The Thinker knows everything that goes on this side of the Galaxy, and most of what goes on the other side as well. We arrange to rendezvous in one of those lawless bars set-up in the basement of a building somewhere in the ruins of Lower Manhattan, which I should find through a guide-pill that once digested creates a humming drone inside the skull that increases as you approach the destination. This is a slightly sadistic way of getting someone somewhere, but then the Thinker is quite devious like that. The pill, which the Thinker somehow manages to smuggle in my pharmaceutical supply whenever he wants to have a chat, is the key to a location that slips through the contours of my genetic architecture, and as such useless for anyone who might intercept it, something that seems unlikely to happen, but then the Thinker is quite paranoid like that.

So picture me hovering in the night above the Stygian ossuary of concrete bones into which Lower Manhattan was turned during the war with the Bugs, trying to determine whether the hum drilling in my head increases when I turn left or right, kind of funny, I have to admit. Maybe the Thinker is playing tricks again, but then he is, well, he is a bastard 100% certified, but he also has the information a freelancing exothenologist like myself needs to keep going in this bizarre line of business: retrieving alien artefacts from abandoned ruins in the boundary between the known galaxies and the gulfs of silence and mystery beyond. Places of opportunity for an entrepreneur, places the Thinker finds using two warehouses crammed with mainframe computers crawling through infinitely expanding data-feeds from the galactic grapevine.

The humming has become almost unbearable now, so I guess my destination lies below, I leave the Lexus flyer floating on standby at a safe height with seven lethal security systems on red alert, and descend hesitant, fires burn amongst the rubble down there, blinking more uncertain than the constellations light-years above.

I feel vertigo as always, not because I am walking down an invisible staircase of thin air supported by a pair of smelly second hand gravity boots, about to land in the midst of a post-apocalyptic scenario inhabited by mutants and primitives, nah, that’s just the context of the situation, my heart is beating faster at the prospect of another expedition into the unknown, I am addicted to this shit, what can I do.

I am getting closer now, once I step inside the vectors defining the X that marks the spot the prize kicks in, a piece of music extracted from the Thinker’s vaults which sets the mood for the rendezvous, ah, we must be the last pair of romantics left in this stinking ball of mud, or at least that’s what we like to think.

Discodromo- Cosmorama (Brennan Green Dromo Arigatoo Remix)

The Vangelis cruiser hides a couple of surprises under a mangy chassis tattooed with graffiti scrawled in ten alien languages, and the love-bites of a hundred asteroids. The most important ones are a K-class reactor enabling it to make quantum jumps across more dimensions that you would care to imagine, and a small black hole generator rather useful as a hiding place when one is smuggling alien goods past the stern rangers that patrol the frontiers of known space.

Ariadne, the ships’ Artificial Intelligence always says that when this miniature black hole is activated she feels a void inside, as if her navel had became a hole through which the sands of time and space slide with a hiss- Alas, she was initially designed to manage the archives of the English Literature Department in a forgotten University, and seems to be imbued with a taste for the poetic. This doesn’t stop her from being the most efficient AI I have had the pleasure of working with, plus hearing quotes from Homer, Nietzsche and Conrad when we step into the black voids of theoretical physics as a first step towards our destination makes me feel the way I want to be made to feel in those occasions.

Whenever I am in some dingey watering-hole in Earth, or Mars, or Cassiopea, or wherever, they are all the same, trying to describe to the drunk bum sitting by my side how it is to use the K-class reactor to jump across dimensions I find myself resorting to the same metaphor: you can’t see anything special happening, because your senses are not designed to see the reconfiguration in space and time which occurs at the Quantum level when the jump takes place. You can’t hear anything special. You can’t smell anything special. But you do feel something, you feel like a silver ball being shot into a three-dimensional pinball, hit by cosmic flaps and disappearing through rabbit holes to materialise somewhere else, suddenly you become ten identical balls all clinging and clanging hysterically, sometimes you stop in place static or become invisible but somehow keep hitting against the bumpers, tumbling down the smiling cardboard faces of Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg and Richard Feynman as the astronomical distances being undertaken accumulate chink*chink*chink in red LED numbers somewhere in the RAM of Ariadne’s subconscious.

