Double Hammer Headed Wrath Amplified Beyond Belief!
29 Mawrth 2006, 16:24 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
The introduction continues to stretch Star Wars-like into the starry background of what already happened.
While the astrally-challenged CocOen was on the lamb's shank nell'America, the twin non-Hammer energies have been encircling their destinies like dragon/wasps sniffing out discarded orange lollies at the county fair.
Obvious to all societies that have mastered indie rock, Polytechnic's ascent continues to spiral with honeyed twists into the Hall of Now. A successful four fingers of SXSW left their handprint in the gelatinous stuff of local legend. The Times has already snatched an image from the sugary surge of cultural algebra and stuck it to their tattered pages. Keep a quizzical eye on MTV2 this weekend, as the Teknikalls may make face shapes on their SXSW package: provided they can navigate the Scylla and Charibdis of Twiglet and Zipper with the usual dizzying aplomb.
In darker, moister climes, yet with steely regard to the future, Boomjet are also carving more and more notches in the bedposts of Mancunia. Last Wednesday, their fuzzy torches touched the cavern walls of The Lounge with such speed and intensity that the alcohol was turned to instant vapours. These vapours were in turn set alight by the punky friction, and everyone present was engulfed as a votive offering to the idle gods of gleeful noise. So pleased were the inhabitants of that pantheistic castle, that they restored all those present to health and vigour, with
nothing but a scaly memory of the Dionysian inferno that had charred them minutes earlier. We had been saved from cafe jazz funk, and we were most grateful.
To complete a Chorlton Vasey brace, Boomjet climb the scaffold yet again on Saturday at the salty, smoky den of late night entertainment, PlayTimes2, at The Royal Oak, Barlow Moor Road. Expect great shimmering streaks of glistening crystal to adorn their progress, these speedy slugs of buzzsaw bubblegum.
In the meantime, the Hammers plot new tunes about valleys roaming with cognisant sheep on shiny, new graph paper. And there are hoarse rumours of pieces of autumnal vinyl scored with Hammermusik to support the obverse scratches of True Swamp Neglect. A split seven inch diameter of destiny, with your teeth slavering to come in.
Let's put the puddles behind us, eh?
Back in the GMTTT! (Then Swirled Another Hour Into the Mists!)
29 Mawrth 2006, 13:49 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
Thousands of Miles Have Flooded 'Neath Mine Eyes, Each Leaving Microsized Scratches on My Dreams
Leading astrophysicists have taken paper cups of cooling coffee from their breaks in Star Trek script meetings to try and ponder the labyrinthine chaos that is making stringy cheese of the brain narrative in Coc Oen's greyest of matters.
The continent was a large-rumped mistress and I clung hard to her curvaceous sides, imagining each inch on the map to mother a thousand incidents waiting to spring from the winking earth and carry me into their foaming, unpredictable eddies. Nothing actually happened though. Through sleet, through snow, through rain and thunder, through boiling suns and days end on end when liquid water was a dimly-remembered legend. Megamiles of history lying in wait.
I saw Texans dancing with bells on their knees. I saw Superman swoop from frigid skies over Niagara, wrestling a polymorphene Frankenstein over till receipts from
Burger King and Ripley's Odditorium. I saw the Most Beautiful Record Shop I Done Ever Seen in the sainted streets of Philadelphia: AKA Music - every where my thumb might've
fallen, a mindblowing piece of music waited like a brussel sprout on Christmas morning, sweet healthy juices wound tightly round the bud. I stepped where Rocky bounced and gazed on a thousand flags that fluttered right at him as if taunting him with the prospect of Rocky VI. I saw The Alamo, and worked hard to try and cast a shadow on its ridiculous, reverential brickwork. I saw Nashville and Memphis, the titanic Tennessee twins, whom I would paint as Cumberland wrestlers the size of rock museums, piano wire trailing from their teeth, quashed ambitions in the tread of their ill-fitting shoes, hassled by panhandling gnats and grizzled with eyes that have seen the arc of music fizzle beyond the horizon.
