Mammal Airlines

Sets of 57, who lost some of the hardcore aggression/numerals for post ironic metal posturing, which of course is all good with me as I have spent most of the autumn lying around listening to the latest Sunn album like I assume most people have been, and I guess on the floor in Sutton with serious drop d infatuation, where the tuning becomes some sort of surrogate girlfriend.

But that video wasn't the actual point, however admirable the compactness of that song was. I want to write up my friend Giles' new music and try for it not to be too obtuse or pretentious. It's a pretty unpretentious song, wearing it's Wavves summer vibe like it is going desperately out of date. But that directness of influence shouldn't be confused with blatant ripoff, Giles seems like genuinely excited about getting his band Mammal Airlines together, and on the strength of one song, "Emily 2.0", which is always a dangerous place to stand, I think I feel the same.

its almost like falling in love

(incidentally, the camera that I have, not my MacbookCamera which i use for the majority of everything in my life including a surplus of hot pics of myself, in some vain imitation of my brother whose collection of self takes is both worrying and sort of impressive. This is of course ignoring the girl Rowena Jessica Doonan who apparently sets a new standard in personal/private vanity. We met in Tokyo and she has been nothing but coy to me since, she was coy even in Tokyo I guess, but not coy enough to keep personal/private the fact, as opposed to allegation, that she has over 1,5oo pictures of herself in her Photobooth. This was at a bad sushi bar in London, looked more like TImaru than anything else I sort of felt. The girl Rowena J. Doonan, one of the large numbers of J middle name initialled friends I have, a minor collection, is relatively easy to ignore. As I was saying at the beginning before the distractions, the camera was a gift from my brother and saw some serious damage in antarctica which is more than you can say for most cameras. Hence the colours are a bit blue. This was not intentional.)

she made this silent face at me, as in sort of blank.
And how Columbus looks so careful in the morning, as if preparing itself.
The north mile stretching out like an arm draped, a long arm I guess.
And every time I walk I see another African American fashion icon, a sort of low rent diva.
Sometimes in matching maroon velour tracksuit, sometimes in gold shoes.
Her in her bathroom, carefully brushing down her hair.
Like how her room is always warm.
The male review club two blocks away.
The occasional sound of loudspeaker voices.
Every morning.
and like falling asleep to bad american television.
ABC/NBC/CNBC/OH/IO

turns out my family are replacing me with japanese women.

singles club #3

DOWNLOAD FROM HERE

infinite party playlist

DOWNLOAD FROM HERE

really, if i am honest this is how I want every video of mount pleasant to be like. this is clearly the best recording of the year, apart from that "she wolf" song.

grim harbours

Anyway, this video for the song "grim harbours" is sort of what I want the play I am writing, slowly and carefully, to be like. Really boring. and brown hued. I was looking at the curtains in my grandmother's house, which haven't been updated and I realised that brown velvet on patterned carpet is actually a really good interior decoration colour scheme.

dissolute, dissolute

When the unknown actress in the anonymous fifties melodrama, well of course she wasn't actually 'unknown' and probably had a number of roles in other anonymous fifties melodramas in which her hand to face actions were used as dramatic tools to further the emotional resonance of the scene and the anonymous fifties melodrama was only anonymous to me because I have forgotten the title, had to portray a scene of emotional resonance she used her hand to slowly move up to her face. Then of course, she looked down and turned away stage right away from the camera. These actions were directed to her, possibly in the script of the anonymous fifties melodrama. I don't think that it was like a genuinely felt emotion/ authentic display of emotional impact.

Anyway, as it is Dissolute Dissolute's cover has this unknown actress as the cover. She is sort of attractive in a way, but if you watch the anonymous fifties melodrama she stars in I guess you learn that her attractiveness is only a cover for her inner failings/moral weakness/possible communist leanings. It's not a really good melodrama either because in the end, you don't really identify with all the characters. There isn't enough moral ambiguity and you end up demonising the unknown female actress. She just really wanted their son dead so she could have her husband all to herself/ is probably a communist. I pretty much only "identified" with the anonymous female actress when she looks down at her husband and is going to speak with him and reveal everything but decides in that moment to not and then turns away stage right from the camera and walks back into her house. That is the moment.

She looks both sad and defiant. She is also a murderess and sort of attractive.

