MetaFilter posts tagged with Monkeys

For Domu / Umod / Sonar Circle / Bakura (etc), This really is The End ...

filthy light thief — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:46:43 -0800

The story starts in 1992 or so, when the 14 year old Brit, Dominic Stanton, bought turntables and started spinning early drum'n'bass. He transitioned from DJ to producer, made demo tracks, and got signed by age 17. He went on to produce broken beat* and jazzy downtempo*, even into the realm of disco edits. Then about two weeks ago, the 31 year old musician called it quits.

The point is that I am no longer Domu. He is a character, always has been, and as of Friday 13th November 2009, he no longer exists. Neither does Umod, Sonar Circle, Bakura, Yotoko, Rima, Zoltar, Blue Monkeys, Realside or any of the other names I put out music under. I am cancelling all my gigs and not taking any more. My hotmail is closed, my Twitter is closed and my Facebook is closed.

Furthermore, his website is closed and the original post of his farewell message is lost, though you can still view the cached version or find it copied elsewhere. Domu's website now simply states This really is The End . . . Step inside for an abbreviated journey. Dominic Stanton's musical interests were first hip-hop and acid house and techno. From there, he followed the early days of jungle and drum'n'bass as a DJ, later producing some tracks and sending demos around, eventually signing with Dennis 'Dego' McFarlane and Mark 'Marc Mac' Clair on their label, Reinforced Records. For the first recording on Reinforced, Stanton joined two other guys and formed Static Imprints for one single, released in 1996. Then the trio became a duo, known as Sonar Circle, and they released their first three singles in 1997, including Devient Concept / Keep My Sanity. The duo released another single in 1998, and the only Sonar Circle album, Radius, came out in 1999. The duo became a solo artist, with Stanton becoming the only person behind the name. He released two more singles and two EPs by 2003, but had largely moved onto other projects. Dominic Stanton's most prolific profile started in 1999, when the Domu single Dressed to Ill was released on the 2000 Black label, a broken beat/ future jazz/ deep house imprint of the drum'n'bass focused Reinforced Records label. In 2000, Domu released his first single on the Italian Archive label, where he later released two albums (2001, 2005). In 2007, Domu produced an album for Pete Simpson on the Papa Records label. And this past summer, Tru Throughts released a compilation of what Stanton considered the most important works of his from the last 10 years. Stanton's two other solo projects were Umod and Zoltar. The former was more sample-based than his other work, and as Umod he released an album and a single in 2004, another single in 2006, plus some odd tracks. Zoltar was more of a one-off personality, and is credited for a 2004 single and a remix of a Umod track. The rest of his musical creations were collaborations. There were at least 10 profiles for these joint efforts, ranging from the one offs as Kudu (one single in 2000) and Blue Monkeys (one single in 2001), to the longer lasting Bakura, which produced an album in 2005 and a few singles. Another group was Legends of the Underground, a multimedia performance group based on music created by Stanton, Mark De Clive-Lowe and Paul "Seiji" Dolby (the trio had earlier collaborated as Kudu). The soundtrack was released on Kindred Spirits in Amsterdam in 2005. Live shows merged music, dance, and an animated 3D world (3D glasses supplied). Along with production and DJing, Dominic Stanton started the online label TrembleO, focusing on digital distribution of new and old tracks of his own creation, as well as other artists and a few releases on CD and vinyl. The official site was taken down, but the MySpace page is still public. In the wake of the announcement, there was much discussion on blogs and forums, and much use of the twitter tag 'weloveyouDomu'. Tribute mixes a-plenty were posted, highlighting the history of Dominic Stanton. People pulled out past mixes from Domu, letting the man speak for himself. He might return, or maybe find something else to fill his life. Until then, there is a vibrant past to re-live. Audio/Video clips 1997- Sonar Circle - Devient Concept (6:04), from Devient Concept/Keep My Sanity 2001- Sonar Circle - Havoc (5:59), from the Havoc EP 2001- Aardvarck - ReSpoken (Domu's Broken Dialect Mix) (6:21), from the Re Spoken 12" 2003- Bakura - Thinking About (Domu Mix) (5:34), from the Veya Veya / Thinking About 12" 2005- Domu - Quarantine (6:20), from The Electric Institute compilation 2007- Domu presents Pete Simpson - Coming Back Around video (4:29) and Play This Song (4:41), from the album Look a Little Further 2007- Domu presents Pete Simpson - Look A Little Further (The Muthafunkaz 12" Vocal Mix) (7:00), from the Look a Little Further single 2007- Making of Swell Session video (3:02), from Swell Communications featuring Domu and Elsa Esmeralda 2008- Broke'n'£nglish - Take It Low (Domu Remix) (5:09), from the Take It Low 12" 2008- Replife - Put It Down (Domu Remix) (4:41), from Put It Down / R U Ready 7" 2009- Domu & Yannah Valdevit - City Madness (A&D's 4 The Summer Mix) (2:25), sample from the City Madness / Info People single 2009- Tortured Soul - Home To You (Domu Remix) (5:17), from the Home To You remixes 2009- Interview in Paris (3:23), posted after his announcement to retire but recorded in the months prior Mixes by Domu 2004- Interview and mixset for Red Bull Music Academy Feb 22, 2005- Live from CSUF (scroll down for the link to the mix, read more on his profile) October 2007- Exclusive Domu guest mix for Urban Landscapes [dates unknown]- TrembelO Radio Show, showcasing Domu and a rotating cast of extras including Shifty, Marin, and Soza.

