strawberry stone

there is also a stone which looks like a strawberry...

it is not a rock, but does look a hell of a lot like a strawberry...

[strawberry rock sounds like some kinda grungy shoegazer anthem]

there is also a fish... it is a little fish.

so as you can see, its everything as normal on planet bwoi... and as an added bonus the beans is lookin' massive! not as massive as grand galvatron...

uhm, what now...?!

but he was mental! anyone who wants to build himself into the ultimate transformer, using parts of all the greatest transformers, and comes up with a design like that has got to be a bit twitchy in the head...

today i will be mostly layin' down some vocals lo-fi old skool stylee, a lil' bit of tweakin', finishing a chorus, and devising two set lists for tomorrow's gigs - happy time

the welcome rock...

it is the welcome rock...

not only does it tell you 'welcome', it goes on to provide a bona fide dictionary definition too...

AND... its a rock!!

welcome, rock...

Fatbwoi Live @ The Tollemache Arms 250512

word up you crazy cats!! how's it all goin'?!

took to the stage with the most-excellent wildfire sessions crew on friday night... twas at the tollemache arms in harrington... which has got itself some tight old roads, some beautiful vistas, and a complete lack of mobile reception - a bit of a hitch when you have decided to navigate via the magic of google maps...

but i found it! and it was a lot of fun...

there was two stevies, who both put in sterling performances... an excellent set from abbie hutt, who i first saw over at nbs... and after a brief discussion on the relative merits of 'nandos' and a certain mister sheeran's tune of a similar name, and that mine came first and stevie is convinced he robbed it from me, it was my go...

opened with aforementioned poultry ballad... the reaction to which is always interesting in a new venue, before requesting some dance moves and dealing with the marmite...

the weather basically twisted my arm into playing sunny afternoon, fatbwoi filtered of course, it almost seems wrong not to... and perhaps the complete lack of sun explains why i haven't played it yet this year...

there was a spontaneous 1-800, which never featured on the lil' piece of paper... but i was going down well and i just couldn't help myself... forgot to consider the effects of stomping on a hot evening, and by the end 1x bwoi was damn hot!

always nice when you drop the fresh prince at the end of CYHMN and everyone sings along... it still amazes me to this day, just how many people know all the words to that particular ditty...

its like some kind of national guilty pleasure...

the closer was bullet, by request of mr jones... and who can deny a request like that?!

all-in a really good night... i had a lot of fun, and anywhere with red stripe on draught has automatically got itself a handful of bonus points... thank-you to the two stevies for having me over!

learnt an important lesson too... its probably best not to burst into spontaneous versions of "we're the anchor cows" when asked if this is the adverts... i'm not sure that pretending to be a doo-wop cow whilst standing there looking crazy-haired and sweaty doesn't affect your street cred...

good fun though 8)

until the next time...

peace-out y'all

fb

the sunshine vibe... [going all katy perry]

"Well, can you tell me what it feels like?"

"Fool, it's hot! I told you again! Were you born on the sun?! It's damn hot" 

well, its not actually that hot, but complaining about the weather is the national obsession...

although i for one have been rather enjoying it...

didn't i tell you, its hot, damn hot...

i'm less keen on the 'medallion man' triangle i appear to have developed on my chest whilst out and about today... (and if my face caught the sun, it could be that the beard is gonna have to stay awhile)

and you can't beat a bit of messin' with synths on a sunny day (esp. not the bass!!)...

Katy Perry... and watermelon

but what's all this got to do with katy perry?!

well, it has come to my attention, via the means of proper scientific analysis, that attempting to write synth lines on a sunny day inevitably leads to katy perry bubblegum sunshine-pop...

it is seriously true!! you start out all dank and dirty, and then a lil' bit just creeps in there...

you gotta be quick!! like that game with the moles and the hammers...

tbf bubblegum synth-pop is a genre that i have explored yet, and have no especial desire to at this time (i'm leaving it to my 50s, after my dub-freakout album)...

if it happens, you know exactly who/what to blame...

peace-out y'all

fb

writing... [flatbread]

word!!

or in this case, words...

still doodling away with some electronic weirdness over here on planet bwoi... but i can at this stage present to you an early (incomplete) draft of the lyrics to 'flatbread'...

