http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4Kc1xlJ4_0

this is the first of a series of off-the-cuff docu-clips shot while plastic and i write music for a collection of releases we're creating. they're shot in the studio in the in-drawn breath between the Prude record heading to production and the Chemlab disc taking flight.

this flikker's a hand-held spatter snared during the SH101 haze-layering for the song "collapsed paper stars" taken at Plastic Fantastic Studios, London, 2009. the camera recording's raggedly ambient. the track itself is raw, vocals painfully un-effected. all clearly nowhere near the production stage, yet it signposts at least where the b-side of the record's going to head.

the a-side will be more direct in indirect ways, more driving, rock, 70s electronic, backwards, built to play to the holes between the notes.

plastic and i are currently living without a name somewhere just outside of the light. though we'll gain a name and a public face, i expect that we'll never really enter the circle of light others live in.

at the moment, like us, the disc's also untitled though it might become "Electronically Yours".
don't quote me.

this record's the first in a series that plastic and i are releasing. they'll also come out in quick succession, if it all goes the way we want. each release will be a limited edition. once they're gone, they're gone, each one engineered for quick disappearance. they'll each be approached differently, probably incorporating other musicians at different points along the way. stylistically i've no idea where we'll go and that's dead exciting.

we'll be keeping the pressing for this first one minimal, almost certainly no more than a few hundred copies for sale at most. many reasons for this, not the least of which is that the series will be a time-intensive labor of love.
for this first release each one of the covers will be hand-made by us. the artwork will range across the map of styles and concepts, some will have inserted objects. others not. what you get will be dictated by the luck (or misfortune, if you get the pulled teeth, or the blood bag) of the roulette wheel's spin.
they'll all be numbered and signed, and though some may be akin to others, none of them will be alike.
no promos, no, gimmes, no review copies, no reservations. no waiting.
we're tired of waiting.

release date will be announced soon. check the street corners:
www.hydrogenbar.com
www.myspace.com/chemlab
www.myspace.com/plasticheroes

and recently allowed to run naked down the avenue:
www.twitter.com/chemlab

there'll be myspace/facebook/twitter soon, and the above will alert about the below.

we'll also capture other random segments of the recordings as seems fit and may be releasing variant aspects of the record. some better. none worse. how could they be?

and if this track isn't to your taste, try the next one. it'll be something 'other'.
now, pull the pin, count and wait for the explosion: one mississippi, two mississippi, three ..

the attendant frustrations attached to the Altered Statesmen record are legion.
it continually boggles my mind that somehow i've managed to stumble into one of those Twilight Zone episodes where a band can't get their record untangled from the tentacles arrayed against them.

finally, despite all efforts to sustain it, the record shudders and vents its dying breath.

from then on it simply floats aimlessly out in space, joining the staggering collection of unloved, unnecessary, unconnected, undesirable orbiting space trash left behind as part of an ever-growing ring of rubbish girdling the Earth. left to float un-tethered, never to dock, no beacon to beckon. its last lights soon to die out in the super-silent chill.

as far as i can tell though "the death of radio mars" is the quintessence of the selfish gene.
it has mutated and figured out how to stay alive.
out there.
in the ever-expanding ring of detritus and jettisoned flotsam, shining luridly in the chromium haze of deep space.

and so, this is where it can be found and where it shall live out its days.
it's a fitting home for such a chimeric album. i raise my glass to it, toasting longevity.
out there.

Long live the selfish gene!!

The final break’s creeping in and it seems like there’s nothing that can be done to shore up the defences against it.

There’s another noise here that makes no sense and every time I try to steer myself near it it seems to slide itself further out of the realm of the graspable.

Sometimes there’s nothing to do about the dismal tide but throw the spear into the darkness and hope you hit something.

So, to that end, I’m starting to toss spears.

