Hey Charlie!

Annals retentive: art decade

2009-12-31T06:43:00.004Z

There's storms forecast for Melbourne at the strike of midnight tonight. Something about that, despite not wanting to think many self-scaremongering thoughts, seems entirely fitting. While it feels futile to relate the pulsation of the moment to the current calendar system that peoples are using, this still feels like a decade i'd be very, very keen to hold onto for a bit longer. For personal reasons as well, i guess; at the turn of the millenium i was in my early teens, and now i'm in my early twenties, so, tempestuous times as they may have sometimes been, it is also the period which i'm sure i will always think of the most fondestly. These are - i think - roughly my favourite ten albums from what i hate calling the noughties. You should listen to them rather than read the reams of praise i'd be showering them with, although i won't entirely because it'd take me about a week to do any of them anything close to justice. They are pretty much in reverse order of preference, but not really, because being definitive about that sort of thing was to hard.

Cornershop - Handcream For A Generation
i watched that fairly patchy documentary 'Live Forever' the other day, and because i tend to watch all the crappy extras that are dumped onto DVDs too i ended up watching the extended interview with Jon Savage. In one part he suggested that Britpop didn't really reflect the beauty of mid-nineties uk diversity because some alternative artists who had big hits at the same time - he mentions the incredible White Town and the...uhm...well...Babylon Zoo - were left out of the club to an extent, perhaps because of their ethnicity. A loaded point i guess, but it would make sense with Cornershop, who had one of their ploddy whimsical songs beefed up, had a smash hit, and the full extent of their awesome talent remained largely unbothered by the mainstream audience. Nevertheless, i can't help but feel that if Handcream For A Generation was released in the mid-Nineties it would be mentioned in the same breath as turds like Maxinquaye and What's The Story...? Instead it was released in the strange hinterland between The Strokes and No Name so only Lammo and John Peel played stuff from it. Listening to this album today makes me feel like there was barely a cloud in the sky all the way throughout 2002.

Broken Family Band - Cold Water Songs
Although i have a huge soft spot for 'Balls' (make your own joke up) that otherwise seems worryingly unloved, the moment The Broken Family Band accidentally invented Anglicana is a moment i'll always be thankful for. When most end-of-decade polls will be celebrating the fact that Arctic Monkeys sing in their own accent, i'll be pleased that some lads from Cambridge tried both lyrically and vocally to sound like country and western stars.

Chris T-T - London Is Sinking
It turned out he was right, too. A strange trajectory Chris seems to have had over the last ten years; at the beginning of the decade he was probably best know for writing songs about Eminem's sexuality and maiming Lisa from Steps, and now he's most regularly recognised as one of the kings of lefty British politi-pop, the awfully-named genre that thankfully nobody made up (except me, just now). Last year's Capital was excrutiatingly under-valued, but the central pillar of his London trilogy, a long-player that tracked a narrative of sorts on a boat along the Thames, has more romance, death, anger, imagination, intrigue and heartbreak than any gritty Beeb drama could squeeze into a six-part series.

People Like Us - Stifled Love
When the music industry grinds to a halt and we have to rely on artists chopping up bits of long-lost exotica as the primary source of entertainment, this is who i want to make everything i listen to for the rest of time. Rather than hear me ramble about how wondrous, sarcastic, warm and human her plunderphonic adventures are, you can download this album in its entirety for free from here. i have no idea why the hell you would not do this.

Mclusky - Do Dallas
This should speak for itself:

Pagan Wanderer Lu - Fight My Battles For Me
Some people said that it was too long. Then again some people think Cheryl Cole is entertaining and fucking dogs is a good idea, so people aren't to be trusted.

Applicants - Life In The Bus Lane
An amazingly enjoyable album containing songs about pizza's involvement in relationship problems and Spike Milligan being a cunt. The best pop songs i've ever heard by someone who used to be on Digital Hardcore. Deserved to be downloaded more than the Dan Brown / J.K. Rowling sex tape. Next album will be pretty good i bet.

Misty's Big Adventure - ...And Their Place In The Solar Hi-Fi System
i personally think that when John Peel called Grandmaster Gareth 'the new God' he was talking Gareth down a bit. Dismissing Misty's as a novelty band - as many idiots did - for being inspired by the Bonzos, named after a Magic Roundabout reference and recording a song with Jeremy Vine/Noddy Holder ignores the swathes of frustration, world-weariness and paranoia that flow through most of their songs - it'd be like calling Radiohead a comedy band because they wrote a song about a watering can and did that video where someone fell over lol. They just happen to be very entertaining too...or fun, if you must. All of their albums are worth exploring, but these songs are the ones that i'd most like to be still singing to myself even after i've forgotten my own name.

Bearsuit - Team Ping Pong
The band that most defined the last decade for me; i'll be wearing my blue Bearsuit t-shirt when i'm dragged kicking and screaming into the next one. It's a close call between this and their first 'proper' album Cat Spectacular!, as Team Ping Pong is (as far as i can tell) a truncated version of their attempted debut In Charge Of Meats, but for containing all the planet-beating songs that made me pretty much fall in love with them in the first place* this edges it. If i die suddenly play 'Minerals Made Me' at my funeral please.

*although the distinct lack of 'Poor Prince Neal' left me a bit miffed.

Super Furry Animals - Rings Around The World
i wrote something about this here earlier in the year, kind of knowing that it would still be my favourite album by this point. Thanks. Happy new year.

Annals Retentive: Two Thousand And Fine

2009-12-29T14:12:00.007Z

This is sort of some of the best things i heard this year. It is dedicated to Norman Borlaug. i realise that trying to honour a recently-departed agricultural scientist said to have saved over a billion lives by just sticking some mp3s together and saying "this is for you" seems a bit arrogant, but in a year where a pop star got about a billion times more attention in death i feel like any mention of Borlaug's incredible achievements is worth doing.

This is my favourite pop video of the year:

This is good too mind. i especially like the thing that happens when "He feels that the ethics of punk can be applied to the world of work" is sung:

Anyway.

Here is the mix. Enjoy. (ysi)

High Places - Late Bloomer
Joy Orbison - Hyph Mngo
Thermals - When I Died
Acoustic Ladyland - Sportsmode
MJ Hibbett & The Validators - My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once
Cornershop - Free Love
Micachu & The Shapes - Golden Phone
Anti Pop Consortium - Volcano (Four Tet remix)
Internet Forever - Cover The Walls (Dreamtrak session)
Nordloef - Buddy Holly
Paul Hawkins & Thee Awkward Silences - Sleep The Clock Around
Silence At Sea - Fields Of Fire
Leyland Kirby - Memories Live Longer Than Dreams
Pagan Wanderer Lu - Ten Cities Is Not A European Tour

RIP BFB

2009-11-03T12:31:00.002Z

Bye lads.

Super Furry Animals live at Cardiff International Arena 1999

2009-09-27T01:44:00.003Z

This is a bootleg of a Super Furry Animals gig recorded by Radio 1 for Lamacq Live just before Christmas in 1999. As it is recorded onto cassette from FM radio like what we had to do in those days, it is occasionally a bit crackly and is not the full set played that night - the Beeb usually only broadcast choice parts of the event unless it was completely live. Because of the year the setlist is pretty Guerrilla-heavy - or rather, it includes tracks off the album that they've not played live much since, including The Turning Tide and The Door To This House Remains Open. My recording misses the first couple of bars too...sorry about that.

Super Furry Animals recorded at Cardiff International Arena 1999

Something 4 The Weekend
The Door To This House Remains Open
The Turning Tide
Northern Lites
Play It Cool
The International Language Of Screaming
God! Show Me Magic
Fire In My Heart
Hometown Unicorn
Calimero
Mountain People
Ice Hockey Hair

You can also see (read: hear, with a nice picture from space to accompany it) a recently-added Peel session and interview with John by the band here on YouTube from around the time of Fuzzy Logic, as added by someone called stepintothegalaxy. Lovely.

Eat The Beatles on Another Nice Mess

2009-09-14T06:15:00.003Z

A few months ago, during the modest promotional run for Two Of The Beatles Have Died, i was fortunate enough to compile a mix for the superlative Another Nice Mess radio show on DFM Radio hosted by Marcelle Van Hoof in Amsterdam. Considering it's a show that i've been a huge fan of for over five years now i felt honoured, frankly, and incredibly grateful that Marcelle played so many songs from the compilation. Considering there's supposedly a renewed wave of Beatlemania this week - and they're all songs relating somehow to The Beatles, you see - i thought it appropriate to upload the set here.

Eat The Beatles on Another Nice Mess 28/4/09

*Marcelle introduction*

Michael Mills - The Beatles (excerpt)
The Beatles - Flying
John Baker - I Want To Hold Your Hand
The Debbie McGees - Two Of The Beatles Have Died (Ziggy Bollus remix)
Yoko Ono - Snow Is Falling All The Time
Astral Navigations - Pope John Paul & Ringo
Grandmaster Gareth - The Sound Of Gareth
The Beetles featuring Cookie Monster - Hey Food
The Better Beatles - Eleanor Rigby
Daniel Johnston - The Beatles
Sebadoh - Yellow Submarine
The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - Give Booze A Chance
People Like Us - Something In The Way
The Beatles Fan Club Christmas Record 1968 (excerpt)
Mojo Jones - Strawberry Fields Forever
Monsoon - Tomorrow Never Knows
The Fall - A Day In The Life
Paul McCartney, Super Furry Animals & Youth - Peter Blake 2000 (excerpt)
The Seltaeb - Enif Leef I

*Marcelle back-announcement*

The Ramones - I Wanna Be Sedated
Zea - I Wanna Be Deleted

Unjazz

2009-08-15T00:47:00.004Z

Hello.

i realise that this blog is now just a place for me to store mixes, but i will at least try to make it a place for me to store mixes more often.

Today's particular mix is entitled Unjazz and it is dedicated to Chris and Rifa. The word Unjazz has been playing on my mind since it was announced that there might be a future EP by Chris T-T of that title, comprising of his improvised piano recitals that in other variations recently delighted those attending his joint headline show with MJ Hibbett's Dinosaur Planet a few weeks ago. It makes sense to me that Chris might want to call what he's doing Unjazz, seeing as i once mentioned jazz in an interview with him and he became so appalled that he couldn't even bear to repeat the word back to me. Thing is though, now that i've heard the word Unjazz i believe it's something that actually exists, maybe not simply as a genre or movement, but a description of an attitude as vague and disparate as jazz itself. Maybe, like punk once claimed those that foreshadowed it, suggesting that the Stooges and MC5 were singing from the same hymn sheet when it yet had a title, perhaps one day unjazz will become the umbrella term for something much more subtle and yet incredibly potent. In my mind's eye i can't imagine it being the opposite to jazz, just like anti-folk isn't the opposite of folk per se, and i can't see it having shaken off the burden of jazz itself, just as post-rock hasn't - and can't - liberate itself from rock. i can imaging something that is largely undiluted funk, or beat poetry, or minimal techno or maximal house or swing or bluebeat can be unjazz, but unjazz is not all of these things. You dig?

Well maybe not. i might be closer to explaining myself properly by playing you some things i could, if needed to, consider unjazz. Delicious cold, disgusting hot? You decide.

Tracklisting:
People Like Us - Sing With Melodious Inarticulate Sound...
Acoustic Ladyland - Thing
The Bad Plus - Velouria
Asa Chang & Junray - Hana
Delia Derbyshire - Ziwzih Ziwzih OO-OO-OO
MRR-ADM with Malcom Catto - B1
Tracy Is Hot & The Clap - Cat Power Is Fucking Rubbish
David Shrigley - Don'ts
Raymond Scott - Manhattan Minuet
Grandmaster Gareth - Lovely Cellos
Gil Scott-Heron - B Movie
Squarepusher - The Modern Bass Guitar
Aphex Twin - Avril 14th
Schneider TM - I Dream Of Chomsky (High Llamas remix)
Blur - French Song
David Schafer - Forever In Love In Forever Part 1
The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - Rhinocratic Oaths

Annals retentive: Two Thousand And Late

2009-01-16T22:55:00.003Z

i realise i'm a few weeks behind schedule with this, but here's a mix i made of some of our favourite tracks of 2008. i started this tracklist thinking i wouldn't have much to pick from but there was loads i had to leave out for the purpose of time & space (hopefully it all fits onto one cd, give it a go).

Hope you're having a happy 2009 so far.

Link for the download resides here.