I saw Graceland, and trod the Stations of the Infinite Locust, snapping images with touristic wonder: how could one man have lived in such tiny luxury? I saw Polytechnic wade into the angry tides of SXSW and emerge with fresh salmon of musical experience wriggling amidst their smiling teeth. I saw gumbo burning into the tastebuds of my tongue with delicate care. I saw many, many branches of Dennys with a thousand vinyl hash brown breakfasts, and heard many, many identical radio stations spreading their wares across the kitchen table of well-worn rock and roll. I saw night after night of March Madness, squealing and flaring on lacquered courts of collegiate chaos, limitless teams (half of whom seemed to play in orange shirts) wriggling like maggots in an enormous TV bucket of hope-riddled possibility. I saw the promised Chicago skyline, but never actually got to lay eyes on it, or
onto the fabled vests of Hooters,
due to late night Polish drinking with a once-distant cousin. I saw Indiana and it was flat. I saw the deteriorating husks of the first germs of English Virginianism, slowly being nibbled away by the James river - the death of a thousand creeks. I saw Madame Liberty out of the corner of a yellow cab while throbbing across the Brooklyn Bridge, and the unkind mediocrity of Sleepy Hollow further up the Hudson river. I saw Boston and read the claims of yet another birthplace of democracy, carefully noting the stretchmarks on the blank-faced population. I saw the family resemblance. I saw Ontario's snowy wrath, skidding into the path of my faithful Chevy Malibu.
I saw Michigan unfurl its academic artichoke heart to me and noshed hard upon its vegetarian thoughtfulness. I saw the Mississippi river, feared and bridged and ignored like an unruly grandparent, but never got to paddle my fingers. I saw the western expanse of the United States pulling my very skin towards the Pacific and the dark side of the Earth, and dug my craven heart into the Lone Star soil. I saw Dallas freeways swimming in gorgeous floodwater. I saw a dozen cities for no more than five minutes each, and knew that they've had their chance. I saw the political classes, jogging mightily along the Potomac river, and the staircase from the end of The Exorcist, but couldn't make the connection. I saw the San Antonio river and Paradise as clumsily interposed slides in the lonelier chambers of my heart, and ate vegetarian wraps
in the arboreal shade.
I saw a Cockney gecko selling car insurance, night after night; the only reminder that Britain existed, aside from my faithful Motorola. I saw pigs racing, deep-fried cookies and sex in every pixel of Spanish language television. I saw half a dozen hospital buildings, none of which looked as though they knew my mother from 1958. I saw an Egan, Louisiana, an Ennis, Texas, a Llanfair Avenue in North College Hill, Ohio, and a score of Manchesters. I saw Cincinnati was in a very dire and serious need of a party, and that Hammers should plunge warmly into the Ohio river soon as Springtime. I saw New London cling to some Utopian thoughts on the Connecticut coast, dispensing free gloves, sweet vibrations and Doric masonry to a wandering lamb. I saw shrunken human heads, cattle with fluffy blow-dried coats, and Japanese men making escalating metal music like restless monkeys with drum kits supported by eager hands and heads. I saw about 5% of what was possible.
But how did I feel? Scratchy. Shallow. My body sang my journey back to me in trembling, mucal staccato; and I still can't quite place the voice.
Normality on a postcard, to...
Sky Ships in the Night
24 Chwefror 2006, 00:56 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
Empty House of Hammer?
Oh friends! An empty house and an
empty chair... Where is our leader?
Loopol and I, a mere
egg, only went for a few days and returned to find a scrawled note, four foot
high in tomato puree, much similar to the entry we see below. Except more
direct. When we saw the toothbrush pot empty we knew it was true...
Our sloppy brains had had a bashing from far within the Dutch experiment and
at that moment it was clear hands of mighty imps were playing with
us in some sort of deranged charity shop subbutteo cup final. We have indeed been scattered in
fertile winds! Play with us if you must ye fiends, we can take whatever you
can throw at us.
I had to go to an official source for comfort:
"If a streaker's on the pitch, play would stop until your
opponent flicks a policeman close enough to make an
arrest. You can waste vital seconds."
Source :
Daily Record www.record-mail.co.ukNo
time to waste now, keep moving and you can meet them all! Shout hellos in busy
malls, hijack radio stations... swim deeply in the USea.
Good tide hammer,
we'll see you
brightly
in morrow month!
Hammers Found Silent at Wedding
21 Chwefror 2006, 00:15 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
One more Hammer descent to Earth before disassembling to challenge the world.
