diskant is an independent music community based in Glasgow, Scotland and we have a whole team of people from all over the UK and beyond writing about independent music and culture, from interviews with new and established bands and labels to record and fanzine reviews and articles on art, festivals and politics. There's over ten years of content here so dig in!
Live Acts
Albums
Cracking albums of 2007
Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam
Battles – Mirrored
No Age – Weirdo Rippers
Deerhoof – Friend Opportunity
Less amazing:
Songs Of Green Pheasant – Gyllyng Street
Z – Mikabe
Hauschka – Room To Expand
GIGS
That Fucking Tank + (argh I forgot their name…)– Port Mahon, Oxford: dancing in my boxers
Shellac + Lords – the thingy in London… oh what’s it called…
Rolo Tomassi – Port Mahon
Jazkamer, Mogwai, Sunn O))), Shit & Shine, Modified Toy Orchestra, Qui – Super Sonic Fest, Birmingham
Othello at the Globe – alright not a gig, but still incredible
Acoustic Ladyland – Zodiac
So So Modern – Cellar, Oxford
The Turn of the Screw – London Coliseum
3 BEST THINGS
Singing in an opera
Peru
Skinny Rugby http://hs.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5561864423
3 WORST THINGS
Hella latest album
Hella latest album
SHITE INDIE TRUCK FEST
Overall: Fee Fi Fo Fum, AS Levels, Uni visits, Finland, Pe bloody Ru, Tenor & Bass, Verdi’s Requiem, Baths, Horndean Special Bitter, teaching guitar, Oxfam records, Taize, Thelonious Monk, 18, Matt Bayliss.
Where is everyone? Having fun or something? Bah!
Records
Scout Niblett ‘This Fool Can Die Now’ – just lovely. The Will Oldham songs are great but I could easily have managed without them, the rest is so good.
Girls Aloud ‘Tangled Up’ – Oh shut up. There is no way to dislike this album.
Prinzhorn Dance School S/T – Purposefully treading a thin tightrope of brilliance between shouting nonsense lyrics as read off a newspaper on one side and pretentious art-rock sneering on the other. With added Skinned Teen naivete.
The Royal We S/T – just FUN, and so Glasgow. A real Saturday night party band.
Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element, whatever the hell it is called – Hurrah! It really has been far too long in the making but worth it, especially as now the old songs sound new again.
Electrelane ‘No Shouts, No Calls’ – a keeper
Margaret Berger ‘Silver Fairy’ – Adorable Scando-electro-pop.
Souvaris ‘A Hat’ – wasn’t feeling this at all until walking home in freezing fog. Now I get it.
Blood Red Shoes 7″s – ALBUM NOW PLEASE
Live Music
Robyn at the Classic Grand – I have never seen anyone have as much fun onstage as Robyn.
Lords at ABC2 – Lords + lunar eclipse = Hurrah!
Joanna Newsom & Northern Sinfonia at City Halls – just perfect in every way
Errors at various places – ALBUM NOW PLEASE
Prinzhorn Dance School at Sleazys – loud, minimal, shouting, arrogance.
Mogwai at Supersonic – heartbreaking
Watching
I have been to the cinema precisely twice this year and managed to miss half the things I wanted to see. Thus this is more of a DVD list. I also watched nothing on TV this year except for Doctor Who. The joys of starting your own craft business.
NANA 2 – I don’t like the new Hachi but it was still cool seeing my favourite manga coming to life. I’m also recognising areas of Tokyo with ease now which makes my heart ache for JAPAN.
The Golden Compass – disappointing as expected but still entertaining. It just could have been oh so much more.
LOST S3 – Thanks to Greg Kitten I have spent much of the year watching LOST and babbling incomprehensibly. S4 looks like being similarly awesomes.
The Wire – So good I had to re-upgrade my Amazon DVD rental as I am watching them faster than Amazon can deliver them.
General Highlights
JAPAN – Even better than last time even though we just stayed in Tokyo the whole time. I’m sad I never got to bore you with the details but you can still look at my 7 million photos or read my incredibly popular Tokyo Shopping Guide (still in progress).
Gifted – I was very honoured to be included in this exhibition at the National Museum of Scotland. Even more so to have been asked to restock after my stuff started selling out. It’s still on if you’re in Edinburgh before the 6th.
Asking For Trouble – I am still fairly giddy about complete strangers buying things I have made and shops and galleries wanting to stock them. Not looking forward to self-assessment though, argh.
