Cometh the month, cometh the man

As 2005 rampages towards its inevitable, logical conclusion (an inappropriate drunken pawing at a Hogmany party), we draw ever closer to Rocktober - the month of my birth. I will be a quarter of a century old this year, and I still have the brain, thoughts, sexual desires and hand-eye coordination of a high-voiced acne-ridden 16 year old. We men never fully grow up, do we? It's sad really - women my age are thinking about babies, marriage, buying a house, and here I am wondering what Playstation 2 game I want for my birthday (The Warriors, if you were wondering), and whether or not my chocolate cake should have a He-Man made of icing on it, or an Optimus Prime.

I'm a fucking a child, basically.

But enough of this maudlin nonsense, what I really want to talk about is gigs. Oh yes. Gigs. Due to my inability to get time off to go back to Glasgow for Instal, I've been keeping my eyes peeled for some hot shit down here in sunny London. Here's what I've found:

• 26 October - Rhythm Factory

65daysofstatic & Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies

Not only are 65daysofstatic releasing a new album, but they are fucking touring too. Ahhh. Having only heard about them at the beginning of the year, they have quickly become one of my favourite bands. Get yourself along to one of the other UK shows (or this one) for a heavy dose of post-rock breakcore nonsense.

• 31 October - Scala

Patrick Wolf & Friends Halloween Spooktacular

Patrick is supporting Bloc Party all over the land, but if you want to see him headline this seems to be your only chance for a while. The Bloc Party dates are all sold out anyway, I think. Expect him to be dressed as a gay Robin Hood-esque goth while he belts out his angsty electro-ballads. Probably.

• 04 November - Cargo

Minotaur Shock, Radioactive Man & more

Folktronica is such a dirty word. But hey, if lazy journalists can use it - so the fuck can I (and I can split infinitives with profanity too). Minotaur Shock is fucking awesome, and is supposedly named after a discredited type of therapy that they used to dish out to mental patients during less enlightened times. The head doctor would charge into the lunatic's room, gibbering, with a minotaur mask on. Yeah, that'll cure them. Radioactive Man, too. That's all I gotta say.

• 04 November - Overkill @ Elektrowerks II

Mistress, Trencher, Charlottefield, Modeselektor, Tim Exile, Phil Collins 3, Sharkattack, Ceephax, Shitmat, V/Vm, DJ Scotch Egg, The Gasman, Chevron, Ebola, Mully & Bunglegushcore, Miss Hawaii, Cutting Pink With Knives, Ommm, Romvelope, D/J Rupture

Jesus Cunting Christ. That line up makes me want to weep with joy. Almost every one of my favourite (at the moment) electronic artists (ok, so VSnares and Jason Forrest ain't there, but don't be nitpicky) are playing this gig. I'll really only be going the Minotaur Shock gig if I canny find someone who'll go to this with me. I reckon this could kill the last vestiges of adequate hearing I have left. Jesus...just...Jesus.

• 05 November - Camden Barfly

Robots In Disguise & more

The 2 chicks from the Mighty Boosh (Electro, Nanageddon and probably another couple of episodes too) will be dishing out their brand of punk-funk to the drunken Camden bastards. Lovely.

• 14 November - Trash @ The End

TIGA! Erol Alkan will probably be there too

If ever there was a time to make an effort to go to Trash, it would be this night. It will be oh so very trendy. And gay. Very very gay.

• 17 November - Koko

Squarepusher & Luke Vibert

Having never seen Squarepusher, I really should try and make this. I'm just worried he'll only play stuff from his most recent album (Ultravisitor), which I thought was shit. Luke Vibert is cool though.

Now, going by my track record I reckon I'll make it to one, maybe two of these nights. Why oh why must I be so fucking shite? Because I'm a fucking wean trapped in the body of a slightly bemused adult.

Come on, birthday. Come on

Attention Whoring Worldwide

What the fuck is going on in this world? Seriously? What did people do before God blighted us with the dull fuckery that is Myspace? Have you seen this shit? "My e-penis is so much bigger than yours - I have 144 friends". But how many of them have you actually met, dickbag?

