Category: review

Thought Creature – You Telepathy

Posted on by Dr Hitchcock

Thought Creature played a fucking amazing set here in Christchurch last night, TWICE! They played a sold out all age gig at the legendary Media Club with support sets from Hypercolour (MEGA_UBER_MADNESS and it was their 1st ever set), Brains (FUCKIN_WOWO_PLUS_DELUXE), and Shocking Pinks who primarily played sans-vocal versions of songs off their debut release Dance the Dance Electric, my absolute favourite SP album.  And then TC packed out Goodbye Blue Monday, smashing the collective conscious of the present party participants. GBM was so fill in fact that some punters opened the window side of stage so that the sounds could flow into the courtyard. These particularly dedicated party peeps started their own little dance floor. Mr Bass Man from TC would occassionally pass through the window to play the odd song on this newly cleared dance floor. MADNESS.

Anyways, here’s the video that the tour was in aid of. FUCKIN’ trip yo! Do it!



RedHead Outdoors – i don’t know why

Posted on by Dr Hitchcock
RedHead Outdoors
RedHead Outdoors

Personally, I like bad boys. I particularly like bad boys who can sing and scream at the same time. The singer of RedHead Outdoors just broke my heart in this sense. In the band’s freshly baked song I don’t know why he resurrects the anarchic rebel spirit of Sid Vicious. I’m not talking about the way it sounds, but the way it makes me behave. Jumping on the bed, hitting the walls, shouting, and swearing may be, are strongly recommended. This will help to discover another side of the composition.

And yes, back to the singer. I do not even know his name; Wikipedia is, as yet, silent about his personal details. After thoroughly surfing the Internet the band remains a total enigma. The only fact I discovered was that RedHead Outdoors has many Myspace friends. Touching, but not all that helpful.

The band’s disco punk sound is bright and vigorous, and I totally loved the main guitar motif. However, it wasn’t enough to make me like the song. Seconds 54,55 and 56 of the second minute of the composition radically changed my mind. Just out of the blue in the middle of the song I could hear a distinctive eight-beat sound that brought back memories of a good old Pacman. I’m not sure if it was intentional of the band’s members to insert this part into the song in order to make the listener nostalgic, but it worked for me.

Mint singer, mint band, mint song.

MP3: RedHead Outdoors – i don’t know why

:: Cara Totoro

‘lust lust lust’ by ‘the raveonettes’

Posted on by Dr Hitchcock

hey kids- its surf fun with tenderness and feedback!

nothing captures desolation so well as singalong choruses and walls of guitar-skerang. this is music to nod off to– not that nodding off is a valid past-time, but there is something particularly isolated about the raveonette‘s latest that suits those last few minutes of blissed out consciousness, before we fade to black.

i’m not a dedicated fan, so i can’t compare it to their last however-many albums. i know they’re scandinavian, but i refuse to compare them to other contemporaries. ok, except maaaaaybe peter, bjorn and john, as they seem to have a similar love of meloncholy melodies– oh yeah, and talent. 

so for the un-initiated such as myself, the best way to think of the album is somewhere between jesus and mary chain’s earlier work and … the shangri las, maybe? particularly on ‘black satin’ (just like honey) and perhaps more knowingly on ‘you want the candy’.

so why listen when you’ve heard it all before? well, it’s hard to pin down…

i think lust lust lust has nailed what a lot of people missed about the point of rock’n’roll and goth: a twisted sense of humour that embraces the wrongs of life, love, sex, death and ourselves, and laughs a-ha-long with the joke that it all is.

it’s ironic that bands like the raveonettes are labelled as “derivative” and “tributary” yet they’re now making better music in the vein of their influences than all the re-formed “originals” doing the zombie tour circuit right now.

i would liken the production (for those of you that can remember) to roller-skating around at the end of the night to the last few tracks in an empty concrete skating-rink. as the PA craps out, your dodgy rented metal skates wear down to their tinny little axles and the sparks begin to really fly. then just as you get lulled into a comfortable side to side rhythm, that piercing feedback rises up and hits you in the face like cold 3am concrete.

so slap it on, any time you’re up or down and sigh sigh sigh. best played loud! 

MP3: the raveonettes – aly, walk with me 

:: nurse nos

All party peeps who comment on blog posts in May will receive a Starlifter.TV badge/button. It’s an S Club Party!!!

Micachu – Jewellery

Posted on by Dr Hitchcock

Jewellery is the best, debut album that I have heard in an obscenely long time. Mica Levi is the 21 year old behind the sound of Micachu – backed by her band The Shapes, and signed to Rough Trade. This album utilises what would commonly be considered mistakes in production – hisses, pops, fuzz, distortion. Some of these crazy sounds can be explained by the customised instruments Mica has made – the “Chu” a guitar with an added bass string, and a pedal which pitch shifts another particular string, the complexities of which escape me. Anyway, it sounds awesome. The albums controlled erraticism forced me to pay attention; it’s fresh, androgynous, deconstructed pop. This music comes from someone who has trained in music all of her life, and has warped the knowledge into something absurdly catchy. As part of Mica’s studies, she composed a piece of music for the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and fans include Bjork and Bat For Lashes. Standout tracks on Jewellery are “Sweetheart”, “Just In Case”, and the Mint Chicks-esque “Golden Phone”. This album is truly brilliant – and if you want more, download the free grime mixtape below.

:: Darlene Brown