Godstar

Psychic Tv were never that good. You could pick a handful of tracks from all the genres they dabbled in and you'd still have enough fingers free to poke in a small child's eye. But, sometimes, when they felt like it, they came up with the goods. Dreams Less Sweetwas a more or less consistently weird and wonderful and very musical album, full of dank echoes, beach boys harmonies, Santa Claus, dungeons, walkie-talkies, Gregorian chanting and tibetan thigh bone trumpets (I've always wondered: whose thighs?). Unclean was a great post-punk drone-a-thon and Godstar, Roman P and their freakadelic version of Good Vibrationswere all uneccessarily pop-tastic singles.

And remember, they invented Acid House. Maybe.

Well...their early acid house stuff like Jack the Tab, Superman and the Timothy Leary sampling Turn On,Tune in... showed the direction that Acid House should have gone in before it got adopted by all those soulboys in smiley t-shirts and bandanas shouting "Aciieeed!" at the top of their voices prior to launching themselves into mass amateur gurning competitions and Jane Fonda / Nazi inspired aerobic marching. (off the point but it's been bugging me for a while: why did everyone in the early days of Acid House face the front? i mean, there was never anything to see was there? always kinda reminded me of step aerobics. and how come they stopped playing Hi Ho Silver lining and careless Whisper at the end of the night?)

Anyway, listen immedeiately to Genese P Orridge's soothing voice on the Brian Jones tribute Godstar (readysteadygomix) courtesy (well, I haven't exactly asked...sorry!!) of The fine and friendly people at The Suburbs Are Killing Us and then maybe check out the Unclean 1999 remix-inspirathon from the people at Fopi Net which isn't exactly by Psychic Tv as such but which is a kinda tribute of sorts. If all this is too much then I recommend heading over to Tried and True Attention Getting Tactics where there's Doris Day's immortal indecisive sleazeathon Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps

365

Sorry there's been no posts for the last few days; I've been in London hanging out in ridiculously cool places with cooly ridiculous people, spending obscene 3rd world debts of money on useless things and generally sucking in what air still exists through the smog. No direct songs today but I'm ecstatic to link you to the newly Ubued 365 day Project which seems to be hosted with all the Mp3s from previous days. Seriously, you could spend days trawling through this stuff and I'd recommend that you do because there's everything here: seriously retarded tributes, under-cover versions of popular tunes, misplaced melodies, foolish conceits, dopey doo-wap, rented rock, wrecked bee-bop and juiced up space garage. Every song is a bona-fide paen to the idiocy of our great race and we should stand by and applaud long and hard whoever put these songs together. They say the line between genius and stupidity is fine and these songs nearly always fall just the wrong side.

Oh and while we're at it, why don't you check out Spoilt Victorian Child(uh!)which has a great Voodoo Queens track for download plus lots of others. Oh and The Mystical Beast has some tracks from a Bleach CD I picked up yesterday for £1 in the Record and Tape Exchange in Berwick Street and then left somewhere (if anyone finds it then please tell me...I think it's probably in London somewhere if that narrows it down - you don't have to give it back; i just want to know it's in safe hands); a situation which seems so much like destiny or fate or something that i couldn't fail to mention it.

Pray for Rain...

Glastonbury is here and I haven't go a ticket (despite a 47hr long dark night of the telephone)... to make things worse the bastards are congregating outside my house to get the free buses with their stick on mud patches, grime already painted on with kohl, beards drawn in with biro...

Yep! It's time to start bitching and prayin' for rain. All together now...

I've never been one of those people who see Glastonbury Festival (they added of Contemporary Performing Arts in 1990 in an attempt to get the school teachers to raid the educational trip budget) as a gathering of the tribes. It's a place for all the fucked up losers who think they’re not fucked up losers to hang out. A place they can call home. A kind of Star Trek convention for people without televisions.

Anyway as far as I know Faun Fables aren't playing this year but they remind me of the kind of band who appear, mysteriously in the Field of Queasy Listening or the Pyramid of Lutes and Love at 5 a.m. singing songs about Pan and Albion and nymphs and so on.

Play Fear March whilst sitting in your garden and battling off small boys getting aboriginal by blowing into lengths of guttering and you'll get the idea...

then play..

