I (HEART) GODLAND

"Godland" is fucking brilliant. If you haven't picked it up before, then you really should; it works on so many levels, both surface and conceptual (that running *joke* thing on the letters page, etc, etc). Beautiful Cosmic Pop Art and eye-searing colouring; late-era Kirby Baroque dialogue that'll twist yr brain pretzelwise...

Don't get to go to comixshops v. often (n the printing-press hasn't even reached Yeovil yet), but always snag a copy of this when possible...

Joe Casey is a genius. Is he the most under-rated guy working in comics right now? No, don't answer that.

Not the Real Kid Kid Shirt (aged 8-and-a-thousand) loves it too; how many comics can unite dif. generations and sensibilities like that, huh?

TIME LIFE: DOUBLE BLACKBERRY

Time Life = Heidi Diehl n G. Lucas "Non-Horse" Crane. Meudiademorte. ("Shit-faced since 2003").

Cassette-label has been Pollackised: black cum scribble; the iceing art of Head-Chef Xavier Van Snyde. I reh-reh-recognise the art style: it's ***** ********.



Ohmmmmminous krautmische deepspace droneverk; bowed vacuumsong. "Zeit" era TD Vs. early Bothers of the Occult Sisterhood. We travel the spaceways on atom-thick sheets of blood-coloured light, traversing a photonegative montage of collapsing stars. Oneironauts r.e.m.-travellin' back to nine-teen-seven-tee-one only to find themselves in an alien zoo-installation curated by Howard Manilla. Soundtrack to a Druillet wetdream.

Slow folds of tomorrow. Windows in the air. Visonfields unfurl like flags or a series of flatscreen migraines. A waterfall of molecules, protein-chains visible n wrigglin' like compost-worms. Superliminal plainsong, a call to prayers as the Eve of Eyeflicker Dusk falls over Qhasm Q. Lunar Occulus, a trick of the light.

The sky is dark red now. Our converted beach-buggy bounces over a sunken sea of moonrock, dodging the shadowcats; Nikki grinning in the bucket-seat as the Spectre takes hold, a Peabody Hancock voweljam on the radio, something from Shapemaker II, I think.

Birds become static and vice versa. Popul Vuh stretched into thin pasta-like strands of sound. A squeeekt becomes a tape of Gemini VI re-entering the ionosphere. A cone on fire, a sonargram. An epithet of gravel geetar growl. A vehicle of some sort (anag.).

(*I*'m writing this in bright sunshine, but it's midnight in my mind.)

Random clicks n clunks. A tribe of didgeridoo-voiced ghostmen re-infect the radio-dial. A washing-machine in the shape of a mouth, clothes all tangled up in its teeth. They're climbing out of their holes now - spindle-limbed half-men drawn by Ralph Reese, scuttling towards us on aluminium flange-scooters, their splayed, olive-green, frog-like feet kicking up dust w/ every floppy-foot'd kick.

Throat-opera in 3-D. Geddy Klein's Ulvulva (Op. 8) in G-Major, a piece for sheet-metal, disgruntled Hoover and a choir of tonsilitis-sufferers. The fuckers've put an operative curse on me. "I'm feeling it, sweetheart; I'm feeling it."

Liquid arcade-games ripple in and out of focus. Circuitry trickles down my forehead like beads of sweat. Oscillators and a sticky, leech-like metal bucket that's attached to my foot. Can't shake the damn thing off!

Fuck ThrobGris; this next section is beyond terrifying, yet no one even raises their voice and never a cross word is said. It's a plea to be re-meated; to be extracted from Void #D and re-embedded back in the physical realm. Poor monkeysoul lost in The Psemetary of Psouls, a collapsing waveform who was once alive, just like you.

"Double Blackberry" is the treach-est shit you'll hear right now - but, hark! - it's, like, uh, a year-and-a-half old (my estemed colleague Auxiliary Out re/v'd it sometime in 1894) and probably long out of print. Bah! Not taunting ya with it, just making the point that shit like this can still leave Fanboy Kek slack-jawed and dribbling. (It's been calling to me from its shelf for long, lonely months now, pleading to have its spools restretched.) It's wonderful.

Try here.

Or form yr own band.

RIP SKY SAXON

All that fuss about you-know-who dyin' has kinda overshadowed the sad loss of Sky Saxon.

A couple years ago me n Cloudboy did a song called "Last Night I Dreamt I was in The Seeds" that turned out far too Garage Rock to make it onto an IBS release (real guitar! real drums! real organ! a melody line!) - in fact, I need to finish that off sometime - still, in a weird way that track probably speaks acres more than any written tribute I could write.

All Hail Sky!

RAPHAEL'S ASTRONOMICAL EPHEMERIS OF THE PLANET'S PLACES FOR 1943

1943! For when you've absolutely, totally got to wage war on yr enemies backwards through time - this is yr best ally. Well, that or a rogue angel - a, y'know, a whatdyam'callit.



This is a very cheap option. My copy cost, oooh, £1.99 and is in near mint condition. Short of nicking something from the British Museum's Red Basement, you won't get anything better for under 5-grand and that'll be via some sleazy specialist arcane book-dealer who you'll also have to fuck in return for it. Eeew.

Still, it wasn't until I got it home that I realised it had been pubished by a company based in (da-da-daaah!) Yeovil Road....oooh: spooky coincidence, eh, readers?

Except that there's no such thing as a coincidence, bub. This, therefore, is the perfek' magical weapon for me. Watch out, ****** ********, I'm going to travel back in time and fuck yr mum at an optimum juncture in the Hypertinuum; that sperm will never fertilise that egg. And you, sir, you will never be. Bwahahaha!


My plan is foolproof! That'll teach you to fuck wit me, u creeetan.

See, everything you need to know:



Oxfam, yr one-stop shop for occult ordnance.

NOT THE REAL BEYOND THE IMPLODE

Martin goes Non-Canonical too.

See, it's spreading!

THE TERRIBLE TABLE OF CLAY RUBY

The table was made in 1868 by Alfred Massey, a furniture-maker based in the village of Binegar, near Gurney Slade, North Somerset. The only mishap of any note that took place during the table's construction was that he cut himself on a couple of occasions while planing the wood and his blood seeped into the grain - which may have 'primed' the table or activated it in some way.

It would be an exaggeration to say that the wood was cursed, but it certainly had a chequered past; the wood had been sourced from an oak that had been used as a makeshift gallows at Cannard's Grave near Shepton Mallet. In 1796, the notorious highwayman "Black Tommy" Holdwick was hanged by his neck from one of its boughs until he expired, after stabbing a wealthy merchant from Bath. His body was left out for the crows as a warning to other locals not to rob their betters. The notorious Belamey Brothers - a pair of horse-thieves and pony snatchers from Templecloud - met a similar fate in 1798.

