tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72564116845276457392024-03-18T15:22:27.090+00:00Niluccio on noiseInsufferable music for insufferable people
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger886125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-49191578177388638352024-03-16T10:01:00.026+00:002024-03-16T11:57:17.599+00:00What is goth? God knows<p style="text-align: left;">The other day I got asked, "What is goth?", by someone who - lucky them - doesn't know anything about rock/pop music. Oh, blissful ignorance. How can you possibly answer this question? I should have said, "Forget it, it's a waste of time talking about it. I'll regret it - you'll regret it". Nope, I stupidly stumbled through about two minutes of desperate "explanation". <i>Er, it's a sub-genre coming out of punk. It's all about a fascination with death and things usually considered 'morbid'. Graveyards, vampires, er ... </i></p><p style="text-align: left;">See what I mean? Not easy. Especially when that person doesn't know anything about popular music. My bumbling efforts did - happily - include a reference to Nico (my interlocutor knew about Nico): Nico's voice and her love of dark German folk songs. Fine, but otherwise horror films and literature were about my only hope. This is all valid though. Surely Herzog's Nosferatu The Vampyre must have influenced a band like Bauhaus just as much as David Bowie or the spectral rattle of dub reggae. No man, goth was less about music and more about the power of Bergman's Death from The Seventh Seal or the atmosphere of the famous <a href="https://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/film/there-were-four-us">nocturnal story-writing competition</a> between the Shelleys, Byron and Polidori in 1816. Or so I reckon. A quick mini-anecdote: there I was, 19 years old, seeped in post-punk and a smattering of this and that, and I'm magnetically drawn to a city centre clothes shop in my (then) home town Sheffield. The shop sells pricey "alternative" clothing which I can't afford living on the pittance they laughingly called "the dole". Why am I there, for about the third time that week? It's the <i>atmosphere</i>. The skull-print bowling shirts, the bullet belts, the fact that the main shop assistant (probably paid peanuts) is a guy about my age but in a far more "advanced" state of neo-gothdom: cut-down black t-shirt revealing a tattoo of what I vaguely recognised as the spindly "Death with a sickle" design adopted by Sex Gang Children who - almost by chance - I'd seen live the previous year. </p><p></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRgMV2fDMmapqtqlZZYXiDr330BeUsDdUI1AhfUqJJuNdkrm5Xepq9IEzu8z1aeGD-kELJwy0YtKd8Pnax8GgwMbxPPRleOo84akHVweUgpr6peKvnjJ0J-jFAaZ8PgdMgL-ThftVifznyoaRum6T7iciOXFN9vXeW2wIBGEY-5ej2ur50kThCfA0-" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiRgMV2fDMmapqtqlZZYXiDr330BeUsDdUI1AhfUqJJuNdkrm5Xepq9IEzu8z1aeGD-kELJwy0YtKd8Pnax8GgwMbxPPRleOo84akHVweUgpr6peKvnjJ0J-jFAaZ8PgdMgL-ThftVifznyoaRum6T7iciOXFN9vXeW2wIBGEY-5ej2ur50kThCfA0-=w640-h640" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Sex Gang Children: chopping pretend-goths down to size</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: left;">SGC: not much mentioned these days, but they had this great motif and their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYBUt7cK-K4&ab_channel=SexGangChildren-Topic">music</a> (which initially I didn't really get) also still sounds pretty good in my opinion. But again, how to convey any of this to someone who just doesn't inhabit the same musical universe? Somewhat off-point, we - my interrogator and me - began to drift off into a wider incoherent chat about horror films, Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, vampire films. Off-point but also, as I say, probably actually very relevant. Why exactly did punk seem to stir up this revival of goth in the late 70s? This was something I also struggled to explain. <i>Why</i> did it? Or even - <i>did</i> it? My quick answer would be: yes, punk - as a major culture shift - did unleash a lot of repressed/underground tendencies, helping to validate pretty much almost anything previously considered marginal, obnoxious and unattractive. For what it's worth, I reckon the key bands were the Cramps (reviving the Munsters and fun-goth but also married to a fierce punk-rockabilly sound), Bauhaus (still one of the best of the crop), early-ish Cure (Seventeen Seconds, Faith, Pornography), Siouxsie & The Banshees, Joy Division, the Birthday Party and maybe Killing Joke and Theatre Of Hate. Plus, you could probably make a case for the subterranean influence of proto-industrial bands like Cabaret Voltaire, Suicide and Throbbing Gristle. In my view, the goth-rock scene when it matured and became formulaic was generally much less good: Death Cult, Sisters Of Mercy, Flesh For Lulu, Danse Society, Play Dead, New Model Army et al made <i>not that much</i> good music, though I reckon stuff like the Virgin Prunes or (later) the Cocteau Twins showed that the gothic was an important influence in music that still stands the test of time. Down the years I've seen some genuinely good bands with a goth component (Neils Children, O. Children, Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster and These New Puritans are a few that spring to mind) and it's good to see that it keeps cropping up in new forms all the time. The other night I saw <a href="https://moistcrevice.bandcamp.com/album/psychic-violence">Moist Crevice</a> (oo-er, missus) who's heavy goth stylings were pretty mesmering for anyone who used to spend time in expensive Sheffield clothes shops pretending they were on the verge of buying something fashionably graveyard-y. On this blog I've frequently made a little stand for goth, but these days I don't think it's even necessary. Goth has easily proven itself and now reigns supreme (or almost so) in the dark scenes, death metal, grindcore, doom and so-called horror punk. For all that early punk can sometimes seems quite <i>un</i>-goth (dayglo colours and Sex Pistols cartoonishness), it was surely there all along: Dave Vanian's vampire cloak and make-up or the morbid deathwish of <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2023/02/why-is-my-television-on-blink-reading.html">Richard Hell</a> with his "Please kill me" t-shirt. Even uber-punk safety pins seemed to echo the stitched-together cadaver of the Frankenstein monster's body. Yes, it all goes back to Shelley and before that to the Mysteries Of Udolpho and the Castle Of Otranto. By 1987, my goth days behind me (a lumbering doppelganger), I was reading these novels for a course called (if I remember correctly) "Aspects of the English and Amercian gothic novel". We later got on to Poe and Dracula and Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde, and it was, all in all, a fun course. These days any university course along these lines ought to weave in films such as Night Of The Living Dead and Carnival Of Souls, music by the likes of Alien Sex Fiend and Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel, and first-person reminiscences of the Batcave during the time it was always being featured in ZigZag magazine. So, anyway, all these years on, what's the answer? <i>What is goth? </i>God knows ... </p><p><br /></p><p> </p> <p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-26318994042396738252024-03-13T21:53:00.013+00:002024-03-14T09:41:09.616+00:00It's hip to be square: the lost sounds of New York City<p>A few years back I did a couple of blogs/podcasts based on stuff I'd scrappily recorded with my cheapo handheld devices at various gigs in London during those golden years 2000-19. Yeah, happy times (except when they weren't), and full of great music. These recordings - rather brilliantly called Das Kapital (geddit?) - were, it has to be said, <i>too much bloody work </i>to do very often. There I was pulling out dozens of minidiscs from my shelves, listening back to hours of music (complete with between-songs crowd chat and bar noises), trying to pinpoint some standout stuff and then - all rather painstakingly - threading these together into a new 80-minute compilation, complete - aha - with craftily-placed snippets from the audio book of Marx's <i>meisterwerk</i>. Yeah, it was a lot of er, labour. Anyway, one of these live compilation things I did years ago was - slightly differently - based on stuff I recorded on a short trip to New York with a friend in 2008. An age ago. Time irretrievably lost. One of the shows we caught during our pretty hectic cultural tour of the city was by the Santa Dads, a duo (one in a fancy dress tiger suit, the other in santa-elf get-up I think) doing an utterly mesmerising beatbox/ukelele-backed close harmony vocal thing at the Cake Shop on Ludlow Street in the Lower East Side. When the Santa Dads started up and then proceeded to perform one uninterrupted 30-minute stream of musical weirdness, I think it's fair to say that my companion and I were ... stunned. So yes, I've dug out 60 minutes of that 2008 NYC comp (Santa Dads included) and here it is. RIP all the excellent venues that have since closed down and please, kids, don't forget that, despite what they all say, <a href="https://www.mixcloud.com/Niluccio/nyc/">it's hip to be square</a> ...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMuFmzgM00EaSymDjP-tf-IQRAABpERAGlDdGuyft0WGLDjFptPrEFElZqP9xhlZ2XRnneXMMXZnTRL_6Lz44Bp6Y-LkaYCprYSstFRHI2OsYdXFPMtRdqoNmrJJZks012FrQedWE_seqY18VwSpWGM1Yb5iA5gT1f530oal2N620D583Sl5fFyWdG/s780/NYC.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="780" data-original-width="780" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMuFmzgM00EaSymDjP-tf-IQRAABpERAGlDdGuyft0WGLDjFptPrEFElZqP9xhlZ2XRnneXMMXZnTRL_6Lz44Bp6Y-LkaYCprYSstFRHI2OsYdXFPMtRdqoNmrJJZks012FrQedWE_seqY18VwSpWGM1Yb5iA5gT1f530oal2N620D583Sl5fFyWdG/w640-h640/NYC.png" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">1: The Wowz: Pete's Candy Store, 30/1/08<br />2: Ching Chong Song: Sidewalk Cafe, 31/1/08</div><div style="text-align: left;">3: Subway musician: West 4th Street Station, 31/1/08</div><div style="text-align: left;">4: Magnus Aronson: from the film Build A Ship And Sail To Sadness</div><div style="text-align: left;">5: Turner Cody & The Wowz: Pete's Candy Store, 30/1/08</div><div style="text-align: left;">6: Liza Stepanova: Society For Ethical Culture, 30/1/08</div><div style="text-align: left;">7: It's hip to be square</div><div style="text-align: left;">8: The Santa Dads: The Cake Shop, 1/2/08</div><div style="text-align: left;">9: Lonely creatures</div><div style="text-align: left;">10: Bell: The Cake Shop, 1/2/08</div><div style="text-align: left;">11: Rubalyats: Goodbye Blue Monday, 2/2/08</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>
<iframe allow="autoplay" frameborder="0" height="120" src="https://player-widget.mixcloud.com/widget/iframe/?hide_cover=1&autoplay=1&feed=%2FNiluccio%2Fnyc%2F" width="100%"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-66138688317378085142024-03-10T15:16:00.072+00:002024-03-13T22:40:31.800+00:00All that is solid will melt into air; or why my all-time top 20 music list is immune from criticism <div style="text-align: left;">The list that no-one was asking for from the blogger whose views no-one cares about. Yeah man, it's the Niluccio <i>twenty golden greats</i> list. The best of the best. The stuff that transcends all the rest. Or at least the transcendental greats in the deluded, opinion-addled place I (laughingly) call my mind. God knows why because it's the cheesiest music thing in the world, but lately I've been pondering all this. The Big List thing. On the one hand, this pantheon-creating urge is obnoxious - just clickbait fodder for social media. "What are<i> your </i>all-time greats?" etc etc. So, yes, I generally hate this approach to appreciating music (or anything else). In the main, this endeavour is extremely conservative (looking <i>back </i>...) and almost custom-designed to suppress interest in new stuff. Then again, as I think John Peel would occasionally remark, it's also obviously important to have a few mental benchmarks if you're in the business of making judgments about music. In practice, you've got to compare anything new you're listening to against earlier stuff that you know is good (<i>know</i> in the sense that it's more or less stood the test of time, at least in your view). Taste and judgments change, not least your own, so nothing's fixed in stone. Five years ago I would have come up with a different 20, ten years ago an even more different one. And so on. In even a few months' time I could easily bump at least one of these off the list (if I can ever be bothered to look at this boring list again, that is). Whatever. Good stuff - or <i>superlatively</i> good stuff - is a big part of enjoying music, so it probably deserves to be named (and listed) from time to time. At the same time, it's only fair to say that listening to music that's great on all sorts of levels but just not - somehow - quite at <i>this</i> level, is also a huge part of the pleasure of music. A song (to take a random example) like Jilted John's Jilted John is just as superlatively good in its own way as anything made by any of the artists on this list. Ditto Big Break's The Gaffer, Crass's Bloody Revolutions, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five's The Message, Dark Thoughts' Without You, The Modern Lovers' Roadrunner, LCD Soundsystem's Losing My Edge, the Musical Intimidators' Double Struggle, He<span style="font-family: inherit;">rman <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;">Düne</span>'s My </span>Friends Killed My Folks, dozens (hundreds?) of jungle and breakbeat tunes, and ... blah blah blah (add another 10,000 examples of your own). Anyway, shoot me now but here's my all-time top twenty. Scientifically selected and completely beyond reproach or any meaningful criticism whatsoever. All killers no fillers ... </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgZHNNRgvIZenRl8RGvhQnl8GqhceFUxr8G5SnVdk1NmZOjOsGPxiKq1Yv5vGSyCHwppb0TlJmkMLdqFoJHVqB5D08LBtWJkwTpSDoAQtSSdffQkcuMNhvRSHO4Vg9gmsyusYNHVpXuf2KzwPn1KG6et8j-amweowBgpTHL4JuUzVRLYKrLSrKL-4Yq" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="889" data-original-width="1144" height="497" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgZHNNRgvIZenRl8RGvhQnl8GqhceFUxr8G5SnVdk1NmZOjOsGPxiKq1Yv5vGSyCHwppb0TlJmkMLdqFoJHVqB5D08LBtWJkwTpSDoAQtSSdffQkcuMNhvRSHO4Vg9gmsyusYNHVpXuf2KzwPn1KG6et8j-amweowBgpTHL4JuUzVRLYKrLSrKL-4Yq=w640-h497" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Rare shot of Niluccio after he's been racking his brains to come up with an all-time top 20 list that will prove</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> once and for all that he has better musical taste than anyone else</span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><b>Fats Waller</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Still one of the funniest people in the entire history of recorded music, Waller is surely one of the key links between ragtime and early pop. Fats is great, yahs yahs yahs.