Folking Hott, Or, A Totally Gratuitous Picture Of Anne Briggs Looking Pissed Off

Furious Like Tiger!

Just heard the new Darkthrone album. Fuck my old boots. Fenris 'n' Ted have outdone themselves with this one. Colder, darker and grimmer than ever, it picks up where Sardonic Wrath left off, but slows the tempo, and whacks up the groove to a blackened punk bandsaw rush that rips yr head off and pisses a shitty norse beer* stream down the hole. Mucky buzzing riffs, drums like crematorium doors slamming and as much misanthropic yelling you could wish for, Darkthrone are unique in that the more they regress, the better they get. Nocturno Culto's ripping out the solos again, which is a joy to hear, cos no one does fuck the notes, how fucking horrible can I make this sound guitar solos like Ted. They've shortened the song times too, nothing outstays it's welcome, like a good whiskey vomit without the dry heaves. Plus it contains the greatest example of swearing in musical history. Better than the long drawn out grunted "fuck hope" bit in Sacrificing To The God Of Doubt from the last album, even better than the angelic "why don't you just fuck off" from Sueisfine by MBV, it even tops William Bennett's 'why don't you stand up for what you believe in you fucking wankers?" from Whitehouse's Rock'n'Roll which was my previous favourite gratuitous bad language in music moment. Just listen for the glorious chrous of Shut Up which mainly consists of the words Fucking Twat.

Darkthrone rule, no two ways about it.

*I love Norway, beautiful country and wonderful people, but they can't make beer. I mean, one of the most popular brands of lager (ugh) is called Aase, which I can imagine a number of ways to pronounce but the one that springs rapidly to mind sums up the taste so well. And it's 6 quid a pint, sorry, half litre, and impossible to get pissed on if y're used to drinking real beer with names like Old Rotting Quim and the like...

¡Ahora Mire Esto!

I'm far too full of DF's to write anything coherent except to say;
Chrome videos!
On the web for all to see!!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh!!!





Unfortunately they're not from the Alien Soundtracks/Half Machine ultrapsych roboporn era, but from the early 80s when they went all electro-Stooges. Which still kicks arse. Plus you get to see Helios Creed and Damon Edge acting like twats on the San Francisico metro dressed in a somewhat individual manner. Click the top pic for the video for 'New Age' (from Red Exposure) and the bottom one for 'Meet Me In The Subway' from the infamous 'Subterranean Modern' compilation LP on Ralph Records. Enjoy.

Tacto De Hombre (Versión Chav)

Tacto De Hombre

Come To This, It's Going To Be Rather Good...

Those nice folks at Upset The Rhythm are putting on a night of droning wonderfulness which we're playing at...

ZAIMPH + HEATHER LEIGH MURRAY + MORGEN UND NITE
SUN 5 MAR - GREEN NOTE**, 106 Parkway, Camden,NW1 7AN
Doors 8PM - £5

ZAIMPH is the solo project of Marcia Bassett, best known for her intensely prolific work in Double Leopards and Hototogisu and various collaborations with the likes of Tom Carter. Under the ZAIMPH moniker, she has recorded and released two solo transmissions of mirage-like guitar, fried electronics and disembodied vocals. In person, Marcia's set verges on the ritualistic, as she turns the room into a swirling vortex of light and energy.

HEATHER LEIGH MURRAY has long underpinned Charalambides, Scorces and Taupis Tula with her shimmering swathes of pedalsteel wizardry and otherwordly vocal intonements. Heather is now striking out with a growing number of solo performances, which see her improvisations taken to further extremes. It's an encapsulating experience, as Heather enters a trance-like state layering her instrument and voice, until her bloodied knuckles can claw at her strings no more.

MORGEN UND NITE make spontaneous drone ectoplasms, behemoth riffs, high-end killer-hummingbird oscillations and BBC Radiophonic doom using guitar, analogue synthesis, harmonium and telepathy. They like listening to the music of Heldon and the voices of cats*, playing in the key of C sharp and observing the colours purple and green.

I'd also like to give credit to whoever took that fucking great photo of us live at Bardens that's at the top of the post, but I can't, because being in my heavily medicated state, I can't remember their name...

*Although the last cat that I listened to just said "Maow" very loudly and repeatedly but steadfastly refused to elaborate on this admittedly compelling initial argument.

**Which is a vegetarian place, so if y're looking for me before the gig I'll probably be round the back by the bins chainsmoking and eating raw steak out of a paper bag.

Want One...

I do like an odd musical instrument or two. One day I'll own an electric hurdy-gurdy and then you'll all be sorry. The other instrument I'd love to get my hands on is the glass harmonica, because according to Wikipedia:

The instrument's popularity did not last far beyond the 18th century, partially because of a strange rumor that using the instrument caused both musicians and their listeners to go insane.

