AHHHHH Work is killing me!

Tweet I can't afford the time to blog this weather. But here's what Im working on, a massive blog about my all time favourite record.... 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea' by Neutral Milk Hotel. If you looked out of an old fashioned biplane, flying over the sea, you might see this... I envy someone coming to this album for the first time. Listen to the tune below and tell me what you think. Its the open door into one of most mysterious and compelling worlds ever created... because thats how I see 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea," not as a bunch of unrelated songs on plastic but as a spacious and self-contained world, a complete artistic vision. In fact no other album ever struck me as being so complete. Oh man I'm going to treat you to some bullshit about this one!

My noise rock friends...

Tweet I know a bunch of lads who are mad into noisey post-rock. So much so that they regularly jet off like a begraggled version of the Monkees to British holiday camps and custard factories to hear their fave musicians tear these odd places new bumholes with scary loud music. Hanging around with the boys is great. They eat sleep and drink noise and sound. Whether thats weirdbeard avant garde music like lightning bolt and wolf eyes or more structurally conventional but no less visceral stuff like today's track, its normally a bit dark. In these faddy days of cool-for-two-minutes indie-dance, its refreshing to know a bunch of dudes in sonic youth t shirts who stand around discussing the merits of Pelican's drummer. Back to today's track. Its the new Liars single, plaster casts made of everything. The video for this track is also linked. Its a gleefully cheesy skin-crawler that matches the freakin' out on bad drugz vibe of the track perfectly. Seems to owe some to David Lynch's Lost Highway with all that rushing nighttime tarmac and those creepy superimposed faces. Its got that filthy B Movie buzz. Primal Scream often try to do what this tune does. I think these lads do it better. Now look at that video. YIKES!!! Its like a nudey version of Karma Police.

Mini Post

Tweet Busy Friday alert. So I've only time for one random picture and two songs by my favourite band. Enjoy the weekend dudes!!! Its thanksgiving in the Kapowski household. And grampa Kampowski is telling Gramma he loves her.

Let it come down...

Tweet A big let down at Primevera was not getting to see Spiritualized's acoustic mainline set. I gave up standing in a snaking queue of chin-stroking continental poseurs after about a half an hour. I'd say my temple veins bulged in comical rage by the third time I heard a generic bunch of sour Spaniards in designer spex asking what they were actually queuing to see. So I missed it and trundled off with popeye steam coming out of my ears to see Beirut (who I don't really like). And according to my spaced out spaceman buddy Jiffy, I missed something wondrous and intimate. A mini-orchestra and the band playing softer, reworked material from Pierce's entire career, while thousands of stars gently fell against a curtain behind them. Ack!!! Well I'm not missing that again for the world, and its happening in Laois next week. Its admirable how nothing is sacred to Jason Pierce. He treats his entire back catalogue as a malleable work in progress to be continually remixed and reinterpreted in novel ways. Its a mark of his genius. And because of it I have high hopes the gig is going be an intriguing counterpoint to the last time I saw them live. In a sweaty Dance tent in Oxegen at about 5 in the afternoon they performed in a walloping wall of oscillating, strobing and stretched out guitar and synth drones from the dawn of noise itself. It was one of the most incredible gigs I've seen. Pierce stood still as you like at the side of the stage. There was no emphasis on him, all focus was on the exhilarating sound that filled the tent and blew the minds of the few remaining dance-monkeys who weren't scared off by the guitars. You could see new vistas opening up in their big oily pupils. I'd say a few spiritualized records got shoplifted in Cork the week after. I'm putting up 'the slide song' along with a silent prayer that they play it. Donal Dineen used to always play this back when Today FM was Radio Ireland and I used to tape shtuff off the radio. He'd spin this and a magical old B Side by Embrace called 'now you're nobody' and I'd be lulled to sleep by the duvet like qualities of both songs. Magic. The man himself. Fuckin Genius that he is.

