Thanks

I'd like to use this moment to thank Pelika.net for listening to my music requests and updating their songs available for their digital music jukebox located "in my office"

I remember when working in an Irish bar used to be all about listening to The Pogues and The Dubliners all night long with perhaps some Ronan Keating thrown in the mix.

Sometimes the odd person would come up to bar requesting "Irish music"
When I asked them "like what?"
"Dropkick Murphys or Flogging Molly"
I feel like telling these people to "fuck-right-off-'cos-your-twisting-my-melon, man"
They are American bands (with members being of Irish decent and even a few born Irishmen) playing celtic punk. Just because they've got a fucking fiddle doesn't make it irish music.

Hell, check out the first ten seconds of this.
Even though I'm not overly fond of them, I wouldn't go as far as calling The Sounds "A bunch of Swiss cattle shepherds" just because they use a cowbell.

These days however, because of the request function, I'm just as bad and probably a lot worse than the aforementioned types. It's obviously been much more authentic to drink your pint of Guinness whilst sat there listening to my "Mega-Irish-playlist-to-get-me-through-the-night"















I offer my apologies to the people whom my taste in music offends.
But in all honesty. I think we play some damn hot tunes.
So HA!

notarealpostbutjustanoutletforbeingsuperhappy

In a nutshell, today has been fucking awesome!

Bachelors' dissertation: handed in
Bachelors' presentation: given

So now I've done it, boom-boom-shake-shake-the-room.

What do I do when I'm mega-relieved and super happy?
Yes, that's right. Listen to tango-electronica. More specifically? Gotan Project.

Whoah there! I here you say. GP haven't done anything worth mentioning in ages.
Well for all of you doubters, read here from the mouth of the horse album #3 called 'Tango 3.0' is set for release in April.

Now if somehow you've never heard of Gotan Project before, they are a few French blokes who thought it sounded good to blend the sonic world of Argentinian tango with up-to-date modern beats. They were bang on correct, because it does sound shit hot. But why should I tell you about them because I found perfectly good video to do it.



Unfortunately I couldn't find anything new other than 'La Gloria' on Myspace so I'll just put up a few videos of old stuff that I could listen to forever.

Here's Época. This must be familiar to everyone, because without being able to put my finger on exactly where, it has been used somewhere maybe on TV or whatever.



Last Tango in Paris done a bit live. Love the violin-plucking. Ooh that's reminded me to get tickets to see Owen Pallett again!



y La Viguela



Adios y buen fin de semana

My Maudlin Career

Hello and good day to each and and every one of you!

I survived last nights Viva! tour and boy I'm telling you it was worth seeing.

Norman Palm looked the sterotypical geek-chic singer-/acoustic guitar-man but overcame the fact that it must be the shittiest shitmost feeling to be playing for a big room full of about 3 people to really deliver a heartwarming and touching performance. His cover of The Cure's 'Boy's don't cry' was extraordinary. "Forget real brass instruments, because you've got a perfectly good mouth for imitating trumpets..."

I think Norman's right-hand-man Janne stole the show though. The fella just calmly whipped out a new instrument after every song and during the last song of the set quite possibly played: 2 synths, a melodica, stompbox, a miniature calypso drum and a xylophone all at the same time. Watching him was quite mesmerising.

Zebra & Snake entered the stage with the air of a comedy duo about them. Singer/synthdude had the whole "Jay minus the Silent Bob" thing going on.
The other guy just looked really up for attempting copulation with any instrument he could get his hands on.

Dry-humping your synth with your trousers dangling dangerously from your arse whilst "busting moves like it's 1999" is so 2010.



They did however sound very good. Sort of like Robert Smith leading vocals on a New Order track, backed by Kaiser-man Ricky Wilson yelping "oooh's" and "aah's". The only problem was the lack of audience, so the dancefloor remained untouched for the whole of the set.

BUT! after this came Joensuu 1685 and they have now slotted in as best live performance I've witnessed (after Crystal Castles at Flow 2008 of course)
They just about captured everything I love about live gigs. Pulsating drums and hypnotising basslines, and "lead-man" just layering beautiful noise on top of all of this. During one of their many elongated moments I already felt myself slipping away from consiousness of being when the "light show" started. "FUCK ME IF I'VE EVER EXPERIENCED SUCH A COMPLETE LOST IN THE MOMENT FEELING EVER!!"

