OK, inspired by Jason’s compelling 2004 A-Z, here’s mine:

Aufgehoben (our exciting first release – see F)

Bristol (spent lots of time there when Cardiff couldn’t deliver the goods)

Cod sperm (my first – and hopefully last – taste of Shirako: raw cod sperm sacs)

Damo Suzuki (saw him twice, both times were life changing)

Every day is like Sunday (see U)

Fourier Transform (an exciting new record label!)

Giving homes to stray cats

Hat (not having cut my hair since March, I’ve taken to wearing woolly hats)

Improv (my new musical thing – see S)

John Peel (irreplaceable)

Kara (sometimes I can’t believe I’m married)

Lightning Bolt (best live band this year)

Money (lack of. see R)

Noi Albinoi (one of the only films I saw this year that wasn’t rubbish)

Oh god, I need to stop spending so much time on the internet

Pitch shift (what my super-complex ‘sound processing’ method consists of – see I)

Quiet nights in

Redundant

Sunnyvale Noise Sub-element (I left the band)

Terrible demos (see F)

Unemployed (see R)

Vibracathedral Orchestra (bought loads of their stuff, saw them live for the first time, tried to convince Neil to let us release something of theirs)

Wales

X-men 2 (saw it 3 times during long flights, equally pathetic each time)

Yoghurt (discovered a new exciting flavour/brand – Rachel’s Coconut: with bits!)

Z (my new favourite Cartesian co-ordinate, after last year’s Y)

2004 End Of Year Poll time.

Here’s my Alphabet Of 2004:

A) All Tomorrows Parties (April)

B) Blogging

C) Cahill’s goal in the FA Cup semi final

D) DJing

E) English A-Level class

F) Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas Criterion Collection DVD

G) The Go! Team

H) Hunter S. Thompson

I) Iggy Pop on the South Bank Show

J) Jack Black

K) Kevin Muscat

L) Lost In Translation

M) Mr Show series four on DVD

N) Nirvana boxset (albeit not very good)

O) old habits

P) Phoebe Luk

Q) winning the Quidney Cup (a Playstation/Pro Evolution Soccer 3 tournament for stoners)

R) Run Ronnie Run

S) Sopranos series five

T) Tate Modern

U) UEFA Cup match: Millwall against Ferencvaros of Hungary

V) very first “A” grade at anything (in this case, English essay/coursework)

W) Woody Allen movies

X) The x-ray on my ankles in January

Y) Y2J Chris Jericho

Z) Allen Zuk of the Blitters

What about the rest of the Diskant team?

hi gang, been doing things recently (in a roundabout way). best of all was a rather wonderful trip to san francisco where we saw hella, walked up some massive fuck off hills and ate crazy new food. thanks mainly to the insane amoeba records, we are now up to our eyeballs in new music too, which is pretty great. in another thinly veiled excuse for a band list, here are some recent purchase highlights:

alvarius b/dylan nyoukis – sugar: the other white meat lp

dylan nyoukis – with hicks in the sudan cassette

friends forever/gang wizard – split 9″ (lathe cut too, no less)

ashtray navigations/gang wizard – split 7″

amon duul ii – yeti cd

amon duul ii – phallus dei cd

sunroof! – bliss 2cd

wolf eyes & smegma – the beast lp

wolf eyes & black dice – collaboration lp

riveting, i’m sure you’ll agree. buying stupid records and then showing them off as shamefully as possible is one of the best pastimes a man can have if you ask me. the live circuit is still fairly quiet, but we are hopefully seeing KHANATE!!!!! next thursday. judging by the live photos circulating from the shows they’ve been playing, they look insane and should be nothing short of excellent. just after that, cheer accident are playing in town with a band featuring ex-members of sweep (remember them?!) which i’m kind of in two minds over. all this activity of course in no way makes up for the fact that we’re missing atp this year (and all the various gigs that the bands are playing around the same time). i for one am also insanely jealous that mister younger is getting to go to no fun fest in nyc! jammy tyke. and as if that weren’t enough, radio playing excitement to boot? how does he do it?

