Some Cosmic Bollocks

If you tune yr TV to an empty frequency, obviously all you get is white noise and flickering static on yr screen. The cool thing is, around five percent of that A/V noise is the cosmic microwave background, the fading electromagnetic remnant of the moment space and time erupted into existence. Which begs one question. Which five percent?

This Is Funnier Than Lars Ulrich

Go here:

http://www.mothersagainstnoise.org/

I so fucking hope this isn't a hoax, but if it is, it's a beautiful one...

Kong My Whopper

I wouldn't normally congratulate Burger King on anything, but that is the best slogan I've seen on a poster for quite some time. I can think of so many contexts in which I could use this phrase, but strangely none of them have anything to do with fast food.

The Campaign For Real Winter

I'm not in a bad mood, it's just that I absolutely fucking hate this time of year, as the season of enforced fun is upon us once more and the streets are packed with arseholes. Plus it's not cold enough. Did the Earth tilt on its axis at some point over the past year? Maybe it's just me, or my hyperactive metabolism, or the fact that my nerve endings don't seem to respond to temperature like other people* (at least three people will point out to me at some point in January that I've got the windows open and my sleeves rolled up even though there's icicles hanging from the taps in the bathroom), but it's too warm at the moment. I demand real fucking winter to go with my Black Metal, Red Wine and Blue Vodka**. It's too fucking warm for December. I love bitter winter mornings when every footstep crunches with the shattering of billions of tiny ice crystals, the cold white light and blazing low sun making it appear as though everything has it's own sharp black outline against the sky, somehow emphasising the spaces between as much has the shapes themselves. It's beautiful.

*Or maybe I just have a fetish for icy cold things. I should probably stop this line of thought right now.

**Smirnoff Norsk, it looks like bleach, but it tastes a damn sight better.

Come Worship The Wicker Pig

Before I get back to rambling about my life, I should tell you lovely people to come to this, cos we're playing, and The Telescopes kick serious arse, and there's no better way to celebrate the shortest day than to immerse oneself in a darkly glowing psychedelic cloud...

The Telescopes + Detwiije + Morgen Und Nite

At the Buffalo Bar*

goo go gang DJS til late

Doors 8.30 - 1am. Tickets £5 or £4 (flyer/nus).

Info: 020 73596191.

*Which is next to Highbury & Islington toob, beneath the Famous Cock

Twisted, But In No Way Bitter Part 2

I should go to bed. I have to sleep. I've been awake for far too long now. But I don't want to. I might miss something. Time seems to be moving faster than usual, and it's not drugs for a change, I'm just mildly stoned, it just seems that 24 hours in a day aren't fucking enough at the moment, there's so much music to play, so many people to see, too many ideas spinning round my head, too much electricity burning through my blood. I'm so fucking wired right now. I'll tell you about the rest of last night tommorow, but right now, coherence ain't my strong point. Suffice to say that tonight was another motherfucking killer. I'm not entirely sure what Sonic Mook were expecting from us, but it sure as shit wasn't the 20 minute one track jazzpsychbluesgrind raised middle finger that they got. It were lovely.

I can't see straight. Time for bed.

Boing...

Twisted, But In No Way Bitter Part 1

As I type this, my brain is still in bed, lying the wrong way round with it's boots on the pillow and head under the covers going "uuuurrrrrrrggggg".

Yesterday night was a blur of booze, pills, shrooms and ungentlemanly behaviour. I only meant to have a couple of pints with a few friends before heading to the Plan B nite. As you've probably guessed, I didn't get there. Wine and beer had flowed freely for several hours by this point and the conversation spiralled down into the depths of vulgarity it always reaches when certain people gather together and start drinking. I now know something about a certain musician which would make you piss yrself laughing and shiver at the wrongness of what someone you know thinks is acceptable behaviour. I wish I could tell you this story here, but it's far too disgusting to relate publicly, and I'd probably get my head kicked in. But if you ask me nicely the next time you see me, I'll probably tell you. One by one, people left as they became too pissed to do anything except engage drunkenhomingbeaconautopilot and sine wave their way home. I was standing at the bar, waiting to get served, when I heard a loud kiwi female voice from the opposite bar say "Fuckin Hell, is that Lee?"

