Nochexxx, Ben UFO & Co. @ The Rhythm Factory, next fri:

CHILLY GONZALES: "I AM EUROPE"

Chilly Gonzales, Chilly Gonzales.

Despite the 'modern' production values / sound pallette, there's something curiously old-fashioned about this; the way it's put together; the lyrical vibe. Reminds me of a handful of things, none of which I can particularly put a name to.



It won't change yr life, his music, but it makes me laugh.

He has a kinda scattershot, quasi-conceptual approach to building Pop records, which appeals to the part of me that likes 10cc. I like his vaguely Satie-ish piano pieces, tho the piano 'tone' on some of them kinda sucks. "Slow Down" is gloriously unashamably retro-kitschly lush - errrm, Steely Dan meets Christopher Cross - tho the attention to detail isn't quite there to that obsessive nth degree that I quite dig. That's gonna happen if you're a bit creatively restless, I suppose: the horizontal spread of ideas vs. vertical burrowing into needless detail. Cake vs. Eat It.

UFO: "BOOGIE FOR GEORGE"

UFO. Slight return. Yeah, here, previously.

A song that never goes out of fashion. This is for Matt Woebot.

Yep, Matt........def. roger that! (see: #6)

The Groundhogs were 'sposed to play at the Focus gig I went to last year (but still haven't got round to blogging about...yet!), but pulled out - due to illness, I think. I really wanted to see them; they're 'sposed to still be a great live act.

Yeah: "The Two Sides of Tony 'TS' McPhee" is the album I'm missing and really want to get, but I never see it on vinyl. It's the solo album with synths on it; my friend Ken had it back in the mid-70's and used to play it on his home-made Hi-Fi rig - it sounded fucking lovely. It's been on my reptile-brain 1000-page wants-list for ages. One day it'll probably just turn up in the Oxfam shop for 99p and I'll weep with joy.

I AM A VICTIM OF CRIME

So, I'm walking home last night and this guy comes round the corner and punches me in the face. Actually, there were three of them - barechested at 12:30 at night, so you can guess the deal here - with a couple of droop-titty'd scraggettes in tow.

"Ahhhr, ur fuckin' cunt!" Thwaap! Random as you like.

I was pushing me bike at the time, thinking about maybe getting some chips, and then: Thwaap!

Both hands on the bike, so no chance to defend meself. I saw them for about 1.6 seconds - a half-formed thought of oh, they look a bit leery, tried to burrow its way into the linguistics part of my brain, but it didn't even turn into proper words. One of the girls squawked "Oh, fuckin' hell, Ken / Kev / Something-similar, not again..." as he hit me which kinda suggested a sort of micro Wilding Spree was in progress. Then she giggled like a tripped-out witch from an early 70's Spanish Black Lace n Candles type movie.

My only response (beyond Owwwww... ) was a half-muttered "Oh, fer fucksake...". I felt more, I dunno, inconvenienced than threatened. I certainly wasn't gonna go after them or give it some verbal, cos (a) I was slightly 'refreshed', so it didn't hurt that much and (b) that would be an invitation to a serious kicking...

Actually, and this sounds like bravado-after-the-event, but:

HEY, SHITDICK: YOU HIT LIKE A LITTLE FUCKING GIRL.

If a guy like you - a third my age and in the so-called peak of your fucking physical condition (it's all downhill from there, moron) CAN'T EVEN PUT DOWN A SCRAWNY LITTLE OLD MOTHERFUCKER LIKE ME WITH A FREE SHOT, then you are truly a piece of useless shite. I bet you couldn't even get it up for a ragged, chip-nailed handjob in The Park from one of your coldsore-riddled little 16yr old groupies.

But, hey...

So I kinda just kept walking for 30 seconds then the adrenaline kicked in and I thought: actually, fuck you, you assholes...I'm sick of people like you thinking there's no consequence to your actions...I knew where they were heading - into The Park - so there was only one or two roads they would be taking...so, I thought: fuck it, the police station's only a minute's ride away on the bike - let's get a cop car to intercept them before they punch someone even more puny than me...