The table was bought a fortnight after it was completed and ended up in the servant's kitchen at Ashley Hall near Priddy where it was used to prepare chickens and butcher small joints of meat (knife and cleaver marks are still clearly visible on its surface). The Honourable James Mackelroy had relations with Anne-Claire - a common kitchen-girl - on the table in the small hours of March 15th, 1876, (Saihn Smedrin's Day in the old Ludrinian Calendar) and her menstral blood mixed with the various animal fats and fluids, waxes and stains that the table had already absorbed. This had the curious effect of turning the old woodgrain into a sort of solid-state circuit-board, capable of storing a series of nano-potential-differences and carrying them through a complex system of lignified xylem tubes. The table began to absorb/record, store and play back sounds as if it were an organic hard-drive, filtering and cross-mixing the noises through a labrynth of bio-analogue 'circuitry'.

In the early 1900's the kitchen gained a reputation for being haunted. Strange clicking sounds and eerie moans could sometimes be heard downstairs in the early hours. The servants tended to avoid using the room after dark. A corn-cross was placed over the cooking-hearth; lucky horse-shoes and Gypsy heather were nailed to the ceiling beams.

Late one evening Michael Mackelroy heard a grotesque parody of his late mother's voice reciting The Lord's Prayer backwards in an otherwise empty kitchen, so he summoned the Rev. Amos Hunt from the local Methodist Church to perform an exorcism of sorts. The vicar's Latin babble was absorbed into its surface and commingled with four decades' worth of psycho-accoustic leakage. Despite The Blessing an odd atmosphere seemed to hang over the table - an accousto-kirlean aura of wrongness that extended out into the space around it.

In 1909, Mrs. Best - the housekeeper and head-cook - severed her left index finger at the first knuckle whilst hacking at a sheep's head to prepare meat stock.

In 1913, the table was finally replaced and retired to one of the gardener's sheds. Here, it was used as a makeshift workbench where assorted tools and gardening implements could be oiled and repaired. It absorbed a number of oils, greases, paints and solvents, its bio-circuitry slowly evolving as additional layers of chemical logic-gates were stained into its surface. Sometimes, rabbit or fox carcasses were dumped onto it, allowing it to thirstily soak up haemoglobin and rust, synthesising exotic iron oxide complexes which bestowed unforseen data-storage and processing capabilities on the table. In the small hours the table would hum, sing and shriek to itself - its voice a ghastly, otherworldly pastiche of the people who had once used it.

In 1926, the mines at Pensford closed and the Mackelroy family business went into recievership. Ashley Hall was abandoned and left locked up for several years. The shed which contained the table fell into ruin, becoming overgrown with weeds and ivy. The table soaked up birdsong and cricket-scratch, its surface slowly bleached and warped by the sunshine that filtered through a broken window. Local poachers told tales of strange sounds that sometimes echoed across the heath at night - a high-pitched keening howl, a terrible fox-like mating-song that was a shrill ripple on the breeze and could chill a man's blood faster than brandy could warm it.

The Hall was bought in 1931 by the Accor Hotel chain and renovated. The grounds were restored, and tennis courts and a heath-spa added. The Ashley Hall Hotel ran seasonal pheasant shoots for local Bristol- and Bath-based businessmen, and the table found itself routinely spattered with gun oil and bird blood. In the long run, the site was not considered exclusive enough to attract serious high-rollers, so Accor were forced to scale back their business in 1937. The Hotel was fatally damaged when a German Junkers 88 dumped its bomb payload during an aborted raid on Filton in 1942. However, assorted furnishings, fittings, junk and old family chattels - including the table - were sold off in June, 1944, to a local rag-and-bones merchant. The table languished in a salvage yard in Chew Magna until the end of the war.

A local man - Albert Shaw - bought the table for 5 and a half shillings with the intention of cleaning it up and using it to build model airplanes in his garage, but soon found there was something a little off about the table. Its presence made him feel uneasy, though he was hard-pushed to explain why. He gave it to his brother Bill, but Bill didn't warm to it either. He revarnished it with the intention of installing it in his back parlour, but decided he didn't want it in the house. Sometimes he thought it made 'sounds' - it seemed to play weird aural tricks on him, make miniscule noises that he could almost hear from the corner of his ear. He had seen some terrible things in Belgium during the war - awful things that still prayed on his mind - and the table seemed to summon up a series of not-quite-heard voices and sounds from his own memories, so he hauled it out into the garden and left it there.

His wife Alison nagged him to burn it, but he became quietly obsessed with the idea that it might scream if he set fire to it. So instead he watched it cautiously from the kitchen window as if he were trying to catch it out. He would spy on it, convinced that if he observed the table long enough then one day he would catch it doing something. The birds seemed wary of the table and could not be coaxed onto it, even with copious piles of seeds or bread crusts. Percy the cat gave it a wide berth. Bill was watching it one sunday afternoon in the early autumn when he suffered a fatal stroke.

After the funeral, Alison gave it to a cousin who was the landlord of the Lark and Lamb pub in Whitchurch where it sat in a darkened corner of the skittle-alley listening to fat men swear and get drunk. At night it would soak up owl-calls and badger-howls, internally remixing them into terrifying new permutations. The police were called on three different occasions when odd noises - presumably burglars - were heard by neighbours. It remained there until 1974 when the alley caught fire after an electrical short. The table survived; though one leg was slightly scorched. It didn't scream.

It languished in the storage shed of a second-hand furniture-shop in Whichchurch for 6 years until it went out of business and the stock was sold at auction as a job-lot. During the eighties and nineties it appeared in three TV dramas and a small, independently financed film Dirty Laundry; it sat in a cricket pavillion, a post office, an antiques shop and a bedsit in Bedminster. And in its wake followed a swarm of bad dreams and half-imagined soundsongs; a roil of r.e.m.noise and lucid imaginings, the verbless final rasps of the long-departed; crowtalk and amplified insect chatter.

It was put out for the bin-men, salvaged by a middle-aged hippy couple, briefly used in a vegetarian cafeteria in St. Pauls, Bristol, and ended up in a reclamation yard in Stokes Croft where it was spotted by a local firm that specialised in redecor-branding cafe-bars with cheap tat. In 2005 it found its way into a local bar called The Croft.

It listened to laughter, drunken rants and cheesy chat-up lines; it soaked up whisky, lager, coffee, cocaine, spittle, Indie, Metal, Pop, Disco, Dubstep, House, Techno...people sat round it and argued, lied, cried, snarled, sneered, snogged, bitched, joked, sighed, swore, sniggered; said "I love you" and meant it/didn't mean it. The table wasn't alive; it wasn't self-aware, it was...I don't know what it was.

