I’ve had the latest Einstürzende Neubauten album for a while now and I’ve been meaning to review it because I know how much you’ve been dying to hear my thoughts on their latest opus.

Perpetuum Mobile is a comparatively quiet album for Neubauten and this shows in the distinct lack of heavy machinery that they are renowned for using in he percussion section. At first listen you could be mistaken in thinking that they had simply relied on conventional instruments for this album but a quick glance down the instrument list shows that they still favour the use of air compressors, plastic pipes car tires and survival blanket (sic). Fortunately, none of the poetry is missing and Blixa Bargeld and his crew show that after 20 plus years of making truly industrial music, they can find a heart and soul in their music that other, more ephemeral, crowd pleasing and chart topping bands seem incapable of drawing out.

The album starts off with a typically ironic first track, simply titled “Ich gehe jetzt” (”I’m going now”). This seems to strike the chord for what, on the surface, appears to be the theme for the album, namely the transient nature of twenty-first century living. The title track, “Perpetuum Mobile”, is a 13 minute ode to intercontinental travel and reminds me of that thousand yard stare you get when you gazing out of the window of a bus, train or plane. But digging a little deeper unearths the existential element of the tracks and the overall tone is very introvert and reflective if not a little melancholy and isoalted. It’s a definitely a different feel to the post coital eulogy of their last album, “Silence is Sexy”.

As with most of their albums, the lyrics are predominantly in German but the inlay provides the English translation. While I’m sure it sounds better in the original tongue, they still possess the ability to provoke wonderful imagery, as a line in the eighth track “Paradiesseits” (”Paradisng”) shows:

In my dreams the birds advise me
Of songs I can later sing

Then you come across the opening verse of “Selbsportrait mit Kater” (”Self portrait with hangover”) which describes the type of morning I know only too well:

It’s often in the morning
my hands are shaking
my face
it doesn’t belong to me
Water! - comes as a shock to me
I can’t take it quietly

I wasn’t sure about this album on first hearing it but it has definitely grown on me. They’re playing in Kentish Town on Saturday and you’ll find me there, no doubt moshing to the song from which this site takes its name and generally having a fantastic time. But then you’ll get to hear all about that next week.

SHAMELESS CAPITALIST UPDATE: Buy Perpetuum Mobile + Limited Dvd from Amazon.

Of all the films I’m looking forward to this year, there’s one that I’m currently chomping on brains at the bit to see; Shaun of the Dead.

I’ve mentioned it before but as it’s released in a couple of weeks, it’s worth mentioning again. It’s a British comedy zombie film brought to you by the people who made the marvellous surreal Channel 4 sitcom Spaced.

I’ve just finished watching both series of Spaced again and had fogotten quite how good it was. There’s a first series episode called “Art” (guest starring Paul Kaye and David Walliams) which has plenty of references to zombie culture (namely Resident Evil video games, Evil Dead, the George Romero Dead Trilogy) and gives a lot of hope that the film is going to be very funny.

There’s quite a good marketing campaign in London at the moment (can’t speak about the rest of the country) with appropriately tailored posters for the film appearing on the tube (a picture of which is at Annie Mole’s blog) and phone boxes around the capital. The second, very amusing, trailer has been released today and you can watch it here here.

I’m off to polish my shotgun in anticipation.

A trailer for the new Harry Potter movie has been released today and, despite myself, it looks pretty good. Harry Potter and the Boca del Cielo is the young wizards third outing and this time is directed by the Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron who previously wrote and directed the Oscar and BAFTA nominated “Y tu mamá también”.

Despite differing in several ways to his earlier work, the trailer suggests that he also explores the friendship between two young boys and their relationship with a more intelligent and slightly older woman. The trailer doesn’t feature any clips of the soon-to-be-legendary scene of Harry and Ron rubbing their wands vigourously to see who can cast a spell the quickest and there is some doubt over whether the rumoured scene of the two teenage wizards and their friend Hermione indulging in a menage-a-trois in Hagrid’s Hut will make the final cut.

You can see the new trailer here.

As I may have mentioned before, I studied Philosophy at university. One of the elective modules I took was on the subject of Existentialism and a large part of that course focussed on the works of the existentialist master, Jean-Paul Sartre.