You feel this at the atomic level, way deeper than the gargantuan synaptic distances between neurons, it is weird, knowing that your body and your conscience are dissolving and being simultaneously reconfigured, sometimes going back in time, a million times while the jump takes place, it gives me the creeps, but also takes me to the place I want to go.

Photonz- Shaboo (Andy’s Edit)

It was another operation to remember, death and craziness, battling the algorithmic traps which protected the alien ruins like ancient Egyptian curses, I lost two members of the crew then and there, and another one we had to jettison into space when it became obvious he had been exposed to a exo-virus that almost crashed Ariadne when she tried to analyse it. At that point he was too far gone into the space of evolutive possibilities to even notice. I think we should have burned it rather than leave it floating in the void, maybe alive and ready to board some careless ship, but then one never knows how will these things react to fire. Oh well, that guy was aware of the possible mess he was getting into when he decided to join the trip, I will make a good contribution to the Scavenger Guild as a gesture of good will, another name etched in the memorial plaques of their vast halls.

Regarding what we found, well, what did we find? We have been manipulating the Alien artefact with robotic titanium arms inside an isolation chamber strong enough to contain an atomic conflagration of medium intensity, but no idea yet. This is a very important step of the exothenological process: identifying the properties of our bounty shall determine the potential buyer- new materials and compounds for corporations and weapons for the army. Even if we can’t find any practical use for it, I am sure some rich collector will be happy to pay millions of credits for it once its origin is verified by an independent analyst, hang it in the walls of his zero-gee pleasure palace somewhere in Saturns’ Lagrangian orbit, like some piece of modern art designed for an intractable purpose, perhaps even art originally? Who knows what went through the brains, or whatever passes for brains of these extinct alien civilisations?

Anyhow, the siren of the isolation chamber has started ringing, might this be some sort of breakthrough in our investigation, or have we started a chain-reaction that will blow up the continent? It is always exciting times in this future we live in!

The Thinker’s synthetic and I approach the portholes drilled into the thick walls, even the figure by my side seems thrilled in spite of being nothing more than an empty biological vessel being remotely operated from whatever dungeon the Thinker is currently holed up in. We behold the strange dance of the robotic arms juggling with the perfect cube which we retrieved from the labyrinthine ruins of the asteroid, small, finer and more precise appendixes being deployed like the fragile legs of a water insect, tracing lines in the smooth surfaces of the enigmatic artefact, identifying some sort of pattern which is repeated in the air like the passes of a prestidigitator, so that a mechanism can be suddenly activated, a crack opens in the side of the cube, a box with invisible hinges inside which a tiny ballerina has started to spin slowly while frail tones fills the sterilised silence of the Isolation chamber with a melancholic melody, picture us staring at our robot carefully holding in its mechanical hands a music box with a golden dedication to Elizabeth, a human memento saved from the voids of the forgotten by aliens to which we were aliens too.

What the hell are we going to do with this?

Roland Sebastian Faber- Molekular

- – - – - – -

This post was inspired by M. John Harrison’s ‘Light’ and William Gibson’s ‘Count Zero’

Images: Ruins Ship Ballerina

About the music:

Brennan Green already showed that he could pull a Carpenter in the slow-burning ‘Escape from Chinatown’. Well, he’s done it again in his thumping remix of Discodromo’s Cosmorama, released by wonderful Internasjonal. You can imagine Snake Plissken sneaking around the ruins of NYC under the synthetic clouds of this nefarious thriller.

Dissident keep it phuture with Photonz’ Shaboo, a menacingly seductive hybrid of jacking acid house and bleepy old skool hardcore that should set the right dancefloors on fire with sinuous moves, killer!

Aube records bring us Wettkampf der Moleküle, the second release by vintage electronica wunderkind Roland Sebastian Faber, who continues on the beautiful path sketched by Vangelis and early Jarre with a blissful sequence of melodic chains written, in synthetic language, on the whiteboards of our imagination.