But what about Monkey Polar Express?

supercres — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:54:33 -0800

The uncanny valley effect (too many previous posts to list) has been blamed for poor acceptance of human-analogue robots (YT) and computer simulations (not to mention the box office results for The Polar Express, Beowulf, and other computer-animated movies). But did you know that humans are not the only primate species to experience this "too close for comfort" effect? A recent behavioral study in macaque monkeys suggests (pdf) that the uncanny valley may be hardwired into our brains at a deeper level (i.e., earlier-evolved) than previously thought.

Gene Therapy for Color-blindness

spitefulcrow — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:58:23 -0800

"But after five months, something clicked. The monkeys picked out red and green, again and again." UW researchers use gene therapy to give squirrel monkeys trichromatic vision. “Not only might we be able to cure disease, but we might engineer eyes with remarkable capabilities. You can imagine conferring enhanced night vision in normal eyes, or engineering genes that make photopigments with spectral properties for whatever you want your eye to see.”

Play That Monkey Music

mygothlaundry — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:22:00 -0800

Monkeys react to music composed specifically for them, using monkey calls. Cellist David Teie, working with psychologist Charles Snowdon, has created music based on monkey calls that successfully affects the emotional state of tamarinds. Turns out that they don't like human music, except possibly Metallica. What can you do with this information? Well, you could buy - or, hey, create - music for your cat.

Mark Helprin vs The Mouth Breathing Morons

shoesfullofdust — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 14:56:15 -0800

The overall effect is like listening to an erudite gentleman employing $20 words while he screams at a bunch of punk kids to get off his front lawn. A review of Mark Helprin's Digital Barbarism : A Writer's Manifesto. This is an insanely long review of Helprin's book by Lawrence Lessig. You can read Helprin's 2007 NYT editorial, the impetus behind all of this, here. [previously]

Sign of the time, so out of line

Joe Beese — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 20:35:33 -0800

National Geographic's photographic history of monkeys in space.

Snow Monkeys bathe in hot springs

Joe in Australia — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:34:54 -0800

Japanese snow monkeys in Yamanouchi have developed a neat trick - they bathe in the region's hot springs. Here's another gallery. There's even a webcam! I love these guys. They're really cute. And this time I searched for monkeys, hot springs, hot tubs, and every other relevant keyword I could think of. I really hope nobody's posted this before, but with my luck it will appear as, oh, "oriental primate immersion within caloric effusions".

Animal behaviour: Grape expectations

kliuless — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 07:10:32 -0800

Revealing how we are just a bunch of monkeys... (via) Franz de Waals and Sarah Brosnan

...trained brown capuchin monkeys to give them pebbles in exchange for cucumbers. Almost overnight, a capuchin economy developed, with hungry monkeys harvesting small stones. But the marketplace was disrupted when the scientists got mischievous: instead of giving every monkey a cucumber in exchange for pebbles, they started giving some monkeys a tasty grape instead. (Monkeys prefer grapes to cucumbers.) After witnessing this injustice, the monkeys earning cucumbers went on strike. Some started throwing their cucumbers at the scientists; the vast majority just stopped collecting pebbles. The capuchin economy ground to a halt. The monkeys were willing to forfeit cheap food simply to register their anger at the arbitrary pay scale.

in other words, it could be up to our kids to replenish our trust networks... BONUS GRAPES

Hey Cat!

ooga_booga — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:29:18 -0800

Look at This Cat! Not to be confused with look at this dog, look at this muppet (wat a donut...), robots and donuts, monkeys and robots, monkeys on stilts, twin monkeys, koala twins, or celebrities without makeup. [via mefi projects]

Mini Monkees

vronsky — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 19:34:35 -0800

Mini Monkees Of Brazil

Mail-Order Friends: The Comic Book Squirrel Monkeys

An Infinity Of Monkeys — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 18:50:19 -0800

Mail-Order Friends: The Comic Book Squirrel Monkeys

"I very seldom tell anyone what I actually do, because you just don't know who you are talking to."

fearfulsymmetry — Sat, 31 May 2008 04:14:22 -0800

"The Guardian has been granted exclusive and unfettered access to one of the most controversial research facilities at a British university." Caring or cruel? Inside the primate laboratory. Audio slideshow. A necessary evil - Colin Blakemore. Wise monkeys - Gill Langley.

