Aug 31, 2008

M Ax Noi Mach will soon be supporting The Feeling, no doubt about it

International Noise Conference

I have an Earl-esque list of things to do on my blog, and I never get through them.

But here's my chance to cross off something I have been meaning to mention for months. The International Noise Conference is an alternative music event - make that a very alternative music event - that took place in the States earlier this year

Artists (one pictured here, taken by mbcharbonneau) are under more pressure than a bull on rollerskates in a house of cards: they can play no more than a meagre quarter of an hour, plus laptops and mixers are banned.

I guess the best way to get noticed is to have a good name. It works for the Edinburgh Festival, with Fringe show names like Five Hours Of Farting and One Man And His Gimp*.

So with a Matthew Herbert Big Band-style toot of a fanfare, I present to you my 20 favourite eye-catching band names from the Miami leg of the conference, in no particular disorder.

I hope Europe does not disappoint, because it's coming here next year.

... Uh-Oh Spades
... Tumblecat PoofPoofyPoof
... My Left Uterus
... Mouthpet
... The Uh
... Autistic Mother
... Piss Piss Piss Moan Moan Moan
... Rhiknoberous
... Sarcastic Eulogy
... Meat Glove
... Dickhearse Discourse On Dickhorse
... Fognozzle
... Witch With Flying Head
... 60s Residue
... Amputee
... Unicorn Hard-On
... Biff Boff Barf
... Poopy Necroponde
... M Ax Noi Mach
... Wrong

* I think I made these two up

Aug 19, 2008

Gardener's fingernails, tubed Somerville, and James at war

Black Devil Disco Club

My recent post about unearthed goodies from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop brought to mind an album by Black Devil which was lost for over 25 years before having the dust blown off by Rephlex.

That album was Disco Club (in 2004 I think), and since then the duo have renamed themselves Black Devil Disco Club and released several more albums. The latest, Eight Oh Eight (pictured), has just come out so I thought I'd write up a little review, bury it, and have it dug up in two decades by a trenchcoated man with cruddy fingernails.

Eight Oh Eight is a touch disappointing. Opening track With Honey Cream sounds like Jimmy Somerville in a tube. But then it all begins to sound like Jimmy Somerville in a tube, with pure high energy disco funnelled through an increasingly wacky range of effects like flanged beats and robotic vocals.

I'm a sucker for the Air-esque cheesiness that Black Devil have plumped for, but I can see how the cheese could grate. The bongos and whistles on at least a couple of the tracks (Open The Night and Never No Dollars) are my least favourite sounds since the noise of cluster bombs missing army officer James Blunt.

Black Devil Disco Club's Eight Oh Eight is closer to 'oh' than 'eight', but only just. If you want forced disco glam, Mika's your man.

Aug 13, 2008

At about this age, you get cake flushes

Birthday synth cake

"Everything is pretty good until about 35.

"Thereafter, a whole series of things is going on. It's like having a car; when there are a few miles on the clock, things start to break down. Our resting heart rate increases and our muscle mass and strength decrease."

It's my 35th birthday today, and according to the Guardian, I am destined to become a gasping mess of wibbly gloop.

The last laugh is on me, of course: I'm already there.

Anyone fancy cake?

Aug 8, 2008

Eight oh eight oh eight oh eight oh eight oh eight oh eight oh eight oh eight

808 State

I was going to write a spectacular post about 808 State in honour of the comely curvature of today's date.

Reminiscences would have poured from the edges of this blog until your keyboard was soggy with my moist-eyed memories, like when 808 State rocked Manchester a few days after the 1996 bombing, or when I bumped into one member of the band playing that saxophone in a recording studio.

I may even have uploadified a photo of my much worn 808 t-shirt declaring "there is no greater love than that between man and his cock." It had a picture of the kind of cock as seen in my terrible Youtube video here (2,500 hits mostly helped by my dubious tags).

My interweb domain would have come into it to, because fatroland.com was launched on 02/02/02. It plunged me into a six-year-long obsession with repeating dates.

I was going to write this amazing piece. But I didn't.

That's coz Music Thing has done a much better job with his celebration of the drum machine that gave 808 State their name.

