BIGGEST WEEK YET!
SPRING BREAK!
BATRIDER

DIY 'til I die, DIY 'til I die...

One of the reasons I've been absent of late is because I've taken up a new job at the University of Newcastle as a research assistant into matters of communication and culture (a very fulfilling occupation I may add). Another reason is visible in the above e-flyer (who am I kidding? I'm just clutching at excuses).

SPRING BREAK!! It's the new style!

A friend and I are currently in the process of establishing a new weekly indie night in Newcastle, and our launch date is set down for Thursday the 14th of February.

Basically the idea is to introduce new/interesting bands to a (relatively) captive audience. Artists will benefit from tapping into a regular crowd, the people will benefit from exposure to otherwise obscure acts. Each week there will be a live band plus regular and guest DJs (including my much awaited return to the decks, yo).

Bands confirmed so far:

14th Feb. - Naked on the Vague [SYD]
21st Feb. - Athol
28th Feb. - Batrider [MELB/NZ]

Bands touring through Newcastle? Write us. Wanna DJ? Hit us up. We are true democracy.

[SPRING BREAK!!]

I'M NOT HERE, THIS ISN'T HAPPENING

Hello new world. It's been a while, I admit, and at the risk of ruining the 2008 love-in, I'd like to post my top 40 albums of that distant time known as 2007.

1. PANDA BEAR – Person Pitch
2. NO AGE – Weirdo Rippers
3. THE FIELD – From Here We Go Sublime
4. DEERHUNTER – Cryptograms / Fluorescent Grey EP
5. THE TWILIGHT SAD – Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters
6. RADIOHEAD – In Rainbows
7. SHOCKING PINKS – Shocking Pinks
8. M.I.A. – Kala
9. BLACK DICE – Load Blown
10. SPOON – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
11. ANIMAL COLLECTIVE – Strawberry Jam
12. ELECTRELANE – No Shouts, No Calls
13. KES – The Grey Goose Wing
14. STUDIO – Yearbook 1
15. BURIAL – Untrue
16. FUTURE OF THE LEFT – Curses
17. BLACK LIPS – Good Bad Not Evil
18. YEASAYER – All Hour Cymbals
19. SCOUT NIBLETT – This Fool Can Die Now
20. DAN DEACON – Spider Man of the Rings
21. JENS LEKMAN – Night Falls Over Kortedela
22. A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS – A Place To Bury Strangers
23. FABULOUS DIAMONDS – 7” EP
24. OF MONTREAL - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
25. PATRICK WOLF – The Magic Position
26. ANDREW BIRD – Armchair Apocrypha
27. FUCK BUTTONS – Sweet Love For The Planet Earth EP
28. SLY HATS – Liquorice Night
29. JOANNA NEWSOM AND Ys STREET BAND – EP
30. JOHN MAUS – Love Is Real
31. MARNIE STERN – In Advance of the Broken Arm
32. FEIST – The Reminder
33. CARIBOU – Andorra
34. BEIRUT – The Flying Club Cup
35. OKKERVIL RIVER – The Stage Names
36. ALELA DIANE – The Pirate’s Gospel
37. IRON & WINE – The Shephard’s Dog
38. BON IVER – For Emma, Forever Ago
39. DEVASTATIONS – Yes, U
40. !!! – Myth Takes

There you have it. Punctual as ever.

Just to think 2008 has already given us albums (released or leaked) by My Disco, Beach House, Destroyer, British Sea Power, Why?, These New Puritans, Fuck Buttons etcetera. Whoa. You can expect that list late 2010.

Crab Smasher: Impossible Possible

MP3: The Moon Rattled Inside Her

One of this year’s most pleasant surprises for me has been Crab Smasher’s latest 3-inch release, Impossible Monsters, although ‘pleasant’ isn’t a word I’d generally associate with Newcastle’s noisiest duo. However, it was perhaps with good reason that Grant Hunter, the act’s hack of many trades, described this as their ‘top 40’ release.

