Terrible Lizards – Podcast Review ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Teardrop Explodes once sang “pure joy wins out again”, and whilst gnostic oddity frontman Julian Cope finds joy in stone circles; Iszi Lawrence and Dr David Hone find pure joy in dinosaurs. They have brought us Terrible Lizards, an addition to the podcast fossil record. History pods are a dime to the dozen, – (unlike dinosaur fossils, where only one in a million dino’s became fossils – it’s this kind of fact you will be regaled with). This isn’t narrative history though, this is an episodic interrogation of an expert by an enthusiastic amateur. Iszi asks the questions we would ask. Terrible Lizards is a warm and soothing conversational piece covering your favourite dinosaurs. It’s like having your own personal palaeontologist, with Iszi as our medium.

Here are some facts revealed and questions covered:

Velociraptor’s are not as big as you think. Protoceratops had a big arse. Penn Gillette does not like Jurassic Park. How do you pronounce Diplodocus? If our bones are like a Snickers, were Pterosaurs’ bones like a Crunchie?

The most interesting parts are for me is listening how David uses his expertise on modern day animals to gauge the behaviour of dino’s, best seen in the Spinosaurus episode which features a wonderfully long discussion on whether or not they could swim: comparing them to crocodiles, looking at nasal position, and ultimately arguing that they were probably more like massive herons (“I kill you with my face” (Iszi impersonating a heron)), (I used to live next to a canal and a heron resembles a scraggy dementor).

A good podcast makes you feel as if you have a friend in your pocket, like a smarter, less needy Tamagotchi. If you’re night-feeding babies, this will make 2AM less miserable.

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Hive by Teeth Of The Sea

Those destructive builders of rotted joy are back. You may call them anything you like but to us they are the optimum. In 21C music they are the yardstick you must judge other bands against. If a band is operating at 20% Teeth Of The Sea they are doing well.

And the boys are back. A new Teeth Of The Sea album is like awaiting the cyclical return of a shape shifting Lovecraftian monster. One year it comes in the form of a ginormous carnivorous squid with a beak made of metal. This year it comes with a thousand eyes and a thousand mouths eating candy floss made with E.

https://teethofthesea.bandcamp.com/album/hive

Hive is the return. It is a concept album based on….. Let us tell you it is less noir-y than Wraith, less warlike than Tarantula. Less sprawling death scape than MASTER. But that’s what it is not. What is it? It is the lightest and most playful TOTS album yet. It is more overtly beautiful. The bangers are front loaded for your pleasure. There are little bubbles of airless dub. The ambient second half is like sleeping on silk sheets. There is lots of trumpet for all you Teeth trumpet heads. The magnificent lode stone is ‘Butterfly House’, a huge slab of electro pop, like the carapace of a golden insect the size of the Brooklyn Bridge. The introduction of vox from Kath Gifford may seem like inconoclasm but on listening it’s like entering a parralel world where Teeth Of The Sea never made instrumentals.

This is the TOTS more likely to come and play at a 5 year olds birthday party, assuming your 5 year old reads Frank Herbert and loves dance floor post rock.

The monster is back and this time is dressed as both Ferry and Eno and feeling fine and frisky. Make hay while the sun shines. Next time we may not be so fortunate. We puny humans. Let us commence building the statues and the making of votive offerings.

Kat Bryan presents Armour

A plaintiff pulsebeat throbs as the synths transport you to another, delicious place, to a familiar frequency. As if you’re through the looking glass, as if somewhere on the other side of never, Sigur Ros body swapped with Moroder and made power ballads for blockbusters made in the golden hour.

Or could it be the vibe of a techno thriller? Kat’s vocals are dripping neon against a Tokyo backdrop. A voice transmits a soul. The city collapses as it shimmers.

Or maybe OMD popped pills and drank Sunny D.

‘Armour’ is the lead single from the brand new EP Luna.

https://katbryan.bandcamp.com/album/armour

If you like this, check out this album of space age electro bangers Kim Boekbinder – The Sky Is Calling (2013)

Teeth Of The Sea in Cities Of Gold

Behold the illusiom, tangible between your fingers. Like a dream that intrudes your waking life. Slices of electro like greased pastrami. Soundscapes of vistas from The Warriors. There’s Knight Rider smashing through an arcade while Michael Knight does Can-D.

We’re talking 80s futurism, peeps. We’re talking ghost poetry, p33ps. We’re talking fleeting interactions with time as this song could loop insight inside and out and dissappear or expand beyond reason. We’re talking music to make you dance and make you quiver in fear. As always, Teeth Of The Sea are all things at once. They set it off. Your all in. Are you all in? Your all in. This is Cities Of Gold. They are. You are. Capitulate.

https://teethofthesea.bandcamp.com/track/cities-of-gold

Pillowland by Jam City

Outside the poses, lost in a dream, those fragmentary thoughts. Through the riptides and beyond the pale.

