Random bobbins

Does anyone have any questions for Neil Hannon from The Divine Comedy?  I'm going to be interviewing him in a few weeks, so let me know.

We've also got 4 tickets for the NME new music show at Electric Ballroom tomorrow which we don't want anymore as we're going to the Ibiza Rocks launch party.  They are £11 and you'll get to see Boy Kill Boy, The Automatic, Long Blondes and Forward Russia all for that price!

If you're not busy on Friday there are a couple of good things happnening. The aforementioned Veto Silver are playing at Koko at Club NME alongside Protokoll. [and remember next week at CNME,  The Cazals and Doloroso are playing, both of whom I'd recommend.]  Instead though, I'm planning to go to Aftershow Club - Simon Price's new night - up in, no good for anyone, Kentish Town.  It's a new disco night and Simon will be joined by Billy Reeves [formerly of theaudience] on the decks.  I must go shopping for something disco-esque tomorrow.

Then the bank holiday weekend arrives and ideally I'd like to get out of London but I'm not sure whether that will be financially possible at this late stage.  If I do stay then, Masters of Work at Canvas sounds good, if a little expensive.

When the week rocks around, Tuesday night at the Garage should through up some girly delights with Betty Curse supporting Robots in Disguise.  And the girly fun continues as The Like make like it's 1996 and support Phoenix in the death pit of Mean Fiddler.  The winner of best girl gig of the week though surely has to go to Frank (yes them off that T4 show) and Girls Aloud at Wembley.  Yum.

I’m At The Forefront of Technology

Miss-Shapes Setlist 18/5/06

Miss-Shapes last night was fun. Fuelled by Chinese takeaway, Big Brother and a lot of alcohol, Darren, Ady, Bonnie & gang set sail on the good ship Ghetto to see if we could cope without the social catalysting of the wonderous Sam & Duncan. 

I'm regularly getting people coming and requesting tunes telling me they know I have it because they've seen it on this blog now.  So make yourself known people.  Stop lurking!

Tonight we're DJing Popstarz from 10 - 11, then going to Comeout2night at the Purple Turtle to catch the end of the Apartment gig. Then we'll run over the road to Club NME to see Morningwood before ending up at Riot Fever.

This is what we played last night.   A mixture of stuff. Not overly new, but fun. 

Veto Silver

Ages ago, like properly ages ago a band called Veto Silver played at Nag Nag Nag. With nothing else to do that evening, we thought we might as well go and see them, as we'd heard things about them and well it sounded alright.  They were pretty good live, the crowd were very 'ooh you're pretty lets touch you' and when I spoke to them backstage afterwards, they seemed like really nice guys.  Then I promptly forgot about them.

Flip forward to now, and we've just received their promo for Stay Young, Stay Beautiful, the track that really stood out back on that October evening.  It it's simplest form this is a boy band, hell they've even got the same surnames, but more importantly this is a boyband with synths (and guitars), who've really been loving their old Duran Duran records.   SY SB is nicely produced, sounds good and will be penetrating the ears of the miss-shapes crowd on Thursday.    

If you can't come to dance to it, then check them out on MySpace, or see them live at Club NME in a few weeks.

Yesterday, Today

Yesterday was rubbish in the world of music.  Today, however, is brilliant.

Yesterday it was announced that Clor, one of my favourite new bands from last year had called it a day.  Ther debut album ' Clor ' had entertained us and the Miss-Shapes crowd for many a time over the last 12 months and they were a great act to see live.  Their music was a quirky duelling guitar electro indie sound, with lots of interesting spazzy squelchy moments.  Good Stuff, Outlines, Love & Pain, and Dangerzone are just some of the highlights, but I urge you to buy the album and give it a chance if you've never heard of them.   Chaotic & damningly catchy - they will be missed.

Today though, The Pipettes album promos for We Are The Pipettes have gone out, and brought us a glorious 33 minutes of gloriously oozing pop.  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, they've gone out and got some strings (or at least some synthy strings) and the album is really full and luxiorious sounding.  Everything seems pretty familiar for long time fans but there are a few surprises.  It Hurts To See You Dance So Well goes silent where we expect it to end and then cracks back in with an extra verse with a different arrangement, ABC has some different instrument sounds (maybe trumpet, im RUBBISH at picking out instruments) and I Love You sounds much darker.  It's great to finally have all these songs recordered properly, rather than having to listen to them in ear raping quality.  I cannot wait to play Pull Shapes to a dancefloor!!

