How is your 2007 going so far? Weather-wise, this has been an atrocious year for me so far (although it has just started snowing, yay!) Luckily things were brightened up by what is already my gig of the year – Joanna Newsom and the Northern Sinfonia at the City Halls, viewed from row B right in front of her pretty little face (and amazing shoes). She was perfect in every way and I started regretting giving up my cello for art and normal teenagerdom. I loved playing in an orchestra. If anyone has a spare cello please send it my way….

Have you broken your resolutions? I am still slacking terribly on the review front though I did tackle the overflowing diskant review box so I could hand a few piles out to our reviewers. Quite a few things that have been sitting in there for months got binned as well so if you sent something before October-ish and we haven’t reviewed it then we probably didn’t like it, one way or another. As anyone who has the misfortune to be within shouting distance of me when I rummage in the review box will know, my one tip for sending us CDs is BUT WHAT DO YOU SOUND LIKE? I don’t care where you met your drummer or whether you’re tipped as the next big thing, I want some way of figuring out which reviewer might like your record. Okay, I’ll calm down now.

Other than reviews, diskant is a little quiet just now. I’m mostly working on stuff behind the scenes including wrestling with the new version of Blogger, trying to tidy up long-neglected areas and getting the diskant robot back to work. I have also set up an Amazon aStore for diskant so you can buy some of the things we write about. More information about that is on the weblog

Don’t forget the special double issue of the diskant newsletter will be going out at the end of the month so join up now.

Current listening: Joanna Newsom, Cat Power, Shigeru Umebayashi, Fugazi, Deerhoof.

I have set up an Amazon aStore for diskant so that you can buy some of the things we go on about on here. Obviously we’d recommend you use your local independent store but if you’re going to use Amazon then at least a tiny proportion of the cash is coming back to us. At present we have our favourite albums and films of 2006 and a bunch of personal recommendations from your own diskant Overlord. Hopefully some of the other diskanteers will do their own recommendation sections but I wouldn’t hold your breath.

Do rest assured that I will not be plastering ads all over diskant – the shop is completely seperate to diskant and will only be linked by text in a few relevant places. I also guarantee that all profits made will be spent by me on great things which I will subsequently write about on diskant. At present I personally pay all the hosting and domain registration costs for diskant out of my own pocket. The day diskant ever starts to cover its costs we will decide what to do with the money (free pie for everyone of course).

Some incredibly ambitious 2006 round-ups for you to enjoy. Makes our annual struggle to put together 10 albums look a bit pathetic.

Edward O counts down his Top 100 Singles of 2006 on Enthusiastic But Mediocre with much europop and, well, pop. His 2005 article was one of my favourite things and I am enjoying this year’s a lot so far.

The Silent Ballet write about The Top 50 Instrumental Releases of 2006 AND The Top 25 Instrumental Tracks of 2006 and still have stuff left over they have to put in an honourable mentions page. Hardcore.

Also, a small bit of self-promotion: Cake Tourism. We are eating cake around the globe, photographing it and posting it here for your delight. If you have eaten any exciting cake recently do tell us.

Happy New Year! I welcome you to diskant’s ninth year of existence. Yes, we are planning some exciting things for our tenth anniversary, thanks for asking. I hope you all had a happy, fun and pie-filled festive season and are not finding the return to hard work as difficult as I am.

Having some time off our real jobs means that there has actually been a flurry of activity on diskant in the last couple of weeks with ou articles about our favourite albums and films of 2006 now online and our writers picking out some of the best things about the year over on the weblog.

We do have plans a-plenty for diskant this year. Hopefully we can increase the regularity of new content as well as bringing in some new features and tidying up some old ones. At least three of us have made resolutions to review more records this year so I hope it will be a while before the terrible excuses start. As always, if you have any ideas of ways we could improve do let me know.

I decided not to send out a December issue of the diskant newsletter as things were so quiet. Instead there will be a double issue for January, hopefully with a new exciting competition. Watch this space for more info or just join up now.

Current listening: Joanna Newsom, Bertine Zetlitz, Deerhoof, Lily Allen, Belle and Sebastian.

I was going to copy I Like and do 1 photo from each month but I appear to not have done anything in January and an awful lot in Feb/March. Plus 15 makes for a better screenshot. It’s difficult only picking one photo of each place I visited but it does look like I had quite a fun year.

