I’ve mentioned a couple of Northern Star Records-related things on diskant.net before (here and here). They’re a weirdo experimental/psychedelia/nuthouse label with connections to and releases from The Telescopes, Stevenson Ranch Davidians, Silver Apples and Brian Jonestown Massacre, so it’s good to know that on 15 November they’ll be launching an MP3 shop so that all you heads can get your lysergic hits in a download style.

Find out more here.

After listening to this album by the London bass and drums duo Shit and Shine (think Merzbeat, not Lightning Bolt) a few times, I can say the following about it: Jealous of Shit and Shine contains a one-riff, thirty minute long cover version of “Practicing To Be A Doctor” by the Strangulated Beatoffs.Sure, this is obvious to anyone looking at the track listing on the CD, but this fact alone tells you pretty much all you need to know about what you’re about to hear. About ten minutes into that song I wanted it to be over; by the end of it, I thought it ended too soon. There’s a fuckedness here that only rarely makes it to record.It makes me think of the VU on “Sister Ray”, the band barely managing to keep it together but the song working precisely because of this, or perhaps the sheer pill-induced audacity of Dylan Carson and Dave Harwell letting a single chord ring out for half an hour at the end of Earth 2, or maybe the monotonous riffery of Skullflower’s Exquisite Fucking Boredom. Not that Shit and Shine sound like any of these bands, but they share the same mentality as them.It’s sloppy, it’s dirty, it’s probably completely unlistenable to most sane people, it certainly doesn’t belong in polite society, but somehow, buried somewhere deep within there, there is the pure essence of rock n roll in all its retarded glory.

www.riotseason.com

Yes, I know this is supposed to be an arts and culture blog and not some sort of hipster’s dating service, but basically we (being myself and my good lady wife) have booked a four-person chalet at this year’s ATP:Nightmare Before Christmas festival in Minehead on the 8th, 9th and 10th of December, and are in need of a couple of nice, friendly, preferably non-sociopathic persons to fill the other two bunks. Tickets are £135 a head and have sold out, so if you left it a wee bit too late, now’s your chance.

If you’re interested, do drop me a line at alex.mcchesney@gmail.com Cheers!

Update (01-12-06): After having a few offers that came to naught, these tickets are still available, so it’s not too late!

Following on very much in the style established on their previous album Alone In The Bright Lights Of A Shattered Life, this new set from Library Tapes is outstandingly bleak, minimal and intimate. I imagine that Library Tapes’ David Wenngren and Per Jardsell have never heard the theme from Oliver Postgate’s Bagpuss, but the twelve tracks here share its childlike, eerie sense of atmospherics, of loss and of glimmers of hope.

In terms of developing the musical themes from the first album, there is nothing revolutionary or particularly new at work here – both albums are made up of brief glimpses of melody; circular, echoing piano lines laid simply and effectively over a variety of scratchy, time-worn found sounds. But as part of a continuing meditation on the purity of melody, it’s hard not to be affected by these scribbles of music. At worst, the tracks pass by and leave me with nothing more than a melody hanging in my mind. At best – on the sinister, piano-less swells of sound of ‘Departures (Burning Saints For Your Own Sins)’ for example, sounding like an offcut from Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works, Volume Two, and the beautifully chilly ‘Feelings For Something Lost (pt. 2)’, Library Tapes are almost unbearably heartbreaking and effective.

This is true winter music in the same way that Rachel’s and Hood are winter music – lonely, emotional sounds that reverberate deep within. I don’t know what’s in the water at Library Tapes HQ, but it brings out some of the most honest and heartfelt, yet simple, music I’ve heard in some time.

Library Tapes
Resonant

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

So, Audioscope 06 took place last weekend and I have just about recovered. My state of ruin was possibly not helped by a free bar the night before in Glasgow and a much delayed, sardine packed debacle of a train journey (so bad the staff announced over the system how we should go about making a complaint!) but it’s always good to see Simon and Stu at the other end and catch up on everything while watching ridiculous films. Hustle and Flow does indeed teeter on the hilarious/terrible knife edge. Believe me, I shall be thinking twice before I throw any more demos down the toilet.