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Woody Guthrie</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">No Guthrie, no Dylan, but Guthrie's righteous and often very moving blasts of pro-union, pro-worker hillbilly-country still sound fantastic in their own right. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br />Nina Simone</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Am listening to a double-CD comp (Gold) even as I bash out this tawdry blog offering and - once again - the super-distinctive nature of Simone's huskily-beautiful voice is immediately hitting home. Sounds like her stuff was experlty recorded as well, as it still sounds vibrant and clear. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Bob Dylan</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">A few years ago I would have scoffed at the idea of Dylan being on any personal best-of-the-best list, but - for fuck's sake - his 60s output is so good I've had to reconsider. Recent appreciation <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2024/02/niluccios-116th-bob-dylan-dream.html?view=magazine">here</a>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Velvet Underground</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Back in the day I think I <i>over</i>-absorbed a Marc Riley & The Creepers line about <i>not</i> playing my VU records "into the ground" and consequently swerved away from listening to the Velvet Underground & Nico LP (an obligatory post-punk 80s purchase) and tapes of the other albums. No more! Reading a lot of Warhol in recent years has also reignited my interest. Surely one of the greatest rock bands, full stop.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Not uniformly brilliant (but who is?) but er, far more brilliant than most lesser mortals. Along with the Velvet Underground, Beefheart and his lunatic blues weirdos were so far ahead of plodders like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones that it's positively embarrassing. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Nico </b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Great on the first VU album, her solo stuff with John Cale is otherworldly. I must admit I hadn't listened to this until a few years ago (stimulated by reading James Young's excellent Nico <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2019/08/nico-icy-heroin-queen-turns-into-big.html">book</a>). The Marble Index and Desertshore are, I think, incredible albums. Dark and haunting. Goth before goth. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Iggy & The Stooges</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Kinda obvious given how long they've been firmly installed in the proto-punk firmament, it's still incredible to hear er, the raw power of the Stooges rock sound alongside Iggy's scorchingly-simple thug-delivery. Iggy <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-stooges-dog-is-for-life.html">says</a> he picked up a lot from the Chicago blues players and I think you can hear that. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Fela Kuti</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Politicised call and response, propulsive rhythms that hold back, hold back ... and then hold back some more, Fela Kuti and his band are totally on fire in some of his recordings. At school one day, one of the teachers said we should all be listening to Paul Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice. We all sat there bored, thinking <i>teacher don't teach me nonsense</i>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>King Tubby</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Seventies reggae was awash with talent and Lee Perry (among others) must run King Tubby close, but KT's pioneering dub experimentation basically changed music forever and created some incredible stuff like Augustus Pablo's King Tubbys Meets Rockers Uptown, so yeah, all hail the king. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Kraftwerk</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">German jokers (yeah, German people are very funny), Kraftwerk's 70s stuff must be some of the most original electronic music ever made. Famously influential on the hip hop and early Chicago house scenes, Kraftwerk's mesmeric electro-pop leaves pale imitators like the Pet Shop Boys for dead, and even New Order (good as they were) often sound a bit tame by comparison. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Public Image Limited</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Let's hear it for the all-conquering 1970s, because the decade also produced PiL's excellent early output, true dub-metal machine music (especially the searing Metal Box and Death Disco). It's still fairly amazing that Lydon helped pump this stuff out so soon after the chaos of the Sex Pistols. It surely shows that there was once a real music brain operating in that now clownishness figure who keeps popping up and embarrassing himself. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Fall</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">A new face in hell (or on this list), I think The Fall from (roughly) 1977-87 were in a league of their own when it came to post-punk rock spleneticism. All that curdled social commentary and surreal wordplay (shades of mid-60s Dylan maybe) spat out alongside Steve Hanley's relentless bass throb was pretty irresistible. A couple of semi-curdled, semi-skimmed appreciations of my own, <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2021/07/music-for-salford-hard-men-reading-mark.html">here</a> and <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-fall-familiarity-factor.html">here</a>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Felt</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Achingly-beautiful and mysterious-feeling pop music by one of music's great <i>outsider-wishing-he-was-an-insider-but-almost-certainly-being-better-off-as-an-outside</i>-ers. Or something. Maurice Deebank's delicate and ethereal guitar playing was a big part of what made them good, plus Martin Duffy's keyboards later on. And Lawrence's portentious way of intoning his very <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2020/04/talking-russia-literature-blues-with.html?q=lawrence">poetic</a> lyrics. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Low</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Woah, more achingly-beautiful and mysterious-feeling pop music (or <i>not-quite-pop</i> music). Think I first heard these on John Peel when he played stuff from their 1996 The Curtain Hits The Cast album. It put me in mind (if I remember correctly) of the Velvet Undergound's Pale Blue Eyes-ish stuff. Anyway, it was definitely a <i>stop everything you're doing and listen to this</i> moment.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Gorky's Zygotic Mynci</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">And yet <i>more</i> achingly beautiful pop music (seems I've got a weakness for it). Euros Childs' heartbreakingly-beautiful voice matched with piano and violin chords cascading through lovely psych-pop-country arrangements could definitely take the listener into some great Neil Young-esque territory. And the Welsh lyrics often sounded great too. (Btw, where's Neil Young on this list? An outrage!). </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>David Thomas Broughton</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Kind of a one-off (but aren't a lot of the best artists?), David Thomas Broughton's looped and darkly-beautful voice/guitar arrangements need to be heard to be believed. Soaring (tortured?) Yorkshire-inflected vocals that come from some ancent-sounding folk tradition, listening to DTB is often a spine-tingling experience. Check out his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Qq_Cf-KV1k&ab_channel=bojangles">The Complete Guide To Insufficiency</a>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Rebel</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Still going strong (stronger than ever?), The Rebel's acidly-misanthropic country-noise drone sounds great in its present form, which involves a lot of crunching beats for him to interact with as he juggles his ten gallon cowboy hats. The Country Teasers were great, The Rebel is better. More tiresome Niluccio on noise appreciations <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-rebel-seeks-to-take-up-residency-in.html?q=the+rebel">here</a>, <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-rebel-in-support-of-arachnids.html">here</a> and <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2020/10/tucking-into-new-normal-with-rebel-in.html">here</a>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Etran De L'Aïr</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Super-infectious desert-blues stuff from Niger. Listening to what sound like very complex poly-rhythms in their endless wedding music jams is like being transported to another planet. They're somehow ultra-relaxed and effortlessly mesmeric. Check out their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h31JEqA1Mtw&ab_channel=SahelSounds">Agrim Agadez</a>, which takes ages to get going but slowly coheres into something that sounds like it'll never stop. Slow-burners. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Plus, whoever's sounding good to me this week </b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Possibly the most important one of this top 20 list, this is whichever band/artist I've recently taken a shine to (new or old, but especially new/newish). This week I've been enjoying <a href="https://jjackietrashh.bandcamp.com/album/one-thousand-years-in-a-dreamscape">Jackie Trash</a>, <a href="https://oortclod.bandcamp.com/">Oort Clod</a> and Charlie Mingus, among others. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">In conclusion and as a way of correcting against all this infantile list-making, I reckon it's important to remember that lists have a horrible habit of solidifying. If you allow them to become too fixed then the contents metamorphose into something "beyond question", which is when the rot sets in. When this happens you're likely to sit back, endlessly admire your top ten or top 20 in all its glory and ... stagnate. After this you'll hardly ever (never?) listen to anything new, completely convinced that nothing can match the artists you've self-satisfiedly placed on your all-time-greats mantelpiece. <i>Yes, THESE are the best. Now I can relax. Where's that Jam greatest hits album again? </i>No man, don't do it! Nothing in life is certain and all idols must come crashing down (the strange idols pattern and other short stories, as Felt would say). Sure, I've now also committed the unforgivable sin of creating a top 20 list but at the same time I also want it to come tumbling down. To evaporate as new stuff leaves these so-called giants looking stale and old. In music (as in life?) it's all about endless revolution (45 revolutions per minute). Yep, all that is solid will melt into air ...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bCWYwA6oaJI" width="320" youtube-src-id="bCWYwA6oaJI"></iframe></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-23583284226434952024-03-08T22:08:00.005+00:002024-03-08T22:11:27.490+00:00A richer dust concealed, Dubpod #45 (Mar 2024)<div style="text-align: left;">Does Aki Kaurismäki like reggae? Doesn't seem so. Having throughly blitzed his films over Christmas (blog evidence <a href="https://neildurkin.medium.com/theres-a-line-in-aki-kaurism%C3%A4ki-s-shadows-in-paradise-which-seems-to-sum-up-the-life-chances-of-53d28aebacd7">here</a> and <a href="https://neildurkin.medium.com/kaurism%C3%A4ki-the-extras-24565bb60db0">here</a>) I couldn't detect even the hint of a downbeat/offbeat or dubbed moment among all his many music choices. Shame. I'd like to see him throw a bit of echo or reverb into his film soundtracks. Nevertheless, I think we can safely assume that Kati Outinen digs dub. Yes, it's <a href="https://www.mixcloud.com/NiluccioVersion/a-richer-dust-concealed-dubpod-45-mar-2024/">a richer dust concealed</a> ... </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimwLMhF_vQGAprG7v_4NRDglZNBzja_0E5UHHE19m8sfIRDKP2BDc5y75B7cvvbQ6nUAm95qWzcBQoxeIv3XXmB-lDLteF3uj0jhn7-c4C98UZdcx88BBL6bn2DApdmdxvAw7duwEaTUsKCTSIzLLD1NakKm1xvN_9xEeqb6kQLEUDqMgeQq6mB7N0/s1171/Kaurismaki.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="775" data-original-width="1171" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimwLMhF_vQGAprG7v_4NRDglZNBzja_0E5UHHE19m8sfIRDKP2BDc5y75B7cvvbQ6nUAm95qWzcBQoxeIv3XXmB-lDLteF3uj0jhn7-c4C98UZdcx88BBL6bn2DApdmdxvAw7duwEaTUsKCTSIzLLD1NakKm1xvN_9xEeqb6kQLEUDqMgeQq6mB7N0/w640-h424/Kaurismaki.JPG" width="640" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>1: Scotty & Loyd Chalmers, Salvation train </div><div>2: A richer dust concealed</div><div>3: Joyella Blade, Cairo/Cairo dub</div><div>4: Clint Eastwood & The Observers, gate (version)</div><div>5: Winston & Robin, Wailing time</div><div>6: Sound Dimension, Swell head part 2</div><div>7: The Zodiacs, Walk on by</div><div>8: The Musical Intimidators, Double struggle </div><div>9: Dizzy Reece, I had the craziest dream</div><div>10: Soul Boys, Rudie get wise</div><div>11: The Skatalites, Exodus</div><div>12: The Soul Defenders, You’ll be sorry (version)</div><div>13: Dread Locks Fey, Black weh</div><div>14: The Ethiopians, Headache</div><div>15: Sir Collins Music, Collins blood</div><div>16: Baba Brooks, Twilight zone</div><div>17: King Ayisoba, Arica</div><div>18: Lynn Tait & The Jets, Move up</div><div>19: Poet & the Roots, Five nights of bleeding/Defence dub </div><div>20: Dennis Brown, Westbound train</div><div>21: Dillinger, Headquarters</div><div>22: Pioneers, Long shot</div><div>23: Althea Forest, Downtown thing</div><div><br /></div></div>
