We Are Two

My friends, let us look around us. In the grand scheme of things, we are but amoebic specks on the timeline of existence. Civilised humanity has gradually worked itself to a gateway of pointlessness over the last 10,000 years or so, and whilst we might look at achievements such as our worldly wide information superhighweb, built on a backbone of filth, and believe we are advancing beyond all recognition, against the back drop of the 15 billion year old universe, we aren’t much really. Aren’t much at all.

And so what significance can we attribute to the second anniversary of this very vehicle for melancholic out-pouring that you find yourself wading through at this moment of a blink of a fraction of history? Well, shit loads, obviously.

We could go into a bit of depth and detail as to the significant steps on the evolutionary path that we’ve achieved, but truth be told or something, there is not enough time in the day, or adjectives in the lexicon to cope with our skills – needless to say though, your occasional kind word makes it all worth while. Honestly.

Take this one for example, received from Mr Hopkinson’s Computer, who joins us in our celebration, by having a go at some Bjork-ing. Textbook.



Mr Hopkinson’s Computer – Birthday


And with this introspection that our ludicrous measurement of time deeming that another passing of 365.25 days made up of 24 hours made up of 60 minutes made up of 60 seconds gives us, we retort with this – we are a'changing. Like a caterpillar retreating into it’s pupae, we are going to sleep for a while. But when we come back, we will be a beautiful butterfly. Or possibly a moth. Or maybe we might just stay a pupae. Hmm.

Until then, as an apparently suitable footnote, where do I find myself on this most celebrated of days? In a hotel room far too far North, with the sound of a power shouting class booming down the hallway, and the suspected dramatic view of the English countryside obscured by genuine proper rain. How wonderfully apt. To add insult to injury, due to my little tripette, I’m missing a night of high falutin in New Cross, where PNAK are churning out their spasticated krautings. We’re going for a walk now.



PNAK – Experimental Croquet


Tiny Dancer


Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

New Night

We all like new things, don’t we. A bit of new. A new thing. Nice bit of something new. A lovely slice of new. A visit to Newington. A trip to New World. Two tickets to New please. Have you seen New lately? Tell him I’m looking for him. I’ve just booked an appointment with Dr. New. I’d love to see your new. Gone on, show us your new.

Oh, okay then.

The name’s War. Gary War. Which is the best name I’ve heard for about three days. But then, it’s been a good couple of weeks for names. I met a man called Wayne Tantrum this week. And last week, a man called Gavin Savoury. Both true, both brilliant. But neither of them can tell me about the future, whereas Gary War most definitely can. I don’t believe in time travel and all that old shite, because my puny human brain can’t conceive the fourth dimension, so I’m stuck with the same old three. I’m not that upset about it, but if you are, the lad War has written a song which I believe is atuned to the most highly developed of the human senses, and is really the instructions on how to enter the fourth dimension and build a time machine. This is it.



Gary War - Hope For The Future


Q: What is the thing that would happen if you locked half of Electrelane in a dark room for seven days and seven nights, with The Lightning Tree piped in on repeat, in 2001?

A: Aleks And The Drummer

Thank god.



Aleks And The Drummer - Szcz


And finally, it is new, but it isn’t new. It is new, because I haven’t heard it before, but it isn’t new, because I’ve heard it before. Well, when I say I’ve heard it before, I’ve heard Meddle before, and god knows I’ve heard the Bladerunner sound track before. And now Mirror Mirror sound a bit like playing them both together at the same time, but so they play together as one thing. And I haven’t heard that before, so therefore it is a new thing, and it counts as such.



Mirror Mirror – Lock Up Your Sons


If you believe what they say, all this lot of new have got records coming out soon. I’ll keep an eye on them, but I’m not sure I trust them.

And finally, confirmation of some sadness that has been floating around – Yellow Swans have called it a day, and what’s more they’ve said so. I fucking love Yellow Swans, even if ashamedly I’ve only been listening to them for a couple of years. In a rare moment of out pouring, they opened my mole-like eyes to much, and therefore they will join the pantheon. They’ve still got some live dates to play, and I’ve never seen them live, so if anyone is off to Barcelona for the 20th of June, and they’ve got room in their suitcase, I’m not much trouble. Cheers.



Yellow Swans – Police Eternity


Tiny Dancer


Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

A Great Work Must Have Many Sides

The practice of going out somewhere is a fickle mistress. On the one hand, you get to see stuff, some of which you might even quite like. On the other hand, you have to deal with people, and as we are all well aware of, the majority of people are rubbish. It’s a fine line, and one which should not be crossed without a great deal of thought and consideration.

