"lick your lips & shake your hips"

it's now only two days away from the last tuck shop we'll be doing at rooty's, for the foreseeable future at least. this has nothing to do with branching away from the modestly sized venue, we always have and always will love rootys but due other commitments we just don't feel that we're be able to give the night the attention it deserves right now.
fear not though, we will be back on august 15th and once a month thereafter at 444 club @ the rainbow as well as some other projects in the pipe-lines which we'll tell you about very soon.

for now though, make sure you get down to the custard factory nice and early this saturday to get your share in all the fun. say what you will about tuck shop, and it certainly has caused conflicting opinions with the bands we've put on, you can't say we haven't brought something exciting and refreshing to the plate of birmingham's sometimes repetitive night life. so get yourself down for one last dose of the magic you helped us create.
here is the flyer & a link to tuck shop: http://www.myspace.com/tuckshopbirmingham


in other news, nisennenmondai is tomorrow, i'll be meeting them early on in the day to chaperon them and make sure they get the venue safe and sound. after their set i'm having to make haste to rootys to dj @ discord, an experimental electronica/techno/dub night at which i'm mashing up all kinds of electronica and noise. if you fancy that, it's £3 and starts at 10pm.

Read More...

Summary only...

"i can't say we haven't had our run in's but we've never taken chair legs to each other"

i've still not quite recovered yet from what turned out to be one of my most favourite weekends of the year thus far. peep show on demand helped today and a trip to kings heath high street in which me and my housemate rickery discovered a discount freezer food store full of frozen delights, some of which were chain brand mcdonald's and kfc food, which was weird. i got 8 fairly tasty veggie burgers for 50p and a huge bag of hash browns for 60p. the man who owned it told us it was all stolen or something? for that price, who cares? plus they're fucking over mcdonalds' which can never be a bad thing.

anyway, friday day i endured a painstaking 5 hour journey in unbearable heat to london and then on to reading in preparation for cassie's grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. what a genuinely inspiring achievement. we had an awesome buffet prepared by cassie's amazing mother with her amazing culinary skills, which was just a prelude to the amazing food we'd share together over the course of the weekend. sorry if i talk about food way to much but we genuinely do love the stuff.
on saturday we got up nice and early and drove down to a little place outside of reading as we had reservations at a super posh restaurant overlooking a beautiful river which was home to lots of nice ducks and their children. the sky was bright blue and the heat was blistering. a perfect setting for a diamond wedding anniversary if ever there was one. we had such a pleasant afternoon and some great fillet of sea bass on a bed of creamy spinach. the scallops for starters were a little disappointing, i'd never eaten them before and imagined they'd taste more like chicken but in fact they were quite slimy and rubbish. after some profiteroles for pudding, a sit by the river and an amazing speech from cassie's grandad, it was home for sleep. the combined heat and eating way to much really takes it out of you. here are some photos from the dinner, courtesy of cassies mum and sister.

saturday night we headed to london to dj @ push. we arrived at the astoria 2 about 11.00 an hour before our set, we said our hello's to the tom's of no pain in pop and made use of the free ice cold cans of red stripe. push is not dis-similar to birmingham's generic indie mecca, panic. except it's london so naturally a bit cooler but still a lot less intimidating that i had imagined.
we were given a brief rundown of how to work the ridiculously designed vestax mixer, which proved not much help. i really don't understand at all what they were trying to achieve when they put that piece of shit into production. to make matters worse, the speaker out was broken and you could barely hear what you were cueing in. despite the set backs and a shaky start, due to us djing in a cage, where it was quite difficult to hear what was going on the dancefloor it didn't take us long to get into the swing of things. i soon abandoned the set i'd worked out because it was almost impossible to do anything i'd practised on the poor mixer anyway.
so we played a varied mix of everything from gay against you, to bjork to timbaland.
it seemed to go down fairly well and we ended up djing for an hour and a half and a cute french guy even came up and asked cassie who we were and told her with his endearing accent "dis is incredible, you play the murder of rosa luxemburg, it is best set i hear for long time", which is always pleasing.
after waiting in line for ages for some average chips and pita and buying a beer from a guy in the street who was selling beer from a wheelie bag, we set about waiting an age for the night bus, which took us back to tom kings and a lovely comfy bed.

we decided to get up quite early on sunday and make the most of the sun. we went to meet alex before we all headed off to brick lane for cafe 1001 lunch, rough trade east and sexfest. lunch was as perfect as ever, amazing mediterranean salad and veggie lasagna. rough trade managed to lure me into buying something, as ever. still, i figured i deserved a treat so i purchased telepathe's sinister militia 12" and a holy fuck 12" single with a no age remix on it, plus our good friend phil gave me a discount!
by the time we got to sexfext, last nights hungover was starting to kick in and the sun was raging and thus it was much to hot to stay in doors, a sentiment also shared by the 90% of the audience i think. we eventually found a bench outside 93 feet east where we sat for the afternoon putting the world to right. eventually we decided it was to much hot and the beer was much to expensive so when cassie had to go home me and alex decided to go back to his, get some cheap cans and sit on his balcony getting drunk.
i ended up having a really great time catching up with him properly, we spoke about all things holy roar, stop scratching and otherwise. we got considerably drunk and after some brief youtube, went to bed.
perfect end to a perfect weekend really, good food, good music, good company. not much else i would have asked for really.

