Noise Into Music

2011-04-09T07:51:00.001+01:00

For reference, I am writing here now - Sickmouthy.com

2008-08-11T12:02:00.002+01:00

http://rocktimists.blogspot.com/

Current Listening

2008-03-09T09:36:00.003Z

Let’s start with five new and newer records.

The Dø – A Mouthful
Portishead – 3
Why? – Alopecia
Foals – Antidotes
Elbow – The Seldom Seen Kid

The Dø are rocking my world in many unusual ways; I shan’t say too much about specifics because I’m covering them for DiS, but they’re a Franco-Finnish odd-pop duo, who are possibly the most eclectic and fun band I’ve come across in an age.

The Portishead I acquired yesterday, and have been really impressed with off a couple of listens. It’s really not what I expected; very groovy, droney, subdued, lacking the dramatics one might expect of the trio. It’s still very cinematic however, but in a different way – more Vangelis than Cotillard, if that makes sense? Backgrounded, sci-fi, not an actor but a composer. You can see the influence of Beth’s solo album. Bits of it sound like they’re about to break into Kyuss-esque guitar sludge; that they don’t is testament to the unerring control and taste of the record. It’s utterly insane to think that it’s been a decade since the last Portishead album; it’s been five since Beth’s solo album! How?

Why? is someone that a lot of friends of mine have liked for a while; I never really got into cLOUDDEAD despite buying their eponymous album some years ago. I never really got into Elephant Eyelash a couple of years ago either. So I am resolved to try harder with this. I think the voice is a bit of a barrier, especially given that the lyrics are meant to be integral; I’ve not been a lyrics man for a long, long time.

Foals are both annoying and intriguing. My initial reaction is that they’re Battles for preschool kids; I know a lot of people are really hating on them, though. The voice is difficult to get to grips with, but is less offensive than the fringe on the singer. Songs are more direct, more linear, less jazz than Battles. There’s some controversy over them remixing their album from the mixes that producer Dave Sitek did originally; not having heard the Sitek mixes, I can’t comment, but the sound is pretty good to me. (Not exceptional, but interesting.) Good use of horns. Franz Ferdinand have been mentioned, but I’m not really feeling that so much.

The Elbow album I already reviewed for DiS, and the full, hagiographic piece can be found in a link to the right. I’m not actually listening to it much at all now, having listened to it intently while writing about it, because I’m saving it. I want the CD. I want to go back to it and enjoy it in a few weeks time, and have it take me anew.

Now let’s try five older records that I’ve been playing.

e.s.t. – Tuesday Wonderland
Les Savy Fav – Let’s Stay Friends
Gravenhurst – The Western Lands
DFA – Compilation #1
Mouse On Mars – Autoditacker

I reviewed the e.s.t. for Stylus back in the day when it came out, and dug it out the other day for the first time in probably a year, only to be very pleasantly surprised at how tuneful and enjoyable it was. This shouldn’t have been a surprise at all – I gave it a glowing review when it came out. There’s a certain trepidation preventing me getting thoroughly into jazz, neatly encapsulated in the title of this ILM thread. The worry being that it means I’m old. But if it comes to a choice between the latest alumni of the Brit School and… Empirical, or e.s.t., or The Blessing… then I’m with the fogeys.

Both Les Savy Fav and Gravenhurst released records last year that I missed; Amazon has been pimping the Les Savy Fav one at me for an age, but it took seeing it for £6 in HMV to make me buy it. Initial contact was unspectacular, but, like all good records, there’s more and more to go back to each time you hear it anew. I almost feel like it’s a concept record, but I’m not sure it is. There’s a bit of Caribou, a bit of Fugazi, a bit of Dismemberment Plan, and a bit of something else I can’t quite place, in there. The more restrained stuff is winning me over; but all if seems more restrained the more I play it.

The Gravenhurst I was alerted to by a vague allusion in relation to the last Radiohead, which I’ve found myself enjoying thoroughly, much to my… shame? Folky shoegaze. On Warp! That particular label has come a long way since it’s reputation as a “weird techno only zone” in the early 90s. I’m glad of this – a listen to Rest Proof Clockwork yesterday revealed way more guitars than I ever remembered.

