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diskant is an independent music community based in Glasgow, Scotland and we have a whole team of people from all over the UK and beyond writing about independent music and culture, from interviews with new and established bands and labels to record and fanzine reviews and articles on art, festivals and politics. There's over ten years of content here so dig in!

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Archive for the 'overlord updates' Category

Holiday Schedule

Posted: June 22nd, 2008, by Marceline Smith

I’m off gallivanting yet again, this time to Bangkok to visit my good friend Claire and escape the horrible weather forecast for the UK. However, thanks to the wonders of WordPress, there will be new content nearly every day of my absence, even if no-one else at diskant lifts a finger. It’s a bit like when the school holidays rolled round and the TV schedules were suddenly full of Why Don’t You? and terrible Australian dramas, only even better!

Wil Forbis’s Bargain Bin Culture
diskant will still bring you a fresh dose of Forbis every Tuesday and Friday around 10am, ready for your morning coffee break. Try not to spit it all over your computer screen.

diskant Summer Catch-up 2008
This was going to be an article but it got way out of hand so instead every day at 4pm you’ll get a new blog installment of what the diskant team have been enjoying this Summer, starting with records and continuing with books, films, video games, bands, television & radio, zines, places & events and websites. It all starts properly tomorrow but look out later today for a special introductory offering from the legendary Greg Kitten.

And that’s not all!
I also present the first Talentspotter interview in approximately 15 years; a chat with Stonehaven’s finest export, Copy Haho. You’ll be hearing lots more from them soon, I predict, so why not read up on them now and you can make yourself look cool. They’re quite amusing too. Go go go >>

diskant construction update (slight return)

Posted: June 20th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

HURRAH, I think I have finally finished reformatting every single damn page on diskant into the new format. I haven’t been able to do any page redirects because a) my mac doesn’t like htaccess files and b) it’s so much work, but you should be able to find everything via the Features or Talentspotter indexes, or by using the handy search box top right.

Here’s some cool stuff I spotted in the archives as I toiled:

– Chris Summerlin’s masterworks; diskant gets the blues and the time he interviewed himself about Sonic Youth
– Dave Stockwell’s still-awesome and relevant guide to getting gigs
– Xoë challenging Steve of Cat on Form (now of Blood Red Shoes) to answer for their political stances.
– My favourite interviewees; Icebreaker International and Mogwai
– Excellent interviews with Zoot Horn Rollo, Ian Mackaye, Guy Picciotto, Foetus and Steve Turner

Enjoy! But hurry up, as there’s a whole stack of new content hitting diskant this weekend.

diskant construction update

Posted: June 10th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

Sorry for all the banging and broken stuff around here. I have now fixed up the Talentspotter section into the new layout after it all went very screwy this morning. As I cut and pasted, I found myself re-reading a few interviews – here’s a few that caught my eye and are definitely worth a quick read:

Lords in full on gibberish mode and Gay Against You in crazy/intelligent modes
Pickled Egg and Gringo Records on the ins and outs of running a label
Foals before they even had any photos, plus The Young Knives and Youthmovies before they were famous.

I am now inspired to actually get interviews completed with all my favourite new bands. Also, who should we be featuring next?

NEW NEW NEW

Posted: June 6th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

Things are finally happening again at diskant, you’ll be pleased to hear. Our first new feature in about 8 months is now online; a round-up of our fun times at All Tomorrow’s Parties (curated by Explosions in the Sky). There are a few more articles and interviews in the pipeline so hopefully we’ll be back to some kind of regular schedule soon.

It is diskant’s ten year anniversary this summer, so to celebrate I will be pulling some stuff out of the vast diskant archives and making it available again. We’ll be starting with a series of columns that Wil Forbis wrote for us a few years ago – a hilarious set of reviews of forgotten and unloved bargain bin classics. 3 of these columns actually feature in his awesome new book so consider it a taster for new readers. I’ll be posting one or two columns a week here on the blog and there’s plenty more good stuff to come after that.

I’m also pulling the main content of diskant (articles, interview, Talentspotter etc.) into the new diskant style but expect this to take a while. There is a new features index which will be updated as the new pages are created. The other sections will follow suit, eventually.

What’s cluttering up the diskant inbox?