L-R top to bottom:
1. Brighton Pier at dusk on the Uter tour
2. Me and Econoline at 3am in the great Blizzard of March, Glasgow
3. The hilariously twee wallpaper in my first purchased home. Yes, we kept it.
4. Todai-Ji Temple, Nara. My favourite photo of Japan.
5. Largs on one of the hottest days of the year
6. St Stephens Church in Dublin – again for an Uter gig
7. Visiting my sister in London
8. Best costume winners (but disowned by my own mother)
9. Another great Audioscope and a lovely afternoon with Parts & Labor.
10. Angel Bunny joins us for a weekend in Newcastle for crafting
11. I made so many things last year but my brooches were the most popular
12. Detour round Speyside while visiting my family
13. Meeting Bob the Builder at Minehead ATP
14. My handmade Christmas cards
15. Me. I look very different to me in 2005

Full photos here.

You may have noticed that our annual Favourite Albums and Films of 2006 articles are now online. Go enjoy.

While doing the above, people complained that they couldn’t vote for stuff that didn’t come out this year or for gigs so I promised we would do it on the blog. We used to do this on ye olde diskant YahooGroup but that has really and truly died after EIGHT wonderful years of complete and utter timewasting. I’m sure the YahooGroups stormtroopers will miss us.

So, make up your own categories for the stuff you wanted to write about. I’m not doing ineligible albums of the year as I still intend to post my Songs of the Year thing.

MOST LISTENED TO BANDS (according to my iTunes)

Errors
Otterley
Findo Gask
Pet Shop Boys
Mogwai
Joanna Newsom
Burowelt
Girls Aloud
Gay Against You
Dananananaykroyd

It seems I am a walking advertisement for Glasgow.

GIGS

Lightning Bolt/Gay Against You @ Grand Ole Opry, Glasgow
Sonic Youth/Stooges @ ATP Minehead
Findo Gask @ The Arches, Glasgow
Ladytron @ Cross Central, London
Errors @ Stereo, Glasgow
Mogwai @ The Barras, Glasgow
Danananaykroyd/CSS @ Indian Summer, Glasgow

WEBSITES

Flickr – I live my life on Flickr. It’s my MySpace
Popjustice – Still hilarious and almost always right
Design*Sponge – has cost me an absolute fortune in buying cute things from design shops.
No Rock’n’Roll Fun – Makes most of the music press pointless
I Was Just Really Very Hungry – Intelligent and inspiring food writing
Wonderland – Computer gaming be fun!
Remember The Milk – has literally changed my life

FILM/DVD

NANA – Film of the Japanese manga
Everything is Illuminated – Amusing and then unbearably poignant
Bring It On – Cheerleading, cliches ahoy and Kirsten Dunst – what more do you want?
Hustle and Flow – Ridiculous
Whisper of the Heart – Finally on DVD with proper subtitles, my second favourite Ghibli because I am a sap

BOOKS

Harumi’s Japanese Home Cooking – my new bible
The Best of Smash Hits – All the best stuff from the classic 80s period
Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash – will make you horribly aware of every single thing you throw away
Paradise Kiss – My favourite manga for having a depressing undercurrent of realism underneath the fashion and relationships stuff, for being short and for not having a happy ending.
NANA – 2 girls called Nana, one a punk singer and one a cutesy ditz. Taking absolutely forever to get translated and getting darker by the week (if you sneakily watch the animes which are way ahead)
100 Posters, 134 Squirrels – Jay Ryan’s amazing posters. So good I bought a real one.

COMPUTER GAMES

Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS) – I am still playing this daily. I sent everyone in my town a “festive” tree and am currently trying to build perfect snowmen to get furniture (when dung beetles aren’t running off with my snowballs) while helping the Museum owl to get over his morbid fear of insects.

Cooking Mama (DS) – Learn to cook literally seven million Japanese dishes under the watchful and rather scary eyes of Mama. Making sushi and dumplings is hilarious fun – measuring rice and not dropping your steak on the floor less so.

Chibi-Robo (Gamecube) – Tiny robot runs around the house making everyone happy by cleaning and tidying and fixing problems. Why isn’t tidying the house this much fun in real life?

Tamagotchi Corner Shop (DS) – Just ridiculous. I really spent far too much time hanging out with a bunch of bunny-shaped things and puddings with eyes making them cakes, washing their clothes and decorating their teeth. Happy Tamagotchis thanking Stu for decorating their teeth with I HEART HITLER will live with me for a long time.

EVENT OF THE YEAR
ATP – Was good to be back and the new site made it doubly exciting, not to mention all the good bands, the company, the continental cheese, the chalet, the excellent television and that unique Butlins experience.

