Welcome again to the magical world of S@E. We've been going a bit gig crazy of
late, so this issue has a bit more gig reviews than usual. Gigs coming out of
our arse. But thats a good thing. Because we have such nice arses. A gig would
be glad to come out of such fine establishments as our arses. Exciting news on
the Warp front is that the Two Lone Swordsmen (aka Andy Weatherall and Keith
Tenniswood) have been signed up and will hopefully be putting out something on
the label pretty soon. Their first 3 LP s are still knocking about the Dublin
shops on the Emissions Audio Output label. This years Stockwell Steppas was one
of our fave LPs of the year. This is your last chance to enter our short story
competition. The closing date is Dec 21st or so. We're not going to bother
telling you all the details again cos we've done so in the previous three
issues. Suffice to say all you have to do is write us a short story and you
might win a load of cool CDs and a couple of nice t-shirts.. big thanks to
dECAL who set up the Plaid interview.. thats about it really. All we have to
say is said in the issue so get reading, dammit. Contact us at
slanted@redbrick.dcu.ie or by snailmail at 10 Whitethorn Road, Artane, Dublin
5. See you all next year and have a nice Christmas .

Wishkah the blue haired commie freak types something for us: Look down. At your
clothes, like. What are you wearing? Where'd you get them?  How much did they
cost? Were they worth it? And what do they say about you?  Clothes are how you
label yourself. They say you shouldn't label people, but then they also say you
shouldn't drink to excess. What They say is pretty much irrelevant. People do
label people on little information. The main way you can affect how you're
labelled is by the clothes you wear, since that's what people see when they
look at you. Hmm, let me think of a few case studies. Right, how about "the one
black stripe" The Editor. He wears a bubble jacket and usually some kind of
amusing techno t-shirt. Come to think of it, I can't remember his trousers, but
I know they're dark blue. Okay, sod that, I can't remember anything about
Stripe below his waistline. But he has bleached hair.  He certainly stands out
as being a bit technoy, and for a long time I had him marked as
raver-scumbag-syringe-wielding-gimme-all-yer-money type, in a nice way.
Labelled. Thayl, Mr. Other Half of S@E, wears baggy stuff. Most of it has
labels. Quicksilver and so on, expensive surfer gear. Baggy expensive combats,
fleecy expensive tops. That makes him alternative-music type, nothing like torn
jeans and a Head-Tearer-Offer death metal t-shirt, but something other than
your average chinos-and-rugby-shirt wearing chart hits dancer. Mick\Mike over
there, he wears expensive stuff too. He goes into Tribe and spends lotsa money
on No Fear stuff and tings like dat. He also speaks like a black basketball
player. I'm not sure quite what this labels him as, so maybe I shouldn't have
mentioned him. He's certainly amusing anyway. Spike is trapped in the eighties.
He wears skin-tight jeans, a leather jacket, and typically a Def Leppard
t-shirt with his Docs. A pretty brave thing to do, I suppose, in a society
which values up-to-the-minuteness as much as ours does. Bob,
sometimes-contributer to S@E looks like your typical indie kid - generally
corduroy trousers, tight-fit t-shirt, Adidas jackety-thing. Either that or full
ex-army combat gear, right down to real army boots which kicked in real East
European teeth. But he's not really an indie kid at all, his CD collection
consists mostly of heavy fucking shit.  Me, I'm usually to be found in
all-black, but I don't really like goth music.  You'll notice that one other
factor is to be found here - musical taste. It's how we define people. You get
put into a specific set in society depending on what type of music it looks
like you listen to. Pretty strange system, really.  Fast-growing dormitory town
Clane, Co. Kildare is where I hail from when I need my washing done. It's full
of Adidas tracksuits and closed-mindedness.  First-year kids in secondary
school have been known to call a classmate of Asian descent a chink or
something to his face - dunno if this is unusual in Dublin, but it makes my
stomach churn. They have also been known to comment aloud in the local dialect
of English something along the lines of "Ehh, blue shoes, feen..." at my rather
fetching blue Docs which I love to bits.  Anyway, yes. Adidas tracksuits and
comments. Brings us to two different branches of conversation. Right,
tracksuits. EVERYBODY wears Adidas these days - chart hits dancers (The Spice
Girls [or The Pop Tarts if you so desire]), indie kids (Joyrider, anyway, no
doubt loads more), heavy metallers (Korn). My virtual sister Karen is a mad
Korn fan and wears an Adidas tracksuit, but she *looks* like a Korn fan and not
a Spice Girl wannabe when she does. Unfortunately, I couldn't tell you why,
it's a phenomenon I'm still investigating. The other branch there was hair.
"The One Black Stripe's" short, bleached hair, Thayl's, eh, rather messy 2-inch
long mop, Mick\Mike's short black-basketball- player look, Spike's recently
shaven head, Bob's infamous look-I-can-hold-a- pen-in-my-hair carpet, and my
own conservatively styled blue crown - you don't grow hair, you wear it. Like
with a car. It too says something about who you are. You could cut it with the
aid of a pudding bowl and wet-look-gel it forward, and bingo, you're scum. You
could have it like mine only in a normal colour, and bingo, you're deeply
boring and sad. Grow it long and don't wash it much, and bingo, you're a greasy
metaller. I'd put in a new paragraph here, but there isn't really space, is
there? I'll finish up by pointing out how clothing trends tend to cross over
given time. Take a look at the early nineties - rockers wore combats and baggy
tops, skangers wore baggy trousers (remember X-Works?) and tight tops. And now
lookit - combats have gone respectable, you can get nice presentable combats
that look just like something you'd wear with a rugby shirt, only with a pocket
on the leg. My linguistics lecturer even turned up last Tuesday in a pair of
these. And those combats which aren't respectable are baggy now. They usedn't
to be, if you remember correctly. Same thing with Thayl's tops - started off as
those X-Works black-and-white affairs, but got picked up on by surfers and now
have a Quicksilver logo stuck on, come in some earthy colour and anyone can
wear them. Clothes can say as much or as little about yourself as you want -
looking around I can see a punk-listening Satanist friend of mine wearing a
blue shirt, black jeans and runners and looking decidedly normal. If he wanted,
he could wear a torn denim jacket, high Docs, a mohican cut and a
five-pointed-star medallion, and he'd get labelled as what he is, pretty much.
But he's not that. He's a nice guy, not some mad antisocial freak. But it's our
music and stuff that decides our social category. Good ol' society again. Gotta
love it. I could now provide you with a moral to take from this rather
badly-structured flow of thought, but I'd prefer you to take your own stuff
from it. So bye.

DEcal/Anodyne at the Temple Bar Music Centre, Nov 7th: Yay! Its the best techno
act in Dublin shakin their asses for the punters. The S@E posse were there at
8pm to make sure we got the free CD. Free stuff is the business. YOu cant go
wrong with it at all . Needless to say we didnt need to be there til about half
nine or so but it didnt matter. We got to sit down and relax in the bar of the
TBMC.  Which strangely enough was having a beer promotion, in conjunction with
Heineken and Murphys. The promotion being that those were the only two drinks
available. And they were both 2.50 a pint. I'd call that a pretty fucking shit
promotion. Hardly a promot ion at all. More a monopoly than anything else. But
who cares. Once theres alcohol in it we dont give a shit. We got to chat to
Alan O'Boyle and Maura from Venus Envy before the gig. DEcal are hoping to put
an EP out with the release of the CD. We handed out 50 copies of S@E as well to
the bemused punters. Some of them knew what it was though. Also something we
noticed this night was in the inlay card of the Lo-Lite LP. See the picture in
the background? (you should all be able to refer to this picture easily,
because you will have bought the CD by now, havent you? If not, go and get it
NOW) Thats taken at the junction of the M50 motorway and the Navan Road near
Blanchardstown. See the big arch in the distance? You used to be able to walk
up there, before they put these big metal spikes on the side to stop drug heads
wandering up there and chilling out. Such a shame. It was a fair walk away,
maybe 40 minutes but always nice to wander up to when you thought the sky was
green and your hands left trails for about a meter behind. Anyway, Anodyne was
on about 10.15 or so and played for half an hour. Holy shit. What a fucking
set.  Unbelievable. Pure noise terrorism. Only recognized one track from
Ultramack 005 and it was warped and fucked up seriously. Sounded like a train
colliding with a glass building. Actually thats an unfair description cos it
implies some amount of chaos in t he sound when actually its quite formulaic
(to a very small extent) and structured. Reminded me of Squarepusher.
Brilliant. Hopefully there'll be some new EP or something from him very soon.
Who's the dude on the stage with the PVC trousers though? Anodyn e is amazing.
This was the first time we'd seen him live and we'll defintely be checking him
out again in the future. DEcal came on around.. 11.20 or so and played til
12.40. Excellent set. Deadly. Cant remember any of the names of the tracks.
Theres one that keeps getting higher and higher thats a real crowd pleaser.
Their stuff is a lot more organised than Anodyne defintely, but I like the 4/4
beats, being a silly house head at times. Thayl the big wuss cant hack them at
all cos he's a filthy metaller who likes all the mad warped ou t shit. They
really got the crowd going, and at the end of it they were screaming for more,
and the two lads obliged us with an encore, after they'd hoovered up a load of
drugs.. only messin. Unfortunately I was a bit drunk and me and James were
plastic g lassing each other in the head up the front and acting the general
drunken scum, doing Tekken 2 moves on each other and stuff which might have
scared some of the punters away from the front. For a while there was an
invisible line that nobody would cross, but eventually the line drifted closer
and closer to the stage as their set went on.. the crowd was a bit wierd..  at
first I thought it was a jungle crowd, cos there was this 6'4" girl with an
amazing figure wandering around, and there was loads of lads with baggy
trousers and wallet chains (die!!) there too, but then there was indie heads
there as well, "giving it l oads" as much as indie heads ever do. Strange mix
of punters, but then I suppose DEcal's sounds appeals to loads of people.
Anyway we all had a great laugh, and it was a nice cheap night, defintely be
going to see DEcal again in the near future. 

Top Five S@E Illnesses (seeing as how we're all coming down with colds and flu
and shit like that as winter approaches):
* AIDS (Acquired Intelligence Deficiency Syndrome): This virus is usually
 picked up in secondary school. Symptoms in males include acting macho and
 beating those people smaller and more intelligent, and in females acting like
 slappers and wearing far too much make-up, and acting dumb to please males. 
 Symptoms in later years include going to shitty chart discos like The Court, 
 The Vatican, and Slapper Faced Cocks, and listening to the mind-numbingly bad 
 mantras for the masses like FM104 or 98FM.
* Multiple Screwosis: This occurs when one person is seeing several people at
  once on a regular basis, without the partners realising it. It is a very short
  disease and usually ends in bouts of violence, tantrums, screaming, and
  destroying personal posessio ns of the victim. 
* Anoraksia Nervosa: State of mind where victim feels they must buy every
  single 12" that gets released. Ever. Victim will often go without food for
  days to finance the vinyl addiction. They take comfort in talking to other
  anorak-clad lunatics about obscure remixes and b-sides.
* Chicken Box: Sickness that affects the stomach. Usually occurs around 11pm on
 a Friday or Saturday night. Symptoms include greasy fingers, bad breath,
 inability to swallow properly.
* Spanish Measles: Affects those living in Dublin mainly. Occurs around June
 and can last up to three months. Symptoms include talking loudly, roaming the
 streets in packs of 20 or more persons, eating in McDonalds and wearing
 brightly coloured backpacks on
 ones chest.


