Oh dear… I seem to have missed a day.

Whoopsie.

I really am too busy for this lark at the moment. With the amount of work I have to do for uni, posting lengthy blog posts about music and other such frivolous matter really isn’t top of the pops.

Erk…. I’ll make it up in a few days, I reckon, maybe.

Oh dear.

 

Posting by Proxy

I am not quite myself this evening.

In fact, I think I’m haing an out of body experience; I don’t even think these are my fingers typing…

Day two, and I’m still going strong.

Back again so soon. I’m not sure if these pages are going to be able to take the strain of these huge slabs of text hitting them in such quick succession… They’re just not used to it.

So what am I going to write about today?

Well, I’ll start off by telling you about the cellist I hinted at in yesterday’s post. But first, some context.

Saturday 31st of October. I make that Halloween! Indeed indeed. One of the many parties I attended was in a secret warehouse venue, tucked away in the back streets of Bristol. It was filled with lots of experimental and alternative treats in a cabaret style, mixing live music, spoken word/comedy and performance art, a very interesting event indeed.

One of the performers on the night was a lady named Bela Emerson. She used her cello much in the same way as Stanton Delaplane used his guitar and voice. With a loopstation as the primary tool of manipulation, but where Stanton created lush, twinkling folk harmonies, Bela favored dark dissonant textures, really taking full advantage of the eerie tone that cellos do so well.

The music veered from reasonably regular classical, sitting somewhere on the darker side of baroque, through more and more experimentation until it became discordant abstract minimalism, with a smooth transition through the area in between. It was utterly fascinating throughout, and the dissonance was balanced with enough consonance to keep the whole thing sounding beautiful.

I have always been a sucker for the sound of a cello, there’s something about the timbre that really appeals to my senses, the it sounds so rich and full, yet sharp and subtle all at once, and it was brilliant to see one used in such an alternative manner, lovely stuff.

Now you need to go and listen for yourself…

http://www.myspace.com/belaemerson

http://www.cellobela.com

This video gives you a pretty good idea of what’s going on with her technical set up. Interesting stuff for geeks like me.

And look who we have here… None other than Mr Tim Exile…

Fascinating stuff, I hope you’ll agree.

Well that about wraps up part one of today’s post… But we are not nearly finished! Oh no…

Seeming a polar opposite to the dark baroque magic of Bela Emerson, we have an excellent pop band I’ve recently stumbled upon; Delorean. Probably about as twee and fun as pop music can get before I start to spasm with rage, their sound lies somewhere between The Go! Team and MGMT. The same euphoria that both employ, and a lovely mixture of The Go! Team’s cheerleader enthusiasm and MGMT’s synthy cool. This isn’t poncy or clever, and to be perfectly honest, I’ll most probably be thoroughly sick of it in three weeks time, but for now it’s jolly good fun.

I came across them after I was directed to an article concerning a new movement entitled “Glo-Fi.” Cue rolling eyes and groaning cynicism that always follows ridiculous hybrid sub-genre pigeon holing. But stupid names aside, the scene does seem to be producing a fair amount of interesting music. In what seems like a natural progression from the new wave of New Wave that’s been all over the music scene in the past few years, bands like Neon Indian and Blank Dogs are actually regressing through the chain of musical evolution, from the spot that MGMT, Ladyhawke and so many others have been drawing from in recent years.

Neon Indian seem to be taking things back to both psychedelic baroque pop songwriting, and the synth twiddling production of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis. While my descriptions may sound rather fascinating, the album has yet to grab me particularly, and I do find the concept very intriguing, the end product sounds somewhere between Justice gone lo-fi and Air for the nu-rave market. Not that that is a bad thing, just not as exciting as one might hope from a band who’s name keep popping up in the all the right places.

http://www.myspace.com/neonindian

Blank Dogs however, are regressing things in an altogether more exciting way. Taking the New Wave starting point and ramming it back to the raw Post Punk and Garage roots, keeping a nice slice of Goth stuck in there, very good stuff. I’ve yet to actually buy the album, so I’m not going to pass too many comments on it at this stage, but from what I’ve been hearing, it’s raw and ballsy stuff, just what I like to hear being made.

http://www.myspace.com/blankdogtime

So far, what I’ve heard about this scene sounds very promising, despite the name, but I’m sure we can find slightly more eloquent terms for describing this sound as time goes on.

