Wack­en Earth

I got this post­card from a super­mar­ket in a small town in NW Germany near where the fest­iv­al is held. I hope it has genu­ine Rammstein tears in the soil sample, or I’ll ask for my €3 back

Australi­an Radio Playl­ist

Here’s a playl­ist I made while I was in Melbourne of (mostly current) Australi­an stuff I heard played in vari­ous shops and cafes. Daytime Australi­an radio is where cock rock goes to die, and keeps Midnight Oil forever living off royal­ties, but I defin­itely didn’t go there with this playl­ist.

You Get Used to an Empty Room- playl­ist

Everything has been grim- the world, polit­ics, more person­al matters. Here is a short playl­ist of a certain mood of corrus­cat­ing bleak­ness.

Published
Categorised as Music

I want my MTV (late 90s edition)

I was a teen­ager in the dark ages when you had to have light­ning reflexes to tape songs you liked when they came on. I didn’t have cable or satel­lite at home, but I did a lot of babysit­ting at houses where they had the music chan­nels. So I used to to make mix tapes of music videos. Here’s some of the stuff I remem­ber taping.

Published
Categorised as Music

It’s a fool who doesn’t see what I see watch­ing trees

Here’s a playl­ist. There’s a certain early 80s synth pop mood, even if all the songs aren’t actu­ally from that era. There’s some Russi­an stuff, there’s the Deftones cover­ing Duran Duran (yes, really). Have a good aesthet­ic­ally composed sulk on me.

Published
Categorised as Music

A gener­al update

I haven’t posted much this month because I was ill- not ill enough to need medic­al atten­tion or be bedrid­den, but not ill enough to do anything much either. Was it the virus, or not? I have no idea because of course I wasn’t able to get tested, but the symp­toms fitted, and the people in the flat next to and below me were equally ill with the same symp­toms, and I live in one of the most affected parts of the UK. I also felt tired and grey for a long time after recov­er­ing- simil­ar to after having glandu­lar fever and shingles (not helped by doing some­thing pain­ful to my shoulder in the mean­time). So it seems likely.

Cross­ing the Alps playl­ist

To travel in between Vienna and Graz, until the never-ending tunnel under the moun­tains is finished later this decade, you have to take the train over the top of the Semmer­ing Pass, going up and down over the Alps. You get some spec­tac­u­lar views, and the train­line itself is a UNESCO site. It’s hard to take good photos out of the train window, so here’s my playl­ist for over the moun­tain.

Das Geht Sich Gut Aus

I’ve been in Vienna and now a tiny village on the Austro-Hungari­an border for the last few weeks. Here’s what I’ve been listen­ing to.

Lunatrak­t­ors at Halloween

I took some photos of my “broken folk” musi­cian friends the Lunatrak­t­ors doing a Halloween perform­ance. The setting was an art install­a­tion of a crypt of obsol­ete tech­no­logy in a tunnel on the seafront by  Sadie Hennessy. The metal­work head­pieces were created by local jeweller and metal­work­er Billie M Vigne. 

Nervy Betters poster

I designed this poster for my friend Henry, based on Ware land­mark Scott’s Grotto, but forgot to post it here. It’s tomor­row if you are in the area.

Lunatrak­t­ors

Last week I went down to Pegwell Bay in between Rams­gate and Sand­wich to take some press shots for my friends Carli and Clair- aka the Lunatrak­t­ors. They describe their work as “broken folk” and combine folk, ambi­ent vocal over­tone work and choreo­graphy into it (Carli is also a choreo­graph­er and clown by profes­sion).

I found the fragrance separ­ate from the flower

Today’s song is Black Cat, by Broad­cast, from Tender Buttons, one of my all-time favour­ite albums (I was torn between choos­ing this or I Found the F). I really wish I had seen Broad­cast more times than I did. There seemed no hurry.

Published
Categorised as Music

Pig- Sparkle­horse

So anoth­er song- Pig by Sparkle­horse. I was consid­er­ing pick­ing Tears on Fresh Fruit, which is my other favour­ite song by them, but this won out.

