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.

Partial obituary prematurely composed in response to the imagined death of Mayo Thompson

No one's going to be doing an obit on him on the late news. He's not going to be inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame. He's not going to be awarded a post-humous Grammy, or a post-humous Lifetime Award for Services to Music, and the anonymous remaining members of The Red Krayola aren't going to accept it on his behalf.

But he's arguably - demonstrably, even - a greater musician than any of say Brian Wilson, Lennon and McCartney, Zappa and the Mothers, Beefheart, Klaus Dinger or Michael Rother, Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison or Mo Tucker, Conny Plank or Conrad Schnitzler, Roky Erikson, Ralf und Florian, Van Dyke Parks, Eno, Mobius or Rodelius, Uwe Nettlebeck and Faust, David Bowie; anyone who set out at roughly the same time and who did something significantly weird; something outside of the pantheon, of the expected, of the projected trajectory of rock music.

I realise that this is a very big call, but I stand behind it 100%. And the good thing is, he's not even dead; I couldn't imagine a greater opportunity to laud the man and his work. So yeah. Mayo Thompson and Red Krayola = good. Bloody good, in fact. As Ritchie Unterberger puts it (on allmusic.com), Thompson "seems as concerned with deconstructing the language of 'rock' music as with actually expressing himself within it. This makes Red Krayola's catalog challenging, often difficult listening. Its saving grace is the quirky charm of Thompson's songs and vocals, with a whimsical humor and open-mindedness rather atypical of avant-rock."

Over the course of nearly forty years, Thompson has created a legacy of wonderful music in a series of superb recordings. He has also recruited a diverse succession of excellent musicians to play with him - a few being Gina Birch (the Raincoats), Epic Soundtracks (Swell Maps), Lora Logic (X-Ray Spex) and latterly, the perennially multi-faceted Jim O'Rourke. He has himself played in the legendary Pere Ubu for a time, in the 80s.

Apparently you wanna know where to start. I wouldn't go past God Bless the Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It (1968, highlight Victory Garden, surely the only love song penned in the voice of Eva Braun and sung to Adolf Hitler); Kangaroo (1981, highlights Portrait of V. I. Lenin in the Style of Jackson Pollock Pts. 1 & 2 and Born to Win (Transactional Analysis With Gestalt Experiments)); Black Snakes (1983, highlight The Sloths); and the Blues Hollers and Hellos EP (2000, highlight Container of Drudgery).

Also check out the internet to find out lots of information about new releases of old, unreleased Red Krayola material, including the astonishing 1977 album Corrected Slogans. You'll also be able to read all about how the company that makes Crayola crayons forced Thompson to change the band's name from The Red Crayola.

photo by James Welling.

Trade me

I buy a lot of vinyl, and I buy a lot of it second-hand from TradeMe, New Zealand's answer to eBay. (I also buy books and consumer electronics.) In the interests of posterity, as well as an audit of sorts, here is this month's haul [what, did you think I was gonna link them all up?]:

Eye In The Sky by Philip k. Dick
MORE DEVILS MUSIC Various Blues LP * GB RARE VG++
NEWPORT IN NEW YORK 72' Various Jazz LP Orig OZ
Megadeth - Peace Sells LP Original Press
Danse Macabre - Last request LP
PSYCHOTIC TURNBUCKLES DESTROY DULL CITY LP
>>> Blade Runner - Directors Cut Edition DVD <<<
David Sylvian - Brilliant trees LP
VELVET UNDERGROUND LIVE LP DOUBLE
THE CARDIACS LP The Seaside * RARE Alphabet label
That Petrol Emotion - Peel sessions LP
Fatima Mansions - Valhalla Ave LP
The Wedding Present - Hit parade 1 LP
Ned's atomic dustbin - Intact 10"
Drop nineteens - Limp 7"
David Sylvian/Ryuichi Sakamoto - Heartbeat 7"
Cabaret Voltaire - The crackdown LP
Teenage fanclub - What you do to me 7"
The BOX TOPS / Dimensions LP
Ned's atomic dustbin - Are you normal? LP
JACK KEROUAC Subterraneans early pbk first edition
ACDC, T.N.T LP
Mudhoney - Mudhoney LP
The Fall - Why are people grudgeful? 7"
The Fall - Free range 7"
The Charlatans - Weirdo 7"
BLACK SABBATH/PARANOID CD
Altered Images - Happy Birthday / Bite LPs
THE BOO RADLEYS--WAKE UP! CD
Virgin Prunes - If I Die I Die LP
Pere Ubu - Art of walking LP
VA "Summit Meeting". Jazz LP
Chainsaw Masochists- Thrashing Around 7"
Hank Jones."Ain't Misbehavin'". LP
Misc "Bebop Spoken Here". Jazz LP
Car Crash Set - No Accident LP
FELA KUTI Zombie LP
ARCHIE SHEPP Yasmina (France) LP
LONNIE LISTON SMITH Astral Traveller LP
CURTIS MAYFIELD Curtis LP
MCCOY TYNER (2 LP's) LP
THE ASSOCIATES/ WILD AND LONELY LP
Bob Dylan Nashville Skyline LP
Tim Buckley "Greetings from L.A." LP
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem. pback
Clifford Brown and Max Roach. LP

yikes.

