Four massive things that don't go bleep: open mics, exhibition, two competitions

You may know me as an electronic music guru made from silicone, cryogenically frozen Moog synths and deep fried Orbital loops. But I have four more strings to my bow lyre*.

The first string is my umpteenth reading for the Bad Language open mic night at one of Manchester's pubbiest pubs, The Castle on Oldham Street. At past readings, I have imitated Yorkshire men imitating American schoolgirls, talked about the gutting of dead tooth fairies and peeled the text of a story off my reddened chest. What gimmick shall I masquerade as serious literature at the next Bad Language? Come along and see, on Wednesday March 23rd.

And while I'm twanging that first string, you'll also find me performing at the Manchester Twestival at NoHo on March 24th. The Manchester Twestival is a localised version of a much bigger global mission to raise cash for charity through social media. I'll be at what's called a 'pop up literary salon', which sounds like a hairdresser made from cardboard but it is not. If you do buy a ticket, you can raise money for the Wood Street Mission too.

My second string is coming up very shortly, and that's an art exhibition starting tonight. Surgery of Dreams is an otherwise-respectable composer and musician Michael Mayhew scalpelling out the innards of antique books and replacing their guts with found objects, such as shotgun cardtridges, skulls (check the amazing skull on the website) and, gulp, the cast of a vagina. Which I poked with my finger the other day. Gently. The launch is in my bookshop tonight, it will be hosted by me and you should definitely come. The exhibition runs until April 20th.

My third string (hurrah, we have a chord!) is a short story competition I have cobbled together with the original protagonists of the so-called Beatoff Generation. Except now, we are respectable because this is part of the Chorlton Arts Festival. The Flash Mob Writing Competition (see here the Twitter page) is asking for stories of 500 words or less by April 29th, which is otherwise known as That Bloody Royal Wedding Day. All the rules and requirements can be found on our funky red Flash Mob website. This is the Festival's first ever flash fiction competition and all shortlisted entrants will get to read their tales at a special reading and awards night on May 26th with little old me and my chums.

My fourth string has somewhat snapped, only because it naturally sounds of sadness and failure. The F1 Losers League is back once again this year. It's a unique competition which flips the usual fantasy league formula to celebration of the stragglers and also-rans in the world's most high-tech sport. The F1 Losers League will close to entries in the early hours of March 26th, at the beginning of qualifying in Australia. So to take part, you need to get your entry in pretty sharp-ish.

So then. Exhibition launch tomorrow night, Bad Language on Wednesday 23rd. Manchester Twestival on the 24th. F1 Losers League entries before March 26th (winner announced December 1st). Flash Mob Writing Competition now and until April 29th, with the main event on May 26th.

*altered due to comment, below

NASA-bass p-funk synths bark like slow motion dogs: some recent(ish) 12"s and EPs

S>>D whiffs more than a little of Autechre, what with the ominous chords drizzling themselves over fuzzed-up snares, but I'm not complaining when the 33 EP cooks up delicacies like Protovision, a track which takes a vanilla breakbeat and drags its bleeding corpse across Satan's kitchen floor before funneling it into a pit of echoey, gooey melancholia. Lovely, even though it's left me with confused cookery metaphors.

Starkey's Space Traitor EP is the sound of this Philadelphia boy having an immmense amount of fun with the science fiction movie score that must be running through his brain all the time. NASA-bass p-funk synths bark like slow motion dogs. Ital Tek is among the numerous remixes, but best track is one of his originals - Holodeck - which also has a vocal sample that sums up this whole enterprise (yes, that was a sci fi pun): "the sounds of man in space." Roll on Captain Starkey's next mission.

Record of the week / day / hour / shake of a lamb's tail must go to the first in a series of collaborations from All City Records called, wait for it, Collabs #1. In this opening slab of electronic goodness, wafer-thin drum & bass exile Martyn (pictured above) gets his dubstep on with Lucky Me's son of a jazzman Mike Slott. It's housey but it's good house and is the sound of two brilliant producers dancing a dense fandango.


