Mente Errante

Sorry for the recent dearth of postings, I've just been a little uninspired to write lately. But I seem to have regained the urge, so here I am. I'm halfway through a massive musicological appreciation of the superlative* reissue of Sleep's Dopesmoker - you can hear what notes Al's playing! it doesn't sound like slurry anymore!! - still, for my money, the benchmark against which all Doom/Sludge/Thingy should be measured and by an accident of fate, was reissued in the same week as my birthday, a coincidence which slipped me by but was pointed out as very appropriate by a number of my good friends. I'm quite sure I have no idea what they mean... Fuck me it's good tho'.

One reason I haven't written much is music. After the smoking demise of my old (hi-fi) amp, it's replacement** proved to be so fucking amazing that every time I've sat down to write, I've been dragged back to the sofa by the music, so clear and beautiful is the sound, unable to concentrate on anything else, and then found myself completely unable to remember what the fuck it was I was going to write. Well, at least I've got a good soundtrack as Europe sails inexorably towards the economic event horizon lurking somewhere in the near future...

Eleh's Radiant Intervals is filling the room at the moment. One advantage of the place I live in now, is that it's fucking old, proper brick shithouse military architecture. I mean, the place was originally part of the Royal Artillery and is located in the parkland the army used to train people to lug and fire massive battefield artillery pieces, so unless you throw open every window, there's almost no leakiness at all, and that means I can listen to Eleh at the correct volume level. In other words, stupidly fucking loud. I love Eleh's music, ultra-minimal, like a sub bass obsessed cross between Elaine Radigue and Alvin Lucier, and the way it works as much on a physical level as a sonic one, absolutely filling the listening space with palpable density, seemingly giving the air that it's moving weight and substance, a thick, gooey sonic treacle permeating every corner of the room, making the whole place thrum as the high end oscillations tickle yr eardrums like starlight twinkling through the atmosphere. You can almost see and taste the waveforms. And (Dopesmoker has this effect too) when it ends, it feels like the pressure in the room has actually lowered, like the molecules of the air itself have been allowed to fly loose again, the sensation that a huge, unseen presence has left the building. It's akin to the delicious way the air feels after a massive thunderstorm, uncanny and wonderful and unusual.

The other thing I admire about Eleh is their? her? his? insistence on, and ability to maintain, absolute anonymity in this multiply-connected world of ours. Eleh have been around for 13 years, put out a fair amount of records, and still no one seems to have a clue who's behind it all. No websites, no interviews, no photos, no names, no nothing except the music itself. I like that.

Also, did you know that if you watch four Resident Evil films in one sitting, yr intelligence level slips lower and lower by the minute. I had to ring someone to find out how to work the fucking kettle after the third film...

Anyway, enough of this rambling foolishness, I've just got the first series of Archer on blu ray and I feel like laughing until my lungs fall out.

And one last thing, Dr C, tak for de lægemidler og solbriller, du kender mig for godt.

*Not a word I bandy about with great frequency, and certainly not towards Southern Lord, whose shit to good release ratio clocks in at around 10:1 (and growing) these days. They did this right though.

**It's a Rega Mira3, in case you were nerdy enough to be wondering. I won't have any other make of stereo gear in the house (speakers excluded - it's Tannoy all the way for that side of things).

¿Rachel Khoo, Puedo Ser Su Espátula?

Anyone who's known me for some time has probably heard my "why rabbits* are the ultimate embodiment of evil" theory**. They've probably also noted my deep and abiding (and to some, inexplicable) love of Moloko, a band whose music has always instantly filled me with idiot glee and the urge to dance like a tit because they manage to be funky as fuck, poppy as all hell*** and deeply odd all at the same damn time, which is not an easy trick to pull off. And, of course, the incomparable Róisín Murphy§ was one half of 'em, and I fucking love Róisín Murphy. Not just because of that smoky voice which does things to me I'm not going to discuss in a public place, or that uncanny elastic phrasing of hers, the way she can twist and wrap a vocal line around a skewed rhythm section in a manner which is somehow percussive and slinky at the same time, but also for her utterly batshit lyrics, which I've only just realised, 17 years after the fact, are responsible for the aforementioned evil rabbit theory§§. And this, Killa Bunnies, is the song solely responsible:



Fear them...

*As in rodents.

