a last minute tip

Ah, a (relatively) early night in bed - time to sort out some easy emails before laying back and reading some Lanark before a healthy sleep. Oh wait, what's this? Why it's Oh, How The Mighty Have Fallen, whose dubstep-meets-experimental synth barrages have made me feel queasy for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. You can hear "Natural Venue" on the man's Myspace, which reminds me of that low-frequency infrasound that doesn't stop in Irreversible.

Have a good weekend.

ohhhh yeaahhh

Well holy hell, I must not have been paying attention: Thrice have a new song on their Myspace.

Beggars is out digitally August 11th. Well hell, I'm psyched now.

feliz cumpleanos mesa verde

Glasgow screamo fanatics Mesa Verde are five years old this week! And to celebrate, they're doing what they do best - playing a Glasgow show with assorted kindred spirits. I sadly won't be able to (a) make it due to previous commitments and (b) am so broke I can't actually afford it. So do yourself a favour and check out Mesa Verde live at their "second home" (make sure to email them for directions and the such through their myspace) - I saw them years back with Aussitot Mort, Allergo (R.I.P.) and Amanda Woodward, and that night is still one of the best gigs I have ever ever EVER been to. These guys get a life pass, basically.

Mesa Verde - For the Tree That Fell

In related news, the band have a split with Oakland, CA's Spires out in the near future, which is good stuff. Keep an eye on their Myspace for that snazz. Oh, and Black Channels (ex-Allergo) are playing with 'em on Saturday and you need to get up on their 2008 demo fucking STAT. I am sad to say that I'm yet to see them live. If you're reading guys, hook a brother up :)

Black Channels - Glass Lungs

Make sure you at least check out the mp3s. And buy the bands' albums.

content was, up to this point at least, my favourite colour

Sure, I may be late on this one - what's new guys, seriously - but if you're wanting to hear a new album in its entirety, for FREE, in a way that doesn't make you feel douchebaggy AT ALL, go to The Most Serene Republic's Myspace to check out the entirity of their new LP ...And the Ever Expanding Universe (don't forget to take it off shuffle). Despite the guff title, I'm enjoying it so far. Here's an extra preview for y'all just in case of what seems the most accessible track:

The Most Serene Republic - Heavens to Purgatory

"Phi" is a bit of a jam, check it out. It may be lazy journalism to say that if you like Broken Social Scene and all that, you'll dig Serene Republic (they're both Canadian), but let's face it. You will.

wes anderson x roald dahl

I loved Fantastic Mr Fox growing up, and The Life Aquatic is one of my favourite films. I've been looking forward to this for a while - I hope it lives up to the promise.

Woulda been sicker with some more Quentin Blake in there but we'll wait and see. The flick premieres at the London Film Festival on the 14th October and gets general release on the 23rd.

we SHOULD BE MAKIN' LOVE

My new obsession right here:



The fist-pump at 1:10 is pretty much the greatest thing ever.

Todd Rivers - One Track Lover (12" Extended Version)

if you haven't heard it already...

...It does the job.

Jay-Z feat. Kanye West and Rihanna - Run This Town

Expect more posts this week - I saw JCVD when I was flying back from NY and I'm itching to write about it. And Love Aaj Kal comes out this week!

woah-ohhhhh!!!

Right folks, I'm off to New York for a few days with this song in my head.

MPHO - Box n Locks

Keep it cool while I'm away.

like a king

Hark, did somebody say "new Glassjaw"? Allegedly so, says vocalist Daryl Palumbo in a new interview:

“It’s a five or six song EP,” says Palumbo. “And the EP will be slightly different from the full-length. The new Glassjaw stuff is far more aggressive than it was previously. This is stuff that Justin (Beck) and I have been working on for a long time. It’s far more aggressive than I ever thought it would be,” Palumbo explains.

