The Meccano Grape

The Meccano Grape is dedicated to the future of brands, communication and culture. By Simon A. Carr. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-8246827-2']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

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“The military is easily capable of adapting to change, but they don’t like to stop anything they feel is making their lives easier, or is to their benefit. And this certainly is, in their eyes, a very quick, clean way of doing things. It’s a very slick, efficient way to conduct the war, without having to have the massive ground invasion mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan. But at this point, they have become so addicted to this machine, to this way of doing business, that it seems like it’s going to become harder and harder to pull them away from it the longer they’re allowed to continue operating in this way.

https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/the-assassination-complex/

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What's the most overrated film? Amelie - it's a lie from start to finish. I hate the portrayal of this young lady waiting for the perfect love and being so naive, being an absolutely boring child. And I hate people who love that film too

Jehnny Beth, Savages

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I can’t give you the life you want 

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Wetherby

“I only know goodness.

And anger.

And revenge.

And evil,

And desire.

These seem to me far better words than neurosis and psychology and paranoia.

These old words.

These good, old words have a sort of conviction which all this modern apparatus of language now lacks.

We bury these words.

These simple feelings.

We bury them deep.

And all the building over that constitutes this century will not wish these feelings away.

If you can’t feel them you might as well be dead.”

https://youtu.be/m2LK-7vlkrk?t=4877

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“It would be hard to say whether the jukebox caused the death of human speech or whether music came to fill an already widening void - but unless the music is stopped now, the human race, mumbling, snapping its fingers and twitching its hips, will sink back into an amoebic state, where it will take a coagulation of hundreds of teenagers to make up a single unit of vital force - which, once formed, will only live on sedatives, consume itself on the terraces of football stadia, and die”

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Imogen Heap: saviour of the music industry?

In our age of Spotify, most artists fail to get a fair deal. But with help from coders, Imogen Heap is leading the fightback

“I want hackers to take my song, and then try whatever they want, to use it how they want, and to work out what we can do. We’ll see what they come up with, and take it from there – working together to build an open platform for everyone.”

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Interview with Banksy about Dismaland

You’ve described a lot of the work as ‘post-modem’ can you explain what you mean by that?

I came up with the term and now I’m desperately trying to work out what it means. Post-modem is art that has high click potential, that invites being shared between people. This usually requires the art to have at least two parts; ‘embroidery – but into car bonnets’ or ‘a mushroom cloud – that’s also a tree house’. I think the internet puts greater demands on art. You could call it ‘gimmicky’ if you like, but I think that misses the point. We have a new medium for sharing visuals that rewards novelty, insight and humour, but also recognises technical skill in a way modern art has ignored for fifty years.

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Variable Rewards: Want To Hook Users? Drive Them Crazy – Nir and Far

Variable schedule of rewards is at the heart of the Hook Model. Users are naturally curious and are on the search for rewards, which helps create habits.

The power of randomeness

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I salute the future

‘I’ve spent the last years of my life working in commercial media: that is, information packaged for consumption in order to make money for large organisations… Most of what you read and hear is produced in accordance with these “package-consume-money” conditions as we are encouraged to live not our own but others lives. This is not an entirely irrevocable fact of life in our present state. From my work I now understand that mainstream media seeks to ignore any Truths as much as it can. This force, with such power over our lives, actually prevents us from realising certain root facts — we all die, and virtually everything presented to us on this material plane is one long trivial diversion and denial of that fact. There is, of course, considerable pleasure in trivia, in consumption — otherwise it wouldn’t work — but it is important to realise that our life is temporary and that the way we live is a temporary state — brought on by various economic and social forces — and that, contrary to the propaganda, we needn’t and won’t live this way much longer. This realisation is at once terrifying and liberating…

Our society — and we too — work by pretending that ours is the only age; the past, the future do not exist except in terms of the present: the best work is that which doesn’t remind you, but puts you into other, future, past, alternative present ways of thinking and being.

I salute the future. We are taught today that there is little, that there is nothing. If only we knew it, there is everything and anything.’

— Jon Savage, The Tape Decays, London/Manchester, 1981

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Rare VHS of the seminal Metalheadz Sunday Sessions @ The Blue Note. 

Not the best quality but one of those treasures that Youtube sometimes throws up. 

As London’s club scene is ripped apart and turned into flats and cafes this is a ghostly transmission from the past of what the future could have been. 

Tracklist:

Peshay - Fight them

Lemon D - Going gets tough

Die - Special Request

Dillinja - Unexplored terrain

Sirenes - Deep end (Grooveriders Deep mix)  

Ed Rush & Fierce - Locust

Rufige Kru - VIP Riders Ghost

Doc Scott - Shadow Boxing

Nico - Omen (direct cut)

J majik - Your sound

Codename John - The Warning

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RUFF SQWAD : GRIME 

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On The Wire 30th Birthday Show featuring Demdike Stare Mix

Demdike Stare exclusive mix

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Interview: Regis

It is what it isn’t. It’s not just about the sonics and structure it’s about how much game I bring to it .. It’s not about past or present, it’s about the experience of the experience .. aka Repetitive Club Noise

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Chasing Perfectionism: An Interview With Source Direct

Few have crafted electronic music as virtuosic, as moving and as futuristic as groundbreaking drum & bass duo Source Direct did in the late 1990s. In one of his first interviews since returning to action, including a set at Fabric tomorrow, Jim Baker speaks to Harry Sword about Source Direct past and present, searching for futurism in sound, and the tantalising prospect of new music on the horizon

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The death of privacy

Sharing is the norm online, and secrecy is out. But what is the psychological and cultural fallout from the end of privacy, asks Alex Preston

Sitting behind the outrage was a particularly modern form of disquiet – the knowledge that we are being manipulated, surveyed, rendered and that the intelligence behind this is artificial as well as human. Everything we do on the web, from our social media interactions to our shopping on Amazon, to our Netflix selections, is driven by complex mathematical formulae that are invisible and arcane.

"THE STREISAND EFFECT" 

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Hardcore Activity In Progress - Regis: 20 years of Downwards

Pioneering UK producer and fearless sonic explorer Regis drops his bruising no-nonsense techno live at the Knockdown Center in Queens.

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To be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world - and, at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything know, everything we are

Marshall Berman - All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience Of Modernity