The Abnormals

I'm old enough to remember when comics were mostly read by children.

I was one myself. My dear departed pops used to pick up Spidey and Hulk US imports for me at the amazing, long-gone Yankee Mags in Paisley, Scotland (Oldest UK comic shop, folks).

On the odd Saturday I would go along with him and gaze at the piles of Marvel comics stacked up from floor to ceiling. Happy, simple times indeed.

I even have this, still in very good condition, thanks to a kind and clearly naive older cousin who gave all his UK first editions to me.



Luckily, even at eight years old, I had near OCD levels of keeping/hording stuff.

Anyway, I stopped collecting comics a long, long time ago, but I still have all my old ones and pick up the odd graphic novel now and again, whenever comic geek pals recommend me something that piques my interest. I think the last comic I got obsessive over was probably Preacher, which an ex-girlfriend got me hooked on while I was at Uni.

So I wouldn’t normally be in a position to recommend a cool new comic. Unless someone I know goes and actually produces one.



The Abnormals is the new comic from Grant Springford. Grant is an upsettingly talented comic book artist and writer from London town.

Entirely self-produced, and focusing on a strange collective of London-based super-beings, it comes highly recommended. The first issue is seriously good. The artwork is beautiful and odd, the dialogue whip-smart and intriguing. This dude is going places.

While crafting this opus, Mr Springford offered to place a mock poster of my short 2008 film The Initiation in the panels that feature Westminster Station, which was most kind of him. The juxtaposition of film still and comic looks pretty cool I think.



In return for that favour I am going to be doing something very exciting for the comic later in the year.

You can find out more at the soon to be complete website and the man himself will be at the Bristol Comic Con 2011 doing all things Abnormal. Literally.

Go and say hello.

AND BUY HIS COMIC.

Le Carpenter c'est magnifique!

Zombie Zombie are a couple of French whiteboy music nerds who - by chance - I happened to see three times in the space of a year (2008) supporting various other bands (Yeasayer and, I think, The Horrors) and once on their own at the Amersham Arms in New Cross. They weren’t the most er, visually compelling prospect but they did make a really entertaining din - sounding very, very like a certain horror director’s classic scores, played live.

Naturally they’ve now made a John Carpenter covers EP.

And it’s completely boss.

The trick here is that ZZ take the analogue dread of Crapenter’s seminal tracks (and Morrcone’s uncharacteristic The Thing score) and stretch them out into long, hypnotic Can-like grooves without ever losing the essence of the originals.

Love what they do here to EMs super minimalist 'The Thing'.



And with 'Assault on Precinct 13' (complete here with a live video of much nerdgasmic percussion and knob twiddling), Carpenters’ sinister synth lines take flight into a hypnotic space jam with added funk squelch.

Yes yes fun

Although I don't actually buy CDs or records anymore I still have a lot of admiration for artists and labels who take great care over releasing their music as a tangible product. In fact, the labels who have put out some of my favourite sounds over the last few years, like ghost box, are partly defined by this aesthetic, with their music released in lovingly packaged, limited edition ornate LPs and cassettes.

I was a real record shop trawler for years. But now, like many, I am a total download convert. I understand the feverish desire for pretty 'things' and the collector ethos, but the internet is now the greatest record shop in the world, one where the music obsessive can hear endless sounds old and new without the financially crippling task of tracking down actual records, not to mention the difficulties of storage. I realise this is anathema to the artists that keep the vinyl ethic alive but for me music is firmly about HEARING as much exciting stuff as I can rather than ‘owning’ it.



Not not fun are definitely in the obsessive collector tradition and are home to some of the most exciting, compelling underground music of the 2000s. Co-run by La Vampires' Amanda Brown (ex Pocahaunted) they take in bands who deal in psyche-folk, ambient noisepop, Italo disco and pretty much all of the currently active musical sub-genres swirling around the underground right now. Their output seems to have taken up a lot of my listening time of late, unsurprising as 90 per cent of it ticks my musical obsessions to a T.

My good friend and filmmaker Ben Robinson, who shares my love for this kind of stuff, asked me recently where I thought the whole hypno-pop thing that has been blogged about by all and sundry was headed. I couldn’t help thinking that its ultimate endstate would be where almost every music movement ends – utter absorption/co-option into the mainstream and no doubt soundtracking some fey TalkTalk ads very soon.

BUT many of the artists on NNF feel like they’re taking the dreamlike fetishisation/ reimagining of the recent past and moving it further, twisting it into interesting new shapes.

Particularly Estonian-born musician/artist Maria Minerva - whose brilliant, spectral album Tallinn at Dawn is one of my absolute faves of the year so far.

This video is off the scale.





AND THIS from the new-ish Minerva 12" 'Noble Savage' is possibly even better.



LA Vamps own stuff betrays a certain dub/slits influence but again, creates its own strong groove. WARNING: this video could upset those who harbour violent anti-hipster tendencies.



Umberto is another very interesting NNF artist whose output thus far seems to consist entirely of long form doom-synth homages to GOBLIN and other dark purveyors of 70s horror scores.

Geek out to THIS. Love his titles, which are like the chapter selections on sleazy Italian horror DVDs.



This one kicks in around the two minute mark. DARK synths.




For more Not not fun fun, get thee over to pontone for a nice free mix.

pontone.pl/not-not-fun-mix/

Available online, not in a record shop.

James Blake's album works SO much better if..

...you erase from your mind the idea that it's a dubstep record.

It really isn't.

I admit I was pretty surprised to find that it's mostly sort of quite polite electronic folk-soul.


It's this




plus a dash of this





Nowhere near as good as either of course.

A few of the tracks are actually quite insipid, much more anaemic than expected, and the dreaded glottal stop of Blake's delivery renders at least one track virtually unlistenable.

BUT

At its best it suggests a true, emerging artist experimenting with dynamics and sonic space.

And this is great. In the air tonight for the blubstep generation.

February feeling

five for feb


This track is just so ferocious and evil. It cannot be stopped.





The ghost of some 50s doo-wop band played through an electronic noise box. Underwater.




Toro Y Moi is spring sex music




White-powder soul whose individual elements; an impossibly sunny, smothering sax, New Order-ish guitar lines, vaguely prefab-y vocals, shouldn't really work - but they do. And how.




Teenage girls playing the music of 40-year-old Mojo readers sounds all kinds of wrong, but this is so lovely and timeless, it's hard to resist.



bonus:

hurry up summer



white and nerdy. And brilliant. And also kind of horrible.

sex, sleaze and style

Couple of recent pieces by me over at Chris and Phil.

Why Amer succeeds as art installation but not giallo cinema





the grotty bare behind bars and why I don't dig the 'chicks in chains' genre very much.

Jaws and jugs

'gleeful, hilarious trash'

my review of PIRANHA 3D over at podcastdoors