its the one with at least half a shopping list, and a brief dabble in culinary territory...

not that you asked, but i am known for musing upon my own modus operandi, and it enables me to answer a question...

the question? do you ever write these things down?!

the answer? yes! and the paper is never bloody wide enough [must use less syllables]

[or get a bigger book]

they do actually all get written down at least once... sometimes its on a cardboard box, once in match on a paving stone, but i digress...

when i was on bridge FM, paul (the DJ) asked me whether i write the words or the music first... and really the answer is both... sometimes one-way, sometimes the other (nightmare answer i know - but its true)...

this one was words first, in the car, on the way back from the supermarket... and they're wrong. well the 'do-do do do' bit (kinda of a chorus) is anyway... now its much more science-y. some of the second verse is missing, and that last line is different (currently back to the monkey)...

structurally its a bit of a builder... but also a bit out there, but i like it, cos it allows me to repeat the "something missing... tiger, string-pull light... mirror" motif, and that was the late night 'eureka' line that made me want to roll with the idea...

i like the prawns line too...

so there you have it...

peace-out y'all

fb 8)

ps. i'd consider some-kinda prize if anyone out there fancies guess-humming the melody, and sending it to me?! i would say closest, but anything is good... reinterpretation is good for me too

beunos noches

writing and recording...

"Norway has trolls... so more power lines will be needed, that's just the way it is..."

word-up...

how the devil be thee?! all good i hope...?! life on planet bwoi has been proper hectic of late... mostly, as a way of celebrating the gradual return of my hearing, with the good stuff - the writing, the playing and the recording... and to make it just that lil' bit better, there's even a few gigs coming up...

happy time...

between one thing and another, there's definitely been a lot of writing recently... one i am hoping to debut on friday is tentatively called 'luggage', and has this kinda 'happy-eels' type vibe to it... there's a few more acoustic ones, that i shall be slipping into the set over the summer...

lately, i have been working on a couple of 'less' acoustic tunes... there's the TRE remix of 'Love Once', which has this retro-bigbeat/monster-synth vibe going on...

and then there's 'flatbread'... which is loosely based on a shopping list. initially i was aiming for a 90's b-side kinda vibe, with definite hints of 'go to the bank' by james... not a b-side i know, but definitely the kinda start point i was thinking of...

a flatbread, although not the one i was singing about...

it has admittedly 'wandered off' a bit, but is nearly finished and ready to make happy in your ear-holes...

its got aliens, flatbread, (conspiracy) intrigue, and a healthy slice of weirdness (whether or not the sound of pan-fried bacon makes it to the final mix remains to be seen)... pretty much what you've come to expect after all this time...

thus i shall leave you, for now, with this lil' couplet, which may/may-not explain something/everything/nothing [delete as applicable]...

"there's a little piece missing from deep inside the tiger...
there's a string-pull light sits on top of the mirror..."

alles klar?! though not...

i hope the world is good with y'all... i shall return, for now, to my beavering...

peace-out y'all

fb

stereo sound

i think that my hearing is finally coming back...

there have been a couple of moments, both last night and today, where i have realised that i am receiving (more or less) in stereo...

full service is not yet restored, its a bit like a speaker with a loose connection... but the pain has gone, and i know that the full restoration will indeed be glorious...

they are some truly impressive headphones...

where did my hearing go... the short answer is i don't know, away somewhere...

but after the initial "oh my <insert deity here> i've gone deaf, i can never make music again" panic had subsided (days 2 and 3), i've been pretty stoic in dealing with it...

to the point where i only realised today, now that we are in may, that i was in-fact 'receiving in mono' for the majority of april... [and i actually managed to not get run over!!]

the most frustrating thing about it all, is that i have been on a bit of a writing tip of late... and at its worst i couldn't hear the guitar i was playing - i was effectively working off the vibrations... try to hum a melody over that and the guitar is gone... add a little bit of outside noise and everything suddenly gets really confusing...

but its going now...

as far as i understand it, i had some kind of bad-ass infection in my inner ear that produced a lot of gakk... which then bunged up the delicate inner workings off my ear (and tried to take over the rest of my head)...

two courses of progressively larger horse tablets later (the second batch we're bright red "how ill are you" type tablets)... and its only just starting to clear...

i was trying to sort out a click track for a new song the other day, and playing through an earphone into my left (deaf) ear i was hearing a most awesome metronome sound... when i swapped ears it was this hideous flabby distorted bass drum... so in that the deafness did a good thing...

but i'm not planning on using my ears reduced frequency response as a plot for a new extreme drum filter... nuh-uh, i'm just looking forward to being able to lay some stuff down...

as the song says...