Mount Pleasant, Dissolute, Dissolute.
Digital Release, 13 songs, 30 minutes

DOWNLOAD FROM HERE

This is maybe too effective. All the subliminal "buy" messages in it. Song in it, "autumn tour" also from the cassette, it's all interlinked. Maybe my business skills are undervalued, this new marketing approach is completely effective.

cassettes not dead

(this could be you)

I completed the cassette. It feels like a concrete step to have something professionally made. Unfortunately I have no such concrete business acumen, so if you want to buy a cassette you will either have to send me an email or see me sometime, you know around Sutton Coldfield or something. I generally look pretty somber and unfriendly though. It gets dark at four in the afternoon at the moment. What is that about?

Mount Pleasant- Reverie, Reverie

Magnetic Cassette Tape, 11 songs, 30 minutes

MIX

and she had her hair like some sort of sixties icon, it was I guess "strawberry blonde" like the boy Simon Riddell from my high school. I remember him describing his hair in those very words, as I guess you would if your hair was like that. like the Baldoventti painting. Apparently, a man can have blond hair but he is never a "blonde." She wore it piled over her head, it was carefully tied up behind and formed something almost unbearably perfect. I thought the style had died, and could only be utilised in novels by Murakami.


She sat next to me and was talking about how when she was my age, her friend could get front seat tickets to the Odeon theatre in central city Birmingham. From my research, and I have nothing at the moment but time to research, in the sixties Birmingham was the grimmest city in the world. She talked about how she was obssessed with soul music and had seen Smokey Robinson and Otis Redding live which was enviable enough.

then she said:

"I was in the front row for the Supremes,which was deeply exciting. there at the Odeon. Diana Ross with her hand, grabbed me out of my front row seat and danced with me on the stage. You know, her hand was small and claw like."

I don't think I have ever been so in love with anyone.

ghana movie fantasy

I found these painted ghanian movie posters on this website, I guess mostly from the eighties. At least in Ghana, they didn't have like high profile promotions teams with proper printing presses churning out proper images. But I don't think you necessarily need a proper marketing model to sell some of those films. I don't even know like half these movies anyway, but anyone can clearly see that CUJO is the best film ever made just from the poster.  Obviously they had some sort of printing presses in Ghana, probably like Rotorman litho sort of affairs. Definitely colour, but pre web offset evidentally. But possibly offset litho. 

I could probably talk printing for days. 

in the future, every film will be like this

absolute contentment, and like sense of achievement covering me like some sort of golden wreath, olympian. totally sent off for that cassette. cheque and all. sure its sort of not really good and I am already sort of cringing at bits of it, but its good to have a completed document you know?



when it comes I will take a photograph with myself and the cassette, looking triumphant or preferably like the main guy from the band "midnight star". will have to, obviously do some serious hair growing/perming/mustache growing but it will be totally worth it. as it is, there is no artwork done yet and the deadline for autumn tour is closing in as it looks pretty autumnal all the time outside, and the temperature is dropping. considerably. seriously don't want it to be a winter tour. i mean the idea of america anyway is pretty grim.

post industrial.

in other important news of the moment, my wisdom teeth have stopped aching and limp is sort of subsiding. just so you know.

I got the delight of being mentioned on this website, which is French I assume. Generally as it is written in French, but it doesn't necessarily have to be from France. When I was fourteen for instance, we had an exchange student stay with us from New Caledonia, his name was Jonathan and we used to play guitar together. I didn't keep in contact with him, but he was a sort of forgettable guy. Like I pretty much only remember him looking sort of "Gallic", and imagining he was going to be like a Pacific Islander or something but actually he was pretty French. And I remember like one of the songs we used to play together, but I might be confusing it with the soundtrack to the Science of Sleep movie. This kid looked like a character from a Michel Gondry film.

In other news, while I am on the topic, the cassette is progressing. I am making a cassette release, vaguely remastered or like redone, in regards to the tracks rio joy and no roots, and put onto magnetic tape. It is definitely going to happen.

press

sort of wish i was a bit more professional or something, and had some press releases etc, but its okay. self promotion via this blog is probably the best way. but joseph interviewed me and I couldn't say no to the readership of the Auckland University Times, or whatever it is actually.

interview with some auckland students magazine

and then like the wheatley series, kim wheatley, in wellington. he is a pretty good writer.

on nocturnes

on mt pleasure

on performance

interview with some wellington student magazine

also got a guess as close as I can get to a press release on the a low hum website,
not that implictly it is impossible to press release this music. it just doesn't seem necessary anyway.

press release

and two live reviews from the high street project,

live with el guincho

live at the christmas auction

for andrew

my brother, andrew, got angry at me, maybe not angry. but he definitely expressed some sort of emotion about the absence of any identifiable narrative thread over the last period. i would be like, but andrew that is what books are for. this is something completely different.

real cute pic of me and my brother too, we used to be way closer I guess.

anyway, this is for my brother.



