Bartitsu: The Gentleman’s Art of Self Defense

A short documentary on Bartitsu, a self defense system created by E.W. Barton-Wright in 1899 by combining Asian and European defense techniques including jujitsu, boxing, french (kick)-boxing, stick fighting and improvised fighting for example by using your overcoat to defend yourself. It was so popular in the UK at the beginning of the 20. century that Arthur Conan Doyle had his best know character, Sherlock Holmes, practicing Bartitsu in one of his books.

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Music: zZz – Running with the Beast

The video “Running with the Beast” for the band zZz is interesting in two ways.

First there is of course the music and then the project shown “…about two artist who have created the conditions to capture rage in a systematic way…” by letting two colored cocks print their fight on a sheet of paper.

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Quote of the day: Funeral Blues

One of W.H. Auden best known poems “Funeral Blues” in its second (shorter) and changed version. We are still searching for the original version with five stanzas which Auden wrote together with Christopher Isherwood in 1936.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Wystan Hugh Auden, 1907 – 1973, Funeral Blues

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Music: Klaus Nomi – The Cold Song

This is one of Klaus Nomi’s greatest performances. In this video, Klaus Nomi sings Purcell’s aria “The Cold Song” from his 17th century baroque opera King Arthur.

The opera’s composer Henry Purcell died in 1695 from incurable T.B. aged 36, while in 1983 Klaus Nomi sadly died as one of the first prominent victims of AIDS, aged 39.

He died about a half year after this recording was taken in Munich, Germany.

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Music: Requiem For A Dream

The song Lux Aeterna (Requiem For A Dream) by Clint Mansell.

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Music: 4AD year end features

A set of great and free tracks from British Indie Label 4AD.

Includes most of their artists from Atlas Sound to Stereolab. You can embed their player in your web site (see below) and also download the tracks.

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