Today, as part of my actual job, I have been researching add-ons, features and widgets people might like to add to their websites. In the course of this I have emailed eBay to tell them how aghast I am at their lack of web widgets and discovered that two of my long-held brilliant internet ideas have actually been realised by other people. Someone who actually had any ambition might be annoyed by this, I am just delighted they now exist.

GiftTagging have answered my frequent question of ‘Why isn’t there an Amazon Wish List but for EVERYTHING you can buy’ with a site that is something of a cross between del.icio.us and ThisNext. You can import your Amazon wishlist, add new gifts by hand or add them from any website with a toolbar button. You then tag them with handy descriptive words and your friends, family and random stalkers can buy you a present that you actually want. It’s a little clunky and basic at the moment but it looks great and has loads of potential.

Remember The Milk is the answer to my other daily trauma, two computer forgetfulness. I have all my best ideas at work and then forget them all by the time I get home and can do anything about them. Usually I resort to that utter patheticness – emailing myself reminders. Remember The Milk though, lets you set up a web-based to-do/task/reminder list which you can tag and split into seperate lists and, best of all, you can email reminders to it which it will automatically add. Put an RSS feed of it on your blog or RSS reader and you’ll never forget anything again.

Marvellous. I’m so glad there are so many clever people on the internet.

Dave used to be diskant’s resident obscurist, guaranteed to fill his columns full of unpronounceable unlistenable music that he still managed to make sound amazing. Since then, we’ve recruited a few other mentalists to keep him company, so much so, that Dave actually turned out to be the diskanteer who’d heard the most out of our Top Ten Albums of 2005 and thus had the fun job of writing up the article*. He’s also given us the enormously helpful guide to getting gigs and the highly entertaining Souvaris European tour diary as well as profiling swathes of labels for Talentspotter.

By day Dave works as a Project Officer for Children’s Centres Services at Nottingham City Council working with children and families in Nottingham’s most disadvantaged areas. By night he makes “guitars chime, churn and occasionally howl” in Souvaris, “what’s generally regarded as horrific noise and drone” in Bologna Pony, “sporadically mucks around with homemade lo-fi ambient things”, helps out with DIY non-profit gig-organising collective Damn You! and sometimes even finds the time to write a few extra esoteric reviews for Foxy Digitalis. Blimey.

Where do you live and what do you like about it?
Sneinton, Nottingham. It’s just outside the centre of a medium-sized but comparatively lively (read as: violent) city and I can get out to green space or nice places outside the city limits with a short walk. I also live just around the corner from HQs for three record labels: Gringo, Low-Point and Fire. Convenient.

What have you been listening to/reading/watching/playing recently?

Oof, where to start?

Listening to: The news of Relapse reissuing Harvey Milk’s Courtesy and Goodwill To All Men had me dusting off my copy and remembering quite how wilfully absurd/strangely brilliant it is. Ditto the This Heat boxset, which has to be my purchase of the year. Steven R. Smith’s new LP on Important is really lovely and comes in a beautiful woodcut sleeve. MV & EE w/ The Bummer Road’s latest album on Time-Lag might possibly be the best/most maddening new music I’ve heard this year. Birchville Cat Motel’s 3xCD live document Curved Surface Destroyer is appropriately mindblowing. The new (Chris) Clark album Body Riddle sounds sumptuous. Erase Errata were tremendous when they played live recently, but their new album doesn’t sound half as raucous.

Reading: Last things I’ve read have been Dodie Smith’s I Capture The Castle (lent by a friend) and Richard Hooker’s M*A*S*H (on which everything you associate with that title was originally based). Next up is a Bukowski biography, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and at some point finally tackling Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States of America.

Watching:
I don’t watch television, and I’ve barely had time or inclination to watch any new films recently. I did get The Parallax View and My Own Private Idaho on DVD for dirt cheap not that long ago though. Both classy films. Seeing stuff in the flesh, I went to the Sunday of the Barbican’s celebration of Steve Reich’s 70th birthday and it was mostly brilliant: Konono #1 played in a free gig in the hall; Reich’s new piece (entitled Daniel) managed to be both emotionally charged and beautiful; seeing Music For 18 Musicians performed in the flesh is an experience I’ll never forget. Especially when Steve started hitting loads of bum notes on his vibraphone halfway through.