I was lying awake at two in the morning, you know. in the town Goole, or Reddiheath i think somewhere like that. it doesn't matter. i think it was the light outside my window, either that or I have too many thoughts currently. the light outside my window makes everything look like a david lynch film, erstaz, sans people i guess. loneliest place in the world, just so you know, Reddiheath, two in the morning.

this town called beverly, which was lovely I guess. it was what I want,intimate, or at least as intimate as a town can be, there were cobblestones and this lincolnshire burr. I walked around with this three year old boy called joshy, who smelled like urine and could only say one word "NO" which was issued in short brisk and joyous announcements. he cried when I walked away from him, for at least an afternoon i discovered my paternal instincts. the only difficult bit, of course, was that women and I guess men assumed I was the father, and I was a pretty bad father effectively letting my unruly son lie on the floor and have effectively no control over him. still i got this like curious understanding look from attractive mothers of britain, who looked at me with weary but understanding eyes.

"you fucking idiot."
each word was drawn out, spoken in this melencholy jamaican-"brummie" hybrid, in a sonorous minor key. the other man remained silent. I couldn't see them, but I could hear the one man's voice as I lay down in my room. a disappointed voice.

thats all for now.

photo from friend's facebook of home. 

Barry said to me, "it feels like autumn today" and he was right. the air was cold and I put my hands into the pockets of the only pair of jeans I wear. They, like the weather, had become grayer in England. I guess once they were black, they are a remnant. We looked out across the suburban brick, all silent and remote. I said to Barry, "yes it does, I guess that ends the summer."

Sweat is a documentary by the director Thomas Hilland, following a Finnish sauna champion. The best thing about the film, I think, is the interior of his house, like everything is perfect in it. I don't really understand why he lives in a home that looks like it is occupied by a grandmother considering he is super masculine and there should be like metallica posters on the wall or something, but maybe he has a thing for wicker chairs and floral patterns. The main guy, Timo, is apparently a metal worker, hence the sweet "bod", but lives for sauna. 

Sweat

the man from london

i want every night to be like this

I would say I like this one even more than Rio Joy, but then I shouldn't really judge my own work. This one is called " I Met Her at The Televised Execution", which seems pretty romantic. I didn't actually, but if I did it would be perfect. So a lot of this is sort of unfinished, maybe it is the heady english summer's fault. It is there to download anyway, some new recordings in my attempt to stay "really prolific."  

REAL UNFINISHED

COMPUTER JESUS REFRIGERATOR - LOOP#2 from KOKOFREAKBEAN on Vimeo.

she looked at me with the face that jealous lovers have, she held my affection in the same way. "you can tell me anything,"
she looked to exaggerate little things, the rain falling all over the streets of christchurch and birmingham and every city, that is what she looked to. I looked at the mirror as she talked to me, I found it the most relaxing place. anamnesis, the opposite of forgetting. Some times, you know sort of to fill the time between reading and writing new songs, I draw self portraits of myself from memory.
"jon," she started cautiously and then stopped
"don't stop like that," it was in the half whispers of the early morning. christchurch. sprinklers on grass.
"no, i don't want to say it anymore."
and that is what i remembered in my new house in the suburbs, where the smell seemed familiar and like home, and as i sank onto the mattress on the ground you know, all tinnitus and ringing, i thought about her. circular.

some people are jerks, like this is pretty incredible. and the title of it is like "awful movies", it is sort of like the lady gaga of films I guess. really misunderstood.

birmingham deluxe

skate witches

the images of nuclear detonation photographed in the fifties by this new form of camera that could capture something terrible into something small and fragile, I thought they were really grim photographs of fungi or something. They aren't, the camera is called a rapatronic, which sounds like it should be a childrens toy. the kind of "new kids on the block" childrens toy.

Is it just me or is this guy completely terrifying and completely amazing at the same time. Especially the bit at the start.

