Senator Bobby

I heard this on a compilation tape someone gave me and for years I thought it was genuine. It's not exactly uncanny but it just seemed an absurd (and too brilliantly scripted) thing to exist in the world. It seemed more likely that it was genuine.

It's not, but it is funny.

The Bran Flakes Revisited

In the early days of the blogs, I got a lot of innocent, spazz-dancing fun out of these guys and then kinda forgot about them. In the meantime, slightly less psychotic successors like The Go Team have been Mercury nominated and hosts of bright-eyed, (Kate)Bush(y)-tailed sonic clusterers, appropriators and sludge-fiends have come and gone, beat-digging the life out of every genre imaginable.

But there's something just.... further out about The Bran Flakes. They seem resistant to categorisation (contrast those artists - they know who they are - who seem resistant to not being categorised, lest they miss out on being included in the latest Pontone mix or something) and lost in the music itself... I'm pretty sure The Bran Flakes started off being ironic but have now found themselves trapped/immersed into a kind of Rainbow Hole, a soundworld where nothing can escape, where the teeniest hint of hipster funk is pulled apart by rabid toys and where the only sex is the sex-o-lettes.

And if this stuff is all sampled then fuck knows where they dug these beats up...

The Bran Flakes are as unselfconsciously odd as anything Drag or Witch or whatever. This music which makes me want to go score some Crystal Meth in double-quick time. Now, where's that guy in the Chelsea tracksuit...

Ike Reiko Blues

Don't you just hate it when you've plugged the iPod* into the speakers, shoved it on shuffle and an Ike Reiko sexgasping orgasmatrack comes on just when your Mum's visiting?




Forgot to say that you can find some more on Ike Reiko at the ever-reliable, steamroller of a Blog, Mutant Sounds... which may have been where I first came across her...

Actually, during a brief Google for more on Ike Reiko (I won't say my search terms) I found a whole series of stuff on this blog which I'd completely forgotten about. Although now, An Idiot's Guide is clearly a doyen of taste and discrepancy and general good grammer way back in the past it was nothing more than an odd repository of solarised women and slutty record covers.

Check these out: Babe-a-licious Times!

I'm ashamed, but I still think I might return to those times, sometime soon.



*apologies to anyone who feels that my Apple-bobbing affects their delicate mythos / makes their blood boil / drags some terrible trauma into their naked consciousness...

From The Wytch Machine...

The Roots Of Goa Trance: Uchronie

Well, I know people kick the hell out of me for keeping with the faith (and it's a bigger leap than Kierkegaard took; a bigger leap than Yves Klein ) re: dodgy India-Alien obsessed PsyTrance - see, for example, Goan Wurries - but reading this via Blissblog opens a few interesting sideswipes and alternate histories - imagine where we might have ended up with another combination of:

(from here)

A selection of the acts played by Laurent and others in Goa from 1983-1989

Acts Of Madmen, Alien Sex Fiend, A Split Second, Anne Clark, Android, Arthur Baker, Art Of Noise, BAD, Bappi Lahiri, Blancmange, Borghesia, Boytronic, Cabaret Voltaire, Carlos Peron, Cassandra Complex, CCCP, Chris & Cosey, Code 61, Cyber People, DAF, Decadance, Den Harrow, Depeche Mode, Devine, Dr Calculus, Ecstacy Club, Egyptian Lover, Electra, Fad Gadget, Fatal Attraction, Force Legato, Front Line Assembly, Front 242, FockeWulf 190, Giorgio Moroder, Hard Corps, Hashim, House Master Boys, Hypnosis, Icarus, Information Society, Ironic Remark, I Start Counting, James Ray and The Performance, Jellybean Benitez, Jean- Michel Jarre, John Carpenter, Karen Finley, Keith Leblanc, Koto, KLF, Kraftwerk, Krush, Lama, Laser Cowboys, Laser Dance, Liaisons Dangereuses, Man Parish, Manufacture, Mark Imperial, Mark Shreeve, Ministry, Mittageisen, Moev, Morton Sherman Bellucci, Moskwa TV, Neon, Neon Judgement, New Beat Express, New Order, Newcleus, Nitzer Ebb, N.O.I.A., Nux Nemo, Off, Orient Afair, Peter Richard, Poesie Noire, Portion Control, Public Relations, Psyche, Richard H. Kirk, Robotiko Rejekto, Sandy Marton, Severed Heads, Screaming Trees, Signal Aout 42, Simple Minds, Sisterhood, Skinny Puppy, Space Opera, Spectrum, Soft Cell, Syntech, Tackhead, Tangerine Dream, Tantra, Telex, The Maxx, Time Zone, Torsten Fenslau, Total, Tribantura, Two Of China, Vicious Pink, Voyou, Yello, Zwischenfall, 400 Blows, 4You, 16 Bit...

You can see the nucleus of some really interesting things here; something similar to the plate-spinning antics of Stevo in the early years of Some Bizarre, something that could have eaasily diverted into an altogether stranger, more tentacled (tentacular?) beast...

