1. Summer Camp – Better Off Without You. Well this is obvious – do a blog post about summer and find bands with summer in the name. If you’ve been to Moogie Wonderland over the last year, you’ll have heard us play the incredibly sun infested tracks from Summer Camp’s debut EP ‘Young‘. This new single taken from their forthcoming album ‘Welcome to Condale‘ sacrifices brilliant lo-fi sounds for polished production and Best Coast style vocals – which is great on paper but a mild disappointment in Summer Camp’s case. Here it is nonetheless.

2. Burning Hearts – Into The Wilderness. Now for something a bit more brilliant! Burning Hearts released their ‘Into The Wilderness’ EP earlier this year and it is stunning. Very dreamlike and like nothing i’ve heard for a little while which is refreshing.

3. Gruff Rhys – Shark Ridden Waters. Arguably the genius of sun soaked music [ok, so there's Brian Wilson too], Gruff Rhys gives us a catchy but unusually melancholic track.

4. Stefano Liberati – Abissi Violenti. A new internet discovery of general wierdness/amazingness happened the other week. After stumbling across a soundtrack by Stefano Liberati when looking up KPM library music, i ordered the vinyl straight away for it’s funky thriller music. Then i looked up the actual film of the soundtrack and discovered it’s a scuba diving naked girls horror film [the genre is probably something like scubarotica]. I also discovered that someone’s made a list of any film containing scuba diving girls. What the flip?!

5. TV Girl – Baby You Were There. Hawaiian stylings will always fill us with joy here at Moogie [ever since we did our Hawaiian themed night]. TV Girl, one of our new favourite discoveries, fill up this track with Hawaiian loveliness and sunkissed breeziness which makes us want to go on ice-cream dates. Anyone looking to go on ice-cream dates with us should email us with an in-depth description of their favourite cupcake.

6. Hotel Mexico – Dear Les Friends. Another new band for you [actually recommended by TV Girl]. Dear Les Friends evokes hazy July memories and evenings sitting around in shades and grass. We think it’s pretty similar to Ariel Pink with it’s high pitched muffled vocals, melody soaked riffs and occasional discordance.

7. Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Ffunny Ffrends. Following on from having songs with ‘friends’ in the title and muffled vocals, this is another melodic catchy song. Despite having an daft respelling of words, Ffunny Ffrends has captured our imagination this week with it’s simplicity – it keeps looping in our heads when we’re trying to make posters and watch scubarotica. Possibly set to be a Moogie anthem in the same way that Twin Sister’s ‘All Around And Away We Go‘ caused quite a lot of people to give us their mobiles.

8. Dino, Desi & Billy – Thru Spray Coloured Glasses. Nothing need be said, just watch and swoon.

9. Tiny Fireflies – So Sad To Say Goodbye. And in a moment the unexpected sun will go and the impending doom of winter will hit us like a brick to a shin. Tiny Fireflies are a whispier Camera Obscura with the sweetness of The Marshmallow Kisses and the ability to turn that brick into a bag of feathers.

Moogie Wonderland is this Saturday at Oliver’s, Rochester High Street…hear much of this music there!

But more importantly we have a few additions and changes to the Moogie bill. Firstly we are kickstarting a London Moogie at the Dirty Dicks pub in Liverpool Street on Saturday 17th September with the plan to move to the Betsy Trotwood from November this year. We are very excited by Betsy’s lamps.

Medway Moogie is changing too. After many fun times at Poco Loco, we have decided to move to Olivers (used to be Enigma), a venue that we have had our eye on for a long time (not purely because it is close proximity to the Cumin Club). Medway Moogie will begin on Saturday 1st October, teaching us ladies and gents the rules of etiquette to the usual sounds and dainty dancing fun. The Sipping Sessions will now form the first two hours of our Oliver’s Moogie resulting in one super longer monthly Moogie (8pm-3am folks!)

[please note: some of these clips/links may not be suitable for work]

1. Manfred Hubler and Siegfred Schwab – Vampyros Lesbos OST. This was my first purchase from MovieGrooves after spending days and days listening to clips of loads of rare soundtracks that I’d never heard before [I later found the movie in Air Entertainment in Chatham of all places]. The groovy nature of the music mixed with psychedelic sitar and bursts of horror makes this a must have and has made a regular appearance at Moogie Wonderland over the last 5 years. It was recently released on the Crippled Dick Hot Wax label along with other brilliant soundtrack records such as Schulmädchen Report by Girt Wilden & Orchestra.

2. J.J. Johnson – Cleopatra Jones OST. Cleopatra Jones was ‘the soul sisters answer to James Bond’. A funky soundtrack with plenty of wah and smooth basslines as you’d expect from possibly the greatest example of music in blaxploitation films, sitting nicely alongside Superfly and Coffy. 

3. Piero Umiliani – La Ragazza dalla Pelli di Luna OST. This has italian composer written all over it. Suprisingly similar in parts to the more famous Ennio Morricone masterpieces, this lush orchestration leaves you mesmerized as much as the enchanting character played by Zeudi Araya.

