Here’s a genuinely good thing my flatmate (hello Dave) pointed out to me:
Mogwai have got the boys behind inconsistently published/consistently hilarious magazine Chunklet to answer the usual barrage of moronic questions they receive at the hand of their Q+A section this month. Let’s hear it for unparalleled levels of abusing your own fans! No seriously, it’s great.*

http://www.mogwai.co.uk/qanda.html (click on ‘4’ underneath ‘2005’)

*Ish.

Robert Crumb (‘The People’s Favourite Underground Cartoonist!’) on diskant favourite film Some Kind of Monster:

“Recently, I was watching a documentary film about the heavy metal rock band Metallica, and I thought, “Oh my God, the culture is totally fucked!” The film shows scenes of concerts where thousands of young men stand with their shirts off, raising their fists in the air, screaming and cheering to this shrieking heavy metal music. I felt like I’d just arrived from another planet. “What in God’s name is this about?” I wondered. It seemed to be about everybody thinking they’re a rebel, thinking they’re hip and angry against some square culture that barely even exists anymore.”

Taken from ‘The R. Crumb Handbook’ by R. Crumb and Peter Poplanski, 2005.

Hello, I’ve been away. I would just like to amend the comments in the article “diskant’s favourite films of 2004“. Sherry Ostapovitch returned my DVD of ‘Before Sunrise’ back in January, but I have not had an opportunity until now to clarify the situation. The defamatory claims made about her in my contribution to the article were written back in December 2004, but Ms Ostapovitch – otherwise known as “MusicForOne” – ensured that the DVD had returned to my library before diskant published said article. Sorry Sherry.

Please also note that the DVD is once again available for loan to anyone who asked to borrow it last August.

From the temping job that has been slowly destroying my life since June:

Number 5. From someone who wrote a five-page letter about the brown spot on their ceiling:

“…please note no one in the house who smokes as this is a CHRISTIAN home.”

Number 4. From a man who wants his local housing association to reimburse him for the uninsured stuff he got stolen from his house after he forgot to lock the front door:

“I don’t believe I should pay because I am a victim”

Number 3. Explains itself nicely:

“I have absolutely no intention of returning to shop in ********* ever again, until all of the parking meters produce tickets with sticky labels to enable me to fix the ticket properly to my screen, as is the style in Derby. My daughter, who is 6′ 5″ has the greatest difficulty finding clothes to fit. Derby cannot help her and ********* was one place that could help. She has, since the above incident, found one or two good shops in Leicester.”

Number 2. An email, apparently drafted on a mobile phone:

“our tax 4 136 leybourne dr is up to date acc no ********,wepay monthly over the fone so why r u taking us to court 11-11-40 we dont owe you.

yourskevin and sonia wright”

Number 1. Some constructive criticism in the wake of the very publicised murder of a teenage girl:

“You people are to blame, your city is the most violent city in the UK.You are all accountable and have presided over this continuing decline in the quality of this city.

1. Bring back the death penalty

2. Sack the entire ********* council and the staff

3. Wipe ********* off the face of the map”

“Our children tall ram calculates. Our children tall fancy recycle bin stands-still. Their noisy little bra show its value. Their purple fancy house stands-still and still whose slopy smart hairy stupid caw run. His tall well-crafted underwares calms-down. Our slopy t-shirt calms-down and any given round-shaped table is thinking and still his brothers odd shaped door lies. Our noisy hairy omprella falls while whose green glasses falls however, any given beautiful small well-crafted t-shirt calculates. Our round-shaped bicycle run. His odd shaped paper sleeps or whose well-crafted paper got an idea. Her daughters white slopy door sleeps. Her daughters fancy pensil calculates. A stupid golden glasses smells. Mine smart omprella smiles. The smart shining silver caw lies. Any little slopy book sleeps. His expensive soda show its value. A given red sport shoes makes sound and still th! eir hairy gun walks. His green ipaq spit. Her daughters stupid paper fidgeting. Any given golden recycle bin got an idea. Her smart well-crafted house looks around.

