Hello. Welcum to S@E 22. Fame at last it seems, or maybe not, hard to tell. The latest flyers for the temple of sound appear to feature an S@E member on the front. Interesting, but its hard to tell if its us or not.. very wierd photo thats all green and blue and stuff..
Bassbin put on interesting jungle nights around the city, and now they are having a little membership scheme for the punters that go to their nights on a regular basis. For the measly sum of five quid, you get a copy of Bassbin 002 for free, which is the second in a series of mix tapes by Rohan and Naphta, very nice.. also you will get monthly info on upcoming releases,
gigs, merchandise, etc. You also get a pound off the door price for any Bassbin event and 20% off all merchandise. Sounds good to us. Bassbin are bringing over Photek to the Temple Bar Music Centre on October 24th, so that will definitely one not to miss. A fiver for all that is pretty cool, even for the tape alone its deadly. Anyone out there in zine land who doesnt know techno would be well advised to get the chips in..  Theres a few new zines around, we just picked up the last copy of Loserdom in the shops there, more political than usual, interesting in places.. no S@E review though, doh! Doubtlessly the summer
period will see shitloads of new zines around the place as all the little kids who are on their summer hols have loads of free time on their hands so keep your eyes peeled to the counters of the shops around the city. Nicholas Saunders of
"E for Ecstasy" infamy (sp.?) has a new book out called "Ecstasy Reconsidered". The only place we've seen it so far is Tower Records. Its a tenner, and althoughthere is a glut of new info in the book, we dont really see anything new in it that has changed since "Ecstasy and the Dance Culture". If you havent read either of the first two versions of the book, then sit down in Tower some afternoon and rip the plastic off the book and have a read of it. We think at this stage
everything about E has been well documented. Yeah, its harmless enough in the short term, it will make you depressed if you take any more than about eight in a month on a regular basis, you are less likely to die from one than being killed skiing, when you're older you will suffer from it, it gives you a very good high and makes you feel pretty happy and open. Speaking of which due to excessive work commitments we missed the Garden Of Delights weekend on drugs thing so if anyone took any notes or taped any of the talks or whatever was on, could they please get in touch with us as we'd like to hear some of what went on there. Power
FM, 98.7, easily the best station in the country, has an excellent web page at http://indigo.ie/~powerfm, with details about the station, a line up of the DJs, and links to record labels. Its currently still under construction, so have a look at it now and again to see any changes. They also now have a morning show on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, so you dont ever need to listen to any other station. Interesting little bit of graffitti around town, theres this little
man in various positions with a question mark over his head. Anyone out there have any idea what it means/represents? We also picked up the lastest issue of the freesheet Helium Bong, bit tired and predictable at this stage. Maybe if the author could move on from dwelling on how much he's disliked, and tried to focus on the more positive aspects of the punk scene in Dublin, like the DIY ethos of making records or gigs or whatever then it might prove interesting.
No sooner did we speak then we picked up a new freesheet, focusing on Country music and Americana called "lonesome highway".. although we dont like the music featured it is always good to see groups of individuals taking back control somewhat of the music they love from the big companies by promoting what they like because of the music rather than for a blind profit, no matter if its country, metal, techno or whatever. Write to them at 14 Sir John Rogersons Quay, Dublin 2.
As always you can get in touch with us at slanted@redbrick.dcu.ie.
Stop Press: We have decided to leave the country for a while. This may be the last S@E for a while. Until then you will have to make do with inferior freesheets. Unfortunately we have run into trouble with some drug dealers and this has forced us to flee for our safety. What happened was that we bought 50 Es on tick from a dealer, and then when we found out they were duds, we wanted to give them back but the dealer wanted his money, which of course we wouldnt give him, so then he threatened to kill us unless we had it within two weeks, which was two
weeks ago. So if theres any vigilantes out there who are reading this, do the world a favour and go and shoot ****** ****** of ** Sheepmoor Gardens, Blanchardstown, Dublin 15 for us.
 