It tic'd and pulsed within itself, carrying out endless vegetable computations... a stain-engine that shunted pools of ferric-encoded sound-data back and forth through its mineral buffers and
phloem-processors. Baroque resinous whorls of wooden cpu; protein micro-capacitors, diodes made from minute beads of varnish and animal fat; a self-evolving patchbay linked to parenchymic tape-heads.

The Croft, 18/06/2009, 6:50pm:

Fat Paul, the promotor, sucks on an electric cigarette and chuckles, "I can't believe these things. They're amazin'. And they're completely legal. You can smoke them indoors. They do a pipe and a Cuban cigar too." He shakes his head at the sheer preposterousness of it. "Everything's Digital these days. Help yourselves to tables from the bar, lads, if you need anything to put your gear on..."

Mic and Paul drag a generic-looking bleached pine table into the Live Band room at the back of the bar. Clay Ruby selects an old-looking table from the corner of the room - something about it catches his eye, a certain aura that it exudes; the table has 'character'. Adhesive Dan from the Swindon band Merge in Movement gamely helps Clay carry it in and heft it up onto the stage. Dan's not playing tonight, but is riding shotgun w/ the IBS Wiltshire posse.

Clay Ruby starts setting up his gear - a tangle of fx-pedals and keyboards. He gets a sudden flash of something - moonlight falling on a 19th century scullery. Old crockery. A jug. A woman moans, the rustle of cotton petticoats. He untangles a jack-lead, unable to shake an unquantifiable sense of unease. It's not nerves - he's played too many shows to freak over something like this, but...he had a fever for 6 days after he flew into the UK - some weird Brit virus - so maybe it's that. The room seems to recede for a few moments. He imagines some unknown species of animal; hears it snort and hiss inside his head. An old woman's voice. The clunk of skittle-balls hitting a wooden alley. Part of a prayer. Fuck this shit, he thinks and fires up his Yamaha for a soundcheck.

The Croft, 18/06/2009, 10: 35pm:

Clay Ruby aka Burial Hex, is the undisputed Master of Horror Electronics; his improvisations have a strange unhurried feel to them, as if he is slowly uncoiling the sounds (in the same way as he patiently uncoils his plugs and leads from a flightcase), pulling them down off a series of shelves in his head; peeling them out from inside the air, from the structure that sits within things. His live soundtracks sound as if they belong to the air, as if they are of it...part of some natural order that he has uncovered, not composed...his music reveals hitherto unseen facets of The Order of Things. His music makes you feel as if you are standing inside of something that has always been there, some structure that you never quite saw before; that you are witnessing some act of revelation. He is a conjuror, is Clay - watch his hands, the way he carefully moves, the unhurried way he presses a button, tweaks a knob, sets whirling plates in motion; it is a marvel to behold. "Look!" the music (and Clay) seem to say..."Look what was here all along. You just weren't looking in the right direction. Now do you see it?" There is something zen-like, almost glacial in the way he opens up doors inside the audience's heads, one door at a time, and releases the things that were always there, but invisible. Things you didn't want to look at. Things you didn't want to hear.

And the table that sits beneath his gear - it knows. It hums and throbs and creaks beneath his pedals, boxes and wires; it responds.

Like Clay Ruby, the table is patient. It is a survivor, an archaic-yet-novel object-form that will undoubtedly out-'live' us all. What a strange yet banal journey it has taken from There to Here, from Then to Now. The table knows.

Clay plays spooky droplets of reverb'd piano; horrific little snowflakes of unease that settle over the table and cause it to stir. He is a musician at the height of his powers, yet so few people know who he is. One day soon that will change. The sound he summons is hypnotic, queasy, oneiric, oddly familiar; a dreamtrack, the ost to a night spent sweating and restlessly dozing in the suburbs of delirium...

He pulls down loops of pocessed static, layering sheets of crackle across the room like a series of nylon burial shrouds - pale veils of misplaced noise that cause the audience - and the table - to shiver. The sounds build: grinding antique machinesong; the tug of ancient ropes. Something is approaching now - the slow, ground-shuddering stomp of a distant behemoth...something terrible and incredibly old...it's coming closer now: a leviathan, ancient and awful, an unnamable horror so vast and dreadful that even a glimpse could kill. But the table...the table has heard this sound before. The table knows...

The sound comes closer, closer...colossal, unstoppable...

And the table...it...the table...

And the table...it...



And the table...



The table...



The table...



The table...



The table...



And the table...the wood within the table...

It wakes up and it remembers.

ICE BIRD SPIRAL LIVE @ THE CROFT 18/06/09

"You're not going out dressed up like that!" (Part 6)

What Cloudboy and 'me' like to do in our spare time:



Holy fuck! There's more:



Jeepers! Raise the Scottie-Dog Umbrella!

RIP IAN LOVEDAY

RIP EON.

GARETH AND JESS: LIFE AFTER THE BIG NATURALS

Mentioned The Big Naturals before. (Yep, they're somewhere in here ). They were triffik in Trowbridge; loads heavier live than their studio incarnation. However, sad to say, they are no more; they've knocked it on the 'ead, but Gareth has teamed up with a new drummer - Jess - and bounced back w/ a new dual line-up. West Country Sludgefans have already dubbed them The New Big Naturals, tho Gareth and Jess seems to (temporarily) be the name on the poster...



The name debate seemed to be continuing while they were setting up, with various names being batted around. The soundcheck sounded pretty darn good, but Gareth was fretting: "We've only been practising for 3 weeks, some of my runs are a bit off..."

He needn't have worried; they were great.

For those of you unfamiliar w/ the score: Gareth plays lo-strung bass gtr thru a serious array of fx and a monstrous Ozzfest-sized amphenge of Marshalls and Oranges (set up in amongst the audience), bouncing off some fiery full-kit drumclatteration. (Holy Shades of Lightning Bolt, Robin!) They're so loud that even Cloudboy wore earplugs.

The music: errrm...they switchback between Stoner Doom and Hard Rock Sludge, but with some nice twisty, quasi-proggish time-signature changes interspersed with controlled feedback, percussive kitwank, electronic interventions, etc. Loved it.

Skipper Webb is a big old school 80's Hardcore fan and he dug them too.

G n J know when to riff down, when to grind, when to pump (oops, some unintentional sexual metaphoars there), when to squaawwk, etc. And great to see - my God! - a mixed-gender audience w/ girls in the crowd tossing their hair around and grooving; so not just bullish, macho boys n their toys musik, nosiree.

You really should check 'em, oh yes!



(Ghost Guitarist Alert!)






(Next Ish: the genius of Clay Ruby)

*Briefly surfaces from a tangle of wires, mics, megaphones, etc (some sort of attempt at a 'rehearsal', apparently - which basically means making sure everything plugs in and works) *

Mentioned it before - and sorry to nag - buuut: just a gentle reminder that 'we', ie Ice Bird Spiral are playing The Croft in Bristol this thursday...