Now, the possibility of a new Glassjaw EP excites me - maybe it'll be a showcase for all the songs that have been written for the third album but just weren't suitable for the overall mood. Maybe it's a way to test the waters of releasing records totally indie-style (they can't possibly still be on Warner, can they?). And then again, maybe it's bullshit. But Daryl does seem to be on a roll here. Which does make me a bit more excited. Especially if they put "Jesus Glue" on it.

Read the full article here. Photo courtesy of Katie Anderson, taken at Give It A Name last year, where I was in raptures for pretty much the entire time the 'Jaw were on.

Glassjaw - The Number No Good Things Could Come Of

BONUS: House of Blow - Afghani Black

Heavy tune, nuff said.

Idris Muhammad - You Ain't No Friend of Mine

zoidberg metal

So I finally got round to seeing the video for "Stick Stickly" by Attack Attack! and all I can say is:





Find your own favourite bit and click HERE. "STOP HATIN ON ATTACK ATTACK!" indeed.

smoke gets in your eyes...

The fact that there's a (seemingly legal) Bollywood remake of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Three Times truly boggles the mind but I'm looking forward to seeing how this more crowd-pleasing take on the story works out.

Preview the Love Aaj Kal soundtrack here. Read about Three Times here - it really should be on your rental list, like, yesterday.

From Facebook:

Pony pony run run En première partie de Katy Perry à Glasgow le 21 aout !
July 2 at 8:18pm

A case of your support band being better than you:

Pony Pony Run Run - Hey You

And a case of your headliner being hotter than you:

Ooh lord.

oh, update

Well, there you go. Thank you blogosphere, you supplied when I needed it.

Girls Can't Catch - Keep Your Head Up
(via Boom Boom Chik)

two punk bands + a girl group = ECLECTICA, YO

Ah, the early (well, before noon) browse through my regular haunts for cool new bands to check out. The receipents of a quality review on Punknews are The Sorely Trying Days, who describe themselves as a "deadly storm of pure rage, half fun and deafening volume". There's bits of whatever stoner rock is (was) with some crust and I even hear a bit of melodic punk in there. Definitely worth checking out their myspace, as well as the video below, which has them playing "About the Good Times" off their Useless World debut Survival Mode. Check 'em out.



Also on the receiving end of a favourable review on The Org are new No Idea signees Dear Landlord, a band containing members of The Copyrights and Off With Their Heads. They've been receiving some type of hype due to their allegedly superb live shows and incredibly catchy songs, and their debut Dream Homes is pretty much living up to the hype from what I've heard so far. Check them out by clicking on the link above and check out the live footage of them playing "Lake Ontario" below.



And courtesy of the ever-snarky Popjustice, Girls Can't Catch and the video to their first single "Keep Your Head Up". It's catchy and allows whoever writes Popjustice to make posts like this so really, everyone benefits here. (Go to their Myspace page and check out the Starsmith remix of the single - it's great, even if the vocals are pretty much buried by everything else in the mix.)



Sorry for the lack of mp3s. You'll have to deal with the Youtube videos for now!

Well, FUCK IT'S FUCKING CHRISTMAS DAY!!!

Beastie Boys feat. Nas - Too Many Rappers
via Hypebeast, via illRoots

Hot Sauce Committee Pt 1 out September 14th (for all the UK cats). Drowned In Sound had a first listen recently - read up on it HERE.

rappers shouldn't wear fedoras

So, Nigo and Pharrell were in London town the other day and Skateboard P wore a ridiculous hat to the proceedings. The lazy fashion-related blog post writes itself.

Cadence Weapon - Your Hair's Not Clothes

BONUS: Pharrell - Despicable Me

Wow.

1:50 onwards > Illmatic

what i loved most turned to distant ghost

Carve The Future are an Edinburgh-based hardcore band who sound a bit like stonking Japanese band FC FiVE and have a lot of gang vox. The vocals sound a bit flat at parts but they're pretty good, especially on the song "Stand Tall". Basically if you like melodic hardcore, you'll dig their "Avoid the Fall" EP, which is up for download here. If you missed that: HERE it is. HERE.

