The War On Pteradactyl

Do you know what I'm not doing tonight? Going to The Wheatsheaf. Great place, of course, but if I did it three nights in a row it wouldn't do me the world of good, I suspect. You can't live on a diet of Oxford Gold and tinitus, can you?


V/A – WE DO NOT HAVE A DINOSAUR (download)


People doing things for charity, we like that. People doing bleepy things, we like that. So, let’s be honest, we’re well disposed towards this Japan tsunami fundraising LP from promoters The Psychotechnic League and The Modernist Disco, featuring various flavours of Oxfordshire electronica. As is the way with this sort of thing, the record feels more like a grab bag than a carefully cohered entity, but anybody with a passing interest in digital dance music should find something to make the fiver tag acceptable, not least the efforts from the curators of the project: We Are Ugly (But We Have The Music) offers a simple little chugger that sounds like it could have been made by a schoolchild on their Amga (not necessarily a bad thing), and Space Heroes Of The People’s “Kosmoceratops”, an insistent spiral of buzzing synths that’s like being harangued by Jean-Michel Jarre at a political rally.

There’s a fair variety of styles on offer, from Left Outer Join’s crusty trance that brings back king Rizla memories of Astralasia, to icy Biosphere tones from The Keyboard Choir, and Sikorski’s chest-thumping synth rock (which we don’t really like, because it sounds like Big Country doing Eurovision, but it makes a change). “Winter Sounds 4” by King Of Beggars isn’t the arctic techno we were expecting, but rather a portentous grid of synthesised harp with a bleak vocal direct from early OMD, and it’s rather great. Meanwhile, The Manacles Of Acid live up to their name by producing straightforward acid house with samples about, err, acid house; it’s almost criminally unoriginal, but if like us, you find any vestige of critical opinion evaporating in the face of a 303, you’ll agree it’s bloody brilliant. Tiger Mendoza and Cez can also hold their heads high.

But we end with the best. Coloureds have made a track called “Tennis”, which is logical, because listening to its relentless chopped vocal fragments feels like spending four minutes as the ball in a game of Pong. It also sounds like it’s going to break into Orbital’s “Chime”, which is obviously fantastic. Perhaps not a perfect LP, but one well worth getting hold of...unless you’re one of those people who thinks that electronic isn’t real music, in which case just go stick your head in a bucket of elephant dung. I bet even the bucket is plastic. Can’t even get a proper tin bucket nowadays. Poor you. Yes, yes, we know: hell in a handcart.

Dis Figures

This was supposed ot be a double super review that carried on with the four acts at The Cellar. Well, I only only managed 2 and a half before I went to bed, because I've got the old winter chill, and I don't like gigs that go on till two in the bleeding morning.

For the record, The Cellar broke down like this: Coloureds, wonderful as ever; P-45 had nice varied ideas but it was a long an uneven set; Shitmat just seemed to be DJing some old Aphex tracks and things, not making his excellent breakcore live, which was fine but not what I hoped for; bed, very nice indeed.


WE ARE UGLY BUT WE HAVE THE MUSIC/ SPACE HEROES OF THE PEOPLE/ KINETIC WARDROBE, Psychotechnic League, Wheatsheaf 15/1/11



OK, it’s not snowing. But the other two major disasters that can hit a small time promoter have befallen the Psychotechnic League’s inaugural gig, namely the loss of two thirds of the lineup a few days before the event, and the presence of a similar, but more upscale event within jacking distance of the venue, in the shape of Audioscope’s Andrea Parker and Shitmat booking at The Cellar. It’s a tribute to promoting virgin Fred Toon that he not only managed to keep his gig afloat , but managed to draw in a decent, if not earth-shattering huddle of punters who were clearly enjoying the evening.

And as such, it would be harsh to be too critical of Kinetic Wardrobe, one of the stand in acts, left playing unusually early to encourage an attendance at both the Wheatsheaf and the Cellar, and certainly his late 90s, post-Orbient down-tempo techno set is full of well-turned moments, but some of the sampled gobbets (as The History Boys’ Mr Irwin might have put it, were he an aging raver) that stitch the set together are beyond hackneyed. What’s that? Fear & Loathing? Be still my beating heart. But in fairness, it’s a solid set, with some surprisingly approachable grooves, a couple of tracks with scratchy guitar parts sounding like lost De La Soul remixes.

