Okay, the diskant top ten albums and films of the year articles are finally online. Every year I start things off earlier and every year we still manage not to get things online til mid-January when everyone is sick of end of year roundups. This year has been the most difficult yet – I almost ditched the albums poll at one point when there was so little agreement in the voting that we couldn’t even come up with ten that had 2 or more votes, not to mention the fact that zero of my picks had ended up in the top ten. Thankfully some late votes fixed this and the resulting articles are full of the usual enthusiasm and disdain from the diskant team. I hope you enjoy reading them and discover some new records to seek out. I’m certainly itching to hear more of them. Feel free to comment below.

As an extra bonus this year, you get to see exactly who voted for what as I’ve published everyone’s individual top tens.

If I get a chance I’ll post up some thoughts on why everyone else is wrong and my picks were actually the best ten records of the year but we’ll see. It’s probably more pressing that I dig into that pile of review CDs by my stereo.

I think I’ve found my favourite band of 2006 already. Is there any way this could be better? Two teenage Swedish girls covering Pet Shop Boys songs in an electropop style. Not only would the PSBs approve of this, it’s almost surprising they aren’t behind it. The styling is perfect – all very futurist industrial. The video for Domino Dancing has them wandering morosely through corridors sporting silver spraypainted hardhats and their press photos are all modern architecture, leather and dogs. So in concept it’s brilliant, in musical reality it’s even better – Pet Shop Boys crossed with Robyn and tATu. Domino Dancing itself is a very odd choice for a debut (their cover of West End Girls, also awesome, is out next), not being one of the PSB’s more well-known singles but I’d forgotten how good it is. There’s something heartbreaking and poignant about the young female heavily accented vocals replacing Neil Tennant’s English reserve, adding even more layers of ambiguity to the song. And the handclaps are the best thing I’ve heard so far this year. I cannot wait for the album (please have Heart on it, and I Want A Dog).

West End Girls

You know I’ve been waiting all year to do this again.

ALASDAIR – for patiently re-introducing me to Fun, amongst other things
BUNNIES – I have spent way too much of 2005 stalking bunny rabbits
CHANNEL 4 – Damn you, I wasn’t supposed to get addicted to TV again
DATA PANIK – my favourite new band of 2005
ELEPHANTS – providing the main entertainment of being a corporate designer
FLICKR – my year in photos
GREEN TEA – begone, caffeine
HIS DARK MATERIALS – The stage show was one of the greatest things I have ever seen
IPOD – completely changed my listening habits, probably for the worse
JAPAN – I’M GOING TO JAPAN (my catchphrase for 2005, my most anticipated thing for 2006)
KNITTING – and sewing, as part of www.misofunky.com
LAST FM – See, Crazy Boys IS my song of the year
MONO – home from home this year with the fantastic Plan B and Beard events, our gig with Wolf Eyes and many happy hours just hanging out with friends.
NOODLES – Do I eat out anywhere else than Ichiban and Wagamama? Probably not.
OWW – Brain melting noise at Instal and Glasgow Implodes
PROPERTY OWNERSHIP – In progress. Keep your fingers crossed!
QUIET – Living in a tiny house in a garden, down a lane
RSI – pros: less time on computers, more going out. cons: PAIN, losing touch with online friends
SNOW – on December 29th. Just in time!
THIRTY – My turnaround year, and how
UTER – Still fun, mainly due to good gigs with so many lovely and fantastic bands
WALKING – also rediscovered thanks to living next to the River Kelvin walkway
XENOMANIA/RICHARD X – responsible for most of my pop thrills this year
YOU – for continuing to read diskant. Thank you!
ZINES – I’m not going to get my zine done by the end of the year am I?

Leaving aside the related gig disaster as previous post, I was excited about this, the idea of wandering around the back streets of Glasgow and discovering light installations and disused buildings that have temporarily been given a purpose again.

With Alasdair on map reading and Glasgow knowledge duty we began by meandering our way round the Merchant City. The first couple of installations were so non-eventful as to almost pass notice and the church with, um, some lights on it was similarly unremarkable. We were invited to make our way round a set path through the Ramshorn Gardens which was initially exciting as our giant shadows projected themselves on to the building opposite and slowly shrunk as we walked. Things then turned muddy and dark with some tiny fixed lights illuminating random gravestones, branches and corners. Woo.

Down the back end of King Street things improved with warped, melty shop sign lights making me feel like I had taken a wrong turning into surrealist France, and an enormous video projection on a wall was momentarily awesome in its size.

‘Trapped’ at the bottom of King Street was possibly the biggest installation where a disused building has had its windows lit in colours with video projections filling the central area of windows. We arrived while they were displaying adverts (for the festival. Which we were at) so had to make do with the entertainment provided by Man Pissing in Doorway and Children Crying (possibly related). Then giant ants started marching over the windows in patterns, getting bigger each time they appeared with the colours changing in rotation, eventually culminating in enormo-insects filling the whole central area. Giant insects crawling over buildings is to be encouraged, I think.

