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MSN Music Blog: The InsiderPosts from both sides of the music business
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June 22 Vending ParadiseI met with a Paper Engineer today. Artist (and Paper Engineer) Helen Friel has designed and handmade these beautiful boxes to house the first two releases on mine and John’s cassette label: Paradise Vendors. These boxes really are things of beauty, limited to 35 per release. Each release is a different colour box and tape. See Helen’s space here: http://helenfriel.blogspot.com/ and while you’re there check out her two pieces exploring the the murder rate and causes of death in sunday night television over the last twenty years. Amazing. We’ve been plotting the advent of Paradise Vendors for way too long and at last, upon collecting the tape boxes, the first release is imminent. Each release is a fifteen minute tape, two bands per release, each with seven and a half minutes to do with as they wish. The first release is a green box with a small die cut triangle revealing the yellow tape inside and features Hand Jobs (Brooklyn, NY) and Talbot Tagora (Seattle, WA) with a GG Allin insert. The second release (which will be out in the same week) is a pink box with a small die-cut octagon revealing a white tape featuring Temperatures (UK) and Paper Legs (New York) with a JT Leroy insert. These will be out in July. I’ll keep you posted. Don’t fret. Go find your walkman. www.myspace.com/paradisevendorsinc
June 21 Liars, Deerhunter, nearly High PlacesYou’d think I was chasing the tail of Brooklyn’s High Places. Or I’m eating their dust. Or something. I keep missing them. Narrowly. Came close at Café Otto (behind the Dalston Mcdonalds) a few weeks back. Then they played with Telepathe, all sold out, we biked up too late and could only view the action through the big glass front of Café Otto and as if responding to a giant muted TV, we backed away, found cold Modelos in a Kingsland Road Off Licence and settled for street drinking with our friends. It was sweet. Was summertime. Anyway now I’m all last minute and headed for Liars and Deerhunter @ Koko, Camden. High Places open at early-o-clock. Miss them. Again. Natch. Deerhunter drench me. Layer upon beautiful layer. I’m drowning, not waving, smiling as I go down. Last saw Deerhunter in NYC and then Bradford (singer/main dude/Atlas Sound) could barely stand up and was flouting and flirting with smoking laws, sparking up and mouthing off and in turn getting cute and nostalgic. He was pretty much blubbing. And that, then, was great. But tonight he is total control. I welcome every jangling tier. It’s a soak. Each tidal layer rinsing my senses good. One, two, three chording guitars foaming with Bradford’s layer-vocal while bass softly bolts through it all and drums simply weave on that. I ache for more songs I know from ‘Cryptograms’ but am soothed by a band so-on-form, sending out new songs into a crowd so porous and hungry for more. Seen Liars so many times now. And they still kill. Angus rocks the English public school blazer and tie. Liars are one of those bands bold enough to make sharp turns after each record they make. Seeing them at this stage in their shape-shifting life then is pleasure. They flash a spectrum at you as they mess with oldies, refresh recenties and suggest with newies. They close out by tugging at our hearts with a scruffy-beautiful ‘The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack’ and just as we’re melting in to the floor from that they quickly run back on stage and rage out with ‘Plaster Casts of Everything’ and beat the life back in to us. And walking home, dodging comedians, I’m thinking: really we’re always chasing High Places. Right?
June 19 Male BondingMale Bonding, a new band, we played our second show for Sexbeat @ Macbeth, Old Street. It was with the amazing PENS (we played our first show with PENS, we want to play all our shows with PENS). Electricity in our Homes played also. Male Bonding is Robin, John and me. We’re compact. We can take our show anywhere, in a cab. We take a cab and get so deep in to a conversation about the Monochrome Scene that we stare at the Macbeth and drive on right past it. That’s funny. I like the Macbeth it’s open till 4am. That’s lethal. PENS open. In bows. It’s Power tonight. Electricity in our Souls. Switching up and up and up, a triple sense threat from the stage. All duties are switched: drums, vocals, casios, guitars. All drums are stand up. It constantly moves and charges. It is dizzying pop music. I love it. I love it. Monochromes blush. Male Bonding: we group tight on stage and we chop out our 5 plus one songs (plus one is an un-hep secret). Show goes off. Something like this: youtube clip I don’t know what to say about my own things. Matt Flag said “Gig of the year” and that, my friends, is holy patronage for me. The only review I ever want. Electricity in our Homes ice it out, music and shirts tucked in to their pants. Their own cool-school. Etcetera. And we squeeze out of the Macbeth, re-compact and charge in to the morning.