The DFA compilation I went back to last night to see if it still worked; it does. Likewise Mouse On Mars. That does too. Bob was a bit freaked out by me dancing to it.

Sunday morning. Off to Sainsburys now.

Now For The Good Bit

2008-03-02T12:20:00.007Z

Part Two: Pointedly uncompressed records and records that use compression in an effective rather than destructive way, 2000 onwards
These aren’t necessarily records that I adore, although I do think most of them are fantastic. They are all, however, records that I can take great pleasure in listening to just on a sensationalist, physical level. Of course, nicely rendered engineering and mastering isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of good music; a fantastic arrangement and terrific song are still urgent and key.

Kate Bush – Aerial
Late 2005 this came out, didn’t it? That is, just before I started looking into the whole compression thing. Next to other stuff I was digging back then (Bloc Party, Shortwave Set, Vitalic, even Acoustic Ladyland) this was insanely quiet, like something from a bygone era. Except that it was also incredibly modern and futuristic and alien and weird sounding; a far more radical record in terms of the context of what it was surrounded by than, say, Bloc Party was. “Norturn” and the title track, combining for a nearly fifteen-minute climax; absolutely wondrous. Endless detail to discover, relish, and luxuriate in every time you go back to it.

Elbow – Leaders Of the Free World
Likewise this was a 2005 release that made me think; why did it sound so much richer than Out Of Nothing? The more forthright tracks still rocked, and rocked hard, but the delicate moments, which are both plentiful and beautiful, are truly delicate, truly intimate. But really the swinger, I think, was the between-song chatter and ambience, which sucked you into the studio with the band. Remarkable.

65daysofstatic – The Destruction Of Small Ideas
Whereas this, two years younger than the Elbow record, is kind of the end of the process rather than the beginning. Or, at least, a sign that this was a process after all, because it meant people were listening. Instantly and infinitely better than previous records by 65daysofstatic, both compositionally and sonically; the sonics suck you into the compositions better, make you more aware of the contours and craft. And, you know, it’s postrock; it’s all about the dynamics, surely?

LCD Soundsystem – Sound Of Silver
I have no idea if James Murphy read Imperfect Sound Forever - I know Jonathan Galkin was a Stylus reader so it’s possible - but he certainly stepped back from the slightly thicker sound of the eponymous LCD debut. Which is why this works so well and won over so much acclaim, I feel; by reinjecting physical dynamics, space and detail it makes the compositional dynamics, and therefore the emotional and physical impact, stand out so much more. “All My Friends” starts as nothing and grows to everything; “New York I Love You” is genuinely personal and genuinely climaxes. And stuff like the title track is just incredibly sensually pleasant - redolent of when I first got into ‘techno’ or ‘dance music’ or ‘electronica’, when it was (almost) all about the sheer psychedelic joy of the details, the sounds, the space.

Scott Walker – The Drift
This is, clearly, the daddy; it wouldn’t be half as scary, weird, and avant-garde if it sounded like Keane. Actually it probably would but still.

Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Just play “Pot Kettle Black” after “Misunderstood” from Being There. “Misunderstood” is a fucking great song, but, even though it’s from 1997, it’s brash, loud and in your face. Wilco’s following two records have both been beautiful sonically too, but I think this one just pips; the radio noise is the winner, perhaps. And, of course, it’s all down to JIM O’ROURKE; I could pepper this list with records he’s produced or mixed, be they by Sonic Youth or Joanna Newsome or Loose Fur or O’Rourke on his own. He’s a sonic genius.

Electrelane – Axes
As is Steve Albini; this is frighteningly glorious sonically. All of Electrelane’s records are good for that, but this is arguably the best. As with several others, I’ve written plenty about Electrelane already (or feel like I have) so shan’t say much more here.

Lambchop – Nixon
This is just splendid and open and beautiful and rich; every detail, from huge-scale orchestras to handclaps, is rendered perfectly. Wonderful. (I’ve lent my copy out, and must get it back!)

