Cold turkey... has got me... on the run...

Last night was interesting. At the last moment I dragged myself to Mary Newton Gallery for the opening of their latest group show, featuring work by David Cauchi (see David's invite here) (my previous excursion to a DC opening) and The Jarman. David is showing a new ink-on-paper work which is bloody good (there's a moderately poor - by his own reckoning - picture of it here) even if he's ripping me off to buggery. (Ha! Just kidding, Dave). The Jarman is showing some more of her ever-popular plastic-bead burning houses.

You know how when you're in a serious relationship, your friends become her friends and her friends become your friends and so on? That all goes to the dogs when you break up. How weird was it walking into a room full (there were 100+ people there) almost exclusively of The Jarman's friends. I had such an instant paranoid seizure ("just add water! ready in seconds!") I almost had to leave immediately. As it was I had to latch on for far too long to the couple of people I know independently. It was a huge relief when Gary F. arrived.

Later I went to see Kung Fu Hustle, which screened recently in a sold out session in the Film Festival (I almost prefer the alternative name Gongfu). The film - a parodic kung fu farce - is hilarious. Set in 1940s Shanghai (which looks awfully like a Chinese comic-strip version of 1930s Chicago) it has huge and epic kung fu battles featuring techniques ranging from the sublime - The Palm that Falls From Heaven - to the ridiculous - The Toad, and Lion's Roar ("Ooh I didn't know Lion's Roar could be done with a loudspeaker! I surrender!") as well as comedy domestic violence, a gang of sartorially-extremist axe-wielding mobsters (the "Axe Gang"), ancient musical instruments which fire volleys of invisible whirling blades, the worst-looking kung fu masters you can't ever imagine (The Beast - the world's worst killer - was a sort-of cross between Hannibal Lechter and LOTR's Golem/Smeagol) and a ridiculous romantic subplot/flashback scenario involving the lead character as a scrawny, runty picked-on kid and a mute girl.

Highly recommended.

UPDATE For some reason, I forgot to mention that Kung Fu Hustle is screening at the Embassy.

Drinking buddies galore

myegoism blog is another local Wellington blog and it's a great read too; on the strength of her deeds alone, Kate has joined my drinking buddies (on the right there ->) and been added to the Drinks-After-Work all-time honour-roll.

Kate writes candidly and hilariously about her experiences with the type of gallows humour possibly unique to the recently-dumped. Being in the same boat I identify strongly. Oh and if you're wondering about the picture, she's currently incognito. This is, after all, Wellington NZ - home to little more than 100,000; it's definitely better to play on the safe side sometimes when it comes to being read and recognised.

Sheeit, just what I needed. Someone else to go drink for drink with of a weekend.

UPDATE Kate's picture kept disappearing - may or may not have something to do with me trying to leech it - so I made my own copy and I gave her a little black cat as well. It's meant to be her cat Salem.

Funny

I thought this (shiver-me-timbers) was really funny.

Random beauty #1

So I'm sitting working on a track in my multi-track software. I'm having to make some very, very minute adjustments to the gain on a couple of tracks because they are clipping in the mixdown. I'm using the volume-envelope tool on the waveforms; suddenly I've turned a couple of 2D geometric outlines into a beautiful rendering of snow-covered mountain peaks. (Click on the image for a closer look.)


God bless sub-harmonic boom.

Intertwingulation

Trust Jeremy to know a word that dictionary.com doesn't, and is only archived by Google on three different pages on the web. That's not a very popular word at all.

It refers to (at least in the context with which Jeremy levelled it at me) the practice of linking to other web-resources all over the place within your own web-content. Apparently I do it very successfully in my own blog-postings.

In direct contrast to the obscurity of the term, however, the practice of intertwingulation is very common and in my opinion, is one of the main factors that makes the "interweb" what it has become. Another way of looking at it is that I am doing the googling to save you the trouble.

Wasted Brains

Dan Mayer is the latest addition to my Drinks-After-Work Drinking Buddies directory over there on the right sidebar. Dan lives in Denver, Colorado, USA, and as well as a regular blog, Dan writes a very popular regular column reviewing energy-drinks (Energy-Drink Reviews). The good thing about his reviews is that often they provide interesting and useful information about the possibilities of mixing each energy-drink with various alcholic beverages. Dan also has randomly-displayed images and lots of interesting "Wasted Brains" projects.

Last night I headed straight from work to the local bottle store, from whence I obtained one bottle of Cointreau, one bottle of Tanqueray gin, and a cocktail stirring spoon. From there I proceeded directly home, where I made 1951 Martinis and drank them. Yes it's true, Jeremy's cogent remarks on my recent post detailing the events of last weekend left me with such a goddamn thirst that I felt possessed of very little alternative than to mix and serve my own. So I did. To myself. They are a very, very, very good drink and almost-unnacceptably "moreish". I was able to write several important, candid and uncharacteristically-lucid emails under the influence; a bit later, when I had Indian takeaways with Shana at her new place in Lower Hutt, I was even inspired to order entirely the wrong thing in burst of intoxicated and misguided enthusiasm.

Being

On a whim I just updated my blogger profile, and I selected Chemicals as my "industry". While technically untrue, you can only select one "industry", and I felt that my "industry" was much more multi-facted than one selection would allow. Anyway, considering the name of my blog and my activity of the last few weeks, I felt Chemicals was somewhat justified, if not as an "industry" then at least an occupation. It also turns up some interesting blogs when you follow the link to see who else in the blogosphere (neologism of the day, possibly) is in the "industry" of Chemicals.

I was also quite interested in the "industry" of Religion.

I still didn't get around to filling in some of the the other fields like Interests and Favourite Books and so on. I guess maybe one day I'll feel focused enough to choose some.

Forget about Drinks After Work...

How about "Drinks Any Goddamn Time Don't Be Shy You Feel Like It".

Friday night turned rapidly from 'a few beers after work and a martini at Js house' to a 'a few beers after work, a cocktail-binge session at Js, and then 6 solid hours trawling about town in a frantic whirl of booze and taxis and good bars and bad bars and good music and bad and smoke and mirrors and girls picked-up and dropped and lunging and turning and breaking into restaurants through their back doors and... home somehow and sometime and asleep 'til midday.'

Every time I go out with these guys I seem to have skipped breakfast or lunch or breakfast AND lunch and you really think I'd learn wouldn't you but I haven't yet.

Saturday started with three bloody marys at home and then into town to drink beer and cider with J; suddenly we're back at his place again and there's more martinis to be drunk and South African cheese and biltang to be consumed and then the Mexican flatmate brings out the very expensive tequila... then it's - needs must - off to see The Jarman where I have to do my bit and I make my way through the best part of a bottle of pinot noir.

Sleep came easily around midnight and I suddenly wake at 1420 hours Sunday, sure in the knowledge of one thing only and that is that I have to be at the cinema across town in 40 minutes. Two bloody marys is as good a breakfast, brunch and lunch as any, so one shower and two large gulps later I am at The Paramount in time to see Werner Herzog's doco "The Grizzly Man". (BTW cheers, ENZEDFF, for the stink Werner Herzog director profile) (no offence, Rose).

