Asleep on the Compost Heap

Danger accident black spot

2009-11-28T02:17:00.019Z

We used to go to Mayo to visit granny four or five times in the year. That was some long journey from Kells, cooped up in the back of a Nissan Bluebird with my brother and sister, watching half-lit midlands towns streak past the window at forty miles per hour (this was the speed at which my Dad drove) while something maudlin warbled on the radio - "I wonder if it's raining back home in Donegal". We used to fight in the back of the car too. Terribly. I remember elbowing my sister's nose near Strokestown once and the blood pumping down her face. Another time, my twin brother flung a burger I bought from the Luigi take-away in Longford out the car window. I recall how we both watched in shock and amazement as it lay sad and tiny on the road before disappearing under the headlamps of the car behind.

When we got west of the Shannon it was normally dark, even though Daddy used to say we'd be there by night time. It wasn't his fault though - he had good intentions but just never managed to break the 40 mph barrier. At this point, the back of the Bluebird was a funny little place onto itself. My sister would be fast asleep, actually nearly comatose, and her little head would bounce audibly off the car window. Meanwhile my brother and I were lost in eddies of perception and thought which changed depending on where we were sitting in the car. Whichever twin sat at the side window had a view of Bellacorick power station sticking out of the bog. The twin looking forward saw pointy Achill Island and the sea. Both views were something different after four hours of Strokestowns and Edgewardstowns. Bellacorick was a gigantic cooling tower belonging to the ESB which loomed over the local flatlands and our imaginations. We called it the big chimney.

We knew we were coming close to granny when the big chimney reared out of the bog. On winter nights the steam sometimes floated a mile above. Frozen. Like a cloud in an acid trip. Sometimes the steam caught the moon. Sometimes it looked further away, weirder than the moon. And the stars, of course, were rampant. No light pollution. Indeed, the far west of county Mayo is still one of the most perfect places for star spotting in Europe. Once, long ago (the 80s), our parents told us Santa lived in Bellacorick. It made sense. He came down a chimney. And, after all, Bellacorick was a big chimney. As a child, it looked to me like it could manage a lot of industrial toy manufacturing too. I really thought Santa lived there. I stopped believing in Santa in 1989. Bellacorick cooling tower was demolished in 2007. Watch below. The wind whistling in the camera mic is my favourite thing about the demolition of Bellacorick.

This post was going to be about Hunter-Gatherer, an Irish electronic producer who has a current album called 'I dreamed I was a footstep in the trail of a murderer'. I started writing this post while listening to the album, and it was on loop when I finished. The album is a fine piece of work and I believe it audibly fits with all of the thoughts expressed above. Hunter-Gatherer FTW.

MP3: Hunter Gatherer-Left for Dead

I'm a virtual tour venue!!

2009-11-26T22:23:00.018Z

Sure, Vicar Street might have some classy acoustics, and, yeah, I suppose the O2 has been known put on the odd showstopper for the masses, but next month sees the opening of Dublin's ultimate venue - a place where the bouncers take Ketamine and the flamin' Moes run free, where cougars prowl to the free-from jams of Amon Duul II! and Harry Nilsson tickles the ivories in the corner. Wild times abound 'til the bleed of dawn a-comes, leaking through shutters closed over a pretty tableau of giant Black Metal fans and gawky girls in vomit-flecked American Apparel unitards, all dancing their last slow set against the watery light. As proprietor, I smile from behind the Smithwicks pump and let them have one last spin of the floor before I ring my little brass bell and boot open the doors onto Kells' main thoroughfare, Farrell Street.

But really, I'm becoming a virtual gig venue. You see, the excellent Candy Claws from the Indiecater label are going on a blog tour where they will be uploading unique video or mp3 content to everywhere they visit. A virtual tour, if you will, and, as I mentioned, Asleep on the Compost Heap is one such 'venue'. Woop Woop. I guess they heard about our legendary rider - I'm busy sourcing stuff for them now, but the live conga eels are proving tricky to track down. You can listen to an MP3 from the 'Claws below the virtual tour dates.

CANDY CLAWS VIRTUAL TOUR DATES:
8/12 – Liverpool – The Devil has the Best Tuna
9/12– Ireland – Asleep on the Compost Heap
10/12 – Norway – Eardrums Music
11/12 – Germany – Das Klienicum
12/12 – Scotland – Song, by Toad

14/12 – Switzerland – Music of the Moment
15/12 – Huggerland – mp3hugger
16/12 – Venezuela – Gopher Illustrated
17/12 – Philippines?
18/12 – Surprise Finale!

MP3: Candy Claws-Island Grows

AND FINALLY - Check out the Home Lights Festival this weekend. Awesome acts, awesome idea, and awesome Adem who is welcome to stop by and play on the 'Heap any time he wants!

Oh goat-foot God of Arcady!

2009-11-24T16:35:00.052Z

first popularised by the goat-foot God Pan, the pan-pipe was a much-maligned instrument before it was rehabilitated by indie tastemakers Animal Collective in Winter 2009

Whatever criticisms you might throw at Animal Collective, never let it be said that they don't cater to their fans. 'Fall be Kind' sees them release their fourth EP of fine music following an album proper. And, like the EPs which preceded it - Prospect Hummer, People and Water Curses - the sense you get listening to this material is less one of scraps of stale crud cleared from the cupboard (as so often can be the case), but more a sense of evolved, upgraded music which has grown with the musicians during the gestating period between its release and the album which conceived it.

In 'Fall Be Kind's' case, the dominant shaping force in the intervening period was an extensive wigged-out tour of Merriweather Post Pavillion - a tour which saw the band sometimes attracting criticism for *ahem* too much 'strawberry jamming'. In that light, it will come as no surprise that the songs on 'Fall be Kind' are looonnnngg and that the EP itself is album length. It's also, perhaps, a bit knowing of the group to smuggle both a loopy pan-flute solo (Graze) and a Grateful Dead sample (What would I want? Sky) into proceedings. Yup, all the signs point to 'Fall be Kind' as Animal Collective's jam band EP. And, thanks in no small part to the immense presence of 'What would I want? Sky?' (truly a floating church of a song), it's also probably the best of their short players.

Lyrically, the band tunnel deeper into their strange, strange, burrow where domestic triviality is blown asunder by moments of psychedelic transcendence - a place Avey Tare in particular has made his own. In fact, if I am not wrong, there is a very crafty acknowledgement of a famous antecedent to this style of songwriting on the track 'On a Highway'. Tare, bored on a tour bus, sings about feeling dizzy with sunstroke and needing to piss. After smoking some hash, he becomes jealous of Noah Lennox dreaming - cue a disembodied Lennox harmonizing all over him. A Day in [their] Life? It's clever, yet not clever-clogs, and brilliant.

What else is there to say? Some people will say the record, and Animal Collective's music in general, can be solipsistic. Well it is, a bit. But unlike, say, the Arcade Fire (who always attach an angsty, cod-intellectual rationale onto their regressions to child-land), Animal Collective see no reason why both an innocent way of thinking and adult responsibility can't coexist without the agonized soul-searching. Not that there aren't flickers of darkness here; there are actually a couple of moments of abstract lyrical dread. Regardless, here, as on any of their recent records, they never strive for insincere explanations of what they are up to; a reason why they are my favourite current band. Well, that, and the monster fucking melodies.