One of the few genuinely interesting acts around town, Crab Smasher usually specialise in the creation of improvised, often harsh, noise soundscapes with both traditional and non-traditional instrumentation. I’ve likened them previously to ‘Black Dice on a lazy Sunday’ but I’m not sure that really applies here. ‘The Moon Rattled Inside Her’ is the third track off Impossible Monsters and it’s a driving, vaguely Kraut-rock, pop song. It’s one of their more conventional songs, and it’s all the better for it.

It’s coming up to the end of the year, and you know what that means. Lists. Too many, really, but I’m not one to complain (unless it’s about the vapidity of Q Magazine or Mojo Magazine’s Top 50 albums of 2007). I’m partial to making the odd list, I must say. But you can’t rush these things – often I don’t discover my annual favourites until well into the next year! Anyway, I was rushed into conceiving my top 5 list for Reverb Magazine. Deadline and all that.

I’m already having doubts about the list that was published. I mean, it was only mid-November and I’d only just heard Burial’s imperious Untrue. Anyway, this is what I submitted:

1. Panda Bear – Person Pitch [Paw Tracks]
MP3: Good Girl / Carrots

(Do I get extra scene points for having the same number one as Tim Hoey from Cut Copy?)


2. Deerhunter – Cryptograms / Fluorescent Grey EP [Kranky]
MP3: Fluorescent Grey


3. The Field – From Here We Go Sublime [Kompakt]
MP3: Silent


4. M.I.A. – Kala [Interscope]
MP3: Paper Planes


5. Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga [Merge]
MP3: Finer Feelings

See, small lists are troublesome; I think my verdict was clouded by my notion of the magazine’s readership. This is Newcastle, remember. Pandering to a largely mainstream audience, I perhaps took a conservative line. With so few spots up for grabs, I guess I also wanted to showcase ‘the great expanse of my listening habits’. The top 3 will probably remain, but Kala and Ga x 5, I fear will drop. Both are great albums, no doubt about it, but probably gained their lofty positions for reasons already noted: M.I.A. shows my cultural sophistication, Spoon that I’m still down with your standard indie-rock…etcetera.

So I’m gonna put together a more extensive list. In time, of course. Off the top o’ me noggin, artists likely to feature prominently include: No Age, Shocking Pinks, Kes, Black Dice, Fabulous Diamonds, A Place To Bury Strangers, Future of the Left, Beirut, Electrelane, Feist, Patrick Wolf, Clipse (2006?), Kevin Drew, Jens Lekman, Animal Collective, Black Lips… I should stop ‘cos I’ll probably forget more than what I post.

Think I’ll make a list of my favourite older discoveries too, and maybe even favourite songs of '07.

OH, LISTS!

Party Time! Party Time!

I was at a party the other night, not a particularly cool one. To mask my indifference, to show my disaffection, I spent a lot of time watching futbol on the pub’s big screen. I did eventually get talking to this guy, though, who may or may not be a member of the Hillsong church. Anyway, that detail is just an aside. Speak-shouting, as we were, over the top of some bad DJ – my inner cynic nicely numbed by alcohol, he simply Mr. Nice ‘Teetotaller’ Guy – topic turned to music.

Now, I feel I gave him a pretty good ear-bashing, the type that invariably gets no reply or at best a polite ‘I have to go over hear now’. I don’t know the teachings of Hillsong (is Australian Idol really a subject for preaching?), but it must breed tolerance. Like Jerry Seinfeld attributing his funniness to Scientology, let me just thank Hillsong for this inane blog entry!

