from a voice plantation

Brighton gig / The World is Fxxxed torrent

2012-01-29T14:39:00.000+01:00

Next Plus gig in Brighton, details as follows...

when i'm pretty presents...

28 Feb THE LATEST MUSIC BAR, Manchester Street (Kemptown) Brighton 20h

THE SUMERIAN KYNGS

An 8 piece band creating a sound known as Psychedelic Swamp Groove! With an incredible Light Show, this diverse group of musicians – including Monty Oxymoron, the musical phenomenon and long term member of ‘The Damned’ – bring together many influences, from blues, jazz and electro to punk, rock and improv. But the Kyngs add that vital ingredient – a Groove to dance to – making each Kyngs gig an event worth catching.

+ PLUS

Formed in Kemptown 13 years ago, Plus use guitar, 808 and far-out vocals to create a unique noise pop/alt.rock wigout. Part performance art, part punk, part prog, totally unique.

DJ MELITA will be keeping it interesting before, during and after the acts.

Doors: 8.00pm. Price: £4 on the door

- - -

The good people behind the (probably appropriately named) The World is Fxxxed Records have put up a torrent featuring the combined works of the esteemed noise pop combo Amy Blue with whom we have played a few times in the past (I first met them when we played together at their first ever gig at the now defunct Pleasure Unit in Bethnal Green, found them again later on myspace (don't let anyone tell you myspace isn't good for stuff like that) and have followed their career ever since, they are really good - pls check them out if you haven't already), evol-1 (which is Simon Amy Blue in more industrial/fxxxed up solo guise), a few other bands/acts they have associations with (most notably tricyclic looper which is Trev's long running bedroom tapes project) and Plus, it's got the when i'm pretty album and the mix CD I compiled a couple of years ago as an introduction to the band. All this stuff is available for free here !

modest refusal; artificial pyramid, ....

2012-01-22T11:22:00.000+01:00

I could be erased. They have this tower. My user has information. Just to use this place. Reassurances in red. Hands in the circle. Blue steps, tower guardian. Pollution probe. Flowering distance. More power? Globed head. Fog machine, distortion space. What escapes? Reaching for the disc. Exit loop opens wide. A ray goes up and connects. It's begun. Distorted 80s radio voice. Disc interface communication. Looping down into a digital valley. Clouds, open space. XX. A butterfly connects you with the error message. Giant letters, then a giant face. Manipulate the game! Hexed language exposed! Worn out program! Digital melt! Do we make it? Pray for our side! Sharp zingers collate at the side as the butterfly follows. Reunion helmet slides lower, that is a user demand, lower. You were a fury. What's happening in the distortion? The black sky is no limit. Looping demands. Green square wanders. I still have P.O.W.E.R. . . Leave me alone, we failed. Eyes revolve. Whizzing machine. Optimism prisms. The heart of the whole system. Raise lights. Throw your satisfaction at the sliding walls. Catch the light "Your user can't help you now"....

Fehlfarben -> Paul ist tot -> Berlin -> April 2010

2012-01-01T19:17:00.002+01:00

I finally got around to post this photo-gallery/video I made a while ago, using Fehlfarben's seminal track played live and a gallery of photos from my trip to Berlin.

In April 2010 I travelled to Berlin to see Fehlfarben, the legendary German post punk band whose "Monarchie und Alltag" album remains one of the most important German language rock records and one of my favourite albums of all time, for the first time on a tour promoting their excellent new album "Gluecksmaschinen". It was a great show, worth travelling for & hopefully I'll get to see them again sometimes, they don't come to London though. I took a few photos during the show (mostly a bit blurry and not that great) and quite a few photos walking the streets in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, looking at graffiti, gig posters, corners, squares, exhibitions, demonstrations and meeting old friends, so I put them together with the recording of "Paul ist tot" from that night (thanks to Gavin for the bootleg!)

"Paul is tot" (Paul is dead) is the coda of the Monarchie und Alltag album, the last song, it's very famous, it's long, monotonous, depressing, dirgey and very simple and effective. Most tracks on the album are pretty fast and snappy, this one is mostly melancholic and brings back memories for me, trying to find a perspective where there is none, and generally capturing an atmosphere of utter defeat, an inability to communicate, a somewhat shell shocked ambivalence towards anything you can say or wish for, a moment in time, an empty room after someone has left, an absence, and lots of memories. This live version is actually quite playful and muscular in its delivery.

Some of the things you can see in this video are....:
0.06 a defaced poster of Mireille Mathieu
0.15 view of the white house right on the Spree in which a friend lived in the 80s and 90s. I have no idea where he is now as he doesn't live there anymore and I've lost touch. The whole area has been gentrified. He used to live there pretty cheap in a massive flat overlooking the river and all these derelict warehouse buildings on the East side (that are now clubs, galleries, corporate offices), when the area was right by the wall and a bit of a dead end...
01.17 Fehlfarben bow out after two encores
03.13 The long running Cafe Jenseits in Heinrichplatz had to close down due to rising rents but was squatted for the time being.
04.21 The legendary SO36 punk rock venue, Germany's CBGBs. or something...
04.36 Genesis P. Orridge collage exhibition
04.42 Chez Frank
04.56 Tray-cee K u l t s t e i n
05.10 The Dennis Cooper shelf, chez Nico
06.10 Frank in the Cafe Kaiser in the big complex of shops, cinemas, etc that is now on Potsdamer Platz. In the 80s this was a wasteland by the wall, one of the buildings standing was a semi derelict ballroom where we saw Sonic Youth in 1986 together, an incredible show. This ballroom, the Kaisersaal, was also used in the seminal Nick Cave live concert scene in Wings of Desire, and is now incorporated into the complex and restored and used for functions, they actually allowed us to go in there and have a look at it again and I can sort of remember it....
06.25 Frank outside Mr Dead and Mrs Free record shop with the new Fehlfarben album in the window. This shop was around in the 80s already and seems to have survived!

i was on a landing touching...

2011-12-31T15:49:00.000+01:00

avantgarde patterns, strokes zooming through the skies, searching, flickering, losing a battle, waving goodbye, when the wave arrived, one by one, at once, enormous, a lost world and a total measure and everything we saw and sensed and ever did, ballooned into one enormous wave, leaving us stranded, drowned, and very small.

a dreadful silence fell, mobile phone tsunami pics, seconds tick away, the voices over the crumbling port, small pleasure boats, run with the voices

cut through the corners, flooding corridors, oh here come houses, sprinkling inside the running news stream. debris slide. evacuate. toxic car chase. wash away the points failure

THE LAUGHING GNOMES

2011-12-20T23:35:00.000+01:00

photos from the ancient island of Delos, near Mykonos, Greece in June. Mainly inside this one temple... this track somehow seems to sound like a further fuxxed with & warped copy of Dino Jr.s Freak Scene but the truth is it literally came out of nowhere, it's a first take!

the room gets sparse as I trace the bloodline. when it was funtime my deep trace ran out and fell into a tree. just so you know... as if I knew you would do such a thing. the sexy airs ... down there where you can watch all the animals. get out there. but I feel truly detached from the party, as if all you're saying wouldn't matter much beyond today, the good day would last but what comes next is so much darker, you won't believe it now, anyway. and then what you can speak is so much more distorted even from what is confusing now. and confusion is next. I want to further disintegrate. let me get fractured inside my little frame. noone knows what's inside. my castle. let me in, I'll let you out and then scream goodbye inside your little ears tonight. scream your little ears off tonight. let you go outside then come back and not know where you've been. and then I say let's take over because you want to, you want to, you want to be the knife that cuts through. right through to where the veins are. and the laughing gnomes

Plus & Pink Choppers at Corsica Studios

2011-11-30T21:22:00.001+01:00

Hi - I'm just looking at the new look of this thing, hmmmm... I haven't posted for a while but as far as I'm concerned this blog is still going, it's just... a lot things that used to sort-of happen here, have been eaten by my fb habits, it's just easier to upload photos there and you can get an instant response....