"Can You Hear Me Now?"

("honestly?! uhm,... no.")

Hoodwinked

it has been said, on occasion, that i have questionable taste in films...

there maybe some truth in that...

but in contrast to my usual zombie-related fare, i am currently 'proper feeling' the hoodwinked vibe...

and if you haven't seen it (i'm not known for being especially up-to-date, so chances are it may have gone global with me none the wiser) - i recommend you check it out!

its like a post-modern take on little red riding hood... and in a bizarre take on the way things normally go, its got songs in it and i like it! i've seen/heard the 'd-na-me-tay' joke somewhere before - but i'll let it off...

[as an interesting aside, i heard the jo brand hignfy "make the cockneys love abu qatada" gag before on the wireless... they were both broadcast by the bbc, hence the 'cross-referencing, by punt and dennis' execution was much better]

anyway, assuming you haven't seen hoodwinked, i shouldn't really tell you anything more about the plot than i already have...

i like the goat...

thing is, i tend to listen to hoodwinked a lot more than i watch (you know how it goes)...

and i've come to the realisation that its almost certainly one of my favourite in-film soundtracks ever...

it has been said that i have questionable taste in film soundtracks (although much less often), just putting it out there - also on the list is the billy corgan 'dicking around' on mel gibson vehicle 'ransom'...

but i digress... the opening number (aside from the dvd music which is pretty funky the first 20 or so times) sounds like something on mr e's first solo album with a really nice melody... later on there's 'red is blue' which has a proper 90's ethereal shoe-gaze vibe about it... and there's even some angular punk...

nice...

oh yeah... and the goat.

i like the goat.

he's been cursed, and has to sing everything...

he also has interchangeable horns...

i'm not normally big on the banjo/buegrass/yodelling, but its impossible to like the goat without likin' his song - because of his affliction...

he's a pretty darn melodic goat - check it out
 

and of course, here it is again - backwards!!!

so does this sudden liking for 'goat music' mean there maybe something bluegrass-y coming off of planet bwoi soon?! probably not... 

unless its going backwards... 8)

Fatbwoi Live @ Kettering Arts Centre 140412

word up you crazy cats!!

its been a fun (and also hectic) couple of weeks here on planet bwoi... which is, as ever, just how we like it... complete with good friends, thang-shakery, and songwriting - happy time

first up - some of the thang shakery...

saturday 14th was wildfire sessions 1st birthday festival at kettering arts centre... a birthday party like none other, one which the wildfire crew deserved for the quality work they always do, complete with a whole pile of quality tunage...

i caught sets from the legend that is kevin hewick, and budding for-ex trader stevie rigsby (who needs to work on his bartering a lil' bit), as well as my jaike, before dropping some tunes of my own...

opened with the one about the chicken... moved onto the one with the dance moves... as one does, but hereabouts we should perhaps rewind a lil'... for when i took to the stage, i was not alone...

making their first appearance since last summer at the cross keys was the midgetbwoi army, armed with shakers and some funky-ass dance moves...

you have not seen soulful grooving like it (no really - you haven't!!)...

but they (and i) had an ace time, so who can knock it?! there was even a (sort-of) harmony on some of the random bits that they've picked up...

i reckon with the energy expelled by the three of us during that set, we probably could have powered the building for a week - now that's ecologically friendly! 8)

back to the music...

there was a début outing for newbie 'modern condition', which i think went down really well. its a lil' bit slower than some of the others, although still heavily up-swung... fun to play too. its got two riffs, and a lil' bit of "oh dear, what can the matter be?" - fair to say its definitely a bwoi tune...