After the Afronauts spread the seed of the Manchorlton Christs in the fertile soil of Zambia this Summer past, CocOen has risen to the challenge and chosen to hurl thoughts of the chosen thinking across the North American continent from sea to swirling sea. Special flags have been comissioned in each of the host states to remembark the occasion, and the Olympian Committee have been sighing in their bribe-stained pillows that it's only the Winter Olympics that will be smothered from the headlines. Although whether this will stem the tears of the milky-complexioned luscious legion that dangle from his every gesture on the streets of Manchorlton until his return in April, is a thorny question indeed. Please hold the CocDude in your minds as he traverses the most discombulated of nation states, and if it helps, he will most likely be stretching his blog muscles on
Myspace.
Ringo meanwhile will be readying himself for slapping skins with the Teknikons the length and other length of this United Isle of Kingbritaindom, subtly semaphoring out a message of pure Hammer infatuation as he
glimpses every urinal venue our sweet archipelago has to offer. Subliminal enhancement has been a staple of our diets for decade on mouldering decade, so why shouldn't the forces of good fruit sign onto the same dotted line once and a while? For more details, spit your laser-guided eyebeams to the
Polytechnic site.
But afore we split, just time (Two Ronnies style) to put all in the right box, regarding the recent Playtime performance. A shifting performance, it was, wrongfooted by backing tracks disappearing like intoxicated aunties until tables, and strangled by apparently whispering vocals. Technology had taken just about enough of our wilful abuse, and was striking back. Still, more draft cards were picked up and gleefully swapped for the Hammer's shilling: our ranks have tumesced that important inch outwards. Soon we will have command of the inveterbrates, and within a few months, of the lower grades of mammal and fish.
Oh, say. What can you see?
Noise Found Dead in Kitchen, Pictures
8 Chwefror 2006, 16:32 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
Sure, you can lock us in! But where do we get our moist fanmail from, eh?
More detritus, you say? Well, alright. You can tow away that pile of rancid memories, snaking evil odours into the thinkosphere over by the kitchen window. Just give me a moment to commit them to http://giveashit...
Who the fuck am I talking to?
Another year down the mysterious hole of history, and thusly, another occasion for grinding the air around us into horrible, horrible shapes. Rather selfishly, we crowned the Goatboy Birthday Man of the Year with a celebratory Hammerparty. No-one else was invited to play. Or maybe they were. Callous souls that we are, we may have dangled amps in their faces and then switched them all off.
The set was met with howls of such intensity that passing motorists were temporarily blinded and drove into the Lloyds TSB windows. No mortgages were injured. The walls ran soggy with a milkshake of primal longing, huge hairy beats and neatly conceived moves intended to topple humanity, crested with a inedible fruit of pure messy ambition. Man, it felt good to be a Hammer! But the evening was not without it's petty tussles with the grizzled ghosts of musicianship and repetitive man(c)tras, ripped from the yellow pages of a dusty pop compendium. In the spangly blue corner, eight-fingered denizens of nagging guitar, Beefheart noises and bluesy instincts distended beyond communication; in the dusky red, the two insistent thumbs of sore insensible bliss, desperately wanting to keep the window open for unpredictable pre-recorded genius.
Polish Dan and Ringo combined their fingers over piles of vinyl to muss up the minds of all about, turning their
bodies to vessels of dance and bringing down Babylon around our shapely shoulders. Even Coc La Roc jammed his thumbs into the retinal fluids of Madame Disco to create a beautiful tripod of Polish Coc Ringo Aktion. Then the Musicians Union decreed that the needle fun was over and that the jamming should begin. Just the one key. For four hours. When half six arrived, the dawn turfed them out back to their unimaginatively decorated flats.
In other news,
Polytechnic are out and about once again, touring with Morning Runner. History will only repeat itself so often, so train yourself to jump onto the steely moment when it comes. Citizens of Leicester, your time is nigh.
And if you want a third bit of news, Hammers will be playing above the tooth'd hordes drinking their own weight in boiling lager at the
Royal Oak on Barlow Moor Tangent on 18th February. It's the Son of Playtime, Playx2, and it smells of delight.
Drumkits, ahoy!
Elvis Spotted Kissing the Tarmac at Chorlton Cross
30 Ionawr 2006, 17:15 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
There's something in the water here: it's water!
