Critical Motherfuckin' Best

I've been making music under the name Critical Best for just over six months now. It's good fun, though I've kind of hit an impasse. I've switched software recently, and it's kind of fucked up my creativity (OH the humanity). Hopefully the frosty winter months will inspire me.

Well, they fuckin' better - I'm working towards a decent and cogent EP, good to go by the start of the new year. It'll be available for free ('cos really, you wouldn't fucking pay for it, would you?) from this here blog, and a few other select places.

Enough of my nonsense, what I really wanna talk about is 'Lovely Girls', a hypnotic, disentegrating piece that I made ages ago, but didn't upload to my Myspace, for some reason. Here it is, for your listening and/or downloading pleasure:



If you like it, or if you don't, let me know. Either here or on the dreaded MYSPACE

Luv + hugz

GRINDHOUSE70O

Meant to post this a while ago..

Tarantino and Rodriguez's homage to grindhouse classics is out next year. It looks fucking awesome.

Trailer is here - http://www.themoviebox.net/movies/2007/DEFGH/
Grindhouse/trailer.php

And here's some natty posters (click for huge):

Enjoy

Postal

I think my postman is stealing my fucking mail. Just mine, mind, and not my flatmate's. The bastard.

When I got paid last month, I ordered quite a bit of shit from various sites, which arrived in dribs and drabs. Well, most of it. I'm still waiting for some CDs and t-shirts nearly a month later.

I get all my fucking bills and that, all the bumph, but I'm still missing some pretty expensive items. I haven't really seen what the postman looks like, recently - maybe he's changed and we've got some shifty criminal.

I don't have a webcam or anything to set up, so I may have to wait until I'm off work on Tuesday to peer out the spy hole. I can spot the awkward gait of a lifelong lawbreaker from twenty paces. Fucker

In other news - there's a couple of new shirts over at essenem.co.uk, with a couple more in a few days, hopefully. We're actually selling some, which is lovely, and we might be getting some press coverage. If only I had time and talent to design a better looking site. Boo hoo.

Oh, there's a Myspace, too. There's gotta be in this fucking day and age - http://www.myspace.com/essenemclothing

MARGE YOU'RE BREAKING MY HEART

Words....words fail me...



Oh yeah - hi everyone. Long time no see. I'm off to Morrocco tomorrow, but when I come back, I'm going to be all over this fucking internet like a cheap suite.

Laters

An auditory experience lacking musical quality

Hello again peeps. I've been neglecting this site like a motherfucker, and I have no one to blame but myself.

The T-shirt site should be getting a thorough revamp, soon, as we're getting to grips more and more with the wonderful world of E-COMMERCE, but that's not the main reason I've been slacking. Most of my free time on the laptop has been spent fucking about with music software, recently, and so I've done what any self respecting amateur noise maker would do in this day and age.

MYSPACE FUCKING MUSIC PAGE - http://www.myspace.com/criticalbest

Yes, I know - save me the abuse. Nothing on there is completely finished, and I'm not claiming to be the next Merzbow or anything, but it's good for a laugh.

Who knows, if I get my CSS shit together, there's a good chance I can integrate all this frippery together into one big happy funtime megapage.

Hip Hop Is Not A Spectator Sport

Many moons ago, before getting caught up in the soul sucking machine that is professional television, I was a carefree youth stumbling through college with a series of ramshackle programmes (or shall we call them 'short films'?). The last of these, being a hip-hop documentary entitled Hip Hop Is Not A Spectator Sport.

It's far from a masterpiece, as the drunken organising of a documentary is not a good idea. There's quite a few technical errors, too; some poor white balancing; a load of cheesy moments; and, some frankly laughable graphics, but it was all good fun, and got me my HND at college.

