December 2011
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Top 10 Albums of 2011 - 4
4 - Chris Tenz - Frozen Arms
It takes a while, but I’ll be alone.
I love a nice discovery.
Chris Tenz’s debut album represents a curious cross between Calgary and Edinburgh; written in one and released in another. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was written by Stevenson as a metaphor for Edinburgh’s duality, of architectural layers and social discord, and the best music to ever...
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Arsenal v Wolves, 27th December 2011 - A Bad, Bad...
Tactics in football are about the creation of space. It is a manger’s basic job to be able to adjust his team to try and work the opposition out of shape, responding to how they are set up to play. This should go without saying. It’s so obvious that this paragraph just looks fucking silly.
Perhaps, then, my festering old joke of a manager can explain to me why he oversaw a team today,...
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Life-Ruining Thought #43
Latest in an occasional series.
(500) Days Of Summer
A concise summary of precisely the calibre of woman you end up with when liking Morrissey is a key attribute in the selection process.
*shudder*
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Top 10 Albums of 2011 - 5
5 - I Break Horses - Hearts
So, hail to 2011 - the year of appropriated shoegaze. The scene is dead. Long celebrate the scene.
I went to Manchester in December to see I Break Horses’s second ever gig - raw as hell, they unfortunately understood live shoegaze sound like I understand relativity theory as a natural outgrowth of dynamics. Worry not, though - the source material leaves...
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Top 10 Albums of 2011 - 6
6 - Epic45 - Weathering
Wheels within wheels - circles within circles.
Every now and again, a record comes along that is so gorgeous, it almost seems a shame to pay attention.
Simon Reynolds said that Weathering was “straying into ghostified zones” in his slightly tongue-in-cheek essay on ‘hauntology’. I don’t know about popping a head round the door into the...
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Great Things This Year
- Moving into the best flat ever. - New job. - Assorted adventures to Prague, Berlin, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Bratislava, London and Aberdeen. - The debut of Pendulum Man Concerts. - Playing guitar for Matt at four performances of the limb-shakingly ace Flags Of A Dead Ship. - A staggering two An Insection EPs – A Tension Prism and Festive. - One Greyhound Out Of Mainline EP – For Jonathan...
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Top 10 Albums of 2011 - 7
7 - The Raveonettes - Raven In The Grave
The Raveonettes are becoming a treasure. It’s all appropriated shoegaze, sure. We’ve known that for years. What Sharin and Sune have mastered is exploring the different aesthetics that could be applied to a very limited sound; take a simple beat and simple chords, and amass a litany of approaches, a catalogue of method. Like Peel said of The...
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Top 10 Albums of 2011 - 8
8 - Conquering Animal Sound - Kammerspiel
It really is most odd writing about Kammerspiel as a component of 2011. These songs formed a huge part of my two years preceding this one, and so to listen to the eventual record, finally released on the saintly Gizeh Records, is more a summary than a fresh statement.
More so, CAS themselves have moved on; these songs are not, on the whole, present in...
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Apparatjik - Time Police (Greyhound Out Of...
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Tomorrow!
… sees the long-awaited release of Convex Mancave’s seminal study in aural dissonance, Big In Mogadishu.
You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You’ll scream! You must be there!
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An Insection - Festive EP
We are very proud to finally release our morose opus for 2011, the Festive EP.
This has been in the works for quite a while. I think it’s quite easily the best An Insection have sounded in the three and a half years we’ve been extant, and it features my favourite tune we’ve ever done; Committed To The Season, featuring Ed’s debut on lead vocals.
Tracklist -
1. Cosy...
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Top 10 Albums of 2011 - 9
9 - Ringo Deathstarr - Colour Trip
Oh come on. What the fuck am I supposed to say about Colour Trip? Ringo Deathstarr sound like My Bloody Valentine. Every beat, every note, every melody, every vocal delivery, is attributable to their idols. But when they are dreamers having quite this much fun, and who understand the textures and atmospheres of what they are apeing so thoroughly, you’d...
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Top 10 Albums of 2011 - 10
I absolutely cannot believe it is this time of year again. I say that with genuine joy - compared to 2010’s frenzied, disconnected shambles, this year has been stuffed with all sorts of bonkers adventures, from new job to Arsenal’s horrible failings to Prague to Portishead to dreams arriving in my city and then reconfigured versions floating through New York static. It’s had it...
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Tonight...
…despite the logistical problems presented by the Atlantic Ocean precluding the involvement of Mr Chris Tenz, sees the long-awaited return of Convex Mancave.
I for one am rather excited.
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Kyle
Kyle, talking about this very blog -
“It’s like someone has taught a 5-year old English, has given it a thesaurus and has told it to learn all the words, without knowing what they mean or the context.”
This is me and Kyle, over the course of fuck many years, just for the record, etc.
That is all.
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Miserable Christmas 2011
I recently set myself a challenge - compile a CD of Christmas tunes designed to instill melancholy, bitterness and other assorted forms of narrow-minded, lip-quivering nostalgia.
My criteria haven’t been too narrow, a result of deciding that the first priority needed to be that everything on here should actually be a great song. So, then - cover versions are fair game, and explicit...