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Hey kids – are you an unimaginative bum with all the computer games and sporting equipment in the world but nothing to do? If that’s the case, this week’s Mine’s On The 45 Singles column has a bunch of fun activities that are even less likely to interest you! Nonetheless, here they are as part of the 'MINE’S ON THE 45 FUN ACTIVITY PAGE'!
 SINGLE OF THE WEEK
KID SISTER feat. KANYE WEST – Pro Nails
(Downtown / Inertia)
Where’s Kanye? Mine’s On the 45 will describe various settings, and you have to yell out when you spot hip hop’s currently most over-collaborating superstar Kanye West. Mid song doing a rap for an English R&B singer in one of the year’s most deserving chart hits. Oh there he is, with Estelle! Ok, now we’re looking at something resembling a blank canvas, almost imperceptible due to its blandness and dullness. Oh, and there’s Kanye, collaborating on his own latest single with ‘he who can drain the colour out of every musical situation’, Mr Chris Martin. He’s everywhere we look! Now let’s turn our eye to Chicago, where the debut for female MC Kid Sister is a slowburn and headfuckingly funky ode to manicure and proper nail care, Pro Nails. Produced by West’s longtime DJ pal A-Trak, this steady low bass and zippy high-pitched environment sounds like just the sort of place Kanye might come to hang, moreso by choice rather than for white bread commercial recognition. And halfway through, there he is, popping up on a verse and ringing his endorsement bell for this new hometown heroine. There’s nowhere this man won’t go! He’s like the Kochie of hip hop! Let’s play again!
123 AMAZING – 123 Amazing EP
(Independent)
Have you and your friends ever had a sleepover party? They are terrific fun! You need to get your parents to agree to let about three of your good friends to stay over, then, let the late night fun begin! But now that your sleeping bags are all laid out and the clock has struck 10, what do you do at a sleepover party? 123 Amazing had a very productive sleepover in their hometown of Sydney recently, and their EP has some ripper ideas on what you can get up to! First you have to make up a name for your group of very cool friends. Under the glaze of torchlight, make up a list, but be careful – when you think of something as stupidly awesome as 123 Amazing your giggles might wake up cranky Dad. Next, you can make up some songs and record what we call ‘demos’, all in your bedroom! To sound like 123 Amazing, you don’t even need to turn the lights on – the dark-tinged and seductive mathpop of songs like Tender Is and Pressure calls only for the retro-futuristic lasers the band is known for. You might want to do the same and have two girls as singers, but either way just make sure for your best song like Automatic that the bass and synth are standing closest to the tape recorder, while your drummer’s set up in another room entirely. Then, when you have your four songs recorded (don’t worry about not having enough lyrics – long spaces of echoey, lonely sounding instrumentals are all 123 Amazing’s rage!) you can put them out on the internet and wait for other similar sounding groups of friends like Van She, Lost Valentinos and teenagersintokyo to invite you to travelling sleepovers with them! Have fun!
 ARCHITECTURE IN HELSINKI – Like It Or Not
(Shock)
Here’s a fun game you can play anywhere – in your room, in the car, or in a grin-filled indiepop loving crowd of increasingly large and international numbers. Player 1 lists four words, for example: (a) King, (b) Jedi, (c) Mack and (d) Big Brother Little Housemate Rima, while Player 2 has to pick which is the odd one out, and why. In this timely example, the answer is (d), because all of the others had successful returns. Good one! Taking on the big guns! To get you started, here are some more examples, inspired for no particular reason by Architecture In Helsinki’s third single from their Places Like This album.
Q1. (a) Tropical carnivale street parade, (b) Out of control house party, (c) State funeral for a stereotypically uptight eisteddfod curator, (d) Calypso cruise ship.
A1. (c) State funeral would not be immediately obvious as an appropriate choice of occasion to play Like It Or Not, although with AIH’s growing popularity, it’s not impossible.
Q2. (a) A pretty rainbow, (b) AIH’s Like It Or Not, (c) One of those big chunky 12 colour pens, (d) The Bristol colour chart.
A2. (a) Rainbow only has seven colours, whereas the rest have significantly more.
Q3. (a) Like It Or Not, (b) Hold Music, (c) Heart It Races, (d) The rest of AIH’s catalogue.
A3. Inconclusive – While all of the above get thumbs emphatically up, the difference between all their wacky squeaky-voiced goodtime fun jamborees is getting more and more difficult to spot.
 BRITISH INDIA – I Said I’m Sorry
(Flashpoint / Shock)
FUN FACTS… How fast are you? Zoooom. Like that fast? How about ZOOOOOOM! That’s very fast. No matter how fast you are, you’re not as fast as British India. They’re like ZOOOOM!!!!!! They’ve already finished reading this, and are halfway through whatever you’re going to do next. Not only that, but after releasing a million singles and playing a brillion shows from their first album Guillotine, only released last year, they already have their second album Thieves ready to come out! They’re not just writing it, or playing a few gigs – it’s all packaged up and shiny and still glowing hot from presumably being recorded at faster than the speed of sound. Speedwise, these Melbourne lads have things covered, but how’s their accuracy for nailing some more ultra catchy shouty indie pop? Frankly, the first single sounds like it might have been written on the fly. It sounds a little like The Living End’s All Torn Down, but without the You got no reason anthem-line repeated a spillion times, leaving us with a solid mid tempo rocker that will probably become singalongable with the inevitable blanket Triple J coverage it’s going to receive, but without some real high rotation pushing, it’s going to zoom past and be gone from memory in a split second.
 DALLAS HERON – Blue
(MGM)
Hi there eagle-eye Mine’s On Ther 45-ers! How good is your eyesight? Read through this review of Dallas Heron’s single Blue, and see if you can count how many times word ‘fun’ is used!
Singer-songwriter Dallas Heron might have once belonged to the ranks of Tasmanian band Red Sun, but following a move to Melbourne, Heron has emerged as a solo player, with this taste from his forthcoming debut album The Hollow Sky. It’s odd that the names of Heron’s projects all have celestial connotations, because with a voice that lies somewhere between Pete Murray’s dusty throat and the hard-to-decipher gritty warbling of early Eddie Vedder, Heron is the epitome of earthy, delivered in an enthuasiastic bluster. A bluster of earth, dust, grit, and a few strings and other musical roots and branches blowing around in the mix, the result is a blinding windstorm of brown and grey. It’s well intentioned and will interest fans of earnest rock, but could do with just a pinch more salt of the earth for these tastes.
(If you saw the word ‘fun’ in there, get your eyes checked!)
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