merry christmas! first, thanks to sara-rose for this months cover, festive & lovely, & sent to you readers with love & care, scented with oranges & cloves, & warming the cockles of your heart. (you might have to imagine the oranges & cloves though...

if only this was out in time for st lucia's day as planned... ah well, never mind. we made swedish bread to welcome christmas! it was really... good.

make sure you read about the hundred handed quickly, because the gig is very soon - blink & you'll miss it, & regret it forever. they provide us with an interview of genius.

we have a habit of harassing people - well, i do - moving units were no exception. chris actually scared us more than we scared them though, so it's okay. have a look at their masterpieces of artwork & award them marks out of 10 and smiley faces.

going to the ballet is a christmas essential for me (at least, i'm trying to make it that way... i like ballet). no swan lake or the nutcracker cliche for us, oh no! we get to see sylvia, danced by my favourite ballerina. i smile.

upon returning from nottingham i was accompanied by dear holly to witness the event that was the winter wonderland. concise reviews of isobel, babyshambles, the departure, the zutons, tim wheeler, kasabian, razorlight & embrace are included, plus some very unprofessional photos.

finally, single reviews for some of decembers releases, including the wandering step, goldie lookin' chain & manic street preachers

so wont you have a very merry christmas and all that sort of stuff, & if you don't celebrate christmas, just pretend or something.

- *jingles* ruth moog

back to top

the 12th of december is st lucia day in sweden, which is celebrated as the begining of christmas. girls in white dresses wear candles on their heads as they walk around their village offering people saffron buns as part of the celebrations. allegidly. you never know...
well, bellyache decided to make some of these saffron buns & take you through our cooking experiment, but it didn't really go as well as it could have.

first, check for ingredients. the shops of forest gate don't have an afection at all for saffron, so in need of some kind of substitute, tania & i opted to try cinnamon instead. we also needed flour, yeast, sugar, milk and almonds.

"let the saffron [read: cinnamon] infuse into the warm milk" ... right then. how much is a pinch of saffron in cinnamon measures anyway? besides, what does saffron even taste like...?

so we seive the brown sludge into the other ingredients & add the yeast, & mix to make a dough. knead for five minutes. then leave the dough somewhere warm to rise. not cold. oops.
ruth: "i'm sure that's not risen..."
tania: "nyah, i'm sure it's done..."
ruth: "put it under the radiator?"
tania: "okay... right, now it's done."
simultaniously: *shrug*

devide the dough & arrange in hare's, stars & s shapes on greased baking trays. now this we can do! like playdow...

glaze with egg & bake in the oven for 20 minutes until golden. hooray! they're done. nice huh? we tested them on a friend: "they're nice." "is there cinnamon in this?"
ahhh, we would make rubbish swedes...

back to top

in this bit we tell you all about how much bellyache likes the hundred handed ep, & then ben & dan answer some questions.

hundred handed - on parade e.p.
a question of etiquette
x=y
we decline
a lazy complaint
billy bray

many moons ago, i went to see a band called "the german exchange" at the barfly monarch, for no particular reason, but i'd heard a rumour they were good. i wasn't disappointed, and as time went by they miraculously became the hundred handed, & somewhere along the line their on parade ep found it's way through my letter box & into my cd player.
it's some time on from those magical days, but with a gig planned in the good ol' east london just days before christmas, what better time to tell you all about quite a wonderful band...

the five track ep, with it's somewhat understated artwork says a lot about the band; it would seem that some people have struggled to pick up on the hundred handed's tones & rejoice in their glory, but when you peak through the many layers the consequences are amazing, like being the only person able to open a glass sweet jar... you know the ones.
anyway, enough - to the music! the overall sound of the band is hard to describe - if i want to say lo-fi, i can't because it's not. if i want to say bombastic, it does no justice to the sedated temperament they have. however, if you can imagine them untouchable on a pedalstool it might give you a good idea why people have struggled with them in the past, as well as an insight as to what they actually sound like.

opening track a question of etiquette gallops & twists leaving you onlooking attempting to catch up with the manic & rhythmic jaunts of the band, expressed with the feverish veracity of a bad dream, yet maintaining an air of dignity that the gents possess at all times.

a bleak fanfare introduces the following track, x=y, which launches into a leg shaking combination of drums & guitar lines before falling into bluesy bass led section, rushing back to the leg shaking, & ending with guitars sounding more morse code than melodic.