Anyway, Plus. This band is still going too but nothing much has happened since Simon died (see previous post). We were going to look into playing a London show at some point but it just seems so difficult to work things out it's easier taking a break. I guess. Also, that new album is still as finished as it was 6 months ago... (and it will come out!) But I finally got around to uploading most of our gig at the Corsica Studios 18.06. mainly a memorial gathering/gig for Simon Wring, with three bands playing who he was involved in, we were sandwiched between the Pink Choppers, George and Vikki who played with Simon as Rail previously, and the mighty Gallon Drunk who Simon played bass with. We played only 6 songs and it was quite a hard thing to do, a bit sombre and subdued and it took us a while to work out which songs to play, but it turned out to be one of our more focussed shows, and fortunately 5/6 of it was filmed and recorded by a really good camera so it's quite classy footage, if I may say so:

We played: Antique Doll / Tired Eyes / 48 Hours / Bijou 80s Breakdown / Shades of Green / Double Shine Dustbowl Future

so this is "Antique Doll":

followed by a longer video featuring "48 Hours", "Bijou 80s Breakdown", "Shades of Green" and "Double Shine":

if 48 Hours is a bit peculiar (as it mostly is) just move forward :)

and here are two of the three tracks played by Pink Choppers

"Lagoon"

& a really fun cover of "Walk like an Egyptian"

there's some GD footage too, which I may post but I think I'll ask them first...

thanks, xx

RIP Simon Wring

2011-05-03T21:03:00.000+02:00

Our friend Simon has passed away last week.

I don't really want to go into the details but let's say it wasn't a complete surprise, he had got himself into a state where it was something that could be on the cards. Still, it's a shock and very, very sad...

He was an old friend of our drummer John, but I've known him for quite a long time too. We always felt he was the unofficial fourth member of the band. From the early days, and apart from demos, he did all of our recordings, and he also did sound for us quite a few times. I always remember going into Waterhouse Studio, a little place he set up with a friend underneath a church opposite Stratford shopping centre, for the first time and recording our first demo, and I'm not sure I even have a copy of it anymore. I was just so excited to be in a recording studio for the first time, and Simon was the perfect gent, very capable, precise, and supportive. From that time onwards he became a friend. He would always oversee everything we recorded and later, once he closed the studio, we would just be in his house to do it. He sometimes would add a piano motive, or other sounds to a song of ours (Shades of Green, for instance), and would reportedly work on that for hours, he was a bit of a perfectionist. But otherwise he often favored a first-take, spontaneous approach to recording, he didn't like recording too many takes, and more often than not, he was right. Our new album, which is finished you know, was probably one of the last things he worked on, there were several sessions, recording, mixing, etc. It's actually quite a while ago now, and the last time I saw him was at our last London gig in July last year which he recorded.

He also played bass in Gallon Drunk, went on tour with them a few times, and was tour manager for Bright Eyes, The Wedding Present, and others. For a while he was always off on tour, and his house was full of music memorabilia and photographs.

Anyway, here are a couple of videos, from his short lived project Rail that played our "when i'm pretty" night a couple of times at the Cross Kings:

(Vicky and George have now regrouped as The Pink Choppers, btw)

and with the mighty Gallon Drunk at the Corsica Studios (apparently they called him "The Bison"):

RIP Simon, I'll never forget you & thanks for all the music!

Thomas x

when i'm pretty in Brighton

2011-04-02T10:42:00.002+02:00

Crayola Lectern soundcheck:

Bella Kardasis and Paul Farrington, moody, ambient improv collaboration by the daily sea swimmers:

Crayola Lectern:

a genuinely lovely & mesmerising set by all accounts, listen to a short snippet here:

and then it's...

BACKSTAGE AT THE PLUS GIG:

I dedicated the set to the people of Japan, I was still very much in shock from the news reports. We played: I know I know Colony Collapse / Double Shine Dustbowl Future / The Tenderness of Wolves / Bijou 80s Breakdown / Lemonade Laminate / The Cracks of Language / Rotating Futures / They're Watching at Home and finally Shades of Green. By the end we seemed to have lost/scared off most of the audience though. Still, we've got the photos to prove it...

Rotating Futures, we're almost there...

2011-03-13T19:29:00.001+01:00

when i'm pretty presents... March 16 Brighton The Latest Music Bar

Wed 16. March, 20h

Brighton, The Latest Music Bar, Manchester Street .

£ 4.—on the door

when i’m pretty presents....

Plus – Plus formed in Kemptown over 10 years ago. They use guitar, 808 and far-out vocals to create a unique noise pop/alt.rock wigout. Part performance art, part punk, part prog, you won’t have seen anything like them. Celebrating new album “Rotating Futures”.

www.myspace.com/mmmplus

Crayola Lectern – Torrid piano songs spew forth from Crayola Lectern, aided and abetted by Jon Poole (Cardiacs) on Casiotone and Al Strachan (Hamilton Yarns, Willkommen) on flugelhorn.

www.crayolalectern.com

Bella Kardasis and Paul Farrington

Daily sea swimmers Bella Kardasis and Paul Farrington will perform together for the first time on dry land.

Bella Kardasis composes music for choreography, film, and animation.works using guitar, violin and piano.

http://soundcloud.com/bellamusic

http://www.kardasiscompositions.50g.com/

Paul Farrington works as a digital artist and musician under the name of Tonne. He has been primarily a graphic artist; however, he has increasingly been working with interactive technology which is music-driven. To that end he has been developing applications for making music. With his first release titled 'Soundtoy' published in 2002, he has been described by The Wire magazine as an "interactive software visionary". His interactive 'Soundtoys', which he has created for Depeche Mode, Mute and Moby, have set the benchmark for music 'packaging' in a post-print landscape.

Farrington's audio has also featured on numerous labels worldwide including BiP-HOp and Klitekture. His 'Soundtoy' CD - a collaboration with Scanner, si-cut.db, and Hakan Libdo - was a precursor to many similar audio/visual experiments, suggesting possible audio futures. Pauls interactive installations have been exhibited in the UK , Spain , Canada , USA , Germany , Italy , France and Croatia , and workshops have taken place in Sweden , Austria , UK and Ireland .

http://soundcloud.com/studiotonne

http://www.studiotonne.com/

& Space Disco DJs

Plus gig in B'ton: 29.09. at the Latest

2010-09-22T17:25:00.000+02:00

I've been meaning to get back to the blog but it seems the only times I'm posting at the moment is when we've got another gig! Oh well, next week on Wednesday we're returning to the Latest Music Bar in Kemptown. Come along, if you're free! We're playing second so should be on stage sometimes after 9 pm!

when i'm pretty presents....:

The Lovely Brothers: a dysfunctional family of performing buffoons whose cabaret tunes combine tongue-in-cheek satire, pop plagiarism and punk mayhem.
www.myspace.com/thelovelybrothers

Plus: brooding noise pop & alt.rock wigout. www.myspace.com/mmmplus

Broken Star: Improvised guitar, keyboards and visuals.
www.myspace.com/brokenstardust

& Space Disco DJs. Compered by Brighton poet Naomi Foyle

Wed 29.09. 20h @ The Latest Music Bar Brighton, £ 4.-- on the door

14 - 17 Manchester Street, Brighton BN2 1TF

Hobson's Choice Night

2010-07-25T13:41:00.002+02:00

Hi - I'm putting on another night featuring my band Plus and friends, next Wednesday 28.07.! Since the untimely recent demise of the fabulous Cross Kings bar and venue (RIP), which had to close as they were being evicted by their landlords Enterprise Inns, we had to move it, but, fortunately for some, it's still going to be in Kings Cross, for now at least. The Kings Cross Social Club is just around the corner from the Scala and the Big Chill House, on the corner of Kings Cross Road and Britannia Street, see it on the map here: http://tiny.cc/k4cqj. We're in the upstairs bar from about 8 pm, Plus should be on stage by about 10 pm. All dee-tails, pls see below...

cheerios, thomas x

when i'm pretty presents... HOBSON'S CHOICE SPECIAL featuring:

PLUS - noise pop with improv elements. www.myspace.co.uk/mmmplus
OF ARROWE HILL - gothic blues and psychedelia, solo acoustic set. "short, bittersweet'n'twisted alt-country by cult hero Adam Easterbrook" Tom Robinson, 6Music. www.myspace.com/ofarrowehill
(THE LEGENDARY) TOO DRUNK - garage rock. www.toodrunk.co.uk

DJ Gavin Hobson playing psychedelia, avant-metal, drone, noise, garage rock etc.
£ 3.-- on the door
Wed 28.07. 20h @ KINGS CROSS SOCIAL CLUB (UPSTAIRS BAR)

2 Britannia Street, London, UK WC1X 9‎

Behind The Music: Simon's old skool hard rock and metal party

2010-04-30T02:02:00.000+02:00

rock pigs party!