Published
Categorised as Music

Ghost Fang

Kevin who I run Connect Noth­ing With Noth­ing with has an improv group called Ghost Fang. Each perform­ance includes whatever musi­cians want to take part…

Published
Categorised as Music

Nuns contem­plat­ing Dog

I took some press shots of “”pineal-poking punked-up psyche­del­ic speed­freaks” Casu­al Nun at Dream­land when they came down to Margate to play a gig recently. While everyone’s back was turned, Irak­lis won a huge toy dog from a sideshow on the first attempt.

Kleenex- Nice

So next up, Nice by Kleenex. (Who later had to rename them­selves Lili­put after pres­sure from the tissue company). Infec­tious early 80s Swiss post-punk.

Published
Categorised as Music

Over the Edge- Wipers

So I thought I would pick a song I like each day, and write some­thing about why I like it, in an attempt to make myself write more often.

Published
Categorised as Music

Bismuth

Hello from the south­ern hemi­sphere. Here’s some new press shots of my friends’ band Bismuth I took a few weeks ago at the origin­al UK Botany Bay…

Bloody Head

So here’s anoth­er gig I’m help­ing to organ­ise and did the poster for. This time I went for a pretty simple design. Spilt blood speaks for itself…

Published
Categorised as Music

Enter the Vortex

So here’s the posters I designed for two gigs I’m help­ing to put on- one in London, the other in Margate. As per the press release “Girl Sweat is the ever-chan­ging garage-noise project fron­ted by the 6ft 5” beast that is ‘Sweat’” along with the fine collec­tion of psych and drone weirdos assembled in support. My brief for the poster was “illuminati/​masons cult shit”. I hope I delivered.

Very Friendly

Here’s some photo­graphs I took of my friends’ band Very Friendly. For a while we had inten­ded to take some promo shots with a miser­able day at the beach theme, and then the beach was suddenly covered in thick snow, so this happened over a lunch break. Harry even­tu­ally got warm again. Even­tu­ally.

Prim­or­di­al Soup

Here’s a gig poster I drew recently. I was given free reign to do whatever I wanted, and it turns out what I wanted was to do a fake cyan­o­type of pondscum. Face­book event for the show here.

Dawn­walk­er

So I recently did some artwork for an album cover- Human Ruins by Dawn­walk­er (featur­ing Dane Cross from Sacred Son, who caused an incred­ible fuss last with the Black Metal fanboys with his choice of album artwork). I did the moons and runes, and someone else did the photo­graph and logo. Photos cour­tesy of Mark from the band.

Janu­ary Playl­ist

The second half of Janu­ary has been a bad time for me, with a lot of very diffi­cult things to deal with. I’ve been low on energy for doing anything much creat­ive. Here’s a playl­ist of songs I’ve been listen­ing to lately though.

Published
Categorised as Music

Domest­ic Abuse Support All-dayer fundrais­ing gig

I recently went to a local gig put on by Art’s Cool rais­ing money for the local domest­ic abuse support char­ity. It was an all-dayer, with half the lineup being local Kent bands, and the other half being from Leeds. The next day they did it all again, but in Leeds, and rais­ing money for an educa­tion char­ity there. I missed the first band, but they were kind of a super­group made up of members from the differ­ent Leeds bands

Published
Categorised as Music

They only want you when you’re seven­teen

I made this playl­ist a while back, and the post has been languish­ing in the drafts for a while, so I thought I’d finish it off for the end of the year. It’s all songs I liked when I was 17, which was in 2002

Zilin­ski album launch

So here are some much more recent gig pictures- from this week in fact. Local label M8s Records held an album launch party for Canter­bury band Zilin­ski. With Lazy Pilgrims and Trash Mammoth in support.

Cloudrat & Moloch

A couple of years ago my friend Steve Larder’s band Moloch did a split LP and tour with Amer­ic­an grind­core band Cloudrat. I found the uned­ited photos the other day, and finally sorted them out. Enjoy.

I’m Curi­ous To Know Exactly How You Are

I had to put a Hüsker Dü song in this list, as they are one of my all-time favour­ite bands, but it was hard to decide which one. In the end I went for a really obvi­ous choice- the first song of theirs I got into.

That Cat’s Some­thing I Can’t Explain

I would describe this as essen­tially a Bond theme about a Siamese cat. I’m a big fan of Syd Barrett, but have a deep pool of loath­ing for Roger Waters. I would call it an irra­tion­al hatred, but I feel like I could come up with plenty of reas­ons for my loath­ing. My moth­er is a big Pink Floyd fan, so I’ve had plenty of expos­ure over my life­time to fuel it.