then along comes we decline: short, sharp & ballsy, and, neglecting the statement of "we decline" in the lyrics, sounds as if is most definitly rushing up a hill to kill you. yes, kill you. HUH! it's big & brash, but with a niggling edgy tragicness laying below.

the tempo slows with a lazy complaint a favourite of mine live, if purely for the almost reggae bassline. the mood is sombre, with sad lyrics such as "your heroes are dead or they are in disgrace", yet ultimately the track is postive "open your tired eyes", and never dull as interest comes constantly from all elements of the band, something the hundred handed appear to do very easily, but then, they do have 3 guitars...

finally, in walks the ghost of billy bray, begining with soft drums & develops into nearly five minutes of meandering narrative, sometimes delicate & pretty, & sometimes whailing & sour, seemingly about taking the role of the religious cornish figure.

as a whole, the songs gently & easily move onto one another, which perhaps means there is no reviting dynamic between tracks, but with each song presenting new themes to occupy the mind, it's easy to be destracted from the last as the next comes along. i prefer to think of it as five songs on one ep, rather than an ep of five songs. or rhubarb & custards; i like them too.

so following that review, ben & dan found time to answer some questions about the e.p, the forthcoming album, and keeping with the seasonal bellyache theme, christmas. they also gave us an insight to their gig on the 21st (details at the bottom of the interview, & check their website for more info & flyers)

bellyache: who are you, & how would you describe your sound if you were asked by someone like... bellyache?
dan: we're benjamin reynolds, moh rahman, alex norman, ben beare & dan barrett. what do you think we sound like ruth?
ba: like nothing ever heard before! there's something quite quaint & military about you i think, but i have to try really hard to find someone to compare you with - it seems that musically you stand alone...
dan: i'd like to think that we sound like an english art-rock band in the 70s tradition (e.g. roxy music), but with less fat & more steel.
ben: incendiary!

ba: who do you get musical inspiration from? & what music/artists do you usually listen to?
ben: first, it's hard to get any inspiration from our peers because you can see where they're coming from - wearing their influences on their sleeves - and then you just compare them to one band or another and rarely they're any better.
dan: this is a difficult question to answer without writing an essay. i think that we get a great deal of musical inspiration from each other, for starters. we're mostly self-taught (i think alex had a few drum lessons) and i never wanted to emulate slash or eddie van halen or whoever - i've always just picked up a guitar and played. the initial ideas for songs are similarly spontaneous. ben's especially good at structuring songs, and we work with our ideas over a long period of time before something is 'finished'.
ben: certain interests are easy to see in the music like david bowie, iggy pop, roxy music, captain beefheart, television and fugazi. but the end result is very much our own and lyrically the influences are from a very different place.
dan: personally, this year i've listened to a fair bit of jazz (monk, coltrane, mingus), a fair bit of metal (especially mastodon & isis), some old stuff (neil young, crazy horse, the band) and some new stuff (the futureheads).
ben: maybe the new material will see the band shifting towards jazz-metal? who knows?
dan: i know that the hundred handed will only take a jazz-metal direction over ben's dead body, but there are elements in both musical styles that i subscribe to. however, there's a great deal of grandstanding in metal and jazz, and that's just not us.
ben: no.
dan: sometimes i get sick of other people's music and have to give my head a rest - i think ben's had the same feeling at times too.

ba: regarding the on parade ep: when did you record it? what was the aim behind the recordings & music at that point? ie: what were you trying to convey as a band?
dan: i can't remember when we recorded it exactly - it was over a year ago. it started out as an expensive lesson in how not to go about making a record, but the 3 tracks that we had done were salvaged by our legendary 6th member dom lethbridge. we then added a couple of new tracks recorded with dom and in many ways it formed the blueprint for our current, more "d i y" ethic.
at the time we were trying to produce a more representative document of the band - we've always played around with different styles but (perhaps because of this) we hadn't yet put a coherent set of songs together. we hoped that the e.p. would cement our identity, both for us and for the listener.

ba: how has that changed or developed in the time since the ep coming out, if at all?
dan: because of the circumstances surrounding the ep it still sounds disjointed. i can't distance myself from it, so i don't know how it sounds to the listener.
ba: i picked up the ep again the other day & gave it a good listening to; it sounded good as ever to me. it is pretty old now though so i guess naturally you would have moved on, but it still sounds static & curious & intense, which was why i liked it in the first place... & that bassline in a lazy complaint.
dan: to be honest it seems really outdated to me now, especially considering the quality of the songs that have been written since the ep. i think that 'a question of etiqutte' and 'a lazy complaint' came out best, but i know that if we were to record the same 5 songs tomorrow it would sound completely different.