But the Police Station was shut. And this is in a town with a 40k+ catchment area. So you have to pick up a half-busted phone on the wall, which puts you through to a call-centre in Bridgewater or Bath or some other place 30 - 40 miles away. They've no idea where any of the places are that I'm describing. So, I'm trying to describe where these guys are heading, so that if there actually is a patrol-car in the area then the cops can pull 'em over before they seriously hurt someone...."If there's a car in the blahblahblah area, then you can't miss 'em; you could pull them over and nab them..." but the woman on the other end, just wants to run through her script, which takes ages, by which time they will be long-gone, back into their rat-runs...

She kept asking me where I was and I kept telling her "Outside Yeovil Police Station, but there's no one there." There were, like, 2 lights on in a 4-storey building.

"There won't be," she said, flatly. "It's late."

So you kinda wonder what we're paying our taxes for. I thought it included, y'know, policing.

It worries me that someone could've turned up down there looking for help who had actually been seriously hurt. Or, God Forbid, someone who had been raped.

"So, do you want to press assault charges?" she asked.

"Against who?" I said. "You could've caught them 10 minutes ago. Not now."

"Just answer yes or no," she said, with no explanation of what she was asking me even meant, legally or otherwise.

I kinda lost interest about then.

"So you're not pressing assault charges then? Can someone come round later and take a statement?"

Later? "Not at 4 in the morning, no. My wife and kids are asleep; I don't want them disturbed. And I've already told you what happened. I just described them and I even told you where you could've found them. I only wanted to make sure that no one else got hurt by these idiots."

"Well, someone will have to come and see you at some point to give you your Crime Number.

So I now have a Crime Number. And a sore jaw.

THE LOUVIN BROTHERS: "SATAN IS REAL"

Because, well, he is...

Oh God, please help me. Fiction-orientated parts of brain overheating.

*adopts gruff Beefheart-like voice* "Smoke-stack / poop-deck / poop-hatch":

ssssssssssshhhtsst neurones crackling, skull-case smouldering, etc.

Off to see Pop Parker.

Need gin.

Yes, gin.

THE RETURN OF ROSE O'RION

Super-psyched about this.

Some really fabulous art from Dylan Teague to complement a new Rose O'Rion text story I wrote which'll be appearing in the next issue of Zarjaz magazine (from the UK-based Futurequake stable). This should be be out shortly-ish (september, maybe? You fellas'll be the first to know...)

The story's called, appropriately enough, "Unfinished Business". I had a lot of fun writing it and I hope you enjoy reading it.

Huge thanks to Dylan for being such a great sport and returning to a character we co-created waaaaay back in the 90's, despite being an extremely busy in-demand guy.

Meanwhile, please continue to support small-press comic and book publishers in the UK, US or wherever you live.

As well as providing an alternative to 'mainstream' publishers, they are also its lifeblood, giving elbow-room for a new generation of creators to learn their chops and grow. In the case of Zarjaz, they also supplement 2000AD, publishing strips containing obscure and less well-known characters along with fan favourites such as Dredd, etc. And this is all done with the support of 2000AD Editorial.

Thanks to Dave and Rich for letting me come out and play.

NOCHEXXX: "POLTERHOST"

A new bit of e-biznis that Nochexxx sent me last night.

There's been a bit of a recent i-net nanotrend for homemade Shadowmen music videos (well, not really - mostly just in the Cambridge sub-segment of the web - but a bit of hyperbole doesn't go amiss now n again; mostly it's the grown-up equivalent of kids dressing up as ghosts), and The N-Ster - always a man with his finger tightly wedged in the Dutch Dyke that is The Zeitgeist - cops a bit o'that action here.

No, it's not Witch House.

Buckyballs discovered in space.

FRANCOIS AND THE ATLAS MOUNTAINS: "HOLD ON TWICE"

Lovely stuff. Woozy and dream-like. They're playing at The Cube, Bristol, next week.

#ONEMANFESTIVAL

...and later in the afternoon I lay in the garden on a picnic-blanket and cushions with picture of dogs on them under a homemade pretend-tent made from a sheet of blue tarpaulin and listened to old Ghanaian Highlife records.

