This week... Halloween, the Mercury Prize, and Evian Christ's pants
A new feature for Dummy: every Friday we'll be rounding up five things from around the 'net that made us smile, made us think, or made us tap our feet. Here, we tackle the million mixes put out for Halloween, the dark, dark world of Mercury Prize thinkpieces, and the strange case of Evian Christ's underwear.
Obviously, today is Old Hallow's Eve, and that means that people are celebrating the best way they know how: by flooding the internet with CONTENT. First up, we have gory music videos – there's Dizzee Rascal hacking up attractive young women, then there's Flying Lotus being the one hacked up. There are also playlists – we'll point you towards our own list of the 10 best tracks for Halloween, compiled by Numbers producer/DJ Deadboy, but there's also a guide to horror soundtracks courtesy of cratedigger supremo Andy Votel up on RBMA.
Babe Rainbow is highlighting his Halloween mix from four years back, which is literred with Southern rap and horrorcore, but we have to draw attention to this 'Tropicalloween' mix by Joakim, who is straight up one of the best selectors around. He stitches together spooky selections including Italian horror scorer Fabrizio Frizzi, Chris & Cosey, Venetian Snares, and 808 State. All in all, that should be your Halloween party playlist sorted for the next 12 months – when it happens all over again.
Wednesday's Mercury Prize went to Young Fathers, a surprising choice but not an unwelcome one, beating out competition from bookie's favourites FKA twigs and Kate Tempest. Because music journalists are an uninspired and contemptible bunch, there were a slew of cut-n-paste thinkpieces and op-eds about the prize, tackling it from every angle. Often these angles were contradictory – i.e. you're just as likely to see a piece explaining why Young Fathers were worthy as you are to see one explaining why they weren't.
Amongst all of this, though, were some really great reads – VICE looking into the judging process, one of few articles to not refer to "the Mercurys" as some abstract concept but to remember that it's a proper organisation with proper procedures and proper, human judges. But the most fascinating was The Guardian's look at the sales boost gained since the Mercury nominations were announced: in it, it was revealed that FKA twigs's album, despite all the publicity, sold just 6,980 copies before her nomination. Sure, 'LP1' was released toward the tale end of the Mercury eligibility period, but nevertheless, it highlights just how tough it is to turn blog success into actual sales.
It was incredibly sad and completely shocking when one of our favourite producers, DJ Rashad, passed away earlier this year. Still, instead of grieving, the many times we've heard his tracks get played in a set – including a load at Hyperdub's recent 10th birthday celebrations – just reminds us how everything he achived lives on. Bringing some humour to his 'Double Cup' track She A Go, someone somehow had the idea to set stock videos of office workers to the music. Faces warp, workers dance, and there's a slow shot to a guy deadpanning. It’s a bizarre, hilarious video that you probably shouldn’t play in public for fear of laughing just a bit too much.
Evian Christ accidentally ordered 500 pairs of bootleg Calvin Klein boxer shorts from China with the words 'Evian Christ' scrawled across them. Naturally. Luckily, as he told The FADER, he'll have an opporunity to shift them at his third Trance Party at Corsica Studios tonight. It started as a joke, but now he needs to shift them as quickly as possible, so you can only buy them in packs of three. We might try and pick up a pack.
For all the girls who feel left out, he’s apparently thinking about making a sports bra in the same style, should this entrepreneurial endeavour go well for him. Despite it being Halloween, Christ hates the holiday, so probably best to leave your costume attempts at home…
It’s been a hefty week for all things Jacques Greene – we caught him showing up as a secret guest DJ at North London clubnight Eternal, he announced his new EP, he hosted a two-hour session on BBC Radio 1, and he's playing a Halloween set at London’s Roundhouse tonight. In amongst everything else, he took out the time to make an insanely replayable mix for FACT, including an exclusive of a clunking trance remix that Life Sim did of Tiga’s Bugatti, which is our new favourite track: that Boy comes up to me and says what you driving? Bugatti. hook is impossible to get out your head once you've heard it.