Los Campesinos! - My Year In Lists
MGMT - Kids (Soulwax Nite Version)
The Bug - Poison Dart (Skream remix)
Telepathe - Chrome's On It (the Mae Shi remix)
Germlin - thrash'r
Women - Lawncare
Beyoncé - Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)
Hot Chip - One Pure Thought (Toddla T remix)
Applicants - Pocket Dictionary
Warren Myles - Mountains
Errors - Toes
Yung Nate & Charles Hamilton - Stutter
Pagan Wanderer Lu - 2.0///The Bridge Of Sighs
Soko - I Will Never Love You More
The Chap - Surgery
Oxynucid - Keys and Lighter
Wiley - Wearing My Rolex
Neon Neon - I Told Her On Alderaan
Kylie - The One (Freemasons Vocal Club mix)
Gas - Konigsforst 4
Marble Krusher - Cat Power Hijacks a Train and Drunkenly Crashes It into Portsmouth in a Idiosyncratic and Wasteful Tribute to Tracy Is Hot & The Clap

xxxxx

John Peel Day mixtape

2008-10-11T00:00:00.002Z

Apparently it was John Peel Day this week? Or it will be next week. The Beeb don't seem to have devoted many shows to the day or indeed even mentioned it, but i'll press on regardless.
While working for The Man over the past few weeks i decided to fill the time between waiting for data to process by making a special mixtape-compilation-type thing for the occassion. It's the same length as the Peel shows i grew up listening to (two hours) and features bits that i remember fondly at the time, most of them being peel sessions or performances from Maida Vale or Peel Acres. It's by no means an 'ideal' show i've cobbled together - no Pig's Big 78 for a start - but it does feature some of my favourite artists and some older stuff as well.

Anyway. The link is here.

If you don't want to know the tracklisting (you might like the element of surprise, i know i do) then look away now:

- Cowcube - Itchy Cut
- The Damned - New Rose (Peel session)
- Delia Derbyshire - The Voice Of John Peel
- X Booty (Dan The Drummer) - O Superman
- The Black Keys- Hard Row (Peel session)
- Listen With Sarah - Cuntry Music
- The Magic Band - Diddy Wah Diddy (Live at Maida Vale)
- Party Of One - Shotgun Funeral
- dj /rupture - High Resolution (live at Maida Vale)
- Culture - Two Sevens Clash (Peel session)
- Son House - Death Letter (Peel session)
- Pavement - The Classical (Peel session)
- The Fall - Groovin' With Mr Blo / Green Eyed Loco Man (Peel session)
- Galactic Symposium - YMCA
- Half Man Half Biscuit - The Light At The End Of The Tunnel (Is The Light Of An Oncoming Train) (Peel session)
- The Would Bes - My Radio Sounds Different In The Dark (Peel session)
- Napalm Death - The Kill (Peel session)
- Jeff Mills live at Maida Vale
- People Like Us - Abridged Too Far (Peel session)
- Pico - Speed (Peel session)
- Belle And Sebastian - Roy Walker (live at Peel Acres)
- Orbital - Doctor ?/Chime (live at Maida Vale)
- Grandmaster Gareth - Dr Dre Buys A Pint Of Milk
- Hyper Kinako - Tokyo Registration Office
- Lightning Bolt - Dracula Mountain (live at Maida Vale)
- The Cuban Boys - The Nation Needs You
- CLSM - John Peel Is Not Enough (Fergus Mayhem remix)

Turn it up and keep it peel xxxxx

dodecahedmix #1 : good grief

2008-05-10T20:02:00.002Z

Here is an mp3 mixtape i made for you. It's got twelve songs in it. They are:

People Like Us - Sing With Melodious Inarticulate sound...
The Pointer Sisters - Pinball Number Count
Jason Forrest - My 36 Favourite Punk Rock Songs
Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes (XXXchange remix)
Bolt Action Five - Tree Friend Tree Foe (The Cleft Palettes remix)
Robyn - Handle Me (Chewy Chocolate Cookies remix)
CSS - Rat Is Dead (Rage)
Napoleon IIIrd - Hit Schmooze For Me
Napoleon XIV - They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!
Sebadoh - Yellow Submarine
Yung Nate & Charles Hamilton - Stutter
Elastica - Stutter

i'm wondering whether to do this more often.

Enjoy, anyway.

ttfbxxxxx

Coping with Los

2008-02-29T00:32:00.000Z

i was born bald with no teeth

2007-07-11T07:44:00.001Z

On this day - hello, happy Wednesday - Hey Charlie! founder, loving chum, Go-Betweens fan, teacup specialist, devoted soul gardener and official Greatest Person Ever, Bianca Ferguson, celebrates her birthday. i hear it's ungentlemanly to reveal a lady's age (and if there's one lady i'd want to be gentlemanly to, it's her) but rest assured she's yet to reach even halfway to Loudon Wainwright III levels when he wrote this:

Loudon Wainwright III - The Birthday Present

i realise that in terms of birthday-related tracks Teenage Kicks is already a step ahead of us this week, and i appreciate that my lover isn't really a big fan of The Sugarcubes anyway, but it's blogging tradition and i'm willing to accept that not all traditions are bad. Plus i reckon this is a pretty neat demo, probably surpassing the single itself, if shoehorning an indier-than-thou statement of approval into proceedings is acceptable at this juncture of course.

The Sugarcubes - Birthday (demo version)

But anyway. All it leaves me to say, hoping that any other readers we have don't find their breakfast revisiting them, and yet in the sincerest most affectionate way:

Happy birthday Bee. You are fabulous and i love you.

View Monday: only a quick reminder to buy all the recently re-released Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band albums this week.

2007-07-09T22:13:00.000Z

Gorilla

The Doughnut In Granny's Greenhouse

Tadpoles

Keynsham

View Monday, in a post-Fopp malaise: Glastonbury special with added Mistys.

2007-07-01T23:12:00.000Z

People are still going on about last weekend’s Glastonbury festival, and there’s nothing like jumping on a bandwagon a week late. So here we are. i can assure you that this first entry is the only time i will mention the word mud.

The only performance that i’ve seen from the abundant internet Glastonbury audio-visual material that looked particularly exciting is CSS, which is particularly good because of…balloons! Look! Balloons all over the stage! Oh and that they’re a great band. But still. Balloons! Check out also how it obviously takes three burly men to wade in and manhandle a petite and be-leotarded Lovefoxx from the adoring grasps of, ooh, half a dozen people? Obviously for her own safety. Three big blokes. With big hands. One small lady. Yes. Also, note the close up of her bum as well. But only because it’s got mud on it. No other reason. Nope.

Back a year (we think), this is the bard of Barking singing the greatest Billy Bragg song he never wrote. With the person who wrote it. We ought to do a post about Mr Bailey at some point. Remind me.

If you didn’t think we could get more self-indulgent, here’s that band my lover likes a lot. Just because she likes them and i love it when she’s happy.

More balloons! And two perpetual suns! And a dolphin! And a tiger! And several thousand other things! Those good ol’ boys from Oklahoma really do put some effort into it, and this was before Wayne decided to travel to gigs in a bloody massive inflatable ball. There’s a large chunk of the rest of this set online if you’re interested, which you probably ought to be.

And back in the real world – oh okay, away from the countryside then – this week saw the sudden yet unsurprising end to Fopp, making another big weapon in the music industry’s arsenal when arguing value for money doesn’t pay. (This of course being the same week that the music industry were furious that Prince would do anything as innovative and relatively selfless to his fans as give away his new album for nowt, although they seem to have ignored that the real reason to get mad is that in order to get your mitts on a copy you’d have to actually purchase the worst newspaper in Britain.) One thing that Fopp were good at – obviously not making much profit, or treating their employees with dignity and respect by actually paying them for their final month’s work – was in-store performances, and although they varied in quality they at least re-ignited in some way the notion that going out and buying records could be an experience and actually, whisper it, fun, rather than something you did in Tesco between choosing the shortest till to queue at and picking up some Tic Tacs. Here’s one of the in-store performances from Jim Noir, which as you’ll be able to tell is really rather badly out of synch. Bye Fopp, i’m sorry i didn’t buy that cheap reissue of After The Gold Rush as a way of saying farewell.

And finally, some added Misty’s Big Adventure, who this week at last saw the fruits of a video shoot for ‘Night Time Better Than The Day Time’…which came out as a single on Awkward Records in, uhm, 2004. You’ve got to hand it to director Marke Locke, he’s pretty nifty with the camera, and at least this use of his (generous) talent didn’t languish in a vault for evermore. Funny Times due soon too, thankfully.

The Compact

2007-06-29T08:59:00.000Z

Now. I’m in a bit of a shit mood. I haven’t left the house today, I am wearing yesterday’s clothes and I’m sick of watching the news because it reminds me that people like to pour hydrochloric acid on other people’s faces. There is a muscle having an epileptic in my left forearm, and I can feel the fat cells gorging themselves on my lunch. I’ve got my ring stuck on the wrong finger. I have the mean reds (and if you think that means my period, you can just stop reading now).

I know most people come here expecting music. Well, today I woke up expecting to be 5’10 with thick wavy hair and a waist roughly two thirds my own. I have a feeling that today you and me both will experience some disappointment.

I do have something serious to discuss. The Compact. It’s old news I know, I know, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and have decided my position on it.

The Compact started some time ago, at least 18months, but probably a bit longer in San Francisco. Quite basically; they do not consume. They buy nothing new , and only buy second-hand what is necessary. They do buy food, although, you see, people need food to live. Organisations like Freecycle are supplying this demand for non-consumerable living, by providing a forum for people to trade their goods. There are free markets in San Fran, like normal markets, but free.

I like The Compact. I love The Compact. The Compact is maybe what the world needs to stop its disgusting self combustion and might just stop us from vomiting dust and smoke and rubbish enough to choke ourselves. Might.

Although you see, here’s the tricky thing. Shopping makes me happy. Buying silk blouses at extraordinary prices makes me happy. Checking the time on my Longines watch? Yep, happy. Even imagining myself making tea in Limoges tea cups makes me happy. And I know other people, people I admire and love and like, I know people who can be made happy with material things. In the very purest sense, beautiful objects hold joy.

So you see, my gripe with consumption, is not consumption per se, but rather, the mindless trash that is produced for the mindless public. Cheap, ticky-tack, poor quality and in poor taste annoys me more than Comsumers. For example: killing innocent children in the street is wrong, but, if I had the choice, alone in a room with a man (or woman) who abused an animal, or child (but especially an animal), I would, had I the strength, beat him to the end of his life. Killing is wrong. Some people are worth the effort. Mechanical consumption is dangerous, and more than certainly immoral. A chair by Charles Eames is a work of art. A shoe by Marc Jacobs. A dinnerset by Kate Spade. Even an Elle McPherson bra for His sake. You can get veritable beauty in bought objects. Yes - not all my clothes are works of art, I’m sure if I sat my (generous) bum down right now on a city corner and put up a sign ‘HUNGRY’ not a passing person would think about doubting I was homeless. I usually buy second hand books, for monetary reasons, and the rest of my books come from libraries. I prefer to eat what I’ve grown, which means I spend a lot of the winter months eating broad beans, but that’s ok. I don’t eat meat, I do buy leather, I drive a car but I never take plastic bags from shops. I recycle everything.

So. Here we are, I’ve run out of steam, and all I want to say is this. I can’t give up everything. I can give up a lot, but not everything. If you can Compact, do it. Try not to buy. Try not to buy new. Try to grow your own food. Try to buy local produce. These are some good people and I respect them. Ideally, we don’t need to stop buying, we just need to stop buying so much. But really, in reality, some people are too thick to understand that. So these Compacters are giving up things on their behalf. On your behalf. They’ve given up everything that I still can’t manage to. They’re stronger than me. If you’re strong, then please, do what you can. Or think about it at least. I know, if you’re here, you’re probably music people. Music is good. Buying music is fine. But just think. Sometimes. Please.

View Monday: robots, dogs, balaclavas, seagulls and a bit of pork.

2007-06-24T23:17:00.000Z

We’re well and truly into festival season now but, considering that festival season now stretches into late September, we’re still relatively in the starting blocks. Which must a bit of a bummer for nearly every musical act on Earth who aren’t Daft Punk, because they’ll have a hard time doing much better than this performance from last weekend’s Wireless festival. Parts of this are so euphoric i sat weeping with joy, and i imagine the people who described it as six of the best minutes of their life may well have done similar. So when’s Electroma out lads?

