Woofers, Tweeters, Raptures

Spent a good deal of last night puzzling over this key question / Spinal Tap conundrum: what do the numbers on a stereo volume button represent? My new stereo goes up to 30 (which is really loud) but I'm not sure what that means. It can't be some absolute measure of loudness - each number can't relate to a particular decibel level because even at the same number different CDs are louder or quieter, as always. So if there is no absolute relationship between the numbers on my stereo and actual loudness is there instead a relative relationship? Does 10 relate to 10 more than the original level on the CD?

I know, I know... but it's been a long week and the sad thing is someone out there will actually know the answer to this.

The first track I played? This one:

Shackleton - Blood on my hands (villalobos mix)

pilfered from here

Twin Infinitives

Songs that come as twins. Both of these conceptually the same. Different spins on the same template. Both sluggish, Loploping, frazzled. The female voices running in, with and against the beats, the slurred delivery reflecting shellshocked Nicaraguans or drunken South Bank forays. Villalobos and Coil stretching parameters and humanising music that can be unsettlingly alien (Coil generally masquerading as black elves, Villalobos letting a robotic sheen drift over him). Actually, that's not quite true. These tracks take care to humanise music that is already human - neither of these artists ever fully embrace(d) the machine-ethic of techno, there's always a radical, spinning, error-strewn basis to their music and these tracks simply emphasise this to people who don't listen too hard.

Coil - Things Happen

A Yousendit shellshocker

Ricardo Villalobos + Andrew Gillings - Andruic and Japan

A zShare gurning

In case you were wondering.

Que Belle Epoque 2006

This is supposed to be an Mp3 blog after all. Here's Mr Villalobos doing his warm and fuzzy thing, from the Que Belle Epoque Ep.

Ricardo Villalobos - Que Belle Epoque 2006