Hiatus..

Pop Cultureddd, after on Dr Disco Nap's suggestion, may be taking a short hiatus.

I'm very busy trying to end this term and move back to Teesside for the summer and personal drama is making that even more difficult.

So I need some time to regather my confidence.

Anyway.

Go HERE for a free download.

A quite good remix of Feist - One Two Three Four by the ever wonderous side project thing Van She Tech.

O2 Wireless Festival - Leeds - Sunday 17th June

Jealous much?

MAIN STAGE
DAFT PUNK
LCD SOUNDSYSTEM
CSS
PLAN B
MARK RONSON
NEW YOUNG PONY CLUB
DATAROCK
MUTEMATH
METRONOMY

2nd STAGE
KLAXONS
MODULAR DJ'S
CALVIN HARRIS
MODULAR DJ'S
SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO
MODULAR DJ'S
DIGITALISM
MODULAR DJ'S
MUSCLES
MODULAR DJ'S
SOHO DOLLS
MODULAR DJ'S
PENNY BROADHURST

02 BLUEROOM
UNKLEJAM
HUSKY RESCUE
STEVE EDWARDS
KATE HAVNEVIK
FANCY
MAKE MODEL
CHUNGKING

Check it out.

Conflict..

There is conflict all around us. Not just in a 'war' type sense. In a larger sense.

And two things that are potentially always in conflict are the individual and the social for each of us.

For the individual:

Dakota Oak - Die Fische im Wasser



For the social:

Alfie - You Make No Bones



Yes, obviously one of each from like the turn of 2000. Retro as, eh?

Love Twisted Nerve. Love Alfie. Love Dakota Oak.

Also love getting my head confused by grand abstract meta-narrative statements.

I now feel no conflict and am happy.

Other blog's n'tha..

I'm not too sure how most people go about reading blogs. And I'm pretty certain I'm writing even this to a fraction of persons. But hey-ho.

Firstly, my good(-looking) friends over at Disco Nap have popped up the Roisin Murphy video. A brilliant song. I'm very excited about pop music right now, seems to be making up for my lack of faith in other genre's at the moment.

And they also are partial to iLiKETRAiNS of whom I'd forgotten I really quite like myself. Made me dig out the CD out of my 'black box'.

Wonderous people that they are! I wish I was over the pond to go for a disco dance with them.

Occam's Razor is another great blog, if somewhat neglected at the moment, which actually makes me laugh out loud in shock, awe and admiration of the wonderfully blatant thoughts expressed. I love it.

Yet, the whole reason for this post is to air my dismay. A very popular blog, which you may very likely know if you are up on your blog scene, Missing Toof, and I habitually check several times a day, has admitted a liking for Simian. Why? Why? Why? They were a horrible band. Their sound was too nasty to be pop, too yukky to be indie, too awful to be cool. I just could not reconcile a liking for them at all. And even the Justice VS. Simian m'lark didn't do it for me.

But everything that Simian Mobile Disco have done I have adored with an unfathomable aching in my chest. I love it all. The album, the remixes, the production. If those wonderful boys, James Ford and James Shaw, have gotten near it or tampered with it then the likeliness is I will be a fan.

They encapculate everything good about this scene that I've kind of plunged into.

To think I used to be an twee-indie girl that wore floral patterns.. Oh.. Wait.. I still do.

Fuck! Even the Simian Mobile Disco mix of Simian - Never Be Alone is better than the Justice version. A controversial thing to say as that was probably what was regarded as the Remix of the Year 2006. But fuck it! I don't care.

I'm nervous about imminently having to go a meeting where I'll have to walk into a room full of strangers.

~sobs~

Calvin Harris

My thoughts on these are going to be given chronologically backwards. Just because that is how I feel. Yes, backwards.

Having had a lengthy drive home, which involved a wrong turn at Leeds and a tour of the city, I got home from London, picked up my man and got ready for a casual night at Empire to see Calvin Harris, the super-new pop-electro sensation.

A few tipples were consumed and then it was to Empire. Which was £10 in. I wasn't impressed, infact I think I exclaimed rather loudly "Fuck me! Ten pounds! Jesus Christ!" before being pushed into the club.

SebastiAn - Walkman was played before 11:30pm. How incredibly silly.

Calvin Harris appeared and, like, about 4 other people, which to me seemed excessive, you know, its not like he is reproducing a big sound. They looked a bit bewildered at first and then kind of fell into what seemed to be something that was very run-of-the-mill to them, i.e. performing.

Having had my image of Calvin Harris's live performance shattered on TV and then listening to the album (admittedly on MySpace, the worst way to listen to an album) I was genuinely hoping that the gig would reaffirm any reason I'd liked him.

But it was just as formulaic live as I thought it would be.

The only songs standing out at all being the obvious Acceptable In The 80's and The Girls, probably because they are used to getting a good response for those and they actually react to the crowd. But also what I am assuming will be the next single Vegas. And that only really stood out as it was the final song of the set and you could quite comfortably sing the lyrics for Acceptable In The 80's, same formula, same hook, same rehashed idea.

I was willing it to be good and it just didn't seem to happen.

Streetlife DJ's were fun though. Played some great tracks. And I've stayed for that if it wasn't for the odd and frankly quite unsettling mix of people in Empire.

They seriously need to think about how they handle these Friday nights. It's such a fucking beautiful venue. It'd be a shame to fuck it up.

Watch this space..

(Indeed, like bookmark it or get it on one of those RSS feeds or something)

I have just woken up very bleary eyed from two long days of travel and gigs.

Expect pictures and words of not a particularly positive nature.

