Life Just Bounces

Dissonance Corp. 2011 Annual Report

2012-01-01T19:12:00.012Z

in 2011 i:

helped drove a rock band around Germany. went to America. made peace with London, went to Leeds a lot.

signed on way too many times. got A Proper Job. moved out, moved on, moved city.

saw my cousin marry her high school sweetheart. saw my awesome sister graduate uni [hi Fee]. lost a grandma.

reconnected with some amazing old friends, met some excellent new friends both IRL and OTI.
met some rad internet people IRL [hi Jesse, Ruby Kid].

graduated journalism school seemingly just as the industry caves in on itself [hi Newsies].
went to a series of excruciating job interviews [ask me about the one where i ended up talking about Skrewdriver].

continued to learn and unlearn a load of important stuff.
didn't protest awful shit enough.

developed flash crushes on way too many beautiful & awesome women both IRL and OTI [hi... no, not telling you].

started a new radio show. released two fantastic records by three artists [hi Liam, hi Arran [+Dicks]] and reached a year-end Top 50 list in a music magazine i really like [tho Not Here was robbed imho].

read some books, watched films & TV, saw some art. listened to a shitload of fantastic music, didn't actually hear that much bad music at all. saw some amazing live shows, including someone i've been waiting about 13 years to see. embraced poptimism.

didn't play enough [any given musical instrument]. bought a trumpet. started writing a rap album. helped film a music video. formed a band [hi El].

ate some great food, ate prolly way more really shitty food, drank enough coffee to poison a town's water supply.
continued to be pretty unhealthy. discovered i actually really like olives.

engaged in too many Herculean struggles with my own mood swings.

didn't blog enough. tracked the amazing rise of the Horse_ebooks phenom. did my bit to make a washed-up '90s alt-rock singer eat 2 dozen eggs on YouTube. went mildly viral tweeting about a Beefheart/Bono kerfuffle.

ran up the back of a minibus in traffic.

found a stray dog, returned the dog. sat next to a dog in church. saw some great fish and other marine life.

wore various enjoyable hats [favourites: ushanka; Yankees cap; mushroom]

plans for 2012: stop being quite so desperately unhealthy; rejuvenate this blog and get back into writing about music more; release about 5 more records; hopefully meet a load more rad people; generally get my weight up in all ways except literally.

shout out to everyone i love and everyone who loves me.
and if 2012 doesn't bring about that much-vaunted Mayan apocalypse i'ma start the shit myself.

2011-12-09T17:49:00.003Z

"I wish a rock guy would cover an R&B song. That way I could learn that underneath
all that popularity and blackness there's something great." ~ Jesse Thorn

Ahahahaha

Nice one, Leona. A+ trolling of all those metal/punk/rock groups and fans that still think pop/R'n'B covers are hilarious and novel i.t.y.o.o.l. 2011.

Anyway, this version doesn't sound any worse to me than Reznor's painfully teenage original (he was nearly 30 years old when The Downward Spiral came out) or Johnny Cash's curiously-revered-but-nonetheless-drab-by-his-high-standards take. Actually, if you're gonna do a song this laughably bombastic and self-regarding, it strikes me that big stadium-pop production, clunking cardboard-box snares, melodramatic vocal dive-bombing, and artificial string sections are by far the most honest ways of approaching it.

Desert Island Dicks & Where Woodwose Walk — "Clearance Sale" (AMP009)

2011-12-05T17:34:00.003Z

The new split/collaborative album by

Desert Island Dicks

Where Woodwose Walk

is out now

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://amoebicindustries.bandcamp.com/album/clearance-sale"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Clearance Sale by Desert Island Dicks &amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp; Where Woodwose Walk&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>
Clearance Sale, the new album from Desert Island Dicks and Where Woodwose Walk, sees the two noise groups reflecting on the ongoing global financial crisis that started in the late 2000s.

Across ten tracks (including one collaboration) named after British retail chains that went into administration following the crisis, the two groups use noise, drones, field recordings, sampling and live instrumentation to explore connections between the current malaise and the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Train sounds, Cisco Houston, news reports, Woolworths, Zavvi, "Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime?", corporate malfeasance and T.S. Eliot all come together for the first time in what critics are already calling "Capitalist Realism in a disused arms factory".

The album is available from Amoebic Industries as pay-what-you-want digital download or CDr priced at £3 plus p&p. The two groups have pledged to make an accompanying follow-up album in the event of a double-dip recession.

Desert Island Dicks are an anonymous international plunderphonic noise collective. No-one is certain who is in the group nor even how many of them there are. Their 2009 album The Shades of Jazz to Come was named in Marina Rosenfeld and Raz Mesinai's "Top 15 Albums of 2009" list in The Wire.

Where Woodwose Walk is the one-man project of Brighton, UK resident Arran Jones. When not composing, he enjoys allotment gardening, snail collecting and incorrect music.

Amoebic Industries is a jenky DIY label based out of a Glasgow flat.
They have released records by 30KB, Aurist and Desert Island Dicks.

Listen or download now: http://amoebicindustries.bandcamp.com

(p&p for physical copies:
UK: +50p
EU: +£1.00
elsewhere: + £1.50)

Being good at journalism: a bad way to become a journalist

2011-11-02T01:14:00.013Z

In preparation for this year's customary wheeling out of the widespread media lie [backed by attention-seeking politicians and clergy] about how some authority or other is trying to "ban" or "rename" or "rebrand" or "prevent people from celebrating" Christmas, usually "because it might offend [Muslims/ethnic minorities/whoever is the current scapegoat du jour]", i've been reading The Winterval Myth, Kevin Arscott's excellent and forensic analysis of a falsehood that has now been repeated by the British press at least 283 times since 1998. [If only it came in a physical form which could be used to knock people who perpetuate such garbage about the head with.]

There's a particularly telling passage with regards to the state of British [Western?] journalism on page 9 of the PDF, concerning Kelvin MacKenzie's experiment soon after he began editing The Sun to only hire Oxbridge graduates as reporters, and why this 'failed' [his assessment].

"Satisfied that my bold move would take The Sun to a higher plain I waited for the results. They were not forthcoming. In fact, very little emerged from my new hirelings. Most disappointing.

I had to get to the bottom of this. It became clear that with their keen and analytical minds they had made a fatal mistake – they had continued investigating every story to the point where they had satisfied themselves that there was no story at all. This would not do.

I called in one of the super-brains and explained a philosophy that had served me well over the years. The reporter leant forward with an earnest look as I told him the secret: if a story sounded true it probably was true and should therefore appear in the paper or there would be lots of white, unexplained spaces."

So there you have it. If it sounds true, it's probably true. The most surprising aspect of this for me is not the fact of what MacKenzie says, which should be pretty obvious to anyone who's been paying attention, but how cheerfully, casually blasé he is about acknowledging this.

Which is how, 13 years after an event, you end up with almost 300 repetitions of a straight-up tissue of lies about that event. And with a culture where the people who have the skills actually required to do a job are considered overqualified for that job because those skills don't prop up the 'correct' financial and ideological interests. Good stuff. I await 2011's blizzard of Winterval fabrications with interest.

Extra-curricular Song of the day: #39a El-P – "Drones Over BKLYN"

2011-08-16T23:08:00.000+01:00

You better stay aloof when the troops move/ the suicide booths soothe/ the who's who of looters shoot, the bullets go 'zoom, zoom'...

Holy shit there is new El-P music, from his forthcoming LP Cancer for Cure on Fat Possum.

This has the same tangible of event as when he previewed the unmixed "Tasmanian Pain Coaster" from ISWYD on Gilles Peterson's Radio 1 show, and "Drones Over BKLYN" lives up to expectations. Beat and rhymes alike are so damn tough, instantly recognisable but still stylistically progressing from his past work. On this evidence, the album should be another massive one.

Fuck, i'm not gonna describe it, just click "play" below and see for yourself. i think i'm on my tenth or eleventh play of the day so far.

DRONES OVER BKLYN (uncensored, unmastered) by PRODUCTOMART

PS: Downloadable version at Mediafire, awww yeah.

ATP I'll Be Your Mirror, reviewed

2011-08-16T20:09:00.000+01:00

Firstly, here’s three reasons ATP-run festivals are better than other festivals.

1. No more tents. Getting lashed and watching cool music is fun. Going back to a campsite after the bands have finished, probably in the dark and with the ground churned into five different kinds of crap by bad weather and foot traffic, and sleeping inside essentially an oversized Pac-a-Mac, probably with large rocks digging into your back, most likely surrounded by loud idiots, and running the risk of having your stuff stolen, or having someone even more wasted than you are piss on your tent in the night, fall into it and demolish it, or even set it on fire (all of these things I have seen at festivals)? Well, that’s not so much my idea of fun. ATP neatly sidesteps these problems by setting most of its festivals in Butlins, with chalets and microwaves and showers and proper beds. No longer do I have to live like an unenthusiastic Duke of Edinburgh participant for three days to watch some cool bands...

My review of ATP's recent I'll Be Your Mirror fest:

Features Company Flow, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Alan Moore and Stephen O'Malley, Foot Village, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Acoustic Ladyland, PJ Harvey, (MF) DOOM, and Portishead;
Begins with one of the most ridiculous run-on sentences i've ever written;
Is now up in two parts at Never Enough Notes. (part 1, part 2)

Pleasingly, Foot Village have already expressed their approval!

Song of the day: #39 Pharoah Sanders – "Ore-Se-Rere"

2011-08-16T17:17:00.001+01:00

My plan to blog more was slightly thwarted by travel: i'm in New England at the moment, and internet access has been a bit sporadic, so i've been doing analogue stuff like reading books and playing piano. Crazy, i know.

Anyway, i've been working out this Pharoah Sanders piece, which is tremendous fun. It's kind of a palate cleanser in the middle of the parent LP Elevation, a joyful 5-minute respite from the crazed overblown reed and piano soloing surrounding it (which, don't get me wrong, is also great). i've been listening to an ever-increasing amount of brilliant avant-garde 60s/70s jazz recently, and while some of it can sound like a challenge at first, i reckon this track could easily find its way to many people's hearts without too much difficulty. Nigerian jùjú highlife is for lovers.

(Originally from Daniel, whose radio show i've probably recommended you before, and for good reason.)

mp3: Pharoah Sanders – "Ore-Se-Rere (Nigerian Juju Highlife)"

Song of the day: #38 Bruza – "What U Waitin For"

2011-08-03T20:27:00.001+01:00

What's Bruza up to these days? i hope he's still performing, but i'm not that in touch with the grime scene so i dunno really. But let's hope that, if he's decided to stop, he's become a motivational speaker or something, because this tune is seriously like the abstract concept of positive thinking did a load of uppers and then went round a club vigorously pumping everyone by the hand making them feel better.

With such a likeable MC, loads of lyrical gems, and of course his trademark interjections of "YEEEAAHHHHH!" and "YA GET MEEEE!" i actually don't see how it's possible not to be cheered up by this.

If i had to pick my three favourite lines, i'd probably go for:

• "put your balls in it!"
• "The feeling of success can be spine-chillin'/ people talk about they want the ice (YEEEAAHHHHH!)/ but they spend too much time chillin'/ watching someone else do what they wanna do while they're chillin'"
• and of course the amazing bit towards the end where he talks about how he hasn't eaten anything all day "...oh, apart from me cereal!"

So here's a toast to Bruza for getting me through many a crap day. Cheers mate!

mp3: Bruza – "What U Waitin For"

Random Jon Poole randomly on TV.

2011-08-03T14:33:00.001+01:00

Two completely unexpected TV appearances from Random Jon Poole (Cardiacs/Wildhearts/God Damn Whores) on prime-time telly!

In the first one, Random Jon and his mother-in-law appear in support of his wife Louise as she scoops a tidy win on a 2005 episode of BBC1's The Lottery Show. Dale Winton calls him "a bit camp", which is a pretty funny thing to be called by Dale Winton.

Then there's this appearance on Chris Tarrant vehicle It's Not What You Know in 2008, which is honestly maybe the most contrived quiz show format i've ever seen, apparently involving the contestants trying to defeat Johnny Ball, Dr Fox, Toby Young, Brian Sewell and Miranda Krestovnikoff at knowing the answer to trivia questions.

The couple seem to be doing quite well, but i have no idea how it all turns out because the uploader didn't manage to tape the whole thing. The highlight is probably Random Jon hilariously pretending to find Tarrant's crap jokes funny, and also mocking his frankly weird impersonation of Sylvester Stallone.

Thanks to Rachel for both of these.

"There is eloquence in screaming"

2011-08-02T18:39:00.004+01:00

Incorrect fuel anger x mindless, grinding, hilarious repetition.

On a long-enough timeline everything starts to become sound art.

Via Stuart Finnie. Original here. Obligatory bloody dance remix here (via Chris Down).

Song of the day: #37 Isaiah Toothtaker – "Intruder"

2011-08-01T19:16:00.010+01:00

i alluded to Song(s) of the Year in my Jacques Greene post the other day, and this is another of my definite contenders. i keep returning to "Intruder" over and over.

Apart from just being a great record, part of what's so fun about "Intruder" is just how many layers of détournement have gone into making it what it is. In case anyone doesn't know the provenance of the music in this song, here's a brief memeology.

First there was Antoine Dodson, who went viral in July last year after a shit-talking interview with his local TV station in which he warned his sister Kelly's attempted rapist what was coming to him.

Then The Gregory Brothers, apparently a country/soul group but pretty much known for their novelty "Auto-Tune the News" series of YouTube videos, caught wind of the musical cadences of Antoine's voice (and what Wikipedia calls his "flamboyant delivery") and autotuned parts of his and his Kelly's interview and exposition from the news anchor, into an R&B song, "Bed Intruder Song".

This went even more viral, getting to number 89 in the Billboard charts on iTunes downloads alone and racking up, so far, 86 million YouTube hits. Détourne 1: from bad news story to pop smash.¹ Then other performers started to do their own versions, 2,500 of them by this time last year, ranging from rubbish (the singer out of Paramore and someone from kiddy-punks New Found Glory; the human sigh that is Dane Cook) to ace (Afua's bass-based snippet; the shamisen arrangement). Then there's this brilliant version by the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Marching Band. Détourne 2: from pop smash to parade-ground anthem.

It was probably inevitable that there'd end up being a rap interpolation of the theme, but we're lucky that it was done by someone with the skills of Isaiah Toothtaker and Wavves drummer Jacob Safari, who produced "Intruder", and that they recognised that the marching band's huge, powerful version was the best (to sample, or otherwise), and furthermore that all the song lacked was a tonne of skittering drum machines and an MC as charismatic as he is casually menacing.

Toothtaker's repurposing of the song as a snitches-get-stitches warning is détourne 3, from light-hearted YouTube meme (albeit excellently done) back to urgent street-level threat. This is only emphasised by an excellent split-screen video, in which Toothtaker's performance to camera is mixed with a creepy animation of a clenching and unclenching hand, and scenes of shootouts, car accidents, fist fights and bits of Mark Hejnar's 1996 film Affliction² (particularly Turbo Tom's eye-gouging, and hilariously unhinged gun nut Full Force Frank) edited together by experimental filmmaker Walter Gross. And the cycle is complete, with the salvaging of something concretely decent from a shifting sea of memetics. It'd be interesting to know if Antoine Dodson, who was able to move his family out of the projects from his share of the "Bed Intruder Song" proceeds, has heard this, and if so what he made of it.

¹ Although the questionable power relations of affluent white New York hipsters bolstering their rep off the back of the sincere anger of a wronged black housing project resident didn't go unnoticed. NYU music professor Jason King told NPR, "It has a really good hook, but it's problematic, too. There's a way in which the aesthetics of black poverty—the way they talk and they speak and they look — sort of becomes this fodder for humor without any interest in the context of the conditions in which people actually live", while comedian/Onion web editor Baratunde Thurston elaborated that "As the remix took off, I became increasingly uncomfortable with its separation from the underlying situation. A woman was sexually assaulted and her brother was rightfully upset. People online seemed to be laughing at him and not with him (because he wasn't laughing), as Dodson fulfilled multiple stereotypes in one short news segment. Watching the wider Web jump on this meme, all but forgetting why Dodson was upset, seemed like a form of ‘class tourism.’ Folks with no exposure to the projects could dip their toes into YouTube and get a taste."
² Worth a watch if you're into mental underground/transgressive culture, but probably only once.

Song of the day: #36 Sweet Female Attitude – "Flowers"

2011-07-31T20:44:00.001+01:00

Attended a Noah's Ark-themed fancy dress party in Leeds on Friday, dressed as Noah himself (this basically entailed wearing a removal company delivery blanket from the back of a car, a belt made from plaited twine and some awful open-toed sandals, with shorts and t-shirt beneath for modesty). At one point i needed to go to the shops and had to debate with myself whether to go in full costume and risk either looking like a weird religious cultist, or possibly catch a furious beatdown if misinterpreted as taking the piss out of religious garb; or take off the robe and risk looking like the kind of man who wears open-toed sandals. Eventually i decided that bad style was preferable to possibly inciting a religious riot through comical misunderstanding, and left the robe behind. Still don't know if i made the right choice.

Anyway, the party was going pretty well and i kept the costume on for what i consider a heroically long time. Later on, about 30 people all seemed to turn up at once, most of whom weren't making any attempt to wear a costume, and the vibe started shifting from "Noah's Ark theme" to "regular house party with a fucking weird guy standing around wearing a sack". It was like Keith Richards in the 70s getting a complete change of blood or something. i finally bailed after most of the animals removed their face paint and i started getting the stinkeye from more people who had arrived and who apparently had no idea there even was a fancy dress theme.

But anyway, i digress a bit. Part of the crew-of-30 that arrived later included one guy who took to the decks, threw out all the Serious Bro Music For Serious Bro Parties soundtrack (= drum'n'bass, pretty much) that had prevailed before (a welcome relief for me, cuz honestly that shit bores me beyond death) and instead starting throwing on wedding party anthems like Hall & Oates' "Maneater" and Bobby Brown's "Two Can Play at That Game". One thing he dropped early on in his set was today's SOTD. i'm pretty sure when this came out i found it pretty annoying, but hearing it again i'd forgotten what a good pop record it is, despite the duo behind it doing that annoying thing where their artist name is taken from their obvious musical or personal 'selling point' (c.f. Gangstagrass; Drums and Tuba; Buke and Gass; every shit dance troupe or boy/girl group on Britain's Got Talent).

i've always liked the skipping rhythm patterns of UK garage and the way that they manage to be swinging yet urgent at the same time, added to which "Flowers"' technique of micro-cut vocal samples only seems to have got more relevant over time. Basically, a great pop tune. And, pleasingly, it turns out Sweet Female Attitude were from Stockport! Result. Now, if you'll excuse me a contrived Bill Brysonesque ending, i'ma go and listen to last.fm's UK garage station for more turn-of-the-millennium action.

Dischord Spotify playlist

2011-07-27T22:31:00.000+01:00

Now that my American readers (i know there's at least, like, 3 of you) have access to Spodify too, i feel less bad about sharing playlists and stuff on it. Now if only the people at the far, far superior turntable.fm could sort it so you can use it outside the States (i managed 2 glorious days on there before the geoblock).

But anyway yeh, until then, here's a Spotify playlist featuring virtually the entire Dischord Records disc(h)ography, in order. For some reason, The Snakes records aren't on there – a minor shame, as a bit of relentlessly daft novelty pseudo-rap would balance out a lot of the relentless seriousness of the rest – and some of the split-label releases are also missing. But that's still a good 4 solid days' worth of hardcore, punk, and good indie rock. Dig in...

Why i hate the "27 Club".

2011-07-26T23:28:00.004+01:00

Someone in my comments section asked if i was going to do an Amy Winehouse tribute post. The answer is probably 'no' in terms of a straightforward/regular tribute, basically because i've been away this weekend, and by now everything i would want to say has been expressed better by others. i did, however, want to do a brief post about the pernicious myth of the '27 Club' – the apparently ominous cluster of musicians dying at the untimely age of 27.

Something of a minor cultural industry has built up around this idea – there's a graphic novel,¹ a film, a website,² a truly crappy t-shirt,³ and article after article after article after dummkopf article. A huge amount of the media coverage of Amy W's death has included some kind of reference to this construct, which I find troubling for a number of reasons. So, briefly, here's why i hate the 27 Club.

