hollowsolid

Now That Is Interesting

2011-09-11T23:17:00.000+01:00

Austria 2011

Argentina 2007

Genius In A Dunnes Shirt

2011-09-10T20:15:00.001+01:00

A very young Martin Hayes ripping into Mason's Apron as Manuel Barroso desperately tries to keep up.

I pulled this up for Doireann who started violin lessons (not fiddle lessons) today.

Jottem!!!

2011-09-03T16:17:00.053+01:00

A quick, picture-heavy post to mark the occasion of Sadhbh's first birthday in a foreign land which happened to coincide with our holidays in ze Alps in August. Photos in no particular order. You'll notice a distinct lack of "action" shots with calf muscles glistening in the Alpine heat - that's because our expeditionary group was overcome with a blitzcokken attack of Jelly Legs and sunstroke on our first outing, a setback from which we never really tried to recover :)

Schmitten

John the Rabbit, Yes Man!

Group Shot (without Siamak who was at the hospital with a suspected broken toe)

Shutup I Am Dreaming Of Carbohydrates

Friends for Now

Breakfast at Jottem!!!

Pre-Meltdown at the Glacier

Zell Am See

Our Chalet from the Valley (*WINK*)

Group Shot (without Linda who was out jogging or e-biking I think)

Not enough shoulders to cry on

Jumpin' in my garden (Yes, ma'am)

Cheeseless Cheese of the Year Awards, Pinzgau

Bringer of Jelly Legs

Home of the Pinzgau Fart

In the Belly Belly

Relaxing at the Frankfurt Business Hotel

Attack of the Icecream Zombies

Die gullewagon

Today Was A Good Day

2011-07-03T22:10:00.007+01:00

The weather and a crackin' picnic by the river inspired me to post some photos of the day and borrow from photos of other days. Will try and arrange more picnics and post more often for the rest of the Summer.

Before And After

2011-05-29T15:46:00.001+01:00

Gunther and Bunty And Hard Bolied Eggs

2011-04-02T22:07:00.008+01:00

Doireann has taken to making up songs as she plays the guitar. She'll choose a theme, add some words while she tries out a few melodies, and then pick a bit she likes and turn it into the chorus. It inevitably ends up with us all joining in and then falling about the place laughing. Today she wrote a classic :

"This is a song about when me and Sadhbh escaped in a balloon..... It's an instrumental one." That's a direct quote. Sometimes we wonder where in the name of God she gets her inspirations from. She listened to this (obviously very attentitvely) in the car earlier today and it seems to have made an impression. She has always had a thing for balloons and Gunther and his multi-coloured hot air balloon regularly rescues her from mountaintops at the end of lots of her bed time stories. So yeah, 3 years old and already writing conceptual / improvisational instrumental pieces. And she's already gone electric. We're such proud (and completely terrified) parents.

Buke and Gass

2011-03-26T19:42:00.003Z

Wheeeeeee! Shanty

2011-03-20T21:59:00.014Z

Some days off work so some mild adventures, photos and the ongoing search for the perfect wheee!

Bolo

MutElla Fitzgerald

Swingin'

I Wish I Was Swingin'

I wishawishawish I was Swingin'

Ad placement

Divilment At Rest

"..Way haul away, we'll haul away Joe..!"

There's a funny story attached to the hat. When I was in Seattle it was snowing and I needed a functional, warm hat to cover my head while walking in and out of the office. So in a sale in a gale , I picked up a wooly hat which covered my ears and it was indeed functional and warm and I thought no more about it. When I came home Doireann took an inordinate shine to this blue wooly peaked hat and of course I told her I'd shopped high and low for this very special hat for my daughter. Since then Doireann and the hat have become inseperable. Aswell as the obvious fashion statement (or sub-clause) it makes, it serves many additional uses. She can be seen above using the hat to keep her hair out of her eyes while eating her breakfast. And also using it as an authentic prop in her Makem and Clancy routine.

Pentatonic Free Jazz

2011-03-06T20:00:00.005Z

Saturday morning discos have been going unplugged for the past couple of weeks. It's not easy playing along to Kanye West with a Fisher Price Xylophone and a small red guitar, but sure, if it was easy everybody'd be doing it. Some more photos from this truly unique session below.....

Anyway, eat up!

This song needs a melodica solo...

Technical difficulties

Bressist in Balaclavas

2011-02-13T20:57:00.017Z

Getting off to a bit of a slow start this year. I've been travelling a bit with work and have been pretty busy. I didn't bring my camera on my travels either, which isn't like me. But I did get home to celebrate the 3rd birthday of the lady of the house.

Same cake, over and over

...and indulge in a spot of outdoor breakfastin' with some kids in balaclavas...

Nevermind the Buzzcocks... GO MUSK OX!

2010-12-30T22:44:00.012Z

From scienceline.org [Credit: Len Radin, Flickr.com]

Interesting and entertaining podcast describing the evolution, environment and prospects of the Musk Ox. Their story is a fascinating one and, as one year turns into another, the contributors' big-thoughts-in-deep-time theme gives a timely dose of perspective to our own selfishly introspective species.

Only the children can save us now.

I've been listening to On Point for a long time and rarely have I heard Tom so fricken excited! I'd encourage everyone to listen in to hear a great broadcaster in full flight on what turns out to be a disarmingly intriguing topic.

An On Point primer can be found here.

"Yah we do!" :)

Happy Christmas

2010-12-28T22:42:00.012Z

Some random and wholly un-Christmas-y images from our house this holiday.

Our Christmas tree after some mulled wine (this is actually our Christmas tree)

Christmas Morning Chocolates

Whaddya mean elves don't do polymers?

Diddle Diddle Dumpling...

Sunlit, sedate Mutella indulgence

Devotchka - Mutella's Darkside

Lost Weekend

2010-12-11T21:47:00.011Z

Just back from a lost weekend in a hotel in ......Dublin. We've done that before, hit Dublin as tourists, but never as tourists with children. It's lots of fun and highly recommended for those of you out there who have ambitions to see other European cities with kids but haven't gotten round to getting those tiny travellers their passports yet. The occasion for our staycation this time was Christmas Lights/Christmas shopping and also because it's the last weekend before I start a new job.

Highlights were :

Doireann's first ever gig...

...the Christmas lights (of course), the Christmas markets, gingerbread lattes, Christmas carols (piped and live), buskers with trumpets, homemade Macaroons... Sweeties from Greece, train rides (the luas and the German merry-go-round), family movies on king-size beds, hotel breakfasts (the girls had rice krispies, fried eggs and Dan O'Chocalade - Maisie had the best mushrooms she's ever tasted), Diego as gaeilge, my first walk down Talbot street since I got my confirmation suit in Boyers, snowsuits and spacehelmets, and like any good Amish family hittin' the city together, new shoes for everyone.

Some of the more forgettable moments included surreptitious, un-clean, pink plastic gifts to the girls from troubled Luas passengers and a massive wasabi malfunction where Doireann tried to ingest a golf ball sized lump of wasabi on the QT before her head exploded and gave the game away.

I Singalongs

2010-11-28T15:23:00.054Z

Welcome aboard the bipolar express, a musical trainwreck on a 5-stop continuous loop between the twin stations of elation and deflation. I've had plenty of time on my hands recently but I've still failed miserably in my editorial duties and this bloated tradition continues to expand its tasteline year on year. But my hope is that the scope creep should make things a little more interactive. Feel free to self-edit and build your own sub-compilation of favourites from the 89 samples contained here.

Same rules apply :
- Play Loud
- Sing Along Where Appropriate
- Skip The Ones That Make You Uncomfortable

Previous Compilations
Upsetting The Apple Tart
We Send Kisses
Choo-Choo-Choo-Choo Beep! Beep!
Songs For Girls and Boys

All of the songs on this first one were indirectly chosen by a set of (nearly) 3 year old ears and an even fresher set of 18 month old ears. These are the songs which the girls have responded to in some small, sometimes imperceptible way, singing along, asking for it to be turned up, nodding their heads along silently in their seats, asking me to play it again, asking me who it is or what's the name of the song or in some cases what instrument is jumping out at them. And two fine sets of ears they are - Doireann's party piece is "name that tune" and she can generally out-gun anyone. For example the first 45 seconds of the Freelance Whales song is just random plumbing noises barely audible when the car is moving - within 5 seconds Doireann always pipes up with "Are we ready?" preparing us all to sing along once it kicks in.

We're like an indie-rock Flanders family driving around the back roads of west Wicklow, hail rain or shine, pretending we're outdoorsy with the heating cranked up full and the stereo belting out dodgy hipster experiments. So this collection has been truly road tested and these songs are guaranteed to provoke in-car singalongs and wild 4-part family harmony experimentation in all trajectories of the nuclear family in motion.

1. Karen O and The Kids | All is Love
"L.O.Beep.Beep" is how this is sung in our house. Had no idea these guys were responsible for the Where The Wild Things Are soundtrack. This features whistling, clapping, counting, spelling, ooohing, and simple lyrics wrapped around a great tune. A huge favourite with the under 3s in our family.

2. Edward Sharp and The Magnetic Zeroes | Home

This one goes back a while - a guaranteed full house on the dance floor. Has been known to inspire wild experimentation in dance moves....and the girls generally follow suit.

3. Air Waves | Shine On

4. The Avett Brothers | I and Love and You

5. Bill Callahan | Sycamore
This guy is phenomenal. Listened to him a lot as Smog in the mid 90s but lost touch a little. His voice is incredible and his off kilter song writing and willfully unscientific song structures always keep you guessing. His ability to gnaw feeling from the most inert subjects is praiseworthy - here for example he's singing about a housing estate in Naas and it's like, soooo evocative! This is amazing :

6. Boat Beam | Rain Pauly
Doireann loves this..... she sings "See The Rain...... Falling" This is also her first exposure to a cello in the wild. And she appears to have developed a peculiar affinity with the instrument. Having shown her a couple of youtube clips of girls playing cellos, she now hilariously plays air-cello (very seriously) along with this song during our Kitchen Discos.

7. Dixie Cups | Iko Iko
I believe this is an old New Orleans marching song. This version was recorded in the foyer of a recording studio as they waited their turn to record. The drumming you hear is drumsticks on an ashtray. The version was good enough to keep and they added some additional instruments in the studio and the rest as they say is fun for kids.

8. Freelance Whales | Generator ^ First Floor
The first song Jolly Small ever sang along to. Jolly Tall scarily knows most of the words.

9. Midlake | Jungler

10. The National | So Far Around The Bend
From the Dark Was the Night compilation.

11. The Notwist | Boneless
This will get ridiculous as we move through the rest of this year's compilations. Here, the 2 Acher brothers appear together, in the one band, amazingly enough. I've been listening, enthralled to The Notwist for years. Everyone should own a copy of Neon Golden.

12. The Saw Doctors | Red Cortina
Anyone who remembers dancing in a shed or a community centre as a child at a "disco" with "the light still shining through the winda" will relate to this. Anyone who has a daughter, listen well.

13. The Shins | Saint Simon

The complex, intertwined, multilayered vocal and guitar lines in the last minute of this are the equivalent of an ice cream headache for the ears. In a good way.

14. The Softpack | Answer to Yourself
No idea what it is about this piece of new-wave self-help which Doireann relates to but excessive reason has been known to result in the "Universe being thrown out with the bath water." So lets not over analyse.

15. The Strokes | Is This It

16. Thao | Bag Of Hammers

Doireann does a great rendition of this featuring a random tumbling-out of kiddie syllables all finishing with "ice cream".

