Tag: vinyl

Jonny Bad – 12th August 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

‘Low-life’ Jonny is feeling low
Thinking nothing can be fixed
I’d really love to see him grow
And to get his message unmixed

Why does he hate himself so much?
Always putting others down too
Has he got a sensitive touch
That he’s hiding from me and you?

I don’t know why Jonny feels so bad
Maybe he didn’t get the news
That there’s no need to feel so sad
And it’s something he can choose

Written for a contest at AllPoetry.com about Bad Jonny himself.

Today I’m feeling:

A little rough in the stomach this morning but maybe all the chilli last night has blown away my headache and sore throat.

We didn’t get home until 1 am and I woke up at first at my regular wake-up time but slept a little more before forcing myself up.

Health:

Physical: 6
Mental: 6

Today I’m grateful for:

Cheese and the store-brand vintage cheddar from Makro, which is reasonably priced. I just have to remember that we have it in the fridge because generally, now I don’t have cheese with any meals.

The best thing about today was:

Packing up a bunch of vinyl to send to Nampan from SpeechOdd, hopefully tomorrow. I need to get these records into their hands where they can sell them at shows.

I felt productive at least.

I also managed to get some guitar playing in today, too and noticed a slight improvement.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

Takky came over for lunch with Amy, which continued for 7 hours into dinnertime too. Amy said that he is much more himself again after all the stress of his PhD work.

I let them get on with it whilst I was doing my stuff and didn’t hassle Amy to make me food as I had the cheese and her soft, sweet bread rolls to keep me going.

Something I learned today?

I learned a new finger exercise on guitar that I should try and remember and practice often.  You know, along with everything else that I should do!

Review your acts, Good and bad.

I donated a copy of the High Voltage/SpeechOdd LP to put on display at Utopia.

I put Anchan in touch with Nong Kratae at the English Place and Champ has also supplied some information that may be useful for her.

I took this picture because the canopy over our entertainment area is evolving into a flowery grotto.

She Is Waiting – 26th July 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 11 Comments

She is the lone wolf
Waiting for the summer mist
To rise from the forest floors

Her thoughts are her own
Serving no masters
Comfortable in quietude

Ears alert to opportunity
Sniffing out the rats
Deadly silent stalker

She is the lone wolf
Waiting

Submitted to WDYS #246 and dVerse Quadrille #204 – summer
26th Sep 2024 – Submitted to Word of the Day Challenge – stalker

Today I’m feeling:

Tired still and not particularly excited for my classes, knowing that many students will be missing for various reasons, disrupting my plans.

I got up ok this morning but feel a lack of energy and my eyes are a little blurry still.

Onwards we must go!

Today I’m grateful for:

A bit of a chilled, busy day due to circumstances described below.  I’m still pretty tired at the end of the day but was expecting to feel much more exhausted after six hours in class, then dashing home and soon out again to the airport to pick up Amy.  I’m looking forward to sleep but also feeling satisfied with the day.

The best thing about today was:

Falling into the rhythm of the day with only 14 out of 35 students turning up for my first class.  The rest were mostly off doing projects and special meetings.

As the class was due to do presentations, this has to be delayed until next week.  I figured I’d try to do some pronunciation work with the few students in attendance and settled on a 90-question Quiz about the pronunciation of past tense ‘-ed’ verbs.

At the start, everyone was quite competitive but with so many questions, once they started to understand the rules for this grammar point, they all started deliberately choosing the wrong answers to wind me up.

Suitably satisfied I stopped the quiz halfway and let the kids relax for the rest of the time.

And so it went on, in my next class, about 8 or 10 students were off doing something (which luckily I heard about yesterday and had prepared for) and I did a really simple reading, translation and quiz with the predominantly J-Biz program students.

