Moombahton: what's that all about then?

It's early 2010, and Dave Nada is in a tight spot. The Washington DJ been roped in to play at his lil’ cousin's skipping party, a Daily Mail-friendly invention whereby a bunch of kids slack off school and have their own impromptu, unanounced cop-bothering house party. Anyway, Dave, top Washington DJ and producer that he is, has been helping out with this whole Ferris Bueller scene, dropping a reggaeton set, but as mentioned, he's fucked: he's out of tunes. All he has left is a bunch of Dutch techno, which they aren't going to go for. His hand forced, he slaps on the Afrojack’s Moombah remix and tries to avert a disco-lynching by pitching it riiiiiight down, hoping that they won't notice. Then it happens: the track's rolling percussive rhythm enters a breakdown, the vocal hollers "t-t-t-t-t-turn up the bass!" - and the kids go absolutely fucking batshit nuts. He follows it up by repeating the half-speed trick Sidney Samson’s Riverside. Bang! Another winner. Like the eureka guy in the bath, Isaac newton getting apples on a Bosman from gravity and more pertinently the DJ who invented Belgian New Beat after accidentally playing an industrial track at 33 instead of 45, Dave Nada had his own moment of divine intervention - Moombahton was born.

In under a year Moombahton's gone from that house party to worldwide buzz: from America to Japan via Holland and Israel, from Canada to the UK, we're all getting on it, with the likes of Diplo, XXXChange, Toddla T and A-Trak all jumping on board. Nada, along with scene-shapers David Heartbreak, Munchi, and other DJ/producers like A-Mac, DJ Melo, Sabo, Apt-One, Wyld Stallyns and Skinny Friedman, quickly laid down the Moombahton template: a percussive 108bpm two-step reggaeton rhythm, met with crisp tweaky electronica, truly humungous breakdowns and equally sizeable drops, creating a hybrid that will connect with anyone with a passing interest in electronic dance music - acid, techno, even dubstep, it's all in there, but with far greater warmth, thanks to the rump-friendly Latino underpinning. If I’m being a spotter I’ll flag up a precursor in the mid-90s UK compilation on Fused & Bruised, This Is Latin Amyl, which shoved a tab of acid down the neck of an entire carnival, metaphorically speaking, you understand.

But the accessiblity continues: it also shares DNA with Baltimore Bounce, Crunk, Brazilian Baile Funk and AV8-style hip hop bangers, all outgoing, party-minded genres, miles away from the mardy face of much of the current UK scene – I’m looking at you, dubstep and witch house. But if it has a template, it’s a broad one that’s already allowing the genre to grow and develop, adding bits to see what fits – some of it leans towards the more traditional cumbia style, while others have used it to renose dubstep towards more energetic dancefloors, while over in the UK, Smutlee has taken it in more of a dancehall direction, while London label Mutant House have added a garage feel. Plus, Munchi and Heartbreak have already taken the sound into tougher, gnarlier spots, resulting in the far darker sub-genre Moombahcore. That’s all without taking in the raft of edits that would endear it to both the UK market and more mainstream ears – from Justice, Chemical Brothers, Count & Sinden, Josh Wink, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Drop The Lime to the more obvious pop edits of Lady Gaga and Rihanna, Moombahton's tentacles are everywhere. Jesus, even The Doobie Brothers get a look in. What's fun is watching the whole thing shape up, branch off, develop and grow.

And for a UK crowd now plenty used to tropical and two-step electronica, it's all set up to welcome Moombahton into their clubs in 2011 - and to get you started, here are some mp3s to whet your whistle...

Dave Nada - La Gata (Moombahton edit)
Hyper Crush - Ayo (Wyld Stallyns Moombahton edit)
Crystal Fighters  - I Love London (A-Mac Moombahton edit)
Kid Sister - Pro Nails Ruska remix (Ivan Rankic Moombahstep edit)

And today's film that I'm glad exists, but not enough to do anything more about it than watch the trailer is....

...Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives.

Thanks to Film Drunk for bringing this doozy/useless piece of trash/curio to my attention. I think it's safe for everyone to draw the line at watching the trailer. Excuse the fact that the clip's cropped on the right-hand side - though it's not like you're really missing much.

As you were...

Tron: Legacy review

Old-school geeks the world over will soon be put out of their misery and discover whether the Tron sequel will be able to reclaim computer game chic from the legions brought up with the likes of Call Of Duty, GTA and cinematic CGI spectacles such as Avatar, and put it back into the hands of those of us who weren't cool enough to sniff glue and instead had to make do with sitting in a bedroom waiting an hour for Daley Thompson's Decathlon to load, and whose only claim to supremacy would come when we were able to enter those three magic letters in an arcade game's sacred hall of fame. 
PCCP sent Anthony Crossby along to see how Disney's Christmas gift to nerds stacks up...

