KillYourKids

to me The Hives have always played like a hardcore punk band, a bit minor threat, just their guitar sound has been a bit more 60's and they weren't afraid to slow things down once in a while for a bit of contrast.

i didn't go see them at the Hoxton Bar and Grill for obvious reasons (it would have been full off exactly the same "hipsters" he's talking about), but they were stunning in Paris last year and still put on an amazing live show.

morrissey once got someone sacked from their job at a venue for eating a sausage roll because he had a gig on that night and had banned all consumption of meat on the premises.

this is a FACT.

if it isn't maybe DiS will get sued too :)

or "listen to music I think is good but doesn't normally get played" day.

does music mean any more to the "converted" people on DiS then the average Heart FM listener on a diet of 80's easy listening classics?

do they gain less enjoyment from tne "virtual-payola playlist" known music then you do from "fresh, independent and challenging" music?

No Music Day is (to me) about asking how music soundtracks our lives, how we engage with it, how it affects our moods, outlook and actions. It's set firmly within the religious ascetic tradition of absitinance which brings value to things we'd normally take for granted (he even puts it before a feast day celebrating music for "God's" sake).

It's not about style, taste or distinctions on value but about the how/where/why of listening to music and what our lives would be without it.

i like the way the discussion on no music day invariably falls to one of taste, thus class. people see it as an opportunity for getting rid of music they don't like, sounds they don't chose. it becomes yet another way of taking control of their immediate environment and complaining about our modern world.

this misses the point entirely.

no music day is about bringing back value to music. by showing it's true place in our lives, in our society, through it's conspicious absence.
by making each conscious choice NOT to listen to music you become aware of each time you subconsciouly do. by becoming critically aware of each bit of ambient music you notice how it alters the environment it's heard in.

Bill Drummond is a genius, he may not be an original thinker (pretty much everything he does with music and art has been done already by Cage and the 50/60's New York set) but his ability to popularise and capture the imagination of the public by taking "high" concepts and translating them into an easily digestible form is unparalleled in the modern age.

Maybe I should get spend an hour sawing of my own head with a plastic knife.

Saw them live, twice. Terrible.

I'd forgotten it was a leap year next year!

if half of them join the Mars Volta and the other half join Sparta.

it's sci-fi-chic all over. the 2020 referrence is a killer (and, i think, completely by accident).

and can't believe what i just saw...

"The music is good, honest fun, but nothing original"

that'd be like discovering Minor Threat and complaining they sound like a whole bunch of hardcore bands :)

LSF are going to gain a whole new audience on account of them having a publicity/marketing machine behind them for the first time. the new album isn't any better then before. the live show I guess is just the same. they've always been one of the best bands in the world, it's just that there's money to back it up. and your average music magazine likes being told what to like by the people with advertising spends rather then deciding on what's good themselves... DiS ofcourse does not fall into that category

do that to his actual guitar I can safely say that he means it!

sorry... can't stop laughing.

this has been really nicely edited by Mike or both Envelopes and LOTP are breaking all government targets on spelling and literacy.

finding this band mildly amusing to thinking they're tony the tiger. has something to do with them getting better as they went on actually. and getting a drummer. i like drummers. especially one's who hit the drums hard.

but decided not to.

last saw them at the underworld again about 2 years ago (I think) and they succeeded on playing for 13 minutes and pissing about 90% of the crowd off who just didn't get it (and were demanding their money back).

as a band they're designed to question what you're after from a gig, from music. boring though is daming indeed, and hope that this is a one off.

good after about 7 years everyone else has finally caught up.

in that he's just recyling other peoples ideas and not "adding" anything of his own.

and the drumming is fantastic, BUT hamnett has to take a lot of the credit for insisting on that particular feel and sound.

if you look at the sisters of mercy who were doing a lot of similar stuff at the same time they were using a drum machine (!) and you get the feeling the idea is to recreate that feel but with real life drum sounds. the linn kit hadn't been invented yet after all and as soon as it was you have the whole of 80's pop ahead of you...

lyrically it's dark but it's more the moanings of a well read teenager then anything especially profound. the lyrics have more to do with JG Ballard's writings (and the like) then any genius on Curtis's part, and like most lyrical content the ideas are never original but a reprocessing of the work of others.

what's amazing though is the contrast between the millitary precision and space of the bass/drums and the complete atonal freedom of the guitar and vocals they allow (and, to this end, Martin Hamnett takes all the credit from what I've read and heard).

what's depressing is this review totally ignores the music (we have half a sentence at the beggining of the 6th paragraph), and instead gets sucked into some sycophantic hero worship of the "tortured artist" at the centre of it.

the songs on here are amazing though and the best they produced, but not because of the words because of the music and the sound of his voice (he could be singing anything to be honest and this would still be the most perfect of albums).

also, this is an album you can happily lift stuff from and single out, 24 Hours for one is the joint best track of that whole goth era (along with Sisters of Mercy's Body Electric) and I happily play it whenever I DJ, and I'd say the album as a whole has 4 killer tracks on it which stand out way past the others.