After the film I have to take stock. In order to shore up my situation carbohydrates are called for so on the way home I call into a Japanese grill for some "fried dumpling". At home I just have time for two more bloody marys before I have to head to Te Papa to see another film, this time a doco called "In the Realms of the Unreal", about reknowned outsider artist Henry Darger (scroll down for bio).

Back home again later it's 10.30pm and I'm sitting in front of the computer, composing and drinking pinot. A friend txts me "What you doing?"."Composing and drinking" I txt back, "Come on over if ya wanna" and needless to say she does so we knock off the rest of the bottle and when she leaves at 1am it's all I can do to down a couple of fingers of Teachers, finish off the track I was working on and hit the sack about 2am, rested and ready for the busy work week ahead.

It's now Wednesday night and I think I'm still recovering.

Tit fer tat

Rumour has it that the originating email outing the two scoundrels involved in the ex-sports-star-turned-tv-celeb drug-scandal came from inside TVNZ. Now a (bizarre) (seemingly-revenge-motivated) story surfaces a few days later that a TVNZ presenter is facing charges of sexual violation and assault. Somehow the ACT party got involved (oh wait, TVNZ is the state broadcaster, so of course the whole thing has to be discussed ad nauseum in Parliament, and the government blamed) and Bob's your uncle... or if not your uncle, a very good friend of your father's.

And so on and so on.

Play nicely, kids.

Helpless

Haven't had much time to post lately. I'm still trying to get over the irony of Mark Blumsky supposedly being beaten up out of sight of the inner-city security cameras he was so instrumental in having installed - somewhat controversially, at the time - when he was mayor.

New drinking buddy for July

Exciting! I got me a new drinking buddy there on the right ->
Martha aka Wanda Harland is from Petone, Wellington, New Zealand, and her favourite music includes a band called happy mondays etc. Umm, which is pretty cool because she's the only blogger in the entire known universe who's heard of them (I suspect this is because it's her own band).

Wanda wants to know who the celebrity drug fiends aren't. And quite frankly, so do I. I betcha anything you like at least one of them isn't who I thought it was. Not that you can tell anymore, for in fear of being dragged ass-backward through the civil courts in a libel case, I removed the names. (Not that it did me any good, for Google has helpfully cached the post).

Name suppression doesn't always serve the interests of the many - in this case, all the ex-NZ-sports-stars-turned-tv-celebrities who aren't currently being hounded by Interpol agents through Asia Minor.

Now it's time for me to say goodnight, and leave you with a picture I done made.

More grist for the mill

Of the last 100 referrals to Drinks-After-Work, something like 97 of them have been Google searches about the celebrity drugs scandal. And most of the googlers have little or no doubt about who they think is involved; two names in particular keep on coming up over and over again.

Foot-In-Mouth pointed me in the direction of Hard News which pointed me in the direction of David Farrar's miserable excuse for a blog which pointed me in the direction of the NZ Herald story about which notes that Aaron Bhatnagar had to shut down comments on his blog post on the topic after people kept posting guesses about the identities of the two celebs; what they omitted but the same story on STUFF did mention is that the poor wee duckie apparently got "back from several hours of meetings" and found "all sorts of unsavoury comments made" and so was moved to shut down comments on the thread in question.

But did he stop there? Did he fuck. As he writes "anyone posting names will have their IP addresses recorded by me in the event that someone important wants to know who they are." Which was as effective a way as any of nominating himself as Cock of the Week. Apparently he's also a member of the National Party.

Anyway I guess someone ought to tell these guys at What-the-Funk - surely as unlikely a hotbed of libel as anywhere.

It was actually a real pity that Aaron Bhatnagar disabled comments on his posting, because I almost expired in a paroxysm of hilarity (o how I do love literary cliches... sometimes) when I read the note from peterquixote, who said (and in the saying so provides the same Mr. Bhatnagar with some real Cock of the Week competition):

Can anyone give a clue, [sic] why would [sic] celebrity on good income ruin his/her life this way? Or are they cheats and low life [sic] from the start?

Peter, Peter, Peter. O my god, where to start. You say so little and yet you say so much.

I dunno. Is this shit even interesting any more?

At least Damien Christie in his Cracker blog had the sense to keep stumm and not post any of his trademark irrelevant incomprehensible bullshit; it would surely have only annoyed me even more.

Everybody's talking, yeah.. *sings*

Now concerning today's earlier post, in today's litigious society one has to be awfully careful how one treads. From Dictionary.com: libel -

1. A false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person's reputation.

2. The act of presenting such material to the public.

So, in the interest of posterity, I should point out that:

1. The investment advice was received by me in an unsolicited fashion and posted sincerely and without any intended relation to any case currently under investigation or before the courts; for goodness sake take no inference as such, and

2. The linked image is a sophisticated visual pun on the colloquial term for cocaine, and/or any drugs that are ingested nasally, which I thought was so clever I was compelled to share it with everyone who hadn't already received it in their email inbox. Any perceived reference to any business, corporation, incorporated society, or charitable trust is unintentional, and frankly, purely bad luck.

Yeah. Those who know me know that I'm an utter sucker for cheap humour - just keep those emails coming - and that I'm always up for a hot tip, be it on the dogs or the sharemarket.

And in other news: happily, this is the fifth post in a row on this blog that doesn't have a reference to I in the title (after a similarly lengthy run of 'I' posts).

On the run

Sometimes it's too easy to be a blogger. Today on STUFF:

Ex-sports star coy on coming home: One of two former sports stars caught up in a major drug bust says he has no immediate plans to return to New Zealand and talk to the police. [...] The second celebrity [is] also believed to be out of the country.

I'm really feeling for our boys* on the lam, here. Who would come on in to that sort of welcoming committee? I just hope that wherever they are, they know that they're always in our thoughts, prayers, and non-work-related emails, and that they never forget that there are plenty of very reasonable nations in the world - of quite acceptable quality - who don't have extradition treaties with New Zealand.

Note: Term 'boys' used here not with any calumnious intention but in an honourarily-fraternal sense and for the sake of brevity and clarity; our 'second' recalcitrant comrade could of course be of either sex.

Advice for young investors

Start adjusting your share portfolio right now... sell: Charlies; buy: Woman's Weekly.

(from an email fwded to me yesterday)

I also found this, which was forwarded to me this morning, quite funny.

If I wasn't so busy and ultimately so concerned with not sounding like a twat, I'd probably write something profound about drug prohibition.

Ooh goody, I smell a scandal

Ex-sports stars' link to drug ring: Two former sports stars have been implicated in a drug ring smashed by Auckland police for allegedly supplying methamphetamine, cocaine and ecstasy.

Since this morning's Dominion Post actually ran the headline TV stars link to drug ring, I'm guessing that the "two male celebrities", wanted for "supplying cocaine and cannabis" and "receiving ecstasy", are *cough* and *hurrumph* - though it would be carelessly slanderous of me to actually come right out and allege it.

"Announcing the arrests, police said the case was one showing that stimulant drugs were widely available and used by educated professionals on good incomes, not just by criminals."

