Now, prior to this gig I’d had no experience of Emilie Autumn and with my current state of Internet connection limbo I didn’t fancy downloading anything or using her MySpace to have a preview of what to expect. I’m too lazy to write this up into a full, coherent review, so here are the notes we took while propping up the bar:

TEA BAGS
4 o’clock x lots, half past dead (isn’t that a Stevan Segal movie?) LIAR LIAR LIAR – such inspired, profound lyrics
I’d like it a lot more sans theatrics and vocals – some nice breakcore-ish stuff in the background for the intro. Hang on, she only has 4 different loops.
First gig I’ve been to where I’ve noticed high-pitched teenage squealing. Is her audience entirely prepubescent or just female?
When is a concert not a concert? WHEN NOBODY PLAYS ANY INSTRUMENTS
Bad mixing with overpowering vocals. Microphone feedback. At least one backing singer/performer/drama school reject can’t control her singing, certainly doesn’t know her range or voices. Or what key the song is in.
5 girls looking lost on stage a la Satanic Sluts – but with better looking outfits
Is Emilie signed to Cleopatra Records? She should be.
At least the girl can fiddle, even if the music sounds like a cross between Razed in Black and Evancescence, fronted by Anastacia and with a hint of baroque for good measure. Stop screeching, woman.
Cardboard moon and stars on bits of string. She certainly knows her target audience and seems to have recycled props from their nativity play last year.
Crowd full of dead people – NOBODY is moving
Emilie really really really loves harpsichord preset #4 and so will you after an hour of it
Why choose just one theme for the stage show when you can have a girl for every occasion? Pirate, ballerina, doll, ugly screeching harridan etc.
“We’ve been taking a test to see how long it takes for a crumpet to smell” Hope this is an in-joke and not some lolrandom behaviour.
Backing singers not the only ones on stage miming
Brief interlude for Emilie’s costume change – 3 girls play parachute games like 6 year olds and thrash about on stage. I imagine the 14 year old boys in the audience find the faux-lesbianism arousing. DAT tapes galore as an invisible orchestra plays EPIC MUSIC. Oh look, more tea.
Basic fetish stage performance shit, minus any blood. If you’re going to do faux-cabaret please book some talent next time. Circus Space is a good place to start. Only one performer looks like she has dance training and unfortunately for her, she can’t do her corset up properly.
Stage show needs a lot more rehearsal. Or at least people with a sense of rhythm. Fuck it, just have everyone in fewer clothes, it’d distract from the lack of professionalism.
LOVE PLUS BLOOD EQUALS MURDER. Kids, stay in school and don’t listen to Emilie – her maths is a bit wacky and these lyrics are dire.
Scripted mistakes a la every touring comedy show ever
Boo shouted GET YER TITS OOT. Emilie didn’t oblige but had a fiddle fretwank. I love violin solos, especially ones that rip off the main theme from Dune.
People at the bar – are they goths who love this shit or just the audience’s parents?
Wannabe-Dresden Dolls pseudo-cabaret made acceptable for 14 year olds (and their parents)

After an hour and a half of pretentious drama student theatrics ticking all the spooky kid boxes (Angst! Asylums! Alice in Wonderland! Stripy tights! Style Over Substance!) we were treated to 5 minutes of genuinely awesome violin work. We were both starting to bore of the show by this time and couldn’t get drunk due to prohibitively high bar prices, so skipped off to the nearby Lloyds’ bar for refreshments. The children’s parade filed out about half an hour later filled with excitement and caffeine – I’d hate to have been their parents trying to put them to bed that night.

To be honest, the show wasn’t as bad as I painted it in the notes above, it’s just fun being snarky. Hell, I used to be a massive spooky kid as a teenager and so can’t really blame the kids for getting so excited about this type of thing. However, as I said, I’d had no prior experience of her music or performance and just felt jaded about the whole thing; aside from the technical skill with the violin, I found the whole gig lacking. Boo and I were more entertained by a dsquared and Rolf Gehlhaar generative art installation we found in the N1 Centre. Lesson learned? One PIR sensor, colour changing lights and a selection of sounds is more fun than Emilie Autumn.

I was introduced to his work last year at This is Our Punk Rock. I’d mainly gone to see Alec Empire and Venetian Snares but was absolutely blown away by Zan Lyon’s blend of glitchy noisy electronica with live violin and video art.

boo and I arrived early, paid entry and got stamped so we could disappear off to The Trocadero and play in the arcade. They’ve changed some of the games and I couldn’t find Virtua Tennis 3 or a Ghost Recon Machine with the swipe card memory. On the plus side, the Silent Hill arcade is pretty fun but it’s drowned out by the nearby dancing games.

Anyway, we got back to the venue just before Zan Lyons was due to perform. I was a little surprised to not see any familiar faces from the noise scene but we managed to secure a table with a perfect view of the stage and the projector screen. I had high expectations for the gig and I certainly wasn’t disappointed – the music was beautiful and perfectly complemented by the projections. Some of the video reminded me of Chris Cunningham’s works involving bodies but I wouldn’t say it was derivative. The fact that Zan Lyons was incorporating live sampling also set him apart from other electronic musicians who you can never tell how much is presequenced. He certainly didn’t “just press play”.

