you watch as I destroy your face

Mood: speechless
Music: Broadcast - Hah Hah Sound


I've lost my fucking voice. Like, laryngitis stylee. Played a gig with a cold the other night in a smoky venue in Bristol. Gig = success. Throat = cunted.

On the basis of some poor inductive reasoning, I can only assume my voice will never return, that i'll have nodes on my larynx, i'll never be able to sing agin, and that will be the end of my career in music. See you down the temp agency.

Or maybe i'll just make instrumental drug music like Sonic Boom.

i smell burning

WTF?! http://www.petsnap.com/menu-nav/dstrollerSBC1.htm
Mood: I have lost my voice
Music: Talk Talk - Laughing Stock

Last night we played our first gig since November at the Croft, Bristol. It was dead, dead good.

I was asked to write a bit about recording in the studio for The Fly. Here is what I wrote.

The studio is Toybox in Bristol, http://www.toyboxstudios.co.uk. It's run by Ali Chant, Stef Hambrook and the producer and musician John Parish. Howe Gelb, Scout Nibblet and Kid Carpet are among the artists who have made records there. Toybox is situated in a Georgian townhouse in leafy Portland Square. The studio has an abandoned lift shaft which makes a great reverb chamber, and is haunted by the ghost of a horse, as it used to be the stables of the building above. The horse was hanged for a crime it didn't commit in 1888, and its restless spirit now wanders the square in limbo. I saw the horse in the control room after drinking a bottle of cough syrup.

Dreadful Crows

Mood: granular synthesis
Today my world was rocked by:


arc in round - Disco Inferno
the butterfly collector - ARKane
fortune teller - Sugar
percy's song - Fairport Convention
aguirre - Popol Vuh
pink turns to blue - Husker Du
just to play - Midnight Movies
where Iike to stand - Vashti Bunyan
jenny Was A friend of Mine - The Killers
popul vuh I - Flying Saucer Attack
beyond Belief - Elvis Costello
christine - The House of Love

Stupid idea: http://www.bbspot.com/News/2005/02/ban_urban_legends.html

Genius: http://www.enginecomics.co.uk/interviews/jan05/alanmoore.htm

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Making some real headway with the comic book, which we have decided to name Ultraskull.
Mr William Schaff has decided to risk his artistic credibility by donating a piece for the front cover of our shitty little rag.

-[--]-<>_


Music: Matt Elliot - Drinking Songs
Mood: Flanders; trenchfoot

.

[:]

Mood: unemployed rat-catcher
Music: Crescent - Collected Songs


Unbelievable quote of the day: "Any man who rides a bus to work after the age of 30 can count himself a failure in life". - Margaret Thatcher

Super fun link of the day: http://www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm

Trying to organise a few Bristol shows before the Camden Crawl in march. Not much else to say other than that I am reading The Real Middle Earth, by Brian Bates, an exploration of Dark Ages Britain, the inspiration for Tolkien's Middle Earth, and it's fascinating.

celebrity bowel sprayer

mood: Les paul
music: me playing a Les Paul really loud through an amplifier the size of a cigarette packet

Super fun link of the day: http://www.landoverbaptist.org/


Critical reappraisal time

I tell you what, right? Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns is an overrated crock of shit. If bad artwork, a dearth of sympathetic characters and an unconvincing script filled with irritating street-lingo makes a seminal work of comic art, constantly referred to in the same breath as Alan Moore's peerless Watchmen, then I'm Lionel fucking Ritchie.

I got his Ronin for Xmas (Miller's, not Richie's, though I suspect Richie's is the superior work). It had better be good.

My friend Andrew actually sat through the Punisher movie. Here is his review:

Punisher the movie. A review by Andrew Barkham.

"Beautifully paced by director Jon Hensleigh and his editing team, storylines from various Punisher incarnations are skilfully weaved into a comprehensive whole. The dialogue crackles with wit and intelligence and each revelatory plot twist draws you deeper into the action. Thomas Jane is Frank Castle incarnate and must surely be destined for greatness. Best of all, John Travolta displays his true professionalism by attacking his role with the same enthusiasm and intensity he brought to Pulp Fiction and Get Shorty. Marvel can rest assured that the integrity of one of its most popular characters has been upheld."