Since every festival in the UK this summer will probably feature Vampire Fucking Weekend, this seemed like a sort of skewed response. A microscopic protest against...something.

Conceptually speaking, it would be more elegant (and hermetically-sealed) if I told no one whatsoever about this. But I had such a great time that I felt I should mention it. It's definitely worth trying your own personal variations on this.

Occasionally, one or both of the kids would pop in and join me. Kid Kid Shirt wrote a sign with "CLUB BOOM" on it and put it by the entrance.

"Is this what it's like at a festival, dad - you just sit in your tent and hear music in the distance?" she asked.

"Yes," I said.

Kid Kid Kid Shirt brought me a bowl of raspberries and sat eating them for a while with me. Occasionally she said random festival type things like "shoe eyes!" - the sort of thing some stoner in the next tent might suddenly shout out after two days on the ganja.

But most of the time I was by myself. Just me, the music and the 'tent'.

I was facing the screen of trees at the bottom of the garden, so it (unintentionally) felt like I was camped out in the woods. We have wood-pigeons and assorted bird-life down there. We've deliberately let it turn wild and created a sort of micro-meadow. There's butterflies around at the moment: red admirals, cabbage whites, gatekeepers and elephant hawkmoths. The girls spotted a Blue this afternoon.

In the evening, I switched to some Egyptian Pop, drank black coffee, smoked, looked at the tarpaulin and had a good think.

My wife appeared for a while and threw the Plastic God Beard at me - the one that Ade sent me a couple years ago when I was going through my Kevin Godley period.

"I think you'll probably be needing this," she said. She's cool like that.

One Man Festivals: it's the way to go.

Keep watching the big-name bloggers and the coffee-table papers: they'll be covering all this eventually, probably a year or two down the line, just like they finally wrote pieces this year about facial hair and biggin' up 10cc. They're sooo hapless and slow. Dinosaurs.

The 1-Man Fest will be huuuuge by summer of 2014. People'll be saying "Ah, it's shit now - too many people; too corporate - but those early one's were fucking great."

#onemanfestival

BRUCE CAMPBELL'S CREAM OF DARKNESS SOUP

Via m'man Circle Brophy, currently holed up in Java:

John Eden Boops Mix. Excellent, and minutely / lovingly annotated, as ever.

Nice one, John.

LEVENSHULME BICYCLE ORCHESTRA

Ha! Not LFO, but LBO.

PORK SALAD PRESS

Here.

CANCER MATRIX: "SYGNOK KOMPUTER 1"

This is beyond fucking awesome. I love the whole sense of 'otherness' that clings to this as an art-object. The music seems almost irrelevent - secondary - but it's not, of course; it's just part of a greater conceptual whole.

I dig the frenzied / frazzled bedlamite logic that pervades this, but also fuels it.

The only thing I can think of, of the top of my head, that has a similar feel - a sense of narrative derailment, of being soooo completely, utterly soaked in its own personal.mythic gasoline until it reaches the point of auto-ignition - is some of the films of Damon Packard. He also creates uniquely-deranged sound-and-vision bubble-worlds whose narrative logic feels like it might almost be able to underpin some sustainable alternative to consensual reality. It's a momentum thing, of course - the viewer / listener gets dragged along in its wake for a few minutes, buoyed up by its garishness and sense of gleeful abandonment; it feels weirdly / temporarily 'authentic' even as we are seduced by it's 'wrongness'...it feels like we've been sucked into a world that has consistent narrative 'rules' of some sort, an internal logic - even though it's completely preposterous and even revels in revealing its own underlying processes...

I also get a similar buzz from Jeff Keen's work.

It's the first thing I've seen for a while that might even be Visionary. Whatever that means.

It ticks pretty much every box I like having ticked. Cheesy and cheap to look at, yet wickedly and awesomely inventive; so, beautifully, beautifully Gone On. Garage Surrealism.

Thanks to Pete Um for hepping me to this. Apparently, it's the work of Goodiepal. I should've guessed, I suppose. Plenty of clues there (the swastikas; the whistling; the moustache; it's Danish - duh!!!), but I was too busy picking my jaw up off the ground to notice.

