Pink Floyd's Pulse DVD is truly awesome but you do need a decent 5.1 surround sound to appreciate it properly. Watching it really brought back memories of seeing them at Wembly Stadium in 1987 - 9/10.

Hostel - This is a pretty gruesome little affair where three back packer blokes are enticed to a Hostel in deepest Slovakia by promises of tasty lasses who let it all hang out. On the surface the hostel looks pretty appealing to the three lads but they soon get more than they bargained for. The victims soon get worked on with a wide range of power tools and other DIY stuff you might normally find in B&Q - 7/10.

Basic Instinct 2 - Another pretty gruesome affair but for all the wrong reasons. If it hadn't been for the UK location and British acting cast - David Morrissey, David Thewlis, Charlotte Rampling an Stan Collymore (isn't he meant to play footy?) - then the DVD woulda been back in the case within 30 mins of watching. Utter cobblers - 3/10

I can't say I'm a huge fan of recent Hollywood attempts at bringing graphic novels and comics to the big screen. They usually turn into insipid heartless vehicles for whatever American eye candy they pay millions of dollars to turn up and generally act badly.

V for Vendetta on the other hand is a nice surprise. I read the graphic novel a while back and absolutely loved it. When I heard that the novel had been earmarked for the silver screen I had that horrible sinking feeling about the compromised crap that Hollywood would no doubt churn out.

However I was wrong. The film doesn't exactly stick to Alan Moore's original creation and there's plenty of artistic license taken by the director of the film but the end result is 2 hours of highly enjoyable viewing. The cast is excellent as well (not sure about Natalie Portman's made up English accent though) - John Hurt, Hugo Weaving, Stephen Fry and Stephen Rea amongst others. One of the nice things about the film, and it really surprised me because the producers are the Wachowski brothers, is that it's the script and the acting that keeps your attention instead of high-tech special effects. Also at no point in the film did you get that feeling of "get on with it" either. All in all 8/10.

The Legacy has been treated to a shiney new set of Oz Super Leggera 17" Alloys wrapped in Toyo Proxes T1S 215/40ZR17 rubber. The car sticks to the road in high speed corners now and there's not even a hint of understeer like my old Mondeo. The Mondeo had the worst understeer of any modern car I've ever driven, even with decent tyres...trully appauling and trouser soiling.

I also fitted four new high performance vented, grooved and drilled brake discs and carbon fibre pads which makes the car stop on a sixpence.

Any go here http://blog.zygonia.net/content/binary/DSCF0249-s.jpg and ogle at my shineys.

Weird, dasBlog has stopped syndicating entries with images, here's the last entry for the RSS/Atom readers -

http://blog.zygonia.net/PermaLink,guid,1d932c45-acd9-430f-b72c-38d252c00b9b.aspx

Last week my trusty old Mondeo Diesel stripped it's timing belt and then went on to commit engine hari-kari. Valve heads were lopped off and given a sound thrashing in the piston pots and gawd knows whatever else got mangled, dented and fractured. The cost of an engine rebuild, 600-800 quid, was too much to swallow and there was no guarantee that it would've run properly again. It was a 98 model and I paid £1200 for it two years ago and racked up 35000 miles (it failed with 153000 miles on the clock) so I guess I got value for money. I was sad and disappointed to see it go because I'd kinda hoped for another year of motoring out of it before looking for something else and it was a really comfy car to get around in.

Anyway I needed a car and so it was time to go shopping and I ended up with a 1992 Subaru Legacy 4WD 2.0 GT Turbo. That model era is my favourite shape of Legacy and really looks the business compared to the later euro-curvy-bulgy designs that sadly polluted the minds of Japanese car body designers from the mid 90's onwards.

My bro in NZ has one which I got to use loads when I was over there last year and I absolutely fell in love with it. These are no ordinary estate cars, the standard power plant puts out 236 BHP and the 0-60 time is 6-7 seconds (at a guess). It's the first car I've owned that plants you firmly back in the drivers seat when red-lining all the way through the gears from standstill, through 9 speeding points and all the way to loss of license and a year in jail.  It's awesome!

