Blog: My Chemical Toilet

L. O. L.

What a moment. What a MOMENT! This post is about Ronika, who I had never heard of until about twenty-five minutes ago when I remembered I have a SoundCloud Dropbox (that orange thing in the sidebar labelled "SoundCloud DropBox") and decided to have a rummage. Ronika, you are the first artist to feature on this site as a result of my DropBox. I think. My memory's not all that. And it did take me about a month to get round to listening to it. "Radio Love Love" is an irrepressibly jaunty soul-pop occasion which [...]

While lesser other music blogs file a festival review as soon as the weekend on which it occurred has ended, My Chemical Toilet does things differently. There will always be people who claim that this review has only now been published because of an unshakeable laziness that plagues the site's editor, but I think we know that those people are just HATERZ. So, after cunningly bypassing the glut of Latitude reviews that stank up the internet like a dog fart a few weeks back, here is the definitive review of the event. It was texted through in installments [...]

Here's Manchester United's Rio Ferdinand disclosing what he plays in the dressing room, what with him being the chief selecta and all: I've got some old school tunes to fire me up, some old school [UK] garage. Plus there's other stuff. The mix has got a bit of Kanye West on there, Lil Wayne and stuff like that, so that everyone in the changing room is happy. I wonder which of those is Gary Neville's favourite. [via [...]

This site's esteemed illustrator, Mr Phil Martin , has been touting Mayer Hawthorne for many months now. While I thought "Just Ain't Gonna Work Out", the first track to emerge from his forthcoming album A Strange Arrangement , had pleasingly meaty, vintage soul-inspired production, the track didn't do a whole lot for me. I think the video adds a certain something though, partly due to the shock that the guy producing the sounds - and apparently he's a one-man operation - is a geeky white guy. A geeky white guy you're going to be [...]

• Mayer Hawthorne - One track mind

Paul Lamkin went and saw intense indie noiseniks The Twilight Sad last week at The Lexington in London's trendy North London. Here he describes the experience through the medium of type: Why aren't The Twilight Sad famous? Why do other Scottish bands such as Glasvegas get to bask in the festival season limelight while their far superior countrymen struggle for recognition and resort to playing tiny venues such as The Lexington , as they did last night? "Maybe it's because I'm too ugly," says James Graham, lead-singer of the band ( professionally photographed, [...]

I jest, of course. Funky Dee's "Are You Gonna Bang Doe?" might bring to mind disturbing visions of a yoot making bare moves on a doe, a deer, a female deer. But "doe" here is urban for "though". I know, I was disappointed too. According to a rather excitable chap I heard on the radio the other day, this is "blowing up" in Ayia Napa which, lest you were unaware, is where man dem go for a spot of grime-related funky funtimez in the summer, or something. I shan't be spending my vaycay in Ayia [...]

I know, I know. You could quite happily live the rest of your miserable life without hearing Duffy's "Mercy" ever again. And I know, I know , Mark Ronson has taken 60s soul-style production and made it yawnsomely ubiquitous. But there's something about The Third Degree's cover of "Mercy" that has the ability to silence that over-analytical part of one's brain. It gives a glimpse of what Duffy could have sounded like with a slightly rougher edge. She'd almost certainly be worse off financially, mind you. The Third Degree - Mercy [...]

I meant to write a thing about "daggering" a while back, but then I got a text or something. For the uninitiated, daggering is a style of dancing which involves fully-clothed people getting as close to having sex as possible. Often violent, genital-slamming sex. I'm not exaggerating - people have snapped their cocks . It looks like tremendous fun, if that's your cup of fuck. Anyway, Major Lazer - a collaboration between Diplo and Switch - have incorporated daggering into their new video "Pon De Floor", alongside art direction that appears to take inspiration from [...]

This is thevideo for The Cribs' new single, "Cheat On Me". I've literally only heard this song twice at the time of writing, but I loves it, I do. Or at least, I loves the second half of it. The first half I spent thinking "hmm, this isn't as good as the stuff from the last album, which I enjoyed enormously and made me feel reasonably cool when I dropped it into conversation with people much younger than I." But stick around - once the neck vein-bursting " cheeeat on me " bit makes an appearance [...]