This is part of his ongoing Goodiepalisation of the Eventide H8000, I guess.

Wonderful.

DYLAN TEAGUE: "DIAMOND" GEEZER

All hail the mighty Dylan Teague - who's as lovely a guy as he is awesomely talented!

He's just sent me an utterly wonderful illustration for a certain little project that - fingers crossed! - will hopefully appear later in the year. Right now, I have a very large grin on my face.

Which reminds me...

Dylan has a book out - an extremely cool French graphic novel written by David Chauvel and Christophe Bec - called "Le Casse: Diamond", which you can buy here. And you should.



There's some more info here (incl. some art).

VOMITUS SKINK

Been really enjoying these - dunno quite what to call them - fairly minimalish atmospheric pieces of electronic music? - by my pal (artist / animator / film-maker / writer) Jase Daniels aka Vomitus Skink.

Bonus points for calling a track "I Found My Brother (Fuckin' a dead Fox)".

CHAD VANGAALEN: "MOLTEN LIGHT"

Calgary-based artist / songwriter Chad VanGaalen offers up this little tremulous-voiced delight (complete w/ homemade vid) from a couple years back.



Not so keen on some of his other stuff, but this one catches a nicely sour mood.

EAST-END PUB PIANOS ON PROG RECORDS (PART 2)

My friend Mark reminded me today that there's a pub piano on Rick Wakeman's "Merlin".

"Actually," he said, with wry comic timing, "there's a pub piano on all of his records".

A very murky recording, this, but the pub piano appears about 3-and-a-half mins in. And again, as a reprise, on the last couple bars (ha! "bars" - geddit!!? ).



He liked pubs, did old Rick.

HENPARTY: "SANTA BARBARA NIPPLE"

This evening I am (also) listening to the delightfully shambly (and extremely catchy) Glam-Punk-Pop of "Santa Barbara Nipple" by Henparty.

They sound Americanish, but they're from Blackpool.

Apparently.

WOEBOT: "STRING"

Woebot: String from Matthew Ingram on Vimeo.

"Moanad" on sale here.

EAST-END PUB PIANOS ON PROG RECORDS (PART 1)

Off the top of me head, two instances of pub-piano manifestations on Prog records are, umm, "The Battle of Epping Forest" on Genesis' Selling England by the Pound (a now oddly-prescient title if ever there was one) and "Benny the Bouncer" from ELP's Brain Salad Surgery.

Both feature pub pianos, deal with gangland dust-ups and feature appalling fake Cockernee accents by Peter Gabriel and Greg Lake respectively.

The Genesis track, tho, is genuinely, well, peculiar. There's something 'off' about its construction that appeals to me now. Totally hated the LP when it came out. All my mates were into it, tho; it were a reet big record at our school. I think my old friend / classmate (and Peej Harvey producer) John Parish went to see them on that tour.

Oddly, both records came out in '73.

Other instances of pub pianos on Prog records gratefully received.

Bonus spotter-points if they were released in 1973.

ICE BIRD SPIRAL / QUILL DIAPER FOR DIORAMIC UNDULATING MEZZANINE SPLIT CSS

As predicted in The Book of Yeovil, a new, long-anticipated, waiting-in-the-wings release by my old band Ice Bird Spiral finally surfaces as a split cassette with the awesomely-named electronics outfit Quill Diaper For Dioramic Undulating Mezzanine on the US tape label Scumbag Relations.



Even though Cloudboy and I have long-since moved on to new (and quite different) musical projects (plus, this was recorded ages ago), I'm v. supportative of this piece - it's a collaborative thing that I'm proud to have been associated with - a psychik bookend of the "Psychiacmc Bloems" css we released on the Flemish Funeral Folk label. I always felt the two belonged together as a pair.

