doom country...

Earth - Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method
OK, my exposure to Earth is as follows: I've got a remix album, I know that they are famous for producing some of the slowest, droning metal ever produced, they have heavily influenced Sunn0))), and if legend is to be believed Dylan Carlson (Earth's leader) was Kurt Cobain's drug buddy and gave him the shotgun he used to commit suicide. So, where does that lead us? Well to the world's slowest country album, it's fantastic! The slowness is still there, the drone is still there, but what we have extra is slide guitars and atmosphere that can't help but transport you to some the wild wild west, you can practically smell the horses and the cowboy spit. A truly great album.

MP3: Raiford (The Felon Wind)

Work is in progress...

OK, I think I'm happy with the redesign - it's clean, the webcam is always on display, and if you can be bothered to use a scrollbar there are all sort of goodies at the end of the page. I've tested the site in Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0 beta (I'm a developer, I'm allowed to have that one), Firefox 1.0.7 (the officially endorsed darthphil.com browser), and it's readable in Opera 8.5 and Opera Mini (OK, I'm not really allowed to have that one). If you are viewing this site in an older browser may I suggest getting some sort of protective head gear and then joining the rest of us in the 21st century.

Change of tact, do you know any depressed cowboys? I mean really really depressed ones, not just moody ones like Clint Eastwood used to play. Well I think that the new Earth album would be perfect for them, the rumours are true - Earth have gone country and I have the proof right over here.

I'm redesigning the site to incorporate the web cam on a more permanent basis, the current plan is to do something which steals this idea from Derek Powazek's site. In the meantime I've got a couple of new CDs, MP3s are over here.

vaguely folky...

Devandra Banhart - Cripple Crow
Devandra's previous albums were pretty sparse affairs, mainly just solo guitar numbers with his strangely enthralling warbling voice. For his latest album he's enlisted some help from his friends, lots and lots of friends judging from the artwork, which gives the whole album much more depth. Anyway, really good album let down from being a classic album as it is way way way way way too long. Anyway, have a listen - although be warned, we are travelling into serious hippy territory here.

MP3: Cripple Crow

CocoRosie - Noah's Ark
This album has been getting some pretty vicious reviews (stand up Brainwashed and PitchforkMedia), which I don't understand why. They are a fairly strange group: two sisters, one of which is a trained opera song, and they have an odd approach to percussion which seems to involve hitting toys with large sticks, but really these songs are quite nice in my opinion, sort of like a very lo-fi Bjork. Absolutely no need for such vicious reviews, I think the unicorn porn on the front probably made the reviewers a bit uncomfortable...

MP3: K-Hole

I'm having another one of those half-hearted attempts at sorting my life out by making a fairly meaningless and potentially easy to fail gesture. I'm giving up caffeine.

I drink way too much of it, at work I'll make it using three spoons of instant coffee to every cup, and I'll easily have at least half a dozen cups during the day (ie nearly 20 cups of normal coffee). At home I'm slightly addicted to that lime flavoured diet coke, getting through a couple of two litre bottles over a weekend.

I'm reasonably positive that this intake of caffeine has something to do with the fact I'm never asleep before 2am... which would be great if I didn't have to get up by about 7am to have a reasonably productive morning.

So it's all gone now, I have caffeine-free, sugar-free, super-boring coke in my fridge and decaffeinated coffee and (I'm such a fucking hippy!) decaffeinated green tea at work.

...
Can't think of a way to link the previous rambling with this next lot, so I won't even try. I've updated my CD page, this time with a bunch of albums that were nomintaed for the Mercury Music Prize (well, sort of). You can read about them, and download dodgy tracks here.

Mercury Music Prize...

Antony and the Johnsons - I am a bird now
Hmmm, OK I'm going to have to throw my hands in the air here and admit that I may have been wrong about this album winning the Mercury Music Prize. Yes there are some fantastic heart crushing songs, and he does have an amazing voice (basically Nina Simone, but male... and a little bit gay), but there are some other pretty hideous songs on it which sound like the sort of things Jules Holland would enjoy playing on which is 100% the reason I don't like them. Basically it's not sad enough for me.

