Chimpomatic

Fresh Pots!

Dave Grohl has a coffee problem.

Via Sound Theory.

And speaking of drumming, I'm starting to feel like I may have under appreciated ~~Will Ferrell's~~ Chad Smith's drumming...

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18th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Ohayou Goizamasu!

8.58am in London, 5.58pm in Tokyo - where me, BC and HHG are on a mission. Fashion, then snowboarding - but not in order of priority.

Barrage of photos to follow for sure, but for now start the day Japanese style.

Arigato goizimasu!

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18th Mar 2010 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

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20 x 5 second Films

Watch the 20 best five second films. It'll take less than two minutes of your time. http://bit.ly/9fqZfM (via @dannydoom) RT @wired

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12th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Documerica

The US National Archives have made a large chunk of their Documerica project from the 1970's available on Flickr. In the wake of the Nixon-created Environmental Protection Agency, the project set up to document the environmental state of the US at the time - with Koyaanasqatsi-esque results.

Via WIRED

12th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

National Treasure

The National have previewed Terrible Love - the lead track off their new album High Violet (due May 11th) - on the Jimmy Fallon show. Pretty great lead-up to an album with a lot of expectation after Boxer, which we rudely only gave 4.5 stars.

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11th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

RIP: Corey Haim

RIP: Corey Haim. The original Lost Boy. "Are you freebasing? Enquiring minds wanna know. "

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10th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Info-nite Arms

More info has emerged on the forthcoming third LP from Band of Horses, Infinite Arms, due to arrive on May 18th. The satisfyingly familiar cover is by Christopher Wilson, who's portfolio looks like a peek inside my iPod. Buy the image from The Funeral single here.

Looks like old favourite Sub Pop have got the heave-ho however, with the release coming via Brown Records/Fat Possum/Columbia/TopSpin.

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9th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

NYC and Vegas from above

Nothing makes for a lazy blog post quite like a new set of photos from The Big Picture. Here's New York City AND Las Vegas from above.

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8th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

IMDBPhone

It's been a long time coming, but IMDB finally have their own iPhone App. At last, you can recall what Mel Gibson is actually famous for from the comfort of your local pub (Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, Braveheart, surprisingly not much else).

It's a pretty thorough recreation of their comprehensive website - and in many ways is a lot more intuitive.

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4th Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Unfortunate Names

Hilarious piece on the BBC website about some of the worst names in Britain. Stan Still, Hazel Nutt, Paige Turner...... and I thought chimp75 was bad

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1st Mar 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Trailer Park: Everybody's Fine

Upcoming remake Everybody's Fine could be another tipping point for De Niro, and this one could go either way. With What Just Happened?, he seemed to have put his shakiest decade behind him and started on the road to recovery - and while this trailer stinks like a Shining parody, the film could actually be quite good. We'll see.

26th Feb 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

#Against

I did a quick search for the word 'Against' today in iTunes - looking for a song that I'd rather not explain. Strictly research, I can assure you.

It seems that with the exception of U2 and Phil Collins, it's a word exclusively used by the disaffected bands youth. Grrr.

26th Feb 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Trailer Park: Get Him To The Greek

Trailer up for Get Him To The Greek, a pseudo-sequel to the amusing Forgetting Sarah Marshall and featuring Jonah Hill being sent to chaperone rock star Russell Brand from London to a gig in NYC in 72 hours. Or something. Actually could be quite funny.

25th Feb 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Drowned in Sound on Spotify

Nice Spotify playlist up from Drowned in Sound with a curated list of some new music, featuring Phoenix, Midlake, Gorillaz and more. Spotify are launching the playlist as a regular monthly feature.

Listen direct here.

P.S: We still have a bunch of Spotify invites available if anyone wants one.

25th Feb 2010 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Re-activated

The Minutemen's first incarnation is getting a dust-off, with Water Under The Bridge records releasing a 12" of tracks from an early session by The Reactionaries - the first band for D. Boon, Mike Watt and Geogre Hurley - with Martin Tamburovich on vocals.

From Joe Carducci:

The Minutemen Were Reactionaries

For most of the music world – or rather the much smaller rock world – of the early 1980s, the Minutemen seemed to arrive fully formed, as if from some other planet. Questions must have immediately crossed minds: Where are these guys from? What drugs are they on? Are they carbon-based life forms?

