March 2015 - Sinister - missprint.org

Sinister: MIME-Version: 1.0
by robhalcrow＠tiscali.co.uk 28 Mar '15

28 Mar '15

I've just been playing Girls In Peacetime... Has taken me a while to get into it. Really liked Nobody's Empire straight away. Getting into the others. Most of them anyway. What else? I saw God Help the Girl with a friend...I wanted to like it. We both did. Didn't work for me though. Or my friend. Maybe I'm just too grumpy. Maybe we both are. What else else? I would have done the Stuart David book competition if the digest had arrived before the closing date. Haha. Never mind. If you won one, I hope you enjoy it. I really do. It's nice to see the odd Sinister message pop into the email. I'd had a look round the site from time to time. Enjoyed the completely outdated knackeredness of it. Right up my street. I'll keep this short. In fact, I'm stopping now. Robert +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Sinister: Chris Geddes demo
by Jean-Christophe Pacaud 28 Mar '15

28 Mar '15

https://soundcloud.com/chrisgeddes-1/perfect-couples-first-day-demo +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Sinister: Looking backwards
by FP 16 Mar '15

16 Mar '15

So, Sinister still works. And I still have the same phone number. I can prove it, too. I found myself in a sticky situation the other month. In the office, taking a toilet break. I sat down, but, too late, realised there was no paper left. Oh. Too late. Incidentally, I heard the new B&S single the other day, inadvertantly, on 6 Music at 7 in the morning, opening the Mary Ann Hobbs show. And it was...well, interchangeable. I can't help feeling as if up to (and including) DCW, B&S albums always had some sort of memorable moment, some sort of touching chord change; and since DCW, everything they have produced has been blandly interchangeable, all produced in just the same way, all with the same orchestral parts behind it, all much of a muchness. There are only two toilet cubicles, and there was someone else in the other. I'll just sit it out, then, wait for him to go and sneak my arse across. Hmmm. He's not moving either. He's very quiet, in fact. Almost as if he's run out of paper too. Oh. We spoke: it was one of my staff. He was, indeed, also out of paper. Bugger. I haven't listened to much B&S for a while - in fact, it must have been a year ago they last popped into my life. Sitting in a random Midlands motorway services, feeding warm milk to one of the kids, Stuart M's face appeared broadly across the News 24 coverage bracketed up on the wall. Aspect ratio problems, maybe. God Help The Girl at Sundance. I haven't seen God Help The Manic Pixie Girl either; I'm not entirely sure I want to. The trials of a young woman with issues seen through Stuart's lenses? Ho hum. My phone was in my pocket, because it's always useful to have something to keep you occupied on the toilet after all, isn't it. My own phone, not my work phone, but it still had the numbers of some of my staffers programmed into it. I tried the first one: no answer. Tried another: bums. The first again. Ring ring ring. Weird to think that I should have staff working for me, that I should have kids, indeed. I tried to play Fans Only to them when they were younger but they didn't seem particularly excited. My daughter, though, does rather enjoy dancing to Bauhaus and The Cure, good choices for a toddler. Her twin brother prefers to run around randomly screaming, which I understand is rather more traditional for the age group. I only discovered today, thanks to Mr Casarotto (formerly of this parish)'s Twitter account, that there's a Duplo Trains phone app. It's amazing what you learn being a parent. Mind you, if you want Lego trains, I randomly found some by Ben Apps on the internet the other year. Ben, if you're reading: I'm impressed. Sinister life events. We've covered all of the traditional ones off now between us as a list, haven't we? All three. So we escaped from the toilet eventually, as you've probably guessed. However, although I had my staff's numbers, it turns out, they didn't all have my not-work one. So they googled it. And what comes up if you google my phone number? The Sinister archive, apparently: the phone numbers of me and GEA, letting everyone know them ready for a meetup in Embra. I have the same number still. I don't know if GEA does. Back when I first discovered Sinister - 17 and a half years ago, in the fourth floor University Library computer lab because you didn't usually have to queue there - it led me into a world of music I didn't really know about, and didn't know I had been missing. Sarah Records, for example. Everyone was saying that B&S were like a Sarah band, that if Sarah had still been going they would have signed them. I couldn't even remember hearing of Sarah, although - I worked out many years later - I probably bought the NME in which they announced they were closing down. The closest I'd come to such things were bands like Lush on the rockier side, or Stina Nordenstam on the quieter side. Nowadays, I'm a mature grown-up. I have children, a responsible job, I commute to work every day from a station that appeared on a Sarah 7", and I go to see art exhibitions explaining the history of Sarah Records. And, all of a sudden, I got it. I saw straight away that Sarah would never, not in a million years, have signed B&S. B&S, after all, put Stuart's ideal girls on their album sleeves, the sort of girls he wanted to write songs about and make films about. That just wouldn't wash. Back in '99 I spent my summer away in the Scottish islands. I was away there whilst TBWTAS was released; I had someone post it up to me. I heard Tigermilk for the first time, courtesy a girl called Cat Toms who had it on tape with her. I was deeply sad at the time, surrounded by beautiful, wild moorland, and by night darkness, black lochs and wild Atlantic winds. I lay catatonic on beaches when I was supposed to be working, and I was never brave enough to throw myself into the dark, inky, mirrored nightwaters for the seals to bear me away. I've never been a brave person. If I'd waited twenty years, I was thinking the other day, before going to university, I'd probably have done a lot better at university. I'd have seen through the bullshit, got all the work done, organised my arguments more effectively and generally done better at all of it. But if I'd waited twenty years, I wouldn't have been the same person now. Would I have liked the same music, though? I'm still touched to the core by the first few B&S albums despite all that I've learned since then. Which led me to think: I went to see them again the other year. A bit different to the first time I saw them, at Carnegie Hall. What surprised me the most: Mr Jackson's afro. Do B&S, now, still like the same music that they did themselves 20 years ago? Do they think themselves they're at their peak, now they're invited onto national radio to sing things out of tune? Or do they wish they were still writing songs as good as the songs they wrote back in time? Stuart David, of course, is kind of outside of it. I must try to get hold of his book. At the book group I occasionally go to, we read an Ian Rankin crime thriller a while back; and Stuart D - or rather his alter ego Peacock Johnson - popped up in it as the villain. The other book groupers were mildly amused to discover I'd met one of the characters from the book that month, especially as he was fictional after all. I'm going to try to make sure the children like B&S, even though they probably won't. I'm going to try to make sure they like making music, more importantly. And I'm going to try to make sure they appreciate serendipity, and quiet corners, and the fact that things fade and wither. Maybe they too will find a band, and discover something magical. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Sinister: Stuart David's book and the spectucular prize draw thereof
by honey＠missprint.org 16 Mar '15

