this is the blog of a blog called asleep on the compost heap

Tweet Glad to be so loved

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"Hi buddy, your blog' s aim is basic and straighten up and i like it. Your blog posts are superb. Satisfy charge of them coming. Greets!!!"

superted superted superted

If it wasn't for that sort of support I dunno if I could continue with this gig. But I'm glad to have fans and the fans keep me going!

Today, I read a mega bit of music journalism. In fact, it was the sort of thing that makes me happy that people still make an effort to share a few thoughts on assemblages of things that make harmonic noise. It was a piece by the comedian Stewart Lee about his favourite 13 bands.

He revealed that he reviews for the Sunday Times. He also revealed an impeccable taste in music, and wrote about it in such a refreshingly honest way that he went a massive distance in backing up my favourite theory that most of the human race tells lies for the craic. Out of a lot of fun things that he said, I suppose my favourite is "[Guided by Voices] and The Fall are the best bands of the last 30 years" simply because it sounds like something I would shout, nay barf, at someone while on the lock.

And you know what? Guided by Voices are the best band of the last 30 years. If you disagree please meet me at Markovitz gym on Tara Street so we can lube up and pretend to wrestle.

BEST

BAND

EVER

YAKA WOW WOW

Tweet YAKA YAKA YAKA WOW WOW WOW

Some times you say yaka. Some times you say wow. Sometimes you have no option but to say yakawowow. The following things are all a bit yakawowow.

Kid 1 "yaka" Kid 2 "wowow"

#1 yakawow thing: Harmonic gigs over the next month or so.

Leagues O'Toole is probably (no, easily) the best gig promoter in the country. I am not saying this for any 'sponsored' reason or such. He just is. He brings great bands to play great venues, and normally at very cheap prices. And from what I hear when I interview them from time to time, he treats all the bands so well that they go off home raving about this promoter who cares, and more bands come over in turn, and the cycle continues. So a big up to Leagues.

There are more Harmonic gigs on the way this month than you could jerk a twig at, but I'll pick out two which chime with my taste. 

MP3: Emeralds-Alive in the Sea of Information

Last year, I meant to write a top ten album of the year list and never got around to it. Had I, Emeralds' second album 'Does it look like I'm Here?' would have easily topped the list. Drone magicians making drone magick. Music that slowly descends from space like this. They are playing next week (Tuesday 24th in Whelans). The track above is from their first record which is more freeform than 'Does it look like I'm Here?'. Drone in excelsis.

MP3: Julianna Barwick-Envelop

*this gig is now over :( 22/05/2011

She sounds like a disintegration loop. She is ace. She is performing in a Unitarian church. You can see her play in said church for pocket money and still afford a bag of meanies afterwards. 

#2 yakawowow thing

Earthbound:

This game is pretty much all I play on my Super Nintendo emulator these days, and I cannot overemphasise just how gloriously mental it is. It is an RPG set in a crazy Japanese-scripted fantasy version of smalltown America, with a story ostensibly about a bunch of Goonies-style kids who come up against some aliens.

At first, there doesn't seem to be all that much to it. The graphics are wack, (albeit in a funny on-purpose way). But the story is packed full of the most bizarre post-modern madness. The weird characters regularly break down the fourth wall by momentarily realising they are in a game, or by knowingly taking the piss out of RPG conventions. Yet better than all that, Earthbound is as funny as hell. For example, early on, you have a rubbish sidekick called Pokey. How rubbish? Well his battle moves include things like "Pokey uses you as a human shield", "Pokey cringes", "Pokey apologises to the monster", and "Pokey pretends to cry". (Pokey gradually turns evil in a disturbing subplot). 

The whole thing is a magnificent way to waste some time. I advise yall to download it, like yesterday!

I pause to record that I feel in extraordinary form. Delirium perhaps

Tweet Although I am yoked to the school schedule, I don't get paid for the school holidays, so, nice as the holidays were, I returned to work with a certain amount of relief today. Glad to be earning a few bucks. And glad too, after a couple of hours getting back in gear, to recalibrate to a work environment where you are the weirdo if you don't make jazz hands and bawl the entire lyrics to 'It's a Hard Knock Life' (Annie, 1982) to a child before lunch. I'm glad to be at work, in short.

Here are some bits and pieces which are on the stereo right now

Axel Willner did amazing stuff with trancey techno a few years ago - pulled it inside out, eked emotion out of repetition, and so on. The people who applauded his skills (including me) typically came to him the long way around. We were not that deeply doused in the sort of mid nineties trancey shit that was obviously in swirling 'round other peoples' brains (e.g. the above). We were too busy worrying about indie.

The Field is a genius, mind you. Yet! Listen up and hear his pulsating roots (especially, exactly 4.05 *ahem*).

Let's hop off the techno wrecking ball 'cos it is only Wednesday, and there are loads of cool tunes floating around right this second, and anyway the ball whispered to me that it was going to gleefully start wrecking more shit to this.

MP3: Miracle Fortress-Raw Spectacle

I interviewed these guys (this guy) ages ago for the first ever issue of Analogue Magazine. Said dude who may have been called Graham (but let's call him 'Miracle Fortress' like 'McBane') had set intentions about the project. He really wanted the album at hand to be cohesive, no filler - so he hung microphones at odd angles on strings in rooms, and fiddled, and barked into them, while his bandmates ate crisps.

Well who is eating crisps NOW?

(Miracle Fortress's bandmates, probably).

His new album is as sealed up as the last one was. It bobs perfectly in the sort of smooth transparent snowglobe world that his first album did. It's coloured in by M83 (Saturdays = Youth) and Caribou (anything he wrote). Great stuff. And Pantha du Prince has done the obligatory remix.

P.S. this is what passed for a review on this blog in 2007

"Combine harvesters are great. I'd trade a bollock to escape the dreary January buzz right now and drive a combine into a dusty Canadian sunset."

Have  a go lads. Mr Tayto swears it's slippy and painless.

MP3: Robag Wruhme-Thora Vukk

This is the sort of track that makes you question your headphones. Like how, deep do they go? How much crispy shit can they take at one end, and how much beating the durty hollow shite out of an empty corrugated cowshed can they take at the other?

The oddly named Robag (we can assume he comes from Berlin) is having a bit of a techno moment in the sun this Spring. His oddly named (yah, again) Wuppdeckmischmampflow mixtape on Kompakt slid straight into the Immer slipstream, by tickling the balls of indie music, farting melodies, and spectacularly, nay brazenly, sticking it to the mixtape snobs by stretching Villalobos's Dexter over most of its first half. Even better, his recent Resident Advisor mix was full of 'chillwave'.

Ace.

Oh, if you're mad into techno you already know Robag is a former Wighnomy brother, and you're delighted this solo shit is so epic right?