Best XML file in the world ever

My complete lack of desire to play videogames over the last few weeks is beginning to concern me...

Various tyes of hip-hop...



Wiley - Treddin' on Thin Ice

Hmm... I think I may be a little disappointed by this - not really quite as good as I thought it could have been; annoyingly though, there are some glimpses of something a bit special, that is between the times when he's not going on about having/not having a girlfriend - or slagging Dizzee Rascal off. I quite like some of the almost 8-bit computer game sounding tracks, and Pies has a very funny chorus, but overall it feels like an album made of far too few ideas - and as much as I hate being unimaginative, it isn't as good as Dizzee's album.



Anticon Label Sampler: 1999-2004

Thirty three tracks for ?3.99, you can't go wrong with that. If you're looking for a way to get into one of my favourite (pseudo-)hip-hop labels, you're not going to get a better introduction than this. I've got quite a few of the tracks already, but as the tracks are sort of mixed together (pretty subtley), it gives a different perspective to the tracks I've already got - and the one's I haven't got are most welcome.



Vast Aire - Look Mom... No Hands

Solo album from Vast Aire of Cannibal Ox fame, which has some pretty damn high standards as The Cold Vein by Cannibal Ox is one of the finest hip-hop albums ever, partly because of Vast Aire's larger than life arrogant 'and yes, I damn well know it!' lyrics, but also because of El-P's sci-fi production work. For his solo album Vast Aire ditches El-Producto, and brings in pretty much every other left field hip hop producer: RJD2, Madlib, Nasa and DJ Cip One amongst many others. Although this mix of producers makes the whole album some what eclectic, it doesn't take anything away from the fact that this is Vast Aire's album, and a damn fine one it is too.

Once again I appear to be inundated by hip-hop CDs (or hip-hop influenced CDs - this whole 'grime' thing feels much closer to hip-hop than garage - spiritually speaking). The three CDs pictured on the left have been this weeks purchases - you can read about them here.

A new band



TV on the Radio - Young Liars EP

I was put off this band for a bit for no other reason than they seem to be friends with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs - who I don't like (no logical reason, they just seem like a bunch of cunts to me). It took a posting of the song Young Liars on an mp3 Blog to get me into there music, basically on this EP they seem to be almost industrial - lot's of metallic type drones and fairly harsh sounding drum beats. But, they have this amazing vocalist, who has this stunning voice (which OK, does sound a bit like Peter Gabriel); they have this way of being really epic and scarily intimate at the same time; and they do a doo-wop cover of a Pixies song when your least expecting it! Very good stuff - looking forward to a proper album and maybe seeing them live...

Tips for a better standard of life, Part 1 of an occasional series



1. When trying to chill out from an evening that has involved being 'largered up to the eyeballs' on Stella, it is a good idea to avoid accidentally spilling more beer over your laptop PC. I have recently discovered that leaving a laptop to gently marinade overnight in the contents of a bottle of Asahi is not really the sort of thing you want to do - it tends to leave said laptops making funny little fizzing and popping noises, and also refusing to turn on, and necessitating a trip to PC World to get a new one. :-(



2. A good walk around the centre of London, taking in some of the sights (*) with a few friends, is a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon - and is also good exercise.



3. Theme Parks are fun, rides like this (**) are probably best avoided if you want to hold on to your lunch.



4. TV on the Radio are really good and should be listened to, I've been listening to the Young Liars EP pretty much exclusively for the last three days.



(*) scroll right a bit after clicking this link to see 'the sights'

(**) you'll need something that can play .3gp files to see this, although I wouldn't stress yourself over getting a player as the video I've posted is very short and a bit shit.

Stuff...



www.gx30.com - could be useful once it's matured.

www.skinnyfatman.com - some dodgy .3gp videos to download

mpegable x4 live - handy .3gp ripping software



The ICA has some really interesting bands playing next month, including: Gonzales (international hip hop prankster - who I thought had retired), Alias (probably the most underrated member of Anticon), and Devendra Banhart (very talented bohemian singer/song writer). Even though they are all on Sundays (arse! that's my recovery day), I'm going to try to see at least one.



