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PAY LESS FOR CASH
Tomás Ford's DISTRACTOMATIC _//July 2008

INDEX // TOMASFORD.COM SEMI-NATIONAL TOUR_/ SOMEBODY SHUT ME UP /_ THINGS THAT SUCK / SPECIAL PRESENTS / THINGS TO DO IN A SEPARATE WINDOW WHILE YOU SURF PORN SITES /] AGING RECORDS YOU SHOULD TOTALLY SCORE OFF BITTORRENT ../ WHY PERTH IS NOT AS LAME AS YOU KEEP TELLING ME IT IS / OUT OF CONTEXT REVIEW QUOTE OF THE MONTH // TOTALLY LAME WORD PUZZLE _//UPCOMING TOMAS FORD GIGS////////////////////////////////////////////////!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!///1!?!

TOMASFORD.COM SEMI-NATIONAL TOUR
Yes, Party Shall Be Had.
I know I mentioned this last month, but it’s really cool news; I’m heading off on a big series of interstate days in a couple of weeks. It would be most radtastic if you could tell everyone you know that lives anywhere near these shows about it as they’re all going to be pretty amazingly amazing. More info at the end of this issue.

SOMEBODY SHUT ME UP
Regards,

So it’s been an incredibly busy month of banging my head against the brick wall of eastern states press. It’s starting to give in a bit, but it’s very thick indeed. I do a lot of this; banging my head against resistance until things eventually happen is a pretty major part of my work. The live set is shaping up well at the moment, it’s all sounding very tight and I’m ditching the black and white threads for a more neon look. My mother is currently squirreled away sewing. For real.

I’ve been doing some collaboration with my man team9, which has primarily involved us sending compliments back and forth to each other. But the songs are flowing stupidly easily (particularly as opposed to my own material, which I labour over for months) and they’re really good. I don’t want to tell you much else, but it is something that’s happening and I like to care and share with you guys. Well, to an extent, I guess. We have pretty well established boundaries here, yeah? I’m not going to tell you if I’ve got gastro, for example.

What else is happening? I saw Get Smart the other day. That was good. I saw Demonlover yesterday. That was bad. Don’t get that out from the video store, like, ever. And the A Night Of Horror short film fest was life-changingly awesome. If you were the people sitting next to me who had to leave after one film, you totally missed out.

I bought some new shoes. No I didn’t. But I felt like I should say something to fill the space and I panicked.

I’ll see you all soon.

Punchbuggy yellow,

Tomás

THINGS THAT SUCK

The Date – I wish I had another two weeks until I went away on tour. But I always wish that before I go. Sigh.
My day job – Getting to “totally intolerable” on the sliding scale of job crappiness. No offence to anyone from there that reads this. It’s not you, it’s me.
Having To Work A Day Job – (intentionally left blank)
The Orphanage – Not, as advertised, a fucked up horror movie with small children. More similar to a gothic version of Ghost.
Inner Turmoil At Having A Discount Liquor Warehouse Open Near My House Whilst Having A Copy Of No Logo On My Bookshelf – Cheap Wine 1, Self Respect 0.
End Of Fashion – About to release a second album and still not ready to apologise for the first one.
My Agent – If you’re reading this, please take it as a reminder that I AM ALIVE AND LOOKING FOR ACTING WORK. (bangs head against wall)
Perth – There is no acting work.
Disco – So apparently we’re about to be hit by a disco revival in the Scene Formerly Known As Electro. I warn you, just as electro turned to electro-house, what these kids are calling “disco” is nothing but a gateway drug to Madison Avenue.
Cinema 4 At Luna SX – Also known as the “I’m Not There” torture chamber. Every time I see something in there now I am overwhelmed by a sense of foreboding that it could be as agonising as watching that movie. And every time I go to Luna SX, I’m put into that cinema. It’s as though by watching that film, Cate Blanchett has cast a magical, time-transcending curse to annoy the shit out of me any time I try to see a decent movie from now on. I think I’m just going to watch DVD’s for a few months.

SPECIAL PRESENTS
This month I finished two bootleg remixes that I’m sending to people I like. Since you’re on this list, I guess I like you enough to fill your mp3 player with my shit. So here, have some free mp3 downloads. Bec au se I love you that much.

