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Just Pondering the 'dearth' of anything I want to 'see/hear' to write about.
ALTRES & THE LAST GREAT WILDERNESS - LIVE August 2006 @ Elemental Arts Festival, Argyll - Review by KK
ERASURE - LIVE 14 April 2006 @ Usher Hall, Edinburgh - Review by Fifi J
SINDOLOR - 'Let's Take A Ride' 10 Trk (Salt Lake City, Utah, USA) (review coming - I promise.. even if it's been 4 months promising!!!!
Jegsy Dodd - 'Wake Up and Smell The Offy' 11 trks (Liverpool/London, UK) (review coming) another one.. Maurits took the CD's!!!
The Paranoid Monkeys - Self-Titled 5 Trk CD (Fife, Scotland, UK)
Sans Trauma - Various 3 and 4 Trk EP's (Environs of Edinburgh UK)
The Skullies - "It Ain't Pretty" - 7 trk CD (Georgia, USA) resurrected!
The Z28'S - "Wrecks from the Highway" - 14 trk CD (Scotland, UK)
CAFEBAR 401 - "CafeBar 401" - 11 trk CD (The Netherlands)
Listening To_Archives: Luther's Fall / Jim Bryce / LAST GREAT WILDERNESS / TRANSAUDIO / ELECTRA 2 EP's / THE SENGEN / SOUNDS OF THE UNDERWORLD / 4 HOUR SHUT UP / STEEL MOON
*If you would like to have your music reviewed contact: Delta Dawn - It may take us a while to get around to it, but if we like it, we'll write about it.
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| January 2008 |
I'll think of something... I haven't seen
anything I liked that much in a long time now. You could call this
last year a real 'dry' spell. I guess I could say
something about the V Fest in Chelmsford last August....but, for me that reached
it's highpoint and nadir all in one big SELL-BY moment as soon
as I saw the soap stars sloping about everywhere . The festivals are losing their verve and
credibility. They way long ago
lost their unique-ness, yet, the Festivals are what the remaining 'labels'
and newer 'Live Nation' company types are going to be pushing... Selling
tickets to 'exciting' LIVE events to make up for loss of
record/CD/download sales. It's all a dry hump for the punter.
But, already, we're manipulated to near-death by the people who HAVE TO
sell you something, or Out Of Business they go... which means they might
have to take any job in a factory or an office or driving a mini-cab
somewhere.
And the artist? Nobody really gives a toss about the artist. Maybe they never did. The artist is almost surplus to requirements, unless they can be photographed shoving some really shit-quality powder up their nose in a darkened room somewhere. How come nobody ever snorts coke at the beach??? It's the perfect place for it. A little charlie.. a little white wine... all that sunshine. Lifts your spirits. |
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| August 2006 |
ALTRES
& LAST GREAT WILDERNESS
- Live August 2006 @ Elemental Arts Festival, Argyll -
and Psychaedelic it might have been... indeed! (if we'd had any PSYCHAEDELICS!) But this isn't the Summer of Love, this is the Summer of.... 2006! Not promising to say the least, except I spent most of it in a small castle on a mountaintop in L'Empurda. So... I GOT my tan before this rainy wet gig rolled around. Anyway.... as it happens, I like Argyll and the hidden coves of the West Coast of Scotland, where we participated in a groovy event dubbed 'The Elemental Arts Festival'. An almost 'private' affair held yearly by local residents, movers, shakers, kayakers and, uh, other 'party' animals. Their own crowd for their own pleasure and next weekend we're going back to the Laird's daughter's wedding! So it's almost like the party never ends in Argyll. But maybe that's where all those people went in 1967 when they turned on, tuned in and dropped out. """ALTRES
w/ formidable guest vocalist Electra,
THE LAST GREAT WILDERNESS took over at midnight where ALTRES left off. The psychaedelled crowd was ready to rock and roll and dance and close the night down with a SHOUT!! LGW played all of their favourites: 'American Pornography', 'Love's Pretty Colours' and started the set with an instrumental intro leading into a new track which was absolutely STUNNING.. and again I kick myself for not knowing it's name. The tent filled with party-people and dancers and the night stayed glued to the stars til the rain came down around 4:30am. Thanks to all of the promoters of the Elemental Arts Festival, Rob Nolan and Maryanne and Chris Fox and Val and to all the people who came and all of the people who made sure the bands were well looked after (GREAT ACCOMMODATION by the way!) We'll be back again. Soon. |
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| April 2006 |
Erasure
- Live 14 April 2006 @ Usher Hall, Edinburgh
Very disappointing entry from Andy - he minced on in Adidas tracksuit bottoms and a brown(!!! is that from the 'action' Andy?) tshirt with a sparkly lapel bit and a cup of tea in his hand!
