The line-up for everyone’s favourite Scottish, lager-sponsored, city-hopping music festival has been announced and it’s a good one, and so it should be since this is to be the last Triptych ever, nooo! However, they seem determined to make it a Triptych to remember and there’s promises of a new type of event to replace it. Whether this will be a good or a bad thing remains to be seen – it does have the terrible name of The Tennent’s Mutual. This just makes me think of that episode of The Prisoner where everyone starts shouting UNMUTUAL at Number 6. Hopefully it will be just like that.

Anyway, the usual range of excellent bands, DJs and films will making their jaunty way round Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen over the weekend of 25th-27th April. I’m particularly looking forward to the Tramway extravaganza featuring Mogwai, Clinic, Dirty Projectors, Malcolm Middleton, Errors, Frightened Rabbit, Magik Markers, Correcto and RememberRemember all in one place. Tremendous.

Here’s the full list of artists taking part:

Mogwai, The RZA, Candi Staton, Sebadoh, Alela Diane, Clinic, Michael Hurley, Jamie Lidell, Gilles Peterson, José James, Flying Lotus, Theo Parrish, Derrick May, Model 500, Four Tet, Andrew Bird, Malcolm Middleton, Pram, James Blackshaw, Mikel Rouse, Dirty Projectors, Frightened Rabbit, Chrome Hoof, Aidan Moffat & Bill Wells, The Fence Collective, 1990s, Magik Markers, JD73, Buraka Som Sistema, Jah Shaka, Krafty Kuts, A.Skills, Annie Nightingale, JD Twitch & JG Wilkes, The Bays, Skeletons & The Kings Of All Cities, Correcto, Errors, Found, Neil Cowley Trio, Human Bell, Bass Clef, Kitchen Cynics, RememberRemember, Rustie Hudson, Mohawke, Mr Velcro Fastener, DJ Skurge, Harri & Domenic, Mungo’s Hi Fi, Messenger Soundsystem, Dirty Hospital DJs, Orgue Electronique, Four Corners DJs, Norman Blake (DJ Set), Miso DJs, Dee J A’la Fu, Funky Transport, Rub-A-Dub DJs, The Parsonage, David Shrigley (DJ Set), Gerard Love (DJ Set), Zilla / King Cannibal, Joe Acheson Quartet, Mweslee, Grant Campbell, Andrew Divine, Octogen, Sushil Dade, Copy Haho, Pastel DJs, Syntheme, Chris “Beans” Geddes, Paul Cawley, Laurence Hughes, Sace, Departure Lounge DJs, Kinky Afro.

Find out more and have a listen to some of the artists over at the Triptych website.

Ooh, we have a new blog! We have upgraded and combined and now all the diskant blog content is available in one place. I hope you like it. Over on the right menu you will find a list of categories which should help you find anything from the past you wish to read. There are still some older posts to be categorised but I am working on it! You’ll also find some cool stuff in the sidebars – Flickr pics of what the diskant writers are up to and links to websites and music we think you might like. More things will be coming soon too.

The rest of diskant will slowly be joining us in the new design but there is a lot of stuff in the archives and it may take a while. I apologise in advance for any oddness. I expect also there will be a few broken links and suchlike for a short period until Google has a proper look round our new setup. If you spot any major issues do let me know though.

RSS folks – you’ll be wanting to ditch all the previous diskant rss feeds and just use the new combined one which will keep you right up to date: http://feeds.feedburner.com/diskant

(or, let’s all try out posting on the new blog!)

Listening: same old same old. I need something new. I also need a new stylus so I can listen to records again.

Reading: anything I can get my hands on, usually for free thanks to BookMooch. Kids fantasy and school books, design stuff, Badge Button Pin, Nylon magazine, approximately 4000 blogs.

Watching: LOST S4, Cloverfield, The Wire

Working on: badges and brooches, secret surprise gifts, diskant 10 year anniversary bash (this Summer!), zines (no, really), Oddments, Shopify.

Anticipating: February 29th – my last day of full time work! If you haven’t heard, I quit my job and will be doing the crafting and freelancing thing instead. Wish me luck! And if you need a nice unique handmade gift or a website designing then get in touch.

Self-promoting: my shop! Also my exhibition at The Park Gallery in Falkirk which finishes up end of February.

Just to keep you updated – the new diskant is actually nearing completion and so you may notice some odd things going on in the next couple of weeks while we swap things over. The first part to launch will be an amalgamated blog of record reviews, films and all the usual nonsense. The new blog is so much better in terms of organisation, functionality and layout so I hope you like it. It does have a whole category dedicated to pie.

In the meantime, we are still not accepting review submissions. I am working on a new submission policy and all will be revealed soon.

Thank you for your patience!

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.

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.

Those of you with time on your hands (Hi Chris!) might be interested in ZineWiki, which I have just stumbled upon. Yes, a wiki directory of zines. The fact that it doesn’t include Damn You, Ablaze or indeed any other amazing UK zine that I spent my days swapping with back in 1998, means we need to act. Get on it, people!

Hello, by the way. I have no internet (this is DAY NINE) and thus have not been able to do anything much including update diskant, reply to email, activate the diskant robot etc. However:

1. I am back from Japan and it was awesome. You can look at my 700 photos on Flickr and also read my Tokyo Shopping Guide in progress.

2. My exhibition is now open so do go along and be impressed at the sight of an enormous banner with my name on it (and my handmade purses). More info here.

3. The annual diskant end of year polls will be taking place very soon. If you are a long time diskant reader why not email me (diskant-overlord AT diskant.net) and we’ll let you join in.

4. Please go round to BT and kick their asses for me. Dial-up is for losers! I want my broadband back! Thank you.

In case you hadn’t heard, UK music site Stylus is no more. I always liked their writing and it’s sad to see it go but I think every online music writer will understand why. Freaky Trigger posted a link to Stylus writer Nick Southall’s blog post Why We Killed It and really, never a truer word spoke. If you’ve ever wondered why diskant isn’t updated more often, there is your answer. It is literally another day job for many of us, who already have a day job and one or two other side projects on the go. It’s also pretty much a thankless task repaid in endless emails, piles of terrible demos and without even the ego stroke of web stats, now that RSS feeds count for many of our readers.

The Web 2.0 stuff is also a problem we have at diskant. None of us are programmers and we just can’t build the things we and our readers want to make the site better or easier to use. So, we have to stick with the old ways which are more and more time consuming with less and less people to help out.

I hope I won’t be killing off diskant any time soon but I also hope you’ll continue to be patient and take us for what we are – a bunch of busy people trying to write about the music (and films! and PIE) we love.

Anyway, go read some of Stylus’ best writing while you can. I hear some of the writers are moving to Pitchfork too.

I had hoped to write something about Prinzhorn Dance School today, after seeing them play last night but I am off to Japan tomorrow and I haven’t found the time. I am slightly obsessed with the album so, if this continues, I will likely write something on my return. I would just like to say that of all the band combinations I have ever dreamt of, mixing up The Fall and Skinned Teen was not one I ever imagined actually happening. I am still not sure if this is a good thing.

Anyway, I am OFF and I hope the good people of diskant will keep you entertained in my absence. As mentioned in my babblings on the homepage, there will be no-one answering general diskant mails and no review CDs being passed out to reviewers for the next two weeks. Somehow, I doubt this will cause any huge problems in the real world.

See you in a fortnight!