Holland – our little family excursion to visit all the family history sites was really fun in a way that family things usually aren’t. Yay for family windmills!
Supersonic – My only festival outing this year and a very enjoyable one, not least for getting to hang out with some of my favourite people and see a bit more of Birmingham.
Portsoy Boat Festival – unless this counts. The boats themselves weren’t so exciting but I had the best company, the most perfect Summer weather, the glory of the North East coast, my mum lading the table with her greatest dishes and the sort of road trip that involves chips in Forfar. More road trips next year please.
Lowlights
No Audioscope – damn you UK railways! Why is it so expensive to get to Oxford now?
No ATP – None of the lineups really grabbed me this year. Also lack of holiday time. BOOOOO.
No-broadband November – Losing your internet in the run-up to Christmas when you have an online shop is very stressful. I never want to go back to dialup hell. Yay for big refund apology though!
Overall for the year
Hm. It’s been an odd one. Lots of excitement but not much momentum. 7/10
Things I am looking forward to in 2008
My Bloody Valentine!! thanks to surprise ticket gift.
New diskant
New exhibition (more on this soon)
My 33 and a third birthday
Seeing my friends again
Yesyes, I am working on my 2007 in review post. In the meantime, here is my year in photos. One for each month! This was very hard as I have taken approximately 14million photos this year. But here we are:
(L-R, top to bottom)
October – Tokyo at night from the Mori Tower.
March – Visiting the family windmill in Zaandam, Holland
June – Shop at The Barras with Miso Funky
November – Finnieston Crane in Glasgow taken from a bus stop
January – Starting the new year with bento lunches. Still going strong!
February – Stranded in London by overnight snow
April – Blossom on Glasgow Green
May – Me on the bus for Flickr’s 05/05 contest
July – Supersonic at the Custard Factory
August – Making purses for the Gifted exhibition
September – Gocco printing
December – Having a kawaii Christmas
You can view them full size with descriptions at Flickr by clicking here.
KARP IN ALABAMA NOVEMBER 1996
THE WHIP IN OLYMPIA
MERRY DEAFMAS!
5 weeks in dialup seems like a lifetime but I am BACK. Sadly just in time for the quietest time of the year. I will post my review of 2007 on Monday probably and hopefully everyone else is planning theirs. Please check my blurb on the homepage for what’s happening round here. This bit is particularly important though:
RECORD SUBMISSIONS ARE CLOSED FOR 2007. We are not accepting anything for review until January 2008. You can continue to mail the robot if you wish and he will let you know when we decide something. Until then we will be concentrating on getting the all-new diskant ready and launched and see where we go from there.
It sounds like the big annual end of year round up won’t be happening this year (thank BT) so here is my blog-shaped summary of the last 11 and a bit months….
Recorded Music
PANDA BEAR – PERSON PITCH
Really, really spectacular. Up there with Sung Tongs for general mind-hurting magic.
JUSTICE – [bastard html cross]
Bangers.
JAMES BLACKSHAW – THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING
His finest hour so far. Saw him play these songs very quietly to a room of about 800 very noisy people and got sad.
FLOWER-CORSANO DUO – THE RADIANT MIRROR
Did this come out this year? I don’t care, it’s shit hot.
MENEGUAR – STRANGERS IN OUR HOUSE
A weird one at first but a real grower. The best indie rock band in the world.
RACCOO-OO-OON – BEHOLD SECRET KINGDOM
The point at which this band really fucking came together, and the closest document to their blazing live set.
MAGIK MARKERS – BOSS
Never liked Sonic Youth this much.
OM – PILGRIMAGE
Admittedly not a patch on the previous two LPs, but still hits that sweet spot, and the only reason I’ve paid Southern Lord any attention all year.
CELEBRATION – THE MODERN TRIBE
Managed to ignore this band for ages. Saw them on MTV2, courtesy of The Horrors.
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE – STRAWBERRY JAM
Still got it. For Reverend Green makes me grin.
DINOSAUR JR – BEYOND
Am still yet to fully recover my hearing after seeing them 18 months ago. Why aren’t there more records like this being made? Makes me feel about 13.
VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA – WISDOM THUNDERBOLT
Searing electric joy, with added Matthew Bower.
GANG GANG DANCE – RETINA RIDDIM
Could probably get a mention under film too. Like hearing Aphex Twin for the first time all over again.
Live Music
JUSTICE at Primavera Sound, Barcelona
Holy fucking shit. Epic.