It is in our opinion interesting that it is precisely now, when it seems that music has become instantly accessible, but also ephemeral, usually embodied in the epitome of disposability, the mp3, when many talented producers have started engaging in the creation of epic odysseys that to be savoured fully require the listener to devote his or her wholehearted attention and a good chunk of time, with the finger away from that pesky iPod clickwheel. This aren’t tunes for mixing either along the traditional lines of the expanded disco edit, although a few magi out there like Optimo are able to use them to compose psychedelic symphonies behind the wheels of steel (of a wagon travelling through the space in time of the spiritual autobahn), because their progression makes sense only when allowed to unfold fully.

And when it does, and it is well done, synth lines rise into the air like ghosts to their scattered bodies going in exercises of slow restrain delivered with gentle and steady pulse, the tension builds metronomically as vast vistas of alien beauty unfold upon our ears, the pleasure is of the journeying, not of the arriving, attention is focussed and thus a strange place is created where the sounds can exercise their spell upon us, slow, slow, good wine requires patience to mature, and has similar effects.

We love it when this happens, and the sorcerers who make it so, we are happy to give them our time so they can fuck around with our perception of reality, here you have two examples, and a little bonus, but what a bonus.

I have always thought that in the Castle of Progressive German Rock where NEU! is the king and Can the Queen, you know which one, that which is surrounded by dark woods inhabited by the fierce Wild Hunt of Amon Duul over which Kraftwerk roam in their silver flying machine, that with vast underground laboratories where Cluster and Harmonia conduct their alchemical sonic experiments, a castle full of dragons and spells and ghosts and (Tangerine) dreams and nightmnares , in that castle Faust must be the jester, the joker, not in the sense of clown, of which they have a bit anyway, but of the crazy enlightened type clad in a custome which is a patchfwork of random colours and shapes, a bit like Bob Arctor’s suit in A Scanner Darkly, facing him can be befuddling and even annoying, feel free to ignore him, but be aware that, when you do, you are missing the true spirit of this place of creation, now, pay some attention to 71 Minutes of Faust, and particularly ‘Chromatic’ aka Party 3, because if they had a Halloween ball in that castle, this is the way it would sound.

Faust- Chromatic (Party 3)

Which unfurls sedate and majestic following the green waves of surf raised by the cruising of Brian Eno’s Big Ship, and makes Jean Michel Jarre’s early attemps at crafting thee electronic symphony sound a bit feeble by comparison, this is the march that seals a human marriage with the fairie folk, the veils of melody somehow manage to create a space of weightlessness and transition to a glimmering otherworld, this is an epic success of the weird and inexplicable processes I was talking about at the onset of this article, and whenever I listen to it, its sounds tint the dullness of reality with the glamour of wonder.

I mentioned Tangerine Dream before, well, here you have our definitive changelling disco faves Studio doing a version of Williams doing the Tangerine Dream (Love in a Real Train is in the fantastic soundtrack to Risky Business), through which you gain passage into an alternative reality of ethereal flight through the pastel coloured skies of sunset, or that LSD trip where heaven downloaded itself into Sonny Crockett’s head, the guitar melodies, spaced out synth waves and steady metronomic drumming draw neon lines connecting the stars above into new constellations of blissful content, it doesn’t get any prettier so, once again, be thankful for living in a world where music like this exists.

Williams- Love in a Real Train (Version by Studio)

And we close for the day with a little dessert, shorter but oh so sweet, we mentioned Crockett above, and this gets the Miami Vice Connection started, you know how we are obsessed with Jan Hammer, well, in the 1970s he was in this little outfit called Mahavishnu Orchestra, together with John McLaughlin of ‘Me and Miles Davis fame’, well, we are posting them today and henceforth putting the jazzfunk back into 20jazzfunkgreats, which is a very healthy thing to do once in a while,

Mahavishnu Orchestra- Open Country Joy

Because although the theme of today was in principle one of length, and how in its plains beauty can run, grow and take shape free, that was only an accident of the post, as you know we are at the end of the day concerned with substance, or whatever makes our hearts skip a beat by whatever means, which in the case with this small gem by Mahavishnu Orchestra is the sheer amazingness of placid melodies, delivered warm and gentle, and also the furious coiling of that solo, a whirlwind which sucks you into a place not dissimilar from that where we found ourselves above, intensity spreads perception like butter over the space-time continuum which at the end of the day is not only a sequence, but also a cycle, we are sounding like total hippies here you say, well you know, maybe, we are.

