We're talking C.A.T.A.S.T.R.O.P.H.E

So, my laptop has died a horrible death

There's a good chance I've irretrievably lost a few new Critical Best tracks, and some other bits and pieces, which is pretty shit.

I'm going to remove the hard drive this week, and try and nab the data off it. If this works, we should be all okay. If it doesn't, I am going to cry like a little bitch.

In addition to the music, there was all my dead pigeon photos, too - so that blog will need to be on hiatus for a wee while.

More news as the story develops

UPDATE

Just updated http://deadinthestreet.blogspot.com/ after a wee break. Was on holiday, and all that jazz

I might chuck some holiday pics up here soon, it was well ace in Sri Lanka

In other news, I'm working on some more tracks, not for my album, but for a wee remixes and covers EP I've just had the notion to put together

Late-arz

ONLY REAL COWBOYS READ THE BIBLE

I have a new MP3 out - Critical Best's second release, 'ONLY REAL COWBOYS READ THE BIBLE'. It's a 13 minute noise soundscape inspired by the harsh violence of the frontier lands of the 1800s. This year I've been really into 'cowboy things' (Blood Meridian, Deadwood, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, The Proposition, etcetera) and the utter mindless brutality, and complete unglamouressness of life back then really made an impression on me. It all kind of came to head while putting this track together. Brutal, unrelenting, then sparse, windswept, pregnant with the anticipation of the danger to come.

Released on Scunnered Records [scun002], and available for download here:

http://www.archive.org/details/CriticalBest-ONLYREALCOWBOYSREADTHEBIBLEscun002

You can also hear it on the Scunnered Records Myspace - http://www.myspace.com/scunneredrecords

And you can both download it and listen to it at Last.fm - http://www.last.fm/music/Critical+Best/
ONLY+REAL+COWBOYS+READ+THE+BIBLE

Please get in touch if you have anything good or bad to say about it.

Cheers for the support

FOUND DEAD IN THE STREET

Hello there,

Here's my new blog, with some pictures I've taken of dead animals, found in the street:

http://deadinthestreet.blogspot.com/

A new picture will be posted every Monday.

If you have any you've taken yourself, gimme a shout and I'll put them up. With full credit, of course

Cheers

61

Dunno how many of you use http://www.thesixtyone.com/, but I now have a page on there:

http://www.thesixtyone.com/jinginakipunxxx/collection/all/

Where you can go and listen to 3 of my tracks, and bump them if you wish. There's some good music on that site if you can be bothered to go looking

Laters gaters

humour

Been listening to a lot of Belladonnakillz recently - they fucking rock

Download OPTIONSSS aplenty

Hey peeps,

Forgot to mention - you can now download the full Meconium album from the Critical Best Last.fm page:

http://www.last.fm/music/Critical+Best/Meconium

Go there and do your dirty business

Oh, I’ll probably be putting some other bits and pieces on there, too, for your downloading / listening pleasure, as I have a few tracks kicking about which are unreleased / kind of released / won’t make the next album

And I’ve got some new ideas for a couple of tunes which I should be getting round to starting in the very near future

Laters gaters

CRUNK TECHNO

Is 'Crunk Techno' a real genre? I propose that it is. And the main proponents of it are:

Herrmutt Lobby

edIT

Who else is there?

Blades of Nonsense

After watching Blades of Glory the other night, my mind wandered to a spectacle I once seen. That of a man, decked out like Kurt Cobain, ice skating to the sounds of Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'.

Five minutes fucking around on Youtube and here it is:



Jesus

Arundel Tomb

Hello peeps,

I've been working on a new track. You can listen to it over at the the Critical Best Myspace - http://www.myspace.com/criticalbest

It's called 'Arundel Tomb' and is based off the Philip Larkin poem 'An Arundel Tomb'

I reckon it may still need a wee bit of tweaking

Also, if I haven't mentioned before, there's another new track on there, too, called 'Trevor Brown Don't Paint My Child' (shortened to 'TBDPMC' for the Myspace player)

Enjoy

Fun with baby

This is the best thing I ever saw:

http://www.c00lstuff.com/1133/Do_s_and_don_ts_with_babies/

Some highlights:






Head over to that site to see them all

Sickening

Eugh

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=371620

John Travolta tells us how awesome he is, and how he was an idol of Heath Ledger's


http://www.entertainmentwise.com/news/40175/daniel-day-lewis-breaks-down-over-ledgers-death

A tearful and distraught Daniel Day Lewis tells us he's incredibly upset, and "I didn't know him. I have a strong impression I would have liked him very much as a person if I had"

Jesus fucking Christ you people are despicable

Burial - True!

Was just speaking to a 'friend-of-a-friend' who works at *REMOVED* and he's let me in on a little secret - supposedly, universally loved dubstep producer Burial is actually Roni Size.

Odd, eh?