Photo adapted from one taken by The End.

A helpful pie chart to summarise Fat Roland On Electronica

Welcome to the various new bloggers I met at last night's Manchester Blogmeet (#mcrblogmeet).

Fat Roland On Electronica [June 2016 edit: the old name for this website] is a murky old water in which sardines come in their millions to die. I hope the pie chart (above) helps explain a little more about what goes on around here. Click for bigger.

I'll thrash together a blogmeet write-up in due course. Huge thanks must go to I Love To Love, who sponsored the meeting and infused the whole enterprise with the aroma of quality leather (one of my childhood-memory smells, along with bike oil), to Common Bar for being helpful and jovial hosts, and to Manchizzle for getting the whole thing up and running before being struck down with a lurgy caught from her (very cute) wee bairn.

Meanwhile, here's my new favourite band. Enjoy.

Hammer time for Fatty Bumchops: how to blog properly

The best developed, most cohesive, and most robust blogging scene in the UK.

These were the words, carefully prefixed with 'arguably', scribbled by the Manchester Blog Awards last year. With the next Manchester Blogmeet nearly upon us (this Tuesday!), I thought I'd give a few wibblings about my little corner of the blogging scene in 2011.

I find myself in a very different position from this time last year. I always saw myself on the edges of blogging in the same way I played around on the edges of DJing. A few blogmeets and awards later, I'm somewhere near the somewhat crowded centre. Of one of the many centres.

What started as a way of plugging my DJing activities became, well, a scene in which I hang out with bloggers (retro gaming the other night), perform with bloggers (at the Bad Language events), get consulted about blogging (websitey people asking for advice) and help other bloggers connect (having a hand in the Manchester Blogmeet, for example).

Part of this is graft: I gave up my telly for these paragraph's you're currently smooching with your eyes. Part of this is also my belief that blogging has to be about connection in this proper physical world of real things. It has to make a difference, even if it's just someone in a shed in Preston giving encouragement to a struggling writer sweating it out in a birdhouse in Portsmouth.

What I love about Manchester's blogging scene is the rag-tag jumble of blogs of different shapes and sizes: the SEO-heads, the musicistas, the foodies, the hyperlocals, the poets or the whimsical neither-here-nor-theres.

And everyone's so busy all of the time. It's a well-developed and professional scene that is strong enough to say to companies wanting to capitalize on our content or ideas: "thanks for your interest, now give us some money."

The nice thing about the Manchester Blogmeet is it brings everyone down the same level and it humanises what is often a solitary pursuit. I'm not going to spool off a rollcall of recommended blogs here, although this post has inspired me to ditch and re-start my Fat Friends in the right-hand column of this site.

What I would say is if you run a blog and you're in Manchester, be encouraged. You're part of a bustling scene of tapped-in letters in darkened rooms, whatever the focus of your blog.

I thought I'd finish with some advice. People often ask me about blogging because they think I know stuff. It always goes like this:

- Hey Fatso, should I publish my blog in 150 different languages and reduce the text to six-point?
- Don't do that. People might not read your blog.

- Hey Fats, should I smear my blog page in crusty lobster paste?
- Don't do that. People might not read your blog.

- Hey Fatty Bumchops, should I ditch the tired old media of computers and fire my blog out of a tube instead?
- Yes, definitely do that, then everyone will read your blog.

I like being asked, so here are few basic pointers about running a blog the Fat Roland way, concentrating mainly on sins I myself have committed on these very pages.

Fat Roland's ten blog tips

1. If you want a wider readership, make your blog about something. I deliberately put 'Electronica' into my title to Ronseal this whole dang operation. I hope I've proved you can be specialist and still be accessible.

2. Most of your hits are probably very casual browsers. You want them to stick around, right? Then don't splash eye-pain all over your blog. Start by getting rid of that black background.

