¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Yep, it's that time of the year again. Happy New Year everyone, and Godt Nytår og se dig snart min skat to one person in particular. I forsee whisk(e)y in the very near future...

Transportamiento

If you get the chance before the 16th of January, go to the Wellcome Collection and immerse yrself in the mesmerisingly beautiful Sound Seam, a breathtaking short film by Aura Satz, then wander back downstairs and check out the equally brilliant and fascinating High Society exhibition, and gaze in wonderment* at the cannonball sized sphere of opium (sensibly kept behind very thick glass) before buggering yr eyes up completely by looking at one of Brion Gysin's Dream Machines for too long, and filling yr brain with the deeply bizarre history of intoxication and our species somewhat skewed attitude to it. Then buy Mike Jay's equally fine book that accompanies said exhibition. Truly excellent and mind expanding stuff.

*And lust, if you share my predilections.

Tridimensional Psicodélia

If y're in or around Brighton on the 13th of January, I suggest you get yrselves down to Komedia, for the first Outer Church of the year as it's going to be rather fucking fantastic. This months theme is Psychedelic Campfire Tales, and the musical entertainment comes courtesy of the rather fine Haxan Cloak, and The Larsen Effect. Oh yes, my first solo gig and I can't fucking wait, especially as my string mangling will be accompanied by visuals by the brilliant Jade Boyd, whose work I recommend you check out immediately, if not sooner. Plus there will be a screening of two films by Graham Reznick; I Can See You, which looks fucking excellent, and a 3D short entitled The Viewer which sounds quite mental, and therefore also excellent. Plus you get to look around the venue and see everyone wearing anaglyph glasses, which is inherently amusing in and of itself...

I'd write more, but all the info you need is on the OC blog and the other links above, and my brain isn't functioning at peak efficiency this morning (thank you Zivania) and I think I'm going to go back to bed because it's nice there and I don't have to put any effort into keeping my head vertical.

Bestia Excelente Seis

Behold the mighty Quackhenaten, pharaonic master of spacetime and conqueror of the reptile masters.

I for one welcome our new Anatidaean overlord.

Yes. I am very, very drunk. But not as fucking drunk as the person who took this photo.

Happy Christmas everyone, and I hope whatever y're drinking is as good as what we're drinking.

And also, obscurely but very importantly,
Glædelig Jul Smukke xxx

La Ranatoro Blues

In a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, Jimi Hendrix was asked "how does it feel to be the best guitarist in the world?" His reply? "I dunno man, ask Rory Gallagher." He had a point there.



On watching that clip, the word effortless springs to mind, closely followed by the word fuck. The next clip is a fucking lesson in what a bottleneck is for. Pay attention, you will learn something.



I would fucking kill for that rhythm section. Although I wouldn't be able to look at the bass player onstage because I'd be too busy laughing to play the fucking guitar. Here's a couple more slabs of slide magic, an unaccompanied electric version of Gambling Blues from the Isle of Wight festival, followed by an outfuckingrageously shameless version of Bullfrog Blues live in Paris in 1980. The man was a fucking god.

Precio De Saldo

Go to Marks & Spencers immediately and buy this wine. It's around a tenner, and a fucking steal. I freely admit to being slightly addicted to Piedmontese wines and their leathery awesomeness, but this really is so damn good, and about half the price it should be, that you owe it to yrself to indulge. I would review it properly, but to be honest, I'm a bottle and a half down and can't be arsed. So trust me on this, you know the Dr wouldn't lead you wrong when it comes to the red stuff.