There are some refitted songs up on the myspace profile as well as a few old treats. The most interesting of them, however, is at the top of the chart as it’s not only my current fave, but it kicks the shit out of the rest of the noise I hear every day. It also kicks my ass on a regular basis. It’s a remix of Binary Nation by Latin Saint. He appeared to us as in a fever dream, his ax held aloft, clad in rust and wire. I could talk about him a lot, but the remix has all of the requisite fist instead.

I really dig the guy, and since there’s a new Chemlab record in the offing, it might make sense to pull the cat into the shitter and fuck with his world. Might be a good reason to fold in new meat to the thresher and make a dishonest woman of me.

We’ll see. Regardless, go and check him out at www.myspace.com/chemlab.
I’ll talk more in a second.

www.acidplanet.com/latinsaint/songs
www.myspace.com/latinsaint

After years of the wrong signal-to-noise balance, the haze too thick to catch sight lines through, I’m in a deeply productive time for me right now. The chemical mixture of the hours and light-dark ratio, the perfect curve of the detonator coil all seem to be aligning in my favor for the moment. Nothing lasts, so I’m making hay.

I’ve just finished a strange project. This week I finished writing and designing a tour guide for the reopening of the Whitechapel Gallery, the oldest and most influential art gallery in London’s East End. The book’s geared for 4-to-12 year-olds, providing them with a fun and stimulating way to interact with the gallery space as well as begin to get a sense of how contemporary artwork’s made. It runs short, the pages chunky and some cut into, each one with a place to draw or write on and it comes with pencils, pens, crepe paper and stickers. The pages are all detachable too so you can rearrange them any way you like. It’s not tied to a specific exhibition but instead functions as a way to play with contemporary art concepts. It’s full of questions and challenges and moments of both levity and intellectual rigor..., well, for kids at least! It was a gas to create, allowing me to stretch out into new terrains where I could combine my passions for conceptual and contemporary art with my writing. It’s the sort of project that I’m hoping to do more of. So much to do. So little time left now.

At the moment it’s only available when you come to the gallery, but people have already expressed interest in getting copies when it goes into a wider printing. I’m gauging interest through the sites to see if it’s something that would sell online.

One of the other things that I’m going to try to do is spend a shred more time writing here and in other spots just for the outlet, for the simple pleasure. I’ve been writing a lot. For the first time in a long time I’m pitching with winds, the waves are rising and I’m fertile with the creative juices. Gravity’s broken off its chain under me and I’m pouring out material constantly. Seems to be on the rise. The fascinating this is that, for perhaps the first time in my life, I’m writing for me as opposed to for some supposed audience out there in the dark just past the lights at the edge. From the deep cut I’m bleeding out writing and artwork and music and I’m suddenly unrestrained. Virginia Woolf’s dictum was to get it all out, to get expressed without impediment, to do it without hate or pause or protest or obvious special pleading or any of the rest of that jagging around. She didn’t mean that the writer’s job is to write endlessly or announce and continue with a splash, but to get the real experience down: the private moments, the feel of the winter air cutting, the noise and the silence and the way smoke travels when it hits a gust of wind or the pleasure of listening to traffic knot and unknot. That’s where I feel like I’ve been heading for a little while now. I always knew the road, sometimes on, sometimes way off, but for the past year or so I can feel the hard shoulder pressing up under my feet, see the path as it stretches out towards the horizon. I’ve no idea where it’s leading, but I’m going there.

There’s a lot of music going on in and through me right now and I’ll talk about it next. There are a series of super-limited edition records that Plastic and I’ll be releasing very soon as well as the Prude record that’ll be coming out some time this year. There’s much to talk about, and if you happen to be in London over the next few months Plastic and I will be gigging a bunch at both open and closed events.

The thread pays out ahead .. ..

As some of you may know, a few years ago I had the pleasure of working with Mark Spybey (CAN, Zoviet France, Download, Dead Voices On Air and many others). I’ve been a fan of Mark’s organic and inverted music for decades, since the pummelling beginnings of Zoviet France. I always thought that it would be incredibly cool to work with him on a record of some sort. Never believed that it would actually come to pass, but the dream rippled on below the silvery surface.