Tell us about your favourite local bands
Nottingham’s a funny old place for music: there’s always a steady stream of interesting bands but few seem to stay together for more than a few months at a time (except the terrible ones that refuse to die). Lords have to be mentioned as a premier live attraction, but bring your earplugs because they’ve gotten unbearably loud since they got their new amps. Gareth Hardwick may have the misfortune to be in a band with me, but I still love his solo ambient stuff anyway, and it’s getting better with every release. Designer Babies seem to have been in a period of transition for a frustratingly long time since they lost their frontman, but I’m hoping for exciting things when they play soon. The inimitably unique Hellset Orchestra are always worth seeing and I really admire their wilful absurdity and Queenesque stage antics. Apparently Love Ends Disaster! live just around the corner but never seem to play here. Orchards are a new proposition from members of many established Nottingham bands that I really enjoyed when they played their second-ever gig recently. Lovely melodies alongside American Analog Set-style keyboard throbs – it can’t be beat. There are loads more, such as Lovvers and the new-look Exploits of Elaine, that I really need to get around to seeing soon.

What are you planning on writing about next for diskant?
At the start of the month I managed to buy about 50 LPs for a quid from a fleamarket. I got some amazing stuff, such as Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and Talking Heads’ Remain in Light, but also the first Dire Straits LP, The Fine Young Cannibals and a really fucked up Wagner sampler LP got in there too. I’m thinking about trying and write a two sentence review of every one.

What are your favourite articles/interviews on diskant?
I love Ollie’s infectious enthusiasm for anything absurd and/or highly offensive. Joe Luna has an incredible knack of writing about things that I was either thinking about buying or thinking about reviewing – keep it up Joe! And whatever Chris turns his hand to is inevitably going to be worth reading.

What are you looking forward to this year?
I really want to see Darren Aaronofsky’s The Fountain, which has been in development for about five years now and will hopefully hit the cinemas before the end of the year. I just hope it’s not the train wreck it could well turn out to be.

I’m also very much looking forward to Damn You! putting on Birchville Cat Motel early next year, and there are whispers about the possibility of Charles Hayward (This Heat, general drumming genius) coming up shortly after that have got me in a real spin.

Lastly, I’ll be excited on Friday because that day I have to post a completed mix of the long-awaited second Souvaris album (entitled “A Hat” for no particularly good reason) to Mr John Golden to unleash his mastering skills on. You’ll be able to listen to the results courtesy of Gringo Records early next year. Thank fuck!

What have you learned during your time at diskant?
That the advent of Web 2.0 means that you can no longer slag off a shit record with impunity. Someone’s opinion is always going to be more important than yours, especially if it’s the artist’s.

* Although I see I have actually credited the article to myself. Oops.

If anyone living in the US would like to buy me a white bunny radio from this site I will not only love you forever but will send you something of your choice in return (or the money if you want to be boring). It’s a bargainous $7 but the only international shipping option costs a quite unbelievable $300 and I don’t want one that much. Please?

(Yes, I know this is of no interest to 99% of diskant readers. I have more proper content to go up shortly).

UPDATE: My bunny woes are over, hurray!

What with the rise of YouTube and “the download generation”, everyone is now rushing to offer as much multimedia content as our brains can handle. Two of Scotland’s festivals have put this idea to good use, making available all kinds of video, audio and photography on their websites.

Instal has been sadly under-covered on diskant this year (I didn’t make it along in the end) but if you wished you were there, you practically can be thanks to Instal Live, a new section of the website where attendees are encouraged to upload their photos, videos and comments on the sets. As well as this, there are free MP3 downloads of all the sets from this year including Keiji Haino & Tony Conrad, Sachiko, Tetsuya Umeda, Blood Stereo & Ludo Mich and literally loads more. There’s more content promised soon including stuff from Resonance FM so it will quite likely take you until Instal 07 to work your way through this lot.

Triptych are a little less giving as most of the music is in streamable form only but it’s still a good introduction to the breadth of artists that make up the Triptych line-up. There are also full live sets to listen to in the Triptych Player from the likes of Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid, Jamie Lidell, Candi Staton and Boom Bip. Newly added are some of the short films about the festival by aspiring film-makers which we got a sneak preview of at the GFT a few weeks back. There’s a fairly basic overview of the festival by Roseanne Davidson and a clever, glitchy A-Z by Jonno but everyone’s highlight was My New Job by Jorn Utkilen of Schneider TM, a witty and hilariously deadpan film of his rise to Triptych fame as a pop star complete with fish slice guitar and backing group of cuddly toys. Well worth a watch.