JOHN FUCKING RAMBO

This is going to be the film of the year

Hahahahahahahaha

2007 Musical Roundup Type Thing

As we reach the end of another futuristic year, it's nice to look back, and bask in the glory of music. Music released in 2007. Music released in 2007 which was enjoyed by me. To this end, I have compiled a list of sorts, illustrating music I enjoyed from the year two thousand and seven. Here it is:

2007's Best Albums

(in no particular order, except number 1)

1. Rotator - Choose Your Poison, Mine Is Hardcore!!!


2. The Tuss - Rushup Edge


3. Battles - Mirrored


4. Panda Bear - Person Pitch


5. Gescom - A1-D1


6. Wiley - Eskiboy : The Best Of Tunnel Vision


7. Melt Banana - Bambi's Dilemma


8. XXL - ¿Spicchiology?


9. Pluramon - The Monstrous Surplus


10. Mujuice - Cool Cool Death


11. MIA - Kala


12. DJ Scotch Egg - Scotchhausen


13. Dilithium Tourdes - The Dirty Dick Outlaw


14. 65daysofstatic - The Destruction Of Small Ideas

Best 10 Inch

• Venetian Snares - Sabbath Dubs

Great, wobbly, dub cover/remixes of classic Sabbath tracks. A pity there's only 2 tracks on here

Best 12 Inch

• Various - Cross Roads EP

There's a brilliant Cakebuilder tune on this, but the standout track is Venetian Snares' totally unexpected 4 to the floor monster, "Koonut Kaliffee". It's a punishing rave bastard of a track, and shows yet another side to the man Funk. Released on Dross:tik Records, if you're looking for it

Best Compilation

• Proibidao C.V - Forbidden Gang Funk from Rio De Janeiro

Mmmm, illegal Brazilian funk. Well, it's not really funk - it's gang sponsored MCs chatting over Miami bass beats. Peculiar stuff

Best Reissue

• White Noise - An Electric Storm

BBC Radiophonic Workshop maven, Delia Derbyshire, and friends, show literally everyone how it's done in this stunning masterpiece of an album. Listening to it today, it's almost unthinkable that it was released in 1969

Biggest Letdown

• Venetian Snares - My Downfall (Original Soundtrack)

Cheap nasty presets for the violin sounds, lacklustre breakcore, emo imagery - Snares has fucking lost it with this album. Seen by many as a follow up, and companion piece to 2005's "Rossz csillag alatt született", this fails in every single way that "Rossz..." succeeded (and I didn't even rate "Rossz...")

A Few Mentions...

• Burial - Untrue

Better than last year's debut effort, but I still don't see what the fuss is all about. This is on every single fucker's album of the year list. Don't believe the hype until you've gave it a thorough listen yourself

• Wu-Tang Clan - 8 Diagrams

Unexpectedly good new album from the Shaolin boys. I've not gave this a decent enough listen to include it on the proper list, though

• Minimal Techno and the Kitsune / Ed Banger shit and the Nu Rave bollocks and most Dubstep...

Can all fuck right off. Well, maybe not Dubstep, but it's proliferation annoys me - you just canny get away from it

• Xiu Xiu - The Air Force

Released in 2006, but only nabbed by me in 2007. More fantastic stuff from Jamie Stewart. The "Remixed and Covered" album released in 2007 was pretty decent, too. Great tracks from Kid606, Why?, Larsen, Gold Chains and many more

That's me for another year. Here's the previous lists...

2006
2005
2004
2003

Let's hope we get some good shit in 2008

MECONIUM on Scunnered Records MP3

The lovely folks at Noise Joy have had a bit of a catastophe - everything they've ever released has disappeared from their servers. Nasty

Until they're back up and running, I've released Meconium on Scunnered Records MP3:

www.archive.org/details/CriticalBest-Meconiumscun001

Enjoy

(There's a new track on Myspace, too - www.myspace.com/criticalbest, it's called 'Trevor Brown Don't Paint My Child')

Christmas Mix

http://www.mediafire.com/?fatjmmxx9zz

1//Kodek - You Must Think First Before You Move
2//Droon / Barndance
3//Adam Harris / Hyperspeed (Sy and Unknown Remix) + Hellfish / Pill Lesson
4//Phuq / Broken (Ruthmix)
5//LFO Demon / Classwar Dynamite
6//Ladyscraper / Turboturd!
7//Gabba Front Berlin / Speedcore Lacrima

A decidedly un-festive half hour. Enjoy

Woop de fuckin' woop

Oh yeah, I have a Discogs page now:

http://www.discogs.com/artist/Critical+Best

Yeah

I went climbing yesterday and now these arms are dead snakes

Hmmm, I haven't updated this in fucking ages.



I have an excuse, though - I've just moved into a lovely new flat with my awesome girlfriend, and we don't have t'internet yet, so I can't really update this page from home. And work is pretty busy, what with Xmas looming on the horizon.



I've been growing a moustache this month, along with loads of other guys around the world, to raise money for Prostate Cancer charity. I'm starting to look like a gay fisherman.



I've got 3 new tracks in the pipeline, and a kind of vague concept of things I want to do. Unlike my first album, which was just a hotch potch of all the tracks I'd done, I have a nebulous theme in mind for my next project. I want to get some cheap analogue equipment first, though, as I'm getting a bit bored of my software (and I'm too lazy to learn a couple of the new bits of software I got recently).



Wa wa waaa

All Hallow's Eve

Happy Halloween, peeps.



For your listening pleasure, I present a 'mashup' of Gershon Kingsley & Peter Waldron and Nurse With Wound. I've taken the DJ Brokenwindow route on this, as I'm shit at mashups, and it didn't really need much tweaking to sound perfect and creepy:

Nurse With Wound - Rat Tapes (Marc'o van Bastard's Halloween Edit)

(This was originally the last track of that Zomcore podcast I done, but I figure it's spooky enough to stand alone today)

Also - what the fuck is up with the lack of pumpkins this year? I am bereft. Most annoying

Laters gaters