Wednesday, November 28, 2007

rollright stones - garish photos




here are some horrendous garish manipulated photos I just
uploaded to my flickr account.
I took them in the autumn of my friends at the Rollright prehistoric stone circle north of Oxford.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

7 random/weird facts about me

goddamn its late and seizethenite has set me homework.

Here are the rules for the meme:
1. Link to the person’s blog who tagged you.
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself.
4. Tag seven random [?] people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog.

1. I used to be able to move my hands and arms out of my body when I woke up in the morning. I could keep my eyes shut. lift my hands and touch palm to palm finger to finger. It felt fuzzy and electric. When I would open my eyes my arms were flat down on the mattress either side of me.

2. On a recent visit to Switzerland I went hiking on my own in the Alps. On each of the two days I went high up I found what seem to be prehistoric stone axe heads. I came home with them both - still need an expert to examine them.

3. Yesterday I won £100 on the premium bonds and received a package
from Pete Loveday the fantastically talented creator of Russell The Saga of a peaceful man. A brilliant graphic novel about a friendly festival goer who meets lots of strange folk, gets stoned and very paranoid often. I ordered the books from Pete and he wrote me a lovely letter.

4. I was given a Far Side calender pad for christmas last year, you know where you rip off each day and see a new comic strip.
I never got past February 18th and its still sitting and staring at me every night.

5. The other day I went magic mushroom picking with my friend at his secret patch. Before we ventured out in the rainy fields we nipped into a local pub only to find Edwina Curry there. She was a junior minister in the previous conservative UK government who it was revealed in renet years had been having an affair with the boring dull Prime Minister John Major. I tried to slip in a "major" joke but I don't think she heard me.

6. On saturday night I slept in the top bed of a bunkbed in a room occupied by a woman who spent til 4 oor 5 in the morning telling me about her strange mental state which involved the fact that everyone she ever met, spoke to or talked to was just "one" being that new everything about her i.e. God. I was kind of fascinated and concerned at the same time but eventually had to call it a night and climb up to my bunk. I didn't get physical - "scared of nutter latching on to me" syndrome kicked in. Plus my back acne was rocking something awful.

7. I am a single guy who is extremely sweet, humble, friendly and interesting and I'm always looking for great women to meet so hey how about it gorgeous? London Calling.
I promise I won't accuse you of being a nutter on a very public blog and my skin is usually good.

Oksy if you read this far then you have been TAGGED too
and better write some good old random/wierd thinsg too..
and then let me know right here in the comments section so
I can come and read them!!!

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

New Goddamn York!!! (Updated)

Okay, this is where I shout out to the
blogosphere "what the hell is wrong with NYC!!"

I booked accomodation at some cool cheap place
called Ye Olde Carlton Arms where
all the rooms are painted by artists and it
sounded fun.
I booked WAYYYY in advance.
They said I needed to confirm in November,
so I figured I would receive an email asking me
to confirm. NO NO NO I had to email them on precisely
November the Eleventh no earlier or no later or
they'd give my treasured room to some other asshole.
Which they did without so much as a "sorry for fucking up
your entire trip you limey piece of shit"

So now I have to explain to my friend that we're gonna have to
go cockroach and bedbug hunting elsewhere.

This is my first ever trip to the USA and if I do end up
in a stinking dive then it may well be my last!!!!
I'm going to support a very fine US band called Ween who I worship and I'm going to be giving lots of my fine Emglish pounds to your country. The least I could expect is that when I make a reservation, it stays a reservation.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what my best option here is???
I can't afford too much money but I don't want to have a total
suck experience. I need 30th Nov 1st Dec and 2nd Dec for two people in Manhatten. Please Uncle Sam do something to redeem yourself!!!!

UPDATE:
ok ok
the hotel I reserved with originally have managed to
find me another room. so fair play to them.
I'm still annoyed that I had to go through an evening of panicking.

also I'm pleased to get a tip from someone about short term apartment lets in NYC that I may well use next time I visit the big apple, which of course depends on whether I have a good time this first time. I'll keep you posted.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Song of a Man Who Has Come Through

Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me!
A fine wind is blowing the new direction of Time.
If only I let it bear me, carry me, if only it carry me!
If only I am sensitive, subtle, oh, delicate, a winged gift!
If only, most lovely of all, I yield myself and am borrowed
By the fine, fine, wind that takes its course through the chaos of the world
Like a fine, an exquisite chisel, a wedge-blade inserted;
If only I am keen and hard like the sheer tip of a wedge
Driven by invisible blows,
The rock will split, we shall come at the wonder, we shall find the Hesperides.

Oh, for the wonder that bubbles into my soul,
I would be a good fountain, a good well-head,
Would blur no whisper, spoil no expression.