Send More Paramedics... oh yes!

paul oakenfeld and someone else...

i once saw "Grace" do a live pa in tower records in picadilly. true dat.

anyway, I'm waiting for the Sunscreem revival.

does DiS actually have in Chicago. i can imagine it being quite a problem for him though as it's the single most interesting thing about his live set.

put it this way, it's not Eddie is it.

dev releasing an album of old green day material is infinitely preferably to green day releasing and album of new green day material.

metallica's "metallica" anyone. no artwork, no title to the album. just black.

the "no cover art" statement is obviously a lie, so they're either being ironic or dishonest. what it should say is "shit cover art". that would at least be honest and accurate.

janet street porter was president of the ramblers association for a few years and is currently a vice president.

i didn't know you could write! you should be hungover more often.

mike - I really thought you were talking about Oceanic the band for a second and got really excited

demons - the issue with knowing the set list prior to performance (rather then don't look back as a concept specifically).

it's about your relation to this music and the show. if you didn't know the album from start to end intimately you'd still be having the same experience you described. otherwise your issue would be with a band planning any set (irrespective of whether you knew it or not) where you knew what would follow what.

that any forefought on their part (concise or otherwise for that matter) is a reduction of the spontaneity of the live experience.

the follow up to your argument is where do you stop? at which level is a work still divisible (or best presented).

is daydream nation a whole, an entity, or simply an unassociated collection of songs? as a collection does it take on a different meaning, or is it simply an arbitrary ordering.

the second point you make is that playing old material (in this form) without any new material is an admission of failiure by the band. BUT even with a structured ordering it's the band in the here-and-now performing it, one which has developed over the almost two decades since this was written. to say that their performance hasn't been affected by what they've produced since then is to say that they've not developed as people and musicians, and that the performance itself is not capable of expression.

i ask you one more thing. if a band like Sonic Youth were to play a concert where they played a forthcoming album from start to end, of material you didn't know in it's entirity (but others did), would this be a valid exercise?

I've seen complete rubbish posted by DiS reviewers, enjoyed it, commented on it, and laughed at the subsequent outrage they've caused.

This though, tops it.

"All things considered, should these records really be victim to such nostalgia-ridden retrospectives?"

If the idea was to create a loaded, ill thought out, biased and ultimately hollow piece in order illicit a response this article is a great success.

Well done.

we've hardly started. the crack DiS technical team are actually working on a program which will ban any word with less then three syllables.

"Freddie Mercury caught in clinch with furry pussy shocker"

by the way, not sure what's more impressive, the shirt or the sofa.

is so much better then my review was of the primavera gig.

as to whether Daydream Nation is "better" live then on record or not depends on your relationship with music. is it a fixed artifact, a single interpretaion, a squence of 1's and 0's or an moment, and event, each different and of it's time and place.

a historical persepctive says it's the later, that our relationship with it is based more on memory and feeling then on any objective facts (of right or wrong). that latter interpretaion comes with age and experience (for me in any case, that there is no truth, but many truths), and not something which sits comfortably with the deterministic world we live in.

here's my best shot. punk rock is described (by me at least) as making music you're not supposed to, breaking rules and challenging conventions, but any music which relies on intellect as it's primary motive for invention isn't punk rock.

maybe it was this one gig but the band sounded to me at least a little too thought out and the wailing a little affected. maybe it's a reaction i have to a certain style, the prog/psychedlia end of things, not sure...

so will let that last comment go :)

really excited about the new "sound" if not "direction", especially as didn't really like the mix on the last recordings compared to the demos, but suprised people are only picking up about the african end of stuff because Yannis mentioned it.

there's a lot of other stuff in their music which no one talks about because they haven't got the breadth of musical experience i guess the band has. that's my only point really. foals didn't suddenly appear out of a math-rock vacumn, there's a lot lot lot more to them then that.

all that is punk rock is all that is good in music. punk rock being not just a musical genre but an ethos (read this band will be your life for better examples, or any biography of Liszt or John Cage).

if they didn't desire to be punk rock as described above i'd be even less inclined to listen to the rest of their music, but to be honest rather not speculate about their intentions, which are unknown, but talk about their music (and the gig) which is known (and which is what i did talk about, albeit a different one which I made clear).

the dance influence is pretty obvious when they flit into an ambient techno groove and dispense with the guitar/vocal harmonies which make up most of the set.

and at no point do i tell people not to listen to it, just that i don't like it and give the reasons why. two people who's opinions i respect both state they did like it and mine was a counterpoint to this.

just get a cheap black and white photo instead?

was great. for the first time since I think Truck last year I Foals guitars were louder then there vocals (maybe not on stage but certainly out front). this is the balance they should ALWAYS have and suits them so much better then the vocal/drum heavy "pop" mix they tend to suffer from live at bigger venues.

what REALLY annoys me is this talk of "Afrobeat" on the new album. Dear journalists, have you ever listened to Fela Kuti, or traditional african music. Have you ever spent evenings listening to the great Andy Kershaw on whatever slot the BBC have put him on at present. Foals have ALWAYS had an african influence in the music, whether intentional or not. How can you have ever listened to Foals AND NOT heard that.