THOSE AT WORK BEWARE – the Triptych site will launch with sound on.

Well, it is a whole new month and this year continues to zip past at the speed of light. Audioscope is over for another year and I have posted about it on the weblog.

My thoughts are now turning to the end of year poll and wondering if this will be the year we don’t manage to agree on even ten records. Thinking back myself, it’s been a pretty darn great year for music, especially locally, but I’m not sure how good a year for albums it has been. Possibly that’s the fault of my iPod as I hardly ever seem to listen to full albums anymore since it’s so easy to pick out the immediately good songs and put them in a playlist of marvellousness.

I’m also going to have a similar problem with voting for films as I have only seen about 3 films at the cinema this year. I have, however, seen more films this year than any previous year thanks to my Amazon DVD rental subscription. And with my Freeview box I can tape all the TV I want and watch it later. I fear I will never randomly discover anything again, I’m so busy selecting out just the things I know I want to hear or see. Maybe I will make 2007 the year of Random.

Anyway, the first NEW diskant newsletter went out with only minor hiccups so if you haven’t received it, you’re not subscribed. Go sort that out here or you won’t get the next one either.

I know l ast time I promised some reading recommendations but I filled the space writing about just 2 books and there’s tons more so I will post them on the blog soon instead.

Current listening: Squarepusher, Trail of Dead, Dananananaykroyd, Mogwai, Piano Magic, Joanna Newsom.

diskant interview slackness stats: Interviewees: 4, Me: 3

So, Audioscope 06 took place last weekend and I have just about recovered. My state of ruin was possibly not helped by a free bar the night before in Glasgow and a much delayed, sardine packed debacle of a train journey (so bad the staff announced over the system how we should go about making a complaint!) but it’s always good to see Simon and Stu at the other end and catch up on everything while watching ridiculous films. Hustle and Flow does indeed teeter on the hilarious/terrible knife edge. Believe me, I shall be thinking twice before I throw any more demos down the toilet.

Anyway, Audioscope was upstairs at the Zodiac this year which was entirely preferable – tons more room to set up the merch stall, a proper high up stage, an incredibly loud PA and an offputting walk downstairs to the cakefest (which stopped me eating even more raspberry muffins than I did). I wasn’t jumping up and down with overenthusiasm at the sight of this year’s line-up for once, but it turned out there wasn’t a single band I didn’t enjoy which made the ‘best/worst band of the day’ thing even more difficult than usual. So, here’s my four favourites:

I’m Being Good – being very good indeed. Starting with possibly my favourite IBG song, they hollered, scraped and bounded through their set in perfectly timed precise abandon. Lovely to see Our Tomipus back on stage too.

Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element – still getting better and better and nothing went wrong this year! It’s been a whole year since I saw them and although they’re playing mostly the same songs, they all sound so much bigger and more confident, so much so that I didn’t even recognise half of them to begin with.

Piano Magic – sighingly lovely post-rock tinged sadness which went down surprisingly well after the Trencher/Rock of Travolta/I’m Being Good/Kids in Tracksuits string of exuberance.

Parts & Labor – I was tired and they were ear-bleedingly loud so mostly their set was like having a brain aneurysm. But, y’know, in a good way. I need to spend some time with their recorded output I think and hope for the opportunity to see them again. They also stayed over and were some of the nicest people I’ve hung out with in a long while. I’m hoping Stu will post some more photos of The Tattoo Game which they introduced us to with evil glee. Luckily my drawing skills are passable enough that I didn’t have any new tattoos to explain to my workmates on my return.

If I did have to pick a worst band, it would be Clinic who were merely slightly experimental indie and thus enjoyable without being very exciting.

Manning the merch stall was as fun as always although I was in continual fear of Clinic coming up with 7 tons of multiformatted, multidesign merch but thankfully that never happened. All the bands were really well organised and lovely and I came away with a whole armful of free stuff gifted to me (although I seem to have gifted as many box sets in return).

