Selected Things That I Don't Like

Rudeness
Olives
Town
Being told what to do
Oysters
Mackerel
Cash machines that charge
Billy Butler
Lights on my bike
Selfishness
Closed shops
Most music
Politics as is
Having too few pillows
Full beam headlights
+ lots of other things

The triviality of taxonomy & the death of the subgenre

The human mind is an incredible thing. Everyday we are confronted by a sea of chaos and inconceivable complexity, and yet emerging from that sea are the logical and causal patterns by which we make every single decision in our lives. The 2001 film A Beautiful Mind tells the story of the great modern mathematician John Nash, a man whose pattern-perceiving skills are so acute that he is able to substantiate a string of delusions, merely by reading a newspaper. And you don't need to look far on the internet to find wild conspiracy theories which uncover networks of possibility that, whilst interesting, would never pass any scientific criteria for a theory of the way things actually are. Aside from these examples, all of us project logical patterns onto the world around us, and rightly so. After all, it's only by forming these patterns in our collective consciousness that we can have any hope of comprehending the world around us, a world abundant with information, each piece of which can be reduced, renamed and defined.

It's important that we embrace our own beautiful minds, but it's apparent - to me at least - that we are largely constrained by these doctrinal structures. There are numerous examples of these trivial structures governing our everyday perception of reality. Taxonomy, the classification of living things, is one such example. For thousands of years we have classified living organisms based on their perceived properties. Now we use genetics, but the principle is the same. We have species, and those species are grouped, and those groups are grouped in turn, until at some point we get something resembling 'the tree of life'. But if no minds were there to group, and name, and categorise, what is left? What is real? All that is left is the one driving force behind all of these species: life. Life adapts to any environment it could possibly survive in by virtue of a process we have come to know of as evolution. It is only because these changes happen so slowly relative to our passage through time that we perceive there being a structured hierarchy of species at all. All these species are, through the tiniest mutations, changing over time. So slow is this gradual change that we can't even pin down when one species ceases being itself and becomes something else. It is vagueness of meaning epitomised, and it's this vagueness which exposes the triviality of taxonomy. None of this is to say that taxonomy is a wholly futile pursuit, only that it has the tendency to cloud reality. It doesn't capture the fundamental oneness of life, a transcendent truth that has captivated people for millennia.

I hope you'll forgive that brief descent into academic boredom, but what does this mean for us as lovers of music? Music is a very different kind of thing to life. It is born of the mind and has no reality outside of that context, except as meaningless waves of sound. When we remove the scaffold of musical taxonomy, what is left is less tangible than the driving force of life, but it's still something. And that something is much more beautiful than any linguistic concept we'd use to comprehend what kind of thing it is. Nevertheless, we endeavour to intensely categorise music through a network of genres and subgenres in the hope that we can more easily comprehend the artform. The classification of different kinds of music certainly has its place, but in a world where music is consumed according to the way in which iTunes categorises the abundance of material it sells, it becomes a huge constraint on the unadulterated discovery of new music, which is now more than ever governed by generic preconceptions in place of unbiased artistic assessment.

It's not long before we realise that our genres are just as meaningless as any other categorical structure our pattern-hungry minds lap up on a daily basis. Take dubstep. Still an infant genre in itself, it's seen such an explosion in over-specific, wanky hipster subgenres that the futile meaninglessness is apparent even to the mindless cretins that lap up the endless wobble-bass presets and invariably spend their spare time writing things like "this is so disgusting my grandma shat her pants" on youtube videos. It seems that the creation of such subgenres is more an attempt to break identity with the huge influx of awful wub-wub gar(b)age that has populated dubstep for the last few years. And who can blame them? I mean, how many people neglected to listen to Burial because he was broadly considered dubstep? How many people are still unaware that there are hidden underground gems in the genre which are pushing the boundaries of production and music to its very limits?

Now for the holy grail of meaningless genres: Indie. Indie never described a sound, merely the means by which it was made and distributed, i.e. outside of the major label oligopoly. But it is in itself paradoxical. It implies that the value of music is relative to how it is released, or even worse, how popular it is. If anything fails to capture the magnificence of the seminal 'indie' records it's that label. This in turn has led to the hipster mentality we all love to ridicule where good music is embraced to the point of becoming popular and then discarded as mainstream rubbish.

Unfortunately the sad fact is that, as a matter of utility, genres (although perhaps not the inane subgenres that have emerged in electronic music) must exist. How else would be able to comprehend the plethora of music that is now just a click away? But just as we must look past biological taxonomy to see the true essence of life, so we must endeavour to see past our categorical scaffold and appreciate music as it is, unpolluted by the preconceptions that genre-specific organisation has imposed on us. The exciting truth is that music has the capability to transcend not only genres, but all language. Engaging with music is a spiritual experience that creates in us feelings that, try as we might, cannot be put into words.

