Time And A Half

(photo by pixelspin)

I thought I'd break from the Saturday norm this morning and post before the bacon roll action starts. Last night was a fairly traumatic double-leaving-do which resulted in a pretty late night culminating in getting home to find the door locked and the catch down, visions of still being there now having camped in the shelter of our wheelybin having passed by now. Someone else was in. I have the privilege of working in an office environment where everybody actual gets on, a real rarity, so the departure of four of my closest compadres in the last month or so cuts me deep, cuts me real deep. But I soldier on til my day comes, I bide my time, I wait for my moment and someday I will pounce and carpe diem, boys.

Much like Zinedine Zidane.

Without a hint of a joke, that must be the best link I, and probably anyone, has ever written. Anyway, it means I'm posting about what I'm listening to right now. For some reason I've been buying far more music than I can comfortably find time to listen to at the moment, which is why Mogwai's latest effort hasn't had sufficient aural privileges. They've composed a soundtrack to an artisan French film (which it kills me that I haven't seen yet) about the footballing superhero Zizou. The film follows ZZ around the pitch for the duration of one whole match, Real Madrid vs. Villareal, using 17 different cameras. The film is soundtracked by Mogwai in reserved, dramatic mode and if that doesn't sound like just the most amazing thing, then I don't know what does. At the time of writing, like right now, I'm listening to Half-Time, which I believe featured on the trailers. It's almost 7 minutes long and sounds like a good number of the brooding, menacing slow passages from Mr Beast. This is a Good Thing, of course, that album being one of the finest of the year. The track splits the soundtrack in two (fairly obviously), providing a fulcrum between the moodier first half, and the more dynamic second. It really is a game of two halves, Brian. There's none of the juddering, cataclysmic dynamic shifts of some of Mogwai's work here, but it's almost all the better for it - a beautiful tribute to a beautiful player.

Note on Mogwai: Mogwai are probably the best band ever. They have released a slew of apocalyptic, breathtaking records and have a (fully justified) reputation for a skull-scraping, mindblowing live show. Their music veers from hypnotic, delicate guitar riffs and piano passages to white noise that sounds like its trying to escape from inside your head with a hacksaw. Guitar riffs so monumental that the whole world sways when they're played, banks of noise that build up like a tower of Babel that keep going even when you think that to get louder is a physical and scientific impossibility. Unassuming, approaching-middle-aged Glaswegians with bald heads that produce the sound of the end of the world, presuming that the end of the world is not just catastrophic but incredibly beautiful. In short, there's no-one to touch them, none of their post-rock peers have managed to transcend a sound so completely to elevate to a singular platform, population: one. In short, the best band in the world.

The Music
Mogwai - Half-time
Mogwai - It Would Have Happened Anyway
Mogwai - Like Herod

The 'fo
Artist: Mogwai
Website: mogwai.co.uk
Recommended: Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait OST
Label: Pias
Buy: Amazon
More: Hype Machine; elbo.ws
If you like this you might like: Godspeed! You Black Emperor - Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennae to Heaven
Tags: Mogwai; Zidane; soundtrack; movie

The bugs are biting

(Photo by Mil)

It's gardening time of year again. Being just a little less than green-fingered, my propagation of nature tends to weigh heavily on the side of enthusiasm, but is occasionally found lacking in terms of persistence and skill. That said, we have (with little to compare it to) an excellent crop of tasty tomatoes (which need using actually, mental note), a pepper well on its way, even chillies and olives. A squirrel (now issued with a fatwa) made off with the head of one of our sunflowers, but it looks as though one is about to burst into life. Good stuff.

However, the next major project is due to our Greek-Rigsby styled landlord, who was less than impressed at the housemate's removal of the garden path. Liability and health hazard though it was, it was at least a path. So, a new one is in order, leading to my first, tentative steps into the world of garden design. A subject foreign to me, it is none the less one in which I have picked up tips via osmosis, many being the occasion at my parents house when a gardening show on the telly would distract me from my book/sleep/food. So - trips to Homebase are on the cards, we'll soon have a melange of sand, gravel and paving to explore the garden with.

All last evening's activity inevitably led to a fairly impressive series of insect bites, hence the situation coming still to mind. It does, though, give me the opportunity to post songs from maybe my favouritest band in the world, Mogwai. In Cornwall, there's a tourist attraction named The Lost Gardens Of Heligan, a fairly over-dramatic name for a garden if you ask me. I don't know what's there. It always reminds me of Mogwai, indeed one of there more famous early tracks (check the track title).

That would be a tenuous link indeed, though, so I'll bolster it with the fact that the song refers to exactly what I was creating (albeit not to the song's stated location).
I've included several versions here, as there's two parts to the song. It doesn't appear on any of the band's standard full-lengths, and the original versions I have here are those on the collection of early EPs, Ten Rapid. The live versions are from Mogwai's excellent BBC sessions album, Government Commissions, and the remix by Max Tundra is from Kicking A Dead Pig, the Mogwai remix album. All excellent: Part 2 is the sort of subtle, all-quiet Mogwai moment (although mercilessly and brutally chopped and changed by Max Tundra), but Part 1 is the classic Mogwai hail-of-beautiful-sound, the sort of song Windows Media Player visualisations are made for.
NB - the songs are labelled slightly differently on each release, but they're all versions of the same songs...

Mogwai - Helicon 1 (from Ten Rapid)
Mogwai - New Paths To Helicon Pt.1 (from Government Commissions)
Mogwai - Helicon 2 (from Ten Rapid)
Mogwai - New Paths To Helicon Pt.2 (from Government Commissions)
Mogwai - Helicon 2 (Max Tundra remix)

<$>Mogwai/Max Tundra<$>

Tags: Mogwai; Helicon; Max Tundra; path; garden; gardening; bugs

Auto Rock

Sometimes there's a song or an album or a band that can pick you up from any sort of mood. The other evening I was traipsing home in the twilight down a rain-sodden side street in New Southgate, coughing every few yards and barely audible even if I'd have tried to speak. There are various home-styled issues that are distracting me, but I was cheered immensely by the presence of Sigur Ros on my mp3 player, a band whom, when playing, can cause you to find beauty in anything, be it the dreariest bepuddled pathway or the uniformly dark grey clouds.

These home style issues are mostly along the lines of having to move. They say that moving house is the most stressful thing you can do, and I'm not inclined to actively disagree, especially in London. You'll get a London weighting on your salary working in the smoke but this means literally nothing because it's all swallowed up in housing costs. I have friends who, when studying in Northern Ireland, were paying £30 per week for accommodation. In London, if you can get it at £70 it's a miracle, and in truth you're looking at above £80 in most cases. So when you've found a nice flat, affordable, spacious and with agreeable cohabitors, you make it your business to hang on to it.

That is, until the letting agent that you've been nagging for years to fix the damp informs you that they'll be moving you out because the state of the problem means the house is approaching unlivable. Happy days, indeed. So now I have to find new accommodation at an affordable cost, in an area where I actually can abide living, and in a dwelling thats fit for human habitation. Good luck me.

These things have a tendency to play on your mind. So it's a beautiful thing when your thoughts can be carried away by a piece of music. In this case its not finding the beauty in the ugly things, its finding the Rock in the best place. Of course it's Mogwai. Mr Beast was released on Monday and to listen to Glasgow Mega-Snake on near-full volume is to detach oneself from all cares and worries, and to revel in the rediscovered art of the Riff. It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.