Meet the Remixers

So as you may know, there are a few folk out there who have agreed to remix songs from the Lighting and Electrical album.

The remix process is exactly the same regardless of the remixer. It all begins with either myself, Anna or Cam drunkenly acosting some poor unsuspecting soul who has made the grave mistake of displaying a modicum of musical talent whilst we happen to be within earshot. After a period of badgering (usually in stereo) the poor buggers are sufficiently weary and tearfully agree to get involved. Ha!

Then, after several weeks of promising faithfully that 'I'll do it tonight!', I eventually get around to burning a CD of badly labelled and hugely disorganised WAV files that (allegedly) contain all the component parts of the songs necessary to construct a remix. After carrying this CD around in my bag for another week or two I eventually send it, accompanied only with a scribbled note that says 'Hi there. New tune to remix. Have fun! Can you have it done by Wednesday? Did I mention there was no money involved? Ok? Byeeeeee!!!!!!!!'

When the CD arrives the remixer gets cracking. Simple, really.

'A remix, yeah? For Friends of the Stars? Micheal Fucking Jackson! I'm in.'

At the moment there are several remix tunes on the boil and it's all very exciting, I must say. TeaTowel have got two cooking, including a stunning 7 minute Krautrock-tastic take on our track "The Frequency of the Word Turtle". Mike Stokes (Bentley Rhythm Ace) is on the case, as is Clutch Daisy (X [isgreaterthan] Y) and there are, of course, a few others who have yet to receive CDs from me. At this stage, only one remix is available to hear on our myspace thingum, and that's from Manchester's finest folktronica twiddlers Lee Andrews & Rob Hyde (Mum & Dad), but there are more in the post!

Anyroad, we thought it might be fun to post some information about these people. The reason being that our main criteria for us asking these people to remix us in the first place was that their music is wildy different to ours and so, by extention, they are probably wildy different people to us, leading wildy different lives.......all of which should lead us to some wildly different remixes. Do you see??

So with a view to providing you said insight, I emailed a remixer last week to find out what they were up to over the coming weekend. Incidentally, the remixer does not wish to be named as he's scared of the internet, but by way of a clue for the more eagle-eyed readers amongst you, I can reveal that he lives in Manchester and his name isn't Lee......Here's the fanstastic, tongue-in-cheek (i think!) Barleytastic response I received:

The weekend starts at 4 this afternoon, when I'll be picking upthe chaz from Kelvin in the new rockabilly electro cafe downstairs. Then some last minute tune-shopping before meeting some DJ mates in the northern quarter to talk about DJing. Then I'll start DJing about 10, in a new members bar exclusively for DJs, by DJs.

Leaving there about 5, I'll flex back home with some chick, also a DJ, and DJ before having rigourous sex (in steady 4/4 time). She'll wake me up with a kick-ass breakbeat set, before taking it downtempo through the afternoon. We'll nip out to pick up a few tunes, perhaps some mild beat-digging if there's time.

Then, on to a party (taking a bag of tunes along, as if people know what kind of music to play at parties! Anyway, I'll be bored otherwise.) After tearing the roof off (of course) it's back home to bed.

Sunday, mainly reordering records alphabetically (Think it's theKompact section's turn) and changing the 'record of the week' on my wall (dudes love that stuff). Bit of banter on the Underground Resistance forum and then probably have some mates over for one of my famous 'Sunday sessions' in the garden. Proper fucking balearic tackle.

Shaping up to be awesome, as ever.

Wow, eh? What exciting lives the Friends of the Stars remixers lead! It's a wonder they find the time to knock our stuff into shape, innit.

xxxx

Some dates......

We've booked ourselves a few shows in order to road test our lovely new tunes.

Thursday 3rd August @ Market Tavern, Digbeth

Sunday 27th August @ The Old Moseley Arms, Balsall Heath

These will both be acoustic shows. Hope to see you there!

x

Fuck me! Steven Seagal is touring

After Anna and I had rehearsed yesterday we decided to take advantage of a very fine summer evening and go for a pint in the Prince of Wales. Granted, this is hardly a momentous thing to occur and 'Two Musicians Go Drinking' is never likely to attract many headlines. In fact, you're probably wondering why I'm bothering to tell you this.....

BUT WAIT!

.....An innocent and cheeky couple of pints on an otherwise uneventful night was about to become hugely significant for us.

The Prince of Wales, Yesterday

We had been chatting with our friend James for a while and we eventually got on to the subject of gigs and bands we'd seen, swapping tales of bands who had been great and lamentable tales of bands who had been awful. We were having a fine old time of it, I must say. Then James dropped his bombshell....

Casually puffing away on a fag during a brief lull, and completely unaware of the 743 shades of almightly hell he was about to unleash, he said to us, "My brother-in-law is going to see Steven Seagal's band in September".

Now, I don't know what kind of reaction he expected to that statement, but I'd wager that the one he got took him completely by surprise. It may even have scared him a little.

In the immeadiate aftermath of the words hitting us like a juggernaut, James was greeted by Anna screaming with delight and me unable to express my happiness in any other way than to issue a vicious string of swearwords joined together with exclamation marks and incredulous spittle. After this initial explosion subsided James was then faced with a barrage of questions as we launched into him, attempting to garner more information with some kind of demented 'Bad Cop / Bad Cop' routine. On mushrooms.

James clearly had no idea of the level, the depth, the full-fathom-fucking-five-ness of the importance of Seagal to Friends of the Stars. He is our talisman, our guardian angel and the very GLUE that binds us together. To us, he is the greatest movie star to have walked the planet and we have been known to cancel rehearsals, move recording dates and even NOT TURN UP FOR GIGS when there is a Seagal movie on Channel 5. I'm serious, dudes, this devotion borders on obsession.

When things go wrong for us, when things look bleak and we think we're ploughing a lonely, pointless and ultimately doomed furrow, when yet one more thing has gone tits up and we're about to tear it all down, give up and resign ourselves to the thought that we will live out the rest of our days with the stench of faliure and a feeling of regret deep down in our wrethched, twisted and unfulfilled guts, we stop.

We pause.

We take a moment to reflect.

We B-R-E-A-T-H-E.

Then we look at each and a collective thought occurs to us:

'What would Steven Seagal do?'

..and then it's all ok again.

What a day! To find out so casually that the man himself will visit our town and play a gig with his band 'Thunderbox' quite literally made our year. Sod the release of 'Lighting & Electrical', Sod being invited onto the bill of 'Moseley Folk Festival' - THIS is Steven fucking Seagal, man, and the year 2006 was made for us in that moment. The man who brought such gravitas to the role of Sasha Petrosevitch in 2002's 'Half Past Dead' is now going to be here playing songs from his new album Mojo Priest...

For the record, my favourite Seagal movie is the environmental epic 'On Deadly Ground', but Anna disagrees with me. She prefers the classic 'Under Seige' - and in particular the seminal 'Hide in the fridge!' scene. Whilst we both agree that the brief flirtation with black cop / white cop movies some years back was perhaps ill-advised, we see this merely as a BLIP and blame the herd mentality of Hollywood producers rather than the great man himself.

To see a complete list of the Seagal cinematic ouevre click here
To visit the great man's official homepage click here
To buy the album 'Mojo Priest' on CD from Amazon click here
For downloads visit iTunes, innit

Bye for now,
x