Read More...

Summary only...

nisennenmodai moved.

nisennenmondai have now been added to the acid mothers temple show on friday august 1st instead. it will still be at the hare and hounds, i'm not sure of the price now though as the show is being run by capsule. so they're still playing, just a day later and now at least i don't have to risk losing money & considering we'd be up against caspule and a much more widely known japenese noise band at the same venue, in the same week it would be safe to say that losing money would be a certaintey.

Read More...

Summary only...

nisennenmodai.

this is one week tomorrow, if you're into japenese noise/punk or just fancy coming down to check them out, it's only £5. starts @ 8.00pm. it says all this on the flyer. yeah.

Read More...

Summary only...

i never did get that sausage sandwich.

the weekend just past was supersonic. plan b were right, at least they were for the friday, it is an amazingly curated festival. this year saw supersonic move to a three day event. unfortunately i could only afford the friday, in fact i couldn't even afford that and i had to call on my good friend alex, of cutting pink with knives fame to get me in. well, i couldn't really afford to miss their last uk show & dalek in one night! i genuinely couldn't afford it.

a lot more people seemed to come out for the friday this time and there was a much better vibe as well, last year i remember it being a bit dark and tame and although acts like wolf eyes, kid 606, deadsunrising all delivered exactly what i hoped for and more, the night as a whole lacked something. this year it more than made up for that.
cutting pink opened the proceedings proclaiming that "we're the most fun you'll have all weekend, we're the only band that will smile" they weren't far off the mark in my books. it was always one going to be one of those occasions that would go really well and leave everyone on a huge high, or be ruined by chris and eddy's, at times, unrelenting arrogance and alex carelessly punishing the crowd with his flailing bass. fortunately for all of us, it was the former tonight. they played as tight as i've ever seen them (although not quite as good as dot to dot when curtis of doom patrol filled in on vocals), chris' on stage banter was an act all in it's own and most importantly the crowd really got involved and seemingly enjoyed thier last outing. a perfect way to kick off an evening that would see plenty of fun and frolics ensue.
dalek really stole the show for me though, my close friends are all pussies (& cassie stayed in to tidy her house!!!) so i ended up going on my own, i lost all the people i knew there and found myself near the front next to a huge group of guys dressed a doctors when dalek came onto the stage. i've been into them for a while now so am very familiar with the disgusting power of their sound, but nothing could have prepared me for how utterly mind blowing they were. it was like a wall of twisted gnarly electronic sound hitting you from the moment they started, oktopus created huge hip hop soundscapes and punishing industrial noise that perfectly accompanied the profound and insightful lyrics of dalek. in all it was a performance that had me surely annoying all those around me with my whole hearted enthusiasm. defiantly one of the best things i've seen this year.
a brilliant night followed which ended with me and the lovely chaps of rolo tomassi finishing it all off back at my place, that got a little messy for me and james but we shall not go into that now.

then saturday. after a delightful day of watching peep show and animal videos on youtube with the rolos and after my linda mccartney lasange, which i thought was sauasages when i picked them up in ruprai's, i had to depart for coventry and fez's birthday.
from that moment on i spent pretty much the whole weekend moping that i wasn't at supersonic. we went for a very below average chinese at dragon phoenix which cost me £14! scandal. then off to coventry's answer to the uprising of ex-indie kids' sudden need for new era and bass, vinyl is. as always i spent the whole time storming around with a face on, whinging to anyone who would listen, only this time i didn't even have a single drink in protest, so by the time london guests get me took to the 1 & 2's i really was at boiling point and probably the only sober person in the place & they didn't make matters any better with their awful display of mashing up (some)perfectly good tunes, overlapping of songs to disastrous effects, and general bad attitudes. the weekend died at that point and after some painful not sleeping on a landing, it was home to help cassie move out of her house, which was a very tiresome affair, but she bought me fish and chips to say thanks.

so yeah, cassie is now back in reading. which is mile aways from me. which sucks. but i have been making lot of tapes recently and am now half way through gentle friendly and completely finished with talibam! which should go on sale in the next few weeks. i'll do a post about that and other exciting news very soon. if you've read this far, urm, thank you? sorry? get a job.

i strongly advise you all to go liten to dalek. here is a start, www.myspace.com/dalek.
xx

Read More...

Summary only...