It reminds me of some of the alternate timelines for Acid House that I imagined a while back - here mostly and then here (Where Richard NOrris has his say) - ... so many missed opportunities, so mnay angles yet to be explored... who's for suggesting Uchronie as the latest new genre? Music that purposefully re-imagines alternate musical timelines... starts afresh, sends signals down the line that don't get interrupted...

Law Abiding Citizen

I'm mentioned this before but I find it hard / don't find it hard / ought to but maybe don't always find it imprecise and/or difficile to understand the message (even the syntax) of Deleuze and Guattari - I try, page by page, line by line and I'll keep trying ("I must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on." etc) but now I'm faced with an even bigger philosophical conundrum...

You see, I've just watched Law Abiding Citizen

and...

well...

I'm trying to understand the ethics...

I'm sure it's there: the 18 Certificate suggests it, the DVD extras imply it but....

I can't find which ethical system they might be using, or trying to use.

It's a brilliantly misconceived, potentially dangerous and destabilising film (in all the wrong ways). It twists in turns in ways you don't expect i.e. the plot doesn't twist, the plot is brutally obvious but the morality twists, in a way oddly more confusing and certainly more disturbing than any Haneke film. If there's a commentary implied here, it got lost in the edit.

You kind of want one person to win, then the other, then everyone....

Actually...

You want one person to lose, then the other, then everyone...

That might be the point.

It might be unintentionally brilliant but I'm pretty sure it's unintentionally shit. I could be wrong. I feel almost certain that i must be wrong. I can't be wrong. I'm wrong.

Disc(l)ocations

I don't choose music these days. It chooses me. I'm temporarily without CD or Record player. Trapped in a room with just a little black box* and a big iPod on shuffle. I load it up and it chooses the mood, decides on which kind of day it is. I'm learning to live with it, learning not to press on through the tracks, learning to believe that, if I've put it on there, it must be worth listening to all the way through.

Mostly, there's a tangle of sounds. Mostly, there's no rhyme nor reason - The Chesterfields to Ramleh to Fourt Tet to the soundtrack to Barry Lydon - but occasionally it gets a feel for things. Sometimes, there's something in the air. Yesterday, shuffle had an odd liking for the new Kempernorton EP (and in some Jungian synchronicity / complete coincidence, I found the Iron John book in a Glastonbury second-hand shop the same day) and various Pantha Du Prince tracks (of more in a later post perhaps; I've come to this guy late but it's stirring, interesting stuff) and today, apropos of nothing (so far), it's got a disco head on.

It's quite relentless.

There's been the odd bit of Patrick Cowley, some Ze stuff and, especially, Giorgio Moroder. In fact, out of the tens of thousands** of tracks it could choose, more or less all of them have a disco twist (over 15 songs played so far today, all but three have been disco). I can't get a fix on it. There's clearly disco in the air, the tranciest kind. The kind that keeps going. The day doesn't feel disco but I can't escape the sense that maybe it'll become so. There's a few hours left. It's out there, trying to get in. It's insistent music at the best of times. It's trying to get into my bones.

Giorgio Moroder - The Chase

Giorgio Moroder - First Hand Experience In Second Hand Love




*I might mean this. I can't be sure. Wasn't this in Rapid Eye or something?

**Maybe the iPod is trying to comment on the obscenity of having this much music on your person at any one time, maybe it's making a comment about the implied self-denial of Free Will, maybe something's just missing a time when the best bit of any journey was deciding which tapes to take with you...


UPDATE - I think this may be responsible. I'm looking into it.

Christian Yoga

Some of this creeped onto my ipod somehow and now it's wrestled the shuffle function away and is using it for it's own ends. Whatever else it plays, there's a Christian Yoga chant just a few songs away. Cleansing.

Also mentioned and reviewed here and here.

The Execution of Gary Glitter

Well, Channel 4 can hardly say they're ducking the punches. This was a tiny scratch of insanity writ large (could they have stretched it to a mini series or a phone vote? - I'll bet anything that was on the cards at some point, just grab someone from Ofcom, feed them a few drinks, and make them tell all). It started many bombs ticking; made people think about the death of TV, the death of the remix (the moment where Gary bug-eyes at the crappy remix is seventeen times more funny than intended), the death of the News, almost anything except the death penalty itself.

You watched, kept watching, felt your mouth creep open and hang there. This was coke spritzer in television form, a head bigger than Nikolai Valuev's, a head designed to punch. Channel 4 used to court this kind of controversy all the time; they clearly felt the need for some more. They clearly felt the need for a good kicking. Maybe they watched that programme on Mary Whitehouse and got a burst of vanilla-scented nostalgia for the good old days, when people could be relied upon to care enough to march on things. When people would do their cardies right up to the top and storm the barricades.

(The crowd / protestor scenes btw: pitifully empty. The budget needed thousands of extras; without them it was just some spinning cameras and a few people wandering around aimlessly. If they were trying to portray a surge of emotion then...)

