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Oxford Collapse
The Windmill, Brixton, London
Looking around the empty pub it seemed unlikely that Brooklyn rockers Oxford Collapse would be the skinny-jeaned, curly haired chap, or that head-banded trendy in the corner. Of course not. These guys had graduated from the US school of indie rock and had the tattoos and beards to prove it.
The half-empty venue did nothing to dissuade the band from kicking out 'all the hits,' as smart mouthed, charismatic front man Michael Pace led them through the best of last years Remember The Night Parties - with Lady Lawyers, In Your Volcano and Kenny Can't Afford It amongst the songs getting enthusiastic renditions, complete with guitar heroism from Pace and bassist Adam Rizer.
The Boys Go Home from A Good Ground was also dusted off, as well as previews of several tracks from forthcoming album Bits. The sound might have sucked, and the under-informed crowds of London may have missed out, but the band have certainly nabbed themselves a spot in my list of most anticipated releases for 2008.
"This is a blues riff in B, watch me for the changes and try and keep up." Once that cymbal is fixed of course.
26th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
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Oxford Collapse!
Thanks to some late breaking data from chimpovich, team Chimpomatic has been mobilised for tomorrow's Brixton Windmill show by 2006 favourites Oxford Collapse. You can't argue with £5. Hope to see you down the front.
New album BITS is out on August 5th.
20th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Evil Urges
With momentum building around their upcoming album Evil Urges, My Morning Jacket are making the title track available via their website for one week from April 18th. That's until next Friday folks. Get it here. Password is urges101.
20th Apr 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Everybody's At It
BW brought home a 500mb flash drive keyring yesterday, sent through by none other than the Tenderstem broccoli company. As you can imagine, the supplied photos and press release outlining Tenderstem's "mild, distinctive flavour and a texture which is more akin to asparagus than traditional broccoli and it’s deliciously succulent" are unlikely to stay on there long, but I thought I'd pass on the good news first.
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19th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Super Friends
Stumbled across this classic-era viral this morning, from the internet glory days of late '99. Back when AOL and Ask Jeeves ruled the searchwaves, Netscape was a viable alternative and Napster was still pretty tough to get your head around. What's an mp3?
18th Apr 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Hold Steady, It's Gonna Be A Rough Ride
2006/7 favourites The Hold Steady are following in My Morning Jacket's footsteps and signing with Rough Trade for the U.K. Not resting on their laurels, they've already recorded a follow up to the Springsteen tinged Boys & Girls Of America - scheduled for release later this year.
18th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
El Rey
May 26th is the date. Tracks are:
1. Santa Ana Winds
2. Spider-Man On Hollywood
3. I Lost The Monkey
4. Soup
5. Palisades
6. The Trouble With Men
7. Model, Actress, Whatever
8. Don't Take Me Home Until I'm Drunk
9. The Thing I Like Best About Him Is His Girlfriend [Santa Monica And La Brea Version]
10. Boo Boo
11. Swingers
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17th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Grooveshark
Check out music site Grooveshark, which offers a combination of Last FM and iTunes/iPhone like features. Not bad, with a snazzy interface - but as usual the catalogue that they actually have full-length tracks for is perhaps a little slim at the moment... but you can line up tracks to play in sequence.
17th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Sub Pop +20
Sub Pop records may have been operating as the SUBTERRANEAN POP fanzine since 1979, but 1988 is the official start-date for the label so 2008 has being designated as the official 20th birthday.
The celebrations will be varied, but highlights include an fundraiser outside Seattle on July 12th & 13th, featuring bands past and present (Green River, Flight of the Conchords, Foals, Iron & Wine, Kinski, Low, Mudhoney, Pissed Jeans and more) and a series of re-releases for high profile albums from the label, starting with Mudhoney's Superfuzz Bigmuff: Deluxe Edition on My 22nd....
As noted by chimpovich, in the pre-internet days 'anything on Sub Pop' used to be a pretty solid recommendation for new music, so pull your weight and get involved.