Anyway, Audioscope was upstairs at the Zodiac this year which was entirely preferable – tons more room to set up the merch stall, a proper high up stage, an incredibly loud PA and an offputting walk downstairs to the cakefest (which stopped me eating even more raspberry muffins than I did). I wasn’t jumping up and down with overenthusiasm at the sight of this year’s line-up for once, but it turned out there wasn’t a single band I didn’t enjoy which made the ‘best/worst band of the day’ thing even more difficult than usual. So, here’s my four favourites:

I’m Being Good – being very good indeed. Starting with possibly my favourite IBG song, they hollered, scraped and bounded through their set in perfectly timed precise abandon. Lovely to see Our Tomipus back on stage too.

Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element – still getting better and better and nothing went wrong this year! It’s been a whole year since I saw them and although they’re playing mostly the same songs, they all sound so much bigger and more confident, so much so that I didn’t even recognise half of them to begin with.

Piano Magic – sighingly lovely post-rock tinged sadness which went down surprisingly well after the Trencher/Rock of Travolta/I’m Being Good/Kids in Tracksuits string of exuberance.

Parts & Labor – I was tired and they were ear-bleedingly loud so mostly their set was like having a brain aneurysm. But, y’know, in a good way. I need to spend some time with their recorded output I think and hope for the opportunity to see them again. They also stayed over and were some of the nicest people I’ve hung out with in a long while. I’m hoping Stu will post some more photos of The Tattoo Game which they introduced us to with evil glee. Luckily my drawing skills are passable enough that I didn’t have any new tattoos to explain to my workmates on my return.

If I did have to pick a worst band, it would be Clinic who were merely slightly experimental indie and thus enjoyable without being very exciting.

Manning the merch stall was as fun as always although I was in continual fear of Clinic coming up with 7 tons of multiformatted, multidesign merch but thankfully that never happened. All the bands were really well organised and lovely and I came away with a whole armful of free stuff gifted to me (although I seem to have gifted as many box sets in return).

If you missed it, you’re a fool. I’m already looking forward to next year.

(The less said about my flight home from Birmingham, the better. Although, my train to Birmingham actually went on to Glasgow apparently not arriving there for another EIGHT HOURS! There are no words for this madness. I am now in a quandary over how to get to ATP without wanting to kill myself).

I took a few photos which are here.

They don’t mince words, the $hit. Listen to this from their press release: “Lock Up Your Ghettoblasters!!! delivers the urgent technicolor pop chaos that your cynical post-modern soul needs… it’s time to forget everything you’ve been told by MTV and let your miserable ears get shafted by the $hit’s rasping pico-pico rock ‘n’ roll”. Their ambition, it seems, is matched only by their willingness to abuse punctuation.

Now, I’m a not-quite-rehabilitated Manics fan. I have a weak spot for bands who utilise ridiculous hyperbolic over-statements to sell themselves. I’m intrigued…

…and by the end of the first track, I’m grinning like a loon. Gobby punk rock, casio-raping beatmongery, robotic rapping and a full-on 80s hip hop breakdown so cheesy it could only be carried off by true maniacs. This band is totally out-of step with what’s hip right now, they look like complete weirdos, and they’re definitely more fun than whatever you’re doing right now.

The album continues at breakneck speed, blending some of the silliest bits of hip hop, electro pop and punk with a brutal wit and a general disdain for the mainstream. Goddam it, I find myself thinking, they’re right to lambast the current generation of scruffy-haired songsmiths. We have bought into this James Bluntesque serious craftsmanship bollocks, at the cost of the cheap primal thrills that made us like music in the first place. This is what we need.

Several listens later, and just before I become a true believer, it occurs to me that they sound just a little bit like a British Bloodhound Gang. But then, most of the problems with the Bloodhound Gang would be fixed by being British – better influences (at times, the $hit sound like the bastard techno children of the Stranglers), and a sense of humour that extends beyond the female anatomy. And anyway, in order to pen the previous observation I had to pause the music and stop jumping round my room chanting “Smoking crack!/Bombing Iraq!”, so who really has the last laugh?

