Group Hug - Haps with the Chaps

Do They Know It's August Bank Holiday Weekend?

29 Awst 2005, 09:58 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

All Hail the Hammery Afronauts!

Two candles wait in Barlow Moor windows for the safe return of two of the illustrious Hammer crew. Goat Boy the Loop and Ringo, Lord of All Sutchbury have embarked on the Big Trip over the Equator to the land of six o'clock sunsets.

Their hands have been taken across the world by these redoutable chums. A long trip through the clouds via The Saucy Afronauts! Amsterdam and Nairobi and all the malaria tablets they could fit down their tiny throats has ended successfully in Monze, Zambia. In a little less than four weeks they shall return. Calves are being fatted as we speak about fattening calves, which is a happy coincidence. The Egg and Coc may even try and organise a gig or two to announce their return. Likewise Polytechnic prepare the adventurer's suite for the return of their skin-slapper.

The Hammers have recorded a demo of six tracks labouring under the title, Six Pints of Doubt. If you should be at all interested in hearing how we sound, assuming for a moment that someone has chanced upon the site that doesn't know all our middle names, then press with mousey fingers upon the Skull'n'Cross Cocks at the top of the menu page. Can you see it? Go on, tickle it with your distant thoughts. Once Handsome Nick has returned to us with a cover design, we shall tear down from the Manchorlton mountains and wreak ourselves about the populace. Sounds more exciting than you might expect, eh?

Bacon sandwiches at Twelve O'Clock!

Grassy Knolls Spotted in Delicate Vicinity

16 Awst 2005, 19:53 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

Yorkshire cave paintings record The Egg's man boobs jiggling with success.

We're back once again with our feet up in the flames, blowing smoke rings from our eyes in a blissful, nostalgic fog, remembering our blissful corner of a foreign field that is forever Manchorlton.

A tent torn out from a starry sky held the dreams warm against the cold, incompetent indifference of the sound crew. Whole instruments fell through the gaping chasms in their ability, but the Hammers spirit bonfired with determination and soon the audience were straining to listen with the palms of our hands to our blustering script. The minds of the small and unold buckled and blistered as the acid corruption of our scaly filth boiled their brainbones. And they politely clapped and cheers us, the gimps!

Polytechnic of Higher Edutainment Polytechnic followed on in a fetching row of hats and stabbed birds from the sky with their skewer-tight musings. As the wolves of Big Daddy Industry circle and slaver, the spots of saliva fleck in their eye muscles and they see more clearly than ever before. This drives them to burst through themselves until they are met by the silver-suit wearing future Polytechnic hanging around outside the Albert Hall, inviting them in for smack and biscuits - a tricky, double helix path to navigate.

After that a sacrilegious, blasphemous outrage going by the once-holy name of Loophole set about our senses with unfunk sludge and bad Bentham cajun sing-songs. Dry ice licked our wounds and planted mildew in our minds. For us, the war was over.

In other news, our subterreanean London jaunt has been snared in words here.

Wine before beer makes you feel ear.

Polyteknicons, Assemble!

11 Awst 2005, 19:02 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

Big Dogs come sniffing on the trail of our shining lads.

A brief aside on the continuing adventure of Polytechnic. We left our heroes, bloodied from a tangle with their evil alter nemesis, The (Other) Conversation; but now they are being stalked by a couple of small record labels, offered money to press their strings into big, swanky recording devices and playing hot, hot gigs for hungry kids. And Denny's got tickets for the Third Test down the dusty road at Old Mantrafford, the swanky young gent.

It's all gone enormously swanky. Keep a beady one on this space.

Pure Cork Rains Down on Oz Heads, While Hammers Prepare

11 Awst 2005, 17:03 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

London Spat Out Her Generous Fruit in Our Direction

A strange weekend in many ways. Hammers attacked the Capital from many fronts like Nazi arrows on the Dad's Army map - though some snaked in more quickly than others. Lord Ringo's Bedford was not in an obliging mood and many hours were spent sitting in Warwick Services, salivating over the exploits across the county at Edgbaston and throwing out dark thoughts re: the death of Robin Cook. Then on the return leg, fresh from stoking the boiler of our own Hammers legend with fresh turf, Shoreditch decided to hold on to us for another few dark grey hours. Eventually the AA breathed a new spirit of co-operation into the Sky Blue Wagon and we arrived home 8am on Monday, just in time for the Coc to get up to go to work. Roc a rol, fy ffrindiau!