Burial Hex, man! Fuckin' Burial Hex!

As ever, yr support will be much appreciated. If you do come along, then try and rock some sort of 1920's care-in-the-community 'look', y'know orthopedic boots, trousers that don't fit, etc - it's a sort of Anti-Dandy Look. Errrm: The Cardiacs gone Small-Town Dada Cabaret In A Farmyard. Carboot Sale Surrealism. I'd like for this to catch on. Trust me, this look'll be big in about 15 years time. So, yeah, come in 'costume', freakos, and join in the fun.

AS ZEIK

As Zeik: fine n filthy-sounding monochrome fastdirgenoise that sits at some unwanted interstice tween Post-Punk n Almost.Metal. This sounds like a Red Factory rehearsal tape circa '82, tho obviously loads better than that. Faster, more passion, more fsssszttzsh.



Trying to make sense of the tape in the privacy of me own abattoir; hearing some raw Punk nihilistic/Bostik bounceback in places here; a faster, thinner/treblier-sounding Stoogesness - this trak's too, erm, springy for old school garage-rock - there's a leaden shrillness (not as much of an oxymoron as y'd think), an almost.intensity, a dudd!dudd!dudd!isity, an unrequited linearity that Kek digs. A single-finger guitar-solo blossoms from nowhere on the fade-out n it almost sounds baroque, unintentionally opulent. Yeah: go, buddy, go...

Loving the wanton thugboombeatery of this - its lack of angularity n guile; its uncomplicated 'artlessness' (the way it's completely circumnavigated No-Wave/ArtRock canonicity) yet for the most part it's still resolutely a B 'n' W Music - no needless colour hues here; it revels in its reduced bandwidth: this is No-Punk, Non-Post-Wave...on this tune Kek'm getting the Post-JD afterbirth dirge of Factory acts like Crispy Ambulance, but sped up and stripped of Hammett mix-details, stripped of everything except the top-end, tho someone's clearly upset the singer...no, they've upset everyone...but the details are refreshingly unclear. Your private life drama, baby, leave me out.



They come back for more: this time sounding vaguely like "Paralysed" by The Legendary Stardust Cowboy for, well, at least 8 seconds before the drum-kit implodes, metal tubing and crash-stands splinking out into a right old row. They make their point quickly and leave...then something that sounds like fastforward Factory fuguedirge grinds into a Killing Joke outake on L-Dopa. The song hesitates, auto-Metalisises itself, speeds up, turns into a howl of outrage, guitar and drums chasing themselves in a tight circle like a couple of kartoon kats chasing their own tails. G'wan - shooo, you pests!

Tapesquaawwwwk and: early Siouxsie and the Banshees speed thru the room like a high-speed train, swastika t-shirts flailing like miniature windmills. More Legendary Stardust Cowboy, followed by an early Slits demo. "Oh Fuck!" or maybe "Oh Suck," someone shouts. More hi-velocity Kenny Morris drums. Can't keep up w/ them, the fuckers.

A Fall-ish rhythm-riff; drums kick in, shrieks. Track drops out. Rockabilly howl talk-over style vocals briefly occupy reverbspace (In heavily accented semi-English: "Don't fucuuuck with me, or you will dieeee...Die! Die! Die!") then more spaz-drums and a slightly different but similar riff, faster, faster, lapping itself...then something remarkable happens: everything dissolves into a crackle of static, like something's burning - a polythene bag on fire - while a slow, vaguely percussive sound cycles somewhere in the distance. Fadeout.

Apparently, As Zeik means "peeing". I'm probably just passing on a band in-joke - that'll teach me not to speak Flemish! - but - you know what? - ha! I don't care about that. (I would like to speak Flemish, tho.)

I really hope they are called Peeing.

Bekie, Groesjka and Vrjkke: you so fucking rule.

Available from Funeral Folk.

RUSTIE MIX

A mix from Rustie, courtesy of BTS Radio.

AquaCrunk...ScrewFonk...CoughSyrupSwing...Philthy Glaswegian Phear-Sleep: whatever you wanna call it.

And you can find it here (Right-click to save)

A GENRE CALLED "PURPLE"

Don't call it Wonky - call it Purple.

How cool would that be? - a musical genre named after a colour! Make it happen! (aving a senior moment here; a flashback to the musical heyday of Prince...)

Wotz 'e on about? Well, A Man Like Dan @danhancox in yesterday's paper on The Purple Sound of Bristol's Joker, Ginz, Gemmy, etc....

And let's not forget the excellent "Orchestral Lab"/"Way U Make Me Feel" single by Guido, that dropped a little back on the ever-excellent Punch Drunk, the label ran by Kid Shirt pal Peverelist... oh, and Gemmy's "Bass Transmitter", of course....

Some of it's creamy and hyper-caramelised, like pouring a whole bottle of Baileys straight into yr cranium; but some of it's games-console Toons ("Silken Bitch Wars") meets imaginary Futur.Tv theme-credits meets crack-addled 80s gangsta.nebishes in Tron.space. Some of it is Dubstep 2.1.2. Some of it sounds like The World's Famous Supreme Team meets UK-Garage filtered thru some theoretic narcotic w/ crystals the colour of potassium permanganate:



Are we seeing the re-psychedelicisation of Funk? The Clintonisation of Garage. P-Funk-Plus...? It comes from Bristol, so: B-Fonk. Purple is one of those in-between-scene words; I love it.

But what's great about Joker n Ginz's "Purple City" is that both sides clock in at around 2:30, the perfect length for a 7"...and it makes me think of one of those what-the-fuck moments you would have on a regular basis around '78, '79 - pulling a single out of a seven-inch box in a provincial small-town record-shop and hearing something by Thomas Leer, Robert Rental or The Normal, except these tracks have got Fonk or Swing or the echoes of a 2-Step Snap, a Reggae Chkkk, whatever... now we're seeing a generation of yng musicians that are inspired as much by post-8-bit games and games.soundtracks than any dancefloor Nuum, either real or imagined.

B-but the one's that sound best to these bruised old ears are the ones that sound like some retro.fictional theme-tune for something that never quite came to be. As much as Kek like dem creamy, vocoder'd, microdot-smeared Fonk splonks, he doth dig the starkly austere, stripped-back Neo-Retro Instrumental 'Realness' stuff as much as The New Eighties Baroque.

Still, it's all good; S'Purple, innit.





Etc, etc.

Anyway, always great to see Bristol getting rep'd. The Future starts Now.

ZER0-INVERT LESBIANAIRE(S)

The cheapest, fastest, crappy-est music promo evah.