17. Those Darlins | The Whole Damn Thing
I call this the vegtarian guilt song.

18. Wintersleep | Weighty Ghost
"I got outta bed today, swear to God I couldn't see my face." A classic example of puffy smushins in the wild. These guys were chewing tinfoil on last year's compilation if you cast your mind back. The missing link between dairy products and depression. I have this tic where, without even being conscious of it, I stare at strangers and generally within seconds, superimpose on them the first draft of my version of their life story. I was in The Oval on Abbey Street with Herr Doylee before the Wintersleep gig and there was a group of boyos drinking in the corner, looked like they were school friends from Kilkenny, combat jackets, bad hats covering bad haircuts, probably hooking up for a regular Friday night pint and a chat. Turns out they were from Halifax, Nova Scotia and they were called Wintersleep :) How rare and refreshing a thing in this age of media saturation not to have any kind of awareness of what a band you're dying to see live looks like or whether the lead singer is a bearded giant or a bald dwarf. How rare and refreshing a thing also in this age of media saturation for a band not to have addressed the bad hair and combat jackets as a going stylistic concern. I'm sure there's a lesson in there for me not to be so judgemental of Kilkenny people. But tics are tics and I won't be told, even if I'm a million miles off every time.

19. Wisely | Through Any Window
Doireann learned her colours with the help of this song and a wall-hanging in our kitchen so it has a special place in her heart and ours.

20. YACHT | Psychic City
The dance floor filler at our Saturday morning discos.

21. Andrew Bird | Oh No
Teaching children all over the world how to whistle.

22. dEUS | Everything is the Same (Except No One Believes Me)
A Bside. The chords, the words and the main vocal line on this are pretty simple. So my job is easy. Maeve has been known to make the high pitched shrieking refrain her own. Not so easy, but she has earned the permanent respect of her children and her life partner through her efforts. These are the things that matter.

II Noisy Neighbours

2010-11-27T21:03:00.045Z

This was originally meant to be the dumping ground for the noisier, more rambunctious music - so you could avoid them if you were having a non-noisy moment. But as usual, doctors differ and ideas die. So herewith, the mostly noisy neighbours.

1. Electric President | Wearing Influences On Our Sleveless Tshirts
Florida, Morr Music. Tasty. Let me know if I'm starting to sound like Pat Kenny.

2. Ms. John Soda | Hands
More indietronic von Munchen.

3. No Age | Glitter

4. The Beets | What Did I Do?
I love this. Under 2 minutes of well reared noise.

5. Rollerskate Skinny | Shallow Thunder
Yep. Another great original Dublin band. I love the cover on this.

6. Owen Pallett | Keep The Dog Quiet (Simon Bookish Remix)
A fiddle player by trade, this guy wrote the string arrangements for the Arcade Fire's first 2 albums + Beirut's Flying Club Cup + loads of others. He also performs as Final Fantasy and tours with nearly everyone. This song features a nice quirky melody and some odd rhythms. What more do you want?

7. Wolf Parade | Ghost Pressure
Just heard that these guys are going on an indefinite hiatus once they've completed the current round of shows. Sad news indeed. This song rocks and was on heavy rotation round our house this year.

8. Wormhole | Lay It On
Where to start with these lads? Some of the noisiest neighbours you could ever hope to meet. One of my favourite Dublin bands ever. Let's start with this (watch out for Waccy Baccy appearing nonchalantly out of a Wendy house to rock the corpo estate in Ringsend) :

And move swiftly along to this :

A definitive history of the band (and a nice general archive of certain bands in Dublin in the late 90s) by Stephen Rennicks is available here. God I love Wormhole.

9. Lali Puna | Micronomic
More Achers.

10. Weekend | Tiara

11. Parts & Labor | Sugar Kane
Faithful cover of a great song, even more notable for the absence of guitars. How do you cover a Sonic Youth song without abusing at least 1 guitar?

12. Bot'Ox | Bluesteel
Short and sweet.

13. The Cast Of Cheers | Auricom
Math rock is no longer welcome at breakfast in my house. Jaysis, fair enough I hear you cry. Not sure why I was surprised to discover this band is from Dublin... That artwork defines the special needs genre. Give that man a grant.

14. Cloud Nothings | Hey Cool Kid
Kind of hypnotic no-fi with unintelligible lyrics....but it's got a hook.

15. White Denim | Sex Prayer
Time to lash out my festive denims and do some squat tests, Waccy Baccy style.

16. Obits | Two-Headed Coin
Cant be saved and not get spent | It belongs to the government
Brooklyn but not indie/folk/hipster. This is Rick Froberg's (Drive Like Jehu, Hot Snakes) latest band and they rock like all other bands he's been involved in.

Nice poster from a recent Dublin gig.

17. Harlem Shakes | Strictly Game
To all who've had a hellish 2010...and I know that includes quite a few of you. Stay Game.

18. Cut Copy | Unforgettable Season
Pop dressed in noisy clothing.

19. Gruff Rhys | Candylion
Welsh, pure pop oddness. This is from a 2007 album of the same name.

20. The Intelligence | Dating Cops
Altogether..."Woo-Woo-Woo-Woo-Woo-Woo-Woo!"

21. Windsor For The Derby | Maladies
A famous gig back in 2000 where Wormhole supported these guys in Whelans. I didn't go but ........I have the flyer?

22. Q and Not U | 1000 Animal Calls
A disbanded dischord band. Gives me an excuse to include this :

23. Church | Happiness
Happiness is alright.

III Well Reared

2010-11-26T11:46:00.047Z

1. John Yoko | Papa Was A Rodeo
Winner of the best band name and best song title in this year's collection. The song is a cover of a Magnetic Fields song off of 69 Love Songs. Lali Puna are Markus Acher (the Notwist - brother of Micha Acher from Ms John Soda) and Valerie Trebeljahr and a bunch of other punters called Ken. This is their side project. Interestingly incestuous indietronic interrelationships. Here's an entire press release about this simple 2 song record.

2. Thom Yorke | 33d (Fourtet Remix)
This is just amazing. The phrasing, the lyrics, the complex and melodic doodling at the edge of a vocal range. Great song, stunning remix.

3. Burial & Fourtet | Moth
Black 12" with black centre label. Good men. A collaboration rather than a remix. One of the smoothest sounding records I've heard in the past 12 months.

4. Wintersleep | Fog

5. Moondog Jr. | Ice Guitars
This song works like food colouring for my brain. Belgian Art Rock has a special place between my ears. Makes me want to wear a chilli stained vest and a stetson and get my groove on. Watch out Snaffles..... Achtung Equine Hospital! There's a clarinet in here which didn't make itself known on an old C90 tape given to me by the tallest drummer in Belgium. The same man taught me that roosters in Belgium say "Kookla Kookla" or at least that's what Belgian kids are taught. My respect for Stef Camil Karlens is known and needs no further elaboration. This is a Sallymount bedsit special reprised by the wonder of the iTunes store. The entire album is great and worth the investment.

6. Dan Deacon | Snookered
Hang on to your endorphins with this one. It's mastered extremely loud. This song reminds me of what I do for a living, unpredictable but cyclical phases of relative calm combined with near chaos, bizarre changes in tempo and recurring themes falling in and out of phase. Adding value all over the place.

7. The Barr Brothers | Beggar In The Morning

8. Sufjan Stevens | To Be Alone With You
Can you imagine how accomplished Superman's banjo playing might be?

9. Here We Go Magic feat. Luke Temple | Fangela
Ummm, Brooklyn Folk. Indie Brooklyn Folk Rock.

10. Jim Guthrie | Nighttime/Anytime (It's Alright)
Constantines cover. The Constantines were the first band we saw live in Canada, within days of landing in that fair country. The Media Club. It was meant to be a fresh, new and exciting cultural experience. The band was in fact arbitrary and a little forgettable. This is a nice cover though.

11. Junip | Rope and Summit
Jose Gonzalez is in here somewhere. I like the compressed, narrow band sound off this. And the analog synths.

12. Woodpigeon | Empty-Hall Sing-Along
From Calgary, the Brooklyn of Alberta. This band was originally named Woodpigeon Divided By Antelope Equals Squirrel. Good men.

13. The Mountain Goats | Source Decay
More 3 minute super condensed cinematic story telling from John Darnielle. I wish the West Texas highway was a mobius strip.

14. Ms John Soda | Solid Ground
More from the Achers of Munich. To borrow a sports commentary term - they're everywhere on this year's compilation. There's a piano only version of this floating around aswell which is worth a listen.

15. Skanfrom | Here She Comes
Soothing Sounds for Robots is a nice description of the type of electronic music which captures my ear, electronic music that was reared well, makes a good impression quickly and knows when to get its coat. This is a nice example of well reared electronica.

16. Fanfarlo | Finish Line
Watch out for the horns :(

And finally, in these times of great tribulation for Ireland, to distract the focus of international financial journalists and senior members of the IMF, I think it might be appropriate to propagate some more traditional stereotypes of the Irish, guiding us back to our roots as a humble, fun loving, singing and dancing race. Not a pinstripe suit or Range Rover Sport in sight. Thank God. If you think of the Dubliners as bankers at the peak of the boom, think of their banjos, tin whistles and fiddles as "financial instruments", and the cameo from the pint of Bass as a schneaky credit default swap, you might get a sort of an insight into precisely how "we are where we are". The audience are the developers by the way.

IV Modulo Offcuts

2010-11-25T22:36:00.043Z

These are the songs marked for greatness but which didn't make the final cut of 4, being either too loud, too quiet or disliked by the two old men in the back seat. But they were also too good to ignore completely and they all coexist in relative harmony - so here they are. These are the growers, not the showers.

1. Warpaint | Billie Holiday
On the topic of gratuitous pictures of Rickenbacker-bass-toting females a special mention has to go to Kira Roessler.

So now....

2. Tune-Yards | Fiya
Oakland, 4AD.

3. Tiny Vipers | On This Side
Maeve has this theory about me and mad girls with severe fringes, fucked up teeth and curious singing voices. I have no idea what she's talking about.

4. Sun Kil Moon | Glenn Tipton
Glenn Tipton was the guitarist in Judas Priest. How this song, lyrically, stylistically, metaphorically, or otherwisely relates in any way to the subject matter of the title is far from known. For more check out Red House Painters or Mark Kozelek.

5. Sleepercar | Stumble In
Elation on the plains. If a harmony goes horribly wrong at full throttle and no one is around to hear it, is it still embarrassing?

6. Sam Means | Yeah Yeah

7. The Rural Alberta Advantage | Eye Of The Tiger
A nice take on a classic - even if my eldest daughter finds it derivative.

8. Ms John Soda | Hiding/Fading
Micha Acher - also of Notwist, Tied & Tickled Trio - combines with Stefanie Bohm to make great electronic pop songs which are cleverly produced to have you humming along to new hooks on each listen.

9. The Morning Benders | Waiting For A War
Indie Rock, Brooklyn via Berkeley. Story of my life.

10. Monarchy | Gold In The Fire
This can only be described as Epic Kitsch. Wouldn't normally yank my crank but this song has been knocking around my ipod for a while and is one of those which the ipod's shuffle algorithm keeps throwing up. So persistence pays off.