Seriously, the guy’s honesty was refreshing. It takes something to sidle up to me, dressed in my finest indie-chic, and proclaim yourself a ‘teeny-bopper’ (his words). A married man, too! ‘S Club 7, Britney, Christina… ,’ he went, on first-name basis no less. Fair ‘nuff. You can like what you like. We then talked about music downloading as a social phenomenon. I pointed out the disparate views from artists. Some, like Radiohead and plenty of indie artists, can encourage the act: to be heard as opposed to simply bought and sold. Not so major labels etcetera, who take the opposing view and shout ‘creative rights! ownership! moneys!’ at all sorts of inopportune moments. This is the only point over which Mr. Nice Guy and me really clashed. What he said was unforgivable but, more importantly, a sign of the black-and-white times we live in.

‘It’s like all the good artists want their music only to be bought, while the bad ones will just give there’s away.’

Oh my. In type, that probably doesn’t look too bad. But the way it was said, with one of those laughs that suggests the speaking of unarguable fact, really grated. Thing is, he doesn’t know better. It’s not his fault. I do wonder whether these ‘good’ artists have no objections to the buying of votes i.e. the buying of cultural capital i.e. Australian Idol.

Here you are, my friend, some super-duper songs redone quite poorly by struggling artists:

Bonnie Prince Billy - The World's Greatest (R. Kelly cover)
Nouvelle Vague - Dancing With Myself (Billy Idol cover)

And when she talked about a fall, I thought she talked about Mark E. Smith

I’ve thought for a while now that The Fall could be my ideal band – if only I could get started on their lengthy back catalogue! And that’s just the problem! From what I can gather, their output is remarkably consistent with something like 26 studio albums spanning three decades. Not that the band’s personnel has been at all stable: vocalist, lyricist and leader Mark E. Smith ('the most hated man in Britain' or angry enigma, take your pick) has been the only constant member, with there having been around 58 line-up changes. Smith, a notorious cynic, once quipped 'If it's me, and your granny on bongos, it's a Fall gig'.

It has always seemed to me that The Fall has no Daydream Nation or I See a Darkness; no definitive introduction album, nothing concrete for which I could test my compatibility with such a prolific artist. But I knew it must be. Being a fan of so many bands influenced by Smith and co. – Art Brut, Pavement, McLusky – as well as contemporaries of a sort, like Wire and Gang of Four, I knew. Plus the Jens Lekman lines featured in the title above have proven handy for name-dropping!

Having read so much about Smith’s unique lyrical style – apparently a heady mix of social realism, brutal criticism, surrealism and absurdism – I really shouldn’t have left it so long. I may be exposing a gaping hole in my indie-cred but it was only last week that I purchased (yes, this was far too important for downloading) my first Fall album. I settled on This Nation’s Saving Grace, which, along with Hex Enduction Hour and Perverted By Language, was one of three that I had narrowed my selection down to. And, whaddya know, I’m hooked-uh (in true Mark E. Smith vocal style).

Please, if you haven’t already, do yourself a favour:

I am Damo Suzuki
Bombast

Every Breath You Take

I was just watching an episode from the second series of Love My Way; it’s the one where Tom (Brendan Cowell) has a go at his brother Charlie (Dan Wyllie) for owning a Sting CD. To paraphrase, Tom states the obvious – Sting in the Police equals cool, Sting solo, uh, not so cool. Charlie bites back, arguing that the album in question is Sting’s first outside of the Police. Tom argues that it doesn’t matter; the CD would not have been around at the time, it clearly would have been vinyl. This, he contends, settles the issue, and he threatens to throw the offending piece out the window.

There’s something in this exchange that really emphasises, for me, the dynamic relationship between music and technology. This blog was established for my Technology, Media, and Culture class at university on the basis that it would provide a web log of my thoughts and experiences on an aspect of culture and its connections with technology. That I chose to focus on music looks, in retrospect, to be a bit of a cop-out. As a heavy peruser of blogs, music ones especially, I am aware of what is already out there and, while I have felt an urge to join the Mp3 revolution, for the benefit of my course I have attempted to avoid this line of posting (not to say it won’t happen in the future!). So far as technology goes, I have attempted to showcase the human aspect; in particular, the ways in which advancements frame our listening and consumption habits. How important is it to stay on top of things? At what point does society (or at least e-society) deem something uncool or outdated? Who exactly dictates these trends? When does borrowing become stealing and how does technology facilitate such acts? Questions no-one can answer, true, but they sure make for interesting discussion.