Just joking, scared you there for a second. Off now. Take it well easy kids.

PS- The nice and I think suitable title of the post is taken from a short story written by wonderful Ursula K. Leguin

Neon beams iuminate your position wherever you are from La Hague’s version of Sauron’s Mordor Tower, fucking special if you ask me.

Join the party, and shake those joints.

A revenant composed of corpses both male and female roams the corridors of our spaceship, we hear it singing at night, it stares at you with synth ray eyes that chill, if Liars had been watching Blade Runner after their first album, instead of riding to the Brocken in a drum powered broom maybe they would have ended up making an album like this, or aren’t there lots of Twin Peaks in Mars?

Perfect music to slit your wrists to, as DJ Stevo would say. Chromatics should dig.

Nine Circles- Twinkling Stars

From their self-titled 1982 album.

Dyanrec’s Paranoid electro acid monster utters kraftwerkian odes to microprocessors and things while roaming the streets of Berlin bristling with fibre optic tentacles ending on silicon blades that rape the soul like this was Urotsukidoji.

Dynarec- Secret Tactics

I picked up the phone at the office the other day and the Rainbow Brothers (aka some French band who are kind of famous) infected my brain with the electro-boogie equivalent of Lucy Monotsone’s creepy hippie terror anthem from the other side of the line, probably located in a silvery satellite orbiting Saturn. The bass growl in this P-funk cosmic extravaganza is enough to shake your spine out of its axis and send you in a dance rampage across underground clubs full of conspiratory barcoders.

Do you know who is Amamiya Kazuhiko?

Sure he can swing.

Rainbow Brothers- 818 323 01

I wasn’t initially convinced by Numbers’ transmogrification from masters of all things spazzy into indie rock post-shoegazers, it wasn’t that I thought what they were doing was bad, it’s just that I fucking loved their Mk.1 incarnation as hysteric masters of stripped down taut synthetic no wave devo-tionism, do you perhaps remember ‘Too Cool to Say Hi’ the best expression of I can’t see without my hipster karma detection horn-rimmed glasses agony ever committed to tigermusic?

Numbers- Too Cool to Say Hi

But then things change and too many years spent making two minute long short-circuited spazzy robo-stomping capsules might have been tiresome for our restless Numbers, dynamism is an arrow shot into space, hence ‘Now You Are This’, their new album, which I have been listening and enjoying very much, keyboard driven sci-fi exploration into the abyss of Proxima where Stereolab’s rocket crashed some time ago, deep sound engulfs you like the Solaris ocean bringing to mind all sorts of Retrofuturistic memories.

The song I am liking most is one which runs a tad faster and contains in it the jerky genetic code of old Numbers, if only twitching inside an egg-shaped chair like Broadcast’s anphetamined little sisters, you can see them live in Rapture’s Arcadia Festival once we sort out the splicer mess our little underwater utopia finds itself in right now.

Numbers- Everything is Fine

Old Time Relijun haven’t really changed that much in their new Catharsis Crisis album out on our beloved K Records, but then their stuff has always sounded like our favourite Brainbite toting celtic hero Slaine undergoing a warp spasm where he becomes a fang-head-spouting-muscle-coiling mess which ‘knows neither enemy nor foe’, I think the latter isn’t the case with Old Time Relijun, though, if their furious expeditions into the wilderness show something, it is that they are, most definitely, on the side of Life in all it’s bloody rotting shitting glory, Arrington de Dionisyo throat vomiting sound bile will make you twitch like an illness.

This is party music for a Werewolf Church with hymns written by the Birthday Party, black creatures dance in the dark, blood spills and less shapes go back out in the forests than did come in, such capers. Did you ever wonder what the Contortions would sound like if they had been produced by the RZA? You’re quite fucked up aren’t you?