there was also a first ever acoustic outing for 'wrong', which had previously only ever seen the light of day as an fb5 tune... enjoyed playing that too, without a backing band its a slightly more melodious affair (in that it feels inappropriate doing the shouty bit on the chorus without the bwois behind me) - but all good fun!

finished off with bullet and forces, my dancers exhausted...

all-in it was a really good day, i enjoyed myself (as did the midgetbwoi army) and big love and props go out to stevie and the wildfire sessions crew, not just for putting it on, but for all the work they do year-round providing quality nights at which to enjoy some quality tunes...

thanks guys! and happy birthday

fb 8)

fatbwoi's essential money saving tips #1

place a 7up bottle next to the fridge light to make your fridge/food look more futuristic/like its in the matrix...


2l blue sprite zero boxes can be used to create an early C21st 'future' effect... however the current trend is for blue LEDs, rather than dingy lighting...

presenting... Parva Doodles

PRESENTING, FOR YOUR THANG-SHAKIN' ENJOYMENT... 

a deep grooving dirt-funk alt-pop collection...

(with a healthy slice stereo-randomness thrown in for good measure...)

Parva Doodles

the sound of the bwoi in the studio, complete with synths, distortion, harmonies, FX (pretty much the whole nine yards), and not a single acoustic guitar in-sight...

lashings of electric guitar though... and even *shock horror* a guitar solo(!!!)

having drawn comparisons to tom vek, beck (and even rizzle kicks*?!), parva doodles showcases a sound which, whilst very different to the typical stripped back fatbwoi sound, oozes with the fatbwoi vibe...

its upbeat, its anarchistic, organic, left-field, tongue in cheek, and above all... fun

full tracklisting...

1 - Tagbank

2 - Dark Fire

3 - Come On

4 - Dog Food

5 - The Patient

due for release mid-february via itunes, spotify and other major online retailers, pre-release copies are available direct via the magic of http://fatbwoi.bandcamp.com - complete with PDF liner booklet and hidden (bonus) track...

if you fancy seeing it live, discussions are under way about hosting a one-off 'spectacular' (the anti-luau) in birmingham during the summer... but that's a whole different blog - i'll keep ya posted!!

i hope you enjoy listening to it, as i much as i enjoyed making it...

this is not the end of this parva-business... 8)

peace-out y'all

* this is true, totally random, but true...

21st Century Communication [Rogue River]

you gotta love technology right?!

i mean true, the world is sadly STILL lacking hover-boards... but, well i'm actually gonna turn to a tweet that sums this up as well as i ever could...

and its funny that i should turn to twitter...

its a great tool, i can communicate any kind of brain-fart anywhere around the world... genius.

get a tweet of akira the don... day made.

earlier tonight, fresh after watching troll hunter, i sent a tweet about 'Rogue River', which i watched last week and in all honesty didn't rate very highly...

"Unlike Rogue River which i watched the other night, which was just draught up sh!t... #justsaying"

that's what i wrote...

despite the over-use of the word 'which', in all honesty that tweet is probably longer than any review i could be arsed to right about the film...

imagine my surprise when it was retweeted by the film's director...!!

who does seem to be a nice enough bloke...

but now i feel bad...

not because i said online that his film was sh!t, which it is... but rather that the tweet doesn't actually say what i wanted it to say...

i don't want him to have misinterpreted it as some kind of 'street' recommendation of his work... i genuinely think its sh!t...

i actually tweeted a clarification straight afterwards...

"last tweet should say 'straight up sh!t'... but 'draught up sh!t is an #autocorrect i can live with..."

but he never retweeted that, or even necessarily saw it...

had i known the original tweet would have reached out in such a direct way, i don't know if i'd have been as happy to live with the mistake...

autocorrect being another common feature in c21st communication, one which can be a cause of immense amusement...

but i don't want to get into that... just yet

peace-out y'all

megatron's head...

yes, it would appear that i am STILL going on...

further to earlier megatron's head related rant, there is no way that you can tell me this its an appropriate head for the ultimate bad-ass decepticon leader...

this ultimate bad-ass decepticon leader...

with this head...

yeah right... that's just cracked off!

lets be honest about this, it looks like the weight of his head is going to pull it over to one side at any minute... either that, or he is wearing an ultra-hard-wearing granny hood...

i'm not overly fussed on the pattern either, but am willing, on this occasion, to let it slide...

especially when we take into the consideration the body that it was put upon...

indeed...

it truly beggars belief...

but, on the plus side, it does reinforce my 'pop' theory about how kids perceive cool...