Christmas day 1986

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I was going to post a mini-blog for today because work is suddenly very busy. Now that its done, it looks more like a medium helping of blog. I posted a link to the latest from my twin brother who is beavering away like a complete loon on his electronic music making software. More power to him, I say. Each new thing he does seems to take a step further away from the constraints of the tools he's using and a step closer to the sounds I reckon he's hearing in his head. This one is called rockfield symphony. Its pure headphones electronica. To me, it twinkles in a fog of frosted nostalgia, but that might be just the personal connotations of the title (we grew up in a housing estate called Rockfield). Cue blurry slideshow of 1980s Christmas photos.
Oh and hands up who likes the lighthouse? As a child, I always thought it would be class to live in a lighthouse. Of course, the harsh reality of adverse weather conditions and geographical isolation didn't intrude on the cosy fantasy gaf I dreamed of as a ten year old. On a related note, John Lennon once went on a 4 day LSD bender where he babbled about buying an island off the west coast of Ireland where he could live in a psychedelic lighthouse. I'm not sure if Lennon would be hardy enough for lighthouse life either, you'd need to be more like the baldy man in the ronseal ad.

And finally, can anyone spot the sample in this track? Its from a famous Irish book.

Breakfast in Heaven

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Hans Peter Lindstrom is a genius from a tiny isolated Norwegian town where its dark a lot of the year and there's probably not that much to do. He makes electronic music that I'm going to label 'celestial house' because I'm not even going to attempt to feign knowledge of the autistic intricacies of the various dance music genres. Lindstrom's music seems to owe a lot to disco, but with its rubbery snaking beats and lost-in-space sound effects, its clear that his head is somewhere waay out there in the cosmos. I'll bet there isn't much artificial light in the town he grew up in, and the teenage Lindstrom slept under the glimmering star-scapes us city dwellers are only dimly aware of being out there. Until today, my favourite Lindstrom tracks were 'another station' and 'I feel space,' both available on the mega odds and sods collection 'its a feedelity affair.' This morning though I read about this EP track 'breakfast in heaven' on pitchfork media who have put up an excellent Arp remix of it. I hunted down the original for your appreciation. I'm sure you'll all agree that its a rolling piece of space-dust flecked musical magic, and my current favourite Lindstrom cut. Because the track is so good I've also given it to download, but if you love it please go out and buy some Lindstrom stuff. Oh, today's picture is of the comet Hale-Bopp over a town. I think it would make a fitting cover for a Lindstrom EP.

MP3: Lindstrom-Breakfast in Heaven

Blood stained the icy wall of the shore...

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Went to see slint play tripod on Saturday night. It was part of the don't look back series of gigs where influential alternative bands dust down a classic album and play the whole thing live. So spiderland got aired in its entirety as well as a few new tunes. I found the whole thing magnificent at times (if a bit of a sweaty sausage party-apart from Loreana, there doesn't seem to be that many girls subscribed to the slint fanclub). I've always been fascinated with the song 'good morning captain'. Its one of the most poetic and image-rich songs I know, a murmured then screamed sonic sprawl that draws from Coledridges hallucinatory mega-poem the rime of the ancient mariner. I closed my eyes during the dread-filled climax and could literally 'feel' the music-the floor was rumbling. Well worth going to see and probably a good cure for constipation with all those bass notes. My obsession with icebergs and the arctic continues with today's picture, an illustration of the famous albatross from the rime of the ancient mariner. What is it about icebergs? A nice association of this song is the huge splintering and groaning of an old ships hull against a fuck off iceberg. Oh yeah, they also played a new song at the very end and it sounded like the anti-good morning captain, explosively positive, like a fireworks display. Great gig.

ELECTRIC PICNIC-NIC-NIC-NIC!!!!

