noisefromthevoid

I originally posted the trailer for this movie on here a good while ago. Last night I finally got the chance to see the whole thing..

I was especially hyped to see it because of the era it’s set in - Thatcher’s Britain. An era in which I, like the characters in the movie, grew up and came of age. I’m not gonna pull punches, it was generally a period of widespread alienation, cultural desolation, and divisive politics as the right-wing conservative government of the time not only fought an unnecessary war with Argentina, but also fought an underhanded class war with it’s own people - the “enemy within” to quote the prime minister Margaret Thatcher at the time. I’d say it was not unlike the McCarthy witchhunts of the 50’s here in the States, but it was now the late 70’s and the enemy wasn’t a small number of ‘commies’ and ‘pinkos’, it was a whole class of organised working people.

I remember it all so vividly: joining the dole queue as unemployment soared to 1 in 10 of the population, while the government destroyed industry after industry and instead pandered to the newly emerging yuppie culture. Of getting organised to fight back, for instance going door to door through my neighborhood and panhandling on the street with buckets, to collect food and donations for the country’s coal miners, who at the time were on strike fighting a painfully long, drawn out and ultimately losing battle with the Thatcher government..

But politics aside - it was also a time when youth culture was thriving. Punks, mods, skinheads, new romantics, greebos, goths and all kinds of subcultures came and went at breakneck speed, all overlapping each other, along with their associated music, styles and attitudes. This film focuses almost exclusively on the skinheads - the mostly working class white kids who reacted (in part at least) to the middle class hippy culture of the 60’s by for instance cropping their hair off instead of growing it long, and wearing their jeans tight and tucked in their boots instead of loose and flared.

Those original skinheads were also heavily inspired by Jamaican culture & the rude boys and girls who had brought ska and rocksteady music to the shores of Britian during the post-war boom of the late 50’s and 60’s. Unfortunately over time the skinheads gained a reputation for being extremely violent, nationalistic and racist, but this movie focuses mostly on the original skinheads who were a different breed. The movie does however still deal with the issue of race, quite bluntly and violently at times, but it does so authentically, not in an over sensationalized or glamorized hollywood way like some other movies I wont bother to mention.

And watching this film I could relate - as a teenager I grew up in a mostly working class white community where a majority of the kids my age were aligned with either rude boy or skinhead culture. And although the skinheads I knew weren’t particularly interested in politics or racial aggravation, there were still other right-wing skinheads & agitators aggressively flyering and recruiting outside our school gates whenever they felt like it. It was scary back then - at times anyways - especially being into punk rock, constantly wondering I was gonna be attacked for being different. But like most folks I made it through relatively unscathed, and a little wiser and stronger to boot.

And I have to say this movie really nails the mood, feel, and look of those times. The music, the clothes, the run down council estates, the overgrown and abandoned buildings, even the old World War II relics littering the beaches, as they did where I lived. I watched the whole movie without taking my eyes off the screen, entranced like I was in some kind of time warp, the various characters so often reminding me of old friends, even down to the smallest details like their facial tattoos and vicious humor..

And I cant help but add that this movie, along with the memories it invokes stands in stark contrast to my first experience bumping into a gang of Bay Area skinheads on Haight St way back when I first moved to San Francisco. For a moment that afternoon I thought I was gonna get the sh*t kicked outta me, but they turned out to be the mellowest, friendliest and cuddliest skinheads I’d ever crossed paths with in my life. Ha, ha.. They may have adopted the look of working class England in the 70’s but they certainly hadn’t lived it. And with that in mind I hope that they or anyone else for that matter who finds themselves drawn to British culture and style finds time to see this movie. It’s beautiful, funny, poignant, harsh, sad and moving, in a way that captures the truth of those times, and the truth of growing up white in working class Britain..

If you’re a regular on noisefromthevoid you’ve probably heard me chatting on the mic about the dj software I’ve been using on the show for the last few months, and the irritating issues I’ve been having with it..

