Geek Pie

A quick chat with DJ Vadim

2009-10-13T15:04:00.003+01:00

DJ Vadim's playing the Jazz Cafe on Thursday and he's bringing it large. Having battled with health problems over the last few years, he released a joyous new album to acclaim, featuring turns from favourites and newbies such as Yarah Bravo and the brilliant SabiraJade. We caught up with Vadim quickly to run through the setlist for Thursday, his dream band and why there might not be a new Onself album anytime soon!

1) New album, new live set, new and improved Vadim: what can we expect at Jazz Cafe?

Well its an evolution of sound. Soul tronica perhaps. Organic hip hop soul reggae vibes... live keys, percusion, me on the MPCs, 2 vocalists, backing vocalist..

2) What would be in your ultimate dream live band?

Umm The Roots. they are about as good as u can get. Erykah Badu's band is dope, so is Raphael Saadiq, Fat Freddys Drop, Jill Scott...

3) The album is very joyous and full of life and energy. What mindstate were you in making it?

Well I came out of having cancer in September 2008. and I survived cancer so I felt joyous in that. Relieved and inspired to live... that's partly why the album is upbeat...

4) What is the best album you've heard all year and why?

Well there are a few. I love the latest album from Fat Freddys Drop - Dr Boondiggae, Jake One - White Van Music, Homecut, Mos Def, Donaeo, Robin Thicke.. a lot of different stuff. I like the new Ghostface Killa album also...

5) Describe your sound to the novice/Vadim beginner?

It's a mix of hip hop, soul and electronica. Rapping and Singing. Some instrumental. bass heavy with dope intricate drums, lush orchestration and defiently something different and quirky about it.

6) When can we expect a new Oneself record?

Ahh I wish... one day it may happen again!!! But don't hold ya breath. Yarah and Blu aren't exactly talking!!!!

Dave Simpson - The Fallen (Canongate 2009)

2009-10-08T10:45:00.001+01:00

So many positive reviews of this book served to make me want to take a different tack in writing about it. Despite this, I warmed quickly to the way Simpson set about inviting the reader to join him on his quest to not only account for, but to archive the stories of every member of The Fall that ever there was.

Simpson’s reverence of the band’s music and the aura that surrounds the band oozes from the pages, occasionally getting carried away to the extent that tenuous links are forged to a psychic force wielded by singer Mark E Smith and odd coincidences offered as being somewhat more than that. This doesn’t detract from the story, with Simpson’s own role in it never being overblown or taking over from his obsessive focus of eking out lost band members and hearing their tales of what it was like to be found by The Fall, to work with the band, and to leave it. Simpson is a fan, and he weaves his story around what the band meant to him when growing up and throughout his life since then, through periods of not listening much to The Fall, but returning, always returning, over a period spanning more than 30 years.

The only constant in The Fall is Smith. It might not seem odd that a singer should be the one around which the band is shaped, but what makes The Fall so very different is the way the band’s music shapes itself, and the way that a particular sound, “always different, always the same” (John Peel), identifies itself to the listener as being The Fall without the listener having to hear the vocals, no matter who is in the band at the time, no matter what era the song is from. Smith doesn’t write the music or play any instruments, either. He often doesn’t turn up at rehearsals. Somehow, a band consisting of over 40 different individuals can make over 30 albums in as many years, all of them recognisably The Fall, but all ploughing their own furrow.

The geographical source of the music is explored, the tough landscapes surrounding Manchester, with the village/small town of Prestwich at its epicentre. Smith recruited a fair few members of his band through more-or-less literally approaching them on the street to somehow pressgang them into service.

Violent on-stage dissolutions of line-ups are explored, also off-stage formations of strong allegiances which appear to go against Smith’s philosophies of the tensions which provide the fertile ground for musical creativity, and which, it appears, Smith did his utmost to break down.

The story of The Fall is one of probably the last truly working class Northern rock band. Perhaps the last rock band of any significance. Over 40 members ex-members of the group were tracked down and talked to. Tales of extreme weirdness abound, but the sense of pride is palpable from all those people, and that nearly all of them would work again with The Fall, no matter the circumstances of their final departure from the band, is testament to the special nature of the music that the band has consistently produced since 1976.

by Pete Sottrel

new Foreign Beggars video

2009-09-01T15:58:00.000+01:00

Peter Bagge - Everybody is Stupid Except for Me

2009-08-20T16:47:00.000+01:00

Peter Bagge is an interesting proposition, a political satirist for Reason magazine for many years, railing against wars and oppression and corruption and at the same time railing against the railers, the protestors, the anti-oppressors, the anti-war, the anti-corruption and these uneasy cartoons floating in the murky middle ground between righteously right wing and liberally left-wing are collected in the amusingly titled ‘Everybody is Stupid Except Me.’ His style is frenetic, usually using a representation of him, the sweaty nervous nervous, as the crux of all his points. The stories are like pictoral articles, investigating scenes and issues and presenting both sides of the argument, sometimes through vox pop or illustrations of a diagrammatic nature to bolster the reportage. It’s impressive stuff and he certainly knows his bones when talking about the homeless crisis in San Francisco or the hypocrisies behind the abstinence movement. His drawings are busy and curt, always cutting and always railing against most forms of authority. It’s in his work that we find ourselves questioning our liberal attitudes. Are we right? Are we patronisingly right? Are we peacenik commies? Unfortunately, Bagge himself comes across as ambivalent about some areas himself and leaves us guessing as to his political sentiments. Is this good journalism? Is it the direct confusion of a man unable to place himself on one side of the fence? Or is it just liberal-baiting hectoring from a man who ‘mostly’ disagreed with the Bush government. It’s probably a mixture of all three. These are good comics, fun to read and definitely funny, definitely searing and when he hits a target he gets it right. Also there’s something to be said for the journalist tone of the writing and the structure of the strips would translate well into a proper newspaper, were he so inclined. Is everyone stupid except for Peter Bagge? Well, we’ll never quite be sure. But then, neither will he.

Sathnam Sanghera - The Boy with the Topknot (Penguin 2009)

2009-08-12T14:09:00.001+01:00

Sathnam Sanghera’s debut book, The Boy with the Topknot (published in hardback as If You Don’t Know Me By Now) is a worthy piece of work despite it revealing him to have a clawingly bad taste in pop music. It’s bittersweet and funny but over-archingly triumphant in the face of adversity. It seeks to debunk the misery memoir myth by being self-referential and unreliant on tugging our heartstrings unnecessarily, instead using memory and a nice narrative juxtaposition of past and present to reveal its inner depths. Despite all the references to George Michael obsessions and some chapter titles taken from some of my worst enemy pop songs, it’s a beautiful piece of work.

When successful journalist and materialist Sathnam Sanghera, living the high life of Prada and loft flats, dinner parties and celebrity interviews, was 24 he discovered for the first time his father and sister were both suffering from a severe mental illness he hadn’t been aware of. As he researched their conditions and how they had come to be hidden (through a lack of understanding of schizophrenia and through family guilty secrets) he moved to Wolverhampton and started to piece together his family history and the history of his parents. Each member of his family is a character, from his silent father obsessed with BBC Parliament despite his illiteracy and lack of English; his mother, neurotic and obsessed with tradition, with finding him a wife of equal caste and culture holding the family together; his brother with his growing obsessions with fashion icons of the times and his two sisters, funny and nasty in equal measure. Sathnam was the baby and through the flit between past and present reveals how he learnt English on the fly at his school, became obsessed with being a good boy (a symptom of a schizophrenia family member) and went from his mum’s favourite to her biggest disappointment as he sought to escape Wolverhampton and her over-bearing clutches, all for the sake of dalliances with girls. The book closes with a letter he writes to his mother, emotionally explaining the choices he has made in his life and the secret life of dating white girls he leads and the amount of panic and depression it causes him, bordering on inflicting a mental illness of its own on his neuroses. The book isn’t all misery and family repression though. It’s warm about his family at times and funny at others, especially on a chapter dedicated to cutting his hair for the first time, a big Sikh no-no. The book, torn between his present feelings of ineptitude, helplessness and confusion as well as the process of trying to write the book while being scared of scratching too far under the surface and warm/bitter feelings about Wolverhampton, moves along quickly, never boring, always interesting, always painting an interesting picture of a family dealing with mental illness and a family dealing with the cultural differences of old and new, East and West. While this is a worn out subject, Sanghera’s literal, funny and unearnest take on his Asian identity makes for hilarious scenes when he goes out to meet potential brides at meetings set up with his sister, when he describes his family set up in Wolverhampton. However, it does go into horrific detail about domestic violence in the Sikh community and the pain and suffering his mum went through before his dad was finally diagnosed with a mental illness.

As a misery memoir, it fails, because it never plays with your emotions. Sathnam breaks the fourth wall, describing the process of writing the book, always in his head but dealing with enough factoids and studies and quotes to keep his feelings on the side of reality and recognised research. It’s warm and funny but bitter and painful and the final denouement with his mother and the letter is a poignant finale to a life-affirming book.

Simon Armitage - Gig: The Life and Times of a Rock Fantasist (Penguin 2009)

2009-08-12T13:52:00.000+01:00

Gig is the second memoir from indie enthusiast, writer, rock journalist and would-be poet laureate Simon Armitage. Told in a charmingly self-effacing way and full of bright and sparky anecdotes about the life of a jobbing poet who makes more than adequate time in his busy schedule to attend as many gigs as possible, it’s laugh-out-loud funny, breezy and poignant. Running through Armitage’s experiences in interviewing Feltham young offenders and sex workers for films ‘Feltham Sings’ and ‘Pornography: the musical’ respectively (don’t mix those two up), he reveals the behind the scenes process of writing all the lyrics for these films as well as anecdotes on the research process and subsequent careers and lives of the subjects. He writes about his time up North, getting into the New Romantics while his dad, a stoic manly man, took every opportunity to mock his girly hair and foppish demeanour. There’s a hilarious story about his time studying home economics and having to live a flat on school premises for a week and cook his teachers’ lunches. Only in the North, only in the seventies. There’s also the music. Armitage uses every other chapter to visit a gig in the last 3 years and have it spiral off into memories of getting into the artists in his teens (Morrissey, the Fall, Stiff Little Fingers), how they have related to parts of his life, stories about the bands and artists themselves and an overriding sense that he wishes it was him up on stage, rocking socks off. Alas, he’s confined to the role of bard, travelling the world reading his work and enthusing about British rock history. Every chapter is peppered with memory, charm and hilarity and the book ends with Armitage setting up his band The Scaremongers, and their fraught attempt to lay down some tracks in the studio, despite both being in their mid forties. A charming book that makes you want to go and seek out his poetry. Also, be sure to read Armitage’s £33.33 column in the Observer Music Magazine, where he spends said amount in charity shops each month and recounts his experiences of the albums he finds.

Riz MC - Sour Times video

2009-07-10T14:49:00.001+01:00

Alan Moore and Kevin o'Neill - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Century 1910 (Knockabout 2009)

2009-07-07T16:38:00.001+01:00

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen volume 3 is upon us, and with it, Alan Moore’s propensity for Victorian filth and mind-expanding concepts. This time, The League is more ambitious, and dare I say it, purposely a fuck you to anyone who might consider trying to film it, after all film versions of his work have ended up ruining or only hinting at the genius in the original source material. Volume 3 of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is called Century officially and... spans... a century. Expansive. Gone are most of the characters we refamiliarised ourselves with (the original two volumes concerned literary characters from Victorian novels reimagined as a type of antequated MI5) and instead we are faced with brutal serial killers, songs and the occult. So prevalent are songs and rhymes in this first volume (with parts two and three due next year and the year after) that if it were filmed, it would take the place of a grotesque carnival musical, with filthy shanties and bawdy limericks pricking the surfaces of naked tortured skin. We catch up with Wilhemina Murray, the vampiric bride of Dracula, immortal and having outlived most of her original League, now with generation 2, comprising of Thomas Carnacki, a ghost detective, Quartermain’s son and Orlando a mysterious figure in possession of Excalibur. Carnacki’s visions lead him to murderous Armageddon in the East End and the occult who are trying to birth a moonchild. Meanwhile, Captain Nemo of the Nautilus dies, leaving his beloved submarine to his estranged daughter, absconded to England to work in a bordello by the docks. The book is self-contained and while it takes a while to get going, promises an interesting take on this century. Themes abound in volume 1 of the power of vice and how do-gooders trying to quell human desire for vice and virtueless violence are undoing nature’s own commands, and evil will out. Moore seems to be predicting the death of the century and along with it, the death of the human race. The violence is grotesque and bloody, the pirates that crew the Nautilus are ruthless and cunning. And the new League is still trying to find its feet. Volume 2 takes place in 1969 and concerns the hippy movement and volume 3 will bring us up to date in 2009, promising appearances from Jack Bauer, characters from the West Wing, and bizarrely, Armando Iannucci’s surreal retro-future comedy show, Time Trumpet. Definitely unfilmable then. But then after the disaster of the last attempt to commit The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a sombre and disgusting mediation on the human condition as told by literary figures in Victorian times, into cartoonish celluloid, I doubt anyone’ll be coming near this 100year spanning tome with hardly any ‘stars’ or recurring characters through each volume. Whatever happens, Moore has ensured he won’t be cursing any more film versions of his babies anytime soon. In the meantime, this is essential for any comic book reader and for any literary types who want to succumb to the filth and fury of 1910, as told by modern times’ most famous magus of wit and invention, Alan Moore.

Shappi Khorsandi - A Beginner's Guide to Acting English (Ebury 2009)

2009-07-06T14:53:00.001+01:00

Look ma, a celebrity autobiography worth reading? Shock-a-rama... except this breakout memoir by comedienne Shappi Khorsandi has been what’s tipped her over the edge into the public eye, eyeing up appearances on Jonathan Ross and Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow. Instead of gracing the mirthless bowels of Radio 4 comedy, Shappi Khorsandi will now hopefully be commanding more high profile gigs based on this book. The memoir, documenting her arrival and early to teen years in the UK trying to fit in, shows she can write too. More poignant than laugh-out-loud funny, more tragic and beautiful than punchline-punchline-punchline, the book approaches the immigrant experience with a fresh yet familiar take, using a backdrop of England and classic Englishisms to tell a story about inherently Irani protagonists. Khorsandi discusses her first years at an English primary school, speaking not a word of the language, using her brother and other silent immigrants as emotional crutches, while occupying a fantasyland of make-believe and imagination at home, hero-worshipping her father and trying to teach her mother more English things. She talks about how English slowly crept up on her, through rhymes and stories before becoming her normal vernacular, how she went from being frightened of the English to scolding her mum for not being able to make her jam sandwiches. The centre of her attention is her father and his political leanings. While Iran undergoes some major changes, her father, a satirist and journalist and poet- hero-worshipped by the Irani community of London, meaning endless social engagements, debates and performances in front rooms- documents the changes, the fall of the Shah, the rise of the Ayatollah, the revolution and its divisive nature, as middle and upper class London-dwelling Iranis put their tuppence in. Meanwhile Khorsandi’s family in Iran feel the effects and impacts the changes in power structures have on their well-being. ‘Persepolis’ dealt with similar topics and told them from the same spiky brutally honest angle; here, the crucial difference is the journey that Khorsandi and her brother make towards accepting their present surroundings and how it impacts on their cultural identity, something easily identifiable for a generation of Diaspora immigrants in this country. This most tense and interesting section of the book, where men are dispatched by the new government to assassinate Khorsandi’s father. This section arrives in the second half of the book and is by far its most exciting bit. The writing teams with compassion and warmth, the humour in the situations and characters is sweetly scathing, the differences between Irani and English customs played out to great comic effect, and the sincerity in the prose, the unflowery honest writing makes it a strong memoir with its lightness of touch and comic timing.

Rutu Modan - Jamilti and other stories (Jonathan Cape 2009)

2009-07-01T12:19:00.000+01:00

How much do we know about the people of Israel? We know the politics, have picked our sides to support and happily go on through our lives reducing countries to polemic and political policy. So thank god for the medium of graphic novels and for Rutu Modan, whose short pieces of pictoral fiction comprise a sturdy offering from the Jonathan Cape stable of thinking liter-ista’s funny books. This is a far cry from the spandex and superheroism of Marvel. This is a subtle intense funny set of short stories, all with their own brand of ultra-violence. In the titular ‘Jamilti’ we meet a bride-to-be, one of Israel’s bleeding heart liberals marrying an oafish pig of a far right man. Her quiet acceptance of her position and his boarish conversational gambits about terrorism and Palestine converge in a tense engagement where much is left unsaid. When she finds herself in the debris of a terrorist bombing, she finds herself face-to-face with a mutilated dying man who makes her feel appreciated and beautiful. That moment of pure vulnerability and synergy makes the closing pay-off all the more smarter. The characters in Modan’s book all lead quiet lives that are torn apart by violence, whether it be political or personal or emotional. ‘The Panty Killer’ follows the police investigation into The Panty Killer, a violent serial killer who leaves his victims with a pair of Y-fronts over their head. In ‘Homecoming’ a small community mourn the death of one of their boys gone off to war in different ways, unable to move on from the fact that he may have died at war, when a plane appears overhead and they reach fever pitch excitement wondering if he has now in fact returned. Each story is funny with a black heart stricken with the cancer of grief and bereavement, with the whisping underbelly of politics trying to muscle its way into the lives of these Israelis. The artwork is beautiful and sombre with a lot of strange yellows and pencil-coloured hair and backgrounds, each panel oozing with the mix between adult- and child-eye view of the scenes depicted, reminiscent of Tin-Tin. The precise nature of their expression and observation mean that the dialogue-light panels are effective at evoking deep emotions. With other stories ranging from parental discoveries to women with healing hands, the range of lives in Israel, macabre and twisted as they may sound are funny and sombre and dripping with a gallows humour only befitting a country with such a war-filled past.

Loops issue 1 (Faber/Domino 2009)

2009-06-29T12:09:00.001+01:00

The independent spirit still thrives in the overwrought music and literature industries, both struggling to cope with pay-fatigue and other distractions away from their products, bigger and flasher with more flash images and snazzy coding. Oh, the independent spirit, it ebbs and flows that a DIY middle finger that deviates between sticking it up in rebellion and exploring the cavities of one’s nose with an awkwardness resigned to irrelevance. Oh, the independent spirit, a matador of such pride and ferocity and spirit, occasionally flagging up such works of wonder as issue 1 of Loops magazine. A co-project between Faber and Domino (recording home to Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Lightspeed Champion), this is a threefold attempt at bringing forth the danger: 1) it’s a quarterly magazine of highbrow essays and short stories, something in short supply in the advent of the blog ‘review’ offered as a free pdf download guaranteed for eyesore 2) it’s a return to the type of music criticism that made Plan B (recently sadly defunct) so vital, that made Lester Bangs so vital, that made music blogs so vital 3) it’s an opportunity to sell some products that, quite frankly, need your cash because yes, Lily Gaga may have farted out another album and Martina Cole may have vomited out another thriller, but they don’t need your cash. Independents with the independent spirit like Faber and Domino do, natch.

Loops features some quality articles written by some interesting writers, some musicians, all from varied spectrums of the music listening platform, from blogger to musician to journalist to critic to fan. Nick Cave’s insane new book ‘The Death of Bunny Munro’ is included as an extracted from early on in its demonic road trip to the soul of tragic father figures. Chris Killen, another Canongate author, presents a bizarre dream sequence involving a narcissistic and sad Paul Simon fighting with Chevy Chase. Richard Millward, author of ‘Ten Storey Love Song’ a book drenched in musical psychedelic and Madchester verve, provides a retrospective on Spaceman 3, your favourite fuzz drone space rock band’s favourite band. Mystery music blogger Maggoty Lamb provides a scathing and insightful review of the last year in music journalism, destroying all sacred cows, dissecting the death of music journalism and its conquering by blogs and websites and people actually writing about bands they like rather than bands they think you’ll like with the biggest ad budget. James Yorkston describes a recent tour with humour, self-deprecation and humility, nailing the touring musician’s spirit with eloquence and heart. Susan Sontag has the best piece, a hilarious deconstruction of hip hop and its inherent campness, using its feelings of bravado and machismo to implicate rappers in the biggest homo-erotic undertones since... well... errr... the last one. Loops, at times, feels a bit too cleverly put together, like there was a list of ubercool cult authors and musicians... right, now, who can we get? But this is a small quibble in a publication well edited and commissioned and put together like a biannual labour of love. Music journalism, music criticism, just writing about love music, seems relevant again.

Ho! The Morally Questionable Cartoons of Ivan Brunetti - Ivan Brunetti (Fantagraphics 2009)

2009-06-26T11:56:00.003+01:00

Satirical ‘former cartoonist’ Ivan Brunetti has been flying the flag for independent and underground comics for a while now, veering between the high brow cerebral stories and ironic filth. This collection of new one-panel cartoons and quips and visual one-liners, is a brutally funny and disturbing attempt to push some buttons, either uncomfortably or comfortably mired in taboo. The aesthetic of freaks, geeks, nerds and ugly men and women, all with dark pasts, dirty fetishes, sociopathic tendencies, and murderous habits all play out over 120 odd pages of frenetic cartoon violence, sometimes sexual, sometimes suicidal, sometimes offensive, but always funny. It’s hard to write a review of this book without putting up some of the images, but I think to take them out of the context of the book reduces the ‘hilarious’ impact of page after page of dick mutilation, rape and droopy breasts. You get the feeling that Brunetti is not to be taken literally, that these cartoons have been deliberately constructed to break taboos and to irk the sensible. Culled mostly from out-of-print work (Hee! and Haw!) and other anthologies, the contents are discreetly presented in an uninviting, funereal package of unglamorous black and white. The gallows humour of sexual fetish gone awry keeps us guessing as to how far Brunetti will take it, but also to who’d have bowed out by now, too shocked to continue to the end. It’s a funny book that plays with the idea of obscenity and censorship in a way that shows Brunetti to be the master of gag cartoons… especially ones about skull-fucking and severed dick lollies.

Check out more Fantagraphics books, some of the best in the funnybook business.

Joe Simon and Jack Kirby - The Best of Simon and Kirby (Titan 2009)

2009-06-26T08:53:00.002+01:00

Comics were so much more innocent in the 60s, during the ‘Golden Age.’ They oozed nostalgia, Americana and an innocence depiction of good versus evil. The only shades of grey were the suits the superheroes wore in their everyday guises. Everything was black and white, good and bad. Well, in Marvel’s case, everything was primal American flag colours versus green and khaki, symbols of Nazism and communism and pure evil. Marvel has always held a patriotic view of its all-American heroes, lacking the egoes, gold complexes and macabre elements of DC’s more nightmareish grey areas. Most heroes in the Marvel canon operate in the same red, white and blue costumes, spandex representations of their patriotic selves.

