Category: Music

As an avid producer and consumer of music, I made this.

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Music

Not Aquamarine

For many years now, periodically I’ve had a very annoying earworm. It’s an [808 State][] song featuring James Dean Bradfieldwho, incidentally, has my least favourite voice in the world singing *”Aquamarine, everything vanishes,”* something something something. A song called *Aquamarine*, obviously.

As you are probably aware, there are two ways to rid yourself of an earworm. The first is to replace it with something even more infectious. This is often counterproductive, as you end up with *Show Me Love* by Robyn S in your head. The second, and usually less stressful way, is to listen to the actual original recording of the earworm itself, and this will usually magickally purge it from your system. It’s a kind of closure.

As a result, the number of times I’ve typed stuff like intitle:"index of" mp3 aquamarine "808 state" into Google is, by now, phenomenal.

Today, while furtling with [Rhythmbox][], I discovered that I had another song by 808 State featuring James Dean Bradfield. *”Well,”* I thought, *”he must have done two songs with them. Aquamarine and this one, Lopez. Wonder what Lopez sounds like.”*

Well, spank my nose and pack me in bubblewrap, you’ll never guess what happened.

Go on. Guess.

[rhythmbox]: http://www.gnome.org/projects/rhythmbox/
[808 state]: http://www.808state.com/

Categories
Music Original Music

He, Too, Devours Particles

I’ve thrown together another little song for you to download and listen to.

Please note that this is not my usual singing voice. I’m not even sure what my usual singing voice **is** anymore.

Listen at last.fm

Categories
Music Original Music

A little ditty

I’m trying something a little different here. The song is called “Sliding Gracefully Into Partially Frozen Malaise” and can be listened to at last.fm.

Categories
Displeasure Music

Tale Of Pod

Apple Will Eat Itself

AWEI by Craig Ward used with permission.

*AKA Waiting For Podot (groan)*

Karen has a pink iPod Mini, and it’s given us problems. Periodically, it will suffer from a major identity crisis, and believe that it is a fish. Or a banana. We’re not exactly sure what it thinks that it is, but it is definitely under the impression that it belongs to a species that does not possess the ability to play music.

This came on gradually. Initial symptoms were a kind of iPod amnesia, where it was still aware of its purpose in life, but it couldn’t remember any of the songs that it had been taught. We discovered an arcane magic spell that we could work on it, a kind of vulcan nerve pinch, that was the metaphorical cartoon sledgehammer required to remind it of its past.

This then degenerated into an iComa, where even long periods on a life support machine were insufficient to awaken it. No light came from its precious little screen. So we sent it back to Apple, the iGod, if you will.

It was returned a few days later. They said that there was nothing wrong with it. However, when I slapped it in the face to rouse it, the face that looked back at me was blank. Sure, it lived in the same body, but they had done something to the little fella to change it forever. Some demonic brainwash or the like. We painstakingly began the process of teaching it everything about the world all over again.

But it did not last. Only a few weeks have passed, and it is comatose once more. I await a response from the iGod. I grow iRate. It wasn’t mean to be this way.

Categories
About Me My Bands

A brief history of Shiny Tight Stuff

Foundation (to 9 months)

Shiny Tight Stuff is the name of the band that I formed with my friend Craig at the end of 1997. A few months earlier I had bought my first bass guitar, after years of listening to music and imagining that I was up there on stage. I realised that there was no reason why it shouldn’t be me, and so I took the plunge. It was only a matter of weeks later that Craig, motivated by my own bravery, decided to get a guitar and join the fray. It was on the 27th December 1997 that I was idly flicking through a video games magazine in Craig’s bedroom, and I remarked “I wish I had a girlfriend so that I could make her wear shiny tight things.” Craig responded “Shiny Tight Things would be a good name for a band.” Hold on, we thought – we’re a band… kinda. In fact, the only thing stopping us from being a band at this stage was the fact that we didn’t have a name. Literally within minutes, we realised that by giving ourselves a name, we could legitimately claim to be in a band, and impress the girlies. Initially Shiny Tight Things, we took a poll amongst our friends and agreed that Shiny Tight Stuff was marginally catchier.

Continue reading “A brief history of Shiny Tight Stuff”
Categories
Music Music reviews

Some Recent Listening

Here’s some stuff that I’ve been listening to lately.

Brassbound **Brassbound** by *The Ordinary Boys*

I should let you know that I don’t change the CD in the car very often. As a general rule, I’m so eager to either (a) get to work or (b) get back home again, that it never quite seems to be the right time to go through the rigmarole of opening the glove box, getting a CD out, performing the changeover routine, blahblahblah. This particular album, however, was sufficient to set a new record – I could only listen to it one-and-a-half times before my brain said No more! and I involuntarily but willingly ejected it from the system. I ejected the CD – not my brain.

This album is completely pointless. It’s unoriginal ska-pop that just treads a load of boards that made a rather nasty squeaking sound first time around. I had heard of this band before, but it wasn’t until after *Celebrity Big Brother* ended that I thought to myself, hey that Preston fella wasn’t completely repellent, I wonder what his band sounds like.

Well, short-lived that was.

Trouble **Trouble** by *Ray LaMontagne*

This, however, is superb. I do most of my listening to music whilst I’m pootling about on the computer, reading weblogs and writing PHP and fiddling about with CSS. Every once in a while, I find myself listening to an album that is so poignant and rich with sound that I hit the switch on the monitor, and allow myself to do nothing but listen for the next 45 minutes. This is one of those albums.

Fabulous voice, fabulous songwriting. This is everything that I thought [O][] by *Damien Rice* would be, until I discovered upon continued listening that it was shit.