 

Decal "Ultramack 006" (promo copy): You know that you're reached the dizzying heights of being a true music journo when you get a promo copy of an LP.. Decal thankfully have not made a drum n bass LP, although it has encorporated some aspects of that genre. The opener "Phunk City" which you should all know of course, having bought the split 12" still around the shops, is a slow chugging.. house?
number, not really typical of the LP. "Snake Hips" moves the LP up a gear and sets the tone, breaks and techno merged together into one ball [incidentally for all you trainspotters out there this is not the same track as the FSOL number of the same title from the "Far Out Son Of Lung And The Ramblings Of A Madman"]. "Darkstar is pretty heavy on the breaks, still maintaining that distinct Decal sound, quite dark, the scarier side of their music. "Undersea by Rail" is a more house influenced track, with 4/4 beats.. just picture yourself in the chunnel, the
beat of the track + train and all the metallic strains of the pipes from the sea above are ringing around your ears.. maybe that was what they were trying to create with this track, thats the feeling I got anyway. "Zerostar" again like its cousin Darkstar, leans towards breaks, stopping throughout for ambient cups of tea, its very poppy and light but not in a bad way, and who is the mysterious female voice at the end of the track? Haunting, distant vocals, more of the same
please. "The Bastard" for the opening two minutes threatens to explode into jungle madness, tempting you with chip pan breaks, drilling up to the familiar sounds, still has that unique Decal keyboard echo, with a very wobbly dark melody stretched over frantic Bassbin-esque beats halfway through the track. "Penthouse Suite": what the fuck is that voice sample? Horribly distorted and warped, very scary, bound to set any acid head at a gig into a terror-induced coma.. this track
loops and jumps, fades back and forth from clarity to muffled bass and snare emissions, while "Colussus" is much more ambient, a majectic FSOL type excursion. "Lo-Lite" is very lo-fi and dubby, and the last track "heavy vibes" is strained
and disconnected, clanging and hard, at times difficult to listen to. "Dead Boy" is pure blissed out ambience.. overall this LP is brilliant, even though its been three years since Ultramack 004, Decal have shown that they are still capable
of producing above average techno music. Although this LP is more formulaic than the very off-centre Ultramack 005 by Anodyne, it still takes in various styles and works well on the floor as well as in the living room. This LP is set for a late summer release and could well be the Irish LP of the year, if not the best release anywhere. Decal have a very distinctive sound, and they use this to their advantage. The tracks are very different yet still have hallmarks that you can immediately identify as being Decal in origin. I think that with some good publicity and some gigs around town, Decal should be well on their way to breaking the UK market. S@E predict big things for them.. if someone like Orbital or Leftfield (both of whom we would consider musically inferior to Decal) can get 8000
people in the point for a gig, then theres no reason why within two years there shouldnt be another 8000 punters in there for this lot. Hows about it? An all Dublin night, Decal headlining the bill, Anodyne + Rob Rowland live sets, and various DJs doing opening slots? It could happen, and on the strength of this LP it just might. Contact Decal/Ultramack Records at PO Box 5417, Phibsboro, Dublin 7, or email them at ultramack@connect.ie.