Parties are the bloody business. They are the bees fucking knees. S@E were just
at one such kick-ass party a while ago, and it was so good that it prompted me
to write this article-type-thang. This particular party was a 21st (so we
actually had some lame excuse to boogie on down, not that you need one) that
was thrown by some Communications (or CS) students in DCU. (Incidentally, CS's
are the coolest people in DCU, I wish I was a CS). Me and my friend Singer had
armed ourselves with cans (after deciding that we wanted to stay off anything
else that we may be busted for during the course of the night) and we arrived a
bit early, the door was opened by a bunch of girls and we were led into some
blue-lit room galking at these be-skirted beauties while openi ng and closing
our mouths in silent appreciation of the finest pieces of art that the gods
ever stuck legs on. Yum yum.  So I guess that's one of the requirements for a
good party, beautiful people. And if you think that I'm shallow for saying
that, why you're probably as ugly as muck. You need lots of beautiful people at
parties, blokes and girls that you'll lust after all evening long, people
you'll try to sit down beside in the quiet room where everybody's smoking
joints. People you'll bump up against when the stereo's playing some bouncy
music. Ah ha, there's another thing, the music. What you want is
pumping-jumping-shake-yer-fat-arse music for most of the night. Then when
people start getting knackered and nicking other people's beds you want to slap
on some slow ambient tunes, jazzy stuff maybe? There'll always be some fool who
complains about the sounds being crap, that's the guy who'll wake up the next
day to find puke all over his jacket. (sucker !!!) At the party we were just at
a while ago some bloke brought decks and started DJ-ing, fucking ace or what?
But then all his mates wanted a go, and they played crappy house. Ohhh dear.

	Of course parties have their downside. The party-thrower usually 
has to clean up (unless he or she lives in filth like all of S@E do), and 
there's always a load of shit-heads at these parties, friends of friends 
that everybody else wants dead. Even worse are the gate-crashers who 
mostly happen to be chancer scumbags from the surrounding area. So it's a 
good idea to get yer pumped-up mates to guard the door from any of these 
undesirables. Anyway, I'm kind of wandering off here. The point of this 
was really just to comment about how cool parties are, and how more and 
more people should throw them, and how S@E want to be invited to them 
all!! Right, back to the usual crap

At last it's here, my hours of biting nails, smashing my head of walls 
and climbing on top of telephone boxes in Artane has ended, 'cause at long last 
(ages after the promo copy was posted to us)  probably the most eagerly 
awaited album of the year (well, it was in the S@E offices anyway) has 
been released, Lo-Lite, alias Ultramack 006, the second LP from those 
hippest of Irish dance acts, Decal. (or dECAL as they like to be known as 
sometimes) Incidentally, we all got this album for free at the Decal gig 
that was on a while ago. (The first 100 people in got the CD for free, 
cool or wot?) The gig's been reviewed somewhere else around the sheet, 
duh, go look. Anyway, this album's the business. I've been listening to 
it non-stop while surfing the web on my new computer. 'Cause it makes me 
feel like a bloke from that film HACKERS, it's "future-techno" ya see. 
[grin] Well, actually there's a bit of everything on this album. Break 
beats, tiny amounts of house, jazzy moments, ambient moments, and loads 
of other just plain cool moments. The tracks haven't been loaded up with 
layers and layers of samples or anything, this thing kinda goes for the 
simple yet effective rhythm beat up front with clever beeps and whirrs 
happening all around. Snakehips starts with some kind of siren thingy, 
attacking your ears until another kind of friendlier beepy thing kicks 
in, relaxing you and pulling you in. Then Decal tease us with break beats 
and go mad with more sirens things. Great stuff. Track two, Self-Storage 
has to be my fave track of the whole lot. It's like this track keeps 
coming up to you and then running off again, drums fading in and out, the 
whole thing putting you into some trance where yer head says "Dammit, I 
gotta jump around somehow, aargh !!". Weird huh? Mr. Warbled voice keeps 
trying to tell you stuff through the track, but we'll never know what 
he's saying, because he doesn't have the decency to stop mumbling for one 
solitary second. Excellent track, best one on the disk.

	Next up we're calmed down a bit by the very funky "Camoflage" 
(Hey Decal, did you spell it wrong on purpose, in some sort of quirky 
reference to the illiterates that populate our city and determine what 
music succeeds and what music fails? Or maybe you're just bad at 
spelling..) Anyway this track's a slowie, a soother, it's not as good as 
the next one though. Zerostar show us Decal dipping their heads into the 
world of groove-ambient (no, I didn't just make that up, I swear). 
Zerostar is a fish under the sea, lazing around, poking it's fish-nose 
under rocks, always swimming slowly, and never worrying about Jaws or 
Free Willy or Captain Nemo. Zerostar is like staring at one of those 
sperm-moving-up-and-down-in-a-lit-up-jar for ages, except you're 
listening to it, so it's better. And to finish you off, at the end of the 
track a seductive woman's voice murmurs something in the background about 
being attractive or something.

	I'm not to far gone on the next song, Malk, I think the other 
half of S@E (Stripe) might like it, it's kinda housy. And I 
hate house in all it's forms. (Including the building type too) The next 
one, Pigeyes gets Wacked, is in danger of becoming an annoying 
house-type-track too, until the COOLEST combination of weird sirens and 
groovy bass lines comes on and totally gets you hooked. (This is that 
ascending and descending siren song that Mr. Stripe was talking about in 
the gig review). This has a freakisly catchy ping-ping-ping sound that 
plays over this mega-grinding bass, you just have to hear it to know what 
I'm on about, this rivals Self-Storage for track of the album actually, 
now that I think about it..
	The title track Lo-Lite is another stab at ambient-avec-jumpy 
beats. Nice techno sounds all around to sedate you into a comatose-bliss 
of some sort. Legging onto Phunk City, this has the coolest wavy sounds, 
with far off clangings and a steady beet to keep us interested. Then fade 
out with Iona, a totally ambient "coma-song", I call it that, not because 
it put me into a coma or anything, but if ever there's a scene in a film 
with somebody dreaming stuff while in a coma, they'd play a song like 
this, except Decal do it better, it has their trademark Decalish sound to 
it. This whole album has a certain sound, a hous/techno/weirdo siren 
sound. Decal's music has matured a lot since Ultramack 004, Lo-Lite is an 
excellent piece of work, well worth the measly twelve quid that I've seen 
Comet charging people for it. If you don't believe me then why not go 
into Tower and listen for yourselves?

Hip hop horray, DJ Shadow at the Red Box. You can't go wrong with the Red 
Box, the sound system in there is thumping!! It's an aural assault on 
your eardrums, it's a longitudinal wave-centre of vibrating coolness. 
(check yer physics book's after you've read this) Anyway, I had just 
beaten Sandra 9-2 at Tekken II on the Playstation and I was totally in 
the mood for some groovin'. There was a big mad queue from hell outside 
the Red Box, but it turned out that they were people without tickets!! So 
we, the elite few with our paper passes, overtook the line of squares, 
got groped by some hairless apes at the door (AKA the bouncer-types) and 
ran up the stairs to be greeted by the sounds of John Carter playing 
infectious groovy hip-hop that instantly forced everybody into 
body-shaking of all forms. Up on the wall there some weirdo graphics were 
being projected, some old conductor bloke waving his 
little-conductor-stick wildly, and beside him were random pictures, I 
think I remember seeing the Stealth Bomber (it obviously had some deep 
and hidden meaning man). The place was PACKED, jammers I tell you, and 
the doors had only opened at eleven (it was around twenty past when we 
got in). Soon enough Mr. Carter left the decks and Monkey Mafia 
(replacing the Propellerheads, who'd dropped out due to illness or 
something) came on, with their bass and their drumkit and their keyboards 
and all, playing some kinda techno stuff that got people cheering. They 
would've been really good too, if their singer guy hadn't kept screaming 
"Respect to da masses mon, respect to da people in da house" and other 
such originalities. Then the Monkee's (hehehe) left and Shadow came on!! 
And he wasted no time getting down to the scratching and bopping, leaving 
no old jazz record unturned and no bit of drum un-eh, unused I suppose. 
Everybody in the whole of the Red Box were jumping up and down, the 
people behind the bar were spilling drink because they couldn't stand 
still!! Throughout the gig we caught bits of The Number Song, Building 
Steam and other ones, but they had been mixed over by other tunes so much 
that they were hardly recognisable at all. And we also heard loads of old 
stuff that we should have known, The Beastie Boys were in there, Bootsie, 
I could have sworn I heard Bootsie. Anyway, you get the message, loads of 
old hip-hop all mixed together and made new again. Bleedin' great stuff, 
and he played for ages too. What, about one and a half hours, pretty good 
for a DJ type I suppose. Only the ending was crap, he came back on to say 
thanks and the he played the start of Stem (you know, the Guinness add 
music) but before the drums or anything came in it faded out, and all the 
lights came on. NOOOOO!!! Dammit Mr. Shadow, you can't end a totally 
exceptional show with some half-ass end song like that. Grrrrrrrrrr. (We 
forgave him later though, because we think he's phat man, phreaking 
stuff. Yeah.)

Bjork @ Olympia MOn 17th Nov: Surprising that Bjork played here considering she
packed the Point out w/ Underworld in August 96. Spose the Olympia would be
more "intimate" or some such. And indeed it was. Although the Point is always
good for a laugh. Aft er downing a pint in the Handel Bar on Fishamble St.
which is fast becoming a fave spot for the S@E posse, we walked up to the
Olympia and arrived too late to get one of those little bracelets for going up
the front. Curses. We managed to secure a spot by punching and kicking our way
through the crowd which was a healthy mix of ravers, indie kids, and five foot
high girls in body length dres ses with their hair tied in knots. Bjork fans
then, presumably. There was someone DJing beforehand, although he/she/they were
nowhere to be seen.  We endured an hour and a half of mutant asian dance and
jungle before Bjork took the stage around 9.30 or so. Although the sound of her
new album might take a bit of getting used to, the music being very disjointed
from the vocals, Bjorks voice is incredi ble and every time she opens her mouth
its like a mad storm of tones and screams, the power from her throat is
unbelievable.. she was accompanied on stage by a string sextet or octet (?)
cant remember exactly how many people she had playing the strings, and then
this bloke, possibly Mark Bell from LFO, looking after the beats and peripheral
noises. She sang a mix of old and new, including "Hunter", "joga", "5 years",
"Bachelorette", "all neon like", alarm call", "pluto" (which we didnt think she
would be capable of doing live with all the crazy vocals in it but she p roved
us wrong) and as an encore "All is full of love", a very dreamy number.. and
from olden times, "Venus As A Boy", Possibly Maybe" (personal favourite),
"Human Behaviour", "Hyperballad", and "Violently Happy". I would have liked to
hear her sing "Big Time Sensuality" but you cant have everything in life I
suppose. The backdrop on the stage was cool too, with all the lights and
waves.. the sound system was crystal clear, and fucking LOUD (temple bar music
centre take note), and the crowd really got going after a while..  all in all
one cant find fault with this gig which lasted about an hour and 15 mins.. and
afterwards it was back to J.'s house where I spent the entire night plugged
into the wall.. oh well..

