unpopular

Some Swedish news for you, courtesy of the very fabulous Friendly Noise label:

Friendly Noise celebrates its fourth birthday with a big happening
(aka FYN 35) in Gothenburg, in co-operation with Koloni. On Saturday 4
November, 20:00, at Underjorden in Gothenburg. Address: Brahegatan 11,
station: SKF, age: 20, entrance: SEK 60

This will happen
Live:

Differnet
Testbild! vs Viktor Sjöberg
Most Valuable Players

DJ: Stepbrother Ernest
Record releases: Friendly Noise releases two 3" records, available
this night only. Differnet, "mpkg Vol 2 - Chocolate Edition" (FYN  36)
and Viktor Sjöberg, "... Imagines A House" (FYN 37).
Film: A selection of silent film and art films by Cecil M Hepworth,
Bill Viola, Tony Conrad, Emile Cohl, Joseph Beuys, Gary Hill, Slavko
Vorkapich, Mary Ellen Bute and others.
Record sale: all the latest Friendly Noise releases will be available.

More info and listening here:
www.koloni.tk (Koloni)
www.friendlynoise.se (Friendly Noise)
www.myspace.com/internationalbyzantinemachines (Differnet)
www.testbild.org (Testbild!)
www.structuressonores.com/work (Viktor Sjöberg)
www.myspace.com/mvpmvp (Most Valuable Players)

More news:

There is some (previously released) Friendly Noise music used in the
new Swedish youth film "Du och jag", four songs by Differnet and Erik
de Vahl, directed by Martin Jern and Emil Larsson. At cinemas in
Sweden right now, premiered 6 October.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499025/
+
Differnet contributes a new, shorter version of the song
"Conflictionary (Barricade Builders Of The World Unite And Take
Cover)" to the compilation "Svensk Indie, 1988-2006, en
kärlekshistoria", released by NONS, 9 October.
http://www.svenskindie.se/
+
Testbild! now can be found on Myspace, visit them at
http://www.myspace.com/120635058

For those of you in London this Sunday night, Phil King is showing his Lush 1994 'Split' tour films at The Social in Little Portland Street. The films are being shown in memory of Chris Acland who died 10 years ago this month. They will be shown after the Mark Gardiner show: http://www.soniccathedral.co.uk/index.html

 

...And Stones

Drunk probably, and happy to have you here… a hint of blue aeroplanes, a dash of Guinness, a splash of holiday hysteria. An evening of beer and crisps for dinner. These things happen with such irregularity, and we thought about similar times of last winter and returning to a building site and thanked the spirits of the country air for small mercies. Or something.

Young People

Duh, although I have deleted the flash files from my local machine it never occured to me until a moment ago that the old ones might still be residing on the remote server. And whilst the Jandek one had indeed been deleted, I had not not got rid of the Young People one. It is here, should you feel nostalgic. So, mystery solved.

Mystery Cover Star (pt 2)

Here is Hank's '20 second Police Sketch Artist' rendition of the mystery cover star. Perhaps it will help to jog some memories (sounds like Crimewatch, doesn't it?). From what Per Christian says it's entirely probable that this cover star was only up for a short period of time between Jandek (or Paul Scholes if you prefer) and Rose Pipette. A shooting star, if you like...

failing memory

I’m quite sure no-one is really keeping track of these things (goodness knows I’m not!), but does anyone remember who the Tangents cover star was before Rose Pipette? Checking my files I have a suspicion it was Jandek, but there is some suggestion it was in fact another woman, possibly with a scarf around her neck… And I can’t for the life of me remember. It’s one of the delights of getting old, I suppose. Suggestions from those with far better memories are much appreciated.

Modular

Fancy some Argentinian psychedlic orchestral pop with lounge-core references?  Then check out Modular at http://www.myspace.com/modulantes and http://www.modular.com.ar/ Think Stereolab meets Os Mutantes meets Peter Thomas meets west coast sunshine soft pop. Yum and then some. Thanks to Mariana for the pointer.

Still avoiding work

Allow me to indulge myself for a moment. Let me plough back into my past and unearth something from the mists of time. Or at least eight years ago. See, it was in 1998 that Rupert, in what can surely only be described as a moment of insanity, said he would like to publish a collection of my witterings on music. Thus ‘Young and Foolish’ was born. Now I’d kind of forgotten about it in the past few years, but was recently reminded about it when Chris from Sweden was posting his radio station manifesto on his blog.

Anyway, I found a single spare copy in the garage at the weekend and I thought it might be nice if I could send it out to meander around amongst the small coterie of Indiepop kids who may possibly be interested in reading some of it. I dunno. It was just an idea. Having said that, you can pick up copies dirt cheap on Amazon, so maybe my idea is pointless. If anyone really does want to read it they can pick it up easily enough nice and cheaply.

I also started to read some of it this morning. It’s a strange feeling when one reads something one wrote some time ago. This made me sad in so many ways, not least in the way that I suddenly felt like I’d gone astray in the eight years since… at least in terms of writing. Looking back on the past eight years and comparing it to the stuff in Young and Foolish I get a feeling that a feeling has been lost along the way; that writing has become business-like, a job that must be done. It has lost the essence of urgency, of the need to write to communicate something of love and hate and the meaning of an existence. I think. Perhaps. I’m sure I have moaned about this before and not too long ago too likely. Oh well. Maybe I should actually do something about it…

Another thing that struck me is that a lot of it would seem to dovetail neatly with the whole resurgence of interest in the C86 and indiepop phenomena going around these days.

And yes, I am still avoiding work.

I Am Not Indie (official)

CNN, bless them, have a quiz to test how 'Indie' you are: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2006/indie.scene/ I am delighted to say that I scored one out of ten! Yay! And the one I got right was about Black Star's debut. All the 'rock' orientated Indie questions I got 'wrong'. Hurrah! Oddly enough there was nothing about Swedish Pop in there. Hmmm.

Thanks to Pop Musicology for the tip to the link.

work avoidance pt 3

Wired News: Battle of the New Atheism: My friends, I must ask you an important question today: Where do you stand on God? It's a question you may prefer not to be asked. But I'm afraid I have no choice. We find ourselves, this very autumn, three-and-a-half centuries after the intellectual martyrdom of Galileo, caught up in a struggle of ultimate importance, when each one of us must make a commitment. It is time to declare our position. This is the challenge posed by the New Atheists. We are called upon, we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth; we are called out, we fence-sitters, and told to help exorcise this debilitating curse: the curse of faith.