The Null Device

Religious dictatorships find their own use for international policing protocols, it seems. After Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari fled to Malaysia after posting a Twitter comment critical of Islam, Saudi Arabia used Interpol's red notice system to have him arrested. He has been hastily deported to Saudi Arabia, where he may face the death penalty for "insulting the Prophet Mohammed".

The Malaysian home minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, said: "Malaysia has a long-standing arrangement by which individuals wanted by one country are extradited when detained by the other, and [Kashgari] will be repatriated under this agreement. The nature of the charges against the individual in this case are a matter for the Saudi Arabian authorities."

Kashgari said in an interview that he was being made a "scapegoat for a larger conflict" over his comments, Reuters reported. Amnesty International labelled Kashgari a prisoner of conscience and called for his release.

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This is pretty cool; NASA video of an aeroplane full of crash-test dummies crashing and burning, edited and set to what sounds like a laptop-glitch remix of Interpol's Untitled. (Of course, Sigur Rós, Merzbow or some Austrian glitchmeister would have been more l33t, but still...) (via bOING bOING)

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With the '70s rock revival in full swing, it's not surprising that The New York Dolls are reforming, with members of Guns'n'Roses and The Libertines standing in for dead members. The glam-rock band, formerly managed by Malcolm Maclaren (before he went on to bring us the Sex Pistols and failed experiments in pirate-pop and opera-rap and such) went on to inspire everything from hair-metal to Morrissey; in fact, it was Moz himself who prompted them to get together, for the Meltdown Festival he is curating in London.

Meanwhile, in the same issue of Pitchfork, there's a new New Order Peel Sessions compilation, with two performances from the late 1990s, including reworked versions of old Joy Division numbers. And the Interpol website has a downloadable MP3 remix of Untitled (which apparently was sent to them, quite unsolicited, by the fan who did it).

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There are some tracks worth voting for in the Triple J Net 50; Love of Diagrams, Minimum Chips, Manitoba and Interpol are in the current one. So's an Architecture in Helsinki song, but it's not one I'm all that fond of. (There is such a thing as too twee, you know.)

Not sure if my vote will be counted, though, given that I put in my real age.

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I just came back from the Interpol gig, which was great (if a bit on the crowded side).

First up was a support band called the Tucker Bs (presumably of no relation to Tucker B and the MGs). They were from Perth, and played a sort of crunchy, angular guitar rock. They were OK, though I don't see why the promoters flew them all the way over from Perth when local outfit Love of Diagrams wanted the support slot.

Then, some time after 11:30, Interpol came on; they were five young men in neatly buttoned-up shirts (some with thin ties) and equally meticulous hairstyles, looking very New Wave, like some cross between Joy Division and Kraftwerk. That wasn't the only Joy Division influence; the singer's stage manner seemed studiedly Ian Curtislike, only not quite as manic; I suppose that goes with his vocal style. The bass player (the chap in the very sharp red tie) stole the show, punctuating his workmanlike bass playing with rock-star stage antics, slinging his instrument around and raising it into the air. (He didn't play it at ankle-level à la Peter Hook though; or at least I didn't see him doing so.)

Oh, and the songs. They played pretty much all of Turn On The Bright Lights and one other; I'm not sure if that was a new one or something off an earlier EP. The sound was really good, filling the packed venue with a wall of layered guitars and thunderous drums, which made up for the fact that people who didn't stake out the front of the stage had a hard time seeing what was going on. Anyway, if you ever get a chance to see Interpol, do so.

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I wonder who will be supporting Interpol when they play here in August. I bet it won't be Architecture in Helsinki.

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