MP3: Animal Collective-Graze

AU Irish albums of the decade.

2009-11-20T19:35:00.002Z

Ah northern Ireland, it's brilliant isn't it? Home of May McFetteridge, crap ads for shopping centres, the Hole in the wall gang, Julian who introduces Coronation Street, and, er, lots of rally cars. I jest, I jest. Norn Ireland is great, and it has a brilliant music magazine called AU, which I've written for a few times. AU are currently having a tilt at compiling a list of the top Irish albums of the decade. To do this, they want as much input from Irish music fans as they can get. Anyone can vote, and moreover, you can list up to 20 albums - gloriously allowing for the entire spectrum of anal retentiveness. If this endeavour interests you, get on over to their site and throw your tuppence worth in BEFORE MONDAY. Mundy O'Rourke and Glenn Hannigan for the motherfucking win y'all. Here's the link.

"'Bout yis? Neuowyeee on Corrie our Deirdreeee is getting a wee bit carried away with her toybowyee Rasheed. It's only scandalous. Why am I grinning? Well, sit yerselves down and I'll tell yis a wee secret. I just voted for my favourite wee band Adebisi motherfucking Shank in the AU magazine poll."

on the office stereo in a manner of speaking

2009-11-15T21:14:00.002Z

I thought I'd quickly share a couple of tracks that I am enjoying at the moment. The first is a remix of rare beauty from dub-step producer Joy Orbison. He has done magical uplifting things to Four Tet's already quite special 'Love Cry'. Both of these guys will be releasing stuff in early 2010- what a minty fresh start to the year.

I'm enjoying the new stuff from German microhouse producer Dominik Eulberg, such as the track below. It reminds me of Aphex Twin's fingerbib in a way - it's that crystalline sounding sine wave effect. The video is ace. Lots of high definition footage of various insects bumbling around, chilling out on plants, and doing their thing. Eulberg is a big fan of the natural world and his music draws on it. A word of warning to Lolo if she is reading this, there are moths and butterflies in this video (compost contributor Lolo has a crippling phobia of both).

Finally, more Joy Orbison. Hyph Mngo was a set-topping stonker in many clubs this year. It's easy to see why; it plays out like condensed joy, a track where the vitamin D deficient sound of Dubstep goes ripe in the sun.

nicknames

2009-11-15T09:43:00.026Z

Irish realist dramas such as pure mule tend to have charismatic characters with nicknames. Yet, the nicknames are usually shit. I mean 'scobey', come on. They are often like the name of a crap character from an early Tommy Tiernan riff or recent Ardal O'Hanlon. You know the bit in the act where said comedian says to the audience "wait til I tell yis about the fella from navan, his name was 'shovel' and then we knew this traveler called 'black and decker'". I also notice that Dublin-based shows or plays have the same problem. Crap nicknames; Anto et al.

I'd like to alleviate this 'shovel/hatchets/anto' cliché in Irish drama and fiction. Here comes a roll call of Kells nicknames. Borrow at will, but give credit.

Lala Smith, Bee Baw Power, Bop Power, Flap Lynch, The U boat (went to school with me but is follically receding now), the Plank, Mono, Luscious Lynch, baldy barrett, bodice mitchell, the honey monster, bubble balfe, turkey hogan, johnny eyeballs, skinny O'Brien, forty arses, hulky smith, snialler, scrounger, fisher price, dots, mongo, the soggipins (i might have made up this one, they were rival twins who took up bodybuilding and appeared on ricky lake as Ireland's hottest twins in an international hot twin episode), piko, parrifin lamp, jellyhead, Braysheens, beano laing, little wart, big wart, forty year old man, scaldy reilly, tailor, donkey, ironside, wolf, spud, magic arse, pudsy, piko, gilly, ironside, the honeymonster, Ba Tum, smiley Kiely, jomps, jaffa, razor, Hollywood, bear, smelly benny, and so on and so forth

minding the shop

2009-11-12T23:16:00.015Z

Trains will be leaving compost heap station at regular intervals soon. Please mind the gap. In the meantime I am busy thinking about the albums I enjoyed this year in preparation for a more dedicated effort than I usually put into the whole lists thing. The main reason for this gestating project is that I listened to wheelbarrows of albums this year. Seeing as I spent most of said year hunched over a desk with headphones on, I had little choice. I may have a grotesquely curved spine and the muscle tone of a filleted salamander, but on the upside I can pontificate over the relative merits of Sunn O)))'s 'monoliths and dimensions' and Bat for Lashes' 'two suns'. Also, I am going to do a top five (or ten) of the older albums which helped me through the academic year. Like I said, all this is coming soon.

First, some quick shopkeeping.

With the exception of the few in my sidebar, I know fuck all about other Irish music blogs at the moment. Are there any new ones worth checking out? Do any readers keep their own blogs? I'm shit and inconsistent at checking stats or the like, so I also don't know whether people with nice blogs are linking to this site much or not. Leave me a comment below if you have a blog.

I'm writing a little more consistently on food over on tumblr (actually, can something be 'over on' inside the internet? In this part of the country, we might say it's adin' in the internet or adover on Tumblr). The latest effort relates to an ongoing quest for casserole perfection. Read it here.

And now a beautiful MP3 to round things off. 'Angel version' is a dub edit from Stephen Hitchell's Intrusion project. Let it soothe thy frazzled brow and take you down an elevator shaft into his warm subterranean happy cavern. While there, admire the stalactites but for the love of God DON'T LICK THEM. Listen to the echoing sounds that fill the cave, including a painterly analogue hiss that might either be an effect picked up from the recording technique or the actual sound of billowing clouds of skunk pumped through fissures in the happy cavern floor. Okay, now look deep into my eyes not around my eyes look into the eyes not around my eyes now put your headphones on, mewl like a cat and press play.

MP3: Intrusion-Angel Version

Hitchell's beautiful 'seduction of silence' album is available to buy here.

Man's best friend

2009-11-11T00:04:00.026Z

First up, anyone who has not yet caught Episode 1 of Analogue TV really oughta! You can watch it on the embedded vimeo below. I declare a multiple win for the gang behind it. The production values, the sense it gives of a developed (rather than grab-bag) editorial taste, not to mention the quality of the show's interviews, make a screaming case for this to be watched by ANYONE who gives a hoot about that endangered televisual subspecies - proper Irish music television. Take a bow dudes.

Analogue Episode 1 from Analogue on Vimeo.

Second up: people who walk dogs in Kells, take note. I have one eye on some of ye now and I'm wise to your greasy little tricks. I had to catch a 5.40am to work in Dublin earlier - the eerie ol' 109 red-eye, a bus where the soft gloom of snoring Poles is sometimes punctured by the sad hiss of surreptitiously opened cans from behind the seat hiding the ubiquitous old fella of the eternal maudlin morning. On my way over the town to catch this bus I spotted two suspect characters in the dark, both pausing along the street with their hairy best friends. Bold as brass, they were, and definitely taking the dogs for a sneaky stroll with benefits - AKA the Farrell Street poop n'run.

