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The Electric Company
Magnolia Electric Co. gig was great last night. After a shakey start and an extreme case of mistaken identity, the actual band appeared and rocked the house. All time chimp favourite Werewolves of London as an encore too.
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3rd Jun 2005 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
live fencing
spotted lots of new chimp faves king creosote gigs up…
3rd Jun 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Chimp News RSS
Chimpomatic is now fully updated with an RSS news feed. Click the link in your browser...
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2nd Jun 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
dylan alert
like a rolling stone out-takes on tonight's culture show, 7pm and 11.20pm, bbc2
2nd Jun 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
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Check out that 4x4!
Spotted Marty McFly revving up at the lights by Liverpool Street. Don't do it Marty! Your kids lives are depending on it.
1st Jun 2005 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
even better than the real thing
fake u2 rooftop mission here…
1st Jun 2005 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
more mara
if you're not already going to see dinosaur jr next wednesday, Mara Carlyle's supporting mark mulcahy at bush hall.
31st May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Song of the Day
6.30 Is Just Way Too Early by James Yorkston. Loving that Hammond Organ vibe.
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31st May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Song of the Day
X-Mas Curtain by My Morning Jacket. Love it.
26th May 2005 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Footie
Chimomatic may not be synonymous with football... or sport in general for that matter, but the European Cup final last night was enough to get anyone going. Liverpool came back against AC Milan from a 3-0 down at half time, to 3-2, scored a rebound on a penalty and then won on penalities after Milan scuffed 3....
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26th May 2005 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Oasis
Don't Believe The Truth
This record sounds just about what you'd expect. It isn't crap, and for all you can tell it might well be "the best thing we've done since Definitely Maybe," but it's just sounds like old news. Led Zeppelin could re-form and make "the best record since Physical Graffiti," but it probably wouldn't work. Hiring Richard Fearless to produce was maybe a good idea. Sacking him probably wasn't. Most appropriate song title - "Keeping the Dream Alive".
25th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
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Get The Fear
Fear of Music
w/ Ladyfuzz
Friday 27th May
8pm – 12.15pm
£3
The 'Legendary' Montague Arms
289 Queens Road
SE14 5JN
24th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Foo Fighters
There Is Nothing Left To Lose
I've been looking forward to the new Foo Fighters album due this summer, so thought I'd revisit this one - seeing how I never really got into it. Boy is it dull. It just never really gets going, and after the unpredictable goodness of Foo Fighters and The Colour and the Shape it's a real let down.
Learn to Fly is OK in a radio-friendly-single kind of way, and Generator is kind of post-Everlong, but generally the album is just pitched at the same solid level aaallll the waaay through. No fun. One by One was a proper return to form, so I'm still keeping fingers crossed on album 5.
23rd May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 2 star reviewsGoogle Expansion
Google's utter domination plans seem to be progressing nicely, with them now offering a customised homepage, with RSS news feeds, weather and more. Very snazzy moveable content.
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23rd May 2005 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Hamlet
(dir. Michael Almereyda)
After the death of the head of New York's Denmark Corporation, wayward son Hamlet returns to his home to find his mum shacked up with his devious uncle.
Set in modern New York, this film is a strange remake of the Mel Gibson original. Although the setting is modern, the dialogue is still in the original form, meaning it takes a good 20 minutes to settle in and actually get a hold of what's being said. You're left recalling your English O level to keep up.
Once you get into the swing of things however it's a pretty good adaption. Ethan Hawke plays a good Hamlet, and while some of the actor's seem a bit like they're reading gibberish without knowing what it means, a few really let their screen persona come through - Bill Murray and Steve Zahn in particular.
Good music, good locations, nice pixelvision.
23rd May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
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The Sum Of All Fears
(dir. Phil Alden Robinson)
A Nazi extremist gets hold of a missing Israeli nuclear bomb and tries to use it to start war between the US and Russia. Only young CIA analyst Jack Ryan can see the truth and prevent all out war.
Unfortunatly that young CIA guy is Ben Affleck, not the Harrison Ford of previous Ryan films. Affleck is surprisingly undislikable, mainly due to the fact that this is a big film with a lot of character's - rather than a typical star-focused Hollywood blockbuster.
It's a pretty intelligent and engaging film, that holds back on the usual punch up action, and focuses instead on Nuclear armageddon. It's a weird cross of pre/post 9/11 paranoia - as the bad guys in the book were Islamic terrorists, but at the time of filming (2001) it seemed implausible that they would be able top get hold of a nuclear weapon. Things had to be re-jiggled a bit in the edit however, as things had changed...
It starts to unravel slightly towards the end, but generally it's pretty entertaining. Good cinematography too.
