Your Weekend

FRIDAY

Get down early for Caught Ship, they're new and sound totally class.

SATURDAY

Get down early, it's all totally class (and I'm playing tunes at 4.30).

SUNDAY
Take it easy, swoon -

Fievel - Go West - Free Download

Fievel are a Melbourne duo who make addictive electronic pop songs, using only a selection of samplers and live drums. They have very kindly made their new Ep, Go West, available to download and it's a beauty. Clearly influenced by the usual suspects from the Warp roster but also, to my ear anyway, acts like Cold Cave and Matthew Dear. So you get all the beats and squelches you would expect from those references but there is also something more plaintive and heartfelt here that you do not normally find in electronic music. A lot of this has to do with singer Tristan's voice, which whether falsetto-inflected on Tonight or strained almost to supplication on the sublime I Used To, carries something cathartic in it, and with the live drums, humanizes the songs. That is not to say that the instrumental tracks are robotic or sterile though, Swap Shop is a downtempo gem and Tumbleweed closes the Ep like the dreams of an exhausted child.

With releases from Love Connection, Rat vs. Possum and the Tantrums all due by the end of the year, it's an exciting time for esoteric sections of the Melbourne scene, but they're going to have to work hard to better this left-field sleeper. All in all, Fievel have quietly produced this year's Delays.

Download here and catch Fievel at Fermez la Bouche on the 17th October.

Spring Tones

I don't think anyone needs reminding that Spring Tones is on tomorrow but here is another one just in case. There are some great gigs coming up in Melbourne but it is hard to see how any could challenge this for gig of the year - prove me wrong Animal Collective, Lightning Bolt, Why?, Chillwave, etc.

I'll be djing in the Snowflake room from 11, between Mark Barrage and Aoi and then keeping the party going after Hawnay Troof destroys the place, so come dance!

Deformative Mixtape

I finally got around to doing a mix on my shitty litte Gemini all-in-one yoke. I don't have much of a clue how to mix and I'm not even sure if it's possible to 'mix' this kind of stuff but I'm pretty happy with the ideas behind it, if not the execution (clipping, pauses, misuse of pitch-bend). Anyway, it should serve its purpose and give a good idea of the kind of stuff I play. This mix includes thrash-dance from Belfast (above), Johnny Jewel's new project, Electronic Body Music, Italian Horror soundtracks, angry Mexicans, ex-members of the Make-Up and Weird War going disco and other good stuff.

Tracklisting:

1. Goblin - Opening to the Sighs
2. Not Squares - Bi Ka Na
3. Los Microwaves - Forever
4. Excepter - Kill People
5. Cap Pas Cap - We Are Men
6. Liaisons Dangereuses - Los Ninos Del Parque
7. Duchess Says - Tenen Non Neu
8. Detachments - Fear No Fear
9. Desire - Under Your Spell
10. Ssion - Clown
11. XYX - Nunca Nunca
12. Publicist - Chain Gang
13. Medicine and Duty - Jury Rigged
14. Liquid Liquid - Sank Into the Chair
15. Hecuba - Suffering
16. Salem - Whenusleep

Download here.

Go Check Out Lost Boy

My coolest discovery of the week is definitely Lost Boy. He isn't doing anything different at all - in fact what he is doing is very now - which basically means fast, fun, noisy pop music, like Wavves only not balls. It could well be that I will get bored with this in a few weeks or whatever but right now I'm finding it very endearing, great morning music when you are on holidays.

And there two extras +s: 1. He is ridiculously proficient.
2. He posts all this proficiency for free (along with his
other band, Boats) up here!

I haven't gotten through half of it yet but the album 1991 is pure gold!

Simo Soo//Keith! Party//Mickey Gloss//Deformative DJs

This is going to be a FUN gig, and it's in the Pony which rarely has FUN gigs.

Simo Soo is a bit of an oddball from Sydney playing Ipod-overdriven, attention-deficit noise-pop, I've been looking forward to catching him for awhile. Keith! Party are the perfect compliment to Simo's idiosyncratic noise and are debuting a new live DJ in Fletch. Mickey Gloss, also from Sydney, will be opening up proceedings but I know pretty much nothing about them, sorry. I'll be providing toons between bands and for a bit after until whoever the 2am monkeys are this week take over.

Oh, and apparently it's all going out live here - FUN!

PiL Reformation

For a short time, directly after leaving the Sex Pistols, John Lydon was one of the most respected men in music. The mainstream were still salivating at what the former Johnny Rotten could do to shock them next and the alternative community were quickly learning of Lydon's inner-aesthete - his disgust at the white-boy rock of the Sex Pistols and his desire push music into the unheard of territory originally espoused but never delivered upon by Punk. And he did this with Public Image Ltd. Few would deny the power of the first three PiL albums, especially Metal Box, and to varying degrees they remain as benchmarks of experimental music, all the more interesting because of the genuinely unique situation of the biggest rock star of the time collaborating with unknown and rather avant musicians, Keith Levene and Jah Wobble.

Of course, as it had to happen, PiL devolved into a hideous parody of themselves, with Wobble and Levene leaving after the second and third album respectively, leaving Lydon to amass increasingly ridiculous line-ups for increasingly terrible albums. And now, Lydon has announced plans to reform PiL for a series of concerts later in the year. Without Wobble or Levene who rightly want nothing to with it. Lydon has proved himself to be such a cock over the last few years that nobody is treating this as anything more than another desperate cash-grab, no different than the Sex Pistols reformation. We should not be surprised at this, so instead of annoyed ranting I'll end with Simon Reynolds' pertinent anti-epitaph to the once-great band from his brilliant Post-Punk document 'Rip it Up and Start Again':

'Towards the end of his PiL tenure, Levene had noticed a weird development: 'John Lydon sort of became Johnny Rotten again'...Living in America, Lydon found himself feted by awe-struck fans and courted by big-shot managers who encouraged him to exploit his legend to the hilt. Eventually he decided, or realized, that the Sex Pistols adventure was where his rock-myth bread was buttered. After Levene left, the ex-Pistol started to do something during PiL gigs he'd once sworn he'd never do again: sing 'Anarchy in the UK' and 'God Save the Queen'. A decade and a half later, he reformed the Sex Pistol as a touring nostalgia revue, reneging on absolutely everything PiL represented.'