Their bluish sport shoes makes sound while his brothers golden glasses sleeps or maybe any expensive balloon calculates however, our silver house got an idea and still our white bluish beautiful small shining recycle bin sleeps however, any given small eraser stares however, her bluish shining magazine is on fire.

Her hairy computer smiles.

A odd shaped clock is on fire and her tall laptop stands-still.

Any expensive beautiful white well-crafted wine looks around at the place that their green fancy bra stinks.

Whose expensive dog fidgeting.”

Amy Bethan Jose – an annoyingly beautiful niece.

Birchville Cat Motel: Ur-drone Emperor.

CDRs explode as the new homemade cassette labels. Well, for me anyhow.

Damn You! Know It’s Christmas – a fine way to end the year/exhaust yourself.

Europe in 6 days (see tour diary).

Foxy Digitalis

argh, Garage bands get out of my life.

html, I am now too intimate with thee for comfort (www.souvaris.com).

Infinite loops of sound/noise/delay. Yum.

John Porcellino, artistic genius, sweet guy, and album artwork practioner.

Key Skills, giving up on developing as the year progressed.

Linklater, Richard – School of Rock + Before Sunset = $$$ x critical kudos.

MA = Master of Arse.

Nottingham City Council has taken my sanity away and I want it back.

Ontological arguments, endless. Damn pseudo-intellectual flatmates.

Philip K. Dick, extremely mental/not mental bloke (who I now know too much about)

Questioning yourself about everything you do, ever. Fun.

Rehabilitating Mr Wiggles, as ever.

Sneinton, home of Notts – increasingly concentric indie-rock circles.

Twenty-three Productions – independent recording and production collective.

Unit Ama, The – officially nicest band on the planet.

Vandalising your own musical equipment/output. Consequences to come in 2005.

Waiting for The Brown Bunny (still a while to go yet it seems).

Xanax Tobin, a (rubbish) song by Tom Sweetlove that seemed to follow me around.

Your taste in everything sucks. I have been trying (failing) to revise this opinion.

Z‘ev is a pretentious wanker.

This album has been a major pain in the arse. There I was, all busy writing in some mildly ridiculous manner about my favourite musical emissions of the past twelve months, happy in the knowledge that my top ten had been pondered on long enough during idle (i.e. working) hours so that I hadn’t forgotten anything. Then I finally remembered to get hold of the second album from Thee More Shallows.

Y’see, this is the only goddamned thing I’ve heard all year that I’ve liked that isn’t almost entirely instrumental/huge swathes of drones/bizarre free improvisation/enormous bouts of riffage [delete as applicable]. It’s almost normal. The gorgeous half-whispered vocals are your focus, empowered by the only lyrics I’ve been interested in outside of an Anticon record in years. The music underneath is generally understated and gorgeous, subtly using complicated rhythms and fascinating textures. The recording is absolutely sublime too – everything is warm, well-placed, and fits together beautifully. Fuckit man, this what I dream pop music would sound like all the time.

“It’s almost normal.” Actually, I should modify that: It’s almost normal. Which is maybe the best thing about TMS – they can start an album with a completely incongruous opening of mildly cheesy electronic drums and synths, and after a couple of listens you won’t even blink an eyelid. There’s the jarring realisation that they’re singing about mass graves in the midst of the album’s most touching musical moments in “Ave Grave”. There’s the second of the record’s awesome one-two punch of middle tracks “Cloisterphobia” and “2am”, which features a high ringing toy piano picking out the lead melody with a sound that woke me up with a jolt after I had slumped asleep drunk and emotional listening to the album for comfort one night, and for a good ten seconds I was convinced that I was stuck in hell, and this was the soundtrack of my eternal misery. Somehow, this traumatic event has failed to temper my enthusiasm for listening to this song whilst sober. And then the last track, “House Break”, which builds oh so imperceptably yet inevitably… and just when you’re thinking it’s about to kick in for one glorious tallyhooing farewell hurrah, TMS have the gall to undercut your expectations, and end this record how they want to – not with a bang, but with a whisper. Which is both gorgeous and utterly appropriate.

