#21 Deadbeat-Drawn and Quartered Whither dub techno? A bit like black metal, it's a niche style of music that is not particularly trendy, not known for progression, fiercely protected by pedantic purists, and arguably exhausted in what the form can do. To the outsider, the differences between certain dub techno tracks undoubtedly seem infinitesimal. I remember evangelising Basic Channel to a friend a few years ago and giving him a CD of their mysterious stripped down productions (music which has burrowed [...]
Bradley emails and asks why the blog is called Asleep on the Compost Heap. Good question Bradley, and I'll be fucked if I can give you a decent answer. I'll try though. When I started writing the blog, I noticed that many music blogs had vague and pretentious names that relied on forced surrealist juxtaposition (for example, Gorrila versus Bear). So I jumped on that bandwagon and played word association games with myself for ten minutes until I came up with the satisfyingly nonsensical yet visually rich expression 'Asleep on the Compost Heap'. I intended the blog's [...]
Special guest alert! Sean McTiernan of top dollar podcast Them's the Vagaries and the No Chorus blog joined me this week to share some and chat about some cool stuff that interests him. Instead of pretending I had even an iota of knowledge about the majority of Seans enthusiasms I let him do the explaining a variety of stuff that includes K pop, DMX prayers set to ambient music and power violence music. Don't know what any of that stuff is...(don't lie, you don't!)....? Then download this week's episode and receive an education in esoterica [...]
Any art lovers in the audience? Sure there are. Go check out 'The Shock of the New', Robert Hughes' classic BBC documentary on modern art. You can watch the entire series starting here , which is what I did last weekend. When finished, if you fancy more old skool mind food (and who doesn't?), you should try out the entire series of Jacob Bronowski's 'The Ascent of Man' starting here . You can use the acquired skills to beat Civilisation IV or something. My twitter acquaintance @leahycoo alerted me to this stuff being on youtube a [...]
See ya January. Off to fuck with you now. February sees me taking on some work in Dublin and facing into a daily commute totalling 5 hours to and from my job. I'm trying to be as zen as possible about this and want to maximise my use of the down time afforded by the bus trip. If I turn off my phone, I can completely tune in and turn on to a good book, a podcast, or an album. I can give my attention fully over to these things without [...]
A couple of weekends ago when I wrote my little photo essay on Kells, I had a childish fight with my twin brother (a regressive and embarrassing spectacle that happens all too often when we spend time in the family home. We are 31.). He stalked me around the house, pleading with me to delete the blog post as I banged a couple of doors and muttered at him to fuck off (reminder: we are 31). He believed that the post would go viral and I'd become a pariah in Kells. Not only that, my near-certain status as [...]
Woo hoo I finally got on top of the sound issues. My voice is dulcet on this one. Golden. I have pipes like this dude... On this week's podcast, I discuss some music social networking sites such as this is my jam, James Ferraro's creepy google muzak masterpiece (or is it?) Far Side Virtual , and the [...]
Music journalism cliché #29545: the phrase "dancing about architecture". Music journalism cliché #29546: the adjectives "hazy", "ethereal", "gauzy", "widescreen". Music journalism cliché #29547: clunky gender specific synonyms for the word songwriter when said songwriter is female, such as "songbird", "chantreause", or *retch* "songstress" Music journalism cliché #29548: synth music only ever occurs in "stabs" Music journalism cliché #29549: "X sounds like Y on acid" For more of these, check out a funny old post by Dave [...]
The asleep on the compost heap podcast is now set up with iTunes. You can subscribe to it right here . In other podcast news, I am going to record some episodes where guests chat about their favourite things. Yes, it will be a 100% rip-off of pitchfork's guest list feature. To complete this lousy act of blatant intellectual theft, I need a good name for the feature; something that is not 'guest list'. If you have any ideas please leave them in the comment box below. Many people pointed [...]
Hmm, I'll have to admit, this feels a bit awkward and wayward of me, my starting this list now, six weeks later than I really ought to have done. Even that notorious tortoise Karl appears to be putting his list to bed over on those geese (it's an excellent list by the way; you all should read it, but come back here won't yis). The path ahead looks lonely and punishing as fuck...and to think I started blogging because I thought it would be fun. THIS YEAR...IN A WORLD...ONE BRAVE MUSIC BLOGGER'S JOURNEY AGAINST THE [...]
