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The Wednesday Watch #4: Is this the end of Zombie Shakespeare?

Oh. Hi. Website seems bereft of content this week. EXCEPT FOR ME. Orestes P. Xistos, comin’ atcha live! On column number four. Wow, four of these? AM I ACTUALLY COMMITTED TO WRITING? Or should I just be committed? Five singles for you. If you like any of these, follow the artists, give them a comment on a video or say hi on any social network you like. They’ll appreciate it! Read on, dear…

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Review: Concepción Huerta - El sol de los muertos

As magma creeps through the planet’s crust, it creates a resonance. The viscous molten rock rises and falls thanks to convection, moving tectonic plates to its wanton desires. It’s near impossible for the human mind to comprehend this spectacle but it’s real, and it’s part of our ecosystem. Let’s say for a moment that this resonance goes into a frequency that approaches the essence of music. It…

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Extraños en el bar - "Ahí no era."

Me escapé temprano del laboratorio. Estoy exhausto después de usar el método Walkley-Black con las muestras de cieno que Scotty recolectó parael doctor Thornton. Thornton es circunspecto y estricto, pero hoy me visitó cada hora, recordándole a Andy, el laboratorista que esté al pendiente de la trampa de líquidos peligrosos. Tuve que usar dicromato de potasio, y el doctor Thornton revisó mi equipo…

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The Wednesday Watch #3: A mi ñero llevan pal monte

The Wednesday Watch is Orestes P. Xistos’ weekly column. We do not align with its radical political beliefs, that include a wild theory about Lenny Kravitz left pinky, but Orestes delivers on time, with plenty of typos, and always includes jammie dodgers and wagon wheels on the christmas basket. Hi, lovely people, specially our readers in Norway and Finland! I’m writing about Gregory and the…

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Shaggy dog biogrraphy: a summary execution of HBO's Sin Querer Queriendo

“When forced to pick between truth and legend, print the legend”. Allegedly, Tony Wilson said that, and it’s perpetuated, no, ingrained, into popular culture because of 24 Hour Party People, an anti-biography (!) from 2002, directed by Michael Winterbottom. Serving as both a chronicle of the Madchester scene and a critical assessment of Tony Wilson‘s persona, it relishes on lying to the audience…

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Review: Belafonte Sensacional - Llamas llamas llamas

On their third full album, Belafonte Sensacional finds new ways to reinvent themselves. No two tracks sound the same. No song resembles what formerly came before. No, Belafonte Sensacional surfed too close to the event horizon and fused themselves -and the music they love- together as a strange, gestalt entity, that would make both Sturgeon and Le Guin happy. Burroughs was not invited, the…

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Tales of a scorched frug dancer

After a hectic day with plenty of worrying mental health issues, today feels better. There’s a hopeful breeze in the early morning, the cobalt blue sky is a perfect background for the swaying palm trees. The sandwich from Ralph’s is sadly tasteless, and the strategic placing of a layer of cool ranch doritos improves texture, not flavour. It’s the task of the rainier cherries to save breakfast…

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The wednesday watch #2: It's me, David, I've got a hat the size of Oooooklahoma

The Wednesday Watch is Orestes P. Xistos’ weekly column. We do not agree with its views on York’s delicious pastry, the fat rascal, but Orestes owns a Switch 2 and might gives a chance to play Mario Kart World. Hullo, hullo, hullo, chavs and chavettes, it is I, Orestes P. Xistos, free again to reply-guy my way on twitter, deciding unilaterally whatever I want to blog about. I’d like to thank the…

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Review: Alan Sparhawk - with Trampled by Turtles

Eschewing the clinical, fierce-as-Proteus electronic nature of White Roses, My God proves that Alan Sparhawk avoids stagnating on a single genre. It’s something that was essential to Low‘s nature, and evident for Retribution Gospel Choir‘s last three releases (The Revolution, 3, RGC DUB). It could jump from one band to another. The brutal, dirge-like ‘breaker’ from Low‘s Drums n Guns was reworked…

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Review: Echodrone - Music for 6 musicians

“Thinking that for something to just be a sound is useless, whereas I love sounds just where they are, and I have no need for them to be anything more than what they are.” – John Cage Echodrone‘s first release was in 2007. It was a tranquil daydream of an EP that dovetailed shoegaze and dream pop, with a healthy dose of ambient. Through the years, they never steered too far away from that…

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Review : The Bat Creeps - Flaccid Justice

“Punk is nothing but death and crime and the rage of the beast” Batman uttered this damning statement back in Fortunate Son. Perhaps he was warning the boy wonder of the cavalcade of pop-reference infused punk of The Bat Creeps, whose new album, Flaccid Justice, mixes the best of nerd culture with tales of earlier days, when boiled sweets and you had to get “direct edition” comic books. You want…

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"I can still make it to the Beverly"

It’s past 4 pm, I should be in the hotel already, getting ready for my obligatory visit to Griffith observatory. Instead, I’m in at The Last Bookstore, a stone’s throw from Pershing Square. The smell of lignin permeates all corners and I’m holding two old sci-fi books with trippy covers and colourful pages. Not my fave genre, but it was my dad’s obsession. He had to own every single book in any…

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Back to the odds and sods column by our star bovine, Orestes P. Xistos.

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Review: Spook Muziek - Pop Music

Rain accumulates on the window sill. It’s the wettest July in Mexico’s recent history. A thousand dead leaves block the neighbour’s gutter. The tea mug still smoulders away, the aroma of cheap imitation Earl Grey piss, the only available “tea” available in this coffee-addicted place. “How to describe Spook Muziek?” I ask myself, avoiding taking a sip from the chipped mug. “Spaced’s soundtrack“,…

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A eulogy for hope.

January 2010. Sleet and half-melted snow make the sharp-slanted streets of Sheffield, the hilliest town I’ve lived in, impossible to navigate. No grip at all with cheap Topshop Chuck Taylor knockoffs. Still, the O2 Academy brings some relief. As I’ve mentioned before, I hold that night of January 2010 dear to my heart, as it was the first time I witnessed The Hope Explosion. Their name is no…

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The Farewell State - Dial Everything

Once you reach a certain age, time becomes…strange. We are taught ad infinitum that time goes on our independent variable axis, and its scale remains equidistant. But again, after you hit forty, it becomes more like one of those orange and white logarithmic paper situations. Dial Everything is The Farewell State newest album. It’s a long in the making album, as in, fourteen bloody years from…

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Live review: Pitchfork Music Festival, Chicago

Day one An empty Union Park under the unforgiving scorching sun. A chorus of cicadas, as loud as vuvuzelas in a world cup match. Random guitar notes start to gel together and it’s Black Duck, offering relief to the few that arrived early. Chill improvisational experimental music that offers a groove, but not for long. Like short bursts of lucid dreams, indescribable. Easy start to the day. Then…