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I Went To Bangkok, Instead I Had A Holiday

OK: So I should write about my trip to Bangkok or I’m pretty much not going to. As regular readers of my blog/twitter/other forms of computer addiction will know, I went to sunny Thailand at the end of January. And it was teh cool.

Trying to remember all the stuff we did is pretty difficult. We were only there for four days but we crammed in enough stuff that it felt like a much longer holiday. We’d kind of forgotten a bit about the exchange rate being so good, so when we got there we were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves super-rich. Unfortunately, we were also super-dumb; almost every person you meet in Bangkok is out to scam you somehow. At first this is quite confronting; like when the first taxi you get in charges you 700 baht for a fairly routine trip from the airport and you almost asphixiate in the back seat because his gas tank is on the fritz. Or when half an hour later, you’re dumb enough to get into a tuk-tuk at the insistence of a friendly man who insists today is a “special day where entry to temples in Bangkok is free”. It was clearly the Bangkok Gem Scam. Yes, a scam so obvious and well known that it has it’s own fucking wikipedia article. Luckily we got out pretty quickly after that and went shopping.

And the shopping was goooooood. I bought shit. I bought a lot of shit. Clothes, mostly. I insisted I wasn’t going to get any clothes tailor made until I had too many 100 baht ($3-ish) long island ice teas and started stupidly window shopping. Next thing I know, I’m inside being measured up for shirts that are, admittedly, fabulous.

We managed to get a few massage-type things in, which was rad as I’ve never really had a holiday where things like that actually happened. Again, crazy cheap and crazy excellent.

What else? Well, we hired a khlong and went out looking at the canals of Bangkok, which from what I gather is a lot like what the city was like before it boomed in the ’90s. That was pretty cool. There are houses falling into the water, next to bizarre concept houses, next to temples… still, the khlong driver was running a racquet of high-pressure souveneir sales and clearly had deals with a few places including a muay thai fighting joint that he pulled us up to and pressured us to check out. He extracted 20 baht from the souveneir ladies on little paddle boats by revving his engine until they coughed up. Uncool, but this is kind of what Bangkok is like. You get used to it and it ends up being a fun part of the city.

One of the most amusing ripoffs was when we asked a tuk-tuk driver to take us to Patpong. He was a little too enthusiastic about it and charged much less than I’d expected. Every taxi and tuk tuk driver in Bangkok wants to take you to Patpong, and most will get pretty vocal about it, so the kickbacks from it must be pretty decent. But he didn’t take us to Patpong. He took us to some random back alley warehouse where they wanted to charge us a stupid amount of baht for entry. We ended up not paying much as we just walked out and they quickly followed us asking “OK! OK! How much you want to pay?”

I bought a ladyboy prostitute/bartender a drink as by that point I was well in the habit of greasing the wheel with small tips and favours (and also because it was fun to buy a ladyboy prostitute/bartender a drink) and we sat down for the show. Which was pretty much everything we could’ve hoped for. They started with ping pong, I’ll put it that way. That’s like U2 opening their set with Where The Streets Have No Name or Scandal’us opening their set with Me, Myself And I (things are about to get odd, so if you’re the prudish type, skip to the next paragraph). From there we enjoyed Girl With Cigarette (woah!), Girl With Amazing Pepsi-sculling Vaginal Cavity (the whole bottle! In! Out! Woah!), Girl With Enormous Length Of Ribbon, Girl With Razor Blades On A String Oh My God and a few other delightfully unpalatable sights. The pepsi thing has stayed with me. I can’t look at cola the same way now. Oddly, we seemed to be the only two people in the place enjoying ourselves. It was full of men who seemed to be trying to look as disinterested as possible. Totally hilarious. We then left, got into a random tuk tuk and asked the driver “that wasn’t Patpong, was it?”. “No.” He said flatly. Hilarious.

We checked out the temple of the reclining buddah, which is almost awe-inspiring enough to make you believe in buddhism, though we channelled that sensation into the purchase of a small jade buddha and some hideous wall art. The wall art was the most amusing scam of the whole trip; a man outside the temple holding a series of identical but slightly differently coloured felt prints, insisting that he was the “original artist”. I didn’t have the heart to argue with him, which is kind of problematic in Bangkok - if you don’t dispute even the most reasonable claim, stupid things happen, like you end up with three identical pictures of a generic south east asian scene in three different colours.

We went shopping at Chakutak night market on our last day there and then Siam Paragon on the way back. Chakutak is fucking awful; about six times the size of Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Markets and full of boring crap. But it’s not as bad as the Siam Paragon, which is a generic large shopping centre; full of luxury brands and rich Thais; having not seen too many well-to-do-thai around where we were staying in Banglamphu, I was a bit shocked and said something to the effect of “So this is where all the rich people are hiding.”