Simultaneously reading the religious book my friend the vicar gave me, trust me it is a long story but suffice to say I am not turning really spiritual or anything, the next album isn't going to be like jesus songs (Incidentally the book is pretty bad, Christian fiction is not like "real fiction")

This is a sample passage from the book;

"The forest seemed to close in around him and he began to seriously wonder if he had taken the wrong path. Out of the corner of his eye, he again saw movement and instantly crouched down, peering between the low branches of a nearby tree. Something ghostly, like a shadow, slipped into the brush. Or had he only imagined it. Again he waited not shifting a muscle. Was that God?"

Pretty sure, when you are walking out in a forest, the only explanation for shadows is always "God".

However, I think if, in the unlikely probability that the book transforms me into a Christian, the songs I would start writing would be pretty amazing, I am thinking like Dylan's gospel period, the best period. I even sort of imagining the cover and track titles and everything. Getting the strong conviction that converting to the christian faith could be really good for business, although pretty sure there is already a christian artist called "Jonathan Phillips", effectively destroying my nascent career as a Christian musician.

Anyway, apart from thinking about that, I have also been reading "the Unbearable Lightness of Being", and this book of Virginia Woolf memoirs. The former is more likeable, although Woolf has some pretty good anecdotes about Edwardian society, but no steamy sex stories. What a waste of time writing memoirs without every single detail, oh she sort of went in the homosexual encounters of the bloomsbury circuit. Maybe she was too dignified or something.

Listening to Alec Bathgate and Alastair Galbraith, probably the best New Zealand musicians. Lately I have been working towards the next album I guess, but it seems too much and I keep sort of feeling I can't "match" the last one, even though it wasn't like unblemished or anything.

And that pretty much keeps us up to date, its good to you know, keep you informed.

i have been seduced.

I think I have glandular fever.

Now for a paradox:
"I know nothing at all."

P.S. I hate Christchurch.

this week my mother sent me an email, kind of like slyvia plath's mother and her correspondence. i read the entire correspondence between the two, she seemed pretty upbeat throughout the whole thing. well at least to her mother. turns out, in the other biography I am reading about her and ted hughes, she wasn't really so upbeat.

anyway, so my mother sent me this email titled, "how to get over yr ex". If only I had have known about internet dating before, now every night in england is going to be a hot night. not like physically hot, because it is raining a lot.

thanks mum.

drumgasm

the best part of my friends britanny's latest letter to me was when she used the phrase "delicate naive youth". it pretty much made my day.

a blog is created every five seconds

Johnny Hall's brief moment of celebrity, featuring on prime time New Zealand television. My brother is also in shot. I can't explain Johnny Hall, but he is very interesting. Anyway, he has something that noone else I know has, a proper website all to himself. It could be really self indulgent, but then I think if you are prepared to write things on the internet then you are going to display some degree of narcissism.

wrote something about himself


Tobias is now in Wellington and is some sort of journalist looking for scoops, his internet blog has his recordings and moving writing. I think I will cover his latest song, he makes such good music also looks like a pretty serious musician in that photo.

all yr internet dreams come true




Richard is still in Christchurch and makes music at this myspace address, I am pretty sure myspace is dead but his music is still available and can be downloaded too. Definitely recommended.

anti party




Shea goes to the best gigs but does spend a lot of time listening to music. Probably a lot of time looking at nice photos.

so he was going to call his band drunk shea



Amy is the best person. She writes this nice blog which makes me want to express more affection for things. This blog has no trace of narcissism, which seems unlikely.

this girl




Joseph is a hardworking person, his level of commitment is impressive. something to aspire to.

real bass heavy

Maja is new to blogging, but she already has the best aesthetic.

vincent gallo vs. edvard munch

Rachel and Anna, now also including Charlie and Joseph, write this idiosyncratic blog which is always worth reading. it is like text messages sent to a friend when really bored on a bus from Pipe Hayes to the city, costs £1.70 for one way. England's bus fares are pretty much keeping the economy running.

maybe profound, probably banal

Clemence writes her blog, organises shows and hopes to make it big in the business world. This is an inevitability.

young and the restless

my brother andrew has written as a sort of self defence. he is probably in a different league from everyone else because his writing is completely unaffected. i mean its not trying to be anything other than it is.

andrew draws better than he writes

Darian and Simone made good blogs too, but they are private now. Sigh.

so when I woke up this morning, and went to the supermarket with my friend hilda, because this was the "big plan" for the day, a day in which I had planned to finish the coetzee book and also send two parcels to new zealand but achieved neither. Hilda said, "Oh Jon, there has been an earthquake in new zealand, it was the largest one for 75 years I believe." I had these terrible visions you know, like of Napier or something and New Zealand had to be completely recreated in postmodern architecture which would be a real drag. In the newspaper there was a little article about it, and this much larger article about Mr. Yealand's Malborough vineyard in which miniature sheep were saving his diesel costs and the environment.

anyway, hamish has made me a video for "letters from new zealand," off my album "Rio Joy." Its a spiritual song I guess, woozy. I hope New Zealand hasn't been destroyed in my absence.