We all know that Twitter is an invaluable way to let people know how deathly dull your life is, but the Twitgigs experiment this Thursday 6th August is an opportunity for you to try and convince your followers otherwise. At The Vibe Bar in "London's trendy Brick Lane" Twitgigs will be putting on a battle of the bands with acts sourced directly through Twitter. Punters in attendance choose the winner by sending in a postcard tweeting their votes, if they can tear their eyes away from the live Twitterfall updates [...]

Once upon a timepiece, this blog was just about festivals . Heady days they were, with month after month of writing about events to which I wasn't invited gradually leading me to a severe, excrement-flinging depressive episode. I jest, of course. Kind of. The fact is, it's all very well setting up a blog about festivals, but if no fucker's inviting you to them it ends up being a) expensive, b) dull and c) (see points a & b). No funzies. Ergo dipsum velorum, this particular site broadened its scope to music in general (and jigsaws [...]

Do you miss Popworld ? I do. It was a chucklesome nuggetoid of TV pop silliness with the ability to bring on the hungover gigglies, and it hasn't really been replaced. On television, anyway. But that doesn't matter because only your gran watches TV nowadays, and even then it's just when Antiques Ladder is on. For amusant pop-related funtimes these days one looks to the web, and once there one finds things like Sony Ericsson's Pocket TV . Taking the Popworld [...]

In keeping with this site's generally shambolic approach to pretty much everything, allow me to present you with some week-old, lukewarm-off-the-presses "content". My Chemical Toilet was presented with the opportunity to go to Lovebox Weekender and film some things happening. "Splendid!" thunk I, then: "Oh. I don't know how cameras work." THEN: "I know, I shall ask the lovely folk at Fixation Video if they'd like to go and film some ting." They said yes, and, with a minimum of (i.e. quite a lot of) technical ishoos they captured all of [...]

It's a fact of modern gig-going that the more brands get involved, the more unwieldy become blog post headers. Hence that displeasing title up there. Peh. Anyway, Louise Doherty went to Matter for the latest Smirnoff Original Nights extravaganza, and came back with a newfound respect for Little Boots. And a tattooed tit. Crowdsourcing is best known as that thing people do when they're too lazy to use Google. Y'know, asking your Facebook friends or Twitter followers to find you a cheesetastic club in Margate, suggest a birthday present for your [...]

Well, who saw this coming? Jet, priapic Antipodiean lowest-common denominator bollock-rockers, have decided to introduce some surprising - and yet welcome - elements to their new material. Beginning with a stark, austere drum machine before being joined by a chilly synth line and the more familar rollicking guitar, "She's A Genius" shows that the band, previously perceived as knuckle-dragging Oasis obsessives, have secretly been hiding a thrillingly eclectic outlook. And make sure you wait for the bit with whooooosh of sequenced beats as the chorus kicks in! Nah, just kidding. It's the same old crap. [...]

There are people out there who will say that no Joy Division song could ever put a smile on someone's face. This is for them. From Manchester Procession ; video by nicktrash

Perhaps i shouldn't be surprised that such a well-oiled touring & merchandising machine as the Rolling Stones started doing TV ads in 1963, but... Really? Rice Krispies? I wonder if they'd consider a Just For Men spot nowadays... [via Fark ]

Credit to P-Money - "Everything" (featuring someone called Vince Harder) is going to find it difficult to be anything other than massive in the UK this summer. It's irresistible electro-funk-house which I heard for the first time on Zane Lowe the other night and loved immediately. But it did make me wonder where the heckfire Chromeo are at the moment, because surely they should be tearing up the charts - albeit with slightly fewer housey vibes - with this kind of stuff by now? Anyway, P-Money is a New Zealandish chap [...]

This is a guest spot by Laura Scott, who is from somewhere called Canada. Recently she went along to see a band called Moneen, who are from - hey! - Canada as well. The other week I had the chance to check out Moneen at the Camden Barfly, as they headlined one of two UK shows before kicking off their week-long tour with Brand New. Despite the fact the show had been organised fairly last minute, with the band having to borrow equipment from opening act Lights. Action!, the Barfly was [...]