Class is winding up for the year and this is my summarising comment. What’s ‘round the corner? You'll have to wait and see.

Before You Was Famous

Marj Kibby, in her as-yet-unpublished article ‘The practice of music fandom on the internet’ (2006), reasserts the long-held notion that cultural capital is central to music fandom, and examines the ways in which intimacy and authenticity can heighten musical experiences.

She goes on to talk about how new technologies of communication, such as the Internet, have led to disintermediation in that they enable a connection between producer and consumer, musician and fan, without the need for an intermediary. And it’s true. Nowadays many ‘stars’ have blogs or treat their official web site in a less than official manner (check out The Whitlams’ Tim Freedman and his attempt to get back at the Chaser boys). As Art Brut say in 'Formed a Band': ‘It's not irony / And it's not rock and roll / I'm just talking / To the kids’.

It may be stating the obvious but is there any better way to feel a connection to music than to be somehow in direct contact with it? Like talking to your favourite artists or having semi-famous people reply to your blog. I don’t think there is, although sometimes, such as when it comes to friends’ band, it helps to have a little distance.

Funny I should write all this. Yesterday my sister pointed me to the MySpace front page, where it appears my girlfriend has become the face of the Laneway Festival. Now, there’s no way we’re going to miss that!

Sample Credits Don't Pay Our Bills

Come Away With...ESG

I must sound like a broken record going on about this kind of stuff, but…I must sound like a broken record going on about this kind of stuff. I mean, someone has got to say it. At the moment my musical taste is just so sample-driven. Call me a product of the digital age, I don’t care, but I dig the re-appropriation of sounds – old, new, borrowed and blue. Whatever. Except mash-ups which are 98% lame.

Well, on to today’s history lesson: ESG. The four Scroggins sisters - Deborah (bass, vocals), Marie (congas, vocals), Renee (vocals, guitar), and Valerie (drums) – simply have to be amongst the coolest coolsies of all time (please, please, please ignore what has to one of the most unappealing promo pics ever, above). Back in the late ‘70s, when all were teenagers, their mother (add her to the cool list) bought each of her daughters an instrument to keep ‘em away from the trouble of the South Bronx streets.

Somehow, almost certainly not by design, ESG became flag bearers for post-punk, no wave, hip-hop and house music. According to AllMusic, the group's only aspiration was to play their music – simplistic in structure and heavy on rhythm – and sell lots of records. And despite borrowing heavily from their influences, such James Brown and Motown, when it came to originality, the girls had it goin’ on: figuring people would know when they screwed up a cover, the group decided to write their own songs in order to sidestep audience knowledge of when mistakes were being made. Through a mixture of ignorance and bluster, ESG have been responsible for some of the most dance-able and purely enjoyable music out there. Their full-length debut, Come Away With…ESG (1983), is a classic, but the critical admiration never transferred to commercial success. ESG disbanded shortly after that high-point but reformed, to great surprise, in the early ‘90s.

And yet the monetary reward still wasn’t forthcoming. In their absence, their music had become popular amongst hip-hop artists on the look-out for samples. The likes of TLC, the Wu-Tang Clan, Beastie Boys and J Dilla all made use of ESG rhythms and beats, often uncleared, and the Scroggins were left uncredited and out of pocket. The gals (by now middle-aged mamas) addressed the issue in the coolest of ways: by naming a 1993 12” EP Sample Credits Don't Pay Our Bills.

I don’t really know if I’m helping matters by posting mp3s of their work but I see it is as spreading the good word. I’ll be knocking on your door come Sunday. Anyway, this is a victory for the little guys. Check out a couple of tracks from the band, as well as one from indie-rockers Liars which borrows, uh, liberally from ESG’s ‘UFO’.

