in the matrix

FBi Radio hath been saved by the good graces of Sydney’s clubbers, music industry sponsors and pink-faced binge drinkers.

From a wave of fundraising events to an insidious PR campaign aimed at the top rung – $ir Richard Bran$on - the funds needed to keep the station solvent and on-air have been banked.

Every person that contributed even just one cover charge towards these events should pat themselves on the back. Either we're fantastic supporters of community radio or just a bunch of raging alcoholics that didn’t care so much who performed, but rather how many drinks we could carry from the bar at once. Don't fall over sweetheart.

Also in Blouse's awesome! books are the numerous music venues, bands and DJs that donated their blood, sweat and mojo to these fundraisers. What we’ve seen in the past few months isn’t likely to happen until the next global recession in 2109. The ability to fight the GFC is quite an achievement.

By contrast, one organisation that hasn’t been asking for help is Google. I feel like my time in the internet cloud, way up ‘there’, is slowly being taken over by these guys. If it's even run by humans.

Apart from owning most of the observable universe, Google have that fantastic Chrome web browser which shits over Explorer, Safari and Firefox for its speed and simplicity. It isn’t the prettiest of them though. In fact, it’s positively sterile. Chrome has the aesthetic character of a condom.

I’ve also been using iGoogle, which pushes email, news and blog feeds into the same browser with the Google search engine (I call it Dad) sitting above them.

Just to test it I even wrote this post in Google Documents. It was rad. Just as good as Word, maybe better because I can write from any PC or laptop - and I use several a day. Don't even get me started on Gmail. Or the Android OS for mobiles.

Then to add another shackle to my life ‘Dad’ recently announced the Chrome Operating System. It'll probably be shipped with netbooks by late next year and, if it’s as good as everything else they do, will give Microsoft a serious kick in the nuts. Soon enough we all might become converts and disown Windows, the OS that raised us.

Google is...the Matrix.

Here's some Friday night happy tracks, to keep your mind on the fields-of-daisies at over at FBi.

Tellier & Oizo & SebastiAn - Chivers as a Female

Dragonette - Fixin To Thrill (Villains Remix)

The Mint Chicks - Don't Sell Your Brains Out, Baby

the new viagra

Lyrically, Tiga sounds like a whining bitch that can't find his bot-bot.

Visually, he looks like a slick, Greek version of Jack from Will & Grace. Such a poser.

Musically, Tiga knows that people are listening to him when they're on it, when they're hella-drunk and when they're mating. It's almost a sense of we need to hear Tiga, like we need Viagra for round 3.

His playful new album Ciao! ticks all the boxes we got from the Juno Award winning Sexor. There's the dirty-dancing numbers "What You Need" and "Beep-Beep-Beep". There's electro-pop spinners like "Shoes". At times it borders on corny but, and a very big but, there's a new dimension to this little Canadian leprechaun. He shows us a tender, introspective side on the synth-laden "Gentle Giant" and multi-layered "Love Don't Dance Here Anymore".

The Electroclash master has collab'd with Soulwax and Gonzales on this record and you can definitely hear the rocky mountains here - so much artistic variation between these tracks - compared to the uniform sound of his debut.

Here's a sweet Mr Oizo remix of "Shoes". Love the original, and this is a light-hearted, jittering take on it.

Tiga - Shoes (Mr Oizo Remix)

The Proxy have just turned "What You Need", a lesson in distortion and tongue-in-cheek, into a nymph of a remix. It's got a sexy build-up, and how good is the Apocalypse audio filter effect in the original?

Tiga - What You Need (The Proxy Remix)

monsieur, is that a stain on your deck?

The cover of Mr. Oizo’s new album Lambs Anger is so clever it’s practically better than the album. It’s an appropriation of a scene from the 1929 surrealist film Un Chien Andalou, written by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel. In the bit where actress Simone Mareuil has her eyeball sliced open by a razor, Oizo has replaced her with his classic little euro-muppet: Flat Eric. You may remember him from the song Flat Beat, which forever linked fluffy toys to drug abuse when it landed in ’99. I think for Eric the party never ended.

Here is a remix of the album's single Positif:

Mr. Oizo - Positif (Pink Punk Remix)

Oizo has a knack for mashing retarded sounds. The LP has random beeps, blips and buzzes arranged with total contempt for symmetry. It’s like he rummaged through the Gimp’s record collection and molested some decks, before spooning them for an hour. Then, somehow, he ended up with this album.

Mr. Oizo - Positif (The Exo What The Fuuuck Remix)

As a result it’s likely that anyone who listens to Oizo for the first time probably won’t like him. But once you find a taste for his sound - like how most women I know (and some homosexual men) somehow find a taste for vegemite - you’ll be bouncing off the walls to this record.

Mr. Oizo plays Future Music this Saturday.

secs

ear sex?

Mr Oizo - Negatif (Mr Flash Remix)

flash and oizo have seen your ears and told me that they want them sooo bad. just thought id give you a heads up