Kari!Kari!Kari!

Amazing homemade video from the Chicago's Kari.

Christmas number 1.....

Hello all...... we have a four day count down till our tour begins and we are extremely excited about the prospect of swooping across the country and saying a big hello to everybody. The last couple of weeks have seen us busy in the rehearsal room, tinkering about with our new songs and trying to get them as close as possible to that place called perfection. Its been so long since we played around England, i can't even remember what places like manchester look like. We've also been getting our album mixed by an amazing chap whose been working all through the day and night, couped up in a studio somewhere around the Hollywood Hills, his name is Nick Launey and he's been responsible for the mixing duties on records such as "Neon Bible" (Arcade Fire) and "Grinderman" (...er Grinderman). He also played a big part on an album called "Flowers of Romance" by PIL, it was the third album they made and the last with Keith Levene, its very unusual sounding, but in a good way.....have a look at this:



Has anyone seen the videos we've made for some of our new songs???we've always enjoyed fiddling about with video cameras (Kai in particular), and so decided to make a series of trailers for our new songs. They were a lot of fun to do, and this one (Flakes) involved us buying about twenty goose feather pillows, and then having them explode during one of the more climatic moments of the song. The feathers got everywhere, in our hair, down our throats....some of us had to evacuate from the fits of coughing that they were inducing. Still i think it was worth it, and i also think it was quite appropriate, Christmas is, after all, only around the corner, and the swarms of goose feathers clouding the air could quite easily be mistaken for snow flakes......in fact i think i can say that Flakes is our Christmas present to the world, our sketchy attempt at a christmas number One. Enjoy.



Oh and here's Kapil, with his attempt at a christmas number One.Its called "Morron 5".



Love William.X

BEST NEWSPAPER HEADLINE IN FUCKING AGES

-The sun tuesday 12 November

Mystery Jet Lag (the american adventure)

Peeling back the asphalt.

First of all, appologies for having posted little in the way of news or goings-on over the last month. We have just returned home from a 4 week American tour (a delayed excursion plugging 'Zootime' and opening for Klaxons across the states).
I think we'd all agree that hitting the road again for the first time in a year(!) has made the long months of writing and recording the second record all wothwhile. It is one thing combing over and over a new song in the studio, in the hope of creating something resembling perfection, but it is quite another to stand infront of 2000 people at the Filimore Auditorium in San Fansisco and perform it for the first time.

We are currently getting all the new material mixed and have also stumbled across some stunning artwork, which, with a little luck, will end up accompanying our lp when it is released, in the early part of 2008.

Do check back in a couple of days, by which time we will have hopefully sifted through our american tour photo album and worked out how much of it is suitable for reproduction.

In the meantime...

-We will be setting out on a small after-hours club tour across the Uk commencing on the 25th of November to road test new material and show our faces before the year is up. Venues, Support Band and Djs will be announced in the next couple of days. But beware - These will be INTIMATE so get a ticket in advance : )

-We will be selling a twelve inch of a new track + remix at the shows

-If you live in the states, but dont own a copy of 'Zootime', our Hybrid James Ford/Erol Alkan part old/part new Lp, get down to your local indie record store and tell the guy behind the counter to hand that shit over.
(or if you live anywhere else in the world, put 'Zootime' into amazon)


And lastly, heres some things for you to download and play to your friends.

Beirut - La banlieu

Band of Horses - Is there a ghost

The Dirty Projectors - Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie

Dan Deacon - The Crystal Cat

Vampire weekend - Mansard Roof

Klaxons - No diggity (Blackstreet Cover)



Oh and one more thing. Everybody knows this as one of the greatest and most memorable keyboard lines since the creation of human kind...But the video- THE VIDEO!
This came on the other day and all i can say is that i was a happy person for the rest of the day.



Blaine

"TOUR DAY 1"- Blue skies in Montreal...

