[--:--]

mood: three hour tailback on the M4
music: whatever is playing on the Irish radio station which is the sole thing our car stereo can receive

Bob Mould has a new album out. Pitchfork seem to like it, in their way. It's often hard to penetrate the snake-eating-its-own-tail rhetoric deep enough to decipher exactly what Pitchfork thinks about anything.

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/m/mould_bob/body-of-song.shtml

WM3 Day

http://wm3.org/live/newsevents/index.php

Live at the witch trials

All your worst fears about Southern Baptists confirmed...

I just watched the Warp Film's DVD of Paradise Lost 1 + 2, the documentaries on the West Memphis Three. This is terrifying and depressing stuff; three teenagers sent to prison -one to death row- for the murders of three young boys, without a single piece of physical evidence linking them to the crime. The fact that the teenagers wore black and listened to Metallica was enough to whip this Bible Belt town in Arkansas into satanic panic, convincing them that the murders were part of a satanic ritual. The stultifying ignorance, prejudice and blind faith of the police, judiciary and jury befitted a medieval witch trial. Appeals have been repeatedly turned down and now Damien Echols has one last channel of federal appeal before he is sent to his death.

Read about it and get involved:
http://www.wm3.org/

Buy the double DVD here:

http://warpfilms.com/paradiselost/

People on drugs are winning it

Mood: Minor surgery
Music: Hot Chip - 'Coming onStrong'
Dead Meadow - 'Feathers'


Returned from playing Scopitone Festival in Nantes, France. Also on the bill were the fabulous Hot Chip, our new favourite band. Five men with a shared love of Stevie Wonder, Devo and This Heat, all playing synthesizers and singing harmonies with lyrics such as 'getting down with your royal bad self' and 'like a monkey with a miniature cymbal'. The only circumstance in which I would normally consider dancing is when someone is firing a gun at my feet, but then Hot Chip arrived.


My contempt for National Express reached new heights this weekend. I've known no other privately run concern to operate with such unfailing incompetence and disrespect for its cutomers. On the coach ride to Gatwick the air conditioning broke down. Being English, no-one complained, until I went up and told the driver that my blood had become solid. He pulled over after about fifteen minutes and fiddled around with the dashboard, said 'hmm', then drove off again. When we reached Reading, where the coach took on a further ten warm-blooded humans, I complained again, and the driver, in a flash of genius, decided to open the windows. We drove away and I went for a piss. Having suffered numerous past indiginities, I wisely checked the taps. On a previous trip I spent an hour and half with soap burning a rash onto my hands because there was no water. This time, again, there was no water. But there wasn't any soap either, and the toilet didn't flush. I told the driver. People looked at me in the way that English people do; glad you complained so they didn't have to, even though they wouldn't have done, but also slightly embarrassed by your assertiveness, assuming you must be like, American, or something.

Secret report says war on hard drugs has failed Blair ignores its conclusions

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1520157,00.html
"Researchers found that stamping down on hard drugs through the police and courts had little effect on production and found no evidence that attacking drug supply had any impact on the harm caused by heroin and crack users. The full report provides a powerful argument for legalising drugs so they are not controlled by criminals.Even if the war on supply succeeds, the report found, it would simply lead to a rise in the price of crack and heroin, in turn producing more crime by addicts needing to feed their habit and increased profits for the drug barons. The cost of crime associated with heroin and crack users was estimated at £16 billion by researchers, but the report found that the global crusade on drugs had coincided with a rise in consumption."

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Michel Houellebecq on H.P. Lovecraft:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1497922,00.html

mad dogs and englishmen

RIP Richard Whitely - The People's Champion
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Media/site/story/0,14173,1516026,00.html

Paradox of the Card- Carrying Libertarians
http://www.guardian.co.uk/humanrights/story/0,7369,748632,00.html

mood: sanguine
music:
Broadcast 'Tender Buttons'
Jamie Liddell 'Multiply'
Neil Diamond 'Greatest Hits'
The Sound 'From the Lion's Mouth'

Back on line again. The break has made me realise that there is a world outside of the internet, but it isn't particularly interesting.

Too much has happened recently to write about it all. Here are some key events:

Batman Begins is very good. Sin City isn't, suffering from a paucity of sympathetic characters, and Frank Miller's inability to write dialogue free of howling cliche. We turned it off after twenty minutes.

In Debt

Mood: ill. I have a throat infection.
Music: Disco Inferno 'In Debt'

Disco Inferno tribute site: http://listen.to/discoinferno/

This week I've been listening to Disco Inferno's 'In Debt', the Che Recordings collection of their first two EPs and debut album. Every year I dust it down and spin it again; every year I'm reminded how excruciatingly derivative most contemporary bands really are. This was Essex way back in 1989, and whilst DI's roots were planted firmly in the icy Factory Records production aesthetic, the MIDI- triggered, hypnotic guitar textures pointed firmly to the future... a future that never really materialized, because few bands since have bothered to exploit the infinite musical possibilities technology has offered them.

Disco Inferno were exceptional; their music is startling, eerie and totally authentic, and are probably the greatest forgotten band of the '90's. Infected with nostalgia, the disease of Britpop swept the country, whilst a penniless DI, ensconced in a rat-infested railway tunnel, created something truly new, and no-one cared.. apart from some sections of the music press. Back then, higher sales allowed them to champion new and challenging music by bands with non-specific hairstyles. These two magazines introduced me to Third Eye Foundation, Movietone, Crescent and Flying Saucer Attack. Wooed by the enthusiasm of the reviews, I went out and bought records that changed the way I thought about music. I moved to Bristol, and Matt Elliot (TEF) himself introduced me to Disco Inferno.

