Your views:

Mandy, 23 from Essex:

“I’m cutting down on food – like McDonalds and stuff for the kids, and also the morning after pill. I heard you can get it cheaper online from the US.”

Derek, 33 from Swindon:

“I’m not buying my rail season ticket anymore and instead am pretending to be a piss-smelling vagrant on all Great Western services. I’ve already made £200 by begging at Paddington.”

Siv, 18 from Bolton:

“I’m cutting back on Jacobs crackers and I’ve also taken up violent knife crime. It’s a great way of getting some extra needed cash for my dangerous crack habit.”

***Send more of your “Credit-Crunch-Crisis” money-saving tips to freetheswans.com***

Posted: June 24th, 2008 under News.
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By our Greek-Ethnic correspondent G. Imme Sum Credos

Crisis hit the world today as what many are calling the “Credit-Crunch” reached almost crisis proportions.

Said one member of the public: “I can’t believe it! There’s such a downturn in the economy at the minute and my house is pretty much worthless.”

As newspapers struggled to fill pages, another onlooker commented: “Aaaaah, shit, the world’s gonna fucking end… I’m flabbergasted that the government have kept this a secret.”

*** For second-by-second updates on the “Credit-Crunch-Crisis” tune into freetheswans.com ***

Posted: June 24th, 2008 under News.
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Novelty London Mayor Boris Johnson has announced plans to ban public sighing on London’s streets. The audible exhalation of air in order to express dissatisfaction, stress, or boredom will shortly be outlawed. The sole exception being when it is done in a positive context: such as a sigh of relief. Although this will only be authorized after 11pm (1am in the Boroughs of Southwark and Hackney).The Mayor hopes this will be a key step in his ongoing campaign to amuse each and every Londoner.

“I remember some chaps sighing over a particularly delicious dinner when I was in Bullingdon. We gave them an awfully hard time and even hid the keys to their tuck boxes.”

Posted: May 21st, 2008 under News.
Comments: 1

Every 9 seconds a new musical genre is conceived. It’s hard to stay on top of this ever-expanding melodic beast, especially when you need to impress friends with the condescending name dropping of obscure DJs. GenreFarmer rounds ‘em up, shoves them through a colossal critical filter, and helps you stay unbearably smug.

Creationist Mixtape

Genrefarmer’s been busy hacking away at the coalface of popular music in our quest to dig out something truly progressive and lasting. Our improbable task has taken us over the ocean to Greenville, South Carolina to uncover the latest craze: Creationist Mixtape. This humid mid-sized town is often described as the “buckle” of America’s bible belt which is a fitting birthplace for this new wave of Christian proganda music.

Creationist Mixtape fuses laid-back noir bass lines with classic hip-hop breaks overlain with an aural assault of pro-creationism vocal samples. The mixes are aggressively marketed to 4-21 year olds and often handed out free at schools, cinemas, young offender institutions, and dentist waiting rooms.

We meet up with a few members of the critically acclaimed Truth Fish Collective as they picket an abortion clinic. DJ and trombonist, Bretty B, explains their creative process in between hurling abuse and cow fetuses at prospective patients.

“We do a lot of this shit y’know? And fundraisers and seminars and shit like that that.” He breaks away briefly to address a young lady leaving the clinic. “You’re gonna join your dead baby in hell!”

“Where was I? Yeah y’know we’ll do some charitable shit and then just kick back in the studio and lay down some beats.”

Creationist Mixtape is a genre obsessed with attempting to discredit critics of Intelligent Design to its listeners. I ask Bretty B about their favorite target: Richard Dawkins.

“That man’s like a total douchebag. I mean he wants kids not to be Christian y’know? So like he wants them to have abortions and smoke meth and shit. And saying the world wasn’t created 6000 years ago. I mean it’s right there in the bible! What more proof does he want?”

Here’s a section of the Truth Fish Collective’s “Intelligent Decline” mixtape:

We’ll be reporting back soon from France where we’ve been given an exclusive insight into “Mouse Funk”

Posted: May 19th, 2008 under GenreFarmer, Music.
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It all starts on about 2mins 20 secs in. Check out McCartney’s left hand from 2m 45…

Bloody brilliant! John Lennon (who incidentally features on Jay Z’s t-shirt) would be turning in his grave.

Other than that, Jay-Z shows us why nobody is going to Glastonbury by bleating “uh huh” over the entire Macca part. All the while Chester, who looks like a lesbian hairdresser from Brighton, abuses the major fifths.

Posted: April 13th, 2008 under Video.
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Every 9 seconds a new musical genre is conceived. It’s hard to stay on top of this ever-expanding melodic beast, especially when you need to impress friends with the condescending name dropping of obscure DJs. GenreFarmer rounds ‘em up, shoves them through a colossal critical filter, and helps you stay unbearably smug.

Recurring cyclic house

RCH came into being only 2 weeks ago and is already slightly popular on UK dance floors. Its most daring pioneer, DJ Furry Teef, takes us through the ingenious sampling techniques that make RCH the standout genre of early April 2008.

“Basically yeah, I take some vocal sample – like off one of them free CDs that come with computer music magazines and just loop a single word for at least 8 minutes.” He explains.

The looped sound is commonly backed by a sparse four-to-the-floor beat and occasional flourishes of fizzing acid house bass. The inherent simplicity and sardonic overtones have apparently been lapped up by clubbers in Sheffield as well as cliquey twats with absurd haircuts in Shoreditch.

