prebenlang.com

Re-designing and re-thinking

Preben — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:48:55 +0000

To quote Pink Floyd: “Is there anybody out there?”

Well if the website is poorly designed and maintained, i will never know.

So i’ve desided, to spend the next few days and weeks trying to redesign and rethink the purpose of this website.

In this process i will make, sort of, a mission statement, which will be published here.

With no knowledge of designing or programming websites whatsoever: Here i go.

I’ve given myself the challenge, not to take a ready-made template and swap the imagefiles, but to start from (almost) scratch. I’ll start with a base layout from matthewjamestaylor.com and build on that.

I will succed or fail spectacularly.

Wish me luck

Preben Lang

Food For Thought

Preben — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:36:08 +0000

At work I had a chat with a collegue, about Lowkey and the deepness of his lyrics. It got me thinking. There’s a lot of raps out there with deep meanings and some thought-provoking lyrics. So I tried with my (so far) limited knowledge-base to name a few.

We are gonna touch a few different subjects and decades of our history. KRS-One is one artist, who has been around since the dawn of time. Almost, anyway. I fell for his “Kill a Rapper”. He argues that society and the police does not care when a (black) rapper kicks the bucket. No-one really cares. Next up is Jedi Mind Tricks. In “Uncommon Valor” he tells the story of a Vietnam Veteran and how the war was percieved by the footsoldiers. How their lives were affected by the missions they got and the weapons used. It’s sort of “Deerhunter” shortened to a few minutes (worth watching, by the way). A more contempory theme is “What kind of cruelty to mankind, are we prepared to ignore in our quest for material possesions?” Child labour? Slavery? Inhumane living conditions? Have a go with “Shadow Business”.

Moving to the UK, Lowkey, has something on his mind. The middle-eastern countries as well as politics, seem to be a favorite theme for this one. Lowkey likes to challenge the listener to think about the world and for lack of a better desciption: Established truths. “Obama Nation” questions the role USA plays in world politics. How the USA has been an influence in just about every single theater of politics and wars. “Long Live Palestine” tries to challenge Israels self-proclaimed role as a victim. In “License to Kill” he looks at the policebrutality in the UK. He bases it on the case of Ian Tomlinson who was beaten to death by the police, even though he was no threat to anyone at the time. So who gave them, the right to kill a man, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time?

From Denmark: Kinski. Lykkelig Luder attacks the Danish government and basically states that the government blindly does what USA tells them to do. No questions asked. Unfortunately there is no english version, that i know of. I’ll see if i can post a rough translation soon.

If you have other links that fits in with the theme of this post, please leave a comment.

So here goes (Just click the links):

By KRS-One

By Jedi Mind Tricks

By Lowkey

By Kinski (Danish)

J-Walk(ing)

Preben — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 23:34:43 +0000

Sometimes you strike gold, and you don’t even know how you found it. This time I actually can trace (most of, anyway) the steps. We start the trip at 180g.dk (180 grams), an ecxellent danish webshop for hiquality vinyls. A place where money disappears, vanishes at the same rate as if you went to Las Vegas. So here i go. Once again entering a territory where i can not afford to go. I decided to browse around their Hip-Hop Collection. Saw a new item to their stock, this one from Cut Chemist called The Litmus Test. Intrigued. In the description they mentioned “Den Sorte Skole”. I jumped on youtube to see who that was. Den Sorte Skole: Lektion #1 – Track 12-Track 13. In the comments J-Walk was mentioned. And so i had to listen to him as well. Curiosity didn’t kill me, but now i definately have some more records to buy.

Link history:

180g.dk / Cut Chemist (Note: site is in Danish)

Den Sorte Skole (Den Sorte Skole / The Black School(literally translated))

J-Walk (J-Walk: Soul Vibration)

Also from J-Walk:

The French Letter

The Wasp : a favourite