He looked like a middle-aged
potbellied gay dad who was about to sit down for Match of the Day. (were
those comfy slippers on his tootsies?) He was joined by a drummer,
double-bass player,
a guy playing a sitar like instrument, a guitarist, two female backing
singers, one was Valerie Chalmers and the other one who was married
to the guitarist and who played a penny whistle(!) and Vince way at
the back on various guitars, including one where he had a tube in his
mouth(?).
I only really know the "hits" so a
lot of the songs in the early set I was hearing for the first time.
Andy had a few tuning problems where he hit a wrong note but he put his
hand up and mouthed to the front row "sorry, first night
nerves". It was a chilled out Erasure who performed some nice
ballads including "Boy" and then "Oh l'Amour"
which worked quite well acoustically, but the fun really started
when they covered the pop tracks. And I don't think I mean that in a
nice way. It was all a bit too line dancing, yee hah Texas cowboy to be
taken seriously. The first was Blue Savannah and I thought they were
just taking the piss out of it - y'know in a "we're not going to
take ourselves too seriously" kind of way. The sparkly cowboy hats
being sold at the door were the perfect accessory. After Blue Savannah
they did another couple of slow numbers but the last 20 minutes was
dedicated to the hits.
Always, Chains of Love, Ship of Fools,
Sometimes, Victim of Love and Love to Hate You all done to that demented
blue grass twang. Not that anyone cared, we were all singing along and
dancing in spite of and not because of the music. To be fair, they were
probably trying to reproduce the electronics on strings and believe me,
it doesn't translate.
So in summary, Andy may be palpably
'ageing', but he
can still sing. Unfortunately, I don't think this tour gave
the existing fans what they wanted, and to tell you the truth, I doubt it
will win them any new ones. They should stick to what they do best -
synthesised pop, over the top performances, lycra and sequins. And a tip
for Andy: track-suit bottoms does not a gay icon make, but now.. I
could go for a cuppa tea!!!!.
- Fifi J
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| June 2005 |
The
Paranoid Monkeys Saw The Paranoid Monkeys at Whistle Binkies last night. What a weird name for a pub.. but an even weirder name for a band who are sincerely intense, compelling and original soundsmith's of THOUGHTFUL sonically grooving material, i.e. material that makes you THINK AND GROOVE! (Rare as rocking horse sh*t.) Politically astute, universally aware, socially super-conscious and ultimately spellbinding. If all you want is three chords and dumb entertainment, then they probably aren't for you. But if you actually love 'listening' to music, they probably are. Two of their tracks were played on LeithFM, "All Going Wrong" and "Toys In The Attic". Hand on heart, they are the only band played on the 'Unsigned' shows that people called in to praise. I know I'm lazy.. but these are very busy times.. Just go see them live.. Playing sometime in Glasgow next... look it up on the 'gig guide' dot com or visit their website: www.theparanoidmonkeys.co.uk |
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| April
2005
Why Do You Think They Call it "Death Metal"?
|
Sans Trauma - Various
4Trk EP's available from the band.
"Spacious and sensitive, yet has a heavy element. Einstein probably had a name for it. Creates a sonic space of its own." Sans Trauma. They're different. Maybe that's all I need to say. They got a sweet little review in The List live gig guide last month. It's on their website should you care to read it. After seeing them at Caledonian Backpackers in Feb, I wrote: ""The keyboard sound from one of their tracks was in my head this morning. Can I write a song using that line? "Woke up this mornin' with the keyboard sound from a Sans Trauma song in ma head!" It's a signature sound from the second track, 'Give In To Win', on their self-titled EP. I listened to the EP on Sunday after seeing the gig. Lots of people hand out CD's after a gig. I don't always listen to them. Sans Trauma have got something going on. I can't quite put my finger on what it is. A unique sound. Unique for what's happening 'now' generally, musically anyway. It reminds me of the very free-spirited soaring vocalled musicianship of the 60's after LSD kicked in. People were exploring new territories emotionally and sonically. Inspired music. Spacious and sensitive, yet has a heavy element. Einstein probably had a name for it. It creates a sonic space of it's own. I was thinking, listening to the CD... the music is kind of like their name. I could throw in the name 'Arab Strap'. Go see them live.. they're very very engaging live and very different from the 'run-o-the-mills' plying their trade up and down pubs and clubs across the land. The 'run-o-the-mills' could kill this new wave of 'indi/alternative/nu/rock' sweeping the land. Bands like Sans Trauma give us hope. www.sanstrauma.com |
