More Glastonbury stuff... efestivals has the complete line-up, but with approximate times. So now you can start planning your glastonbury weekend with something approaching military precission - since I am essentially a very sad person, I've started doing mine here (the weird formatting in the document is because once upon a time it used to be an excel spreadsheet)

Woo Hoo! This years Glastonbury line up has been announced, it's looking pretty good to me. Here's the bands that have caught my eye so far:



Friday:

De Le Soul, Mogwai, Zwan, Har Mar Superstar, Electric Six, Primal Scream, Death in Vegas, James Lavelle, Nightmares on Wax



Saturday:

The Warlocks, 2 Many DJ's, Chemical Brothers, Lamb, David Holmes free Association, Interpol, Jimmy Cliff, Flaming Lips, Radiohead



Sunday:

Asian Dub Foundation, Sugababes, Feeder, The Raveonettes, Krust and Die present I-Kamanchi, Scratch Perverts, The Streets, Tricky



...the full list can be found here. To be honest it's unlikely I'll get to see them all since I think there's going to be some clashes, but there will be trouble (oh yes... there will be...) if I don't get to see Mogwai, Interpol or The Streets.

Oh dear, looks like my principles with regards to downloading dodgy music off the internet have just given up and walked out of the room in disgust. In my defence it's the soundtrack to Rez (a game which everybody should play, or should that be experience, at least once), which doesn't seem to exist in this country even on import...



Anyway, Matrix... I'm aiming for a detailed post on it at some point which get's down to the core idea of the film, I think I'm getting there, see yesterdays comments for some thoughts, but at the moment it boils down to two words.... (brace yourself, I could go up my own arse at any point here) "fractal reality".



The problem is it seems there are other people out there with similar ideas but who may have taken it a little too far... crop circles, the masons and the matrix. Hmm, I dunno about that - i think we may be into tree hugging, hippy crap territory here.

OK, I've got to get my initial Matrix Reloaded impressions into the wide world of the internet....



I suppose I should put a spoiler warning here:



SPOILER ALERT! MAN THE LIFE BOATS!! WOMEN AND ME FIRST!!!



ahem...



So, as you may know after my experience with the game I wasn't holding up much hope for this film, but I have to say I was pleasantly suprised. But before I mention what I liked I feel like I should get the bad points out of my system:



First off... Zion, to be honest I really don't think we needed to be shown it, most of the start of the film could have been dumped, after all we didn't see Zion in the first film and that wasn't any weaker for it - I liked the control room scene that they showed, but the rest of the interior just didn't fit with this initial peek of the human stronghold. The scene with the council reminded me of that one in the Phantom Menace when the leaders of Naboo are talking about the upcoming invasion, I had a horrible feeling Jar Jar Binks was going to rear his ugly head... and as for the rave/softcore porn scene, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...



Besides that the only other slight disappointment was Neo's fight with the hundreds of Agent Smith's, I guess it's over exposure more than anything - but some of the digital Agent Smith's seemed a little ropey to me and it lacked the purity of the other fight scenes. Having said that some of Smith's lines in this scene were great, it's the way he say's "me" that get's me going.



OK, good stuff: the other fight scenes with Neo - the boy's done good, I don't think he'd look too out of place in a Hong Kong action flick - maybe they could have done with a bit more wire work, after all he is The One, and I don't think you can have too much super hero action in his position. Following on from that little comment I quite enjoyed some of the more outlandish 'Superman' stuff with Neo, that last flight of his was just awesome - some people may complain about it being too much, but let's not forget, he is essentially mean't to be pretty close to a god, after all the first film ended with him learning to see and to some extent control the Matrix.



Other stuff off the top of my head: The Twins reminded me no end of Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace in a good way (again with the Star Wars comparisons, sorry can't help myself), the freeway sequence was damn impressive, and I fucking loved the scene with The Architect - that threw a couple of well aimed spanners into the works didn't it?



Anyway, I'm sure I'll rant about it more later... but I'm too tired at the moment.



...



before I sign off this is for the members of the kangeroo household: I can get all of two out of this weeks invisibles, note to self: watch more films.

