Is There a Doctor in the House?


So I got this in the post today. Released in October 2007 on Warp Records, it is a compilation put together by the man most widely known as Radiohead Likes ‘Im (you lie, that was a year ago?). Here is the tracklist, courtesy of my man Jugo:

(intro) from tape archive
Scorn – Doors – Hymen
DBit – Kero mix – R.A.S.
Autechre – Laughing Quarter – Warp
British Murder Boys – Splinter – Downwards
Aphex Twin – Vordhosbn – Warp
Paul Damage – Passing By – HOG
The Bug – Killer – Razor X
Squarepusher – Red Hot Car – Warp
British Murder Boys – Anti Inferno – Counterbalance
Throbbing Gristle – Persuasion (Motor remix) – NovaMute
Tony Rohr + Paul Birken – Lofishizzy – Remains
Cane – Fall – Arcola
British Murder Boys – Unreleased
Aphex Twin – Ventolin – Warp
Scorn – Sleep When Home – Hymen
Archae + Grovskopa – Elements (unreleased) Emergence
British Murder Boys – Father Loves Us – Counterbalance
Curve – Falling Free – Aphex Twin Remix
Eight Frozen Modules – Datacasting – Orthlorng Musork
Brothomstates – Rktic – Arcola
Monolake – Invisible – Monolake
British Murder Boys – Don’t Give Way To Fear – Counterbalance
Whitehouse – Dumping the Fucking Rubbish – Susan Lawly
Autechre – Second Bad Vilbel – Warp
Vex’d – Canyon – Subtext
Scorn – Snow Hill – Hymen
Surgeon – Klonk (part2) – Dynamic Tension
British Murder Boys – Don’t Give Way To Fear – Counterbalance
Monolake – Linear – Monolake
Eight Frozen Modules – A Low Bite Riddim -Planet Mu

Looks good, right? Word. Only problem is I can’t/won’t break into the packaging to get to the musical oyster inside. As you can see above, it’s something of an origami torture device and, while I’m sure I can get into it, I am not confident I could ever reseal it. I’d probably break it anyway. And, as you can also tell above, it’s well limited and I especially don’t want to muck it up on account of this artificially imposed value of ownership.

I’ll let you know how I get on. But I would surely never download it or owt.

Serious note: I really haven’t downloaded it. Nor did I upload it. But I figured, seeing as there’re only a thou in the world I might as well link to a file someone else uploaded so the world doesn’t miss out on the compage. If Surgeon or anyone wants it taken down I’ll do so. ‘Ere endeth the legal bidneth.

On Being a Setanta Customer

I’m with Virgin for my cable telly. I’m sure there are benefits to this situation (other than not having to have big black cable – oo-er – snaking round the outside of my house a la Sky), but it initially meant being stripped of two of my favourite shows, Lost and 24. OK, I thought. At least I have Prison Break. Then Sky got that. Nice one Branson. It does mean I get Setanta, though, which is reasonably good, and free.

At first I was pretty chuffed with this most recent acquisition: as well as such niche excellence as the occasional UFC event and Australian Rugby League, I got to see some full Premier League football matches. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t have to go to a crap pub for that fix. However, time passes and a certain truth rears, to paraphrase Living Colour, its ugly head.

After a period of both watching the Setanta Premiership matches while also attending the aforementioned horrid pubs (they being either dingy chain faux-traditional ‘Oirish’ pubs or else gleaming glass ‘n’ steel structures as soulless as the Razorlight fans who populate them), it became upsettingly blatant that the evil Murdoch was sorting fans out with much better matches than the evil… Des Lynam?

I can forget about watching matches between the Big Four sides (for those who know even less than me about football, i.e. nobody, they are Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United) – or even between top six sides, for that matter. No, the best we can expect is a Big Four side playing a relative no-mark team on Saturday early evening. And you get used to it, like some kind of televisual battered wife. Of course, if that match involves Arsenal it’s not so bad because I can watch them weave their magic with glee any day.

It does mean, though, that the Setanta viewer sucks up whatever morsels they can; this brings us to yesterday. I was invited to Harrogate to attend a friend’s birthday festivities and felt a pang of disappointment that I would be missing out on – wait for it – Manchester United (Scum) vs. Newcastle. For anyone who doesn’t know, I am a Leeds United fan and only watch Scum matches on the off-chance they might lose. Still a match is a match and the pang, however miniscule, was felt.

