yum ...

"They cant play baseball
They don't wear sweaters
They are not good dancers
They don't play drums ...."


Chatting with Bren on the phone this evening - trying to persuade him to join me Kid Shirt and Flinty for the Stooges/Sonic Youth/Wolf eyes/Gang of four etc etc (ok kek I know I should also bigggupp Sunburned Hand of the Man) extravaganza down at Butlins Minehead this xmas - and as happens the conversation drifted onto the urgent need for me to digitize the rather large stack of assorted goodies currently held on my aging Betamax Video collection ...

I am the rather dubious (nah make that proud or indeed as some around these parts have indicated - proudly dubious!) owner of this ....



What a stack of tech-porn or what - yep they separate - can be swung over your shoulder - and hooked up to the optional huge battery pack - become a mobile recording unit - eat yer hearts out all you namby pamby newbie DV Cam users - ya ain't;t lived till you tried taking this babe on a 6 month over-land docu-trip across India - trust me !

Anyhows - talk drifted to the more family-tilted material sitting on my slowly decaying tapes - and we were transported back to the heady days of 1979 and the Old grey Whistle test - and of course the most vital rock video to ever have been committed to tape (after Knowing Me Knowing You - by those alt-rockers A.B.B.A) - which is Fish Head Fish Heads - by Barnes and Barnes - a true classic of neo-romanticism prose addressing that long sufferred feeling of longing for severed rotting heads (when not thinking what a damn good soup they might make that is !) ...

Anyhows - as is the case these days with the worlds slackers - out slacking even me - some fine sould have obviously already done the dirty digi-deeds - so come on boys - n - gals - "Eat them up --- YUM ..."

Bomb them ALL ...

"THIS IS A SCARY STAMP.... This is a stamp of our times, a terror stamp for the 21st Century, a climate of fear stamp, a stamp that pisses on all other stamps, a stamp that will appeal to all, one stamp to rule them all... except there are 2."



More such suchness over at Scorpion Thunderbolt Deliverance Incorporated .....

Tranquility Base ..

Well back from a rather enjoyable 2 days in Leicester - Thursday early evening found me at the opening of the show in the New Walk Museum - laying down noise surrounded by Francis Bacon paintings and with an audiance made up of Chinese officials and the Lord Mayor - then on to a late night session at OK Kareoke - a quite different breed of punter and surroundings - based above a take-away in a somewhat dodgy down-town location - with a vibe reminsicent of seedy triad bars in Wan Chai/Tsim Sha Tsoi - the crowd more intersted in belting out somewhat less than tuneful Maddonna/Prince covers whilst playing that shakey-shakey Hong Kong dice-game they all know and love ... I ended up playing an hour of banging beats (what else is one to do) whilst slouched on a couch - slurping £2.50 boittles of beer ...

After that there was nothing more to do than enroll as an astranaut and begin immediate training prio to my impending launch into outer-space - needless to say being a fully qualified tractor driver - I passed with meddles and a well needed Masala Dosa ..

The sound of Rice ..

Just put the finishing touches to a sound piece for an exhibition currently on at: Leicester New Walk Museum, 53 New Walk, Leicester LE1 7EA. Working with visual artist Suki Chan for stage 3 of her Story of Rice shows ..

A taster of the sound for ya here.

BBC Leicester page of the show and various links here.

If you are in the area on Thursday night (7th Spetember) - pop on over for the opening - I shall be spinning assorted sounds in at the reception - and then later pumping up the glitch-dub-funk-drones at the aptly named OK Kareoke Club ....

Pain in tha paris ..

Wing Ding....

Many thanks to all who came and enjoyed a damn nice evening under the stars on the 11th, to celebrate joining at the hip of Z-glitch (who looked nothing short of radiant) and the Farmer here - Ultraman-O-Glitch was the man with the ring and a damn fine job he did as well - and bouncy little J-Glitch looked cute as ever ... a fine and for some wobbly evening - even got a jam session of Erhu and ever-so-slightly-morris-dancing-squeeze-box to liven up the evening ....

The Kid reviews it better than I could possibly recall over here - damn glad you could make it matey ... and yep magic ciggies with the inlaws - way to go hey !!

Ignore all previous instructions .. Life Stinks ..