My car at the moment is pretty much in stock condition but the previous owner added a new stainless steel sporty exhaust system which coupled with the boxer flat four engine makes it the most interesting and loudest sounding car I've owned. This is it here -

It doesn't look terribly flash at the moment, but for the first time in my life I've had the urge to do boy racer stuff to a motor and pimp my ride. I'm fancying new 17" alloys, low profile rubber, dropping the suspension, debadging and new paint job and of course the obligitory turbo waste gate dump valve :-) Must be a late 30's crisis thing or something. This is my brother's pimped up Legacy but I reckon I'll be getting wheels with a bit less bling -

Well...I did the final show last week but the good news is that I'm moving to a new slot with one of the other guys, Eric, on a Thursday night (10pm to 12am). It suits me better because 1) I get my Friday nights back and 2) I missed the on-air banter and spraffing about music we used to have when I started doing Fridays. We kinda always intended to dual up on the show but Fridays were never good for Eric. Anyway...here's the playlist (only if you're faintly interested):

The Dandy Warhols - Bohemian Like You
Sonic Youth - 100%
Boris - Ibitsu
The Fall - Pacifying Joint
Neutral Milk Hotel - Song Against Sex
Part Chimp - B2
Bowery Electric - Black Light
Do Make Say Think - Dr Hooch
Godspeed You Black Emperor - Sleep
Explosions In The Sky - Have You Passed Through This Night
Tangerine Dream - Stratosfear
Ash Ra Tempel - Freak 'n' Roll
Roxy Music - In Every Dreamhome a Heartache
King Of Woolworths - Stalker Song
FC Kahuna - Hayling

Back In the Saddle

It's been month since I did a show due to being on call and a dose of the flu and a cough that hung around to make it virtually impossible to speak without spluttering. Anyway....here's the play list for last nights show:

Hayseed Dixie - Black Dog
[correction] Neutral Milk Hotel - A Song Against Sex
The Fall - Clasp Hands
Spizzenergi - Where's Captain Kirk
Beck - Girl
65 Days of Static - Install A Beak In The Heart That Clucks Time In Arabic
Part Chimp - B2
Bed Head - Living Well
Ivor Cutler - Life In A Scotch Sitting Room - Jungle Tip (Owl)
Ivor Cutler - Life In A Scotch Sitting Room - Episode 1
Takako Minekawa - Fantastic Cat
And The Native Hipsters - Mr Magic
Grandaddy - A.M. 180
Grandaddy - He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot
13th Floor Elevators - Your Gonna Miss Me
Silver Apples = A Pox On You
Neu! - Hero
King of Woolworths - Stalker
Bowery Electric - Fear of Flying
Hooverphonic - Sarangi
Santos - Combination
Backini - Little Big Horn
Stereolab - Get Carter
King of Woolworths - To The Devil A Donut

I thoroughly recommend picking up King of Woolworths' Ming Star album. It's a bloody marvellous and the track Stalker will put the willies up you on a late dark and windy night. I picked up some God Speed You Black Emperor and have been listening all day to them. They're utterly amazing, the album Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antenna To Heaven is incredible. It consists of four 20minute (ish) tracks that take you on an aural rollercoaster ride you won’t forget - in a word mind-bending.

I don't know what the Attorney General is so upset about, isn't this what the Home Office wants for all our good citizens anyway? They just happen to be starting from the top.

Wow...this guy had some imagination. One of my favourites is 'Earth Orbital Bombs As Nuclear Deterrents'.

Via: The Register

I haven't done the show for a couple of weeks, mostly because I fancied a couple of Fridays off just to finish work and kick back in front of the telly and catch up on some reading. Also I've been feeling a bit burned out and there's no point sitting in the studio with a lacklustre and last minute choice of tunes and no research and just playing tunes like a robot.

That said, it hasn't kept me from adding a few new items to my music library over the past few weeks -

Mogwai - Mr Beast their newest release and Come on Die Young and Young Team just to complete the set. I'm also seeing them in Edinburgh in April at the Queens Hall. Looking forward to it immensely.

The Dandy Warhols - Come Down, Dandy's Rule Ok, Odditorium Or Warlords of Mars, Thirteen Tales... and Welcome to the Monkey House. I was really put off the Dandy's because of that infernal Vodafone(?) advert which ruined a perfectly good tune. I'm glad I revisited them as they're bloody marvelous.

65 Days of Static - Fall of Math, One For All Time. These guys are just amazing and I'd say they're one of the standard bearers of the 'post rock' movement. If you like Mogwai then your gonna love these guys.

Sparklehorse - I already had 'It's a Wonderful Life' and figured it was time to flesh out with Good Morning Spider, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot.

Roxy Music - Roxy Music, For Your Pleasure, Stranded, Country Life and Siren. I had these one tape years ago and they were ridiculously cheap on Amazon's marketplace.

The Wedding Present - George Best, Seamonsters, Bizarro and Take Fountain.

The Delays - Faded Seaside Glamour and You See Colours

So as you can see I've got a lot of listening to catch up on and I now need a bigger shelf for my CD's. Anyway I'll be back on the radio next week and if you're in the Perth or Pitlochry area next Friday then tune into 97.5FM between 10pm and midnight.

