Another Saturday morning, another sun rising over the buildings of W1 while my friends and I found ourselves huddled round a laptop after being up all night. Through a very convoluted chain of voyeurism on Facebook and MySpace we came across the very disturbing picture of someone who had split their own tongue. Seriously, there was a whole series of these pictures where we were shown the stages of the tongue healing, and more disturbingly the actual process of cutting.

After our queasiness subsided and we collected our jaws off the floor we decided we had to research this bizarre practice; would there be others out there cutting their tongue in two for cosmetic purposes? To our horror (and slight fascination) we discovered a whole subculture propagated by people who practise extreme body modification. Judging by the pictures posted online there is an extremely fine line between this and self-mutilation; think of suspension, where people have stuck hooks to various parts of their bodies to be able to hang themselves from the ceiling.

Tongue splitting appears to be popular amongst people who want a more ‘devil-like’ appearance as we found images where they had cut their ears to give them a pointier shape and inserted domes on each side of their head. What’s the motivation behind these bizarre operations? Are they depressed, self –harmers, addicted to pain, or just unconventional? The Lizard Man makes a living out of his appearance, and Fakir Musafar has even turned his experiments with his own body into art. Still, the mind boggles…

Later that night I ignored my body’s cries for a decent night’s sleep and headed to a Mariah Carey-themed party in Clapham, South London. I was having so much fun I didn’t realise the sun was coming up yet again whilst I raided the hosts’ CD collection.

Despite the late hour people were still arriving, and I got chatting to an American duo who rocked up after being refused entry into Ministry of Sound. I was a little unsure how they’d managed this, though one of them seemed nice enough. The other - a 21 year old – asked my age, and when I said I was 25 he replied with “that’s cool, I dig older chicks.”  “Well, I don’t dig kids” I said.  

He trotted off along with his Justin Timberlake-style hat in search of prey. Only two other girls remained by now, and this being a gay party Timbers found himself in the enviable position of being the only straight man with two very drunk girls at his disposal. After chatting both of them up separately they clocked on to the fact that he was trying it on with the pair of them. Did they then realise he was simply trying to get laid by whoever would say yes? Nope, instead they got terribly upset and started ranting to whoever would listen that, “Oh, he’s talking to her too, he likes her!” Honey, he doesn’t like either of you, he just wants to get into your pants.

One of the girls decided to take action and launched herself upon him, but Timbers, thinking he could really milk the situation asked them both for a threesome. I don’t know the outcome, but something tells me this wasn’t the romantic scene they’d envisaged when he first approached them. I could go on about Timbers the creep, but some girls really don’t help themselves…the mind really does boggle.

For dance music aficionados, Carl Craig should need no introduction. One of the most successful techno DJ’s today, on August 30^th he’ll be performing at Clapham’s Get Loaded in the Park festival with an orchestra nonetheless. Craig, - who always remains stoney-faced throughout his sets, as he says DJ’ing is serious business – gave an interview to the Get Loaded team who were kind enough to let us reproduce it here…

Looking ahead to the Get Loaded festival, you’re performing with the Innerzone Orchestra, could you give me a brief understanding of what the Innerzone Orchestra constitutes and what we can expect on the day?

Right well, Innerzone is an entity that I developed back in the 90’s. The track ‘Bug in the Bassbin’ was a slow grower, but very inspirational to a lot of people who were wanting to make music. The track is credited as being one of the tunes that helped visualise the drum and bass scene with Fabio and Grooverider. So the concept of Innerzone has always been very heady but groovy music. Just an experience that’s involved in the performances rather than being a typical performance.

In terms of the actual performance that you’ll be doing, are you recruiting a new team of musicians for this project?

Yes I will be. What will be new about Innerzone this time is we’ll be adding a small orchestra to perform. The group will consist of myself, Francisco Mora, Chelda Shola, and Francisco Tristano and we’re also planning on adding some percussionists and actually adding orchestra to it which for Innerzone we haven’t done this before. The concept of the Innerzone Orchestra is always what’s in your mind and now we’re bringing the orchestra outside of your mind.

Yeah, we’re putting music together depending on the line-up and music involved. The main guys in the Innerzone, they just roll. They just go by my lead and their beats rock it. The Orchestra are going to have to rehearse like last year in Paris, as long as the conductor is good, which the conductor will be good, the rehearsals for that show, string players will be there.

I’ve seen clips of some of the old Innerzone shows on Youtube, including a trailer for the forthcoming Carhartt DVD release. What does your particular role entail on the day?

It’s like Voltron and I’m the head! My role is a director and chief rhythm-oligist and directing the other musicians. I’m the chief writer of the material and program.

And a new smart suit with it perhaps?

You know I always gotta be fresh.

Will you be planning to release any new material with Innerzone based on what your plans are for this summer?

Yeah we’re working on some new recordings that we will do in 2010.How did the gig in Egg in London go (on 5^th June)? You played for six hours didn’t you?

I did yeah, it was great. It was wonderful for me because for the first couple of hours I played very light jazz and ambient and things that I’ve worked on and re-composed. I have fun doing that kind of thing because I can go wherever I want to go musically and it doesn’t matter if there’s nobody in the room or 100 people in the room or a 1000 people in the room, I don’t feel that pressure that I have to play 6 hours of banging you know, bumping club music I can play music that inspires me and I hope it will inspire others.

You don’t normally play 6 hours though?

Yeah, it’s not very often that I do that. To do it you have to be in a good space as well, the club has to be good. Travelling as much as I do it makes it difficult to do 6 hours. I couldn’t do it every night because the minute I’d be done I’d have to catch a flight and sometimes it’s 2 or 3 flights or I might only have a little bit of time to eat and then go to the club and play again. You may not have time to rest.

It’s a hard life isn’t it?!!

It can be, it really can be. It’s not easy I’ll tell you that.

Going back to Detroit, obviously it’s one of the most famous musical cities in the world and the techno scene is famous for evolving from there. What was it like for you growing up there?

It was an interesting place because Detroit has such a bad reputation locally for violence and that sort of stuff that this is something we had to live with. We had great radio, we had great music that was happening all the time but you know these were times when young boys were the biggest heroin sellers in the US probably, not only the Detroit area. There were local gangs that increased the drive by’s and all kinds of stuff like that. You know a mixture of elation and terror [laughs]! But I think that in relation to that it helped to mould me into the person I am today as well as the artist and the businessman I am today too.

So it’s part of what inspired you essentially?

It is yeah, definitely. I think that even the very small things in life can have an effect on some people and it’s what your sight picks up. If it picks up something that’s positive all the time but within a lot of negative you’ve got to bring it all in and balance it all out to whatever your personality will allow you to.

You’ve played all over the world. Have you come across anywhere new recently that’s incredible to play at?

Dublin. I like Dublin a lot, it’s great. The audience gets very excited. I had a lot of fun. It was the last place where I felt the people were really excited about the music. They wanted to hear new things and were lusting for some different shit.

With all the projects going on how do you relax? What do you do in your spare time?

I do interviews!

And in case you were wondering, this is what it sounds like when an orchestra plays techno: 

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