Nov 25, 2007

It's a magic carpet ride, every door will open wide to happy people like you

Sesame Street

I've just burned my thumb by shoving my hand in the oven*, which was painful but on the bright side has lessened my chances of being murdered from hitchhiking**.

And it reminded my fast food-addled brain that I have itchy fingers or feet*** or whatever the saying is because I haven't run a music night for months.

My last foray into live Manchester eventdom in which I was the organiser and, naturally, the star was a moderately successful ABC-themed event with a punter-led video installation and big, colourful buttons for the public to select which Sesame Street clip they watched.

Part of the reason is this: I haven't had time. Strike that from the record; that was a putrid bile-dripping lie. If the truth be told, and this is the internets so it's always true all the time, I think I have become lazy.

So lazy, in fact, that here is a list of words I couldn't even be bothered to type on this blog:

a)

b)

c)

d)

e)

See? So the plan is to click my heels and land back into the colourful world of electronica arts, with the added expertingness of my Squeaky Productions cohorts. The last Squeaky Productions night, called Two, is dead in the water, although you can dredge for bodies on these blog posts.

Watch this space. Because at this rate, that's all my blog will become.****

*when I say "the" oven, I mean my oven. There's isn't some special oven shared by everyone like the sun or the air.

**I'm reading On The Road, which probably also explains ***.

****If I do too many of these asterisked post-scripts, it will also become an anemic imitation of James Henry's blog.

Nov 18, 2007

Reviving my shrivelling grandma and getting out of my depth with Mahler

Jay Z in graph form

Just because I've been adjusting to a new job for the first time in nine years, that's no excuse to leave my blog shrivelled on the edge of the pavement like an old forgotten grandma.

Still, there's nothing better to distract you from your blogless disappointment than some nice charts. Above is a bar chart interpretation of Jay Z's 99 Problems, and you can see plenty more here. If anyone can tell me the collective noun for charts, tell me using a graph.

Because blogging is the way I speak, I've kept silent about lots of music. Not least Sun Electric's Lost & Found (1998 - 2000). The tracks were rediscovered on an old CD-R, as the title suggests, and it's a welcome reminder of a band that have been dormant for donkey's.

Sun Electric always lacked the crunch of their techno peers Orbital, and perhaps the production talent of some-time Orb dabbler Thomas Fehlmann lent their music too much whimsy.

When it's not trying to be Brian Eno's Nerve Net on a little too much horse tranquilizer, Lost & Found works wonderfully, not least in the flapping rhythm of Echelon which sounds as though the whole thing was recorded inside a pipe.

A hop over to the Leaf Label now, and Murcof have thrown a curve-ball with their new album Cosmos.

Their glitchy precision has been buried in favour of ambience sweeping from Mahler-inspired moodiness to Wagner-inspired pomposity. (All the other reviews have mentioned György Ligeti, but I don't know who he is and I'm bloody useless at classical comparisons).

It's either quiet, or it's the ambient equivalent of a guitar solo. It's certainly not worth buying it on its own, which is good because apparently it'll be fully realised as an audio-visual project.

In fact, stuff all this lot. Screw it. If you're looking for something on which to spend your hardcore pimp wage, plump for Luke Vibert's Chicago, Detroit, Redruth. Playful acid rave has never been so listenable, and it's the first album I've owned dedicated to a Cornish town.

mpSunday: Pole's Stefan Betke remastered the newly found gems on Sun Electric's Lost & Found. Pole are seriously underrated, so here's a free track. Grab it while you can, because as soon as I post another mpSunday, this mp3 will be kicked to the kerb like gran. POW! This mpSunday is no longer available - click here for the latest mpSunday