11. King Charles | Love Lust
lust only grows like anger and revenge
beauty comes and goes but love stays until the end

12. Jim Guthrie | All Gone

13. Hello Saferide | Anna

14. Handsome Furs | The Radio's Hot Sun
[synth punk indie rock] apparently. Advice for life right here.

15. Frenemies | New Room

16. Freelance Whales | Generator 2nd Floor

17. Clem Snide | Me No

18. Bishop Allen | The Ancient Commonsense of Things

19. Animal Collective | My Girls
All I want is four walls and VHI Plan B for my girls....

20. Lightning Dust | I Knew
The album cover reminds me of Pablo Neruda's house. East Van band, a subset of Black Mountain, maybe even Pink Mountaintops. Nice session (and sister harmonies) here :

V Sleepreading

2010-11-23T21:46:00.041Z

If the practice of falling asleep to music is allowed in your home, then this compilation is for you! This multi-purpose auditory wallpaper also acts as an ambient accompaniment to fireside reading, felting, scented candle burning, knitting, cooking, sudoku or even the odd bout of hatha yoga. There are purposefully few words to distract you from your interpretation (or sweating your onions). Pianos feature prominently. To paraphrase and re-purpose Con Houlihans' observation that a man who put's an apostrophe in the wrong place is capable of anything... a man (hello Elt'on John, Jool's Holland and Billy Jo'el) who does not appreciate how a piano, played with subtlety and understatement, can move the air in beautiful ways, probably has nipples for ears. This year I've asked Santy for the right to press play when I turn off the light. To Winter walks, sweet dreams and mindfulness. Bah humbug to the boogie-woogie.

1. The Beatles | Flying

2. to rococo rot | cars

3. John Coletrane | Central Park West

4. Tortoise | Along The Banks Of The River

5. Smashing Pumpkins | Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness

6. Aphex Twin | Kesson Daslef

7. Yann Tiersen | Comptine D'un Autre Été: L'après Midi

8. Jose Gonzalez | Heartbeats

9. Icebreaker International & Manual | Into Forever

10. Stars Of The Lid | Humectez La Mouture

11. Amiina | Sexfaldur

12. Matthew Robert Cooper | Miniature 7

13. Beethoven | Piano Sonata No. 8 in C Minor

14. Stina Nordenstam | Soon After Christmas

15. Black To Comm | Rauschen

16. múm | there is a number of small things

18. Brian Eno | Music For Airports 1/1

19. The Beatles | Goodnight

One From The Archive

2010-11-17T15:18:00.004Z

Rabbits in the Head Lice...Burning Man 1998

I found a shoebox of photos this morning with all kinds of un-indexed, un-tagged and non-chronological randomness. I have neither negatives nor scanner, so I photographed and cropped the image to drag it into the binary world. Funny photo. The idea of publishing irregular, guerilla-visual flashbacks could be a dangerous one but lets see what happens. For now, happy 1998 and god bless america.

Anne Doyle has a lot to answer for.

Rabbit Potter Is God

2010-11-03T16:36:00.010Z

"Christianity had a reputation for few gods and great violence. But good schools. ......Islam had a reputation worse than Christianity’s – fewer gods, greater violence and I had never heard anyone say anything good about Muslim schools."

I'll be honest, I missed some of the deeper meaning and allegorical references in this book until after I'd read the last chapter and some very interesting reviews. But having discovered that a lot of people read the book believing the statement in the foreword that the story told in the book is a true story, I feel a little less silly. Great imaginative story with some moments of true descriptive brilliance, told at a deceptively pedestrian pace. Yann Martel has recently been given $3m for rights to publish his new novel, another allegorical story based on the holocaust which features a monkey and a donkey in a taxidermy shop, apparently. And Ang Lee has just agreed to film a 3D version of Life of Pi over the next 18 months. It's all go now that I've finally gotten around to reading it.

By way of accidental contrast, between bouts of technical and operational book devouring and job hunting asceticism, I'm reading this at the moment. For an entirely different reason than musical snobbery, I'll never be able to listen to another Kylie Minogue song without grimacing ever again.

100 pages in and the writing and story line hasn't been overly impressive so far. But snippets of hectic dialogue and some truly bizarre guerilla imagery keep me coming back;

"The giraffe was struck by lightening Dad, at the zoo. It's quite common on the veldts of Africa. They cop it all the time. They act like lightening rods. One minute they are minding their own business, the next minute they're jelly"

Again I'm left trying to bridge unbridgeable narrative gaps, knitting the smoke and the flames of completely unrelated stories, but with related elements, together. Flying zebras, baboons, tigers, muslim meerkats, hyenas, scorched giraffes. For my next trick and the sake of my sanity I might try reading a book in a recognised series and then read the next one. Harry Rabbit Potter At Rest With A Dragon Tattoo II maybe.

Advanced Gooleybox Engineering

2010-10-31T15:15:00.006Z

Happy Halloween!

....from Thing1 and Thing2

Bear Mush For Lionel

2010-10-11T12:28:00.034+01:00

Caterpillar Missing

An eventful week around our house. In developmental terms, Sadhbh lies somewhere between a caterpillar and a butterfly. Her mode of movement (or escape) from crime scene to the scene of accidents about to happen is no longer confined to shuffling her belly sniper-style along the floor trailing toxic spill and breadcrumbs in her wake, yet she remains a long way from the graceful movements of a butterfly. The Metamorphosis is proving eventful. In the past 10 days or so she has picked up a chipped tooth, a black eye (or "a blue eye" as our Polish brethern refer to it) and by the end of the week her right arm was in plaster cast. To use NFL terminology, in her rookie season our Sadhbh has an abysmally low "yards per carry" average . Defensive window sills, interfering fireplaces and aggressive radiators all conspire to thwart her bipedal efforts and keep that average on the floor. And those falls are taking their toll.

Before

After

The tasteful pink plaster cast was applied in Tullamore hospital. We were kind of terrified that upon presentation at the clinic she'd be immediately taken into care due to the several very obvious facial, dental and ... limbal injuries she was carrying. We were all prepared with outlandish but considered excuses; "We decided to skip montessori and go straight to cage fighting school. How could it have gone so horribly wrong!!" Doireann had been coached all the way from Portarlington to respond "Wasn't me....." to any enquiry from anyone in a white uniform. But nothing - worryingly so. Doireann helpfully picked up a gastric bug during her brief time in Tullamore General and spent the week recovering. In the multiple gaseous exchanges at all hours over the next 48 hours, her collection of Dora books were completely destroyed and she spent the week watching Series 3 of the "Puppet" Show for punishment. We're erring on the side of extreme caution now and both our daughters have recently been fitted with full-contact Junior-B grade protective equipment to facilitate Sadhbh's Metamorphosis.

"Nightshade" limbers up before a bout with a domestic appliance

Doireann Suffers For The Sins of Her Sister

Never a dull moment and never a full night's sleep. In other news, Sadhbh's list of soubriquets grows a-pace. Her new one is "Lionel" (Lee-O-Nel) because she's so.......

....messy

What follows is incontrovertible pictorial evidence to disavow you (or any social workers who might pay a visit) of the notion that we are neglectful parents who allow their one year old girl get in fist fights and reassure you that we're just a normal family trying to survive the Metamorphosis. Marvel at our intensely happy children leisurin' in combat-free contentment....

Our eldest daughter having fun with fruit

Here, seen frolicking in an arcadian paradise on her penny farthing

"Huckle-Buck in Woodchip"

A hastily prepared graphic clearly shows that the nutritional needs of our little ones is of utmost concern

Kidgeree for Pat Ederry. Mmmm Nutritious!

.... STILL enjoying herself immensely!

Could being a small Keogh possible be any more SAFE and FUN!?

No, no it could not.

Washolie, Marl-on (aka Smalleen Pauline) and Üti Flutey (present but not pictured)

Hunter Gatherer

2010-10-10T14:09:00.020+01:00

Anne Doyle

Hunter S. Thompson

If, as I believe it does, finishing a well written piece of literature or journalism leaves behind in the imagination cache of the reader, hanging like a thin plume of thought-provoking smoke from the capillaries of short term memory, latent half-engaged memories of characters, their conflicts or the proxied aftershock of dramatic events, imagine the multi-coloured smorgasbord of storytelling smog hanging around my brain having recently completed the following random samples of American life.

From the almost forgotten simplicity of a mid-century midwestern childhood, to the self serving middle class complexity of the contemporary American family, on to the entropic behavioural extremes of a group of hairy west coast men on motorcycles.... all human life is (t)here. A societal snapshot of America at any time in its history is a complex and fascinating artefact. An unplanned, pan-continental time-lapse sweep of real, semi-real and completely imagined accounts of American life is even more illuminating. All come recommended, though not at the same time. Here's a more considered review of "Hells Angels"

Other HST photos from his time on the greasy side ....

On a vaguely related note, this just made me laugh...

Sisterly Advice

2010-09-21T20:01:00.003+01:00

Sid Vicious Meets Oompa Loompa

"....There'll Be Better Days Than This One...."

Canadian Leviathan, Atlantic Version

2010-09-12T21:33:00.005+01:00

Not the best quality recording out there but the singalong sends shivers. Pretend they're whales. Saw these play a much more modest venue on Friday night in Dublin. Nice gig. Nice guys. Siamak played bass.

Watermelon Helmet

2010-08-28T23:09:00.002+01:00

2nd in an unintended series of unknown length
From here

Just A Perfect Day

2010-08-21T21:42:00.013+01:00

The Littlest Hobo turned one today. The one who's normally happiest in her own company - self contained and self amused - discovered what it's like to be the centre of attention.

And didn't she deserve it.

It was a milestone week for Sadhbhín - aswell as turning 1, she sang along to the chorus of her first song (see later - the words perfectly facilitate pre verbal singalongs), she stood unassisted for 5 whole seconds, she has been upgraded to a forward facing car seat (no more fuzzy head straining backwards around cushioned corners to participate in car conversations) AND she got her first pair of shoes earlier in the week. Further festooned with a new birthday gúna and a sunflower birthday crown, she had a lot to celebrate and was good to party.

Summer birthdays are where its at. Sadhbh is the only one of the 4 of us with a long Summer day for a birthday. The party was a huge success, everyone was well fed and watered including a plague of wasps who went on a coulis rampage. There was handmade bunting, chocolate birthday cake, apple tart on the Cooley Peninsula and all manner of delicious soul food for all and sundry, all compliments of the ever resourceful Maisie.

After the cleanup - and the cleanup for kids parties can be quite......calorific - and some well earned bobos for the littlest and largest hobos, we closed off the day with an extended riceball dinner listening to a perfect shuffle as the clouds stretched into crimson vapour and the girls sang along or downed tools and danced when the music stirred them. eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-EH-EH-EH-EH-EH-EH-EH-EH-EH

Most everyone adhered to our request for books for birthday gifts. Thanks to all for your wonderful and throughtful gifts. Niall and Áine started Sadhbh off early on the path of disembodied poetics by getting her a beautiful hardback edition of Shel Silverstein's Where The Sidewalk Ends which features the following beautifully simple toddler's manifesto :

Listen To The Mustn'ts
Listen to the MUSTN'TS, child.
Listen to the DON'TS
Listen to the SHOULDN'TS
The IMPOSSIBLES, the WON'TS
Listen to the NEVER HAVES
Then listen close to me -
Anything can happen, child,
ANYTHING can be.

Breithlá Sona Duit A Sadhbhín

Big Girl's Bed

2010-08-20T22:25:00.008+01:00

*Sigh* I've Arrived!

*Sadhbh* is close behind....

From Aherlow To Merrion Row

2010-07-06T22:36:00.025+01:00

Quick photo top up post. My camera is malfunctioning heavily so I haven't been taking so many photos recently. Explains why the last couple of posts have contained borrowed shots. I have managed to chronicle some of our sedate adventures this Summer so far. Below are some of the more publishable ones. We hit the National Sheep Shearing Contest in Portlaoise, went camping in the Glen of Aherlow and visited the World Street Performer Competition in Merrion Square. We also ate a lot of rice balls in our back garden and had several impromptu discos on the landing.