I managed to digitise it some time ago (albeit from a shonky VHS copy), but had never got round to actually doing anything with it. So, without further ado, I present it to you now:

[ Youtube Video removed,

gie's a shout if you want to see it ]

I've got some more of my shit kicking around somewhere which you may or may not be subjected to in the future

Shifty eyed goddamn liar

Two years today I moved to London. How fucking bizarre is that? Imagine me, turning up at the airport, fresh faced and full of wonder. No idea what the fuck I was doing. I remember my first few weeks - I was fuckin' terrified. Glasgow's a reasonable sized city, but it can't prepare you for the enormity of London. 'Thrown in at the deep end' doesn't even begin to describe it.

But that's always the best way to teach a drunken baby to swim. Look at me now. Haggard. Cynical. Sporting a beard and dressing like a homosexual. Talking about house prices and congestion charges and production houses in Soho. I don't bat an eyelid when I pay 4 quid for a pint in some faux trendy wankhole in Hoxton. I don't bat an eyelid when I careen down the wrong stairs in some grubby tube station, fighting against the tide, knocking some pregnant banker down, clattering onto the platform. Just to shave 15 seconds off my commute. I have never earned so much money, nor been so skint in my life.

And I fucking love it.

COVER YOUR SHAME

WWW.ESSENEM.CO.UK GOES LIVE

Hello peeps. After 6 months of drunken fuckery, the t-shirt site is finally up. Go and have a look, and if you see any shirts you like, for fuck's sake BUY THEM.

Conversely, if you see a design you like, but we don't have the particular syle or colour you want, let me know and I'll rectify the situation.

Here's a small selection from the site:

TELL YOUR FRIENDS

www.essenem.co.uk

marc(AT)essenem.co.uk

Don't mess with me, lady, I've been drinking with skeletons

Fuck me, I am useless. What with having a full time job, making music, designing t-shirts for the site, working on a treatment for a short film and being a raging drunkard, I just haven't had time to talk shite on here that nobody wants to hear. Poor you.

I am sitting here eating a Twix, and it's been in the fridge. I think I've broken my fucking teeth chewing through the toffee bit - it was rock solid. Bastards.

My nonce-ear (as Craig so lovingly put it) is pretty much gone. I filled it full of far too much Otex and went to a 65daysofstatic concert. That fucked up the wax good and proper. I swear to God, you have to invest in some Otex. It's expensive (~£8 for a wee bottle), but it is most definately the shit.

T-shirt site should go live at the end of the week - expect me to plug the shit out of it.

Byeeee

Corn Beef

I awoke at around midnight on Monday in screaming fucking agony. I hate ear infections, and have not had the displeasure of one for quite a number of years. After a rather brisk 2 hours at Accident & Emergency I was furnished with ear drops and some nifty codeine tablets for the pain, tablets that ensured the week at work stumbled by like a drunken hobo.

The infection itself is pretty much gone now, but as I sit here bored shitless in work, I am deaf as a fucking post in my left ear. This is a further annoyance, as I've come to realise that my left ear is my good ear, so basically, I can't hear shit.

Everything I am somehow able to hear sounds as if it's underwater, due to gunk and shit floating around in my ear canal, but I don't know if I have the time or patience for another trip to A&E for a syringing. My flatmates have that Audiclean stuff, so I may give that a shot.

And why should you give a fuck about my ears? Well, I was going to write about my brand new, super awesome funtime happy box that has just arrived in the post - My FM3 Buddha Machine:

It's a cool wee box that plays 9 different loops, and from what I've heard, is lovely and soothing. Obviously I'll need working ears before I can give a decent view on the thing.

Fuckin' ears

Motherfuckin' bird flu

I bought my first CD of the year on Friday night. I don't know what the fuck is wrong with me, I've usually bought a fuckton of albums by now. It's not even like I'm downloading a lot of shit from Soulseek, I'm just being generally shit when it comes to music.

But yeah - I bought my first CD of the year on Friday night. It was an Ove Naxx tour CD, bought from the man himself at esteemed breakcore night Trash Trash Noise Next Door. It was fucking bedlam. Ove was so stoned when he got up on stage he fell over and broke his microphone. And DJ Scotchegg had 4 Gameboys on the go at one point. Good fun.

I will have to buy some music now.

