Viisi adjektiivit Suomi-tyyliin

Howdy, chums of Nordia and the Hyperborean sector!

Been a long time, been a long time - as Led Zep might screech.

I've not done any Insidious Junkboxes since the Autumn, largely as a result of a reorganisation of the front room at The Shed Above. Not a reorganisation of my making, I might add. It may have to wait until after the wedding and the new homestead in Firswood.

Neither have I had many stimulating thoughts of late; nothing of any great cultural import or insight. Well, what's new there, one might ask? Assuming that anyone would read that to ask about it. The thing is I haven't even had the illusion of cultural incision to tease my fingers to the keyboard. Nothing that can't be safely contained within a tweet or two.

But now I sit at a wee table in Room 211 of the Hotelli Milton in Jyväskylä in central Finland and I've a few observations to share with you "all".

It's based on a game that Lw and I (and its co-inventor, Bwrti Eryri) like to play when we go somewhere new - and Finand/Jyväskylä is very new for both of us. It's called the Five Adjectives - and it's quite straightforward. The only proviso is that you can't go for the obvious ones, ie Finland = expensive, Nordic or whatever you could up with without even having to visit the place. You need to show some insight, some creativity.

So, here goes - for Jyväskylä (and Finland, to a lesser extent):

1. FUNCTIONAL
This is the overarching theme for me that best covers several different aspects of Finnish life. From the moment we didn't have to queue for the FinnAir flight to Helsinki, we knew we were dealing with a culture that knew how to get things done with minimum fuss. But we hadn't imagined quite how functional everything would be - in both senses of the word.

In Jyväskylä at least, there is very little room for frivolity or antiquity. Everything has the sense of being shaped by a clean idea of purpose. The architect Alvar Aalto, a native of the city, seems to have had a very profound impact here - everywhere people live in boxes. This gives the town a curious, slightly anonymous feeling and makes it a little hard to navigate in terms of the usual landmarks.

But it's not just the architecture. The Finnish language seems remarkably sleek - no gender for nouns (in fact, no "he" or "she" at all), no "a" or "the", phonetic spelling. OK, there are a large band of word-endings and enough noun cases to choke a reindeer - but even that gives the grammar a machine-tooled sheen. There isn't even a word for "have", which suggests some egalitarian, non-capitalist haven, which would be too much to really hope for - even this close to the arctic circle.

Turns out that even this is built on a bit of a well-meaning lie. No-one actually speaks the offical, written language that was developed between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries from parts of the eastern and western Finnish dialects. No-one except newsreaders anyway. The process of language-building gathered in intensity as the Suomi wriggled their way out from under Swedish and Russian rule and the language was required for courts, business and technology as well as discussing crops and cracking jokes. But it was more important that there was one working language to express this solidifying Finnish nationality than it was to honour these regional differences. Function over continuity, see? Bam!

2. ATHLETIC
I'm not too happy with this word, as it might project the image of tanned, hunky and/or svelte Titans padding their way about on rippling lawns. This doesn't quite capture what I've seen. Some of the Finns are rather too varied in build to fit this model, but they all seem to want to make the most of the sunlight hours while they have them. It's just that instead of British concept of outdoor summers (pub gardens, garden centres and music festivals), they want to pull on the vest and lycra shorts and go for a run in the woods.

I thought about "health-conscious", as the town is full of apteekit (ie chemist shops) and the only person I've seen smoking on the entire Uni campus has been Lw. I don't think you could say the same of any UK campus. I doubt even Loughborough could boast that. But the "healthy" tag doesn't quite cut the mustard either - this isn't California. There's no prune juice and no hint of New Age quackery. Just an awful lot of lycra.

I even thought about "wheeled", as the number of people on bikes, rollerblades, rollerblades with ski-sticks, skateboards and every other foot-powered contraption known to Finn is really quite impressive. You have to keep a keen eye all around you to try and make sure that you aren't wandering into the path of some speeding cyclist. I seem to be the only person under the age of 50 that huffs about at a snail's pace - on the campus particularly. "Jyväskylä: the City that Never Walks." But then, "wheeled" would cut out the joggers, so that can't be used either.

So I'll settle for "athletic" rather than "sporty" - purely because it all seems so non-competitve. No football in the park, just frisbee. They seem a bit of an individualist bunch (if you'll pardon the oxymoron), the Finnish - more about challenging themselves. Functionality again, perhaps?