Tweet So its now looming massively over the horizon of a summer that has been wet, stressful and not that summery. And the line-up is astonishing. My tip for the performance of the festival is Bjork. Possibly because she is so popularly misunderstood, Bjork doesn't seem to feature all that highly in my mates' list of things to look forward to. Admittedly, to the casual observer, she carries a few albatrosses around her neck, the biggest being 'its oh so quiet' with its ridiculously irritating video by disingenuous smugmeister Spike Jonze. There is also this unfounded notion that she's contrived, a sort of self-conciously cute pixie creature thats old enough to know better. Its all bullshit. Bjork is an absolute original and an artist of real integrity. To top it off there is a huge festival-humping barnstorming essence to her best work. And I'll bet its going to sound absolutely transcendent at EP. Especially on the first night, after LCD soundsystem, people drunk and high on all sorts, and hopefully the sun setting over the remnants of a warm bright day. Try these tracks out for size and imagine 'em on a balmly night in Laois.

Squirrel and peanut butter sandwich

Tweet Elvis died 30 years ago today. His overworked colon ruptured trying to squeeze out one final squirrel flavoured turd. Not really knowing or caring much about 'the king' I only know this because the news channels carried pictures of a vigil where grotesque oul' bats sweated on bandy deck chairs in the Memphis heat. They were mostly encrusted in sequins. They were all overweight. The things I associate with Elvis are bizzare and unnatural. Fat oul' ones, burgers, aliens, plastic figurines, psychics, small furry animals on baps; this is the cultural detritus that has accumulated around his memory. Most of it is the stuff that many people find repellent about America. Elvis was a totemic icon of bloated wastefulness, a walking carbon footprint the size of a small country. His head is a cliche, a universal symbol of 'weird' America, and even if his music is good I can't listen to it objectively. I can't stop seeing him and his freaky quiff and that creepy Elvis voice that sounds like an Elvis impersonation because everyone does Elvis impersonations, and some of them probably sound more like Elvis than Elvis. The song I'm putting up here is a really interesting cover version of suspicious minds. Its sung by My Morning Jacket. The Elvis version is a ropey and bejeweled Vegas sweat-fest and I hate it. The lyrics are really interesting though, and MMJ's keening and reverb-heavy country style allows you listen closely to the lyrics without automatically visualising a fat man in a jump-suit. Its good! Maybe MMJ should do more Elvis covers so I can find out if they are good songs or not.

Yum, lamb tagine. And John Cale.

Tweet The rain really pissed down yesterday, and it was the really cold wet stuff. Weather I'd associate more with a mouldy October afternoon than early August. After being so fucked off with the weather, starving and drenched to the bone last night I decided cook today what I really wanted last night. And its this, a big stewy lamb hotpot in my Moroccan tagine. Its mad cheap, it cooks quite simply and during cooking oozes out its own deliciously gloopy gravy that isn't as wintry as Irish stew because of all the spices, coriander and whatnot. Oh, and although it looks really cool in a tagine it'd cook just as well in a heavy casserole pan. I bought a kilo of old shoulder lamb in Buckley's for 3 quid. This feeds about 3 and its my bastardized version of a recipe on bbc.co.uk Ingredients: (Lamb browning) 1 Kilo of neck lamb with bones (bones = flavour) Salt and Pepper Oil (Flavour paste) 3 cloves of garlic (finely chopped) small handful of coriander stalks (finely chopped) 2 shallots (finely chopped) pinch of salt bigger pinch of fresh ground pepper 1 red chilli (seeds scraped out and finely chopped) (To stew) 4 tsps of ras el hanout (Morrocan spice mix found in most Asian food shops, although garam masala is good too) 6 or 7 medium potatoes cut into quarters 3 or 4 carrots cut into 1 inch chunks 2 medium onions cut into big chunks (about 6 per onion) chopped parsely and a bay leaf a dash of soy sauce salt and pepper a tsp of paprika Cooking it... Start with the chunks of lamb. Trim the lumpy bits of fat off , rub salt and pepper on it and fry the chunks on a medium heat in your big casserole. When they go a tasty brown colour set them aside. Get the flavour paste ingredients listed above and mash them until they are really mushy with a fork (or mortar and pestle if thats how you roll!). Then add this mush to the hot casserole containing the lamb juices and it will fry up and instantly fill the mankiest Irish flatland kitchen with the exotic flavours of Marrakesh. To add to the effect you could play a CD of the muslim call to prayer as you cook. After about two minutes add the ras al hanout and keep stirring away. By now it'll smell really enticing. All you have to do now is dump all the remaining ingredients in with the lamb at the bottom. However, hang onto a scattering of parsley to garnish. Then top it up with water so that the veg are barely covered and put a lid on it. Simmer the whole lot in your authentic tagine (if you're cool like me) for about 2 hours... Make sure it never boils, just simmers. As any random granny will tell ya, boil a stew and spoil a stew. Otherwise the lamb will go as stiff, grey and unappetising as yoda's dead body. Simmered slowly it should come out falling off the bone like this...it's easy! Gratuitious close up... Enjoy!!! Oh yeah, I almost forgot John Cale. During the cooking i wasn't actually listening to the Muslim call to prayer but this yearning nugget of a song by John Cale, which, containing the line "nothing frightens me more than religion at my door," sorta neatly encapsulates how I feel about things like the call to prayer anyway.