That night we did a few random things that were kind of great; fish massage was surprisingly pleasant. You stick your feet in a fishbowl and fifty or so carnivorous goldfish come and bite off your dead skin using their tiny mouths. Once you get past the tickling, it’s like you’re being gently stroked by ten hands at once. Also, we ate bugs. Serious bugs. We started with caterpillars, which reminded me of those bags of “French Fries” chips you can buy over here. We got a bit enthusiastic after that and bought bags of maggots and grasshoppers; the bags were surprisingly HUGE. The maggots had a dusty texture and the grasshoppers were delicious; they spray all the bugs with soy sauce, which the grasshoppers seemed to absorb perfectly so it was like biting into a crunchy soy bomb. We ate too many of them and felt sick. They looked like this:

So much else happened but I realise I’m dribbling on here; we checked out the enormous Chinatown district and accidentally ended up in this rooftop restauraunt where they made us an amazing grilled sea bass, filled us with beer and let us look at their panoramic city view for something like $20 AUD. I got overexcited about going fabric shopping and then we accidentally stumbled over a market where everything was closed except a dozen or so shops containing women sewing amazing drag costumes. That kind of thing kept happening; we pretty much spent our whole trip stumbling over surprise awesomeness.

Obviously I bought some music while I was there and you can find bits and pieces of it on this blog already; I’ll be posting more soon because there’s some interesting stuff there and it’s something a bit different to listen to. And obviously I ate a lot of thai food and it was awesome.

We had a day in Singapore on the way back but it wasn’t much fun; ended up lost in a big shopping centre in the city centre that was full of boring luxury brand shops. The highlight of the last day was wandering around the enormous, visually striking, terribly run Suvarnabhumi Airport and realizing we could bring four litres of alcohol into Australia as we looked at the duty free for bugger all money. Actually, the highlight of Singapore proper was lunch at McDonalds and where I enjoyed their terribly titled Double Prosperity Burger. It is basically a hot beef roll stuffed with the most disgusting burger meat and cheapest gravy you can imagine. I didn’t finish it. I didn’t feel prosperous. But it was an amusingly disgusting dining experience.

So anyway, you should totally go to Bangkok.

Schticky. Graney.

This is starting to feel like my theme song.

I’m actually going to go see Mr. Graney tomorrow night at Rosie O’Grady’s in Perth. You coming?

UPDATE: He’s actually giving away an mp3 of this thing at his site.

Tata Young. She's So Rebellious It Hurts.

Continuing my Thai pop bender, I just came across some serious so-bad-it’s good awesomenitude. Tata Young’s “Sexy Naughty Bitchy”. Listen to how rebellious she is! She’s all like “I pick all my skirts to be a little too sexy / Just like all my thoughts always get a bit naughty / When I’m out with my girls, I always play a bit bitchy / Can’t change the way I am / Sexy, Naughty, Bitchy me!” Her mouth never takes a holiday! She was always the kid in school who turned up to each class about an hour late*! Ooooooh rebellious! Look at her strutting around in what looks like a set modelled after Bardot’s Poison clip. Actually, the music sounds a bit first album Bardot. The track is from 2006, I guess.

The main reason I like this is that the chorus is designed around the words in the title; it’s pretty much the words that teenage girls would like the most when they learn English. It turns Tata Young’s record into the embodiment of that point when you’re in Year 8 learning a second language for the first time, laughing with your friends about whatever that language’s word for “fuck” is.

This is some seriously awesome awful, so-wrong-it’s-right songwriting; I wish I’d seen her when she was in Perth last year now though I suspect she’s gone all slow-ballad-Christina-Aguilera on us.

*: At my school, our classes were 40 minutes long.

Super Laneway Festival Crowdsurfing Fun

Epic fun at Laneway. Thanks to Jacinta Matthews for the shot.

Dancing With Myself

OK, let me explain, because some people, particularly Perth underground party kids, are going to see me posting a Harlequin League clip on my blog and be all like “WTF?” at me on Facebook. To them I say this; sure, on one hand they are one of those noisy guitar-pop bands that you see at every festival and half the gigs around town. But chop that hand off and look at the other one; they are FUCKING GREAT.

Not only are they sweet-talkin’ perfect gentlemen, but with each record they get simultatneously more idiosyncratic and more pop. I mean check this track out; it’s so loud. It’s even louder if you turn the volume up. You don’t hear Sydney bands like Faker or The Scare smashing out something this odd/fun/brilliant. This has me throwing myself around my kitchen like a teenage boy sculling his first six pack of Sub Zero. And I’m listening through laptop speakers. Respect.

lanewaylanewaylanewaylaneway

Holy shit. Laneway Festival was awesome.

I had three big LED video screens to play with, a crowd of people who were looking for some party action, a big-arse stage on the road between Central Tafe and the WA Library, a bottomless rider bar, a ton of pent up energy to put into the show, an awesome timeslot, an awesome lineup… we like these things here at Tomás Ford. That was a super-fun set. I want to do it again.