Patrick Wolf – Wind In The Wires
Oh Patrick. He had The Magic Position mastered three times, you know, just to get it right. It is a little bit overblown, to accentuate its POPness, but it’s OK with that; the richness of the string tones on “Overture”, the way the brass comes in on “Get Lost”, the coda of “Bluebells”. But where The Magic Position is good, Wind In The Wires is outstanding; stark, open, personal. Get the percussion in “The Libertine”, the energy in “Tristan”, the sheer sense of musicality through the mid-section of the album. Beautiful.

Caribou – Andorra
Dan Snaith’s always been good on the textural front, but this is his best, I feel; the dynamic shifts in “Desiree” and the subtlety in the arrangements to “Eli” and “Sandy” suggest that he was pushing to make this even more intricate and beautiful than usual, as if he was making a statement. The drum tones are amazing; the layering more so. It’s like Andorra has sonic mezzanines that intersect and allow differing views across the whole song. It’s absolutely breathtaking on headphones.

Six.By Seven – If Symptoms Persist Kill Yr Dr
Another record I suspect is a direct result of ISF; pump “Liberation” on headphones and get absolutely consumed. They’ve not sounded this good since “Get A Real Tattoo”.

Guillemots – Through The Windowpane
I interviewed Fyfe at about the same time ISF was first published, and we inadvertently got into a discussion about how mastering can ruin your record. It can. From the moment I first heard the debut EP in mid-2005 I knew there was something ‘right’ about how this band sounded, and it was born out on the album; just get the fucking mentalist dynamics of “Sao Paulo” - there is no way on earth that this song would sustain interest for 12 minutes if it was squashed, if the solo piano bits didn’t lull you in so the mad orchestral samba explosions could blow you away. High hopes for the new record.

PJ Harvey – White Chalk
Uh Huh Her was a step back into rawness after the slick urban rock of Stories..., and then this was… a time machine to a cobwebbed, bare floor-boarded house, frayed lace and desiccated satin. It’s cold, intimate, foreboding, and utterly unlike anything else she’s ever done.

Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
Joe from 65daysofstatic asked if I’d heard this; I said I’d not bothered as I’d not liked the debut. He said he thought they’d laid off the compression and that it sounded great; you know what? They have and it does. I’m still not the biggest fan of mr Butler’s histrionics, but this is at least pleasurable on a sensual level, even if I’m not emotionally or aesthetically that into it.

Boredoms – Sea Drum / House Of Sun
This simply wouldn’t be exciting if it was squashed up.

House Of Blondes – House Of Blondes
Another direct result of ISF; interestingly this is mastered by the same people who did Vampire Weekend’s debut album, and there’s a similarity to the sound a little, in that both privilege space and accuracy. This is probably lovelier, though, although less fun. They know the worth of a good Fred Perry, too.

Anthony & The Johnsons – I Am A Bird Now
A certain keyboardist once said to me, quite rightly, “imagine how amazing [a rather mashed ballad by his band] would have sounded if we’d done it like Anthony & The Johnsons”. He’s right. Said ballad is a big slap in the face, inflated beyond need. If it had sounded like this - sparse, intimate, elegiac, otherworldly - it would have been an entirely different and more wonderful experience.

Augie March – Moo You Bloody Choir
I think, in their native Australia, that they received an award for the mastering on this; so they should because its remarkable; at times they sound like a dirty, boozey bar band and at times they sound like the most sophisticated, musical, graceful guys in the world. Scale and texture, brilliantly combined. You could say the same for Strange Bird too, and the debut.

Final Fantasy – He Poos Clouds
Owen’s just a saint, really. This is pretty breathtaking in terms of space and timbre.

Primal Scream – XTRMNTR
Acoustic Ladyland – Skinny Grin
Battles – Mirrored
I’ll deal with this little trio all at once; compared to 65daysofstatic or Guillemots, these are loud as fuck. But that’s kind of OK, because they’re all also totally radical, totally awesome, and totally brilliant. XTRMNTR, for instance, uses digital limiting and compression as an artistic statement - just listen to “Accelerator” and “MBV Arkestra”. Skinny Grin takes jazz and pushes it into the realm of experimentalism and genrelessness by making it sound like not-jazz. Mirrored maintains the integrity of all its component parts and the weirdness of the aesthetic landscape it inhabits, but makes it more impactful by heightening everything.

