Here’s one from September 2009.

01. Elvis Presley – Crawfish (Pilooski Edit)
02. Friendly Fires – Paris (Aeroplane Remix)
03. Bag Raiders – Shooting Stars (In Flagranti Remix)
04. Beni – Maximus (Jori Hulkkonen Remix)
05. Simian Mobile Disco – 10,000 Horses Can’t Be Wrong
06. Fever Ray – Triangle Walks (Tiga’s 1-2-3-4 Remix)
07. Para One – Passion
08. Friendly Fires – Jump In The Pool (Wild Geese Remix)
09. Justin Martin & Claude Vonstroke – Beat That Bird
10. Beni – Fringe Element (Alex Gopher Remix)
11. Moby – Go (Vitalic Remix)
12. Fake Blood – The Dozens
13. Glimmers – Frantic (Tommie Sunshine Remix)
14. Teenagers In Tokyo – End It Tonight (Heartbreak Remix)
15. The Kills – Cheap And Cheerful (SebastiAn Remix)
16. The Chemical Brothers – Morning Lemon
17. Legowelt – Disco Rout (Johannes Heil Remix)
18. Hystereo – Cityspeak (Deadbots & Hystero Remix)
19. Birdy Nam Nam – Parachute Ending (Vitalic Remix)
20. Motor – Black Powder
21. VV Brown – Leave (Style Of Eye Vocal Remix)

Here’s the tracklist for this mix I did for Sidetracked a while back. Grab a download while you can!

01. Jungle Brothers – What You Waiting For?
02. Men Without Hats – Safety Dance (Extended Mix)
03. The Dub Pistols feat. Terry Hall – Rapture (Prins Thomas Diskomiks)
04. Shit Robot – Losing My Patience (Unabombers Android Re-Fix)
05. Aaron Carl – Homoerotic
06. Breakbot feat. Irfane – Baby I’m Yours (Aeroplane Remix)
07. Hall & Oates – I Can’t Go For That (Pseudonym Remix)
08. Tyson – Out Of My Mind
09. Tribute – We Love Debbie
10. Miss Kitten & The Hacker – Frank Sinatra (2001)
11. Depeche Mode – Everything Counts
12. FC Kahuna – Glitterball
13. Four Tet – Pinnacles
14. Charlie – Spacer Woman

Here’s a little something for the weekend. Download link here: A Mix For Mother

01. Bot’Ox – Blue Steel
02. Holy Ghost – Do It Again
03. Grace Jones – Williams’ Blood (Aeroplane Vocal Mix)
04. Moby – After (iamamiwhoami Remix)
05. Celestial Choir – Stand On The Word
06. Pet Shop Boys – West End Girls (Dance Mix)
07. Beth Ditto – Open Heart Surgery
08. New Order – True Faith 94
09. Yacht – Tripped And Fell In Love
10. Joe Goddard – Gabriel (Dub)
11. Mano Le Tough – Stories
12. My Mine – Hypnotic Tango
13. Memory Tapes – Bicycle
14. Aeroplane – My Enemy (Rex The Dog Remix)
15. Roisin Murphy – Overpowered (Kris Menace Remix)
16. Azari & III – Manic
17. Gus Gus – Call Of The Wild
18. Hyetal – Searchlight
19. Royksopp – 49 Percent (Ewan Pearson’s Glass Half Full Remix)
20. Eat Me Drink Me – I Need Your (Robot) Love
21. Neon Neon – I Lust You
22. Flowers And Sea Creatures – A.M. (Ewan Pearson Edit)
23. Alias Empire – Another Idea (Philth + Seki Remix)
24. Florence + The Machine – What The Water Gave Me
25. The Golden Filter – Mother
26. Manic Street Preachers – William’s Last Words (Underworld Remix)

The EP which includes the original of Hurricane plus three other tracks is released on October 14th. (Purchase link coming…)

A friend of mine lives in a building on Temple Bar Square in Dublin that McDonald’s intend to open a restaurant in. I’m genuinely interested in whether people think this is a good or a bad thing.

A lot of people, including the Temple Bar Cultural Trust, will be objecting to the plans. [This was stated on a recent interview on the Moncrieff Show on Newstalk.]