Portishead @ Olympia Wed 19th Nov : After having a grand total of 5 hours sleep
in the 2 days after Bjork, and having spend an inordinately long amount of time
with J., in which time I wrecked my own head and probably melted hers as well,
yours truly met up with the Phillips Head Screwdriver in a very weakened state.
We queued outside the Olympia early, and as soon as we got in, we acquired a
blue bracelet for getting up the front, and then sat down in the bar and
knocked back pints of heineken for the rip-off price of 2.70 until I was ready
to pass out with fatigue and until the PHS was pretty gurned up, having
swallowed some acid about an hour pr eviously. Portishead came on at 9.20, we
have no idea what was being played before they came on but judging from the
bass pulses we picked up in the bar, it was some sort of low-slung hip hop..
where Bjork is nice and cute and fluffy, Portishead are dark and scary and
black, and as we assumed our place down the front, right next to the speaker
stack, this sense of dread swept over me, and I was sure at some stage during
their set I was going to break down in tears or slash my wrists. But suddenly I
saw this warm side to their sound, and this was helped by Beth Gibbons manner
on stage, who was smiling and friendly rather than aloof and mournful which I
expected her to be.. like Bjork they played a mix of old and new, including
"All Mine", "Cowboys", and "Over" (new single) from Portishead, and "Roads",
"Glory Box", "Mysterons", "Sour Times" and the classic "Numb" which was
criminally ignored by the masses when it was released as a single many moo ns
ago before Glory Box got them the recognition they deserved.  Their sound live
works very well, and Geoff Barrows work in the background, fucking the output
up, dampening the beats and producing that harsh crackled edge to Gibbons Voice
is an essential part of the Portishead "experience". Critics have said that the
new LP is very difficult to listen to, in comparison to "Dummy", which was more
laid back, music for fucking to, but having heard tracks off "Portishead" live,
theres a warm core to the music that you have to look deep for, like Autechre
in some ways perhaps, and when you find it, its worth it cos its very
pleasurable and relaxing, despite initially appearing as paranoid and/or
awkward. They played for about an hour and twenty minutes, and again the sound
was loud and clear.  . fair play to the equipment people.. another good gig
then, but by the end of it I was dead on my feet whereas my companion was ready
to go for a stroll around the city.. and the next day I realised I had lost
some markers, prittstick, and a shitload of pens in the Olympia, my bag having
been left open on the floor fo r about an hour at least, so if anyone comes
across them could they please send them to us here at S@E mansions.. ta very
much..


Venus Envy- The Temple Bar Music Centre Fri 14th Novemeber

	Having frequented the TBMC not so long ago for Photek and dECAL, its
becoming something of a regular haunt for the S@E crew. But no matter how 
many times you go there, ya don't get used to the shitty sound. I cant
remember it being too bad for Pavement, in August (but Steve and co. 
could play through a "Tomy-My First Tape Player" and still sound like God ),
but our recent visits have been somewhat diluted due to the (lack of a)
sound system.
	That aside, Venus Envy are one of a few (but only a few) of the guitar
orientated bands in Dublin at the mo. that make me excited. In fact they make
me very excited. So excited that when I listen to their "Four to the Floor"
E.P., I lose all control of my bodily functions. Or something like that anyway.
	The dodgy sound affected the vocals mainly, leaving them 
meandering behind the wall of noize generated by the Sonic Youth-esque guitar
"leads", and the solid rhythm section generated by Maura's and Eugene's 
ear bending guitars. Comparisons to the 'Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and
even to Stereolab are inevitable, but this doesnt detract from the originality
and beauty in the songs.
	Despite being completely unfamiliar with the set, short of the 
4 songs of the e.p., the performance was breath-taking. Highlight of the 
night was "Passed by (without a word)", from the e.p.Boo-boo of the night
goes to the usually godlike Maura, who managed to plug out her guitar mid song,
and passed the blame on to her "big runners".ok then.
	Pity the place was half full, and damn cold. But, quibbles aside,
a damn good night was enjoyed by all. Go see them play in the Da club on the 
13th December, with Palomime and a "guest d.j.". I'll be there.

Stripe> So Thayl, what did you think of 1997 then?

Thayl> Eh, what? I'm busy, go away.

Stripe> But Thayl, we're doing an article about the good and bad bits of 
the past year, don't you have anything imaginative to declare about 
experiences, music, gigs, parties, drinks and drugs you may have partaken 
in during the illustrious year that was '97?

Thayl> Illustrious? What's that mean?

Stripe> It means "cool", now just fucking tell us something funny or I'm 
going ram this phreaking tape recorder up your hairy moth eaten arse!!!

Thayl> Yikes!! No need to threaten me there. Anyway yea, 1997 eh? Wow, 
that was over quick. I can hardly remember any of it. There's been loads 
of great times, seeing Pavement in the Temple Bar Music Centre had to be 
the best "live music" moment of '97. And also seeing Anodyne for the very 
first time was extremely cool. Release wise, I'd say my fave. release 
this year was Photek's first LP, Modus Operandi. And Hard Normal Daddy by 
Squarepusher, I just got that a while ago and I've been listening to it 
non-stop, so that gets a mention in the best of '97. Right, can I go now?

Stripe> No!! You've hardly done one paragraph yet, tell us about what 
you did for the summer.

Thayl> Um, I worked in a bar.

Stripe> Is that it? You boring fuck!!

Thayl> Well I went out and stuff too, there was that Hope Collective punk 
workshop thing on in the City Arts Centre that I walked into by accident.

Stripe> Yeah? What was that like?

Thayl> It was crap, most of the bands were shite. Punk music in general 
is pretty lame. All these other zines keep going on about how excellent 
the punk scene in Dublin is. But they don't seem to realise that all punk 
music is a big load of horse-manure. But at least they had the right idea 
with DIY music and zines and "spreading the word" and all.

Stripe> Zines? I don't see any other zines around

Thayl> Actually they've become pretty scarce recently. Helium Bong, 
Planet Fish, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Loserdom, The World Won't Listen, 
sure I haven't seen any sign of them in ages. And I thought Gearhead 
Nation had gone under too, until I got sent the latest issue a while ago. 

Stripe> I remember you slagging off The World Won't Listen a while ago.

Thayl> Heheheh. I was only messing really. Although the quality of zines 
during the summer really dive bombed, I still have to say "fair fucks" to 
all those boys and girls that took the effort to write stuff and spent a 
bit of their cash on printing them all out. This zine work ain't cheap ya 
know.

Stripe> Anything else?

Thayl> Oh oh, I got a new computer during the summer, it's a Pentium II 
with [next ten minutes of techno babble cut for viewers pleasure] 
incompatible with my Ultra ATA controller card.

Stripe> AARGH !! Shut the FUCK UP about your damn computer!!!! Jesus, my 
head is melting.

Thay> There's also been a hell of a lot of horrible music this past year. 
With such top name vulgarities as Sash, DJ Quicksilver and all that other 
tripe you hear on FM104. Speed Garage also reared it's ugly head, the 
sooner people get tired of that the better. And every single person that 
did a cover version of any song this year deserves death. Covers in 
general are usually bad, but this year they were appalling!! I just wish 
for the day when the people that bumped off the "Notorious" BIG come back 
and finish the job by taking out Puff Daddy too. And where the hell do 
they get these names? Puff Daddy? If he had grown up in Coolock with a 
name like that he'd never have lived to see his confirmation.

Stripe> Well Thayl, if -you- had lived in Coolock with bleached hair 
like that, and those skater clothes, you'd never have made it out of your 
house alive. Anyway, you can shut up now, I'm finished with you.

Orly give up any hope of ever putting an Indeed U R out again and writes S@E another article: Right here is my ,now, monthly contribution to the pages of S@E - Am I part of the posse now lads? (erm do I want to be?!) Right, I wont further 
that so :)
  Out of a complete lack of anything to do this Sunday night (all my 
friends are working - dang it!), I have decided to grace these here 
pages, and in doing so have raised the standard of writing by ten fold 
(wah ha ha ha....)
   After my last  contribution Im going to proof read this article about 
20 times before I hand it over. I apologise profusely  to those of you 
who spent last month wandering aimlessly around Temple Bar looking for 
the new Hard Rock Cafe (and to those of you who thought Eamonn Dorans  
was about to be bulldozed, and actually cared - although im sure there 
werent too many of you so I dont feel  as bad about that.) . I can claim 
one of two things ( the former being the truth): I had an incredible (yet 
it is) but freak bout of Dyslexia at three in the morning when I was 
writing the article - I meant to say the Rock Garden was where Eamonn 
Dorans now stands, but the words fell backwards outta my mouth on to the 
page. Else I could claim that I meant Planet Hollywood (and hence wouldnt 
look so dumb) and that I just got confused about the location.
  I desperately tried to blame the Eds poor typing skills but the bastard 
produced my handwritten script and proved me wrong in front of the whole 
canteen. Why am I writing this again? Anyway im very very very sorry. It 
wont happen again ( I lie, I lie), so you can no longer slag me about it 
- ok?
  So to the actual point of this article methinks:
A song I was listening to today is the reason I started thinking about 
this - In particular the words
  I know what I know, I sing what I say
    we come and we go thats a thing that I keep at the back of my head....
   Youre probably thinking this is going to be a very morbid rant, but 
its not I swear. It actually helped me be positive about about stuff 
thats been getting me down lately .
   Since departing my old way of life and starting in college, a lot  of 
my perceptions about my friends and friendships have changed.. One or two 
of my friends have been wrecking my head a bit lately. Im not saying its 
their fault (just in case they read this and figure out its them, but 
really it is!) - hey im probably being paranoid , but it seems to me that 
theyve changed since theyve started college. People I dont like (and I 
thought they were of the same opinion) are now their friends and im 
beginning to wonder if theyre losing their grip on reality altogether, 
but this is not my point.
  Ive come to the conclusion its just not worth it anymore - I dont mean 
my friends, I mean stressing over whether theyre thick with me or not. 
All this headwrecking crap ive been putting up with lately is not going 
to happen no more. its better just to deal with life day by day and not 
to deal with continual crap from people. I did that for the last two 
years and it nearly made me suicidal, from now on I refuse to deal with 
ppl who dont have any time for me. Life is just too short. I can always 
stare at a blank screen if needs be, (then again theres always chat).  

The Null Set, Jubilee Allstars, Joan of Arse-The Funnel Mon? nov. Never been to the Funnel before, it's an ok place. Well its bigger (and better) than, say Behans, or The Attic (may they rest in peace). Nice long room with the stage at the top, and the ba
r down the back. The way things should be. And good sound too.
	Anyway, Joan of Arse opened........hmmmmm. Just a guy on guitar and his mate on drums. Well, he couldn't actually drum, he was a drummer impersonator. Artist's nowadays, eh? I dunno if Joan of Arse are actually trained classically in their respective ins
truments, but to my ears, the singer/guitarist could neither sing nor tune his guitar, and the drummer couldn't drum. Maybe they were going for the whole out of tune melancholic sound, but it just sounded shit. Not that the songs were bad, or anything, th
ey were kinda like Palace Bros. and Sonic Youth, but its like trying to read a book written in 4 year olds writing......  I know theres such thing as artistic merit, but , i dunno, there's a fine line, and I think it was crossed......
		Jubilee Allstar's started off dodgily, mangling their biggest *hit*, "Which kind", one of the few J.A. songs i like. More dramatically out of tune guitars didn't help their cause, but, admitadly, they got a lot better quickly. Their set was mainly of co
untry_esque ballads, in a kinda Pavement's-recent-albums way. Definitely not a bad thing, but then I've never loved The Jubilee Allstars. At least keyboards dont go out of tune... ;)
	The Null Set were fabulous. They are fabulous and always will be fabolous (touch wood.). Its hard to exactly put my finger on who they sound like, They sound kinda Pavementy in places, melodic and quirky,possibly a bit more shouty yet my freind compared 
their first number (played with the trumpet player in the UCD orchestra ) to Korn. I mean diverse or what? Their set wasn't as long as I would have prefered, but with three bands on the lineup I can't really complain.  I thought they were better at the D.
I.Y. fest. in August, but so is life.  It gives me hope to find bands as intresting and original as The NullSet in Dublin. They're playin' a Hope gig on the 12th December, with the ever wonderful Jackbeast, and those fruitsome lads The Waltons, in the Fus
ion bar.  Admission is 3 quid worth of toys for a womens refuge, but bring loads more.