Radiohead – In Rainbows
They’re still polished over with a definite commercial sheen (which, no doubt, the serious fanboys would deny vehemently) but this is way better than the other post Kid A stuff; Amnesia in particular is unpleasant at points. But I’ve said all this before; let’s just say that, as enormous, modern rock records go, In Rainbows does it a damn site better than X & Y. I don’t, for the record, like how OK Computer sounds particularly; not qualitatively so much as aesthetically. It’s cold, impersonal, mechanical. I know this is deliberate; I just don’t like it on a physical level. The final third in particular I find dull and hard to remember.

Ray Lamontagne – Till The Sun Turns Black
Not to everyone’s taste - Em hates him and doesn’t get at all why I like him - but I think everyone would have to recognise that Ethan Johns’ production is beautiful. Just get how funky “Three More Days” is. Hoary old retro it may be, but it’s done with serious love.

Lift To Experience – The Texas-Jerusalem Crossroads
For the absolutely mental guitar textures, and the scope. It’s as big as a desert.

The Clientele – The Violet Hour
Hazy genius, really. None of their records sound even remotely bad, but this is just so beautiful and sepia.

!!! – Myth Takes
Such a fantastically fat, groovy, odd sound to this record; totally unrealistic and synthetic, but totally, utterly layered and psychedelic and terrific too.

Roots Manuva – Awfully Deep
I dug this out again the other week after neglecting it for probably a year or more; in 2005 I voted it as my album of the year at Stylus. You know what? It’s still great, and a big part of its greatness is the sound, the depth of the bass, the accuracy of the electronics. Awesome record, and that’s before you get into his words and the emotions conveyed. Just get the precision in the electronic wibbles in “Toothbrush”. Terrific.

Ash – Twilight Of The Innocents
There’s so much integrity to this compared to the slick, obese, LA rock sound of Meltdown; it’s still punchy enough to rock, but it’s done better, done sympathetically, done well. The closing track simply wouldn’t work if it was bloated; get those enormous drum hits towards the end. And, most importantly, it allows the melodies chance to shine once you get to know them better.

Grizzly Bear – Yellow House
This is compressed, in terms of the instruments, in order to give it that cold, crispy sound that it has; but it’s also incredibly rich and detailed (how many times have I used the phrase “rich and detailed” in the last two years?!) and inviting. Inviting in the sense that it asks you to really inhabit it, to imagine yourself in the titular abode in the middle of nowhere, windows battened down and curtains drawn against the elements.

Louis Sclavis – L’Imparfait des Langues
Pretty much any jazz on the ECM label; just get the drum tones on “Dialogue With A Dream”; they’re fantastic, so perfect and realistic as to become psychedelic. Acoustic Ladyland and the second Polar Bear album sound massive and POP by comparison.

Bark Psychosis - ///Codename:Dustsucker
Graham’s just a champ. A million edits; totally unnatural sound, but totally glorious. See also: “North Hanging Rock” by British Sea Power, which Graham produced.

Queens Of The Stone Age – Era Vulgaris
This is an odd one; it’s squashed and flat and coarse but it’s done in such a phenomenally powerful, mechanistic way that it works; the deadened thump of the kick drum, the infinite fuzz und drang of the guitars. Things don’t have to be delicate to be detailed and exciting.

Califone – Roomsound
I’ve mentioned this loads so don’t need to write much this time around; it sounds amazing.

Now for another list, but with no explanations, because I can’t be arsed...

Part Three: Some (generally) early-to-mid-90s records that sound amazing if you turn them up today.

PJ Harvey – Dry
The Boo Radleys – Giant Steps
Orbital – (Brown)
Massive Attack – Blue Lines
Long Fin Killie – Houdini
Talk Talk – Laughing Stock
Morphine – Cure For Pain
Bark Psychosis – Hex
Mouse On Mars – Autoditacker
Dodgy – Homegrown
Blur – Parklife
Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Spiritualized Electric Mainline – Pure Phase
Disco Inferno – Technicolour
Sabres Of Paradise – Haunted Dancehall
The Beta Band – The Three EPs
Verve – A Storm In Heaven
MAKE-UP – In Mass Mind

This list really could go on forever, so I’ll stop now. Except to mention this:

And One That Doesn’t

Neutral Milk Hotel – In An Airplane Over The Sea
This horrific record can fuck off.

