https://ukf.com/words/a-tribute-to-diane-charlemagne/14085
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx9-fjlh7Y4
Musings on the byways of popular culture
https://ukf.com/words/a-tribute-to-diane-charlemagne/14085
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lx9-fjlh7Y4
So. How excited are we about the new instalment of Star Wars, out on December 18?
Points against:
1.) It’s Star Wars, and if anything can be said to suffer from a slight case of overbombing, it’s bloody fucking ubiquitous, not-all-that-much-cop-in-the-first-place Star Wars. 2.) Those awful, awful prequels. I was one of those frothing at the mouth for The Phantom Menace; I didn’t even bother to see The Clone Wars at the cinema (ironically, as it turns out, the best of the three), and let’s face it, Return Of The Jedi wasn’t much cop either.
Points for: 1.) IT’S STAR WARS. 2.) You have to admit, those trailers do look pretty good. 3.) It will feature stormtroopers. For some reason, none of the prequels featured stormtroopers, which is like Adele releasing an instrumental album. Stormtroopers are your biggest and best asset, you idiots! Thank God someone realises this. 4.) George Lucas is not involved. ‘Frozen out’, so the rumour goes. Good. 5.) IT’S STAR WARS.
Thoughts?
Question: have you ever been predisposed to see a film but then been put off by the trailer?
What does it sound like?:
My destination of choice for chest-shaking sub-bass and Arctic atmosphere, Senking follows 2013’s Capsize Recovery (which I reviewed here, and LOVED) with more of the same. Deep, glacial bass drones work their way into your very soul but Senking’s Jens Massell also plays homage to glitch and micro-house by way of dubstep — and even, on Grolar, a sort of slowed-down neurofunk — and the result is something that despite sounding ominous is still very listenable. Check it, peeps!
What does it all *mean*?
Embrace the bass.
Goes well with…
Dark nights drawing in.
Might suit people who like…
Traversable Wormhole, Vatican Shadow, Haxan Cloak, Demdike Stare, Andy Stott, The Caretaker/The Stranger, Gas.
A five-star review in The Guardian but another article calls it ‘cornier than Skyfall’, which considering I thought Skyfall sucked is bad news for this Bondage fan.
Any thoughts?
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/oct/21/spectre-review-james-bond-is-back-stylish-camp-and-sexily-pro-snowden
According to my local Co-Op, they and ALL OTHER MAJOR SUPERMARKETS will be charging 5p per carrier bag from Monday.
Where the sample from? It’s the bit that goes ‘buh-buh-buh’, all the way through, but you can hear it especially at 2.25. I feel like it’s also been used elsewhere, in a Sabres of Paradise track or something.
I hate being unable to play my beloved vinyl but I don’t want to spend the time and money, not to mention donate the space to a ‘proper’ set-up.
So I got to thinking, in my branes, what about one of those portable turntable thingies, like the hipsters have? You know the kind of thing. It looks like a vintage briefcase but opens out to a record player. The family gathers round, playing board games and listening to Psychick Warriors Of Gaia twelves. Crosley seems to be a favoured brand.
Thus my question is, does anybody have any advice and/or experience when it comes to purchasing these things? As ever the internet is a mass of conflicting and bewildering opinions so I thought I’d have a go here.
My requirements:
1. Portability. Duh. But, like, in a little case, yes? I imagine myself carting it around the house. Maybe I won’t, but that’s the idyllic image I have in mind. Don’t shatter my dreams.
2. Reasonable sound. I’m by no means an audiophile but I do like a bit of bottom-end, said the vicar to the actress. I’d play it through the native speakers, but I’d also hook » Continue Reading.
Four hours of Autechre mixing it up electro stylee.
You’re very welcome.
Prince
Expanded editions of both albums! Unreleased tracks! A special box! Orgasms!
http://3loopmusic.tmstor.es/index.php?page=products§ion=Earl+Brutus
What does it sound like?:
My introduction to System 7 was made on an Alex Paterson Mixmag Live album in 1993. That mix of ethereal guitar, proto-Goa trance and a sensibility that I only later learned belonged to Hillage’s history with Gong meant that I was instantly hooked. Like a lot of System 7 fans, however, I began to lose faith around the time of their transformation into a psytrance band in the early 2000s. Don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of psytrance, and even most of its myriad sub-genres, but the System 7 of the early 90s were forefathers of that scene, not its innovators. They weren’t really Goa trance and they definitely weren’t psytrance. It’s not like they were bad at it, just a bit generic. Most egregiously, they’d sidelined that one element that made them really special, Hillage’s guitar.
So excuse me for being late to the party with this one. It came out in 2013. The bad news is that I’ve missed out on two years of what is easily the best thing to bear the System 7 name since Power Of Seven. The good news is that I got there in » Continue Reading.
Year: 2015 Director: Olivier Megaton
You wouldn’t say the original Taken was great, but it had its moments, most of them in the first thirty minutes. Liam Neeson simultaneously essaying twitchy, nervous parent and special forces badass was cool, and his ‘particular set of skills’ speech can still tingle the spine.
However, the film went downhill from there. For all his talk, Neeson’s skills weren’t especially particular. If you were looking for spycraft you’d come to the wrong place. He was all brawn and no Bourne. Things continued in the same direction for Taken 2 (more of the same, only with shit action scenes) and they pretty much reach rock bottom in number three.
The one thing to recommend Taken 3 is that it doesn’t simply rehash a kidnapped-family-member plotline. No, one of them is dead this time, and murder-suspect Neeson is trying to escape capture (by dogged cop Forest Whitaker, the only good thing in this mess) while simultaneously investigating/avenging the death. As stories go, it’s not exactly original and it only nods at what was appealing about the » Continue Reading.