FLOWER-CORSANO DUO at the Portland Arms, Cambridge
The kind of thing where you can’t really believe it’s actually occurring. To quote Chris Summerlin: “Smokin”
VIBRACATHEDRAL ORCHESTRA at Palimpsest, Cambridge
Been waiting for years to see them and they were more than worth the wait. Got cosy on the floor at the front and was caressed into a state of total brain death over 45 minutes.
WOLF EYES at the Man on the Moon, Cambridge
Finally.
TRENCHER at the Portland Arms, Cambridge
One of a few bands that suddenly seemed to get really good this year. Like getting stabbed up by carnies.
ISIS at Primavera Sound, Barcelona
Couldn’t have predicted this at the start of the year. Absolutely fucking IMMENSE. The first few seconds of ‘The Beginning and the End’ was like the entire history of rock music condensed into a single moment. Wanted to explode.
MENEGUAR at the Portland Arms, Cambridge
Feel weird putting this since it was my gig, but they really were magnificent. High stress yields best results, it turns out.
RICHARD YOUNGS at Palimpsest, Cambridge
Really divided opinion, but for me he was transcendent. Totally a cappella, and caused feelings in me that I’d literally never felt before. Wild.
TIGHT MEAT w/ SONNY SIMMONS at the Portland Arms, Cambridge
The point at which I ‘got’ jazz in general probably. Still reeling from this now in fact, especially given how much I didn’t enjoy their set at Palimpsest.
SUNSHINE REPUBLIC at the Portland Arms, Cambridge
One time provincial ‘noise/drone’ no-hopers split my head/the whole world in two. Something like undergoing experimental kidney surgery in the empty back room of a pub.
JOANNA NEWSOM at the Royal Albert Hall, London
Biggest gig I’d been to in years and years, and really the perfect setting for her. Lovely lovely lovely.
Film
TRANSFORMERS
Fuck the haters. Right from the opening line it felt like my entire life had been leading up to seeing this film. There was a huge sense of “Well where the fuck do we go from here?” upon exiting the cinema. So immensely entertaining I wanted to cry.
I’m tempted to leave it there, but cos I’m a sucker for lists…
INLAND EMPIRE
Completely emptied my head of any thought for a good hour after seeing it. Felt like the future of filmmaking whilst watching it, this may have been a slight overstatement, but still terrific.
RESCUE DAWN
Herzog. Bale. Yes. Really surprised by the lukewarm reception this seemed to get, some moments of total genius in there.
CONTAINER
This probably came out last year, but I’m putting it anyway. Only discovered Lukas Moodysson over the last few months and have loved everything of his I’ve seen so far, but this is easily his standout work for me. Abstract weird shit about identity, celebrity and cross dressing maybe, but it struck a few chords with me that few other films have for a very long time. Still not as good as Transformers though.
General Highlights
ICELAND
Still regret not just staying there forever.
BARCELONA
Party town.
TWO WEEKS OFF WORK
Managed to cram about a years worth of fun into 13 days.
EXCELLENT HOUSE
With excellent people. Never want to move ever.
MEAT
Eating the flesh of dead things makes me feel ALIVE.
WII
Zelda: Twilight Princess, Resident Evil 4 and Super Mario Galaxy have all kept me out of trouble for long periods.
H&M
New clothes for the first time in about a decade.
Overall for the year:
8/10
Things I am looking forward to in 2008 include:
Bjork in Wolverhampton
My Bloody Valentine in London
Primavera / my birthday in Barcelona
Other places that are not this country
Forgetting all about gigs and music and getting into hiking or scuba diving or something
New job? Probably not actually
Some message threads from the Drowned In Sound site.
Bands that seemingly everyone loves and you don’t
Seriously, the best electronica album of this millenium
What do you value more in songwriting? Intellect, musical complexity or emotion?
Artists that changed/developed your music taste?
wheres the hip hop thurston?
write an essay about why you like a certain band
Songs which start steady or quietly and flip or spaz out
mainstream+indie success=harmony?
Bollocks to The Enemy: this is what Coventry really sounds like
british city to produce the last great bands?
myfirstmine accidentally invents a genre
bands that started off bad and then got really good
the girl version of the horrors have supposedly been found
single of teh year?
Signficant albums of 2007 so far
Promoting bands you really like but hardly anyone’s heard of
Building a following
I wrote a song. It’s 6 minutes long, about a boy who rapes girls and you can listen to it…
Singles which arn’t named after any track on it
Which 65daysofstatic album is the best and for what reasons?