Escuchar A Través De Mocos

Richard Pinhas - Metal/Crystal (Cuneiform)
Demdike Stare - Voices Of Dust (Modern Love)
Barn Owl - Ancestral Stars (Thrill Jockey)
Factums - Alien Native (Siltbreeze)
Shed - The Traveller (Ostgut Ton)
Ascend - Ample Fire Within (Southern Lord)*
The Pink Noise - Dream Code (Sacred Bones)
Moon Unit - Hell Horse & Heady Stratus (Blackest Rainbow)
Newworldaquarium - The Dead Bears (Delsin)
Borbetomagus - Live At In-Roads (PSF)
Shackleton - Fabric 55 (Fabric)
Orthodox - Sentencia (Alone)
F - Energy Distortion (7even)
Magda - From The Fallen Page (m_nus)
Cabaret Voltaire - Mix-Up (Mute)
Bitchin' Bajas - Tones & Zones (Important)
C.H. District - Conclusion (Tympanik Audio)
Effi Briest - Rhizomes (Sacred Bones)**
Downliners Sekt - Hello Lonely, Hold The Nation/We Make Hits, Not The Public (Disboot)
Hey Colossus & The Van Halen Time Capsule - Eurogrumble Vol.1 (Riot Season)

*I've had this record for ages, but hadn't really given it my full attention. I have now, and wish I did earlier, as it's probably the best thing Greg Anderson has ever fucking done, and one of the most original doom albums of the last few years. Seriously fucking brilliant.

**Yes, I am aware of my occasional goth tendencies. Don't care. I will love Bauhaus and early Sisters until the day I die, unrepentant and proud.

La Iglesia Externa

Bleh. I have a fucking sinus infection which feels like evil imps have been pumping cavity wall insulation into my skull and a few of the nastier miniature demons are making a concerted effort to push my eyeballs out of my fucking face. Still, on the bright side, it's got me a few days off work, and a prescription for amusing painkillers, so I can't really complain too much. Not that I've ever let that stop me before.

But complaining isn't what I'm going to do today, well apart from the above small moan of course. I have some Larsen Effect news, namely that because I bought a new pedal that's turned my guitar into a whole new fucking instrument, I'm almost done recording a second disc of material, so the album will now be out in the new year, and it'll be a double cd. Yes I know that's self-indulgent. It's a bloody solo guitar album for fuck's sake, what did you expect? Plus it'll still be nice and cheap, after all, blank cds are cheap as fuck, so why charge more unless y're some form of bastard?*. More LE news soon, as the first gig is being sorted at the moment, and as soon as it's all finalised, I'll post the details.

*Not that I'm not, sometimes, but you know what I mean...

El Tiovivo

I haven't posted for a few days for a variety of reasons, as the last week has been both shitkickingly brilliant and foot-gnawingly fucking awful in almost equal measure. So, consequently I haven't really been feeling that chatty, particularly as the main reason for the brilliance is also the main reason I feel like chewing my leg off and that's no recipe for clarity of thought, believe me. I'm ok, it's just taking up more of my brain than I'd like it to at the moment, and consequently, haven't been able to muster up any coherent writing. Next week therefore, will see a veritable flood of new rants, reviews and random shit as this emotional roundabout decelerates and I stop feeling quite so bloody dizzy.

In the meantime, I'd like to say this: Borbetomagus are still, 30-odd years down the line, the finest fucking noise merchants the US has ever fucking produced, a kaleidoscopic all-consuming wind tunnel roar of a band, who, using nothing more than a fuzzed out guitar and two enormously loud saxophones, produce a cascading life-affirming racket that makes me want to bounce up and down like a psychotic Zebedee, and live, as they proved beyond all doubt at the Luminaire last week*, they're a fucking force of nature, and so the first big piece coming next week will be about that, them and why they should be forced-listening for everyone who thinks they know how to make noise.

*Gig of the fucking year, by a country fucking mile.

¡Mis Ojos!

Could someone please explain the logic behind this to me, I thought I was a fairly intelligent person, but I'm obviously missing something here...