Before six is the turd hour, it would seem. The hour when nobody can see your rat on a string void some reprocessed animal offal out of its trembling little hole (they alway shit on streets like they are getting off on it) onto Kells' main thoroughfare. Nobody, that is, bar the odd magpie taking a break from fighting a rook over a discarded three in one, and me. So what did I do? Nothing of course. I just stewed all day until I could write this spineless diatribe. But I might. I might *ahem* write a strongly worded letter.

gis a fuckin chip will ya?

Did I say dogs? I used the term loosely. These rambling little micro-mutts are the sort of canine which is more weight-watcher accessory than animal; a nondescript little shit factory on paws dragged over the town under darkness by some sweating, demented wagon in all-over-gortex as she trys to pound out the last bit of whatever bowl of uncle Ben's slop buckled the weightwatcher chart the night before.

The current dog craze hit Kells around Christmas 2006 I think. Almost overnight there were a million of them. My Dad has a good Dad-like theory on all this. "It was them Dubs who moved into the new estate houses" he says. "They can't do anything without a stupid dog, them Dubs. And now the Kells crowd are all at it too. Copying them." It's most probably not true. But it's funny, and it makes me think of dogs barking in either Kells accents or Dublin accents, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Atlas Sound and Tickley Feather giveaway

2009-11-05T13:45:00.004Z

Update: Tickets have been randomly selected. Congratulations to Morgan and Eoin who have been notified. I'm also aware that I had the wrong email address written at some point in the text. Woops and sorry.

Thanks to the nice people at Foggy Notions I have two sets of double passes to give away for upcoming gigs.

The first are for Atlas Sound (Bradford Cox of Deerhunter) and Hulk (Bruce Banner when he's angry - kidding. Hulk makes the sort of dome-ceilinged, instrumental electronica this blog loves. His album 'the silver thread of ghosts' is beautiful in all sorts of ways). The gig is in Whelans Saturday 21st at 8pm. For the chance of a pair of passes email asleepontheheap@gmail.com with your name and the name of Atlas Sound's new album and I will select your name using a random number generator tomorrow night 8pm.

hulk play whelans, hulk support atlas sound, hullk want to know who spilled hulk's pint

The second set are for Tickley Feather. Tickley Feather is the work Annie Sachs who makes woodsy, distorted music that is LOW-fi. Think of a creaky, smudged take on Animal Collective's campfire phase. Indeed, she is signed to their Paw Tracks label. Tickley Feather is supported by local boy wonder Patrick Kelleher and his full band upstairs in Whelans on November 18th. This promises to be an intriguing night. For the chance of a double pass to this email asleepontheheap@gmail.com with your name and the name of Tickley Feather's errr, actually screw that just email your name and mark it tickley feather. I will use a random number generator to pick a winner by 8pm tomorrow.

Nohow less. Nohow worse. Nohow naught. Nohow on.

2009-11-05T04:47:00.044Z

Ah, wanderly wagon. A children's show from those days where a vignette about snakes and ladders could prove as terrifyingly existential as a one-act Samuel Beckett play. And, as we all know, life sometimes still feels like a fucked up game of snakes and ladders with a know-it-all prick of a crow cackling 'I told you so' over your shoulder.

(Aside - If there was an Irish 'Neon Indian', he'd swipe the theme tune to wanderly wagon and fucking run with it for ever, the chillwave cunt. Hey, wait...I'm just kidding Neon. Come back please, I need you. Hang out with me and the possie like we did in the 'Shaw last week. Remember how we ironically ate roast potatoes cos it was Sunday, then non-ironically gobbled a load of cattle wormer pills from New Zealand and jiggled around the barr to your tune and it was only lunch and it was mad? Then we capered through Rathmines in the daylight until the worming tablets wore off. Remember how we got home to play guitar hero and luxuriously felt that every time we busted major fret during Dragonforce's 'fire and flames' a discrete unit of the human soul did not have to die? Y'know, not like it felt that time before? The time you cried at the TG4 euroweather?)

When this show used to come on, my brother and I went quare. Bloodless faces, tiny bodies collapsed in stiff sobbing angles behind a couch. Indeed'n I still feel the visceral panic which used to overcome me at the start, when the wagon moved in semi-animate slow motion through the air, piloted through waning time-lapse light by a peculiar sort of overjoyed pig lady pilot. My mother describes the scene well: two screaming twins, faces pumped beetroot, scrunched together in mutual telepathic horror behind a couch, yet still very much drawn to the source of that which demented their wee minds.

And as for fortycoats? I remember clearly a demonic shade to his persona. He was like an archetypical travelling salesman form hell - a comically devilish character out of Bulgakov. He also flew some sort of contraption, and confidently spoke in rhyming verse ("I'll take look at me breakfast bowl, it's empty crow, now where'd it go? And that shoal of herring which flew beyond the wagon, which caught me eye before that dragon?"*) He was a spooky fucker. And with the exception, perhaps, of rimini riddle, the single most spooky entity on RTE kid's TV.

*made up in the fortycoats style

Music things to see and do this month

2009-11-04T02:31:00.043Z

"Nothing lasts for ever in the cold November rain" is a lyric Axel Rose wrote after he was kicked out of Whelans and left holding a bag of half-cooked chips from Roma II one pissing November night. Sure enough, those chips never saw the watery dawn, and Axel suffered inside himself. However, suffering begets inspiration, and earth is now one hair-ballad the richer.

Like Axel, many of us find the month of November as grim as a greying carpet of tripe of left out in a butcher's window in Phibsborough. Yet, we needn't turn to smack to help us through the gathering gloom. Why? Because there are a bunch of fun things to keep us otherwise occupied (in Dublin at least - if you live in Offaly heroin might be a reasonable seasonal crutch). Here are a few of them in order of their occurance.

Tripe: its repeating honeycombed surface makes it a foodstuff much feared by magic mushroom gobblers and neurosurgeons alike

Analogue Episode 1 Launch Party: Joy Gallery (Thursday November 5th, 7.30pm)

Analogue, the online Irish music magazine, is launching its excellent new Web-TV show in the Joy gallery this Thursday. For the price of a pint you can catch a screening of the first episode of the show - followed by music from Hunter Gatherer (sepulchral grooves from a wandering boy poet's mind), Angkorwat (smudged expressionist electronica that walks a tightrope between euphoria and worry), and The Great Lakes Mystery (gliding half-way house between post-rock and techno). Like Analogue's excellent Peeek! CD, this night promises to be a signpost toward the innovative, the fresh, and the left-field in Ireland.

Check out Angkorwat here

Check out Hunter-Gatherer here

Yours Truly: Crawdaddy (Friday November 13th, 11pm)

Yours Truly is a night starting soon in Crawdaddy (Tripod). I know the lads behind this and they have great musical taste. They will be casting their net broad and wide to pull in a bunch of quality bands from home and abroad for some proper alterno-weekend fun. As the night is in Crawdaddy and on a Friday, it will go on late. It will feature regular DJs (including Aero - my old bud from Kells), and should prove a proper tub of happy craicers. We Have Band are headlining the first night with support from Feed the Bears. A lot of brilliant acts are on the agenda for this night (from Ireland and abroad): more details will follow.