Potential film of the decade candidate? I'd recommend watching it with the sound off though...

Oops, I forgot this one:



The Cinematic Orchestra - Man With A Movie Camera

Pure quality...

For those of you still paying attention the CD sections have been updated, all be it very half-heartedly, here and here.



OK, now as you may have notice your reading a fairly badly written, personal website - what I should be doing now is regaling you with tales of my fascinating and exciting life. However, I can't - I didn't really get up to much. I've got this natural tendency to do pretty much bugger all unless I'm given a push, if there is one law I do follow it's Newton's First Law of Motion.



Saturday evening was spent with fine wine, spicy food and pleasant company watching the annual musical carnage that is Eurovision - now apparently, according to El Tel, there was some political voting going on which was responsible for the 'nil pois'. Hmmm, I think you'll find it was because we were utter shite more than anything....



Today I did manage to get off my arse and go into London for a bit light CD shopping and, well I guess sight seeing. I've been curious about those new inflatable sculptures by Paul McCarthy outside the Tate Modern, so decided to have a look at them myself. I'm not sure about the ketchup one, but the slightly warped version of Pinocchio is pretty impressive.



Anyway, that's about it - a few new acquisitions: a new X-men book by Grant Morrison who continues to merrily break every unwritten rule of the series, and a book 'written' by Kid Koala called Nufonia must fall - I've used the quotes there since effectively it's a picture book, there is no dialogue in it... maybe it's about time I went back to proper books?

OK, this bit of the site is become a right hassle, so I'm going for a quick one today. I think these are the latest CD's, but I may have missed some



Gonzales - Z

OK, for those people at the back who've just arrived let me introduce you to 'Chilly' Gonzales, very hairy, Jewish (I think), Canadian rapper/raconteur extrordinaire. This album may or may not be his swan song, damn shame if it is - it's sort of a best of, apparently the original intention was to produce a new album but he reckons he just ended up playing all his old songs. So this CD ends up being a collection of re-worked Chilly classics - great fun.



Various Artists - Lexoleum

Compilation from Lex Records, home of Tes and Boom Bip, so what you get is a mighty fine collection of left-field hip-hop. Really good stuff too...



The Matthew Herbert Big Band - Goodbye Swingtime

And by jove this is full on big band music but thankfully very much removed from that bloody Robbie Williams album, very classy - needs to be appreciated while drinking expensive cocktails and smoking posh fags.



DJ Scud - Ambush!

I think the artist and title explain everything you need to know about this



Sk/um - I Pagu Fallsins

I couldn't be bothered to type the title properly, theres some weird punctuation and strange letters. Anyway, it's Icelandic electronica as recommended by the BBC experimental music site - to be brutally honest I'm not that impressed by it, it gets very samey and it's not very challenging.



Morphine - The Best of Morphine

A complete rip off since I already own all but three of the sixteen tracks here, but I love the band and wanted to be a completist. In case your wondering Morphine were a three piece comprising of drums, baritone sax, two string slide bass and vocals - sadly the singer/songwriter died of a heart attack a few years ago, they did the sort of music that complements maudlin drinking sessions and chain smoking perfectly. I miss them alot...



Various Artists - Playlist Dance & Urban

One of those crappy compilation CD's HMV give away free, but worth a mention because of a track by someone called McKay who does a mighty fine hip-hop/blues/funk crossover.

See, now I'm depressed... second Friday night in a row and I'm at home, boo! I'm not good at this. OK, I have the booze, I have the fags, I have one of the finest music collections you'll ever hear, and three games consoles under the telly, but there's something missing. After the vaguely unfulfilling week I've had (...and am prone to recently) I feel like I should be letting off a bit of steam, or at least spending the evening talking a whole bunch of crap with other people.



Instead I'm watching fucking Big Brother...



