bang bang

Jahresuberblick 07

I enjoyed the albums released by Björk, LCD Soundsystem, José Gonzales, Caribou, Fennesz and Feist this year. I was pleasently suprised by the works of a few artist I had never even heard of a year ago: tormented singer songwriter Phosphorescent; alternative hip hop outfit The Shape of Broad Minds and Norwegian trumpeteer Arve Henriksen. When push comes to shove though, these are my ten favourite ten albums of 2007, alphabetically ordered.

AMON TOBIN the foley room
JAMES BLACKSHAW the cloud of unknowing
BURIAL untrue
PANDA BEAR person pitch
PJ HARVEY white chalk
POLE steingarten
RADIOHEAD in rainbows
RICARDO VILLALOBOS fizheuer zieheuer
ROBERT WYATT comicopera
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE QUEEN same

Happy New Year to everyone!

up close

in retrospect

Was 2007 a good year for Spider James? Some of us have had their ups and downs, that’s for sure. As a band? I’m not so sure. We didn’t do any gigs, like bands are supposed to. Do we care? I can only speak for myself: ‘No. I don’t’. I’m pretty thrilled with most of the stuff we have recorded with Pieter Kloos in Eindhoven. But we’ve not finished, it’s not an album yet. I’m not gonna be satisfied with it if the music is just ‘okay’. It has to be exciting, class A stuff. Why bother releasing it, if it isn’t? Make no mistake: I’m optimistic.
For Spider James it will all come down to the next couple of months, starting next Thursday - January 3th. I’m eager to finish the job. I want us to be proud of the result so we can finally get back to actual playing and working on new, fresh material. There’s lots of it laying around.

gently weeps

happy birthday!!!

JL Rouvroye, 'man van het betere gitaarwerk', celebrates his 31th birthday today. Cheers.
When I first met him back in 1993 (yes, 1993) he was skinny kid in a scary metal shirt, blowing me away with some of the loudest guitar work I had ever heard in my life. Apart from a six month hiatus in 1995, we've never stopped playing together; in Spider James, Merry Pierce and again Spider James. I've watched him develop his musical technique and style of playing and going through different phases: blues, psychedelia, lo-fi indie, surf, soul, dub, afrobeat. JL has a undeniable talent to bring little pieces of these influences into a style that's really his own. He never stops suprising me.

good girls (4)