And I completely agree with the Pitchfork Review of TV on the Radio's Young Liars EP - it is awesome.

Attention Fugazi fans! Have you been wondering what Ian Mackaye has been up to recently? Well, a slightly more punk rock version of Sesame Street seems to be involved, which you can see over here.

Is this what happens when you get past 30?



I appear to have completely gone off computer games and I'm now buying an obscene amount of CD's - however this could however be down to the fact that there aren't that many good games out at the moment, but there is a frigtening amount of music that demands to be listened to out.



Current top tips: the Richard X remixes of Prince Po's Hold Dat - absolute blinder of a single, you can acquire it from bleep.com if you are vinyl-ly challenged like me; and TV on the Radio - who sort of combine lo-fi electronica and post-rock music in a poppy way (honest), if you are quick you can download the title song of there Young Liars EP from The Big Ticket.

FOUND Magazine



...it's found stuff, in a magazine.

OK, about those The Angels Of Light CDs and the Michael Gira CD I was talking about in the previous post... here are my thoughts on them.

No, Thank You Mr Gira...



The Angels of Light - New Mother

OK, some background first: Michael Gira was the driving force of a band called The Swans who influenced alot of bands that I like today. I've heard Sonic Youth namecheck them, and Justin Broadrick from Godflesh has also mentioned them extensively during interviews. As far as I can understand The Swans could be incredibly loud, noisy and bleak - frankly I'm a little bit scared about exploring there back catalogue because of this (and the fact it's so big!), but one day I intend to be brave and venture forth. Before I do that I'm investigating Michael Gira's post Swans output, starting off with his song oriented work in The Angels of Light, this is there first album. It's a deeply personal collection of songs based around some deceptively simple melodies mainly based on Michael Gira's voice and acoustic guitar, but complemented with layers of accordian, violin, piano, banjo - just about everything except for the kitchen sink. Lyrically it can be a bit bleak, there is a lot of guilt and shame on show here: the last verse of Song For My Father is particularly tragic. Still these are things that shouldn't be hidden, it's not all bleak though - the first proper song is a fairly joyous tribute to violent women.



The Angels of Light - How I Loved You

The second Angels of Light album feels more orchestral, and has a slightly lighter feel, lyrically speaking, to the first album - although there is a song called My Suicide which kind of destroys my whole argument there. There are some stunning songs on offer here, highlights include My True Body with it's almost ritualistic tribal feel, Song For Nico keeps creeping up on me in a friendly Stalker sort of way, and New York Girls is just stunning IMHO anyway. If you are nervous about which Angels of Light album to start out with, I'd suggest go for this one.



Michael Gira - I am singing to you from my room

Skipping over the last Angels of Light album (Everything is Good Here/Please Come Home), here we have a Michael Gira solo album which does exactly what it says on the sleeve! It's recordings of him, in his office, with his guitar singing some songs. Before you even slip the CD into the player you have to admire the personal touch, each CD envelope has been screen printed by hand, numbered and has a personal thank you note (he actually signed the other CD's too - of which I'm well chuffed about!) - a lot of love has gone into this release! It contains songs that have appeared, or which may appear on Angels of Light CD - in the rawest most humble form, there's a fragment of a live song which he jokingly refers to as being utter self indulgence (I've heard worse), and suprisingly three children's songs. A wonderfully personal CD.

I swear I fell in love yesterday...



Wandering around town, I saw this girl who just totally took my breath away - dark hair, slim, attractive, maybe it was just me - but she had a certain understated elegence not found in the typical Burberry clad Woking lass. As I was getting into the lift to the car park she asked me for directions to Woking's most 'exclusive' shopping centre The Peacocks Centre, she had this wonderful East European accent, the kind that makes grown men go weak at the knees. I told her where to go, and that was that - maybe in some other parallel universe there is a more confident Darth Phil who showed her where it was, who took her for a coffee or something, and well...