Doireann's first Toddler Rights Mobilisation Rally

Sack The Stylist (Doireann styled this one herself)

Runner Up, Street Performer

4 Pot Heads in a Two Man Tent, Do-Da, Do-Da.

Not much I can say about this really :) Taken by Grandad Duggan.

I Want It That Way

2010-07-03T23:02:00.008+01:00

From here

To here.Took me a while to figure out this was shot in an Internet cafe. Then it took me another 2 minutes to figure out the Chinese might have a sense of yumaw. This is a great tune and these boys really do got talent.

Stephen Shore

2010-06-15T22:49:00.006+01:00

Stephen Shore, Church and Second Streets, Easton, Pennsylvania June 20, 1974

Stephen Shore, 'Holden Street, North Adams, Massachusetts, 7/13/1974', 1974

Stephen Shore, Second Street, Ashland, Wisconsin, July 9, 1973

Stephen Shore, West Third Street, Parkersburg, West Virginia, May 16, 1974.

Stephen Shore, International Motel, Sacramento, Ca., 1973

Little Vision Come Shake Me Up

2010-05-22T12:28:00.024+01:00

Hi. We're Wolf Parade from Montreal Canada.

There's something ancient and noble about an unwashed, half cut, travelling band of entertainers from a far off land coming to perform their tricks to the collected rabble, from whatever random elevated podium, scaffolding, or beer crate and plywood platform, which by dint of even the slightest difference in elevation between it and the floor, gets called a stage. The same stage where on any evening anywhere, opera, poetry readings, theatre, witch hunts, fight nights, magic shows, a Furey Brothers gig, public executions, motivational speeches, technology demos, cock fights, sumo bouts, world changing speeches or, as witnessed at the Pavement gig recently, middle aged men, get flung from with wildly varying levels of dexterity. Call it showbiz, call it stagecraft, call it a ritual. I'm such a fanboy, I even get daxxled by an empty stage of backline humming under the lights or the ruby red twinkling of the standby lights on the amps. Ahh what a well placed mic. There's art in it, there's lights on it, there's atmosphere around it, there's thousands of years of tradition in it, there's the combined weight of the audience's expectation upon it filling the room until the band walks on. And there's release (and if we're really lucky- entertainment) in it.

Hello. We're Fugazi from Washington DC.

Fugazi always introduce themselves with their hometown appended. As did Black Flag. It's a nice touch. And how could I forget Shellac of North America?
And so with a thumping headache in a work shirt, slacks and comfortable shoes, me and mister Van Basten saunter into one of those well appointed but yellowing, neglected old Dublin pubs where the sun sets in the glasses over the bar, where there's exactly 12 steps between your barstool and the urinal and every patron propped at the counter is an unabashed, never wavering alcoholic and/or Man Utd fan. The kind of bar where, as a contingency, knitting sits in a plastic bag under the stool waiting to be withdrawn when the talk turns to mickey muck, the ponies or Jimmy Keaveny. A sunlit drunken version of "I Know Him So Well" (It took time to understand him) was our pre-show entertainment, the stage in this instance a rickety barstool, this at 8pm of a Thursday evening. Pock marked plastic bags were appearing billyo as we left and the third rate second division game on the box in the corner was still nil all. There were some excellent vintage Barney Rock era Dublin jerseys, originals as far as I could tell, on display aswell. Could have been 1982 but for the polyeseter panic.

I got a savage bout of culture shock on entering into the false darkness of the venue for Wolf Parade, not 5 doors down from the pub mentioned above. No obvious alcoholics, no Dublin jerseys, no knitting. Just buckets of young wans falling over each other to appear unobserved and disinterested. Met up with Anonymous Dave and his lovely girlfriend Evelyn both looking dashingly windswept and interesting. Highlights of the main event were This Heart's on Fire and I'll Believe in Anything - still the best song in their songbook. No Fine Young Cannibals unfortunately. Everyone except the drummer had their own keyboard. Dan was playing one of these aswell. Still one of the very few guitarists I've witnessed (on several occasions) playing a single guitar through an entire gig despite hammering eleven shades of shit (per song) out of the thing. Without a doubt Dan is the Barney Rock of Indie Rock.

And here's one he made earlier - download "Ghost Pressure" from their new album : Little vision come...come and shake me up. It's a cracker.

Nice blog : http://flyingbuttresses.wordpress.com

This One's Called "Old Camera Blues in Red"

Athdown Syndrome

2010-05-05T22:05:00.025+01:00

Edit - two more photos from Martin's phone, reproduced with kind permission etc :

The only documentary evidence of the camping. Martin's tent pitched a little too close to the river for a man on valium stumbling around in the dark.

Maith an banbh! Also compliments of Martin.

Spent the long weekend in the mountains at a reassuringly difficult to find bend in the river Wicklow with family and friends and friend's children and food. From speaking to people afterwards, everyone thoroughly enjoyed the peaceful surroundings and the escape from the hassles and inconveniences of modern life without the inconvenience of having to travel half way across the country to do so (except for Marc - see later). Somewhere to stay out of sight for a long time. Stars in the night sky. No midgies. May contain traces of banana. Quote of the weekend goes to Mei who announced apropos of nothing during dessert that Marc farts through his nose. Thanks to all who dropped by kids in tow.

Ass and Elbow

Interesting to note the navigational efficiencies or otherwise of those who turned up. Martini made it without any contact with the mothership. He cleverly saved the map I'd sent to his phone and used it to navigate through perilous obstacles like signpost-stripped crossroads, yellowribbonless oak trees, concealed entrances and a complete lack of referenceable landmarks. The Hopkins used the "I'm blowing the horn, can you hear it?" trick of the truly lost - even though, without knowing it they had made it to the gate at that point, using the same cunning tactic of printing and following the map I'd sent. The Lardners (and their beautiful new daughter who we were all introduced to for the first time) needed a chance encounter with a bunny-hopping Marco Van Basten "up top rohd" to confirm their suspicions they were in the general area but, in fairness made it with minimal radio guidance.

Mei-vid Bellamy

Mr. Odysseus Van Basten Doyle and his car load of disoriented passengers took the scenic route, referencing random landmarks all over south Dublin and east and west Wicklow ("......we're at the Blue Gardenia......") as they wended their leisurely way, mapless (note, the graphic designer and the photographer were the only ones not to avail of the rudimentary visual aid of a pre provided roadmap), towards that silver cow gate somewhere in Wicklow. Never judge a man until you've walked a mile in their shoes. Or travelled one hundred unecessary miles in their backseat. Hiroko, Mei and Eri were remarkably understanding :)

The food for the entire weekend was fantastic, Maeve brought most of our kitchen with her and fed and watered all comers with an accomplished array of wholesome and nourishing food while simultaneously juggling either or both of the girls - see above. There was pinhead porridge with apple & cinnamon and milk and honey, followed by bagels and bananas with piping hot coffee for breakfast, salads a-go-g0, quinoa chilli, and quesadillas with homemade guacamole for dinner and fresh pesto pasta with whole cherry tomatoes for lunch. Martin though he'd died and gone to heaven. Hiroko and Eri also contributed salads and pastas to feed the combined carb cravings of several well rounded vegetarians' appetites turbo charged by the fresh mountain air. Louise and Stephen brought some delicious snacks, sampled later in the evening when taste buds were in full bloom.

One disheveled silhouette in waiting

For me, the camping itself is always a highlight. Out came the baby MSR and the camping was indeed wholly refreshing. I went to bed on Saturday night in a wet fridge but I awoke on my back on Sunday morning with the sun in my eyes and the rain making alternately semi predictable or completely random patterns on the bubble of backlit transparent orange tent fabric which my sleeping quarters had thawed out to become. It was like what I imagine awakening from being cryogenically frozen might feel like. Or being inside your own brain watching thoughts develop, witnessing the chemical synapses form and dissolve circuits of perception. Or seeing a stop motion movie of the path and pace of a long and interesting conversation. Better than squinting at the ceiling cracks in a badly built semi d in anyways.

The next morning I was awoken early by the Brownian motion of the disheveled silhouettes of two young rapscallions (namely new BFFs Doireann and Mei) calling my name as they ran in opposite directions around the footprint of the tent trying to figure out, by echolocation I presume, where the door of the tent could be found. Oh to be awoken every day by such a random and refreshingly different collection of visual alarm clocks.

Maeve and the girls chose the more considered option of kipping in the cabin. This weekend marks the significant emotional milestone of any mother; their eldest child's first night in a big girl's bed. The fact that it was a bunk bed and had dinosaur prints on the pillow helped. Every time we brought this up in conversation over the weekend (which was often as we are proud parents) Doireann would chime in incredulously......"and I didn't fall out!" to heighten the effect of our story.

Also managed to get some decent mountain biking in over the weekend, compliments of Martin and his new family. Ended up on the baby slopes of Ballinastoe Mountain Bike Trail (which turns out is just up the road from the cabin) and fun was had and the bug was revitalised. We're both trying to convince Marc to drop a grand and a half on a decent bike so he can accompany us on future adventures.

Yuri Gagarin

Met a man on the river fishing with his son who, without any prompting whatsoever, gave us this mouthful of a URL. He's a neighbour apparently and doesn't frequent the Ballinasloe horse fair (_major_ faux pas bringing that up).

Happy Hanukkah, Tasty Salad

Miraculously inherited a ticket to Pavement on Tuesday night via Martin. Great gig. Really brought me back. All the hits from the full back catalogue were rolled out..... and it was good. Stephen J. Malkmus catatonic, autistic trail boss, battle hardened cattle herder and single handed bringer of perfectly odd guitar music on expertly confused guitars. At one stage he was standing in the corner playing 2 notes, repeatedly and the sound he made was Pavement. He's got style, miles and miles. Mark Ibold is a great lad altogether, what with his haircut from the 90s and his rock solid abilities delivered super modestly. My dislike for and belief in the irrelevance of Spiral Stairs (guy with the cap, stage right in the video) was greatly enhanced during this gig. Even the tambourine player has more raw talent. That's unfair on Bob. He is in fact a genius.

And finally.....

For Mikey and the Cat. Sadhbh loves sushi rice too! :)

Checking In

2010-04-24T11:49:00.024+01:00

A non post really, a timestamp with carelessly selected decorations to hang off the hooks.

Eadie and Dee Dee of Grey Gardens

One of the reasons I'm not posting so much is that my camera is in uberfritz, kaka bang-bang. The dreaded Er99 Shooting Is Not Possible message. Turning out some pretty interesting shots though.

Whats up Chupa Chup!? Whoa Whoa Whoa :)

Maisie is enjoying the final few weeks as a stay at home mother and the girls' diaries are chock a bloc full of back garden activities....

Wa'sholie and Chupa Chup at a recent Members Only Teddy Bear's Picnic

Leisurin'. Doireann Style.

Brunch (not pictured)

Doireann recently had a horrific 7 day bug which completely floored her and from which she's still recovering. And for a developmental checkin with our youngest daughter, Sadhbhín is waving HI! (but oddly not bye bye) , singing along to the raucous in-car family favourites, and while not crawling yet, is perfecting her deterministic directional "rolling" which ain't pretty but is ruthlessly effective. Eventually.

Looking forward to our bank holiday and the family friendly camping trip up at the cabin next weekend. Hope we get the weather and everyone can make it. Started studying again so my minimal reading time will most likely get absorbed by the pages of doorstop textbooks, deadlines, spreadsheets and regular assignments. Here's what I read recently while I had the chance.

