MaHaBone 1

Jack: Treacle Eater

Psychic TV - The Orchids



Califone - The Orchids



This song. Yeah. Long time ago now in the wind-blasted Barwick dunes. The God of Hell-Fire. Two out of four of the people I associate with this place and this song are dead. Blood arching through the air like a loose artery. Fire. A beautiful, cursed place. A hinterland.

This guy as well, of course.

Zola Jesus

Oh, so that's where Danielle Dax has been. Knew she couldn't just be fucking around with UnicaZurn album covers. Scrubs up well, our Danielle.

Welcome too, to our new-old post label: Gert Big Goths, inspired partly by Speakers Push Air

Zola Jesus? I'm still undecided - the dubbier it gets the better. I think I might really like it, but I'm not willing to commit, just yet. Actually, I think Zola Jesus hasn't quite decided either - the music lurches from album to album, refuses to settle; I like that, even the stuff I don't like, I'm glad it's there. Certainly, there's bits I love and I really like the collaboration with LA Vampires (hate the name LA Vampires though) - love the No No No cover/reinvention.

Quite like this one too. As 80s as a Vaughan Oliver sleeve, though.

Zola Jesus - Sea-Talk

Via MBV

Burial Hex Runs The Voodoo Down

Burial Hex vs. Maya Deyens. Well, not exactly vs. Apposite, if anything. Saw some of her films in NY over the Summer... haunting, like watching Hungarian footballers in the 1950s.

Burial Hex in quite a restrained mood here. Dainty, even.

High Wolf & The Lycans

Because I was listening to High Wolf on the bus late last night and a werewolf got on. It freaked quite a few people out; one guy moved away so quickly he almost fell over. The werewolf smelled of weed, oddly enough and only lasted two stops before heading off into the night, perhaps to rub Virgin fat onto his alopecia-ing chesthair.... I know what you're thinking but it was a werewolf, a lycan, they used to be all around here, you used to be able to spot them out of the corner of your eyes, just before they dissolved into the bracken... they were relatively harmless then, the odd bite, the odd scratch and sniff... many of them were young, cubs even, barely more dangerous than the torch-wielding feral kids being chucked out of the Action Zone slums of Bridgy...

But still, the Lycans are creeping back. This one was an adult male - red eyed, yellow-toothed, hair like a dirty ripped dress. He looked like he meant business. Haven't seen them in a while. Not this type. They've been lying low, perhaps afraid of all the publicity, perhaps annoyed at how shitty the novels about them have been. Last time they were this out in the open is back in the CJD farm-culls...

Interesting. I'll keep you posted.

Other than that, High Wolf's donated organ tumbles are quite fetching, I think. Diverting. A little transporting. Tiny little squiggles of puff. Substantially insubstantial. Better than Ferraro et al, I think; more.... honest. Makes me think I need to start taking extra gulps of cough syrup.

Trainings 2

Sir Richard Bishop plays in the same ebbs and flows of the guy in the seat in front of me's sleep breaths, when the drums kick in I think they might wake him; The Residents version of Paint It Black sounds miles better if you imagine it hummed in the head of the woman reading the Jodi Picoult novel, especially if you imagine that, at the last beat, she's gonna go Purple-Assed Mandril Amok; Harvey Milk's comedy angst works well as you pass Newbury and realise you're not near half way; Mount Vernon Arts Lab's The Fog Detonator is exactly what you'd hear if you were watching televised coverage of a terrorist attack on this train; Spaceape sounds less good the further away from London you are; Johnny Cash doesn't work in the dark, even if he was The Man In Black; El-B's Amazon can, under certain conditions, give the distinct illusion that peoples' wrists are responsible for drum slaps; Earthmonkey always makes me think I'm in Rome, even if I'm actually just approaching Pewsey...

From The Wytch Machine...