[o]: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000AXKRB/

The Back Room **The Back Room** by *Editors*

There are one of two possibilities here. Either I’ve only listened to this album twice, or I’ve listened to it a dozen times but it’s so unimpressive that I’ve not noticed. The singles seem to be reasonably catchy, but the overall effect is early Coldplay with larger testicles – not enough to really twizzle my goatee. This might be one of those albums that needs to be played in the car. Tell you what, I’ll make a note, do that, and then get back to you.

Supernature **Supernature** by *Goldfrapp*

Ah, *Goldfrapp*. *Goldfrapp* have never, to my knowledge, disappointed. Alison just gets hotter and hotter, and the music – well, I suppose the music does too. I should make a date to go to a *Goldfrapp* gig, I really should.

There is a but. The first song was used on a mobile phone commercial. If it was the second song, or the third song, then that would be fine, but I find myself wondering whether I’ve put on the *Goldfrapp* album, or if a commercial break just started. This is bad for me, and bad for *Goldfrapp*, but probably quite good for the mobile phone company in question.

Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not **Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not** by *The Arctic Monkeys*

This is a tragic tale of *Libertines* proportions. *The Arctic Monkeys* are good, really good. This album is good, really good. But it just can’t cope under the weight of everything that’s going on in its name. Some people would call it hype, but it’s not. It’s more like a religion. This band have a lot of peoples’ hopes riding upon them, and I don’t think that they’re up to it. They are drowning in their own gimmick, and the Pandora’s Box-esque nature of things means that this fabulous new way of getting yourself heard will very quickly be hijacked and controlled by the players in The Industry, and the only thing that will have changed will be the brand of clothes being worn by the guy who is making millions off of your effort.

If I sound cynical and pessimistic, then I apologise. This is the end result of years of analysis and pessing. I don’t pess lightly. My pesses have been thought about at length.

Plans **Plans** by *Death Cab for Cutie*

I’m not au fait with the whole history of *Death Cab For Cutie*. In my cybertravels, I often stumble across mentions of them here, there and everywhere. Generally, these mentions seem to be about who they are, and why they are, and some television program called *The O C*, and there is precious little mention of the music. This album, for those who are interested, is a collection of mainly exceptionally good songs, with some slightly dull ones that don’t really ruin things too much. There is some very competent songwriting ability in evidence here.

I think that’s it for now.

Categories
Music

Warning of Impending Intelligence

Earlier today, I decided that I wanted to write about my band. In order to provide some context to my article (hereafter referred to as article A), I wrote a paragraph about who we were, what we were about, etc etc. But then it occurred to me that it would make sense to write two articles – a full history of the band (hereafter referred to as article H), and then the one which I originally set out to write (ie article A).

So I’ve written article H, but completely forgotten what article A was going to write about. What’s more, now that I look at article H, I find myself thinking that it’s just a little bit too detailed, and it would actually make more sense to just add relevant historical notes to article A, when I finally remember what article A was going to be about.

Watch this space.

Categories
Music Music reviews

Albums of the year

It’s been a good year for music, but I’m struggling to put together a “Top 10 albums of 2005” list, for the following reasons.

Firstly, lots of albums which I would have wanted to put on the list were actually released in 2004 or sooner, and I felt that including them would be dishonourable.

Secondly, there are a few albums which I haven’t really listened to enough to be certain of my opinion, so trying to slot them into the order would be hit and miss.

So I’ve decided to make a list of albums what I have liked, and very vaguely categorise them as follows:

**The Best**

* Arcade Fire – Funeral
* Rufus Wainwright – Want Two
* Hard-Fi – Stars Of CCTV

**The Good**

* Foo Fighters – In Your Honor
* Maximo Park – A Certain Trigger
* Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
* Elbow – Leaders Of The Free World

**The Rest**

* Beck – Guero
* Doves – Some Cities
* Franz Ferdinand – You Could Have It So Much Better
* Ben Folds – Songs for Silverman

*Originally posted here*

Categories
Music Original Music

Woodshedding

You may have noticed a phenomenal number of Shiny Tight Stuff songs slipping into my audioscrobbler playlist lately. This is because we have our next recording session coming up soon, and this time I am determined to do it right.

As our sessions have become more and more spread out, I have spent less time playing the bass. Until the session is a week away, I will generally forget to play, and so by the time we get round to the actual session, my hands are weak, relatively unco-ordinated, and my endurance is severely wanting.

This time, I’m making at least an hour available every evening for playing through the songs that we are in the process of recording or re-recording. This way, when it comes to the session, I hope to be tight and able to play through the songs without my hands getting tired. I’ve noticed a marked improvement in the quality of my bass playing over the course of the last few days – it’s much more relaxed, more groovy, there’s definite potential for it to slip really smoothly amongst the other instruments and provide a foundation that I can be proud of.

Karen, in the meantime, is neglected.

*Originally posted here*

Categories
Music Music reviews

Reading Festival 2005: Day 3

Slow start today. The number of bands playing today about whom we were enthusiastic in advance was less than previous days, probably mainly due to the silly heavy rock bands taking over the main stage.

We decided to start the day at the third stage, and the first band we saw were called Gratitude. The music wasn’t particularly remarkable, but the frontman was sensational. He was very talkative and inviting, spending a lot of time off the stage and stood on the fence before the front row, and he drew a very healthy sized crowd. This enabled him to crowd surf, which he did multiple times. At the end of the set he then climbed down into the crowd with a box of the band’s CDs, to shake hands, say hello, and sell some discs. The crowd followed him like a swarm of flies. I was most impressed. I’d speculate that this guy has a certain star quality. Which, as we know, counts for a lot in this world.

Continue reading “Reading Festival 2005: Day 3”