archive for the Music category

Connect Festival

Music Tuesday 11th September 2007

connectconnect
I think there is a two week delay between stuff happening and me blogging it. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago Kerry and I were at the (brand new) Connect Festival in Inveraray on the west coast of Scotland. Here are some good points:

  • Awesome lineup, including Bjork, Beastie Boys, Regina Spektor, Big Star, Teenage Fanclub, Divine Comedy and on and on…
  • Excellent food
  • Nice vibe
  • Smaller crowd than T in the Park

Here are some not so good things:

  • The mud! The horror!
  • 8 washbasins for 4000 people? I kid not
  • Campsite on a sloping bumpy field seemingly infested with spiders

But they’re all pretty minor, I mean, you don’t have to wash for three days.

There is a metric ass-load of photos on my flickr steam.

 

Gay for Dave Grohl?

Edinburgh,Music Saturday 8th September 2007

Foo FightersFoo Fighters
I saw Foo Fighters supported by Nine Inch Nails and the Silver Sun Pickups at Meadowbank the other week. It was part of T on the Fringe – the music part of the Fringe events and was an awesome concert. It was a long afternoon event (5-11) but the venue is a good size and there is plenty to keep you occupied. It almost rained a couple of times but for the most part we managed to keep pretty dry. There is a shed-load of pictures on my flickr stream and a video of Dave rocking out – surprisingly good quality from my new camera.

 

I’m Off to Connect

Me,Music Friday 31st August 2007

connect.jpg

Yay, woo.

 

Olly meets Podcast

Music,Technology Thursday 23rd March 2006

So, I broke the other day and started using iTunes about 3 months after getting my Nano. It is actually not such a bad programme and hasn’t quite taken over my music collection in the evil-hell-spawn way I thought it might. What lead me to use iTunes was the fact that I totally broke my Nano messing around with ipodlinux. I had to do an ipod restore and it was just easier to use iTunes…damn Apple and their bundled easy to use feature packed software. Whilst exploring the iTunes interface I came across the vast index of podcasts that Apple let you browse through. I’m now hooked on radio five’s film review podcast, and one from “Security Now” is also quite interesting. It’s like radio for your ipod that you can pause! Great stuff.

 

Charly’s Boat

Music Tuesday 29th November 2005

I’ve totally forgotten to give some props to my work-mate Blair’s band Charlie’s Boat. You can hear some of their tunes on their myspace page. Looks like they’re playing in Edinburgh on Thursday night, so y’all should go and stuff.

 

De La Soul

Edinburgh,Music Saturday 10th September 2005

So I’ve been totally slack and not blogged about the De La Soul (up inna’ hizzy) gig. I went to see them last Friday along with James & Catriona and Alex and they rocked. It was the most fun I’ve had at a gig for ages. They got the crowd totally worked up and everyone was bouncing and having a great time. There was lots of “Hands in the air if you love hip-hop!” and “Is the party on the left? or the right?”. Masterful crowd control stuff. It’s not until they started doing their stuff you realise how much material they’ve done and how consistently awesome it all is. It was a great night. Such a shame Kerry couldn’t make it as she was ill. I had to tone down the “awesomeness” when I got home so she wasn’t too jealous :). There are a few (not brilliant) pics up over in the pictures hizzouse.

 

Beastie Boys A Capella

Music Tuesday 23rd August 2005

Wow, this is super-cool. The Beastie Boys have put up mp3s of A Capella versions of some of their tracks for personal remixing and such.

 
via: boingboing.net

De La Soul

Edinburgh,Music Sunday 14th August 2005

Toot, toot. De La Soul are playing at Scratch in September and we got tickets.

de la soul
 

These Are the Breaks

Music Saturday 6th August 2005

These Are the Breaks

 

The Warriors

Edinburgh,Movies & TV,Music Wednesday 27th April 2005

Kerry and I went to the see TES tonight at the Film House. He was showing a re-editing of the ‘The Warriors‘ with a live hip-hop soundtrack. It was prety damn cool. I’d never seen the film before but Kerry loves it, and now I want to see the full version. He was powering everything off a powerbook aswell, which added to the geek factor 🙂