Homelights: Whelans (Friday November 27th - Monday November 30th)

Foggy Notions and Adrian Crowley are behind this one. It is a sort of micro-festival taking place in Whelans at the end of November, which appears to reflect the musical sensibilities of Adrian Crowley as it is quite a folky weekend. It is also a potentially awesome weekend. In addition to Adrian Crowley, you can catch the likes of Vashti Bunyan, Minotaur Shock and Hulk. You can also see AN-ALL-TIME-COMPOST-HEAP-FAVE in the shape of Adem Ilhan, who is playing on the Saturday. The tickets for this are priced between €12/€15/€20 for single nights or €45 for the weekend. If you have 45 quid to spare it might be a nice weekend. Whelans smells of pine and Christmas as winter draws in.

MP3: Adem-Statued

The rubbery white face of an old man

2009-10-31T02:56:00.005Z

This year's obligatory Hallowe'en post comes from Storkboy, my identical twin. I robbed it from an abortive blog he kept years ago that crafts something mystic out of 'we-wuz-in-an-estate-but-wuz-aware-of-the-country' in a way which I try, but never can. He is a brilliant writer. He is also identifiable as the twin on the right in the photo below. I ate more carrots to make me handsome. Happy Hallowe'en (Or Oíche Samhna as us non-Americans six miles from the place where it was invented sometimes call it)!.

they were dotes growing up

It happens every year, and it was walking home from work today that it chose to happen this year. First it was the dramatic surrounds of the national park that set it off, but later even stronger feelings with a darker edge stirred in my breast as I reached the non-descript housing estates. These are the housing estates that echo with childhood memories under ragged October skies, memories and feelings summoned by the power of damp walled terraced houses; a hypnotic power which is rooted not in any of their specific details, but is instead paradoxically rooted in their very universal non-descriptiveness. This is why they also seem universally familiar, those never-ending conurbations that spider out from our county towns.

I work in the Waste Water Treatment Plant which is located in a copse of woodland on the grounds of Ross Castle. I had quite a workload to get through this week and it spilled over into Sunday. Working on a Sunday is not something I mind too much, as the place is empty, allowing me the full use of the lab without my erratic working methods getting in anyone else’s way. I also like to take the time to enjoy a leisurely breakfast roll, read the papers and watch TV. It’s great. There’s nobody else to bother me.

I worked late today and I had to switch on the lab’s lights an hour before I left, a full two hours before what the newspapers recommend as the official ‘lights on’ time. It was while cleaning up my stuff that I had the first sense of the October pangs, which would later develop into an acute attack of the jib-jibs. I think it was the 5pm lights on that did it.

Walking home, I pass the gothic ruin of a Georgian gatehouse with several chimneys and boarded up windows. It is located on a little patch of grass which seamlessly blends into fine woodland at the rear. On summer mornings this place is attractive in an opaque postcard way. However, it was only this evening, with the jackdaws cawing from its mossy roof that it came into its own for the first time and fully announced itself to me; imposing, gothic, and forlorn. All over the park, ruins and stately homes, oak trees and ravens were uncloaking their true nature. Ross castle, no longer teeming with new-world coffin-dodgers, now majestically soared into a tumultuous sky casting no reflection on the surface of the black lake. The centuries overlapped. I took it all in as I walked; the way the mushroom wind sent hundreds of yellow beech leaves swirling chaotically in the funny half-light and the sad way in which car headlamps shone on the glistening road. It’s not often that it happens to me, tuning into my surrounds in such a manner, but when the world gives up its secrets I make sure to try and take note.

I approached the town wondering whether if each season had such a day, just the one, in which things take on a hallucinogenic significance, and now, as I write this, I wonder if I am using the term ‘hallucinogenic’ to try and describe the act of simply perceiving the world as it is. Further proof of the poverty of our conditioned senses is found in the thrill seekers who methodically comb hillsides for little fungi at this time of year, trying to open doors of perception that have been closed since childhood.

As I mentioned at the start of this blog, these feelings deepened as I walked through the housing estates at the edge of town. I grew up in one such estate, and I first experienced the world through its alleyways, playing fields and forbidden building sites. This evening, like some half-stoned gombeen, I slowed down to people-watch in a similar Killarney housing estate. Nothing changes; a group of ten year olds kicked a football around a muddy playing field with wet echoing slaps. Their mothers cooked mashed potatoes and sausages behind steamy orange windows. I remembered the myriad alliances forged in the complicated politics of childhood, the secret world of ten-year olds, every bit as convoluted as the UN.

The corner boys were there too. Those specimens who crowd round cement walls, hooded and wraith-like. They were playing with fireworks. Not the bulbs that explode into flowers in July skies but a different breed of firework; the Halloween firework. Sneaky whistling things that shoot from Waven pipe and explode with empty cracks. Halloween fireworks are not designed for the crowd-pleasing spectacle. Instead they are designed to blow cat’s arses apart, give oul one’s massive coronaries, and every now and then to blow the fingers off one of the teenage paramilitaries that wield them.

One of the hoods was performing the archetypical banger throw. It went like this, he lit the banger in his hand and the dim sodden air around him filled with acrid blue smoke and fizzing sparks. In a show of machismo he allowed the fuse to burn down almost to the very last before his friends began to scarper. He then fucked it into the air as hard as he could. The aim is to get it to explode in mid-air, which it did satisfactorily, eliciting a barking cacophony from terrified pet dogs. The dogs, along with the elderly, suffer the most at this time of year.

Another banger move is the house attack. In this move a hoody and his cronies will pimp-roll over to the house of say, a retired teacher who’s on a kidney dialysis machine. This move is more subtle than the previous one. The banger is placed in the confined space between a concrete wall and the house gable. This will produce a bowel shattering echo. Once the banger is lit, the hoodies don’t scarper, but instead, with hands in pockets, radiate outwards in a nonchalant circle, only betraying themselves with a flinch as the banger explodes, its sound magnified by the reverberating effects of the surrounding walls.

In the next few weeks anything carbon-based that is not nailed down will disappear and then reappear in one of the fiercely guarded bonfires that mark each estate’s perceived superiority over the others. Bonfire building is a competitive sport. The excitement is not merely in the building of a bonfire but in the daring raids in which material is acquisitioned. With the aid of several gallons of petrol these rain-soaked bonfires somehow always manage to defy the laws of physics by spluttering into life on October 31st. Dangerous things they are and all, what with the winds that can blow at this time of year, and they do sometimes set trees, buildings and perhaps even the odd hoody on fire.

Finally I came to the town. October had struck deep here too. I’ve never believed in that shite that one needs to grow up in a rural setting to fully appreciate the turning year. The light was really dimming now, and a bit of a breeze was blowing. The breeze smelt of leaf-mulch and coal-smoke, with an underlying earthiness betraying the cold and hibernating pasture lands that lie just beyond the town. I passed shop-fronts which were festooned with spooky Halloween decorations. Halloween is the festival which has done the least to shake off its pre-christian identity, as Halloween knows that Jesus can’t compete with it. Its decorations are probably the only festive decorations which empathise with the natural manifestation of the season. Compared to the gaudy incongruity of Christmas tack, the orange and black crepe paper and rubber goblin faces of Samhain perfectly compliment the falling leaves and darkening skies. Like the bonfires, they are there to answer a hidden need within us, a need to somehow reach out and grasp momentarily through the shadows and cracked mirrors of this hollow age towards another time, an age in which it was not a matter of suspending disbelief, but simply believing.