3. SPARKLING
This is maybe more dependent on the fact that it's been hot, sunny weather all week - and unusually so for this time of year, we're told. The rest of Europe seems to be getting soaked in rain and Jyväskylä has been warmer than Rome for days.

But the fact is Jyväskylä sparkles. The lake in the middle of the city, Jyväsjärvi, sparkles. The white University buildings sparkle. The glass-covered balconies sparkle. And because the sun doesn't even set until after 9pm, they sparkle for a long, long time.

I'm going to miss the sunny sparkle and the views across the lake when I get back to the red-brick and neglected waterways of Manchester on Friday night.

4. SYLVAN
There are trees everywhere. Flying over Finland, all you could see were trees and lakes of different colours (not all of them very healthy). The airport was surrounded by trees. The lake is surrounded by trees. The white University buildings peak out through a forest. The trees are in charge here. And not just evergreens either, there's a healthy cluster of young oak trees throwing down in the park in front of the town hall - and sexy, slinky silver birches all over the place. It makes Germany look like the Bull Ring car park.

We'll be taking the train to Helsinki tomorrow before we fly back to Manchester. I expect to see a great deal more forest before then. Dendrophilia overload: Ultrasylvania. If Dracula ever decided to get away from it all, he could summer out here quite pleasantly, stalking about in the woods, ripping out joggers' throats as they go through the fourth circuit of the evening. (Although I suppose the permanent sunshine might cause him some difficulties.)

5. ?????
I'm still an adjective short at the moment. We thought "shy" or "quiet" might be a possibility - especially as almost no-one on the whole 'plane spoke a word on the flight to Helsinki. But people have been quite chatty on the whole - not exactly bursting with questions, but happy to talk. And in English, of course, which sets my cheeks burning with a little shame. The phrasebook has remained wedged in my pocket.

Obviously, there's "expensive" - and it IS expensive here. £3 for a 70cl bottle of Pepsi. £20 or so for CDs. Between £5 and £7 for around a pint of beer. And this has meant our activities (especially the drinking and eating) are not quite at the usual holiday levels. But it would be wrong to say it's curtailed our fun in a big way. And reindeer liver would probably be even more expensive at home. I just hope I can manage to locate some bear sausage before the end of the week.

So I'm on the look out for another impression to word up. If I come up with one, I'll let youse know.

Nähdään!

Your pal, Coc x

PS One slightly bizarre sight (which could be considered a little frivolous) was a floating sauna on the lake last night. Not ship-shaped at all - just a wooden hut idly wandering along the water. No birch twigs in sight, but plenty of topless men - one of them wearing a captain's hat. There were beer bellies and there was beer being poured into them - so maybe that knocks adjective 2 out of the water as well? Or maybe they were Swedes.

Coctoberfrucht!

Hei, meatball fans!

Just sitting here, watching "Crocodile Dundee 2", considering how little I've managed to stockpile of my ambitions and sketches over the last twenty years.

In the meantime, have some tracklisting.

Insidious Junkbox 27: Coctoberfest

Josef K - Chance Meeting
Deerhunter - Revival
Sole - Where They Put My Flag On? (Leif Kolt Pizza & Terror remix)
Klaxons - Venusia
Alan Moore - Vega
Smoking Popes - Brand New Hairstyle
Dinosaur Jr - Sludgefeast
Roots Manuva/Wrongtom - Son of Boddha
Smog - No Dancing
Salem - King Night
New Flesh - Wherever We Go
Gruff Rhys - Shark-Ridden Waters
KMD - Soulflexin'
Sweet Baboo - If I Died Would You Remember That You Loved Me

Nothing more to share with you this evening. Until the rainbow rolls around again.

Your pal, Coc x

Titles Are For Chumps, Swap Trainers For Pumps

Ey up, me ducks!

So the grey slides down the slated roofs and muddles around our feet, so what? So it soaks the fringes of our velvet bellbottoms, so it seeps into the backs of our hearts and asks us uncomfortable questions in a chilling, wet voice about how far we think we've come and in what direction - so what about any of that?

One September has born a monster - a thrice-cephalopodded beast of Junkbox. Junkbox 26 (para-titled Wet September Fruits) has clustered itself against that which went before. This is the news on which we must focus. This is the story the kids want to hear.