Disney have returned to the digital grid and the adventures of Kevin Flynn in their new blockbuster Tron: Legacy. The original Tron was a huge risk when it was released in 1982. Built around the then-emerging computer generated effects, it attempted to mix the new method of special effects with real action to create a unique sci-fi adventure. Costing a reputed $17 million dollars to make, Tron was seen as a box office failure and a risky venture which ultimately didn’t pay off. What it did do however was open the door to the possibilities this new technology could bring.

Twenty eight years later we return to the adventures of programmer Keith Flynn (Jeff Bridges), and once again it is a risky move. Disney are trying to capitalise on the cult status Tron has garnered over the years by making it their big Xmas blockbuster. Is there a big enough box office pull for a sequel to a film that, though influential, was hardly a break through hit? More importantly, is it any good?

After taking over ENCOM at the end of the last movie, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) has been busy at work, creating a whole new digital world on his personal server. Flynn believes that he has made breakthroughs which will aide and improve humanity, and after declaring this to his young son Sam, he promptly disappears. Without the guidance of Flynn over the next 20 years, his company ENCOM turns from an idealistic computer company into a profit-guzzling corporation.

Like all fatherless sons in movieland, Sam (Garrett Hedlund) has grown into a thrill-seeking, responsibility-shunning adult. He base-jumps of buildings, rides fast motorbikes and sabotages ENCOM’s latest attempt to make more money. After a distress call from Kevin received by his fathers old buddy, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner reviving his character from the original film), Sam discovers his father is in the digital Grid.

Sam follows his fathers and is thrown into the computer world through the portal his father used. He soon discovers that his father created this new world with the help of TRON and his own programme doppelganger CLU. CLU soon rebels against his creators’ vision and becomes the all powerful ruler of the Grid, intending to use the portal to invade and take over the real world as well as the Grid. Distraught by CLU’s treachery, Kevin has been hiding away from his nemesis, holding the key to the portal, which CLU needs to fulfil his plan. Rescued by Kevin’s protégé, Quorra (OLIVIA WILDE), Sam joins in the fight to scarper CLU’s plans and free his father…

Visually, the film is stunning. The screen bursts with today’s technology whilst still holding close the design concepts of the original film. The update to the light cycles looks great and introduction of the familiar games is superb. The soundtrack by Daft Punk is probably one of the best soundtracks in years and complements the visuals perfectly. Bridges brings a warmth to his character in his usual imitable style, Wilde looks fantastic and brings a heart to the film, and even Hegunland is suitable as the wayward son.

It is a shame that the plot lets this all down. It feels paper thin and convoluted at the same time and the emotional beats in the film feel empty, plus TRON, our previous hero, is hardly eluded to and feels slightly shoehorned in when he does appear.

The main problem maybe the plot but the biggest distraction for me is the villain. CLU is a digital recreation of a 25 year-old Jeff Bridges and looks like a computer game character. Every time he is on screen you feel as if you are in a cut scene and it diminishes the spectacle.

Ultimately, it is an enjoyable film despite its flaws, but with a little tightening of the story by writers Kitsis and Horowitz, this could truly have been a classic.

Tron: Legacy is released in UK cinemas on December 17th.

Machete: The Grindhouse Endures

Lovers of trash/B-movie/exploitation/whatevs cinema will notice a stirring down below today, as Robert Rodriquez's guts-and-girls opus Machete finally opens in the UK. It's the director's second overt homage to the piss-soaked grindhouse era and the kid brother to Planet Terror, the zombie flick that formed half of his and Tarantino's sadly ill-fated Grindhouse project, and the same excursion that teased Machete into being as a faux trailer.

While Grindhouse fizzled out - to the point that the recent release of the as-God-intended version was met with little more than curiosity - the fleapit aesthetic of the 42nd Street scene has endured, from the loving homage of Black Dynamite through to the hot-curry-eating-endurance contests offered by A Serbian Film and the torture porn films - fittingly including the I Spit On Your Grave remake - and documentaries such as Jake West's recent Video Nasties: The Definitive Guide and Elijah Drenner's excellent American Grindhouse. Though remake nostalgia is ever-present in cinemas, this ongoing exploitation chic offers a different, less commercially driven and arguably more legitimate thrust - a hankering for primal film-making and a shift away from the multiplex-aimed slick production process. Obviously, it's fucking stupid to argue that we don't live in an era when the mainstream isn't offering classics in its own right, perhaps rather it's that the exploitation scene had a mad spontenaity which afforded directors and producers who often didn't have a clue what they were doing the chance to create happy accidents, a tone that is perhaps less apparent today, and a sense of discovery that is missing in the internet age; though the grindhouse's obvious rep is for setting the tempo on sex and violence, it was also way ahead of the curve by giving the fringe cinema of Europe and Asia a platform - would Bruce Lee have broken through if Jimmy Wang Yu hadn't become a grindhouse fave first? Would Blair Witch exist without Deodato's cannibal flicks' faux-docu framing?