• Firstly, it's not a sodding club. None of its "members" filled out an application. Many probably didn't even know about it. It's a retroactive cliche applied by Rock Trivia Buffs, a smug insincere trumpeting of a stupid factoid, often for people who don't care about the subject matter beyond the superficial, and by same. Consequently, it reduces all that was great, fun, profound, meaningful, stirring, and/or important about those artists' work to the level of a cheese-wedge question in a game of Trivial Pursuit: Rock Edition™.

• It demotes complex, difficult, diverse lives down to just one detail, the coincidence of their shared death age, making no distinctions between each. But Kurt Cobain shot himself. D. Boon died when a van he was in, driven by someone else, crashed. Janis OD'd, Brian Jones drowned. Robert Johnson, Freaky Tah and Mia Zapata were murdered. What the hell do these have in common, beyond a number? It just feeds rock(ism)'s dumb obsession with The Canon in the worst possible way.

• It's as meaningless and arbitrary as, say, a "list of musicians still alive at 35". If "list of musicians still alive at 35"or "list of musicians who died at 27" were proposed even as Wikipedia articles, they'd rightly be rejected because of this. (Except, of course, in the 27 Club's case, it's now been discussed so much in 'reputable' sources that, head-shakingly, it does indeed have a legimitate Wikipedia article, as linked above.)

• Perhaps worst of all, in the case of the 'Club' members who perished self-destructively instead of completely accidentally, it shores up those other shit myths of tortured artisthood⁴ and "live fast die young",⁵ as if early death were something to aspire to, as if art or passion or any of the other great things about the work of "Club" "members" were only valid for the young. As if Ornette Coleman, 82 years old and still regularly blowing groups half or a quarter of his age off stage, isn't cooler than a pretty 27-year-old corpse. Sorry, but i'd rather Amy, Kurt, whoever, had lived.

And it's also the totally disingenuous way it's ominously, fearfully spoken of ("the curse of 27") in hushed tones by the same people whose "who will be next?" speculation (tabloids, gossip sites, internet snipers, record labels, promoters) often helps it become a self-fulfilling prophecy. And the way that once that prophecy is fulfilled, the same people are just as quick to turn it round as a marketing gimmick for themselves as mythmakers or "Experts", behind a mask of "concern" or "sorrow" for the latest victim they're solemnly pretending to care about.

So yeah. If you buy into the narrative of the 27 Club, please stop. The world already has all the trite awful shit it needs.

RIP Amy.

¹ "The 27 Club Now Includes Amy Winehouse", trumpets their website's new header proudly. "The 27 Club Experts predicted Amy's death in The 27s, this 2008 book". Well done guys! Must be nice to be so insightful.
² "Depending on your preference, The 27s is a pop culture phenomenon, a weird curse, or a statistical anomaly" – or, in fact, none of the above.
³ Bearing a misquote of the Neil Young lyric quoted in Kurt Cobain's suicide note.
⁴"The price for membership was more than he could handle", groans the tagline of The 27 Club, the myth's 2008 filmic incarnation. Or a quote from random American rehab centre co-founder quoted in one of the predictable Forever 27 articles linked to above, theorising, on the basis of nothing, that Amy herself may actually "have secretly wanted to be part of the 27 Club". Riiight.
⁵ "You know, death was always funny to me before. It was funny to all of us. I heard Joey say a thousand times "live fast, die young and leave a pretty corpse"... It was always "Oi, dead boy, this one's for you, I'll see you when I get there, motherfucker. And now I'm not even sure there is a there."

Song of the day: #35 Jacques Greene – "Another Girl"

2011-07-22T18:08:00.000+01:00

House producer Jacques Greene's been getting a lot of play recently for some Radiohead remixes he did. Can't front, Thom Yorke's obviously got some good taste. Because Radiohead remixes still have a bit too much Radiohead in there for my taste, i prefer the 20-year-old Canadian's original stuff, and "Another Girl" is a sublime highlight.

The kind of murky, subaquatic synths that have been voguish lately combine with an ace late-90s UK garage rhythm that's as funky as it is propulsive, and best of all the whole thing's topped with the kind of anthemic looped soul-ish vocals that sorta recall the breakbeat hardcore era building to a euphoric climax. Antoin, who put me on to this, has already called it as song of the year, and while i've got a few possible candidates for that title so far, "Another Girl" is definitely up there.

Song of the day: #34 Xrin Arms – "Xr World"

2011-07-20T18:49:00.000+01:00

Been meaning to do a post about Xrin Arms (pron. "You're in Arms" or i guess "Urine Arms", if you like) for ages now, and the release of a new video for "Xr World", the first track to be released off his long-awaited Human Hallucinogen album, seems like a good time.

Xrin is the one-man project/alias of Anthony Vincent, originally from California but more often found spreading his caffeinated gospel all over the States on tour. He's also found the time to release over a dozen albums in the last few years, whether solo as Xrin Arms and Goldz Field, together with frequent collaborator p.Wrecks, or part of the group Heavy Barrelz with Wrecks and Guttah Face.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of XA for the uninitiated is his wildly contrasting musical styles: basically, you're either going to get swaggering, gritty hip-hop or ferocious, balls-out, electronic-inflected grindcore/digital rock, both of them topped off with Anthony's unmistakeable self-harmonising singing style. (i'm sure i've seen him explain the seemingly unusual mix of styles by saying it's like having two kids and loving them both equally, but i've forgotten where i saw this.)

Anyway, if "Xr World" is anything to go by, Human Hallucinogen seems like it's going to be great. An inscrutably beshaded Xrin drops rhymes to camera over a claustrophobic beat as slow and heavy as a hijacked steamroller. The accompanying p.Wrecks-edited video has unsettling images of desert skulls, cockfights, grainy porn slivers, crosses, sinister clowns and vomiting, which i think you'll agree is all you really need from a music video.

Song of the day: #33 Rakoth – "Fear (Wasn't in the Design)"

2011-07-12T14:43:00.000+01:00

Gallopy ridiculous Russian Lord of the Rings/Robin Hood forest metal. Too many amazing/terrible bits to enumerate. You'll have to pick your own favourite.

Song of the day: #32 Michael Bell-Smith – "Chapters 1-12 of R. Kelly’s Trapped in the Closet Synced and Played Simultaneously"

2011-07-06T22:04:00.002+01:00

Can't remember if i've ever blogged this before, but it's one of those things i cannot get enough of, and have to share on Facebook, etc., with a regularity which has got to be pretty annoying for the people that i'm friends with.

Brooklyn-based video artist and semiotician Michael Bell-Smith took advantage of the fact that each installment of celebrity micturator R. Kelly's bizarre R'n'B opera uses the same beat and mixed down all the extant episodes (at the time, there were twelve) into one hyperdense, abstract expressionist, over-Kellied morass.

For me the best bit is at 2:45, when the heavy snare drops and suddenly you have 12 incredibly animated R. Kellys all screaming at each other.

Song of the day: #31 Rufus Harley – "Acknowledgement (A Love Supreme)"

2011-07-01T21:12:00.001+01:00

"i think this is the first time I've ever seen a brother playing bagpipes and wearing a kilt!" exclaims someone in the comments. Rufus Harley was the first jazz musician to adopt the Highland bagpipes as his instrument of choice. Here he plays a great version of Coltrane's "Acknowledgement" off the classic album A Love Supreme, interpolating a little bit of "Greensleeves" along the way (and why not). This 1987 performance is from a live DVD of Harley and the Sun Ra Arkestra (which i haven't got, but would very much like to see).

Working as a Philadelphia maintenance man, the young Harley became fascinated with the bagpipes after watching JFK's funeral procession, but couldn't find anywhere in town that had any to sell him. Eventually he had to travel to New York, where he found a set in a Jewish pawn shop. Apparently he used to practice piping in his apartment to his neighbours' great ire, but when the cops turned up after noise complaints, he would quickly stash the pipes away out of sight and ask the officers, "do I look like I'm Irish or Scottish to you?" He also played with Sonny Rollins, Laurie Anderson and The Roots, among others.

gay against you Wikipedia article

2011-06-30T15:33:00.002+01:00

i forgot to post up the Wikipedia page i recently wrote for gay against you here. During the writing for this, after i lamented that i regretted not seeing them live, Joe reminded me that not only had i driven them to two separate shows, in York and Cardiff, i also played drums for them at the Cardiff show. i have no earthly idea how i could have forgotten this, but i was very pleased to be reminded of it.

(Citations have been stripped out for ease of reading but are all available at the page obv.)

gay against you (stylised in lower case; sometimes abbreviated GVsY) were an electronic music duo from Glasgow, Scotland, made up of high school friends Joseph Howe (aka Oats Soda; b. 1983, Perth, Scotland) and Lachlann Rattray (aka Mr. Big Softie; b. 1983, Natal, South Africa).

Biography
The band formed in 2005 after Howe and Rattray moved into a shared flat, having previously played together in various other bands. They self-released a mini-album, also named gay against you, in 2005. It became one of the most frequently-downloaded records from the last.fm website. The following year their debut full-length album, Muscle Milk, was released by the ADAADAT label.

The popularity of the band's first record on last.fm led to the group being asked to perform live at the Old Blue Last venue in Shoreditch for a last.fm/Presents event, which was recorded and released as a free downloadable album on the site. Their second full-length album, Righteous Signals, Sour Dudes, was released on CD in 2009 by ADAADAT, with a vinyl version released by the Upset the Rhythm! label.

gay against you toured the United Kingdom several times, also touring Scandinavia and elsewhere in Europe. They played gigs with the likes of Lightning Bolt, Dan Deacon, Shitdisco, No Age, Cutting Pink With Knives, The Blow and Eats Tapes. They recorded radio sessions for Tom Ravenscroft's Channel 4 Radio show and for Vic Galloway's "BBC Introducing in Scotland" show on BBC Radio 1. They were also played by Radio 1's Rob da Bank and Steve Lamacq, and on Resonance FM.

A rumour spread in the Norwegian press that the NME had called gay against you "the new shit", leading to reporters unexpectedly attending their Norwegian shows requesting interviews; no-one knows where this rumour originated.

The band broke up in 2009 following the release of Righteous Signals, Sour Dudes. They issued a further EP posthumously, I Play Gay, consisting of covers of the band's songs by Dananananaykroyd, Dolby Anol, Agaskodo Teliverek and House Mouse.

Both members continued to perform separately and released solo records. Howe used the name Germlin for his solo work and has more recently performed and released skweee-influenced music as Ben Butler and Mousepad, sometimes accompanied by drummer Bastian Hagedorn. Rattray has also performed and released as Yoko, Oh No!, as well as playing in the band Neighbourhood Gout.

Style

The band gained attention for their flamboyant and chaotic live shows (often played with Howe and Rattray dressed in PE kits and on the venue's dancefloor rather than the stage), prominent visual style, offbeat subject matter (with songs about unicorns, lactose intolerance, Lawrence of Arabia, breakfast cereal, Magic Eye puzzles, Jurassic Park and physicist Niels Bohr) and their diverse and experimental musical style. Their early work was noted as combining accessible pop melodies with unconventional, rapidly-changing song structures and disorientating bursts of synthesizer or electric guitar. Later material was described as "slightly more... mature", with lush analogue-sounding synth and even psychedelic influences.

Stated influences included Magma, Minutemen, Devo, Cardiacs and BBC Radio 4. The band garnered comparisons to artists such as The Locust, Melt-Banana, Animal Collective, The Faint, Nintendo soundtrack music, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Atari Teenage Riot, The Mae Shi, Lightning Bolt and The Pastels. They were described by Terrorizer magazine as "[e]ither a council estate Butthole Surfers or just Japanese mimicry... odd and wrong", and by Drowned in Sound as "a chiptune-gabba aerobics class soundtrack". The Wire called them "prog, of a sort... though with manic impatience in place of pomposity", while Fused Magazine described them as "[t]wo subterranean creatures dressed in primary school P.E. kits, complete with charcoal-stained eyes and badly-concealed erections, howl[ing] unintelligibly over spaz-core electronics". The Daily Telegraph said they were "absurdly-named".

In an interview with Dazed & Confused magazine, the band characterised their own music as "filter pop", and "pop music with all the shit bits taken out: mostly no repetition, no wastage, and no fat".

Personnel
Joe Howe – vocals, programming, synthesizer
Lachlann Rattray – vocals, MIDI, electric guitar

Discography
Albums
gay against you (self-released/Megapixxels, 2005)
Muscle Milk (ADAADAT, 2006)]
Live at last.fm/Presents (last.fm, 2007)
Righteous Signals, Sour Dudes (ADAADAT/Upset the Rhythm!, 2009)

EPs
Bogus Totem Summer (CD + DVD, self-released, 2006)
gay against you/House Mouse Summer Tour Split (self-released, 2007)
I Play Gay (self-released, 2009)

Singles
The Vichy Government/Gay Against You split 7" (Filthy Little Angels, 2007)
O.I.B Records Split Series Volume 1 7" (One Inch Badge, 2007)

Compilation appearances
"Greased Lightning" on Down to Grease on Holiday (Filthy Little Angels, 2006)
"Fun Meal, Satabic" on Exercise for Exorcisms, vol. 1 (Unnecessary Friction, 2006)
"Magic Eye" on Two Thousand and Ace (Brainlove, 2008)
"Let's Build a Chinatown pt. II" on Stench of Muscle (Stench of Muscle, 2008)

Song of the day: #30 Pete Seeger & the Weavers – "Solidarity Forever"

2011-06-30T13:51:00.000+01:00

Song of the Day #30 is for #j30. Good luck and solidarity to all strikers and protesters today.

Stewart Lee picks his 13 favourite albums for The Quietus

2011-05-31T23:50:00.002+01:00

"The first time [hearing The Fall], I just thought 'This is absolutely awful. This bloke can't sing, it's repetitive, it doesn't make any sense, all the things are out of tune, it just goes on and on the same. I hate it'. Then I heard it again and for all those reasons I thought, 'This is also brilliant'."

"There's nothing worse than comedians saying they're like freestyle jazz musicians, because usually what they mean is that they had a photograph taken of themselves smoking..."

"This is another thing we've forgotten about is that with Mark E. Smith and Dave Graney, you buy into all the things that they're saying or their point of view can shift. Are you being addressed by them as a person, are they in character? You don't really know enough about them to assume anything. So it actually means they can do anything.

Whereas if you live your life through Twitter and blogging everyone assumes that what you write is an extension of making yourself public, one of the things about writers and musicians historically is that we project onto them, or we choose to take different things away from them. But it's increasingly hard to do that because everyone's living like a Philip Dick novel where they're supposed to have an online presence as themselves."

"There was this great bit on Jools Holland the other week. They had McCoy Tyner on, who was John Coltrane's pianist, him and his little quartet were trying to find the right chord to resolve this jazz improvisation. They'd probably hit their time, but they couldn't quite find this resolution, and Jools Holland had to just walk across and introduce Elbow. When the dust of culture settles, that will seem like an amazing moment."

Stewart Lee is ace and this interview is ace (mis-spelling of Sonny Rollins' "Freedom Suite" notwithstanding). The quote about Mark E Smith/Dave Graney and the mystique some of us still like to invest in artists is absolute nail-on-the-head stuff considering i read it just a couple of hours after a terrible generalising careerist article about "how to build an online presence for your band", which basically seems to take as first principle the idea that all bands and artists are the same and want the same thing for their music, and that all fans are the same and want the same thing from their artists, and frankly the assumptions of what both sides want seem so stultifyingly limiting and mundane that i don't think i'd ever want to hear any artist that would willing follow the advice given in the piece.

Actually, i don't "want an authentic connection w/the artist", ta all the same; i want to be able to project and imagine and interpret and speculate and postulate, possibly/probably incorrectly, and fill in the gaps for myself. It's reassuring that someone as high-calibre as Lee thinks the same.

Being 20 minutes long, "Freedom Suite" is not YouTubeable, but this video of Rollins playing with Don Cherry, Henry Grimes and Billy Higgins is also pretty sweet.

Aurist on Tom Ravenscroft show!

2011-05-24T21:46:00.004+01:00

Massive props to BBC 6 Music's Tom Ravenscroft for being, as far as we know, the first person to play anything from Aurist's Not Here on the radio. "Dekindling" was aired as the fifth track in his show from Friday, May 20, alongside the likes of Jehst, Danger Mouse, James Pants and Eno & Byrne. Tom says it's "charming", and a listener agrees, adding that the experience is "like filtering gin gently over amplified rocks". We like to think so!

i don't know how Tom feels about comparisons to his dad, which surely get thrown around all the time, but i hope he wouldn't me saying he definitely has the same spirit in him.

Bonus round: later on in the show there's also a new track from Crewdson, who you may remember produced a couple of tracks on the first 30KB record ("Care Less" and "Crewd Sons (Ghost in the Machine)"), as well as being an ace solo electronic producer in his own right. i am looking forward to a day soon when all radio playlists comprise cool people i've worked with.

Check out the show in question on iPlayer (3 days remaining) or, if you're tardy or a podcast fan, stream/download here or download here.

Songs for the rapture

2011-05-21T19:09:00.002+01:00

i'm starting to think that maybe the scheduled rapture may well be going to happen after all at 6pm Pacific Time – 2am Sunday GMT – just because everyone's taking such great pleasure in the certainty that it won't, and so wholeheartedly embracing all the attendant possibilities for believer-bashing.¹Sort of like The Boy Who Cried Apocalypse, or something.

Anyway, i thought it was only right to draw together some sort of short mix of stuff that i think'd make a good rapture soundtrack, partly inspired by Flavorwire's "Music Critics Pick the Last Song They Want to Hear Before They Die"² and partly out of the galling number of people who seem to think REM's "It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" is a suitable choice – sure, it may be thematically relevant,³ and a fine indie-pop song, but musically way it's too ordered and unexceptional for such a cataclysmic event. C'mon, the world's ending,⁴ try a bit harder!

So, while i've not given this as much thought as i could've (should've started earlier maybe), here's my personal rapture mini-playlist. (All of my picks seems to be for massed voices or entirely instrumental; i don't know what that says about either me or the rapture.) For best results, stick it on at just 1:22am GMT so that you get the climax of the last track just as the faithful start ascending.

James Blackshaw – "The Cloud of Unknowing"
Just gorgeous, ten minutes of intricate guitar picking that's by turns melancholy and ecstatic.

Pharoah Sanders – "Spiritual Blessing"
It doesn't seem right to have a soundtrack to any kind of rapturous or world-changing event without some fiercely blissful, dissociated free jazz, and this cut from Pharoah's 1973 Elevation album fits the bill admirably. He still plays shows, so ideally we could have him and his band amped up via the world's loudest speaker system to soundtrack the rapture live.

Shibusashirazu Orchestra – "Honda Komuten Theme"
This particularly fine choice from this absurdly under-heard Japanese jazz orchestra takes the everybody-soloing-at-once trope in a different direction, infusing it with an incredible celebratory energy and anthemic melody. The last party in the world.

Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge – "Eternal Father, Strong to Save"
(aka "For Those in Peril on the Sea" or the Naval Hymn). Not so much as a tokenistic inclusionary gesture to Christianity, but more because of its secular connotations of peril & nobility in the face of impending or realised doom (c.f.: sinking of the Titanic, funeral of John F Kennedy, funeral of last surviving WW1 veteran Claude Choules).

The Shipping Forecast (May 21st, 2011)
Because essentially i'm British and middle-class and, if the world really was in the process of ending, despite the fact that there's not going to be any more Dogger or Fisher or German Bight, or Radio 4 or shipping or even any more weather, i sort of feel it'd be tremendously comforting.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – "Broken Windows, Locks of Love pt. III"
In one sense i've been waiting for the apocalypse ever since Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven came out in 2000, simply because this, the near-10-minute final movement of the track "Sleep", already sounds like the end of music and the world. So this is the last piece of music to be played, ever. See you all on the other side, maybe.

mp3: LJB rapture mix (mediafire)

¹ Easy target much, guys? You might as well take the piss out of people who sincerely believe the moon's literally made of blue cheese.
² The excellent Jessica Hopper hipped me to this, and her particular choice is one of the best.
³ Sort of, anyway – "the rapture" does not actually denote the end of the world, but the moment when all those who've accepted Christ as their personal messiah and lived pure, righteous lives according to certain Christian standards are whisked away to heaven, leaving the remaining heathens on earth for five more months of chaos and torture before we're all crushed by earthquakes or transformed into pillars of salt when the end of the world does actually arrive, which in this case is five months away, on October 21.
⁴ q.v. footnote 3.