<iframe width="100%" height="120" src="https://player-widget.mixcloud.com/widget/iframe/?hide_cover=1&autoplay=1&feed=%2FNiluccioVersion%2Fa-richer-dust-concealed-dubpod-45-mar-2024%2F" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-79172103870082390242024-02-27T20:48:00.030+00:002024-02-29T19:25:08.986+00:00Niluccio's 116th Bob Dylan dream<p style="text-align: left;">Up until the age of 20 I don't think I'd ever heard a Bob Dylan song that <i>wasn't</i> Like A Rolling Stone or Mr Tambourine Man. To me, a callow fellow with narrow pop-punk musical tastes, Dylan was just that slightly boring singer from the sixties. Older people liked him but I wasn't interested. Then one day in the record shop where I then worked someone played the Bringing It All Back Home album out on the shopfloor. I didn’t even know what it was. “What’s this?”, I blurted out. “Bob Dylan, of course!”. “Really? Sounds really good. I didn’t think he was like this.” Looking back, I'm surprised I didn’t get kicked out of that job. Anyway, what caught my attention that slack Wednesday afternoon (probably) was the delirious brilliance of the lyrics and the amped-up blues of Subterranean Homesick Blues, Outlaw Blues, On The Road Again and Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream. Fuck, man! Such amazing surreal-blues trips. Given how good this sounded to me back then, I probably should have become some dull Dylan-head, buying all the bootlegs and live albums, and getting massively excited at snagging a super-expensive ticket to see him at somewhere awful like Wembley Stadium (I knew someone at university like this). But no, I think I was getting assailed by new (to me) stuff every week back then and this didn't particularly stick. Dylan being so famous and revered probably didn't help - how was boring Bob supposed to compete with discovering the boptastic Mighty Mighty at a gig in Birmingham or the wonderfully-swoonsome Felt at Warwick University? But wait! What's this meandering blog even about? Surely it's not just about how I, Niluccio, failed to properly appreciate Dylan first time around and now... er, I do? Yeah, I guess so. Or my own slightly tortured version of that. I think in reality it's been a slow thing - going from initial enthusiasm for one particular Dylan "sound", forgetting about him, taping the odd album during the next 20-30 years (but not playing them much), but in recent years gradually rediscovering him. Anyway, more or less by accident, I've now acquired this little collection of CDs.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhliZJVwaUZKlR6szcSVyShGA3lfXxy4-F6F-7J4SjTqbg6VOCbf6ZXs-5MiAQN4jrwL6avsN7mA1QUtdvczEwxDWVBrJ4jlg0qYnB2peS8Idf3GKUxp5ccm5mqk_4De26Mqr-52enVAxLIPKDSg8tknFfe_M7hbWwukMnS0vSHg51j05mgs4A_okFg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="863" data-original-width="1039" height="531" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhliZJVwaUZKlR6szcSVyShGA3lfXxy4-F6F-7J4SjTqbg6VOCbf6ZXs-5MiAQN4jrwL6avsN7mA1QUtdvczEwxDWVBrJ4jlg0qYnB2peS8Idf3GKUxp5ccm5mqk_4De26Mqr-52enVAxLIPKDSg8tknFfe_M7hbWwukMnS0vSHg51j05mgs4A_okFg=w640-h531" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Modest, really, and only early stuff (post-sixties Dylan remains off my personal music map*). As recently as a year or two ago I would probably have said I had "about two" Dylan CDs and wouldn't have been able to remember which ones they were. Now I'm my own mini-Dylan obsessive, pleased to have all these early recordings - all very strong except, in my opinion, the fairly lacklustre John Wesley Harding. The other week I saw a cheap The Times They Are A-Changin' CD in a charity shop and then got all annoyed with myself for not buying it ("surely I've got this one"). Yeah, early Dylan has got me. In my on-off-on again appreciation of the mighty Zimmerman, I think it's his first seven - seven! - albums that show how good he is. Not-giving-a-fuck wild, tender, playful, blues-y (far more than I'd initially realised) and able to knock out some amazing lyrics. Also his bullhorn voice is surely punk before punk. By '64-65 he seems to have been hanging out with (or dropping in on) the Factory crowd, with Warhol saying that Dylan had developed a distinctive "anti-act" style ("even when he was standing he was all hunched in"): polka-dot shirts, high-heeled boots and a famous determination to alienate the folk crowd. Seems pretty punk to me. Yeah, back on that record shop afternoon, I really should have spotted the punk-ness of early-electric Dylan and in a way I think I did. And Beefheart is surely similar - something so raw and strange as to be punk before punk. Anyway, one final example of my extreme Dylan naivety. About 20 years ago I was watching then-faves Herman Düne (André-era). After an already excellent set - in a weird abandoned office space in Berlin - they started doing an encore with something I'd never heard them play before, a song which appeared to be called Desolation Row. Again, I had no idea it was Dylan. As it happens, I now reckon Herman Düne’s version was much better than the original - slow, epic and moving, and also infused with the vibes of a memorable night in Berlin. Dylan may be great if you can get a handle on him, but as we all know, the pump don't work because the vandals took the handles ...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i>*Except maybe Blood On The Tracks, all those years later in 1975, which I must admit is very good, especially Idiot Wind, and I guess forms part of my own little Dylan canon.</i></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-22746303849443476632024-02-25T19:37:00.006+00:002024-02-25T19:39:20.574+00:00 Let’s take a ride, Podcast #223 (Feb 2024)<div style="text-align: left;">It's been a while (well, a month), but here's another of my unbeatable monthly podcasts. I'm reliably informed that this is "the best one yet", but you'll have to see for yourself. C'mon! Let's take a ride ... </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGpN6jjK5OETnEvUKSPmO1Tjmtxo1PWli8uJYu7YK5ChDl1YRjle7CRntEyLYvHRdny4aPstxm_8kDfznHToDMBQTYCbq1IvCG12e9th8o-tUOXmwZYiS4cP0e1bYQYJdYuVDBBczbl0c_meSrxr9XWmCSTL8P8f6VYw5TJiPSmVxQyLsbz14Eoi5p/s629/Paris%20Review.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="536" data-original-width="629" height="546" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGpN6jjK5OETnEvUKSPmO1Tjmtxo1PWli8uJYu7YK5ChDl1YRjle7CRntEyLYvHRdny4aPstxm_8kDfznHToDMBQTYCbq1IvCG12e9th8o-tUOXmwZYiS4cP0e1bYQYJdYuVDBBczbl0c_meSrxr9XWmCSTL8P8f6VYw5TJiPSmVxQyLsbz14Eoi5p/w640-h546/Paris%20Review.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">1: Jaguar 777, Death ride<br />2: Stan Getz, Lester left town<br />3: Shirley Collins & The Albion Country Band, Poor murdered woman<br />4: Thermal C, Sputnik crash<br />5: Ex Youth, X-youth<br />6: Plaid Throats, My inspiration<br />7: Boy In Static, Lifetime achievement award<br />8: Joke Lanz, Dutschke<br />9: Terry & Gerry, Joey<br />10: Bullet Union, Stay indie, don't be a hater<br />11: People Skills, Summer 1978<br />12: Human Hair, Chapter & verse<br />13: English Chamber Orchestra, Scylla et Glaucus (overture) (Leclair)<br />14: Grown Ups, Grown up<br />15: Ronnie Scott (Club XI) Boptet, Ow!<br />16: Oberhofer, o0O0o0O0o<br />17: Laraaji, Live at Terraforma 2017 (extract)<br />18: Die Letzten Ecken, Zirkus<br />19: Demdike Stare, Physics (extract)<br />20: Lust For Youth, Dreams<br />21: Eternal Summers, Electric blue</div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-4583196698547890732024-01-27T19:04:00.005+00:002024-01-27T19:35:02.137+00:00Still responsible, Podcast #222 (Jan 2024)<div style="text-align: left;">Welcome to another thrilling episode of the Niluccio on noise podcast (aka The Podcast That Will Not Die). When I first started doing these podcasts three pennies were enough to buy you a whole street of houses in the east end of London, the landlady of the Queen Vic was still on the throne, and only a few very adventurous musicians had started experimenting with what would later become known as "drum and bass". Yeah man, great days. As the years have gone by and the Niluccio on noise podcasts have got worse and worse, some people have wondered if that could be due to the fact that I've been delegating responsibility for them to someone with far inferior music tastes. Nope. I'm <a href="https://www.mixcloud.com/Niluccio/still-responsible-222-jan-2024/">still responsible</a> ...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiucfpSzRXkJMEOp5CWVt52S5UkWCwoNngYT7WOGEAK-cn2rDZ9_iOcFFJ3VvUUktFzNLTJO6ZfoP7KnHMfbtlndz0-qLRHwrcDrmGL-KceX0zT4Hxn0BrosMp8DkDK2bsRmT5cpHVqbeF-8hU_AnOloSv_yVG_ZseAlhoL6UNw-VuuWzdkxj09i73L" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="621" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiucfpSzRXkJMEOp5CWVt52S5UkWCwoNngYT7WOGEAK-cn2rDZ9_iOcFFJ3VvUUktFzNLTJO6ZfoP7KnHMfbtlndz0-qLRHwrcDrmGL-KceX0zT4Hxn0BrosMp8DkDK2bsRmT5cpHVqbeF-8hU_AnOloSv_yVG_ZseAlhoL6UNw-VuuWzdkxj09i73L=w565-h640" width="565" /></a></div>1: Diacatorce, Parasito<br />2: Group Lewlewal, Lingerie<br />3: Dyslecta, Begawan shuffle<br />4: Foreign Objects, Pill popper<br />5: Doug Wallin, Pretty little girl with the blue dress on<br />6: Current Affairs, Cheap cuts<br />7: Bite Itself, Splinters in brine<br />8: Cedric Im Brooks & Count Ossie, Right on rasta<br />9; Hard Copy, Stray dog<br />10: Sunbloc, Crashing your car<br />11: Do U Want To Move Back To Ldn, 26.7.22 trk 7<br />12: Pam & Teri, Lucy<br />13: Argument?, I just wanna have some fun<br />14: Farsight, Sorted<br />15: Abba Gargando, Zinezju meghdem<br />16: Ye Woodbeast, Contrabandana<br />17: Patrick Phelan, Then Trust<br />18: Gesture, Beth & John<br />19: Gee Tee, Fightin is dumb<br />20: SOGA, Fiambre<br />21: Lone Ranger, Fish tea<br />22: Still responsible<br />23: Society Nurse, Ignorance<br />24: Werewolf Jones, Pages<br />25: Comfort, Husbands (get involved)<br />26: Decontaminate, Decontaminate</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-52988503117642453232024-01-13T13:06:00.005+00:002024-01-13T15:06:40.640+00:00Always with success, Podcast #221 (Dec 2023)<p style="text-align: left;">Just like the white rabbit, I'm late, I'm late. Yes, it's already 13 January and here I am posting a podcast for December. Hmm, off with my head. Anyway, another 75 minutes of found sounds (found here, found there, found everywhere). All carefully curated/slung together by yours truly. It may be hated in some quarters (or more likely ignored altogether), but still, to me it's another triumph. As with the previous 220 of these musical endeavours, it may start badly, then may get even worse, but, rest assured, it'll inevitably end the same way. <a href="https://www.mixcloud.com/Niluccio/always-with-success-podcast-221-jan-2024/">Always with success</a> ...<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhL2aLLFDJGJzqdj-CEa3ZiSluIGAzKYqlqebV4ibnvvIJddVtL_K7nN-cfh7w3gTpKARl_O_wRiSge1o0dDNN564_OfXPNoA6w5e30cqX_7XUAURHIEsZGYmQCbhlf7oJgRB-WOpCpzH6gRvsCmJSKiWYle94KWdFrupQQVcYQ2BcvLpRCZMO8LdgA" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="780" data-original-width="780" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhL2aLLFDJGJzqdj-CEa3ZiSluIGAzKYqlqebV4ibnvvIJddVtL_K7nN-cfh7w3gTpKARl_O_wRiSge1o0dDNN564_OfXPNoA6w5e30cqX_7XUAURHIEsZGYmQCbhlf7oJgRB-WOpCpzH6gRvsCmJSKiWYle94KWdFrupQQVcYQ2BcvLpRCZMO8LdgA=w640-h640" width="640" /></a></p><p></p><div style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">1: Parry, Ashdown</span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">2: Always with success</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">3: Sunbloc, Rock candy</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">4: Duelling Ants, Countryside again</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">5: Fikret Kizilok, Köroğlu Dağları</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">6: AL-90, ‘24</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">7: Blush Club, Birthday hat</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">8: Dumfun, Alone</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">9: Pixelord, sbeat23</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">10: The Upsetters & Prince Jazzbo, Story come to bump</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">11: Swiss Portrait, Always</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">12: Gidi Gidi Maji Maji, Atoti</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">13: Brian Eno & David Byrne, Mea culpa</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">14: Dancer, Love</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">15: Scrapies, Lifestyle choice </div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">16: Summer Of Haze, Hot pot aftermath</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">17: Product KF, Today</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">18: LYSOL, Sonic thrill</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">19: Jimmy Riley, Songs of Negus</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">20: Niik Posse, Sussa appinnagu</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">21: Choncy, Default</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">22: Beach Vacation, Lay low</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">23: Dog Prison, The taller the ears, the closer to god</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">24: Why Bother?, Verbally transmitted diseases</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">25: Athletico Spizz 80, New species</div></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div style="text-align: left;">26: Destrata, Mutationist</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></span></span></div><p><span id="docs-internal-guid-8e2eb539-7fff-e764-7693-60d6d93a7f5e"></span></p>