NIIIINNNEEEE. EXXXXXXX. EMMMM!

Y'know, the thing about not having a full-time job is that you find yourself eating breakfast for up to three hours due to watching Brit Asia Music or 9XM. And being pretty unfamiliar with British Asian music or famous tracks from Bollywood movies, the whole thing is always really interesting for me. I found some pretty neat stuff this morning while I ate my cereal, especially the two videos below.

The first is the debut single from Mumzy Stranger, a British Bangladeshi vocalist under the tutorage of producer Rishi Rich (a bunch of Jay Sean beats that you'll probably recognise if you watched MTV Base a while ago) and, hell, "One More Dance" is very much of its time - Stargate-style synths and drums, trilbys, flashy lights, but hey, I'm a sucker for stuff like this, no matter how calculated. The video is below and if you don't feel like watching it, hey, it'sgot a cute girl in it. It'll be stuck in your head by the end of the day, even if it's pretty piecemeal.



The other video is from the film Anwar, a drama about an artist who is mistaken for a terrorist in modern day India. That's pretty much all I know about it, but after hearing this (absolutely gooooooooorgeous) song from the film, it's gone on my Lovefilm queue. Hope it's good.



Ah, TV. Is there anything you can't do?

so, late pass on something prince did

Wrecka sto

So, I'm an awful blogger. Awful awful awful at this. However, I thought I'd write about this odd film I saw today (and hey, I'll write about films too, it's my blog dammit) by the name of Under the Cherry Moon. If you didn't know, it's directed by Prince. It's a weird one.

The follow-up to over-extended music video Purple Rain, Cherry Moon has Prince playing an actual character (!) rather than Purple Rain's Kid and, eh, he gets on as okay as somebody with that much natural charisma has. He plays Chris, a gigolo who steals money from rich French women with the help of his half-brother Tricky (Jerome Benton, now and forever the guy from The Time who holds the mirror up to Morris Day during "Jungle Love"). For their latest heist, they hear about an heiress by the name of Mary Sharon (Kristin Scott Thomas in her first screen role) and decide to take her $50 million trust fund. Then there's some stuff about her father and his corruption, as well as Chris' gig as a pianist, but really now, all that stuff, pssh, it whizzes by.

People hate this movie. Hell, Kristin Scott Thomas hates this movie: "When I left drama school...I was more afraid of not working at all than of the actual material I was being offered. And if you look at my very first film, you'll understand exactly what I mean." It won (is "won" the right word to use here?) five awards at the 1986 Razzies. It can't quite decide what film it ever wants to be: it is a screwball comedy, a rom-com, a heist film, a melodrama, and Prince is pretty much doing whatever the hell he wants at any given time. Nobody is really acting on the same quality level at any given time (when Prince cries, it's always funny) and the script is, er, an acquired taste. Oh, and did I mention that it's set entirely in Cannes during a time period that mixes together the 80s and 40s without ever truly deciding on which decade?

But because I'm weird and like films other people hate, I turned out kinda liking Under the Cherry Moon. It reminded me of Idlewild, the OutKast vehicle from a few years back, and Prince's film was probably a massive inspiration on that film for the idea of making a film set in a total fantasy world. Sure, the movies do that more than anything, but both Idlewild and Cherry Moon are obsessed with artifice, with cliche, with movie people doing movie things that only ever happen in movies. There's no need for the heiress' father to have the cops on his payroll and basically be corrupt, but hey, it's been done before - same goes for Benton's hysterical sidekick (he yells his way through this film and I really dug it) and Scott Thomas' totally inconsistent vamp/virgin/rebel. The main reason I liked Under the Cherry Moon is because it is a total fantasy, an illusion, a true movie. Mash cultures and times together, mash the characters together, mash the genres together. It's messy, but it's devoted to the artifice that we all kinda take for granted by watching better films.

Oh, and the soundtrack's great (released under the name Parade). Here's some songs from it:

Prince - Life Can Be So Nice
Prince - Mountains
Prince - Sometimes It Snows In April