I'm lazy, I'm hazy / new music review / brushing yr teeth - mish mash stuff post

Early afternoon today, I woke up late and wrote out a list of my favourite albums of all time. HERE. This evening, lying on my bed in a vague haze I am listening to two of my top ten and am beginning to glimpse at the majesty of all - how little I know and have managed to grasp and am beginning to discover. Whilst my family are downstairs watching Doctor Who I am reading through the Sick Mouthy and Devon Record Club archives and bookmarking a lot of things that I don't have time to do without committing to them at the expense of other things (each of these uncommitted to - and so I do nothing).

My two favourite records this evening, brought to mind by my list and pushed into my ears by the discovery of Wild Swim.

It can't be time to break through yet, though; I refuse to move through the haze, sober up and pursue that which gives me a sense of fulfilment as well as the façade of enjoyment. I really am rubbish at seizing the day.

What do we do when we are without the drive to delve into the archives of the canon, or shortlist? Either look forward or just ignore the issue. For once, I seem to have done the former and in earlier perusing the Glastonbury emerging sound competition (not capitalised, read: too lazy to fact check the comp.'s name) longlist I discovered a host of new things to be excited about. Of these, the one with which I really clicked was Wild Swim. Towards the end of your first listen, it dawns upon you that they're amazing.

The last thing you would do would be to accuse them of aping Wild Beasts, and yet it is hard to ignore an approach that blends the most baroque of Hayden Thorpe's vocals with a minimalist sound reminiscent of all the influences you would expect cited for Smother - the kind of music that gives you a hankering for late Radiohead or Atoms For Peace. As Echo develops, it reveals itself as almost onomatopoeic: a collage of influences that near-crescendos, never quite coming to flower. Ending in a cacophony that leaves you almost as puzzled as you are pleasured, the track is the more wild side of Wild Swim, a band whose music seems to be the result of mixing restraint with boundlessness. The record's b side, Bright Eyes, showcases the opposite end of the spectrum, a pool in which you can languish and perhaps pull a length or two out of that locker we probably have a key to somewhere. Currently available to pre-order, their latest is a more mature fusion of the two styles, and is even more brilliant than Echo. I may well purchase both releases, but I'm trying to save money and writing this feels like justification for only streaming them. I won't forget about them. This should be more than enough to tempt you into listening now. Do it. Can you sense my urgency? I must flip the record and refill my drink.






Forget it. I have finished my drink and so am signing off here. Here is a link to my Instagram account, where I've started a new trend of people taking unattractive pictures of themselves brushing their teeth. Byeeeeeeeee


J.

p.s. I only told you about one of the longlist. There were loads of good'uns - find it here. Other favourites were Moats (obviously, I've mentioned before that I like them and they're quite nice too), Isaiah Dreads (a 15 year old mc who has an incredible flow but semi-rubbish beats) and Mt. Wolf. Here's a song.<br />
<br />
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writing #3 - An Attempt To Be Sexy

Did a new 'thing'. I'm pretty sure it's a short story but some of the sentences in it are really like I was trying to write a poem. Please excuse the late night husky voice and the phone on which the recording was being made vibrating half-way through. Ta.

___

AN ATTEMPT TO BE SEXY

“Hold still”
“yeah?”
“Yeah. Okay, I think I got it...”
“Right”
“Yes, yes, okay, got it”
“So can you hear me now?”

I stared through the window, my left cheek squashed against the glass. The once-cooling surface had, within a matter of seconds, become the source of a chill that prevented me from speaking to you.

“Hang on, I’ve lost you again.”

It seemed a shame that it was my jaw, not brain that had frozen over. My breath had by now clouded the pane and blocked any view. Hot air escaping from my nostrils began to thaw my mouth and the same gas waiting to emerge finished the job.

“Better?” I began to reply, until I realised that my body was trying to motion accordingly and the consonants scrambled in my mouth. I found the futility of this act entertaining enough to divulge my attention from attempting to distract you from the reality of the fact that we both preferred it when we had less in common.