If I didn't suspect that it's more to do with the media rubbing its hands in glee at bringing down these irreverant Johnny-come-latelys, I'd congratulate them and the Police for this statement. Makes a welcome relief from their typical scare-Wadestown-housewives-at-the-prospect-of-smelly-poor-people-on-methamphetamine-fuelled-home-invasion-rampages fare.

EDIT *Names removed in the interests of legal ass-covering.

Billy Corgan's musical yoof

If you're like me and you really can't stomach The Smashing Pumpkins (and let's be honest here, colloquial evidence would have it that there's a lot of us about) and you paid no attention whatever to his post-Pumpkins project Zwan (despite the presence of Slint/Tortoise/The For Carnation/Papa M-guy Dave Pajo, and recent Will Oldham collaborator and touring guitarist Matt Sweeney) (and continuing to be honest, any evidence that you'd like to inspect would have it that again, there's a lot of us about) (...); if you're like me you're going to be surprised at how good his new new-wave-esque solo album TheFutureEmbrace is.

Ok. The downside is that it's still Billy Corgan singing, and the songs still sound like Pumpkins songs. The difference here is the production - it's all beautiful synth washes and arpeggios and basslines and ethereal guitars and vocal effects and so on and so on and it's all like it's 1985 again and I really was quite skeptical, believing as I do that nostalgia for it's own sake is no good and a no-good sole reason for liking something - but this effort transcends any of those concerns. It's all quite gorgeous and the thing is that instead of coming across all wry and flippant and apathetic modern yoof and so on (standard stoopid Corgan), the fragility of the words and the sounds somehow offer you up a charmingly-real personal angle by which you can quite easily find yourself being seduced. Dave Simpson in a review in the Guardian Unlimited points to Bowie's Berlin work (Low, Heroes, Lodger) and for my money he's spot on - which really means that's it's actually all like it's 1977 not '85 but that's getting pedantic.

I only have room for one track, so here's track #2, Mina Loy (M.O.H.), but there's any number of superb tracks on the album - not least the collaboration with The Cure's Robert Smith on an astonishing cover of the BeeGees To Love Somebody.

Billy Corgan - Mina Loy (M.O.H.) (right-click and Save As to download)

I love my leather jacket

The Chills are unique in the history of rock music. I realised this tonight, driving home and listening to Radio Hauraki when I Love My Leather Jacket came on. There are a million bands who could have written a song called I Love My Leather Jacket and for 999,999 of them it would have been taking the piss out of bogans. There's only one band in the world that is twee enough to write a song about the leather jacket which belonged to your best friend who was taken suddenly in his prime by leukaemia and which you now wear in sentimental rememberance of him and what's more you don't even pretend it's taking the piss out of bogans but instead you tell everyone what the song is about with your down-home fresh-faced kiwi-boy sincerity, because you really miss your friend, even now years later if you think about him too much you feel tears welling in your eyes and you wonder why it had to be him that was taken and what you did any differently to be saved, and you want to share this loss with us all because you feel it so greatly, and because face it, you're a naif amongst the swell of hardened cynics and fleeting fashionistas in the music scene.

And that is why The Chills are unique in the history of rock music; so without any more ado, I give you:

The Chills - I Love My Leather Jacket

I should be happy

I've been looking at that previous post for the best part of a week now, and I've come to the conclusion that my claim to having "thrown out" my girlfriend was a little harsh; to be fair, we reached the mutual conclusion that her continued presence in our home was untenable.

Since last Tuesday's melt-down I've been in this weird, numb, no-fly zone just waiting for something to happen. I worked three 12-14 hour days in the last four. I went out on Friday night and got drunk. I've spent the entire weekend sleeping, and when not sleeping all I seem to be able to do is read Phillip Roth, download Norwegian black-metal and wander around the house, looking at all the dirty dishes and wondering who left them since it surely wasn't me.

Last night I dreamt that I started a nuclear war by launching a missile attack on Russia, who obligingly retaliated and bombed Lower Hutt (despite its strategic value surely being less than zero). Through an open window from my office 20km away in Wellington I watched the detonation - obediently shielding my eyes from the glare - and the mushroom cloud bloom. I waited as the blast wave roared towards me and as it enveloped me, I watched my body breaking up into streams of pixels, as if photographed using really bad grainy film. I felt at one with the universe, as if I had suddenly, through a series of reductive transformations, found my place in the proton-stream emanating from the centre, the birth of the universe and the Big Bang.

I've just finished watching I Love Your Work, a neat little art-film which appears to be some sort of a discourse on the nature of self and fame and obsession and the entertainment industry. It's one of actor Adam Goldberg's first directorial efforts and it's quite a stylish little piece, very poetic and meditative; nice, unusual, clever but classy use of cuts and shots, very innovative application and integration with the beautiful soundtrack (Goldberg again, with Steven Drozd of the Flaming Lips); thoughtful. It even pulls some neat multi-layered tricks crossing the fourth dimension - the barriers between subject and actor and audience and so on - and ends with a bizarro Rodgers and Hammerstein flourish. It certainly doesn't hurt that the film features the very watchable Giovanni Ribisi, Franka Potente, Christina Ricci, and, weirdly, Elvis Costello. Unfortunately I didn't enjoy it because I just can't concentrate on anything at the moment. This makes watching films very difficult and leaves me in no doubt that I am going to be an utter flake for this year's film-festival.

I should be happy; I've got the reviews I've been waiting for for several months. Aquarius records has, in their New Arrivals #217 list (possibly here, in a week or so) reviewed my recent Application antarctica download form and Communion longplayer CDs. And given them bloody good write-ups. And streaming samples, for anyone who wants to listen. As much worth as a review ever is, these ones are probably worth quite a lot, just because of the clout that is apparently afforded to these guys' opinions.

Help me I am in hell, or something

Well. Tonight's big news is that I just threw out my girlfriend, The Jarman. Call it irreconcilable differences, or something. More later at some stage, I would imagine.

My show last night went really bloody well, in fact almost too well. I was drinking whiskey and beer and I got quite drunk; ended up doing an on-air giveaway that I shouldn't have.

I went to an opening tonight at Idiom gallery. There was some nice work by Gordon Crook (also here and here) but I didn't stay long; couldn't be fucked being in close proximity to so many people. In honour of Dave's post on J. P. Satre, I think I may begin to develop some sort of a philosophy or credo or manifesto or something based on my ongoing experiments with social phobia and paranoia.

indie-show 4-July-2005

Tonight I'm off once again to do the indie-show on Radio Active 89 FM. The show goes from 9pm 'til 11pm (that'd be 0900 to 1100 GMT I think, if you wanted to listen to the stream). For a change I'm looking forward to it - perhaps it has something to do with being a lot more prepared today than I am customarily.

