london is...

a bald, shirtless man slamming a metal barrier into a shop front at three am.

someone joined in but the barrier fell on top of him so he went for a lie down on the pavement. then the bald man started kicking the door in.

the last couple of weeks have been very good, and most of this is looking forward to the music i will be making in the coming months, although most of it is merely planning and guitar work. the bobby mcgees e.p. is largely mentally planned, and i started remixing butterflies tonight (basically mashing it up with pyramid song). then there's 'klutzma', my e.p. of radical klezma, and of course, the previously mentioned girlfriend experience e.p., which is in pre-production. then there's the band; ian and i are slick now, just waiting for others to join in.

things seem only, or largely to happen at weekends; an evening isn't long enough to go anywhere and come back. unless it's to a gig, which are always unmissable, and i've just found a page on last.fm that tells you when bands you like are playing in your town without you having to do anything except listen to them. it's great.

lesson learned this week - how to call it a night and go home at the right time.

so last weekend, after sessioning with ed, ian and ruth tried to make me come out to 'oh my god i miss you', the indie uber scene club. we would have made it to, if it wasn't sold out. so instead ian and thalia took me back home, ian changed out of his magician's costume, and we went out to an student indie night (after school klub), and fortunately most of it wasn't nme shite. there was a great 80s hiphop section to the night when i went really sick. however, they did play 'bigmouth strikes again' twice. about two, the night wasn't getting any better and i was tired, and sick of getting pushed around on the edge of the dance floor - is this universal, or do some people just find that they always gravitiate to the middle of the floor? and what do they do when they're in there, how do they possibly enjoy themselves? - i crept off home. all this on a single snakey-b. a decidely excellent night.

this friday, i went out with ian and ruth again, out in bloody shoreditch. we stood outside a pub drinking, then went the offy and got cheaper drinks and stood outside the pub, then went inside and jiggled left and right a bit. about midnight they went into a club and i could tell i wasn't going to like it. rather than go in for a fiver, hang around and not enjoy it, and get increasingly aggravated for three hours, just so i could kip at theirs, i went home.

this was a bad idea. i could have just got the keys off them and slept at theirs, got up in the morning nice and bright, headed out to south london to look at the house i'd appointed. but no, i got on the first bus with 'holborn' on the front. unfortunately, it had already been through holborn, and when i got to stoke newington i realised 'stay on the bus and see what happens' is not a good strategy. at three i got home. the evening might as well have not happened.

but when all looked dubious on saturday, i got a text from robin (girl); it seems the new season of london migration is taking place. she has moved to ... bethnal green! and saw something about 'unskinny bop' which is possibly the greatest club night ever... they played the BLUE MINKIES. loads and loads of cute indie kids, and they're all (probably) gay, meaning no annoying sexual tension. and at half one, i called it a night; robin stayerd knowing they'd play her elastica song eventually. i went out and had the owrst falafel kebab ever. they had absolutely no idea. should have just stuck with my original decision for chips kebab, but no. this is how it happened; a pitta was grilled. salad? onion lettue and tomato, please. the man puts the biggest amount of raw onion i've ever seen into/on top of the pitta, then does the same with the tomato and lettuce. humus? yes please, loads, i say. this goes in the corner of the pitta. three rubbish falafel are then balanced on top. pointless. afther eating the falafel with my fingers, and tearing off as much of the pitta as i get from under the salad and dipping it in the corner of humus, the bus came and i through the thing in the bin. yes it's a waste, but think of it more like it was being put out it's misery.

then followed the bus journey when i saw the man who didn't like the shop.

tonight we made stoved jerusalem artechokes, lovely sauce but the artechokes them selves were like bad potatoes; like they were cooked on the inside and raw on the out. we also roasted some garlic which was rocking.

girlfirend experience press release

the girlfriend experience are dj gallow slutt and mc format, better know under as grilly and drumbo, or under the psuedonyms (XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX) and ed boucher, and will be recording their robust first mini album 'lock the taskbar' over the coming month in fits and starts between other projects.

the album will compromise soft jazz-flocked love ballads, as interepreted by socially inadequte artificial intelligence gradutes.

the tracklisting will provisionally be as follows:

1. circumscised *
2. car park song #
3. tagic love company [working title] $
4. meanwhile back in communist missippi (interlude) *
5. pavannah capricho &
6. love (dub) $
7. boom goes lovergirl #

* boucher/griliopoulos
# boucher
$ griliopoulos
& albeniz

every track will feature guest appearances from talented members of the fraternity (i.e you, probably).

the album will be complemented by the free downloaded only double a side:
a. phobos anomoly (id)
aa. ken's theme (capcom)

we hope that the record will attract major label attention (i.e. ex libris).

the music's nearly written, but lyrics are stil mainly in the conceptual stage and will be fleshed out over time. i don't know about the songwriting devision either, but it looks pretty and professional on paper. i'm hoping to have the 'klein bottle wanking girl' image i've had in my head for the cover, if that's ok ed? oh, and sorry for describing you as 'socially inadequate' but i thought we had to show a unified front..

aaron mcmullen

well blow me away. sorry, i'll start again.

there i was, downloading the rough mix of what has now become widely known as 'situation tradgedy', a piece of doom-folk destined for the 1-track e.p. 'hell on earth' under the psuedonym 'david c. griliopoulos', when i've tweaked it a bit (it needs woodwind), so i hyperlink over to the top secret ex-libris drop box, and find it in the middle of screen grabs of audio files and what looks like rushes from the new aaron mcmullen album, which is always an event worth celebrating (despite the fact i never got around to downloading the last one due to disk spaces shortages, which i will never have again once my 500 gb arrives this week). this one is especially worth celebrating as it's his ex libris debut, with andy fiddling away once aaron's done his one guitar and vocal take. and omfg it's brilliant. it's the slickest most professional thing i've heard from the colerabby studios. the next day at work they're in my head all day and i can't wait to get home and listen to them again. it's especially exciting because the last time i heard any of the mixes, they were at a very early stage and i wasn't too impressed. but now they sound so.. so radio!

so yeah, well done andy.

mic standing

i bought a mic stand the other day. lovely and chrome, it crouches next to my amp, craning round so that it's virtually kissing the cone. over the years, i've used positioned mics in pringles tubes, mini-bins, held in place under books or poking out of drawers, i've had to sing into a moving target, p'haps using a sock as a pop shield.

no more.

it's taken me so long to buy this one simple piece of kit that will do me no end of good. it just never seemed like a priority, but what a miser i was being. i'm quite happy with it now, but if only i had anything to record. well, i do, it's just not come together yet.

also, in my continuing re-development of this blog, i've added direct links to streams of the last two albums on last.fm over there ->
so if you've not got them yet, like luke, you can listen to every minute in crappy 128kbs sound from anywhere in the world without downloading anything.
if anyone would like to contribute tags &c, have a go at doing up my profile or something, that would be quite nice.

xx