Some notes: I already have a copy of PKD's "Eye In the Sky". I'm not sure why I didn't realise this before I bid $16.50 for it. The David Sylvian "Brilliant trees", Virgin Prunes "If I Die I Die" and FELA KUTI "Zombie" LP I have downloaded as mp3, but normally I only double-buy mp3 stuff on vinyl when it's for DJing. Sylvian and Prunes don't fall into this category, however. Tim Buckley "Greetings from L.A." and Bob Dylan "Nashville Skyline" LP I used to have on CD, before I was robbed a few years ago. The Pere Ubu "Art of Walking" is my third copy of the LP - hopefully this one won't suffer from the manufacturing fault the first two did. The Associates "Wild and Lonely" is/was a waste of money (1990!). The Stanislaw Lem "Solaris" paperback is the post George Clooney remake edition and so loses out on hip points for that. The Car Crash Set "No Accident" LP (punchy, solid NZ post-punk/new-wave) is almost impossible to get, especially in this condition, and was an absolute steal at $8, particularly since the seller included a CDR copy of the LP, with a bunch of other rare tracks, at no extra cost. McCoy Tyner's "Enlightenment" 2LP is some of the greatest post-Coltrane jazz I have ever heard. What else. Mudhoney's first LP is their best, easy, although their recent (2000+) work is very cool. The last time I heard Megadeth's "Peace Sells...But Who's Buying" was in 1989, so I'm looking forward to that one arriving. Teenage Fanclub can not put a foot wrong with me (if you ignore their stink later output). I've been waiting to find a Cardiacs LP (any LP, any tape, any CD, anything at all, any music shop employee who's heard of them, any catalogue, any website fer fuck's sake) since being bowled over by their track "Is This the Life?" on the CD88 Indie Top Twenty compilation I bought about 15 years ago.

Drinking-buddies and so on

I've started building a directory over there, on the right, of drinking-buddies. Email me if you want to appear. Also tweaked various aspects of the blog, including putting the archives into a drop-down, and inserting a by-date menu of titles after the monthly archive selection.

The Shins 'Oh, Inverted World' (Sub Pop 2001)

As promised; the following is the review I penned in 2001, for the magazine Looking for a fish-drying plant?, of The Shins' Oh, Inverted World:

Don't be alarmed by the opening track Caring is Creepy, an awkwardly skewed new-wave sort of thing which sounds like a CURE B-side from the late-80's. The rest of this album is a wee gem of oddly-comforting pop, if not comfortingly-odd pop, rather like a very affectionate homage to the 60's psych of TOMORROW or LOVE or THE BEACH BOYS (the vocal dept.) or SYD BARRETT to name a couple, very carefully and cleverly done with quick-fire (mostly) sub-3-minute songs and aptly sparing use of effects. This is extremely tasty stuff which just reminds me track-after-track that I should really get The Great British Psychedelic Trip vol. 1 thru 3 CD's back off whoever it was I lent them to about two years ago. Best line: "You may notice certain things before you die / mail them to me should they cause your algebra to fail".

The review was part of an article in which I reviewed and raved-about my favourite psychedelic-pop albums.

The King is dead: long live the King etc.

A guy I affectionately refer to as Ass-Computer, a pal in Finland, paged me earlier in soulseek saying "have you seen this?" and passed me a link which ended with "obit_thompson.html".

My heart sank and a heavy grief overwhelmed me.

"Fuck!" shouts I. "Mayo Thompson is dead".

Of course, it quickly turned out that it was Hunter S. Thompson, erstwhile Doctor of Journalism, a.k.a. Raoul Duke, who was in fact deceased.

A weird mixture of relief and frustration and fulfillment replaced the grief. In a sense I'd been expecting it. I mean, the guy's been dicing it; lining up to bite the big one for a well over forty years. It's not exactly unexpected, that he would go on a crazed acid binge after gnawing for several hours on the pineal glands of kidnapped Amazonian tribesmen, and shoot hisself in the head as he battled to fight off the giant man-eating reptiles.

Or something.

