Acid King – Motorhead

My Dutch homeboy Stefan recently put me onto Acid King. A trio from San Fran USA, their sound is slow doomy and brutal heavy psychedelic rock with a strong Black Sabbath influence. Long wailing guitar riffs and dark, sometimes hypnotic vocals from front-woman and electric guitarist Lori S make for some real heavy shit. Their albums Busse Woods and III have been on pretty heavy rotation ever since, so I was pretty psyched to hear that they were going to be headlining the Doomsday Festival in Newtown.

This track Motorhead is from their second album Busse Woods. It was first released in 99 but there is also a later re-release with 2 bonus cover tracks, one of which was this cover of Hawkwind. Busse Woods is named after a Forest near Chicago where Lori S. used to hang out in her teenage years, where her and her friends “…hung out with their trunks open, cranking tunes and selling drugs. After the cops caught on this era ended.” With a lead-in like that, you pretty much KNOW this shit is gonna be wild baby!

I also found this recording of Acid King at the 2007 Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands, where they played alongside the likes of Blue Cheer, Red Sparowes, Orange Sunshine and Melvins amongst others! Fucking crazy lineup and the set is dope so download that shit, play it loud and blow your fucking brains out.

Acid King live at Roadburn Festival 2007

Download Acid King live at Roadburn 2007 | Artwork by Godspill, the bassist from Orange Sunshine!

01 – Busse Woods
02 – 2 Wheel Nation
03 – Heavy Load
04 – Electric Machine
05 – Bad Vision
06 – On To Everafter
07 – Into The Ground
08 – Sunshine And Sorrow

Acid King Sydney tour dates

October 2, 2010
Doomsday Festival II
Acid King with support from Pod People, Summonus, Looking Glass, Clagg, Sons of Ionian Sea, Fattura Della Morte, VAN, Adrift for Days & Mother Mars
Newtown RSL
52 Enmore Road Newtown

October 3, 2010
Acid King & KK Null
Valve Bar
900 Princess Highway Tempe

Acid King – Motorhead

Émilie Simon – Desert

Émilie Simon – Rainbow

Forget about love at first sight… that shit is played out. This post is about love at first listen, aka me and Émilie Simon.

The year was 05, maybe 06, and I was prowling Myspace for a vocalist to collaborate with (this was back in the day when it was still actually useful for this kinda shit). After wading through crap singer after crap singer, I stumbled across a profile for Émilie. Cute photo, I am thinking to myself, hoping she can sing as well when Desert started playing out of my speakers; right from that moment I knew it was love baby. By the time the second track on the player, Secrets was playing, my heart was well and truly stolen by that soft, silky voice. I also knew I’d found my vocalist, and typed her out a message with a link to my track explaining who I was and asking, not unhopefully, whether she would be interested in singing on my instrumental.

Of course as it turns out, I soon discovered that the Myspace profile was a f*ke set up by some adoring fan, Émilie was already signed to Universal Music and her self titled album Émilie Simon had been in the French charts ever since it’s release in 2003. My hopes of working with her were quickly dashed, but not all was lost as I ended up working with Beta Evers and the resulting song Eternal (soon to be released on 7″ vinyl through my label Zerohour Doom & Glamour) is nothing short of perfect to my ears, I can’t imagine it possibly sounding any different. Not one to hold a grudge I have been a big fan of Émilie’s ever since. I even managed to track down (and shell out a small fortune for) her extremely rare transparent red vinyl LP — anybody who says music doesn’t sound better on vinyl doesn’t know what’s up.

She was often referred to as ‘the french Björk’, but to me this really just doesn’t do her justice. While I can see the comparison, to leave Émilie in the shadow of another (even one so large as that of Björk) is an injustice to her lyrical talent, experimentation and musicianship. Her music is electro-pop (a term that would normally make me want to kill) done properly, an effortless blend of electronic and live instruments with influences of rock, classical, trip hop and electro music.

In 2007 I got the chance to see Émilie sing live in Sydney with fellow Frenchies Nouvelle Vague, and for the second time she really blew me away. That soft and sometimes tiny voice came with a huge stage presence that was enough to put a packed house at the Metro in a trance, as she performed a mix of songs from all 3 of her albums, Émilie Simon, La Marche de l’Empereur & Végétal. More than just her incredible voice and stage presence though, what really stood out to me was her musical creativity. She played a mix of piano, synth and guitar, with backing from a combination of live drumming, drum machine tracks and synthesizer played by her band. Her voice was filtered, controlled and manipulated by the custom made ‘Brissot’ on her arm, a streampunk inspired kind of wristband covered in knobs and switches (check the photo). And my curiosity was sparked by what the hell a goldfish bowl was doing in the middle of the stage — was it part of the show? Would she dunk her head in and sing underwater? As it turns out, it was used for just one song, as her drummer came out to mid-stage to slap a beat on the surface of the water, which through contact mics (and I daresay considerable filtering) came a beautiful organic rhythm.