From what might be described as a more 'sedate' festival - i.e. it's inside - here's some footage from last weekend's 'Forest Of No Return' segment of the Jarvis Cocker-curated Meltdown festival. Here, ‘Home Sweet Home’ is performed by the aforementioned Jarv, Pete Doherty, Shane MacGowan and Nick Cave. So in other words they’re howling like dogs for a prolonged period of time.

Of course as we type Britain’s most lauded green-meets-greed clash of alternative medicines and mobile phone advertising, Glastonbury, is winding itself down to an inevitably muddy and plastic cup-strewn halt. The lack of telly and my computer’s unwillingness to stream BBC coverage means i’ve not seen any footage from this year’s event, but i think i’m safe in saying that none of the acts topped this performance, not even the band themselves. At seven years old i was probably too young to be allowed near a hippy at the time, let alone a filed full of them, but if anyone ever asks me which one single Glastonbury performance i’d want to have been present at, pressed against the bars and wailing like a banshee, it would probably be this one. i know this video isn’t the best quality ever, it’s slightly out of synch and it finishes a few seconds before the song does, but i still think it adequately explains why.

Meanwhile, away from the mud and back in this century (although only just), this week saw Skint Records offering a free digital ten-track sampler of releases they’re about to, uhm, release. i’m a big fan of Skint (not just because of the Brighton connection, or because their sponsorship of the Seagulls makes their team strip possibly the most amusingly ironic kit ever), and i think it’s unfair when people say their heyday is over, just because big beat fell out of fashion a long time ago and their most famous artist has released a few duff records recently. But if we’re looking at when Skint were at their peak, i wouldn’t point to the mid-Nineties, not in terms of creative peak anyway. i’d personally turn to the beginning of this decade, when the label released great stuff such as Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars (still a forgotten classic, i feel…well, still a decent album, anyway), ‘(I Need The) Disko Doktor’ by Space Raiders, and a slew of great singles, performances and an album by the label’s head honcho, Damien Harris aka Midfield General. This is the video for ‘Midfielding’, titled as it is for its vocal contribution from one Noel Fielding.

And finally, news came this week that the rumours are true and ITV will be giving Stars In Their Eyes the axe. Although it probably ran its course a fair while ago, and i rarely understood the point anyway, as far as i can tell it was the place that Harry Hill got the idea to ‘do’ Morrissey, so i think that’s reason enough to mourn its passing. Remember it this way, seeing as Vic & Bob’s version of reality is usually much funnier than the real thing.

Still (y)our new favourite band

2007-06-24T22:23:00.000Z

w00p!

Annals Retentive: 2004 (part one)

2007-06-20T22:49:00.000Z

2004 was a bad year for music.

Of course, every year has great music in it – don’t believe anyone who’ll tell you otherwise, they’re just not looking, or listening, hard enough – and 2004 was hardly an exception. Bearsuit released ‘Chargr’, for instance. 65daysofstatic released ‘retreat! retreat!’.
Art Brut released (the superior Rough Trade version of) ‘Formed A Band’. Fiery Furnaces released (the superior EP verion of) ‘Tropical Iceland’. The Concretes released ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’. Wiley - who is currently gracing front pages of The Wire, Plan B and One Week To Live, all worth checking out even if you have given up on the printed music press – finished what Dizzee’s Mercury win starting by dragging grime kicking and screaming overground with ‘Wot Do U Call It?’. Cornershop introduced Bubbley Kaur and released ‘Topknot’. Help! She Can’t Swim released ‘Bunty vs. Beano’. Ikara Colt released ‘Wanna Be That Way’. Biffy Clyro released ‘Glitter & Trauma’. The Broken Family Band released Jesus Songs. The Unicorns released ‘I Was Born (A Unicorn)’. Mclusky released ‘She Will Only Bring You Happiness’. The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster released ‘Mister Mental’. &c. &c.

But 2004 was the year that John Peel died. And, as you can probably tell, i’ve never really gotten over it.

There is an immense number of Peel-related weblogs about that either started before he went (Radio Plus being a personal favourite), or, more frequently, cropped up in tribute after his death (John Peel Everyday, Teenage Kicks, Right Time, Right Place, Wrong Speed, Kat’s Karavan, The Perfumed Garden, Fades In Slowly, Furtive Fifty, John Peel’s Record Box, Peel Acres, John Peel Pages and so on). But, although i can’t really speak for Bianca, my entire outlook on music, let alone my record collection, owes pretty much everything to him, so you can add my share of this blog to that list too. It’s quite frightening really, thinking of the bands that i really truly love, and realising how they were, with very little exception, either bands i first heard on his show (and, in many cases, nowhere else), or only gained access to wider exposure because of his patronage. He was the only person in Radio 1 – and, really, national broadcasting in general – with the courage, audacity even, to play whatever the hell he wanted knowing that the right people will eventually catch on, and genuinely caring about his listeners to boot, which was understandable given his immense belief in what he broadcast. But it is still very, very scary that alternative music culture (not alternative in the sense of ‘alternative’ music now, packaged and sold back to you, but alternative in the sense that it disregarded trends and market research for sheer throw-it-to-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks embracing of anything good, regardless of background) relied on one person so heavily. And now that one person’s gone i still feel lost.

Anyway. Rather than babble on about how much i like Peelie – which, i must admit, i’m considerably prone to doing – here’s a couple of absolute corkers that i first heard on John’s show in 2004. They’re both pretty epically lavish slabs of neo-psych-rock, in case you’re into that sort of thing. And both bands have particularly ace monikers too.

First is by Earth The Californian Love Dream with a song that i remember hearing John play a couple of times but somehow on both occasions – possibly because i was drifting in and out of slumber, although considering my sleeping pattern since then that’s unlikely – i managed to miss the name of both the band and the song, possibly even on nights when the highly useful tracklistings weren’t being written. Then, a few weeks later caked in mud on a farm near Pilton i heard the song again, only this time on a massive soundsystem in a tent as music to watch bands set up by. i rushed over to the sound desk and enquired, with some urgency, “do you know what this song is?”

“Earth The Californian Love Dream”, he said, for some reason not looking best pleased that someone was taking an interest in what he was ‘playing out’.

“…what?!”, i replied.

It turned out that this particular song featured on the staple of the festival, the annual Truck compilation, and hence was played regularly all weekend – also acting neatly as a reminder to catch their set. In a way, i’m kind of disappointed i did, as it turned out to be their only song of any considerable merit – the other songs just weren’t really that memorable, or were memorable for all the wrong reasons, like, for having lyrics such as “women fighting is what i like to see” and “fuck Ozzy, fuck The Queen” or having titles like ‘Porn Star’. But at least there was one very shiny gem in the middle of it all.

Earth The Californian Love Dream – In The Garden

The other is by equally well-named psych-punk overlords Marble Sheep. i remember Peel both starting and finishing a show with this track, which, somehow, kicks in with a tremendous amount of gusto, and yet seems to remain as energetic and charged all the way through, if not more – to the extent that you don’t realise it’s been going for eight minutes. i managed to pick up the Marble Sheep album (‘For Demolition Of A Spiritual Framework, released the year before in their native Japan) a matter of days later in a London record shop – for some reason, i remember it being the same day i bought Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? and Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding, although that’s probably not very interesting – and believe me when i say that eight minutes is bestowed with a virtue of brevity compared to some of the other tracks. Apparently they’re ‘veterans’ of the Eighties new-psych improv scene, although seeing as they’re churning out tunes like this in the twenty-first century i’d say they’ve still got it.

Marble Sheep – Fla Fla Heaven

i would also like to draw your attention to another song that i first heard John Peel play in 2004, and another track that opened one of his shows. For that, though, i feel i should alert your attention to (for the second time this week) Teenage Kicks, and in particular this post because it holds within itself probably my favourite track of 2004. As you can see from my comment at the end of it, i really really was rather excited to be able to download this version of ‘O Superman (For Massanet)’ by the divine Laurie Anderson (remind me to do a blog entry on her at some point, she’s a fascinating artist and it’s a shame that her one big hit is remembered as a ‘novelty’ rather than the beautiful piece of music it is. It’s also a shame that a lot of her other work is so often overlooked, but it gives bloggers an excuse to complain about it, which is always useful.) Although John credits the track to ‘The X-Booty Crew’, i have a sneaking suspicion that X Booty is actually the label and that the remix is by Dan The Drummer, who i can’t seem to find the website for. Darn! Anyway, i was so excited about hearing it at the time that i remember writing a gushing blog entry elsewhere, claiming that it was a piece of such perfect simplicity, sticking Anderson’s sublime vocals over the thunderous ‘Funky’ by Henry Cullen and Julian Liberator, that it rivalled Duchamp going and painting a moustache on the Mona Lisa (although, in hindsight, it feels a bit more like the Mona Lisa is painted underneath the moustache, if Anderson represents the painting and Cullen/Liberator represent the rebellious act of ridiculous, almost eccentric aggression). Of course that’s debatable, but i think in terms of the bastard pop/bootlegging craze that had pretty much died out in terms of fashion/invention by that point, it was one of the finest meeting of minds. Anyway, get over there and listen to it already.

(And also, if you head over to the ill-ec-tro-nic blog right now you can download the new remix by M.A.N.D.Y. and Booka Shade...sweet.)

i’ve decided to do this Annals Retentive in two parts, as 2004 was a year that i also spent a great deal of time ligging around my hometown of Southampton, growing for itself as it was a rather envious local scene that seems to have withered considerably over the pas few years (with the exception of the forever ace-core Ejector Seat promoters), so i’ll save some of the better lesser-known tracks for then. But i will leave you with a track from another more celebrated geography-based scene of the time, the New Cross, which despite also fading away still sees its band offspring running amok in the playgrounds of pop. Nice to know that some of the bands (or ‘friends’) mentioned have gone on to greater things – i’m looking in particular at The Long Blondes but i also think that The Boyfriends, Ciccone and Luxembourg have made particularly brilliant records since, not to mention The Violets, Rhesus, Japanese Intellgence Mind Control and Since Last Summer. Oh and Art Brut have a new album out of course. It’s rather a shame, though, that since this recording the programme that they love has died.

Art Brut & Friends – Top Of The Pops

View Monday: posted Sunday night so you get it on Monday. We ain’t feeling fashionable.

2007-06-17T21:02:00.001Z

Hello. Wasn’t this simply delightful? Yes, yes i think it was.

My laptop’s thrown a wobbly and won’t let me get to stuff i’ve written for this blog, or a lot of songs for that matter, or the internet, so you’ll just have to watch some stuff again. Sorry.

Here’s a collision between two subjects that two of my personal favourite blogs have written about this week; Teenage Kicks wrote a commendable piece about grindcore, while Sweeping The Nation made me go all misty-eyed with Britpop nostalgia about mid-Nineties Radio 1, back when the station really was the nation’s favourite. (Really like the black and white Peelie footage.) You’ll notice of course that another annoying Chris was at the helm of Wonderful Radio 1’s breakfast show back then, and while the television programme that ultimately made him leave the station, TFI Friday, was often a monstrosity, anyone who puts Napalm Death on teatime Friday night Channel 4 isn’t doing everything wrong.

Meanwhile, it’s scary to think that something still as brutal and rarely-surpassed in the extreme rock scene as ‘Scum’ is twenty years old, but at least there have been many holding the heavy flame aloft. It’s often mentioned that they stamp on their fans’ heads, and of course there was the time that they chucked their own faeces at them as well. But under it all Dillinger Escape Plan are proof that math metal still carries the thrash heart pumping and bloodied in its tightened fist.

This’ll be the new single from Blood Red Shoes then, which – understandably, given the years they must have slugged it around Brighton’s narrow and ever-decreasing toilet circuit – is called ‘It’s Getting Boring By The Sea’.

Apparently Muse kicked it at Wembley this weekend, but did they destroy their instruments? That’s what i want to know. They may have been going since 1994 but when they hit their stride in 2000, i remember an interview where they winced revealing the bill for the amount of equipment they'd already completely obliterated, rocketing as it was into the tens of thousands. Nowadays i’d probably think it was a Who-copyist hollow statement of false showmanship, despite the strength of the songs, not to mention a waste of money and craftwork. But at the time i just thought: cool.

…and here’s what i think about every time someone mention’s buying Prince tickets, apart from the time i was lost and lonely and staring at a drawing of a unicorn in The Penthouse and suddenly, as it blasted through the speakers, i finally ‘got’ Purple Rain. But i can’t really embed that. Thankfully.