One of those silly little moments that I thought should be documented. It must be Spring time, my hormones have woken up...



*sigh*



Anway, back to the real world, before I get even more melancholy: there is the grand total of one suriviving picture from Friday night's drinking session. Contrary to popular opinion there is quite a lot of editorial control behind the pictures from my phone, and the other pictures were either shite or wouldn't be appreciated by the photographees at all! I've padded the content with some pictures of things I've acquired recently including: a t-shirt purchased to satisfy my requirement to own a vaguely patriotic t-shirt for Euro 2004 which doesn't involve Bulldogs, a St George's Cross, or FCUK being crass; some signed CD's from Michael Gira's Young God Records label (of which I am well chuffed with); and the latest Hellboy comic book (which is actually a spin off - so not really a Hellboy book).



Beside's the falling in love with random strangers and failing to use my camera phone properly I've spent most of this weekend listening to music, mainly my new Angels of Light CDs, but I've also found some interesting stuff on the internet:



Another band who have an album released through Young God Records are an Italian band called Larsen, there is a fascinating account of how there album Lever was recorded, and if you hunt around on there own site there are some mp3s to download. If you like Mogwai, you'll like these a lot - trust me.



I watched a documentary on BBC4 the other day called The Blues which had some music by this old fella who played a cane flute, called a fife, whilst backed by a whole bunch of drummers. It was recognisably 'the blues', but I've never heard it played that way. Anyway, his name was Otha Turner - sadly he has since passed away, but you can still listen to his music on his home page and on epitonic.



gabba / POD have posted this grime tune by a 12 year old MC called Ashman which is actually pretty damn good - time for Dizzee Rascal to start worrying?



And, finally: Check out this fuckin' chain clart! Safe as fuck! You knows it!, Welsh hip hop at it's finest.

Don't say the Z word...



Shaun of the Dead

Sound track to the excellent Shaun of the Dead film - sensibly rather than just coming up with a CD of incidental music or songs from the film they've got mash-up producer extrodinaire Osymyso to mix eveything up with a sprinkling of classic quotes (generally involving swearwords - yay!) into one fun filled package. A bit too much Queen for my liking, but I'll let it pass. Good music for any zombie themed fancy dress parties, probably...

.the .produkkt



If you have a high spec PC, and are feeling a bit geeky - may I suggest clicking the above link and downloading .kkrieger, a reasonable looking first person shooter in a 96K file. God know's how they did it, I suspect some sort of pact with the devil was involved...















...or they could just be really clever.

I can't be arsed this week, hence the short CD reviews.

Lazy Reviews...



Einsturzende Neubauten - Perpetuum Mobile

Guilt tripped into buying an album by a porn site - who would have thunk it? Einsturzende Neubauten are a band that by all rights I should have been enjoying for years, they pretty much invented industrial music - although you wouldn't guess from this album, although much of the beats are created using various scrap metal instruments, and it's mainly in German, it's one of the most song oriented CDs I've bought this year. Almost gentle in places - I think I'm going to spend alot of time with this one.



Murs - 3:16 The 9th Edition

Ten songs! No skits! This is how all hip-hop albums should be. Production from 9th Wonder, who comes up with some good solid beats for the ever reliable Murs to speak his mind over. The word that springs to mind most when listening to this is 'honest'.



Teledubgnosis - Magnetic Learning Center

Ex-Drummer from late era Godflesh does dub, sounds a bit like a Bill Laswell album but with less bass guitar wanking, rather good really. Also has a dancehall stylee from the Bug, which is always welcome, and Justin Broadrick (from Godflesh) does a drum n bass remix in his Tech Level 2 guise.