I wear contact lenses, have done for fucking 20-odd years, and it's such an ingrained habit now I haven't bothered getting a pair of glasses for almost that long. I've run out of lenses, because I wear daily disposables, and my fucking optician is using the snow, and this country's frankly hilarious response to it, as an excuse for a few days off*. So I need to go elsewhere to enable me to fucking see. Now if I bought them online (which I would have done had I had the foresight to know said optician would be closed for the duration), all I have to do is fill in my own prescription, pay and wait for a box of lenses to pop through the letterbox once a month. But I need some lenses immediately, so I went to another optician, who sell lenses online in the above manner as well as being on the high street and was duly informed that they cannot sell me any lenses, even though I have my empty cases with the prescription spelled out on the lid, because it isn't a written prescription from my optician. Same company, one rule online, another in the actual shop. Work that one out. I know it's not of earth-shattering importance, but this sort of petty crap really gets my fucking goat.

*Not that I blame 'em, we're all skiving a bit...

Hablar De Cerveza...

The other thing I'm going to treat myself and whoever's lucky enough to drink it with me to is a few bottles of Brewdog's ultimate stout, and probably the only beer ever inspired by Space Invaders: Tokyo - Intergalactic Fantastic.

An 18.2% (yes, you did read that right - and it's not even close to being the strongest thing the 'Dog makes) motherfucker of a beer, brewed with 5 (count 'em) different malts, jasmine and cranberries in the kettle, dry hopped to hell and back and then aged on toasted vanilla French oak. It may be pricey, but sometimes you need a bit of luxury, and this stuff is just so decadently fucking delicious I couldn't care less how much it sets me back. Godfuckingdammit I'm dribbling already...

So if you like yr stout and y're feeling decadent too, I suggest you join me and my drinking companions in tasting the most gorgeous fucking dark beer it's ever been my pleasure to get down my extremely discerning gob. We'll be raising a bottle to yr health and good taste, wherever you are.

Delicia, Embotellada

Normally I wouldn't write anything praising Tesco's, not because of snobbery, I'll shop almost anywhere that sells what I want, but because they seem to be attempting to beat Starbucks at their own take over the fucking world game but I have to now, because they seem to have gone completely mental as far as booze is concerned, getting some of Britain's finest independent breweries to come up with some seriously special beers for their "Tesco Finest" range, including an excellent porter from Harviestoun, the people who bought us the fucking magnificent Old Engine Oil, one of the best beers I've ever tasted, but more importantly (for me anyway), they've got the mighty Brewdog to make an astonishing double IPA for them, under the very unBrewdog name of American Double IPA*.

9.2% of fermented fucking hop heaven, with a Seville orange marmalade nose and backnotes, a simultaneously resinous and floral bitterness from the huge hop load and an wallop of ginger biscuit sweetness which is fairly unusual in a double IPA like this. It's also deceptive in that if you didn't read the label, there is no fucking way you would know this was 9.2% until you wondered why you were twice as pissed as you should be and then actually looked at the ABV. Seriously though, it's amazingly easy drinking for an ale of this strength and character and an all round killer beer, if not quite as awe-inspiring as Brewdog's Punk, Hardcore or the much-missed Chaos Theory IPAs. Then again in the world of beer not much comes close to those for me. Take into account that it's only four fucking quid for three, and you have whatever the fuck you have when you go through bargain and come out the other side. I'm going to empty the shelves in my local branch tomorrow when I've been paid, because I ran out on Friday after sorely underestimating the addictively delicious nature of this marvellous brew, and I don't intend to make the same mistake twice. I suggest you do the same.

*I know Brewdog are from Scotland, but Double IPA is originally an American craft brewing style, so I'll let 'em off.

Bestia Excelente Cinco

The Horniman museum walrus. Perhaps the ultimate badly-stuffed winterbeast. 

