Post-percussion.

Yo!

Been suffering from a touch of blogger's block lately, so excuse the sporadic nature of the posts around these parts this past fortnight or so. It's been a case of starting a post, saving the draft and never getting around to finishing it a lot of the time (both here and over at No Flipping!), so at least the intent has been there.

Anyway, enough of the excuses...

SINGLE OF THE WEEK

Liars - Plaster Casts Of Everything (Mute)

The best Liars songs sound like the world ending in some way or another. This is very much in the literal camp. Whereas in the past they've often made the apocalypse sound like the eerie death rattle of all things, this one's a fire-and-brimstone blitzkrieg that lays waste to the Earth in spectacular fashion. All the while, Angus Andrew's creepy falsetto near-screams of the "sweet massacre of death" and other things. Drums pound, guitars rage and it all adds up to one of Liars' best singles yet. Superb.


So, this year's Dpercussion - the last of its kind - was pretty much just like all the others. A mixed bag of bad judgement, piss-poor decisions and shite timing on both a personal and organisational level, we didn't get to see half of what we wanted to see and ended up seeing stuff that we never wanted to in the first place. Here are a few scattered thoughts on the day...

• Norman Jay - quite clearly one of the day's biggest draws - was pretty fucking bad. Only saw a little of him but it was more than enough to draw the conclusion that he has clearly lost it. Playing in a city with a deep-rooted love of soul, funk and disco, he opted for snoozy funky house and - shock horror! - early rave. We'll be taking that MBE back, thangyewverymuch.
• Elektrons, on the other hand, were pretty darned great. Bouncy, summery and steadfast in refusal to let the dodgy sound mix get in the way of starting the party, their set was just the tonic as the day looked like it was heading for a slide.
• 'Trash' by The Whip seems to have been crowned the new Manchester anthem, judging by how rapturously it was received. I'm not sure how I feel about this. It's a cracking song, even better played live and you got the feeling they could have drawn it out for an hour before the crowd got bored of it. However, there's still too much of a whiff of old Manchester about it for me to get behind. It's time we forged a new identity for ourselves, not forgetting the past, just not trying in vain to relive it. Speaking of which...
• I apologise to his friends, family and fans, but Clint Boon is a cunt. His boorish MCing of the main stage late in the day was one of the most cringeworthy things I've ever seen. You're not on the radio now so quit fucking jawing. Introducing each tune by getting the crowd to chant "Boon Army!" or saying "Does anyone want to hear The Smiths?" before dropping 'How Soon Is Now?' should be the reserve of wedding DJs. I used to enjoy going to Disco Rescue on a Saturday night because it used to be quite unpredictable and off-the-wall. His sets, along with his radio show, have become increasingly stale over the past few years and we need to consign him to the bin sooner rather than later. Maybe he can have a big "Who really is Mr Manchester?" dick-measuring competition with Dave Haslam in South one night, with the winner becoming a kind of silent Manc figurehead - a bit like the Queen - while the loser is exiled to Liverpool for all eternity? How does that sound?
• I won't miss the scallies one bit.
• I'm gutted that I missed Dabrye on the Sketch City stage, but my, FC Kahuna's DJ set (actually it was just Dan on his own) was a whole lot of fun. An honest-to-goodness, unpretentious electro-tech set that capped the evening off perfectly (we opted to skip the last hour in favour of necking a few ales in Briton's Protection). Sometimes that's all you need.

Elektrons - Hurry On Down (mp3)

Above photo is from here.

In other news: I'm on this week's Blog Fresh, yakking about, of all things, Elektrons. Serendipitous, don'tcha think?

JMx