Oh yeah haha. Was told that we had a student party last night. Yet again I feel like a bad member of my student group for not attending.

The theme was "traffic lights"
Dresscode was colour coded:
Green if ur single
Red if ur spoken for
Yellow if ur facebook status is "it's complicated blahblahblah"

If I'd have gone I'd have gone as a walking rainbow just to confuse people.


Hmmm.. What else? This is becoming a monster post but I added Camera Obscura's My Maudlin Career to my record collection. nicely nice

back in day

I remember a time when living and going out in Turku caused a slight verbal predicament.

Back in day, you know there used to be a sweaty olde nightclub going about calling itself 'The Club'. Now this place was frequented by, rather unbeknown to me, the "elite-of-the-underaged-kids-and-people-who-just-honestly-wanna-shake-dat-ass-to-whatever-Justin-Timberlake-has-last-released"

Then there was Klubi. The place for the perhaps slighty alternative-minded get-down-go-downs.

Whenever asked "what y'all might be getting up to tonight?" my response might be "Klubi".
Obviously stating the name of the establishment was never enough as this brought on further laughing/speculation in the form of either "HAHAHA" OR "wow, cool I didn't think you were Justin Timberlake/Pussycat Dolls type. See ya there and we'll have some hot-shots together"
So a specification was needed: "Klubi but not The Club-Klubi"

Living is much easier now that 'The Club' has faded into distant memories. Much less words are required to explain what I might be up to tonight.

Tonight in fact I am going to Klubi to witness the ongoing 'Viva-tour' featuring Finnish acts 'Joensuu 1685', 'Zebra & Snake' and German geezer 'Norman Palm'





Ok se Norman Palm is new to me but listen to this and enjoy, for it is actually a very good collab with Le Corps Mince De Francoise

Tuesday again

hello. Just some miscellaneous words tonight.

I've grown a moustache and beard. Not because I've wanted to, but more because of a general lack of hygiene.

I'll describe what it looks like:

Moustache: The scraggliest and shittiest pipe cleaner you'll ever see in your life hopelessly glued to the area roughly between my nose 'n' mouth

Beard: Looks like a rabid rat/minging cat's furball went for my jugular but instead of finishing me off, it decided to pathetically cling on to my throat as to not fall the fatal 180something centimeters.

Anyway, while walking to school my facial hair got all frozen up with moisture and snot and shit. (not literal shit. I still have some standard of hygiene)
This was a new and intriguing feeling and completely enlightened me to a whole new level of the moustachio'd mans winter troubles.

Got to school and the labteacherman's phone goes off revealing this baby



This gets me thinking of what would be my supermegasoundtrack/themetuneringtone.
Would it be this?



or perchance?



Also a big fan of this:



Conducting a poll I found the female vote going towards:



Conducting a different poll I found humanity's vote going towards:



You maybe came here for "real-people-music-not-some-bullshit-soundtrack-shit"?

I'd love to comply so here's hotly tipped scottish band Midnight Lion for people who might like stuff like 'Frightened Rabbit', 'Ellie Goulding' or 'Hot Fuss-era Killers'

[insert title here] pt.2

hiya

just a quick post to celebrate the release of Holly Miranda's record 'The Magicians Private Library'

I've been recently having a female "singer/songwriter" renaissance. Catching up with the old favourite's of mine whilst I was growing up in a village unforgiving for having a different taste in music/clothes/garlic bread/crumpets/mopeds/Super Furry Animals.

From this resurgence of "skirt-singers" has emerged a huge new love for Holly Miranda. This damsel from the US of A released album 'The Magicians Private Library' a few days ago. Quite a bit of the album is on myspace for your ears only

Here's Holly's own blog and the first thing you could do is listen to the 'Sleep on Fire' EP found there. The Magicians Private Library






That's enough from me now.
Goodnight

[insert title here]

I went record shopping yesterday.
It was good.
Found some stuff too!

Wandering home from school I walked passed the shop of recorded audio and noticed Risto's 'Aurinko Aurinko Plaa Plaa Plaa' record on sale going for like a tenner or whatever. I thought "Give me some of that!"