I canny talk. I've just started a Myspace page. Yet another repository for lists of my favourite films and music, pictures of me in 'uproarious' situations, links to pages of people whom I DO NOT KNOW and occasionally links to, wait for it... actual real life friends. Gasp.

Friendster is bad enough, but Myspace lets you fuck about with the layout of your page. There are literally millions of identikit emo-bawbag's pages filled with shitty pictures, bad, bad embedded mallcore MP3s and impossible-to-read black on dark blue text.

But you know all of this, because you have a Myspace page too, don't you. Every fucker and their pet spastic has a page. It's going to hit critical mass at some point in the near future - every Myspace user is going to be friends with every other Myspace user, wasting away years of their lives exchanging poorly written comments with one another while drooling over their keyboards. "OH MY GAWD, U R SOOO HAWT IN DAT PIC"

Maybe I'm getting a bit old and jaded, but these social networking things are really starting to grind my gears. I have no use for them whatsoever - I don't use them to keep in touch with mates (I use phones and email for that), they're basically just more ammo for a future stalker. But I will continue to sign up, I will continue to 'add people' to my friends list and I will continue to write painfully unfunny comments on the pages of people who I wouldn't shit on if they were on fire. I will continue because I am just as big of an attention whore as everyone else. I need more online friends than my other online friends. I need to validate my existence by counting the number of people who have viewed my profile.

So here, here you fucking go -
http://www.myspace.com/bape_monkey

Add me you cunts.

NORMAL SERVICE WILL RESUME SHORTLY

In the meantime - have a look at this happy fuck. He loves his job.

Art Wank

Jesus, I canny believe I've been down here for over a year and only just paid a visit to Trash. I don't want to say it's London's version of Optimo, but it was quite similar in crowd and music, if not aesthetic and ethos. Hahaha, what the fuck am I talking about.

Anyways, the reason I ended up there is thanks to these boys - A Cult Called Karrianna, who were playing at the Elephant and Castle in Camden, on Monday night. The only way I can think of describing them is - Motley Crue, fronted by Bobbie Gillespie, covering Bon Jovi songs in the stlye of Felix Da Housecat, New Order and Depeche Mode.

They fucking rocked, and afterwards my mate and I found ourselves wandering Tottenham Court Road, following the gay hair and t-shirt and tie crowd to Trash. A good time was had by all, and work the next day was a fucking chore.

Back up to Glasgow tomorrow. Fan-cunting-tastic.

Aw yeah, and you absolute jerk-offs had better be watching The Mighty Boosh.

Science! Part 1

I was sitting a couple of weeks ago in the flat. Bored. On t'internet, as you do. And I said to my flatmate "Did you ever hear of the guy who strapped helium ballons to a chair and floated up through the sky?" Obviously he didn't believe me, so I had to use the power of computers to prove to him it happened.

The Snopes page is here, and it's quite cool, when you actually read what the guy done.

But that got me thinking, thinking about whether or not I could attempt something like that myself. I decided it was far too dangerous, and would probably be really expensive. Then my flatmate's wee dog scampered in, jumped up on the couch, and grinned at me like a spaz.

She's a little daschund, very much like this...



...though without that fetching coat. Now, I thought, how cool would it be to take her out a walk, with her floating at the end of her leash, five feet in the air, suspended by helium balloons?

Very, was the answer. All I had to do was work out how much it was going to cost.

Now, she probably weighs between 5 and 7 kilograms, depending on how much she's eaten recently, so I had to figure out how many helium balloons it would take to get her off the ground.

I found out your standard one foot diameter balloon, when filled with helium, can exert an upwards force capable of lifting about 14 grams.

OK, taking the weight of the dog, for simplicity's sake, to be 6 kilograms we get:

1 balloon = 14 grams
1 dog = 6000grams

6000/14 = 428.6 (rounded up) balloons.

