I’m running the risk of self promotion with this one but hear me out. I watched the BBC documentary about John Coltrane last week and was really stoked. The docu itself was hippy dippy rubbish but it inspired me to try and work even harder. But I left the program wondering how I was going to do that exactly. I turned my PC on and there was something that was at least part way to answering my question. I got asked to play guitar for Damo Suzuki. Crumbs. Damo was in Can for the uninitiated. He’s on an endless tour right now playing with “sound carriers” of his or the promoters choosing and we got put forward to back him in Nottingham (we being Neil and Phil from wolves and Elvis from Twinkie and Lords). We have to improvise with him for an hour. It’s going to rule. September 14th.

Tomorrow also sees the first steps towards my own record label of a kind. No name as yet (so the first release helpfully has no record label on it) for the label but me and my bud Gareth are just doing small run CDRs of things that might be better served with a cheap price tag but some nice packaging and a little care. The first CDRs we’ve done are for our ambient-ish project EOM and thats a live to cassette album (36 mins or so). There is a also a CDR of a record I made on my own which is coming out in 10″ on Lone Hand (ltd to 77 copies!) and another solo CDR audio travel diary of Australia. All kind of throwaway stuff but hopefully relatively devoid of commerce and hopefully therefore fun.

Been investigating modern composition too and the work of Gavin Bryars who has further convinced me that I am not pushing hard enough.

I move house on Monday too.

xx

I must have been one of the hundred or so people in the country not watching England sort-of-convincingly sweep the Croatians aside on Monday, ‘cos I was at the Queen Elizabeth Hall checking out Nina Nastasia, plus ‘rare guests’, whatever they are (robot guitarists? Thurston Moore on French horn?). Well, as it turns out, they were, in addition to the already-impressive backing band, two fellas from Tuva (near Mongolia, geography fans) called Kaigal-ool Khovalyg and Sayan Bapa, wielding a formidable array of Tuvan instruments like the igil (cello thing using horse hair), doshpuluur (a long-necked lute) and, er, their throats. And guess what? It was utterly wonderful.

The effect of what are apparently the khoomei (you’ll have to imagine some accents on this word – I’m not sure if Blogger will let me) and kargyraa singing styles was that of an ersatz string section. Thankfully, there was nothing ‘novelty’ about it – Nastasia’s been using saws, dulcimers and that for ages, and this was just a natural extension and a new way to hear her songs. Even better, none of that gorgeous open space that characterises her recorded stuff was compromised by (ahem) coruscating instrumentation – it’s just that when things picked up, it wasn’t just a case of upping the volume, but gradually building up layers of sound, underpinned by drumming that was fabulous in an understated sorta way. I won’t come over all encomiastic about NN’s songs (suffice to say all three of her records are great), but Monday night really was terrific and if you’ve not heard her before, do yourself a favour and have a listen.

Obligatory further information links for the ‘inter net user’:

Nina Nastasia

Huun-Huur-Tu

Contemporary Music Network

The most popular CD in my stereo right now is the double CD compilation, WANTAGE USA’S 21ST RELEASE HITS OMNIBUS. This is a compilation as they should be done – two CDs packed full of all kinds of exciting, quality music, wrapped in a nice-looking package with a substantial booklet containing full details of all the bands and how to find out more about them.

If you’ve any interest in the current underground music scene in America – and, randomly, the underground music scene in Latvia (where Wantage mainman Josh lived at the end of the 90s) – right now there, you should check this out. The music on here is that kind of punk/hardcore/’fractured noise’/indie-heavy-metal stuff which always seems so far ahead of what we’re doing here in England (to me, anyway). An inspirational introduction to what seems like a very healthy scene.

More info here – there’s 47 bands on this double CD, including The Fucking Champs, Oneida, Noxagt, Dub Narcotic, Stars of the Dogon and Early Humans.

I’d forgotten the one terrible thing about living next door to the Art School. The annual Degree Show Street Party which takes place right outside our house. Cue booming music all evening interspersed with the sound of car alarms being set off by the vibrations. I’m getting a real education in art school hipster music tonight and it is exactly as you would expect – lots and lots of Franz Ferdinand and The Rapture. Don’t they realise what a cliche they are being? But they’re just playing the full length version of Blue Monday and it sounds amazing. If they want to play this outside my house at high volume every evening that’s fine by me.

Last night I did two monumental things. I took my girlfriend to the airport to fly to Australia, probably forever. I then sped across London, Cannonball Run style and saw The Pixies.

Let’s not go into the first thing but The Pixies were grand. Any fears that the goofing around they do when they come on would mean any fire in songs like Tame would be gone was quickly disspelled. Towards the end in Vamos after Joey had done the big guitar solo by just putting his guitar in its stand and having a fag, Charles/Frank/Black let out a scream that seemed to last a minute or more and was so gutteral that even Kim Deal seemed to break concentration. 3 encores, Wave Of Mutiliation played twice and me nearly crying in Hey and Gigantic. Wow.

No support (Graham Coxon? what happened?) save for Dave Loverings magic show – “I did this show opening for Frank Black & The Catholics on tour last year…much smaller halls”

Sadly I ran over a bunny on the A52 on the way home. A slight dampener.

May I also take a second to advertise the Norwich Pop Underground Convention taking place, shockingly, in Norwich over the weekend of the 19 June. Playing are Twinkie, Quickspace and Wolves! (of Greece). In NORWICH. Like, NORWICH. Where am I from, kind of. So if you’re an eastern type you have no excuse!

With regard to Joe Morris’ excllent new column: Markus Archer, who sings on the new Alias record, is a member of The Notwist. So now you know.

In addition: The Parts & Labor half of the split album Simon Minter talks about is great! Tyondai Braxton is awesome too, but in a totally different, head-spinning kinda way. Looking forward to P&L’s cover of ‘Sugar Kane’ on Narnack’s forthcoming Sonic Youth tribute CD too…

I’ve been too lazy to enthuse about the new issue of Loose Lips Sink Ships but lucky for me, Stereo Sanctity have done the work. I’d like to agree with everything they say. I mean, show me another magazine that manages to feature Sonic Youth, Kevin Shields, Weird War, Blonde Redhead and Lightning Bolt all in the same issue. And the photos! And the funny smell the paper has. Mmmmm.

I got mine in Virgin so you should be able to find a copy easy in your local record store/Borders etc. or find out more here.

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.