sunday morning coming down

I had no intentions of going out over the weekend but Friday somehow saw me in the sugar club at an IMRO showcase of new bands that included Betamax Format, Le Galaxie and Grand Pocket Orchestra. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the sugar club is an odd and inappropriate venue for a lot of the energetic indie-rock style acts that have recently ended up playing there. All those ascending rows of fixed tables can form a barrier between the audience and the band and lead to muted atmosphere at times, especially when the venue is not sold out. Its more of a venue for your Stars Of the Lids than your Grand Pocket Orchestras.

Anyway, I arrived too late for Betamax but caught Grand Pocket Orchestra and Le Galaxie, who I only found out on the night used to be 66E. I must confess that I've seen GPO a few times before and while I enjoyed them I never gave them my complete attention. That changed on Friday night. I don't know if it was the band stepping up a gear or me just being attentive (aka sober), but I was completely taken in. This was an arresting and dynamic performance. After stepping out with Fight Like Apes a few times, GPO have developed quickly and confidently. They now have a sound that isn't a million miles from the apes but is very much their own. Its an ostentatious indie clatter that sounds a bit like Deerhoof and Los Campesinos! having group sex in a cowbell factory. Its exhilarating. Also, they really look the part- they filled the stage like a quirky cartoon band, jumping around the place and all dressed up brightly. Good luck to 'em.


Grand pocket orchestra enjoying their rider.

MP3: Grand Pocket Orchestra-radio

The next band I saw, Le Galaxie were a different kettle of fish altogether; brooding, emotive purveyors of post rock with oodles of blaring synths. Some of it sounded great- a suitably widescreen soundtrack to an imaginarey sci-fi movie. A wee bit of it sounded a little cheesey though. There is such a thing as too much Korg. Lots of Dublin bands need to know this. By hammering out repetitive pre-programmed riffs on one of those things, you are not taking your music in some visionary new direction, you're just giving people a headache. Also, shit that sounds boring on guitar sounds even more boring on synths. So easy on the synths lads! In saying that, Le Galaxie are well able to pull it off successfully. And I gotta admit, I loved the flashing lights under the lead singer's Korg. It gave me the impression that if Le Galaxie had more money at their disposal, they'd invest in jet packs, floating keyboards and a lazer light show to go with their bombastic music.


Le Galaxie chill out backstage

Back to the Past...

Is it just me or does this years Electric Picnic line-up (courtesy of Jim Carroll's blog) smell a little bit like wee and mothballs. I mean Sinead O'Connor? Christy Moore? The Waterboys? Pack some smiley t shirts, some warm cans of harp and spark up the flux capacitor folks.....We're going back in time to Feile 1992, except for 10 times the price!!!!!


Fergal and Mags haven't been this excited since EMF played a rave in Athenry

Okay, I'm being deliberately flippant, but come on, the line-up as whole? Most of the acts on it are long past their peak, creaky relics of bygone scenes trading on past glories. Such acts are normally part of the bigger picture at these festivals- the old crowd-pleasing nostalgia monkeys that are a good wheeze but not the main attraction. This year they've all lumbered center stage, like a bunch of embarrassing uncles and aunties popping e tablets and wearing tie-dye. A certain part of the traditional EP crowd (mid 30s cutting loose to remember the good old days) will love the line up. This is fair enough. But what of that other huge cross-section of Electric Picnic goers, people like me, mid twenties and upwards, fans of the smaller more left-field indie acts who are put off by a certain piss-soaked post leaving cert war-zone in Kildare? This crowd was always happily catered for by the Electric Picnic. And now, I'd bet most of us are online, feverishly booking tickets for Benicassim and Primavera. Or even worse, considering running the Oxegen gauntlet. 'Cos for €240 this picnic just doesn't cut it. And as for the Sex Pistols hype? Ye Fookin' wha? Stuff that sounded like a dangerously incendiary new world to kids in tiny London Clubs in the late 70s ain't gonna sound so hot on that big stage. It will look and sound like 5 wrinkly scrotums with guitars. They'll be up there earning a fat paycheck by playing repetitive 2 chord ditties that have been blunted by time and nostalgia. PiL would have been waay better. Bollocks dot com.