Trainings

A few musical observations on a train journey:

Xhol Caravan makes Reading Station glow; Coil's Die Wolfe Kommen Zuruck played loud sucks the train sounds into it and then spews them out sometime in the 30s, making everyone with a hat or facial hair look like a Poirot baddy - maybe not the Time Travel intended; LCD Soundsystem have always been Music For First Rail Adverts, they haven't *become* Music For First Rail Adverts; Dinosaur Feathers work as a beautifully adept/scornful soundtrack to children squabbling over polystyrene WW2 (Hurricanes, I think) fighter planes; Summer Dregs gave the effect of actually turning off the weather, if only for a few moments - in this instance, this isn't a good thing but you'd be an idiot not to see the future utility; Circulus sound 3x better when soundtracking a fat woman eating a homemade sandwich (mayonnaise though, will never look the same); Creation Rebel intros sound like the inside of babies' heads; Dennis Wilson works well if you imagine it being sung by the guy arguing with his wife about the nature of 'reserved'...



From The Wytch Machine...

Ekoplekz and Hacker Farm live on Resonance FM

Bottom row, extreme left - Farmer Glitch, second from left - Ekolad, extreme right - Loki, second from right - 2ndFade; middle row, second from right - Kek-W, extreme left - Bob; top row, extreme left - Time Attendant, second from left - John Eden, third from right - Mugwump, extreme right - Cybore. We don't know who the other guys were, or why they turned up in near-identical outfits. Embarrassing.

...


...great live show, Ekoplekz almost early-Aphex Hard, Hacker Farm more ambient than I've seen them before (though ambient like an acid rush, ambient like an accidental theramin, ambient like the beats have gone round the back to meet the children of the night...)

.... whooosh; fizz ... thudddddd ... flick flick ... crackle crackle crack-le... fizzzzzzzzzz ...

scatter scatter scatter drummmmmm ... scatter scatter scatter drummmmmmm ...

Pics, audio, etc here...

Johnny Mugwump was a brilliant host; putting up with the liggers and the hangers-on (i.e. me) and generally being gutsuckingly charming... lovely to meet you Johnny!

....

...and on that note, wonderful to see John Eden and Woebot / Hollow Earth / Cybore / in the flesh too... (cheers for the drink, Matt)... John especially I've had a lot of dealings with over the years. I say dealings, I mean mostly just envy-ridden seethings over the gigs he got to see in the 80s / 90s which me and my Yeovil mates were often trying to get to as well, only somehow getting derailed by falling car doors, exotic illness, bad tidings, fleshfalls, cold readings and non-specific Chaos Magick (in roughly that order - I'm serious: a car door falling off on the motorway stopped us getting to two different gigs)

...

and, almost forgot that the equally charming Bob from West Norwood Cassette Library was also in attendance... as was Time Attendant, who jammed along with the West Country boys in their final flings... Monotron a go go...

... truly a great Blogger meeting of minds... though by then mine was a little, er, aft via Red Wine and Gin and Mojitos

... still, didn't bite anyone...

Gira Does Britney

Michael Gira sings 'Me' like Britney Spears sings 'Me'. Just a little pitchshift, even imagined, and you're there. It's not just the way they sing 'Me' either, the 'Me' itself is the same, or has the same intention, the same semi-autobiographical distance. Not true, but not false either. You can't rely on that 'Me' but you know that there's more to it than words.

This song would suit Britney. In fact, a lot of late period (haven't heard latter period yet) Swans would suit her. She ought to get on it.

Swans - Love Will Save You

Washed Out

Been enjoying Washed Out recently, one of a long string of bands genred into chillwave etc that all sound like the Hipstamatic app takes pictures. Vaseline-smeared as Pitchfork put it (for once apt). Perfect dozing music; instantly evocative of nothing in particular. I just like the name, really; think that it'll go places where the mass choirs of other similar artistsi will founder. Names seem more important than ever. Posters. Sleeves. The album artists are coming back, I think. Album artists. We'll see.

Washed Out - Hold Out

Washed Out - New Theory

Washed Out - Feel It All Around (Toro Y Moi remix)