Stuff and bits part 2

Ian, who's always in first with breaking news over on thrillpier, has already pointed out that Silvio from the Sopranos, AKA little Stevie from the E Street Band will be broadcasting his radio show Underground Garage direct from Tower Records on Sunday (1PM to 3PM). Should be a pretty ace way to spend an afternoon for non-Oxegen goers. I believe he is into all sorts of classic rock, but primarily garage rock. He took a big interest in Dublin band The Urges a while back. Did he sign them or something? I dunno. I was always sorta curious about that Nuggets style scene in Dublin. All those resplendent mod guys turning out Lester Bangs-type music as if it were still 1968. I criticised one of these bands once saying they were pastiche, but in fairness if I ever formed a band it would be a Guided by Voices pastiche.

Ahem - Speaking of which, this brings me neatly around to the most recent Times New Viking MP3. I have a hardcore grá for these guys, even though they are best buds with that Psychedelic Horseshit dude who seems to be on a one man mission to bully Wavves.

I'll have to digress a bit before getting back to the TNV tune. The Psychedelic Horseshit stuff came on the back of an overall intimidatory journalistic beat-down against Nathan Wavves. This was ignited by a music website who clearly should have known he wasn't ready for the fame hoisted on him by said site. Yet, they blabbed MELTDOWN! during Primavera like they were an association of judgemental indie elders sitting proud on a moral cloud. The Greek Gods of alternative music.

Some musicians struggle live. Thome Yorke has done. Kurt Cobain clearly did. Bright Eyes too. Recently, I've seen Beirut 'melt down'. Less recently, Grandaddy. It happens. Good bands will fuck up, with the aid of illegal substances or not. They are all too human. And sometimes a bit more difficult even than that. But just because one disgruntled Pitchfork writer had a blackberry at the right time, a vulnerable enough lad (if admittedly youthfully arrogant with - God forbid - a wee fondness for dope) was dragged through the coals like a sacrificial lamb.

The information pitchfork.com (who didn't cover said festival properly anyway) provided about Nathan from Wavves was subsequentially digested by many other music blogs and bigger sites like NME. Also, in extension to their 'meltdown tweets', from Ryan Schreiber, Pitchfork followed up with a stinkingly childish, linked interview from a member of the Black Lips. Here, said macho hero blabbed explicitly about how a friend of his band gave Nathan the drugs he couldn't handle. That to me was the saddest part of all. What was the message there? Some pitchfork favoured bands are big and clever at taking drugs, others aren't?


Oh look! it's the poor fucker who had the MELTDOWN! (tm) God have mercy on him. Heard it was worse than when Posh Spice stopped atein' celery last week. He'll never get over it.


Nice promo for 'no hope kids'. It includes some fun clips from Dublin.

And now, that Times New Viking Tune. It's awesome. They recorded it on videotape (VHS) apparently. It sounds clearer than the last album which was probably recorded on used fanny pads or something, even though it was still ace.

MP3: Times New Viking - No time, No hope

I suspect they'll battle it out with Jay Reatard this summer over who can get out the most nihilistic record title. They currently pip Reatard, because despite this TNV badboy having a ginormous melody, its refrain, "no time, no hope" sounds like an existential howl that mocks the generally accepted chirpy rules of life. Jay's almost equally life-affirming effort is called "you're gonna lose" and contains the heartwarming nugget "don't you know/ you're gonna lose". Giddy up for some REAL positive tunes on Matador folks!

MP3: Jay Reatard-you're gonna lose

The next post in the pipeline will be about Irish music.

I did an interview with Deerhoof for State.ie. It's here. They're playing around Ireland this weekend and are well worth seeing.

stuff and bits Part 1

My techno listening buzz continues unabated. Which is funny because I am mostly reclining at home with this shit on my headphones. Any sort of exciting night-life is more or less out the window for me these days. PhD. There, I give a three letter word a sentence of its own.

Regardless, this cut from Slovenian producer Petar Dundov is a stratospheric plateau of repetition - heady techno in as close to its purest form as you'll get nowadays.


MP3: Petar Dundov-Oasis

It's all build and no breakdown, like a Sting and Trudi Styler humping marathon on a posh rug. The album which the track is taken from, 'Escapements', is a slithery, galactic beast with a relentless forward groove which never lets up despite the deceptively repetitive arrangements. It's all a bit of a masterful sonic illusion really, one that reminds me of The Field's Daytime track on his 'Sound of Light' EP. Anyone who likes their dance music brimming with a touch of the transcendental should check Dundov out. Actually scratch that, if you are one of those late-nineties Underworld nuts who never shut up about 'Rez' you'll find piles to love on this album.

waxing gibbous

The local Niteclub, Vibe, had a full moon party last Saturday. The concept was to capture the wild spirit of one of those trancey all-nighters that go down on the beaches out in Thailand. Some of the local boyos must have come back last Summer with the faces peeling off them and tales galore of the craic they had out there, atein' funny mushrooms and hittin' the sliotar around the beach with some ladyboys at dawn. Last week, it was time to bring a bit of that exotic magic to Kells. Forty tonnes of sand were dumped inside the niteclub and a hot-tub was placed in the smoking area to create that authentic beach experience. Not to be outdone by the lack of a full moon (it was a tiny fingernail on the night in question) the organisers bravely raised a huge smiley helium balloon against the uncooperative lunar calendar so the good people of the town could get wild n'funky. I went down with a few mates and we had the most magical, enlightening, loved-up night of our lives...