Whatever you might expect from a band called Space Heroes Of The People, you probably don’t expect poise and delicacy, but this is exactly what the superlative duo delivers. Yes, the music is built on an insistent club thump, and Tim looks like he’s dressed as a day-glo swimming instructor, but the music is crisp, intricately thought out, and delivered with a surprising lightness of touch. That the fascinating Soviet animations projected behind the band are often perfectly in sync shows that the bad have thought carefully about the onstage presentation, but they still manage to retain a whiff of that old live magic, peppering the music with realtime drumfills, double bass and Wii remote waggles. Neither brainlessly retro nor obsessed by dance sub-genre novelty, neither gimcrack cabaret performers nor wheyfaced techno dullards, Space Heroes are purveyors of a polished, elegant electro you never knew you craved, an oasis between endless torrents of bedroom boredom low rate MP3s and Dadstep dance revivalists. Weirdly, with their tight quality control and the nouse to make classically simple music feel new with subtle arrangements, the local band Space Heroes most resemble is Little Fish. But Space Heroes are better.

We Are Ugly But We Have The Music, the promoter’s laptop acid project, in some ways retreads the drawbacks of Kinetic Wardrobe (such as a fucking stupid name, for starters), offering solid, but unsurprising dance throwbacks delivered by an awkward looking man with a laptop. But, whether it’s because the set is slightly more uptempo, whether it’s because Fred’s drum sounds are that little bit crunchier, or whether it’s because he has a smiley T-shirt and a big old strobe, the We Are Ugly set is more satisfying. It’s true that he hasn’t really worked out a reason to hear this rave-robbing music live, rather than on record, but somebody shamelessly reliving their youth is rarely this entertaining. Having made some strong music, and salvaged a gig that looked likely to collapse, Fred must have finished the evening with a self-congratulatory grin, even if most of the assembled finished their evening at The Cellar.

2010s - Thousands Of 'Em!

As is traditional at this time of year, I selected my favourite local releases from 2010, for the MIO roundup. It's all pretty exciting this year, with a special podcast, a roundup of selections from a handful of contributors, and a public vote, which makes interesting reading. Essentially, it all goes to show how much MIO has changed this year - and I don't just mean the URL. It's now a truly fantastic resource if you like Oxon music...and if you don't, then what are you doing reading this? No kittens or nudity on this corner of the 'net, you must have got lost.

Anyway, it transpires that I was rather more obtuse/poetic/inane/lateral/smug in my descriptions of the best releases, but there you go. I still think the Morse-Hebrides joint allusion is pretty sweet in the Stornoway summary, and I think I'm the first person to go public with a Cursing Force gag. Happy new year, and so on.

By the way, I have a few plans for 2011, which will intrigue me, but will probably eat up time and put to bed once and for all the concept of running this as an actual blog where things are, like, blogged? Oh my God, my internal monologue has gone, like, totally Californian? So, you can expect just a few updates here every month? Rest assured they shall be awesome, and in no way groody?

I have an odd desire to listen to "Valley Girl" about now?



Alphabet Backwards - Primark

Sherbet-fuelled melodic nugget about the death of the High Street. As unashamed pure pop lovers, the Alphabets wear their hearts on their sleeves (shirts: £1.35)

Borderville - Joy Through Work

Only Richard Ramage can come close to Borderville in terms of literate lyrics that sneak up on strong emotions whilst you're not looking. If The Relationships are a mythical village school fete, Borderville are a baroque Hallowe'en masque at the end of time.

D Gwalia - In Puget Sound

Like a creaky harmonium making a drunken hour long phone call to the Port Talbot Samaritans.

Samuel Zasada - Nielsen

Rich, full-bodied and peppery with unexpected subtleties. Or am I thinking of shiraz?

Space Heroes Of The People - Dancing About Architecture

More totalitarian techpop from the now drummerless duo. One day there'll be none of them left in the band, just an autonomous laptop. And it'll be great.

Spring Offensive - Pull Us Apart

The cowbell rehabilitation starts here!

Stornoway - Beachcomber's Windowsill

There's been a murder, Lewis: Stornoway have destroyed the opposition for best Oxford LP.

V/A - Round The Bends

Surprisingly coherent grab bag of 'head covers raises dosh for needy nippers. Therefore if you don't like it you're evil as well as stupid.

Vileswarm - The Shaman's Last Waltz

Frampton comes undead! Euhedral reads the rites.

Xmas Lights - Treading The Fine Line

Posthumous release by much missed emperors of isolationist metal, a great ear-scouring sign off for Oxford's original Cursing Force.