Personally, having spent a lot of time in my friend’s apartment and watching what goes on out there on the square, I think it would be very hard to lower the tone of Temple Bar any further. Admittedly there are too many fast food joints and pubs in the area already, but in terms of preserving the area’s “cultural” status where were all the objections to Spar, Tesco, Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Urban Outfitters and the Hard Rock Cafe opening up?

A similar question springs to mind when the issue of local restaurants comes up. If the lease was available why didn’t an Irish business try and acquire it? Should McDonald’s now be punished for being on the ball?

The only reasonable point against McDonald’s opening that I’ve heard is that just because an area already has a lot of crap in it already doesn’t mean you should be able to open up another fast food joint. However, this only holds up if you believe that there is any hope of fulfilling making progress towards the original vision of Temple Bar as a cultural arts space. And I don’t believe there is.

Unfortunately the public gets what the public wants and the public wants what the public gets…

The Hour comes across a little as if it doesn’t know what it wants to be. On the one hand, it’s a bit of an in joke at the expense of the BBC. Look how hard it is to get things done around here! The government is telling us what we can and can’t broadcast!

On the other hand, it’s a whodunnit, or a whydidtheydoit even, with the main character Freddie (Ben Whishaw) trying to figure out why an old friend of his was killed (or did she kill herself?).

The balance is nicely struck though, even if McNulty Dominic West doesn’t seem to quite fit into the role of Hector Madden. There’s a fine line between acting like you’re hamming it up, and actually hamming it up. The other actors seem particularly well cast though, and there are a string of fine cameos from Andrew Strong (who you might recall as Moriarty from the recent BBC adaptation of Sherlock Holmes), Juliet Stevenson, and Tim Pigott-Smith.

Check it out on the BBC iPlayer if you’ve missed it.

This one’s been around for a while now (so go and buy it!) but the video only went up today. Enjoy.

I know it’s not cool to like Moby any more, but I have to admit to having a soft spot for this remix by the ever excellent Michael Mayer. Anyone know if he’s coming back to Dublin soon? The remix from Clouds is a bit (lot) more banging but sounds pretty good too.

I guess we know what the cast of Mad Men get up to when they’re on hiatus then! I picked up L.A. Noire a few weeks ago and got time to play it recently. I was expecting just another Grand Theft Auto in old threads, but what I got was the first proper plot driven, well scripted and well voice acted games I think I’ve ever played.

Many people put would Hard Rain into the same category but for me it just felt too forced. I never felt any empathy for the lead character and so never cared much what happened to him either way. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say I liked the main character Cole Phelps, voice acted by Mad Men’s Aaron Staton, I did enjoy guiding him through his roundabout career in the LAPD.

There is one case in particular in which the tension is wound up just like the climax of a good movie. Unfortunately, the climax of the game itself isn’t quite up to that standard, but it wraps it up nicely none the less. By the way, don’t type “cole phelps” into Google if you don’t want to be spoiled. The first auto suggestion kind of gives things away!

The game isn’t perfect though, suffering from some of the same frustrations experienced in the GTA series. Driving around stops being fun very quickly, as do the side missions and finding hidden cars. Really it is just a race to the end of the plot driven main storyline, and if you stick to that and ignore much of the rest it still stands head and shoulders above most other games out today.

I’d definitely recommend it.

So, it’s back. 21 years after the first series ended Thundercats has been relaunched by the Cartoon Network in the US. I watched the first two episodes to see how it had changed from what I remembered as a kid in 1984.

Despite still being a cartoon for kids, the tone is much more serious, taking a lot of cues from The Lord Of The Rings or even Game Of Thrones. It touches on ideas including a war between different species, magic versus technology, and all the usual kids stuff like watching your dad, the king, get stabbed and fall off a big tree. The trailer above gives you a good feel for it.

What I wonder is, will kids these days care for it? It looks good for sure, but first two episodes feel like an origin story movie, where not a lot really happens except one big battle towards the end. I’m not sure it’d hold kids attention. Presumably though we can expect a new range of toys and console games to accompany the new series, and maybe that’s all that matters to the makers.