The release of Machete, and the upcoming Hobo With A Shotgun - another fake trailer to make the conversion to a feature - and the rash of midnight movie schedules at festivals around the world show that the need to hang around on the periphery of acceptability and love of unfettered film-making endures. Now, all we need to do is persuade Edgar Wright to make his Don't! trailer into a feature...

So, What's XXXchange Been Up To Then?

Spank Rock twiddler, hip-hop renaissance man and PCCP fave XXXchange is a busy man. After sprinking his party-hued beat magic over the likes of Kele, The Kills and Amanda Blank, and remixing countless others up a gear, he's now announced another project: Win Win, a collaborative joint with longterm associates Devlin & Darko and video artist Ghostdad. Hot Chip, Andrew WK and Gang Gang Dance.

The Fader have Releaserpm, their first single, on their website in a highly grabbable form. Get on it, I say.

While you're at it, here's a particularly swell remix of his:
mp3: Make It So (Xxxchange remix) - Daedelus

So When LCD Soundsystem Said No More Albums...

 

...they should have put a little asterisk next to it with the words '*apart from this live album recorded at the Ally Pally' in tiny 6pt text.

Not that I'm moaning. Bag it, along with the Hot Chip set from the same night, here.

Review: Carlos The Jackal DVD (Movie Version)

Making terrorism sexy since 1973

As Mrs PCCP and I recently sat watching news reports of the thwarted terror business at East Midlands airport, we got into a nice middle-class chat about the ongoing Middle East situation, which, as I'm personally more geared towards weighing up which is my favourite disco edit or how irritating Roy Hodgson is, my contribution to the debate was intellectually and politically assured as a drunken teenager faced with a bra strap.

Coincidentally, a few short hours later I was watching Carlos The Jackal, Olivier Assayas' much-oohed-over opus on the activities of said Carlos, the David Bowie of terrorism, who theatrically ushered in the game-changing era of the setpiece terror attack, bold statements of aggression that plopped the Palestinian-Israeli situation into the laps of the world via the media.

. 
Watching both the live events and the Assayas' take in the same day made me realise the following:

1. This situation has been going on for a while now, and not a great deal has changed.
2. Fuck going to the Yemen for a holiday.
3. Carlos' terrorist template sadly stands the test of time.
4. Being a Middle-Eastern terrorist doesn't mean you have to stop you getting your jollies.
5. Germany in the 1970s was an even more impressive place than I originally suspected - krautrock, Kraftwerk, Beckenbauer, Bowie and Iggy in Berlin - and if Carlos is to be believed, a seemingly endless parade of sexy Baader-Meinhoff revolutionary hipsters.

Points 4 and 5 are the key ones here. Carlos was a terrorist, no escaping that, but one who wore shades, smoked, drank, partied and got to make out with highly politicised lovelies - he's basically Don Draper with access to Che Guevara's humidor. But rather than rendering the situation in that simplistic, Mesrine-chic way, this superb ambitious drama instead highlight's how one man's action, and in many cases, his ignorance, served to provide a painful legacy that stretches for decades, leaving unbearable scars.

Filmed as TV mini-series stretching over nigh on six hours, Carlos leaps straight into the man's ascent in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, where his efficiency was overmatched by his determination and his balls. Finding a fan in Saddam Hussein, Carlos is sent to kill a minister who's blocking an oil deal the tyrant wants to go through. After leading a squad to storm a meeting at OPEC, the situation escalates, with Carlos taking sixty ministers hostage, before it unravels, leaving him to try to salvage the situation by flying the captives to Algiers. Forced out of the PFLP after the failure of the mission and the damage his decisions caused, Carlos ultimately becomes a gun for hire, flitting between volatile countries keen to get the rub from his notoriety.

Despite being cropped to 159 minutes, the movie version shows no sign of suffering from such a hefty edit. Neither Carlos or the viewer has the full benefit of the bigger picture, so the gaps feel organic, creating a naturalistic narrative that doesn't lean on exposition, in the same way the season breaks work in Mad Men. Intriguingly, we're offered nothing in the way of background, no reason why Carlos is so passionate about the cause. This means we're thrust in the middle of the drama, finding direction solely in his actions. With his understanding of the intricacies of the situation seemingly sketchy, his passion for the cause becomes little more than that - raw passion, of which there's plenty on show.

Smartly, Assayas allows you the option of learning the political intricacies of the situation or simply taking Carlos as a work of entertainment, cannily balancing the two - it's both a document of a pivotal moment in recent history and a character study with intrigue, action and women erotically licking live hand grenades. It's stunningly filmed, edited and directed, with a even-handed willingness to portray a string of probable bastards as simply people who are simply faithful to their beliefs - the judgement comes in hindsight as we count the long-term cost of their deeds. There's also a robust performance from Edgar Ramirez in the lead, making him an almost noble klutz, more full of bombast than canny wit, and always compelling and human throughout.

A success on plenty of levels, Carlos The Jackal is ample proof that you can actually be big and clever.