Didn't think much of Kavalier and Clay but I'm thinking I'll re-read it on the basis of this. Great writing in nice edible chunks suits me at the moment. And this is a collection of, at times, truly illuminating and always entertaining observations expertly delivered on the male condition.

A novel comprised of multiple short stories, unrelated except for the presence, real or implicit of Olive. Nice.

Dark, precise, random subject matter, leaves you with a bizarre taste in your mouth.

Heavy Bongos.

And now for a bedsit-experimentalist trip down Sallymount Avenue....I bought these two albums together when they came out (in 1996 according to the release dates). I was listening to one of the two recently and kept getting images of the other, both visual and aural. It still amazes me how attentive to and retentive of detail my brain is when it comes to anything related to music while with everything else I'm like a slow learner goldfish. Anyway - 2 great albums, both completely instrumental, different worlds in terms of mood and atmosphere, but with complimentary album covers of similar of baby blue hue, which is probably why they were bought together in the one bout of instant consumer gratification in the one physical record store. I need to go real world record shopping more. Expect a representin' on the Christmas Countdown. Being a parent is nothing like Music For Babies lead me to expect.

We've also this week re-entered the world of feature film viewing, joined a video store and are in the process of playing catchup for the past 7 years of zero discerning visual stimulation..........

One of our very first dates was going to see Three Colors: Red in the old Lighthouse cinema on Abbey Street. And while the Pat Spillane Tan of the boyo above may also provide a literal parallel (more closely to Three Colors: White maybe), youtube was always going to be a pale substitute for quality feature films.

another one of those weekends

2010-04-05T21:45:00.003+01:00

Happy Easter

Geology Vs Technology

2010-03-20T20:53:00.017Z

Strange and busy times. First off, a big congratulations to Louise and Stephen on the recent birth of their daughter Anna.

We took time out to try out our new tent for real this week. We're still struggling to come to terms with many, many aspects of family camping. When is a bathtub floor not a bathtub floor, when exactly is the mesh wall required, how in God's name does a double zipper work? By the time we've perfected it no doubt the girls will have discovered electronic communications with boys and will refuse to accompany us on trips where uneccessary inconveniences like mountains and bodies of water interfere with the efficient functioning of their 1G Personal Telepathy Transmitters (Late Late Toy Show 2015).

Next Generation A-Frame Hotel Astra

We've discovered that Doireann for example swims heats of the ladies 200m freestyle individual medley in her sleep, complete with explosive starts in random directions. And she does not stay in lane. Off the grid, off the path, off the thermarest. It reminded me of years ago in a friend's house when I witnessed an old retired greyhound relive the glory days of his racing career while asleep by the fire in a family sitting room, lying on its side with its tongue hanging out and its legs frenetically stepping out the final yards of a particularly closely fought Greyhound Sweepstakes (televised). That was highly entertaining stuff. Doireann's aquatic somnabulance (call the ambulance!) was slightly less entertaining in a fully occupied, dark and cold tent.

Molly Polly Wa'sholie Dolly Blankie Dodo Mumsy "Bobos" Murchúcú Keogh (not shot in the tent)

Sadhbhín, when she finds herself in a gale, in complete darkness with the ambient sounds of the women's 200m freestyle heats taking place in the nearby river (with wild animals calving on the riverbank) tends to panic a wee bit and comfort drinks like a Las Vegas Showgirl - but only when her body temperature goes below a certain critical point. I've heard of adventurers in cold climates requiring the services of sherpas but never wet nurses. I'm not sure if you can buy multi layered feeding thermals or Breast Milk flavoured Power Bars but we're going to investigate online (careful now). I think teeth (plural) may be a pre-requisite to achieving maximum refreshment from Power Bars though.

Boliviana Soybean

We got to about 1am at which point we were all wide awake in a state of advanced Puffy Smushins and retired en masse to the warmth of the cabin where it took us another 2 hours to regain a restful state. But we did it, baby steps and all. We'll be a long time training for Annapurna at this rate.

Family Camping : Fly On The Wall Perspective

My Name's Wa'sholie.... And I'm Your Friend :)

Random Early Rehearsals For The Late Late Toy Show, Cow As Bryan Tubridy

"Come away oh human child to the wilds'a Wickala"

Happy Val Dillon Day

2010-02-14T09:49:00.007Z

Just after breakfast with the girls on V Day.

Giraffe Hearts for Starters

On this the weekend where Sadhbh got her Tripp Trapp from the postman and we had to arrange the whole place to accommodate another little human at the dinner table.
So Happy V Day people.

And remember, aside from a good pension.....

From the aforementioned Charting The Beatles Flickr Photostream

This Is Nuts - Danderson Cooper

2010-02-13T22:56:00.004Z

This is even nutser... CNN is the last place I though I'd see these guys http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/indie.asia/

And finally, from a project called Charting the Beatles this fascinating graphic :

Upsidedown Crown One Second At A Time

2010-02-03T21:40:00.013Z

The Wait

The Cake Watch

No Touch, One Second At A Time

Finally

Doireann's Déja Vu Face

Upsidedown Crown From The Time Travel

Next!

The Hundredth Post

2010-01-23T00:12:00.027Z

...and nothing to report. Preparing hard for the Terrible Twos. It's Doireann's 2nd (or sixth - depending on who you ask) birthday this week and preparations are in full swing. We were hoping to go low key with this one but you know how things tend to ......spiral. We've already confirmed the funk band. Throughout the afternoon the cousins will be performing hornpipes in fancy dress on the back of a truck (we're awaiting a callback from the Tulla Céilí band). There'll be coleslaw contests, we've hired 3 bouncy castles, a bouncy semi-D, a marquee, a helium baloon artist, an anti-freeze splashpool, a florist, a face painter and decorator, a dark chap who does things with handkerchiefs, a tightrope walker (specialises in clothes lines), a 22 piece marching band to wander around the estate drawing attention to our invite only little event (neighbours can look but will not be fed or have access to any of the bouncy objects), oh and a full strength Macnas will be mingling with the guests throughout the day taking requests. I hope we get the weather. The chocolate fountain tends to become troublesome in a gale. Speaking of weather related activities, dissapointingly "Kilts on Stilts" cancelled once they heard Macnas were coming. We're struggling to think of who to get as a replacement to light the 20ft wicker man at dusk. Sadhbh is getting into the spirit of things by having her head waxed on Friday as she's a small bit sensitive about the wisps. Doireann and chums will arrive in a pink princess themed limousine. We wanted her to arrive in a hot air balloon but the event management company told us to get fucked - the back garden didn't have the required physical area to make a good landing target.... especially with the marquee, bouncy castles and highly unpredictable sugar buzzed entropic chums. Simply not safe.

I really hope we haven't tried to squeeze too much in. Last thing we want is little Dee Dee getting overwhelmed and becoming aggressive.

Books and Music did rain down from a height for a very long time following my spend-it-all-in-the-one-shop Christmas Voucher splurge. I'm systematically working through loads of new music and a years worth of quality reading awaits.

Read this in 2 train trips. Worth a read, won't change your life.

Very interesting, very accessible but a small bit too cut and dried for my cynical mind.

Really enjoying this. Quality writing and a beautiful edition. I'll let you know how it ends up.

And to mark this momentous 100th post milestone, below is a mindless bit of trivia : verbatim, the top search terms which landed many disoriented randomers on these very pages.

1. hollowsolid
2. thurston jazzmaster
3. hollowsolid + blog
4. hollowsolid.blogspot
5. "i made you a present, you never expected"
6. "rick white album" site:blogspot.com
7. "wait.think.fast
8. "yellow avensis"
9. bariloche "bencina blanca"
10. buenos aires new year obelisca
11. cho cho hey beep beep
12. ernesto djedje 320
13. how to. make pipe bombs from from canada
14. if your gonna be a broke little bunny
15. sadhbh doc
16. wipers "i'll be around" blogspot
17. "dee dee" bowerbirds lyrics
EDIT : updated
18. lyric's of song about henery sheflin
19. stephen shore
20. peat muppets
21. site:http://hollowsolid.blogspot.com frozen
22. call,beep bloom possible! slova
23. alo donegan
24. dan boekner up all night
25. geese the national beverly road sampled
26. nearlymeat
EDIT: Further Updated
27. wanking fast tutorial (!)
28. spiderland slint
29. snow leopard beep casuale
30. frog noise riddip
31. ballyfair
32. blogspot first dance song bon iver
33. daniel johnston wallpaper
34. hayden "home by saturday"
35. wet/oily floor pictures
36. isaac brock living in a condemned home
37. midlake sg vox
38. birkenstock buckle clicking noise
39. the barr brothers
40. schmitten outside disco
EDIT : Addendum Sept 2011
41. anne doyle
42. mellon collie and the infinite sadness wallpaper
"43. loosen the dung"
44. andes mt deadly road
45. ben gibbard home
46. duggan ballyfair
47. josh homme ginger elvis
48. malcolm x camping
49. thing 1 thing 2
50. you are my happy ending

We had a terrible job finding bencina blanca in Bariloche aswell. Yellow Avensis indeed.

Merry New Year

2010-01-01T14:34:00.008Z

New Year's Eve turned out not quite as we'd planned it. We were due to stay in the cabin up the mountains in the woods by the river. We loaded up the car with a couple of days worth of food, made our way up the mountains assisting several snow bound motorists out of our way and got there (we actually made it) to find the electricty was gone. Electricity should be optional in a cabin up the mountains in the woods by the river in a snowstorm but not when you have a 4 month old and a 22 month old and temperatures were predicted to fall to as low as minus 6. So we had to turn around and travel the same treacherously dicey roads home. Not before our raclette ended up sliding down a hill in the snow (we had to unload the contents of the boot to access the tow hook), I earned a sports injury assisting a fellow motorist out of a snowdrift and we ended up having to be pulled out of a ditch by adrenaline junkies with winches. But we made it safely home in time to celebrate new years with a dinner cooked on the raclette, which was in surprisingly good form considering the abuse it took earlier in the day. Quote of the day "Conor Faughnan has just been on de rayydio sayin' that the Sally Gap is impassable.... fuckin' right it is!" from the guy who pulled us out of the ditch :)

Happy New Year to all. May you all receive liberal sprinkles of 10-10-20 on your 2010, the thing that brings the bringer of things.

In other news, a rare sighting of Sasquatch Keogh was captured on film this New Year's Day...

On that eerie and chilling note, we'll sign off on 2009. Oíche mhaith agus chodladh samh.

Balloons for Dee Dee

2009-12-30T21:37:00.002Z

From the movie "Up"

Ironing To Fix Latching

2009-12-29T01:03:00.010Z

We just had a very impromptu get together of old friends, the kind that doesn't happen very often and generally happens more by accident than design. Christmas is always a good time for these gatherings when people are home and their food and wine guards are down a little. There seem to be more and more additions to each of these as they happen in the form of baldy babas. Linda and Siamak also announced they had gotten married recently :) Best news we've heard in a long time so big congratulations to them. Great to see everyone and great to see everyone in such good form. I have some photos but to save the blushes of all involved I won't publish them - let me know if you want to see them and I'll mail them to you directly. A quick plug for Nora's website : http://www.walnutbooks.com/ a great place to go to buy great books. Check it out.

My Grandad

This little lady is really coming into her own. She's gone all solid and sturdy, she smiles at anything that moves and has one of the most pleasant personalities I've ever met. She's recently found her voice, her belly laugh and her hands and has spent most of the Christmas holidays either playing woozy-dextrously with her little grab toy she got from Santa or shoving her fist in her mouth to self soothe. The photo above was taken on the morning of her christening as she awaited the arrival of her gown. Someone said that they have a bajillion photos of their first child and none of their second. I'm trying real hard not to let that happen but it is indeed a struggle. I heard an interesting quote on the wireless over the Christmas break where someone said that while having one child will turn your life upside down, there was no difference between having 2 kids and 9 kids. With 2 children (or 9), while you attend to one, the other(s) tear the place apart. Speaking of tearing the place apart....