Black Box Recorder- Art of Driving because...well see my previous post on this band...

then

Piano Music - The Canadian Brought Us Snow because they sound like they ought to be playing there and probably won't ever get asked

and finish off with

Electric Birds - Parallelogram
Electric Birds - Flotilla because it's always nice to imagine this kind of abstracted multi-layer floatiness is what you'll hear at Glastonbury even though what you really here is 50 essex lads dancing outside Joe Banana's Blanket stall to Mad-fast techno mentalism...

It's a shop guys. Not a club. A shop . Do you feel the need to dance round Dorothy Perkins or Tescos?

V/VM

Just found a whole page of Downloadable Mp3s from V/Vm . If you don't know the band then they sound a little bit like an i-Pod slowly dying from cholera whilst plugged into a large Marshall amp. Somewhere in the morphine-soaked reverie the little machine is trying to make sense of it's own manic sputterings with a demented creased frontal-lobe logic and a Kid 606-written guidebook on "How to Make the Most out of Popular Culture"

It's glitchy, mildly irritating, sometimes melodic, often obtuse, occasionally memorable and always worth a few moments of your time.

And it's free.

Hail the Midlands!

Prolapse almost made it. For a while they were the freshest, most chaotic, silliest band in the Uk (replacing Birdland?) and then, well I guess the joke wore a bit thin. Are they still around? Still producing records? I think their site is down now and apparently they've gone on to form other bands (they'll come to me in a minute...)Anyway, this track TCR is just by way of reminder: little girl vs nasty boy vocals, The Fall playing after a good beating by Mark E, pot n pans, clunking percussion, shouting, cooing and smoldering. And they had good hair. Well, apart from the curly guy. Leicester's finest, except perhaps Volcano the Bear who's Larkrise and Larkrise are worth a listen if you like the sound of folk bands wrestling with Austrian free improv quartets whilst alternating from mogadon haze to speed-balled, eye-popping. These tracks are probably produced by Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound. Whether or not the band noticed is debatable.

Oh, and as for Birdland, a mate of mine saw them in the Kentucky Fried Chicken the other year. Yeah, I know. Apparently The Manic Street Preachers were massive fans. No, really; couldn't you tell? "I love everyone from Birmingham, me!" Richie Manic was heard to say, just before taking the leap and this is now taken to be a reference to the premier Midlands bleach-blonde Mary Chain copyists. Sorry, but I haven't got any MP3s of this band so this is all going to be a tiring waste of time but if anyone knows where I could get some I'd love to hear Hollow Heart again, even if it's just so I can sneer all over again.

Terranova

Terranova are full of good ideas. Not only do they fly a two-footed tackle into the post-punk wagon with their mix of old school punk-reggae, but then they add in some funkiness, a little hip hop and top it all off with recruiting Ari Up of The Slits for the vocals. Yeah, it sounds a little bit Tackhead, a little bit Flying Lizards and it does occasionally descend into an unfortunate mess but you've got to love the guys for trying.

This track is the title track of their recent ep Allergy

Tav Falco and the Panther Burns

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Tav Falco and the Panther Burns look and sound like they should be playing The Pink Room in David Lynch's Fire Walk With Me. I think that's recommendation enough.

Here's a few tracks, not my favourite but I think they give the general idea



Love's Last Warning

Lotus Blossom

Born Too Late


BTW, a big thank-you to Totally Fuzzy for linking to me.

Maldoror

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I've been re-reading Maldoror by the Comte de Lautreamont and it's still the most relentlessly evil and hallucinogenic piece of literature available (my wife's diaries aside. Read this and it's like peeling the skin off of mankind uncovering tender sex with sharks, mythical beasts, murder and mayhem, cannibalism, infanticide, live burials, fly swarms, hermaphrodites and a whole host of liminal characters, torn apart by their own depravity. It's kinda like a night out in Bridgwater, but with more poetry and less FCUK t-shirts.

Here's a little taster:

One should let one's nails grow for a fortnight. Oh! How sweet it is to brutally snatch from his bed a child with no hair yet on his upper lip, and, with eyes wide open, to pretend to suavely stroke his forehead, brushing back his beautiful locks! Then, suddenly, at the moment when he least expects it, to sink one's long nails into his tender breast, being careful, though, not to kill him; for if he died, there would be no later viewing of his misery. Then, one drinks the blood, licking the wounds; and, during the entire procedure, which ought to last no shorter than an aeon, the boy cries....

If you're interested in Surrealism then this book kicked the whole thing off and was deified by Andre Breton and the early Paris mob. It's also the source of perhaps the most beautiful simile ever written: “As beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella..." which later became the title for Nurse With Wound's debut album.