It's that time of year again for the South by South West Festival (SxSW - March 10th - 19th) in Austin Texas. I first heard about SxSW last year when I started tuning into BBC Radio 6 a bit more frequently (Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone to be precise). The festival has a fairly electic schedule of bands playing and it was where (on radio 6) I first heard what has become one of my favourite bands - The American Analogue Set. You should checkout radio 6 next week for ongoing coverage. Next year I'll maybe make it over there and also to another festival in the states I've wanted to attend for years.

Scotland 18 - England 12 time to get some new wheels for that chariot :-)

And.....the Daddy arrived:

I shouldn't laugh but the method of destruction in the style of Frank Spencer left me with tears of laughter. What topped it off for me was the polite letter from the museum asking Mr Flynn not to return in the near future. There is the making of a mastercard advert -

Bus fare into town - £2.80
Two tickets for the museum - £8.40
Nice cup of tea and a biscuit in the museum tearoom - £3.40
Forgetting do up your shoe laces, tripping on them and taking out two rare Chinese vases - Priceless

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4671450.stm

Not quite sure how I found the first one or even why, but there's all these websites out there about UK roads and all these people who seem to have catalogued, documented and photographed them. Somehow I've managed to waste an hour and a half looking at this stuff:

http://www.uk-roads.org.uk/
http://www.cbrd.co.uk/
http://www.pberry.plus.com/ukroads/index.html
http://pathetic.org.uk/
http://euclid.colorado.edu/%7Ermg/roads/

And it just goes on and on....

Well it's been six months since I started doing the radio show. I was reckoning I'd got the measure of the knobs and dials and gotcha's on the studio desk and had the beginning feelings of competancy doing this thing. Then some blob of discrete matter bloody well had to attach itself to the underside of a CD when I wasn't looking. My attentions were elsewhere prefading in another track in my headphones then I realised that there was no sound coming from the on-air monitor...two minutes in, The Egg got stopped in it's tracks then there was the deafening sound of dead air...all 20 seconds of it...ouch.

Anyway this is tonights playlist. I think my fav tracks were 13th Floor Elevators and Silver Apples.

Pere Ubu - Non Alignment Pact
Butthole Surfers - I Saw An X-Ray of a Girl Passing Gas
Mercury Rev - Something For Joey
Malka Spigal - Antimatter
Curve - Chinese Burn
The Knife - Pass This On
Lightning Bolt - Ride The Friendly Skies
Boris - Ibitsu
Stereolab - Moogie Wonderland
Four Tet - Sleep, Eat, Food, Have Visions
Julian Cope - Mystery Trend
Grandaddy - A.M. 180
Electrelane - Film Music
Comets on Fire - Brotherhood of the Harvest
13th Floor Elevators - Slip Inside This House
Quantic - Apricot Morning
Captain Beefheart - I Got Love On My Mind
Nick Drake - Sunday
Wagon Christ - Bend Over
Wire - Pink Flag
Ozric Tentacles - Disolution
The Egg - Angel of my Soul
Silver Apples - Program
Royksopp - What Else Is There?

Took a night off to do normal stuff like drinking beer! Back to normal this week though. If you're in the area (Perth) then tune into 97.5FM at 10pm for 2hrs of top tunes.

This was last night's playlist. Played quite a few 8-10 minute tracks which I couldn't really get away with when it was just a 1hr show. Fave track of the night? Belle and Sebastian's 'Sleep Around The Clock' and Electrelane's 'Film Music'.

Bert Jansch - Strolling Down The Highway
Belle and Sebastian - Sleep Around The Clock
Malcolm Middleton - Loneliness Shines
Television - Marquee Moon
Wolfgang Press - Kansas
Tom Vek - C-C (You Set The Fire In Me)
Ladytron - Sugar
Electrelane - Film Music
The Fall - Hilary
Stephen Malkmus - No More Shoes
Joy Division - Transmission
The Sensational Alex Harvey Band - Framed
The Rezillos - I Can't Stand My Baby
Alien Sex Fiend - I Walk The Line
The American Analogue Set - Hard To Find
The Egg - Angel of My Soul
Tangerine Dream - Stratosfear
Nurse With Wound/Sterolab - Simple Headphone Mind
Kraftwerk - Spacelab
Curve - Chinese Burn
Frank Zappa - Peaches en regalia

Another handful of tunes played on the show. Fav track(s) of the night were The Widow/L'Viaquez by The Mars Volta (you should listen to the lyrics...mind bending) and Grandaddy's Collective Dreams of Upper Class Elegance.