All We Hear Is Radio Gagarin

I've been looking at lots of fine art over the past week. It seems to me that if you only had old masters ot judge by, you'd soon reach the conclusion that the Dutch are the ugliest people in the world by several orders of magnitude.


SPACE HEROES OF THE PEOPLE – DANCING ABOUT ARCHITECTURE EP

The great thing about Space Heroes Of The People was always the delicate sense of balance. In their music organic live rhythms circled sequenced synth tones warily, thumping tech-tribal simplicity sat facing musical eloquence in an eternal blinking contest. When they lost live drummer Lizz last year we wondered how they’d fill the gap without toppling the precarious Jenga edifice of their music, and the answer is they’ve not bothered..

They’ve gloriously, wonderfully, inspirationally just done bugger all. Whilst the live show might be bolstered by what old thespians might call some business with a floor tom and Wii remote, on record they’ve simply turned up the keyboards, robotised the vocals are further 20% and made the songs even more linear than before. Jo Edge’s basslines chug along ineluctably like a perpetual motion machine built by the SNCF and the synths buzz with regimental fury like massed Stasi bees. On EP highpoint “Engineers” they deal with the fact that the song is a deliriously self-parodic vocodered Numan chant by…changing to German half way through. Talk about making peace with the cliches of the genre. This isn’t so much setting out your stall, as jumping all over it covered in tin foil shouting “Bloop bloop I’m a cyborg”.

Although the vocoder does weigh slightly heavily on the record, and we wish that Tim Day would let a little more of his natural voice onto the music, this EP is inane and ridiculous, but absolutely fantastic. “Skylon” threatens to morph into Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” (albeit without the faux-existential histrionics), “The Modernist Disco” is the record’s low point, but it still manages to sound like 90s trancers Gat Décor remixing some harpsichord heavy 60s spy theme for Jean-Michel Jarre’s garden party, and “Mr Atomic” is a cybernetic mantra that sounds like an early Underworld tune with the buzzer from Catchphrase sprinkled liberally over the top, which can only mean electro-nirvana.

Thirty years ago music like this sounded like the icy steel of a bleak future; ten years ago we listened to it with charmed retro-condescension; now we finally have enough distance from the birth of synth pop and industrial dance to realise that this band is simply fucking ace, now, then or in eons to come. It’s good, and it is right.

Whose Idea Was A Top 9, Anyway?

A change from the usual today, here are my favourite Oxon records of 2008, as posted on Oxfordbands.com. Quite hard to choose favourite records, as although I come across lots of new acts, I don't necessarily hear all the recordings, so it's an arbitrary list.

Not much else to say, so I'll leave you with this observation. You know that Gaviscon ad where a milky firemen surfs down a woman's throat, spraying pharmaceutical goodness around her oesophagus? Am I the only person who thinks that looks like the climax of some Trumpton blow job? I can't help seeing it as Fireman Sam's anthropomorphic ejaculate spurting down the gullet of some Pontypandy floozie. Sorry.

Edit: a quick trip to Google later, I realise I am not alone in forming this horrific image. I do feel better now.

TOP OXON RECORDINGS OF 2008

Les Clochards - Demo

"I get drunk and I forget things," alleges "Tango Borracho", but we won;t forget this eerie pop monologue. Edit - they released a full LP this year, and very good it is too, if you like wry Gallic cafe indie.

Ally Craig - "Angular Spirals" 7"

Wonky full band outing is lyrically obtuse but deeply lovable. We want a full LP!

Euhedral - Burned Out Visisons

Economy implodes! Venues close! "Hallelujah" raped" Never mind, watrm fuzzy drones wil make things better.

Family Machine - You Are The Family Machine

Yes, the songs are quite old now, but this brainy perk pop is as warming yet intoxicating as a pint of Drambuie.

Foals - Antidotes

Battles + Haricut 100 + studied funk artiness + stupid clothes = Blue Aeroplanes for the T4 generation.

Nonstop Tango - Maps & Dreams

Improv scamps impersonate Waits, on Oxford's least accurately named band's debut LP.

Space Heroes Of The People - "Motorway To Moscow"

Another cracking EP that sounds lovingly handmade and icily robotic simultaneously.

Tie Your Shoes To Your Knees & Pretend You're Small, Like Us - Demo

Journo baiting cockabout results in unexpected collaged fascination.

Stornoway - "On The Rocks"

New EP contrastingly reveals there's no end to this band's melodic invention, and that rag week humour really sucks.

