Never use a cruelty when a joke will do in its place

I'm obsessed with strings for some reason. Like, orchestra strings. I want to put them on lots of songs. I've always liked the sound of a drum kit paired with strings (see: Rachel's*, Godspeed You Black Emperor!), and to a lesser extent, the string arrangements on disco and R&B records (see: Chic, Love Unlimited Orchestra). Blonde Redhead's Misery Is A Butterfly record has lots of cool string arrangements, courtesy of one Eyvind Kang, who happens to be a fantastic composer in his own right.

Now that the second KNS record is going to finally come out, we're all sufficiently sick of the songs on it and are working on new material. I would love to have strings and/or Mellotron and/or Chamberlin on it. Maybe some horns. I guess this signals where the band enters its bloated prog rock phase. Seven-necked guitars and miniature replicas of Stonehenge are right around the corner, I'm sure.




*It has always irritated the shit out of me that Rachel's has this possessive "S" thing happening with their name. I know they were all smarty-pantsed college kids when they started the band, and thusly they should have known the proper use of the apostrophe. Maybe they were just trying to be different. Visually, their name is the KoЯn of hipster chamber rock.

European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5-year phase-in plan that would become known as “Euro-English”.

In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly,
this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard “c”
will be dropped in favour of “k”. This should klear up
konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year when
the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”. This will make
words like fotograf 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be
expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are
possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double
letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling.
Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent “e” in the
languag is disgrasful and it should go away.

By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as
replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”.
During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords
kontaining “ou” and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil
sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and
evrivun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a
united urop vil finali kum tru.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey
vunted in ze forst plas.