OMG
How do our youth group themselves? (in relation to music/fashion)?
If your band had a support slot with a band that you despised musically,
Do you ever buy a CD you that would not usually be to your taste to attempt to diversify, musically
Great Melodic Punk Band I Stumbled Upon
Joanna Newsom’s voice is horrific
bands who you loved but now you fucking hate
Name me the most cutting edge indie you can think of right now
bands that sound like other bands but do it really well
What proportion of Art Brut’s success in the US is down to their Pitchfork reviews?
Bands you briefly thought were good, but then realised weren’t
Do you ever stop liking music?
is there such a thing as unsigned anymore ?
Ever feel like your finger’s fallen off the musical pulse slightly?
SEVEN FUCKING YEARS?
You’re shitting me?
Seven years and a week in fact. That’s how long I have lived in Nottingham. I moved here on Saturday November 19 2000. I know it was this date because I moved all my boxes in, unpacked nothing and then sprinted down to Rock City in town to see Queens Of The Stone Age on the Rated R tour. They started with Feel Good Hit Of The Summer. It was like burying your head in a speaker cabinet.
I really and sincerely love QOTSA. The first 3 records are up there in my favourites. The first song I heard in the 21st Century was Regular John, played to me at midnight on New Year’s Eve 1999 for the first time by a friend who couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard it. We listened to Rated R a lot in the bus on the first Gringo Records tour with Colin from Eska leading the air guitar activity too. Good times.
The only time I ever went on a “band outing” with the members of the first band I was in was Queens in Birmingham the day before we were due to go on tour to Holland. They were amazing. Goatsnake opened. King Adora played in the middle. The first thing Josh Homme said when he walked onstage was “The King is dead, long live the Queens”.
After enduring King Adora, I dug that muchly.
The reason I am reminiscing so much is not that I’m getting to that point in life where that’s all I do: though after 3 beers it’s a safe bet that this might happen. No; it’s that I’m trying to tell you I’m not a fair weather fan of this band. I genuinely love them. Really.
I am a sucker for a band thrust into the limelight who are happy to fuck with their position a little. Around Rated R and then through to Songs For The Deaf, that seemed to be their entire mission statement. If ever a band looked able to match the way Nirvana were successful but were still glorious fuck-ups then it was them. When other bands get known for ‘outrageous’ antics it’s usually as a giant polyfilla-type cover-up for a serious lack of anything that’s good when you get down to it. What made Queens different was that the songwriting was insanely good, creative and strange. Whereas most of their peers were still in debt to Kyuss and were interested in stretching their music in length and heaviness, Queens went the other way – compacting and editing their form into great songs and albums that sounded as fat as can be while simultaneously having no fat (filler) on them. Watching a band play a song as heavy and bizarre as Tension Head or something as basic and garage rock as If Only to huge crowds felt like the world was turning for the better.
I think if you don’t like this band you’ve probably stopped reading this review by now so I can assume if you’re still with me then you’re a fan of sorts at least and therefore you think you know where I am going with this. You think I’m going to bemoan the absence of Nick Oliveri and how the band sucks without him.
I’m not though. Not yet.
I love the first Queens record and Oliveri’s not on that (despite the photo on the sleeve). And to me Queens is as much about that monstrous guitar as anything. As someone who is sick of seeing ‘guitar’ bands where all you can hear is the fucking bass drum, seeing Queens play was always like some supreme relief. Josh Homme is one of the most creative guitarists I’ve ever seen/heard. Also, I saw one of Oliveri’s last shows with the band at the monstrous aircraft hangar that is the Horden Pavillion in Sydney, Australia. It was a good one, though I remember thinking then that maybe this ‘cult band with a big following’ had become something else. I guess playing to about a million people in a shed does that.
So, when I heard Oliveri had been sacked I figured it’d work out. I especially figured this when I heard Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top was playing on the next record (Lullabies To Paralyze). It looked good.
But then the record came out and it was…OK.
I wanted to love it because this guy is right in my book but there was something missing. I am not a musicologist so my best explanation is “the weird shit had gone”. Sorry, I said I am not a musicologist. That 60s garage rock feel, the randomness, the songs that sort of sound like the Kinks a bit, or Elvis Costello or The Sweet or just that sense of them coming from somewhere you’re not sure of. That lovely fresh feel that something like No One Knows had. The idea that every other band dealing in ‘heavy’ was just chasing this band’s heels. What you’re left with when you take the weird out of Queens is basically just alternative rock.