Singer: 1997, eh? err, what a year, eh? Ok, cliches aside, '97 wasn't a year 
to miss.err.*ahem*
	Ok, best gig (so far), was Bjork. Dont ask me why. It was just fab.
I could live off Bjork-beats(tm) and Bjork-strings(tm) all of my life. Sortof.
The Olympia was a great place for the gig too. Real nice place.
	Best film? er, not being the biggest movie buff in the world, I'm 
pretty sure I'm wrong on this. Probably. Anyway, Mars Attacks was the best new
film I saw. Bloody good director, that Tim Burton chap. Lots of mad stuff 
happens in the film. See it. I did.
	Best single? Spiritualized's "Electricity". Lots of live B-sides 
(on two versions of the c.d.). Great stuff from mad owl Jason.
	Best Album? nnnnggggg, this is hard. Either "Homogenic", "Ladies 
and gentlemen we are floating in space", or my brand new "Pet Sounds Box set".
Depending what mood I'm in. I dont like this best of the year stuff, anyway,
never had, never will. oh, they're by Bjork, Spiritualized and The Beach Boys,
for the musically impotent out there.
	...and thats all that happened this year.Everything.Thats 1997 for ya.
	

Stripe: 1997 was a bit of a hectic year. What I remember of it anyway. Destroying half on all ones brain cells with serious hard chemicals is not advisable when you still have work to do in college. Anyway on to the more important shit.. music! LP of the 
year.. its a hard one. Very hard. But at the end of it all, there was one winner that stood above the rest. It was the middle of the summer, and I had just been fired from a job for something I didnt do. It was boiling hot every night and the pressures of
 living in a city with 10 million people were really getting to me big time (London, this is). I'd come home every night after an hour and a half on a sweaty, smelly, overcrowded, piece of shit tube and my head would be fucking completely melted, no salva
tion in sight except maybe a couple of bottles of Biere D'Or in the fridge at home. When I'd come home, I be ready to kill the first person that crossed me. There was a CD player in the kitchen and I'd put on this LP and suddenly everything would be ok.. 
it was like a breeze of cold air blowing across me, like my head was suddenly cleansed of all the shit that had accumulated during the day. This LP has so many influences on it, the production is incredible, and theres a cool mix of extremely laid back tu
nes, like the last one, or mad just-lose-it-for-four-minutes ones like the sixth. The vocals and noise and even the addition of the choir on the second track made it just the perfect thing to come home to every night for a while when I thought I was going
 to go crazy with the heat. 
This LP was Spiritualized's "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space". The only prescription you could get in HMV that was used to treat the heart and soul. What can I say but it is a must buy. Jason Spaceman is a musical genius, and although this L
P did well, its a scandal when you see other recycled muck like Radiohead, Oasis or the Verve doing well among the indie kids when there something like this on offer.. such extremes, such wonderful noise.. just beautiful. As for song of the year.. must go
 to Locust for the hidden track on the "Morning Light" LP (reviewed last issue), or maybe Venus Envy's "Passes by (Without a Word)" which although it is not techno, it certainly did something special for me. Gig of the year.. hard one. Might be the Orb on
 St. Patricks Day. Dont really remember much of it now though due to a serious ingestion of illegal substances about an hour before the gig started. Twas pretty mental though. Aphex at the Essential Festival was insane too, it was brilliant hearing Aphex 
tunes firing out of a huge big speaker stack like that, and knowing all of them. Squarepusher at the Essential was pretty savage as well.. mad drill beats played at a dangerously high decibel level. Not for those with pacemakers. Fanzine wise.. Far be it 
from us here at S@E to blow our own trumpets,
but we have yet to come across anything that even pisses close to our February Zine "Kows @nd Kre@m". Short stories, tales of hiking across Europe, music reviews, stuff about punk and the internet, straight edge, Christmas, mugging, anarchism, personal di
lemmas, shitloads of music and gig reviews.. there was a lot of reading in it, which was what we aimed to do with it. We lost money on the damn thing cos certain dickheads felt that 70p was too much to fork out of their miserly pockets, and said so in the
ir pathetic zines, which we dont see much of these days. I cant think of any other zine that would have kept the reader occupied for so long. Moment of the year was when some beautiful stranger sat down opposite me and asked me to meet her the next day fo
r a drink in the sun.. who knows, I might regret saying this in several weeks time.. the future is so uncertain but fuck knows I dont think I've been as happy as this in many a year.. its amazing how your opinion of something can be turned on its head com
pletely when you meet someone who you care a lot about and who seems to recipricate those feelings.. overall its been a good year. I think I've learned a few things, especially
over the summer when I wasnt making any money at all but I was having a fucking amazing time with close friends, and now I've met someone who I've gotten very close to in a scarily short space of time.. and I lost a good friend to my own paranoia and stup
idity, but now things seem to be getting reasonably back together.. even if it isnt the same as it used to be.. will it all fall apart? Will I turn back into the greedy old cynical bastard I was this time last year? Fuck knows.. I dont have the answer (I 
wish I did) and nobody else does, what can I say kids but your destiny is your own to a certain extent.. life is as shit as you make it, but you can make it worth your while. 
   Now, if you dont mind, after that optimistic sunshine-and-lollipops type stuff, I'm gonna go get sick, get seriously fucked up on some bad drugs and stay up all night playing Playstation and watching pornos. I'll feel somewhat back to normal then.. ahh
hh yes... 


Bob the mad anarchist bastard gives his opinion on the year: What a year, a year of a nation learning to remember all the things it's tried to forget, and trying to forget all the things its learned. Ireland is changed,to use the hackneyed words of W.B Ye
ates "changed utterly", no longer are we an insular , xenophobic, little bastion in the armput of Europe. Face it for one the papers are correct (as well as being right...) we are the "Celtic Tiger", we are a young, intelligent, articulate nation, poised 
on the brink of taking  hold 
of a society and moulding it in our own image, into something better..if  we only could. This nation is a paradox, on  one side there's (for want of a better word) us, the common people. On the other side it's Them, the establishment, the disciples of the
 squinting windows, the holier than thou, vallium popping , mass going , Late Late 
watching pillars of Irish Society.  You know the swimmies(SWP) are right , it all comes down to class in the end, 'cept in ireland we don't have a working class, a middle class and so on , instead we have the so called  "respectiable classes" and those th
at arent.  Thesr people have Ireland in their musty death embrace, they are the tail that wags the dog of Irish society. The most concrete manefestation of this dog-wagging in the recent past, has been the so called "X-2" case. A _13_ year old girl was ra
ped ( or "allegedly raped" let's keep the PC fascists happy) and the question of her having an abortion was raised.....so yay on to the supreme court, the moral majority have to 
have their day in court ..forget about putting the poor kid through more and more trauma, substantive issues have to be ironed out..it's in the interest of the nations morals....honest.  Just cause her parents don't have enough cash to hush it all up, jus
t cause their travellers ( again sorry PC police "members of the travelling community"), their child gets taken from them and put into EHB care..conditions weren't proper you know...
Yet again, morals and values being emposed..This country does need to find a solution to the abortion problem, but exploiting the problems of a 13 year old to do it is totall wrong. The "respectable classes" of this country are happy to shut-up, and clean
 their windows ( while seeing what their at next door) untill a nice pop issue comes up, one that doesn't affect them, and with a nice clear cut moral stand point as well, preferably one that the church or some ivory tower dweller can "guide" them on.
It's the ultimate act of moral cowardice to have toi take all your moral standpoints from someone else. If your going to take a stand on an issue, make your own bloody mind up, have an opinion, give a damn, don't let the tail wag you...sure listen..questi
on..but in the end it's your own choice. Some pompus cleric on the dias at Sunday Mass is not your moral guardian..you are..accept the burden, live your life as you see fit...you decide..
Thats our problem as a nation we have never stood on our own two feet, we have never released ourselves from the mantle of the roman catholic church and her credos , we have'nt grown up enough as a nation to stand on our own two feet, weve always had to t
ake the lead from others. The only time we've ever deviated from the lead of the UK and the USA was during WW2 when we were superficially neutral, and stood against the tide of our bigger neighbours. Typically enough we quickly fell back into step, and ha
ve seen fit to ape our neighbours and the US for the past 40 odd years. Now they're letting us become the playthings of the christian right, allowing them to play out their holier than thou abotion melodrama in our courts, making a mockery of our country.
  This country and her people should have the maturuity to take a stand, and live by her own decisions, rather than be a lackey running up and down to global opinion....  frankly its time to wake up.....

This is an interview with Rohan and Naphta from the jungle promoters Bassbin. It took place in the Funnel Club during the Plaid gig. 

