Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee

Tweet My quest to destroy my white whale has become all-consuming. It's pull is so ferocious that I must strike at it with every last ounce of my strength. As I cling to it, I now know it will take me away from the Compost Heap until my deed is done.

from hell's heart I stab at thee, thou foul beast of a PhD

Providing the great beast doesn't drag me to Davey's locker, I will return to the Compost Heap before too long. I will be a changed man because I will be rid of the huge blank monster that has rolled ahead of all my thoughts over the past four years, sometimes at a great distance, sometimes right  up close, but always there. When I return, I intend to write here more, to review live shows again, and hopefully contribute to other publications too.

In the meantime, I leave you with the gift of a few of my favourite life-affirming songs. The sort of songs that have, at various points in my university career found me dropping text books books like hot turds, scissor kicking things off desks, and opening windows to let in the thick possibility of Autumn nights before throwing on a scarf to catch a last-minute in gig Whelans, or in more reflective moments, opening atlases and dreaming of those two elusive years when Canada was my home from home.

MP3: Guided By Voices-Dayton Ohio 19 something circa 05

One of Bob Pollard's most direct lyrics. It's a loose, chugging celebration of smoking dope and grilling food with the boys in some idyllic but downtrodden place. It's where it's "great to exist/ where the produce maybe rotten/ but nobody is forgotten", and where for that smell of "fried food and pure hot tar/ you'd travel far/ to feel completely alive/ on Strawberry Philidelphia Drive". Awww cripes, I know it's probably a kip, but I'd kick back with you there for a whole summer uncle Bob.

MP3: The Microphones-I Felt My Size

This is a beautiful, transcendental turning point in Phil Elvrum's towering opus 'The Glow Pt. II'. Stepping out of a cave, our protagonist watches dawn crawling over the hills, traffic flying over a freeway and, quite contently (I think), he feels his size. He realizes he's small - like the rest of us.

Oh, and those who like Neutral Milk Hotel's contemplative 'In the Airplane over the Sea' yet don't own this record, owe it to themselves to find it immediately. It's essential - a similarly puzzling rug woven from tangled plaits of the both the raw fibres of one man's mystic awareness and those of universal truths.

MP3: The Thermals-I let it Go

There is a cathartic moment toward the end of this instant classic from the Thermals where love, life, fear and the whole lot are packed into a huge emo-punk-pop-rock ball which chases Mr Thermal toward the edge of the metaphorical cliff. Then, being the seize-the-moment fucker that he is, he looks his fear in the eye and leaps...

MP3: The Olivia Tremor Control-A peculiar noise called 'Train Director'

Fuck knows what this one is about. But I admire the fact that the Olivia Tremor Control sing from some psychedelic rag and bone shop of the soul, where the soundtrack is full of unruly elephant noises and "in the blink of an eye you get several meanings". I watched my twin brother playing the 'I am the Walrus' section of Beatles Rock Band the other day. He seemed to temporarily escape to that place too.

MP3: Of Montreal-A sentence of sorts in Kongsvinger

Like Mr Barnes in his self-imposed exile, and like many PhD students with extra-curricular interests, I found myself questioning my character long and hard throughout the process. Being ferociously introspective I've had dark times and doubtful nights, both due to the research and for other reasons too.

In light of these things, I've loved this song hard, perhaps more than any other I've put up here, and almost as much as my all-time favourite, Wichita Lineman. It's the sound of an introspective person dealing with their failings head-on, but in the context of an album from which they ultimately emerge changed for the better. That means so much to me. Thank you Kevin Barnes.

Thanks too people, for all the comments left here over the years. This blog has proven a valuable distraction from the trials and tribulations of a process that has probably had far more troughs than peaks for me. See you all soon.

where the birdies meet and sing tweet tweet

Tweet As the days begin to melt into each other during my thesis write-up at home, I've become quite involved in daytime telly. From the Den TV kids' stuff on RTE2 to BBC2's stone cold trinity of great afternoon viewing - flog it!, pointless, and the hairy bikers - there's always something to dip in and out of during work breaks. Seeing as we are all here (and seeing as I have nothing better to do), let's take a look at some of it, yeah?