Up at the Trongate a building was sporting projections designed by children which meant we had the scarily fun sight of a building covered in brightly coloured balloons. Further projections were based on the actual building itself making it appear as if it had been coloured in with neon crayons, a slightly disorientating look that made me feel like the buliding itself was a projection.

Our last stop was the view of the, again, unremarkably lit church and mosque by the Clyde but much more captivating was the long term lighting developments on the various bridges which reflect shimmering colour on to the river. The blood red pedestrian bridge dominated the view and we walked back over it where it loomed, bright red, clear and strong overhead and easily beat the festival installations.

The main problem with most of the installations is that they were just kind of there. Pretty and kinda cool but not really living up to the status of a festival of light. Radiance was trying too hard. Glasgow doesn’t need this trumpeting and garish cosmetic lighting. Light up the dark random areas, highlight the unused and un-noticed and let people discover them for themselves.

Following on from my previous post:

Worth looking forward to: SNOW

We got snow sooner than expected, on Thursday. The light that morning was eerie, amazingly clear and so beautiful. I even noticed entire buildings I never noticed in six months of walking up Queen Margaret Drive daily. As I stared around in wonder, clouds of doom crept in, the sky went dark and the snow started falling. When I got off the bus ten minutes later the snow was thick and swirling all around me and I was so happy I thought my heart would burst. I’ve never been so wide-eyed and over-excitably talkative at 9am on a work morning. I love Glasgow so much.

Not worth looking forward to: playing with Data Panik

Excuse me if I go off on a rant here but I am so disappointed, angry and upset about this. As a huge bis fan, and having seen DP play about 5 times now, I was so excited to get asked to support them. But we ended up pulling out of the gig in the afternoon because of what we consider to be unbelievable and ridiculous promotion. The gig was promoted by a well-known, experienced local promotion company and was part of a local council sponsored and heavily advertised festival. But by the time we pulled out these were the conditions we had apparently agreed to by accepting the invitation to play (maybe we should have asked more beforehand but maybe they should have told us sooner than the day before the gig and without us having to ask):

Running order of support bands, number of guest list places and all payment for the night to be entirely decided by amount of advance tickets sold personally by each band by 4pm on the day of the gig.

So if we sold zero tickets we wouldn’t even get our expenses covered even if 50 of our friends turned up on the night and paid on the door. Am I being mental here or is this just wrong?

We’ve played a lot of gigs in the last 18 months, including some high profile ones, and never been treated like this. Every gig we’ve done has been promoted by enthusiastic, friendly, helpful people who have given us all the information we needed and either paid us very generously or at least given us our petrol money and some beer.

I’d heard about these ticket deal gigs before and always vowed never to play any of them. Maybe my principles are too strong here but after 15 years of doing things DIY I won’t be a part of something that plays bands against each other and doesn’t treat them as people (and people with jobs. Our presence at soundcheck was also demanded for 4pm) with basic requirements. It just seems so corporate.

I’d be interested in what the rest of you who are in bands/promote gigs think about this.

(The Girls Aloud album better be great now)

UPDATE: Our official band response to the promoter is now on our website which explains things in more detail.

Or what I have been doing instead of being here

Listening To:

Michael Dracula – Destroy Yourself
The kind of band Glasgow does best. They’re the Lung Leg to Franz Ferdinand’s Yummy Fur which means spiky guitars, screamy drawly vocals and GURLS. I tipped them on this very blog way back when they played with some other band I couldn’t remember the name of (yes, Franz Ferdinand at their first proper gig) but hopefully they’ll get some records out soon (ideally the awesome remix by Optimo’s Twitch)

Annie – The Wedding
Sometimes she’s just too candy cute but this is adorable without making your teeth hurt. It boings and burbles and whooshes in all the right places while Annie whispers away “I do I do I do” til your heart melts.

Black Heart Procession – 3
Mmm, depressing winter music. Time I dug out Cold House by Hood too. Sigh.

Reading:

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
After a few months of reader’s block all it takes is a new Murakami to get me to finally finish a book. Sure all his books are the same but when they’re about libraries and cats and memories I don’t really care.

DIY: The Rise of Lo-Fi Culture by Amy Spencer
A book about zines! It reads like a thesis and probably is but it has artwork by Rachel Slampt and stuff on the Yummy Fur. In a real book.

Working on:

www.misofunky.com
A new craft collective I’m part of with my friends Claire and Jo. We make mostly knitted and sewn things and you can buy them and look fabulous. Or just look at the website which is also fabulous if I say so myself. You’ll all be wearing disco ties by christmas.