Instead of doing it 1/2 an hour before the show, I already burnt the 2 CDR volumes (as is my recent habit to use, rather than 30-40 LPs), and I've been listening to them all day. It's going to be a rockin' show...

a.r.e. weapons - saigon
aframes - modula [A Frames 2LP,2003]
allen ginsberg - transcription of organ music [Howl and other poems,1993]
amt - do you know where the secondhand record shop is [swr,2005]
charalambides - magnolia [After the medicine show,2003]
flaming lips - The Spiderbite Song (Early mix) [the soft bulletin companion,2000]
heka - Cachet [last spiritual gas station before the end of civilisation,2005]
heka / Temple of ruin [last spiritual gas station before the end of civilisation,2005]
robyn hitchcock - full moon in my soul [Spooked,2004]
robyn hitchcock - welcome to earth [Spooked,2004]
mars - 3e [the Complete Studio recordings]
maximo park - the coast is always changing [LAMACQ Live showcase,2004]
pere ubu - humor me [terminal tower,1978]
pharaoh overlord - mangrove [#1,2001]
plugz - El Clavo y la Cruz [Complete Collection]
Red Krayola - Micro-Chips & Fish [7"]
Red Krayola - The Principles Of Party Organisation [Kangaroo]

scorn - black box [Gyral]
Secret Machines - you are chains [Now here is nowhere,2004]
Shellac - Song Against Itself [1000 hurts]
six organs of admittance - for octavio paz #05 [for octavio paz,2003]
soft machine - memories [Jetpropelledphotographs,1997]
sunn_o))) - hell-o)))-ween [White2,2004]
swell maps - full moon [Train Out of it, 1987]
swell maps - read about seymour [Whatever happens next,1981]
techno animal - needle [radio hades]
the mars volta - the widow [frances the mute,2005]
the raincoats - fairytale in the supermarket [the Raincoats,1980]
the rolling stones - you got the silver [let it bleed,2002]
tortoise - alcohall [Rhythms, Resolutions, Clusters remix EP]
TV on the radio - the wrong way [New Health Rock CDS]
vangelis - blade runner (end titles) [blade runner soundtrack]
white stripes - forever for her (is over for me) [Get behind me satan,2005]

I might come back later and add some notes about some of this stuff.

Rumour has it I sold some work, though.

The opening of the Final Product show was the other night (good god it was last thursday night a week ago already) and it was a pretty good night. The worst thing was the trio of midget David Gray impersonators I caught the clap off of in the parking lot. (well i don't mind the gonorrhea so much that can be put paid to with a short course of antibiotics it's more that the music is so abominably dire eh) (oh alright i'm lying jus' tryin' to make it sound more inneresting than it was it was just another gallery opening orright) (Rumour has it I sold some work, though.)

CJA's Ironclad

CJA (Clayton No-one, of Armpit, The Futurians, The Ideal Gus and so on) has released an utterly wonderful CD, gorgeous, possibly his finest and most realised solo work to date - Ironclad - on US label Digitalis.

I'm not going to try to better the great liner notes, written by Campbell Kneale; I'm going to let them say it all for me by reproducing them here, without permission.

"A blather of fuzz and strum, tapedeck meltdown, edits seemingly performed by snapping the tape in his teeth... I defy you to find anybody that gives less of a flying fuck than CJA. Or more for that matter. These sounds don't demand attention so much as they demand to be lived through. This is real. I'm talking REAL in all its mundane, apoplectic, divinity. The pain, the love, the wonder, the near-religious might. Sometimes wrathful, sometimes somnambulent, sometimes talkative, other times saturated in a well of its own disinterest.

These songs have a life of their own and they plead to be allowed to live it. These little magnetic mountains and polycarbonate stylus-files retain their totemic status round here and, over the years, have contaminated the cassettes next to it [sic] in my drawer with a spreading bile that seems to lessen anything placed in its presence. They are CJA's black-eyed offspring: hungry, runny-nosed, and whining for attention. Just love them."

CJA - 2:50 (right-click and Save As to download)

Available all over the place, including Surefire Distribution.

Final product show

There's a new exhibition opening in Upper Hutt at Expressions (the main public art gallery there). It's called Final Product: Drawing as the final product and it's got work (drawings) from a bunch of groovy cats ("Aus" denotes the exhibitor is from Australia):

John Abbate (Aus), Katie Breckon (Aus), Dan Campion, Matt Couper, Jenny Gilliam, Richard Lewer (Aus), Pat Macan, Angela Meyer, Karin van Roosmalen, Vin Ryan (Aus), Stewart Shephard

.. and me. My contribution features work executed on a Hewlett-Packard iPAQ pocket "palm" computer and printed using a high-quality laser-printing process onto heavy water-colour stock.

The show opens on Thursday night, the 23rd of June, at 6.30 pm, and runs until the 7th of August.

It's an easy (and scenic) train ride from Wellington to Upper Hutt. The Gallery is very close to Upper Hutt train station. - Ross P. Kettle

Here's a sample of my drawings - this one's called fleet.

Reviews

Ahhh... reviews. The pathetic agony of scouring the known universe for reviews of one's work (read: googling the various titles of your albums), time and time again. It's all rather sad, really.

Found some today, though. Foxy digitalis has some great reviews of Application antarctica download form and the V/A The tone of the universe.. compilation, as well as one of an older 3" CD called Communion, that I released a couple of years ago on PseudoArcana. And a Polish e-zine called Gaz-eta has one of The Voice of the Taniwha.

Stone the crowes, thass bin e mrud-ah

So speaking, as we were, about murder (well, we weren't really, I'm far too 'fraid of being made to jump off the pier wearing a pair of concrete slippers to write about the reasons behind Murder Shed being known as it is), here's the theme song from the Scottish television series Taggart (and here).

Mike Moran (feat. Maggie Bell) -- No Mean City (Taggart theme) (right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)

Mike Moran -- No Mean City instrumental (Taggart theme)

There's two versions - the incidental instrumental version, and the title music with lyric sung by Maggie Bell, formerly of rock band Stone the Crows. The theme is called No Mean City and was composed by Mike Moran.

'Mrud-ah' is how the Glaswegian Taggart pronounces "murder". My Scots roots are also in the fair city o' Glasgow, and he reminds me of my grandmother.

UPDATE

Leave a note if you find this; there's so many people coming here for the Taggart theme music tracks it's becoming legendary, and it'd be cool to know who y'all are.

Out now: At Murder Shed

The new The Stumps vs. Ohm CDR At Murder Shed is now out, released on the French label Paha Porvari. If you want a copy, try emailing them, or check at your local folk / noise / electronics / psyche / free / minimalism / concrete / drone / improv record emporium. You might be able to get one from PseudoArcana, or even from me.

I've never been able to figure out the link between Paha Porvari and Naninani, but there is one; either way, however, their website seems a little on the side of underdone.

Back

Yeah, the site went down for a few days there. Sorry about that.

did 'e 'eck[a]

Here's another Heka track. Damn this is a good album...

Heka - Cachet (5.04 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

Meanwhile, fans of either can head on over to KittenWar.com to check out the progress of and latest stats on The Sneak (an old friend) and Charlie Brown. WARNING: it's addictive!

Welcome to the temple of ruin, I am drunk and you're insane...

Heka is the magick of ancient Egypt - magick practised while still alive.

Heka - exhuberant noise chime, landscape-y topographical hallelujah music -- nzmusic.com.

It's been too long a time since I last heard the magic, but those days and weeks and months are wiped off with the peal of the first notes. It's taken four years for this moment, but finally I have my hands on the CD. Heka is the name of the band - Dunedin duo of Stephen Kilroy and Heath Te Au - and Last spiritual gas station before the end of civilisation is the name of their new album.