The release-blurb reads:

"This is a single, multi-part Anti-Concept Piece (an UnRock Opera!) that takes the listener on a damaged day-out through a queasy seasick 1950's Brit seaside-town Punch n Judy performance, avant Blues Concrete, wyrmwood-addled monk.psych machine-music, ending in a beautiful accousssssmatic keyboards n cut-ups come-down. Features a special guest-appearance from nightmarish childrens-entertainer Mr. Sausages. You kids'll flip for this...!! "

But I think that may have been half-inched from something I wrote a while back lol.

A small handful of allies and close friends will have already heard this on a ltd tour CD-r thingy. But the cassette sounds fairly different - s'analogue, innit? - plus you get to check the loopy e-machine-stylings of Quill Diaper For Dioramic Undulating Mezzanine (Hi, Eric!).

Will the quite-frankly bonkers "Drug Opera" or *eeeek* "Kraakplast 1893 (Unlive/Dead)" ever come out...? Maybe, possibly, I hope so.

Anyways, I hope you check this one out. It still doesn't sound like anyone else I can think of.

BIKE

CIDER LABEL CONTEST

I recently suggested on Twitter that maybe it was time for a competition on Kid Shirt - after all, we haven't had one for a while - the idea was to design a label for a non-existent brew of Somerset cider.

Ruff Cider labels round here tend to be Art Brut affairs, home-drawn/photocopied/cheaply-printed slightly grotesque pieces of Outsider Art done in felt-tip pens or biro, often with a slightly sinister bent, as if daring the drinker to partake, despite the threat of potentially ruinous consequences to their health. Some local farm vintages have label-images that would be better suited to a privately-pressed Norwegian Black Metal LP from the early 90s.

So, those of you who fancy a crack at drawing or designing a ruff cider label, send it to my dump email-address kekw10cc ahhhh-t Googlemail Doot-doot, dot Com. And I'll publish your ghastly works.

Don't worry if you can't draw - that'll be even better. Get your kids to have a go.

Wish I'd kept that placcy-jug of Old Crippled Cock or whatever it was The Farmer brought round a couple years ago. It had some sort of black hellbird on the label.

Here's a more, uh, 'nicer', up-market Farm-Shop type version:



No wait...that's beer, not cider, and it's from Dorset (ptui!). But you get my drift.

POP PARKER: THE MAGICAL BICYCLE TOUR

This is my old friend Pop Parker, pictured at a recent show that we played with him.

He's ace.



And - lo! - as was foretold in The Book of Yeovil...er, I mean, as he told me at the gig, he and some other like-minded musicial pals (Morningstar and Milon) are embarking on a tour of the West Country by bicycle, towing all their gear on bike-trailers and camping out after each show.

He's playing Yeovil on the 29th July and - yes! - of course I'll be there.

MEGA PIRANHA

After Megashark Vs. Giant Octopus (staring Debbie Gibson!) comes Mega Piranha (starring Tiffany!).

Not just flying piranha (as in Piranha part Two: The Spawning), but giant flying pirahna!

SUPERISK: "FIND YOUR WAY"

Up-n-coming Bristol producer Superisk drops a listener-wrongfootin' intro that sounds like John Carpenter being spanked by a very large rubber tyre.

However, 15 seconds later it reboots itself and pretends to be a Chinese games-console from some parallel universe 1989. A slippery-sounding melody modwheels its way up n down a half-octave like a luminous digital eel transversing a Tron-grid.

At 1:10 we suddenly graduate to the next level: everything goes bubbly n sparkly as if someone's pressed the Drug-Bomb Button.

Or maybe it's the bit between levels, because it suddenly strides off into the scenery...well, I say "stride", but it's a sort of Spacehopper Beat: an Oriental Nebbish bouncing off into the hills on some weird Digital Vision-Quest - a bitmapped Shaolin monk avoiding flame-spittin' purple dragons and black-robed / white-bearded Adobe Flash bad-guys with laser-staffs.

Lovely.

The Mensah rmx starts w/ backwards blips n flourishes, followed by bouncing Dancehall snares and Taoist Priest-meets-Bhangra style "Hey!"s and "Hrh!"s as the whole monastery comes out into the court-yard and practices throwing Preying Mantis Kick-Drum shapes. It's frantic, good-natured stuff, full of slappy clap-samples and trembling melody-lines.

