poison to the mind

Alright, a bit of follow-up to yesterday’s post. One thing I haven’t heard anything about yer Howling Bells is whether Joel ever gets to sing any leads (or write songs?). Because got a few here and there in Waikiki days, often for the slightly harder-rawking numbers, but they seem to be making a feature now of contrasting Juanita’s sweeter voice with the guitar churn of the current sound.

This is the only one that got released as a single. “Limited edition,” crowed the sleeve, as if that’s an unusual feature for any record released in Australia.
Waikiki - Lucky

Here’s Juanita guesting with On Inc., as mentioned last time (formerly On, they changed their name due to an American group with the same name, and have recently changed back. It’s contagious!). This remix is a bit more bleepy and not as smooth as the album version - not having actually compared track times or done a comparison by ear, I’ll also blithely assert based on back covers alone that the commercial single featured a radio edit and extended version of the mix, but this, from a media promo, is the plain unmodified version.
On Inc (feat. King Tide & Kikisun) - Spooky (Tokyo Mod Squad Remix)

And what the hell, here’s the EP version of New Technology, also reffed below. How many T-shirts do you have to sell to recoup flying Ric Ocasek to Sydney to produce one track for you?
Waikiki - New Technology

Buy:
Ah, looks like On Inc’s own album is out of print too… I wouldn’t have gone so far to rip a non-merch track if I’d checked first.

So bits of the UK press and strands of yer MP3-blogospear’ssister are getting all worked up about this HOT NEW BAND the Howling Bells. Attractive singer! Signed to Cocteau Twins’ label! Swirling! Glowering shadows! Woozy carousel! So-and-so meets thus-and-such!

Buy:
That TV performance can be bought on one of the many Music Live From The Panel CDs. Waikiki’s album proper appears to be the only thing still in print from them, so I’ll drop a couple more single tracks next week.

Have I been street-teamed? I think I like it! Someone posted a comment on this old post about the first single for Betty Boo/Alex james collab Wigwam, plugging the official site with new music and video and so forth. It’s all Flash, and the sound is horribly compressed and bitty, but: new!

…I shouldn’t have left you
Without a couple of hours of dope beats to step to.

Here’s Tiga’s Essential Mix from two weeks ago:

Tiga - Essential Mix 9/4/2006

Tracklist here. Tiga website here. Buy the album Sexor here.

Sorry for the lack of posts, I’ve been sick and the laptop is VERY sick. So no mp3 here, but I feel everyone needs their attention drawn to Mark Morrison’s plans for a new career:

“I might be able to pull a beetle off. As long as I ain’t got to talk.”

 Quite.

I’ve been holding off on posting these because I was trying to find links to the PDFs I recently downloaded of Neil McMillan’s epic History Of Cut’n'Paste records. Unfortunately, all Google seems to turn up is references to an abridged version printed in Big Daddy magazine, and an extended reprinting in another zine by the same people, and OCRed versions of the original shortarse version, so fuckit. Maybe the email address on that last link can sort you out? It’s really great and worth reading, but let’s just assume you did so weeks ago already and are now keen to hear some classic copyright-dodging 1980s collage records by white blokes:Double Dee & Steinski - Lesson 3 (The History Of Hip-Hop Mix) - the broadest of the original Lessons.

Coldcut - Say Kids, What Time Is It? - the baton gets picked up across the Atlantic.

And twenty-odd years later, Douglas and Steve reunite and team up with Cut Chemist for a promotional tour through the catalogue of Sugarhill Records:

Double Dee & Steinski - Sugarhill Suite

Buy: Despite the impression given by rampant bootlegging, none of the Lessons have ever been released legally. Shockah. If you buy anything on Sugarhill ever, then the Suite has done its job (it came out on some Melle Mel 12″ b-side or something. Maybe it’s on a label comp too?). AND! Coldcut, at some point, rescued their own white-label-only debut for a low-key release with a bunch of other stuff they probably don’t own (shonky 90s dance labels innit), and will flog you their Cold-Cut-Outs direct.
(edited by Peteypie because Kit doesn’t know the location of his own mp3s. You can download them now!)

With the closure of group-blog New York London Paris Munich and a withdrawal from ILM, Freaky Trigger founder Tom Ewing is these days doing all his public thinking about music on LiveGerbil (of all places etc etc). In the course of revisiting his list of personal Top 100 Songs Of The 90s, the latest entry is on the chart-bothering version of The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu’s “It’s Grim Up North.” Which is all fine and all (though he mispells “JAMs” and “McLaren,” tsk), but I always find the hit version with Bill Drummond’s own vocals hard to get into because there are just too many ideas in it (which is to say: there are two, with “Jerusalem” coming in at the end).

No fault of the record itself, it’s just that I heard the original version first (fancy that, a KLF record that got completely re-recorded and re-released), which may have simply been an excuse for Drummond to tick off the remaining box on his Crucial Three scorecard, BUT! Pete Wylie’s vocals aside, the strength of this version is that it stays relentlessly grim: rain, towns, bass and a disturbing hooting noise, like some depressed goth rave siren. Even the record was pressed on grey vinyl (one-sided 12″, 500 copies only, blah blah).

The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu Featuring That Pete Wylie Innit - It’s Grim Up North

Buy:
No records obviously, but the brilliant The Manual - How To Have A Number One The Easy Way is in print and available from the publisher.

Went to check out the first instalment of a monthly (?) dancehall & soca night on Saturday, only to find a complement of three bouncers, two door staff, and three punters, only one of whom was on their feet, moving to lover’s rock. Lessons here? Possibly: Sydney isn’t ready. Probably: don’t put on any event at a venue on Uni premises the week before student intake*. Certainly: don’t keep playing warm-up music until people arrive, or they will bugger off instead of coming in.

So switched instead to the odd but excellent combination of a drum & bass night - in a pub! - where one of the latter-day/no-longer Avalanches came on and played a couple of hours of non-DNB in the middle. And a bloke wandered out and played sax over half an hour of one of the earlier DJs. You might think this last an atrocious idea, but to your and my surprise, you’d be wrong.

And speaking of potentially dubious DNB concepts: chartered accountant/cartoonist/home rinse enthusiast TonyR has boshed together 40 minutes of old jungle tracks that feature samples from superhero and sci-fi movies for his own satisfaction your enjoyment. Get the “slower” intro mix here, and the main feature here (you’ll probably want to put in yr own ID3 tags once you’ve downloaded ‘em). Tracklist!

*see also: Alex Paterson DJing in a different bar at the same uni a few years ago, to about a dozen people. In a room that holds about 600. During student holidays, of course. We dragged a sofa onto the dancefloor for the support act, Dr. Alex chucked a strop afterwards and blew out the rest of the tour.

back soon.

One show I missed out on during the BDO swarm (because it happened in a restaurant in Surry Hills and wasn’t advertised) was a MIKE WATT SOLO GIG. Happily it turned out that he wasn’t doing Minutemen and Ball-Hog Or Tugboat material, just playing more Stooges covers without actual Stooges around him. Phew.

In the spirit of Stooges covers you could probably live without, here’s EMF taking on “Search & Destroy”, from their “there’s always been a rock element to our dance music” EP Unexplained. Hey, it’s better than the Chili Peppers’ one.

EMF - Search and Destroy

Buy:
If you can’t find the EP, this was included on their best-of that came out a few years ago (but is now also out of print). It’s actually pretty listenable all the way through, but the bonus disc of remixes makes the mistake of only including two versions of “Unbelievable,” and about ten other songs that aren’t “Unbelieveable.” Plus, neither of the remixes are the Sin City Sex Mix. Tcoh!