Published
Categorised as Music

I just wait, I just think

I debated which Codeine song to use, the compet­i­tion was strong. Codeine are often described as Slow­core. Slow songs in Steph­en Immerwahr’s (a fitting name- his surname is German for “Always True”) clear voice with vivid images about the small despairs of every­day life and rela­tion­ships. A long even­ing alone in the Winter. I imagine a lot of people will hate this and find it dreary, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s anything but.

Published
Categorised as Music

Ponder this to get near­er to noth­ing

When I wrote the 50 Things About Me entry a little while ago, I star­ted creat­ing a playl­ist of 50 favour­ite songs. It got unwieldy and didn’t flow well though, so I gave up. Instead I’ll write a little bit every so often about songs from the list.

The Van Pelt are not famous or well-known outside a small niche. The sing­er­/song-writer  Chris Leo’s broth­er Ted Leo is much more well-known, and bass play­er Toko Yasuda has had success over the years play­ing with Enon, Blonde Redhead and St Vincent, but they never hit the big time. Instead they released two quietly treas­ured albums in the mid-90s (Sultans of Senti­ment and Steal­ing From Our Favour­ite Thieves) and then disban­ded- they’ve released a collec­tion of sessions that were inten­ded for a third album (Imagin­ary Third) and done the odd reunion tour (I was lucky enough to catch one in London-it was a very special even­ing) but I’m guess­ing only a small selec­tion of my read­ers will know them.

(((O Boards of Sunnada O)))

Anyway, in July Sunn O))) toured the UK, and I couldn’t go because I was commit­ted to work­ing long hours on this resid­en­tial course I was teach­ing, and I felt pretty sad about it. So I used It Took The Night to Believe as the prompt for that week’s creat­ive writ­ing activ­ity for my students. The previ­ous week I’d used the video for Reach for the Dead by Boards of Canada (both pieces of music gave good results in the student’s writ­ing) . While setting up the activ­ity I acci­dent­ally set off both songs at once, and discovered they actu­ally sound amaz­ing togeth­er. So enjoy. For best results, start the Boards of Canada song first.

Japan playl­ist

Here’s a Spoti­fy playl­ist I made while I was in Japan, of Japan­ese artists and music that matched my mood at the time. (All the Japan­ese bands are marked with a J).

Forgot­ten late 90s Indie Pop

A little while ago, there was a thing on Twit­ter where people used the #indieam­nesty tag to tell funny or embar­rass­ing stor­ies about their involve­ment with the whole Land­fill Indie and Nu Rave thing in the mid 2000s (there’s also a surpris­ingly intel­li­gent and self-percept­ive inter­view with Johnny Borrell (!!) here). As the Guard­i­an article I’ve linked to said, “Indie amnesty brings togeth­er thou­sands of relat­ively banal anec­dotes about unglam­or­ous people doing slightly idiot­ic things into some­thing quite majest­ic” and most of the people were writ­ing about being fool­ish and easily impressed in their teen­age years.

Published
Categorised as Music

Should a word have two mean­ings?

My three top new albums this year have all been by female solo artists, two of whom are Welsh, Cate le Bon’s Crab Day, Gwenno’s Y Dydd Olaf (the Last Day) and Artan­gels by Grimes. Crab Day is well worth check­ing out, combin­ing influ­ences from spooky 70s folk, Fleet­wood Mac and Devo.

Published
Categorised as Music

Actu­al Crimes

Last week I took some promo shots of my friends Kirsty and Aaron’s band Actu­al Crimes. They recently became a two piece after the depar­ture of Lenny for a job in the US, but are hope­fully becom­ing a three piece again in the near future. No expense was spared for this photo shoot, we bravely walked five minutes down the road to a brightly painted garage door, and devoted ourselves to posing for ooh, at least half an hour.