Out to Lunch with Lunchmeat

The content of this post was very close to being solely the lyrics to the Funkadelic song, Promentalshitbackwashpyschosis Enema Squad, but I backed out last minute. I'll regret that. It's a fantastic song and you should listen to it; excellent lyrically and musically and I'm a big fan.

Elsewhere, a new window has been fitted. Congratulations to the builders for managing to get me up at ten o'clock in the morning: that in itself represents a decent achievement, but note should be taken for their impressive ability to coat every single kitchen appliance in old window muck. Great effort, guys. 

Anyway, I'm not going to take this any further as today is strike day, and I don't want to be a scab. So here's the info before I go-go (get well soon George Michael, he must be going private given there's a Best Of Wham out, either that or he needs dough for ganja).

HOME FIXTURE

5/12 (Mon.) - Lazy Genius Night at Mojo, Liverpool

AWAY DAY

6/12 (Tue.) - Oporto, Leeds

Both free to get in to, which makes it good for your earhole and your pocket. So there it is and here's the song.

Puskas On Puskas

Thanks to all concerned for last night. As Tuesday night line-ups go it couldn't be faulted, the Casiokids were on great form and there was solid support all round. Glitches wont get you bitches, but it's all part of the fun. Over to Puskas.

Synth When You're Winning

IN spite of my better attempts to embrace sobriety this weekend gone, things got weird on Sunday night. Nothing noteworthy to report beyond cavalier enjoyment of the romping Redmen socking it to AVB's lads earlier that day. Good food, funky lager and wobbly bike rides took the place of vermouth aperitifs and Yorkshire puddings, making for a reassuringly left field take on traditional Sunday rituals: "the only thing real is waking and rubbing your eyes".

Enough. Tuesday's here and it's time to turn pro. Tonight we ply our trade down at the Shipping Forecast, supplying able support to Norwegian keysmen the Casiokids. As we all know, you set the scene and there's not much of one in your living room, so bring yourself along for a mid-week boogie and you'll be able to tell your friends in work/uni/your living room how much of a good time you had the night before. Got that?

Sundaze

On The Chin

I feel like Coleridge after he was interrupted by the person from Porlock. What would help is if I could get myself in to a similar state to how he was before the knock on the door, but that's so not a good look right now, and I need to rescue my weekend rather than condemn it to 48 hours of getting to know my couch. A poet's calling is to lay down his most earnest of thoughts on paper. A poet I am not, and I feel unable to convey those jumbled up electrical impulses that are chasing one another around in the space between my ears. A poet must also endure the idea of people reading those thoughts, the verbal manifestations of the workings of a soul, with a critical eye: if that soul you lay bare is anything but untainted, you'll be made aware of it.

I feel like I'm dancing around the subject a little. With thought, comparing myself to Sammy T and my naval to the moon might be hasty. The moment when Lisa Simpson makes to denounce Jebediah Springfield in front of the whole town, but backtracks for the right reasons is perhaps a more accurately comparable scenario. But are my reasons the right ones? Do I even have reasons? I'm not sure. The only thing I can get clear in my head is how blind I act sometimes. In the short amount of time that Saturday afternoon has existed, I have reached a conclusion on myself that is deeply unsettling and will have an effect on me similar to the time time I had a broken coccyx. It smacks of inconsistency, my behaviour. Not in any single incident but in a more general sense.

I watched the George Harrison documentaries last weekend and I, like all else who saw them was deeply moved. Everyone I've talked to who saw the epic two-parter has agreed, to a lesser or greater extent, that it's changed them as a person. He was an enlightened character, and it is something that we all must strive for. His profound and lasting effect on those who knew him stirred in me an enthusiasm to aim to be a better person; I was discussing as much with a friend last night. All the while, in how I was acting, or, moreover, not acting, I was in a position of complete contradiction to this new (maybe not new, but revised) philosophy I peddle. The more I think about it the more blind I see myself. Not like Blunkett the Sun columnist but like Januarie the Merchant. I've riled myself and I should probably get a pair of sunnies and a stick ready in anticipation.

The Romantics preached real life experience rather than experience through education. Education has its worth, a given, but it is nothing when not in the context of seeing and understanding the mechanisms of the world first hand. Coleridge's good friend and collaborator Wordsworth talked alot about it. And even with all this in mind, I have failed to recognise my own over-absorption, blinkered by ego in to paying too little attention to those that deserve it the most. We all have our faults, but when you recognise them and do nothing to improve on them you've got to consider your position. And that was this. Gig Tuesday.

Wear a Jumper

D'YER TAKE CARP?!

Band politics is a complex discourse. Balancing the creative desires of five different members may seem like a daunting prospect in itself, but it's nothing when compared with the veritable ticking time bomb of 216° of this carousel [that's 3/5, you idiot] entering a caption competition with a garment of many wonders up for grabs.

