Therefore pleased to announce our first two confirmed festival shows of the summer - Yay!

First up, on the 1st-3rd of August at Kendal Calling, up in the Lake District - Super Furry Animals, British Sea Power, Dizzee Rascal, Lowline, Howard Marks, DJ Yoda, Dan Vs Scroob, The Lovers, The Man Nick Frazer and us? (amongst others…) Now that’s what I call a fine weekend :) Someone should charge for seeing that… oh they have!

Second up, a considerable distance closer to home on August Bank Holiday weekend (22nd-25th) at Brighton’s brand spanking new Beachdown Festival - Stunning location up on the Downs, and we can get back to our own beds for a change - not that we well, mind… as there’s partying to be done and the company of De La Soul, Lightspeed Champion, The Hat and Roy Ayers amongst others. Delighted to see Brighton back on the festival map!

Set days and times as soon as we know! And more to come!… don’t touch that dial…

Anyway, Dublin? The day before St.Patrick’s Day? A chance to pay tribute to the greatest snake-driver in the land? A guaranteed drink-fuelled party-hearty crowd? Oh, bring it on…

Behold the woderful Foggy Notions crew getting down to some Three Girl Bump Jump Inferno - Thanks to Leagues, Leah and their wonderful ensemble for being such cracking hosts. Don’t they look gorgeous?

“Fish In A Barrel” tune of the night : Chemical Brothers “Electronic Battle Weapon 8″
Surprise hit tune of the night : Hardfloor “Mahogany Roots”
Kleptones hit of the night : A new one - You’ll just have to come to a show and find out!

Big thanks to Brian Sweeney for the videos, and for taking most excellent care of us on the night. Biggest of thanks, as always, to everyone who came along and danced like possessed people, especially the bunch that I frugged with at the end to Arcade Fire - You guys were great :)

Till next time, E out x.

There’s several versions of the tune online, even from the same tour - but naturally, not the one featured in Amazing Journey. If anyone knows where the full version of the clip can be found, drop me a line or leave me a comment - I’d be very grateful.

If you don’t know the track, here’s a version from the “Rocks America” live video. Please don’t mock Pete too much for the hair, he don’t have it no more…

Greetings and salutations! It’s been a while, but we trust you’ve had a rather splendid year - it’s been a crazy one for us, as per usual. All that continual re-pointing of the old headsphere in every which way direction has been quite overwhelming. Our Eric has been out and about DJing here, there and everywhere, and we spent the summer having lots of fun growing a munster of a live show, which we’ve been taking out and around when the opportunities arise.

So, by way of a thank you to all the people that came out and saw us over the past year and a bit, and as a dangly carrot affair to the rest of you, we’d like to offer you Live’r Than You’ll Ever Be, a recording of our favourite show this past year, at Bestival in the Isle Of Wight. A rather crazy affair, as those of you who attended will be very aware. Suffice to say, I think we acquitted ourselves admirably, so we’re proud to present the evidence. Not just the traditional “live album” audio (i.e. just like the studio albums with more reverb and cheering… okay, so there’s some new tracks in there too ;-), but also a rather zingy video slideyshow (thanks, YouTube), and a gallery of photos (thanks, Flickr), both assembled from our good friend Bob’s rather excellent video camera work. Just think of it as the online equivalent of a box set, or deluxe edition bonus dvd and booklet. Or not. It’s up to you. There’ll be more similar shenanigans soon, though, so keep watching the skies in ‘08.

Yes, we have been rather quiet this year, we know, but, as the above testifies, we haven’t been slack. It’s been very good to take a little time to get out and be part of the real world, and watch the rather marvellous way that it rotates. And boy, has the world been rotating this year, or what? Now, chock full of our experiences, we’re back in the studio for the winter, working on some new mixes, looking for a new station to host the radio show that Eric has been doing with his good ami Jim, and yes… working on a new album or two. So consider this the first salvo in a new run of K-fun. There’ll be plenty more over the coming seasons, and eybrow-raising stuff it will be too, we think.

Many thanks, by the way, to all of you who emailed to say hi, pass on good things, complement us on our style, or to tell us to pull our fingers out and get on with it. It’s very much appreciated, as always.

Well, That’s it for now. Is this an early Xmas present? Could be… If you like it, feel free to copy it and stuff it in unsuspecting people’s stockings - you never know what might happen.

