I got a new point-and-shoot digital camera for Xmas. I was always a little shutter-happy anyway (my Flickr page has far too many photos on it) but getting to grips with this one has meant a couple of day trips in 2008 already and it’s still winter.

Wollaton Park in Nottingham: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157604088758388/

Rutland Water: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157604054833088/

A week ago I was not a writer for Diskant and there was an earthquake. My name is Daniel Chapman and I am now a writer for Diskant and there have not been any more earthquakes here. The earthquake was initially very confusing. I feared that the roof of my attic flat was being blown in and so I got out of bed and surfed the floor for a while. When this novelty was over I opened my window to see if the street held any hints. One of the many rules one observes in Leeds Six is that people will come out onto the streets at the merest hint of an event, such as a fire or an earthquake or a power cut (although I think it’s nice that wherever you are in the world people will always gather to look at a fire; in lonely moments I’ve considered the advantage of arson as a way to meet people). I knew for certain it had been an earthquake when I heard a tremulous and youthful voice shout “I felt it all the way over on Ash Road!“  Now, Ash Road is well over a mile away and with no time to have made that journey the young man must have meant Ash Grove; normally I would find this unforgivable but in the circumstances I’ll allow that perhaps he forgot his geography under stress and was not just some witless student wanker who has never bothered to learn the names of the streets he lives on.

Last summer I wrote a fairly long article for a fanzine and swore it would be the last writing I ever did about music. This spring the prompting of Chris Summerlin and the indulgence of Marceline Smith has placed me in a position where I will have to write about music again but I still think I can stay true to the principle I had in mind. The particular moment which made me swear my frustrated oath was when, pen poised, I was about to describe what Sonic Youth sound like. The whole situation was ridiculous and I am anxious to avoid a repeat. Perhaps striving to that end can be a theme of my writing for Diskant, and my brutal failure a theme of your reading.

At the weekend I visited Newcastle for the preview of the Little Chops exhibition at the Star and Shadow Cinema. Although I have a thunderous bias in favour of one of the artists involved I feel confident that nobody visiting the show over the next week will feel nepotised at my hand. Interesting things are on display there in photography, drawing, Amy Winehouse’s hair, piss, film, and the floor. While in Newcastle I also was oblivious to a pub brawl and nearly run off the motorway by a fool. I regret that I did not fully investigate the radio panel with ‘snooze sensor’ in my hotel room.

I live in Leeds and I am twenty-seven years old and I hope to hit a stride to fit Diskant soon.

HI

March 2008 sees a minor price hike for The Speeding Train. Increased print and postage costs means my profit margins are dwindling and it’s about time, after 3 years, that I went with inflation.

So from March 1st 2008 it’s going to be £5 per poster and my deal is now £12.50 for any 3 (plus postage).

BUT!

I am re-stocking in March so take the opportunity to buy a shitload of my old stock off me at the old price of £4 per poster and any 3 for £10 (plus postage) and I will throw in a minimum of 2 randomly selected used posters of my choice too. More likely I will throw in about 4 or 5 as I have tons. I’ll try and pick something you might like too.

Basically, all these are genuine gig posters, they’re printed up and used to promote gigs. I print the ones for use on lighter glossier paper and the ones for sale on heavyweight matte finish A3. I have piles of the glossy promo ones in my house and I can’t move. So if you order any of the posher ones from me I will chuck in some of the glossy ones too for you. They might be a bit creased or have some staple holes or whatever but they’re free, what’s your problem?!

So have a look here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sumlin/sets/72157594212951999/

and email me to check what I have in stock. This offer only applies to what I have in at present and it ends on Sunday 2 March.

Contact me on honeyisfunnyATfastmail.fm

I accept Paypal, cheque or lovely smelly cash.

There are over 100 to choose from…go see go see…

Liking the new diskant!

Listening: Lots and lots of Lungfish. A little Lungfish here and there also. I try and mix it up a bit with some Lungfish too.

Also: the Mick Turner/Tren Brothers compilation on Drag City showcasing one of the finest guitar players ever; Birds Of Maya on Holy Mountain which sounds like it was recorded from a record player with the stylus covered in pubic hair and wire wool; Nathan Bell’s solo banjo pieces sound like a spectral memory-trigger if ever I heard one; new Earth LP is a juicy monster (though I suspect if it were any other band this would be labelled ‘post-rock’ in reviews before you could blink); Sir Richard Bishop’s furiously-picked solo guitar records; the new Bilge Pump album ‘Rupert The Sky’ (click the link to be magically transported to Gringo Records’ Myspace page for a sneak preview).