There were early mistakes. Tom Anon naively thought that the narrator's contrived tone and thick scouse accent could be conveyed solely through the medium of CAPS. [OF COURSE, AS WE ALL WELL KNOW, USING CAPS ON THE INTERNET MAKES YOU SOUND LIKE A MENTALIST!!!!!] It doesn't help when your narrator is also a fish. Considering such a careless first move, you'd think it was a wonder this 72° [you're on your own this time] wasn't censored by the judges. But alas, through the absence of crazygirl exclamation marks and the presence of meaningful wit, the entry earned a whopping 4 'likes' - more than any other in the albeit weak field of competition.

Recognising that his entry was poor early on, another 72° attempted to bolster his campaign by insisting that, unlike the other entries, his was not 'contrived' - as if this would somehow make it more deserving of victory. Pah! I for one was not moved. "You made your bed and you can lie in it" was the predominant thought running through my head following the many times that point was made.

As for my entry, I deviated from the narrated form for an arguably more traditional statement of the conditions. I did my best given the bizarre picture and my propensity to bloat a sentence, but after many hours spent bent over a thesaurus, rearranging the plethora of fruity words and punctuation marks at my disposal, I ended up with a half polished [but incredibly firm] turd of a sentence.

Luckily the competition was weak. Notsoluckily, the organisers asked one of their dads to be the impartial judge. So no one won. The guy who won didn't even win. He lost as soon as he hit enter. I believe on the internet they call it a FAIL...

But really, he didn't even win. They sent him an email and he never got back to them. I can only assume he took the easy way out of a severe bout of FAIL-induced depression [epic lulz].

So the default winner was Owen. Apparently someone's Dad loves jazz, because it was a self-proclaimed uncontrived spontaneity which made Owen's entry the pick of the bunch. End of story?

Nu-uh. Questions were asked, certain parties weren't happy. A conversation with one of the competition organisers revealed that they favoured anon's capitalised entry over the official winner's. Given the fortunate default, the favourable opinion of the bigwigs and the addition of 4 'likes' [that's 20 comedy points, would you believe], Anon felt he had a genuine claim to victory. This was the real quiz.

But no, whilst the decision will remain controversial, even as it lives on in the annals of history, the judge has the final decision and that decision must be respected, whether he's obviously wrong or not. At least, that's what FIFA would say.

Wind Harp

It's cold outside and voices say, "It's just the warmth that you covet".

I'm afraid to say we caved. Against our better, more ideologically and economically motivated nature, we centralised our heating for a couple of hours in the evenings. Unfortunately our white-washed-young-professional-soon-to-be-fountain-of-sonic-embellishment-home is hardly the most energy efficient. The large single-glazed window in the kitchen is a daunting prospect alone given the expected bitter winter ahead, but having a hole in the frame which sucks the sweet, sweet aforementioned and depressingly unaffordable warmth from our fragile souls is not ideal. Not to worry though, our heavy duty kitchen fire door should at least keep the rest of the house warm.

But the gods of ofgem do not look kindly on those fools who head for the boiler dials so early when a onesie and a pair of slippers could do the trick. And with one fell swoop they striketh our hope of ever of ever reaching homely-ostasis.

Unfortunately closing the door now effectively entails a death sentence for anyone unlucky enough to be making a brew at the time.

We strike back tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is the b-side to the new Nicolas Jaar E.P Don't Break My Love. You can download both tracks for free off his soundcloud here.

Wha-whaaat (cont.)

We had a good time last night. It was a cracking Sunday night line-up in the Mojo: the term 'chilled' can sometimes have negative connotations, but the fine line that separates ambient goodness and ambient boredom was rarely crossed and the whole thing sounded good to me. Thanks to sound man Lindon (who is genuinely sound), bar man Courtney (also sound), promotor Mike Deane (damn sound) and indeed the other bands who he booked. Well judged, well performed and well attended. This calls for a song.

Nothing much more to say, then. We'll be getting our heads down over the next couple of weeks, trying to practice what we got and develop what we've not quite got, as well as listening to Xxplosive and making important decisions between Twix and Snickers. Catch us next at The Shitting Shipping Forecast (Tue. 22/Nov) where we'll be warming up the PA system ahead of the Casiokids. They had a song on Fifa 10, don't you know.

Wha-whaaat

That's just for starters. We play Sunday night at the Mojo. It's a place that's been good to us in the past, and I expect that tonight will be no exception. As mentioned somewhere in the realms of earlier entries, we are the suppliers of support to Twin Sister, as part of Liverpool Music Week. If you chance on these words before this night has passed, do join for goodness, if not from us, from them.

