I was at Instal, a festival of experimental electronic and contemporary classical music yesterday and it was fantastic. seven hours and I wasn’t bored for a single moment. it was kind of like a cross between a music festival and an art gallery with new artists starting their sets in different parts of the venue moments after each other. nice mix of stuff as well although we managed to avoid most of the classical stuff which sounded least interesting to me. we did catch the Symphony for 100 Metronomes though, or rather, since we were a little late, the Symphony for 5 Metronomes. I was more interested in watching other peoples’ reactions to watching the last 2 metronomes click-click-clacking for ten minutes but then Koji Asano started his set and everyone got bored of watching metronomes. Koji Asano was probably my highlight of the event, loud but really textured and I could hear so much going on. Philip Jeck was another highlight, looking like a dusty old history teacher but bringing out the beauty of his old deteriorated records. Local acts Rhomboi and Defaalt gave different tones to the event with echoing throbbing guitar and interactive graphics respectively.

Headliners Icebreaker International were in a class of their own though. Funny, intriguing and vaguely mad in person, we left our interview just as confused as when we arrived, our heads full of economics and well-spun tales. Live, they were definitely the most acccessible act with their flowing electro-pop and NATOarts business suits. sadly they got cut short by a technical problem – a sad note on which to end such a well-organised event. I ended up stumbling home in the frost at 1am where I saw a fox watching me from the roadside. I then had seemingly endless strange electronic music soundtracked dreams and woke to a group of economists discussing world trade on the radio. my head’s been a bit odd since.

just sat through the whole of jo whiley’s sycophantic dribble in order to catch channel 4’s ‘pioneers’ programme about the mighty SONIC YOUTH. a disappointment? oh yes! i wondered how they’d manage to cram the whole of a 20+ year career into such a compact time (fifteen minutes – fifteen WHOLE minutes!) and – clever trick – they didn’t bother! effectively cutting the career in half, NOTHING pre-‘Goo’ was played, only hinted at in the vaguest of ways, and the band interview was giving secondary prececedence behind rambling obvious blather from a collection of low-rent 90s indie kids (debbie goodge excepted – a Snowpony member fair enough, but hmm… I seem to remember some other band called My Bloody something or other which seemed to have dropped off her caption…) Any reason why sonic youth have such a massive influence over so many bands from oooh… 1985 onwards (at least) wasn’t even partly explained: the closest we got is ‘because they got Nirvana signed to Geffen’. Yeah! DIY spirit!

fuck!!

i implore you all to go here and download the mp3.

I went out in the cold and the wind and the rain last night to support both the 13th Note and also the musical rock scene of Aberdeen. Really good turnout I thought even with headliners Purple Munkie having to cancel. So we were left with Nero and Maple. I was keen to see both as it’s been well over a year since I saw either of them, seeing as I moved to Glasgow and that.

So, Nero. I remember being pretty horrible about them the first time I saw them but damn me if they weren’t great this time. They had pop tunes, rock guitar, three-way singing, jokes, charm and dance routines. they were pretty much all over the place really but tremendous fun to watch, especially since the singer reminded me a bit of John from the Yummy Fur with his geeky looks and jerky dancing. but the songs are the main thing and Nero’s are stupidly infectious, or maybe infectiously stupid. the kids should love them.

Nero had reminded me how funny and crazy Maple were so I was all excited. there was something different going on though. Maple have really grown up in the last year and they’ve now got this serious practiced edge. the riffs are solid and loud, the vocals have lost the overt crazyness and it was all just sounding, well, professional. it took me about four songs to start getting to grips with this new version of Maple and then they only played maybe one more song and just stopped. so I hope they come back soon so I can give it another go.

I keep seeing John from bis and Aidan from Arab Strap in town. I want some different lo-fi glasgow rock stars to spot.

Oh aye, Mogwai are in Kerrang! this week with wee stuart right on form: “If you’re into Westlife, you’re fucked. You may as well get into crack”.

I went down to the 13th Note on Wednesday to have a look at Cayto. Well, I actually went to the cafe first ‘cos I was thinking too much about how awful it will be if the 13th Note has to close. Once I’d realised my mistake I backtracked to the club and was greeted by a ‘can I see some ID?’. I must have looked pretty incredulous, told him I didn’t have any and that I was TWENTY SIX and he let me in. gee, how many more years til people believe I’m not 17?