I even managed to dash off to House for a quick coffee and writing catch-up before my final class with grade 8s and a tough reading challenge for them.  I was pleasantly surprised at how well they handled it.  Not with the quality of their reading but the fact that they’ve become accustomed with doing what I ask and feel comfortable that I will assist them.  It’s a win as far as I’m concerned.  If they can’t improve their English, at least their attitude to difficult tasks will improve.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

I’ve been a little frustrated with waiting on covers for the SpeechOdd/High Voltage split 12”, which Parthiban arranged with Talib in KL.  Talib has been out of contact for a few weeks now and I’m sitting on a stack of currently unsellable vinyl until I get these covers.

There’s not much I can do and Parthiban is also frustrated and decided not to work with Talib again.  Hopefully, the situation resolves soon.

Something I learned today?

I read an interesting piece about how Buenos Aires was richer and more culturally advanced than any other American city in the early 1900s until the Great Depression, followed by a series of political missteps, which saw it lose its status.  There was even a phrase, ‘To wish to be as rich as an Argentinian!’

Review your acts, Good and bad.

Even after my long day of classes, I dropped in on Kru David’s grade 9 class and helped Nicha, Yurin and Tankoon to understand what was required.  It felt good to help them and they showed their appreciation with their thanks.

I took this picture because Freya didn’t understand why I was saying ‘Sadako’ when she was fixing her hair, so I put the picture up on the screen and made her stand there too.

The Wake – 19th February 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

Here the shadow falls, down into the fog
Eyes dead at the singing of the bells
Broke by the vicious cards dealt
Crawling through the sawdust of these hells

Burying bodies, ten-a-penny
Stuffed men once filled with straw
All now quiet and meaningless
Wondering what it was all for

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper
It never would have come to this
If we’d just kept things simpler

Submitted to Shay’s Word Garden – inspired (and borrowed) from T.S.Eliot’s The Hollow Men

Today I’m feeling:

Good, getting better throughout the day. I started off a little dizzy until my meds kicked in.  

Both my classes were simple and the kids seem invested in a little reading and understanding.  I didn’t push them but the way I structured the reading and questions definitely caught out some of the students who would generally just copy their work.

Today I’m grateful for:

Parthiban in Singapore for paying back his share for the HighVoltage/SpeechOdd 12”, straight back into our Aussie bank account, which will keep Amy happy for a little while!

The best thing about today was:

Being inspired to write a couple of poems during my break between classes.  That two hours flew by today as I caught up some reading, thinking about prompts and ideas.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

In my first class we ran out of time for the last group to read because they were all struggling to understand the questions that I was asking them.  

I was surprised at how quickly the time disappeared.  Oh well, at least I caught about 85% of the class today.

Something I learned today?

Arwith’s band Piri Reis is supporting Converge in Bangkok in May.  He’s going to try and line up a weekend show in Chiang Mai if possible too.  

Either way I’d like to catch up with him if he’s here somewhere during a weekend.

What things do I like to collect?

I’ve answered this or a similar question before, answering with music, books, comics but it got me thinking a bit more about how technology has transformed collecting in many ways.  

With almost everything available somewhere somehow as a digital file collecting physical items is becoming more of a rich person’s privilege.  

Collecting things digitally doesn’t mean much to me but from seeing what some of the younger folks are experimenting with online in games they seem to place value in those things.  

I was intrigued whilst watching an online race over three hundred kilometres on a barren planet in one of the sci-fi games where folks collect and trade minerals.  

I can understand the appeal of these types of games and there may have been a time I might of dreamed of delving into them but I still have some part of me that clings to the physical.  

Unlike those players though I cannot place any value in something that only exists as bits and bytes.

Praewa took this picture because she stole my phone (again). Her face is finally starting to mature as she has had a cute childish face since I’ve known her and it has only recently started changing. She still hasn’t grown taller though which I often tease her about but she could still grow a few more inches yet.

Leavings – Sell and Shark – 21st November 2016

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Cat #: 189TZM

Leavings is a three piece punk band from Brisbane, Australia which takes cues from post-hardcore, indie rock, shoegaze, krautrock, and the vibrant DIY cultures of Australia, China, and South-East Asia.