So, who were Joe Simon and Jack Kirby? Well, thanks to them we have superhero films and we have Marvel’s successful characters and we have the popcorn powerhouse of good and evil told in the fantastical. They were pioneers. Meeting in 1939, where Joe was an editor and Jack was a staff illustrator, they developed the costume, Blue Bolt, a mix of science fiction and derring-do. Football star, Fred Parrish, struck by lightening fights the nazis and the underground forces of the Green Sorceress. Blue Bolt set the tone for the slew of comic book heroes fighting nazis, developed by Jewish refugees practising wish fulfillment in their art, a device told beautifull in Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Joe Simon and Jack Kirby went on to develop the all-conquering Captain America for Timely Comics, a character who eventually ended up frozen and resurrected in the modern-age as a Marvel character, a super soldier with a belief in truth, justice and the American way. Simon and Kirby rocketed to fame, launching hit after hit, spanning sci-fi, superheroes, horror, even romance, with industry-beating characters like Manhunter, Captain America, Sandman. They set the standard for superhero action.

And now Titan has lovingly collated some of their best issues spanning their most versatile genres for this new collection. With issues from the Fly, Stuntman, Fighting American, Bulls Eye, Private Strong, we are treated to some of the most memorable and lovingly regarded comics America ever produced before eventually commanding the entire market with the template Simon and Kirby created. This is the perfect introduction to their brand of imaginative yet simplistically themed good ol fashioned funnybook stories. Definitely worth picking up for anyone wanting to know their comic book history, for any Americana nostalgia freaks and for anyone who likes a good yarn about the never-ending battle between good and evil.

The Kominas - 'Wild Nights in Guantanemo Bay' (2009)

2009-06-23T16:10:00.003+01:00

It's two thousand and fucking nine people... Iran is imploding, the BNP is exploding and we're all still doing the running man like it's 1988. Who the fuck is Lady Gaga? Who the fuck are the Kominas? Cos they'll poke---her------face...

Anger, destruction, energy, synergy, polemic, ire, fire- want one? Remember when music was exciting AND relevant and it made the hairs on your prickly skin stand up to attention as the righteous music caused revolutions all over your body, convulsing you into a spastic frenzy. Remember the first time Public Enemy melted your brain? Asian Dub Foundation made you dance for justice? Remember remember? Well, the Kominas do, and they're coming for you people. Formed after the book The Taqwacores, that launched a niche North American muslim punk movement, The Kominas are leaders through their buzzsaw guitars, wry lyrics and bombastic fascination with Bollywood conventions and overdramatised acting. 'From Dishoom Bebe's hilarious anecdotal Indian gangster to 'Sharia Law in the USA's anarchists, this is a funny no-frills batallion stomp through American foreign policy of the last 8 years and its inadequacies... but the difference is... you can mosh to it. Relevant and melodic, The Kominas destroy any stereotypes anyone holds about muslims with their riotous funtimes rock'n'roll party and polemical hardnosed rhetoric that tears apart att he very fabric of our society. Hip hop smashes in with references to Slick Rick and Brand Nubian. The Dead Kennedys, NOFX, and Disposable Brothers of Hiphoprisy. In songs like Wal Qaeda Superstore, parallels are drawn between Walmart and the oil industry in the Middle East, criticising and defending and detracting and redacting all at once. Look, this is punk fire, with 12 tracks of high energy contemporary political rock'n'roll, it's not for the faint hearted or apathetic, it's one to get righteously moshed out to and get out there and do something.

Kominaspace

Colson Whitehead - 'Sag Harbor' (Harvill Secker 2009)

2009-06-23T15:51:00.001+01:00

The fourth book by Colson Whitehead seems to be the one that'll finally break this hilarious writer out from the cult following that nurtured his flights of autobiographical fancy. Set in the titular Sag Harbor, a Hamptons for blacks in upstate New York, Whitehead introduces us to changes that ending up shaping urban culture and vomiting it out into the mainstream. Sag Harbor is a safe haven for middle class black kids. They spend their entire summers there, get to hang out with fellow African-American children and pound the streets safe from 'the streets.' They lead innocent lives and try to come to terms with the duality of their existences. For they are predominantly the only blacks in their classes and schools and thus have to partition part of themselves for school and parts of themselves for Sag Harbor. And thus it becomes a mythical, mystical, nostalgic setting for growing up. Benji, our main man, and his twin Reggie, earn money in cooking jobs, stalk the beaches for nudists and scare off any white people who try to beach themselves on their sections of the beach. For this is theirs, apart from the 'man' and away from 'whitey. Benji's a Converse-wearing, Smiths-loving, Dungeons & Dragons-playing nerd whose favorite Star Wars character is the hapless bounty hunter Greedo- out of sorts with his peers and contemporaries, who despite their lack of exposure to urban black culture are still rocking out to Afrika Bambataa and the Zulu Nation, scolding Benji when he informs them of where their samples come from (in this case, the Kraftwerk-sampling 'Planet Rock). The other boys, especially twin Reggie, seem more at ease with their sense of identity than Benji does and this pervades the rest of their 3 month unsupervised holiday in the summer of 1985. Essentially a coming of age novel, Benji's narrated story tells of his first kiss, the removal of braces, BB gun battles, slinging hip insults and deconstructing the myth of what it means to be black and what it means to be Benji. Filled with nostalgia, summery vibes, oodles of pop culture and hilarious self-deprecating narrative, 'Sag Harbor' is a warm and funny piece of literary comedy that is laidback like the summer it depicts and staunchly proud of its identity. A warmer and funnier read you won't find this summer.

Buck up you publishing fucktards

2009-06-23T10:27:00.000+01:00

Look publishers, excuse the profanity but I feel a sense of release this morning. All this digital publishing isn’t destroying print books. People are reading less, yes, but that’s probably cos they’re getting dumber. People are reading blogs, tweets, profiles, news stories online, email etc etc etc… the world is getting smaller and more mobile but that doesn’t reduce anyone’s need for a good story, you idiots. So continue to put out good stories. Don’t think that publishing is an extension of lowest common denominator media like Big Brother or Kerry Katona’s Latest Meltdown.dot com or Strictly Come This Way Talentless Pricks. To the celebrity biogs and the ghostwritten books and the franchise series told in short chapters so they’re easier to commit to screenplay we say AWAY AWAY AWAY.

I had this realisation today because in a sea of books today, I saw my first e-reader. Yes, I was reading ‘Sag Harbor’ bu Colson Whitehead, someone was reading a Barack Obama book, someone was reading David Foster Wallace, another- James Lee Burke… and in the sea of manuscripts and pages and covers and art, I saw someone using an e-reader. She was dressed in a suit, wore glasses (well if you do everything on a screen like watch shop work read, say hello to speccy-vision) and snatched up nose trying to concentrate on scrawling electronic ways that pixellated the more her tired commuter eyes squinted. I manipulated some commuter dodging just to sit next to her and see what she was reading. And you know what it was? Yes, she was going through her electronic slush pile. She was an agent. It stands true… the rule that the only people using electronic readers are tired agents glued to ploughing through slush piles trying to find, in this economic apocalypse, a new Dan Brown or Sophie Kinsella.

So yes, printed books aren’t dead. I’m yet to find a real-life person sat with their electronic reader, reading for pleasure.

And you know who agrees with me? The editor of Granta. Read his article about print here. Also Dave Eggers is in on the action, declaring at a conference that if anyone wanted to email him about the death of printed books, they should email him.

Well, I did…

And here’s what he said (I hope he doesn’t mind my repeating this, it seemed like a pro forma reply):

Dear Person Needing Bucking Up,

Hello and thank you so much for writing. I feel honored that you would take the time to reach out and in many cases tell me your very real struggles with writing and work and the future of the printed word.

I have a few thoughts to share, though unfortunately in this space I can?t detail all the reasons I think we have a fighting chance at keeping newspapers and books alive in physical form. But before I do blather for a few paragraphs, I should apologize for sending you a mass email.

As you probably know, in May I gave a speech to about 100 people in New York, and I didn?t foresee it getting out there on the web. (Shows how much I know.) And I really didn?t expect this email address to be given out.

Again, though, that was my lack of foresight. And I?m an infrequent emailer, so I?m unable to respond to most of the (plaintive, beautiful,

heart-ripping) emails that have been sent to me these past few days. So I apologize for not being able to answer your email personally. Or at least not in any timely manner.

Anyway. I would like to say to you good print-loving people that for every dire bit of news there is out there, there is also some good news, too. The main gist of my (rambling) speech at the Author?s Guild was that because I work with kids in San Francisco, I see every day that their enthusiasm for the printed word is no different from that of kids from any other era.

Reports that no one reads anymore, especially young people, are greatly overstated and almost always factually lacking. I?ve written about youth readership elsewhere, but to reiterate: sales of young adult books are actually up. Total volume of all book sales is actually up. Kids get the same things out of books that they have before. Reading in elementary schools and middle schools is no different than any other time. We have work to do with keeping high schoolers reading, but then again, I meet every week with 15 high schoolers in San Francisco, and all we do is read (literary magazines, books, journals, websites, everything) in the process of putting together the Best American Nonrequired Reading. And I have to say these students, 14 to 18 years old, are far better read and more astute than I was at their age, and there are a million other kids around the country just like them.

These kids meet every week at McSweeney?s, and things at our small publishing company are stable. We?re a hand-to-mouth operation to be sure, but we haven?t had to lay anyone off. To some extent, that?s because we?re small and independent and have always insisted on staying small and independent. We take on very little risk, and we grow very cautiously. It?s our humble opinion that the world will support many more publishers of our size and focus. If you can stay small, stay independent, readers will be loyal, and you?ll be able to get by publishing work of merit. Publishing has, for most of its life, been a place of small but somewhat profit margins, and the people involved in publishing were happy to be doing what they loved. It?s only recently, when large conglomerates bought so many publishing companies and newspapers, that demands for certain margins squeezed some of the joy out of the business.

Pretty soon, on the McSweeney?s website ? www.mcsweeneys.net ? we?ll be showing some of our work on this upcoming issue, which will be in newspaper form. The hope is that we can demonstrate that if you rework the newspaper model a bit, it can not only survive, but actually thrive. We?re convinced that the best way to ensure the future of journalism is to create a workable model where journalists are paid well for reporting here and abroad. And that starts with paying for the physical paper. And paying for the physical paper begins with creating a physical object that doesn?t retreat, but instead luxuriates in the beauties of print. We believe that if you use the hell out of the medium, if you give investigative journalism space, if you give photojournalists space, if you give graphic artists and cartoonists space ? if you really truly give readers an experience that can?t be duplicated on the web ? then they will spend $1 for a copy. And that $1 per copy, plus the revenue from some (but not all that many) ads, will keep the enterprise afloat.

As long as newspapers offer less each day ? less news, less great writing, less graphic innovation, fewer photos ? then they?re giving readers few reasons to pay for the paper itself. With our prototype, we aim to make the physical object so beautiful and luxurious that it will seem a bargain at $1. The web obviously presents all kinds of advantages for breaking news, but the printed newspaper does and will always have a slew of advantages, too. It?s our admittedly unorthodox opinion that the two can coexist, and in fact should coexist. But they need to do different things. To survive, the newspaper, and the physical book, needs to set itself apart from the web.

Physical forms of the written word need to offer a clear and different experience. And if they do, we believe, they will survive. Again, this is a time to roar back and assert and celebrate the beauty of the printed page.

Give people something to fight for, and they will fight for it. Give something to pay for, and they?ll pay for it.

We?ll keep you posted throughout the summer about our progress with this newspaper prototype, and any other good news we come across.

Thanks for listening for now,

Dave

P.S. The email address you wrote to ? deggers@826national.org ? was a new one I set up to give to the attendees of the Author?s Guild. I won?t be able to check it very often, as I?m slow with email to begin with.

Jhumpa Lahiri - Unaccustomed Earth (Bloomsbury 2008)

2009-06-18T21:18:00.003+01:00

Jhumpa Lahiri's subjects are niche, quietly dysfunctional Bengali American families in Massachussets falling apart either through marital ennui or cultural identity issues, but the pain and emotion and expanse of delicate subtlety steer her characters to the core of the human condition. The deservedly Pulitzer-award winning debut short story collection, 'The Interpreter of Maladies' was a beautiful account of the above, but at the same time, so much more. Her writing is clear and concise, yet descriptive about the small movements, the lingering stares, the paths of loneliness and solitude and the companionships of families. 'The Namesake' was a bigger project, taking the same themes and translating them to a broad pallette, a full novel that spanned England, India and America, made into a superb film by safe pair of hands, Mira Nair. Now, 'Unaccustomed Earth', a new short story collection. It spans 5 stories and 1 novella in 3 movements, each one beautiful and delicate and full of nuance and quiet implosions. In 'Unaccustomed Earth' the first story concerns a grieving father and daughter as they dance around the silence of their stoic relationship, as he bonds with his new grandson and she watches him slowly move on with his life, unable to do so with her own, their secrets building up fortresses around them. In 'Only Goodness' a sister mothers and sisters and befriends her younger brother, building their secrets into a wall against their parents, one that results in his battles with self and identity and alcoholism while she tries to escape their quiet life in Boston's suburbs, both burdened by a simple secret that captures them both. In 'Nobody's Business' a man pines for his roommate as she conducts a clandestine affair with a mysterious man, full of secrets, trying to mind his own business as the affair unravels spectacularly and involves him. The novella, 'Hema and Kaushik' spans three significant times in the lives of star-crossed friends/lovers Hema and Kaushik as they move from awkward teenage crushes to death and disappointment to an eventual rekindling of their burdgeoning romance in Italy 20 years later. Each story deals with small secrets and big secrets and how they become anchors around necks, about how everyday events create stigmas that change lives, about whispers and lies. It's a beautiful piece of work, each story chillingly emotive (chilling in their power and nuance), everyday objects and events are described in new ways. The affairs with married man, the slow burn of mixed race relationships, secrets, learning to move on after losing a loved one or the relationships between parents and their adult children- are all themes that build into a fine piece of work, a work of a true master of their craft.

Patrick Neate - Jerusalem (Penguin)

2009-06-11T16:07:00.000+01:00

‘Jerusalem’, the new book by Patrick Neate is the final part of a loose trilogy about myth and stories and Africa and London featuring his usual mix of sardonic side-swiping worldviews versus ultra slick language versus marvelling in the power of storytelling. Featuring familiar characters from ‘Musungu Jim and the Great Chief Tuloko’ and ‘Twelve Bar Blues’, the book is an expansive universe of different timelines and countries. In London, ultra-cool tastemaker Preston Pinner discovers a rapper called Nobody, who he feels he can mould into a chart-beating superstar. Nobody turns out to be less malleable when he is revealed to be an illegal immigrant and a sharp tongue and a strong sense of racial history. Meanwhile, Preston’s dad, an MP, travels to Zambia (for which read Zimbabwe, with its tyrannical post-revolution Prime Minister, dodgy politics and tenuous diplomatic relations with other countries) to free a business tycoon accused of espionage. Musa, our happy-go-lucky witchdoctor from previous books, minus one foot, languishes in jail and dreams of a Bristolian gentleman on a search for the core of Britishness in the early 1900s, extracts of whose diary pepper the present-day action throughout. It’s a broad canvass that purports to get to the heart of Britishness and as well as discussing the very nature of ‘cool’ and tastemakers who decide our trends, and white man’s burden in Africa, and the nature of history and the folk tales of Africa that tell the same stories that have been retold for years and years. Such a broad canvass and there are some amazing ideas in the book, written well from sentence to sentence, employing a hip slick sensibility and a fast-paced writing style, but the broadness makes the whole project feel bitty and unfinished in places. Which is a shame because in here are some great ideas that struggle with each other for space, struggle with each other to be the big ‘theme.’ There is a lot written about the nature of identity, who we are and what masks we hide behind and what we consider to be home. It’s a great ride throughout, featuring a good finale to the story of Jim Tulloh (from the first two books), but sometimes struggles to keep its ‘big theme’ at the forefront. As a discussion of Britain and this green and pleasant land, it manages to be more successful as the scenes in London echo louder than the MP abroad faux-pas-a-rama. Musa remains as enigmatically batshit crazy as ever and is always fun to read. Patrick Neate is certainly one to always watch as his work is always interesting and this is definitely an ambitious project, definitely worth a read, and definitely hunting down Sway’s track, posing as Nobody, for 'Jerusalem.'

Helen Walsh - Once Upon a Time in England (Canongate 2009)

2009-06-07T09:44:00.003+01:00

Helen Walsh's broody, moody and quite frankly depressing 'Once Upon a Time in England' is a brutal deconstruction of a family falling apart. Set in and around Warrington from the 70s to present, it follows the Fitzgeralds: Robbie is a working man's club singer extraordinaire guilted into giving up his dreams of singing for a living when beautiful wife Susheela is the victim of a violent rape at the hands of local racists. Their existence folds in around the rape, which she keeps secret and its ensuing effects on the rest of their lives. She grows agoraphobic and aspirational, trying to keep up with the neighbours, a sallow shallow bunch of ladies who lunch, while Robbie gives up his dreams and good looks to work excessively in factories, wiling away broken pipe dreams into the shopline. Their celibate lives drive Robbie to bathroom distraction and later, affairs, while Susheela drives herself to Manchester to spend afternoons sampling the secret delights of spicy curries, something Robbie hates. One secret begets many others. Their children, a writer and a space cowgirl, experiment with homosexuality and drugs and soon the separate lives they all lead become burdens around their necks during uncomfortable family time. The secrets they hold are powerful macguffins that affect their lives over many decades. The spiral of the fallout from Susheela's initial rape creates a catalyst of broken dreams and broken promises as the Fitzgerald family slowly implode in the confines of their suburban prison. Walsh is a fine writer, honest and descriptive and able to keep track of her four main protagonists, colouring each in with regret and misery and even mystery. Eldest son Vince is a quiet enigmatic talent while Ellie is a spacy but boisterous force. Susheela has her secrets and rigid constructs of life, while Robbie is a regretful broken man. This is a tiny microcosm of northern suburban life, both unflinching and willing to run its characters through the mill, and it's this honesty that keeps it powerful throughout. Again, another Canongate triumph.

Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett - Tank Girl vol 1 and 2 (Titan Books)

2009-06-05T14:23:00.003+01:00

Tank Girl is one of those seminal texts, like The Watchmen, that launched hundreds of copycats, heavily marrying zeitgeist and comic, a sign of the times, though set in an apocalyptic future. Tank Girl was a hilarious cynical street-smart riposte to comic book machismo and paternal attitudes to women in pictoral form. Tank Girl spawned Gorillaz, eventually. Tank Girl was the late 1980s deconstruction and destruction of prissy New Wave New Romantic MTV dross by giving his a DIY post-punk apocalyptic missile up its arse. And at the centre of it was a punky drunky ignorant feral skinhead called Tank Girl, a girl with a tank. Simple. With its whipsmart dialogue and bizarre scattershot scenarios barely forming a loose arc, she destroyed her way across Australia, whether it was road-tripping with Easy Riders Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda (in this case, volume 2) or delivering colostomy bags to the wetbag Prime Minister, she was always interesting, unintelligible and sardonic. Set in Australia, featuring monstrous hideous personified kangaroos, who fleeted between dangerous and love interest, she battled and fought. These remastered editions from superlative Titan Books, retell he whole story in black and white, with essays by the creators and funs, featuring never-seen-before clips and snapshots of the era that creative Tank Girl, even featuring baby-faced Damon Albarn and Hewlett hanging at art school. The artwork is stuffed with pop culture references, very British references (despite the Outback outset) and spiky slightly obscene images of scantily clad men and women, shagging, raping, fighting and getting blitzed. The disorganised nature of the stories make it a riotous read, never boring and never succumbing to the weight of its own universe, by being so open it can literally be taken anywhere. It’s dated slightly, especially stylistically, and in the actual references, but the structures the one-liners and the format are as fresh as ever, and completely punk. Worth picking up these lovingly compiled new volumes for the extra bits and bobs.

Kitsune - Maison Compilation 7 (Kitsune 2009)

2009-05-28T16:43:00.002+01:00

Uber trendy Kitsune have their 7th Maison compilation out and it doesn’t relent from the chirpy uptempo dance/house/electro with yelping indie twee vocals, songs about love and loss and hipster girls and guys lost in the mire of vice and depravity. Two Door Cinema sound like Born Ruffians gone disco with its liquid searching guitars over throbbing beats. The new sound of this summer’s indie disco has arrived. We Have Band has a shonky Talking Heads type manner about them, shouting and squawking tongue-in-cheek over electronic guitars. La Roux’s In for the Kill gets a LIFELIKE remix, sounding like an electro girl Mighty Boosh pisstake pastiche in its serious and squelchy synths. 80Kidz continue the 80s traditional with clanging synthy Casio keyboard sounds. The album is varied enought o be a good party record and oozes class but lacks any real substance, and most importantly, in these summery months, bass. It’s all high energy 80s triumphant disco electro with androngynous vocals and shouty yelpy power pop voxxxx. The heart and soul got left on the hard drive as the album got programmed to rock. This is for indie kids and hipsters scared of bashments, needing something cleaner, more clinical and synthetically two-step thud-thud to keep the rhythm to. On their own, songs stand up, but in the mish-mash of this oozing trendy compilation, they lack a cohesive sense of passion, they scream trendier than thou, and quite frankly, I’d rather listen to loud bass-filled gangsta rap now the sun’s out.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes - Tail of the Blue Bird (Jonathan Cape 2009)

2009-05-23T22:55:00.002+01:00

Is there anything Nii Parkes can't do? Lauded performance poet, celebrated editor in chief of his own independent publisher (Flipped Eye), and now his debut novel on Jonathan Cape. It's a beautiful elegaic poetical dreamy story about the influx of technology and modernity into the more rural parts of Ghana, and the uneasy relationship between science and spirit. Set in Ghana, and mostly occupying a tiny village called Sonokrom, there is a delicate preservation of tradition and culture, through the language and food and drink and the music of the forest, the villagers' only link to the influx of modernity in the bigger city is through a transistor radio. Sinister remains, possibly human, are found in a hut in the village and this brings Kayo, a budding forensic scientist to the scene to discover the truth behind the remains and help advance the career of politically hungry police inspector Donkor, expecting him to deliver a 'CSI-style report' on the mysterious remains. While Kayo tries to decipher what has gone on, and keep the inspector happy, he mingles with the villagers, drinking their palm wine, coveting their woman, listening to their stories and histories and slowly the balance between fact and fiction, science and tradition seem to blur uncontrollably. Western logic and political bureaucracy are no longer equal to the task in hand. Strange boys wandering in the forest, ghostly music in the night and a flock of birds that come from far away to fill the desolate hut with discarded feathers take the newcomers into a world where, in the unknown, they discover a higher truth that leaves scientific explanations far behind. It's a beautiful told story, about the old and new Africa, about changing worlds, told with verve and no cynicism, with heart and poetical syntax dripping from the page, the traditional Ghanaian words and symbols all adding to the belief that while Africa changes and moves forward, it must hold on to its precious past in its heart. It's a heart-warming and funny tale, Parkes is able to balance the mystical nature of the plot playing with the idea of fable and scientific fact, drawing warm rich characters who are three dimensional and engaging, always entertaining and filled with life. Parkes has already done so much for independent publishing and language and hopefully this impressive elegaic debut will mean he starts to reap the kudos he deserves.