Stephen Malkmus - No More Shoes
Low - California
Mogwai - Dial: Revenge
Mogwai - You Don't Know Jesus - Bonus extra track because of finger trouble :)
Black Mountain - Don't Run Our Hearts Around
Explosions In the Sky - Your Hand in Mine
Iron and Wine - Woman King
The Postal Service - The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
The Orb - Perpetual Dawn (Album Version)
The American Analogue Set - Hard To Find
Goldfrapp - Utopia
Arcade Fire - Neighbourhood 2
Polygon Window - Polygon Window
Boards of Canada - In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country
Hawkwind - Master of the Universe
The Mars Volta - The Widow
The Mars Volta - L'Via, L'Viaquez
Tom Vek - The Lower The Sun
Grandaddy - Collective Dreams of Upper Class Elegance
Magoo - East Polar Opposites Meet
The Polyphonic Spree - Light and Day/Reach For the Sun

A bit late but if you're interested this is the playlist from the show a couple of Fridays ago. If not...move along...

The Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog
Jesus and Mary Chain - Teenage Lust
Sparkle Horse - It's a Wonderful Life
Malcolm Middleton - Loneliness Shines
Spiritualised -Ladies and Gentlemess We are Floating In Space
Royksopp - What Else Is There
Black Mountain - Don't Run Our Hearts Around
Boards of Canada - Music is Math
Caribou - Bees
Like a Stuntman - King Kongs
The Orb - Ghost Dancing
System 7 - Gliding on Duotone Curves
Kraftwerk - Kling Klang
Grandaddy - A.M. 180
Revolting Cocks - Do Ya Think I'm Sexy
Can - Pinch
Egg - Angel Of My Soul
Engineers - New Horizons
Killing Joke - Like Like Blood
Portishead - Mourning Air
Lush - Light From a Dead Star

I just treated myself to a new toy (excuse the fuzzy photo). It's a Creative Zen Micro which is compatible with Napster To Go which I am about to upgrade to (more on that in a later post). Anyway...the 5GB disk might not seem huge compared to the Zen Touch, iRivers or the rather nice looking Toshiba Gigabeat, but it's enough storage for roughly 1200 tracks at around 3 to 5MB a track. Plenty to keep me entertained whilst cycling, walking and my forthcoming trip to see my wee bro in NZ in October...anything with a bigger disk was another 100GBP and the dimensions became less than comfortable for my pockets.

Another selling point is the built in FM radio (I missed listening to the radio on public transport) which works a treat even in my office which has more RF generating kit than Edinburgh Airport. The unit is solidly put together and I'd even go so far to say that the quality of the built is at least as good if not better than Apple's iPod range.

When re-charging (either from the mains adapter or USB cable) the Zen emits a gentle pulsating blue glow which is aesthetically pleasing to the eye and is a nice touch.

The touch sensitive controls initially took some getting used to, however switching to the least sensitive mode got me past my initial finger trouble. There's also a reassuring click from a built in speaker to give you an audible cue when you've selected a menu option, track etc, though this can be turned off.

The sound quality is also excellent and the headphones that come out of the box are comfortable to wear and give a good sound reproduction. There is also a range of preset EQ settings but you can also customise your own EQ settings from a 5 band graphic equaliser.

Finally, the retail box I bought came with a bonus rigid case with belt clip and desk stand.

All in all I'm well pleased with the Zen Micro and it's huge improvement on my bulky old Zen DAB

Score: 8/10

Not just content with polluting blogs with comment spam, I just took a look at my referrer list....jeez referrer spam now, heaps of it.....sigh.

Seems I rattled through and fair old set on Friday. If you heard the show then I hope you enjoyed it.

Marilyn Manson - Disposable Teens
Editors - Blood
Ladytron - Sugar
David Holmes - My Mate Paul
Nurse With Wound/Stereolab - Simple Headphone Mind
Boards of Canada - In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country
Silo - Prime Movers
Dead Kennedy's - Winnebago Warrior
The Fall - Black Monk Theme
At The Drive-In - One Armed Scissor
Tom Waits - Hang on Saint Christopher
Fischerspooner - Ritz 107
Manitoba - Hendrix With KO
Battles - HI LO
Hawkwind - Golden Void
Wire - Pink Flag
King Crimson - Starless
King Crimson - Red
Mudhoney - You Got It
Royksopp - What Else Is There?
Boredoms - (spiral)
Boris - Ibitsu
Stephen Malkmus - Pencil Rot
Amon Duul II - Wie der Wind Am Ende Einer Strass

Sadly I've had to turn off comments due to the amount of comment spam. Contact me on k e v i n . k e n n y  _a t_  z y g o n i a . n e t if you want me to tack on a comment.

If you're in the Perth/Pitlochry/Aberfeldy area then you can tune into my 2 hr slot of eclectic (dare I say) tunes every Friday night from 10pm onwards. The frequency is 97.5FM and the station is Heartland FM . We're also holding an open day tomorrow (30/7/05) from 10am to 4pm where you can come visit the station meet the the folks involved, get a tour and see how things work. I do believe there's a BBQ and liquid refreshments to be had too. I'll be there from about 1pm.

Yep...just noticed the summary of posts by date control is broken always showing January.