...so far it all seems horribly familiar, Davinia Wots-her-face is pregnant again (does the world really need people like her to breed? hmm, maybe that was a bit too bitter phil?), and the contestants are the usual 20 something cliches who I've instantly taken a dislike too (again, not really fair since I've got the sound on my telly off at the moment - my laptop has decided to play me some Curve to fill the void) but, you never know they might be very interesting people - yeh, right



Ooh, random aside - my laptop's started up a bit of jazz - Chris Bowden to be precise, fantastic tune called Only Angst, from Slightly Askew. It's just full on, blows your brain out of your nose, chaotic sleazy jazz - it amazes me that more people don't listen to this sort of stuff....



(15 minutes later of jaaaaazzz later)



Damn, I needed that. Anyway back to big brother: so yes, I hate them all, but I haven't been listening to them speak (I'm on to the Afghan Whigs now fact fans) so I shouldn't be judging them too much (it's just my nature...) - but with the lack of any war's for me to rant and rave about I have a nasty feeling that this program could become the main topic of conversation on this site, so to start the ball rolling I'm going to say out of the blokes I'm going for the big asian lad (we share similar physiques) and out of the ladiez the red head (because I've had - or should that be have? - a thing about redheads).



What do you lot reckon?

This is especially for kangeroo pie... isn't childish humour fucking maaarvelous!

Today I have mostly been driving up and down motorways far too quickly...

I don't know if anyone else gets this but every so often an album comes along that just leaves me stunned. Today it's Ether Teeth by Fog, I'm about three quarters of the way through it at the moment and I'm really impressed with it. Full description will follow later, but in the mean time thing folky acoustic psychedelia with lot's of turntables, and some really inspired sampling.



I haven't done a list here for a while, so here's a list of CD's on order or in the post (I've given up buying from my local Virgin, they never have the weird shite I want):



Marilyn Manson - The Golden Age Of Grotesque - sort it out play! it was allegedy posted over a week ago.

Various - Lexoleum - Hip Hop collection from Lex records.

Morphine - The Best of Morphine - ...me being a completist, there are a couple of songs on it I don't own

Cex - Being Ridden - apparently better than his last album

Cex - Being Ridden Instrumentals - or are they? totally different tracklisting

SK/UM - I Thagu Fallsins - I dare you to find a more obscure title.

Kid Koala - Nufonia Must Fall - actually a comic book, but it has a soundtrack, I'm intrigued



...in other news I've just rediscovered this site, before clicking the link I should warn you that it's a Nine Inch Nails humour site, so won't make a huge amount of sense unless you know the music - still, it's good to see that there is someone else out there who isn't a suicidal teenage goth and listens to them.

I have a matrix joke for you, stolen from pvponline - you may want to sit down or hold on to a wall or something before reading it...anyway here is joke:



"Why can't you eat any soup in the Matrix?"



...answer in the comments.

Oh dear, I'm now very worried the new Matrix film.



Not only have the reviews been bad to mediocre, but I can now report that the so-called ground breaking videogame "Enter The Matrix" is a steaming pile of shite. Clumsy controls, a fighting system so weak it makes Yie Ar Kung Fu seem advanced, a driving section which seems to be some sort of programmer's joke, and bloody-annoying, instant death riddled, jumping sections. And this is something the Wachowski brothers have been heavily involved in apparently... not a good sign.



Still at least I can exchange it for a decent game next Friday.



By the way this weekend alcohol fueled shenanigans are now online.

favourite quote from TV tonight:



Patty Hearst couldn't pull one off and she had money and a gun.



Can you guess what I've been watching?

I'm off to Microsoft tomorrow (well, today actually) for some corporate brainwashing - don't be surprised if my site get's replaced by a single page saying "OBEY!" with a link to the worlds favourite multinational corporation.



I've been getting way to excited about some of the E3 news, portable playstation, doom 3, xbox karoke... sorted!

Apparently I'm dodgy...



I've just got back from watching X2 and I'm glad to report that all seems well in the world of the mutants. A story focusing on the uncomfortable relationship between mutants and human, the big super human battles are kept to a minimum and I think its all the better for it. The characters are fleshed out a bit where needed, but not so much as to leave them flat and unintersting for the inevitable third one.