Illustration of how foolish my panging was: Scum, much as I hate to say it, has found form after a hilariously shaky start to the season. Their defence is solid, and they have large threat up front in the form of Christiano Ronaldo, Carlos Teves and, to a lesser extent, Wayne Rooney. They score a lot, are infuriatingly consistent, are the defending champions and – as of yesterday morning – two points behind leaders Arsenal.

Newcastle United on the other hand is dismally bad. Watching them in the last couple of months I am amazed they managed to scrape together twenty-six points thus far this season. They drew with bottom side Derby County on December 23rd and lost to 17th-placed Wigan at home. To make matters worse, they are currently – after the ditching of human cane toad Sam Allardyce – without a manager. And they were playing Scum at the fortress that is Old Trafford.

So the fact I even wanted to watch this match, a match in which Scum were likely to smash Newcastle (I predicted 4-0), is a resounding illustration of how desperate the Setanta viewer is for football. And I don’t even like Newcastle.

While in Harrogate, the home of fantastic pastry (and other stuff) shop Weeton’s and numerous middling drinking establishments (including Montey’s ‘Rock Café’. Sorry, if you play Keane, you have to remove the word ‘rock’ from your moniker), someone with a much posher phone than me took a look at the results. Arsenal was held to a draw at home to stupid Birmingham, which didn’t bode well for the inevitable Scummage; it was worse than I thought.

With a Ronaldo hat-trick among the goals, Scum beat Newcastle 6-0, sending them to the top of the Premiership and a message to all the other teams. So in summation my decision to go out was a good one (how depressing would it have been to watch that match), and Setanta viewers are desperate to watch top-flight football. Even if it is the worst possible top-flight match to see. Also: I reckon that, wherever they finish in the table, Newcastle should be automatically relegated at the end of this season for their general crapness. Unless they suddenly become amazing and shoot to sixth place or something, but that’s just not happening.

Or is it?

No.

Dedicated to the memory of, though making no implications about stylistic/qualitative parity with, the majestic Woebot. There will not be another blogger as good as him.

* * *


I was walking home from work the other night and had thankfully remembered the iPod, unlike the night before when I managed to get locked out of the house. I got it in 2005, so it’s a Mini and looks gigantic compared to the relative condom wrapper that is the new Nano. (I am ashamed to admit that, even though the storage is less than my current model, I covet the Nano so much. Jobs, I know you’re reading this. Get it sent.)

Obviously the only way to go is to shuffle the tracks, so that is what I did. Given that I am almost entirely done with mp3 (literally entirely when it comes to home use), I have given up on putting new – to me – music on it and have opted, Grandad style, for some old faves. I came to the realisation some months ago that the only type of music which even half-works on mp3 is of the high-energy kind, so I have gone to town. Andrew W.K., Captain Ahab, Be Your Own Pet, Converge, Coalesce et al… even semi-forgotten family favourites like NOFX and Rocket From The Crypt! Deciding that this is blatantly the way to go, I am going to fill the iPod with – as I should have done a long time ago – such music. It’ll be a proper portable jukebox, rather than an obelisk with which I attempt to get into new music. I have the turntable for that.

Anyway, the walk home was satisfying indeed as I steamed about to the favourites and some lost gems. I assume I am the only person here who remembers ‘Here and Now’ by Letters To Cleo, let alone fondly. But it came on and I loved it like the twee early nineties indie head that I really am, deep down. And on I marched til I reached the home stretch, with that odd winter-pedestrian feeling of a boiling hot core, warm headphone ears and freezing extremities. Coalesce was the current jam and it was awesome. It was the opener to their sarcastically-monikered Noisecore swansong classic 0:12 Revolution in Just Listening from 1999, ‘What Happens on the Road Always Comes Home’.

Knowing it was on shuffle, I was ruing the lack of the songs follow-up ‘cowards.com’ before the former had even finished. Nothing, I internally reasoned, could follow this. A song came on (as is bound to happen in such situations) and it was largely unfamiliar rap, though with a great beat. I decided not to skip. That voice was strangely familiar and the track compelling. That’s it, I decided. I’m going to see who this is and get their album bought on 12″.

Turns out it was Cenobites, one of Kool Keith’s many projects. Good fucking luck.