Venus Envy "Four To The Floor": This 7 track CD ep has been out a while but we didnt pick it up until recently. We wouldnt have done so either but that our paths crossed with Maura from VE on the Internet, and we bought it out of the goodness of our hearts (aaawww..).. and yowser!! Is this a fucking class piece of work
of what? Could "passes by (without a word)" be the best song of the year? Indie/guitar heaven with female vocals, beautiful rich deep vocals, the kind of voice you could fall in love with. This is more a personal thing than anything else, I generally prefer the female voice to the male voice, maybe its some sort of Freudian thing but I just think it sounds so much better. Having said that however,
the mix of male and female voices on "butt of a joke" work extremely well, very good harmony between them. The lyrics are also excellent - "I feel like the butt of a joke, when I wake up, hungover and broke/I feel like the butt of a smoke, when I wake up, bitter and broken down". I can picture the morning after in my minds eye perfectly.. not that I've ever regretted anyone I've ever slept with you understand <ahem>. Coming more from a techno background we generally wouldnt appreciate lyrics all that much [the female voice in techno works some times,
other times not, take for example the absolutely atrocious Extremis by HAL featuring Gillian Anderson from the X-Files.. is there a worse song in existence?] but these lyrics are pretty damn cool. "Disposable" is very mellow and relaxed for a while, and breaks into guitar noise occasionally.. mmm give us more of that
voice.. its pure class. "2", "4" and "6" (all untitled) are short little instrumental pieces, "2" is very quiet and well produced, a slight ambient edge to it (or maybe not.. but we always see the techno in things) perhaps? "4" is straight out of black hip hop central, and "6" sounds like a CD skipping, with these
strange samples over it, very avant garde indeed. "alien interference interlude", the closing track, is another instrumental, shame, I would have liked to hear more of Maura's voice. It's an interesting track however, slow and relaxed with this slightly edgy guitar coming in and disturbing the relative calm, the sounds have also been treated in production, giving it an alien edge. This EP is actually very well produced, there's lots of different sounds going on in the background that
you have to listen out for.. theres a much greater sound to it than a three piece. This is still available around the shops for about four quid, you should buy it. You can get in touch with Venus Envy at ve@connect.ie.

Double Club Review: Thursday the 12th of June at the Kitchen saw one of the last nights of the very popular club Influx, before it moves off to its Saturday night slot in the Mean Fiddler. First DJ of the night was Glen Brady, who was playing more run of the mill hip hop, not bad I guess. Not exactly my scene. Jon Carter (incidentally I had never heard of this bloke before and didnt plan on going to the kitchen this night but loads of people I knew were going so I went along anyway) was the main DJ, he does a regular slot in some place called the Social over in London. I hadnt heard of this place either.. someone expressed shock at
my lack of knowledge of this club, but come on for fucks sake. I dont have time to be reading the face or mixmag or any of this shit all the time. Who cares whats going on in London anyway.. this is Dublin. Anyway Carter's set was cool. He started off where Brady left off with hip hop and then moved into more Chemical Brothers territory, sort of techno with breaks in it, big beats. Then from the big beats he drifted into house, fucking hard house with plain good old four to the floor bass, I love this stuff, just shows how something simple can be brilliant and you dont have to be "innovative" all the time to be good. Saturday the 14th saw Bassbin hosting Boymerang (ex Bark Psychosis) in the Temple Bar Music Centre. Rohan and Naphta were doing DJ first but I was sitting outside in the bar area having drinks and talking shit when they were on. Decal were up next and played a load of stuff from the new LP (which at the time I hadnt heard). I have seen Decal play about eight times live now and each time
has been pretty cool. The start of the set is slower, and then they build it up to dancing levels, and everyone really gets into it. Its a welcome break as well in jungle nights cos jungle is normally so full on, and then they come on and theres more of a build up and then the atmosphere gets better as well. Boymerang was on last and IMHO was disappointing, first of all he was only DJing (I thought it was going to be a live set) and that way you didnt get to hear any of his own tracks, secondly I was expecting some serious warped out experimental shit
that was going to blow the head off me and it didnt, it was nothing more progressive or unusual than anything you hear in any jungle night, and third of all the chap is WHITE, so then that means of course that he cant be cool. Not a bad night overall though, I got to meet some very very nice people, they know who they are..

