Changeroo

Gonna try out wordpress for a wee while so follow me over using this link:

There Will Be Blog Wordpress

If I decide to change back,you'll be the first to know.
Cheers,
Adam

Ya wha'?

Been a while, eh?
Just thought I'd pop my head in the door, turn the lights on (burglars are terrified of illumination), bring in the plastic bag of baked beans inexplicably left behind the front wheel of the car in the driveway and make sure everything is generally ok.
It seems that a few curious heads have been poking around here already and some have even asked where I'd gone (specifically Patrick McCarry, whose Moonshine Travellers play is on in the Sugar Club this month and who wants to use this blog as a vehicle for his ego...well there you go, Paddy. Happy?)
Since I was last here, I've been to Berlin, lost a day's work every week, failed to get my laptop back and working, missed the Electric Picnic, written fuck all and achieved little.
Life in the fast lane, eh?
But let's not dwell on life's lack of fulfillment.
In the pipeline are gigs from Times New Viking, the Jesus Lizard and the fooking Rza. Yep, the Rza is coming to Dublin next month. Unreal.
Tomorrow is the birthday of the better half so I would like to wish her a very happy one and hope that she likes/liked the pressie I got for her. Horses are not cheap.
And after this brief hello, I'm going to go and watch that dude on Channel 4 who went barmy after a few weeks alone in the inhospitable wilderness and started conversing with flora and fauna alike.
A couple of weeks?
He's never been to Offaly in the dead of winter where it's so cold you can only go outside if you're on fire and have consumed a half bottle of brandy.
Back soon.

Dammit

Just when I was getting back into the swing of bloggage, my laptop seems to be on the fritz. Back soon, hopefully.

Easy like eggs on a Sunday morning

I awoke early on Sunday morning to an empty right-side of the bed and the thumping of little hairy feet on the stairs.
It appears that the newly-installed Playstation 3 has taken my other half from me and has worn her out so much with its relentless gaming-power that she has passed out on the couch from exhaustion.
This must be how it feels to be a human in the future of the Terminator franchise - helpless before the power of the machines.
The dog doesn't really give a shit about the complex mechanics of our human relationship - or how a computer gaming console can come between people so rapidly - so he proceeds with his usual game of 'staring in your face like an idiot'.
I continuously inform him of the futility of this contest and how there'll never be a clear winner....he just keeps staring, throwing in the old 'cock the head sideways' routine every minute or so.
Sigh.
We've been living in Ballsbridge for 4 or 5 months now and I've grown to really like it, after my initial scepticism.
Yes, there are hordes of rugger-loving, Crok-sporting, nice-but-dim D4 posho types around but the pub up the road is a cracker, the neighbours are lovely and it's really nice to be in a leafy suburb ten minutes from town.
Somehow though, I had, up until now, not made it here for breakfast (NOT brunch, NEVER brunch) in all these months.
Sinead (I'll link to her myspace as she recently informed me she intends to begin myspace blogging again soon) has been to this Juniors place a few times, a trip of about 1 minute from our front door, and has come back espousing the delights of the finely cooked food and 'Galway-esque', i.e. cramped, design.
But those times have been with her friends and I don't want to crash her girl time. y'know?
That said, last time she went down with a friend of hers, some drunken young men bought them both Mimosas and then sought deep and meaningful relationship advice so maybe I should have made the trek before now, if only in a supervisory capacity.
We sat inside, as all the outside seating was filled with the beautiful people.
I'm pretty sure I actually saw two pairs of oversized sunglasses eating breakfast at one stage.
The giant Prada ones seemed to be shoving devilled eggs into its lenses.
Weird.
I had the 'Breakfast of Champions', which was absolutely sublime, consisting of a giant, succulent Cumberland sausage, streaky-yet-meaty bacon, a rosti, a two-yolked fried egg, a small slice of thick toast, not-from-a-can beans made with tomatoes and proper beans, black & white pudding (something I would never normally entertain) and a massive mushroom and tomato double act, both remaining half-eaten at the end, thanks to a near-full-to-capacity belly.
Sinead opted for a New York steak (thick and charred), eggs with Hollandaise sauce and some deliciously small, roasted potato chunks.
I often judge eateries by their coffee and this coffee was delicious - fresh, frothy and strong as an ox. Even the orange juice was freshly squeezed.
As you can probably see if you have a gander at the menu, it wasn't particularly cheap but as a treat at the weekend, it's well worth it.
As we were paying the bill, the waitress/cashier admired Sinead's beautiful dress and then asked me about my t-shirt.
"It's an Animal Collective t-shirt", I said.
"What's that?", she said.
"A band"
"Oh right. Well I think Irish men don't usually make much of an effort dressing so you're doing ok actually"
Personally I think the t-shirt is a little too 'Ivan Lendl in the 80s' with its purple/lime green/white combo but I like it...and so did she, apparently.
If you fancy a visit to Ballsbridge, and someone to admire your pretty ropey t-shirt, then you could do a lot worse than giving Juniors a go.

I don't want a holiday in the suuu-un...oh no, I do actually.