Cartoon Monkeys go BOOM

carsonb — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 23:49:40 -0800

Enjoy 10 variously attributed^* vintage Monkey Cartoons and more courtesy STWALLSKULL and BOOM!
Also available for your viewing pleasure, an itemized list with embeddable links: These are all located at the first link above, but here they are again for your convenience: The Monkey Sword Masamune (1930)
森のお医者と白衣の勇士 (Doctor of Forest and Brave Warrior of Sanitary Gown)
Sankichi the Monkey in The Storm Troopers (1934)
The Monkey Fleet (1936)
Betty Boop with Henry, the World’s Funniest American (1935)
Art Gallery (1939)
Pipe Dreams (1938)
Monkey Melodies (1930)
Happy Harmonies: Good Little Monkeys (1935)
The Peanut Vendor (1934) I find that STWALLSKULL and Steven Stwalley have been lovingly featured before, and recently.

Pyow-pyow

chuckdarwin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:42:28 -0800

A troop of putty-nosed monkeys in west Africa has been found to use a rudimentary language.

The art of Laurie Hogin

homunculus — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 22:11:04 -0800

Monkey Portraits: Allegories of Brand Loyalty, by Laurie Hogin. [Via Right Some Good.] Hogin was previously mentioned here and here.

Animal Planet investigates alcoholism in monkeys

finite — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 16:32:42 -0800

"Significantly, the percentage of monkeys and humans who avoid alcohol is the same." [YouTube]

Illustrations of primates

salvia — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 11:31:35 -0800

Look at that tail! Stephen Nash has illustrated the most endangered primates (image gallery: part 1, part 2) -- so faithfully over the years that one now bears his name. The just-released "Primates in Peril" report has full profiles of each animal, along with all of Nash's illustrations (including those replaced by photos in the gallery above -- don't miss the sumatran orangutan!).

Pan homo culture

svenvog — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 16:07:00 -0800

I laughed, I cried, and I welcomed our new Pan-Homo Culture From the always edumataining TED talks. Now Dawkins free.

Portraits of Apes and Monkeys

Kattullus — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 08:57:35 -0800

Incredibly expressive portraits of apes and monkeys by photographer Jill Greenberg whose pictures of crying babies raised heckles last year.

A touch, I do confess it.

dersins — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 14:11:50 -0800

Notes towards the complete works of Shakespeare [pdf] by Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan. (About the authors.) Documentation. "Making of" video. [previously discussed, but never actually linked]. From the same people: Carbon Life Form, a small Mac application that will die of starvation unless you feed it files.

Brazilian Blogger Bash

vacapinta — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 10:35:05 -0800

Brazilian Blogger Bashing! The respected Brazilian newspaper Estadao decided to promote its new online presence by jokingly producing a series of ads with obvious misfits and asking such questions as "Is this the guy giving you dating advice?" and a video (youtube) comparing bloggers to monkeys. Bloggers are outraged "Why would you read a newspaper that compares bloggers to monkeys?". In today's newspaper, Estadao offers no apology but instead dryly recounts the facts. Meanwhile, the resulting controversy, with thousands of blogs weighing in, has driven a lot of traffic to their new site.

Custom Monkey Drawings & More

jonson — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 13:24:26 -0800

Illustrator Apelad has many various projects & flickrsets, including the fairly well known Laugh Out Loud Cats & the Hodgman inspired Hobo Names project, but some of the lesser known ones are awesome as well, including this set of images created for common HTTP Errors, this Alphabet of Monsters, and a personal favorite, Monkey!, wherein users send in a monkey description and receive in return a drawing.

Affected by Digg Effect

Burhanistan — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:35:25 -0800

DailyHub - "Social Content for Business Geeks". A Digg-esque aggregator that purports to be grown up.

All things are joyful to a monkey

homunculus — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 00:21:25 -0800

Mr Monkey's World of Hats ! [Via.]

Apes of Wrath:

P-Soque — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 13:28:59 -0800

Apes of Wrath In October, they gained similar rights to humans, now it seems monkeys are plotting to take over the earth. Their bid for global domination has been happening right before our eyes; it's just a matter of connecting the dots. Check out this ominous timeline of escalating monkey aggression, drawn from real news reports. The evolution will not be televised.