S@E: talking to Rohan and Naptha from the Bassbin Collective here.. first off can you give us any news of any upcoming gigs, releases, anything like that?
Rohan: Ok.. next week I am going to London to buy a studio. Well, not a studio. A sample. Naptha's gonna be chipping in with a few things, a mixing desk, a computer. We're hopefully gonna have the studio set up within three weeks. From then on we're gonna
 start recording. We're not going to push it, we're not going to rush anything out. Theres no point. We're gonna try and make it slowly. At Christmas time we've got a No U-Turn gig with Ed Rush, Trace, Nico and MC Rhyme Time, which is probably the best bi
ll in Dublin, ever, on the drum'n'bass scene. So at the moment, things are going pretty well.
S@E: You said there you're going to be setting up a recording studio. Are you hoping to put stuff out on your own Bassbin label soon?
Rohan: Absolutely. We're hoping to do something for say, February or March. As I said, we dont want to push it, cos theres no point in putting out anything thats rubbish. I'm gonna hand you over to Naphta now cos my mobile is ringing...
S@E: OK.. well I was talking with you (Naphta) earlier on about the Bass Odyssey stuff thats out now. If you're putting out a record, do you hope to push the boundaries a bit with the sound or is it more a case of making a tune the punters will like? 
Naphta: The way I play out is always to get some balance between dance floor participation, and then pushing the boundaries to a certain extent. I think a lot about the way I play stuff out there before I actually do it. I think an awful lot about it, to 
get a balance between the knowledge I already have and spontaneity as it occurs. Its a difficult one to get, when you get it, its kicking, when it doesnt work.. try again. As far as the stuff I actually want to produce goes, I want to produce stuff thats 
seriously rythymic, but also work in some stuff that people havent heard before. The only way to make this music progress is to try and incorporate new stuff. 
Theres no point in recycling the same breaks because its too easy. I wouldnt get a kick out of it and nor would Rohan. We want to get a new kick out of it, to direct it a little further.
S@E: Do you think its important that people from Ireland make releases?
Naphta: Yes. Its really crucial. But theres no point in trying to ape what we've heard before. The crucial thing is to take the sound and re-interpret it, according to our experiences. Its not about throwing in some Irish trad, or pseudo Irish nonsense on
 top of a breakbeat, but to inject our sum total of our musical experience, whatever that is. We shouldnt pay too much attention to whats going on in London or wherever cos then it will just be the same.
S@E: If you look at Dublin now, the popularity of breakbeat music, with yourselves and Quadraphonic, you're both packing out the venues. How much more popular can breakbeat music get? If you look at England at the moment, drum'n'bass seems to be passing o
ff in popularity. Labels like Suburban Base have even turned to garage (audible laughing from Rohan and Naphta). Can it get any bigger with the advent of people like Roni Size, Goldie, etc passing into the mainstream?
Naphta: I dont think its a question of necessarily getting bigger, its a question of self-maintenance. The scene can survive as it is if it continues to generate new music, new labels, new sounds, new producers, thats good enough. It doesnt have to keep e
xpanding, it doesnt have to take over the world. That way it can lead to oblivion commercially. It can be taken over, it can be corporatized. It doesnt have to go that far. It will survive if the music is being made and given out to a core audience who wi
ll maintain a small level in the scene, thats enough. If we can get involved from our angle, thats good as well.
S@E: What way can you see the music progressing at this stage? Jungle has been around for the past 3 or 4 years, do you think its reached a peak? 
Naphta: Its reached a peak insofar as attention has gone, in the media. We may even have passed over that peak. That may be a very healthy thing. Theres no outisde pressure on whats going on right now. Theres more room for people to try different stuff an
d there'll be less presuppositions about what they are meant to produce. Of course, there is a lot of trash being produced, there always has. Theres a lot of generic rubbish coming out right now. I am still excited by releases I get from week to week thou
gh. It can still happen. 
S@E: Anyone you think is good then? Particularly progressive or innovative?
Naphta: Elements of Noise, Tonic, Trace, The Full Cycle Crew do a lot of really good stuff, Dillinja has loads of talent defintely. Reinforced is the ultimate label for me cos they just keep pushing it. If it gets released on Reinforced then I am interest
ed immediately. They represent the cutting edge as far as I am concerned in the music.
Rohan: They're not dancefloor oriented though. 
Naphta: They can still cut it though, it depends.
Rohan: Well, thats ok when you're sitting at home, listening to it. Theres actually a point on this I'd like to make. A problem with drum'n'bass at the moment is that its just fucking slamming. It just puts a lot of people off. Theres no thought put into 
it by the DJ. DJs arent thinking enough about what they're playing. Its just bang, bang, bang. You gotta think about the girls in the audience. You gotta hear about people who want to hear nice music.
S@E: Is it the old intelligent vs. dancefloor debate then?
Rohan: No no no..
Naphta: No no..
S@E: Well, you can have music that caters for both. As for progressing, well I;ve been listening to jungle since you were on Power FM since late '94, and the music has changed but not much, and as far I can see breakbeat music has reached a peak, I cant s
ee it changing anyway. How can you progress? Music wise? Will any progression come from the more "coffee table" end of things?
Naphta: Well, one of the key labels for me is No U-Turn, and the reason they are is  a key label is because they have a completely utilitarian view for d'n'b. Not only just the kinds of sounds that they are after, but in terms of what way a DJ uses their 
records. I read something about Nico who runs the label, who makes records with DJ mixing in mind. Which means he makes a record as an incomplete piece of music that is designed only to make sense when it is mixed by a DJ. The whole medium of communicatio
n is not finished by him it remains to be finished by the DJ. And that is the process of communication which needs to be followed. More musical d'n'b can be nice. You can make jazzy stuff, you can make stuff with a melody. For me the stuff that is there a
s a DJ tool, thats the way to continue, to make sense of what the DJ does. Otherwise its just a re-iteration of past aspects of great music, be it jazz or funk or whatever.
S@E: So you still reckon that the DJ has an important role to play in the drum'n'bass scene, or just in the dance scene in general?
Rohan: He's the most important part of drum'n'bass.
S@E: Well, I would be of the opinion that the creator of the music would be more important than the DJ. I'd be coming more from an ambient/shoegazer background, I started getting into dance music through stuff like the Orb. I do think the DJ is important 
when you're in a club, but less importance. What do you think? Well, obviously as DJs you wouldnt agree with this.. I'll let Rohan answer this one cos he's going mad here !!
Rohan: The whole point is, you have DJs and they're playing brilliant records, but they're not making the most of the records. What is the point in slamming out twenty dark tunes in a row. They have good tunes, but the people are going to get really bored
 with them. You've got to make the tunes. You play a dark one, and then you bring in a light one afterwards. It doesnt have to be Bukem-ish. I'm not slagging him off, although some times I think he should be.. but you've got to put beautiful tunes in so t
he dark ones will impress on you so much. You have to play tunes that work with each other. Anyone can mix the beats in continuously and have a beautiful beat mix. The whole point is you've got to make the music work and make people actually want to dance
. To make them feel something. 
Its low how many times can you be hit in the face. But then if you're hit in the face, and then kissed, and then hit in the face, you'd feel the emotion every time. 
S@E: Yeah you're right.. but as DJs you'd obviously support the DJ culture.
Rohan: No, if the producers werent making good music, then we'd be out of jobs. Naphta: Its not simply for its own sake that I say "I support DJ Culture", just cos I'm a DJ. I've heard DJs play tunes I really liked and I thought they fucked them up and ma
de a mess of them. I've heard other DJs play the tune I liked and I'd say yes, they put them in the right context there. The DJ is a translator of the music, and unless the translation is there, its just two different languages. Then they're misunderstood
 completely. 
S@E: ok... is there any question I should have asked that I didnt?
Rohan: How good is No U-Turn going to be on the 21st of December? Heheh..
S@E: And whats the answer to that then?
Rohan: Just be there, you'll find out. 
S@E: I dont like to talk about this much, but commercially, is Bassbin doing well? The big question, the mighty dollar and all that shit..
Rohan: We didnt make any money until Photek, and thats a years work. Just over a year. After that I can afford to buy one sampler. Which isnt much money. The rest is just money going back into the events.
S@E: Is making money important to you?
Rohan: No. The whole point is to build up a studio. To make the records. That was the point in starting the club. Well, the original point of starting the club was because me and Shane (Naphta) couldnt get gigs with Quadraphonic. We had to get gigs on our
 own. So I went to the Mean Fiddler and said "Give us a gig". They said no. So we went and hired the venue. We borrowed a credit card. We wanted to DJ it out. That was why it started. Now its to start the label. To make music. Its progressing. 
S@E: You know what I'm gonna ask now.. is there any rivalry between yourselves and Quadraphonic at all?
Rohan: Ask Brian. Heheh..
Naphta: I'll second that.. heheh...

This is an interview with Ed and Andy from Plaid who played an excellent gig in the Funnel Club down the quays on the 28th of November with dECAL. Their new LP, Not For Threes, is available on Warp Records now and you can get it in all the usual shops aro
und town that stock good music (you know which ones they are).
S@E: Any influences on Not For Threes? Its a very individual sound, cant think of anyone who sounds like you.
Ed: All the original Detroit boys I suppose. 
S@E: Anyone closer to home?
Ed: Loads of people. Anyone we've ever heard I reckon.
Andy: I reckon Ed maybe. Anything I hear as well. But when we are together, they stuff that Ed does. I'd hear that most. Not that its any good, heh..
S@E: Whats it like being signed to Warp Records? We're big fans of that label.
Andy: Its really cool. We got a good relationship with Rob whos one of their people. We've known him for about five or six years. He's pretty friendly, and it doesnt seem like a business relationship.
S@E: Do you think being on Warp has any influence on selling records?
Andy: Yeah I'd say so alright. In terms of the technicalities of selling records and distribution, they have really good licensing deals all over Britain.
S@E: Can you see ambient music changing or progressing in any way? It seems to be leaning towards breakbeat with stuff like Aphex or Squarepusher.. some people would say that your stuff might be going a bit stale. 
Ed: I think when people get bored they tend to write new music. As soon as people get bored they'll come up with something new, but I really dont have a clue what way it could change.
S@E: If you look at Autechres last tour, it was a tour of small clubs, even though their last LP sold loads.. and theres stuff like Big Beat or Jungle that seem to be the big things in England.. is ambient being pushed underground?
Ed: In some ways that would be good, becuase it will innovate and change again. Its hard to say what might happen.
S@E: You're only on a mini-tour at the moment. Any plans to do any more touring next year?
Ed: Yeah, definitely. Once we've got some more stuff written, and we can play more stuff live.
Andy: We might do a Big Beat album, and then do a stadium tour.
S@E: Any place you'd like to play to?
Ed: Oh, Dublin again, naturally.
S@E: Hows the trip to Ireland been so far then? How was the gig in UCD last night?
Andy: It was really good actually. There was quite a wierd band on before us. Like a sort of a rock cover band. I was a bit nervous about it, the whole vibe of the place. But it went off pretty well I think. 
S@E: Any thoughts on Dublin?
Andy: Yeah.. very friendly people. I love everybody I've met.. but its been a bit grotty this time.. the weathers been a bit shit. I've only been here once before but I've always really liked it. Good vibes. 
S@E: Whats the reaction been to Not For Threes so far? Has it been recieving good reviews in the press?
Ed: Yeah, we're getting good reviews in the press alright, but it doesnt seem to be selling well in England.
S@E: Why do you think that is? People know the Plaid name, and your ex-association with the Black Dog.. Bytes and Spanners sold well, and even the Music For Short Ads And Films that Ken Dowie did on his own sold well..
Ed: Theres a lot of reasons but partly because theres just a lot of very popular electronic music about now. Dance music, like the Chemicals or whatever. And thats what people go for, because its immediately available and they know about it. 
S@E: What was it like working with Bjork and Nicolette? How did you get involved with them? You've probably been asked this about a million times..
Andy: Yeah.. and each time we try and come up with a new answer. Um.. we went to school with Bjork in Iceland. 
(dECAL) Thats a real MTV-Tastic question.
S@E: Well, its what the punters want to hear.. famous names and all... moving on.. any short term plans?
Andy: Well, we got some gigs in Scotland. Ed's forgotten about them already.
Ed: That'll be deadly cos.. um.. the Scottish people are really friendly. And I've got loads of Scottish relations. 
S@E: Heh.. so are you just gonna rest on Not For Threes for a while or can we expect something new from Plaid pretty soon?
Ed: Well, we havent written anything for a while, and we just got some new studo space so we are pretty eager to get back to it alright.
S@E: Is Not For Threes relatively new or has it been in the works for a while?
Ed: We've been doing it for about 3 years actually.
Andy: Our very optimistic plans would be to have a new EP out in the Spring but we were saying with this one it was going to be finished in two months time for about three years. I think we both seem pretty eager to get working again. If we could get it f
inished by late January or February we might be talking late Spring for a release.
S@E: Nice one.. anything final you'd like to say to the readers?
Andy: Yeah, we love Ireland and all the people.

