Sorry for all the banging and broken stuff around here. I have now fixed up the Talentspotter section into the new layout after it all went very screwy this morning. As I cut and pasted, I found myself re-reading a few interviews – here’s a few that caught my eye and are definitely worth a quick read:

– Lords in full on gibberish mode and Gay Against You in crazy/intelligent modes
– Pickled Egg and Gringo Records on the ins and outs of running a label
– Foals before they even had any photos, plus The Young Knives and Youthmovies before they were famous.

I am now inspired to actually get interviews completed with all my favourite new bands. Also, who should we be featuring next?

Things are finally happening again at diskant, you’ll be pleased to hear. Our first new feature in about 8 months is now online; a round-up of our fun times at All Tomorrow’s Parties (curated by Explosions in the Sky). There are a few more articles and interviews in the pipeline so hopefully we’ll be back to some kind of regular schedule soon.

It is diskant’s ten year anniversary this summer, so to celebrate I will be pulling some stuff out of the vast diskant archives and making it available again. We’ll be starting with a series of columns that Wil Forbis wrote for us a few years ago – a hilarious set of reviews of forgotten and unloved bargain bin classics. 3 of these columns actually feature in his awesome new book so consider it a taster for new readers. I’ll be posting one or two columns a week here on the blog and there’s plenty more good stuff to come after that.

I’m also pulling the main content of diskant (articles, interview, Talentspotter etc.) into the new diskant style but expect this to take a while. There is a new features index which will be updated as the new pages are created. The other sections will follow suit, eventually.

Exciting news everyone – the one and only Wil Forbis has published a book! diskant oldsters will remember Wil who wrote a hilarious series of review columns for the now-defunct diskant zine on the bargain bins of the USA and also did a great interview with comic artist James Olsen which you can read here. He also runs the awesome Acid Logic webzine which kept me entertained through a number of boring jobs.

Anyway, you can go purchase Acid Logic: A Decade of Humorous Writing on Pop Culture, Trash Cinema and Rebel Music on Amazon for remarkably cheap prices so get on it. Hopefully some of Wil’s columns will make it into the exciting diskant 10 year FUN we are currently planning. More news on that SOON.

Further to our cynical Triptych post below, the successor – Tennents Mutual – has now been launched. Providing you are of alcohol drinking age*, you can help “devise and programme a series of live shows in Scotland in October / November this year”; from what bands get to play, which venues (presumably only ones that sell Tennents) and even which bank gets to sponsor the event. Hasn’t this been done already (ATP etc.) with increasingly obvious choices? The fact that Belle and Sebastian are ruling the board at present is so inevitable, it’s almost funny. Anyway, if you sign up before 30 June, you too can add your votes and suggest new bands for everyone else to vote for. Get to it!

*If you’re under 18 you can’t even LOOK at the website, lest you be driven to underage drinking. Let alone go to any of the gigs. Exactly why is sponsorship of live music by makers of alcohol a good thing?

Does anyone really think ATP was better at Pontins? The info for Butlins ATP has just been emailed out including these gems:

What WE Provide!
Butlins Minehead looks out across a superb sandy beach. The site not only has a supermarket, newsagent and cash points, it also has Burger King, Pizza Hut, Finnegan’s fish and chips, Sun and Moon, Skyline Cafe and Yacht Club Dining room. Onsite facilities include a cinema, Splash Water World – a sub-tropical environment that has a huge wave pool, a swimming pool, 3 flumes and also a flume based raft ride – Ten-pin bowling and amusement arcade. Sports include Archery, Football, Basketball, Darts, Petanque, Fencing, Kwik Cricket, Netball, Rounders, Table Tennis, Outdoor Bowls and Crazy Golf.

Meal Deals:
For those of you who have purchased room only accommodation or don’t feel like cooking over the weekend Butlins have put together a breakfast and dinner package at £34.95.

What you get: Full Traditional English Breakfast, Continental Style Breakfast Buffet, Selection of Cereals and Pastries, Fruit, Toast and Tea, Coffee and Fruit Juices. 3 Course Dinner, served buffet style, including Soup, Hot Buffet, Salad Bar, Desserts and Ice Cream, with Hot Drinks and Juices

Amazing. They don’t even brag about the widescreen TVs, framed pictures, complimentary Butlins chocolate and pyramid of single serving milk either.

So, who else is going to Butlins?