So I guess the bats finally caught up with him in this world; now he's barrelling down the highways of the next, in the midst of a depraved ether and qualude bender, furiously shooting off his six-gun while they're screeching overhead, dive-bombing the car and snatching at his aviators. Probably with the devil riding shotgun, "as your Lord of Darkness, I advise you to use the flame-thrower." etc.

R.I.P. Duke, and take care, you mad mother-fucker.

Short tribute. HST has had arguably the greatest influence on my life in terms of how I view the world, how I think about states of existence, the managed consumption and abuse of intoxicants and narcotics and the beauty and potential of the written word. For that I'm incalculably grateful.

PS. Oh yeah, and if you're the bastard that's got my copy of Songs of the Doomed (yeah, I know I lent it to ya but I've forgotten who you are) get it back to me, would ya?

PPS: Non-deceased Musical maverick Mayo Thompson has recorded and released an astonishing amount of incredible music under the project name The Red [CK]rayola since approximately 1966.

Fly like an eagle or some shit

These days the opportunity to reflect on the passing of time is never more greatly afforded than at a rock concert. Face it son, you've been doing this for fifteen, nearly 20 years. Face it son, you've become the old weird guy standing at the back of the hall. Face it son, you're old. You know, "What the hell am I doing here? Would the drinks-after-work of 20 years ago even be here?"

So with that in mind, I went to see The Shins tonight at Victoria University Student Union Hall. Note I didn't stand at the back, though, I braved the heat and the sweat and the dank of the fifth-row; I endured the great unwashed and the downright sheep-dog-dag-smellin' kids down the front. Especially you, yeah you - you know I'm talking to you - you 6'5" stoopid-Leo-Sayer-afro-lookin' mutha-fucka with yer collar turned up and the elbows all over the fucken place and the talking at 120dB through the quiet songs. That was me who smacked you upside the head. (and then hid).

So. The Shins. I mean, they look like nerds (also see the photo-album at allmusic.com), but they rock like motherfuckers (see below). Don't get me wrong, I love The Shins - I've been playing them on my radio show and singing their praises for almost 5 years - but they're a weird band, a band-apart, almost a band of two parts. One part is a fairly straightforward, almost nondescript, indie rock band, albeit one with a penchant for penning gloriously beautiful pop songs which are sometimes even a little reminiscent of the splendour of Brian Wilson's Pet Sounds. The other part is the voice and vocals of singer James Mercer. It's that part which suddenly and repeatedly turns the chair-of-the-song over and exposes it's legs; it's cartwheeling across the lawn and there's something weird about the sun and the legs scrabbling, clawed, and spazzing shards of guitar out at you while a huge bird, an eagle or an albatross or whatever soars overhead.

Mercer possesses a very wonderful set-o'-tonsils. He sings in three registers, the first of which is a not particularly unexpected mid-range. Then there's his powerful pitch-perfect high-register; add to that his ability to launch into a stratospheric falsetto, once cruising velocity is attained, and you have a singer of some ability. Which translates quite naturally into a great band of some distinction. And they have a very, very, very fine set of lovely, lovely, lovely stripped-back cut-down acoustic ditties. And they walk a very fine line when it comes to the length of their songs (they're markedly, sometimes preposterously, brief) but they always come out on the right side of the ledger, y'know less is more and all that.

They put on a fantastic live show too. Near-flawless, actually. And here's the thing; that eagle, or hawk, I was talking 'bout before, that's James Mercer's song. Only it's not a bird, see, it's a giant mechanical robot-hawk-thing with metal wings and razor talons and laser eyes and it's wheeling above, like a vulture or some shit, waiting to strike and peck at you. Live, the faux fey trappings of a nerdy-hippie pop-band from Alberquerque, New Mexico are stripped away and you have Mercer, bug-eyed and bulging-veins as he bellows in his impossibly pure voice soaring above the clamour of a very rockin' band and he doesn't miss a single note and I was waiting all night for him to fall and you know what? he never did. And they nailed the acoustic lullabyes 5-0.

Anyway, The Shins have two albums out; shortly I'll post a review that I wrote for a magazine of their debut Oh, Inverted world when it came out in 2001 or so. Chutes too narrow is their second album and it's a goodie, too. There's another The Shins page here, and an Oh, Inverted World album page here, but it's kinda stink.

At murder shed

Last year my band The Stumps met with two other bands - Birchville Cat Motel and Pumice - for a one-off 'supergroup' recording session. A French record label has offered to release the recording and it'll be coming out soon - we're calling it At Murder Shed. I've been working on the layout for the CD artwork, and this is an essay I've just written for the booklet.

It's raining but not too much. Cars running by on wheels of white noise as I'm checking outside for the others to arrive. Door knocks and they're here... in comes Pumice and Birchville and the rest of The Stumps and a couple of cases of beer which we immediately begin to devour.

