My Science Project

Tuesday, June 20, 2000 --- 08:28 a.m.

Vote for your favourite Simpsons episode. The winning episode will be shown this friday on BBC2 as part of the Simpsons night. On the same page you can also do a Springfield personality test and write your own Blackboard Gag.

Monday, June 19, 2000 --- 09:28 a.m.

Bugger. For some reason pitas can't do links to url's with backwardslashes. That Flavor Flav story I mentioned yesterday is at Davey D's page at http://www.daveyd.com/FullArticlesarticleN427.asp. But with a backwardslash between the s from Articles and the a from articleN427. But this system seems to refuse to have anything to do with backwardslashes... Let's hope it works this way, 'cause it's an article worth checking out...

Saturday, June 17, 2000 --- 11:11 a.m.

Flavor Flav Speaks Out and gives props to Bruce Springsteen regarding that American Skin song. Article is from Davey D's excellent hiphop-site and contains a interesting anecdote about the recording of Public Enemy's 911 Is A Joke sort of connected to all this.

Only for those who can read Swedish: Dagens Nyheter, a Swedish newspaper, reports from the Hultsfred-festival with all kinds of reviews and interviews and behind-the-scenes articles.

Thursday, June 15, 2000 --- 10:19 p.m.

Went to see Salako yesterday, Upstairs at the Amsterdam Paradiso. Sadly, I was just about the only one who did. Only 20 people turned up, which is a bit of a letdown after last week's Blonde Redhead gig, that was almost sold-out. Okay, so there was football on - Belgium v Italy - and the concert was badly advertised, but what does an American Sonic Youth rip-off have that some British lofi indie folkies, making off-kilter popsongs in the style of bands like Belle & Sebastian, Super Furry Animals and Boo Radleys, doesn't have?? Sometimes I don't understand the Dutch indiemusicfan. So you can't really blame the band for not trying really hard - there was a lot of rummaging about between (and during) songs and some conversation with some members of the audience etc - which was too bad because I think Salako's songs deserve close attention, both from the band as from the audience. As a result I can't really say it was a great gig, but it's nice to have seen Salako live.

Oh, and read this great review of Eminem's Marshall Mather's LP in today's Western Homes.

Friday, June 9, 2000 --- 09:58 p.m.

So I saw Blonde Redhead last night. It was a night full of squeaky guitars and squeaky singing as expected. And it was all rather good. Although singer Kazu Makino seemed to have some trouble with her voice, which was a bit of a pity because her, let's say 'peculiar', voice is an important part of Blonde Redhead's music and in my opinion is one of the main features that makes Blonde Redhead so much more than just another Sonic Youth inspired indierock band. Anyway, it was unexpectedly busy upstairs at the Paradiso and there was even someone throwing flowers on to the stage. Which is always a nice thing. Best song of the night was probably This Is Not, the sort of synthi-disco influenced one off their new album. But they also did a very moving piano-ballad-y thing that sounded great.

Some thoughts after watching Top Of The Pops earlier tonight:
- Eminem and Dr Dre can really rap. I mean, I like their songs and all but usually when this sort of thing is done live it gets rather messy but this sounded very tight and even Dre, who I personally don't rate very high as a skilled rapper, had an unbelievable flow. And Forgot About Dre is just a brilliant popsong.
- That Sonoque single is really crap isn't it?? Bloody awful. Probably bought by the same kind of people that buy Faithless records.
- Chris Rea???
- Mary Mary's Shackles (Praise You) sounds rather a lot like 702's Where My Girl's At. Not suprisingly actually because, according to one of those MTV Data Video's I saw the other day, Mary Mary also wrote that tune. By the way, right behind the stage where Mary Mary were performing there was this bloke with absolutely the worst sense of rhythm ever. It looked ridiculous but very funny. Worth catching the saturdaynight rerun for I'd say.

Thursday, June 8, 2000 --- 09:12 p.m.

Oh my god... There is a 'who is better: The Smiths or Belle & Sebastian?'-thread going on at the indie-poplist. Maybe it's time to unsubscribe... I never have anything useful to contribute anyway because I haven't heard of 90% of the bands that get talked about. On the other hand you do get to find out about the occasional interesting thing and I participated in the mixtapeswapping a couple of times and I really liked the tapes I've received and like making the tapes I send out.

Some links today... The excellent Pop Is Love webzine has new interviews with Hefner, Blonde Redhead (I'm gonna see them tonight; right after I hit submit I leave the house to catch the train; I'll let you know how they were tomorrow. Hopefully), The Lapse and The Utah Saints. The KindaMuzik You Like, a Dutch webzine written in English, has some new content as well such as a New Wet Kojak Tourdiary, or roadnotes is the term they use.

