I was in London over the weekend for the first time in ages intending to go see all the things I never have time to go see. I stayed in an amazing hotel which has reminded me that I need to make loads of money so that I can be one of those crazy old rich people who live in hotels and wander around in my pyjamas carrying a cat.Easter Sunday was my Art Day which started with a lengthy walk past the Tower of London and across Tower Bridge to the Design Museum. I don’t know if they knew I was coming but they appeared to have organised the whole thing with me in mind. A whole floor on the history of maps, road signs, diagrams, typography and safety leaflets was exciting enough but the next floor had exhibitions on Penguin Books and Factory Records, not to mention an N64 with Mario to play on. The only disappointment was the shop which was a bit small and not as full of quirky things of wonder as I had expected. I did get some badges covered in the insides of envelopes though. I’m glad someone else notices these things.

After this I went over to the Tate Modern having heard great things about it. I loved the building but I was a bit disappointed by the art on show. There were very few things I liked that I hadn’t seen before and they seemed only to have inferior works by artists I like. I also found the new Modern Art is Important seriousness of the people there kind of tiresome. I think I liked it better when everyone scoffed at modern art, rather than thinking it’s all very serious and clever. Some of it, at least, is supposed to be fun so stop pondering it.

What did I like? The Rothkos were awesome in real life, sucking everything into themselves. All the pop art was fun to look at close close up to see all the human flaws that never show up in glossy reproductions. There was also a great room of prints by one guy, all with similar motifs of flowing body lines and flower overprints.

I was also impressed with the Bruce Nauman exhibitions – a room of colour treated projections of his studio recorded overnight, like a room of CCTV screens with nothing much happening. You’d get interested in the detail of one projection until a clank or thump made you think you were missing something on another side of the room. I could probably have sat there for hours. He also had a sound thing in the Turbine Hall with a series of speakers randomly muttering and hollering at you as you walked the length. It sounds a bit crap in print but in location with all the concrete and the high roof it was great; a child’s voice fading into sinister rasping fading into robotic repitition and so on. There’s a virtual version online.

To be continued with my trip to the THEATRE as I have not yet caught up on sleep and this is getting a bit long.

Hopefully I will get some of the new diskant stuff online tonight. I’ve been very busy lately for once and it is only going to continue what with it being MY 30TH BIRTHDAY ON FRIDAY, HINT HINT. All cutesy Japanese things, books and birthday greetings happily accepted.

Anyway, Trail of Dead on Sunday which was fun despite the shambles of trying to find a band member for interviewing purposes. Seems TOD don’t even soundcheck themselves any more! Is this the height of lazy rock star madness? We cornered Jason later with our buddies from Beard so look out for that in the next issue (haha, great photo of Jason and Conrad on Beardblog there). The TOD show was way better than the wee Tuts show last year. The album really does take a good few listens for its tuneful prog mentalism to take hold. Onstage fighting always good too. Sad I missed Conrad’s violin playing with The Black though. My highlight of the evening was definitely wee stuart singing an Uter song to me when describing how much they enjoyed listening to it through their huge PA. Yay.

Last night I went to see my workmates Fraser and Tom in their comedy sketch show You Owe Me Glue. I’m not a big fan of live comedy, particularly sketches but this was pretty funny. Certainly proved that running gags, ridiculous costumes and especially cuddly bunnies being evil is always funny.

FREE RECORDS!!!!!

I’m moving house soon so it is time for a clear out. I’ve already chucked out about ten million crappy old cassettes and am currently working my way through an ENORMOUS box of zines I found at the back of a cupboard. I also have some half decent cassettes, CDs and 7″s* that you are welcome to for the price of postage. Use the comments box or email marceline at diskant.net to claim anything, first come etc. Most of this is either review stuff, things I also have on vinyl or where I’ve copied the good songs to MP3. It’s all going to charity otherwise. More soon, maybe.

*I did go through my LPs and 12″s but only managed to discard one so I put it back in…

Ooh, I forgot I also have the following:

LEXMARK inkjet printer – does colour OR B&W but not both at the same time. It’s okay.
EPSON Scanner – only works with Windows 98, usefully. Pretty good scanner though.

These are FREE to anyone who can pick them up from Glasgow. I doubt they’re worth the cost of postage.

A Few Things Of Note

– I’ve tidied things up a bit here, you may have noticed. Hope you like it.

– Congratulations to Stewart and Beard for winning the EMAP Fanzine Award for best music fanzine presented by, of course, Steve Lamacq. The new Beard zine is well worth buying and not just because there’s an interview with me in it, ahem.

– Those of you missing listen-to and/or looking for a new Friendster/Myspace fix should sign up to Audioscrobbler which tracks your listening habits if you play music while online and links you with other people with similar listening tastes. Typically, I recognised a few of mine from zine/blogland. My page is here – feel free to mock me.

Apologies for lengthy delays in getting this next lot online. You’ll understand why when you see the epic article Chris Summerlin submitted entitled ‘diskant Gets The Blues‘. You may be edging away from your screen at this point but don’t be scared. Set some time aside and let Chris educate and entertain you with his best article yet. I live in fear of the day someone takes Chris away from us (which is why I bribe all editors to turn down his pitches).

We also have two marvellous Talentspotter label profiles by Simon Minter with Unpopular Records and Kabukikore. Both are incredibly interesting and full of ideas, insights and enthusiasm. So, welcome to the new diskant updates – where you can learn while seemingly wasting time on the internet!

Also, fame at last for a certain diskant blogger.

Oh dear, these have been sitting by my chair for ages. Sorry, zinesters.

