Hello people. I haven’t reviewed anything in a while but I have been taking a break from reality and hiding from the real world. In other words I have been watching far too much TV and trying my hardest not to think too much, if at all.

In one of my more lucid moments I agreed to help Marceline by sorting through the CDs that come through the diskant door. In doing so I am exposed to some appalling artwork and press releases but I also get to pick out stuff that looks interesting. Dan Deacon’s Spiderman of the Rings was one such find and I am hugely glad it caught my eye.

It is brilliant. I put it on expecting mildly pretentious, but potentially entertaining, sample heavy electro-noodling only to be entirely blown away. This is great fun mutant cartoon electric funk rock with fantastic tunes. If I realised reality could sound this good I would not have stayed away so long.

Dan Deacon’s website
Carpark Records’ website

A new feature here on the weblog as we pin down the organisers of the upcoming events we’re excited about and get them to tell us all about it.

First up the Gringo 10 year anniversary party. I’ve known Matt a looong time now since the very first issue of Damn You! zine and loved all the early Gringo bands – Hirameka Hi-Fi, Reynolds, Empire-Builder…I’m already blubbing with nostalgia. Gringo was even the first website we hosted here at diskant. Ten years later and they’re still releasing awesome records from the likes of Lords, The Unit Ama, Polaris and Souvaris and are planning a big old party in Nottingham to celebrate ten years of greatness. I hassled Matt to answer some questions.

Can you tell us a little about how Gringo started and what your reasons were?

Youthful enthusiasm for the IPU led five friends (Viva Joe, Jimi, Tom and Jason!) to blow their first pay packets on a slab of black vinyl put inside a badly photocopied paper sleeve. The mission: to put North East Essex on the musical map.

What have you got planned for the day?

LOVE

Also, 11 Gringo recording artists past and present. Tears at seeing old faces and missing good people who could not attend. Chris Summerlin projecting my face on to a large white screen. Me pulling down Chris Summerlin’s trousers. A Gringo DJ set which may include cuts from Mr T, Dennis Waterman and Reel 2 Real feat. The Mad Stuntman. No doubt there will be a lot of mess to clean up.

What have been the highlights and lowlights of the 10 years of Gringo?

The highs: every release; the first Gringo website; anything to do with John Peel (his reading of my first fax, the playing of the first Gringo release, the playing of Empire-Builder at the wrong speed and his reading of my fax pointing this out, the first Gringo Peel session, the 10minutemen live sessions); Hirameka supporting Mogwai back in the day; Meeting glorious people; Getting to watch Gringo bands play in different countries; starting to break even!

The lows: Southern Records; falling out with people over stupid shit because we were all too young to know better

What’s happening next with Gringo?

Souvaris album out now. Sailors 7″ out soon. Second albums from Bilge Pump, Lords, Soeza and Eska sometime this year. The Unit Ama should record again soon, if they are reading this. I would like to put out a record by The Horse Loom. I will continue to stalk The James Orr Complex until he submits.

Anything else you want to tell us?

You can buy tickets from me. Or Selectadisc in Nottingham. Or online. Lots of people are travelling and I’ll do my best to find you a place to stay! Please someone drive from Glasgow so that Marceline and Colin Kearney can attend. [yes, do! – M]

Find out more at www.gringorecords.com

A bit of market research, if you all don’t mind. We here at diskant are eager to hear your suggestions for bands and labels (and indeed anything else) that you would like to see featured/interviewed on the site. We can’t promise anything (especially if you want to see an interview with Elton John or something), but it’d be great to get some ideas about stuff to cover here.

You can see some of the other people we’ve covered here: www.diskant.net/features/index.htm.

Feel free to leave suggestions as comments on this post, or alternatively you can e-mail Marceline or I at the usual addresses… thanks!

I couldn’t work out how to do that thing that Mar-C did where she made them all little neat thumbnails so you get bigger photos. Here’s 2006 in visuals…

Although we do have writers based around the globe, there’s a small majority of us living in Glasgow. I cannot deny that part of the reason for this is me trying to offload CDs from our overflowing review box on to anyone I happen to meet. Alex McChesney, however, claims quite the opposite, having originally run his own music review website back in the day. “After meeting Marceline and seeing the excellent diskant, my need to come over all self-important about music was re-awakened, and I volunteered for reviewing duties. Duties which I have been somewhat negligent about lately. Er… sorry.”. Alex has mainly stuck to reviews so far but that ranges from getting thoughtful about Songs of Green Pheasant to getting hyper-excitable about Lightning Bolt live. He’s also diskant’s resident movie buff helping collate diskant’s Films of 2005.

