Powerplant - Import/Export

I went to see Powerplant a trio consisting of percussionist Joby Burgess, sound designer Matthew Fairclough and visual designer Kathy Hinde at the Birmingham Conservatiore. The night was billed as an experimental, high octane, challenging repertoire. It was Monday and had bugger all else to do so thought why not?

The night consisted of two parts first five peices with the midi xylosynth and the second a peice in eight parts using general debris.

The music alternated between the sort of stuff that you think yes its interesting but its actually a bit rubbish wouldn't you say to cool that's really clever and actually sounds rather good.

The first peice was Audiotectonics III - this layered up sounds sampled and messed around with from the xylophone until it sounded like something lemon jelly would produce from a thousand different records. Next up was Carbon Copy, at first this sounded terrible, banging on some kind of ethnic instrument isn't the best of things to listen to however what the artists were actually doing was taking peices of noise messing with it and the looping it over and over again until it sounded really cool.

Electric Counterpoint was my favourite part of the night, basically a cover version of a Steve Reich guitar peice that samples and loops and samples and loops so you have over 100 bits of the same instrument being played at the same time.

The next two tunes were so so - one rainforest sounds and the other made entirely from samples of George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld - I suppose both were kind of hypnotic in their own ways but not my cup of tea really, a bit too avant garde for me I guess.

The second part of the evening was so-so, banging plastic bags, scraping keys across barrels, tapping bottles together, banging on bits of drift wood. Quite clever in a way but I doubt that you'd listen to it at home

Atomic Jam

I met Joe in the British Oak for a couple of beers, I was going to meet up with Steffi before she left for Berlin but Joe was being lazy and a bit poor as ever and wouldn't leave. After bumping into Grant and Donna 2 I ran off to have a pint or three in the Island Bar with Steffi, Maria, Gareth and Josie, not many people at the leaving do which was a bit of a shame...Dar was there but chatting to others and didnae really speak to him.

I had already bought tickets to go to Atomic Jam but in hindsight should have stayed with the others at the Island Bar. I don't really like the Que Club a great deal, I find it overprices and a bit grotty and money grubbing really. Speedy J was dead good and the lights fucking good, Joey Beltram however was pretty average.

My life has gone back from midnight til whenever partying to some kind of 8-1, which I suppose isn't a bad thing. It's just I'd quite like to switch between the two.

Tales of Stupidity, Debauchery and Drunkeness

Last night we reminisced with a certain friend who now lives in Germany, his younger brother was both shocked and amused to here tales of fire, beer, car crashes and many other topics. I suspect he will never see his brother in the same light.

I think I agreed to go to Germany so that I can attain some more tales of stupidy, drunkeness and general debauched behaviour. ;)

Murcof

I was/am very tempted to go and see Murcof at the Hare and Hounds tonight. I've been checking out his music today and have enjoyed it greatly, while it is pretty slow it definately has some qualities that appeal to me, perfect sunday afternoon music.

However I don't really fancy paying a tenner to see a bloke look at his laptop. It turns out that I have actually already seen him before at the Dissonanze festival but was probably looking for something a bit more upbeat that night and don't really think was in the mood to listen to drone music.

He is supported by the "Jimi Hendrix of the Tuba World" but I didn't really see much appeal to that music. I have ten minutes to decide whether to go or not but in all honesty will probably watch Top Gear instead.

Francios, lovely, cor....

je souhaite ete le bloke that was on top of...

fook.

Posts

I have no idea what the post below was about, I think maybe they are putting strange chemicals in the beer at the Shakespeare.

I have been extremely hungover today and I can't quite work out why???? I drank five pints of Kronenbourg over a four and a half hour period, which is not exactly a great deal by my standards. I have felt like death all day, I have been about as productive as all those statistics that warn bosses about employee drinking.

I had an hour long meeting and then proceeded to distract everyone else from their jobs - not that they were doing a great deal anyway - we work in the public sector after all. I still feel shitty. Although I have now had a wash, I have had a smelly day at work today, luckily nobody had to come too near me.