Drops on Punch Drunk in September.

VITA NOCTIS: "THESE LIES"

(More Flemish Post-Punk / signposts towards a New Miserabilism):

Vita Noctis came from Liège and their track "These Lies" is really hitting a spot for me this evening.

Dark, minimal bedroom Casiobeats; vocals that somehow manage to sound disconnected and angry at the same time. She sounds like an actress who's been thrown out of drama school for spitting at her tutors: restless, bored, irritated. Is she really singing "I tried to be the dog"...?

Fuck Crystal Castles. Fuck yeah!

Fuzzed-up gtr n bass. Minimal CV-ish drum-machine. This is a great track, sounding better with each play. Sounds like a cassette demo for some pre-Ultravox! art-school combo fronted by Hazel O'Connor's younger chain-smoking sister. Gloomy as fuck.

I need to find out more about this band.

Stop Press:

Some info here on Fritz die Spinne's blog.

Ah, right, here we go:

In The Face Of Death (cassette, 1985)
Much Money Good Boy, No Money Goodbye (cassette,1985)
Death and Smoke (cassette, 1986, Mad Tapes )
Untitled (Vita Noctis) (12", 1986)

There may also be a demo tape type thing floating round somewhere too.

SIGLO XX

More Early-80's Flemish Post-Punk (or "Cold Wave", as it seems to get called, often to the irritation of bands from that period.). This time it's Siglo XX. From Genk in Flanders.

Perhaps a bit too Punky in places and not quite what I'm looking for - and it's a shame they felt the need to sing in English - but I do quite like the blatant Factoryisms on "Individuality", and "Death Row" is quite good fun too. Very JD, but not quite miserable or rigid-sounding enough to tick all the boxes.

I like this quote: "We are marginals, but to us marginality is change, change is movement, and movement is life. The established is halted, gray, dead".

From their MySpace:

"In 1980 Siglo XX independantly released their first 7'' single ‘The Naked and the Death’. Things really got rolling two years later with the maxi-single ‘The Art of War’, still a classic and for instance included on a ‘New Wave Club Class.X’ volume. Later they signed to Antler Records which released a few of their albums and maxi’s.

"Their sound resembled Factory bands like Joy Division and Section 25: cold new wave, with dark basses, moody synths and depressive vocals. Siglo XX sounded probably even rawer than their more famous examples, with sometimes punky guitars. In the mid 80’s a move to Play it Again Sam followed, where three albums came out. The last was ‘Under A Purple Sky’ in 1989."

THE FAT LADY OF LIMBOURG

DE BRASSERS

Okay, starting to answer my own question from last night, ref: Flemish Post Punk.

Here's a good starting-point, maybe: De Brassers. Sounds like they're still on-and-off active.

There's a MySpace here.

From the band's own biog:

"Einde seventies: punk rules. En bereikt Belgie. The Clash en the Damned veroveren het podium te Jazz Bilzen, dalen neer tot op de begane grond, en doorbreken letterlijk en figuurlijk de hekkens tussen publiek en groep. De ivoren torens worden verlaten, rock is weer van en voor iedereen.

"Anger is an energy. Enkele trips naar gigs te Londen bevestigen: dat kunnen en willen wij ook. Op onze manier. De Brassers beginnen. Zonder kennis, zonder dogma's . Post Punk, New-Wave, Cold-Wave, de Doem-Scene."

"De Doem-Scene" - The Doom Scene?

Ahhhhh, here we go: another snippet of info cut n pasted:

"De Brassers: a Joy Division-like post-punk band out of Hamont, a little village in the north of Limburg. Started out at the end of the 70’s, inspired by early British punk bands like The Clash and The Damned. Short-lived but not forgotten.

Their self-released single ‘En Toen Was Er Niets Meer’ (1981) is considered a true Belgian cult classic. After sporadic reunion gigs throughout the years, De Brassers are a working unit again as of 1998. In 2005 they even released a 5-song EP with new material. A compilation album surfaced three years later. "

NIK COHN: "TRIKSTA"

Snagged this for 50p in a charity-shop a couple days ago; 50 pages in and I'm totally soaked; remembering why Nik Cohn is one of the greatest writers ever. One of my favourites, any way.