“The best band on the planet.” Jamie T. Conway, Melody Maker.


"the seeds of failure are allready sown / in awe of evil you set about creating your own"
-Arc In Round

.
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This may be my last post for a while as we are moving house and offices so internet access will be limited. Thanks for all your posts and comments; for gig news and stuff visit the Gravenhurst and Bronnt sites.

Be seeing you....

Bungle Fever

Mood: Rod, Jane and Freddy Kruger
Music: Manyfingers - 'Our Worn Shadow' - promo
Current Reading: Atomised - Michel Houllebecque
Why are We at War? - Norman Mailer

Lack of recent posts due to feelings of depressed post-election resignation. Everything turned out as predicted, except I had the naivety to get my hopes up that Blair might step down and Brown step up. The Liberal Democrats got a token number of extra seats. Pressing need for electoral reform insulted by Blair assuring us that there is currently 'no appetite' for it in the UK. Having just read Michel Houellebecq's 'Atomised' I can't help feeling that it would make little difference to the fate of humanity anyway. The future is female, or the future is fucked.

But hopefully not before I get my new album out, which I have just mastered.

Name and Number

Mood: Pongo you bastard. I'm the Daddy now, next time I'll fucking kill you.
Music: Where's your tool?
what fuckin' tool?


_______________________


Thought for the Day:

Vote Liberal Democrat.


-End of partisan broadcast.

__________

From www.makemyvotecount.org.uk:


I want a better voting system. There would be more point in voting if I could vote for candidates in my order of choice and if my vote helped to create a more representative parliament.

I want a referendum, so that the people can decide how MPs are elected.

MPs talk non-stop about modernising and improving … the health
service, education, the immigration system … strange then that most
of them never mention the voting system.

This is because Britain’s outdated voting system can be relied on to
keep most MPs safe in their cosy Westminster club until they decide to
retire.

Did you know that at the last general election:

• only 3% of seats (21 out of 659) changed hands from one party to
another.

• no MP won the support of the majority of their constituents.

• only one in four of electors voted Labour, yet they won another
massive majority.

It's little wonder that millions of people believe that voting doesn't
make a difference.
Politicians shed crocodile tears over voter apathy, and conduct
expensive pilot schemes to make voting easier – while avoiding voting
reform. Massive public interest is needed to persuade the majority of
MPs to reform the system they benefit from.
sign up to the campaign on
www.makemyvotecount.org.uk

Robots and Volcanoes

How it's all going to end

From:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1458536,00.html

Robots taking over

Hans Moravec is a research professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh:

"Robot controllers double in complexity (processing power) every year or two. They are now barely at the lower range of vertebrate complexity, but should catch up with us within a half-century. By 2050 I predict that there will be robots with humanlike mental power, with the ability to abstract and generalise.

"These intelligent machines will grow from us, learn our skills, share our goals and values, and can be viewed as children of our minds. Not only will these robots look after us in the home, but they will also carry out complex tasks that currently require human input, such as diagnosing illness and recommending a therapy or cure. They will be our heirs and will offer us the best chance we'll ever get for immortality by uploading ourselves into advanced robots."

Chance of super-intelligent robots in the next 70 years: High

Danger score: 8

Super-volcanos

Professor Bill McGuire is director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at University College London and a member of Tony Blair's Natural Hazards working group:

"Approximately every 50,000 years the Earth experiences a super-volcano. More than 1,000 sq km of land can be obliterated by pyroclastic ash flows, the surrounding continent is coated in ash and sulphur gases are injected into the atmosphere, making a thin veil of sulphuric acid all around the globe and reflecting back sunlight for years to come. Daytime becomes no brighter than a moonlit night.

"The global damage from a super-volcano depends on where it is and how long the gas stays in the atmosphere. Taupo in New Zealand was the most recent super-volcano, around 26,500 years ago. However, the most damaging super-volcano in human history was Toba, on Sumatra, Indonesia, 74,000 years ago. Because it was fairly close to the equator it injected gas quickly into both hemispheres. Ice core data shows that temperatures were dramatically reduced for five to six years afterwards, with freezing conditions right down to the tropics.

"A super-volcano is 12 times more likely than a large meteorite impact. There is a 0.15% probability that one will happen in your lifetime. Places to watch now are those that have erupted in the past, such as Yellowstone in the US and Toba. But, even more worryingly, a super-volcano could also burst out from somewhere that has never erupted before, such as under the Amazon rainforest."

Chance of a super-volcano in the next 70 years: Very high

Danger score: 7

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Hopefully the Robots will take over first, become benign dictators and politely adjust our respiratory, digestive and immune systems and save us from the volcano.

Or the volcano happens first and wipes out us and the robots, in which case at least the smug robots get a pasting too.

Hippy wigs in Woolworths

Culture Rape of the Day
Article in Vogue on youth fashion sub-cultures:
*Style instructions for feckless scenesters*
How to look New Wave: skinny ties, tight trousers, pout
(Picture: Sons and Daughters)
How to look Acid Folk(I shit you not): Maxi-dresses, floral prints, cardigans
(Picture: Joanna Newsom)
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I have recently become aware that some of my favourite films of all time have in common the themes of debased male pride and moral degeneracy:

American Psycho
Sexy Beast
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover

___________________________________

I have just read or are currently reading

A Scanner Darkly - Phillip K. Dick
Cain's Book - Alexander Trocchi
Maus - Art Spiegelman
How to be Idle - Tom Hodgkinson

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Current music

'Prospekt' - Circle
'Feathers' - Dead Meadow
'More Deep Cuts' - Thee More Shallows


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