Yet more wittering about compression

2008-02-26T21:49:00.007Z

Two things.

Firstly, our septuagenarian neighbour is a music teacher, as well as a bad influence, who coerces us into drinking far too much champagne on Sunday afternoons. She’s a violinist by trade, but also plays piano. She still regularly performs concerts, and teaches freelance at the local school, which is very posh, and also private lessons to the kinds of young children whose parents pay for young children to have music lessons. She’s a New Zealander who’s lived here for over 50 years. She’s said some disparaging things about what Peter Jackson’s done re; tourism in NZ over recent years. She smokes, drinks, and swears, and is pretty awesome.

This Sunday just gone I was explaining the compression article to her over a bottle or two. As you might expect of a music teacher of a certain age, she’s into classical. She has little truck with jazz and less with pop. And you know what? She didn’t understand the compression thing. Not because she couldn’t technically grasp the concept; far from it. Her reaction was something along the lines of this (not verbatim; a little too much was consumed that afternoon):

“No fortissimo? No pianissimo? Why?! Why the bloody hell would you flatten music? It’s all about the fortissimo! That’s why recorded music is never as good as seeing something in a concert hall; it’s never as exciting!”

I was, needless to say, absolutely fucking delighted with this reaction. She thinks I’m a crusader now. Which I kind of am.

Secondly, someone on ILM asked if I’d ever made a list of great sounding records. I pointed them towards the two top tens I did for Stylus on the subject, which are OK, but not quite what was asked for.

Closer are the two lists I put together on Amazon. Bu they’re still not exactly what I was asked for. Neither is this, but it’s closer, and, well, I’ve not quite written enough about this yet.

Maybe a third thing before I get to the actual list…

Thirdly, briefly, putting the stereo in a bigger room has made some things a damn site more sonically palatable than they were before. Presumably something about “standing waves”, whatever they are. Still not ideal, but there you go.

Anyway, some records. Two lots; the first lot, records a bit damaged by being, in my opinion, over-compressed one way or another. The second lot are records that I think aren’t over-compressed, or, at the least, that I think use compression effectively rather than destructively.

As ever; I’m NOT a sound engineer, just a fussy cockfarmer with lots of headphones. I’m not talking about data compression, and I’m not talking about compression on individual instruments; just dynamic range compression, the stuff that makes records consistent in volume and can often blur the sharpness of instruments

Part One: Records damaged by inappropriate or unnecessary use of compression, 2000 onwards
These are not necessarily records that I dislike; in fact in many cases I very much do like them, maybe even love them. They’re just records that I can’t bring myself to listen to very often because they give me a headache if I pay attention.

Embrace – Out Of Nothing
A really good example of the potentially negative affects of dynamic range compression (let’s call it DRC from now on) is what’s happened to the title track here. On an early, unmastered version of this song that I heard as an MP3, the levels were left more natural; as a result, when the huge, searing feedback climax kicked-in it was a damn site more shocking and exhilarating than it is on the version you can buy on CD. It’s still a phenomenal song, but it could be better.

Radiohead – Kid A
I had a bit of a Radiohead phase over the last few weeks, mainly because I’ve actually really enjoyed In Rainbows, and so I stuck all their albums on my work computer and made a best-of playlist. I stuck the Amnesiac version of “Morning Bell” on there, cos I remembered the opening vocal melody being lovely. It is. But it’s mastered horribly; really loud and imprecise. The prior album is much the same; I’ve said before that my problem with Kid A is that it’s an electronic / avant-garde record mastered like a mainstream rock record, and I stand by that; there’s none of the detail and precision and real accuracy that you get in the things they’re aping.

PJ Harvey – Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea
Play this after Rid Of Me or Dry. Sure, you have to turn those up, but they FUCKING ROCK when you do. This, on the other hand, turns very quickly to engine noise. And that’s not nice to listen to, no matter how great the songs.

Bloc Party – A Weekend In The City
I gave this a kicking at Stylus; almost completely unlistenable. And the songs don’t justify trying, either.

Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
This choice might shock some of you, because I fucking love this record; but it’s squashed. It works, pretty much, and I still listen to it a lot, but I can’t help think that Howie Weinberg (who mastered the PJ Harvey album mentioned above, too) just squeezed a little too much clarity and distinction out of the bass guitar and kick drum as he pushed for that extra -1dB. Gimme Fiction suffers from this too, and wasn’t Weinberg job, so I can only assume it was the band’s decision. Play Kill The Moonlight and realise this could be done better. Then play A Series Of Sneaks and realise that Kill The Moonlight could be done better too.

AN ASIDE
Bob the kitten has been sitting on a beanbag by the speaker. iTunes is playing on random as I type. The realistic, uncompressed sound of Patrick Wolf’s violin on “Eulogy” has just freaked him the fuck out, and he’s beaten a course to the windowsill.

Back to business.

The Flaming Lips – At War With The Mystics
This one you should know about. I can’t even remember how any of the songs go, is how flat and corrupted it is.

Snow Patrol – Final Straw
It was the opening track of this MBV-for-accountants album that was one of the things that shocked me when I played it straight after something older, possibly even something by them (first album engineered by Jamie Watson, and sounds great for it). No wonder they went massive; they ditched the idiosyncratic song titles and pumped-up the levels.

Yo La Tengo – I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Kick Your Ass
Just that little bit too much, you know? Still pretty terrific, but a little fuzzy around the edges, and for such a long album it makes it very hard to get through all at once.

The Shortwave Set – The Debt Collection
A little idiosyncratic indie record with an emphasis on odd sonics and thrift-shop instrumentation, and they pump it as loud as possible. Criminal.

Arcade Fire – Funeral
Can’t remember a note, even though I vaguely remember quite enjoying it the first time.

Matthew Dear – Asa Breed
Like Kid A this is just a little too upfront, a little too brash, and not quite involving enough.

Cocteau Twins – Heaven Or Las Vegas (2004 Remaster)
This, however, is headache-inducingly shrill and loud. And I love this album. Thank heaven I kept the original.

Phoenix – It’s Never Been Like That
Their aesthetic kind of needs to be clean and polished, but this was meant to be a step away from that. It didn’t work; the first track was so horribly in-your-face that I never went back.

Keane – Under The Iron Sea
Muse – Black Holes & Revelations
These two you just expect to be disgusting; surprise surprise, they don’t disappoint. Get the snare sound on the Muse album. Get the track that’s meant to be really minimal and acoustic and a bit barbershop, but that’s exactly the same volume as the mentalist rockers. It’s stupid. And the Keane album is just fucking disgusting.

TV On The Radio – Return To Cookie Mountain
See: Yo La Tengo. The debut EP is terrifically done. This is just a bit crunchy and lacking in space.

Working For A Nuclear Free City – Businessmen & Ghosts
The debut proper was really quiet, which meant when you turned it really loud it was properly engulfing and psychedelic. They’ve not destroyed the integrity of instruments and other ingredients on this double-CD compilation, but they have made it more boring, which is a shame.

Ulrich Schnauss – A Strangely Isolated Place
This is meant to be shoegazing. The bass clips. Unforgivable.

65daysofstatic – One Time For All Time
One of the ones that set me off; I could tell it was ‘good’ compositionally, but it didn’t move, it didn’t achieve the intensity I was after.

The nicer bit will follow in a while; maybe hours, maybe days.

Dusty In Vegas

2008-02-17T09:32:00.002Z

I was glad to see Katy Setterfield win The One And Only on BBC1 last night – vaguely fraudulent feelings at having not watched any of the series before the final but still being won over enough to feel emotionally invested in her performances notwithstanding – as much because it made Em and I get out Dusty In Memphis and then a greatest hits collection and actually listen to the real Dusty. (It has to be said that Katy was very damn good at emulating the real Dusty, much more so than the chap ‘doing’ Robbie Williams.) (I’ll not mention the oddly-named, bright-ginger kid who ‘became’ Lionel Richie.)