It's not particularly easy to read (the first few pages are a bit tiresome),it makes almost no sense whatsoever and it can get quite nauseating at times but it's one of the very few work of true art in literature and you should read it.

The Rondelles

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Indie-pop today with the Rondelles. This reminds me of all the mid-eighties jangle bands like Talulah Gosh, The Chesterfields and the Shop Assistants. It's like an aural teen-movie and you can almost smell the anoraks.

Revenge

Like A Prayer

Back-Stabber

A+B

Yeah, the kind of people who listened to this back in the 80s were probably the kind of kids who got their heads jammed in lockers at school but I don't think you should hold that against them. After all, the very same kids are probably now twisted 18 stone pure-muscle misanthropes who've been spending the last 15 years working out in private gyms preparing for revenge. I saw one the other day, cornerning a guy who back then used to wear ski goggles to pretend he was in Front 242 (and now just wears them skiing with the kids): "Still think jangle-pops for poofs eh? Try and take my dinner money now fuck-board. Just try it..."

Foxy

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I know this is very old now and the bootlegging craze is pretty much on it's last legs but this track remains my favourite boot of all time so I thought I'd dig it out one more time. Enjoy.

Also, check out Psychbloke's ramblings. He posts his daily detritus for your amusement and has a great article on Kendo Nagasaki, some very weird art and plenty to while away the minutes of your lives while you're trying to think of something meaningful to do. And he's very tall.

While you're there, check out Half Man half Biscuit's Breaking News one of my favourite recent(ish) tracks by them.

Sorry Ade, but it was just too good an opportunity to miss.

Blotter Acid Art

What is it with acid? Do people really think that the picture on the blotter actually makes a difference. I can remember everyone going into whoops and curls over Purple Ohms or California Sunshines as if the picture actually had a relationship to the strength, veracity or, er, visualness of the LSD within. Was I wrong to be cynical? Do those Ohms make you feel Far-eastern? Do the Scooby Doos make you more likely to get the munchies? And what the hell is an Ohm anyhow? And as for those beardy weirdies that talk about it being double-dipped (man)...what does that mean? Can you have triple dip acid? Quadruple dips? Can you have stuff that's not been dipped at all but just slooshed over a dwarf virgin's thighs?

Maybe The Butthole Surfers can help. They seem like nice boys. A friend lived with Gibby in Austin for a while and said he was an asshole actually but I hardly think that's the point here because, for a brief moment, they were the hottest guitar band on the planet.

And then they went a bit shit.



By the way, if you need Fridge Magnets, even just for those True Romance recreations, then The The Lurid Fridge is as good a place as any.

Mario Winans and A Sucking Chest Wound

Just watched Top of the Pops. Mario Winans - I don't wanna know is Number 1 and one thing is on my mind: most people use samples of records they have, right? So...what are all these hip hop / soul guys doing with Enya records? I've never been to the States but somehow I feel safer if the drive-by shootings are conducted to the sound of Orinocco Flow. Gives them a kinda Robin or Sherwood (the hooded man) mysticism which, as a brit, you can't help find reassuring.

Brings to mind that old adage: a sucking chest wound is just nature's way of telling you to slow down.

Anyway, to take my mind off such matters I've been listening to Speed Mel Moore's homage to the delights of amphetamine abuse ( i think it's a homage, though sounds like he needs some) The Ballad of Patty Hearst, Sue Lloyd and William O'Donell's song-poem about the brainwashed (or was she?) terrorist heiress, both from The American Song Poem Archive and from there I've gradually fallen into a deep and peaceful reverie. Maybe later I'll also listen to my third favourite Mormon song sung by children Janeen Brady's Do You Want to feel Happy? and then I'll revitalise my sapping Capitalist impulses with a last play before bedtime of The Woolworth Managers Work Song

Mmm... don't you feel better after that?

Maybe now you're ready, if you're ever ready, for my favourite anti-Evolution Christian rant The Monkey Song (+bonus track) sung with voices that could cut hair either by an earlier incarnation of Hanson (check out them No, No, Nos...) or by 2 of those weird blonde kids from Village of the Damned.

Thanks for listening, and remember: "i'm no kin to the monkey No NO NO; the monkey's no kin to me Yeah yeah yeah"

Thanks to The Oddball Auditorium for my shameless abuse of all their hard work.