 

Beasties Live

Me,Music Friday 10th December 2004

Last Saturday Kerry and I went to see the Beastie Boys live at the SECC in Glasgow. First time I’d seen them and the first time I’d been the SECC. The gig was amazing, we had a good spot quite near the front and managed to avoid the drunken beer-throwing and crushing that went on in the middle. They started with a huge screen showing what was happening back-stage. Some roadies were wheeling a big case up to the stage, smiling and slapping and pointing at it. They brought it up the stage, opened it and Mixmaster Mike jumped out and lept up to the DJ booth. He then did some amazing turntablist trickery for a bit including the “5-4-3-2-1” countdown from Thunderbirds (genius) and then the Beasties came jumping on to the stage in matching adidas tracksuits. It was a great show starting with them doing their “3 MCs and 1 DJ” style stuff. Then they went off the stage leaving Mike in the DJ booth. Then the booth disappeared backwards and a huge stage/float thing was wheeled around from the back with a whole band on it, plus the Beasties all in really bad suits. They then did a few of their more instrumental tracks before the stage did some more trickey and reverted back to DJ booth/dancing space. Amazing night in all, even though it took us 3 hours to get home.

Review here from the Independent.

And another from the Guardian.

And a last one from the Times.

 

Beas-tie Boys!

Music Monday 18th October 2004

Many, many thanks to James and his excellent Ripped Tickets service for letting me know that Beastie Boys tickets for Glasgow were going to be released. I didn’t even know there was a Glasgow gig! I quickly checked the Beasties site and saw there was a ‘fans only’ link through to ticketweb where you could buy them online. Two days before they went on general sale! I snatched two tickets up sharp-ish as the London tickets sold out in less than 24 hours. Kerry and I have been wanting to see them live for a while, it’s gonna roXor 🙂

 

Triple Trouble

Music Monday 13th September 2004

The Beasties have a new single out: ‘Triple Trouble’. It uses the hook from Rappers Delight and is just superb. As usual they also have a hilarious video that just has to be seen.

 

Vocal Chemistry Makes It Sound So Sweet

Music Sunday 5th September 2004

J 5 inna hizzy!
Went to see Jurassic 5 at the Corn Exchange last Wednesday, I’ve basically been too slack to blog it so far. They were pretty awesome. I’ve never really seen any big hip-hop/raps acts live before so it was a lot of fun. The crowd were totally up for it, lots of hands in the air, bigging it up. They did all the faves and actually interacted with the crowd loads. It seemed liked they actually gave a crap about us, the audience. Which was nice.
Of course, I had to buy one of their sweet t-shirts while I was there. Cheaper than buying them from their online shop aswell 🙂

 

More New Music

Music Wednesday 1st September 2004

Green Day also seem to have a new album out. There’s new stuff coming out all over the place at the moment. I noticed that they also picked up a life-time achievement type thing at the Kerang awards the other week.

 

New From The Old

Music Tuesday 24th August 2004

I’ve been hearing some good things about the new prodigy album. I’ve caught bits of the single on radio1 and it sounds pretty darn good. Think I may have to pick it up once pay day comes around.
Fatboyslim also seems to have a new single out which is the usual much repeated sample thing. It’s kinda annoying at first but I’m sure it will grow on me as most of his stuff does.

