20th Oct - The Cube Bristol Ichi was marvellous… stilt walked on stage kazooing as he went… making his way through an array of homemade musical wares completely acoustically - as Jan would later state.. 'not even using a microphone'... Essentially a one man band, he brimmed with inventiveness… a real eccentric. A bright orange traffic cone amplifying his cutesy Japanese vowel noodles, accompanied by the simplest of melodies and oompha [...]
Morning, good people, how are things out there in the wilds of the internet? It can be a crazy and dangerous place out there I know - I think even David Cameron has some fans out there, but they might just be exaggerated fairy stories made to scare the children, I couldn't say. Anyhow, there's an awful lot of stuff going on this week. First and foremost, we are recording with a band I have temporarily named the Wolf Crystal Ghost Toads for now, until we find them a proper name. More about the exact project later, but [...]
Good weekend, everyone? The rapture didn't occur. Or did it. Maybe for us hell is just more of the same, you know? Although if this is hell I have to admit I love it. Friday night my friends and I hit up some area bars and got joyously intoxicated like a beautiful perfect little family [...]
Here's an occasional treat for you. I don't do fey and wistful. I've tried, but I've always been a tall, stocky kind of bloke. It just doesn't work, and it feels like I'm in pantomime drag. Still, kudos to those who can pull it off. The whole folk music thing helps, of course; there's scope for a whole bundle of feyness there. You probably need a bit of indie cred too, so make it the freakier sort, and wear lots of loose knit wools. If you could record your music at home, I [...]
San Francisco witch house creep oOoOO just put together a tight knit dark atmospheric mix for Fact Magazine. Start off track is a new ethereal one from oOoOO before going on to hit up some vintage classics. Click here to download. Check the track listing below: oOoOO – Сирин Islaja – Uni pöllönä olemisesta James [...]
Islaja - Keraaminen Pää It was an icy, bright winter morning somewhere in central Finland. The sun hung low in the sky, tentatively looking out over the frozen marshes, snow-burdened trees, and lonely drunks crawling out of lonely bars. It would only be a couple of hours before the sun said, “fuck this,” and went away again. As sharp shadows lengthened across the snowdrifts in his yard, Jan Anderzén had an idea. While the weather is this good, let’s have a yard sale. He went to the attic and rounded up every piece [...]
[Audio] STR Mixtape - So Long, Great Drummer (Right click + save as to Download) Title Artist Starting Time Yellow and Blue Jericho Jones Ashes To Ashes Warpaint 05:05 Over There Banjo or Freakout 10:10 Waterfall The Fresh and Onlys 13:56 Bathurst Foxes In Action 16:57 Careless Love (Dream Surf Mix) Arborea 20:32 Three Sisters J. Tillman 23:05 Moonshine Bert Jansch 29:36 Shir Eres Chava Alberstein 34:26 Throw Aggi Off The Bridge Black Tambourine 37:22 [...]
This was a Barbican-promoted gig taking place at Cafe Oto, something which was confusing enough already, even without someone from the Barbican appearing on stage to tell me that it was part of a series called "Transcender". A series celebrating "transcendental, devotional, spiritual and sacred music". Er, and how exactly does Islaja fit into that? There may well be some devotional traditional Finnish music, but (see my review of her recent album) Islaja seems a long way from any such roots these days. I don't know, maybe a diagram or something might have been useful. [...]
I spent a couple of weeks in Finland a few years back, an found it to be a beautiful and fascinating place. I travelled from the cities and archipelagos of the south and west, through the lakes of the east, and finally up to the cold and slightly bleak far north. But the most interesting thing about the country was its people. From Helsinki to Rovaniemi (yes, I went to Rovaniemi, home of the mighty Lordi), I met so many, well, so many odd people. I was accosted in a heavy metal bar in Helsinki: "why do you [...]
Flow Festivalin ohjelmisto on uusien ohjelmalisäysten myötä valmis. Tuoreita kovia nimiä ohjelmistossa ovat ensi kertaa Suomeen saapuvat hiphopin keskeisimpiin suunnannäyttäjiin kuuluvan yhdysvaltaisen Outkastin toinen puolikas Big Boi , jo pitkään Suomeen esiintymään toivottu kanadalainen indie-menestyjä Caribou , sekä kovaan maineeseen maailmanlaajuisesti noussut brittiläisten dubstep-tähtien Skreamin ja Bengan muodostama Magnetic Man . Kukin artisteista saapuu Flow’hun odotettujen uusien levyjensä jälkimainingeissa. Ajankohtaisten ulkomaalaiskiinnitysten lisäksi Flow’n ohjelmiston täydentävät kotimaiset Uusi Fantasia , Circle , Kemmuru ja Dinosauruxia . Kokeellisen musiikin kokonaisuus laajenee edellisvuodesta konseptin muuttaessa Makasiinista suurempaan Tiivistämöön. Tilassa esiintyvät mm. [...]