Song of the day: #29 Aurist – "Dekindling"

2011-05-11T14:12:00.004+01:00

The first artist to get two Song of the Day posts was also the subject of the very first Song of the Day post with his remix of Shawnna's "RPM". He is, of course, Aurist, and this time the track is "Dekindling", the lead track from his newest album Not Here, which if you were reading yesterday, you'll know was put out by Amoebic Industries Unltd. (basically the corresponding label to this blog).

Anyway, here's the first video from Not Here, for the lead track "Dekindling", as created by one Cory Stephens (http://twitter.com/outmouth), and i really like it. The visuals mostly consist of old amusement park footage (primarily a three-bend water slide, teacup and flying boat/spaceship¹ ride) which, estimating from the film stock and the clothing styles of the people in it, i'd say probably dates from somewhere in the mid '60s–mid '70s period, tho i could just as well be completely wrong about that.² At the same time, the footage flickers and distorts in time with "Dekindling"'s pounding pulse, creating image warps that are equally gorgeous and eerie.

The whole thing also seems to tap into a weird not-nostalgia – can it be nostalgia if you weren't actually there? – that i suspect a lot of us have for those periods of history immediately before we were born or became aware of the world, a time that seems just slightly out of reach. It reminds me of being six and at Disney World, but also a childhood trip to Granada Studios to see one of those films where the seats rock you around in sync with the cinema screen (i think it was some riff on the recently-released Honey I Shrunk the Kids) where the film actually melted and strange molten plastic globules butterflied across the screen and they had to call the whole thing off and halt the bucking rows of seats and bring up the house lights and offer us all refunds, as well as – somehow – most of late 20th-century America.³ Needless to say, this all also works brilliantly as an accompaniment to the track.

This seemingly incredible ability to stimulate weird associations within my psyche that i didn't even realise i had is all the more remarkable when you consider that this is only Cory's third music video.⁴ Definitely going to be checking for his future work.

¹ What do you even call this ride? i'm pretty much just guessing.
² Not being by any means an expert in either film stock or fashion. There's something of the Mad Men era about it, tho.
³ Also the early work of Scottish post-rock group Mogwai, tho why this would be i have no explanation at all.
⁴ Though he does shoot and edit footage for an arts/entertainment web show for his local news.

OUT TODAY! Aurist — "Not Here" (AMP008)

2011-05-09T21:34:00.001+01:00

Amoebic Industries is pleased to announce the release of Not Here, the latest album by Aurist.

Aurist, aka 19-year-old Londoner Liam Adams, is a noise/abstract digital musician and poet, among other things. He's previously released several albums on labels such as Cantankerous Records and the Australian/Dutch netlabel Glitch City, including Technic'ly This Is Art (2008), Profonan (2009), and the compilation Mislaid (2010).

The name derives from a now seldom-used term for "one skilled in treating and curing disorders of the ear". Not Here, the first Aurist release from Amoebic Industries, prescribes as a cure for any ear troubles four slabs of brooding, intense noise/drone over 35 minutes, somehow managing to be punishingly harsh and strangely delicate at the same time.

The album is available for listening or download at http://aurist.bandcamp.com. Custom handmade CDrs are also available from Amoebic Industries for £2 (UK) or £3 (worldwide). Each CD package will include a small item that is in some way "not here".

Track listing
1. Dekindling
2. Blind & Elated
3. Mes Rois
4. Powerless

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://aurist.bandcamp.com/album/not-here"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Not Here by Aurist&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

"Should we take up a collection for a new record-player needle for Aurist, or lobby the Limey noise sculptor for an extended paper-shredder remix?" — Minneapolis City Pages on Technic'ly This Is Art

"Some of those advertised do harm by setting up a mechanical irritation in the ear after a time, and a better result is often obtained with... a disc introduced into the ear by an aurist." — The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI)

Listen or download now: http://aurist.bandcamp.com

More links to Aurist:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Aurist/143778732317071
http://www.twitter.com/Aurist
http://www.last.fm/music/Aurist
http://aurish.tumblr.com
http://snailshellbackpack.wordpress.com

For CD orders or any further information, email amoebic DOT industries AT gmail DOT com.

Ron Paul = Dawson Leery + 40 years

2011-04-28T19:31:00.000+01:00

Anyone noticed how libertarian goon Ron Paul is essentially emo-tastic wannabe auteur Dawson Leery in 40 years' time?

This is probably significant in some way.

Rules for writers

2011-04-28T02:14:00.001+01:00

This is the only important rule about writing you need to remember.

Song of the day: #28 Tim Fite – "Money Back"

2011-04-19T20:38:00.002+01:00

Tim Fite is not happy. Why? Because he wants his motherfucking goddamn shit-ass money back, of course.

Lawd knows why this song has a mere 327 YouTube views, it's been cracking me up at intervals for a while now.

Wiki says Tim is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist based in BK, that he used to be a member of a hip-hop duo called Little-L and One Track Mike, that he's pro-sampling and -giving away albums for free, and that he's put out like nine of the aforesaid albums since 2004, which seems quite impressive (i mean, unless the rest are really bad or something. i'm gonna have to check more of them out). Actually, he seems really quite unnervingly prolific in general.

"Money Back"'s parent album, Under the Table Tennis, is one of those you can get free from his website, which is pretty much just his name rendered in the form of a website.

mp3: Tim Fite – "Money Back"

An adjective could hurt if it's not caught

2011-04-18T19:36:00.000+01:00

Oh, here's another thing i apparently forgot to post.¹ My bros in SCAMS were on the NME site recently with the video for their new song "Lost for Words" (which is out today via loads of places like Amazon, etc.), which is nice.² i can't embed the video unfortunately because it seems to be some sort of NME exclusive, so you'd have to click the words "the NME site" above to see it. i'm always getting gazumped by those bastards!

As you'd expect, my involvement with this video was once again totally essential; in this instance, i wrote out some of those brown parcel tags you see attached to everything³ and attached them to tree branches and stuff, hid in a bush to help throw a load of shredded paperbacks over Sasha ("The Girl") for the scene at e.g. 03:15, and scared the piss out of a bunch of curious forestgoers by wandering silently among them in the dark and then suddenly turning on a powerful flashlight.

¹ Tho i did post the unofficial video as a Song of the Day back last May.
² FYI "Making Maps from Memory" is also a really sweet song, as in "touching" or "poignant" rather than in the least funny scene in cinema history, aka that-bit-in-Dude Where's My Car?, sense.
³ My handwriting's the stuff in all-caps with crosses over the 'i's (e.g. "MIC" at 0:37, "SHIRT" at 03:13).

Song of the day: #27 Invincible – "Sledgehammer"

2011-04-18T16:18:00.000+01:00

This is that proverbial "real shit" we're always hearing about.

Here, across two packed, intricate verses, Detroit native Invincible shouts out everyone from dead homies Dilla and D12's Proof to "Strange Fruit" writer Abel Meeropol and murdered Black Panther deputy chair Fred Hampton, paraphrases a Frantz Fanon line, and claims to actually be Peter Gabriel at least a year or two before Lil B was running the "women want to sleep with me because i look like [prominent, unlikely public figure]" meme squarely into the ground.

Sorry if everybody else already knows about Invincible (who i really should have heard of before now; tho i suspect most people probably don't), and thanks to Dan Sonorous/Omnific Beats from 30KB for putting me onto her.

Inadvertent recursive sound art

2011-04-17T14:16:00.000+01:00

Clearing out some old Twitter links, found this from last August. Hilarious webcam feedback loop actually becomes strangely pretty/musical by the end. Dude's panicked tone is also pretty funny.

Kutiman – "My Favorite Color"

2011-03-23T17:14:00.004Z

This is pretty stunning. Israeli producer/composer Kutiman (who you may remember from his YouTube-mixing ThruYOU project from 2009), using only YouTube videos of 23 musicians as raw materials and some smart editing, creates a dense psyche-jazz piece that to these ears recalls someone like Pharaoh Sanders or the Coltranes.

More Kutiman at Twitter, Wikipedia.

Song of the day: #26 Deaf School – "What a Way to End It All"

2011-03-23T15:19:00.001Z

Remembered this tune after a recent conversation with Pip, and it's a bit of a cracker. Much more rinky-dink and ukulele-based than i remember, but this actually fits really well. Turns out the song's about someone unconvincingly threatening to kill himself, and his hesitance to actually go through with it is nicely reflected in the tune's refusal to ape Len Cohen or Tindersticks or bloody Morrissey or whoever; in fact, the bouncy music-hall energy and the knowing backing vocals repeating the title phrase seem to reinforce the would-be suicide's reluctance.

This crappy bluescreen video represents the best quality sound version of the song on YouTube, unfortunately.

Deaf School are often called the second-most important band in Liverpool's history (after possibly the most overrated band in music's history), credited with basically rejuvenating the entire city's music scene in the mid-70s during its post-Merseybeat drought. Another cool thing about them is that guitarist "Cliff Hanger" is actually Clive Langer, who went on to be an much-in-demand producer (for the likes of Dexy's, Madness, Morrissey¹ etc.) and also wrote the music for legitimately one of my favourite ever songs, "Shipbuilding", with Elvis Costello.

¹ Christ, twice in one post. What a state of affairs.

Vote for Ben

2011-03-20T21:59:00.002Z

Ben Black outta Delusionists is in the running to get on a remix of Baby Blue's DaVinche-produced "Paper Haters", with a bit of luck and enough votes.

There's already a version with J2K, Ghetts and Scru Fizzer and a third will be out at the end of the month, with the MCs determined by number of votes. Delusionists say:

If he wins, it'll give us a huge opportunity to get our music to a wider audience (Baby Blue has worked with big names like Estelle, Sway and man-of-the-moment Wretch 32) so we'd really appreciate your support. All you have to do is go to the competition page and hit the big green vote button.

Oh, and you might want to watch the video too while you're there! You can vote once a day up until the 25th, and there's a share button on the page so you can encourage your mates to vote too. Not that we really, really want to win or anything... Whatever you can do, your support would be massively appreciated.

For ease of reference, here's Ben's verse. Frankly, i feel like it aces the competition just on the basis of the gleefully subversive fourth-wall-breaking pay-off "and the kids they love this sound, you're flippin' right i dumbed this down cuz... [i want the papers]", but there's like 14 more really good lines as well. Go vote.

SCAMS video for "Youngblood"

2011-03-09T18:40:00.000Z

My pals in the newly-reshuffled SCAMS have teamed up with director Sing J. Lee to make this video for their new tune "Youngblood". A mix of animation and other techniques, it employs some fairly laborious effects practices that used to be industry standard in the past, but have since been superseded by the effortless processes of digital.

There's probably a thesis to be written somewhere about reclaiming creative autonomy from the homogenising effects of technology through the conscious choice of reactivating the 'obsolete', with parallels to be drawn with things like Steve Albini's "The future belongs to the analog loyalists. Fuck digital" slogan from Big Black's Songs About Fucking, WFMU's Antique Phonograph Music Program, and the refusal of cassettes to lie down and die, for example. But i'm not really a philosopher, so maybe someone else can take on that one. Or maybe they already have! Hit me up if you're rolling your eyes at this like "duh! [Writer X] dealt with this in 2008".

Unlike a few other SCAMS (and associated bands) videos, i don't think i actually do anything on this one, except for maybe hanging around chatting nonsense while Sing and Andy painstakingly manipulated bowls of water, plastic cels and paint etc.

Just a quick note...

2011-03-05T20:30:00.004Z

...to say that if you're here and reading this, you should probably read Pip's (sample piece: "Why I Have No Time for Jeremy Clarkson") and Ben's (sample piece: "Rap's Coming Insurrection: A Review of mansbestfriend volume 5, an Exegesis of Based, and an Exploration of the Negativity of the Underground") blogs instead(/also) as i am by now pretty sure that both of them are way better at this writing malarkey than i.

"i wish Sergeant Pepper never taught the band to play"

2011-03-04T23:53:00.002Z

As you've probably seen, Radiohead have put out another record, and there's been loads of the usual hype as the world falls over itself to compare them to ever more bewildering things and/or use them as proof that, see, it's still viable to try and make a living off music: you just have to be Radiohead (what, you mean that's all i have to do?!)

As usual, i've been pretty indifferent. i don't really care about Radiohead, beyond finding the enforced reverence for them mildly nauseating. They're pretty much moving into that Beatles category of "if you do not say you love this band, you do not like music" but for a new generation, which i find not only kind of baffling and daft but also a bit unimaginative. That's as high as my taste has to aspire?

Anyway, here is the only thing they've done that i really like and/or listen to on a regular basis: a DJ mix Thom Yorke and the brothers Greenwood did for Mary-Anne Hobbs' Radio 1 Breezeblock show in December 2000. i think the point was for them to showcase some of the influences on their then-new Kid A record, but it works equally well as just a really great 90-minute mixtape.

Particularly great discoveries from this were electronics pioneer & scientist Hugh Le Caine, the Kool Keith track, and particularly the inspired one-two of Terre Thaemlitz's brilliant Christopher Cross-modding "Soon I Will Be Free" and The Santa Claus Orchestra's² beautiful straight reading of "Silent Night", which makes me yearn for Christmas at inappropriate times, like the beginning of March.

Radiohead - DJ mix on the Breezeblock 11/12/2000 (pt. 1) by nailheadparty

Radiohead - DJ mix on the Breezeblock 11/12/2000 (pt. 2) by nailheadparty

Track listing
Louis Armstrong – St. James Infirmary (International)
Jega – Rigid Body Dynamics (Planet Mu)
Antipop Consortium – Rinseflow (75 Ark)
The Fall – The Birmingham School Of Business School (Fontana)
Kraftwerk – Expo 2000 (EMI)
Kid Koala – Like Irregular Chickens (Ninja Tune)
Serge Silberman – Theme De L'Americain (Somethin' Else)
Grain – Untitled (Fat Cat)
Betty Davis – F.U.N.K. (Island)
Sonic Youth – Tunic (Song For Karen) (DGC)
The Santa Claus Orchestra – Silent Night (Polydor)
Terre Thaemlitz – Soon I Will Be Free (Bottrop)
Cannonball Adderley Quintet – Hummin' (Capitol)
Christoph De Babalon – On the Block (Meet Him) (Fat Cat Records)
Jurassic 5 – Concrete Schoolyard (Interscope)
Pixies – Bone Machine (4AD)
Kool Keith – Extravagant Traveler (Threshold Recordings)
Mantronix – Who Is He (Warlock)
Duke Ellington – Come Sunday (Phillips Realities)
Faust – Tapes (White Label)
Hugh Le Caine – Sackbut String Quartet (National Library of Canada)
Lali Puna – Rapariga Da Banheira (Hausmusik)
Autechre – Play (Warp)
Art Ensemble Of Chicago – Theme de Yoyo (Universal)
Gabor Szabo – Walking On Nails (Impulse)

¹ Post title from "Who Will Save Rock and Roll?" by The Dictators, courtesy of Lachlann
² About whom any information would be gratefully received.

Favourite Twitter stuff, 2010

2011-01-03T17:44:00.001Z

2010 was when i really 'got' Twitter, having been sceptical for most of '09 and then tentatively turned around by the #oneandother hashtag for Anthony Gormley's same-named public art project and the fact that there was always someone commenting on what the plinthers were up to. i started following a bunch more rad people and actually favouriting things. A lot of them were articles i didn't have time to read, links i didn't have time to open, etc., and i've just been clearing all of that stuff out in the Christmas break. A substantial amount, tho, were just rad things people said. Without further ado, here are the best of those.

Sorry about the wall-of-text, but it's all pretty great quality text.

#ff: most people on this list

Made me giggle
@kicking__k, Feb 4: Just tried to breathe tea, can confirm would very quickly die on any planet with a tealike atmosphere.
@diss1, Feb 6: "yeah - and you know that i'm Scouse / catch me outside your bird's house in my Berghaus"
[at a rap battle]
@twosilvertrees, Feb 17: constrictions of email subject line reduce header to a concise 'Joanna Newsom added to The Simpsons'. imagining yellow, doughy harpist. [NB Lauren: please tweet more]
@davidschneider, Mar 1: Sarcasm finally loses lowest-form-of-wit crown to Pretending to Speak like a Mentally Handicapped Person
@Aiannucci, Mar 5: At the airport.Got my Oscar tickets in my pocket, my girl by my side,and 3 packets of heroin hidden up my anus.What could possibly go wrong? [i think it's the choice of "anus" that makes it so funny]
@ConanOBrien, Mar 29: Jewish fun fact: If you celebrate Passover on top of an overpass, you go back in time.
@TheOnion, May 10: NEWSWIRE: Rogue Quantum Physicist Wanted Dead And Alive
@AesopRockWins, May 18: there is a butter knife sitting in the middle of my living room floor. it showed up like 2 days ago. gonna let it be i guess.
@JerryThomas, May 24: If you want my body and you think I'm sexy come on sugar raise your standards.
@davidschneider, Jun 19: He'll is other people #predictiveSartre (from @MimFox)
@GaryDelaney, Jul 1: Just seen two men fighting over whether to use the pluperfect or imperfect, it was a tense situation.
@Aurist, Jul 4: nice unfortunate trending topic: Dog Eating Contest
@davidschneider, Jul 8: I'm not racist or anything but my street is full of ants
@AesopRockWins, Aug 6: There's been a man drunkenly yelling "Sabrina!" on the street for like 2 hours. Sabrina if you're reading this, go outside. Dude's here.
@woodmuffin, Oct 4: its troubling to know that one of the few phrases Scooby-Doo can pronounce correctly is "Race riot"
@leducviolet, Nov 4: meme girls
@RapSkit, Nov 5: I sleep with one Wikipedia page open
@leducviolet, Nov 5: McRib is back. McAdam & McEve, not McAdam & McSteve! #McGod
@woodmuffin, Nov 6: ? Who's the leader of the Reich that stretches very far? A-D-O-L-F-H I-T-L-E-R ?
@CelestialBeard, Nov 8: the dutch name for Ludo translates as "dude don't be annoyed"
@SRN_lol, Nov 8: i think if a tractor trailer kicks up a rock and cracks your windscreen, you should be allowed to shoot out one of their tire
@Toxzxi, Nov 9: Endless butt harddrive
@robdelaney, Nov 11: Been a while since "It's the End of the World as We Know It" & "We Didn't Start the Fire." We need a new song where someone yells a list.
@leducviolet, Nov 16: @diss1 "you should buy a kindle" "you should get your affairs in order, because I'm about to impale you on a polearm" [on bookstores becoming obsolete]
@WXTXIVXX, Nov 16: wish i could put my facebook relationship status as 'desperate but indifferent'
@Giania, Nov 17: I like my women like I like my coffee: a lot.
@dogsdoingthings, Nov 17: Dogs lingering after class to get some clarification on whether you mean "Chaka Khan" when you say "Jacques Lacan." [NB pretty much anything else from this account would also qualify]
@leducviolet, Nov 24: I received a B.A. in English *receives a breathtaking rimjob from the ghost of Emily Dickinson* *dies impoverished & alone*

Poignant/poetic/thoughtful/absurd
@kicking__k, Feb 25: -5 FOLLOWERS. Every time I lose just one I send a search party into my heart but they or why are never there.
@kicking__k, Mar 8: The problem with wanting to be loved for what we are is that we're never really / rarely ever what we think we are.
@mcsole, Mar 8: "the suicide bomber is the last true believer// he's lonely in heaven, with no virgins, and no heaven...."
@Benladen, Mar 3: every way out is really just a way back in
@dreamguts, Feb 16: @diss1 only artificial things are good http://tinyurl.com/yam84cc
@_hoju, Mar 10: I've never had a nice tasting fortune cookie. I don't consider this fortuitous.
@R_C__S, Jun 19: I'm a fish again.
@Benladen, Jul 29: i will bleed gravel until your whole world smells caustic.
@negativecos, Jul 30: meet the new phone, same as the old phone
@Aurist, Aug 27: crowns. RT @IAM_SHAKESPEARE: crowns.
@milkhell, Aug 31: egg city destroyed. yolk everywhere.
@jessedarling, Oct 1: Sometimes I mourn all the pretty songs I wrote & probably won't ever sing. [swoon]
@rejecter, Oct 6: I served on the S/S Reuptake Inhibitor, the world's only steamer to round the Cape of Good Hope crawling the ocean floor.
@Giania, Oct 15: I'm so hip I'll eventually need to be replaced
@Giania, Oct 21: Stop dying all the time. Stop it. Don't you know there's a word called love and a bunch of silly shit left to do?
@chunderbucket, Oct 26: If we outlaw laws, will only outlaws have laws?
@AesopRockWins, Oct 28: "BEFRIEND RAP" to replace "BATTLE RAP"-contestants will be given two 1-minute rounds to "befriend" their opponent via improvisational rhyme.
@Aurist, Nov 2: even when the last tree falls, there will be fire.
@ceschi, Nov 3: "Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable." - Michel Foucault
@preschoolgems, Nov 4: "You're going to space jail."
@preschoolgems, Nov 10: "I don't like me. I'm yucky."
@evrythingmustgo, Nov 12: I wish this sadness was just my persona.
@xmaswar, Dec 6: in alaska they give you all the sauce at mcdonalds you want even if you dont order nuggets in order to keep the suicide rate down

Current affairs
@MissCay, Jun 27: The only way this match can improve now is if England actually bring on three lions. #worldcup
@Chr1sR0berts, Oct 19: When Winston Churchill was asked to cut arts funding in favour of the war effort, he simply replied ‘then what are we fighting for?'
@josephjedwards, Oct 20: All in this together. All in this together. All in this together. http://i.imgur.com/mHlXY.jpg
@simon_price01, Nov 10: You know how some people are always moaning that students should earn their keep? Today they're doing it.

