It’s been banished from my 3 cd changer. We need a break. I need to see other people. I haven’t sickened myself of an album through overplay in ages but I was really starting to get sick of the more poptastic tunes on ST&C – Baudelaire and Relative Ways in particular.

I do find myself more and more concentrating on three cds at a time plus one record as befits my stereo. The vinyl is usually something I can stick on to get overexcited about before I leave the house – Le Tigre‘s first album at present – while the cds tend to be one rock, one downbeat and one electronic. I’m getting very predictable. Unwound are my rock cd at the moment and also my new heroes. I’ve liked Unwound kind of absent-mindedly for the last few years but they’re gradually edging into my top bands evah! list. It’s the guitars – they fill my heart with joy and my eyes with tears, if you want to be cheesy about it. That Death Cab for Cutie album is providing some quiet moments although I can see it being swapped back to the Papa M album very soon. The DCfC just seems so flimsy and mimsy and lacking in anything solid and still too much about mittens! But I can’t stop playing the thing either. Damn them. The electronic one arrived this morning and is the new thing by EU. It’s in a perfectly circular plastic cd case which is a design marvel but I’m not sure if it’s good or if I like it. The music however I do like – it’s all twitchy and fluid and mmm.

I really recommend you go read some of the new articles on The Morning News as they are all really good, particularly this one. And let’s not forget Tangents [which I did, now added to our links on the side as it should be] which is always excellent, particularly Alistair’s blog and this article about Friends Reunited. I should register there while I can brag about my super-popular web empire and my work for crazy Texans. And also while I am actually still in employment…

BBC postpone tonight’s Trail of Dead Peel session for not having the right note of respect on the Queen Mum’s funeral day. Rock on. I wish the BBC had done a real news report on this instead of just mentioning it like a slight schedule change. Excuse me while I get my Breakstuff hat…

I saw Hirameka Hi-Fi, Electro Group and Fighting Red Adair last night. I don’t remember much about it though. I remember driving back to my house with eleven people in an eight seat van and with a traffic cone still on the roof. I remember it being loud. I remember the sound being rubbish. I remember Fighting Red Adair being mental and ill. I remember being impressed with Electro Group and buying their album. I remember missing Ben FM from the Hirameka live experience. I remember people giving me free records. I remember standing on my balcony this morning in the spring sunshine.

Things I Like:
Unwound: discordant guitars, mmmm
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists: still one of my favourite books. Bunch of painters at the turn of the century paint houses and discuss socialism in their lunch break. Much ‘throw im out the bloody winder’, drinking of petrifying liquid and the sort of socialist idealism that makes you want to cry.
All Tomorrows Parties countdown: Two weeks today!
Sitting in the 13th Note on a sunny afternoon drinking Irn Bru: What could possibly be better?

Things I don’t like at all:
Flat hunting: blah
Job hunting: double blah

The new Death Cab for Cutie album seems to have far too many songs on it about wearing jumpers and mittens. Didn’t hear anything about milkshakes or kittens or park benches but I’m still a little worried about where this is heading. Errrr, not that I’m listening to the new DCfC album when I’ve still got eight records to review before tomorrow afternoon. erk..

And can someone help me with this:

April

16th: Dianogah at the 13th Note

16th: Blectum from Blechdom at Nice’n’Sleazy’s

24th: Trail of Dead at the QMU

24th: The New Year at the 13th Note

27th: Do Make Say Think and Hood at King Tut’s

27th: Smog at the 13th Note

Sometimes living in Glasgow is just too good.

Me again I’m afraid. If you’ve got any spare opinions or anecdotes can you forward them to the rest of the diskant staff?

Well, I dragged myself out last night to see Les Savy Fav, The Mars Volta and The Apes despite being exhausted beyond belief. So actually I missed The Apes. I heard they sucked. My impeccable timing had me arriving just as The Mars Volta started their set and I prepared to give them an open mind since I had some respect for At The Drive-In without really being very interested in them. Turns out they ruled, I was well impressed. There was still some elements of At The Drive-In: the sharpness, the fluidity, the action, but there was also a much more relaxed mood with the heavy keyboards and drawn out grooves. I guess it’s very similar to the change between the Nation of Ulysses and the Make-Up, right down to the addition of a supercute girl bassist. Except that I’ve never been too keen on the Make-Up. I can’t forgive them for not being the Nation of Ulysses any more and I imagine there’ll be some ATD-I fans feeling the same way about The Mars Volta. I’ll be intrigued to hear some of their recorded material to see if it’s as good.