Tim Clare - We Can't All Be Astronauts (Ebury 2009)

2009-05-23T22:45:00.002+01:00

Stand up poet Tim Clare's memoir of trying to write and publish the perfect book, mired by peer-jealousy and depression, is the best possible tool for any budding writer or someone wanting an insight into the creative process. This brutally honest, hilarious and engaging memoir flits between Tim's struggle to edit and mould his tome into something resembling genius while living at home with his concerned but understanding parents, insight into his personality and its traits- how having always found creativity easy he flits between trying and assuming it'll all happen, and descriptions of his jealousy while other friends are published, get paid to be creative, and enjoy themselves. Meanwhile he internally tears himself apart trying to get his book finished. I can relate. Writing my book, watching my friends succeed, waiting for my moment, persevering, fighting for it, dying with jealousy and depression- it's all there, it's all part of the writer's journey. Clare is funny and eloquent with his descriptions, using personal experience and brutally funny and honest anecdote to drive his tale of how he tried to make a career of writing tales. From a weird suicide pact with his dad to begging Jeffrey Archer on TV for money to a strangely conceited and fake Channel 4 show on his trying to find a deal, he muddles through, being his own best promotion and his own worst friend. It's a definite must for any creative person trying to get a deal- be it publishing or music or film or anything, it shows the process, the paranoia, the tender self-esteem, and the humour in becoming self-obsessed, precious and arrogant all in the same stride, and Clare shows himself to be a brilliant writer, laugh out loud and articulate, and I can't wait for him to release his amazing novel about a part-dog adventurer.

Denis Robert - Happiness (Serpents Tail 2009)

2009-05-23T22:35:00.003+01:00

Denis Robert's novel, translated from the original French, is an erotic dissection of sexual obsession and passion. A 39 year old writer (probably not dissimilar from the writer of the book) and an art graduate (ten years younger, sexual, willing to be dominated- male fantasy) meet and over the course of 200 pages dissect their intense sex lives that parade their obsessions and fantasies into a powerful mesh of eroticism. Her notes on the affair are on the left hand side and his on the right. It's a quite erotic read that shouldn't be attempted in public. However, it's quite light and never really gets under the surface, never really tackles the married man's lackadaisical attitude to his marriage and the woman's submissive personality, enhanced by her own loveless marriage. It is a tittilating voyage to the centre of fantasy and cruises hotel rooms, balconies, public spaces, cars, sex clubs and dinner tables, fellating the pages with oodles of passion and fierce intense orgasm. It's over before it's started, and though not much happens, it's an interesting dissection of an obsessive affair.

Post War Years - The Greats and the Happenings (Wealth 2009)

2009-05-20T15:19:00.002+01:00

The mix of indie and dance has been so seamless now that we’re getting these immense albums that are high on indie radars and low on guitars, like Golden Silvers, The Invisible, Man Like Me, creating a lo-fi electro-pop that is intricate and thumping in the same emotion gauges as blistering loud indie from bands like The Enemy or Dananananakroyd. Add Post War Years, and their great debut ‘The Greats and the Happenings’ to that canon, and fire: BLAM BLAM. Featuring spidery guitars, heavy duty bass and some belligerent electronic samples, they exude style and class, using intricate harmonies and sharp wordplay to create a heady mix of fusion. Opener ‘The Red Room’ is pleasant wonky white boy funk, but it’s track 2, ‘Death March’ with its squelch of fuzzy synths and off-kilter vocal melodies that really set the agenda for this album. ‘Whole World on its Head’ is a Gameboy-lead spacey track with pulsing twittering acoustic drums and a airy feeling throughout. The frenetic live favourite ‘White Lies’ and ‘Latin Holiday’ show off a whirlwind of tuneful handclaps and atmospheric electronic swirls weaving through a sing-along chant chorus. There’s plenty of funk and soul on here, and the intricate way the songs are put together offset a lilting optimistic surging sound that results in some powerful moving music. Closer, the 8 minute epic ‘That’s All’ is a dancey tender ballad oozing with passion and loss, and yet just as lovely as any other song about love out there. The sweet harmonies and the scattering drum brushes add a vulnerability that is only hinted at in other songs. There is a lot of versatility and breath on this album, drowning in its rhythms and bruised by its own intricate layers, definite one of the more interesting debuts this year.

Official

Chuck Palahniuk - Pygmy (Jonathan Cape 2009)

2009-05-20T15:00:00.000+01:00

It’s been less than a year since we Geek Pied about Chuck Palahniuk’s ‘Snuff’, which was a quick brutal look at the porno industry. So prolific is he that we’ve entered a stage where every other Palahniuk book is good and considered, while the rest are turning out to be good ideas quickly realised. Unfortunately, ‘Pygmy’ falls into this camp of good idea half-realised. Written from the perspective of a terrorist sleeper cell operative infiltrating a host American family on a pretend foreign exchange, really a cover for Operation Chaos, the pygmy of the title ingratiates himself into society and somehow misunderstands (often ‘hilariously’) suburban American life. He is from a non-specified origin, somewhere in South East Asian, somewhere almost fascistic and Draconian and evil. He writes in impenetrable diloague that seems to have been translated a few times and written using an internet programme like Babelfish or Google Languages. I get why it’s written the way it is, and it’s consistent for much of the way, but this makes it near impossible to read and to follow. God forbid putting it down and coming back to it the next day, you lose the sense of rhythm and association a good session with the book eventually develops. But this is the programme, its lack of accessibility means the message gets lost. Also, while moving away mostly from Palahniuk’s usual dysfunctional family models scenario (even though taking place in a middle America family as fucked up as any of Palahniuk’s other family trees during the years), it hits pretty obvious targets like American crassness and ignorance, arrogance, high school hijinks, trenchcoat mafias and closet gay bullies. It seems to be a filtered dubbed version of Saved by the Bell showing in a foreign country. But this means that ultimately there’s no point agonising over trying to decipher the way it’s written. Underneath all the verbless sentences and strange syntax ticks, there’s a bogstandard novel there, lacking all of Palahniuk’s usual dynamic spark, wit and invention. It’s disappointing that it’s not worth the effort to muddle through and I confess, I couldn’t finish it, I couldn’t be bothered to invest that time because I cared so little about Pygmy, the title character, a vain passive aggressive sociopathic terrorist.

Dub Pistols - Rum and Coke (Sunday Best 2009)

2009-05-14T15:50:00.001+01:00

Dub Pistols are an interesting proposition- a collective of dance-orientated dub heads with a love of hip hop. Live, they’re such a good time band, it’s like they were invented for a Saturday late afternoon set as the sun sets and a chilled can of Red Stripe is thrust into your hand and the live trumpets are creating klaxons of joy and unity and the steady thumping beats are pounding your feet into a rhythm. Time and again, this formula, this festival perfect set-up has been near impossible to translate into a studio album that is consistent and carries the oomph and impact of a live version. Unfortunately, I’ve always felt this about Dub Pistols’ albums, and ‘Rum and Coke’ is no exception. On Rob da Bank’s decent Sunday Best label, it’s pretty much a tighter, more honed version of the sound they’re known for. Dance, carnival vibes, Rodney P’s slurred effortlessly brilliant ragga-rap flow, the dub basslines and some tight drum production. With turns from Beats International’s Lindy Layton and Freak Power’s Ashley Slater (on 3 tracks) it feels a little staid in places. The stronger tracks are when the dub fires up the ire and Red Star Lion and Gregory Isaacs bring the vibes allowing Rodders to be the ultimate Riddim Killa, one of the UK’s best MCs and hosts. It’s weaker when it dissolves into acid jazz-esque numbers. Songs like ‘Ganja’ sound immense live and great recorded. ‘Peace of Mind’ is joyous’ and ‘Six Months’ features legend Gregory Isaacs is class, sophisticated and oozing with summery lover’s rock uptop skanking. It’s a shame that the songs that sandwich these pearls are quite mediocre, and sometimes painfully MOR. Dub Pistols bring it live though, and if you want the definitive band experience, chill some Red Stripe and head down to any number of festivals they’ll be at, setting suns perfectly.

Myspazz

My Toys Like Me - Where We Are (Dumb Angel 2009)

2009-05-14T15:24:00.001+01:00

My Toys Like Me is a strange hybrid of disco, dub, house and trip hop. It seems that in today’s misery of diminishing genre returns, the only way to stand out is to mix as many sounds together as possible, throwing in your entire record to the mix, meaning that every new record these days seems to be ‘eclectic.’ My Toys Like Me are an interesting proposition, despite the unnecessary many ways people try to describe them. Imagine ‘Ponderosa’s Tricky trying to make a dance album with Martina Topley-Bird still doing vocals for him and you get an idea of what My Toys Like Me are like. ‘Superpowers’, their single, skitters along witha two-fingered instinct, pumping and off-kilter with child-like lost vocals of singer Frances Noon. ‘Sick Couple’ contains some evil violin following a couple falling out of love through alcohol. It clitters and threatens to lift off. ‘All Over My Face’ has the smooth feel of trip hop and the bounce of goodtime Bristol music, slightly mariachi in its dub threat. Enough interesting things happen on this album to keep you interested throughout, despite it never really realising its full potential in pace and power. It’s good, catchy and as endearing as Martina Topley-Bird once was on ‘Ponderosa.’ An interesting and playful debut showing British music to, once again, be the sum of a lot of parts and influences, a brave attempt to create a boisterous mix.

Myspazz

Blank Dogs - Under and Under (In the Red 2009)

2009-05-08T13:05:00.000+01:00

Blank Dogs are actually one dawg, Mr Blank Dog, who effortlessly fuses uptempo programmed drums (mixed to give you the rush not the pound), Cure-esque bouncing basslines and searching power guitar licks, creating a grimy lo-fo electro-rock, full of DIY ideas and punk aesthetics. ‘Under and Under’ is 15 songs of pulse-raising ire-dictacting melodic grime-punk. ‘No Compass’ is a powerhouse opener, bouncing and scittering along on a sweet two-note guitar riff. ‘L Machine’ switches between synth-fuzz and acoustic battering ram strums. There are moments of brutal new wave, all filtered through Cure synths and guitars heavily filtered and processed, and a weird distorted macabre vocal reminiscent of Joy Division. It’s certainly noisy and full of brash ideas, unafraid to get extreme. Songs do tend to merge into one and picked out of the whole of the album lose their impact. It’s a strong album with moments that feel till they’re approaching a tipping point. With contributions from Crystal Stilts and Vivian Girls, there’s definitely a collective of dusty strange lo-fi fuzz-kateers power-punking their way through Brooklyn, New Yoik.

Blank Dogspace

Broken Records - Until the Earth Begins to Part (4AD 2009)

2009-05-07T15:26:00.001+01:00

Gravitas, that’s what Scottish seven piece Broken Records bring to the party. Swirling orchestras, pounding pianos, mournful vocals and a hint of glockenspiel all add to the weighty mix that comprises Broken Records. Their debut album ‘Until the Earth Begins to Part’ sounds like that moment in a film like Armageddon where all hope seems to be lost and there are yearning goodbyes and painful realisations of mortality before an explosive heroic act/dues ex machine triumphs and wins the day in a dramatic and bittersweet way. Such is Broken Records’ music, swirling paeans to triumph over adversity. The brooding cellos and the pounding piano and lead vocals embittered and indelibly inked in pain all create an epic swirling and mystifying sound, with a warm passionate heart beating, and the thump of interesting little flourishes like glockenspiel and accordion and trumpet to round out an impressively bursting sound. ‘If Eilert Loevborg Wrote a Song, It Would Sound Like This’ is a fun calamitous accordion-filled yearn to a married woman and to art and to love. ‘Ghosts’ is a quiet and simple haunting that builds in sweet falsetto and spectral guitars. Album closer ‘Slow Parade’ starts inoffensively before building into a thundering crescendo of emotion and intense piano. ‘Until the Earth Begins to Part’ is a curtain call to the world as it implodes then explodes in a big bang of disappointment and lost love. Broken Records have the ability to harness emotion and translate it into the fury, intensity and delicateness of love and lust, creating musical palettes that tug on your every heartstring. If Coldplay can rule the world with insipid vague stabs at emotion, then Broken Records deserve a decent stab at stealing that crown and title with their world-beating expansive sound.

Officialness

Mika Miko - We Be XUXA (Post Present Medium 2009)

2009-05-06T15:49:00.000+01:00

Mika Miko’s second album, the cryptic ‘We Be XUXA’ is a rattling thunderdome of short snappy shouty riot grrl LA punk. 23 minutes of exhilarating powerhouse guitar punk pop with only one song staggering into classic pop song status by being just over 3 minutes. Though still lo-fi and loose with their playing and singing, the production values seem to have increased since their scattershot debut ‘CYSLABF’. The songs seem to revel in their own banality, with subjects flying about from listening to jazz while having sex (‘Sex Jazz’) or eating turkey sandwiches (errr... ‘Turkey Sandwich’). This gives the album a breezy feel, relying on electro-shock spider-guitars and thumping one-drop drums, simple but pounding. ‘Totion’ is a post punk floorfiller, all death disco beats and elastic bass, while vocalists Jennifer Clavin and Jenna Thornhill yelp at each other from across the speakers. It sounds tense and brooding, ending as songs should, with a mass explosion. The influence of The Slits and LA punk bands flits across the vocals and the powerhouse guitars. It’s all very breezy and almost lackadaisical in execution making you wonder how long you’ll find yourself listening to it, but those first two listens reveal an arresting energy that is lacking in loud thrashing punk these days, a style and emotion you’d think would render punk redundant by its absence.

myspace

Wavves - Wavvves (Bella Union 2009)

2009-05-06T14:28:00.003+01:00

Three things stick out about Wavves’ debut album: 1) He’s so young it makes me sick. 2) He’s obsessed/got a bugbear about Goths. 3) This album is the literal translation of the following vague descriptors: mind explosion; audio clusterfuck; brain-melt; aural destructorcon. Forgive me for only wanting to really blog about things I like instead of getting sniffy about things I don’t, but this album is amazing. There, I said. Whatever. I like it, I’m in a minority of music journalists who like the things they review and review the things they like. So, yes, go and own the album. It’s the closest we’ll have to our generation’s Sonic Youth? Wait, no, I’m old... I have My Bloody Valentine. You... you youth, you sickening bloodythirsty children... Wavves is your Sonic Youth. He’s a maverick and he’s only 22. God it makes me sick how much time I squandered in pubs of varying descriptions when I was 22. This guy has spent his time obsessing over Goths and crafting a sonic, youthful (geddit) clusterfuck mind explosion of an album, and you need to own it. I’m serious about the Goth thing. Though the lyrics are intelligible machines for adding another layer of LOUD NOIZE, there are 5 songs about different types of goth (‘Goth Girls’, ‘California Goths’, ‘Summer Goth’, ‘Beach Goth’ and ‘Surf Goth’- all variations of the same type of Goth surely Mr Wavves?). The album itself (oh yes, there was some music in here somewhere) is a sun-drenched amalgamation of sunshine pop, slacker fuzz, surf rock, teenage punk and crackling lo-fi, all told through the wide-eyes of young Nathan Daniel Williams. The sonic assault starts with the thumping ‘Rainbow Everywhere’ and the blister-bursting ‘Beach Demon’ which will cause a rush of blood to the head. By the time, the slower thunder-rumbling ‘Sun Opens My Eyes’ arrives, all sustained dischord and oooh-wop melodies, you’ll be happy for the break. ‘Gun in the Sun’ surges under a vocal dissected through a flanger. ‘So Bored’, an early single, is a riotous call to arms that Thurston Moore would be proud of, a celebration of feeling something, a celebration of getting up getting out and doing something. The Goth songs tend to be the most difficult, nearly instrumental cacophonies surrounded by discordance and paranoia thrashings of the fuzz pedalled-guitar. ‘Killr Punx Scary Demons’ is a horror-tale of pianos out of sync, woeful and sad. Then ‘Surf Goth’ finishes us off in melodic off-kilter style. The guitars all swirl and wail around each other like a parapet of cacophony. The heart of the album is sunny and this is a blissfully optimistic album underneath all the drone, fuzz and flange, it is boyish in its charms and has moments of reflective nostalgia. It’s fucking powerful. Go and seek.

Myspace

Speech Debelle competition

2009-05-05T09:44:00.001+01:00

Speech Debelle - Album Launch - Madame Jojo's - Thursday 28th May - 8pm Set Time
Fresh from causing all kinds of fuss amongst the ladies and gentlemen of the press, Speech Debelle will be celebrating the release of her debut album ‘Speech Therapy’. The party will take place at Madame JoJo’s on Soho’s Brewer Street on Thursday 28th May. There are rumours about special
appearances from album collaborators as well as DJs and guest vocalists, and Speech will be playing a full live set with the band some call The Therapists.

There are a very limited number of tickets available for this event, and Big Dada are running a competition to give some of those away to deserving fans. All you have to do is email info@bigdada.com and complete the following line from Speech's debut single, 'Searching.'

'Who made these rules? ..... ..... ..... .....'

Please use the subject line 'Speech Debelle competition.' Good luck!

Daniel Davies - Isle of Dogs (Serpents Tail 2009)

2009-05-03T20:30:00.003+01:00

Daniel Davies' nod to sexually transgressive culture, in this case dogging, is essentially a morality tale about broken Britain in the suburbs, poking at the CCTV culture that pushes certain lifestyles into the fringes, with bubbling paranoia and a lack of understanding/compassion being the ultimate fallout. 'Isle of Dogs' features a frustratingly rubbish beginning and ending featuring the author 'breaking the fourth wall' and claiming to have cobbled the novel together through the diaries and emails of the protagonist, Jeremy Shepherd, that is incredibly clunky and unnecessary and means that it begins and ends in underwhelming fashion, a shame because the main action is so satisfying.

This is a dark morality tale about Jeremy Shepherd, one of those London pricks you always hear about, good media job, misanthropic, laddish and promiscuous to a fault, bordering on a narcissistic nymphomania. He quits his job when he realises how futile and shit it is, ending up living with his mum and dad in the home counties, working a dead end civil service job where the biggest excitement is arranging meetings in order to arrange meetings. Bored and tempering his nymphomania, he enters into the car park world of dogging to satisfy his needs amongst fellow consenting adults, while the small town society around him fails to understand. Clunky depictions of racial violence and attitudes to perversions fly off his cold hard exterior. He doesn't feel anything and what we get is a 'Crash'-esque cold depiction of the scene, methodical and meticulously drawn, describing how dogging operates, how people connect and communicate, how they protect themselves from the law and from the all-seeking CCTV and the codes and ethics that make up the scene, from signals that you can participate to the etiquette of what doggers should bring to the party. It's a fascinating insight into a subculture that is both mocked and feared by red-top papers. Davies is clinical in his depiction of the action and ultimately, the consequences of engaging in illicit sex all around us. The book is short and zips along, never quite getting under its protagonist's skin, instead choosing to be a dogging bible. We see how relationships and webs develop and the intrusion of the press when it's discovered that one of the doggers is a minor celebrity. We see how people temper love and lust and actual interaction. But we never get to really see Jeremy Shepherd, and during the final violent climax we see the acts are misunderstood by locals. Ultimately, what we learn that this is happening everywhere, probably round the corner from us. In the awkward epilogue we get a strange coda to the action that manages to undo all the work the rest of the book has done. It's two word ending will either make you tut loudly or laugh at its ridiculousness but it is neither realistic within the universe created nor funny.

Otherwise, a solid depiction of an activity made famous by Phil Mitchell.

Jim Dodge - Fup- a modern fable (Canongate 2009)

2009-05-03T20:17:00.003+01:00

'Fup' is a modern-day fable (though written a while ago so not so-modern for its reprint with effortlessly modern Canongate) by professional loner and gambler Jim Dodge, a remote tale of farmship and the strained love between grandpappy and grandson, between whisky and eternity, between a shotgun and a silent vicious boar, and a hard-drinking fussy duck called Fup. Short and peppered with the kinda language that'd turn your tongue purple, the book is a sleepy take on strangers in their own family all believing too much in the healing power of different vices. Grandpa Jake sips 'Ol Death Whisper' a whisky reciped by ancient Indians supposed to bestow eternal life on its imbiber. Tiny, his grandson, builds fences as an emotional crux to keep the bad dreams at bay, and to keep the bad people away and to focus his orphaned mind against the elements. One day they meet Fup, a duck who manages to change their lives and bring them closer together, but not before it nearly drinks up all their reserves of Ol Death Whisper. It's a funny little book, dark and light and full of quips and mediations on remote country life in the heart of America's south. Featuring newly commissioned artwork from Emma Dibben and featuring a feel-good all-star cast of weirdos and freaks, this is a heart-warming tal dipped in whisky and set fire to.

Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career (4AD 2009)

2009-04-30T14:49:00.003+01:00

This album begins: Spent a week in a dusty library / waiting for some words to jump in me / we met by a trick of fate / French navy my sailor mate before being glazed with handclaps and strings laden with walls of sound, just like Phil Spector would have wanted. ‘French Navy’ telling the charmingly naive tale of a girl trying to write but being distracted by love. I experienced this with my first listen of the album. Trying to write my own novel, I stopped typing, my fingers hovering over the eyes, and slowly I swooned and fell in love with Tracyanne Campbell’s dizzy head-in-the-clouds lovestruck voice as she guided me through eleven tales of love and woe and abject heartbreak. ‘French Navy’ should have been sung by Al Green, but it’s commanded beautifully by Campbell as the strings ache and swoon and swell around the nucleus of her voice. This album spans the length of a relationship (her career perhaps) as obsession and love and charming flirtation all mix to create a heady, literary attempt to document the wild rush and settling in of a strong relationship.

Campbell mixes childlike naivety with headstrong power and passion, innocent and eloquent in the same breathy stanza, poetic and earnest, almost like a confessional diary entry. ‘The Sweetest Thing’ is like the most joyous song McAlmont and Butler nearly nailed. Campbell's soft Glaswegian accent and delicate, nasal tones suit the fragility and naïveté of a he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not sentimentality. ‘Swans’ is rousing, stirring and almost country-ish in its execution, like ‘Away with Murder’, slide guitars duelling with strings. ‘James’ is quieter, acoustic, sadder, more direct and not like the dizzy swirls of sound that accompany other songs on the album. The centrepoint, it is both emotive and heart-wrenching. By the end, Campbell is nearly weeping, completely stricken. It’s aftermath comes in the filmic string-laden ‘Careless Love’, portentous about the end of an affair and its lingering memories: I've been really struggling / to think of you and I being friends / I blow hot and cold / yeah I'm like a yo-yo / so I don't think I should see you again.