As such I found it a blessing that tonight would not suffer the routine roll call of all the people I didn’t like, didn’t know and didn’t want to know. Nor off-the-cuff, semi-relatable (under analysis) remarks about the coincidence of being alive at the same time being vast and quixotic as it is and the subconscious setting of barriers because it always pays to be prepared. No: my mind went blank as you asked me to begin and a mental image of you seared itself on my mind’s worn-out eye.

“Um,” it began, disappointing even myself and starting over, “I manage to remove my socks with minimal fuss”. Politeness is an only half-desirable trait and was unfortunately the one of my few to find itself amplified by the telephone receiver.

“Speak up.”
“Can you hear me now?”
“Shh. Carry on.”

Something about the subtext encouraged me but a mistimed gulp between breaths interrupted my flow and startled, it turned into a belch. Time was, it would have passed with a laugh but the humour was no longer present and though the lack of reaction was in itself unremarkable it hit me with a jolt and I once again started to think. Trying to talk I spluttered outside of my shell and unchecked, half-formed thoughts mixed in the air with the organic waste and my lungs gave way to the great wave of guts.

It didn’t turn you on.


___

Friday - recommendations #2

Evening all. I'm a bit late for a party, and need to do history revision, write this blog, eat, pre-drink, and get ready for tonight in a very short period of time. Multi-tasking - risky? We'll give it a try.

Fantastic stuff from this week:

   On Tuesday I went bowling with my cub pack.  Some good things about this included the playlist (This Charming Man followed by Paradise City? Hell yes) and my score of 148 smashing Simon’s by a good 50.  Also going to be made a fully fledged leader for CV and things, we were discussing my name – has to be from the Jungle Book, we were thinking King Louie but apparently he’s only from the film, so I’m gonna be ‘Jacala’. Win.

    Wednesday after ethics I walked into town with Alice and accidentally ended up drinking all afternoon with her. Love my best friend, such a terrible influence but yeah man, ace day.

    Still digging the new Gaga album. It’s so immense. Favourite songs on it: Judas, Bloody Mary, Bad Kids, Hair, Heavy Metal Lover. Least favourite (but still excellent): Americano.  Even better, I was delivered this baby today.  Beautiful, best £2.47 I have ever spent.

    Also delivered today was my little brother @andrewalpha’s birthday prezzie. It’s his birthday on Sunday, I’m not sure if he reads this (IF YOU DO I HATE YOU) so I can’t say more than what he already knows, but I bought it direct from Gareth Campesinos! so he’s got a lovely birthday note from the singer of one of our favourite bands.

    Lots of yr13 leavers cake.  The best leaving thing has been in history, where we had a good party – lots of cream cakes, a competition which my team – ‘team’ – won. I got a medal and everything.  Ms Lindsay, or, as we refer to her when drunk/she isn’t present, Jan, gave us a fantastic emergency exam kit; featuring incense (a jibe at religion), ready-dated revision cards, and a wristband bearing ‘”legend” history class 2011’. She’s ma fave.

    I’ve been watching Campus on 4oD in the last few days, it gets taken down in 13 days so if I were you I’d be all over that like a rash, Matt Beer is excellent and I would hope if I never bothered to leave uni that is exactly  what I’d be like.

    Wild Beasts’ Smother is, like Gaga, still brilliant. The lyric ‘Oh, oh Ophelia, I feel ya’ is my all-time favourite nine syllables.

    This happened a while back but just remembered and it’s still hilarious – my brother, And, was watching Father Ted (our fave, alongside IT Crowd, Black Books, Alan Partridge etc) and was really enjoying the bit where Ted dances to the song Shaft*. He fairly innocently assumed that there’d be a decent .gif of it on Tumblr, so he searched it – forgetting that Tumblr’s a fairly sex-obsessed site. He’s regretted it since.
(*the shaft makes up a large amount of the anatomy of a penis, if you hadn’t realised. I’m sure you did though, you intelligent, sex-crazed things, you)

    @footballquotes on twitter are AMAZING. Massive massive #ff recommendation.

