For those of you who enjoy a little wordplay from time to time and are fascinated by German zusammengesetzte Hauptwörter (Mark Twain loved them too, read his masterpiece “The awful German language“) here’s a little thought:

German composed swear words don’t sound so mean anymore if you just interchange the two main vocals, actually, they sound quite cute.
Some examples.
Schwunzlatscher – Pessnilke – Sickgesacht (haha, reminds me of Bastian Sick) and Flichwachser. Hey, here’s one that get’s even stronger: Wurmdascher!

Saidly enough, it doesn’t work with Flachzange, Vollpfosten or Kackbratze.
Any more creative ideas here?

Picture by Christian Iten & Daniel LüthiAnd here is another interactive multitouch display from the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, Zürich.

If you like this you might also find the following interesting:
Multitouch interaction research at NYU
and the interactive multitouch instrument Reactable

This video is already a classic on Youtube and one of the most viewed music clips. Little kids come to their teachers with this, wanting to play like little Tony Royster who was apparently only 12 years old when he played this solo. Since then, 10 years have passed, Tony has received many awards for his drumming and now plays with a rock group called Lazy Eye.

Kompakt is the label that even more than all other great ones (like Karaoke Kalk, Substatic or Treibstoff) built the “minimal-fame of Cologne”, also with their big distribution network they smartly built over the last years. I personally don’t own any Kompakt records but their DJs sure deserve the popularity. One of its protagonists is Tobias Thomas who is also a music theorist (or journalist) for German pop magazine SPEX.

He plays regularly in Berlin’s Panorama bar and has gigs all over the world. In his mixes he is not so minimal at all, but has a nice feel for some pop, elegiac and hands up moments. Enjoy the following mix (which is not always tight and perfect but very warmhearted and with the real club feeling to it) which was recorded at Kiosk Club in Lille in 2006 and is kindly hosted by Dviason.

Download audio file (killerteppich01tobiasthomas.mp3)

Download

I found this mix via the highly remarkable Dj mixes collection Drogensumpf aka <3 Electro – an almost too overwhelming amount of DJ mixes.

I wrote an article about Scientology on Potsdamer Platz for Hauptstadtblog which has been linked to from different sites and has some nice comments on.

On Berlinale, I visited the Talent Campus and saw the movies that have been produced within the last four days. An exciting and very succesful experiment: Directors, writers, actors, cinematographers, editors and so on organized the projects almost entirely over the internet, you can read their public discussions on the projects site. They come from all over the world, finally met at Berlinale and each team had only one day in the Garage studio to produce a short movie. Be sure to check out my favourite “Click-Clack-Clack” and read the whole story (in German) on the Berlinaleblog.

Just the other day I listened to one of my favourite albums: Solarscape and Starmarket. Indiemusic, but intense and somtimes complicated, a little melancholic, but not naive, full of power and surprises. And I thought, too bad, it’s been long that I didn’t find music like this.
Now, “Pictures of Shanghai” wanted to add me on Myspace and seriously, I am a little annoyed by the mass of bad music and disturbing mass bulletings á la “new mp3 online!” that I stopped adding bands. But listening to them made me feel like the other day when I turned the volume up and had the perfect rainy but angry weather soundtrack. Please check out Pictures of Shanghai and if you have a label, sign them, they are going to be succesful.

Beatport, probably the world’s leading online store for club and electronic music has developed a great tool: The Beatportplayer which generates a code you can put into websites to play track snippets according to certain criteria.

Here’s an example for the recently issued tunes in the deep-house genre. Nice toy and great viral marketing, just like De:bug states.

One of Berlin’s best record shops faces hard times, so they asked their friends to celebrate a support party for their shop Freizeitglauben.

Since it is a nice place with enthusiastic people, many big names of Berlin’s DJ scene will show up tonight at Watergate. Admission: 6 charity €. Among the DJs playing tonight will be:

Guido Schneider / pokerflat, Thomas Melchior / perlon, Benjamin Fehr / catenaccio, Sven VT / memo-freizeitglauben, Falko Brocksieper / substatic-karloff, Anja Schneider / mobilee, Oliver Koletzki / cocoon, Mitja Prinz / wmf, Daniel Dreier / highgrade, Jens Bond / highgrade, Sebo K. / mobilee, Todd Bodine / tresor, Housemeister / aycb-bpitch, M.i.a. / substatic LIVE, Burger / freizeitglauben, Phage / Norman Weber (Luna City Express) / moonharbour and many more. Read on for the official invitation of the Freizeitglauben makers about the current situation in the record selling business (in German):

“‘Berlin für Freizeitglauben’ ist eine Benefiz Club Nacht. Unsere Szene verändert sich stetig, das ist kein schlechter Zustand, elektronische Musik ist populär geworden, die Grenzen zwischen den Genres verschwimmen immer mehr. Wir als Plattenladenbetreiber und Labelmacher haben es uns von Anfang an zur Aufgabe gemacht, diese Szene zu featuren und mit besonderer Auswahl und Sorgfalt, die besten Veröffentlichungen bereit zu halten. Die Situation am Markt, sowie die technischen Vorrausetzungen haben sich jedoch in eine Richtung entwickelt, welche man derzeit als eine Ãœbersättigung des Marktes bezeichnen könnte.

Verkaufszahlen verteilen sich auf die stetig wachsende Zahl der Labels und Releases. Für Plattenläden ist es zudem immer schwieriger, mit der wachsenden Zahl der Internetshops mitzuhalten. Preiskalkulationen, wie sie Online Unternehemen vornehmen, lassen sich bei Realen Recordshops nicht umsetzen. Desweiteren ist der Digitale Markt ein nicht unwesentlicher Faktor für immer weniger reale Plattenläden.

Wir wollen uns nicht den neuen Anforderungen des Marktes verschließen – nein! Vielmehr ist uns daran gelegen, verschiedene und alternative Wege zu finden, damit eine Existenz aller Formate (MP3s, OnlineShops etc….) nebeneinander möglich bleibt.
Diese Benefiz Club Nacht soll uns helfen, unsere Arbeit fortführen zu können…

Ich hoffe auf Eure Unterstützung und somit auf ein Statement zu diesen Zeilen und freue mich, Euch an diesem Abend zu sehen!
euer freizeitglauben berlin.”

JoinR is a new social network which has an intriguing surface, very ajaxy, you can play with boxes and mash up your profile. Let’s see who’ll be hanging out there. Check it out: Joinr.de. I, of course am stylewalker.joinr.de, but have no fancy profile yet.
Note: It’s early beta and obviously aimed at younger people (I feel old).

And here you’ll see UK’s master of the mouthmade beats, Maité, playing around with some kitchenwear and sounds á la “Memphs Soul Stew”.