Combining driving, aggressive bass and drums, shouted vocals, and wiry guitar with catchy, muscular hooks and cavernous noise and drone-scapes, the group’s songs generate a bold, vigorous energy that is both affirming and cathartic . 

RIYL: Unwound, Flying Nun records, The Men, Rosetta, Fugazi, Japandroids, Sonic Youth, Blank Realm, Neu!, P.K. 14, mewithoutYou, Turnpike, A Place to Bury Strangers.

Sell & Shark is Leavings’ debut release and the first single from their forthcoming LP.

On side A is “Sell”, a reckless punk rock clanger in which the band belts out grumpy yells drenched in reverb over the top of a collection of distorted major-key hooks played at full tilt.

Exclusive to the 7″ is a brooding slab of noise rock in the form of B-side “Shark”. The track begins quietly with a faint, nervous guitar riff and muted, tense drumming encircled by a menacing bassline which swims around them tightly until all three instruments attack each other, exploding into dissonant fuzz and dry screaming.

Together, the tracks represent the band’s response to the frustration of living in an Australia whose leaders become nastier and more cynical with each passing year. “Sell” is defiantly spirited while “Shark” is the band at their grumpiest, but not without a sense of humour. 

Both tracks were recorded in Brisbane at Tym Guitars with Donovan Miller (FOREVR, No Anchor) over one weekend in the winter of 2016.

For interviews, press, and bookings, please contact leavingsband@gmail.com.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes – A Million Farewells – 13th November 2015

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Cat #: 177TZM

When Xiao Zhong and Sharon Cee-Q found themselves in a room together for the very first time, they agreed on a guiding philosophy: “Let’s not make anything that’s going to last. If we’re together for just two shows, then that’s what it is.” Thus was born Tom Cruise And Katie Holmes. Since then, they’ve most certainly deviated some, but not much, really.

Over the course of a year and a half, the Shanghai-based musos who’d been involved (non collectively) in such lauded mainland acts as Pairs and Hua Jia Hu Wei, released their debut 7” here on Genjing, added journeyman bassist Sam Walsh and drummer Daniel Nagles to their lineup and have proceeded to lay down one of contemporary indie rock’s most exhilarating jam sessions gone right – a concise full-length chock-full of woolly, dreamy, delicate, white-knuckled shoegaze imbued modern hymns.

This autumn marks the official arrival of A Million Farewells, the band’s first long-player for Genjing Records. It is a miraculously dissonant, wonderfully immediate display of Tom & Kate at their mightiest; alive with the same wild chemistry and sense of possibility that made their first recordings so vital. With more time together than they’d ever had before (which wasn’t much), the band had found themselves confronted with ideal, yet quasi-foreign conditions. And they wouldn’t have had it any other way. Two-minute freakouts like “My Life is Over” share airspace with the meditative squall of “Sam’s Knife” and the guitar-born majesty of the title track. One can’t but notice the band’s intentionally one-off brand of being exactly who they are in a pop context; everything presumably captured in (something like) three takes or less in a bleak, quasi-nondescript studio someplace deep within the damp, scabulous scrawl of modern Shanghai.

“It’s a simple thing,” Xiao Zhang says of their approach. “Simple takes the worry out of it. But we’ve grown up and been through some shit in China. To get to this point you have to bust through a few walls. It’s easy to be new, and I think, in the end, this is what it is.”

When you put the aforementioned foursome in a room, it’s Tom Cruise And Katie Holmes.

And A Million Farewells truly is what it is – quite something: a classic quasi-Sinophilic full length if there ever was one. 

