cold blooded claws never offered anything at all

campus does this to you

hoho, I've finally given in, and started surreptitiously plugging my player into the computer at work. Alas the airiness of a fast emptying pocket is much more striking than the loftiness of the moral high ground.

ok the result: sia's new album ( which we only brought in #&$% three!)/ kimya dawson/ yael naim/ pianist ost/ unkle's more stories/ we are scientists/ the teenagers/ the kills ( which I think I will buy anyway since it's so bloody good) / sparklehorse/ justice/ hercules & love affair/ eels best of/ mgmt/ radio 1's live lounge ( some only)/. So fun. But I might as well wear an eyepatch and go yarr! now.

I've only started going through a little of this gold mine, but already MGMT is already stealing many repeats that should go to listening more of the other stuff. Probably have to thank a senior manager at hmv who put them on once one morning shift. It's like screwy pop songs, but terribly fun nonetheless. Reminded me of The Flaming Lips, then I read that this new band were given the same producer as them when they answered to their newly-signed-onto label whom they would like to work with:

" Prince, Nigel Godrich, Barrack Obama, not Sheryl Crow."

Heh anyway, MGMT started out as two guys just clowning around while in university, apparently just playing for fun. Which perhaps kinda explains their sarcastic response above when they couldn't really believe a major label was picking them up after they graduated. hm I wonder if this can ever happen here in sunny Singapore, but probably nah, probably no.

I've got here two tracks, " Kids " and " Pieces of What". The first is a fantastic song with a killer keyboard section that I say is guaranteed to bring the house down at any dance party. Barring hip-hop ones, but I never really liked those anyway.

Ah but " Pieces of What" is the absolute clincher. The lyrics are striking enough, enough to have caught my step a couple of times the first few times I really listened to the song. But it's the whole magical progression of the song over two and three quarters minutes that is really amazing. Oh how many times I've tabbed " back" on my godforsaken-for-better-or-worse -whiter-thou-goest-i-goest creative Zen ( yeh right *zen*) just to hear again when a particular instrument comes in. First just the acoustic guitar, then a bass guitar, then a slight stirring of strings, and man the piano! the piano! Finally the crashing cymbals/drums/ backing vocals that herald the denoument of the whole song just when you think it really only got started..

Wow. It's like a Shakespearean tragedy. With music instruments as players. The kind that thinks if all the world's a stage, they want a better sound mixer.

All in all, go give their album " Oracular Spectacular" a listen online. The rest on the album have a consistently good quality too, and I think I just might hold back one of the two last copies on the shopfloor for myself.

right time to get back to hmv. Not long now, perhaps a couple more months, but i'll make sure they are good.

MGMT - Kids
MGMT - Pieces Of What

pardon me the music is moving/ moving from left to right

Inara and Greg

Ah just came back from watching semi electronic/jazz/dancey The Bird And The Bee, and wow bloody hell it was good!

Was there early so was right at the front, just a meter away from Inara and her backing singers. What made the band shine was the utter *clarity* of everything. The sound mix was very good, and Inara's voice, oh that sweet sonorous voice, came through more crystal and fine than even the released records. The synths/ keyboards by Greg were amazing too, but a large part of my ' viewtime' were the two lovely backing singers that were probably the closest I could ever get to watching the Pipettes live here, what with their absolutely delightful bababaas that were best heard on " I Hate Camera" and their coordinated dance sways.

Backing vocals Alex Lilly and the pretty-girl-in-green. Both absolute delights to watch.

The overall sense in that small tight space was one of an slightly ethereal floating quality.. with an offhand quirkiness as evidenced by the clothes they wore and especially with Inara's vocals. Retroish.. but not retro, never over the top and always precisely clear. The spontaneity by those on stage were borne out of a sincere familiarity with each other and it was really fun to watch.


and there's the setlist, god bless the zoom function on JS's camera. Note how they alternated between their slower jazzy stuff and more dancey fast numbers. ' Polite Dance Song' was an absolute blast, but ' Fucking Boyfriend' was the most memorable with Inara somehow getting the audience of mostly 20-30s to sing and clap along.