ba: you've been quite quiet for a while - what's been going on in camp hundred handed since getting the ep done & now?
ben: taken our time - done a little thinking - recorded an album in an old sunday school by a farm. in fact my old sunday school - but not my old farm. my doctor recommended i take some country air - so who better to spend it with than these boys.
dan: in september we went back to cornwall to play at a wedding. we dressed up and brought the house down, so to speak. we also got a genuine encore. some songs were more successful than others, although the al green song 'love & happiness' is still the band favourite.
ben: things have changed for the band over the year - new leaves being turned and all that - but we've had a great deal of positive support from friends old and new and i think that (thanks to them) we've got a clear idea of what we're going to do next.

ba: can you tell us great wondrous things about the album?
dan: the album contains the best songs that we've ever done. some of it will make you get up and dance, some of it will make you sing yourself hoarse and some of it will make you fall to your knees and weep.
ben: i beg of you, readers, that you come up to dan and tell him one of our songs made you "fall to your knees and weep". he has a little thing about it.
dan: i do! it's my only measure of success! i lose count of the number of times that i've listened to the rough mixes, but there's one song where ben's vocals never fail to send a shiver down my spine.
ben: ah, back to my home village... maybe that rural influence was going to come through at some point - but with any hope what you will hear is a far cry from folk and something that can give a different voice to growing up in the country - something touched on by some of p.j. harvey's early stuff. i feel very removed from this urban sound pushed by the nme, etc. there needs to be something countering this.
it's hard to argue that any guitar music is pushing the boundaries these days, but we're perhaps ploughing a neglected furrow in our own way. growing up in the country means you have to get used to the solitude, but it gives you an inbuilt optimism and i think that the album reflects this.
dan: of course, we didn't all grow up in the country, but i agree with ben that there's a particular feeling of confidence and individuality coming through on these songs. not sure that you can say there isn't any guitar music pushing the boundaries though - isn't it more the case that too much modern guitar music is working within boundaries that were set in the last 40 years?

ba: changing the subject, what are you looking forward to about this christmas? have you found the christmas spirit yet this year? put the tree up? eaten many mince pies? collected a copius supply of brandy/sherry/babycham/[insert appropriate seasonal beverage here]?
ben: i have recently tried babycham after years of bated breath. replace bated with morning.
dan: i haven't got the christmas spirit as yet, but i'm looking forward to hanging out with the family (all four of us) and having a marathon scrabble session. it's been decided that we're not going to spend much money on presents this year, so i'm expecting to come back to london with a can of soup, a pair of socks and a handful of buttons.
ben: i've decked the hall with someone elses holly - but i wouldn't condone stealing so don't take me up on this.

ba: what can we expect as we flock to the on the rocks gig on the 21st?
dan: you can expect an "incendiary" performance.
ben: i said that earlier!
ba: i am scared you're planning to burn us all now!

what do you hope the new year holds for the hundred handed?
dan: i hope that the album will be finished in the spring and that we can have the mother of all parties to launch it. i hope to play more gigs outside of the m25, and some less 'conventional' gigs in london too. i hope that somebody gives us a great deal of money so that we can build our own studio. most of all i hope that we can continue to make music together and on our own terms.

ba: anything else you would like to add?
dan: expect new mp3s from the album on www.hundredhanded.com next year. we're also going to put together some sort of 'album diary'. finally, i'll be perfecting the recipe for 'hundred handed biscuits'.
ben: think garibaldi's with a difference.
dan: thankyou for the opportunity to speak!

thank you both for a fabulous interview, the pleasure's all mine!
if you think you're game enough to brave the apparently inevitable fire of a hundred handed gig, to warm the cockles before christmas, they're playing at on the rocks on tuesday 21st december, on stage 9pm, £5, £4 w/flyer, @ 25 kingsland road (near old street tube). be there, & fall to your knees & weep. okay!

hundredhanded.com

back to top

the units played a superb gig at london's barfly monarch at the end of november (check out the live reviews section of the site to see what bellyache had to say about it) & following their performance, we thought it'd be a good idea to turn their heads to the season upon them & see what they thought about christmas time. and what better way than to get them drawing pictures?!