A new paper zine
No really, soon.

Looking forward to:

Playing with Data Panik on Friday.
The new Girls Aloud album with Christmas cover versions and limited edition festive cover art!
Snow

What about you?

Well, I am back from my holidays and will post some thoughts on them soon. However, I see that the only two things of major interest that I did have already been written about elsewhere. Stu Fowkes has an in-depth review of Audioscope 05 over at OxfordBands while Alistair Fitchett once again has stolen my thoughts in his almost perfect post on Tangents about the Turner Prize exhibition at the Tate. Nice of them to do the hard work and leave me free to write some kind of flippant top ten list instead.

UPDATE: You can now look at some photos I took.

– One of Findo Gask also plays in Otterley who were great on Friday – noisy bip-bop pop with nicely fragile vocals.
– Park Attack are amazing, especially their drummer.
– The band that Errors remind me of are – gasp! – Sunnyvale!
– I still get panicky in crowds of tall people but why should I have to go stand at the back just because you’re too inconsiderate to look behind you when you push in to stand with your mates at the front? Gah.
– I am a total sucker for Rocket Dog shoes, particularly if they involve brown suede, velcro and dragons. DRAGONS! They totally saw me coming and now I am triple skint.
– If you get 13 noise bands to play in one day (at the Glasgow Implodes! alldayer) they will all be guys wearing black, except me.
– Even after Instal there are still ways of making noise that can surprise me. I especially liked the guy with about 50 pedals on a table, and a crushed coke can. And the guy who brought the biggest amps evah and knelt right in front of them playing ear-splitting drones. You’ll ruin your hearing, young man.
– You can wear legwarmers onstage and no-one will laugh at you
– Everyone else at diskant is dead, again

We played a gig last night with Findo Gask who were tremendous – well-dressed young men playing electro-dreampop. Lots of chiming but nicely dirty guitar, swooping fragile vocals and some awesomely great drumming. They reminded me very much of the Electro Group whose album I still dig out regularly. They sound a little less dreamy and a little more rocky on their MP3s but that’s in no way a bad thing. I look forward to records.

I have never gone onstage at 1am before but it was surprisingly good (next morning booked off work rather key though) and there was a great atmosphere and some brilliant records being played, so much so that I stayed out til 3am and walked home in giddy abandon. I’m glad I am getting over my fear of clubs but disappointed for the second time that no-one will dance to the Yummy Fur with me. I hate you all.

This was Quiet Day and we needed it after Hijokaidan, especially with the sun shining outside. I had to tear myself away from my usual Sunday walk and head into the bowels of the Arches once more but I was suitably rewarded.

INGAR ZACH & RHODRI DAVIES
A collaboration between percussionist Zach and harpist Davies, this was perfect Sunday afternoon fare. Ingar Zach had the air of an inquisitive garden shed inventor picking up various objects and trying them out on his drum kit. Electric fans, metal chains and ping pong balls (hopefully purloined from Sun City Girls) were a few of the things used to create fluttering, pattering, juddering rhythms. In perfect accord Rhodri Davies pulled out extended drones and short plucks of sound from his harp using various bits and pieces of his own.

LOREN MAZZACANE CONNORS & ALAN LICHT
This was a delight from start to finish – beautiful, intricate guitar interplay between the two with an array of pedals to tweak the sound and noisier bursts of feedback to stop you from quite drifting off. There was an attentive hush in the room and only the discomfort of the floor made me want them to stop. Quite lovely.

JANDEK AGAIN
Looks like Jandek had been reading my post about Friday and this time we did get a stripped down set with just Loren Mazzacone Connors on guitar and Jandek’s mournful poetics. It was really quite affecting especially when the words were interspersed with interludes of sighing harmonica with the lights slowly changing between the two. The second half of the set saw Jandek take to the drums along with Alan Licht on guitar and (so Alex says, I wouldn’t know) Heather from Taurpis Tula on pedal steel. Jandek’s booming simple drumming was wonderful and this was surrounded by swathes of noise and Heather’s primal wail which grew to be one of the most impressively soul-destroying things I’ve heard in my life, gnawing away at my soul and filling my heart with nightmares. After about 20 minutes the intensity of this was almost too much to bear. Afterwards we emerged blinking and stupified and I sat in a befuddled daze with StewBeard for half an hour while we talked disjointedly and tried to shake off the sound and effect of that voice. By that point I had pretty much lost it.

But that’s the great thing about Instal, hearing things you might never dream of listening to in your own home and can never play loudly enough for full appreciation. Sure, I found myself scrabbling for pop music as soon as I left the building to restore some kind of equilibrium but it’s an honour to be able to challenge my ears in this way and see the many ways people can create new and inspiring sounds.

From the strangest and simplest means. Long may Instal continue.