Now I know what y're thinking, but no, it wasn't who you think it was. If it had been I doubt I would have walked straight round to the other bar grinning like a fool to give her a huge hug, and there is no fucking way what happened later would have happened. It was weird, we lived in the same house in 93/4, always getting stoned and drunk and whatever together, both really liked each other, but nothing ever happened, even though we were both single at the same time. Admittedly in those days neither of us knew what day it was half the time, which may have had something to do with it, and after she moved out, she went back to NZ and we lost touch. So when I heard those strident tones across the bar, I was a little surprised, to say the least.

I was also really fucking pleased. a lot of the people who I knew during the time I was in Skree have moved away, emigrated, burnt themselves out or just given up, leaving behind all the weirdness and anyone who was there at the time, which is a shame, but you know... So there she was. Same long black hair, same lopsided grin, same piercing green eyes behind the same glasses she always wore. Total fucking deja vu overload.

More later, got to go and blast the fuck out of some freejazz mayhem down in Brixton, but there's so much more I need to say about last night and other stuff I'll probably carry on as soon as I get home. My brain may have got out of bed and had a shower by then so maybe I'll be slightly more coherent.

Necro Church Bonerfest

I do like a fucked-up church, Gaudi's restoration of La Seu in Palma being a particular favourite, but if there is one place I really would love to visit, it's The Ossuary in Seldec, in the Czech Republic. It's a small nondescript place from the exterior, but the inside is decorated with the bones of over forty thousand people. Check this out people:






Here's the address of the rather nice website that I nicked these pictures from...

http://www.ludd.luth.se/users/silver_p/kutna.html

Now that's what I call necro.

Two Things I've Been Accused Of Lately

Dressing like a 70s coke dealer.

Fair enough. I'm not gonna deny that one. Especially given my prediliction for large Aviator sunglasses*, flared pinstripe trousers and tight shirts with big collars. Not to mention the fact that my main musical collaborator once told me that my chosen footwear for that particular evening were "Nigerian pimp shoes"... So, guilty as charged, and totally unrepentant.

*Preferably either mirrored, tobacco, black Polaroid or rifle range yellow** if you were wondering what to buy the Dr for the winter sacrificial feast...

**you know the colour I mean, check out any Vietnam film or 70s cop drama, whenever people are in the shooting gallery, they always wear Aviators with lenses a very particular shade of yellow. Fuck knows why.

Using an unnecessary amount of foul language, particularly the word Fuck.

Bollocks. I absolutely adore the word Fuck. I know of no other single word, "obscene" or otherwise, which can convey such a range of feeling depending upon tone and context.

Teeth pushing into lip before releasing to produce a hard voiceless labiodental fricative, air moving to the back of the throat before rushing forward to become a velar plosive, like a fast burst from a compressed air gun, the word cutting dead as yr epiglottis slams shut. It's an incredibly satisfying word to say, if an infinitely more satisfying thing to do, which brings me to my next point. That is, if the reason you find the word fuck offensive is its root meaning, then you may need to sit down and have a serious talk with yrself. On the other hand you may not like it because it can be used in a seriously aggressive manner, and in some cases I won't disagree with you, it's a violent sounding word sometimes, but it can also be a beautiful one.

On the other hand, I probably say cunt too much. So maybe I am just a typical foulmouthed Streatham scumbag.

You'll Like This...

My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. The undisputed heavyweight champions of Black Metal Stupidity. A two-man tag-team tornado of shameless idiocy, Horgh and Abbath, the mighty Immortal.

That is some fucking pose. It's no one-off either. I get the impression that Immortal enjoyed the photoshoots slightly too much.