We're sitting in an airport lounge, its 4 pm and and the Canadian skies are huge and bright outside the glass window.
We were up at 5 this morning. The long awaited American tour has finally come around, and we've nearly, so very nearly finished the album.
We're on our way to Chicago, with a connection in Montreal and i feel a little like an excited zombie.

We've decided to try and be better bloggers during our time stateside, so hopefully we'll be delivering some fresh photos and a few crisp words on a daily basis.

Sorry not to be more talkative right now but the brain is a little tired...

Till the next,

LoVe,

Kai xxx

BORN UNDER PUNCHES

If you ask me, It really is all about cosy shows. You know the Kind. Where strangers' asses rub up alarmingly close against groins, and where your arms are either above your head (punching the air, as they should be) or by your sides (checking other peoples coat pockets for 'spare cigarettes).
Well, in celebration of this revelation, we decided to play in some damn right hot and sweaty little rooms, just for fun.
The first BORN UNDER PUCHES, to be held at the lauch of hot new blog txtxtxt at corsica studios next thursday will be the first of a series of intimate nights, where we will be putting on acts and djs who we think others ought to know about. This month we have a killer bill, but im paticularily looking forward to Riton's set. Remixer de haute gamme and up n coming posterboy of the ableton generation.

The worst part about not having played a show for near to 7 months (bar a one-off at the opening night of indie superclub Chalk in january) is that you actually start to wonder how you ever did it in the first place. Sure, touring is a trot. Watching tireless roadies carry your guitars and drumkits in and out of clubs each evening whilst ridding your tourbus mini-Bar of its contents is hardly the stuff of a bum's worst nightmare.
Its the idea of actually getting up there and tearing your heart out infront of people who have come there for the sole reason of watching you get up and tear your heart out in front of them that scares the shit out of me.
Fuck, like how did i EVER do that?

Which is why we decided to do some shows with the mighty Late of the Pier for company.
Famous already on blogs like fluokids and skulljuice for thier hotwired gary numan-silicon teens-queen fused sound, they really are the Gary Glitters of how to translate laptop wizardry into full 24 Bit technicolour live, explosive spunk.
If youve not heard them stop reading this shit and witness 'The bears are coming" off thier myspace.
It more lively than life itself
HERE
Its the sound of the the day after tomorrow, created using a circuit-bent speak and spell and sent back in time to warn the children of today of what awaits them just over the horizon. And we like.

Noah and the whale are a 5 piece from west london doing exactly what any band with half an inch of raw talent ought be doing. They are playing thier man tits off. The trick with building up a fanbase appears, actually, as less of a trick once you realise one key thing.
The more people see you play, and the more the same people see you play again and again, the more your songs will penetrate thier little heads. You dont even have to be good. Gwen stephani has built an entire solo career off writing songs which endlessly repeat the same, horribly unforgettable hook from astart to finish. Its kind of odd more talentless people havn't realised that you could sample your self barfing and loop it over a 4/4 beat and have a cult hit on your hands.
EAZY PEAZY

Luckily noah and the whale are a different kettle of fish and write songs that even guys like jeff lewis or conor obherst would pay good american dollars to take home in thier top pockets.
A delightfull combination of harmonium, folk guitars, Basement tapes boogie and charles' heartfelt vocal chords make noah and the whale the best thing since neutral milk hotel hung up their thrift store parker coats at the end of the airplane over the sea tour. If you are coming to the corsica show, get there early or you may very well miss out.
noah and the whales' myspace

Well, on the jets front, i think i could almost safely say we are well on the way to having an album on our hands that we are most proud of. It still has some way to go before it reaches completion, but hearing erol's latest mixes has made the long months of writing and arranging all worth the while. We may even play you one or two if you come down to one of the three shows next week. Expect squeltching guitar parts designed to replicate crashing computers, Synthetic bass workouts and a big lyrical hook borowed from a certain magic FM eighties classic.
Heres a clue..


