Box Musique » Lifestyle

How to Wreck a Nice Beach

David — Wed, 05 May 2010 23:31:24 +0000

Invented by Bell Labs in 1928 as a speech scrambler for the American military, the vocoder is a device with a pretty fascinating history. Dave Tompkins’ new book, How to Wreck a Nice Beach, charts this incredible journey from WWI, through the annals of musical history and to the present day of T-Pain dominance and Kanye West trying to make his flat fucking voice sound somewhat presentable. The New York Times is calling it a “hallucinatory stew of Rimbaud, Tom Wolfe, Lester Bangs, and Bootsy Collins” and that, my friends, is good enough for me. I’m buying it.

There’s more info on the book available over at the Melville House Publishing site.

Win a Holiday to North Korea

David — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 13:13:32 +0000

Forget molesting dolphins in Goa or smoking blunts on white beaches in Jamaica, the sunny vistas of North Korea are where things are really cracking off. Vice Magazine have teamed up with Young Pioneer Tours to bring you the chance to win a holiday to everybody’s favourite socialist territory. The 10 day, all expenses paid trip will take you to a Pyongyang film studio, a shooting gallery and even North Korea’s only nightclub, where you’ll no doubt be skanking to Korean dub until dawn. Who knows, Lil’ Kim might even welcome you himself. He’s always wearing a Hawaiian shirt and brandishing a punch-filled pineapple on the news…or threatening nuclear armament, I forget which.

If you’re free from August 15th – 25th, all you have to do is convince Vice that you deserve the trip and voila, you’ll be living the dream in no time. Suggested entry forms include ‘essays, photo stories, comics, sculptures, movies, flash games, songs or bribes’, but I’m sure they’re open to whatever your little mind can come up with. Head over to Viceland now for more details on how to enter and a better explanation as to why you should be hyped about this unique experience.

See you there comrade!

Ed Sheeran is Incredible

David — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:11:04 +0000

I watched this last week but for some reason it didn’t occur to me to post it. Oh well, it’s here now and all I can really say about it is that it’s an exhibition of pure talent. Ed beatboxes the percussion, plays guitar, sings, raps and well, it sounds a little bit shit if I try and write it down, but it’s fucking amazing when you watch it. So good that Smokey Barz of YouTube grime fame posted it in amongst the street freestyles he gathers. That’s got to be good for a ginger kid with a guitar, right? Anyway, I’m tired, I’ve been as confused as an elephant in a black hole all week and it’s a miracle that you got anything out of me today. Just watch the video and behold the glory. The glory!

“My eyes are red, I’ve been burnin’!”

Exit Through the Gift Shop

David — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:17:37 +0000

Shit. I spent most of last night charging about Sheffield with imperious intensity, scattering the fragments of my dignity and drinking for the sake of drinking. Still, somewhere in the haze I managed to catch Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop, a curious and enjoyable documentary that explores the elusive phenomenon of street art and the equally fascinating life of French film-maker, Thierry Guetta. I’m not convinced that’s it’s entirely a work of reality and I think it would be naive to expect Banksy to deliver a straight forward piece of work. But, speculation aside, the film is a compelling and beautiful exposition of an important street movement and the intriguing characters behind it. If you’re down for some incognito, anti-establishment malarkey, then this is going to fit you like a fucking glove.

I promise my next post will be about music…

Spinning on Your Head

David — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 03:04:53 +0000

B-boying is generally accepted as one of the four elements of hip-hop (along with DJing, MCing and graffiti), and Benson Lee’s 2007 documentary Planet B-Boy, is a mad insight into one of dance’s least understood subcultures. Following several different b-boy crews as they attempt to win the prestigious Battle of the Year competition, human struggle meshes with awe-inspiring physical insanity to spawn a mesmerizing hour and a half of rhythmic viewing. At times, admittedly, it does stray into sentimental territory but I managed to dispel comparisons to the woeful world of X-Factor and spent God knows how long trying to lift myself off the ground with one arm and spin in a circle. It didn’t work and I think I’ve broken my neck. I’m writing this with my tongue. Please get help.

Stop! Trailer time.

Emalkays Talks About Stuff

David — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:45:11 +0000

Here’s a video of Emalkay being interviewed at “And Here it is, The Return of Fall Massive” in Baltimore a couple of weeks back. He chats a bit about how the UK and US dubstep scenes differ and mentions a few producers he’s currently hot for, it’s all very civil.

The best part, however, is the fact that he’s from Birmingham and doesn’t even mention the Bullring once. I swear to God I’m telling the truth…

Raw Juice Benga Interview

David — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 04:10:54 +0000

Here’s a recent interview of Benga by the folks over at Raw Juice Records. It’s just a standard bunch of questions, but it’s pretty interesting to see where he is in regard to producing, DJing and the whole dubstep scene right now. In 10 years, he reckons he’s going to be on a yacht banging some ladies whilst dubstep makes it large on the gay scene. Why the hell not? In 10 years I could be lying in a hammock in the middle of the jungle or suiting up to fly to the moon, it’s going to be 2020 for fuck’s sake.

Head over to Raw Juice to give them some love. They can’t spell ‘necklace’ but hey, they’re Norwegian. I can’t spell anything in Norwegian. I can’t even say anything in Norwegian. Maybe I should learn Norwegian.

Leading the Movement

David — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:00:46 +0000

This post isn’t to do with music, so I’ve placed it in our seldom used and fairly enigmatic “Lifestyle” category. Taxonomy aside, I am now proudly addicted to CurrentTV’s Vanguard series and it’s all because they love to investigate guns, gangs, drugs and injustice. Anything remotely dangerous or controversial, for some unknown reason, tends to float my boat. If you were a television producer trying to specifically target me, then you’d create a show called: ‘Brutal Gangs: The Guns, The Drugs, The Bitches’. Perfect.

I’ve attached a new episode of Vanguard after the jump. Entitled ‘Forest of Ecstasy’, this instalment is presented by Adam Yamaguchi and investigates the recent proliferation of illegal safrole oil factories in the forests of Cambodia. Safrole oil, for those of you who don’t know, is the main ingredient used to make ecstasy, so it’s a bit of a big deal in South America. I have no idea why I find this shit so interesting.

Babybels, Beer and Box Musique

David — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 01:48:37 +0000

How long has it been since we last saw you? A fair while, I imagine. We’d be sorry for not providing you with the hordes of musical goodness you’re used to, but we’re quite selfish, so instead we’ll just return to doing what we do best and post some stuff about how we like babybels and beer far more than auto-tune.

On a serious note, we are switching things up here a bit and have streamlined everything, with less categories and some periodical articles which will hopefully have you coming back for more. We also have plans for a weekly radio show in the works, but don’t tell the man because he’ll just try to keep us down with his fiery stick.

We’ve also entered the social domain and would appreciate it if you got your fat little fingers over to Twitter, Last.fm, Technorati and Facebook and decided to support us. Whilst you’re at it, you may as well subscribe to our RSS too, because who wouldn’t want to get daily updates?

Oh and you can comment again! Do let us know what you think of the new design. Peace.