<iframe allow="autoplay" frameborder="0" height="120" src="https://player-widget.mixcloud.com/widget/iframe/?hide_cover=1&autoplay=1&feed=%2FNiluccio%2Falways-with-success-podcast-221-jan-2024%2F" width="100%"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-44766752357545421212024-01-08T13:45:00.003+00:002024-01-08T13:45:37.399+00:00Movement, a palm and an empty room<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiQM2CDLIn1eleeorU-9F_L1vuj7Py96PR9A01N5P9jDQdexs0S-rtndEh3-BeNU23yMXa104MflRKXY-2X8K8ZHn2zjZjwDvkjBeXV1Y12yub2neluoY-9EeZSP8oi8vfKY0mHRnGL04uoHCZSAAgBiGB13yLZdGL9cc5R7YUdkADkydPHFC42nT7Q" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="1011" height="519" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiQM2CDLIn1eleeorU-9F_L1vuj7Py96PR9A01N5P9jDQdexs0S-rtndEh3-BeNU23yMXa104MflRKXY-2X8K8ZHn2zjZjwDvkjBeXV1Y12yub2neluoY-9EeZSP8oi8vfKY0mHRnGL04uoHCZSAAgBiGB13yLZdGL9cc5R7YUdkADkydPHFC42nT7Q=w640-h519" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-72064544471053043782024-01-05T22:31:00.017+00:002024-01-07T18:49:55.875+00:00Dark thoughts: why some gigs linger longer<div style="text-align: left;">Why are some gigs especially memorable? Er, that's simple, right? Because the performer (band, singer, DJ whatever) belted out fantastic music and you were bowled over by it and never forgot how good the show was, whether it was last week or about 40 years ago. This is <i>obvious,</i> isn't it? Er, no, I don't think so. Over the years anyone going to a steady number of gigs clocks up hundreds and hundreds, even thousands. Presupposing a lot of them are good (true in my case anyway), that's an impossibly large number to remember. Unless you're some kind of Hitchcockian Mr Memory, they're all a bit blurry (at best). No, the ones that linger longer in my shattered and increasingly-frayed memory tend to be those that had something a bit ... extra. To illustrate the point, take this list of 20 excellent gigs I cobbled together a few years back in a <i>best gigs of the 2010s <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2019/12/my-20-best-gigs-of-decade-digging-it.html">blog</a></i>. They were all good (<i>very</i> good) musically, but they mostly had a stand-out feature. These were the 20 picks: </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">-The Rent Boys: Stag's Head, London, 29 January 2010<br /><div style="text-align: left;">-The Sundae Kups: Camden Head, London, 28 March 2010<br />-Fat White Family: The Social, London, 20 March 2012<br />-Shopping: Power Lunches, London, 8 August 2013<br />-Diaphram Failure: Stag's Head, London, 31 October 2013<br />-Good Throb: Power Lunches, London, 26 May 2014<br />-Irshad Ali Qawwali Party: Tin Music And Arts, Coventry, 9 October 2014<br />-Self Deconstruction: Pit Bar, Tokyo, 31 July 2015<br />-Black Tambourines: Old Blue Last, London, 23 October 2015<br />-Han-earl Park, Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh: Lamp Tavern, Birmingham, 1 December 2015<br />-Fickle Twin/No Form: Studio With No Name, Nottingham, 5 February 2016<br />-Radical Boy: Sebright Arms, London, 25 February 2016<br />-Pale Kids: JT Soar, Nottingham, 30 January 2017<br />-Black Mekon: Shacklewell Arms, London, 22 April 2017<br />-Anna McLellan: Silent Barn, New York, 7 May 2017<br />-The Rebel: Windmill, London, 7, 14, 21 and 28 June 2017 (plus similar month-long Windmill residencies in 2018 and 2019)<br />-Hamer/Sleep Terminal: Audacious Art Experiment, Sheffield, 15 September 2017<br />-Dark Thoughts: Delicious Clam, Sheffield, 13 October 2018<br />-Leather.head: Windmill, London, 5 July 2019<br />-Bad Idea/Leggy: Chunk, Leeds, 8 September 2019</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />So for example, with Diaphram Failure it was because the slightly crazed singer did a thing where he intoned "What ya doing with my fucking shopping?" over and over again (about 30 times). He also, if I recall correctly, rummaged around in various shopping bags and pulled out things like sparklers which he promptly lit and waved around on stage. It's these elements of Captain Beefheart weirdness that stood out. The band's powerful drone-rock stuff was also good, but the "What ya doing with my fucking shopping?" stuff made it. Anyway, a few of the others: Hamer/Sleep Terminal - excellent because of the sheer intensity of the noise-rock sound but also because Hamish from Hamer seemed to be on tip-top deranged rock-dude form, which was fairly mesmerising to watch; the Rent Boys - great Stooges-type stuff but long remembered because of their brilliantly camp on-stage remark, "Tell you what, come back round here in six months' time and they'll be serving warm pickled onions ... <i>straight from the oven</i>" (take that Shoreditch); the Sundae Kups - because this chaotic surf-rock band kept manically crashing into each other, rolling around on the floor while continuing to play and the chaos only came to an end (an abrupt one) when the manager of the venue switched off the power after about 15 crazed minutes; Black Mekon - their Batman and Robin masks; Black Tambourines - guitarist Sam Stacpoole's hip-shimmies and hair-shakes; Self Deconstruction - their fantastic grindcore-geisha outfits and savage delivery (ditto a couple of others with the savage delivery thing). And so on. You get the picture (maybe). Another thing to mention is that many - though not all - of these acts were being seen for the first time, which I think often adds to the impact, seeming to stamp something extra in the memory. <br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Anyway, probably this is all blindingly obvious. Or is it? People drone on about the great gigs they've attended but I think it's actually quite hard to conjure up much from what's by definition a fleeting experience. You had to be there - and in a deeper sense that also applies to <i>those you saw yourself</i> (ie you have to <i>still</i> be there). In my case it helps that I've got some recordings of gigs from the last 20 or so years and these can really take you back, right down to all the evocative noises off - the audience chat, the clinking glasses and creaky doors. But still, it's often a few peculiarities that lodge in the memory and create a mini-aura around the thing being remembered (yes mini-aura: Marcel Proust, eat your heart out, I think I've now moved up a gear from all your tired stuff about the times that Maman tucked you in at night). Anyway, speaking of memory, the reason I even started thinking about any of this today was that - very randomly - Dark Thoughts' Ramones-tastic <a href="https://dark-thoughts.bandcamp.com/track/with-you">With You</a> came up on an old compilation CD I was playing. It's this song I always associate with their October 2018 show at the Delicious Clam in Sheffield (in the list above). Why? Because - for fuck's sake - I'd been strongly motivated to go to this gig because I especially wanted to hear them play With You live after listening to it for weeks beforehand on Bandcamp. Of course, on the night ... no sign of it. So it's the fact that I travelled hundreds of miles to hear a song <i>not </i>being played that makes this gig stand out. Yeah man, what a gig that was. One of the best ...</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-71594223792669829082024-01-01T13:21:00.000+00:002024-01-01T13:21:06.375+00:00Niluccio raids Bandcamp #4<p>Yeah man, I'm starting 2024 with a bang (sort of). That's right, it's another quick Bandcamp playlist - all new stuff from that now very old year, 2023. Listen to the results of this so-called raid ... <a href="https://bndcmpr.co/c0a858ae">here</a>.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEilHLy9sec95jIwRvMXROKBpvgucB9SB4VVqx4ztr1hNWUCof8ch30PV6V4P__UoD35U9uu0RDskosg1gc5w44elvKVvkfnCgGGnjgyxv-UmNtpx5DppFjc81wrvHFXHJfJhS80b2WZerWPWidLiOE0r9bydBxRopzGRB5_91oT55NFFXwfOEj3rbHs" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="842" data-original-width="1405" height="384" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEilHLy9sec95jIwRvMXROKBpvgucB9SB4VVqx4ztr1hNWUCof8ch30PV6V4P__UoD35U9uu0RDskosg1gc5w44elvKVvkfnCgGGnjgyxv-UmNtpx5DppFjc81wrvHFXHJfJhS80b2WZerWPWidLiOE0r9bydBxRopzGRB5_91oT55NFFXwfOEj3rbHs=w640-h384" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-18522826231228862572023-12-30T21:46:00.002+00:002023-12-30T21:46:09.124+00:00Reggae heads<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgcxKYLH4KeLw4sTrqfqy39Ds5YybvddOLD2CozIIcNm_GMBbU_0d2j-h8Tg4UFjVHDBfOWfeiNWzNTkOD9n_Wxx7yf-vDoIor46qm2FIV_UPQuW9UE0k2RLuYEZ_QplEz4wict5kUh0npqta0K7OgW7TmcgJcKhKKNsdb6tHchvlqPJcEz6sh0rgOa" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="597" data-original-width="888" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgcxKYLH4KeLw4sTrqfqy39Ds5YybvddOLD2CozIIcNm_GMBbU_0d2j-h8Tg4UFjVHDBfOWfeiNWzNTkOD9n_Wxx7yf-vDoIor46qm2FIV_UPQuW9UE0k2RLuYEZ_QplEz4wict5kUh0npqta0K7OgW7TmcgJcKhKKNsdb6tHchvlqPJcEz6sh0rgOa=w640-h430" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-10212911460219308112023-12-30T21:08:00.018+00:002023-12-31T14:27:27.623+00:00Love in a void: a music blogger looks inward <div style="text-align: left;">It's that time of year again and I'm seeing various best-of-the-year Twitter threads from bloggers - stuff like "My ten most popular blogs from the year". Or journalists with their "Articles from the year I'm most proud of". Should I be getting in on the act? Should I parade a few of my own posts from this blog? <i>The very best of Niluccio on noise 2023</i>? But how? Select the most popular? Er, no - they're all equally <i>un</i>popular (or neither popular nor unpopular, just ... <i>unknown</i>). What about those that give me a warm and cosy <i>proud</i> feeling? Hmm, not really. Pride comes before a fall, and er ... nope, I don't think so. I dunno, why bother looking back over things you've done in any one calendar year anyway? To take stock? Is it all just a bit of not-especially-subtle bragging?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Come to that, why do music bores like me even bother self-publishing all this nonsense in the first place? Dozens of posts every year. For years! Utter fucking madness, no? The kingly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/26/blogging-freedom-outdated-format">Simon Reynolds</a> - the Taylor Swift to my unknown strummer in a basement bar, first on, no-one paying attention - reckons there's something especially freeing about the self-produced music blog. You bash it out regardless of whether anyone wants it, whether anyone has - god forbid - <i>commissioned </i>it. True, but he's got his book empire as his "real" music output. He's a huge name in the world of music writing - his blogs are, I guess, merely his public ruminations, his preliminary sketches for future articles and publications. Possibly also a way of generating ideas and getting early feedback. All fine, of course, and I'd probably do the same if I was a superstar music writer like him. But no, he inhabits a completely different world. Naturally I agree with his view that music blogging is perhaps first and foremost a <i>compulsion</i>. Or perhaps in reality it's the act of <i>writing </i>that's compulsive. The fact that the writing's about a major personal interest, music, is obviously a big thing as well, but I would say the writing itself is really the compulsion. And, let it be said - and freely admitted - the free-to-air nature of blogging - the ability to "publish" and share it - yeah, this also has some kind of appeal (<i>what</i>, I couldn't quite say, possibly simple <i>vanity</i>).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Who actually reads the stuff I write anyway? God knows. A tiny handful of friends (and not even them most of the time), a few people scattered across the globe who stumble on a Niluccio blog after googling a band, a song or some bit of arcane musical history (with "What's this shit from this weird Niluccio guy?" presumably being the typical reaction), and ... er, <i>me</i>. Yes, mostly me. I write them, I read them, full stop. There I am, reading, re-reading, correcting, tinkering, re-reading again years later and also thinking ... <i>what's this shit from this weird Niluccio guy? </i>Ahem. Yes, well, let's just agree that blogging for years about music is a strange habit and there's probably no cure for it. <i>But</i>, I hear you cry, w<i>hich of your blogs from 2023, Niluccio, are the ones you're most proud of? The best of the year?</i> My answer? Fucking <i>all </i>of them. Or none whatsoever. You decide (or don't). Either way, since 2010 they've been my 874 little moments of musical love. Love in a void. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0fpyaCQhIBI" width="320" youtube-src-id="0fpyaCQhIBI"></iframe></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-62164370844828258842023-12-27T13:35:00.006+00:002023-12-28T08:11:35.522+00:00Niluccio raids Bandcamp #3<p>They're coming er, thick and fast now - another BNDCMPR playlist, which features a few faves listened to in 2023. Check it ...</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjKS_HDQnfT-G8xMi5xYf9Q2fex0OMjPMwYk_rDTMZA4od1Ti6tV0dLWIzo9bNw-04uNEHyB7Mfv7IzkvRNl1IayFMTD0DC_vtYoLaJFR0-2h9hC3BFkkHRSowb1VM_4k4y17M4XK3olCTNNooKEJvWH5LnzUYAxr4mj5VULbKtP2tb0FNQecRYyYLm" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="844" data-original-width="1425" height="380" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjKS_HDQnfT-G8xMi5xYf9Q2fex0OMjPMwYk_rDTMZA4od1Ti6tV0dLWIzo9bNw-04uNEHyB7Mfv7IzkvRNl1IayFMTD0DC_vtYoLaJFR0-2h9hC3BFkkHRSowb1VM_4k4y17M4XK3olCTNNooKEJvWH5LnzUYAxr4mj5VULbKtP2tb0FNQecRYyYLm=w640-h380" width="640" /></a></div><p>... <a href="https://bndcmpr.co/da8503ff">out</a>.</p><iframe src="https://bndcmpr.co/embed/da8503ff?orientation=landscape" style="border: none; height: 91px; width: 100%;" title="Niluccio raids Bandcamp #3"></iframe><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-16447816110817573292023-12-26T16:20:00.006+00:002023-12-26T16:20:55.226+00:00The ground to dust and rust (Joe and Elvis)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjZEkEfw9KI4CVF0p7gdBtRifq0FeTajvzZGjvwGKvdRw49BKyxglg2NKxqw2hyb9_pfW5ipyQh5iPOCNY4UpJfRPUDxkJ-Qoog6BkxDkzsSElAdgElJF1HzLteNxeoHNs0-E888N4UcwmLZvnaTheiGGMI3fMmU2c73LOWdzaYRq0S8MNAM2serLAg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="724" data-original-width="1383" height="335" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjZEkEfw9KI4CVF0p7gdBtRifq0FeTajvzZGjvwGKvdRw49BKyxglg2NKxqw2hyb9_pfW5ipyQh5iPOCNY4UpJfRPUDxkJ-Qoog6BkxDkzsSElAdgElJF1HzLteNxeoHNs0-E888N4UcwmLZvnaTheiGGMI3fMmU2c73LOWdzaYRq0S8MNAM2serLAg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Joe Strummer jiving it up in Aki Kaurismäki's I Hired A Contract Kille</span>r</div><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-73726407578171047122023-12-21T16:11:00.007+00:002023-12-21T16:14:51.995+00:00His idiotic tin-can band<p><i>"Mr Petrbok, all dressed up in his band-leader's uniform, rushed out of his house and carried off toward the square. He was wearing white gloves and carrying a baton with a gold ball on the end. The idiot. This poor sap was the one who always made trouble about our permit to play and said that since jazz wasn't our national music it should be prohibited. And now he thought he would welcome the Russians with his idiotic tin-can band ..."