Things started strangely.
As I settled into my seat (as best a 6' 1" manchild can 'settle' into an airline seat), something wasn't quite right.
A quick browse of the food and drink laminate showed sandwiches for 4 euro, bottled water for 1 euro and beer for 1.50...my eyes seemed to lack a certain burning sensation...a distinct lack of sensory-overload thanks to relentless blue-and-yellow plastic hideousness and advertisements for 'baggies' of vodka and rum.
"That air steward-person doesn't look like a Transylvanian post-op transsexual", I thought to myself. "And I can still feel my legs below the knees."
I was on a Tunisian airline, you see, but Ryanair was etched into my mind's eye.
We were on the way to Yasmine Hammamet, a Tunisian coastal resort in its infancy. The idea of a resort holiday brought up images of drunken 18-year old Thomas Cook reps vomiting in each other's handbags whilst having brief, unprotected sex on the beach with swarthy Ahmed, the lifeguard/fruit salesman/salamander vendor.
Luckily I had left my handbag at home.
The girlf and I really needed a break and a holiday of poolside boozing and beach side lolling was just the ticket.
The Diar Lemdina hotel offered the perfect deal: the room was a two-storey job with 3 bathrooms and two bedrooms, all of which I used in rotation and never limiting myself to their specific function.
The pool was a long 10-second stumble from the room's door and the period between said door and falling headfirst into the pool, when I was absolutely beerless, was a nightmare.
Luckily, there was always a drinks-delivery youth waiting in the wings to take care of me, almost in that Remains Of The Day, Anthony Hopkins way.
I was Emma Thompson and little Mohammed was my silent protector and provider without ever really admitting it to me.
The first few days were a bit of a culture shock with the haggling nature of the nearby market, the Medina - I spent a half hour negotiating the price of a magic carpet with one tradesman only to discover it was a rug with little-to-no magic capabilities.
With the Medina right next door to the hotel, we were through it every night, dodging Arabic beckoning and cries of 'Cheaper than Asda' or 'Have a butchers' but it was something for which you really needed to be in a mentally strong state to cope and if you have never experienced this kind of thing, you are hereby warned.
The routine quickly became: get up, hit the pool, have lunch, have a beer, hit the beach, have beers, go on a jet ski, avoid paying 45 Dinar for 3 pieces of fruit, avoid buying a turtle/salamander/frog, have dinner and have beers in the fading sun.
Bliss.
Then we booked a two-day Sahara trip.
My Irish skin said 'no' but my fingers reached for the cash anyway and on the Thursday morning at 6am, having spent 4 days living the lives of particularly complainy lizards with excellent communication skills and Dunnes flip-flops, we packed off to the desert.
It took in many aspects including a gripping 4x4 trip to the Atlas Mountains, a horse-and-cart journey to a fruit plantation in the middle of nowhere, an oasis, camel-riding in the Sahara, nearly catching the sunrise in the desert, salt-mines and the Troglodyte caves where all the Star Wars Tatooine scenes were shot.
It was truly wonderful, one of the more weird parts of the trip being the visit to a Southern Tunisian couple, in their respective 70s and 80s, who actually lived in one of the cave houses, having reared eight children there.
As I stood there in awe of their achievement in such an unforgiving environment, an English girl bulldozed into their 'bedroom' bellowing 'They ain't goh now telllllleeee'.
Least of their problems, love.
Unusually, given my hyper-cynical disposition (and considering I was a tourist on a touristy tour) I was genuinely moved by the fact that in the corner of this cave house, an ancient woman was hand-grinding corn with a stone mill, collecting a few Dinar from the browsing tourists.
The old husband just sat quietly across from her, slowly baking in the 38-degree heat in his hole-in-the-ground house and yet they seemed content, nodding and smiling at the curious horde in front of them.
I'll never complain about my phone reception again.
It helped that our guide - a wizened prune of a man called Eddie with a hilariously crap line in jokes and a genuine affection for this part of Tunisia, where he was originally from - was a real pro, always showing us what to do, where to move, how to deal with the culturally unfamiliar aspects of the tour.
Toward the end of the 1300-kilometre round-trip he did seem to be verging on 'mentally delicate' but I'm sure he's ok now. Ok or still asleep. Or dead.
He even brought bread for the hole-in-the-ground family's donkey.
We made it back to the resort hotel after two days, drained and fulfilled, set for one more slap-up meal, a little hookah pipe, some Boukha and bed.
The next day was time to fly, just as the week had done.
I should have bought a salamander.

March of the people

Watching Werner Herzog's South Pole documentary, Encounters at the End of the World, is an exceptionally humbling experience.
Herzog sets out his stall early in the film, telling us that he was not interested in making a movie about 'fluffy' penguins and instead he takes his tiny crew to McMurdo Station, the American headquarters, and a town-of-sorts in the Antarctic.
In and around this area, he encounters a group of people working in a variety of disciplines - plumber, driver, biologist, volcanologist - and tries to discover how and why they have ended up here, at the 'bottom of the world'.
Herzog willfully seizes on the eccentricities of many of these people and manages to create a film that is beautiful, both in its visual representation of an unusual part of the planet and in its portrayal of the fragility of humanity and how, ultimately, we are all just a blip on this planet with extinction an inevitability, just like the dinosaurs before us.
Nature will take care of us sooner or later.
We are no more special than the single cell organisms that are scraped from the ocean floor by one 50s science fiction film enthusiast and scientist who celebrates the discovery of three new species in a single dive by jamming with a co-worker on top of their shed in the middle of the snow, their noisy blues echoing across the white plains.
Personally, I find this prognosis refreshing and Herzog certainly doesn't want it to be taken as bad news. As always, he sees the beauty in human existence, in their stories and thoughts and ideas and lives and he sees the eventual demise of our species as just another step in the world's history..and future.
Why do we deserve anything special because we are a little more intellectually advanced than most animals?
Isn't it wonderful to imagine that everything we have ever created, both hideous and sublime, will someday be gone, probably through our own doing, and the world could be once more left to the most basic creatures, scurrying and foraging on the ocean bed, only interested in the next meal.
The earth would have a clean slate again and it is just a shame that Herzog will not be there to make a documentary about that.
I can imagine his monotonous voice, just audible over helicopter-shot footage of a desolate, silent planet:
"Theees eees de plenet nowww. Chust ez eet begenn. Wiss nossing ett all exsseptt ameebazzz and plennnt liiiiife....'