Plus returns to Brighton! Wed 3rd March @ the Latest Music Bar

2010-02-26T17:41:00.001+01:00

We've been wanting to return to Brighton to play a show for some time, after all this is where we started the band, and we still have friends there. For some reason, it's taken us a while but we've now put an exciting bill together, well, John did, so hopefully this will be a good one, looking forward to it... Wednesday 03 March @ The Latest Music Bar in Kemptown, just off St James Street, from about 20h... In John's words it goes something like this:

"

The When I’m Pretty Brighton Special....

.. ..

The long-running tri-monthly night in Kings Cross, curated by Plus, comes to Brighton.. for a one-off. Strange things can happen…

.. ..

Plus formed in Kemptown over 10 years ago. They wear Amy Winehouse wigs. They use guitar, 808 and far-out vocals to create a sound described as ‘strangely-flavoured frozen junk pop’, ‘fucking shit’ and ‘the best band I’ve ever seen’. They have been curating When I’m Pretty for 3 years, showcasing acts as diverse as Bach-playing classical guitarists and hardcore industrial noise, normally on the same bill; this is their first ..Brighton.. date for 6 years. Part performance art, part punk, part prog, you won’t have seen anything like them, and you won’t forget them.

.. ..

DJ Tendraw is a musical anarchist who has been described as ‘the British pioneer of ‘circuit bending’’; he has performed and exhibited nationally and internationally (Glastonbury, 2009/08/07, Next Festival, Slovakia, Bent Festival, LA/MPLS, US, Destroy Athens, Athens 1st Biennial, Below The Radar, Portugal) and has delivered lectures in turntablism and circuit-bending at the Kinetica Museum, Science Museum and the ICA, London, UK. He has written and presented radio shows for Resonance 104.4 FM, and released music on Big Dada, 4th Harmonic and Stationary Records.

‘DJ Tendraw has spawned a scene and production style entirely of his own creation and watched it grow to become an underground phenomenon from grimy South London clubs to the dancefloors of the electronica elite.’ www.Iconscious.co.uk

‘Circuit bent analogue mayhem ... re-routed childrens toys, magnetic hotel keys, feedback, casio keyboards, and an array of home made ‘jump loops’ wallpaper textures & things that i've never seen before.’ The More or Less Club

.. ..

Adam Lygo & EMB

Two-man improvised guitar massive sullen noise. Sounds like a house being sucked into a jet turbine.
’Digging deeply into claustrophobic spaces...the only intention is to suggest a feeling of enclosure, of huge gravitational weight, and powerful seismic forces at work.’

-Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector

www.myspace.com/adamlygo
www.myspace.com/murmurblend

.. ..

DJ Melita will be bookending the acts with a selection of downtempo electronica.

www.myspace.com/melita666

Only £4.00 on the door"

An Evening with the Weaklings: Winter Rites@Bistroteque

2010-02-10T22:50:00.001+01:00

A fundraiser for the Five Years gallery, a non-commercial artists-driven space, essentially a small flat in a council estate near the East London gallery hub of Vyner Street.

The beautiful dark interior of the small Bistroteque theatre with its many swirling lights:

The angel-voiced Nick Hudson and assorted players:

Dirty Snow: Esther Planas, Wolf and Tender Prey create a doomy, ambient dronescape with occasional hushed vocals and a lot of eerie chemistry. Thankfully it's not too loud and quite subtle, as isn't always the case with these things ;)

Jeremy Reed and Itchy Ear, aka The Ginger Light, a multimedia poetry performance that feels almost like a seance:

renewed plastic time

2010-01-23T19:48:00.004+01:00

while heroes sleep

turn another corner into song. bigger lines, no refusal, no fuss. the shock of renewed tears in my fictional desert.

the glittering lights that lead nowhere, really.

sweat runs down the older hero's face as he still sings of youthful abandon.

little lines cross horizontically across a gothic wedding scene.

the reds in the wedding cake remind you of the times you go back in that box.

i've rehearsed my lines for years, to explain what happened.

the emptiness near the motorways and the airports in the 50s and 60s.

snapping into mythological fatherhood. being so cute. homemovies for the future, assigned for you and me.

behind the fence, maybe a monster?

fast moving action time.

the low voice that wants to describe everything as it was, chicken, salad, the older singer's eyes, sparkling in eternity.

the huge snowman that never was.

my direction is for change, but i'm always stuck in the same old song.

i want to take care of you, ride that horsie.

aftershocks in the memory, when all the food is gone.

when did i receive that and where is it now, it's all so fluid in my head.

he remembered his humble beginnings, i'm flashing your images right back at him.

taken to be ideal. this is not a real life. i performed myself to oblivion. driven forever. no answer.

the end of being cool hangs out of your trousers...

...it's filling the room in odd intervals.

when you go to sleep and the lights go out.

i want to to be good. it's me with the wig, feeling bloated.

the truth behind the shades, going up and down, behind the man in black.

i'm on the wave, whooping like a tiger in the new plastic time.

memories mix, come together and mould a 60s hounddog, intellectual doesn't come into it.

when she speaks, i have all the time in the world.

he's sitting on a horse, riding off. the smoke was only yesterday.

it was you and the whole wide epic world, the electric shapes that made the sunset clearer, the passionate goodbye amplified over nature.

in endless copies we try to be ourselves in the old songs, and just before they were written.

i said yes reluctantly.

coming closer on the stairs.

the original figurehead, the original tone riding into the mind.

what's still plastic now, like those memories?

it speaks to me, it duplicates.

his telepresence, his letter head glory projecting into the holes in the ground. it was always the same. we're in a cloud. we're trapped. we can redeem this soul, and climb!

Hampstead (for Camilla)

2009-12-29T14:39:00.002+01:00

Camilla called us from Stockholm on Sunday, said she was going to see the new Jane Campion movie about John Keats, set in Hampstead I believe, so we were just about to leave the house to go to the heath as well so I said "we'll both be in Hampstead then this afternoon",and she said "take pictures", so here there are, the good ones anyway.... and merry x-mas! thomas x

Ali's 40th birthday party/jamming session @ West Hill Hall in Brighton

2009-12-20T15:11:00.001+01:00

another atmospheric shot of Brighton beach, it wasn't as windy as two weeks ago but it still looked fairly dramatic, ever since Aldeburgh I started paying more attention to the clouds when taking these kinds of pictures

and another shot of Waterloo Street... and onto West Hill Hall, a beautiful community centre in the Seven Dials area, sometimes used for acoustic, informal gigs and gatherings. For his fortieth Ali had organised an afternoon of mulled wine and some short sets of jamming with friends and other musicians from Brighton and beyond, even some morris dancing, etc. so here are some pics:

so happy birthday, Al!

Brighton breezy, isn't it?

2009-12-09T23:18:00.002+01:00

Above: John and Sue's party, or is that a doctor's waiting room...

John plays cricket with this man, and Momus wrote a song about him apparently, he played it to me at the end of the night:

and here's some pics from the very dramatic sea in the morning and during the day, Brighton looks good when it's windy:

Waterloo Street, our old haunt The Iron Duke is as the bottom of this street

one of the big old windows of The Bristol, looking out from the seafront

North Laines

I'm halfway through Daphne du Maurier's "Jamaica Inn", enjoying it more than I thought, I recognize a lot of the places in Cornwall. Want to go back to places like Padstow and the Bodmin Moor...

in the Evening Star (the obligatory stop before getting the train back!), dressed like a not quite convincing "Le Donk"

Aldeburgh and Saxmundham

2009-11-28T15:52:00.001+01:00

A Three Day Stroll Along The River: Cricklade to Oxford on the Thames Path

2009-11-02T21:51:00.024+01:00

Pre Halloween craziness...

2009-10-22T12:41:00.002+02:00

Plus - bijou 80s breakdown (demo)

2009-10-07T00:24:00.005+02:00

animation masks,
silent thread inside the theatre.
unhappy connection, scattered intentions,
multiplied strains,
techno investigator shakes his head,
itching to get out of thread.
in the woods
alone at night. flickering colours, the dozy
masters of tomorrow.

gasoline threads the nation, flying through
frozen colours, interweaving flavours left, stranded in different colours.
ejaculating future reports. bijou 80s breakdown.

hair waves in front of you, suggestively burn down in bed,
a sullen space rocket, a blackness invades your eyes,
reaching out from mossy eyelids, it kicked in and multiplied,
a swirling canvas, a different shadow questions you,
trapped in fuzzy state.

melancholia overload, images
are false to the eye,
delighted quiffs reverse.
therapy deepens layer machine. feedback noise evaluate, evaporate into mist.
flowers bloom over white sheets.

