Hello, my name is Looptron.

I have been redecorating.

New Supherhet Deceiver website, as rubbish as the old one except it's now the same colour as my guitar. It's almost like there was a plan. (Also, apologies if I got any Citadel Blood Angel Red on your website.)

Now all we need to do is get some of that, y'know, "content" stuff - ideally the main landing page will have 76% less hot cepholapod action and more of a "here's the next show, here's the record, pwease be our fwiend, pweeeeease" type affair.

There's a blog forming in my brain about what makes for a good band website in this attention deficit world but I suspect "less is more" sums it up rather nicely.

So, about this Friday then...

Details at http://www.superhetdeceiver.com and http://facebook.com/superhetdeceiver - see you there.

Superhet Deceiver

Happy New Year!!

A quick bandspam - Even though I've still got a stack of takes to wade through and some singing to do before the inaugural Superhet Deceiver* EP will arrive I would like to direct your attention to the Official Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/superhetdeceiver and mention that we're playing Dead Or Alive @ The Comedy on January 13th. Details will no doubt be published on FB, the website or twitter. Put it in your diary.

I have also hacked together a shiny new frankenstein guitar out of bits from eBay for the purpose. Let's see if my soldering skills survive my dancing...

* Yes it used to be Receiver but there were already a zillion bands with that name. Really.

Two Thousand And Eleven.

Been a pretty good year... so, it's time for the Short-Term Nostalgia Power Hour!

Favourite gig: Too many to choose from. Flaming Lips at Ally Pally. Hotly followed by Grinderman at Ally Pally, Portishead at Ally Pally, tUnEyArDs and Ghostpoet at the Scala, Primus at Brixton Academy.

Favourite album: Oddly in a year that had a Radiohead release in it it's definitely not that - The King Of Limbs is a bit lumpen and hasn't really grown on me at all. Oddly, according to the iTunes stats the record that has been played in it's entirety the most this year is actually the Tron Legacy soundtrack. The On Rails record wins on Spotify but I daren't list that on account of making a cameo appearance as a basser.

Favourite song: Midnight Lover by Link Wray, Worm Tamer by Ginderman or Meet Your Bride by Jason Webley. Stats are about even, can't pick between them. If I don't discount stuff I've written though (which gets a lot of listens while bug fixing) then it's Medusa by Superhet Deceiver - which either means it's my favourite or it's properly broken...

Favourite instrumental: Rostropovich & Dedyukhin's recording of Debussy's Clare de Lune. (This is what I get for watcing BBC4 late at night.)

Favourite read (comics): It's a toss up between the Low Life run in 2000AD or finally binging my way through Warren Ellis/Paul Duffield's entire run of Freakangels in a couple of nights (I'd been waiting for the final TPBs to come through).

Favourite read (novel): William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, because no-one does the near-present like William Gibson. Besides, I picked up Zero History, realised it was part of a loose trilogy and went back to the start, and IMHO Pattern Recognition is the best of the three.

Favourite game: Portal 2 or Batman: Arkham City. The former because it made my brain hurt, the latter because it didn't. (Also, I should point out that I've not had a crack on the new Uncharted game yet - it's still in it's cellophane and will remain so until my current job finishes.)

Favourite movie: Attack The Block. Although given my long history of loving lo-fi brit flicks about squaddies vs werewolves, idiots vs zombies, etc an aliens vs hoodies movie was pretty much a lock from the start. Honourable mention to Super 8 for being so unashamedly Goonies/ET.

Favourite telly (In no particular order): The "Witness" episode of Person Of Interest, the first episode of Black Mirror, Neil Gaiman's love letter to Doctor Who and playing the Hawaii 5-0 drinking game generally. (Blatant product placement: take one drink. Blatant partial nudity unrelated to the plot from one of the main cast: take one drink. Spot out-of-work guest star from one of the main cast's previous shows (Lost, BSG, etc): take one drink. Spot known character actor who crops up in a minor role 1/3 of the way in but turns out to be the villian of the piece and would have gotten away with it too if it hadn't been for those pesky kids: take two drinks, plus a slammer if you called it correctly. Winner is the person who still has a functioning liver after the second ad break.)

Favourite (non-musical) gadget: Not the iPhone 4S (very impressive and all, but just an upgrade.) Nope, the Macbook Air wins this one, because it does everything I need, it's so thin and sturdy you can cut cheese with it and they're not stupid money any more. Although, truthfully, the thing that has revolutionised my life the most? I finally have a microwave oven. Wooooo.

Favourite (musical) gadget: A 2009 Gibson SG Standard, in black, from eBay. Bought to be a gigging (i.e. effectively disposable) instrument but has turned out to be a thing o' aural beauty. As such the gigging role in shitty London venues now to be filled by a b-stock mexi-Strat with some, ahem, "modifications". Honourable mention to the Zoom R16 interface controller thing we used to do the Superhet recording though - by no means perfect but a hell of a lot of bang for the buck.

Favourite meal: Steak at The Hawksmoor courtesy of Mrs. Sarah Harris-Rogers. Seriously. WOW. 

Favourite thing that happened, like, ever: The Wife. Now that was a good day. Top tip: If you're going to get married do so as quickly as possible and try and start the day in the jacuzzi. (All that crap about not seeing your wife before the wedding is bullshit - get her in a bikini.)

So that's it. Happy new year, pop kids!

On Rails

For the benefit of those who are not already aware, I have a bit part on the brand new On Rails record. (The part in question is some bass playing on "First Earth Battalion".) However, don't let this put you off - it's a fantastic beepy crunchy melodic somewhat Krautrocky album and it's on Spotify right now. Lend it your ears.

Stars [Demo]

If anyone out there is wondering where the next Looptron record is... well, sorry, but you're going to have to wait until I get over the "disco-meets-Pink Floyd" phase I seem to be having. And not in an ironic Scissor Sisters Comfortably Numb sort of way either. There really is no market for this stuff. Most likely it'll get repurposed with loud guitars for Superhet*.

However, thanks to FB deciding to do some random reposting of old stuff earlier I've noticed that the blog is doing a passable impression of an empty wasteland. I figured I may as well at least post the stuff that's littering up the hard drive.

Download: http://www.futuresoundofdisco.com/mp3/Stars_Demo.mp3 This track is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License. Share and enjoy.

* In other news, there will be some Superhet recording happening any decade now.