"ain't no kid wants to be luke skywalker"

and

"there's a reason all the kids had optimus prime"
(and its nothing to do with mispronouncing it octopus!)

i think its pretty self evident, but if its not, the best way to get an in-depth explanation is to track me down and get me wasted... its like proper pop headology (or something)

i promise to lay off the megatron for a while...

peace-out y'all

from megatron, to galvatron...

megatron is a pretty bad ass dude...

bit of a tendency to cut and run, and not so good at choosing lieutenants... but savage, merciless and cruel nonetheless...

in comparision, prime is a bit of nancy.

its like that whole "no kid wants to be luke skywalker thing", prime is cool, but he is the robotic equivalent of a farm boy...

megatron has a big cannon... mounted on his arm

he transforms into a gun, which is too large for any transformer (including metroplex, the uhm,... city-sized transformer) to actually use... in terms of the G1 toys, the scaling's a bit off...

and the G1 toy's robot mode does look clunky and lame...

i think this, and the fact that he transforms into a gun, maybe partly to blame for why so many of my friends had their own optimus prime... he transformed into a truck, with a lil' scooter and a robot (with missles and a bendy bit) in the trailer...

but megatron is a bad ass mo-fo, and transforms into a godamn gun...

BOOM!

so, obviously i was a little concerned when, having had a bit of a ruck with prime and essentially fallen off a high balcony, he was thrown outta the back of astrotrain as deadweight in deep space...

astrotrain says there was too much weight...

i say astrotrain wasn't trying hard enough!!!

then along floats unicron, and remodels our apparently 'unhealthy' bad ass mofo into galvatron...

some kinda megatron-sqaured, well there was a grid involved...

and galvatron, yeah... he's pretty bad-ass...

once more with the shoulder cannon, he even transforms into a cannon...

quite a bad-ass one too, as he manages to atomise the newly crowned decepticon leader, starscream (who else) with one neatly placed shot...

he's clearly got some issues, and for what he may have lost in mercilessness he has easily gained in brain-bubbles...

he's some kind of deep allegory as he struggles to directly take on his own creator/god, even though this omnipotent being is capable of interfering directly with his inner workings...

and that takes balls...

now, i was too young to realise that this transformation, and indeed the movie were all part of a cynical marketing ploy... a smoothly executed ploy, much less rushed than the year on year compulsory brand expansions we're plagued by now...

but it was plausible. whilst the toy version of megatron was quite lame, and definitely dated, the animated megatron was truly timeless...

galvatron seemed a reasonable update, more streamlined, more colourful and with angled pointy bits on his head... definitely more futuristic...

the animated galvatron (occaisionally needed a darker face) was one you definitely felt was going somewhere... and if not equal to his predecessor, at least more fit for the job than starscream...

but somehow with the toy, the impossible was achieved...

it was actually worse than the original megatron toy... pointy head bits gone and replaced with crenellations that give the look of a crown...

he transforms into a gun... straight out of some disco-nightmare barbarella...

i mean really, what self-respecting leader of all things evil would transform into such a lame retro-future zap gun?!

so we learnt that it was probably better to play G1 transformers without the leaders (don't get me started on ultra magns), pretend like they're on some sort of secret mission, or they've been kidnapped or something...

we learnt that the more 'futuristic' the transformer, the more likely it was to have some kind of nodule on its head...

we learnt that some transformers were just better left drawn, or animated, as cheap production limited our leaders awesomeness...

through this we learnt that galvatron always stayed a lil' quirky...

and of course, it was galvatron's 'issues' eventually brought about the end of the world...

but that's a different story...

one in which bad-ass megatron, and crazy mo-fo galvatron exist at the same time...

and that, is the way i like it

#still_not_my_cat

i don't actually own a cat...

no really...

i used to live in a house with a lot of cats...