I'm sure you can detect the sarcasm.

Critical reappraisal time part II
I tell you what, right? Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America is an overrated crock of shit. The contrived plot revolves around an unlikeable group of mysoginist thugs, with the odd woman portrayed as a either a whore or a pricktease. The pace is Lucio Fulci porridge without the recurring scenes of ocular trauma to reward one's patience. In the bathroom I found an interesting stain on the wall and didn't come out for twenty minutes, by which time the film was over. Apparently James Woods throws himself into a furnace in the end, so it sounds like I missed the consolation prize.

shrinkwrapped limbs

Mood: Moody
Music: Midnight Movies


Heard 'Just to Play' by this band Midnight Movies

http://www.midnightmovies.net/

Superb. Velvets, Joy Division, Nico. Album out in UK end of January.


----------------------------------

Album mastered. Sleep now. Bye.

Old Gods

Mood: Shaving the dead
Music: Geisha - new album demos

http://www.prayforgeorgewbush.com/pages/236635/index.htm

On the subject of delusion, last night I took a new drug, called Kratom. It has a physical, opiate-like euphoria, rather like codeine. It also gives you the power of flight, but it doesn't work if you try to take off from the ground; you have to hurl yourself off the top of a building, and you have to have FAITH. As I can already fly, I sat in darkness listening to Aphex Twin's Collected Ambient Works Volume II. I'm sure it will be made illegal soon.

Today I listened to Shed Seven and cleaned the bathroom.

Let's Talk About the Lake

Mood: Ultra Skull
Music: Interpol - A Time to be Small

Eurosonic was good. My show was okay but I wish I'd had the band with me. It seemed to go down well though. Shame I didn’t have my head screwed on and taken all my merch because Aberfeldy who played after me cleaned up; they sold loads of albums and t-shirts. They were good fun; twee indie pop with immaculately arranged songs. It’s not everyday you meet your exact opposite. I forwent my lift to the hotel to stick around with them and get fucked up. So we all went back in the van together, listening to Tago Mago at full blast.

They had already checked in and went to their rooms whilst I made my way to the reception. This was at 4am, it was freezing cold and the air was saturated in face-level lowlands fog. At this point it became horrifyingly apparent that I wasn’t booked into that hotel; mine was on the other side of town, about 15 miles away. Bad. Very Bad indeed. Fortunately I managed to get through to the festival organiser who arranged for someone to come and get me. In the meantime I had to say goodbye to the guys, but I couldn’t get into the hotel building as I didn’t have a card… because I wasn’t booked into that hotel. So, pissed and stoned, I wandered around the perimeter listening in at windows, trying to hear drunk Scottish people. I think I disturbed some families who thought they had rumbled a duffel coated pervert trying to spy on them. I eventually found their room only because they hadn’t pulled the curtain properly, alerted their attention and explained everything to them. Had I not been so hammered I would have been panicking. So I got taken to the other hotel by an enormously gracious transport manager and got four hours sleep before I was picked up and taken to the station. I had to bin 3 grams of White Widow before boarding the plane, which was an emotional moment.

wacky bearded american folky eccentric dude

Music: 'Balaklava' Pearls Before Swine
Mood: plastic surgery disaster


Same internet cafe again. After eating in an Italian restaurant that played Cuban music, I spent the evening in the hotel room, watching television, partaking in a pleasant strain know as 'White Widow'and a few 'relaxation remedies'to help me with my 'fear of flying'. The Bravo channel had three FBI Files shows back to back. I can't remember much apart from lots of people getting shot. In the dark I listened to Sugar's Beaster'and Çopper Blue'on random shuffle. I was awoken by a church bell ringing constantly for about four minutes. Wake up tourists! Time to get up and buy more pot! They Told Me I Went tO Amsterdam But I Can't Remember!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh hold on, that's not right. I left out the bit where I rescued the 14 year old girl from pimp gangsters, took out their yacht with C4 and an M16, burned the heroin, saved the two very, very blonde kids from drowning and exposed the corrupt officials. I politely turned down the cash reward, because it was reward enough that justice had been served.