Just because Yannis mentions it on an interview on this website doesn't suddenly make it a marked change in direction. All there stuff has it in there (from the offbeat accenting of the drums to the intertwined guitar parts).

Yours most certainly miffed...

that your average wolf mother's only thought when protecting it's "offspring" is kill...

saw yeasayer last night at the social. no no no no no no no.

they are the antithesis of all that is punk rock (and as a result, all that is good about music). there's the beatles psychedlia (surely the beatles worst period), the neil young vocal close vocal harmonies (the least interesting part of neil young), the vangelis keyboards and bad synth drums (actually, that's the best bit about vangelis, but they somehow make it sound laboured).

the lyrics are nonsencical, "baby, i'm stuck on you", like a post it note that says "kick me" perhaps. and then all that wailling. really, is life that bad?

you feel that they've latched on to the dancier end of things in the hope of fitting into a "scene", any scene, but there's not enough there to make you dance before the mastubatory end of what they do returns to the fore. even worse, the dancier end is token at best and postively uninspired when compared to people doing a similar line in atmospheric beat lead electronic music over a decade ago (Aphex Twin, Sabres of Paradise).

the single is good, in isolation, and they are definitely an original band (in the breadth of their influences and ambition even if not in their musical output) but as a whole it really doesn't work.

commenting on this gig but what the hell I'm sat at home at my computer while the rest of indie london is out enjoying itself.

i watched 2 minutes of this gig and heard the rest of what appeared to be about 3 hours from the rather more pleasant. Maps, on the basis of this live show, are the musical equivalent of woodchip wallpaper. Up close things may appear to have some sort of value but from a distance it merges into an annoymous whole. and, like woodchip, it's main purpose is to cover up the cracks underneath.

Musically this does absolutely nothing new, it breaks no ground, and as a live experience, has no viceral content and no emotional depth. It's simply pretty, trading in musical cliches, rising and falling in waves, as predictible as the tides but with a shadow of there power.

Admitedly it does everything you'd expect, has nice noises, gets louder then quieter then louder then quieter. Adds stuff then takes it away.

Surely we want music which challenges the mundane nature of everyday life, not refltects it. Let things be good, or bad, but mediocrity is not a temple anyone should ever be worshiping at.

(OK, admittedly, I'm probably rambling above, and this is just a bunch of thoughts in sequence rather then a structured review, but this music made me feel like i'd already died, that feeling, the human experience, had been taken, muted, and fed back to me like it was the real thing)

the word "secret" in quote marks.

b-

has the worst sound of possibly any venue in london... i think i'm going to cry.

i wonder who that scottish four piece are...

has given me a headache... following the replies has given me a migraine.

have to say the first time i saw her live was completely affecting. about 4 people paying attention, her sat at a little keyboard with her friend accompanying on guitar, just singing the most stripped down bare songs i'd heard in ages, the voice singing the kinda quarter tones ian curtis made his own.

it's pretty clear though is since signing there's been a marked change in the presentation of the music she's making and that the production imposed on her just makes it sound like any other. if a recording captured the sound of that gig i saw all of a year ago, stripped down, naked, vulnerable and yet completely unashamedly honest and sure in it's convictions, we'd have had a truly great album on our hands.

the better... actually not that bad really. just a bit acid jazz for me.

seriously though, this reader feels that maybe the reviewer in question could be a little more punctual for gigs in the future ;)

people writing nonsense. i think it should be encouraged in fact.

but where people are writing things which sound like they should make sense but in fact make no sense that tends to get me a little miffed.

a DiS style guide would be hillarious...

this band not being massive is the biggest fuck up in recent british musical history.

i'd heard they were going to split for a while as other projects had taken on more momentum.

still, i guess we have a new hard-fi album instead to listen too...

mister oliveri provided an edge, which is distinctly lacking since he left.

that the comsumptive offspring of any bands (whoever they may be) would be completely incapable of doing any rampaging, general or otherwise, and would most likely be confined to their sickly death beds.

fucking on the dance floor you'd only have needed to turn around and ask...

bondo do role were a revelation. and coming onto the looped riff from Sad But True was a moment of genius.

TRUCK moved to Mike Divers garden and shed. it's a DiS exclusive.

aboslutely no humour in this news article anywhere. surely you could got in a few puns, a comment about his hair or beard, anything something. very dissapointed. d-

had thought of the Lovebox first...

does anyone have a large back garden we could have the festival in instead (ie. does anyone know the queen?)