Waking Life

Just watched this: this afternoon.
I know that technically this is a music blog but it's only a guideline and anyway this flick has a string quartet in it and salsa dancing. Infuriatingly it's one of those films where if you tried to recommend it to a friend it would be really hard to summarise it and not make it sound lame. It wasn't lame.
It's a strange half painted, half real animation that looks like a wobbly hallucination and which is not adverse to mini sprite-like creatures whizzing across the screen for no reason. From what I could tell it's about a boy that keeps meeting odd characters in his dreams. Except most of the time he doesn't know that it's a dream. And neither do you. And by the by most of these dream characters seem to have a healthy range of opinions on reality, politics, consumerism, the media, religion and..er.. existentialism. Sorry, ahem, it's been a while since that word cropped up. Go me for learning French and staying conscious during my Sartre tutorials.

Do Make Say Think

I used to listen to this band a lot in a another phase of life, in the past, when I was younger greener and not so wise. Perhaps it is time I revisited this era. I fear some of my memories have become entwined there. Or maybe it's just that my mouth is too small for my wisdom teeth.

Opeth

Toady's top-tip: Listen to Opeth and look at pictures of Uzbekistan.

Daisies of the Galaxy

Just as someone bursts your bubble

Fills you with dread

And kills your dream

There will always be someone there

To help rebuild it

And give you ice cream.

The Mantra Above The Spotless Meltmoon

This was a band that I saw last night at Soyo bar. Maybe it was just the raspberry martini going to my head but I really enjoyed this band. I had forgotten that it was possible to dance on a Monday night and I didn't just head-bob; I was dancing like a crazy twat.

The drummer was very understated and groovy. Not something you often see in a four-piece indie band. Actually it's unfair to use the term 'indie'. There was a certain moodiness there that was reminiscent of Tomassi-esque grindcore though it wasn't heavy enough to be so. Actually the souring vocals made it sound more like a Sinead O'Connor tribute being ambushed by a bus full of Mars Volta fans.

Penguin Cafe Orchestra

What is art?

This isn't an entirely random question, as I've just been watching this - http://iai.tv/

Something beautiful? Something extraordinary? Or is it just what happens when someone with a lot of ideas and (probably) too much time on their hands, decides to do something with one of those ideas?

Fatboy Slim, Moby and Radiohead

Oh well.