Some Numbers:
Highest position on the Billboard 200 Albums chart #2, The Shins, Wincing the Night Away (2007)
Best-selling album 1.6 million copies, Nirvana, Bleach (1989)
Most releases by a single artist 17, Mudhoney
Number of releases through June 2008 777
Sub Pop Singles Club releases, first incarnation, 1988-1993 62
Sub Pop Singles Club releases, second incarnation, 1998-2002 47
Sub Pop Singles Club releases, third incarnation, 2008-2009 12
Singles Club members at peak of first incarnation 4,500
Grammy nominations 4
Children assigned Sub Pop Records catalog numbers 2
Percentage new releases sold by download in 2007 21
Free downloads of The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights” on subpop.com 11,655,300
Employees as of March 2008 27
Dogs roaming the halls of Sub Pop HQ 3
Cost in cents for 12 oz. Ranier beer in lunch room soda machine 75
Corporate charitable donations in US dollars for 2007 250,000
Highest winning online auction bid in US dollars for Nirvana “Love Buzz” single 3,451
17th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Fox Captcha
Following on from 71's earlier captcha malfunction, Wired has an article about how the technology is proving useless at defeating the bots. Perhaps Skynet itself became self-aware through such activity.
Anyway, skip the heavy reading and cut straight to punch line. The top candidate for an unbeatable Captcha (that's
Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart FYI) Kitten Auth, designed specifically to out-fox the bad guys.
.....a similar variation is all about cats:
17th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Bubbles
As I know it's distinctly uncool to promote ads, but as an occasional filmmaker I'm looking at it from that aspect. Fallon are the Agency, Sony is the brand.
16th Apr 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
New Videos
I thought Holy Fuck / Water Curses made a nice couplet. Check out Animal Collective's latest single Water Curses from the EP of the same name here:
And get your ears bashed in by Holy Fuck here.
15th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Curious George
Arch-agitator Shepherd Fairey has been commissioned to cover two of George Orwell's classics - 1984 and Animal Farm. Not sure Big Brother will be too happy about it.
14th Apr 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Dust Off That Live Jacket
My Morning Jacket are on tour in June and July in support of forthcoming album Evil Urges.
JUNE
25 Wed Sheffield, UK Leadmill
26 Thu Bristol, UK Academy
27 Fri Manchester, UK Academy
29 Sun Glastonbury, UK Glastonbury Festival
JULY
01 Tue Hamburg, Germany Gruenspan
02 Wed Koln, Germany Gebaude
04 Fri Werchter, Belgium Werchter Festival
06 Sun Kent, UK The Hop Farm
08 Tue Amsterdam, The Netherlands Melkweg
09 Wed Paris, France Le Trabendo
11 Fri Nottingham, UK Rescue Rooms
13 Sun Glasgow, Scotland T In The Park Festival
15 Tue London, UK The Forum
19 Sat Benicassim, Spain Benicassim Festival
14th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Overheard
"Let's play the Wii and THEN watch the Matrix".
- Goths. Camden town Northern Line 22:44
13th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Standing On The Edge Of The Black Hole
The Large Hadron Collider is being started up for the first time in June, so if you find your world being mysteriously sucked towards Switzerland that may well provide the explanation.
The machine is located outside Geneva at Europe's European Organization for Nuclear Research, or C.E.R.N. for short (don't ask). The machine is a particle accelerator, designed primarily to study proton-proton collision (and the occasional heavy ion), hopefully proving the existence of such things as the elusive Higgs Boson scalar elementary particle that could link up a variety of fields of thought.
Until it's fired up however, it's all theory - and some parties are worried that collisions by such previously unexplored energies could lead to disasterous consequences, with micro-black holes and stranglets seeming like potential side-effects. A stranglet could potentially convert the Earth from Ordinary Matter to the Strange Matter that typically makes up a Quark Star, and would not be cool (see Ice-Nine for more info).
C.E.R.N. themselves have gone so far as to address the potential 'issue' on their website and seem confident that an earth-obliterating scenario is unlikely - as the black holes they are generating are likely to be merely 'modest' in strength. Phew.
12th Apr 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Yahoo vs Microsoft vs AOL vs News Corp vs Google
Yahoo is still putting up a fight as they try to resist Microsoft's advances, and some unlikely partnerships have come out of the woodwork. Yahoo is testing some limited use of Google's Adsense on its search results, while Microsoft cosies up with News Corp as a possible route for upping their bid for Yahoo, in an attempt to head off growing interest from search dinosaur AOL. Tricksy.
