The Sound of The Ladies

Ah. The world loves me again. Subba-cultcha featured a brief but very nice review of Scrape The Paint, which said “A gorgeous voice, and a set of songs awash with angst, pain and beauty… melancholy, minimalist and touching” which was really nice.

My life is turning into a causal loop. Oliver, who reviewed Scrape the Paint recently got in touch to mention his having seen me play at Robin Ince’s night, a couple of regulars at Robin’s night came to the gig I did with The Monroe Transfer tonight, which also featured Fireworks Night, whose keyboard player works with Olly Mann from Answer me This!, and while playing a Sound of The Ladies gig on Friday I bumped into Gemma Burditt, who created the animated film for The Monroe Transfer’s I dreamt I was a hammer and everything was glass and who, it turned out, knew the gig’s promoter, the lovely Tim Eveleigh. I’m becoming concerned that I basically know 3 people and they’re running around trying to look like a crowd. It looks as if that number is dwindling and soon everyone I know will be me in various hats. Finally we’ll reach a singularity of infinite interconnectedness, and achieve nirvana.

That’s the least likely endpoint of a record review I’ve ever heard.

Well, not the whole world. The whole world hasn’t heard of me. This is a long way of saying I got two bad reviews last week but as I always link to the biggups I get, I feel-duty bound to link to the slaggings too.

First up, I played at Robin Ince’s School for Gifted Children at the British Library last Tuesday, which was reviewed by Fazzington Wangpipe of Chortle.co.uk, the comedy website. While I appreciate that name-calling a comedy critic who’s given you a bad review is not the most grown up thing to do, neither is using the phrase “dirge-like” in a review of a musical act. Dr Wangpipe’s love of the very talented Gavin Osborn (new album out soon) convinced me that he is not a complete moron. Just. I’m not linking the review, you can find it yourself

Better written but still not really a fan of The Sound of The Ladies is the 405, who posted this review last week. I had a chat with the guy who runs the site, he’s a very nice man, Mr Jazzflaps. Kidding! His name’s Oliver Primus, and although not loving Scrape the Paint, he does run a cool site, so check it out. Don’t listen to his review though, check out the EP yourself! Who’s right, you or those fuckers who want to tell you what to think? Uh, sorry, channeling a bit of Hicks there…

Hopefully next week the world will love me again…

The lovely people at Music is Power podcast recently featured The Clouds at the Top of the Sky in one of their episodes. It reminds me to give a shout out to Penny Broadhurst, who featured the same track on her podcast a couple of months ago - at a time when I wasn’t updating my blog very regularly… thank you the internets for liking clouds so much!

Thanks again to Cris Tanzi, this time for providing the below video snippet from our gig together in Brighton last month. This is a bit of Deep Dish, which is on the new EP, and the latest podcast. Sorry the video’s so dark, it was a very brooding performance and it sucked all the light out of the room like some kind of an indie event horizon.

…or swear like a cussbox. Your choice. That was my experience trying to record a new song called “<hand punches air>” this evening when I was far too tired, and my telecaster bore the brunt of my frustration. My attitude towards recording is that it is to live performance as airfix modelling is to piloting a jet fighter. I can pontificate about this at length, but basically - it’s not really true, but with my time constraints that approach tends to work best for me. But this one really needs to be taken live - and I don’t know it well enough. And some of the lyrics and structure sucked, which is always a bitter pill to swallow. Take a step back, and then once more into the breach.

I’m hoping the song will be on the next podcast - it’s one of the most abstract storytelling songs (i.e. unrelated to my own experiences) I’ve done, and I like the story it tells. It’s got bits of Ursula leGuin, John Carpenter, HP Lovecraft and The Quiet Earth in it. Innit.

If you’re free on Thursday, come along to the White Hart in Whitechapel (the one at 1 Mile End Road) - I’m playing for my old chums, uberpromoters Bedsprings Acoustic. Rock.

I went down to Brighton last night to play a gig for the lovely chaps at Chimera Music thanks to the even lovelier Cris Tanzi and Alex Scutturo (sp?) allowing me gatecrash their booking… it was an “intimate” night (c’mon Brightonians, don’t tell me you’re all busy on a Wednesday night?) in a really lovely room. But: Do. Not. Eat. The. Food. At. The. Caroline. Of. Brunswick. And don’t order the burger unless you enjoy steak tartare. Here are Cris and Alex (l-r) rocking out, and the malevolent burger leering in the foreground.

Shout outs to Mark and Cindy (Mark is probably my most longstanding friend) for coming along, putting me up, feeding me pain au chocolat and reading my irises. People who know me know what a skeptical bastard I can be - but one has to temper unseemly scientific arrogance with a degree of open-mindedness, or one is massive prick. And the reading proved interesting. One point does not make a graph, but anyhoo… I’d like also to plug Mark’s blog, which careers wildly between anti-corporate politics, shiny shit and the RAC. Check it out.