Miss Hilton, you must be worth a trillion bucks

2007-06-15T06:52:00.000Z

Now. Before I begin, I realise that I have been, until this time, the silent partner. Which may be in the interests of my darling Hey Charlie! to be honest, because I’m not the most inspired person, I can’t even begin to loop a series of words together appropriately, and, really, I don’t have anything that comes even near to acceptable taste in music, what-so-absolutely-ever (Although I do have Thomas. He is Acceptable Taste In Music). Also- I lie. Like saying just then that I have no taste in music? That was a little porkie. I have no taste FULL STOP. I am currently watching The Simple Life with Paris and Nicole. And I’m up to my second episode. And I'm onto first name basis with Paris and Nicole. And I’m loving every trashy, tanned and plucked and rather slow minute.

Now: here’s the irony. I am watching Paris, who seems to be being eaten by a baby blue coloured fur sole (I’m being silly of course. It’s not EATING her. Someone’s killed the darling thing and REMOVED ITS FACE). Paris is having a 'serious' meeting with her publicist, or media relations manager, an orange man with blond tips and shiny nails and he says to her, “Paris, you need to hide your love away”. Very tactful.

And so we arrive at The Beatles (and Oasis, if you swing that way. They do a lovely cover). I don’t want to talk about The Beatles. They're just the bridge. They get us to who I do want to talk about. Not Paris. Not Paul, Ringo, John and George. But Hetty, Rachel, and Debsey. Is there a greater name than Debsey? If there is it’s probably Hettie and if there isn’t, then I’m glad we agree. And now we’ve arrived I don’t really have anything a lot to say about Dolly Mixture, except I love them, you’ll love them, and how come you’re such a hit with the boys Jane?

Oh. I’m lazy too. Here are links to the nutritional content of Dolly Mixture.

The Band

Their Space

Songs:
How Come You're Such A Hit With The Boys Jane?
Baby It's You
I love this version of this song. Apparently the girls didn't though, they thought the record company was trying to clean them up and sell them off as bright eyed, squeaky clean, come-home-and-meet-my-mother-dearest type girls and they disapproved. It is strange though, because when you listen to Dilly Dolly Dally that is exactly what they seem. All knitting and warm mince pies and firesides.
New Look Baby
Dilly Dolly Dally
Will He Kiss Me Tonight?

View Monday: Stuart Murdoch interviews a hatstand and other stories.

2007-06-11T18:58:00.000Z

Quite.

A bit of Hermeto Pascoal, evidently adored by them Avalanches. (No, not these Avalanches.)

Frank Sidebottom and famous pals doing justice to this lot. i've been waiting ages for an excuse to show this but now i realise i don't need one. However, tickets for Frank's gig at Bethnal Green Working Men's Club should be on sale by now, if you fancy it. There is yewchoob footage of another Frank doing 'How I Wrote Elastic Man' but frankly (arf) it's not as good.

The new Los Campesinos! single. Out last week. Buy it. Go on.

Finally (for now) something from fuggin' Ash, who apparently announced they've called it quits this weekend. i know it's like going to the wake of a childhood friend you've managed to avoid for six years - Free All Angels was the last time i ever considered them a properly exciting prospect - but the part of my pre-pubescent self still lingering inside, still finding immense joy in destroying floorboards to 'Jack Names The Planets' and still believing the act of burning 300 Westlife CDs to be an overtly political statement rather than an obtusely rockist one, is silently weeping, knowing that all things must pass.

Banks and banks of humming machinery

2007-06-11T18:36:00.000Z

It’s a shame, really, how long some things take to reveal themselves. It’s been nearly a year that i’ve been residing in the seaside town of Brighton, feeling like the live music scene is not as impressive as its counter-culture aesthetic likes to make out (despite looking for it), and yet all that time there was such a fervent and thriving noise scene right on my doorstep. This time last week, for instance, saw another gig put on by promoters Psykick Dancehall, who also happen to be some parts of Brightonian free-range scatter “crude actionists” On Fire.

On Fire – Oh What A Shitting

(Apparently, though, they’re going to change that name, not only because when you Google it you just get a list of things on fire, but also because there is a band from the Netherlands with the same name. They also appear to have the catchphrase “get involved!” which, each time it was uttered, would remind me of this…

Grandmaster Gareth – Party Pooper)

Anyway, back to the gig, which was in a rehearsal space obviously not designed for dozens of perspiring young persons on a summer’s evening – the bands requested an ice bath, quite reasonably yet unrealistically – but it’s really quite perfect for the aural abstractions presented that night, with its maze of corridors and acute attention to acoustics. First on were Made Out Of Wool who came across, it must be said, as a band enjoying themselves more than the audience, which is a shame really because they nailed the whole freeform drone experimentation thing pretty niftily. i was assured, though, that this may have been because about half of the ensemble weren’t regular members, which various nervous glances during the never-knowingly-structured set attested. Admirable though, and pretty in the ear-bleeding sense. In marked contrast though was Ack Ack Ack who, with their distort-drenched yelping ferocity made Lightning Bolt sound like Kenny G and had a natty gasmask microphone contraption to boot. Their drummer, a recent addition who also finds home in Charlottefield, manages to be astoundingly good and yet look like one of the most bored musicians ever at the same time. Go here for more.
The headliners though were Portland, Oregon’s rightly-respected experimental kings Yellow Swans, who after six weeks of touring the UK were not only (understandably) shattered but also polite, warm and tremendously humbled by the positive reactions that they’ve been receiving. They decided to do a completely improvised set, split right down the middle, but if they hadn’t told everyone then we’d probably be none the wiser as their complex, cavernous, bone marrow-meltingly loud sounds already lend themselves to a thrillingly instinctive spontaneity. There was one point during the set where a guitar solo so electrifying flew out above the abrasive beats and concrete atmospherics, where it felt you were feeling this music rather than hearing it; it probably a bit of a wet, hippy-ish thing to say, that the noises they make are ‘experienced’ rather than heard, but it does apply as much to the way in which they engulf you as well as batter your body’s vibrating patterns something rotten. Anyway, try for yourself:

Yellow Swans – I Woke Up

(Un-expertly placed here from The Wire’s mighty mp3 library.)

And yes, we realise that the superlative 20 Jazz Funk Greats has already done a post about this gig this month, but that was before it happened. You should go and look at them anyway.

(y)our new favourite band

2007-06-05T07:31:00.000Z

i'm not even being ironic.

EDIT:

You can now see this video and others at Brainlove TV, including the stupidly good Fuck Buttons and the stupid-and-good Insectoid. Believe.

You're not cracking up, you're just getting older

2007-05-30T00:22:00.000Z

Poor neglected Hey Charlie! i’m sorry we’ve been such unresponsive parents recently. It’s the same excuses about galleries and hospitals, but that wouldn’t stop the realisation that if there were a weblog equivalent of the social services we would have been put away for leaving Hey Charlie! on the bus, or forgetting to warm the milk properly, or dressing the wee bairn up in flea-bitten rags, or something. Again, apologies are all we have.

Although i, thomas, (hello, good to see you again) have a scrap of evidence this time. A lot of the exhibitions i get involve in don’t really tend to be seen by many people, or even have much work in them, but at least every now and then there is a bit of a gem. This is an exquisite bit of noise from a sound exhibition i recently wrote the press release for, i recommend using headphones and a horizontal positioning.

Elizabeth Banks - Beach

Anyway, back to today’s procedures, we have a few belated birthdays to deal with. Yesterday, for instance, Noel Gallagher turned forty years old, while, on Monday, Kylie Minogue turned Still Too Young To Be Past It. This is the sort of time where the perils of a shared blog come to the fore – i prefer Kylie, while she prefers Noel. Not in a who-would-you-want-stuck-with-you-on-a-desert-island-with-you-before-you-get-rescued-and-move-to-the-countryside-together-to-drink-tea-all-day-and-make-babies sort of way, but in a way that simply and purely involves just the music. (Yes yes, i like Kylie for her music. You can’t really argue with this, this, this and this as proof that perfect pop music does exist – although i suppose you can really, but you’d be arguing against me.)

However, because Bianca is not here at the moment, i’ll take her side and give you something from Noel. Although, admittedly, if she was here she’d probably play you something by that band he’s in, whereas i think his best moments have been away from that. For instance, this. And similarly this, although i’m including that equally because it is probably my favourite music video ever ever. So much so that i’m going to embed it. Right here.

But anyway, as i was saying, Noel’s occasionally been pretty handy at the whole trad-indie acoustic guitar songsmithery thing, and ten or twelve years ago The Band He’s In could pass for being reasonably exciting, but i’d much rather he teamed up with his mates
to do fourteen-minute guitar solos while battling a sitar over an insanely funky neo-bhangra freakout. Like so:

Cornershop feat. Noel Gallagher – Spectral Mornings

And if i had to include a cover version of a song That Band did, well, i’d play you something that makes Mike Flowers Pops’ rendering of their 'art' sound positively ferocious. The natural progression is to go from the lounge to…the cocktail lounge!

The Lance Gambit Trio – D’You Know What I Mean?

And whilst we’re doing many happy returns, it turns out that At The Club by Kenickie became ten years old while we were away. Yes, we feel old. Just in case you missed it…

Kenickie – Come Out 2nite

Sorry again for the absence, we have a lot of post to play to you and some Annals Retentives too, just as soon as we’ve got off YouTube of course.

Together at last: two Brians and a Jim

2007-05-08T23:43:00.000Z

There's not really much to add is there?

Thanks to Mirri.

We’re just a bunch of buffalo getting slaughtered

2007-05-07T14:06:00.001Z

Yes, yes, i know. i’m sorry. Things just got a bit hectic back there. i was part of an exhibition that panned like a Teflon and Bianca started work in a hospital that won’t let up. We can only apologise.

Anyway, where were we? i can’t remember, let’s just start here by saying that The Crimea have a new album out. Principally because they do.
The Crimea formed after the demise of The Crocketts, a band who mixed primitive psycho-eyed frenetic rock garbling with moments of delicate introspection, this next song fitting neatly into the latter category, acting as it does as the B-side to ‘On Something’ which is most definitely the former. You’ll notice also that this track is a duet between ‘Davy Crockett’ (now plain ol’ Dave MacManus to his fans, including sister Annie) and one Mary Hopkin, who is not only reet famous but was also signed to Apple for a bit. Sweet and crunchy.

The Crocketts feat. Mary Hopkin - Host

However by the tail end of 2002 The Crimea had been formed by the aforementioned male MacManus and Owen Hopkin (any relation?), a year after The Crocketts were dropped by V2. Peelie started playing Lottery Winners On Acid with fervent admiration as soon as it was released on Shiny Beast, as well as the follow up, ‘White Russian Galaxy’ - unfortunately he didn’t live to see them play the song on Top of the Pops, or sign to Warners and release their debut album Tragedy Rocks for that matter, but then again the gap between the first Shiny Beast EP and the album was probably longer than The Crockett’s entire career.

The Crimea – White Russian Galaxy (Shiny Beast version)

And now, not only is it ready, but you can download the new Crimea
album, in its entirety, for nowt. Which is quite a clever marketing ploy apparently, but still rather pleasant i think you’ll agree. Free music might well be the future.

The Crimea – Secrets of the Witching Hour (LP)

Enjoy.

(Also, while we’re here, having that last blog entry featuring Reuben gives me adequate reason, i feel, to mention that they have a new single called ‘Blood, Bunny, Larkhall’ out on 18th of June, which seems to be mostly digital although they’ll have some CDs too. On first listen it’s much better than the singles from the last album, but i’d advise you not to watch the video while eating dinner, particularly if it’s spaghetti.)

Shop What You’re Doing: i’ve got the Elm Street Blues

2007-04-04T22:11:00.000Z

Hi my name is Thomas, i love Dalston Oxfam Shop and, i might as well admit now, i’m about to rip off their idea. Even though i don’t have any cassette-to-mp3 facilities just now. Sorry.

i’ve been travelling the country visiting my family for the past few days, which also doubles up as the chance to pick up a few long-unheard CDs and vinyls. My record collection is divided amongst various residences on the South coast of England, you see, with a few hundred in my Dad’s loft in Southampton, a few hundred more in my mother’s study in Bournemouth and a handful here in my room in Sussex. So, in order to make sure i had some choice cuts to upload soon (for variation) i’ve lugged home a delightful bunch of songs to play and a load of tapes in case my technological incompetence is eliminated to the extent i can put some of the various Peel sessions, Lamacq Live and tracks and festival coverage recordings up on here. i’m afraid that, as i looked upon all the compact discs teetering in mountainous towers as i unloaded them from plastic crates to read the tracklistings, i wanted to play most of them to you. So. We’ll all just have to wait.