Next I find a second hand copy of Fleetwood Mac's classic album 'Rumours'! That shit was well cheap. Honestly can't put a price on top-tunes or Stevie Nicks



With my last bit of money I invested in Architecture in Helsinki's 'Places Like This' for the simple reason of 'Heart it Races' being constantly stuck in my head. Check out it's video cos' it's got a bit of awesomeness to it.



So this was me taking a slight break from listening to new stuff and just having a breather with past records that I find inspiring and just a bit "shit-hot"

Toodles

Cold War Kids

Something very good passed by me quite unnoticed quite recently.

It was the excellent Cold War Kids' new EP 'Behave Yourself' released maybe a month or so ago.

It follows up 2008 album 'Loyalty to Loyalty' with more top-notch tunes and more of Nathan Willett's tell-tale vocal style.

Now some people give 'Loyalty to Loyalty' shit saying the band went off the rails into a whole new direction of poo-ness after debut album 'Robbers & Cowards'. And to be fair 'Robbers & Cowards' was mighty good and obviously hard to follow up, but with tunes like this on "L2L" who even cared what the rest of the album sounded like?



'Behave yourself' is a bit of a pick and mix of CWK's best and most differentiated styles of musiqué. Rolling in at roughly 14 minutes it is a bit of a short indulgement but oh yes it's satisfying. 'Sermon' is exceptionally good as a piano driven cry for mercy. erm yeah.. enough of my meaningless words, here's 'Audience of One'



OH YEAH!

And just because I'm off to see Florence + the Machine in a bit, here's my old dear Flo covering the Cold War Kids' Hospital Beds

whatevs.

Hidey ho.

I was supposed to write about something completely different tonight, but due to unforseen events I went to see Magenta Skycode.

Unlike every other student in the whole of Turku I decided not to go to some generic student party organised because Jesus once sledged down a hill and ate a bun. Instead of putting on my distinguishing overalls I put on whatever the hell I could be arsed to wear for a crazy long day at school coupled with an indie gig.

Of course me seeing Magenta dudes wasn't planned as such, but it turned out to be a sort of escape from going home and doing all the usual shit like sleeping and whatnot.

Yeah I had listened to a bit of "Skycode" before and heard all the hype from various "trustworthy" sources that: "Shit dawg, Magenta Skycode iz da shit-hottest shit y'all can find in Finland." Believing this I readily went. I mean come on it's tuesday night, what could be better than live music?

My "trustworthy hipster sources" were in fact right. It was rather good.

I arrived just in time to hear the first song with the female vocal harmony bits and that really built my hopes up. So so good. Their voices really did compliment each others incredibly. wow! The musical styles of the songs tended to vary quite radically I thought. One minute they had me thinking of a scandinavian Arcade fire with the melodies and accordion parts. (If you need to know what I mean by scandinavian check these out: Tribeca - Solitude, The Radio Dept. - Pulling Our Weight and Acid House Kings - Do What You Wanna Do) and the all of a sudden the next song sounds like something 'The Big Pink' could come out with. Mainly I thought because of Big Pinks tendency towards'industrial-esque' drumming courtesy of Akiko's (from Comanechi) beats. Albeit Magenta's cool beats were mostly pre-recorded and came from a computer. They still sounded good and got the hippies in front of me dancing.

Anyway. It seems Magenta Skycode are coming out with a new album soon, because they were playing quite a bit of new stuff and towards the end really letting their female singer (don't know who she is, sorry) loose. The last few songs of the set did in fact sound absolutely monumental, so here's waiting for the new album release.

This was one of the new ones.



Good Tuesday night if you ask me.
Laterz
xxx

Happy belated valentines day

Yeah to happy days to each and all!

If you got down with your other half/halves(parts? quarters? How would that saying work for polygamous relaish's?) then I hope you had a cool time. And even if you hate the whole blown-out-of-proportion commercial aspect of "lovers day" surely a nice thoughtful gesture from your loved one/random internet acquaintance/last minute saturday one night stand would be sure to at raise at least a half-smile? No?