…can’t believe I’ve never used that as a title yet, but there you go…

Anyway, out of hibernation we come, blowing off the straw, mothballs and empty sandwich wrappers, to make a couple of announcements. And there’s lots more to come, oh yes.

First off, we’ve got a couple of festival shows confirmed this summer in the UK, so if you’re up for it…

Sunday 24th June - Glastonbury Festival, Pilton, UK - A double whammy of K-fun for The Big G - Firstly you can catch us at the end of your Saturday night / Sunday morning festivities in the Lost Vagueness Ballroom @ 5am for some banging old-time fun, then after a quick roll around in your tents, you can catch us at the Dance Village in The Pussy Parlure @ 12noon for a special Sunday Lunch-Out set, with some extra very special vocal guests (chuffed!) - watch this space for details of these guests and possibly a couple of extra secret shows over the weekend!!! :)

7th-9th Sept - Bestival, Isle Of Wight, UK - Honoured to be invited to participate in what is now established as the perfect endmark to the UK Festival season - And we’ve got one hell of a surprise for this one for you, more info nearer the time - Date / Time of show also TBC, as soon as we know!

Naturally, both these events are sold-out, but watch this space for more summer shenanegans both online and in real life as we get them confirmed :)

Second up, apologies for the irregularity (understatement) of the Hectic City podcasts, and many thanks to the people who mailed in to tell us how much they missed them - Sadly a few unavoidable circumstances got in the way, causing them to fall by the wayside - Bugger. They will be back though, just a little more intermittent than we originally planned.

However, as an added bonus, and to make up for the lack of HC, Eric is now participating in his own real live radio show, in partnership with his good friend and nemesis Jim of All Time Top 100. The show is called “Eric & Jim’s Look-In”, (after our favourite magazine from when we was small, innit), and  goes out every Thursday night on Radio Reverb 97.2FM, in Brighton (that’s where we live, in case you didn’t already know - keep up at the back!).

The show isn’t a DJ mix affair, more of a chance for us to play new releases and stuff we’ve found online at each other while blathering on about the cumulus of our lives and the detritus of other peoples’… you know the sort of thing.

So far it’s been a lot of fun, and we feel we’ve got used to the format a bit now, so if you’re interested, we’ve started podcasting the shows so everyone outside of our locality can have a listen (and there’s a backlog too!).

The blog for the show notes and links is http://ericandjim.blogspot.com/ and here is the feed for the podcast. Let us know what you think…

“…in the summertime, let it roll…”

Tracklist:

The Birds - Leaving Here
The Creation - Biff Bang Pow!
The Easybeats - Friday On My Mind
The Beat Merchants - Pretty Face
The Koobas - Face
The Boys Blue - You Got What I Want
The Clique - We Didn’t Kiss, We Didn’t Love, But Now We Do
The Attack - We Don’t Know
The Lancasters - Satan’s Holiday
Fire - Father’s Name Is Dad
Davy Jones & The Lower Third - You’ve Got A Habit Of Leaving
The Creation - Making Time
The Haunted - 125
Them - I Can Only Give You Everything
The Primitives - You Said
The Outer Limits - Help Me Please
The Movement - Tell Her
Cuby & The Blizzards - Your Body Not Your Soul
The Chasers - Inspiration
The Mickey Finn - Garden Of My Mind
Paul & Ritchie & The Cryin’ Shames - Come On Back
The Poets - That’s The Way It’s Got To Be
The 5AM Event - Hungry
The Beat Merchants - Messin’ With The Man
Ipissmus - Hold On
The Blue Stars - Social End Product
The Birds - No Good Without You Baby

Since you ask, if we had to pick out a couple of albums and say they were the best of the year, it would fall to a close tie between these three, we reckon:

The Joe Beats Experiment - Indie Rock Blues

Guillemots - Through The Window Pane

Spank Rock - Yoyoyoyoyo

Brains, balls and soul all present and correct in the highest of levels within all three of those, which is just the way we like it. You really should listen to them from start to finish, if you haven’t already. Well worth it.