Give Up Your Day Job (Tomás Ford’s Unconditional Surrender) – The F au ves
http://www.mediafire.com/?0hnxneiienj

and

Sweaty (Tomás Ford Is Also Sweaty) – Muscles
http://www.mediafire.com/?z2idzegnwo5

THINGS TO DO IN A SEPARATE WINDOW WHILE YOU SURF PORN SITES
Fantasise About a North Korean Holiday
http://www.vbs.tv/shows/north-korea/
I’m going to write a fuller post about this for the Shitfilter on my site when I get a spare minute, but I would like you to know that my ultimate dream holiday is to go check Pyongyang in North Korea to see Arirang and enjoy the randomness. If you’re willing to pay for both of us and my wife, you can come too. This video is by Vice magazine, but you should give it a chance, it’s pretty good.

Pay What You Want For The New Girl Talk Disc
http://www.illegalart.net
This is interesting bec au se as opposed to Radiohead’s “pay whatever you want” scheme where nobody can say that they can’t hear the man hours involved in putting it together, Girl Talk is a mashup artist and the whole question of what to pay for that work is much more complicated. On one hand, it’s a very involved Ableton Live mashup LP that recontextualises the songs involved almost entirely, so it’s fair for him to expect to make money off it, but on the other, he hasn’t cleared any of the samples, so if you pay the full amount, is that fair either? I am very interested to see how much au diences are willing to pay for this album. Incidentally, while you’re at Illegal Art’s (his label) site, click around to find yourself a copy of the Steinski compilation to hear the originator of this shit in action.

Make A Map On Goth City Maps
http://gothcitymaps.com
This site collects Google Maps with little tabs on them explaining all the cool places to go for goth-type stuff in cities around the world. There’s one for Melbourne and some random places like Salt Lake City , but nobody’s done one for anywhere else in the country yet and it’s a really cool idea and easy to do, so maybe you should go in there and fix that up. It’d be great if someone could do one for Pyongyang . It could start at the Ryugyong Hotel; IMHO the best venue for an Empty Show ever.

AGING RECORDS YOU SHOULD TOTALLY SCORE OFF OF BITTORRENT
Evil Heat – Primal Scream
The album before this one, XTRMNTR, was the soundtrack to my first year of uni. I slept on the follow-up until I scored this for $5 from Jumbo the other day, only to find that it is actually better than the aforementioned record, which it now replaces in my top five of all time. It’s dirty, noisy, electro-influenced shoegaze punk noise that will eat you.

True Colours – Split Enz
This was reissued on cd a couple of years ago and I was expecting it to be slightly cooler than it is. My Dad had a cassette of this when I was growing up and I used to listen to Shark Attack a lot. Mind you, I’m not that surprised, I mean I was heavily into Peter Coombe at the time and I don’t rock out to that anymore either. But for a collection of tunes to stick on your mp3 player to come up when you put it on shuffle, this is kind of nice.

Sand On Seven – Not From There
I just bought Gerling’s last album 4, also from Jumbo’s $5 bin, and I’m totally underwhelmed. It sounds as though they were trying to recreate the radness of this. Also Grandaddy to an extent, but mostly this. It’s the album that had Sich Offnen and Juanita’s Cocktail Party on it. It’s dirty, vaguely experimental late 90’s indie and It’s really good.

WHY PERTH IS NOT AS LAME AS YOU KEEP TELLING ME IT IS

Revelation Film Festival – Is on at the moment and is well worth you seeing. If you missed A Night Of Horror on Friday, I offer you my consolations as it was phenomenally awesome. My picks at the moment are Redacted, Revel8, Island Of Lost Souls and Saturday night’s live soundtrack performance by Lawrence English to experimental Harry Smith shorts. Awesome. Lawrence English heads up an amazing ambient label called room40, so I assume his work is in that slightly glitchy, techy ambient kind of vein as well.
Schvendes have a new album out. I recommend it highly.
Late nights at The Rocket Room – The rocket room has just started pumping out the late night jamz. Much better than Amplifier. Hopefully.
The Rusalka Thread – I haven’t seen it yet, but Geoffrey Jay Fowler’s new production is on at the Blue Room. He’s a very gifted writer and I don’t give away compliments like that like candy, y’know. Plus he’s been talking about the Sierra game Quest For Glory in his press interviews about it, which is totally l33t.
Liquid Architecture 9 – the experimental electronic music festival Liquid Architecture is an east coast thing, but this year we get it too at Club Zho on July 26. You should go to this.
Happy Go Lucky – The new Mike Leigh movie broke through my layers of cynicism. Really well constructed. You also need to go to your video store and get out Vera Drake; I sold it to my friends on the basis that it’s about an old lady who goes around doing abortions. They’re a bit like that. This one’s a happy one though.
Dexter – Yes, they have TV’s all over Australia. But my couch is particularly comfy and I prefer to watch this show in Perth.
King Wasabi – Oh my god, they’re still around. That’s so awesome. A Perth cabaret band who were a bit of a local institution before they went MIA several years ago. They’re launching a new cd on August 9 at the Fly By Night in Fremantle.
Cinema In A Cave – New monthly microcinema showing edgy, obscure film in Mt Lawley. More info is at: http://www.cinemainacave.com/
Richard Parker – A Perth producer I saw play for the first time at Deuce’s monthly residency on Thursday at Velvet Lounge. If you’re into germanic sounding minimal stuff, you can’t go past this dude. His production is pretty much faultless. Free MP3’s are here: http://www.richard-parker.com/
First Page – This is a launch of some presumably great writing by usually quite interesting local writers at The Bakery on August 2. It’s a concept thing with each story based around a picture or something, but that doesn’t really matter; what matters is that it will be pretty good. Although you’ll all be at Shape that night watching me play, so I guess you’ll never know, will you?

