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.

I am home

No posts last week - I was busy in Cornwall trying to learn to surf. No posts at the weekend - I am quite a lazy person. Saturday was my birthday and I am very happy to say I am going to see Amy Winehouse in december. YAY. To celebrate, here is a very rushed illustration done with my amazing wacom pad.

I'm feeling rather pleased

Yay, Lillica Libertine has a new mixtape and it's awesome. Titled 'Oh My Gosh 4', it's 53 minutes of sick electro banger. He's also releasing his EP in november on Meal Deal records.



In other news,



Yeah, that's right, my mum's old wacom tablet does in fact work on my computer so now I can spend my whole time failing my GCSE's through the method of iSketch.

Because I am cool I am also allowing you to download Mr Libertine's amazing remix of Papa Vito's 'Drill It'. I'm not tooo excited about the original, but the remix is phenomenal. Also, When I said "I am cool", I actually mean Lillica Libertine is cool, seeing as he posted the link to this in a bulletin about a week ago. Have a listen.
DOWNLOAD: Lillica Libertine - Oh My Gosh 444 Mix (50.4 MB)
DOWNLOAD: Papa Vito - Drill It (Lillica Libertine Remix)
*Update: Drill it link now fixed!

Partyshank @ Boston Dome, London

Partyshank @ Boston Dome, London, originally uploaded by OMG TOM.

After the incredible disappointment of not seeing Hadouken! and Late of the Pier" in Bedford on Tuesday, I had an awesome night seeing Partyshank at the Boston Arms Dome on Friday. I'd never been ther before, and the venue's website made it sound like the tiny back room of a pub. But it was HUGE inside. The lineup was a ska band followed by rap outfit Sabotage Party who were actually really good, preaching about not being a twat in the moshpit and always using a condom. (Sample Lyric: "We don't want no STD and we don't want no pregnancy!" - note the double negative, what is grammar coming to these days?)
After that there was another ska band, whose music was infuriatingly rubbish to dance to. However, they entertained in other ways, such as when the lead singer attempted a stage dive and the crowd completely failed to catch him.
What was good was that in between the sets the music was actually really good, supplied courtesy of the ADHDJ's, two kids my age who know how to put on a good tune, and remix it and stuff like that which will forever remain a mystery to me. At about half ten Partyshank finally took the stage, and put on an exhilirating set, starting with 'Untilted'. I am 99% sure this song is actually called 'Untitled', and they happened to spell the name wrong when they uploaded it to their Myspace, but for now I will have to assume it is referring to something that is not tilted. The venue was almost completely empty at this point, either because Partyshank were completely not anyone's cup of tea, or maybe people needed to catch a certain train. The last few tracks introduced a new aspect of Partysdhank performance I'd never seen before: screamo. In general I would say I am against screamo because it generally represents the more depressing emotions and generally leads to people dying their hair black and snarling at cameras for their Myspace pages, but by then I was too immersed in adrenaline to care. I managed to video pretty much the whole of 'Penis vs Vagina', lead track to the latest Partyshank EP, available off their Myspace. I got a bit 'funky' with the camera angles at times, but I'd hate for people to think I was the sort of person who could stand still with Partyshank playing a few metres away.

Niyi & Namalee: Super?

Niyi and Namalee are all about bright colours, optimism and not being afraid to make a fool of yourself. Namalee's top fashion tip for this season is "saucepans on heads". Making regular appearances in London's no.1 cut-and-paste style magazine Super Super¹, Niyi and Namalee are turning heads. Here's what Niyi has to say for himself on his myspace:

"I'm a really nice guy who who is trying to do this music thing after dropping out of uni. my mum got all african and threw her splipper at me. so i need to prove her wrong... i had to get her to pay my rent the other month, so im not doing so well so far........ and now jus tryna finish an album of some sort, with a broken laptop....and of course prevent further slipper throwing and mum rent paying."

To be clear: Niyi is a solo artist, and so is Namalee (sort of). Namalee's band, Namalee N The Namazons, consists of the frontwoman herself and whoever she happens to be collaborating with. However, Namalee & Niyi are routinely appearing on each other's songs and myspace pages - take 'Niyi's Supershiny Nanamix' by Namalee for example.

Niyi's music is what could only be described as Geek Rap: songs about his love of poached eggs, or having a crush on your friend's mum. Namalee has the ability to effortlessly swap genre about three times a song. From my point of view, it's really refreshing to see a whole scene based on happiness, individualism, looking like a twat and loving it. For too long has the world been full of floppy-fringed, pierced-lip poseurs who want to be taken seriously.