ive been into the plants and simple treasures

I've never been a huge lyrics person. Well, not in the conventional sense anyway. I've always been more drawn to bewildering imagery than naked emotion. This is why I'd rather hear Bob Pollard sing about lighthouses and aliens than Matt Beringer sing about wine and heartbreak. Because of this, singers praised for their lyrics regularly leave me feeling a bit out in the cold. I've never subscribed to the cult of Dylan, Waits, Cohen, Cave and all those other wordsmiths whose utterances make Mojo readers weep. I accept they are great and that their words carry weight but when talk turns to these dudes at parties its generally an "I'll get me coat" moment for me. Maybe I'll grow into them as life experience builds, or maybe I'll remain forever at the brink peeking into this world of heartache and profundity, wondering if I am some sort of emotionally stunted childbrain. In saying that, there are a few 'classic' lyrics that I've managed to "get" such as Wichita Lineman, Fairytale of New York and Born to Run, but as for the like of Visions of Johanna? Listening to that sort of thing is like sipping wine you're told is an expensive vintage and feeling embarrassed because you can't tell the difference between it and 5 euro Tesco plonk. The songs that always made me feel most emotional were the ones where the emotion is expressed indirectly through strange metaphors and symbols, stuff like Neutral Milk Hotel's Ghost and the Flaming Lips' Waitin' For Superman. I suppose I'm the kind of person that feels sad at the sight of a rusty gate, or a discarded tayto wrapper.

Which brings me to animal collective.



Animal collective are a band that communicate more to me than most music I hear these days. Apart from the somewhat decipherable yelps at the fore of much of Strawberry Jam, their lyrics tend to play hide and seek, gliding over distances, echoing from sparse distant spaces one minute and crying up close through heavy thickets of musical foliage the next. Its always hard to get a handle on exactly what they are singing about but many of the snippets that filter through have a naive quality that is nature-focused, almost pagan and reminds me of Aldous Huxley's rapturous description of the natural world in The Doors of Perception. Lyrics such as "I've been into the plants and simple treasures" and "you could build a rabbit with a rib" are from a primal and altered place that they have made their own. Couple these with music that continues to sound on a fundamental level like it was made with rattling bones and twigs no matter how technologically advanced it gets, and listening to Animal Collective is always the greatest escape. A a new EP by them is pinging all over the internet at the moment. Its called Water Curses and its stuff that didn't make it on to Strawberry Jam. Its further proof that they are going through a purple period of enormous creativity. The four songs on it are all worthy additions to the abundance of riches in the back catalogue. Best of the bunch is Street Flash, a languid psychedelic evening walk that wears its 6 and a half minutes lightly. Look out for a bizzare moment containing a bloodcurdling scream which to me (perhaps because of the incongrous musical setting) sounds oddly comforting. The second MP3 here is the title track, a more hectic experience, full of sunshine, flutes and calypso drums.

MP3: Animal Collective-Street Flash

MP3: Animal Collective-Water Curses

Finally I have one response to that head scratching worry many of us are experiencing-how in the name of god does one choose which gigs to go to in the veritable chinese take-away menu of musical goodies this May. My good friend the artist and illustrator Laura emailed me a gig rainbow! Here's a Jpeg.



Because of cash flow problems my rainbow will look a lot more decrepit than Laura's colourful bonanza. It will have two stripes, one called Animal Collective and one called Spiritualized.

Waaahhhh

I've wanted to write blogs all week, but free time, once so abundant, is shriveling into a mocking trickle. Something coming later, I promise. In the meantime, here are a few special needs dogs to pad out this skeletal 45 second post. Oh, and on the subject of music, how good is that Animal Collective EP Water Curses? I'll throw up a track or two later.


Ruff! Re're Rupid Dogs!!!

Lolomix Ate: Lolo's Yum Yums

Lolo mix ate...see what she did there? Merp, merp, merp, and tumbleweed blows across asleep on the compost heap. I was worried that this particular confection was going to be a bit too sickly, and frankly freaking out that Kandy Pop by Bis would rear its unfortunate little head. But there is a good dollop of noisy madness in there, proving that songs about sweets ain't necessarily sweet. Great stuff. Its on rapidshare at the moment, cue my hollow promise to put it on fileden...*ahem*, "I promise Lolomix 8 will appear on fileden in the near future."

Download Lolomix 8-Yum Yums



Sakura & The Quests- My Boy Lollipop
Beat Happening- Hot Chocolate Boy
Grizzly Bear- Blackcurrant Jam
Pavement- Cream of Gold
Holy Fuck- Milkshake
The Strangeloves- I want Candy
The Flaming Lips- She don't use Jelly
Ben Kweller- Lollipop
Gruff Rhys- Candylion
Maths & Physics Club- It's a Marshmallow World
Gram Parsons- Candy Man
Spacemen 3- Honey
Yo La Tengo- Sugarcube
B.C Camplight- Blood and Peanut Butter
Of Montreal- Pancakes for One
Quasi- Chocolate Rabbit

Micro DJ gig review: Michael Mayer played an absolutely phenomenal 5 hour DJ set in Spy on Sunday night. The grand upstairs room in that place is perhaps the most fun venue to catch one of these shows in the city. As for the crowd who turned out, to use a bit of rave parlance and say they were "up for it" would be an understatement. Especially one unnamed dude I might know, who was so up for it he climbed onto the high up back window during a climactic point in the night, and proceeded to dance like a loon, egged on by the loolah crowd and Mr Mayer himself. Fun times.