First, the kids stuff. Okay, it's for three-to-twelve year olds and deciding to review it is probably not the coolest or most constructive thing I've done here. But fuck it. I like to think I'm down with kids - not the 'kids' obviously (they go to Antics and I don't get them) - but the kids, the Farrely's rusks brigade. After all, my only sane friend at home right now is the three-year-old girl my Mam babysits. And, I have to say, she shares a good few of my general views on what's hot and what's rot on DEN TV these days.

Let's start with the rot. First up, this creature.

Yes, I am about to tell you about the creature you see to the left of iconic children's TV monster, Soky. Her name is Emma O'Driscoll and she was once a member of a failed Irish pop outfit called Six. She now presents on Den TV with the sort of ability, naturalness and grace that would make any mop-handle with a face painted on it pure jealous.

I know I am starting to sound a bit deranged here, but at least hear me out before you call the Gardaí. When Emma O'Driscoll appears on the Den, my mother invariably mutters "oh no, not that yoke" (again, she is not referring to the cloth puppet) and our three-year-old critic regularly implores "I don't like that silly woman with Soky".

And who could blame her? O'Driscoll's style of presenting consists of randomly erupting into strangled wooden laughter, giving the camera weird thousand yard stares, over-emphasizing syntax in a creepy way (those alien things called 'children' that you attempt to communicate with every day aren't hard of hearing Emma), and worst of all, oddly repeating the word Soky multiple times in every sentence until the hairy puppet's name is bouncing dementedly around the walls of your house like a strange entity in and of itself. A sample O'Driscoll sentence runs like this: "Soky, thats a lovely card that Eilish aged four sent in, isn't it Soky? Will we buala bus her Soky? Now SOKY make sure you join in now SOKY" - cue thousand yard stare, uncomfortably lifeless smile, and the buala bus from hell. Kids presenters need to be natural. Emma O'Driscoll is not.

Kathryn McKiernan, who presents a show called Kazoo, is the anti-Emma. Kazoo is a great laugh in its cheap and cheerful way. It's made for an older age group of kids, and is very much about getting them involved. While a lot of mad stuff goes on in the show - like silly physical tasks, quizzes, musical games, mini-science experiments and the like - its success ultimately boils down to the capable abilities of the presenter. She's spontaneous, always game for a laugh with the kids and well up for mucking around in a very natural likable way.

However, Kazoo might not be hot shit with its target audience. The three-year-old's older brother reliably informed me that all the boys in fourth class think "Kazoo is gay". Hmmm, well I'd love to meet some of these buckos and tell them that, for someone who hates Kazoo so much, this lad spends a lot of time watching it on the sly. He thinks he has himself well covered though - and loudly announces what a crock of wimpy shit Kazoo is whenever I walk into the room. "Alright, sure we can change" I say, second guessing him and switching to Bargain Hunt. Well now, if you could only see the look of seething, closeted Kazoo love that builds up in his eyes when I do that.

I know, I know, I'm playing mind games with a ten-year-old. But this is only one example of the many ways in which academic research can break a man. I've also managed to ease myself so gently and slyly into following Fair City that I still don't even know I watch it!

Oh and one last thing. There is a little cartoon which comes on every day about a gang of birds. It's called 3rd and Bird. It's great for the following reasons.

(i) It seems to be the only show on kids TV that isn't either about computer generated vehicles with lifeless human faces or a troupe of mouth-breathing aussies in furry animal costumes dry humping each other in front of a live audience of terrified kids holding balloons.

(ii) It's beautifully drawn, really short, and the songs the wee birds sing and whistle are so gentle, loose and practically hypnotic that it creates a zen-like calm around the house before lunch each day. It draws the three year old to the screen like a magnet, where she stands slack-jawed for five minutes, watching these little birds in baseball caps fluttering around and singing their way out a fix. Its one of the few shows on that reminds me of stuff I used to watch when I was small myself.

Normal service will resume on Saturday - from the wi-fi room in Mullingar mental hospital, no doubt.

welcome to weird hotel - leave your brain at the door

Tweet Hands up who likes really weird Japanese music? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

MP3: Haroumi Hosono & Tadanori Yokoo-Malabar Hotel...Upper Floor...Moving Triangle

Remember a few months ago I posted about a dreamy Anime film about cats and the afterlife called Night on the Galactic Railroad? Well it got proper under my skin and I've watched it twice since. One of the many exquisite things about this film which intrigued me was its stately soundtrack by Haroumi Hosono. I didn't know much about the composer so I banged his name into spotify (the good old days eh?) and found out that, along with Ryuichi Sakamoto, he was a member of the fuppin' mega 70s electronic group, Yellow Magic Orchestra.