MP3: Hope There's Someone

The Go! Team - Thunder, Lightning Strike
To be honest these are slightly more deserving. The Go! Team have been all over the mp3blogs for a while, and I've seen nothing but good live reviews of them. On record they mix Indie Rock, Hip Hop, with what feels like good old fashioned Motown soul - then they turn the volume on the drums up to 'bastard loud'. It's all good clean fun.

MP3: Huddle Formation

Antony and the Johnsons - Antony and the Johnsons
Not entirely sure why I bought this aswell as the Mercury Prize winning one, think I just got excited. Anyway, same contents as before apply - although this one is sllightly more melancholic.

MP3: The Atrocities

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm Remixed
Not quite the album that was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, but pretty close. A track for track remix album with some very interesting names providing remix duties (Mogwai, Four Tet, M83). Bloc Party have never done anything for me, but I have to confess this CD is rather good - the M83 remix is especially stunning.

MP3: Pioneers (M83 remix)

Can't believe I haven't updated my CD collection page for over a month. Well, actually I can believe it, I'm lazy and I was probably in the pub or something...

Anyway, I've started updating it now - first up is an Anticon loving post, I've got a couple of other posts planned for the next couple of days. One being a Mercury Music prize post, and the other a bit of Neo-Folk loving shenanigans - I bet you can't wait.

Anticon appreciation post

Alias & Ehren - Lillian
Alias moves further away from hip-hop with this release of melodic electronica with help from his brother providing wood wind instruments. It's rather a lovely CD, well thought out beats with plenty of lush electronic sweeps and Ehren's instrumentation bringing an organic human element to proceedings. Recommended.

MP3: Lillian

Alias - All Things Fixable
This is a companion piece to Alias's previous album Muted, like Lillian it's full of hip-hopped paced electronic instrumentals, but this time with the odd vocal number. It's a bit all over the place, but I mean that in a good way. I rather like this track:

MP3: Half The Devil

Dose One - Ha
After being an active member in bands such as Themselves, cLOUDDEAD and Subtle, Dose One has had a go at a solo album. It's actually very good, lot's of weird and wonderful vocal work on top of layers of sound from all sorts of sources. I think the best way of describing it is that it sounds like how it feels just before you wake up... (eh Phil?). Kind of have to listen to it for that last sentence to make sense.

MP3: Lullaby #2418a

Themselves - Live II
One for the fans here...

MP3: Grassskirt & fruithat (Denton)

Viva La Revolution! (I get way too excited about this sort of thing)


This is the Nintendo Revolution controller (well the thing on the right really) it works like a 3D pointer able to detect vertical and horizontal movement and the direction the controller is pointing. The D-pad controller is a bit of a red herring, I think it's really there for backwards compatibility (turn it 90 degrees, voila! Instant NES controller). This video shows how it's meant to be used - I'm suitably intrigued.

Just been to see Green Street, it's OK-ish. Another film about maybe adds too much of a shine to hooligan 'culture' (no hint of Racism and they all 'stand there ground' for each other in a fight) but it's clearly one of those films aimed at the Yanks what with the painful explaining of Cockney rhyming slang at the start, and some equally painful accents). Not totally bad, but I think some of the user reviews on IMDB are a bit over the top, I'm sure there are better films about football hooligans...

Vaguely W800 related post to blatantly drum up a bit of traffic...

This is not a highly dodgy link to Russian website chock full of games for your fancy new mobile phone that has been gathering dust in my del.icio.us bookmarks. Nope, not at all...

But this is a link to RocketBoom's list of RSS feeds which I've been using to download little 5 minute news clips to my phone everyday (although it's been a bit flaky recently). I think this sort of thing is a brilliant idea, and if anyone knows of any other decent videoblogs that have RSS feeds to mobile phone compatible files I'd like to know.

See! I told you we would win the Ashes!

Absolutely fantastic day, probably the best atmosphere I've experianced at any sporting event. I've got lots of pictures over here, might change my background image to incorportate this picture at some point, but the slight hangover and mild sunstroke is slowing me down a bit.