It readies itself on my computer now, it gestates - and once that pregnancy reaches it partition, it will be available here. But what does it comprise, grammar fans? Well...

Insidious Junkbox XXVEye - West September Fruits

Frank Black - Los Angeles (nearly typed Los Angleseys - how cool would that've been, eh?)
The Breeders - Metal Man
Secret Colours - Bad Vibrations
Women - Venice Lockjaw (LP- Public Strain is very good!)
Public Image - Fodderstompf (anti-disco dub disco!!!!)
Neon Indian - Mind, Drips (Bibio remix)
Sole - Sebago
Edgar Wappenhalter - "Michel Brun Omber" (Cauliflower Dreams cassettes)
Flying Lotus - Zodiac Shit
Devon Irons - Vampire
Duran Duran Duran - Hard Girls
Grass Widow - Submarine (LP - Past Time is also very good!)
Baby Monster - Ultra Violence And Beethoven
Neil Michael Hegarty - Repeat The Sound of Joy (very, very finally)

So until we crush the next pub quiz at Jam St cafe in der Range, I'll leave you with the sound of your life blood rushing through your pearl-like shell-likes.

Your pal, Coc x

World Edging Closer To Equidistance

Howdy, flakes!

The hibernation of fun has been staved off for another minute or so: another Junkbox has slopped out the traps and is limping its way out into the Universe from this point in space and time. A more fluent understanding of physics and the nature of essence would enable me to stretch the point out infinitely, wrap around the ears of millions, warp it around the thoughts of thousands; but then a more fluent grasp of my potential as dictator, demagogue and potentate would've steered me to a position of massive and distortive cultural influence, through which MY loves would become THEIR loves (but not YOUR loves) and my heart would boil with the bloody gratitude of a hundred starving artists.

Now the paranoid, meta-fantasy fades away and I find myself sat before another ODI, I'm left only with the hollow victory of another Insidious Junkbox - the TWENTY-FIFTH!! I think I'm roughly on course for a Junkbox per month since I started in July 2008, and that fills me with an enormous sense of under-being. (Parklife!)

Lend an ear and let the wax pour forth!

Insidious Junkbox XXV: Robert Maxwell's Silver Junkbox

Menomena! - Ghost Ship
MC Mabon - Canna Lembo
No Age - Boy Void
Scritti Politti- P.A.s
Cut Copy - Hearts On Fire
Boards of Canada - Skyliner
Liquid Liquid - Scraper
The Fall - Who Makes The Nazis?
De La Soul - Freedom To Speak
Depth Charge - I ... Always Do
Ayalew Mesfin & Black Lion Band - Gedawo
Gorffenwyd - Y Cynllwyn (The Conspiracy)
Datblygu - Hymne Europa 1992 (plus rare bit of DRE speaking English!)
Jeffrey Lewis - Punk Is Dead (Crass cover)
Beck - Sexxx Laws (this will be played at the Coc/Lw wedding disco!)

All these tracks were selected by my iPod on shuffle, as an attempt to do something a bit different to mark the silver number achievement. I skipped a couple by the same bands, and to be honest, I did also set Otis Reddings's "Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay" aside. Punch me in the kidneys and call me an organ rapist, if it makes me feel any better.

So until I manage to work out how I can translate my skull doodles into some kind of Insidious Junkbox emblem, I shall leave you to your stinking thinking.

Your pal, Coc x

There's Always Room On The Womb

Junkbox Heil!

It used to be so easy. I'd just sit at the computer and nine times out of ten a torrent of bird-shaped imagery and liquid-based metaphor (or was it a flock?) would spunk out of my thinkhole (or was it swoop?) and I'd write them down using a computer (or was it a bird-table?) and sit back all pleased with myself at the corrosive power of my wobbly intellect.

Now I make a list of the songs. Dry is my thought and withered my writing stick.

Insidious Junkbox 24: 24 Hairy Portly People

Ministry - Jesus Built My Hotrod
Minks - Drunk Punks
The Chap - Few Horoscope
Chops - Giant Whale Is A Krill Eater
*Aspects - Psychoboogie
Cloud Nothings - Didn't You
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Fright Night (Nevermore)
Woods - Death Rattle
The Sharks - Music Answer (Vocal Mix)
Gold Panda - You
Acen - Trip II The Moon (Part 2: The Darkside)
Black Carrot - Magnets
Ween - Buenas Tardes Amigo

It can be downloaded, this hour-long stream of golden spew, by clicking on the Insidious Junkbox bit above - but you know this, you aren't children.