23rd May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 3.5 star reviewszappa plays zappa
ahmet and dweezil zappa are playing an all-frank tour: "Zappa Plays Zappa - Tour De Frank"
U.K Concert Dates
31st October Wolverhampton Civic Hall
1st November Brighton Centre
2nd November London Royal Albert Hall
4th November Manchester Apollo
5th November Glasgow Clyde Auditorium
Tickets go on sale Friday June 3rd at 9am. National ticket hotline 0870 400 0688 24 hours (UK) or book online at
www.getLIVE.co.uk
23rd May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Good News / Bad News
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Malkmus in UK in September
Frusciante not in UK in June
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22nd May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Homefires
Conway Hall, London
mugison ruled as usual, pulling someone on stage to help with the projector for 2 birds, doing a rare live version of the night is limping, getting muddled after 2 hours sleep and a gig in iceland the night before… all great.
lau nau was ok, nice use of tape machines, but a bit meandering.
white magic spent the whole time looking pissed off and tuning their guitars before running through dylans' 4th time around in a fairly pointless fashion.
jesca hoop was a bit too ye olde folke for me.
hot chip were ok, but felt like they were playing everything too slow. and the singer sounds a bit like the housemartins.
really enjoyed king creosote, who had james yorkston, pictish trails and some other fence collective dude playing with him.
adem himself was great, and was probably too modest to headline the night, even though his set had the most up feel to it, with an all-star backing band featuring people from the other bands.
badly drawn boy showed off a new hat.
james yorkston finished the night, another v good set, if a little quieter to finish on maybe… he did get the crowd off their feet at the end though, with adem, kieran 4-Tet hebden, and other fence collectivees on stage with him. generally, a great day and it did feel like adem had hand-picked stuff he was into.
plus they had great sandwiches
22nd May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
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homefires
full chimp contingent enjoying adem's homefires festival yesterday…
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22nd May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
horses
nice patti smith interview chatting about meltdown, horses and hendrix…
22nd May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
mara chats
lovely Mara Carlyle is in the Guardian today, and she's live next week with The Real Tuesday Weld on the 24th May @ The Spitz in London. Her new single I Blame Dido is released on 23rd May.
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20th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
More Mugison
In case you're not going to Homefires this Saturday (or even if you are in fact), Mr. Mugison is playing another gig at Brixton's Windmill pub on Sunday 22nd.
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18th May 2005 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
ahead of the curb
dr chimp points out that curb your enthusiasm series 4 dvd is on amazon's advance order service: aug 4. no sign of it popping up on e4 yet…
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17th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
millsdotzero
there's a Mike Mills
retrospective in this year's onedotzero festival at the ica
16th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
lions v midgets
nice spot of brasseye style midget news
16th May 2005 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Copland
(dir. James Mangold)
A New Jersey sheriff tries to bring justice back to his town, which is almost entirely populated by a corrupt group of NYPD. After the wackness of Identity, I went back for a re-evaluation of Copland, and can still report it is an awesome movie. While the set up is a little contrived, that is quickly surpassed by the performances in this movie. Almost every actor in this movie puts in a great performance, from De Niro through to Janeane Garofalo. Sylvester Stallone is particulalry great, putting in a touching and sympathetic performance as the local hero left out of the loop... which only serves to remind us that he never followed this break into serious acting with anything else. It's awesome to see DeNiro and Keitel in a scene together again, with an instant history and presence to both character's. "I gave you a chance and you blew it!"
16th May 2005 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
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Basic
(dir. John McTiernan)
I had pretty low hopes for this, but the fact that John McTiernan was at the helm (Die Hard fans - you know who you are) swayed me into watching it. It actually started off pretty intriguingly, with a Agatha Christie style whodunnit set-up after drill Sergeant Samual Jackson is killed in the Panamanian jungle. As the story unfolds from different perspectives it is left to investigators John Travolta and Connie Nielsen to unravel who's telling the truth.
The bigest problem with the movie was that John Travolta was his typical over-acting-annoying self that he's been ever since Tarantino gave him the false belief that he wasn't just another David Hasselhoff. While I admit that the movie was slightly more twisty than I guessed, Travolta's manner just telegraphed from the start that there was going to be a big twist... meaning it's all no surprise.
16th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
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The Good Girl
(dir. Miguel Arteta)
A grocery clerk in a small town embarks on an affair with a delusional younger man.
This is a pretty engaging movie, with Jennifer Aniston putting in a surprisingly watchable performance. Jake Gyllenhaal from Donnie Darko is good too, but there's something slightly fishy about the whole thing. It's seems to be have been pitched as a far more indie movie than it actually is somehow...
16th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 3 star reviewsdarth bush
oh right, it's all about bush now…
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16th May 2005 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Identity
(dir. James Mangold)
Pretty tricky mystery/thriller/horror from Copland's James Mangold. A load of strangers get stranded at a motel, while a killer with multiple personalites has his execution debated. It's twisty with a couple of surprises, but you can kind of see it all coming.
14th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 1.5 star reviewsNews Comments Available Now
Alright readers, you can now add comments to all news postings - letting us know just how unneccessary you think this website is. Click the link by the appropriate item...
