Skat Injector: Speedcore Savants

Masked bands remind a little of the Star Trek ‘rule of evens’. The popular myth is that the even-numbered Trek movies are the better ones. This sort of works, ‘The Wrath of Khan’ (the second one) being a good example. How does this relate to bands with masks? It doesn’t really, it’s just that the [...]

Heat From A Dead Star

This unwieldily named band might at first listen appear to purvey shabby garage rock but there is more to them than scruffy strumming. Touches of shoegaze, touches of indie and touches of pop rock all blend together into charmingly simple and warm songs with decidedly wonky corners. Odd chords, touches of piano or atonal violin [...]

Crooked Mountain, Crooked Sea – It’s the falling that counts, not the landing

I must admit to being a little nervous about how I would find Crooked Mountain, Crooked Sea. When I first saw the name I let out an internal groan. I imagined a band that would release a two-track EP, with two twenty minute long Mogwai-esque snore-fests. Luckily my fears were almost instantly put to rest [...]

Perhaps Contraption – Sludge & Tripe

This wonderfully named band and album hail from the UK; which is immediately apparent as the singer makes no effort to sing in the cod transatlantic English that taints so much homegrown music. This adds greatly to the appeal of the album, not because I am a relentless jingoist but because it makes it sound [...]

Man thrown in jail for not giving thumb-print at a stripclub

This was just too weird to not post here. From The Consumerist:
Going from strip poles to iron bars in one night, a Consumerist reader says he got tossed in jail when he refused to give a strip club his thumbprint. Their ATM was broken so he had to pay his tab using a credit card [...]

Come and see ‘Night of Pan’ for free

Brian Butler, the guest of our latest podcast (see the frontpage), is screening his new film ‘Night of Pan’ for free at London’s Horse Hospital tomorrow night.
As well as an appearance by Butler himself, the film features seminal film-maker Kenneth Anger as the Magus, and Buffalo 66’s Vincent Gallo as Pan.
Brian will be performing live [...]

EPISODE 35 – Raising Pan with Brian Butler

Podcast: Download

This week we venture back into the worlds of the Occult, and film-making. Brian Butler is a film-maker, Magician, and colleague to legendary director Kenneth Anger.
In this weeks episode we discuss: Jack Parsons and his magickal journey, The Night of Pan, Kenneth Anger, and how the occult can influence the film-making process.
Brian is screening [...]

4chan being blocked again, this time it’s Verizon

4chan site owner m00t has posted to the 4chan blog, and Twitter, that Verizon wireless, are blocking both in and outbound web-traffic to 4chan.
Unlike a recent scare involving AT&T last year, m00t believes that this time it’s for realsies, from the 4chan blog:
Over the past 72 hours, we’ve been receiving reports from Verizon Wireless customers [...]

Anonymous takes its war on Scientology to Haiti

Anonymous, the masked protesters that have spent the last two years protesting the Church of Scientology, have responded to a creepy Today Show report on the aid-work being conducted by the Church in Haiti.
Anonymous, best known for their masked street-protests, have responded by issuing the following statement (sourced from Gawker):
Hello [audience]. We are Anonymous.
We wish [...]

Watch Douglas Rushkoff’s ‘Digital Nation’ now in this post

Digital Nation – a PBS Frontline documentary I’ve been working on for, gosh, two years now – is finally airing this coming Tuesday evening, Feb 2, at 9pm on pretty much all PBS stations in US. (I know: that’s during the Lost premiere that even Obama feared going up against. But you can Tivo Lost, [...]