Reading: I just finished Please Kill Me, the anecdotal history of Punk as told by some Americans. It’s fascinating stuff, especially when dealing with Detroit and the MC5 and Stooges. Less so when Patti Smith crops up at any given point. Patti Smith is bullshit, am I missing something with her or something?

Watching: Broke my “no trips to the cinema” policy to see No Country For Old Men, a film so detailed and so reliant on the audience’s total undivided attention that it only served to place my policy firmly back in action. I am never going to the cinema again. A guy sitting along from me screamed at the kids in the back to stop rattling their keys and then said kids moaned loudly when the ending didn’t deliver what they wanted/expected. It was excellent of course.

Been watching lots of randomised You Tube stuff as well which I will endeavour to share with you through diskant as often as possible.

Working on: an absolute pile of design work. Record sleeves for Crevecoeur from France, Bilge Pump, Beyond This Point Are Monsters and gig posters galore of course. Some shown below…

Team Damn You! has also been hard at work in 08 so far with some amazing shows by the likes of Enon and Fuck Buttons and more to come.

Music-wise, I only got round to doing my first gig of 08 last week when Felix opened for the Cave Singers in Nottingham. We’ve been hard at work on a Felix record with Mr Ian Scanlon at the helm. It should hopefully come out later this year when we ever finish it and we’re dead excited.

2nd Lords album hit a hiccup at the end of last year due to some crazy bad luck occurrences. It is done, dusted and being artworked at the moment with a view to coming out in May. It is called “Everyone Is People”. We tour with Bilge Pump in March in the UK. This summer will see a serious slowing down of Lords gig activity for good so come out and see us now.

Antipating: Lords LP/tour; Chris Leo playing in Nottingham; Human Bell playing in Nottingham; going to Australia later this year for a holiday; getting a new band together at some point (do YOU play drums or sing? Then email me!)…

Self-promoting: I think I’ve done enough of that already.

Exciting!

Listening: Lots of pop, the Klaxons have (surprisingly) found a special place in my heart. Also Madonna‘s Immaculate Collection has, much to the annoyance of my housemates, had some heavy rotation recently too. Hope for Men by Pissed Jeans has been filling me with grunge nostalgia, and Fuck Buttons‘ Street Horsssing has been keeping it technicolour.

Reading: Got into a really bad habit of starting books and not finishing them, which frustrates me more than possibly anything else in the world. Currently halfway through Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory which is going fairly well. Was given a copy of the 33 1/3 book on Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, which I look forward to tearing through with much glee. Still my favourite album ever.

Watching: Loads of Shameless, which I’ve really got into over the last month or so, after hating it for years. Constant Red Dwarf, despite the fact that I’ve seen every episode like a hundred times. Black Books, Nathan Barley and Jam too for good measure.

Working on: Loads of gigs, as part of the Crushing Death & Grief party collective, getting ready to start a new job with Apple, so I’ll actually be getting paid to be a smug bastard full time, and trying to figure out a way to get my art zine made. After an initial flurry of activity and interest last summer it’s become a real grind, but given the quality of submissions (art-wise, and music for the accompanying CDR!) I’ve already received, I’m determined to get this finished. If you know anyone would might like to contribute something, drop me a line!

Anticipating: Starting the aforementioned new job on March 8th, loads and loads of gigs including Trencher, Spiritualized, James Blackshaw, Family Underground, Björk, My Bloody Valentine, and of course the annual jaunt to Barcelona for Primavera Sound in May.

Self-promoting: I’ll skip the gigs since I already mentioned that. Er….. that’s basically it though. A much neglected personal (read: art/music/general crap, low on words, high on… er… crap!) blog called A Box Labelled Catastrophes that needs some work, but has photos of strippers on the first page!

Watching: John Sayles’ new film Honeydripper at the Glasgow Film Festival. Good stuff. Full post later, I hope.

Listening: No scope for lying to make myself looking cooler, since it’s all on my Last.fm profile but Honeydripper sent me off to lots of old blues and rockabilly stuff like Hank Williams’ Move it on over. Either public domain recordings rule, or I’m getting old.