I also found out he released a remarkable album called Cochin Moon. And when I say remarkable, what I really mean is set your eardrums to WTF. This stuff is off the map. From what I can gleam, Hosono went on a jaunt around India in 1978, and by all accounts it was a bit of an eye-opener. When he returned to Japan, he was so full of the sights and sounds of the place that he set about making the lush soundtrack to an imaginary Bollywood movie (Cochin Moon) with some help from the other dudes in Yellow Magic Orchestra and the pop artist Tadanori Yokoo.

The album starts off with an astonishing suite of tracks which are musically and thematically linked (they're named after a hotel he stayed in). I included the second of these above. It's a piece of music which gives you an idea of the awesome intricacy, downright weirdness and plain brilliance of this project. Starting with a creepy insect buzz, the track takes off in a complete vertical ascent buoyed by overlapping helicopter rhythms and distorted snippets of what sounds like a voice saying "boomshakalaka". By the time a bubbling keyboard melody starts bouncing off the walls and gasping alien vocals join the fray, Hosono has left base-camp so far behind that he's in oxygen mask territory.

MP3: Haroumi Hosono & Tadanori Yokoo-Hum Ghar Sajan

Another gloriously bonkers thing about the album is that with the exception of one track - the gorgeous raga chant Hum Gar Sajan - it doesn't sound even vaguely Indian. Waiter, I'll have whatever he's on please.

and clouds for company

Tweet MP3: Lawrence English-and clouds for company

The edge of the town sloped away into an ornate wooden place near the precipice of a cliff. Everything, all the buildings, shops, even the road itself, had the quality of being carved and painted into weathered old wood, giving the impression of boat decks or old funfair rides. There were no hard edges at this end of town. Objects were curved and made smooth by the weather.

I could see that the things in the town had been painted brightly in block colours once. But the prevailing wind off the sea had softened the colours down to stains through which you could now see the knots and rings in the wood.

At the furthest part of the town, at the very edge of the cliff in fact, was an oval shaped bar. I walked toward it because I could hear the pop of fried food and smell scrambled eggs. The barman waved me over. He was serving drinks from this little wooden corner of the world with nothing behind him except the eight inches of cliff top upon which he stood. Behind that, a dizzying drop to the ocean itself, which, he later told me, was about a mile and a half below. I looked out. It was so tangibly, deeply blue and so still that it could have been the hard surface of an exposed sapphire. A trawler sat frozen on the horizon.

He pulled a pint of smithwicks for me and left it on the counter. I considered it for a while and made to drink from it but it remained there as things do in dreams. I asked the barman why it was so quiet in town today. He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes and he asked me if I couldn't see that everyone was below at the water. The children were saying goodbye to their parents, he said.

Sure enough, I could make out a crowd of tiny black figures as small as mites. There were hundreds of them at edge of the the sea, moving around with miniature flags and bunting. I could just about hear music too, a circular instrumental lament that the barman told me could break the hardest heart.

He returned to preparing his eggs and I watched the distant ceremony unfold. Wave after wave of people broke free from the crowd and walked out into the strange sea until they were gone. The crowd grew lighter and the warm eddies of musical wind carried broken snatches of children crying. I rested my head against the wooden bar in sorrow, and the last thing I heard was the barman telling me the children would be back up in time to play at a night-time fair, but that I'd be gone by then. And so I was.

Ye wha' buttons?

Tweet Ha ha take a look at this drug-riddled, photoshop clusterfuck of an album cover. I can't decide whether Fuck Buttons have come up with the best or worst album cover of the year for Tarot Sport with this nightmarish vision of replicating jazz hands juggling oranges in the sky? I wonder what inspired it? Maybe one of them did acid before getting on a Ryanair flight and made the mistake of looking out the window somewhere over the Irish Channel?

