I went down to the 13th Note on Wednesday to have a look at Cayto. Well, I actually went to the cafe first ‘cos I was thinking too much about how awful it will be if the 13th Note has to close. Once I’d realised my mistake I backtracked to the club and was greeted by a ‘can I see some ID?’. I must have looked pretty incredulous, told him I didn’t have any and that I was TWENTY SIX and he let me in. gee, how many more years til people believe I’m not 17?

Anyway, I picked up my raffle ticket er, ticket and walked into an appalling wailing noise which turned out to be Slowloris. I’d kind of liked their track on the Smoke compilation so I was surprised, but they soon picked it up and the rest of the set was generally good stuff. Haunting vocals and nice atmospheric beats. After meeting up with diskanteer Will and getting a free badge it was time for Fighting Red Adair. I had nothing to go on here except that they had a good name and one of them had a hat on [often a good sign]. But they literally launched into their first song, throwing themselves about the place as they bashed out an instrumental OXES/Reynolds kind of thing. I was stupified with glee and all ready to proclaim them as my new favourite band. the rest of the set wasn’t quite up to that level but still had me laughing to myself and I was that person left still applauding when everyone else has stopped. heh. they did some dual vocals on the rest of the songs with one singer having an americanised sounding voice and the other just a mental shouting voice. they just made me laugh a lot and I really want to see them again. it’s making me laugh just thinking about it. haha.

but I was technically here to see Cayto and I was now very worried. I’d not been overly impressed with their EP and after that display of rock activity I couldn’t see that they could impress. but I was pretty much hooked in from the first song. I guess they come across like a more energetic Radiohead, like if the early punky Radiohead had the song structure and technology of current Radiohead. It all just sounded really big and much more powerful than their records. the singer reminded me a little of stevipus [Steve of The Oedipus, diskant fact-fans] in the way he ran about and jumped off the stage and stuff. they had one song with a clarinet bit which was kind of painful to watch and didn’t really sound of anything but most of the songs were pretty great.

After that they did their legendary raffle but I didn’t win anything [and I could have really done with those biscuits]. so, basically I’m glad that I got off my lazy ass and went down to the gig. if there’s any possible good thing to come out of the 13th Note’s situation it’s that people like me are more prepared to go out to mid-week gigs on a recommendation or a whim. I even forced myself to drink alcohol so as to give them more money. I felt like going up to the bar and saying, ‘I’ll have one of whatever you make the most profit on’. Ah, all hail the 13th Note!

We (Minter, Ady & I) went along early, saw Cassetteboy. Brilliant, brilliant stuff, all on tape loops so the bloke didn’t actually have to do anything, he just sat on a stool WITH HIS PENIS OUT (well a sort of putty penis, if you follow me, looked realistic though) and a mask of Jimmy Saville, then he cut his penis off, went offstage and came back on dressed as Bin Laden with a hat made of aeroplanes.No really. And he fought with another man who had a cardboard twin towers on his head.You had to be there. The music was loads of cut up, blink and you’ve missed it loops of songs, famous and not famous (caught the Smiths, Public Enemy, Joy Division etc amongst other things). ‘The drugs don’t work’ with the lyrics changed to say ‘the drugs work, they don’t make you worse, i know i’ll be on drugs again’. Blinding. And a cut up politician’s speech made to sound like it was good to murder 11 year old boys. Some sort of comment on the manipulative power of the press, i expect. Before Cassetteboy, some well-constructed glitchcore (ha ha, love these terms, tech step, darkcore) from Wauvenfold. A weird evening up there with the fish-headed man of Gloucester (ask Minter).

Hood themselves were really, really good I thought. Started off with left handed guitarist playing right handed bass upside down and right handed bassist playing left handed guitar upside down, but sorted out after first song.

Sounds a lot punchier live (obviously), and i think it’s a good thing that the vocals were occasionally sunk under the rest of the mix, what with them being weak from time to time. Asked them about Audioscope too, they seemed quite up for it, amazingly.

Ace gig, though, apart from the crowd. Loads of them faced away from the band the whole time and even more talked all the way through, very beard-scratchy being there to look cool sort of crowd.

There was even one guy with an old man’s cap on, backwards, a little goatee anda black polo neck, smoking rollups. The man was a cliche on legs. I swear I saw him in top lesbian sitcom Ellen once, too.

In other news, Sunnyvale have their first MP3 up for download on our fantastic website It’s us messing about doing a two-minute funk interlude, and is in no way representative of what we do most of the time, but some of you might enjoy it. If you like 70s cop show themes. Let’s play drums…

i’m greg kitten and they’re not showing ghost world anywhere near me.

i’ve been sulking for 12 hours and i’m certainly not stopping now. i went to THREE seperate cinemas – i think they were a warner bros, a uci and an odeon – i dunno for sure and frankly i don’t much care – they were all wack. none of them were showing it. so all i did was end up driving about 20 miles to eat shepherd’s pie. don’t get me wrong, i like shepherd’s pie, but BAH.

