Idolator

"Fucking a noise musician, the repercussions"

Having a date where they want you to play music by hitting that pipe against a tunnel.

Waking up in a damp warehouse, swaddled in sheet metal.

Waking up with your nipples clamped into a circuit with a broken Casio.

[www.shilv.org]

Space, stars, planets, NASA, rockets…blastronauts? Blastronauts is the brain child of duo James Allison and Jacob Halpern and is quickly gathering pace on its musical quest. After being in the popular rock group Jingo and playing in many other bands together and separately, in the US and abroad, James and Jacob decided to cut the bs and just do everything themselves. What evolved from this little idea? After spending every day of the summer of ’07 jamming, honing their musical abilities, learning a mass amount of instruments, and generally being magically creative and spacey, the group organized all their ideas on a portastudio and immediately released the songs online. With an out-of-this-world indie rock sound that combines the classics like Jimi Hendrix, Television, and Dinosaur Jr. with contemporary bands such as Arcade Fire, Modest Mouse, Incubus, and Foo Fighters, along with James and Jacob’s own “outer-space-psychadelic-jam-rock” influence, interest in the group gathered pace and James and Jacob headed to the studio to see how far they could take their music. After a successful string of solo acoustic shows featuring James in England during the Fall of 07, Blastronauts reunited in December to go on their first string of live dates. After playing Boston, New York, and various cities in Ohio, with help from some friends, James and Jacob completed their debut five track EP, "Interstellar Groove Machine," recorded at EP studios with legendary producer, Tony Stewart. Another succesful live run in March, included headlining two nights at their own much heralded "Outer Sounds Music Festival," in Columbus, Ohio. The band will continue to perform and play live to support the EP over April and May, and stay tuned for new songs and demos!!!

I hate to play the "I told you so" card — but here it is. When the Wall Street Journal has a front page story on the inevitable, ongoing clashes between SXSW organizers and the promoters/sponsors of unaffiliated day parties AND a [a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/sxsw"]SXSW Blog[/a](with predictably awful content) — and with reports from anyone who actually attended that Motorhead show (as Maura previously mentioned) few and far between, I kind of have to feel repuidated in my decision not to attend SXSW this year. Everyone just sounds hot, drunk and grumpy. Ah, just like old times — only about a million times more crowded. [[a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120546500941535975.html"]WSJ[/a>, subscription required]

Last night at the premiere of the Bjork Wanderlust video in queens, I was standing in line for drinks when the first showing let out. A brunette woman in her late 30s, shuffled to the door while telling her date she’d “had just about enough of all these hipster wannabes.”

What the hell is a hipster wannabe?

Also, doesn’t being at a Bjork-attended music video premiere with free booze kind of signal a hipster black-hole with an immeasurable gravitational pull over those who star fuck and chase open bars? As the woman was leaving, some sort of nexus of doubt and self-loathing briefly overcame me. Then it was my turn to get red wine and it passed.