Hours and hours were carved into a performance of just 30-odd minutes, but we burned into Street of Hammers (No Right Turn Allowed) their earbones with typical precision and grace. Or was it Pure Shonk (TM)? I don't remember. We'd drunk beers all night, then risen early to watch the unruly sight of England winning an Ashes match. Heads were realigned an inch or two to the side - perfect Hammer conditions. And it was a nice red basement we played in.

No Filthy performance, but some other bags of grit to treasure. Antifolk thoroughbreds David Cronenberg's Wife dredged their souls in a witty, wordy and warped fashion. For all the world, two men with sperm for blood and murderous intent waiting patiently behind the eyes. Then post-Hammer came Peanut, who crept down from Edinburgh and shook happy fists over their jangled guitars. Cutely punk with a sniff of the unplugged, they clattered and rattled like some unquiet marsupials..

Now we set up sights on the Big Weekend up the M6 and along a bit. Again it will be tight, as the weekend is studded with parties and a spot of work here and there. At around 8 o'clock on Friday night, we will release tiny spores of sparkling science into the air and scatter dead flies and twigs in the path of Polytechnic, who will follow hard on our exit with their Krautpunk genius.

Ready the chariot and hand us our spear of desire.

Boys Keep Swinging

5 Awst 2005, 23:58 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

The Donkey Never Strays Too Far from the Canteen

We hadn't forgotten, our pretty little pupils. We've sweated chalk from our temples, readying and steadying ourselves for the trip to the Big Smoke. Goat has been practising San Andreas all day 'specially to learn how to operate in a right big city and Coc Oen has been practising looking at girls and The Egg has been polishing his enigma. The Lord Sutchbury has been busy steaming his valves with the lauded Polytechnic, fresh from their triumph at the Blowout weekend at the Southern on Mauldeth Road. But now the planets have aligned in the form of Hammerstein from ABC Warriors and the time is right for us to sweep back to the Dirrrrty South.

Islington's Buffalo Bar has stacked its furniture into a massive bonfire, with a squadron of hedgehogs crouching at the bottom, ready to squeak and fizzle on cue when we arrive. The Antifolk Summer Festival will put matches under our tongues and ask us to speak in flames to the heathen lumps that stumble past the windows. It's all taken care of. Almost GH, just needs a wheel clamp on the chicken's leg

Then onto Yorkshire, where it has been confirmed - the Lamb will lie down with the Goat in Yorkshire's green and pleasant meadows. "Dom, Mike and Tony's Big Weekend", as the Festival That Appears to Have No Name is properly addressed, takes place at Hazle Hall Farm, just off the B6480 near High Bentham on the North Yorks/Lanky border. Delicate Hammers take the stage around 9pm on the Friday, 12th evening. Bats will spiral up in a double helix, codifying the DNA of all those present, and massive electro-sexual energy signals will show up at Jodrell Bank and explode remote radar stations in the Antarctic. When your TV picture bends and fuzzes for a second, that means The Hammers are bending musical pasta through the mangel. Throw your hands up.

Ah, pork scratchings, the smell of romance!

Fingers Wedged in the Castle Walls Aiming for a Tricky Traverse

5 Awst 2005, 14:38 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

Mini Hammers Pack Powerful One Inch Punches

Hola, our razor-toothed chums! We return from the dark interior supermarket aisles with baskets of thick, treacly glee as the warm glow from Auto Test Pilot 8 hardens into a glossy shell of invincability.

The decor was just so, designed by Rudyard Kipling, and the glamour palpable in the underground, aesthetic bolthole known as Tiger Lounge, as Your True Hammers stepped to the stage like Big Smoke to the court of hoops. We played a sawn-off set and yet none of our tunes were any less packed with punky, random 12-bore. The atmosphere was thick with the scent of petrol, cheap lawns and second-hand suits but we wore our irony-masks so we could breathe unimpaired. Each note we touched shuddered and sprang into the air, unfolding its thick, waxy wings as it arched above the crowd. It was a sight to behold, and those that beheld cheered and clapped.