I listened to the album a lot today and I like it. As a whole, it is a sort of unrelenting noise-dance hybrid filled with clinically obese kick drums and steady synth progressions that crawl along the scale from ominous to euphoric. Weirdly, nearly every song starts off sounding like Animal Collective's 'My Girls', all twinkly and hanging around your ears like a bead curtain of notes, then ends sounding like SunnO))) gone Balaeric. They mostly develop in a similar fashion too, and I'm sure there will be plenty of detractors who will find the template simple and formulaic.

But you won't find any sniping here on the compost heap. After all, I wouldn't know a pentatonic scale from an octatonic scale any more than I'd be able to translate Icelandic poetry. All I know is that it sounds immense and a like a whole lot of noisy fun. Particularly the madly titled 'flight of the feathered serpent', which I do believe is named in honour of my outrageous sex life. Thanks Fuck Buttons, you really shouldn't have!

Whatabout Canada?

Tweet Hmm, I'm not so sure about one of my favourite bands anymore. Now, as someone who is very slowly becoming a lyrics man - yeah i'm still a bit C3PO when it comes to decoding love songs - I must admit that the Clientele always struck a chord with me because of their expressionistic, and seasonal lyrical themes.

As far as my lyrical appreciation extends right now, romantic reflections on nature are still usually about as sophisticated as my taste gets. Apart from that, I guess, in tired and emotional states I have leaked the odd unexpected tear at a heartfelt platitude during a mid-tempo Sugababes hit.

Back to my theme, the season which the Clientele characteristically refer to during many of their songs is Autumn. This is something I tended to love about them too, being someone whose senses are attuned to any sort of Autumnal mulch: from plump fungus breaking underfoot, to crisp morning moons, or indeed, to Samhain itself, fingering it's way into Kells's life as it does, thanks to all our local pagans. Other vaguely creepy yet delicious gut pangs are brought back by the similar sights and smells each Hallowe'en too: the one poor child in a crappy mask and a binbag, a banger popping in football pitch gloom, or the dull embers of a bonfire in the corner field of a housing estate at dawn - poked and nurtured by the two remaining teens too high to go home; but also too fond of physically abusing cats with bangers to win your sympathy, dear readers.

MP3:The clientle-Since K Got Over Me

MP3: The Clientele-My own face inside the trees

I think I always figured the clientele to be slightly pagan, or at least fond of poets that way inclined such as Ted Hughes. What with their throaty evocations of city-light turning against the season, things glowing unusually at twilight, and those pure images I will never shake - such as 'a frozen red balloon against a blue sky' and '[faces] inside the trees'

All these tropes thrilled me on the earlier albums. But is Bonfires on the Heath a stretch too far? Pandering to expectations?

MP3: The Clientele-Bonfires on the Heath

I don't know about this album on first impressions. It's a deliberate step back into all that seasonal expressionism from their earlier records that people like me adore, for sure. But this time around, it seems studied. A bit forced. Like they are banging out a formula. Nearly every other song on the record namechecks autumn, september stuff, october stuff, bonfires at hallowe'en, scarecrows, harvest time, and so on, and so forth - so that in the end it all smells like a fucking nature table in 'jennifer' and 'julias' class (typically vague girls' names from the album).

Perhaps I am being way too critical about one of my favourite bands - and a moany goon.

*oh and if someone can tell me what happened to the spell-check in blogger I'd be much obliged. This post is probably full of mistakes.

four saints

Tweet Planet earth is having its once-a-generation Beatles kenipshit this week. Which means people are either delighted to see the fab four's formidable back catalogue reappraised, or are jabbing biros up their noses and clawing at their temples with pulpy fingernails each time their facebook feeds are updated with yet another clip of Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da.

I'm revelling in the current hype to be honest. Mostly because I have such precious memories of the last time all this happened, back when when the Beatles Anthology series came out in 1995. Like anyone with ears I had heard the Beatles back then. But they were very much in the background of a masturbation-riddled hell of Greenday cassettes, Stephen King books, and impotent electric guitar skills. Not to mention self-loathing morning routines spent aiming projectile zit bullets at my despondent reflection while Robson and Jerome's musical feces spewed unchecked from the clock radio. Being fourteen was a true annus horribilus for me in Kells.