Twinge Kingdom Valley

One of Picture Book is the offspring of Kid Creole, of Coconuts fame. That's a solid gold fact you can take to the bank...if the bloke at the bar who told me was telling the truth.

THE ORIGINAL RABBIT’S FOOT SPASM BAND/ SPACE HEROES OF THE PEOPLE/ PICTURE BOOK – Klub Kakofanney, The Wheatsheaf, 6/2/09

At their best Leeds’ Picture Book are a cross between Lamb and Sade (as in “Smooth Operator”, not “120 Days Of Sodom”), at their worst they’re a load of old balaerics. They do show plenty of rhythmic inventiveness in their sleek techno pop, and a nice line in flatulent 80s keyboards, but the vocals aren’t able to breathe life into the songs; if they had an Alison Goldfrapp or a Roisin Murphy hamming it up we might be talking. Having said this, the last two tracks blow the rest of the set out of the water, the finale pitching keening violin against the synth hum, and single “Strangers” is a fussy bustle of dubstep keys and exuberant syn-drums that are half Karl Bartos and half Tito Puente. More like that, please.

Space Heroes Of The People have always been about balance. Their music is live enough to feel organic, and programmed enough to seem inhuman; the sound is minimalist enough to be hypnotic, but compact enough to class them as an ace pop band. It’s a tough tightrope to walk, but tonight they nonchalantly saunter across, possibly stopping midway for a somersault or two. Perhaps it was the live vocals, perhaps it was the unexpectedly meaty Sabbathesque half time sections, perhaps it was the righteously hefty sound that the engineer coaxed from them, but this was a superb set. We just can’t shake the image of Maggie Philbin coming onstage halfway through “Barbie Is A Robot” to explain what a vocoder is.

The Original Rabbit’s Foot Spasm Band are not at all original, but everything else about them is fantastic. They play 30s jazz songs, but we feel as if we’re in a sordid sweaty speakeasy, not some horrific sanitised tea dance. These songs (“Mack The Knife”, “The Sheik Of Araby”) are about sex, narcotics and impossibly louche tailoring, and they should be treated with the dirt they deserve, not emasculated by legions of function jazzers. The Spasmers get to grips with the soul of the music through riotous trumpet, rasping sax, and by being heroically, Biblically, drunk. This, my friends is the authentic sound of New Orleans…possibly during the hurricane.

My Bunny Valentine

Something bang up to date now, a review from this month, printed in the most recent copy of Nightshift.

THE ORIGINAL RABBIT’S FOOT SPASM BAND/ SPACE HEROES OF THE PEOPLE/ PICTURE BOOK, Klub Kakofanney, The Wheatsheaf, 6/2/09



At their best Leeds’ Picture Book are a cross between Lamb and Sade (as in “Smooth Operator”, not 120 Days Of Sodom), at their worst they’re a load of old balaerics. They do show plenty of rhythmic inventiveness in their sleek techno pop, and a nice line in flatulent 80s keyboards, but the vocals aren’t able to breathe life into the songs; if they had an Alison Goldfrapp or a Roisin Murphy hamming it up we might be talking. Having said this, the last two tracks blow the rest of the set out of the water, the finale pitching keening violin against the synth hum, and single “Strangers” is a fussy bustle of dubstep keys and exuberant syn-drums that are half Karl Bartos and half Tito Puente. More like that, please.

Space Heroes Of The People have always been about balance. Their music is live enough to feel organic, and programmed enough to seem inhuman; the sound is minimalist enough to be hypnotic, but compact enough to class them as an ace pop band. It’s a tough tightrope to walk, but tonight they nonchalantly saunter across, possibly stopping midway for a somersault or two. Perhaps it was the live vocals, perhaps it was the unexpectedly meaty Sabbathesque half time sections, perhaps it was the righteously hefty sound that the engineer coaxed from them, but this was a superb set. We just can’t shake the image of Maggie Philbin coming onstage halfway through “Barbie Is A Robot” to explain what a vocoder is.

The Original Rabbit’s Foot Spasm Band are not at all original, but everything else about them is fantastic. They play 30s jazz songs, but we feel as if we’re in a sordid sweaty speakeasy, not some horrific sanitised tea dance. These songs (“Mack The Knife”, “The Sheik Of Araby”) are about sex, narcotics and impossibly louche tailoring, and they should be treated with the dirt they deserve, not emasculated by legions of function jazzers. The Spasmers get to grips with the soul of the music through riotous trumpet, rasping sax, and by being heroically, Biblically, drunk. This, my friends is the authentic sound of New Orleans…possibly during the hurricane.