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But I don't care - use Firefox.

Oh, alright, I'll try and do something about it.

Long periods of nothing

Sorry about the silence - I have in fact been filling my time with all kinds of fun, including writing a tutorial on kick drums for Computer Music, and interviewing Plaid. Both of those things should appear in the next issue.

I can feel Truck approaching rapidly, and I am also booked for another gig somewhat sooner - I will provide details shortly.

What I want

A Winamp plugin which automatically mixes tastefully between tracks you drop into the player so that you can mix while doing something else.

DJ Zinc is good at stupidly high-pitched bass sounds - this is worth a look for drum and bass people in the "listening" genre - not sure how that would work in a club.

Actually, the last time I went to a dnb night there was altogether too much sub and the whole thing was like being inside some kind of giant reactor core which uses chavs as fuel.

The Amazing PR Spelling Police

I received an email just now which amused me so much I'm just going to reprint it for you right here:

"Hi,

Just letting you know that the artist JAKOKOYAK has been spelt wrong on your website with regards to the forthcoming Truck Festival - I think it's spelt as jakoyak on the site. If possible, can you change this!
Here are some weblinks for Jakokoyak if you need further information:

www.bbc.co.uk/wales/music/sites/jakokoyak
www.jakokoyak.com
www.myspace.com/jakokoyak

Many thanks!
Garmon (peski records)"

I believe that the original ERROR was quoted from here, so I am in fact guiltless in this particular matter.  Blame Drowned In Sound...blame them for everything.

Anyway, well done to Jakokoyak, you have earned yourself some further press with your strong attention to detail.  See you at Truck, no doubt.

Welcome to Shatnerland, Home of the Metadroids

Today has seen some fairly furious blogging on my part. Furious as in prolific rather than...wrathful.

Probably the most relevant to what usually goes on over here is this post about William Shatner over at Mode 7 which got picked up by the inimitable Dong Resin over at Screenhead.

I will return.

Search Strings of the Month: April

Straight in at Number 1 this month, it's relative outsider and unfortunate Adam Sandler quotation, "stop looking at me swan".

The surprise winner has managed to hold back a veritable glut of old favourites: "They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard", "Hobbits take Isengard", "We're taking hobbits", "where hobbits? in isengard?", "we're guarding the hobbits?", "what? hobbit? who?" etc.

Boards of Canada - Trans Canada Highway

I got to listen to two of the tracks from The Boards' forthcoming EP this afternoon, as well as checking out the video to new single Dayvan Cowboy.

I have to say that I've been a little non-plussed by their work after Music Has the Right to Children and the EP which followed that: Geogadddi was fairly anal and Campfire Headphase was unfortunately just a bit boring.

Trans Canada looks like it has the chance of being a kind of upswing, but maybe not in the direction you might initially expect. Dayvan Cowboy itself is closer to Amon Tobin than anything else - sampled, retriggered drums over a modulated looping guitar motif. It does have a typically disjointed Boardsy melody which plonks along over the top, but the swelling strings and other sampled sounds really do lend it a bit of a Ninja Tune feel.

I also have that nagging furniture advert feeling when I'm listening to it - it's so different from the wackiness that characterised Music Has the Right. There's no dorky time signatures or, perhaps more interestingly, unidentifiable sounds to be had here: if you were being cruel you could make a crack about library music.

That's not strictly fair- it's a nice tune and I'm happy to listen to it: there's no grating, over-processed nonsense; some of the drum programming is superbly intricate; the spacey, drifting feel is a different direction for Sandison and Eoin and a not entirely unwelcome one.

The video is a tad disappointing, mostly consisting of cut-up shots of water and some guy surfing. Yay.

Skyliner, the second track on the promo, seems a little half-hearted. The pads and pitch modulation from earlier days are right back at the centre, as are the little elliptical drum patterns, and occasional single notes with a very long attack time: it's totally unambitious and doesn't really seem to fit with the direction Dayvan Cowboy wants to take. There's even some slightly irritating dub echoes just to make you feel all the worse for listening to it - it's just filler.

Here's hoping that the finished product will have a positive weighting in the Dayvan Cowboy direction when it comes out on the 6th of June (yes, 06/06/06 - because every black metal band hasn't already scheduled their release for then - oh dear).