Go here:

http://ruthlessreviews.com/top10/10blackmetal.html

And then go here:

http://ruthlessreviews.com/top10/10blackmetal2.html

See what I mean? The other great thing about Immortal is Abbath's singing voice. He sounds like exactly like fucking Popeye. Black Metal rules.

El Vomitar Proyectil

Well, to be fair, I haven't quite reached the Exorcist level yet, but I do feel distinctly unpleasant, coughing and spluttering like a victorian consumptive. I just looked at my tongue in the mirror and I was frankly appalled. I think I've also discovered a new colour cos I'm fucked if I can describe the astoundingly revolting shade of ? that my tongue has gone. Apart from that, I'm pretty good considering.

So, as it's almost the end of the year, and I was discussing this earlier, and cos I do like a list, and cos thinking about this shit will stop me thinking about being spectactularly and colourfully ill, but mainly because there's been some seriously wonderful music released this year, here's my personal selection for 2005, 25 slabs of musical mindrot of various hues which, in my not-so-humble opinion, y'all should beg, steal or borrow...

Ilk - Canticle (VHF)
Boris - Pink (DIW/Phalanx)
Various - Congotronics Vol.2 (Crammed)
Soihadtoshoothim - Alpha Males & Popular Girls (Crucial Blast)
Growing - His Return (Megablade)
Skullflower - Orange Canyon Mind (Crucial Blast)
Spiral Joy Band - Lullabies For Jeff Dean (VHF)
Om - Variations On A Theme (Holy Mountain)
Black Witchery - Upheaval Of Satanic Might (Osmose)
Juan Atkins - The Berlin Sessions (Tresor)
Last Exit - Koln (Atavistic reissue)
Hototogisu - Ghosts Of The Sun (Important)
Various - Acid: Can You Jack? (Soul Jazz)
Earth - Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method (Southern Lord)
The Mass - Perfect Picture Of Wisdom And Boldness (Crucial Blast)
Vibracathedral Orchestra - Tuning To The Rooster (Important)
Carl Craig - The Album Formerly Known As... (Planet E)
Various - Vertigo Mixed (Family)
Asva - Futurists Against The Ocean (Web Of Mimicry)
Jonathon Kane - February (Table Of The Elements)
Pelt - Untitled (VHF)
Thralldom - Black Sun Resistance: Six Strain Ceremony (Total Holocaust)
Cephalic Carnage - Anomalies (Relapse)
Boris with Merzbow - Sun Baked Snow Cave (Hydra Head)
High On Fire - Blessed Black Wings (Relapse) (I know it says 2004 on the sleeve, but I'm sure it didn't come out till February... I could be mistaken as that part of the year is a little hazy chronologically speaking in my memory, for a variety of reasons, but fuck it, even if it did come out last year, it's still the best fucking metal album ever, bar none. Especially Devilution, Cometh Down Hessian and Silver Back which have a comparable effect on me to crystal meth. Sorry. I seem to be getting carried away. Anyway...)

Reading back through the list a thought pops into my head. I wonder what it would sound like listening to all of these records simultaneously. Only one way to find out, I mean, what the fuck are powerful computers for if not for realizing every ludicrous concept that occurs to my fevered brain?

Proper Fuckin' Muck

Fuck Earth. Fuck Khanate. Fuck early Swans. Especially Fuck Sunn O)). I've just dug out By God's Very Own Fuck by Come* and it frankly (to quote Mr Cope) kicks their collective dicks in the dirt. About the only other group I can think of with a similarly warped low-end aesthetic would be Harvey Milk, but even they didn't quite plumb the fantastically regressive depths of Come. Khanate at their nastiest can't hold a candle to this, it might just be the most unpleasant rock music you've ever heard. This is so far beyond doom, beyond sludge it's scary**. Mainly composed of nothing but kick drums and the most massively distorted bass ever, it's a beautiful coagulating mess of half formed riffs rolling around in the primordial ooze punctuated by drums like weather and some wonderfully unpleasant EDP Wasp. The flip, President, Your Prick's Stiff, is more of the same, with the addition of painfully high microphonic feedback and the most retardedly accelerating rhythm I've ever heard. Plus it has the bonus of lots of William Bennett hollering which sounds wierdly like the screaming on Sleezy D's I've Lost Control. In short, a lost classic. Track down both The Come Organisation Archive compilations on Susan Lawly records, and subject yrself to some real musical debasement. Alongside Ramleh's most psychedelic moments, these cds collect together some of the most astoundingly wrong music ever created.

