03.14.13 - 09:56am
Couldn’t resist buying a largely unecessary tape deck in Resale the other week, or bragging about it on YouTube:
Subsequently quite shocked to see some pisstake artist has uploaded some sort of parody of my serious hi-fi investigation!
01.18.13 - 03:43pm
Thanks to Panarchist for including my stuff in this:
музыкальные итоги года
1. Musette – Drape Me in Velvet
scratchy dusty asthmatic elevator muzak for 2-story buildings
2. a) Pete Um – The New Album
b) Pete Um – Can’t Get Started
c) Pete Um – Babysitting the Apocalypse
Felix Kubin meets Peter Mamonov near the trashpile behind an abandoned
thrift shop in the middle of nowhere in the near future where
super-intelligent robot rednecks rule the universe:
http://peteum.bandcamp.com/
3. Anne-James Chaton + Andy Moor – Transfer/1-2-3-4
“…sound poetry and musical intersections focusing on the themes of
travel and transportation, viewed from a factual (side A) and fictional
(side B) perspective.” (also check out “Le Journaliste” (2009), one the
best albums of the previous decade).
http://www.unsounds.com/34u.html
4. Lonnie Holley: Just Before Music
outsider blues
5. Mac Demarco -2
detuned jangle pop
6. Starving Weirdos – Land Lines
earthy hippies encounter astral jazz and explode
7. a) Frank Ocean – Channel Orange
b) Kendrick Lamar – good kid, m.A.A.d city
c) Chimurenga Renaissance – PUNGWE Mixtape:
https://soundcloud.com/chiefboima/chimurenga-renaissance-pungwe
(a year in hip-hop)
8. Fenster – Bones
gently dislocated boy-girl pop music, remake-remodel of Young Marble Giants
9. Markus Mehr – On
shimmering layers of orchestral samples sounding closer to My Bloody Valentine than to the nauseatingly
bland sort of “pop ambient”
10. Eloïse Decazes & Eric Chenaux
not dissimilar to the most sober, quietest moments of Brigitte Fontaine & Areski circa mid 1970s
http://eloiisedecazesericchenaux.bandcamp.com/
11. Serengeti – C.A.R.
12. Tenniscoats – Papa’s Ear
13. a) Gui Amabis – Trabalhos Carnivoros
http://www.guiamabis.com/
b) Passo Torto – s/t (actually from 2011 but who cares)
c) Tom Zé – Tropicalia Lixo Logico
(a year in MPB, or 8th year without a new Arto Lindsay album)
14. Burnt Friedman – Bokoboko
15. Pumice – Puny
16. Sun Araw, M. Geddes Gengras, And The Congos – Frkwys Vol. 9
17. Bisk – Memorabilia
18. a) Hospitality – s/t
b) TOPS – Tender Opposites
c) Hanne Hukkelberg – Featherbrain
(a year in chick music)
19. Köhn – Soulastalgia
20. Egyptology – The Skies
вне конкурса:
Swans – The Seer
Radio Klebnikov
Tags: 2012, best of, lists, music
All hail Felix Kubin for sending out Um-shaped underground smoke signals towards mainland Europe.
01.18.13 - 11:54am
The man Lee Fisher with the grist ingredients here.
“This is what we played”:
PANIC AND CAROUSELS with Hickeysonic
Show 1: January 15th 2013
Emptyset – Armature (Collapsed EP, Raster Noton, 2012)
Nurse With Wound – Groove Grease (Hot Katz) (Huffin’ Rag Blues, Dirter, 2008)
Boxcutter – Grub (Oneiric, Planet μ, 2006)
Cluster – Heise Lippen (Zuckerzeit, Brain, 1974)
Receding Zones – Corridor (Receding Zones, Reject & Fade, http://rejectandfade.tumblr.com/, 2012)
Growing – Afterglow (Lateral, The Social Registry, 2008)
The Books – The Story Of Hip Hop (The Way Out, Temporary Residence, 2010)
Motion Sickness Of Time Travel – Day Glow (Luminaries & Synastry, Digitalis, 2011)
Jessica Bailiff – If You Say It (My Friend, My Love) (At The Down-Turned Jagged Rim Of The Sky, Kranky, 2012)
Broadcast – The Equestrian Vortex (Berberian Sound Studio, Warp, 2013)
Kling Klang – Position 1: Heavydale (The Superposition, Rock Action, 2003)
Pete Um – Machine State (Babysitting The Apocalypse, http://www.umbusiness.co.uk/, 2012)
The Fun Years – Am I Having A Stroke? (Split Vol 2, Three: Four, 2009)
Kemper Norton – Warrior Log In (To Iron John, http://kempernorton.bandcamp.com/ )
eMMplekz – Cleaver Squared (Izod Days, Mordant Music, 2012)
Gene Moore – Carnival Of Souls Main Theme (Carnival Of Souls OST, Birdman, 1998)
In good company there. Thanks man!
01.03.13 - 02:02pm
Terrifyingly, I once had to support the Magic Band at The Junction in Cambridge. Terrifyingly, I’m doing it again in Colchester in March. It’s a cosmic injustice that some of these guys were locked in a shack for 8 months and subsisted on beans whilst they rehearsed Trout Mask Replica for 14 hours a day and then have to go on after some twit who sings over tapes but there you go. Actually the Cambridge gig went OK for me and they were tolerant of my minidiscisms. If you’ve never seen them I can attest you do get The Magic Band and French’s Van Vliet is like a proper inhabitation of the Beefheart voice.