‘My Maudlin Career’ is like a modern-day Ronnettes song, with twinkling pianos, crashing drums and the melodies that yearn and celebrate and pumps fists and thumps hearts all at once. Phil Spector, again, would be proud of this piano-twinkling display of complete powerhouse beauty. The soul that pervades this album is sometimes vintage Motown, and others vintage Spector but mostly a continuation of the elegaic music that Camera Obscura has regaled us with for four albums. ‘Forests and Sands’ marries a child-like travelling ethic with a stomping bus-rolling beat. It documents the distance between a traveller and their lover. Closer ‘Honey in the Sun’ finishes optimistically, hopeful for a brighter day, sunny and colour-drenched, despite the sadness that lingers in the cold dead lyrics. Though documenting the deepest depths of sadness, there is a joy throughout this album, a unifying rallying call of fist-pumping anthemic happiness beating in its epicentre. ‘My Maudlin Career’ is a bare-boned honest and startlingly well-put-together document of a relationship.

Web

Banjo or Freakout - Upside Down EP (Half Machine 2009)

2009-04-30T13:53:00.001+01:00

Banjo or Freakout sound like that fuzz-drenched moment on My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Loveless’ when the dissonance breaks for a 4 minute romance paean to broken love (‘Sometimes’). Like Kevin Shields before him, London-based Italian Alessio Natalizia creates heart-thumpingly aching music in the epicentre of a fuzzy distortion pedal turned to My Bloody Valentine setting (the one after 11, presumably). The acoustic distortion of opener, the title-making ‘Upside Down’ allows a war before ooohs ahhhs and a pounding acoustic guitar, while his voice passionately feels its way through the mix. ‘The Week Before’ allows tinges of electronics and tribal pounding drums to wade through the rippling sounds of a bath running. It’s like a repetitive psychedelic nightmare curated by Panda Bear on ‘Person/Pitch’. The choruses allow for a rush of guitars to filter through driving an urgent strum through the beeping mix. ‘Like You’ is all pounding basses and squawling guitars duelling over a lost love, pleading her to ‘kiss me now’. The star-gazing reverb pop then mutates into a strange, mostly instrumental tribal pulse and thrash while disjointed voices erupt around your years. A strange sitar is alone in the far-off distance, unsure of itself, on ‘I and Always’. With an Allez Allez mix of the throbbing ‘Mr No’ to end proceedings on an uptempo high octane fuzz and dance finale, it’s a perfect introduction to a blog favourite. Banjo or Freakout is able to translate emotions into guitar noises with impressive versatility, never quite emerging from a lo-fi tunnel of his own nightmareish introspection. It’s strangely beautiful and discordant all at once, like Kevin Shields expertly told us guitar thrashing could be. Essential and excellent and effortlessly powerful music.

Myspazzz

Golden Silvers - True Romance (XL2009)

2009-04-30T13:41:00.000+01:00

South London’s Golden Silvers have been hotly tipped for a hot minute now over their guitar-free indie white-boy funk. Now, debut LP ‘True Romance’ is here and yet another strange stab at 80s English funk is watered down from an impressive live show into something plodding through the motions. The groove is dead fellas, Like The Invisible, they carry a tune and they carry it well, it seems to get lost in a watered-down studio environment with the red lights on and the lack of a crowd vibsing in front of them, suddenly, the drums sounded ungrooved, the singer sounds displaced and the music fails to lift people’s fists to the ceiling in rapture. So what do we do? Turn the cowbells on. Turn the harmonies to 80s crescendo ballad pop.

‘True No 9 Blues (True Romance)’ the title track in ways, is a skanking cod-reggae full of groove and thumping cowbell. There’s even a cod-spoken word verse, mocked thrillingly in a recent Adam and Joe song war. ‘Here Comes the King’ is the sombre ballad, inspired by a 50s piano plod and lots of reverb turned up, like the song was recorded in an empty concert hall. Songs like ‘Please Venue’ and ‘Arrows of Eros’ show an impressive understanding of literature. Finale ‘Fade to Black’ is more earnest and emotive than what has come before it, ending the album on an impressive bittersweet note. This is for fans of the Invisible and Esser. It’s cod-whiteboy funk for retro addicts, unable to function without some sort of retro gazing into hilarious bad fashions from the past. Oh well, the can’t be arsed cry. It’s alright. Oh well. Underwhelming finish to an underwhelming review about an underwhelmingly hotly tipped band that’s alright.

WEB

Can't Recline

2009-04-29T23:01:00.002+01:00

Sorry I haven't been keeping you up to date with all the mundane self-promotional things I've been up to recently. I'll endeavour to rectify that in two seconds... starting... ONE TWO>>>>>

NOW!

1) The film Videowallah and I made won a major award last week. It won the Satayjit Ray Foundation/British Council Best Short Film award. It was an amazing experience. We met the director of Shifty and loads of other British Asian filmmakers all thinking we had made something better than them. We hadn't and were both incredibly shocked to have won, but we did. Watch out for Channel 4's coming up season this august. The film 'Half a Cup' is brilliant, concerning two wannabe gangsters putting together a cast to rehash an old play at the local Pakistan Centre. It's aces. Anyway, we were at BAFTA in the David Lean room for the award drinking pink champagne out of logo glasses, have cream tea with scones and watching loads of films. The director of Shifty announced we won, Videowallah swore loudly and then the director proceeded to dissect our film into something approaching deep and intelligent. I still can't believe it.

2) An extract from my forthcoming book, The Honorary Mzungu, about my year in Kenya has been published in Litro magazine under the title, 'Walking in my Father's Footsteps.'. Don't get the printed version as it's been ballsed up by a gross printing malfunction. Read it online above. If you want two more free short stories, drop a comment with your email address.

3) Last week, I attended London Book Fair and saw some inspiring seminars on the future of digital publishing and diversity in publishing. The most amazing thing was getting down with the Canongate peoples (my favourite publishers) and blagging a ticket to their all-important party. Lucky I went because earlier in the day, Franic from Canongate had handed me a free proof copy of Nick Cave's forthcoming book, 'The Death of Bunny Munro.' And luckily, Nick happened to be at the party long enough for me to corner him and ask for a signature. He signed the book, I debated either sycophancy or an attempt to be deep. i opted for a cheesy 'Thanks for the music' in order to extract myself from the conversation with dignity semi-dishevelled. Also in attendance were McNulty, who I suggested started a conga (an idea he was taken with) and the awesomely serene Lester Freamon. Yes, the last two are actors from the Wire. I was properly starstruck. Canongate therefore rule ipso ergo sum... can I have a publishing deal?

4) Jeff Lewis in concert last week was amazing. Seeing a man so ridden with angst and issues, yet able to translate them into accessible dry wry funny sweet and beautiful songs was awe-inspiring. He's absolutely incredible and I love him.

5) Some amazing gigs coming up including Rich Sandling's Perfect Movie and Salena Godden's Book Club Boutique. Also, some good mentions on the Luke Wright podcast and the Answer Me This podcast.

Right, till next time... STEPHEN!!!!

Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years (Rough Trade 2009)

2009-04-29T16:24:00.001+01:00

After two years of arsing around in a retro future (‘Neon Neon’) or with luvvy actors (Rhy Ifans, The Peth), the mentalist subversive and gleefully happy Super Furries are back with a psychedelic tour de force that celebrates their obsessions with kraut twat-ectro, psychedelic blues and rock, mixed with that good ol’ time vibe. In places it feels like they’ve mixed Neon Neon with The Peth and fuzzied it up with the dizzy sugar of Gruff Rhys’ solo work on ‘Candylion’. Super Furry Animals are definitely the sum of all of their parts, a powerhouse of musicianship swathed in clouds of weed smoke and happy pills. The grooves and riffs are in abundance from the get-go rush of ‘Crazy Naked Girls’ before the hilariously titled yet strangely bittersweet ‘The Very Best of Neil Diamond’ deals with the apocalypse and the abundance of Neil Diamond CDs and tapes that will surely survive Armageddon boring us ad nauseum till the pulse of our doom. ‘Inaugural Trams’ with its off-kilter Deutsch clipped tones features Franz Ferdinand’s Nick McCarthy. This album has its moments of effortless energy and glee and most of all, ideas that keep the riffs and grooves rooted to a hard-nosed feeling. Good standard stuff from the Super Furry Animals who’s consistency and ability to keep their schtick interesting makes for a solid album.

Websense

bizarre Star Trek clip

2009-04-23T15:58:00.001+01:00

Speech Debelle - 'Speech Therapy' (Big Dada 2009)

2009-04-23T15:29:00.001+01:00

Speech Debelle’s debut album is an emotive wistful collection of passion-filled songs oozing with bittersweet triumph, knowing smiles and the kind of emotion usually absent from all-show hip-hop. This is a breath of fresh air for two reasons: one, it’s rare the largely male UK hip-hop scene opens its closed gates long enough for a female rapper to come through and get the props she deserves. Not for Speech Debelle. Also, this is the livest, most instrument-focussed record Big Dada has put out in years. It has become synonymous with electronic, dubby hip-hop. This album, recorded mostly in Australia with live musicians, including drummers, clarinets and mostly put together by the underrated Lotek, featuring moments by Tunng and Aussie, Plutonic Lab, this is fire on all cylinders.

The syncopated, acoustic mournful yearn of ‘Searching’ opens proceedings, a clitter-clatter of focussed rhymes and beautiful elegiac music. Speech Debelle, sounds younger than her 25 years with her babyish little-girl-lost vocals. Speech Debelle sounds older than her 25 years with her wise words and tough stories of hardships in hostels, with absent fathers and with failing love affairs. Mostly recorded in Australia, it still manages to perfectly soundtrack London, especially on ‘Wheels in Motion’ a powerful sociological look at life in the big bad city. ‘Go On, Bye’ deals with rejection, and uses zeitgeist references like Facebook and texts to set a picture of a real-life love affair failing in real terms in this real world here. The pain is real. Don’t doubt. There’s pain in her voice. There’s passion and there’s articulation and commitment. There are elements of Lauryn Hill’s first album here, a duel between summery vibes and the firsthand experience of someone going through tough times. ‘Daddy’s Little Girl’ is a fragile yet scathing attack on an absent father over dark rumbling dubbed bass and some funky drums. It’s a testament to Lotek’s production techniques and abilities that his stamp is on this but it’s a far cry from stuff he’s produced for Roots Manuva or for his own Lotek Hi-fi. Instead, it is a sound all Speech Debelle, his delicate touch and live instrumentation add gravitas to a vocal talent. The awesome Micachu and the inimitable Roots Manuva turn up on chorus duties, for the triumphant ‘Better Days’ and the piano-laden London dissection of ‘Wheels in Motion’, strings pulsing in the background.

There are many themes on here. It stays mostly away from the thugged-out grimy London life tales, instead focussing on a more poetical narrative, like on ‘Buddy Love’, a funny interpretation on that moment when you start sleeping with a close friend. The balance between happiness and melancholy is delicate throughout, teetering on the edge of dissolving in an overflow of emotion, there are moments of wistfulness and there is a deep intelligent socio-political eye for detail that never misses a beat. ‘Finish this Album’ discusses how important this album is to Speech, this is her therapy, her observations, her desperation to get everything out of her system because she may never get to this point again, may never have anything to say again and this nervy friction between need and desire provides a beautiful insight into the mind of a creative artist whose output is their everything, who validates themselves through their art, making this her reason to be. It’s brilliant urgent rallying call and thank god she did, so when album closer ‘Speech Therapy’ arrives, we’re with her, we’re on to her, we believe in her spoken word delivery we hear the final words echo out: ‘And I’m just learning how this world really works, It’s a law that says you get back what you put forth.’ And for this, she deserves all the praise she is owed. This is her Speech Therapy, it ain’t just rap.

Speech Debelle

Mr Lif - 'I Heard It Today' (Bloodbot Tactical 2009)

2009-04-23T14:14:00.002+01:00

Only Mr Lif could announce his blistering clusterfuck (in a good way) of an album with a spoken word quote peering behind the Obama magic and wondering whether just because the government has a more acceptable face on it, will it make a damned difference?

And then it explodes, never relenting for a good forty minutes of powerful powerhouse polemic, politically prodding at the carcass of the world economy, picking apart the self-hatred existing in the blacvk communities, and the horrors of the housing crisis. All with Mr Lif’s articulate squeaky and breathless flow, fitting in impossible amounts of syllables into clattering ignition-switch 4/4 bars. The rumbling dirty funk of ‘Welcome to the World’ announces his intentions with a death-defying (he survived a tour bus plummeting forty feet into a ravine) tirade of emotions about the US economy, about the paranoia and angst we all feel with our safety nets and rainy day money, all from a man who survived near-death for a reason. Mr Lif sounds alive, completely in control and never self-censoring, happy to voice unpopular opinions in interesting ways, using concepts to exploit his forthright opinions. Beats-wise, the toughness and ruggedness that wasn’t around for Mo Mega or for the Perceptionists is back, and this is closer to ‘I, Phantom’ than we’re likely to get, a superlative debut off the back of some incredible mini-albums. Mr Lif’s ten year career has spanned a lot of topics from the topical to the egotistical to the downright surreal, but this time it’s all politics, all blistering and all finding the triumph in the centre of the dark storm of adversity. Edan and J Zone turn up to provide bears, while up-and-coming efforts from Willie Evans and Batsauce impress. This is the new generation, the Dawn of Obama has its first dissenters, a smattering of cynics wondering if he can possibly achieve the messianic potential promised by his hype team. We’re living in a global crisis of fear and paranoia and economic degradation and self-hatred and now these negatives are used by Mr Lif to search for a brighter day, which he eloquently yearns for on poignant electro futurescope closer ‘Dawn’. ‘Head High’ addresses Obama’s tussle with controversial minister, Jeremiah Wright, using his unique flow to question why it all took place on a world stage. There are issues and potentials above their squabble. Mr Lif has never sounded vital and urgent and despairing and world-weary but in a world that has phasers set on sugar-coat, is an interesting dissenter in the time of change.

Myspazz

Alex Wheatley - The Dirty South (Serpents Tail 2009)

2009-04-23T09:53:00.001+01:00

‘The Dirty South’ is South London’s Alex Wheatley’s latest dissection of Brixton and its grimy danger and local celebrity, revenge and violence and passion and spark. Having lived in Brixton for 3 years, I can safely say I never saw any of the types of events depicted in ‘The Dirty South’, having instead felt nostalgic for the places mentioned instead of fearful. This book, more pitched at teenagers over adults, constitutes the prison confessional of Dennis Huggins as he recounts the events leading up to how he got his ‘bird.’ He writes angrily, drenched in slang, uncompromising and honestly about his experiences, his life as a shotta (that’s slang for drug dealer) and the webs of deception and danger that were spun around him and because of him. Underneath the bravado lurks an intelligent and sensitive boy, mollycoddled by his mother and loved by his father and even hero-worshipped by his nerdy sister. He’s in love with Akeisha Parris, an enigmatic single mother who he watches run at the Tooting track everyday. However, on road, that don’t count for nothing. His friend Noel, poverty-stricken and desperate to stop dressing like a ‘ghetto child’ needs to make P’s, and everyone thinks Dennis is a spoilt pussy. They descend into the life of shotting, selling weed (never crack never anything harder) and slowly the webs tighten in around them as events spiral out of control, and little acts of selfishness and bravado, of ‘badmind’ and complete recklessness come back to haunt them in a violent electric finale, chillingly recounted with honesty through Dennis’ eyes.

Wheatley has masterfully written the bible for teenagers flirting with this life. He captures the fear and paranoia, the need for material validation, the highs of the life. But he is able to balance this out with an existential accountability for every action, each with their life-altering reaction. This book should be read by teenagers. The naive inner-monologue of Dennis, his reliance on materialism and bravado, his use of slang and his complete relatability to young people not just in Brixton but in any inner-city environment makes him such a real character. You feel like Wheatley has been surrounded by this, lived in this and around it and even makes a welcome appearance himself in the action as his 80s spoken word poet alter-ego, Yardman Irie. It’s a shame there’s so much swearing and sex as this would be a wonderful resource in schools. Obviously, we shouldn’t be shy about opening this debate with teenagers about these real life concerns of theirs, but in this case, the words are so real, the language is so close to what happens and Dennis is a great teenage everyman that this could all be happening on your street right now. This is highly recommended not only to teenagers, but also middle-class frightniks scared of hoodies and youths who really don’t know what’s going on in their heads. Brixton is painted as a pocket of friction and change, where middle-class toffs mix with the grimiest, where territorial gang-life and drug-dealing mix with the influx of different religions and art, which is the heart of Brixton’s community, through spoken word and music, the bashment bounce of the bass, the heartfelt singing and the couplets, whether rapped or poeticised... poignant, real and permanent.

Shifty Remix - True Tiger feat Riz MC Sway Plan B

2009-04-19T17:23:00.001+01:00

http://www.myspace.com/truetigerrecordings

Download the tune from there... Riz MC Sway and Plan B on True Tiger's remix from next week's film:

John Niven - The Amateurs (William Heinemann Ltd 2009)

2009-04-15T21:02:00.002+01:00

Och, this is a far cry from John Niven's debut, 'Kill Your Friends' a dark satire touted as 'BRITPOP PSYCHO'. It strides into Irvine Welsh territory from the get-go with its sunny-side down Scottish setting, awkward mistimed sex and endless toilet humour told in jarring Glasweigan dialect. That the dialect is written in Glasweigan and the narrative in plain English means having to readjust the ease at which you read it. And it's about golf and those obsessed with it. I don't know much about golf, my only real association with it being Larry David's increasingly bizarre excuses to his wife so he can play it. I don't know the rules, what a birdiebogeyeagleradgeholeinone is. So, not off to a great start.

It works as a Coen Brothers film set in rural Glasweigan suburbs, where characters with strange bizarre ticks and sense of humour all engage in increasingly desperate attempts to wean away their humanity into a type of suburban film noir that is both absurd and disturbing as it could be happening next door, and this is where the easily readable charm lies. Much as Niven strides the Welsh comparison with aplomb on this one, losing the fresh edge he brought to 'Kill Your Friends' glistening with claret viscera, he is funny and his toilet-humour attack on mediocre people and their obsessions is both scathing and funny.

Gary Irvine is married to Pauline who hates his dull obsessions with golf, which he sucks at, and behind his back she's shagging a local business tycoon, who's unhappily married to a woman who he can't divorce as she'll take him to the cleaners, but he went to school with Ranta, the local gangster, who's obsessed with golf but more obsessed with money, and whose son Alec is owed a large amount of cash by Lee, Gary's brother and waster. Somewhere in there we meet Stevie, Alice and Cathy. It's an exhausting coterie of characters who are brought together by increasingly trivial and tidy circumstances that eventually end up in murder, blackmail and a Tourettes ridden hole in one. Gary, despite his awful handicap, is hit by a golf ball moments after he has mastered the perfect golf swing, his muscle memory making him unstoppable to the point where he advances towards professional status, despite his priapic Tourettes outbursts.

There's the gist of the plot. I won't reveal anymore as this crime and golf caper is full of twists, turns and stupid people doing stupid evil mean things to each other in silly scathing funny ways. It's not as fresh as his debut but Niven's settling in for the longhaul and this is definitely readable and fun all the way through, despite the sometimes impenetrable dialects and golf-banter. Fun and frivolous and filthy.

Engine-earZ is the future

2009-04-15T09:19:00.000+01:00

David Simon and Ed Burns - The Corner (Canongate 2009)

2009-04-14T11:20:00.001+01:00

Have you seen the Wire? Oh you really should. It’s so realistic and it’s so moving and it’s so brutal and it’s so interesting and it’s so well thought-out and it’s so real about American politics and it’s so a dissection of the death of working class in American society and what do you mean you haven’t seen it yet and I don’t want to ruin it for you but McNulty and Bunk and Freamon and Daniels... ooooh, I won’t ruin it for you. I wish I was like you- I wish I hadn’t seen it so I could start watching it for the first time ever. Seriously, have you seen it?

And thus middle class dinner parties across the country continue. Gradually, they will move on to Spotify and the new Bat for Lashes album and when they first originally read the Watchmen and The Apprentice. Don’t get me wrong- I love all these things. I’ve been at these dinner parties. I’ve been that annoying zealot. Which is why, despite a slight over-Wire-ing of current popular culture, I still think you need to read ‘The Corner’, Canongate’s latest David Simon reprint, about a year on the drug corners where Simon and real-life inspiration for McNulty/Sgt Mellor from the Wire, Ed Burns, witness the lives of the down and out and desperate and those who feed their hunger. This is the book that inspired the mini-series that inspired The Wire. And it’s good... fucking good. Fa’real. Mos’def.

True to the hyper-realism of the show, we get an immersive experience into the corners. An author’s note tells us that either Simon or Burns or both witnessed 80% of what they portray, and the other 20% is down to memory and circumstance and anecdote. But 80% of a 700 page book being witnessed fa’real is unprecedented access, especially for two suspicious white ‘suits’ in a predominantly black neighbourhood. The trust and access is impressive testament to their investigative journalism and ability to recount such tales with clarity and poignance. No notebooks, no tape recorders, just eyes, ears and the knowledge of where to find a good story. Firstly, let’s get the nerdy facts and tidbits out of the way. Firstly, Denise Wise- Cutty from the Cut- was a real man, a real assassin and dangerous to boot. Whether he followed a path to redemption isn’t mentioned. Shamrock is just one of a list of drug dealer street names ripped out for usage in The Wire. It’s amazing to see how much is based on real life. Bravo. Simon and Burns choose to follow the McCullough family through a year, watching their slide into the game, how the system fails youngest son DeAndre, drawn to the corner and never kept interested in school, how real life beats once successful Gary, and how the game always be the game for Fran.

DeAndre is barely 15 and already an experienced hustler and businessman. He provides for his family because he has to but also because he enjoys the street level respect he gets. He helps run the CMB gang, a bunch of similarly-aged runts as they own their corner and never fail to be drawn away from its allure, through direct changes in the game, through territorial disputes and truant officers and the police and weeks of inferior/sparse product. They own their corner and the corner always be the corner. Simon and Burns build up the economy of the street-level dealers here, showing their outgoings and incomes, how they earn more money than they have the sense to spend and always have that provision for their families as their main drive. What else you gonna do? School is lost to them. Ms Ella tries with her youth club but there are no funds. In the meantime, the corner is their absent father, providing them excitement, thrills, the prospect of danger and man-making and the attentions of the girls who know who’s holding the most money.

Gary was always doomed to failure, the middle child in a run of 13 siblings. His parents are simple folk. His dad still drives a cab as his pension can’t support their house still in the neighbourhood and the constant bail-outs of his more disappointing children, drawn to the corner and absolved as family obligation. Gary was successful. Gary went to college but was drawn back home by Fran’s pregnancy with DeAndre. He is our Bubbles. He is eventually lost to addiction and we watch painfully as he gets involved in scrapes and desperate capers, living hand-to-vein, sometimes bribing or stealing from his parents for his next fix. It’s pure bottom-level desperation and it’s heart-breaking. Through him we meet the junkies and addicts, the scammers and the row house shooting gallery regulars and their helpers, like Rita, a junkie nurse who can find a vein on you anywhere and will shoot you up if you share your stash.