Elsewhere, a fan assisted oven has been replaced by a piss-poor conventional. Sure, we rollin' on temps now. But distrust has been replaced by 'rumbling tums': it took thirty minutes to cook a sausage this afternoon. I realise that this seems trivial in the context of goings-on on a global scale - this bastard economy, racist footballers - yet those things have little impact on my life and my primary concern is the latent convection inside the oven. I'll get a tent out for that. More to come.

Filofax This!

Firstly, thanks to everyone who came along and supported us for our Shipping Forecast headline slot Friday gone.

Secondly, congratulations to my good friends Marianne and Louis on the birth of baby Ellis. If you want your heart broken in 16 years time, watch this space.

Forthcoming Liverpool Shows:

(SUN.) - 6/Nov   - Mojo - Liverpool Music Week (w/ Twin Sister)

(TUE.) - 22/Nov - The Shipping Forecast, Liverpool (w/ Casiokids)

Away Day:

(TUE.) - 6/Dec   - Oporto, Leeds (w/ Hot Head Show)

Though that may seem sparse, there will be more dates for you to examine as and when they emerge. Come down on Sunday should you be available: it's free and there'll be plenty of other music for you to pass disdainful comments on.

Ride on, Twin Sister !

Tomorrow we will be headlining at the Shipping Forecast (which you may have worked out from the big flyer at the top of this page). Looking forward to it.

I'll forewarn you: there are some breasts in this video.

JAUNT

Few things to reflect on, now that Sunday is behind us and we plough on into the final week before the clocks change and we all have to accept that it's glove time. And yes, this is your early warning on that one. No excuses, paperboys/girls, I'm telling you now that BST ends in six days and I don't want next week's Observer arriving any later than my courgette fritter hitting the oil. It's all there in black and white and orange and don't you dare distrust the government.

The only place you'll find sympathy is in the dictionary, right between shit and syphilis. When the mighty red men were felled (unjustly, obviously) to nine, a four goal thumping on away-day-pastures pushes my patience. So, to gloat. Shipping six in front of an audience that is heavily weighted towards friends (rather than foes) is a bit of an embarrassment. Monday mornings can prompt people to cower from contact for various reasons, but believe me, the daft amongst you will want to avoid my path for a week or two, 'cos uze are getting it.

Serious thanks to Digby and Alex for their hospitality over the last couple of days. A weekend spent on and around the veranda of a shed studio deep in Farnham Woods is a good one, and that's what those kind brothers have provided us with. I'd put us at six furlongs from home, so the whip can now be unreservedly wielded with no fear of retribution form the Horse Authority. Tolerate my attempts at topicality, and your reward will be tinned tropicality. The more LA Noire amongst you will be on to my allusions: fresh beats imminent. Yeaaah, buddy.

High Spirits, Suffocative, etc.

The highest, in fact. Immediately below: today's feature sound, background music to enjoy while you read the text follows immediately below it. D'yer follow? It's going to be an assault on the senses, just roll with it.

If you will suck my soul, I will lick your funky emotions, and all that. I can't speak highly enough of Funkadelic.

I was going to talk about Friday night, when we played the Mojo and hit the town, but looks like I've been beaten to it. And it's been done well, so I wont dwell. For the record I will object to the harsh language, though. I'll also add that I had nothing to do with that drink what throws a bottle of VK on top of a four-fold Vodkat measure. No dig. Re: thanks - what he said.

That base being covered, what contemporary sociological thematic area of the outfield should I occupy? Luckily, I'm a cultured soul. I was in FACT yesterday, twenty minutes early for a screening with just enough time to enjoy the installation in their downstairs gallery, it turns out. I thought it was going to be this (new tab this, don't stop the funk), Gormley's Blind Light effort from a few years ago, one that I missed at the time and have always been hoping to be revived. As per usual I went nowhere near any research, and what we got was different all together: a white room, a truck load of dry ice, ambient soundscapes and a strobe light to give you cataracts. It was great. A different sort of great to what I was expecting, sure, but as every bit as intense and bad-tasting as we were told it would be before they let us loose in that weird blind triangular space. I lasted the whole twelve minutes; others in the group bailed before five had passed and I can understand why: as one half of a pair I had an accomplice with whom to share the panic when too far from the rope. Telling, that the token loner misc-European was amongst the early escapees. Deffo go.

Lastly my thanks to all who have tolerated my banging on about the marathon for the last six months and moreover the last seven days. It was huge, and I thoroughly enjoyed my day. I couldn't have done it without the yeas and nays of the sayers.

That's it. Enjoy whatever's left of the way back yonder funk and this picture of what wasn't my Sunday evening.