Anyhoo, tracklist for HC5 is:

Brightblack Morning Light - Everybody Daylight (from their eponymous album)
Scritti Politti - The Boom Boom Bap (from the album “White Bread, Black Beer”)
Guillemots - Through The Window Pane (from the album of the same name)
Lupe Fiasco - The Instrumental (from the album “Food & Liquor”)
Ty - Don’t Watch That (from the album “Closer”)
Cunnilinguists - Hellfire [Joey Beats Mix] (unreleased)
M.Ward - Sad, Sad Song (Joe Beats Experiment Mix) (from the album “Indie Rock Blues”)
The Grates - Rock Boys (from the album “Gravity Won’t Get You High”)
Subtle - Midas Gutz (from the album “For Hero For Fool”)
Union Of Knives - Opposite Direction (from the album “Violence And Birdsong”)
Scuba - Twista (single)
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Phenomena (from the album “Show Your Bones”)
Mew - The Zookeeper’s Boy (from the album “And The Glass Handed Kites”)
Cynic Guru - Drugs (single)
Extra Golden - OK-Oyot System (from the album of the same name)
Eliot Lipp - Rap Tight (from the album “Tacoma Mockingbird”)
Trentemoller - While The Cold Winter Waiting (from the album “The Last Resort”)
Matthew’s Celebrity Pixies Tribute - Wave Of Mutilation (website)
Jarvis - Running The World (from the album “Jarvis”)

That’s yer lot for ‘06 - Hope you enjoy!

Not only that, but we also get several mentions in the list of DJ gigs of the year, singling out my set at Mutation in Birmingham over the summer! - so eeeeextended thanks to the peeps at that one!

The full Big Chill Top 10 in alphabetical order:

Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not
BiggaBush - BiggaBush in Dub
Bonobo - Days to Come
Gotan Project - Lunatico
Hot Chip - The Warning
Kleptones - 24 Hours
Laroca - Friends in Faraway Places
Nathan Fake - Drowning In a Sea of Love
Thom Yorke - The Eraser
Trentemoller - Last Resort

Honored to be in such exalted company, really!

You can see the full results for yourselves here.

OK - Trumpet back in case now.

Happy New Ear, y’all :)

I could stick this up on a del.icio.us link (over there –>>), but I thought it worthy of a post. So if you have forty-five minutes or so to spare, I’d say you could do a hell of a lot worse than go and watch Laurence’s speech from last week’s 23rd Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. If you’re in a hurry, or have never watched LL speak before, either just grab the start for a taste, or skip to around 43m in to get the summary, but if you can spare the time, try and catch the lot, including the grilling he gets at the end of the Q&A (was that John Gilmore asking the last question?) - it’s great to see that there’s some very interesting new (at least to me) insights within the presentation that indicate Laurence’s current sabbatical away from his professorial role at Stanford is doing him a considerable amount of good. Or maybe it’s the just the fine German beer… ;) Either way, it’s the first worthy watch of 2007.

(via BoingBoing.)

So to raise the spirit of the times, and to enable mental preparation for the coming New Year celebrations, here’s part two of our skip through the records that made our switches click in 2006. Hope you enjoy.

Tracklist:

Hollertronix - Gold Digger [Diplo Remix] (single)
Spank Rock - Bump [Switch Remix] (single)
Motor - Black Powder (from the album “Klunk”)
The Come-Ons - I Feel Love [Michael Ivins Flaming Lips Remix] (single)
Wolfmother - Woman [mstrkrft remix] (single)
Superqueens - Per Ardua Ad Strangeways (from the album “Royal Shit”)
The Rapture - Whoo Alright Yah Uh Huh (from the album “Pieces Of The People We Love”)
Cansei De Ser Sexy - Alala [Bondo De Role Remix] (single)
Peaches - Do Ya (from the album “Impeach My Bush”)
Peter, Bjorn & John - Young Folks (from the album “Writer’s Block”)
Grandaddy - Elevate Myself (from the album “Just Like The Fambly Cat”)
The Emperor Machine - Bodilizer Bodilizer (from the album “Vertical Tones And Horizontal Noise”)
Distance - Traffic (single)
Amy Winehouse - Rehab (from the album “Back To Black”)
DJ Farrapo & Yanez - Baiano Vem Baiano Vai (single)
Eagles Of Death Metal - I Want You So Hard (from the album “Death By Sexy”)
Dev2.0 - Boy U Want (from the album “Dev2.0″)
Ali Love - K Hole (single)
Kelis - Bossy [Cavemen Remix] (single)