3. As for your content, edit, edit, edit. Write a sentence then halve it. Use short paragraphs. Short sentences and not ones that go on so long you've lost track of how the sentence started in the first place because you didn't read my advice about writing a sentence then halving it which is what I just wrote in a previous sentence which, entirely non-ironically, was twice the length before I edited it down unlike this one which has gone one so long you've lost track of how the sentence started in the first place because I didn't read my advice [breathe!] are definitely better than long ones. See?

4. Check your facts. Pressing 'publish' and hoping you're right is not good enough. And reading something on one website is not fact-checking. Learn to do proper Google research.

5. Collaborate. Don't type in a vacuum. Contribute to other people's blogs, leave comments, link generously and meet other bloggers (starting with the blogmeet this Tuesday).

6. Post regularly. I've really struggled this past month to keep up with my blogging  and I think my sites have suffered as a result. Set yourself a target and stick to it (mine is 120 posts a year).

7. A bit of design wouldn't go amiss. My blog is a pretty recognisable Blogger template, but I've added a bit of extra visual goodness. All of my design, apart from my masthead, is done using Microsoft Paint and a crappy picture editing programme called Piknik. Even a five-year-old sandwich could use those programs.

8. Give up your telly. No, really. If you're watching Corrie when you know you should be blogging, then you have decided that watching Corrie is more important than your blogging. Smash it in with a hammer. The only danger then is, if you are smashing in your television with a hammer instead of blogging, you have decided that smashing things in with hammers is more important than blogging. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

9. It's not about the stats. People should be able to find your blog in any way they see how, and if that means parallel Facebook posts and letting people read the full text on Google Reader, both of which I would assume takes away clicks from your actual site itself, then so be it.

10. It's only a blog. Lighten up. Jeez. Why are you even reading this? Turn off the computer. Get out. Go for a walk. Let the wind furrow into your brain-hair. You'll be a better blogger producing better content with a mind clear of cobwebs.

Is Fat Roland my real father? Norwegian woof. *click*

I thought I would like February more than I liked January. However, if January was a rat-infested tin house in a forest full of dead baboons, then February is the lice-ridden mulch underneath the festering welcome mat of the rat-infested tin house in the forest full of dead baboons.

And so, to lift me a few measly iota above this interminable funk I seem to be in (I can't even get excited about Cool Runnings being on iPlayer), I thought I'd do a quick update on my whereabouts.

Firstly, you can hear me read one of my short stories if you're in Manchester tomorrow night. If you heard me read at Waterstone's rather eccentric open mic night at the end of last year, you'd have heard tomorrow's story before. Otherwise, come listen to my fairy story at the Bad Language open mic night, at the Castle Hotel on Oldham Street. There will be many other writers, so I only have four minutes in which to impress you.

Secondly, my presenting partner Lee and I will reunite in a public performance for the first time since the well-documented Refresh FM debacle. We'll be running the next Special Guessed pub quiz at the somewhat super King's Arms pub in Salford on March 1st (8.30pm). I'd love it if we got a decent crowd to this: it would certainly mean a lot to me. We'll fill your pants with so much trivia, you'll be shaking it out of your trouser ends like the UNCLE guy in the Great Escape.

And finally, there's always my F1 Losers League, which I have banged on about before, but which now has an extended entry deadline of March 26th. Visit the website for more.

Yes, this blog is meant to be about electronic music. Pfffrt. If you want consistency of content, go and read The Pigeon Post.  I have been a bit shoddy recently, but there'll be more music witterings soon, honest. Meanwhile, here is a list of search terms that haven't resulted in recent hits on my blog:

- junglist Richard Madeley
- Norwegian wool
- a cacophony of roses
- the holy trinity of Rudy's Rare Records, Cool Runnings and Rastamouse
- Justin Biepbipe
- is Fat Roland my real father
- turnpike Birmingham rocking chair crew
- Norwegian woof
- cheap supermarket toothpaste
- Venetian Snarls

I am downloading the James Blake album

I am downloading the James Blake album.

Digital kilobytes of James Blake are swooshing into my memory like recalled jokes or déjà vu.