*edit* Big up junglist respect to Mr Butler for sorting out the tickets!

This weekend has a distinct Sporting theme, yesterday was my first trip of the season to see my adopted Premiership team Spurs. As is traditional alot of lager was consumed and plenty of shouting was erm... shouted, and a few silly pictures were taken. Been playing with the panorama mode on my phone as usual, almost got a decent picture of White Hart Lane from it.

Continuing the sporting theme I'm off to see England win the Ashes (yes WIN! damn it!) tomorrow, yes I know technically it's not the weekend - but I'm not at work, so I'm declaring an extension. Could be a very special day.

OK, that's the sporting stuff finished. Now for something completely different, as you may be aware I am a bit of a fan of (or more accurately FUCKING OBSESSED WITH!) Nine Inch Nails. Although I'm sure all the other NINternauts out there will know this but El Rezzo has graced us with a brand new shiny song, it's called Non Entity and is a rather lovely little piano based number which will appeal to the older more relaxed affeciando. You can watch a video of it here, or search around in this forum post to find an mp3 version.

I've been meaning to do a Katrina post for a while as that's all I seem to be reading about on the internet and watching on the news at the moment, but for that precise reason I don't think there is any need for me to wade in (excuse the very flimsy pun there - it is genuinely unintentional), but I couldn't just let that picture pass this website by... Congratulations to whoever does the captions on Sky News.

I've been watching the coverage of the Mercury Prize on BBC4 tonight with some interest. Watching the performances tonight it's struck me that there are at least three albums I'm going to have to be purchasing in the near future. Forget the more rocky bands on the line-up like Maximo Park, The Magic Numbers and Hard-Fi they're OK in there own right but I can't help feel, well a bit... meh about them all.

Anyway, back to tonights show - first up: Polar Bear, a jazz band with two saxophone players, and an amazing drummer who deserved an award just for his hair. The solo between the drummer and someone using a gamepad to control samples made me prick my ears up.

The Go! Team also impressed me with there amazing energy and cheerleader routine. I'm embarrassed to say I've been meaning to pick up there album for far too long.

And finally, Anthony and the Johnsons... What a voice! I've heard him before on a leaked track from the new Coco Rosie album which sounds pretty amazing, but that performance really hit me, just stunning...

...and what do you know! He won - OK, the credit card is primed, I'm going in.

Went to Portsmouth this weekend for my friend Claire's birthday, and very good it was too. Had a very nice meal, drank lots of wine and went to a cool little club that appeared to be in someones basement - rather enjoyed myself.

Went to see The Pixies last night. Very good it was too, they played most of the classics and a few obscure numbers I didn't recognise. I'm happy to report that Frank Black (or Black Francis) has still got that scream, and Kim Deal still makes my knees go all wobbly when she sings. Enjoyable night out.

Back to today, you may have heard of the release of something called a Playstation Portable here in Blighty. Well as an early-ish adopter of the Japanese system I thought I'd give a little buying advice...

1. Buy a screen protector - even though I'm very careful with my PSP I've managed to get a couple of tiny dents on my screen. To be honest you don't notice them when the system is on, but I still find it naggingly annoying that they are there

2. If you want a game to show off the PSP get Ridge Racer, it's blindingly fast and looks like the dog's proverbials. It's also quite good fun to play even though the first few races are far too easy.

3. If you want a game to last get WipEout Pure. It's satisfyingly hard and the downloadable content for this game is a blinding move, just when I start getting a bit bored it seems that Sony telepathically reads my mind and releases a new content pack.

4. You'll want a bigger memory card if you get Wipeout Pure, the 32MB is pretty much useless.

5. If you appreciate simple elegant game design, interesting visuals and a decent soundtrack and/or you like Tetris you'll want Lumines. If you don't agree with any of those pre-requisites then why the hell are you buying a PSP?

6. Steer clear of Ape Academy, the loading times are longer than some of the mini-games in the Japanese version, I doubt they are any quicker in the European version, and even once they do load the games are all a bit shit.