Wednesday 20 April 2011

How to add a Nightbreed Radio stream shortcut to your iPhone/iPod Touch

Convenience. You can't beat it. Coffee, food, all sorts of things accessed by the single push of a button.
So it made perfect sense for me to figure out how to access an internet radio station from the single press of a button.

I suppose that you could trawl the Apple app store to find one that would allow you to access Nightbreed Radio, maybe even charge you for the privilege.
OR you could just follow the steps below that I knocked up through a little bit of tatting about.
The simple instructions below will make a direct shortcut to Nightbreed Radio's stream on your iPhone/iPod Touch-just press & listen, like radio should be accessed in my humble opinion...

Once I've figured out how to attach the Nightbreed logo icon " " to this shortcut I'll let you know (this option already works for adding a shortcut to the Nightbreed Radio website to your homescreen)

1. Open http://nightbreedradio.com in Safari on your iPhone/iPod Touch
2. Scroll down the page until you reach the 'HOW TO LISTEN TO THIS STATION' section.
3. Press & hold on the Radionomy .M3U link until options for it pop up from the bottom of the screen.
4. Choose the 'Open in New Page' option.
5. A new page will open and the stream will automatically start playing through Safari's Quicktime player plugin.
6. Press 'Done' in the top left-hand corner of the screen & a blank screen will appear.
7. Press the middle button at the bottom of the screen which looks like an arrow pointing out of a box.
8. Select the 'Add to Home Screen' option
9. Name the shortcut something relevant, like 'Radio Nightbreed' or 'Nightbreed Player'
10. Tap the top right-hand 'Add' button and you're done!

Friday 15 April 2011

Dominion Magazine: interview with DJ Cruel Britannia about World Goth Day

Taken from Dominion Magazine, April 14th:


The Crazy World of Cruel Britannia on World Goth Day

By Cassandra on Apr 14, 2011 | In Features | Send feedback »

World Goth Day according to Cruel Britannia.
World Goth Day is quickly approaching. To those few people not in the know, it's on Sunday May 22 and it's a world wide phenomenon. I spoke to Cruel Britannia, the man behind the initial idea of this weird and wholly wonderful venture. The result of my enquiries is what I expected of Cruel: a tongue-in-cheek and rather amusing insight.
I asked Cruel ''why on earth did you think that us down-trodden Goths were worthy of a World Goth Day?''. He said ''In short, why not?''.

Initially the concept was started by a weekend special of musical genres on BBC 6Music back in 2009 and the day that concentrated on goth music was May 22nd. They ultimately made a good job of it from what I heard on the radio. The first I heard of it all was on the Whitby Gothic Weekend forum when a scout from the BBC posted a thread on it asking if anyone took the goth scene into their day jobs, such as dentists with black aprons and suchforth''

''Either way, something went 'clunk' in my mind one evening (probably too much caffeine) and I brainstormed a blog on Myspace about how the whole country should have a 'Goth Day' and celebrate what the goth scene means to them, rather than it just being constrained to a commercial radio special. I even hit photoshop and created what we now know as the Goth Day Smiley that evening so that people could print it out and splash it around their home or workplace''

''What I wasn't expecting was for people to take notice and do exactly what I'd ranted on about. I'm used to being ignored the other 364 days of the year, so why that day? Gawd only knows. Nowadays, the Myspace blog is long gone now along with my Myspace account, but the concept stuck. Last year Martin Oldgoth and I decided to bother the whole world with it using the tried and trusted methods of social networking, a forum and a website with freely downloadable stuff (because let's face it, everyone follows the free cookie trail).The results were more than satisfactory, what with several events ranging from full blown goth nights to picnics, barbeques and themed Race For Life participations all over the world''

The common mis-conception and continual wind-up is the outsiders view of Goths, I asked Cruel if he thought that we Goths were happy to be miserable and down-trodden, or to appear to be. His reply was that he didn't think so at all. ''Most of the goths who were there from the start simply aren't comfortable with being insular and moody anymore, they've matured a little with age and, dear god, developed a sense of humour that they don't mind showing in public''

''I think the stereotype of the self-harming, heartwrenched bedroom poet that outsiders tag us with has been whipped off our Bauhaus t-shirts and given to the Emos to be honest. Even Robert Smith is looking slightly jolly nowadays, and not just in the waistline''

When I asked Cruel what he thought the National Anthem should be I didn't expect the answer I got, which was Europe's 'The Final Countdown', however, he elaborated after apologising profusely and said ''seriously though, I'm probably one of the worst ones to ask that question of; as a DJ I have a new favourite song every ten minutes. To think of a song that encapsulates and celebrates the very essence of the goth scene, AND be good and catchy enough to sing along to is nigh on impossible''.