Musical highlight of the day - so far, as said I'm gonna see Blonde Redhead tonight - was the streetorgan opposite Amsterdam Central Station playing a jazzed-up, very swinging version of Elvis Presley's In The Ghetto...

Monday, June 5, 2000 --- 11:28 p.m.

The Bjorkulator and some of Bjork related skins for Winamp and Real Jukebox to download.

All The Web's A Stage: article in the Guardian newspaper somewhere last week about internetbands (written btw by Sunday's bassist Paul Brindley). It mentions some bands that became succesful on/via the internet but sadly it doesn't really tell how these bands managed to distinct themselves from all these thousands of other bands on sites like mp3.com. I'm not entirely sure I really like this sort of 'democratising power' of the internet, because it's basically a lowering of the standards. Everybody can upload his music onto sites like these and claim it's the future of rock'n'roll. At least in 'the real world' there are institutions like recordcompanies, but also fanzines, that make some sort of a selection. Of course some of the good stuff will slip through the net and will be left undiscovered, but it's a risk I'm willing to take...

An entry in josh blog a couple of days ago reminded of the fact that a couple of Dutch indiebands will be touring - well, playing a couple of gigs really - the UK soon. All three bands release their records on the sympathetic Transformed Dreams label. Zea is probably my favourite of the three. Their Kowtow To An Idiot is without a doubt my favourite Dutch album of the year so far. When I wrote a review about it for my (now sort of defunct) e-mail-zine I compared it to (Belgian) bands like Deus and the Evil Superstars; poppy indierock with some beats, bleeps and samples thrown in for good measure. I have seen them live but that was a special gig where they provided the music to the (silent) Dracula-movie Nosferatu, that was very entertaining and their regular gigs are probably as well. Seedling have a sort of reverse Pixies-thing going, with the bassist being the only male in the band. They've got a violinplayer but are definitely not folky, instead they sound a bit like Deus(again) meets Sleeper. I see their bassplayer and singer/guitarplayer walking around my university occasionally.
Here in The Netherlands we are a bit jealous of Belgium because they've been producing loads of interesting bands that last couple of years - some of which I have already mentioned here such as Deus and the Evil Superstars, but there are many, many more such as Soulwax, Zita Swoon, Metal Molly, Nemo etc etc - and, to be honest, Dutch bands are beginning to get a bit of a inferiority complex. But I don't know whether that was the reason why Zoppo called their latest album Belgian Style Pop. To cut a long story short, you can these bands here:

june 8th Red Eye, London (Seedling, Zea, Zoppo)
june 10th Adelphi, Hull (Seedling, Zea, Zoppo)
june 10th Festival of the University of Hull, Hull (Zea)
june 11th Fibbers, York (Seedling, Zea, Zoppo)

Oh, and especially for Jeffrey Kickbright and for anyone else interested: my name is Joris Gillet. I have plans to do a special 'about me' page but haven't gotten round to it yet. It's not because of some strict willing to be anonymous or anything. Anyway, other important stuff to know about me: student, Economics and Psychology; trying to graduate in Economics before the summer, so I can go to Exeter next year to do a year in Economic Psychology. Currently living in a small town a 30-minute trainride north of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Last record I bought: the new Belle & Sebastian this afternoon. I've got a personal homepage as well, but that hasn't been updated in ages and this weblog sort of came in its place.

Thursday, June 1, 2000 --- 07:11 p.m.

Playlouder has an interview with Ultraviolence - he was doing this digital hardcore thing way before Atari Teenage Riot and Alec Empire came along - and the quite disturbing news that Billy Corgan is co-writing songs with Lisa-Marie Presley for her debut-album.

And then some more downloadable stuff. A Sergeant Rock screensaver (1.2mb) (is also available for mac). You can listen to some of his music at wiiija's page. Did you know that Sergeant Rock is a guy who used to be in Collapsed Lung?? I didn't, at least not until last week anyway. Ex-Collapsed Lung-ers (Eat My Goal will be re-released for the umpteenth time because of Euro 2000....) all seem to be doing interesting stuff at the moment, take DJ Scissorkicks for instance, he released a great album called Video Computer System last year and is also in Junior Blanks.

And via the NME comes this Fat Les football game (506kb) to download (also available for Macs) (Fat Les = Damien Hirst + Alex James from Blur + some more people making novelty-hits). But, eeeh, it doesn't run on my computer (yet?) because the file 'appears to be corrupted'. Have no idea what that means, probably that I have to try and download it again...

Thursday, June 1, 2000 --- 11:26 a.m.