Those reactions were understandable, as it was the 45-song, double 33 rpm Double Nickels On The Dime (SST 028) that introduced the band to most folks outside of Los Angeles. If I remember right, the initial sales jumped from the five thousand range for Buzz Or Howl Under The Influence Of Heat (SST 016), to fifteen thousand for Double Nickels. (Of course all those releases sold far more after the day.)

D. Boon, Mike Watt and George Hurley were always deflecting the effusiveness of fans in clubs, or in interviews – it was part of their charm. But think about it, the Minutemen were telling kids that they could pick up instruments and do the same! Nobody who saw them live believed that for a second.

I was at Systematic Record Distribution and got their first record, Paranoid Time (SST 002), from the label and ordered it for distribution to shops around the country. It was hard enough for me to discern how great they were from that and their early follow-up records and compilation tracks. To my ear, I don’t think I really heard what they were capable of until they were playing the Anti-Club regularly in 1983-84. There was just so much music packed into their short, fast tunes. And at each gig a few older, simpler tunes were replaced by new, even more masterful tunes. At their first San Francisco gig at the Mabuhay, Dirk Dirksen (who ran and MC’ed the club), strolled out on stage to introduce them and the first thing he saw was a four-foot long set-list taped to D.’s mic-stand and Dirk said, “What is this, the history of music?!” It was! When we recorded the long tail of the song “More Spiel” for Project: Mersh (SST 034) I joked to D. that he had just laid down a six-minute history of the guitar solo. At SST, hearing guitarists Greg Ginn, Joe Baiza and Curt Kirkwood all the time, it was easy to underestimate how great a guitar player D. was. That radical reformation the Reactionaries performed on themselves to become the Minutemen encouraged that, because it elevated Mike and George to co-lead players.

But their world-historical, musical summation had a history as well. And that was their late-seventies band, the Reactionaries. Mike and D. had known each other since junior high. They met Martin Tamburovich and George Hurley at San Pedro high, although they wouldn’t claim they knew George because in Watt’s words, “he was a happening cat,” whereas D., Mike, and Martin were on the not-so-happening end of the high school social spectrum. As George tells it: “For a long time Mike would ask me to play music with him. He wanted to jam out, but I really wasn’t into it ‘cause I was a Surfer then and he was sort of a geek. I don’t know, we were kids. Finally, I agreed to it.” This kind of transgression of school social hierarchy is common when music brings young kids together in their first band. It’s an under-appreciated aspect of the power of music.

Thankfully the Reactionaries recorded a practice in their attempt to get gigs so we have these 10 songs to contemplate. What you can hear are the rudiments of the Minutemen’s sound, only unlike most bands, they only got rid of stuff as they improved. D. is already a good guitar player with his trebly sound in place. Mike and George play more standard-rock bass and drums parts, and Martin sounds like he belongs on the mic, though the quality of the lyrics varies widely. Chuck Dukowski saw them and reports, “Martin was a cool singer and I liked his style.” They were just out of high school and though they already had their obsessive interests, the lyrics (by Mike, Martin, and friends outside the band) show an awkward adaptation to the punk style as they understood it. Like a lot of lyrics by seventies punk bands, television is of particular concern – punks who were determined to create a music scene thought watching TV was a fate co-equal to Death.

In February of 1979, Chuck and Greg Ginn were flyering a Clash, Bo Diddley, Dils show at the Santa Monica Civic when they met D. and Mike. The flyer was for what would be the second Black Flag gig and it was going to be in San Pedro. D. and Mike were amazed to learn of a gig in Pedro and Chuck hadn’t known there was a punk band there, so he put the Reactionaries on the bill. It was their first gig; they played with Black Flag, the Descendents (their debut too), the Alley Cats, the Plugz and an impromptu mini-set by the Last. A world-historical night, however many paid at the door.

The Reactionaries played only two more gigs, opening for the Suburban Lawns at their practice pad in Long Beach. They made a pass at getting a gig at the Other Masque up in Hollywood, but the band was falling apart. Mike’s description of D.’s loss of interest in the Reactionaries is interesting. Apparently D. didn’t offer his songs to the Reactionaries and then found them another guitarist (Todd Apperson) so he could quit. They broke up around mid-1979. George found a band in Hollywood called Hey Taxi! and is on their 45. Though soon enough, D. and Mike regroup and eventually pull George back into their new, improved mess after their new drummer (Frank Tonche) walked offstage and quit during their second gig. At the Minutemen’s first gig (May 1980), Greg asked them to do a record for SST.