 

Power In Quality Control

Music Wednesday 21st July 2004

Jurassic 5 are on at T On The Fringe on the 1st September. I discovered these guys last year and it was one of those moments when you wonder how you couldn’t have know about them already. If you know what I mean…

 

T In The Park Report

Music Monday 12th July 2004

Oh man, that rocked my socks off. Highlight of the weekend has to Orbital live on the Sunday night. They played all the favourites including Halcyon And On And On, with new Darkness remix action! Their kick-ass Dr Who theme remix was in there aswell. I had to go see it on my own which was cool as everyone else was seeing The Pixies on the main stage. It all seemed pretty well organised, no troubles getting in or anything. Had to queue a while at the bus station in Edinburgh but even there they had loads of staff on-hand. Other people who rocked were: Black Eyes Peas, Faithless (uber rocked), Electric Six. Lots of folk on the Sunday clashed and on the Saturday the main stuff I wanted to see was in the Slam tent which was ridiculously under-sized and therefore always full. It completely filled up for Basment Jaxx, Felix Da Housecat, Chemical Brothers and Groove Armada, which sucked. Now, on with the ass-tastic camera-phone photos:

Told you they were good…

 

Sup d00ders!

Music Sunday 11th July 2004

Hey everybody! Just eaten a very nice pie with mash and peas, mmmmmmmm. Just a quick blog from the virgin tent-thing here at t in the park. Laters!

 

T In The Park

Music Saturday 10th July 2004

Toot! toot! T in the park today tody and tomorrow! Need to get ready soon or we’ll be a bit late…

 

BMX-Bandits Gig

Music Saturday 5th June 2004
bandits.jpg

Went to see the bmx-bandits in Cabaret Voltaire with Kerry on Wednesday night. She is a huge fan and it was a really nice small gig. I haven’t heard much of their stuff but all the songs were pretty good, expecially the actions to go with them :). The venue wasn’t too crowded and had a good mix of people. Free posters on the way out aswell!

The picture to the left is the best my ass-tastic camera phone could do in the low light. Thats the main guy douglas singing in the middle..

 

Woo! First festival Thing!

Music Thursday 18th March 2004

Kerry and I are going to T in the park in July \o/

 

2 many djs

Music Saturday 28th February 2004


Went to see 2 many djs (aka soulwax) on Friday night with alex. Then venue was City Nightclub, some new fancy-pants place under North Bridge. It was a very nice venue if a little over-sold. The dance floor was getting rather cramped and rock-concert like at times. The support guy (Erol Alkan) was actually just as good as soulwax, they did a good set but it was more like an ordinary dance music set than a kerazy-mad-soulwax set. That was a little dissapointing but they had some brilliant moments such as managing to fit in Stone Roses and Nirvana, which the crowd loved. The only downside was at then end when the cloakroom staff managed to misplace alex’s jumper which meant we had to wait for 30 odd minutes, even though we can see it! This drove us nuts, as we were totally knackered. Good night in all though, and I saw loads of people from computer science, bizzarely.

 

Strongbad Sings!

Music Monday 8th December 2003

This is really rather good, much better than I was expecting. If you’re not a fan of home star runner you probably won’t “get it”.

 

I suck

Music Sunday 16th November 2003

Yes, I suck. Managed to miss Cut Chemist by completely forgetting about it until we were already out, slightly inebriated and it was too late. gah!

 

Cut Chemist

Music Monday 27th October 2003

Cut Chemist is playing at Honeycomb in Edinburgh!!
Cut Chemist does most of Jurassic 5’s turntable wizardry and producers lots of their stuff. He also teamed up with DJ Shadow to do the infamous Product Placement mix cd and the genius that is BrainFreeze. In other words, rather good on the ones and twos.

 

Jurassic Five

Music Wednesday 30th July 2003

These guys are just da bomb. Such good lyrics and beats, I must listen to Quality Control almost every day when I get in from work. Great pickmeup.

(If I could figure out how allmusic does its searches I would link more stuff up….)

 

Chilled Listening

Music Wednesday 30th July 2003

My main man John has being showing off his skillz on the decks with the release of an album length progressive house mix. You’ll have to jump onto soulseek to get it, contact him (or me) for more info.

 

Ahead of the pack

Music Saturday 8th March 2003

People in the UK may have seen the kerazy Junior Senior song that entered the charts at number 4 this week. Rather fine it is to, although the severe Radio 1 pimpage it got did no harm I’m sure. Anyhoooo, I linked to the vdeo last September. Ahead of the curve/pack/thing I am!
Stay tuned batfans!