Fanzine Ynfytyn

My zine, Fanzine Ynfytyn, is named after a song by Welsh language post-punk band Datbly­gu (“Devel­op”). The name could be construed as either “Fanzine Idiot”, “Idiot Fanzine” or “Idiot’s Fanzine”. People either look at the name with baffle­ment, go “uh, is it Welsh in some way?” or are pleased because they know the song (those people get a free copy). In some ways I regret giving it a name that so many people struggle to pronounce or under­stand, but I’m on issue 22 now, so they’ll just have to get used to it. When I star­ted it, I only expec­ted to give a few copies to some friends who were already famil­i­ar with the song, so it wasn’t really a concern (I also had a mini collage zine called “Pobble Eh Come?” like a really mis-spelt version of the soap opera). Seeing as one of those people was a fellow language student penfriend who I had a running joke with of us mangling Welsh and German togeth­er to make one über­bendi­gedich language, I wasn’t too worried about the palat­ab­il­ity of the name. I was never expect­ing to get to issue 22, and have sold or traded hundreds of copies of some of the back issues and have them in librar­ies and academ­ic collec­tions. I was surprised I got to more than a couple of issues to be honest.

Sleat­er-Kinney

A few weeks ago I went to see Sleat­er-Kinney, one of my favour­ite bands, at the Round­house. They had been on hiatus since 2006, with the members work­ing on other projects like Portland­ia in the mean­time, so I was pleased and surprised when they announced a new album and tour. The last time they had played in the UK was when I was doing my finals, so I’d had to give it a miss. I’d seen them before at Read­ing Fest­iv­al, but I never really count short after­noon fest­iv­al sets at massive outdoor fest­ivals like Read­ing as really seeing a band prop­erly, because you’re basic­ally watch­ing them on a tv screen stand­ing at the other end of a field (one of the many reas­ons I don’t go to them any more). I don’t think I have ever been to such a big gig as the Round­house one where I just constantly ran into so many people I know and like, it was almost too much, there was someone new to say hello to every time I turned around . The band them­selves were superb, and played for an hour and half. I don’t think you could ask for more, really.

Published
Categorised as Music

Your suspi­cions I’m confirm­ing, as you find them all quite true

1) Contin­ent­al Shelf- Viet Cong
One off the radio at work. I’m not that fussed about the whole album, but I really like this single.

2) King­dom of Heav­en (Is With­in You) – The 13th Floor Elev­at­ors
From the True Detect­ive soundtrack. The seedy side of the late 60s. It really fitted the show well.

Published
Categorised as Music

Gigs of 2014

I was really broke for most of 2014. I didn’t get to go to many bigger gigs, but I did go to a lot of smal­ler ones. I made this playl­ist of songs each by a band I saw last year. It’s not an exhaust­ive list, I just picked songs I liked by bands I had a good time seeing, which were also avail­able on Spoti­fy and worked togeth­er on a playl­ist. If you are outside the UK I don’t know if all of them will play, due to a lot of them being bands of people I know putting their records out on small labels or them­selves. Hope­fully they will.

Published
Categorised as Music

Auto-sugges­ted path­ways

Long time, no see. I’ve been without a computer recently. Now it’s been fixed, I’ve got a bit of a back­log of posts. This is a spoti­fy playl­ist I made a little while back. I was going for a intro­spect­ive and slightly witchy mood.

Published
Categorised as Music

Inter­na­tion­al Pop Hits

My all-time top Finn Tukru, sent me some weird Finnish music videos from the past. (Don’t intro­duce me to any other Finns, Tukru, you might get demoted).

Ponder this to get near­er to noth­ing

Long time, no see. In the last week I star­ted a new design job, had some major dent­al work done, and also moved. Busy. I now have a bit more money, and a lot more space though, which is always a good thing. I’ve got a fair few things to catch up with here. I’ve got films I took at Homespun Fest­iv­al to devel­op and scan, and some illus­tra­tion and sewing things to finish.

Published
Categorised as Music

Frozy, Dog Legs and Los Crip­is

Last night I went to see my friends Frozy play with Dog Legs and Los Crip­is. Los Crip­is are from Argen­tina, but play over in the UK quite frequently. I don’t know any other bands from Argen­tina, so they can be my favour­ite one. I tried to take some photos, but the light­ing in the bar was appalling, and I don’t like to disturb people with flash, so here’s a music video instead. Don’t watch it if you don’t like blood. Los Crip­is have an album out now, and Frozy have one coming soon. Why not give them some money?