Mogwai - Mr Beast,
Liars - Drums Not Dead,
B.Fleischmann - The Humbucking Coil
Battles - Ep C/B Ep
65daysofstatic - Radio Protector EP

Yeah that'll do for now.

The t-shirt site I've mentioned a few times will be up and running very very soon, I'll keep y'all posted.

Laters

2005 - That was the year that was

I had to go and get a blood test done, what was it... last Thursday. Now, I watched the guy do it, and he seemed to know what the fuck he was doing, and it didn't hurt (it looks cool as fuck when the vacuum in the vial kicks in and it whips the blood right out of your vein), but I've ended up with a massive fucking bloody-yellow bruise on my left arm. It's actually impinging on my fucking tattoo.

It looks like I've had part of a junkie-biker-whore's arm grafted onto mine. I can see people look at it in work, too. Whatever must they think? Fun fun fun. Really though, he made a right fuckin' meal of it. Hopefully, it'll fade in the next, oh... week or some shit.

Anyways, back to the task at hand. Last year I decided to have a little fun with my calendar. Each day, when the day was done, I wrote one, two or three words down to describe each day. Some days were cryptic, others were blatant. I honestly didn't think I'd keep it up for the whole year. But I did. And what do you do with all that data? Well, if you're me, you put it into an Excel spreadsheet, allocate each day a rating between 0 and 13, then you graph the fuck out of that motherfucker.

Here's the raw as fuck data, untouched and graphed:


As you can see, it's pretty much all over the shop. That blue line is the general trend, but it doesn't give the full picture. I had to do some fucking ninja shit on the data to get an awesome graph. And here it is, my overall happiness throughout 2005, month by month:



So that was 2005.

Shit man, I need a new fucking hobby.

And now for something completely different

I don't think this site was primarily designed for this sort of shit, but...well...here:

--Bombay Bullion
--Saucy Nurse
--YAMS
--Lollipop Man
--Project Mayhem

Sorry for the appalling lack of humour (not to mention words) in this update. I'm a tired panda

Liz Hurley has shoulders like a rugby player

I fucking hate January, I swear to fuck. The whole month is just a hangover from Xmas and Hogmany. I feel like I've been underwater for the past 2 weeks - I have no money, my health is shot to fuck from over-indulging and I have this sort of creeping dread that washes over me every now and again. I think last year it wasn't so bad, 'cos I'd just been dumped so I had every reason to feel like shit. But this year... Fuck. This year I am in a good place. Things are going well for me, and I have no reason to be in a shitty mood. Which just makes it worse when I feel like rubbish.

On the plus side (of this laughable emo fag outpouring), I am feeling much better today. Maybe it's the methamphetamine in the coffee; maybe it's the fact it's payday on Sunday; maybe it's the fact I have a lovely girl who lets me do stuff to her; maybe it's the limited edition Japanese Adidas I bought yesterday made from FUCKING NILE CARP! Whatever it is, I'm feeling rather damn spiffy.

It's probably the meth, actually.

Yeah, anyways, you didn't come here to listen to me moan about this shitty month, you came to hear me rant about moths and keyboards and poorly trained killer whales, didn't you?

And on that note:

What the fuck is the deal with that smell? You know the one - when you leave your clothes out to dry and they don't dry properly. What the fuck is that? It doesn't exist anywhere else in nature and I'd like to know where in the everliving fuck it comes from. It's deceptive, too. You grab a fresh tee shirt from the cupboard, you think everything's hunky dory, then BAM - you're sitting at work, furtively sniffing your sleeve to see if that pungent, corpse-like aroma is emanating from your supposedly clean clothes. I'm too poor and lazy to be washing shit twice, but I'm too fucking cool to be out in public smelling like Bernie after he's been left out too long in the sun.

It's very annoying.

Don we now our gay apparel

Happy Fucking Christmas

Diagnosis : Music

Hogmany is fast approaching and 2005 is drawing to close. Now is the time for the music critics, the journalists, the celebrity DJs and presenters and the average everyday music fans to come scurrying out of the woodwork and force their music tastes on a disinterested public. Now is the time for "Best Albums 0f 2005" lists, and their brethren, to run rampant across all forms of media. And this particular shit pool of the media is no different.