Fran never wanted to be pregnant. But now she has two sons, is fiercely protective but ultimately for her own needs. She will scam, lie, cheat and steal to get her fix and her way and to manipulate everything to her advantage. She is our guide to the touts and runners, the extra hands for the dealing crews.

And what gets you is, these are all real people. Sure they become blueprints for TV’s more colourful characters, but they are free of stereotype, painted so vividly and tinged with so much sadness you can’t believe this is happening now, in a country as world-beating as America. It’s a brutal, honest and beautiful piece of work that paints a picture of one of the worst drug-neighbourhoods in America, one where hope is all but gone and all roads point to a corner.

Canongate

The Horrors - Primary Colours (XL2009)

2009-04-14T10:36:00.002+01:00

The Horrors are a constant delightful surprise. Their visual aesthetic and look-at-me appearances in the style presses and the gutter presses have almost painted a picture of a group of posers more concerned with the tightness of their trousers over the ink in their creative nibs. ‘Strange House’ their debut was a curate’s freakbeat egg of short twitchy punky horrorcore songs. ‘Primary Colours’, their sophomore effort, arrives on a wave of expectation. Journalists are frakking themselves with a level of intensity reserved for new Radiohead albums with excitement. And you know what? It’s just. This is easily top ten albums of the year material. Already decided. Already essential. Already unmissable. Download-only first single, ‘Sea Within Sea’ is a dizzying 8 minute work of sheer class that whips itself up into a deafening wall of sound as the song pounds towards its crescendo. Former Geldof paramour, Farris, now sounds like a macabre Paul Adams (Interpol), androgynous yet menacing, power-hungry and tightly wound, and vulnerable yet triumphant like Ian Curtis, a heady mix of the two distinct vocalists. Musically, they are tighter and tougher, eschewing the B-movie shonky freaky pop of their debut for something bigger, The Cure, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Psychedelic Furs and the dark black clad British rock of these bands’ peers. Keyboardist, Spider Webb, through his experimentations with Radiophonic soundscapes and keys on his Spider Webb and the Flies side project, really shines here, ably translating his side-work into a searing layer of sound for The Horrors 2.0. The slow-burning stomp of ‘I Only Think Of You’ is a 6 and a half minute triumph of pomp and lovelorn bluster, while ‘Scarlet Fields’ is spectral and blissful with its almost My Bloody Valentine-esque off-kilter keys and murmured fuzzy vocals. ‘I Can’t Control Myself’ is full of swagger and flanged out punk fuzz, the most pop-punk of this collection, which manages to be bravely experimental in places, allowing moments of electronica to filter into its songs, especially in the first lowkey minute of opener ‘Mirror’s Image’ before it whips itself up into a moody foot-stomper of a welcome. ‘Three Decades’ is pure dizzying menace, with a wall of sound building like shrieking damsels falling off roofs revealing themselves to be winged demons.

This is an impressively tight album, never dull, always impressing with its strong course of serotonin-raising dope-ass soundscapes and bulging walls of sound, psychedelic and electronic and 80s-ish and gothic and punkish and rawk all at once, persuading even the casual listener to shut the fuck up and just tune in to its impressively tense depth. Surely a contender for best sophomore album you’ll hear this decade and a definite contender for album of the year.

www.myspace.com/thehorrors

Newham Generals - Generally Speaking (Dirtee Stank/XL 2009)

2009-04-06T16:12:00.003+01:00

The first release on Dizzee Rascal’s label Dirtee Stank new imprint is a powerhouse juggernaut, a military assault,a black ops mission, violent, uncomprising and lacking in any subtlety with its ferocity and its shuddering dirty disgusting beats. As Dizzee has softened with each album, focusing more on his songwriting and less on the aural violence, his cohorts, Newham Generals have been beavering away keeping things unpolished. Lead single ‘Heads Get Mangled’ with its perilous ‘only a doctor can save your arse’ refrain is a hard-hitting drum’n’bass trip down clubbing memory lane, nostalgic and violence in the way jungles were back in the day. Sidenote- are they old enough to remember? ‘Pepper’ is a 90s rave anthem, featuring Dizzee, and encapsulates the versatility of British urban music. Elsewhere, ‘Violence ‘ is disturbing, a trawl through the subconscious of someone ‘born and raised in the gutter’ barely managing to keep things together, barely trying to keep his head out of violent thoughts. This is a male album with very masculine concerns, the heady heights of hedonism and the lowest lows of violent aggression. ‘Bell Dem Slags’ manages to strangle that line between misogyny and hilarity, but before you know it, the nightmareish urban claustrophobia closes around you and you’re deep in the drip-drop squelch paranoia of ‘Heard You Been Smoking’ a hard-hitting story about a sorry descent into addiction.

The music encompasses all the different psyches of British urban music with slow rumbling dubstep creeping drums and basslines, manic grime, mad two-step garage and rave, drum’n’bass and good ol’ hip-hop. The beats all pulse with a dangerous electricity, an elasticity to each song, able to transcend simple verse hype chorus verse hype chorus templates. Best song ‘Douchebag’ mangles old skool electro breakbeats with rave bass synths and some funky soul sampling before fierce MCing tears up the dancefloor. With the violence of inner-city life, the guttural delivery, the aggressive metaphors and the dry humour that pervades this release, we get a deep dirty companion to Dizzee Rascal’s current output, both nasty and catchy and worth the wait.

Myspazz

Art Brut - Art Brut vs Satan (Cooking Vinyl 2009)

2009-04-06T12:13:00.003+01:00

Art Brut are a wonderful concoction of posh erudite funny poetry and spiky guitars. Their first album, ‘Bang Bang Rock’n’Roll’ was a rousing piece of art theatricality and funny lo-fi lyrics about the awkwardness of love and being in a band and all those ridiculous Hoxton hipsters and their inherent stupidity. Second album, ‘It’s A Bit Complicated’ was a bit too polished for this doyen of lo-fi scuzz, so never really stayed with me. Third album, produced by Pixies god Frank Black, returns to their roots of good ol’ poetry and guitars. This time the themes veer from failed doomed relationships and the awkwardness of love and being in a band and being dropped by a record label because they tried to do something different and the stupid public didn’t like it, so fine we’ll go back to where you preferred us you idiots. And, I’m ashamed to say it, Eddie, but I love it. The new album is a superlative mix of relevant lyrics writhing in wry subtle accusations and insults, and the fierce guitars that made ‘Bang Bang Rock’n’Roll’ so electric.

‘Alcoholics Unanimous’ opens proceedings with a paranoid agoraphoric set of reflections over tea and coffee, deconstructing endless oblivious nights before, hoping you haven’t burnt any bridges in a haze of drunkenness. ‘DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshakes’ is close to my heart, playing through the idea that not drinking ale and reading the Guardian puts you in a state of arrested development. Argos laughs at those laughing at his comic obsessions. Two rousing openers to a strong album. ‘Am I Normal?’ and ‘What a Rush’ tongue-in-cheekedly run through bizarre awkward relationships. The triptych of ‘Demons Out!’ (biliously placing the record-buying public in the body of satan, asking plaintively ‘If you like pop music, then why do you let them abuse it? The record buying public’), ‘Slapdash for No Cash’ (destroying mediocrity by asking ‘Why is everyone trying to sound like U2?’) and ‘The Replacements’ (debating whether bands mean it, rhetorics like ‘So many bands are just putting it on/ Why can’t they be the same as their songs?) all ask questions about the people making the records and their intentions, the record labels releasing the records and their intentions and the record-buying public whose apathy allows this shit to reach our shelves. It’s an angry section, so righteous and spitting pure fury, but also sad and resigned to the failure of everyone involved in the creativity of music, of those who seek to destroy us. It’s a beautiful and sad section, full of pathos, you can hear the meetings, the broken-down communications and Eddie Argos’ suffocation at having to resort to a sound instead of trying to develop and move on and try new things. His shouting, his couplets, his posh articulated slur, his bouncy poetry are all essential in this section.

This is a great return to form, despite the circumstances that caused it. Frank Black’s production allows the Brut sound to breath, never intruding too much on the minimal set-up, giving it some gravitas with some clashing drums and panned 70s punk guitars revolving from ear-to-ear. This is Argos’ album though and his words are endearing, funny, angry and most of all, relevant. There’s a poet laureate position opening up soon, Eddie? People will be complaining in a few months about 2009 being another shit year for albums, but it’s April and we’ve had Micachu, Bat for Lashes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Jeffrey Lewis, The Horrors, and now Art Brut, all completely destroying our ears with life-affirming, conscious, melodic and brilliant music.

Space
Myspace

1990s - Kicks (Rough Trade 2009)

2009-03-31T14:27:00.000+01:00

1990s second album is a humdrum affair, similarily pitched throughout and unremarkably strident in its journey towards off-kilter power pop. Featuring a new bassist and a duet with ex-Long Blondes helmer, Kate Jackson, this is a sugary treatise on hope and blind optimism, quite content throughout and never really engaging with you on an emotional level. Opener ‘Vondelpark’ is nice enough with a rousing sustained guitar and more yelpy vocals, that hark back to previous material. Melodic and soaring, it gets proceedings off to a good start. Off-kilter wonky pop with some nice Futureheads-esque vocal breakdowns. ‘I Don’t Even Know What That Is’ is like White Denim covering Beach Boys with its sugary harmonies and plundering gonzo guitar spikes jamming all over the mix. ‘Kickstrasse’ is an ode to Beider-Meinhof and features Kate Jackson, as they sing about capitalism’s inevitable implosion.

The spiky guitars and bang-bang drums drive the songs in a fun and enjoyable, accessible way. The problem lies in its unremarkable delivery and execution. Not much of note happens and not much engages with you in a perfectly pleasant way, just like Mark in Peep Show having ‘a perfectly nice time while you’re all off your faces on drugs’. Humdrum but lovely and listenable. ‘Local Science’ is slower and more poignant with cellos and strings while ‘Giddy Up’ is quite Adam Ant in places. This is like a tribute to the 80s. Certainly not placed in the 1990s I remember. Get your rocks off in a perfectly nice way while everyone else is rocking out to Micachu this summer.

myspazz

The Virgins - The Virgins (Atlantic 2009)

2009-03-31T14:14:00.002+01:00

The Virgins’ debut album arrives on a wave of buzz stuck to the bottom of a desk with revoltingly second hand bubblegum (see the front cover). They’re pitched as a poppy 80s-ish Strokes and their new album mentions ‘cocaine brunches’ in the first 30 seconds, meaning they are officially dangerous and not teenagers playing pop punk games with their local vintage shop and Converse sellers. The lyrics about wealthy girls, scandalous love affairs and late night parties soon tire as the inevitable rot of being more driven towards scene-straddling than playing sets in and we wonder if this band was invented for Gossip Girl watchers. The 80s dance energy and sharp guitars and the weird 80s basslines all allude to the 80s club circuit in New York, but summarily, highlighting the emptiness that lay within by standing for precisely nothing other than commenting on coked up girls blowing boys tee hee and rugged t-shirts hoo-haa and dancing all night oh me oh my... the danger, the anger, the horror the horror.

This is supposed to be comment on the rich not an aspiration to walk amongst them as equals, which is precisely where this music falls. ‘She’s Expensive’ ‘Rich Girls’ and the shoulda-been-an-Ibiza-anthem-guitar-led ‘Private Affair’ lay down the conceit that New York is a jungle (heard it), rich girls there like drugs, boys, hedonism and nothing else (heard it), rich people can be mean, empty and self-obsessed (heard it) and wow, look at all these parties I’m not invited to (not interested). The earnest delivery of the lyrics, the lack of subtlety, the lack of metaphor and the lack of care when choosing its targets make for an insipid and creepy foray into 80s power punk pop by numbers... ending with the mysterious and deep ‘Love is Colder Than Death’- like, woah, deep. So yeah, if you’re as empty as these rich girls, if you’re a teen lover with no interest for the little things, the little details... if you like rehashed zeitgeist 80s pop punk by numbers, get this and play it for 6 months till the next buzz comes along. In the meantime, spend your money on an album that’s out this month too and will destroy all the same targets, and properly, like a monolith of RAWK (I’m talking about ‘It’s Blitz’ by Yeah Yeah Yeahs). The Virgins... insert your own joke about whatever you want here, I’ve struggled to write this much about this latest ‘buzz band.’

Myspazzzz

Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard - 'Em Are I (Rough Trade 2009)

2009-03-31T14:02:00.001+01:00

In Jeffrey Lewis’ strive to document the extensive parameters of his imagination, he leaves nothing to the imagination. Each private misery and pained emotion is documented in his work, from sexual inadequacy ‘East River’ to artistic integrity ‘Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror’. Through 5 albums of sparkling wit and lo-fi invention he has delivered a solid simple set of songs that are infinitely hummable and no less tuneful for his cracked overwrought lo-fi voice. And new album, ‘Em Are I’ is no exception, with its 12 ebullient songs about everything you ever want to know about life. Jeffrey Lewis is adept at finding the bigger picture in the smaller minutiae. Through his cultural references, confessional narratives and lyrics for invented science fiction shows, he is able to make claims to a higher knowledge and a wider field of view. And with his comics ploughing a similar field, the brush strokes reveal hidden details in his meticulously curated life. Look, make no mistake about his, I am one his hugest fans and music reviews just don’t to say this obvious or the earnest anymore, so let me just say at this point, this is easily going to be one of my favourite albums of the year. It’ll duke it out with Micachu later, but in the meantime, ‘Em Are I’ doesn’t stray too far from the formula, but it does give you exactly what you need in spades.

‘Slogans’ blasts this materialistic world of ours, riffing on No Logo’s tirade against brands, this time the effect is more holistic and Lewis is trying to find himself within these constant slews of information, lost in communication breakdowns. ‘Roll Bus Roll’ is a delicate banjo-tinged paean to the life of a travelling musician that sashays with the pull and tow of the bus. ‘If Life Exists’ is an elegant description of searching for true happiness and finding it in the simplest of things, like never getting bored ‘when you find the right two chords.’ The way he describes an increasing list of girlfriends still not making happy is a pivotal Lewis lyric, truly understanding the core of human failure and misery and allowing his description of it to be simple, never overwrought and constantly melancholy. ‘Broken Broken Broken Heart’ is a cracked pop song, uptempo and sad-tempo, with handclaps and a melodious chorus that bursts out of your chest with positivity despite its inherent sadness.

‘To Be Objectified’ takes a simple subject- going bald- and deconstructs it till it becomes about the vain futility of man’s obsession with his appearance despite its lack of importance. The sound effects in the intros create a panoramic view of the places these songs could have been written. And here as the sea roars, Jeff discusses ‘the manliest thing he’ll ever do...’ (going bald) and hopes that he’ll still be attractive. ‘Bugs and Flowers’ is a hippytastic theme tune for a cartoon that hasn’t been made yet, a tinge of sadness as Jeff walks endlessly finding the beauty at the core of humanity, but ultimately feeling loss in his core. ‘It’s Not Impossible’ is a simple melodic-driven lo-fi ebb and flow of travels and world-weariness sleep and hope. The politics of the Crass covers has subtly imparted itself on his palette. Finally, the brilliant and wry pastiche of science fiction ’Mini Theme: Moocher from the Future’ alludes to the best science fiction series ever with its scatological references to themes and events and a back story, and a strong narrative of mirth-inducing hilarity. With her ‘metal front and plastic back’ she messes around with King Saturn, travels through time, destroying her own present with her incursions into her past and future.

The sadness and wryness on these album are completely in tune with the lo-fi antifolk stylings of Lewis and his Junkyard band, all adding subtle touches to the enigmatic voice in their centre. The sound effects and sampled moments all add to the simple DIY sound. This is one of the albums of the year from one of the best lyricists in the world today.

Website

P.O.S. - 'Drumroll' video

2009-03-31T12:04:00.001+01:00

Freebie Lucre

2009-03-30T08:04:00.002+01:00

After a great gig with Luke Wright, Ross Sutherland, Poeticat and Salena Saliva Gloopy Goddamn Godbless Godden, it was back to London to blog, write my secret book and plan a wedding. It's incredible and incredibly dull, simultaneously, how much time and effort goes into planning one day. It makes me cry. From Friday 7.45pm till Sunday 10pm we talked about it, seemingly non-stop, so much so that I was too housebound to check out my bezzie mate, Mr Lingo's Bass in your Face Bristol rave-scene screamo bass-ment rumblefest. It's taken over my life. The thing we're struggling with as a couple is: on one hand, it's the happiest day in your life- on the other, it's one day in your life. If we worked out how many hours our 00s of pounds was paying for, the ratio would sicken me. Isn't there a recession on? So, we decided to speak to a friend of mine who writes for a wedding magazine. Did he want to cover a multicultural melting pot wedding? A mixture of top hats and sarees, fascinators and turbans? We were the mixed race dream and surely a dream feature ticket? He said fine, so I've been going round offering press coverage in this niche wedding magazine for discounts and freebies.

And I've met with a resounding 'big who cares'. It's not that the coverage in a niche Asian wedding magazine is anything to sniff at. Oh no, that's perfectly fine. It's just they seem to be suffering the same recession as me, and despite everything wedding related being marked up an extra 40%, no one is stupid enough to be having a wedding this year. Right? Wrong, we seem to be doing it. Though, at the rate it's infiltrating all our conversations, who knows where we'll end up.

Things I like:

Jeffrey Lewis and the Junkyard's new 'Em Are I' album
Dollhouse and Eliza Dushku
The Corner by David Simon and Ed Burns
Scott Pilgrim
Spotify
@azizansari 's bonkers tweets

The Black Box Revelation - Set Your Head on Fire (T for Tunes 2009)

2009-03-26T13:53:00.001Z

I may have said this before but Jack White has a lot to answer for. Talent like yours Jack should be harnessed for the greater good. That garage punk lo-fi sensibility he had that became the central conceit of the White Stripes, that one guitar and one drumkit attitude, that punka DIY mentality. So enter Black Box Revelation. Admittedly, they’ve been knocking about for a while with their one guitar one drumkit squawl of noise and blues-rock thrashing. The fuzz pedals are on; the distortion is static-y; the drumming forearms are like Popeye’s, bulbous lobster limbs. So yes, Belgian rock group Black Box Revelation, hello.

We reviewed their EP a few months ago and while the musicianship was pretty damn impressive, felt that it was ultimately unstructured jamming, no hint of songs and sometimes excluding the audience from the navel-gazing. ‘I Think I Like You’ is a storming opener, all bluster and pomp, firmly straddling the noodling punk blues horse with a large cock and massive cojones. By the time ‘Gravity Blues’ arrives you realise that there’s no point listening to the ridiculous lyrics, they’re filler, just a vocal noise to pad out the songs before they hit noodle-solo. ‘Stand Your Ground’ features the immortal advice ‘I got to beat this to see this through.’ Soundbites and snapshots of vaguely political rhetoric are crooner before the guitars get to do their noisy bit. There are two moods to the album, waiting for the chorus and the chorus which involves some admittedly impressive thrashing of the ol axe. It’s kinda empty and boring and never really drawns you in. The vaguely political utterances distract too much. The desperation to sound LOUD and BIG and THRASHING grates after a bit. Jack White, I lay this noodling boredom firmly at your door sir.

Myspazz

Metric - Fantasies (Metric Music International 2009)

2009-03-26T13:30:00.001Z

Canadian pop quartet Metric are back with a new album that flits between large pop and small tinges of punk. Big choruses dance around vulnerable verses. Metallic drums and thistle guitars push ‘Help I’m Alive’ the lead single and album opener forward in a soaring direction, well upwards in a soaring direction. In 2005, Metric knocked the world for six with the one-two punch of their anthemic single “Monster Hospital” (with its ubiquitous “I fought the war/ and the war won” catchcry) and their critically acclaimed album “Live It Out”. This album is more of the same, ploughing that ethereal and poignant punk pop field that made their name in the first place. ‘Gold Guns and Girls’ seems to be a riposte against the limitations of man with its uptempo skittering drums and synth swells. Lead singer Emily Haines is a decent enough front woman, managing to sound lost and vulnerable but with a degree of power and control at the same time, which despite the contrasting emotions, gives her this position of being able to mould songs into two distinct moods. The workman-like musicianship of the rest of the band provide a backing that is both electronic synths, spiky punky guitars and a mash-up between live and programmed drums that gives them an extra depth. Occasionally, there is a stray into too emo-pop styling, ‘Satellite Mind’ but they manage to pull it back with their quieter more trip-hoppy numbers like ‘Blindness’ and the riot grrl electronics of ‘Front Row’. This is a good album that occasionally strays into forgettably listenable, which is a shame because the talents on display and that have been witnessed in the past could definitely have produced something with a little bit more verve and electricity, however seem to have settled for a sound that emotes well in pivotal scenes in One Tree Hill-a-like shows. Workmanlike and listenable and good but underwhelming on repeated listens.

Metric

Where the Wild Things Are trailer

2009-03-26T09:18:00.000Z

free track from Mr Fogg

2009-03-25T15:02:00.001Z

Here's a new track by Mr Fogg an unsigned electronic artist from just outside London who sits in the same creative pool of melodic electronic as Postal Service. More here.

Brian Chikwava - Harare North (Jonathan Cape 2009)

2009-03-25T11:11:00.000Z

When he lands in Harare North (a curious moniker for London), our unnamed protagonist carries nothing but a cardboard suitcase full of memories and an email address for his childhood friend, Shingi. Finessing his way through immigration, he spends a few restless weeks as the very unwelcome guest in his cousin's home before tracking down Shingi in a Brixton squat. In this debut, Caine Prize winner Brian Chikwava tackles head-on the realities of life as a refugee. Written in pidgin English and conversationally African, this story is narrated by a storyteller who uncovers a dark history and a darker heart as his desperation and confidence grows. He pushes himself to extremes exerting his power over his peers at every opportunity. Aleck, Tsitsi and Shingi, his housemates soon cower to his power as he strives to shift the power balance. He belonged to the Green Berets before moving to the UK and this scares them. His ambivalence and defence of Mugabe, his clouded politics and his guarded nature all make him an untrustworthy narrator, capable of doing anything to get what he wants, including blackmailing his cousin’s wife to extract money from her when he finds earning money through cash in hand jobs (called ‘graft’ here) doesn’t scale him up the economic rankings fast enough. He slowly uncovers his history in Zimbabwe and his reasons for being in the UK. We are painted a bleak picture of London, similar to the underclass-masterclass of ‘Dirty Pretty Things’. We see squat-living, desperation and the practicalities of refugees and asylum-seekers, vilified at every opportunity by Daily Mail and other papers. Here we see their human side, and there isn’t a human emotion more eloquent and sad than desperation. Chikwava’s style is mystifying in places, all delivered in a pidgin-English lingo that is awkward and clunky and sometimes impenetrable to the point where strands of naarative get lost. It’s a brave device though as you are immersed in the nameless protagonist’s world and oyu have to trust his thoughts, views, stories and justifications for every act he perpetrates to get what he wants. We are given a dark, often hilarious, political and ultimately moving piece of socio-economic writing about London’s underbelly and the asylum-seekers, refugees, immigrants and ethnics that inhabit its bottom rung.