“Forget Dubstep yeah, an’ forget Bassline. Recurring Cyclic House is where it’s at bruv!” Proclaims DJ Furry Teef. “It’s already well popular with the deaf community and people who are really, really mashed.”

We ask him if RCH is as involved as the media suggests in the championing of drugs.

“I don’t really know what that means.” He replies. “But it definitely sounds better if you’re proper fucked. Not just some drinks and a couple of pills. I mean brains splattered on the ceiling, Oliver Reed meets Amy Winehouse wasted.”

Below is an excerpt of DJ Furry Teef’s defining dance floor anthem “Drug(s)”, which features the infamous RCH virtuosos Scrubberdown and Mighty Child.

We’re off genre-digging. Check back soon!

Posted: April 10th, 2008 under GenreFarmer, Music.
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Posted: March 30th, 2008 under Video.
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1) Never gonna leave your side – Daniel Beddingfield

“This is the best vocal performance ever. Period…
People ask me what makes a great record. And the answer is simple, its ‘success’. I picked Daniel out of nowhere, with the whole industry telling me he was the ‘wrong guy’. Now he’s sold 21 million albums worldwide. Period.”

2) Unwritten – Natasha Beddingfield          

“Much the same as above. Best female vocal performance ever – period! People mock her lyrics, but to me the measure of a song is how much money it makes. ‘Bryan, Shelley, Keynes, wrap it around this hip-hop beat’ – brilliant, if you ask me!

3) Danke Schön – from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

“I just like this. It reminds me to be thankful of how much money I have, and all the gorgeous women that I’ve been in relationships with. Period. The lip synching is fantastic, and it’s a great, fun film that reminds me how young I am.

4) Deeply dippy – Right Said Fred              

“Pete Waterman said they’d never make it in the industry, but I moulded them into a fantastic pop outfit. Great song, great fun, great fashion sense as well. People don’t realise this, but after their success dwindled in the fickle UK market, they sold stacks of albums in Germany and South Africa.”

 5) Do their know its Christmas – Various artists

“Not many people are aware of this, but it was actually my idea to come up with this song. Bob [Geldof] had been on at me to do something for the Ethiopia thing, so I quickly had a ring around and got some top names involved. It was pretty easy really, and all came together in about twenty minutes. Then once it was finished – bam! Problem solved.

Posted: March 24th, 2008 under Reviews.
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This is really good. Better than the album version.

Posted: March 24th, 2008 under Video.
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This week: Hard-Fi

Yeah, I know I said weekly, but ‘good things come to those who wait’. Such a phrase is particularly apt for this week’s band: Hard-Fi.

Unlike most wet-behind-the-ears, NME-raved young upstarts, West London heroes Hard-Fi have bashed and bartered their way to the top of the UK’s pop music tree.

Sure they’ve already had two albums, and they’re not exactly under 30 – but these guys deserve a bit more credit – Okay!?

As their charming frontman Richard Archer, 35, explains, it’s been far from plain-sailing:

“It’s been a tough old road for us guys, we’ve not been over-hyped like most young bands, and have really had to graft our way to the top,” says Archer, in his inimitable cockney-twang. “Not a lot people know this, but we recorded our first album in a toilet for fuck’s sake! Then within six months we’re playing Glastonbury.”

I meet Archer in his favourite West London haunt: Chez Italiano in Egham. It’s here, in this disgusting hangout, where Archer rose from London cabbie to the most famous face in British rock music.

“Not a lot of people know this,” begins Archer. “But I used to work in Egham at the Somerfield down the road for three years…They were crazy drug-fuelled days, they were.”

Unlike most multi-platinum selling albums, Stars of CCTV was recorded in a variety of weird-and-wonderful locations, including the back of a taxi cab, a pub and a rabbit hutch:

“We were really poor back then… living in what’s pretty much a London ghetto – Staines… not a lot of people know that,” lambastes Archer, who graduated from Thamesmead School in the grey industrial suburb of Shepperton, Middlesex in 1989.

“I bought my first real six-string that year… it was the summer of ’89,” he continues.

After singing in numerous bands, including a brief stint with French electro-pop outfit Chez Frenchie, Archer got that “thunderbolt moment” in 2005, when he met his current band mates.

“It was like pow!” he explains. “When I got together with these guys, I was like ‘this is the fucking Clash for the new millennium’.”

Archer was right, and within 12 months Hard-Fi’s debut – which blended traditional punk-rock circa The Stranglers with notes of Ska, Pop and Reggae – was up for the coveted Mercury Music Prize.

“We managed to make true working class music for the masses…” says Archer, who is briefly interrupted by a cabbie friend asking him ‘the best way to Strawberry Hill’.

“Don’t go M25, cos it’s always chocka this time of day… you wanna go on the bypass and avoid Staines town centre… Oi Tony mate, you never guess who I had in the back of my…”

After a brief awkwardness I interrupt, and Archer’s once again back in full-flow, describing his first-love: music.

“Yeah, where was I? Oh, right, yeah, cos I had one of them bloody Royal Family in the back of me cab last week… Prince fucking Harry! What the fuck has he done for us? Nuffink… Just sat on his tod and got paid for it… never done a day’s work in his life… string ‘em all up, that’s what I say…”

Posted: March 7th, 2008 under Reviews.
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