But the night was littered with greatness. Ed Barton set flames liking round the assembled polite indifference until a small campfire singsong spat into life. Nextly, Potteries vocal maelstrom, Mr Thompson, scorched vocals into the The Pimhole image arrives! ceiling, piloting the swell of his own looped voice beneath himself, poking and prodding his keys further and further into the yellow sound. The post-Hammer highlights came thick and glacial from The Pimhole Group of Prestwich, tailors of chilling synth/bass bedsit isolation. Their jackets were leather and their ties were straight, and there were some noises they made with their circuits and pedals that brought forth chortles of delight from the Coc. Funerals, sperm, bedsits and the odoour of antique transistors. Double grand! Then Nottingham's own Zapatistas clattered and shattered the sense of finality that had begun to cloak the evening with bristling industry. Their ties were also straight, but twinned with jumpers for maxium school assembly effect. The Speakers Push the Air site always have many things to say about them, and they were nice lads. Then the quality street petered out into a typical Manc cul-de-sac, so we headed home to enjoy 7-year-old Havana rum and 4-year old Cuban cigars with glamorous ladies.

Another Sabbath, another Hammers triumph. Unless you're a Chick on Speed, in which case, keep taking the supplements from out the Sunday papers and fashion yourselves a papier mache head to take to the carnival. Yeah!

Red Rings Around The Diary Pages

29 Gorffenaf 2005, 01:38 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

Hammers Will Strike Thrice 'Pon the Britannic Swell

Lust has run down my neck like an cold, angry key this last fortnight; but still I stand and stalk the news. Our baskets teem with tench and bream, and our crowns blaze bright with holy intent. The children of beautiful mothers dance in the streams left by the retreating rivers and their careless feet crush tiny beetles on their holidays. That's kinda tragic. But on their way up the mother of pearl staircase they glimpsed the immediate future of Delicate Hammers, which they relayed to us by way of tiny matchstick bonfires.

The Black Prince Waits Already on this very screen, news of Auto Test Pilot 8 (the * number) has bled into the Ontonet. We will be brief, a mere blip in the night sky, but ATP we shall be this Sunday at the Tiger Lounge on Cooper Street, dipping our wicks in the beatnik stupor and sinking our teeth into their truculence. There will be lashings and lashings of performance, dripping from the ceiling and furring up our eyeholes until we beg it to end. Or go home. Whatever happens first.

Then as August throws his purple robes across the year, the Central Hub throws out a lazy spiral harm and sucks us in with its antimatter intensity. Londinauts, beware! The Hammers doth approach from the Hyperborean heights with lupine magic on their minds and the scent of city folk on their breath. Come the next Sabbath, August the Seventh, the Antifolk Summer Festival hosts the Hammers at the Buffalo Bar in Islington. Attitude shall rain down like golden sparks from the forge of Hephaistos as the monkeymen with more fire than fingers rip shit up from seven till midnight. I believe The Zapatistas will be there, of whom many nice words I have read but none understood. The Big Filth himself will be there and the fun will flow quick and sturdy.

Hot then upon those dainty ankles comes the next Delicate appointment at the Festival Which Appears To Have No Name, which takes place in the region of Skipton, Yorkshire Dalemoors. This shadowy collection takes place the following weekend around the 12th-14th of August, but as yet the gilt-edged, embossed invitational shuriken has yet to embed itself in our front door. But even if the Hammers do not take the stage, we will warm around the fields in the company of Polytechnikons and other miscreants with consciences. If we should bust the mics, then tornados shall rip into roofing in every sodden crevice of our craven kingdom. So you know what to look out for, right?

Keep watching the thighs.

Finito, Benito!

Circling Wasps Sniffing the Scent of Future Hammer Action

11 Gorffenaf 2005, 21:23 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

There are carpets in the forests with embroidery and crisps, and they lead to the heart of us all.

News of rattling, metallic clouds swirling like Coffeemate over the Manchorlton prairie has pricked up ears all over the flat Earth we call home. A thousand cast-iron monkey wasps chatter in unison that the Hammers are to play in Manchester again.

