She’s Lost Control Again

This week’s Breezeblock show has an even higher hit:miss ratio than usual, although the Knifehandchop live session should be skipped if you’re prone to nosebleeds. I started making a list of the good tracks but got tired of it because I was pretty much just adding every track. Can anyone out there be a lovely geek saviour and tell me how to record RealAudio streams and convert them to mp3?

Django’s offer of 25% off new CDs AND free shipping for new CD orders over $25 was just too good to resist.

  • Low and Dirty Three: In The Fishtank ($8.78)
  • TV On The Radio: Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes ($9.58)
  • Mogwai: Ten Rapid ($9.58)
  • Diverse: One A.M. ($11.18)
  • Explosions In The Sky: Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place ($11.98)

Wheeeee!

[Random question: does anyone find my frequent use of lyrics/song titles as blog entry titles pretentious?]

Radio Ga Ga

Matt asked for Internet radio links, an area I am willing and able to help with, given that I listen to all my music via the Internet these days (okay, okay, MTV too) due to the total banality of Singapore radio.

Matt-specific links:

  • Last FM: A great range of material and stations. From Aphex Twin to Emmylou Harris to Miles Davis to Portishead to Sonic Youth to you get the picture.
  • Videos from the Montreux Jazz Festival, including performances by Radiohead, Mogwai, Jimi Tenor and Big Band and, er, The Stereophonics if you like them. :P (I haven’t had time yet to see The Roots, RJD2 and Yo La Tengo performances, but certainly will at some point. Also Flavor Flav just for the fun of it!)
  • Not quite radio, but I don’t suppose you’ll say no to a mindbogglingly large array of obscure Radiohead mp3s
  • John Peel on Radio One

Other online radio sources I use regularly, for anyone else who’s interested:

  • D*I*R*T*Y for a large archive of mixes, including sets by DJ Shadow vs PC (and many other Solid Steel mixes), Matmos, Four Tet and Susumu Yokota
  • The Breezeblock on Radio One
  • Spank Radio: Lots of indie, mostly okay. Playlist includes Rachel’s, Polvo, Red House Painters, Interpol.
  • Anything on 1Xtra, where I wander from dancehall show to drum’n’bass show to garage show like a country bumpkin in a vast amazing city of utter joy.

[Mp3 treats for the day, courtesy of boom selection: scroll down the page to the entries for March 4 and March 6. There you will find a veritable treasure trove of the insanely catchy. Please treat yourself to drum’n’bass and glitch remixes of Toxic, and the dancehall divaness of Lady Stush ($ Sign) and Ce’cile (Rude Bwoy Thug Life).]

SUXORS

There I was all smug because I managed to be on-the-ball enough to get tickets to see Múm at the Old Vic (well, to get Russ to get tickets) the day after I arrive in London. And then I found out about this, conveniently organized for when I’ve fucked off to Krakow. Not living in England any more really sucks.

When something sucks this much, only novelty mp3 downloads can cheer me up, which is why it was fabulous to have found:

(I can’t exactly remember where I found the mp3 links, but I’m pretty sure they were from largehearted boy, which I increasingly realize I can no longer live without.)

These Boots Were Made For Alt-Country

Word to Adidas for using Calexico’s very lovely song Pepita as the background to their ad featuring big sports names running with Muhammed Ali. I’d have used Quattro instead, because it always makes me think of being borne across a vast expanse of night clouds at exhilarating speed with my bare feet skimming their cool damp surfaces, and that seems to be a fairly nice mental picture to have associated with sports shoes, given that my usual mental picture associated with sports shoes involves heat rash and a general longing for death. But Pepita’s cool too.

When Exams Attack

Studying will really really begin tomorrow. For real. Really.

Unfortunately, going by previously established patterns, dear Reader, this probably means you’re in for a rather slow 3 weeks. No more of my rapier wit and irresistable personality! No more visceral vignettes of my swinging rock and roll life! Indeed, my friends, you will have to get by with my usual exam output of unrestrained music geekery, pointless links collected during hours on end of study avoidance surfing, and most certainly nothing even remotely intellectual.

So, pretty much the same as what you’ve always got here, just with even less of a life than before. Sigh. Here’s a little taster:

Music Geekery
Newly arrived from Django, yay!

  • Bubba Sparxxx: Deliverance
  • Dirty Three: Whatever You Love You Are
  • Aereogramme: A Story In White
  • Lewis Parker: Masquerades And Silhouettes
  • Bedhead: What Fun Life Was
  • The Walkmen: Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone

Pointless Links
In honour of For Alec, who had his first actual bout in a boxing ring a few days ago and wisely decided not to tell me about it until after the fact: Mike Tyson Quotes.

Here’s one I’d like to highlight for you, you big dolt no one in particular, because of course I’m totally cool about the fact that my favourite nose in the world could quite possibly have been broken before I got the chance to see it again – “I try to catch him right on the tip of the nose, because I try to push the bone into the brain.”

