You can’t count on me for anything…

I’ve been off for the last couple of weeks getting a rather sobering dose of what we laughingly refer to as the real world. Quite enough of that thank you.

Let’s get back to not doing much, eh?

Gintis

Poking around the Hidden Hive site, a couple of weeks back for the previous post, I came across this lot. At the time it didn’t seem to be quite as much fun as Flotation Toy Warning, but it’s really grown on me since.

I don’t know a whole lot about Gintis, and there’s not many clues from their Myspace page aside from the highly laudable:

“If you like your music to come with scarves, blazers, shit haircuts played by pretty boys in jeans way too tight, then just fuck off now.”

You have to say, though, that they sound a helluva lot like Mercury Rev or Grandaddy, with a really rich (can I say “orchestral”?) sound that sees what sounded like simple songs developing into much more complex affairs. Perhaps predictably, they seem to have some sort of close links with Flotation Toy Warning, and the latter’s Ben Clay has written a review of Gintis’ album, Happy Drunken Accidents, for the website, here, which is worth a read.

Hidden Hive do have another couple of bands that sound pretty interesting too and it makes me wonder if there’s some sort of cosy Elephant 6- style collective going on there. I think I should probably investigate…

People Defiant

Wonderful Show

Trying to understand it all just makes your head hurt...

I have a bit of sweet tooth. I like to ladle cream onto puddings that are sweet enough already. I can’t manage my coffee without two spoonfuls. And don’t even get me started thinking about jelly beans…

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t always indulge it (how else do you think I maintain this svelte figure?).

But I’ll just get on with the link, eh? The analogy I am trying to suggest is that this is also born out in parts of my record collection, particularly in my reggae section. I love dub records, the wackier and sicklier the better. I love all that King Tubby and Mikey Dread queasiness. Can’t get enough of it. I like a good dose of unhealthy psychedelia too (ever noticed how many of the great psychedelic bands have sugary names? Prunes, strawberries, chocolates – not many crisp flavours there…)


Flotation Toy Warning

Anyway, I came across this band on Myspace yesterday, and immediately started thinking in these terms, although you'd immediately think Mercury Rev or Grandaddy, rather than Freedom Sounds. Flotation Toy Warning are another London band, but they sound pretty American to me, all operatic chords, kooky loops and lush dramatic vision.

You get a better idea if you look at the bands line up, as listed on the Pointy Records website:

Paul Carter - vocals, domingotron; Ben Clay – Guitars and Bass; Nainesh Shah – guitars and slides; Colin Coxall - drums, octopad; Vicky West - keyboards, samples, vocals, buttons & dials

Damn! I knew I should have kept going to my domingtron class!

It’s all pretty giddy stuff really and the “biog” section of their website is also rather disorientating too, relying as it does on an elaborate story about eighteenth century polar explorers and nuclear experiments. I suspect there may have been some artistic licence exercised somewhere.

But that’s OK; the music is a bit like that, too. To be honest it’s best not to worry about it all really. There are times when you don’t want to dance or think, you just want to curl up on the sofa with your quilt, toss jelly beans in the air and catch them like a dog…

Losing Carolina for Drusky


Popstar Researching Oblivion





Flotation Toy Warning's (as yet) only album Bluffer's Guide to the Flight Deck is available on Emusic...

Witness the majesty that is... the first Partly Porpoise Interview!

Pushing the boat out here...

In order to pad out a review I did for Fuse magazine on the Hoden Lane / Buzzcocks gig last month, I got in touch with Andy from Hoden Lane and didi a sort of e-mail interview thingie:

Fuse caught up with the youthful garage punksters and asked them what they made of the gig, a bit weird or an honour to support a legend?

We have played at the guildhall before, when we supported The Rifles so knew what to expect.” said singer Andy, “It’s always better playing to big audiences, whatever the age, luckily we like to think we branch out to anyone who likes listening to some decent tunes and it was nice to get some good responses from the Buzzcocks gig. We just wanted to play for longer, though !!!!

Definitely. Will we be seeing you again in the near future?

We love playing at The Guildhall and would play more around Gloucester if there were places to play. We play in Cheltenham at the 2pigs a fair bit but want to play more around Gloucestershire as the Birmingham scene is dead as a rabbit in the middle of a Robin Reliant. People who go on about how great Birmingham is are just complete nutters...the only thing Birmingham has got going for it is that its right on the motorway...so it's dead easy to fuck off quickly to somewhere else!!!

According to your Myspace, Oasis, the Libertines and Milburn are influences, are you big showbiz pals with any of them?

Bands like The Libertines and Oasis are influences purely because of what’s happened in the UK over the past 10 years, we are quite close with Milburn after meeting them a few times, as well as meeting up with The Zutons. But we would never try and blag a gig off them or anything like that, they get that so much...

Any older influences?

The Small Faces and The Who are also big influences as well as the obvious ones like the Stones and The Beatles. You just really have to appreciate music whatever type and take whatever you can from it. The good thing about our music is that our influences range individually, for example me and our guitarist (Bez) are heavily into The Libertines, The La's, Hendrix, The Who and The Beatles, with Smeg (bass) into Radiohead and The Jam and our drummer into everything from Dirty Pretty Things to Green Day. Its dead hard to try and get some notice as there are shitloads of bands out there, never mind just Gloucestershire, the whole of the south west and the Midlands has some cracking bands. The most important thing is that we are having a laugh, there’s no point going out with the attitude of wanting to be signed and thinking you’re a failure if you don’t. We prefer to write, play and record wherever, whenever we can and meet people and have a good time doing it…

So, where is Hoden Lane? What’s the significance? Hoden Lane is a place where Fenders and Rickenbacker guitars grow on trees, a place where ice cold beer runs from the taps and where stunning dark haired Latino women walk around asking if you would like… a refill... Don't you think Hoden Lane sounds cool?

Well when you put it like that, it kinda does…