THE SIX PET PEEVES OF THE BASTARD WISHER

1. When people confuse similes with metaphors. Not everything is a metaphor. You cunt.

2. The fact that everything is now licking out Twitter. Did you hear? Marketing says that Status Updates are the new cool thing! You cunt.

3. Ugly animals - like the proboscis monkey. That monkey is a fucking retard. You cunt.

4. People that think everything is 'going to be fine'. It isn't. The world will run out of oil in 2050, and then resort to chaos. Renewable energy sources only make up 2% of the world's energy and oil is a large part of food production, therefore most of the world's population will die. You cunt.

5. People that slam doors for dramatic effect. You are a melodramatic prick. You cunt.

6. People that don't know how to be nice. You... bitch.

-BASTARD WISHER

The Bitters (I am excited about this band like a tramp gets excited about eating)

Gordon Bennett! Not only do Bitters sound as good as they look, and taste like nice bitter pints ov ale on a noice sammer's day, but they are so good that they are LITERALLY grazing the possible shelf of New Favourite Band Material. And I haven't had a new favourite band since the early Times New Viking records, and before that, the ancient, craggy blasts of the early Deerhoof LPs like 'The Man, The King, The Girl'. So competition is steep.

But Bitters come as a fully-formed House Party/College Radio Punk Band for the best kind of losers, only with none of the pretentions of not being able to write killer songs, harmonise awesomely, or be (the difficultest, most deadly word)... catchy. They gots it all, basically. They're the kind of band you hear whilst holding the hair up of some puking girl, drunk and bored, and then they play, from a paint-covered stereo in someone's kitchen, and summer is tomorrow. They haven't even played a show yet. I hope I didn't jinx them too bad...

The Bitters - Warrior [mp3]
The Bitters - Can You Keep a Secret [mp3]

FIBRE TIPPED PENSSSSSSSSSS.

There's nothing like the sound of people having fun. And with the mighty Fibre Tipped Pens, these girls know how to have FUNNN. We have been mutual fans on MyDadsASpaz for some time now, but rest assured, as the decades have rolled by, FTP have continued to put out solid, challenging work.

It's the sound of what you get when you have a fun sleepover (which there really aren't enough of these days) and dig some shit recording equipment out of your dad's cupboard and make TUNES. Best track of 2009 so far is the astonishing 'Quote me happy'.

S

Spells for Harm & Doing Evil

I literally tried this.

So one day I was browsing the web, and I came across this awesome doozy of a site --

Spells for Harm & Doing Evil

--which basically does what it says on its hypertextual tin. It's a bunch of lo-fi black magic, based (apparently) on ancient Haitian Vodou (correct spelling merci beaucoup), that allows you to cast bare spells that cause general negativity to specific people. And the fact was/is that I am somewhat uncomfortable around one of my housemates, with all his boring obsessions with Window's 95 Solitaire, being Welsh* and having a really ugly face. But there were no killing spells that I could find, so the next best was the 'Banishing a Troublesome Person' spell, which involved carving Eel Kanno Taf (the magic words) into a candle, which we have plenty of because our house is a house of powercuts, and then reading a psalm out for 9 nights. I could only really be arsed doing it for about, what, 1 night? But I still think it's had at least 1/9th of an effect, as he's still here, he just fucks off back to Wales a whole lot more on weekends.

*sorry Welsh

S

What to Do if you Hate People

If you are lucky enough to suffer from depression, or bouts thereof, unlike most of the happy-go-lucky shithawks you meet on a daily basis, you may find yourself asking this question -- 'How am I going to stop myself killing myself?' Then you pause, laugh it off -- 'Haha. I am so god damn melodramatic. Things aren't that bad.' But the truth is, my love, they fucking are. And it's because of people. Until the end of time, people are the ruiners of your life. People are idiots. Not just in a Dan Ashcroft 'Rise of the Idiots' way, but with crippling, unforgiveable desperation, throughout the entirety of life, forever.

Uncle Buk once said... "It's not the large tragedies that moil us to pieces - we are fucking well ready for those. It's the little scratchings and drippings...these things again and again, the similar small biting donnybrook continuous hail...these tear us to the final pieces. ah ha." ...But poets always kill themselves, as a rule, so don't fret too much. People are the reason for these small, gay things in life that tear us to shit. Misanthropy is where it's at. Get juiced on it. Embrace the hatred of your fellow man.