16 Mar '15

Hullo you lot, Right. I promised a week or so ago that I'd be sending on an exclusively-fashioned finely-honed Sinister-specific (lip-smackin' etc) competition to win a pre-release copy of Stuart David's fine new book on the origins of the band which I can't recommend enough. This is it. Book blurb: https://www.littlebrown.co.uk/books/detail.page?isbn=9781408705155, Stuart's blog about it: http://www.stuart-david.com/?page_id=175 Pets Win Prizes: http://missprint.org/sinister/allnightcafe/competition.jpg Rachel from the Little, Brown Book Group (spectacularly the name really includes a comma) is offering 16 (wait for it) copies of the book to those who enter, drawn randomly from your entries. The lucky winner gets the book, a tote bag (how very B&S!) and a poster signed by Stuart, which I'd like to think but can't guarantee is signed in his blood. Five more get the book and tote bag (see pic above) and ten more just get the book. The rest of you get a polite round of applause. I'm not great at statistics but I'd say you have a reasonable chance of winning. Rachel has assured me your email or postal addresses won't be used to spam you subsequently and will be deleted after the draw's over. So that's good then. But firstly a word or two from Stuart to you, yes you: "Although I wasn't fully conscious of it at the time, it was all the people from the Sinister list I was talking to while I was writing this book. So if any of it means anything to any of you crazies, that's enough. It doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks." I'd really appreciate posts from winners after you've read the book, so please remember to come back and tell us what you thought, good or bad. In fact I'd like it if you posted on entering too but you don't have to. I really want to know if others enjoy it as I did and besides, you won it here. Don't forget Mum. Mail from the publisher below and details on how to enter. Please try to ignore the quote she's included from me as it's hardly Booker Prize worthy - Chris's review is much better. The book though is very, very good. Honey x ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Little, Brown says: On April 16th, we're hugely excited to be publishing Stuart David's memoir of Belle and Sebastian's formative year: In the All-Night Cafe. It's affectionate, fascinating, evocative, magical and charmingly written - everything you would expect. But don't take the publishers' word for it - it comes highly recommended by some Sinister people too: Honey says: "I can't recommend it enough. It doesn't have an ounce of twee other than a good bit on a beach, and is written with a very singular voice: it's more of a story than an attempt to produce one of those dreary blow-by-blow diaries of gigs and tours. I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say it ends with the Tigermilk party, which I love. It's mostly about him and Stuart M hanging around and finding out how songs work and how records work. I am dying to tell you some funny stories from it but let's just say "if you want to shag him, you should just ask him out"." Chris Jones says: "It made me swoon and feel just marvellous. The re-animation of Sinister is very timely, because it will take you on a beautiful nostalgic journey back to those heady late 90s days and make you fall in love with the band all over again. As they creep towards a slick, professional, internationally touring pop behemoth/contemporary cultural irrelevance (delete as you see fit) it was beyond wonderful to be reminded of why we all fell head over heels for them in the first place. I've been listening to the early stuff all over again, supplementing it with the newly learned scraps of joy from Stuart's book, and boy have I enjoyed it... The fact that I've been able to read Stuart David's book at the same time has made me fall in love with them all over again - I've been listening to the 90s stuff with a totally fresh view. It's been utterly beautiful and I've found enjoyment in places I never did first time round. It's a great fanboy read - I've been reading it on the bus after work and am so sad that I'll have finished it soon. It's put a bit of much needed indie sparkle back in my life." For a chance to win a limited edition early copy of the book (10 runners up), with a tote bag (5 runners up), and maybe a poster signed by Stuart (1 winner), just email marketing(a)littlebrown.co.uk before midnight on Sunday 22nd March with your name, post address, and subject: "All-Night Cafe". ------------------------------------------------------------------------ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister(a)missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo(a)missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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