...efforts layer retro fuzz wail and mend the right channel now so the left layer doesn't take over...

a nice, spacey, dreamy demo we recorded a little while ago, just me and Chris, the band version will sound a bit different, will maybe even feature keyboards by a special guest, set to some photos from a very hot August weekend in and near Cognac, France. Where they make the cognac!

www.myspace.com/mmmplus come and see us on the 22nd October at the Cross Kings!

Better late than never... some shots from the wonderful "Our Band Could BBQ Your Life" weekender at the Brixton Windmill

2009-08-23T13:31:00.014+02:00

Simon's mum in the cafe of the Museum of Childhood reading "Our Band Could Be Your Life", Michael Azerrads seminal book on the American underground, through the 80s to just pre Nirvana. Each chapter is dedicated to a different band, and the weekender at the Brixton Windmill featured new bands covering at least two tracks of each of the bands in the chapters. I just re-read the book, it's very inspiring and well written, every chapter is infused with the history, drama, organisation and flavour of that band, and of course it makes you want to investigate further and join the dots. First time I read it I wasn't really familiar with The Replacements, Minutemen, Mission of Burma. That was quite a long time ago, and they've become firm faves of mine. This time I ordered/bought discs by Black Flag, Beat Happening and Husker Du, so fingers crossed...

Dan/4 or 5 Magicians/the organiser of the entire weekend as The Replacements, the highlight of the weekend for me. HOW DO YOU SAY GOODNIGHT TO AN ANSWERING MACHINE? He opened with that, it was amazing...

Winnebago Deal played about 20 Black Flag songs straight through, really astonishing:

My good friends Amy Blue tackling Butthole Surfers confrontational performance art techniques, an intense and noisy set, and certainly in spirit with the inspiration ;)
We're playing a show with them again on the 22.10. at the usual place, the Cross Kings, put it in your diary:

Blenheim Gardens in beautiful afternoon sunlight, quite a contrast to the dark coven of noise inside the venue:

Everyone to the Anderson as Big Black, a very cool, understated, minimalist set, one of my faves:

Ice Sea Dead People as Minor Threat:

The mellow scene outside the Windmill, everyone started to look a bit frazzled at that point:

The Muscle Club as Fugazi:

4 of 5 Magicians second set of the weekend, as Dino Jr, very good - though at that point I was slightly less tolerant of loud rock music, haha, so it didn't quite have the same impact as their amazing Replacements set the night before for me, but solid, only songs from You're Living All Over Me which is cool by me. Freak Scene was played over the PA straight after I think, so it wasn't missing though it wasn't played live:

A mountain of equipment lugged onto the stage by X-Certs who tried to be Husker Du, seeing them maybe wasn't strictly necessary on Sunday night, have to say. But all in all a great weekend and really good to read that book again, highly recommended:

some wonky shots from the Field Day '09

2009-08-02T14:38:00.011+02:00

I'm not that great at photographing bands, it's quite hard, but what interested me visually was the whole scene, the crowds, the lights, especially as things got a little messy, mostly in a good way, from about 5-6 pm onwards, with the rain and the drinks and whatever taking over etc. it looked good. I love the way this one day festival that is firmly an East London fest mixes up edgy indie with mellow alt country and dubstep and electro and improv jazz and burlesque/alt.cabaret in the "Do you come Here often" tent and all sorts of other grooves, it's quite open ended and attracts an interesting crowd, both nerdy and hedonistic, and very East London, again, mostly in a good way. While the very happening dance tents (mainly Bugged Out and Bloggers Delight) and the general clubby atmosphere might make it come across as some sort of eccentric rave party with an indie festival tacked on, it was perfectly possible to immerse yourself in pretty dark and moody soundscapes all day long, from the Sian Alice Group to SCUM to The Horrors to Fennesz to The Big Pink and finally on to Mogwai who were truly magnificent, one of the better festival headline sets I've seen, best enjoyed with your eyes closed... but open your eyes now:

Wet Paint (they were really good, US alt indie influenced - I'm sure, and wouldn't be surprised if they own a few GBV records - and very energetic and fun, shame everyone was sitting down but I think they turned a few heads):

S.C.U.M. slightly overblown and murky neo-goth sounds, does that do it justice? Not sure... :

The Horrors, in the rain, I guess they didn't quite make the impact they should have, but it was entertaining enough to me, if not a little lightweight:

The Big Pink:

Four Tet, dancers with Hula Hoops that had little lights attached:

Bloggers Delight, a smallish tent that seemed to be rammed the whole time:

Mogwai, both the main course and the comedown:

no solution mf: Sludgefeast and Junkyard Choir at the Spice of Life

2009-07-20T23:02:00.012+02:00

James Sludgefeast is back from Singapore for about a week, so there was a series of Sludgefeast shows in quick succession. The biggest one was probably Sat at the Spice of Life, supported by ex Do Me Bad Things singer Mark Wood's Junkyard Choir, and many excellent guest spots on bass, as Coirin wasn't there, guest singers, a Do Me Bad Things cover version, and for the last song, a harmonica (!!!). The whole thing felt like a family party. I got to wear my wig and shades again, James II's shades disintegrated halfway through the set so I gave him mine - unfortunately they kept sliding off as he's a very energetic drummer, and they're just some cheap party shades (you don't see much looking through them but it feels good at a Sludgefeast show, you want it to look woozy!)

Abingdon to Dorchester on the Thames Walk

2009-07-19T22:21:00.018+02:00

The fourth day of our ongoing little project: walking the whole of the Thames Walk, see photos from one of the previous days here. Kirsten, whose idea this is and who is organising the walks, did a couple of days of walking with a friend over a weekend without us in between too, and there's a day's worth of walking missing that was impossible to get to with public transport on a Sunday, so we're not doing this 100 % linear. The weather was meant to be really bad today but it ended up just drizzling for a bit, it stayed mostly overcast and a bit windy but mostly dry and it was quite warm so it didn't matter too much, though our shoes got wet walking through the grass. We started in the pleasant old town of Abingdon, where we walked to from nearby Oxford a few weeks ago, having lunch at the famous Barley Mow pub, housed in a 14th century building, eventually arriving near Dorchester, where we decided we would stop the walk for today as our initial destination was taking a little too long to get to. Dorchester is set back from the Thames by about a mile but is a fascinating small town with many historical buildings, couple of medieval coaching inns and old churches, so it was good to get to see it.

Abingdon:

old railway bridge:

The Barley Mow:

allotments just outside Dorchester:

Dorchester:

pub opposite Didcot Parkway station advertising some food:) :

Sunday: On Blake's Steps, etc.

2009-07-14T08:05:00.001+02:00

The last episode of the five part Torchwood screened last week, I missed it on Friday so watched it on the iplayer. Really got into it, the way the government is trying to cover up for itself in the eerie plot (involving aliens forcing the UK government to give up 10 % of its children, and the government deciding that underperforming schools should go first) is obviously taken from real life to some extent:

Funky old Redchurch Street:

Rivington Street:

The John Snow in Soho, a favourite haunt:

and around the corner to On Blake's Steps, a fairly eccentric gathering of young and old poets reading a few of their poems, poetry fans and Blake heads on the steps of the (modern) house that stands on the site of the house William Blake was born in in Soho (around the corner from Carnaby Street). My friend and old B'ton buddy Naomi Foyle read a poem about her mum's death (exactly 15 years ago), a poem by her mum who was also a poet and a poem by someone she was with on that day, very poignant, unfortunately I was lost in the moment and didn't take a photo. This is Jeremy Reed:

The "eco poet" Helen Moore reads a poem that contrasts the infinite intricacies of the natural world with the financial jargon of the banker (read by Niall Mc Devitt):

Jeremy Reed again at the end, this time with partyshades:

Niall then took the group on a little history tour around Soho pointing out the various residences of the Blakes, Shelley's house and eventually Blake's residence in Poland Street, three doors down from the Kings Arms pub that he used to frequent. In the upstairs room the ancient order of druids was revived around that time and that's where the gathering ended with some more poems and talks and discussions about Blake, by that point history seemed to have come alive out of the books and words, it almost felt like a seance communing with the spirit of Blake and his legacy:

graffiti in the gents at the KA:

