Paperjam

In a life full of glittering achievement (highlights including my cycling proficiency test, sitting through all of Revolver and the evening I spent with that foxy Iranian waitress who fortunately turned out to not be a bloke after all) one feat towers above the rest: If you whack “Animals That Swim” into Google then an article I wrote ages ago appears quite near the top. I realise this isn’t on the scale of solving the energy crisis or isolating the Higgs Boson, but it does make me happy.

In the five years or so since I posted that article a small but select group have left comments in support of my theory that ATS are indeed the most underrated band of all time. We even heard from the band too, which is almost certainly the most showbiz thing that had ever happened to me until I had occasion to enquire “You alright mate?” of a thoroughly bemused Henry Rollins a couple of months ago.

Relatively speaking the last eighteen months has seen a whirlwind of Animals That Swim related activity, so in dragging my lazy arse to the keyboard to actually write something, I thought what better way than to provide a bit of an update for any ATS acolytes that find their way here. Remember; they haven’t actually split up – they just haven’t recorded anything for ages.

- Hank Starrs appeared on the Art Brut single Direct Hit in a duet with Eddie Argos.

- Hugh Barker published a book called Faking It about authenticity in popular music, theres also an associated blog right here.

- A chap called Alex set up an actual proper ATS website with decent writing, a discography and everything - hasn’t been updated in a while, but dead good.

- Someone updated the band’s wikipedia entry to state that they had asked to play gigs in London in 2008 but, tantalisingly, “They declined, for the time being.”

- Hank Starrs made mention of a possible MySpace page while also mentioning that former bassist Terry De Castro had a page with a really very cool cover version of East St O’Neill on it.

- Someone known as Craydee75 actually slapped the video for Faded Glamour on youtube:

Now that my patience for film photos has waned, mostly due to the sheer cost of it - medium format is essentially a quid a shot - I'm liking this little photo-grunger-upper application called Poladroid. It's Mac-only for now, but they're promising a Windows version soon enough.

Here's the original photo, Emma outside the Old Bell Tavern in Harrogate (which by the way, is a fine pub...):

...and here's the vignetted, messed-up Poladroid-ed version.

So it's a bit daft and all and dead retro-y/regressive, but when digital seems so clean, it's understandable why people are going back to these effects. I half wonder whether in 40 years time todays' youth will be tightly JPEG compressing their photos down to get that shitty, blocky phone camera look.

We've seen these flyers lurking about the Tin Angel and been a bit mystified, but it's becoming clear.... A Thing About Machines is an audio/visual arts festival in dear old Coventry, happening from the 19th to the 21st September.

Artists include Andy Votel, Frog Pocket, film heroes 7inch cinema (who are running an all-day event in honour of electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire), Talking Birds, Modulate and more, all playing and arting about in some unusual venues, including The Crypt of St Mary's Guild Hall.

Tickets are £12 for the 7inch cinema/Sonic Boom events, get them over 'ere.

I went to see a load of art by the Chapman brothers a few years ago, the upshot being that it ended up annoying me quite a lot. However, I was definitely nowhere near that warehouse when it went up.

Jake Chapman has now partially redeemed himself in my eyes (yes, I imagine it will be quite a weight off his mind) with the video for You Lie You Cheat by Spiritualized. It seems to combine the attempted suicide from A Clockwork Orange with that Polanski film The Tenant. It also calls to mind that sketch in Jam about the man jumping out of a low window repeatedly rather than throwing himself from the top of the building - in case he changed his mind halfway through.

Whatever the antecedence of this camera-abusing short film, I really like it. See what you think. Great song too.

SFA/Notting Hill offshoot The Peth are out on tour, notably at the Hoxton Bar and Grill on Friday 10th and The Greenman Festival in August. London types who like catchy, stomping, glam-rock noisiness should act accordingly. I am once again logistically incapacitated and thoroughly fucked off about it.

This should of course be in the bit on the right-hand side of this web site - but if it was I couldn't bung the strange video for the excellent Shoot On Sight just down here. All together now: "WE HAVE FOUND THE INSURGENTS".