When not reviewing CDs, Alex spends his days writing “the world’s most boring computer software” and his evenings as a member of electronic-rock combo Sister Blades, and making occasional unpleasant noise in podcast form. He is also married to the lovely Rebecca who will be joining us on diskant’s review pages shortly.

Unfortunately Alex is less lazy than I anticipated so these answers are now ever so slightly out of date. Hopefully this means we’ll get some words from him about his trip to Iceland soon to go with his marvellous photos. A-Z of Iceland, Alex, come on!

Where do you live and what do you like about it?
I live in Shawlands, on the South Side of Glasgow, which is a scant 15 minute train journey from the city center, has a great number of decent shops, bars and restaurants, including what is (in my opinion) the best Italian restaurant in Glasgow – Bacco Italia. (Now what are the chances of them reading this and offering me a free meal in return for plugging them? Rather slim, I suspect.). The South Side. It’s “the new west end” dontchew know. Still, it could do with a record shop or two – there was one in the arcade that was ok, if a bit heavy on the alt.country, but I went to look in the other day and it was cold and dead.

What have you been listening to/reading/watching/playing recently?

Everyone’s sick of hearing me bang on about the Nintendo DS, but it really is my favourite games console ever. I’ve had it for about two months now, and I’ve already been tempted into buying almost as many games for it as I have my PS2, which I’ve had for around four years. It’s a little white box of fun.

I’ve just bought an album called “Hypnotic Underworld” by Ghost, who are a sort of folk-prog band from Japan who I have heard many many positive things about, and have meant to get around to listening to since their collaboration with Damon and Naomi some years ago. Some records you buy and can form an opinion on by the end of the first song, but this is one I can’t quite decide if I like or not. I’ve thrown it on my iPod for listening on the train, so maybe I’ll get the bottom of it one way or another.

I find myself listening to more music in work than anywhere else nowdays, which is a far from ideal situation. I own some great music that just isn’t appropriate to programming to, so isn’t getting played.

Watching? Not a lot. There’s nothing on TV that interests me at the moment, and I haven’t been to the pictures in quite a while. I do, however, have a pile of DVDs bought cheap from the Blockbuster up the road that need watching. Oh, and we bought “Screaming Masterpiece”, the excellent documentary about Icelandic music. But more of that in a minute….

Tell us about your favourite local bands.
Gay Against You rule the roost as far as I’m concerned. I enjoyed Park Attack the last time I saw them. And we just played with Beaches of the Proud and Captain Haddock, who approach instrumental ambience from opposite directions but are both ace in their own ways, in addition to being jolly nice folks as well.

What are you planning on writing about next for diskant?
I was thinking about doing an article about the original Wicker Man, in time for the release of the shite-looking remake.

What are your favourite articles/interviews on diskant?
Chris Summerlin’s diskant Gets The Blues is a tour-de-force, but the yearly Instal round-up is always a good read too.

What are you looking forward to this year?
I’m going to Iceland in September! About which I am stupidly excited! It’s just for a long weekend, but already I have become a total Iceland bore. Go on – ask me anything!

What have you learned during your time at diskant?
That the diskant Overlord is not to be trifled with.