XBlaine

Ok, seems i made a boo boo, tickets appear to be available at ticketweb, they cost 7pounds fifty pence, and when you search for the concert on the website type in "Born under punches", the name of the night, and it will lead you to the ticket purchasing page....See you soon,XXXXX

Born Under Punches

Here it is, a little concert to unveil new songs, say hello to everyone and play alongside our favourite bunch of bands and disc jockeys...There are tickets going for sale on friday 15th june at ticket master and there will also be a very limited amount available at the door.
Take care, see you there,
william.X

Berlin Show Tonight

Afternoon friends! We’re in Berlin right now to celebrate William´s birthday, and we´ve been invited to play a little show tonight by a friend of ours.
If by chance you are in Berlin this evening, then you´d be more than welcome to come down, have a drink, and listen to some new songs we’re working on for the second album.
With love,
Kai.

Come for 10 pm

Address: Leberstraße 61, at the corner of Leuthener Straße.
Mini Markt, nearest tube station Schöneberg, Sudkreuz, Berlin.

BORROWING NEEDLES...

Its our last week in the studio, Kai's flown away to Barcelona for a holiday in the sun, Kapil's off to Egypt tomorrow with his family, and these last 3 days are going to be a mad rush to finish everything we've started. About eight songs have been completed and we're all over the moon about how they sound. I don't really know what to write, the last month has been so manic and tiring....we've all blossomed into brilliant ping-pong players, had wonderful chats with Ray Davies (The Kinks... wrote Waterloo Sunset amongst other classics) about working late nights in recording studios, been living off genius cafe lattes from Ben (our engineer) and generally scraping through the routine of late nights and early starts. Last night saw the whole of Team Mystery doing its best female gospel singing around one microphone, we all sounded like old ladies at a sunday church service....its amazing what a pinch of reverb and some studio tomfoolery can do though, it actully sounds quite good.Kaps is just about to record a jug, its a bit of a wild card but its working as a percussive sound and resembles a tabla drum.
Anyway, here are some songs that we've been really getting into.One is a new track from Bjork called "Earth Intruders" and the others i won't reveal the identity of, but they are brilliant and very eagerly anticipated by the rest of the world.
???
???
???
Hope you've all been very well, here's a home made video documenting what we've been up to.





Lots of love,
william.

POST ROCK TITANS TAKE THIER FINAL BOW

This friday, my oldest friends and indeed the band i have seen more times than any other, Doctor Filthwill be playing thier last. I highly advize you, in fact i URGE you to come see them off if you live in london.
Nobody ever seems to do them justice in describing how they sound, but imagine something somewhere inbetween Shellac, Queens of the stonage and Jesus lizard and your kind of close.
Lots of STARTS and STOPS and NOIZE and CHAOS and SHOUTING and FAKE BLOOD.

THIS FRIDAY 13th
AT THE PARADISE BY WAY OF KENSAL GREEN
CHAMBERLAIN RD (LADBROKE GROVE TUBE)
DOORS 8PM £5
DRESS BLACK N WHITE BURLESQUE

Come! This will be THE LAST TIME to see the best band you have never seen.
XBlaine

Moutarde a l'ancienne...

Its the end of our first week in the studio,its been a ball, a laugh, a lot of hard work, very tiring, completely amazing, slightly frustating, wonderfully smelling (our producer insists on burning joss sticks all over the studio "good for the soul..."he says) revealing and telling, sometimes people yelling, group discussions, lots of percussion, broken strings,things to sing...........you get the idea. I have emerged as the trailing light in our ping-pong games, having been thrashed by everyone from skinny Kapil to big chief Erol, Kai coming in as the number 1, the don, the maestro, the very reason i'm alive. I'm pretty good but lack the reflexes and the general nack of it. Anyone seen the new justin timberlake video, featuring Scarlett Johanson??? Many of our dinner times have been spent in deep discussion about this video (well its more of a short film) Is it over the top and meladramatic? (the fight scene where the music cuts out and a scuffling timberlake appears cursing and shaking his fists at naughty miss Scarlett, to the tragic ending where they crash their cars and one of them ends up dead) Or is it a really good effort from the biggest pop star in the world, trying to keep his ideas fresh and surprise his audience a bit.......i don't know, i'm not hugely into Master Justin, but his timbaland produced stuff is wicked (I'm sure you've all heard it...if not.) You decide.....