Here's Doireann doing a wooden toy | wooden figure mashup on Christmas day. When asked why the 3 kings and Mary had been loaded up onto the back of a truck she said they were going to the shop. What for we enquired - what could be important enough to drag them out on bad roads on the most important day of their little wooden, molded-for-purpose lives.....? To buy milk was the response. Milk and toast. Baby Jesus must have had latching issues. Imagine calling to a modern maternity ward to visit a newborn and mother with the ever practical gifts of gold frankincense and myrrh. You'd probably be sent off immediately to get something more useful like a Hello magazine or ....milk. Yesterday she had her ironing board and little wooden iron and was ironing the tiny wooden Jesus. No idea what was going through her head on that one but I'm liking her take on conventional religion.

Got some really good feedback for the CDs which a lot of you received recently, so thanks for that. I've been grabbing loads of new stuff from the short lived "best of" blogs and I've ordered tonnes of CDs from Amaxon with the kindly received birthday and Christmas vouchers so I'll be busy between places in January filtering out the peanuts from the shit. Can't wait.

Twas The Night Before Christmas....

2009-12-24T23:56:00.007Z

.... And all through the house, not a creature was stirrin'.... not even Doireann. Just as she was going to bed, we put out some cake and milk for Santa and some carrots for Rudolph and we asked her did she think there was anything else we should put out. She went to the fridge and said "Vimmin". So Santa has some baby vitamins on his plate aswell as the more traditional fare to get him through the cold cold night's work of delivering awkward shaped objects down regulation chimneys around the world.

She's been watching this a lot lately. Can't wait to see her face in the morning. Something tells me tomorrow will mostly consist of tricycles, icicles and feeling so nice-ical :) Poor Sadhbhín will have to jump on the back when she's old enough. For now some waterproof books and a grab toy was all Santa could decipher from her pre verbal Santa letter. Bless.

Happy Christmas to all.

Ingredients for a Wild Goose Chaser...

Goodnight.

Upsetting The Apple Tart I

2009-12-05T16:41:00.040Z

El Ten Eleven Double necked for your listening pleasure

The first one I've managed to stand up and get out the door before year end while holding down a real job. Irony being it's the biggest compilation yet 77 songs . It's sheer breadth is unprecedented while also militantly limited to melodic oddities from the world of unpopular music. It's a pretty random bunch of songs and I've really squeezed them in there, even though at 4 cds you're probably thinking I've picked them up off the side of the road. But rest assured they're as obsessed over, permutated, combinated and finally differentiated as all of the previous efforts. Got a bit bogged down with dEUS and John Frusciante. There's a lot more information, videos, interviews and songs out there by the bands on this compilation than is strictly neccessary to enjoy the music.

Don't know about you guys but I'm going deaf. Again I've included the cover art and tried to discipline myself to ensure that the cover matches the source of the song, but I have a really low tolerance for bad cover art so sometimes I've chosen a better looking cover instead (always from the same band). (edit : I got undisciplined half way through and started dropping in the nicest looking images regardless). The only case where the covers are so universally bad is Wolf Parade so they get a mugshot instead. I've also included links to myspace pages for further orders. Be careful though, myspace crashes browsers and leads to the appearance of dayglo shoe laces on your dress shoes and the footwear of your loved ones. The incestuous friends lists are telling. Don Cab on Slints page, Sparks on Sandro Perri's page, El Ten Eleven on Spiritualized's page etc. So anyways - herewith, 5+ hours of music to get you over the darkest Christmas of the 21st Century so far and to mark the stark end of a decade which went a bit mad in the middle.

This year's unintentional theme is location with random bands originally hailing from similar locations most of whom seem to have relocated to Brooklyn. Bands from Chapel Hill, Videos of other bands performing in Chapel Hill, Several bands from Athens, Austin, too many from Toronto and a couple from Kentucky. I even turn a blind eye to a couple of British bands coming in from the side which must mean I'm getting old.

Anyway - same rules apply :
- Play Loud
- Sing Along Where Appropriate
- Skip The Ones That Make You Uncomfortable

Previous Compilations
We Send Kisses
Choo-Choo-Choo-Choo Beep! Beep!
Songs For Girls and Boys

1. Fredrik | Black Fur
Lets start Scandinavian and see what happens. Fredrik is the 19th most popular boys name in Sweden. Percussion provided by IKEA Cutlery Department.
2. Electrelane | I'm On Fire.
Speaking of better looking covers - I love this cover version. I could go into a long meandering nostalgic reminiscense about cassettes and Born In The USA being the first original (as opposed to dubbed) album I ever owned but now is not the time. 1984, now that was the time.

3. Winter Gloves | Factories
"From Montreal" health warning. From their biog ....."the band consists of Charles F. on vocals, Wurlitzer and organ, Vincent Chalifour on synth bass and keyboards, Jean-Michel Pigeon on guitar and glockenspiel, and Patrick Sayers on drums" Thats a shitload of keyboards. From the blogs.

4. Why? | Fatalist Palmistry
From the Alopecia album - which had a number of bizarrely catchy bouts of clever, poppy, literary obscenity. No obscenity here just a nice chorus.

5. Noah And The Whale | Five Years Time
From the blogs. I've heard this on the radio in shops and on an ad aswell I think. Catchy ukelele. Oooh, danger here! Turns out they're "British". This counts as shit cover art.

6. Shrag | Forty Five 45s
Which, if you're up on your 45 times tables you'd know was 2025. Also "British". Brighton actually. The photo above is funny. For real life non ironic comparison see here.

7. Rick White Album | Grim Unintention
From the blogs. From Toronto? Also from Eric's Trip a band I couldn't get my head around when I was 17 so no point trying now.

8. The Long Blondes | Guilt (Pantha Du Prince Remix)
This originally lived on the long songs cd but some juggling was required to fit everything in. From The Blogs, Sheffield. This is a remix of a song I've never heard before. One of them had a stroke and they've since split up.

9. Hayden | Home By Saturday
From Canada. It's amazing what you learn about songs or singers you've been listening to for years when you have to write a one line description and come up completely blank. This is one from buck who used to pull together some great compilations in an online compilation club I was part of years ago. Consistently excellent new music through your letterbox until he disappeared. Nurbs.

10. White Denim | Heart From Us All
One of my biggest disappointments is missing their gig in Dublin in July this year cos it crept up and happened while I was in a work blizzard. These guys live in a trailer in Austin TX and use it as their distribution headquarters for whacked out, tight as a duck's arse MC5 meets the Beach Boys musical oddities. I wore white denim to a céilí early on in my going OUT out career. Some really bad shit happened and I never wore white denim or went to céilí ever again.

11. Sigur Ros | Hoppipolla
Heralding the arrival of daughter number 2.

12. Hella | Hos in The House.
Hella is a town in Iceland. From the delectably uncerebral "Bitches Ain't Shit But Good People" EP . Dont wake the kids.

13. Xiu Xiu | I Do What I Want When I Want
From many places. A very disjointed piece of music that when it briefly, intermittently comes together causes great wonder.

14. El Ten Eleven | Lorge
Doubleneck guitars. Pinbacky to the Max. Why ever not? Listen to My Only Swerving on their Myspace page. I don't have a copy of that one if anyone can oblige....

15. The Mendoza Line | Whatever Hapened to You
Again a buck contribution. "The Mendoza Line is an informal term used in baseball for the threshold of incompetent hitting. Even though Mario Mendoza's lifetime batting average is .215, the Mendoza Line is said to occur at .200, and when a position player's batting average falls below that level, the player is said to be below the Mendoza Line." This was a boy girl band from Athens Georgia who divorced and promptly split the band up.

16. John Frusciante | Murderers
This is from an old four track album recorded before he rejoined the chilli peppers when he was away on a 6 year mega bender. I've loved this song for a long time. He's either had a pretty crazy life or he's one of the more imaginative wikipedia contributors.

17. Asobi Seksu | New Years
It's hard to not like a band whose name translates approximately to "playful sex.". They were originally called Sportfuck. From The Blogs, Brooklyn NY.

18. The Thermals | Pillar of Salt
Doireann's favourite band after Midlake. Saw these this year and it was like a 6th year reunion. Ze Germans were over, Noni, a brokeback Martini, Marconi Van Basten (who fell in love with the bass player), Eri, Carol. Good gig. Nice tattoos :) Doireann learned to headbang to this song. She also fine tuned her influential un-dancing technique.

19. Netherfriends | TAC TAC
From the blogs "Netherfriends are that bastard-psych-pop-catchy as hell band that you’ve been searching for." Catchy singalong chorus for our twilight years sitting around in Vneck jumpers and ill fitting Magee pants upto the gills on sherry and bottles of stout down the Workingman's Club blue rinsed hairs between our teeth misremembering our lives as young sailors. The future involves shared combs I fear.

20. Walkmen | Tonight Will Be Fine
I'm not a Leonard Cohen fan so I didn't know this was a Cohen cover until very recently. From a Daytrotter Session. Lovely.

21. Jason Collet | Charlyn Angel of Kensington
From Toronto.

22. Spiritualized | True Love Will Find You In the End
J. Spaceman returns to earth for a live performance. I usually hate live recordings. But when it's the only version of a great song you own you make exceptions.

23. Micachu | Vulture
No idea what's going on here but it sounds great. Only one word for it... "rowdy". This was supposed to be the opening song on this CD but software has a mind of its own so this cd is presented to you sorted alphebetically by song name. "The key to her unique sound is that she plays tons of homemade instruments, many made from objects found around the house" So, now.

Upsetting The Apple Tart II

2009-11-28T09:51:00.031Z

Mendoza Line We're All In This Alone

1. Adem - To Cure a Weakling Child/Boy Girl Song
This is a cover of two Aphex Twin songs mashed up. I've listened to both and frankly I'm a little confused. Most of my Aphex Twin stuff is from the dark web and seems to be heavily mis categorised. I think this was used in an ad recently aswell. There's a video somewhere of sunlight in a room the week Sadhbh came home (and Si and Dee Dee float in and out of frame) and this is blaring in the background. Sunlit memories.

2. Sandro Perri | Double Suicide
This has been knocking around since mid last year. And has kinda grown on me. From Toronto via the blogs.

3. Casino Vs Japan | Summer Clip
This is fantastic. Crazy electronica at its best. I've had this mp3 for close to 10 years (downloaded in the dot com goldrush) but there's a glitch in the encoding which no other software has allowed me to burn to cd. iTunes' error correction sorted it out. Lexington Kentucky. Another unlikely centre of music excellence. I need to buy some of this guy's albums.

4. Lo Fine | Remotely Together
"Wise men dont poke pins they wait and deflate them a little" Evan Dando (I think!) appears completely out of nowhere on here. Havent been able to confirm.

5. Allá | Es Tiempo
Self described as Latin Psychedelic. Mexican. Ó na bolgs.

6. Handsome Furs | Hearts of Iron
Need no introduction.

7. The Mendoza Line | Let's Not Talk About It
A husband and wife team from Athens, Georgia. Divorced in 2007 and dissolved the band.

