Google keep giving me gmail accounts to give away and it's going to get to the point where I have more gmail accounts to give away than people I know - which is slightly embarassing...



So if anyone wants one let me know your email address and I will see what I can do. In case you are unaware gmail is Google's new internet email service. The big advantage is the massive 1GB of space to play with, but you also get a nice clean interface and it has the clever idea to group responses to emails into what they call converstations instead of having masses of emails titled 'RE: re: re: something or other'.



The downside? Well privacy advocates get all wound up about Google putting adverts into emails based on there subject - but they've been doing that for ages based on searches with Google and has it bothered anyone? Plus it's a machine doing it, and it's far less annoying than how Hotmail or Yahoo plaster banner adverts everywhere. And when they do eventually take over the world I'm sure you will be in there good books if you have a gmail account!

Some more random purchases...



Two Cultures Clash

The idea behind this collection is to get a bunch of 'Western' electronic musicians and introduce them to some Jamaican vocalists. Personally I don't think it works too well, there doesn't seem to be enough risks, and maybe I've been listening to The Bug's take on ragga too much but this CD just sounds too safe. Even Kid606 who does a track with Ward 21 seems a bit too tame.



The Bug featuring Warrior Queen - Aktion Pak

Now this is more like it! Ruff as fuck, with the mother of all basslines on the title track. The mighty Warrior Queen takes on the vocal duties for two tracks, and the slightly mischieviously looking Ras B gets his own tracks at the end. The four remaining tracks are Dub Versions (ie instrumentals) of tracks from The Bugs last album. Definitely worth picking up.



Jah Wobble - I Could Have Been A Contender

Continuing the reggae theme this is a three CD anthology from Jah Wobble who over his long career has pretty much nailed the dub reggae bassline. He started off in the post Sex Pistol's band Public Image Limited, the two PIL tracks here still sound completely relevant and fresh - one of them sounds like it may even have been ripped off by Fugazi, but I can't believe they would do such a thing - would they? The 3 CDs on offer here also cover his commercial hits (Becoming More Like God? Visions of You? You would recognise them if you heard them), his excursions into World Music and his more experimental tracks. Its good stuff, if I have one problem with the collection it's pretty heavy going - three CDs packed to the edges with music. Still you can't fault the value there... and his liner notes are very funny.



Old Man Gloom - Christmas

Bit off track this one, we're into Doom Metal territory here. There's an Isis involvement here, so anyone familiar with that band will be right at home here. Intelligent heavy metal, full of atmosphere. The last track (Christmas Eve parts I, II, and III - alt version) is amazing, slow as fuck with a slight hint of the Swans. Again, a recommended purchase if only for the last track.

I'm getting lazy on the posting front aren't I?



OK, time to correct that. First things first a rant I think, Woking is getting really shit. Once again a perfectly enjoyable night out has been marred by violence, my usual peace loving left wing views on how to deal with modern society are being questioned, and I'm now of the opinion that there is a whole demographic that I would quite happily see being rounded up, sterilised so they can't breed and shipped away to some deserted island in the middle of nowhere.



This is all from an incident that happened last night - basically I spent most of the evening with Johnboy propping up the bar at the Station pub in Woking. We were both drinking vodka and red bulls, the vodka was to get me drunk and the redbull to keep John awake. Anyway we had great fun, met lots of weird characters (who mainly seemed to be Spurs fans), and developed a special bond with the bar staff. Afterwards we staggered back to my place, but just as we were outside my flat some twat decides to smack John in the face. No explanation, no warning, just a smack in the face. Fair play on John, he didn't move an inch, but unfortunatly his teeth were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and his lip pretty much exploded from being cut by them - there's quite a spectacular blood stain on the path outside my place now. We tried to clean his mouth up, but it was clear that it needed proper medical attention - anyway long story short, we eventually sobered up enough to realise that a trip to Guildford Accident and Emergency was required. They were pretty good about it, but it was bad enough for the doctor on duty to need to call a special facial surgeon to sort it out - you can see the result of her handiwork in these pictures.



So, a perfectly decent night fucked up, I'm really beginning to hate Woking...