Oh, and all you Black Metal freaks out there who think Abruptum are the last word in sonic flagellation, you need to hear this shit, because it plumbs the sonic and misanthropic depths that you lot would love to, precisely because this music didn't attempt to connect itself to an existing scene or ideology, didn't hanker after some long lost golden age that never fucking existed, wasn't trying to be "evil", it was an honest attempt to make music as fucked up, as confounding, as shocking and downright wrong as the world around us at the time.

*The Whitehouse affiliated lot, not Thalia Zedek's rather wonderful group of the same name...

**It was also recorded when Ozzy was just being kicked out of Sabbath...

Standing In Shit, Staring At The Sun

I'm not sure why, but recently I seem to have developed an ability to fuck up minidisc players without even touching them, perhaps due to some inexplicable exponential expansion in my electromagnetic field, sort of like a personal solar flare. Or maybe, after years of working on all sorts of weird electrical and electronic gear, I've developed some sort of empathetic resonance with circuitry and the poor minidisc player has picked up my enormous loathing of the unreliable tinny little fuckers and died a choking sputtering digital death.

Two days in a row, minidisc players have prevented listening back to some really fucking good music. M vs P yesterday suffered from drop out hell and today, a seriously fucking mountain levelling Morgen und Nite session suffered the same fate. Maybe we're just too analogue for a minidisc to handle. It's a shame though 'cos we played a couple of killers, the first an ever ascending rush of sound, guitar 'n' synths locked into an accelerating drone and riff dance, exploding into massively overloaded solos and duels but always returning to the same resonating core, like quakes temporarily breaking the surface of a contracting, dying neutron star. And did the fucking minidisc pick up one fucking second of this hour long planet-fucker? Did it fuck, bastard thing. The second track was cool too, growing from a spaced out country blues through the ketamine laser high frequency drone before ecountering the cosmic kittens and mutating into the slowest lowest mean fucker of a guitar riff crawling around in a pit of outrageously queasy synthdrone and a liver threateningly deep sub bass. The MD buggered that up too, with random drop outs rendering large portions unlistenable or just absent. Which is a pain.

But it was a brilliant session anyway, the first electric one for a while. Don't get me wrong, I love playing the acoustic stuff, but when the synths are screaming and the volume's cranked to nausea levels I'm in one one of my favourite places in the universe, drowning in massive swells of filtering and phasing, swept along in slow currents of molasses thick bass, howling, arcing feedback tearing an electric gash through the sky. No matter how pissed off I am, and I was pretty fucking down this morning, as this weeks been a bit of a rollercoaster, playing this music always lifts me. Making Morgen und Nite music is a fucking joy, especially when it sounds like today. If the gig with The Telescopes on the 21st at The Buffallo Bar is half as good I'm going to be seriously happy...

Records Everyone Should Hear At Least Once...

Shit Sushi (Crippled Dick Hot Wax 7") - One of the most astounding pieces of music you will ever hear. A short but oh so sweet bit of coked up japanese porn funk with perhaps the definitive scat vocal. If you ever wanted to know what Elvis' 70s Madison Square Gardens backing band would sound like at their most outrageous with the sound of someone really enjoying a steaming fresh log over the top of 'em, then this is the record for you.

Return Of The Synth Perverts, Or The Choir Of Memnoch Sing Forth Praise To The Kittens

Do you like Acid House? No? Sorry, wrong answer. You should probably go, you won't like it here. How about Krautrock? What, you don't like that either? Fucking hell, you're definitely in the wrong place mate.

This is Maireya vs Perinium and that's what y're gonna get. Harmonia with a Techno boner if you like, and I know that you do, deep down.

