Wednesday, May 7, 2008  7:42 am 

Me and Niko down in Bohan (a true story)

20jazzfunkgreats consider it a crying shame that what could well be the crowning achievement of British popular culture this century, GTA IV is being greeted with all sorts of desultory and misinformed comments from the usual sanctimonious scaremongering suspects, who of course haven’t played it. The game is a thing of beauty (in spite of the oft clunky targeting and covering, and the frustrating save system, you can’t have it all my friend), its main problem is that our addiction to it is detracting from other worthy activities such as reading psychedelic sci-fi novels and writing in this blog of yours truly. The character of Niko Bellic might well be the most wonderfully fleshed out, witty and sympathetic ‘good guy in a bad fix’ we have come across since Carlito Brigante and Neil McCauley. We almost feel guilty when we engage in random acts of mayhem on the way between missions, but that doesn’t stop us, we are trigger happy passive aggressive catharsis-chasing nerds you know. And hey, this is a video game, not real life, anyone unable to differentiate between both has bigger issues than GTA IV.

A key element of pleasure and satisfaction is of course the music of the wonderfully curated radio stations: the other day I jacked this car, and as I was speeding away from the cops Black Devil Disco Club’s ‘The Devil in Us (In Dub)’ kicked in and I almost creamed my pants, seriously, driving around Liberty City one misty night while listening to the avant garde/kosmische selection of the Journey, is as enthralling a cultural experience as any recent visit to a museum, which in a way is what GTA is, a living museum and a beautiful rorscharch test crafted with love, humour and passion, hats off to Rockstar North and Sam Hauser, this is frankly amazing.

As a tribute, here you have some of our favourite tunes included in its playlists, enjoy!

Global Communication-8.07

The aforementioned robo-curated Journey Station contains gems such as Global Communication’s ‘8.07′, hexagonal synthetic chains of silver sound expanding into the confines of the universe and further out, this is the heavy metal music of cosmogonists and astrogrators, and as it plays stars flare up in the darkness like lighters illuminating the circular contracting auditorium of the universe, to create an spectacle that makes us cry in wonder and joy.

Cerrone- Supernature

Karl Lagerfeld’s K109 the Studio is disco galore, Skatt Bros and the beginning of an epic neverending odyssey of spaced-out French disco inside which we are forever lost delighted, it’s not that they don’t make music like this these days, it’s that it’s fucking difficult to make music like this these days, seriously, on top of those accelerated processes of technological ‘advance’ which have obliterated many secrets of the warm art of sound engineering (how did the ancients make the cathedrals? fuck knows!), we have a music industry retreating hasty into the cost-efficient world of ringtones and the such, now, who would have what it takes (probably a coke-blinded ego) to invest on the creation of a lush visionary opus such as Cerrone’s? The European Commission? Rrright…

Nitzer Ebb- Let Your Body Learn

Francois K’s ElectroChoc contains a good bunch of modern trendy dance music which is all fine and good, but sort of pales in comparison to Nitzer Ebb’s throbbing slab of nihilistic EBM sitting in its midst like a hammerhead shark lurking ravenous in the depths of the blue, it is pedestrian carnage and SWAT good times whenever this leather-clad Liquid Liquid pumped on steroids killer kicks in the stereo, and we are sort of justified aren’t we? It doesn’t get much more aggro than this.

XXXXX

In a forthcoming post we shall be putting up some songs which we would have included in GTA IV radio if we had been curating it, check it up!

IF YOU ARE IN BERLIN TOMORROW

Go to the launch party of Discos Capablanca- This is the loving project of psyche-noir disco sorcerer, 20JFG associate and all-around winner and good guy Hugo Capablanca, we’d love to be there but thinks are a bit crazy right now. So go, and give Hugo an enormous hug from us, this is the beginning of something very special.

labels >> Cerrone, GTA IV, Global Communication, Nitzer Ebb