Monday 26 March 2007

Healing fingers...


...sending out some healing fingers to Pete Young... get well soon. x

Saturday 17 March 2007

Tulsa goddamn...

Cookies and Cream...


Cookies and cream vinyl...kinda beautiful... don't you just love it when you hear a record for the first time and it completely blows you away and you are sure that it is the best thing that you have ever heard? well I have just experienced this rare phenomenon with The Bark Haze Lp on Important records... this is my record of the year already... I can't see anything beating it. This essential piece of vinyl works on so many levels... each of the three tracks are hermatically sealed in their own conceptual perfection... all dressed in a sleeve full of Bill Nace drawings... the macro orgasmic power drone of side 2 flutters and fluctuates through a universe chock full of repetition and variation... the clanging sonorous guitars duel in an aspic golden heaven, the workouts circular and perfectly formed.... the sound is harsh, black and indestructable like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey... whenever I hear an amazing piece of music that shakes me to the core... I'm reminded of an object... and/or a scenario, sound translates into 3D mass... inexplicably. (The Stooges s/t... Pastrami on rye - Bad Moon Rising - Sonic Youth... a 70's transistor radio - Joy Shapes - Charalambides... frozen tree trunks... For Sada Jane - Magik Markers... a summer breeze gently turning some plastic windmills)... also this handsome chunk of inspiration was a gift from the person that I love the most in the world... life just doesn't get much better than that.

Saturday 3 March 2007

Satan, sin and death... a scene from Milton's Paradise Lost...


...That's how it seemed to me as I went on a late night trawl through the Current Hogarth exhibition at the Tate Britain. Some friends were performing as part of a series of special nightime gallery openings. To say that it was a strange affair is an understatement... kind of like being trapped in a bad movie... when you get to the vaguely unconvincing hallucinogenic scene that makes you cringe with embarrassment because the art director, cast and crew have got it so, so wrong. Imagine if you will the very staid and stuffy interior of this 'great British Museum'... it's walls dripping with 16th, 17th and 18th century British art juxtaposed with silly middle class art students and the odd brace of 'with it' parents and OAP's running around spilling their wine and controlled abandon in the direction of anyone who was looking... to a soundtrack of Fuck Off "... If you don't want to fuck me baby well baby fuck off." by The Electric Chairs... you get the picture. Actually I had a really good time and my friends looked fantastic in their powdered wigs and 17th century night dresses. We ended the evening in the dressing room where I fought to shield my eyes from a flurry of underwear, tits and smudged makeup... lubricated by alcohol and sweat.

Stereo Mars a go go...


...So this is really exciting, the debut Lambsbread platter arrived in the post today and I'm currently listening to side two which is beautifully heady and expansive... Side one starts with a great live vocal exchange before heading off into hard fought oblivion... the Lambsbread speaks!. I have a slight headache which only adds to the delicious freeform din... these guys are really hot at the moment so catch them while they still smoulder. I was lucky enough to witness their gloriously brief appearance at the Thurston Moore's Nightmare Before Xmas festival last December where they were truly spectacular... you can see me here... the taller guy just underneath Zac's right elbow gazing on in rapture... They are reportedly touring the UK with The Skaters in June so get out there and soak it up while you can.(Ecstatic Peace E#105c ...Stop press - as of 03/03/07 there are only 74 copies left!!!... don't sleep.)

Thursday 1 March 2007

Real dramatic stag recording. Rated XXX

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Stereo 8 or something

...Indeed thoughts of Sonic Youth performing 'la Daydream Nation'... can these impossible dreams and surefire aspirations be reproduced in another time and context...? the tinkle of thurston's Providence toy piano fills the room with astonishment and amp fuzz a plenty.... Michael Lavines tungsten drenched shots of the band in the broken alleyways of New York make my heart swoon with wonder. It's impossible for me not wax lyrical about this beautiful period in Sonic Youth's history and indeed my own history... for they were both inextricably intertwined in the same tempestuous sea of hope and fearlessness.
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