"and how are you, are you okay jonathan?" it seemed like an afterthought, an affectation.
"oh yes, I am fine. I am just, you know, sitting listening to bach."
"you like bach?"
"yes..." i paused here as I didn't really know what else to say
"well good for you," he said sort of congratulating me or something like that, "better than television I say!"
and then the conversation pretty much ended.

hey richard flett, what have I left?

rio joy

Mount Pleasant

Rio Joy L.P

The tracks I have listened to over and over and that stand out to me are: Fantasy Island, 1961 (can't explain but I really, really like it, something vaguely familiar or nostalgic about it when I know it shouldn't be, it seems almost wistful ); Safer (yes yes yes! 90's indie-house beat? is that a fair description? ); Saturday Nights (haunting waltz with a more sustained melodic vocal track than others, which is refreshing to hear ) Dead Panning at the River Styx (intense orchestral sounds- ominous cellos contrast well with light vocal melodies).

my friend Susannah wrote me this review

Your new album is really good. It still has your veering toward the edge of a chasm sound, uncertain and breakable. Brittle and Icy. But I also hear a hope that wasn't there before (unless I was imagining when listening to previous albums, to escape the atmopshere of desperate lonliness your songs seem to create). I like the way the clashes seem to still clash, but have a wholness or proper sense to them. I like your voice. I even like the weird bit that kind of sounds like Regan/Linda Blair in 'The Exorcist' (at the end of Zimbabwe Cock Fight), although I would not recommend listening to it by yourself late at night, if you are prone to nightmares. My favourites were the first song that samples 'you'll never walk alone', that one was really cool.

my friend joh wrote me this review

rio joy track-by-track

1-amazing when it gets near. a++
2-waking waiting's young sister coming of age drama
3-abandon
4-garageband claps put me off
5-feels right.
6-england doesn't have weather this good. does it?
7-can feel ones skin graying & sagging
8-the sun will set,
9-ya feel real good about this one. genuine joy & entertainment & not wanting it to end & makes me want to create & go on & live inside & even if alone it won't matter
10-too banging
11-really well sequenced
12-oh ok. album standout. black francis as a cello.
13-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te_Nv3lMUnA
14-cut from mix-cd at the punakaiki gift store
15-self-fulfilled

verdict: 8.1/10

review from my friend sam ellis, unexpected and very positive.

i asked my friends rosa, janet, alice and abby to reply but I think they might be too busy or something. its okay though, if you want to review it still you can always send me your review. that probably goes for anyone.

click here to download

oh and rarities and bsides from the recording "process"/ last three months

click here to download

remittance deluxe

i could probably map the next 365 days of my life

and would be about 80% on the money

rio joy in technicolor

so my mother sent me this kind of strange email I guess that was just photographs of animals and landscapes. normally she sends me job options, and thinks I should become like an actor go for some auditions or something like that. in her opinion I am the best actor. anyway, I am not complaining, my mother apparently has the best taste in photographs. all 31 of them. this is the best one.
probably patagonia. I guess.

So I was getting all, I don't know, gritty and urban today listening to Mobb Deep. Its been a long time since I listened to those bros. But it was a good time. It was real good, like probably the best time I have had since my week of solid Scott Walker. Also a really good week. I don't know, its like the way that they use the samples and the lyrics are real mean, you know like you wouldn't want to mess with Mobb Deep. Ever.

Seriously.

Like sample lyric from "prelude to the infamous"

"If you step to me on a personal level, I don't back down easy"- Prodigy from Mobb Deep

He probably wouldn't.

I got the entire lyric thing for that track, they are both gritty and urban. Like their expressions on the cover. Here are the lyrics.