Carry on Regardless

What a night. A totally bodacious gig at Mojo preceded what can only be described as an exceptional carry-on 'round the best and worst watering holes of the Slater Street gauntlet.  Giddy from the sonic fumes of Valet Dukes, Muto Leo and MinionTV we failed to overlook such armpits as Faculty, but never mind, sanctuary was found by way of quad-vods; an effective anesthetic to foul beats and a sea of mutton dressed mutton.  Sadly our lack-luster herding skills were ineffective in such an establishment, so on to Santa Chupito's where far more success was had, allowing for the creamiest of endings - make of that what you will.

The biggest of up's to Sam Garlick and the rest of the Everisland team for a well considered and sincerely promoted event, we look forward to playing another in the near future.  I hope their forthcoming nights continue with the same success.

Running the Snickers & other things

Large online congratulations are due with respect to Mr. Thomas J Byrne's marathon success yesterday. Whilst Facey laid down some drum tracks for our ongoing recording endeavours and others slept off the night's antics, Tom's sexy pegs brought him home in an impressively punctual 3 hours and 56 minutes. He becomes the 3rd generation of Byrne to smash the Merseyside course, which returned this year after 18 years of scousers being fat lazy bastards. He is the deserved receptacle of our appreciation and admiration for doing something as stupid as running 26 miles & 385 yards for apparently no reason whatsoever.

In other news we shall be playing at MOJO in Liverpool this Friday. If you'd like to come, why not publicise your intentions by attending the facebook event here.

Having recorded the drum parts for a new track, we'll soon be heading down south for some much anticipated studio time so watch this space ------->         <-------- this one right here.

We Need To Talk?

Well, yeah, we do. Mercifully, the recent trend leans towards the concise, and although my natural preference is to swim upstream on most matters, sometimes I prefer more to live a life of ease than one that advocates the devil, moreover when I really need to be sleeping. So brevity is the order of the hour.

I tend to try to present news, as well as mindless garble; but the simple fact is that there aint much news to report. The show must go on, though. Slow news days dont mean double Simpsons or a literal stopping of presses - the latter is of course reserved for big news days, if cliche be believed - so here I lie, punching at keys until something half-satisfactory appears. I'm prepared to resort to wishing Facey a happy birthday, as I never did at the time: happy birthday, Facey. There's also the hot goss (that's Latin, you know) that we practiced in a new room this week. It did the job. And that's everything - it really has been that boring round these ways. A busy weekend coming up. Honest. Yawn. Enough.

A song from someone else, then. Introduction credits to A.Nunn.

hypothetical euthanasia roller-coaster

think about it...

Dime, qué comemos

Having seen what I saw this afternoon, it's a good job I didn't do as I nearly did yesterday and "go in there myself". Why does the river run brown?: the question on everyone's lips. Wet wipes: the soiled answer dripping from the drainman's hand. Unfortunately, none of this is metaphorical.

AUTUMN GIGS

(FRI.)    - 14/Oct  -  Mojo
(FRI.)    - 28/Oct  -  Shipping Forecast
(TUE.)  - 22/Nov -  Shipping Forecast (w/ Casiokids)
+ more we haven't written down yet

Pedestrian Sundays

Alight numbers at the bombed out church stops have dwindled since they shifted the commercial district half a mile closer to the waterfront. To fully explain the motivations behind the very existence of a Bold Street Festival would require depth to drown even the most competent of 'verbal swimmers' I like to call readers. Although that barely makes any sense, it does sound alright, so it stays. Anyway, just understand that I'm saving you from having to tolerate a load of relevant (but seriously dull) journo-style opening paragraph filler / context stuff (you're welcome) and trust that the businesses higher up the hill have suffered since the opening of Liverpool One: Bold Street has a festival now.

Those present on Sunday gone would perhaps argue the point that it was more a case of Bold Street being open, as per usual, with the addition of balloons and bunting to adorn the awnings. But inarguable was the presence of stages (perhaps spaces would be more apt) exhibiting dubious artistic outpourings, one example being the twenty minute spillage of our musical bile (this being the literary bile) across the cobbled filth that paves the increasingly tranquil side of the CBD. I don't want to detract from the event or the wider success of the day: it is a worthy cause, a welcome addition to the city's events calendar, organised by devoted and passionate patrons of that noble climb towards wrong-o-clock and Tokyou. It is just a shame that this once crucial route on any shopping trip worth its (Matta's-bought Italian rock) salt has to resort to this level of prostitution - in a Holden Caulfield dismissing movie scriptwriting way, nothing more sinister - just to get people to acknowledge its being there. The fault lies almost completely at the doors of cash hungry town planners and developers. That's not news, though.

Bold is a street that I will forever associate with my earliest forays in to town, both with and without mother. In the memory rain is rare, its limited outings confined to the heart wrench of some Romantic image that Claus of Innsbruck might cast in bronze for me; so perhaps the cynicism of my now years is completely misguided. The relative corporate neglect lends well to a counter-cultural renaissance, which is a good thing. All of this, of course, the subjective anecdotal ramblings of a tired man. So we move on to report the stuff worth reporting. 