Ian McKellen is once again excellent in his role as Magneto and I thought Mystique came out quite well, almost made me forget Rebecca Romijn-Stamos was pretty much butt naked for the whole film. We learned a bit more about Wolverine, but again not too much, so theres a bit of mystery left for the next one, Cyclops got ignored (good! he's a boring goody two-shoes), but I think mutant of the film has got to go to Alan Cumming (dare I say he was even better in X2 than he was in Spy Kids).



And I took great pleasure about walking out with a knowing smile about what's going to happen in the next film.

Well I can see that this new Zelda game is going to cause plenty of late nights, damn it's good, I've had to physically drag myself away from it tonight. OK, its not that much of a departure from the older Zelda games (besides the graphics, but to be honest I can't see what the fuss is about, they look great to me), all the old items like the grappling hook and boomerang seem to be present and correct, the dungeons still follow the same find big key, kill big boss route but the sheer quality and balance of the game is just breathtaking.



This, combined with Metroid, also on my gamecube, and Neverwinter Nights on my PC mean I'm rapidly approaching videogame overload. I'm fairly sure I may snap soon - I'm guessing sometime around when Ikaruga comes out.



So, because I've been wasting all my time on videogames, plans for tonight's update have gone somewhat astray. I was planning to get a bit political about the whole Claire Short resignation, she got on my nerves when she threw all her anti-war posturing out of the window before the Iraq conflict, and now the way she's getting all moralistic just grates even more - but I'm too tired to do that.



And if anyone has been wondering why the imood indicator has been saying uninspired tonight, well I had this great hip-hop beat knocking around my head on the walk home from work, but I'm damned if I could get it to work in fruityloops... very annoying.

Aaaaaaaaargh!!!!

Damn, this page is getting long...



RJD2 - The Horror

This sort of thing must really annoy the people who buy def jux 12 inches, a handy collection of b-sides and remixes from the dead ringer album and an extra CD-rom with some live performances, an animated version of the horror video and the making of the horror (but strangely the actual video isn't on this disk). Anyway for someone like me who doesn't buy vinyl this is a welcome treat, the remixes of ghostwriter and june are very good, the other stuff is well up there with his album - actually I reckon some of the instrumental tracks on this are better than the album tracks - however the CD-Rom stuff only gets an OK from me... as much as I like the turntable-tomfoolery it's pretty dull to watch.



Four Tet - Rounds

Some bright spark has come up the term folktronica to describe music like this, I dunno though... OK there are acoustic instruments being sampled but I wouldn't say the songs themselves sound like folk music, it's kind of more jazzy in an Amon Tobin-styleee. So, what do I think about this album? Pretty much the same as every review you'll find on the internet, it's very good...



Prefuse 73 - One Word Extinguisher

So hands up who's bored of me writing, buy this album, it's very good... Well I'm afraid that your going to end up disappointed again, I like this album - I'd say it beats his first album, apparently this one was written over the course of a pretty messy break-up, so it seems a touch melancholic in places to me...

Looks like our boy Snake is going a bit Rambo in his next game, I am officially intrigued...

OK, I've just done this personality test, apparently I am highly paranoid, but only moderately obsessive-compulsive. Personally I think it's wrong, surely the fact that this website being about 50% lists means I deserve some bonus points in the obsessive-compulsive category, and if there was a question saying "do you sort skittles into different colours before eating them?" I'd be well on the way to a series of comfy therapy sessions.



I also had a go at the Dante's Inferno Test. I'm a heretic and I get a flaming tomb and some infernal Furies stained with blood, with limbs of women and hair of serpents... Woo Hoo! Count me in!!



Anything else? Well I've been introduced to a couple of very good websites: infinite wheel, where you can find the very cool dub selector, and limmy.com. Cool site, bit on the skizophrenic side, it's got fun shite like the "you are a fucking cunt" swearing xylophone but if you hunt around in the playthingz section there are also things like "time" which are quite poignant, and some of the photography is really good.



Oh, and I've got the new RJD2 EP, a few b-sides and remixes and some interesting CD-ROM pieces...