So go and read that instead. It has lots of things for your mouse to click on, including a hyperlink for 808 State's aptly titled Olympic.

Jul 31, 2008

Warp Records present the BBC Radiophonic Workshop?

Delia Derbyshire
A dusty tape among scores stored in an attic has just blown apart the entire history of dance music.

Among the possessions of Delia Derbyshire (pictured), knob twiddler for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, was the recording of an experimental dance piece that simply should not exist.

It sounds like the sort of thing you would expect from Aphex Twin, Massonix or Sabres Of Paradise, yet it was recorded in the late 60s.

As a piece of production well ahead of its time, it has the same woo factor as Pink Floyd's On The Run, or The Beatles' Tomorrow Never Knows.

And yet it's more advanced than those pieces, as though some beardy electronica fellow is messing about with a TARDIS and not telling us.

"That could be coming out next week on Warp Records," bleeps ex-Orbital man Paul Hartnoll, who, incidentally, did a cracking cover version of the Workshop's Dr Who theme tune.

Decide for yourself - jump to Delia Derbyshire's experimental 'dance' track on this BBC news piece.

Jul 19, 2008

Tim & Daisy make Jay & Bob look like ****ing Bert & Ernie

Spaced (short)

Very Short List published this sweet, concise tribute to Spaced on Thursday:

"Instead of Jay and Silent Bob, Spaced delivers Daisy and Tim, twentysomething roommates... who live and die under pop culture’s influence, the kind of people still recovering from the disappointment of Star Wars, Episode 1...." Click here read the whole thing.
But it made me wonder: are there really people out there, living breathing human-beens, who haven't clapped eyes on everyone's favourite Shaun Of The Dead prequel?

If you've never seen the series Spaced, leave a comment. I want to know you exist. And I want a full and frank explanation for your neglectful behaviour as well. Tsch.

I'll get back to blogging about electronic music soon. I promise.

Jul 14, 2008

Wait, westerly wanderer, there's a big carrot-y creature in your way

Mongolian Death Worm

I was just scooting over the Taklamakan desert on Google Earth and I was startled by a Mongolian Death Worm (pictured).

I wasn't really expecting to find something like that in the rippling nowhereness of a huge desert (I had been low-flying my way from Tokyo, via Beijing, through some random places beginning with X that I had never heard of).

Still, I was comforted by the knowledge it reacts to yellow in the same way bulls charge at red things, and if you agitate it, it will gob poison at you and dissolve your face.

Oh and it also kills people by zapping them like a Dalek. Or God when he starts one of his big lightning storms.

Anyway, I'm continuing on a westerly wander. I should be in Iran by midnight.

Jun 19, 2008

Pathetic, turgid and very unKylie - number two of a descending series of five

Itunes review

Hop across to Ebay and look up item number 120274828675. I've never sold on Ebay before, but there are my Kylie tickets right there.

Right then. Back to my enthralling series-- wait-- that doesn't quite sound right.

Back to my interesting series on customer reviews-- hold on a sec-- I'm not sure if that really sums things up too well.

One final try.

Back to my turgid attempt at a "series of posts" about customer reviews on i-tunes, as if anyone really gives a hamster's crotch.

Towards the beginning of the month, I decided to put up five reviews on i-tunes in a descending order of positivity. The first review got five stars, the second would get four stars, and so on until my fifth review which would be a scathing one-star rant.

And so to my four star review, referred to on this blog as "that album that had the red cover and it sounded a bit like a movie soundtrack," and otherwise known as Deadly Avenger's Deep Red.

This series will get interesting when we get into the lower stars. Honest.

Go, Kylie! You got it, guuurlfriend!

A warm, filmic engrossing album for fans of DJ Shadow and David
Holmes.

It ranges from gorgeously dark, low-down depths (Black Sun, Lopez), to
weaker easy listening down-tempo (Blade, Love Sounds), to Avenger's particular
area of strength - grand, spacious, friendly, meaty, beaty pieces of enjoyable
soundtrack pomp (We Took Pelham, Punisher).

Electronica that positively breathes down your neck. Four stars.