I'm guessing at some level I enjoyed this; it acted like a counterpoint to A Short Film About Killing, a comical flipside, a film about death that didn't feel like a film about death. But, at some level, I enjoyed this because it's nice to be offered fresh meat now and then, it'll be interesting to discuss in class, it'll be a worthy addition to the the end of year WTF? lists and talking heads; it'll be on New Year's Eve again, attempting to catch in the throats of the post-pub crowd.

The remix will be out before Christmas. Is probably out now. Chris Moyles will be playing it.

It made me think of how understated I was being when I suggested the Young Gods version of Did You Miss Me ought to be playing from huge speakers on the clifftops as he crawled back to Britain. It made me think how, as a child, I used to think the phrase 'fact is stranger than fiction' patently absurd. It made me think of a time when Brasseye and The Day Today were surreal and over the top. I've already heard people gossipping that maybe this was a Derren Brown stunt; the sun didn't really disappear, this really wasn't on TV last night.

Does it matter that he's not dead? Is there anything to be gained in the rhizomatic linkage that has the other major drama on TV last night feature a literal car crash?

That said the guy that played Gary, played a blinder; he must've known what a weird one this was going to be and he looked and sounded like Gary Glitter, threw himself into it (eye-popping remix moment notwithstanding); this was a performance worthy of a better stage, a better script... Gary Bushell and Anne Widdicome played similar blinders; you really believed them, every nuance, every bombshell... they might have been one of the 54% of British people who favour the death penalty (but then they wouldn't be allowed to act on TV, would they? Well, I guess once Nick Griffin gets on, anything can happen). Anne and Gary B's performance was a twin-set of evil; some of the great screen monsters of our time - pity they couldn't get Jedward on the screen, doing a pro-death dance, singing an amended version of John Barleycorn...

Exotica

If you were intrigued by the comment below re: exotica then here's as good a place as any to make a start... there must be a modern counterpart to this kind of thing out there; something seamed from whalehusk or antler or appalachian guthorns -a frog chorus made from steamrollered amphibian sighs, the pretty woodchip techno of deforestation...

Congotronics maybe.

Audio.Outings

When I can be arsed - slumping like a burst spleen at the moment but getting there - I'm gonna have to start posting about my rediscovered love for all things techno but, until then, enjoy with me this site - full of MP3s of tracks that I used to have on vinyl but sold due to malnutrition and carnage and immediately wished I hadn't, if only so I could now do gutter style photo-shoots of my records looking pretty ("If you could just tip your...yessss...and then maybe the shoulder strap could...mmm")

3D Death Chase

"When, suddenly and without warning, 2D was not enough..."

Meme Thing

Meme thing that's been doing the rounds, via Doppelganger and Kek and Gutter and Dom and everyone. 10 records that you don't want to admit are lurking at the back of your collection... or else at the lower end of your hard drive, obscured by deliberately incorrect MP3 tagging...

Most of these I've had Vinyl versions of, at one point or another and now retain in MP3 form at least. Irregular readers will know that many of my actual records disappeared or were scratched to pieces in a savage ex-girlfriend attack circa 1995.

1. David Essex - everything really, but especially Hold Me Close and the mighty Rock On.

2. Godley and Creme - Under My Thumb. The perfect single so far about a woman throwing herself out of a train. The electronic backing seethes with menance in a way that Nine Inch Nails never quite manage.

3. Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Vida. I'm just waiting for these guys to come back into fashion.

4. Paul McCartney - No More Lonely Nights. Because is reminds me of freezing my tits off waiting for a girl to finish her paper round. I had to jump out of a thirty foot tree because of this song.

5. Paul Young - Love Will Tear Us Apart. Not sacrilege at all. I prefer this to the original in almost every way. Lovely hair, put to music.

6. Natasha Bedingfield - Chasing Cars. The Snow Patrol cover that caught me in a loose moment and won't let go. Trust me, I've tried to shake it but the little fellah hangs on in there and keeps nagging at me. I find myself humming this on trains, sometimes with my eyes closed.

7. Mathew Wilder - Break My Stride. The sound of smug set to music. Later on, he became the voice of Ling in Mulan.

8. Marc Almond/Bronski Beat - I Feel Love. My first foray into the 10" maxi-single and the gayest record ever made, apparently. My second foray was a Gaye Bikers On Acid EP, which might be a semantic/linguistic trace for the Freudians / Lacanians out there to follow. My third 10" was Phorward, by The Shamen, which may or may not buck the trend. Actually, I still play this all the time, even when people are around so I'm not sure this really counts as a guilty pleasure. Still, like an 8 year old sitting on Kays catalogue underwear models, this feels vaguely wrong in a way I can't describe.

9. Divine - Walk Like A Man. See above. Triple it.

10. Phil Oakley and Georgio Moroder - Together In Electric Dreams. The first song I remembering being in love to. The girl looked a bit like Fallon, from Dynasty (the first one: see below) and never asked me to jump out of a tree once.



Records I didn't include because they were my parents': David Soul, Cat Stevens, Bread, Neil Diamond, Foreigner, Pilot (I love Magic too Gutter!).