Beachy Head

Throbbing Gristle's mission isn't quite terminated. From all accounts their gig at the Astoria was disappointingly good (and doesn't Gen look fab now? like a dipsomaniac aunt on Boxing Day) and now I'm more desperate than ever to get a ticket for their take on the Camber Sands experience. To welcome the guys back here's a link to a bunch of MP3s that form part of a weird re-mix project apparently inspired by TGs Beachy Head song (from 20 Jazz Funk Greats, I think). Also here's an MP3 from Scanner's website which of an TG mix intended to be played at the cancelled RE:TG.

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Throbbing Gristle might have been responsible for thousands of crap imitators and they may have inadvertently invented a genre of music that let the humourless emotional cripples of the world a chance to seap through, but you can't blame them for that. They remain one of the most influential bands of all time; perhaps cited more than actually listened to but nevertheless a source of influence that stretches right the way through modern music, from Merzbow to Rachel Stevens (great new single by the way, available at FluxBlog ) and back again. Buy all their albums and bathe in the swing from Tesco to serial killing, burn victims to marmalade, girlish rhymes to ear-splitting noise.

When William Shatner is King

When William Shatner is King this kind of music will be sung by everyone.

Until then we're going to have to make do with these demented gems...

Mr Tambourine Man takes on The Byrds and Dylan and kicks both their asses. The phrasing, the polyphony, the sheer drugged out balls to the wall HELL of this is exceeded only by:

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds which seems to suck all the acid out of John, Paul and George, give it all to Ringo in a spinal drip and then shake things up a bit by adding some drugs references. We should worship this man. Some do.



These Poor Sods for One


Anyway, both these tracks are exceeded in modern music only by Shatner's delerious take on Elton John's 'Rocket Man' "....and i'll be...HIGH as a KITE by then...." but you'll have to find that yourself...

Trust me

Negativland

Negativland are one of those bands that seem to have been around forever, quietly nipping away at the seams of contemporary society, like an evil twin at a Corporate dinner. They occasionally miss the mark, sometimes attack targets that are too easy but you're always glad they exist.

I feel much the same about ocelots. And lemurs.

In fact, they're the music equivalent of James Joyce; yeah, sometimes it's a chore to actually listen to them (although many of their records are just the right side of musical and some are downright poppy) but you really ought to have a CD on your shelf and you never feel bad about shelling out for something they created because, well, it always feels like you're contributing somehow to the downfall of capitalism...

Or else they're actually a multi-media conglomerate of their own and your hard earned pennies are going towards the beating of slave children in Sri Lanka...

Either way, you have to say it's a good joke.

Truth in Advertising is fairly symptomatic of their work, taking in stupid Americans, radio phone-ins and phoney media messages.

The Prima Donnas

Short post today because I'm currently trapped under something heavy.

Here's 2 tracks by premier punky riot grrl electro fiends The Prima Donnas. They're not especially good but there's something about this band that's hard to dislike and, in this age of Jet and The Stills, I think that's a good thing...

A little bit Add N to X, a dash of Riot Grrrl and two parts some obscure English/Japanese 80s new wave band named after a Belgian toaster who released one 7inch and then imploded in a riot of body paint, sunglasses, high-collared shirts and calculators....

Freaky Zone
Nance Music Manifesto

Coil's Lorca Not Orca

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Just want to direct you to Vague Space where there's an old Coil track posted - Lorca Not Orca, from Love's Secret Domain which is just about my favourite album of all time. This probably isn't my favourite track - Further back and faster, Chaostrophy, Things Happen and the original version of Teenage Lightning are all better - but, just for the audacity of having such ornate Spanish guitar on an otherwise otherworldly technoid psych-spew means that it deserves attention.

On Amazon I wrote this review ages ago and I think it still stands:

No one else makes digeridoos sound scary. There's hiccupping beats here, dark nasties of sound, vocals pulled in, out and all over the show. (Somewhere there's a small creature in a jesters hat, pulling at the light cord...). There's Annie Anxiety and Marc Almond in there somewhere, sounding lost and alone - like they're yelling from inside thick black glass. Later on, there's how Beefheart might have sounded if he'd ditched the guitars and invested in some short wave radio's and vintage synths; there's deep sound everywhere on this album; the more you listen the more you hear. you ought to have this.

Buy the album here or here

Coil are just about the only band who understand that sensory derangement is actually kinda fun (although if you read Englands Hidden Reverse the recording seems thick with demons) and this album seals everything together.