Primavera/Barcelona pics

EDIT: Check out my review over at Drop-D

Powerful stuff

Hoping it ain't lost in the transition....

....as drop-d moves to new pastures. I usually hate reading my stuff but I actually enjoy reading this review of Mudhoney's last album. Sorry for this somewhat self-serving post but anyway..

With the grunge era now a nostalgic bong water stain on the ripped jeans of yesterday, all we veterans can do is snaffle up Nirvana albums on vinyl if we stumble across them, watch Pearl Jam get fat and old and reminisce over Youtube footage of Alice In Chains’ mesmerising MTV Unplugged performance from back in the day.

Mark Arm and his elder statesmen of that fruitful musical period, Mudhoney, have crawled out of the sticky dirt to crank out a new album, 20 years after giving the world a grunge classic with Touch Me I’m Sick, and thankfully they have summoned the spirits of their scuzzy, raw, anthemic youth to make an album that is as relevant now as it would have been in the early 90s. It begins with the cocksure sexual swagger of I’m Now, a song many of the pubeless indie cretins of today’s ‘alternative indie rock’ bands would lop off their fringes and pointy-shoe-clad feet to have penned.

Inside Out Over You crackles with feedback and psychedelic twiddlings over a Jefferson Airplane-style bassline while the title track grooves along to a chorus of “The lucky ones are lucky they’re not around.” - a wry take on grunge’s casualties.

Other highlights are the blues-kissed What’s This Thing, the garage rock musings of And The Shimmering Light and the screaming teenage delight of Tales of Terror.

This gem was recorded in just three and a half days and the confident brevity of the uncomplicated songs would definitely corroborate this, with most of the tracks around the 3 minute mark. There is a lusty, noisy, filthy, punk vibe fused into every song - with a side order of garage, blues and The Stooges - and a sense of urgency that makes it difficult to believe these gents are on their 8th album and 20th year together. It filled this writer with joy to be aurally transported back to a time when Sonic Youth, Bleach, lumberjack shirts and Seattle were at the forefront of my mind and here’s hoping that Mudhoney bottle the energy they harnessed for this recording and churn out many more albums as enjoyable in the coming years. This is how it is done. Indie pretenders take note.

Good morning..er...afternoon

I ill-advisedly clicked on a youtube link to watch a Marianne Nowottny clip earlier, got The Fear immediately and so had to watch this to regain some semblance of mental balance.
This is one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite artists.
As Jools Holland might say, by way of introduction, "Hapablap habahappahap habbaplapppppp Joanna Newsom blap"

What's the plan now then?

And so another printed publication hops on the escalator to the great shredder in the sky....Plan B is no more.
While we lament the demise of print journalism (and as a print journalist,aswell as an online one,I will join the ranks of those wailing the loudest) the fact of the matter is that the magazines you have loved, and still love, are supported in a major way by advertising revenue from independent record labels - labels that can barely afford to function anymore let alone take out a 10x3 advertisement space in a glossy, shiny, lovely-smelling magazine.


Add to that the fact that no-one has yet entirely figured out how to make impressive advertising revenue from any online publishing ventures and it's clear we are in a state of media limbo.
Personally, I enjoy a combination of reading about movies, music, pop culture and bestiality online as much as in print. True the online reading has addled my concentration levels - at times, I believe, severely - but it's nothing permanent and I still sit around with books and a ton of newspapers to dig in to every couple of days.


Things are grim as fuck these days in the print world and will only get grimmer. Those of us left with jobs should count ourselves lucky. And with regard to the always interesting, often brilliant, Plan B, let's hope they find a way to continue their writing either in other decent publications (i.e. the Observer Music Monthly about 2 years ago via a time machine or Wire magazine) or they manage to work out an online presence without the quality of the writing being affected.

I tip my cap to you Plan B.

End of the occupational road for some..

This week my father (top right) retires from the civil service after 40 years of service, a lot of which has been spent as a Principal Officer in the Department of Defense, based in Galway.

Much to the chagrin of my friends (who still refer to him as Major Dad due both to his perceived occupation and his resemblance to Gerald McRainey {bottom right} who once played Major Dad in the sitcom of the same title), he is not a highly-trained killer; half-man, half-wild dog. It's an office job. It was an office job.

And it's a little strange how his job has plotted the direction for my life.

In 1989 my parents left Aylesbury, Tallaght with young moi and my sister in tow, to head to Galway, the city that the decentralisation plan at the time had decided was to be the new Department of Defense’s HQ.

I have no doubt that my knackery, mulleted little pre-teen self might have ended up doing horrendous things had I spent my teen years surrounded by the glories of joy-riding, glue-sniffing and coal-eating (Fact: a family up the road used to eat bits of coal they found on the street. I don't know why. Mineral content? It's a bit fucking Angela's Ashes isn't it?)

There are a few photos of young me knocking around at the family home from my Tallaght days and it’s clear that in my final year there as a 10-year old, obsessed with guns, violence and becoming a member of the SAS, I may have soon butchered my first small domestic creature and moved gradually onto drifters and/or prostitutes.

I base this theory entirely on my haircut and attire at the time, which was part Stefan Edberg, part hi-visibility hooligan.

Ah yes, I seem to have dodged a life of crime and now I work in the newspaper that reports on that same crime in that same area. A place that has drunken miscreants telling the gardai they will eat all the houses on the street and enter strangers' houses through the front window to bum a cigarette. True stories.

