You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April, 2008.
Tape’s last album Rideau is a massive favourite of mine. Its languid mix of guitars and fizzing electronics reminds me of that strange and seemingly-mythical land, summer. So, with winter’s long and gnarled fingers finally beginning to loosen their grip on Britain’s wizened ankles, I’m especially pleased to have a new soundtrack to accompany the sound of it been kicked in the face and tossed to the southern hemisphere for them to deal with. Listening to Luminaire, I’m feeling ready for whatever that fairest of seasons can bring. Except those stupid bastard-faced insects (wasps, are you reading?), which will inevitably make me squeal and flap like a deflating zeppelin. Read the rest of this entry »
Philip Jeck’s latest album for Touch, Sand (alliteratively aligning itself with Seven, Soaked and Stoke), is even more explicit about its reflective nature than usual, coming as it does with a quote from Emily Dickinson’s poem “The Chariot” on the cover. Like the poem, the album feels like a heavy-hearted reminiscence on the course of a life, with its long-distant highs long worn away by the falling sands of time. The end result is almost unspeakably moving, and may well be Jeck’s masterpiece. Read the rest of this entry »
There is a huge monument on the Greenwich peninsula in the shape of a giant white female breast. Nobody knows exactly what it is for, but it is believed to have been erected as part of some pagan celebration at a particularly auspicious date in the calendar; perhaps the big tit symbolised the free-flowing wealth that they hoped they would be sucking on in the future. Unsure of its true significance, UK Plc sold the thing off to some Americans who believed they were buying an actual female breast; they also bought a plot of land in Croydon where they expected to begin digging to excavate “her” genitalia. On arrival they soon discovered their folly, and began a major recontextualisation of this once sacred place: from mammary to mammon; from nipple to Nando’s. Read the rest of this entry »
Bloody hell, The Wire didn’t make much of this, did they? What did Portishead do to them, come round their office and stick a Mika CD in a Mika Vainio CD case? “Two good tracks, but the rest sounds like animal faeces being sucked into a giant hoover while the circusmaster just stands around collecting cash”, they said, although I paraphrase a bit. By any other yardstick, including that deployed by what seems like pretty much the entire population of the internet - who, given the leakier-than-a-Tory-cabinet nature of that vast land, probably all have this on mp3 already - this is a stunning album. It is far better than we have any right to expect from a band who –again, like a Tory cabinet – haven’t existed for the last decade. Read the rest of this entry »
“Tickets for Marc Almond…any spare tickets for Marc Almond?”. It was obvious that the ticket touts were having a bit of trouble pitching this one. “’Ere Trev…what’s this Current 93 all about then?” “To be honest, it is just another example of your run of the mill apocalyptic folk band…visions of the second coming of Christ, eternal damnation, what have you.” (a pause) “That “Tainted Love” is a good tune though, innit? Spare tickets, any spare tickets, I’ll buy or sell!” Read the rest of this entry »
Michael Rother, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Mobius took to the stage for the very first time in the UK to open this year’s Ether ragbag on the South Bank. Shuffling on to stand behind their desks, this looked more like the opening night for a symposium of retired German scientists; actually that is probably unfair on the spritely Rother, who is still a few years away from collecting his autobus pass. In front of footage of themselves as far younger men, and facing an extremely diverse and expectant crowd, they began to tinker with their boxes of wires. And, slightly worryingly, a laptop. Read the rest of this entry »
Another show, another photo of a bridge; this time the impressive spine of the Hammersmith flyover. I bought Monkeyman a pair of tickets to see Bjork in the Apollo for Christmas. I’d have been a bit gutted if I wasn’t invited along, especially in hindsight: imagine if I had to put up with Monkeyman going on and on about how brilliant it all was, and how beautiful she looked and how there were these people with these funny clothes and blah blah blah. I would have had no option but to run outside screaming, and to try to set fire to myself; although I would have failed due being sodden through with tears. Read the rest of this entry »
Ignore that tag that says “album review” (even more than you usually would). This is even less of an album review than all of the others which bask in the overinflated self-importantness of that title. Think of it more as a public service announcement, but by someone who couldn’t be bothered creating a new category for such posts. Read the rest of this entry »
Listening to this new album by Carla Bozulich’s new beat combo Evangelista reminds me of Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s 21 Grams film from a few year’s back . Under the mental strain caused by two hours spent watching Sean Penn’s method boy gurning some unspeakable tragedy, everything has fractured; the narrative to what may well once have been a love story is now horribly deranged and disfigured. I’d imagine if I had the fortitude to listen to this a thousand times I could piece it back together again. Not sure I do though; this is tough going…yet, damn it, perversely enjoyable. Read the rest of this entry »
The gLASSsHRIMP show on Resonance 104.4FM now has a functioning website again, where we’ll post playlists, links, photos, and details of forthcoming shows (of which there are a couple of crackers coming up…you’ll have to head over there to find out). Hopefully podcasts and stuff someday too. glASSsHRIMP - it’s for your ears.