Obviously we have to round that up again, to get one full balloon, so call it 429 balloons, to equalise the upward force exerted by the balloons and the downward force of the dog. She would probably rise quite slowly, so she'd be easy to keep on the end of the leash.

"But how much would that cost?" I hear you ask. Well, Balloons.co.uk price the hire of their HG331 N2O Canister at £135.71 (click that link and scroll down). Problem is, it will on inflate 330 12" balloons and we need 429. So, we'll have to hire an HG330 N2O Canister (which can inflate 165 12" balloons) too. That'll set us back another £95.76.

Total price so far - £231.47. They do deliver though, so that's quite nice.

With those 2 canisters we can inflate 495 balloons, which from Balloons.co.uk will set us back 8p each. Let's call it an even 500:

500 balloons x £0.08 = £40. Nice. I reckon they'd deliver them when they bring the helium, too.

Grand Total, then - £271.47, and for that we get 500 helium balloons, with a flight time of between 8 and 10 hours. Plenty of time to wander about London getting odd looks.

If anyone has a spare £280, I'm totally up for this. The logistics of actually inflating and attaching almost 430 balloons to a dog not much longer than a foot will have to wait until all the equipment is right there in front of me. I'm sure it won't take long.

(Christ, imagine if I accidentally let go of the leash. My flatmates would kill me and burn me in the bath)

Deep in the juju, I was chasing the train

Alright you worthless motherfuckers, I'm betting you wouldn't know decent comedy if belted you round the chops with a live baby, then proceeded to shit on your shoes. Which is why you should care that The Mighty Boosh is back on the BBC next week. It's fucking awesome, and should be watched by everyone. EVERY-FUCKING-ONE.

The lovely, lovely people at the BBC have provided a live stream of the first episode, "Call of the Yeti", which you can watch by clicking right here. I'm not totally sure if you can view it outside the UK, so feel free to berate me for giving you false hope.

Enjoy

No service on the Circle Line

Yeah, bits of London may have been blown the fuck up, but it's very much business as usual, which is pretty cool. Other than a couple of extra Polis at the Tube stations and the odd controlled detonation of a suspect package outside my work (and other people's, presumably), everyone is pretty much going about there lives as normal. It's all gravy.

And am I the only person who thought of Monkey Dust when they heard the identities of the suicide bombers this morning? Good English boys, born here and into cricket, football, booze, Chicken McNuggets, kissing girls, and all that jazz.



"This Wednesday, death and destruction will rain upon your heads...."

"Eh, our Shafiq, we can't do Wednesday, it's West Brom versus Villa on pay-per-view!"

"....This Thursday...."

"There is a clause in all of my contracts, that my liver is to be buried seperately, and with full military honours"

After finally kicking the balls off GTA:San Andreas the other week, my wee dinky PS2 has been deathly quiet. I'm not a total game addict or anything, but it's nice to be in the middle of a game, to be able to waste away a couple of hours bashing buttons and hitting hookers with a spade. Thanks to my wee bro' I've discovered that the mighty mighty Rockstar are due to bring out a PS2 version of my all time favourite 70's gang film, The Warriors. Click that to view the trailer, it looks fucking fantastic. It's out in Rocktober, the month of my birth - I think I'll ask Mummy and Daddy dearest for it, all nicely wrapped in Scooby Doo paper.

I mentioned Rubber Johnny in my last post. Well, if you are too fucking cheap to buy the DVD, you can click this link to view it on t'internet. Enjoy.

I'm off out tonight to a pub quiz at the AKA Bar. We fucking won it last month, by some bizarre drunken luck. £100 bar tab we won, and we fucking hammered half of it in about 30 minutes. We're defending our title this time (as well as caning the rest of the bar tab), if only so we can hear the name 'Cartoon Sex Clowns' called out over the speakers again. Send some cocking luck my way, bawchops.