The foreign legion may be growing, but the eco-damage of this constant tarmac pilgrimage is weighing heavy on our tattered souls, tearing new dangly curtains from the sweet black beef within. Perhaps it's time to turn our attention to the glossy pavement beneath our own feet.

The rumour is that the Hammers may be peeping above the parapet at the artsy cause for concern that is Auto Test Pilot at the Tiger Lounge in the darkest corners of Mam/Mam. The shadowy visage of Robin Nature-Bold can be discerned in the loonlight. This would be on Sunday, 31st July - but hey! the rumour mill has ground many a hopeful bone into the shingle.

Let's see, eh?

One Bag of Memories Swapped For Another in Memory Bag Swap

9 Gorffenaf 2005, 18:43 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

The love ran down the walls and was scooped up in tambourines

A first glimpse of life in the Betikasphere and it was indeed magnificent. Something about the Greater Betika (as we watched the whole big maximum on the stage) puts us in mind 50 Watts of Goat of Isembard Kingdom Brunel and his stovepipe hat. Perhaps the intricate, almost organic chattering mechanism of it all. Truly they are a clan of engineer/poets, turning whimsical fingers and brain sinews into sturdy power stations of beautiful aspect.

The Hammers certainly enjoyed themselves, as the beer flowed like Austrian anti-freeze. We also moseyed down to the Consortium, and enjoyed some of the Project Mayhem action. It was certainly more fun than we had any right to enjoy. We're very lucky boys.

A few words had been moved overnight but we found the strength and cunning to adapt fairly quickly. The crowd was sparse, but we drove tiny hammer splinters into each of their ears and turned a few more heart-valves blue with our curdled half-hop. There was a lot of talk about sparrows. And there was some lovely music played by Sancho Paul on his recorded music machine. Attendant Swamp personnel argued that Dorset was the Hammers' spiritual home and that we should cast the M60 behind us and concentrate on the M27 West. Motorways stitched together like promiscous fleas in the back of our minds.

A success in the hearts of folk; but there was a small sacrifice to be made. A bag of Coc Oen's life was left at the Mr Smiths venue, and he's been cursing his idiocy since. But the balance of fun and disgruntlement has been kept in good proportion, which is brilliant obviously.

In the words of Hulk: You won't like me when I'm Ang Lee.

Another Watery Dribble of InfoNews

6 Gorffenaf 2005, 11:31 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

What of those Angelic Downstarts, The Conversation?

Sad word vomits its way across the newsdesk here at the toweringly delicate, oak-panelled Hammer HQ. Much as in roughly half of all wars, the side of the angels has been defeated; this time by the she-nanigans of effeminate indie overlords, The (Other) Conversation. Pure cash swilled around in large-barrelled cannons and volpine ecclesiastical lawyers polished their massive and incisive fangs on ancient, dusty documents: you can guess what happened after that. Prossima volta, mi amici; prossima volta!

But say you have a bunch of louche, loose-moralled musical alleycats hanging about in the rafters of their own freetime, looking for a new moniker with which to storm the huddled streets below. Eh? (Come on, say it.) What better place for the terrifying Galafreyan transmogrification to take place than emerging party bolthole, Plastic Surgery at the Late Room beneath Life Cafe on Peter Street? If you can think of a better place, then we shall scalp your hides and pin them to the kitchen wall to inspire us to greater future creative intution.

Narrowly averting disaster in the tiny yet monstrous form of the name Pep (shudder!), the clean-limbed youth of the Barlow Moor Road will instead assume the studious mantle of Polytechnic. Small amphibious landing craft will parade like on Soviet May Day and aim their puny weapons at the ears, noses and throats of all concerned.

And the good news for vinyl junkie Ringo, The Lord Sutchbury, is that Plastic Surgery operates strictly only on the black stuff, playing blockpartyhiphop, indiemusik, all those bags that we love to boil on the dancefloor.

It takes place on Saturday, this Saturday, the 9th July, from 7.30pm until 2.30am. That's like seven hours of ear,and all you pay is £4 before the pubs tell everyone to get the fuck out, etc.