Congratulations

Councillor Darren Parker of Hackney.

2006’s best pop song: Part II.

NOW IN FULL

So a while ago, Karinski.net brought you Rihanna's SOS video declaring it the best pop song so far in 2006.

Well here's the 2nd in the sequence of 2006's best pop songs.  We've been playing it ruthlessly at Miss-Shapes since March and now it's finally got a release date of 5th June.  Rock on Nelly.

Boy Kill Boy - Live on a Boat

There's no big secret that I'm rather a large fan of Boy Kill Boy.  I wrote about them at Islington Academy earlier in the year, and I got chance to see them live on a boat on Saturday. We were pretty tired, having been djing Popstarz till 4am the night before but the music was good, and the sun was shining so we ended up having a lovely Saturday and it gave us a great excuse to get out of the house early!

You're probably already singing the catchy hook of Suzie to yourself regularly but try catching the band live on the NME new bands tour if you can or buy their debut album Civilian when it's released in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime though, you can check out my words and Millys photo at the review of the gig over on Gigwise.

Annie

Back in the summer of 2004, I remember going through some promo cds and seeing huge numbers of discs from someone called Annie.  I listened to the song (Chewing Gum), thought it was pretty crap, and thought little of it again.  A couple of months later, at our Oaklands housewarming Laurie alerted me to a video playing in silence on our TV which turned out to be Chewing Gum.  He thought it was ace (afaik) and I have vague memories of him going on about her giving Kylie the finger with the video, whereas I muttered about it being toss.  ERROR.

Then, I don't know when it was, or how, but suddenly Annie, Chewing Gum, the whole caboodle just clicked. This was awesome pop!   Anniemal, the album, had been withdrawn for a future re-release, but I managed to get a copy left over somewhere probably in about January 2005 and was very impressed by it.  Full of light electro-pop songs, Annie had a cute, thin voice and the songs were full of squelchy little noises that make it exciting.  Me Plus One, Anniemal and My Heartbeat shone and alongside Chewing Gum were firm favourites on the Miss-Shapes dancefloor (in fact the first time I heard My Heartbeat outside my stereo was on the dancefloor at Misshapes which made my jetlag compeletely disappear).  Of course, being brilliant pop, the album and singles sank miserably and only the bloggers were digging it.

Then disaster struck when Annie supported St Etienne in concert at Koko during July 2005 when she was just plain awful!  Her voice sounded rubbish, she seemed bored, and there was absolutely no pop star spark.  We went away rather sadly, and it was sometime before we really enjoyed Anniemal again.

But what is the point, you may be wondering, for this long post about a pop star everyone was raving about 2 years ago.  The point is that this weekend, The Crush, the lead single from her new album made it's way into my ears.  It's different, I'll give it that. Completely different to anything I've ever heard Annie do.  In fact, if I heard this in a club I'd probably race to Shazam it and would have no idea who it was.  For a start, there's a guitar :o and lots of drums.  This is Annie singing with a proper band (or maybe a nice band machine), this is Annie being a female frontwoman, in fact, imagine Annie fronting the White Stripes first album and you're not far off it. 

It's quickly become my most played Annie track though, and I've no doubt I'll play it lots and people will dance.  As James said, this sounds like a woman who isn't letting a label or a producer dictate her work - she's just gone off and made what she wants to.  Rumour has it, more Anniemaly remixes have been made, so we'll wait to hear those.  Could this be the one to turn the general publics head?

The Pipettes grow up

Way back in January 2005 a group of us trekked to the 100 Club in London to see The Go! Team live.  I'd just read some article on Londonist about a band called The Pipettes who were supporting the band so it seemed worth going early.  Well since then I've written about them loads and go on about them to anyone who'd listen, as well as seeing them live about 15 times.

Finally, after 2 proper single releases on Memphis Records, an album release date (July 18) has been announced!  The band have just put two finished album versions of tracks up on their myspace page and it's well worth a listen. A far cry away from their live lo-fi sound, future single Pull Shapes reveals a lush, stringy, full sound and sounds better than you could ever imagine.  They've gone from being a cute almost school stage performance to being a real sit up and notice wow band to more than just us dedicated few.   Check out their songs, and see them live, they put on a superb performance.

Photo taken from Music Like Dirt's flickr stream.