Preston G Parallax – 20 Jazz Funk Great’s very own non-existant Sci-Fi author and pseudo-alter-ego, once himself came up with his very own non-existant Sci-Fi author and pseudo-alter-ego. A huge fan of the writer Kilgore Trout (although he hated Vonnegut), Preston was inspired to pepper his novels with appearances by his fictitious second self – Prestwick L. Parallox. In…
We stare aghast at the dynamics of nerd media convergence, and in particular a modern zombiggedon that has not managed, over several years of rotten meat barrage and hick vernacular, to produce a single moment worth a footnote in the original opus of Master Romero (the exception being Left 4 Dead and its sequel). Or…
The pit is a wormhole shield that conveys emotional energy into a frozen vacuum where it floats in stasis like the discoloured specimens of a crippled race. The pendulum is the razor-sharp condensation of molten dreams flowing inky from the alcove at the pinnacle of the witch house. Mushy brandishes both weapons deftly, deviant chanteuse…
The first 20JFG Podcast of the year is a real smasher. Kruton is the DJ alias of our pal Milo, AKA Binary Chaffinch from the Dissident posse AKA Milo from the Chrome Hoof posse. Heavenz Gate, his most recent release on I’m a Cliche is a remarkable voyage through pretty much every style of dance music known…
On a warm Iberian island under purple skies. On the gentle cliffs above the glistening midnight blue sea. On the flat roof-cum-balcony of a white washed villa. On a wicker chair, padded with soft white cushions. She sits. And watches the stars unfold. They twinkle infinitely in patterns of such astounding beauty that the only…
Recently, Macintosh users may have noticed a new symbol unexpectedly appear upon their dock like a pimple appears upon your face before a hot date. Seruptitious and illicit, many have tried to ignore this new icon at their peril – for it burns upon your desktop like a cigarette through ancient newsprint. Throwing it in the…
Last Friday, your 20jazzfunkgreats explorers slipped into a sensory deprivation chamber connected to a High Definition TV set and flicked between BBC’s factual psyche-scientific repertoire and bouts of carnage in the windswept taigas of the Hellghast world. The unlikely collision of theoretical physics and relentless headshotting released a myriad diminutive particles which were meticulously collected…
Fielded‘s Lindsay Powell hangs out on the balconies of a galactic parliament chamber, singing out a monologue over the epic processional music accompanying the opening of a new session of the star chamber. Hidden behind a Venetian mask and shrouded in a black cloak Broadcast’s shadow looms over the ensuing ritual. Fielded – Late Come…
Once again we open up 20JFG to the Endless House Foundation and Dramatic Records. If you’re unfamiliar with this occasional series then it begins here, and other episodes can be caught scattered around the rest of the internet. Today we feature an excerpt from their forthcoming book – “Sketches Of The Endless House” – a…
Expectations about the Dirtbombs cover album of Detroit electronic music classics, ‘Party Store’ (in In the Red), recently reached fever pitch in the camp of the believers where your 20jazzfunkgreats aficionados frolic. We are happy to report that the promise made in the early leak of ‘Sharivari’ is in fact fulfilled in this triple vinyl…
The 20jazzfunkgreats Intelligence Unit has been parsing some historical trends in the accumulation of inhuman capital in the American population between 1950 and 2010 using US Census data. We witness peaks in the number of enrolments in witchcraft colleges during the 1970s, probably associated to the high levels of experimentation with psychedelic drugs, the embrace…
Nickodemus Nathaniel Plyers could have spent an erasmus year perfecting his French, in the majestic city of Paris. He could have spent it continuing his studies in psychology, in the beauteous city of Budapest. But instead, he chose to spend it in a self-induced coma on the fourth floor of Northwick Park hospital, Harrow, Middlesex. Forgetting to tell his distraught family where he…
(photo by Nicola Kuperus from Adult.) Adult. were that blinding beacon of paranoia awaiting at home after a cocaine-fuelled night in the Electroclah Babylon. The half glimpsed hallucination of a Bauhaus tiger with stroboscopic eyes snarling from your surgical looking chaise longue. Their greatness, never doubted, hit us again while we were picking some tunes…