ESG – Dance
ESG – UFO
Liars - Tumbling Walls Buried Me In The Debris With ESG

When it’s all over we still have to clean up the mess

So, yeah, it looks like Mess+Noise, inarguably the finest free music mag devoted to Australian content, will no longer exist in printed form. It’s a shame; not only because I’d just recently started contributing but rather as the physical form has always seemed to me to carry a sort of reverence, I guess in some way linked to disposability.

Talk is there will be a substantial boost to online content and, hell, it ain’t even official yet (and may not even be the full story). This supposed move does speak volumes for the lure of the Internet though. Music criticism and journalism, if you’ll allow it to be known as such, are so integral to the culture cycle that it’s always a shame to see a genuine outlet fall by the wayside. And I’m sure you can bring the whole ‘online democracy’ debate into this mystifying episode but truth is anyone can blog, anyone can review. But I, for one, don’t want to read it all. Anyway, I’m sure M+N will maintain the high quality product it has become known for.

I’ve got fond memories of trips to Sydney degenerating into hunt for M+N goose-chases, and it’s true that, 15 bi-monthly issues in, my coffee table will never look the same again. It’s not the end, in any case. You can always print your own copy, right?

DIY: Damned If You do? Damned If You don’t?

Stolen picture!

Technocrats are always arguing the social networking capabilities of the Internet and, yeah, it’s difficult to not see the benefits of a connected society. But, for all these advancements, how much better off are we? I mean, Facebook costs employers countless amounts in earnings and lost productivity, MySpace promotes the collecting of fake friends, illegal downloading is destroying the music industry, legal downloading is plagued by DRM locks... and it all becomes clear the Internet is not quite the democratic utopia that many claim. I do not subscribe to the notion that the Internet is detrimental to music, the universal human practice, only that it impinges on the industry of music as we have come to know it. But I’m not writing here to launch a tirade against said industry; that’s all be said and done. I’m more interested in music’s role in the shaping of self and group identity, and how this has been affected by increased commodification and the growth of online practices.

I, like many, view music as an aestheticisation of experience. That is to say, through listening to music – and interacting with other people, their experiences and opinions about music – I establish, form and maintain elements of my social identity. As Frith says, ‘the experience of music is an essentially humanising experience, a kind of ideal of sociability, a way of making us feel what it is to be engaged with other people’ (Frith, 2001: 28). Online, I align myself with several web sites, tastemakers if you will, from which I also form part of an imagined community, made up of likeminded individuals. It is this point that greatly interests me.

There are some that view these new online music communities as an extension of older movements. For instance the late 1970s New York punks or the Bronx hip-hop scene of the same time; the former who communicated through handmade fanzines, and the latter who copied and traded tapes. This notion sits well with me, especially due to my participation in a number of identifiable subcultures.

More and more I find that I align my identity with the do-it-yourself ethic, which first came to prominence in the punk movement in the late 1970s. Maybe it’s the sincerity of unmediated wares that allures me, or that I’m simply defining myself by what I’m not (i.e. commodity fetishist), I don’t know. Perhaps I’m over-analysing things – as I am quite prone to do.

Back to this idea of online social networking, I’m interested to see where the traditional values of D.I.Y. fit in. As noted, I regularly attend D.I.Y. shows at warehouses and art spaces, which, despite a lack of conventional promotion, draw reasonable attendances. This Wednesday I will be attending a gig by hardcore act La Quiete from Italy, at Newcastle’s Sushi + Cigarettes gallery. Shows like these, and the small-time bands involved, rely heavily on the Internet, in particular networking sites like MySpace, which “provide an outlet for groups and artists to promote their music to a wider audience” and build up vibrant culture of online discussion about music where fans and artists of specific genres seek out likeminded individuals (Bennett, 2005: 338). The Internet, then, can be used to impart and obtain cultural capital, upon which communities can be sustained on- and off-line.