Published
Categorised as Music

Wake and walk and talk and take

More like wake and talk and work and talk and work lately. I’ve been work­ing teach­ing on a resid­en­tial course in an ex nunnery near St Albans this week. I’ve worked for the company for a few years on and off, teach­ing the odd course here and there. Most of their work is resid­en­tial, so I just do it occa­sion­ally. They hire out beau­ti­ful histor­ic­al build­ings and teen­agers from abroad come for 2 week holi­days. You take them out on field trips, give them lessons about cultur­al topics, and to improve their prac­tic­al use of English, and do a creat­ive project with them. This time we have been doing film-making. Last week they did a detect­ive story, this week horror stor­ies. No, you can’t see them, because of child protec­tion rules at the job.

BARR at Power Lunches

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The other night I went to see BARR aka Brendan Fowl­er at Power Lunches. I had pretty much forgot­ten about him until I saw the gig announce­ment on the Upset the Rhythm mail­ing list, but I was really happy when I saw it. I always like good spoken word. He doesn’t do so much music these days, more photo­graphy (he’d come over to the UK to give a talk at the Tate). I never got around to seeing him at the time, and some­how only a hand­ful of people I know remembered his exist­ence, and even fewer could make it on that partic­u­lar Sunday, but luck­ily it turned out my friend Tobi was coming up from Brighton. I was partic­u­larly keen to go, because the next morn­ing I was due to go off for two weeks to teach a resid­en­tial course in the middle of nowhere, so it was my last outing for a few weeks, and I’ve been a skint hermit recently.

Published
Categorised as Music

Rocks are slow life

I’ve been enjoy­ing hermit­ting recently. I’ve gone out and done the odd thing and for work, but I’ve been happy to stay in the last few weeks and work on vari­ous projects, and apply for more work, and declut­ter junk. Some­times these phases are nice.

Published
Categorised as Music

No jokes about fireman’s poles here

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Some people I know put on a byo gig on Friday at the old fire station in Stoke Newing­ton. It makes a great venue. More of these, please. The band in the photo above are Tyran­no­saur­us Dead. I didn’t take a lot of pictures, because it’s diffi­cult in low light situ­ations, and I don’t like to use flash if the ambi­ent light­ing is atmo­spher­ic.

Published
Categorised as Music

How to Be a Cult Lead­er

Last week I went to a How To Be a Cult Lead­er show. My friend Mel was doing the visu­als with Space is Ace. I liked the setup and atmo­sphere of the show a lot. There were differ­ent musi­cians dotted around the room in the small theatre, and they would each play one or two songs in turn, with a 10 minute bar/​toilet break every so often. There were also projec­tions and lights direc­ted at the two side walls. It was quite tricky to take photos, because the theatre was dark, but there were also a lot of vibrant colours I wanted to do justice to without leav­ing the performers blurred.

Published
Categorised as Music

A Hawk and a Hack­saw

The other night I went to see a Hawk and a Hack­saw at the Queen Eliza­beth Hall. My friend Fliss had a spare tick­et at the last moment. I had seen them a few times before, the picture above is one I took at ATP around 6 years ago. She had booked the tick­ets so long ago she had forgot­ten the details of the show. It turned out to be a collab­or­a­tion between A Hawk and a Hack­saw and the BBC Orches­tra. The orches­tra played pieces by Bartok and Ligeti, a Hawk and a Hack­saw played folk songs from Hungary, Romania and Ukraine, and the two joined togeth­er for some songs at the end. It felt very civil­ised to sit watch­ing an orches­tra in plush padded seats. It’s not some­thing I do that often. I had an ice cream in the inter­val too.

Published
Categorised as Music

East­er House Gig

Last week­end I went to a house gig in South London. These things seem to be few and far between in London, because people tend to be pressed for living space. Hugh, the host, played, and the other bands were all vari­ous config­ur­a­tions of my friend Nicol from Sussex and three of his friends from Bris­tol and London. One of the resid­ents of the house is a little girl, who helped out by find­ing a toy drum and a stick from the garden, and join­ing in as a second drum­mer while wear­ing a prin­cess dress (while jump­ing up and down on a tram­po­line too when Roxy played in the garden). All gigs need more of that. (Also, some­thing is weird with Band­camp – the audio controls don’t appear in the preview, and you can’t centre them

Published
Categorised as Music

Tömeny romantika, imád­lak 80s hungari­an songs-ika

The other week­end I went to visit Erika and her part­ner at their beau­ti­ful house. I always have a nice time there. The worst thing that ever happened to me there was that I once ate too much Stilton and had to have a lengthy lie-down. If the worst thing about your day is that you ate too much blue cheese, then the day is going well.

