[T-shirt] New squarepusher design

In honour of the new album. Its my 3rd squarepusher design put the first 2 were cheapo white jobbies. This'll be black and professionally printed - long sleeves and short!

First t-shirt design
Second t-shirt design

I also did some funky animated gifs for various avatars:

Squarepusher - a tweeked song "Coathanger²" by me!

7\7\ Aphex Twin 7\7\

When I heard Aphex Twin was playing at Oxegen I immediately went about getting a ticket...but didn't want a weekend ticket as every single other acts looked like crap and who want to go camping at knacker festivals these days - especially after the chalet haven of Bangface. I ended up getting a Friday only ticket at Needsaticket.com and while it was pricey and they were well dodgey on the phone they came through for me just in time. This photo is form T-in-the-park the following nite.. same vibe.

I was also determined to record the entire thing on video because live recordings are my favourite goddamn pieces of information ever.

So J.B. drove us down to his mate Val's gaf who lives in a rambling old farmhouse nearby. These guy are major Ministry fans and the next morning would see me turn into one as we relaxed after the mahem with a few hours of Vals Ministry in Sweden video and other recordings as well as Butthole Surfers.
I miss Minsitry next week as I head to Paris with Aoife but get to see Butthole Surfers the following Thursdays.



We got "ready" and got a lift off Val to the massive mess of a festival site up the road. Wandering in we headed for the Pet Sounds tent where Aphex was due on in 40 mins. We met Sparky, the lighting guy who was in the central lighting rig and just finishing up with Tricky. I was trying my camera out on the rig, knowing it'd be a stable place to put the camera and zoom in on Aphex. I figured the sound wouldn't be great though and anyway the smoke/lights were playing havoc with the focus. So we met Brendan and Niamh, J.B's mates and made our way to a good location. The tent was starting to flood with ravers and RDJ was getting his shit together on stage.... he had a camera and was taking pictures of his set-up.

This photo is form T-in-the-park the following nite.. same vibe.

With everything set..... the gig kicked off. A Massive 1hr30mins of near 50% Aphex Twin music inlcuding Drukqs, Tuss, AFX, unreleased stuff and a couple of squarepusher humdingers. I videoed it all as best I could in the state I was in
and managed to lash it all up on WATMM and xltronic Monday morning. The gods of electronica were smiling on me as someone put up Squrepusher at Bangface entire set on WATMM. Praise be! I'll be youtubing the Oxegen set over the week too but thats gonna be a bit tedious... still it'll get to a wide audience.

A big pity those cunts at MCD - yeh you heard - have shut down thumped and boards from talking about this set.

I finnally got the recording on d'web in mp3 and mp4 formats. It's stored where every other known live set is at.... you may have to join to download.

The vids are also up on http://www.youtube.com/user/thekeyfumbler

Aphex Twin - 2008-07-11 Ireland-Kildare.mp3

Aphex Twin - 2008-07-11 Ireland-Kildare.mp4

For the record I've seen Aphex Twin 9 times:

1999 Olympia Theatre - Dublin- rare Ambient set with dancers.

2001 Sonar Festival - Barcelona - with Col and Niall - jungle/gabba mayhem

2001 (i think) Rephlex Allstars - Dublin - the famous Cylob-as-a-banana set.

2003 Warp Rave - Hackney - Me and Guliamo and no sleep

2003 All tomorrows Parties - with Col Nial and Antoin

2004 Rephlex Disco Assault - Bogdan, Astrobotnia, me in a wig

2005 Glade Festival - with psycho-ex-gf a tent and a load of shrooms

2005 Sonar Festival - Barcelona - with the pyscho-ex-gf

2008 Oxegen with JB - fully recorded

Col returns, Eric visits, We rave!

So Friday 4th July saw Col, that wayward traveller, return to the fold, from Austria. Eric was over for a birthday and we all met up along with Niall, Mel and Neill and that-college-mate-of-Erics-whose-name-I-forget and my budo buddy and fellow festivaller Ruairi.

It was Andrews Lane theatre for a FREE gig featuring "giveamanakick" and "dudley corporation"(?). The first act were rockin enough, havin seen them before support Electric Eel Shock(japanese naked drumming cheezy metal)... Act one was about as good as you'll get with a frantic drummer, guitarist and gasmask mic.. pretty good stuff. We weren't arsed with the second act so hit thing mote for a few pints and chat. We lost Mel and Neil and Ruairi to other projects that didn't involve the acid techno I'd been uppin'.

So we made out way to Kennedy's for Doubtfull Guest off planet-mu records and BODENSTANDIG 2000 from Rephlex. WOW WOW WOW! Absolutely amazing music from first daz german technoists with their chunky phat goose-stepping beats played to the visuals of Bavarian teletext images of pixalated sex-lines. One guy practically had leaderhosen on him and they played some folk instruments too. It was a fitting welcome back for Col I thought.

Next up was Doutfull Guest. She flabergasted me at Bangface with her golden-haired headbangin acid techno and ripped it up again here with more of the same antics. She's a very gorgeous laptop producer and meself an Niall chatted to her friend upstairs singing her praises royally. We all agree she kicked ass undoubtedly.

Doubtfull Guest - sswishhhhhhhhh

Burial Video - Near Dark

I shamelessly ripped off a gritty little Scottish movie - guess which one - to make this video for a Burial track.


Near Dark

Dublin Ceephax Summer Madness

Catching up with Jim and Guliamo who've both been AWOL in Japan and Italy respectively for 3-4 years was pretty amazing and lots of fun at the Ceephax gig at McGrudders in early June.

I took my Sony miniDV handcam and shot 35 min of 303 mayhem so here they are!


HERE WE GO.... 1/5



Can you plug that back in?.... 2/5



C'mon ya.... 3/5




Aubergines.... 4/5




WE CAN ONLY HOPE.... 5/5

Bangface Weekender

4 mins of dodgey Squarepusher footagé

1000's of top quality photo's are up at

{{{{{{{{{{{{{{{http://www.bangface.com/raves/raves.htm}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}}

...............including yours truly piloting on his bang-sub --------->





Whats follows is some adventures at the bangface weekender - a neo-rave extravaganza witth the best of electronica at Camber Sands Holiday Camp in the South of England - fantastic!

After spending the night in Portrane - I drove leaving the car at the house- myself, Niall, Antoin and Col got a lift to the airport at 7am from Nialls ma - nice one! We flew into Gatwick - an airport I'm all to familiar with this year - and had some "award winning" Cornish Pasties.

(Oh and I met Yellow Pages-ad star and "next Colin Farrell", freind of Chris's Brendan at the airport, on his weay to Helsinki with a gal he didn't introduce me too!)

We had our tickets booked for the train to Hastings so we made no delay....

In Hastings we hung on for Eric who was coming from Bristol and then scouted around for a frisbee that wasn't to last too long and some sort of food depository, determined not to live on festival food. Col took a short cut and Antoin stuffed as much dairy based gunk into his mouth as possible - buttered scones with crumpets and clotted cream...

Our bus took us through Rye and the windy British countryside to the coast and Cambers Sands - hassle free journey...

On arrival we cought site of the tell-tale inflatable smiley above the chalets. I was group-leader.... ha ha ha ha ha ha ... so i got the wrist-bands for us and our 2 keys. Our chalet was 137 and couldn't have been in a better position. facing the main venue on the corner. We unpacked the shopping, lashed up a few Bangface flyers to turn heads and opened a few beers. We have arrived.

There was much party-popper action going on inside..........
..and plenty happening ouside the window....

But what about the music? Well first up on the bill was Global Goon off Rephlex... top notch electro-tronica to get us going....

It's Max Tundra and Scotch Egg...............saw both play in Dublin over the years....saw both hob-knobbing at this festival.....We missed Scotch Egg

then there was tons of other stuff (putting up later)... got to check the line-up at home......WATCH THIS SPACE

We saw Ceephax as Ceephax Acid Crew the Friday... which was absolute banging 303 action. But as DJ Ceephax in the bar he was pants-a-rama to be honest.. too much cheezey soul. Where was the mobile disco action?


These guys we accidently wandered into and they were absolutely fantastic with their lush electro synths and cool dispositions. We thought they were Stingray for ages... maybe they are..but more likely it's Model 500

On Saturday we went to the beach in the morning..... it'll be 2 months before Ireland gets this sunshine....

Things became a little dis-coloured for a time.........as day blended into night again....



Did I mention the Saturday afternoon pool-party that myself and Antoin went to? Corny old-school breaks to a splashy inflatables frenzy. We got ourselves some flotation devices and mingled in the chlorinated water with the aquatic ravers for about an hour......fun fun fun. I forgot my googles but then I would have been underwater most of the time makig usre all the ladies had appropriate swimming costumes on. We had a great game of hoop the clubbers with the inflatable rings in the end.

Saturday night was the haziest night..... i just remember ending hanging with the Grace's gorgeous gang from Gorey/Athlone/Carlow..... Danielle, Marian, Grace, P, Harvey, ... eh and I forget the names of the rest and think I only got those names half-right. Sound bunch of folks.

I had spotted Grace earlier by the siluette of her hair crossing the lawn, but she had died her hair black since the last time i saw her. Turns out their chalet was behind ours... i could see me doing the dishes if i could see that far. Anyway they had banging tunes in their chalet and allowed me to play some of mine. Hey met Redrum there who said i could support a McGrudeers gig sometime. Anyone know how to get in touch with him?

We all raved pretty fucking hard to 2 of my highlights of the weekend... if only i could recall any of the music! They were the classic Mike Dred - always a blinder on the 303 action and the beautifull only-female-act-of-the-weekend Doubtfull Guest - who headbanged her way through stomping acid rinses. Missed going to see Altern-8 and doubly missed Scotch Egg.. did manage a bit of Producer and Panacea..... i think!!

Hell my days are all mixed up!! When was BOGDAN RACZYNSKI??? Cought the last 30 mins - pretty good but a bit of a press-play fest.

Sunday night was the end-up with absolutely breath-taking techno, hardcore and dub done by the otherworldly Beardyman with just his voice for the first half then looped samples of his voice the second half......


Crappy Video footage of Squarepusher what I took: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjMU8mBYwXQ

After that we had 2 sinister black monolithic screens roll across the stage to cut it down to a small squarewindow. 2 bass guitars were brought out and various laptopish equipment arranged. Squarepusher was about to close bangface with a bass-tastic assault. the sister monoliths are his amazing blissed out light show that just plays variations of the [ ] shape that this guys has totally hijacked for his own image.

He played about 3 new tracks - inlcuding a cheeky little vocal number with signature melodies and driving beats and a rather good punk-esque one, all with live bass lines of course. Then he cut into his main set which had bass-fueled acid tracks warble all over the place.... One was the relentless one he's played during the Ultravisitor tour that ends on a lush 5 minute bass-only noodle-a-thon. Then there was the unreleased Breezeblock track he's been playing recently too - an acid stomper too. Then we got Hello Meow - i think... He fitted in Angstromm Feck 4, Modern bass guitar and Exciton.. a crowd favourite for sure. Here the light show went from washed out pure white to space-ship landing-light red..... in perfect tune with the tracks. He ended with C'mon my selector and Journey to Redham for a nifty encore.

The Sound was amazing at the front, but reduced majorly in quality at the back. The heat was pretty bad too. Overall though a great set and the bangface crowd was the best ever.... a million glo-sticks arced back and forth during the whole thing in a rainbow firefight to the blistering bass assault. Smental!!!

The next day was the checking out....... Grace and co were off on a minibus to Gatwick but with our flight not till 8pm we declined a lift and got our asses to Hastings for some sea-side enetertainment and breaky. We found an appropriately greasy caf, an awfull amusement arcade and a wonderfull crazy golf course to waste the last hours away.

**************************************************************************

New sounds - new movements

I've been in iPod land for a while now - and while its pretty cool having 90% of my music jammed into my pants, there's a few "new" ways of listening to music I've discovered recently.

Col's fuzzy old decks:
- I'm minding Cols' decks while he's loving it up in Austria and got them working proper-like the other day. Man the sound is amazing through those old wooden speakers he found one day - so I had a lovely evening with Aoife on Easter Sunday playing some of my old records. Our 16ft hgh ceilings do a good job of expanding out the warm aural glow too.

- Boards of Canada, Takemura, Global goon , Squarepusher, Autechre, Aphex Twin etc. It was so nice that I rushed out and bought Burial's 2 albums on vinyl the next day.

Motoring:
- I honestly can't believe I'm driving these days. It's no so much that its taken me years to get around to it - mostly because I never needed to - but because nobody's ever really expressed what fun it is. Is this because so many people do it and so there's a collective global "meh" factor? I don't get it.... its like a virtual reality computer game that takes you to actual real locations.....My sister, my cousins, my mates... people i work with - they're all just so used to it or something. It's bloody brilliant.

PLUS..... every piece of music i love has a new environment to fall into... a big silvery glidey one that has extended mine and Aoifes geographical reach. So far its been Autechre's new album, Burial and a bit of Warp's NED mix. Watch out when I start playing squarepusher! Nobody will ever want a lift!

I have been feeling guilty about consuming our preciosu fossil fuels, but I firmly believe that by the time we're just about fucked planet-wise.. they'll have sorted the problems with nuclear fusion reactors and we'll be using heavy water to power everything and no more oil-powered middle-eastern mess. Now that will be sound.

I'm opening a dojo!!

http://bujinkanjiyu.blogspot.com/

In the jungle!???

A truly classic comedy scene.... i love that line "In the jungle!?????" Very sample-able!






And while we're at it.... here's another amazing one. The League of gentlemen vs 2001:a Space Odyssey. I saw this ta the Glade festival a few years ago before Hexstatics amazing VJ/DJ show.

Cloverfield

____________Sweaty _/ _____________ hot _/ __hot also_/

Yes! Excellent 9/11 reference done in the Blair Witch style. I saw this with Jason and a mate of his and I think we all agreed that it dragged us through the screen by the hair. Great pace, great effects, great story. Dialogues a bit ropey, character development not amazing.... but then again it's a self-confessed youtube generation film and so we don't care about character too much. The embedded action and hints at horror were just right... a perfect Godzilla for the times. By the way, everyone should see the original Godzilla - a rather underated these days anti-war/disaster movie.

There could well be a sequel and I hope there is and lots of them - perhaps showing more survivor footage, maybe showing the government strategy, the aftermath, the cause.... or whatever. As longs its as big, as hyper-real and as scarey.

Some web folks also a said that the film looked a lot like the Half-Life game - good point.

Warning... moster revealed below....

Hey, he's not so scarey!