Green Slime

Recently, it was the birthday of a horrible man named Philip Heckles. Don't worry if you haven't heard of him, I wish I hadn't. He probably doesn't even have a Wikipedia page... Nah he doesn't, I just checked. This is the closest result for some reason.

Anyway, I was wondering what to get for him for a short while. He tends to spend money on gifts for others, but I've been a bit skint. So, as usual, it was time for an in-joke present. Easy enough, he's obsessed (and quite rightly so) with this 1968 factual documentary* film theme tune:

...so I did a quick scribble based on it. It looks like this:

The picture is 2 different green inks applied to a piece of A4 size white card with a wooden kebab skewer and a little plastic spray bottle. You may notice I got the quote wrong. That is because I didn't watch the clip before making this, and I didn't really have a plan when I started. Also, the words I use are our own twisted variation of the lyrics**. I painted a nice wooden frame dark green and varnished it to make it look slimy.

That was it basically, present sorted. Upon receiving said gift, his reaction was "it's a picture!"

Well done Phil, your age and intelligence go hand-in-hand.

The Smallprint***:

*Well, 99% of it based on real life events.

**A poor excuse.

***I can't actually adjust the size of small section of text, just the whole article. But you can pretend.

2010 in Music - Releases

I haven’t really sat down and thought about a countdown of top albums this year, but I always make a note of what albums I’ve bought throughout the year (that are released during it) then just mark off what ones were really fucking good… then try to arrange them in some sort of rough order. This isn’t exactly fair as some albums get a billion plays since January, others only get 4 or 5 plays, over the last week! I also decided to combine releases for artists who have proper churned stuff out this year.

Regardless, here’s my attempt to organise some records I’ve enjoyed this year:

1. Astrohenge - Astrohenge

2. Teeth Of The Sea - Your Mercury

3. The Declining Winter - Scenes From The Back Bedroom Window EP

4. The Green Kingdom - Prismatic / Remixes

5. Altar of Plagues - Tides EP

6. Triptykon - Esparistera Daimones

7. Khuda - Palingnesia

8. Working For A Nuclear Free City - Jojo Burger Tempest

9. Cloudkicker - Beacons / ]]][[[ EP

10. d_rradio - Parts / Seasons EP

11. Alcest - Écailles de Lune

12. Gold Panda - Lucky Shiner

13. Brave Timbers - For Every Day You Lost

14. The Moscow Coup Attempt - Transmissions From The End of The World

15. Mass - Paint By Numbers

16. We Are Knuckle Dragger - Doors To Rooms EP

17. Lafaro - Lafaro

18. IO - Materioptikon

19. Dead Meadow - Three Kings

20. Rose Kemp - Golden Shroud

21. Fieldhead - Riser EP / Long Train Journeys / Reference Line

22. Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart

23. The Dark Sky Singers - Like No English

24. Mogwai - Special Moves

25. worriedaboutsatan - Heart Monitor EP

26. 65daysofstatic - We Were Exploding Anyway / Heavy Sky EP

27. Wolf People - Steeple / Tidings

28. Baths - Cerulean

29. Admiral Angry - A Fire To Burn Down This World

30. Scott Kelly -The Wake

31. Gallops - Gallops EP

32. These Monsters - Call Me Dragon

33. Unkle - Where Did The Night Fall

34. BXI - BXI EP

35. The Books - The Way Out

36. Mender - The Happy Medium / Resonant Tense EP

37. Quack Quack - Slow As An Eyeball

38. Autechre - Oversteps

39. Silent Front - Dead Lake

40. Drum Eyes - Gira Gira

What have I missed then? I must point out that I didn’t find the time (or money) to buy every album I wanted to, so yes there are big gaps in the shape of God Is An Astronaut, SWANS, Grinderman, Chickenhawk, Humanfly (I only have that album on tape so it’s only had a couple of plays so far), Enslaved, The Phantom Band, Sleepy Sun, Melvins, Zach Hill, Bardo Pond, and so on… I’m still waiting for the postman to deliver the 2010 releases by Talons and Conquering Animal Sound too.

There’s also a load more that I didn’t mention as the list would end up going on forever. A top 40 is already too much to try to figure out! Feel free to discuss any of the records I have or haven’t included.

In 2011 I am looking forward to new releases from Vessels, Manatees, Three Trapped Tigers, Mogwai, And So I Watch You From Afar, …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Necro Deathmort, The Pattern Theory, Alright The Captain, Dextro… the list goes on!