An old Kid Shirt live favourite emerges, retweaked, from hibernation with some phreshly-shot phound phootage attached.



Play loud. Or something.

TEXTURES #2

Oh, please, dear God, no: not another flippin' on-going series!

SHIT AND SHINE PRE-ORDERS

The new album by the 'Real' Shit and Shine is now available for pre-order on CD on the 'Real' Riot Season site. Pile on and snag a copy prior to the in-shop release date. Previous releases have sold out pretty quickly, so don't hang about or you'll regret it, u lazy weedheads.

A double-vinyl should be dropping at s-s-some point too.

The new Black Boned Angel CD "Verdun" is also available for pre-order, so get yr ya-yas out.

THE CONTINUITY BANKSY

Can't stand Banksy or his 'art', tbh, but *this*...this is very interesting (for obv. reasons, ie see Kid Shirt masthead above).

The Continuity Banksy...?? The 'Real' Banksy Vs. The Not Banksy?

Okay, I confess, the Non-Canonical 'Me' is hooked.

Banksy becomes a self-critiquing meme:franchaise.

EVIL JOHN MAYS

Evil John Mays, the legendary Texan gore-fx wizzard: check out his fabulous demo reels...

And here's an interview with Evil John.

"...you can’t beat the old Grey’s Anatomy cutaway book showing the different layers of skin and bone. Actually, I keep a quick cheat sheet that they have for nursing students in my portfolio book and I can reference it to make sure that I’ve got everything completely balanced up. If I need to find out, is there an actual bone under this position I’m working on? I can go look at that. For facial trauma it’s good to go and look where the major cranial nerves and veins are." lol.

Just been reading an extremely funny email detailing various shenanigans round his house yesterday involving a fresh-out-the-mold exploding latex penis thing...

KARNEVAL IM LAND DER CETACEAN

A communique, just in, from Lieven:


KARNEVAL IM LAND DER CETACEAN

A three day festival with Taped Sounds artists and related seekers of sound.
Live acts, dj's, visual presentations, etc.
All connected with a mutual interest in communication, living, the mind, the cosmos, the outer world and co-existing.

Friday 26th of june (starts 5pm, 6euros presale - 8euros doors)
Saturday 27th of june (starts 2pm, 6euros presale - 8euros doors)
Sunday 28th of june (starts 4pm, free entrance)

@ Landesmuseum Joanneum (Klubraum), Neutorgasse 45, 8010 Graz, Austria

http://cetaceannationcommunications.blogspot.com/
http://www.absolutely-free.at/
http://werk02.org/
http://www.museum-joanneum.at/

LIVE ACTS:

friday, first band 6pm!
INSTANT SPACE SOUP (be)
PARTKDOLG (be)
BUFFLE (be)
P.A.R.A. (us)
JAMES FERRARO (usa)
BREW ABUSE (be)
ORPHAN FAIRYTALE (be)

saturday, first band 3pm!
EEKHOORN X (be)
COTOPAXI (ger)
VOM GRILL (be)
DOLPHINS INTO THE FUTURE (be)
HEAD OF WANTASTIQUET (usa)
HUUR IS DUUR (be)
MONOPOLY CHILD (usa)
IGNATZ (be)
MIK QUANTIUS (ger)
HUNGRY SOUL (be)

sunday, first band 5pm!
CITY HANDS (nl)
ZIM ZIM ZIM (be)
HELICOPTERE SANGLANTE (fra)
R.O.T. (be)
LUDO MICH (be)

* IGNATZ (be)
Bram Devens, the Belgian champion in computer gaming. in the axis of his inner peace, you will find... armed with a guitar, thriftstore electronics and a smoked out voice, Bram speaks in a tongue of modern tales on traditional hothouse psychedelics and rootsmusic, like the 2009 Henry Flynt would translate his tale of life into tunes. But more than simple xerox creations, Bram draws a new dusty map of his own. Pretty singular if you ask me....Bram released 3 lp's on Kraak, and tapes on labels like Taped Sounds, Beniffer Editions, etc.

* ORPHAN FAIRYTALE (be)
C.G. Jung teached us to create a childplay, to get in touch with our own myth, our past. to gain understanding about ourself. Orphan Fairytale is the musical translation of this technique. Under the blanket of naivety you will find treasure. played with a level of illumination and intelligence one rarely encounters in the modern languague of music, Eva Van Deuren builds a whole playground for the lost and found, sounding like both dwarfs playing nursery rhymes, and munchies on a high-energy techno struggle.Eva released tapes on Imvated, Puik, Beniffer, Blackest Rainbow, etc. A collaborational LP on Dreamtime Taped Sounds, and is working at LP's for Notnotfun, Ecstatic Peace and Nofun. She also runs her own imprint Pluim.

* MONOPOLY CHILD (usa)
Spencer Clark, dweller on the treshold who is also a member of the Skaters. Monopoly Child is the "sisters' man" own vision on the fourth way. A massage, rooted in the village that is Pacific City, at Dimension End. His esotherical, psychological music, encoded in the magickal key "Ah Kukuu" is the mans' own gateway to a world beyond the clouds. His liveshows sound both like a temple inauguration and a bootleg from dusty 50's Ethnic Folkways LP's. Spencer released records on Eclipse, Wabana, etc, and has a stream of cdr's and tapes on his own label Pacific City and on sister label New Age.

* CITY HANDS (nl)
This guy has only city hands, but has a mindframe to understand both the power of Digital Man and the insight of Caddyshack. Full time bowler and bridge builder between the creative and the working class. Head in office of the recently put to sleep Helbaard emporium of gigs, vision candy and free beer for me. And a lovely hand for tongue-in-cheek diamond silkscreens. His personal soundworld is one that verbalizes the hinterland behind a hissy tape-recorder playing dusty new age thriftstore tapes.Manuel releases various limited self-released items on his own label Silver Ghosts.

* JAMES FERRARO (usa)
James Ferraro, the Hannah Montana European Fanclub chairman of the board plays also in the Skaters. Currently he's both channeling the evil eye of the mass media and the beauty of life, love and clear. James' music stands by his own unique vocabulary of what one could verbalise as childlike conceptions of today and yesterday. But speaks in a very adult tongue with a code of comical comments on the now. His discography reads as a mapping of some parallel world he's giving tours through now and then, dictated by a vague ultraterrestial presence. Records on Eclipse, Wabana, Old English Spelling Bee etc, and has tapes and cdr's under various monikers on his own imprint New Age, and on Taped Sounds, Heavy Tapes...