Visitors to the kellsonline website will note the town's quixotic quest to have a volume of the book of Kells removed from Trinity College and permanently 'returned' to us (because, erm, a treasure of national significance belongs to the town near which it was found). Understanding the magnitude of the endeavour, I've decided to help the town's chamber of commerce with some photojournalism to bolster their PR effort. It's a series of images that give a flavour of the picturesque and historical town on a quiet Sunday afternoon. I call it Kells: A Photo Essay [...]
This week's episode finds me considering... - gloomy witchy techno from England - Guided by Voices' heartbreakingly ordinary new album - and Nim, the tragic chimp whose life was ruined by a pompous turtlenecked professor with a hard-on for his female postgrad students and a disregard for the simple simian's heart. the hipster chimp with the heart of gold [...]
Some of these are just plain tricky to make interesting. Something that grows? Not my bank balance anyway (boom boom). How about Skrillex's hair? Skrillex's hair gone sentient, growing out of your toilet at a hundred miles an hour, wrapping around your ankles as you run screaming for the door. SKRILLLLLLLLLLLEXXXXXXXXXXXX (click to make big) MP3: Harold Budd- Flowered Knife Shadows [...]
There are few sights as dispiriting as Christmas decorations at this time of year. At any given moment on the fifth of January, a piece of tinsel detaches from a hard piece of blue tack and see-saws slowly towards a floor, somewhere in Ireland, while a drunk man cries. In a thousand playrooms, a thousand interactive toys dimly light up for the final time, playing horribly distorted electronic lullabies as batteries (which will never be replaced) die. Meanwhile, blocks of barely touched stilton squat in fridges, unpopular quality streets make their inevitable greasy descent down the gullets of the self-loathing, [...]
I saw in the end of 2011 watching TV with my mother in our front room. A tin of chocolate sweets sat open in a no man's zone on the floor between us (a slightly out of reach spot that allowed us to maintain a feeble delusion about not being chocolate crazed Christmas pigs). Before midnight, my mother, engaging in one of her weirder habits, went into the kitchen to microwave her cold mug of tea. I gulped a mouthful of Tesco diet cola, farted softly while there was a sly getting away with it, and un-muted The Vaccines who [...]
For better or for worse here it is, my first podcast, thirty minutes of me sitting alone in my room awkwardly talking to a laptop screen. Topics covered include... This guy doing this stuff The same guy doing this stuff [...]
I'm going to lash into these (you'll hopefully excuse the brevity as I am working on the podcast). Without further ado... Ho Ho Howaryis kids #5 Grimes - Vanessa Claire Boucher's voice is weird. Weird like something out of an 80's horror film on VHS - the bit where a possessed little old lady's eyes turn electric white and she sings in a [...]
I heard Mariah Carey's Christmas song on the radio today (pre Bieber version) and it made me feel very Christmassy, or at least Christmassy enough to open a packet of lebkuchen. But here's the funny thing - I clearly remember watching that song on telly when it came out in 1994 and thinking to myself "all the new Christmas songs are shit; there'll never be a good one again". All I want for Christmas struck me as trying far too hard with that super eight ski-chalet video clip and its gratuitous use of sleigh bells. Yet now, I almost well [...]
Music critics should be suspicious of consensus. When the same two or three indie-shmindie albums end up in year end top fives you can only wonder whether in fact these items objectively contain the best music of the year? Do writers who evangelise these albums really care that much about them or are they just following a trail of breadcrumbs dropped by noted tastemakers such as pitchfork ? That M83 album is as phoney as a nine bob note [...]
Ah lookit, ye all came. So nice to see so many familiar faces; or it will be, as soon as our eyes adjust to the gloom. The smell? Oh that's only a common chemical reaction that happens when quicklime reacts with Justin Vernon's and Fleet Foxes' corpses. Now, are we all sitting tight? I hope the cable-ties aren't too restrictive; I just can't have you all skipping off to Nialler 9's or Karl's sites. You see, what I share with you, my six or seven readers, is an exclusive relationship, and though I [...]
Asleep on the compost heap
First Aid Kit – Emmylou
Childish Gambino - "Heartbeat" (Official Music Video)
Hardwell Bootleg Pack 2012
James Blake – Live Album
Circo Voador anuncia shows de The Kooks, Foster The People, Friendly Fires, Gogol Bordello e mais