Year: 2015 Director: Henry Hobson
Me, I love zombies, but even I have to admit to being a bit over them by now. And after ‘Zombieland’, ‘In The Flesh’ and ‘Warm Bodies’, I’ve had my fill of ‘a new take’ on the genre as well. However, for one reason or another, I made an exception for Maggie, ‘a new take’ on the zombie genre starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’m always a bit wary of praising performances in films but Arnie is really good in this, like maybe the best he’s ever been. Really it’s only the accent to reminds you that he’s Sir Arnold of I’ll Be Backshire. Otherwise he pretty much inhabits the role of a loving father who must come to terms with his daughter’s impending zombie transformation, not to mention his inability to do anything about it. As you might imagine, seeing the man who played John Matrix made powerless in the face of a mere virus is the real kicker here, adding a layer of autumn-years nuance that really lifts the film, while Abigail Breslin as the pre-zombie in question is outstanding. Nevertheless, the film itself doesn’t quite rise to the level of its stars. The zombie-integration » Continue Reading.
I heart industrial and goth music and just before lunch, completely on a whim, I corralled my industrial, goth and EBM albums into an iTunes playlist, added a few I felt were apposite to the mood (e.g. Depeche Mode, The The) ordered it by year and hit play.
So. First five albums, which should keep me going till tea time today, are
1. Throbbing Gristle — The Second Annual Report 2. Throbbing Gristle — DOA: The Third and Final Report 3. Cabaret Voltaire — The Mix-Up 4. Gary Numan — The Pleasure Principle 5. Chrome — Half Machine Lip Moves/Alien Soundtracks.
More anon!
Little Richard — Tutti Frutti Link Wray — Rumble The Kingsmen — Louie Louie
Your go!
What does it sound like?:
For me, The Chemical Brothers’ imperial period began in 1994 and went up to, and included, the ‘Come With Us’ album in 2002. Between those two points, they were important and weighty and exploratory, and I would happily have followed them to the ends of the earth.
As it was, I settled for following them to festivals, as well as making numerous trips to the Brixton Academy, and they hold the record for being ‘the band I have seen most but remember least about’ (I have MDMA to thank for that). My ardour cooled, however, over their next two albums, something about a button, and something about a night, which were decidedly flimsy beasts by comparison with their mighty previous output, as well as suffering from ill-chosen collaborations with the likes of The Klaxons, Willy Mason and Jerry Ma-fucking-guire.
Actually, in retrospect, the button one probably wasn’t all that bad, and I might have accepted it as a temporary suspension of quality were it not for the fact that it was followed by the night one, which not only featured all those collaborations I just mentioned (although I made up the one about » Continue Reading.
Provocative stuff.
https://vimeo.com/132402171
One of the things I really admire in a band (but not necessarily in an actual human being) is the ability to not give a fuck. e.g Factory bands and this shower (Earl Brutus, in case the video doesn’t appear.)
Any more?
What does it sound like?:
Rising from the ashes of (sorry, Bob, but the FUCKING AWESOME) Earl Brutus came The Pre New, whose Music For People Who Hate Themselves debut was so seriously ignored as to provide conclusive proof that there really is no God.
This new one seems to have more traction, though — witness this glowing review in The Guardian…
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/07/the-pre-new-the-male-eunuch-review
As to what it sounds like — like The Sleaford Mods you can dance to. Oh, all right then, like The Auteurs gone electro. Or like Half Man Half Biscuit if they were really, really cross and had a sampler and a bunch of Giorgio Moroder records to play with. There’s something about listening to The Pre New that makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time. This lyric, for example: ‘You left your tarmac on my drive, it’s the stupid things that make it so good to be alive, sleeping now, I am within, past photographs of you when you were thin, up your stairs, down my hall, past the Farrow and past the Ball, past the pictures of the kids when they were young, and all the emptiness the guy » Continue Reading.
What does it sound like?:
Merzbow and Whitehouse meet John Carpenter. In other words, dark cinematic melodies with screaming and power electronics thrown in. Sometimes it’s just the power electronics. Sometimes it’s just the dark ambience. But the best tracks, like the opener, Myth Of Building Bridges, combine the two.
What does it all *mean*?
Aaaarrrrggghhh!
Goes well with…
Emptying rooms.
Might suit people who like…
The idea of a Wolf Eyes and Haxan Cloak team-up
Author:Wyndham Wallace
Telling the story of how the City Slang PR officer and Uncut writer Wyndham Wallace went from being a long-time fan of Lee Hazlewood to becoming his manager and friend, Lee, Myself & I has an absolutely tremendous first half.
Through Wyndham we meet Lee, and are entertained not only by the mere presence of the man, but also a seemingly endless fund of howlingly good anecdotes and observations, the famous Hazlewoodisms. Anybody familiar with Lee’s records will be happy (though not at all surprised) to learn that he was a man who walked it like he talked it. The difference being that if anything he was even more eccentric and irascible in real life as he was on record. Wyndham captures him beautifully.
This first half builds towards a climax of sorts as Lee prepares for his first-ever UK concert, appearing at the Nick Cave-curated Meltdown in 1999. A story of the meeting between Cave and Hazlewood provides one of the many highlights; the description of the concert itself – ‘There he is, one hand tucked stiffly in his pocket, sauntering onstage like a man returning from the toilet’ – an absolute joy. Wallace is » Continue Reading.
I don’t think there’ll be a better hip hop track this year than Kendrick Lamar’s King Kunta (well, it’s a toss-up between this and Kendrick’s ‘i’). I love the unhurried way it gathers its various elements, the introduction of the guitar, the pop-op towards the end, and the old-skool video is really sweet as well. He’s muscling in on territory last occupied by OutKast and doing it beautifully.
Lately I’ve tended to think that commercial hip hop is a moribund genre, but this is making me reconsider.