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Result

October 31, 2005

You may have noticed the 'Get Test Icicles Into The Top Twenty' campaign I’ve been running here on The Swish Blog for the past week, thanks to everyone who took heed of my frenzied campaigning and bought the single; remember one Test Icicle is worth seven Arctic Monkeys when it boils down to the future of world music - we're talking Wyld Stallyns stuff here.

Anyway they didn't make the Top 20, finally coming home at number 25 which, although not as good as we'd originally hoped, is still pretty good. That's two places above Audio Bullys (sic) - who were on Top Of The Pops last night - and one place below Magic Numbers - who seem to have whored themselves out to every TV show going this week.

Posted by Chris at 09:48 AM | Category: Releases

cst cst cst cst innit!

October 25, 2005

This has already been posted to my livejournal and myspace today, so if you stalk me (or are just really fond of me) you may have already seen this, if not please read on.

Please buy Circle. Square. Triangle by Test Icicles now! It's #25 in the Tuesday midweeks at the moment with 1,256 sales but I'm sure we can do better than that; Arctic Monkeys didn't have an MC Lars remix on their single after all.

buy
physical: hmv | pure groove | amazon digital: karma download | itunes

But remember: if you buy from itunes make sure you rip out the restricting (and in my opinion illegal) DRM by burning the track to a CD and then ripping it back into itunes.

edit: The single is now #24 in the chart (1,907 sales)! Not a great leap forward, but at least they're now above Rifles, which is great. Still two places below Will Smith though, come on guys!

edit: Right, this isn't good enough. Today (Wednesday) they are still at #24 with 2,625 sales. The main problem it seems is digital sales (with only 125 of them) - remember that downloads count towards 39% of the chart so this needs to be higher - so please, if you haven't already, click one of the download links above and buy the single. Both iTunes and Karma Download count directly towards the chart, so go, go, go!

edit: As of Thursday's midweeks they're still at #24, now with 3,100 sales (of which still only 186 are downloads!)... So there's still a lot of work to be done guys, vote for good music with your cash and your iTunes accounts, or as they themselves put it themselves in a MySpace bulletin yesterday, "help us keep it at 24 and not drop to number 3,000,000 like last time!!" Don't let it happen.

edit: I haven't got the chart update for today as I'm away from work, but today was the most important day for Testies to hold onto their good chart space. Let's hope the stay in the top 20/30. Good luck for tomorrow...

Posted by Chris at 04:59 PM | Comments (4) | Category: Releases

Hrh?

October 24, 2005

Damn. I've been seriously lazy recently; hence, no posts. No promises, but I suspect a MIXTAPE will be appearing shortly, so please be patient. In the meantime my life hasn't really changed much, it's still all about the zombies for me; but with Hallowe'en approaching again, again, again it's even more so. Shoe Girl and I are dressing up as '50s/'60s Zombies for fright night: her as a sort of Jackie Onassis style super-wife lady, but dead; me more mid-century Fleet Street journo with a drinking problem - not to mention a cream trenchcoat, glasses and a side-part - but dead.

Photo courtesy of Mark Webster - Flickr CC works rock!

Posted by Chris at 05:12 PM | Category: Life

My first sober moment for a while...

October 11, 2005

I had intended to write small summaries of some of the tracks in last Friday's playlist mix, but completely ran out of time as I was late for an awards ceremony – about which, there is more on my Flickr – so for my sins (and my seemingly eternal hangover) I'll add them in now.

Firstly, Jeremy Warmlsley’s track After The Fact is taken from his soon-to-be-released EP '5 Interesting Lies' which is released on Transgressive on the 7th of November. Incidentally, any Londoners of a J_Wo persuasion should go to his EP launch party tomorrow night at the Camden Barfly – he's supported by Emmy The Great and Roland Shanks so it should be awesome – get there early!

I've been told I talk about Test Icicles way too much on here, so I'll keep this short: What's Michelle Like? was on the boy's first demo last September, but this is a rerecorded version which is the secret track on their new album 'For Screening Purposes Only' out 31st October.

Beauty Scars by Action Plan is the b-side to their new single 'Stendhal' out on Young and Lost Records at some point in the near future. This track has featured on a Swish Mix before, but this rerecorded version sounds a lot better and also seems to convey a lot more heart.

Now if you haven't downloaded the thing yet, do it now – you have no excuse (unless you're on a dial-up connection, or hate me).

Posted by Chris at 08:28 PM | Comments (12) | Category: Life, Mixes

Swish Blog Playlist Mix 07-10-05

October 07, 2005

I first tried to do this Swish Mix last Wednesday, but at the song choosing stage I realised all I had listened to in the past week was the new McFly and Test Icicles albums; so I shelved a new mix until today - giving myself enough time to do some serious listening (whilst of course still getting enough McFly and Test Icicles into my system... seriously, I'm obsessed).

The Swish Blog, Weekly Playlist Mix, 07/10/05
~~High Quality (160kbps) 55MB~~ | ~~Low Quality (64kbps VBR) 22MB~~
(Please right click and save-as)

1. After The Fact - Jeremy Warmsley [00:00 - 02:53]
2. What's Michelle Like? - Test Icicles [02:53 - 05:18]
3. Deine Eltern - MIT [05:18 - 07:59]
4. Three Cherries Straight - Bullet Union [07:59 - 09:55]
5. Busy Needles - Bearsuit [09:55 - 11:52]
6. Girls In The Back - White Rose Movement [11:52 - 15:17]
7. Head That Talks - Bird Blobs [15:17 - 19:32]
8. Audio Video Disco - The Seal Cub Clubbing Club [19:32 - 25:00]
9. My Dix Sucks - Giant Drag [25:00 - 28:42]
10. Spår 02 - Suburban Kids With Biblical Names [28:42 - 31:50]
11. Beauty Scars - Action Plan [31:50 - 35:42]
12. You Can't Fool Me Dennis (Justice Mix) - Mystery Jets [35:42 - 39:29]
13. Anti Gravity - The Art Goblins [39:29 - 41:47]
14. Teenage Party - LoveBites [41:47 - 44:06]
15. Too Close For Comfort - McFly [44:06 - 48:43]

Posted by Chris at 06:20 PM | Comments (8) | Category: Mixes, Playlists

Overheard in JB's Phone

October 06, 2005

Some of you may have heard of awesome ear-wigging-voyeur site Overheard in New York where sharp-eared NYCers share other people's conversations with the waiting webbies on a daily basis. Well I experienced an interesting ear-wig yesterday which I think is worthy of OINY - if only I lived on the other side of the Atlantic - instead I think I'll share it here:

On the Central Line, two smart-suited-but-young city girls.

City Girl 1: He's not even that cute man, if he was cute and he carried on like that it'd be ok, y'know?
City Girl 2: Yeah, and his hair looks really gay.

My second bit of tittle-tattle regards the new girl in Eastenders... she's James Bourne's (yeah, that guy from Busted) ex-girlfriend!
If any of you watched America Or Busted on MTV last year (don't worry, you don't have to admit it publicly) you would have heard the lovely Kara Tointon brashly berating poor James for constantly phoning her whilst he was on tour in America; I think they were breaking up at the time, but this girl was harsh. He offered to fly her over to New York for the weekend and she told him that he was being ridiculous, childlike and inconsiderate of her feelings. Haha.

Posted by Chris at 06:00 PM | Category: Internet, Life, Television

Hysteria... my ears are still aching

October 04, 2005

McFly are some serious baddass motherf**kers and anyone who doubts that needs their head checkin'.
This is their new video for 'I Wanna Hold You', watch it. Now.

Posted by Chris at 04:58 PM | Comments (3) | Category: Video