 Look down. At your clothes, like. What are you wearing? Where'd you get them?
 How much did they cost? Were they worth it? And what do they say about you?
 Clothes are how you label yourself. They say you shouldn't label people,
 but then they also say you shouldn't drink to excess. What They say is
 pretty much irrelevant. People do label people on little information. The
 main way you can affect how you're labelled is by the clothes you wear, since
 that's what people see when they look at you. Hmm, let me think of a few
 case studies. Right, how about "the one black stripe" The Editor. He wears a bubble jacket and
 usually some kind of amusing techno t-shirt. Come to think of it, I can't
 remember his trousers, but I know they're dark blue. Okay, sod that, I can't
 remember anything about Stripe below his waistline. But he has bleached hair.
 He certainly stands out as being a bit technoy, and for a long time I had
 him marked as raver-scumbag-syringe-wielding-gimme-all-yer-money type, in
 a nice way. Labelled. Thayl, Mr. Other Half of S@E, wears baggy stuff. Most
 of it has labels. Quicksilver and so on, expensive surfer gear. Baggy
 expensive combats, fleecy expensive tops. That makes him alternative-music
 type, nothing like torn jeans and a Head-Tearer-Offer death metal t-shirt,
 but something other than your average chinos-and-rugby-shirt wearing chart
 hits dancer. Mick\Mike over there, he wears expensive stuff too. He goes into
 Tribe and spends lotsa money on No Fear stuff and tings like dat. He also
 speaks like a black basketball player. I'm not sure quite what this labels
 him as, so maybe I shouldn't have mentioned him. He's certainly amusing
 anyway. Spike is trapped in the eighties. He wears skin-tight jeans, a
 leather jacket, and typically a Def Leppard t-shirt with his Docs. A pretty
 brave thing to do, I suppose, in a society which values up-to-the-minuteness
 as much as ours does. Bob, sometimes-contributer to S@E looks like your 
 typical indie kid - generally corduroy trousers, tight-fit t-shirt, Adidas
 jackety-thing. Either that or full ex-army combat gear, right down to real
 army boots which kicked in real East European teeth. But he's not really
 an indie kid at all, his CD collection consists mostly of heavy fucking shit.
 Me, I'm usually to be found in all-black, but I don't really like goth music.
 You'll notice that one other factor is to be found here - musical taste. It's
 how we define people. You get put into a specific set in society depending on
 what type of music it looks like you listen to. Pretty strange system, really.
 Fast-growing dormitory town Clane, Co. Kildare is where I hail from when I
 need my washing done. It's full of Adidas tracksuits and closed-mindedness.
 First-year kids in secondary school have been known to call a classmate of
 Asian descent a chink or something to his face - dunno if this is unusual in
 Dublin, but it makes my stomach churn. They have also been known to comment
 aloud in the local dialect of English something along the lines of "Ehh,
 blue shoes, feen..." at my rather fetching blue Docs which I love to bits.
 Anyway, yes. Adidas tracksuits and comments. Brings us to two different 
 branches of conversation. Right, tracksuits. EVERYBODY wears Adidas these
 days - chart hits dancers (The Spice Girls [or The Pop Tarts if you so 
 desire]), indie kids (Joyrider, anyway, no doubt loads more), heavy metallers
 (Korn). My virtual sister Karen is a mad Korn fan and wears an Adidas
 tracksuit, but she *looks* like a Korn fan and not a Spice Girl wannabe when
 she does. Unfortunately, I couldn't tell you why, it's a phenomenon I'm still
 investigating. The other branch there was hair. "The One Black Stripe's" short, bleached hair,
 Thayl's, eh, rather messy 2-inch long mop, Mick\Mike's short black-basketball-
 player look, Spike's recently shaven head, Bob's infamous look-I-can-hold-a-
 pen-in-my-hair carpet, and my own conservatively styled blue crown - you
 don't grow hair, you wear it. Like with a car. It too says something about
 who you are. You could cut it with the aid of a pudding bowl and wet-look-gel
 it forward, and bingo, you're scum. You could have it like mine only in a
 normal colour, and bingo, you're deeply boring and sad. Grow it long and
 don't wash it much, and bingo, you're a greasy metaller. I'd put in a new
 paragraph here, but there isn't really space, is there? I'll finish up by
 pointing out how clothing trends tend to cross over given time. Take a look
 at the early nineties - rockers wore combats and baggy tops, skangers
 wore baggy trousers (remember X-Works?) and tight tops. And now lookit -
 combats have gone respectable, you can get nice presentable combats that
 look just like something you'd wear with a rugby shirt, only with a pocket
 on the leg. My linguistics lecturer even turned up last Tuesday in a pair of
 these. And those combats which aren't respectable are baggy now. They usedn't
 to be, if you remember correctly. Same thing with Thayl's tops - started off 
 as those X-Works black-and-white affairs, but got picked up on by surfers and 
 now have a Quicksilver logo stuck on, come in some earthy colour and anyone can 
 wear them. Clothes can say as much or as little about yourself as you want -
 looking around I can see a punk-listening Satanist friend of mine wearing
 a blue shirt, black jeans and runners and looking decidedly normal. If he
 wanted, he could wear a torn denim jacket, high Docs, a mohican cut and a
 five-pointed-star medallion, and he'd get labelled as what he is, pretty
 much. But he's not that. He's a nice guy, not some mad antisocial freak. But
 it's our music and stuff that decides our social category. Good ol' society
 again. Gotta love it. I could now provide you with a moral to take from this
 rather badly-structured flow of thought, but I'd prefer you to take your
 own stuff from it. So bye.

DEcal/Anodyne at the Temple Bar Music Centre, Nov 7th: Yay! Its the best techno act in Dublin shakin their asses for the punters. The S@E posse were there at 8pm to make sure we got the free CD. Free stuff is the business. YOu cant go wrong with it at all
. Needless to say we didnt need to be there til about half nine or so but it didnt matter. We got to sit down and relax in the bar of the TBMC.
Which strangely enough was having a beer promotion, in conjunction with Heineken and Murphys. The promotion being that those were the only two drinks available. And they were both 2.50 a pint. I'd call that a pretty fucking shit promotion. Hardly a promot
ion at all. More a monopoly than anything else. But who cares. Once theres alcohol in it we dont give a shit. We got to chat to Alan O'Boyle and Maura from Venus Envy before the gig. DEcal are hoping to put an EP out with the release of the CD. We handed 
out 50 copies of S@E as well to the bemused punters. Some of them knew what it was though. Also something we noticed this night
was in the inlay card of the Lo-Lite LP. See the picture in the background? (you should all be able to refer to this picture easily, because you will have bought the CD by now, havent you? If not, go and get it NOW) Thats taken at the junction of the M50 
motorway and the Navan Road near Blanchardstown. See the big arch in the distance? You used to be able to walk up there, before they put these big metal spikes on the side to stop drug heads wandering up there and chilling out. Such a shame. It was a fair
 walk away, maybe 40 minutes but always nice to wander up to when you thought the sky was green and your hands left trails for about a meter behind. Anyway, Anodyne was on about 10.15 or so and played for half an hour. Holy shit. What a fucking set. 
Unbelievable. Pure noise terrorism. Only recognized one track from Ultramack 005 and it was warped and fucked up seriously. Sounded like a train colliding with a glass building. Actually thats an unfair description cos it implies some amount of chaos in t
he sound when actually its quite formulaic (to a very small extent) and structured. Reminded me of Squarepusher. Brilliant. Hopefully there'll be some new EP or something from him very soon. Who's the dude on the stage with the PVC trousers though? Anodyn
e is amazing. This was the first time we'd seen him live and we'll defintely be checking him out again in the future. DEcal came on around.. 11.20 or so and played til 12.40. Excellent set. Deadly. Cant remember any of the names of the tracks. Theres one 
that keeps getting higher and
higher thats a real crowd pleaser. Their stuff is a lot more organised than Anodyne defintely, but I like the 4/4 beats, being a silly house head at times. Thayl the big wuss cant hack them at all cos he's a filthy metaller who likes all the mad warped ou
t shit. They really got the crowd going, and at the end of it they were screaming for more, and the two lads obliged us with an encore, after they'd hoovered up a load of drugs.. only messin. Unfortunately I was a bit drunk and me and James were plastic g
lassing each other in the head up the front and acting the general drunken scum, doing Tekken 2 moves on each other and stuff which might have scared some of the punters away from the front. For a while there was an invisible line that nobody would cross,
 but eventually the line drifted closer and closer to the stage as their set went on.. the crowd was a bit wierd..
at first I thought it was a jungle crowd, cos there was this 6'4" girl with an amazing figure wandering around, and there was loads of lads with baggy trousers and wallet chains (die!!) there too, but then there was indie heads there as well, "giving it l
oads" as much as indie heads ever do. Strange mix of punters, but then I suppose DEcal's sounds appeals to loads of people. Anyway we all had a great laugh, and it was a nice cheap night, defintely be going to see DEcal again in the near future. 

Top Five S@E Illnesses (seeing as how we're all coming down with colds and flu and shit like that as winter approaches):
AIDS (Acquired Intelligence Deficiency Syndrome): This virus is usually picked up in secondary school. Symptoms in males include acting macho and beating those people smaller and more intelligent, and in females acting like slappers and wearing far too mu
ch make-up, and acting dumb to please males. Symptoms in later years include going to shitty chart discos like The Court, The Vatican, and Slapper Faced Cocks, and listening to the mind-numbingly bad mantras for the masses like FM104 or 98FM.
Multiple Screwosis: This occurs when one person is seeing several people at once on a regular basis, without the partners realising it. It is a very short disease and usually ends in bouts of violence, tantrums, screaming, and destroying personal posessio
ns of the victim. 
Anoraksia Nervosa: State of mind where victim feels they must buy every single 12" that gets released. Ever. Victim will often go without food for days to finance the vinyl addiction. They take comfort in talking to other anorak-clad lunatics about obscur
e remixes and b-sides.
Chicken Box: Sickness that affects the stomach. Usually occurs around 11pm on a Friday or Saturday night. Symptoms include greasy fingers, bad breath, inability to swallow properly.
Spanish Measles: Affects those living in Dublin mainly. Occurs around June and can last up to three months. Symptoms include talking loudly, roaming the streets in packs of 20 or more persons, eating in McDonalds and wearing brightly coloured backpacks on
 ones chest.


At last it's here, my hours of biting nails, smashing my head of walls 
and climbing on top of telephone boxes in Artane has ended, 'cause at long last 
(ages after the promo copy was posted to us)  probably the most eagerly 
awaited album of the year (well, it was in the S@E offices anyway) has 
been released, Lo-Lite, alias Ultramack 006, the second LP from those 
hippest of Irish dance acts, Decal. (or dECAL as they like to be known as 
sometimes) Incidentally, we all got this album for free at the Decal gig 
that was on a while ago. (The first 100 people in got the CD for free, 
cool or wot?) The gig's been reviewed somewhere else around the sheet, 
duh, go look. Anyway, this album's the business. I've been listening to 
it non-stop while surfing the web on my new computer. 'Cause it makes me 
feel like a bloke from that film HACKERS, it's "future-techno" ya see. 
[grin] Well, actually there's a bit of everything on this album. Break 
beats, tiny amounts of house, jazzy moments, ambient moments, and loads 
of other just plain cool moments. The tracks haven't been loaded up with 
layers and layers of samples or anything, this thing kinda goes for the 
simple yet effective rhythm beat up front with clever beeps and whirrs 
happening all around. Snakehips starts with some kind of siren thingy, 
attacking your ears until another kind of friendlier beepy thing kicks 
in, relaxing you and pulling you in. Then Decal tease us with break beats 
and go mad with more sirens things. Great stuff. Track two, Self-Storage 
has to be my fave track of the whole lot. It's like this track keeps 
coming up to you and then running off again, drums fading in and out, the 
whole thing putting you into some trance where yer head says "Dammit, I 
gotta jump around somehow, aargh !!". Weird huh? Mr. Warbled voice keeps 
trying to tell you stuff through the track, but we'll never know what 
he's saying, because he doesn't have the decency to stop mumbling for one 
solitary second. Excellent track, best one on the disk.
	Next up we're calmed down a bit by the very funky "Camoflage" 
(Hey Decal, did you spell it wrong on purpose, in some sort of quirky 
reference to the illiterates that populate our city and determine what 
music succeeds and what music fails? Or maybe you're just bad at 
spelling..) Anyway this track's a slowie, a soother, it's not as good as 
the next one though. Zerostar show us Decal dipping their heads into the 
world of groove-ambient (no, I didn't just make that up, I swear). 
Zerostar is a fish under the sea, lazing around, poking it's fish-nose 
under rocks, always swimming slowly, and never worrying about Jaws or 
Free Willy or Captain Nemo. Zerostar is like staring at one of those 
sperm-moving-up-and-down-in-a-lit-up-jar for ages, except you're 
listening to it, so it's better. And to finish you off, at the end of the 
track a seductive woman's voice murmurs something in the background about 
being attractive or something.
	I'm not to far gone on the next song, Malk, I think the other 
half of S@E (Stripe) might like it, it's kinda housy. And I 
hate house in all it's forms. (Including the building type too) The next 
one, Pigeyes gets Wacked, is in danger of becoming an annoying 
house-type-track too, until the COOLEST combination of weird sirens and 
groovy bass lines comes on and totally gets you hooked. (This is that 
ascending and descending siren song that Mr. Stripe was talking about in 
the gig review). This has a freakisly catchy ping-ping-ping sound that 
plays over this mega-grinding bass, you just have to hear it to know what 
I'm on about, this rivals Self-Storage for track of the album actually, 
now that I think about it..
	The title track Lo-Lite is another stab at ambient-avec-jumpy 
beats. Nice techno sounds all around to sedate you into a comatose-bliss 
of some sort. Legging onto Phunk City, this has the coolest wavy sounds, 
with far off clangings and a steady beet to keep us interested. Then fade 
out with Iona, a totally ambient "coma-song", I call it that, not because 
it put me into a coma or anything, but if ever there's a scene in a film 
with somebody dreaming stuff while in a coma, they'd play a song like 
this, except Decal do it better, it has their trademark Decalish sound to 
it. This whole album has a certain sound, a hous/techno/weirdo siren 
sound. Decal's music has matured a lot since Ultramack 004, Lo-Lite is an 
excellent piece of work, well worth the measly twelve quid that I've seen 
Comet charging people for it. If you don't believe me then why not go 
into Tower and listen for yourselves?