Shitmusic

I once had a Wagon Christ EP that had a song called “Pretty Crap” on it. The title was not a joke: the song was lovely with lush pads and beats and what not, but despite the self-awareness, it was rather shit. The same can be said for a lot of ambient electronic music. The genre brings to mind images of ravers, MDMA, “chill out rooms”, and pleasant but entirely vacuous aural wallpaper made from Korg presets. Not my scene.

Enter Tim Hecker’s new album, Harmony in Ultraviolet. Tim Hecker (not to be confused with the Mego artist Hecker) is a Canadian electronic musician doing things with guitars and computers that inevitably draws comparisons to Christian Fennesz, even though the two of them are exploring very different aesthetics. Tim Hecker, from his deconstruction of Van Halen in My Love Is Rotten To The Core to the “ambient death metal” of 2004’s Mirages, to his shows and tours with Isis, is working far more at the very outer limits of rock. And I do mean the very outer limits. There are the last vestiges of rock music here, with heavily distorted and computer processed guitar riffing throughout, and occasional bits of percussion buried deep in the mix. This is rock music in the same way that Earth or Sunn0))) are rock music. And yet, with its glitches, clicks, organ drones, and gentle melodies giving a pleasant sense of drift, the album can quite easily be situated in the much-maligned ambient genre. It’s really pretty, yet the fields of static, distortion and sub bass rumble that Hecker’s sonic structures are built on save it from being insipid. I could throw out more comparisons, such as how “Chimeras” brings to mind Philip Glass’s Koyaanitqatsi soundtrack or that “Dungeoneering” seems to take Steve Reich as an influence, but this misses how unique Harmony In Ultraviolet sounds. There’s a staggering amount of influences here, but it all blends and flows together seamlessly.

I give this my highest possible recommendation.

Tim Hecker
Kranky

I’m always very suspicious of band name changes. They smack of desperate fame seeking, like some major label suit has told them they could do well if only they’d change that stupid name, get a haircut and ditch that fugly/wacky member. I don’t think that’s the case with Matchsticks (or Flying Matchstick Men, as was) although they’ve always sounded like a band hellbent on getting in the top ten who could be sorely tempted to sell their souls, or at least their “indie cred” if they ever cared about such things. But maybe they just got bored of explaining their name to taxi drivers.

Anyway, Duvet is typical Matchsticks fare, all arched eyebrows, knowing looks and waggled fingers; call and response lyrics over Pulp style charity shop pop. It sounds like the theme tune to a Saturday morning kids tv show complete with a wonky Gameboy breakdown in the middle; even the lyrics have that vague open-ended feel that means it all still fits 12 seasons down the line.

Still, there’s something quite annoying about Matchsticks – the too-catchy choruses, the hyperactively histrionic vocals – which kind of makes me want to hate them, even as I put the song on repeat. So let’s hope they do get picked up by Mr Major Label Suit, get their top 10 hits and blank out their indie past with Stalinist impassiveness so that I’d have a proper reason to hate them (while still secretly loving them).

Matchsticks at Myspace
One Records

Short and sharp, Dartz! bring in two songs on this single in under five minutes. You’ve got to love those song lengths on yer pop singles. Sharing the jerky, excitable structures of bands like The Futureheads and Smokers Die Younger, Dartz! infuse their sound with some of the circular guitar lines that marked out the later work of the sorely-missed Yummy Fur, but it’s slightly marred by vocals which are very much of the shouty-post-hardcore now. For me, ‘St. Petersburg’, for all its brevity and grooving syncopation, isn’t as successful as B-side ‘X-RayBex’, which uses the twin-vocal style to greater effect, reminding of the impassioned pop stylings of Cat on Form. Whilst the bands I’ve mentioned here have a certain idiosyncratic style that defines them as individual outfits, Dartz! still seem to be scrabbling to find a sound that’s their own. I get the feeling that they may get there in the end.

Dartz!
Xtra Mile Recordings