Anyway enough of that, onto other items. Naturally I've been buying more CDs, you can read about them here, there's some good CDs coming out soon: I'm really looking forward to the new Jesu CD and there is a Twilight Singers covers album coming out soon, which with Greg Dulli's track record on doing cracking cover versions should be really good. I've decided to give the Bjork CD a miss, I've had a quick listen to it and I just find it a bit gimmicky.



Anything else? Well, I'm off on holiday to Crete in a couple of weeks - should be fun, I'm really looking forward to a proper break. I've got my Eyetoy working as a webcam thanks to this page, this may lead to a new feature on the website soon - you have been warned. My laptop is now fully Service Packed up, no problems yet I'm happy to report. Oh and I went to see The Village a couple of days ago - saw the twist coming a mile away, I wouldn't bother with it really, but I've never been a fan of M. Night Shyamalan...

It has been a while since I inflicted my music tastes on anyone, so here goes: 4 new CDs for you to read about.

random purchases...



Black Dice - Miles of Smiles

For some reason I had the impression Black Dice were an indie band because they seemed to get mentioned on Pitchfork alot - I'm here today to admit that I was very very wrong. We're into some seriously abstract pretty much avant-garde territory here folks! This EP comprises of two tracks, the first one miles of smiles could almost be described as a field recording, it starts off with insect noises which eventually changes to become the sound of a marching band, and what sounds like someone tearing paper. There's some sort of processing done to the sounds which gives them a slightly out of place feel, it's a fascinating piece and keeps me enthralled for its duration. The second track on this EP is slightly more traditional, starting off with a simple organ line and layered vocals - then someone appears to land a jumbo jet in the studio. I think I really like this EP, it's not going to be easy to listen to if your a fan of tunes, but for anyone with any appreciation of sound in general I'd recommend it.



Craig Armstrong - Piano Works

I think this is Craig Armstrong's third solo album, he's also done a few film soundtracks (notably Romeo & Juliet), and worked with Massive Attack (which is how I started listening to him). This album has a conceptual twist in that all the sound sources are from the Piano - although not in any sort of "Aphex Twin-esque making snare drum samples from a piano note", it's basically just several solo piano pieces treated with a bit of reverb. I'm torn between finding it boring or quite dull - I think it says alot that my favourite tune on the CD is 33 seconds long.



Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I like this film alot, it's quirkiness has a certain charm which seemed to be refelected in the soundtrack when watching the film. When listened to in isolation it's OK, but not anything outstanding. There are a couple of gems on the soundtrack though: Wada Na Tod by Lata Mangeshkar is a fantastic spagetti western tinged bollywood tune, and Beck does a really good version of Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometimes. You may want to hit your favourite file sharing tools to get hold of those.



Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven

I'm never quite sure where the explanation mark goes in there name, but Media Player tells me it should go after the word emporer for this double CD. Anyway, another one of those albums I should have bought ages ago - bit like Mogwai, but more epic. I can see why pitchfork gave this a 9.0.

I'm pretty sure that the following two objects would make me a better person:



First up, the Archos GMini 400. I'm leaning towards getting a hard disk based mp3 player, so far I've stuck with flash based ones as they are small and cheap, but I'm thinking that I need something a bit bigger. This one also has the advantages that its not an iPod (so none of that being tied to iTunes rubbish), however it is about the same size of an iPod, so could reasonably fit in a pocket. And it can play videos, which gives it a certain geek charm - think I need to see some reviews of it first before making the plunge.



Second, the pirate kit on this page. OK it's basically a t-shirt, but it's a t-shirt that comes in a crate with an eyepatch and a feather - which is of course a good thing.

A quick weekend post-analysis post I think, before the full force of Monday hits me.



The Jerry Springer Opera on Friday was very good, it can be enjoyed on many levels: a social commentary on the modern worlds increasingly voyeuristic viewing habits, a clever satire on religion (as it does end up with our hero Jerry in hell), or you can just enjoy the fact that professional singers having to sing swear words and lines such as 'chick with a dick' is very funny. And it ends with a tap dance number, which can't be a bad thing.



On Saturday I went to see Woking play, the football was typical lower league affair - ie a bit rubbish - but it got me out of the house. The rest of the day/evening was spent in the pub where I got to meet a friend of a friend that I have absolutely no problem in calling a total wanker, he didn't appear to have one single redeeming feature - maybe except for the bit where he did shut the fuck up and stopped talking/shouting to everyone.