DOWNLOAD: Namalee - Namazonia
DOWNLOAD: Niyi - Ur Mummy
DOWNLOAD: Niyi - Poached Eggs

¹ Surprise surprise, Namalee is creative editor at Super Super. Oh and Creative Review magazine have an interesting article about Super Super that you can read online

THE TEENAGERS + CRYSTAL CASTLES TOURING THE UK FOR FREE!

Incredible excitement pours forth - Crystal Castles are coming back to London, and so are The Teenagers and These New Puritans. Did I mention it's free? Supposing you haven't already, I implore you to go www.unitaur.com and register for the chance of winning tickets. Starting late october, the Vice Tour is going to loads of student unions, it's gonna be noisy. If you haven't seen Crystal Castles you haven't lived, click here to read my ridiculously overhyped review of them at this summer's awesome Underage Festival.

DOWNLOAD: Crystal Castles - Seed
DOWNLOAD: The Teenagers - Tiger

In other news, if you're free next friday, I would suggest you hop on a train to Kentish Town to see toystep duo Partyshank at the Boston Arms. If you feel so inclined, I might suggest you have a little read of my ridiculously overhyped review of them at the New Cross Inn.




DOWNLOAD: Partyshank - Penis vs Vagina
DOWNLOAD: Partyshank - Untilted
By the way, both of these songs are low bitrate and are repeatedly interrupted by a computer generated voice reading out their myspace address.

Pleased To Meet You

(This picture has no relevance to anything, but it looks rather cool.)
I cannot allow myself to think that there are some people who have not heard the amazing cover/remix of Blur's excellent Song 2 as put forward by elctro-rockers !Trash Yourself. I'm not going to write a full review as I will just end up repeating what has already been said, so I suggest you hyperlink yourself to This review from Missingtoof.com!
All I can say is that combining a britpop classic with dirty pounding synths is a guaranteed party starter. Enjoy!

Jack Penate @ The Astoria, 26/09/07

Jack Penate put on a more than adequate set at the London's Astoria, but approximately half the crowd seemed to think they were at some kind of death-metal-football-hooligan-mud-wrestling fight extravaganza. It was the first time my parents had let me go to a gig on a schoolnight, and there weren't a lot of people my age there - for once me & my friends were actually the youngest people in the venue. There were about 3 seperate moshpit incidents that turned into fights, one leading Jack Penate to stop playing and lecture the crowd about how there was no need and it's not what his music is about.
The songs were really good, but there is something about Jack Penate that I find inherently annoying. It might be his Tony Blair-esque voice, or his slightly too rounded face, but that man incites levels of annoyance in me that I usually would reserve for people who are actually annoying. During slow number My Yvonne a female vocalist appeared onstage to do some additional vocals - at first I thought it looked like Adele, but my mate Harry swears she was wearing one of those gold name necklaces that said Julia. The main set ended with Torn On The Platform, but the encore included Learning Lines, a cover of one of those songs you sort of know of but can't remember the name of, and the excellent Second, Minute Or Hour.

DOWNLOAD: Jack Penate - Made Of Codes

There were two support bands, first folk-rockers Johnny Flynn who played a set that was reasonably pleasant to listen to, but not exactly danceable. The lead singer swapped guitars 3 times, and every time there was a smaller guitar. For the last song he got a banjo out, which almost ruined my whole evening. Please do not question my hatred of banjos - I will not go into details, but I do not like banjos. At all.
The second band were terrible. When I saw the poster, I thought 'Yay, Wild Beasts are playing.' Then I remembered that I had never heard of Wild Beasts, and that the band I was thinking of was in fact Foals, and Wild Beasts I had never heard of. The bass and lead guitarists both came on wearing turtleneck jumpers, and the singer did this cringe-enducing dancing that seemed to be based on copying the style of an angry pigeon.
The opening songs skirted the boundaries of good taste, but a few tracks in the whining falsettos became too much to take and several empty beercans started flying, along with a few ones that seemed to be mostly full. I didn't throw anything, but this was for the simple reason that I have the most inadequate throw of anyone I know, with about the same throwing skills as a newborn baby; I didn't want to embarass myself. It is a pity the band didn't feel the same way. Dressed up like a fourpiece Simon & Garfunkel both having bad hair days, I am considering starting a petition to make Wild Beasts illegal.

In other news, WOO YAY St Albans won the online monopoly board vote by a ridiculous margin. Getting more than twice the number of votes than the second place Exeter, locals voted a total of 104,107 times. Arguably St Albans only won because we are the most internet and Myspace obsessed town in the UK, but it does also show that people in St Albans love it so much that to us it's worth staying at home, making up addresses such as *keyboard smash* @ *keyboard smash* .com a million times a day for 3 weeks. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a certain boardgame to beat my brother at.