Wednesday, May 9, 2007  1:34 pm 

Dreaming ain’t a crime

We are fed up with the tyranny of vacuousness, novelty and branded cool. It’s all very boring and unengaging, it sucks, it’s killing the planet and it fuels cocaine trade, we reckon it is linked with the disenfranchisement of the youth, violence in the streets and credit card abuse as well. We say fuck that, and the fake trendy wastemen too. We advocate enthusiasm and political engagement even at the simple level of having fun without thinking too much about what those kids over there think re: why are you having fun, or the way you look while you’re having fun. Don’t let anyone mess with your social space, politics are just a physical extension of that.

Do It Yourself/Do It With The Help Of Your Fwendz’s where’s it’s at, for the win and the welfare of everyone. We are considering the idea of entering the next Hove Council Elections together with the Jedi Gremlin party. You might think that convincing our OAPs of the need for social spaces where kids can mess about with lo-fi technology to make furious spazz music will be a bitch, but we have enlisted some cool grannies with stripy socks and dapper old men with long sideburns to do some ‘viral marketing’ (euch) down at the bowling matches and philately meetings, we think, we hope we have a chance, you can make spiritual donations at the comments box below.

Let’s kick off with the mighty Best Fwendz, who we saw on full stereo pants out Y pants in glory at some weird ‘dance’ night on Friday. After being bombarded by the hype machine top 20 soundtrack, and drowning in a sea of soul-less beats and indie dance remixes from Mordor, Best Fwends came on stage like some Punk-Rock non-MTV sponsored version of Napoleon Dynamite pumped on early era Beastie Boys, Cap’n'Crunch cereals & 3x chocolate cookie milkshake to destroy the 3.50 quid a pint and fancy cocktails place, most of the crowd seemed kinda alienated by their C86 2step happy grindcore jams but you could see a bunch of people dancing at the front, like Ninja High School said, it’s gotta be us.

Their new album, Alphabetically Arranged represents quite well what the kids are about, 34 bedroom nurtured tunes which rarely last for longer than a minute prancing, rolling and somersaulting with the enthusiasm of tennis sock clad kittens coughing dayglo balls of sonic fury in a total apocalypsis of hysteric fun.

Best Fwends- Adultnap

The CD also contains some fancy remixes, we particularly like Goto80s’ Gameboy Gabber take on Ultimate Party Hit (TM) ‘Skate or Live’, where our friends grab hands with Mario and Luigi to jump into an anarchic data stream leading towards a utopian future of peace, enlightement, happiness and no bullying at schools. And a decent Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles revival.

Best Fwends- Skate or Live (Goto80 Remix)

Let us continue on the joyful race into that weird funny zone where kids with musical instruments acquire super-powers like Ralph Hinkley after getting his tight red suit from a bunch of little green men, in this case we bump into our beloved Munch Munch, who hail from Bristol and happen to craft wonderful magic gems of lo-fi unpop in the time between exams and stuff, true superheroes we tell thee.

Munch Munch- Wedding

We are quite excited & proud they sent us this tune, Wedding, the night after recording it, which means you’re listening to it a couple of days after it started existing, as you can see it is still quite warm, like Red Kross’ anarchistic boy with the peppercorn eyes straight out of the oven, and what a delightful magic roundabout of keyboards it is, round & round it spins riding a colourful Unicorn, changing the colour of the clouds with psychedelic melody bolts, we think Munch Munch’s future shines bright and that’s excellent news for everyone, we look forward to see where they go next (check out their split 7” with Gay Against You, Lonely Ghosts and other bedroom wiz kids in O.I.B. next month).

And let us end with what might perhaps be the battle hymn of our political party, we wanted something suitably dramatic, energetic and inclusive, could there be any better option than The Monks?

Nay, we say, Black Monk Time is a timeless garage punk classic which fills us with efervescent energy every time we listen to it, if someone connected a little dynamo to Lord Nuneaton Savage’s heels everytime it’s played you could power up a couple of villages in the sea-side, and we like Hanoi Jane too, here you have the demo version from 1965 which they recorded before the album, these tapes have been recently re-released by awesome Munster records, what can we say, if you don’t get goosebumps as this monster stomps into the room we can’t be your friends kid, don’t bother voting for us.

The Monks- Monk Time (1965 Demo version)

labels >> no creeps, party politics, religion, turtles