I got 3 CDs in my copy of The Wire this week. An extra copy of the subscriber-only Phonorama and if anyone thinks they’d like it, they can have it. Leave a mention or contact details in the comments.

Phonorama is an improvised electronic piece that’ll remind you of Fennesz or Oren Ambarchi. Extremely pleasant in my opinion and about as accessible as a Wire CD would get. The packaging’s cute too, if flimsy and all-in-all it’s better than the Wire Tapper compilation.

While on the subject of The Wire, their blog has led me to some good articles recently. I especially liked k-punk‘s essays on class and culture (but the specific one that caught my eye, I’ve lost; sorry).

It’s the biggest science experiment in the world, silly people are getting freaked out by the prospect of a baby black hole eating the whole world, it’s make-or-break for all current physics theories and what’s the BBC’s response?

• a radio episode of hack sci-fi series Torchwood
• Andrew Marr (former economics guy, aye?) smashing barely-detectable metaphors together in the hope of producing some insight
• schoolchildren explaining why it’s great and important (“cos we’ll, like, find out new stuff even if we don’t find anything”)

As weak as gravitational waves.

Given the scale of the project and the ambition, there was really only one way to adequately deal with the subject and it would involve Godzilla spinning Mecha-Godzilla round and round by the tail before smashing it into Gojira, as spun by King Kong.

I have been wondering what the LHC sounds like, too. It’s definitely not cutesy hip-hop (I love scientists but we overwhelmingly suck at picking tunes).

Somewhat inevitably, I decided it sounds like Merzbow but in a relaxed way. So like his collaboration with Nordvardgr, which happily enough has a track called Tachyon Paradox.

Lots of sound and fury over “piracy” of music and films. One situation where there’s no grounds for compliant must be those films that hardly get shown in cinemas in this country, i.e. anything with subtitles. Picking random torrents off of the Pirate Bay isn’t for the faint-hearted but it does turn up some gems.

La Sconosciuta is an Italian thriller from a couple of years back, more indebted to Hitchcock than the giallo / Argento tradition. Has a very muted palette for one thing and the similarly-murky morality makes it a more mature piece of work.

A woman arrives in an Italian city, blank and hollow, with a number of secrets in her past. What’s her motivation for inserting herself so determinedly into the life of, first this apartment block then this family? All standard thriller stuff, but what makes the film stand out is the shifting sands of your sympathies for the main character. Is she victim or villain? Why is she stalking these people and what does she want with the child?

That relationship with the child is the (rather cauterised) emotional heart of the film, fascinating and disturbing. There’s a lengthy scene where the child is being taught to be stand up for herself by being pushed over with bound hands and feet. It goes on and on, the kid gets more and more upset and is extremely uncomfortable to watch. Yet at other times it’s clear that she cares deeply for the child. The ambiguity introduces tension over and beyond the whodunnit? aspects and makes the film one that would probably repay repeat viewing.

Without the Pirate Bay, would it be possible to see this film in this country? It might’ve got a couple of showings on the arthouse circuit, I don’t remember it. Otherwise I think you’d have to wait for a Hollywood remake where the “difficult” parts would be removed to make it a story of redemption and you’d find yourself wondering what the fuss was about.

So I’m with the pirates. AAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgh!

Nuts & Seeds are maybe the most interesting gig promoters in Glasgow at the moment. The last show of theirs I went to was Vialka at the 13th Note, where they were giving away a cute miniature catalogue of their upcoming gigs, all of which looked good.

There’s one at the Flying Duck (hidden up the hill from Walkabout, but they’re too cool to advertise that fact :P) on the 10th September. It features Peeesseye, “yapping three-headed (former) NYC electroacoustic junkyard dog who evades lunk scumnoise pound & braniac improv leashes to dig up free music’s old bones & birth it’s own avant-mongrel sounds.”

Add in some guitar and big Taiko drum for a £4 door tax and it sounds like a good night…

After a complaint about punters shagging at the Arches‘ “Burly” gay club night, the venue has been told to shut for the next 6 weeks.

Could have serious consequences for the Arches, which is 85% self financing and shows some of the most innovative work in Glasgow, including hosting the Instal festival for most / all of its time.

It’s not all bleak though, this story about an orgy in a nightclub does include a policeman saying “Lest the chief constable’s position be misinterpreted”…

Some ideas people come up with make no sense but they don’t see it.

I appreciate that there are 2 ways to increase profit from a product. You sell more, or you sell more expensively. So any ridiculous item is made to seem luxurious, from bog roll to fabric softener.

But I think some kind of limit has been reached with White Diamond & Lotus Flower-scented washing powder. As far as I know, lotus flowers were the ancient Greeks’ version of heroin and diamonds are solid lumps of carbon that don’t emit chemicals and can therefore have no smell.

I decided to investigate.

I thought that perhaps there’d been a printing error and that it wasn’t the smell of white diamonds, but the smell of the jakey’s favourite £3 tipple White Lightning. (Cider is, after all, pretty trendy these days.)

Alas no. I had a sniff in the supermarket this afternoon and can exclusively reveal that what White Diamond & Lotus Flowers smells like is… Continue reading »

Edinburgh festival? Gash. But some interesting stuff occasionally slips through the sketchshow-pitching oxbridge footlight hordes. See this for the 22nd & 23rd of this month:

I’m told “will be somewhat crazy japanese performance with theremin and other unusual instruments,” it’s free and it’s in the very nice Botanic gardens. What’s not to like?

(Well, the press release, which sounds like it came from some grant-awarding body but never mind.) If anyone gets along to this I’d be interested to hear how it was.

Haven’t bothered visiting the Onion for quite a while, it seemed that either the written content was getting formulaic or I couldn’t find the lulz because of the redesign.

However, I’m liking their video podcasts. From the 2 I’ve seen, they’re doing for US cable news what the Day Today did to News at Ten. This one (Beijing Olympics: Trap?) is like a 3 minute primer on Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent.

In other news: beat rising prices by holding a barbecue at your house. Result: fridge full of food.

If someone who knows more than me about riot grrrl-y tunes could tell me what the song on this video is it would make me happy.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=pVaUYVF-Cfk[/youtube]

Sarky IT news site the Register has an interesting article about Last.fm and independent labels. Apparently the site (now owned by the massive CBS) that used to be cuddly little Audioscrobbler isn’t passing much of anything on to the artists whose music it streams, despite shouting about how cool it is.

Just 10% of advertising revenue goes into the musicians’ pot, not any of the subscription revenue. Maybe it’s that I’m running AdBlock but I don’t remember seeing any adverts on last.fm.

The article continues an amusing analogy between “web2.0” sites and sharecropping, where lots of people do work on a small scale while one big site (i.e. landlord) creams off the revenue. It’s all about the Benjamins, no matter how many beanbags you have in your office…