Anyway, Dave Fanning (at the time my go-to guy for the new Soundgarden cut, probably still a lot of people's go-to guy for the new Soundgarden cut) began playing all this music from the anthology series one night. It was mostly the weird psychedelic stuff, like the spare, mellotron-led demo of strawberry fields forever (still my favourite version). And good fuck, but I can remember the first time I heard it. It was like being mentally altered in a way. I experienced the music physically; down my back, behind my knees and in my tummy - an echo of the same floored way a child might feel when they think there is a ghost in their curtain or that santa is creaking about on their roof. There was a thick soupy essence of the strange buried in that music. Lennon's fevered reimagining of his own childhood headspace was for me at that age, a mainline shot of some sort of sweet psychedelic voodoo that went straight to the deeper recesses of my brain.



Listening to the Beatles cured my zits overnight too! Just kidding, I suffered from a recurring shiny lance-job halfway up my already sizable conk until I hit seventeen. 17 again? Get fucked Efron.

All this is a side of the Beatles that gets overlooked nowadays - this utter strangeness which is inherent in some of their work. And yeah, I know that can't be helped in a way. They have become so embroidered into our cultural fabric that it is hard not to take them for granted and perhaps easy to casually dismiss them as 'meh' or whatever. But like other truly great 20th century art which has since become shorthand - such as Magritte's lonely men in bowler hats - the essence is still there, glowing dimly like ETs heart, waiting for you to scrub away all the layers of cultural slime and see it for what it is, a postcard from some 'other' place, a place from where only genius can broadcast coherently back to us.

MP3: The Leisure Society-Something

I'm not going to risk a Beatles MP3, 'cos Apple will probably hoover my post up into 'nowhere land', but this cover version is a great substitute. Mojo's latest issue has an alternative version of Abbey Road with contemporary artists covering that album's tracks. The rather lovely Leisure Society's effort leaves their folksy stamp all over George Harrison's 'Something'. I'd advice you to download it folks. It's more than a throwaway.

i want TO DO A POO at Paul's

Tweet It seems that 'most everyone I know is down at the Electric Picnic festival. I freely admit I envy them. Indeed, right at this moment - if it weren't for my academic obligations - I'd probably be at that secret forest rave, on my own, clinging to a plastic bottle containing three parts gin and one part kiaora and swaying in pure confusion amongst a bunch of dreadlocked orbital fans, sunken-eyed nordies and the creepy menagerie of dancing medieval beasts they collectively hallucinated. Sounds grim doesn't it? Yet, for some reason I wish I was there. Ah well, here is an MP3. MP3: John Talabot-Sunshine Sunshine is a summery choon which was played a lot this summer, and got picked up by pitchforkmedia (somewhat behind the curve), no doubt because of its indie friendliness and its supposed 'relevance' to their contrived *ahem* 'glo-fi' scene. They are bang-on though (about the track's awesomeness as oppposed to 'glo-fi'). A 'music sounds better with you' style house pulse coupled with a fairly epic progression cements it as a crossover choon as likely to rock antics as the twisted pepper.

this is cringer, my fearless friend (chuckles wryly)

Tweet Sometime around about last week, all the trendy new music coming out of the 'States stopped sounding like The Clean, and started sounding like the fucking soundtrack to He Man played through a ropey VHS machine with fanta spilled on it. Or this... MP3: Memory Tapes-Plain Material Anyone in a lo-fi band called Deer(something) who harbours ambitions to make it onto Gorilla vs Bear this week is properly fucked. Today, it's all about memory this, neon that, and melty synths puking half-digested melodies all over the carpet in a sickly, nostalgic mess. It's all very escapist and regressive in a way, like a mass musical retreat toward the womb. Stylistically, the current crop of cartoonidelica bands owe a huge debt to Boards of Canada who tweaked the same nostalgia neurons over a decade ago, particularly during those enigmatic little sound sketches which initially sounded slight but ultimately turned out to be the most rewarding moments on the stone cold classic, 'Music Has the Right to Children'. MP3: Boards of Canada-Olson As fun as Neon Indian, Memory Tapes and their ilk are, their music probably doesn't shoulder the comparison to Boards of Canada. It's lacking the deeper hues, the colder currents and the genuinely strange undertows. Like He-Man they're fun, they're bright, but they're a bit 2D.

