Yes its May Day and a whole 40 years since the summer of 1968 where so many of our parents (probably) generation thought something might happen, and perhaps something nearly did. Anyway, here’s some music from that year.

It sounds almost ironic now, doesn’t it.

Amazing even now, The Beatles White Album was released in November, sending special messages to Charles Manson. John Lennon and John Hoyland exchanged letters in the media about the summers protests.

And more and more and on and on. The Yardbirds disbanded and Led Zeppellin rose from their ashes. Hendrix recorded Electric Ladyland. Small Faces released their first album. Et cetera…

And then after all, after the tear gas and petrol bombs of Paris had cleared, Elvis had his come back special…

Brilliant outsider singer song writer, and self mythologist, Daniel Johnston is playing a gig in Whelans on July 27th. He’ll be supported by a host of names, but its really a chance to see one of the most enchantingly difficult men in music. Tickets go on sale today from tickets.ie

Get me one will you?

I downloaded the excellent Tronika mini-album from Sketch Show there the other day, and was totally blown away by it. But, and here lies evidence of my total inability to work the googlemachine, I couldn’t find out anything about them in English. Gradually I looked closer and specifically to the excellently named NipPop, an internet resource on Japanese music.

It turns out that the two main guys are former members of Yellow Magic Orchestra, the giants of experimental electro, kind of a Japanese Kraftwerk. The music they do now is reminiscent of a more accessible Aphex Twin, from his ambient period, and the collaboration with Cornelius really tells through, with playful flashes layering unto the beautifully crafted aural textures and chanted lyrics, in both Japanese and English.

I am utterly enchanted by this little piece of brilliance and am now planning to buy the live dvd. The clip above is from it, the two guys in question are the bass player and drummer, called Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi respectively. They even look utterly brilliant. Love the hat.

Oh and if anyone has any of the other albums by these guys, or more infomation, please let me know or comment on this posting. Thanks.

As the man with the best myspace background in history, Kavinsky has a lot to be smug about. But not that much. He’s tried to build up a tongue-in-cheek myth about himself, but his ramblings about zombies, Ferrari’s and the 1980’s make him sound like a delusional fool. But none of this is important.

What is, is how he sounds. He more often gigs with SebastiAn, who’s more muscular take on French dance seems to off set Kavinsky’s more cartoonish approach. As with many others from the ED Banger Records stable, Kavinsky sticks to the mould of sample repeat, add beat, repeat original sample louder, middle bit with only beat then first half of song looped. Make any sense? Basically he sticks rigidly to the model that has proved so successful for Daft Punk and Mr Ozio.

Live, and on his own, Kavinsky is fun, without any of the transience that better dj’s can provide. His sound is intentionally retro- often seeming like the intro to a bad 80’s film with one of the Sheen’s and a Douglas. This is both a good thing, in the short term, and a bad thing in the longer- it gets old fast.

Still if you’re horsing down drugs, I’m sure he’ll sound great.

Apparently, we’re meant to have some kind of integrity and our reviews legitimacy. Its not okay to review albums on the basis of a quick skip through the tracks and a look over the press release: WTF?

As the only album I’ve reviewed, for this publication, I listened to over and over again before I knew I was doing the review I can’t really comment directly, but I know damn rightly when I first get an album I can pretty much get it enough to report it fairly accurately. Yes there are grower albums, which are often the most rewarding eventually, but if you’re listening to an album professionally then you ought to be able to get it done soon. If it sounds like horror, then you write that down and skip on…

Or rather not. If you’re doing it, then its your job. We’re meant to be professional about it. Listen through it, a couple of times. I’m sure we’ll all get a good enough ear that we can hear the opening note, divine the rest of the song instantly and probably have the review written mentally before you’ve pealed the plastic off. But not yet. Well not me, anyway.

I can’t believe the Guardian thought there was a debate here.

I recently piked the Xiu Xiu album, Women as Lovers. Its an unsettling little piece of work. Quite what the artist is reaching for is unsure. He seems to be trying to worry you, like a drunk who delights in shitting himself on the bus, the music seems designed to drive you away. The lyrics also repulse, like the afore mentioned drunk squishing around a bit, smacking his lips, making big lip smacky sounds. You’re going to think ‘fuck it, I could do with the walk, perhaps I’ll get off here, in Newbridge‘. The music, as it is, is submerged in layers of noise: the constant hum of discordance and unhappiness, and Stewart’s breathless dominant delivery of those fuk’d lyrics, the unveiling horror of whats going on inside of him. It might be interesting if there was a redeeming feature, other than the Queen/Bowie cover. Even the cover photograph is soft-focus nightmare of a Japanese rope fetishists dream.

We’re all revving up for the festival season here in the anablog caverns. The vans been polished. Hats are being tried on, the jauntiness of angle perfected. Old sleeping bags are being unfurled and the empty crisp packets and other matter is being swept out of them. The tie dye arrived last night and the old tee-shirts of the years before are being vetted for credibility. Soon, soon, my friends. The elysian fields are calling, can you hear it?

Umm… Its actually quite away from the season. Months and months. Still tickets are being booked, holidays booked in work and camper vans are already nearly booked up. So some bastards excited.