Only kidding. It was pure shite. I knew in my heart we were chasing rainbows as the twelve euro cover charge was bled out of us at ten minutes to fucking two. "Typical Vibe" we muttered, the opening incantation of an inevitable, grim ritual. Subsequent highlights included someone getting sick in the sand, a local girl in a bikini horsing around the hot-tub with a ripped Germanic dude while a shadowy conglomeration of paunchy young farmers with buckeldy belts and wranglers looked on intently, and someone telling the black toilet attendant "ye must feel at home tonight with all this sand." Kells, I love you but I hate you.


full moon party Thailand


full moon party Kells.

Something good is happening in Kells this weekend though, the yearly town festival which actually has a lot of engaging looking events. I know a few people end up on this site when they search for useful information about the town, because I tag the word 'Kells' a lot. Well, Kells information seekers - if you are looking for something fun to do this weekend may I suggest taking a visit to the Arches bar from 8pm on Sunday night (5th of July). Two talented local comedians, Aodhgan Comiskey and Fred Cooke, will be doing their thing and there will be an open mic too. If you see me, try to stop me going to Sunday night Vibe. Why? Because it is a bleak vortex of career alcoholics and cougars. Yet, despite all our best intentions it will start to exert an inexplicable gravitational pull on us the very minute the barman in the Arches yodels "Time now folks!"

No one can succeed like Doctor Robert

Ah lads, I can't handle this humid weather. It's suffocating. Earlier, a trip to the shop for a cooling lolly nearly left me collapsed in a wheezing heap. Night time is worse. I ended up rooting around the freezer for bags of frozen veg to put under my sheets last night. They sort of worked too, like reverse hot water bottles with broccoli florets in them. In case you're wondering, I didn't share my bed with the foodstuffs. I patiently watched a bit of BBC News 24 as they worked their magic. I can be a bit gross at times, but even I wouldn't sneak a bag of veg back in the fridge after it was semi-defrosted by the radiant heat from my crotch.


John Daly: Keeping the Jimmy White flame of smoking in sport alive.

My friend tells me it's terrible bad weather for 'golfer's hole'. This unsubtle euphemism describes an otherwise unspoken rash that will be familiar to any man who has spent a hot day doing repetitive physical activity in Penney's underwear. The aformentioned friend and his golfing chums periodically suffer from this embarrassing scourge. They've a lot of extra nylon to deal with, y'see. Indeed, it's so common in the golfing community that they talk openly about it in the pub and compare treatments. The slathering on of Vaseline at 7am, the sly dock-leaf dropped down your jocks behind the fifteenth tee. It's all part of a hot day's golf.

I'm going to post a techno-y MP3 because I haven't done that in a while.

MP3: Deepchord presents echospaceelysian

This track is a cut from the monolithic dub techno album 'the coldest season', which is produced by Stephen Hitchell and Rod Modell. I associate dub techno with two wildly different types of situation. The first normally occurs on a bank holiday Sunday afternoon. You find yourself wobbling through the blasted wreckage of a house-party to open a window, any window, as long as it lets out the mong. Invariably, a few survivors are splayed on couches, staring at lampshades and muttering about heading down to others of their ilk in the Bernard Shaw. An impossibly cheery techno-wonk's ipod, running on the barest shred of battery, will be burbling through the speakers. What's playing? Why, dub techno of course.

My second experience normally occurs at home, late at night when I am feeling a little down in the dumps. I put my headphones on and surrender to this music. It's a security blanket. So deep, dark, cavernous and luxurious. All those soft undulating effects following the sparse bass, echoing, hissing, drawing the mind further and further into space or perhaps more aptly 'a space' where everything melts away except form and texture. Often dub techno music is barely representative of anything (one of the tracks from the deepchord album I mentioned is called "ocean of emptiness"). Such a meandering, repetitive journey through texture maddens those who criticise the genre. But, to me anyway, it is the very abstraction they criticise which provides the ultimate means of escapism.