I'd like to volunteer to be in charge of booby traps

Wales was absolutely fuckin' mental. There's something glorious about being stuck in the middle in the middle of nowhere with tonnes of drink, drugs and headcases. Far too many people were taking their lives into their own, rather shaky, hands and doing all sorts of wacky shit. Explosive rockets, unicycling down treacherous hills, Super Soakers filled with paraffin (ok, that's a lie, even in our state we knew this was a bad idea), Mushroom tea, stunning sunshine, cows, dogs and enough Grolsch to take down George Best and his army of livers - it was all good fun. I've been back for quite some time, and I still don't feel like I've recovered.

I've been haemorrhaging money recently - as well as the usual 'social expenditure', Futurama Series 3, Jim Jarmusch's 'Coffee & Cigarettes' and Chris Cunningham's (slightly disappointing new short) 'Rubber Johnny' have just crashed through my letterbox and two seconds ago I ordered a suave new Zippo from eBay.

I don't even fucking smoke.

Waxing Gibbous

Do you know that way, when you've built something up in your mind and you're really looking forward to it, then it turns out to be utter shite? Well, I had been looking forward to 65daysofstatic for so long, I was sure that was going to happen. And did it? Did it fuck. They are easily one of the best bands I have ever seen - the drummer, especially, is fucking insanely talented. The only way I can think of describing the cacophany they create (and I hate doing this) is like a cross between Mogwai, M83, Squarepusher and Venetian Snares. My ears are still ringing. Buy everything of their's you can, savour it, and bask in the knowledge that if there is any justice in the universe, they are going to be fucking giant.

Sin City. That was the other thing I've been looking forward to for ages. I won't bore you with a sub par review, needless to say it's fucking brilliant.

I'm getting lazy at this writing malarkey. I'm off to Wales for the weekend, hopefully when I come back I'll be full of vigour and enthusiasm. And stories of drink, drugs, explosions and the shooting of rabbits. Yup.

Happy Birthday Natalie Portman

My CDs arrived the other day. I honestly don't know what the fuck - I should not be allowed to order CDs with a hangover, I always go for stuff that I wasn't really after. I ended up with Elektro 4 - Keystroke One and Solvent - Apples & Synthesizers which should be reasonably fucking cool and Ascoltare - Gallery, which I think I must have ordered due to seeing his name in the same sentence as DJ/Rupture. I've also got the new issue of the Wire, hahahahahaha.

It's the 65daysofstatic gig tomorrow night, and I have not been this excited about seeing someone in quite some time. If I don't end up with permanent hearing damage I'm gonna want my money back.

Right, have a look at this - "'Asbo' and 'chav' make dictionary". Now, I have no problem with 'ASBO', 'Chav' and 'Ned' making it into the Collins (Mickey Mouse) Dictionary, as they are commonly used terms in this country, but have a look at some of the other random buzzword shite they've put in there. 'Retrosexual', 'Property Porn', 'Bouncebackability'? What in the ever-loving fuck? No one has ever even said those fucking things outside the sphere of the media. They are 'cool' gimmicky words bandied about by Nathan Barley fucking cunts in the pages of Heat and the Sun and shit like that; no one fucking using them. Imagine saying 'retrosexual' to someone in the pub, you'd be fucking knifed. And with good reason.

Collins knows they are a fucking third rate dictionary and are loading their pages with this utter dross in a cynical attempt to get themselves into the news. And it's working too. Fucking cunts.

Seeing as they are turning into a print version of Urban Dictionary, I wonder how long it'll take for them to include 'Wank Ma Shite'.

Mystery in Spiderville

Fucking Imageshack - why have you lost my title image? You motherfuckers. Udo will watch over us, from the relative safety of Painted Over until such times as I can dig out the old image.

Enough fucking shite, you want to know about the Death From Above 1979 gig don't you? You don't? Then fuck you, and the rest of you quiet down, this isn't a fucking school picnic. They rocked harder than dinosaur bones, and I was drunk as fuck - that's the whole night stripped down to it's bare elements. On the merchandise front, I picked up a slew of badges, none of which are particularly good - I may hand them out to tramps the next time I head into town. Also, due to the aforementioned 'drunk-as-fuckness' I was pogoing about like a fucking mental patient, leaving countless cuts and bruises on my body and completely fucking my shoes. I think they are beyond help, I may have to chuck them and buy a new pair. God damnit I love those shoes as well. In the ensuing hangover the next day I ordered a fuckload of CDs from t'internet - I literally have no idea what I bought, and I'm purposefully avoiding looking at the confirmation emails. I wonder what surprises are winging their way to me.