8. The Thermals | Now We Can See
Without a doubt Doireann's favourite Dancing on the Landing song. When the oo-wayoh-oo-wo-oh bit starts she'll drop everything, come running business like from wherever she is in the house, no matter what her state of dress or dishevelment and dance in her curiously studious style (fists clenched arms tucked like a boxer, reversing in circles sometimes nodding her head when her synapses are feeling up to it). She mimics both of her parents dancing styles (god love her) and throws in a bit of Bernard Dunne. Generally elicits the reaction "Moh!" for more when it's over. Only this song and Midlake ever get that reaction. This is a song which all kids seem to love. Try it on yours!

9. Breeders - Safari
Vintage Breeders. Way before stylists. This is interesting also.

10. Jim Guthrie | Difference A Day Makes
From the blogs. Via Toronto.

11. CiM | Commuter Love
This sounds like something from an electronic archive - I have no idea where it came from but it needs its own lofi electronica tag. Very simple but very effective. They've become extinct though.

12. Manchester Orchestra | Brother
From last year's blogs. Via Atlanta Georgia.

13. Murdocks | Die Together
Contains the use of the word "Raaawwwk!!"

14. Jennifer O'Connor | Valley Road 86
The lyrics on this are very evocative.

15. Reindeer Section | Where I Fall
This album reminds me of Whelans lockins and misbehaving. Broken driverside windows and the fear of god.

16. Yo La Tengo | Stockholm Syndrome
This song is 12 years old. Missed them when they played in November.

17. Madeline | Sleeping Dogs
A hit around our house.

18. Karen Dalton | Katie Cruel

19. Murdocks | Playhouse Down
"Powerpop" from Austin TX. Image courtesy of Google Image Search for "Murdocks".

20. Tobin Sprout | Small Parade
He of Guided By Voices. Nice tune.

21. Ben Gibbard | You Remind Me Of Home

22. Camper Van Beethoven | Tina

Upsetting The Apple Tart III

2009-11-24T22:23:00.044Z

1. B Fleishcmann - Guided By Beats
The start sounds like a German Oral tape. What is the man talking about? Where did he eventually find his misplaced schnitzel? Trace the man's life story to demonstrate how he ended up living in a Youth Hostel? Who says the Germans got no soul (Hai Siamak!). Woops, he's Austrian apparently. Who says the Austrians can't get down? This is a gorgeous little ditty. I remember seeing Mr Fleishcmann play in the Sugar Club with the boy wonder who purchased all the vinyl he could at the end of the gig. I'd never seen a man dance to hardware before.

2. Mice Parade | Focus on the Rollercoaster
From Canuckistan. I know de nada about them except for this song and their fine album art.

3. Emily Jane White | Wild Tigers I Have Known
Nice piano song. I see she's described as a "dark folk" artist. Aint most folk dark? From the blogs.

4. Superchunk | Untied
Perfect guitar music from Chapel Hill NC. The only band I've ever left the country to see. Oh... before he reminds me.... Redlad discovered these.

5. Sparks | Good Morning
This song manages to be very funny while dealing with the socially important phenomenon of post one night stand awkwardness. Reminds me of Dieter, Peter and Skeeter in a small St Kitts hotel room getting crazy with the after sun lotion. Contains the killer half rhyme : "......While I fix you breakfast | I hope it's just your laugh that is infectious" Amazingly, these guys have been around since 1970. "The band's long career has seen them successfully adopt many different musical genres; including glam pop, power pop, electronic dance music, mainstream pop and most recently chamber pop." Ahh chamber pop for the veeeesh. They Might Be Giants cite them as a major influence.

6. Spank Rock vs Burial | Bumpangel
A mashup of Burial and Spank Rock. The marathon table tennis session continues. The bit in the middle is a quick tutorial on table tennis technique from a female world champeen. The tip for long term, sustainable supremacy over your predominantly Asian (mostly Korean) opponents is to "keep that shit nasty"

7. Frightened Rabbit - Fast Blood
"And the fast blood, fast blood, hurricanes through me and then rips my roof away". Still rockin' the suburbs. I found out a wee bit late that these guys are supporting Modest Mouse for their Dublin and Galway gigs. Coulda been a dealbreaker and got me to buy a ticket.

[Bad Bad (really bad) Artwork]

8. Autamata - Fragments
Foggy Notions CD. Try not bopping your head to this one. Many's the nervo was banished by closing my eyes, high in the sky, planes trains and semi camas.

9. Ernesto Djedje | Zadie Bobo
From a great compilation of African music which Chocatini Dupree sent this year. Reminds me of Orchestra Boabab, a good thing indeed. Nice horns throughout. His dad was called Wolof apparently and Ernesto died young. Chocolate Rain anyone?

10. Seabear | I Sing I Swim
A song for bathtime. From last year's blogs. From Reykjavik Iceland. Apparently it's not cold in seabearia. They've very cleverly collated a bunch of random wannabes armed with badly tuned acoustic guitars doing abysmal youtube cover versions of their songs. This is one of the more.... in tune versions of this song (watch out for the Octave Change of No Return)

11. Wait. Think. Fast | Look Alive
Described as Melodramatic. From the blogs.

12. Songs Ohia | I've Been Riding With The Ghost
"I been runnin outta things I dint even know i'd been usin'"

13. Wait. Think. Fast | Clear Our Name
When the music comes from the blogs, the songs tumble down the bit slide and get streamed into your head unidentified and you end up liking 2 songs from the same band without knowing it's the same band. This happened with these.

14. Daniel Johnston | Fish
From buck, a fellow traveller on the long and winding road to nurb town.

15 The Reindeer Section | I'll Be Here When You Wake
Flute reminds me of another Scottish supergroup (The Delgadoes). From bhicipáid "The Reindeer Section arose - according to Lightbody - out of a chance get-together of musicians at a Lou Barlow gig in Glasgow in 2001, at which Lightbody drunkenly laid down the challenge to others to "make an album together", to which everyone said "yeah yeah". Lightbody "went home and next day wrote the album" and later convinced Johnny Davis of Bright Star to fund a recording session and release the proposed album. The group met over three days of rehearsal and ten days of recording to produce the first album."

16. Phoenix | Long Distance Call
The only French representatives. From the blogs. Where the French get their idea of cool :

17. Lungfish | Instrument
First song on Rainbows from Atoms. A Dischord band.

18. Camper Van Beethoven | Take The Skinheads Bowling
"All you ever wanted was to write a song as perfect as Take The Skinheads Bowling but of course you never did. "

19. Dakota Oak Trio | Brownie and Sonnie
This one seems to predate the internet. Draws a complete blank. From a compilation club, from the postman.

20. Zita Swoon | Where's My Love?
This lad has progressed a bit since I last checked in with him. Stef Kamil Carlens the old bass player from dEUS. I love his heavily accented Belgian vocals and he's a quirky great songwriter (See Worse Case Scenario or this (I've never seen a music video with subtitles before)). Here he is on the left hand side.

21, Mas Y Mas | You Can't Play Without Ice
This is a nightmare vision of my children's teenage years. Overdosing on Ice, Electroclash and Rock n Roll. From the blogs. Joe Dolan would turn in his grave.

22. Toasted Heretic | Black Contact Lenses
Easy on the flange there Julian.

23. This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb | Trains and Cops
I'm hearing Larry Gogan's voice saying "Folk Punk from Pensacola Florida".

II and I to come when I get the time. I'll be posting these out next week aswell.

I can't wait. And you shouldn't either.

Upsetting The Apple Tart IV - Long Songs

2009-11-21T14:59:00.015Z

This is my dedication to the lost art of getting lost in music. Early morning train rides half asleep, long songs keep the continuity, black out the gaps and allow you to drift off into or out of. Whatever you want. Anything which offers a bolthole, when the only visual distraction is the garbage strewn gravel banks of Ballyfermot seen through windows fogged up by morning breath, is to be heralded and I've chosen the time honoured medium of the mix tape to pay my respects. There's a risk with long songs. What results can generally be categorised as triumph or tragic waste of time. Longs songs have a tendency to get skipped more often than not, especially on compilations like this where they hog and squat the valuable optical real estate of a CD or the valuable bits in a zip file which needs to squeeze through the pipes. Just as the wise old schoolboy saying goes - more than 3 shakes is a wank - so too in music, more than 3 minutes is also considered onanistic (except maybe in classical music). Elvis got business done in 2:30. Minor Threat in a minute and a half. And I love and respect them for it. Not to the point where I'd fashion myself a quiff or get a blade1 - you can respect the King without trying to be him and if it takes you 2 hours a day to look like a punk you've missed the pony completely. But sometimes you need a bigger canvas. And from a man who's just upgraded from a 4man to a 8man I know all about the need for bigger canvas (the bigger living room will come later).

So here's to journeys, wallpaper, soundtracks, and not knowing whether you're half asleep going clickety clack through Adamstown or half way through a 7 minute drum solo by some band you've never heard of. See? I didnt use the word progressive once.

My 3 minutes are up.

1. Of Montreal - The Past is a Grotesque Animal [11:53]
I've no idea what's going on here. This is unlike anything I've heard from these guys - in fact I haven't liked anything I've heard from them before. But this is interesting and at almost 12 minutes, it'll do to kick us off with the long songs.
On three........."Let's tear our fucking bodies apart."

2. Wolf Parade - Kissing the Beehive [10.52]
Ahh now. If this aint progressive. "If you like Can then I guess you know music".

3. Don Caballero - The Peter Criss Jazz [10.36]
Controversially, this long song is on here mostly because of the the great drumming in the first 2 minutes. Damon Che and Ian Williams (now the guitarist and guiding sound of Battles) were the basis of this incarnation of Don Cab (Pittsburgh) and fuck me. These guys are the muso's musician and while they can deviate into utter noodling, when they hit a groove it's time for the wet ones. Their mostly instrumental songs allowed them to produced some great song titles (pulled straight out of their ass). In The Abscence Of Strong Evidence To The Contrary One May Step Out Of The Way Of The Charging Bull | My Ten Year Old Lady Is Giving It Away | Mmmmm Acting, I Love Me Some Good Acting | Let's Face It Pal, You Didn't Need That Eye Surgery | and my personal favourite Pantsuit, Uggghhh

4. The Wedding Present - Take Me [9:21]
I bought this album when I was about 15 having seen them on Top of The Pops doing Brassneck and I ran up to KFM records in the arcade in Newbridge on my lunchtime, my toes sticking out of my oxblood docs in expectation. The closest you'll get to guitar trance. The rythym guitar is hec-tic...the original guitarist in the Wedding Present was of Ukranian and Irish descent (he later released a Ukranian folk music record and is currently teaching in some Ploytechnic in the UK) so that's where he's getting his crazy intricate rythyms. Joyful.

5. Slint - Washer [8:50]
More memories - these ones are based in bedsits though. What a dark and scary song. I love the guitars on this (and most of Slint's stuff) but the hook on this particularly makes my eyes glaze over. Goodnight My Love.

6. The Wrens - 13 Months In 6 Minutes [6:50]

7. Animal Collective - For Reverend Green [6:35]
The best you've ever played it.

8. Kevin Drew - Gang Bang Suicide [6:22]

9. The Old Believers - Granny's Song [5:10]
Portland OR. Bust. This squeezed on here cos it was the right length. Number 35, Number 2, Number 9, Number 5, 1501 699. and 43. very obvioulsy the wrong album cover but that's OK.

More III|II|I to come next week.....

Valentine Occupanther

2009-11-12T22:07:00.001Z

A belated heads up. This is happening. That is all.

Go Go Go!

The Fall Collection

2009-10-31T23:06:00.015Z

Another game launched, another 6 weeks missing from my yearbook. Here's what we've been up to as a family in the minimal time we've spent together recently (the Adventure Tennis shots didn't turn out so good so I've left them out). Hope you're all well.