The day Geek Pie met Michael Jackson

2009-03-25T08:51:00.001Z

spot the Kesh...

Charity Shop Divinity

2009-03-24T20:43:00.002Z

Earlier today, I wondered how many D'Archetypes singles were out and about in the world.

Later on, while reading Edgar Wright's blog I thought I should track down Scott Pilgrim and read it before the film comes out so I can be sniffy about how I was there first. Checking Amazon it seemed volumes 2-5 were reasonably priced, while volume 1 (second hand) was going for a cool hand luke £35.

Then, while reviewing Doves' latest album I wondered why I had taken 'Lost Souls' their inspiring debut album to the charity shop after overplaying it through my final year at university.

I was wondering up Green Lanes in Harringay today checking out estate agents for a possible move. I walked into a charity shop on a whim and what did I find? A D'Archetypes single (okay, this made me die a little inside as someone had discarded my art), the first two volumes of Scott Pilgrim and a pristine vinyl copy of 'Lost Souls' by Doves. Now this may all seem unimpressive and coincidental but sometimes charity shops seem to soundtrack your day in a way that transcends what you can see in front of you. I'm not saying I believe in god, but if I do, she definitely volunteers in my local Sue Ryder Cancer Care shop and is trying to send me a message. What that message is... god knows... and thus is the divine gauntlet laid for me.

This week, I went to a wedding, on a Monday. Afterwards we celebrated with a coffee in Asda. You can't get classier than that.

I really hope the charity shop has a publishing deal; a brown morning suit and an iPhone next time I head down.

Doves - Kingdom of Rust (EMI 2009)

2009-03-24T14:27:00.003Z

Remember Doves? They wrote modern anthemic indie Northern soul that married rock and dance in sublime ways that were miles away from baggy and full of heart. From ‘Black’n’White Town’s claustrophobia-destroying foot stomps to ‘There Goes The Fear’s triumphant guitar riffs, they have been canny enough to produce music with feeling and intelligence and accessibility, something certainly not to be sneered at. Sometimes they've never been able to match the pace of their knockout singles for an entire album, but this time with 'Kingdom of Rust' they're playing for keeps, sounding focused and consistent. We all know their story (well, if you don’t) from Sub Sub to studio tragedy to workhorse underdogs to now. They’ve cheekily been covering Sub Sub tunes live for a minute now, so it’s nice to hear both influences married together on new album opener ‘Jetstream’ with its dancey reverbed synths ricocheting over guitar-peggios and a housey beat that always threatens to erupt into anthemic status, but sensibly holds back all the way through. Title track ‘Kingdom of Rust’ ploughs that familiar Doves sound, melancholy and triumph, optimism in the midst of pain and tragedy, the suffocation of small towns, the disintegration of society yet striving to find a way out. As ‘blackbirds flew into cooling towers’ Jimi is packing his bags, waiting for you, trying to escape the kingdom of rust over lilting guitars and brooding strings, with an oompa-oompa country-esque bounce. Electronics skitter in the outer frequencies, and the hope shines through the depression and sadness. This is Doves at their strongest, beating the odds, pulling together, fighting dirt with grit.

‘The Outsiders’ is back in that fierce edgy Sub Sub field, all delayed bleeps, uptempo drums and urgent surging guitars. ‘Winter Hill’ seems to replicate Spiritualized’s droned-blissed-scuzzed ‘Electric Mainline’ riff and turn it into something sombre and bittersweet, Jimi pleading plaintively in the centre of its repeated hypnotic rhythms eventually distorted into a stomping Northern Soul banger. ‘Compulsion’ is the other new departure for Doves, with its languid funk and ease of rolling basses, passionate and funky, with a new lease of life for the band, strangely, in party mood. ‘The Greatest Denier’ kicks out, the anthem for the underdog, so completely at ease with itself and beating the odds despite Doves’ finding themselves not being a Mancunian band people remember. Which is a shame, because their superlative songwriting rivals that of one Stephen Morrissey, certainly beats certain Gallaghers for invention, emotion and lack of pretension, and is funkier, groovier, fist-thumpinger and more urgent and better than any other contemporary Manchester band. They are more than a Manchester band. They are a band for the underdog. A band that beats off the sorrow and regret in their lives with fist-thumping, heart-warming, uplifting beautiful music juxtaposing the clash between natural beauty and heavy industry. This is dreamy and panoramic and melancholic yet so utterly beautiful and uplifting.

Myspazz

free Mpho Skeef mixtape 'Art of Pop' to download

2009-03-24T13:16:00.000Z

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?cnjlg2ja2mn

She's superduper awesome... Here's why:

free new Edan and Dagha track here...

2009-03-24T12:41:00.001Z

Dagha + Edan = No Brainer!

The Remedy is one of Edans first productions since his critically acclaimed Beauty And The Beat album.

Dagha is on fine form with the first track recorded especially for his Divorce EP Hes joined by the rhyming sensation Al-J over Edans acoustic groove.

One track, short but sweet.

Nowt else to say except listen and enjoy.

Click here to download this awesome track...

Dananananaykroyd - Hey Everyone! (Best Before 2009)

2009-03-24T12:38:00.001Z

This is a labyrinthian powerhouse of a release from Glasweigan sextet Dananananaykroyd. Their wit and showmanship is apparent in their name and two-drummer-bashing thunder-beats. Underneath all that screaming and yelping is a sense of humour that lightens the meticulously noisy 12 songs that make up this release. Muscular and pig-headed, they pound your solar plexus with spidery guitars, strained shouts and distinctive stop-start song mutations that bulk up an impressively loud sound. It’s far from contrived, if anything it’s utterly passionate and heartfelt and earnest with a tongue in cheek slant, all at once.

The songs leap out at you from the get-go with ‘Watch This’s screaming banter and cheeky ‘Hiya! Hiya What’s this?’ squeals. And once it’s gone, it carries on like a juggernaut veering towards the edge, all pounding through the fog of lo-fi with a determined clarity and jagged guitar swells. ‘The Greater Than Symbol and The Hash’, ‘Pink Sabbath’, ‘Totally Bone’, ‘Some Dresses’ have all cropped up on singles and EPs through the last year but all sound so fresh integrated with album hits and quieter calmer moments, like the fidgety ‘Black Wax’ which is as angular and yelpy as they get. The noise and scattershot harmonies never detract by the pure sense of melody the band possess, all harmoniously working hard to create a thorough and layered sound that never errs on the side of simplistic or typical; it’s always nervy, stop-starty and deliriously tuneful and hopeful. It’s not quiet or calm for long, as the fiercely manic triptych of ‘Totally Bone’, ‘Pink Sabbath’ and ‘Infinity Milk’ bring the noise back to the furore. ‘Hey James’ seems to be seven songs in one with its fist-pumping melody, dark title-whispering coda and shouty chorus. This is unifying music, music to join a cult for, and with that simple declaration of ‘Hey Everyone!’ the bands’ arrival has been announced.

‘Hey Everyone!’ (exclamation mark necessary) is an unforgettable monolith of a debut, simply put, awesome- always moving forward, always getting louder, always keeping you entertained and never taking itself too seriously. Hooray for a band that sounds like its members are having fun playing together, melding scream, metal, punk funk and good ol workhard indie into a multicultural melting pot of important guitar noise. In a slew of great 2009 albums, this’ll stand up by years’ end as one of the best debuts (they’ll be duking it out with Micachu for that honour) and definitely one of its mostly durable and unforgettable. Who ya gonna call?

Myspazz

free Daniel Merriweather track

2009-03-23T20:07:00.004Z

He's young and blonde and the next big thing if Mark Ronson has his wicked way with the world.

In the meantime, here's a free download of album track 'Impossible' by Sticky. Download and enjoy. Brrap.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz (Polydor 2009)

2009-03-23T16:16:00.003Z

Much has been made of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' guitarless return, and 'Zero' weighs in with some cheesy 80s candy synths reminiscent of Frazn Ferdinand's 'Do You Want To' which always reminds me of a Way Out West song, but at the epicentre of the erupting synths is that familiar sneer, yelp, wail and abandoned vocal scree... yes, Karen O- she makes it all worthwhile and she's our tangible Yeah Yeah Yeahs recognisable factor that leads us into Yeah Yeah Yeahs mach 2.0, guitarless, and when 'Heads Will Roll' kicks in with 'Dance Till You're Dead/Off With Your Head's macabre threat, you're with them and what emerges is not Nick Zinner, the amazing spidery punk guitarist, but Nick Zinner, the composer, able to juxtapose Karen O's wild vocals with some powerful candy synths all fluffy and light and yet full of the same intensity that makes the Yeah Yeah Yeahs so durable and electric in whatever they do.

'Soft Shock' returns to the emotive song-based territory of 'Show Your Bones' with the fuzzy synths soundtracking a verse-willing Karen, so beautiful and willful with her childlike bursts of love and electricity falling in love. Here the backwards guitar emerges and you realise that they haven't gone away, they've just been integrated with a fuller sound for the greater good, for the good of an evolving band willing to add to their canon and not afraid to mutate and evolve that which made them so good. 'Skeletons' is a love ballad to match 'Maps' with its gorgeous soft almost-spoken heartbreak and soaring chorus. The synths are somewhere between Madonna and Suicide and in the excessive emptiness of the middle of the songs lies Karen's voice, so beautiful, whispering and crooning 'Skeleton me' breaking your heart. 'Shame and Fortune' is like a Suicide remix of 'Rockers to Swallow' all ticks and stop-starts and fuzzy rumbling basses as the shrieks build over pulsing guitars that eventually erupt. 'Little Shadow' has a church feeling to it, and is most like Karen O's North Korea Rock acoustic band, delicate and reverential all at once. Yeah Yeah Yeahs are firing on all cylinders, pulling out all the stops, pushing their songwriting forward more and more evolving at a larger rate than any of their contemporaries, making their sound so distinctive. It'll be a versatile live show with the thunder and fuzz of 'Fever to Tell', countrified ballad yelp of 'Show Your Bones' and disco-motions of 'It's Blitz.' They're still dirty, sensuous, scuzzy, cool and filled with the bile and bluster of swallowing rockers whole, all with the spirit of the party reigning in their limbs flailing about in the disco lights. 'It's Blitz' is a blitzkreig of bliss and brilliance. Bravo.

YYY

DOOM - Born Like This (Lex 2009)

2009-03-23T16:11:00.003Z

With more monikers than a career conman, Daniel Dumile has certainly lived through hip-hop’s greatest feats, from his Zev Love X incarnation that helped make the Golden Age so shiny, KMD gave us optimistic funky and dextrous music that moved us. Their ‘Bl_ck B_st_rds’ album gave us some political rhetoric that was undeniably powerful. After an exodus and family tragedy, he returned as MF Doom and kept his face hidden with a Dr Doom-esque mask, ensuring the focus stayed on the music and the character the sad man bloated with regret and aggression could hide behind. He was Viktor Vaughn, Madvillain, King Geedorah, and now he’s just DOOM (‘all capitals, no acronym’) and he was BORN LIKE THIS. This is DOOM’s first album since 2004’s Mm.. Food. He went through a prolific period, collaborating at the drop of a hat, filling our ears with that familiar staccato raspy flow and there was danger of overexposure/lack of quality control. But he held back. Worked away on his new album, taking in new beats from himself, JakeOne and even posthumously Dilla, and now what we’ve been waiting for has arrived. Sadly, it wasn’t his long promised album with powerhouse Ghostface (also a man hiding behind a mask, monikers and many mirthy metaphors), it’s a solo album. And it’s fucking good.

The thing with DOOM is he has mastered his craft and on form, delivers the best edgy, B-movie-sampling, funked-out, headnodding hip-hop going. When he’s lazy you can hear it, but when he puts his time and passion into it, you can tell he was BORN LIKE THIS. This album is precious, special and never boring. ‘Gazzillion Ear’ erupts like a Madvillain beat with reverberating police sirens and that familiar flow, still spitting lackadaisical insults, villainous rhetoric and metaphors, comparisons and cultural references only DOOM gets, but the way he does it, so calm and gravelly, and with a hint of awkwardness, he sounds electric. The sirens signal a strong start. Then ‘Ballskin’ comes in with its off-kilter synth-scale and evil trade-offs, a stream of consciousness rhymes and internal couplets abstract and yet electric. ‘Yessir’ features a guest verse from vibrant bouncy and yet menacing Raekwon, who cooks up one his finest while a guitar-siren pulses in the background. The downtempo bass and scattering drums all make this a highlight, along with the near-police-procedural drama in ‘Angelz’ an old track featuring Ghostface that finally gets the release it deserves for its James Bond strings and knockout rhymes trading blows with the beats.

The only misfire is a strange unnecessary cuss against fake gangsters which exercises that age-old hip-hop dinosauric conceit of being homophobic, it’s unnecessary and betrays the intelligence DOOM usually places in his rhymes. However, this aside, the rest of the album is fire, firing, moving, grooving and completely utterly brilliant all the way through, able to be funky and threatening all at once, while a vibrant rejuventated DOOM has fun on the mic, throwing out streams of abstract consciousness rhyming intensely, like a dictionary definition of a superior rapper, all personality, attitude and ability, DOOM certainly was BORN LIKE THIS.

MYSPAZZ

Geek Five: Dananananaykroyd interview

2009-03-23T08:40:00.003Z

Here is a quick interview with Dananananaykroyd where I get something wrong. They are an awesome Scottish band with bright hilarious passionate songs and two frakking drummers. Album review later on today, but in the meantime....

- 'Hello Everyone' is your new album. How would you describe your album to someone who shies away from traditional greetings?

Our album's called 'Hey everyone', you denser. It's a touch more colloquial, so right from the off we're making things that are little bit easier for those who shy away from traditional greetings. Our debut album is one big giant "hello" to the world, with lots of loud, crushing guitars and scottish people shouting and screaming out of your stereo. A sort of "look at us! We're really annoying!" Not really the sort of thing for anyone shy of anything, to be perfectly honest.

- Indie DIY is the way to go for bands today. Yay or nay and explain your workings?

Yay and nay. It all depends on what sort of person/band you are. If you have the sort of money and resources needed to succeed or even exist at a comfortable level where you get to put out records and constantly tour the world, then go for it. It's a fantastic thing to be able to do that off of your own back and, from past experiences, very rewarding. Just because the record industry is in a bit of turmoil just now, doesn't make it any easier for tiny little bands to get noticed though. It still takes a hell of a lot of hard work, whether or not you choose to work with a record label. There's 6 of us and we're all skint, so, well, duh.

- In order to recreate the thundering experience of two drummers on a record, you must.... ?

TURN THE DRUMS UP REALLY LOUD AND MAKE THEM PLAY AS HARD AS THEY CAN UNTIL THEY HATE THE SONGS AND ALSO MUSIC AND THEIR LIVES AS A WHOLE. Well, that's what we did in the studio. At home, listening on your stereo, we suggest turning your stereo up nice and loud, to the point where your mum tells you that, even though she loves you as a mother because she has to, she no longer likes you as a person and you end up growing up all wrong and stuff.

- What's inspiring you right now? Books, Cds, films, art, tea brands etc?

Pink Floyd! I watched a show about them today and it has given me some great ideas. And also my new Playstation 3 is teaching me all about how, if you write silly pop music that ordinary people enjoy, you might get to be on a computer game and then actually make some money from playing music. Very inspirational.

- What's the geekiest thing about each member?

Well, Calum and Duncan are constantly playing WoW. Like, to the point of deep, deep sadness. Laura is constantly just sort of being a general, geek and telling crap jokes and picking things up off the floor and eating them. She also married a rock star, what a total geek! John makes dance music ALL the time. He thinks it makes him cool, but who actually listens to dance music past the age of 15? What a geek. My name's David and yesterday I lay in bed playing Skate 2 for 12 hours straight. Goodbye!

Bat for Lashes - Two Suns (EMI 2009)

2009-03-23T08:02:00.002Z

2006's 'Fur and Gold', Bat for Lashes' debut record was a real discovery for me. I heard 'Sarah' at someone's house and further investigation lead me to an album that wouldn't leave my stereo or my fiance's, it became an omnipresent staple in our house with its shamanic naivety and childlike beauty, serene and soothing yet wild with impossible emotion. It's quite a feat considering how much new music I absorb, how long this stayed on the stereo. I was intrigued by Natasha Khan, a beautiful, lithe and quietly kooky woman, completely at odds with fashion and typified female singer-songwriters who were mouthy and sang about al frescos and boys being dickhead. She made songwriting vague again with references to magic and animal totems and the wild possibility of the skies and the simple emotiveness of 'sad eyes.' Seeing her support Radiohead last summer completed my journey to love/obsession where a field of 100,000 people who sort of knew her were seduced and subdued and captivated over a strong 45 minute set. Then the Mercury nomination came along with the Kate Bush comparison bat-lash. Ultimately, she is one of the country's finest songwriters, and now we have a gorgeous new album of hers to absorb.

On first listen, 'Two Suns' seems to be about duality, about spirituality and physiciality, about the sun. Natasha and an inner-child alter-ego, the vacuous and destructive blonde inner-self duel over the course of the album, intertwining and connecting in strange ways, exploring the philosophy of the self and the connectedness of existence. It feels filmic and narrative-heavy yet loses none of the intricate songwriting that charmed us originally. Recorded with members of Yeasayer and featuring Scott Walker on a mesmerising finale, this feels more like a band record, whereas 'Fur and Gold' felt like Natasha, with friends brought in to be orchestrated, this feels more expansive and collaborative, the songs are more ambitious and intricate, swiling and changing and oozing with meticulous power.

'Glass' is about lovers brought together in the city then torn apart and separated like two planets, two entities that belong together. With the bass drum thud and the apocalyptic wail of Natasha, the doom-laden strings and guitars menace and thud creating a sonic soundscape of two extremes.

'Sleep Alone' is bat-dark with the processed acoustic guitar riff and off-kilter disco beats. With Natasha's spooky falsetto, this feels like a doomy dancehall while Natasha wails “My mama told me / the dream of love is a two-hearted dream”. The duality theme is explored more here, and as the song reaches its denouement, you see that this disco is empty save for Natasha, alone, fighting to find her other half.

'Moon and Moon' is a sumptuous piano-laden ballad, closest to 'Fur and Gold' with its focal point being the piano and Natasha's vocal. The two twines of the moons, on their trajectory, represent two travelling lovers lost trying to get back to each other.

'Daniel' represents the biggest departure for Bat for Lashes with its hefty electro beat and poppy heart. The synth wavers and tinkles and the beats kick in and suddenly you can see Neo flying through green lines of code in the Matrix, this is film music, this is moving beautiful, powerful heavy poppy ballad stuff. Bravo to Bat for Lashes for hitting the pop parade as, while this is superior 80s electro, is the most accessible song on the album.

'Peace of Mind' is a soothing acoustic ballad with elongated country guitar that builds layer upon layer until a choral chant (an all-black all-gay gospel choir) gaves this song a wave of reverence, a wash of sunniness and burning bright light. Ben Christophers' guitar shine as does the choir that builds and builds till crescendo.

'Siren Song' is our first introduction to Pearl, the destructive blonde alter-ego, lost in New York, a wash of decadence gone sour and loneliness. The delicate piano is played until the pounds and bashes build the song into a towering eruption of emotion and beauty and sadness and wild shamanic screaming looking for a place to fit in. The search for perfect, wholesome and innocent love and the destruction of that love through emotional sabotage builds from a bashed piano into a wall of sound of flutes and strings and drums all clattering and building an impenetrable aural wall.

'Pearl's Song' continues the theme of Pearl feels like Pearl wander around the city lost, an urgent beat throbbing as she swirls around looking for something she's seem in a dream. This is the second most accessible song of the album with the Yeasayer-influenced falsetto chorus evoking both magic and triumph over adversity.

'Good Love' and 'Two Planets' are both beautiful evocations of the stars, with their twinkles and scatter-shot rumbling drums. 'Two Planets' feels like a dance tune while 'Good Love' is a slow ballad'. 'Two Planets' is the album's weak link as it occasionally veers off into a strange out of tune coda that doesn't gel with the entire song.

'Travelling Woman' is a psychedelic desert song, all sun and solitude, Natasha wandering by herself in an expanse, reflective and remorseful. The piano and drums pound a stomping walking rhythm that eases the meditation.

'The Big Sleep' is Pearl's curtain call, a duet with Scott Walker's pain-ridden disembodied voice, almost Phantom of the Opera-ish, as she calls the curtain to close, as she bids goodbye as she hangs up the dress forever, a sad sack of pain and forgotten emotion. A faded star. She is empty now and ready to leave. Spectral and electric, this is a beautiful song, almost heard out of a music box, it sounds so vintage, and as the curtain closes on the reverberating piano, we bid goodnight.

This is one of the year's most special albums, packed with content, packed with moods, a real sense of journey and the pacing of a maestro. It's sad to think that as the album dies, these songs will become disembodied over time as standalone pieces, because together they take you on a powerful emotional ride. This is an album as albums should be made, a real journey that leaves you bereft at the end, having been with it all the way to the end. Bravo Natasha Khan, this is the work of a true genius.

Bat for Lashes

Gujaratis, Bruce Wayne and Friend Chicken

2009-03-23T07:43:00.004Z

Life's been strange recently. Instead of blogging every excruciating minute piece of banality from my so-called life, I've been writing my new novel. While the industry has been in complete meltdown/downturn, some writer friends and I thought it best to start stockpiling material for when the dust settles the book-market upscales and hey, they need more brown-boy-material to fill the shelves. I've been working on this book in relative secret, only giving out sketchy details about small parts of it. Because I'm still in first draft hell, I haven't come up with the definitive killer sentence to describe it, the one-sell, the 'boy meets girl, girl kills boy, boy haunts girl' type sentence that makes people get it instantly. All I have is this abstract concept about what it feels like, and if anyone asks what it's about it becomes errr ummm errr well it's kinda like about this sort of thingy.

Some amusing and disgusting things recently:

1) Outside my house, an old Indian man is wandering up and down the street slowly, darting back to our house. We're watching him. He's definitely in the weirdo category. We leave the house for dinner. He stops and walks up to me just at the end of the drive.

'Excuse me...'
'Yes?'
His eyes are red and tear-strewn, he walks with a lean over to his left side like it's boneless.
'Are you a Gujarati?'
'Yes I am.'
'I'm looking for Ashok Shah's house. He lives in Wood Green somewhere but I'm forgotten where. Do you know where he lives? He is Gujarati too.'
'No sorry.'
'I can't believe I've forgotten. Sorry.'

He limps off.

