Hollywood Rag (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
(Wenn) Via Telegraph: Daul Kim, a South Korean supermodel who starred in a string of high-profile fashion campaigns, has been found dead at her luxury apartment in Paris. Her death was discovered after she left a series of messages on a website saying she was "lonely" and "depressed". Kim, 20, was a regular on catwalks in New York, Milan and Paris was found hanged in her city center...
Raven Sings the Blues (Free subscription) | 20/11/2009
As with the Tom Fazzini record, French cold-wave creatures Soror Dolorosa could teach the current crop of would be dark synth wizards a thing or two about how to properly evoke everlasting despair. Rooted in a metal past but working firmly off the 80's post-punk/cold-wave/darkwave axis; the band matches insistent, twisting riffs with crisp snare snap pulsing underneath a dour-eyed croon that would...
Macclesfield Pub Quiz League (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
SPECIALIST QUESTIONS SET BY THE NEW CASTLE 1. Science 2. Local Heroes 3. History 4. Geography 5. Animal Magic 6. Sport: I want to tell you a story 7. Arts and Entertainment: Nemeses 8. Hold the Front Page Science 1. What word describes an object’s ability to return to its original shape after being stretched or compressed? Elasticity or Elastic constant 2. Which part of the human anatomy remains...
Dialogic (Free subscription) | 19/11/2009
OK--students in my cultural studies course had a bit of a crisis because half of their presentation group dropped out. They are doing a presentation on the Goth subculture and the two members that dropped out were covering the music. So I offered to help out with an introduction to the roots of the Goth sound (as a non-expert)... here is what I came up with, anyone want to suggest additions? 1970s:...
Boomkat: Just arrived (Free subscription) | 18/11/2009
COLD CAVE Death Comes Close Matador ELECTRO / SYNTHPOP 12" This is an ultra-limited 12" accompanying Matador's re-release of the universally acclaimed Cold Cave album Love Comes Close, featuring the title track backed with the three bonus tracks exclusive to this release. What sets this band apart from all the other synth-pop and cold wave revivalists is the intense darkness at the heart...
Stereogum (Free subscription) | 13/11/2009
This NSFW French-language trailer (via TwentyFourBit ) for Joann Sfar's Serge Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life makes us want to see the film. Mainly because Eric Elmosnino seems to inhabit Gainsbourg the way Sam Riley made like Ian Curtis in Control . Also: Nudity.
Isaac Ashe's Sound Advice (Free subscription) | 13/11/2009
○○○○● RELIVE , the new album from former Josef K frontman Paul Haig , is the funkiest punk you'll hear this year. Musically the songs are more like grooves, with tracks like Round And Round and Ambition sounding like a joyous head-on collision between Franz Ferdinand , The Smiths and The Pixies , with Grace Jones pulling up to the bumper for good measure. And over these...
Austinist (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
Miller-McCune The number nerds at Miller-McCune recently took a stab at crunching all the aggregated film data on Metacritic.com . The result is a series of charts illustrating how movie stars tend to rate with the critics, and, in turn, which of the nation's top 25 most prolific reviewers tend to be more or less favorable when it comes to doling out scores. At the very bottom of that latter heap...
Damn Fine Day (Free subscription) | 11/11/2009
“Ceremony” is one of the final two Joy Division songs front man Ian Curtis had a hand in writing. It was never recorded in a studio by the band (though New Order, the band comprised of ex-Joy Division members, would go on to record it in the studio as a single not too long after). [...]
Didcot Green Team (Free subscription) | 08/11/2009
I spent yesterday in company with hundreds of local environmental activists from across Oxfordshire at The Big Climate Event , a conference organised by ClimateXchange and the Oxfordshire Community Action Group project. It was a day of hopes, fears, facts and ideas. Ultimately it was about communities coming together for change. Ian Curtis from Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute opened the...
THE VINYL VILLAIN (Free subscription) | 08/11/2009
There are some things which really dont seem as if they were released 30 years ago. The 7" single given the catalogue number FAC 13 first hit the shops in October 1979. I'm guessing that more people heard the song for the first time over the past 5 years than did over the previous 25 years such has been the resurgent interest in Joy Division and in particular the life and death of Ian Curtis ....
An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming (Free subscription) | 07/11/2009
...is (deep breath) still my favourite version of the song. Not only do I have the same confession as Liz (though why we feel the need to confess, I'm still working on); that Paul Young's version was the first I heard but also that when I heard the Joy Division version a few years later I thought it was a ropey Paul Young cover - and in fact, that's how I still see things now. When No Parlez came out...
Londonist (Free subscription) | 06/11/2009
Last night saw Oregon based mistress of drone folk Liz Harris aka Grouper hush a teeming Luminaire crowd in Kilburn. Presented by the London based music promoter Upset The Rhythm , Grouper was accompanied by Silk Flowers; an otherworldly darkwave synth-pop Brooklyn trio and self billed athletic rhythm / action unit Thank You hailing from Baltimore. Silk Flowers kicked things off with a few from their...
Chris n that (Free subscription) | 05/11/2009
Last night Owen accompanied me to Heaven (first time I have been there since the '90s!) to make sure I didn't self-combust... 'cos I was going to be seeing my Pop heroes Alphabeat for the 2nd time live! Anders SG, Stine, Anders B, Rasmus, Anders R and Troels saved my sanity while I was working in Borehamwood so many times - their debut album THIS IS ALPHABEAT could shake me from the deepest depression...
Boomkat: Just arrived (Free subscription) | 05/11/2009
COLD CAVE Love Comes Close (Matador Edition) Matador ELECTRO / SYNTHPOP LP We're still buzzed-up on Cold Cave's utterly f*cked-up and insanely brilliant compilation of early material 'Cremations' that came out a few weeks back, so you can only imagine how hyped we are over their debut LP proper, 'Love Comes Close'. While that first comp was engrossing from start to finish, we much preferred those tracks...
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