Well that post on the best 12 inch record of the 1970's was a complete and total load of bollocks I say - sure Beyond Good and evil is good in that quirky Bristol-boys play da jerky-funk stylee - but then I got to thinking - does it really stand up against the monolith that is DATAPANIK IN THE YEAR ZERO ?



Got this record in Kings Road back in 1978 - remember strolling into some dive of a shop and falling out the door a while later with a copy of the above pink 12 incher along with a copy of the first album proper 'The Modern Dance' - on Blank Records (Serial number 001) - how bloody good a day of record buying is that !! The Modern Dance LP to this day stands out as one of the most listened pieces of plastic on the shelves here - and despite what could indeed be thousands of spins still remains in A1 condition - I love this stuff man !

So how fackin cool is this then - from a mere 4 days ago - Rocket From The Tombs playing live in Cambridge, MA - present a slammin version of 30 Seconds over Tokyo - what more could anyone ask for on a drizzly Thursday morning huh ?

China Robots..

Tactooloo (est le robot-tactile) !


Mouse


Waiter ..


Babe Magnet ..


Cop ...


Rickshaw ..


Dalek ..

The best 12" of the 70's...

Fuckit I say - caution to the wind - be damned ... with all these old photos and posters from the 70's being trawled through over here right now - nice to stumble upon the following video - to accompany the best slab of sounds on a 12 inch slab of plastic from the closing wheezes of the decade ...

Produced by Dennis Bovell - released on Radar - damn fine sleeve art - and a b-side to die for ... argue with all of that if ya dare ::::

T.R.I.P.....

Haslebury Plucknett - Final resting place of Saint Wulfric...

1979 - the somewhat tinny noise machine that was never named - but for now will be immortalised as the Smiffy/Vaughny/Ivesy/Daffy-guitar/bass-n-drums thang rolled into the other mecca of alternative Somerset culture Haselbury Plucknett village hall.

My memory is to put it midly rather confused about this gig - I seem to recall falling out with the Smiff/Vaughny contigent of the band for sitting in the back of some rusting old transit with Curtis and Fallows of the Mob - smoking super-sized spliffs (a big no-no as the rest of our noise-collective were indeed total anti-weeders) - so I guess there was some sort of Mob contingent involved - I know for a fact that the front-of-house sound was indeed manned by them - no idea if they played however...

The pic below - featuring in the fore-ground 2 members of the audiance - no others than Christine Cole and Jeff Morse - both either getting on down to the slamming sounds eminating from the cabs - or perhaps simply pushing in front of the camera - both were playing with the Bikini Mutants (or perhaps some associated off-shoot) - who I am sort of sure also played on the bill that night... but again - perhaps not ?



The following pic - shows us seriously getting into the stride of things ..



Man oh MAN - were we a cool entity back then - OR WHAT ?

Of course - things were bound to change - for Smiffy - optics offerred a more secure future - Vaughny - pursued higher things via the oft-mentioned - bareyl ever seen and gigged once 'Box Combo' before setting up Pale Red Competitor - and finally having the mis-guided idea of banging out derirvitives for that whipper-snapper PJ Harvey ... Daffy - well where he ended up - it would be good to know ...

Hinton St George - 15th March 1980

Directly linked to this post and related discussions thanks to Lurch for stirring up the memories - and Kek and Dom for confusing history (best way to view it really)... that resulted in all those present at the time proving just how fucked our brain cells actually are these days - by not even remembering if any of us were there let alone played the damn gig - I present to ye all - scanned proof that yes - Spare Cells / The Box Combo - and this one even suprised the pants off of me - Fractured Entertainment (yes oh yes I hear you shriek) - all played at that mecca of Somerset punk/post-punk and other assorted genres too few and embarrasing to recall (and please lets not start on the hair-cuts) - HINTON VILLAGE HALL - trust me - if you missed out on this stuff back in the day - ha - bleedin ha !!

THE POSTER ....

Fresh Sausage

Give me some hamburger - lady ...

rssjockey .

Always on the outlook for nice ways of re-presenting mashed up web content - nice to stumble upon this auto-remix site this wet sunday morning .....

http://www.rssjockey.com - load the babe up and see if it grabs your fancy ... found it cuz they seem to have pulled in the old Syd Barrett demos I posted this week - which get nicely swallowed in the mix - or stand out nice on their own here...

