So, bogwitch has been getting me into New Wave recently, ever since I found myself listening to a load of it on the American Airlines 80s radio channel... I was convinced that this stuff sounded dead on trend and something was going on with it. Turns out I was right! As my Rough Trade Synth Wave 10 album put me on towards, there is some sort of scene happening, possibly taking the name coldwave or minimal wave, following what to my knowledge are long defunct descriptors of early post-punk. Very excited about this! (And don't worry, will stop talking wank about genres now.) There's a whole world to explore, but currently I'm in love with Led Er Est, who sound a bit like Theatre of Hate would if they'd come from Brooklyn and ditched the saxophones for gameboy-dodgy synth and more groovy lines. Really it's just the vocals. Anyway, this is a track off their album from last year:



and this is a more boppy track of greatness from their 2009 outing (though everything I have says it's called Poll Gorm, not Poll Grom):



ETA: And this is why all the hipster bands are starting to record on cassettes! It all makes sense... Alas, no cassette player for me; not hipster enough, clearly.

Crystal Castles had a new album out recently, it seemed worth mentioning that this song is a triumph beyond triumphs. It's all about the slow, smooth baseline and the echo chamber of everything else.



(The image of the video doesn't change, by the way; it's an unbleached version of the photo from the album cover.)

I can't really name any other standout songs from the album, but that's fairly par for the course with CC, it seems (and I definitely rate the album). I wish they'd set their vision a bit bigger than individual songs, because I would be in love with a proper twenty minute EP or some such. They're clearly developing (and I love the fact, just discovered, that (III) was made without computers), but the songs are still very much one idea played with for a few minutes, when they could easily carry a bit more narrative.

ION I slightly hate last.fm. I had to remove the updated app they had me download, because it kept trying to interfere with iTunes in a way that Windows decided was too virus-like. So currently I have no record of listening habits. Ah well. No one really needs to know that I sat in the library with Simple Minds on repeat for four hours.

I need to leave for the library now, but I found this! Never seen it in full before. Have not got more than about five minutes through, but if you've never heard of Poly Styrene, at least the first part of this should tell you what an intelligent, thoughtful and generally lovely person she was was (RIP Poly :( ). Even if you also get the impression that, like a lot of us, she couldn't hold a tune if she couldn't hear herself over any background racket...



I wanna be instamatic
I wanna be a frozen pea
I wanna be dehydrated
in a consumer society

(^some of my favourite lyrics ever.)

ETA: Oh dear, this may well break your heart. I thought it must have been filmed before Poly left the public eye, but it seems to be more about her reflections on why fame is horrific... Watch at your own risk? I'm halfway through and it's definitely worth watching, but yeah, it's sad.

It wasn't shit. I actually liked it a lot! There were many delights to be had and I might actually go and watch it again now (at least the first bit, not the parade, nor the goo later, though that was pleasant enough at midnight). Macca ruined it at the end, as is his way, but the first section was very clever - I've been made to sing Jerusalem in school in my time and it was quite something to see it played out against the irony of history. With Branagh!Brunel and The Tempest, no less!

And I liked the bouncy beds and the GOSH children's stories. And all the music!! It was so nice to feel like there were people at the helm in the Boyle-Underworld team who knew where to go for a recent history of British music. I'm not even a big fan of Dizzee Rascal, but you can't really have a house party without him (and help me for recognising Tinie Tempah too). There nothing like the Pretty Vacant riff as a siren call...

And I thought the 7/7 memorial firey section was very well done (Emeli Sandé has a lovely voice), and I loooved the cycling birds. (Especially to the sound of the Arctic Monkeys! Not who I expect to pop up at an event like this, and so refreshing. Take note, you bookers of Gary effing Barlow.)

They had some very nice picks on the flag carriers. Shami Chakrabarti looked like she couldn't believe she'd been asked, and I couldn't quite either, but, yeah, she's who you want carrying a flag!

And someone somewhere made some excellent choices about how to do the whole torch-to-cauldron bit. Not least on the copper (best metal). ;)

(Still not going to watch any of the sport.)

ETA: Seriously, I cannot stop re-watching the Isles of Wonder/Pandaemonium opening segment. I'm not sure what other national pageants I've ever seen for the UK, but this is so captivating. That molten steel running down the shape of the Thames; the pantomime-monster-sized industrial looms. Maybe I'm just easily bought by slick and ironic literary references, but this is spectacle.

1. I take back everything negative I've ever said about Burial. All right, it's rare for me to be more into an artist's later stuff than earlier stuff, but I should have known better. Listening to tracks from 2007 is not enough!

2. I have finally found a track for the epic long-narrative/silent-movie-almost style vid concept I've been wanting to do for ages.

3. These things may be related.

4. Erm... When I appear with such an item in an unspecified number of months, people will be interested, right? It'll be Spuffy! At least in a parallel character study sense. Think of something like a sequel to 4'33", but less myopic.

Blergh... I don't want to do the boring bit where I work out which DVD chapters I want to rip as a starting point. Damn this complicated creative process...

I never did that meme that was going around last week or so(?) about various random personality bits and bobs, mostly because I didn't think my answers would be that interesting. (Although, for the record, when we did Pottermore at a friend's house I came out as Gryffindor - and I was quite happy about that. I don't think the others fit!) One thing that really struck me, though, was the number of people who said music wasn't especially important to them, because for me music is absolutely crucially crucial and has been for a long time.

