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