Every week seems to bring a new Edmund Xavier-related delight to the doorstep of your 20jazzfunkgreats ludicrous cult. After sniping across the ruins of a sonic Stalingrad with Teenage Panzerkorps, chasing Hostage Sex until the Gates of Heaven and tuning to FWY’s post-mutant-apocalypse radio show, we turn to the melange of cold wave turbulence and…
Bob Loop sat on a stool gazing absently at the sticky sheen that stretched over the long curved bar. Comfortably oblivious to the other patrons save the odd bump to his back or temporary hand on his shoulder as they ebbed and flowed around him. Bob’s perch afforded his easy access to Inigo Dick, the…
continued from last week Preston’s next victim was über-powerful publisher – John C. Criris. Now, having knelt fruitlessly at the throne of the publishing industry many times before, Preston knew he had to watch himself here – and so came with a different tack. One of the most coffee-stained and tattered pieces retrieved from his…
Those nights we stay in, but outside of the forbidden cellar, we tend to fall asleep to the cycle of a cylinder light that projects upon the walls of the bedroom the shapes of future constellations in the pantheon of musical glory. Last night, it was Jeans Wilder who showed up in this makeshift firmament, up…
You can’t see it, but the Ooze is all around us all the time. It is an invisible and supernaturally charged substance with a thick, gloopy codeine consistency. When we sleep it envelopes us completely, keeping us safe in our beds and not walking around outdoors case we get shot by a redneck zombie-hunter. Sometimes it seeps into our…
Indescribably dour Science Fiction author, Preston G Parallax, once found himself at a glittering event curated strictly for the unbelievably rich and influential. Quite how this flea-bitten specimen found his way into such a function is a mystery, but the borderline-committable Sci-Fi genius could not believe his usually rotten luck. Looking through the eyepiece of his skull-castle to see it surrounded…
In Diaspora, Greg Egan, the master of mind-blowing hardcore sci-fi that is more easily readable if you have undergraduate level training on physics or biology, tells us of a distant future where mankind’s tribes reconfigure their physical and psychical setup to explore new ecosystems, and alter their perception of the world. These diverging branches stop…
Picture the collection of delicate vibrations through which sound is transported across air as a nascent civilisation of golden-skinned homunculi toiling in barren lands, developing in a super-compressed evolutionary process a theory of the mind and language. Imagine this tiny civilisation advancing in parallel tracks, material progress manifest in trade, crafts, technology and floating cities…
The thunderous gods converge once more on the black mountain peak where their three acolytes have summoned them. Sheltering from the elements inside their robes, their top buttons fastened against the cold, the fraternity begin their ritualised attack the bare stone of the peak with a rhythmic frenzy, creating a pit of sound and fury….
Lordy have we got some serious incrediblenesss coming up for you over the next few weeks. Prepare thyselves – for 2011 already manifests itself as a phosphorescent conveyor belt into the celestial furnace of eternal listening pleasure. Regular readers may remember 20JFG’s brief handover to the Endless House Foundation at the end of last year. They regaled us with fictional real-life tales of…
At night we hear tanks rumbling across the village, towards the Western Front where what’s left of our army still resists. During the day, occupation patrols roam the streets smoking cigarettes, chatting in their harsh language and ogling the women. They took the headmaster away but we still go to school, the lessons unfold in…
Digits helped us close out 2009 and just over a year later they help us open 2011 with more gorgeously constructed pop music. Which also functions as ample proof that not all resurrections are bloody. Lost Dream is all minimal, reverb heavy, synth-pop. The echoes of handclaps circling and decaying as a skittish drum machine…
We close out 2010 with a series of shout outs to the great and the good that have a special bond with 20JFG. From guest writers who’ve put out spectacular albums to alumni that have hopped the fence and started their own labels, with this post we salute you because we love you and we…