The software is called Torq, and is very similar to a couple of other dj products you may have heard of - Serato and Final Scratch. Put simply, Torq allows me to spin mp3s directly off of my computer while still using my turntables to do so. It does this using a couple of pieces of “control vinyl” that look and feel like normal records but the grooves on them contain timecode instead of music. This sound of this timecode is picked up by the needles on my turntables and sent through Torq’s unique audio interface to my computer, where any changes to the timecode signal (caused for example by me moving the turntable’s pitch control, or putting my hand on the vinyl to slow it down) are picked up and interpreted by the Torq software, which in turn uses this information to control how the mp3s are played back from my computer. All in all this allows me to start, stop, cue, pitch, mix and otherwise spin mp3s just like regular records..

Kuel, right?

Well, there’s probably lots to be said regarding djing with Torq, control vinyl, and with mp3s in general, but I’m gonna try and keep the geekiness to a minimum by just listing the pros and cons I’ve experienced using Torq, and let you make of my comments what you will. If you’re thinking about taking the plunge and purchasing Torq (or one of the other simlar options out there) perhaps this will add a lil’ insight into your decision..

Pros -

Believe it or not, most of the music I own is stored on my computer. I have way more mp3s than I do records. Using Torq allows me to DJ using those mp3s, without having to burn them all to CD first. The last thing I’m interested in doing is adding thousands and thousands of CD’s to my already large record collection. With Torq I can dj while keeping all my mp3s all in one place - on my computer..

Using mp3s saves me alot of $$. Alright! Generally mp3s are alot LESS EXPENSIVE than records, which is a big deal for me, as live in expenisive San Francisco, and have 2 kids to feed and cloth..

Mp3s don’t take up any SPACE - unless you count the hard drive they are stored on. You can have 100 or 100,000 mp3s and they still don’t weigh anything or take up valuable room in your home like large amounts of vinyl do..

Mp3s are extremely PORTABLE. Having all my mp3s on a laptop means I can literally take my whole music collection with me wherever I go, including to dj gigs. No more having to choose only 70 or 80 pieces of vinyl and stuffing them into a heavy 50lb record case. Of course I’m not currently interested in doing the whole “laptop dj” thing out at clubs and parties, but having the option to is nice..

Lastly, they don’t warp or scratch like vinyl..!

Now the cons -

The first one is SOUND QUALITY. Unless the original songs are converted to mp3 at the highest quality possible they probably wont sound as good as they do on vinyl. This isn’t always true, as mp3 encoding software can be pretty good these days, but mp3s are by their nature a compressed and degraded copy of the original, and I do notice the sonic difference quite often. The perfect solution would be to keep all the audio files I own uncompressed instead of as mp3s, but that’s not always possible especially with files that have already been converted and compressed. Still, noisefromthevoid is a pretty lo-fi broadcast so using lesser quality audio isn’t such a big deal for me, not yet anyways..

Correctly editing, labelling, categorizing, sorting, analysing and creating cue points for my mp3s (so they are ready to use in Torq) is laborious and TIME CONSUMING. I spend several hours each week before my show just taking care of this kinda stuff. Yawn..

If I don’t want to prepare the mp3s beforehand I can simply drop them into Torq as I need them, and let it analyse them on-the-fly, but they wont be properly labelled, categorized or sorted, and doing so can sometimes cause Torq to become unresponsive and CRASH. When that happens Torq stays on the computer screen but stops responding to the mouse or keyboard, and needs to be force-quit and restarted again. Most of the time the mp3 that was playing doesn’t stop, so I can quickly grab a regular record and mix into it before the mp3 finishes. But it’s annoying..

Also, loading incompatible mp3s into Torq can cause it to CRASH. How do I know if an mp3 is incompatible or not? Pretty much the only way to find out is to load it in, and see if it crashes Torq. On average I only encounter one or maybe two incompatible mp3s a week, but it can be annoying, as the problem mp3s will often work fine in other software such as iTunes..

Browsing through mp3s using Torqs browser is awkward and SLOW. Torq doesn’t give over enough screen space for the browser, so casually scrolling through the list of mp3s can be a long and tiresome process. Also using Torq’s included search function is really slow, if like me you have several thousand mp3s that Torq needs to scan through. At times it can take 10 seconds or longer for Torq to complete a search, and I may need to perform a bunch of searches before finding the right track to throw in the mix. During that time Torq is unresponsive, so all you can do is wait while it finishes searching. Over the course of a long set that can soon add up to alot of time thumb-twiddling instead of djing..