I present to you:

"17 Albums Which Were Released
In 2005 And Were Very Good"
(It's probably in order, but who can really say?)

1. Xiu Xiu - La Foret
2. Sigur Ros - Takk
3. 65daysofstatic - One Time For All Time
4. Arab Strap - The Last Romance
5. Buck 65 - Secret House Against the World
6. Maximo Park - A Certain Trigger
7. Minotaur Shock - Maritime
8. HORSE the band - The Mechanical Hand
9. Vitalic - OK Cowboy
10. Kevin Blechdom - Eat My Heart Out
11. Patrick Wolf - Wind in the Wires
12. LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem
13. DJ Koze - Kosi Comes Around
14. DJ Scotch Egg - KFC Core
15. Jason Forrest - Shamelessly Exciting
16. Bright Eyes - I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
17. Hrvatski - Irrevocably Overdriven Break Freakout Megamix

I'm pretty sure that's way it should look, but there's still some time left in the year for a young pretender to stake a claim. Here's the 'Honourable Mentions' and why they missed the cut:

• kid606 - Done With The Scene EP : it's an EP, innit? So, not technically an album, so not on the list. Still fucking awesome though
• Arcade Fire - Funeral : I've not listened to this enough for it be included. It is good, though. Oh, another thing, I'm pretty sure this was released in 2004?!?
• Fantomas / Melt-Banana [Split CD on Unhip Records] : well, this only clocks in at about 3 minutes long, so I could never justify listing it. It is cool as fuck, though
• Animal Collective - Feels : again, I've not listened to this enough, either, but after seeing them live earlier this year, I had to give them a mention
• Test Icicles - For Screening Purposes Only : see above. Fucking shite name, though. Band and album
• Death From Above 1979 - You're A Woman, I'm A Machine : much like Arcade Fire, I'm pretty sure this was released in 2004

So that's about it. I may come back and edit some comments onto the list, it looks a little sparse at the moment, but other than that, we're done here. I've got a big fuck-off pile of CDs strewn about my room now, and will spend the next hour meticulously putting them back in the right order. I love my life.

I'm sorry, but what's creative about further harshening tequila?

A couple of years back, at Christmas I made this monstrosity:



That's two hot-ass motherfuckin' chillis, tops cut off, then left in a bottle of Smirnoff in a dark cupboard for a 2 months.

On Christmas Day my Mum decided it would be a good idea to harrass my wee brother's pals into doing shots of it. Jesus fucking Christ I thought we were going to have to go to the hospital. After sampling it straight myself, the only word I could use to describe it would be 'AHHHHHH! Dear God why are my lips not made of asbestos? Why God, why the pain? Take my eyes, take my fingers, take my balls, just stop the burning fucking agony'.

My ex did say it made an awesome Bloody Mary, though. Through her burns mask.

This year, rather than use pure, pussy, untainted vodka I'm going to do it slightly differently. I'm doing it with dirty, dirty, slutty tequila. Two chillis rammed up her and papped in the cupboard for a while, that'll get her all hot and heavy. I canny wait to dish it out on Jesus' birthday.

Feeling quite zlaradno

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I've abandoned this blog, and my life, and ran off with Cappy, my gorgeous kangaroo concubine. You'd be dead wrong... though she does look lovely in taupe lipstick and kitten heels, and she is always asking me to come away with her. Anyways - I've had three weeks off work; three weeks of laziness, drunkenness, debauchery and only minimal creative output, so I've not really had much of worth to write about.

That's not to say that even minimal creative output isn't a huge step up for me. I managed to actually get some music done, which was a bit of a shock. I also got some t-shirts designed, and there will soon be a website selling said designs, in the near future. Not entirely my thing, my good buddy is doing shirts too and is in the process of doing the site, but it should be cool. See if you can find a link on this page, you fucking internet detective, you.

