Prelude – One Hipster’s Story

In my final year at college I helped start a music magazine that briefly went nationwide. For a little while we covered a brutally hip range of ‘indie’ and electronica acts: Interviewing, smooching, listening to a lot of great new music and occasionally finding time to publish some decent writing.
Then, about a year ago, exactly twelve months after we’d started the magazine, and just before the release of our sixth issue and third nationwide release, trouble hit paradise like a leaky tanker with a drunken …

The latest album from savage one man lo-fi outfit ‘Dublin Duck Dispensary‘ is out today for free, from the bands netlabel Rack and Ruin. The band recently made their live debut with an ultra brief but fantastic set at the poorly organised Hard Working Class Heroes festival. The album is called Luanqibazao (pronounced Loo – an – zi – ba – zow), from a Chinese word meaning ‘a complete mess’. Haven’t had a chance to listen to the rest of the LP yet, but the first ‘single’, (i.e.: the first …

Dublin’s fringe festival has rolled round again, and a variety of musicians are appearing in the Spiegeltent, which has been hoisted in Iveagh Gardens. Now while this is a disgraceful appropriation of public resources for the private use of privileged cunts – a harbinger of US style neoliberal fuck the commonmanism (kind of like the LUAS) – there are some interesting gigs available, including..
Cathy Davey – Monday 9.30pm, €20
The Fall – Tuesday 9.30, €29.50
(Appropriately circus like post punk legends)
Duke Special – Wednesday 9.30pm, €20
An Introduction to Dubstep – Friday 9.30pm, …

Ireland’s other new national music magazine has announced it is to take a months break from active production, relaunching as a freesheet. Before I get to an analysis of the change, I’d like to point out a little something from States’s press release (reprinted in full below), which sticks in my craw.
The phrase is “It is set to become the first Quality National Music Monthly available completely free of charge!”. Lets parse that shall we, ‘first’ means original or only, ‘quality’ as in indicative of worth or high value, ‘national’ …

New music sharing service Blip.fm bills itself as Twitter for music. Really it’s not. Like twitter it allows brief posts to be quickly shared between friends. Unlike twitter the service doesn’t provide for posting (or receiving posts) via SMS. That’s sort of immaterial, because what Blip does do is freaking awesome. Once you’ve created an account on the service, you carry out a search for the artist or song of your choice (so far almost everything I’ve looked for has been found – and you can upload your own music …

Outsider composer Harry Partch abandoned a university musical education, lived as a hobo for ten years in depression era America, and wrote an opera based on Yeat’s translation of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King. At an early age Partch forsook the ‘dead, white, middle class musical tradition’ and the Western system of musical notation; developing new scales (including a 43 tone scale, with 43 notes per octave rather than 12!), inventing new methods of musical transcription, and constructing instruments which could ‘capture the melodic contours of dramatic speech’.
Above is a youtube …

The pitched fork has pronged another prize with the fantastic documentary, Reformat the Planet on the emerging Chiptune scene. Chiptune (as distinct from 8bit music per say) has been around for about a decade, and is finally garnering some critical acclaim. Not content with inventing punk music, Malcolm McLaren hopped on the bandwagon early, writing an hilarious piece for Wired in 2003 claiming the birth of a new scene, ‘Chipmusic’. In the article McLaren is escorted my mysterious French underground electronic musicians to a dingy factory where credibility and curry …

We pride ourselves on our tremendous nowness here at Analogue towers. Finally our credibility has been recognised; several prominent young hips associated with the magazine have been featured on Fashion Filosofy, Ireland’s first street style fashion blog. Congrats guys!
Update: More sightings of Dan – My New Muse, Bluebirds are so natural.

Dublin band ‘The Dead Flags‘, are launching their perversely rocking debut single ‘Oh my love! Oh my God!!’ tonight in Whelans. The track (video below) features the bands trademark screwed up lyrics, and rag tag rockabilly style. Tickies are 10 euro, or 8 with this concession.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTxlLtfgnbI]

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Uutttk4AT0]
Music and video games can be a sublime combination. Whether you’re performing humiliating karaoke versions of cock rock classics with your friends on Harmoix’s Rock Band, or fiddling through rhythm action puzzle games like the recent PSP title Patapon, or trippy two and half D hiphop kungfu classic Parapa the Rappa..
Kick Punch, it’s all in the mind, if you wanta’ test me, I’m sure you’ll find, that all the things I’ll teach ya, is sure to beat ya, nevertheless you’ll get a lesson from teacha
..there’s a special thrill to be …