“Zizz, buzz, trill, click, whizz, plop, flutter, splash; and all the time everywhere whisper, whisper, whisper, lap, chuckle and sigh” (The River at Green Knowe)

Some music is made for exploring. I took this album out one sunny Sunday afternoon meaning to walk one of my usual routes and instead was enticed down side streets to discover hidden wonders minutes from my door. A little-used viewing platform decorated with thickly layered ovals of glass with the river twinkling far below through the trees; a hidden corner garden full of oddly shaped tree trunk sculptures; leaf shapes silhouetted against the bluest of skies; peeks of a circular private park through the gaps in the railings; swathes of golden yellow buttercups; finally, truly, the Pink Japanese Robot Bear of our dreams sitting in a shop window; a garden gate the perfect colour of green; midges circling in shafts of sunlight. Blinded by the sun, moments from my door, I banged my face on the scaffolding and the tears seeped out while I stood in shocked surprise.

I love this album. Two Japanese girls coaxing the sounds of nature out of electronics with childlike vocals cooing and sighing throughout. Every time I listen to it I see something new.

In sharp contrast to the intense-yet-ponderous 15 minute noise-epics Detwiije are prone to crafting, i’ll keep this brief: on ‘Would you rather …’ Detwiije have cultivated an impressive bittersweet post-rock cacophony – an album easily capable of setting Mogwai quaking in their ‘blur:are shite’ t-shirts.

www.detwiije.com

Fantastically summery pop music, this. The (occasionally Chipmunksesque) vocals on this CD single stay on just the right side of sugary overload, and the clean, clear, pin-sharp music seems designed for no other reason than to get you outside, dancing, in the sun, probably with an indie kid bowl haircut, Pastels t-shirt and hairslide… whilst playing along on a variety of toy synthesisers. The music mixes the vigour of early Bis with the finesse of late St Etienne; all perky electronic drumbeats, gliding electronified pop sounds and low-in-the-mix (at least for the most part) guitar melodies. Whilst this kind of 60s-tinged electropop might not be particularly original, on this single it’s particularly effective.

Persil
Transformed Dreams

I am delighted to find out that Dusty Hill, bassist for the finest band on Earth ZZ Top, nicknames his right index finger (seen left pointing at his wife’s forearm) :

THE PLEASER

I love this band.

As diversity can be valuable and in my own white male geeky way I’ve been ‘hired’ to bring something a little different to the diskant table. I listen to Girls Aloud, by choice and I enjoy it too. I’ve never knowingly heard a Black Flag track and I preferred Hole to Nirvana. I’m not ashamed and that wasn’t meant as a confession, just laying my cards out before starting this review properly.

Jeremy Warmsley’s press release tells me that he has created a ‘a truly original style that remains uniquely accessible’. Rubbish. On listening to the cd it is accompanying I find that Warmsley has created a pocket of experimentation that while being quite fun and spirited is not well defined enough to be accurately described as ‘truly original’. It’s accessible as long as you enjoy listening to the sound of the lo-fi bedroom white boy riding again. By at turns confidently and clumsily merging a twee indie sound with skittering electronica, Warmsley has produced a sketchy debut that I’ve been finding hard to love or hate.

jeremy warmsley
exercise1

words cannot do it justice, it just manages to capture all the fun and pain of being in a band and/or involved with music; it is actually pretty inspiring and you look at the bands on the screen and really want to get involved and do that!

And it doesn’t even matter that the band is the Dandy Warhols, it fucking rocks!

The cutesy/scratchy/cut-and-paste-y artwork on the front of this CD single sums up the music: somewhat raucous, impassioned indie noise. With its uptight girl-band-gone-bad vocals and garage-dirt riffing, the first track ‘Message’ is the standout for me – short & sweet, aggressive female-fronted punk which reminds of The Slits, The Bangles and Phil Spector’s ‘Christmas Album’ in different ways. The further three tracks don’t quite keep the pace up, and lose out by losing some of the energy and desperation, but continue in a similar vein. Playful, quietly confrontational noisy pop music for disaffected youth.

The Grates
Captains of Industry

I can’t believe this shit. I move house, and thus temproarily lose my internet connection. In the meantime I have a lovely weekend of blissful ignorance, and then come back to work to be greeted by this:

http://www.swamirecords.com/news.html

The best goddamned motherfucking punk rock band on the planet have just split up, and YOU probably missed them last month. I thought they seemed to be having too much fun.

It’s nuts. I hated Big Brother with a vengeance – even when they were all kicking shit out of each other last year. But this year has been GOLD television.
It’s like someone handpicked the scum of humanity, put them in a laboratory and just picked on them. Praise be that someone had the common decency to televise the results.
Take yesterday’s activities in the house for example.
The contestants were set a task where they each had 15 mins alone in the diary room and they had to wear a bizarre set of goggles with little test tubes attached. The task for the day was for them to collectively cry enough tears to fill a tea spoon. I SHIT YOU NOT.
When they were in there, the voice of Big Brother advised that if they needed beating down, belittling or upsetting then he would oblige. They then bombarded the contestants with tearjerking music and read them upsetting and heartbreaking stories.
Seriously, I fully expect them to lock a housemate in a glass box next. The ceiling will then begin to slowly descend to crush them slowly to death. They will be informed that if they confess to everything bad they’ve ever done then Big Brother will let them go. On the bottom of the screen it will flash to the audience
“BIG BROTHER IS LYING. NOTHING THE CONTESTANT CAN DO WILL SPARE THEIR LIFE”.
In the same day one of the contestants wanked off another in the swimming pool after he had asked to feel the fake breasts of another contestant and she had happily obliged.
This is amazing, perfectly orchestrated, car crash TV.