If you’re feeling a little guilty about the amount of time you spend on Youtube watching pandas sneezing or Mike Patton laughing at Wolfmother or whatever, here’s something a bit more edifying.

I only found this site last night, and already it has blown my mind. Just look at this list! And - although I don’t want to tell you what to watch, because there’s so much here - I’d advise you click on Charlemagne Palestine’s Island Song. Give it a few minutes to get going. At first, it’s just a camera strapped to a motorcyle veering down the empty streets of a monochrome seaside town with a guy growling and exclaiming to himself as he swings around corners and past holiday cottages. Then - it’s still that. It continues to be that. But as the film progresses you hear Palestine’s voice smooth out and extend, until the growls have become drones, harmonising with the whirr and buzz of the motorcycle engine, and then full-throated hollers that soar over the thrum of the machinery, part prison work-song or yodel, part hymn to motion. But before it gets too blissed, the uneasy rider intersperses the singing with a chant of “gotta get outta here…gotta get away…” It’s funny, simple, completely un-self conscious and a really awesome realization of what the mind does when the body’s moving really fast: a layer of transcendent calm disrupted by everyday loops of stress and need. The houses are left behind; we follow the motorcycle’s jerky progress to the cliffs. The film ends looking out across the sea, Palestine singing along with a distant foghorn and the hiss of the waves.

The film stuff’s only part of the site - there are also tons of brilliant MP3s and even, you know, things to read. It is amazing. Get addicted. Watch some Maya Deren. If you want funny stuff involving animals, there’s an MP3 of Marcel Broodthaers interviewing a cat somewhere which made me do a laugh even though I’m not sure how the cat feels about it all.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Thursday, November 30th, 2006
(2 Comments)

I am extremely pleased with my species. When two scandinavian artists brought a choir in Birmingham together to sing a piece entirely recorded from complaints submitted by members of the long-suffering British public the result - watchable here - had me beaming with reflected glory. The subject matter ranges from grumbling banalities (”Why does my computer take so very long…?“; “People eat my biscuits / When we have a pot of tea“) to the heart-breaking sudden intimacy (”No one appreciates me“) but all delivered in the same elevated tragi-comic tone which equates the mixed-up flux of modern life perfectly. This is art that’s doing its job.

Happily, the concept has gone viral and a second video was made by the Helsinki Complaint Choir, who push it still further by force of numbers and poker faces. It begins “You can’t get rich by working / And love doesn’t last forever” but my favourite moment is the dramatic surge as they sing “My dreams are boring / Reference numbers are too long…” or, no wait, actually their mournful delivery of “Evenings wasted hiding from the TV License inspector / Because I don’t want to pay for sports and reality TV” is pretty totally affecting, too…

I dunno, I’m not feeling especially articulate, but it knots my heart into an origami flowerhead… Go forth, be happy.

Posted by kicking_k on Sunday, November 26th, 2006
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I’m on the radio tomorrow! Tune in 11pm UK time to the mighty Kosmische show on Resonance 104.4 fm in London or here, if you’re listening online.

Because I’ve just prerecorded the show tonight, you won’t get to hear me reading out improbable track titles in a sibillant (read: tired) whisper and laughing when they are funny. Poor you. However, you will hear some completely fucking far out noises, kind of like this:

And this

AND THIS

OK, maybe not that. But it’ll be good. Check the kosmische blog on Thurs for playlist.

Posted by Frances May Morgan on Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006
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Get Innocuous (7:11)
Opening with a second-generation ‘Losing My Edge’ drum pattern, and gradually augmenting the same with assorted autobass riffs and etc, the record shows a heavy debt to Bowie/Eno atmospherics from the get-go. Minimal, muscular, lots of builds and spaces.

Time To Get Away (4:11)
Murphy’s mannered falsetto is soon accessorised with disco-not-disco percussion and loose elastic bass… “I can’t believe I used to talk to you,” he despairs, as I run out of things to say.

North American Scum (5:25)
New wave gang klang, the first recognisable LCD monologue on the record - paranoia re: xenomania (not the production team, unfortunately - there’s a beef I’d like to see) giving way to an almost glammy chorus of (more or less) synchronised yelps troubling the upper registers. Will clearly be brash, unabashed tour anthem.

Someone Great (6:25)
Pretty, clicky arrangement that harnesses pulsing electro flux to percolating synth bleeps, real or virtual glockenspiel and a more downbeat but straightforwardly sung vocal. A sophisticated update of an eighties electroballad, essentially. Um, emotions.

All My Friends (7:37)
Relentless piano vamp. We’re trading eighties references in the office now (in a non-derogatory way). This has something of a made-over Joy Division feel to it - perhaps very early New Order before they went Technicolor widescreen..?

Us v Them (8:29)
Shunting emphasis back toward dancefloor dynamics and the hectoring soapbox style we’ve decided we like best - and then halfway through start chanting in that smoooooth style that ran through Heroes‘ East European anthems like a long train.

Watch The Tapes (3:55)
Punky scuzz, jittery rhythms and the sense all of this would sound very different very much louder (we daren’t give it any more juice, the cursing plumbers next door complained before…)

Sound Of Silver (7:07)
“Sound of silver / Talk to me / Makes you want to feel like a teenager / Until you remember the feelings of / A real life emotional teenager / Then you think again…” Minimal, subdued, nice abstracted low choral drone and various microbleeps.

New York I Love You (5:35)
A weary, almost Bacharach-flavour piano bar ballad to end. “Take me off your mailing list,” he wails as we meander (via a dramatic last burst of guitar bombast) to a close.

B.A.S.I.C.A.L.L.Y. It’s, y’know, solid, classy, isn’t going to throw you with any hairpin bends (unless you were expecting a monstertruck love-in of acid house eruptions) and demonstrates pretty effectively that LCD have always been more about detail and nuance than stunt and gimmick. It’s not going to redefine the way you dance but it’s a middleweight supplement to the first album (note: album - not singles collection). The only question is whether this is the entire set, or there are more brutal white labels (or left-handed versions) being readied as KOs and killer apps for the world outside yr urbane bedroom…

Posted by kicking_k on Monday, November 20th, 2006
(11 Comments)

plz direct yr rheumy orbs toward the subscribers-only SunnO))) & Boris poster (which, ok, we’ll also dispatch to those of you who have the excellent judgement to order copies of the latest ish online…) INTENSE, NON?

Posted by kicking_k on Thursday, November 9th, 2006
(1 Comment)