The last succession of hours has seen us get down a song which so far is untitled, but we all refer to as the "michael jackson"...its full of little hooks and backing vocal ideas, some of which sound quite haunting, its definately got a "thriller" kind of feel to it. We are taking the Quincey Jones approach to producing it aswell (he is the man behind "Off the wall" "Thriller" and "Bad"), dry drum sounds, the toms recorded separately, and lots of weird guitar noises, that sound more like synths than actual guitars. As for the lyrics, i won't give them away, lets just say its an extremely warped love song, the fact that wacko jacko is the inspiration for the music perhaps makes the whole thing even more ironic.

These are some things we've been listening to in the studio: coco rosie (thankyou to max shake for sending me thisX) this a song off their new album, really brilliant i reckon. A band called the Monochrome Set, a post-punk gem....... A chk chk chk song which is pretty interesting, and this..........a song called Ldn is a victim, it basically rips apart all the "cool" bands and musicians in london at the moment, its mildly amusing in places and a little dull in others but have a listen all the same, its one of those songs which is about the scene and for the scene, (whatever the scene is (assuming the musicians living/working in london can all be clustered together into a so called scene)).


And finally, allow me to recommend the above. Its a whole grain mustard,made in france, and its called "Maille". There are pots and pots of the stuff all around the studio, and heres why: Its made from the finest of ingredients (spirit vinegar, mustard seed and white wine) and when applied to pretty much anything you can think of, magic happens. Its no musical wonder tool or maker of miracles, it just tastes fucking amazing. Buy a pot, slap it onto cheese and toast...watch it transform a common snack into a royal delicacy. Sorry for the randomness but it needed a mention, me and blaine have been putting it on everything, its just really nice.







I hope you're all extremely well and happy, please try the mustard, and let us know how you are all keeping,
love william.X

VIDEOS OF THE WEEK

UNTIL we put the finishing touches to Erol's second venture into fly on the wall film making, Id like to point you in the direction of a handfull of videos which weve been lapping up. Not so say weve been lounging about wasting precious recording time on cheap Craic. That would be a gross understatement. After all everybody knows the overwhelming cultural significance of a healthy youtube education.

FOALS HUMMER VIDEO
Foals comprises of 5 people, two of which, jack and yannis, used to play in the worlds greatest math rock trio, The edmund Fitzgerald. I saw them about 3 times with youth movie soundtrack strategies and was never anything but speechless by the time they staggered off stage. Though Foals were born out the Ed Fitz's dying embers, they have a quite different adgenda. The rythyms are beeline, the guitars sound like a ping pong competition and the vocals are delivered cantankerously. Check it.


XTC: STATUE OF LIBERTY ON THE OLD GREY WISTLE TEST 1978
Alongside the Attractions and Devo, XTC are one of my favourite bands of the new wave era. Statue of liberty, if you read the lyrics is litteraly about a love affair with the green-coloured lady with the torch in her hand. But I think Andy Partridge could have written a top ten about an overweight giraffe had he wished. I love the way he plays with words as they leave his mouth. funny looking chap too.


THE KLF: ITS GRIM UP NORTH
Also known as the Timelords or the guys who set fire to a million quid or as authors of 'The Manual (or how to how have a number one the easy way)', the KLf ruled the late 80s and Early 90s with thier semi-sarcastic art terrorism. Their most notorious performance was at the February 1992 Brit Awards, where they fired machine gun blanks into the audience and dumped a dead sheep at the aftershow party. This performance announced The KLF's departure from the music business, and in May 1992 the duo deleted their entire back catalogue. Check out the video for 'its grim up north'. They namecheck Featherstone! They namecheck Wigan!
Erol has been bangin' on about these guys for ages. And not without reason. check.


