Ekoplekz and Hacker Farm live on Resonance FM

Bottom row, extreme left - Farmer Glitch, second from left - Ekolad, extreme right - Loki, second from right - 2ndFade; middle row, second from right - Kek-W, extreme left - Bob; top row, extreme left - Time Attendant, second from left - John Eden, third from right - Mugwump, extreme right - Cybore. We don't know who the other guys were, or why they turned up in near-identical outfits. Embarrassing.

...


...great live show, Ekoplekz almost early-Aphex Hard, Hacker Farm more ambient than I've seen them before (though ambient like an acid rush, ambient like an accidental theramin, ambient like the beats have gone round the back to meet the children of the night...)

.... whooosh; fizz ... thudddddd ... flick flick ... crackle crackle crack-le... fizzzzzzzzzz ...

scatter scatter scatter drummmmmm ... scatter scatter scatter drummmmmmm ...

Pics, audio, etc here...

Johnny Mugwump was a brilliant host; putting up with the liggers and the hangers-on (i.e. me) and generally being gutsuckingly charming... lovely to meet you Johnny!

....

...and on that note, wonderful to see John Eden and Woebot / Hollow Earth / Cybore / in the flesh too... (cheers for the drink, Matt)... John especially I've had a lot of dealings with over the years. I say dealings, I mean mostly just envy-ridden seethings over the gigs he got to see in the 80s / 90s which me and my Yeovil mates were often trying to get to as well, only somehow getting derailed by falling car doors, exotic illness, bad tidings, fleshfalls, cold readings and non-specific Chaos Magick (in roughly that order - I'm serious: a car door falling off on the motorway stopped us getting to two different gigs)

...

and, almost forgot that the equally charming Bob from West Norwood Cassette Library was also in attendance... as was Time Attendant, who jammed along with the West Country boys in their final flings... Monotron a go go...

... truly a great Blogger meeting of minds... though by then mine was a little, er, aft via Red Wine and Gin and Mojitos

... still, didn't bite anyone...

Brazil are Germany are Us aren't Brazil

I imagine Mark will do this better over at Minus The Shooting (actually, I've just checked and he has; bugger that boy's quick - could use him in the England Back Four etc).

The Brazil are Germany are Us aren't Brazil.

Watching Brazil's typical, topical, bullying demolition of Chile was like watching the Germany of old, stirring the same feelings of admiration / apathetic loathing, though the commentators insisted throughout that each and every example of Brazil brutalism and efficiency (not a bad thing at all, really) was somehow an exception to the rule; that despite what we were seeing (i.e. an incredibly organised and tight and hard working unit) they were actually playing Samba style sexiness like they always have (or like they used to up until, say, 1982).

(cf; I know it looks like we're letting the bankers get their bonuses despite it all being they're fault but really it's for the good of everyone...)

It was like watching Liverpool in the 80s. Very organised. Very quick. Very efficient. They had skillful players but even they knew when to put their foot through the ball. Contrast the England of this World Cup, playing at being possession footballers, not playing at being Premiership footballers.

Both Brazil and Germany are playing a version of our game. Way way better.

Brazil are the best team at this World Cup and it's because they were the most organised. Some of them are technically gifted, yes, but it's the organisation that's destroying teams. Importantly, they seem to know what they're doing and are making the most of what they have (and shedding what they are not - Ronaldinho, take a bow).

Brazil are Germany as they used to be. You wonder how come you hadn't heard much about the German players until the World Cup (until every World Cup)? Because organisation doesn't have star potential. Because pace and power and a game plan isn't easy to stick on a DVD best of. It isn't what people want. People want triumph despite the lack of organisation. That's sexy football. That's what that Brazil team of 1982 almost pulled off. That's the Grail.



Socrates: 'True opinion is as good a guide as knowledge for the purpose of acting rightly'?

But they didn't pull it off. And the Brazil team of now are an indication of what can happen after the crushing disappointment of the Golden Generation; you can start all over again, from the beginning, from the back.

The goals given away by Brazil 82 against Italy in that match were the equal of the silly, sucker-punches that England gave away against Germany on Sunday. England didn't have the players to rally - and neither did Brazil. Even the Golden Generation couldn't muster enough skill to win despite no organisation.

Brazil learned from this. England will have to. Play to a pattern, not to players.

Now, anyone out there have a pattern?

Gary Glitter Memorial Society

I'm looking through Gary Glit-ter's eyes, looking through Gary Glit-ter's eyes....

Meat Loafing

Mucking about for the first time in years on Dissensus and came across this:



Which made me smile.

Can't remember Dissensus ever making me smile before.

Times, they are a changin'.

RHOd(amn)esia - a review of Kempernorton's latest without hearing it

Rho - a value of 100; Moment, Um (Ohn?) or: the endtime for RNA synthesis and
((((Road)))
Rhode(s)- and associated Colossus; Helios archetypes... Sunburned Hands of God
Damn - the exclusion from Heaven or the separation from the GODhead; the Rhett row...
Amnesia - Fugue in E (Morris Dancer) Minor - a cow's eye looking at the pathway to the Tannery at Pittards; yellow elbowed men from the sticks, eyes burned by chemical vapour...

Kempernorton's road roaming, in music... ripping the wheel from the Motorik: Kraftwerk's Autobahn, Neubaten's Onomatopeic Nnnaaammm, various Highways to Hell...

British Roads mostly resolutely not motorik, not beat-driven but altogether slow and crumbly and ambient... glitches abound, mis-steps, fumbles, false starts - Elvis's Are You Lonesome Tonight dissolving into man-giggles and choking makes much more sense as a soundtrack to West Country roads....

Kempernorton is keeping with his Sus-Sex theme but he's a W/C lad at heart, can't not be...

So...

Comus perhaps... the stop/start, the possibility of burning Christians in the fields... Comus the band and the deity.... The Wicker Man outside Bridgwater, Junction 23, sunk in a trench to avoid the

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

of local Bridgey boys, confused and aroused at a bare wicker bottom...



... the Westonzoyland Road.... past the old abandoned airstrip, now full of kids learning to drive in clapped out taxi cabs .... a territory mapped out in another life by JG Ballard... Psychogeographers in the surrounding woods, digging out trenches, hiding in Hides, watching the anthropology unfold...

The 303... the squiggle and the sound of deer hitting your windpipes... the related sound of the car behind licking it's lips...

80s style burst johnnies..... Nnnaaammm

Roadtrip to Sutton Bingham.... The Spice must flow...

Cows burning in the fields during the Foot in The Mouth days / daze... Punch drunbk farmers wandering the fields.... walking like the Scarecrows in Dr Who... the traffic slowing down to watch and then catching the barb-e-cue smell...

More.

Hallam Foe / 2 Days In Paris

Finally got round to seeing this on DVD and I guess Hallam Foe is exactly like you probably imagine it will be, if you've seen any trailers or interviews or read anything about it. Not bad but not something I can be bothered to write about. Mice hat, which reminded me on an old Yeovil saying 'Badgers never let go'.

A few tracks from the soundtrack here



2 Days in Paris on the other hand was tremendously unsettling since it seemed to be an only slightly skewed transposition of conversations I've just had onto the screen in a film which lopes around like it's been made by Woody Allen's younger cousin. I can't honestly tell you if this film was good or bad (and why would you care?) but it made us giggle like drains, even if I'm guessing that for almost everyone else on the planet it could be a little annoying.

Like my own life, this definitely would be improved by some zombies and cheerleaders.

Juno

I'm normally a kind of miserable person to go to the cinema with. I've probably seen about ten films where I haven't been distracted / depressed by some flaw or absence or gentle intrusion. Normally, I come out and say things like: "It was really good until..." or "If only they'd not bottled the ending..." or "Maybe if they'd added some zombies or cheerleaders...". But I went to see Juno and I have to say it's more or less perfect. Every character is likeable and more or less believable, every performance a little lesson in how to kook-out without turning into an emetic. It's what I want to think all Americans are like.

It's exactly the kind of thing I like in music and film; something that gets so close to utterly rubbish that you can almost feel the tension between the characters - one false move, one missed cue and this is the kind of thing that might make me queasy, in the same way that Orbital sometimes got so close to Jean Michel Jarre it could be frightening listening to an album for the first time. Even the soundtrack works with the characters rather than against them - it's fey as hell but it fits perfectly with the gentle rolls of the film, bouncing along with Juno in neat little quantum Converse jumps.

It's never annoying, even when I wanted it to be. It ends like you'd want it to end, not like other people think you'd want it to end and it deals with the potentially tricky problem of teenage pregnancy with a delicacy and charm that gives another perspective entirely on a woman's right to choose. I'm not even sure if it'd be improved by extra zombies and cheerleaders.

The Moldy Peaches - Anyone Else But You

Ribcage

I've always been annoyed that more artists don't try to be good once they get fame and fortune, as if the lure of commercialism contaminates them to the extent that their memory fails, refuses to let them return to a time when they were genuinely entranced by the possibilities of music, of experimentalism, of pushing boundaries (though personally I've always preferred it when boundaries are shifted just a little sideways). I guess Radiohead had a good go - though they still gave off a whiff of trying too hard to be hard, of relying too much on fans buying things regardless. And then there's all the contract-breakers, like Metal Machine Music (I know the jury's still out on that one but I'm coming down on the side of those who think Lou couldn't resist a final, petulant gesture - like that footballer who said he was going to score an own goal during some tricky contract negotiations). Same probably goes for Neil Young, who may well have lost a Neil Young look-a-like competition around the time of Trans and maybe even Aphex Twin, who clearly got colder feet than most after the first album.

But, anyway, it's always annoyed me that bands never really opened up after they'd got their success - The Shamen got to hit the pop charts and then sort of died a slow, merepop death (okay, there was the Terence McKenna track that might have messed with a few minds and I guess the Hempton Manor album but that just seemed like they'd run out of ideas). Seems to me there are worlds of opportunity missed out there:

Westlife's recreation of classic Routes From The Jungle breakbeat vibe - if their producers can make them that smooth, they can make them clanky and brittle and exhuasting.

Girls Aloud covers album - you remember this, right? I still think they should do a whole album of The The covers even though I'm off medication now...

Rachel Stevens fronting Neubauten - she's be sexier than Lydia Lunch and her soft, robotic personality would suit the boys well, I think.

David Bowie - actually, don't try anything David, you can be the excception; you have children now and it's always kinda embarassing for everyone.

Cascada offering up a Shackleton remix album (not so unlikely since legend has it that the guy behind Burial is also the guy behind Cascada who's also the guy behind most of the Belgian New Beat records of the late 80s/ early 90s)

Newton Faulkner releasing a minimal tech-house album on 4 one-sided heavyweight 12"s in a black velvet case with an octopus eating fried eggs embossed on it.

And why didn't Robbie Williams just release an album of instrumental doom-sludge-Earth-y metal?

Which brings me to todays track:

Dubfire - Ribcage

This guy used to be in the ultra-popular Deep Dish (and probably still is) but in his solo guise he's pushing different buttons and this is pleasantly rumbling, broken, machine-funk reminiscent of other, more 'arty' and credible minimalist producers and not unlike the Neubauten / Lydia Lunch track Thirsty Animal alluded to above. Okay, maybe a stretch too far but the bass sounds like I imagined the bass would sound before I'd heard the Neubauten track and heard it was a ribcage being pummelled. I'd be surprised if there was no link between the two tracks, even one that was largely unconscious.

The name - Dubfire - is a little crap but credit should be given for returning; wonder who else'll give it a go?

Notes on The Animal War

Based on a once recurring dream I had that has now re-recurred:

Notes on The Animal War.
Chapter 2: A bender in the making.

It didn't take long for the cats to work out thermonuclear weapons. It was guessed that way: Professor Cranberry, of the Bio-labs, set the idea down way back in the 70s.

'Y'see, there's something peculiar about the feline neurology. Something seems to be missing here. From the records. The computer's creaking, of course, but that doesn't cover all the blips. The records have been altered, I'm sure of it, and the only things I can think who would possibly have anything to gain are the cats themselves...'



Cranberry got called a crank and had to call it a day. The Bio-labs gave him a generous pension; told him it'd be better all round if he just turned a blind eye. He gave up on cats, went quite mad.

They Louis Wained him, cut him loose, hurled abuse at him in a rain of paws and catnip calls. By the end, the fruitcakes from the Ministry of Health got him carted and then pumped full of drugs. He claimed by the end of the first round of medication he 'could hardly breathe.' Paranoia, they said (they actually said it was furballs) and dumped him in the secure unit with people who thought they were Elvis.

And later, at Cwmdonkin Park in Swansea, some small glue-sniffed boys looked up at a sign that used to say:

No Dogs Allowed

But had been altered to read:

Only Dogs Allowed

Everyone thought it better not to mention it; to blame the kids from the Valleys. No one suspected that there was a militant band of canine maniacs already plotting against the dominant species...

And here we are now, with the cats getting the edge over the rest, as Professor Cranberry had perviously suggested. Anybody who's anybody has their nose in his book 'Feline Neuropsychology and the Garage Disease' trying to figure out a plan. The cats had taken several minor cities by Sunday the 19th and Chief of Staff McGovern was quoted yesterday as saying: 'The cats themselves, led we think by James Crawley, are increasingly looking like they will eventually use either bacterial warfare - possibly anthrax - or thermonuclear technology. Either way, we have two major decisions to make: do we attempt a swift counter-attack right now or do we send more of our, let's say it, fairly pitiful negotiators to their doom. Personally, I don't see how it makes anything any better to receive lungs through the mail. These cats are disturbed, there's no doubt. We should attack without further delay.'

James Crawley was a sly tabby, known since the very early days of the Doolittling because of a live TV appearance when he swore at Bamber Gasgoine. 'Bamber, you're a fuckanine,' he said on a day time TV show. James was thought to have an IQ 'somewhere in the mid 260s' - Govt. Animal Intelligence Dept. - and was also known to have something of a bad attitude to women in particular and humans in general. James ran for Feline Parliament initially and then dropped out to work behind the scenes as something of a political agitator. Commentators at the time suggested he was 'mid way between Abbie Hoffman and Hodgkinson's disease' - The Sunday Times. Despite thorough psychoanalysis during James' brief prison sentence (for aiding and abetting the abuse of alcohol by minors), the source of James's malcontent with regard to humans was as yet unmarked, though Dr. Carny suggested that perhaps 'there was a minor complex evolved from losing his right eye in a gardening accident'. To this day, James' thoughts on gardening have remained unclear.


Cat Stevens - Peace Train

Cat Stevens - Wild World

Which is obviously partly a ridiculous / obvious failure to make a conceptual link but also included because it was used in the final scenes of Skins which is coming back soon...