24th Feb 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Nu Wu

A partially reformed Wu-Tang clan are making a come back this year, with new release Wu-Massacre.

The album is primarily a collaboration between Method Man, Raekwon and Ghostface Killah - with appearances from Inspectah Deck and Cappadonna, and production from RZA and Mathematics.

Suspected street date: March 30th.

24th Feb 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

R.I.P. Alexander McQueen

Sad news

11th Feb 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Everything That's Happened on Lost So Far, Just from Memory

Forget the fancy Lost timeline, or cheat-sheet catch ups like Lost In 10 Minutes. If you're a true fan you should be recallng the entire show from memory. Gawker tried it out.

The final season of Lost kicks off with a double episode on Sky1 this Friday at 9pm.

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3rd Feb 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

RIP: JD Salinger

RIP J.D. Salinger, author and legend. Despite penning uber-classic The Catcher In The Rye, Salinger has been reclusive and unpublished since 1965 - although allegedly writing constantly. Time will tell.

Via BBC

"Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row."

Goddam phonies.

28th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Trailer Park: Edge of Darkness

Aint-it-cool are reporting good things about Mel Gibson's new movie Edge of Darkness. Martin Campbell directs a remake of his own UK mini-series, with Gibson starring in his first film for 8 years.

28th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

iPad

So, the iPad is a big iPhone with much the same functionality - just a bigger screen with more spread out icons. The $499 starting price isn't too bad, but for now consider me mildly underwhelmed. Not quite the shot in the arm the publishing industry was hoping for.

What was pretty interesting was how fast this thing was ripping through Twitter.... And how close The Onion's take on things might have been.

27th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

LCD Trailer

Nice little trailer up on the LCD Soundsystem website for their forthcoming new album...

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27th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Mad Men 3: Madder Men

Everybody's favourite advertising-industry-based US drama is back on the BBC this Wednesday 27th. Tune to BBC 4 or BBC HD at 10pm.

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26th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Re-Nationalized

Chimp favourites The National are back in business in 2010 - with a new album due in May. They will also be popping over to Europe for a couple of shows, at the Albert Hall on May 6th (Tickets here, La-di-da!) and the Zenith in Paris on May 7th., where they will be supporting Pavement.

Read our 2006 interview here.

25th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Back In Black

This autumn's End of the Road festival in Dorset is lining up a stellar cast, and might just be enough to drag me out of self-imposed gig-hiatus.

Wilco set to headline, and now album-of-the-decade contenders Black Mountain are making an appearance. Hopefully that will coincide with a new album.

Of course, both bands may add solo dates - so camping may be avoidable after all....

20th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Baby Marmot

Congratulations going out to Chimp stalwart marmot this morning, who just welcomed baby marmot into the world.

Unofficial Song of the Day: After The Goldrush.

20th Jan 2010 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Still Beating Dis

Who'd have thought Bomb The Bass would have a new album out in 2010 - a good 23 years after genre-defining single Beat Dis first stormed the charts, cannily disguised as a US import to give it some cred.

New album Back To Light sees Tim Simenon collaborating with Depeche Mode's Martin Gore amongst others. Keep this frequency clear!

Tweet Dis

15th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Trailer Park: The A-Team

Unfortunately, this plan seems to have come together and there's a trailer out for the Joe Carnahan-directed A-Team movie. Doesn't look too bad - until they fall out of a plane and parachute down in a tank, guns blazing.... YouTube it.

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12th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

RIP: Eric Rohmer

French nouvelle-vague director dies aged 89.

L'Ami de mon amie was one of my favourites.

Via BBC News>

11th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Phantom Menace Review

Finally... it's here. Part 1 of 7.

Don't bother going to Film School. There's a film-making 101 right here.

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11th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

WIDI

Forget WIFI, WIDI is one of the new tech developments that has emerged at this year's CES show in Vegas. Shipping soon, the technology allows the new Intel chipsets to push the display over WIFI to an HDMI-equiped TV.

Might be the shot in the arm that the watch-internet-content-on-TV movement needs.

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11th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Mixable Greatest Hits from Pavement

Domino and Matador have a great competition up to guess the tracklisting for Pavement's upcoming Greatest Hits compilation Quarantine The Past: The Best Of Pavement.