My grandmother used to refer to Halloween masks as false faces. This was a term which always unsettled me. And every year after all the little people have finished calling to the door trick or treating and the porch lights have been switched off, when the bonfire has burned back to a few glowing tyres and the fireworks have become sporadic and distant, there’s always a straggler, a trickortreater who calls alone after all the others; a wee hunchback whose alert eyes ramble gleefully behind the rubbery white face of an old man. It is he who wears a false face and not a mask. In wordless silence he stands on the doorstep looking back at me, his torn binliner-cloak streaked with rain, its black tatters fluttering in the howling wind. I give him some sweets, hoping he will go away quickly; for I cannot know for sure if he is ten, or four thousand and ten years old.

You're breaking the fourth wall Caden

2009-10-29T00:41:00.043Z

My sister went shopping for wine in Asda Enniskillen today and being fascinated by supermarkets, I decided to tag along with her. I wanted to check out the most profitable Asda store in Europe. This turned out to be a regretful decision. The place was fucking hellish (Asda, that is. Enniskillen looked lovely). The initial omens were bad. Enniskillen has a tricky little network of streets and the influx of booze-thirsty southerners is too much for the town. We speculated about what it must be like at Christmas, then we speculated about what it must be like for the local population every day, then we stopped speculating because my sister's slow-building road rage had started to seep from her, and it was scary.

After a few futile loops of the Asda car-park, we ended up parked 200 yards away in Tesco. By now my sister's road rage had infected me and had me loathing everyone in or around Asda. Even though we were a pair of 'southerners up shopping', I viewed all the other 'southerners up shopping' through a noxious fog of hatred. And fucking hell, but there were plenty of them. Once in the store, I watched a swarm of activity around a pyramid constructed from 1 litre bottles of Smirnoff and decided on the spot that everyone in the spirits aisle was a 'vulturous creep'. The ambient, Babel-like chatter of a hundred different regional Irish accents left me seething for no logical reason. I mean the fucking state of these people, descending from their various fucking 'regions' to a big fucking nordie supermarket to purchase goods at a cheap price. How fucking clichéd, you hungry pack of trolley-humping bog trotters. Yeah, I was that bad.

I don't know what short-circuited in me but logic had well and truly flown out the window. By the time a smug-faced woman in Leinster jersey bumped into me with a bursting trolley that contained a spectacular half-n-half combo of gin and milupa baby formula (starting 'em off early yeah? you fucking bitch), I was looking at a sign that said "Asda is part of the Wal-Mart group" and wondering if they sold automatic weapons.

Look at these fucking bargain hunters dot com

I ended up buying one thing - Marmite Cheddar. It looked the part, niftily coated in black wax with a yellow marmite sticker, like a more hardcore version of babybell. Before I unwrapped it I half-hoped it would have swirls of marmite running through it like rippled ice-cream. Instead, it was uniformly dirty yellow in colour, but looking closely I could make out tiny specks of the yeast extract in the cheese. It tasted underpowered. The cheddar had tang, but the marmite was a bit too subtle. Melted on toast, I'd say it would be barely noticeable.

Marmite cheddar: a terrible beauty is (not) born

If I was Pitchfork I'd give Asda Enniskillen 2.1.

I'd give Marmite Cheddar 6.6.

Today's token nod to this being a music blog is a song called 'Sheila' from Atlas Sound's Logos album. While immediately catchy, the song slips pleasantly in and out of focus the way a lot of Bradford Cox's music does. I'm sometimes reminded of those old plastic viewfinders when I listen to Atlas Sound; of looking inwards at a tableau of scratchy and faded little vistas from a time past. Thanks to Foggy Notions, Bradford makes his gazillionth visit to Dublin this year on November 21st when he will play Whelans. It's an Atlas Sound show so expect plenty from Logos (which is excellent). Tickets are €13.50.

MP3: Atlas Sound-Sheila

P.S. I noticed in Asda that the shop was festooned with green signs promising a giant 'rollback' on prices. I became unable to look at them without thinking (rather randomly) to myself "you don't rollback prices, you rollback a foreskin". I couldn't shake this puerile thought, and soon visualised giant green foreskins being rolled back over similarly huge helmets with the Asda logo on them everywhere I looked.

The Morrigan

2009-10-27T14:51:00.014Z

I didn't make it to the pumpkin festival after all. The blustery weather put paid to my attending. I went to the nearest pub instead. The sign outside promised a night of "spooky stories". How could you resist that? Outside, a lively breeze was sporadically pasting wet leaves to the pub's windows. Inside, the place glowed. It was suitably decorated, with pound shop cobwebbery hanging from every corner, unusually carved pumpkins flickering on the bar, and candles lit on every table. And then there was the storyteller, a secondary school teacher from Trim. He looked the part...not quite Eddie Lenihen, but bearded, bespectacled and behatted.

We settled down for some old fashioned ghost stories, but it seems the teacher had different ideas for the night than the sign outside let on. Instead of the advertised tales of terror, we were treated to a dry, stilted lecture on celtic mythology delivered from a laptop. He more or less chastised us for coming to hear "spooky stories" (a phrase he often repeated in a prickly tone) and we were to learn, instead, about the origins of Hallowe'en - or Samhain, which began near Athboy and Kells.

We listened as he read mechanically from a word processor document about the historical origins of the Tuatha De Danann, Tara, and Morrigan, the triple-headed hag. A lot of people were confused. None more so than the proprietors, who had gone all out on special effects for the night of spooky stories. The teacher's creaky lecture was therefore intermittently interrupted by a bar man releasing vast clouds of dry ice into the pub, and by the odd cringey sound effect from a Halloween CD. A final, awesome display of what-the-fuckery topped off the whole endeavour, where, mid-lecture, the teacher's wife emerged from the dry ice wearing an African tribal mask. Y'know the sort you can buy in that safari shop on Liffey street? Must have been all the rage in pre-Christian Ireland, those yokes.

in fairness, a lot of the stuff was pretty interesting

MP3: Kurt Vile-Overnight Religion

Kurt Vile's latest album, Childish Prodigy, is on heavy rotation around these parts. It is a rattly, loose collection of songs which are ostensibly lo-fi, but borrow from classic rock, psychedelia and krautrock. He has a great voice, yelpy, expressive, sometimes all Avey Tare innocence, and other times corroded by a hint of sneer. He has a great way with a guitar too - liquid, bejeweled patterns of notes often emerge from the production fuzz, catching you by surprise. Check him out.

Now you are here, at 7:43. Now you are here, at 7:44. Now you are...

2009-10-27T02:54:00.055Z

I read something that made my blood boil not so long ago. Glen Hansard (ancient self-mythologiser from ultra-precious yet mediocre Irish indie band) told the Irish Times that the current recession is "karmic" and it is going help us all remember our artistic roots. In fact, Glen went so far as to say that he enjoys coming back to Ireland these days so he can enjoy seeing people smiling.