Update: A video of the dude himself doing his thing in Spy. Yeow!!!

Apologies

For not writing much this last while. I've been too busy. More blogs coming soon, including Lolomix number 8.

UPDATED!! Storkboy chooned and colours moved in whelans

Update: Here is a full MP3 of a compressed version of the performance reviewed below. Nice!!

MP3: Storkboy Choons/Colours Move-Whelans March 9th 2008

Sunday took a bunch of us to Whelans to check out my brother road-testing his nascent laptop-tronica project "storkboy choons" in public for the first time. He was third on the bill of a Foggy Notions curated line up that included Ugly Megan and Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. I went to the gig not being familiar with either of these acts. I thought Ugly Megan's use of one of those sound effects keyrings in one of their songs pushed them into the territory of being too affected for my taste. Lots of people dug their fey sounds though, including those geese were stupefied who writes a great review here. I watched Casiotone from an upper balcony, from where he appeared to be a big beardy gremlin standing inside a ginormous trashed TV set, such were the amount of wires, jacks and pedals surrounding him. I liked a lot of what I heard, particularly his delicate reading of Bruce Springsteen's 'streets of Philadelphia' which exerted a tug on my Smithwick's soaked heart. Other than that, I can't say much, except he appeared very uncomfortable on stage and was perhaps singing with his mouth too close to the mic. My interest was piqued enough to revisit his records to get fully acquainted with them.


Photo taken by Loreana Rushe, bastardised by Gardenhead.

But enough of this. Lets review the *ahem most important act of the night, Storkboy Choons, ably helped by his good mate Colours Move. First things first. The lads need to overcome the perennial problem of how to create a dynamic live show out of pushing laptop buttons. Because they came on and sat in two black leather chairs, it felt like we were about to be treated to an episode of mastermind. To me, the way forward would be some freaky visuals that sit well with their fresh, undulating take on electronica. However, its testament to how arresting their live set was that I soon forgot about the slightly awkward spectacle of them on stage. They had basically reworked around 6 or 7 tracks (that have featured on this blog from time to time in demo form) into a seamless beefy live mix that built into some explosive moments of shoegaze melody that sounded a bit like Ulrich Schnauss riding beats akin to Underworld. The mixing was top notch too, with a bit of Jay Z and Syd Barrett cleverly threaded into the madness. Two tacks in particular summed the lads up. First was Colours Move's 'Sad Songs' remix which in its latest incarnation is a merciless wall of jackhammer sound effects. Played in a sweatier, less inhibited setting, that tune could slay a crowd. Second, was 'Rockfield Symphony' by Storkboy which managed to sound twinkly and innocent, but in a massive banging way. It has a sort of synthesizer breakdown half ways through that's proper fookin' huge like. If it wasn't the most dynamic gig visually, it certainly was musically and I'd bet on them doing well. I believe another gig is potenially in the pipeline. I'd dare say it'll be a more suitable slot in terms of the heads they'll be playing to.

tweedledum and tweedletwee

I was gonna write about Hercules and Love affair tonight, drop a fresh MP3 from their new album; then glide out my door on the crest of a slick and shiny wave, marveling as I go at how the paving slabs light up at the touch of my jiving feet all the way into town. Instead, I took on extra shifts at work, so I'm staring down the barrel of a 6am start and listening to precious old skool Brit indie in my jocks. Well some of it is decidedly more precious than the rest. Case in point is Tigermilk by Belle and Sebastian. I'm imagining what my Greenday-loving 14-year-old former self would have done if he found out he'd grow up to like acoustic songs about sailors and gay art students delivered by a man who lisps like Daffy Duck reciting sally sells sea shells... They'd have peeled that poor traumatised kid from the front of a passing bus in 1995. Actually, that would make a great lyric from Tigermilk. "A walking clearasil ad/ the spottiest boy alive/ they peeled him from the front of a bus/ in nineteen ninety five". Its some album though, a classic.


Corey and Tegan have special knitted pockets on their cardigans to keep their copies of Tigermilk.

MP3: Belle and Sebastian-The state that I am in

Less precious, yet utterly brilliant are the enigmatic Young Marble Giants who are in that rare club of hugely influential bands with one album to their name. Its called Colossal Youth and it was released in 1980. Its sparse, tense, quite strange and occasionally psychedelic. I'm gonna write about it in more detail when I have my thinky reflective head on, but if you have never heard of them the following MP3 will give you a handle on this classic record. Its probably one of those occurrences when a band have expressed their vision in such a powerfully perfect way that if they were to record again it would be redundant, dilutive rubbish. A bit like wot happened when Second Coming dumped all over the mercurial beauty of The Stone Roses from the coke-addled heights of Led Zeppelin mountain.

MP3: Young Marble Giants-Searching for the Night

Now its off to bed to second guess me alarm clock for a few sleepless hours. Yay.

watch the dark clouds bruising...

