Dissonance Corp. 2011 Annual Report

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.

"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.

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

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.

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

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"

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

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"

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.

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

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"

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)"

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"

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.

Aurist on Tom Ravenscroft show!

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.

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

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)

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



"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.

An adjective could hurt if it's not caught

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).

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

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

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"

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"

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"

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.

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

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 War"