One example of fear from playing the glass armonica was noted by German musicologist Friedrich Rochlitz in Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung where it is stated that "the armonica excessively stimulates the nerves, plunges the player into a nagging depression and hence into a dark and melancholy mood that is apt method for slow self-annihilation. If you are suffering from any nervous disorder, you should not play it; if you are not yet ill you should not play it; if you are feeling melancholy you should not play it."

Sounds fucking brilliant.

The Eyes, The Eyesssss!!!

On Tuesday I experienced something I wouldn't particularly recommend. Eye surgery under local anaesthetic. Clockwork Orange clamps, the dull echo of scraping in my half-numbed eyelid and far too much blood and matter for my liking. So now I'm off of my face on good old Syndol with the Churchills (killer late 60s Israeli psych like a cross between Bulldog Breed and Frijid Pink) blasting out at a fairly ridiculous volume. This stops me screaming everytime I blink, which is helpful, but does nothing to alleviate the somewhat wrong side effect of the eyedrops I have to use. About 15-20 minutes after I've put the drops in, I can taste them. Seriously. What does this mean? And if this is actually a common occurence for people using these eyedrops, as opposed to some weird quirk of my skull structure*, could you do us all a favour and possibly make them not taste like fucking drain cleaner? Cheers.

*Why in the name of Fuck would my eyes be connected to my mouth? What possible point could there be for this? Admittedly there have been occasions in the past when I was convinced I could taste what I was looking at, but drugs may have been involved. Possibly.

¡Usted Lo Ama Se Convierte En Escoria!

Necrodelic Pigfuck Blues is the future, and Anaglypta Exordium are going to screw you right into it.

We love you, and it's time you fucking knew it.

LK, GP & CT

LámaseCieloDeOro

Or LickGoldenSky as they were generally known. Go listen, cos no fucker did when they were still together.

RIP LGS & Beecher. Too many people too deaf to hear and too blind to see.

Velocidad

The two flats below me are being done up. Which is good, because it means I don't have to go all the way to the rehearsal studio to crank the Orange up to the moon and crank out some planet sized riffs. This is the best way I know of offsetting the side effects of the fucking horse tranquilizer sized pills the nice people at Moorfields gave me for my fucked up eye. They must be working, cos my eyelid seems to be shrinking back to something approaching normal size and they don't think they'll have to stick knives in it now. Which is nice. The thing about these pills is that they make me feel like I've just done too much meth. I can't drink with this shit either, so the only way to calm down is to carve out some semi-sentient masses of guitar slime and do buckets until I fall over. Should be time for the second tablet of the day then...

Go Ask Alice

Fuck. This album is so good I could eat it. It would probably taste really fucking good too. But then I wouldn't be able to listen to it. Which would be a shame, cos this is one of the most audaciously beautiful records you will ever hear. It's also totally fucking shameless, wildly psychedelic and manages to sound corny and dated as hell yet futuristic and visionary at the same time.

Dizzyingly kaleidescopic strings wrap themselves around Alice's harp and wurlitzer, born aloft on the shimmerings wings of Ben Riley's cymbal work, but grounded deep in the earth by his drums and Reggie Workman's queasy double bass, this record could so easily descend into the realms of cosmic kitsch in any other hands but Alice's, particularly on the tracks 'Galaxy Around Olodumare', 'Galaxy In Turiya' and 'Galaxy In Satchidananda', where the swirling string clusters and buzzing tambouras could so easily sound like a new-age Esquivel were it not for her sensitivity to tone colours which produces a kind of glowing, honeyed dissonance that I've never really heard in any other jazz.

No one sounds like Alice Coltrane, especially on organ. That fuzzed, slurring wurlitzer cascading through modes and raags before exploding into abstraction one minute, then nailing 'My Favourite Things' and 'A Love Supreme' to the floor in a way you suspect John hadn't thought of, churchy and funky, striking sparks off Frank Lowe's awesome, spluttering saxophones and LeRoy Jenkins' brilliantly acrid violin whilst the rhythm section get into that same elasticated free groove thing that the Art Enemble found themselves in on 'Rock Out' and 'Theme De Yoyo' and produced Pharoah Sanders jaw-dropping 'Balance'. Damn it's good.

A Quick Word If I May, Mr Young

I've just read Warp - Labels Unlimited by Rob Young (and Adrian Shaugnessy, even though he gets no credit on the front and back cover). First up, if y're looking for a serious, definitive work on the considerable impact that Warp have had on the musical world over the past 15 years, look elsewhere. This is a classic example of a coffee table book masquerading as serious history and analysis. Sure it's beautifully designed, and Adrian Shaughnesy's essays on the evolution and impact of Warp's artwork (Designers Republic et al) are thoughtful, illuminating and obviously written from the standpoint of someone who knows and loves their subject, if too damn short. The archive photographs and articles and excerpts from internet discussion boards from the 'Artificial Intelligence' era are excellently chosen and convey a real sense of the possibilities that were opening up around dance/electronic music in the early 90s.

