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Archive for the 'overlord updates' Category

From the desk of the diskant Overlord – February 6th

Posted: February 6th, 2007, by Marceline Smith

Things are very very very very busy with me at the moment. As if I didn’t have enough things to do with diskant, a record label and a band, I am frantically busy crafting things for my very own stall at the DADA/Miso Funky Market on the 10th. It’s quite a jump from my usual leisurely brooch-making to creating a whole stalls-worth of saleable things. Only four days to go and I think I might just make it. If you’re around, do come and say hello.

Before that, I also have to squeeze in a short jaunt to London which cost us an entire £1.42 in air fares. Yes, I do feel guilty about the environmental effects but it’s February and it’s COLD and I haven’t had a day off since the 1st of January. Plus there are many Japanese foodstuffs and cute things needing to be purchased and sometimes Glasgow just won’t do.

Things aren’t being completely neglected on on diskant though with The Spencer McGarry Season featured in Talentspotter and a whole bunch of reviews over on the review blog. I’ve also wiped the slate clean and will be restarting my interview slackness stats from today. The previous lot have had enough reminders that I can’t be bothered pestering them any more.

It being a new year, my thoughts are being dragged unwillingly towards a redesign. I’ve been having to brush up my CSS skillz lately as it seems to be the way the web is going with almost everything I use for web development (Blogger, WordPress, Shopify etc.) using CSS more and more. So, I may be looking for some reader feedback soon to see what’s most in need of work. But first I will have to find the time…

Current listening: Margaret Berger, Asobi Seksu, Joanna Newsom, Errors, Shigeru Umebayashi, Cat Power.

diskant interview slackness stats: Interviewees: 0, Me: 1

From the desk of the diskant Overlord – January 16th

Posted: January 16th, 2007, by Marceline Smith

How is your 2007 going so far? Weather-wise, this has been an atrocious year for me so far (although it has just started snowing, yay!) Luckily things were brightened up by what is already my gig of the year – Joanna Newsom and the Northern Sinfonia at the City Halls, viewed from row B right in front of her pretty little face (and amazing shoes). She was perfect in every way and I started regretting giving up my cello for art and normal teenagerdom. I loved playing in an orchestra. If anyone has a spare cello please send it my way….

Have you broken your resolutions? I am still slacking terribly on the review front though I did tackle the overflowing diskant review box so I could hand a few piles out to our reviewers. Quite a few things that have been sitting in there for months got binned as well so if you sent something before October-ish and we haven’t reviewed it then we probably didn’t like it, one way or another. As anyone who has the misfortune to be within shouting distance of me when I rummage in the review box will know, my one tip for sending us CDs is BUT WHAT DO YOU SOUND LIKE? I don’t care where you met your drummer or whether you’re tipped as the next big thing, I want some way of figuring out which reviewer might like your record. Okay, I’ll calm down now.

Other than reviews, diskant is a little quiet just now. I’m mostly working on stuff behind the scenes including wrestling with the new version of Blogger, trying to tidy up long-neglected areas and getting the diskant robot back to work. I have also set up an Amazon aStore for diskant so you can buy some of the things we write about. More information about that is on the weblog

Don’t forget the special double issue of the diskant newsletter will be going out at the end of the month so join up now.

Current listening: Joanna Newsom, Cat Power, Shigeru Umebayashi, Fugazi, Deerhoof.

Buy stuff

Posted: January 15th, 2007, by Marceline Smith

I have set up an Amazon aStore for diskant so that you can buy some of the things we go on about on here. Obviously we’d recommend you use your local independent store but if you’re going to use Amazon then at least a tiny proportion of the cash is coming back to us. At present we have our favourite albums and films of 2006 and a bunch of personal recommendations from your own diskant Overlord. Hopefully some of the other diskanteers will do their own recommendation sections but I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Do rest assured that I will not be plastering ads all over diskant – the shop is completely seperate to diskant and will only be linked by text in a few relevant places. I also guarantee that all profits made will be spent by me on great things which I will subsequently write about on diskant. At present I personally pay all the hosting and domain registration costs for diskant out of my own pocket. The day diskant ever starts to cover its costs we will decide what to do with the money (free pie for everyone of course).