 

Lemonjelly

Music Monday 3rd March 2003

ljgigticket.jpg

Yes, me and Alex went to the see the fantastically good LemonJelly on Sunday evening at Edinburgh’s Queens Hall. We turned up half an hour early and someone pushed ourselves (accidently) to the start of the queue, which was nice. There was the usual ticket tout trying incredibly hard to get ‘spare’ tickets off everyone in the queue, we declined.
Once we got in we were given a goody bag and a bingo card, you just knew it was gonna be good from then on 🙂
The warm-up act was “lemon jelly bingo” introduced (extremely cheesily) my Mr Fred Deakin and featuring all the usual bingo paraphenalia. The prizes were pretty good, loads of lemonjelly merchandise, along with some monstrous posters that would have looked uber-nice on my wall 🙂
Anyway, we didn’t win anything. After the bingo they put on some 80s-early 90s cheese for 30 mins of so and then started the show with Space Walk off the new album. They had loads of mirror balls which gave a brilliant space effect.

I was wondering how they were going to do their stuff ‘live’ and was hoping they won’t going to chicken out and be lame. They certainly weren’t 🙂
Basically they would have the (pumped up) beat going in the background, then Nick would play acoustic or electric guitar and Fred would dive around between his electric cello, scratch mixer/decks and the effects machine of doom. It was fun to watch and a pleasure to listen to.

On stage they had:

Electro-Acoustic guitar
Electric guitar
Electric Cello
Keyboard
Organ
Korg Synth thing
Big Bongo drums
Decks and Mixer
Electric Drum Kit
and Percussion stuff – symbals, cowbells etc

and this was for two guys 🙂 and there was probably loads of bits we couldn’t see.

Oh and the stage lighting was brilliant. They had these vertical standing LED strip things that had green, blue, red and white colours. These were very bright and were a nice suprise when they first used them. Along with the LED strips they had these vertical tubes that could seemingly change colour in patterns, it was very purty.

Drinks were reasonbly priced and their tees were on sale for a reasoanble £18, I wish I’d got one now. Although in the goody bag we did get a couple of postcards, balloon, badge and a pencil (marked: Lemon Jelly Doodle Machine). Of course, everyone blew-up their balloons immediately and so the main dance floor was a sea of people trying to dance and simultaneously keep 30 balloons in the air. It was a nice site.

All in all, a very good night.

edit: oh and while we were in the queue a guy asked alex (not me) if we had any hash. Bloody students…

 

Amon Tobin

Music Saturday 22nd February 2003

amontobin.jpg

It was pretty damn good, the sound system at the bongo club is bad-ass with a capital B. The warm up guys were ok but everyone was really waiting for Amon, who came on at about 12:30 and busted some nice moves. He also had some superb visuals playing on a semi-transparent screen in front of the stage, they rocked. It had this nifty effect where you’ d get the image on the screen and then it would still shine though and hit the wall behing the decks, double image-tastic. Ian is now named ‘lame Ian’, after waiting through the warm-up guys for about 2 hours he leaves after ~15 mins of Amon’s set. Oh yeah, Bongo Club certainly isn’t the classiest venue in Edinburgh, the gents is basically three toilets in a cupboard. Good stuff though.

I came back at 3am to an empty flat, so immediately cranked up the stereo and played more Amon Tobin 🙂

 

Check, check

Music Wednesday 12th February 2003

Just reminding everyone how fantastically good this site is:

SomaFM: Listener Supported, Commercial Free Internet Radio

consider yourself reminded

 

Gorgeous New LemonJelly Site

Music Sunday 26th January 2003

Check it out: Lemon Jelly

 

Lemonjelly

Music Monday 20th January 2003

Tickets are booked
yay!

 

Danger! Danger!

Music Friday 10th January 2003

High Voltage!

brilliant tune from Electric Six – Danger! High Voltage
The video is mildly disturbing:

http://electric6.com/multimedia/index.shtml