I'm glad I went though, as it's put me back in the mood for gigs. I'm gonna go and see 65daysofstatic in a few weeks, and hopefully Sons and Daughters and, if it's not sold out, Aphex Twin. So there you go.

If the scientists who built me could see me now, I think they'd be justifiably proud

I should rant about boys 'n' girls shit more often, that last post got me the most feedback I've ever had. On the the other hand, do I really want to be another whiny emo cunt? Maybe.

Now, I know it seems like pop music Armageddon at the moment, what with that cock juggling cunt-fuck 'Crazy Frog' stampeding towards the number one spot (I'll leave the rest of this rant to someone who actually gives a shit about the state of the UK charts), but for me it's a pretty good week. I just ordered Maximo Park - A Certain Trigger, Autechre - Untitlted and Lyrics Born - Same Shit Different Day, which will be the first CDs I've bought in ages, and I'm off to see Death From Above 1979 tonight. I'll try and report back tomorrow with my verdict, and news of any badges purchased.

In other music related news - I won the latest Ninja Tune newsletter competition, which is pretty awesome for someone who never wins a fucking thing (OK, so I won a competition years ago that coincided with the release of the 'Masters of the Universe' movie, but I won't count that as I was really wee. God I thought those toys were the shit - if only Mother hadn't fucking gave them away! Anyways...). I won a 'Ninja Tuna' hoody, designed by Mr Scruff. It's not really my colour (dahling), but it's comfy and supposedly 'rare' or some shit.

One last moan before I go - I just got Gozu, Three Extremes, Stacy and Junk through the post, and Sin City and Star Wars are out in the cinema - and I'm working all fucking weekend, it's typical.

Now fuck off.

This peach is sub-par

I ain't updated in a while 'cos, basically, I haven't had much of interest to say. I was planning to write up a big fuck-off review of my week back in the land of chibs and Whisky but I really don't think anyone wants to read that, and I certainly canny be fucked writing it. So, instead I'll do a quick run down:

The Warriors
Showing at the Glasgow Film Theatre with a new and improvised soundtrack being layed down by some New Yoiker named Tes - this was.......interesting. First off, he didn't keep one sound from the original film - all the dialogue only appeared as subtitles. This meant we missed the infamous "Can you dig it?" and "Warriors.....come out and playeeeeeeee" bits, and you canny have the Warriors without them. Secondly, some of the music just did not fit the movie at all. Tes' stuff was very like John Carpenter in places, but at other times it was like the fucking 'Gonk' from Dawn of the Dead or some shit. You do not laugh at the fucking Baseball Furies and you do not use music that will make people laugh at the Baseball Furies. When I went for a pish about halfway through, there were guys in the toilet up for rushing Tes (oh Glasgow) and just playing the rest of the film with the original soundtrack. This heated atmosphere did yield one classic moment though - when Luther was clanking the bottles together on screen, tonnes of motherfuckers in the crowd were all filling in the sound effects themselves by clanking their empties together - vaguely menacing and fun. Tes done a bit of a freestyle at the end, which was pretty cool and probably the only live hip-hop I've ever seen in a cinema.

Pressure
I headed down to this after the movie and met up with the boys outside. Fuck me it was good to be back in the Arches - you forget just how punishing the techno can be, ensconced in those sweaty stone vaults. Vitalic rocked the fuck out of the place and Adam Beyer was immense. Why can't we have techno like this down in London?

Laptop Jams
Live laptop tomfoolery in the basement of the Brunswick Hotel, which is a sweet little venue. The music took a while to get going, as it was basically 6 or 7 random guys just sonically bouncing off one another, but there were some nice moments. The visuals were shite though.