If you missed it, you’re a fool. I’m already looking forward to next year.

(The less said about my flight home from Birmingham, the better. Although, my train to Birmingham actually went on to Glasgow apparently not arriving there for another EIGHT HOURS! There are no words for this madness. I am now in a quandary over how to get to ATP without wanting to kill myself).

I took a few photos which are here.

I’m always very suspicious of band name changes. They smack of desperate fame seeking, like some major label suit has told them they could do well if only they’d change that stupid name, get a haircut and ditch that fugly/wacky member. I don’t think that’s the case with Matchsticks (or Flying Matchstick Men, as was) although they’ve always sounded like a band hellbent on getting in the top ten who could be sorely tempted to sell their souls, or at least their “indie cred” if they ever cared about such things. But maybe they just got bored of explaining their name to taxi drivers.

Anyway, Duvet is typical Matchsticks fare, all arched eyebrows, knowing looks and waggled fingers; call and response lyrics over Pulp style charity shop pop. It sounds like the theme tune to a Saturday morning kids tv show complete with a wonky Gameboy breakdown in the middle; even the lyrics have that vague open-ended feel that means it all still fits 12 seasons down the line.

Still, there’s something quite annoying about Matchsticks – the too-catchy choruses, the hyperactively histrionic vocals – which kind of makes me want to hate them, even as I put the song on repeat. So let’s hope they do get picked up by Mr Major Label Suit, get their top 10 hits and blank out their indie past with Stalinist impassiveness so that I’d have a proper reason to hate them (while still secretly loving them).

Matchsticks at Myspace
One Records

You know where you are with Amelia Fletcher. Whether with Heavenly, Marine Research or her new band Tender Trap, you know you’ll be getting sweet, catchy indiepop with sugarsharp lyrics, swooping vocals and plenty ba da bas. Much like Saint Etienne or Stereolab, Amelia’s bands have this specific sound that makes them instantly recogniseable however much they try and push their boundaries. There’s not much boundary pushing going on here, mind you, but it’s all so enjoyably uplifting and uncomplicated that you can’t really complain. Mostly this EP reminds me of Operation Heavenly which was always my favourite Heavenly album so I’m very happy. They even do a song about Friendster and make it feel like it was something from the early 90s (which, with the speed of new internet trends is probably about right). I doubt MySpace will ever inspire anything so sweet. Lupe from Pipas turns up on the final song Como te Llamas? for a sparky bilingual duet that ends things on a high note with a bumpidy beat and the cutest talky bit I’ve heard in a long time. Lovely.

Tender Trap
Matinee
Fortuna Pop!

Since no-one reads my nonsense on the homepage I will also post this here:

Believe it or not, the diskant newsletter will soon be resurrected and will be entirely awesome. Turning up once or twice a month, it will let you know about all the new interviews, features and reviews on the site, what’s up on the blog, some tips on cool events and websites you should check out and whatever else we think you might want to to know about including EXCLUSIVE NON-WEB CONTENT. Wowee. You best sign up now if you’re not already a member. You can do so here, and you should get a move on as the first will be going out before the end of this week.

Yeah! Remember when music was fun? Dananananaykroyd do.
The day I got this record I played Some Dresses approximately 14,000 times in a row and every single time I got excited by the off-mic entire band chanting at the beginning. They make being in a band look like the most fun thing to do in the world (Which it should be, or else why are you bothering?) and they’re going to inspire so many new bands. I’m glad party bands are back, bands who understand that songs should have dynamics, who know how to work a crowd and get them involved. Like Lords, Dananananaykroyd make complicated music look piss easy: observe the way Some Dresses breaks down into a complete shambles half way through only for them to casually pick the melody back up and carry on. They’re the kind of band that can twirl their drumsticks and their guitars and not miss a beat. The funny thing is, Danananaykroyd have timed this perfectly. If they’d put this record out 3 or 4 years ago it would have got lost in the post-post-rock/math-rock aftermath boredom years but now in the midst of our Franz clever-ironic hipster doom, this sounds so fresh and vibrant. Picture the scene at Indian Summer this year – Dananananaykroyd casually whipping the early afternoon rained-on crowd into some form of cult style frenzy – and know that fun and fervour are back. Yeah!

Jealous Records
Dananananaykroyd on Myspace