I am not entirely sure how legal this Audio-bot-site is, since it seems that everybody can upload his or her favourite mp3-tracks. But they've got a pretty big list of things you can download, with a couple of gems like tracks by Sarah Dougher, Smog, Sleater Kinney, Death Cab For Cutie and the wonderful, wonderful Microphones (if you're into wierd lofi-pop be sure to check them out).

More mp3's. At Slumberland Records they've got a couple of tracks online off the new Amy Linton & Stewart Anderson 7" single. I must admit I haven't heard the tracks yet because of my annoyingly slow internetconnection today, but Amy plays in the Aisler's Set and Stewart used to be in the totally ace Boyracer and runs 555 Records, so I assume it is worth checking out.

Some interesting articles (via SXSW's news page The Daily Chord): mp3.com is going into the muzak-business and rethinking copyright in the Napster-age. The sensible viewpoint - 'resistance to file sharing is futile'; when you ban Napster there's Gnutella and if you ban Gnutella there'll be something else - comes from someone from a Internet civil liberties group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation who, of course, have their own homepage.

Tuesday, May 30, 2000 --- 02:11 p.m.

Some mp3's for your downloading pleasure...
Rough Trade's new stuff mailing thingy said this about about Call And Response's new 7" Rollerskate: boy/girl band who play breezy pop music like the Beach Boys or Free Design. Judge for yourself and download (4.26mb) the leadtrack of this 7".
John Peel played this (3mb) on his show on the BBC World Service recently, it's a song called Kibbeb by an band called Out Hud. He said he couldn't tell us anything about it, and even after reading the bio I can't either actually. Apart from the fact that this band is from Sacramento, California whose members were/are in bands I have never heard of such as Yah Mo's and !!! (which apparently is pronounced as 'chick chick chick') and they play a mighty fine weird spacey bleepy postrock sort of thing.
Die hard John Peel fans might remember a Dutch (post)punk outfit called Eton Crop back in the 80's. They'd been awfully quiet ever since their marginally succesful 'madchester'-inspired period in the early nineties - they almost scored a top40-hit here in the Netherlands. But last year saw the release of their first album as their new disguise the EC Groove Society, a downright techno-album I might add. Although, as mentioned in loads of reviews, with a punkrock attitude. Anyway, ever since they've been rather prolific even making a new track every month for the Dutch version of Vitaminic. Although at the moment it still the april (3.8mb) track that's online.

Monday, May 29, 2000 --- 06:03 p.m.

Can I just say that the people at Get Records here in Amsterdam are very nice?? I was there earlier today to get my weekly fix of new records and when, after browsing through the 'just in' bit and through the new 7"'s etc, I came to the counter with my selections - the new Delgados lp, the Gomez ep (yes I know it's not cool to like them. And I really don't - I can't remember what their last single was called - but I like this Machismo song very much, in a Beta Band meets Fatboy Slim sort of way), Brassy's Got It Made cd and Legal Man by Belle & Sebastian - they advised me not to buy the B&S cds because when the full album is out later this week they will give the single away free with it. Not very smart businesswise but very nice nonetheless. Anyway, haven't listened to my new purchases yet since I've just got home and have been listening to a mix-cd - with loads of poppy American indiepop like Dressy Bessy, Tullycraft & Winterbrief among other stuff - that came with the post today, since I did.

Link for today: there is a new edition of Scottish indiewebzine Jockrock online. Includes reviews (plus soundsamples) of Delgados, Looper, Belle & Sebastian, Idlewild and much more. And you can win promos of the latest Belle and Sebastian and Looper singles in their quiz.

Monday, May 29, 2000 --- 09:26 a.m.

This has 'potential single of the year' written all over it: Freiburg V3.0. Or, in other words: Tocotronic's classic Freiburg reworked aka remixed by Console. Sadly it's only a 30-second snippet from the site of the Austrian radio. I will definitely check napster for the full version.

Teen White Supremacist Movie Critic: really scary site. Although I'm not entirely sure it's completely serious. Just look at the 'how to contact the Teen White Supremacist Movie Critic'-bit at the bottom. But somebody who writes reviews like these - even if it's meant as a joke - can't be sane. Anyway, I found this link via Slabco Records who, on a somewhat lighter note, have a page full of mp3's of bands like Land Of The Loops, Volume All*Star and Draco.

Sunday, May 28, 2000 --- 08:18 p.m.

