Foals + Bombay Bicycle Club + Matthew !WOWOW! @ 229 The Venue, 24/11/07

(I forgot my camera, so all of these are by photographer extraordinaire Riaz Philips. Those are my legs. See more photos here)

Having literally not been to a gig for aaaaages, it was nice to finally go and shove some indie kids around in the spirit of fun. If you're under 18, living in/near London and go to a gig every now and then, you'll probably have heard of All Age Concerts. Theyre one of the main champions of gigs specifically for under 18s (not forgetting Underage Club) and they are pretty well respected for consistently puttting on a helluva good show, and last night was no exception.

Due to various train/ticket/massive queue problems we missed most of the first band's set. The ticket said Tinseltown were playing, but apparently they had to pull out due to some kind of illness. i don't know what the replacement band were called, but their last song was extremely danceable. After this there were some DJs who did a pretty nice job, putting down some club classics such as 'Licky' by Larry T and Princess Superstar. After that was Bombay Bicycle Club, who put on a more than adequate performance. BBC, like so many others, is one of those bands who I knew about for ages, and I knew are probably quite good, but just could not be arsed to actually listen to their tracks. However, I am now aware of how truly great they are. Currently I don't own any mp3s of theirs, but go stream some off their myspace now!

After that we had the pleasure of a truly monumental DJ set by a man who was calling himself 'Matthew !WOWOW!'. Despite the fact he was wearing gold sequined leggings (no, he really was) he was able to drive the crowd into an all-out frenzy. The highlight had to be Justice's 'Phantom I and II' as remixed by Troublemaker, which he managed to keep spinning for something like 10 or 12 minutes, with some rather wonderful glitchy rewinds and reverses thrown in.

Foals took ages to actually come on stage, and I spent most of the time rambling to one of the musicians in The More Assured (who had decided to turn up for some reason) about how much of a shame it was that I won't be able to attend their gig next Saturday (also at 229), because I'm going on a fun fun fun weekend in Dorset with my family. When they finally took the stage even the boring people who'd been posing at the sides and back joined the crowd and everyone got really horribly crushed to death, myself included. Rattling off recent singles 'Mathletics' and 'Balloons', the band were clearly enjoying themselves, climbing onto stacks of speakers and jumping high in the air. The crowd were also going mental, and crowdsurfing was increasingly common towards the end. The set closed with killer (and i mean killer) track 'Hummer' bringing the venue to a complete standstill. I actually cannot wait for the Foals album, rumoured to be released sometime in early 2008.

DOWNLOAD: Justice - Phantom + Phantom Pt. II (Troublemaker Edit) (zShare)
DOWNLOAD: Foals - Hummer (zShare)

Oh, and this kid's shirt is too cool not to put here:

Alice Practice Lyrics? My Obsession Is Becoming Worrying.

I have been playing every Crystal Castles mp3 i own on a loop for about 2 hours.
I spent about 10 minutes working out the words to 'Alice Practice'. I don't care if it's just a soundcheck Ethan decided to shove on myspace, I now know the words. And don't tell me there aren't any. I, like many, thought Crystal Castles was just random screaming, then I realised if you listen to 'Mother Knows Best', there is a bit where Alice spells out 'H-E-R-P-E-S'. Which is quite gross really, but just the tip of the iceberg if you read the full lyrics. 'Insecticon' is profoundly less disgusting, although I'm sure it's a metaphor for some kind of obsessive/abusive relationship; or there's 'XXZXCZX ME', which is about 'Aids Robots', apparently. Just a thought: what do their parents actually think about the weird music they make?

HEEEY.

Scars, in you, son.
You shrug it off,
Except for you don't.

Better, it surely
It don't fall out.
Said I live low,
I lisp, I die.
But you've been shooting
Bled with deadbeats,
Only crawl so your sad eyes.
Quite christian,
Blood...

Drop it: it's dead.
We dropped it
And took the body home.
Sad eyes...

Scars; I'm chopping dagger
See you'll never walk, only stagger.
Sad eyes,
Quite christian,
Blood.