BAND OF HORSES LIVE ON LETTERMAN:
When did band of horses get so fucking big? Letterman? Thats big right? Christ. Im dreading the day i see a little girl wearing a band of horses t shirt at a snow patrol gig. In fact i dread the idea of a snow patrol gig full stop.
However I dont mind that these guys are soft on the ear because Funeral is a beautiful, beautiful song, and the vocals are neither whimsical nor self induldgent. I highly recomend thier album too, Everything all the time. Each of the ten songs is perfect in its own little way.
Watch how Ben repeatedley struggles to hold back his grin as he contemplates performing infront of 4.4 million people.
No pressure mate.


Finally, here is a clip which has, to be fair, done its rounds on the net. But nothing takes away from the The sound that comes out of this kids mouth as he unwraps his n64 (AKA the 2nd best games console of all time after the NES).
It just makes you want to say 'Weve ALL been there kid, you go ahead and do your thing"
But will someone please shoot his little sister?


X BLAINE

In the beginning.

Soooo....we've been in the studio for about 48hours now, i don't quite know where we are, somewhere in the depths of leafy north London, the old hunting ground of the Kinks apparently. We've been rapidly unpacking all our gear, changing guitar strings, drum skins, running around the place, playing killer games of ping pong, making sure everything sounds good through the mixing desk and generally treading the fine line between mischief and music making. We've got the foundations for our first song in place too.....its just drums and bass right now, but we're about to do the vocals and duran-stlye keyboard parts so i'll make a little dictaphone sample of it in a couple of hours and stick it up on the blog so you can hear it. We also found a bit of time to make a short film for everyone to see, Erol directs it, and we all play the lead roles, with Kai making a topless cameo appearence in it.Let us know what you think, its the first part in a conceptual series that we'll be executing in the coming weeks, involving food, indoor sports and whatever else we can get our hands on.......

[A little message to everyone in america who wants to come to our gigs:
We are hassling our managers and booking agents to try and sort out some under 21's shows, its proving quite tricky but we're doing our best to organise it. Another idea we had, would be to play an acoustic show in every town that we visit,i.e. doing matinee gigs in independant record stores.Send us a message if you have any brain waves...but either way,if we can't do any under21's gigs there is always the backdoor, and we can do commando style missions to sneak people in and avoid the bouncers.
hope your well, lots of love.
william.X

We start recording our new album in two days...aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!
XXX

INTRODUCING SHUFFLE CORE

On the 22nd of march we will be battling numerous others in the UK's first ipod battle, to be held in bethnal green working mens club. Basically, heres how it works:

-Teams (comprising of two or three people) get a minute to sonically stamp thier oponents into the dirt, without the use of mixing or effects. Just a plain old ipod.
-The two teams in the ring (a real boxing ring) battle it out, back and forth until a horn is sounded at the end of the 20 minute-long round.
-Using a decibelometer the referee measures the crowds' reaction to each teams' performance.
-Competition is evened out by allowing each team an equal amount of seats in the ringside.
-The team with the more applause stay on to the next round where a new opponent faces them in the ring.
-And the prize? errr...an ipod?

Other teams feature
ISA GT & MATTHEW WOWOW
SINDEN& RADIOCLIT
FABRIC CREW
QUEENS OF NOIZE
AND OTHERS....



More info on the official ipod battle UK page here


Ipod battles are nothing new to the french, check out the carnage right here:


Im not in a position to give away any clues as to what we are going to be cueing up at this stage in the game.
But lets just say that if you like the Pet shop boys, you might want to walk this way.

XBLAINE

???