Still not sure about that jesters hat though John... kinda makes me think of all those sad little post-Glastonbury faces grinning inanely through the gloom of comprehension that comes with foregoing the 2 basic rules of Festival attendance:

1) Never buy a wacky Medievalist hat because it might be fun. It isn't. It's hotter than the sun.
2)Never buy anything by the Ozric Tentacles (or any ex-member of Hawkwind's band) even if they sounded absolutely amazing in the Magic Tent at 5 a.m. In the cold light of day and without the aid of hallucinogens it's just nasty noodling and you'll never listen again.

I have 3 Ozric tentacles CDs. Anyone want to trade?

Panda Bears

A musician and a filmaker and On the Farm are 2 early tracks from Panda Bear, now one half of The Animal Collective, one of my favourite Look at me, ma, I'm really quite insane bands of the moment. The name, though, continues to bother me.

I hate Pandas.

Using them to front the World Wildlife Fund is just a joke. I mean, they're practically begging for extinction: they only eat bamboo, which takes, like, a thousand years to grow (and you have to pay the price for fussy eating in my books); they refuse to mate even when sexy femme Pandas are shipped in as Sure Things (which smacks at the very least of laziness) and they look kinda like domestic abuse victims (actually, I like that).

All you pandas out there, get a grip. Eat a goddamn peach buddy...

Voltaire's Last Words

On his death bed, and asked if he would renounce Satan, Voltaire replied: "This is no time to make new enemies..." and then promptly expired.

I think there's a moral message in there for us all.

Thanks to the kind people at Copy, Right? for linking to me. They really deserve your attention with an incredibly well researched and thought out site.

Or else, they keep getting lucky.

Mark E Smith's Teeth

Last time I saw The Fall Mark E Smith's teeth fell out on my friends head. I can't think of a better reason to go out and buy their music..

To me, The Fall are a Psychometric Test: yeah, they can be a little crap and, sure, Mark E Smith can be annoying, obtuse and ridiculous but if you can't see beyond that to recognise that they are one of the only living bands conceivably possessed by genius (answers on a postcard please) then you're either dead, autistic or one of the band.

I guess you could be all three...

*80s/90s is a track from the huge anthology that's just been released. If you don't have all the albums anyway it looks like a good place to start.

The Blectums

A track by Blectum from Blechdom today. Right time, Right Place is the usual fare from the guys and gals: plenty of aural fart gags, gender-bending weirdness, clicks, cuts and bleeps. If you think you'd like the sound of a bus full of transsexual retards going to The Bi-Annual Brute Choir contest with a stackful of laptops, a corrupted copy of Reason and some analog synths blagged from the third Aphex Twin (the one who sits in the corner drowning in his own bodily fluids)then this is for you.

If not, well go and buy the latest The Rasmus album.

Pompey

Jonathan Meades novel Pompey was re-released earlier this year and I recommend anyone who likes what they see/hear here to immediately buy it.

Along the way there's a pygmy hunt (my second favourite adventure holiday), coprophilia, small children eaten by alligators, a guy with metal in his head, amateur terrorism, a human blood bank, a gerontophiliac (look it up!), the Church of the Best Ever Redemption, fireworks, crucifixions, sex viruses and much much less...

All of this and it's written with a love for the english language that is, I'm sure, unsurpassed. The only reason this didn't win every literary prize going is because after reading it you tend to feel, well, a little soiled.

Trust me, it's the kind of unreconstructed filth you all need in your lives.



BTW, thanks to NeverCameHome for plugging me! I thoroughly recommend you check them out.

Black Box Recorder

Today's track is Child Psychology by BLack Box Recorder

I have fond memories of the first time I saw this band... walking, much beshroomed and bedazzled, through the crowds at Glastonbury, towards the New Bands tent and seeing Sarah Nixey on the stage wearing what from a distance looked to be nothing at all but later turned out to be some kind of Crash-Test Dumy catsuit.

Later, mid way through the set,I had one of those sad druggy episodes / epiphanies (if you are a sad druggy episode) when you really think she is singing at you before a kindly friend slapped me back into full comprehension...

Desanguination

Just in case you were wondering...

Spleen

Rob Ellis is best known for being PJ Harvey's drummer but he's released several well-respected (i.e. don't sell ) records as Spleen and they're all worth a listen. Personally, I remember him as the guy working for seemingly years behind the counter at Acorn Records in Yeovil. He once managed to get hold of a long-deleted Coil 12" (i think it was Panic, the one with the very slow version of Tainted Love) for me.