Jump forward a few years to 2009 and we had the release of Émilie’s most recent album The Big Machine. This album is, to me, a change of direction. To my ears a less experimental and more straight-forward pop tracks. Unlike her previous albums, all the songs are sung in English instead of a mix of English and French, and musically too it is more straight down the line pop, with a bigger and more accessible electronic sound, and sounding much more produced than her previous works. Her voice too sounds larger than it ever has before, gone is the silky, sometimes wistful feeling and lyrics and in their place a stronger, more powerful voice which takes advantage of the full range of her voice. This time around. the album has drawn more comparisons to Kate Bush and Tori Amos than Björk. I later found out Émilie has moved from Montpellier to New York, which to me, made the change in her sound make much more sense. Rainbow is the standout song of the album for me, a dramatic, uptempo pop number with a plenty of brass, a big beat and Émilie’s slightly dark edged lyrics. Impressively, Émilie has managed to maintain an original and unique sound, managing to make her music more accessible without selling out to mass-produced trash for commercial radio. Which is good, ‘cos otherwise I couldn’t love her anymore.

Anyway, the point of all this is that Émilie is playing again in Sydney tonight and I’ll be there, swooning somewhere up the front row and I am pretty excited about it.

Ps Émilie when you stumble across this page and undoubtedly think, “hey, I should really do a song with this guy”, don’t be shy, hit me up!
Pss don’t worry readers, I’ll be back to writing about street electro, rugged hip hop and fuzz metal in no time. Got some new mixes and music on the way too!

Émilie Simon – Desert

Émilie Simon – Rainbow

Saturday night OSC-001 and myself are going to be repping the Cold Crush Wreckin’ Cru on support duties for none other than West Coast king Egyptian Lover along with Detroit pervert Jimmy Edgar, who are playing at the Civic Hotel. Me and OSC are both abso-fucking-lutely pumped!

Check out Cold Crush for more info on both nights, see you on the floor there Sydney cats

Cold Crush flyer hand drawn by my baaaad self! (Cold Crush logo by the man Crazy Kade) | Cold Crush event page on Facebook

Egyptian Lover + Jimmy Edgar event page on Facebook

My homeboy Spate hooked me up this link to Nightcrawla, a site dedicated to Philadelphia graffiti with emphasis on hardcore street bombing and Philly wickeds. Basically, some next level shit — menacing tags turning handstyles into wildstyles, even many writers find Philly tags illegible due to their complex letterforms, huge flares, tags that sometimes reach several metres high as well as smoking spliffs and brandishing butterfly knives. Heat. These cats rock can control in their tags that toys don’t even achieve in their pieces. Check it out at Nightcrawla Philadelphia Graffiti. The navigation is a bit frustrating but there is some primo shit if you can be bothered to lurk through it.

Philly’s Rasan from the late 80s and DaSaR from the mid 90s | Photos by Nightcrawla

Espo, photo by adnauseum on Flickr

Philadelphia Graffiti Handstyles

Dope Youtube video giving some insight into the Philly style plus more importantly,
hardcore street bombing action footage. Peep it!

Sydney Graffiti: Spate

The man Spate is also a fucking yob. One of the dopest bombing styles in Sydney no doubt.

Zapp & Roger – More Bounce To The Ounce

B-Boys B-Ware… Cold Crush is the electro funk driving ya’ll crazy and it is back this Friday night at 202 boogie down Broadway. We got Melbourne mix master Hysteric, the Cold Crush Mob — that’s me, OSC-001 and Simon Caldwell, and special guest, boogie king Sage One. We are gonna have asses shaking and bodies poppin’ and lockin’ from 9pm till late. We got more bounce to the ounce baby!

I just did an interview with Hysteric last night, and posted a fresh electro mix from him for Cold Crushin’ Mixes. Dude has been collecting records and doing his thang for many years now, so it’s a pretty cool interview for anybody into electro or record collecting… check it out over at Cold Crush.

I also just wrote an article for Cold Crush on punk pioneer and Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, who you may not know also recorded a couple of very cool old school hip hop records. Check it out the Buffalo Gals video clip, it is amazing… featuring bboying by the Rocksteady Crew but what is really incredible is the rare footage of all time graffiti style king Dondi White painting a public style burner reading Buffalo Gals in his trademark funked out style. Dudes letters are untouchable to this day, Style Master General is the word!

Anyway, see ya’ll Sydney cats Friday night, i’ve been pretty busy with some other stuff but i’m working on some stuff for this site too so i’ll hopefully get around to a few posts this week. I’ve got a new mix on the way too for Cold Crushin’ Mixes so stay tuned!

Zapp & Roger – More Bounce To The Ounce