Photos, festivals, and The School

Got myself a Flickr account, initially because I needed to upload recent photos from Brighton and London that I knew others would want to see. So that's another Internet community to get hooked on then. Are any of them really of any use? At all? My MySpace has now registered more than 1000 profile views. Why?!? (OK, I have met and befriended some nice people...)



I spent the latter half of last week at Oslo's annual Øya festival. Never really been a fan of outdoor festivals (the wrong setting for most good music, too many people, rain, I'm too old) but after realizing that the one day I attended last year was quite enjoyable, I decided I'd go for the duration this time. And it was in fact grand. Oh, there was still plenty to moan about (the wrong setting for most good music, too many people, rain, I'm too old), but I also met up with some nice people (again), and obviously got to see a fair amount of from decent to great gigs. Big names (Morrissey, Beck, The Cramps, Yoko Ono, The Fall), medium sized names (!!!, The Wrens, Spank Rock, Kieran Hebden w. Steve Reid), small names (Love Is All, Liars, Cold War Kids) and Norwegian names (or mostly English names but on Norwegian bands): Spunk (playfully noisy improv), The Loch Ness Mouse (summery indiepop), Motorpsycho (yeah well, hadn't seen them live before), Susanna & The Magical Orchestra (beautiful electronica tinged reworkings of rock classics), Datarock (bouncy, funky electro), Darkside Of The Force (latino fused live hip hop), and this lot:



Great spiky pop-punk, all angular guitars (what does that mean anyway?) and attitude... The School need only get a deal with Domino Records and they'll have it made. There's an album out shortly; in the meantime you could do worse than lend an ear to the excellent 'Mädchen' ep from some months back. The track below steals it's motoric groove from The Modern Lovers' Roadrunner by way of Stereolab's 'Super Electric', and is ace!

The School | Situation