I'd f'gotten just how fucking good he was. Haven't read anything by him since I was ill, so we're going back a good decade or so. Probably The Heart of The World. Yeah, almost certainly.

Anyway, barely tapped this and already he's strolling around the Rap World of early 2000's New Orleans like it's an episode of The Wire, followed by meditations on Soulja Slim's death, pimp pianist Jelly Roll, 1930's and 1900's N. O., being on tour with The Who in '72 and a, quite frankly, jaw-dropping section on the boxer Willie Pastrano, who he hung out with in the early 80s.

Cohn's not a music-journalist, he's a...I dunno quite what he is. There's a weird mix of Nick Kent and Damon Runyon and...something else. He understands the value of Myths - especially of self-created ones - but isn't afraid to chase them down, see where they lead, even if that means popping a few bubbles along the way. He meets some mythic figures that he's created inside his own head and finds out that they're something else altogether - something more clay-like...then embraces that fact, revises what that might mean on a personal level and adjusts his own position. (He's fearful and slightly disgusted by the fact that he's a White Male, but understands it's far more scarier being Black.) He questions stuff, but still holds onto the magic that lies at the heart of any great mythology, urban or otherwise, even though its shape sometimes changes along the way.

He's not afraid to be disappointed. Or to learn.

I don't care if a lot of this stuff is even made up - and that's a helluva thing to say - but the way he writes holds true to...something. It convinces me; it unrolls basic human truths. It resonates.

And that's the mark of a great writer.

It's basically about himself, of course - he's an ex-junkie who, by his own admission has one eye on the mark - but he's a dreamer. And a good one at that. As fascinated as he is by the Dark Stuff that haunts the Inner Heart of any mythyology worth creating or exploring, he also wants things to turn out alright for everyone else, but knows that they won't. (The fact that he's written the damn thing in the first place means they ain't.) So he turns both inwards and outwards simultaneously, trying to figure out why.

You get a sense that this book is the result of much porch-slouching, failed biographies, successful articles, mythic cutting n pasting, whisky-sipping, dream-walking, Hep-C jetlag and belly-aching. A restless soul in motion.

I'm sure the rest of it won't disappoint.

RICHTING HUISWAARTS

My good friend Stief has a new(-ish) band called Richting Huiswaarts, wh/ has a, errm, kinda European Post Punk vibe to it, for lack of a better term, tho there's still vague echoes of some of the psych shapes he used to pull in Anfang...

Obv. this is still early days yet (and I feel a bit of a heel shining a light on something that's still taking shape in practice-rooms, pubchat and late-nite kitchentalk, but...) I like where this might be going. I like the feeling of stiffness and regimentation that underpins this, a sense of rhythmic and atmospheric oppression that feels at odds with the swirlier, echoey freeform sounds trying to hang-glide in above it; the monotone Orwellian vocals vs. theremin and gtr - it feels like some new hybrid might be starting to take shape under our noses.

A new way of distilling Doom-i-ness - of weaving tight patterns of tension and teasing some sense of freedom out of them by applying an unexpected layer of psychedelicisation. After Ecstatic Doom and assorted mid/late-2000's soundforms, maybe playing around with uptight Post-Punk tropes (in a non-Indie manner) to build a form of - hrrrugh! - tension that can then be opposed is the way to go. I dunno.

I was goofing around on Twitter a few days ago and (half)-jokingly suggesting that I'd like to hear a new form of Miserabilism - one better suited to these times. Maybe one that was deliberately musically-restrictive - possibly even in an OTT, self-mocking way - but which suggested escape-routes from its own structures.

Again, I dunno.

I'm just projecting - imagining - as usual. I think it was Xavier from Buffle who told me about various Belgian/Flemish early 80s acts (unfortunately, I've just lost 4 years worth of emails - gah!) - but I think they were more at the New Romantic / Futurist end of things. Was there a Belgian equivalent of NDW - the tighter, more, er, constrained post-New Wave end of things - ?