This then got me thinking about various teenage obsessions I had, which brought me back, after a long absence, to AFI - and Black Sails in the Sunset on Grooveshark. There was a time when I was fourteen/fifteen or so that I was convinced that this was the best record in existence, completely and utterly. (And I thought the album cover was a thing of beauty too.) The fact it's not on my iPod and therefore inaccessible to me not via Grooveshark is evidence of how much I dropped it and AFI after I realised I couldn't take any of the horrifically emo lyrics seriously anymore, but it's so weird listening to it now. For a start, it's pretty damn impenetrable - on the first listen through I had absolutely no idea what had attracted me to it at all - but now, as I readjust to the ever-present cymbals, I can hear all the musical turns that I loved... Which is such a bizarre feeling.

The album came out in 1999, and you can really hear that in retrospect. Clove Smoke Catharsis, for example, has some turns that I recognise from things like the Lostprophets' first (and only good :P) album (oh, Shinobi vs Dragon Ninja... Thefakesoundofprogress still defines when I started being a person, in my mind), but I think had entirely vanished in rock music by the late 2000s, which, actually, was all pretty retro by comparison. Now that I can divorce myself from the embarrassment of thinking Black Sails' lyrics were any good, I find the whole thing a really fascinating snapshot of how my tastes expressed themselves back in the day. Because I definitely still like my speed and my harmonies and my syncopation and my cadences, and this is so dense with them.

Anyway, I don't really know where this is going, but it's definitely strange being able to look at this stuff with distance. I used to go to and from school with my CD Walkman, not bothering to change which album I was listening to for days/weeks at a time and I can remember these songs going round and round and round as I trudged back home up the hill with my bag and my viola and my PE kit and my tech folder. No Poetic Device is really not that great a song, but it still puts a smile on my face (even with the emooooo lyrics), because I remember how it used to make me perk up every time it came round on shuffle. And then I get to the massively emo God Called in Sick Today and remember that, oh yeah, 'filigree' is still one of my favourite words...

I'm not sure I'd recommend the album anymore - unless you too feel really emo and want something that will make you feel like random Californian musicians understand. At the same time, it does make me think that guitar music these days is very dull indeed. I mean, what would the equivalent be? Who's looking after the emo!teens now? Where are the Bullet for My Valentine-type bands, which I scorned so hard by 2005, but who were still providing a service (I link to the only song of theirs I ever confessed to finding catchy)? Am I completely missing all the alternative bands out there, or is it true that all the teens are listening to Deadmau5 and Skrillex? I like my electro, but it all seems a bit sad. Where's all the death and pain and blooood gone?

In other news, I'm bored of my music collection and want moooaaaaar, but am generally dissatisfied by what's out there. If you're not that into music, be glad this is a restlessness you never have to experience! :D

So, my Easter weekend can be summed up by easily boilable carbohydrate things, writing and computer games. Yep. Oh, and Tchaikovsky. A lot of Tchaikovsky.

I keep opening up this window trying to come up with something more to say about that, and a witty way of turning the anecdote about the group of classicists who decided to go into the library on Good Friday only to end up in the common room for most of the afternoon watching supergreatfriend's Let's Play: Deadly Premonition and my ensuing roller coaster ride through the videos over the next three days, but that's pretty much all there is to say.

Currently 44,000 words into what will hopefully be a completed longfic thing for seasonal_spuffy and have hassled bogwitch with 30,000 words of it. At least that chunk makes a rough Part I that I could post if all else went wrong. Need to get the rest out, though.

Also: new things you learn everyday about US vs. UK idiom. Dish towels instead of tea towels? I think I knew this anyway, but that was annoying to have to Wiki when it sounded wrong in Buffy's voice. And I have always wondered what 'rappelling' is. Turns out it's just abseiling - who knew? Why can't I write for a British fandom...??

But I feel like I haven't posted in ages, so I am posting. Here is some stuff:

1) Just played Holst's The Planets in a concert. Venus was a shambles (at least for the viola section), but Jupiter was great. It's my favourite planet and my favourite movement and even though the big tune mostly sounds indulgent and overplayed whenever I hear it about the place, playing the viola part right in the middle of the suite is a wonderful and lovely feeling. Especially since our conductor was keen to have the first time through restrained and reflective - by the time we were in the upper register it was all sad and slightly hopeless, heading straight towards Saturn - before we were back in jollity again. Good stuff.

2) Am quite miffed that I can't yet watch the third episode of Melvyn Bragg's series on Class and Culture, which like The Tube series I mentioned last time(?) has become the closest thing to must-see TV I have at the moment. You may well ask when the last time I watched a drama series was, but I feel like documentaries that cover literary culture are so rare that I want to just gobble this one up (and all it's other culturey bits) with a big spoon.

3) Just signed up for seasonal_spuffy, which means getting the third part of my alt S6 AtS crossover thing done in time. Even though it's apparently going to be long. But I'm looking forward to that; just need to write it.

4) Everyone should come and play Prompt Tag with us at sb_fag_ends, because bouncing off other people's ideas is highly amusing! I wrote a fic.

Yes, this would be the weekend of a massive slew of Spikeid stuff from me! Although this is something like a teaser, really. ;)

I put half this soundtrack up a while ago, but I think it's easier to have it all in one place, which is why it's all here again. The only thing I have to apologise about is that my copy of Take the Veil by The Mars Volta got a scratch on it back in about 2005, but it doesn't affect the song too much, I hope.

( I-VI )

( VII-XII )

[Play/Download at Box.net]
(where you can also find the minimix I made for stultiloquentia when I did that minimix meme thing)

I couldn't be bothered to type, but my WiFi couldn't cope with being useful for enough time to upload a whole ramble, so here I am in selected tracks. And we've got a video! /Young Ones

Me on Clermont-Ferrand (and Subway).
Me on the course (and the video - see below).
Me on where I'm living (and the availability of Tyrell's Crisps).
Some fandomy sort of stuff (and the Jardin Lecoq...).

Video! As I say, sad but catchy.



(Please do still listen and talk to meeeeeee...!!)