but since then i have pretty much always not had a cat...

its a condition that i've got quite used to living with...

so imagine my surprise on coming downstairs to find the portal to 'culture corner' closed, actually that's not the surprising bit - that happened afterwards... and upon opening said portal, being greeted with the sight of dudley (still_not_my_cat) indulgently licking his balls on my sofa...

never has a cat looked more at ease, more pampered, more relaxed...

this cat doesn't care where i'm meant to sit, oh no, he's comfortable...

and that's all that matters!

but dudley, you're STILL not my bloody cat...

you don't live here...

you don't appear to be taking over my twitter photo-stream...

see, its not just a random collection of pictures of you in my house (where you don't live) and cubase screenshots (although i have been mixing quite a bit recently... more on that later)  

and i have never dashed back in through the front door in an effort to avoid you...

sure its a testament to cat intelligence that you have now managed to associate both the front and back doors with being my house, especially seeing as its not your bloody house...

you're pretty good at playing scarf outside when its cold, i have never know a cat so ready to jump on on someone's shoulders and keep their neck warm...

but your hugs are a bit 'no-one loves me' and sub-standard - must try harder!

although at the end of the day, you're still not my cat...

and you're sitting in my seat...

Godt Nytår you crazy cats!!

Godt Nytår you crazy cats!! this one goes out to everyone who came down to shake some thang, sang along or even just hassled my ass online... thank you!!
i got some some crazy sh!t planned for 2012 and i can't wait to see some of you cats at the party - is nice... happy time 8)

i've got one of those... only bigger!

big love from fb and the amazing frau linenwrecker (without whom so lil' would be possible), coming right out of your computer and into you face... yummy!! i will start divulging soon... (eeeew... sounds oozy)

until then, big love y'all...

peace-out 8)

that book...

i finished that book...

the one that took 300 pages to get good.

it didn't burn itself out...

quite the opposite in-fact... the tension was continually cranked up, and the story itself continued developing right until the end...

and then some seriously fantastical sh!t happened real quickly, was kind of brushed over, and we hit the epilogue...

seriously, wtf is with that?

hack out some of your bibbly description of the WI countryside, and hit me up with more of the flame-throwing rings and mutant supernatural bad guys...

its like peter jackson's lord of the rings all over again... they could have largely hacked out most of the first movie... "yes, new zealand is beautiful... wow, there really is some rugged scenery... with some hairy-footed people walking on it"... cut-out some of that business, make up the rest of the time with cool as you like slo-mo fx shots...

or remember that the trilogy rocks in at over 9 hours long, and just trail a bit on the cutting room floor...

i always liked the 1978 animated version... 'sa bit dark and everything. the orcses are proper random and a bit spooky...

i especially liked the version i had recorded on VHS (complete with spongey box bold adverts) where the channel four announcer pointed out they'd never had enough money to finish the project and filled we, the viewers, in on the remainder of the story line before the credits had even finished...

now that's story-telling...

two beings out of time...

the moment that started the end of not just our world, that of quintessa (not such a bad thing... esp as it happened a long time before the destruction of earth), but also the end of time itself...

two beings 'out of time' having travelled back from the year 2008 to seek out galvatron (also from 2008), and having by-passed the usual one for one exchange principle by which radical time-travel is regulated, the death of cyclonus years before he was even created was too much for the delicate fabric of space-time which ruptured...

but that's alright, because time-travel is not possible...

oh wait...

CERN broke science (twice), and doctor cox could only explain the first event away as 'mis-calibration'...

oh no... 

and, perhaps most disturbingly of all, it seems to have seriously 'messed with the processes' of the uber-cool cyclopean transformer shockwave...

and that's just not cricket at all...

reading a book...

i am reading a book, that has taken 300 pages to get good...

the first 300 aren't bad, they're just a preamble to the bit where it gets good...

its all right though... there's over 500 pages left...

let's hope it doesn't burn itself out to quick now eh?!

squash 2...

the squash is back...

in a bigger bottle...

same destructions... 
(for simplicity's sake)

however the serving suggestion is still sadly missing...

pretend rice krispies should be served with milk... and an owl.
(that's what it says on the box)

(don't argue with the box man...)