June 15 Sleeping States Instore @ Flashback Records‘Instores’ can be peculiar. I’ve played a few myself and I’ve been in the twitching audience for a few…usually something jarring about plying your intensity in to the unforgiving commercial glare of a record shop. Flipped all that on its head on Friday. Set up an instore for Sleeping States @ Flashback Records, Islington. It was amazing. Really. Was a loaded instore. Sleeping States is leaving the big city for a slightly smaller city way west. So it was a farewell party to a firmly established London family. It was also Markland’s (Markland is Sleeping States) first ever solo show. So pretty poignant. And just to amp up the emotionals even more, it’s Markland’s birthday. So here we are, up to our ears in an emotion-wringing triple whammy. And it couldn’t have gone off better. The shop was packed out; bulging out on to the street and the reverence and hushed appreciation of the crowd was solid vibe. So beautiful. Markland adapting some familiar songs but wrangling with old tunes and freshening us with songs he’d never attempted before. We all hung on to every word, every tape click and banking delays. And we all nearly cried our eyes out at the last song introduced thus: “this song is about leaving”. Ok, okay the “we” is more “me”. But I bit my quivering lip and held off that foggy feeling in my eyelids. Wow. Anyway, it was nothing but special. And then we spilled out in to the Mucky Pup, where I won the indie darts and lost the indie pool and we all tried to hold on to as much of Markland’s fading London time as possible. Till the early hours. But it’s all good. New start. New Sleeping States EP (on Bella Union) preceding a new Sleeping States album…and who/what will be the new live band? There are rumours of desire for multiple guitarists. Watch your dusty legend Mr. Glenn Branca. And as for the Flashback instore. It was the first one at the shop, and in that sense a trial. And it was a pure success. And hanging at an independent record shop after-hours on a Friday night, drinking cold beer, buying Liquid Liquid reissues…well that’s good times right there. And cued by this very cool first-time event…there will be future instores at Flashback. Regular. And why not? Summer looks so much hotter for it.
June 06 Sleeping States on MSNIt wasn't me. I just blog here. I just bang my head in to the keyboard and press 'publish'. From struck keys I offer convoluting sentences, roly-polying paragraphs. Here I rave, I despair. Mostly I document. Clutching at fast memories of things I see-hear-feel. i try to nail it all on to a fast moving background. I run a record label. I talk about it a little here. I released an album by Sleeping States, I raved on that. I just blog here. MSN video has just posted up three songs by Sleeping States (taken from the MTV "Spanking New Sessions"). Lookie: Rivers : http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-gb&vid=6d1f25cb-409e-45f4-b189-cad284d6ee43 The Sleeping States or Who Has Been Rocking my Dream Boat: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-GB&brand=&vid=6320ddba-5a81-457c-a99e-7562854478de The Next Step: http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-GB&brand=&vid=106a52b3-1374-4387-9234-726e5db814f6 I have no sway in the life-loving decisions made at MSN. I just blog here. So it's nice to see Sleeping States crop up @ MSN video. You bet I'm gonna blog on that. And while we are here at Sleeping States (by default) I'm gonna talk it up some more: Sleeping States is relocating. Leaving the capital. Sleeping States is essentially Markland Starkie, with amazing live help along the journey. And this relocation (to another British city) sees a natural, but quite emotional end, to the London version of Sleeping States. The Sleeping States we know and love has seen Caroline Banks (Seafood / Caz Mechanic) on drums, who passed the sticks on to Robin Silas Christian (Bullet Union / Tropics / Male Bonding) and the longest serving figure in the Sleeping States family, and with a burgeoning progressing band of his own (Beacons) is Craig Gell. It's just gonna be so weird from now on. But it's good. That's what change is...it's good. I'm excited for a new Sleeping States, a new album, a new band. Keep an eye out for an EP forthcoming on Bella Union. I saw the last 'London line up' Sleeping States show last week at White Heat @ Madame Jo Jo's, Soho. It was immense. Markland stacked himself in to the drum set at the end. And that's it (for now). With a lump in my throat, I bike home in the rain, got a puncture, and walked several miles in thunder and lightning, that intensified as I got nearer to my home. I could only laugh. Rain would have rudely rinsed my tears away anyhow. Sleeping States hasn't left London yet. And there is one more chance to see him off. Markland is giving (for the first time) a solo Sleeping States 'instore' performance @ Flashback Records, 50 Essex Rd, London N1 8LR on Friday 13th June from 7pm. It will be special. And then the after party is at the legendary (see previous posts) Mucky Pup right around the corner. Shots will fly. Happysad. Oh yeah, here's unexpected patronage: Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol name checks Sleeping States: http://www.snowpatrol.com/band/ Funny, right? What next? Bill Gates declares his love for Foot Village? I'd blog the hell out that one.
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