seriously tripping baws dudes

Tweet This time last year, I was a fixture in Whelans most weekends; checking out whatever trendsetters crossed the Atlantic with more than an 8.0 from Pitchfork and the Foggy Notions seal of approval. In September 2009, however, things are sadly different. This state of affairs exists on account of me being under house arrest until I submit my monster thesis which is currently 50,000 words and counting. From a live music perspective then, this blog is limited to what I can cover. In other words, as much as I would like to see Dinosaur Jr. tear county Carlow a new bum-star, I won't be able to go to the Electric Picnic this year. I'll have to settle with the Kells live music scene for the moment. Musically, summer 2009 was bleak in Kells. We were visited by many bands with names like 'Smooch', 'Who's who', 'The rhythm boys' and err, 'Aslan'. Also, there were a few rebel bands with names like 'Tara Shamrock' and some Country Nites too - where various Philomenas, Declans and Marys crooned out anemic interpretations of real country music to maudlin family men who cry at Christmas. Rough stuff. All that's about to change though. For Real. This Autumn, Kells shall host its own version of Britain's got Talent. It will be called Kells's got Talent (also known as Kellsesesiz's goh taahlent). 'Kells's', 'Kells'es', 'Kellziziziz'? - try saying it five times, and you'll quickly discover that the town wasn't named with the possessive case in mind. During sixth class 'Gilly' pulled a few crafty handstands atop this imposing place - the handball ally behind my primary school. Oh Youtube where were you in '92? Back to Kells's got Talent. It will start on the 12th of September, and will take place in the Saint Vincent De Paul hall. It will be open to people aged between nine and ninety, run throughout Autumn, and reward the winner with five grand*. Yep. Five thousand euros. It is a serious prize, and one that will draw a lot of Kellsians, be they talented or otherwise, out of the woodwork - and probably some chancers down from the North too. The Cunts. As we all know, for every '_____ has got talent' there is a '______ Factor' lurking in the wings. For every Susan Boyle, there is a Chico; for every Ham Sandwich, there is a band called Turn. So it's no surprise that there is a rival Kells competition looming in the shadows. That's right, this autumn, the total talent show prize money sloshing around my home town will be ten grand. Yikes on bikes. Our late license bar, 'the Kelltic', is not the type of place to be outdone by a selfess Catholic charity for impoverished families. So it is standing up for itself and putting on a rival talent show with another five thousand euro prize. This will be called, (did you guess wot it iz yet?), 'Kelltic's Got Talent'. What can we make of all this? A: if you are talented and live in Kells, then lucky you. B: Because I won't be able to make it to electric picnic or grizzly bear or any of that, I'll post regular and detailed updates from both competitions. C: In the year 2000 I witnessed a good friend of mine** take part in a talent competition in the Kelltic with a killer Jarvis Cocker number, only to get absolutely robbed by the most frightful, skull-shattering rendition of a Mariah Carey*** song I ever heard. Here are two MP3s of what I am listening to right now (semi-ambient, post rocky stuff which is conducive to writing science). MP3: Tape-A Spire MP3: Mountains-Telescope Mountains will be playing the DEAF festival in Dublin, and I figure they will be a revelation. On their new record, 'Choral', they construct a canvas of ambience which incorporates acoustic guitar sketches and gamelan/raga type patterns. The vaguely familiar rickety, folksy, guitar lines (to my rubber ear anyway) stretch, creak and are given room to grow comfy. Indeed, the languid opening chords of 'telescope' recall Neutral Milk Hotel. All this summery strummery happens before larger, more epic, and slowly moving sheets of static, fuzz, raindrops and drone form like weather systems above. The resultant noises, which could fill skies, creep over the skeletal guitars and, in some cases come close to obliterating them entirely amidst the drifting storms of drone and static. Yet nothing is ever completely wiped out. That is not to say the original melodies survive perfectly either, but rather peter out prettily, vaguely, and sinking into dissonance. Mountains are playing the DEAF festival, and should be a great proposition, seeing as a lot of this stuff is worked out live. 'Telescope', above, is easily a track of the year for me. And the album 'Choral' has only 'Fuck Buttons' to beat in my usual post-rock race to the prize (a golden apple butt this year). *maybe not five grand. refer to comments section **member of Ham Sandwich in pre-Ham Sandwich format. ***possibly Meatloaf in case somebody reads this and decides to sue me.