8/6/09

I should probably find out more about chairlift - I've not been keeping up so much these days, but that's a pretty cool song.



kicking myself for missing that.

---- MORE FUCKING LEGENDS COME TO DUBLIN;
George Clinton - Dublin date.
GEORGE CLINTON & PARLIAMENT/FUNKADELIC

Friday July 31st

Tripod – Harcourt St – Dublin 2.
Doors – 7:30pm

Tickets €30/37.50

---- really interesting article for uber geeks; http://thequietus.com/articles/01793-the-science-of-sound-thomas-dolby-versus-the-quietus

---- BIG BIG BIG NEWS;
http://thosegeese.wordpress.com/2009/06/08/we-jam-econo/

Lets face it, Irish people are not very supportive. Our best talents have to either emigrate or work in 6/7 different bands while holding down a day job if they want to keep playing/writing/studying/whatever .... So the recent trends with places like the hideaway house and the box social and the joinery have been great. But this on a whole new level. An all ages not for profit venue is something that we have never had before and hopefully a genuine culture of support and ambition can develop out of this.

----

The Reacharound 5/5/

Still in love with Bat For Lashes.

--- Dan Deacon plays Ireland in june - I wanted to post some photos of a recent gig to get across to some people what they should expect from a Deacon show.

http://www.culturebully.com/dan-deacon-triple-rock-social-club-05-02-2009

The review given of Bromst over at P4K was surprisingly good. It picked up on a strand thats been running throughout Deacon's discography - the idea of community. I think that its really strange that a more 'band' album, like Bromst, sounds far more insular than any of the predecessors. I was talking with Stephan from Halfset, in a failed interview, last year about this progression from introspective to more extrospective (??) music, and its a really strange subject. Halfset did it a more haphazard way by inviting in more collaborators and I spose in a much more overt wayby inviting a/v artists to interpret songs. But Deacon's sense of community extends from a showmanship, and a particular philosophy - yet with Bromst there was a tendency to put the music too firmly set in a reactive mood, by which i mean reactive to this central idea of what Deacon is, as laid out by blogs and critics and the like. Bromst is great but it's too similar in styles to Superman of the Rings for it not to make me wonder about the validity of this 'new' approach.

--- From the funnier side of indie - http://pitchfork.com/news/35244-wayne-coyne-apologizes-to-arcade-fire/

--- Todays work time playlist has involved alot of those fourtet/burial tunes. As I watch You From Afar, The Juan Maclean and some good ole The National. ohh and a lot of burial.



--- The Juan Maclean were a band that I've been seeing in a lot of 'what I'm Listening to now' posts/enbeds but not a lot has been written about them- apart from a pretty good lil review over at the Quietus. The music, and I hate having to boil down a band into cliche's but this one works - is what would come of LCD Soundsystem and The Human League having a love child. Comparisons being made to Hercules and Love Affair are purile. HLA got the DFA sound and went for a look at disco, and pulled it off in a really good way - mainly because you an't exactly claim that there was anything particularly time-specific or culturally neccesary about disco, it can be transposed into any time period - it might sound naff it might not depending on the level of cool that the band trying to pull it off have. The Juan MacLean's game plan is similar but its basing itself firmly in the same period as disco, just on a different continent - Europe. So expect Human League sounding trade offs between the male and female lead singers with familiar enough electronics going off underneath. Its good, its not ground-breaking and if you give them a chance the music does grow on you. But here's the deal, disco was fun. The Human League were far too po-faced for their own good. And the same can be said on the HLA vs Juan Maclean front.

--- And the end here's a pretty cool song from the XX, via Nialler 9;

The xx - Crystalised from Young Turks on Vimeo.

--- Jeremy Barnes from A Hawk and Hacksaw discussing modern city-planning. The Quietus do have a lot interesting wank. http://thequietus.com/articles/01602-a-hawk-and-a-hacksaw-on-the-potential-pitfalls-of-natural-building

---

The Reacharound 1/5/9

Cannot believe I only just saw that.


--- the big news, at least for me, this week has been the news of a fourtet/burial split 7"/collaboration. Consensus is out at the moment as to what exactly this is, well apart from damned good. Information about the project has not really been made available yet. The songs being posted definitley start off with trademark fourtet or Burial sounds - depending on the song, i.e. Moth, the second track starts off spunding very Fourtet - and then seem to develop into what would be the logical progression of both these artists. The tracks are bueatiful, they add gravitas and atmosphere to the minimal techno strands that seem to be running through both, creating blissed out instrumental peices that go well beyond the basic templates added by each artist's standard sound.

All the copies being made have been prebooked (http://www.juno.co.uk/ppps/products/352434-01.htm) but you can use that page to stream the tracks.

Or simply use this;


and the second track;




--- Sunset Rubdown in dublin; http://thrillpier.blogspot.com/2009/04/sunset-rubdown-dublin-date.html

--- http://stereogum.com/archives/premature-evaluation/premature-evaluation-sonic-youth-the-eternal_067151.html

---

I'm sorry to anyone whose memories I have just ruined, but yeah thats chris cornell sounds like now. I was sitting in a pub a week or so ago and that came on. And I have told people about just how bad it is but nobody believes me, so there's the proof.

--- http://www.latfh.com/ funny.

--- Ok so I have a bone to pick with 2009. Every year the industry gets more and more claustrophobic and cooler-than-thou and it seems like in 2009 people have gone from desperate beginning of year searches for the new really great thing and just went for a load of random and occasionall truely shit bands. Wavves, Vivian Girls but by far and away the worst culprit was gaslight anthem. Wavves and Vivian Girls y'know at least they have the honesty to sound like they put more effort into their hair than their music. Gaslight Anthem is over produced faff claiming to be something more than any old random shit band you'd see slotted in between other blaring indistinct bands at your local all ages show. But at leats kids grow up and get tired off writing the same old thing over and over again. Gaslight Anthem haven't and they are loved for it, somehow? Avoid!