on a slightly sadder note, a tiny little part of my soul finally died yesterday, as we gave up on the endless struggle against all of society, and bought mobile phones. fancy ones too, with cameras and email and all kinds of crap. we’ll be eating tapas and ending loud and irritating public conversations with “ciao” before you know it.

other recent things include: long overdue haircuts, the surprisingly good dawn of the dead remake, final fantasy:crystal chronicles, vague plans to move to various different places which usually last about an hour, kickass new tape deck with flashy lights and things, and of course, a constant state of anarchic joblessness. when will the excitement end?

kudos must go to chris s. for his saab purchasing. after a big clanky late 80s volvo, a saab would definitely be my car of choice (if i could drive, this is). i think though, if he mentions the slint thing to anyone else, his saab should become THE saab from tweez, it would make for a much better story, especially since it would be coming from chris summerlin, master of rock, and would therefore be entirely believable.

lastly, down there on the left just above the blogger button, you can now see what each of us have been listening to. well, currently it’s just marceline and i *coughSTAFFcough*, but hopefully it will provide you with some insight into, er, something or other. this somewhat miraculous feat of technology (by my standards) is provided by listen-to.com. clever stuff.

Good way to make a compilation: A to Z. It’s a winner. My bus journey minidisc for the week features

AC/DC

THE BAND

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART

DEERHOOF

EXCELSIOR

JOHN FAHEY

GOLDEN

HOT SNAKES

I’M BEING GOOD

SKIP JAMES

KING CRIMSON

LE TIGRE

MUDHONEY

NIRVANA

WILL OLDHAM

ELVIS PRESLEY

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE

RED EYED LEGENDS

ARCHIE SHEPP

TALK TALK

UNWOUND

THE VAN PELT

TOM WAITS

THE EX (cheating a bit)

NEIL YOUNG

ZZ TOP

chris

Like:

Irresponsible impulse-buying of things we can’t even begin to afford and really don’t need

Castlevania on the PS2 (see above)

Pilsbury Toaster Strudels (you can ice them yourself!)

Wolf Eyes (still)

No like:

Irresponsible impulse-buying of things we can’t even begin to afford and really don’t need

Insane weather (it was in the high 70s at the start of this week and now it’s a couple of degrees above freezing or something)

The idiots who apparently haven’t found the time to give me a work permit yet

The price of beer

Elsewhere this week: We saw Birdland who are two people who used to be in Love Life and Jaks. Katrina sang and shimmied around while Sean played organ and guitar at the same time which was very impressive. They also had an odd looking centrafuge type thing behind them which had lights and made a funny noise and seemed like it might be something to do with the organ. If anyone knows exactly what the purpose of this was, other than to look nice, we’d like to know. They were very good though.

We also saw The Matrix Revolutions which was a marvel to look at but was disappointing as a climax to the trilogy. I never liked anything to do with The Matrix before this summer, but after seeing the last one I was hoping for big things, which it didn’t deliver, at least not in terms of storyline. Some of the action is truly incredible though, and it’s probably worth seeing just for that.

Nice to see Chrisummerlin posting, now it won’t just be me who swears far too much. It’ll be quite something to finally see that Wolves record too, about time!

– New York is more interesting at night
– the Subway’s not that scary, Harlem’s not that scary and Brooklyn’s not that scary
– everyone downtown looks like a model and/or is trying too hard
– midtown is boring, downtown is fun but expensive
– on my first night I missed more good gigs than I would see here in a month
– barstaff who get tipped are more helpful and chatty and give you free drinks
– people like Scottish accents and they say “I’m scottish too”
– nobody goes to Central Park to relax, they go to Do Things, like run in a very determined manner
– Johnny Cash’s death got as much attention as some sitcom “star” I hadn’t heard of
– there wasn’t a shortage of people to tell me how much they disliked George Bush
– Boston has more bikes than the whole of Scotland (maybe)
– the Lucy Parsons Center on Columbus Avenue is my favourite bookshop
– even I am better than the average American at football
– any kind of weird music you like, you can easily find a bunch of people who are into it here
– taxi drivers really do keep talking at you after the journey’s over. I met a revolutionary socialist from Romania
– trucker caps are out
– it’s hard to find shops that are interesting and not just big
– you can read the most beautiful poem ever but in a competion you’ll always get beat by the girl talking about giving head
– CBGBs is like punk was never happening; Bowery Ballroom is a top venue
– USA doesn’t get youth hostels