Culture
@MaxTundra, Mar 9: OK Go should record an innovative, exciting piece of music - and make a plodding, nondescript video to go with it.
@nathanrabin, Mar 17: The Britney Spears song "Lucky" is about a girl named lucky who is lucky. But is she really lucky? No. No, she is not.
@ebertchicago, Apr 5: Chuck Norris gets mad, punches out Hummer. Werner Herzog gets mad, triggers 6.9 quake centered in Baja.
@WaFBelieves, May 4: Mark E. Smith is made out of industrial smoke, cut-up fragments of Philip K. Dick stories, "unsporting behavior", whiskey and Can LPs.
@demon_pigeon, Jul 6: 'dirty harry potter'
@demon_pigeon, Jul 28: korn iii: old man with dreadlocks, singing about rubbish life: in back of his porsche #reviewhaiku
@Discographies, Aug 6: M.I.A.: 1 "A pop revolutionary's gotta move fast..."; 2 "...before success softens your ideas..."; 3 "...and all that remains is celebrity." [NB: virtually anything from this stunning account would also qualify]
@JoshMalina, Aug 15: Nope. ROBIN HOOD's playing. RT @russellcrowe Anyone awake in Poland?
@leducviolet, Oct 22: The Naked & The Dad
@Neil_Hamburger, Oct 26: I'm critical of the Pink Floyd policy of occupying FM radio RT @RogerWaters:I'm critical of the Israeli policy of occupying Palestinian land
@Aurist, Oct 27: it seems there are a lot of people out there who don't know the difference between a "sick drop" and "making the bass loud but not better"
@martinnicholls, Dec 23: Apparently Beefheart responded to Bono's collaboration request with the note: "Dear Bongo. No." I so want that to be true.

Great Potential Band Names [w/suggested musical style]
- Musket Party [akin to vintage Butthole Surfers doing an Elvis Costello covers set]
- Superpredators [like ATR remixing Dead Kennedys]
- International Soups [kraut-/post-rock]
- Cytokine Storm [intricate technical metal]
- Sonic Cathedrals [you expect shoegaze but then it's actually boring garage-rock]

My own stuff that i favourited out of a sense of undervaluedness
@diss1, Feb 7: i'm going to pretend that there's a major sporting event on called the "Superb Owl"
@diss1, Feb 9: Mark E Smith interviewing himself
@diss1, Feb 16: 'Jedward' are pretty much Disney's Tweedledum and Tweedledee after a 12-hour gunpoint lipo session.
@diss1, Feb 18: @willmill82 @TheMasterBrewer one day i'd love to hear the bloke who does the football results scoring internet memes. "girls - 2; cup - 1."
@diss1, Mar 4: apparently there's a man dressed as a banana in our office car park. [there really was]
@diss1, Mar 10: you say "tomato", i say "tomato"... on paper, this could work out.
@diss1, Jun 30: "Why has me gay?" "What is a mouse when it spins?" "Who decided to use coffee in a cup?" great questions, all. [christ knows what these were from, sounds like Yahoo! Answers tho]
@diss1, Nov 2: "respect the old man who has forgotten what he learned, for broken tablets have a place in the Ark beside the Tablets of the Law"

Just sort of assorted aceness
@Aurist, Feb 16: the young assistant walks into @mark_yudof's office/lair. "sir... he's back..." cut to yudof's face, and zoom in on his widening eyes [on the return of Benladen to Twitter after Yudof getting him b&d]
@buddypeace1980, Mar 27: Apparently when you have wolves in a film you have to have a sniper there too - just in case... They're untameable. Never knew that...
@Benladen, Jul 7: CANNON KNOCKED DOWN THE TOWERS RT @johnbcannon It was you, diss. Tell the truth, diss. RT @diss1 @Benladen didn't blow up the projects. [this is just ace]
@errolmorris, Nov 11: AMBROSE BIERCE'S DEFINITION OF "NOVEMBER:" n. The eleventh-twelfth of a weariness. (Damn. Does the colon go inside the quotes?)
@AesopRockWins, Nov 27: Under the bum drum cutter is a real motherfucker's motherfucker, motherfucker.

Me and OYBAM's #listnumber3 suggestions: songs that would sound either good or in some other way interesting when played together, or conceptual remixes based on titular/nomenclaturial similarities
- Beach Boys "Fun, Fun, Fun"; Kraftwerk "Autobahn"; DKs "MTV Get Off the Air"; Nickelback "How You Remind Me" #listnumber3 [me]
- Weezer "Say It Ain't So" + Pixies "Where Is My Mind?" #listnumber3 [OYBAM]
- Dream Theater "Pull Me Under" + Camel "Spirit of the Water" #listnumber3 [OYBAM]
- selections from the "Super Mario" OST with something by Mario Lanza #listnumber3 [me]
- "In the Hall of the Mountain King" + the theme from "Inspector Gadget" #listnumber3 [me]
- The Fall "Blindness" / Roots Manuva "Witness (One Hope)" #listnumber3 [me]

OK, these links could be useful
- Every Spin magazine ever on Google Books http://tr.im/R9VY /via @dannynorthphoto
- Your Twitter followers throw you a fucking parade http://bit.ly/a8U3uo /via @alexia, carr2n
- A Flash version of John Conway's Game of Life which also queries Wikipedia and Bing image, it is fun to watch: http://bit.ly/byn4V1 /via @dreamguts, who also created it
- Best bad ad placement ever http://i51.tinypic.com/jpeaet.jpg /via @backpedalling
- Gargoyle Mark E Smith http://twitpic.com/2p29pv /via @serafinowicz
- a dozen films of Samuel Beckett's plays: http://is.gd/ffmNG /via @ubuweb
- Derrida The Movie (Documentary, 2002): http://is.gd/fxFUJ /via @ubuweb
- coordinate yr own symphony in realtime, it has to be in Bb tho http://inbflat.net/ /via @JNRaeside, @jeremyhillman, @iankatz1000
- the "Best Answer" on Yahoo! Answers to the question of what it was like for Martin Luther King growing up http://yhoo.it/cg7ko7 /via @kasper_hauser
- essential info in Wiki's Alan Sugar article http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alan_Sugar&oldid=96137718 /via @demon_pigeon
- John Peel taking over Radio 1's daytime for a week. hilarious, thrilling http://bit.ly/9PdrhX /via @kleptones

Amen
@CharSmar, Apr 21: #IfSongsWereHonest This is a mans world...and look at the fucking state of it
@subpop, Mar 18: Coffee, work your magic
@MJMcKean, May 23: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." Kurt Vonnegut
@Dorianlynskey, Jun 24: If you could have only one wish, what would it be? Mine would be for Stephen Fry to stfu about Apple products for the rest of his life.
@joehowe, Jul 27: be realistic, ask for the impossible.
@edjeff, Oct 7: if you shitheads re-elect boris in 2012 i swear to god i am going to kill every last one of you
@shaylamaddox, Oct 13: Twitter makes me like people I've never met and Facebook makes me hate people I know in real life.
@Aurist, Oct 21: @diss1 why am i not a meme yet
@Aurist, Oct 22: fuck you die fuck you die die die fuck you dead die fuck dead you fuck die die fuck you fuck RT @kellyoxford Anorexia is hipster exercise.
@delrico, Oct 27: you see, more than the music and the influence and the exposure, this is why I love John Peel http://bit.ly/aboAKj #keepingitpeel
@Toxzxi, Nov 4: The Apprentice. You're fired! Into the sun. For watching it.
@Toxzxi, Nov 4: I cannot smh enough for these disgusting bird is the word for christmas #1 imbeciles SMDH
@djharrylove, Nov 4: Never make the mistake of assuming that someone's life is fine just because they dont tell you all their problems
@Aurist, Nov 9: @Maaever i am going to become a celebrity so i am in a position to make being nice to people a fashionable thing to do
@virgiltexas, Nov 9: Mad Men Avatar, Didn't Read #MMADR
@cmunell, Nov 17: I think "child murders" is a kind of #MilitaryEvent (http://bit.ly/a7HDNx)
@demon_pigeon, Nov 24: sometimes i don't think i'm good enough to write a novel, but then i remember pride and prejudice and zombies is out and i cry
@pippa_dee, Nov 24: It bemuses me that so often, in place of polyphony there is only a somnambulous chorus reciting the words of dead white men. [i seem to remember a blog post that expanded on this, but disappointingly i can't find it]
@Maaever, Dec 1: the fact that being male and feminist makes people perceive you as intellectually dishonest is points for patriarchy
@BlancoMusiccom, Dec 1: Is it just me or does the great philosophical divide of the 21st century look like it's going to be between techs and creatives?
@chrissteigen, Dec 31: In 2011, I will be angrier #realisticresolution

Song of the day: #25 Kazuki Tomokawa – "彼方"

2011-01-03T16:43:00.002Z

Been catching up on some 2010 stuff i didn't have time to check out in the year, and this extraordinary track was one of them, as part of Oh Yes, By All Means' ever-excellent mixes.

This one's from Around the World in 80 Minutes pt. 1, and represents Japan. "Singer, author, actor, painter, drinker, raconteur [and] bike-race tipster" Kazuki Tomokawa is apparently known for performances so wild he has snapped all his guitar strings in a single song. Indeed, the intensity of both the guitar playing and, especially, the vocal on "彼方" borders on the frightening. The closest useful comparison i could think of is when you first hear Black Francis lividly howling over the acoustic guitars on "Vamos" and suspect he might be genuinely disturbed. Although even in that case, i had more of an idea what Francis was talking about. The fact that i don't speak Japanese and therefore have no idea what Tomokawa's saying may well enhance the tension/urgency in his delivery. It sounds at times like he's trying to vomit out one of his lungs.

The title seems to transliterate as "hira" and mean "there, yonder, in that location, in a specific place", but that's from an internet translation engine and could therefore be balls.

Also, it seems both Tomokawa's music and he himself have recently made appearances in the films of Takashi Miike, so i suppose some people might recognise it from those. Not me, tho, as i'm terrible at having seen films and have only seen Audition, Visitor Q and maybe The Happiness of the Katakuris (i literally can't remember about that one).

mp3: Kazuki Tomokawa – "彼方"

Song of the day: #24 Ben Butler & Mousepad – "Super Motion"

2010-11-24T10:09:00.000Z

Originally wrote this preview of my pal Joe's new act for Never Enough Notes, where there's a Soundcloud player with more material and so on. This tune's deffo my favourite BB&MP tune tho, at least at the moment. Some of the greatest awkwardfunk i've heard in years.

Ben Butler and Mouse Pad is the new project of Joe Howe (previously known as Germlin, or one half of gay against you), in which cardboard castles and adult hyperactivity disorders take a backseat to freeform synthesizer solos and extremely geometric pullovers.

Joe's long-standing synth fascination shines through, but this time there's much more of an emphasis on playing. It's still dancefloor-friendly but more reined-in and richly melodic than before, recalling the warm ooze of the Weather Report or Zappa's Waka/Jawaka and Grand Wazoo albums, as well as a sense of pushing synth sounds as far as they'll go that's akin to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop (another stated influence). Or, as one last.fm user neatly describes them, "like Prince and Stevie Wonder on your favourite arcade machine".

As well as the laudably unfashionable likes of prog and jazz fusion, BB&MP identify with the Scandinavian skweee scene, and have released one side of a 7" named "Future Tent" on the genre's spiritual home, Norway's Dødpop label. As well as that record, there's a mini-album of "Future Tent" remixes by the likes of oMMM, The Niallist and Tangles, and a 5-track compilation of early stuff named, fittingly, Early.

So far, gigs have been largely conducted in Europe, but North American audiences will soon be able to get their first taste of BB&MP in the flesh, as they play 22 dates across the US in January and February in support of indie stalwarts Deerhoof. Any of our transatlantic readers would be well advised to take a look.

28 Jan 2011 US San Francisco, CA – Great American Music Hall
29 Jan 2011 US Los Angeles, CA – Echoplex
01 Feb 2011 US Austin, TX – Mohawk
02 Feb 2011 US Dallas, TX – Palladium Showroom
03 Feb 2011 US Memphis, TN – The Hi Tone
04 Feb 2011 US Nashville, TN – Mercy Lounge
05 Feb 2011 US Athens, GA – 40 Watt
06 Feb 2011 US Raleigh, NC – King’s
07 Feb 2011 US Washington, DC – 9:30 Club
08 Feb 2011 US Brooklyn, NY – Ridgewood Masonic Temple
10 Feb 2011 US Cambridge, MA – Middle East
11 Feb 2011 US Philadelphia, PA – Theatre of Living Arts
12 Feb 2011 US Pittsburgh, PA – Altar
14 Feb 2011 US Pontiac, MI – The Crofoot Ballroom
15 Feb 2011 US Chicago, IL – Bottom Lounge
16 Feb 2011 US Madison, WI – High Noon Saloon
17 Feb 2011 US Minneapolis, MN – Triple Rock Social Club
18 Feb 2011 US Iowa City, IA – Blue Moose
19 Feb 2011 US Omaha, NE – Waiting Room
21 Feb 2011 US Denver, CO – The Marquis
25 Feb 2011 US Seattle, WA – Neumo’s
26 Feb 2011 US Portland, OR – Holocene

mp3: Ben Butler & Mousepad – "Super Motion"

Song of the day: #23 Prolapse – "Deanshanger"

2010-11-22T10:26:00.004Z

Do you remember the 1980s?
I was there too...

Tory government, strikes, riots in the street, papal visit and now a Royal wedding to boot. Yep, at the moment, comparisons of the 2010s to the 1980s are just serving to confirm the cliché that clichés are clichés because they're true, in that they're both clichéd and true.

With that in mind, a revival of Prolapse's 1997 not-quite-anthem "Deanshanger" might well be in order. Formed "under a table" at the University of Leicester student union, Prolapse stated their intention of becoming "the most depressing band ever" and set about the task by mashing up krautrock rhythms, punk rock and massive swathes of brutalised grey shoegaze feedback, topped off by twin vocalists "Scottish" Mick Derrick (psychotic, Glaswegian) and Linda Steelyard (sarcastic, deadpan, English Rose) enacting fearsome psychodramas over the top.

The music... was crap
The claise¹... were crap
The hair... was crap
Everything... was crap

Opening with a blast of haze before a rhythm section like a wired descendent of "Yoo Doo Right" kicks in, layered with snaking guitar lines and – yes! – bagpipes, "Deanshanger"² then lays out a laundry list of grievances against the '80s, from a time approximately equidistant from their end and their 21st-century revival. The Royal Wedding "wasnae worth the paper it was written on". The papal visit "promised much but didn't deliver" (i'm always amused/baffled by this bit: just what were you expecting, Mick?)

Meanwhile, Steelyard (now a reporter for the Leicester Mercury) enacts the part of someone "trapped in a room" and fruitlessly trying to work out how to escape ("even if I could build a door, I couldn't reach the wood because my feet are strapped to the floor"), the wall of noise around her voice isolating her even further, her tone resigned. By the end she has given over to Stockholm syndrome ("well I feel quite at home here now...")

"I'm glad it's all over, wrapped up in a box and put under the bed," proclaims Derrick at the song's conclusion, but the circling spiral of drums and feedback loops after he's finished seem almost to acknowledge that it's not over, it's never over, and no matter how hard you shout it's only a matter of time before it's all back again.

mp3: Prolapse – "Deanshanger" [YSI]

¹ Whoever reviewed this in the NME at the time had never heard the word "claise", and proceeded to make a right tit of themselves when their quip about Prolapse condemning the "theatrical productions" of the 1980s rather undermined their knowing-condescension schtick.
² Lord knows, what, if any, connection all this has with the Northamptonshire village of Deanshanger.

Newspaper truism

2010-11-15T20:02:00.001Z

The thing with a lot of Guardian readers is that they think they could write the Guardian better themselves. Whereas Times readers think they could run the country better themselves. ~ Caitlin Moran

Thank-you, Caitlin, nail/head/party there methinks.

#7: The Burns Unit — "Side Show" (Proper)

2010-11-14T22:21:00.001Z

The word supergroup has been bandied about, but happily “Side Show” swerves the usual pitfalls of ego and bloat that the term suggests. The amount of disparate talents actually works in their favour: as each song is penned by at least two band members, it seems like the songs’ streamlined nature must have been necessary just to fit everyone in...

i review The Burns Unit's rad debut album Side Show for Never Enough Notes.

mp3: The Burns Unit – "Send Them Kids to Wa r"

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2010 edition)

2010-11-12T00:23:00.000Z

Synopsis: After the breaking of the Fellowship, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli join up with a small band of Rohirrim warriors and mount a valiant defence of the fortress at Helm's Deep against the massed forces of Saruman's Uruk-hai army. Soon they are joined by a band of Elves of Lórien, Huorns and 2,000 riders led by Éomer, who proceed to stand around with their noses in the air proclaiming that a fortress is a privilege, not a right.

#6: Chinese Church — "Hallowe'en 2010" (Stone Lion)

2010-11-03T01:39:00.003Z

Hallowe'en is dead, long live Chinese Church!

Would you guys kill me if i coined the term "witch noise"? You would? Oh well, never mind then.

Former Glitch City man Tim J aka Wingus aka Chinese Church, now operating another label, Stone Lion, has released a 5-track web-EP "recorded, compiled and released on Hallowe'en 2010" with all samples, oscillators, effects, artwork and photos by himself.

Aptly named Hallowe'en 2010, the result is a bit like if the Scarefest rides at Alton Towers weren't set in old science research facilities or scary circuses but in a network of abandoned, haunted abattoirs. Its whispers, shrieks, howls and all-round mechanical clanking also occasionally recall the claustrophobic lost-soul squalls of the denser early Third Eye Foundation records.

"They're Driving the Hovering Castle" is probably my favourite initially, both because of the way it develops from a hissing digital thunderstorm into something both disjointedly melodic and weirdly rhythmical, but always slightly beyond the listener's grasp in both contexts. Could the title refer to "The Last Hovering Castle" by Warcloud, who Tim got me into in the first place? Or Jonathan Swift's floating tyranny Laputa? Or the Hiyao Miyazaki anime inspired by it? Maybe all or none of the above.

"Ganesh Particle Conjured from the Eternal Lattice" is also really good, sounding like a bit like a 60s radio commercial being imprisoned by an electric fence made of whistling, churning feedback, but it's all worth a look. Get the whole EP here and check for Stone Lion's other holiday release We Wish You Are Happy New Year.¹ They also have other releases which are neither holiday-themed nor downloadable, so you will have to pay Australian dollars or the equivalent thereof for them.

— Download Hallowe'en 2010

mp3: Chinese Church — "They're Driving the Hovering Castle"

¹ Title now fixed, hat tip to Ben

Back. / Ascending mixtape

2010-11-03T00:45:00.002Z

Hiya! So sorry i've been away un-blogging for so long... i actually have a fairly good reason - done 8 weeks of an NCTJ diploma to become a, like proper journalist and everything. If i also told you that course is a mere 20 weeks till full qualification and therefore somewhat intense, and that to get there i wake up at 6.45am daily and don't get home till 7pm, and the fact that there's also 30KB, label administration, writing for other blogs, sleeping and some other stuff i also have to do, y'can probably why the blogging's dropped off a bit.

i promise to get more done soon, but in the meantime: a) you might wanna catch me instead as @diss1 on Twitter [HA! you hypocrite! caught you! etc.] where i now find communicating in sub-SMS chunks to actually be useful, manageable and actually kinda fun [yeh yeh i was wrong in this article i admit it, but hey in the last week or so Charlie Brooker's come out and basically admitted that the last several years of his work was nihilistic gallery-playing so i think i'm allowed one].

