You are currently browsing the monthly archive for March, 2008.
Pseudonyms are the last hiding place of the devil, or Derren Brown as he likes to call himself these days. That is, of course, after he has exhausted his usual well-established list of hiding places - the blue dress, the jar of spicy pasta sauce, Mysterious Ways plc, and so on. Behind the name Isambard Khroustaliov lurks Sam Britton, one half of the inveterate sound-fiddlers Icarus, and on Nowhere he indulges in some devilishly good dialogue with bass clarinetist Lothar Ohlmeier. Read the rest of this entry »
The blackness scale. In order of increasing blackness:
1) Michael Jackson.
2) The night sky viewed from the edge of a mid-sized town in Hertfordshire.
3) The neighbour’s cat. It would have been higher but for the fact that it has white paws.
4) Coal.
5) James Brown (see also: the proudness scale).
6) James Brown’s hair.
7) A cormorant drowning in an oil slick. At night.
8) Jeremy Kyle’s soul.
9) The empty gaping void of all-consuming nothingness that will take the place of the Earth after the inevitable apocalypse has rinsed you and all you sinners out of the cosmos’s bowl.
10) Robedoor. Read the rest of this entry »
I was saddened to read the other day that Polaroids are becoming obsolete, with both the camera and the film being discontinued by the supplier. Not only will future generations not get to experience the joy I felt as a child when ghostly images began to emerge from the medium’s wet greyness, but they are destined to remain forever baffled by Outkast lyrics. Which will be a real setback, as it is highly likely that all the key moments of their young existence will be accompanied by a bald, portly man playing “Hey Ya” from behind a bank of unenthusiastically flashing lights. I hope that Bleeding Heart Narrative have snaffled as much of the remaining film as they could, given that they intend giving away a unique Polaroid with each copy of All That Was Missing We Never Had In The World. Otherwise it’ll be like the Hoover free flights fiasco all over again, but instead of a swarm of baying old people getting hysterically litigious over a trip to Malaga or somewhere equally shitty, there will be literally dozens of disaffected experimental music fans tutting really quite loudly. Read the rest of this entry »
(Note: this review ends with a poor quality and highly unoriginal pun. Readers of a sensitive disposition should avert their eyes now, go stare at some kittens or something). He is everywhere these days, James Blackshaw. I have even started seeing him at gigs, and when someone new by the name of Blackshaw started at work recently, I actually felt compelled to check that we hadn’t employed a guitarist to liven the place up a bit (well, my suggestion of a random employee sacrifice on the altar of the photocopier was vetoed, so I assumed they must have had a better idea). In the wake of last year’s excellent The Cloud of Unknowing album come these two unmissable new releases. Read the rest of this entry »
Maybe due to the fact that I spent my childhood living by the sea, when I travel to a landlocked country I become acutely aware of its inaccessibility. Even here in London town it doesn’t feel so bad; it wouldn’t take all that long to get to the Kent or Sussex coast, assuming the ex-Connex train lines weren’t having one of their periodic spazz-outs (note: never suggest to me that Southend-on-Sea is on the sea. It is not. That there water is the filthy great Thames estuary, and no number of piers and grotty arcades will convince me otherwise). That absence was felt on my recent trip to the Czech republic, particularly when trapped on one of their worse-than-Connex train services - the rail replacement bus between Stribro and Kozolupy which caused me no little consternation is likely to remain in place for at least a couple of years, so the weary locals told me. Still, at least I had the new ocean-themed album by Chris Abrahams and Mike Cooper to assuage my various complaints. Read the rest of this entry »
…so the robotic monkey can be packed away. What did I miss while I was away? A bit of a storm, some more of that precipitous slide into recession, and Scotland beating England in the rugby? If those aren’t the first signs of the forthcoming apocalypse, I don’t know what is. Read the rest of this entry »