I had a few people say to me afterwards “That was a great set, where are you from?” Which I’ve come to learn in Perth is a very high compliment. Our cultural cringe is enormous. It’s always quite fun to reply “Fremantle” or if I’m in a contrary, I’m gonna-fuck-your-shit kind of mood, “Rockingham”.

Who else did I see? Hmmm. Boys! Boys! Boys! Were great as usual, but their fantastic Southbound set was always going to be hard to top for me. Voltaire Twins were fun. Wild Beasts were somewhere beween sexy-style Of Montreal and a sex scene from a Twilight movie, so I was a bit confused about weather to get into them or not. Hockey were pretty great for a new hype band, even if their songs aren’t much to write home about they’re tight and interesting enough. I’ll wait for their next record before I committ to fully digging them though.

NASA were scarily awful, like walking into the rave scene from the movie Go. Scratching and mashing up things that shouldn’t be mashed up and doing a lot of shouting “Peeeeeeeeeeeerth!” with delay on their voice. I had my own little Perth-cringe moment when their MC said something along the lines of “This is the last show of the tour so we want a pumping crowd! And the crowds are always pumping in Perth!” Oh dear, I fear you are either lying or very inexperienced in positive crowd reactions.

My non-Me highlight of the day was sitting sidestage for Florence And The Machine. Girlfriend has moves. What an amazing show; I’d never really listened to their music before, but as a performer Florence is entrancing. Her band is tight and inventive despite basing their songs on classic rock sounds; I can’t say I’ve seen anything like her before. Her presence is what I’d expected from Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs but not recieved at Southbound. Her voice is amazing, but it’s more the sensation of total raw emotion you get from watching her sing. Fantastic.

Plus, bitch climbed the lighting scaffolding in 3 inch heels. I was in awe.

Again! I want to do it again!

Final Music Video Post. Mind In Ruins.

My mind is still in ruins from this grant application. But I just had my mind blown by this hyper-psychadelic bizarro freakout from Dan Deacon. It’s twelve minutes long but it will destroy your ability to control yourself. Nice work.

Die Antwoord

Sorry, I know it’s two music video posts in one day, but this video just blew my mind. Watch it.

Just Back From Bangkok

Got plenty of Bangkok stories to tell you, but not today. Today I’m writing a grant application and listening to a dvd of top 40 songs from around asia I picked up in the market there. This has led me to discover the intense lameness/awesomenitude of Super Junior, who are kind of like an all male, thirteen member, semi-acrobatic Korean version of S Club 7, but with a revolving door cast like in Young Talent Time. One of them is slightly chubby like Gary Barlow was in Take That. He’s my favourite.

There are now spin-offs, the most successful of which is Super Junior-M. I like them in particular because they’re not afraid to use bad early 90s rave pop orcherestra hit lead parts in their songs. It sounds awesomely tacky. I suggest checking out their track Super Girl, which I’ve included below.

I started working on some new material while I was in Bangkok and it’s pretty surprising to see where my songwriting is going. The album after the new one will be pretty interesting. Don’t want to say too much yet though, it’s bad creative juju to talk about the process to much while I’m in the middle of it.

Anyway, who wants to talk about me right now? I just want to talk about Super Junior.

Laneway! Feb 6! Not Far!

We can haz timetablez.

Laneway Festival playing times are out. On one hand, I’m a bit bummed that I’m playing at the same time as Daniel Johnston. On the otherhand, I’M IN THE SAME FUCKING TIMESLOT AS DANIEL JOHNSTON! Even better, I’m programmed between  kinda great indie-dance band Hockey and kinda amazing afro-disco kids The Very Best, who would have been the highlight of my festival anyway but who I will now be able to grunt at uncomfortably by way of greeting as their crew tries to set their gear up as I pack down.

This show is going to be a lot of fun, and very different from my Disco Bunker show at The Astor on the 27th, so if you’re at Laneway and in the mood for some of my kind of schtick, it’d be great to see you.

Personally, I’m also excited about seeing Florence & The Machine and NASA, though reports of the latters’ set at Shape last year were that it was the kind of DJ show where they didn’t look like they were actually doing anything. My tip for secret surprise though is Radioclit, whose remixes have been consistently interesting since they started, even notwithstanding the party-starting joy of their recent African cultural imperialist direction. So I may just hang around the TAFE stage drinking my rider and dancing awkwardly after my set, actually.

Make sure you get down early to catch Voltaire Twins and Boys! Boys! Boys! - the latter’s set at Southbound was the highlight of my bandwatching there. They are getting to be world-beatingly good. Both are great acts and proof of the boom in awesome discopartymusic happening in the city at the moment.

Anyway, Laneway is going to be excellent. Do come.