Yeah yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah. Hold the fuck up. We gon' take this little intermission, listen to what the fuck I got to say ya know? I been doin this shit for years; holdin' heat, sellin, using, abusing all types of drugs. Robbin' niggas, runnin up in niggas' cribs, ya know? The whole shit. So don't ever in yo life get me confused with some of them other niggas that you might see on TV, or hear on the radio and such, ya know what I'm sayin? I mean this is me, P. I'm speakin from my fuckin self. When you see me at a show, on stage or on the street, I definetely got the gat on me, know what I'm sayin? Knowaimean? [sniffs] And it aint like I'm tryin to be a tough guy, or I'm tryin to make people think I'm crazy by sayin all this shit. What it is that, I know how niggas gets down, aight? I used to be in the clubs, the music tunnel or whatever-the-fuck. They used to get they little drink on, havin fun wit their little crew, knowatimsayin? Start cuttin or shootin or whateva. Things like that. Lotta these so called rap niggas aint never seen no parts of that shit, knowatimsayin? Dig where I'm comin from? Word up, yo. And I know a lot of ya'll niggas, matter fact all ya'll niggas right now listenin to this shit like "Yeah, yeah we gon' see them Mobb Deep niggas. We gon' see what they about. Knowatimsayin? Touch where they head is at." Yo, I'll let ya'll niggas know right now yaknowwatimsayin you aint gotta waste yo time or yo money on ya hospital bills. If you step to me on a personal level, I don't back down easy knowatmsayin there's a good chance ya ass is either gon' get shot, stabbed, or knuckled down, one out of the three. So don't gamble wit ya life, du'. Word up. And believe me, I know very well I can get shot, stabbed, or fucked up too, whatever. I aint super-nigga I'm a lil skinny mothafucker. It's all about who gets who first though, knowaimsayin? So therefore, say no more, to all my niggas get the money, frontin' niggas get deceased.

And oh yeah.. to all them rap ass niggas wit ya half assed rhymes talkin bout how much you get high, how much weed you smoke and that crazy space shit that don't even make no sense: don't ever speak to me when you see me, knowaimsaying? Word. Imma have to get on some ol' high school shit, start punchin niggas in they face just for livin. Yo, I'm finnished what I had to say, ya'll can continue on.

so I think about how this summer seems to have stretched on for too long, like maybe two summers was a selfish act or something. anyway, I don't know if it really matters. I kind of like how hazy everything seems at the moment, all sort of slowed down and unimportant. Each day seems a little wilted I guess, like the grass at the moment. It doesn't take much apparently. Seriously, like a couple of days sun and it is like some sort of dessicated wasteland in places . Anyway. I wrote and recorded this song late night in an apartment in London. Which is more than I can say for my other songs.



Mount Pleasant - Endless Summers, Single, 1.18 Mins

Click Here to Download

i want people to smile inwardly when they see us

Like complete childhood regression for me, watching this programme with my sister. She doesn't talk to me much anymore, but at least we will always has this programme. sad thing is, you know, i don't remember what it is actually called.

dream sequence

and my friend johnny hall, who always makes the best things has made a new video for an older mount pleasant song which I recorded in rosa's living room in the winter I guess. she sat next to me on the couch and I recorded the basic track with a guitar, currently I have no guitar so have to use as many vocal tracks and garageband synths, but then I could use her harp as well. even though the song was sad, and was filled with this longing I think maybe you can change the meaning if you want and make it a love song to seasons and moving on. if you wanted.

unfortunately, you know, because I can only use the internet on the library computer, I can't watch this video so I don't know what happens in it. all I know is that two of the best possible people are involved, abby and johnny, and from abby's wintery hat I assume it is set somewhere cold and forboding.

Mount Pleasant - Spring Mythical from Johnny Hall on Vimeo.

marriage fantasy

videography

Mount Pleasant
Video Works
2008-9

Dead Panning at the River Styx
from the album "Rio Joy"
directed by Jonathan Phillips




The Eletra Fan Club
from "Pop Hits City E.P"
directed by Joseph Ernest

http://photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs164.snc1/6140_1197731581671_1179934445_30581864_5188192_n.jpg

directed by Joseph Harper

Mount Pleasant - Spring Mythical from Johnny Hall on Vimeo.

Having A Party To Celebrate Every Perfect Moment In My Life< /em>
from the album "Rio Joy"
directed by Jonathan Phillips



In Lust
from "I Forgot E.P"
directed by Johnny Hall

Filmed in the carpark of Riccarton Pak and Save, on this really grey day. Johnny Hall was in another trolley being pushed around this empty carpark.I hadn't washed my hair that week and had fresh peaches for dinner.