The day you realise that everyone around you is a shaking ball of insecurity, and/or a walking coma patient of retardation, can be quite a liberating one. Once you know that everyone is a zombie, you can say and do what you like, all the fucking time. Hey mum/dad! You're a right-wing retard! You've wasted your life except for making me! Hey (insert ex gf/bf name)! You're fat! And you've been getting increasingly fat since we split up and everyone knows! Hey, everyone from high school! You're all on the verge of disease, and despite what you thought when you were 16, you will never EVER be successful in any way! Phew. Man, is that ever liberating.

It doesn't stop there. The more you hate basically everyone, the funner and more useful it becomes. If you're in a band, stage-nerves disappear completely, because everyone in the audience is a cunt. If you're at university, you realise that your tutors all fit neatly into brackets of [old, caved-face feminist] or [type-a personality malfunction] or [compulsively ironic] or simply [douche master]. In the workplace, the scale is simple -- most cunt = manager, least cunt = you. But the best thing about hating everyone, is that sometimes, if you're lucky, someone will slip through your hate-sea, and you will love them, with epic swathes of love, forever.

S

Italo Disco -- the Whos, the Whys & the Hows. And the Whats. And the Whens

This is a piece I wrote for theconceptionist.com:

Italo Disco, put in basic terms, is the cool tonic after the electronic frenzy of the last few years. It's the music of class and black cabs and silence and smoke. It's what you hear when you stare across an open dancefloor at a girl you realise does not give a shit about you...

...Woah, heavy guy! It also has a somewhat goofier past, as most dance music genres here in Europe do. A past of fun dancing chicks, basically. Today we're going to focus on the cooler side of what Italo has become - namely a slow, icy genre obsessed with the cruising and the sailing of the most ghostly synths ever.

One of the most heartstoppingly cool tracks of 2007 was undoubtedly Chromatics' 'In the City' (released on Italians do It Better). A seven minute groove with one of the most brittle, instantly moody riffs since Glass Candy, it paints some incredible Hopper-style mental pictures of a stoic, uncaring New York (or any city you like), with top end shrieks and subtle, stood straight basslines. Ruth Radelet (above)'s vocals are an especial luxury of breathy, midnight lust and confusion, aided by the fact that she looks for all the world like a French yé-yé girl circa 1959. In short, she's way purty.

Sweden's Sally Shapiro represents the sweeter, daintier side of what Italo offers electro, with her quietly snowy tracks like 'I know', with an added bonus of loliti-vocal weirdness. Very MD, basically.

Another favourite is Toronto's Parallels, AKA the guy that drums for Crystal Castles at live shows. Who knew he was such a master of crisp, popsicley kraut-disco? 'Dry Blood' and 'Magnetics' are particular robotic-Italo chillers. 'Dry Blood' especially takes the idea of the vocal as instrument to an amazing new level. It's vibrato + possessed-girl = something that makes CC's Crimewave sound like a Playskool toy. Deeply underrated.

Anyway, that's Italo Disco in 2009. Next week, Donk.

(kidding).

AndrewDS

The Killer Guide to Shit Music

Screamo + Crunk
Woah. Just, woah. This is exceptionally, powerfully... no adjectives really. None. Imagine the two most Nazi-ish, 100% cunt values of two people you hate more than life -- i.e. the narcisstic emo PRICK that is still clinging to myspace because it made him feel... something, and the utterly braindead G-Staw Raw shopper that actually, physically gets excited when Soulja Boy drops, here, now, in 2009. This is illustrated with stunningly depressing perfection by a band I don't even get the name of, it's unpronouncable. Something like brokeNCYDE (??) which looks a bit like broken CLYDE, except there's no 'L'. Listen to them here, and then die. It will take your breath away.

New Folk
Oh Em Eff Gee! Your new track SO sounds like a t-mobile advert circa 2006! It sounds so sweet like romantic holidays in portugal, but has this really rural, damaged feel to it because of the glottal stops? Or (alternatively) because you sound posher than you are in reality which is really charming and twee like a knitted sweater from your grandma that itches but you wear it anyway because you love her? Get over folk, for fuck's sake. You never really liked it anyway.

Budget Electro
You know the type. Two guys that first heard Alice Practice last month, made a flashing GIF of them moving their legs diagonally to a neon pink and green background, downloaded Massive and thought they could create basslines overnight. Probably a few pictures of wolves on their photos.

S