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| Sometime
in Springtime 05
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It’s rough. Sometimes things are. That’s not the message, that’s just the fact. The antelope gets up in the morning and starts running. The lion gets up in the morning and starts chasing the antelope. It’s not a game. Sky Sports will not be televising it for an extra 20 quid a month on your cable package (although Discovery does). This is the reality for most life forms on a planet of kill and be killed, eat and/or be eaten. There’s no escape. No time out for a Big Mac and fries, a wank or a bad movie. If you happen to be a Wildebeest, or that guy in Alaska who studied the grizzlies up close, and you take your eye off the reality for a nano-moment – you’re lunch. The Skullies haven’t forgotten about it. They’ve grasped the fundamental nature of things. They begin. They end. They tell you a little story along the way. It ain't pretty, but it is honest. I've always been into classic, indie and nu Metal for this reason. In some ways it may be considered macabre to tell the truth. To discuss the gruesome innards of things.. your anatomy.. your failings.. the vacuousness of your successes, the bullshit system we’re brain-washed with day and night. The deplorable values set out by government, business and neo-celebrity alike. The shitty two-timing two-faced double standards of relationships, friendships and parental advice. I like this stuff. It doesn’t fool around with niceties and pleasantries (which I also like sometimes.. don’t get me wrong. A little rose-coloured glass is indeed 'pleasant' or how the heck could we get up and start running every day??) but, really, this music dispatches with the useless ‘chat’. The stuff that fills up some people’s days. It asks questions and begs answers if it doesn’t manage to rhetorically answer them for you. So.. yes.. I like this. I’m kinda sick of this crap world we’re living in this week, so the Skullies are coming right up my alley in the right kind of way. Musically, it’s straight forward: crunching guitars, methodically mauling each other over a rhythm section lumbering forward like standard bearers for the Mongol hordes, crossing the Steppes on their way to sack Strasbourg or some other tidily quaint and picturesque town. I’m sure if I poured it in a cup and made you drink it, there’d be a grimace or two.. but today, I don’t care. This IS what I want to hear at this moment in time. Something without the frills and blinking neon. Something that’s not shuffling along in agreement with the sleep-walking unwakefulness of our stupid thick idiot culture; self-obsessed, umbilicus watching. More worried about oil prices and the new car, than the fact that all 'consumables' come in a plastic bag; that the rain forests are burning; that this is making reprehensible people rich. Their crimes are written in the sky in letters so huge, but somehow no one sees them. All they see is the money; as if accumulating cash means you're a great guy. Who cares if all of life is for sale; reduced to it's 'packaging'. Let’s go to Vegas and sit up Satan’s bumhole all day playing crap machines. Let's build another swimming pool in the desert. (I’m guilty too – I do these things and go to these places and participate in the rites of ruin). And I'll diversify here with another complaint. The internet; websites in general – interfaced like fruit machines. Stuff flashing.. stuff popping up. No.. I don’t want to win a million. No I don’t want to retire to Benidorm or some equally pathetically falsely fronted environment – filled with half-wits who want to talk about the stock market, house prices or ‘designer labels’ (which they have absolutely no understanding of anyway) bought at some cheap outlet; some hideous ‘gated’ community filled with ‘lets-make-nice-while-we-fuck-the-planet’ numpties and padded out with cheap and nasty ‘luxuries’ that cost the world. Some place that’s destroying the environment with it’s very existence. No, I don’t want to fiddle while the rest of Rome burns. I don’t want to sit in an office making fat stupid selfish pathetic planet destroying bastards richer and richer and richer and not ask questions. And I don’t want to know anyone who does. All culpable, all in collusion – all fat stupid assholes at the break of every day.. greedily guzzling their way through what’s left. No. I don’t want to 'get rich quick'. I want to live a rich and fulfilled and AWARE AWAKE, maybe, even.. a meaningful life. So fuck off and let me finish listening to the Skullies. Track listing: 1) Soulless, 2) Weak, 3) The Waltz, 4) Direction, 5) Years Gone By, 6) Solitude, 7) Unknown If you need any help finding the Skullies in Georgia or on the increasingly stupid ("isn't that new program so HOT!") internet visit: www.theskullies.com and / or contact them theskullies@yahoo.com Shall we dance? Yes… love to. And what are you going to do with the rest of your life? |
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| February
2005
Why Do You Think They Call it "Death Metal"?