All in all well worth the £5 entry fee and a much better experience than my other proposed entertainment for the evening – watching an episode of the next series of The IT Crowd being filmed. Zan Lyons is highly recommended and I’m now going to have to track down some of his releases when my invoices finally get paid.

A new comedy series for BBC3 jointly Executive Produced by Ash Atalla (The Office, The IT Crowd, Man Stroke Woman) and Adam Chase (Writer/ Exec Producer on the hit US sitcom ‘Friends’), Clone opens with a brilliant scientist unveiling the result of his life’s work: The first human clone. Intended to be a prototype super soldier who will eventually replace Britain’s volunteer army, the Doctor quickly realises his super weapon is more likely to hug someone than shoot them.

Clone is a classic ‘fish out of water’ comedy revolving around the education of an Innocent who is seeing and experiencing our world for the first time. It might also be described as a ‘buddy comedy’ about a modern Dr. Frankenstein and his monster.

The show stars Jonathan Pryce (Pirates of the Carribean, Evita, Miss Saigon) and Mark Gatiss (The League of Gentlemen) with Fiona Glascott (Foyle’s War) and Stuart McLoughlin (currently appearing in ‘Brief Encounter’ live on stage at the Cinema Haymarket).

The warm-up comic (do you really need one for a screening?) was trying to get everyone excited about the Friends and The Office connections, but due to being a comedy elitist snob I was less enthusiastic than most of the rest of the crowd. I was mainly interested in Johnathan Pryce and Mark Gatiss’ performances.

We were shown the final 3 episodes of the series, the first 3 having being shown to a different audience earlier in the day. To be honest, I found the quality a bit patchy although it definitely picked up towards the end of the series, both in pace and writing. The last episode is fairly amusing for an action movie style car chase involving a 2CV and the final twist is quite interesting. It looks like they’re banking on a second series but that’s all I’ll say about that.

The strange thing is, I don’t know what demographic this is aimed at. It’s going to be broadcast on BBC3 which is supposed to be yoof-oriented and yet aside from the occasional expletive, Clone was fairly sedate and seemed a perfect fit for the Friday night 8:30 BBC slot. It’s not bust-a-gut hilarious and certainly doesn’t break any new ground but as a sitcom it is better than My Family and My Hero.

Overall it’s alright, the writing isn’t amazing but is carried by great performances from Pryce and in particular Gatiss, who seems to relish his role as a sadistic military general. Not worth seeking out but an entertaining way of killing half an hour on a bored Sunday.

Kind of like Friends then.

Part of the reason for this is Evol Intent‘s new album Era of Diversion. It’s easily the best album I’ve heard released this year and I’ve pretty much had the album on repeat since buying it.

Although they’re known primarily for hardstep drum and bass due to their prior discography and some awesome remixes (which is where I first heard of them from a dnb mix album), they’ve really diversified for Era of Diversion. The album seems to cover everything that I’m enjoying at the moment; glitch/IDM, breakcore, apocalyptic hip-hop and drum and bass. There are even chiptune and digital hardcore metal elements across the CD. Despite this genre-hopping they manages to avoid any clichés, particularly the dubstep bass wobble which so many producers seem to be relying on. The album flows really well building up to Evol Intent’s signature hardstep sound towards the tail end of the tracklisting.

All in all, it’s a slickly-produced release and I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest in the genres I mention above. Dogs on Acid have a short interview with them from last year where they talk briefly about this album, their production techniques and include a storming hardstep mix as a bonus.

Next Tuesday at 9pm BBC3 will be showing a one-off special of Phoo Action, a comedy-drama based on characters and ideas from Jamie Hewlett and Mat Wakeham’s Get The Freebies, a comic printed in The Face during the mid 90s.

The year is 2012 and London is in the grip of mutant criminals. Only Terry Phoo and Whitey Action can save the nation, uniting to create chaos and comedy, mischief and mayhem to become heroes for a future generation. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the wonderfully warped world of Phoo Action.

Full BBC press release and interview with various members of the production crew. Somehow a trailer has made it onto YouTube:

It looks pretty interesting and seems to capture one of the few things I like about The Mighty Boosh – the deranged lunacy of a kids show gone off the rails. This seems to complement Hewlett’s trademark style, although it’s a shame that this wasn’t animated as it’d look awesome if treated similarly to Dead Leaves. That said, the production team seem fairly impressive (including the talented Euros Lyn, director of one of my favourite Doctor Who episodes) and it stars Carl Weathers and Ray Winstone’s daughter, so I’m really looking forward to this. The BBC have hinted that it could be developed into a series if this special/pilot receives a warm reception, so fingers crossed!

For those unfamiliar with the source matter (as I am), here’s some scans of the first “issue”: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. More rarely-seen Jamie Hewlett artwork can be found amongst the broken links on this thread at The Drawing Board.