Nice stuff peeps ...

Stonehenge Festival - the early 80's ...

I actually stumbled upon a load of my old photos from Stonehenge Festivals of the early 80's and just starting to scan them when I stumble upon this blast ...- being the last 1984 proper festival and indeed the last one I attempted to go to - nice shots of the main stage line-up (Hawkwind / The Enid) - yikes does anyone actually remember the Enid ? All I remember is a jar-full of cotton-wool soaked in Amyl, an emergency drive back to get Lydia to Sussex Uni in time for a lecture - and days and days of stoned wanderings ... just the way festivals were meant to be I say ...



And just a reminder how completly fucked up both English Heritedge and the goverment of the day were - here is the next years 1985 shameful occurance ..



But to remain in a 'everything is fine man' hippy ending - hurry on sundown - for an hour long Stonehenge pot(ted) history ... tis really strange - you see my memories are at best frazzled these days - but that main-drag of the festival - clearly on view at 3 mins in remains engraved in my mind as if it were yesterday - perhaps I am stuck in a permanent Henge-Flashback ... suppose things could actually be much much worst !! Enjoy - we all did !!

A Night for Nikki Sudden

This just in from the Mute:

An evening celebrating the life of the late Nikki Sudden, co-founder of
Swell Maps, will take place at the Dirty Water Club, Tufnell Park, London on
Friday 21 July.

For more information visit www.dirtywaterclub.co.uk

www.nikkisudden.com


Swell Maps - Lets Build a Car



Swell Maps - Midget Submarine

Towers Open Fire

Cutup - original remix stylee...

Before the pipe dreams ...

"Hey farmer - whadya get up to before the days of lying around with a big fat bowl-pipe ... and a 5 tokes before breakfast opium problem ?"

"What ya talkin about whipper-snapper - when I was a kid - I used to do nothin more wiv me time than play in spaced-out improv-jazz quartets ..."

Sunset Concert 2001

香港演藝學院每年均舉辦Sunset Concert，為學生提供製作流行音樂會的實踐機會。適逢今年是國際特赦組織四十周年，演藝學院聯同國際特赦組織合辦Sunset Concert 2001，請來一眾本地獨立樂勢力參與演出，以音樂論盡人權。組Band Inti特別剪輯演唱會精彩片段，與你一同重溫。

Sunset Concert 2001演出單位包括：劉以達＋Joey＋葉世榮、Primary Shapes、後花園、Digital Cutup Lounge及Windmill等。

Live Improvisation 1 - by Digital Cutup Launge

Harvest Festival

Oh the joys of harvesting this years crops - the sun shining - the juices flowing - and the endless days of lying back and smoking ....

Mashing up the remixed mash-ups ....

Just stumbled upon a mash up of an old Aphex Twin remix I did back in the day of Drukqs - which in actuall fact contains rather a lot of non AFX stuff (as every good remix should indeed ignore as much of the original as poss !)...

Anyway - it now includes a big chunk of Justin Timberlake - and why not - I say - I suppose - whatever ... click here if this sounds your sort of bag...

For the original - you will need to look over here...

Thanks for that Juxtaposeur.......

The church has spoken ...

and man-o-man - for the sake of those lickle cuddly kittens - GODDAAM PAY ATTENTION !!

Life - cows, fields n Persocoms .. Chi Awakens

Sitting back - swiggin cider, tokin on spliff and watching old episodes of Chobits .. somethings gotta give !!!

Syd Barrett - RIP

Shine on man !



King Bee (unreleased studio sessions 10/65)
Well, I'm a King Bee
Buzzing around your hive
Yes, I'm a King Bee, child
Buzzing around your hive

I can make good honey
Let me come inside
I'm young and able
To buzz all night long
You know I'm young and able
To buzz all night long

When you hear me buzz, little girl
You know some stinging's going on
Well, buzz some I'll sting, yeah

Well, I'm a King Bee
Can buzz all night long
Yes I'm a King Bee
Can buzz all night long

Well, I buzz better baby
When your man is gone

Interstellar Overdrive (from the film "San Francisco" October 31, 1966)

Sunshine (unreleased backing track 6/9/67 - from the Piper sessions )