</i></p><p>-Josef Skvorecky, The Cowards</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjTIKgcOLiw1KOBK5CsR2WgdqTo2YgTfwPpQFIDKV78vCScO3fGjxOAfnK0zrVP64BTCivQRBzqSOgcHkRd129--B2nbzWkk1ZJdU7BTrcb4_OnBpAM7XRZXZtX1IcY_1xZ7xHmuk4t_SzX4-CO0oPiHPqPv6FQw0JLpNsA1XPC-49cm9zw_elE8bOG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="592" data-original-width="873" height="434" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjTIKgcOLiw1KOBK5CsR2WgdqTo2YgTfwPpQFIDKV78vCScO3fGjxOAfnK0zrVP64BTCivQRBzqSOgcHkRd129--B2nbzWkk1ZJdU7BTrcb4_OnBpAM7XRZXZtX1IcY_1xZ7xHmuk4t_SzX4-CO0oPiHPqPv6FQw0JLpNsA1XPC-49cm9zw_elE8bOG=w640-h434" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-59660810749797128502023-12-21T16:00:00.025+00:002024-01-12T18:35:14.328+00:001-2-3-4: all music worlds will crumble to dust <p style="text-align: left;">There's a moment in Dignan Porch's song <a href="https://dignanporch.bandcamp.com/track/sad-shape">Sad shape</a> where the singer Joe Walsh says "2, 3, 4" just ahead of a big chord change. In my opinion, it totally makes the song (check it out: at 1:32, and again at 2:18, and once again at 3:19). Standard stuff, you might say. Just a filler ahead of the stirring chord change. Yeah, maybe, but I think the count-in is itself part of the power. <i>Two-three-four</i>, <i>one-two-three-four</i> - the ultimate cliché kick-off moment within rock is also, I reckon, charged with supernatural power. Sort of ...</p><p style="text-align: left;">I have no idea when it became a thing to include the count-in within a recording itself - perhaps it's always featured in more "informal" recordings, like those chat-and-play sessions that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Lomax">Alan Lomax</a> did with Big Bill Broonzy and others. Or is it just that there are a lot of live recordings in existence and we've become used to hearing this because bands continue to do it on stage? Whatever, since at least the Ramones with their super-abrupt barked-out "1-2-3-4!", I think there's been a distinctly macho edge to this little bit of musical enumeration (by contrast there's a great Buzzcocks bootleg - from New York in '79? - where Pete Shelley's various "1-2-3-4s" have a deliciously tired-camp quality). Anyway, macho or not, I reckon the power of the count-in probably lies in the fact that it's a reminder that music is supposed to be about <i>keeping in time</i>, but keeping in time in a special way<i>. </i>Time + instruments/voices = music. When Prince in Sign O' The Times (his best song?) intones "Time" at regular, well-<i>timed</i> intervals in the song it definitely packs a punch. Put it all together and it has a distinctly prophetic/apocalyptic edge. In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNxNwvjzGM0&ab_channel=TootsandTheMaytals-Topic">54-46 (That's My Number)</a>, Toots Hibbert sings:</p><div style="text-align: left;">Give it to me one time (huh)<br />Give it to me two times (huh-huh)<br />Give it to me three times (huh-huh-huh)<br />Give it to me four times (huh-huh-huh-huh)</div><p style="text-align: left;">A song about doing time (in jail) after a wrongful arrest - pretty amazing that this should be one of the very first reggae songs to break out of Jamaica. A break-out song in more than one sense. Numbers, time, music ... <i>escape</i>. Escape from what though? Escape from the 9-5, from normality, from a dull sense of regularity? Seems to me that the regimentation of "keeping time" and counting and so on is always potentially in tension with the utopian, break-out-of-this-fucking-place impulse in some of the most powerful music. (I guess the "chaos" of improv is where this is given a measure of free rein). Is music just too powerful to ... stay in time? To break out of time, so to speak, is, if I remember correctly, what Jon Savage was referring to when he mentioned (in England's Dreaming) the mesmerising power of seeing a London punk with just "1977" daubed in giant letters on his leather jacket in ... January 1977. Yeah, probably just a fairly routine homage to the Clash, but still, it probably provided a frission of <i>something</i>. Some kind of minor "shock" - a small gesture toward doing the impossible and breaking free from the normal steady flow of time (the shock of the new/shock of the now). Actually, all the hype about punk - and specifically 1976 - being a sort of cultural "year zero" must, at the time, have had quite a sinister edge when you recall that Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge had announced their year zero policy only the year before (a holiday in Cambodia, indeed ...). In any case, despite its polemics and hyperbole, one of the ironies of the supposedly scorched-earth-like punk rock phenomenon was that it incorporated so much <i>old stuff</i> (Johnny Rotten's Ted gear, standard rock tropes, dozens of refugees - mostly male - from early-70s pub rock bands etc). Basically, it wasn't anywhere near as <i>modern</i> as it pretended to be. By contrast, for example, when it emerged in the 1990s, jungle was <i>very </i>modern sounding. Let's not forget though, modernity is always shortlived however fresh it may feel at the time. In a long section dealing with modernism in Walter Benjamin's book on Baudelaire, he quotes the French novelist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Barbey_d%27Aurevilly">Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly</a> saying that "a few years bury the mores of a society more effectively than all the dust of the volcanoes". C'est vrai! Give it a few years and we'll all be dust and where will your cool punk count-ins and your shockingly-new music be then? Nowhere. Gone. So drink up - it's later than you think. <i>Time, gentlemen please! </i></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjro8hPXzz1v_IX-Gr9HFCMVuJfM92d0hJNa3PTITxtMfJjdKNHAeb7MlPV-pToiu3MGU3k6376_m3v1rT0UKbRin5v4bnVu6j2CPfOYh3kPVBoi26Y4bkmzyNmDbgqILBXYi6deLkhx70CcIP9tjHy_iffI56O872WNysl3bCq7VPKckjQn2X-b7hx" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="827" data-original-width="574" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjro8hPXzz1v_IX-Gr9HFCMVuJfM92d0hJNa3PTITxtMfJjdKNHAeb7MlPV-pToiu3MGU3k6376_m3v1rT0UKbRin5v4bnVu6j2CPfOYh3kPVBoi26Y4bkmzyNmDbgqILBXYi6deLkhx70CcIP9tjHy_iffI56O872WNysl3bCq7VPKckjQn2X-b7hx=w445-h640" width="445" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Charles Baudelaire wants nothing to do with your 'punk rock revolution' </span></div><br /><p></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p> </p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-92019849984339759422023-12-17T09:03:00.023+00:002023-12-22T21:49:49.736+00:00A year in music: seven random things <p style="text-align: left;">A longstanding tradition to rival Christmas (and possibly even Christianity itself), here's my famous random things blog for 2023. Throw away your horrible Christmas presents and read on ... </p><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Best things found in the street</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">This year it has to be the excellent arm-breakingly-heavy <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2023/02/hi-fi-that-doesnt-cost-you-arm-and-leg.html?q=turntable">Gemini XL-500 II</a>, scavenged from a big pile of junk outside a discontinued record shop-cum-venue in the street where I live. Naturally it was in perfect working order and there was no good reason to throw it away. Alongside it was a decent amp as a side dish. Believe it or not, a workmate tells me he <i>also</i> found a Gemini XL-500 II in his street, a couple of miles away from me in Dalston. What's going on in Hackney? Is there an over-supply of this model of turntable? Is it a very obscure art experiment of some kind? Bizarre. But fine with me.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Best donations made / stuff disposed of</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Sort of the opposite of the previous category, this is where I've displayed my famous benevolence and generously given things to a worthy cause. Or to put it another way, it's where I've got rid of stuff I no longer wanted but have at least done slightly better than lazily throwing things out with the rubbish. This year's giveaways have included a sofa given to a friend's <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/510826886577795/">venue</a> in Coventry and countless records, tapes and CDs that have been plonked down on the counter of my local Crisis shop. I reckon the Crisis staff have long since ID'd me as "that weird bloke who brings in all that stuff we'll never be able to get rid of", but, never mind, my philanthropic spirit is ... strong. Best single item of the year? That will be the Dave Haslam clubs <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2017/03/feel-rush-all-nighter-reading-life.html">book</a> I chucked their way. It's a decent enough read (if a little cluttered in the telling) but my sagging bookshelves needed a cull so away it went. I originally picked it up for £1 at an Amnesty booksale. A few days after I'd left it with them, Crisis had it on sale for £7. Inflation, eh? </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><b style="font-family: inherit;">Best destruction art</b></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is where I wreck something in an effort to turn it into a supposed work of art. (But what is art, I hear you ask). It's all part of my (very) submerged artistic impulse: refashioning stuff. The opposite of make and mend - destroy and make. So this year I finally <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2023/11/swinish-behaviour-turning-my-buzzcocks.html?q=garrett">did something</a> with an ancient Buzzc</span>ocks t-shirt which has now gone from unworn clothing item - yellowing and moth-eaten - to the centrepiece of my amateur collage thing (Malcolm Garrett would be proud). Fun fact: my partner hates it so much that she demands I turn it to the wall whenever she's in the flat. Grounds for separation? </div></span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgke6ytr5fGc1lQddDxyCNUGWii2muoSdGu6lIny5pACZY7LH1nVrRto_gq3InkGi8NL2M29hUCPxVOVgFecwsoVHDAzHbpWRoH6xUpX4aTIxzZkqWH_yYcxW9HZTifgFmAM4gT19kIENbgsfK1zVB1mNUVYu_xONI-OGQO2JfRYd0uZYHmL5QJJ8_k" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="4160" data-original-width="3120" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgke6ytr5fGc1lQddDxyCNUGWii2muoSdGu6lIny5pACZY7LH1nVrRto_gq3InkGi8NL2M29hUCPxVOVgFecwsoVHDAzHbpWRoH6xUpX4aTIxzZkqWH_yYcxW9HZTifgFmAM4gT19kIENbgsfK1zVB1mNUVYu_xONI-OGQO2JfRYd0uZYHmL5QJJ8_k=w480-h640" width="480" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">A habit that sticks: destruction art</span></div></div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Stuff I've enjoyed listening to (in no particular order)</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Smashing Times, This Sporting Life</div><div style="text-align: left;">Hygiene, 15 minute city</div><div><div style="text-align: left;">Légumes Sex, LPette, especially the Buzzcocks-tastic Poc’mec</div><div style="text-align: left;">Dignan Porch, Nothing Bad Will Ever Happen</div><div style="text-align: left;">Tube Alloys, Magnetic Point</div><div style="text-align: left;">Euros Childs, Thrips</div><div style="text-align: left;">Dinner Night, Bernhard</div></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Calendars, Noah Don't Like Rock</div><div><div style="text-align: left;">Brorlab, Working Out In Heaven</div><div style="text-align: left;">Jenerator Jenkins, Let's Jenerate! No.1 EP / Evil Rising In the Collapsing Age</div><div style="text-align: left;">All Girls Arson Club, Demos, Rareties & B-sides, with deliberate misspelling? </div></div><div style="text-align: left;">Hound, Some Days Were Good</div><div><div style="text-align: left;">Rrose, A row of cylinders</div><div style="text-align: left;">Cassandra Miller, Traveller Song / Thanksong</div><div style="text-align: left;">Roxy Music, Street Life</div></div><div><div style="text-align: left;">Crumbs, Mind Yr Manners</div><div style="text-align: left;">Poledo, Start again</div><div style="text-align: left;">David Tattersall, On The Sunny Side Of The Ocean</div><div style="text-align: left;">Crawlies, Old news</div></div><div style="text-align: left;">DJ Cuddles, Selector After Dark mix</div><div><div style="text-align: left;">Andrew Weatherall, York hiphop mix</div><div style="text-align: left;">Joe Mckechnie, Champagne For My Real Friends/Real Pain For My Sham Friends mix 27</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> ... plus the wonderful <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL5IlI9tYoc&ab_channel=Felt-Topic">Whirlpool vision of shame</a>, which I must have listened to about 100 times this year because YouTube's evil algorithm keeps defaulting me to this tune every time I use their clunky platform. On this occasion I'm not complaining. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Notable under-attended musical event that was good anyway</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">This has been most of <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2023/12/my-20-best-gigs-of-2023.html?view=magazine">them</a>, really, but a special mention goes to the Elle Et Moi DJ set at the LTB Showrooms in Coventry alongside Danielle McHugh's very nice photography/projection project. EEM played an enjoyable selection of not-heard-very-often stuff (krauty pop, trip hop, the Associates) to a massively unpacked room of about four people. And yet it was <i>still </i>very good. </div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0ejU7806fh_5QYWmc3lVRwLH_gVQtc4qe3jFK5JAHaqrG1YGHKmQuhcVNkPKwom9tuVyZScGNl4GbOzXeVCYXTyOiHFsX9dO0gP1_6YbCT5v2UNLpK8NEwGelrgF8w_bDA1HOdl8Pbjusv3w69zqAJrBk18FN4Wmevz1OMHLBR-fzcrMAKgtFAzxU" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="900" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg0ejU7806fh_5QYWmc3lVRwLH_gVQtc4qe3jFK5JAHaqrG1YGHKmQuhcVNkPKwom9tuVyZScGNl4GbOzXeVCYXTyOiHFsX9dO0gP1_6YbCT5v2UNLpK8NEwGelrgF8w_bDA1HOdl8Pbjusv3w69zqAJrBk18FN4Wmevz1OMHLBR-fzcrMAKgtFAzxU=s16000" /></a></div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">Dancing by myself: fighting for space on the dancefloor at the LTB </div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Best free badges</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Having recently <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2021/04/reptilian-thoughts-why-its-ok-to-wear.html?q=badges">got back into badges</a>, these days I usually scan the merch stall at gigs (sites I'd disdainfully shunned for years) on the look-out for an attractive badge. This year the best two were the freebie ones that (1) <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2023/12/leeds-leeds-leeds-wormboys-and-all.html?view=magazine">Wormboys</a> gave me at their rainy-night Leeds show, and (2) that a very nice (Ukrainian?) woman gave me at Powerplant's Nottingham gig after I bought their <a href="https://ppowerplant.bandcamp.com/album/stump-soup">Stump Soup</a> tape. Merch!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Gig that I most struggled to find even though it was only ten minutes from where I live</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">This was a show at the recently-opened Two Palms venue in Hackney, part of the ever-growing Jaguar Shoes empire. Where's this place, I thought. Hackney? Really? Never heard of it. So off I went, thinking it's my local patch and it'll be super-easy to find. Half an hour later - having gone into a basement restaurant with "Palms" in its name (thanks Google Maps), up a side-alley into a middle-aged party-crowd pub, up and down a busy road several times dodging drunks - I was about to give up. I would just go home and add it to the long list of gigs I didn't attend because I was so disorganised/hapless. When ... there it was: right in front of me. A new bar-venue beneath the Hackney Empire theatre, currently well into panto season. <i>Niluccio! Behind you!</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Best finds in a charity shop</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Yes, not only do I generously donate to charity shops I also buy stuff from them. More and more, it seems. Anyway, this year I bought one half of the Velvet Underground Gold 2/CD comp on Polydor (it was 50 pence, I think) from a charity shop in Fulham in deepest darkest west London. Someone had apparently stolen disc one, but disc two is better (Ocean live etc) and, anyway, 50p for 16 VU songs: I ain't complaining. This shop in question was across the road from another charity shop where last year I got the Sex Pistols' Something Else 7" for ... zero pounds. A loose, totally-unsleeved record stranded among the Dean Martin LPs, I took it up to the counter where the bloke - with barely a glance - said, "You can have it". Punk, eh? Not what it used to be.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQr5ytPAWRhT8X7KRgJvDw5vvcYj3o6FgG-EHB3i98WVASC9tLmlK5Dw1S6BKRUAn1cFvjjY2TKuK7GZf8OsR4b6vcZAZn51E6AF4NRBDeXpJzrBlNnAzrM5FCtwqqlNvxNEgMC7XqdL9E4id2Awpv3nicyJMQNa4Y8EnMUnaUg_-BCdldh_ESSWtz" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="836" data-original-width="1113" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhQr5ytPAWRhT8X7KRgJvDw5vvcYj3o6FgG-EHB3i98WVASC9tLmlK5Dw1S6BKRUAn1cFvjjY2TKuK7GZf8OsR4b6vcZAZn51E6AF4NRBDeXpJzrBlNnAzrM5FCtwqqlNvxNEgMC7XqdL9E4id2Awpv3nicyJMQNa4Y8EnMUnaUg_-BCdldh_ESSWtz=w640-h480" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">It's the beginning of a new age: the VU make it big in Fulham</div></span><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And that, dear friends, is that. Only seven random things this year. It's sometimes eight, but then it's also sometimes six. Like everything else in life, this annual blog is itself very random. Yeah man, I'm beginning to see the light ...</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-21722842561112073292023-12-16T10:49:00.003+00:002023-12-16T11:31:12.440+00:00More curved, Noisepod #38 (Dec 2023)<p>If you're looking for something to drown out the moronic "festive" chatter this week, look no further. Here's 75 minutes of prime anti-Christmas noise, perfectly designed to put every fake Santa to flight, to banish all thoughts of "Christmas telly" and ... to generally make life at this time of year slightly less unbearable. (Slightly). Yeah, scream like you're a member of Skinny Girl Diet if you hate Christmas. Anyway, I wish you less straightness in your life. Fewer harsh perpendiculars and confining geometrical shapes. A life, in other words, <a href="https://www.mixcloud.com/NiluccioGrrr/more-curved-noisepod-38-dec-2023/">more curved</a> ...</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj7wQ5RavaVpf92Sd3zbB2l0qkBDGSQ0KGrbW5_XDNGOOkQQjMu959YZJgUU7_Y5HR66dG6qLp_FoW7wxSGY8mOsAv5pPoo4pYx0CG36Zo1V4Me7LRg0tf2-w19uxzygNatcgNveGgH_x3f1onKT5XTdCjB_pi721yT9Q-mUxApcVgb7P4rQf3eLv0T" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="760" data-original-width="626" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj7wQ5RavaVpf92Sd3zbB2l0qkBDGSQ0KGrbW5_XDNGOOkQQjMu959YZJgUU7_Y5HR66dG6qLp_FoW7wxSGY8mOsAv5pPoo4pYx0CG36Zo1V4Me7LRg0tf2-w19uxzygNatcgNveGgH_x3f1onKT5XTdCjB_pi721yT9Q-mUxApcVgb7P4rQf3eLv0T=w528-h640" width="528" /></a></div><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">1: Karen Cooper Complex, Jerkin’ pretty<br />2: Kullnes, Life under a rock<br />3: Claw Marks, Temple of wine<br />4: Good Throb, The queen sucks Nazi cock <br />5: Panzram, Born with a bad haircut<br />6: Dead Moon, Evil eye<br />7: Légumes Sex, Cérémonie <br />8: Test Icicles, What’s your damage?<br />9: The Mute Servants, A little t and a<br />10: Day Of The Dead, Old habits die harder<br />11: Corpse Twitcher, Closing: sutures<br />12: Oscillation, New way to feel<br />13: Kafadan Kontak, Yr acting<br />14: Neils Children, I hate models<br />15: Eyes Of Fire, Paperpipe<br />16: Ultimate Decada, Primaria decada, decada central<br />17: More curved<br />18: Mr Airplane Man, Slippery<br />19: Animalia, Kien es el culpable<br />20: Ricky Hell & The Voidboys, Killing season on earth<br />21: Lot Lizard, Dopefiend<br />22: Snob, Jeremy Kyle<br />23: Stiff Meds, Never gonna change<br />24: Black Mekon, Frank died hanging from an electric fence<br />25: Woolf, Temporal drag<br />26: Scaners, Levitation train 2077<br />27: Skinny Girl Diet, Teenage wolf pack<br />28: Suicide Generation, Evil everywhere </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-25299476510728152062023-12-15T22:00:00.004+00:002023-12-15T22:00:31.984+00:00A yellow glimmer<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgbm5hdozmxl3yKBc9QYhY4yqTjOIQFHCfVEdQQ3-oZFpPVwR_X08orQFumuQqRkCdlbVgVFyOOYSZJyV7q3WvnhjY1eMTjSEdT-W-Kr1DmmWs0y3-Qf_WYGqCSFBwtNvFPCMhcZbf1DdK_EGDGVwpVShGwSWImNDTJLaltjOfid1jO1VhmObv8zDDX" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="845" data-original-width="689" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgbm5hdozmxl3yKBc9QYhY4yqTjOIQFHCfVEdQQ3-oZFpPVwR_X08orQFumuQqRkCdlbVgVFyOOYSZJyV7q3WvnhjY1eMTjSEdT-W-Kr1DmmWs0y3-Qf_WYGqCSFBwtNvFPCMhcZbf1DdK_EGDGVwpVShGwSWImNDTJLaltjOfid1jO1VhmObv8zDDX=w523-h640" width="523" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Maripool: Victoria, London 15/12/23</span></div><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-85652947343273257912023-12-11T20:48:00.030+00:002023-12-12T11:32:31.181+00:00Leeds, Leeds, Leeds! Wormboys and All Girls Arson Club defy the rain and call for trans liberation <p style="text-align: left;">My 20 best gigs of the year <a href="https://niluccio.blogspot.com/2023/12/my-20-best-gigs-of-2023.html?view=magazine">blog</a> is already done and dusted so it's a particular kind of Niluccio hypocrisy-cum-senselessness that sees me still turning up at shows toward the tail-end of the year blithely disregarding whether these could be yet more great gigs that by rights should be chucked straight into the highly-coveted top 20 list. Yeah, the whole thing's clearly a complete travesty. So I've done just that. Smugly posted my blog about a so-called "best 20" and promptly gone along to another very good one. Absolute madness. Anyway, this was Wormboys and All Girls Arson Club at a somewhat hard to find place apparently called the Canal Drawing Offices in the Armley district of Leeds ("go down the alleyway between the furniture shop and the ice-cream place and we're on the left"). So, on a storm-lashed Leeds night, that's what we did: went down the alleyway, across the sodden duckboards and ... plunged into an event that was a bit like a night-time fête: stalls with raffle tickets, baked goods, home-made jewellery and other stuff for sale, and a slight air of hilarity. Inclusive fun for all the family. </p><p style="text-align: left;">First up (in fact already playing when we got there): Wormboys. Good stuff, I thought. Slightly fragile vocals and a sense of calm that could sometimes suggest twee-pop but then confound that expectation with a sudden swerve into grunge and heaviness (check out <a href="https://wormboys.bandcamp.com/track/mostly-still">Mostly Still</a>). At other times they unleashed a driving, anguished rock sound that managed to take us into whiplashed PJ Harvey territory. Fair enough - they can do more than one thing. Their set was also memorable for an inpassioned rallying-cry speech from the bassist, who was demanding "trans liberation" and urging us to "fuck politicians" and bring this about by our own actions. Who am I to disagree? (No-one). Anyway, this genuinely stirring speech was met by applause, cheerful hoots and even (unless my ears misled me) chants of "Leeds, Leeds, Leeds!". </p><p style="text-align: left;">Then it was All Girls Arson Club, the guitar-and-drums two-piece who'd recently ventured down from Manchester for the Delicious Clam in London extravaganza - also, now I think about, held on a day of incessant rain. They had super-tuneful songs (slightly hampered by the sound on the night), a relaxed vibe and some kind of undefinable feel-good factor. They don't take themselves seriously but I'm not deceived: they're good. I've listened to their Bandcamp on and off all this godforsaken fucked-up year, and ... it never fails.</p><p style="text-align: left;">So there you have it: three brave people venture forth into the rainy Leeds night, make it to the gig in the wilds of Armley and ... go home again. I even got a Wormboys badge, which is apparently made from an old piece of circuit board. So, all in all I think I can safely say that this would <i>definitely</i> have been a worthy gig to have found a place in the highly-regarded Niluccio on noise best gigs of the year during 2023 list. Except, of course, I've already done that ... </p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgiMYONmXGjwNsslNE4MuWw43vbu1T2vXBA66cPiBlBlM09K9lRCH6dHqIRA8g9X38CtrP31J55ZvGKSeCWvuE6CM36Cw9bQ3I9KyEm28MWt5GEoYAYL34l89kIYtVBmhFsUi_BDC8YlRPQKevBhidzY6xgoiQpH6LBW4AL3kqCcnmkwvLmehmCBYrP" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" data-original-height="713" data-original-width="623" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgiMYONmXGjwNsslNE4MuWw43vbu1T2vXBA66cPiBlBlM09K9lRCH6dHqIRA8g9X38CtrP31J55ZvGKSeCWvuE6CM36Cw9bQ3I9KyEm28MWt5GEoYAYL34l89kIYtVBmhFsUi_BDC8YlRPQKevBhidzY6xgoiQpH6LBW4AL3kqCcnmkwvLmehmCBYrP=w560-h640" width="560" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">A fully-paid-up Wormboy</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><p></p><p><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-66171274739845126362023-12-06T19:59:00.002+00:002023-12-06T19:59:09.864+00:00No Bauhaus<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivu5rHN-H4PyXrQwmqpOg4IJaQIe_R-MNZudOpSdRycriLgwNyr0ndc66u3W6H47_WAobJ7YPYOvm2P5uqmgSbDTb847TMkqlEiTyCfIYrYaStbqc_PPVHWahR79AZuqakblxQZhZVa5vibjf3g1rLfWV2qnCq59bLh0N8Ma8CcoFbLBR32uoQqiz0" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="624" data-original-width="348" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEivu5rHN-H4PyXrQwmqpOg4IJaQIe_R-MNZudOpSdRycriLgwNyr0ndc66u3W6H47_WAobJ7YPYOvm2P5uqmgSbDTb847TMkqlEiTyCfIYrYaStbqc_PPVHWahR79AZuqakblxQZhZVa5vibjf3g1rLfWV2qnCq59bLh0N8Ma8CcoFbLBR32uoQqiz0=w357-h640" width="357" /></a></div><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-9177681133359805932023-12-04T22:56:00.250+00:002023-12-05T20:37:09.649+00:00My 20 best gigs of 2023<div style="text-align: left;">Yeah man, it's that time of year again: the Niluccio on noise top 20. My best (or ast least a few half-remembered) shows from another excellent year spent hurrying into shabby venues surrounded by people I barely looked at (and certainly didn't talk to) all for the privilege of having the remains of my hearing shattered by <i>too much sound</i>. This is the 14th year of these oh-so-exciting lists, so we're a mere 280 gigs into my mid-life live music extravaganza. Will I make it to 500? Maybe ... </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Hot Face: Dream Bags, London, 7 February</b><br />Pleasing garage-guitar stuff from Hot Face, a band I liked enough on first hearing to check ‘em out again a few weeks later (Shacklewell Arms). Two things in particular that stood out: the big chord change and ringing vocals in their tune <a href="https://soundcloud.com/hot_face/automated-response">Automated Response</a> (a hooktastic winner live) and the intense demeanour of the vaguely Mod-ish singer, big sideburns and (non-Mod) brothel-creeper shoes. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Lunar Effect: Blondies, London, 9 February</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Shake your hair like it's 1974: genuine headbanging stuff and probably the purest "rock" gig I’ve attended in decades. The laid-back singer, sporting an oversized off-white cable-knit sweater, an enormous mass of long ginger hair and Catweazle whiskers, would walk unsteadily about - lean precipitously as if he was set to fall over - before grabbing the mic stand and bursting into piercing Ritchie Blackmore-style vocals. The music, essentially fairly traditional, non-metal rock, included a couple of bluesy ballads for extra 70s rock authenticity. The vibe was fun without being parodic. In several cases, the singer finished a driving rock song by … <i>bursting out laughing</i>. Genuinely good.