Anyway, Roadsong is a track from Little Scratches, his second (i think) solo album and it is co-written with PJ and has John Parish (who used to be in Yeovil pots and pans band Automatic Dlamini) and Terry Edwards (he's on everythin isn't he?)on it as well.

Deerhoof

I've really been getting into Deerhoof and there's loads of MP3s here. Hard to pick a favourite track though Blue Cash is my current favourite. The tracks are all different but somehow very distinctively skewed and sounding like Talulah Gosh, The 5678s, Robert Wyatt and Nurse With Wound had a reunion with Stereolab inside the teleporter from The Fly and somehow forgot which instruments they could play.

Expect odd little harmonies, songs about being licked by cows (probably), buzzing guitars, nasty bontempi organs, kettle drums and tubas...

Thanks to Puzzle.suchfun.net for hosting these tracks...

Capgras' Syndrome

Second in an occasional series on bizarre neurological disorders...

Capgras' syndrome is a neurological syndrome where the patient will typically identify people close to them as being imposters - identical in every possible way, but identical replicas. Classically, the patient will accept living with these imposters but will secretly "know" that they are not the people they claim to be. When Capgras' occurs secondary to other disorders such as the schizophrenias, the experience can take on a frightening dimension along the lines of "Invasion of The Body snatchers".

Neurologically speaking, Capgras' Syndrome occurs when the kinesthetic component of facial recognition is damaged. The result being that the strategy of facial recognition no longer has the internal kinesthetic on which to exit. Thus the patient gets caught up in an eternal loop in his strategy and needs to form an explanation (the delusion) in order to understand why this experience should occur.

More information can be found here

Music From the Empty Quarter

Anyone remember MFTEQ magazine? it was fun for awhile wasn't it? i just found a load of old copies and re-read them...amazing to think that in pre-The Wire days it was about the only alternative to the NME-Q magazine axis of mediocrity.

New (ish) Liars video

Okay, a bit behind the times with this one but if you're so inclined you can watch the new Liars video for 'We Fenced Other Gardens With The Bones Of Our Own'here.

People Like Us

This track is one of my favourite People Like Us tracks. I always really want to like Vicki Bennett but somehow most of her music annoys me in a vaguely smug, Glen Miller "In the Mood" kind of way. This track has something skewed and erratic about it but at the same time stays more or less on the beaten path and works really well as a soundtrack to home movies involving children being excited over Easter eggs or something.

This track is courtesy of those nice people at Illegal Art who have an excellent audio section of wonderful goodies from Public Enemy to the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu - who later went on to become The KLF amongst other things (btw I recently heard the JAMS 1987 album again after many years of forgetting all about it and realised how absolutely terrible it was - was it always like that? i'm sure it couldn't have been...it seemed so revolutionary at the time...).


nb: The children being excited over Easter Eggs is merely a serving suggestion. This MP3 may not necessarily elicit any such feelings of goodwill.

Get Your Goth Name

There is absolutely no reason why you'd want to get your Goth name and I think that's reason enough for visiting this site. Spare a thought for the Goths who are already called Evil Twin and end up coming out as Colin

Je t'aime

I love you, I love you
Yes I love you
Me either
Oh my love
Like the irresolute wave
I go, I go and I come
Between your kidneys
I go, and I come
Between your kidneys
And I retain myself

I love you, I love you
Oh yes I love you!
Me either.
Oh my love
You are the wave, me the naked island
You go, you go and you come
Between my kidneys
You go and you come
Between my kidneys
And I join You

I love you I love you
Oh yes I love you
- Me either
Oh my love
Like the irresolute wave
I go, I go and I come
Between your kidneys
I go and I come
Between your kidneys
And I retain myself

You go, you go and you come
Between my kidneys
You go and you come
Between my kidneys
And I join You

I love you I love you
Oh yes I love you
Me either
Oh my love
The physical love is without exit

I go I go and I come
Between your kidneys
I go and I come
I retain myself
Not! now
Come

Well, I wasn't entirely sure about them either... apologies for what I'm sure is a dreadful translation...

Here's a decent intro site to Serge which includes some sound files so you can sing along...

Stereo Total

I think this band is vaguely Momus related but, anyway, there is a whole CD worth (+coverslip jpegs!! albeit crap ones...) of rare Stereo Total tracks here. I especially like in/out with the German-on-the-verge-of-a-mental-breakdown guy duetting sweetly with the French babe (ok, she probably looks like Mama Cass) in amongst frantic stop-start guitars and 60s organ fondling....