Hello hello, so i gather my ??? mystery song wasn't so mysterious afterall, as the song and the artist name appear when you download it....well, what can you do. Click here ??? and now runaway from your computer screen....whose song is it?guess.....first person to find it out can pat themselves on the back.
I ventured into the NME awards (when i say ventured i mean i blagged it in pretending to be one of the stage crew) and found myself sitting next to the charming Jamie T, it was lovely to see him and he did me proud when he won the "best solo artist" award, definately deserved it i think.I was absolutely aghast when i heard the Twang won some sort of award, i absolutely don't approve of thier second-rate oasis sound....i also felt pretty sorry for lily allen, scooping the worst dressed award, i think she always wears wicked clothes... big dresses, nike trainers and gold necklaces.Our manager and Kai also snuck in with me, it was quite fun, feeling like secret agents who'd infiltrated the awards show...Kai challenged us to a drinking game, the loser of which having to go up to where the awards were being dished out and say something ridiculous over the microphone, luckily we never got round to it though, i probably would have lost being the terrible light weight that am anyway...and made a complete prat out of myself. Anyway, our manager was chewing the ear off Kai Stephens (the hard-fi bass player), the only other man in rock other than our own bass playing misanthrope called Kai, while meanwhile said bass player was running around, finishing off the drinks of the rich and famous. I generally stood about looking boring, i was dogged by a slight headache, and ended up having conversations with various Klaxons and one of the original Jesus and Mary Chain members in and around the mens toilets. I have to say, the total hero of the night was Billy Bragg, i reckon he is responsible for some of the most beautiful and subversive songs written in the last 20years and he also had some really interesting stuff to say when he went up to present an award.In his deep Essex accent he spoke of how he was donating cheap argos guitars to prisons, in a project to get criminals and convicts into music and away from their former lives of violence and crime.He was the only person who had something worthwhile to say, and in his honour i'm going to give you a song of his.....it was originally a b-side, made in the early eighties on a four track recorder.I think he was living in west london at the time, our neck of the woods and this song holds a lot of memories for me......hope you like it

Any way, we should be writing songs, but Kai has decided that he wants to lounge around smoking his infamous shisha pipe, and acting like some kind of french duke...i would show you some photos of this act of laziness, but he has just started having a play fight with his girlfriend and i don't think they'd appreciate having the spotlight on them in one of thier more intimate moments.
I hope you are all fine and dandy, i'm going to get on with a bit of music and get old mr Fish involved too.....
take care,
william.X

I can Phil it coming in the air tonight

Some people like to pretend theyre really down with things which other people regard as stupid. Because in thier minds the only thing cooler than being into something really hot, is being into something really NOT. This is what
Nathan Barley is all about in case you've never watched it.

Well I can geuinely hand-on-heart say ive been a Genesis fan since my dad bought me A Trick of the Tail for christmas seven or eight years ago. You might place that record somewhere between Brain Salad Surgery by ELP and Larks tongues in Aspic by King Crimson or perhaps even near A night at the opera by Queen. Yes its self indulgent and Yes there are extended instremental passages. But what Phil Collins is owed most credit for is his Bean-Flickingly wet Drum sound.

A much-impersonated formula of huge toms, gated reverb and serious EQing. Basically if you want to sample some drums , good old Phil's done half the work for you by wacking them so fucking high up in the mix that you dont even need to worry about getting hold of the seperate files. Besides theyre probably slowly rotting away behind lock and key in a volt in switzerland somewhere.

Well to celebrate Genesis' forthcoming world tour reunion in july I thought it would be appropriate to pay Phil some respect by wacking up one or two of the less cheesy remixes floating about in hyperspace.

Phil collins - Shes' Hearing in the air tonight (lobsterdash mash up)

Phil collins - Easy lover (divided remix)

Phil collins- sussudio (alpha conspiracy mix)

BATTLE OF THE DRUM SOUNDS: NELLY V PHIL in "Manlover"


Feedback appreciated as always. For me personally, nothing beats the
original easy lover video. Flying about in Helicopters, wearing cut off jumpers and baggy suits, syrncronised chicken dances, combovers.
Now Thats proper rock star get up.
X Blame

Tip if you hate...