Niall Mc Devitt in the historical upstairs room at the Kings Arms (now, of course, the unofficial London bear pub)

with Naomi in Thai Metro in Charlotte Street, always tasty, reliable, and in an ok location where most of the restaurants are more expensive:

aboriginal art gallery on Charlotte Street, I saw a few new galleries around there that I hadn't noticed before:

Soho Square:

later at 100% Dynamite, the excellent monthly reggae/dub/dancehall Sunday all dayer put on by the Soul Jazz Records crew and co, at the equally ace 1001 cafe off Brick Lane:

Brick Lane, going home:

Saturday: walk through (mostly) rainy London

2009-07-12T00:01:00.000+02:00

London Bridge was closed to traffic for the London Bridge 800 fair. To celebrate the 800th anniversary of the bridge, they set up stalls similar to what would have been there 800 years ago:

leading on from the temporary market on the bridge it was just a few steps down to Borough Market, always packed at the weekends:

along the South Bank by the Royal Festival Hall all the trees along this busy stretch of the river have these red-with-white-think-bubbles coats on them right now. People seem encouraged to write their thoughts or whatever on them, and most of them are covered in graffiti:

the ever popular fountains outside the RFH:

Gamelan workshop/demonstration in the lobby of the RFH, there's always something going on in there on the weekends:

Vauxhall:

this is the street of Denis Severs House
at the end of it a new gigantic and IMO very ugly and unoriginal looking office tower block looms, but inside this street time stands still and worlds collide:

The Gwaun Valley

2009-06-29T21:52:00.000+02:00

or the mysterious Gwaun Valley, as it's sometimes referred to... Pembrokeshire is mostly about the coast, but this lush green valley is hidden away between the Preseli Hills and the port of Fishguard where the Gwaun flows into the sea by the Lower Town (also pictured). It's difficult to even find the road that goes there, it's only a small B-road, and once you're there you enter a beautiful and mostly fairly steep valley with ancient woodland, and the occasional meadow, bridge or farmhouse. Apparently people there still follow the Gregorian calendar and all sorts of other old traditions, and it certainly feels like a forgotten place that's left as it's always been...on that day it had rained all morning so it was very green everywhere!

Plus, Paperbag & The Flying Gambinos at the Cross Kings, 11. May, the evening in pics and video

2009-05-17T12:29:00.001+02:00

soundcheck:

Paperbag:

Plus:

photos by me, Simon and Hebe.

setlist: Plus Today / Double Shine Dustbowl Future / I know I know Colony Collapse / Shades of Green / Tired Eyes / 48 Hours / The Cracks of Language / Steamrise / Lemonade Laminate / Ephedrine Daddy

it was another good night, a bit chaotic but it worked, we were quite busy, and I got to wear my new lederhosen with my beehive wig, a good combo! Hebe the DJ unfortunately couldn't get the data discs she brought along to play over the venue's sound system, and I only had one Cocteau Twins album on my ipod, Milk and Kisses, so we did play a bit of that, but also the great 1 hour DJ set I got from werasagtmussauchbsagen (friends of Joerg's from the Munich scene) a couple of years ago, plus later Anderson had some good stuff in his that we played, so it wasn't a huge problem, just a shame as she spent a lot of time preparing her Cocteaus DJ set. The Flying Gambinos played in a new lineup for the first time, including their cover of our song "Antique Doll" (see video below), Paperbag rocked out power pop style, including a Police cover at the end of their set. And we just did our thing too, I did a bit more falsetto than usual, possibly to let hang out my perceived Cocteaus influence, we played a slightly different set again, some songs we hadn't played for a while, several people came up to me later who I didn't really know and told me they really liked it, so thanks! everybody!

trip down to lovely B'ton to rehearse for the gig tomorrow...

2009-05-10T12:25:00.000+02:00

we always rehearse at Monster, in an industrial estate just by Portslade harbour, just outside Brighton. When we arrived on the train there were still a couple of hours before the rehearsal was due to start so I walked through the very busy North Laines (it's the Brighton festival right now as well!) first all the way into Kemptown then back along the beach, got a lift from the others to Monster and then walked back along Hove promenade, so I essentially walked the whole of the Brighton and Hove seafront in total yesterday. Well, it was a lovely day and the air was so good... even though i felt a bit crap, it was a productive rehearsal, some new stuff, and we managed to agree on a fairly varied setlist that has an intriguing mix of old and new...

when i'm pretty presents... Plus, Paperbag & The Flying Gambinos @ the Cross Kings, Monday 11. May

2009-05-10T11:46:00.000+02:00

Norfolk Broads

2009-05-04T12:39:00.000+02:00

I've just come back last night from three days of walking on the Norfolk Broads (I took the Friday off to make it a super long weekend, a wise move which I can remommend as you can beat the Bank Holiday travel rush - even though the train was delayed badly due to someone under a train in the Romford area, affecting all trains out of Liverpool Street), a flat, old landscape that lies roughly between Norwich and Great Yarmouth on the coast with an extensive system of waterways, rivers, ditches and many old windmills, remote villages and country pubs. There are some good long distance walks, I walked a bit of the Weavers Way from Acle to Great Yarmouth, right across the Broads and then along Breydon Water, and bits of the Wherryman Way that follows the River Yare, on the second day around Reedham, and yesterday from Norwich up to the Ferryhouse Pub near Surlingham village. One problem for walkers in this area is access, it's ok if you have a boat, but as there are only crossings over the Yare in Great Yarmouth, Reedham and Norwich, it's quite difficult to get to the walks and back, and even on a bank holiday there weren't many walkers. I walked as far as the Ferryhouse pub expecting to be able to cross over to get to the train station for a train back to Norwich, only to find it stopped in 1965. So I asked around in the pub and got a lift across the river from some very friendly guys who were having a stag do party on three boats and who were happy to help :-)

Great Yarmouth on first impressions wasn't too good, quite tacky and a bit rough, but on closer inspection I quite liked it, there is a very old part of it that faces away from the sea, the historic South Quay, and the whole are around there is actually quite nice, some good pubs as well, walk north from the pier and you come to some quiet dunes facing the amazing Scroby Sand Wind Farm. Norwich too, some streets around the station on a Saturday night are like a giant hen party from hell, but walk around the corner and you're in some amazing tranquil cobblestoned street, old churches loom everywhere, so you have to explore it a bit. I eventually found a nice big pub, that had a little free party in the basement where some dudes played old ska and dub 45s and a cool, chilled crowd hung out, the complete antidote to the towney pissed up scene just down the road.

Norfolk Broads 2

2009-05-04T11:53:00.001+02:00

L'Aquila

2009-04-14T21:26:00.001+02:00

In 2004 we took a very interesting trip through Abruzzo and the Molise, two neighbouring Italian counties that have a fairly remote and to some extent backwards feel, even though they are really quite close to Rome, just east of it in fact, and only about a couple of hours away. This is mostly due to them being very mountainous , I think, especially in the highly recommended Abruzzo national park which almost looks like the Alps. For some reason, these areas, though interesting and featuring many old places, don't really seem to feature very much on the international tourist trails and when you arrive in Rome from the Abruzzo you feel you're suddenly landed in a much more touristy place where everything is double the prize and much faster.

Most people will have heard by now of the terrible earthquake in the old town of L'Aquila that has claimed many lives and allegedly damaged most of the many historical buildings in the town and surrounding villages. But I suspect most people in other countries will not have a real sense of the place, as it's not that famous outside of Italy. So we spent a couple of days over a weekend there during our trip, and fell a little bit in love with the place, actually we were hoping to go back at some stage (and still do). There were many old churches and buildings, a remarkable Roman bath, mountains all around it. It was quite lively, with a university, an arts centre in an old fort, many friendly bars. We discovered the music of the wonderful sad old crooner Frank Buscaglione in one of the bars near the main square. I remember a friendly student bar run by some beary looking types who invited us to sample the local grappas. And this amazing broad old staircase leading up to a church where the local youth would hang out in the evenings. I wonder what is left of all of this, I haven't really researched it but seeing the events unfold on international news programmes was harrowing, actually knowing the place and having met a few of the friendly locals. So anyway, here's some of the photos we took. My thoughts go out to the people of L'Aquila!