If you lay awake at nite, wishing that you could, just once, hear what it would be like if you got DJ Pierre, Michael Rother, Juan Atkins and Ralf Hutter to jam, well, Maireya vs Perinium are here to make yr phantasy come true.

Maireya vs Perinium have no use for sequencers, such is our metronomic mastery of the analogue way. Thrill as we take you on a transcontinental electronic journey, taking in Chicago, Dusseldorf, Detroit, Berlin and London on the way.

Cumming very soon to a venue near you...

Plus, you'll be able to hear and see the wonderment on myspace in the very near phuture, just as soon as we can get the fucking stuff recorded without the recorder dropping out all the fucking time...

Cut To The Quick

At the moment, I've got Keli Hand's Detroit History Vol.1 blasting out of my speakers. Before that it was Dungeon Master by Christian Vogel. Next up is The Berlin Sessions by Juan Atkins. Yup, I'm that frame of mind where nothing but the finest techno is going to work. Where the most sensible thing to do is to let my fizzing self get *lost* in the subtly shimmering webs of hi-hat and percussion, be tweaked and kneaded by the spectral shifts of synthesizaurs'n'effects, kick'n'snare syncing into my pulse until breathing and heartbeat are just another element in the polyrhythmic maze I don't want to find my way out of.

Y Era Tan Niza Y Tranquilidad Anterior...

Admittedly I am a little on edge today, for various reasons. There are 126 bottles of champagne sitting in my office for distribution to various clients. If the fuckwit who works across the office from me doesn't stop testing out his unbelievably annoying christmas fucking ringtones* there will be 125 bottles.

Obviously I'd drink it first. Can't stand to see good booze wasted.

*It's not just the ringtones. The fucker whistles at his desk too, and if that's not a hanging offence I don't know what is...

A Word On Metalcore

Let's face it. 99% of metalcore is bollocks. I don't care if this makes me sound like a reactionary old twat, but surely the idea of fusing metal and hardcore occured years ago. Over twenty years ago. If memory recalls correctly that's what Slayer (who always sounded more like a hardcore group influenecd by metal to my ears, but anyway...), early Metallica, My War-era Black Flag, Prong, Napalm Death, Siege and countless other bands were up to throughout the 80s and beyond. As far as I can tell, the difference betwen all this stuff and metalcore (it even looks wrong written down...) is that the above bands and all those who followed/whatever took all the good stuff from metal, and all the good stuff from hardcore and slammed it together and stripped it down to create something sleeker, harder and more visceral, whereas metalcore does the opposite and melds metal's propensity for pompousness and unecessary technical posturing with hardcore's unfortunate tendency towards toecurling self-righteousness and mob pleasing one dimensionality.

Just a thought.

Get In The Fucking Pit

Fuck. What a gig. I haven't left a venue totally drenched in sweat like that for years. It's certainly been many years since I've been carried off by such a pure outpouring of blazing, molten pure fucking violent rock power.

High On Fire are a damn well named band, the musical equivalent of a pyroclastic flow, laying waste to everything in their path like the unholy bastard sons of Celtic Frost and Motorhead they are. Matt Pike was, as ever, awesome. No one plays guitar like this man, or gurns like him either (go read You Need A Mess Of Help's blog for a wonderful description of Mr Pikes facial foolishness). He seems to be blessed with the ability to play two riffs simultaneously, has a roaring, razor-edged guitar sound that could knock out a bull elephant from a hundred paces and bellows the words like a californian Cronos with third degree piles. Allied to a rhythm section that grooves in a stranger way than else in metal (excepting Om) and can bend time like no other I've heard he's fucking unstoppable. And fuck, that rhythm section. The massively deep, fuzzed out growl of Joe Preston's bass locked into the rolling, roiling thunder of Des Kensal's drumming propels High On Fire's hypnotic riffology onto another level altogether. Time changes abound, but there's not a hint of prog to them, riffs mutate or seemingly reverse themselves at the flick of a cymbal (check the intro to Devilution for an amazing example of this). It fucks with yr head, bar lines and time signatures become fluid but they never, no matter how fast they get, descend into wank. Fuckin' wonderful.