Seriously, what's not to like?

An American's Answer

Charles Ashman - An American's Answer (to Gordon Sinclair) seems more relevant now than ever. Good-natured, slightly retarded Right-Wing-nuttiness from a guy who seems genuinely hurt that his great Nation is being consistently misunderstood.

Bunnyrabbits, Satan, Cheese and Milk

There's just something about this track, one of many weird and wonderful "mic in tracks" / remixes found at Stark Effect. I just wonder if the girl extends her interests to all dairy products.

The Milk Factory

Nothing at all sarcastic to say about this except it's a really music good site (techno-related)with some decent downloads that I've just discovered via this anyway, give it a try here

Brion Gysin's Dream Machine

Thinking about making another dream machine. I made one years ago from plans in the first Rapid Eyebook and it seemed to work fairly well. There's plans around the internet but I'd recommend this site for a general introduction to the dream machine and Brion Gysin as an artist and poet (though his novels were a bit dodgy to be fair...he was much more of a theorist than a writer...no wonder cut-ups were his idea).

If you know of a good site / book containing his paintings/drawings I'd love to know because the bits I've seen have been very low quality images though the paintings themselves look like they'd be fantastic at higher resolutions... better still, does anyone actually own an original?

23

The number 23 is one of those enigmas that probably aren't enigmas (more like auto-suggestion or something I guess) but that doesn't stop it being a fun number to spot and investigate. Anyway, i first came across the number 23 by passing a house in Glastonbury (the town not the Festival) with the number painted in huge letters across the whole front...from there I picked up a few hints from William Burrough's Captain Clark nonsense and then onto Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV and the Temple of Psychic Youth (remember them? you used to see them lurching about at parties, quoting de Sade and trying to sell you plug in electrical stimulators)

Anyway...hit the number23 for one of (i'm sure) many sites out there dealing with these issues...

Glastonbury Festival

Glastonbury is approaching...

Since I have no ticket and my wife and I spent the best part of 36hrs straight on the phones / net trying to get them I thought I'd just say that, in the spirit of Love and Peace, I hope everyone who does have a ticket has a terrible time. At the very least I'm wishing for a Deluge of mud and rain (maybe frogs) with the associated trenchfoot & autism that all that entails.

Come with me, my brothers, and pray for rain and ruination. Pray for plague and famine. Rejoice in others' misery.

Still on the subject, if you are going then go see the guy with the 'Healing' Pyramid, he's always good for a laugh. Sample conversation (i think this was from about 10 years ago but he's always there, i think, at least he was last time I went - 2 years ago):

"How much?"

"3.50 per 1/2 hr."

"Pretty steep..."

"You want to be healed or not?"

"Mm..kinda need to be...I just spent an hour dancing to Peter Gabriel, thinking it was the Orb..."

"Easy mistake to make."

"Mm. Okay. Can we both go in?"

"Course. That'll be £7.00."

"You said 3.50!"

"Yeah, but there's two of you. Energy doesn't come cheap; you should see what the Orgone Accumulator guy's charging."

"But it's the same energy isn't it?"

Sad shake of the head. "If only it were, my son. If only it were..."

Badgerminor

Badgerminor has some great mp3s from the Palace Brothers / Bonnie Prince Billy plus the excellent 'Transparent Radiation' (as covered by Spacemen 3) from Red Krayola. All this plus Big Black's version of Cheap Trick's 'He's a whore' and a Cheap Trick orginal! Excellent stuff.

Kluver - Bucy Syndrome

First in an occasional series on bizarre neurological disorders.

Damage to the front of the temporal lobe and the amygdala just below it can result in the strange condition called Kluver-Bucy Syndrome. Classically, the person will try to put anything to hand into their mouths and typically attempt to have sexual intercourse with it. A classic example is of the unfortunate chap arrested whilst attempting to have sex with the pavement. Effectively, it is the "what" pathway that is damaged with regards to foodstuff and sexual partner. As Ramachandran puts it, "they are not hypersexual, just indiscriminate. They [monkeys with surgically modified temporal lobes] have great difficulty in knowing what prey is, what a mate is, what food is and in general what the significance of any object might be."

Danielle Dax

Remember her? Then you probably WERE there. I've been having an 80s retro week and rediscovered all my old LPs... Danielle was normally dismissed as part of the 'Goth' nonsense but her music is nothing like Goth...lots of twee / slightly twisted harmonies, middle-eastern drones, odd Ewoks-banging-on-Stormtrooper-helmets percussion, digeridoos(!), skewed pop, backward guitars, weird lyrics...