2) Teenagers are funny. They're so easily offended by some things and so quick to assert their awkward authority on others. I was standing on a crowding train next to two teenage girls who were sneering about their surroundings. They were particularly upset about the train being too busy to offer them seats. One of them became quickly outraged by a non-descript blonde boy on the other side of the carriage wearing one of those 'fashionable' faded vintage Batman insignia t-shirts. He looked bland, unable to carry off a conversation.

'Oh my god,' said the girl audibly to her friend. 'Look at his t-shirt. The Batman one. He's, like, a complete idiot. I mean I bet he doesn't even know who Bruce Wayne is. He's like his alter-ego you dumbarse.'

Weirded comment about a t-shirt ever.

3) Here's some proper ASBO behaviour. It's the last dregs of Sunday morning (11.45am), we're on a train hurtling into London. A man stands over the passengers with his girlfriend, both devouring fried chicken from boxes, daubed with ketchup, oozing grease. He has chicken fat smeared across his face. He keeps steadying himself with his greasy chicken hand, placing it on every handle pole and surface he can find. You're disgusting mate, and you only warrant a mention because that's the filthiest thing I have ever seen and you're the reason our tube is a putrid mess of dirt and annoyance and I hate you.

That's all for now. I'd tell you about the worst gig I had to cancel 20 minutes after its scheduled start and why the venue were pricks for making me turn up even though I knew no one would be buying tickets, but that's one for the memoirs, which I will begin stockpiling now for that inevitable book-upward swing.

Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls (In the Red 2009)

2009-03-19T14:12:00.003Z

Brooklyn noise-pop trio Vivian Girls are drenched in a seductive fuzz of swirling guitars while their muddied shoegazing harmonies sweetly flirt you you over the tops of their fretboards. Gorgeous, grungy and just too damn powerful with the geetars, they fuzz and buzz their way through ten short sharp succint songs. 'Wild Eyes' is the pinnacle of their simple format, naive slightly off-key sweet schoolgirl harmonies while the bass pounds and the drums clatter. The guitar is a heavily distorted flange of fuzzy overtones. They balance frequencies beautifully with high-pitched murmured vocals, middling power chords and the rumble of a tight bass. 'Going Insane' is a dizzy rollercoaster-like song slightly out of time with itself, nearly tripping over itself as the singer delivers slick lyrics about impending insanity. 'Where do you run to' pounds over a repeated riff, slightly road tripish, and trippy all at once, out of sync harmonies ghost over the top of the music. These short songs are tight and well-put together erupting through multitudes of moods and melodies in short bursts of time, desperately scrabbling towards the finish. This is for you, you noise pop shoegaze fan, you girly girl harmony guys, you must own.

Myspazz

Shifty trailer

2009-03-18T17:10:00.001Z

Trailer for new film Shifty starring Geek Pie friend/favourite, Riz Ahmed aka Riz MC

Blue Roses - Blue Roses (XL/Salvia 2009)

2009-03-18T16:59:00.002Z

Blue Roses is actually Laura Groves, a West Yorkshire-bred acoustic female singer-songwriter with a voice pitched somewhere between Bjork and Joni Mitchell, and a delicate instrumental touch pitched between Simon & Garkfunkel and Joanna Newsom. Her little-girl-lost voice soars over carefully picked acoustic guitar melodies, while the occasional flurry of piano or maracas and other percussive engines push the song past the acoustic singer-songwriter post. His ghostly folk consists of found instruments complimenting the omnipresent guitar, adding a fragmented spectral layer to the music, an alabaster texture of purity. She sings about love and loss and all those other staples of the acoustic female singer-songwriter, lacking the vision and attention to detail of someone like Emmy the Great, but makes up for it with the impressive range of her voice and how she is able to harness harmonies and melodies out of disjointed vocal arrangements. ‘Doubtful Comforts’ is evidence of this melancholy medley of sounds working together as an aural collage of beauty and quiet serenity. The kalimba tinkles and slides around your ears like falling coins, persuading your swoons to induce themselves. It has an eerie sound quality. Elsewhere, on songs like ‘Does Anyone Love Me Now?’ her emotions are kept in check by a steadily plucked guitar and impressive vocal falsetto eruptions. Where most songs bleed into each other, these two stand out, as do others where harmonium and harmonica duel or where the textures laid down by the found instruments bolster up the sound beyond simple standard fare. This is impressive stuff from a prodigious talent with still a lot left to give, and as she grows so will the sound. In the meantime, this is a great introduction to a soon-to-be force to be reckoned with.

Myspazz

Black Lips - 200 Million Thousand (Vice 2009)

2009-03-18T16:17:00.001Z

Black Lips toe the line between chaotically unpredictable and comfortably predictable with wild abandon. You should expect them to snarl, piss in your mouth and get their clothes off, especially if it isn’t appropriate. Their recent gigs in India resulted in nationwide scorn at these Georgia-based punk rockers. Maybe it was excessive in a country that is still struggling to reconcile its traditional values and cosmopolitan future but maybe that’s why the world needs Black Lips. Musically, you can rely on them to produce wild thumping lo-fi 60s garage punk-influenced badass songs that all reduce the listener to a sweating spitting headbanging disciple of the Lip-i-festo, counting 200 million thousand strong as their legion, or something. The new album, then, is a rip-roaring feat of derring-do, similar in feel, tone and recklessness to ‘Good Bad Not Evil’ and containing catchy snarling uptempo 3 minute pop songs that veer wildly to strange proclamations (‘Big Black Baby Jesus of Today’) to paranoid delusional drug-induced ramblings (‘Drugs’). There’s also their tender side, that still moment of the night where the Lips reflect on the chaos trail they’ve blazed and deliver undeniably moving yet slightly unhinged slowies in the guise of love songs, which is where the sweet and tender ‘I’ll Be With You’ comes in, skipping along with a 50s ‘Earth Angel’ vibe. You can imagine George McFly trying to impress his future wife to this one. ‘Big Black Baby Jesus of Today’ has the spit and sawdust aggression, beating you with pool cues and slow threatening slurred lyrics over thudding guitars. Influences 13th Floor Elevators and New York Dolls prevail on these 14 snarling lo-fi mumble songs all about fucking, drugging, punching and loving- so base and simple, so primal and urgent, all fierce and pure in their catchiness. The guitars all fire in that scattershot post-flower-power garage sound, berating the listeners with their rhythms. Ultimately, Black Lips are a con, they play the punk game, but underneath they’re sweet and sound and loveable rogues and that’s all you want in a 200 million thousand strong legion of fighters all flying your flag. More of the same but when it sounds this good and this powerful and this headnoddingly infectious, I could suffer more albums in the same vein. Never lose your edge boys; never hit the big studios and never turn the fuzz pedals off. Keep it going, take my heart.

Myspazz

Fake Problems - It's Great to be Alive (SideOneDummy 2009)

2009-03-17T19:22:00.003Z

Fake Problems' new album really sells you with the title, which they deconstruct over the course of twelve songs, sometimes ridiculously optimistic, and at others mocking themselves or just striving to triumph over adversity. Recruiting a horn section, the band give the songs a liver feeling, something bouncier and more joyous. The guitars still squelch and induce ticks and huzzahs, but it's in a rejuvenated bass and new horn section where the songs find a backbone bopping its way through the spine of the song. Chris Farren's lead vocal is heartfelt and soulful and playfully enunciates the intentions of the band as they course through the songs with good humour. There's still a punk rock core at the centre of proceedings, like on the bouncing flouncy 'Diamond Rings.' 'You're a Serpent, You're a She-Snake' operates on a sinister shuffle andwail, and the mourning 'Tabernacle Song' is orchestral and lush. There is never a dull moment and it keeps its heart pretty versatile throughout. Lyrically, they appreciate life and examine ambition and identity, and despite an underlying tinge of sinisterisms, the majority of the album operates on an optimistic course, trailblazing itself through the Nebraska landscapes that spawned it, all with a bit heart full of joy and ultimately optimism for the future.

Myspazz

Video Nasties - On All Fours (Dead Again 2009)

2009-03-17T19:10:00.002Z

The debut album from London scum, Video Nasties, is an aggressive buzzard of an album, gnawing and chomping like a mixed-animal metaphor breaking free of the shackles of its captors, a stodgy heavy punk-assault on your emotions. Potent and aggressive, their line of searing boisterous and down right disturbing punka guitars give you an uneasy fuzzy journey into the abyss. Willing you into submission are singles 'Albatross' an animated tome of death and destruction and bile and spit that pounds and thuds with every bass drum boom and the acetate bliss of 'Dead Again' an all-punching all-kicking riposte to doubters. Menacing and compelling future single 'Jellybean' is an uneasy journey through thrash while 'Rolling' shows a potential versatility with its lullaby-like charm. Full of personality and oozing with threat, this is a thundering debut.

Myspazz

Peter Doherty - Grace/Wastelands (EMI 2009)

2009-03-16T14:18:00.001Z

Remember when Pete Doherty made music? Well, he finally has. Ha- hilarious tabloid joke over and done with, what else to update you on the Doherty press machine? Well, to separate himself from Pete Doherty=junkie, we get PeterR Doherty=troubadour. This is PeteR Doherty’s first solo album, a collection of songs that have been knocking about for years for the discerning Doherty curator. They’ve now been recorded proper-like, away from the hiss and crackle of the Dictaphone, by Stephen Street and Graham Coxon weighing in with some delicate guitars and flourishes that bring the songs out from their lo-fi beginnings. This is PeteR Doherty playing for his fans, knowing he’s given them a rough ride the last few years, becoming a superstar for the wrong reasons, gravitating away from the people’s hero that rose to giddy heights helming The Libertines, which was a band for the fans, happy to engage and interact and honour their diehard core army. These songs have been knocking about for a while, and so, given the studio treatment, they become PeteR as the fans want him, mostly intimate and acoustic and mournful, whipping them up into delirious fervour with his every emotive drawl. This won’t be the cross-over album that endears him to a press that vilified him. Instead, it gives his fans little more than a thank-you. Many songs are all set at plod-tempo, or ‘mournfullo’ (meaning ‘slow enough for long drawn-out vocals and quiet instrumental breakdowns for full emotional caterwauling’. Songs that don’t play mournfullo hit novelty tempos, with some forays into white boy reggae, and gypsy jazz. For all PeteR’s heartwrenching, he hasn’t lost his wry sense of humour or melody. The lyrics vaguely celebrate all PeteR’s favourite topics, decadence, freedom, libertines, lost love and outsider-status. There is a deep swooning romanticism on show here, poignant and fun and beautiful all at once, as PeteR now sounds fragile, the morning after, full of sorrow and regret. The acoustic guitar shimmies and canters like ‘Radio USA’ from the first Libertines album, the melodies veer between mournful folk and Kinksy fun. Single ‘Last of the English Roses’ builds a beautiful pace with lilting strings and an almost dub-like explosion of sound twinkles in the background, as an off-beat skank celebrates a bubbling beat. This is an album for the fans, one that redeems him, ultimately it’s a curate’s egg, a bit like ‘The Watchmen’ film- one for the fanboys who have scoured the internet for every crackly half-arsed mp3, who finally get to hear the finished studio version, which in effect neuter’s the thisness of the recordings, but at least Doherty’s back on track and has finished up his half-arsed body of work since he left the Libertines, and hopefully his next one will be the one.

PeteR

Tim Thornton - The Alternative Hero (Jonathan Cape 2009)

2009-03-16T13:47:00.002Z

'The Alternative Hero' is the story of my teendom, an account of obsession and pop culture meaning more than life itself, of bands and their cults and the blood sweat and tears poured into rock'n'roll as a movement, as a punk barrage of unity. Clive Beresford is 30, working in a dead-end job and still obsessing about music, in particular the band that changed his life 'Thieving Magpies', who were the alternative's saviours before Britpop arrived and they imploded under the weight of expectation and an apparent meltdown by the lead singer, the enigmatic Lance Webster. Clive still obsesses over their every moment and minute and while his friends have all moved on and gone on to successful jobs and well-adjusted lioves, he's still caught in the nostalgia of fanzines and rare import-only seven inches and the scrawl and sprawl of his teenage years. The book zips between his recollections, articles, earnest fanzine rants and reviews and memories.

One day Clive notices (*plot contrivance alert*) that Lance Webster, now seemingly retired from making music, lives on his road. What follows is an earnest uncomfortable stalker fantasy plot where Clive seeks to befriend his alternative hero, who meant more to him than life itself, find out what exactly went wrong and restore Lance to the rock’n’roll museum. Though written like an excitable teenager’s diary, it manages to messily saunter through a series of clunky plot contrivances to make it work. Clive’s relationship with Lance, built on a lie, is uncomfortable and funny yet slightly tragic in its highlighting of his arrested development. Somehow Lance Webster remains elusive, an overriding figure in proceedings yet never quite engaging with the action, knowing what he does. The coverage of indie music and rock’n’roll is nostalgia-inducing and the helpful recommended listening are certain cause for reaching amongst your CDs and dusting of those gems that meant so much to you years ago. As the impending doom of Britpop approaches, Clive and his hero achieve some sort psychic connection that spiritually intertwines them forever. Clive is certainly the only one who cares, and as he tries to befriend the impenetrable hero we watch that age-old adage that one should never meet their heroes unfurl in awkward horror. It’s funny, easy listening with a distinct ear for music, but alas, it works if you can suspend your disbelief enough to get past some clunky exposition. Relating to the main character is easy enough as a music lover, but this would leave anyone cold who either wasn’t there or doesn’t hold any of the bands in reverence. Also, the tendency to write the whole thing in gushing fanzine language, relying too easily on pop culture similes to make points means that this has a limited appeal and is unpolished. However, as a debut novel, it shows promise and man, Thieving Magpies certainly remind me of some my favourite bands,

Thru You

2009-03-13T12:36:00.001Z

Being a fan of mashups this has to quite possibly be one of the coolest things I've seen in a while. I've added the first one here.

Click the title to see more.

Gomez - A New Tide (Eat Sleep Records 2009)

2009-03-13T11:12:00.002Z

Does the world need another Gomez album? 'Bring It On' and 'Liquid Skin' ploughed the breezy acoustic soul and blues and quirky electronica ticks so brilliant around ten years ago, and while the rest of the world moved on and moved forward, Gomez continued to mine similar caves with varying success. 'A New Tide' promises a return to their 'freewheeling and experimental roots' yet in actuality delivers something quite polished and devoid of their distinctive voices and breezy harmonies. This is almost serious. This is not from the students who brough us the gravelly 'Tijuana Lady' and the wonky endearing 'Whippin Picadilly'. The boys have grown up, left university, travelled the world and we're left with that post-student daze, one where the twilight twinkles for serious folk. While listenable and occasionally beautiful, 'A New Tide' sounds like it should be soundtracking ponderous moments in American teen dramas. You can imagine 'Little Pieces' and its country-fried rock incidentally honing the gamut of Pacey's emotions as he looks out on a serendipidous sunset over the creek. Only 'Win Park Slope' and single 'Airstream Driver seem to shine through with their whirling psychedelia and quirkiness intact. Much is made of this album being put together online from disparate members separated by the world, and therein lies the inherent problem with it, they don't feel like a gang, they don't feel together, they lack that summery universal vibe that made their first few efforts such a triumph against the odds. They were all together and they shared the same 'last gang in town' mentality as The Clash or The Libertines, despite their different approach. So, what we're left with is a nice mediocre album with some nice ditties about vague emotions, polished and processed and aiming for the college rock ears of American audiences. Gomez have grown up, which is far enough, but with age, they've lost their edge.

Web

The Wave Pictures - 'If You Leave It Alone' (Moshi Moshi 2009)

2009-03-12T11:10:00.002Z

The Wave Pictures' sophomore album is a heart-warming collection of shanties and ditties, all warm and fuzzy and imbued with the spirit of liveness, thisness and moment-capturing. Eschewing the more produced electronic production that gave their 'Instant Coffee Baby' album a more processed sound, they're stripped back, filled the frequencies with gorgeous finger-picked guitars, and Stanley Brinks' emotive horns. This collection of songs is more story-based. With its folkish harmonies and thumping brushed drums, 'My Kiss' tells a dreamy tale of an awry kiss, while 'Bumble Bee' has a fantastical Lewis Carol quality to it. Singer Dave Tattersall has a charming quality to his voice, halfway between bluster and self-conscious, his wavering melodies and confessional tone make for a beguiling and engaging set of songs, all celebrating warmth and love and the point at which fantasy and reality duel with each other. His wit and image-invention is well-worn and well-honed, erudite and most of all relatable in its dreamy take on reality. The album was recorded in one twelve session and you can hear the journey the band takes you on throughout, there is a live feeling to proceedings, a celebration of the thisness of capturing a moment. Along with Emmy the Great, this is proof-positive that British bands can capture a beautiful and engaging folk sound so well.

Myspazz

The Invisible - The Invisible (Accidental 2009)

2009-03-10T12:17:00.002Z

London's The Invisible bring another one of those 'indefinable sounds' to the pallette, sounding like Radiohead, Elbow, TV on the Radio, Queen, Bugz in the Attic and Prince all in one go, yet managing to be a diminished sum of their influences, pitched as some sort of style mash-up, yet managing to not be terribly interesting, despite the kudos of their obvious influences. Sung as Guy Garvey (Elbow) singing Prince-style falsettos, there is a strange moroseness to these heavily bass-driven songs, where the low notes drive you up and down on their tripwire electric funkiness. Opening with the Jack Johnson-esque 'In Retrograde', you're misled into thinking they're just an acoustic singer-songwriter combo, however 'Constant's jagged razor-sharp Kid A-era Radiohead guitars (when there were guitars on Kid A) give you an off-beat James Bond lite theme. 'Jacob and the Angel' manages to sound poignant and funky all at once. 'London Girl' the lead single is funky and oozing with bass, yet seems like a diet twisted funk song. The singer's lack of personality and charisma make the the music dull with his input, which is a shame as these tracks in the hands of someone like Saul Williams or Tunde from TV on the Radio would really shine. It's a shame that it smacks of mediocrity in places as they could shine. Insert your own 'Invisible' pun here.

Myspazz

Richard Milward - Ten Storey Love Song (Faber 2009)

2009-03-05T12:25:00.001Z

I get the whole slab of concrete, high-rise ten-storey metaphor for the one long stream-of-consciousness paragraph that constitutes this book and much as there are those who will applaud the invent lack of punctuation, I found it impenetrable and slowed down what had the tenets of a great book. The arduousness in ploughing through thick concrete slab pages made the quick-fire wit and ‘Trainspotting’-esque inventive fast ticks and flashpans and drug-hysteria slow to a dull throb. Which is a shame because it had the makings of a great book. The characters are certainly colourful enough and rich with detail and enough pathos to represent the bottom of a nasty underbelly in a rough housing estate in Middlesborough, but they get lost in the dreamy acid-trip stream of consciousness. Bobby the Artist is an idiot savant artist, great with paints and hippish in his pursuit of hedonism, he excuses his need to get off his face at every opportunity with the love it brings him towards everyone. He loves Georgie, desperately, a drunk working girl who doesn’t see why anyone would go on the dole when it’s easy to earn minimum wage in a shitty job. Johnnie, the local dealer/pusher/bully, is a violent and jealous sweetheart with a soft spot for his gran and for out-of-his-league Ellen, a nymphomaniac he just can’t make cum because he thinks all girls wanna fuck like they’re in a porno. While Ellen loves Johnnie/fears Johnnie and after what he did to the last guy she fucked around with just for the sake of an orgasm is treading lightly around him. Meanwhile, Alan Blunt the Cunt is a racist paedo clambering his way towards a much-needed race war, one headline at a time. All these wonderfully colourful characters intersect in the busy traffic of a council estate block, all desperate and alone and needing human interaction, wanting to make it and for everyone to make it, and in their fucked-up dysfunction, they seem to form the perfect model family of down-and-outers. When Bobby the Artist’s crazed artwork finds itself under the coked-up nose of a dodgy arts dealer from the big city, the possibility of his impending fame and how it’ll elevate him and Georgie out of Middlesborough into high intensity of London, a trail of violent events is unleashed that zip our character along to a dramatic climax. It’s well written and the characters are constructed with imagination that it’s a shame the pace isn’t matched by the way it’s written. I don’t want to labour the point of it being written as one paragraph but it really does slow the book down, which for all intents and purposes, with a few chose line breaks, could have been brilliant. There are some raucous laugh-out-loud moments and moments of real pathos, sadness and melancholy, as well as blissed-out off your face hedonism. Richard Milward has the makings of a brilliant author, and at his young age has said more for Britain’s working classes than many of his writing peers. If you can spin your head past the concrete slab of text, underneath lies a book thick with hilarity, nuance and complete filth.

Sudhir Venkatesh - Gang Leader for a Day (Penguin 2008)

2009-03-05T12:07:00.002Z

Before The Wire’s graphic depiction of poverty in America and in the predominantly black ghettoes of its major cities, Sudhir Venkatesh, a budding socialist decided to get in with his tutor by helping out on a project exploring poverty and the ghetto in Chicago’s worst housing estates. In 1990, he went round a dangerous piss-strewn estate asking the wrong people, ‘How does it feel to be black and poor?’ They didn’t take too kindly to this long-haired brown boy from middle-class America asking them about their daily lives and how they felt about being doomed as a race in a country that kept them in the lowest income brackets. They held him hostage overnight. He feared for his life. But felt he had a moment with their ruthless leader, J.T. who explained to him that if he wanted to know how it felt to be black and poor, he should take the time to get to know his subjects instead of asking them stupid questions. The next day, instead of running away, he returned with a bag of beer and the intention of immersing himself in the gang life, so he could get to the core of their hopes and dreams.

Sudhir ended up spending four years immersed in this gang, The Black Kings, in the Robert Taylor homes in Chicago (so bad they were eventually torn down during the tail-end of Clinton’s run), watching how they dealt with the community, each other, and effectively acted as pushed and protector to a portion of society the police had no interested in supervising anymore. It’s a startling journey, true, sad and funny all at once. Despite the clunky inappropriateness of his field research and getting too close to his subject, and occasionally falling back too much on his internal journey rather than really getting under the skin of his subjects (in some cases out of fear for his life and for cloudy ethics given this was a violent drug gang) and the fact that he never really witnessed much illegality, just the rosy side of gang-life, it’s still a fascinating study of the oppression of an underclass, one that has only ever been adequately reflected in ‘The Wire’ and David Simon’s other work around the Baltimore slums.

Once he has convinced gang leader J.T. he is writing his autobiography, he is given unprecedented access into gang life and gang economics, how the money is structured and spent and accumulated, from taxes for protection and territorial privileges, to straight-up drug-selling. Part of this research ended up in ‘Freakanomics’, but here we meet the gangsters, like T-Bone, who is desperate to get back to school and become an accountant and leave all this behind; C-Note, a tragic old man going straight after years of drug-abuse, trying to make his way in life without crossing the lines of territory with the gang; Ms Bailey, who is the community liaison to the gang, who protects and provides, runs the community and ensures she gets her cut; and J.T., charismatic, realistic, yet delusional and obsessed with respect. These characters paint a fascinating portrayal of the realities of what it is to be black and poor in America. As the gang life changes and the territory evolves, so do the gangs and they evolve and mutate to reflect societal changes, and their entrepreneurial spirit means that they could be hustling in the street or in the boardroom but they’ll always provide for their dysfunctional gang family, because they have to, they have no choice. If you have the choice of going to school or selling drugs and paying for food for your hungry brother, what are you going to do? The most heart-wrenching parts are when you see ordinary people, not in gangs, try and provide, going to extraordinary lengths to make money, or those who exploit their communities in ways other than selling drugs, be it selling sweets to hungry children, or redistributing crack money, or allowing your kitchen to be used as a production factory for the huge amounts of narcotics flooding through the buildings.