It counted as gig number six as our current carnation and it was maybe one of the worst yet. Such harsh self-criticism comes on the back of the mild success of our midweek dalliances: what we're looking for is that rare thing called consistency, and over the two shows we certainly demonstrated little of it. With computing issues that the rockers of old would certainly spare a chuckle for, such a thing could well take longer than it otherwise would. Nonetheless lessons were learned, even if the principle one was that stylophones and songs about spiders are more crowd-friendly than the tidbits we have to offer a disinterested passer-by. Which, when you really think about it, isn't a lesson at all.

P.S. Only now, having read the above back, do I realise just how little sense any of it makes. Not that you can expect an apology, they're your eyes and it's your fault for leaving them open. The song below, which I'd well recommend, has a tenuous link to some of what was said, and may well make the effort of you scrolling all the way down here worthwhile. Just remember to try and bring yourself to pause our music beforehand (if you've already paused it, shame on you), unless you want an inadvertent and probably quite terrible mash-up. Mash tips? Answers on an email.

You got naturally selected, bitch.

I'd like to think I respect grass. At least, when I see some baby shoots in my path I attempt to skip over, so as to cause minimal damage. I will not however, divert my route entirely for the sake of some fucking grass. Given this, I was mildly offended when, on my way to work this morning, I was approached by a burly grounds keeper who was thoroughly pissed off at what he saw as a mistreatment of his emerging foliage.

I took a couple of seconds to consider my response, "Do you even realise how this grass got to be here in the first place?" I said,
"Aye lad, I planted it here meself"
"You're not grasping the bigger picture," I scoffed, "this grass exists only by virtue of a process of natural selection, whereby the strongest blades - those best suited to the environment they habituate - go on to survive. In the wild, this grass has to endure myriad attacks from all corners of its largely futile and miserable existence. Over hundreds-of-millions of years, this has led to the perfection of the grass you so love and nurture."

I'd run out of things to say but nevertheless continued, "so can you not see that by caring less about the health of your grass, we all contribute to the ongoing improvement of the species? Who knows, a few thousand years of lawn neglect could lead to the emergence of plant-intelligence and world-wide grass domination. In some parallel universe of unknown spatio-temporal location, there's probably a giant blade of grass writing a ridiculous and entirely fabricated story on his shit blog about how it's ok to stamp on babies heads because it progresses the species in the long term"

"Well that's a good point there lad" said the grounds keeper.

I must say I was surprised by this response. I expected him to be bewildered and confused by an apparent intellectual argument which had quickly descended into an absurd, self-indulgent rant. But he must have grasped some meaning from my vague whimsical sentences when he laid me out with an impressive right hook.

As I lay there watching him race off on his shitty little lawn mowing go-kart, spraying fresh cuttings into my poor swollen face, I thought to myself, "Who was the winner in all this?"

Me!  I was fucking right. I proved my own point by taking a punch to the face, probably the purest form of justification and elucidation for any point in the history of homo-argumental consciousness.

Turn Ups

We all know that this blog sits happily on your bookmark bar alongside the BBC, Guardian and YouTube icons, and that you simply can't leave the house or close your eyes at night before eagerly checking for any fresh literature for you to get your mental chops around. Well here it is, cats. To follow up your digestion of the news that the police aren't pursuing legal action against the Guardian Media Group (shame, because I hate how smug those hacks have gotten these days) I present at your brunch table an amuse-bouche of the latest in the series of Live Updates! on Carousel's affairs.

NEWS NEWS NEWS Tonight at the MelloMello we (Carousel) play along with the delectable Being Jo Francis, the undeniable Moody Gowns, and the adorable Lu Lou & and The Boy. How fitting those adjectives are is anyone's guess: for concrete evidence you'll have to turn up and see for yourself (see what I did?). It's all free but depending on how cheeky we feel (or on how much organic vodka Ross has consumed) there's a chance we'll be asking for donations to try and cover some of the costs. The link to the FACEBOOK EVENT is tested and should work. Just in case, though, it's a half eight start and we should be done by midnight, so anyone looking to dash off down the road and slip in to the first Medication of the academic year shouldn't be concerned, although your psychoanalyst has reason to be. Now you've got through all that I'll let you get away to watch what's left of PMQs, although Miliband is likely done by now so unless you want to watch Dave field questions on the rise of sheep worrying in lowland Cumbria you're best not bothering. See you tonight, bitches.

The Charm Offensive

Obsession is a double edged sword. So after a few days of maniacal perfectionism and borderline lunacy, we have one of two 'finished' songs ready for the manifold listening experiences we hope you, a person, will enjoy in abundance.