Nothing Remotely Intellectual
I certainly never kept my Will Young mania a secret on this site during the original Pop Idol, and I see no reason to be shy about my commitment to its American franchise. This Ryan Seacrest fellow is a poor substitute for Ant and Dec, and I like Pete Waterman so much more than the painfully inarticulate Randy Jackson, but at least sexy Simon is still around, and getting sexier by the episode. Oh, and GO FANTASIA!

Silks And Linens Of Yesterday’s Gowns

Okay. I’m green like the Hulk. This year’s All Tomorrow’s Parties lineup has six curators and is held over two weekends. Out of the six curators, three are Sonic Youth, Stephen Malkmus and Mogwai. OMFG.

I’m always a little self-conscious using the word “dream” because it feels so Judy Garland but attending this festival has been my dream since it began in 1999. Under a deluded sense of priorities, I never managed to go while I was in England because it always managed to coincide with the freakout period in April where I realized I had four weeks to claw myself out of a year of complete academic neglect. Well, that and the fact that until my last year in England I didn’t know anyone who a) shared my taste in music and b) had the funds to commit to a weekend residential festival as opposed to a gig in Shepherd’s Bush and c) were good enough company for me to actually want to spend an entire weekend with. Benny only made the transition from ostensibly sane but potentially axe-murderer email buddy to real life friend in my Masters year.

I’m sure I’ll finally get my chance some day, unless (God forbid) I lose this hunger for music and start thinking Dido CDs should actually be played rather than used as cool holographic coasters, but in the meantime, I am here and All Tomorrow’s Parties is there, and all I can say is that this post was originally liberally dotted with obscenities but I edited them out because I’ve been thinking lately I swear too much.

Two Firsts And An Umpteenth

On Wednesday, going to Zouk with Esther and Jeremy:

One, the first song I have ever heard about albinism – Forest Whitaker by Brother Ali, courtesy of Jeremy’s car stereo. Fantastic, but since my normal album sources Django’s and Amazon UK seem unaware of his existence, it looks like I’ll have to go to inconvenient lengths to procure the album.

Two, the first time I’ve seen James Lavelle do a decent(ish) DJ set, since in London he was usually only ever a relaxing but dull break from the mad bonecrushing DnB room in Fabric. This must however be qualified by the fact that I’m a lot more starved for good clubbing over here than I was in London, and the fact that after two jugs of cocktails (Esther, bringing the drinks: “Like my jugs?” Well I thought it was funny) two more were ordered without realizing it was one-for-one hour, cue arrival of four jugs to make a total of six.

My absence at my 9 am lecture the next day, due to popping into Phuture on the way out of the club “just to see what was going on”, realizing there amid mashups of Hey Ya with dancehall that I should just have abandoned James Lavelle hours before, and dancing happily there till half three, was somewhat less of a first though.

Whoo! Whoo! It’s The Sound Of Da…Disappointment

An open letter to DJ Jazzy Jeff:

This is the second time you’ve done this to me. For the second time, I’ve gone to see you DJ at Zouk and you’ve taunted me cruelly with only the opening of KRS-One’s Sound Of Da Police but none of the verses.

The first time, I tried to tell myself it was the cool way to do DJ sets – drop some obviously famous beats so that the crowd will go wild with recognition, but then switch to something else more obscure fairly fast so you don’t look like you’re just playing a The Best Hip-Hop Album In The World, Evah! compilation. And to a certain extent, this often works for me quite well. I no longer feel the need to “Jump around! Jump around! Jump up jump up and get down! Jump! Jump! Jump! etc.” but I’m still happy enough to dance to the first verse.

The problem, and of course this is totally subjective, is that what applies to Jump Around doesn’t apply to Sound Of Da Police, okay? Hearing the intro is simply not enough. I demand KRS-One’s righteous bellow of “STAND CLEAR! Don man a-talk, you can’t stand where I stand you can’t walk where I walk. WATCH OUT! We run New York, police man come we bust him out of the park!”, I long to be in a club full of people gabbling that meld from “oberseer” to “officer” in the second verse, and as he ends the third verse with “My grandfather had to deal with the cops, my great-grandfather dealt with the cops, and then my great great great great…” hell yeah I want to join in and complete the line by yelling “WHEN IT’S GONNA STOP??!”

[The fact that I am an affluent yellow girl whose only real encounter with the police ever was making a report when I lost my wallet as a teenager, and that they were really rather nice at the time, should not negate my right to profess undying love for this song. Or even to shout along in simulated rage.]

So please, Jazzy. If I ever see you play again, give us the whole song. You already played your part in inflicting Will Smith on the world, thereby depriving mainstream radio for years of any hip-hop worth listening to. Are you willing to shoulder the blame for this further cruelty?

Check Your Headmusic

I have a bad feeling about this. The last time a song was in my head so continuously, I ended up walking down the street not realizing I was singing Wave Of Mutilation out loud.

I really don’t want to burst out into a rousing chorus of “Fuck you you ho, I don’t want you back” in the middle of Chinese New Year family visits.