    This monkey is a joker. In the immortal words of my mate Maskey, “Monkey eats 3 bananas then has a wank.... tickled me hard” 

    I’ve just taken the plunge of following And on twitter. Best decision I’ve ever made, he’s hilarious. Also he’s at a hot tub party tonight. Love the little lad (again, if you’re reading this, though, I HATE YOU)

    NAZI HULA HOOPS
    Excellent news – Bobby ‘Dreamy’ Pires might go to America and play for NY Red Bulls (tut, American commercialism) - and therefore play in emirates cup with Thierry this summer.  If so, I’m so gonna go, Lebob and Titi, YES.

    This tweet is absolutely BANG ON

    Increase in DLs of free download of our song E9 here - it's a song I ('I' - well, I did the lyrics haha and some other bits haha) wrote about this picture, the board game Battleships and the Greek mythology of Sirens – I’m a pretentious wanker, I know...

    Feeling rock and roll and doing ma Nick Clegg sad face #2k11 (yeah that's a tie draped around my neck, forgot about it (also that is a medal I won in history yesterday, not a really shit necklace)) à Me  | Nick Clegg 

    Next season’s awful footie kits. Many are hilariously rubbish.

    ArseBandits is so fucking funny.  Football fans read the entire series right now.

    I found this old pic of my band after our first gig (with Two Door Cinema Club, smuuuug) eating pizza.

    My Sweet Baboo EP was delivered. It’s beautiful.

ANGRY CORNER

This feature's all about good things, but we do all occasionally need a little bit of anger, just to keep us awake and exercised in mental activity.  It's fun!

  - I wrote my Superinjunctions song – ‘Oooh, Zeitgeisty’ but couldn’t record it. Boo. I wrote a blog about superinjunctions to make up for it but didn’t post ‘cause everyone’d got over the whole thing. Recording boo :(

  - Every single one of my pockets in these jeans I’m wearing have a hole in.  Party hard, yay, but holey pockets, nay. Pockets boo :(

  - I accidentally used a twitlonger yesterday.  GUTTED.  Not ma style.  Accidental twitlonger boo :(

  - The first thing which is more than a minor irritant.  Do I really need to explain why this atrocity is irritating?  Richard Littlejohn boo :(

  - This sobering thought.  Fuk da haterz boo :( 

  - Fuck off Crooks, Bale but no RVP? Load of old bollocks. Garth Crooks boo :(

  - Daily Mail - generally, obviously, bad, but this is awful.  Shit journalism boo :(

  - My timeline disappearing and Twitter apparently thinking that I'm not following anyone. I unfollowed + refollowed everyone, making those I mutually follow hate me when I appeared at the lower end of their followers list. Tasha assumed I’d unfollowed for ages!  Twitter being a dick the other day boo :(  

  - It isn't a good look to have visible pockets peeping or blatantly poking out of your short shorts - Nothing against a bit of leg, just against stupid pockets.  Stupid fashion boo :(

Back to the fantastic things love-in, and I'd like to say thanks to anyone reading this.  I've only got seven followers on here but it turns out lots of lovely people from twitter have email subscribed, and have been reading (: Thanks people - I'm particularly lovin' the love for my walking feature. Thanks very much twitter and everyone else for following! I hope I can get some more followers soon, still feels a bit like I'm blogging to no-one, comments appreciated haha - this is, I think, my tenth post, so now I'm allowed to join more communities and the count should be going up soon haha.  By the way, there is a small personal/housekeeping issue to sort - on my follower list, it has your usernames but I can't get it to show me the blogs you write, only those you read, so if people reading this could comment/email me ( jamie@kidswithfireworks.com ) with their blog's URL I can find you online and we can get chatting!

I think that wraps up this week, so that's one of my list of multi-tasking stuff to do done. I'm kinda ready to go out, too, and I've had a fair amount of cheeky beers writing this, so that's all good. Going to make use of Jan's lovely revision cards for a bit of history now! Then off (late) to N's party, paintin' the town red and various other cliches about drinking.  Revision win.  Have a good weekend!

P.S.

An assortment of links I would have liked to have written into this post but I am very late and a bit drunk now 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

P.P.S.
"I wonder if Buzz and Woody ever met any of Andy's mum's toys... especially since they probably had the same names"

P.P.P.S.
Really sorry it's so long.  These always turn out massively longer than i expect yhem tyo.  I'm quite late now tho