what rhymes with chaos?

Cut Chemist @ BNE Hi Fi reviewed for Rave magazine

After the debacle surrounding D12’s non-appearances at the disastrous Heatwave festival it would seem that American hip hop acts are starting to garner a reputation as being unreliable. Continuing this trend, tonight’s opening time has been shifted back an hour and there seems to be a great deal of confusion as to what time the performers are actually hitting the stage. Nevertheless, once local wunderkind Sampology starts warming up the crowd everyone seems indifferent to the confusion and ready to shake that which their matriarchal progenitors gave them and raise their hands in an upwardly fashion like they just don’t have a particular preference on the issue. After a brief intermission, Cut Chemist strides onto stage along with accompanying VJ and launches into a rap mash-up intercut with bizarre psychedelic visuals. All of this occurs behind a slew of turntables, loop pedals and MPCs that has gearheads drooling in awe. The crowd tonight is lively and enthusiastic, but surprisingly sparse for such a renowned international act. The benefit of this is that the dance floor actually has some space to move, meaning no one has to resort to the all too familiar arms-up-head-nod-shuffle-dance that has to be regularly employed at packed hip hop shows. Cut Chemist’s set tonight mixes classic hip hop joints like Sound Of The Police with music from Colombia and Brazil interspersed with classic J5 tracks and of course selections from his forthcoming album. During all of this he uses a variety of cameras to zoom in on his various feats of technical wizardry ranging from his trademark virtuoso cutting to mixing whilst operating loops via foot pedal to his fingers dancing over the MPC. Chemist is clearly a man who loves what he does and does it better than almost anyone else. Between samples he air guitars, pantomimes and lip-syncs in a manner that manages to be both adorably goofy and, when interspersed with prodigiously expert scratching, pretty damn incredible.

 

Exit Stage Zed


If you'd like to listen to my voice as well as read my words (although I'm not sure why you would, I have to listen to my voice all the time and it's pretty damn annoying.) You can check out the new show I'm doing on 4zzz with Darragh and Jodi. Exit Stage Zed runs from 4-6pm every Saturday. We'll be focusing on playing live recordings and music from bands gigging around town each week. 

You can check out our 4zzz page here facebook here and twitter here.

Hit us up on the facebook page if you have any suggestions for live albums to play or if you want to throw us demos and such. Also 4zzz is running a drive to raise money for a new transmitter and you should probably donate between nine and ten million dollars.

Dearest Academy Floral OR STFU Valentine's day

Dearest Academy Floral

Thanks so much for your suggestion for me to send more flowers to my now ex-girlfriend for Valentine's day. And yes, you are right. That first bouquet I sent back in September did indeed ‘WOW!’ her. The problem is that the flowers I had delivered to her have now withered and died and been tossed into the nearest trash receptacle.

 Much like our relationship. 

For a brief period which future literary historians will doubtlessly refer to as ‘J.M. Donellan’s “SWEET MOTHER OF GOD WHY IS EVERYTHING SO UTTERLY AND INCOMPREHENSIBLY HORRIBLE ALWAYS AND ALL THE TIME?’ period I was temporarily transformed into a quivering and mildly alcoholic wreck spending most of my time lying on the floor listening to the Cure’s Disintegration on repeat and consuming a weekly average of twelve packs of oreos.

 

Thankfully I’ve now more or less recovered, reduced my oreo intake to a much healthier and more sustainable pack a day habit and returned to an emotional state of which Oprah would be far more approving. After all, as the old cliché says, there are ‘plenty more fish in the sea.’ (The fact that the search for love is so frequently compared to tricking a small water dwelling animal into spearing a hook through its face and then subsequently forcing it to asphyxiate in one final furious fit of fatal convulsions before removing its outer layer and internal organs before cooking and consuming said animal does, however, somewhat concern me.)

I suppose I COULD still send her more flowers, but that would seem kind of weird and pathetic. I am both of those things of course, but I’m trying to pretend like I’m not. So far I am attempting to accomplish this by doing push ups every morning, but I’ve been doing this for literally DAYS now and I still don’t have rippling biceps so I’m not really sure what the point is when I can just be my normal scrawny self with absolutely no effort whatsoever.  

I’m sure your message was well intentioned, but the fact is, for a great many people Valentine’s day is just a reminder of the fact that they are tragically alone. It’s a day when single people feel like the entire world has conspired to say LOOK AT US! LOOK AT WHAT WE HAVE! LOOK HOW MUCH HAPPIER WE ARE THAN YOU!

"I wuv you honey baby sweetie pie!"

"Not as much as I wuv YOU my little muffintop on stuffed crust pizza base with double cherries on top and a side of bacon fondue pudding!"

Of course I can always take solace in the fact that the vast majority of those couples are either going to break up at some point in the near future or alternatively edge incrementally towards their graves despising each other slightly more with each transpiring hour until they are just a pair of nonagenarian husks that stare into each other’s gimlet-like eyes with an odious cocktail of disdain and boredom whose potency is outdone only by their own body odour and crippling ennui.

In conclusion, unless you feel like adding a ‘deliver large box filled with vodka, cheesecake and Stevie Ray Vaughn’ albums to your Valentine’s day package options I don’t think I will be interested in your services.

+      +  =  YES.

In fact, after I finish writing this email I am going to instigate a campaign to have National “I Am Still Single Because I Refuse to Settle Down with Anyone Who Won’t Make Me Supremely Happy and Allow Me To Do the Same for Them in Return in Order to Allow My Already Astonishing Levels of Awesomeness to Attain Even Greater Heights” day. This will basically involve a host of astoundingly wonderful single people getting together to drink vodka, eat cheesecake, air guitar to Stevie Ray Vaughn albums and indulge in guilt-free make out sessions in the utilities closet.  Feel free to attend.

Kind re:Guards

J.M. Donellan