Things should all be working okay here now. As you can see I’ve switched themes; I’m liking this more minimalist look at the moment. The old Nobus theme I was using was pretty stylish but not the easiest to read, nor was it the best laid-out theme ever. So what do you think of the change? An improvement, or has something you liked disappeared? Screenshots follow for comparison:
The Nobus theme I had been using since setting up NFI.
The minimalist theme I was using recently as a temporary theme (which I also liked).
If you’ve got any thoughts or feedback on this design or one of the previous themes, leave a comment to let me know. It’s all useful! As for actual content, you can expect some soon – I’m on the mend after a dose of manswineflu and will be writing again shortly.
As you may have seen there’ve been some issues here at NFI over the last few days. These are basically the result of me moving to a new host and not knowing a damn thing about PHP and SQL. Anyway, the move is complete now although my old theme is broken. Please bear with me while I either repair it or switch to a new one – which might take a while as I’m rotten ill at the moment (it’s swine flu, clearly). I’m using this neat minimalistic one in the meantime.
They might be the zit-ridden little brothers of science fiction geeks, but fantasy readers still deserve our respect
Making a good start there, then.
I wonder if this byline policy is also going to be extended to other subjects. Perhaps we can also look forward to Time for the violence in Tehran to end – even if those crazy brown folks do enjoy a spot of barbarism, or Calling for an end to rape – although she was totally asking for it, wearing that tight little miniskirt.
On the positive side of things it’s under a half-dozen comments into the thread that names like Mieville, Vandermeer, Swainston et al start getting mentioned. So we know that Guardian readers are capable of adult dialogue even if the paper’s editors may sometimes fall short.
My mighty, meaty-in-the-metaphoric-sense review of ATP: The Fans Strike Back ’09 is now up at The Dreaded Press – direct link here. I think I made editor Paul Raven a leeetle jealous by getting to go…
I’m going to shamelessly bump my blog’s appearance in search rankings and list every band I cover in the review: Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, HEALTH, M83, Devo, Fuck Buttons, Young Marble Giants, Grizzly Bear, Harvey Milk, Beirut, Errors, Sleepy Suns, Marnie Stern, Spiritualized, Bad Guys, Future Of The Left, Parts & Labor, the Mae Shi, the Jesus Lizard, and This Will Destroy You.
If you only want the gist of it, I had a reeeally good time. And we got a seagull drunk on cider.
Hailing from London, fulangchangandi (that’s pronounced “foo-lang-chang-and-eye”, and is the name of a Frida Kahlo painting) are one of those bands you wish came along more often… and at the same time find difficult to write about. Why? Well, because they’re inventive and thus resist lazy comparisons.
It’s fortunate – for me, fc&i, and anyone who’s reading this with a piqued curiosity – that over the last few years I’ve finally started getting shoegaze, post-rock and noise-rock. For some reason most of it never really clicked for me before, but there’s now been enough confluence of coincidence and recommendation that things have fallen into place for me. I’m still pretty fuzzy on a bunch of the big names – Slint, Shellac, MBVet al - that fc&i name as influences, but on the strength of what they’ve done with this inspirational fodder I need to pick up my retroactive pace.
So, sonically the band play music that straddles shoegaze and post-rock territory. Their songs and riffs loop lethargically and dreamily, heavy on the distorted chords/clean picking juxtaposition, with prevalent bass lines and minimalist drums. Minimal is a good byword, actually – while the vocals are kept to a minimum here these guys aren’t chasing the textural build-up of post-rockers like This Will Destroy You or the rockier instrumental take of And So I Watch You From Afar. It’s impressionistic, almost, as each element of their songs emerges clearly but is integral to the greater whole. Excuse the slightly pretentious metaphor, readers…
The first track on the EP features jangly, dischordant guitar front-and-centre, with sporadic Enablers-esque spoken word vocals over the top. Lyrically these aren’t exactly on a par with the San Francisco cult favourites, but they’re a nice touch and work well. Next up is ‘Godolphin’, probably my favourite of the three, which is a sort of mournful victory march with great tremolo guitar picking and some soaring melodies that builds to a close awash with noise. Rounding out the trio comes the seven and a half-minute epic ‘Emergency’, a song of several parts, crescendoes and decrescendoes alike, slightly varying its central hooks throughout to great overall effect.
All in all this is a very cool first EP and I’m looking forward to seeing what fulangchangandi do next. Two of the three songs on this EP are up on their MySpace page, so go have a listen.
Brighton’s Offcuts (disclaimer: my friends and some of my housemates) have finallyreleased the video for their single ‘Flesh’ (warning: contains some graphic scenes of violence, gore and burgers):
I say single, but it’s not been released as one. Maybe one day! Still, the video’s goddamn slick, huh?
I don’t tend to post band news up here unless a band I really like splits up, but Warren – drummer with Against Me! for a good eight years – has just left the band. Or been fired, depending on whose version of events you read – follow that link for the statements. Sad times indeed. Warren is a fantastic drummer and a real friendly guy; although I only spoke to him briefly once or twice myself, it’s pretty much universal opinion that he was one bona fide cool guy. Apparently his next project will be running a Mexican restaurant in Gainesville. If I ever make it over to Florida for the Fest, I’ll have to try a few tacos.
It’ll be interesting to see where Against Me! go from here. New Wave cemented their shift in direction – a process clearly begun with Searching For A Former Clarity – away from the aggressive folk-punk of their youth and towards a more mainstream rock sound. Last year Tom Gabel – founder, singer and guitarist – released the solo record Heart Burns, an EP which was hailed by some as a return to his roots but which to me lacked the passion that made early Against Me! so utterly, brilliantly vital.
I hold no grudges against the band for ‘selling out’, and respect Tom’s efforts to lyrically document the process of being drawn into the major label music industry, but New Wave is merely a good record to me. It is a far cry from Crimes As Forgiven By, a record which hit me so hard and was so important to me that it seems fair to deploy an old cliche – it was a record that changed my life. Ironically, Crimes predated Warren’s involvement in the band (at that time Against Me! was Tom on guitar and vox, Kevin Mahon on bucket drums). So now it seems that things may have come full circle, concluding my love affair with the most important band of my early twenties.
All the same… it’ll be interesting to see where the band go from here.
