Mas Fuego

Zingone. They´re called Zingone, and they look like fucking circus clowns. My girlfriend LOVES Tektonik. She was talking some shit about how the arm movements are really gracefull. It reminds me more of those funny trance moves that people used to do to Brandon Blocks Power of Love remix in Gatecrasher at the end of the 90´s. It´s totally a movement, but it´s not a subculture. Tektonik is fashion. Just like ponytails on guys were in the early 90´s.
I don´t really want to talk about the tektonik stuff anyway. I meant to say that this type of distorted bass kick/ handclap electro is like garage rock. Digitialism and Justice and Yelle have spawned a black tide of boy girl, boy boy, (but not girl girl yet) outfits that are chirping away like the fillament of a streetlight outside your window at 4 in the morning and just as annoying. Like when you couldn´t go into a club in london without some platinum blonde girl in leopard print tights telling you about how her ex boyfriend shared a joint with Pete once, now i guess people in this scene talk in hushed french tones about their friends of friends who had a track on a kitsune compilation. I never realised i felt so strongly about all of this until just now. What´s my problem with the french? Maybe it comes down to the sheer audacity of having so many fucking bikes in a city as mountainous as paris. And then they put their pretty wispy girlfriends on the handlebars like it´s 1945 or something. No. This isn´t it. That´s not a reason to hate, What´s going on with this article. All i wanted to say was that Zingone have a shitty name, they look insufferable, Their anti fashion stance just makes them look trendy and yet, and yet THEY WRITE GOOD QUIRKY COMPLEX DANCEFLOOR BANGERS WHICH I LIKE. that´s all, and now i´ve gone and fucked it.
www.myspace.com/zingone

Six Million Ways To Die (choose one)

Hola A Todo El Mundo, this weird band from Madrid are getting more media coverage than Penelope Cruz’ cleavage this month. They’re doing interviews with everyone from El Mundo to Mondo Sonoro. Myspace have chosen them as their highlighted band of the week and they’ve been building up their tally of gigs played in a pleasantly workaholic manner. From three to 6 in 2 weeks isn’t bad for a band who made some demos, hand made the sleeves and then didn’t get round to recording the CD’s.

Beneath all the hype there’s a few people unsettled by this sudden rush of publicity for a new band. For a start their live shows are still a bit shabby. The songs are undeniably brilliant, and each of the 6 members brings something else to the sound – shouty boy/girl choruses, melodica solos, or the type of euphoric violin breakdowns more common on GYBE! than on pop songs.

Hitting Spanish crowds with this kind of thing though, is risky. A typical gig audience is made up of fashionably dressed cultural retards, fucked up on coke and whiskey, and raised on europop. It’s like rather than slowly building a scene by taking risks on booking great foreign bands (like delorian just did with Radioclit - who cares that there were only 50 people there? It was a fucking blast.), making Madrid an essential stop on the indie touring circuit and then sitting back with a smile as a whole army of inspired kids take to the streets and build the revolution one fanzine at a time, throwing a band as delicate and visionary as HATEM right into the established scene is a bit irresponsible. Yes they deserve wider exposure, but this should come from the inside out, right?

Regardless of all this, they still make me smile like I’ve just seen a kitten in a wig tied to a pink balloon sailing over a rainbow, and clara and me did a big ‘Hola A Todo El Mundo’ graffiti on the wall of a bassment last night, complete with clouds and expert shading.

Incedently I’ve spent the entire week spraypainting shop shutters, which means my hands look like I’ve got leprosy and my lungs and nose are both totally full of little particles of montanna hardcore spraypaint. Not cool. Not by a long way