Um, who are these people, mister Hansard? These smiling leprechauns? Are they the huge swathes of the young population in negative equity who are worrying about their being able to buy Christmas presents for their kids this year? The people who face an unsure winter because of the massive budgetary cuts on the horizon? Y'know, the ones who haven't won Oscars and therefore aren't afforded the opportunity to shite on to the Irish Times about their youth as an authentically poor Dublin 'provo'.

Or are they that tiny, 'funemployed' sliver of the population who are grossly overrepresented in Sunday newspaper supplements, blogs, and twitter? The sort who are afforded the luxury to think the recession is a wheeze or a gas; something that is a blessed state of affairs for Ireland 'artistically'?

Hmmm, I have yet to meet a less-than-well-off yet genuinely artistically talented person who thinks the recession is cool. All they can see are cuts. If you meet one, send them my way.

Here's something nice happening in Dublin this Hallowe'en night. It is in aid of the Simon Community and under a block of flats on Clarendon street. You get a discount if you bake a cake. It is probably a result of the recession that such nights are happening right now. But that does not make the recession good or "karmic" as some out of touch Oscar winners might think.

Download: Children Under Hoof-Breaking the waves

pumpkin festival

2009-10-24T01:55:00.002+01:00

I think I'm going to head out to the pumpkin festival in Virginia over the bank holiday weekend, so I should have plenty of blog-worthy material come Monday. Tonight there was supposed to be a 'pumpkin procession' through the town (which is no more than a single main street really). All of the houses were going to black out, and the pumpkins were to provide the only illumination. I'm sad I missed out. I'm sad too that I am going to miss the finale where a virgin Garda from Kells will be burned alive in a giant wicker statue while hundreds of Cavan people swing slowly from side to side and chant.

Transition year students from Cavan add the finishing touches to this year's pumpkin festival 'spectacular'.

MP3: Paul Giovanni-Festival/ Mirie/ Summer is a-cumen

This is Gas...but weird

2009-10-23T02:46:00.004+01:00

Eoin Butler blogs about Television Personalities. Then someone who could well be the real Evan Dando attempts to communicate with Dan Treacy through Eoin's blog.

Is Eoin Butler an 'enabler'?

far away beaches....

2009-10-22T16:08:00.005+01:00

I finished the PhD today and I'm submitting it tomorrow. How does it feel you say? (or you probably don't...but I'll continue) Imagine being constipated for four years and finally squeezing out the great grandmother of all shits. That's how I feel. Ruptured. Spent. But lighter and happier.

What doing a PhD feels like...

What finishing a PhD feels like...

What it sounds like..

MP3: On some faraway beach

I'll be back blogging goodo (as my mam says) soon. Also, see the tumblr account in the right toolbar? That's gonna be the food blog I always dreamed of. Later dudes!

It's CUPPA...the insane teenage kettle

2009-10-18T17:50:00.003+01:00

Make way for CUPPA...the insane teenage kettle...

I used to draw a lot of made-up comic characters when I was about 11 or 12 years old (16 years ago!). Whenever I sit down to draw them again they come out exactly how they used to, right down to the tiniest line. It's some sort of special memory process related to fine motor activity I think (like riding a bike).

So here's Cuppa. He was a bullied teenage boy who ran away with the circus after getting a kettle welded to his head. He never exacted revenge on his bullies; he just got up to surreal hijinks with the other circus folk.

The moon on a stick

2009-10-15T01:17:00.135+01:00

My thesis is now almost in the lap of the Gods. I have two nights off 'for perspective' while my supervisor proofreads the thing. At 240 pages it's a bit lumpen and scary (like my soul), so I feel sorry for her. After that, there is one more weekend of torture - prettying it up, formatting tables, pausing only to shit or fill my face with Aldi chocolate. D Day is Thursday next week.I wonder how I'll feel? It will be a line drawn under four tough years.

Well maybe not exactly a line, because I will still have to defend the thing in front of a couple of world renowned academics in the Spring. Hopefully, by then I'll have rediscovered some respect for my own work because at the moment I'd probably manage a more enthusiastic defense of the Meath/Louth phone directory.

I know what I am going to do as soon as I finish, though. I am going to read. A LOT. Anything that is not psychology thank you. At the moment, I'm halfway through a million books. All the narratives are frozen in time. In 'the portrait of a lady', Isabelle's spirit is being slowly bled from her by Gilbert, in 'blood meridian' there are a lot of raggedy heads on sticks, and in 'heartburn and reflux for dummies' I'm half-finished my 'design your own heartburn chart'. Next up, I think I'm going to read 'infinite jest' on the grounds of Karl's recommendation.

Christmas this year is going to be a time of chilled out reading. I can't wait. As for this blog, I'm thinking of upgrading to Wordpress, and also considering posting some of my recipes on it. What do yis reckon? The other option I was thinking of was to have an alternative food blog? I can't work out a name for it though. All I can manage are ultra-lame food angles on asleep on the compost heap...("compost treats?" like fuck I'll have one....."lets eat on a compost heap?" ...whatever you're into yourself).

Here is some of the music I've been listening to at the desk over the past couple of weeks...(the photos are all by my talented friend Ailbhe Kelly Miller who is currently in Iceland and spying on things through a triangle).

MP3: A sunny day in Glasgow-ashes grammar/ ashes maths

This band have made a very interesting and possibly great album. But being the judgmental freak I am, I was reluctant to listen to them because of their ultra contrived name - "they come from America and they call themselves 'a sunny day in Glasgow'? C86 aping cunts." How wrong I was. The 'ashes grammar' album is beautiful and elusive; it squirms all around the place like mercury and keeps drawing me back in.

To call it nu-gaze would be to do it a terrible disservice as there is so much more going on. But there is a HEAVY whack of Slowdive off it; not that there is anything wrong with that - I'm just saying. I've read a few reviews which came down relatively hard on the album. They nearly all focus on the fact that there are a lot of ambient interludes. I don't think that criticism is fair. In fact I'd say such reviews were rushed due to circumstance and didn't give the album time to breathe. Ambient music typically needs time to develop. Sure it was only after four or five listens that I switched from admiring this record to being enamored with it.

Well, now. How about this for a change of tone from the last piece of music. Shackleton is a producer who makes STRANGE music. Rattling alien signals from a place marked on the furthest dusty corner of an ancient map which only he has read, a secret cave linking dubstep island to techno peninsula. His new album '3 EPs' came out on Perlon and it is the weirdest, darkest, most exhilarating, and most perfectly conceived thing I've heard this year. That riddle-wrapped-inside-a-mystery-inside-an-enigma Ricardo Vilallobos once pestered Shackleton to let him remix a track, and ended up with one of his best ever pieces of work - the desolate and epic wormhole below, which nods to 9/11, ancient history and entropy.

I can see where Villalobos was coming from. Shackleton is something else.