What many people don’t know is that a few years ago, previously lost diaries of the great French philosopher turned up unexpectedly in the pool room of a pub in Slough¹. These diaries reveal a young Sartre obsessed not with the void, but with food. Apparently Sartre, before discovering philosophy, had hoped to write “a cookbook that will put to rest all notions of flavour forever.” The diaries are excerpted here for your perusal. (more…)

The BBC has asked people to contribute to an interactive story they’ve started running. The only condition is that it has to be entirely made up of clichés.

Go read here - and contribute if you like!

The headline on last nights Evening Standard read “Beckham met Madrid Bomber”. One of the suspected bombers was a huge Real Madrid fan and, towards the end of February, had waited outside the stadium where the team were training to get an autograph from his hero.

This morning’s Mail carried the following headline: “Beckham stalked by Madrid Bomber”.
(more…)

I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to bid for the PC Version of “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City” on eBay. It’s a right royal P.I.T.A. Especially as I’m too stingy to splash out on one of those auction snipers.

So does anyone out there have an original copy they’d be willing to sell me for a tenner? Or perhaps a little more.

(Yes, it’s sad, no, I don’t care. I just need a distraction from reality and what better way than a game where you can drive around a virtual Miami-a-like doing jobs for an organised crime syndicates, street racing, stealing cars and building a drug dealing empire quite appeals at the moment. And you can get to pick up virtual hookers rather than just reading their blogs!)

UPDATE: One harrowing bidding war later and I am destined to become the proud owner of a slightly used copy of GTA:Vice City. I rule. In the words of Tony Montana - “Make way for the bad guy!”

At the risk once again of sounding like I’m part of the moral majority (oh wait! I already am!), I find myself despairing that the fickle hand of fate fortunes those who flip the bird at the rest of society.

I’m thinking in particular about one waste of DNA in particular as he’s hit the headlines again today. Michael Carroll, whom the tabloids dubbed the “Lotto Lout” after he won nearly £10 million on the Lotto, has escaped a jail sentence after police discovered £1000 worth of Columbian Marching Powder in his home last December.

This is after he “broke promises” that he would stop his life of crime after his windfall. But, according to his lawyer, it’s not actually his fault. After his 20 year old wife and he seperated (can’t imagine why!) and he was introduced to cocaine which helped him “escape the pain”. I’m sure that he never tried it before. I mean, if you’re a wealthy 20 year old crim chap with no need to work and your whole life left to partythen obviously the last thing you’d find yourself doing is white lines through a crisp £50 note off a silver tray that you stole bought with your lotto winnings despite a history of questionable behaviour and of mixing with the “wrong crowd”, right?

I begrudgingly accept that there’s nothing to be done about it and I don’t think I’d want there to be limitations on who could win lotto jackpots anyway (except for under 16s). That doesn’t stop me complaining about the fact that there are many people out there who work hard all their lives and follow the guidelines and dictums that society lays down but who never get a break like this guy has. And yes, I do mean me! Amongst others.

As petulant and childish as i may be, it’s just not fair!

Of course, I might be able to improve my chances of winning if I could actually be bothered to buy a lotto ticket!

I’d like to say that I have been doing something interesting but that would just be a lie. Over the last week, I have been looking for inspiration, motivation and illumination but keep encountering the cerebral equivalant of a 404 error page (”life not found”).

Even now my brain feels like the warm blooded mammalian equivalent of a soggy, three-day-old brussel sprout. I find myself increasingly resorting to despondent introspection that I can’t work through and can’t work out owing to a bronchial infection, a slightly pulled pectoral muscle, inflammed intercostals and a burdensome workload. Not to mention the ongoing saga with the insensitive emotional manipulations that have pervaded the otherwise serene bliss of my lair.

At times like this I miss the babbling inanities of the voices in my head.

Anyway, thanks to Briggy and Daisy for guest commenting while I was, erm, away. Whatever you’re on, I want some! Unless it’s doughnuts.

Team meetings - a weekly event where an hour of our time is filled with inconsequential discussions and people droning on about projects and problems that I neither care about nor have any impact on me.

Every now and then there will be an agenda item involving some new administrative concern or a rehashed iteration of last months pointless bureaucractic innovation designed solely to hide the fact that the management haven’t got a clue what’s going on.

Today we were asked to start thinking about what leave we may want to take…

…over Christmas.

It’s the middle of March, less than 3 months after Christmas last year and it’s not even Easter and we have to think about holidays over Christmas!

Words fail me!