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.

If you're looking for miserly pricks, it's like Christmas come early!

Some genuine radicals in Yorkshire¹ have decided they're going to make everyone's life better by supergluing the locks of charity shops they deem to be 'selling Christmas stuff too early'.

The writer claims to speak for the "Movement for the Containment of Xmas".

Clive Barker, manager of the Oxfam shop in Otley Road, said the letter was posted through his letterbox on Monday evening.

He said: "It is very odd. Every morning I wonder if I am going to be able to open up or will the lock be glued up.

"We are not going to take our cards down as we are a charity and we raise money for all the Oxfam projects.

"The cards are important for our fundraising. Like the rest of the High Street there are Christmas cards on display as early tasters.

"Four shops have been targeted and I just hope that nothing comes of it. The police say they are treating it very seriously and have taken the letter for fingerprints."

The letter states: "This is a very polite but very serious reminder not to display Xmas cards until 1st Nov. We will put super glue into your locks if you do. Peace and goodwill."

Truly revolutionary, guy(s). You are doing a sterling job of reclaiming Christmas from the forces of capitalistic greed and back towards the true Christian message of charity to others by, erm, vandalising a charity shop for attention.

i'm starting a counter-movement called "Movement for the Proliferation of Xmas" just to spite these pricks. And i'm going to find out their identities and send them Christmas cards and serenade them with carols ALL SUMMER.

The fact that they've given themselves a fancy yet slightly wacky name screams "clever-clogs students" to me. (NB: Sarah, who knows about these things, says "I guessed those student sorts too. Then I read the article and it says that some of the beef happened in Headingley which makes it a 99.9% cert.")

He/they probably meant it sincerely, too, but pound-to-a-pinch-of-shit that if the po-po pick do them up from the fingerprint evidence, they won't even have the balls to cop to it, and will instead say "Oh, it was meant as an art statement, on the nature of capitalist society and how it erodes our basic humanity. We were SATIRISING the sort of people that put glue in locks."

Weak as plankton piss. A plague on all their houses.

See also this Facebook group, where they're actually compiling lists of shops that they think are selling Christmas stuff "too early", putting in complaint letters and boycotting the shops in question. Good job that such a list could also be used as a guide to where to shop if you want to spite the kind of bores that find it necessary to join such a group!

Debenhams, the target of their ineffectual bleating, wrote back very patiently with a stock letter explaining their position. (Incidentally, some geniuses in the group seemed to think they were the next Sherlock Holmes for spotting this fact. "I received an almost identical, and obviously canned response", smugs one complainant. Well, yes. The reply is very similar to the reply received by others who complained, perhaps because you all put in the same fucking complaint.) If i owned a shop, my fantasy reply letter wouldn't have been quite so cordial. It would have more likely been along the lines of:

Dear Complainant,

It's our store, and therefore our prerogative to sell what we want whenever we see fit. We are not bothered in the slightest that your ignorant arse will not be crossing our threshold this year.

Fuck off,
tom dissonance.

Ho, ho, and indeed, ho.

mp3:___dREàgänN|||||| — "This Is My Christmas"
mp3: Cutting Pink with Knives — "Merry Fucking Christmas, You Spineless Fuck"

¹ Well, one guy at least. Probably two at most. They will be plural for the time being.