There is talk of seizing the day, yes, and of “throwing in for the team” but I’m not sure which deity they are expecting me to invoke to find those magic extra minutes.

So, then, this is not about seizing the day. This is about that five minute window between 3:24 and 3:29 every afternoon when the LCD spits phosphors at your face while the sun outside reflects off the fish-silver office buildings and the clouds sit high above.

Slip off the noose, children, and embrace that which should be yours. (mp3, 74mb)

Tracklisting
Pnau – Embrace
The Modernist – The International Loner
Rex the Dog – I Look Into Mid Air
Jeans Team – Faul
Hercules & Love Affair – Blind
Muscles – One Inch Badge Pin
Chromeo – Destination: Overdrive
Cut Copy – Hearts on FIre
The Presets – This Boy’s In Love
Justice – One Minute to Midnight
Pnau – With You Forever
Cicada – You Got Me Feeling
Digitalism – Digitalism in Cairo
The Field – Everday
Underworld – To Heal
UNKLE – Burn My Shadow
Bonobo – Nightlite
Underworld – Beautiful Burnout

Posted in Flatbeat on Sunday June 29, 2008. Shoutouts.

I don’t know what Death Cab’s “Grapevine Fires” is about, but it’s beautiful and it just about redeems the rest of their sadly lacklustre new album.

Posted in Flatbeat on Sunday June 15, 2008. Shoutouts.

fantastic flavoured fancies sick like Sid and Nancy wicked as a joy ride jaunt

“You don’t seem like an ‘Oh yeah’ crowd,” she says, “but maybe after a few more songs about sex, we can coax an ‘Oh yeah’ from you. Yeah?” as the eighteen year-old next to me takes out his phone and starts texting. I glance at the screen as he taps away, “at nypc so wasted wer u?” I am here. She is here. They are here. The others are not.

I want to be locked away in some tiny concrete room, underground, with the others who get it. I want walls to hem us in. I want to feel the crowd around me and to smell the sweat. I feel bad for her, on this beautiful evening, in front of this crowd who stand and stare without moving. We are making a mockery.

Posted in Flatbeat on Thursday January 10, 2008. Shoutouts.

What were the skies like when you were young?

Posted in Flatbeat on Saturday August 11, 2007. Shoutouts.

And glow,
Glow,
Melt and flow,
Eviscerate your fragile frame,
And spill it out on the ragged floor,
A thousand different versions of yourself. (mp3, 93mb)

Tracklisting
The Shins – Sleeping Lessons
Battles – Atlas
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Y Control (The Faint remix)
LCD Soundsystem – Yeah
DJ Shadow – Outsider
The Chemical Brothers – Lost in the K-Hole
Delerium – Deluxed
The Dust Brothers – Single Serving Jack
LCD Soundsystem – Us vs Them
Cut Copy – Going Nowhere (Whitey remix)
Underworld – Crocodile
Connie Case – Get Down
The Faint – Your Retro Career Melted (Ursula 1000 remix)
A Number of Names – Shari Vari (Ectomorph remix)
Severed Heads – Dead Eyes Open
Deadly Avenger – Wild Chillies
Bonobo – Ketto
Headless Chickens – Cruise Control
8bit Rockers – Dolf
Dntel – Roll On
08 – The Untitled (Male)

Posted in Flatbeat on Thursday August 9, 2007. Shoutouts [1].

Posted in Vidiot on Monday June 11, 2007. Shoutouts.

Born to gaze into night skies,
When all you want’s one more Saturday.
Well look here, until then
They gonna buy your life’s time
So keep your wick in the air and your feet in the fetters
‘Til the day…
We come in doing cartwheels
We all crawl out by ourselves
And your shape on the dance floor
Will have me thinking such filth I’ll gouge my eyes.

Posted in Randoms on Sunday March 11, 2007. Shoutouts [2].

Sunday brought warm and sunny weather just in time for the 2007 Good Vibrations Festival in the glorious Swan Valley locale of Belvoire Ampitheatre, what I’d consider the perfect venue for any late-summer outdoor gig. The fantastic line-up didn’t dissapoint – and Cut Copy took my vote for most danceable live gig, they didn’t set a foot wrong. Jurassic 5 drew a huge crowd, and rightly so, the weather, the crowd, and the atmosphere were just right. They seemed to think so too, exclaiming, “You know, Perth, I just love this bowl thing you’ve got going on."