Anyway, I wish Stief and his mates the very best with this, wherever it ends up going.

Extremely chuffed to find out my short story "The Making of True Confessional #7" has been accepted for the next ( - seventh! - ) issue of the legendary "Anti-Pop Culture Journal" Polluto.

This is a particularly queasy piece of kino-matic NonNoir set in a respun analogue version of [Anti-Spoiler Software Engaged: bwoooot! bwoooot bwoooot! ] featuring defibrillators, Klieg Lights, [bwoooot! bwoooot bwoooot!] and bootlegged cassette-tapes of medical audio-porn.

In other words: you'll just have to read the damn thing.

I think this drops sometime in August. More news as n when.

Meanwhile, go to the Polluto site and buy up all their back-issues in readiness, my trembling little kulchur-hunds.

Now, where did I put those damn electrical-paddles?

MINI BOX LUNAR

The Nova Wave of Brazilian 2010tistas: Mini Box Lunar. Not so much surfing it as, well, paddling in the shallows in the sunshine while tugging on a j and fiddling with your hair.

BRUCE STERLING AR KEYNOTE SPEECH

(Via Warren Ellis) Visionary Stand-Up by Bruce Sterling.

Required viewing for anyone with anything resembling a brain.

The Augmented Reality Event: Bruce Sterling's keynote from Ori Inbar on Vimeo.

DRINKING THE EVIL BLACK CRACK

Curved Air cancelled their Yeovil show three weeks ago, apparently. One of my friends phoned the venue today and found out. *gnashes teeth*

Nice one, Western Gazette. Let's hope their News section is more reliable.

So, instead I bought some v. strong Arabian coffee wh/ I have named Black Crack because it's so fucking strong. It's sooo damn dark that photons are unable to escape from its caffeine event-horizon.

It makes me wanna...nnnnnnrgggggh...my teeth...I...nyyyahahahaha....

What like about it is that it makes me feel really evil. It's dark granular ruuuuussh makes me think sinister, evil thoughts.

And - you know what? - I fucking like it. I like being evil.

It's the caffeine equivalent of 90's Darkside 'Ardkore.

I'm not going to tell you the name of the brand because - quite frankly - I don't trust a weak-willed individual like yourself to make good lifestyle choices whilst you are in the grip of its beautifully-insidious, rich-aroma'd fist. Besides, now that I've got a jar I want all the rest for myself...!!!

Ngggggggggh! Ohhh, my heartsie! Nhahahahahghahagggg...

It cost two quid.

Two quiiid-d-d-duhh...

WATTY

Via @Mike_Donachie: the artwork of veteran Scottish comic-book artist Dudley D Watkins has just been retrieved from the DC Thomson archives for the first time in decades.

Lovely, lovely stuff - a real artisan feel - especially those colour prints. They seem to glow with an unnatural light.

More work here.

Strangely smitten by some of these paintings by Rob Kolomyski on Swipple.

Espesh the fourth or fifth one along: Slightly concerned resource #15. Looks like some sort of reconstructed post-human Bishop or Pope.

The landscapes and animals I'm less fussed about, but some of the 'portraits' def. hit a spot for me.

CURVED AIR PLAY YEOVIL

Veteran Folk/Prog/Rock band Curved Air play Yeovil tomorrow. At The Quicksilver Mail.

Yes, I'm going. It would be rude of me not to. There's some debate whether Darryl Way is playing with them. Flip a coin, I'm really not sure. I hope he does. Didn't realise he was a Taunton boy!

"It Happened Today": this is my favourite C A song; I think this live version is a lot punchier than the studio one - I've got this performance on a DVD somewhere. Not sure why I like it so much. It sounds kinda mysterious or something. Slightly oblique / metaphysical in some way. Is that a Tango beat they're playing?

I've said this before, but doesn't the rhythmic vibe of this track and Sonia's vocal inflections sound like some sort of template for Roxy Music / B. Ferry...?

Anyway, the sound's fucked on this clip, so you'll have to turn it up quite a bit:

MARLON BRANDO (VERSION #2)