Old Time Relijun- Veleno Mortale

1- Phil Dick once wrote a short story called ‘The Trouble with Bubbles’. It is about a future where Humankind finds itself, in the absence of other habitable planets in the Solar system, trapped in Earth. People’s thirst for space exploration and discovery is temporarily quenched by an industry dedicated to the construction of small bubbles containing sub-atomic living worlds which are cultivated and grown by their owners as a form of entertainment…However, the energy devoted to the creation of these replicas or ‘surrogate worlds’ eventually turns into rage, and crowds begin to get together to celebrate massive orgies where they smash the bubbles they have spent so long building in wild holocausts of microscopic life.

The art of building these bubbles is called ‘Worldcraft’, heh. Rings a bell?

2- Grant Morrison appears to imply at several points of the Invisibles (I don’t dare asserting I have a clue about what they’re about yet) that all possible universes, futures and pasts, heaven and hell lie hidden inside each and every one of us.

3- Although admittedly one way of opening the door to these vistas is by resorting to psychedelic keys, it is also the case that boredom and ennui drive many to neuronal apocalypses I guess not that different to those Dick described, surely also witnessed, perhaps later in his life (‘The Trouble with Bubbles’ was written in 1953).

4- Music is another way of accessing and creating new worlds outside and beyond this terrenal sphere, in Robert Heinlein’s terms, of deploying vectors of movement outside of the three physical dimensions, and also of the fourth one (ahead in time, one second at a time), perhaps travelling full reverse into a mythical past where people hadn’t given up on the future (or space) yet, perhaps because they didn’t live in it like, in a certain way, we seem to do.

5- William Gibson has for example decided to abandon writing about the future because he thinks himself unable to predict it anymore, the accelerated curve of technological change is, according to him, becoming too steep for that, perhaps because we’re headed towards the Singularity, I don’t know about this but the feeling of loathing that those human mutants living in the TV screen inspire on me suggest that humankind is indeed changing, maybe I’m becoming obsolete.

6- Although it is rather contestable whether science fiction should be about technological prediction (rather than philosophical speculation, hence my adoration for Dick and Lem), it would seem that Gibson has a point he isn’t even trying to make, or wouldn’t revisiting most of the styles explored during this genre’s honourable history constitute an exercise in revival, this is, travelling to the past? Even masters like Frank Herbert or Vernor Vinge are simply stretching the space opera into colossal dimensions of space and time, their novels read in a historical style analogous to Tolkien’s. Although, of course, they rule much more.

7- Perhaps to talk about the future truly we need to use the technological tools of our age, Anime seems to have done a good job so far, video games some day? Nuff respect to these genres’ creative daredevils, however I like books too much, before going back to my sofa with one I’m going to leave you with a couple of tunes which seem to follow a similar M.O. to which we have sketched, or don’t they, in order to evocate worlds of the future which span beyond postmodern post-cyberpunk pastiches, do like Batman before leaping between two dark skyscrapers in Gotham city? You know, take a few steps back and inhale deeply?

7 is a good number, 7 is enough. Beam us back Scotty.

A Mountain of One hail from London but for all we know they could well have arrived from a valley which lies hidden in the vast expanses of Mexico where Aeons ago the aliens descended to create a stone city of a Kadathian nature. There they mingled with the natives, perhaps introduced them to peyote, this reprise of Innocent Line included in their second EP sails with smooth A.O.R. power over a vanilla superhighway, or maybe it flies, carried by the strong wings of naughty tickly gaunt angels, choose your trip, but don’t dare denying its beauty.

A Mountain of One- Innocent Reprise Intro

Gosub already trapped us, with Watchers from the Black Universe (out in our fave label Citinite), in a eerily paranoid beat reticle surmounted by blue jack o’lanterns of pure electroid power, this force kills birdies, attention, this force kills birdies. Only Harryhausen Owls, Ea Poe Crowess and Bad-ass cannibal vultures can survive its strength and sit perched threatening in its crackling surfaces.