That about wraps it up for today’s post… I seem to have managed to clock up a pretty impressive word count in these last two posts. I’m actually supposed to be writing a 3000 word report on my research techniques for uni, but as usually I’ve found a way to focus all of my words to a rather irrelevant product. Oh well, long live feckless blogging.

At the rate I’m going I’m going to run out of things to talk about alarmingly quickly and I’ll have resort to telling you about what I’ve had for my dinner and how many times I’ve been to the toilet today. But you can always check twitter for that information in the mean time.

Ciao pet.

BloFiYoToRea. Or something like that…

Well well well well well,

What do we have here? A blog from Minimax not trying to force a mix down our throats, or some other ghastly act of self promotion. Blow me down!

So, to business! This month (November, blimey the days just fly by, don’t they!) I’m taking part in NaBloWriMoFoShoYo -  National Blog Writing Month to it’s mother (forgive me, I made the last three ‘o’s up.) – which will see me taking on the seemingly impossible feat of writing a blog post everyday! SRSLY! A quick scroll down the page will give you a fairly good idea of my usual posting frequency… You get the idea. But enough preamble, let us get the meat in this pie!

This weekend has been a fantastic few days for discoveries. Today I dug out a CD that’s been in my possession for several months now. Sitting beside my bed, in suitcases, on my computer desk, constantly teetering just on the edge of action, but never quite making it out of the case and in into my ears. I was sent it by a rather nice chap who went by the name ‘Stanton Delaplane’.  I encountered him way back in the midst of time, at a gig at Start the Bus…

Gomez were headlining, Tom and Ben doing an acoustic set as it happens, which was bloody brilliant, but another story all together. The support hadn’t been announced, but being the keen music geek I am, I got there nice and early hoping to find some new musical loveliness. And it was loveliness I came to, oh my brothers, but not the sort I was expecting.

When I arrived, Stanton Delaplane was mid way through a set of beautiful guitar drone and a multi-part harmonies with himself. God bless loop stations. He very kindly offered to send anyone in the audience a CD, if they gave him their address. Luckily I managed to find a felt tip pen and a scrap of paper, and scrawled my address in a blur of red letters that instantly expanded to twice their size the minute they fell onto the paper.

A few weeks later and still no CD, I assumed that my note had been  illegible, until one morning I came down to find a package waiting for me, containing an EP entitled “Mandibular Sweetmeats” a curious name if ever I heard one. Unfortunately, the CD arrived at a time when things were a little hectic in my life. I was moving house what seemed like three times a week, and spent the majority of the summer living out of suitcases and boxes. The disc got put aside and spent the next three months being tossed about, dug out for a definite hearing, then lost again in the mess that inevitably follows where ever I rest my head for more than a few days. Until today.

On the bus on the way back from town, the words Mandibular Sweetmeats popped into my head, but I couldn’t think why. I narrowed it down to being the name of an album or EP, but with absolutely no idea who the artists was. I got home and googled the name, and up pops Stanton Delaplane. After a few minutes of rooting about, I finally found the CD and put it into my computer. I’m pleased to report that it was definitely worth the wait.

A baroque folk mix of beautifully defined guitar lines, wall of sound layers of drone and some really fantastic harmonies, this is good stuff. Anyhow, this is the part where I will inevitably fall into painful journalistic clichés and sickly sweet arse kissing if I write anymore, so I’ll leave it to you to try and form an opinion on his sound, based on the tracks up on his myspace. You never know, if you write to him he might point you in the direction to pick up a CD with his music on it.

http://www.myspace.com/stantondelaplane

I was also going to tell you about a cellist I saw at the fagoween (all will be explained) party last night, but unfortunately I haven’t got a clue what her name was… I shall endeavor to find out and include a bit about her in tomorrows post. I’m sure you can probably wait until then.

TTFN Biatchiz.