tomBCN

Primavera Sound 2012 lineup

Tom — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:00:15 +0000

The program’s probably pretty much complete now so as usual, here’s a list of the acts performing at this year’s Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona. The festival takes place from May 30th to June 3rd. The first and last days will be free events at Arc de Triomf. Get tickets here.

This year’s lineup is a bit of a mixed bag. If, like me, you’re sick of FUCKING WILCO, and you’re a bit sick of most British indie from the last 3 decades, you could be forgiven with thinking there’s little on offer. (I say ‘most’ because I obviously still love Spiritualized and Björk, who’s practically British). But take another look and you’ll find much to amuse you.

Take AarabMuzik, for example, who makes quite good music by sampling quite bad music. And how about Dominant Legs who have a sort of Tom Tom Club thing going on. Or the ‘chillwave’ (whatever that means) of Neon Indian. Or Redinho’s electro fun times. There’s plenty to be enjoying. I’ll see you where we can see the sea.

Primavera Sound 2012 lineup (my picks highlighted)

A$AP Rocky (US) A.A. Bondy (US) Aeroplane (BE) Afrocubism (CU) Anímic (ES) AraabMUZIK (US) Archers Of Loaf (US) Atlas Sound (US) Atleta (ES) Baxter Dury (UK) Beach Beach (ES) Beach House (US) Beirut (US)

Benga (Live) (UK) Big Star’s Third (US) Bigott (ES) Björk (IS) Black Lips (US) Bleached (US) Bombino (NE) Buffy Sainte-Marie (CA) Chavez (US) Christina Rosenvinge (ES) Codeine (US) Danny Brown (US) Death Cab For Cutie (US) Death Grips (US) Death In Vegas (UK) Demdike Stare (UK) Dirty Beaches (CA) Dirty Three (AU) Doble Pletina (ES) Dominant Legs (US) Erol Alkan (UK) Fasenuova (ES) Father John Misty (US) Field Music (UK) Forest Swords (UK) Franz Ferdinand (UK) Friends (US) Girls (US) Girls Names (UK) Godflesh (UK) Grimes (CA) Grupo de Expertos Solynieve (ES) Hanni El Khatib (US) Harvey Milk (US) Hype Williams (US) I Break Horses (SE) Iceage (DK) James Ferraro (US) Japandroids (CA) Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel) (US) Jeremy Jay (US) Joe Crepúsculo (ES) John Talabot (Live) (ES) Josh T. Pearson (US) Justice live (FR) Kings Of Convenience (NO) Kleenex Girl Wonder (US) La Estrella De David (ES) Laura Marling (UK) Lee Ranaldo (US) Lisabö (SP) Liturgy (US) Lower Dens (US) Main (UK) Matías Aguayo (AR) Mayhem (NO) Mazzy Star (US) Melvins (US) Michael Gira (US) Milagres (US) Milk Music (US) Mudhoney (US) Mujeres (ES) Nacho Vegas (ES) Napalm Death (UK) Neon Indian (US) Nick Garrie plays The Nightmare Of J.B. Stanislas (UK) Numbers showcase: Jackmaster, Oneman, Deadboy, Spencer, Redinho (UK) Obits (US) OFF! (US) Orthodox (SP) Other Lives (US) Pegasvs (ES) Peter Wolf Crier (US) Picore (ES) Pional (Live) (ES) Real Estate (US) Rebolledo (MX) Refree (ES) Refused (SE) Richard Hawley (UK) Rufus Wainwright (US) Rustie (UK) Saint Etienne (UK) Sandro Perri (CA) SBTRKT (UK) Scuba (UK) Senior i El Cor Brutal (ES) Sharon Van Etten (US) Shellac (US) Siskiyou (CA) Sleep (US) Sleepy Sun (US) Spiritualized (UK) Sr. Chinarro (ES) Tall Firs (US) The Afghan Whigs (US) The Chameleons (UK) The Cure (UK) The Drums (US) The Field (SE) The Olivia Tremor Control (US) The Pop Group (UK) The Rapture (US) The Right Ons (ES) The War On Drugs (US) The Wedding Present plays Seamonsters (UK) The xx (UK) Thee Oh Sees (US) Trash Talk (US) Unicornibot (ES) Veronica Falls (UK) Washed Out (US) Wavves (US) White Denim (US) Wilco (US) Wolves In The Throne Room (US) Yann Tiersen (FR) Yo La Tengo (US)

How I resolve to live in 2012

Tom — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 11:08:47 +0000

New Year resolutions are generally just a list of regrets from the year before: “actually quit smoking”, “lose weight”, “find a man”. A litany of past failures presented as optimistic hurdles that will ruin the year to come. Here’s my list of non-regret-fuelled resolutions for 2012.

Learn Jazz. I’ve been listening to jazz for years and feel like I need to spend some quality time this year learning its history and how it works so that I can better enjoy it in years to come.
Do poetry. I used to love reading and writing poetry and realised recently that it had been out of my life for a decade or more. I should fix that.
No smoking indoors. While I haven’t yet smoked a cigarette this year, I now pledge not to do so in our flat. I will smoke in bars if Rajoy leaglises it, though.
Read at least one book in Catalan and one in Castilian too. 2012 marks 10 years since I moved to Barcelona. I ought to progress beyond shoddy newspapers.
Find new living quarters in Gràcia (or even Poblenou); swim regularly; eat less meat; visit Paris and Lisbon… (these items are perhaps the regret-laced resolutions I warned of).

Have a fun, safe and happy 2012.