Of course, it doesn't help that when re-encoded for streaming on soundcloud it sounds like shit, and I didn't spend my waking nights carefully pruning this fucker for you to not at least have the option of something of a little more quality. So here is one you can download and listen to all by yourselves.

In other news, we're hosting a gig at a fine establishment by the name of Mello Mello this coming Wednesday which we're very much looking forward to. Oh look, here's a link.

FYI / JAM WARS

PART ONE is for those who bought tickets for the forthcoming 'Metronomy Night' in the Kazimier on the premise of catching us open the show before sneaking out for a swift half in the Monro and jumping the last bus for an early night, for I must bear to you bad news. You can probably guess where this is going. Let me temper this with a classic good news bad news set-up. Ahem: your tickets for the night are still valid, but alas we wont be there. Don't tear up those passes in despair though, you've made a commitment and you should stick it out, even if your faves aren't going to be about (get on that rhyme, linguists). The last band on - I think they're the ones called Metronomy - are half decent if the print press is to be believed, so probably worth going down to see if their funk is worth the others' fuss. But yeah, in short we're not playing it so strike it from your official Carousel Calendars. (While I'm on that subject: anyone who pre-ordered but still hasn't received one of those classic pieces of merch in time for the start of term should consult their local post man, as it is he and not we that holds responsibility.)

PART TWO is where we enter the real meat of this blog post. Not actual meat, a significant percentage of the band has now expressed an interest in taking "the pledge" and cutting out the red (sometimes white) stuff all together. When I say meat I actually mean jam. And by jam I actually mean war. JW1, as it will be forever documented in the annals of time, sees the first significant battle take place next week when strawberry takes on raspberry. Note also that there are a few interesting undercurrents to this one: rival mothers, north/south divide and berry suitability being the pick of them. Don't hedge your bets because this one really is an open field. Now that pun fest is over we can look forward to the tastings. If you want to get involved bring bread, a blunt knife, appropriate footwear and also da ruckus. If you don't want to get involved just have in mind that it's already too late, and by persisting with this drivel up to this point you're already knee deep in stickiness without you even yet realising it. May I recommend that you stock up on wet wipes.

The benefits of lazy naivety

With days off few and far between, a 7 hour band practice is simultaneously a blissful escape from our mundane lives and a nightmare slog which saps our pent-up creativity and splatters it all over the walls of our low-lit practice room; the perfect setting for a musical experiment which has left us satisfied but slightly confused by the end result. Before I elaborate, I should point out that we've attempted the seemingly futile fusing of unrelated ideas in the past and ended up kicking ourselves for wasting time. Given this, it's frankly ridiculous that no one objected to the proposition, whereby we take parts from two floundering but promising pieces of music and combine them to create some supersong. But for some reason, after complicating things more and more, we finally got something which works.

I can't tell you what it is. I don't even know whether it's good. As was pointed out about half way through this little jaunt, "I don't know whether this is groundbreaking or just musically wrong". On the off chance that it's the former, we'll sleep on it and try and work out what the fuck it is that we just wrote.

In the meantime, we've made the online acquaintance of emerging Liverpool-based music blogger ManGone, delivering unbiased and well-written reviews of gigs in the city. Naturally, referencing his blog has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he thinks we're "pretty cool".

Rising Damp

Is it too much to ask, for our homes not to be thwarted by the shortcomings of cowboy landlords and desperate crooks?  Apparently so.  Though, people have to eat...so come all you drug hungry, pilfer our guitars, laptops and good spirits.  Lessons were learned from our new years break-in, we are now amongst the insured.  But our protection does not extend to black holes - metaphorical or physical - and I fear the time Tom and I spent clearing this mess up will not be reimbursed. 

boo hoo

How To Write Nice

Formula. Conformula! There is no newfoundland. A footprint in the snow can be covered - tread obscured - but it existed nonetheless. A Derridean paranoia of the flawed concept of individualism, omnipresent. To have image is to be trend. To set trend is to clamour for reassurance. Tribe functions only as tribe. Mutiny, revolution; an overthrowing of old structures to impose neglected but non-forgotten methods. History repeats itself as farce. Critics champion the musical reverberations of their own youth. What goes around does not come around, it is exhumed. The genre resurgence, though passive, requires the action of another : though the baton be carried by bright young things, it is passed by not cool possessors of dusty blazer pockets full of VAT receipts. Oh whatever. How easy to bemoan in a mirrored tone. Day old bread.