Since 2005 is drawing to close I'll be compiling my end of year album list, which may or may not be of interest to any of you fuckers. All the cool kids do it, and I've done one the last few years, so it would be churlish of me to miss it out this year. There's been some awesome shit released, though I haven't bought my usual amount of CDs this year. Still - it'll be hard to whittle it down to 20.....24.

On the first of January last year I started a daft wee project (well, I say wee - it has been a year long thing), which I expected to get bored with, but which looks like it's going to arrive at completion come the first day of 2006. I'm gonna start fucking around with that very soon, and if it looks vaguely interesting I may put some parts of it up here. Oo - cryptic.

Fun Fact:
Irritating as fuck, kids programme Bodger and Badger was originally pitched as a saucy late night farce, entitled Todger and Badger. It would follow the misadventures of a tatty badger puppet and a large foam phallus as they embroiled themselves in all sorts of hilarious japes. When it was picked up by the BBC and switched to a pre-watershed timeslot, it had to drop most of the racier elements; but some traces do remain. The creamy 'mashed potato' facials, for instance.

That's yer lot - cock off

A little late, he staggered through

Since this blog is almost one year old, and this DJ Scotch Egg album I have on isn't really conducive to shitting out new content, I think I'll do the lazy and thing and link to some of my favourite posts of the last year. 'Cos, you know, I'm a literary genius and some of this pish needs a second airing.

The Early Life of Venetian Snares - this is all 100% true, I swear to fuck

Shoelace Tension Discrepancy - The Facts - who says only the children and the spastics have trouble tying their laces?

Science! Part 1 - shit, I forgot about this. I really must try and do it one of these days

schlechte Tätowierung - wherein I rant about Friendster

They all float down here - spending an hour in a floatation tank.....I'm such a fucking hippy sometimes

Scuppered at the last hurdle? - yes yes, I'm worried that god is videotaping all my hilarious fuck-ups to he can show them to me upon my demise

Some advice - last but not least. Come have a look at my most ill advised rant which garnered more feedback than anything else I've written

That's your lot. Everything else I've written has been fucking dire. Indeed, most of the stuff linked to above is shitty too. A good writer is not me. Enjoy

"The air was continuously alive with gay synthetic melodies"

Whenever I come back from Glasgow I always feel (and look) like I've been raped in the face with a bus. I've been back about 3 or 4 days and only now do I have the strength to type out any sort of coherent shite.

So yeah - Animal Collective in Glasgow was a laugh riot, they were really fucking good and odd and good. Pick up their new album if you like, I won't fucking bother. I went to see my current favourite band 65daysofstatic on Wednesday night, and spent a fuckton of the Queen's pounds on merchandise. Christ, I've probably got a 65daysofstatic toothbrush kicking around somewhere. They rocked the fuck out of the place for what felt like an hour and half (it may have been a wee bit longer or shorter, 'twas hard to tell), playing pretty much everything off their first album and some great stuff from the new album.

On Thursday I went to the NFT to a thing called Antenna, where they show new music videos. Who was on the panel? None other than Spike Motherfuckin' Jonze. Jesus Christ. He was a bit nervous and shit, I think he must be terrified of people, but he came across as a likeable, talented guy and he provided the people questioning him with nice wee anecdotes as answers to their questions. Garth Jennings (part of Hammer & Tongs) was there, too, and he was one funny fuck - he looked incredibly comfortable up there on stage, witty bastard. In addition to the star studded Q&A, they showed some awesome new videos, the highlights being Tiga's new one, and one from Venetian Snares' new album. The track itself was a sub-par orchestral Squarepusher rip-off (I'm not that keen on the album...as a whole), but it was saved by a moody, inventive and downright crafty video. Shit, have I just badmouthed my hero on national internet?

As a companion piece to my Amazon list, "CDs I Lost When I Went Back To Glasgow And Got Drunk", I've just knocked this bad boy up:

"DVDs I lost when I went back to Glasgow when I went back to Glasgow and got drunk"

Yes kids, that's right - my idiot tax is increasing. Bye for now