More Indie MP3: Girls-Hellhole Ratrace

Finally, another band who people have been mixed about. These guys are called Girls. There is something about the PR circus surrounding Girls which bothers me; they come with a gnarly cut and paste cult 'n drugs indie X-Factor style back-story. Every single piece of criticism about them obligingly mentions said story, to the point that a 200 word review of the band in the guardian wasted about 150 words describing it instead of the music. All this shit stinks of PR, and undermines their music. Which is a shame, because it's likely the band will soon tire of being pigeonholed by such baloney.

Their music sounds completely wide-eyed, raw, and real. It's gorgeous. In fact, the above song is an absolute anthem in waiting. It's communal and celebratory in a a genuine way that puts it straight into the same hallowed space as Blur's tender and Spiritualized's ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space. Don't believe me? Listen to the zonked sing song and see-sawing feedback that crash in at 3.46 and try to keep the hairs on your neck under control. Magic.

National Poetry Day

2009-10-08T15:31:00.005+01:00

Not really back blogging just yet folks. But it's national poetry day and as Karl marked the day with a nice poem over on 'those geese', I thought I would too. It's a poem I've read a lot recently.

I wonder if they chose October as the month for poetry day because Autumn seems to stir up such a rich stew of senses and associations?

The Seven Sorrows

The first sorrow of autumn
Is the slow goodbye
Of the garden who stands so long in the evening-
A brown poppy head,
The stalk of a lily,
And still cannot go.

The second sorrow
Is the empty feet
Of a pheasant who hangs from a hook with his brothers.
The woodland of gold
Is folded in feathers
With its head in a bag.

And the third sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the sun who has gathered the birds and who gathers
The minutes of evening,
The golden and holy
Ground of the picture.

The fourth sorrow
Is the pond gone black
Ruined and sunken the city of water-
The beetle's palace,
The catacombs
Of the dragonfly.

And the fifth sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the woodland that quietly breaks up its camp.
One day it's gone.
It has only left litter-
Firewood, tentpoles.

And the sixth sorrow
Is the fox's sorrow
The joy of the huntsman, the joy of the hounds,
The hooves that pound
Till earth closes her ear
To the fox's prayer.

And the seventh sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the face with its wrinkles that looks through the window
As the year packs up
Like a tatty fairground
That came for the children.

Ted Hughes

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee

2009-09-30T02:31:00.034+01:00

My quest to destroy my white whale has become all-consuming. It's pull is so ferocious that I must strike at it with every last ounce of my strength. As I cling to it, I now know it will take me away from the Compost Heap until my deed is done.

from hell's heart I stab at thee, thou foul beast of a PhD

Providing the great beast doesn't drag me to Davey's locker, I will return to the Compost Heap before too long. I will be a changed man because I will be rid of the huge blank monster that has rolled ahead of all my thoughts over the past four years, sometimes at a great distance, sometimes right up close, but always there. When I return, I intend to write here more, to review live shows again, and hopefully contribute to other publications too.

In the meantime, I leave you with the gift of a few of my favourite life-affirming songs. The sort of songs that have, at various points in my university career found me dropping text books books like hot turds, scissor kicking things off desks, and opening windows to let in the thick possibility of Autumn nights before throwing on a scarf to catch a last-minute in gig Whelans, or in more reflective moments, opening atlases and dreaming of those two elusive years when Canada was my home from home.

MP3: Guided By Voices-Dayton Ohio 19 something circa 05

One of Bob Pollard's most direct lyrics. It's a loose, chugging celebration of smoking dope and grilling food with the boys in some idyllic but downtrodden place. It's where it's "great to exist/ where the produce maybe rotten/ but nobody is forgotten", and where for that smell of "fried food and pure hot tar/ you'd travel far/ to feel completely alive/ on Strawberry Philidelphia Drive". Awww cripes, I know it's probably a kip, but I'd kick back with you there for a whole summer uncle Bob.

MP3: The Microphones-I Felt My Size

This is a beautiful, transcendental turning point in Phil Elvrum's towering opus 'The Glow Pt. II'. Stepping out of a cave, our protagonist watches dawn crawling over the hills, traffic flying over a freeway and, quite contently (I think), he feels his size. He realizes he's small - like the rest of us.

Oh, and those who like Neutral Milk Hotel's contemplative 'In the Airplane over the Sea' yet don't own this record, owe it to themselves to find it immediately. It's essential - a similarly puzzling rug woven from tangled plaits of the both the raw fibres of one man's mystic awareness and those of universal truths.

MP3: The Thermals-I let it Go

There is a cathartic moment toward the end of this instant classic from the Thermals where love, life, fear and the whole lot are packed into a huge emo-punk-pop-rock ball which chases Mr Thermal toward the edge of the metaphorical cliff. Then, being the seize-the-moment fucker that he is, he looks his fear in the eye and leaps...

MP3: The Olivia Tremor Control-A peculiar noise called 'Train Director'

Fuck knows what this one is about. But I admire the fact that the Olivia Tremor Control sing from some psychedelic rag and bone shop of the soul, where the soundtrack is full of unruly elephant noises and "in the blink of an eye you get several meanings". I watched my twin brother playing the 'I am the Walrus' section of Beatles Rock Band the other day. He seemed to temporarily escape to that place too.

MP3: Of Montreal-A sentence of sorts in Kongsvinger

Like Mr Barnes in his self-imposed exile, and like many PhD students with extra-curricular interests, I found myself questioning my character long and hard throughout the process. Being ferociously introspective I've had dark times and doubtful nights, both due to the research and for other reasons too.

In light of these things, I've loved this song hard, perhaps more than any other I've put up here, and almost as much as my all-time favourite, Wichita Lineman. It's the sound of an introspective person dealing with their failings head-on, but in the context of an album from which they ultimately emerge changed for the better. That means so much to me. Thank you Kevin Barnes.

Thanks too people, for all the comments left here over the years. This blog has proven a valuable distraction from the trials and tribulations of a process that has probably had far more troughs than peaks for me. See you all soon.

where the birdies meet and sing tweet tweet

2009-09-24T01:57:00.045+01:00

As the days begin to melt into each other during my thesis write-up at home, I've become quite involved in daytime telly. From the Den TV kids' stuff on RTE2 to BBC2's stone cold trinity of great afternoon viewing - flog it!, pointless, and the hairy bikers - there's always something to dip in and out of during work breaks. Seeing as we are all here (and seeing as I have nothing better to do), let's take a look at some of it, yeah?

First, the kids stuff. Okay, it's for three-to-twelve year olds and deciding to review it is probably not the coolest or most constructive thing I've done here. But fuck it. I like to think I'm down with kids - not the 'kids' obviously (they go to Antics and I don't get them) - but the kids, the Farrely's rusks brigade. After all, my only sane friend at home right now is the three-year-old girl my Mam babysits. And, I have to say, she shares a good few of my general views on what's hot and what's rot on DEN TV these days.

Let's start with the rot. First up, this creature.

Yes, I am about to tell you about the creature you see to the left of iconic children's TV monster, Soky. Her name is Emma O'Driscoll and she was once a member of a failed Irish pop outfit called Six. She now presents on Den TV with the sort of ability, naturalness and grace that would make any mop-handle with a face painted on it pure jealous.