Titanium
Heavy metal afternoon/night in Barfly, organised by my ex's sister. This was pretty cool, even if me and my wee brother were the only ones not in black tops. We had to leave early so I only caught one band - not really my thing, but hey, it was for a good cause.

LCD Soundsystem
Playing in a venue fucking miles away on the South side of Glasgow called the Tramway. We walked in and the Optimo DJs were warming up, which was pretty fucking cool. Hot Chip were supporting and they were damn fucking fine. James Murphy and company were amazing, though I was pretty toasted by the time they came on so am probably no the best judge of quality. I canny remember if it was 'Daft Punk are playing at my house' or 'Losing My Edge', but they done a really shitty version of one of them. The only low point of their.

Soundhaus
We swanned along to the Soundhaus after LCD Soundsytem, to cap off the night. We were contemplating going to the almighty Optimo, but ESG were playing and it was a bank holiday so the place was fucking wadded and rammed. The Soundhaus is a filthy (in the best possible way) wee underground/member's only place and is always fucking banging. This night was no exception - I was fucking motherfucked (good choice of words there, Marc'o).

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Jesus. Maybe I'll write up a proper review of this, fuck, I may even go and see it again just to get a second opinion (come-down Marc'o was technically the one who seen it). Basically - Martin Freeman and Mos Def are amazing; Sam Rockwell......what the fuck was going on with Zaphod? Zooey Deschanel was hot but a bit wooden; the Vogons were good, but given too much of a central role; it was 'Hollywoodised' a bit too much; the Guide itself was under-used, as was the Improbability Drive; it was cut down quite a bit from the book (and the book is not that long at all); the newly introduced sub-plot with John Malkovich was shit and pointless and shit; it looked lovely, and I think I'll leave it there. I did read the book again on the way back down here, so I suppose it's good that it reminded me to re-read them all again.

Fuck, can you believe this is the quick run down?

Asia Argento is fucking hot

I've been back in Glasgow for almost 2 days now, and it feels a bit odd. It's so fucking small. Anyway, tonight's the night when shit really kicks off - The Warriors screening @ The GFT, then Pressure @ The Arches, which will no doubt fuck me up good and proper.

While looking through the wee booklet for Triptych, I realised that Savage Pencil does all the illustrations for the festival this year (including that crazy owl I used on the last entry I wrote about Triptych). Jesus, I forgot how fucking awesome he is. His insane scribblings can be seen adorning the pages of Ken Hollings' masterpiece Destroy All Monsters, which you severely have to fucking read. Now.

Here's a little present for you, dear reader. It's the mid 80s electro hip-hop stylings of the Latin Rascals, with their tribute to Eddie Murphy - Axel F (New York Rap Remix). Enjoy, I'm off to get some breakfast.

The Early Life of Venetian Snares

Aaron Funk was born in 1977 in Baraboo, Wisconsin to snake farmer Leviathan Funk and aeronautical engineer Missy 'Misdemeanour' Funk. Aaron had a rough and troubled childhood, fending for himself amongst his father’s reptiles, battling the poisonous creatures for morsels and scraps to eat, and sleeping with one eye open. It was here, at a young age, that he learned an appreciation for the power of music; he would sing the fanged bastards to sleep in order to steal their food and milk their fangs. This milking went on for many years until Aaron was confident he had enough. As his father came in one day with the usual offering of lifeless rats and mice Aaron pounced, forcing him to the ground and pouring the toxic venom down his throat. At aged 7, he made good his escape. But not before liberating his father’s wallet from his jacket pocket.