drummer chris' attempt proves to be fairly cynical, with his profound & touching statment on the commercialism of christmas time.
we give him special credit points for drawing style... (if only you could have witnessed it; there was knee/elbow angular action! it was very exciting.)

this is bassist johan's insanely impressive "volvo driving with a christmas wreeth on it". we were actually stunned by this genius & creative original thinking & would like to offer johan a round of applause! *claps*

the first thing that entered vocalist & guitarist blake when we asked him to draw for us was "nice things like bunny rabbits". bellyache let out a little squeel, & we hereby declare that blake is the man! bunny rabbits are the way to our collective heart. it must be fate that blake just knew this, & loves us with his bunny little heart. oh yes, oh yes indeed.

thank you moving units! we will try & think of less taxing things to say to you next we meet!

www.movingunits.net

back to top

there's nothing like going to the ballet when christmas is approaching, especially when darcey bussell makes it back to the stage after a while away with her baby. the royal ballet are celebrating the works of sir fred ashton (founder choreographer of the royal ballet) & putting on a season of shows choreographed by him, 100 years after his birth. in the case of sylvia, old people had to try & remember the steps & put the full length ballet back together. i kid you not.

the story goes something like this... in ancient greece, a shepherd called aminta is in love with the beautiful sylvia, nymph of diana. he tells sylvia of his love for her, & sylvia - sworn from love - is annoyed at eros the god of love, so attempts to shoot the statue of eros with her arrow, but instead gets aminta who stands in the way of eros. the evil hunter orion sees sylvia's beauty & kidnaps her after eros pierces her heart with an arrow, & orion takes her from the woodland to his island cave, as peasants look after amintas body. but eros appears as a stranger & makes aminta well again, sending him to look for sylvia.

orion offers sylvia gifts to win her heart which she does not take. instead, in love with aminta from eros' arrow, she waits for orion & his servants to get drunk, & prays to eros for help. he shows her aminta is waiting at diana's temple, & takes her there.

when sylvia & aminta are finally reunited, orion arrives to take sylvia back, and orion fights with aminta as sylvia hides in the temple. orion tries to go after syvlia, but diana kills him, and still angry she forbids the love of aminta & sylvia. eros reminds diana that she used to love a sheperd, and diana changes her mind, sylvia & aminta are united, & they all live happily ever after (except orion who is dead), & some woodland creatures do a dance!

bellyache went to the final performance of the ballet, & arrived just in time as the staff at the opera house shouted at us to hurry up and were very scary indeed. the set was grand & beautiful, complemented by some brilliant lighting, particularly so the lights that brought eros' fountain to life. the score by leo deliebs was beautiful, his wispful & jolly score played brilliantly by the orchestra. the performance was excellent, though due to our lovely cheap seats, we didn't get the opportunity to witness sylvia's solo in the final act, which was a shame, as ashton's intricate choreography is typically very technical & complicated, & therefore would have been wowing to watch.
you're not meant to take photos in the opera house, but we did anyway. not of the performance though, because we're good, really.

royaloperahouse.org

back to top

the day wasn't hideously cold, but you start to notice a chill when you're waiting in a queue for hours. bellyache managed to arrive horribly early at the hammersmith apollo, & started to feel our age as sergio & tom of kasabian walked past the queue... "they look awfully thin..." "throw subway at them?" our nonchalance contrasted by the fizzy excitement of isobel's #1 fans rushing around yelping "we've just met kasabian!" ahhh, youth. if only we were still that excited by seeing members of one of our favourite bands strut past us. alas. this brings me to the first act of the night, the winners of christian o'connel's breakfast show's rock school competition.

isobel
young & lively, bouncing about to their winning cover of no doubt's don't speak, it's almost impossible to take a photo of them because they. wont. stay. still! but at least this manic exhuberance provide for an entertaining & colourful performance, though only one song long. we did however spare a thought for their parents, who would surely have to make do with jumping beans instead of children for the next couple of weeks at least, just until the adreneline wears off...

isobel-official.co.uk

babyshambles

once again pete doherty's band live up to their name, and by arriving a couple of hours late, we have to settle for an acoustic rendition of the libertines' time for heroes & the new babyshambles single kilamangiro, with drummer gem on tambourine, drew taking his hand to the departure's drumkit & pat... somewhere. & before we know it, pete is taken away & kicked outside after attempting an onstage protest involving... well, none of the audience. but still.