Posted: April 17th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

Some emails of possible interest

* The legendary Creation compilation Doing It For The Kids has inspired a new 3CD charity compilation which features such Creation luminaries ex-Jasmine Minks members, Ed Ball, and um, one of Hurricane #1. There are also tracks by the likes of Ballboy, Popup, de Rosa and The Orchids. There are only 266 actual copies available, which will be individually auctioned for Yorkhill Children’s Hospital in Glasgow. You can also download the whole thing here for just £6.49 with all proceeds going to charity. Find out more at www.myspace.com/yorkhillproject

* Roger from the on-hiatus Dawn Of The Replicants has set up “a shabby DIY label type of a thing” called Shark Batter with his brother and are releasing a bunch of new things soon including his new band TheStarkPalace, The Stone Ghost Collective and Vacuum Spasm Babies. Have a listen and find out more at www.myspace.com/sharkbatterrecords

* Beginning your email, “Dear Fierce Terrifying Force” is one way to get my attention. Tom Braham is from Southampton and does aa “free weekly show of nit-wit fun and the best bands live in session” by podcast Not sure about “best” but they are certainly big-ish names like I Am Kloot and Six Nation State. Have a listen here.

* It seems to be down just now but hopefully that’s just a blip. wikimobileactunsigned.com is a wiki “for local band scenes across the UK to create and maintain a local directory of useful stuff in their area. Everything from record labels, studios, local papers and radio, gig venues, cd duplication places, t-shirt printing places, etc etc.”  Good idea if people find some time to help out.

That’s all for now.

Random Fun

Posted: April 10th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

I forsee no sleep ever again. CLICK HERE for random diskant goodness from the archives, then CLICK on the same link in the left sidebar and CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK. God, what a lot of amazing nonsense we used to post on here.

(yesyes, there are still many untitled and uncategorised posts back there. I’m not quite that bored, yet.)

Send us your records!

Posted: March 31st, 2008, by Marceline Smith

Finally, after about six months of procrastinating, thinking and watching the diskant review box spiral out of control, we are now accepting new submissions for review. You can see how it all works on the new Review Submissions page. The robot is now on a break and you can interact directly with the diskant reviewers.

Since there were clear notices all over diskant announcing that we were not accepting new review material, I don’t feel any guilt in throwing out everything that is currently sitting in the box, unlistened to and unreviewed. It’s possible I might find some time to dig out anything that looks any good. Don’t hold your breath though.

Anything sent to me, unsolicited, will now be binned immediately. Please follow the new guidelines. If you want to strike diskant off your promo list, I will not blame you in the least. However, it is helping nobody for me to have a crate of dusty ignored CDs in my front room. Thank you.

Minor update of fun

Posted: March 17th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

There are two new fun little things on the blog. At the bottom of the right sidebar, you’ll now see a long list of all the diskant writers past and present. If you click on their names you can see every post they’ve written in one handy section! I will of course be tracking clicks to see who is the most popular diskanteer (not really).

The other thing is at the end of individual posts. Just before the comments you’ll now see a link to whatever we were blogging about on that day a year earlier. Who knows what you might find bubbling up from the archives.

Re-introduction

Posted: February 25th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

Ooh, we have a new blog! We have upgraded and combined and now all the diskant blog content is available in one place. I hope you like it. Over on the right menu you will find a list of categories which should help you find anything from the past you wish to read. There are still some older posts to be categorised but I am working on it! You’ll also find some cool stuff in the sidebars – Flickr pics of what the diskant writers are up to and links to websites and music we think you might like. More things will be coming soon too.

The rest of diskant will slowly be joining us in the new design but there is a lot of stuff in the archives and it may take a while. I apologise in advance for any oddness. I expect also there will be a few broken links and suchlike for a short period until Google has a proper look round our new setup. If you spot any major issues do let me know though.

RSS folks – you’ll be wanting to ditch all the previous diskant rss feeds and just use the new combined one which will keep you right up to date: http://feeds.feedburner.com/diskant

No pie today

Posted: February 7th, 2008, by Marceline Smith

no pie today

Just to keep you updated – the new diskant is actually nearing completion and so you may notice some odd things going on in the next couple of weeks while we swap things over. The first part to launch will be an amalgamated blog of record reviews, films and all the usual nonsense. The new blog is so much better in terms of organisation, functionality and layout so I hope you like it. It does have a whole category dedicated to pie.

In the meantime, we are still not accepting review submissions. I am working on a new submission policy and all will be revealed soon.

Thank you for your patience!