There’s something just great about going to the cinema in the afternoon, particularly how it’s daylight when you go in and evening when you come out. I’m going to do it more often. Anyway, the film was pretty damn good. All cartoony looking and funny and true. I was kind of perturbed by the storyline though. Either I’m a complete stereotype or they based that movie on me, just changing the location and details so I could complain it wasn’t like how it really happened. It was kind of funny actually although a bit too deja vu on occasions. I did think Thora Birch was too pretty to be believable though and I didn’t really like the ending much. Still, it’s probably the best film I’ve seen this year [out of all the, er, three films I’ve seen this year]. Yeah, go see. Unless you’re Greg Kitten and they’re not showing it anywhere near you. Hoho.

having not won a single thing since guessing the correct number of sweets in a jar at a school fete when i was about nine, i was very pleased to hear this morning that i’m like the winner of a subscription to a series of cds on three lobed records. entitled purposeful availment, its like this nice limited run of cdeps by bands including bardo pond, tarentel, shannon wright and mick turner from dirty three. needless to say this makes me very happy indeeed. hurrah for three lobed, and hurrah as well for fakejazz, who seemed to be involved in me winning somehow.

I wasn’t scared and I didn’t cry and it was generally just great. They played lots of songs that I wanted them to and it was just one of those gigs where you’re kind of overwhelmed by actually seeing the real people and by hearing the songs in real life. Low themselves are so huggably cute and do their little joking about between songs. Aww. Highlights for me were the times when they all sang away from their microphones so you could hear their real voices as well as the amplified versions. It was just heartwarmingly lovely. We got an encore of about 3 songs and then once they’d gone there was a hardcore of about 50 people hollering for them to come back and props to them as Low did indeed reappear despite half the audience having gone home thinking it was all over. and even played a christmas song as the audience were so insistent that they should.

I’ve been listening a lot to the new Papa M album which is just your perfect autumn/winter record and today I picked up the James Orr Complex single on Rock Action which just shines with Chris Mack’s character and personality. Buy them both. As soon as possible.

so i spent last weekend hanging out with marceline and nicolette in glasgow. of course, it rocked. i’m only getting round to writing about it now because i’ve been recovering. but that’s not because i’m a wuss, of course.

highlights were seeing american analog set, who were absolutely delightful, being involved in possibly the biggest diskant meet-up ever, seeing john and steve from bis, who looked absolutely upstaged and starstruck when they realised the diskant crew were in the house, watching instrument, the mighty fugazi video & finding out what it really means to be punk, playing with candles, and watching an hour’s worth of ‘metal anthems’ on mtv2.

oh yes.

since that weekend i’ve been listening a lot to american analog set’s ‘know by heart’ and getting all sappy and nostalgic. bah.

interesting things i have been doing lately include:

skiving work, liking the bubba sparxxx single far too much, whatching stupidly bad tv (young, gifted and broke anyone?) and ah yes, seeing mogwai of course. they were good but not like amazing. better then average i’d say. my mogwai gig tally is now in double figures though, which is quite nice.

i have been listening to rhode island’s lightning bolt lots and lots, who are certainly worth checking out if you like full on noisy mathmatical stupidity (and let’s face it, who doesn’t). i also got the set fire to flames album, who manage to nicely escape the moniker of ‘yet-another-godspeed-side-project’ which can only be good.

the official diskant tape ring 2001 (as it has now become known) is proceeding at a terrific rate as anyone involved will tell you. well done to everyone for making it this far. it can only get better.

I went to see Mogwai last night. I paid my £12.50 and went there with large amounts of trepidation as the last time I saw Mogwai at the barras was definitely my worst Mogwai gig and the one that temporarily stopped my statement after every Mogwai gig that it was the best I’ve seen them. but thankfully it was not to be like that again and they really were the best I’ve seen them.

It must have been very close to sold out and not as huge a number of neds as last time, definitely an enthusiastic but in the right places audience. they weren’t over-frendly to support band Sophia though who had a fun heckle bout in between every song. I really liked Sophia, absolutely no pretensions to them.

I’d been granted my ten minutes of jostling in the photo pit and after that I got myself a nice vantage point where I could still take photos quietly without flash. I also stole wee Stuart’s bottle of Irn Bru that he’s left behind after watching Sophia. To drink, mind, not to keep as some sick souvenir or to sell on Ebay.

Anyway Mogwai pretty much picked all the songs that make me all tearful. I’m getting to be a right sap now. I thought it was just the overdrinking at Leeds that made me want to cry but no. Stuart’s voice is just getting better and better and that version of Cody is going to be in my top ten highlights of my life. well, maybe not quite that high. I’ve never heard Cody live before but it was all dragged out and Low-like. I’m just so glad Stuart got over his singing embarrassment thing and sings loud now. Chances of me crying at Low next week now stand at 84%.

The only bad bit was Secret Pint which sounded pretty rubbish. Stuart was complaining about something technical but the whole song just sounded out of sync and wrong. and John didn’t stay and break everyone’s hearing at the end of the encore, they just all left the stage and left the noise playing for a good ten minutes during which half the audience left. heh.