I take back everything nasty I’ve ever said about the place.

I had my dad visiting this weekend so we decided to get on a train to Edinburgh and see some stuff. Partially because the Edinburgh International Games Festival was on, it has to be said. We also did some fairly educational traipsing round the Royal Museum and Our Dynamic Earth so here’s what I learned, in no particular order:

– DinoBirds are better than birds but not as great as dinosaurs

– Leopard seals are unexpectedly ENORMOUS and extremely scary

– It was pretty cold in the Ice Age

– Tropical rain showers are pretty lame when compared to a typical Glasgow day but Glasgow downpours could be made more fun by having a man work the crowd beforehand.

– Children are more scared of a shark than a Cyclops

– I know lots about Antarctica, strangely

– My favourite bridge building era is…err…oh heck, I’ve forgotten

– A child frantically punching his hands at lightning speeds can kill as many ninjas on the EyeToy game as a child boredly flapping his arms about and not even looking at the screen.

– Unicorns are really twee

– having a cinema screen on the ceiling so you can lie on your back while you watch stuff is a fantastic idea (except for when you have to get up at the end)

– going back 15,000 million years in a time machine only takes a couple of minutes

– At the same time as the mountains and valleys of the earth were formed by glaciers, balloon animals roamed the icy wastes (or maybe a small child left one there)

– Nothing we saw was as exciting as catching pigs in Zelda Wind Waker

New job designing websites for quality meat product suppliers and towbar sellers means I am s-k-i-n-t until payday and thus completely missing out on Glasgow’s best gig week in months. No Erase Errata, American Analog Set, 90 Day Men, El Hombre, Hex, Cat Power or Nina Nastasia for me. Waaah.

Still, at least the weather’s nice, eh? I got up really early today and went to see Watership Down with a small child which was rather nostalgic. I didn’t blub though, possibly because they kept messing up the sound so I never really got into it. And then I did some gardening and planted some herbs and once I’ve finished here I’m going to take my computer to bits. mmm.

So, Things I Like (in the absence of cash)

– Mario Party 3! Without my Mario Party Gang I would die of boredom and miss out on the opportunity to throw giant snowballs at my flatmates. But my button pushing fingers might hurt less. Not as good as Mario Party 2 though due to far too many memory games.

– Friendster! Yes, I am sad and pathetic. But I have twelve friends!

– Papa M Rediscovery possibly prompted by finding David Pajo on Friendster

– The re-design of diskant! Oooooooh, bet you can’t wait, etc.

ok ok, so my plan to kick-start the blog by spurring a frenzy of blazin’ squad appreciation didn’t go completely to plan. still, people are blogging again, so i might as well join in with the ‘stuff i like’ lists…

sweet lord yes!
those new chocolate bars with smarties in
chocolate in general
the horrible christmas rush at work being over
cold crisp mornings

hell no!
cold crisp mornings
bouncing rent cheques
money/banks/the western world in general
that guy from busted’s eyebrows, terrifying

i’ll have some of that action

Things I like:
– My Beach Boys car tape which spans their whole career and Brian Wilson’s descent into loopydom within 45 minutes
– The film, 24 Hour Party People
– Oxford, which so far appears to be even more beautiful than Reading
– My new Bialetti coffee maker

Things I don’t like:
– The very real, imminent possibility of a driving ban due to getting caught speeding too many times. And yes, I KNOW it’s my own fault
– Coldness