The more you use it, the more it works.

Februr­ary has been a deeply weird and confus­ing month, for vari­ous reas­ons. I had to go to hospit­al with gast­rit­is and a kidney infec­tion. I didn’t have to stay in or anything, but I had to take loads of differ­ent medic­a­tions and was pretty ill for about a week and a half. I had to also follow the most boring diet possible until my stom­ach healed up (like, liter­ally noth­ing was allowed). I was basic­ally eating the diet of a fussy toddler. I never want to see anoth­er quorn nugget as long as I live. My stom­ach is fine now, and I’m rein­tro­du­cing vari­ous foods and drinks, but it’s weird to have to try to remind myself to eat prop­er meals again. I also lost weight. Soci­ety wants to tell you that you should always be happy about that for whatever reas­on, because women aren’t supposed to take up space in the world or some­thing, but actu­ally my weight was fine before (they defin­itely don’t want you think­ing that). Now my clothes are a bit sad and loose look­ing. Hope­fully now I’m back on prop­er food that will be sorted out quickly.  

Space is Ace II

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

My friend Mel put on a space-themed night at Power Lunches with some other students from her MA course. I helped out by design­ing the flyer, help­ing with decor­at­ing, and djing in the bar. I had a really good time, but I really don’t have anything nice to say about the beha­viour of the three other St Martin’s students.

The night was really popu­lar though, the place was packed, and every­one seemed to have a good time, which was the import­ant thing.

Stef Kamil Carlens at Neu Gallery

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I wrote before about going to a gig at Neu Gallery run by Greek artist Stefanos Rokos. I returned the follow­ing week, to see Stef Kamil Carlens, ex of dEUS. Like Matt Friedberger’s perform­ance, it was quite differ­ent stuff to the bands both of them are known for- more sing­er-songer­writery in this case. I partic­u­larly liked the songs which were in French. I think I’ll leave this picture to do the talk­ing.

Field Day 2013

I also went to Field Day this year. It was the first Saturday I had off work in about 3 months, so it was good to make the most of it (I also had to go to work the next day- some­how I looked and felt fine, I must be a wonder of biology). I managed to see most of the bands I wanted to, bar Toy and Mount Kimbie. I was there with my house­mate, but we managed to keep miss­ing each other. When I left I suddenly had a flood of texts onto my phone saying things like “I’m at the bar by X, we’re going to watch Y in a min, where are you?” which might explain it. Stupid tech­no­logy. He saw Mount Kimbie and found it disap­point­ing anyway. I managed to find my Medway friends anyway, and spent some time with people from Read­ing too, which was nice.

Published
Categorised as Music

Revert to Disar­ray

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The gallery has some kind of connec­tion with a hotel, and they held anoth­er event there the follow­ing night, with Jim Sclavun­os from the Bad Seeds djing ( a strange mix of Iggy Pop and novelty jazz records), and a repeat of the music. It was quite a  surreal exper­i­ence. I don’t really drink in fancy hotels anyway, it not being in the budget. Also, on the way there, we stopped off to get some food, and eat it in a little park, the sort where office work­ers go to eat sand­wiches. There was a crown green bowls contest going on in the middle of the finan­cial district. We felt very civil­ised, watch­ing bowls before going to social­ise in a hotel.

Listen­ing to my grandad’s stereo (but not his record collec­tion)

I recently received my grandad’s stereo. He’s 89 and has moved into an old people’s home, and said he didn’t need it any more. He was an elec­tric­al engin­eer for Philips, so his choice of appli­ances can usually be relied on. I was expect­ing some­thing from the 70s, but then it turned out he’d actu­ally bought this one 3-4 years ago. I don’t know why he felt the need to buy a whole new stereo to listen to his 10 Shir­ley Bassey records. He once gave me a tape with Itali­an lessons on one side, and Shir­ley Bassey songs on the other. I guess he felt it was about time I took up both of those things.