Sophia - All My Love

Obligatory CD single from Sophia's People are like Seasons album, could be a hit but it won't. One of the b-sides called Genius is really rather good - slightly different to Sophia's normal stuff as its almost all electronic.

Today I have mainly been: spending too much money on shirts... they are very nice shirts though.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Some music related postings I found on the internet, which I feel the urge to share with the world, in a sort of educational way:



This European MTV site has some interesting Anticon interviews if you follow the This is Our Music link. Anticon are a record label/collective whose CDs more often than not end up in my CD collection. Even if you don't like the music you can marvel at the collection of different styles of haircuts and facial hair on display.



I have many regrets in life: smoking and drinking too much, not taking my first degree seriously, having an almost pathological urge to not say the right thing at the right time to the right people (ooh, how vague am I?), but above all these is: not seeing my favourite band of all time play live before they sadly called it a day. To make me feel even worse about it Slateman has started to post mp3s of the last live show that the mighty Godflesh played over at his scarily encyclopedic fan site. They are very loud, and unless you are a fan you will hate them...



Definitive Jux have posted a link to a rather nice collaboration between 'the peoples MC' Murs and 'Beatles sampling producer' DJ Dangermouse, which is well worth your bandwidth as it's a good song, and highlights one of those amazingly ridiculous American ideas of justice.



Richard 'damn it you worked with Liberty X, how dare you invade my high-brow indie hip-hop label' X has contributed a rather jolly good remix to the new Prince Po material on Lex Records. And before I get accused of being snobby, I did like his work with Liberty X and The Sugababes - bastard!



And finally, if it's still there, grab the wonderfully goth Sex Beat by Two Lone Swordsmen from new (ish), err, then pre-order the new album. I know I've mentioned it before, but it deserves repeating since it's a great song.

Today I have mainly been: breaking the national speed limit, eating too much and demolishing a greenhouse...

My friend Claire, thinks this is hot - your opinions please.

relaxing...

Well, I'm smoking again... *sigh*



Two nights out in a row hasn't helped matters out, oh well, hopefully I'll see sense and sort the whole smoking situation out soon. Besides the excessive drinking and smoking I've been buying more weird CDs, reading lots of Hellboy comic books and watching possibly the funniest Zombie film ever: Shaun of the Dead. Awesome film - I can't recommend it enough, it contains possibly the best use of the word 'cunt' in a film ever, even beating the one in Withnail and I.

Even more weird shit...



Matmos - Rat Relocation Program

I do buy some strange CDs. I'll leave the description of this one to Matmos: “ A street rat was breaking into our apartment, eating our food and chewing holes in our clothes, skittering across our kitchen in the dark, scuttling inside our walls late at night. Since we already had a pet rat, the prospect of trying to kill one rat while feeding another struck us as intolerable hypocrisy, so we bought a non-lethal "Have-a-Heart Trap". After several days of luring the invader closer and closer towards and then inside the trap with peanuts, we captured her. The first track is an unedited recording of the rat protesting its incarceration. The second track is our response, in which the timing and duration of the rat screams from the first track have been preserved. The following morning we took the rat to a wealthy suburban neighborhood and set it free.” Well, as you can expect the first track is about as interesting as it sounds, the second one is quite funny in a strange sort of way...

beatallica.com



...sort of amusing for about 5 minutes to fans/ex-fans of Metallica. Not sure what Beatles fans will think of it.

BBC NEWS | Health | Woman gives herself a Caesarean

Sorry to keep banging on about the subject, but here's further evidence that I am 100% right about Sophia, I'm pretty sure they are going on about desert song #2.



And then it happens. The walls of sphincter-slicing, granitey screeee come out of nowhere, and it?s so brilliant we could do with coming up with some brand new profanities just to describe it. Knucklefuckingly magic, then. Why, people are even genuinely scared!



More over here, I'm working on the asumption if I keep going on about it, people will relent and start listening to them...