Random Journey: The Raspberries, Big Star & Teenage Fanclub's "Thirteen"

2009-04-06T22:45:00.000+02:00

I've been meaning to do this for quite a long time: A few years ago I started a series of blog posts about bands and records, one leading to another, by association, seeing to where it would lead me. Last you heard from me on this journey I was with the Pooh Sticks which lead me to the Raspberries and their Greatest (hits). I've had this record for a couple of years now, and on the whole I really like it, I've played it quite a lot, it's been a bit of a (minor) favourite actually. I'm not sure what the Pooh Sticks saw in them, the overblown, almost baroque stompers (in a maybe ironic way?) or the fine, lovelorn ballads. Anyway, several things: As far as I know this stuff was already retro when it came out, but it's so old now it sounds doubly retro, 60s pastiche sounds different now. When it's good it's lush, breezy, confident, anthemic power pop with quite complex songs that stick in your head after while. While lyrically often riding out some cliched love stories, the music is definitely not too formulaic. Eric Carmen's voice has a beautiful, slightly camp, often wistful and, yes, fruity quality, though some of the stuff goes a little too far into cheese territory for me, the fruitiness becomes over-ripe and slightly rotten so to speak. Some of the songs are real classics in my book though. I'm so glad I bought this record!

I think the next step was via an amazon recommendation and it's not too far a step to Big Stars first two albums collected on this dics . There are definitely some parallels here, Big Star can do lush and grand power pop too, but there is more melancholia and a slightly grittier feel underlying a lot of this material. It bites a bit deeper, it's got a different kind of staying power that anchors it, it inhabits a moodier, more doubtful place, and it's this quality that maybe makes them more relevant today. Again, some absolutely great stuff here and probably high time I checked them out. Saw them in London last year in top form!

So now it goes back to Scotland and the 90s, the link this time happened as follows...: Shortly after seeing Big Star play in London, they did a beautiful version of their fine sad ballad "Thirteen", I was in Glasgow's Avalanche Records en route to the Hebrides and saw Teenage Fanclub's album "Thirteen" there at quite a reasonable prize. Now I knew that they were indebted to Big Star's sound (just like a lot of other indie bands), but up til then I didn't realize that the title of the album was probably a Big Star reference in one way or another (I think there's thirteen tracks on there too), so the link for the "random journey" suggested itself. What sounds maybe a little bit dull and monochromatic on first impression revealed itself as quite accomplished, very understated indie rock with all sorts of subtle nods to the past but still occupying some time and place of it's own. The Big Star template is definitely in there, no doubt, but they manage to blend in all sorts of other elements, and the songwriting is very impressive, once you give the songs some room to breathe. I think they had some sort of problem with this record, it came out after their breakthrough "Bandwagonesque" album, and they weren't so happy with it, but to me it was this record that made me a fan. I've got most of their albums now. It was sitting on the porch in Colonsay playing it on this crappy stereo, over and over, while looking at the craggy hills and the sheep wandering about. There's a song, "The Cabbage", that sounds eerily like an early 90s Weezer outtake, the same bass staccato lines, and even the yearning vocals sound similar. "Escher" is my favourite though, I think, and the opener, "Hang On", is grand too, gets me every time. Though I'm sure I haven't got as deep into this band as you can go. But I'm glad I'm on the way now, again, probably much too late, but sometimes certain bands reach you at a later stage. So where next on this journey? At least I've finally got around to updating here again. Hopefully it won't be two years before the next instalment. It's been really good and educational so far, I have to say!

Rozz Williams Happy Hour

2009-04-01T08:01:00.000+02:00

RIP Rozz...

Actually this is a bit more than an hour so you can skip some of the Shadow Project stuff (for some reason I found a lot of Shadow Project stuff I liked on youtube, but couldn't find many good videos from Christian Death's second and third albums). For more info on this amazing artist check out these websites:the blue hour and http://www.rozznet.com/ //// thomas <<

"Cavity - First Communion" (Christian Death featuring RW Reunion Show '93) 3.35

"Deathwish" (Dr Caligari) 2.10

"Dogs" Daucus Carota in Paris 06.11.94 2.55 lyrics are taken from poems by Dennis Cooper, he told me via his blog

"Spiritual Cramp" (It's a Wonderful Life) 3.03

Premature Ejaculation 8.52

Shadow Project 3.50

Shadow Project "Zaned People" 9.36

"GrungeandDeath"'s short tribute 0.40

"Gleichschaltung" 4.34

"Whorse" with images by David Lynch 3.58

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqRgoD1nrmY
(embedding disabled by request)

Shadow Project 2.07

Shadow Project "Hounds Upon the Hare" 4.54

Christian Death: "Figurative Theatre" (King of Kings) 2.55

Shadow Project live 6.23

Christian Death : "Romeo's Distress" (Reunion show '93) 2.55

Rozz Williams - Memorial (Flower) 6.05

PUT PEOPLE FIRST!!! demo in London

2009-03-29T14:57:00.000+02:00

Some pics and video from the big, peaceful demo in advance of the G2O summit in London. The three main focal points were Jobs, Justice and Climate and I've rarely seen a demo with such a huge variety of groups taking part, unions, environmental groups, Tibetan protesters, priests, people of all ages, with all sorts of banners, messages and concerns, some of which you see in the placards they were carrying set against the background of a pretty good walking tour of most of central London's landmarks, starting at Temple, proceeding towards Big Ben then back down along Whitehall, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus and on to a big rally in Hyde Park, where the variety of speakers and video messages again was very impressive. The atmosphere was great throughout, the weather kept changing, it could have maybe been a bit busier but it was nevertheless a big, powerful and largely good natured demo. Me and Frank the Photographer who I met through the Germans in London forum were making photos and some video throughout, so here it is...

i took this, it's not that great, but hey...

and someone else put this together:

when i'm pretty presents... pics and video from the 15.03.

2009-03-20T07:59:00.001+01:00

GNA pics (apart from first two) by Simon, think they came out really well... another good night, started a bit quiet but definitely picked up later.

So far no pictures of us, Plus, but here is our setlist: I know I know (Colony Collapse)/Walking the foodmiles/Rotating Futures/48 Hours/Potatobiter/Lemonade Laminate/Double Shine Dustbowl Future/Ephedrine Daddy/Antique Doll/Electric Germany/Silhouette (quite a wild set mostly, I was a bit preoccupied before hitting the stage but once it started I got really into it!)

Next "when i'm pretty presents..." night just confirmed for Monday 11. May at the Cross Kings Jester Bar again (w/Flying Gambinos and more tbc).

videos:

GNA - Global Noise Attack!!! sound a bit sh!t on this but you can just about make out the songs and visually it's quite the entertaining, hehe ;)

EVOL-I (Amy Blue):

Simon Amy Blue in excellent solo mode. "Won't You Follow Me?" and "?" (hadn't heard that one before I think). Shame hardly anyone was there for his set, it picked up later, so at least this way he can have more of a (belated) audience...

when i'm pretty presents (rescheduled from 2nd Feb): 15.03. Sunday GNA, Plus and EVOL-I (Amy Blue) @ Cross Kings, Jester Bar, York Way, nr Kings Cross

2009-03-14T11:01:00.000+01:00

Meeting Old Friends: Nico Punk aka Ralf

2009-03-10T23:12:00.000+01:00

The first in a series, possibly, here some photos, not in chronological order, from last Saturday when I finally got to meet my old friend Ralf again. It was a buzzy, balmy afternoon and we had a few hours before he had to get the Stansted Express from Liverpool Street to fly back to Berlin so we went on an epic walk through the East London 'hood, starting at Old Street station, taking in Bunhill Fields, Hoxton Square, the outside of the George and Dragon, Columbia Road, the Hackney City Farm, Broadway Market, and back to Brick Lane, Rough Trade East, Spitalfields market and finally Liverpool Street station. It was quite magical, even to me...

More Snow...: Tannheimer Tal

2009-03-03T22:55:00.001+01:00

two days of falling snow which has a very special quality, it's still new, it's not icy or dirty yet, and it keeps coming. thick layers of it hanging over everything, paths need to be prepared. In the Tannheimer Tal, a high lying valley just over the border in Austria, about two hours drive from my parents house, so they go there quite often, the valley and the lower lying tracks are prepared and some of the alpine huts/restaurants are open, so winter walking is possible (and recommended!) After two days of drifting snow suddenly sunshine and a very pristine white valley emerged on our last morning there.