Arriving on a Greyhound bus in Cottonwood, California in the summer of 1984, with his heart full of hope and his stomach full of something other than rodent flesh, he fell in with a group of Bavarian gypsies who ran a travelling circus. He spent his days learning the ways of the acrobat, and his nights increasing his musical knowledge through the folk songs of his new 'family'. Aaron became more and more confident in his abilities and decided he would make it his life's work to garner fame and riches, and one day rid the world of snakes, much like Saint Patrick did in Ireland, all those years ago. Knowing full well Bavarian troubadouring and snake-charming lullabies wouldn't be sufficient for world domination; he built his first synthesizer from a broken Sinclair Spectrum, bits from an old Ford Model T and some corrugated iron, at age 14. It was with this unwieldy piece of machinery that he shaped his first album, 'Jack Rabbit Ham-fistedness and It's Effect on the Third Trimester of Unwanted Pregnancies'. It contained only 2 compositions, one of them being a 70 year old man intoning the word 'brass' over and over again for 50 minutes, with a looped beat from an old Nina Simone song in the background, and the other being Joy Division's 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' played backwards. Kerrang called it 'A truly groundbreaking album, best listened to at the lowest perceivable volume while eating an artic roll', whilst NME described it as 'The future of rock and roll' and awarded it a prestigious '5-Stars'.

The success of this debut album made Aaron a multi billionaire at the age of 16, so he shelved his promising music career to become a Pirate Kiss-o-gram. He believed that this job would give him the mental clarity he would need to formulate the 'Snake Apocalypse' he desired so much. His life continued on quite comfortably for just over a year, but a string of unwise investments in anti-snake hammers and a catastrophic addiction to plantains swallowed up the vast majority of his fortune and forced him into hiding just days before his 18th birthday.

Nothing much was heard from Funk until, late in 1999 he re-emerged, now calling himself Venetian Snares. His first release under the new moniker was the 12" 'Greg Hates Car Culture', which caused massive ructions in the burgeoning electronic music scene. A breakcore and gabber monster, NME described it as 'The future of rock and roll' and awarded it '5-Stars', whilst the Wire devoted 18 pages to it, each painstakingly written out in hieroglyphics using the blood of Seb Coe. This would just be the first of many groundbreaking and genre-defining works Venetian Snares would release, and was a call to arms for an ever changing and exciting electronic music scene.

Fifteen Interesting facts about Aaron Funk

-He is composed entirely of heavy photons. If you get close enough, you can hear the plasma his body is comprised of, vibrating

-He has a 17 year old lactose intolerant cat named Trevor

-In Minsk there is a fifty-foot tall glass statue of him, which dominates the city's main square. At midday on the vernal and autumnal equinoxes the sunlight is focused through the statue onto a point no larger than the head of a pin. Every year the mayor lights a cigar using this focussed light, which is then passed around the fathers of any babies born on that day

-He discovered Tungsten and Molybedenum

-He has guest starred in 57 episodes of the Simpsons, but has only ever had one line. It was 'You wanna go faster? I call disaster'

-He is an avid breeder of geese and swans

-Twice a year he visits the concrete encased reactors at Chernobyl. He writes profane limericks on the walls using pink lipstick

-He has a base on the moon where he is constructing a giant laser, which he plans to use to carve his initials into the polar ice caps

-He has a coat made entirely from the bee's fur. It took a crack team of blind lepers in Cambodia 5 years to make it

-There is a room in each of his mansions where he houses his vast collection of out-of-date, unopened Ambrosia Creamed Rice cans

-He is afflicted with Picquerism, which he satisfies by poking girls with French bread in the queues at Tescos, then running to his car to masturbate furiously

-His favourite film is Shallow Grave, and he one day hopes to marry Christopher 'Dr Who' Eccleston

-He does not believe in the second law of thermodynamics and was once charged with attempted murder for beating a man to within an inch of his life for even mentioning the name 'Carnot'

-He has a horse called John, but refuses to ride her, as he is scared of being kicked in the face whilst putting the saddle on her back. This is due to a childhood phobia of the board game 'Buckaroo'

-His favourite food is pâté made from the hearts of baby starlings, suffocated en masse in giant Hessian sacks


Venetian Snares new album 'Rossz Csillag Allat Szuletett' is available now from good record shops

Live MP3s can be downloaded from VSnares.com

I said it knowing full well I had no intention of doing it

This has got to be the greatest safety video in existence. It's a wee bit slow to get going, but when it does......Jesus. It's like the Evil Dead, in a German warehouse.