The problem is, the main body of the text totally fails to do justice to it's subject and the material gathered to illustrate it. It reads like a series of expanded-after-the-thought sunday supplement articles written for a reader relatively ignorant of the history of the label and the cultural impact that Warp have had, and in the latter half of the book is far too concerned with continuing the mythologising of Richard James as a reclusive genius, semi-autistic savant saviour of electronica. Not that I'm decrying his music, much of which I love, but Autechre, a group who are as important, if not more so, in exploring and exploding the possibilities of electronica are given no where near as much space or analysis, possibly because their music is considered more 'diificult', or, more likely in my opinion, because they're more difficult to write about as they don't carry around the baggage of being eccentric artists, there's no host of amusing anecdotes about their 'weird' behaviour and therefore Mr Young would have actually had to sit down and seriously think about what he was writing as opposed to regurgitating all the old "Aphex Twin did..." stories that we've all read or heard over the years. It's fucking lazy witing, as is the slapdash way that certain terms are bandied about throughout in a way that leads me to suspect the author doesn't know nearly as much about his subject and it's context, especially in realtion to the evolution of dance music, as he thinks he does. Two examples:

Page 31: "...and when 'Acid House' crept up on him around 1984-85". Now correct me if I'm wrong but I think I know what I'm talking about here, the earliest Acid releases where Sleezy D's "I've Lost Control" from 87 and Phuture's "Acid Tracks" from 88, the former only being referred to as Acid in hindsight, after the proliferation of the term arising from Phuture's groundbreaking 12" and the slew of similarly named tracks that followed in it's wake. So for Acid House to creep up on you 2 or 3 years early, you'd need a fucking time machine.

Page 41: "...the city's young people were gathering under the sign of the new trance Techno played by Juan Atkins, Derrick May's Rhythim Is Rhythim...". I almost puked when I read that sentence. Trance? No. Wrong. So wrong. If you removed that word it would have been fine, but using it in that context shows no understanding of the history, or the very specific terminology of dance music at all. Trance came considerably later, a product of Europeans like Sven Vath and Oliver Lieb, and it's a music that rejects the intricate percussive subtlety, melodic/harmonic complexity and crucially, the emotional resonance of Techno for a far more simplistic, standardised 4/4 rhythmic matrix overlaid with sub-acid burbling and the sort of hackneyed, hippy-stereotype samples (Terrance McKenna talking about hyperspace conciousness, that sort of shit) that make me reach for my revolver, allied with (if y're really unlucky) 'ethnic' instrumentation/music used with absolutely no understanding of context, tunings or, frankly, taste.

Those are just two I could mention, but there are more. Mr Young should know better, given his journalistic background, and the publishers certainly should have picked up on this shit considering that the book has been

¡Helado Extremadamente Peligroso!

Apart from preserving the brains of the sort of fuckwit you wouldn't really want to be re-animated in the future, liquid nitrogen has many and varied uses, most of which are both entertaining and dangerous. Not may people, apart from arch food perv (sorry, molecular chef) Heston Blumenthal, realise you can 'cook' with it too. Yep, if one is so inclined,the wonders of cookery and low-temperature chemistry can be combined to make ice cream. What's more, these helpful and responsible people will show you how to do it in the safety of yr own kitchen.

I'm fucking dying to try this. Liquid nitrogen is only about $4-5 a litre. That's just asking for trouble...

Music Therapy? Fuck It, Works For Me

I'm a much better mood now, for a number of reasons. One (well, two) of which is that I've been playing the living fuck out of the two guitars below for several hours a day.





The crying, rattling sound of a bottleneck smacking against the strings of a National steel guitar is one of the most beautiful noises on this planet and also the one that can reduce me to tears and put a huge grin on my face simultaneously faster than anything else in music. You just can't make those sounds with any other guitar, from high, keening, at times almost theremin like wails to a fucking rude barking klang, accompanied by a spectral harmonic haze of sympathetic overtones rarely heard from a normal acoustic or even electric guitar.

I could bang about this for fucking ages, but I can't be arsed because typing this takes up time I could be playing. Just go and listen to Son House, especially his 60s Columbia recordings, for the perfect example of the klanking, gutteral yawp of the single cone (lower pic) and possibly the greatest Blues voice of all time, and Tampa Red's classic Yazoo recordings to wallow in the more refined, stinging, almost vocal sound of the tricone (top). Time for more wine'n'slide I think...