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj5iV3dkuu7j71BOjkQM_fDH0tgnGFCvJ3Nsi7oxP4n1gdoM4G0Taw3lBLhaP7HP1EHfVUWgIcJRPXD0xtclwtygMLV6Tu4LDFx0pS3kutFzV9Mct9WYILQyCqNoKdgIigxmhlL16mgJv71xNx1M-hzgisPLB7lvgBewswIO3XKpytuZ-J63qOjWB0K" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="816" data-original-width="580" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj5iV3dkuu7j71BOjkQM_fDH0tgnGFCvJ3Nsi7oxP4n1gdoM4G0Taw3lBLhaP7HP1EHfVUWgIcJRPXD0xtclwtygMLV6Tu4LDFx0pS3kutFzV9Mct9WYILQyCqNoKdgIigxmhlL16mgJv71xNx1M-hzgisPLB7lvgBewswIO3XKpytuZ-J63qOjWB0K=w456-h640" width="456" /></a></div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">Long-haired music for long-haired people: The Lunar Effect</div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Big Break: JT Soar, Nottingham, 25 February</b><br />All together now, <i>What the Nottingham gaffer don’t know won't hurt him!!</i> Yes, more Big Break, a band I’ve seen approximately twenty-hundred times in the past 2-3 years (or more than once anyway), and here they were, <i>not </i>in Sheffield but still blasting their way through a dozen sub-two-minute Devo-meets-hardcore blurts from their just-out <a href="https://big-break.bandcamp.com/album/angels-piss">Angel's Piss</a> album. Fresh piss from South Yorks? Hampered by slightly unclear vocals (defective levels?) on the night, they were still fierce, jagged and driving. And the burly singer's delicate little on-stage jigs are always a pleasing sight.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Cath Roberts & Olie Brice/Alex Ward Item 4: Centrala, Birmingham, 26 February</b><br />"Is it going to be dissonant?", asked my partner before reluctantly agreeing to make a rare appearance at a live musical event that <i>wasn't</i> classical/opera. Naturally we were then treated to an hour-and-a-half of improv noise that certainly got pretty close to dissonance. First Cath Roberts and Olie Brice did a sax-and-double bass thing: all eerie scrapes, pops and blurts. Because of where I was sitting, the bass was so close that Brice's bow was in constant danger of hitting my legs (improv, man!). Then Alex Ward had a go at upping the dissonance levels. Looking older than in his Boat Ting days (now a skinny, bearded prophet), from him and his outfit we got clarinet whine and spurts, super-intense guitar micro-freakouts, and er, other stuff that probably went over my head. But, I hear you ask, was it dissonant ..? </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiomN0fHLNwQMt9vB5br1x7hgARTF31U-CjA101hsompU-iQFAguHpKWad6O79fQNRlsyqj6_bp8D9mF45lJfId7nZobMTeVe0d1MQg5Hqhc_4XvHs3_v2204i1-eQ9AoTEKurKxNdPeOyghJj8zBqgrBQsBYd1errKiVZIFnRvlOEq2WnEZ__2lL5V" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="789" data-original-width="613" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiomN0fHLNwQMt9vB5br1x7hgARTF31U-CjA101hsompU-iQFAguHpKWad6O79fQNRlsyqj6_bp8D9mF45lJfId7nZobMTeVe0d1MQg5Hqhc_4XvHs3_v2204i1-eQ9AoTEKurKxNdPeOyghJj8zBqgrBQsBYd1errKiVZIFnRvlOEq2WnEZ__2lL5V=w496-h640" width="496" /></a></div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">The prophet surrounded by his disciples (effects pedals): Alex Ward Item 4 </div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Ski Lift/The Tubs: Windmill, London, 30 March </b><br />Firm jangle-pop favourites with this blogger, the Tubs were both relaxed and almost fiery at this gig in a venue I’ve inflicted my DJ’d music on countless times in years gone by. The singer (Owen) seemed to be on particularly pouty pop form, while the lead guitarist was apparently possessed by some kind of guitar demon: hunched and strumming away maniacally. Meanwhile, Ski Lift delivered decent choppy pop which was good enough for me to invest £5 (sterling) of my own money, buying a CD from them on the night. Merch!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgAXcNco0kRWjVz5OXDhwwnNLFk9n4AkQYUszrnloyRZuPOzIZ_5TybLaHKnjI0GnY1pKbarAL3qkujSy3WnNF0NbRrxAru8vLoVMbDDbCavFS4VRnEsf9N9tTVN1dUoRRKBXoqfJEov_q9sHL78R7szB5bReoumZaaUdkoBijMSi7YdxeCIBBKWCME" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="814" data-original-width="584" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgAXcNco0kRWjVz5OXDhwwnNLFk9n4AkQYUszrnloyRZuPOzIZ_5TybLaHKnjI0GnY1pKbarAL3qkujSy3WnNF0NbRrxAru8vLoVMbDDbCavFS4VRnEsf9N9tTVN1dUoRRKBXoqfJEov_q9sHL78R7szB5bReoumZaaUdkoBijMSi7YdxeCIBBKWCME=w459-h640" width="459" /></a></div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">The Tubs: swoonsome jangle-pop in your area</div></span><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Church Party/Trust Fund/The Tubs/Big Break: Delicious Clam, Sheffield, 15 April</b><br />Another bustling and varied line-up at the still-doing-it-for-the-kids Delicious Clam. First up, Church Party, playing a shortish set of sprightly pop-flavoured garage rock, with the singer indulging in the odd shimmy to liven things up. Next, Trust Fund veered into super-twee territory - fragile, high-pitched vocals and creaky, child-like keyboards. A surprising triumph. The Tubs (again!), then Big Break (also, again!), with one of their superfans, Jeuce's singer-ranter Jenn, careering about at the front to incite a minor riot, particularly during the excellent The Gaffer. As the Tubs’ Owen Williams said, this gig had "all the types of music … gentle music, in-between music and aggressive music".</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Thee Mightees/Holiday Ghosts: Delicious Clam, Sheffield, 18 April</b><br />Two fave bands on one bill, yes it had to be another Delicious Clam mini-extravaganza. Holiday Ghosts - who I was seeing for the millionth time if not more - were … <i>perfectly OK</i>, but in truth for me the thing that most stood out from their set on the night was singer Sam Stacpoole’s lovely black Elvis cap. Superficial of me, I know, but er, there you are. Thee Mightees, meanwhile, were rather brilliant in their super-understated, vaguely chaotic, extremely non-rock and roll way. Blithe, blissful melodies from the fabled land of jangle. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Liminal Project: Dream Bags, London, 26 May</b><br />The three-piece Liminal Project were a low-key take on goth with thunderous drum machine/programmed beats, distinctly ominous bass lines, high-in-the-mix guitar - including numerous downstroke guitar "chimes" - and determinedly sombre vocals. All fine with me. Add a bit more flutter to the vocals and it would have been Cocteau Twins territory. The Faith-era Cure vibes of their slowest song was possibly their best.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjIYPh0CzIIls8J_j6Go3E6lA7yS_QVVnnf3LXXgHxI-sUcQYb3-RQ6ou8vqld4R7nN41gTsWAFDP02V6qfaOUJBteKqcmBGEf8J8z0kkH1jHxLvYQxRp-ueAQZLHcnpejbY1sS1Sv6zRwjWZvWTFX7gVqDn3maQBDzMC8v5QinYqilHIgNems0V1rS" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="824" data-original-width="654" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjIYPh0CzIIls8J_j6Go3E6lA7yS_QVVnnf3LXXgHxI-sUcQYb3-RQ6ou8vqld4R7nN41gTsWAFDP02V6qfaOUJBteKqcmBGEf8J8z0kkH1jHxLvYQxRp-ueAQZLHcnpejbY1sS1Sv6zRwjWZvWTFX7gVqDn3maQBDzMC8v5QinYqilHIgNems0V1rS=w507-h640" width="507" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Goth for a new age?: Liminal Project in the fiery depths </span></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Unknown rap-metal band: Blondies, London, 8 June</b><br />I didn't even catch the name of this band (very remiss of me), but they were pretty striking. Pre kick-off, three very unassuming types (a guitarist, a bassist and a drummer) quietly assembled and looked as if they were about to play polite indie of some kind. After a few chords they were suddenly joined by a super-rambunctious singer/rapper/ranter (pictured) who exploded into life as the band suddenly took off behind him. Grinding guitars and pummelling drums began to set up a relentless backdrop as the ranter-maniac harangued the audience, jumped up onto the bar, prowled about all over the place and generally ran amok. Pretty great. This livewire’s best line went like this: "Fuck Rishi Sunak, fuck Liz Truss, fuck Tony Blair, fuck Winston Churchill, fuck all of them". I quite agree. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWpsLVwzMb4UpOLkWDIRYvw6TDR0T0zZujyAS35HqPGodVomTLmQ5KnxGrZn3Jq5cD9lVyJgAp5_O9nn16HD6-Jv2v10RzHhhjIuSeJqWyBCqNKBJnoL-ZzUsGfQmo14b9y1V2BdqUGri4JgwazB5oHCG6Bl9wykGft-R4uJx4YXX8xcaYUyNrQd6g" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="832" data-original-width="575" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWpsLVwzMb4UpOLkWDIRYvw6TDR0T0zZujyAS35HqPGodVomTLmQ5KnxGrZn3Jq5cD9lVyJgAp5_O9nn16HD6-Jv2v10RzHhhjIuSeJqWyBCqNKBJnoL-ZzUsGfQmo14b9y1V2BdqUGri4JgwazB5oHCG6Bl9wykGft-R4uJx4YXX8xcaYUyNrQd6g=w443-h640" width="443" /></a></div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">Ranter-in-chief from unknown band runs amok</div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>The Rebel: Windmill, London, 19 June</b><br />I've previously said plenty about The Rebel (he'll be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame any day now) so I won't go over it all again. Suffice to say this was more of his crunching beats and garbled noise (ten straight minutes of this without vocals at the beginning), laced with sour lyrics verging on the misanthropic. "If the oceans were made of whisky / I'd swim to the bottom and die / Sometimes I think it's amazing that I'm still alive" being one of the sunnier moments. As ever with Mr Rebel, the devil was in the detail: he wore <i>two</i> cowboy hats (one on top of the other), and explained that his unusual white Vox guitar (emblazoned with a £20 sticker) was of "such low quality that only 80 were ever made".</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Xie: Dream Bags, London, 12 July</b><br />A baseball-capped duo who unleashed an avant-noise onslaught to a tiny gathering in DG's small basement which, I must admit, I only survived for about 15 minutes because my ears were hurting and, anyway, the drummer’s kick-pedal apparently kept malfunctioning (so, er, I made my excuses and left). They were good though. Lots of choppy snare and cymbals-heavy drumming and various electronic drones and squalls triggered by a guy on keyboards. At times the latter would press a key which seemingly played a programmed snatch of treated vocals (I think). Also, the gig kicked off with the keyboardist using a delicate paintbrush to dab something (paint?, an oil?) onto the cymbals and drums, which the drummer then proceeded to strike. A sacred noise ritual.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Powerplant: JT Soar, Nottingham, 16 July</b><br />Seemingly everywhere at once - in my emails, on people's t-shirts in the street, and er, in many other places - Powerplant were evidently on the up by the time of this Sunday gig in happening Nottingham. Were this semi-vogue-ish band any good? Yeah, I reckon so. They doled out a pretty impressive blend of synthed-up punk (more Devo meets hardcore, you might say). The sound levels on the night were perhaps weighted against the vocals, but to judge from their Bandcamp PP stuff generally involves pretty mangled vocals that could have been spewed out by a (slightly warped) machine. Nice stately moments of keyboard here and there (their Stump Soup tape is an incredible high-concept 60 minutes of this) and some excellent "huh" grunts from the singer-guitarist. If Powerplant become big I will - naturally - immediately stop liking them, but for now … they're cool. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEimlwa3rRoJF1uJXfLdfTfgZr9N4qtV3rSfy0VkoxtV1U3sdvkV5NldN01mApdnd--0WeFx4J_R0E8wWmnmga6XbHlC5kC4xBgnZrOjvF2FEjTFU3auNJMWBzjlW0YEMZqhfAv-6AzHRbxrN2hiUgx1a_oR8DHso9Xqe-OgZyZuIgXB6LgLkx65Mx_T" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="891" data-original-width="1160" height="492" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEimlwa3rRoJF1uJXfLdfTfgZr9N4qtV3rSfy0VkoxtV1U3sdvkV5NldN01mApdnd--0WeFx4J_R0E8wWmnmga6XbHlC5kC4xBgnZrOjvF2FEjTFU3auNJMWBzjlW0YEMZqhfAv-6AzHRbxrN2hiUgx1a_oR8DHso9Xqe-OgZyZuIgXB6LgLkx65Mx_T=w640-h492" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">Powerplant: everywhere at once </div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Water Machine: Delicious Clam, Sheffield, 9 September<br /></b>You call it "kooky", I call it infectious pop music in a B52s vein (or maybe The Grates, the amazing hyper-energetic Australian band active 2002-20). Fronted by a wild-eyed, action-packed super-demonstrative person with a safety-pin earring and "Grow" tattoo'd on her chest, this was irresistible stuff sounding considerably more powerful than their demo on Bandcamp. Notable things included seeing how they drummed with both the floor tom and snare covered with tote bags (modern muffling) and made good use of cow bell knocks. A really entertaining gig, and all in all it was probably what they call<i> a water cooler moment</i>. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Silk Cuts/The Smashing Times: New River Studios, London, 28 September</b><br />Arriving at this gig halfway through Silk Cuts' set, I skipped getting a drink from the bar and headed straight into NRS's murky concert room because the music sounded <i>that good.</i> And was that petunia I could smell in there? Anyway, Silk Cuts were well worth a deep drag: super-authentic C86 jangle-pop with fey vocals, spindly guitar chords and heavy thud-thud-thud drumming. And then Baltimore's The Smashing Times who, believe it or not, I'd been playing non-stop on Bandcamp for weeks before this gig (check out <a href="https://thesmashingtimes.bandcamp.com/track/candy-bar">Candy Bar</a> for example). Anyway, lovely psych-toned twee-pop played with a mournful edge by a chill band who seemed fully capable of playing for three straight hours if they wished. In the end they played for a mere 35 minutes.