Hello. I should be in Manchester rocking the shit out of people but I am not because all day (a day in which I have so far managed to eat a single apple) I have been puking and shitting like a machine. I normally commend the food from The Wireless Stores on Hockley but seeing it emerge again this morning has left me less than confident about future returns there.
I also have that weird senstitive thing where my arms and legs hurt when they get so much as brushed by something.

Anyway, in the week I reprinted all my poster designs for gigs onto ultra-posh matt heavyweight card and I am selling them all – have a looksy at www.honeyisfunny.com and see what I mean.

Excellent article on The Morning News today about circuit bending – Bend Me, Shape Me. This sounds like lots of fun and probably what they should be teaching kids in science lessons. Music science! Lots of cool pictures of circuit boards too which is always a bonus.

I do take issue with his mockery of the Casio demonstration version of Wham’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go though. I have a keyboard featuring this and it’s totally awesome. It even makes an hilarious appearance at the climax of the only song I have actually made up and recorded (with my sister) back in the day. I should dig that out and see if it still makes me laugh.

Many many thanks to 1990s for posting the link to the documentary I mentioned a while back that they hosted for Danish TV*. You can view it online here (link to video is half way down on the right under SE Udsendelsen). It’s basically a post- Franz look at the Glasgow music scene which means nice live footage of 1990s, Lucky Luke, Mother & The Addicts and Franz Ferdinand and bits of chat with Arab Strap, Isobel Campbell, the ubiquitous Stephen Pastel etc. And of course no Glasgow music programme is complete without wee Stuart Mogwai and Barry Burns pissing about town under the euphemism of “showing people around”. This of course means going to Monorail and then Sleazys (as anyone who’s visited Glasgow knows full well) and pointing out that every single person you meet is in a band. All it really lacks is a bit where Glasgow band members insult each other on Myspace and it would be just like the real thing. I haven’t laughed so much at the internet in ages.

* Yes, they did cut out the bit where John introduced me to the camera at the Triptych launch, thank god.

Flying and Yeah on this CD are reinventions of tracks from The Telescopes’ awesome eponymous album from ’94. They’ve been given the full at-one-with-nature, multi-instrument treatment that reflects the band’s live shows of late; the vaguely recognisable and vaguely audible hints of melody and lyrics from the originals are swathed in rich drones and soothingly tribal rhythms. Sharing the intense depth of sound that is evident in outfits like Sunroof! and Six Organs of Admittance, the 21st century Telescopes have taken that blissful, stoned shoegazer style and smeared it into a naturalistic, anything-goes modern world music. The sounds of making music – scratched strings, random clicks and pops – blend with the music itself to create a whole that is beautiful and precise whilst seeming utterly handmade and fresh. It’s proper ‘head’ music, psychedelic to the core and incredibly rich in content.

The Telescopes
Double Agent

ps. Yes, I am somewhat biased as I have released a Telescopes record myself. However I assure you that my journalistic integrity remains intact.

pps. Relive those blissful, stoned shoegazer days with a selection of classic videos!

With its stabbed guitar lines, ramshackle drumming and freaked-out stop-start rhythmic structure, Architectural Failures’ opening track suggests that this is an album of yet more of the post-everything angular indie rock that is so goddamn hip right now. Then it goes off in a weird direction, with spooked chant-a-long lyrics and atonal synthesised drones forcing a wedge between the traditions. And so it goes on, introducing odd new aspects to what could just have stayed a good, but uninspiring set of songs. The vibraphone used on a large part of the album is a welcome and refreshingly ‘trad’ sound, adding a joyous twist to songs like Magic Teeth and Oskar which evokes that beautifully warm early-Tortoise sound. I don’t know too much about Hi Red Center but to my mind they’re more jazz than rock – more Soft Machine than Doors, if you will – and their music is more about crafting musical shapes than pummelling out rock familiarities. In the same way that a band like Liars arrive at a good place by travelling along a tortuous, complicated, frustrating but worthwhile journey, Hi Red Center don’t seem afraid to open themselves up to new ideas.

Hi Red Center
Pangaea Recordings

You’ll hopefully have noticed that the diskant homepage is all new and exciting. This has been a long time coming but it took a while to find solutions to the main blight of diskant (= I have no time to keep updating it constantly). So, hope you like it and thanks to Minter for his suggestions and help. You’ll also note there’s now a huge area in the middle for me to blather away about random nonsense (this was not my idea – I am not (entirely) self-obsessed) so expect slightly less of that here. The blogs are due a tidy up also and that’s next on my list. Let me know what you think and keep suggesting events and links we should feature.

Some bands just come out of nowhere with something incredible, new and fully formed – like as if you’re walking down the street and then someone suddenly steps out of a shop doorway and clubs you over the head with a frozen trout. Other great acts creep up slowly and grow on you as they grow themselves. Lots of awesome and well-known bands have obscure and mysterious origins with potentially embarrassing limited edition/low budget/simply not very good debuts. Others simply churn out so many records that it’s easy to lose track of which was released when. It struck me just now while listening to Swervedriver what an awesome debut album Raise is, and how they never really did anything to match it. And then by comparison I thought about Oval, a band I love with all my heart, and how their debut, Wohnton, is pretty lame. And then how Spiderland is so superior to Tweeze.