**When my brain is idling, especially if I'm off my face, I've always enjoyed thinking a ludicrous idea right through to it's ultimate conclusion, just for shits 'n' giggles. I once came up with an entire religion based on analogue synthesizers and kittens purely because I was a bit bored and very, very stoned.

***And given that poppiness isn't really a trait I look for in music, or even respond to very often, the fact that Moloko did pop so fucking well that I love 'em all the more for it is a high and very rare compliment. Their first two LPs, Do You Like My Tight Sweater? and I Am Not A Doctor are just fucking wonderful and I won't have a word said against 'em.

§In the pub a few days ago, someone asked me which singer I would most want to collaborate should such a ludicrous possibility arise. Well, here's yr answer.

§§They don't make any fucking noise. I don't trust an animal that doesn't make a fucking sound unless you sit on it, especially when there's billions of the buggers running around under our feet in their hollowed out catacombs, they've got some sort of fluffy bastard hive-mind going and they're just biding their time...

Más Allá Ubicado El Wub

One, no, two other things about the book below. Firstly, it's published by Penguin, but they've resurrected the Pelican imprint for science and whatnot for this and lots of other books* which also look fucking excellent, and I was always very fond of the old blue Pelican paperbacks, which, along with the old orange Penguins, sort of makes them the Blue Note and Impulse! of book cover design, and I'm a sucker for that sort of stuff. The other thing is the paper the cover is made of. It feels really fucking nice. Sort of a fine mossy sensation but not as bouncy, or alternatively, vaguely like suede. Maybe it's wub fur. Yes I'm very stoned, but I noticed this when I bought it, when I wasn't stoned at all, and was instantly struck by it. Oh fuck it, Eno would know what I mean. Where's my bloody lighter?







*Several of which I was intending to purchase until my ancient but beloved amplifier (stereo, not guitar, if it had been the guitar amp I'd probably have fucking heart failure) started to show signs of terminal burnout a day or two ago. Which given the bugger's 20 years old and has had to put up with my record collection and amazing ability to spill Guinness** for all that time isn't a bad innings. Still pissed me off though, which is why I'm so battered and typing this bollocks on the internet.

**The only drink I regularly knock over, normally near electrical equipment. I should only drink it outdoors

La Gripa

I've been a bit slack as far as posting goes. So it goes. I've been really fucking ill and in a right poxy mood (the two often skip along hand in hand, you may have noticed), too much stress and worry about stuff that I'm not going into here took it's toll and left me somewhat discombobulated*, but now I'm in a better frame of mind and body and capable of more than going to work, sleeping and being sick, I thought I'd pamper myself a bit. Which is why I'm sitting here with a very large tumbler of Glenmorangie Quinta Ruban, a single malt which has spent 10 years in white oak bourbon casks, then another couple hanging around in ruby port pipes, and judging by the outrageous levels of depth and deliciousness this has imparted, it's certainly enjoyed it's time in the wood almost as much as I'm enjoying it slipping down my throat and filling my nose with spicy wonder and my belly with extremely boozy warmth. This stuff is fucking heavenly, sweet fire for the soul and a very good match for skunk and Skullflower, not to mention the epic bastard of a steak I devoured a little earlier, all of which are adding to my much improved mood no fucking end. Well, that and something that happened on Thursday which I'm not going to tell you about yet.

So yeah, I've had a really shitty month or so, (in fact this year's been pretty fucking hard work to be honest), but things are improving. I think. At least I fucking hope they are.

*Without a doubt, one of the finest words in any language, ever.

Procede El Weedian

I spent most of last week asleep, and then spent the whole weekend awake*. Now that I'm once more functioning on something approaching a human circadian rhythm and my pupils no longer look like piss-holes in the snow, there will be posts aplenty once more...

The other reason I haven't posted much is because I (huge shock coming here) bought a new guitar, a Gretsch Baritone Jet to be precise, which is actually a 6-string bass which thinks it's a guitar and can be seen modelled by (a somewhat dishevelled) yrs truly in the blurry photo below...

It's a shame the photo's so blurry, because you can't really see the outrageously sparkly black and metal flake finish, or the fake abalone** pickguard, which look sorta like the materials the toilets in a over-fussy middle-eastern restaurant would be made of, but the person who took the photo was frankly having trouble focusing their eyes, let alone a fucking camera. But I digress. It's fucking awesome, looks like the epitome of 60s trash, sounds like the bastard offspring of a Gretsch guitar and a Rickenbacker bass, and with that Bigsby tremolo and a bottleneck, has opened up a whole new vista of low-end wrong in my never-ceasing quest for the most outrageous, disgusting guitar sounds known to man, and every time I've meant to come online and blog something, I've ended up playing the fucker and forgetting what it was I was going to bang on about.