Both have spent time in legendary bands - Kilroy is an alumnus of the band Stephen (feat. David Kilgour), released a solo track on the seminal Xpressway Pile=up compilation, and was a founding member of Chug; Heath has done time in The Puddle, Suka, Mink, and Cloudboy to name but a few. Both are enthusiasts and horders of classic old equipment - huge Gunn valve amps and vintage tape echo boxes and shiny electric guitars and analogue effects units. For both it was time to re-enter the music scene after something of a hiatus.

Put Stephen Kilroy and Heath Te Au together and what you have is a self-described "sonic tour-de-force based around furious krautrock beats and a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar soaked in delay". So - take the extended jams of The Clean, the dense overtures of Spacemen 3 or H.D.U. or My Bloody Valentine or Bailter Space or even The Jesus And Mary Chain, and the transfixing propulsive motorik of Neu!'s Klaus Dinger - and you might have some idea what they're about. Or, what they at least sound like. But these two illuminati conjure up something entirely more mystical altogether.

For this pair, Heka is about coming together to make beautiful, ritual music. Together they summon magical spirits to which they offer themselves up and they enter another world where they become one with the ceremony and can lose the now and forget about the trudging from one day to the next.

Heka - Temple of ruin (3.74 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

It's glorious stuff. This is the sort of music you can live your life without hearing, but one listen and then you wonder how you ever got by. And of course, to see them live is a special treat.

Good Heka magic indeed.


Please visit the arclife records site if you want to buy the CD, which I naturally urge you to do. The CD is not actually listed on this page, but I trust the ordering information and other avenues of purchase are still valid.

Mystery bird

What the hell kinda bird is this I just saw sitting on my back fence? Well, Charlie (the cat) saw it first and she was having a complete spaz all over the kitchen about it, so I knew it must be pretty special and I came and checked it out.

Despite living where we do, we actually have an amazing array of bird-life - plenty of pigeons and sparrows and thrush and blackbirds of course - but even better, tui and bellbirds, with their distinctive calls, fantails, waxeyes, and incredibly, at least two keruru (morepork) complaining every night in the bush across the road. I could swear I heard one of those fat-ass native wood-pigeons one day, too.

But I've never seen one of these before.

The Stumps are live

The Stumps will be appearing live this Saturday night, 21 May, at Enjoy gallery. With any luck we will be promoting our new CDR (At Murder Shed, on French label Paha Porvari) and our new CD (Lost Weekends, on US label Digitalis) but that will depend on such vagaries as the international postal system. We will play at 6pm in order to accomodate such entertainment synchronicity as Super12 semi-finals and A Low Hum omnibus-gigs at Indigo. A superlative film will also be presented.

Also appearing later in the evening will be THE JUDGE, New Zealand and Golden Axe, one and all decent bands and true.

The event is Enjoy's final celebratory bash at 174 Cuba Street. They're throwing a party to help raise funds for the move to their new space down the road and they ask that you please give generously at the door.

God bless.
----------
Who are The Stumps? The Stumps are a bit of a free-psychedelic-noise-rock supergroup from the rugged confines of New Zealand. Featuring Antony Milton (PseudoArcana, A.M., etc), Stephen Clover (seht), and James Kirk (Sandoz Lab Technicians, Gate, The Dead C, King Loser etc.), these are sonic musicians putting their best foot forward. On "Lost Weekends," the trio unleashes a sonic, droning landscape of epic proportions. If there ever was a masterwork, this is it.
--- brad e rose, digitalis industries

Resurrecting Bailter Space

They were the best band you'd ever want to see in a dark smokey dive where the sweat drips off the wall and the high notes ricochet off the pillars directly into your synapses. They blew our minds with their pummel and fuzz and then they upped digs and off to New York, USA. And after a few years and a couple of barely-noticed releases, pretty much disappeared below the radar.

I've just undergone a personal Bailter Space renaissance and it's taken a recent evangelical turn - from getting their CDs and LPs out after a long, long while, to regularly featuring tracks on my radio show, to uploading Bailter Space mp3s to friends in Scandinavia and North America.

Bailter Space - Shine (4.55 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

Bailter Space - Robot World (6.05 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download)

So here we go with the proselytizing. Well, actually I'm going to keep it pretty low-key. Shine is from Bailter Space's US breakthrough EP The Aim, released 1991 on Matador, and Robot World the title track from from their 1993 follow-up LP. They are the more melodic highpoints of the band's repertoire and as such feature little of the aural bludgeoning that underpinned other tracks; be asured that live, however, they stood toe-to-toe with the rest.

These tracks... this band... was just gorgeous. We always reckoned they were better than My Bloody Valentine, the nearest comparison you could ever hope to make. Now fifteen years later, we were right, and Bailter Space needs to be heard again.

We still reminisce about this gig and that gig, this album and that. Perhaps their time is yet to come.

[Note: After a couple of false starts in the mid-80s Bailter Space settled on a line-up which was basically a reformation of The Gordons, notorious sonic terrorists from half-a-decade earlier and reputedly the loudest band in New Zealand. Stay tuned for a Gordons post soon.]

Application antarctica download form

Blow blow trumpet trumpet etc. I've got another new CD out, Application antarctica download form. This time it's on New Zealand label Celebrate/Psi/Phenomenon. This is what Campbell the label-boss sed about it:

Brrrrr, it's gettin cold in here... don't fall asleep 'cause you may never wake up. Like its namesake, "Antarctica..." comes on like a vast cathedral of suspended ice-prongs dripping out action at a pace roughly comparable to the formation of a glacier. Nature's fractured architecture pixelated and amplified through the green luminescence of night vision goggles... almost TOO beautiful to be real? My esteemed friends, this falls well inside the parameters of 'effortless' and, not to make too fine a point of it, makes even the most vogue-ish dronesters look pretty silly indeed. A zenith of sensual, hypothermic dream-states. File under 'Near Death'.

I don't really know what I can add to such praise.

There's a compilation which has just hit the shelves (well, not really, it's not actually officially released yet, wait a week ok?). It's a double-CD comp on PseudoArcana called The tone of the universe (= the tone of the earth). Antony Milton (PseudoArcana man):

This compilation arose out of a Routes for War and Travel discussion about the news that astromoners have discovered a galaxy - far far away - that is resonating in a steady B flat drone. Due to this drone's inaudibility (not only is it remote but it is also something like 50 octaves below an audible pitch...) it was decided that a compilation of 'cover versions' was in order. That is not to however imply that the tone b flat is neccesarily present in all of these trks...

Featuring:
'white cd'
1 Blithe Sons- 'Map of Dusk'.
2 Peter Wright- 'Haboob'.
3 Keijo- 'Stellar Wind'.
4 Eugene Carhesio & Leighton Craig- 'Untitled #14' (from the Hunter Constellation Series).
5 CJA- 'Misty'
6 Anla Courtis- 'Several Galaxies of Bb Sound-lave Playfully Roaming About'.
7 Vibracathedral Orchestra- '3 Bb Moods'.
8 Hands of Satisfaction- 'Version 1'.
9 A.M/Uton- 'Ground has Curve'.