Hello everyone, the last week has been a very varied one for each of us, blaine's been romancing in a cornwell hideout (its called castle camelot, and its literally like a medieval castle on a cliff top... its haunted corridors are riddled with eerie sounds and approaching footsteps, and its run by a bunch of polish waiters who hover above the carpetted floors and take your order with crooked smiles), kai's been djing in stevenage, playing all his favourite early 90's smashes while watching a bunch of young kids who call themselves the guildean gang play.Kaps has been orbiting in a different sphere, the land of bangra beats, intensive drum practices and evening sessions at the wembley football club, Henry has been whiling away sweet time hunched over his newly purchased baby grand piano (its white and is identical to the one john lennon plays in the Imagine video), he's also been composing some very beautiful piano pieces, he says they are sounding a hybrid between arcade fire and radiohead's pyramid song, and as for me, i've been to see a whole bunch of gigs, amy whinehouse, Love is all, regina spektor, jack penate, the noisettes..and generally been losing sleep over a song i'm working on.Its a mixture between flamenco guitar picking, a bossa nova drum rhythm (from an old german drum box that resembles one of those beautiful 1950's stereos), some synths and lots of ehoing vocals....the lyrics were originally called Ivy Tower, but i reckon i might just shorten it to Ivy, i like the idea of this creeping plant that slithers up trees and strangles the life out of them over a period of decades, someone told me that ivy can pull down brick walls too mmmm......probably total rubbish, but interesting rubbish none the less. The last couple of days, (friday and saturday) i've been over at kai's, fulfilling our shared dream of timbaland rhythms and fleetwood mac guitar, pushing all sorts of strange sounds into his laptop and mixing them up into structures and bpm's...its been a bit like remixing ourselves at the same time as writing, and i'm really really pleased with how it sounds.One of the pieces (which is without lyrics at the moment, but we've decided to call "missing limb") is like our version of Nelly Furtado's "No Hay Igual", or perhaps a continuation of one fo our quite recent songs Crosswords. The other piece, which has a working title of Hide Away, sounds like a cross-dressing of New Order's "Blue Monday" and Daft Punk's Aerodynamic ....the lyrics have this really creepy feel to them, they're about an under cover lover, sneaking around someones house and looking through their possessions (interesting to see whats been on blaine's mind).Its quite strange for us that these songs have turned out this way, it feels like we are another band almost, like we are morphing into something new, maybe we should start looking different too, do some costume changes during the set......?








Anyway, i've been listening to this song, i think its absolutely incredible....really beautiful lyrics,and a strong arrangement.I shouldn't really be sharing it as its a song from a very highly anticapated album that hasn't come out yet, but have a listen and see if you can guess who its by......click here ???

I saw this in Garlic n' Shots in soho, had to use a lighter in order to shed some light on it....made me laugh, everyone should go and drop their lose change into it....


Take care, hope your well, let me know if you can work out who the mystery (???) song is by...
William,X

The lost art of keeping a secret

More info on this here
xB

RED AND BLACK

Zootime is the name of our US-only album soon to be released on Dim Mak, Steve Aoki's hollywood based label, past and present home to the likes of Battles, Bloc Party, The Rakes, Gossip, Von Blondies and Scanners. I believe the record is due for release in april but for a more accurate estimation check the Dim Mak site in the up and coming weeks.
If you look at the track listing below, you will notice that a few numbers off 'Making Dens' have been subsituted for newer recordings. In a sense 'Zootime' is a compilation of some of our favorite recordings of the past 18 months, regardless of where abouts each one might have origiinally surfaced. We figured that people are always going to be able to get hold of 'Making Dens' on import or off the web anyway (in much the same way as the american EP is available over here), so why not put together something completely new with some pretty old school looking graphics on there too?
Heres how it will sound:

Diamonds in the Dark.
Inside Four Walls
Scarecrows in the rain
The Boy who ran away
Soluble in air
Horsedrawn Cart
Zootime
You Can't fool me Dennis
Puprle prose of Cairo
Little Bag of Hair
Umbrellahead
Crosswords

At christmas we put up a free download of umbrellahead (Erol Alkan's version) on our website. Well, incase you missed out on it, here is the link again:
Umbrellahead MP3
Hold CTRL when you click on the link and choose "download linked file"
Check out Steve Aoki's own kickass blog here
over and out
xBlaine

A recent history of the Jets.