I've been seeing a lot of good films recently, and have to recommend Oldboy, Sympathy for Mr Vengence, Bubba Ho-Tep and The Machinist. My love for Christian Bale is well known, so I won't go into detail about the The Machinist. Let me just say, it's a bit more David Lynch-ey than Brad Anderson's last film Session 9, and better for it.

Now, Oldboy and Sympathy for Mr Vengence.......fuck me. I thought Takashi Miike was where it was at with regards to Asian cinema but these 2 Chan-wook Park films show just how fucking awesome and batshit crazy the Koreans are. You literally owe it to your brain to see them. They both deal with similar themes (revenge, inter-familial bonds, motherfuckers getting fucked up), but they do it in totally different ways. The range of emotion they take you through is unparralelled in most films coming out just now - you will not forget these movies, they will be burned into your psyche. Oh, and they are both stunningly photographed too.

Bubba Ho-Tep was good.....probably better than I gave it credit for, at first. I had built it up in my head so much that I was quite disappointed when I watched it. Then, after thinking about it for a while I realised I had kind of missed the point. I was a expecting an off the wall action film with JFK and Elvis kicking the shit out of a Mummy and cracking wise. What I got was a beautifully touching film that made you think. And I'm pretty sure that's better. I'm gonna rewatch it again soon with this new mindest.

So, what's coming up next? Sin City, which everyone informs me is the shit. Romero's Land of The Dead, which has gotta be awesome. Star Wars - if Lucas fucks this up I'm pretty sure someone will put a hit out on him, you know what enraged geeks are like. And coming up really soon - The Hitchiker's Guide to The Galaxy. I'm gonna go see this when I'm up in Glasgow, and I really don't know what to expect. The previews look amazing, but will it capture the book's glorious nonsense? I hope so.

Cursed by his own hubris

In addition to the fucking television, inexplicably buried in the back garden, my flatmate introduced me to this little gem in the kitchen sink the other day:


Why yes, that's right - a motherfucking dead baby mouse, apparently drowned in the very same water we used to wash the dishes. I done what any self respecting man would have done - laughed, photographed it, then picked it up by the tail and threatened to hurl it over the back wall onto the road. We ended up binning it instead.

Oh well, I'll have to amuse myself by immolating the ants who seem to be infesting the kitchen as well.

I'm gay for Christian Bale

When I first heard that Christopher 'Memento' Nolan was directing the new Batman film, 'Batman Begins', the first thing that popped into my head was "I hope there's more fire-breathing horse action than the previous films". Looks like my prayers have been answered:

Batman Begins [Trailer Mirror 1]
Batman Begins [Trailer Mirror 2]

It's Christain Bale, as Patrick Fucking Bateman, as Batman. It's gonna be so many different kinds of awesome.

No mean city

I'm all booked up for going back to Glasgow. One week of fucked up debauchery awaits, from the 27th of April to the 4th of May. As you may or may not know, that is the weekend of the Triptych Festival, Scotland's premiere eclectic music festival sponsored by an alcoholic beveridge. So far the only things I'm definately going to are the showing of 'The Warriors' at the GFT on Friday (with live DJ accompaniment), LCD Soundsystem on the Sunday and Optimo, also on the Sunday night. I'll probably go to Pressure, which is the motherfucking best techno night in the UK, on the Friday night (with Slam, Adam Beyer, Percy X and Jacques Lu Cont DJing, and Vitalic playing LIVE) and spend all day Saturday in Mono, so it should be a fuckin' messy weekend.

It'll be good to get back for a wee week and see all the bawbags again, it's been too long.

Oo oo - if you don't know the Perry Bible Fellowship, you should click here. I swear to fuck if you don't laugh at these comics I'll come round your house, stab you in the fucking face with a Philips screwdriver, douse you in petrol and watch your humourless body burn to a crisp.