11th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
AMPed
Adobe have chimed in to the ongoing media player battle, with their new (and ingeniously titled) Adobe Media Player having more in common with iPlayer than iTunes. Using Adobe's own AIR tech, it pulls together a variety of online content - including ad-supported TV shows that aren't as tightly tied to specific territories as some previous efforts - and let's you watch them on your machine (full screen too).
CSI:NY and Yo MTV Raps are some of the more mainstream shows on offer, and hopefully that'll improve as Adobe get more partners on board.
Read more at PC World.
Get it here.
11th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
P3 minus USB
Portishead have been making a few videos to support the release of upcoming album Third. They'll be featured on the USB stick/box set mega version, but they're also online.
11th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Mo'Lina
Jason Molina is amongst the stars putting in an in-store performance at Rough Trade East next Saturday (19th), as part of Record Store Day. Support your (or mine in this case) local vinyl merchant and you'll be in with a chance of seeing the likes of Billy Bragg, Eugene McGuinness and a DJ set by Can's Irmin Schmidt...
10th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Mo' Sebadoh
Bubble and Scrape is next up on the Sebadoh re-release schedule, with a full-length Don't Look Back performance coming to Koko on May.
9th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Space Chimps
It's not astro-chimps in washing machines, but..... www.spacechimps.com
8th Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
The W Section
A recent trip to the mighty Amoeba Records highlighted a couple of useful facts.
Unfortunately there is less and less reason to go to an actual record shop these days. Where I would have once whiled away a solid day flipping through albums for imports, rarities or new releases ("a new My Morning Jacket album, I had no idea!"), the internet has pretty much rendered that lack of pre-information obsolete. Not much slips out these days without a mammoth, self perpetuating viral marketing campaign.
I stumbled across the other nugget completely by accident. If you have to arrange a rendezvous, the letter W is a good place to kill some time. Wedding Present, Ween, Weezer, Mike Watt, Wedding Present continued and so on. The Wedding Present have a new album, El Rey, out next month don't you know.
7th Apr 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Behind The Scenes on Watchmen
Great little behind-the-scenes movie up at Superherohype illustrating some of the set-building that has gone on to create 1985 New York for Zack Snyder's upcoming Watchmen movie.
6th Apr 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Clown Travel Agency
There's something going on over at Clown Travel Agency and then Acme Security Systems, which seems likely to involve that prankster The Joker. I'm too busy to see it through, but will check back later to see the results....
2nd Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Miracle Favourites
Miracle Fortress are back in town for a few shows:
Wed 02 Apr - London, Scala w/Patrick Watson
Thu 03 Apr - Brighton, The Janbury Club w/Patrick Watson
Fri 04 Apr - London, Luminaire
Check them out if you can. If not, just check out these two awesome videos.
1st Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Radio Edit
Radiohead are jumping on the NIN remixing bandwagon and offering 'stems' (i.e. bass track, the guitar track etc) of their new single Nude. The catch is, this time you have to pay. For each one.
Once you've got all five you can get a free Garage Band file and start remixing ....or just use your program of choice, as all tracks are DRM free files. Upload your finished mix and listen to others at www.radioheadremix.com
1st Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Monster Sale
Monster sale on over at Play if you can be bothered to a) trawl b) are still buying DVDs.
1st Apr 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
1988
Sky's recent HD revival of 80's 'classic' Cocktail has confirmed a couple of long-term suspicions:
- Yes, it is a hollow, ruthless example of 80's yuppyism gone mad, which would play in a nice Grindhouse double bill with the more worthy Wall Street.
- Some years are better that others - in all aspects. I've suspected for a while that 1988 is pretty low in the pile ....with Die Hard, Roger Rabbit, Midnight Run and Big being a few of the scant box office releases of note. Baron Munchausen, Arthur 2 or Coming To America might be more suitable films to sum up the year.
Musically the story isn't much different. Bon Jovi follwed up Slippery When Wet with New Jersey, Crosby Stills, Nash & Young briefly re-formed and Dylan released Down In The Groove (???!!). Daydream Nation was released, but Hip Hop was the big winner, with It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, Straight Outta Compton and By All Means Necessary hitting the shelves.
Rattle and Hum sums the year up perfectly. It's not rubbish, but it's not Joshua Tree, which came out in the far superior 1987, which also brought us The Untouchables, Full Metal Jacket, Good Morning Vietnam, Lethal Weapon, Robocop - not to mention The Lost Boys, Dogs In Space (one of my favourites) and of course, Wall Street.
