Journal

Last month’s vinyl haul included brand new music, a couple of great releases I’d missed in 2019, and some killer reissues.

Let’s dive in.

Sleep D – Rebel Force

I’ve noticed that a lot of my recent favourites are from Australia: artists like Ewan Jansen, Rings Around Saturn and Turner Street Sound; labels like Ken Oath Records. This LP from Sleep D – who contributed Connexion Dub on the excellent Sweet Echoes Vol 1 – was produced in Melbourne but released on Anthony Naples’ NY-based Incensio label toward the end of 2019. It’s on the deep, heady techno and electro tip (but also features a lush house remix from Kuniyuki) and has been getting some plays from Hessle Audio luminaries Ben UFO and Joe.

Current Favourite Track: Twin Turbo

Grab a copy on Discogs

Bella Vista – Mister Wong

Originally released in 1982, this electronic pop oddity has been reissued by Adelaide-based label Isle of Jura. The original with its quirky vocals, synths and guitars is a bit like a French Genius of Love, while there’s also a lovely stripped-back and effects-laden dub version.

Current Favourite Track: Disco Dub (Jura Soundsystem Extended Edit)

Grab a copy on Bandcamp

Roy Ayers – Searching / One Sweet Love To Remember

Vibes legend Roy Ayers’ 1976 rare groove classic Searching gets a welcome 7″ reissue from UK label Dynamite Cuts. One Sweet Love on the flip – also from the Vibrations LP – sees Roy in more upbeat mode with great swinging, syncopated drums.

Current Favourite Track: Searching

Grab a copy on Bandcamp

Oscar Weathers – We're Running Out Of Time / Countdown

A stellar slice of reissued eighties electrofunk which I heard while tuned in to 6Music. The original is a much-sought after rarity but fortunately it’s now available once again thanks to Fantasy Love Records. It features a cool vocal accompanied by Funkadelic-style synths, live bass and horns, resulting in something pretty unique.

Current Favourite Track: We're Running Out Of Time

Grab a copy on Bandcamp

Skinshape ‎– I Didn't Know

A lovely 7″ slab of dubbed out, psychedelic soul from Will Dorey aka Skinshape, whose work I first encountered on the Riddim Box Dub / Soul Groove release on Horus back in 2013. The version of I Didn’t Know I heard first (on Gilles Peterson’s radio show) is the dub, however I’m warming to the vocal too. I’ve also noticed that he’s released a few albums which I plan to check out.

Current Favourite Track: IDK Dub

Grab a copy on Discogs

Benoit B – Caution 9′6″ High

Another excellent release from Edinburgh’s Unthank (sister label of Firecracker) featuring four tracks ranging in style from oddball electronics to more dancefloor-oriented electro.

Current Favourite Track: Coconut Groove

Grab a copy at Boomkat

Various ‎– DB12 002

Obscure and limited various artists release from Rimini-based label Duca Bianco, featuring a variety of electronic sounds; some poppier than others. The track Sequence Fiction I bought it for is a 100 BPM chugging John Carpenter-esque instrumental that came to my attention via Joe’s excellent mix for Crack Magazine (appearing at 7:05).

Current Favourite Track: Guillaume De Bois – Sequence Fiction

Grab a copy on Juno

Joy O – Slipping

I’m really enjoying Joy Orbison’s journey as a producer and loved the 2018 7″ Diamonds under his Sin Falta pseudonym. This occupies a similar glitchy and heady space and showcases some really interesting sounds and ideas while still having enough oomph for DJs and dancefloors of taste.

Grab a copy on Discogs

Stimulus JS is great but doesn’t provide any documentation for testing controllers, so here’s some of my own that I’ve picked up.

Required 3rd-party libraries

• jest
• jest-dom

Basic Test

// hello_controller.test.js
import { Application as StimulusApp } from "stimulus";
import HelloController from "path/to/js/hello_controller";

describe("HelloController", () => {
  beforeEach(() => {
    // Insert the HTML and register the controller
    document.body.innerHTML = `
      <div data-controller="hello">
        <input data-target="hello.name" type="text">
        <button data-action="click->hello#greet">
          Greet
        </button>
        <span data-target="hello.output">
        </span>
      </div>
    `;
    StimulusApp.start().register('hello', HelloController);
  })

  it("inserts a greeting using the name given", () => {
    const helloOutput =  document.querySelector("[data-target='hello.output']");
    const nameInput = document.querySelector("[data-target='hello.name']");
    const greetButton = document.querySelector("button");
    // Change the input value and click the greet button
    nameInput.value = "Laurence";
    greetButton.click();
    // Check we have the correct greeting
    expect(helloOutput).toHaveTextContent("Hello, Laurence!");
  })
})

I wanted to see if it was possible to create SVG charts that would work without JS. Well, it is. I've also created an experimental Svelte component library called Pancake to make these techniques easier to use.

