Blog: An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

A slight detourn from the one at Freq Imagine that Animal Collective could be reformatted like a hard drive. (((imagine that Animal Collective could be reformatted like a Kek hardrive, like the Werneck Wretchmondings I talked about here ))) Imagine some mad urfolk indie scientist, their senses dulled by slow cracks and too good weed, decided that the shimmering pop tarts of Merriweather Post Pavilion was just too much to bear, too damned hummable [...]

I never actually saw this, only imagined it. Now it's here. I knew where but, well, you never really know where do you?

For those that really can't be arsed with all the arsing, there's the proper review here . "Rest in Peace", the opening track of the latest Prince Rama album opens with a slightly strangulated House howl, the kinda thing you might have gurned circa 1990 (where were you?), which is then savagely dismissed without a thought; a discarded, non-devotional whore… the drum rumbles begin and then the Dead Can Dance Indian sweeps and suddenly we're deep into what might be a psychosexual memory of Sinbad movies… a primary imprinting on chiffon and chant and painted [...]

Ship Canal, no longer shitting it Well, (lovely to meet you Dan by the way) Ship Canal is shitting it; it's his first gig, his first play out (play seems very apt for this kind of gig; Ableton Live being the toy of choice, the machine of a thousand voices, the churning dreadnaut in software form, sending boys and girls into whirls and paro xy ms...) I meet him about two hours before he's due on, staring at wine, wishing it glugged, knowing it can't be... his [...]

This is an amazing cover version; The, er, Boss nails this... covers album of Suicide/Rev/Vega songs please, Brucie. Call it a Bonus.

The boys are back in town. Taunton shivers. I'm a bit late and a woman in the audience already has both hands over her ears; she looks bewitched, maybe feeling those old ghosts come back to haunt her. Dark planetary voices digging at her bones. I take a few photos but then get told off by the woman on the door, herself a haunted replicant, a pink pearled twin set of malign benevolence... The Steve Engineered video backdrop works perfectly in this context, the blackened cube of the Brewhouse's Studio; music [...]

Almost everything available (or not available) at the Sun Araw shop is worthy of attention and dollarsbut I've been really enjoying/digging/wigging to this bright little baby recently: Fans of Sun Araw will recognise a certain jaded/faded humming of psychedelia... a psychedelic sound that is undeniable but curiously monochromatic; as if somewhere, elsewhere, there's a really grooovy party going on but you're sitting in a room, headstuffed with Cumin and Salvia Divinorum imagining what it might feel like to be invited to that party. [...]

Managed to drag the kids down to St. Werburghs to catch Hacker Farm 's matinee performance at Forage earlier today. The technical problems of playing outdoors in a Willow Dome meant that they were running a bit behind schedule. The kids got bored, absolutely hated Brown Sierra , plus I'd pissed-off the Feral Trade char lady by asking for milk in my tea (I chucked a fiver in the donation box - is it too much to expect a bit of dairy produce??), so we sloped off for a walk down the road to the [...]

There'll be a full review of Roll The Dice's In Dust over at Freq soon (subject to Editor's approval, though to be honest, he lets me write any old crap) but this will do for now. And, for anyone vaguely interested in what I might think about albums, there's also a review of Miminokoto and Billie Ray Martin's new project The Opiates which I'll probably get around the remixing on here when I get the time (at present that looks to be circa 2013) In other news...

You don't often get feedback direct from the bands you revi http://www.blogger.com/img/bla nk.gifew; I guess most never even see their reviews or are content to bathe in praise/ignore the criticisms... self-sealing must be a prerequisite for bands these days; better to find your own corner of the internet, find a place where everybody knows your name, listen to them and just smile or say thanks in person when you see them at gigs... an incestuous cycle perhaps, but one almost necessary for the smaller labels... who cares if someone doesn't like your stuff? Itt's easyish to shift [...]

Just found some of this guys stuff again. Shinjuku Thief seemed a little under-appreciated in the day... no way for this kind of stuff to get out into the light much, aside from the MFTEQ angle and the odd other fanzine you picked up from Berwick Street or wherever... But this sounds like it really fits into the Boomkat now. .. Gonna have to start digging again into the archives...

Okay, (non) pop psychoanalysis time again . Can't resist. I listen to an Ekoplekz release and these things just keep flooding. I'm really sorry / not sorry at all. When Memowrekz was nominated for The Uranus Music Prize 2011 , I joked on twitter that it was the pop album on that list... well, this brooding, black stutter of a record is Nick aka Ekoplekz's response. This isn't pop. This makes a Mouse out of Maus. The title is revealing: throwaway and heartfelt, this is [...]

These two LPs came to me via Tequila Sunrise and Cream of Turner but really via Freq... (the proper review is here - this one has ugly appendages) ...And they came with the coolest hand-made LP sleeves I've seen in ages. Beautiful, odd designs. The Sunlore sleeve is a psyched wig-out of paint and scratches and burns, looking not unlike one of the shotgun paintings of William S Burroughs if he'd found himself knee deep in Max Ernst smears (you can see it being made on the label [...]

via here Memoryhouse ((((...an amended and reconfigured press release)))) To avoid doing a Hari, the actual Press Release is in bold, as befits it's worth, its status, its totemic power. A name, an art, a slice of Canadian now presented as memory of then... E van Abeele (composer) and Denise Nouvion (vocals), hail from Toronto , which... 1) has a secret subway stop [...]

via here Memoryhouse ((((...an amended and reconfigured press release)))) To avoid doing a Hari, the actual Press Release is in bold, as befits it's worth, its status, its totemic power. A name, an art, a slice of Canadian now presented as memory of then... E van Abeele (composer) and Denise Nouvion (vocals), hail from Toronto , which... 1) has a secret subway stop [...]

Olivia Newton John's daughter striking out on her own and doing a leather Sandi... kind of annoying, actually... and nowhere near as dark or disturbing as Xanadu...

Olivia Newton John's daughter striking out on her own and doing a leather Sandi... kind of annoying, actually... and nowhere near as dark or disturbing as Xanadu...

A big thankyou to Richard at Select Magazine Scans for finding, scanning and sending me this (negative) review of Love's Secret Domain ... I don't agree, of course, with Ted Kessler's review but, in the same way I occasionally read The Mail (or even the NOTW - what ? It's gone ? Why? What happened?) just to get a perspective on what the enemy are thinking, I like reading negative reviews of albums I love, just to prevent my Groupthink at bay in the hope I'll avoid the blog/critical equivalent of The Bay [...]

A big thankyou to Richard at Select Magazine Scans for finding, scanning and sending me this (negative) review of Love's Secret Domain ... I don't agree, of course, with Ted Kessler's review but, in the same way I occasionally read The Mail (or even the NOTW - what ? It's gone ? Why? What happened?) just to get a perspective on what the enemy are thinking, I like reading negative reviews of albums I love, just to prevent my Groupthink at bay in the hope I'll avoid the blog/critical equivalent of The Bay [...]

Try to listen to lots of this kind of stuff but not very much gets my attention beyond a cursory quarter-listen, mostly because I'm normally struggling with some elliptical Philosophical half-theory but... this has a distinct whiff of Twin Peaks about it, which can only be a good thing. Books by chloe harris aka raica More here .