OUT OF CONTEXT REVIEW QUOTE OF THE MONTH
”…but he really shone when he surprised everyone with his rapping talents on Loudspeeka, which also sampled the late '90s "ooga-chaca” dancing baby we all remember.” - Drum Media, Perth

I DID NOT SAMPLE THIS BABY

TOTALLY LAME WORD PUZZLE
There is one n au ghty word hidden somewhere in this puzzle. The first person to email me telling me where it is in the puzzle and what it is will get a limited edition “A Brief Introduction To Tomás Ford” CD, which you’d only be able to get otherwise if you worked for a media outlet and I was sucking up to you to get an interview. Anyway, good luck and stuff.

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UPCOMING TOMAS FORD: SUPER BONUS TOUR BONUS EDITION!!! BONUS!
THURSDAY JULY 10
Cottonmouth
459 (THE ROSEMOUNT), NORTH PERTH WA
My monthly gig as MC of this great series of spoken word/performance events continues. This is the sixth one! Get down early to avoid missing out on getting in.

WEDNESDAY JULY 17
GANGBUSTERS
BAR 32, CANBERRA ACT
With Dead Kitten Parade + Partybus + Burgerman
I’m playing in Canberra . This might be the only chance to effect real, lasting political change my show has ever had. I think I’ll play Xanadu.

THURSDAY JULY 18
SOSUEME
Q BAR, DARLINGHURST NSW
With Foxx On Fire + Blush Foundation
This show is kind of a big deal. It’s at a pretty excellent party in a pretty excellent bar. The last time I played with Foxx On Fire was in Melbourne and it was the (second¹) WORST SHOW EVER. So this show is going to have to be one of the best shows in the history of mankind just so I can save some face.

WEDNESDAY JULY 23
IMPROMPTU
THE PUB, BENDIGO VIC
Basically for no other reason than the fact that I can, I’m playing in Bendigo . I’ve never been. My expectations are very high.

THURSDAY JULY 24
THE ALLEY CAT, HOBART TAS
This will be 5-10% more awesome than the time I played Rottnest. The venue looks really cool.

FRIDAY JULY 25
2 AM SLOT
PONY, MELBOURNE VIC
Anyone who has seen me play at this time of morning knows what Melbourne is letting itself in for. Qua is playing before me and his glitchy beats are definitely worth a listen, so if you’re in town, come down early to check out his show as well.

SATURDAY JULY 26
AWESOME SOLO ACT EXPLOSION (not real title)
WESLEY ANNE, NORTHCOTE VIC
With Talkshow Boy + Casionova
Three of the raddest solo electro rockstars in the world ever will be converging on inner suburban Melbourne for a night of demonic-level awesomeness. The evil battle for glory starts at 8:45 and ends at 11pm bec au se Northcote is a bit like that, but nonetheless THIS WILL BE THE AWESOME. And the afterparty will be the super-awesome. So attend, Melbournites!

SATURDAY AUGUST 2
TOUR CLOSING CEREMONY
SHAPE, EAST PERTH WA
The Perth kids amongst you will be pleased to know I’m coming home with a massive show at Shape. There won’t be too many electro bogans there, I assure you. It’ll be fun. It’s going to be upstairs and I think downstairs is dubstep anyway. All the electro bogans are currently pretending they’ve “moved on to techno” or “were always more into disco” or “not living with their moms” anyway, yeah? This is going to be a party. We haven’t confirmed the lineup completely, so it’s kind of secret for now, but I offer you two words which should bring solace to any of the non-disco-party kids on this email list: BLACK METAL.

¹: See review section of last issue.

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