Oh Lady Irony, why do you mock me?

I leave you with Wilco (The Song) by Wilco from Wilco (the album).

This is for you, Pop.

Wilco(the song) - Wilco

Havat you, you scoundrel

Arse life

I truly am a picky bastard.
I can't find somewhere comfortable I like to sit in our new place.
There's a chair and a couch. The couch I like lying on to watch TV but, alas, it is not particularly good for balancing the laptop on my stomach and trying to type for any length of time.
I imagine that were an independent observer to poke their beak over the garden fence and observe me trying to type anything longer than a Twitter update on the brand of sausage I had just ingested while carefully trying to control my stomach 'muscles' to balance the laptop, they would see what looks like an overgrown, overweight idiot doing what appears to be an impression of a fighting spider (Thiania bhamoensis)perched in the Crane position and hammering away at the keys in short, uncomfortable bursts.
And so it is to the bedroom I retire, Laz-E-Boys proving too expensive, and it is in the bedroom I'll have to remain if I want to shake the pins and needles from my poor poor legs. Comfort is an important part of bloggage, dontcha know?
I feel it's time to start paying more attention to the blog and so expect more frequent posting, more wine coverage, more music and more film reviews..and just more blogging in general.
Also, have you seen the The Hills Have Eyes remake? It was on Film 4 the other day. Fuck me it was hardcore. Goggle,goggggggggle.

Blasphemous post

As part of a movement I just read about, to draw attention to our new blasphemy laws, I have to post something blasphemous. I think I'll go with 'Catholics enjoy bestiality' (is that blasphemous?), 'Fuck you, Christian God' aaaaaaaand more later maybe.....
I was going to go with a picture of an inverted crucifix but I think this one says it all.

Yep

Beam me up

Samuel Beam and his Iron and Wine moniker will always have a special place in my cold, black heart. I've loved him since first hearing the Creek Drank The Cradle many moons ago on some dodgy old CD-R given to me by a tramp.Or was it a Vietnam vet?

But that said he has easily put on two of the most disapponting live gigs I've ever seen, one in the Olympia and one in the Ambassador.

With a penchant for tweaking his songs live, the so-fragile-it-might-snap vibe of his albums and EPs are totally discarded on stage and Beam, with his rag-tag bunch of very talented musicians, likes to expand and ruin every bloody song to the point of noodley boredom. Bonnie Prince Billy is the master at doing this kind of twiddleage and foostering well - I've seen him do fantastic versions of much-loved, usually sparser songs and they sounded great.

I do, however, hear that Bob Dylan effectively bends his popular songs over the piano and forces himself into them after administering some form of prescription medicine/alcohol cocktail to ensure the songs black out and remember nothing.
For shame.

Anyway, in a few weeks arrives the Iron and Wine double album, Around the Well (Sub Pop), a 2-CD/3-LP collection of rare tracks ranging from out-of-print to never-before-released. I'm reminded of the shimmering delicate beauty of Beam's music, the lyrics that have a firm foundation in his cinematography and film-tutoring background. Beam's words are some of the most poetic I've heard with the same kind of bucolical leanings of Bill Callahan but without the sometimes startling obscurity - Beam is more Terence Malick to Callahan's David Lynch.

One of my favourite Iron and Wine songs, and one that features on this upcoming album, is his cover of The Flaming Lips' Waitin' For A Superman so here it is.

Waitin' For A Superman - Iron and Wine

From back in the day

I used to fucking love this song. Woke up today with it in my head for some reason; hadn't heard it for a long long time. Now I realise some of it is the same chords as Back For Good by Take That.

Goochee Bandunna goochee goochee bandunna

A surreal video and song with clearly no inkling of a global recession from Soulja Boy.
Yet, if I were to hear this in a club - and God willing I do some day - I will absolutely dance to it. Unbelievable shit/genius.
Makes me feel old and detached. Goocheeeeeee bandunna power

There was blood

Having spooked the bejesus out of myself by watching Let The Right One In recently, it has taken me a few days to get back to a normal, uneventful, solid night's sleep. Even Amityville II: The Spookening (or something) seemed scary, having subjected my human eyes to a Swedish vampire film with one of the most intense and ominously quiet atmospheres I've ever experienced in a film.
I think it deserves a post of its own to be honest, which I will do soon, but for the moment I will bang up a couple of tracks that helped bring me back down from Planet Creepington.
Both are Damien Shingleton remixes of Jonathan Fisher tracks from his 2006 (I think) album Desiderata. Great chilled out remixes of atmospheric electronica. Head over to Hippocamp to find the rest of this album and a heap of electronica stuff all free and legal.

Hebden Bridge in November(Damien Shingleton remix) - Jonathan Fisher

Everything (Damien Shingleton Remix) - Jonathan Fisher

Come have a smell

Magik Markers release their new album, Balf Quarry, in May on the esteemed Drag City label.
Now, I won't pretend to know a shit load about this duo of Pete Nolan and Elisa Ambrogio but their album and homemade CD-R releases are well into the double figures at this stage, they've played with Sonic Youth and, as Tim Westwood might say on Twitter (follow him, it's worth it), this shit is box fresh (ahem).
The album plays beautifully into that woozy, bad trip vibe that has gotten under my skin the last while, also breaking into thumping rock-outs every so often.
It sounds, at times, a little like Jefferson Airplane and Sonic Youth fed through a cheap amp with the band having just been subjected to some serious Timothy Leary psychedelic tomfoolery under the guise of 'science'.
The guitars and percussion are interchangeably menacing, chugging, farting, feedbacking and idiosyncratically wahwahing all over the place while singer/guitarist Elisa Ambrogio is well able to keep up with the PJ Harveys and Nick Caves of this seedy, murky world, sporadically chucking in some gloopy electronica effects and piano to complement her vocals.
In spite of the raggedy all-over-the-placeness of Balf Quarry, there is an immediacy to this album which will most likely alienate their fanbase, who are probably now screaming out for a less 'clean' sound than this and an effort more akin to the band's earlier stuff whilst preparing to berate me for only jumping on the Magik Markers train now. Well fuck it, this is great AND they're playing Primavera on the ATP stage. Should be just dandy.