You're listening to atlantic 252

Back in the days when my mother used to cover my schoolbooks in pattern-embossed beige wallpaper with my name on a sticker, and my music collection consisted of C60s with titles like Maximum Rave, I couldn't get enough of the charts on Atlantic 252. They tended to have a lot of poppy hardcore and rave in them back then. 'Twas 1991, ye see. I remember fuck all else about that year except spending a lot of the Summer up one particular ash tree, daring myself to climb one branch higher every day. By the time the August days were drawing in, I was hanging precariously from some bendy new growth at a height of about 25 foot when I copped the couple living in the neighbouring house. They were both standing full-frontal, and staring me out of it at eye-level. During my aborted scramble from this apocalypse of real life wrinkly-bits, I knocked the wind out of myself by falling into what botanists call the tree's crotch.


My twin brother and I had an old skool '70s Hi Fi in our room those days. This abomination of a yoke consisted of two gigantic silver cuboids; one was covered in chunky dials and a tuner, and the other was a double tape deck and record player. To this, add a pair of crusty speakers that were blown to shite way back when by my Dad and his hippy brother. God knows what sort of an unholy mixture got played through them. Most likely rebel songs and Irish showband swingers. And definitely the odd Incredible String Band or Donovan tune to freak things out if it all went a bit too Declan Nerney - on my uncle, like.

Actually, come to think of it, maybe I fucked the speakers? My bro might correct me if this is not true, but I distinctly remember water falling on to one in horrifying slow motion as we spazzed maniacally around the room with our one-inch-thick step haircuts bouncing disastrously out of tempo to this...



and this...



Sunken-faced Mancs with vicks vaporub up their bums weren't the only beneficiaries of UK Hardcore. The funny voice imploring "it's time for Trumpton" during said tune, spoke to me. It more or less filled me with an overwhelming desire to spaz around my bedroom and throw shit at my brother, like pillows. Mind you, I was ten at the time. Although, I suppose that probably put me on an equal mental wavelength to some of the monged nuttahs who featured in the tabloids every morning. Indeed, I remember us being ten and our Mam cornering us, clutching a paper, to ask if the music on our tapes was "rave".

My point, and there is a point here I hope, is that chart music hasn't figured as explicitly in my life since shortly after those days. I suppose I got into in a scene (Green Day punk in my case, followed by Britpop) and suddenly the charts melted from being the central soundtrack to my life to being snippets of incidental music in my life. Yet, as I grew older and began to rediscover that pop is brilliant, I also found that the charts had turned to anonymous shite. Nobody bar Rain Man could realistically follow the quick-fire confusion of the charts any more. They were pumped with over-hyped, burnt-out earworms that pissed everyone off before they even hit the top-spot, and nothing climbed any more. In at the top, in for the drop. Things had the hyper-accelerated turnover of staff in an Eircom call centre. This, crucially, removed the whole sport of chart watching, a pleasure deeply ingrained in the heart of many pop fans I know. Moreover, it reduced the shelf-life of genuinely quality singles, thus keeping them at arm's length from the collective consciousness.

But it is acknowledged that things are changing chart-wise, and changing for the better. The charts are once again a byword for quality pop. I'm no Jim Carroll, but I suspect the relatively new system of including downloads is making for a strong chart where the cream slowly rises. And best of all, where songs linger long enough to have the luxury of playing yearningly out of chippers at 4am for a few weeks, and to float on tarmac heat while youngsters' cars with rolled down windows hover impatiently at traffic lights. You might hear it from the flat downstairs. From your radio. Out of the shit radio at work. Or even from the Rover's Return jukebox in Coronation Street. But you'll hear it enough to remember it. Great chart music is everywhere this Summer, and I suspect it's great because the charts are once again on its side.

I can't post MP3 chart music here for obvious reasons. But here are two youtubes of stuff I like right now.



BONKERS!! Dizzee Rascal
This makes me nostalgic for prime Basement Jaxx. When you throw everything PLUS the kitchen sink into a mix, it's likely to be a right proper mess. Van Helden and Rascal deserve a big prize here. Why? Because they threw the fridge and microwave in too! Yet, from such mental eclecticism, they managed to make one of the songs of the year.



Paparazzi: Lady Gaga.
In this promo Gaga drinks from the same oversized teacup she whupped out during the weird Jonathan Ross interview. I like how because it is the 'lesser' single from her overplayed album, Gaga appear to be messing around a lot more with her image and all her gloriously pretentious Warholian affectations during the overblown narrative. It's nearly 8 minutes long! She jerks around like an injured stick insect in a steel S&M costume for half of it! On crutches! HEYYY.... I like the song too, OK?

'Cos often-times, the later singles of loaded pop albums may lack the whizz-bang appeal of the previous releases. Yet there can be a languid insistence about them which gets revealed gradually and makes them the perfect soundtrack to a sweltering July night (see Kylie's 'Come into my World'). Or even better, can you taste that last chip from the chipper van in a town gone so still on a Summer's Sunday morning that you can hear a cow mooing somewhere as you savour it? The more relaxed pop songs drip and trickle through Summers like that. Paparazzi might be one of them.