1989's a favourite too ....might research that one next.
31st Mar 2008 - 4 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
The News
The BBC's Web 2.0 overhaul is continuing nicely. The BBC News site has had an update, into an altogether less 1998 format.
31st Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Don't Stop Me Now
Following on from their genius Gorilla advert, the Cadbury's team are back with more high jinks. Airing from tonight, this might not hit the spot in such an unexpected way, but it combines some of my all-time favourite vehicles with a timely take on Terminal 5's current upheaval...
Higher-def version here.
29th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Previously....
Guy Who Says 'Previously On Heroes ' Wishes He Was Guy Who Says 'Previously On Lost'...
29th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Express Delivery
Adobe have finally chipped in on the escalating battle to edit your photos online. Photoshop Express is a free online editing tool that offer some of the offline powerhouse program's features ....but don't expect to instantly know what you're doing. It's simple but effective.
As well as editing, it offers 2GB of online storage and a gallery facility - which suggests they could be looking to rival sites like Flickr as well.
28th Mar 2008 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
The A-Team
Looks like The A-Team might be getting the big-screen makeover, with Boyz N The Hood director John Singleton behind the camera. Woody Harrelson is currently rumoured to be playing Howlin' Mad Murdock, with Ice Cube as B.A. Baracus. This time they're Iraq war vets on the run for a crime they didn't commit etc...
27th Mar 2008 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
Sleevage
Album cover blog Sleevage has some pretty interesting articles covering all sorts of stuff - from the method behind the Editors recent cover, way back to the controversy surrounding Appetite for Destruction's unruly artwork, which was updated in order to get the band on MTV.
27th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Muxtape
Not quite sure how useful this concept really is, but Muxtape.com is certainly a well put together site. Signing up allows you to create a single mixtape page, that plays back the tracks you have loaded through your own URL. Mashable has the details.
27th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
The Breeders
Mountain Battles
4AD
Started as a side project spin-off from both the Pixies and the Throwing Muses, The Breeders' first album Pod snuck out without too much fanfare. After Pixies-riffers Nirvana exploded the Alternative music scene, the groundswell built - and thanks to a string of great singles, second album Last Splash hit the mainstream. Part time Pixie Kim Deal became a full-time Breeder and with Tanya Donnely's departure she was now clearly in charge. Progress slowed. With the Breeders now becoming a day job, another side project was needed to get things going and the GBV-influenced Amps hit the spot.
With The Amps essentially re-branding back to the Breeders, Title TK marked a return in 2002 with some critical accclain (certainly from me), but as the pace dropped back to a crawl album four didn't seem likely. With absence making the heart grow fonder, the extended hiatus that The Breeders have found themselves on has done less to little to lower expectations from the band and with the Pixies barnstorming reunion still fresh in the mind those expectations must seem astronomical, so it was with some surprise that the band's website announced new material late last year.
So what's the result? Another Breeders album. Probably not their best, perhaps not their worst - but it's a welcome return, with many individual highlights. While Mountain Battles may be a title more suitable for a Led Zeppelin comeback, it highlights a notable theme through the record and opener Overglazed sets the bar high with a slow building call-to-arms that is crying out for a Viking clad video to accompany it. Night of Joy is a beautiful masterpiece, building a complex mood with little other than a subtle chord progression and reapeating, simple lyrics ....delivered in Deal's unique style. We're Gonna Rise continues both the evocative mood and the theme ("Light hits my shield"), followed by a track that actually seems to be sung in Orc - although title German Lessons might suggest otherwise. Here unfortunately we hit one of my all time pet hates - foreign language singing (David Gedge, you know who you are).
In this case the second language strangely illustrates the magic formula that Kim Deal seems to find when she hits the mark. The minimal lyrics of Night of Joy convey all their emotion through her singing style, adding weight to the words through tone and repetition - but when singing in a second language, not of that emotion comes across, leaving nothing but slightly cold words. Don't even get me started on 'epic' Spanish language track Regalame Esta Noche.
Re-visiting something you clearly get a bit sick of is a thankless task, and with the album never really hitting the highs of those few opening tracks again it could be argued that The Breeders have never in fact had a bonifide classic. As their raft of great EP's, covers, b-sides and alternate versions stand testament, The Breeders were always most successful as a singles band and in many ways, nothing has chnaged. There's no Cannonball or Safari here, but Overglazed leads the charge into a string of great tracks, while Night of Joy is as good as anything they have done.
