Stuff On The Interweb

There's been heaps of good stuff over at blog to the oldskool including this mini mix from junglistz Foul Play and this 20 minute documentary on Gabber. This is quite bizarre and a little bit scary. It's a portal into a very specific time and place. Check out some of the most mental dancing from the 90s! It's funny now how tame and normal a lot of gabba now sounds. I'm in the 90s now.

Here's an excellent interview with Julian House the dude from the GhostBox label and man behind The Focus Group over at The Quietus. Here's an old bit on Julian from 2006 at K-Punk. Over at bandcamp there is a 19 minute track from The Children Of Alice, a trio made up of House and 2 members of Broadcast, called The Harbinger Of Spring which is well worth your 3 quid!

I only just discovered this Moon Wiring Club Mix Midnight In Europe over at NightVision here which is a bit different than MWCs usual mixes. This mix is of 90s ambient post rave electronica and includes Woob, Baby Ford, LFO, Biosphere, Luke Slater and many more. I'm in the 90s now in a chill-out room. Do they still have those?

Broadcast

Broadcast In Shindig Magazine Shock

On a rare pop in to a newsagent I checked out the music magazines like I used to when I was a teenager (I thought this would pass eventually but er...no). Pink Floyd were on the cover of Mojo again, some other old cats on the cover of Uncut and I think it was Led Zeppelin on the cover of Rolling Stone. I didn't bother flicking through any of those. Even Wolf Eyes on the cover of The Wire struck me as a bit retro. Then I glanced over and saw Broadcast on a magazine cover. I thought 'great there must someone finally giving The Wire a bit of competition.' But no they were fronting the cover of would you beleive Shindig. Shindig caught my eye about 5 or 6 years ago. I thought it was like a cross between Mojo and Ugly Things. I thought that perhaps they were now going down the path that I thought Mojo might have taken by now after they'd surely run out of stories (Mojo that is) on The Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, The Who, Eric Clapton, Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, Bowie, Sex Pistols, The Smiths, Nirvana etc. etc. Sadly this was not to be. I thought by now Mojo would perhaps be havin Black Widow, Heldon, Simply Saucer, The Electric Eels, Cabaret Voltaire, The Homosexuals, The Minutemen, The Cocteau Twins, LFO or even Omni Trio on the cover. Hey that's not gonna sell large quantities is it?

'Cor blimeyI can't believe we us haven't been on the cover of Mojo!'
The Homosexuals

Anyway I once bought a copy of Shindig with articles on The Pink Fairies, Dennis Wilson, Mad River, Love and The West Coast Experimental Band adorning the cover. I dug it. Sure they didn't have the name writters of Uncut, Mojo etc. but they had enthusiasts/lovers of music, not paycheck journos.

So it was a surprise to see Broadcast there on the cover. Is this Shindig broadening its horizons and entering a new bold age? They always have current music reviews but usually of the most retro groups. Lee Gamble or Raime aren't gettin a review here. Of course Broadcast do have that Retro-Futurism thing going on but at the same time they always struck me as a very modern band. I must say it was slightly haunting (no pun intended) seeing Trish Keenan on the News stands, God rest her soul. Contained within this latest issue of Shindig are ye olde types such as Sweet, Donovan, Mike Herron and Gene Clark but there's even an article on the Ghost Box label. Sure it's ten years or so after their inception but that's nowhere near the 40+ years since Donovan did records. Hopefully this isn't just a one off flirtation with modern music. Maybe Ekoplekz will be on next months cover! Here's hoping.

Sun Araw/The Congos/Sherlock Holmes/Girls

Sun Araw and The Congos create a new zone somewhere between Roots Reggae and Hynagogia.
Stoned? Us?

Not much to talk about musically really. I just looked over my top 20 of 2012 and noticed I left out the  Sun Araw, M Geddes Gengras Meet The Congos LP which is brilliant. And I only just, a week or 2 ago, got the 2nd Hacker Farm LP. I'm loving that and it's a huge leap from Poundland. I would describe it as Isolationist (in the best sense of the term) ambiance and dare I say the word, Industrial, anyway it's post all that, but post seems to be a bad word at the moment so I won't say that. The new Broadcast LP is the only other thing I've been listening to. A faux Giallo soundtrack that pays homage to Goblin and other Italian masters.

I've caught up on some tv though. Sherlock Holmes the BBC series featuring Benedict Cumberbatch & Martin Freeman is one I have watched. Thinking, well I didn't really like the Hollywood films of recent times but I'll give it a go, because Caitlin Moran rates it. I was immediately transfixed by the whole thing. The best BBC drama in a very long time. The plots are incredible and the acting, well fuck me!, where did this Benedict Cumberbatch come from? He's an incredibly charismatic actor with star written all over him. How does he do that unblinking thing? I've spent some of my life amongst people with Aspergers Syndrome and I could not come up with a more real version of the syndrome. At one point during the show Dr. Watson  claims Sherlock as Aspergers. This I find refreshing considering how many seasons has it been for Big Bang Theory? Where one of the main characters, Sheldon, quite obviously has Aspergers  and no one has muttered the word Autism or Aspergers as far as I know! But they are quite willing to make fun of his condition. Anyway what a surprise and I can't wait for the next season which is going to be at least a 12 month wait.

The next one was Girls. I was not expecting to relate whatsoever  to a show about 20 something girls in New York, but somehow it drew me in! I thought this may be an interesting show but did not expect to relate to it in any terms. I thought the era, ie now, would alienate me. Being married for the last 5 years etc. would exclude me but fuck this show just reminded me and the Mrs of our early 20s. Lena Dunham has captured in minute detail the confusion, bewilderment, narcissistic wrongness, the obsession with sex, and the whatever else is happening in your 20s perfectly. Timeless, brilliant and so close to the bone sometimes it makes you want to look away. Lena puts in all the bits, awkwardness, selfishness and embarrassment, that others would leave out. One of the most honest accounts of awful 20 something behaviour I've ever seen.

Energy Flash/Hauntology

Here is a quote from page 164 of Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave & Dance Culture written by Simon Reynolds and originally published in 1998 but this is a 2012 edition.

'Imagine the theme music for a 50s Government film about Britain's new garden cities: serene, symmetrical, euphonious, evoking the socially engineered for a post war New Order.'

Here Mr Reynolds was referring to some of the music that Aphex Twin was making early in his career. I wonder if Boards Of Canada were reading this but didn't they already exist? or if the GhostBox crew were taking notes because it sounds like Simon Reynolds invented Hauntology 6 or 7 years ahead of its time, well the theory and subtext to it anyway. When I first heard BOC I thought shite they remind me a little of Seefeel & Aphex Twin, which to me was in no way a bad thing! I wonder if Simon is aware of this portentous quoted passage or realises his complicity in the entire idea/genre? I know he is a big fan of the whole thing and has scribbled many words on the topic via his blog and in an article for The Wire magazine many moons ago.