I’m not, though. There are so many festivals this summer that its difficult to guage which ones to go for. If you haven’t got press passes that is. And lets face it, Bren’s never going to favour me with one of those. And so which ones? There’s the Electric Picnic, which is nearly always brilliant, but the defection of both Body & Soul and the Foggy Notions might leave it feeling flat. Both those teams are putting together there own events this year and with Latitude coming as well it might make for a busy summer. Oxygen can piss off if it thinks its getting a mention. Oh. Balls. Anyway, with big festivals on the continent like Roskilde being cheaper and boasting an unbelievable line up (Radiohead, Battles, Band of Horses, Chemical Brothers, Efterklang, My Bloody Valentine and SLAYER) Ireland might not get a look in at all. If I get a job that is. And they give me time off. And I’m not doing something else, like sleeping.

You know people who collect rubbish in their houses, terrified to let anything go lest they loose some part of themselves as well? Or the scarred limping olds who scuttle round city centers with metal shopping trolleys packed high with old plastic bags, full of “good stuff” they’ve found in bins, before finding a quiet alley to die from the cold in? Yes, you know them. They’re crazies.

Well, what happens if you’re obsession happens to be music. You obsessively store it, scared you’ll loose a single note, some of the liner notes, you make back ups in hard copy and digitally and preserve the original, in its box, away in a special room, which you call your treasure room, living in fear of Conan the Barbarian, or worse, you’re ma destroying it. Yes, we’re crazies too.

But, and here’s where you’re money comes in, what if you had the money, a specially built warehouse and the obsessive hoarding instinct? Well you end up with this. Over 3 million records, a state of the art store age facility and pressing medical costs which necessitates the sale of your beautiful baby boy. Well then, pony up the cash and lets get this lot into the analogue office. Bren‘ll never notice…

I’ve had a long running love affair with music which lyrically I don’t understand. That is not to say that the opaqueness of the lyrics puzzles me happy, as say with the largely meaningless refrains of Radiohead’s Amnesiac, but rather because they’re in French. I studied the French language from the age of 6 ‘til I was 16. I understand very very little of it, despite this, largely because I’m stupid.

However I love French music. Every kind of it. Nearly. I can’t stand soft rock. Bands like Le Rue Kétanou I love, spiraling gypsy brilliance with lyrics about freedom and bohemian lifestyle that thankfully I can’t understand because I’m fairly sure that their hippy insufferablility would ruin it for me. I love the flow and rhythm of Saïan Supa Crew, but their lyrics which their website tells me are about racism and drug use, religious violence and suicide, are also in French. Again bonus.

This might strike you as desperately stupid, and it probably is, as I certainly am. I just really enjoy the sounds and rhythms without being burdened with meaning, which I then have to engage with, and agree with or disagree with, and it takes some of the relaxation away from me.

Happy Valentines Day. Otherwise read this.

A few years ago Ireland had one of the strongest anti-globalisation movements in Europe. The Reclaim the Streets march had thousands of long hairs out in central Dublin partying away. Then they seemingly evaporated, they went away and haven’t been seen again since. It’s difficult to work out why. Some will have got jobs, cut their hair and got on making money. Some left Ireland, to bigger canvas’s. Some turned away from the movement to concentrate on the war in Iraq.

The surprise, I suppose, has been that they haven’t been replaced.It could be that Ireland is too damn small, Dublin even, to support more than a few youth movements. And ‘movements’ itself is the wrong word they’re more like groups, loose affiliations and groups of friends, who dress the same a bit and hang out in front of the Central Bank and Starbucks. At the moment there are hipsters, emo kids and nu-ravers. Nothing else has arisen in large enough numbers to make a cultural impact. The hip hop kids are dismissed as scobes, the longhairs are mostly privilege hippies, and everyone else is English. None of the tribes that are currently thriving in the capital have anything political about them.

The hipsters are the most conscious of the political, but are the worst of the three. They wryly observe, self-consciously sit apon the sidelines witnessing the world, aware of the problems and the need to do something, but prefer to cock a snook, or to blog humorlessly about clothes and bad Italian cinema. The music is varied and some, mostly folk, is explicitly policital but the scene itself is about iconoclastic apathy. They wear Make Poverty History wrist bands and Arabic scarves, but when asked about them they spew nonchalant irony and sarcasm.

What’s going on with the emo kids? What are they thinking in there? Is it the same as goth, the introspection and the bad poetry? Are you trying to work out whats going on in your own heads never mind everyone elses, never mind the worlds? Whatever, the trend seems too commercial and self-reguarding for there to be much going on, and even if the lyrics are wild klaxon calls to the red flag, they haven’t had any goddamn effect. The only march I ever saw them on was an unpaid publicity march up Grafton Street for the launch of the Black Parade album.

There is something nihilistic about the total anti-politics and euphoria of the nu-ravers. The music is mindlessly fun, lyrics meaningless refrains, some even advertising slogans, existing solely to be shouted deliriously. Intentionally there is no depth, nothing else there, allowing you to utterly escape. It is quite political in its own negative way, but it hardly promotes anything like the rage and activism that the similarly apolitical Nirvana did.

And so here we are, in a time of strong tribal youth cultures but little politics. Perhaps it’s something to do with the success of the tiger. We don’t have much to complain about and maybe the capitalists are right, so what the hell’s there to protest against? Maybe the movements were defeated. Maybe we’ll all be back on the streets soon when the jobs we presumed were waiting for us by rights aren’t there when we get out of college. At a time where there is more inequality and injustice, when there is so much that ought to merit protest, when our police service and government act like the criminals and cheats they condemn, it is disappointing to look around and see so much energy wasted. You’re young for godsake. Shout about something.