What is the knocking?
What is the knocking at the door in the night?
It is somebody wants to do us harm.

No, no, it is the three strange angels.
Let them come in.

D. H. Lawrence

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Knee Deep In Mud: Crack is Whack

Knee Deep In Mud: Crack is Whack

Here is a twisted blog post from out <<>>.
I found the link to it at the degenerate ween forum where I hang out
and timewaste.

{{{Let me set the stage for you. I am hanging out in my house with my friend, having just walked back from lunch. We went into the kitchen to get some water at about 3:00 pm. As I was talking to my friend, I looked out my kitchen window that faces the alley between Q and Corcoran Streets. I saw two people in the alley, one black and one white, near the back entrance of the house across the alley. I turned to my friend and said, "Are they having sex? I think they are having sex. Oh my God, they are having sex!"}}}

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Word War (dedicated to Norm Mailer)

This is a word war.
My first word war.
Tug – no.
Stretch – Pull the other way.
Clench and grit those teeth.
At war we words this is no play.
I fight you fight we and they.
Curse and pray to weep and stitch the wounded.
Another day the fight goodly is on again.
Word Vs Word and none shall win.
For words in sin do come freely to fight on
either side.
And war is fought like a water fount and the burn of sunlight.
Eternal words at war spring forth.
All strong weak mild and tough.
The pieces are arranged for the chaos.
Logic or God.
The strategy is played out.
I hear and see and touch.
I shout and flee and ache.
You words one and three.
Where the hell do you think you are going?
I have a job for you two.
Muck out the paragraph and prepare the margins.
Its going to be a bloody mess again.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

burial - interview




Kode9 Interviews Burial

9: What have you been doing since the last album?

Burial: It was a bit weird people hearing the first record because most of those tunes were made without me expecting them ever to be heard. So I've been recovering.

9: How long did it take you to recover?

Burial: About 2 years [laughs]. I've just been trying to get back to why I wanted to make tunes in the first place. The first one got slightly out of where it belonged, and I found it a bit difficult to just block things out and make tunes in a low key way again, and it took time to just get back to doing that, and liking it, and doing it fast, and not trying to be a perfectionist. Just trying to dream up tunes again without worrying what people were going to think.

9: The tracks on the first album had taken about 6 years to make in total.

Burial: Yeah, that was tunes from 2000 hand picked by you out of loads. So doing the second one was never going to be as easy as that, and also I wanted to try and learn some new stuff but I couldn't, so I just gave up and went back to the old ways [laughs]

9: Were you surprised by the reception of the first album.

Burial: Yeah. I think it promised something, but if you listened to it, it didn't really get there. But I think some people liked it because it was just a no fuss bunch of tunes. I want to do low key records so i got uneasy if there was attention. my tunes aren't for everyone but thats the point of it, it's for those people. But I still want people to like it, Im not some ice cold fretless bass playing psychopath.

9: Don't you think, that whatever you felt about it, people liked it because it made a consistent album.

Burial: Why, 'cos it was all moody?

9: Not that it was moody or not, but just that the whole thing had a consistent mood.

Burial: Yeah, it was just a sad, eerie, night time thing. But the new stuff has changed a bit. No it hasn't. Don't listen to me [laughs]

9: What do you think is the main difference between the two albums?

Burial: This one is a bit more buzzin', glowy. It's a bit more uplifting. It doesn't hang around. It's a bit more up. The tunes were made quite fast in the middle of the night and they had to fight for their right to exist. but they came out of nowhere. Its a bit like an unwanted pregnancy, i wasn't always in a good place, but most of the tunes had to be faith restoring somehow to me, but they still take a while to get into.

9: Its still pretty melancholy record. But now I think its downcast euphoria, as opposed to just downcast like on the first one.

Burial: Yeah, the first one was quite a pissed off basic record, downcast. But this one has more little bits of vocals glowing in it, flickering around and burning in the tune, messed with.

9: Why did you end up doing something a bit more 'glowy'?

Burial: It's always been difficult for me to make tunes. i'd just sit or walk waiting for night to fall hoping i'd make something i liked. Or come back in and try to make the club echo in my head from going out. I'd chosen certain vocals because the mood I was in. I wanted more vocals cos they attempt to form songs, its kind of sad but they get to you in the end, i don't want a singer i want something else. Also all i listened to for a year was Black Secret Technology. I still made most of the tunes in the dead of the night, and when you do that you have to let the tune kind of hypnotize you otherwise you'll just fall asleep or play Playstation. The tunes just lulled me, and you need a vocal to do that, and a certain type of sound to echo and circle and sway into a pattern. The moodiness made the tunes, not me. Now when I listen to them, they're ramshackle, DIY and rolling but I know there is a thing trapped in them so that when I look back on them, even if its dry, I know when it was made, I know what was going on that day, its like stapling real life to the side of the tune. I can't get a singer or some session musician to come in and play or sing some dry song, so I've got to get people singing acapellas or just mates singing in their phones and re-cut up what they're saying. Sometimes I run out of a vocal and I have to re-cut up each word and make them sing a whole new verse, and you cant tell what they're saying. But I feel I can make them say certain lyrics.