Random thoughts: <sigh> I made a rare excursion to the southside there recently, for a 21st on the hill in Dalkey. I used to be a real money grabbing fucker and over the last year I've slowly but surely cared less and less about material things and more about meeting new people and having a good time, going out, finding love, and all the other things that are supposedly free in life.. and then when I go out on the
Dart to these places it corrupts me completely. I want it all. I want to be stinking rich. I want a Nintendo 64, I want a fucking huge big tv screen with mad big cinema speakers that rumble the floor when the bass comes in, I want to live in a place that I dont have to worry about having my shit robbed.. has anyone
ever been to Dalkey? The place is beautiful, and its so quiet. Theres no little bunches of screaming kids running around on their fucking roller blades, the streets are always deserted.. in some ways its a bit scary.. the thing is I would
consider myself middle class, and then when you go out to the Southside, and you pass through all these places on the Dart like Blackrock and Monkstown, etc, and these people call themselves middle class, yet what they earn would be at least five times what my parents make in a year.. guess I should re-evalue? I've always considered my life reasonably comfortable and then when you see these places, such luxury, such decadence, I want it all.. I want to live in a place with a
view of the sea, where its quiet.. and hopefully not step on anyone in the process of getting it..  on a different matter all the way back in S@E 2 then then authors talked about a growing scourge of racism in Phibsboro at the time, and now it seems like the whole thing is blowing over again. It is hard not to be racist at times.. like the other day I was at a bank machine getting a tenner out and this Bosnian woman came up to me and started pushing me and shit.. for a while I was thinking all the usual shit, you know, what the fuck are they doing here,
can they not fuck off back to their own country, isnt the war over there, and then I passed by this poster that said "Remember the Famine, Say to no to racism against Refugees" or something along those lines, and I guess it is a pretty serious thing to have to move from where you are from, leave your whole life behind,
to come over to a strange place.. it must take a big step to do such a thing, and if I was in their position, as relatives of mine were 150 years ago, how would I like to be treated? When you're being hassled for your hard earned cash it is hard to see the bigger picture but sometimes you have to look beyond the immediate.. what can we say but fight it, dont feel it.

Right, I spent a quarter of a hundred quid to go and see Radiohead, and
I put it on my S@E expenses account, using my American Express gold
card that all S@E contributers get. Want to
know why Massive Attack's sound was so quiet and shitty ? Well I met up
with this bloke that works with Massive and he said that their sound
engineer had spilt a load of water or something all over the mixing desk
just before Massive came out, so their sound was fucked. And they didn't
have time to change to another mixing desk or anything so they just
played on with their knackered sound system. Their sound engineer was
fired straight after the gig !! So they would have sounded better, trust
me.
    Oh and Radiohead were pretty darn good too. I'm not a real indie head
myself (and they're not a real indie band) but there was a great buzz
going around the RDS. Sure with thirty five thousand seventeen year olds
why wouldn't there be ? And it was outdoor, and it rained !! But nobody
noticed because they were too busy jumping around and sweating a lot and
singing along to a good bit of the new LP (OK Computer) and a good slice
of The Bends and about two or three from Pablo Honey. Funny bit of the
gig was when Thom York says "Right, now for a bit of kareoke." To which
they started playing Creep, and wouldn't you know, everybody sang along..
And for all you underground heads that are moaning about some bands being
commercial well fuck off and stop shopping in Skate City if you want to
remained untouched by the capitalist's evil shiny claws that some call
commercialism. Or something.

Global Goon "Goon" Yet another questionable release on the Rephlex label, but of course being the dirty filthy consuming trainspotters we are, we had to buy the thing. Its a mix of annoying horrible tracks, like the garish pink opener, "St. Martin", which like that uniform from the girls school around the top of Dominic Street, you cant bear to look at it for more than ten seconds; or the unsightly green and yellow curtains of "Der Kipper", with as much co-ordination as an
eighties bachelor pad. "Chime time" is a skanda jacket clash of orange and bright blue, even the most bare faced philistines will not be able to appreciate this repulsive, hideous, gaudy, showy piece of degenerate ridicule. "Skip Glider" is a bright luminous yellow, a big fluffy feathery thing from some tacky shop, but
strangely enough it grows on you, somewhat happy in its intense colour. Tracks like these have you reaching for the skip button (sorry to be buying CDs again but this had 3 more tracks on it than the vinyl version), but then you listen to the Ford Puma metallic silverness of "Metal Buffalo", or the jarred stainless steel clanging mixed with throbbing purple bass of "Pagan Relict", and you think that this album just might match your sitting rooms carpets. The dirty charcoal
grey of "Cleaning song" also saves this album from going in the bin with those Japanese lampshades from Habitat. Overall a mixed bag of textures, no blacks or whites or other extremes, mostly hues, tints, auras, shadings, shadows, blurred impressionism, a pure lack of right angles. Not a brilliant album.