'Wretched'

It's nice to see at least one public figure bucking the trend of the media current. It seems most people are more than happy to (or just appear to) adopt the goldfish short memorys that are required of our TV soaps and apply them to real life. Michael Parkinson has spoken out in the Sunday Times at the glorified exit of Jade Goody saying what a lot of people are probably thinking.

The article is available here:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article6048656.ece

Gaycore

Yeah, you’ve heard of Jewdriver but Black Fag or Gayrilla Biscuits? Hardcore has always been better when it doesn't take itself to seriously but where the hell did this scene come from? Gay punk cover bands that are actually pretty good, even if the lyrics get pretty graphic? Yes they’re here.

Gayrilla Biscuits

Transexpistols

Black Fag

Obsolete?

Math from Pixelh8 on Vimeo.

I’m a big fan of Pixelh8 so when he announced these experimental shows I was excited and intrigued. Being more than adept in 8-bit sounds and computer wizardry, if anyone was up for the job, they had picked the right man. I had no real idea of what to expect but thought the mixture of classic war time computers and modern music geekery could go either way. As it happens it was a so so affair.

Unfortunately the show’s emphasis fell more on the computers leaving me feeling a bit lost in a sea computers rather than an actual music event. The entertainment formed a 7 part set of songs and visuals. The pieces were all made from recordings of clunks and clicks made by various items around Bletchly Park Computer Museum. This gave it a percussion heavy vibe that cried out for Pixelh8’s beautifully buzzing computer melodies and left it feeling somewhat sparse. Despite this the visuals were a delight and accompanied the pieces with a great mass of flickering animations that brought a lot of it to life.

While the pieces created work well as an experiment in Bletchley much of this type of thing has been done before. The visuals were particularly interesting but couldn’t quite make up for it.

Super

One of the great thing about going on holiday is a special form of shopping. The foreign supermarket is an alien place that every so often will present you with a gem.