9: the puppet master ha ha

Burial: I love the sound of 'girl next door' vocals. The way it used to be. Give me that any day over a really talented trained person that can actually sing. There used to be a girl who used to sing in the flat next door but I didn't have the guts to ask her. That would have been kind of awkward to ask.

9: Why don't you do gigs?

Burial: I'm not that kind of person who can step up. I just want to make tunes.

9: Why don't you want to do pictures?

Burial: Same reason. I like the old records, where you didn't know who made them and it didn't matter. You got into the tunes more. I don't want anyone knowing i do tunes.

9: And the drawing on the front of the new album.

Burial: I've been drawing that same one since I was little. Just some moody kid with a cup of tea sitting at the 24 hour stand in the rain in the middle of the night when you are coming back from somewhere.

9: Why didn't you use a sequencer on the album?

Burial: I tried. I did one tune before. . .Unite. With someone showing me how to use it, and it worked out nice, but in the end I wasn't ready and I wanted to do another record without a sequencer again.

9: You like that ramshackle thing, don't you.

Burial: Yeah, I admire people who understand complicated programs or whatever. But I'm not that into tunes that are so sequenced that all you can hear is the perfect grid, e ven on the echoes. With those kind of tunes, sometimes I just hear Tetris music, i always know where i am in the tune so i cant get lost in it, no rough edges in some tunes even when they try hard to sound rough. I want to learn one day how to make tunes properly , but I wanted to do a tribute to my rubbish, dying computer. It starts smoking sometimes and the screen flickers like a strobelight, it mashes your eyes. The tunes are made where they're made, somewhere in my building, the roof or wherever, but not in some airtight studio. Loads of the album was made with the TV on. I wish i could make technical proper music one day but people who want technical music maybe won't like my new tunes but its not for them.

9: What don't you like just now?

Burial: fiending and fakery. Sometimes you get people who don't seem to really enjoy tunes theyre just checking what other people are into and ripping it or slating it . just because..no reason. some people just talk mostly about things they hate like it matters, like they are fighting through a crowd that isn't there. i liked the world before it was so easy for people to find out stuff and get at it. i like it when people are genuine, they like tunes, they want a dance.. i don't get it when people are ploughing in with negative claimage to something. Sometimes you just want music to stay where it is from. I love drum&bass jungle hardcore, garage, dubstep and always will till i die and i don't want the music i love to be a global samplepack music.. I like Underground tunes that are true and mongrel and you see people trying to break that down, alter its nature. Underground music should have its back turned, it needs to be gone, untrackable, unreadable, just a distant light.

9: There are more vocals on this album.

Burial: When I was growing up it was hardcore or jungle tunes and you would catch people singing them while doing the washing up. Like 'Music is the key' 'Thru the vibe' 'inner city life', 'finley's rainbow' guy called gerald, kemet crew. People would be playing them from cars. But deeper tunes too not just big tunes . They tried to put a vibe into the room. They didn't just walk in and stamp on your head. Or they worked hard to take you out of where you were, make you get lost, steal away. They weren't just serving up an element that you could instantly get into. They would put an atmosphere in the room that wasn't there before, or maybe had never been there, not take the atmosphere out the room. Vocals . . .it needs to be glowing, swaying, but I want the tunes to be likeable. Not dark for the sake of it.

9: Why is the album called Untrue?

Burial: When you are not acting like yourself . . .that's an everyday thing for everyone, but it can be a bit sinister . . .It's like the opposite of Unite.


HDBCD002 [Out November 2007]
01 Untitled (0:45)
02 Archangel (3:59)
03 Near Dark (3:53)
04 Ghost Hardware (4:54)
05 Endorphin (2:57)
06 Etched Headplate (6:00)
07 In Mcdonalds (2:09)
08 Untrue (6:16)
09 Shell Of Light (4:41)
10 Dog Shelter (2:58 )
11 Homeless (5:26)
12 UK (1:42)
13 Raver (4:58 )

HDBLP002 [Out November 2007]
A1. Raver
A2. Etched Headplate
B1. Homeless
B2. Shell of Light
C1. Untrue
C2. UK
C3. Endorphin
D1. Archangel
D2. Near Dark

Watch out for "Stairwell"/"Feral Witchchild" on Hyperdub in February 2008.