''However, I've just now had this spontaneous mental image of the 1970's Coca Cola advert where, instead of there being a hill full of hippies singing about how they want to teach the world to sing, a thousand goths are all atop a sunny mountainside throwing shapes to 'Shadowdance' by Eyes Of The Nightmare Jungle.''

''The current crop of post punk and dark edged indie bands that we see now have given the scene a light we can all follow, and for a long time there hasn't been a light to follow other than one we thought to have been carried by someone who turned out to be quick enough to disconnect himself from the goth scene (No hints needed here on who that is). But I reckon that one of those bands will come up with an anthem if anyone can.''
Cruel would really like the idea of World Goth Day going even more global and like our youth, lasting for an eternity. Martin and Cruel sound like they've been chucking various strange ideas around about it and they both appear to be taken by the idea of wearing gold lame tuxedo jackets to present the World Goth Day awards, worryingly I can visualise this.
''Ultimately, I want to see WGD being celebrated yearly without me having to push it so hard from behind a Twitter account, I'd like to see it take off by itself and for promoters to go ahead and create events for people to attend because they know May is coming each year. Pure and simple. We've planted a seed together, I'd like to see us nurture it for the rest of the life of the goth scene!''
You will no dounbt have realised that Cruel Britannia has a rather active imagination and a fairly healthy outlook on life, the universe and pretty much everything to with Goth. Some of his ideals are slightly less achievable, such as ''a total ban of the use of the Comic Sans font in all school letters to parents''. Failing that ''I'd quite like the leaders of all nations to recognise the goth scene as a nation in itself, offer us an island which we will predictably call 'Goth Island' and we can all move there to live in perfect harmony and bring up our gothlings in peace without any intolerance. On Friday afternoons, we'll set aside 5 minutes to throw ridiculous shapes to 'Shadowdance' or something. Oh yeah, I'd like to see the minimum goth DJ fee to be set at £1000''.

''Lastly, when I finally fall off my perch (which hopefully won't be too soon), I'd like my gravestone to be engraved with 'World Goth Day; it was partly his fault'.''
Dominion has it's own World Goth Day event - World Goth Day Dominion Magazine Show on May 22 but there are things starting to pop up all over the place, keep your eyes and ears open for something happening in your bit of the world.

Monday 4 April 2011

Radio Fadeout: The Mix Archive

To cut a long story short (though i don't really need to ; it's my blog, dammit), I got a new car over the weekend. After many years of driving round in rudimetary automobiles that barely have an engine & wheels, I've finally joined the ranks of drivers with cars that have central locking and - amazingly - a CD player.
To take full advantage of the latter, I knew I had to do what is almost expected of me; fill the entire car with CD's to listen to. Not quite like some people who have them spilling out of every crevice & compartment that the car possesses, but definitely enough to temporarily quell my insanely short musical attention span.
That's when I remembered Radio Fadeout.
Back in the days of my old weekly goth night Hex In The City, I used to create a podcast consisting partly of tracks played at 'Hex' to give people a bit of a taster as to what they should expect if they turned up. At the same time, I'd burn these mixes of music to CD to use during the first quiet hour or two of the night where maybe only a few people would be in. I'd stick it on & go round saying Hi to people, asking how they were, etc. It was that sort of night; a welcoming atmosphere where you could come in, feel at home & more inportantly, want to come back next week as well.
Anyway, many years after Hex, the CD's I made all sat in storage, never seeing the light of day. I had made 22 of them in total running from September 2004 to December 2006. I'd lost the very first one to the pub Hex In The City was hosted in; I'd lent it to the landlady & never saw it again. However, the rest are still in good condition & waiting to be stuck in a CD wallet in the car. But not before I ripped them to single MP3 format mixes first.
I'm still wading my way through the labourious task of individually typing out & embedding the playlist into each file-I'm on number 9 at this point-but when I've finished, I'll upload the lot to my 4Shared storage for everyone to have (if you want it of course), so you can own a little piece of Hex In The City history. All 21 mixes, weighing in at just a few seconds under 21 hours.
Owing to the amount of playlist info & dates, I think I'll probably create a web-page of download links so you can have a bit of a read while you're downloading. I'm nice like that.
Watch this space.