The answer is Audio-Surf, an independently-developed combination of music visualisation and puzzle game. The aim of the game is to race down a track matching up blocks of the same colour to score points. The visuals pulse and react in time to the music, tracks peak and dip with the track’s intensity, you lurch forward in time to the tempo and blocks are laid out depending on different elements of the music.

However, Audio-Surf’s unique selling point is that you use your own collection to make the levels instead of being limited to in-game music. When you start a new game it analyses the mp3/ogg/CD you’re using and creates a track out of it. The analysis is surprisingly good too and I’ve yet to see any tracks have an incorrect tempo, a problem I’ve often had while trying to play stuff like drum and bass through programs such as MixMeister, Native Instruments’ Traktor and occasionally Ableton Live. Tracks are very different from one another and the gameplay varies depending on what you’re listening too – Utah Saints creates easy levels as the arpeggios lay out blocks in simple patterns, Boxcutter and Autechre make levels that twist over on themselves and stutter in-time to the glitchy beats, while Bong-Ra is an all-out audio-visual assault. Trying to find out the effects of different tracks is as much a part of the game as playing it.

As with Rez, screenshots don’t really do the game justice, so check out this video. Sadly the quality of YouTube videos detracts from the visuals but it should at least give an idea of how the game plays and looks.

The game is currently in beta and is only available during limited trials, although as the release date is still a few months away, a hacked version is spreading quickly through torrents. I’ll definitely be buying a copy as soon as it’s available.

How to describe Girl Talk? He’s like Negativland’s hipper younger brother, Soulwax with ADHD or Jive Bunny hitting the top 40. His performance was like a night out at a shit pop club compressed into 45 minutes of awesome. A cut-up artist that dances across genres picking and choosing his favourite motifs of different tracks to layer over one another and create something new.

The set was slightly weird; for an artist that relies on using and abusing other people’s hooks, he’d start up with the hooks from a track from the excellent Night Ripper album and then go off in a completely different direction and then veer back into “more familiar” territory on a whim. So would those be defined as meta-hooks? Plunderphonics can be confusing sometimes.

I wanted to see what kind of setup he was using, as I’ve heard wildly different reports on the software he uses ranging from the obvious Ableton Live to the terrifying AudioMulch, but sadly this was impossible as the second the show started in earnest the predominately hipster crowd rushed the stage and much grinding was had.

Anyway, aside from an ugly violent altercation at the end, the set was fucking fantastic, one of the most enjoyable shows I’ve been to and stunning that he could perform it all live. If you like mash-ups or find you have a guilty pleasure when it comes to pop, I can’t recommend Girl Talk enough. Night Ripper is genius and the only mix album that comes close in skill and diversity of music is Liam Howlett’s The Dirtchamber Sessions. That said, I’d stay away from his previous two albums unless you particularly like sub-The Action Packed Mentalist Brings You The Fucking Jams glitch-pop.

It’s difficult to describe why I like it. The main character is a man covered in fur with 6 nipples, a beak for a nose, a snake for an arm and his hips on backwards but his feet on forwards. The only premise of the show is to follow him around and listen to his constant philosophical ramblings. The animation is low-budget shit that looks like it’s rendered straight out of Poser. It looks and sounds like it should be appreciated by the “so bad it’s good” and “so random lol” lot, both schools of thought that have really begun to irk me as they both seem to lead to shit like The Mighty Boosh becoming ridiculously over-rated.

This is all completely irrelevant because the one advantage Xavier has over all comedies I’ve seen recently is that it’s got gags – well-written gags, throwaway gags but most of all, funny gags in fucking spades. It looks like it’s superficially random and all stream-of-conscious but there are so many jokes you’ll miss until at least the second or third viewing because of all the multi-layered writing. Jokes will be set up and then abandoned, just to confound expectations. My only issue is that you’ll see some amazingly well-crafted lines thrown out and discarded, while terrible gags get laboured. But overall, this is the best written comedy I’ve seen in ages – although I’ve yet to see any of the new Boondocks.

If that hasn’t sold you, it’s written and produced by the people behind Wonder Showzen. Now stop reading this and go watch it.

Most of the material was taken from Lee’s March of the Mallards/41st Best Stand-up set but thankfully it had been worked on and improved since I saw him perform it at Ginglik earlier in the year. Mercifully it didn’t have that bloody “Oh you would have loved him Stew, he came out, asked this man what he did and he said he was in oil and he asked him – are you a sardine?” twenty minute stretch of anyone’s patience.

One of the best aspects of the show was Lee’s trademark bitterness has resurfaced, as demonstrated by his tirade against “Del Boy falling through the bar” being consistently voted as the funniest moment of all time and speaking into the camera to spit very real vitriol at the imaginary couch-dwellers at the other end.

The only shame was I missed what looked like a Cook’d and Bomb’d mini-meet – I’ve had a lack of uncomfortable silences at Internet meets recently and this would have filled the void nicely. although it would have been a bit weird explaining it to the party I was with – “Sorry guys, I’m ditching you to make awkard comments to that bunch of comedy nerds over there.”

Anyway, fingers crossed this makes it to production. I’d like to see what sketches he’s been working on and hopefully more new stand-up material.