Here's two tracks from the album to have a listen to.

Magik Markers - 7/23

Magik Markers - Jerks

Wow

Animal Collective - My Girls from Rob Chesnutt on Vimeo.

Not much point me posting this here as you probably already saw it on Nialler's blog but it's just too good to not re-post. So many ideas overflowing in this video for Animal Collective's My Girls by Rob Chestnutt - it has a cracking hodge podge of imagery that, off the top of my head, reminds me of Apocalypse Now and Mike Figgis's Timecode. Excellent stuff.

My mate Andrew wrote, scored and lit this short film. Have a look.

FOLLOW

Plonky Tonk Man #1

With the host of groovy foodie blogs out there, why take a few wine suggestions thrown in your direction (from a questionable source) to complement that palate?
Willkommen bis the inaugural 'Plonky Tonk Man' post. Possibly to become 'There Will Be Plonk' or 'Daniel Plainview's Slosh Factory' - I haven't decided yet.
Have a go at a title if you feel like it.
I like booze and in recent years, thanks to the cheapening prices of vino and the fact that my good lady has, in her distant past, worked as a dazzlingly knowledgeable wine sommelier, I have developed a decent taste as to what's good and what's not. Anyone could do this, given time, but this could prove to be a lot of fun.
For all of us, of course.
And for my first recommendation: The Catena Malbec 2006



Now, I could bang on in the most verbose manner about this wine, and may do so for future installments, but suffice it to say this is a crimson red that smells overwhelmingly of berries and currants and yet is as light on the taste buds as an bulimic starlet who's just barfed up her tuna salad sandwich.
It doesn't need, necessarily, to be imbibed with food and will serve perfectly well as an evening wind-down tipple or as an 'I'm treating myself to a good wine tonight before I go out because I work bloody hard and I want to get pissed up but stay classy' drink too.
A deceptively lighter red for the usually more robust, jammy Malbecs.

Or as Wine Spectator put it:
Enticing, with lots of mocha, fruitcake, raspberry and boysenberry flavors stretched over a lengthy, fleshy finish. A delicious, fruit-driven version. Drink now through 2010.

Thank you, Wine Spectator.

This wine is at the more expensive end of the market, at around 17 or 18 quid, and you will have to head somewhere like The Corkscrew, near Nearys pub off Grafton Street, or that tiny wine store in Ringsend. In general it can be educational and informative to go into the independent wine stores and ask them about different varieties of wines, regions, grapes and years, tell them what you like/don't like and get them to recommend wines and let you taste them.
Tescos won't do that for you, now will they?
Then again, the wine shops don't have microwaveable lasagnes or milk.
It's a careful global-shopping balancing act.

Do yourself a favour and snap up this Malbec or I'll send Wine Spectator around to do your fookin' legs in.

PRIMAVERA - holy shit

Neil Young · My Bloody Valentine · Sonic Youth · Aphex Twin · Bloc Party · Jarvis Cocker · Yo La Tengo · The Jayhawks · Spiritualized · Michael Nyman · Throwing Muses · Saint Etienne · The Jesus Lizard · Ghostface Killah · The New Year · Phoenix · Shellac · Joe Henry · Art Brut · A Certain Ratio · Liars · Squarepusher · Herman Dune · The Vaselines · Spectrum · Deerhunter · Sunn O))) performing "The Grimmerobe Demos" · Black Lips · The Horrors · Andrew Bird · The Bad Plus · Jay Reatard · Gang Gang Dance · Kimya Dawson · Lightning Bolt · Magnolia Electric Co. · Oneida · Th' Faith Healers · DJ /rupture · Ariel Pink Haunted Graffiti · Jason Lytle from Grandaddy · The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart · Dj Yoda · El-P · Simian Mobile Disco · Michael Mayer · Dan Deacon Ensemble · Jeremy Jay · A-Trak · Rhythm & Sound (Mark Ernestus) feat. Tikiman · Jesu · The Mae Shi · Alela Diane · Shearwater · Kitty, Daisy & Lewis · The Drones · Bat For Lashes · The Soft Pack · Damien Jurado · Fucked Up · Chad VanGaalen · The Bats · Tokyo Sex Destruction featuring Gregg Foreman · Crystal Stilts · Reigning Sound · Dälek · Marnie Stern · Dead Meadow · Vivian Girls · Ponytail · Ebony Bones · Wooden Shjips · Zu · Crystal Antlers · The Bug · Bowerbirds · Joe Crepúsculo y Los Destructores · Wavves · The Tallest Man On Earth · Tachenko · Agent Ribbons · Women · Uffie · John Maus · Magik Markers · The Extraordinaires · Stanley Brinks featuring Freschard & Ish Marquez · Angelo Spencer · Karl Blau · Plants & Animals · Extra Life · Mahjongg · Muletrain · Andy Votel · The Secret Society · Carsick Cars · Tim Burgess (The Charlatans) · La Bien Querida · The Intelligence · Sleepy Sun · Maika Makovski · Half Foot Outside · Zombie Zombie · Veracruz · The Right Ons · Los Punsetes · Klaus & Kinski · The Lions Constellation · Duchess Says · Mujeres · Elvira · Lemonade · Girls · The Disciplines · Dj Mehdi · Skatebård · Extraperlo · King Automatic · Cuzo · Alondra Bentley · PAL · Sedaiós · Hola A Todo El Mundo · Brian Hunt · Rosvita · QA'A · Meneo · Oniric · Centella · Bélmez · Wio Leokadio · Joan Colomo · Chris "The Judge" Arthur dj · Merienda Cena · Gúdar · Daniel Devine (WaKS records) · Dr. Kiko

I know, I know. It's a lazy post but holy shit right?