Music recommendation time: First up there are my new CDs



/Phil puts on his Hunter S Thompson sunglasses, hat and jaunty cigarette in cheesy holder combo and starts ranting: "Come on you swines! Listen to my weird shit"



But if that doesn't float your boat, Gabba / Pod has posted possibly the best song Neneh Cherry ever did, and I'm seriously impressed with the Two Lone Swordsmen track posted on the new (ish) site, and the one you can catch streaming on the front page of Warp Records - they've gone goth! Definitely one to look forward to, especially for anyone who remembers The Sabres of Paradise's Haunted Dancehall - it has that sort of vibe, from what I've heard anyway.

Instant stress relief with mild arousal if you press the 'Fresh Sheet' button (no, it's not porn, just me being over imaginative and dirty...)

Weird Shit...



Kevin Drumm - Sheer Hellish Miasma

It's worth noting that Miasma is defined as: A noxious atmosphere or influence; If you start listening in the middle of one the two main 20 minute long tracks by table top experimental guitar player, Kevin Drumm, that is exactly how you would describe the 'music', pure hell! But give it time, once your ears stop bleeding, it sort of makes sense - definitely not for the fainthearted. Top Comedy moments: the 'crank it!' instruction in the liner notes, and the fact that someone is credited with playing trumpet on 'Inferno', sure - there's a trumpet in there.



OVe-NaXx - Bullets From Habikino City HxCx

Pretty obvious DJ /rupture feel to proceedings here, it's easy to see why Mr /rupture picked this album as the first release for his record label - they both enjoy a bit of noise in there music, and they both use a ragga-esque dance hall beat to structure there songs. OVe-NaXx (I have a feeling the capitalisation is important) seems to also love a bit of grandieur in his music, whether it's chopping up heavy metal riffs or spicing a bit of classical music into proceedings. I like this, makes me want to listen to DJ /rupture more though, which probably isn't quite the intention of this CD... Anyway, if you haven't heard of OVe-NaXx or DJ /rupture, but you have heard of Squarepusher, say, you'll be on fairly safe (all be it a bit noisy) ground.



Urban Renewal Program Supplement 1.5

A little break from the weird shit with some hip-hop. Urban Renewal Program was an excellent compilation, released about 2 years ago, of modern hip hip from the likes of Defniitive Jux and Themselves interspersed with tunes from more instrumental producers like DJ Food and Tortoise. Now Chocolate Industries have followed it up with a mini sequel, the title describes it's intentions perfectly. Top tunes: the bhangra-esque remix (Note to self: I really need to own more Bhangra) of Mos Def & Diverse's Wylin Out, Aesop Rock doing a fine remix of one of his own tunes again, and the lovely gentle 'folktronica?' from The Timeout Drawer.



Fennesz - Venice

I'm a bit self concious of the fact that I occasionaly go a bit 'aging hippy' over music, the way I sound like I'm constantly fawning over some of it with cries of "it's fucking beautiful maaaaaaan". But seriously this is! There's a fantastic term for what Christian Fennesz does on the Pitchforkmedia review: neo-shoegaze laprock, pretty much spot on: heavily processed guitar, glitches of electronic noise, but somehow very emotional and uplifting unlike many other examples of electronica. A truly beautiful album.



Good Night Music To Sleep By

New (well, sort of new, it was scheduled to come out about 3 years ago!) compilation from tigerbeat6, this one has a bit of a twist though - rather than the usual label/tour showcase this one has a theme: basically it's music specifically designed to fall asleep to. So, no copyright infringing pop-music sampling, no insane beats, very few glitches - it's just warm, gentle, pulsating drones. The trouble is it's difficult to review this properly as it's designed to be listened to whilst semi-concious, however to the slightly more concious frame of mind that I'm in at the moment it sounds rather nice.