14th May 2005 - 5 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Stephen Malkmus
Face The Truth
Malkmus is back with another awesome post-Pavement solo record. This time he's not even with the Jicks - he's strictly Lone Wolf.
Sounding totally assured and confident in his sound, this album is layered and complex - with long building songs (No More Shoes) and faster more immediate songs (Baby C'Mon). A demo of It Kills was already featured on the excellent Matador at Fifteen sampler, and that's now been finished off and is sounding great. Sounding tight, well produced and powerful doesn't mean that he's done away with the weird shit however, plus there's a funky lyric pinched from KISS, and a little keyboard tinkle from Rod Stewart. Malkmus is still operating on his own frequency and sounding totally original.
13th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 4 star reviewsTech News: Dashboard Widgets
Some truly awesome little freebies have started popping up for Apple's OSX 10.4 operating system. Loads of daily tasks can now be launched from the hidden Dashboard menu, such as IMDB search, train times, Sudoku (sooo now!) and my personal favourite Alertstatus 0.1. As they say: "How could you feel safe without knowing the national alert status?"
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10.4 Info
Dashboard Info
Dashboad Downloads
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13th May 2005 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
no boogiewoogie-ah
just in case you didn't spot this in popbitch this week: "The Fall are on Jools Holland's show next week. Mark E Smith is the only artist in the history of the show to have a clause in his contract inserted to state that Jools will not play boogie-woogie piano over any of his songs."
13th May 2005 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
beatallica back in
chimp favourites beatallica are back online after lars ulrich helped fend off some sony cease-and-desist fascism
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12th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
NYTE BISCUIT
NYTE BISCUIT ACID HOUSE - BABY FORD - MARK BROOM - KRUTON - JIM CLARKE + special guest
This Friday 13th - 9 till dead late
On the Rocks, Kingsland Road
11th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
EPIII Review
Chimp75's Episode III review is online in the spruced-up reviews section.
10th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
(dir. George Lucas)
After several years of fighting, the Clone Wars are coming to an end. As Chancellor Palpatine's influence grows, the Jedi Council become suspicious of him and both sides enlist the help of Anakin Skywalker to keep things under control. Meanwhile, Amidala (or Padme, depending on your preference... ahem) is secretly carrying Anakin's child, and the promise of preventing her death draws Anakin towards the power of the dark side.
R.O.T.S. gets off to a spectacular start with the opening space battle, but that soon becomes waaayy to confusing, hectic and ultimately pointless. Once things settle down the story does thicken up a bit, with the council's lack of faith in Anakin slowly pushing him away and into the Emperor's grasp. As the relationship between Anakin and Padme develops there is some actual emotion and empathy for the characters, and there are even a couple of scenes that step back from the CGI and just let the characters briefly live within the world of the film.
The potential for a great movie is there, but the film is still 30% fluff, which a better director (David Fincher was rumored at one point) would have stripped away. Things get pretty mechanical as Lucas whacks his square shape into a round hole, and we see things like the Wookie planet (and Chewie) for no real reason. General Grevious is a stupid chain smoking bad-ass semi-droid character, who just slows the plot down, before eventually we end up on the volcanic planet that everyone has known about since they were kids. The final battle between Anakin and Obi-Wan is pretty ferocious and engaging and then things wrap up with a couple of quick Darth scenes.
"Where's me bird gone Palpatine?"
"Calm down Darth!"
The attempt to tie EVERYTHING up just serves to make the galaxy much smaller than it ever was in the old days, with much of this undermining the original films. Surely hiding Luke on Vader's home planet with Vader's only living relatives isn't very smart?
10th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 3 star reviewsiTunes Videos
It seems Apple has added video playback as a new feature in iTunes 4.8. There are already several tracks/albums in the store that offer videos as a bonus download - particularly if you buy the whole album...
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10th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Weezer
Make Believe
After their last LP, Maladroit, Weezer seemed to be on a roll. Loads of demo's of forthcoming material were available to download over at weezer.com - supposedly destined for 'album 5'. The fact that Maladroit kind of sucked seemed to put a spanner in the works however and the band went quiet again, with Rivers Cuomo heading back to Harvard to finish the hiatus he started in 1995.
When I first heard this new LP it sounded like the band were back on track, particularly as Rick Rubin was drafted in for production duties. The album kicks off well, with rockin'-comedy single Beverly Hills and then Perfect Situation works Weezer's hard-rocking irony well, This Is Such A Pity is also good, using a funky disco keyboard.
After that, things start to follow the path of the last two Weezer albums. The tracks get bogged down and start plodding and the catchiness fades. I'll keep trying as I want this to be good... and maybe it's the hidden classic that Pinkerton is. Plus I shelled out £25 to see them in June.
9th May 2005 - Add Comment - Tweet
Read more 3 star reviews