but that’s ok ’cause i’m in love with you

10th August motherfuckers! 10th August!

Life’s been quite good lately. =]

That is all.

diamonds and warheads

I’ll keep things short.

Went to Kino yesterday. Shit is expensive. No books bought.

Went to CM after that, had a nice conversation with Man of Gasoline Grenade and the man (no pun intended, sirs) behind the Pelan-Pelan & Bilik Gerakan expo at Annexe. Touched on his art, life and topics such as nationalism, racism and anarchism. Well-spoken man, he is. Booked one of the t-shirts, too. I got the “Pelan Cap Melayu” one, which I am sure will cause a few people to look at me oddly. Who cares.

Spent half an hour (maybe more) lounging around at the Pasar Seni LRT station because trains heading to KJ were full of people and we (me and my friend) didn’t feel like riding in packed-as-fuck trains. Eventually had to, though, but the train we got on wasn’t as packed as the trains we decided to miss. Took lots of photos. None of them really feel that good, but maybe I’ll upload a few.

My head nearly always hurts these days.

I also noticed that there is something incredibly disturbing about the movie Léon. You get halfway through it, enjoying it, before you realize that Natalie Portman is quite hot and that, yes, you would bone a 12-year old girl if it was her. Let’s just say that those aren’t very comfortable thoughts.

I need books.

I’ve been working on new Toni! This Is Sal! material. Quite different from previous material, although I’m not sure if this is something I’ll keep at or if I’ll turn to breakbeats again. The two new songs I’ve written are mostly pounding 4/4 under some very cheery almost videogame-y melodies. Nintendocore? I thought of vocals but I suck at them, so maybe I’ll keep the songs instrumental.

Of course, I could resurrect them breakbeats and combine them with this newfound ability to craft good melodies. The combination would probably work well, too. Could provide some required “hardness” to the sound, although I’m sure a kickdrum pounding out a 4/4 pattern at 190 BPM is quite hard enough for most. It’s not that high up in the mix, though, as I’m not good at mixing and mastering and that stuff. Or some other stupid reason.

interlued

I was at a friend’s house with friends last night. Doa selamat and stuff. Brought my camera along, and thus:

I always look utterly horrible in photos, I think you’ll agree.

stabbed in the face

Apparently, I shall be playing a gig with xLumbrahx at Noisy Studio in Ampang on the 10th of August.

As far as I know, the band only have two completed songs and, thus, we’ve got to either write new ones or find songs to cover (probably both). The responsibility, thus, rests on the shoulders of me and the bassist (who is also the bassist for my d-beat/crust/punk/thrash/metal/whatever band), the (as far as I know) temporary members of the group.

Best part is we haven’t got any songs at all, no cover songs, we haven’t even practiced together, and in less than two months we’ll be up on stage playing. It’ll be my first time on stage as well, which makes me a bit worried about what effect it’ll have on the band. We really need to practice together, that’s a given. A lot. But I guess it helps that they’re not total strangers.

In two months time I’ll ee if I can translate my bedroom and jam studio antics onto the live stage.

Don’t know who we’re playing with yet. Flyer shall be put up once it exists.

fuck buttons – street horrrsing

Fuck Buttons – Street Horrrsing (2008)

I’ve got nothing to do and nowhere to go, so bear with me here. This will probably be of no interest to anyone, but fuck that. It’s my blog innit.

Earlier tonight I downloaded Fuck Buttons’ (such an awesome name, I think you’ll agree) debut album after reading a very favourable Pitchfork (yes, I do browse Pitchfork once in a while, sad to say) review of it. Sounded interesting, so why not check it out, I thought?

Fuck Buttons are an experimental electronic (for lack of a better term) two-piece from Bristol, England, and they peddle a sort of hypnotic noise music. Imagine the motorik-fueled bliss of Neu! (or Kraftwerk, even) filtered through the tribal stomp of (early) Boredoms (or perhaps even Animal Collective?) under beautiful, droning synthwork and layers of noise that Merzbow or Masonna wouldn’t be ashamed of producing. Oh, and distorted-as-fuck vocals here and there for good measure.

The perfect meeting point between pure, loud-as-fuck, oppresive noise and beautiful minimal pop? Perhaps, just perhaps.

Repetition is really the name of the game here, with every track on the album clocking in at over 6 minutes (6 tracks in 50 minutes, you calculate the average length), and thus it’s not going to be fun for those of you who regularly ingest 3-minute pop songs (not that the album would be easy to ingest even if the tracks were all condensed into 3-minute pieces). The two aren’t afraid of letting synth notes drone endlessly or a particular drum pattern repeat over and over and over (the track “Bright Tomorrow” is 7:42 and the drums pound in a constant 4/4 for most of it) but they make it work, and somehow things don’t get boring. In fact, the repetition seems to enhance the tracks, adding a certain tension that really works wonders. Definitely a world away from “easy listening.”

Whether it’s the hypnotic drone of opener “Sweet Love for Planet Earth,” the blown-out distored-as-fuck synth drones of “Race You to My Bedroom / Spirit Rise” or the chug-chug of the aforementioned “Bright Tomorrow,” it’s undeniable that Fuck Buttons have put out something quite special here. If I was to make a case for how it’s not how complicated your musical ideas are but how you mix and match them that counts, then I’d put Street Horrrsing on. And, if I bothered to make “best of” lists then I’m sure that, come December, this album would be on my “best of 2008″ list. And somewhere near the top, too.

