I spent most of today wrestling with a build problem in one of our internal Python modules. We use zc.buildout to automatically pull in the dependencies and build all the components for each module, but one of them started mysteriously failing with an error like this:

While:
Installing scripts.
Getting distribution for 'lfm.data'.

An internal error occurred due to a bug in either zc.buildout or in a
recipe being used:
Traceback (most recent call last):
…
ZipImportError: bad local file header in /blah/blah/lfm.data-0.11.dev_r186049-py2.6.egg

This was particularly weird, as I could unzip that file fine with no problems.

Eventually I got…

I've just been signed up for a gig next weekend (26 Feb) at ARtCH, a quirky little gallery/space/venue of the sort that East London does so well.

Topping the bill is Mark Spybey aka Dead Voices on Air, formerly of Download and sometime collaborator with all manner of avant-garde experimentalists. Expect home-made noise-toys, improvisation and spooky atmospherics.

Also in attendance will be Simon Fisher Turner, Two Dead Voices providing 'audiovisual synthesis', and entertainment until past bedtime from myself and Tango Mango (Freq/Kosmische).

See you there…

If you're interested, here's some more technical details on how we gathered the data for the Valentine's Day blog post.

Our tagging system assigns a relevance score to each tag for each artist that tag is applied to. This is based broadly on the number of listeners who've assigned that tag to that particular artist, but with a number of statistical corrections designed to reduce noise caused by errors, helping the genuinely informative tags float to the top.

This score is reflected in the size of the tags on each artist's tag page. So for Barry White you can see…

I've posted the event page for the first ever Big Bang party, at Electrowerkz in London on the first of April.

Big Bang #1

One floor of banging techno and trance, and another of filthy dubbed-up beats, breaks and bass. What's not to like? The lineup includes Broken Note and Matta, two of the dirtiest dubstep acts I've ever had the pleasure of seeing live – that's a complement by the way – and I'll be doing a set of noisy, atmospheric, bass-heavy electronics.

Tickets are a mere tenner from here.

See the new Big Bang FM group…