Islaja (featuring Samara Lubelski and Blevin Blectum) - Junipero Mash Last year at the Approximately Infinite Universe collab tour I heard Islaja let loose into this glitzed out dance jam halfway through a set of certainly foresty organics. You know those woods, maybe talked of too much but super imagistic and lucid in their ambience and atmospherics. She had mentioned this in a Drowned in Sound interview a few weeks earlier but GEE WHIZ this new colour and rhythmic turn was totally electric, helped by this amazing sequin top that she was [...]
Alain Goraguer/ Déshominisation (I) Broadcast/ Message From Home ES/ Sadepaivat Cozmic Corridors/ Dark Path Marianne Faithfull/ Beware of Darkness This Heat/ 24 Track Loopr Josephine Foster/ An Die Musik (Schubert) Islaja/ Rohkaisulaulu Tall Dwarfs/ Ozone Ex Orkest/ [...]
Hi everybody. I'm glad you could all make it. Welcome to the annual "Best Albums Of..." post, which is usually the time I put effort into composing a blog entry. In 2005 I wrote small blurbs about the top twenty-five albums of the year. In 2006 I wrote three-word reviews for the 50 best records of the year. Last year I went so far as to craft a complete sentence for my favorite 100 albums of 2007. This year...I don't know, I haven't started the list yet. I think I'm just going to write blurbs about the albums for which [...]
Fri 26th - the Cube , Bristol. Presented by Qu-Junktions ...Arrived half way through some films from Fonal label owner - Sami Sanpakkila. Powder-flake snowscapes, an erased face running through the white, trees nebula like to the sky, drawing slow mo circles, then moving on to explorations of Kemialliset Ystavat burning the midnight oil - All available space littered in wires/pedals [...]
How camp is that statue? I took that photo last year in Tampere, on my pilgrimage to the home of the wonderful Fonal label. If you haven’t been, I can recommend the trip - Tampere is a lively place, with a bustling arts scene, fascinating museums (the Moomin and Lenin ones are [...]
Fonal Records acts Islaja , Kemialliset Ystävät , Es and Tomutonttu will be touring the UK together in late September as part of the "Approximately Infinite Universe" tour being put on by No-Fi and [No.Signal]. Read more: http://no-signal.net/aiu/
I don't know how I arrived at this point in my life without knowing that a film like American Movie existed. One of my co-workers handed the DVD to me yesterday and said that I needed to watch it as soon as possible. The description on the back of the case said it was the hit of the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, and it was the story of a man's obsession to make movies. Horrifying images of Be Kind, Rewind -like terribleness flooded my brain, but I was informed that this was much, much different -- and [...]
Newsflash. I am neither distinguished nor a gourmand. I am lacking in both success and authority. I do not command great respect. I am afraid of eating. In fact, before 2008, I'm pretty sure the last time I even consumed 1,000 calories in one day was when I was in high school. Food, for me, is a chore. It's not something that I derive any great pleasure from. It's a frustrating and oftentimes angering routine that most normal folks perform at least once daily. Which is why I'm going to start reviewing all the restaurants I eat at [...]
I found this piece of paper in a wad of crumpled necessities the other day. The following was scrawled in my handwriting: ------------------------------ ------------------------ INVEST WITH SEISMIC TUMOR FARMS (STF) nanotech+trannies+akira=corpor ate success (malignant!) buy buy buy radiation poisoning=blessing in disguise sell sell sell exploit your dna, sell the adspace, put this on wikipedia+pictures of Rupaul+Robocop melted together. ------------------------------ ------------------ I'm tempted to present this like "yoyoyo, thaz jus my nerdpoemz god, Charles Schwab'n that shiit, iz kinda magikal ya know, we in shamblez..", but I just said "I'm [...]
Rottenmeats
Song, by Toad
Birthday Party Berlin
Swan Fungus
Doklands
brokenheartboy
The Line Of Best Fit
Small Town Romance
mapsadaisical
katosblog.com
rose quartz
The Cargo Culte
It's a trap!
The Supersonic Cumberbun
Daft Punk - Lose Yourself to Dance (Simøne Remix)
New Diarrhea Planet – “Separations”
Birthday wishes from Ray Stevens
HAERTS: “All The Days”