Anyway, that was my weekend, some pictures of it can be found over here. I'm off to enjoy my new cold now...

Tonight I shall mainly be watching this opera.

To celebrate my new phone, my old one has been diagnosed as having *cough* water damage (not beer damage, no sirree), I'd like to present to fellow sharp gx-30 owners this highly annoying ringtone.



I've been to the cinema tonight to see I Robot, wasn't as bad as I expected it to be (this whole going to the cinema with really low expectations seems to be doing the trick). Will Smith does his stuff with a slightly meaner edge than usual, it has plenty of cool robots which handily glow red when they go a bit evil, and the blatant product placement from Audi didn't annoy me as much as I thought it would. Worth watching really...



Unlike another couple of films which I've watched recently, but which I've not had to pay £6.50 for (thank you internet!). Garfield was the first one: it just felt like a film that everyone, with the exception of the CGI department who did a reasonable job with the big fat cat, did on auto pilot - there seemed to be pretty much no effort, from anyone involved, to make it anything other than a below average family film.



And then there is The Punisher, it had all the right characters from the recent Garth Ennis comic books: Joan the mouse, Spacker Dave, Bumpo were in it - they even had The Russian (although he was in his pre-transsexual cyborg incarnation, which was a shame). But what was the point in doing a two hour film on the Punisher where he only does some proper 'punishing' in the last twenty minutes? And he kept letting bad guys off! Not violent enough basically...

Got my sister down the aisle OK, and managed to get through a speech without embarrassing myself too much - far too busy to take any pictures though, so all I seem to have on my phone is a picture of my Mum's new and completely insane dog, and my ellusive brother. At some point, I'll have to get hold of some proper pictures...

I appear to be very bored.

As much as I hate stating the obvious, I have to say: Damn! It's been hot this weekend!



It's also been fairly eventful, met someone who's actually heard of The God Machine, got into a bit of a fight over the my slightly old fashioned view that members of the opposite sex should be treated with a bit of respect (I know, crazy idea isn't it?), saw Spurs lose (again!), and had a chinese meal which I almost managed to get through using chop sticks whilst also being a little drunk.



Some photos can be found here, I'm temporarily using my old phone as my Sharp GX30 is at the phone doctor being fixed, so the quality isn't quite up to standard.



Next weekend should be interesting as I'm giving my sister away at her wedding: Eek! Responsibility.

I bought a disco CD a couple of days ago, sort of.



And here's a link to an mp3 blog which may be of interest as it's to someone you may have heard of: namely, Bjork. It's a fascinating sample her new album Medulla, which could be her oddest album yet as the whole thing has been produced using only human voices. She's got beatbox contributions from Rahzel, I think Mike Patton may be involved, probably a couple of choirs - definitely sounds very very interesting...

cock-rock disco...



Donna Summer - This Needs to Be Your Style

You've got to admire someone who has such a liberal approach to sampling that it spills over into stealing someone elses name. In case you were wondering this CD is not from the disco diva, but a laptop bootleg mashup of - well pretty much every style of music ever - from some chap called Jason Forrest. It's kind of fun to listen to, there is sort of disco feel all be it mixed up with plenty of gabba and prog rock(?!), but I think it would be better experiance in some sort of club environment with some quality drugs so you could keep up with the slightly silly rhythms.

So, what have I done tonight? Well I went to see a band called Jesu - I've gone on about them before, but in case you weren't concentrating they are the new band from Justin Broadrick, aka JK Flesh, who has been responsible for some of my favourite music of all time.



Nearly didn't make it thanks to Southwest trains deciding to reroute my train through Staines, making a 25 minute journey last a fun filled hour and a half. If a guard had asked for my ticket I'm pretty sure I would have ripped the fucker's heart out ala that mad priest bloke in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - as you may guess, I was a little bit concerned at arriving late, especially as Jesu were on first.



Luckily I arrived to find the band still setting up so I won't be starting any sort of terrorist operation against any train companies - yet! Anyway I got myself a pint and settled down at my now traditional vantage at the back of the venue (far too old for mosh pit action!).