Damn these guys. As if I didn’t think highly enough of their first record, they have to go and top it with this effort. My minor quibbles about ‘A History of Sport Fishing’ – sometimes I think perhaps it’s a little overlong and occasionally unfocused – have been not so much addressed as obliterated this time around. Clocking in under 40 minutes (a good 20 less than their debut) and with a laser-sharp focus on music, lyrics and mood, I’ve found myself listening to ‘More Deep Cuts’ at least once a day since it arrived on my doorstep. I just can’t help myself: this is pretty much perfect music. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Bastards!

P.S. I hear word that they’re coming to Europe in Spring 2005. I suggest you attend, if only to prod them into playing Joy Division’s ‘Disorder’ again.

www.theemoreshallows.com

www.monotremerecords.com

When entertaining eight drunken libertarian musicians/madmen from Massachusetts, don’t take them to a takeaway run by Turkish and Iraqi Kurds and let the two parties commence debating the merits of the USA’s 2004 Presidential Election candidates. It’s waaaaay more complicated than you could ever imagine.

(However, the encouragement of purchasing copious amounts of food in this situation is still recommended)

Maybe that last post was too weighty for anyone to dare post anything afterwards. Which is fair enough, because that week in December should be amazing. So the only fair thing to do would be to point out the gorgeous posters that some beautiful man is producing for these shows, miniscule versions of which are available to peruse at the Damn You! website. I am especially gratified by the splendour of the Jackie O Motherfucker poster. Now if only there were larger versions available for viewing or download somewhere on the ‘net…

I’ve been trying to find a useful link or audio sample for this group/track for days of scamming off work, but have so far had no luck. Oh well, you’ll just have to bear with me, or dig out some old-skool hip-hop compilations (such as ‘Hip-Hop Don’t Stop’ Vol. One). If anyone knows any good hip-hop archive websites, please let me know.

Anyway, as a contrast to Mr Summerlin’s detailing of songs that plague his life; here’s a song that I wish would plague my life – no one I know has even heard this damn thing, yet it’s a classic slice of mid-eighties hip-hop that encapsulates everything I love about the DIY approach and ramshackle form of this music’s earliest days. I thought I’d lost my copy when my CD with it on got scratched to shit a good five years back, but a recent rediscovery and tentative play yielded surprisingly good results. Moreover, it still sounds FUCKING AWESOME.

‘Strong Island’ is built from an insistent guitar sample that I know I recognise from a record by a sixties/seventies band, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it is. Even if I did know, it couldn’t detract from the power that it instils this song with, roughly coupled as it is to a basic but goddamn heavy drum loop with some serious dub-informed echo. The first time you hear the drums crash in, it seems like they’ve not bothered to check whether the sample, drums and echo actually match up at all, but if you wait… dum… dum… dum… somehow it all fits together. This slightly off-beat, misaligned feel permeates the whole track, giving it a real if-it-even-vaguely-sort-of-fits-let-it-fly feel. Be sure brother, this ain’t no seamless piece of ultra-slick modern corporate ‘hip-hop’, it’s got soul AND it sounds far better than anything the man previously known as Puffy could ever produce.

I could listen to this song for days, and I’m not even sure what J.V.C.F.O.R.C.E. are even talking about half the time. I’m fairly sure it’s to do with representing; the whole thing seems to be an ode to how great they are, and I couldn’t agree more. You see, there’s another piece of genius to this song. Remember Snap’s ‘Rhythm Is A Dancer’, with its infamous line “I’m a serious as cancer”? Stolen wholesale from here. And it actually makes sense in this conext. Honestly. Well, kinda.

So here’s a simple key to amazing hip-hop: (obscure guitar sample)+(dubby echo effects)+(fantastic/hilarious lyrics)=pure genius. Now repeat ad infinitum, adding only a marked ‘trip hop’ influence if you’re on the Anticon roster.

Next week: the fucking misanthropic genius of Schooly D. Or maybe The Geto Boyz.