Hip hop horray, DJ Shadow at the Red Box. You can't go wrong with the Red 
Box, the sound system in there is thumping!! It's an aural assault on 
your eardrums, it's a longitudinal wave-centre of vibrating coolness. 
(check yer physics book's after you've read this) Anyway, I had just 
beaten Sandra 9-2 at Tekken II on the Playstation and I was totally in 
the mood for some groovin'. There was a big mad queue from hell outside 
the Red Box, but it turned out that they were people without tickets!! So 
we, the elite few with our paper passes, overtook the line of squares, 
got groped by some hairless apes at the door (AKA the bouncer-types) and 
ran up the stairs to be greeted by the sounds of John Carter playing 
infectious groovy hip-hop that instantly forced everybody into 
body-shaking of all forms. Up on the wall there some weirdo graphics were 
being projected, some old conductor bloke waving his 
little-conductor-stick wildly, and beside him were random pictures, I 
think I remember seeing the Stealth Bomber (it obviously had some deep 
and hidden meaning man). The place was PACKED, jammers I tell you, and 
the doors had only opened at eleven (it was around twenty past when we 
got in). Soon enough Mr. Carter left the decks and Monkey Mafia 
(replacing the Propellerheads, who'd dropped out due to illness or 
something) came on, with their bass and their drumkit and their keyboards 
and all, playing some kinda techno stuff that got people cheering. They 
would've been really good too, if their singer guy hadn't kept screaming 
"Respect to da masses mon, respect to da people in da house" and other 
such originalities. Then the Monkee's (hehehe) left and Shadow came on!! 
And he wasted no time getting down to the scratching and bopping, leaving 
no old jazz record unturned and no bit of drum un-eh, unused I suppose. 
Everybody in the whole of the Red Box were jumping up and down, the 
people behind the bar were spilling drink because they couldn't stand 
still!! Throughout the gig we caught bits of The Number Song, Building 
Steam and other ones, but they had been mixed over by other tunes so much 
that they were hardly recognisable at all. And we also heard loads of old 
stuff that we should have known, The Beastie Boys were in there, Bootsie, 
I could have sworn I heard Bootsie. Anyway, you get the message, loads of 
old hip-hop all mixed together and made new again. Bleedin' great stuff, 
and he played for ages too. What, about one and a half hours, pretty good 
for a DJ type I suppose. Only the ending was crap, he came back on to say 
thanks and the he played the start of Stem (you know, the Guinness add 
music) but before the drums or anything came in it faded out, and all the 
lights came on. NOOOOO!!! Dammit Mr. Shadow, you can't end a totally 
exceptional show with some half-ass end song like that. Grrrrrrrrrr. (We 
forgave him later though, because we think he's phat man, phreaking 
stuff. Yeah.)

Bjork @ Olympia MOn 17th Nov: Surprising that Bjork played here considering she packed the Point out w/ Underworld in August 96. Spose the Olympia would be more "intimate" or some such. And indeed it was. Although the Point is always good for a laugh. Aft
er downing a pint in the Handel Bar on Fishamble St. which is fast becoming a fave spot for the S@E posse, we walked up to the Olympia and
arrived too late to get one of those little bracelets for going up the front. Curses. We managed to secure a spot by punching and kicking our way through the crowd which was a healthy mix of ravers, indie kids, and five foot high girls in body length dres
ses with their hair tied in knots. Bjork fans then, presumably. There was someone DJing beforehand, although he/she/they were nowhere to be seen.
We endured an hour and a half of mutant asian dance and jungle before Bjork took the stage around 9.30 or so. Although the sound of her new album might take a bit of getting used to, the music being very disjointed from the vocals, Bjorks voice is incredi
ble and every time she opens her mouth its like a mad storm of 
tones and screams, the power from her throat is unbelievable.. she was accompanied on stage by a string sextet or octet (?) cant remember exactly how many people she had playing the strings, and then this bloke, possibly Mark Bell from LFO, looking after 
the beats and peripheral noises. She sang a mix of old and new, including "Hunter", "joga", "5 years", "Bachelorette", "all neon like", alarm call", "pluto" (which we didnt think she would be capable of doing live with all the crazy vocals in it but she p
roved us wrong) and as an encore "All is full of love", a very dreamy number.. and from olden times, "Venus As A Boy", Possibly
Maybe" (personal favourite), "Human Behaviour", "Hyperballad", and "Violently Happy". I would have liked to hear her sing "Big Time Sensuality" but you cant have everything in life I suppose. The backdrop on the stage was cool too, with all the lights and
 waves.. the sound system was crystal clear, and fucking LOUD (temple bar music centre take note), and the crowd really got going after a while..
all in all one cant find fault with this gig which lasted about an hour and 15 mins.. and afterwards it was back to J.'s house where I spent the entire night plugged into the wall.. oh well..

Portishead @ Olympia Wed 19th Nov : After having a grand total of 5 hours sleep in the 2 days after Bjork, and having spend an inordinately long amount of time with J., in which time I wrecked my own head and probably melted hers as well, yours truly met 
up with the Phillips Head Screwdriver in a very weakened state. We queued outside the Olympia early, and as soon as we got in, we acquired a blue
bracelet for getting up the front, and then sat down in the bar and knocked back pints of heineken for the rip-off price of 2.70 until I was ready to pass out with fatigue and until the PHS was pretty gurned up, having swallowed some acid about an hour pr
eviously. Portishead came on at 9.20, we have no idea what was being played before they came on but judging from the bass pulses we picked up in the bar, it was some sort of low-slung hip hop.. where Bjork is nice and cute 
and fluffy, Portishead are dark and scary and black, and as we assumed our place down the front, right next to the speaker stack, this sense of dread swept over me, and I was sure at some stage during their set I was going to break down in tears or slash 
my wrists. But suddenly I saw this warm side to their sound, and
this was helped by Beth Gibbons manner on stage, who was smiling and friendly rather than aloof and mournful which I expected her to be.. like Bjork they played
a mix of old and new, including "All Mine", "Cowboys", and "Over" (new single) from Portishead, and "Roads", "Glory Box", "Mysterons", "Sour Times" and the classic "Numb" which was criminally ignored by the masses when it was released as a single many moo
ns ago before Glory Box got them the recognition they deserved.
Their sound live works very well, and Geoff Barrows work in the background, fucking the output up, dampening the beats and producing that harsh crackled edge to Gibbons Voice is an essential part of the Portishead "experience". Critics have said that the 
new LP is very difficult to listen to, in comparison to "Dummy", which was more laid back, music for fucking to, but having heard tracks off "Portishead" live, theres a warm core to the music that you have to look deep for,
like Autechre in some ways perhaps, and when you find it, its worth it cos its very pleasurable and relaxing, despite initially appearing as paranoid and/or awkward. They played for about an hour and twenty minutes, and again the sound was loud and clear.
. fair play to the equipment people.. another good gig then, but
by the end of it I was dead on my feet whereas my companion was ready to go for a stroll around the city.. and the next day I realised I had lost some markers, prittstick, and a shitload of pens in the Olympia, my bag having been left open on the floor fo
r about an hour at least, so if anyone comes across them could they please send them to us here at S@E mansions.. ta very much..


Venus Envy- The Temple Bar Music Centre Fri 14th Novemeber

	Having frequented the TBMC not so long ago for Photek and dECAL, its
becoming something of a regular haunt for the S@E crew. But no matter how 
many times you go there, ya don't get used to the shitty sound. I cant
remember it being too bad for Pavement, in August (but Steve and co. 
could play through a "Tomy-My First Tape Player" and still sound like God ),
but our recent visits have been somewhat diluted due to the (lack of a)
sound system.
	That aside, Venus Envy are one of a few (but only a few) of the guitar
orientated bands in Dublin at the mo. that make me excited. In fact they make
me very excited. So excited that when I listen to their "Four to the Floor"
E.P., I lose all control of my bodily functions. Or something like that anyway.
	The dodgy sound affected the vocals mainly, leaving them 
meandering behind the wall of noize generated by the Sonic Youth-esque guitar
"leads", and the solid rhythm section generated by Maura's and Eugene's 
ear bending guitars. Comparisons to the 'Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and
even to Stereolab are inevitable, but this doesnt detract from the originality
and beauty in the songs.
	Despite being completely unfamiliar with the set, short of the 
4 songs of the e.p., the performance was breath-taking. Highlight of the 
night was "Passed by (without a word)", from the e.p.Boo-boo of the night
goes to the usually godlike Maura, who managed to plug out her guitar mid song,
and passed the blame on to her "big runners".ok then.
	Pity the place was half full, and damn cold. But, quibbles aside,
a damn good night was enjoyed by all. Go see them play in the Da club on the 
13th December, with Palomime and a "guest d.j.". I'll be there.

Stripe> So Thayl, what did you think of 1997 then?

Thayl> Eh, what? I'm busy, go away.

Stripe> But Thayl, we're doing an article about the good and bad bits of 
the past year, don't you have anything imaginative to declare about 
experiences, music, gigs, parties, drinks and drugs you may have partaken 
in during the illustrious year that was '97?

Thayl> Illustrious? What's that mean?

Stripe> It means "cool", now just fucking tell us something funny or I'm 
going ram this phreaking tape recorder up your hairy moth eaten arse!!!

Thayl> Yikes!! No need to threaten me there. Anyway yea, 1997 eh? Wow, 
that was over quick. I can hardly remember any of it. There's been loads 
of great times, seeing Pavement in the Temple Bar Music Centre had to be 
the best "live music" moment of '97. And also seeing Anodyne for the very 
first time was extremely cool. Release wise, I'd say my fave. release 
this year was Photek's first LP, Modus Operandi. And Hard Normal Daddy by 
Squarepusher, I just got that a while ago and I've been listening to it 
non-stop, so that gets a mention in the best of '97. Right, can I go now?

Stripe> No!! You've hardly done one paragraph yet, tell us about what 
you did for the summer.

Thayl> Um, I worked in a bar.

Stripe> Is that it? You boring fuck!!

Thayl> Well I went out and stuff too, there was that Hope Collective punk 
workshop thing on in the City Arts Centre that I walked into by accident.

Stripe> Yeah? What was that like?

Thayl> It was crap, most of the bands were shite. Punk music in general 
is pretty lame. All these other zines keep going on about how excellent 
the punk scene in Dublin is. But they don't seem to realise that all punk 
music is a big load of horse-manure. But at least they had the right idea 
with DIY music and zines and "spreading the word" and all.

Stripe> Zines? I don't see any other zines around

Thayl> Actually they've become pretty scarce recently. Helium Bong, 
Planet Fish, New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Loserdom, The World Won't Listen, 
sure I haven't seen any sign of them in ages. And I thought Gearhead 
Nation had gone under too, until I got sent the latest issue a while ago. 
(Thanks for the letter Derek !!)