If I spin back a track while cueing it in the headphones, Torq will sometimes become UNRESPONSIVE. During this time the song I was cueing will continue to spin back until it gets to the beginning of the mp3. Torq doesn’t crash and the music keeps playing, but Torq becomes unresponsive to the mouse or keyboard and will remain so for another 10 seconds or more after the cued mp3 finally stops spinning backwards. It’s a real problem if the mp3 that’s already playing is about to finish, as you can’t select and mix in a new mp3 until Torq comes back to life..

Torq will also occassionally CRASH for no apparent reason. The music will keep playing, but Torq becomes unresponsive to mouse clicks or key presses, but unlike the previous issue I mentioned it needs to be force quit and restarted before it can be used again. As before it’s possible to keep the music going by mixing out of the mp3 that’s playing into a regular record, but it’s still an annoying problem..

Torq will randomly and for no apparent reason DROP OUT the sound of the mp3 that’s playing. This is something I just try and ignore, as most often the drop out is brief - less than a second. Very occassionally the music wont come back on at all, and I’m left with dead air. If so I have to quickly throw on a regular record, and quit and restart Torq to get it working again. This problem is a show-stopper fo’sure..

Torq will also occassionally and randomly crash for no apparent reason, DISAPPEARING from my computer screen completely and causing the music to stop. Torq needs to be restarted, so to get the music back on quickly I have to throw on aregular piece of vinyl. Another show-stopper..

Less seriously, Torq has a feature called “pitch-lock” that should allow me to speed up and slow down an mp3 without changing it’s pitch (the musical key it’s in). I like this feature as it allows me to constantly speed up or slow down the tempo of my dj sets while still keeping the music beatmatched, the pitch unaltered, and the listeners mostly unaware of the tempo changes. This is something you can’t so with regular vinyl. Unfortunately Torq’s version of “pitch-lock” has been hobbled and DOESN’T WORK like all the other versions I’ve used previously on dj CD players and other dj software. It therefore makes it very difficult to do this tempo shifting trick without listeners hearing the pitch raising or lowering and therefore noticing the tempo changing. Not a issue for many dj’s, but certainly is one for me..

Lastly and probably the most important issue for me when djing with a computer is how much time I spend distracted from the music, looking at the computer’s screen “thinking” about what i’m doing. Personally I find it hard to be at my creative best when using a mouse, or when gazing at the overtly logical interface of a computer display. And in order to get into a good flow while spinning I need to be able to stop my thinking process, clear my mind and and be present with the sound resonating through the speakers. The less time I’m interacting with the laptop and the more time I spend focused on the music the happier I’ll be..

Now it’s possible some of these issues may be related to the way I have my computer and studio set-up (even though I do my best to keep it optimised for audio work), or the very fast and hands-on way I dj with vinyl, but seeing as many of the issues I’ve mentioned have been reported by other Torq users I suspect most are bugs. Torq is a relatively new product so hopefully these things wil be fixed or improved upon in future revisions, and will cease to be an issue for me. Or alternatively I could go back to using Traktor, which was the dj software i was using before Torq. Although it too would occassionally and randomly crash, it was on the whole more stable, and had a far better and faster file browser than Torq. In fairness though I wasn’t using “control vinyl” with Traktor, i was using the softwares’ on-screen controls to play the mp3’s, which was way less fun and appealling than having my hands on pieces of vinyl.

Now Torq probably wont be updated for a few months, so I’m going to defer any judgement ’til then, continue to deal with the issues, and get on with my show. Up until now things have been hit and miss. Sometimes I’ll go several weeks with lil’ or no problems, sometimes they constantly crop-up in a single night. What I have noticed though, is that the longer the shows is, the more likely I’ll run into trouble. An obvious solution then is to reduce the length of the shows, though I’d really prefer not too. But if I do, at least it’ll mean more sleep for some of y’all on a Tuesday night.. : )

And lastly I have to say - despite the advances in digital djing that Torq represents, there’s still no substitute for spinning regular vinyl, not yet anyways. Not because of the look and feel of vinyl, as torq has that covered, but because it’s so easy to skip through a crate of vinyl and pick out what to play WITHOUT even thinking about it. And that’s what creativity is all about. And until digital djing can match that, and until they make computers that don’t crash so easily I’ll still be spinning vinyl out at my various live gigs..