February 2012
20 posts
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I-Dentity
I wrote this a while back and promptly forgot to publish it. Gah!
“When we talk about the imponderables of life, we don’t really mean that we can’t ponder them. We mean that we can’t stop. Hence the conversation: a Sargasso of monologues that were all attracted to the noise. Some of the voices are talking murder while thinking it to be medicine. Others, the blessed ones, are talking reason....
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“Frank Sinatra was dignified. We don’t have a Frank Sinatra, or a Patti...”
– Jack White, Observer Music Monthly, 2004.
Jack White to appear on Saturday Night Live, hosted by Lindsay Lohan, March 3rd 2012
The sight and sound of your hero crumbling into pure, powdered, personal disappointment.
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Convex Mancave - WHAT THEY COULDN'T PRINT
Not really. But we did get interviewed by the massively great Fluid Radio a few weeks ago, and by necessity a lot of my drivel was cut out. Here’s the full text from my contribution, if any of you could possibly care.
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What I really love about this project is how much of a marked contrast it is to anything else I’m involved in. Greyhound...
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WatchThe new single, Badger, from Hiva Oa - it’s so good that it’s actually a bit embarrassing.
Saturday night looms.
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TONIGHT!!!!!
Matt plays the opening night of the Glasgow Short Film Festival, with an all-star backing troupe of Lorcan from Meursault and some annoying blogger.
Come come come.
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Jonathan Meades on France
This man has pretty much become my hero over the last few years, and last weeks’ episode, ‘A Biased Anthology of Parisian Peripheries’, is pretty much as good as anything he’s ever done.
“People are defined by the religious, ethnic or linguistic group they are born into. Identity is determined by community, rather than by the individual. Cultural diversity inhibits...
January 2012
31 posts
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Fluid Radio - Convex Mancave... A Closer Study
We’ve been interviewed on the stellar Fluid Radio. I still can’t quite believe it.
“Before it is anything, music is the transmission of a signal. A spectrum comes into view, with no signal on one end, and random, rhythmless bits of indecipherable signal on the other. Dead silence and harsh, white noise. John Cage has already determined our limits in respect to the silence:...
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Jack White - Love Interruption - A non-verbose...
Mediocre.
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Lana Del Rey - Born To Die
This thing frustrates me very much.
The Video Games / Blue Jeans single made a virtue of its brevity, a textbook summary of how to write a properly good, considered pop song. The album should have followed suit and confused everyone by being a concise collection of candidates for the chart; no filler, a Robyn EP rather than one of Girls Aloud or Sugababes’s surprisingly turgid...
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FatMatt
Matt’s on the FatCat Demo Player. Rejoice!
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Off! Festival 2012
Bought tickets to this.
Well, of course I have. I wasn’t quite prepared for Suicide the last time. This time I want to live completely of and in the moment, not sit, bereft of fitting words, reacting to their hellfire with bewildered noises.
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Glasgow Short Film Festival
Well, this will be a bit good.
Matthew Collings is performing the soundtrack to Hákon Pálsson’s short film Guilt at the opening party of the Glasgow Short Film Festival. His meticulously selected backing musicians are Lorcan from the amazing Meursault, and yours truly.
All information is here, plus a link to buy tickets at a mere £4. I can’t wait.
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Close
Comes Love Drink Sunlight // Fuck Starlight A Life of Nothing Foot It Wasn’t Spelt The M-B-V Way, Though… International Dateline This Little Light of Mine Jump Over And Join The Party! Miss Andrist Happy Endings Do Not Exist Arkhangelsk
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Convex Mancave And The Ethereal Radio
Hugely tolerant review of Convex Mancave by the kind folks over at Ghost FM -
“A cosmo-centric doctrine of the world around us.”
Read it all here.
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Tracks of 2011
…and, with this, I promise that’s the end of the lists. There won’t even be a rundown of the bands that have been permanently ruined for me by shambolic live performances in 2011. No sir. Not Pulp, Santigold, M.I.A., Asobi Seksu and Tom Vek. Nope.
In no particular order…
Apparatjik - Do It Myself (Draft 1)
So then, the new Apparatjik album is being de facto mixed...
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Top 10 Albums of 2011 - 0, and some that didn't...
Here’s a self-indulgant recap of my top 10 for 2011.
10 - Talvihorros - Descent Into Delta 9 - Ringo Deathstarr - Colour Trip 8 - Conquering Animal Sound - Kammerspiel 7 - The Raveonettes - Raven In The Grave 6 - Epic45 - Weathering 5 - I Break Horses - Hearts 4 - Chris Tenz - Frozen Arms 3 - The Victorian English Gentlemens Club - Bag of Meat 2 - Rob St. John - Weald 1 - Esben And The...
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Trailer Trash Tracys - Candy Girl
I always loved...
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Top 10 Albums of 2011 - 1
1 - Esben And The Witch - Violet Cries
I will hunt the one that burns out the beacon There’s nothing else for us to do here. But cut the sun from its mooring; We will cut the sun from its moorings. Our hands blister as we hold them in the light streams.
So, last year it was These New Puritans’ masterpiece Hidden. This year it’s something a lot more eerie, from a polar...
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Top 10 Albums of 2011 - 2
2 - Rob St. John - Weald
I am no slow burner - but I am no fast runner.
I waited three and a half years for this.
Weald is a product of a personal evolution, from velvety, creaking acoustic frailties to an older and wiser musician binding together a whole pile of previously undisclosed and increasingly noisy influences. You used to be able to call Rob a folk guitarist and get away with it; no...
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Convex Mancave and the Strange Case Of The Good...
More nice things written about Convex Mancave. Nyawww.
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Top 10 Albums of 2011 - 3
3 - The Victorian English Gentlemens Club - Bag of Meat
Are you interested in a card trick with a chimp?
If the Raveonettes are becoming a treasure through steadily altering and honing their focus, then the Victorian English Gents Club are surely royalty by now. This is their third album, and probably their best, although frankly it’s hard to say exactly - at each turn they veer wildly...
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