Re-alignment

Does not this look better? A new, synchronised outlook means that, at last, the concept of joined-up governance takes on actual significance rather than simple, bullshit rhetoric. When Dave says we're all in this together, only fools he kids. We don't say it, because we're not liars - but at least now our various platforms have a level of consistent appearance that has been otherwise lacking.
Behold the revolutionary colour scheme. Clinical whites, dense blacks, smooth greys. Alright, revolutionary might be a bit strong of a word. But it's a definite departure from the amateur graphic setup boasted hereabouts previous.
Enjoy the integrated music playing platform. Not much to you, but I'm learning on my feet, here, and although pride isn't quite the word, I do feel a certain sense of achievement - even though I had Owen and the internet performing the navigatorial duties the whole way. Autoplay might get to you, but we're in no mood to compromise.

Now For Band News: Practice in Crash tonight has been cancelled because there are a load of Yanks and Japs in black mop wigs clogging up the access routes. To any neighbours reading this, I apologise in advance if we interrupt Hollyoaks. I'll give you a clue, though: a load of fitties nined-up in Burton/H&M gear discuss their made up emotions. Bring back Bomhead.

To God, whichever one is hot right now.

Those September Shows

2nd   - Tudor House, Wigan
7th        - Anythin' We Want, Liverpool
21st           - MelloMello, Liverpool

And more. So there.

Never Say Anything

Not really sure what's been going on the last few weeks. I can't bear to think how much disappointment I might have provoked through my idleness. At a guess likely very little, but that's the very reason I can't bear the thought. Oh, to be vital. Oh, to apostrophise without sounding like a nut job.

Less of that. Couple of us went to see the fake Carousel last night. Missed them, so couldn't comment on the music but apparently they made mention of their being the ringer. Good lads. Good venue, too. Remote: yes. But decent rum at a reasonable price in a space with a lot of head room and foot space is worth a walk. Comedy toilets. The aftermath is murkily remembered but standard procedures require little expansion when reflecting like this, to you.

With regards to goings on of relevance, music is developing nicely - as is our schedule. Smashing the gigs through September and the plan is to persist in this vein well into Michaelmas. There's a link somewhere on here to a place where you can have a look at what we got lined up and you'd be well advised to check your availability.

I'd love to say more but I'm feeling pretty latent right now. Something needs to be done about basketball being on the television, as well. Being the only one about, it falls on me to act. (Anyone who's read Hamlet knows the consequences of inaction: everyone dies.) Besides the tedium of the sport is the groan inducing teenager-in-a-music-lesson-style attitude to sound effects being pumped through the public address system. With this in mind, that is all.

So What?

One of the important things about maintaining a healthy blog is to feed it with thought at regular intervals: once a day, once a week, once a month - the amount doesn't matter: the consistency does. I was going to make a comparison to good pancake batter here, but I expect that at the mere mention of pancakes most of you would walk away from this nonsense and reach instead for the whisk and syrup. If that is the case, just be aware that you should allow the batter to rest for at least an hour before you start cooking. 

What takes an hour? Lot's of things, you're right. But let me suggest that you spend the hour that splits construction and cooking with a good thing. And a good thing at the moment is the musical output of the fantastic Carousel. "WHO THAT?" you askin'? Get with it, fan, and consult the previous post. Jeez. 

Should you somehow be reading this on the back of making pancake batter and leaving it to rest for an hour, might I direct you up to the link to our Myspace page. There you'll find all sorts of interesting things including old pictures, old videos, bits of toenails and new music. You see, the reward for patience in this instance is twice-apparent: an authentic leathery-textured pancake, and the injection of good sounding vibrations into your recreation-riddled body. 

Reading back, I realise that the majority of the above makes little to no sense (pancakes you what??). In a roundabout, subconscious way, I could be filling the void left by the closure of the NOTW [sorry]. I know better, and I know that I'm simply feeding the blog with the consistent nourishment it requires to grow big and healthy (see first sentence). So I'll aim to do one of these every Sunday, and who knows, one day I might even have something interesting and relevant to say. But for now it's shite all the way and I'm off to watch an Ulsterman scheme his way round Royal St George's.

WHO THAT?

Who that ? indeed.


That unmentionable V word. Harry Potter may be kicking about but we're not talking Voldermort. We're talking vivacious, vociferous and ventilated. Well ventilated, at that. But we're also talking Videosprint, a byword for damn good cancerous hit mongering as much as handling fee is a byword for bullshit. Is this even the correct and proper use for byword? Doubtful. But what about those by-laws? Keep your feet off that seat, young man. Tommy Taylor got a sixty-note-slip for doziness. Faith, though, was restored in humanity by a lift-offering Wirral-based pensioner who saw it no inconvenience to whizz a whippersnapper round to Ness Gardens. 


All this word play weighs heavy on a Sunday afternoon. So, to the point.


VIDEOSPRINT CORPUS MENTUS : CAROUSEL VIVE SIEMPRE


That ought to appease the Vatican branch of the fanclub. Should you be looking for appeasement on a purely sonic level, then left click the glowing things below.


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On a selfish level, this is the album I would have listened to this morning if I hadn't woken up in the afternoon. Far out.