G for G20

Great photo from the G20 protest today. Courtesy of The Guardian.

Post no Bill

Winter weather is not my soul
But the biding for spring...

Why’s everybody looking at me
Like there’s something fundamentally wrong
Like I’m a southern bird
That stayed north too long

Winter exposes the nest
Then I’m gone

Bonnie Vid Billy - just to brighten the day

Da Nerd Herd

I'm sitting in the front room of the new abode and in the next room sits my sister, my girlfriend and three friends playing a fantasy board game called Descent.
Now, it is perhaps a little known fact that my girlfriend is a supernerd.
Little known if you don't know me, I suppose. And maybe even if you do.
It was subtle at first. Gaming consoles started to pile up. Gamecube, PS2, Nintendo DS, Xbox and many more. The comics started to appear everywhere, action figures were being bought and not taken out of their boxes and then came the question every red-blooded male out there dreads:
"Will you come and play the Battlestar Galactica board game with me and my friends after work?"
"Crikey", I thought. "This is worse than I thought."
So now it's Descent. There appears to be a glut of dragony things and goblins. There's dice involved. It's all a bit Mason-esque and odd. So I will remain in the other room hiding away from the potion-buyers and sword-wielders, drinking my can and blogging my blog.
I slapped a review of Animal Collective together for the 'D so have a look and see if you agree. The goblins approach, I must fly.

Maybe tomorrow I'll want to settle down. Until tomorrow I'll just keep moving 'round dededede dededede

It's been a mentally draining week.
The weather has taken a rapid turn towards the Spring and we've been moving house. In the middle of that was a massive family booze-up, packing stuff for the move, stressing over deposits and arguing over the unpacking.
I have realised I am not human; I'm a Womble.
I collect an ungodly amount of shit and then pack it all away in plastic bags (which I've also kept for some reason...Tower bags seem to be a favourite) to be viewed at later dates.
So far I've uncovered TV guides from 2007, train tickets with chewing gum in them, college notes from years ago, clothes I haven't worn in 3 years and jazz mags I forgot I had (that was Sinead's discovery, much to her delight. They're good ones too...at least, they were good ones)
At first I was a little wary of the whole moving thing. I love the other place and if you saw the photos on Daft I think I linked to a while ago, you'd probably see why. The new place is a good deal though, great pub up the road and much bigger and more 'homely'...I think. It even has a fireplace.
Been trying to plot some kind of hoildays the last while and Primavera is getting ever closer. Feel like I really need a break and that would the ultimate one this year, given the cracking line-up.
Anyway, I'll leave you with a few tracks from albums I've been listening to recently.
A dash of the Bonnie Prince, a banging track from DOOM's latest and a nice bit of work from Ohio drone-ambient peddlers, Emeralds
Toodle pip.

Bonnie Prince Billy - Beware Your Only Friend
DOOM - Gazzillion Ear
Emeralds - Alive in the Sea of Information

Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges.

I've gorged on films in my recent influenza-induced fragile state so here's a round-up featuring ten word reviews.

Frozen River: A quiet but edgy drama with great performances and ice.

Hamlet 2: Steve Coogan as a weirder-than-Partridge drama teacher. Funny.

Lakeview Terrace: Samuel L. menaces, shouts and is a racist cop. Average.

Eden Lake: Sexy Fassbender, sexy Reilly, violent Skins arsehole, bloody and good.

Wendy and Lucy: Haunting, elegiac, arty, subtle, heartbreaking, thoughtful, timely, go see it.


Wendy and Lucy from stian hilton on Vimeo.

Gran Torino: Craggy old racist makes you laugh. Prepare for some melodrama.

Slumdog Millionaire: Overrated, contrived. Not bad though and well-directed by Boyle.

Rachel Getting Married: Manga-faced Hathaway is good but film is too yuppyish.

If you only see one of these, make it Wendy and Lucy. And then check out director/writer Kelly Reichardt's previous film, Old Joy.
And I know you've counted the words so yes, the L in Samuel L. Jackson counts as a word here.

H is for home

Is there something about a hangover that sharpens your ears?
When I left the house this afternoon, I opted to leave the ipod behind and let the sweet strains of Ringsend and Landsdowne be my soundtrack.
It was beautiful.
The singularly rotten sound of squelching as my Conversed foot plunged into a large mound of canine excrement. The young whippersnappers kicking their football off a discarded trolley, a trolley that once may have held groceries for a loving family or maybe for an old couple who still hold hands when they stroll.
The aural wonder of cars sounding their horns at each other because 'the fucking lights are greeeeeen, ya fuckin' cuntcha'. The crackling sound of sausages deep-frying, seagulls screeching and dogs barking at their own tails.
Where's my ipod?

The S Word

As distasteful as a plethora of conservatives may find it, socialism is the concept that could, possibly, bring America's, and the world's, economy back to life.


Check out this article from The Nation, 'Reimagining Socialism'

But Obama doesn't see his actions as those of a socialist

Of course, Chavez has to get his word in too

And, lastly, let us not forget the paranoia of some Americans

It's all getting quite interesting, innit?