Marceline has been hassling me (and all the diskant crew) to do some more music reviews and I kept putting off answering until finally I had to admit that I’m not that into music anymore. Or rather I’m not that interested in new music or listening to things that are put in my lap.
However, I am hugely into music and about 99% of it at the moment is Lungfish.
When I first got into Dischord Records, Lungfish were a total oddity among the deep back catalogue of the label that I was investigating (they still are in a lot of respects). It wasn’t an instant conversion by any means, in fact I didn’t really like them. I remember talking with someone who knows the Dischord people and he spoke incredulously of the excitement shown by Ian MacKaye when the final mix of the new Lungfish record was delivered to him. I remember we laughed.
Then I got a tape of The Unanimous Hour LP about 5 years ago maybe. I remember clearly driving in my car with a girl I had just started seeing and putting the tape in and saying to her:
“I don’t know if I like this album, I just can’t stop listening to it” like I was apologising. I don’t know why I did that but I think it was because if there’s one thing Lungfish isn’t, it’s ‘now’ music or ‘music of the moment’. It isn’t stylistically current. And when you’re impressing a lady I think it’s important to be current right?
The thing is Lungfish songs (or the later ones at any rate) don’t have any changes. For someone digging math rock and every weird time signature shit I could put my hands on in 2001, having no changes was as revolutionary and mind blowing as hearing Trout Mask Replica for the first time.
I think during the approximately 365 baths I took in 2001, I probably listened to that tape for at least 300 of them, still not really sure why. I just found, increasingly (and still so) that when I stare at all my records it tends to be Lungfish that jumps out.
There’s something really all-encompassing about the music they make. It’s for all times. It’s not like putting on AC/DC on a Saturday because you feel hyped or listening to Smog because you want to wallow in bad feeling or listening to Brian Eno to go to sleep. It seems to serve all purposes and be the right thing at all times. Again, I can’t fathom this.
I also can’t fathom what Daniel Higgs is singing about. I think the ambiguity is a big part of the band and their power in that he sings about things that, from time to time, really strike within me like it’s something I’ve heard before or I know already. It’s powerful but yet it has no feeling of lecture. The symbolism he uses rings bells in my head about bizarre cultish practise, the cosmos, power balances and religion but it’s never direct.
When I was in Australia in 2003 I was really down when I found out the band were playing Nottingham in my absence.
I asked Phil what it was like. He said he went to soundcheck and the sound engineer went through the drums and bass etc and then finally asked for guitar. Phil said as soon as the guitarist Asa played a chord it became Lungfish and he remembered why he was there. How many bands can you say that about?
I got lucky when they were added to the 2004 ATP festival. Looking across the front row I think I knew maybe 9 out of 10 of the people clutching the barrier. Live they were bizarre, requiring a certain amount of submission on the part of the listener, i.e. you had to go with it. I love bands like that and I loved them.
I had the bizarre experience of watching the sea with Higgs, Steve from Unit Ama, Neil, bassist Sean Meadows and my girlfriend later that night and I had no idea what to say to them or how to chat to them about anything which sounds completely corny but I’m not usually lost for words or freaked out by people.
Anyway, I’m not even sure what’s going on with them at the moment. Their last LP Feral Hymns is mighty. I heard they may not be operational right now, I know Higgs is playing solo shows.
The reason for writing this is that I stumbled across what might well be Dan Higgs’ only radio interview and it’s a real piece of work. Listen and enjoy!

Link to interview

The blog’s been a bit empty lately so we will be introducing a few regular features for you to look forward to each week. To start things off I will be finding out more about the people who help make diskant what it is, from the old skool early diskanteers I now count amongst my best friends to the new kids I haven’t even met yet. Hopefully it will be interesting to find out more about who we are and what we do and you’ll have a read of some of the things we’ve all written for diskant in the past.

There was only one contender for the first interview – Simon Minter who has been here for far too long, is probably the oldest of us (a whole 3 months older than me) and has had a finger in most of the diskant pies, both figuratively and in reality.

Having been here since the olden days, Simon says he cannot honestly remember when or why he got involved with diskant. "I imagine it stems from old fanzine days of yore when I knew Marceline!", he offers. I recall it being quite a gradual process with him submitting classics like his interview with Alec Empire who refused to answer more than 3 of the questions sent to him and the True or False interview with The Freed Unit. Since then he’s helped out with practically everything at diskant at some point including the dinky cartoon graphics, looking after our columnists and doing numerous in depth interviews with obscure labels (have a look down the features list).

Outside of diskant, Simon’s a graphic designer by day and, well, a graphic designer by night too, now that he has his own little freelance design outfit nineteen point. He also plays guitar in Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element (who have a new 7″ out now!), co-runs the exquisite Fourier Transform record label and co-organises the successful Audioscope charity festival annually in Oxford.

Where do you live and what do you like about it?

Oxford. It’s beautiful and relaxed and there are a lot of likeminded people here.

Tell us about your favourite local bands
Divine Coils – Oxford’s beginner Vibracathedral!
The Keyboard Choir – awesome hypnotic sound sculptures.
Suitable Case For Treatment – weirdo swamp fright-goth-rock

What have you been listening to/reading/watching/playing recently?

Nothing with any great attention except the new Sonic Youth album (trying to work out if I like it or not) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (funniest TV show I have seen in a LONG time)

What are you planning on writing about next for diskant?

Whatever I get sent to review.

What are your favourite articles/interviews on diskant?

Probably the ATP/Audioscope diaries, for reminiscing!

What are you looking forward to this year?

Audioscope. ATP in December.

What have you learned during your time at diskant?

Time management is an important skill. The internet is genuinely a good place to meet friends.

I went to see Adult play Glasgow’s ABC last night and I was quite taken by the support band, Battant. For the same reason Marceline keeps telling me to stop listening to the likes of Interpol and get into Joy Divison instead, I am half sure Battant will be turn out to be fairly derivative of someone or other. While I’m listening in ignorance I have to say I fairly enjoyed their set and this, what I believe to be a self published EP I bought after the gig.