There's some classic hardcore Bond-sampling genius, which sounds a bit like the music I imagine I'll hear when my life flashes in front of my eyes. There's some woozy FM radio Ziggy Stardust impressions. There's some Bristolian twisted hip-hop from about ten years ago. A bit of mid-seventies funky reggae. Some Tom Waits business from Market Harborough. And the immensity of the immense Ween and their immense Mexican revenge song.

I've neverelse to say. Like a reluctant Best Woman at a wedding.

Your pal, Coc xx

Pope Pisses On Church - Man With Face Gapes

Lightning strike!

Before the tedium of this Tuesday evening drives me to plunge my steaming fingers into the back of my eye-sacs, I've decided its time to pull out the necessary apostrophes and reveal unto the world my latest Siwncbocs shenanigans. These words woven from my Hiberno-Cymric heritage, y'unnerstan'?

Back in the day, when I was bored, I would take a pencil in my hand and write about the chicks I was busy digging, or watch an auld film on the VHS, or try and get a bubble into my vein in order to turn all the switches to Nope. None of this has the lusty allure for which I have to petition so strongly these days.

I open up the big box marked "Think, You Squib, Think!" and next to nothing tumbles out, the scaly few cells left behind by thoughts long dessicated, the dead, dry earwigs that starved waiting for Walter Koening to return, the scorched remains of things that were never really there. And cetera.

So in place of original thought and an artfully-turned phraselet, I give you another Junkbxxxxxx tracklisting...

Insidious Junkbocs 23: Revenge of the Skidoo

Frank Sidebottom - Guess Who's Been On Match of the Day (rest in papier mache)
Daniel Johnston - The Beatles (and not the other way around...)
School of Seven Bells - Heart Is Strange
Daedalus - An Armada Approaches
Human Resource - Dominator
D.O. Misani - Giko Piny
PJ Harvey - Man Size
Circulatory System - Overjoyed
Brian Dewan - 99 Chops (not Bryan Fury the zombie dude in Tekken)
MGMT - Flash Delirium
Psychobuildings - No Man's Land
M.I.A. - Tell Me Why
The KLF - What Time Is Love? (Original Version)

Don't let the cotton wool cuteness fool you - I am the one and only Dominator. I'm bigger and badder and almost certainly rougher and tougher. In other words, sucker, there is no other. So make way there or something. And listen to the new Ariel Pink album while you're at it. It'll feature in Junkbox soon (ie Coctober).

Great smears of luck, friends, daubed all over your lolling faces.

Your pal, Coc x

Orange vs Red Fury vs Insidious Junkbox 22

Evening, chums!

In this new atmosphere of amnesiac interpretation of global sporting events, I present a tardy entry into the sloppily-recording school of podcasting, Insidious Junkbox 22: 22 Dragons On My Shirt.

The tracklisiting is something like this:

The Jesus And Mary Chain - Reverence
LCD Soundsystem - Drunk Girls
Ganglians - Candy Girl
Meat Beat Manifesto - She's Unreal
White Hinterland - Huron
Ulrich Schnauss - On My Own
Comet Gain - Thee eager Younger Fraternity Bomp
Love Is All - Kungen
Young Marble Giants - Choci Loni
Crysal Castles - Birds
Filthy Pedro & The Carthiginians - Gilgamesh/Dolphins of Rotherham
King Tubby - Hijack The Barber
The Scientist - The Fly (classic hardcore from Kickin' Records, c 1991)
Tamikrest - Tamiditine

So many of my tiny little crackly brain cells have been absorbed in the World Cup. in wedding plans and in my attempts to scratch out a living in a customer care call centre that it's been almost three months since my last podcast. Were I less honest and more delusional than I am, I would solemnly swear that it shall not be so long before "Junkbox 23: Revenge of the Skidoo" opens a can of Whup-Ear. But who would be fooled?

May the road rise up to meet you, and your gorge swell as best required.

Yours in Christ

Your pal, Coc x