Now, a brief return to mix-making. i used to do a load of mixes before Google started summarily shutting down music blogs for copyright infringement. i still make them, but now i just don't post them up any more. Maybe i should start a separate blog just for mixes! That'd actually be a pretty good idea. OK, just realised my stream of consciousness is now conversing with itself, this is no good. Anyway.

According to Windows Media Player i currently have 1344 hours of audio on my laptop hard drive. So what i've done is yam all that into a playlist, order it all in track length order (shortest to longest) and then made a mix of the first 80 minutes¹ of that. As bewildering sound collages go, i think it's a pretty neat one!

i've edited out some repeat artists at my discretion (basically so it doesn't start off with an entire JAPSHITFUN album) but otherwise the whole mellifluous mess is verbatim.

Track listing

Oh Yes, By All Means - To Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany
Atma - Minterlude Universal Enlightenment
DAISY CUTTER - SATURDAYNIGHT, WATCHING ANIME, GOOD JOB
The Watts Prophets - The Meek Ain't Gonna
Lil' B - Soulja Boy Checks In
Oh Yes, By All Means - Sentry
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - ...
Agoraphobic Nosebleed - Neotropolis Euphoria
Alan Tew - The Detectives (Link 2a)
JAPSHITFUN - Gay
Unknown - power chord [C#]
Unknown - drum loop 7
Alan Tew - The Detectives (Link 4a)
Alan Tew - The Detectives (Link 1)
Daisy Cutter - NTERNAL GUTTERAL RAPE (Rorikiller cover)
Four Tet - Pablo's Heart
The Watts Prophets - Listen
Vague Terrain Recordings - Coming Soon
Atma - Interlude
Santiago Gómez Cou - Pedro Y El Lobo
Phil Dirt - An Introduction By
Reflection Eternal - Black Gold Intro
La Gringa Inga - Inglés En Un 2x3
Unknown - drum loop 01b
Nicki Minaj - I Was First
shorthand dications, 60-70wpm
Formosa Tiene Su Hechizo - Formosa Tiene Su Hechizo
Human Skab - Phone Goof Off
Scissor Shock - Johnny Merzbow Psychic Contact
Apples in Stereo - The Code
The Watts Prophets - We Must Love Black People
Jaga Jazzist - The Thing Introduces...
Formosa Tiene Su Hechizo - Formosa Tiene Su Hechizo [2]
El-P - Wacky Interlude Is Back
Sage Francis - Commercial Radio Advice Intro
Lucky Dragons - Cleanhouse
The Watts Prophets - Instruction
Laura Huxley - Introduction
Spektrum - Shall I Jump?
Boards of Canada - I Saw Drones
The Deep Freeze Mice - Untitled
Spektrum - SP-Spektrum
Circle Jerks - Deny Everything
Retribution Gospel Choir - The Last of the Blue Dream
Spektrum - Spek-t-t-t-trum
Wire - Field Day
L'Homme Fatal - Murdah On The Dancefloor DAISY CUTTER REMIXXX
Spektrum - New Sound Word Power
Frank Zappa - Theme from "Bonanza"
The Magnetic Fields - Experimental Music Love
Atma - Insterlude Earthlings
Lexie Mountain Boys - Stop and Discuss Part Four
Frank Zappa - "Godfather Part II" Theme
Indian Jewelry - Sirens
R Stevie Moore - Explanation of Artist
Yola Polastri - Los Niños Y Su Mundo
Clint Mansell - Dreams
Sam Cooke - 8 Bars of Soul
Lil Jon - What is Crunk Rock (Interlude)
Lucky Dragons - Haley Chaser
Spektrum - Release the Sugar
Spektrum - Ikerlude
Lexie Mountain Boys - Stop and Discuss Part Two
Nervous Cop - Setting the Bushes on Fire
Audrey Saint-Coeur - Diddlage
Scissor Shock - Codeine Dream of Sunset Eyeball
Boards of Canada - Energy Warning
Richard Pinhas - Short Transition
Circle Jerks - Don't Care
Burial - Untitled
Nervous Cop - Rice Precipitation
Bus - Intro feat. MC Soom T
Sax Ruins - Zurna Taksim
Saccharine Trust - Mad at the Co.
Frank Zappa - I Left My Heart in San Francisco
Sin 34 - Not
J.G. Thirlwell - Brock Graveside
Nervous Cop - Get Wolf Boy and Get in Context
Boards of Canada - Beware the Friendly Stranger
Scissor Shock - Let's Foot Fuck!
Scissor Shock - Codeine Dream of Sunset Eyeball [again]
Spiritualized - All of My Thoughts (Strings)
Burkhard Stangl & Christof Kurzmann - Las Hijas de Nieve
DAISY CUTTER VS OH YES, BY ALL MEANS - EXPLODE ALL DIMENSIONS
Analog Rebellion - North Korea and Kim Jong Il's Fat Fucking Face
Eels - Apple Trees
Nathan Johnson with the Cinematic Underground - Laura's Theme
Notorious B.A.C.H. - Gimme the Lute
Gordon Easton - The Drunken Piper
The Roots - Tunnel Vision
Men's Recovery Project - Get the Fuck Out of My Office
The Deep Freeze Mice - Bottles reprise
Wire - Brazil
The Watts Prophets - They Shot Him
Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen (original oratone ideas)
Dick Limerick Academy - Fazakerly
Circle Jerks - Waster
Retribution Gospel Choir - '68 Comeback
JAPSHITFUN - this is the only song that scrobbles so you can stop listening after this
Smog - Hole in the Heart
Wire - Different to Me
Walls - Gaberdine
Revo - Fuck the School
R Stevie Moore - The Voice
Clint Mansell & the Kronos Quartet - Dreams
Santiago Gómez Cou - Pedro Y El Lobo
Wire - Straight Line
Lärm - Pigeon
TUMBLEWEAVE - Pornstars Built the Pramids
Sick of It All - Braveheart
Burial - [untitled]
Scissor Shock - Piranha (I Wanna)
shorthand dications, 70-80wpm
Mugstar - It was too cold to go looking for Brancusi
Frank Zappa - When Irish Eyes Are Smiling
Nik Bärtsch's Mobile - Modul 4 II
Yo La Tengo - Tijuana Taxi
Scissor Shock - No Scissor, No Shock
Scissor Shock - Know Scissor, Know Shock
Nia Ben Aur - Chi Sydd Ar Fai
Da Stupids - Allen
Aspects - Rev. Soul
Foals - Fugue
John MacDonald - Strathspey/The Reel of Tulloch
R Stevie Moore - Explanation of Listener
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - ...
Low - Untitled
XharoldshitmanX - Open You'r Card
Tommy Gunn - Lilting With Fiddle, Guitar and Bones
Guilty Simpson - Preacher's Wife Interude
Micachu & the Shapes - Sweetheart
Credit to the Nation - Honey
Nervous Cop - Pow Strikes Pow Implosion
J Dilla - Digi Dirt feat. Phat Kat
Burial - Untitled
Lucky Dragons - Unkefriend
J.G. Thirlwell - No Vacancy
Tom Waits - Let Me Get Up On It
Jetset - Tot Hier En Niet Verder
J Dilla - Kaklow (Jump On It)
Lexie Mountain Boys - Hairy Rainbow
Chrome Hoof - Core Delusion
Human Skab - Guitar of Africans

DOWNLOAD

¹ It's actually 75 minutes so, if for some bizarre reason you want to, you can put it on a CD.

Song of the day: #22 Your Infamous Harp – "Cock Lobster"

2010-09-02T16:37:00.002+01:00

<a href="http://yourinfamousharp.bandcamp.com/track/cock-lobster">Cock Lobster by Your Infamous Harp</a>

i can't decide if i find this song terrible or amazing, or somewhere in the middle, or veering dementedly between the two. i think the fact someone compared Your Infamous Harp to the horrible System of a Down in the comments made me flinch, and it does initially come off a tad wacky. But then again, the production's really good, the title's obviously amazing¹ , the lyrics have a certain silly wit,² and the song structure's appealingly inventive too.³

and i like the way the guy singer seems to be deliberately aping Fred Schneider in his semi-regular exclamations of "cock lobster!" Actually, having now listened a few times, i've decided this is actually pretty good.

¹ In fact, i only discovered it by Googling to see if anyone had actually written a song with this name yet.
² "i don't want no lobster from you/i think that's very, very rude/you have such harsh words/for being such a delicate food".
³ Such as the 6/8 switch at 1:10 and then back into driving 4/4 a few bars later.

Song of the day: #21 The Delgados – "Mr Blue Sky (Peel session)"

2010-08-30T16:12:00.000+01:00

Happy bank holiday! The sun is out where i live in what must be a last-ditch push by the British summer to remind everyone it actually happened at all. So here's a suitably sunny song of the day, The Delgados' epic take on ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky", recorded in session for John Peel in 2002.

Here are the reasons this version is better than the original:

1. Emma Pollock sings it, not Jeff Lynne.
2. The Delgados version doesn make use of stupid Muppet Show backing vocals everywhere. See also:
3. The Delgados' use of a real string section. ELO might well be using a real string section as well, but crucially, even if it is, they make it sound like a tacky carnival ride backing track.
4. The Delgados do not have a stupid boxing ring bell at periodic intervals.
5. i can't hear any handclaps on the ELO version.
6. Slightly unfair given technological progression etc. etc. perhaps, but The Delgados' vocoder doesn't sound like it was knocked together by Willy Wonka on his lunch hour.
7. Again, Emma Pollock sings it, not Jeff Lynne.

It appears Lily Allen and The Decemberists have also covered the song, so i guess if i ever wished to gain a newfound respect for ELO, i would need only to listen to either of those versions.

mp3: The Delgados - "Mr Blue Sky (Peel session)"

Song of the day: #20 Rita Pavone – "My Name Is Potato"

2010-08-26T13:34:00.001+01:00

Love this song. Love it.

The video's been posted up around the internets a few times, but usually in the context of animation fanboys on some "hey, this song is shitty, but look at the amazing video by animation pioneer Guido Manuli!" tip. Well they're wrong, all wrong. The video is of incidental interest, and mainly cuz of how adorable Rita Pavone is serenading an imaginary potato, rather than the decent but rather standard animation, in which the potato dances around a bit, tunnels into and out of the ground, fires off a pair of six-shooters, swallows a shovelful of dirt for no apparent reason, and then repeats the whole thing for a second time before zooming off in a rocket. Better are the psychedelic flying 3D letters – "Potato", of course – and Rita's completely un-self-conscious and wonderful dancing at 2:18.

Really, the charm of this 1977 novelty not-quite-hit is increased by how unlikely it is to even exist. i have no idea why someone thought it would be a good idea to write a song about being (named after) a vegetable, but the fact that they did is somehow very encouraging. Probably the best thing about it is how much joy and passion Rita puts into singing such an obviously ridiculous piece. She attacks it as if her life depends on it, and by the time the stunt key change kicks in at 3:00, she sounds like she might actually explode with excitement.

mp3: Rita Pavone – "My Name Is Potato"

Song of the day: #19 Walt Solek – "Who Stole the Keeshka?"

2010-08-22T19:29:00.002+01:00

Kishka (sometimes kishke, kiszka or keeshka) is a Slavic-originating term for various types of sausage or intestine stuffed filled with meat and/or meal, and popular among Eastern Europeans, Ashkenazi Jews and diaspora communities of both.

Its several types include kaszanka, a black pudding-esque concoction involving a pig's intestine filled with pig's blood and barley. Sometimes liver is used as a filling; sometimes buckwheat, ground potatoes (as in Greater Bialystok kiszka) or other grains are subsituted for the barley. Paprika is frequently added for flavour. Ashkenazic Jewish kishke obeys kashrut restrictions by using beef intestines (or sometimes, an edible synthetic substitute) filled with matzo meal, rendered fat (schmaltz) and spices. So-called "false kishka" is actually helzel, chicken neck-skin stuffed with a flour-based mix. Finally, believe it or not, there's such a thing as vegetarian kishka.

Someone has stolen Polish-American lyricist, composer, and Clown Prince of Polka Walt Solek's kishka, and, though he might not look it, he is extremely unhappy about this. Intending to secure the return of his intestine-based feast through song, he penned "Who Stole the Keeshka?" (as it was originally spelt), which has since become a minor polka standard to the extent that it is often credited as "Polish traditional" rather than to Solek (lyrics) and polka promoter and musician Walter Dana. It has been recorded by numerous groups including Grammy-winning polka artist Frankie Yankovic, polka revivalists Brave Combo, and dependably dreadful musical comedian "Weird Al" Yankovic.

The song veers oddly and abruptly between the mournful verses bemoaning the loss of the food, the slightly more optimistic questioning of the chorus, and the frankly balls-out, horn-filled joyous exuberance of the instrumental sections, also featuring some truly wild¹ tambourine-playing. This probably says something profound about the Polish-American experience, but search me if i know what it is.

Solek's anguished vocals really convey the pain of the lost blood sausage: it's actually quite surprising that someone can imbue the words "it was hanging on a rack" with so much emotion. After a while he moves from anger to the bargaining stage, offering up pretty much any of his other Polish delicacies in exchange for the kishka's return:

You can take my szynka
Take my fine kielbasa
You can take my [stewed]? czernina²
But gimme back that kishka

Happily, everything turns out ok for Walt: at the end of the song it turns out that it was in fact Yashil who stole the kishka, the big bastard. To his credit, he returns it to the rack, and Solek thanks him, just in time for another tambourine-soaked hoedown frenzy. He's lucky Walt's such a nice guy. i'd have considered giving him a fine kielbasa round the face, to be honest with you.

Walt Solek's records seem insanely hard to find nowadays. There's a couple on eBay, two records on Spotify for British/Scando readers, and that really is about it. For ages i've been trying to find a tune of his called "Old Whiskey Shoes Polka", which was used to great effect by Les Blank in his 1980 documentary short Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, so if anyone knows where i can get hold of a copy of that, hit me up and i will reward you with some Polish sausage or something. Word.

mp3: Walt Solek – "Who Stole the Keeshka?"

¹ And endearingly over-high in the mix, for that matter.
² Couldn't work out for sure what this says, though some research into Polish cuisine throws up czernina – duck blood soup – as probably the closest-sounding dish. Like the kiszka, it's also full of blood.

#5: Antoni Maiovvi — "The Thorns of Love" (Caravan, 2010)

2010-08-22T16:39:00.000+01:00

Review of Antoni Maiovvi for Killed in Cars.

The third album by Bristol-born, Berlin-based DJ Anton Maiof under his (possibly Italo-disco informed) Antoni Maiovvi alias, The Thorns of Love claims kinship with the “overwhelming horror of the stalked… the sound of dimly lit streets where everyone is at risk”. It’s no coincidence that two of his top MySpace friends, juxtaposed next to one another, are John Carpenter and Giorgio Moroder...

More more more...

mp3: Antoni Maiovvi – "This Is the Beast"

Or stream the whole record via Soundcloud:

A n t o n i M a i o v v i "The Thorns Of Love" :: CVANCD003 by Multiverse

Song of the day: #18 Martha Wainwright – "Tower of Song"

2010-08-11T17:28:00.000+01:00

i like Big Len Cohen as much as the next guy, but i seem to prefer his songs as done by other people, for the most part.

Today's one of the best Cohen covers, Martha Wainwright's "Tower of Song", from the 2005 film soundtrack I'm Your Man (presumably it's also in the film, but i haven't seen that). The ghostly slide-guitar backing is perfect, and the way her voice cracks around the line "we'll never ever have to lose it again" kinda makes me want to marry her. Ahhh, Martha.

mp3: Martha Wainwright – "Tower of Son g"

Song of the day: #17 Weasel Walter – "Bohemian Rhapsody"

2010-08-05T15:55:00.001+01:00

Yesterday i posted probably the second-greatest version of "Bohemian Rhapsody" ever. Today: indisputably the greatest ever. Word to Weasel Walter.

"i'm just a poor boy, nobody likes me"... blastbeats... a recorder solo... that AMAZING drum sound. Perfect. The confused, angry comments under the YouTube video just make it all the more sweet.

Song of the day: #16 The Thurston Lava Tube – "Bohemian Rhapsody"

2010-08-04T18:27:00.002+01:00

<a href="http://thurstonlavatube.bandcamp.com/track/bohemian-rhapsody">Bohemian Rhapsody by The Thurston Lava Tube</a>

Via Lachlann, who sent it to me via Spotify: probably the second-best version of this song ever recorded. (No, the best is not the one you're thinking of.) The genius switch-up at 0:41 is worth the admission fee alone. For that matter, so is the whole "i see a little silhouette-a of a man" section.

Named after a volcanic tunnel in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, The Thurston Lava Tube are "a psychedelic, experimental surf instrumental band from Leicester", which i think you'll agree is a quite extraordinary proposition. They've done five or maybe six albums since 2001, the first one being a whole album of Beatles covers in a surf style. Their official website doesn't seem to work, but they have a MySpace. This track appeared on the 2006 album The Thoughtful Sounds of Bat Smuggling, as well on the excellently-titled Cordelia Records compilation Beyond the Sea: The Surf Instrumental Bands of the World Fearlessly Extend Their Repertoire.

The actual Thurston Lava Tube , Hawai'i

According to Wikipedia, one of The Tube's members, Alan Jenkins, was also in Leicester groups The Deep Freeze Mice and The Chrysanthemums. The former have albums called things like Teenage Head in My Refrigerator, The Gates of Lunch and Rain Is When the Earth is Television, while the latter's mix of "psychedelic pop, punk and elements of progressive rock" sounds strikingly Cardiacs-y and therefore immediately interesting. Gonna go and try and find more of all the above-mentioned stuff now. i may well report back on this.

Metal vocalist: "everyone else is fake but me!"

2010-07-20T15:05:00.005+01:00

This morning i read an article in which Keith Buckley, singer for "metalcore-with-Southern-rock-elements" band Every Time I Die, blasted the bands he's currently on the Warped Tour with for being fake, for such crimes as having regulation haircuts and dress sense, using autotune and drum machines, and being liked by teenagers.

Where to even start?

1. Keith: YOUR band (right) have regulation haircuts and dress sense. If it makes it easier for you, try to imagine your complex bad-ass tattoos, denim 'n' band t-shirts as merely the equivalent of "a deep swoop [of hair] that crosses your entire forehead". It's just that you work in a paradigm deemed "cool" by the tastemaker rock establishment, rather than one whose fans who have developed/are engaged in their own trends and don't care what the Metal Police™ think of them.

2. "What is it that drives you [i.e. fans of, e.g., 'crunkcore'/'glow pop'] to assemble in masses and sing along to lyrics about “shots” when you are easily five years under the legal drinking limit? Why are you buying shirts that say “Fuck Bitches, Get Money” when most of you have never: a) fucked or b) gotten money?"

Right on, bro! And why did that guy Shakespeare – y'know, that old dude who was your major in college – write about a Jewish money-lender in Venice? He'd never been a Jewish money-lender and he didn't live in Venice! WHAT A PHONY! i guess he should be condemned as a fraud and his plays discarded as false and useless from now on, right?

3. Autotune and drum machines aren't indicators of "realness" or "fakeness", they're tools designed to achieve certain sonic effects, much like distorted guitars and screaming are. Presumably you wouldn't slag off a saxophonist or a marimba player for playing a "fake" instrument. So where's the official list of Proscribed Musical Techniques, please? i'd like to check that my band is correctly following the regulations, so we can be like everyone else and not stick out. (What's so fucking great about guitar-drums-bass-vocals anyway?)

4. Technically, anyone who uses a PA or amplification, or indeed anything more than basic acoustic instrumentation is as "fake" as one another, as these are artificial processes. And hell, instruments are innately fake, even acoustic ones. They don't occur in nature. Someone had to cut a coupla trees down to fashion them lovingly into that spruce/maple soundbox so we could enjoy these campfire bro-fi jamz. And nylon doesn't grow on trees! (i touched on some of these issues in an earlier piece on – yes! – Milli Vanilli.)