Primitive Calculators/Torturing Nurse – 16th March 2015

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Cat #: 175TZM

Roland Barthes once said: “The ‘grain’ of the voice is not – or is not merely – its timbre; the signifiance it opens cannot better be defined, indeed, than by the very friction between the music and something else,” but who gives a shit? Torturing Nurse would sooner cough on you than speak to you, and they are most definitely not concerned with “music”, just the “some- thing else”. The “grain” here is the granular phlegm at the bottom of “vocalist” Junky’s throat, a choking, faltering reference to the body before the machine takes full control. For this music, you don’t need ears. You don’t even need a body, really. What would Barthes say about the grating grain of all voices at once? Music that’s been fed through the effect-chain meat grinder so many times it ceases to be readable as “music” and actually starts to sound like meat? Just GRIND, fine-ground, the last tiny pieces of humanity ebbing through the proverbial hourglass, grain by grain by grain. There’s no one left: just “Midnight, The Stars & You,” and the horrible, howling wind whipping rust particles through your pores until you’re more corroded metal than man.

Roland Barthes also said: “We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which…  more

PRIMITIVE CALCULATORS are
Frank Lovece – Vocals
Stuart Grant – Guitar / Vocals
Denise Hilton – Keyboards / Vocals
David Light – Bass
Andrea Blake – Rhythms / Vocals
additional vocals by Pocket Calculators featuring Grace, Velvet Sand (Siege-a & O-g-o), Fu and Stella Electrika

TORTURING NURSE is Junky – Noise

AV Okubo – Opium/Heroin – 3rd February 2015

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Cat #: 174TZM

If you’ve never been to Wuhan, let me tell ya: it’s fucking BLEAK. China’s landlocked industrial boiler room, smelting the future from discarded harsh metal scraps of past failures. The heat’s so hot it’ll melt your will to live. Opiates help. Wuhan’s AV Okubo know this, they even soundtrack this. “Opium” is a re-purposed stereo-heater churned out like some retro-futuristic answer to the prayers you’ll be praying years from now, as the decline continues to decline. The voice of “Opium” is a voice out of time, a bi-gender mensch-machine crammed into a vintage Japanese vocoder, sampled and re-sampled til the original is forgotten in a self-medicated haze (while reclining, eyes open but not seeing, slackjaw dreaming). No clue what it’s saying (something about the Qing Dynasty GDP) — but the bottom line is: we’re all damned if it doesn’t ease the growing pains.

“Heroin,” meanwhile, sounds like the Sex Pistols telling Lou Reed to fuck off. Actually this B-side was originally supposed to be straight up Velvets cover but, as AVO vocalist Lu Di laments right off the bat, “the price is too high and I can’t afford it.” Wuhan bathtub meth it is, then. Again! Maybe E, LSD and some more weed, to chase. OK, good now. Let’s do this. Only bass line that comes to mind is ripped straight from Sid’s dead mitts but it’s a miracle we’re even standing up at this point so… Wuhan’s fucking hot. Need more ice. What’s next? The rest… “and the rest, I don’t wanna know.”
credits

Recorded at Busy Bee Studios in Beijing by Andy Gill and Santi Arribas
Mixed at The Beauchamp Building, London by Andy Gill and Santi Arribas
Mastered at The Mixing Factory in London

GR028
genjingrecords.com

Imported to Australia under license

Bad Nerve/Fanzui Xiangfa – 2nd February 2015

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Cat #: 172TZM

FANZUI XIANGFA is:

狂骂 [Kuang Ma] – Drums
逆反 [Ni Fan] – Guitar
毛病 [Mao Bing] – Bass / Vocals
冲撞 [Chong Zhuang] – Guitar
六六 [Liu Liu] – Lead Vocals

Recorded and mixed by Hou Likao at Jishengchong Studio. Vocals recorded by Deng Chenglong and Tan Hang.

BAD NERVE is:

Mårten Bläckberg – Guitar/Vocals
Anna Salonen – Bass/Vocals*
Jonas Lyxzen – Drums/Backing Vocals
Melody Almroth – Bass/Vocals

*On this recording: Anna – Bass/Vocals

All music and lyrics written by Bad Nerve
Recorded at Parasite Studio May 2013
Mixed and Mastered by Fredrik Lyxzen, Parasite Studio

Thanks: Fredrik, Nevin and Genjing Records, Dennis and Ny Våg Records, Amanda, all our friends and families.