Download.

(Link stolen from We Are The Brain Washers)

survivre

I have friends, that much is true. I have close friends, that is also true. I know them, yes. Their names, certain aspects of their past, certain secrets, some inconsequential aspects of their current lives (where they stay, how old they are, what they’re doing in life), their faces, their voices. Those things about them I know: the things that I’d be able to know about anyone given a bit of time.

But do I really know them? Do I really know who they are exactly? What they like? What they’re like?

I don’t know. I think I do, but on certain occasions I cannot escape feeling that I don’t. That my life has been an example of how to get close to people without actually getting to know them, or at least feeling like I really know them. I can lay down on my bed with the lights off and say that, yes, I know A quite well and am close friends with B, but I can also lie down on my bed with the lights off and think about how little I actually know about A’s habits and likes, how I didn’t know he took up smoking until it was old, old news; about how little I know about B’s past and other aspects of his life away from the ever-peachy side he shows to me.

But we all have our secrets. It’s probably just me that’s been such a pathetic fuck about mine.

Perhaps, just perhaps, I don’t even know myself.

18/m/kelana jaya?

celaka

My mind is a mess. My body feels like a sack of potatoes. My thoughts are being irresistably channeled towards one specific entity . . . causing much bother and gnashing of teeth. Can’t escape an odd feeling of familiarity: these thoughts are thoughts I’ve thought before.

16th June 2007: another Monday. Week 5 of the May 2008 semester limbers up and gets ready for its turn in the spotlight. Its season in the sun. Is there something in the making that I shall end up remembering this week by? Probably not.

Life: days spent in sleep-deprived haze.

a friend and i

We were outside at 2 in the morning, and we’d been talking about the week he spent back in his hometown. He looked quite happy, and I could guess from the way he talked about the week that he was. I understood, of course. I am fortunate enough to have not been born in the city. Sure, suburbs pale in comparison to real kampungs but suburbs ain’t city, either.

He straddled his bike and mentioned the “hum” of Kelana Jaya. How you’d hear it even at 3 or 4 am. He asked me about it, asked me what it actually was. I shrugged my shoulders, said that I didn’t know. He said that back in his hometown there was nothing of the sort. That if you sat down in a quiet enough place (nearly anywhere, judging by the way he talked about it) you’d be able to hear that all-too-familiar ringing of tinnitus take over.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is silence.

I couldn’t do anything but agree. I knew exactly what he was talking about. I mentioned that only after heading back to Skudai a couple of times did I realize how much of a busy clusterfuck Kelana Jaya is. I can’t imagine what living in KL itself must feel like. Even when I sit down at a restaurant at 5 in the evening with nothing to do and no-one to talk to (and enjoying those facts) with only a cold teh o ais or a hot teh tarik for accompaniment I can’t escape an odd feeling of . . . oppression.

The contrast couldn’t be greater: on my most recent trip back to Skudai I sat down at a local mamak I used to frequent and everything felt . . . right. The morning school session was ending and right outside the mamak was a whole clusterfuck of white shirts, white blouses, white baju kurungs and white tudungs, dark blue trousers and dark blue skirts with cars double-parking, horns honking and parents running around with their children in tow, but things didn’t feel half as busy as they do here in Kelana Jaya.

There was no hum when I was hanging out in front of a friend’s house, not even when all of us fell silent, lost in our own thoughts. There was no hum when I stood in front of them, with the sun setting in the west, and said goodbye to them in the evening light. The only hum, if you could call it that, came from inside me: that bittersweet feeling of revisiting and now saying goodbye once again to an old love.

I mentioned those things, and he agreed with me. “Ha’ah, ye lah.”

He said he had to go. It was getting late. He started up his bike, bade me farewell and rode off. I stood up, admired the night for a while—curse that infernal humming—before locking up and heading inside.

do the d.a.n.c.e.

I still find it oddly funny how, throughout today, I have listened to Painkiller, then Iron Maiden, then Anaal Nathrakh, then Off Minor and now Justice. I also find it funny how the vast majority of my readers will, at most, only recognize one or two of these bands. Sadly.

I’m most probably going to get some of my photos printed soon, and, if the demand’s there, I’ll gladly print more so that you people, my lovable readers, can purchase some of them. Let me know which ones you think you’d want, I haven’t decided yet which ones I’ll print, although the photos from today are appealing. As are this and this.

If I do have photos printed, and if I decide to maybe see if I can sell some, I’m thinking of “mounting” them on pieces of black paper and then writing some stuff on said black piece of paper. Title, maybe. Number, maybe (as in, for example, 01/10). Some random quotes, maybe. A love letter, maybe.

pork and beans

Met a friend yesterday, discussed a potential job she has for me. While I think it would be nice, I don’t think I’m ready yet for any sort of “real” photography job. Call me an idiot (she wants to pay and all), but yeah. No thanks. Not now, at least.

As an aside, the new Weezer album is quite enjoyable. No, not a patch on Pinkerton or The Blue Album, but it’s no slouch. Better than Make Believe. If I feel up to it I’ll write more about it. Not in the mood right now.