Saturday Afternoon and All Was Not Well

Well, although my profile claims that I work in education I'm afraid that's not quite true until next month so until then I still have to bear with my long running student job of shop assisstant - I can feel the shivers down your spine from here. So, normally it's not too bad, I work in what could loosely be defined as a 'boardsports' kind of store though fashion seems to be playing a bigger and bigger part (ps. for a clue on who I work for - get the first album by C.Aarme and listen to track four - tells you all you need to know). Anyway, on Saturday just past the music hit a new low when the manager (whose taste is, well screw it, they have none) decided that Geogaddi by Boards of Canada was far too depressing and had to be changed. Long story short, they went to the Virgin Megastore across the road and bought an abomination called R&B Classics or suchlike depicting a curvaceous Hispanic lady on the cover in cut off denims and a HUGE diamante belt buckle sporting said title. Well, it was worse than it sounds - all ear-bleeding three discs of it. Let's just say that Dy-Na-My-Tee-Hee by Miss Dynamite was the highlight of proceedings.

Suitably chastened, I had to escape to the local record emporium (not the Virgin, what do you take me for!!) - Avalanche records. Aaahh, sweet relief - despite being skint I managed to pick up the following: !!!:Louden Up Now, Nightmare of You:s/t and A Tribe Called Quest: Midnight Marauders. Not a bad trip all told - although I only got to play A Tribe Called Quest in the shop. However, have since been impressed by both !!! and Nightmare of You in differing ways. First up, !!! - a band of whom I've heard quite a bit but never actually heard up until this week and I'm impresed with their punk/funk (uurgh) stew, bringing to these ears mind a sprinkling of Liquid Liquid and their 99 Records Ilk, a smatter of a number of Rough Trade style bands of the early eighties (those whose singer clearly pretended to be Ian Curtis in the bathroom mirror) and a bit of the less demented Warp records groups (the labe on which this was released) - not a bad heritage. Just found out that their new album is due out in the next couple of months, maybe one to watch out for.

On a different tack, the eponymous debut by Nightmare of You is something which I really should not like, and had I heard it a couple of years ago during the darkest trough of my depths into US HC and the Discharge clones from the continent I belive I may have hurled said platter across the room, uttered a curse and stomped off - but alas I am no longer quite such an angry young man and can appreciate the charms of the odd nice record - and this is a very nice record. My main reason for nuying this is the presence of one of the guitarists from the Movielife (Hey, I like them) and Sammy Siegler (a legend in some circles for his past bands - a decent drummer to my mind but then I'm not as ready to worship at the heels CIV, Rival Schools et al). It's poppy, upbeat, eigthies influenced and has washes of synths and hits the right chord with me at this point - maybe it's the longing for summer (I should point out here that the old joke about Scotland having only two seasons and those being winter and JUne has a certain element of truth) and brighter, carefree times. Either way, I'm glad it was bought and it can now no doubt sit in a rack for another ten months until the urge to hear it again overtakes me with the first wisps of spring.