From the desk of the diskant Overlord – January 3rd

Posted: January 3rd, 2007, by Marceline Smith

Happy New Year! I welcome you to diskant’s ninth year of existence. Yes, we are planning some exciting things for our tenth anniversary, thanks for asking. I hope you all had a happy, fun and pie-filled festive season and are not finding the return to hard work as difficult as I am.

Having some time off our real jobs means that there has actually been a flurry of activity on diskant in the last couple of weeks with ou articles about our favourite albums and films of 2006 now online and our writers picking out some of the best things about the year over on the weblog.

We do have plans a-plenty for diskant this year. Hopefully we can increase the regularity of new content as well as bringing in some new features and tidying up some old ones. At least three of us have made resolutions to review more records this year so I hope it will be a while before the terrible excuses start. As always, if you have any ideas of ways we could improve do let me know.

I decided not to send out a December issue of the diskant newsletter as things were so quiet. Instead there will be a double issue for January, hopefully with a new exciting competition. Watch this space for more info or just join up now.

Current listening: Joanna Newsom, Bertine Zetlitz, Deerhoof, Lily Allen, Belle and Sebastian.

Merry Christmas from diskant

Posted: December 24th, 2006, by Marceline Smith

Things will inevitably be quieter for the next couple of weeks though, with our recent level of activity, I doubt anyone will notice much of a difference. Our annual best albums and films of the year articles are almost done and will hopefully be up sometime next week.

I’d like to take this opportunity to name and shame Findo Gask, Dot To Dot, Dananananaykroyd and Try Harder Records as the lazy/busy people who have been keeping me as the winner of my interview slackness stats. Particularly the first two who have been hoarding their interview questions since FEBRUARY! Hopefully we will see all these interviews sometime in the new year. Apologies go to Errors and 1990s who I have been failing to interview all year, mostly because both bands are doing so awesomely well.

While you wait for all this goodness here are some excellent year-end things by other sites that we love:

The Popjustice A-Z of 2006
No Rock’n’Roll Fun’s exhaustive round-up of the year’s happenings
– Pitchfork’s Top 100 Tracks and Top 50 Albums of 2006

Have a good Christmas and thanks for reading. Don’t forget to have some pie.

From the desk of the diskant Overlord – December 20th

Posted: December 20th, 2006, by Marceline Smith

Where does the time go? It’s practically Christmas and I still have a million things to do. And, as I’m working through the festive period, very little time to relax and do all those things I never have time to do. I’ve been making big efforts to make presents and buy handmade giftss and it’s been so much fun, especially getting such beautiful things in the mail and being able to avoid the mad rush round the shops. There are so many talented people around and I’ve been adding my favourite sites to the Links page.

Since it’s Christmas we will be presenting diskant’s favourite albums and films of 2006 very shortly. I’m just awaiting the last few comments from our voters and then you’ll be able to see what caught our fancy this year. I’m glad to be able to say I’ve listened to a whole three of the top ten albums though I have seen only one of the films. At least I have some new additions for my rental list.

In the meantime, you can read about our exploits at The Nightmare Before Christmas, curated by Thurston Moore. It was the first to be held in Butlins, Minehead but everyone seems to agree the chance was mostly for the better. I’m not rushing to sign up for either of next year’s events (especially after seeing how the current wish list for ATP vs The Fans looks) but it was great to get back into the ATP swing of things.

There’s still time to join the diskant newsletter if you haven’t already. The final issue of the year will go out sometime next week and we’ll have some more exclusive competitions coming up next year.

Finally, thanks for reading diskant this year and have a great Christmas and New Year.

Current listening: Joanna Newsom, Gay Against You.

From the desk of the diskant Overlord – November 29th

Posted: November 29th, 2006, by Marceline Smith

I seem to have been far too busy lately to be updating this, for which I apologise. Some of it is diskant-related though as begin the annual attempt to coax the diskant contributors into sending in their top ten albums and films of the year. Only a trickle of votes in so far but there’s already a few things with multiple votes, thankfully.

So, what have I been doing? A trip Up North to visit my relatives since I will be working over Christmas, a weekend in Newcastle which I enjoyed enormously and much pre-Christmas crafting. I have been making big efforts to give mostly handmade gifts this year, whether made by myself or by others and I’ve been receiving so many beautiful things in the post that I shall have a hard time giving them away.