It's got to be worth a look, hasn't it?

And to those legions ranked neatly on the Dorset coast, awaiting our arrival; as the enigmatic Egg himself would say: "See you in the morrow, brightly!"

Hot Stuff - Coming Through!

4 Gorffenaf 2005, 22:43 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

Dorset Jellyfish Prime Their Stingers, The Hammers Are Paddling South.

The Hammers have pulled their faces out of a friend's birthday cake and stopped writing a list of the 39 traditional counties of England to make preparations for yet another visit to County Dorsetchestershire.

There is a truly lovely, many-headed Protean band of troubasaurs called Betika that browses on the sandy grasslands of Bournemouth and her environs. From their towers, a simple hand-typed invitation has found its way to Manchorlton, blown on a magical breeze. When the gods conspire events so gently, only the most densely-knit of skulls could fail to see the need to comply. And so this Thursday, we will head South once more - like Captain S A couple of their human faces captured on film for sport cott; only with fewer ponies.

The birds will be drawn from the sky as we head south, and amass into an army of truth and coincidence. This weight of collective avian will shall bend the electro-magnetic field surrounding all popstars into a shamrock on the pint of Guiness that is our existence. Africa will rise in sympathy and relieve the pop galaxians of their creative and emotional debt, sending said celebrities spinning Vader-like into the emptiness of the moral void. In 2025, the thousand grandchildren of Fela Kuti will launch the first manned spaceflight into the darkest blimholes in the consciousness of Robbie Williams and return clutching the nuggetty prize - perpetual cocksureness.

And Sting will play the same set as he did forty years before, hoping the Mancunians love their children too.

Mr Smiths Piano Bar, a scuzzy wee venue elevated high on Poole Hill above the commercial drag in ol' BoMo town, shall play host to the collective Betahammikon beast feast from 8.30pm. It will cost you only £3 to enter and another 50p each for tuna cutlets to throw into the collective's hungry maw at feeding time.

Betika make lovely music and the walls remember their wooden childhoods. Hammers make soundwaves question their own physics. Imagine the sandwich these will make with you the bread.

But what does Betika mean?

Our Valley Was Deep and Thick With Many Hedges

30 Mehefin 2005, 21:23 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

Stout-thighed Valkyries Stand from the Waters like Concrete Dolphins.

We fashioned canoes and semaphore flags from waxy, tattered NMEs, we did, and sailed them into the Pharoah waters of the river Glastonbury. Amidst a bank of reeds by the East Dance tent, we found our first born children, Sheriff Egg Surveys the Ranch covered in frogs and boils and whispering about God's pubic, electric fingers raking the hills for deviants and The Unprepared. The Olympians, Asgardians and Elvis Aaron Presley looked down from the Marvel comic clouds and drew lots to see who could piss into the open mouth of a sleeping Tears fan, passed out on the paddy fields below. All the straws were the same length and the cretin was spared.

We were early, we were smug. We had cornered ourselves a tiny mansion in the Green Crafts field, up in the aristocratic highlands, flagons of cheap beer and Pasta Choice at our fingertips. The fury of the ancients resulted in groundsheet puddles and tiny rivulets through our camp, a dampening of tents, but the spindly backing singer giantesses protected us from the worst.

The muddy mousse became our friend; the moussy mud. We chewed on Bic Crystal Biros to keep our blood levels high enough to walk down to the Brown Basin and drank in the sights. Sure, the bikini count was lower than Thursday, but we were grown-ups: we could handle it. Sustenance in the Face of Our Enemy You know about the buckling stages already, those tales bore you. Clambering down waterfalls from flushable toilets, we chanced upon The Undertones playing Teenage Kicks. MIA showered us with Tamil tarmacadam sunshine, the booty-shaker, and Loop didst grin to hear the grime cut through the mud.

Headliners fell into the watery moats that the big arenas provided for them - White Stripes, New Order, The Killers, Razorlight, Ian Brown. Splutter, gurgle, cough. The truth was in the tents and margins: Buck 65 snapped spines once again in the Leftfield tent; Squarepusher shot bolts of pure scattershot genius into the hungry skies, blasting away the colds; Goldie Lookin Chain went hyperactive on orange juice and kiddy Prozac; Hayseed Dixie bent banjos into Motorhead. God love them all.