Okay, let me tell you about some gigs I saw last week... Thursday Brassy upstairs at the Amsterdam Paradiso. Was very cool. Because Muffin Spencer (yes, Jon Spencer's sister...) is very cool. And their mix of funky hiphopbeats and screechy new wave guitars is as well. Even though at times I was thinking: 'her voice does sound a bit like Betty Boo, doesn't it?' Wednesdaynight was emonight at Winston, also in Amsterdam. Burning Airlines were the headliners. As far as I can tell they're a pretty typical exponent of this whole new wave of American emorockbands. One the one hand they sound like a hardcoreband that got tired of playing dumb, angry twochord riffs at 160mph and shout a lot over the top of it and wanted to try something with a bit of melody, emotion and some dissonant guitars but at the same time they're not completely different of what bands like Superchunk, Seam and Drive Like Jehu were doing a couple of years ago. I am not sure how big Burning Airlines's oeuvre is but they played all the three songs I had downloaded beforehand - Wheaton Calling, Carnival & Scissoring. Here in the Netherlands we've also got our emobands. Springrain is relatively new band from Rotterdam and, compared with Burning Airlines, operate more riffbased; more powerchords than dissonant guitars. Still had their moments (mostly when they sounded like the Get Up Kids) and one of the singer/guitarplayers looked uncanningly like (a young) Harvey Keitel. Best band of the night though (IMHO of course) were openers Kevlar from Sweden. They were actually the least 'punk' band of the evening, the drummer even wore a Sonic Youth t-shirt. The singing was maybe a bit tuneless, which made the songs sound a bit samey, but there was loads of interesting dissonant guitarnoodling; a bit Mogwai meets Foo Fighters. Well worth checking out if you're into this kind of thing, I think. There are loads of mp3's on the website of their recordcompany.

By the way, if I'm going a bit quiet the coming weeks, don't worry. It's just that I've started another weblog yesterday. It's not that I've got too much time on my hands (on the contrary) or that I think I've got so much interesting things to say, but I thought it was high time there was a weblog like Us Against Them or Western Homes in Dutch. So I started it... At the moment there is a review of last weeks Bis concert and some news about some festivals and some links to other reviews and I'm currently finishing up the reviews of the Burning Airlines and Brassy gigs. But, as said, it's all in Dutch.

Had a look around the websites of a couple of my favourite bands this afternoon and this is just some newsworthy stuff I found... The new Add N To (X) album is in the final stages and is expected to be completed at the beginning of june. There is no release date as yet... There is a new King Biscuit Time (= Steven Mason from Beta Band) ep out on June 19th. It'll be the first ever Beta Band related release eligible for the (UK-)charts. He has even made a special radio-edit... Shampoo are still alive and have a new album out later this year... You can download a 30 second fragment of Daphne & Celeste's new single, U.G.L.Y. (out june 5th). It's not as good as Ooh Stick You. But, be honest, how could it be?? I'm actually dying to hear their version of Alice Cooper's School's Out, as mentioned by Steven Wells is his Steps & Daphne & Celeste live review.

And how about that: Belle & Sebastian's Legal Man new in at number 15 in this weeks UK Top 40... Sadly New Way New Life, the new Asian Dub Foundation only makes it to number 49 and American Trilogy by the Delgados (still haven't found their new album yet...) to number 61.

Saturday, May 27, 2000 --- 12:04 p.m.

Citysearch (link stolen from Catherine's Pita) brings you 'the 20 musicians that hold the next generation of popmusic in their hands'. Beck is of course number 1, and Aphex Twin and Lauryn Hill are also featured in this top 20. Couple of surprising choices: Wil Dog from Ozomatli for instance and Jeff Tweedy from Uncle Tupelo and Wilco. And I have never even heard of Marin Sexton and Rufus Wainwright. And a number of huge mistakes: Beth Orton is number two. Okay, so she manages to write the occasional nice tune but for the rest she is just an average female singer/songwriter who found credibility because she worked with some hip danceproducers. And Ani Difranco?? Billy Corgan?? The future of pop music?? I certainly hope not!

LINKS

april
avenue
bluelines
catherine's pita
euroranch
friday matinee
fsoa
jejune
josh blog
kempa
kickbright
nylpm
nme
pearls that are his eyes
pitchfork
playlouder
skykicking
steal this blog
us against them
usounds
western homes

the hunger site

PLAYLIST
Badly Drawn Boy - Stone On The Water
Belle & Sebastian - Winter Wooskie
Blonde Redhead - This Is Not
Calexico - Ballad Of Cable Hogue
Delgados - Aye Today
Destiny's Child - Jumpin' Jumpin'
Dre Dre + Eminem - Forgot About Dre
Eminem - The Real Slim Shady
Pink - There You Go
Tocotronic - Freiburg V3.0

NOW READING
Washington Irving - Tales Of The Alhambra

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