I made some sushi the other week. Well you could hardly expect to have been invited after the scene you made last time. I didn’t know what to say, where to look, or which cleaning product I should be using to get that out of the carpet. Anyway, I discovered that making sushi is a bit on the fiddly side. I remember that I had been working on one particular item for about fifteen minutes, when I stopped and looked at it, and realised all I had was wet cabbage. Given how long they spend on making their food, I’m surprised that the Japanese even have time to eat, never mind make ever-growing mountains of blistering psych-rock albums. Read the rest of this entry »
Scrabble doesn’t amuse me all that much for some reason; maybe because to be good at it you have to learn loads of stupid two-letter words with no vowels that look like typos. I do enjoy cryptic crosswords though. I don’t necessarily expect you all to share the joy I experienced when I worked out that “synthetic cream” was an anagram of “Manchester City” or, even better, that “Presbyterians” could be rearranged to give probably its exact opposite, “Britney Spears”. However, if I had the time I’d probably even consider setting a puzzle or two on this site. Consider yourselves lucky then, that this strict twenty four hours per day/seven days per week system that we seem to be dragooned into prevents such self-indulgence. This new album from AGF (7 points. Hang on, that’s not a word! Challenge!) probably caught my attention by challenging the rules of language that my brain holds dear, but it kept it by virtue of being their - or rather her - strongest suite to date. Read the rest of this entry »
Koploop. Got. Zeeg. Got. Woeling. Need. Grom. Got. Fabriek and Fabriek. Need. Bijeen. Need! Thole. Need! Feberdrom. Let me check….yep, got. Tapes of the Day. Still need that. Music for Intermittent Movies…is that the foil-lined one…I need that. Sometimes I feel collecting Machinefabriek releases is like trying to finish off a Panini stickerbook. You run the risk of ending up with half a dozen Alain Giresses and not even sniff of a Karl Heinz Rumenigge. The ones I have listed above are those that have been released - according to his official discography, although sometimes I wonder how even he keeps track - since my last Machinefabriek update last Autumn. Such a ridiculously prodigious output. Read the rest of this entry »
…got me all in the Czech Republic. I’m sure I’ve got some of that head nod shit somewhere here too…hang on, sorry, that’s the egg nog shit. I get those two confused all the time; still, you are more than welcome to some. Read the rest of this entry »
Not content to close the door after the horse has bolted, this site goes on to build a monument to the now-departed beast, equipping it with wings and apocryphal fire-breathing tendencies, pausing only briefly to bestow upon it a made-up history as a champion hurdler, and then charges a load of confused Irish tourists a tenner to tour the empty stables. I know this was released a wee while ago now, and all those who come here trying to sniff the future would be nonplussed by the fetid stench of weeks-old shellac, but I’ve only recently got around to unearthing this from amidst the steaming pile of fine 2008 releases.
Reviews on here of cracking Thrill Jockey releases are like buses it seems. You wait ages for one, and then a bunch of kids kids start laughing at your haircut and throwing chips at you. After the glorious soundscapes of Nemeth’s Film come another couple of changes of style, but anchored to that key core of Chicago musicians the label is more famous for. Read the rest of this entry »
Let’s get this straight right from the start: five bands doth not a festival maketh. It just makes a logistical nightmare with vast potential for overrunning. Still, those funding the event probably wouldn’t have known that - for they are in fact the Vienna Public Utility Company. This is not their field, really. For the confused, a bizarre tale: a couple of years ago they were denied permission to use one of Final Fantasy’s tracks in an advert. So they commissioned some music which sounded just a little too like FF’s for them to get away with it. Instead of a lengthy court case and damages and so on, a most novel solution was agreed upon: they would fund some events which Owen Pallett of Final fantasy could curate. Genius. Imagine all disputes were solved that way. We could have had a Diana inquest “festival” curated by that rotund Egyptian (well, he ain’t gonna get the British passport now) explosion of accusations Al-Fayed. We could have Microsoft letting the EU commission do similar, with the role of curator rotating between member states every five seconds, just long enough for someone to shout out “Manu Chao!” or “Johnny Logan!”. Read the rest of this entry »
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