Well, he’s back now with a similarly futuristic apocalypse which goes by the name of Night Ma’lach, it seems clear that Belzebuth and his cohorts still smile with silvery fangs from the eternal darkness of his beat sorcerer robe, as this nasty piece of anti-romantic balladry, which could have well been croaked by Proteus as he tried to get Julie Christie to dump her hubbie and breed with him clearly shows.

‘Forcequit your love, for me’? pickup line of the year!

If she wasn’t convinced, the woozy synth line which begins at 3.10 (and sounds like a swarm of bees summoned by the Lawnmower Man to peck the Botox off Pierce Brosnan’s face), should be sufficient to send her into some nuclear fission style explosion of analogic ecstasy, I promise it’s totally worked with us, who’s going to clean this mess now?

Gosub- Forcequit your love

And then to the disco, in Space Warrior Smith and Hack do scratchy acid lines//play amphetamine pacman over a neon loop which pounds us into oblivion with a metronomic precision which could have perfectly been engineered by Bernard Fevre, this is one of the most savage pieces of new wave italo disco I have been grinded by, bleep S.O.S. signals from the Nostromo travel through the darkness of space destination nowhere while the throbbing intensity of its Moroderian circular vivisection chainsaw bass approaches merciless to unzip your intestine-pouch, SLOSH!

You were full of Love. Now you are a carcass.

Smith and Hack- Space Warrior

This side could have been signed by Motor if they were italian, less into bondage but not any less filthy, and is going to make a few wannabe Travoltas in wraparound shades lose their shit down in the dancefloor, which is A Good Thing (TM), enjoy the bloodshed kids.

This is the kind of thing that 20Jazzfunkgreats will be playing this Friday in BERLIN at…

AFTERMATH DISCO

Hosted by the most winningnest gentleman HUGO CAPABLANCA At

K.I.M. this FRIDAY
Brunnenstr 10
Rosenthaler Platz

w/mutant improv live & visuals by AIDS30.

Carpenter thrills, Italo Disco, New Wave exploitation: Like they say in Madrid, be a Fan or be pan.

We are bursting at the seams at the prospect of an album by Padded Cell. Imagine, looking back at previous 12″s, what it will be like? The Emperor Machine made by witches and warlocks who shroud themselves in blood-red satin cloaks and have glitterballs for eyes.

Today marks the release of ‘Moon Menace’ on DC Recordings. The title track is a brooding discopolic beat that interferes with the tides of the sea, but its the 70′s horrorshow saxo-manical stomp B-side that we favour, if made to choose:

Padded Cell – Faces Of The Forest

Everyday is Halloween for Padded Cell, and what better way to celebrate the most funnest holiday than conjuring demonic disco spectres and releasing them on vinyl to an unsuspecting world? They sneak into the forest in the dead of night and record the sound of hellish creatures riding metal dragons through the black air, splattering blood across saxaphones and bass guitars as they go. The metal dragons snap and contort like that industrial-sized Rubik’s Cube in Demon Seed, and slice up the creatures a treat.

Because you know it makes sense kids, buy the vinyl from either Juno or Piccadilly x

Oh, that’s nice! Old weird people Crash Course in Science who we blogged back in the gay day have decided to re-issue their classic dumb ass surrealist Cronenberg creeper Cardboard Lamb. My single from ebay is so scratched to shit, this is a wonderful thing people! Andrea Doria’s Bucci Bag just wasn’t fooling anyone, that’s just crap.

Also rather wonderful is it comes with some mixes by Vitalic and David Caretta for that head stuck down the toilet with the bass bin slapping your arse sound(banggin’), as well as the all knowing ever growing Transducer mix by the band themselves.

Crash Course in Science – Cardboard Lamb (CCIS Transducer Mix)

Crash Course in Science are a bunch of religious zealots from America who in an effort to represent the lord Jesus’s (God bless the hippy freak) teachings created a more sensible science which is easier to believe in than this creationist shit.