Plus - Double Shine, Dustbowl Future

2009-02-25T01:34:00.000+01:00

Slouched in the backseat

connecting faces blur again

My lines are broken down to fragments, memories

lines inside the face

peace is full of beasts

waiting for the fantasy to return

paranoid shares seeping into power now

a sea of language frozen in time

he's the first man to do this

double shine double shine

a sharp tug at the corner

evaporate silly maps

i was in it for you

strained laughter

easy message

troubled times flick through

desolation awaits

there is an echo where the river once ran

resources dry out, darker tides even out further

a train into heaven stops, endtimes character

a false boom legacy drags you down

this is not what you want to hear

engineer the land of plenty till you fail

dusty jackets, dustbowl future

From our new CD "Colony Collapse". Photos are from a winter walk in the Tiefental, an ancient valley that is now dry, with amazing rock formations, near Blaubeuren, Schwaebische Alb, in South Western Germany, and the Blautopf in Blaubeuren itself. www.myspace.com/mmmplus

The Snowdiva!!

2009-02-04T17:55:00.001+01:00

Simon Old Cheeser and the snowdiva outside his house. Taken by him two days ago, I guess. Today most of the snowmen have melted away, or started to disintegrate, it never lasts in this city! Love the wig, it looks familiar... ;)

snow :-)

2009-02-02T19:07:00.000+01:00

Weavers Field, Bethnal Green. Pretty full and a good atmosphere. apparently it's like this all over London. Oh, and the gig tonight is not happening, I want to postpone it, hopefully keeping everything intact, the whole lineup. It wouldn't have worked today... and noone would have been able to come to it! Laters...

P.S. "Tagging" Old Cheeser!!! Tagging "Old Cheeser"!!! Pls interrupt yr blogsleep and post a picture of the snowdiva! cheers :-)

when i'm pretty presents... PLUS (with GNA & AMY BLUE!!!) @ the Cross Kings, Monday 02.Feb

2009-01-29T22:59:00.001+01:00

Hey, Hey, Another evening featuring Plus and friends is coming up next Monday 02. Feb from 8pm, again at the cosy Jester Bar @ the Cross Kings on York Way, near Kings Cross station, £ 3 on the door. We're playing a bit earlier this time, at about 09.15pm. We recently recorded a new mini album/CD "Colony Collapse" which we will play, plus a few oldies...

Opening the evening will be our good friends Amy Blue, who are promising a more unusual set of songs they've never played before, and headlining we have the in-your-face industrial rock experience (literally!) of GNA (from about 10pm)... DJ Wayne Bootleg will play old skool punk, rock and goth in between the sets.

All details below

cheers, thomas xx

"when i'm pretty presents...

GNA - Global Noise Attack!! Theatrical, abrasive industrial rock.
www.myspace.com/globalnoiseattack;

Plus - brooding alt.rock with improv elements, playing new mini album “Colony Collapse”
www.myspace.com/mmmplus

Amy Blue – “nu-gazing” doom pop, celebrating the imminent release of their debut album, “The Fortress and the Fatalist”
www.myspace.com/amyblue

DJ Wayne Bootleg plays punk, rock and goth!

Monday, 02. Feb, 20h @ The Cross Kings – Jester Bar (downstairs)
York Way, near Kings Cross rail and underground station
www.thecrosskings.co.uk

£ 3.-- on the door!"

Christian Death: Spiritual Cramp

2009-01-02T02:35:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year!!! ...

and welcome to my latest obsession: Rozz Williams-era Christian Death, one of the original so called "death rock" bands, and a fixture on the LA punk scene. I saw the Valor incarnation of Christian Death in London recently and was so puzzled by it all. I think what Valor and the fabulously scary Maitri (she looks like she's coming straight out of a Polanski movie...) do is decent and fairly entertaining but it's a completely different band. Check out the wikipedia entry for Christian Death and you find there's a fleeting mirage of incarnations, every one further removed from the original band that made that classic first album "Only Theatre of Pain", made when Rozz was just 16 (!!!). So when I got that recently I realised just why this band was so important and influential. And that it's all about Rozz at the end of the day, he was quite the enigmatic and eccentric artist and character...and his image set trends for decades to come...I love his voice, already so world weary and campy, and the driving punk rock guitars on this track, set to scenes from " It's a Wonderful Life"...

Happy Holidays, everybody!!!

2008-12-24T13:14:00.000+01:00

Is the party crashing us now, or are we just readjusting?

My Records of the Year 2008

2008-12-24T10:34:00.000+01:00

1. of Montreal - SKELETAL LAMPING

This record almost scares me, it's so over the top, ambitious, grand, endlessly perplexing, multicoloured, like peeking through a kaleidoscope into a multi mirrored projection hall where all sorts of dreams, nightmares and sexual traumas, fetishes and obsessions get played out relentlessly and reassembled in bizarre combinations. There are some very catchy bits that stick in your head, and some of the more upbeat passages can grate a bit to my ears, but the melancholic/weird interludes that kick in frequently are really holding it together for me, take that utterly desolate piano interlude where Kevin is singing in his sad clown voice "why i'm so damaged? why am i such a troubled soul?'... the kaleidoscopic effect of the album to me is comparable to something like GBV's "Alien Lanes", where snippets of genius songs blur against each other and cancel each other out, it's such a disorientating and overpowering ride. Critically it didn't receive quite the same adoration as the rightly celebrated "Hissing Fauna..." album but I believe people will discover SL in time, it has a lot to offer...

2. TV on the Radio - DEAR SCIENCE

It's more streamlined, and seemed too polished at first, but a few listens in, the songs are strong, and complex, and tense, and are infused with a powerful underlying sense of dread. It doesn't really preach, though it is very angry in places, and it's still very poetic in its images and complex word play, but it conveys a sense of the contemporary world sliding out of our control into previously unknown abysses. Still, it's a pop record for all that, so quite an achievement, a very here and now record...

3. The Notwist - THE DEVIL, YOU & ME

It's quite gentle and understated but underneath the relatively calm surface it's a reassured minor masterpiece of complex soundscape molded into leftfield pop songs. The astronauts/dirty planets/retro sci fi theme running through it is tasty to me too... live, they rocked in their own way, it's always such a pleasure to see them!

4. Brett Anderson: WILDERNESS

Without a record contract, Brett went into the studio for a week and recorded this largely acoustic album featuring downbeat ballads (and no Suede-style stompers) with just him, a piano, a guitar and a cellist, and released it himself. The result is one of his most coherent and concentrated records, and I think a lot of the fans loved it. While it's big on sadness, there's a sense of hope somewhere in there. On the sleeve you see him walking through wintery country spaces, but it looks as if this is very early spring and the first flowers are starting to appear, and this would describe the peculiar mood of this album to me, downbeat, morbid, but with a sliver of positivity, and a sense that he hasn't lost his direction. Live this translated into a first half of Wilderness/solo stuff, the second half was all Suede, done acoustically. Really wonderful...

5. The Gutter Twins: SATURNALIA

Mark Lanegan and Gred Dulli, a dreamboat collaboration/product of a long running friendship. And it really worked!

6. Robert Pollard IS OFF TO BUSINESS

Kinda what it says on the can. I've lost much of my critical faculties when it comes to Bob I'm afraid but this year has seen him bounce back with a new record label, band, coffee table book, and the news that this Cleopatra musical (directed by Steven Soderbergh, for which Bob has written the music)) is finally... I don't know, what is it doing? It may actually happen now. So it's all good in Camp Bob I guess and I'm good with that too... though maybe not quite as excited as I used to be/maybe should be? BTW all other records he's made - I either don't have them yet or haven't spent that much time with them...

7. Deerhunter: MICROCASTLE/WEIRD ERA CONT

More blissed out, washed up, weird pop. The second disc, Weird Era Cont, means a bit more to me right now but that could change. Bradford and Alex, who created the striking cover art, are both at least semi regulars on Dennis' blog so I feel that there's something going on here, the blogs are taking over, haha.

8. The Breeders: MOUNTAIN BATTLES

It took me a while to notice that Kim Deal sings in German on "German Studies" but once I did I loved it, it's hilarious. This is a fun record that seemed a bit insubstantial to me on first listen but has found my affection, there's always something sharp poking in the background in the Deals' wayward laid back sound that keeps me wanting more.

9. Times New Viking: RIP IT OFF

I've said it before but I'll say it again, I don't think this record sounds that much like GBV, yeah, it's very lo fi, they're from Ohio, on Matador, so it gets all that right but there's a different beast in there, and none of the personality of a Bob Pollard. Still, it's a fine party (in your head) record when you're alone in your room in a haze late at night which is how I mostly experienced it. It's definitely cool in all the wrong ways, haha...