|
The Z28's "Wrecks
From The Highway" "Nitro Fueld Rawk that defies pigeon holing." Alan Wright and My vote for BEST CD COVER, And a Treatise on 'Charisma': A teency tincy, absolutely minutely miniscule percentage of the human population have that magickal element we call 'charisma'... It's a natural thing. It can't be learned and it can't be taught. It is or it isn't. Sadly, a huge, monstrous, dull, thudding, plodding part of the population simply don't have it. That's a natural absence. If you have charisma, you probably can't be taught 'not to' have it. But, to my constant surprise, there are A LOT of bands out there; a lot of 'artists' who have the gall to take to a stage, who, apparently, have managed, against all odds, to be TAUGHT how NOT TO HAVE any CHARISMA!!! Sure, ok, some have nice songs and some don't, but one thing MOST of them REALLY DO NOT HAVE the smallest, most necessary 'teenciest' modicum of is... 'charisma'. So it doesn't matter how many fucking nice songs they write, unless they want someone else who actually HAS charisma to perform them.. and voila.. the hidden songwriter behind so many charismatic artists.. but this is about the Z28's. I've seen them playing LIVE about 3 or 4 times and they are BURSTING with CHARISMA.. their jeans are BULGING with it. Their attitude is SCREAMING with it. Their stagecraft is HONED with it. They're a charismatic little package alright and as I've said elsewhere, I'm sure Buzzin' Rockin' Rick Buzzin' Licks (the guitarist who BUZZES on stage) would probably be as lively in bed as he is under the lights. (They also dress and photograph really cool too.) Now to the album. Wrecks From The Highway has been a major surprise. On stage I haven't got a clue what Skini Mark Tyne is ranting about, shouting about.. chucking cue cards, pointing fingers and posturing about, but on the album we get to the point: UFO's, The FBI, covert government operations.. all that bad-ass Black Ops Area 51 stuff is the meat, underpinning the scorching rockabilly guitars and bass while classic hot girls straddle the backseats of classic hot cars. You could be fooled into thinking this was just more noisy shite from guys who like to pose and posture and do it probably better than any other band in the surrounds, but when you dig down ... they're talkin' 'bout caverns in the Nevada desert 5 miles deep, where you and I will NOT be invited to take tea with George and his cronies on the Last Day. The silent helicopters, the mysterious piles of mountain goats and farmers cattle; their body parts perfectly lasered away in the endless mystery of new weapons, new technologies (alien borrowed?) and new psych-ops designs for controlling the population. The track "Lights in the Sky" an homage to the clandestine perestroika between US Gov earthlings and our alien ancestors/gene relations/visitors/ friends.. There's so much more in the lyrics and, once again, the cover is 'to die for.' While the sun bakes it's way mercilessly deep into the Nevada desert.. at the point where the horizon meets the sky.. the driver of a 1960's Camaro is throwing back a bottle of Jack, listening to the Z28's and pushin' the pedal to the metal as he white-lines off into infinity.. Record Label: JSNTGM (Just Say No To Government Music) http://www.jsntgm.com Contact: |
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| January
2005
Why Do You Think They Call it "Death Metal"?
|
Cafebar 401 "I fell in love again.. it took me by surprise.. it took me by surprise..' Troubles It's taken me a while to even prepare to write any kind of review of this CD because I've been caught up in listening to it. I listen to it every day.. sometimes twice all the way through. It was introduced to me with the single 'Troubles' playlisted on Radio 6 Int'l last year and often played back to back with Electra's Jonny Cash. The song seeped into my sub-consciousness first as an irritant. It was a highly emotional song, sung by a young guy clearly off his head in love with some woman. My initial response to it was 'what the f*ck is this guy whining about? "and when she came...." in that pained voice'. Yeah.. and when she came.. it must have rocked his world. A few more listens and I just wanted to be that girl. As I wrote somewhere else: "CafeBar 401's track 'Troubles' should be listened to by every man who's ever loved a woman far beyond the reaches of his own sanity and for every woman who's ever been loved that way. Deep, powerful, celestial and true.. the rest of the album is quite good as well." I'm still not sure how to tell you this is a wonderful CD from start to finish.. so this review is a work in progress.... while I think about it and listen to it some more.. Sometimes.. it reminds me vaguely of Chris Cornell in approach and chord shifts .. not in vocal power, but emotion (although many of the tracks on the CD veer into heavier territory)... but, there's something else going on.. when I've gathered my thoughts and can behave in a more professional writerly fashion.. I will. It's still early days in a New Year. I need some time to get myself together. (PS two weeks later: I can't get 'Bob Ross On Drugs' out of my head. "I feel like I'm Bob Ross... on drugs!!!" .. sometimes I do. But... Who IS Bob Ross?) In the meantime.. the songwriter is Tije Oortwin and the websites are: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/cafebar401 (CD Baby write an absolutely storming and perfect review of the CD, so I won't bother to rewrite mine!) |
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