Here’s the blurb from the Facebook page if you don’t feel clicky enough.
The Magic Band + UM @ Colchester Arts Centre
Public · By Colchester Arts Centre
Saturday, 2 March 2013
20:00 until 23:00
SATURDAY 2ND MARCH
GIG
THE MAGIC BAND + UM
What can you say about the truly legendary Magic Band? Sharing the vision of celebrating the music of the late Don Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart, original members Denny “Feelers Rebo” Walley, Mark “Rockette Morton” Boston, and John “Drumbo” French share the stage with guitarist Eric Klerks and drummer Craig Bunch to re-visit the classic Beefheart tunes with renewed fervour.
Cambridge’s one-man absurdist electronica act UM provides the support.
All tickets £15
Doors 8pm
TICKETS
Get your tickets at the box office now or…
You can buy tickets via our website at http://www.colchesterartscentre.com/ (Just scroll down to the event and click on the BUY TICKETS link on the right hand side).
You can order over the phone from us on 01206 500900 (there’s a small charge for credit and debit card transactions).
You can pay by cash or cheque in person and there’s no fees at all.
Website http://www.colchesterartscentre.com/
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ColchesterArtsCentre
Twitter http://www.twitter.com/ColchesterArts
Oh yeah, I got this email:
You didn’t win the eBay item : Captain Beefheart Trout Mask Replica Double Album
shortly before I got the message about the gig too! Weird huh?
01.02.13 - 10:42pm
I’m forever in Taren’s debt because he donated his art, his time and basically sorted out everything to do with making sure this record has a cover, and one that looks fucking marvellous. Gratitude also to Dudfield’s the printers for their help in this.
Have a look at more of his mindbending art here.
Here’s a pic of me and him celebrating in the pub post-Apocalypse, as it were:
12.12.12 - 08:54am
Spin, spin!
Yes, the cheapest place on the net to buy the rarer-than-fuck 100FTW vinyl edition The New Album isn’t even on the net, if you’re a localist! It’s Mill Road’s most brilliant general ‘n’ electrical emporium of bits & bobs H. Gees! Ten quid! And, as much as I chuckle at seeing in the window, it would be great if it wasn’t there one day…
Many thanks to matey at Gees for his kind indulgence of my tedious folly or whatever.
08.31.12 - 08:26pm
Oh yeah, caught up in the self-love of the post the other day about getting the big-ups from Ekolad I neglected to add an additional straw on the camel with this mix he’s done, featuring Mortal Song from Can’t Get Started in some illustrious company innit…
Love that pic of Nick.
And he’s a such a Discogs dog he’s even added my new record to the great database in the sky, which if you’ve never done it is a bit of a pain so much appreciated again dude!
06.28.12 - 05:32pm
Nice little mention of the Um turn in a Hot Chip review by Connor Browne here. I think this same piece might have appeared in The Ely Standard also. Standard.
The Um bit sez:
Support this time comes from Cambridge’s very own cult legend Pete Um. Mill Road’s original maverick shuffles onstage with his minidisc player in hand and his sunglasses perched on his head. Um’s tracks are usually around the minute mark, his witty and poetic ramblings set to jittery electronics. The set of songs he performs here in J1 are mostly those present on his ‘Greatest Hits’ album ‘Can’t Get Started’, bar a couple of new tracks. As a friend of Hot Chip and a local man, Pete Um’s set of utterly bonkers electronica goes down fairly well, and rightly so.
Cheers mate. Nice one.
I’ll upload a few pics from that gig at some point but here’s one for now:
I like that one, thanks to Clive for that.
06.20.12 - 06:17pm
Dave was telling me I ought to sort one of these out, and he was right. Should have the vinyl for The New Album ready soon too.
03.14.12 - 02:46pm
Can’t Get Started, the new narrowly acclaimed 10″ record on my own Grist label, is now for sale here also! Thanks to the guys at Norman. I buy quite a few records there so they probably figured fuckit, but like the people in the Dr Seuss book they have a useful Mike who writes reviews and they didn’t have to use their Mike for such a purpose so I appreciate it. Here’s what Mike says if you’re not going to visit Norman:
Weird little fella, this. It’s got 17 songs running to a total of 23 minutes 39 seconds. The music contained in those minutes and seconds is frankly bizarre. Our Brian’s saying that this guy has been going a while but this is the first time we’ve met. Basically this is a collection of weird little lo-fi electro acoustic songs with oddball lyrics and even odder backing. It’s so hard to find things to compare this to because it’s just so bizarre. I guess Dan Deacon’s early stuff is a fair reference point but this is much more focused than some of that, so if noises are being made that you don’t like then you don’t really need to worry because they’ll be over in a minute (literally). One of the songs has a weird digital Dan Higgs-esque droney plainsong feel to it too. The closest we’ve got to a pop song here is the surprisingly catchy minute and a half of minimal electro that is ‘My Life Is Hard’. This record is shambling and clattery and disjointed and yet the cumulative effect is far more charming than you’d initially assume from just hearing one song. There’s a beautiful little essay about the pains of modern life that’s well worth reading, too. He certainly has a way with words. This is a weird record, make no mistake, but if you’ve learned anything from us by now then you’ll know that we like weird. And we like this.
Thanks to Mike, Norman.