The chocolate thoughts are still tumbling from our brainlocks after a winning evening in the shadow of Robin Nature-Bold and his army of 80p nymphette fashionistas. After a mixed grill of sugary highs and fatty lows at the November show, the Hammers got to unfurl their brains all out in a carpet of dazzling splendour with over forty minutes of stuff. We played some new tunes, which sat with uneasy confidence at the edge of wrong, and lovingly ran our thumbs over the worn edges of some Hammer classics. If we could've played an encore on our ribs we would've done it without second thought or third party insurance. This after
Ed Barton scaled new heights in musical carpentry,
Lone Lady had growled through a bubbling set of punky insoucience, and The Ex's made sweet sounds. Then we retired to Manchorlton to discuss psychogeography and Saxon farmers.
But most of the news is to be found on the radio. Rob da Bank has slapped the gummy MP3 of "Spaghettihead" up on the webworld
here. Due to the wholehearted sweetwater thought processes that swamp his brain like tributaries of the mighty Amazon, he will keep it up there for a week or two. My, it's been a giddy week. He spat so many friendly words over the air about us, our gourds dribbled over. We needed a new front door here at Hammer Towers due purely to the barrage of fanmail, busty teenage drug dealers and (bizarrely) Noel "Telly Addicts" Edmonds that had hammered upon it. Myspace has had to open a whole new annex to accommodate us. You know, success.
An even stronger stench of fortune hangs around Maida Vale this evening. Cast your eyes
here and you ears will follow. The Twiglet himself will share a joke and a chat with Polytechnic, once they've managed to wade through a couple hundred acres of lawyers, record executons and other Metropolitan midlife crises. Live stuff coming through!
A team of Texans have been spotted drilling into the ground outside Turkish Delight trying to tap the source of this musical gush and sell it in tiny four-inch barrels on the streets of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Good luck, you lunkheads!
Delicate Hamas.
Shimmy Shimmy Ya, Shimmy Ya, Shimmy Yay!
26 Ionawr 2006, 22:20 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
Pretty Boy Conference at the Apollo Ballrooms This Tuesday!
Howdy, you champions of good taste and bad ettiquette! Fresh news from the butchers. Get your bloodied aprons on.
It's been announced that New York City ambassadors The Strokes have hotly punched Polytechnic onto the supporting bill for their second show at the Apollo on Tuesday, Ionawr 31st. Who will be uppermost in the chic stakes? Manhattan slicksters or the rug-smoking, wonk pop merchants from the hip Barlow Moor district in slinky, downtown Chorlton. Legend asserts that The Eva Mendes Videomakers (bless them for that) asked for the Teknikons by name and number. So maybe they'll be wearing Polytechnic Are Ace badges and commemorative mugs and shit.
(Fuck! Rob da Bank just mentioned our very name! Wheee-hoooo! He said we were brilliant, the pony-tailed fool! I knew it was a good idea to send them the cunningly disguised copy of Dire Straits' Greatest Hits.)
Secondly, we Hammers have sweated and puked over three new tunes for your aural reluctance on Sunday. So if you began to feel a jaded, stroke-like feeling crawl across your mind whenever Hammers put foot on stage, rouse yourselves and nip down to Der Tiger Loungeroom in Middle Manchester. OK, it's the Sabbath, but go by horse and cart if you need to. You can tie the line up at the bar.
Consider Belgium!
The Scent of Mag Staples Burns my Eyes
25 Ionawr 2006, 17:49 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
Death of a Thousand Papercuts to the Infidel!
So these rusty words of truth proved too rich for the blood of the few. Now they are hot rivets, littering the
newstands like so many empty peanut shells, their innards consumed by credulous youngsters, hungry for pellets of something new. Pellets of death. Mwah ha ha ha!
Blowback has scattered itself across the land and beyond. It looks more than a little like this.
How perfect a week! Radio One will spill our innermost thoughts over the radiowaves tomorrow night, and we've secured some gig action at the latest installment of Auto Test Pilot at downtown Manchester's ritzy Tiger Lounge. This will take place on Sunday evening, when darkness has fallen on the 30th January. The brave Hammers are stepping into the warm holes left by absent The Nightjars, so we have ascended to the dizzy heights of
headlining the night. Pulsing, fuzzy white stars at the sides of my eyes, is this what it's like to be in The Beatles?
The only grit in the salad is that Mr Da Bank pre-recorded tomorrow's show from the debauched comfort of his absinthe-soaked couch, so these latest pebbles of information are still on the shore, waiting to be picked up by the tide of history.
So we leave this precious cluster of hazelnuts in your hot little hands, readers. You owe it to yourselves to fire these into vinegared conkers of the toughest resemblance and run about your playgrounds, spitting the good word into the sores of all the leperous ne'er-do-wells you meet.