...or just 20,000 people standing in a field?

Tweet The Arctic Circle, now there's a cool place. Where icebergs float silently through black glassy waters and every sunset is a hallucinatory apocalypse. If polar bears could make electronic music i bet it would sound like The Field (aka Swedish minimal house artist Axel Willner). This is music to go king crab fishing and get chunks of ice in your beard to. Its a close call but my favourite track off his debut album 'from here we go sublime' is this one, 'a paw in my face'. Willner's magic is to break through carefully constructed trancey repetition with breathtaking little moments of melody. Check out when the main sample segues in around 1 minute 34, its like the clouds opening. The album is full of such moments. I'd bet The Field would sound great in a field, thats why I am creaming it at the prospect of seeing him at the Electric Picnic. I found the big colouredy picture by typing 'arctic sunset' into google image search. If you're bored, a fun thing to do is type sappy evocative phrases into the image search and see if the resulting pics match those in your head. I quite like this one. Actually, imagine a gig of all your favourite icy musicians (Sigur Ros, The Field, Galaxie 500, and erm Vanilla Ice) right there, under that sky. Now that'd be fun.

Mickey uses his hair as a secret weapon.

Tweet Everyone knows a bloke like Mickey. Thankfully I don't know any blokes like Mickey, but I'd love to box Mickey's lights out, because Mickey is a cunt. Especially when he's doing 'the intellectual.' What a smarmy hateful cunt. I know he's fictional and all, but in fairness if I met the dude who plays Mickey in the ad I'd probably end up physically damaging his face anyway. Today's track is from a little known Irish electronic artist who goes by the name of Storkboy Choons. Storkboy Choons is actually my twin brother and messing around with software like Reason and Ableton is his new hobby. He's getting good at it too. Animal Sky does trippy things to an old shegazey Boo Radleys sample and reminds me a bit of Gui Boratto. Unlike Mickey, Storkboy doesn't use his hair as a secret weapon, he gets it cut for 6 euro in Just Cuts.

I love gloomy scots!!!!