A lovely modern, progressively-enhanced approach to data visualisation that uses primarily SVG, HTML and CSS but can be enhanced with JavaScript for Node-based generation or client-side interactivity, if required. (via @jamesmockett)

A great tutorial video on Eleventy by Jason Lengstorf with guest Zach Leatherman, creator of Eleventy.

I already know Eleventy pretty well – in fact this site is built with Eleventy. But you always pick up lots of great tips by watching the people who really know their way around the software.

(via @jlengstorf)

RegExr is an online tool to learn, build, & test Regular Expressions.

This handy, interactive tool is a bit like Postman but for RegEx. You can create RegEx patterns and save them for easy retrieval later.

I also like the way you can start by making a list of example text strings you want your pattern to i) match and ii) not match before starting work on your RegEx pattern, adopting a sort-of “Test Driven RegEx” approach.

Clair and I just watched The Farewell, a comedy-drama film written and directed by Lulu Wang starring Awkwafina and Zhao Shuzhen, and really enjoyed it. Interesting/difficult subject matter and really nicely done. If you need a break from grisly murder cases etc then I can heartily recommend it.

The sessions recorded by the band in Memphis with the legendary record producer Tom Dowd, along with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section musicians Roger Hawkins, drums, and David Hood, bass, did not make the light of day, because some of the mixes were not suitable in the musical climate at the time.

A great watch telling an unlikely, touching and at times hilarious story of how the Glasgow band temporarily escaped the madness of the early 90’s scene for Memphis to record an album which was out of step with the time and only revealed its true quality with the benefit of hindsight and maturity.

The production on The Memphis Sessions sounded absolutely amazing and there are some great vinyl mastering scenes for those – like myself – who are into that kind of thing!

On the strength of this, I think Clair and I will grab a copy of the record.

As I got on my usual bus from Stockwell St to Vic Rd this eve, I noticed it was the same driver whose bus I’d taken twice last week and both times it had broken down – that’s two days in a row – leaving me to walk home in the usual January post-apocalyptic shitstorm. I got on his bus today and no sooner was it 200 yards down the road than it crashed into a taxi, across from Marks and Sparks. Everybody out – again. That’s 3 times I’ve been on his bus, and three times it’s broken down for one reason or another. The shittest hat-trick ever 😂. I need to find out this guy’s name so I can never get on a plane with him.

My point with all this is that it’s easy to see every problem or design as a new component or a mix of currently existing components. But instead, we should make components that can slot into each other neatly, rather just continue to make more components.

An interesting observation from Robin Rendle who leads Gousto’s design system.

Not every design pattern in a Design System should be represented by a code-based component.

His example is of the common link-with-icon pattern (but the theory could be applied elsewhere).

Gousto already had <Link /> and <Icon /> components, each with their own relevant props (e.g name etc) but because the designs often featured links-with-icons they decided to build an <IconLink /> component too.

This new component introduced new, repetitious but slightly divergent prop/attribute names.

Robin’s point is that the new component essentially:

• just duplicated what the existing components did, and thus
• created margin for divergence and error, and
• added additional maintenance overhead.

So Gousto eventually realised that an additional coded component didn’t make sense. Instead, just combine the existing components by nesting an <Icon /> inside a <Link />, e.g.:

<Link>
    <Icon />
<Link>

I like his thinking!

Basically there doesn’t need to be (and shouldn’t be, to avoid coding error and UX inconsistency) a 1:1 relationship between design patterns and coded components, so long as the pattern can be created by composition using existing components.

Note that I think it’s still key to document how to recreate the design pattern in code – for example we could have a section at the bottom of the component docs for the Icon component detailing how to create a link-with-icon by combining it with a Link component.

Basically I like the idea of reducing the amount of

1. “which component do I use?” head-scratching; and
2. margin for divergence/inconsistency

…by having less components.

Here’s Rob Weychert advocating a combination of CSS custom properties, calc() and Sass to automate the construction of a flexible typographic scale in CSS.