As far as I can tell the only reason she was ever labelled a Goth is because:

1. she had big hair - and she did sorta look like a pretty Nick Cave
2. she once did a song called 'Batcaves'

Anyway, no MP3s i'm afraid but you should all buy her albums.... especially Inky Bloaters and Jesus Egg That Wept

There's also a link to some Real Audio files of her work here and a short biography here

The Bran Flakes

Not my usual kind of thing but it's really hard not to like this band...exuberant, pointless, full of the joys of Summer...The Bran Flakes are the techno, mash-up etc equivalent of C86 jangle pop. This site has loads of free downloads. I'd recommend pretty much all the tracks but at the moment 'Fun Land Five' has me, er, bouncing while 'Evil Knievel' delves into the often suppressed utter cowardice of the all-American jump-suited hero...


"I'm only afraid of one thing...the dark!"

The People With Holes In Their Heads

Just read an excellent article about self-trepanation i.e. the drilling of holes in your head to facilitate clear thought and psychedelia. Apparently it's all based on an hypothesis about the blood-brain volume or something but makes for fascinating, and slightly disturbing, reading. Here's a sample in case you can't be arsed to click:

"'After some time there was an ominous sounding schlurp and the sound of bubbling. I drew the trepan out and the gurgling continued. It sounded like air bubbles running under the skull as they were pressed out. I looked at the trepan and there was a bit of bone in it. At last! On closer inspection I saw that the disc of bone was much deeper on one side than on the other. Obviously the trepan had not been straight and had gone through at one point only, then the piece of bone had snapped off and come out. I was reluctant to start drilling again for fear of damaging the brain membranes with the deeper part while I was cutting through the rest or of breaking off a splinter. If only I had had an electric drill it would have been so much simpler. Amanda was sure I was through. There seemed no other explanation of the schlurping noises. I decided to call it a day. At that time I thought that any hole would do, no matter what size. I bandaged up my head and cleared away the mess.'

There was still doubt in his mind as to whether he had really broken through and, if so, whether the hole was big enough to restore pulsation to his brain. The operation had left him with a feeling of wellbeing, but he realized that it could simply be from relief at having ended it. To put the matter beyond doubt, he decided to bore another hole at a new spot just above the hairline, this time using an electric drill. In the spring of 1970 Amanda was in America and Joey did the operation alone. He applied the drill to his forehead, but after half an hour's work the electric cable burnt out. Once again he was frustrated. An engineer in the flat below him was able to repair the instrument, and next day he set out to finish the job. 'This time I was not in any doubt. The drill head went at least an inch deep through the hole. A great gush of blood followed my withdrawal of the drill. In the mirror I could see the blood in the hole rising and falling with the pulsation of the brain.'

The result was all he had hoped for. During the next four hours he felt his spirits rising higher until he reached a state of freedom and serenity which, he claims, has been with him ever since."

Don't try this at home kids.

Comus

Well the old Idiot's Guide died a death due to my crappy understanding of HTML (it's still no better but now I'm not gonna try and be clever) and I never did manage to post a link to my new favourite Evil-Folk band, Comus. Well, I can't figure out how to host my own MP3s on the web (any suggestions gratefully received) but I did find a link to the track I wanted to post:

Comus - The Bite

Actually, while a lot of the stuff at Artrock Mp3s is pretty dodgy prog-rock stuff (unless you like psychedelic guitar-noodling elf-kings - actually, who doesn't?)there are a few good things I've uncovered for example:

The (EC) Nudes - O Pastor which is pretty cool in a i'm-sure-this-is-actually-complete-twaddle-but-i-kinda-like-it-anyhows kind of way.

See what you think...

Salvia Divinorum

I can't believe this is not a banned substance. Truly, this plant is miraculous. I'm not going to describe exactly what happens when you smoke this plant because that's as interesting as counting your knees (and then re-counting, just to check) but rest assured it is NOT recreational in the common sense of the word. It is, on the other hand, one of the most spectacularly psychedelic experiences available. For my mind, it beats the lot (maybe DMT excepted) and even feels sorta healthy in a curious kind of way...

You can buy some here and try it for yourself though I'd absolutely recommend:

1. reading a little about it first. Trust me, it shouldn't be taken lightly
2. making sure someone is with you when you take it
3. buying a decent water pipe beforehand