En Invierno

My immune system is fucking insane, as we all know now. But, aside from all the horrible shit I have to put up with at completely random intervals, one good thing seems to have come out of going through Guillain–Barré, namely an outrageous resistance to whatever cold and flu viruses happen to be knocking around the air. Before I got sick, if someone so much as sneezed near me, you could pretty much guarantee that I'd have that cold pretty fucking quick. I dreaded flu season, because nine out of ten times I'd fucking catch it, and real flu* is fucking awful. But since I contracted GBS (more on that in a bit), nothing, and it's not like I haven't been exposed to it since, I mean, during the swine flu outbreak, my then girlfriend caught it, and we were basically quarantined for a week so the flat was full of piggy virus and I didn't catch it, not even a twinge, and I was slightly shocked by this given my history with flu, I fully expected to be flat on my back within a day of her getting it but somehow remained immune.

And as for the flu jab, get fucked**. Although the doctors always urge me to get the jab every year (which lead to a spectacular argument with the same idiot doctor who neglected to tell me about tramadol withdrawal), I always refuse now, because I've had the jab precisely twice in the last 15 years, and on both occasions ended up with the worst fucking flu I'd yet experienced, the second time being the (probable) trigger that caused the GBS, (I say probable because to be frank, my neurologist told me we have no real fucking clue what causes GBS, it just mainly seems to kick in after bad viral infections). So if one good thing seems to have come out of my immunoinsanity, and believe me, it's the only fucking good thing to come of this, it's the fact that I can now enjoy the winter without experiencing it through a haze of snot.

Which is nice, because I happen to love the winter, the sharpness and clarity of the light and the way it seems to reveal hidden detail in the world around you, the heightened contrast of land and sky, the shock of breathing in freezing cold air which wakes you up better than any coffee or powders ever could. Not that's it's got anything to do with my abiding love of hot women in sharply tailored winter clothes. Well, maybe just a touch. What can I say? I have a thing. And in this fair city, there's a lot of people who know how to fucking dress, and the winter brings out the best in stylish*** people, blokes too, but I'm not really looking in that direction am I?

So what I want now is snow, a hipflask full of excellent brandy or single malt, and my inner flâneur will be in hog heaven, because I fucking adore randomly wandering for miles until my feet go numb through London and its fantastic parks in this weather, and the snow just makes a beautiful scene all the more wonderful.

So yeah, winter rocks, and not just in a black metal way.

*Not man-flu. I may have many faults, but I don't indulge in that particular form of wallowing, and find people who do really annoying. As I said to the office prat a few days ago when he was whinging about having flu because he had a cough and a few aches, if you can think straight through the whole-body ache, let alone actually get up and come to work, you do not have the fucking flu, you have a cold so stop fucking moaning or go home and drink brandy. Flu hurts, and hurts everywhere, enough to knock me onto my arse for a week or so and I have a fucking high pain threshold. So stop fucking whining you knobs, y're making the rest of us look bad.

**Not that I'd advise anyone else not to have it, it works for an awful lot of people, and to be honest, I wouldn't fucking take health advice from me, this is just my experience and no one knows how they'll react to a particular illness, or it's associated vaccine.

***Note to anyone who doesn't know me that well. When I say style, I do not mean fashion. I mean that innate sense of ease and rightness that exudes from someone who knows exactly how they want to look, and exactly how to pull it off.

Rareza De Rana

On the bright side though, Otobahn II was another very good night, and M&N's frogprog dj set seemed to go down nicely, and it's always good when someone comes over to say thanks for playing Archaïa, which given their ludicrous obscurity and completely batshit music, (imagine a cross-pollination of Heldon and Magma and y're sort of there, but somehow they manage to be even odder than that implies) isn't exactly an everyday occurence. I must write about them at great length at some point, because even by the standards of 70s French lunacy* they're genuinely odd. But I'm off on one again, and was just going to say that now there's been two, there should definitely be a third and it really should become a permanent fixture. I know I'd be one of the regulars because it's just such a nice way to spend an evening, drinking fabulous beer in such excellent surroundings, and I'd really fucking like to do a Larsen Effect gig there, because I reckon it might go down quite well. Here's hoping.

*Which sets the weirdo bar way higher than their more celebrated German contemporaries.