Albums in the year 2007

As opposed to ‘Albums of the Year 2007‘, on account of this isn’t a finished list. It’s just a list of how things apparently stand at the end of the calendar year, having not heard certain things I really want to, but while still wanting to do something timely for once. Rest assured, it will soon be 2005 once more. Then I might do 2007 before 2006 to maintain at least some semblance of zeitgeist. So here is a top ten, with brief notes.

01. Dillinger Escape Plan Ire Works

Not as much of a leap from earlier albums as I’d hoped, but they do the speedy stuff as well as ever (OK, not as well as they did on Under the Running Board), and the slightly ‘braver’, rocky, stuff is fantastic. The last song on the album is seriously the best new song I have heard all year.

02. The Wildhearts The Wildhearts

I didn’t think it would get topped for a while there, but then I thought the same thing about Melt-Banana so what can you do. The album flags a bit near the end, but the first half is so good (in a bizarro stuck-in-time kinda way) that it doesn’t really matter. When everything is either Nemo or drone, it’s great to hear some prog-thrash–pop–metal.

03. World’s End Girlfriend Hurtbreak Wonderland

I don’t listen to this kind of ‘post rock’ any more. And at eighty minutes it’s way too long. That said, WEG regularly attains heights of tender beauty the likes of Sigur Ros will never again reach and Arcade Fire/Explosions In The Sky et al never would anyway. The quality has outed! And what a surprise that it was someone Japanese.

04. Melt-Banana Bambi’s Dilema

Speaking of the greatest rock nation in the world, here’s Melt-Banana. Have to admit I slightly over-killed on mp3 before the album came out, but this poppiest album from the band is still a catchy adrenaline rush that is still as heavy as one would want it to be. Bubblegum grindcore!

05. Pig Destroyer Phantom Limb

Speaking of grindcore, there’s this lot. Having not yet received my Baroness vinyl, I have no idea whether this is the best album of the year with Baizley artwork, but it is fantastic anyway, as well as being smart, horrible and technically pretty dazzling. It’s a bit of a shame the metal media is trying to suggest this as some form of all-time grindcore highpoint (as though Brutal Truth and Discordance Axis never happened), but it’s thrilling and not too long.

06. Boxcutter Glyphic

This is one of a few albums for which I have written initial blog thoughts, but further thoughts indicate it is rather disappointing on side one/some of two, but really opens up into cool musical shapes as the record goes on. Whether this was a result of Barry not wanting to initially alienate fans of the first album or what I don’t know, but I do think it’s the superior album to Burial at the moment (as I admittedly did with their debuts at this time last year). Very good stuff that could end up being considered Boards Of Canada-level-ish.

07. Bloody Panda Pheromone

Still waiting for a vinyl release of this one, therefore I have yet to buy it. However from listens to bogus mp3 files on duff speakers, I am digging this a great deal. What’s not to love about slowcore bludgeon riffola while a strange woman screams the lyrics in a style somewhere between a black-metal dude and the late, great Johnny Morrow? Pithy Kerrang-style lazy comment: it’s Melt-Banana’s secret mutant sibling that’s been locked in the attic all its life!!!???!!?!

08. Shining Grindstone

Like the Jaga album in 2005, this was a great early contender for album of the year whose excellence has not at all dissipated over the subsequent months. Weirdly Dillingerish offering from the bombastic arm of the Norwegian jazzrock crew, this album is both testing and sumptuous. A touch cold at times, but that just bolsters the cool-Scandinavian aesthetic.

09. Burial Untrue

Said stuff about this tres recently pon de blog, so read that. This is great. ‘Archangel’ and ‘Raver’ especially. If for whatever reason you haven’t yet heard this album, these be the songs in which to dip toes.

10. Mira Calix Eyes Set Against the Sun

Had to mention this one really, especially seeing as it seems to have got no press at all (so apols to The Tuss, Landstrumm and Villalobos, who all just miss out on the ten. But try to have a good new year boys). Musically like the best possible Liars album – well, about on a par with Drum’s not Dead, probably – this one really stretches out over its four sides of too-good-to-be-bog-standard-120g vinyl. Despite the end of the nineties seeing Mira making clonky noise electro, this is more tender, like an idyllictronic take on what Leila was doing on Courtesy of Choice. A new Leila album would be nice…