5. Teenagers like your stuff too, Keith. i see that to get over this problem, you have conveniently subdivided them into "smart" or "dumb" ones, claiming that fans of stuff you don't like are mere sheep-like marketing victims, "[eating] up the music that media push on [them]", too stupid to make aesthetic judgements for themselves (unless they learn the error of their stupid teenage ways and "correct these mistakes", possibly through internment in a Humourless Hardcore Bros Gulag), whereas ones with suss and intelligence will naturally gravitate towards Hot Damn! or New Junk Aesthetic. Well that's terribly convenient, isn't it! How lucky for you that all the ones that like your band happen to be the smart, thinking-for-themselves ones! It couldn't possibly be that people make their own informed choices that you happen to disagree with, could it? Oh no.

6. "Most “artists” don’t even write their own songs."
Neither did Frank Sinatra. Nor do most classical string quartets or orchestras. And i've heard that some jazz groups play what's called "improvised" music – that stuff's not written by anyone! Scary stuff, huh?!

i can't believe it's 2010 and people are still using this knuckle-dragging, myopic redundancy as an argument.

7. "This “Glow-Pop” that has contaminated music like poison in the well simply needs to be seen for what it really is--a shameless exploitation of inexperience... It has given kids a focus, an place to assemble, an anthem and much like religion, it has given them a unifying symbol and convinced them that the more people “hate on it”, the more right they are in standing tall in the face of opposition."

Again, please explain how the above differs from your scene, except in the sense that yours has more approval from meatheaded crypto-jocks who give it the thumbs-up in irrelevant categories like "realness"? Except now you've been forced on to the other side. You're no longer the ones who get to assume the edgy outsider rebel mantle, and it's eating you.

8. Oh: and why the fuck are you still on the Warped Tour profiting from the same kids you deem to be stupid, tasteless plebs if you hate it so much? Surely you should start your own tour, the Unerringly Authentic Real Music Oh Quick Someone Suck My Dick I'm So Amazing Tour, instead? Surely to do otherwise would make you a wholly insincere hypocrite?

In conclusion: listen to Every Time I Die's turgid metalcore grunting if you want, but don't bother using the supposed 'superiority' of this as a weapon. Your group-of-choice's protestations about how much more real and unmarketed they are compared to others is, ironically and amusingly, mere marketing. But you knew that, right? After all, you're "the smart ones".

Song of the day: #15 Kishore Kumar – "Bom Chik, Bom Chik"

2010-07-13T20:37:00.000+01:00

Lachlann found today's Song of the Day, "Bom Chik, Bom Chik" by Indian playback singer, actor, lyricist, composer, producer, director and screenwriter Kishore Kumar, on Spotify, and it fills me with great joy.

i love everything about this song, from the opening Indian-language¹ spiel and Kumar's bypass of the usual counting in favour of an enthusiastic "A, B, C, D!" to the sudden ending, marked, bizarrely, by a cuckoo clock going off. The gleefully onomatopoeiac vocal rides an insistent shuffling rhythm, occasionally answered by serene brass arrangements, until at 02:43, a completely unexpected speed change-up leaves Kumar just enough time to spit out a few more rapid lines before the song ends. i don't know what any of this means, but it's great.

Some of Kumar's high-spirited whoops and howls also reminded me a little of the vocalisations of American roots music (ok, i admit it, the first thing i thought of was the dancing chicken from Stroszek,² as soundtracked by Sonny Terry). His Wiki bio indeed reveals that in developing his own style instead of emulating his hero K. L. Saigal, Kumar incorporated a yodelling style copped from country blues pioneer Jimmie Rodgers.

The bio also reveals KK to have been quite the practical joker:

Kishore Kumar had put a "Beware of Kishore" sign at the door of his Warden Road flat, where he stayed for some time while his bungalow was being done up. Once, the producer-director H. S. Rawail, who owed him some money, visited his flat to pay the dues. Kishore Kumar took the money, and when Rawail offered to shake hands with him, he reportedly put Rawail's hand in his mouth, bit it, and asked "Didn’t you see the sign?". Rawail laughed off the incident and left quickly.[15]

According to another reported incident, once Kishore Kumar was to record a song for the producer-director G. P. Sippy. As Sippy approached his bungalow, he saw Kishore going out in his car. Sippy pleaded him to stop his car, but Kishore only increased the speed of his car. Sippy chased him to Madh Island, where Kishore Kumar finally stopped his car near the ruined Madh Fort. When Sippy questioned his strange behavior, Kishore Kumar refused to recognize or talk to him and threatened to call police. Sippy had to return. Next morning, Kishore Kumar reported for the recording. An angry Sippy questioned him about his behavior on the previous day. However, Kishore Kumar insisted that Sippy must have seen a dream, and claimed that he was in Khandwa on the previous day.

In the light of this song, the above makes total sense.

mp3: Kishore Kumar – "Bom Chik, Bom Chik" [YSI]

¹ i'm aware there isn't an "Indian language" as such, but Kishore sang in Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Assamese, Gujarati, Kannada, Bhojpuri, Malayalam and Oriya if not more, and i don't speak any of those so i can't tell which one this is in.
² And i forgot how funny the kick drum-playing duck and fire-truck driving rabbit are in that sequence.

Song of the day: #14 Daniel Johnston – "Some Things Last a Long Time"

2010-07-07T18:06:00.000+01:00

Yeah, yeah, you all know who Daniel Johnston is and need no introduction from me. Three points i will note, however:

– Though Daniel's greatest musical love and influence were The Beatles, i'd be hard-pushed to think of any Beatles song that matches the tenderness, fragility or honesty of this.¹

– The vocal echo is just heartbreaking.

– The parent album, 1990, was recorded at one of the lowest points in Daniel's mental health. On the hymn-like "Careless Love", recorded live, he actually breaks down in tears in the middle. The faltering of his voice in the incredibly sad line "i won't forget all the things we did", starting at 1:55, sounds like it could possibly be another such moment. The emotion is palpable.

Apparently some band called Beach House also covered this, but from descriptions i've heard of them it sounds like exactly the sort of thing i never want to hear.

mp3: Daniel Johnston – "Some Things Last A Long Time" [YSI]

¹ Or, as a YouTube user put it with classic brevity: "DJ > The Beatles".

Some good fucking dishes in this thing

2010-07-07T15:35:00.000+01:00

www.whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com

Song of the day: #13 The Chaplin Band – "Dancing on Townsquare"

2010-07-06T14:49:00.001+01:00

i'm not usually a big disco fan (i don't actively dislike it, just don't know or encounter it a lot), but i appreciate the way it applies equal focus to both the dancefloor and the part of the brain that digs melodies and songcraft, unlike a lot of contemporary dancefloor fare which solely prioritises the dancefloor at the expense of putting any interesting bits in, and consequently, ironically, fails at both (oh hi, majority of dubstep!)

"Dancing on Townsquare" probably isn't a great or classic record (even my friend Jack, who introduced me to it, thinks it's "rubbish") but it has a certain charm nonetheless. Perhaps hearing it first on a sunny Brighton morning in the aftermath a night of extreme alcoholic carnage, surrounded by a group of similar recovering burnouts, was the charm. Plus i also like the sense of "everything-is-grim, together-we-will-overcome-it, possibly-through-funky-dancing" grift in the detail about the people "trying to keep their dreams afloat". If we're going to have an 80s government, we might as well also have soulful 80s solidarity anthems.

The Chaplin Band seem to have been a Dutch disco group from the early 80s (this might explain why no-one has ever heard of them). They're most noted for the A-side of this particular 12", "Il Veliero" ("The Sailing Ship"), which is a pretty great little overlooked gem of its own.

mp3: The Chaplin Band - "Dancing on Townsquare" [YSI]

Why are the BBC, of all organisations, permitting 'however' splices?

2010-06-28T22:52:00.000+01:00

Last year naturists lost a fight to keep Corton beach a designated naturist beach, however by-laws do not prohibit nude sun-bathing on the beach.

Dear Beeb news writers: you can't use "however" between two commas as you would "although". You need a semi-colon/full-stop and a comma, thus:

Last year naturists lost a fight to keep Corton beach a designated naturist beach. However, by-laws do not prohibit nude sun-bathing on the beach.

Last year naturists lost a fight to keep Corton beach a designated naturist beach; however, by-laws do not prohibit nude sun-bathing on the beach.

Dunno why this irks me so much, but i dare say i expect higher standards from the BBC. If they're still having trouble with this, they could always give me a news-writing job. i can do basic grammar and would even capitalise my own personal pronoun if necessary.

Song of the day: #12 Killdozer – "Knuckles the Dog (Who Helps People)"

2010-06-28T16:44:00.000+01:00

WFMU is my favourite radio station in the world, but for some odd reason i never listened to the show Shut Up, Weirdo before this past couple of weeks, when i seem to have listened to about 20-odd episodes (odd being the operative word). Anyway, the SUW binge got me flicking through some of FMU's other webspaces. While browsing the 2010 marathon¹ Flickr gallery, i was reminded of the genius of today's song of the day after seeing the Knuckles the Dog velvet painting:

i am so adopting this guy next year.

Anyway, "Knuckles the Dog (Who Helps People)" tells the moving story of the noble, loving hound depicted above, his friendship with the disabled boy whose life he saved, and his charitable works. Also, it has an ace title. It's from an album called Uncompromising War on Art Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, whose title is also ace. What's more, the song is also good, in an irresistible deadpan-gruff-heroism sort of way. Three for three!

mp3: Killdozer – "Knuckles the Dog (Who Helps People)" [YSI]

¹ WFMU is wholly listener-supported, and their yearly two-week marathon involves the listeners pledging money to keep them afloat for another year. Impressively, they manage to take in a million dollars a year or thereabouts, which is probably testament to the slightly obsessive nature of the listeners.

"Rapper's 999 rants plague police" [with audio]

2010-06-23T17:09:00.001+01:00

i've heard it said a lot recently that with the impending demise of the traditional music industry, artists are having to think of ever more canny and inventive ways to market themselves, but this takes the biscuit.

A rapper is tying up police emergency lines by bombarding a force with nuisance calls.

He dials 999 before rapping to operators at Greater Manchester Police - who are not allowed to cut him off.

Despite officers blocking more than 60 SIM cards, the man has plagued them since January 2009.

Police said the man "has made thousands of calls where he chants, sings, raps, preaches and plays loud music to call handlers".

In the past three months he has made 700 calls, lasting between three and five minutes, slowing down the call handlers' response to other calls.

[...]

During many of the calls, the operator answers the phone to be met with a barrage of music and rants.

His rapping is difficult to decipher but during one call he started shouting about his citizen's rights.

"Not allowed to cut him off"? Genius! Maybe not the most receptive audience, emergency call handlers, but you never know. Probably beats setting up another MySpace, anyway.

Audio (from Channel 4's coverage:)
- Call one: emergency call centre deals with rapper
- Call two: rapper calls for citizens rights

30KB – "The Anthem" (Onra)

2010-06-22T20:08:00.001+01:00

The anthem (30kb ver.) by Article10

Diss1 (me) and Dastardly from 30KB chatting some thoughts on flags, anthems, nationalism, etc. over "The Anthem" by ace Parisian beatmaker Onra.

"The Anthem", incidentally, was also remade to feature in a Coca-Cola ad for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, though their vision of global unity seems mainly to involve Yao Ming and LeBron James guiding a load of national stereotypes in a really half-arsed battle before toasting each other with soft drinks. Also, the version of the track they used is much inferior, because Onra hadn't cleared the samples from the original and thus they had a musicologist replay everything (by the end, nothing Onra actually did was left on the track). It just doesn't have the right bounce or swagger to it.

If you like the beat, try his 2007 album Chinoiseries, which is all made from sampled Vietnamese and Chinese records (Onra himself is of Vietnamese descent). This is probably the best track on it to these ears, although that's not to say the rest are slacking by any means.

If you like our group, you can check us at Bandcamp, Facebook, MySpace, etc. (Bandcamp is best for listening).

[30,000 Leagues] Dancehall feat. Ava Leigh

2010-06-22T16:17:00.003+01:00

<a href="http://30kb.bandcamp.com/track/dancehall-feat-ava-leigh">Dancehall feat. Ava Leigh by 30KB</a>

On a personal level, i have a great deal of affection for this one. Not sure why, particularly. The recurring presence of John Prescott is probably something to do with it.

["John Prescott"] *I can't help it, I'm a ladies' man. Now, who wants a punch?*

[diss1] We smash a silent prism. Rhythm fill up the schism. They got a warrant on this recidivist lyricism. i'm feeling sorta hyper. Somebody pass a lighter. i filter flowing through a tetrahydro- sorta cypher. Step to the stage, we *punch* like John Prescott. See for yourself just how much better the best got. Just try and keep the beat. Hold on to your receipt. Murder mystery weekend silencer, guest shot.
[AcheZen Pains] A cool belated structure from disjunction as a tool, refuse it. Life lesson and rule: stop, look and listen to music. Cut the wacky sample, as a result you forfeit and lose this. Old school like pterodactyl, prehistoric tune abusers. We bring the new ish, the first thing on your wishlist. The last door to break the knocking hand of the last Jehovah's Witness. Picking the seams for indifference, it's gotta be somebody's business. A hobby tree of commodity, as ugly as you are ambitious. Will this mocking stop? Nah, it's gonna last forever. Spit a nasty fluid, evil like I got a mad vendetta. But you've got to get better because nobody likes your flows. Attack and make your lungs collapse through panic. That's the way it goes. When sober, drunk or stoned, grip tight to microphone, sniff the stuff I'm smoking will leave you with a bleeding nose. Don't get me wrong though, in case misunderstood: I am an artist, but I won't draw blood.

[chorus] We take the mic and we strive
30,000 fly solutions to the problems of staying alive
Disposing of hot-zone clones
*Two turntables and a fuckin' microphone!*

We take the stage and we soar
30,000 rise-to-the-occasions for the problems of keeping it raw
Careful with that thing when you're passin'...
*Who's the microphone assassin?*

[AZP] Our lilt's a little lighter, Slim Pickens riding bombs. Flow like a "Beatslope" biter, warm-up phenomenon. Now what the hell's he on? We struck a light chord. For years we take from tears until it appears unclear what we fight for. I write more, that's lesson one from ampheta-metatron. Stomp cities like I'm Megalon, pity what I'm stepping on. The weapon's on, the weapon's aimed and with that grows the guessing game. Solutions for some second fame, we're shooting for a better day.
[diss1] 30K is sort of like the new H5N1. Smartest guys in the room, more so than Enron, cuz when a plan go wrong it's not our names on the paper. Already ducked out the back door saying "see ya later!" Second-rate caterers savour lame shit, we on some future tip like "get these motherfucking snakes off my spaceship!" Eject 'em out the airlock. In space, nobody can hear you hiss... ultimate Dolby noise reduc for those who diss [*one!*] Tranquility shattered down to splinters. Style with the bile to turn your nuclear fams to nuclear winters, and when Chernobyl savages hunter/gather the wilderness for dinner i'll claim squatter's rights on the podium of the winner. Check it: back to the city's lights sober. In the overpass, spirits linger in the air like an odour of cheap perfume, piss and chip fat. And this town... is coming like Pripyat.

30KB Sting — Welcome to Nothing feat. Ava Leigh — Toleracist 2008 — Fuck 'em If They Can't Take a Joke feat. Ava Leigh — Care Less feat. Ava Leigh — NWW feat. Living Larceny — Beat the Rich — Meet Is What I Like to Eet — Carnival of Horrors — Dancehall feat. Ava Leigh — Crewd Sons (Ghost in the Machine)

Delusionists – "Digital Connects" video

2010-06-22T15:57:00.008+01:00

This one was a song-of-the-day last month, and now Delusionists have only gone and made a video for it! i also have a complete set of lyrics so you can peep the sheer amount of smart blog/website references in them while Ben, DBF and Slim Pickens guide you around the track in moody/arty black'n'white.

This rap shit Beats Laying About, so I had to take a minute dedicated a shout,
To every Hip Hop Connection Digital direction providers
Who act like a Sensei and guide us.
Through these Hip Hop Chronicles of Riddick like Vin Diesel
U-Music buffs must have been puffing them Cocaine Blunts (just a quick toke),
Hip Hop Isn’t Dead, nah it just eloped to the Big Smoke.
Believe the Hip Hop Hype Dog,
If you ain’t heard of us you ain’t checking for the right blog.
Oh Word? You never heard the fly chatter
Of a Bonafide nutter on a Certified Banger?
My Style43 times nanger than most,
To redefine The Meaning of Dope rhyme patterns and quotes.
The Underground Strikes Back from the great depression
With Bare Beats in them Basement Sessions.
You might hear one or 2DopeBoyz
No Airs N Graces and prone to make noise
Like “mate what you want!?!” Stay Blatantly Blunt
Pushing UKHH straight to the front (that’s us!).
Repping UK All Day,
Be careful ‘cause Life Just Bounces away
When you play with Vocal Swords that slaughter chumps,
Better Wake Your Daughter Up, if that bitch is sleeping.
Had to switch to a Different Kitchen,
‘Cause the raw Unkut left the kitchen reeking.
With something different to these drug-obsessed amateurs
And only push dope via Suspect Packages.
(Yeah) And the beat plays on
And we don’t stop rocking ‘til the DJ Gone (gone).
God willing we can make Top Billin’ Above Ground
Without dumbing down to a club sound.
Strictly Independant, my brothers and me
And you can hit the button marked RWD
And you’ll agree that it’s wack, Nah Right, shit’s Fat
Lace lyrics with links just to give love back
To all the digital connects.

Oh, and not only that, but should you fancy copping the album after hearing this (totally worth it i'd say), you can get 25% off the download of our album by using the code DIGIFAM at http://music.delusionists.co.uk.

[30,000 Leagues] Meet Is What I Like to Eet

2010-06-20T17:15:00.001+01:00

<a href="http://30kb.bandcamp.com/track/meet-is-what-i-like-to-eet">Meet Is What I Like to Eet by 30KB</a>

Wherein AZP delivers incisive, meaningful lyrics about animal rights extremists, and i chat shit about breakfast foods for 16 bars. Contrary to popular belief, the misspelling in the title is deliberate, although no-one can really remember why.

[chorus: both plus Boron Tabernacle Choir]
30,000 Bastards...

[AcheZen Pains] Hold up! A prime cut from these 30,000 nuts. If you're allergic, watch us work your open mouth until it has to shut. Drinking from the cup with Super Saiyan spontaneity. In sync with linguistics, heaven sent like call me deity. May I? ["OUI!"] You can call us monastic: word play's the religion against the merit of rigid scholastics. Take Vs without asking on some premier robber tricks. Don't grasp what we giving? Go sit on the hat of Obelix. Now he's rocking it, it's ALL animal tested. i'm Pro-Test and PETA should have their bones dug up and sequestered. Direct the vets to the exits. Lack of a logic protecting this. Some of the scariest things in the world are the anti-vivisectionists. Now he's wrecking it! But all for medicinal purposes. Nurture this, unleash the worth as it dissipates from surfaces. A discourteous earful of self-destructive skirmishes. Playground thoughts and tactics with an abundance of worthlessness.

[chorus]

[diss1] Le passé est passé. Le présent est présent. L'avenir est à venir. And so we have another year to let the beat dangle off the precipice. i got to pay attention to my head and like that druid, get a fix. Don't bother trynna flavour porridge with them sweetener sticks, you'll just end up with a mess like waiting too long for Weetabix. Meet is what i like to eet yo, i want bacon by the rasher, black pudding and pork sausages after. Most important meal of the day: i leave space to eat rappers for afters with metaphors by the platter and apple sauce relish in my side dish. It's a delicacy. Don't believe me? Ask the chef: he'll say ["OUI!"]. i made the beat, and i'll make a meal too. The top of the food chain, enjoying the view. It's the feeding of the 30K, superfly catering. It's all art, no artificial flavouring.