Superman Revenge Squad in action

I’ve played two gigs since last I blogged, which is more than usual. The first was aforementioned in my last blog entry, playing at the Green Dragon in Croydon with the lovely De’borah and the somewhat lovely Superman Revenge Squad. As you may have gathered, SRS have become my new favourite band; Birthday Boy Ben Parker was joined by a drummer (in the form of his brother, Nosferatu D2 fans), accordionist, keyboard player/saxophonist and cellist. It was pretty fucking great. The Angriest Dog in the World nearly made Mark the Sound Man and me cry, and Ben very graciously played his song Pupkin * (which features an ungracious slagging of Billy Corgan), after I celebrated Ben’s birthday with a cover of Smashing Pumpkins’ Mayonnaise. Which is a brilliant song, even if Billy Corgan can get a bit full of himself. There’s always room for a little sentiment.

*that’s not a typo, the song’s also about Rupert Pupkin, Robert deNiro’s fame-seeking and deluded antihero in King of Comedy. Think All About Eve meets He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not… ok, maybe not that deluded. But it is kind of a weird coincidence, now I notice it…

If Ben will let me, I’ll put up a video of a bit of their set so you can get a very rough idea…

Last night I played at The Sleep of Reason, a literary/poetry/music night in Shoreditch after replying to a last-minute request from one of the organisers. I played completely unplugged, which I don’t do very often, and it was a lovely intimate vibe in this little basement place in Shoreditch. If you were there last night, thank you for coming along; I had to leave immediately after my set to record Answer Me This! in Crystal Palace, so I didn’t get a chance to see the other musician who was on, or the short story and poetry readings that were taking place. Next time!

Tomorrow night I’ll be playing with Superman Revenge Squad, aka Ben Parker and chums, on his birthday, at the Green Dragon in Croydon. This is an opportunity to say Happy Birthday and to plug his fantastic music. I recently went on a fairly hefty roadtrip to Edinburgh and back via various bits of central and west England, and his EP got played a few times. And a few times when I was back, at work. I really like it. I don’t know whether it’s fair to describe it as antifolk - most antifolk is bollocks, but SRS is what non-bollocks antifolk sounds like. He has a song about The Angriest Dog in the World, an obscure David Lynch cartoon (yup, look it up), and I think there’s one about how Billy Corgan is a dick. Or that might just have been a conversation I had with him… His website, supermanrevengesquad.com, has loads of free music and a blog. I recommend you head over there right now. And to the gig at the Green Dragon tomorrow night if you live in Croydon or environs.

Nick from the Monroe Transfer posted a wonderful blog entry about the joy of printing with a letterpress a while back. I’ve had little bit of experience with screenprinting my own T-shirts, but I’ve always used computery methods for doing CDs - but I have to say, this post has sold me on the value of analogue.

Last week, I had the good fortune to visit the Black Country Living Museum - because that’s how rock and roll I am. I would recommend it, if you’re in the midlands - I love a good working museum. Below you can see a movable type printing press in action:

The disc on the top of the machine is covered in ink; each printing cycle, it rotates slightly, so the ink remains homogenously applied across the disc. On the upward stroke, the rollers pass over the disc and are covered in ink; on the downward stroke, they roll over the type, which is mounted vertically. On the upward stroke, the piece of paper held in the front plate is pressed against the type; then the plate tilts back and the paper can be replaced, while the type is being re-inked.

The design is slightly different - the printing press in the video uses some kind of a flywheel and a footpedal for continuous operation, but otherwise this is identical to the device Nick uses. I love the fact that a design unchanged for 150 years is being used to press the new Monroe Transfer and Fireworks Night releases. That’s all really - enjoy the majesty of letterpress printing via the medium of youtube…

Beset by technical issues today. The best of myspace podcast episode 36 featured “The Clouds at the Top of the Sky”, but due to some technical snafu (probably originating from Yours Truly), featured it in slow motion. If you like the idea of my sounding like Johnny Cash on ludes, check out the original podcast - if not, the song is available in its original form, streamable on their website, along with a lot of other cool music… Thanks again to Gill and team for picking my track, they are men and women of wealth and taste and their site/podcast is a great place for finding new music.

Also, a plucky listener pointed out that I’ve bummed all the ID3 tags on “Scrape the paint”. By the time you read this, it should be fixed, hopefully. If you still have problems, give me a shout.

I just drove back from Edinburgh, home of the fringe/comedy festival. I’m not a stand up and I wasn’t performing at all this year, but I nevertheless find Edinburgh a very exciting time and very inspiring. Stand up comedy is that purest of art form, where you can take ideas from conception to delivery very quickly. Think a funny thing, say a funny thing. The only constraint is it being funny, which as it turns out it is a fairly broad church. In the day and a half I was at the festival I saw shows encompassing Hieronymus Bosch, fatherhood, sporting trivia, Brief Encounter, human rights, childhood prizes, collecting, cookery, wet dreams, music hall, and even the medium of stand up… and there’s a real feeling of creativity. It can be very easy to be cynical about the world of music, where fashion, money and the notion of credibility can be more important to somebody’s success than talent - stand-up appears to be mostly free of that sort of bullshit, and that inspires me to behave as if music is too.  And get on with some creative heavy lifting.