[Edit: You remember, for instance, i said i’d play you ‘£1500 And A Bus Apology’ by Kid Carpet if i had it on me? Well now i do, so:

Kid Carpet - £1500 And A Bus Apology

Hope it was worth the wait.]

Anyway. As well as getting to see my family and the larger part of my record collection, i also got to see some of my hometown and find out how it’s changed. When i left Southampton two years ago one of the local independent record shops, Essential Music, was threatening to close down. Once a Fopp had opened at the top of the road, the faeces smashed into the fan with tremendous force and now they’ve been replaced by a Save The Children charity shop. And their selection of second-hand CDs is, i feel, rather great, considering that the stuff i left included a load of promos by the likes of Help! She Can’t Swim and Cranebuilders. So i’ll play some of what i picked up for you here, if that’s okay?

The Sinking Citizenship – Last Minute Intervention

Whoever donated the bulk of the promotional singles and EPs in this shop must have been in good contact with Fantastic Plastic considering the sheer volume of artists present on their label, such as The Sinking Citizenship. i’d not heard this lot before but it’s quite good and petulant, at times a bit Cooper Temple Clause-y and a little Mansun-like, plus it’s always a treat to have that FP logo on a disc in your hands.

Vive La Fête – Petite Putain

Vive La Fete are a group from Belgium that i recognised the name of because it was one of the names Peelie used to say (and play) a lot, they even made the 2003 Festive Fifty with their track ‘Noir Desir’. Part of the reason i’d not looked for them sooner is i wasn’t really sure what he was saying, even though i studied French and could have worked it out by translating the English ‘Long Live The Party’. i’m just a bit dim like that i suppose.

Jeremy Warmsley – 5 Verses

i’ve only seen Jeremy Warmsley live twice now, and i’m not really sure they count because one was an instore for Resident and the other was flanking Emmy The Great, so essentially i’ve only seen an acoustic set. But anyway live he is mesmerising, especially in the pin-drop atmosphere that his astounding voice often creates, but recorded he goes into intriguing electronic excursions that incorporate his bold harmonies and weepy storytelling. There was a copy of the ‘5 Interesting Lies EP’ which, happily, contains five great tracks.

Reuben – Freddy Kreuger

There also fantastically happened to be two copies of the promotional sampler for ‘Racecar Is Racecar Backwards’, the debut album from Reuben (so hurry up and you might be able to buy the other one). Ah, Reuben. Have i got some stories about Reuben. Yes actually i have (thank you for asking), seeing as they were the favourite band of two of my best friends in college. On one occasion, around about the time they’d just released ‘Let’s Stop Hanging Out’, my mate Wellie had begged her mother to drive us to Portsmouth to see them headline an outdoor one-day ‘festival’, which was essentially a handful of screamo (snort!) bands throwing themselves about in a park near the docks. The forecast was for rain and, with clouds looming, it all seemed quite surreal really, sitting on a grassy bank watching local bands shout embarrassing Americanisms as cruise liners floated away behind them. The penultimate band, who i did review but completely forget the name of now, were halfway through their set when the rain suddenly became torrential and the organisers had to rush plastic sheeting over the equipment while the audience rushed to their cars. i remember returning back as the rain cleared slightly, watching said band risking electrocution to play their final, quite haunting song under circling clouds, as lightning forked on the horizon. It was really quite beautiful, until one of the promoters came out, pushed them off stage and then did a comedic fist-fight with the sky for pissing on their parade. We did get to speak to Reuben though, which was nice, and ask when the hell their album was going to be ready. i think ‘Freddy Kreuger’ came out about a year later, and i’m still unsure how you spell it. i’m also still unsure whether there really is a member of Junkplanet in the video or whether i just imagined it.

Hoggboy – So Young

Har! This find made me more elated than probably necessary, but still, i think Hoggboy were BRILLIANT! For those of you not chuckling into your keyboards, Hoggboy were one of those bands tipped for international indie-rock stardom and yet, despite the promise, languished outside the Top 40 continuously and prevailed as the support act in the Flapper & Firkin for the rest of eternity. i even remember running to the local newsagent one Wednesday during school lunch-break, finding that ver Hogg were front page in NME’s ‘On’ section (yes i feel a bit old now) and reading in the interview that the group said, “we aren’t like other bands”. To which the journalist with them added, “Then again, other bands are shit.” They were to The Vines what Terris were to Coldplay (only two years later) and, considering the Antipodean’s progress since, that’s saying something. It’s a shame really, because i think they would have fitted in well as the more melodic contemporaries of, say, The Horrors or Xerox Teens of now. When the aforementioned Lamacq was broadcasting his final Lamacq Live programme he played ‘So Young’ and said that they were just ahead of their time - which may or may not be much solace to a band lumped into a scene (with No Name) that included the much more successful/revered Mclusky and Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster. [i’ve just found out the single is now deleted too, so download while you can i guess.]

i was at this point going to leave you with a track by Lifting Gear Engineer (primarily, i should confess, because of the title), from a compilation that i also picked up at the STC shop called ‘A Step In The Left Direction’ on Boobytrap Records but the CD won’t upload onto my computer. Oh well. All it leaves for me to say then is remember to support charitable thriftiness.

…Unless you want to stay here and watch the new Von Sudenfed video instead? Okay!

Put on my ravin' shoes...

2007-04-03T21:47:00.000Z

Sorry we’re not about much. We miss you.

So anyway, we know New Rave (or is it Nu Rave now? i can’t keep up with the kids nowadays. i’d rather it wasn’t because Nu automatically makes me think of Nu Metal and frankly i’d rather not) is only just managing to stagger about on its feeble mashed-out legs, but there are still people wanting explanation. Basically, then, the Klaxons stuck a few keyboard sound effects onto their guitar-centric song(s) and it’s been the basis for a whole ‘movement’ ever since. Not that this, in itself, irritates me. No. It’s that, only a few hours ago, i heard someone say that new rave is better than the original Rave movement.

Now, this is the bit where i succumb to my creeping elderly fuddy-dudiness, and admit that i don’t understand the youth of today (as if i ever did). i’ll state that i’m sure Shitdisco are probably nice people but it’s “not my type of thing”, call the dog to fetch my slippers and let the grandchildren huddle ‘round me so i can regale them with tales of lost times, like when CD singles with remixes lasted half and hour and the entire male population was fighting over Justine Frischmann. But i mean, really…new wave versus old rave, and new rave wins?! i know the Klacks put on a decent performance but it’s hardly turning your biggest hit into a machine gun-wielding thrash metal number, dumping a dead sheep at the entrance of the after-party and burning a million quid to celebrate. Heck, it’s not even furiously looping ‘Cloudbusting’ over an euphoric piano/acidic beat. i know i expected the rave revival about as much as i expected Steve Lamacq to move to Radio 2, but they’re not even trying. Which is why i not only feel old, but also feel the need to say embarrassingly lectural in-my-day-lad bollocks like that. But as soon as any of the young whippersnappers deliver something as downright thrilling as the opening cry of “Who loves you, and WHO DO YOU LOVE?!?!?!” at the beginning of ‘Temple of Dreams’, i’ll eat my words without ketchup. Unless it's anything by the newly resurrected Kicks Like A Mule, which doesn't count. Anyway.

Let the music do the talking i guess, step forward old guard:

Utah Saints - ‘Something Good’

The Prodigy - ‘No Good (Start The Dance)’

Messiah - ‘There Is No Law’ (original mix)

The KLF feat. The Children of the Revolution - ‘America: What Time Is Love?’

We got bored, so we ate it

2007-04-03T19:52:00.000Z

In response to a request from top quality mixtape maker and fellow Sri Erotic Volvo fan Rik, today i present to you my ridiculously unpatented recipe for Chocolate Spaghetti Cake. Please note that the measurements of each ingredient are to the maker’s discretion.

Assemble: spaghetti; rice; cooking chocolate; milkshake powder; prepared cake flan; whipped cream; digestive biscuits; banana; chocolate drops; hundreds and thousands.
Cook the spaghetti and rice together for a few minutes longer than recommended on the packet to ensure softness and fork until fluffy (avoid stodginess). Drain if excess water remains. Mix in the cooking chocolate while the mixture is still hot and the milkshake powder (or syrup like Crusha for moistness if you prefer). Once thoroughly mixed allow to cool. Form in a mound on the flan until sturdy enough to slice and cover with the cream, then arrange the bananas, chocolate drops, digestives and hundreds/thousands. Party ‘til you puke.

i couldn’t really think of any cake-based songs to put with this, so here’s something to wash it down with.

Gwenno – Lime Chordial

We’ve been a bit late in picking up on the solo efforts from Gwenno, one of the three pleasant ones from that Bananarama tribute act we mentioned earlier. Those on the wrong side of the Pips debate – i.e. the people who don’t like them – should note that Gwenno in her own words likens the songs to both Ace of Base and The Postal Service, but i think even that’s doing her a disservice. Looking forward to the album. Thanks to Simon for sending the track.

With the volume up and the windows down

2007-03-27T17:59:00.000Z

It’s good to know words just aren’t enough sometimes. One of the absolute stand-out albums of last year, Leave Now For Adventure, had only eight words in it, and i can’t even remember them properly. i think that’s very telling, not when it comes to my occasionally lacklustre memory, but regarding the sharpest, shiniest, most potent noises. Some people are just better wordless.

The aforementioned Feedle long-player came out last year in a digital sense (£3, kids) on SVC Records, which, as eager mp3 aficionados may realise, is the imprint wing of masterful weblog Spoilt Victorian Child. (If you click on that link RIGHT NOW you’ll not only see a heart-warming-as-artery-cardigans photograph of Peelie and Gedge on ‘This Is Your Life’ but also a little bit of writing about The Greatest 7” Single Of All Time). However, this week saw the re-release of Leave Now For Adventure on Illicit Recordings, in a proper physical digipak look-you-can-get-it-in-the-shops(-if-you-ask-them-to-order-it) CD format and everything. You can buy for Not Much Monies at Norman Records, see?

If i controlled radio stations worldwide i’d make sure they played you this straight away.

Feedle – Song For Dogs

Worth getting if you think you’d like 65daysofstatic without the guitars, i think you’ll agree. There’s even a malicious rumour that Feedle used to be in 65dos which would make a lot of sense, but we do know that at the very least they are mutual admirers and keen buddies.

65daysofstatic – Aren’t We All Running? (Feedle remix)

Speaking of which! Not only does Feedle re-return, but a new 65daaaaaaaays album is due upon us. In the UK here, the rest of Europe over there and the US in the other direction, you’ll all have to wait until 30th April for ‘The Destruction Of Small Ideas’ on the marvellous Monotreme Records (you’ve got to admire a label that names itself after one of these little buggers). Japan get it a week earlier on Zankyo Records, which is nice, and if you can’t wait that long you can listen to them live in Austin if you visit the Lounge Acts page at Texan radio station WOXY.

AND (deep breath) the single ‘Don’t Go Down To Sorrow’ will precede the LP, which i’ve just noticed will include a remix of ‘The Major Cities Of The World Are Being Destroyed One By One By The Monsters’ on the b-side. Ace-o.

i’ve got a wealth of 65days stories, none of them particularly interesting to anyone but me i suspect. However, a word of advice, this goes down well in clubs:

65daysofstatic – born apart

Do YSI?

2007-03-26T20:43:00.000Z

Bearsuit – Hei Joska, Hei Jokkunen
Listen With Sarah – Ramblin’ Andy
Ergo Phizmiz – Sticky White Glue (extract): Rectify
Coco Electrik – Apple Pie (Skylab remix)
Easy Star All Stars feat. Morgan Heritage – Electioneering
The Schla La Las – Hot As Possible
Now – The Incase
Yaporigami – Yamato
The Retro Spankees! – Mr Brilliant
KateGoes - Yoyo
Misty’s Big Adventure – Fighting For My Life
Misty’s Big Adventure - Microwave
Misty’s Big Adventure – The Whaleians
Ziggy Bollus – 50 Seconds Of Love (radio edit)
Ziggy Bollus – Biscuit City
Ziggy Bollus – Vitamin Dee Dee (wishpigmentation)
The Stranglers – Walk On By
Coin-Op – Democracies
Chris T-T – Eminem Is Gay
Chris T-T – The Tin Man
The Singing Adams – Minus Nines
The Broken Family Band – You’re Like a Woman
Lost Penguin – Mr Whippy
Lightning Bolt – 13 Monsters
Pagan Wanderer Lu – Our New Hospital Sucks

Annals Retentive: 2005

2007-03-25T16:21:00.000Z

Eurgh, Sunday.