I do love popping down to London though.

Coming up:

Andrew Bird

&

Calvin Harris

Now to my part-time job.

Andrew Bird tonight

It's tonight!

I seriously can't wait.

But I am going to cry like a girl.

Anyone sees me, give me a tap on the shoulder and say hello.

Sheer frustration..

Of all the things that have really incensed me today, of which, I may add, there have been many, the one that really left me writhing was a casual conversation that I adopted with someone about music and identity and someone else jumped in on only to claim not to think or realise that such a connection exists.

-- indicates interruption.

"...and it was mentioned about musical taste being a pretty good indicator of political persuasion--"

"What? How is that?"

"Well, a lot of the time you can pretty much guess a person's habits, likes and dislikes, lifestyle choices, dress sense by what sort of music they like."

"I don't see how it would effect it at all."

We are all a product of the society in which we are brought up in. Culture, tradition, family, education, politics, etc, all have a part to play in shaping the person in which we become. These things are not stagnant either, they are constantly changing, morphing, progressing. Epochs of history which come before influence everything that we currently experience now. Structures within society that even if we are not aware of still can influence our lives, for example, the agenda-setting that takes place in both politics and the media gives rise to us only knowing about issues or stories that they want us to know about. Society is so incredibly vast that to assume that because you are not aware of something must mean it doesn't exist or isn't true is just a naive fallacy for the ignorant.

I decided to use an ancedotal example, taking as my basis, probably, a typcial Thursday night in Isaac Wilson's pub in Middlesbrough and over exagerrate some of the descriptions to make a point, obviously it'd be more subtle.

"If I go on a night out and we go to the pub before going to a club me and my friends can look at the other people in there and just by what they are wearing tell which music genre night they are going to will be.. Skinny fit jeans, tight t-shirts, black and white pashmina's, big scruffy hair will be heading to the indie night. Dyed black hair, black band t-shirts, over-sized loose jeans, big DC trainers will be heading to the metal night. Tanned, short-skirted [female], white shirted [male], straightened hair, very groomed, Hollyoaks-esque will be heading to the mainstream pop/r'n'b/indie night. Its all dead obvious."

In conversation obviously a description doesn't have to be so air-tight as in writing, but you can see the connection being made, if somewhat, crudely. Yet apparently as an empathetic ability was severely lacking in the person being conversed with, this seemed much harder to achieve.

"But I like Christina Aguilera but it doesn't mean that I dress like her."

ARGH!

For fuck sake.

"No, of course you don't! But certain elements, ideas, ways of behaving filter down--"

"I once saw this really nice -insert desinger here- dress, but it cost £110, and obviously I couldn't afford it, but I really liked it. Then I saw a picture of Myleene Klass wearing it. I couldn't have copied her, because I saw it first!"

"No, obviously. I'm not saying that people copy the exact style but certain elements of things penetrate into people's lives, whether they are conscious of it or not--"

"Well, you are more interested in music so I guess you would think that."

What!? Argh! Just a complete lack of sociological imagination, an absolute inability to step out of her own value-judgements and see things objectively.

I was making a point that she completely miscontrued and there just seemed to be no way that she was going to be able to cut-loose from her own experiences to be value-free.

I was enraged.

To be fair, she was interrogated about her way of viewing the world in the seminar and made to look a little silly for misconstruing yet another point. So I felt slightly vindicated.

Hot Chip

Hot Chip's new non-single, demo-type, future-album-inclusion, Shake A Fist is up on their MySpace page.

Must say I'm impressed.

They use an imperitive command and I can't help but obey.

The Chapman Family

So Sunday at Middlesbrough Music Live didn't really go as planned and, to cut a long story short, there was a massive degeneration of rational, logical thought and my day was shortened and certain bands missed.

In saying that, for what I was there for I enjoyed.

But then again, I actually only saw two full sets. An improvement on last year though!

The Chapman Family. I had listened quite a fair bit to their songs on their MySpace. Conversed on a few friendly messages with Kingsley. Had dressed my boyfriend in my very own "The Chapman Family is not a cult" t-shirt and was very much looking forward to their set. But, fuck! They were superb. Really fucking excellent.

First act of the day, still managed to draw an impressive sized crowd that were jiggling around. Started well enough and I was enjoying it as was everyone else. But then they just seemed to 'find their groove', so to say, not in a 70's funk type way. But all of a sudden sheer brilliance just leapt forward. Spotless, flawless engery and charisma fell from the stage.

A fantastic set that definately got better from a good starting point already. I've not been that impressed by local 'talent' in a long while.

Oh, and it was the bassist Lucy's last gig. So from Pop Cultureddd a fond hello and a sulky good-bye.

I kind of wish I was better with my bass. I'm only really good at posing.

I am super-mega-uber gutted that I missed Shy Child and Dirty Weekend. But I'm glad I didn't get anymore sunburnt than I did.

Pathetic..

I'm feeling completely cut off from the world at the moment.

I think it is mainly to do with everyone in the world having the Justice album except me.

Even the rubbish University newspaper have reviewed it! I couldn't actually bring myself to read it. It was journalism of overly neutral writers. Yuk!

And even now I am watching Popworld and thinking how cool the lead singer of Good Shoes cardigan is! It's probably not even that cool at all!

This is it, isn't it?

OH FUCK IT! I'm going to go buy myself some trainers whilst listening to LCD Soundsystem.

I shall hopefully be feeling more connected and positive soon. Probably after seeing The Chapman Family and Shy Child tomorrow.

Party. Disco. And all those sorts of things 'cool' people might say.