'black cd'
1 The Moglass- '05:05'.
2 Neil Campbell- 'Bbreeeze'.
3 Birchville Cat Motel- 'I Am But Dust'.
4 The Skaters- 'Between Land and Cloud Galloping Through Her'.
5 seht- 'Antarctica Download (edit)'.
6 Of- 'The Blank Room'.
7 1/3 Octave Band- 'Dominion'.
8 The Nether Dawn- 'Amber Eyed'.
9 My Cat is an Alien- 'Hear the Voice of the Cosmos'.

YES IT IS AS GOOD AS IT SOUNDS! (<- me) Clayton No-one (Armpit, CJA, Futurians, Root Don Lonie...) says: im listening to "the tone of the universe (= the tone of the earth)" & it is truly blowing me away, super thanks to antony for making this double cd compilation happen, i can feel the coldness of space & the lonliness, it is really 'out there'...pseudo arcana rulz!

This is the best compilation I can think I've ever heard... it functions so much better than many, it really is greater than the sum of its parts. Some of the music is so so wonderful and beautiful and essential that I felt a bit stink, embarrassed like, out of my league.

Oh, and did you think I was finished? Celebrate/Psi/Phenomenon also released a companion CDR to my Application antarctica download form album. It's called Communion longplayer. Campbell Kneale again:

Application antarctica...'s sister release, performing a function akin to an exclamation mark at the end of Stephen Clover's brilliance. The routine transfer of electrons from wire to amplifier (resulting in tiny pulses of air that can only be detected by your eardrums and the hairs on the back of your neck). Golly, it never seemed quite so IMPORTANT before. Further proof of my theory that states "if you leave a tap on for long enough, you can carve your own Grand Canyon".

Contrary to all appearances, I don't actually pay the guy to write nice things about my shit.

Quince (well, some)

For my international readers - many of whom appear to know not what is a quince, and have phoned and emailed me to ask "whassaquince, then?" - here's a picture of some quinces.

Ugly, ain't they?

On a histo-musicological note, I rather imagine the band-name Quincy Conserve is a somewhat assinine pun on quince jam, and the man's name Quinc(e)y.

Quincy Conserve were one of the most talented and professional groups to appear on the New Zealand music scene in the late sixties. They were (Drinks-After-Work's hometown) Wellington's first 'supergroup'. Incredibly, none of the members of the band were ever called Quinc(e)y, at least not in public. They were active from 1967 'til they broke up in 1971, possibly due to the pressure of keeping on having to tell people what their stupid name was/meant.

At this moment I am unable to ascertain the correct collective noun for quinces. I'm tempted to suggest that "a quattrain of quince" may suffice for this situation, and many others, when one has four quince to hand.

Please make any other helpful suggestions in the comments box.

Also spare a thought for Karl Kippenberger, bass-player in Shihad, another one of the most professional groups to appear on the New Zealand music scene. Karl's father Peter died on the weekend in a weird fire in Paekakariki.

Made jam

Quince are a strange, rare fruit; ugly, hard and inedibly tart in the raw state, and available only for a short season of three or so weeks every autumn. They have a uniquely delicious flavour when cooked, however, and hue of their flesh turns from a standard pear-like colour to an attractive ruby-red. What better thing to do, then, on a freezing Sunday morning, than make a kilo or so of them into jam.

Some of the *ahem* fruits of my labour pictured right. The jam is not unusual, nor is the making of it. You use 1 kg quince, 1 kg castor suger, and the juice of two lemons. There is no added pectin; the quince is naturally already quite high in said setting agent and the acid in the lemon juice is all it needs to coax it to do its thing and, well, get the jam to set.

The lemon juice gives the jam a lovely fresh citrus nose, and rather pleasingly, in its delightfully-lingering finish hints of Seville orange marmalade.

It took almost more then I had within me to wait for the smallest jar I filled to set before spooning obscenely hedonistic amounts onto a toasted muffin, laying over curls of a strong cheddar (parmesan would also do charmingly well) and consuming.

WTF

Just seen on a t-shirt: "I eat more pussy than cervical cancer"

Listen closely now, here he comes...

On paper it has all the likely-hood of a collaboration between Graham Capill, leader of the Christian Heritage political party in New Zealand and self-appointed "one-man megaphone for Christian indignation" for more than a decade, and an eight year-old girl. That is to say, not very likely at all.

But you don't, as they say, win matches on predictions or paper and so here we have David Sylvian, former pin-up boy satin-tonsilled vocalist and front-man for Japan, and maker since of a number of literate, lush, seriously odd solo records (highligts: Brilliant Trees, Secrets of the Beehive, Dead Bees on a Cake); heavyweight Austrian electronica artist Christian Fennesz; and Derek Bailey, irrascibly iconoclastic guitarist and foremost proponent of free-improvisation for nigh-on 40 years. Making a record together.

David Sylvian and Derek Bailey - the Good Son

It's a mash-up of sorts, it's called Blemish, and as allmusic.com says, it's the "sort of record that makes many long-time followers throw up their arms in aggravation - it's very much a 'final straw' record".

Not this listener.

Accompanied in turns by Bailey, Fennesz, or his own laconic guitar, Sylvian croons and whispers his way through eight tracks. By its very nature it is a barren, broke-down affair and it's utterly beautiful; enveloping in its bristly lilting swagger, like a well-read drunken sailer yet to find his land-legs and rolling all over town bellowing out his stark shanties to any who'll listen.

Blemish was released in 2003; there's also a new album out called The Good Son vs. The Only Daughter which is a collection of remixes of Blemish material.

Drug Music for an Unreal World Wide WebCast

It's nice to make contact with my fellow drug-addled. I've just noticed that a track from The Voice of the Taniwha has been included in the latest webcast from Drug-Music web radio. This is the full set-list:

Loop - Eternal - Thief of Fire/Thief (Motherfucker) [00:00]
Space Debris - Krautrock Session 1994-2001 - Nuff & Nunner [09:03]
New Order - Waiting for the Sirens' Call - I Told You So [12:11]
The Charlatans UK - Some Friendly - Opportunity [18:06]
Seht - The Voice of the Taniwha - Make the Baby Jesus Cry Some More [24:37]
Ultrasonics - s/t - Sweat Leaf [31:15]
Louis XIV - Illegal Tender EP - Finding Out True Love Is Blind [36:03]
Savoy Brown - Looking from The Outside (Live 69-70) - Leavin' Again [40:16]
Out Hud - Let Us Never Speak of It Again - It's for You [51:20]
The Flaming Lips - Hear It Is - With You [56:09]

Unfortunately the DJ mispronounces "Seht" as well as "Taniwha" but I'm just excited to have ended up on the same set as two personal heroes, Loop and The Flaming Lips; apart from an awful new New Order track it's actually a really good set, too. Worth a listen.

Tarot

Ever since Rose told me about the MP3-Blogs Aggregator, I've been obsessed with it, and the bunch of MP3-Blogs I've found [more about them later].