But so buoyed were the Tiny Dancing team by the success of our recent excursion to Camden, we did it again last week. Not exactly the same you understand – although the visit to Shah’s was once again a triumph – as this time we voyaged off to Kings Cross to see DeVotchKa at The Scala. Credit for this one has to go to Stardust who at his persuasive best persuaded us that it would be a good idea to go and see a band none of us had ever really heard before.

Now, this breaks a golden rule of the fine line crossing. If you don’t have an idea what you’re letting yourself in for, you can easily run foul of people. But everyone deserves a slice of good fortune every now and again, and by god, we got ours. Not only were DeVotchKa a bit of a revelation, but the only person who offended me was a portly man sporting a teutonic ‘tache who seemed intent on thrusting his arse towards me at every opportunity. Not bad, considering.

So good were the surprisingly small band (as in number of members rather than stature), with their massive tubas, drummer drumming whilst tooting on a trumpet, multi instrument wielding genius and plaintively voiced lead, Debris was at one point thought to be seen jigging about a tiny little bit. It’s not been confirmed, but smoke, fire and all that. Apart from a genius cover of Venus In Furs, two songs stood out on the night, both from How It Ends – Enemy Guns, because the start sounded a bit like the start of Dolphin by Shed Seven, and the titular How It Ends, because Nick Urata sounds like Roy Orbison on it, and that’s as high an honour as I can bestow upon a man. Get that album and their newer one here.



DeVotchKa – Enemy Guns

DeVotchKa – How It Ends


The day before, I’d gone all cultural, and wandered to The Young Vic to see Olga Neuwirth’s operatic attempt at Lost Highway. The mere thought of it is enough to scramble the mind, but alas, it was a bit rubbish. Where David Lynch manages to imbue the film with a terrible, intensely claustrophobic sense of foreboding dread, with each pan of the camera threatening to reveal a new horror at every turn, the fully viewed stage, whilst impressive, left nothing to the imagination. And where Lynch manages to capture the disconcerting and strange so perfectly, moments like the party scene were clichéd down to what people might think weird is, rather than actually being weird, because it’s weird.

The final nails in the coffin were a particularly badly judged turn as Mr Eddy, and the operatic second swathe, which rendered the dialogue laughable, when really, no-one should be laughing. An exercise in form and concept over content, and as a result, a shame.

That said, the continuous orchestral score was rather excellent. Over the 90 minutes of the piece, the music was the only element that reminded of the fear that should thread throughout. In an ideal world the score would be recorded and released, but given the relatively short run assigned to the performance, it can’t be likely? So instead, here are some of the more likely moments from the film soundtrack, from Angelo Badalamenti and Trent Reznor, who also produced it all. Get it for obscenely cheap from here.



Angelo Badalamenti – Fred & Renee Make Love

Angelo Badalamenti – Red Bats With Teeth

Trent Reznor – Driver Down

Of course, being the theatre, no-one was overtly annoying, although being the theatre, that was quite enough to start with.

I’m staying in tonight.


Tiny Dancer


Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

The Songs Of The Anaesthetist

A shiny new present arrived in the post recently, all the way from the Amazon. It's called Lifetracks and it's by Mr Tom Middleton, one of my top 20 ambient music heroes (I have a lot of ambient music heroes). Tom Middleton was one half of Global Communication who were doing their thing way back in the nineties, the other half being Mark Pritchard.

As well as creating one of the slowest albums ever with 76:14 (here we give you the last track on the album, 12:18. It's a choral piece that has always put me in mind of the lapping of waves on a beach and is simply beautiful, especially the reprise at 7 minutes 30. It's also excellent for falling asleep to - in a good way), they were also partly responsible for one of my favourite albums in Remotion, a compilation of seven remixes for other artists (and a couple by themselves including one under their Reload guise) that manages the tricky business of hanging together as an album in it's own right.

Not only that but they also recorded an electro funk odyssey under the moniker Jedi Knights, nearly got sued to high heaven by George Lucas and then wrote the bona fide CLASSIC deep house tune The Way / The Deep (I'm going to leave you to seek this one out - it's too good to give away). Since then they have gone their own ways, recording under various names and DJing themselves silly all over the world - nice work if you can get it. For full information I can do no better than direct you towards the excellent and informative Reloadonline here.

So it was that I gave Lifetracks a spin - and I must confess did so with some trepidation, hoping that Tom would have not lost his magic. I was rewarded for my faith with an album of shimmering beauty. Recorded over a period of nine years, and linked inscrutably somehow to the Big Chill festival where Tom has played several times, each track is "inspired by history, people, places and experiences". There are two good reasons for buying this album:

1) it's bloody lovely; and

2) it has a really nice picture of a coastal scene in the fold out booklet. Nice touch.

