Mindless Ones

Guitar/bass/effects/vocals: Guisers, Even Sisters, Blue Kanues… fukken hunners of bands, honestly (see below). You can enjoy Isobel’s patter here, and support her on the Vivarium Sounds Patreon or by trading cash for local sonics on Bandcamp. 

What are the best sounds you’ve made?

The stuff I’m doing in my band Blue Kanues each time we play together. No matter what song I bring to practice, the three of them Hannah, Laura and Mattie all come up with the most beautiful parts. We are going to record an album and will be playing a Glasgow show at the end of June (UPDATE: June 27th at Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre, gig fans! – Ed).

What are the best sounds you’ve heard?

The best sounds I have ever heard was deep in Hangasjarvi when I lay down in the what seemed to be quiet forest and then after a few moments of silence there was sound coming at me from every direction.

What can you tell us about East Kilbride? 

Coming from Motherwell, East Kilbride seemed quite fancy when i would visit my uncle as a kid and when I was a bit older I played in bands there with my cousin and his pals and smoked a lot of hash with old punks and hippies and bams and listened to all the music they would play me, a lot of which was terrible but among the dross was stuff that really encouraged me to play more music

What can you say about Glasgow?

Glasgow is where I live just now. I like walking up to the flagpole in Queens Park and try and get up there to see the nick of the central belt every day. The buses are extortionate.

You’ve got a track called ‘Target: 2006‘. Which Transformers are best and why?

Target 2006 was the first big story in the UK comics after Dinobot Hunt for me. I remember reading it all before the movie came out so knew who Galvatron was in advance. My favorite Transformer is probably Ratchet. I had the wee toy of him and thought he looked really cool and then saw that the comic and cartoon representation of him was quite different to the toy. I really liked him sneaking about the Ark and recovering the Dinobots and then later the horror of him being merged with Megatron. Great cunt.

What are you working on now? 

I’m working on a few things. The Blue Kanues album is the main focus but I also play bass in a band called Life with Laura who plays guitar in the Kanues. I just recorded a black metal record with Laura and it will be getting mastered and mixed by Robert Dallas Gray and we are going to look at having it come out as a physical thing. The band is called Spring and the record’s name is Forth.

I walk around with a microphone and make noises for Even Sisters with Robert. I do a band with my bf called The Loaning where we have been filling up cassettes with jams and field recordings all made on a portable wee fisher price cassette recorder. I have a country band called OPULENCE who plan to play one gig and record an album.

I’m also working away on a lot of songs I have been recording on my phone and then overdubbing on a 4 track and there are close to 30 songs on it. I keep playing guitar and bass, either or both every day.

I’LL GIVE YOU 21… 21… 21…

<ITEM> Lazy Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 has gone ahols – does anyone pity her? Be careful as it could be lurking in your dirtbox pumping fuzzy with a virulently particular pissing scum. In the screentime, Barry Lactus & The Bobs Must Die bring you the dawning gasm of komiks xrytixm that is…SILENCE! #115

<ITEM> Organ donor-cha-cha-CHA!, there’s Pringles, Profusion of the Twatts, Kick flips, Mirrorball, Poontang Country and a whole sweet fistula more…

<ITEM> When’s this dark in that here valley? Who them? Reviewniversals farewell sensibe hedge funder out of its closing jaw…poor them gave these girls to dark the yam…we were whisperin’ Comics!!!! Daredevil, Future’s End: Batman and Robin, Future’s End, Future’s End, Future’s End, Copra, Multiversity SOS, Translucid, Shutter, Stray Bullets (wow), The Wicked and the Divine, Iron Patriot, Trees, Supreme: Blue Rose, a something Transformers, and a whole catbasket more…

<ITEM>99.9% swears-free! Certified safer for kids than Crossed!

<ITEM> I CAN SEE INSIDE THE INSIDESIDE! There’s just time to talk Batman, Tax, BatTax, Alan Moore’s Jerusalem, comic shops, the limits of the cussword, what we’re having for dinner Silence (Because My Mouth Is Full Of Delicious Food) (cheese on toast as it turned out),  and a lot of jizz less.

NOW GIVE.