If you didn't get down with anyone, then I congratulate you for "sticking it to the man"



Valentines day yesterday was the day I spontaneously remembered how good Joni Mitchell is. Just before falling asleep I realised the desperate need to hear 'California'. A bit like needing the loo well bad and making it before trouble-time, hearing Joni lullaby me to sleep was immensly satisfying!



On the subject of lovely stuff. If someone were to be proper old fashioned and had made me a v-day mixtape, then they could have done SO much worse than stuck some 'Young Republic' on it. With '12 tales from a winter city' being one of the best records I own/know I would've melted in your/anyones arms. Shit.



This post is about me getting nostalgic and a bit gooey-wooey so no banging electro tunes tonight.



Ah how many times did I drive home from a days work in the old factory listening to Amos whilst causing immeasurable pain to anyone on the road because I was trying to mimic his smooth croon. Crikey.



I could easily whip out some Damien or Jeff here but I opt for cheese and go with THIS:



Wow, I feel like I've gone back in time! WOAH!. Rather strange
Happy v+1-day everyone! Luvluvluv

Exhaustion

I'm sat here writing this with my last ounce of energy.

For the past week I've had to wake up by 7 every single day.

Now what kind of self-respecting student does this kind of thing? What happened to the parties and waking up whenever? Getting up at 7 sounds like something adults might do.

Shit used to be proper easy you know. Have a few beers. Do a bit of a jive. Just simple.

So the last time I actually did go out 'n' "part-ey" I felt so bad the next day that I couldn't even be arsed to put trousers on when I went outside. I also thought I'd put the female species' fashion trend of going out in a pair of tights and a bit-of-a-bigger-shirt-so-that-it-half-covers-my-bum to the test. Well instead of tights I was wearing my 'Hägar the horrible' long johns and a my shirt was a wooly jumper that I'd nicked off my mum. So all in all some might say I was looking a bit hot/foolish/dickhead-ey/generic/hungover. This outfit got some funny reactions with my favourite being the awkward subjection to flirt from a big old teddy-bear of a flamboyant McDonalds cashier.

I went off the rails a little bit there, BUT back to whatever the hell I meant to be writing about. If I remember correctly... I went to my "other local record shop" yesterday just to do "the browsing thing" but obviously I'm always lying to myself.

Got myself Toro Y Moi's Causers of This on vinyl. There goes eating again. Bye bye food...
I've already said nice stuff about the Toro-man but if you haven't heard me before then here it is again: It's good. Listen and buy it man. 'nuff sed

But to my great surprise, when I was paying for my purchase I was given a free compilation CD called 'Indie Jones 4 ja kultainen 2000-luku' featuring some of the most talked about Finnish pop/rock/electro acts of the past few years.

Now I've never really been that into Finnish music, but I suppose I haven't ever given it a fair chance. Growing up in the countryside where Radio Nova was the radio station to listen to and Popeda/Leevi & the Leavings/Suurlähettiläät/Dingo were the dogs bollox put me off suomipop 4ever.

When I got home I put Indie Jones 4 on and, well it was good. My kid sisters fave Joose Keskitalo's murder ballad viisi tyttöä is just as good lyrically as something that Nick Cave would come up with.

Manna I saw live a while back and rather liked the energy. Oh and the songs.

Fell asleep during Astrid Swan but that shits ok 'cos I've even got her spartan picnic record and it's tight.

Wish I'd fallen asleep during Them Bird Things. Annoying and poop. I'm too tired to elaborate.

GOODBYE

My oh my

My oh my indeed!

Once again the weekend has faded away to become another member of the numerous days of gone. Some weekends do this under the title of "several days I could have spent differently in infinitely better ways". Some weekends pretend to be good and fill you with false promises of endless joy and happiness but once they've gone, you instantly forget about that brief silly fling you had with a predetermined period of time.

However sometimes the weekend will slap you in the face with a bunch of shit-hot-ness

Anyone who's good at reading minds will of course know I'm talking about Saturday and Husky Rescue.

The live floor at Klubi was nearly empty when we got there which didn't bode well for the Huskies but thankfully even the people "round our way" found their way upstairs eventually.