We repair to the recording studio... it's what we call the recording studio, anyway... it's my art studio and the home of The Stumps. A giant run-down corrugated-iron warehouse in an old condemned industrial compound down the road, it's notorious for 2 artists, one party, gang-style fortess-ifications, two brothers from the same crime family and one brutal murder. It's in limbo and it's been that way for nigh-on thirty years. Times passes slow on motorway-designated land. Buildings age almost as you watch them... oil-stained concrete, weeds, rotting planks, pools of lichen, gutters hanging and gone, rodents, paint hardening and lifting and blowing away... ghosts...

Fall cassette in and on and blasting as we chat and pass round more beers and start to set up... suddenly Stefan is away, rattling at his kit while James configures his guitar's output for takeoff. Campbell is making electronic soup, deafening, and Antony plays louder than I've ever heard and my ears are ringing, bleeding noise, before we've barely begun. I've built a polyphonic bass drone loop which I'm laying waveforms over but my head is full of Sunn)))o and Sabbath and my fingers itching and aching, playing my lowered-4^th litany over and over and over and over. Campbell is growling, or singing or something and then I'm watching Stefan and he's watching me and we lock together and we're rocking and rocking... Campbell and Ant have combined and twine an agonising feedback pierce then without warning James tunes in and blasts off in a startlingly prosaic solo that climbs and climbs through registers to meet them...

And then we must break, exhausted, wind it down. We can't go on like this. But now Ant busts into a guitar riff which sparks Stefan into a furious march, some kind of a tattoo and we're off again. I'm watching him again and I slap on another riff and I'm watching him as we slip together and I'm looking at my feet and now I'm pushing my volume pedal, pushing it through the floor. I want to beat the bulldozers and the wreckin' balls... I want to knock the shed down around us somehow with my sub-harmonics. Something is rattling and Stefan gone mad with drum fills breaks us up and I could swear I just saw him throw his head back and howl. Campbell kills us with a sear of hiss and we slowly topple over into a warm, colossal drone.

The rattling is my amp. I'm wondering if my speaker is wrecked but I can't care now, this is too good for bummer thoughts like that to interfere with. I'm parched and bug-eyed and I have to drink a beer so I drink a beer. We have to relax for a while now, surely, we have to rack it back a couple. Antony starts poking little shards of cosmic sonar as us. Campbell is singing and humming and droning along and Stefan accompanies them, pushing into their interplay at acute angles and complex tangents. I've decided to hell with it and start stepping up the filter on the synth-drone and it gets rougher and rougher and rawer and louder and then James throws a raised-5^th feedback line all over me and now I'm as loud as I can be, as loud as I'm ever gonna be. This is our hymn, our prayer to the gods of music and beer and rain and friends and we transcend, climax together and it's all gone quiet.

The rain falls on the iron roof. Stefan's snare buzzes tiredly. Someone's delay parameters collapse into themselves. We pack up, drink more beer, turn the lights off and leave.

Stefan Neville:-drums, guitar, mad howling styles
Campbell Kneale:-electronics, death vocals, electric bagpipes
James Kirk:-photon-guitar, drums, smoke
Antony Milton:-guitar, beer, tools
Stephen Clover:-monophonic synthesizer, bass, Fall cassette

Dork-baiting

It's a new sport and possibly one that should be considered for the next Olympics. I invented it. (Well, I didn't really). Anyway, when you have a moment, cruise around the directory on BlogExplosion looking for right-wing/conservative/Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter-wannabe muthafunkin' dumbass muthafucker blogs. Once there, use all the skills in your possession to write short, literate and explosively-aggravating remarks in their comments sections; then sit back and wait for follow-up responses to arrive.

Of course, you're right, it's infantile and petty... but I did my first one earlier today and, hot-damn! it felt good. And I'm not talking about plain abuse here. Slay 'em with the power of your argument, guys.

Note: I was actually going to call this post Nigger-baiting, but I couldn't find a definition on the interweb that justified it...

Banner

I made a new banner. That's it upstairs, there ^. I actually made it for BlogExplosion.com but decided to use it on this page as well.

That's me there on the right, and on the left is SpaceKitten(TM), the logo for my [sometime] clothing label GalleryHag.

I made the banner in Adobe Premier, printed it to an AVI and then used the shareware tool Amazing Photo Editor to convert it to an animated GIF. Actually I'm not entirely happy with the render I achieved - principally the dither-ey effect on the text as it fades in - so if you happen to know of a free tool (or even a non-free tool) which I could get a better result with, I'd be grateful to hear about it.

EDIT: I redid the banner using a 24-frame sequence, created in Adobe Photoshop and animated in Adobe ImageReady. I like it a lot better now. It really was still far too much work though, for what it is.