ICFTS#06 recap, part 2: do ya wanna ride the train?

This is where my sense of time and order for the evening starts to get wonky (and not because of drink or drugs either), but fortunately I have a partial setlist to work from. (Check out the HOTT DJ superstar photography! The essence of joycore.) Although I also wanted to mention watching Red and Laces' faces at the moment of realisation that kick was playing a cover of 'Hotel California' (by Little Miss Triniton, and a thing of tinny electronic beauty), and maybe sneak in the slightly nauseating knowing looks exchanged by Red and I during 'Heartbeats' by The Knife. But moving on...

During 'Snake' I'm talking to Stu at the (crammed) bar and we're considering the theory that certain hipster crowds are too racist to dance to r&b and hip-hop. I think it's a little bit more complicated than that: being genre-bound is a widespread affliction, and can also extend to people who won't dance to anything with guitars. And also, there's this weird process that goes on whereby r&b and pop tunes, or artists, achieve a level of 'credibility' and become sanctioned for hipster consumption - and what's cool about It Came From The Sea is that they tend to play things irregardless of whether that respectability has been bestowed upon them. So: 'Snake' may never be credible even if it goes to Number 1, but they see that it's already cool. If that makes any sense.

Not that I articulated any of that at the time, necessarily - these are musings with hindsight...

More people we know have turned up at this stage, and it's time for a tune to make people who've been waiting for an excuse to dance surrender to that urge. Someone calling themself the Thin White Duke has done the obvious thing to 'The Conductor' by The Faint and in the process deprived me yet again of the opportunity to make a career as a DJ: I've been thinking for ages that the best part of this song is the bit near the end where it goes "control. control. control. control." [sic], and that's exactly what's been done, looping this and making the beat somehow simultaneously more dancey and more gothic... I guess the word I'm probably looking for is industrial, right? Anyway, me and mine were on the dancefloor by now, and for a moment the music and some of the company made me think I'd been spirited away to a Goth bar, Goth bar, Goth bar. In the best possible sense, of course.

Goldfrapp's 'Train' arrives to glam things up a bit, It's a great tune to play at this point - slow enough so that it's ideal for people who are just starting to move, but that slightly slower pace is also a challenge - it's a lot easier to go crazy to a very fast, hectic tune than it is to dance to something slinky like this. Anyway, you must know this one by now - filthy bass, glacial vocals, theremin, result!

I was going to geek out here and discuss whether the version of 'Truth Or Dare' by N.E.R.D. (and Kelis) played was the 'live instruments' version or whether the original 'programmed' version just sounded different to me on a club PA, but fuck that - point is, I just had to get my groove on to this in a really I-don't-care-how-this-looks-anymore pimptastic way. This is a HOTT tune, made for flirting to and macking and giving people knowing looks. I need to dig out my copy of In Search Of..., like, now!

No Doubt, 'Hella Good' - I'm still not sure whether I should like this tune or not, but I do. Not as much as 'Hey Baby', but still... That's not a credibility thing either. Ah, can't explain that one.

'Justin Likes Blondes' - oh, I'm getting repetitive strain injury now*. I hope this blow-by-blow, almost tune-for-tune recapping isn't too boring. I do intend to finish it, though, because after the last ICFTS I promised to write about all the tunes on the CD I'd burnt with the guys' help, and of course I never did so. Anyway - this one - I thought I was sick of bootlegs, but this one is a real grower. 'Like I Love You' acapella over 'Heart Of Glass' instrumental, but tweaked, of course, and the end result is oddly spaced-out and dreamlike - Justin's vocals sounding more ethereal than ever. You can still dance up a storm to it, though. Bonus points for making the "now everybody dance!" bit live up to the original even without the Neptunes beat. And here I must offer a shout-out to mono**, who was ripping up the dancefloor much of the night but went particularly full-on joycore mental on hearing this. As is only correct. "You KNOW how I feel about Justin", were the magic words uttered if I recall. Damn straight.