So because sooner or later I have to try my hand at everything, I'm going to do the occasional MP3-bloggin' here. Of course, the songs will be posted for evaluation purposes only. I love and support well-made music and make every effort to support the artists I love by purchasing their work; to that end it is my policy only to post what I own, and at that probably out-of-print stuff. To download the songs, right-click on the bold orange link and then select "Save Target As..." or "Save Link As..." to save the MP3 files to your computer. I won't be keeping an archive of the songs, so if it's gone, it's gone. Also, if you own the copyright to one of these songs and would like it removed, please let me know.

Walter Wegmueller And The Cosmic Couriers - Der Weise (The Wise Man)

Walter Wegmueller recorded this album with the Cosmic Couriers - a supergroup of German rock ('krautrock' as it is affectionately known): Klaus Schulze, Manuel Goettsching, Walter Westrup and others - in December 1972 and it was released October the following year on Ohr Kosmische Musik. Wegmueller was an itinerant gypsy mystic and painter and to accompany the album he painted an entire Tarot set of 78 cards; they are repoduced in the CD boxed-set reissue on Spalax that I have.

The album is 22 themed tracks, one for each of the Major Arcana, or trump cards: The Fool, The Wheel of Fortune, the Devil, Death, and so on. Mostly it's rocking funk/cosmic sounds like you'd expect, quite silly but pretty good and really fun to listen through. This track, Der Weise (The Wise Man), is one of the more sedate numbers, and features Klaus "Quaddro" Schulze, one of the pioneers of electronic music, as the narrator/vocalist. It's a piece of pure beauty, and you'll dissolve in bubbling syrup as, at the conclusion and with an apparent complete lack of self-consciousness, Schulze begins to hum along with the melody.

I'd probably write something a bit more coherent about the track if I was in a slightly better condition; The Jarman, Dave, and myself have just spent an enjoyable evening getting toasted, listening to Tarot and performing tarot readings - using Wegmueller's deck - in between bouts of trans-lingual etymological nerdery. You can also listen to snippets of the entire album at TIGERSUSHI.

Oh, and Julian Cope spazzed magnificantly about the album in his Krautrocksampler book.

Happy birfday to me, innit

I got a bunch of great presents last night. From Dave and Rose a huge skeleton-guy cushion/pillow; from Campbell a beautiful, tragic, beat-up accordion; from Marnie a drawing; from Jo and Matt a drawing and a photo; from Shana a pair of signed 7" records by The Stabs; a bottle of wine and a wee painting from Simon and Anya; and Antony gave me a copy of his new cd.

Big ups my mates, then. No really, thank you. I love yous all.

More drinking buddies

I've added Callie and Bad-Aunt, over there in the side-bar.

Hare rama, rama rama

Today is my birthday, and in honour of this auspicious occasion we held a long and raucous party last night, which culminated in my dear friend Malcolm bestowing on me another of his now-reknowned 2 a.m. haircuts. I won't go into the gory details, but suffice to say that if I were to obtain saffron-coloured robes, a small hand-organ and a book of annoying songs, and go and hang out at the airport, I very much doubt that anyone would bat an eyelid.

I am now the very proud owner of a rat's-tail.

At right is a special celebratory drawing by The Jarman.

Hunter and Painter

This fifteen part daily comic strip, by British illustrator Tom Gauld, appeared in the Guardian between 20th December 2004 and 7th January 2005.

It's the funniest thing I've seen in ages. Especially strip 2. Managing to convey accurately and entertainingly the concerns of the modern artist whilst in a Neolithic setting is no small or insignificant feat; Gauld pulls it off with ease.

Hunter and Painter depicts the artist as he struggles to come up with the "difficult second album", music-lore-speak for the less-accessible sophomore effort from a lauded new musician or band, and we are all reminded that, when it comes down to it, more or less we've all "got to keep the customer satisfied".

[Tom Gauld's site].

INTP Central

Us INTPs, we've, like, got our own website. It's definitely a good spot to kill a few minutes/hours/whatever you've got to spare.

Some famous INTPs:

CHARLES DARWIN
RENE DESCARTES
ALBERT EINSTEIN
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
BLAISE PASCAL
SOCRATES

I can't say I particularly identify with any of these in particular. Except perhaps Socrates; I have been known to run about the house naked and shouting. And maybe Descarte: "I can think, therefore I've definitely had coffee and a cigarette this morning".

It gets worse over at TypeLogic.com: F'shure they add Sir Issac Newton to the above list, which is fine, but then lumber us with such wretches and buffoons as Henri Mancini, Bob Newhart, and Rick Moranis. To top it off, we get C. G. Jung, (Freudian defector, author of Psychological Types, etc.) and Tiger Woods in our team.

INTP U.S. Presidents:

JAMES MADISON
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
JOHN TYLER
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
GERALD FORD

Whizzo. (Actually, for the most part, who?!??)

Please note that this is all a bunch of supposition and nonsense; most of these people have of course never been subjected to a Myers-Briggs personality-typing test, and if any of them have been, the results almost certainly have never been submitted to the public record.

The cheap and nasty-looking INTP Survival Guide provides, amongst other things, what passes for Humour for INTPs, mousepads and T-shirts. They do reckon, however, that Linus from Peanuts is a fellow INTP:

"Miss Otthmar, Miss Otthmar" etc.

I think I'm going to go and hang myself, right now.

Finally, TypeTango.com gives us something to get our teeth into: well-known INTP-types are supposed to include Isaac Asimov (author), and Friedrich Nietzche (philosopher), as well as the insufferable Lieutenant Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation.

PS. Rose will be pleased to note that in this post (I believe) I've successfully managed to correctly combine acronyms and possessive apostrophes.

Good husband material...

Doin' tests... doin' tests... ev'rybody's doin' tests... so yeah, I joined in the game and did some tests. (I can hear Ross P. Kettle choking on his soup from here!)

I'm quite enamoured with my Warmth-14% and Dutifulness-22% vs. Introversion-90% and Abstraction-74% in the Cattels 16 Factor test. Regarding Emotional Stability-26%: I suspect we already knew.

Of more concern is the Borderline-78% on the Personality Disorder Test: "individual shows a generalized pattern of instability in interpersonal relationships, self-image, and observable emotions, and significant impulsiveness." I'm keeping schtumm on the Schizotypal-70% and Avoidant-74%, and I've no real idea where the Dependent-70% came from. For the full wrap check out the Personality Disorder page at similarminds.com.

I've known I was an Myers-Briggs INTP for a while. So are a number of my friends. Estimates of our population proportion vary between 1% and 3.5%. I've got a rare blood-type to go with it, not that I'm suggesting there's any kind of link.

Dunno what to make of the Enneagram results - Sensitivity-73% and Detachment-76%. Cute pictures though.

Cattell's 16 Factor Test Results

Warmth 14%
Intellect 78%
Emotional Stability 26%
Aggressiveness 46%
Liveliness 42%
Dutifulness 22%
Social Assertiveness 14%
Sensitivity 62%
Paranoia 66%
Abstractness 74%
Introversion 90%
Anxiety 74%
Openmindedness 86%
Independence 82%
Perfectionism 58%
Tension 78%

Take Cattell 16 Factor Test (similar to 16pf)
personality tests by similarminds.com

Enneagram Test Results

The Enneagram is a personality system which divides the entire human personality into nine behavioural tendencies, this is your score on each...