* P.A.R.A. (usa)
Pre-Atlantian Ritual Artifacts, stands for incantations by this young candidate Lebanna Bly. Soundwaves channeled before the times of Atlantis and Lemuria. Her sparse releases read as a take on magickal manifestations enlighted by a certain crude outsider spirit picked up from out of nowhere. Rude collect calls to a past of a more correct man - woman balance in the mind of Vril. One of the new heads in the
psychological esotherics classroom. Released her debut LP on Old English Spelling Bee end 2008. Released cd's and tapes on New Age and Taped Sounds.

* R.O.T. (be)
"solid eye covered by stoners" dixit Dylan Nyoukis. Long-running troupe of kindred sound poets and acoustic seekers. Started 10 years ago as the common drone / Dead C coverband (according to Bananafish), but evolved into a puddle of various forms of communication about the subject called sound. Intentionally created as a loose vehicle with a grand troupe of bandmembers coming and going, R.O.T. established in a vast four man endeaver over the past few years, creating a sound that is both its most consistent as its most loosely challenging ever. The band holds a large discography with tapes, LPs, CDs, etc on Veglia, Kraak, Morc, Imvated, ....

* ZIM ZIM ZIM (be)
Radiant tonifications celebrating the beginning of the new eaon with the mutual quest for exo / eso - peace. referential sounds, picked out of reference to create emotion to create love under will. Sarah Geens and Wietske Van Gils hold a special eye for romance and melancholy in their cloudy soundworld constructed with vocals, electronics and various accoustic instruments. A gift of beauty to the nation of the free. The band did release some limited self-released items, and debut tape on
Taped Sounds.

* DOLPHINS INTO THE FUTURE (be)
I create my music by automatic writing through my dialogues with the cetacean world and its sources of ultraterrestial information that is maybe in there (...) my work stands both as a musical interpretation of the trancefers, a map of personal ways to the Id, (...) I believe in this stage of our development, the visual and sensory sense are of paramount importance, so I hope I can reach you with this mere collection of tunes. (...) Meditate on the concept of using the cetacean nation as a metaphor of what we could be and reach. love and light,(...) Lieven Martens released a debut LP on Not Not Fun, a cd on Release The Bats, and various tapes on Taped Sounds, Pacific City, Skulls Of Heaven, Puik, ...

* EEKHOORN X (be)
multimedia turbulence created by two dwarfs, coming from the small villages in the playfull creative mind. Orphan's Fairytale Eva Van Deuren and trendsetting nudity covermodel Edith Vandenhoeck mix the childplay with the coming down of hangovers. Because, yes, Eekhoorn X might be the best possible way to linger in the unique powers connected to hangovers. A stream of seemingly naive loops of VHS nostalgia,
combined with tapecollages and locked grooves of old records, massage their way into your Grey Matter and leave you with a feeling of enlightment.

* COTOPAXI (ger)
A duo whose living room looks like a zoo and whose mindtune sounds like an aquarium. He who looks for treasure finds a friend. Creators of gigs in a "tent" called Occi. Creators of sound on a label called "Hallo Gallo". Creators of food in a place called "kitchen". Creators of life on a stage called "buhne". Johann and Hannah might be the realest addition to the current collection of modern day sound creators in the lower countries. Little happy themes constructed with a vortex of toysynths, accoustic instruments, taperecorders etc. Like a gay technoparty for stuffed animals....Cotopaxi released tapes on Hallo Gallo and Taped Sounds.

* MIK QUANTIUS (ger)
Abducted by aliens a number of times. Collaborater with Embryo and NoNeckBluesBand. Rooted in the post-70's Fluxus sound poetry lane... but this guy takes it a lot further since he's always creating a lightbulb of freedom between the many references. When Mik enters the buhne with his amalgan of 2 organs, the power of his voice, and everything else that is available, the listener is privileged to be a silent witness of his personal search for Eureka..... defenitly a big influence on every person he makes eye-contact with. Mik plays on the Embryonnck cd (released on Staubgold), The Way Of The Cross LP (with members of Skaters, NNCK, Kemialliset Ystavat, Keijo, etc. released on Phoenix) and various Embryo recordings.

* PARTKDOLG (be)
Bram Borloo, visual artist and member of R.O.T. and the Belgian (defunct?)soundseekers duo Moysk. as Partkdolg, he creates a manifestation of sounds and ideas, as a pathway for his continuum rôle as the ambassador for the Green Art. Defenitly hiking on some smoked-out Fluxus induced plains Joe Jones could've wandered through (birdcage soundsystem anyone?) but Bram adds his unique vision of Green and the Moon in the blender and thus creating a fresh ballet of multiple input
sound / vision spectacular. Bram put out a few limited cd's and cassettes on Veglia (with his fantastic under the radar masterpiece Senegambia Recordings, where he
creates the kind of perfect fieldrecordings album), Imvated, Audiobot, Taped Sounds etc. He also runs his own imprint Mototronix on which he's been putting out his maat Fool Moon recordings next to other stuff and works of artists like Evil Moisture etc.

* BUFFLE (be)
The masters of "Le Technique Blue Screen" and the visioners of a city called "love". holding in its bosom, the genius of Benjamin Franklin, Buffle is way more than just a group addition to the pretty unique soundworld of Benjamin. It's a unique and creative new puzzle of elements of psychedelic music, Neu-styled krautrock, Alga Marghen sound poetry and electronic trance music. A puzzle that stays fresh and keeps radiating after their many years of existence. And keeps giving you that
fuzzy puzzling feeling. Tapes on Lal Lal Lal, Breaking World Records, Ultra Eczema Taped Sounds, etc. and recently put out a self-released 7".

* HEAD OF WANTASTIQUET (usa)
Sunburned Hand Of The Man mercenary, now relocated in the rich part of Bruxelles. Paul Labrecque creates his own myth with only the help of his axe and brains. Shredding his soul in a roughly loose psychedelic style with links to both Japanese and American 60's teachings. An adult liason of beauty, mythology and magick, celebrating the eye of the spirit of the ever wandering soul called man. Released records on Eclipse, Open Mouth, etc.

* BREW ABUSE (be)
The worldwide premiere of Carlo Steegen's new one man performance act. Carlo is one of the most active heads ever in the bucket of the Antwerp scene. Releasing a vast catalogue of 200+ titles on his imprint Audiobot. Was the shopkeeper at the sadly defunct Stereophonic & Freaks End Future recordstores. Is mc'ing the weekly Schering & Inslag hiphop radioshow on our local independent radio. And in his spare time, the
perfect dj for all your secret dorm parties. With Brew Abuse, Carlo presents his take on the terminal force. Released a bunch of tapes under his Frozen Corpse (a duo with Orphan Fairytale) monniker on labels like Fag Tapes, Maim And Disfigure etc. and recently released his solo debut album "Cryptic Report".