I've finally finished reading Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, OK it's essentially a children's book and I know some people will turn there noses up at it because of that, but they would be fools. This is a series that owes more to Paradise Lost (not that I've read it...) than Harry Potter, it doesn't hold it's punches; death, the afterlife, the fall from Grace, a healthy attitude of contempt towards any sort of higher being/authority, parallel universes - it's all here kids!

Note to self:



This is the order Hellboy comic books should be read in:



1.Seed of Destruction

2.Wake the Devil

3.The Chained Coffin

4.The Right Hand of Doom

5.Conquerer Worm









...you are not meant to start at number 2.

Well, a good healthy dose of Nytol last night seems to have lessened the stressful effects of Leicester City 'Football Club' (I use the term very lightly) fucking up yet again, and for the first time in months given me a decent nights kip without resorting to huge quantities of alcohol... Which is nice, I guess?

Indulge me, I'm testing my FTP since UK2.net have moved servers...



...very good web comic btw

Lazy day recovering from another night out, this time to the scene of Cheryl 'Biffer' Tweedy's crime: The Drink in Guildford, no fisticuffs this time though.



Last hip-hop album of the week turned up yesterday, got some very interesting ones in the post: Good Night from kid606's label is a compilation of music specifically designed to induce sleep - I look forward to trying that one out at work; and Rat Relocation Project from Matmos - this consists of two tracks, the first being a recording of a rat stuck in a trap, the second a song based on samples of the aforementioned rat. Sounds odd, until you consider that matmos have already created an album which used sound recordings from plastic surgery operations as it's starting point.

Hip Hop Week Part 4...



Madvillain - Madvillainy

I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm finding it difficult to get excited by this CD. Maybe I've been listening to too much very left of centre hip-hop recently (Rammellzee, cLOUDDEAD, DJ Signify), this just sounds a bit too normal... Don't get me wrong it's very well put together, but it just doesn't excite me as much as it did the people over at Pitchfork.

Social Smoking, who exactly am I trying to kid?



Once again I have lapsed from the path of non-smoking, once again I enjoyed every second of it - there are absolutely zero pictures of such disgraceful behaviour over here.



Oh, and I didn't get a Glastonbury ticket...



And my horse fell at the last fence in the Grand National after leading pretty much all the way round...



Fandabbidozzee.

Went to see the new Dawn of the Dead film last night.



And very good it is too, as someone points out on IMDB: "At last, someone's got it right...". A damn fine Zombie movie; just the right side of scary when it needs to be, very funny at times ("shoot Burt Reynolds!"), and they haven't been stingy on the gore front.



Good fun, much more fun than trying to get Glastonbury tickets...



/phil wanders off to aloud.com again...

Hip Hop Week Part 3...



Rammellzee - Bi-Conicals of the Rammellzee

Rammellzee is seriously old skool hip-hop, before hip-hop there was graphitti, specifically creating 'burners' - big ol paintings on trains using very stylised 3D lettering, like many graphitti artists Rammellzee gave up tagging trains and went on to creating 'proper' art. He now seems to specialise in recreating those stylised 3D letters as scupltures, sometimes even as costumes (check out the image on the front of this album, dude looks like a transformer). I've no idea when making music came into the equation, apparenlty quite late by the copyright date on this CD; musically it's sort of old fashioned hip hop (roland 808 and 909 samples all over the place) but with a very futuristic edge (lots of synths); lyrically - well Grant Morrison (author of the Invisibles, keep up people!) would love this shit! Rammellzee is pretty much obssessed with the use of letters as weapons, he likes to make armour, he doesn't seem to be in the least bit bothered with the real world, he's frankly mental - in a good way of course. What do I think of it, well I think it's great, the beats have this weird timeless feel to them, and Rammellzee spits out and growls some of the weirdest, most abstract lyrics I ever heard.

moebius_rex: touch me I'm sick



Just wanted to point you in the direction of the groovy lounge-core version of The Disturbed's Down With The Sickness whilst Mr Rex is still hosting it.