[chorus]

30KB Sting — Welcome to Nothing feat. Ava Leigh — Toleracist 2008 — Fuck 'em If They Can't Take a Joke feat. Ava Leigh — Care Less feat. Ava Leigh — NWW feat. Living Larceny — Beat the Rich — Meet Is What I Like to Eet — Carnival of Horrors — Dancehall feat. Ava Leigh — Crewd Sons (Ghost in the Machine)

[30,000 Leagues] Carnival of Horrors

2010-06-19T23:53:00.004+01:00

<a href="http://30kb.bandcamp.com/track/carnival-of-horrors">Carnival of Horrors by 30KB</a>

[AcheZen Pains] Under the rock, a man snaps his own arm off with the precedent to end the gruel. Under the hammer, our ex-prime minister-slash-president plays the fool. What we've got here is a new reign of old fear, the irony of tyranny. It's all too cruel. Forget latter headlines with some imagery. Oh, you missed it? Go check YouTube. Too rude to tell me what to think, if you missed it click on another link to the brink of a meme over cryptic. Politics a trick and the voters went and missed it. Our death clocks reading 20:11, no time for dissatisfaction. Hands behind backs still holding a weapon, ejecting the world while nobody's strapped in. No joke delivered, here today and gone tomorrow when this country's built on smoke and mirrors and the crowd go "oh! the horror!" The media gets greedier, inbreeding facts mislead the mass until we cannot face the fact that we're the warhead-onists. Trick the readers to agree with gracious interveners - a theme of stopping screams, a clever twist for the supremacists. Making us believe that news writers aren't the terrorists. No distinction from the fact and fiction - are we getting this?

[chorus: either or both]
A kingdom full of doubting cuz it's not our vote they're counting
and now it's all over bar the shouting. ("Where's the exit?")
('Way before the metal detectors and barbed wire')
Can't see the trees for the forest fire ("What we left with?")

[diss1] Neat how the best fall. Peet lace the beat like Pulp Fiction adrenaline shot directly through the chest wall. This twisted little personal Hallelujah Chorus got us blowing up the road like driving Fallujah tourbus. Land of the barbed wire, car bomb and grenade, where they tear down the statues for the ticker-tape parade and you can die whether you're a hero or coward, and if the vote changed anything they wouldn't allow it. i subjected them to tests and found them lacking and some see it as just evolution's function. Tho as always, it depends on who you're asking. Dunno if Darwin was counting on mass destruction. When the beast beneath the surface came bursting through the cervix the John Hurt Alien nation discovered purpose, and it can only lead to an impending disaster. i'm in the carnival of horrors with demented ringmaster.

[chorus]

[AZP] As another channel changes with the banging of a different drum, commercial bursts of focus work on where we get our wisdom from. Lurking with the hopeless, working till it chokes us, difficult when the rhetorician brokers with the expositional.
[d1] This track is like Runaway Mine Train freak decapitation, too bloody for your radio station. Beats make crowds frenzy like the crack of a whip. We can outstrip anything that you're travelling with.
[AZP] Beauty's in the ear of the beholder and my ears, they burn volition. Listen to the deceit from the older cheap seats, Britain... truth is, duty's only skin deep, and these politicians got a skin condition when their sin speaks...
[d1] ...when their sin speaks volumes like audiobooks. Tell stories with hooks, could leave your day spoiled like too many cooks. A 7% solution: instant brain intrusion. The track's fusion, hip-hop ain't noise pollution.

[chorus]

30KB Sting — Welcome to Nothing feat. Ava Leigh — Toleracist 2008 — Fuck 'em If They Can't Take a Joke feat. Ava Leigh — Care Less feat. Ava Leigh — NWW feat. Living Larceny — Beat the Rich — Meet Is What I Like to Eet — Carnival of Horrors — Dancehall feat. Ava Leigh — Crewd Sons (Ghost in the Machine)

"To whom... speed means freedom of the soul."

2010-06-13T22:19:00.003+01:00

"Kowalski drives to drive, with no real purpose for doing what he's doing. He decides to give his own life its definition and meaning, with complete freedom over his actions."

Transcribing the lyrics to "N.W.W.", i remembered what a great film Vanishing Point is.
It quickly became clear at least two of my group had never seen it before. We are remedying this now.

[30,000 Leagues] N.W.W. feat. Living Larceny

2010-06-13T21:00:00.005+01:00

<a href="http://30kb.bandcamp.com/track/nww-feat-living-larceny">NWW feat. Living Larceny by 30KB</a>

Cowboy anthem. Featuring Living Larceny who now goes by a different name and is a proper group member. Produced by Artikal-10 who goes by the same name and is also a proper member.

[diss1] 30K flow on some Wild North West script - more of a mystic tip than a Will Smith flick. Future mil sellers, never box office poison. When Artikal drops the beat, we bring the noise in. Cop siren synth make me wanna smoke up some George Lucas. The badlands are wired with computers. Mad losers lost to the thuggery. This is wild NW shit, the good, bad and ugg-er-ly.
[Living Larceny] Oh! Heaven forbid we should try and live positive. Cuz north-west got me sick with its politics. No optimist, this is one you should miss off your tourbook. 30KB with that raw hook. Bad luck to see a place so desecrated. Addiction, most of the Wirral eradicated by Merseyside's finest. Rhymes full of metaphors, knowledge and the odd one-liners.

[chorus: all] Cuz this is how we do it in the North Wild West
Spitting raw shit till our very last breath
Beats by our side in case you haven't guessed
Streets of the blessed, just check the address

[AcheZen Pains] Rap this sipping on the juice of a cactus. North where your horse probably hasn't got a tax disc. Back in the throne of the brand of the underneath, cone in the hand full of high grade tumbleweed. Cowboys wanna kick off? Try and embarrass me. Warcry "HIP-HOP", scalping guaranteed. Savagery the stander of a wrangler attackin 'em. North wild west, mate - this mohawk ain't an accident.
[LL] Larceny speaks diction with an outlaw mindframe. 23 years to my name, dope like John Wayne. El Mariachi! North-west Wirral apache, gingerbredraaan but you can't catch me. I'm way ahead of my time, way ahead of your crew (still at the starting line). Aren't even worth putting on my roster. North-western, that's why i keep my weed in my holster.

[chorus: all]

[d1] Heaven forbid we should try and live more than this. Call me Kowalski on some break-for-the-border shit. Cuz while some of these kids follow cosy trails, others carry more heat than Josey Wales. (It goes...) Once upon a time on the edge of a country, they nurtured a movement and called it funky, and when haters started hating when that shit took off, they said "this town ain't big enough for the both, so fuck off."
[AZP] Unbidden I get vocal from my fear, yo. Many fiddling to a burning Rome like they Nero. Thirty thousand focal pointing at this local hero. Keep that ear low to the floor - I challenge you all to a draw. You can find me through the saloon door. Chop the bow and arrows with significant force and then try spitting some more. It's the magnificent four. It's not a wild guess, you know the wild west from the north.

30KB Sting — Welcome to Nothing feat. Ava Leigh — Toleracist 2008 — Fuck 'em If They Can't Take a Joke feat. Ava Leigh — Care Less feat. Ava Leigh — NWW feat. Living Larceny — Beat the Rich — Meet Is What I Like to Eet — Carnival of Horrors — Dancehall feat. Ava Leigh — Crewd Sons (Ghost in the Machine)

[30,000 Leagues] Beat the Rich

2010-06-11T18:25:00.003+01:00

<a href="http://30kb.bandcamp.com/track/beat-the-rich">Beat the Rich by 30KB</a>

The beat for this was sample from a segment on the Michael Moore show The Awful Truth. It's alright, though, he's cool with that sort of thing.

[diss1] 30,000 detonators primed to go off in your face, as the crew that you never knew blew the doors and stepped right into the place armed with the special abilities, strength and agility plus bulletproof like Kevlar®. Let the sub-bass sound out a clarion call so we can locate where the heads are. Don't give a fuck what you're trynna tell me cuz i learn like an autodidact. You better tell your crew to secure-it-ass or else likely you'll get hijacked. Beat the rich for artistic merit, rejecting the bling mindset, and send undercooked rappers back to the grill cuz they know it's not their time yet. (Yo) simply don't know what we might do. Told you last time that i don't like you, and you can assume that goes for my crew, ready for level-up evolution like Raichu. Each track a winner – keep the score, please. Jon cuts so much we call him Voorhees. Wannabes pray to AcheZ, receive sore knees, enemies bombed like ["1940s"]. Watch what you're doing with that beat, matey! This for those that ain't moved their feet lately. Counsellors calling out "Artikal crazy!" (nah – just smoked too much weed, maybe.) 1 for the talent, 2 for the freakshow, 3 goes to the other Northern Alliance. 4 for the flow, 5 for the way the beat go, 30KB drop science (on your head).

[AcheZen Pains] A simple cystic sign of fear comes. It's not a bass kick, it's the banging of your eardrums. Turn out from animals and edify the fierce crumbs, til when the cheer numbs, and what you hear stuns. The market makers making everything attractive hindered information that's arriving so refracted. Your imagination's overactive. Syndicating songs til overplaying simply passed it. Chooned in to listen: all i heard was static. Take it, grab it, thirty thousand caskets, these days DJs need them through infection - that's why we call them radioactive. And it's a classic, we be laughing rapid. Your style's pH-neutral, we dissolve you like an acid. A clear form of collective defiance. We know the revolution has got to be financed. So beat 'em or join 'em, the rich or the lenders ever offending your secret agendas. You got money? Come try sue me. Your style's uglier than Wayne Rooney, and more embarrassing than Richard is to Judy. i got the message like you can call me *Ruuuuuuuuudie*... you'll soon see why you wanna honour me. The difference between the followers and wannabes. Sire golden victims like i'm fighting Mr Connery. Monetary in snobbery, we do it for the robber's fee, and its a robbery – sound the alert. Nobody truths, all bodies get hurt. M.i.A - rusting penny verse. The great bank holiday to toughen stirling turf. A poor opinion lost in a vote non-official. The end got its funding; all that matters is fiscal.

30KB Sting — Welcome to Nothing feat. Ava Leigh — Toleracist 2008 — Fuck 'em If They Can't Take a Joke feat. Ava Leigh — Care Less feat. Ava Leigh — NWW feat. Living Larceny — Beat the Rich — Meet Is What I Like to Eet — Carnival of Horrors — Dancehall feat. Ava Leigh — Crewd Sons (Ghost in the Machine)

Rahsaan Roland Kirk plays three saxes, flute at once

2010-06-10T21:31:00.004+01:00

Pretty self-explanatory title here. There was a video on YouTube recently of RRK performing "Making Love After Hours" in Norway in 1967, but some copyright miser got it taken down.

This one's almost as good, notwithstanding the weird interludes featuring clips of old-timey cars and a guy at the end interrupting the music to complain about people who interrupt music by talking over it.

edit > some of "Making Love After Hours" appears as the second part of this video, including the excellent nose flute break and the bit where he sounds like he's gobbing furiously into the flute.

Thom Yorke slightly disingenuous on the future of the music business

2010-06-10T20:54:00.008+01:00

"He advises musicians to self-release music rather than yearn for a major label contract, suggesting the loss of the mainstream music industry will be "no great loss to the world.""

Radiohead discography
* Pablo Honey (1993, EMI)
* The Bends (1995, EMI)
* OK Computer (1997, EMI)
* Kid A (2000, EMI)
* Amnesiac (2001, EMI)
* Hail to the Thief (2003, EMI)

i guess it helps if you get yr highly profitable and critically acclaimed major label stint in before you have to start self-releasing, huh.

Song of the day: #11 Scams – "Lost for Words"

2010-06-09T16:00:00.003+01:00

My pals in Scams have a new album coming soon with a load of new songs and suchlike. This one comes with one of the ace found-media videos the group have done so well in the past, where the themes of vocabulary and the limits of expression are reflected solely through edited clips from the educational literacy/numeracy cartoons that used to turn up in Sesame Street. It's PBS-tastic.

"Lost for Words" and another new one, "Helicopter Parents", can also be heard at the band's Facebook and Myspace pages as of now.

Song of the day: #10 Dutch Uncles – "Fabio Acapella"

2010-06-08T15:30:00.004+01:00

If we must have World Cup records, they should be like this one from Manchester indie types Dutch Uncles, the most conceptually awesome effort i've heard this tournament. It sounds a wee bit like John Cage scoring a potential England XI starting line-up, which is clearly amazing.

My favourite thing about it is the way the whole idea for the song seems to have been suggested by the title pun, with the music being worked out to fit that. i'm a total sucker for that kind of conceptual rigour.

Shame about Rio Ferdinand at 0:27, but you can't win 'em all.

Listen and/or download at Dutch Uncles' Soundcloud:
Fabio Acapella by Dutch Uncles

[30,000 Leagues] Toleracist 2008

2010-06-08T13:45:00.006+01:00

The number refers to the fact that there was an earlier, demo, version. Give or take a few songs Jake (AcheZen) and East (producer Article 10) recorded together, this is pretty much the first thing we ever did.

<a href="http://30kb.bandcamp.com/track/toleracist-2008">Toleracist 2008 by 30KB</a>

[AcheZen Pains/Adbuster Keaton] A dedication to no one - an open letter to the broken we're stepping on. Smoke in my eye too close to the melting pot.Think some trouble bubbling, our weapon men are selling shots. Hell in box high blows. John Wayne syndrome with G.I. Joes. Think this action figure's lost, battling with eyes closed. Triggers cost written off less about the Toy Story, more than war upon our witness box, shocking awe and glory. Civil text next sold views faux origins. ("This is the news!") What headlines are we following? Borrowing horror themes no one should be honouring, no hovering. Our culture colour's Neopolitan. So why you looking bothered? We all share the same origins. Optimum humanist, new to this, offering objection. Don't tell us who's a risk without us asking any questions. Ride the insurrection with inner city bickering. Button's been pushed: countdown imminent. Crushed in the panic, bust warning light flickering. Burn up in the heated words, burnt because of bickering. A harsh realm rising, who are we to hide it? The subtleties of stating in debate we're undecided. Vitriol inside turns to people you're despising; blinding hate makes this toleracist island. i'm finding the blinkers blurring out such atrophy. It's raining on our cardboard canopy. Fuck the start war anywhere, any time attitude - that's not sanity.

[diss1] *{cheaper global warming now!}*

*{tax the ozone, not the motorist!}*

*{free dead Iraqi with every tank!}*

[AZP]{d1} No force unstoppable, topple down the core of it. When war's so profitable we're gonna see much more of it. Bored of them distorting it, swayed on bait assumptions. Everybody's talking, only few are saying something. Some reporting on reporting but we just keep walking. Placating easy targets that they think is rewarding. Resorting to a message like the rest to be bought out when they're only gonna say the words that they haven't thought out. A warcloud, thunder storm approaching, provoking, ignoring what's important when the record's broken. No choking (it's gone two bars). And while it's out, it's time to re-examine our scars. Vernacular, and reality beckons. Bite it in the bud and put the needle on the record. A wrecking to put the voices in check. How can any cause such damage while demanding the respect? Without our civil liberties there's nothing to protect. Is this on? {Direct.} Can you see me? {Yep.} Coming live from a time that we'll never forget.

[d1] {AZP} The toleracist is a term we apply to anyone who witnesses but turns a blind eye to the smear campaign waged daily by those with their fingers on the buttons of the media controls. Play to the gallery, establish a consensus. Take care you only ever prey on the defenceless. Afflict the comfortable, comfort the afflicted? {Is there a moral there somewhere?} - Know what? i think we missed it. Take the heat off themselves, so they rock a blame-shift to the people with no mouthpiece to clear their name with - refugees, Muslims, people on benefits. Credit where it's due, the scheme is one of rare elegance. It takes intelligence and a finely-honed bullshit detector to see past the lies they fed ya. Toleracist standard: deify Tony Martin, leave Satpal Ram to rot behind bars, no pardon. What's the problem, is Asian self-defence worse than a half-mad cracker with a shotgun? Laughable sentence thanks to expensive lawyers' word skill, then the press treat this dick like the new Churchill. Seems you've only got to kill someone to get glory... so let's flip the coin for the tail of the story. Sunday night, Satpal's in the curry house, trying to sit back, chill, eat some food, drive the worry out. Group of pissed white thugs wanna start shit - "six of us, one of you. Safe lads, easy target!" Braindead drunk fuckheads try and act manly, six on one with the brain in the fist. Rip shirts like "you won't like me when i'm angry!" Half a dozen of 'em make it hard to resist. Satpal's in his pocket, now he's packing a Stanley from the job that he took to provide for his family. Comes in handy: two cuts to the neck puts the pisshead off his balance, lays him down on the deck. Now the ambulance here, take 'em both to A&E. Attacker demonstrates again what a dick he can be: Satpal gets stitched up, goes home free; this guy abuses the staff and oulls out his IV like "i'm not getting treated by a female!" Fact that she was keeping him alive was the overlooked detail. System gave up when he went into shock like "i'm afraid we've lost him..." Now it's Ram in the dock, and it's self-defence on a charge of murder. A voice in the wilderness (nobody heard ya). Witness statements 'lost in translation'. Judge overseer run a tight plantation. Lack of patience from the same red tops run by white-collar criminals paying bent cops, cruising in their fly yachts round Hawai'ian sunspots. (*Richard Desmond* - preach morals, profit offa cumshots). Murdoch: your papers promote division to divert focus from your Stalinist revision. This isn't cynicism (so where's the WMD?) You tell me - they look cooked up previously Blue Peter style, anthrax and sticky-back plastic. Stick on the front page ("that's fantastic!") So the bovine masses swallow beef willingly. Lack of thought rots grey matter worse than BSE. But some of us are still not so easy to mislead... still don't believe everything that you read.

[AZP] Only fools and forces waste their times on opinions that save them the strength and expense of thinking. Enough is enough. Disruptive reluctance, take that giftwrapped bomb and admit it's destructive. Much of a much, corruption disgusts this Adbuster Keaton. Come hell or high water, i sense it's just a little bit of history repeating.

30KB Sting — Welcome to Nothing feat. Ava Leigh — Toleracist 2008 — Fuck 'em If They Can't Take a Joke feat. Ava Leigh — Care Less feat. Ava Leigh — NWW feat. Living Larceny — Beat the Rich — Meet Is What I Like to Eet — Carnival of Horrors — Dancehall feat. Ava Leigh — Crewd Sons (Ghost in the Machine)

BP chief receives support from unexpected quarter

2010-06-07T19:25:00.002+01:00

Original pic by Charlie Riedel, via Boston.com. Worthy captioning by me.
This is one of the only pics of Deepwater wildlife casualties anywhere, for reasons which quickly became apparent.

Song of the day: #9 B. Dolan – "R.S.V.P."

2010-06-07T18:32:00.000+01:00

On the day an Indian court sentenced eight executives to rather pitiful sentences for the 1984 Bhopal Disaster, it seems relevant to air B. Dolan's calling-out of Union Carbide's CEO Warren Anderson, which even provides several addresses for Anderson should anyone wants to write to him and ask him what the fuck he's playing at.

The gas leak at Bhopal killed 2,259 people immediately, with the death toll ultimately rising to 3,787. Some estimate up to 25,000 have died as a result to date, and estimates for total exposure are up to 500,00.

Because of the time delay in bringing convictions, the maximum penalty for the seven living executives that were convicted¹ is two years' imprisonment and a fine of about £1,500. Warren Anderson, meanwhile, fled India in 1984 after his initial arrest, and has therefore got away scot free with his part in history's worst industrial accident by just deciding he's not all that interested in being prosecuted. Which must be lovely for him. i'm sure Tony Hayward has already erected a small shrine to his chutzpah.

Thanks to the homie Buddy Peace, who mixed this track's parent CD, for the track hook-up.

¹ The other one conveniently gets to serve his sentence in the afterlife.

Song of the day: #8 earthtone9 – "Tat Twam Asi"

2010-06-06T18:04:00.000+01:00

i'm still kind of ambivalent about bands reforming as a rule, but it's definitely better when it's amazing bands and/or those who were underappreciated the first time round (i'm still not condoning, say, The Who playing live with only two original members or whatever).

This year's been pretty great for amazing and underappreciated reformations so far: first Godspeed You! reassembled and even get to curate their own ATP, and now the almighty earthtone9, without doubt my favourite metal group ever, have got back together as well!

Staggeringly slept-on first time round, it's now been ten years since the Nottingham group released their best and final full-length arc'tan'gent, which mixed proper dirty riffing with calmer, reflective passages, wonderful soaring melodies with brutal screaming. Vocalist Karl Middleton (also of The Blueprint, Twin Zero, Blackstorm) is to my mind one of the best in the whole rock game.

These days their albums are as rare as dog parachutes, but the band have helpfully put together a freely downloadable career-spanning greatest hits package entitled Inside Embers Glow and available from http://www.earthtone9.co.uk to prime the unfamiliar for their return. i'd recommend it as an ace collection even if, like me, you've already got all the records.