26th Mar 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
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Hughes News
LA Times has an interesting about John Hughes' impact on the film industry.
26th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Tachyons
Things are moving swiftly forward in the time-travel department, with Tachyons currently providing the most likely mechanism. Traveling faster than light could in theory allow you to travel forwards and look back to see yourself in the 'past', but if these particles were proved to be actual objects, then they could in theory be manipulated.
Shoddy TV show Journeyman revolved vaguely around the theory, but Enitech labs seem to be currently leading the field. Check their videos for more info...
26th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
There's hope yet...
Looks like the writers' strike may have had some unexpected side-effects. First time writer Brad Ingelsby has just sold his spec script The Low Dweller for $650,000 against $1.1 million. Leonardo DiCaprio is set to produce and star, with Ridley Scott directing.
25th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
This Time They're Running From the Joint
While I'd be stretching the truth by saying Harold And Kumar Get The Munchies was a trouble free movie, the teaser for Part 2 suggests they've turned up the heat a little....
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25th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
70's Logotypes
Our brain candy has come a long way since the golden olden days of 1970's advertising. Check out Mr Carl's set of 70's logotypes.
24th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Gunning For That Number #1 Spot
Hip Hop superstar / aspiring film maker Nathanial Hornblower has a serious film in the works - Gunning For That Number #1 Spot. It's a documentary following a group of high school basketball players as they battle it out on a legendary outdoor court in Harlem.
In cinemas June 28th.
20th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Photosynth
Check out this amazing Photosynth demo, which pulls images of heavily photographed buildings off the internet and uses the information to construct detailed 3D models. You can see more info over at the Microsoft Labs.
20th Mar 2008 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
24/12
Just in case you even noticed that Jack Bauer's 24 failed to return after the writer's strike, fear not. Jack's back this autumn with a 2-hour special to bridge the gap between season 6 and the delayed season 7, which will now air all 24 consecutive episodes in January 2009.
19th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet
Freaks & Geeks
(creator Paul Feig)
Set in early 80's Michigan, Freaks & Geeks follows a group of outsiders through a year of high school. Former mathlete Lindsay attempts to up the cool stakes and graduate to hanging around with the pot-smoking Freaks, while younger brother Sam and his geek friends explore the expanding possibilities of life in high school.
Whether they're receiving surprisingly compassionate sex-ed from Coach Fredricks (Biff Tannen to you and me) or just getting a plain-old beat down from some seniors, the story lines here have universal appeal that no 80's kid could forget. In fact, I doubt a kid from any era would have trouble relating to the episodes covered - which is surprising given the relative commercial failure of the show, which was cancelled after one season despite critical praise.
While it cannot be overlooked that the show owes a massive debt to 70's slacker classic Dazed and Confused, it addresses many of that movie's shortcomings and handles a lot of the topics in a more plausible manner, providing depth to the lives of the good and bad kids and even the parents. Due to its length (18 episodes), it also allows the characters and storylines to fill out much more completely, never feeling forced when it drops in era references to the likes of Led Zeppelin or Foghat, like Richard Linklater's film so often did. Unforgettable moments include an episode where the young geeks befriend a new hottie, scored entirely by Billy Joel tracks - or a true Rocky moment when the tables are turned and the geeks get to pick the teams for school baseball - and literally catch out the jocks.
While it doesn't quite have the writing confidence that Aptow found with his small-talking pop-culture dialogue in Knocked Up, it's all pretty convincing and the acting is uniformly good. Linda Cardellini's Lindsay walks the line between wanting to get good grades vs wanted to be cool very convincingly, while the younger geeks are played with a subtlety well beyond their acting experience - John Francis Daley (as Sam) and Martin Starr (as Bill, later to play 'Cocaine Era Scorsese' in Knocked Up) in particular. James Franco also justifies his more recent A/B-List status as the occasionally troubled, always charming head Freak - Daniel Desario.
Things tail off slightly in the last couple of episodes, where you can't help feeling that the seemingly cancelled run tried to shoehorn too much in - but all in all this is expertly crafted, unmissable television.
19th Mar 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet
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Libre Matador!
What could be better that a free album? A free compilation of Matador's forthcoming releases maybe - Intended Play.
Get it here.
19th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet