Sirma - Trigger (The Great Mortality Remix)
@guideguardian Go on then. http://t.co/9KLHMOIixj
— Oli Jeffery (@ojeffery) September 19, 2014
And lo, it’s Review Anything. But after spending the whole week storing up petty hurtful barbs like an industrious squirrel buries its acorns, here’s something that I actually quite like. Imagine geeing yourself up for a naked bungee jump only, at the last second, to be handed a pair of burgundy boot-slippers and told to go and have a nice sit down. I feel like smashing the place up.
Anyway, this track is a reverb-heavy, trip-hoppy smut-crawl. It’s like Portishead dragging Alt-J’s Every Other Freckle by its hair through an art installation constructed entirely of DJ Shadow’s discarded prophylactics. That’s a good thing. And if someone doesn’t send me something rubbish to lay into by this time next week, I’m seriously going to punch a kitten in the face. LH
Ludwig van Bologna – L’Arte Della Fuga
@guideguardian #reviewanything italian glam surf punk rock from Skank Bloc Records/Ludwig van Bologna https://t.co/Hhb2Sr0ORB
— Skank Bloc Records (@larryboschi) September 16, 2014
Who needs lyrics, eh? Not me. I can’t stand the things. Eight minutes of Dylan yammering on like some end-of-the-bar wino? Nah, you’re alright mate, keep it. The ideal song, of course, has no words sung at all on it, but if that’s not possible a close second would be to have something sung in a language I find incomprehensible. Italian’s perfect. I know “forza”, “frutti di bosco” and the noises made in the credit sequence of Football Italia, and that’s about it. Anyway, Ludwig Van Bologna are a group of “unpredictable and elusive musical terrorists” (thanks Google Translate) from Italy who play the sort of skittish and slightly creepy psych pop that wouldn’t feel out of place in a Jodorowsky film. The language barrier here actually enhances the sense of otherworldliness – finding out that they’re singing about fancying some girl from Florence or something would ruin the mystique entirely. Down with words! GM
Sketch-a-Etch
@guideguardian Political mash ups anyone? Boris Farage,Ed Fonzarelli & Kim Jong Camer-un. #ReviewAnything pic.twitter.com/SekeRerRsd
— Sketch-a-Etch (@sketch_a_etch) September 19, 2014
Clearly working on the principle that the offspring of two people is rarely prettier than the prettiest parent – Princess Stephanie of Monaco, Rumer Willis, Prince William, Tori Spelling – Sketch-A-Etch (vowel clash aside) have created something genuinely unsettling. It’s a House of Commons of Dr Moreau, where even the mildest of centre left or right politicians starts to resemble the lunatic fringe. ‘Boris Farage’ takes the only nice bit of Boris – his hair – and nestles it atop a visage of rat-like cunning (which is possibly what Boris sees in the mirror of a morning). ‘Ed Fonzarelli’ fails to hand down to Milliband Jr any of the Fonz’s cool, leaving the runt of the Lost Boys vampire litter. And ‘Kim Jong Camer-un’ is Nick Griffin, pure and simple. Keep them coming, folks. SW
Iyesaya - Bite
@guideguardian https://t.co/PmsScDi3I8
— CAT FROM JAPAN (@CATFROMJAPANXXX) September 19, 2014
I won’t lie: I’ve got a raging hangover, and when I saw that this came courtesy of a Twitter account called Cat From Japan, I anticipated the unique catharsis that comes with splintering your keyboard to vent at some lo-fi dork’s hapless novelty effort (see, er, last week’s Review Anything). Though sadly this song features no cats, from Japan or elsewhere, br’er dork (dorkus chillwavus) is still very much in the mix. Cat From Japan is the label, see, and they say that this is the sound of “post-graduate unemployment”. I say: in today’s difficult labour market you need more than “sickly, out-of-tune Hawaiian guitar sand squelchy emoting” on your CV if you want to score that elusive job. Still, if you’ve ever idly wondered how Ghostpoet might sound produced by Robin Guthrie while both sink slowly in a peat bog, Iyesaya is your man. Now, where’s that Berocca? MH
A visual haiku
visual haiku for next #reviewanything @guideguardian pic.twitter.com/fZwipErbAL
— Ana (@TigerVida) September 13, 2014
For reasons best known to the author, this visual haiku - which is what, exactly? A poem with a picture next to it? – is pretty much impossible to read, having borrowed the style of those really irritating non-robot tests you have to pass when booking stuff online (type in a series of barely visible characters from a ridiculously blurry image and get told once and for all whether you are, in fact, human).
Ironically, this also feels a bit like a computer-generated poem in it’s complete randomness. This is the sort of poetry written by people who have never properly understood a poem in their entire life and have just presumed: poem = random series of words. Doesn’t work like that. Sorry. RA