The set leaned heavily towards 'Ship of light' material as one would expect on a tour promoting a new album. This was not a bad thing at all and it did really work as I didn't manage to hear anyone say anything bad about the gig. (OH except one girl, but that was mainly an attack on singer Reeta-Leena's personality)

May I just say that Reeta-Leena looked mighty foxy and I may have developed an unhealthy fancy for her. Well ok, she took turns looking foxy and looking like a crazed Sami shaman whilst shaking what could have been a percussion instrument, but quite easily could have just been a bunch of animal bones tied together with human hair.

What do I remember distinctly?

-City Lights being gorgeous.
-Sound of Love and We Shall Burn Bright being the sing-a-longs
-Beautiful My Monster's bass literally shaking the booties off of everyone
-They Are Coming sounding like a whistling 'Foals'. I well loved the math-rock-like drumming going on. The fact that 'DJ Goatboy' did in fact play some Foals before Husky came on was a nice touch.
-Almost ending the gig with Summertime Coyboy. Now that would have been the perfect end to the night but alas it was not to be. They still came back on for a second encore to play an accordionised version of Man of Stone. It was still good mind.



Now bring on the new week
Adios

The BJM

Long time no see!

But I'm back and I've been pondering. Pondering the origin of the name 'Brian Jonestown Massacre'


- Is there a town named after their local hero Brian Jones?
What did the great Brian Jones even do to make himself worthy of having an entire community in his honor? Maybe he's some kind of sports personality of the year
I could deffo live in Ryan Giggsville!

- Did this tragic massacre take place in the safe haven of Brian Jonestown? What does Brian Jones himself have to say about this? What was used to do the whole massacre-ing business? Does Ryan Giggs approve of massacres?

OR

- Was some bloke named after a town called Brian Jonestown and
A) Mr. Jonestown did the massacre stuff?
B) Mr. Jonestown got massacred?

If A) then where did all the rage come from Brian? You could have popped on some Damien Rice and just chilled. But "NO" you have to go out on some kind of crazy killing spree.

If B) then what did Brian do to get horrible massacred? I'm not even going to speculate on this because as a person I don't really know Brian that well. However, "gang related" is all I'm saying.

If you had a town named after yourself, what entertainment/activities would you want it to have? I'd have a huge cookie factory. And one of those unicorn farms you see everywhere.

Yeah well whatever. Here's Let's go Fucking Mental


The BJM have got album numero 10 coming out on Feb 23.
It's called 'Who Killed Sgt. Pepper'

Tonight is Husky Rescue night! haha yeah whooh. Let's get it on!

Reina del Camino

Today I did the possibly most street-cred thing in the world:
I baked cinnamon rolls. They turned out good. I ate a few
I came. I saw. I conquered. "'Nuff sed"

After stuffing myself with doughey goodness I felt physically sick and after getting home haven't actually moved since. (this happened many an hour ago...)

So illness is a perfect excuse to "do the blog" and with this in mind I bring thee:

Reina del Camino



The Brooklyn-based quartet have captured a perfect mixture of "surf" and 'Shadows' style guitar playing making me yearn more and more for the summer. I could easily get slated for this but it wouldn't be too hard to imagine 'Sleep to Dream' playing in the background of a Quentin Tarantino film.

'Throw it Away' is a lovely instrumental featuring tidy guitar work over some less-than-subtle beatboxing. Nevertheless loads of fun!

But of their Myspace songs 'Beg For It' is the one that really does it for me. The song has such a driving force it begs to be played on repeat over and over. I really do hope the summer is swift in it's arrival.

Alas, myspace is all they have to offer for now but I'm told that Reina del Camino are hitting the studio in March so I'm gonna keep my eyes peeled for new material. You should too.
Don't be a stranger

T
xxx


OOOH I ALSO MADE A PLAYLIST AGAIN. LISTEN TO IT IF BORED OR WHATEVER, IF NOT BORED THEN CARRY ON DOING WHATEVER COOL STUFF IT IS YOU'RE DOING AND TELL ME WHAT THAT SHIT IS TOO.

Ooh I especially love the 'Curly Hair' song.
Here's the video from the christmas party I was at in Brighton. If you were to be some sort of superman videoclip-turning-man and twist the picture to the immediate left then you'd see me there with a stupid grin on my smug face. Nice.



Flatmate K looks like this according to his own words.
Believe in nothing.