babyshambles.net

the departure

possibly the sharpest band around at the moment, fasionably tight & stylish, & their music the same way, they're like all the best bits of 80s pop in the 00s. they sound superb, & are perfect to dance to, though they seem to have trouble writhing up the lazy crowd, though as singer david swans round the stage he takes a pint to the face, which is just wrong. they continue unphased and complete their set with their forthcoming single lump in my throat which will be their third single for the band formed under a year ago, from the as yet unreleased album. i for one am looking forward to it...

thedeparture.co.uk

the zutons

introduced by adam & joe, are a liverpudlian five piece, futons, crutons, two-tonnes: the zutons scare me, but they do sound pretty good. a set dotted with their well known singles pressure point & don't ever think too much goes down well, as saxophonist abi prances about barefoot with vigour & pizazz, & the chubby singer coos & screams along to their bouncy jingle jangle songs.

thezutons.com

tim wheeler

up next is ash's front man tim wheeler, playing a quick solo set before rushing off to play ash's own headline show. he starts off with shining light, then takes his hand to new single renegade cavalcade which is already sounding like a classic, and possibly one of my favourite ash songs, & finally girl from mars which is a delight as the apollo joins in chorus style.

ash-official.com

kasabian

i can't help but love kasabian, as they've grown & strengthened over the year now filling out huge venues with their engrossing beats cleanly & relentlessly. it seems that every show they play is above average, as they omit convulsive threats by default, but here they are polite & gentlemanly, & not as edgy as we've come to expect. still, the sound of club foot is enough to explode the heinus crowd, but unfortunately for me, them leaving the stage reduces me to a wreck of patheticness and from then on NOTHING IS AS GOOD AS KASABIAN. but i continue observations none-the-less...

kasabian.co.uk

razorlight

love him or hate him, johnny borrell is one of those people who make a great front man, as he struts around the stage of the apollo like thunder as if he owns the place. as a live band, razorlight have an almost sadistic edge, as johnny - with a slit in his ill fitting trousers - calmbers up the amplification tower to the left of the stage and scares the shit out of everyone. they produce a set which creates an awesome reaction from the crowd, with no difference in appreciation for singles & album tracks alike, but by the final track the energy from the crowd is almost tangible, as the band shake & spit out stumble & fall

razorlight.co.uk

embrace

if i'm honest, i wasn't expecting a lot from embrace, but they proved to be darling, with their earnest melodic pansies of songs, which set a warming festive mood as the final act of the evening. rather than closing with an energetic explosion, they provided an uplifting and emotional finale, as they grinned in the falling snow on stage, playfully offering good will & cheer. recent single ashes came toward the front of the set, plus an a capella rendition of a christmas song from danny as his brother fiddled with gremlins on his guitar, before a gorgeous ending to a splendid show with some of the most enigmatic acts of the year.
and then it was time to go home. below are some pictures i took from the event, although some of them require "no, really, that IS so-and-so" to accompany them, & unfortunately i ran out of film before embrace came on. such is life...

embrace.co.uk

xfm.co.uk | shelter.org.uk

back to top

- - - -

the wandering step - christmas at my house
released: december
single: self released christmas song, a present on cd & mp3

ahhh, lovely... a quirky upbeat christmas sound, from the twinkley sleigh bells, soft vocal tones (not unlike swedes [ingenting] if you've had the pleasure of hearing them at all - but in english), & rockabilly dance beat combined with lyrics most everybody can relate to this track is yuletide excellence. go download it while you still can. thank you the wandering step for the lovely present *smiles* xx.

wanderingstep.co.uk

- - - -

goldie lookin' chain - you knows i loves you
released: 13 dec 04
single: cd, dvd, 7"

com.ee.dee. you know the score by now surely? this time the glc take it down and get sexy. well, as sexy as you can get being several chav lads from newport...
give this to someone for christmas if you want them to think you're an idiot.

youknowsit.co.uk

- - - -

manic street preachers - empty souls
released: 13 dec 04
single: cd1, cd2, dvd

thankfully, the follow up to the awful the love of richard nixon from ye olde welshies the manic street preachers, empty souls is a gorgeous track, of delicacy & optimistic tragedy, and yet with the same vulnerability as there by the grace of god, this time there is perhaps a bit more encouragement that there is more life in them yet. it's lovely, lets hope the next single from album life blood is another good one.

manics.co.uk

back to top