And I'm truly sorry to any of my neighbours who have been disturbed by my playing along to Sleep's Holy Mountain, but it was inevitable as soon as I realised I could get the patented Al Cisneros sproing sound, heard to best effect of course on Dragonaut. Which gives me the perfect excuse to post this again (it was on the old blog, now it's here too, don't tell me y're surprised)...



Fuck, I love that song so much. Sleep had a loping, lazy magic to their music which I've just never really heard in another doom band, plus they gave the world Matt Pike, who would now like to explain to you exactly what the fuck heavy means...



And believe me, he knows that of which he speaks. And that, of course, is an excuse to post this, the finest piece of metal (in any subgenre) ever fucking recorded. I speak of course of Devilution, by High On Fire, wherein Mr Pike demonstrates his theory of heavy to somewhat devastating effect.



So yeah, that's why I haven't posted lately. Sorry if this post is a load of rambling bollocks, but it's quite hard to think when y're listening to Dopesmoker and have been getting into the spirit of the track so I'll bugger off now and stop wasting your time and I'll write something that actually has some kind of purpose to it in a day or two...

*I do realise that these statements probably require some clarification...

**Mmmmm. Abalone...

Muy, Muy Alto

Ok, here's some proper damaged brainwrong, and something I didn't expect to turn up on youtube. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, from the grey depths of 80s Britain*, the excellently freaked-the-fuck-out fuzzbomb that is Get Stoned Ezy by High Speed & The Afflicted Man.

Warning: this record contains extremely long guitar solos. Really, really fucking long ones.







*1982, not sure whereabouts they're from exactly tho.

Desde Copenhagen A Greenwich Via Mongolia Y Pub

I will be posting part 2 of the literary rant on Friday or Saturday I suspect. I would have done it yesterday, but to be honest, after last weekend* I wasn't really capable of stringing a legible sentence together and I accidentally ended up in the pub and then listening to (Tuvan? Mongolian?) throat singing at three in the morning whilst very, very stoned in lovely Croydon. Still, these things happen. At least I'm home now. Still can't write properly but I don't care because I'm grinning like a cheshire cat and I feel vaguely strange after viewing some horrifyingly compelling prog synth-sax-kettledrum outrage the Morgen sent me** and which I unwittingly watched after smoking the day away (to quote May Blitz) and failing to heed the hippie warning bells that should have been going off. Any band with an ultra-parp sax synth thing have to be experienced at least once tho, and watching them reminded me of this, the worlds most stupid musical instrument fucking ever, and the reason I piss myself laughing every time a certain mascara advert comes on. Ladies and gentlemen, behold the Millioniser 2000:



I should probably go back to bed. Or have tea. Tea. Yeah. Strong tea is what my brain requires.

*Which was fucking fantastic thank you very much...

**Cybotron, in case you were wondering. Not to be confused with other Cybotron.

Al Azar

The thing I really like about the stats that blogger gathers about yr readers is that it tracks the search terms that lead unwitting fools into my world of stoned foolishness. I'm amazied how many people get here by searching the word "fucking" and I suspect they're seriously disappointed by the content herein. But the reason I mention this is because I was extremely pleased to discover someone came to this blog by searching for "largest ever big fuck off wombat".

Whoever this person is, I like the way they think.

And yeah, I'm in a slightly better mood now.

Enjuagar, Espuma, Repetir

Terminal Cheesecake. Lovely. There's mung, and there's Mung. I do so miss the dirty bastards. Where are the fucking reissues? Someone needs to fucking sort that out.

And if anyone was already wondering what to buy the Dr for xmas, I'd really fucking like a Periodic Tablecloth Of Swearing.

Despierto Otra Vez

There are weekends, then there are Weekends. The last few days definitely constituted an excellent example of the latter. Between Friday and Monday I probably had about 6 hours sleep (which probably isn't helping the manky cold I have at the moment* but fuck it, that's what Syndol's for), but I don't care. Friday's** party was just fucking excellent, loads of brilliant people I haven't seen in an age, everyone on top form, enough alcohol to refloat the Bismarck, some damn fine music (I even managed to behave myself at the decks for once) and an extremely well-stocked pharmacy, and which ended, as per usual, with the last few standing (if that's the right word) marching off to our traditional Croydon boozer, because when you've been up for that long, and y're that twatted, the only sensible fucking course of action is to hit a pub where; a. they sell extremely good beer at exactly the right temperature, and b. will serve us lot in seemingly whatever rotten state we turn up in***, and we've turned up hanging in fucking rags on many occasions, yet never been refused service. Then again, we're good people.