Every evening I think I should do something creative however what normally happens is that I either look at shapely breasts on the internet or shoot aliens on my xbox or go to the pub. Tonight however I am going to do one of the exercises from How Clean is Your Parachute (it's called something like that) which involves drawing your dream life with pencil crayons to help me visualize my dream job. I think it could possibly involve looking at real life shapely breasts, occasionally killing aliens on the xbox and going down the pub only in a place next to a beach where I have a hammock.

Aeroplane Tickets

I notice today that BMI Baby were having a summer flights sale so thought I'd check to see if I was losing out big time on my Sonar flights (silly I know) and when I saw that they'd dropped to £1.04 each way plus taxes totalling about £40, I thought "ooooh you bugger! That could have bin me taxi home". However on proceeding to see how much it cost to take a bag and and pay on a card and other various additions you were looking at you were looking at another fourty quid. So in fact I didn't lose out. Ha ha...

I FEEL LIKE THIS

But what I really should feel is like:

Julia Bradbury

I think I love her.



Almost as much as:

Sonar 2009

I've flight tickets for Sonar 2009!

£55 from East Midlands Airport. I could go from Birmingham but the flight home gets back at some ridiculous time and taxis around here cost about a million quid.

Ch-Ch-Changes!

I think maybe I need a job change. I've bin with the Police for five years have not had a pay rise for eighteen months and am not going to get one for at least another six, I am at the bottom of my pay scale and jobs have just happened to have come up when I've been on holiday and the closing before I've got back which obviously is going to piss you off.

I think I'll go mad if I was to stay there another five years or even worse become troll-like similar to many of the long-termers have at that place. If I stay another twelve months may holiday would increase to 33 days and I reckon I'd become completely rut stucken.

I'm not sure what to do - go back to academia and do a Phd and become Dr Clifford, retrain in something completely different, train in something similar, move sideways, move to a different company, stay where I am have a moan and try and get a better deal or something else. I'm trying to work that out at the moment.

Day One - No Booze - He he he...

Well I think I've proven that I am completely useless at abstinence, I suggested to Tim that perhaps I needed a nagging girlfriend to tell me that I was not allowed out the house but he reckoned that she just make me go out with her and we'd end up arguing about kebabs at three in the morning.

I think maybe going to a place that sells alcohol four nights in a row whilst trying to stay off the booze was probably madness.

Wednesday I was lucky enough to be given some free tickets to see Steve Coogan at the NIA - that was alright I was able to resist Ben's constant offers of alcohol. Thursday, more comedy at the Glee Club and again I easily batted off suggestions of a pint - £2.20 for a lemonade did make me wobble slightly. Friday I just couldn't face the taste of Carling - yuk. Three nights in a row and I was feeling quite pleased with myself.

However...ah well. Cutting down is the key I suspect.

Saturday at the Custard Factory was rather cool. I saw Pissed Jeans - OK slightly watered down Iggy Pop. Wooden Shjips - ace krautrocking stoner drone rock thing with big beards and dodgy cardies. OM a slightly dull bass and drums twosome not the best. Then of course Shellac who were Shellac.

I have just beaten Joe about 79-0 at badminton or perhaps even more impressively. Exercise is good (I may not agree tomorrow) I feel quite good.

Its a Rainy Night in Birmingham...

...and it feels like it's raining all over the world.

Man I am Mr Grumpy today. Woke up feeling rubbish, it was dark wet and miserable and I could have done with some hyperactive happy person around me to ge me out of my dreadful mood, or not, maybe that would have made it worse.

Met up with Chris, Shellie, Grant, Donna and babies but that's not cheered me up much...bah! Drank some beer - so much for abstinence.

I am now listening to Tom Waits. Happy happy. It's cold and pissing down outside.

Be alright tomorrow, I suppose.

My Name is Richard and I am an Alcoholic

I am sitting in a skeleton costume pissed off because I couldn't last a week...rubbish...

Lightning Bolt

I'm going to see this lot tonight, I asked Paul if he wanted to come but he said he thought it would be "too hectic" ha ha haha ha ha old bastard.