And those, “aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh” ghostly-moaning harmonised vocals. It suddenly got a bit Alice In Chains. A bit ‘angsty’. In other words, things I don’t relate to this band were suddenly part of it.
So, anyway, this year the new record comes out. I was hugely impressed by the collaborations with PJ Harvey on the Desert Sessions record. If Lullabies lacked something startling then a song like Make It Wit Chu and it’s Marvin Gaye-isms brought that back. I could handle and relate to that. Everything back on track.
Guess what? It’s the best thing on the new record by a mile. Everything else seems like a great intro but the song never happens. It’s like Homme’s natural ability to just shit riffs out of his ass is still present but no one has thought to shape them into anything that is exceptional.
I think I get what’s meant to be happening, that minimal motorik groove that the band are famous for seems to be the basis for the record with simple riffs pounded on and made huge. It’s a formula that seems to be the basis for the last Bjork record and the 2 are strangely similar. But whereas with Bjork she just records things in such a strange way that you’re thrust out of understanding the process and all you have is the song to digest, the Queens record just seems like a band trying to force a round peg in a square hole. As a rock band, if you fuck about with sounds and get a bit techno on your audience the potential for doing something genuinely new is heightened. Simultaneous to this, unfortunately, is the likelihood that what you end up with sounds like Nine Inch Nails or Marilyn Manson and I don’t give a fuck how nice those guys are and how cool it is to mince around in the desert with them, if you want a record to be good you keep any sign of them away from it. Don’t even mention their names as a joke in the studio or you hex the whole thing.
Still, at least the Bulby character adverts are funny as fuck. “Check my shoes, I think I just stepped in HIT!”.
But despite this, I still love this band. I am on their side.
So, Rock City, Sunday night, 3 albums and 7 years later.
80’s Matchbox B Line Disaster opened, taking full advantage of the age of the fanbase in the venue not being old enough to remember Livewire by Motley Crue. Both guitarists may as well have gone home. In fact they could have saved on van hire and just brought the bass drum, a bass with one low string on it and the vocalist for all I could hear out of the PA.
Rock City isn’t the nicest place to see a band though. It’s horribly designed, almost impossible to go for a slash or get a drink if it’s busy, the beer pumps never work (or if they do they figure the profit margins and time benefits of selling cans is better) and it often sounds crazy in there. All these regular problems were multiplied by about 50 by it being so oversold that every set of steps or walkway was rammed with people meaning any movement on your part was pretty much guaranteed to end in a fight. As a recent recipient of a new knee ligament, it was all a bit Bambi On Ice for me. It was like an obstacle course.
Also, it seemed like a more mainstream rock crowd. Queens in the past used to be a good place to meet your friends, my friend is strictly punk rock in the best sense but yet loves Queens and in fact emotionally refers to Homme as “The Ginger Elvis”. He wasn’t here. Instead it seemed like a lot of regular johns. Excuse the pun.
I saw the first 5 songs before my middle aged man-bladder got my attention and that was it. It took me 10 mins to go for a piss and then I couldn’t get anywhere where I could see. Not that I seem to have missed much. The sound was good but it didn’t sound like Queens anymore, the guitars sounded regular. It was all very normal sounding. No songs off the first record – and when the intro to a song like Misfit Love lasts longer than the whole of If Only then that’s a tragedy – and any older songs seemed to get fucked with until any feeling that they ever rocked had been sapped out of them.
Homme had a Discharge shirt on and the bass drum had a Black Flag logo on it but this was about as far from a punk rock show as you could imagine, it was a band running through the stuff they need to sell to a bunch of people who had paid so much money to get in that any feeling of objectivity had to have been removed. If I hadn’t been stuck next to the bar after having a wizz allowing me to at least get drunk, I think this gig might have just broken my heart.
I had to admit, after years of saying the opposite, that Queens without Nick Oliveri just isn’t as good. Maybe his role in the band was to stop Homme from doing anything that was bullshit, it certainly seems that way. I don’t miss the nudity, the (alleged) spousal battery and wackiness (I guess he was a member of The Dwarves, probably the shittiest band to ever get mileage out of playing with their cocks out) but I think what I miss is the feeling that it isn’t just another gig or just another album or that I’m a consumer. I miss that feeling of making things special and this being a band I would stand by no matter what.
Bang goes the job playing second guitar I suppose.