So here, for no good reason, is a list of 30 of the greatest debut albums of all time (in my biased, not particularly knowledgable opinion, and as far as I can remember). In the interests of discussion, who have I missed?

Swervedriver – Raise
Panasonic – Vakio
Fushitsusha – I
Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced?
The Smiths
Suicide
The Fall – Live at the Witch Trials
Can – Monster Movie (or Delay, whichever you want to class as their debut)
Moonshake – Eva Luna
Mogwai – Young Team
The Pop Group – Y
AMP – Sirenes
This Heat
Cocteau Twins – Garlands
AMM – AMMusic
Erase Errata – Other Animals
Napalm Death – Scum
Nirvana – Bleach
Part Chimp – Chart Pimp
Polvo – Cor-crane Secret
Laddio Bolocko – The Strange Warmings Of
Rollerskate Skinny – Shoulder Voices
Scott Walker – Scott
Lemon Kittens – We Buy A Hammer For Daddy
The Stooges
Pink Floyd – Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Unsane
LFO – Frequencies
Einstürzende Neubauten – Kollaps
Happy Flowers – My Skin Covers My Body

The world is overrun with cynicism and misery, and it’s entirely wasted on Volumen. Despite this album being, in the cold light of day, all over the place stylistically, it’s tied together by an unerring positivity and sparky YIP!manship that it’s near impossible not to surrender to, let alone to ignore. Over its fifteen tracks the album smears zippy weirdopop – which will please fans of Flaming Lips, Pavement, Man or Astroman or even Sonic Youth in their lighter moods – in all kinds of crazed directions. Within songs, and the work as a whole, there are countless surprising forays into noise, rock’n’roll, synth-driven indie-pop, strident pomp-rock, hell, even musique concrète! But whilst many bands are scuppered by their inventiveness and willingness to experiment, Volumen seem to have delivered something of a prog-indie-rock small masterpiece. The weirdness is beautifully kept in check, the confusion offset by pure pop sensibilities and a musicianship and proficiency that is almost relentlessly charming and captivating. Science Faction is heavy in concept, but playably light in conception.

Volumen
Wäntage USA

Otterley seem to have come straight out of the Postcard era back when guitars used to jangle and chime and boys were skinny and had indie fringes. Obviously I am all for this and Otterley’s two self-released EPs are something of a dream come true for indie nostalgics such as myself. They’re not content to merely hark back to the past though with electronic beats bubbling in and out of these songs. What really sets them apart and stops them from falling into the Postal Service indie/electronica cliche are Gerard’s angelic, yearning vocals (also to be heard in the similarly wonderful Findo Gask) which are unashamedly sung in his lovely Fife accent. When his voice catches on a phrase your heart does break.

From the jangliest guitars this side of Johnny Marr that end up twinkling and sighing (In Camera) through harder distorted electronics that soon tip back into Nintendo bip-bop (Sferics) to Kirsten’s almost too cute for words sassy almost-rapping (Idea Fixed) Otterley bring together the precociousness of early Aztec Camera, the lush oddness of Boards of Canada and the heartbreak of the Field Mice into something all their own. In fact, it’s Gregory’s Girl made into song.

But don’t just take my word for it – both these EPs are available for free download from their website. On you go.

www.otterley.co.uk
www.myspace.com/otterleymusic

A few short months since our review of Quack Quack’s debut mini-album/EP (hey, it’s five tracks and 25 minutes long. You call it what you want), and here comes two more songs on yet another excellent release on the consistently fine Run of the Mill Records label.

Seeing as this is a double-A side single, I whacked on the 45rpm “The Great Catsby” side. Initially propelled by a dinky casio keyboard drum machine and some wonderfully slinky percussion, this song is founded upon some real carney-sounding keyboards worthy of your favourite silent comedy stars falling about a screen at your local cinemahouse, playing one of those melodies that you swear you’ve heard before, but know you’ll never manage to get out of your head. From these beginnings, the introduction of some joyfully bouncy bass powers the song into full speed ahead with some fantastically sweet drummage action. Crammed full to the brim with joi de vivre and beautifully to the point, this track is a winner.

Flip the wax over and “Mars” plays at 33rpm. It also happens to be possibly the peachiest track I’ve heard yet from these cats. For some sections of this song erstwhile keyboardist Moz sticks down some keys to get some hot droning action and clambers behind his own kit for some dual-drum lovin’ on this one. Taking on a slightly darker and more percussive guise for this track suits Quack Quack well, as they take the extra time afforded by the 33rpm format to do a little more exploring of their textures and rhythms in between the sweetsweet interaction of keyboard and bass melodies and of course the hothot drums. Watching these fellas perform this sucker live in the flesh a couple of weeks ago was the highlight of my night, and I’d recommend the experience to anyone. Similarly, if you’ve any interest in some sublime instrumental music made by three fellas from Leeds, you need this slice of cheer-inducing genius.

www.runofthemillrecords.com