Later that night Barry Evans of Barry's Bootlegs stumbled into our campfire and set his massive orange flares alight. We laughed together about it for twelve days - I don't know why - and roasted the twisted multiple souls of Jools Holland on the flames. Then we played him Spaghettihead and he wandered away to the stone circle, pipe in hand, searching for beauty and naked truth.

What If the World Had Stopped on Thursday?

The bikini killers returned on Sunday in spinning heliospheres to soothe the grinding nerves in the parma ham that had once been my heelflesh. Ointments they rubbed and applied waterproof plasters. I giggled into my soaked pillow.

Soulwax and The Dears grew a new forest of sturdy afternoon delights to offer shade from the vigorous sunlight. The blasted oak that is Brian Wilson threw warm branches like veins through the massive crowd, full of families, students and quasi-scallies. It was the tingling synapse of the whole weekend.

In order to grind their way further into my spleen and softer parts, LCD Soundsystem failed to reward our dogged perseverence to battle through to the New John Peel tent by turning up. No doubt the drummer was taking a shit.Nine Black Alps we missed through lazy assumption they'd been struck by lightning in some bizarre Vines copycat incident. Our feet had been sandpapered by unpissed boots a couple of hours too often to venture to the Flemish Waffle tent and pour chilled syrup over 2 Many DJs and the gorgeous creatures that will have flocked and packed around them. Twas trenchcoat heartbreak.

And the hairless identikunts almost completely failed to observe a minute's noise for the Big JP on Saturday night. Too busy launching tealights in giant condoms over the top field.

There's something about the First World War...

From the Skies a Mighty Corps of Trumpets Sounds!

17 Mehefin 2005, 18:15 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

Here once again is the shit-faced landlords.

It may have seemed somewhat quiet in Manchorlton and the environs over the last month or so, but the serpents have been slithering under the surface. Serpents with booty in their mouths.

We have been wriggling about in the undergrowth. Looking up at SFA and Beck pouring down their sunlight from the stage, our internal organs were pickled by a beautiful warmth. Throwing wet cabbage leaves in the path of The Conversation, we've let our manes grow out and our trousers split then sewn them back together with the clippings from our manes. Self-sufficiency has been our mantra.

It's quite a short mantra, so we've had the chance to say it that many more times.

Even more importantly, the Hammers were all in attendance at the most glamorous event in the Manchorlton social calendar. At the end of a dogged and uplifting inaugral season, Chorlton Heston FC basked in the reflected adoration of their public and in particular their wild-eyed band of Footballers' Wives. Awards were thrown Full On Creamy Steamy Milkthief round necks, boots gilded, and once again The Conversation planted their sturdy boots on floorboards and filled the room with sinewy arcs of fat, juicy business. After a brief interlude with a cold-hearted stripper, Milkthief seized drunkenly their love-worn instruments and drove knitting needles into our welcoming spines.

But now the air is taking on a thick, sweaty sheen and Summer is licking at our stamps like a horny prairie coyote. What does this mean for our itinerant band of empty-headed minstrels? Damp shirts in rooms and fields.

The Dark Welsh and the Sussex unRegiment will be insinuating themselves into the thrill-seeking gelatinous mass that is the Pilton Drugpackage & Horsetranquiliser Festival this coming weekend. If you see a knot of angel-faced, unwashed men in muddy pinstripe suits clustered about a wooden structure of hollowed anthropomorphic logs, throw them a coquettish, volpine grin, you harlots. Balance will be restored in the karmic sexual vortex, or something.

Let's all eat our own filth in the fetid rubbery night.

Hammers Bleed Into Print

17 Mehefin 2005, 00:15 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton

Tiny Hammers recreate words and pictures on almost daily basis.

Out there we know are hungry imaginations and lonely people who let their lustful thoughts stray in the direction of the nearest available whey-faced pop tart.

We offer our graven images for their feverish delectation. Many thanks to the redoubtable news cubs from Papercut magazine in lovely Manchester town.

Haps with the Chaps

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