And Sunday? Fucking brilliant too. But I'm far too much of a gentleman (stop laughing at the back) to tell you about that.

*No, I can't think of anything else that could have contributed to it. I have no idea what y're implying.

**And for some of us, most of Saturday.

***Although they tend to draw the line at my mate and I's occasional freely improvised duets on the (rather good) pub piano. A word to the wise: If musicians frequent yr pub, and it has a piano, when said musicians are drunk, that piano is going to get played. If you do not want this to happen, don't have a fucking piano in yr fucking pub. Easy really.

Habrá Sangre y DMT

Please forgive the complete insane/nonsensical/just plain fucked nature of anything posted over the coming weekend, as the party I'm attending tonight is going to get really fucking messy and leave a trail of carnage all the way from Croydon to Kilburn by the time everyone has finally fucked off/passed out/been arrested/carted off in a ambulance or just generally lost it in the most enjoyable and spectacular fashion possible. I'm supposed to be deejaying at around 3 in the morning, and am under strict instructions "not to play music that will fuck people up" which is a bit like locking an alcoholic in whatever distillery makes their preferred brand of liquid oblivion and telling them to "look after the stock". You'd think that people who've I've been mates with for over a decade would know better by now...

See you on the other side.

El Horror...

We're back. Again. It seems our notoriety has increased in our absence, and our nation's scrumpy reserves have finally reached a level able to sustain the space-rockin' beast that is Thor's Helmet once more. I've dusted down and oiled the 7-string. The Book Of Ylem has been opened for the third time and it's forbidden knowledge will once again seep into the world's unconscious. Get ready, because things are gonna get messy.

All Hail Malachandria!

Pecados Olvidados

A while ago, someone wrote an article in Vice about how the interweb is an unparalleled resource for yr past sins being found out by others. They weren't fucking wrong. Whilst trawling the web a couple of days ago for manky 80s/ early 90s spacerock tapes* that I've lost through the ages, (and given what I was looking for, it really should have occurred to me that these fuckers would surface again), I inadvertently came across three albums from that dreadlocked era** featuring my dubious teenage speed/acid fried guitar and bass skills (such as they were then), that some crusty bastard has uploaded for all to hear. Some of it's fucking brilliant, some of it's really atrocious, but I hereby offer a very special prize to anyone*** who can find these records without my help.

*The Ullulators. Nukli. Webcore. Treatment. Krel. I could go on (for ages). Much as I (and any right thinking person) loathe the Ozrics, the spacerock/free festival scene actually included some killer fucking bands in those days. If I ever get my hands round the throat of the inventor of trance...

**Yes, I had dreads (anyone who's known me for more than 10 years can ignore this foonote, you saw 'em), and not yr fucking neat and tidy typical fucking whiteboy dreads beloved of shit vegan industrial bands and public school hippy Gong-worshipping arseholes everywhere, but a headful of past my arse length dirty§ waxy thick as yr wrist hairsnakes that would've made Rob Zombie shit himself.

***The nature of the prize depends on who wins it...

§Really, really dirty. Stunningly filthy. You don't know the meaning of muck until you wash 3 foot of matted hair that hasn't been washed in 13 years.

Sí, Soy Colocado, Or, What Would You Do If I Stuck My Cock In The Warp Drive?

Of course I'm fucking stoned, otherwise I wouldn't be urging you to stop reading this and go and watch the revoiced/re-editied Star Trek clips on The Dayjob Orchestra's youtube channel. The Next Generation clips especially are puke-inducingly funny, the Enterprise's crew reimagined as a group of thick as pigshit, sex-crazed intergalactic drug traffickers with appalling taste in music. That so much care (the voices are almost fucking dead-on, and the choice of words to fit the lipsync so good) has gone into something so unbelievably childish, peurile and aimed squarely at an audience of stoners brings me great joy. A word to the wise tho, don't listen to DJO's music unless you really, really like Dream Theater.

The idiot joy is here