So nikon and kick have finally got me to like Interpol, or at least one tune. After several hearings of 'PDA', last Friday's was the one that clicked. Does the chorus really go "Sleep tight, grim rite, we have two hundred couches where you can... Sleep tonight"? That's even more downbeat than I thought, and this is definitely my choice of song for sitting down between dancing sessions and watching the crowd go at it. Last but one time I heard this song (roughly), I think I had a mild moment of chemically imbalanced anxiety. But not this time - this time was just wistful. Maybe 'cos I wasn't sitting alone - everybody say awwwwwww.

In part 3: a theory about 'The Reflex' by Duran Duran, 2 x rap & r&b couples rock my world, "we don't play guitars!", and maybe I'll push on through to the awesome end...

*As I type, not as I dance. Stupid confusing multiple present tense.
**I must write something soon about weird not-quite-nicknames, and how I've been giving people them long before I discovered the internet...

How do I know you are Banksy?
"You have no guarantee of that whatsoever."



Go read this interview. Then go write or draw something somewhere you shouldn't.

"Let's just say the last time I was in this situation, I wasn't using a paintball gun."
"You've seen combat?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"On the television."
"But you just said the last time you were in this situation, you weren't using a paintball gun."
"He wasn't."
"What did you use?"
"A big stick."

Ah, the joy of Spaced.

ICFTS#06 recap, part 1: hott people

With Red at the wheel of her Redmobile, me in the passenger seat, and the Boy 'Laces in the back, we survived the trials of the M25 and made it down to Right-On in good time, and thence on foot to the Hanbury Ballroom to arrive pretty much at 10pm on the dot. Just in time for nikon driver to drop the first tune of the night - 'Out Of The Races & Onto The Tracks' - we are as one mind on this. I'm gonna skip ahead and give musical selections as moments in the evening.

'LT Tour Theme' and I'm nodding my head and moving my shoulders a little as I walk back from the bar, but still I'm thinking again that the guys always play this track a little early, and I'm wondering if this is because there aren't thought to be enough Le Tigre fans in Brighton to give it the reception it would deserve if it came later in the night (surely not?), or whether it's just too good a let's-get-this-evening-fired-up kinda tune to save. Anyway, Red and I boogie away in our seats a little, and grin stupidly, and the place is starting to fill up and I can tell it's going to be a good 'un.

'Finest Dreams' - the three of us are convinced this must be a classic 80s tune, but it turns out to be Richard X featuring Kelis. Maybe it's a cover. Still, it has that super feel that defies retro and instead hits on only what was good about a sound, adding as Red points out a lot more bass. I add this song to my mental list of songs I need to acquire. One to sing along to in the 'mobile one day, if I get my way.

!!! - 'Me & Giuliani Down By The Schoolyard' - I bound over to nikon near the end of this to find out what it is, and he tells me. Of course, it's a band that he and others have been going on about for many weeks now, and yeah, they're right. It's good stuff. Maybe a little too well-timed in terms of that NYC, 'Killing Moon' feel, y'know, but... still worth investigating further.

In part 2: I hear 'Snake', everyone starts dancing to The Faint, and the evening starts to BLAAAAAAST OFF.

I'm experimenting with writing blog entries in my trusty notebook (with a pen, and everything) and posting them up online later, purely as a way of getting round the fact that work is too busy right now, and the weather is too hot to spend too many out-of-work hours inside, staring at a computer screen. This may be boring you, and I'll get to the good stuff soon, but as I write it pleases me no end that I'm sitting/lying in partial shade under a tree in Regent's Park on an incredibly sun-roasted day, with no need or urge to move anywhere in the next hour, and a sense of immense satisfaction at the fact that I can be in the park 10 minutes after I finish work even in the centre of this GRIMEY city.

A lot of stuff to recap: almost three Fridays worth (this is how I measure time now, by Fridays), but since I covered LO-RES a while ago I'll skip over the afterparty - suffice to say there was dancing in someone's living room, there was absinthe, there was 'House Of Jealous Lovers' and 'The Thong Song', there were silly hats. Let's do the Friday just gone first. See above.

Friday night: in the absence of a full report (to follow), let me just say that it was both HOTT and joycore.