While on stage I noticed that I was mainly liking the songs they introduced their new ones. My favourite being ‘Jump Up’, the first track on this EP. It is an acid sharp heavy electric number with disaffected noisy vocals from singer Chloe Raunet. To be honest I can’t really make out what she is singing about but unusually for me that doesn’t matter here.

There is something enjoyably awkward about Battant. Despite the cut glass electronica, or perhaps because of it, there is a solemn, scratchy texture that intrigues and entertains. Battant make music that is dark, sinister and easy to get swept away with.

www.battant.co.uk

Hi. After hearing Marceline’s grief over the Data Panik support I thought I would share a Myspace exchange I have recently been part of. I admit to being a little surly with the ‘promoter’ concerned but it gets my goat. I’m not interested in naming and shaming so I have removed the promotion ‘company’s name but I’ll spill the beans if you want though I doubt anyone will have contact with them…

Enjoy.

PROMOTION COMPANY: “Hi. ****** *** Events are organising a massive all day gig on the 22nd of january at the The **** ****, ******** 2006 and wondered if you would be interested in playing this gig. There will be about 10 bands playing in all therefore a lot of potential exposure to new fans to broaden your fan base. As well as this there are other gigs available in January throughout the UK. 08th of january *** ******** , ******** 15th of january The **********, ******* 21st of january *** *********,************ 22nd of january *** **** **** ******** 29th of january *** ***** ****, ********* All you have to do to seal a place on this gig is to tell us what address to send tickets to for you to sell! We give all bands 30 tickets in which we get the money for the first 20 and they get the money for the rest! Tickets are to be sold for £5 each giving you a potential profit of £50 I hope you are interested in this offer and look forward to hearing from you soon. ****** *** Events”

ME: “Many thanks for the offer but promoting gigs is your job, not mine. I just play.”

PROMOTION COMPANY: “What? We are event organisers, also how do you promote a show that sees bands playing with no fan base? We are helping bands out here. ”

ME: “”All you have to do to seal a place on this gig is to tell us what address to send tickets to for you to sell! We give all bands 30 tickets in which we get the money for the first 20 and they get the money for the rest! Tickets are to be sold for £5 each giving you a potential profit of £50″
Like I said, I play music, you sell tickets. Its a promoter/performer role kind of thing. I am also a promoter in Nottingham. If I suggested to a band that they should be paid for their efforts based on them effectively doing my job for me I would expect nothing less than for them to tell me to get screwed.
Perpetuating that kind of deal where bands are somehow responsible for the turnout at gigs helps no one, it creates a world of opportunist, lazy promoters and bands destined to play to 20 of their mates week in week out.
Maybe it’s what some folks want but there’s quicker ways to the top in the music world.
It just involves developing a strong tolerance for the taste of cock.
Best, Chris ”

PROMOTION COMPANY: “I am afraid that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
If you could tell me how to promote a band with no fanbase but their friends then please do, no matter how many fliers you send out no one will come to see a band they have never heard of. The way we do it is 10 bands each bring 20 people which unless I am wrong is 200 people which is 10 times the amount of people they usually play to.
Do you understand that we have costs to cover?
This way we can guarantee a large turnout and money upfront. What could be better?
Who on earth would go to see YOU play if you did not find people. We dont know your fan base, you do. If you can safely say that if we “promote” the gig, using fliers posters etc that 200 people would buy tickets before the event began then ok, I am wrong.
But if not you have to do the hard work not us. We get the venue sorted, organise the gig and find the bands. We get it all sorted the bands sell the tickets as they are the ones playing the show. Bands mess you around too much saying that they can bring people but never do this way we are saving our backs.
I laugh at your remarks, why should we attempt to sell tickets for a unnamed band?”

ME: “”I laugh at your remarks, why should we attempt to sell tickets for a unnamed band?”
I give in. Because you’re a promoter?

Its all gone a bit quiet since. Awww fuck it. They’re called Silver Fox events. They’re on the world of the Myspace.

“I want this one back if at all possible.” said Marceline as she handed the CD over to me.

“What If I like it?” I replied.

“I’m pretty much prepared to fight you for it.” came the ominous reply.

Gulp!

I put it on, not sure if it would all end in violence.

And it’s brilliant, just a joy to listen to. I’m not going to compare them to anyone or draw comparisons as I’m want to do. Suffice to say this is jaggy, melodic, dramatic and as energetic and life affirming as anything you’ll have heard in a long time.

It’s just such a pleasure to sit back and enjoy a perfectly balanced band ripping it out, track after track.

If Marceline does want this back she IS going to have to fight me. That’s how good this album is.

Getting a copy is worth taking an ass-kicking from a girl.

Charlottefield