These clattering noises, of a dub power pop. Twisted like colours through the window of a washing machine. Glitched like a broken ////%%%%%

The Associates play SNES while eating bananas encrusted with rusty razor blades. Entire genres get forced down a swirling plug role. Electro is demolished and reinforced. All times happen at once. Guitars scratch like birds of paradise pecking magic mushrooms. An anime theme wanders by and tickles you. Blade Runner vents spit raspberry.

It’s chill out and ants in yer pants twitchy ADHD. Restless like horses jonesin for a fix on the carousel.

A peace is being broken between the nature dub of Forest Swords and the fuck-these-drugs-are-the-shit electro of Savant.

Intelligent pop music that breaks it’s diamond form with a hammer, re-grows, then breaks itself. In a loop, music is both glue and acid. An album that fights itself. The stronger the pop music gets the closer to the edge it teeters. Edging itself. You know what I mean.

https://jam-city.bandcamp.com/album/pillowland

https://www.normanrecords.com/records/184498-jam-city-pillowland

LoskInTheBosk: ‘La Tela Di Gaia’

Somewhere in a forest clearing, in which faeries dwell, there are cowboys on a quest for gold.

These are the vibes shimmered by LoskInTheBosk and their debut single ‘La Tela Di Gaia’; this is Italian pop music with fast acoustic guitars racing round hairpin curves like a sleek red roadster, folky flutes, and fast vocals, all in all like a badass anime kickback.

Set around two spinning acoustic guitars, ‘La Tela Di Gaia’ rotates and pivots like a maze that fights back. Here at colourhorizon we love it when acoustic guitars are played fast to stir the blood, such as the mighty Rodrigo y Gabriela. Here the guitars careen and holler. Action is denoted, suggested and supplied.

Meanwhile a delicious pop melody slips through the gaps to take you to a sunny place.

Managing to straddle drama and excitement, ‘La Tela Di Gaia’ combines the pastoral with the action packed.

https://open.spotify.com/track/1jpcsm9XfY9XkftpS7VLAP

Hexed Endeavours by Our Man In The Bronze Age

Like shagging in the back of a Ford Cortina, Hexed Endeavours is a dirty, sweaty 1970s mess. It’s iconic and seedy. But there’s a John Cale LP under your arse and you’re in the car park of a polytechnic.

Our Man In The Bronze Age are a band of riff monsters, but these dudes who read Baudelaire. They are a rock band who wear their smart-ness not dumb-ness. The desert rock sounds may be big and dry but the brains are doing as much work as the riffs.

Our Man In The Bronze Age will make you dance, make you bang your head against the wall, but with enough post-rock pseud mag hi-jinks, and knowing when to hold back and when to go full full throttle.

‘Midnight Lovers’ is a HUGE anthemic slaughter fuck-fest. ‘Rambling’ is where they play with your perceptions with what starts as a piano led ballad slathered with psych undertow turning into a castle crumbling assault over 8 proudly proggy minutes. ‘Bill Odyssey’ starts with a piano and bass soundtrack waltz, like a Western that features a creepy icky spider and one last showdown between the great old ones.

Hexed Endeavours is a long, intense album. Even the softer moments are angled and pokey. This is a trip; physically, mentally and emotionally.

https://ourmaninthebronzeage.com/album/hexed-endeavours

Hot take: Skyfall

Look, Skyfall is a good movie. Hugely fun, charismatic, attitude and stylish. The best Craig Bond movie and the closest to what 21st century Bond should have been.

But in the writing there are several huge, gaping fucking problems that when you see them, they can’t be unseen. And let’s not even bother with the old tenet that the last act is Home Alone. We know that. The crux of the matter is that writers Wade and Purvis are cack handed shit shovellers who seem to write off the top of their heads, and directors then film the first draft.

Main problem with the plot. Villain Silva is supposed to be the worlds most bad-ass hacker. He wants to kill M. He could easily find where she lives and shoot her on her own doorstep. The movie starts by blowing up her office when she’s not in. Well done, dick head. THIS MOVIE DOES NOT NEED TO HAPPEN. The fact that Silva has concocted a murder plan more elaborate than that of a Columbo killer evades your attention first time around, but when the realisation lands, all the comings and goings in London become moronic. Silva boasts to Bond about all the smart things he can do, then does none of that shit at all.

Earlier, Bond is on Silva’s island and forced to shoot at Severine with his dodgy shoulder. She dies. Bond does a cool line about radio and the cavalry arrives. Erm… Why not have done that earlier and a woman wouldn’t now be dead, you complete bastard. Those helicopters must have been around the corner having a tea break.

And more that doesn’t make sense… Bond is trying to protect M so he takes her to Skyfall to lay his trap. Why take an old as fuck woman into what you are planning to be a wall to wall carnage of death? Leave her at a tea room in Lancaster bright spark. She dies. Shocker. As entertaining as it is, this movie is about a useless assassin and a useless bodyguard.

Wade and Purvis philosophy of Craig’s Bond starts to unravel to. In Casino Royale they went to huge, self congratulatory pains to say that this Bond stands apart from the others, ring fenced. Jolly good. But then here in Skyfall they fan-wank themselves into a frenzy by having the car from Goldfinger and a quip about the ejector button. That’s not his fucking car then is it? It’s some other cunts car. You made your shittily assembled bed, now lie in it.