The hunt is on....and you're the prey.

Blogger and Wordpress duel it out

What are the differences between (or advantages of having) Blogger and/or Wordpress? And why are we not all on Livejournal? Who invented the word Captcha? Awful word.

Blunt Force Trauma

Currently doing the business on the Hollyweird scene and plugging her movies on a few shows, in a change of gender (unusually) 'Hunk' of the Week is Ms Emily Blunt.
Devil Wears Prada was shite (Meryl Streep is easily the most annoying actress working today), except for Ms Blunt and she will be popping up as a Young Queen Victoria in the next while.
Normal service will return soon but as it's my blog, if I want to objectify Ms Blunt, I will. Same as I objectified Hugh Jackman a while back. And he went on to host the Oscars.

Porn stars, Paul McKenna and me or how I learned to stop procrastinating and love the blog.

Saved By The Bell, David Lynch-styleee

One of the more interesting aspects of much-maligned but ultimately harmless Twitter (sorry to bring it up again..) is 'following' hardcore porno stars like Bella Donna and Sasha Grey.
Their twatters (titter titter, fnar fnar) were featured in a Sunday paper a few weeks ago and so I naturally signed up as quickly as I could. Where would I be without research, eh?
Essentially, they use Twitter to promote various DVDs and shows but to give you a taste of what kind of output (careful..)they are producing (....) this is basically it:

10am : Woke up, still sleepy, need a frappuccino

12:15: Can't believe my dog is soooo cute LOL. He's the best you guys.

3.27: Arrived at work and haven't even had dinner yet. Real hungry.

4.24: Wow, Aiden's cock is sooo massive and I had three in my ass 5 minutes ago!!

6:17: Time for home again and ice-cream.Yummy.

It's the equivalent of watching that part in Fight Club where Brad inserts(crikey) the Johnson into the kids' film.
It can also be highly amusing as other Twitterers pop up saying the usual daily twattery things and then up pops a reference to girl-on-girl dildo action and a conveniently attached pic.
Not for the office at all at all - unless you work in a porn office.
If there is such a thing.
Probably not an office you'd want to see a stapler or ring-binder in.

Now, I have a treat for you. No-one can resist the mid-Atlantic tones of new media's favourite bespectacled huckster, Paul McKenna, so check out the top dollar creepiness factor on this recording of his, which I found on some Torrent site, that is meant to boost self-confidence. I couldn't resist it. My confidence was at a dangerously low 99.7% and needed topping up. And I figured it would be hilariously deranged.
If you don't need a red hot shower immediately after hearing any portion of this, you officially have the platelet-count of a paedophile or some ilk of deranged sex-offender and you should frog-march yourself directly to the nearest Garda station, strip naked, douse yourself in Tesco own-brand voddy and light a match.
He even layers his voice at one stage and creates a trippy 'McKenna all over your ears' effect. Horrid. I promise not to do this to you again. And by that I mean I will seek out new ones as often as possible, gradually replacing the recordings with my own voice and gathering together an army of blogger 'sleepers' ready to do my bidding the moment I use the trigger-word. The task would most likely involve murder and VIP magazine in some way. Or making me an omelette with especially strong cheese.

Paul McKenna - How to be creeped out in the most heinous way

I'm off to listen to a bit of Bonnie Prince Billy's Beware (available from Drag City here to pre-order). More on that again. Now...sit back and relaaaaax. Let my voice sooooooothe you......

Print is dead, long live other formats

Analogue have news

I've had the pleasure of writing for them and also meeting some of the crew and they're a cool bunch. Here's hoping it flourishes online. Raise your glass to Analogue, everyone.

How to give a dignified, witty, smart, touching and typically Sean Penn acceptance speech.

Series of fuzz #13: Mazes and PENS

Listening to the 'friends' of bands you like on myspace can be a tough swamp to navigate but when you are the cap'n of an airboat as canny as I am, it can turn up some mighty fine results with a real tang.
First up are Mazes, UK fuzz-pop with an unknown amount of members. Check the myspace for a quick idea of what they're about and see the track below along with another. Kinda Weezer-ish and thoroughly wonderful.
Second up are PENS, again a UK act, a trio of girls and some really badly recorded songs on their myspace hence I'm really liking them.
I'd venture that the third track on their page was recorded inside a wet mattress with one of the Vivian Girls having sex with a broken amp on top of it. In a vat of honey. Underwater.

Mazes - Bowie Knife

PENS - Networking

Both mp3s gotten from catbirdseat

I 'urt my h-elbow

Stuff:

Having received Fifa 07 for my PSP for Xmas (a clever financial move from my other half meaning I also got Tiger Woods 07) my hands were beginning to seize up and my elbow cracked with every corner kicked, every tap-in netted, every pass completed. I have spent the last while managing Barnsley, you see, and they (i.e. I) just ain't good enough.
Luckily, with the internet at my fingertips I could scour the cyberworld seeking out underhanded ways in which I could allow my team an advantage.
And soon there it was: Pass to goalkeeper,Run to the D,Kick fullpower and the striker will snaffle it and enter into a one-on-one with the 'keeper.
Oh mighty Barnsley's luck changed and soon we were in the playoffs.
But they just couldn't beat Cardiff and then the fucking PSP packed up.
I'm sorry lads.

Music:

There has been alot of noisy music around, hasn't there? Isn't it great? While Crystal Stilts had a few hiccups at their recent gig, Wavves rocked it hard not so long ago and of course the blogs are all in a frenzy over 'noise' bands and retro-shoegaze bands and so on.
One of the standouts from this gaggle (or should that be gaggggggle?) is LA's Dum Dum Girls, which is one librarian called Dee Dee. Here's a lowest of the lo-fi example of her tuneage.