Type 1: Perfectionism 40%
Type 2: Helpfulness 23%
Type 3: Image Awareness 56%
Type 4: Sensitivity 73%
Type 5: Detachment 76%
Type 6: Anxiety 40%
Type 7: Adventurousness 26%
Type 8: Aggressiveness 23%
Type 9: Calmness 20%

Your main type is 5 "I must be knowledgable and independent to be happy."

Your variant is self pres

Main type

Variant

Your main type is whichever behaviour you utilize most and/or prefer. Your variant reflects your scoring profile on all nine types: so = social variant (compliant, friendly), sx = sexual variant (assertive, intense), sp = self preservation variant (withdrawn, security seeking). For info on the flaws of the Enneagram system click here.

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Personality Disorder Test Results

Paranoid 70%
Schizoid 62%
Schizotypal 70%
Antisocial 38%
Borderline 78%
Histrionic 58%
Narcissistic 34%
Avoidant 74%
Dependent 70%
Obsessive-Compulsive 42%

Take Free Personality Disorder Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Jungian Myers-Briggs Test Results

Introverted (I) 77.42% Extroverted (E) 22.58%
Intuitive (N) 56.41% Sensing (S) 43.59%
Thinking (T) 73.33% Feeling (F) 26.67%
Perceiving (P) 59.09% Judging (J) 40.91%

Your type is: INTP - "Architect". Greatest precision in thought and language. Can readily discern contradictions and inconsistencies. The world exists primarily to be understood. 3.3% of total population.

Take Free Jung Personality Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

Sloth

Last night I went to the opening of my friend Dave's new solo show at the 91 Aro St gallery. That's him over there in the Drinking buddies. (There are links to his blog and his website).

The show is a series consisting of a very reasonable number of works featuring Dave's creation, the somewhat obviously auto-biographical Skeleton Guy. Skeleton Guy is ostensibly a painter, and appears again and again with the tools of the trade - studio, paint, easel and so forth - but seems to spend very little time actually painting. He rather uses the 'studio' as a private space into which he retreats to do whatever the hell he feels like - and frequently does, with characteristic torpid insouciance. Any suggestions from us that this is less than reputable behaviour and even downright duplicitous are challenged with a deapan stare that a Maltese mafioso would be proud of. At the very least we can expect to have cigarette smoke blown into our faces in a less than respectful fashion if we don't shuddup.

I am reminded of the (good old?) days when I would head for my studio at every possible opportunity to thwart the cloying mawkish clutches of my annoying girlfriend. Popular culture would have us believe that this is a common male behaviour - retreat to the den, the shed, the workshop, the garage, the local bar etc. to avoid the shrill girlfriend, the shrewish wife, the responsibilities of a family life - but I am left wondering what it is that prevents us from confronting the issues head-on and acknowledging our apparent need for solace and escape.

I know in my case the annoying girlfriend would accuse me of outright abandonment if I dared to express my desire for some "solace and escape", hence the utilisation of the convenient 'studio' justification. This is clearly weak, but for the sake of a decent night's sleep, worth it. I hope for everyone's sake situations like this are not common; I fear they may be. We're all doomed, aren't we. Go on, admit it - we're doomed.

But I'll never go to see Lambchop play again

I paid NZ$54 to see Lambchop play the other night. Lambchop, the darlings of alt.country - almost up there in darling-ness with darling Ryan Adams (ugh) and darling Jesse Malin and The goddamn darling Handsome Family. It was fine, I guess, but I'm never going again. Actually, if you want the truth, it was boring. And nice.

The cost of the experience is especially galling when you consider I had a ticket to give away on my radio show the Monday previous. I should never have given that ticket away, I should have kept the bastard for myself. Then I could have gotten really drunk and had a really enjoyable time, instead of just getting a little drunk and still being cogent enough to not enjoy the band.

Anyway, after all's said and done, I can't rid myself of this unpleasant nagging feeling that Lambchop is somehow the Jose Feliciano or the Gordon Lightfoot of this generation. And that's not a nice nagging feeling. It's the feeling of being duped... by niceness. Nothing against those fellows, but it's all just a little too... nice.

And should I trust my instinct when people I don't like who play in bands I don't like rave to me about how great Lambchop are?

The Voice of the Taniwha: Promotion

The global promotional campaign for The Voice of the Taniwha has gone into full swing already. The above image shows advertising in Pack Place, Asheville, North Carolina.

The Voice of the Taniwha

My new album The Voice of the Taniwha is now out. It's been released on the Providence, RI label Last Visible Dog.

Here's what label honcho Chris Moon wrote about it:

Another of the NZ bands that have risen in the aftermath of the mid-90's free noise frenzy, but seht is much more about minimalism, field recordings, and still, beautiful moments. Some tracks here (like Canned Laughter) are quite experimental and outright disturbing while others focus only on solo acoustic guitar. [...] seht demonstrates an all-too-genius use of field recordings, the pinnacle of which being the 10 minute 'St. Valentine's Day 2003' that escalates a found recording of a Salvation Army band to near cosmic proportions!

I'm really proud of it and glad it's finally seen the light of day (the release schedule has been somewhat impeded by factors out of my control). Gotta show my gratitude to my brother Andy for his work on the cover design, and the contributors and guest artists too. Oh, and I know I owes some of ya a copy - please rest assured you'll be hearing from me shortly.

O the shame, the hideous shame

One of the most emarrassing events of my life just happened to me. Y'see, I was in my studio and I was working on a new painting. (That's it there, on the right; its working title is erm Self-portrait as an alien). I had just finished a wet layer on the t-shirt area, and I had decided, contrary to my original intentions, that I was now going to ornamate the figure with - how shall I put it - a cock and balls. To those of you familiar with my work this should come as no surprise; to the rest of you, welcome.

Problem was, it's a big painting (1.6 m tall), and I needed an appropriately big model. Not in the interests of vanity or anything, mind - I just needed a decent-sized todger to look at in order to paint one at larger-than-life scale. Now I had a few pictures in an underwear catalogue, but that wasn't going to cut it. So I decided, since there was no-one around, I'll draw myself. A little awkward to *ahem* pull-off, given that I didn't have a mirror, but I thought I'd make do.

So there I was, perched on a chair, overalls 'round my ankles, inspecting my own tackle, when the door suddenly opens and in walks one of the other studio occupants, on his way through to the main door.

Poor guy didn't know where to look. (Neither did I for that matter.) He muttered an apology and hurried off.

I don't want to know what he thought I was doing, but needless to say, I rapidly revised my plan, and went back to work on the torso.

Afterthought: Actually, I've got a reasonable idea what he thought I was doing, because I was kinda playing with it - undertaking a certain manipulation, an auto-stimulation; this was necessary, of course, due to the aesthetic requirement of having aforementioned tackle not in a condition similar to Michaelangelo's David, but rather something approaching the soft, heavy semi-wood of a Playgirl model.

I also feel the need to point out that my familiarity with Playgirl magazine stems from the fact that the fiance of one of my best friends is the former editor; during a dinner-party at 'theirs' one night she got out a stash of back issues for our regalement.