These are obviously not definitive, but I think it's a reasonably good guess. God knows what it means or even if it's meant to mean anything. If you think you can do better, post your alternate lyrics!

***///UPDATE, January 2008. I've changed my mind, now I reckons the first line is 'scars will heal, soon'.

Love Your Enemies, Kill Your Friends Vol. 1

Sorry about posting being very infrequent as of late, I have just managed to finish a pile of history essays that are going to get rubbish marks anyway.Recently I've been listening to a lot of scary sounding sinister stuff, (probably as a way of coping with SO MUCH WORK) and here's the first official Suburban Ghetto Musick mix. You've probably heard a lot of the stuff on here, most of it's pretty new but there's a few tracks that go back a few years. Because I'm rubbish and useless I forgot to do that really cool thing where you shove some kind of blog logo onto all the tracks, but I honestly cannot be bothered to spend another half hour waiting for Megaupload.
It's all here as a zip file, if it doesn't work then comment and I'll put them all up here as separate mp3s.
Hypocrite time: Support the artists! Buy buy buy all these if you like them, I am too lazy to find buy links to all of these.

DOWNLOAD:Kill Your Friends Compilation

P.S. - Do not actually kill your friends, this blog is here to promote music not murder. Except maybe Peaches Geldof, feel free to kill her.

****/// Update: For general whoring and self promotion purposes, here's the tracklist in a more search-engine friendly way (text). Regular Posting will resume eventually.

Rage Against The Machine vs SebastiAn – Killing In The Name Of SebastiAn
Fake Shark Real Zombie – Wolf Is The New The
Sohodolls – Trash The Rental
Mindless Self Indulgence – Shut Me Up
Trash Fashion – Mom & Daddy
Crystal Castles – Alice Practice
Enter Shikari – Labyrinth
Lillica Libertine – Ultra 10
Blood Red Shoes – Stitch Me Back
Queen Adreena – Pretty Like Drugs
SebastiAn – Ross Ross Ross
Party Sausage – Terradactyl Egg Protector
Pre – Know Yr Teachers
Klaxons vs So-Me – Golden Skans To Interzone
Bark Bark Bark – One Thing Stands
Test Icicles - Sharks

DO YOU WANT A FREE TICKET FOR AN AMAZING GIG ON SATURDAY?

i am incredibly annoyed. My ticket to go see Crystal Castles, The Teenagers and These New Puritans is only valid for over 18s, despite the fact that it is not mentioned ANYWHERE ON ANY OF THE WEBSITES. I really should have known that seeing two of my favourite bands (and another one I don't hate) was too good to be true, but it's just annoying that I only actually find out when my ticket arrives in the post.
Usually, the oppurtunist in me would be trying to sell my ticket but the logistics of me actually making any money seem pretty much impossible. Me and my friends have four tickets; if you would like them, email me & I will post them to you, and you can repay me by pretending to be very interested in this blog for all eternity. Although, thinking about it the chances of anyone who can go reaing this in about 12 hours seems unlikely.

Fireworks!

Last night I had lots of fun at the St Albans fireworks, despite the local radio's attempt to ruin the display by playing the same Robbie Williams song three times over the course of the evening. Seriously. Anyway here's some music:

If you like disco, witty lyrics and unrepentantly middle-class accents, you will love the Cleft Palletes. They describe themselves as "Like Crystal Castles but not cool, or good." Which is highly innacurate but gives you a sense of their band ethos. They also wear sunglasses on the tube because they're big deals. As well as some genuinely fun original material they also have a range of remixes which you can stream from their remix page.
The band have made three of their songs available to download from here.
I highly reccomend them all - there's 'Emo Blates' which seems to be an attempt at a spoof death metal record with lyrics as ridiculous as "I hope that you have an umbrella cos it's gonna be raining fire"; 'Party Wall' which has synths that sound like they're ripped out the music to a 90s computer game; or there's 'Seasnake', which is completely psychadelic.