Click to download SILENCE!#115

Contact us:

[email protected]
@silencepod
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie
@bobsymindless

This edition of SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the greatest comics shop on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton.

Despite my seeming full mental breakdown after the first issue of Transformers: Regeneration One, I held on to my sanity well enough to continue buying it on a monthly basis.  Didn’t take long for a feeling to creep in that, beyond the initial shock, things were maybe… Off the boil? I continued to buy it more out of a sense of nostalgic loyalty than any actual engagement.  After all, who doesn’t want to see the creators of their childhood iconography still get paid, in this crazy work for hire world?

(assuming they haven’t espoused something morally dubious or engaged in something horrible)

This review was fuckin’ tough to write. I mean that. I don’t mean just the usual typing and re-typing a section as you try to nuance a gag or make a point, although that was certainly part of it. No, what it entailed was something of a personal whirlwind akin to the opening of Apocalypse Now, but with less booze and more crying. Sometimes I would pause to reflect on how the fuck I got myself into this state over something so simple, because, really, the actual review was a breeze to write. It was what followed that was the problem.

When Simon Furman and Andrew Wildman announced their desire to resume the story of the Marvel Transformers comic, I have to confess I was curious, but I wasn’t burning to have it with never-ending desire. It did seem odd. Bin Generation 2? That odd beast of a comic with 75% more violent death and one of the most intriguing additions to Furman’s version of the mythology? Also, I’d not long finished catching up with Furman’s IDW run. A decidedly mixed bag that almost dips a toe into becoming brutally sublime when the cancellation kicks in and the steadily increasing pace that marked each limited series suddenly sees the last two issues ramp up into a fucking furious pace. Plot points not so much nailed as roadkilled. A tenuous reminder of the energies of past. Maybe he had the old ways in him, but I for one wasn’t sure.

Click here to find out just how sure of his own regression/regenration one adult can be! In glorious technicolour!

NSFW

What? What do you want? You want to hear hot shit talked by two hot guyz? Well you came to the right URL true believers!

In this scalding 5th episode the Beast loses his job as a Transformer, but not before he drops his latest musical gem ‘O Transformer!’ Meanwhile Lactus stretches out on his cosmic sofa and relaxes into the hazy bliss of a heroin high!

But Not Just That! They talk about comics, including speculation on Morrison’s upcoming HAPPY!, Chaykin’s Black Kiss 2, Spaceman no.4., Fantastic Four: First Family, The Twelve no.10,  Orc Stain no. 7, Shade no, 5, Jason Aaron’s Incredible Hulk, Criminal, discuss Chris Weston’s meaty art, the annoyingness of comics covers that look the same each month, and Lactus takes one for the team and reads Robocop: Roadkill. Poor Lactus. Add in the Mindless News, the Coming Attractions and some shameless self-promotion for Cindy & Biscuit no.2 and you have a guaranteed sonic prolapse to brighten up your life.

GET SOME! GET SOME!!

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Click to download

SPECIAL “LOVE UND ROMANCE” EDITION

As you’ve probably noticed, it’s Valentines Day, and since we’ve already established that FEELINGS ABOUT COMICS ARE THE ONLY TRUE FEELINGS, I thought that it might be a good time to get a bit soppy about some of the comics I’ve read recently…

It’s been hard to think loving thoughts about comics in the past week or so (because: WA2CHMEN, Gary Friedrich), but I’m a trooper, and I’ve got my good buddy Mister Attack (aka The Boy Fae the Heed, aka The Beast o’the Bar-G) to keep me company, so here it goes!

Winter Solider #1, by Ed Brubker, Butch Guice and Bettie Breitweiser

Fatale #2, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

It’s a bit awkward to read these two comics back-to-back, and to find yourself preferring the one that’s built on the soiled dreams of Jack Kirby, but it’s also hard to pretend that clean hands make for good art when you’re not a teenage boy.  The first two issues of Brubaker and Phillips’ latest collaboration have proceeded exactly as expected – this is the sort of work (solid, well-crafted, “ugly things in the darkness/worse things in store”) that makes it easy to under-appreciate one of corporate comics’ best partnerships.