Troublesome Houses

Tom — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:28:43 +0000

I’ve got something in the works about Bonnie Prince Billy. For the moment, here’s Troublesome Houses. Stay tuned for my special Christmas Classics party. And some stuff about Grand Theft Auto, Jonathan Franzen, the internet, Devon, Barcelona and skiing. It’s going to be a cultural… er… fiesta de montaditos around here sometime soon.

Dennis Wilson – River Song (1977)

Tom — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 15:09:37 +0000

I’ve been listening to this album a lot in 2011. Dennis Wilson’s voice is considerably different to earlier recordings he did with the Beach Boys, mainly because he spent most of the time between 1968 and 1977 drinking, smoking and doing drugs. This album, Pacific Ocean Blue, is soulful and rhythmic and doesn’t sound much like anything else that I know. River Song is the opening track.

Oh, and here’s a bonus track: Mexico

Old content made new

Tom — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 17:58:53 +0000

I’ve imported relevant posts from ‘theotherplace’, stuff about music and films and books and travel and food and the like. My current thinking is that I should keep these places as separate as possible.

How to Explore Like a Real Victorian Adventurer

Tom — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:56:44 +0000

From this month’s The Believer, “HOW TO EXPLORE LIKE A REAL VICTORIAN ADVENTURER“

Victorian adventurers rarely took a step into the wild without hauling a small library of how-to-explore books with them. Among the volumes Burton carried into East Africa was a heavily annotated copy of Francis Galton’s The Art of Travel: or, Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries. Originally conceived as a handbook for explorers, and sponsored by En-gland’s Royal Geographical Society, the book was required reading for any self-respecting Victorian traveler. Before rolling up his sleeves and getting down to the hard business of exploring, he could turn to page 134 to learn the best way to do exactly that:
When you have occasion to tuck up your shirt-sleeves, recollect that the way of doing so is, not to begin by turning the cuffs inside-out, but outside-in—the sleeves must be rolled up inwards, towards the arm, and not the reverse way. In the one case, the sleeves will remain tucked up for hours without being touched; in the other, they become loose every five minutes.
The amiably neurotic Galton left nothing to chance. His index is studded with gems like “bones as fuel” and “savages, management of.” If Burton couldn’t find the advice he was looking for in Galton, he could always consult one of the other books in his trunk that were written with explorers in mind.

I’m really into this stuff at the moment. As Trevor at Kalebeul has pointed out a million times, there is a ton of material like this to read over at Google Books.

See also: this Salon review of Wilfred Thesiger’s ‘Arabian Sands’ which is on my reading list RIGHT NOW. I’ll write more about exploration and travel soon.

Charlie Parker – Temptation

Tom — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:33:11 +0000

We listened to this track a lot during our August holiday in Menorca. Its mainstream big band sound is highly atypical of Bird but somehow that doesn’t matter. While Temptation was used in several films Charlie Parker’s version, I believe, never has been. This was recorded in a 1952 session.

Switching Songs II (The Good Ol’ Days) – Durrty Goodz

Tom — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 14:00:44 +0000

Another song I’ve been listening to recently. It’s basic a pocket history of garage/grime in London. Click through to the video to see a list of the songs sampled. This is classic.

L’Orchestre Antillais and Biguine

Tom — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 17:14:21 +0000

Various Artists – Vintage Caribbean Music

L’Orchestra Antillais – Serpent Maigre

[Both links require Spotify. feel free to comment with a better way of sharing music, as I'll be doing that a bit from now on]

I’ve been listening to a lot of jazz recently. Particularly pre-1950s. And as part of this, I’ve stumbled upon biguine, a type of jazz that originated in Martinique. It influenced Now Orleans jazz and sounds somewhat similar though with a lot more eerie fiddle. Listen to Serpent Maigre (link above) and look for Quand Meme on the VA album too. Great stuff.

Radio FIP rules

Tom — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 22:10:32 +0000

One of the best things about the modern holiday is disconnection. Many of us spend our work days and nights tethered one way or another. So the holiday provides us with an old-fashioned life: we cook with gas, we suffer the small refrigerator (we still waste food, weirdly), we get our news from the papers or the radio, like in olden days.

This summer we spent a week in Brittany in July and a fortnight in Menorca in August. Neither house has television or internet.

The area around Josselin in Brittany is perfect for lazy cycling: the Nantes-Brest canal has lovely towpaths: I saw an otter on one bike ride, and only about two metres away too. We stayed in a village in the middle of nowhere, without street lights or other light pollution sources. We had two cloudless nights and had as good a view of the Milky Way as we’d had in ages. Loads of shooting stars too.

The three of us sat in the car bound for La Rochelle, but still in Brittany. Our car has a cassette deck for which we have a flimsy shop-bought device that also plugs into an iPod. Said device (the 4th we’ve bought) failed as soon as we departed. What this meant is that we discovered FIP radio. A radio station that plays Bach, then Gillespie, then JAE, then some country, then some funky shit, then tons more jazz. It took me hours back home to work out what station we’d been listening to.

FIP was a revelation. It still is. I know that tons of other people knew about it (particularly in Brighton) and this might seem like saying “I’ve discovered that I like air!”. Like it ought to, FIP provides good archives of its playlist. Which is mostly great. I’m working on having the station play permanently on this site. I think it’s only fair that I inflict this on as many people as possible.

In Menorca, we connected an Android phone to some speakers we bought and listened to FIP online. I listened to the World Service as I read my le Carré. We also listened to some Miles Davis and Charlie Parker. I like jazz, but don’t really know enough about it. I always love Coltrane, Davis, Bird, Ornette, and I adore the old-timey stuff you can find on Spotify.

We also listened to a fair bit of Magnetic Fields, tons of Talking Heads, and the odd Stones or Royal Trux song when in need of rock.