Reading: Not enough books, too many webpages. Damn RSS aggregators.

(or, let’s all try out posting on the new blog!)

Listening: same old same old. I need something new. I also need a new stylus so I can listen to records again.

Reading: anything I can get my hands on, usually for free thanks to BookMooch. Kids fantasy and school books, design stuff, Badge Button Pin, Nylon magazine, approximately 4000 blogs.

Watching: LOST S4, Cloverfield, The Wire

Working on: badges and brooches, secret surprise gifts, diskant 10 year anniversary bash (this Summer!), zines (no, really), Oddments, Shopify.

Anticipating: February 29th – my last day of full time work! If you haven’t heard, I quit my job and will be doing the crafting and freelancing thing instead. Wish me luck! And if you need a nice unique handmade gift or a website designing then get in touch.

Self-promoting: my shop! Also my exhibition at The Park Gallery in Falkirk which finishes up end of February.

Well this has just put my faith back in life.

The Mother Dear disturbs my Coursework-Bedroom-Workingoncomputer strife – I’m happily playing ‘The GrimmRobe demos’ and I, slightly embarrassed, make a joke that it’s the latest release from our local church choir. Ho bloody ho. She brushed aside the shite joke, stopped for a moment and asked:

“Is it ‘Atom Heart Mother’?” (the record she grew up with)

“No, it’s some ‘drone-metal’ band called Sunn O)))” said I, obviously ommitting the brackets. I sighed and turned to my screen.

‘I quite like it’ she said.

Brilliant.

Hi

No posts for a while so sorry for that but I seem to have been at home for about 5 mins in the last month. I’ve long been using my Flickr profile as a Blog of sorts so I’m just uploading some photos of the last month or so and I will link them from Diskant as some are Diskant-related.
None more so than the marriage of Matt Tagney at the start of October. Matt screamed and whispered for years in the first band either of us were in, Reynolds. He got hitched to his long term girlfriend Kerry in the scenic surrounds of the Ulster Folk Museum in Northern Ireland at the start of October.

It looked a bit like this (click to go to the photos):

And the micro-holiday that happened around it looked like this:

and some lovely mouse-over action…go on then…

It was ace. As are Matt & Kerry: congratulations!

Coming soon: Glenn Branca’s Hallucination City in London, Ian Scanlon gets married.

Now playing: FSOL – Papua New Guinea, Sonz Of A Loop Da Loop Era – Far Out, Liquid – Sweet Harmony. Fuck knows what’s going on with my music at the moment, I’m thinking about getting a puffa jacket and an undercut again.

I’m kinda sad to report that most of my 2007 has been consumed with work woes and issues. At the beginning of the year I finally qualified as a fully blown certified accountant after too many years of study taking up too much of my “leisure” time. Anyhow, it proved quite the poison challis and re-iterated just how over qualified I was for my role at Buggles’s gaff despite it being something of my dream job. After much searching and truly painful dealings with swine and shysters posing as employment agencies who in reality barely has a brain cell between them (and evidently NOT the first idea about the industry I work in) I have landed another very good job in the music industry following failed applications (and interviews) at places such as the BBC, Wall Of Sound Records etc etc. It is proving a really tough job though and one that I have sadly had to sign a confidentiality form/contract/disclosure/document. On the flipside I never had to sign any such document when I worked for Buggles at the studio and there is some true scandal waiting to be uncovered by someone at that place. I truly miss working with many of the people there though, such as the former Big Brother South Africa contestant, the ex-Irish girl band member, the old Quentin Tarantino PA etc etc

So……my experiences of the music industry are never ceasing to surprise or illuminate, continuing to do so on an almost daily basis. I often feel disgust and disillusion at just how odious the whole process and profession is – firstly you ain’t accomplish shit without management to brown nose on your behalf. I have seen silly amounts of money thrown at some really third and fourth rate bands which is verging on soul destroying. Comparing what I see now to my previous life with Gringo, how on earth was a professional label able to come in and sign Hirameka without doing nish on the publishing side? Publishing by the way is money for old rope! The majority of acts seldom recoup advances so I have seen the future and it is – no advances! Message me offline and I will tell you a horrible tale of one of the biggest cowboys in the industry doing just that. And the dude looks like Danny Devito. Odious!