It’s perfect pulp, in other words, but at their best these guys can suggest a whole city’s worth of stories in one panel…

…and there’s been nothing in the first couple of issues of Fatale that’s hinted at that sort of imaginative depth. Winter Soldier #1 meanwhile, is absolutely full of potent images. Despite having a truly ugly, gurning cover – despite looking like a superhero book, basically – it’s a sneakily great wee comic, all slick superspy action and unexpected quietness. This panel has caught the attention of a few other commentators…

…and rightly so.  Butch Guice’s art here has a softness too it (and not just in the sense that it contains – ugh! – kissing) that couldn’t stand out more in context if it radiated ethical integrity (ooh, burn – take that, comics!). If I was looking to get all thematic on your ass I’d point you in the direction of Clive Barker’s comment that comics aren’t good at making room for love, but I’m not feeling particularly clever today, so instead I’ll  just note that while most individual images will yield lots of strange, abstract patterns if you crop them artfully enough, this image gives itself more readily to this treatment than most:

Look, I don’t want to make too much of a prat of myself this early in the post, but there’s something beautiful about the way that the boundaries between the two characters in this panel seem to have been gently and willingly collapsed, isn’t there?

Yeah… there definitely is. Click here to watch me search for love in all the wrong places, like a character in a story with a blunt moral!

At this point we’re all getting a bit drunk and we all like comics. This is the best time to get excited about The Official Handbook Of The Marvel Universe and Who’s Who in the DC Universe. Listen now as grown men turn into children before your very ears!

Click to download
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Click here to see some images relevant to the conversation

OR: MINDLESS LINKBLOGGING, SPECIAL “ALL BASTARDS MUST BE AGGRAVATED!” EDITION!

As you hopefully noticed, we spent a large part of last month bringing you the best in bastardry.  We’ve got some spooky Notes From the Borderland coming up in time for Halloween, so right now seems like as good a time as any to collect all of our bastardly musings together and to celebrate the cruel simplicity of the banner The Beast Must Die created for the event:

Hopefully you’ll be able to forgive me for indulging in a little bit of back-patting here while I take you through AN INDEX OF BASTARDS!

DARKSEID IS… looking pretty fucking slick, actually! Click here to experience MAXIMUM BASTARDATION!

Awright troops, Illogical Volume here, with a bit of fine
imported basterdry for ye!

Like another recent guest post, this one started with a tweet from Bostwana Beast.

I’m not sure that aka the Original Eyeball intended to start a fight here, but he should’ve known no tae challenge a proper weegie baistart like my pal Scott McAllister, aka Mr Attack, aka The Boy Fae the Heed, because a man like Scott disnae back down fae fuck aww.

Well, at least not when there are Transformers involved. Anyway, that’s enough of my pish. Here’s what the lad Scott had to say about Thunderwing:

It’s another day at the office in Marvel UK in the late 1980’s. Creative license tells me that at this point in history, it would be dark all the time, and it would be raining. A package has been couriered over from Hasbro, and contains the latest information on new products that must be featured in future issues of Transformers. By this point, the engineering has gotten less interesting, and the toys can be changed in about two or three moves. Quite often these days, they are accompanied by a humanoid shell to contain them in, like a a sarcophagus with arms that can only rotate at the shoulders. A quick glance of the villains line-up reveals it looking more and more like the cover to an Iron Maiden single.

On top of that, with Budiansky departing the American book, it seems the personalities of the toys have fallen into the doldrums, with each character little amounting to endless variations of “he is so bad, so very, very bad”, “he is soooooo good it hurts”, “he is evil because he is mental and robots don’t do meds” or “he’s sort of a good guy, but if we’re honest he’s a bit of a wank”.

Now, if you’re one of the cartoon writers, you stare into the mirror, remind yourself you’re too good for this shit and that you’re only in it for the money, so you recycle the plot of some other show you wrote, and have the new villain you’ve been requested to début elect to secretly build some giant weather-controlling device, or hypnosis booth or some shite, and have him turn up at the end as the mastermind of it all, to get his ass kicked.

But, you’re not one of those guys. You are Simon Furman. Simon Furman only has one question in his head EVER. “How can I make this guy interesting so that he’ll be remembered long after I kill him to bits?”.

Wanna see a masterclass in how to make people give a fuck? Then click on dear readers, click on!