* HUUR IS DUUR (be)
Christophe Piette (of R.O.T.) and Wietske Van Gils (of Zim Zim Zim) create a metaphorical amalgan of purely acoustic created environments. A fresh breeze in in-house architectural breedings. A little bit of a naive xerox from Philip Corner's Piano Works LP created with everything except a piano. Simple, deep and reflective.

* HELICOPTERE SANGLANTE (fra)
Hendrik Hegray. Paris fluorescent friend of direct drawings and instant reaction. Hendrik co-runs the prolific Nazi Knife zine in wich a mapping of the nowadays city of drawers, visual artists, and collageurs is being given a few times a year. Hendrik toured with Demons and other bands. His liveshows are allways different. From a laptop pastiche to a weird performance metaphor, he brings a chronic of alterior motives. Beavis and Butthead with a French tongue......

* LUDO MICH (be)
A sound poet who visits us from dimension M with messages about a life in the light. The movie "Saturnus", which Mich directed, wrote and filmed himself in the early 70's is one of the heaviest Belgian visions in Fluxus rooted liquid mercury incantations. Ludo Mich, drawing his inspiration from mythology and science fiction among other things, is the embodyment of a unique energy and crude creativity one would only connect to those days of forgotten lore. His liFe performances read like
a mysterious automatic writing lecture, only using the strength of the voice and the body languague of codes.Ludo has a long sold out solo LP out on Ultra Eczema, and recently released a collaborational LP with the kindred spirits of Blood Stereo.

* INSTANT SPACE SOUP (be)
Lil' Haaanske. Dark motives by the guy who personally makes tons of people saying "amaai" too many times. Hans is on a personal crusade to spread the brain - body infotainment of the "hamaai" to all who can speak, live and think. Feel how it can change your live today. Hans' music is a weird abyss of tapes, synth, loops, and vocals. Slapping the backs of dark ambient, but being very aware of not sounding dark ambient, because it's not 1999 anymore. A fresh delivery from Burger King. "hamaai".

* VOM GRILL (be)
A king of Ultra Eczema, a full time marketeer, a spokesman of the modern independent radio, and spending his time acting rough in his own house. Dennis Tyfus takes the voyage to Austria to presents his first solo performance of synthesizer music. His rough bottomless pit of creativity translates through the keys of electronical pulses. the snake in the three of life with a start of a bald coupe, ever so vicious, never so real. Tyfus put out many records by various sound lovers on his own imprint Ultra Eczema, released a solo split LP with Dylan Nyoukis, and put out various cdr's on Audiobot, Imvated, etc.

* HUNGRY SOUL (be)
A heavy smoked out entity called Erik. as dj Stroheim playing booty housetunes. And as himself being Mister Shades. As Hungry Soul making extremely booty hanglider house for a whole new presence. Being definitly one of the best hidden secrets in the Antwerp city, I'm pleased he'll be kicking out the jams in Graz.

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DJ'S:
before, during and after the concerts, a range of dj's will play records. Italo House, Hiphop, 80's movie soundtracks, Cambodian music, various ethnic music, etc. a whole world of sound, tunes and dance music will be presented to you. DJ's representing are LAMZAK, ALEX MURPHY, CHARLES BERLITZ, BONGO MAN, MILFHUNTER, BEFFIE BRIENO, PANIEKZAAIER, DENNIS TYFUS, KETAMINE, HELMUTMUT, MISTER MINETTE, LAURENT VEGALIA, etc. a complete line-up will be announced at the festival.

VISION:
films made and / or selected by LABANNA BLY, VJ BONGO MAN, JAMES FERRARO, VINCENT STROEP, ALEX MURPHY, FLORIS VANHOOF, JORIS MARTENS, etc. a detailed list with more info will be announced later this month.

INFORMATION / GIFT SHOP / SOUVENIRS fair:
various stalls with merchandise, souvenirs, cassette tapes, vinyl records, cd albums, books, food, etc. hosted by the various people mentioned on the line up.

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« The human body is a great mechanic. If you know how to drive that
mechanic, you can be a different person. »
(jean-claude van damme)

« In the province of the mind, there are no limits. »
(john cunningham lilly)

« What the Dolphins Have Taught Me 1.) To swim and dive. 2.) To hear better and more in the ocean and in general 3.) To enjoy the ocean and swimming 4.) To value living in a group of people and living like dolphins. These are some of the basic priciples they teach: Supporting each other. Cooperating, no competition. Taking care of Nature and it takes care of us. We are more than our physical bodies, we are able to communicate. Use your telepathic abilities. Sound (vibrations) can heal us. Use them, study them. Live Simply. Breathe deeply all the time and avoid going places where you can't. Sleep on your own schedule. Eat what's in your environment. Always smile, it makes you more beautiful. Eye contact is a communication between souls. You have control over your emotions – express the good ones, analyze the bad ones. Don't blame others. Keep active. Enjoy making love. Be curious. Teach the young people. Play more than anything else, no matter where you are! Respect your family. Share your feelings of love with everyone. Don't be stingy. Be fearless and face the things that worry you with Faith. Use your 6th sense and beyond. Have integrity. Love yourself. Keep your sense of humor. »
(Joan Ocean)

TAPE ANIMUS

CONE ZERO SHORT-LISTED FOR BFA AWARD

Not entirely surprised that Kek-w's short story "Cone Zero" didn't make the Final Six for the British Fantasy Society Best Short Story of 2008 Award lol - tho some bloke called Stephen King did. You might have heard of him. Still, Kek is incredibly chuffed and flattered that he got as far as he did.

However, the Cone Zero anthology that contained it did make the finals for the Best Antho 2008 Award. And deservedly so. If you're a member of the BFA then please check it out and vote for The Little Guy. Cheers!

THE SAVAGE YOUNG TATERBUG: "BOYS OF THE FEATHER"

The Savage Young Taterbug: mentioned this fine feathery fellah before.

Oh, and also here in a piece by Kek-w on the Iowa Underground. Kek just *knew* that any release by the 'bug had the potential to be great and he wasn't disappointed. (Sometimes yr vibedar just senses something's inner coolness; it's a combo of artist name, album title, a glimpse of a cover, a label or certain associations, track-record/back catalogue; sometimes it's a leap of faith, a jump out into the abyss.) "Boys of the Feather" is the best thing I've heard all week by far (apart from maybe when Not Kid Kid Kid Shirt spontaneously started singing "He's a bunyard/ he's a tailor/ a sailor in a ssssquipppwreck/ got my chocolate/ got my [unintelligible, but possibly sounded like 'venison'!!???]/ got my space-car/ and my doggy...).



Loving the green packaging - green of all ilks being Kek's fave colour - and the artwerk by Shawn Reed. This is available from the fabulous Night People imprint who art thee other syde of thee Raccoo-oo-oonschism, the reverse being the soon-to-be-legendary Gel Records.

"Play Loud On Weed!" it says.