A tiring trope too at the time: the villain plans to get captured as a crucial part of the scheme. Here Silva is reliant on Q (and Bond) cracking the London Underground puzzle. What if Q had fucked off on holiday?

Imagine how good this movie would be Wade and Purvis were as smart as they think they are.

Hot take: Casino Royale and Goldeneye

Let’s do it. Goldeneye is a better Bond movie than Casino Royale.

Let’s start by saying Casino Royale is a great movie. Technically, Casino Royale is a much better movie than Goldeneye. And yet, Goldeneye is a better James Bond movie. The tank chase is more Bond-y than any shit CGI komodo dragon, limply shot car chases in Rome, or Christoph Waltz looking sad in a cell.

There are many excellent scenes in Casino Royale (apart from all the Venice shit). The casino scenes are great. And yet the movie is disturbingly mastabatory towards the Bourne movies, a set of fine, though overrated films.

Many of the seeds of what is wrong with the Craig movies are planted in Casino Royale. The third, final act is stupid, boring and nearly senseless. This trend continues, every Craig movie stumbles to a final act that deflates all that has gone before. Quantum Of Solace has a fire in an empty hotel. Skyfall is a violent Home Alone. Spectre trundles to a boring, boring, fuck-me-it’s-boring climax. No Time To Die is a Metal Gear Solid rip off, minus the cool but easily defeated armoured suit.

A big seed planted in the Craig-iverse is Vesper. The romance between Bond and Vesper is ultimately ruined because the writers, Wade and Purvis, are convinced they are writing the love story of the 21st century. The real love story is the one between the writers and Vesper. They clearly love Vesper more than Bond, or the audience ever did, so the result is Bond having to act as if he’s been through a love story that just isn’t represented on screen. As with everything in the Craig-iverse, the writers want the end result without putting any effort in. Want another example of Wade and Purvis’ tell don’t show approach to writing? In Skyfall they tell us incessantly that Bond is old, fucked and past it. No he isn’t. Look at him. Why peddle some shit that contradicts what the viewer sees. Why write like that? Want another? In No Time To Die they’re pressing home that Felix is Bond’s “brother” and have been on so many adventures together. We, the audience haven’t seen Felix since Quantum, so we haven’t been privy to them becoming “brothers”. You can’t just bring back a character you ain’t touched for a decade then ask the audience to care.

Goldeneye gives the people what they want (following Elliot Carver’s rule) . It has action, gadgets, one of the strongest villains, a tight plot, it’s well paced, and with the exception of Boris has great characters. Best of all though is that it stars Pierce Brosnan, a man over the moon to he playing Bond. Brosnan loves being Bond, and his Bond loves being 007. The lack of joy drags down Craig, and it’s not all his fault. On the rare occasion Craig is given some quips and funny lines he nails them. Craig had an untapped side as a Bond who gives no fucks, and the first part of Quantum Of Solace actually showcases him well. He is great as a bull in a china shop. But the writers keep hamstringing him with misery. Given he’s having a whale of a time when he plays Benoit Blanc you have to wander what his Bond could have been like.

It is totally, totally understandable that people love Craig and the Craig movies, but ultimately… If you like Casino Royale but don’t like Goldeneye… Maybe the thing you don’t like is James Bond?

What the hell is wrong with giving the people what they want anyway?

No Time To Die gets a well deserved slating here: No Time To Die Review ⭐⭐

Check out the Contents page!

Synthetic Villains Xmas Album

Tis the season to be jolly… Richard James Turner returns as Synthetic Villains and this time it’s festive.

Without a hint of irony, but with a dollops of love, Richard has made for us a Xmas album. Oh how passe, one might think, as staid as Mary Poppins on Xmas Eve. But no worry, as sure as Saint Nick will squeeze his magical bottom down the chimney, Richard has invested his album with invention, charm and mastery.

Alongside his own compositions, there are a sleigh load of covers of the old classics, those songs that last the generations. For me this is where the album shines: in particular his ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ and ‘We Three Kings’ are particularly delightful, all shimmering elan. ‘We Three Kings’ has a snaking guitar lead that turns it into a charming garage rocker, ready for Mark E Smith guest vocals, when Mark rises on Easter Sunday. ‘God Rest Ye… ” has the lolloping gait of Ealing Comedy hi-jinks, George Cole’s on the make again.

His ‘Carol of the Bells’, known to this humble writer as that song from Home Alone, is transformed into a darkly hauntological John Carpenter inspired chiller. Perfect for a Xmas creepy movie.

The pleasing thing is while there is electro aplenty here this is not really an electronic instrumental album, there are more of those on bandcamp than unwanted Vienetta’s in the North. Make no mistake, Richard is a guitarist first before all things and the focus of each song is his Fender Mustang. A Tom Verlaine disciple, Richard has made a guitar album with electro adornments, not the other way around. He has a guitarists eye and world view.

https://syntheticvillains.bandcamp.com/album/christmas-album