hey-o visitor:

cut+pasted elegantly below is a YouTube safari i put together for last week’s Plan B emailer. these things happen weekly, but strongly, and each will feature a playlist or some wondrous equivalent from whichever of the editorial team richard managed to harry, corner and subdue in our windowless office. i think they also provide useful information regarding things that happen in the real world. you shd join.

First up, the song I found myself mostly looping over the weekend was ‘I Feel Like Dying’ from Lil Wayne’s The Leak (don’t ask, but don’t worry). The homemade vid (above) rather over-literally undercuts our hero’s general contentment by guest-starring Gollum and The Grudge “cause the look like drugs addicts” (mega-sic). Whatever, it’s not a bad accidental analogue for the ups and downs of Wayne’s dreamy excesses. There’s likewise a backwards version on there complete with surely imaginary, wholly psychopathic hidden message.

The second is straightforward euphoria - Matt And Kim playing some manner of kitchen to an audience who pour into the choruses like reinforcements. Audio is camphone quality, but the spirit is uncompressed and overspilling. ‘Silver Tiles’, the song performed, isn’t on their recent album, but captures their counter-intuitive mix of happy/sad/fast/slow pretty well.

Old school indie sorts will surely appreciate witnessing an interview with Cocteau Twins and their 4AD design svengali Vaughan Oliver. What you may not anticipate is how beyond-down-to-earth these supposedly ethereals get so quickly - expect giggles, little deaths.

Meanwhile, The Fiery Furnaces have recently been sneaking out suitably idiosyncratic videos for their Widow City album. Check ‘Duplexes Of The Dead’, ‘Navy Nurse’ and ‘Ex-Guru’ - and thank me in hosannas (at least until i get a PayPal button).

Finally, if you’ve never seen Style Wars, the deeply humanizing documentary about the early days of graffiti culture in NYC, now is yr chance to do so, as it has been chopped into ten-minute portions and uploaded for mass education. Here’s the first…

I hope yr day is beyond productive. Personally, will be working on what I jocularly call ‘my fucking novel’.

Posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008by kicking_k