There is something ghostly, ghastly and queasily ethereal about SYT-B's jams: frequencies rub up against each other, multi-tracked cassette-phantoms of Wilson/Partridge/Manson Families bounced from track to track n back again, via sickly, other-dimensional tape-transports and creaking, grease-smear'd spindles and cheap slack-spooled tapes that have been sitting in a damp attic or a travel-trunk - a mouldy old valise - laying fallow in the barn since 1975. After a while, there's so much tape-bounce-age that it gets tricky to tell who's who. "Boys of The Feather" hints at some sort of leakage from elsewhere, songs seen thru a fog...a fug of smoke (and mirrors); inverted sound-images slippin' n a-slidin' up thru space n time... "coming atcha!"....aberrent sonarities, slack-jawed mystic zzzzt, the sound of spectral space-gospel and woozy Blues; a world stretched so thin by tape-warp that I feel my mind is gonna snap.

There's a coupla songs from the css on his MySpace, so you can get a vague idea of what Kek'm talking about, but the tape is dreamier, driftier in places, bloozier...the vocals oddly anthopomorphic, but in reverse: in places, the singer sounds - via the magic of random indeterminancy - like a chicken, a cat, several different types of dogs...and when The Tater finally sings in something that resembles Human Language it comes as a shock - a genuine WTF! Moment.



Keyboards are overloaded to the point that the hi-end o'the mix dances w/ so much treble that it sounds woolen. A fuffy warm softness; an addled fibrous-ness... as if the sounds are taking on additional textures inside yr head. The transformational tendencies of distortion.

A pale, pale faux-Blues riff is Casiotone'd to death, repeated until it becomes a mantra-like sound-symbol imprinted on the inside of yr cerebellum, a sound-tattoo. The vocals are wordless, a soft, semi-animalistic, post-verbal plea - a keening - for something...food, affection; Kek'm not sure which, but it's lilting and lovely and oddly affecting.

Elsewhere, a budgie or a parakeet joins in as accoustic-gtr pickage accreets more and more sonic clones of itself. "Momma, momma, free yerrr head..." Wonderful.

And another track is so incredibly moving/sad/preposterous/ludicrous, sounding like a gospel-choir of Chinese cats sat on top of a wheezy harmonium while a New Orleans Jazz funeral waltzes by outside.

Skaters, watch out: The Taterbug is a hot potato right now! A serious talent; a guy to watch, ikho.

Best thing Kek's heard this week. Apart from {}.

Oh, you kno.

ICE BIRD SPIRAL AT THE CROFT

Ice Bird Spiral return to The Croft, Bristol, on thursday 18th June as part of an Invada Records Night featuring Burial Hex (aka the mighty Clay Ruby) and The Big Naturals.

Invada is the label created by Geoff Barrow of Portishead and the legendary Fat Paul which is home to assorted IBS pals and allies such as Thought Forms, Team Brick, etc...

Should be an extremely cool evening, so hopefully see some of ya there.

PURE SOFT METAL

Kinda smitten by the idea of Pure Soft Metal. In the same way as its more sonically extreme second-cousins self-reductify themselves as True Black Metal, etc by genre-prefacing their wares with the words 'True', 'Pure' and so forth - then shouldn't Soft Metal also aspire to some ultimate Platonic ur-variant of itself? Shouldn't it also be allowed to distance itself from The Bogus and The False, from The Overly Commodified.

Pure Soft Metal: even the name summons up some sort of majestic lustre. Skin dusted with silver, a metallic aura akin to platinum. A halo of hairspray propellents caught in perpetual freezeframe. The power-ballad recast as pan-galactic hymn; gated snares erupt like slow-motion volcanoes of sound, glacially slow and coated in a permfrost of reverb. Bombast turned back in on itself, a celebration of The Feminine.

What would it sound like, when all that desire is denied release - when it is forced to bide its time, to gradually navigate its way through 30, 40 minutes of quadraverb swirl? The Ultimate Tease, a prolonged foreplay: one in which the original intention is forgotten or is discarded somewhere along the way...or does the libido become heightened - each sloooow cymbal-crash a heartbeat, each powerchord a sluggish pulse of blood, a slow-building spasm? Would this music become some self-eroticised form of Tantric Sex Metal with an eventual money-shot pay-off, or would the journey become its own spiritual reward?

Pure Soft Metal: it needs an Earth or a Sleep.

PARTY GIRL

US uber-dude film-director Jayson Densman's latest film "Party Girl" is currently in pre-production and all sorts of cool n crazy stuff has been flying in n out of the mail-box over the last few weeks. It's been an amazing thing watching Jayson and his pals at X1/Tapestry turning Dustin LaValley's script and initial concept into reality. Creepy-looking locations n locales have been scouted n secured; a cast and crew assembled; a title sequence spliced together and assorted concepts, visuals, test-shoots n fx-gags have been flying around the ether. An albino python somehow got involved along the way.

Kek's been helping out with some soundtrack-related stuff and, well, the experience has been a total blast. Despite being stuck in the UK several thousand miles away from the main action, Jayson's really made Kek feel part of the team. Thanks, man.

Things shift up a few notches in July when the main shoot gets underway. They've been trying to lure Kek over to Dallas so they can brutally murder him in an abandoned industrial unit. I think Dustin L and Bizarro writer/editor John Edward Lawson have been similarly threatened w/ a grisly end and an unmarked desert grave. Suckers!

The film is due to open in the 42nd Street of yr mind sometime later this year. You'll be hearing a lot more about it on this blog, along w/ a piece on Jayson's last film "EGG" which was an extremely cool collaboration with writer Jeremy C Shipp.

Here's a taster of things to come:

RIP DAVID CARRADINE

Very bummed-out to hear of the death of David Carradine.

Pretty sure there was an interview with him a few years back (Psychotronic, maybe?) where he claimed he had a lightning-bolt tattooed on his wanger. Atta boy! Still, it was a highly entertaining piece and mainly focused on his straight-to-video work in the 80's onwards. He was a pretty busy boy at one point, was Mr. C - 3 to 4 films a year. *Rummages around in The Weird Attic looking for interview but gets trapped in enormous spider-web*...

Needless to say, Carradine will forever be a mega-star in the Kid Shirt Mythos. His dad and his brothers were/are pretty damn cool too. In the early 70s he was on all of our bedroom walls along with Bruce Lee and Marc Bolan. V sad to see him check out...





Carradine and Busey!

JOKER & GINZ: "PURPLE CITY"

Flip'd wit "Re-Up":



Twelve from Kapsize Recordings.

BULLET A'GO FLY

"Bullet A'Go Fly" - Badness, Riko, Flowdan, Killa P, Dusk & Blackdown. On Keysound.

Someone point me at a twelve.