Tweet So that that over-rated and overwrought emo band for adults have sold out their gig in the phoenix park. There's still no sign of a backlash, and I'm honestly scratching my head at the whole thing. The emperor is not only bollock naked, he's recorded a huge self-indulgent dirge of an album, packed with transparent lyrical twaddle and pointless strings (he's got a tiny cock too). So kids, instead of fretting over whether you have a ticket for this shit or not, why not think of alternative bands that might do whatever it is that the arcade fire do for you. Is it their obsession with the trials of childhood that tickles your emo bone? Or their big choruses? Cos I know a waay better band that ticks both of these boxes. So lets have a big hurray for the twilight sad. And guess what? They are playing the sugarclub on August 30th. For a lot less than the 60 quid that a certain bunch of sacred cows are charging. This band is great. Like that arch gloom merchant Bonnie 'Prince' Billy they have the steely nerves to fly close to self-parody and get away with it cos something always rings true. Here, its with their gloomy band name, their uber gloomy album name (14 autumns and 15 winters) and the gloomy squalls of guitar that rumble over the epic choruses like post-rock storm clouds. To top it off, the lead singer James Graham has a hardcore scottish accent. Nobody sings/mumbles a gloomy ditty better than a scot, ask Malcom Middleton. James Graham's brogue is fuckin brilliant, he even rolls his R's. Its as if the proclaimers gobbled all the valium. So yeah, the twilight sad. A band who can pull off childhood angst without embarrassing themselves.

Good news for people who love good news (and live in Dublin)

Tweet YAY!!! Deerhunter are playing Whelan's on November 6th. Based on their astonishing output over the last year, this is worth getting excited about. On record they veer from frightening sludgy drug-freakouts to sublime psychedelia. Spindly frontman Bradford Cox (his height is a result of an inherited disease called Marfan Syndrome) sometimes seems to be just about hanging onto the reins of their huge spacerock sounds. For me, Deerhunter's mad blend of psychedelia is not unlike Dave Baker era Mercury Rev, and cryptograms (their 2nd LP) reminds me so much of Yerself Is Steam. As with that album, there is a real sense of barely controlled chaos and genuine brushes with insanity alternating with blissed out spacepop. On both albums you can hear the desperate croaks of actual fear in the singers' voices during some of the real bad trip moments and you have to wonder how far do you have to push yourself mentally to make this sort of music? Deerhunter seem to have stepped back from the brink a bit though, and more recent stuff is mellower, though no less interesting. Like the early Rev, the live sets are supposed to be wild and Cox is one of the most out there frontmen operating at the moment. A lot of current psychedelic music is just pretty pop with weird sound effects. Deerhunter are a welcome reminder of just what it really means to be 'out there.' In more good news for November gig heads in Dublin, Animal Collective bring fuzzy weird forest music to Tripod sometime in November. Nice. We're fookin spoiled for choice! PS. the Deerhunter track below is off their latest EP, and it demonstrates their more mellow sound. ---------------- Now playing: Deerhunter - Strange Lights via FoxyTunes

Coming soon!!

Tweet Well. Been away from the PC since the bank holiday, but there's a new underworld tune out there that I'm gonna stick up here pretty soon for comment.

Myriad Harbour

Tweet Aren't The New Pornographers divisive? My brother thinks they are as wet and fruity as a melted super split. I'll quote him; "shit band, shit name, shit music." But then again, a lot of what he likes to listen to late at night sounds like the erratic rattles of broken cement mixers, so maybe his opinion doesn't count here. I love The New Pornographers though. I think there is a real weathered strength to their tunes that stands the test of time. I've listened to their previous albums a fuckload and annoyance never seems to set in, which is rare for music so instantly catchy. I'd say its because there's a subtlety there too, a lot of thought and structure goes into AC Newman's songwriting and at times it almost has the heft and greatness of all time classic pop composers such as Jimmy Webb. Also, I can't understand why their navel gazing Canadian counterparts the Arcade Fire have done so well in comparison to them? Is it because people get uncomfortable asking for their CD because of their inexplicably sleazy band name? My girlfriend's auntie did. Hopefully the new album will change all that because they piss all over the Arcade Fire as far as I'm concerned. This tune is called Myriad Harbour, and as with other newbie tune My Rights vs Your Rights it suggests the new album will be more string-heavy and produced then previous efforts. "Ah no, not Strings!" You might freak. And I wouldn't blame you, but here, the strings seem to be in the best possible taste, i.e. they don't bludgeon you to death to disguise a lack of fresh ideas the way another Canuck band does.