All in all, it was a totally enjoyable and fun gig to be in, and Im really glad to have had caught them. Somewhere at the start they asked, " So where did you hear us from?". Someone said " the internet!" ( yep god bless the net too), and another shouted " grey's anatomy!" to laughter from all. =)

a crazy kick ass beat

Teme mi corazón de ir adelante/ viendo estar su dolor puesto en celada

Electrelane's Mia Clarke

Creaking, the wooden decks awakens you back to the salty air of the sea. You fumble and stand up on the deck, taking a moment to reorient yourself to the sway of the ship.

Still and moonless, yet an ominously growing sense of awareness of what to break starts to creep into the edges of your senses.You lean forward, squinting into the distance.

It's a moonless night, and the clouds look like as they should be. But something catches your eye, and you strain to stare into the darkness of the skies.

And it is exactly in this darkness that you find that something is different. Like as if they carried too much within that threatened to burst any moment. Like as if so much searing intensity can never be contained within something so insubstantial as mere wisps of clouds.

A flare from a single flash illuminates the skies, and that is the only warning you get. The breeze starts to rush, a low hoarse howl that burns right through you. Before you know it, the heavens let loose with a crash and you run for the helm of the ship.

A slight patter as the sheer raindrops hit the ship, growing into a deafening envelopment that stuns your still sleepy mind. Grabbing the wheel, you pull against the wind, slowing knowing it is futile in the face of the roaring storm, but a sense of self preservation and wonderment, yes wonderment at the hypnotic intensity of the rousing storm, drives you to hang on with gritted teeth..




Electrelane's magnificent ' Oh Sombra!' feels exactly like this. An alternatingly rousing and eerie wall of brazen sonic energy that takes no chances. Founded in Brighton, England's Electrelane formed in 1998, eventually comprising guitarist Mia Clarke, bassist Rachel Dalley, drummer Emma Gaze ( oh what a name!), and keyboardist/guitarist Verity Susman. An all girl band that manages a rare marriage of raucous sophistication to a fiery primal energy.

They are amazingly adventurous, and willing to try anything that fancies them. " Oh Sombra!" is sung entirely in Spanish. In actual fact it is a complete sonnet by 16th century Catalan poet Juan Boscán Almogáver. The song is in essence, not a love song but a song about *love*. And the way they have chosen to lay the tune in all its searing honest glory just leaves me agape.

No matter how many times I listen to this song, I inevitably feel the same rush. A rush that presses me down to my seat. A rush that raises the hairs on the back of my neck. A rush that I just cant say no to.

Some may find this song nothing more than a wall of sound, with nothing that appeals even remotely to them for Electrelane eschews so many usual conventions of a song. But to me, somewhere in that eerie intensity is an elegant honesty which is so rare to find, and utterly, completely breathtaking.

Electrelane - Oh Sombra! ( Live)


Como aquel que en soñar gusto recibe,
su gusto procediendo de locura,
así el imaginar con su figuravanamente su gozo en mí concibe.


Otro bien en mí, triste, no se escribe,
si no es aquel que en mi pensar procura;
de cuanto ha sido hecho en mi ventura
lo sólo imaginado es lo que vive.


Teme mi corazón de ir adelante,
viendo estar su dolor puesto en celada;
y así revuelve atrás en un instante


a contemplar su gloria ya pasada.
¡Oh sombra de remedio inconstante,
ser en mí lo mejor lo que no es nada!


Like one receiving pleasure from a dream,
his pleasure thus proceeding from delusion,
so does imagination with illusions conceive in vain its happiness in me.


No other good's inscribed on my sad heart,
except what in my thoughts I might procure;
of all the good I ever have endured,
what lives is only the imagined part.


My heart is frightened to proceed ahead,
seeing that its pain in ambush lies;
and so after a moment it turns back


to contemplate those glories that have fled.
Oh, shadow of relief, that fickle flies,
to make what's best in me be what I lack!