time to pretend

Watch out, I'll turn up when you least expect it.

Wiley - Wearin My Rolex
Sparks - Beat the Clock

These New Puritans at Bush Hall

I've just seen These New Puritans play their new album 'Hidden' more or less in its entirety. The gig started off with a gentle sort of elegy on woodwind and brass. 'Has somebody died?' the drunk boy beside me asked, before optimistically shouting 'play Elvis!'. 

What followed was an hour of beautiful dissonance - Jack Barnett flailing around as if in a trance, backed by french horn, bassoon, and an absolutely enormous drum that their drummer bet furiously with what looked like a giant club. They sounded like a deranged marching band, with glimmers of Mahler, the Kinks and god knows what else.

An early favourite from the new album is 'Attack Music' which combines a childrens choir with the sound of knives being sharpened - enjoy!

These New Puritans - Attack Music 

‘Oh, look it’s the Gameboy guy’

I went to a party last night and one of my friends started telling me about Dj Scotch Egg, a peculiar performer who he'd seen in Leeds a few years ago. The unusual thing about Scotch Egg, apart, obviously, from his name, was that he Dj'd off a gameboy. I was sceptical at first when told he used to habitually throw scotch eggs at the crowd on the dancefloor, but having seen some videos of him in action I'm inclined to believe it. Here he is exploring his love-hate relationship with Kentucky Fried Chicken.





Today I had planned to write about David E Sugar, who, I just discovered, also uses a gameboy (rewired as a sequencer) to make his music. His first record came out on a Leeds based label, so perhaps he knows Mr Scotch Egg. 

Both were part of the chip music scene when it became super trendy in the early-mid-noughties. Both reference food in their names. According to his website Scotch Egg's debut album was recorded over an intensive 30 day period, in which he consumed only KFC products. Listening to Sugar's music it seems plausible that he follows a similarly extreme diet, perhaps skittles and hawaiian punch powdered drink mix. His music often has a frantic beat, with thrilling bleeping synths and hangdog vocals, The Postal Service on amphetimines?  


    


David E Sugar - Medicine 
David E Sugar - To Yourself

...scat!

From Cleo Laine to the insane  Miss Kiki Du Rane - listening to Cleo yesterday got me thinking about Kiki and Herb, and in particular a little number off their very first record, from 1957, the Hazy Days of Kiki. Buy it here.


Kiki and Herb - The Paris Match

Bee bop bop ba da bo....

"Cleo Laine....you could play her a tune and she'd scat it right back in your face"

 

Cleo Laine, Southalls finest exponent of scat. What a voice. What a face. Cleo Laine, is 82 and still an amazing performer. The man playing sax in the first video is John Dankworth, her husband of 50 years.

Lady 'GayGay' - the backlash begins!

                                                                                (photo: Peter Fingleton)
GaGa's had it good so far. 2009 was the year when her cherry pie was forced relentlessly down our throats. Her face stared back at me from every newspaper and magazine I bought. Her music spread like wildfire, first taking hold in the gay bars, before going on to infect doctors' waiting rooms, supermarkets, elevators, dentists waiting rooms, airport baggage reclaim halls, telephone 'hold' lines.

Despite her growing ubiquity, she continued to enjoy a remarkably uncritical response from fans and the media as the year wore on. By Christmas she had begun to mirror the worst excesses of the medieval Roman Catholic church and was selling relics of herself. I mean, even the Catholics had the decency to wait until a saint died before hocking off bits of them. Soon, I told myself, the reformation would come. 

And it has, in the form of the Westboro Bapist Church (whilst not Gaga-bashing they're often seen sporting placards of the 'Thank God for AIDs' and 'God Hates FAGS' variety). Their song 'Whore-ish Face' strips away the mask to reveal GaGa as the filthy god hating fag-enabler that she is. Go sing it from the mountain children!

Westboro Baptist Church - Whoreish Face

Do you wanna funk? C U Next Tuesday!

It's that time of year when the decisive bloggers are compiling their "best of 09" lists - something that's completely beyond me. But if I was trying to round up my favourite songs I'd definitely use a lasso...

Phoenix - Lasso 

Ok, I'm afraid the puns aren't going to get any better because I have to mention that I'm djing at C U Next Tuesday tomorrow night at Crawdaddy. I've only experienced C.U.N.T. twice and I have to say, I found it very funky. Third time's the charm.

I've been listening to the lovely Fly Girls! album that's out on Souljazz Records, and getting into all those early female hip hop artists who broke open the industry for the likes of Missy Elliott. Back in the 80's it wasn't easy to be a funky bitch with a filthy mouth. Artists like JJ Fad and Princess MC took on the misogyny of mainstream 80's hiphop and showed the b boys where to stick it.


JJ Fad - Blame it on the Musik

Princess MC - Pump Up the Funk

Missy Elliott - Lose Control (Mr Oizo bootleg)