I know I am starting to sound a bit deranged here, but at least hear me out before you call the Gardaí. When Emma O'Driscoll appears on the Den, my mother invariably mutters "oh no, not that yoke" (again, she is not referring to the cloth puppet) and our three-year-old critic regularly implores "I don't like that silly woman with Soky".

And who could blame her? O'Driscoll's style of presenting consists of randomly erupting into strangled wooden laughter, giving the camera weird thousand yard stares, over-emphasizing syntax in a creepy way (those alien things called 'children' that you attempt to communicate with every day aren't hard of hearing Emma), and worst of all, oddly repeating the word Soky multiple times in every sentence until the hairy puppet's name is bouncing dementedly around the walls of your house like a strange entity in and of itself. A sample O'Driscoll sentence runs like this: "Soky, thats a lovely card that Eilish aged four sent in, isn't it Soky? Will we buala bus her Soky? Now SOKY make sure you join in now SOKY" - cue thousand yard stare, uncomfortably lifeless smile, and the buala bus from hell. Kids presenters need to be natural. Emma O'Driscoll is not.

Kathryn McKiernan, who presents a show called Kazoo, is the anti-Emma. Kazoo is a great laugh in its cheap and cheerful way. It's made for an older age group of kids, and is very much about getting them involved. While a lot of mad stuff goes on in the show - like silly physical tasks, quizzes, musical games, mini-science experiments and the like - its success ultimately boils down to the capable abilities of the presenter. She's spontaneous, always game for a laugh with the kids and well up for mucking around in a very natural likable way.

However, Kazoo might not be hot shit with its target audience. The three-year-old's older brother reliably informed me that all the boys in fourth class think "Kazoo is gay". Hmmm, well I'd love to meet some of these buckos and tell them that, for someone who hates Kazoo so much, this lad spends a lot of time watching it on the sly. He thinks he has himself well covered though - and loudly announces what a crock of wimpy shit Kazoo is whenever I walk into the room. "Alright, sure we can change" I say, second guessing him and switching to Bargain Hunt. Well now, if you could only see the look of seething, closeted Kazoo love that builds up in his eyes when I do that.

I know, I know, I'm playing mind games with a ten-year-old. But this is only one example of the many ways in which academic research can break a man. I've also managed to ease myself so gently and slyly into following Fair City that I still don't even know I watch it!

Oh and one last thing. There is a little cartoon which comes on every day about a gang of birds. It's called 3rd and Bird. It's great for the following reasons.

(i) It seems to be the only show on kids TV that isn't either about computer generated vehicles with lifeless human faces or a troupe of mouth-breathing aussies in furry animal costumes dry humping each other in front of a live audience of terrified kids holding balloons.

(ii) It's beautifully drawn, really short, and the songs the wee birds sing and whistle are so gentle, loose and practically hypnotic that it creates a zen-like calm around the house before lunch each day. It draws the three year old to the screen like a magnet, where she stands slack-jawed for five minutes, watching these little birds in baseball caps fluttering around and singing their way out a fix. Its one of the few shows on that reminds me of stuff I used to watch when I was small myself.

Normal service will resume on Saturday - from the wi-fi room in Mullingar mental hospital, no doubt.

welcome to weird hotel - leave your brain at the door

2009-09-22T00:54:00.015+01:00

Hands up who likes really weird Japanese music? Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

MP3: Haroumi Hosono & Tadanori Yokoo-Malabar Hotel...Upper Floor...Moving Triangle

Remember a few months ago I posted about a dreamy Anime film about cats and the afterlife called Night on the Galactic Railroad? Well it got proper under my skin and I've watched it twice since. One of the many exquisite things about this film which intrigued me was its stately soundtrack by Haroumi Hosono. I didn't know much about the composer so I banged his name into spotify (the good old days eh?) and found out that, along with Ryuichi Sakamoto, he was a member of the fuppin' mega 70s electronic group, Yellow Magic Orchestra.

I also found out he released a remarkable album called Cochin Moon. And when I say remarkable, what I really mean is set your eardrums to WTF. This stuff is off the map. From what I can gleam, Hosono went on a jaunt around India in 1978, and by all accounts it was a bit of an eye-opener. When he returned to Japan, he was so full of the sights and sounds of the place that he set about making the lush soundtrack to an imaginary Bollywood movie (Cochin Moon) with some help from the other dudes in Yellow Magic Orchestra and the pop artist Tadanori Yokoo.

The album starts off with an astonishing suite of tracks which are musically and thematically linked (they're named after a hotel he stayed in). I included the second of these above. It's a piece of music which gives you an idea of the awesome intricacy, downright weirdness and plain brilliance of this project. Starting with a creepy insect buzz, the track takes off in a complete vertical ascent buoyed by overlapping helicopter rhythms and distorted snippets of what sounds like a voice saying "boomshakalaka". By the time a bubbling keyboard melody starts bouncing off the walls and gasping alien vocals join the fray, Hosono has left base-camp so far behind that he's in oxygen mask territory.

MP3: Haroumi Hosono & Tadanori Yokoo-Hum Ghar Sajan

Another gloriously bonkers thing about the album is that with the exception of one track - the gorgeous raga chant Hum Gar Sajan - it doesn't sound even vaguely Indian. Waiter, I'll have whatever he's on please.

and clouds for company

2009-09-17T12:50:00.023+01:00

MP3: Lawrence English-and clouds for company

The edge of the town sloped away into an ornate wooden place near the precipice of a cliff. Everything, all the buildings, shops, even the road itself, had the quality of being carved and painted into weathered old wood, giving the impression of boat decks or old funfair rides. There were no hard edges at this end of town. Objects were curved and made smooth by the weather.

I could see that the things in the town had been painted brightly in block colours once. But the prevailing wind off the sea had softened the colours down to stains through which you could now see the knots and rings in the wood.

At the furthest part of the town, at the very edge of the cliff in fact, was an oval shaped bar. I walked toward it because I could hear the pop of fried food and smell scrambled eggs. The barman waved me over. He was serving drinks from this little wooden corner of the world with nothing behind him except the eight inches of cliff top upon which he stood. Behind that, a dizzying drop to the ocean itself, which, he later told me, was about a mile and a half below. I looked out. It was so tangibly, deeply blue and so still that it could have been the hard surface of an exposed sapphire. A trawler sat frozen on the horizon.

He pulled a pint of smithwicks for me and left it on the counter. I considered it for a while and made to drink from it but it remained there as things do in dreams. I asked the barman why it was so quiet in town today. He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes and he asked me if I couldn't see that everyone was below at the water. The children were saying goodbye to their parents, he said.

Sure enough, I could make out a crowd of tiny black figures as small as mites. There were hundreds of them at edge of the the sea, moving around with miniature flags and bunting. I could just about hear music too, a circular instrumental lament that the barman told me could break the hardest heart.

He returned to preparing his eggs and I watched the distant ceremony unfold. Wave after wave of people broke free from the crowd and walked out into the strange sea until they were gone. The crowd grew lighter and the warm eddies of musical wind carried broken snatches of children crying. I rested my head against the wooden bar in sorrow, and the last thing I heard was the barman telling me the children would be back up in time to play at a night-time fair, but that I'd be gone by then. And so I was.