This is a fascinating brilliant yet flawed and at times naive and shallow study, but is well-written, though sometimes too one-note, too in Sudhir’s head, it is best when objectively commenting on life, and more than adequately surveys a section of American society that is marginalised and stereotyped in the media, one than is as human as you or me. It’s a good companion to the superior Wire, and once Canongate reprints ‘The Corner’ in April, will be less relevant but till then, enjoy an absorbing story.

The Death Set - 'Worldwide' (Counter Records 2009)

2009-03-05T11:47:00.001Z

The Death Set, born in Syndey and honed in McNulty country (Baltimore), can accelerate your heart-rate. Fact. I jogged listening to their debut energising album, ‘Worldwide’ and I crawled into a fast K-hole of dark gritty streets of death and destruction, where on each corner kids in hoodies playing Gameboys on endless loops. I nearly ran myself off the end of a cliff by album’s end, and there was a satisfying lurching moment as I waited for the next beat to kick and it stopped suddenly, giving my stomach whiplash. I crawled home on hands and knees begging for mercy. ‘Worldwide’ is a passionate, insanely melodic and thrashing death race through post-punk thrashed guitars and scream-o lyrics (you WILL find yourself screaming ‘THE MOTHERFUCKING DEATH SET’ on a crowded train listening to this), lo-fi Casio drum loops with the muffler on, and weird Nintendo bleeps, bloops and melodious computer synths. The songs are either fast and short or a little slower and a little shorter; the Death Set have two moods, energetic and life-affirming fist pumping punka (‘Intermission’) or melodious (‘Cold Teeth’). Le Tigre/Bikini Kill-esque riot grrl lyrics are shouted and screamed at you, heavily affected but funky and riotous all at once. ‘Moving Forward’ approaches emotive with tinges of acoustic guitar, before heading into uptempo frenzy, it’s almost a love song, almost sweet, but contains enough attitude to enduce whiplash. Closer ‘Selective Memories’ is the least lo-fi of the numbers, with the muffler moved up to halfway, all harmonies and punk sensibilities as the melody breaks sticks over your back willing you to submit to its infectious haze of pure emotion and complete disarray. This album is incredible, so life-affirming and infectiously uptempo, it never bores you, never outstays its welcome and always threatens to break your neck through throbbing pulsing verve.

Web

Bob Log III - My Shit is Perfect (Birdmen Records)

2009-02-27T16:08:00.002Z

It’s hard to tell how far Bob Log III extends his well-tongued cheek. He obviously has a sense of humour, having been a fine purveyor of boob whisky, playing in a deep sea diver’s outfit and including songs on his latest album ‘My Shit is Perfect’ called ‘Bump Pow! Bump Bump Bump Pow! Bump Pow! Bump Bump Bump Baby! Bump Pow! Bump Bump Bump Pow! Bump Pow! Bump Bump Bump.’ But is he taking the piss with the music? Like a pisstake Beck or Bubba Sparxx, he fills his voice with distortion singing empty epithets over scuzzy glitched samples of beatboxing or drum machines with some classic blues riffing in there. It’s musically very samey but so laden with personality, it’s really listenable. But how far is he taking the piss? I imagine he’s not, really, and takes pride in his essential commandeering of the blues from newbies(!) like Seasick Steve. ‘My Shit is Perfect’ ‘Buckwheat Potato’ ‘Bang Your Thing at the Ball’ all provide the ample soundtrack for South Park and My Name is Earl, showcasing the highlights of an album of comedy hip-country blues, a simple album brimming with silliness and humour all the way through.

Myspazz

Boob Whisky - one of Log's finer moments...

Crystal Antlers - Tentacles (Touch and Go 2009)

2009-02-27T15:47:00.003Z

Crystal Antlers are a sonic experiment of rioting guitars and elongated screams into the abyss of pain and tortured souls, the tentacles of doubt surrounding them, cocooned in a cacophony of sound as the world implodes. Seemingly an album about environmental decay and global climate meltdown, the torchbearers of an apocalypse are Crystal Antlers, begging the world to not disintegrate around us as sombre death-march drums lead us towards the inevitable imploding star. ‘From ‘Glacier’ to ‘Until the Sun Dies (part 1)’ singer Errol Favis wails the fragility of nature and its destruction by humankind, all under a cloudburst of epic sound and energy. He sounds like Mark Lanegan and Kurt Cobain, his scream and fragile world-weary gravelled throat weep their way through these emotive beautiful and fragile yet brutal and exhausting tracks. The freejazz experimentations seem to throw the music off-kilter, threating to derail the songs, allowing them to build into frenzied climaxes while the guitars summon up Thor and Ares and wage thunderous wars on our ears. This is a brutal and brilliant album, every inch as worried as we should all be about the futility of our lives in a world we no longer control, the fragility nature suffocates us.

Myspazz

Ponytail - Ice Cream Spiritual! (Inertia 2009)

2009-02-26T14:57:00.001Z

Ponytail’s new album ‘Ice Cream Spiritual!’ is pure pandemonium from start to finish. While two guitars duel over Bonham-esque rolling drums, singer Molly caterwauls her way through a series of shrieks, coos, howls and whinnies, screeches and falsetto yelps. There’s no bassist, which is a problem, as the music tends towards the high-end shriek, leaving the bass frequencies thin and unexplored. Eruptions into tic-ish 80s duelling air guitar solos and extended jams while Molly does nothing recognisable on the microphone makes this an impenetrable listen, one of those albums you can never quite find the right mood to be in the mood to listen to. It sounds like an extended drunken jam in a garage, paying no attention to song structure and any perceived audience. A series of jams that amble along towards no conclusion, journeyless and almost redundant. At Ponytail’s core, though, are some talented musicians, who, with restraint could pearl out some beauties. Molly could keep her wails and yelps to choruses and breakdowns and allow bits you can sink yourself into to happen. A trebly mess of chaos with no real connection, with the occasionally invigorating guitar lines, the singer does this no favours by being so unnecessarily over the top in her attempt to be punky, cool and different. There’s something to be said for 3 minute pop hits sometimes.

Myspace

Magik Markers - Balf Quarry (Drag City 2009)

2009-02-26T14:23:00.002Z

‘Balf Quarry’, the new album from Magik Markers is melancholy weeping with melody and soul, yet tinged with heartache and soaked with tears. It’s a discordant paean of the heart, glitching through moods and jerking in an out of fuzz like only Sonic Youth would dare to do. Opener ‘Risperdal’ sounds like it should be an explosion; instead, a slow distorted androngynous quietly menaces, soundtracking a new Tarantino Grindhouse film, it is all embittered passion and spit and bile flowing up through the pores and leaking all over the straining guitars, desperately duelling with each other, trying to gain the upper hand. ‘Don’t Talk in Your Sleep’ captures that menace with an eerie almost disturbing obsession evolves over a slow penetrative bassline and incongruous wah-wah. This is menace and eeriness and complete obsession, maniacal love and passion gone wrong. Then just as you feel like you’ve wandered into a creaky haunting house, ‘Jerks’ explodes in the stereo, drenched with fuzz and some clashing booming drum roles. Singer, Elisa, finds her inner Patti Smith, screaming and wailing her way through 2 minutes of spasmodic jittery loud brash punk. Some off-kilter guitar and electro glitch-sampling lead us through ‘Psychosomatic’ and ‘7/23’, both more ballady and yearning for some peace to reach the soul. The second half of the album is more sombre and experimental as standard song structures disappear and Elisa becomes a stoned siren torch singer, left alone in a house, by candlewind, slowly driven insane by the rumble of the piano and occasional solitude of the electronic drums that veer in and out of our ears, flanging from side to side. ‘The Lighter Side of Hippies’ returns her to Patti Smith banshee territory shouting and attacking with power guitars behind her. This album manages to evoke such distinct moods and landscapes, it is filmic in its ambition, somewhere like a Sonic Youth journey, never settling for standard song structures or moods, always evolving and changing up its styles, always interesting and aching with pain and hurt and loneliness, desperately seeking a companion who has the guts to try and handle this raw shit.

Myspace

Love is All - A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night (What's Your Rupture 2009)

2009-02-26T13:54:00.003Z

Like a shoutier, spikier, funkier, punkier Zutons, Love is All launch into their new album with the clittering clash of saxophone and angular guitars as lead singer, Josephine bellows over the top, a squeakier Karen O, matching her blow for blow in the attitude stakes. The meat of Love is All is a loud celebration of love and life’s optimistic forces, a testament of raw energy to positivity. This is something that other bands would inflict a darker more menacing tone on. Instead, Josephine tries to uplift, finding the realities that destroy any pretence of perfect ‘Movie Romance’, a spiky powerful ballad that is both searing and soothing all at once, with her comforting yelp drawing the listeners in. ‘Last Choice’ is all false-starts and glockenspiels over sweltering oohs and aahs, with the sweet story revealing a delicate world of dreaming and falling in and out of love. The tinges of sadness that permeate this song and other moments in the album are emotive yet they ask you to join in, hand in hand, and unify as a legion of heartbroken, something that pounds in the band’s simple edict, of wanting everyone to be happy. The music bolts between influences never settling in one tone long enough to get boring. The 80s stylings on the vocals bounce along as the guitars swell and thud in the background, razor sharp and power-drill-like. Moments feel like indie pop, others feel like 80s ska, there is a union happening, a chaotic party where everyone is invited to raise their hands like antennas to a sky begging for their love, and together, and with Love is All at the helm, we all swoon and fall in love for ever, living happily ever after, safe in the knowledge that bands like this are always looking out for our best interests, with a joyous celebratory sound forevermore.

Myspace

Two Fingers - Two Fingers (Big Dada 2009)

2009-02-25T14:55:00.003Z

Two Fingers are electronica whizzkid AmoN Tobin and Joe 'Doubleclick' Chapman, working in Montreal, trying to make hip-hop with drum'n'bass production techniques. The result is a bunch of beats that sound like brewing storms, glitching and erupting in short sharp bursts like stoccato pieces of gunfire, pushing the boundaries of electronica forward. Where it gets interesting is the vocal guests they've chosen. Dancehall legend Ce'Cile laces some riddims with her patois class. Miss Jade, a Missy Elliot affiliate, joins in for some feminine attitude. I remember drunkenly watching her on Ricki Lake about 6 years ago, singing 'bling-bling-ching-ching' over a Gloria Estefan sample. It turns out that in spite of that ill-advised sample journey, she has got lyrics.

Then there's Sway.

I once gave Sway Dasafo (as he was a while back) one of his first interviews, so taken was I with his humour, delivery, charisma and ease of phrase and metaphor, his ability to turn stutters, ticks and repetitions into rhythmical surfing, riding difficult beats with difficult intricate tricky flows, always clear and razor-sharp, always keeping you engaged. When I interviewed him, he expressed his preference for making beats than rapping, which is a shame because ever since, through all his releases, his production (very accessible, very poppy, very mainstream) I felt his production let down a truly magnetic vocalist. Everytime he laced a beat by Secondson or The Last Skeptik or Blufoot, he sounded above everyone else. So to hear that he was working with Amon Tobin, a renowned beatmaker, was exciting. The seven tracks he appears on are all highlights, brimming with class and humour; this time though, he's harder, fresher, harsher, more serious, almost gallows-black with his turns of phrase. Opener 'Straw Men' always sounding like the moment before take-off, sees Sway becoming a machine-gun with his lyrics, gunning down any takers, completely mercenary with everyone. 'What You Know' dissects the perceptions of black men, flipping stereotypes through wry social commentary; 'That Girl' is about the nightmare girl on a night out who overindulges in chemical romances, causing no end of stress for Sway, over a booming defiant club banger. 'Two Fingers' is a punky squelch and swell of fat basslines and thick synths, Sway is defiant sticking two fingers in the air making other rappers turn nightmare. 'Jewels and Gems' is the one to seek out though, with its Arabic mandolin processed thickly, flanging from ear to ear, the menace is thick in the air, always threatening to spill over, always threatening to punch you in the face, before tricking you and adding some funk-flutes into the mix. Miss Jade and Ce'Cille weigh in with some impressive turns, but Sway saves this from lesser rappers, destroying every beat, almost taking the shine completely off the intricate meticulous beat production. This is essential hip-hop. Forget N.A.S.A., the real stars are here.

Myspazz

Thunderheist - Thunderheist (Big Dada 2009)

2009-02-25T14:36:00.003Z

Canadian dancefloor destroyers Thunderheist tempted us with the sleazy 'Jerk It', featured on 'The Wrestler' soundtrack. Titularly named, they arrive with their monstrous debut album, fizzing with hip house, whippersnap smart and all eyes on the dancefloor. Grahmzilla provides the electro house beats, crunked up and garaged down all at once. Like Spank Rock and Wiley and Santogold and so many other things out there, this is all attitude, instructional dance-moves and baritone voices filling the mix. Disco, hip-hop, r&b, electro, house- they all get a look in. Vocally, Isis is halfway between Peaches and MIA, calmly instructing and cooing her way through the sleazy vocals, she is neither too shouty or too lost in the mix. She oozes personality throughout, able to sound like a sickbag full of vice contorting itself into insane dancefloor shapes. 'Do The Right Thing' stomps like the righteous anger of a Spike Lee film; 'Pusherman' is like a dystopian future Travis Bickle washing all the scum off the streets with the ambling electricity of the synths. They are un-posing, unpretentious and concerned with having a good time, ensuring you do too, and with this type of good-time music arriving in the midst of months of angst-rock and murmur-sourpuss music set out for the months ahead, seems like the best bet for a good ol fucking time, jerking it on the dancefloor like space cowboys chewing pink bubblegum.

Myspazz

Writing IV: The Revenge

2009-02-24T16:22:00.001Z

Good article. Put that pen down.

Yasutaka Tsutsui - Salmonella Men on Planet Porno (Alma 2008)

2009-02-24T15:16:00.001Z

This bizarre set of short stories, written by Yasutaka Tsutsui and translated by Andrew Diver, continue the world of absurdist sexual science fiction and modern day claustrophobia made famous by Haruki Murakami. Where Tsutsui succeeds is in the lightness of his tone, accessibility to his themes and complete abandon with which he builds his satires. While Murakami focuses on serenity and silences as well as action, his subtleness lends itself to the beautiful almost ethereal plots that delve into surrealness- on the hand Tsutsui is brash and wild with it. His moderns are far and wide. ‘Rumours about Me’ focuses on a nobody office worker and the media starting to report his everyday mundane life, turning him into an unwitting celebrity. It’s amazing that something written in 1979 remains so poignantly fresh and relevant now. ‘Farmer Airways’ broaches the subjects of whim, fate and placing your trust into the hands of chaos. ‘Don’t Laugh’ is an absurd almost deliriously drunk vision of time travel that teems with frivolous laughs. In "The Last Smoker," a defiant citizen is hunted by vigilant anti-smoking police, and vows to finish his last cigarettes before committing suicide rather than living a smoke-free life. And in "The World Is Tilting," a city slowly begins to sink into the Pacific Ocean, leaving residents struggling to keep up with their daily lives. The title story lives up to its bizarre name, following a group of research scientists as they explore a sex-crazed earth alternative where libidos run rampant and no one wears clothes. Tsutsui's imagination is vivid, and his prose is enchantingly simple, perfectly chronicling the banality of daily life. While he remains unemotional and focuses on exposition and wild flights of fancy that never really get under the skin of his characters, it’s the situations they find themselves in that make the pieces work. The way the science fiction and surreal landscapes interweave into dreamlike escapes in ‘The Dabba Dabba Tree’ allow the story to breath as a comedy of unerotic errors. The idea of sex as a barrier to be conquered, as something that is just out of the reach of the characters make them all act in delirious feverish ways. This collection is worth seeking out and persisting with. Its quieter bits unfurl slowly but persist as they pay off, as do the wild fun fast-paced pieces. Alma is also publishing three other translated works by Tsutsui.

Emma Rendel - Pentti & Deathgirl (Jonathan Cape 2009)

2009-02-24T14:39:00.001Z

Jonathan Cape once again presents some of the best underground/non-costume graphic fiction for our viewing pleasure, and this time it’s disturbing. More disturbing than the awkward sleaze of Daniel Clowes’ work. Finnish graphic artist Rendel presents two short stories, both about death and awkwardness; about the inability to translate your inner-thoughts to the outside world.

‘Pentti’ is about two brothers, both grotesque, rural farmers in a seemingly small town. One brother is calm and friendly; the other is angry and homophobic. He is Pentti. He spies two new male neighbours move in next door and wonders if they are gay. Angered at the possibility, he goes out on the town looking for a fight, his heart filled with fury and fighting spirit. As he rails on any possible gay man around him, pounding them into submission till they are all afraid of him, we get a glimpse into the obvious secret he is hiding. The book ends murderously and violently, though sadly inevitably. All the characters are drawn with angular balloon shapes, all contorted like misshapen biceps, or with grotesque cartoon faces and human bodies, all sweating and worried. The mosaic patterns that burst into colour filling the backgrounds, the natural surroundings and the forests and fields of Finland make for a beautiful yet bittersweet tale that is predictable yet snappy in its telling and beautifully drawn.

‘Deathgirl’ is also mercifully short because the sadness depicted in this diary format is heart-breaking. An awkward girl, obsessed with death and murder, constantly surrounded by instruments of torture and destruction, writes down her thoughts and feelings. Each double spread is a diary entry of a childishly scrawled text. As she falls in love with Karebear, a similarly odd looking boy, she tries her hardest to show him her misplaced affection. Her parents worry, her schoolfriends keep their distance and her diary becomes her best friend. She is massive and her contorted shapes take up most of the page and the action.

Both stories are short and full of angst and awkwardness. Though hardly ground-breaking in their content, they are wonderfully depicted in a woefully foreboding fashion, their grotesque Elephant Man features contorted into the hideousness of their deepest souls.

Mongrel - Better Than Heavy (Wall of Sound 2009)

2009-02-24T12:24:00.001Z

Mongrel is Reverend of ‘and the Makers’ fame; Drew from Babyshambles; the original Artic Monkeys bassist; the actual Artic Monkeys drummer; badass UK rapper Lowkey and a few others, doing live hip-hop mixed with standard indie choruses, very polemical and political, a band seemingly born out of the amazing conscious work that Love Music Hate Racism, who seems to have brought this collective together. It’s all very worthy and well put together. Lowkey is now an electric MC. The drumming and basslines are incredible. So what’s the problem? The problem is, hip-hop in this country has been a running joke for years, full of kids stuck in 1990s New York rapping scientifically over badly constructred Diet Pete Rock beats. But there were a small group of live hip-hop bands who rocked the stage ridiculously, mixing reggae, hip-hop, indie/rock guitars/ funk, rapping and mad metal drumming... bands like Dirtburg, Imperial Leisure, Lazy Habits. What makes this more worthy? Well, the patronage of a few Monkeys helps, as does the vocal presence of Reverend. It’s a good project with some tight songs, all brimming with rage and energy and righteousness, but it’s nothing amazing, nothing new, and everytime Reverend Jon (didn’t he retire from music?) comes in with another generic indie chorus, with awkward rhymes and soundbites, it loses it’s snarl and bluster. Lowkey is articulate, passionate and full of fire. So are the other MCs- the interplay and back and forth of ‘Act Like That’, the fierce and fresh ‘Barcode’, all feature some badass rapping, angry and well-constructed, rhymes that Chuck D would patronise. Musically, it dips in and out of interest. The beautiful ‘Better Than Heavy’ has a lovely delayed Arabic mandolin echoing around some deep skanks and bottomless bass, sounding like a world town version of ‘Ghost Town’. The guitars of Drew from Babyshambles are subtle, not too overpowering or arpeggioed, more as a power device to lend the songs some gravitas. The sampling is light and funky too. It’s the bass and drums that make this album (and Lowkey) and on songs like ‘Alphabet Assassins’ and ‘Hits from the Morning Sun’ they really grind the songs into submission. The album ends on a duff downer with ‘Acts Like That’ which is two different songs, one is a typical ‘funky live hip-hop number’ the other is a weird Manic Street Preachers ballad chorus. Either way, you have to respect the intentions, which are incredibly worthy; the politics, which are truly diverse and right-on; and the love of hip-hop shown by this collective. Lowkey is brilliant throughout, truly magnetic and affable, emotive and well-poised. Unfortunately, for all his intentions, it’s Reverend Jon who ruins this album by giving it its playability factor in the indie crowds, generic whining indie choruses that never lift the songs into flight, rather they give them a plod factor. Which is a shame, because with the pedigree of this band, it has the potential to change worlds.

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Empire of the Sun - Walking on a Dream (Virgin 2009)

2009-02-24T11:53:00.001Z

The culmination of The Sleepy Jackson’s psychedelic Luke Steele and Nick Littlemore of Pnau fame, inspired by JG Ballard, 80s Bowie and synth-pop mashing up with indie yelps, the album ‘Walking on a Dream’, is a beguiling yet enthralling collaboration. Electronic and spacey, like the musical equivalent of Labyrinth and Flash Gordon, this is accessible fun 80s pop. Together, the pair's 1980s-influenced soft pop synthesisers and blissed-out space beats have already taken them into the Australian top 10. The music is coupled with a striking image of two colourful, cosmic crusaders that has been inspired by movie characters and rosily-remembered childhood idols. The music is so light and fluffy, with pulsing guitars, spacious harmonies, and that thud-thud one-drop of the eighties drum pad. Steele squeals vaguely about love and friends and those ambiguous themes that makes pop so electric and instantly relatable to any casual listener, while Littlemore’s synths are eerie yet swelling up throughout the mix, exploding on every frequency. ‘We Are the People’ feels like their most obvious collaboration considering their day jobs, a psychedelic plaintive acoustic guitar and Sleepy Jackson vocals over Panu-esque electronics. 'Delta Bay' invokes the deranged vocoder of an evil genius to deliver some menacing spoken word over clashing harmonies and jangling keyboards. The rest of the album is pure pop joy, frivolous and designed to mask them from their everyday jobs, their usual schticks, in the same way that Neon Neon took Gruff Rhys and Boom Bip away from the psychedelic indie/experimental blip hop they were famed for. The result of Empire of the Sun is a batshit crazy frivolity in that classic Noughties reinvention of bad 80s synth-pop, all angular and squeal-some with irony oozes from its every pad and shimmer-effect.

Myspace