As an experiment I decided to not take any pictures with my phone last night, the phone was left on the table for everyone and anyone else to take pictures, I think I ended up with about 40 pictures on it! The highly edited results now form guest night from the view from phil's phone. Interesting results I think...



Oh, and the thing in the top left corner is an imood indicator, it's for when I'm feeling too lazy to update properly

Thank fuck for b3ta I say... this link , from there site, kept me amused for a good ten minutes or so. My efforts are called ooh that stings and take me to your tea



...and today's creatures in my head feels worryingly apt.

I think one of the problems with being able to knock off a bit of html is the constant urge to redesign this site. I've tried to hold back, I quite like the sparseness of the main area - OK, the black and grey theme is a bit miserable, but hey! so am I! - but I've never been completely satisfied with the menu. Anyway, I think it's a bit better now... although the first person to complain about the font size gets a slap.



I've updated my CD collection with some brief ramblings on discs by Tes, The Bug, Soundmurderer and Numbers...



Actually I'm having a real CD crisis at the moment, too many CD's, not enough time to listen to them, besides the above ones I've also just got the new Prefuse 73 album (halfway through it now, it's very very good - better than his last one I think), and the frankly excellent new one from Four Tet...

Some quickies I think



The Bug - Pressure



Apparently the next big thing in underground dance music is going to be dancehall, it's probably the most modern form of reggae unless you count how it was kind of hijacked by jungle... Anyway, who is The Bug? Well he's Kevin Martin, half of Techno Animal, purveyor of fine compilations (Macro Dub Infection and Isolationism spring to mind), and all round bass terrorist. This CD finds him collaborating with a host of vocalists including the mighty Toastie Taylor, and believe it or not Daddy Freddy (fastest rapper in the world apparently), Martin brings along the beats and the bass, it's kind of traditional in the way that he doesn't stray to far from the traditional dancehall rythmn, but the samples have a Techno Animal feel from them and pretty much every track has a similarly wonderful feeling of dread (or should that be dred) that will be familiar to people who know his work. It's the sort of thing I thrive on. Once again though I have a feeling this release will be ignored by alot of people, which in my opinion is a crime! It is a really really good CD.



Tes - x2



I'm going to steal from another review I heard of this now: Jay-Z could learn a lot from this lad. 12 tracks and it's just over half an hour long. I like this, it's my sort of hip-hop - slightly off centre, and some of the beats just don't make sense - lovely. It reminds me a bit of some of the anticon stuff I've heard...



Numbers - Death



Confession time, I only bought this CD for the Kid606 remix... yes I am that obssessive. OK, rewind for a minute, who are Numbers? Well In think they are tigerbeats punk band, to be honest I don't know much about them and this remix CD doesn't exactly shed much extra light. There is a fairly funny Gold Chains mix, which starts with about a minutes worth of fucking around followed by a bit of disco and nicely rounded up with some hardcore punk shouting; the Kid606 remix sounds quite subdued next to what I'm used to, the rest of the CD is...well, OK... nothing special although I do like the Zeigenbock Kopf mix - they remix the same song as the Kid, but make it much more scary and perverted.



Soundmurder - Wired for Sound



This is very old skool jungle - I'm quite fond of it, but maybe it could of done with a bit more variety?

Hello! I'm back, in spirit if not quite in body - which seems to be rebelling against me today: dodgy stomach and a bad back have been added to the usual set of ailments, but I don't want to bore you with them.



I'm sure some people will like to know that there are some new pictures of me and my pissed up friends on the site, most of my CD's have now turned up so I guess I should update this page soon...



And that's all I can really be bothered to write at the moment...



Yay! Apathy!

Now this is a website that I thoroughly approve of: www.epitonic.com.



It's has tons of free (and legal, gasp!) mp3's, a really good recommendation system, and one of the finest selections of music I've laid my eyes on. From the Mix Master Morris remix of Coldcut's Autumn Leaves to one of Bad Brains first songs to an Amon Tobin remix I hadn't even heard of.



So, can I suggest you stop trying to download the latest Madonna album (or whatever this weeks most pirated album is... it will probably be shit anyway, just walk away) and go and get yourself an education.



Fuck me! They have Lard too...