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhseXfpQMSwmWvPHVjY0MJ_SRTYGQ_mBPB6pcqyvJ0o6GRDdQLIp2pYkATaUnHo3KgdCiFxZQSqOfJPlrq2W236bLtb4imrSZ5CvcfL9zyA87TxrxztwMLZbt8jLXrPa06x_-5BNgYDm0n_b2C05WHou-iLCttxrHuIbHhPnPJSkR79y9v2RHlvBKZO" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="801" data-original-width="661" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhseXfpQMSwmWvPHVjY0MJ_SRTYGQ_mBPB6pcqyvJ0o6GRDdQLIp2pYkATaUnHo3KgdCiFxZQSqOfJPlrq2W236bLtb4imrSZ5CvcfL9zyA87TxrxztwMLZbt8jLXrPa06x_-5BNgYDm0n_b2C05WHou-iLCttxrHuIbHhPnPJSkR79y9v2RHlvBKZO=w528-h640" width="528" /></a></div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">Cool dudes: The Smashing Times </div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Cowboyy: Two Palms, London, 6 October</b><br />Third time lucky at this new Jaguar Shoes-run Hackney venue - I'd been to two earlier shows, including what I think was the venue's inaugural gig, but hadn't dug the music very much. Cowboyy's stuff was some form of prog-psych/math rock, with very twiddly guitar, often with lots of distortion pedals. There was energetic drumming from someone apparently just filling in for the night (I liked his grunts and roars) and generally subdued but still urgent-sounding vocals. Stand-out moment: the singer asking the audience in a not-at-all-rehearsed moment whether anyone present knew a "a good fact" and wished to announce it on the mic. Cue absolute silence. Not even a shouted "no". </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>All Girls Arson Club/Poledo Dynasty/Big Break: Strongroom, London, 21 October</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Three good bands out of a longer all-dayer which saw a bunch of Delicious Clam outfits make the perilous journey to Shoreditch in east London. I've already said plenty about Big Break (pictured), while the excellent All Girls Arson Club were as good as the time I saw them back in sunny Sheffield about eighteen months earlier. Semi-amateurish, super-basic lo-fi pop from a duo (drums and guitar) with very clean female vocals and a fun, no-nonsense attitude. At this show they wore matching red felt bonnets and had a "Bash the fash" sticker on their snare drum. And Poledo Dynasty: heavy-ish post-punk noise with some decent riffs and powerful vocals. Not sure I totally got them (plenty in the crowd did), but still, decent stuff.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjrSSTSEXYO_SGa7Vzz_ff8tdJnhBRYYgnO0lcDqxm46IcB62oEPvCwJuKPxRPkXMcTCCeB0Gx-TA6KMNtkzplF866FLyoRHSss7z4Kh6jlrUN5dCSHpnb-9rXfabEB65HQSw0Bv91oouDBYACIdXQPdAvs70f2CoemY7VVIL-8M4bZaMaX3VrP11FR" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="812" data-original-width="622" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjrSSTSEXYO_SGa7Vzz_ff8tdJnhBRYYgnO0lcDqxm46IcB62oEPvCwJuKPxRPkXMcTCCeB0Gx-TA6KMNtkzplF866FLyoRHSss7z4Kh6jlrUN5dCSHpnb-9rXfabEB65HQSw0Bv91oouDBYACIdXQPdAvs70f2CoemY7VVIL-8M4bZaMaX3VrP11FR=w491-h640" width="491" /></a></div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">Big Break say 'Aggggggggghhhhhh'</div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /><b>Plan Pony/Dearthworms: LTB Showrooms, Coventry, 3 November</b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Two excellent performances from this pair of Sheffield-linked bands at Coventry's only adventurous (and soon-to-be-gone) venue. First the sax-and-electronic squall of the two-piece Plan Pony. This featured a dude squatting down over a suitcase full of pedals and effects units sending walls of electronic bleeps and screeches into the air as a sax player seemingly improv'd her way through the noise. Then Dearthworms who, despite refusing to play Cheetos Man (I asked), were groovy in a sort of warped-rock-what's-going-on-here sort of way. Elements of The Fall (I guess), but especially distinctive because of the singer's rasping-yet-tired vocal tones. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj-ukgGHUt0_RJ2x-getI3RaO7txW5s1K6mM__Y0OYgQ9HP194_Vx1bkwgi0cpuNCGcIHE4sa9DCcKPu6vqm5AsnSyUJMSSdkZSLnPDWJhQhGB8FD-X8UkGQxZJzn56yQcbs-8Wt4Tpyxcd3xcurFIMVHwjKPwkv-mYIbdwBHnbVUnnBMxYcT26McjZ" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="818" data-original-width="595" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj-ukgGHUt0_RJ2x-getI3RaO7txW5s1K6mM__Y0OYgQ9HP194_Vx1bkwgi0cpuNCGcIHE4sa9DCcKPu6vqm5AsnSyUJMSSdkZSLnPDWJhQhGB8FD-X8UkGQxZJzn56yQcbs-8Wt4Tpyxcd3xcurFIMVHwjKPwkv-mYIbdwBHnbVUnnBMxYcT26McjZ=w467-h640" width="467" /></a></div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">Plan Pony: living out of a suitcase</div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Teenage Tom Petties: The Windmill, London 11 November</b><br />A really enjoyable set from this garage-grunge outfit who hit various ecstatic mini-peaks, generally when they unleashed the keening backing vocals of one of the three guitarists. This floppy-haired guitarist guy, probably 40-ish, also had a winning habit of breaking out into a large, child-like grin halfway through the guitar freakouts. Yes, as their song <a href="https://safesuburbanhomerecords.bandcamp.com/track/lambo">Lambo</a> has it, these five not-so-young-anymore blokes "still love rock and roll". Meanwhile, this gig also featured a deadly-serious-looking freaky dancer person from the audience who suddenly appeared down the front, manically whirling about. Dressed all in black, including some peculiarly-massive shorts, and with a grown-out buzz-cut, the assassin-cum-dancer looked uncannily like a 25-year-old Jean-Pierre Léaud. Music for the nouvellle vague, mes amis. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><br /></b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Moni Jitchell/Portable Heads/Kullnes: The Old Hairdressers, Glasgow, 12 November</b><br />Three Scottish noise bands in Glasgow's estimable Old Hairdressers. First the tricksily-named Moni Jitchell were a tour de force: a two-piece solid-noise unit with delay-blasted vocals and beanpole guitarist throwing shapes all over the place (photographic evidence below). "Wall of noise" sort of covers it, but the physicality of their show also put me in mind of modern dance. Portable Heads and Kullnes shared a drummer (wearing a PJ Harvey t-shirt), and both bashed out variants of post-noise rock, but their sounds were fairly different. The Heads went in for lots of loud-quiet dynamics, with default vocals that were subdued and mumbly though sometimes veering into shouty territory. Kullnes were more grungy (occasionally sounding <i>very </i>Nivrana-like), with a jazz feel to some of their breakdowns. That said, their eight-minute <a href="https://kullnes.bandcamp.com/album/sour-single">Swim Like A Shark</a> is different again: moody and shimmeringly beautiful mid-tempo rock. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgDi_1n-48PllQsiqf3SlqvXunwLZ0tegbDIXZ1bDwkMMwu7WY-dSnCp0uD6027tQSbNnzBTv1NGBnRgrAqwClouHp3TO1T6fH_jhovBr_e02fDRD5FMHXL5p99T8orKMDDGskfXTXBCcztjHpbNs10ZQxo06VFGi1c_wEBQm4Ia24KDjH5-fjMEHUl" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="790" data-original-width="618" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgDi_1n-48PllQsiqf3SlqvXunwLZ0tegbDIXZ1bDwkMMwu7WY-dSnCp0uD6027tQSbNnzBTv1NGBnRgrAqwClouHp3TO1T6fH_jhovBr_e02fDRD5FMHXL5p99T8orKMDDGskfXTXBCcztjHpbNs10ZQxo06VFGi1c_wEBQm4Ia24KDjH5-fjMEHUl=w501-h640" width="501" /></a></div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><div style="text-align: center;">Let's get physical: Moni Jitchell in Glasgow</div></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-0e2d7929-7fff-6f7a-aa38-2a37d1ccda5b"><span style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space-collapse: preserve;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Dignan Porch: Victoria, London, 2 December</b></span></span></span></div><div>The lead guitar on opening song <a href="https://dignanporch.bandcamp.com/album/electric-threads">Hounded</a> set the tone: pretty damned lovely yet not overdone and just one component in a wider set of pop-tinged psych rock that always maintained a nice balance between poppy melodocism and VU/motorik groove. So: songs that locked in quickly and didn't outstay their welcome. Highlights were the already-mentioned opening guitar lines, the stutter-rhythm of their mid-set song <a href="https://dignanporch.bandcamp.com/track/footsteps">Footsteps</a>, and their general un-fussy approach. Excellent throughout and well worth venturing out for on a cold Hackney night with ice underfoot, freezing fog and an eerie spectral ambience. </div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhJOAyyuIONgaCEQxeQSAHDvpoDeAHHDacS_qwWm8mn3o41Kocm1ml0CY59q1TtqWzFQpCbLvR12gl0NB_ClW7WTCxeehGki1XpYWnv6FBonBSltPxp0wH7v_VxhKRlO0Vz-rQG4o_5klEthx5rtm_z5ZW27_Hj12X-TBostsS_hLWDSPKUlV1PqXOB" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="679" data-original-width="627" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhJOAyyuIONgaCEQxeQSAHDvpoDeAHHDacS_qwWm8mn3o41Kocm1ml0CY59q1TtqWzFQpCbLvR12gl0NB_ClW7WTCxeehGki1XpYWnv6FBonBSltPxp0wH7v_VxhKRlO0Vz-rQG4o_5klEthx5rtm_z5ZW27_Hj12X-TBostsS_hLWDSPKUlV1PqXOB=w592-h640" width="592" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Sheltering from the cold with Dignan Porch</span></div><br /></div><div>And there you have it. Twenty very good gigs from 2023, and there were at least another dozen or so I could easily have bunged on the list instead of these (it's all extremely random, mate). Contrary to the tired naysayers who lurk on YouTube comments threads saying patronising stuff like, "I feel sorry for young people today because they don't have music like this anymore", 2023 has - in my book at least - been another excellent year for live music. But then <i>every</i> year is. Bye!</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-34263225410305854632023-12-02T20:17:00.007+00:002023-12-02T20:38:51.109+00:00Go into the north, Dubpod #44 (Dec 2023)<p>Looking slightly like a Disneyfication of Herzog's Nosferatu The Vampyre, this Dubpod's illustration invites you in and then ... sucks your blood. Yes, this blog's vampiric ways have always been apparent to those with the heightened senses to be aware of it. And now that you are under Niluccio's influence, I instruct you to cast off your worldly ways. You must leave your home and ... <a href="https://www.mixcloud.com/NiluccioVersion/go-into-the-north-dubpod-44-dec-2023/">go into the north</a>. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEie1PblPoa-CBUTVUA6wIcD_xVy0V9C7ZP1UT8XXzSLhLEbLHHufBgob0ITWgDyCbUU2nHyj4YxaEXHAf8vobJdrivixiHZOtdxl7KSPWKm-py2Ox3cPa-EuIQVC4rxBzuvS1rwj9NaN0ZTXJ4vMd31Vc0OHXWSK5vxr2oV5MePJzxr3DEmHdCcl4Yo" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="789" data-original-width="527" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEie1PblPoa-CBUTVUA6wIcD_xVy0V9C7ZP1UT8XXzSLhLEbLHHufBgob0ITWgDyCbUU2nHyj4YxaEXHAf8vobJdrivixiHZOtdxl7KSPWKm-py2Ox3cPa-EuIQVC4rxBzuvS1rwj9NaN0ZTXJ4vMd31Vc0OHXWSK5vxr2oV5MePJzxr3DEmHdCcl4Yo=w427-h640" width="427" /></a></div><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">1: The Silvertones, Rejoice jah jah children<br />2: Count Ossie, Selam nna wadada (peace and love)<br />3: Max Romeo, Warning warning<br />4: The Soul Rhythms, It hurts<br />5: Jay Glass Dubs, Compound dub (Kinlaw remix)<br />6: Go into the north<br />7: Morwell Unlimited Meets King Tubby, Ethiopian special<br />8: Carl Dobson & The Liberals, Whoping mama<br />9: Tommy McCook & The Supersonics, Lock jaw<br />10: I Jahbar, IndependentGal<br />11: Laurel Aitken, Jamboree<br />12: Kandee, Trouble inna dub<br />13: Keith Dubson, Part 1-2 dubwise<br />14: Prince Far I, Young generation<br />15: Sly & Robbie, Jah is with you<br />16: KR$CHN, In the cloudz<br />17: Prince Buster, Prince of peace<br />18: The General, Revolutionary dreadlocks<br />19: Jah Lloyd, White belly rat<br />20: Levdette & The Corporation, Skinheads a bosh them<br />21: Simms & Egmond, What’s the matter<br />22: Sound Dimension, Heavy dub<br />23: Slim Smith, Rougher yet</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>
<iframe width="100%" height="120" src="https://player-widget.mixcloud.com/widget/iframe/?hide_cover=1&autoplay=1&feed=%2FNiluccioVersion%2Fgo-into-the-north-dubpod-44-dec-2023%2F" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7256411684527645739.post-83446718569114823482023-11-21T16:50:00.005+00:002023-11-21T18:14:17.349+00:00New problems for you in your marriage, Podcast #220 (Nov 2023)<p>New problems for you in your marriage? That's nothing. I've got new problems for you in the music-listening department. That's right - it's a new Niluccio on noise podcast. It's called ... wait for it ... <a href="https://www.mixcloud.com/Niluccio/new-problems-for-you-in-your-marriage-podcast-220-nov-2023/">new problems for you in your marriage</a>. Marital breakdown. Divorce, misery and worse. Yep, get listening ... </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSewQmqpFIpfubIM_IkO0giPs8gR1noZtoqFdtUAw7IbAbbxWjYeGO2w3MplPeXnWaO21FR22jXaYTchOy-Xn_lL0BNKzLfB9hfD4bzm-b2lpJBQU7LgcVnProbfjOIxjxN7OmBc2xEzejOMzjbt9x8_n95dhBms9TcDFtykXYJPiT5CiDLBoEOGFH" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="748" data-original-width="656" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhSewQmqpFIpfubIM_IkO0giPs8gR1noZtoqFdtUAw7IbAbbxWjYeGO2w3MplPeXnWaO21FR22jXaYTchOy-Xn_lL0BNKzLfB9hfD4bzm-b2lpJBQU7LgcVnProbfjOIxjxN7OmBc2xEzejOMzjbt9x8_n95dhBms9TcDFtykXYJPiT5CiDLBoEOGFH=w560-h640" width="560" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Niluccio at the bank: give me my fucking money</span></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></div></div><p></p><div style="text-align: left;">1: Bad Zu, Ghost in the machine<br />2: Dinner Night, Bernhard<br />3: New problems for you in your marriage<br />4: Fracture, All my love<br />5: Lethal Limits, Dysphoric outro<br />6: Lovely Ladies, Soap<br />7: Ochre, get off your horse and fight me like a man<br />8: Niña De La Puebla, My pains are very big<br />9: More Eaze, Accidental prizes<br />10: Unattended items<br />11: Portable Heads, Before<br />12: Crumbs, Cha cha feels<br />13: Nigeria Fuji Machine, Ilu<br />14: Crater Creek, Unidentified crying object<br />15: SPLLIT, Amite river<br />16: Park Safely, First try<br />17: Only Fools & Corpses, Feed the dog<br />18: Statik Sound System, Jack<br />19: Kullnes, Swim like a shark<br />20: Laptop Destroyer, Beep that beep<br />21: Sun Is Poison, Dumb prizes<br />22: Indre Krig, Hollow eyes<br />23: Numbers station<br />24: Bleaks, Jolt in my brain<br />25: The Officials, Babylonian</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>
<iframe allow="autoplay" frameborder="0" height="120" src="https://player-widget.mixcloud.com/widget/iframe/?hide_cover=1&autoplay=1&feed=%2FNiluccio%2Fnew-problems-for-you-in-your-marriage-podcast-220-nov-2023%2F" width="100%"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0