The highlight of their set though was when when a bearded guy rushed through the audience and started whooping and dancing with the enthusiasm of a child in a balloon shop. Cue half the audience looking bewildered and wondering who the crazy man was. Tim from Les Savy Fav of course. LSF are just infectiously great, a spectacle of hilarity. They demand your involvement but with such charm that you participate without question. People will dance, people will hug the crazy man, people will allow him to wear their coat, rummage in their handbag and spray breath freshener in your mouth. If you are the security man you will attempt to keep things safe and correct but eventually melt a little and let the fun continue. Les Savy Fav laugh in the face of sense and order and have a bunch of tunes to make anyone dance. They just rock the house well past the curfew and leave you still dancing the next day. You have to see them.

My sleep-addled brain slowly dismissed possible causes [poltergeist, death metal band playing gig outside my window, local death metal fan committing suicide with chainsaw] and settled on workmen cutting down trees and/or mowing grass while listening to death metal on car stereo. but at 8am? it all seems very unreal now and I’m almost convinced I imagined it.

Certainly wasn’t what I needed after my evening of eclectic avant jazz at the 13th Note anyway. I went mainly to see the rare public appearance of Empire-Builder but also because Late Night Foreign Radio have put a lot of effort into making their residency at the Note as interesting as possible [themed nights, videos, record swapping]. Empire-Builder were testing out a new direction: no live drums, less guitars and instead centred round computer beats and bass-driven melodies. It was a bit sketchy at times but there’s just something about loud electronic music in a live environment that makes my heart pound so I was very happy. I want them to do a remix album and call it ‘Empire Rebuilder’ or ‘Re: Empire-Builder’.

Before this we got George Burt and friend who were amusingly jolly and possibly teach physics in their spare time for fun. As the fingers flew up and down the frets and the bits of metal were applied to the strings I had a horrible flashback to Sonic Youth at ATP2000. Shudder. I guess Sonic Youth are the nearest I’ve got to this kind of improvisational art jazz. Mostly I was in two minds as to whether it was a lot of pretentious twaddle or whether it was enjoyably odd. I think likely it was both. They did have a nice line in detuned riffs that I could have listened to all night. The headliners, Late Night Foreign Radio themselves, did a kind of similar thing but with less art and more ROCK. It again trod a very fine line between ‘yes!’ and ‘nooooo!’ but came out mostly on the side of the former.

Overall, it was kind of like being trapped inside a copy of The Wire for the evening. Except that The Wire would never deign to attend such a low key gig that isn’t even at the top of Mount Fuji or in the middle of a desert. More fool them.

The Morning News like me

I’m having a great deal of trouble coping with this news story about how the police are having a demonstration outside parliament. Who’s going to police the protesters? If they get out of control will they send in some riot police to kick in the normal police? And some of these police think they should try and win industrial reforms like the right to strike! So will they have to employ cheap labour police scabs to beat up the police pickets? Will the police on the picket line be shouting abuse at the police? I don’t think they’ve thought this through…

We went to check out the first gig by Glasgow supergroup John’s Not Mad on Friday. They’ve got people from Lapsus Linguae, Akira and Peeps Into Fairyland on board and had the 13th Note absolutely mobbed. Queues to get in! I’ve never seen the like. Possibly.

Anyway, they were pretty good. Seemed to be aiming for a Joy Division/Mogwai kind of thing but with an added country feel. When it was slow and sad with interacting girl/boy vocals it was great, when they tried to rock out [or, painfully, cover Love Will Tear Us Apart] it went a little awry. Considering it was a first gig it was good stuff although considering they all play in other bands so it should be. Aye, keep an eye out. They’ll be coming to an independently-minded website you know very well rather soon.

After that I finally got to see The Boy Cartographer, which is most of Pentothal’s other band. I really liked them – open and friendly and heartfelt. A bit like a sleepy Spare Snare.

The headliners were Homescience from Edinburgh and they were highly amusing. All their songs were about writing songs and girls and September being crap so I had much fun trying to guess what the obvious rhyme would be. They had some charm though with their slightly wobbly voices and jangly indie guitars. If they were more interesting they could be the new Pastels but sadly they’re more likely to be the new Travis. If they’re not Steve Lamacq’s favourite band already then they soon will be. They’re never going to run out of subjects for songs either since they’ve still not covered how it can be fun in the sun or how a car can drive far or having a dream about ice cream. They had a xylophone though, that was good.

– People willing to spend £22 [TWENTY TWO POUNDS!] on the first single by The Strokes. It doesn’t even have a proper sleeve or anything. Best retrieve my copy from the immense diskant box of review stuff then
– Thinking of bidding on something and discovering it’s being sold by someone you know
– Thinking of bidding on something and discovering that Simon Minter is already bidding on it.
– Discovering yourself on page 23 of the ‘Records > 45 RPM > Other’ section at half past eleven on a Friday night.

If you find my life somewhere I’d quite like it back…