Obviously bands have been doing the whole D.I.Y. thing since before MySpace was even a twinkle in Rupert Murdoch’s overpowering eyes, so what else does the Internet give us? I suppose there is wider access to information for a wider population. And every so often, you’ll come across a site that will offer something innovative. Take the FatCat DIY Resource, for example. FatCat Records, on of the most respected indie labels, have designed a site to ‘help new artists and labels find out what they need to know to get their own work out into the world’. The resource features a large, UK-centric database containing information on various areas such as mastering, manufacturing, distributing and legal, including lengthy contact lists. It also includes interviews with noteworthy D.I.Y. acts, helpful links, step-by-step guides and the opportunity for artists/companies to upload their own data. It’s far from exhaustive but then you gotta take whatever help you can get.

[Bennett, T., (2005) ‘Editorial’ in Popular Music and Leisure Leisure Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4, 333–342, October 2005.]

[Frith, S. (2001) ‘The Popular Music Industry’ in The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock. Eds. Simon Frith, Will Straw and John Street. Cambridge University Press: New York, pp 26–52.]

***

I watched with interest part one of Marcus Westbury’s new documentary Not Quite Art, which aired on the ABC last Tuesday. Westbury travelled to Newcastle – his home town, my adopted home – to take a look at the art culture emerging from outside the supposed proper avenues. He contrasted our fine city with that of Glasgow, Scotland, and it wasn’t exactly pretty. The latter have experience a transformation from industrial city to a hub of youth art in Europe. We, well, we’re still waiting. Nice glimpse of Sushi + Cigarettes, though.

Part two of three will air Tuesday Oct 23 at 10pm. You can download this first episode here.

Dance to the Underground

According to this, a Sydney nightclub promoter has started a campaign to ban a style of dance that he says is a danger to other patrons. Apparently, 'shuffling', a 'mix between the moves of one-hit wonder MC Hammer and the frenetic steps required by dancing machines in amusement arcades' has long been a staple of the Melbourne rave scene but is only now taking over Sydney.

"It used to be in those clubs where people stood two metres apart from each other and they were all on ecstasy, so if they bumped into each other they'd give each other a hug," he [Tim Sabre, nightclub promoter] said.

"In Sydney, on the other hand, they try to do it on a crowded floor while drunk.

"You need precision and when you're drunk you lack that, so when somebody goes staggering around and hits the wrong people … it's not good."

Well, booze + dancing = dangerous. Obviously... WRONG! says DJ Peter Glass.

"That's their self-expression, that's what dancing's about," he said.

Duh, ain't you never watched 'So You Think You Can Dance'? That's an art. I'm quite pleased that this long-overlooked form is finally being recognised. Don't believe the smear campaigns.

Bad dancers: danger to society. Keep children away at all times.

Workinonit!

Sometimes at night, especially when I have things on my mind, I like to set aside time just for listening to music. I lay myself down in a darkened room just before bed and listen through headphones to an album in its entirety. The past few nights I’ve found myself returning to the same two albums: J Dilla’s Donuts, a new purchase that has hit me immediately, and Prefuse 73’s One Word Extinguisher, an album from my collection I’ve neglected for far too long.

The two are linked stylistically, both working as complete works as opposed to collections of disparate songs. I don’t want to go into back-stories too much but it is obvious that these two albums were pieced together with the utmost care. Donuts, particularly, runs like one long song. Now, I don’t claim to be the most knowledgeable when it comes to hip-hop – in fact it is the main genre where subserviently I seek recommendations – but these two make a progressive impact that I cannot ignore. Approaching some sort of post-modern urban terrorism, each album relies heavily on samples – vocal snippets, chopped up instruments, glitchy beats – but the heart remains in traditional hip-hop. The results haven’t changed so much as the methods. Much could be said of today’s shorter attention spans but in cases like these we have an intriguing statement for the value of unrest in the digital age.

I’ve been sleeping well, baby. Enough said.