Anyway, I picked up my raffle ticket er, ticket and walked into an appalling wailing noise which turned out to be Slowloris. I’d kind of liked their track on the Smoke compilation so I was surprised, but they soon picked it up and the rest of the set was generally good stuff. Haunting vocals and nice atmospheric beats. After meeting up with diskanteer Will and getting a free badge it was time for Fighting Red Adair. I had nothing to go on here except that they had a good name and one of them had a hat on [often a good sign]. But they literally launched into their first song, throwing themselves about the place as they bashed out an instrumental OXES/Reynolds kind of thing. I was stupified with glee and all ready to proclaim them as my new favourite band. the rest of the set wasn’t quite up to that level but still had me laughing to myself and I was that person left still applauding when everyone else has stopped. heh. they did some dual vocals on the rest of the songs with one singer having an americanised sounding voice and the other just a mental shouting voice. they just made me laugh a lot and I really want to see them again. it’s making me laugh just thinking about it. haha.

but I was technically here to see Cayto and I was now very worried. I’d not been overly impressed with their EP and after that display of rock activity I couldn’t see that they could impress. but I was pretty much hooked in from the first song. I guess they come across like a more energetic Radiohead, like if the early punky Radiohead had the song structure and technology of current Radiohead. It all just sounded really big and much more powerful than their records. the singer reminded me a little of stevipus [Steve of The Oedipus, diskant fact-fans] in the way he ran about and jumped off the stage and stuff. they had one song with a clarinet bit which was kind of painful to watch and didn’t really sound of anything but most of the songs were pretty great.

After that they did their legendary raffle but I didn’t win anything [and I could have really done with those biscuits]. so, basically I’m glad that I got off my lazy ass and went down to the gig. if there’s any possible good thing to come out of the 13th Note’s situation it’s that people like me are more prepared to go out to mid-week gigs on a recommendation or a whim. I even forced myself to drink alcohol so as to give them more money. I felt like going up to the bar and saying, ‘I’ll have one of whatever you make the most profit on’. Ah, all hail the 13th Note!

We (Minter, Ady & I) went along early, saw Cassetteboy. Brilliant, brilliant stuff, all on tape loops so the bloke didn’t actually have to do anything, he just sat on a stool WITH HIS PENIS OUT (well a sort of putty penis, if you follow me, looked realistic though) and a mask of Jimmy Saville, then he cut his penis off, went offstage and came back on dressed as Bin Laden with a hat made of aeroplanes.No really. And he fought with another man who had a cardboard twin towers on his head.You had to be there. The music was loads of cut up, blink and you’ve missed it loops of songs, famous and not famous (caught the Smiths, Public Enemy, Joy Division etc amongst other things). ‘The drugs don’t work’ with the lyrics changed to say ‘the drugs work, they don’t make you worse, i know i’ll be on drugs again’. Blinding. And a cut up politician’s speech made to sound like it was good to murder 11 year old boys. Some sort of comment on the manipulative power of the press, i expect. Before Cassetteboy, some well-constructed glitchcore (ha ha, love these terms, tech step, darkcore) from Wauvenfold. A weird evening up there with the fish-headed man of Gloucester (ask Minter).

Hood themselves were really, really good I thought. Started off with left handed guitarist playing right handed bass upside down and right handed bassist playing left handed guitar upside down, but sorted out after first song.

Sounds a lot punchier live (obviously), and i think it’s a good thing that the vocals were occasionally sunk under the rest of the mix, what with them being weak from time to time. Asked them about Audioscope too, they seemed quite up for it, amazingly.

Ace gig, though, apart from the crowd. Loads of them faced away from the band the whole time and even more talked all the way through, very beard-scratchy being there to look cool sort of crowd.

There was even one guy with an old man’s cap on, backwards, a little goatee anda black polo neck, smoking rollups. The man was a cliche on legs. I swear I saw him in top lesbian sitcom Ellen once, too.

In other news, Sunnyvale have their first MP3 up for download on our fantastic website It’s us messing about doing a two-minute funk interlude, and is in no way representative of what we do most of the time, but some of you might enjoy it. If you like 70s cop show themes. Let’s play drums…

i’m greg kitten and they’re not showing ghost world anywhere near me.

i’ve been sulking for 12 hours and i’m certainly not stopping now. i went to THREE seperate cinemas – i think they were a warner bros, a uci and an odeon – i dunno for sure and frankly i don’t much care – they were all wack. none of them were showing it. so all i did was end up driving about 20 miles to eat shepherd’s pie. don’t get me wrong, i like shepherd’s pie, but BAH.

There’s something just great about going to the cinema in the afternoon, particularly how it’s daylight when you go in and evening when you come out. I’m going to do it more often. Anyway, the film was pretty damn good. All cartoony looking and funny and true. I was kind of perturbed by the storyline though. Either I’m a complete stereotype or they based that movie on me, just changing the location and details so I could complain it wasn’t like how it really happened. It was kind of funny actually although a bit too deja vu on occasions. I did think Thora Birch was too pretty to be believable though and I didn’t really like the ending much. Still, it’s probably the best film I’ve seen this year [out of all the, er, three films I’ve seen this year]. Yeah, go see. Unless you’re Greg Kitten and they’re not showing it anywhere near you. Hoho.

having not won a single thing since guessing the correct number of sweets in a jar at a school fete when i was about nine, i was very pleased to hear this morning that i’m like the winner of a subscription to a series of cds on three lobed records. entitled purposeful availment, its like this nice limited run of cdeps by bands including bardo pond, tarentel, shannon wright and mick turner from dirty three. needless to say this makes me very happy indeeed. hurrah for three lobed, and hurrah as well for fakejazz, who seemed to be involved in me winning somehow.