The competition is to guess the track-listing of the album, starting with mpfree (get it here) Gold Soundz. First prize is a pair of tickets to see the band at the Chimpovich-endorsed Summercase festival in Barcelona. The real best prize is for second place, however - with the second best guess of track-listing winning 5 custom pressed editions of the album, made up from re-mastered version of their choice cuts.

Although the compilation does not include any unreleased material, it definitely goes deeper than the "hits."

More at Matador.

8th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Bond 23 with Sam Mendes

Interesting news on the next Bond movie - character-driven director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Revolutionary Road) will be in charge of the as-yet-untitled Bond 23. Let's hope he strikes a nice balence between the overlong Casino Royale and the over-compressed Quantum of Solace.

Via The Hollywood Reporter.

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6th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Ad Nauseum: Mini Cooper

Not an actual TV ad this time, just a clever ad installation to advertise the Mini Cooper, post-Christmas.

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4th Jan 2010 - Add Comment - Tweet

Best Of 2009

CSF

As a quick precursor to the Best of the 00s list I'm currently editing, here's my Top 5 albums of 2009.

Not a stellar year compared to 2007 or 2008, but there's certainly been a few stand outs.

John Frusciante - The Empyrean
He didn't tell us he'd left the Chili Peppers, but Frusciante's latest solo album certainly upped the anti on 2004's marathon of low-key releases, blending epic guitars, a stellar guest list and a near-perfect cover of Tim Buckley's Song To The Siren.

Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love
The Black Mountain side-project took it's own place in the spot light, with a solid album - made twice as good by the outstanding supporting tour.

Lightning Dust - Infinite Light
Amber Webber was missed on the aforementioned Pink Mountaintops tour, but luckily that's because she was polishing up her own project. Taking the promise of their debut, Lightning Dust moved forward with grand strides on this haunting ethereal masterpiece.

Wilco - Wilco (The Album)
The old favourites pulled virtually no surprises out with this one, just another handful of great rock songs with mind-blowing musicianship - and again backed it all up with one of the gigs of the year.

Flight of the Conchords - I Told You I Was Freaky
One great album seemed like a fluke, but the soundtrack to season two expanded the comedy duos surprising knack for blending piss-take and homage in an accomplished way, laced with fits and giggles. I'm in love with a sexy lady, with an eye that's lazy.

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30th Dec 2009 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Promo Promo: Wishing On A Star

Great early trip hop video, notable for highlighting some classic Bristolian skate spots.

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22nd Dec 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Adidas Death Star

I'm not quite sure what Adidas and Star Wars have in common, but check out the Adidas Death Star - a Google Maps mash-up that lets you destroy your friends houses with the Death Star.

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22nd Dec 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Promo Promo: Metal on Metal

Nice slice of Battle Royale style ping pong horror in this promo for Metal on Metal. Promo by The Glue Society.

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21st Dec 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

RIP: Brittany Murphy

RIP Brittany Murphy. Dead at 32 from a cardiac arrest.

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20th Dec 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Panic Attack!

Great news for the maker of this low-buget retro robot invasion short - Hollywood have signed him up for a big-budget remake.

If you're interested in making your own low-budget movie, check out Wired's How-To Wiki.

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18th Dec 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Ad Nauseum: Adidas Originals

You might have caught this star-studded Adidas Originals campaign on TV this year - a well planned campaign that started with invites going out with a teaser clip, followed by the party/ad itself and even ending up with a Simpsons parody (below). All run through their website, Facebook and Youtube page.

Great concept, great photography and great direction - by Nima Nourizadeh, through Partizan.

Final ad above. You can probably dig out a more legit copy of the final clip on the Adidas website, or see it on the Partizan site.

P.S. Check out Beckham's hole in one too.

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18th Dec 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Non Frusciante

It's official. Guitar hero John Frusciante won't be returning for the Chili Peppers 10th album, and has officially left the band. According to his website, he left 12 months ago while the band took a hiatus.

The Empyreum still ranks as one of my albums of the year. Read the review here.

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17th Dec 2009 - Add Comment - Tweet

Promo Promo: The Pinkmountaintops

Forgot to post this when it debuted, but check out this slick promo from The Pinkmountaintops for their track Execution.

Directed by Shira Blustein.