Signal to Noise

On Sunday night I went to my friend John Newman’s sound install­a­tion at the Deaf Cat in Rochester, put on by the TEA people. There was a Damo Suzuki improv gig the previ­ous night when I was away. I’m sure they organ­ise these things when I can’t come specific­ally to spite me. I also went to watch at their band dating event they put on on Thurs. They got musi­cians to fill out a profile, then assigned them to a band, gave them 2 free rehears­al sessions, then they played whatever they came up with on the night. It all worked out very well. There were sound­scapes and some­thing that soun­ded like a Talk­ing Heads rehears­al.

Published
Categorised as Music

Were­bitches and devils

On Friday, my friends Tukru and Louise had their first gig (for Tukru in 10 years) appro­pri­ately on Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day. The band only formed a couple of weeks ago, so it was a bit nerve-wrack­ing for them, but everything went fine. I tried to take some photos, but it was in the cellar of an old restaurant/​bar, where you could touch the ceil­ing and there were no stage lights, so I didn’t get anything much usable

Published
Categorised as Music

What is not but could be if

Here’s anoth­er mix, no theme this time, just songs I’ve been listen­ing to a lot lately. When I moved the blog over to word­press, I had to put the playl­ist on Spoti­fy, so a couple of the songs aren’t avail­able.

Published
Categorised as Music

Songs based on books- a playl­ist.

Here’s a short playl­ist I made of songs based on (good, enjoy­able) books, with some short descrip­tions for people who haven’t read the books in ques­tion.

Published
Categorised as Books, Music

Record Fair

On Saturday I’m doing a zine stall with my friend Fliss Colli­er at the inaug­ur­al How Does it Feel to Be Loved Record Fair. As well as our own zines we’re bring­ing a selec­tion of music zines and stock from Vampire Sushi distro.There will be record stalls from Fortu­na POP!, Where It’s At Is Where You Are, Odd Box, Fika, How Does It Feel To Be Loved?, The Great Pop Supple­ment, Dirty Water Records, Enrap­tured, Cherry Red, and Lojinx and lots of second hand records. I will have to restrain myself from spend­ing any money, because I’m broke.

Published
Categorised as Music, Zines

Someone some­where some­how feels you should be here

I guest djed at Moogie Wonder­land with Tukru last week. It went pretty well, although the students were conspicu­ous in their absence because it’s exam/​assessment time. I didn’t plan what I was going to play, just went with intu­ition.

Published
Categorised as Music

Like the librar­i­an said … every­one respects the dead

Yester­day I got the dvd of Kids for £2, and I watched it with Vicky & Tukru. V had some­how never seen it, and the last time T had seen it was about 10 years ago when her down-with-the-kids history teach­er had played it at school (yeah, Finland …). When I was about 15 or so it was my all-time favour­ite film along with Heav­enly Creatures. I don’t know what that says about me. If I’d seen the film now as a 26 year old, it wouldn’t amaze me (maybe creep me out instead). I think what made the impact on me at the time was that in the age before cheap DVDs and easy down­load­ing, it was the first really raw film I’d seen, and I was obvi­ously long­ing for rawness at the time. Glossy Holly­wood high school films had abso­lutely no relev­ance to my life

Often Inclined to Borrow Somebody’s Dream Til Tomor­row

I’m a big Syd Barrett fan, but I really can’t stand any of the stuff Pink Floyd did after he left (iron­ic, consid­er­ing that my MA project super­visor is the guy who designed the cover for Dark Side of the Moon). Recently I went to an exhib­i­tion of his paint­ings, photos and letters. The gallery wasn’t the most welcom­ing place, but I enjoyed the exhib­i­tion. I partic­u­larly liked the way he would just give his paint­ings to anyone who liked them. There were some pictures I really liked, but they didn’t allow photo­graphs, didn’t sell post­cards (only prints cost­ing sever­al hundred pounds) and the pictures on the website are covered in ugly water­marks. It’s the same as when I went to the Hunder­t­wasser museum in Vienna- an exhib­i­tion dedic­ated to an artist who when they were alive lived in an anti-commer­cial, diy way, is run after their death in the most snobby manner of the commer­cial art world avail­able. (I’m not a fan of the atmo­sphere a lot of commer­cial galler­ies create, art is for every­one)

