tenshu.net » Music

Random musical linkage

cmsj — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:49:35 +0000

I listen to a lot of electronic music and one of the nice things about that is the intermingling of other music by way of samples.

Case in point, I’m currently watching The Ballet Boyz’s production of The Rite Of Spring with Rike, and I suddenly realised that the string motif playing at the entrance of The Elders is sampled and looped to great effect by the hypnotic Physical World on Freeland’s album Now & Them.

This kind of thing makes me smile :)

Foo Fighters Wembley Concert, the tale of a weekend like no other

cmsj — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:34:36 +0000

It seems like I have failed utterly to comment on the towering totem of raw awesome that was the Foo Fighters concert on a balmy Saturday in June.

To put the event in context, I spent a few hours during the day with Rike, Alex and Simon in Hyde Park at the Red Bull Flügtag. We ate, we drank, we watched ridiculous people flinging themselves from a raised platform into The Serpentine in craft that almost invariably were capable solely of an ungraceful and undignified plunge. The notable exception being a poor attempt at a basic hangglider design, which somehow stalled and dived its way to a distance record.

We then said goodbye to Alex and headed half way across London toWembley Stadium, where we arrived to a bigger queue for the toilet than for the gates, so we were inside in a jiffy. We’d missed the support acts nonsense and things were gearing up for the Foos. It was a pretty impressive sight and sound to walk out onto what would normally be the pitch, amongst an almost capacity crowd (Dave Grohl seemed to think there were 86,000 people there).

Then noise, then cheering, then rock. Twenty minutes of rock go by before they take so much as a beat of a break to say hello. More rocking. Rock. Rockity rock. Rock. Special appearance by Jimmy Paige and John Paul Jones from Led Zepplin. Rock. Good night. Massive firework show.
Best gig I’ve ever been to, and I’m not expecting it to ever be beaten.
I would describe the show in more detail, but if you weren’t there then you lose, sorry.

Except you don’t lose! You can now buy a DVD or a Bluray of the show, and I am here to tell you that you absolutely should, especially if you own a Bluray player.

My copy of the Bluray arrived yesterday and I’ve watched the entire 2 hour show twice so far. There seem to be cameras everywhere and they’re edited together well, so it’s a treat to watch. The show was presented in conjunction with BBC Radio One and they broadcast it, so the sound recording is very good. What else do you care about? There are no extras, but who cares.

As if the weekend hadn’t offered up enough excitement already, Simon and I went to Silverstone on the Sunday to see a day of Renault motorsport.

Yudee!

cmsj — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 01:11:56 +0000

A couple of years older, a couple of years wiser, I saw Ugly Duckling again at the Jazz Cafe in cheery old Camden Town recently. Last time they were Meat Shakin’, but this time they had Bang for The Buck which is a really sweet album and makes for some very cool live performance.
The venue is kinda small so it’s *very* cosy, but the only people at UD gigs seem to be all other UD fans, so everyone is having a shitload of fun and is ignoring the inevitable game of “guess the body part” ;)

From a weird, observational point of view, the typical demographic this time was older and more suburban than last time, which is…as I said, weird.

If you’re not familiar with UD, head to their site (link above) and it will play a track. Reload for another. Realise you want the rest ;)

Glastonbury 2005

cmsj — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 10:38:05 +0000

Woo! Ok, so the torrential rain and inches of mud were a bit of a pain, but didn’t dampen many spirits and the festival was still a lot of fun :)
I saw some groovy acts play (Jools Holland, Van Morisson, Royksopp, etc.) and saw some funny sights (the guy in the tent near us who made a habit of walking around naked, for example) and generally communed with hippies for a few days.
I hope the 2007 festival is as good, if not better!

My pics are here, mooks’s are here and Tam’s are here

Happenings

cmsj — Sun, 12 Jun 2005 16:19:59 +0000

I forgot to mention that I saw The Chemical Brothers live recently. They’re touring at the moment, so a few of us caught them at the Brighton Centre (not the best gig venue in the world ever, it has to be said). They rock a bunch :)
Up and coming musical happenings are my trips to Glastonbury and Big Chill festivals – expect lots of photos unless some pikey half-inches my camera ;)

Last bongo in Brighton

cmsj — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 15:30:57 +0000

Last night I went to a DJ Format gig at the most excellent Concorde 2 here in Brighton, with Alex and Simon.
In short, it rocked!
Format is a great DJ and Abdominal is a great rapper. D-Sisive was ok, but doesn’t seem to be as good as Abdominal.
They played some tunes off their new album, “If you can’t join em, beat em” as well as some classics from “Music for the Mature B-Boy”, including a very funny version of Vicious Battle Raps with most of the lyrics reversed from the original.
There was a bunch of crowd interaction, including getting a guy to race against Abdominal; he had to eat a breadstick and then whistle in the same amount of time it took Abdominal to rap out 8 bars at full speed (which isn’t very many seconds). Personally I think he lost, but they gave him the CD anyway ;)

If Format and friends are playing anywhere near you (click here to find out), you should go see them :)

More Ugly!

cmsj — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 13:25:31 +0000

I think I’ve figured out what I’m going to be doing on New Years Eve….. another Ugly Duckling gig! woo!

If you’re interested (and you should be), check it out here before the tickets run out!

You Gee Ell Why!

cmsj — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 20:50:20 +0000

It’s Monday. It’s the 1st of November. It’s 2004. This means only one thing…

Tonight I am going to an Ugly Duckling gig in London! WOO! More when I’ve actually been ;)

Update: Wooo! UD rock live! They were unfortunately a little late arriving, so could only play for about an hour, but the set they did was fantastic – funky and funny. I strongly recommend you grab their albums/EPs.