Nightlife Nightlife

Ah shit, Glass Candy rocks. I haven't been out at night for a little while. Well not the 20 hr, gram of coke, next day bars and having stupid fun with new friends kind of night anyway. I kind of miss it. Justice have just released ANOTHER single off the recordwithoutakeyonthekeyboardforthetitle, everything is hotting up here in madrid, and last summers friends are coming out of the woodwork again. Last summer with the ed-banger thing, new MIA stuff and not having anything get in the way of tuesday nights, it was like riding this wave of new faces and stupid conversations for three months. I was splitting up with my ex, who lived in london anyway, and was just enjoying my new flat and flatmates. THen the Vice thing happened which was kind of half unexpected and half totally fucking worked for, and the winter has passed equally as quickly just with other focuses. My girlfriend Flo for instance, who i really cant find anything bad to say about acosted me in the first party we through here, helped me through leaving my flat, put me up and we started working together on the kind of projects i always wanted to be doing but seemed totally out of reach. I've broken computers, lost all my music, been dancing around to new bands that sound like old bands and old bands like the Make Up, Black Lips and Telepathe that keep drawing a line through reality like the raised bump on the other side of a piece of card when you score it with scissors. I've been to London, Portugal, Valencia, and Barcelona so many times it's starting to feel like a torrid second home.
Talking of homes. I had a chat with my new flatmate clara last night, the normal thing about getting fucked up. Isn't it wierd how you always get to that chat before talking about yr parents or whatever. It's like the obligatory new house icebreaker.

www.myspace.com/glasscandy

I Did A Line Of Coke With Richard Hell (While Patti Smith Introduced Me To Her Son)

Tonight i saw Patti Smith lead the service to a segregated crowd in a courtyard which echoed with her voice right up to the glass ceiling. Tonight i saw Richard Hell push his hair back from his face, and make a grab at untucking an oversized vneck t-shirt from his one size too big suit.

Tonight i saw Patti Smith recite a poem to the moon which worked despite itself. Tonight i saw Richard Hell make me laugh with bad acting in a terrible film he made 18 years ago which worked despite itself. Tonight i saw crowds of aetheists clapping evangelistically in time as Patti Smith recited the second sutra of Allen Ginsbergs howl "holy holy holy" changing the words to 'holy is Madrid' like Ice T when we were 14 and he said 'Born Black, born white, born yellow, born in BRYCETON' even though we were in brighton.
Tonight i saw richard hell shamble through improvised versions of songs he wrote too long ago with a guitarist who was a mate of the people who organised the gig.
Tonight i saw a middle aged man who grew up with punk stand
mouth open with admiration as patti introduced her flat capped wearing son jackson on guitar.

I love honesty in music but i think it's a sham. I've always loved the way that richard hell showed this and exploited it and made the most out of it without loosing faith in the effect it has, despite the act. I love how patti buys into the whole hippy thing and people fall at her feet mesmerised. I love how people still come out of richard hell gigs muttering what the fuck was that. I can't choose between them, i wouldn't want to. I'm happy knowing that between me and them lies an ocean 20 leagues across and that they are both stars, glued onto the ceiling with the roof and the sky and the galaxy beyond.

Static

"I'm like a Black Republican/ no cant call it that/ More like a Black Democrat/ Barack Obama i'm down with that."
- Juelz Santana

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/mar/18/barackobama.uselections20081

Of Mice and Men

If there was one thing, one thing i was going to do no matter what this month, more than buy pot plants for all the people whose floors i've been staying on over the last 3 months (yes, i know), was go into a shop and pay money for Third. Not, download it, copy it, get it sent free, but BUY IT...

So i'm listening to it now and it's giving me a headache.

and making me feel guilty.

fuck you soulseek. you are the devil child of the headphones in Our Price.

Totally

What i'm thinking is:
Is collecting, buying, professing interest in twee lo-fi plinky plonky casio music equal to buying those 'bad day' kitten posters? I'm listening to Totally Micheal right now. Death hill Over and Over is the song that you hear in your head when you watch emilo estevez' dance in the Breakfast Club with the sound off. There's also a song about Winnona Ryder, with the line 'even though i'm not a high class retail outlet, i'd love for you to steal my heart' Twee? easy? lazy? yeah. But for a quick sugar rush you cant really beat it. The problem comes when your ipod get's wiped accidentally, and a 'friend' fills the fucker with shit like mgmt and nobody without letting you listen first.

www.myspace.com/totallymicheal