ROBOTS AND ELECTRONIC BRAINS #14
Jimmy Possession is still my favourite reviewer. No-one else manages to play around with sounds and thoughts getting right into the heart of a song with seeming effortless ease. I’ll even forgive him for not saying anything particularly nice about my band since he described Denim and Diamonds so perfectly. As well as the pages and pages of record and demo reviews there’s also interviews with local community radio and lots of bands you’ve never heard of, an excellent guide to promoting gigs and a free CD to add to my pile of CDs that I never get around to listening to but should.
£4 for 3 issues – come.to/robots

BEARD #2
“Music, arts and facial hair” – what more could you want? This is a great Glasgow zine by some rather good writers and photographers who also do stuff for Plan B, Is This Music? and even diskant. There’s interviews (with Kinky Friedman, Weird War and Lucky Luke), reviews (of ATP, Le Weekend and T in the Park) and lots of random articles, cartoons, beard trivia and other bits and pieces to keep you well entertained. New issue out soon too.
£1.50 from Monorail etc. – beardmag.blogspot.com

CARTOGRAPHY FOR BEGINNERS #4 / FORGOTTEN ALBUMS BEST LEFT FORGOTTEN
Two zines for the price of one from husband and wife team April and David. April’s been zining forever and the fourth issue of her latest zine is as good as ever. Generally a bunch of writing about random stuff in her life but April’s life is always hella entertaining. Thus you get her tales of the the most annoying-est things people have done at the movies, her daily transportation fun, free pizza scammers etc. all written in April’s friendly open manner. If you don’t laugh then you don’t know what fun is. Husband David’s zine is self-explanatory – detailed reviews of some of the most unbelievably terrible and hilarious records he owns; records he bought to prove they exist. From French toddlers and cheesy christians to cartoon cats and hair metal, David painstakingly points out every ridiculous facet of these records from the song lyrics and sleeve notes to the terrible terrible sleeve art. Great stuff.
$2 from emotionlotion.org – check April’s cool badges as well.

I’ve been thinking a lot about The Male Nurse lately. With all the Franz Ferdinand stuff finally making people more aware of marvel that was the Yummy Fur, let’s hope some of that spotlight shines on their siblings, Lung Leg and The Male Nurse.

Anyway, to get to the point, I was delighted to hear more than a hint of The Male Nurse in the new demo by Glasgow duo Hex. It’s there in the jangly guitars and blasé sing-song vocals of Unready Unsteady and there’s even a bit of early Fall style shouting on Sorry For Nothing to make Hex probably Guided Missile’s favourite new band, if this was 1998.

Add the sort of drum machine that manages to make everything sound like classic eighties indie to drive the songs forward quick march, some dinky keyboard melodies and stacatto riffing and you’ve got quite the catchiest demo I’ve heard in a long time. Currently without a label so get on it, people!

Email: wearehex@hotmail.com

One year we might manage to get our end of year polls online before the end of January but it is not this year. Getting votes and comments out of our contributors is one of the more difficult tasks of the year but now it is finally done and you can enjoy it. As always there was little agreement amongst us as to the actual best records and films of the year and much complex maths was required to get fair and true top tens. This also means there is lots of disagreement in the comments which makes a nice change from most overly upbeat end of year lists.

So go read about our favourite albums and favourite films and please post your comments here and let us know what you think.

Dave Stockwell has also done us a seperate column about his favourite records of 2004 which overlap with our main choices more than he expected. Not so obscurist now eh Dave?

And to finish off JGram has been chatting to his favourite new band of the year, The Go! Team from Brighton.

One year we might manage to get our end of year polls online before the end of January but it is not this year. Getting votes and comments out of our contributors is one of the more difficult tasks of the year but now it is finally done and you can enjoy it. As always there was little agreement amongst us as to the actual best records and films of the year and much complex maths was required to get fair and true top tens. This also means there is lots of disagreement in the comments which makes a nice change from most overly upbeat end of year lists.

So go read about our favourite albums and favourite films and please post your comments here and let us know what you think.

Dave Stockwell has also done us a seperate column about his favourite records of 2004 which overlap with our main choices more than he expected. Not so obscurist now eh Dave?

And to finish off JGram has been chatting to his favourite new band of the year, The Go! Team from Brighton.

Note to Cinema-goers: If a notice on the door says “the temperature in this theatre is slightly lower than usual. We apologise for the inconvenience blah blah blah” please read this is “Our heating is broken and it is snowing outside, therefore this theatre is freezing. Just go and ask for your money back”.

Or you could stay for the film wearing your thick winter coat and mittens while the chill air blows around the large theatre and its 8 occupants. If you’re really lucky you’ll have turned up to watch a film with lots of outdoor scenes in wintertime and rain which will make you feel even colder and which also drags out its plotline so it seems like the film lasts for 4 hours rather than the actual 2. Then see if there’s any feeling in your feet when you leave. Thanks UGC, I love you too.

If it wasn’t that 2046 was such a distracting film then I probably would be £3.75 richer, and warmer, but then I might have never have had another chance to see this on a big screen which it begs for. A time twisting tangled love story, this makes such amazing use of colour, texture and the widescreen format that I kept forgetting to read the subtitles because I was gazing at a bit of wall or pavement which was taking up two thirds of the screen framing the action into the final third. Basically a tale of lost love and the inability to love, switching between the 60s and the futuristic train from 2046 it’s filled with long pauses and lengthy narration and had a similar mind breaking confusion/clarity of Murakami novel. I wish I could have cinema sized print outs of some of the stills to put on my wall and look at. Sigh.