And on the first day the Lord created a lion and lay him down with a lamb, which he didn’t have much time to make but had a handy pair of scissors and a left over box the Lion came in. They could have a right giggle with Stephen Hawking.

Played on toy instruments and a drum machine by this 1979-81 Philadelphia art student orchestra signed to Rough Trade in the uk, this apparently became a new wave club dancefloor smash. As we were all embryos or in nappies back then 20jfg have been bashing it out and dancing like our pricks are on fire to it at every opportunity since (hence the scratched plastic).

This re-issue gives us a well earned opportunity to re-introduce its da da delights to virgin unsuspecting ears and bored old has-beens with a penchant for reminiscing across the fair lands of Brighton and Hoveactually.

Yes your hardy xxjfg writer with a penchant for Suicidal Tendencies cannot make do with that oddly out of place scremo one from The Automatic and needs to boldly go in search of some other uk kinder of the frantic.

Captains Log, star date probably 1978. Anyone fancy a spot of Futureheads with more Devo than Jam? Scotty, can you get me more power? Sulu, set the controls for the other reaches of the netherwords.

Sulo : surely not Bognor sir!

No Sulu, I’m afraid it’s worse than that, Glasgow.

We Are The Physics – Less than three

We approach the poorly eye sighted We Are The Physics with caution, due to there well known lethal leg movements and general jerkiness in all forms. Although mainly geeky and harmless they are known to burst into vocal harmony led rhythmically inconsistent guitar rackets not dissimilar to the Polysics, well known to make the rest of the crew become twitchy and sexually over aroused.

Dr.Spock : I find their time changes illogical captain, yet there popness unavoidably catchy. I suggest we leave immediately before the ship becomes infected.

Agreed, we head for the lands of the Silicon Vultures.

Silicon Vultures – Howling Stalion

Keeping watch for blood sucking unicorns, we pass by impressive record collections of Germs, Screamers, Nervous Gender and DNA to find another tale of twisted of synth noise, hidden beneath thrash guitar and lyrical science fiction.

Chekov : Captain i call this Heavy Metal. Why have we not read of them yet in Kerrang?

Uhura : What is that sound Captain? It’s intense like anger but somehow filled with joy, they seem to be enjoying themselves! Something about a Howling Stalion? I cannot read the full name of the track on their myspace page!

Dr. McCoy : I fear they have the same sickness to them I have seen before in The Blood Brothers, but in this case non of the subtlety. This could either be a good or a bad thing, and I have no way of knowing Captain. I suggest we leave a probe here to monitor their growth and move the ship to a safe distance immediately.

And so we journey on…

Sulo : From the signals we are getting I think we are approaching Japan Captain, and the noise core scene of Osaka.

Rolo Tomassi – Film Noir

No Sulu, this is Sheffield! City of Steel and also home to the younger breed of the Rolo Tomassi! Like Cabaret Voltaire and others before them they torment the indigenous population with complex structured yet seemingly random barrages of synthetic noise, primal screaming and tribal drum bursts.

Chekov : This isn’t pop, but it sure is fun!

Dr.Spock : I find it illogical that such youngsters can contain the power of Zuinosin and, if I may be so bold, early Boredoms in minds so young. I fear them might explode with intensity within a short time.

Wise words Spock, we can only hope – for our future as a race is invested in these young hearts and minds, or we must face the constant cue of tickets for Melt Banana gigs, never finding a voice of our own in the youth of today. We shall mark Rolo Tomassi in the federation guide book with two silver stars, and one gold star, however now it is time to resume our journey.

Uhura : Having monitored activity the result is no new Test icicles Captain. I think they were a one off glitch in the system.

Very well Lieutenant Uhura, damn i miss them. Spock, do you miss Bow Wow Wow and the days of Punk with Burundi drumming?

Spock : Why yes Captian, I found the patterns used to be most pleasing.

Mr Sulu, engage…

This friday 9th Feb, it will be It Came From The Sea’s 4th Birthday celebration at the Komedia 11-3am. We will be there to represent the XXJFGMassive, so if you can make it come and have FUNN and JAPES and get lost in the thick dry-ice that covered the dancefloor like last time!