For me, the only disappointment of the day was Cassius, playing a heavy and straightforward techno set that seemed to borrow nothing from the filtered French house sound I associate with them. The tent was heaving, but I wasn’t feeling it – so I traipsed across to London Elektricity. I had completely forgotten how fucking great Drum and Bass can be. Perth has a killer scene, and I think it’s time to start getting back into it.

The Beasties have an extensive back-catalogue and it showed, you tend to forget just how long they’ve been pumping out songs until you hear hit after hit after hit. Nothing amazing, but I’m glad I caught them before their zimmer-frame tour.

Although the sun set too early on this year’s Good Vibes, I pity the fool who misses it next year. Sure, it’s no Coachella, but that’s part of the attraction, isn’t it?

Posted in Flatbeat on Wednesday February 21, 2007. Shoutouts [1].

Professional angry-man, pedant, and all round great guy, Doug Thailes, writes in with the latest from the Perth scene, Burning Sensation:

There are some bands that are born great. There are some bands that have greatness thrust upon them. There are some bands that have thrust their great erections into thrush-ridden, syphilitic rotting vaginas, emerging with fetid, flaccid, diseased genitals and a fistful of pure songwriting gold. This is not Burning Sensation. Sure, they fu**ed the aforementioned syphlitic, rotting vaginas (amongst other organs and genders), but they emerged with a fistful of disturbed, purely wrong compositions that raise as many questions as they do eyebrows.

Burning Sensation are from Perth. Their songs are short and sharp, ripping chunks of musical flesh alternatively from 70s/80s UK punk bands like Conflict, Wire and Buzzcocks, and 70s/80s LA/US dumb punk freaks like The Angry Samoans and The Misfits. Their obvious lack of style, instrumental finesse and subtlety puts them in the same lineage as countless punk morons and hardcore flailers. What sets them apart? It’s hard to say really. Only writing songs about STD’s? Being WORSE? I don’t know, and I suspect neither do they. In these times of faceless indie pu##ies crapping out immaculately produced Pro-tools snoozefests, ‘punk’ bands churning out well-written, instrumentally complex epics with multiple time-changes and EVERYBODY having enough Photoshop skills to make hideous coffee-table-yuppie-design-magazine cover art, sometimes I just want to hear something that purely SUCKS with a vengeance. And this sh** fu**ing BLOWS.

Burning Sensation play at 6pm, at 208 Whatley Crs in Maylands on Saturday the 20th of January with Straightjacket Nation, Extortion, Sex Panther, 9 Must Die and Cease. $5.

www.myspace.com/burningsensationburningsensation

Posted in Flatbeat on Friday January 12, 2007. Shoutouts.

“Sun Tzu said: The good fighters of old first put themselves beyond the possibility of defeat, and then waited for an opportunity of defeating the enemy. To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself. Thus the good fighter is able to secure himself against defeat, but cannot make certain of defeating the enemy.”

Thusly, one may know how to conquer without being able to do it (mp3, 80mb.)

Tracklisting
Blackstone & Atari – Bang Bang Overture
Kojak – Stupid Jack
Hexstatic – Ninja tune
The Herbaliser – 8 point agenda
The Knife – Girls’ Night Out
Eazy-E – No More ?‘s
Radio Free Mars
Alex Smoke – Chica Wappa (Mejor edit)
Gui Boratto – Arquipalago
Kirsty Harkshaw – Fine Day (James Holden Remix)
The Books – Be Good to Them Always
Jose Gonzales – Hand On Your Heart
Certainly, Sir – Happy
Erlend Oye – Ghost Trains (feat. Morgan Geist)
The Roots – In the Music (feat. Malik B.)
Madvillain – Figaro
Sunset Rubdown – Shut Up I Am Dreaming of Places Where Lovers Have Wings

Posted in Flatbeat on Wednesday January 10, 2007. Shoutouts.