Those of you who live in Newcastle, you are very lucky. We did a craft fair in The Cluny which was an awesome pub/venue/cafe crammed full of lovely people on a Sunday morning and plastered with posters for excellent shows. We also had an amazing Japanese teppan-yaki meal at Hanahana and made a quick visit to The Baltic which had well-timed exhibitions of Japanese and urban art. I recommend both and will definitely be returning.

>We’re all off to ATP in a couple of weeks so do come and say hello if you see us. We’ll be the ones eating pie, and shivering.

And don’t forget to join the diskant newsletter if you haven’t already. The next one goes out on the 30th and includes an exclusive competition. See the weblog for more information.

From the desk of the diskant Overlord – November 4th

Posted: November 4th, 2006, by Marceline Smith

Well, it is a whole new month and this year continues to zip past at the speed of light. Audioscope is over for another year and I have posted about it on the weblog.

My thoughts are now turning to the end of year poll and wondering if this will be the year we don’t manage to agree on even ten records. Thinking back myself, it’s been a pretty darn great year for music, especially locally, but I’m not sure how good a year for albums it has been. Possibly that’s the fault of my iPod as I hardly ever seem to listen to full albums anymore since it’s so easy to pick out the immediately good songs and put them in a playlist of marvellousness.

I’m also going to have a similar problem with voting for films as I have only seen about 3 films at the cinema this year. I have, however, seen more films this year than any previous year thanks to my Amazon DVD rental subscription. And with my Freeview box I can tape all the TV I want and watch it later. I fear I will never randomly discover anything again, I’m so busy selecting out just the things I know I want to hear or see. Maybe I will make 2007 the year of Random.

Anyway, the first NEW diskant newsletter went out with only minor hiccups so if you haven’t received it, you’re not subscribed. Go sort that out here or you won’t get the next one either.

I know l ast time I promised some reading recommendations but I filled the space writing about just 2 books and there’s tons more so I will post them on the blog soon instead.

Current listening: Squarepusher, Trail of Dead, Dananananaykroyd, Mogwai, Piano Magic, Joanna Newsom.

diskant interview slackness stats: Interviewees: 4, Me: 3

DISKANT NEWSLETTER – JOIN NOW!

Posted: October 23rd, 2006, by Marceline Smith

Since no-one reads my nonsense on the homepage I will also post this here:

Believe it or not, the diskant newsletter will soon be resurrected and will be entirely awesome. Turning up once or twice a month, it will let you know about all the new interviews, features and reviews on the site, what’s up on the blog, some tips on cool events and websites you should check out and whatever else we think you might want to to know about including EXCLUSIVE NON-WEB CONTENT. Wowee. You best sign up now if you’re not already a member. You can do so here, and you should get a move on as the first will be going out before the end of this week.

From the desk of the diskant Overlord – October 14th

Posted: October 14th, 2006, by Marceline Smith

I’m not sure what’s happened but I am suddenly awash with brilliant ideas. I am famed for having approximately 14 brilliant ideas a day, and intend at some point to open an Ideas Consultancy, but few of these ever relate to diskant. However, this week I have thought of literally 5 great new things for diskant and I will hopefully find some time to create them sometime soon. All will be revealed soon (unless end of year poll time looms first) but here is the first:

Exciting news!
Believe it or not, the diskant newsletter will soon be resurrected and will be entirely awesome. Turning up once or twice a month, it will let you know about all the new interviews, features and reviews on the site, what’s up on the blog, some tips on cool events and websites you should check out and whatever else we think you might want to to know about including EXCLUSIVE NON-WEB CONTENT*. Wowee. You best sign up now if you’re not already a member. You can do so here.

Possibly my new-found enthusiasm is due to the fact that it’s quite clearly Autumn now and this brings happy anticipation of jumpers, snow and the annual joys of Instal and Audioscope, not to mention my first jaunt to Winter ATP. I’m glad I kept half my holidays for the end of the year as once I run out of things to anticipate it will be practically next year. By the looks of things this could be a Grand diskant ATP Reunion and we’ll maybe even manage some kind of report back, as these have been sadly absent since, well, I stopped going. Look out for some Instal reportage next week once we’ve had our fill of noise.

I have also been reading an awful lot of books recently so I will try and put together some recommendations for next time.
Current listening: Squarepusher, Trail of Dead, Dananananaykroyd, Girls Aloud, Joanna Newsom, The Rapture.

diskant interview slackness stats: Interviewees: 2, Me: 3

* This may just be some jokes about pie but, you know…