As a result of moving in these circles this week has seen me shaking my head to gigs by Incubus, the Dandy Warhols and the Happy Mondays pushing me back towards Shellac, Fugazi, Nirvana etc records more than ever.

Good gigs though! I am VERY excited about the Les Savy Fav in a couple of weeks, their new record does not fail to disappoint. Part of my thinks their return has been spurned on by the justified success of their friends The Hold Steady being flavour of the month, an OK band made amazing through thick layers of personality and a sense of genuine gratitude.

Devo take the honour of gig of the year at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire and are probably in the running for my all time favourite show. My God, for podgy old men in radiation suits there sure was a lot of energy, enthusiasm and excellence on show that night with every song a hit/classic. Which I have to say cannot be said for Sonic Youth doing Daydream Nation at the Roundhouse which left me with a resounding feeling of “meh”, which is something I would never have dreamt. And in recent weeks LITE from Japan really showed me a good time. I have also rediscovered hardcore after being enthused by the documentary movie American Hardcore and I currently love the band Coke Bust.

Movie wise I have enjoyed very few lately and avoided many films that I would have previously run to enthusiastically. The Simpsons Movie was only OK (it spread itself too thinly) but I am very excited about going to see Fay Grim (the sequel to Henry Fool) at the London Film Festival at the end of the month.

TV has been astonishingly good this year. Without doubt The Sopranos has solidified its place as the greatest TV drama of all time with some of the strongest episodes in the entire show’s existence, proving truly affecting especially in the genuinely jawdropping final four which performed the unthinkable and broached some real taboo subjects. Running in parallel I finally discovered The Wire as an equally well written and performed series, now four seasons old with an ensemble cast to die for and perhaps the smoothest villan in history in Stringer Bell. The show feels like an education in the most entertaining way, one from you come away feeling more intelligent. And finally the Sarah Silverman Program has made me laugh more than anything in recent memory. I question how she is able to put her “sick” humour on screen in such stifling times but I am thankful she has in these times of a real lack of humour in the world it seems.

The new Trapped In The Closet chapters (complete with Will Oldham cameo) despite now proving somewhat knowing totally delivered with the introduction of a ridiculous amount of ridiculous characters.

I have been to the theatre! I went to see the Bill Hicks Slight Return for the third time in as many years last Friday and it still rocks my world. A few weeks prior to that I caught Warren Mitchell (Alf Garnett) in Colchester performing the play Visiting Mr Green and it felt a true privilige to see an 81 year old legend in performance. And on my birthday I finally got to see Avenue Q which was as glorious as I was imagining it would be.

Comedy rocks! Seeing the David Cross residence at the 100 Club was a genuine treat, Eugene Mirman is a big Russian bear of comedy and is currently appearing in Flight Of The Conchords – something I can’t make my mind up on. And Josie Long just continues to get funnier and funnier while my friends Pappy’s Fun Club have returned from the Edinburgh Festival with resounding success and Robin Ince’s Myspace blog remains one of the funniest reads online.

The closure of Fopp (especially the Tottenham Court Road store) has hit me hard.

I continue to try and get my book done. The first edit was put into a printable template of 387 pages back around June but I decided to make a few additional edits and the manuscript has remained in limbo since but I have to draw a line under it soon and get the thing put out otherwise it will never get done. In the meantime I am tentatively working on four other writing ideas to varying degrees of success, a number of which I am sure will fall to the wayside. Hopefully the Douglas Coupland reading at the Bloomsbury Theatre this week will prove inspiring.

I want a new dog but I have no room in my flat.

The Danny Baker podcasts have proved a real surprise highlight of my summer, getting my through many commutes to London and the recent football shows are some of the best podcasts on the internet.

Somehow I remain really enjoying listening to daytime Radio One at work despite walls of shitty “indie” guitar bands easily being eclipsed by pop and mainstream electronic music sounding REALLY savvy and even experimental in comparison. Nowhere will you hear a better song this year than “Police On My Back” by Lethal Bizzle

My apparent fetish for High School Musical apparently has no ends (according to my ex-work colleagues).

American Apparel clothing has really gone downhill.

Eating out is all about dim sum.

I love London more than ever.

I need a holiday.