Then Mastodon. An eight armed psychotic prog-metal juggernaut who are about the only band who could follow High On Fire, and almost blew them off the stage the last time I saw them both. Mastodon have no shame at all. Ludicrously complex, but with an ear for hooks most groups would kill for, plus they can pummell out a galloping thrash riff like no ones business and somehow get away with NWOBHM guitar harmonies without sounding shit or like they're taking the piss, and I normally hate that crap. But because they do it with such shameless abandon, it works. Plus, they are total jerks onstage, guitars held triumphantly aloft after only one song, the guitarist who looks like catweazel and the bass player had what I can only describe as a beard-off. Like staring each other out, only with beards. This is the sort of behaviour I like to see. Everywhere you look, necks are snapping to the Christian Vander on crack drumming of Brann Dailor. The man is fucking terrifying, effortlessly switching between time signatures, from full on blasting death to a swinging, jazz inflected groove with seemingly no effort. Tight isn't a strong enough word for this lot, you couldn't wedge a silver rizla into the gaps...

As each song went by, the pit got bigger. The they played Megalodon. We were all at the edge of the pit at that point, headbanging furiously. As the weirdly countryfied guitar harmony bit ended and the best thrash riff ever kicked in the pit erupted. There was only one course of action. Fucking dive right in and get into some syncopated good time violence. A proper old-style moshpit, no SxE or toughguy UKHC wankers doing that fucking kung fu crap, just a fuckload of people off their tiny minds on some of the most vital music around reacting in the most gloriously basic way. It's been a fair while (to put it mildly) since I've got in the pit, and I'd almost forgotten how much sense it makes when music hits you like this.

It was an astounding performance. I've never heard utter virtuousic precision groove like this did. Aside from the aforementioned Megalodon and Crusher Destroyer, the one thing I was really hoping they would play was their version of The Bit by The Melvins. And they did, the announcement of the title alone provoking a large amount of excitement in both myself and at least one of my companions. I think there may have been jumping up and down with glee. Mastodon then pinned the fucker to the wall and preceded to hammer the shit out of it, making the original sound pedestrian in comparison. I think it was about this point that I probably injured myself.

Laughing My Bollocks Off

Go to Utrophia's website, (it's on the links bar), then to the public section and click on the Poster Project...

The Dr's Prescription

I'm looking forward to tonight immensely. I can't think of any two bands who I'd rather see live right now than High On Fire and Mastodon. I don't even care that it's at the fucking Scala. I just need to lose myself in music that burns with a righteous flame, because I'm in a somewhat intense mood right now. Don't worry, I don't mean the black hole of bitterness and loathing that I was in earlier in the year, just that the weekends events have bounced me up and then down like a psychedelic yo-yo and I need to clear my head by immersing myself in the most thunderously heavy, yet oddly uplifting music I know of. You should all come and lose it too. That's my diagnosis.

Wallowing In The Electric Mud Again

Ramleh. One of the most peculiar bands ever. I've been listening to 'em for years, and the sheer strangeness at the heart of their later music, specifically the albums Homeless, Soundcheck Changeling, Be Careful What You Wish For and Too Many Miles hasn't dimmed one iota over the years. They just don't sound like anyone else. I remember the first time I heard the track Kansas City Bomber it made me feel physically ill (this is a good thing), it's continously ascending guitar line slowly uncoiling like a mercury viper, twisting and writhing, every note bent way too far for comfort as the battering motorik pulse beneath it slowly increases in speed and weight, until the guitar and moog explode into crystalline shards of icy filtered distortion nailing you to the wall for a blissful eternity until it all plummets earthwards, as if the sheer mass of the music could no longer sustain it's own weight and it drops you onto the ground and you lie there, unable and unwilling to move, as the guitar twitches and spasms and the drums sound it's death rattle and it's silent again.