The Fall Collection '09

Halloween @ Doireannín Brownstein's

The first photo of Sadhbh in the wild, Athdown.

Anyone for Moon Camogie?

Moon Camogie + Anti Gravity makes eejits of my family

Mid Term Pumpkin Carving

Handsome Cassanovas | Orange Distortion

2009-10-31T21:35:00.014Z

Saw these play this week with Mr Van Basten, himself a one man hen party. One perfectly abused guitar (wasn't tuned once \oo/), one drum machine, some anarchy yoga, vodka from a mug and a great show. Highly entertaining pair of misfits, particularly when drunk. Some of the worst tattoos I've ever seen. We used to bump into them on Davie (Rogers on Davie was their local video store..... Rogers on Davie are not uncommon.). Nice to see them in such good form.

I love the sound I love the sound. (Nerd Spasm) : "Well, I have a couple hot-wired guitar pedals that I kinda just tore apart and put back together again, that just destroy the signal of the guitar, and that harsh programming stuff with the microKorg. Forcing ourselves to use those sounds and trying to control them into something musical. One of the things I used on this record is basically a bit reducer, sampling the guitar coming in and then lowering the bit rate, spitting it back out. It makes these weird overtones and controlled feedback. And I gotta say, Boss pedals. Boss pedals are a touring musician's friend. They never break down.And they're cheap. So if you ever lose your Boss orange distortion, you can go to whatever pawn shop and get another."

Orange Distortion

And so fuckit.... it's turned into a music video post, this is lovely

and so it grows.....

This is just funny.

Ma~

2009-09-28T22:34:00.005+01:00

Let's take this back inline. Congratulations to Peadar and Dana on the recent birth of their brand newborn daughter Matilda. What is it about lady babies? All of us have had girls, some of us have had several :)

Get used to ladybird necklaces on door handles, startlingly comprehensive handbag collections and stubbing your toe or upending yourself on a crayon or wooden mushroom when you _least_ expect it. You'll be surprised at how utterly forgivable your own offspring are.

Enjoy guys. Mail us some photos of the little lady (I'm good for brooding self portraits of daddy thanks) and congratulations again.

Beck Hansen's Record Club

2009-09-16T21:24:00.003+01:00

The Record Club do Velvet Underground & Nico 'Sunday Morning'

"For those new to the Record Club, it is an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. An album is chosen to be reinterpreted and used as a framework. Nothing rehearsed or arranged ahead of time. A track is put up here once a week. As you will hear, some of the songs are rough renditions, often first takes documenting what happened over the course of a day. There is no intention to 'add to' the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens. And those who aren't familiar with the albums in question will hopefully look for the songs in their definitive versions."

http://beck.com/record_club

Autumn Comes Early..

2009-09-12T23:37:00.004+01:00

..and startles the tea party

Final Installment of The Arrival of Sadhbhín

2009-08-25T00:01:00.005+01:00

Doireann gets to hold Sadhbh for the first time

.....and won't let go

The Meeting Of The Daughters

2009-08-23T21:47:00.002+01:00

The eyes open....

....and the girls finally meet in person

Music For The Mood We're In

2009-08-22T21:53:00.002+01:00

I love it when a band can still produce when given the most modest of tools.

Sadhbh They Called Her

2009-08-22T15:35:00.015+01:00

She's gonna hate us using that spelling when she moves to America..... Not a whole lot I can add to these pictures except to say we're all delighted beyond belief with the new shape of our family. I've been listening constantly, starry eyed, to that song linked in the last post. It doesn't get much better than this :)

It's been seven hours and fifteen days.......

Doireann feels the immediate need to up her game....

I WISH AYEE WAAAAS, IN CARRICKFERGUS!

She asked me this morning did I know what a melodica was and mentioned that she'd seen a notice in Eurospar about tap lessons in Nurney. She needn't worry though. The new baby has a lot to live up to in her big sister.

I'm thoroughly enjoying hanging out with Doireannín while mammy's away for a few days. As are my parents and family aswell as Áine (thanks to all for your massive assistance over the past 48 hours). Expect more baby photos. With 2... I mean 3 stunners around the place, those gig posters are going to have to wait. Over.

Edit : The translation for that Sigur Ros song from Icelandic to English is apparently :
Hopping Into Puddles
Smiling - Spinning 'round and 'round
Holding hands - The whole world a blur -
But you are standing - Soaked - Completely drenched - No rubber boots -
Running in us - Want to erupt from a shell - Wind in - And outdoor smell of your hair
I hit as fast as I could
With my nose
Hopping into puddles
Completely drenched
Soaked
With no boots on
And I get nosebleed
But I always get up

Bring on them puddles :)

It's A Girl Too

2009-08-21T20:45:00.005+01:00

3:35pm today we had another beautiful baby girl.

mother and baby doing absolutely fine. daddy and doireann are frazzled :)

the weight is still a mystery (long story) but the baba is perfect and
maeve has proven yet again what a powerful bit of stuff she is.

Edit: 7lbs 13oz was the official weight after a steward's enquiry. Linda - i have no idea about the length - I didn't ask :)

no name as yet(what do we think of hoppípolla??). Gigunnagap is also on the shortlist. we'll keep you all posted.

thanks to all for your kind wishes over the past 24 hours.

I Heart Jolie Holland

2009-08-11T21:30:00.004+01:00

More here

Now Thats What I Call Planxty Snow Leopard

2009-08-10T23:49:00.011+01:00

More busy eleven o clock overtime. Below is a pictorial communication of my eye movements over the past few weeks. It's a messed up world when the culmination of weeks of effort. painful cross cultural collaboration, endless multinational telecons and lots of shit take out food is .......two blue men with swords knocking spots off each other in an MMO game. Whatever pays the bills.

Lovely book

Interesting to read about Prosperous in a flattering way

Beautiful hardback edition of an unedited version of an old favourite

And I've been given a spotify account with which I spent the weekend making playlists based on this. It will change your life.

Now That's What I Call Music (Burn To Shine)

Hits 5 (Q and Not U)

Thurston Jazzmaster

2009-07-31T21:57:00.005+01:00

Oh Dear. When's my next 30th birthday?

Oh Fuckit. Nevermind......

Shake It Like A Polaroid Picture

2009-07-26T10:35:00.006+01:00

We've been having fun with an application which turns high res digital photos into oversaturated, randomly cropped, grainy old polaroids. For anyone whose family photos consist of half torn or folded polaroids covered in crayon or marker or lipstick from being stored in your mother's handbag for decades - you'll enjoy these.

Photo by Maeve. Doireann is going through a hat phase. Maeve is half way through a painting the fence phase.

Lough Ennell - the retro rigout on Doireann makes this even more authentic looking.

Dot Doc

2009-07-19T22:08:00.023+01:00

So enough lazy posting of lovely gig posters (although I reserve the right to post in a lazy and uninspired way at any time in the future). It's time to pull up my socks as a daddy and document dammit.

Doireann Painting #1 (finger and paint on A3 paper)

For a long time there we had to feed Doireann with two spoons. Even though she didn't quite have the dexterity (or a big enough mouth) to feed herself, she insisted on holding her own spoon in her clenched fist as one of us would feed her with the other spoon. One spoon only, driven by Mammy or Daddy, and no food would pass her lips. She is now feeding herself, out of the side of her mouth, from above, sometimes even facing away from the spoon, so even though her mouth hasn't gotten much bigger, her aim has improved and she's up to about 25% of the food arriving safely in her mouth. Those are organic Rice Krispies by the way.

Mammy and the kids at Rosses Point

Miss Post & Telegraphs, Sligo 1973

Those are her second pair of shoes. She cashed in while she was on holidays. That dress is new aswell come to think of it. We also said we'd get her a nice "do" to go with her new dress and shoes. So we sauntered into a Sligo barber and got some mixed results.

Before

After

Noooooh little Snowbear....

All together now! "Hey Mr Tambourine Man......"

There's a toy shop on Quay Street in Galway where Doireann buys herself one of these wooden birds every time we're down there. It's run by a German woman and her daughter and for such an amazing little toy shop jam packed with beautiful, hand picked, hand crafted kiddies toys, there's minimal emotion on display at the cash register. They do all kinds of animals but we particularly like the ones with beaks. All the better if we dont know what the name of the bird is. We also have a bear somewhere and a giraffe who has also gone missing. Get Doireann to do her giraffe impression next time you see her. It's quality. So these birds live on top of the mirror in the bathroom where Doireann gets changed. She salutes them on entering now with a Hiyiz! and on leaving with a wave and a b'bye!

In the spirit of documented randomness here's a montage of some photos from our honeymoon in Italia which I tastefully placed on a bedspread and photographed when I got the prints.

And finally this is her favourite piece of televisual entertainment at the moment.

You Wouldn't Throw It On Nettles

2009-07-16T21:34:00.010+01:00

Just back from a lovely Sligo babymoon. This one featured a pot head in the bed beside us every night singing songs and even dancing in the dark into the wee hours, blackouts on the massage table, sunsets over Rosses Point with the Snow Leopard's stools, Doireann's first swim (and her second pair of shoes), visiting Queen Maebh's grave, borrowed t-cloths for bibs, multiple bumps on an auto phobic Yaris beaten repeatedly by the same stationary obstacle, the tireless search for pencil lead, Doireann unlearning physics with the wonky ball, Elfie's estate, blue murder over spilt Cidona, Sunbear as daddys, Sideways O's, magic cream samples, spuds and croissants for breakfast and introducing Leopard Cohen. The highlight was definitely bumping into Mary Mcaleese and her entourage at a motorway coffee place outside Carrick on Shannon. I don't think she was canvassing - I think she was just thirsty. The place was full of bajillions of dislocated taigs from all over northern Ireland escaping the 12th of July Orange marches. I'll post some pictures later. In the meantime..... dropped D.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Fridge

2009-07-08T22:02:00.004+01:00

Insomnia, stubbed toes, tri-not-to-breathe-pod, bright until 11 o'clock, cheap curtains, 30 second exposure, straight to bed.

We think it's a boy based on salt and size and old wive's tails and the color of our eyes. Hard to believe that next month we'll be four. All is well except for the planning of the post launch marketing campaign. We've yet to decide on a brand name be it boy or girl. Gulliver has been nixed (Gully means manhole in German). Rolo is the name of a relative's dog. Buzby is so last year. Someone else said we'll have to choose an Irish name as we already have a Doireann. I don't get that reasoning but maybe the two names do need to compliment each other. Darren it is then.

Sokol Underground

2009-07-04T21:33:00.002+01:00

Some lovely Arcade Fire gig posters. Superchunk and Arcade Fire under the one roof.

Best Before See Side Of Lid

2009-06-24T23:10:00.006+01:00

The honeypot on Autumn's windowsill. A swarm of wasps gorging themselves on the inside of a used up discarded jamjar, then realisng that they can’t escape the sticky sides of the jar because their wings are drenched in sugary red syrup. Hind legs, middle legs, forelegs slipping serially on the upright surface. Black and yellow covered in red. Their antenae wilting under the syrupy weight. By the end of the day they had licked with their wasp tongues the inside clean and lay ontop of each other, drunk as fourteen porters, beyond self control, limbs and wings in crazed but unproductive motion like blinded serpents, powered by the biggest sugar rush in the history of Yellowjackets. Nature is greedy. I eventually got bored enough to bin the jar - a microcosm of insanity hermetically sealed and hidden in otherwise unremarkable domestic waste. Probably still writhing to no end, those that weren’t dead. I wonder do they sting each other, out of competition or even by accident.. I wonder does it hurt when you're high on Bonne Maman Jam? There's something distressing about lifeless living or dead things piled one ontop of the other.