And go check out
The Human Costume, Japan's newest and littlest musical hobo. He spasms like a dirty god, and has pylons in his pants.
Shit it up your Tek, scofflaws!
And the producer said to me...
19 Ionawr 2006, 22:20 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
Holy crap, we're in the movies!
The vomit is already swirling in the craws of our nearest and dearest. We are battering them about the hearts with our gibbering fucking nonsense. Their fingers search for hatchets, but all the weapons have been hidden.
Your Hammers, your own sweet Hammers, will be making a small hole in Radio One next Thursday on the spinky Rob da Bank show. Tiny digital fragments of Hammer sent spinning into the future, teaching our thoughts to farflung galaxies, triggering intergalactic disagreements. Man, we chuffed!
There are practicalities to be considered. Radio One will be hosting a MP3 of ours on the
OneMusic site for a few weeks - Spaghettihead, no less. Our gathered heads cannot spark an image of what this might provoke in the
listening public: violent protest, hefty salads of indifference, choirs of sexual congress. We can only hope for a measure of each.
Earlier today, arm resting on a casual afternoon's work, CocOen allowed some "wacky" syllables to crumble from his puckered gob down a phoneline into a waiting answerphone at Radio Central. Should the sheiks of sense not prevail, these distorted turds may reach your otherwise inviolate ears. For what he has done, CocOen is sorry. Don't let it put you away from us. We're not all like him.
Handsome Nick even made sure that our debut was mentioned on the show of His Ginger Authority, Huw Stephens, on Tuesday. How many Christs could this man hold in the palm of his thumbs? Comfortably forty. Elect him the Pope of Hope immediately.
Our heads are in plastic bags. All time hangs until that Thursday moment. And so much good stuff will be heard in the meantime.
This is actual news. After only a few thousand words of soap and inconsequence.
The beach is falling behind, but whither the ferry?
When we woke up, we realised we'd been dead all along.
7 Ionawr 2006, 18:06 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
Fresh faces out, and let's see if we can fake the path again this year.
Sluggards, sluggards. You're in the hands of sluggards, people. A month in our eyes is as a snowflake on a Thai beach. A dirty blanket of shame provides us with rotten warmth, blimholes offering tiny opportunities for redemption, when what we need is a galaxial route to the infinite. Yeah, not much news.
The riders of history have had their bullwhips hard on the backs of Polytechnic, of course. Why only the other day, Scary Indie Twiglet, Steve Lamacqdaddy was bugling the boys up as a red hot, glowing tip for the twelvemonth. Why only this afternoon, the Lord Stuchbury came pouring into the kitchen, thrusting the as-yet unnamed double B-side single into our stinking corpses. Sweet tentacles of song crammed right into us like the fingers of bad uncles. We felt used and exhilarated!
But the radio is a double-edged mistress, with a welcoming bosom for yet more Chorltonites. Well-tempered DJ of many colours, Rob da Bank slotted our name briefly onto the airwaves during their transmission on Thursday, just
before playing a little Tuunng. How did this come about? Look
nowhere but to Coventry, where the exiled cultural
dynamo, Handsome Nick, put petals to the metal for our shining cause. It was he who texted us as a top tip for 2006!
It was he who said people should "open (their) beaks to Chorlton's finest"! It was he who lead the people whole from the desert to the lush-fronded wellspring of Hammermusik! Throw him your happy shapes, ye dogs! A prophet greater than any
country really deserves.
In addition to this, Your Hammers will be featured on the back pages of Brum-based idea magnet Blowback magazine at some point this month. Pen was put to willing parchment by The Nick Himself (originally for the perennially indecisive Papercut) and he refused to let it die. His words are not destined for some intellectual backwater, but suckled on sterner milk than that. The daylight brushes blinking against them.
Some spectral flags of future Hammer appearances flutter in the corner of our thoughts. A new Hammerfreund, Mattheus (Bender of Circuits), is suggesting the possibility of some performances at the legendarious Korova bar in Lerpwl. There is the possibility of some hip-hop type night opening its lungs to us at the end of a nearby month somewhere in MCR. The Never-Tiring Nick is also juggling windows for us in his Warwickshire exile. A thousand shadows are baying for us. We must answer the call.
The Hammers have even lifted one or two fingers towards recording new stuff. Loopol is as fecund as ever; but the
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