy tones) and the Rate it works at (the LFO section tends to be my personal favourite piece of any synth). The Attack and Decay effect how quickly the sounds start and end respectfully. Pitch Env controls how much the pitch is affected, low is minimal and high gives crazy lows to highs. Cutoff sets the sound filter as does the Resonance, which both effect the overall sound. There is a 3.5mm output jack and 3.5mm input jack to use the synth as a kind of filter type guitar pedal. Finally a power of low and high is also provided, low uses a lower current draw that gives less amplitude but saves on battery power.

Having owned analog synths (MS10 and CS10) and a stylophone I was very excited to find it is like having a crazy etchasketch style analog synth in the palm of your hand.

Admittedly the number of controls are limited but given the value and size of it is a lovely thing to have. Its not going to replace your analog synths and would be a toy in comparison but to someone who would like to get into analog this could be for you, a nice gateway into that world esp if you don’t plan to use it as a main instrument.

Dare I say it Moog enthusiasts this is more fun than the Theremin, gives a better range of sounds and probably better value for money.

In Section K we use the Gakken SX150 as an additional synth to the MicroKorg (boo hiss, digital!) both have their advantages and disadvantages, one is £200 more expensive, wooden paneling and can store sounds!

Having said that plug through a pedal chain and a looper box you could get some great tunes out of this beast. Well recommended.

On another note Gakken have several other musical projects including a pitch based
Theremin and 8 Bit Computer that you can use as a sequencer! Check them out.