Quite suprised to find the place packed, especially since the only evidence of any Jesu material that I know of consists of 2 low bitrate real audio files on there website. Obviously other people were looking forward to hearing there music as much as me, kind of wish I could meet someone around here who was so open minded, but hey ho...



The setup consisted of a table with a laptop and a few other electronic bits and pieces, Mr Broadrick on guitar and vocals and another chap who I believe was the bass player of Cable Regime (*sigh* never mind...) on bass. They started with some low bass rumbling and chanting before the guitar started to kick in; took me a while to realise as they play very very sloooooow but the first song was a Godflesh (again: *sigh* nevermind...) cover! Specifically a version of a pretty rare song called Messiah (mine came on a recordable CD, but I believe it got re-released properly at some point). At this point the proverbial shit eating smile spread across my face! Unfortunatly things started going a bit wrong towards the end of this song when an effects unit was pulled off the table by some over enthusiastic guitar playing. This lead to a few technical problems which lead to the second song being aborted, clearly some nerves were beginning to creep in.



They managed a couple of other tunes before calling it a day, it may not sound much but it was enough to get an idea of how they sound. Basically: mournfully slow riffs using fantastically heavy layered guitars and electronics are the order of the day, what lyrics I did catch were suitably self deprecating - all in all enough to get me excited about the forthcoming Heart Ache EP (as a connoisseur of sad songs I've got to love that name!).



Pictures of Jesu doing there thing are over here.

I've updated the CD bit, and added an AudioScrobbler RSS feed, this is another online tool to make sure I continue buying too many CDs. It may be of interest to someone.

Quick First Impressions...



Mike Ladd - Nostalgialator

Mike Ladd, hip-hop's most intelligent MC/producer (he was an English Professor at some New York university) finally gets round to a solo follow up to his blinding Welcome to the Afterfuture album. I'm not sure if it's as good, but it's still welcome in my collection - alternating between punk, funk and ambient influenced styles it kind of reminds me of Outkast.



The Dillinger Escape Plan - Miss Machine

Blimey! This is a bit FUCKING INTENSE! At there very core they are a heavy metal band I guess, but so much more complicated than anything I've heard. Occasionally they sound like the Aphex Twin, sometimes they are just a normal metal band, very occasionally there is a bit of jazz, and sometimes a hint of NIN. And they don't seem to be fans of verses or choruses. If an evil computer took over the world I'm pretty sure it would listen to this whilst enslaving us.



Mark Lanegan Band - Bubblegum

By band, what they really mean is half of Queens of the Stone Age and Polly Harvey. Knowing this you should know exactly what sort of music to expect. Good old fashioned rock music with a hint of the blues and a sprinking of punk. And his voice is something else, makes me want to get drunk and smoke lots for some reason...

I'd like my crayons back, please

What to write? Erm, hot isn't it? That's about all I can say about the weekend at the moment, no pictures I'm afraid - normal service will be resumed shortly.



So, once again - what to write? How about some high brow DVD recommendations to try to pretend I'm more intelligent than I really am? OK, here goes:



Zatoichi

Latest film from my favourite Japanese director 'Beat' Takeshi, this is a bit different to his usual films. Normally he makes very stylised yakuza films, this time he has a go at a Samurai film. He play's a blind masseur, who also happens to be a master swordsman using a concealed blade in his cane to dispatch anyone dumb enough to mess with him. Like all his other films its beautifully shot, full of sly dark humour, but unlike his other films it ends with a tap dance routine... Which is just bizarre.



Naked Lunch

David Cronenberg's take on William Burroughs unfilmable book The Naked Lunch. He takes the wise approach to not make a literal translation of the book, instead taking elements from the book and Burrough's life. I imagine it won't make a blind bit of sense to anyone unfamiliar with the writer's life or the book itself, and the insect typewriters with talking arseholes and sligtly disturbing metaphoric sex creatures may be a bit much for some people, but like Cronenberg's other films I quite like it.



The Kingdom

There's a series being shown on BBC2 at the moment called Kingdom Hospital which is based on this Danish mini-series. It's part horror story, part soap opera set in a hospital full of ghosts and generally screwed up characters. It's all shot in this grainy, sepia hued way which will be familiar to anyone who has played the Silent Hill games. Good stuff, although it does end in a fairly abrupt way which leaves the story line incomplete - which is a bit annoying.