Sweeping The Nation said something very kind about us but it also doubles up as evidence of another unsatisfied customer regarding Wiki Upload. i’d like to inform readers (uhm, hi?) that this use of wiki is not really through preference, but more because it appeared to keep all files for an indefinite period of time for free and wouldn’t hassle visitors with pop-ups about some casino with computer-animated wannabe neo-rat-packers slyly taking dollar off you, or porn. Turns out the catch is that nobody can download the bloody files.

This is probably an apt time to tell you that i’m not a technophobe, i’m just incompetent. i don’t hate technology, yet technology seems to at the very least think i’m a bit of a knob. So from now on, i’ll be doing what i know, i.e. sticking all files that i can’t link to directly on YSI and then if you the viewer want any of the files that have run out we can either stick them up again or e-mail them to you. We’ve got a week to think about it anyway so hold your horses. (They might be lonely.)

Where was i? Oh yes.

Did i say that 2006 was my worst year on record? Now, that was very self-indulgently and disgustingly 3mo of me. Particularly as 2005 was worse. i jest, of course, 2005 wasn’t particularly bad per se – we’ve all got access to electricity, clean water, warmth, companionship, open skies, abundant medicine, decent meals and the new Robyn single, let’s have a little perspective here – it’s just that other years were particularly better. Anyway, most of my memories of 2005 are happy ones, particularly 12th July for reasons too happifying to go into now, and 9th/10th/11th September for being the weekend i was an attendant at my favourite festival line-up ever.

There were great songs too.

Magoo – Robot Twin

The first truly great album of 2005 arrived on the doormat at the end of 2004 in a Christmas card from Norwich. The album was called Pop Songs, although really with it being a double-CD release that only resulted in eight songs it was difficult to really know what to call it. It was, it transpired, a stop-gap of sorts, re-announcing Magoo as an album band after four years of LP-release dormancy since 2001’s Realist Week. (The follow up, The All Electric Amusement Arcade, didn’t appear until June last year). As well as the awe-striking joy and depth of the music, one thing that i absolutely adore about the album is its title. Pop Songs. Go on, say it to yourself. Pop Songs. Pop Songs. It’d be great if it was really an album of discordant abrasive concrete noise collages but as it actually is an album of pop songs, there’s really something very…satisfying about it. Pop Songs. i don’t know why nobody had thought of it before. Pop Songs.

This Et Al – All You’ll Ever Be Is A Dancer

This Et Al were another lot that sent me a great deal of releases and information at a time when bands from Leeds (UK) were quite hot property with the indie cognoscenti, yet being on the Dance To The Radio label meant they were, and are, forever in the shadow of ¡Forward, Russia! who, despite the odd cracking tune and a natty song-titling system, never made (and judging by their new material, probably never will make) anything as frantic and frenetic and bitter or better than ‘All You’ll Ever Be Is A Dancer’. This is the track that i place blame on for my current year-old habit of having to listen to certain songs on a loop several times over just because one spin isn’t enough and, by crikey, i still try and hit that high note on the last chorus. And to think this was a b-side.

Alter Ego Distort – Statements Galore

Along with a wealth of local bands like The Sways, Alter Ego Distort were another pleasant surprise that found their way through the letterbox (not literally, it was a demo of their EP ‘…in all oceans now’) all the way from Sweden. Sadly i can’t tell you anything about what they’re up to now as their official website has disappeared from cyberspace and their delicate yet soaring indiepop uber-tunes never even got a proper release. Injustice, much?

Saint Etienne – Teenage Winter

i adore Saint Etienne (and their website) and have done since barely older than toddler age, gawping a gap-toothed smile at the delight of ‘You’re In A Bad Way’ oozing from the car stereo. Which is why 2005’s Tales From Turnpike House rather disappointed me – well, that and David Essex. i even ended up having a lengthy e-mail correspondence debate with a 50-year-old backing vocalist called Ingemar Gustavsson (who i think may have even been on the album) about how everybody trying to do Beach Boys harmonies at that time (this was quite shortly after the eventual release of Smile, you see, hence it was en vogue) were just going to sound inferior, even the Et. ‘Teenage Winter’ however made up for all of it; it was bleak, forlorn, melancholic to the point of misery, bursting with regret and i couldn’t get enough of it. It was probably too close to the bone – i know where that Sainsbury’s is, i know the second hand shop that is suffering from eBay’s success and i definitely know those Christmas cards you can’t bear to throw away. But on a happy note, their appearance at the aforementioned Bestival, particularly the glorious closing rendition of ‘He’s On The Phone’ played to a crowd of enraptured C86 fanatics was a highlight in a weekend of highlights.

Talking of Bestival another artist there was Kid Carpet who i missed because he clashed with Super Furries and frankly there was no contest. i did however see his DJ set where in between spinning his own records and bits of 2 Many DJs bootlegs he ‘played out’ the likes of ‘Rah Rah Rasputin’ and ‘Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?’ If i had his b-side ‘£1500 and a Bus Apology’ or the superlative ‘Bristol Carpet Factory’ on me i’d play you those, but instead you can have the cover version that a lot of people remember him for:

Kid Carpet – Jump

It was a very indie year it seems, but there was little more…oh go on then…twee than Pete Dale’s collection of songs with his band Milky Wimpshake. As an example, here are three versions of a song about love and The Beatles, and one minute-long punk song about a milkshake taster. Yep.

Milky Wimpshake – My Heart Beats Faster Than Techno (live version)
Milky Wimpshake – My Heart Beats Faster Than Techno (7” version)
Milky Wimpshake – My Heart Beats Faster Than Techno (French version)
Milky Wimpshake – Milk Maid

i’ll leave you with a rather muddy representation of quite possibly the most exciting moment of live music i witnessed in 2005, particularly the moment just before the vocals start. Hold on tight:

A Cookie Is A Sometimes Food

2007-03-24T15:04:00.000Z

Hi there. Sorry we lost touch the past few days. i'd love to say that personally it's because i've been busy doing work of immense beneficial consequence to the rest of mankind but really by day i’ve been standing around doing ‘art pieces’ that involve wearing gas masks and pretending to be a corrupt accountant, by evening writing a thesis on why Disneyland is the most important art installation of the late twentieth century and by evening playing Beatbox Saboteurs records to eighth-full clubs of disinterested students before stumbling around Brighton seafront with the word ‘MASK!’ written on my face. Bianca has been very busy doing more important medical research and, if she wasn’t at this very moment a-sleeping and dreaming her enviably vibrant dreams, i’m sure she’d say a cheery hello.

Now, have you ever taken a personal psychology test? To see through a set of drawings or ink splodges and your interpretation of such whether you are either a well-adjusted upstanding member of society or a raging ball of psychopathic unpleasantness simply choosing to keep it in at the moment? Well, you’ve no need, because i can now judge your inner being using simply some Johnny Cash, Sesame Street characters and nifty html.

Just relax, watch these two videos and tell me afterwards which one you prefer. Your results will be processed shortly.

Chosen? Me too. i chose the latter. i’ve even had an mp3 of it on rotation (mp3s can rotate, right?) for the past coupl’a days. Bad move. i’m quite obviously unhinged, sadistic or just plain not-nice, siding with the Grouch like that. Look at ‘Don’t Take Your Ones To Town’: it’s sweet, dammit. It’s not only got a moral message in it, it removes the original message about unsavoury firearms violence and uses it to teach kids about the importance of numeracy. It has a comedy sound effect in it. And Cash is even polite to all the characters, especially the ones that (being vampires) have probably just got back from draining a virgin dry of their blood supply through their soft pale necks. He’s not curling his lip at a Jim Henson creation and going all shifty-eyed like he would rather be at the bar but doesn’t want anyone to notice. ‘Nasty Dan’ comes to the conclusion that being an utter bell-end your entire life will land you in unscrupulous happiness, and i can’t stop listening to it. Plus he’s wearing a denim jacket. What sort of sick freak must i be?

As we’re on the subject of Sesame Street, here’s one of the myriad reasons why new rave will never really better old rave, not even in the early-Nineties nonsensical sense. Enjoy.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh!

2007-03-19T21:10:00.000Z

18.03.07

The Walk Off were brill-core and even though the dancing bear didn't turn up it didn't really matter. Thanks again to Ejector Seat for the evening and i hope i didn't make them party too hard.

In case you're taking notes, The Thomas Ferguson Band span:

People Like Us - 'Sing With Melodious Inarticulate Sound And Frequent Changes Between Falsetto And Normal Voice In The Manner Of Swiss And Tyrolean Mountain-Dwellers...Please'
Attack Formation - 'Pearl Snaps'
Sticky - 'Killa Kutz'
Pretty Girls Make Graves - 'Speakers Push The Air'
The Knife - 'Heartbeats (Rex The Dog rmx)' [many thanks to Benjamin]
The Noisettes - 'Sister Rosetta (Capture The Spirit)'
KatzenJammers - 'Cars'
The Fiery Furnaces - 'Tropical Iceland'
TV On The Radio - 'Wolf Like Me (OneMusic session)'
DJ Scotch Egg - 'Scotchland'
Metric - 'Monster Hospital'
John Holt - 'Ali Baba'
Lost Penguin - 'Mr Whippy'
Cansei De Ser Sexy - 'Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above'
Bearsuit - 'Shhh Get Out'
Lightning Bolt - '13 Monsters'
Melt Banana - 'Monkey Man'
The Long Blondes - 'Lust In The Movies'
Pagan Wanderer Lu - 'Our New Hospital Sucks'
Venetian Snares - 'Hand Throw'
65daysofstatic - 'born apart'
Shitmat - 'Shopliftin' Gabba'

People danced. People actually danced.

Steven, if you keep this up...

2007-03-16T02:22:00.000Z

i went to a gig last week, by myself that is. i tend to go to gigs by myself, mostly because i can’t really find people who both want to go anywhere with me AND tend to like a lot of bands i do. i don’t mean that in an emo meets indier-than-thou, i’m-so-lonely-but-i-have-the-consolation-of-being-into-much-obscurer-bands-than-you kind of way, it’s just that a lot of the people that i know with similar taste in music (although that’s a questionable concept in itself, i feel) would probably rather be sat at home watching Top Gear or Lost or whatever on Sunday night than have to forcibly spend time trying to be sociable with me. Questionable taste in television aside, i don’t really blame them. i think the last time i went to a gig with other people was, ooh, freshers’ week probably, and although i know there were a few musos there i assume most of them were just pleased to have found somewhere else to get drunk in. Ah, how sweet student prejudice is. The gig, by the way, was at Audio with Coin-Op and Fujiya & Miyagi. The latter were…well i’ve heard a lot of their material since and it sounds very impressive, but there was something a bit cringe-inducingly ‘jazz funk’ about their live presence. Maybe i was just having a bit of a bad week, because Coin-Op were also a bit disappointing, frankly. i knew of them already because they used to be on Fierce Panda and were even in the 2002 Festive Fifty with…

Coin-Op – Democracies*

…but, now, they just seem a bit contrived really. Like they’ve realised that what they were doing then, the whole Fall-larking-about-on-the-end-of-the-pier thing, became fashionable between then and now so they’re gonna try and dominate the South scene by getting trendier haircuts and ditching all their old songs. Hmm.

Anyway, last week i went to Komedia which i don’t usually go to for a number of reasons, firstly because most of their gigs charge quite far into the double figures, secondly because they have much fewer bands playing than your average venue (although when they’re good, they’re really good – the next few months sees Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid, Camera Obscura, The Skatalites (!), Scout Niblett and John Shuttleworth (!!!!!)
for instance) but also it’s difficult to tell how exactly to act in there. It’s a building with two floors acting like two separate venues and often hosts comedy acts and spoken word nights, so when a band roll in they usually get one support act, who seemingly play from the moment the doors open for half an hour, and then the main band comes on and does nearly a two hour set. It does feel like the band is in an unusual setting, like they really are playing on a stage where there’s usually stand-up or improve theatre or something, and the crowd rarely help make things less confusing. At this gig, the two blokey blokes in front of me hugging their beer bottles were leaning into each other discussing how good the guitar sound was with the acoustics in the room, while a couple of guys behind me were flailing their arms in the air and belting out the lyrics like they were crushed against the barriers on Worthy Farm.