Don’t Put Out

The other week I was in Brighton to see Ladies and Gentle­men the Fabulous Stains, a forgot­ten film from the 80s about a fiction­al all-girl punk band with Diane Lane, Ray Winstone (yes, really), Paul Simonon and half of the Sex Pistols. They’ve star­ted doing a cinema club at the West Hill Hall show­ing cult films with bands play­ing after­wards. This time the bands were Trash Kit and Woolf. I found out about it when I was at the copi­ers and the guy in front of me was copy­ing flyers and we got chat­ting and swapped zines and flyers. I wish that kind of thing happened to me more often. A good even­ing filled with friends and good feel­ings. Bands and film recom­men­ded. I want to be back in Brighton. ( I decided to go not via London to see if the cheap­er tick­et was worth the both­er- it wasn’t, it took me 4 hours and between 4-7 trains each way)

I don’t wanna join yr club, I don’t want yr kind of love (Typic­al Grrls v2)

So we had the second Typic­al Girls last week. It was more success­ful than the first, we had 20-25 people there. They were all people we didn’t know as well, which was surpris­ing. I made 50 lurid pink cakes covered in edible glit­ter, and played some Patti Smith and Comet Gain this time. Tukru brought a table full of zines and fundrais­ing stuff for her roller derby team and played some Nicki Minaj and slipped in a bit of Lady Gaga, which made me pull a face. All the cakes got eaten, and even the old men who lurk down the end of the bar had a good time. Hope­fully more people and more dancing next time.

Published
Categorised as Music

Typic­al Grrls v1

So last Thursday me & Tukru had our first club­night. All-female playl­ist, free zine, free cake. It wasn’t very busy, as expec­ted for a first night that we hadn’t had a great deal of time to prepare for. Some art students came, they seemed to enjoy them­selves and certainly spent a lot at the bar, which covered our costs. About 11 it got really quiet, and the owner was tired so she decided to close early for the first one. We went home, I was feel­ing a bit disap­poin­ted. It turned out the next day that a whole load of people we knew came along about half 11, but of course the place was closed. Ah well. Next time. We’ve got a month to promote it as well.

Deher­mit­ting

I’ve been a hermit since Christ­mas. Not going anywhere, and not seeing anyone much. You can’t stay at home forever, so I ventured out on Saturday, and took Tukru with me. (I drag her out of the house, she tells me when I’m being an idiot (frequently), it works out nicely). Tukru wore a purple wig.

Published
Categorised as Music

What about the voice of Geddy Lee?

On Thursday I went to see the last night of the Pave­ment reunion at the Brix­ton Academy (I refuse to call any of the London venues their new spon­sor­ship names). I got into Pave­ment just as they were split­ting up, and so I never got to see them live. 10 years later, and it finally happens. I didn’t both­er to bring a camera, as my pock­et digit­al doesn’t focus prop­erly in low light any more. The tick­et was my birth­day present from Chris back in Janu­ary.

Published
Categorised as Music

Oxjamm

Here’s the pictures I took Sat. Unfor­tu­nately I only got a chance to take a couple before my battery ran out. School­boy error. Should’ve charged it up before a left home.

Published
Categorised as Music

Steve West- Marble Valley

Last night me & Chris went to see Marble Valley. They’re Steve West from Pavement’s side project. I don’t know if he inten­ded to be the comedy Silver Jews, but that’s what they are. Silver Jews + Flight of the Conchords. The support bands were identikit young men trying to sound like the Arctic Monkeys, but minus the wit.

Published
Categorised as Music

Last Week­end

Last week­end I was in Read­ing to see Chris. On friday we ate at Wagamama, and then went to a gig at the Rising Sun. It was Ben, Jay, and the guy from the Inspir­al Carpets who isn’t Clint Boon. I can’t say I’m an Inspir­al Carpets fan, but the guy was bril­liant. He also had a great anec­dote about being beaten up by a Kiss trib­ute band.

Published
Categorised as Music

Panda Eyes

Hot Silk Pock­ets are my friend’s band, and they’re ace. I often get phases where there’s only one song I want to listen to. Their song Panda Eyes was the only song I could listen to last week. (This week it’s been replaced in my affec­tions by Summer­time Clothes by Anim­al Collect­ive and Noth­ing Ever Happened by Deer­hunter, but it’s still a great song)

Published
Categorised as Music
Receive new posts via email. Your data will be kept private.