THINGS YOU DID MOST THIS YEAR
Eat Japanese food
Play with my DS
Put photos on Flickr
Make things
Read millions of blogs via RSS
Stand at bus stops
Wait for/on delayed trains
Order stuff off the internet

PLACES VISITED
Japan (Tokyo, Kyoto, Nara)
Oxford (three times!)
London (twice)
Brighton
Newcastle

LOOKING FORWARD TO IN 2007
Going back to Japan!
2006 being over

Things will inevitably be quieter for the next couple of weeks though, with our recent level of activity, I doubt anyone will notice much of a difference. Our annual best albums and films of the year articles are almost done and will hopefully be up sometime next week.

I’d like to take this opportunity to name and shame Findo Gask, Dot To Dot, Dananananaykroyd and Try Harder Records as the lazy/busy people who have been keeping me as the winner of my interview slackness stats. Particularly the first two who have been hoarding their interview questions since FEBRUARY! Hopefully we will see all these interviews sometime in the new year. Apologies go to Errors and 1990s who I have been failing to interview all year, mostly because both bands are doing so awesomely well.

While you wait for all this goodness here are some excellent year-end things by other sites that we love:

– The Popjustice A-Z of 2006
– No Rock’n’Roll Fun’s exhaustive round-up of the year’s happenings
– Pitchfork’s Top 100 Tracks and Top 50 Albums of 2006

Have a good Christmas and thanks for reading. Don’t forget to have some pie.

Where does the time go? It’s practically Christmas and I still have a million things to do. And, as I’m working through the festive period, very little time to relax and do all those things I never have time to do. I’ve been making big efforts to make presents and buy handmade giftss and it’s been so much fun, especially getting such beautiful things in the mail and being able to avoid the mad rush round the shops. There are so many talented people around and I’ve been adding my favourite sites to the Links page.

Since it’s Christmas we will be presenting diskant’s favourite albums and films of 2006 very shortly. I’m just awaiting the last few comments from our voters and then you’ll be able to see what caught our fancy this year. I’m glad to be able to say I’ve listened to a whole three of the top ten albums though I have seen only one of the films. At least I have some new additions for my rental list.

In the meantime, you can read about our exploits at The Nightmare Before Christmas, curated by Thurston Moore. It was the first to be held in Butlins, Minehead but everyone seems to agree the chance was mostly for the better. I’m not rushing to sign up for either of next year’s events (especially after seeing how the current wish list for ATP vs The Fans looks) but it was great to get back into the ATP swing of things.

There’s still time to join the diskant newsletter if you haven’t already. The final issue of the year will go out sometime next week and we’ll have some more exclusive competitions coming up next year.

Finally, thanks for reading diskant this year and have a great Christmas and New Year.

Current listening: Joanna Newsom, Gay Against You.

I seem to have been far too busy lately to be updating this, for which I apologise. Some of it is diskant-related though as begin the annual attempt to coax the diskant contributors into sending in their top ten albums and films of the year. Only a trickle of votes in so far but there’s already a few things with multiple votes, thankfully.

So, what have I been doing? A trip Up North to visit my relatives since I will be working over Christmas, a weekend in Newcastle which I enjoyed enormously and much pre-Christmas crafting. I have been making big efforts to give mostly handmade gifts this year, whether made by myself or by others and I’ve been receiving so many beautiful things in the post that I shall have a hard time giving them away.

Those of you who live in Newcastle, you are very lucky. We did a craft fair in The Cluny which was an awesome pub/venue/cafe crammed full of lovely people on a Sunday morning and plastered with posters for excellent shows. We also had an amazing Japanese teppan-yaki meal at Hanahana and made a quick visit to The Baltic which had well-timed exhibitions of Japanese and urban art. I recommend both and will definitely be returning.

>We’re all off to ATP in a couple of weeks so do come and say hello if you see us. We’ll be the ones eating pie, and shivering.

And don’t forget to join the diskant newsletter if you haven’t already. The next one goes out on the 30th and includes an exclusive competition. See the weblog for more information.

This is diskant. He likes Takoyaki, amusement parks and ‘Now’ compilations and dislikes Microsoft Word, Emo and geese. He has been made of felt and buttons by the wonderful Miso Funky and we are giving him away on the diskant newsletter. To be in with a chance of winning you need to be signed up before Thursday, so GO JOIN NOW. You’ll also get updated on what’s new at diskant and what you might have missed. Imagine the excitement awaiting you on Thursday!