The support in this case seemed to be The Left Outsides who when the male vocalist was singing made them sound like the folky-dokey Elbow, almost comedically so, yet when the female vocalist took her turn the songs had a certain dusty charm to them. On the drumkit was a friendly, gaffa-taped greeting that bore the legend ‘HELLO LOVE’, but seeing as that’s how The Broken Family Band commence their e-mail emissions i suspect it was their doing.

The last time i was at Komedia was to see the Brighton leg of the Phrased & Confused tour which aims to collate artists recognised for either poetic or musical accomplishment or, preferably, both. For instance, the poetic side included the magnificently bemused and bile-fuelled Brendan Cleary, the music-poetry divide was bridged by Sore Throat and of the lyrical/musical bent was former Delgados songstress Emma Pollock.

Emma Pollock - Limbs

[Edit: i like to think i’m very rarely star-struck, or at least that i’m pretty much just as awkward around most people regardless of their fame or lack thereof, but i feel like i was with Pollock. Strange really. She was just sat behind the merchandise stall but i could barely force myself to approach it, perhaps in case she happened to start singing and i’d start weeping or something, i don’t know. i think it was because i was recalling when i was about 14, being driven around rural France listening to ‘Everything Goes Around The Water’ over and over again on my cassette walkman and thinking every time that it got to the chorus, no, this can’t be mere mortals making this sound. Or maybe it is, and the rest of us are just singing all the wrong notes. i sure was a dramatic little shit in my early teens but they’ll still always be a band i adore greatly, and there will still always be some people that you simply do not talk to.]

Also on the Phrased & Confused bill was Chris T-T who, as a Brighton resident and Bee Eff Bee Dee Voe Tee was also in the crowd at the gig. He’s pretty much given up his snidely comedic light-relief pop culture swipes, like, for example:

Chris T-T – Eminem Is Gay

…and is mostly concerned with either socio-political (with emphasis on the political) lyrical attacks or heartstring-weaving acoustic domestica-yarn songs. The band noticed him in the crowd, which was sweet i felt, and at the beginning of the encore Steven Adams even worked a line from Chris’ tune ‘The Tin Man’ and shot him a sly wink. A touching moment, soiled only by realising that i’m a big enough T-T geek to have realised it ever happened.

Chris T-T – The Tin Man

Anyways, the band in question were indeed The Broken Family Band and they were good, which is about as extensive as my critical assessment of the performance is going to get i’m afraid. i should point out that although Steven (who could possibly, as far as i’m aware, now no longer be referred to primarily as the singer from The Broken Family Band but as the singing Adams from The Singing Adams?):

The Singing Adams – Minus Nines

…held the attention of a very warm and admiring crowd, guitarist Jason turned out to be quite the rock n’ roll showman, managing to get an audience member to chuck him a light in the middle of a song, pulling one of the smuggest grins ever seen in popular musical performance during the solo in ‘Poor Little Thing’ and wearing a Boston t-shirt to mark the passing of lead singer Brad Delp that weekend. There was even a short improvised rendition of ‘More Than A Feeling’.

Surprisingly (i felt anyway) they started with this:

The Broken Family Band – The Perfect Gentleman

…and ended with this:

The Broken Family Band – You’re Like A Woman

The only interesting downside was that near the end the audience were asked to hold hands with the person they turned up with or were standing next to, in a move that Mr Adams recalled from seeing Lenny Kravitz at some enormo-dome somewhere hot, and i realise that i’m seemingly the only sad bugger in the room who’d turned up by himself.

*please note: i’ve no idea what an .ogg file is.

Rave Of Mutilation

2007-03-15T18:19:00.000Z

Can i say ‘jag!’ around here? No? Okay.

This Saturday sees no-rave noiseniks The Walk Off play Unit 22 in an event organised by South coast promoters extraordinaire Ejector Seat. DJ sets will come from also-promoters-actually-but-we’ve-turned-up-to-play-records SubSonic and something moronic called The Thomas Ferguson Band . i do realise that it says all of that in the poster above.

i apologise if you do not live on the South Coast of England as this is probably not of much interest to you.

So, uhm, have a song, about walking. A cover version about walking. Yes.

The Stranglers – Walk On By

Just a band

2007-03-12T00:21:00.000Z

00:16am

If you tune into Radio 1 right now you'll hear Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip performing live. Should be good. i think you ought to really.

01:31am

Well i guess you missed it then. BUT if you’re reading this before this time next Monday morning you’ll be able to hear them on Listen Again for the Rob Da Bank show. What i didn’t realise was that there was another session from Kate Nash at Maida Vale who was surprisingly great actually, intricate motor-mouthed ol'-joanna pop with a fractured heart and an especially healthy bout of swearing in it, a bit like a cross between Lily Allen and pre-production Regina Spektor. Sweet.

i’m afraid this show is one of the ones that makes me feel i can’t keep up as well as i used to. Only today i discovered a rather good white-soul atmosphere-smith called Jamie Woon, and today Rob played the Burial remix of his Appalachian folk cover ‘Wayfaring Stranger’. Losing my edge, evidently. (i think the term is ‘sadface’?)

Empty beds and lonely dinners

2007-03-11T12:52:00.000Z

i was alerted to Au Revoir Simone only this morning by my lover, principally because she asked if i’d heard much by them and, shamefully, i hadn’t. She was curious because she likes the name and thinks their legs look great in photographs, and although i’ve not checked the whole legs thing – i’m not really sure it stands with my principles – i agree about the tag; maybe it’s a stark yet forlorn goodbye to Nina Simone? Or a floral yet scathing dismissal to Simone Clarke? Let’s face it, probably not. Anyhow, i’ve included ‘Through The Backyards’ off their debut album Verses Of Comfort, Assurance and Salvation, partly because it was the only one i could find BUT also because it featured on Grey’s Anatomy a while back.

Au Revoir Simone – Through The Backyards

The trio’s new album The Bird Of Music came out this week in the UK on
Moshi Moshi, if you’re in Japan though you’ll have to wait until April and US readers (uhm, hi?) will have to wait until May 1st. They play annual bus driver’s holiday South By Southwest this year, which should be nice for those jammy A&R gits, and you can hear some of their (really rather good) tracks, as always, on here.

Post rock: As poetic as the crumbs in my beard

2007-03-10T17:51:00.000Z

We like Jamie and owe him a drink.

More stuff through the letterbox this morning which has taken a while to get listened to because we’re so excited by the wealth of Breezeblock shows suddenly available to download. Oooooooh yes.

There’s a new single from Stylus Rex due on Monday (called, ever-so-slightly alarmingly, ‘Squelch Freak’) released on the new label BijouBeats, the not-unreasonably-monikered division of LA-based breakbeat haven BijouBreaks. It is indeed freaky AND squelchy and you’re dancing feet pretty much need this in their lives.

Also on the doormat was new single from Smilex called – i’m afraid – ‘Flimsy Fickle Fashion (Fuck Off And Die)’. Uhm, lovely. It clocks in at 1:46, it regurgitates a flaccid cod-punk of the sort Towers Of London can only dream of and if you can’t guess what the song’s about, it’s about 105 seconds too long.

Thankfully, though, there was also a couple of new releases from Truck Records, one being new single ‘Come To Love’ from Popjustice favourites Trademark. It’s very Pet shop Boys-y, wondrously synthetic and you can here the leading track right here. Also in the parcel was the new split 7” between Hayman, Watkins, Trout & Lee and The Epstein, which looks very promising, yet i haven’t got the heart to tell the Truckers that i haven’t currently got a (working) turntable. i’ve also not got the heart to upload any of the tracks, so you’ll just have to go out and buy them in’t. (You can, however, get a load of Epstein bootlegs here and listen to both of their tracks on the single – ‘Black Dog’ and ‘6:06pm’ – right here so go and do that too.)

However, last and by many means least i received a new, supposedly more professional demo of last year’s 2006: The Love EP by south-coast cut-up cretin Ziggy Bollus. (It’s called an EP but lasts 45 minutes, i.e. one side of a C90, and is eleven tracks long.) i say supposedly because, although the content is plenty interesting, the sound quality is utterly horrible. The original album was released last year on Helen Llewellyn Product Nineteen Recordings but available only on cassette, which obviously bemused a great deal of people who are even starting to regard CD as an outmoded form of audio data handling. It prompted a certain Rob Da Bank to react with a great deal of format puzzlement on its arrival at Radio 1 HQ – judging by that response he might as well have received a wax cylinder or encountered a homing pigeon trying to recite the EP with a penny whistle on demand*.

Bollus put the use of cassette down to technophobia rather than nostalgia purposes and it’s plain to see, or hear rather, because in trying to convert the EP to compact disc he has, for want of a better phrased, completely bollocksed it up. The recording levels are set so far into the red that a lot of it just sounds like indistinguishable fuzzy white noise, which if you’re The Thermals or something probably works in your favour but for a plunderphonic scamp who thinks too hard it takes a great deal away from the work, especially the central track ‘The 237 Songs Closest To Me When Mary Called My Name’ that, clocking in at over 29 minutes, sounds like someone’s replaced the magnetic strip with emery paper. Oh well, judge for yourself, although if you want to hear the original rendering you’re going to have to dig out your old boom-box and start trawling the eBay of your mind.

Ziggy Bollus – 50 Seconds Of Love (radio edit)**
Ziggy Bollus – Biscuit City
Ziggy Bollus – Vitamin Dee Dee (wishpigmentation)

[Edit: You’ll be glad to hear (or probably not, after that) that Mr Bollus has assured me he is working on new material, using computers and everything.]

*actually, that’s not a bad idea, get the bugger on the phone.
**note that the radio edit is 49 seconds long. What larks.

Oh we went fiddly diddly diddly diddly fiddly diddly diddly diddly dee

2007-03-10T00:54:00.000Z

i’ve got spaghetti on my window. That’s not a euphemism or anything, i really do have spaghetti on my window. My staple diet at the moment is about 60% spaghetti and i have to eat in on the windowsill as i’m concerned all the steam billowing from it will set off the fire alarm, and i was a bit too rigorous slurping it up this afternoon.

It is at this point that i should apologise for the lack of quality control in posts so far. Hopefully my better half will say something soon for you, although firstly she is very busy with university work (a concept that for my art student brain is becoming increasingly alien), and secondly you (the abstract construct we believe to be ‘the reader’) are probably doing something else and don’t even subsist as a mass.

Where was i? Oh yes.

This March (hey, that’s now!) Misty’s Big Adventure will be embarking on a tour which they’ve delightfully called A Month Of Tuesdays. Because, well, they all fall within a month of each other, and they all happen on a Tuesday. A bit like that old Linoleum song. Anyway. They look like so:

Tuesday 13th March – London Water Rats
Tuesday 20th March – London Water Rats
Tuesday 27th March – Birmingham Glee Club (with Poppy & The Jezebels)
Tuesday 3rd April – Manchester Jabez Clegg (with The Retro Spankees!)

How glorious are those going to be, especially with support bands like that? Very, hopefully.

The Retro Spankees! – Mr Brilliant

Although i’ve not see them play on the same bill before, MBA and the Spankees! go together beautifully. They shouldn’t really, seeing as some of the Retros are the spit of Grandmaster Gareth’s arch nemeses The Teats, but they’ve got a deft hand when it comes to skewed pop brilliance too so really it makes sense. As did the last support act i saw flank Misty’s:

KateGoes - Yoyo

i’d not seen or heard of KateGoes before their Misty’s support slot but the next day i eagerly proclaimed them to be the best band in the world ever ever. Well, i suppose maybe they did get me a bit over excited but they had lyrics concerning how terrible they were at playing Pogs, one song comprised entirely of the word ‘flob’ and the bassist decided to start fishing in the middle of the gig. The place wasn’t particularly full at that point but i was stood near the middle of the venue and the guy in front of me, who had both been exchanging grins of bemusement and delight, stepped towards me and said “I never thought anyone could make music like this”. i told him that i thought my heart exploded and we went back to the grinning and pupil dilation towards said band.