GR038 – genjingrecords.com

Imported to Australia under license.

The Yours – Public Eye – 1st February 2015

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Cat #: 171TZM

Produced by The Yours
“Public Eye” recorded and mixed by Yang Haisong at Psychic Kong, Beijing, Dec 13, 2013
“Purple” recorded and mixed by Nic Wong, Feb 14, 2014
Mastered by Garrett Haines at Treelady Studios, Pittsburgh USA
All songs by The Yours
Drums by Nelson Ko and Pie Wong

Art by The Yours
Layout by Die Leung

Managed by Yuman Ng

Special thanks to our families and dearest friends; Yang Haisong, Fuhan, Zhang Shouwang, Nevin Domer, Nikki, Bebe and Reggie from S.T.D, Nelson Ko, Roland Lee, Pie Wong, Gosha Rubchinsky and Tim Head

genjingrecords.com
www.iii-records.com

© 2014 GENJING RECORDS, IMAGINE IMAGINE IMAGINE RECORDS LIMITED

Imported under license for Australia.

GuiGuiSuiSui – The Court of King Nitro – 8th January 2015

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Cat #: 167TZM

Originally from Dartford, England (spiritual home of, ahem, minor blues appropriators such as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards), one man DIY punk/blues/horror artist, GUIGUISUISUI, aka Dann Gaymer, started making dark garage blues on a variety of instruments including a one stringed skateboard guitar (The Diddly Board) in the freezing cold of Changchun, Northeast China in 2012. While working with a variety of side men including beatboxers, various percussionists and drummers, as well as a punk rock rhythm section dubbed The Electric Shadows, GUIGUISUISUI settled on a one man band format after relocating to Beijing in the summer of 2013. That same year, Gaymer headed out on a rather unrepresented, borderline masochistic 40+ date Asian Tour which shocked, confused and at times, downright befuddled punters across the entirety of the Far East.

Not one to rest on his laurels, Gaymer began hastily demoing a brand spanking new batch of evil tinged, garage inflected GUIGUISUISUI material immediately upon returning to his home base deep within the confines of the Red Capital.

Engineered, mixed and co-produced by luminary Beijing producer/sonic journeyman extraordinaire, Yan Haisong (P.K.14, Dear Eloise) at Psychic Kong, The Court of King Necro 7″ finds Gaymer delving into four tracks of lo-fi, psychedelic scuzz rock lined with a healthy dose of Delta Blues. Think spiritual/musical mentors, The Rolling Stones, at their most avant garde, stripped down and devoid of overt glam pretense. Yet, when it comes to art rock, GUIGUISUISUI, has forged his own peculiar brand that exists on the dirtier more wanton side of the experimental blues rock stratosphere.

Strictly limited to a run of 500 copies on high quality, weighted black vinyl, The Court of Necro 7″ features hand silk screened/assembled cover art by infamous British punk rock fixture The Craw. If that’s not enough we’re throwing in a hand made badge and a couple of individually pressed buttons which tie in with GUIGUISUISUI’s overall artistic vision for this one of a kind, highly collectible piece of 33 RPM sonic ephemera. Get ’em while they’re hot folks…hot as the visage of hell which inspired this assemblage of wicked passion! 

GUIGUISUISUI is
Dann Gaymer – vocals, guitar, harmonica and percussion
King Necro – The Diddlly Board

Drums on ‘Eighteen Shakes’ and ‘Lamp Post Blues’ by Michael Cupoli

All songs by GUIGUISUISUI except ‘Preaching Blues’ by Son House and ‘Eighteen Shakes’ by Pairs.

Artwork by The Craw

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Yang Haisong at Psychic Kong, Beijing CHINA.

GR034
genjingrecords.com