For your listening pleasures:



Tom Middleton - Optimystic



Reload - Le Soleil Et La Mer (Global Communication Remix)



Global Communication - 12:18



Jedi Knights - May The Funk Be With You


Crisp Debris


Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |

Richard Godwin Is Alive And Well And Living In London

Here at Tiny Dancing HQ we attract all manner of waifs and strays from all over the world, bringing us their wares to show. More often than not we hear them out, nod sagely, thank them for their interest, give them a bowl of soup and then send them back from whence they came, "filing" their offerings with all due deference in an appropriate place; leaving posterity to judge where we dare not.

So it was with some trepidation that I opened a parcel left on my desk accompanied by a note from Tiny Dancer, flecked with blood and sick (he’d been for a liquid lunch with Debris I believe), saying, "Stardust old man, have had this sent to us - not quite sure what to make of it - needs measuring against the great male chanteurs, which is your area of authority. Leave it up to you to see if it's worth a post or if we should send him away with a flea in his ear."

The package was entitled Brel And Other Gallic Horrors and contained the usual stuff about being a fan of the blog, although he did reference a Brel posting I had done – the lad had done his research. He referred us to his cover of the Brel song Next, which some of you may know from Scott 2, and which Richard Godwin, for such was his name, had re-interpreted with his own translation from the French.

Taking my quill, I scribbled a reply along the lines of "Will have a listen tonight... Next! I bet it’s rotten, can’t wait!". I then called in Casanova Cox, a grubby faced urchin that we use for running errands, playing pranks, satisfying Debris’ carnal appetites and occasionally allow to write an article about some rightly forgotten band from the Britpop era. I gave him a shiny penny and sent him over to TD.

That night, after I’d feasted on my usual dinner of opium and whores I lit a fire, opened a collection of poems by the Metaphysicals, poured a glass of single malt and let the gramophone do its work on this Richard Godwin...

The first track I listened to was Next!. Now the thing with Brel is that almost all versions of his songs that the English speaking world has heard have the long shadow of Scott Walker looming over them. He worked from the translations of Eric Blau and Mort Shulman from Jacques Brel Is Alive And Well And Living In Paris and very much brought out the bedsit romanticism in the songs through his persona of the sensitive poet for whom reality is a disappointment and people’s nature is too base. It’s that reading of Brel that’s prospered to this day to the extent that artists don’t so much cover Brel as cover Scott Walker covering Brel.

Godwin’s interpretation is arguably a lot closer to Brel and the tradition of the bawdy, whisky soaked balladeer, who drinks and drabs all day and must confront his demons alone at night. It’s a good version, notably for the guitar arrangement; Godwin really is a very good guitarist.

So a nice start, but it takes more than a "nice start" to get past the strict quality control at Tiny Dancing... then I listened to The All-Stars, one of his own compositions, and was sold. Melancholy loveliness of the highest order, beautiful lyrics and again some great guitar parts.

A quick glance of his influences on MySpace, apart from Leonard Cohen, didn’t turn up who it was reminding me of, although it’s a great list including most of my favourites. He actually really reminds me of Lambchop, but also, musically, Jarvis Cocker when he does more downbeat stuff, particularly some of the songs on This Is Hardcore (listen to The All-Stars from about two minutes thirty and tell me I’m wrong).

It was at this point that I realised we needed a Tiny Dancing field trip to go and see the man in action, so we donned our cloaks and set out.

A very nice curry in Euston was followed by Dancer, Debris and I venturing to Tommy Flynn’s of Mornington Crescent to sup a few ales and keep one eye on the football whilst hiding from the dull support acts. Once the danger had passed we wound our way closer to the stage to catch his set and also to get away from a very smelly old man who had taken a shine to Debris. It was well worth the trip.

The performance was really rather marvellous and lived up to what I was hoping for from the recordings that I’d heard, with a couple of unfamiliar songs at least matching what’s already out there. Currently everything is vocals and guitar, which means you have to make an effort to listen and unfortunately Flynn’s wasn’t the best venue for this as the occasional shouts supporting Arsenal or Liverpool trampled over some of the subtleties of the set. I for one am hoping that the future will bring a brass section as then I think the world will hear just how good the songs are...

I encourage you all to check out one of his upcoming London shows which you can find on his MySpace page as we all thought he was great and I for one will certainly be going back for another look at some point. As an inducement here are Next!, The All-Stars and Variety for your delectation. If you like these then you can also hear Josie and One Of Many on his MySpace page here.



Richard Godwin - Next!

Richard Godwin - The All-Stars

Richard Godwin - Variety


Ricky Stardust


Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl |