I’m hoping other people will join me in over-opinionating on the new trailers they see. Last night’s was possibly the best selection of trailers ever! Firstly (seemingly) 20 minute long Spiderman 2 trailer which gives away so much plot that I’ll now be able to turn up for the last ten minutes of the film and understand perfectly what is happening. Except it looks great so I’ll be going to see the whole thing. Then the new Harry Potter. I have not seen or read any Harry Potter and spent the entire trailer going “What? Whaat! WHAAAAT?!” It makes no sense. It is mental. I quite want to see it. Then I, Robot. This looks like the worst film ever! Robots with human faces! GONE MAD! Fantastic. Oh, and Shrek 2. That looked okay.

All this was an excellent pre-cursor to the film we were seeing, which was The Day After Tomorrow, oh yes. Anyone having read my previous over-enthusiasms on The Core will know what we were hoping for. We didn’t exactly get it. The Core is great because it is a ridiculously stupid disaster film which the characters take entirely seriously. The Day After Tomorrow tries too hard to make things believable but it is just too very very stupid. There are so many best bits in this film that it took us about an hour afterwards to list them all.

Possibly the highlight was the Glaswegian audience’s reaction to the ‘Northern Scotland’ weather monitoring station in Glasgow (a Glasgow which seemed more like Orkney) and the Scots staff working there who were fans of Manchester United and made their solemn final toast “to England”.

But no, the undoubted best bit involved three young men going outside (despite previously insisting anyone going outside would freeze to death instantly) to board an enormous abandoned Russian ship (which just happened to make its way up their street when New York flooded) in search of Penicillin for The Girl who had contracted blood poisoning (while saving a woman’s passport) and were then attacked by WOLVES who had escaped from the zoo earlier and had obviously made their way to the nearest ship in search of flesh despite all the dying frozen people everywhere and of course the instantly freezing air (which obviously doesn’t affect wolves).

As this scene started, a man in our aisle (with great foresight) stood up, said ‘this is Appalling!” in a loud voice and walked out.

Funniest film I’ve seen in ages.

I’ve been meaning to do this for quite a while but I have the memory of a goldfish. So, despite leaving two copies of Robots and Electronic Brains on my desk I have still not remembered to write anything about them. And that’s a darn shame as Robots is possibly the greatest zine in the world at present. Jim seems to have no concept of release dates and current trends and instead just works his way steadily through what sounds like a small warehouse full of records. Thus Robots is always packed with reviews which muse and ponder over the motives, dreams and personalities behind the tunes. The only bad thing is that almost everything ends up sounding intriguingly great and would bankrupt me if I had the memory to search it all out. The other half of the zine is usually taken up with interviews which are almost always absorbingly interesting even when you don’t have a clue who they are. The two issues I have here (#12 and #13) feature the likes of EU, The Telescopes and promoters Bad Timing but most interesting are the ones with SK (early collaborator of The Streets) and Braer Rabbit (who sounded so fantastic I went and dug out the 7″ that’s been sitting in my review box for a year – it is fantastic). As well as this you also get free CDs featuring stuff from ace labels like Bearos, Antenna and WIAIWYA which make me go ‘ooh!’ and then stick on top of the pile of CDs to be listened to… I can’t recommend this enough so just go buy a couple of issues via the website.Also of note is the news that another diskant zine fave Stereo Sanctity has set up a weblog for random reviews and stuff. I have high hopes so keep an eye on it.

So who lives on the Soup Line.?

“Take a map of the British Isles. Draw a straight line diagonally across the map so that it cuts through Belfast and Nottingham”, says Bill Drummond

If you live on this line then he’ll come visit you and make you a pot of soup! Here is a map, here is an article. Come on diskanteers, invite him round.

*Disclaimer:*

I was right down the front for Noxagt, because they sounded like arse if you weren’t in direct firing line of their amps.

And yes, Andy Abbott for Shellac! Mmm, fretless. I am becoming less enamoured with Kill Yourself every time I see them, so I guess Mr Summerlin and myself are headed in opposite directions in that regard.

Chris gives a far better description than me for the other two bands. I must remember to borrow some Chinese Stars off someone soon.

Oh and check out PLC LTD – they’re market leaders

(wait for it to load, its a mouseover thing so it takes a while on certain pages)

I feel a desire to balance the opinions voiced below somewhat. I went to the gig with Dave and I thought Noxagt were fucking rubbish. Well maybe not rubbish but the bass just disintegrated at volume and they just seemed to humourlessly bash away for far too long and while being loud had no arse end to them at all.

Chinese Stars were mighty like some sick perverted disco band. Like watching a stranger pelvic thrust and he’s grinning at you and you’re waiting for the bus and hoping he comes nowhere near you but you can see he’s got a semi-on.

Spin Spin The Dogs seemed to get a dose of the Bunkers Hill sea legs that immediately quashes any bands ability to connect with the audience but despite that they had some great songs that would have shined through no matter what.

And the Shellac comparison for Kill Yourself is getting lazy these days. Sure they still sound like Shellac but now they’re getting songs together that are as good as the real thing if not better. They played 2 songs in the set that were amazing. One had a cool 70s rock twangy riff that was completely out of place (unlike the other bands where everything was very much in place) and the other was an exercise in restraint and tension that was more Jesus Lizard than Shellac which is kind of splitting hairs but you know. I think the realisation that Shellac would be better with Andy Abbott on bass is what has swung me round to liking KY more.

You went and gave me an absolute din of tinnitus last night. You had a yummy (all-conquering) bass sound though, and your flailing knuckles method of attacking your chosen instruments was highly appealing, so I’ll let you off. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a band stand quite so towering above their recorded output.

I should also give mention to the Chinese Stars, who also played and actually did manage to sound just like Arab on Radar with a disco groove obsession (even if it was pretty much exactly the same on every song). There was also a particularly spunky set from Spin Spin the Dogs, who held their own pretty damn well. I guess I should also say that Kill Yourself opened, but the only thing that comes to mind about them is, “Shellac meets Shellac wearing a gasmask (which renders any vocals incomprehensible), and gets in a fistfight with Shellac at a party hosted by Shellac, where a Shellac is getting sodomised on a stage by Shellac…” or something.

At last, at last, E3 is here which means Nintendo DS revealed!. Hurray for Nintendo – this actually looks fantastic, particularly the idea of multiplayer DRAWING madness. New “non-kiddie” Zelda should shut up the moaners as well. And Animal Crossing DS! Woooo!

Firstly Blogger has had a redesign so you may be spotting some changes round here. Already you can view our fancy Blogger Profiles to the left instead of those horrendously out of date pop-up profiles. Also means if you only like one of us you can just read their posts on their profile and pretend the rest of us don’t exist. HAHA.

While looking for ATP photos for our ATP Round-up I stumbled across the website for Everett True’s forthcoming post-CTCL magazine Plan B. By the looks of things it’s fairly similar in terms of contributors and subject and thus very much worthy of your time. Check out the three different reviews of ATP for instance. They’ve got a launch issue out soon but they’re posting reviews and stuff on the site all the time as well as blogs from some of the writers including the lovely Andrew Clare and ET himself.

And finally, WHAT THE HELL? story of the week as Freaky Eyed Hobbit Boy^TM Elijah Wood gets the chance to take over John Peel’s show for a night. Just ‘cos you saved the world from the wrath of Sauron doesn’t mean you can stand in for John Peel. “Elijah is a really big music fan,” a Radio 1 spokesman said. Well, so am I!

actually, finally, WHERE IS EVERYONE ELSE?