4. Bruno Nicolai – Agent Speciale LK OST. Bruno Nicolai was about as diverse with his soundtrack compositions as it gets. From western and horror scores right through to swinging spy tracks.

5. Gerard Damiano – Deep Throat OST. I mentioned Linda Lovelace earlier – for those of you who didn’t know why she’d be in ecstacy, this film would be why. A very diverse score that ranges from the soulful and downright dirty to twee obscurity. I’m pretty sure the theme tune heavily influenced a Moogie Wonderland favourite [when we're feeling brave] by Toy, but here is a track we occasionally play direct from the Deep Throat OST [the first track in the clip].

Hooray for composers!

Pop up shop art installation: 11am-4pm browse our handmade everyday objects and you might be able to take one away with you!

A factory line. Come make grey objects with us from Monday 13th June-Friday 17th June 12.30-5pm at 302 High St (in between Rochester and Chatham)

A mass of people celebrating the colour grey through the handing out of grey objects and ooooo-ing and aaaaahing of our local grey architecture. 11am on Sunday 19th June starting from Oliver’s bar (186 Rochester High St)

A pop up shop from 11am outside Oliver’s bar (186 Rochester High St) where viewers/customers can take away our handmade grey stock (for free)

And of course a grey themed Poco Moogie Wonderland (Saturday 11th June) and Sipping Sessions (Friday 17th June)

Sounds grey-ate to me! More updates to follow.

1. Broken Social Scene – Texico Bitches. Taken from their latest masterpiece, Forgiveness Rock Record [one of the best albums of recent years], Texico Bitches has as much bounce to it as the Baywatch intro [complete with 'whoops'].

2. The Lodger – The Good Old Days. [beware: infectious indiepop!] The Lodger are a Moogie newbie, although we are a few years behind. Caused for  lot of shoulder shuffling from Lucy and Bee at our Greyscale World research day at the Rochester Artist Resource Centre earlier today.

3. Karia Nomoto – Karly. Discovered Karia Nomoto a while back and fell in love like a kitten to a bit of string. Japanese with 60s french pop/bossa nova/Twiggy stylings. Incredibly pretty. Voice that melts all ice in the north pole. More importantly, produced by Pizzicato 5 founder, Yasuharu Konishi.

4. Modular – Playa Biquini. This video is pure Moogie…it’s how we dream our world should be. Modular are on spanish indiepop label, Elefant Records, who bands like Camera Obscura, My Little Airport, The School and Fitness Forever all have associations with.

5. La Casa Azul – El Sol No Brillara Nunco Mas. The europop amazingness continues with another Elefant Records band. La Casa Azul are winners of our top 3 festival moments award with their rendition of Love Is In The Air at Indietracks 2009.

Evidence is here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=206554852707699

and here:

a] Matt and Lucy once saw Celebration Park by Pierre Huyghe at the Tate Modern many grey moons ago. Here is an interview with Pierre Huyghe about the his work. This pays specific relevance to transcendental beauty of places and things around us. His work often focusses on performance and architecture. Interestingly, he also mentions ‘putting white on the map’, which is our intention with the colour grey.

Check back throughout the day for additions to this post.

‘Obit Series’ Gabriel Orozco,

Next stop was the Gabriel Orozco exhibit at the Tate Modern. My favourite piece was his “Obit Series,”  a series of large scale prints of obituary headlines Orozco collected from the The New York Times. The name and age of the subject were not stated, instead you had about five words to sum up their life. Here are a few: Clock keeper, advocate of therapeutic bee sting, Inventor of Catastrophe Theory and lived in two worlds: white and black, both bitter.

I finished with The British Art Show 7: In The Days of the Comet at The Hayward. There I witnessed Christian Marclay’s “The Clock,” and my, it was beautiful. The 24 hour long film (I arrived at 4.02 and left dead on 4.30) is essentially a series of excerpts from films which feature clocks, watches and characters that relate to a particular time of day. It was all synchronised with real time, with a narrative that had some relation from one film to the next. I am in awe of anyone who pays a great attention to detail. Patience. I think that is one of the many reasons why I am obsessed with anything miniature.

Speaking of grey, we would like to thank all of those that braved the bleak and dreary weather on Saturday to come to our Ides of March themed Moogie at Poco Loco. And what a pillar-tastic evening it was too. We had beautiful Roman inspired animations and fortune telling games by Emma Falconer [there's no place like Rome apparently] and an interactive projection on a feedback loop which warped things [no need for several glasses of wine] created by UCA students Oscar, Matthew and Trevor. So what is going to happen at the next Poco? Well we are bringing back the Laundrette! But in a completely new and bubble-tastic way. We will be inviting you to help create our Moogie delicates to hang up in the Moogiette. The fun will begin at tonight’s Sipping Sessions at The Rochester Coffee Co.