Jonny Trunk
Emails from Jonny Trunk never fail to hit the spot. The last one – offering up the Stand By For Adverts/Barry Gray compilation his label Trunk were releasing – asked you to send cash along with a crude drawing of anything from a Gerry Anderson telly show to a Colonel Des Buttocks somewhere near Brick Lane (I drew something crap from Terrahawks in my daughter’s crayons). This time round… well, I’ll let him explain: “It’s called the MMs Bar recording, which is actually pronounced “EMs”, and was made in 2007 / 2008 by an woman called Sandra Cross. She recorded all the buffet car announcements on the Midland Mainline train from Leicester every time she got on it. I first heard it on Resonance FM very early one morning in the car and it really made me laugh and think. I decided it needed to be made into a record. So that’s what I did.” I am working on a picture of a British Rail sandwich to go with the cash I’m about to send to Des The Fat Controller.
The Horrors ‘Moving Further Away’
I love bands like the Horrors. They’re part of that all-to-rare group of artists, the ones who evolve from sketchy beginnings into something far more interesting, far weirder than anyone ever had the right to ever expect. Bands with a healthy amount of ambition. Skying, their new album, is being eulogized about in all the right places – rightly so too. It’s a massive step on from their last LP, managing to weld Kraut to ’80s synth-sounds to garage rock. At around eight and a half minutes, Moving Further Away could easily go on for twice as long. It’s a truly stunning record. Cannot wait to hear what happens next.
You can listen here to a stream of Skying via the Quietus.
Iain Sinclair “Ghost Milk”
I’ll be writing a lot more about this in the next week or two, just editing down an hour long interview I did with Iain last week. The follow up to his hugely successful book on Hackney, Ghost Milk ponders age of (and death of) the Grand Project – from the Millennium Dome to the Olympics. Blackly humorous and oddly trippy at points, it’s as fantastic as you’d expect. Interviewing the guy – well, he doesn’t let you down in person. More on that in a week or so.
The Craft Beer Co.
Well, the other night I caught either a glimpse of heaven or a snapshot of the place that would finish me off – possibly both. The Craft Beer Co opened up with thirty seven casks and kegs on at once – a veritable beer festival every day of the week. I met the Beer Advent Calendar man – this site’s very own Ben McCormick – there for a quick beer on the way home; four pints later I escaped with a considerably looser grip on reality. Their house beers are staggeringly good, their taste in guests (the 35 other pumps) is impeccable. Can’t recommend this place highly enough. That’s the grave stone written, right there.
Robin