The Shane Meadows/ Paddy Considine film Dead Man's Shoes was on Film Four the other night. Even though I've seen it a few times and was getting ready to hit the hay, I stayed up late and watched it through. I went to bed feeling disorientated and troubled. It grips some deep fold of matter in my brain in a way that few other films have ever done. I'm not sure I know why it does this. The film is far from perfect; its rough-shod and simple, like a cheap western. Its the revenge story of a soldier (Paddy Considine) who returns to a dreary midlands town to exact murderous revenge on a bunch of druggy scroungers who abused his intellectually disabled younger brother years before. They ultimately force-feed him LSD and march him out to a ruined castle in the fields behind the housing estates to perpetrate a horrifying final act of abuse.



Although the revenge scenes are far-fetched, much of the film is horribly real. The scumbags are so acutely observed. They're a decrepit shower of bollocky, pill popping flotsam in their 30s and 40s who stalk around a featureless town in the hills, listen to shit music, and fill up on lager and cocaine in the dim stink of their semi-detached houses. Kells, where I grew up has plenty of merits and its not a patch on the drab place depicted in the film, but like any small town in Ireland it has its characters, and I suppose some of the dudes in Dead Man's Shoes remind me of people from around the town. Probably more so than characters depicted in some Irish attempts at social realism I've seen, such as the RTE 2 drama Pure Mule (which was good too). We also have various ruins, and of course 'the fields at the back of the town' where shadows lengthen and people lurk. Anyway, the film's impact has less to do with revenge and more to do with the horrors that happen in small places, really horrible rancid creepy things. Things that become footnotes in local papers while the people who perpetrated them linger on. Small places are great at keeping secrets.

There is a music related point to this post. Dead man's shoes has a wonderful soundtrack, released on the Warp label. Watching the movie was my first introduction to the solo songs of Adem Ilhan from Fridge. His album Homesongs quickly developed a true and lasting friendship with my ears that is as strong today as it was in the first flush. There is a point in the movie just after somebody's head is split open and the scene cuts to a car driving through the countryside. The plaintive and skeletal opening bars of 'statued' plays over the scene. It has an intimate folk-inflected tug that fits the film beautifully. At other key scenes are perfectly judged inclusions from Smog, the Earlies and finally in the most heart breaking moment of all, Arvo Part. Its such a fuckin well-judged soundtrack and its tied to the movie in a very meaningful way.

MP3: Adem-Statued

In other news State Magazine launched today with some sort of mad Ham Sandwich carry on in Tower Records. I'm keen to know how it went?? There is a nice little mention of Lolo's mixes in the mag which the compost heap is very grateful for. Good luck State!

Also to whoever wanted the Jeff Magnum and Chris Knox track reposted, I'm gonna put it up here later on.

And here it is...Jeff and Chris (aka World of Wild Beards) playing Ghost. Chris Knox was in a pioneering New Zealand Lo Fi band from the 80s called the tall dwarves. I don't know much about New Zealand Lo Fi but I'm gonna download some of that loopy 4 track shit and blog it up as soon as I get a handle on it.

MP3: Jeff Magnum and Chris Knox-Ghost

See Yis!

Atlas Sound...

...are supporting Animal Collective on their May 19th date in Tripod. As all the cops in South Park said when Kyle's little brother shacked up with the horny primary school teacher...Nice. Wait, I've somehow managed to blog this up ahead of thrillpier? Score! Thats about as deliciously psychedelic a double header as we're gonna see this year. We'll be treated to the collective's racket of kitchen appliances falling down mountainsides and Atlas sound's woozy plumes of intimate shoegaze all under one roof, in one night. Bring it on.

Here's my Menomena review over on Analogue.

Here's a random special needs pet.


Here's an MP3 from atlas sound.
MP3 Atlas Sound-Ativan

Blog awards

Jaypurs I'm wrecked. I feel like a flattened crow on the M50, run over by a million vans. Between Menomena and the blog awards last night it was the weekend of too many pints for me. The awards were a laugh though, even if they did feel a bit like attending a double glazing conference in Norwich with all those chairs facing a powerpoint presentation. Rick O'Shea was a great host and cheers to the people who organised it. Nialler9's win was well-deserved too! Lots of real versions of online entities were knocking around and it was cool to meet them and say hi, even if it was in a very drunken effusive way.

Menomena were super on Friday. They were versatile, tight and succeeded admirably in playing songs from a tricky and complex record live. Everyone at the gig seemed drunk! Or maybe I was drunk and everyone else was sober? I'll be putting the review on the Analogue blog tomorrow. Right, I'll be off to retreat back into a shivering foetal heap in my bedroom, where I'll listen to something beautiful and forgiving like this.



MP3: Arvo Part-Berliner Messe-Agnes Dei