[No, I’m not going to post mp3s because that would do both artists an injustice]

BUY J Dilla - Donuts BUY
BUY Prefuse 73 - One Word Extinguisher BUY

***

In other news I have a couple of reviews up on Mess + Noise.

Big Pay Out!

With tickets to the Big Day Out music festival going on sale in just a few days I’m bracing myself for the inevitable torrent of slang-ridden MySpace bulletins cursing scalpers, and blaming everything from alarms clocks to online queues for denying one’s God-given right to acquiring tickets.

Spare me the sob stories. I’ve seen it all. Well, almost.

You see, in yet another attempt to circumvent scalpers and online reselling, the organisers of the festival have imposed a limit of two tickets per customer for the Sydney leg, held January 25 at Homebush. In the other five cities, punters will be able purchase up to four tickets at a time.

I don’t know just how good an idea this is. While the line-up this year is actually almost worth paying for, and I hate getting ripped off as much as the next person, it is a no-brainer that the festival will sell out and, yes, hearts will be broken, friendships expired etc. What I’m saying is, I much prefer a bit of people power!

An article published in the Sydney Morning Herald, entitled Fans sabotaging scalpers' auctions, claims “music fans, incensed at the apparent inaction by governments, event promoters and eBay in preventing ticket scalping, are taking matters into their own hands.”

Enraged fans, blinded by their own fury, are actively sabotaging auctions by placing fake bids seconds before they close. With very little legislation protecting us genuine fans from these dirty dealers – their actions being the very definition of un-Australian – obviously eBay, the bastion of free trade, is where we should vent our anger!

Seriously, what can be done? They’re talking about sending unique barcodes to buyers’ mobile phones but I’ve seen first-hand the trouble that even Moshtix - a relatively tame form of digital ticketing - can cause.

Is this a case of technology proving just as much a hindrance as a help? I even miss those middle-aged pommy geezers spruiking tickets outside the venue. Oh, the still exist. Somewhere in this digital world…

'Kin A! Making 'Head-ways

Anyone with an ear to the wind will know that Radiohead, Best Band in the World™, have a new album on the way – due to drop, in just a few of days, on October 10. With the sudden announcement of record number seven, In Rainbows, I almost feel old hat commenting on it.

That said, Thom Yorke and co. have well and truly pulled the wool over the world’s eyes with this, their latest party trick. I suppose not being signed to a record label, they can do anything they like – and it sure doesn’t hurt being the critically and commercially adored megabrand that they are.

The lowdown is, In Rainbows will be released in at least two but almost definitely three forms. The first to see outside light will be a digital download in which the customer, free-minded beings like you and I, will be able to name their own price. The most exciting format is a “discbox” including the In Rainbows CD, a bonus CD from the recording sessions, a two-record vinyl edition of the album, and a hardcover book. The discbox is available for pre-order from the band’s web site, costing £40 or close to $100 AUD, and every buyer gets access to the download. In Rainbows also looks likely to be released as a standard CD in early 2008 but, pfft, that ain’t innovative and this is Radiohead we’re talking about!

Lazy, I? No, just a little different

So, yeah, wow. I don’t really know what to think and I’ll reserve my judgment for the actual music but still it’s a pretty bold move. As the lad at Pitchfork says: only a band in Radiohead’s position could pull off something so audacious. And as I say: what does it mean for future album releases? In effect, the band have made a mockery of the usual PR circuit – isn’t it requisite nowadays for bands to get their promo on, only to have their music leaked at some inopportune time? Haven’t they effectively leaked it themselves, and asked us to pay for it (if we want to)? Subversion of the highest order! Or is it?

I've Lived On A Dirt Road All My Life

It seems like an age since I've been on the Internet but, at the same time, the past week has just flown by. It began with three shows in three nights - Battles/My Disco, Front End Loader (talk about piggy in the middle!) and M.I.A. - with some TiNA-related madness somewhere in the middle, and a heap of travelling. I presently find myself in Orange where I've had the chance to reclaim my thoughts and heal my body.