I'll better stop now. I don't think this list is too exciting myself, but it's partly due to not feeling the need to buy everything new that came out. So it could be quite different. Of Montreal has been the band of the year for me, I don't know where I've been with them before. But their music resonates with me in ways I didn't think possible... And so I'll leave you with a live video of my favourite song right now, Forecast Fascist Future, from the album "The Sunlandic Twins". Have a good x-mas!

Brighton: John and Sue's party and beyond...

2008-12-03T22:25:00.001+01:00

Amy Winehouse and friend, hounded by the paps

terre a terre, still good but still expensive too...

Debbie and Ruth

Pete

Amy and friends gurning outside a pub in Camden Town, 3am
the lovely Keith...
Are we Human or are we Dancer? Yes, there was some of that...

A Neo-Warholian scene

at the Mad Hatter Cafe, Western Rd

me and Keith
John, Chris, Simon
Jenny with wig

dirrrty!

you may have wondered what our weekend in B'ton, and John and Sue's joint birthday party looked like... again, i don't know how to get blogger to post the pics in order. Anyone know?

Elke and Verusca

2008-11-24T22:28:00.000+01:00

these giant swowmen are hanging over Carnaby Street right now...

Verusca signing Gavin's birthday card, I *think* they've met before ;-)

the scene at the John Snow pub in Soho

"just friends!"

Vanessa and Elke at the Porterhouse
Gavin's birthday party

the snowman's behind! i bet he shits plastic snow!

the scene at the pub in Brixton on Sunday night

Simon's mum at the Leicester Square Theatre. We saw a one woman/diva show with Jackie Scarvellis...

Verusca, Johnny and Elke

not in order, blogger getting weird on me again ;-)

rotating futures (here and now reverb mix)

2008-11-17T12:56:00.001+01:00

interlude: contemporary music
feel the now in the past
this animal will swallow your past
scratchy voices link the ages
a cry from the future rhymes with a lighthearted pun in the presence
flickering colours represent the next wave
that you can't see right now
microphone's a blister right into applause
rotating skies
silhouette of a potential future
home in the background
wires promoting an absence
-
young face sings old music
woozy street scene
rhythmic interaction wins the day
instruct positive motivation in sound
rain relaxes you
lie to the advdertisers
freebies snuggle up and overwhelm you
smothered in noise
hostility wave constructs an alternative screen
competition drives you away
japanese whispers summon a full blown overwhelming street scene
bathed in positivity, light, grace
twinkling little neon lights, you follow the corridor
there's a number hidden in the pompous display
written into the white space
landscaped misery overruled by internal chaos
nightmarish exercise
halftones with a religious background noise
a shot in the arm will heal the time dependency matrix, regulate
the breathing so it's streamlined to the future
sitting on the toxic other side of daily life, pleasure
seeps into a grey hole
snapshots from the other side
a soft touch deletes your account, swallows the time machine
and sits you out in a starlit night
caught like a rabbit in the headlights
security makes you nervous
rotating futures, always remixed
more fun will never be
so we forget what comes next

listen from about 4.00 (minutes) into this ...:

Drifting and Tilting - The Songs of Scott Walker at the Barbican

2008-11-14T15:43:00.001+01:00

The Barbican Centre, surrounded by towering office blocks and sprawling 60s concrete residential blocks, endless confusing walkways, says "Do Something Different". It's their current motto, and it certainly was...

Scott Walker's last two albums "Tilt" and "The Drift" are not what you'd call an easy listen, his distinctive voice reciting fairly creepy and enigmatic lyrics to a backdrop of fractured, almost industrial sounding, occasionally very harsh and insistent soundscapes. We've got both albums but we don't play them too often, but as the old cliche goes, sometimes you need to experience it live for it to really get to you. For this new production he collaborated with a theatre director and presented a programme of songs from these albums only, using storylines and full choreography for each track, presenting the story and inspiration for each track, visualizing it. He didn't sing or appear but had a cast of great guest singers, his band and an orchestra. So the songs came to life and it was very powerful to hear it all live like this. Even on my seat in the top balcony with a weird partly restricted view high above the stage it looked and sounded amazing, very dark and trippy, like one of those weird dream scenes in Lynch movies.

This is a video and audio of "Jesse". The song was performed by one of my all time favourites, Gavin Friday (of the Virgin Prunes). I think he was meant to be Elvis speaking in his head to his stillborn twin brother Jesse, there was a figure sitting behind him at the start of the song who later disappeared behind a backdrop with his shadow projected big onto the backdrop... later on he kept wailing one line, "I am the only one left alive" over and over again, separated from his dead twin brother by the screen... Gavin's performance reminded me a bit of the more far out/avantgarde Virgin Prunes material, stuff like New Kind of Beauty or Heresy... very eerie, and a great performance! He's been cast in a number of similar shows in London recently, he always seems to fit in well with the spirit of those shows (The Hal Willner curated Disney Songbook show, and the "Rogue Gallery" pirate songs...)

The rest of the show, well, Jarvis Cocker and Damon Albarn, the biggest names on the bill, while decent, easily gave the least interesting performances... there were some opera singers who really got into the spirit of Walker's songs though, one track particularly stood out and was incredibly powerful, with an opera singer lying on the floor (I think with his feet bound) with another one hovering over him with a camera projecting what was filmed onto a screen behind, a pig's carcass dangled from the ceiling and someone was punching it, every time creating a rhythm, while a hangwire dangled over the scene...

Very trippy and powerful, and probably not for everyone, but I thought the show was extraordinary, gave me a deeper understanding of these far out, enigmatic albums... Hope it gets filmed or recorded, or maybe tours a bit, more people should have a chance to see it!

Anne Clark in the Underworld

2008-11-10T23:29:00.001+01:00

In the 80s in our little circle Anne Clark was one of those names... she had some underground hits like Sleeper in Metropolis and Our Darkness, you'd hear her songs in certain clubs...essentially she's a poet who managed to make very engaging, intelligent and quite danceable electro/goth/darkwave tunes out of her meditations on urban life as a growing malaise, world weary reflections, and a sharp and clear voice. Well, seems like she is famous mainly in Germany where her current tour has about 20 dates rather than London, or Croydon, which is her hometown, it's her only UK date and I'm not sure she's played here much before (!). She has a full band these days, still makes records, and her voice and demeanour hasn't changed much, she still has that sharp and clear melancholic voice, and they're all in good form, it's a fantastic gig. Hearing Sleeper in Metropolis which is clearly about the megacity London while actually being in London is a cool experience, I believe many teenage goths back in the 80s in Germany projected their idea of London onto the song... The new material is up to standard too, the sound is great, and at the end of the second (!) encore we even get Our Darkness which sounds remarkably fresh and intact and gets a rapturous reception...

Edited to add: this post was actually posted after the 10.11., I just used an unused slot to keep it roughly chronological. Also this is the original "Our Darkness" video, I haven't heard it much in the last, uh, 20 years but it seems to be etched into my head, it's all coming back to me, every single line, it's the sign of great timeless pop music, right?...

Halloween Go-Go-Goffing at the Cross Kings: Dead & Buried

2008-11-03T22:26:00.001+01:00

The beautiful Anderson and Hebe who I met at the Cocteau Twins party
me (wig), Steve (Damned Damned Damned T-shirt), big beers

Anderson and me

Anderson negotiating the entry to the hellmouth
gurnin'

back to the Cross Kings for their Halloween event, Dead and Buried, a "trad goth" night Steve was interested in. It was a pretty good night, the space works for that sort of things Our night , also at the Cross Kings downstairs, always had a certain gothy element, so it was interesting to see the space transformed into a full on goth hangout, certainly pretty busy, upstairs there was a gig by Voltaire, a solo performer from NYC who is almost a goth standup comedian, and who was pretty entertaining and went down well, downstairs old skool goth and new wave, including stuff by Wire, German new wave, X-Mal Deutschland's "Begrab Mein Herz" which I'm not sure I heard in a club before, Virgin Prunes, really great stuff, though my memories are bit hazy...

All photos were taken by the lovely Hebe who I met at the recent London Cocteaufest which she organised and DJed at, they took over a big pub in Dalston and played Cocteau Twins and other stuff all night long, it was wonderful, really moving. The Cocteautwinsforums.com are very good, it's a strong community from the looks of it, I just haven't got around to posting there much, even though I've been a member for a while. Listening and dancing to this music with other fans (including Anderson, also pictured here) was definitely a great experience, so thank you again, Hebe. I'd like to do it again sometimes!

i heart Amsterdam!

2008-10-28T21:31:00.001+01:00