There's only one planned live date at the moment, at Damnation Festival in Leeds, but with any luck they'll play a full tour before much longer.

"Tat Twam Asi", from arc'tan'gent and also featured on the compilation, is maybe the quintessential et9 song, featuring both the broodingly melodic and full-on furious sides of the band inside five minutes, as well as the sort of questing/reflective lyricism they regularly explored.

mp3: earthtone9 – "Tat Twam Asi" (YSI)

Israel, Gaza blockade and the flotilla: cartoon

2010-06-06T17:27:00.001+01:00

Conceptualized by Dorian Lynskey, facilitated by me, drawn by Cliff Lipp (Flickr).
More of Lipp's political/editorial stuff at his newly-instituted Tumblr The World Political.

[30,000 Leagues] Fuck 'em If They Can't Take a Joke feat. Ava Leigh

2010-06-05T22:43:00.012+01:00

High time i put up some more lyrics from the first 30KB album. This one's fairly self-explanatory really.

<a href="http://30kb.bandcamp.com/track/fuck-em-if-they-cant-take-a-joke-feat-ava-leigh">Fuck 'em If They Can't Take a Joke feat. Ava Leigh by 30KB</a>

[diss1] This is not a haiku. i don't need elaborate rhyme schemes to say i don't like you.¹ And this is not a protest song, just a chance to answer back to those who hate and deliberately get us wrong. Purposeful misinterpretation shows we got 'em so nervous they must devise lies and slanders to obscure our true purpose. But verses shatter curses: the sword's still less mighty than the mic. Cypher frenzy read the final rites to biter-friendly psyche. Stick that on your front page. Fight me? i might let you if you ask me nicely. Defiant bratty gladiator on some Karate Kid/kung fu death trip shit. That's my 'fuck you' prerequisite. Human Newton's third on some gross exaggeration station making haters wish their disses were retractable: that's laughable. Really thought they could step to us and not get smoked? I say:

*{"Fuck 'em... if they can't take a joke"}*

[AcheZen Pains] This is not a tanka. i don't think i need five lines and 31 syllables just to call you a... *ahem* Taking the time to trample the lines and run 'em right into your face. Dancing the beat like Kelly, taking you out before you've said Grace. A tender heart, broke, ripped apart and rendered ruthless, fruitless juices, easy bruises take offence. i see your brain is useless and then we get off and leave you for dead. See, that's our destination. [ssssshhhhhhhhh] It's gone right over their head! Fun is made to poke with cheeky motive if it's easy to provoke it. Fuck 'em if they can take a joke. And did anyone here even notice the river they drank from is dry? My name is Intelligent Thought, you killed my father, prepare to die. DIY style, like my name is Inigo Montoya. Turn me into 3D, i'll still be Doctor Claw's destroyer. Like some cartoon bloke.

*{"Fuck 'em... if they can't take a joke"}*

[sample parade]

[d1] Round three! We leave the water parted when we sail through. Don't expect a reprieve because your sense of humour's failed you. When the beat kicks in you can't offend me. Already tap-danced straight past you like Fred Astaire crack frenzy.
[AZ] Smoke green with envy, joker friendly, black and blue repainters. The jury have come to a verdict: *everybody hates yer!*... A confiding, just for your information...
[d1] The house that you reside in's built on sand foundation. Big Bad Wolf, takedown. Never met a rule i didn't like (to break). If somebody says 'no' it usually shows you which way to take.
[AZ] So we make and shake the brake and broke you all intentionally. Think this sample's out of time? It's – meant – to – be. Concede each day you're at a loss so mark it as a fixture.
[d1] We strike twice before you can hit us once - cuz we predict yer. Now you caught a fierce diss and wanna come and try and suck up, well here's my word of advice to you, yeh?

*{"Shut the fuck up!"}*

30KB Sting — Welcome to Nothing feat. Ava Leigh — Toleracist 2008 — Fuck 'em If They Can't Take a Joke feat. Ava Leigh — Care Less feat. Ava Leigh — NWW feat. Living Larceny — Beat the Rich — Meet Is What I Like to Eet — Carnival of Horrors — Dancehall feat. Ava Leigh — Crewd Sons (Ghost in the Machine)

¹ This couplet by Matthew John Tudor Jones.

Fucked-up email

2010-06-04T22:13:00.000+01:00

Got this today from a splitter hitwoman (a splitwoman?). Maybe like a female take on John Cusack in the movie Grosse Pointe Blank. i suppose that means it could actually be someone who can't bring herself to kill me cuz she still holds a candle for me. To be fair, i have been out with some people who could feasibly have been secret assasssins.

(i don't know anyone named Kathy Yarbrough, so i'm guessing this is a comandeered email address.)

Fucking weird, tho.

ACT FAST!!!‏‏
From: Tick Tock (kathyyarbrough@msn.com)

You may not know this sender.Mark as safe|Mark as junk
Sent: 04 June 2010 06:57:53
To:

Hello,
This is the only way I could contact you for now,I want you to be very careful about this and keep this secret with you until I make out space for us to see. You have no need of knowing who I am or where I am from.I know this may sound very surprising to you but it’s the situation.I have been paid some ransom in advance to terminate you with some reasons listed to me by my employer. It’s someone I beleive you call a friend, I have followed you closely for a while now and have seen that you are innocent of the accusations he leveled against you. Do not contact the police or try to send a copy of this to them,because if you do, I will know,and I might be pushed to do what I have been paid to do.Besides, this is the ist time I turn out to be a betrayer in my job.I took pity on you,that is why I have made up my mind to help you if you are willing to help yourself.

Now listen,I will arrange for us to see face to face,but before that, I need $30,000. I will come to your home or you determine where you wish we meet; I repeat, do not arrange for the cops and if you play hard to get, it will be extended to your family.Do not set any camera to cover us or set up any tape to record our conversation, my employer is in my control now. Payment details will be provided for you to make a part payment of $15,000 first,which will serve as gurantee that you are ready to you co-orperate,then i will post a copy of the video tape that contains his request for me to terminate you which will be enough evidence for you to take any legal action against him before he employs another person for the job. You will pay the balance of $15,000 once you receive the tape.

Warning: do not contact the police, make sure you stay indoors once it is 7.30pm until this whole thing is sorted out,if you neglect any of these warnimgs, you will have yourself to blame. You do not have much time, so get back to me immediately.

Note: I will advise you keep this to yourself alone, not even a friend or a family member should know about it because it could be one of them.
Tick Tock.

A break for art

2010-05-26T22:59:00.001+01:00

On a whim, i said to Lachlann:

do a picture of Rupert Murdoch with his teeth bared, head retreating into the thorax of a beetle, with dozens of long spindly tentacles protruding, and a speech bubble shouting "crowdsource THIS!"

i then promptly forgot that i had ever said this.

Obviously, he went and drew it.

i swear this guy is the future of political/editorial cartooning. Alan Rusbridger in this Radio 4 documentary seems to suggest that there is a modern-day lack of such cartoonists, which is pretty odd, but definitely leaves the door wide open for more stuff like this. Myself, i can't wait!

One thing i've never quite understood about the Anfield rap

2010-05-24T23:17:00.001+01:00

Does the Australian guy at 1:38 really say "cuz I'm sat on the bench, trying to jizz in my booze"?
If not, what does he actually say?
If so, how does he then rhyme that with "I'm very big down under but my wife disagrees"?

Glenn Branca & creativity/hope from the lower half of the internet

2010-05-18T20:31:00.000+01:00

Composer and guitar-orchestrator Glenn Branca comes off inexplicably curmudgeonly and doomsaying in this blog for the NYT late last year, seemingly both claiming that creativity in music is dead (without really qualifying this rather sweeping statement) and also buying into the strange idea that music is some sort of linear progression of qualitative improvement, like the ever-decreasing time it takes to do a 100-metre sprint or something, which also seems pretty daft to me. Surely it's better understood like the outward expansion of an ink blot on tissue paper, branching outwards simultaneously in all directions?

For more than half a century we’ve seen incredible advances in sound technology but very little if any advance in the quality of music. In this case the paradigm shift may not be a shift but a dead stop. Is it that people just don’t want to hear anything new? Or is it that composers and musicians have simply swallowed the pomo line that nothing else new can be done, which ironically is really just the “old, old story.”

Certainly music itself is not dead. We’ll continue to hear something approximating it blaring in shopping malls, fast food stops, clothing stores and wherever else it will mesmerize the consumer into excitedly pulling out their credit card or debit card or whatever might be coming.

The best answer to Branca's thesis comes from the comments section of the same article, from one Matt Penniman.

In the last half a century we've seen Philip Glass achieve rather remarkable levels of productivity and popularity, Arvo Part create a new sound for choral music, Yo-Yo Ma bring awareness of Asian classical music to America with the Silk Road Project (and generate some appealing confluences of classical and folk with Edgar Meyer and Mark O'Connor), and much more. Meanwhile, the larger popular music culture has developed whole new genres, like electronica and hip-hop, not to mention more esoteric experiments like procedural music.

Crucially, these achievements are most visible in hindsight; if you want to say "sure, but what's happened in the last five years?" I would have to answer "plenty, but we won't know what was important for a while yet."

Or, like the first Premier of the People's Republic Zhou Enlai is reputed to have said, when asked about the impact of the French Revolution: "It is too early to tell".

Song of the day: #7 Sage Francis – "Little Houdini"

2010-05-18T16:29:00.002+01:00

Sage Francis has a new album, Li(f)e. The first single, "The Best of Times", has excitingly and improbably been playlisted by Radio 1 and made single of the week by Kiwi overenthusiast Zane Lowe, as well as gaining approving airplay from the hopefully-to-be-reprieved 6 Music and the like.

It's a magnificent, swooning song, with the hallmark tuned percussion and strings of composer Yann Tiersen (Amélie, Good Bye Lenin!) underscoring Francis' crushingly sincere tales of mortifying youthful awkwardness and ineptitude. At 2:41 it gives way to Tiersen's more forthright rock style and then keeps building up to almost impossibly climactic heights as SF seemingly lays bare all the embarrassments of his youth, at the same time reassuring the listener to essentially get through it, that it's much worse when you're there. i could have done with a lot more songs like that in my early teens.

And i'm not even meant to be writing about that track.

The focus today is actually album opener "Little Houdini", the story of Christopher Gay, career criminal and escape artist. Gay decided that prison would not stop him from visiting his dying parents for the last time, repeatedly breaking out and making his way home in a selection of stolen vehicles, including a Wal-Mart truck and Crystal Gayle's tourbus. (His third escape seems to have been just for the hell of it).

Francis relates that he first heard of Gay's escapology career in 2006, and decided to follow the story in the hope of writing something about him at some future point.

There wasn’t much press about this story at all. Nothing national at least, which I still find strange. I put together what details I could and used a few lines from the actual news stories. The original article said, “This is what country songs are made of.” I thought to myself, “Sure…but this is also what a rap song can be made of.”

Fittingly, "Little Houdini" (after the nickname Gay received from the media) ends up somewhere between the two genres, Francis' lyrics continuing the long storytelling traditions and outlaw focus of both ("I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die"; "the cop got scared, the kid, he starts to figure,/ "I'll do years if I pull this trigger...""). The music, a collaboration with former Grandaddy man Jason Lytle, backs up the point, with lazily strummed guitar, droning violin/organ and a plaintive, distant sung vocal evoking the open road of the third verse, before it breaks into a propulsive 6/8 gallop of a rap.

The song celebrates Gay's spirit rather than excusing his crimes ("he knows what he done was wrong / but he knows his father don't got long"), but Francis mainly reserves his scorn for the armchair moralists who would condemn him: "y'all can turn up your noise / and suck on your teeth and wag your finger like 'tsk, tsk!' / but he had to take the risk".

And why not? Our mythology needs romantic anti-heroes, and personally i'd rather watch, e.g., Escape Artist: The Christopher Gay Story than Ridley Scott & Russell Crowe rehashing Robin Hood for the 35th time but with a boring new PoMo conceit.¹

¹ Having said which, i'd quite like to see Robin and the 7 Hoods, "a musical film set in 1930s gangster Chicago, with Frank Sinatra as "Robbo"."

Just doing my bit for the Streisand effect

2010-05-18T14:29:00.001+01:00

In refusing to run this ad today, the Financial Times has inadvertently given it the extra oomph it needed to reach thousands whose general disinterest in financial wonkery would previously have precluded them from seeing it. All hail the Streisand effect! (pt. 483)

Alternatively, maybe there's a rogue environmentalist element somewhere within the FT that realised exactly what kind of exposure the ad would get if they turned it down, and strategically nixed it to gain that increase. Unlikely, but an amusing idea to me. Bottoms up!

Song of the day: #6 Delusionists – "Digital Connects"

2010-05-06T18:10:00.000+01:00

Here's the Song of the Day for today, and most probably for the rest of the week too! Delusionists dropped a new album this Monday, Prolusion Plus, which as you can maybe gather is a boosted version of their previous smart 7-tracker The Prolusion.

Now with additional tracks, the odd alternate version and a couple of remixes, the EP has swelled to twelve tracks of UK dopeness. A proper review may well follow, but in the meantime check the awesome "Digital Connects", one of the aforementioned new tracks. Over a banger of a beat by Jon Phonics, Ben Black wordplays for dear life on the topic of the hottest spots to hang out online (hence the title, ya dig?) When i first heard it, i immediately thought "Tommy ain't my motherfuckin' boy...", not because i was having a multiple-personality crisis of confidence, but because the concept reminded me of the way GZA flipped the names of record labels on, erm, "Labels".

Two other awesome things about this track: firstly, the outro features a scratched sample of a yet-unreleased 30KB track which Mr. Black drops his fire on; and for seconds, this very blog is one of the ones namechecked in the song, rather awesomely ("be careful, cuz Life Just Bounces away..."). Apart from being a dope honour for yr humble writer, it also means i am finally succeeding (albeit indirectly) in my ambition of getting rappers to reference The Mighty Fall!

You can buy Prolusion Plus from Bandcamp for a paltry four quid, or a super-decent six for a real-life hactual CD. (The latter also had a cool-looking sticker, which has now been given pride of place on my newly-refurbished laptop.)

<a href="http://music.delusionists.co.uk/track/digital-connects-prod-jon-phonics">Digital Connects (prod. Jon Phonics) by Delusionists</a>

On meeting yr heroes

2010-05-06T16:46:00.003+01:00

Warning: contains fanboyism

It's been a pretty extraordinary week. To start with, i was offered out of the blue the chance to attend a festival in Bergen, Norway, the straightforwardly-titled Bergenfest. The reason for this is that my pals in the group SCAMS were playing, but their manager, who had been meant to attend, was detained in Hong Kong and subsequently San Francisco by the volcanic ash cloud of terror that so enlivened April.

The whole thing was a fantastic and often very drunken experience: lovely people were met, absolutely rakes of fish were consumed, great music was seen (i sadly missed Lou Reed's Metal Machine Trio, again, but seeing a duo of air-travel-fixated, synth-toting Latvian pandas pretty much made up for it) and lots and lots of krone were spent on some really pretty dodgy beer and slightly better wine. Doubtless more of this later, especially as regards Instrumenti (the Latvian panda-band).

Anyway, on the last day, we were to be picked up and taken to the airport at 12 o'clock. i woke up at 11:20 with no packing done, in an incredibly untidy room, and with a hangover that could probably be deemed "award-winning". At five minutes to twelve i suddenly felt like i'd been stabbed repeatedly in the gut. Doubled over, i stumbled indelicately round the room wondering whether the jig was in fact up for me. Fortunately, a few minutes later, the outrageous stomach pain passed as quickly as it had dawned. By the time we reached the airport 45 minutes later, though, that was about the only improvement.

It was at this point, sitting grimly at gate 23a of Bergen airport, something akin to delirium tremens gripping my whole body, gamely suppressing occasional waves of nausea and trying to hide my horrible condition from a sweet girl we'd met on the plane trip over – essentially, in no fit state to say anything to anyone – that Andy points over to a nearby group and says "hey – isn't that the Manics?"

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

OK, here's the thing. Before the Manic Street Preachers, i wasn't really into music much. i much preferred roughly re-enacting the events on TV's Gladiators on a local industrial estate, reading, devising "inventions" of various degrees of daftness that i'd write down in what turned out to be the first of a lifetime of notebooks, and attempting to program text adventures for the Sinclair Spectrum +2A. My interest in music was mainly limited to a couple of TV themes, the odd track by ABBA or Meatloaf, and the soundtracks to Speccy games like Manic Miner and others i've long forgotten. i'd listen to local radio, but more for the clownish japes of the DJs then the handful of 70s/80s gassers on rotation in between them. Around about '95, i'd started to take a mild interest in the Britpop thing, but wasn't sufficiently committed to take sides in Blur vs. Oasis, for example.¹ But in early '96, when i was twelve, i heard the Manics on the radio. It was like a bomb going off under everything.

i bought the single i'd heard ("A Design for Life") from Woolworths, followed by The Holy Bible album (the parent album not having been released yet), then Generation Terrorists, then the just-released Everything Must Go (which came out on my 13th birthday). Then Gold Against the Soul to complete the set, and then a compulsive quest to amass everything else they'd ever done, and follow up on all the cultural references contained therein (i don't think i've come anywhere near getting all of them to this day). i could probably draw a musical mind-map starting with MSP at the centre and tracing the influences outwards to a huge amount of the other stuff i listen to (and maybe i will, one day).

Generation Terrorists channelled Public Enemy and The Clash, so i checked out Public Enemy and The Clash, promptly getting into old-school punk and hip-hop. Old punk led to both new punk and to reggae. Reggae led to dub. New punk led to hardcore. Hip-hop led to more and more hip-hop. And so on. The myriad cultural references led me to countless books and films. The general newfound musical obsession led me to the music press. It continued to spread, completely out of control.

So i had to talk to them, nuclear hangover or no; i would have regretted it endlessly (and been chided to the end of time by my MSP-fan mates) had i not. i plucked up the courage to walk up to Nicky Wire, proffered a hand to shake, and promptly forgot just about every word in the English language. Approximate transcript from memory follows:

TR: Hi... er...
NW: Hi. [shaking hands]
TR: i won't bother you for too long, because i'm sure you just want to get back home, but... [completely lost for words by now] um. i just wanted to tell you that your band, literally... in a very literal way, you guys changed my life.
NW [grinning, possibly scoping out the Million Dead t-shirt i had on]: For the better?
TR: Ha ha... yes, definitely. i mean you pretty much got me into music. so, like, thanks for everything.
NW: [something like] Ah, it's a pleasure. Thanks!
TR: [shuffling off, schoolboy-like] Cheers.

Sean Moore, i encountered in the weird mobile corridor-on-wheels thing that connects the terminal building with the plane. He looked possibly slightly worried that i was walking back towards him. i doubt i was in any state to be mistaken for a security official, so i'm guessing i probably just looked like Some Nutter.

TR: Sean!
SM: Yeh?
TR: Hi, erm, like i was just saying to Nick just now, don't want to bother you for very long, but i wanted to say thanks, you guys pretty much got me into music...
SM: [something like] Ah, great!
TR: Yeh, like you had the Public Enemy/Clash thing on the first album...
SM: That's right, yeh.
TR: ...and i'm in a rap group at the moment, from the PE thing.
SM: Ah, right! Well, keep going.

And that was about the size of it: two brief yet unforgettable conversations. i carried on towards our flight, slightly stunned, probably grinning like a village idiot, and oddly enough, welling up a little. i probably sounded quite gushing and far from eloquent, but i figured that if there's anyone that can understand painful sincerity, it's those guys. And for the amount of people that must have told them similar stories over the years, it was awfully sweet of Nick to smile slightly bashfully when he asked if my change had been for the better.

i forgot the cardinal rule of pics-or-it-didn't-happen, but it somehow didn't matter. We all boarded the flight, me tripping over myself with surprise and admiration and probably also residual booze. There was no first class on the flight, the band just sitting among us like anyone else. Another classy move for a group of men who've sold tens of thousands of records.

Keep going.

"They" say you should never meet your heroes. Evidently, "they" just picked the wrong heroes.

¹ i was way more partisan when it came to Blur vs. Mogwai a few years later.
² Hi Lindsey, Kat, Rachel, Dan, Charlotte, Marilyn, etc.!

From:	Tick Tock (kathyyarbrough@msn.com)
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Sent:	04 June 2010 06:57:53
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