Stripe> I remember you slagging off The World Won't Listen a while ago.

Thayl> Heheheh. I was only messing really. Although the quality of zines 
during the summer really dive bombed, I still have to say "fair fucks" to 
all those boys and girls that took the effort to write stuff and spent a 
bit of their cash on printing them all out. This zine work ain't cheap ya 
know.

Stripe> Anything else?

Thayl> Oh oh, I got a new computer during the summer, it's a Pentium II 
with [next ten minutes of techno babble cut for viewers pleasure] 
incompatible with my Ultra ATA controller card.

Stripe> AARGH !! Shut the FUCK UP about your damn computer!!!! Jesus, my 
head is melting.

Thay> There's also been a hell of a lot of horrible music this past year. 
With such top name vulgarities as Sash, DJ Quicksilver and all that other 
tripe you hear on FM104. Speed Garage also reared it's ugly head, the 
sooner people get tired of that the better. And every single person that 
did a cover version of any song this year deserves death. Covers in 
general are usually bad, but this year they were appalling!! I just wish 
for the day when the people that bumped off the "Notorious" BIG come back 
and finish the job by taking out Puff Daddy too. And where the hell do 
they get these names? Puff Daddy? If he had grown up in Coolock with a 
name like that he'd never have lived to see his confirmation.

Stripe> Well Thayl, if -you- had lived in Coolock with bleached hair 
like that, and those skater clothes, you'd never have made it out of your 
house alive. Anyway, you can shut up now, I'm finished with you.

  Right here is my ,now, monthly contribution to the pages of S@E - Am I 
part of the posse now lads? (erm do I want to be?!) Right, I wont further 
that so :)
  Out of a complete lack of anything to do this Sunday night (all my 
friends are working - dang it!), I have decided to grace these here 
pages, and in doing so have raised the standard of writing by ten fold 
(wah ha ha ha....)
   After my last  contribution Im going to proof read this article about 
20 times before I hand it over. I apologise profusely  to those of you 
who spent last month wandering aimlessly around Temple Bar looking for 
the new Hard Rock Cafe (and to those of you who thought Eamonn Dorans  
was about to be bulldozed, and actually cared - although im sure there 
werent too many of you so I dont feel  as bad about that.) . I can claim 
one of two things ( the former being the truth): I had an incredible (yet 
it is) but freak bout of Dyslexia at three in the morning when I was 
writing the article - I meant to say the Rock Garden was where Eamonn 
Dorans now stands, but the words fell backwards outta my mouth on to the 
page. Else I could claim that I meant Planet Hollywood (and hence wouldnt 
look so dumb) and that I just got confused about the location.
  I desperately tried to blame the Eds poor typing skills but the bastard 
produced my handwritten script and proved me wrong in front of the whole 
canteen. Why am I writing this again? Anyway im very very very sorry. It 
wont happen again ( I lie, I lie), so you can no longer slag me about it 
- ok?
  So to the actual point of this article methinks:
A song I was listening to today is the reason I started thinking about 
this - In particular the words
  I know what I know, I sing what I say
    we come and we go thats a thing that I keep at the back of my head....
   Youre probably thinking this is going to be a very morbid rant, but 
its not I swear. It actually helped me be positive about about stuff 
thats been getting me down lately .
   Since departing my old way of life and starting in college, a lot  of 
my perceptions about my friends and friendships have changed.. One or two 
of my friends have been wrecking my head a bit lately. Im not saying its 
their fault (just in case they read this and figure out its them, but 
really it is!) - hey im probably being paranoid , but it seems to me that 
theyve changed since theyve started college. People I dont like (and I 
thought they were of the same opinion) are now their friends and im 
beginning to wonder if theyre losing their grip on reality altogether, 
but this is not my point.
  Ive come to the conclusion its just not worth it anymore - I dont mean 
my friends, I mean stressing over whether theyre thick with me or not. 
All this headwrecking crap ive been putting up with lately is not going 
to happen no more. its better just to deal with life day by day and not 
to deal with continual crap from people. I did that for the last two 
years and it nearly made me suicidal, from now on I refuse to deal with 
ppl who dont have any time for me. Life is just too short. I can always 
stare at a blank screen if needs be, (then again theres always chat).  

The Null Set, Jubilee Allstars, Joan of Arse-The Funnel Mon? nov.
        Never been to the Funnel before, it's an ok place. Well its 
bigger (and better) than, say Behans, or The Attic (may they rest in 
peace). Nice long room with the stage at the top, and the bar down
the back. The way things should be. And good sound too.
	Anyway, Joan of Arse opened........hmmmmm. Just a guy on guitar
and his mate on drums. Well, he couldn't actually drum, he was a drummer
impersonator. Artist's nowadays, eh? I dunno if Joan of Arse are actually
trained classically in their respective instruments, but to my ears,
the singer/guitarist could neither sing nor tune his guitar, and the drummer
couldn't drum. Maybe they were going for the whole out of tune melancholic
sound, but it just sounded shit. Not that the songs were bad, or anything, 
they were kinda like Palace Bros. and Sonic Youth, but its like trying to 
read a book written in 4 year olds writing......
	I know theres such thing as artistic merit, but , i dunno, 
there's a fine line, and I think it was crossed......
		Jubilee Allstar's started off dodgily, mangling their biggest
*hit*, "Which kind", one of the few J.A. songs i like. More dramatically out of 
tune guitars didn't help their cause, but, admitadly, they got a lot better 
quickly. Their set was mainly of country_esque ballads, in a kinda
Pavement's-recent-albums way. Definitely not a bad thing, but then I've never
loved The Jubilee Allstars. At least keyboards dont go out of tune... ;)
	The Null Set were fabulous. They are fabulous and always will be 
fabolous (touch wood.). Its hard to exactly put my finger on who they sound
like, They sound kinda Pavementy in places, melodic and quirky,possibly a bit 
more shouty yet
my freind compared their first number (played with the trumpet player in the
UCD orchestra ) to Korn. I mean diverse or what? Their set wasn't as long as I 
would have prefered, but with three bands on the lineup I can't really complain.
I thought they were better at the D.I.Y. fest. in August, but so is life.
It gives me hope to find bands as intresting and original as The NullSet in 
Dublin. They're playin' a Hope gig on the 12th December, with the ever
wonderful Jackbeast, and those fruitsome lads The Waltons, in the Fusion bar.
Admission is 3 quid worth of toys for a womens refuge, but bring loads more.

	1997, eh? err, what a year, eh? Ok, cliches aside, '97 wasn't a year 
to miss.err.*ahem*
	Ok, best gig (so far), was Bjork. Dont ask me why. It was just fab.
I could live off Bjork-beats(tm) and Bjork-strings(tm) all of my life. Sortof.
The Olympia was a great place for the gig too. Real nice place.
	Best film? er, not being the biggest movie buff in the world, I'm 
pretty sure I'm wrong on this. Probably. Anyway, Mars Attacks was the best new
film I saw. Bloody good director, that Tim Burton chap. Lots of mad stuff 
happens in the film. See it. I did.
	Best single? Spiritualized's "Electricity". Lots of live B-sides 
(on two versions of the c.d.). Great stuff from mad owl Jason.
	Best Album? nnnnggggg, this is hard. Either "Homogenic", "Ladies 
and gentlemen we are floating in space", or my brand new "Pet Sounds Box set".
Depending what mood I'm in. I dont like this best of the year stuff, anyway,
never had, never will. oh, they're by Bjork, Spiritualized and The Beach Boys,
for the musically impotent out there.
	...and thats all that happened this year.Everything.Thats 1997 for ya.
	

1997 was a bit of a hectic year. What I remember of it anyway. Destroying half on all ones brain cells with serious hard chemicals is not advisable when you still have work to do in college. Anyway on to the more important shit.. music! LP of the year.. i
ts a hard one. Very hard. But at the end of it all, there was one winner that stood above the rest. It was the middle of the summer, and I had just been fired from a job for something I didnt do. It was boiling hot every night and the pressures of living 
in a city with 10 million people were really getting to me big time (London, this is). I'd come home every night after an hour and a half on a sweaty, smelly, overcrowded, piece of shit tube and my head would be fucking completely melted, no salvation in 
sight except maybe a couple of bottles of Biere D'Or in the fridge at home. When I'd come home, I be ready to kill the first person that crossed me. There was a CD player in the kitchen and I'd put on this LP and suddenly everything would be ok.. it was l
ike a breeze of cold air blowing across me, like my head was suddenly cleansed of all the shit that had accumulated during the day. This LP has so many influences on it, the production is incredible, and theres a cool mix of extremely laid back tunes, lik
e the last one, or mad just-lose-it-for-four-minutes ones like the sixth. The vocals and noise and even the addition of the choir on the second track made it just the perfect thing to come home to every night for a while when I thought I was going to go c
razy with the heat. 
This LP was Spiritualized's "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space". The only prescription you could get in HMV that was used to treat the heart and soul. What can I say but it is a must buy. Jason Spaceman is a musical genius, and although this L
P did well, its a scandal when you see other recycled muck like Radiohead, Oasis or the Verve doing well among the indie kids when there something like this on offer.. such extremes, such wonderful noise.. just beautiful. As for song of the year.. must go
 to Locust for the hidden track on the "Morning Light" LP (reviewed last issue), or maybe Venus Envy's "Passes by (Without a Word)" which although it is not techno, it certainly did something special for me. Gig of the year.. hard one. Might be the Orb on
 St. Patricks Day. Dont really remember much of it now though due to a serious ingestion of illegal substances about an hour before the gig started. Twas pretty mental though. Aphex at the Essential Festival was insane too, it was brilliant hearing Aphex 
tunes firing out of a huge big speaker stack like that, and knowing all of them. Squarepusher at the Essential was pretty savage as well.. mad drill beats played at a dangerously high decibel level. Not for those with pacemakers. Fanzine wise.. Far be it 
from us here at S@E to blow our own trumpets,
but we have yet to come across anything that even pisses close to our February Zine "Kows @nd Kre@m". Short stories, tales of hiking across Europe, music reviews, stuff about punk and the internet, straight edge, Christmas, mugging, anarchism, personal di
lemmas, shitloads of music and gig reviews.. there was a lot of reading in it, which was what we aimed to do with it. We lost money on the damn thing cos certain dickheads felt that 70p was too much to fork out of their miserly pockets, and said so in the
ir pathetic zines, which we dont see much of these days. I cant think of any other zine that would have kept the reader occupied for so long. Moment of the year was when some beautiful stranger sat down opposite me and asked me to meet her the next day fo
r a drink in the sun.. who knows, I might regret saying this in several weeks time.. the future is so uncertain but fuck knows I dont think I've been as happy as this in many a year.. its amazing how your opinion of something can be turned on its head com
pletely when you meet someone who you care a lot about and who seems to recipricate those feelings.. overall its been a good year. I think I've learned a few things, especially
over the summer when I wasnt making any money at all but I was having a fucking amazing time with close friends, and now I've met someone who I've gotten very close to in a scarily short space of time.. and I lost a good friend to my own paranoia and stup
idity, but now things seem to be getting reasonably back together.. even if it isnt the same as it used to be.. will it all fall apart? Will I turn back into the greedy old cynical bastard I was this time last year? Fuck knows.. I dont have the answer (I 
wish I did) and nobody else does, what can I say kids but your destiny is your own to a certain extent.. life is as shit as you make it, but you can make it worth your while. 
   Now, if you dont mind, after that optimistic sunshine-and-lollipops type stuff, I'm gonna go get sick, get seriously fucked up on some bad drugs and stay up all night playing Playstation and watching pornos. I'll feel somewhat back to normal then.. ahh
hh yes...