In Lust pt 2
from the album "Horseshoe Lake"
directed by Jonathan Phillips



Saturday Nights
from the album "Rio Joy"
directed by Jonathan Phillips



Spring Mythical
from "I Forgot E.P"
directed by Johnny Hall



Rio Joy
from the album "Rio Joy"
directed by Jonathan Phillips


Waking/Waiting
from the album "Claw Friends"
directed by Jonathan Phillips




You'll Never Walk Alone, 1954
from the album "Rio Joy"
directed by Jonathan Phillips



Yr Parties
from the Mount Pleasant Singles Club
directed by Joseph Harper




Zimbabwe Cock Fight
from the album "Rio Joy"
directed by Jonathan Phillips

a week of falling asleep

when I went to sleep, my arm was resting against my head, propping it up like a pillow. it was too hot for pillows, and I slept out of the duvet, so I guess it was too hot for duvets too. I have taken to falling asleep listening to albums again, for a while I preferred relative silence and would fall asleep to the sound of solitary cars and the distant sound of a radio left on in my grandmother's room. so I dreamt this listless dream that left me awake at four in the morning, the least agreeable time of day as night settles uneasily into the blue light of early morning. i dreamt I was in the living room and my grandmother asked "jonathan, what are you looking at?"
I replied that I was looking at the window which was being barraged by hundreds birds attacking it, the whole window filled with restless and terrifying birds. So many brown birds with their lifeless eyes, and flapping wings and the sound of their wings and beaks tapping against the shaking window.

I carefully drew a picture of my face in the only one of the three black books that I bought to England, the ones that the girl Emma got for my birthday. The face I drew looked pensive or reserved. I couldn't draw in the shadows that formed around the left side of my face, as with the picture I had tried drawing the night before, the shading would ruin the whole thing. I drew the image before I went to sleep, in bed with the grey triangulated duvet cover. falling to sleep to kate bush with the pen beside the bed, and the black book beside the bed with the bedside cabinet and the couch and me restless and pensive above the duvet too hot to sleep, too uneasy to sleep without kate bush.

quotable quotes

"he went mad playing mother goose. he was a broken and exhausted man at forty three. "the funniest man on earth" as it said on the posters. "ever seen his eyes?" asked marie lloyd. "the saddest eyes in the whole world. thats why we all laughed at danny. because if we hadn't laughed, we should have cried ourselves sick. thats what i believe real comedy is. you know. its almost like crying."




"on his way home across the solent by the early evening ferry, gladstone was too absorbed in robert louis stevenson's "kidnapped", just published, to feel much grievance."

decisions, decisions

so I don't know about this picture, I guess I like it and the little art deco things around the cocacola sign but I am just not sure.

i wanted to make a new photograph for this blog because after going to Japan there were no girls that looked like the ones in the current profile picture. I did see one girl who was very tired from a big day cleaning and was wearing a yellow cleaning costume thing and I said to her that she was the prettiest girl in Tokyo, when she smiled her unfortunate teeth could have spoiled the effect but I think she was still, probably, the prettiest girl I saw in Tokyo.



So I looked up "joy joy joy" in google, as you do. All I got was this dismal scene so I decided to keep my image as it is for now.

joy rio rio joy joy rio rio joy

I want someone to take a photograph of me with my new bicycle so I can put it in the collected photo albums of my family. With the photograph of my father with his red bike , and my grandmother in the forties with hers. I would stand outside the little house I am living in, the bricks and the weeds and the summer sun and I would be so happy.



This is a music video for "Rio Joy", I sat in the front room and recorded it all with distorted marimba and reverb. The music video is sombre, like hammer horror movies on late nights, but just taken from nature documentarys. The new album will be released this month, I am sending it out to girls to be reviewed.

video works

This video is from a song from my new album, "Joy Rio", which will be available to download and cherish soon hopefully. I know you will cherish it like an old friend. Just so you know, most days I have been sitting around reading Richard Yates, watching that BBC documentary about Planet Earth called "Planet Earth" and walking around Walmley, which is a suburb in Sutton Coldfield. Sometimes the sun comes out for over an hour, you know. My grandmother has a nice expression about the sky "not enough blue to sew a pair of sailors trousers." She really is a lovely woman. I hope you like this video, I want to make the whole of the new album into music videos and storm the pop charts. Somehow I don't think I am going to quite "make it".