Anyway, i hear that one of these Misty’s gigs is going to have a setlist voted for entirely by the viewers of their MySpace page. Seeing as i won’t be there, and i’d rather have a slap in the buttocks with a wet towel than a MySpace profile, i won’t be voting. But if i was…

Misty’s Big Adventure – Fighting For My Life
Misty’s Big Adventure – Microwave
Misty’s Big Adventure – The Whaleians

Apparently the new Misty’s album, Funny Times, is finished but took so long to get done because no record company would have them. Jeez, what a world. But i hope it’s a world that has a good weekend.

Annals Retentive: 2006

2007-03-09T01:18:00.001Z

If art school has taught me anything (and i’m starting to wonder if it actually has) it’s that i hate nostalgia. Presumably because the majority of our tutors are around the age where they can remember (or, as the masturbatory drugs phrase puts it, not remember) the Sixties, new students are virtually on arrival reminded that we are all still in thrall to a decade that withered away nearly forty years ago. Our first lecture, for instance, was about said decade and how (this is a direct quote, or rather as close as i can get through the jumbled slices of paper and string in my tired mind, but the most important words are still intact) "a thing called magic still existed". We all, of course, live burdened with the post-modern condition that makes us believe the world will only get worse – it wouldn’t be a profound stretching of the imagination, i don’t think, to hear that this is part of the reason. At the start of this term, our first lecture was about Andy Warhol and those hep Factory cats, accompanied by slides of his numerous and thus quickly tedious portrait prints that have been rammed down our visual lugholes since deciding art would be a great subject to study at GCSE. It strikes me as perverse that, even given the reminiscent age of the staff, such a cynical and questioning subject as art can be so rose-tinted about any period of history, let alone a twentieth-century one. The sun shone every day, they say. The eyes of strangers were full of rainbows and hence everyone loved. All the unbettered ideas were being had. They nearly neglected to mention there was a war on.

[Edit: When Moldy Peaches first arrived in Britain, there was a large NME article centred around them written by one of New York’s most esteemed hacks (i can’t recall who) which basically said you limeys never got over punk. i was annoyed at this, more because of the way in which the article only talked about the band themselves when mentioning the rumour that they drank each other’s urine, but in hindsight it was a very accurate point. Here, in Britain, we haven’t got over punk and we haven’t got over the Sixties, and i doubt that it hasn’t made some sort of hindrance to progress in most areas of culture and society. With regards to music, The Rolling Stones had what i’ve heard was the biggest grossing tour of recent years and, although i much prefer the support of a live artist refusing to die to the over-reverence of a dead artist you can’t remember living, i can’t help but want that accolade to have gone to someone else.]

i told one of my tutors this – one who, because of her lesser age, pines more for the days of long black overcoats, Morrissey’s credibility and when Nick Cave was a smackhead – and pointed out that maybe i’m just suffering from nostalgia envy. This is a particularly good point, especially when pondering what the ‘Noughties’ (bleurgh) will be remembered for. Uhm, Iraq. Uhm, the internet. Uhm, i’m struggling here. We’ve been living on revivals for too long now, as proven by the wealth of movements prefixed by ‘new’ – New Wave of New Wave, New Rock Revolution, New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, Nu Metal, New Acoustic Movement and so on. The last reasonably original cultural movement i can think of was rave (grunge was an almost onomatopoeic regurgitation of a punk/college rock hybrid, Britpop was British Invasion Mark 2 only not as successful etc.), and now that even that has been re-hashed as New Rave it’s difficult to know where to go next.

But, then again, i disagree with nostalgia on principle as it doesn’t let us learn from our mistakes. Which is why, dear reader, i’m worried i’m suffering from it myself. With regards to music, i go along with Our John’s view that the best ever year for music is the one you’re in now, but it doesn’t seem quite right to let people believe what i’ve just written up there, especially myself, when i know that so much (for want of a better phrase) good stuff has gone largely unnoticed. So, in an attempt to combat this, i will ramble on at great length in a vastly self-indulgent manner about the years i begrudgingly admit that i remember most fondly, i.e. all the ones that occurred this side of the Millennium, with accompanying songs. Agreed? Agreed.

Baby steps first, as i work my way backwards, starting with 2006. Ah, those were the days! The crazy fashions we wore! The zany crazes we followed! The long hot summer evenings! Etc.! It feels quite fitting starting with this one, not only because it was so recent that a lot of our weblog brethren are still reflecting on it, but also because it was, if i’m being quite frank, one of my least favourite years on record, largely made sweeter by a relatively limited yet very VERY wonderful list of things:

1) The co-creator of this blog
2) My father and his lover’s wedding
3) Park Farm Shop
4) We Are The Pipettes*

But as my memories are basically formulated by or around songs, i’ll just have to post you a few of them.

Now – The Incase

i should admit that the reason i’ve even heard of Now, even though they’re on the excellent Pickled Egg Records, is that the keyboard player used to be my art lecturer at Arts Institute Bournemouth. Alas i can’t remember much of the content of these lectures, other than one was about that controversial United Colours of Benetton advertising campaign and that she’d describe everything she didn’t like as “chronic”, but rather refreshingly for an art lecturer she was actually willing to stay behind afterwards and talk to you more about art. i think we had a debate about Martin Creed once and a reasonably lengthy talk about the use of contemporary artwork by Manic Street Preachers. What i remember more, though, is being sat by the radio at 2.55am one morning listening to Radio 1’s sadly missed (by me) magazine show OneWorld and, specifically, their Pickled Egg special where, because the show finished at three and they’d already played the early Go! Team single they previously said they didn’t have time for, i assumed i’d missed their airing of a Now track. But, rather spectacularly the show finished on this, meaning that those clattering clangs at the end segued straight into the next programme. i miss radio like that. Is that a tear forming?

The Schla La Las – Hot As Possible

This is my favourite Schla’s track so far, particularly as it sounds a bit like ‘My Best Friend’s Girl’ by The Cars only, y’know, good. i first saw Schla La Las in 2005 but i met most of them when stumbling into a marquee tired and confused on the Sunday night at Truck. Unbeknown to me, George Schla was the same as George who writes for Drowned In Sound and so we had something to talk about pretty quickly. After a while George admitted that after a few drinks she desperately needed the toilet and yet, as any glam camper knows, the cubicles on the third night of any festival are a no-go area – as i had discovered earlier that evening when my good friend Jonathan found (and there isn’t really any way of skirting around this i’m afraid) a footlong turd in the sink. Anyway, in an act of (in hindsight, quite laughable) gallantry i said i’d stand at the wooded perimeter of the festival site, keep guard to make sure nobody asks her what the hell she’s up to and whistle loudly with my eyes closed while nature took its course. On the way there though, we were stopped by a reasonably inebriated reveller who seemed to know who George was. A few moments later they asked, “where are you off to then?”
“Oh”, said George, “well we’re going to the woods just over there. I’m just off to…you know…powder my nose.”
“Ah, I see”, said our acquaintance, giving both of us a knowing look. “Well, you’re welcome to do it in my tent if you want.”
All i could do was stand there and surpress my laughter as George’s face turned to a picture of horrified bemusement, thinking that a passer-by had just quite sincerely offered her the chance to urinate in their tent, whereas they obviously thought that powdering our noses meant we were off to do a line of coke together.

Yaporigami - Yamato

Before Adaadat released their really-quite-good-you-know compilation Trade & Distribution Almanac Volume III i’d not been aware of Yaporigami and, who knows, may even have been in a pub at the same time as him/her without realising it. As far as i’m aware, T&DAVIII is the only compilation i’ve ever awarded ten stars (unless you count ‘Songbook’ which, considering its near-biblical status in my head, i don’t).

Easy Star All Stars featuring Morgan Heritage - Electioneering

Who would have thought that a reggae tribute to OK Computer would not only work but still be just as enjoyable several plays later? Most feedback i got about Easy Star’s previous release, Dub Side Of The Moon, was that it was astounding on the first listen but tiresome on the second. Also, Radiodread is only one of two reggae-based band puns i’ve heard yet it is definitely the worst. Then again, the other one is Jah Division.

Coco Electrik – Apple Pie (Skylab remix)

Let’s end tonight on my favourite remix of last year, even though the numerous remixes of 'Atlantis To Interzone' gave it a fair bit of competition (especially as the Klaxons remixes made a fairly poor song sound interesting, whereas the remix of Miss Anne Booty simply made quite a sedate song sound like it’d happily chisel your face off). i don’t know why Coco Electrik hasn’t snatched Goldfrapp’s crown and isn’t shifting more units than that last woeful Madonna rekkid did. She’s already recorded ‘Cuts and Lies’ with Acoustic Ladyland, and although i prefer it when they’re doing all that that skronk-jazz-noise that irritated Jools Holland, i won’t begrudge them the chance at sultriness. In terms of the dancefloor fitted somewhere between my mind and my ass, though, Skylab’s rendering off ‘Apple Pie’ obliterated all.

However, if you’re interested, single of the year for me was ‘Fashion Parade’.

*(Sorry i was mildly distracted by the new video for ‘ABC’.)

They're not blood, they're Cherryade

2007-03-07T19:31:00.000Z

The second ever Hey Charlie! post is tonight being celebrated with the consumption of Crawford's Bourbon Creams.

i should maybe have mentioned in Our Virgin Post that whenever i make a compilation, dj set or similar i have, for a good few years now, started with a People Like Us track which, given its full title from the Another Kind of Humor/Another Kind of Murder split LP with Abraxas, is called 'Sing With Melodious Inarticulate Sound And Frequent Changes Between Falsetto And Normal Voice In The Manner Of Swiss And Tyrolean Mountain-Dwellers...Please'. i was instead going to draw your attention to the track OB & Cha Cha, as it reminds me of a film my friend made near the end of last year that at one point involves me putting on a white boiler suit, painting my hair with a brush and green paint and then collapsing. Then, having noted her recent additions to her site, i was going to point out her remix of 4:33 by John Cage, particularly as i gave a presentation about the very same piece last Thursday to a group of students who plainly weren't interested and, perhaps justifiably, didn't find my accompanying projection of completely blank OHP acetates remotely amusing. But, as Vicki Bennett is a firm believer in the power of profit through free distribution, i thought i'd just post a link to her exhaustive list of downloads which covers pretty much her complete discography and lasts well over 24 hours. i say 'pretty much' because i'm still unable to find the track she made for the 1999 Work & Leisure International commission in Manchester. Ah well, someday.

The (almost) entire People Like Us back catalogue.

Letting the circle be unbroken though, or rather granting the triangle the three sides it requires, the next release in the People Like Us schedule is a collaboration with one Ergo Phizmiz. Yesterday in the post i received a lovely parcel from Peter & Sarah Nelson which included the new Phizmiz album on WOMB Records which appears to be a collection of choice cuts from 2001 to 2006. i’ve not heard it yet, but rifling through a few seedees this afternoon i came across another Ergo composition i already had on one of The Wire’s free Tapper covermounts. Listening to this again, i’m pretty certain that WOMB must be the sort of place they only let members of the magic circle into.

Ergo Phizmiz – Sticky White Glue (extract): Rectify

Also in the package though was a lovely couple of releases from Listen With Sarah herself that recently ‘dropped’ from Cherryade Records. So lovely are the people of Cherryade that they included some jelly cherries in a miniature pick n’ mix bag with the parcel. One thing i found particularly intriguing/unnerving is the cover of the most recent LWS EP, The World Of Listen With Sarah. Because, as pictured above, it depicts Sarah sat at an organ belting out her hits; only, it is a doctored interpretation of a record cover that, as a cack-handed volunteer for a fairly esteemed second-hand record shop, i’ve had the pleasure of staring at on many an occasion. Yes, i’ve even been known to play the recordings of said Blackpool-based Wurlitzer demon Reginald Dixon to unsuspecting members of the public on rainy Saturday afternoons, particularly The World Of Reginald Dixon as it opens with a triumphant and quintessential rendition of ‘I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside’. The World Of Listen With Sarah, however, opens with her rendition of Lemon Jelly’s ‘Ramblin’ Man’, only replacing the original narrator with one Andy Kershaw.

Listen With Sarah – Ramblin’ Andy

That’s all to be getting on with for now really, except to point out that today’s title is indeed a reference to the rather outstanding new Los Campesinos! single that you can still download for no pennies if you click on the link sixteen words previously. What a nice group of young artists they are.

What i See When i Close My Eyes

2007-03-07T00:15:00.000Z

"The blank canvas consumes me, and I quiver at its ferocity. There is nowt so similarly terrifying." - Augustus Sterling

Dear reader, thank you for existing. Have a song:

Bearsuit - Hei Joska, Hei Jokkunen