Some emails of possible interest

* The legendary Creation compilation Doing It For The Kids has inspired a new 3CD charity compilation which features such Creation luminaries ex-Jasmine Minks members, Ed Ball, and um, one of Hurricane #1. There are also tracks by the likes of Ballboy, Popup, de Rosa and The Orchids. There are only 266 actual copies available, which will be individually auctioned for Yorkhill Children’s Hospital in Glasgow. You can also download the whole thing here for just £6.49 with all proceeds going to charity. Find out more at www.myspace.com/yorkhillproject

* Roger from the on-hiatus Dawn Of The Replicants has set up “a shabby DIY label type of a thing” called Shark Batter with his brother and are releasing a bunch of new things soon including his new band TheStarkPalace, The Stone Ghost Collective and Vacuum Spasm Babies. Have a listen and find out more at www.myspace.com/sharkbatterrecords

* Beginning your email, “Dear Fierce Terrifying Force” is one way to get my attention. Tom Braham is from Southampton and does aa “free weekly show of nit-wit fun and the best bands live in session” by podcast Not sure about “best” but they are certainly big-ish names like I Am Kloot and Six Nation State. Have a listen here.

* It seems to be down just now but hopefully that’s just a blip. wikimobileactunsigned.com is a wiki “for local band scenes across the UK to create and maintain a local directory of useful stuff in their area. Everything from record labels, studios, local papers and radio, gig venues, cd duplication places, t-shirt printing places, etc etc.”  Good idea if people find some time to help out.

That’s all for now.

I forsee no sleep ever again. CLICK HERE for random diskant goodness from the archives, then CLICK on the same link in the left sidebar and CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK. God, what a lot of amazing nonsense we used to post on here.

(yesyes, there are still many untitled and uncategorised posts back there. I’m not quite that bored, yet.)

Finally, after about six months of procrastinating, thinking and watching the diskant review box spiral out of control, we are now accepting new submissions for review. You can see how it all works on the new Review Submissions page. The robot is now on a break and you can interact directly with the diskant reviewers.

Since there were clear notices all over diskant announcing that we were not accepting new review material, I don’t feel any guilt in throwing out everything that is currently sitting in the box, unlistened to and unreviewed. It’s possible I might find some time to dig out anything that looks any good. Don’t hold your breath though.

Anything sent to me, unsolicited, will now be binned immediately. Please follow the new guidelines. If you want to strike diskant off your promo list, I will not blame you in the least. However, it is helping nobody for me to have a crate of dusty ignored CDs in my front room. Thank you.

There are two new fun little things on the blog. At the bottom of the right sidebar, you’ll now see a long list of all the diskant writers past and present. If you click on their names you can see every post they’ve written in one handy section! I will of course be tracking clicks to see who is the most popular diskanteer (not really).

The other thing is at the end of individual posts. Just before the comments you’ll now see a link to whatever we were blogging about on that day a year earlier. Who knows what you might find bubbling up from the archives.

A new Ghibli film is usually eagerly anticipated here at diskant but this one seemed to miss our radar. Directed by (son of Hayao) Goro Miyazaki and based on the books by Ursula LeGuin, it has plenty potential for awesomeness. However, I heard a lot of bad things about it and thus lacked the enthusiasm to push it up my DVD rental list. I got it this weekend and was pleasantly surprised. Most of the complaints have been from Earthsea fans but really, has there ever been a film adaptation that wholeheartedly pleased hardcore fans of the book? Having only read the first two Earthsea stories early last year, I had some vague understanding of the characters and locations and the powers of the wizards, which weren’t really explained at all in the film. I’m really not sure why they didn’t make a film of the first couple of stories first – they could have Harry Potter-ed up the Wizard school for the kidz and everything and then this film would have made a lot more sense.

Anyway, having not read the stories the film is based on, I found it all quite enjoyable and Ghibli-esque with strong hints of Princess Mononoke and a little bit of Castle of Cagliostro. Goro is clearly not his dad and this lacks a lot of the wonder and joy and oddness of Spirited Away or the book-adapted Howl’s Moving Castle but is certainly as good as non-Miyazaki Ghiblis like The Cat Returns. The tale of a wizard trying to restore balance to the world, an evil wizard trying to gain eternal life, a runaway prince pursued by shadows and a girl with very hidden depths, it’s a decent anime with enough spooky bits and action to keep it interesting. If nothing else, it’s really made me want to dig out my book and finish reading the rest of the Earthsea stories, which I’m sure have much less of a happy tied-up ending. In summary, Ghibli fans – go see; Earthsea fans – think of the new fans you’ll gain, not the changes to the story.

Here’s the trailer with subtitles. Therru singing this song in the fields is one of the loveliest bits of the film.
[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=YnVCK0jXlJ8[/youtube]