(Just so you know, the nature documentary footage used in the video wasn't actually filmed by me, as I haven't purchased a slow motion camera or taken trips to Tanzania. But if i had it would be pretty rad)

Joseph Harper has done his best to make a powerful and moving portrayal of teenage sexuality for my new single "yr parties." When I was younger, I used to have a Snoopy soft toy which I accidentally left at the Hanmer Springs playground. I always regret that decision. We were in the car driving back and I never said that I left it. i would have been like five at the time or something like that, its a pretty hazy memory I guess.

Thank you Joseph for reminding me of my childhood, except hyper sexualising it.

nostalgia

I remember this time some guy, I guess “a fan” but it makes me feel strange saying that, was like “Your band is the kind of band I would make if I could.” And I felt partly embarassed and partly confused. It was a while ago. Like when Joseph Harper drunkenly put his hands on my shoulder and said I was “the future”. I felt embarassed then. Like before that when Frances said my band sounded louder and angrier than the first time she saw me play, she stood outside and smoked that night. The only time she actually saw me play, she stood in the background and came up to me afterwards. Rosa watched us intently. She said it looked like I was still in love with Frances then. My friend Joh took some photographs with her disposable camera, because disposable cameras are clearly superior to any other form of photographic medium, which she later developed herself. By this I mean, she developed the film, rather than developing a new form of photographic medium. Anyway, I think they came out better than my memories of the night, and it is nice to look at my friends and have this nostalgia.

MOUNT PLEASANT SINGLES CLUB: No 3?

so I have been really busy being happy and trying to be as positive as possible. no more insomnia/bad dreams, hopefully. its a work in progress like my new album "Joy Rio." just want my music to be as "joyful" as possible.

in case you were wondering, I have totally made it in england. I am really really big.

really.

NEW SINGLE CLICK HERE YO

nocturnes

april, I have spent on the floor of my grandmother's house, sleeping and recording some new songs. I was going to spread this release out into like a double album thing replete with comprehensive liner notes, detailed notes and references, photographed lyric work sheets, and alternate versions on a bonus disk. something triumphant.

I didn't really complete the album, and its not really an album.



CLICK HERE

I hurt my leg running along by the canals, disused of course, in the morning. Where noone was about other than the ocassional frizzy haired middle aged woman walking her dog through the morning as I sort of limped past. Setting out on a run and returning limping, limping in little white shorts and laced white shoes. The canal network stretches north through the "Black Country" into Birmingham where it reaches out like veins, like the way in which the pulmonary veins carry relatively oxygenated blood from the lungs to the heart. Except nothing moves in the canals, or at least nothing I saw. A silent network of locks and sinister british oak, suspicious oak. Through brick tunnels with names scrawled in black lettering, all dark against the morning fog; the tops of railways forgotten. Past the industrial estates, long stay parks and off licenses. Bright like English grey. The boys I sort of limped past to get to brick lined suburbs were capable of terrible things.

spring guyana fantasy

so I killed my bank account, it was very "decisive", walked out with not very much money. Going to see if I can "make it" overseas. Like that peter gabriel song "big time"

yeah.

ok. here is a new e.p.

FOR YOU, AND YOU

discography

Mount Pleasant
Recordings 2005-9

this is incomplete, but when I get enough time I will properly fill it in and make sure all the links work, because god forbid that you could exist without some of these recordings. that would be terrible if you really wanted them, apart from the albums that I physically made and released. you had to buy those. they were, you know investments, something like that.

L.Ps

Rio Joy, 2009

Horseshoe Lake, 2009
(out of print)

Mount Pleasant,Claw Friends, 2008,
(Out of print)

Cassettes

Reverie, Reverie, October 2009

E.Ps

Mount Pleasant, Dissolute Dissolute, October 2009

Mount Pleasant, "I Met Her At The Televised Execution", August 2009

Mount Pleasant, "Joy Rio", July 2009

Mount Pleasant, Nocturnes, April 2009

Mount Pleasant, "For You and You" March 2009

Mount Pleasure "Pop Hits City" Febuary 2009

Mount Pleasant S/T, (A Low Hum) August 2008

Mount Pleasant, "Little Collection" June 2008 (dead from lack of downloads)

Mount Pleasant, "Counterfactuals" June 2008
(dead from lack of downloads, you don't want these two anyway early recordings are always pretty disappointing)


Singles

There Are No Roots, March 2008

In Yr

Endless Summers

Yr Parties

Street Beat