James Blake is now sitting inside my machine, next to my Yorkshire holiday photos, discarded Ableton sessions and my Justin Biebpipe love poetry.

Listening to this album will be like a thousand swan feathers brushing my cheek in the breeze from the breath of a million angels.

Pressing play on track one will be like the tentative moment before a teenage kiss, that giddy feeling of nascent love-- oh hold on, the computer's crashed. Let me just press restart.

Sorry about this. It takes a while to reboot. Full of viruses, this thing.

So then. Done anything interesting recently? Oh, here we go. Let me just find the mp3s again.

Oh great, it's lost them. Thanks, computer, you galoofing mess of catastrophic circuitry. You've ruined everything.

I don't want to listen to the James Blake album now. That would be like listening to the wails of whales speared in a bloody sea. Like the last sighs of a cherubim skewered on a cackling devil's pitchfork.

Cocksocks.

Kilobytes of James Blake lie dead in my computer, exhausted sonic sperm on the sidelines of my digital tubes.

Mr and Mrs Spotify plug my oozing holes

I usually cough up a monthly Oozy Bleeps playlist around about now, but January is to decent electronic music what a trip to Disneyworld is to Charlie Brooker.

And the meagre crumbs that were released in January appear not to be on Spotify. At least, not the ones I want. As Glasgow collective Lucky Me tweeted a few days ago, "Spotify will never pay folks like us because they refuse editorial: they are only sales responsive."

It's a strange animal, Spotify. The Cynical Musician is right when he asks if Spotify is not a money maker, what is it good for.

Putting revenue aside (I'll let proper musicians discuss that), as a music lover, it's about as useful as a chocolate tea cosy. My recent plays on Spotify include Resoe, SBTRKT and Flying Lotus. What is the front page recommending to me at the moment? Bonnie Tyler, Mozart and Coolio's Gangsta's Paradise.

It's almost as if Mr and Mrs Spotify in their little green Spotify cottage with their little green Spotify umbrellas took a look at Amazon's cookie-monster recommendations system and thought, "no, that won't do, that won't do at all. What we want is the equivalent of walking into Starbucks to buy a coffee and being sold wellington boots instead."

Spotify is good for playlist recommendation, hence my oozing and my bleeping, but when whole record labels are missing from the service because Spotify can't put food on their table - can't even give them a table - then what's the point?

Anyway, the Oozy Bleeps will bleep again next month. I will soldier on with Spotify because, I hope, some of you find it useful. The playlist is still up there, and it will be updated throughout the month.

F1 apocalypse (or 'fantasy league', depending on which term you prefer)

So far this February, this blog has been like London at the start of 28 Days Later. Abandoned buildings. Unread newspapers. Car alarms punturing the silence of desertion.

But screw all that: I've been busy reviving an old project which long-time readers of this blog will recognise.

The F1 Losers League is my attempt at a fantasy formula one competition, with the crucial difference that you need to create the worst possible team. So you get points if your cars are slow, unreliable or crashy.

I wanted to come up with some F1 / electronica puns so I could shoe horn (car horn?) the league into this blog without making it look like an obvious (spark)plug. But all I've come up with so far is Apex Twin, James Brake and Bargeboards of Canada.

The F1 Losers League works like this: you make up a team of four drivers and two constructors. Based on bad performance on and off the track, they earn you points in races and sometimes inbetween races. Everyone pays a fiver and up to seven teams will win cashmoney.

I've run this league on-and-off since 2004, so I know those who get the most out of it tend to have at least a passing interest in formula one. It also helps if you have an inner geek because there are ways of manipulating your team throughout the season.

Have a look at the league on the F1 Losers website. You need to enter before the zombies come and tear out your heart, or until the second week of March (whichever comes sooner).

FLYING LOTUS! The most obvious pun ever! Why didn't I think of that? I always think of good things way too late.

Edit: see the comments section below for two more doozies: Saubers of Paradise and Susumu Toyota. Feel free to add your own!