school's out!

thursday meant the end of sparknotes cramming hell and the start of what's set to be a fantasssstic summer. i was lucky enough to have my celebratory night soundtracked by a collection of amazing bands at liverpool sound city festival's american showcase night. here's the highlights!

BLACK LIPS

i'd wanted to see black lips for a very long time and finally got the opportunity here. they did NOT disappoint as they charged through a raucous and overwhelmingly fun set, with stagedives and full-mouth gold grills thrown in for good measure. i would advise everyone to go see them if they get a chance. here's a video of the live show that got them thrown out of india, and their new album to download and BUY if you like what you hear.

black lips - 200 million thousand

CRYSTAL ANTLERS

this is a band i'd heard good things about but never actually given a proper listen. their live show blew me away, and i had their epic stoner-rock anthem 'a thousand eyes' in my head for a good 24 hours. see if it sticks with you.

Crystal Antlers - A Thousand Eyes (mp3)

TITUS ANDRONICUS

between the dazed ramblings of the quite clearly stoned and hairy guitarist, these boys blasted out epic (i use that word too much), shambolic shouty guitar rock. i couldn't help sing along the shameless theme tune to the epicepicepic second half of their fear and loathing in mahwah, nj.

the fact that they come from new jersey was a bonus for me too, as right now it seems i cream myself at anything remotely sopranos related.

here's fear and loathing in mahwah, nj. scattaaaaaaa!

rub-a-dub-dub

due to the frantic exam cramming stress of recent days, i've relied on geezers like king tubby to stop my brain from turning to mush and making a mess of my carpet.

growing up in kingston, jamaica, tubby became one of the initiators of the dub sound, easing out his wobbly bass riddims on pirate radio stations in the area. starting life as an electronics repair guy, he quickly became familiar with the inner workings of all kinds of machines, and used this talent to piss about making lovely dubly music.

he pretty much invented the remix, and was responsible in a large part for the emergence of the 12984729847329847 sub-genres of electronic music.

unfortunately, he was shot returning from a session in 1989, but his sound has continued to be echoed since, and without him we probably wouldn't have a vast majority or the dubstep, drum and bass, breaks...pretty much allll electronic music that we hear wobbling our soundsystems today.

here's my personal favourite, roots dub:

download once upon a time at king tubby's here.

www.myspace.com/kingtubbydub

if you like what you hear you might wanna check out mad professor too.

peace!

wild style.

anyone that knows me will know i bum off david lynch. from the small town wackiness of twin peaks (possibly the best tv series EVER) to the complete and utter headfuck of inland empire, lynch has been unleashing his crazy genius on to the world for decades.

but one of the most striking features of his work for me is the music he uses, to create the incredible atmospheric moments of cinematic genius he's come to be known for. 

audrey horne is made sexier than ever with her trademark shuffly blues grooves:

nina simone's sinnerman plays as an army of whores go sick to strobe lights. to be honest that film messed with my head too much for me to actually enjoy it:

roy orbison's classic in dreams comes out of nowhere for a bizzare lip-syncing performance in the drugden of blue velvet:

and here's the trademark david lynch sound, if ever there was one, that made me learn to appreciate heavy tremelo on a whole other level:

finally, another surreal lynch moment in which nicolas cage's badass wild at heart character proves his love by breaking into love me tender. guy's got some pipes!

to anybody unfamiliar with david lynch, i would highly recommend you get your hands on twin peaks, blue velvet, wild at heart and mulholland drive.

ike-arumba!

its a shame ike turner was known primarily as the badass wife-beating crackhead. his notoriety for domestic violence pretty much completely overshadowed the enormous influence he had on blues and soul music, ever since he wrote arguably the first ever rock and roll single, Rocket 88, in 1951, which is incidentally also the first ever example of guitar distortion (caused by a broken amp, a happy accident that would be emulated in pretty much the majority of rock music of the following decades). 

ike is perhaps most famous for his formation of the ike and tina turner revue. although tina was mostly in the spotlight, and ike sang on few recordings, it was ike that essentially had to take on the role of songwriter, band manager, and general co-ordinator of everything going on with the revue, and quite clearly if you get a crackhead doing all these jobs at once, somethings going to go wrong along the way. as a consequence of his downward spiral of drug/wife abuse, tina left him in 1976 and went solo, leaving the revue in tatters.

as well as the pioneer of the rock and roll sound, he lived the rock and roll lifestyle most hipsters this day an age would never dream of. on top of opening a can of whoop-ass on tina on a regular basis, he was coked off his tits for most of his career, even pretending to be an LA police man to confiscate crack off street dealers and fuel his naughty little habit, and was behind bars for 4 years. he pretty much defined the term ladies' man, owning the keys to 32 women's apartments in the '50s. for any of you aspiring to follow in his footsteps, here's some words of wisdom from the man himself :

"Stay handsome and hard to get. Keep 'em wonderin' all the time what you gonna do and wonderin' how you feel about 'em. Do you love 'em? 'Cause once they are sure that you do, you got a problem"

oh ike you player.

sadly, the coke finally got the better of him in december 2007, and he died in his home in san diego at the age of 76. 

here's a selection of my favourite ike moments youtube has to offer:

(fully only just realised that the piano loop from this is the one used in jurassic 5's 'concrete schoolyard!')

swine flu just got worse.

seriously, where did it all go wrong for mike skinner? he's gone from original pirate material to generic corporate bollocks and still manages to churn out increasingly awful conceptual albums that make my skin crawl worse than those undead geezers in his video. someone should put him on a one way flight to mexico.

instinctive travels and paths of rhythm #2

i never got that into uk hip hop, but this came on on my ipod today and it's quality.

by no means new but still sick, give jehst a listen