Now, I thought I'd post my playlist from Noise Annoys last Thursday, just to keep yezall in the loop.

• Battles – B+T [from EP C/B EP, 2006]
• James Dean – In The Hospital [James Dean CD-R, 2007]
• British Sea Power – Atom [Krankenhaus? EP, 2007]
• My Bloody Valentine – You Made Me Realise [You Made Me Realise single, 1988]
• Fabulous Diamonds – 2.03 [Fabulous Diamonds 7”, 2007]
• Matthew Dear – Deserter [Asa Breed, 2007]
• M.I.A. – Paper Planes [Kala, 2007]
• ESG – Dance [Come Away With…ESG, 1983]
• M83 – Run Into Flowers (Abstrackt Keal Agram Remix) [Run Into Flowers single, 2003]
• Caribou – Irene [Andorra, 2007]
• The Field – Silent [From Here We Go Sublime, 2007]
• Future of the Left – Manchasm [Curses, 2007]
• Eucalypt – Kepéla [Eucalypt/Sophora split, 2006]
• Warren Ellis interview:
• Dirty Three and Cat Power – Great Waves [Cinder, 2005]
• Dirty Three - Long Way To Go With No Punch [She Has No Strings Appollo, 2003]
• Alps - I Burned An Australian Flag [Alps of New South Wales, 2006]

And yes, despite it being possibly the worst show evah, from next week I will be returning to a regular slot of Monday 4-5pm - with a strict no longnecks policy...

Please people, stay tuned because this week is going to throw up some seriously good blogging. I can feel it.

What Light?

James Dean, the good Samaritans that they are, have allowed No 'Round The Corner to post another exclusive track from their James Dean CD-R release. Scroll back a few posts for an updated link for 'In The Hospital'. CHEKKIT!

At the (Radio) Dept. of Missing Songs

In late breaking news, I will be taking my Noise Annoys radio show to the airwaves this Thursday 27th from 8.30pm. The show will air on 97.9FM in Newcastle as part of the wonderful This Is Not Art festival. If you're out of town you can stream it from TiN radio.

Worth tuning in for - hopefully!

Like a child's broken toy!

I count myself fortunate to have been amongst the all too few to have seen and appreciated the post-hardcore stylings of Newcastle’s The Let-Go!. The band sadly broke up earlier this year, just as they were approaching some semblance of notoriety. A limited edition cassette and as yet released EP may be the only remnants of a brief but blistering existence, yet it is the blurry memories of a slew of late-night gigs that I will cherish mostly.

Fast-forward six months, and three-fifths of The Let-Go are now James Dean. With a new drummer and an altogether stronger sense of unity, the band has honed a more refined sound; still confronting, but with the onus on atmospherics and dynamics rather than the all-out aural attack of previous work. Only a few shows into being James Dean are already proving a caustic célèbre on the local DIY scene.

The first fruit of this new legacy is out now. The James Dean CD-R comes packaged in a delightful handmade cardboard sleeve, limited to 100, and the music contained is just as roughly hewn.

I had the pleasure of sitting in on the band as they recorded the five tracks in the studio a couple of months ago. I was also there on the night of their first show when they received a copy of the first mix, only to come away disappointed and somewhat disenchanted with their recording experience. So on to the drummer Travis' house (affectionately known as Tighes Hill Bakery) they went – where I was inexplicably absent! In one night the band came away with a self-produced product infinitely more satisfying than the one they had spent several hundreds dollars on. The results are spectacular.

With a 7-inch to follow soon, as well as a show with Italy’s hardcore heavyweights La Quiete and a slot at Brisbane’s No Culture Festival, James Dean look likely to forge a reputation as rebels with a very good cause.

James Dean - In The Hospital (mp3)
James Dean - Turn This Iron Handle (mp3)

James Dean @ MySpace