--- however starfucker are another band about to get alot of hype and they can really get a good tune across. Rawnald Gregory Erickson The Second is a great track and so is this from their upcoming ep Jupiter

Beards Over Babies P.2

Reacharound 27/4

---White Denim's Workout Holiday was of my favourite albums from last year. It was sharp and messy and fun and was able to mix all that with genuinely great songs. So getting the news that they've released some new material was a great way to start my monday.
download it from http://www.nialler9.com/2009/04/26/new-white-denim-mirrored-and-reverse/.



--- Here's a nice article about new Vampire Weekend projects and things; http://stereogum.com/archives/mp3/vampire-weekenders-prepping-second-album-side-proj_066112.html

I normally hate anything that comes with all the hype that VW had attached. But their album was so completely different from the image I had in my head. They were just an average band that happened to have some really clever little hooks and could aim at just having some fun unlike say Telepathe ... or Wavves ... or insert random over-hyped under-developed project here would.




--- http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/pricewatch/2009/0427/1224245444200.html
Another article about the state of the industry which got on my tits a bit. So here's two quick points to read into any fear-mongering articles;

1) 'Music' is not equatable to the music industry. They are two distinct phenomena. THe death of the industry does not mean the death of music. This seems painfully obvious considering there has only been an industry since my most tepid of revolutions - the invention of rock - when a load of white guys got together stole black music and sang revolutionary songs about having a house party and maybe getting to dance with some girl. Think about which decades produced the most art, philosophy and music - you're looking at the 20's the 60's and now. Moments of creative impulses created by social trends and - at the moment - free music. Which lets people have access to a far rounded set of influences and very cheap means of recording. Anyone equating the industry with the music in this way is placing a bias and then spouting misery.

2) This is not the death of the industry. This is the industry actually seeing whats really happening cause oh my god their billions seem to have stopped getting bigger recently. We were ripped off through-out the nineties by the c.d. and the decision to introduce the c.d. in the first place has come back to bite them in the ass. This is the industry correcting itself.


--- Mick Weaver was a session player back in the 50s and 60s. Far as I can tell he mainly playeda hammond. Why do we care? Because I recently found this track and its deadly and I've been trying to hunt down more stuff by his group Wynder K. Frog.


And just for kicks, I found this video when looking for the above Vampire Weekend video. THese guys are deadly. Their version of Grizzly Bear's The Knife is amazing.
bye

the reacharound (23/4)

Final Fantasy play dublin at the ned of next month. The list of gigs that I've been this escited over are very few - I think its pretty much just Tom Waits last year and Radiohead in the olypmia before Hail to the Thief was released. I've never really been that blown away by his albums but some songs are brilliant and everything i've seen/heard from his live shows has been phenomonal.

also he said this to p/fork "Overall, Billy Corgan is pretty entertaining. He's Gob Bluth, but real life!" brilliant!

--- Speaking of gigs I is escited about;


--- King Khan has been getting a lot of play time in the office. Was going through a fairly serious garage rock buzz for a while (currently starting a northern soul buzz - the things we do to make the day seem less dull ....) Anyway this is his new video. Check him out;



--- Speaking of buzzes I've been on. I decided that even though I'm never going to read Harry Potter I fucking love the films. Perfect hungover morning films. Here's the first clips from the upcoming film.


--- http://www.state.ie/blog/ladyhawke-to-play-arnotts/

--- http://thequietus.com/articles/01524-sonic-youth-s-new-album-the-eternal-reviewed-track-by-track

--- http://www.nialler9.com/2009/04/22/mp3-super-extra-bonus-party-feat-cadence-weapon-radar/

Super Extra Bonus Party - Super Extra Bonus Party - 'Favourite Things' on MUZU.

yup.
Abe Vigoda's album Skeleton from last year was pretty great. There were moments where the band's energy and musicianship worked completely against each other and showed moments of what seemed like a song falling apart under the wieght or its own potential and then with a simple rim-shot or holler bam and we're straight back in again. Alots been said of their new sound and my lack of an ability to find the ep has been pissing me off for months now. But yeah on the strenght of this I will have to redouble my efforts - even if what I found essciting about the band now seems to be gone.



- Probably more important news - but I didn't like the look of the last post, what with their being no visuals or nothing just my random harping on about crap ..... anyway Pirate Bay news;
Regarding Friday

On friday we will get the verdict in the ongoing trial. It will not be the final decision, only the first before the losing party will appeal. It will have no real effect on anything besides setting the tone for the debate, so we hope we win of course.

Since a lot of people and press are really interested in the outcome of this part of the spectrial, we've decided to hold a small press conference on friday at 13.00 swedish time (GMT+1 / CET). It will be held on Bambuser, no-one is invited physically to participate, only digitally.

The URL for the Bambuser-stream will be posted on the front page of the site on friday some minutes before 13. If you're from the press or just interested in hearing our thoughts about the outcome, you are welcome to join the stream and chat.
It does sound ominous. I'll be trying to write up a large peice about this to set the tone/scene for friday.


- And so as all the irish festival going public sit around waiting for tonights electric picnic line-up ATP (i.e. a way better festival) are already making the first annoucements for their Nightmare Before Christmas show
http://www.atpfestival.com/NewsView/0904151031.php

and before you go scratching your heads about the Horrors inclusion read this; http://www.nialler9.com/2009/04/14/newsflash-the-horrors-are-good-shocker/



--
- Flynn