I for one can’t wait to see Toumani Diabaté opening Bjork’s rolling cultural revue at the cavernous (for me at least; I’m feeling agoraphobic at the thought of it) Hammersmith Apollo next week. I’m going to be jostling with the colourfully-dressed mobile-waving kids down the front to get a glimpse of this nimble-fingered wizard of the kora. If the end result of his appearance there is that a few extra people go home with a copy of Diabaté’s first-rate Mandé Variations, then that can only be good for humankind as a whole, I reckon. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m far from impressed with these current experimental London weather conditions. I mean, we even set aside a whole area of the UK for random non-seasonal post-Easter snow flurries and the like - it is called Scotland. When the clocks went forward last week (robbing me of an hour of my weekend, which I won’t forget; when it is least expecetd – some time around October probably – I’m nicking that back) I was on the verge of cracking out my shorts and my Soul Jazz Studio One compilations. I even checked my black book to see if I could round myself up some suitably-clad bitches, but the closest I came was the phone number of a vet in Highgate. Instead I find myself inside as the arctic winds whirl round outside, curtains drawn, black-mooded and bitchless, listening to the latest release on that most wintery of labels, Miasmah. Read the rest of this entry »
Good things come in threes, some say. Bad things come in threes, I also hear. Hence we can conclude that anything that comes on its own is neither good nor bad, and is merely average. So when football fans chant “there is only one Ali Karimi”, as I’m sure they do, they aren’t being especially complimentary to the free-scoring Iranian midfielder, and some would argue they probably should be taken outside and shot for their insolence. If they haven’t been already. Thankfully, this new release from Steven R Smith under his Ulaan Khol guise (sounds more like a Mongolian dictator to me) is the first part of a trilogy, which means it is possible to form an opinion on it. It must be either good or bad. QED.
I wrote the following about ex Kraftwerk/Neu!/La Dusseldorf drummer Klaus Dinger a few years ago in another place: “whilst Kraftwerk were rehearsing for a TV show, Klaus got into this ridiculous groove and couldn’t get out; three decades later he is still there”.
Well, he isn’t there any more. Tribute from ex-colleague Michael Rother here.
Last night I opted to miss ninety minutes of watching Arsenal players fumbling scoring opportunities by bundling the ball off the opposition’s goal line like people who didn’t quite grasp the fundamental point of the game, and instead opted for an alternative highlight in last night’s North London entertainment listings: a first UK appearance by the newest signings to Warp records, Pivot. Read the rest of this entry »
Some years ago the Milkman was interviewing Kieran Hebden aka Four Tet for his ever-flourishing website, and he asked me for some useful questions. Which was a pretty stupid thing to do, as you can imagine, as the kinds of things which interested me weren’t exactly the kinds of things that he thought his legion of fact-hungry readers would be after. For example, one of my suggested questions was “Do you ever accidentally call someone by sitting on your phone during a meeting?”. We’ll probably never know, I’m afraid. Another question which I don’t think he put to the big-haired electronica doyen was “Considering the best thing you ever did was “Glasshead”, how come you don’t do any really long tracks any more?”. Read the rest of this entry »
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