Hey Sis - Dum Dum Girls

You also may have heard the one-man band Blank Dogs being namechecked by many of these noisy acts like Crystal Stilts or Vivian Girls. Blank Dogs are/is certainly not for everyone so here is a decent example of what to expect.

Blank Dogs - Ants

Blank Dogs - Three Window Room

Other:

Want a laugh? Follow outrageously pretentious friend of Bono/Barry Egan, Gavin Friday on Twitter.

Also, follow porn legend Joanna Angel and get an insight to what people who get banged for a living think on a daily basis.

EDIT: How the FUCK did I get that Yahoo Media Player to work on my page?? I don't know but expect alot more music from now on. Class.

EDIT 2: Just realised linking to a pornstar's Twitter could end up skewing my 'visitor' stats. Could be as interesting as the time I used the terms 'Animal Collective Merriweather Post Pavillion' and 'rapidshare' in the same post...

Twatter

Ever sent a text to a mate and thought to yourself:
'Man, I wish I had sent that to everyone so they could laugh at how fucking funny I am'?
Well, that's what Twitter has the potential to be. Whether it fulfils that potential or not is another issue altogther.
Follow me, my children.

Telepathe: The drug of the nation

Wavves gig was great last night, although it made me wish I was 10 years younger and had a fringe/mullet.
Will have a review up on The 'D soon but, for the moment, those beautiful Brooklynite synth sirens, Telepathe, have kindly returned my Q & A so go check that out

EDIT: Wavves live review from Whelans

Icy you

In an ideal world, this is how I would traverse the ice

There's usually nothing quite as embarrassing as slipping on an icy path and landing on your arse.
On the way to the shop, I did just that the other day and my ever-sympathetic other half proceeded to cry, nay deteriorate into a blob of teary goo, laughing at me as I did the whole 'I am slipping...oh I think I have rescued myself from it...uh oh I'm slipping more...splat. Ow my arsebone' thing.
But it doesn't end yet and in I went to the local Tesco to get some crap.
The still-laughing ladyfriend waited outside with the dog, whose usual habit is to hold off until at least three or four people are exiting, his cue to defecate with gleeful abandon under the blinding fluorescent lights, watched by the smiling security guard, right at the entrance.
The smiling security guard becomes the 'for fuck saking' security guard.
Anyway, once out of the queue, I realised that all was not yet right.
Through the window, chortling-hysterically lady had been watching me in the queue with a little girl standing behind me staring intently at my arse.
Pervy, eh?
Nope.
She had looked bemused, disgusted, amused and disgusted again, I have been reliably informed. The reason, it turns out, was that my fall had not just almost shattered my spine from the arsebone up, it had left a sizeable wedge of dogshit pressed firmly into my jeans. Delicious.
See you at Wavves tomorrow.

What's not to love?

`

Also, check out this groovy piece on Gang Gang Dance over on Plan B

Tallaghtfornia can be beautiful too...

Some young 'un has scrawled 'Asshole' into that menu board in a moment of simplistic, improvised brilliance.


The bus never came for this poor soul. He constructed a snowball and fucked it at a car moments later



A tree. Just that.

Bradjamin Boreton

'Hi, I'm Tom Jism, a former banker. This is my version of a bailout. I'm going to bail my brains out of my head. I watched Benjamin Button too and that certainly couldn't convince me not to liberate my afore-mentioned brains from their skullish prison. Ciao.'

Maybe that is too laborious a title for this post about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button but anyway.
As you probably already know the film is based, albeit very loosely, around a story by F.Scott Fitzgerald (he of The Great Gatsby fame) and involves the tale of a child who is born into an old man's body and ages backwards, eventually becoming a senile man in an infant's body.
David Fincher (director of several works of sheer, unbridled genius not least amongst them being Zodiac)is behind the camera here and it has been said - somewhat cynically and yet plausibly - that this is his bid for an Oscar.
Brad Pitt, a frustratingly talented actor who can be as good as he is bland, plays the eponymous Button and how he got an Oscar nod is beyond me.
This is easily the most 'nothing' film I have seen in ages.
Of course it looks gorgeous, dreamy, hazy, and it is awash with that almost tangible sepia hue of the fantastic Lemony Snicket film. But nothing happens. Less than nothing.
Once the novelty of the special effects wears off, you are left with a rubbish love story that spans an entire life, between Cate Blanchett's character, Daisy - a moody, drawling dancer who manages to make Blanchett look bad - and Benjamin the Dullard.
That's right: this film put me off Cate Blanchett.
Confound you, Ben Button.
At any rate, what follows after laughing at the special effects for the first 20 minutes (Brad's head on an old midget's body - hilarious) is a series of elongated scenes where Benjamin stares blankly at people, speaking in a sloowwww accenttttt thattttt drrrrraggs everythinnnnggg outttt and doing bugger all.
At one stage Daisy and Benjamin meet when they are roughly the same age and...blah blah blah, who really cares.
This is stupifyingly dull.
What is the point of it? And it got how many Oscar noms? Actually, that shouldn't surprise me given the Academy's track record. Christ.
I have to stress that this is not a film with enough conviction to actively hate it, it's just a perplexing oddity, a whimsical glass of water, a cinematic 'nowt'.
There is nothing here that is nearly as profound as it thinks it is and the Forrest Gump comparisons are extremely apt. Don't bother with it. If someone does a rap version of the whole film in six minutes on youtube, a la that Predator rap from ages ago, then watch that.