Hello hello...the picture above is a list of the ten songs that we've been working on for the last month or so.All of them are at slightly different stages, some are fragmentary ideas that might leap to life in the studio with the right synths and sounds around them, others are alot more complete, sounding very close to the versions that you'll eventually hear.All of these however, have a kind of lyrical tightness, they all seem to be saying something, slightly different from eachother, but cohesively, like they all belong to a large extended family....Elizabeth is definately the old grandma of this family, being the first song of the new wave that we wrote (in an airport in spain.....after a very heated discussion about what are songs needed to start saying...) it also sets a kind of theme for all the other 10 songs, each of them about people in some form or other (people we know, we knew, we wished we'd known.) The black sheep of this family has to be "metal soul", its the closest we've ever come to writing a glam-rock song, in the style of Marc Bolan, or aladdin sane era Bowie.Its covered in hand claps, and sharp falsetto backing vocals, its also very hard to really know what this ones about, what do you make of "six of us on the heath, wearing nothing underneath, he likes her and she likes me..."? someone suggested it might ellude to the nudist parties that occur on hampstead heath, i wouldn't know.Anyway, it all seems to be going to plan, the last week we made 4 songs in five days (a mystery jet record, seeing as zootime and on my feet took about 6months to make), and we are exactly a third of our way towards the musical dream thats been recurring in our heads for so long....having 30 songs written.Why such a tall task?? well we want to make the best album possible, and also have loads to spare, so we can wittle together some limited edition EP's, with songs that noone would have heard.Another private ambition is for us to be able to play new songs every time we play live, keep it exciting for everyone, and bring in an element of the unexpected to our gigs. I've put up a very raw demo of elizabeth on our myspace page, its close to how we play it live, but there's some different synth parts in it, and some rather chaotic guitar, i think the main thing we wanted to capture with this is just a really good feel....also, please please please listen to it with headphones, i just heard it through my computer and i felt very embarrassed.turn it up loud too...

Here are some photos of us rehearsing,(very poor quality i'm afraid) in our new gaff,well it isn't really ours but it does feel very homely thanks to the friendly family of eastenders who run the place, they also have a huge bull dog that looks like it eats a baby everyday, and you can tell when its been sniffing round your rehearsal room as it leaves a trial of slobber every where it goes.




































I thought i'd give you all a download of a song i've been obsessing over recently, its a song called No Hay Igual (don't know what the title means...its spanish though) and its on nelly furtado's new record.The rythms and the vocals are incredible.Its really well put together too, all the components fit like a puzzle and everything seems to be treated equally in it, like the drums are as important as the vocals...which i think is a really interesting approach to making music.so many songs seem to be about one thing,i.e. the words, or the strength of the melody, but in this song, nelly takes a back seat and uses her voice as a part, a mere puzzle piece with which to make up the song.enjoy.Get the rest of her album too (Loose) it is brilliant, i know its very easy to overlook it as a mass marketed piece of corporate pop, made in Los Angeles with a 100grand a track producers, but that doesn't stop it being amazing...i think its the best thing i've heard for a about 3months( not including late of the pier) and has definately influenced a handfull of the 10strong batch of new songs. Does this mean we are going to make a hip hop record, replace guitars with mcp beats, and hire in timbaland.....YES.(well...no, i'd never put down a guitar, and i know erol's got enough ridim in his blood to out beat any LA producers)

I hope this finds you all well, let us know what you're thinking about nelly and "elizabeth",
lots of love,
william.X