So we listened to, of course, “Son Of A Preacher Man”, “I Only Want To Be With You” and “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself”; none of which had been performed that night on the show. There’s something in the desperation, the barely contained emotional hysteria, of the kinds of songs given to female singers in the 60s, that Dusty nailed every single time. “I Just Don’t Know…” particularly – maybe it’s Bacharach’s arrangement – the space for the adrenaline-rush drum-roll before the pain starts again. Female singers haven’t… female singers in the mainstream haven’t nailed that for a long time, I don’t think. It was noticeable that, Frank Sinatra’s impersonator aside, all the singers last night bar Dusty were all-smiling, cabaret-singing, happy-to-be-here types while performing; perma-grins and Butlins professionalism. Katy-as-Dusty was the only one who inhabited the songs, who made me feel like she felt it.

We also listened to my favourite Dusty song, the one where she perhaps made me feel like she was feeling it herself the most; a song that was only ever a b-side, and which I only know because it was tacked-on at the end of the edition of Dusty In Memphis that I bought years ago – “What Do You Do When Love Dies”. It was recorded at the …In Memphis sessions but not used until later, a string section added. It goes from nothing to everything, guitar solo, emotional tumult, huge orchestral swell, in less than 2:40. “I run for the 1:10 uptown / show starts at two / I’m surrounded by strangers / but I’m haunted by you”. Awesome. One of the final columns I wrote for Stylus was a top ten of songs I’d cover if I ever could – I feel criminal for having forgotten this gem.

Listening to Dusty lead inexorably to putting on the first two tracks of Hot Buttered Soul, which we followed with “Only In Dreams” and “Say It Ain’t So” from Weezer’s blue debut (Em’s choice – she thinks I hate them; I don’t). Then I had a hankering for “Reckoner” by Radiohead; Em for “Beautiful Boyz” by Coco Rosie (Anthony Hegarty dueting); then I chose “Sheela-Na-Gig” from Dry by PJ Harvey. Em chose a couple of songs from Patrick Wolf’s debut; “A Boy Like Me” and “Bloodbeat”.

Which lead me to “Nocturn” and Aerial by Kate Bush (Dusty, Kate and Polly being probably my three favourite British female singers ever); an album which I realise now was probably the one which most set me off on the compression thing; listening to it this morning next to Radiohead’s In Rainbows, which is far from a BAD sounding album, Aerial is so spacious, detailed, rich, involving... as is the version of Dusty In Memphis I have, a 14-track, 1995 release on Mercury, mastered so quietly by today’s standards that it's useless ripping the songs to an iPod for the commute – turning up “Son Of A Preacher Man” and “What Do You Do When Love Dies” last night, though, and it was… more like having Dusty in the room than Katy Setterfield was. And she was good.

Where is this going? Nowhere really. Em wouldn’t commit to saying that she thought Dusty would win last night, instead pointing out, quite rightly, that you never know who the audience is; Dusty’s classic and we both love her, but how much of the audience would be swayed by songs they knew better? It was the Dusty superfan who was right though; Em and I may have only watched the final, but most other people watching last night have been onboard for up to eight weeks previous – they may not have known much about Dusty Springfield two months ago, but they’ve probably been won over in the meantime by Katy’s performances.

Welcome back

2008-02-14T21:10:00.003Z

Well, that retirement lark didn’t last long. Eyes right – I had a piece published at a blog coordinated by ex-Stylus boy Dan Weiss, whose enthusiasm and facial hair makes me feel very old indeed. Dan asked me to write something a while ago, when his necromantic whim first took hold and he deigned to continue at least one facet of what Stylus was (the On Second Thought column, namely), and so I wrote something. It’s an OK piece about a fucking great record. A really great record. Get it.

All the recent photographs in my Photobucket account are of our kitten and our house. All the recent photographs in my iPhoto on my work computer are headshots of team leaders in my division. So the one up above is years old. I hope I never used it before. That would be terrible.

The Long Fin Killie piece might not just be a blip. Despite buying paints, pencils, sketchpads, and canvas, and loaning a stack of “how to draw / paint / fake it” books from the library, I’ve not yet immersed myself fully in the warm arts (if they are the warm arts). Plus Todd asked me if I’d do something “advertorial” for eMusic. For money. I said “yes”. I have a mortgage to pay, after all. And I like the record he sent me, too. More next week, on eMusic.

I also finally got a copy (two, actually – the second is for the library) of the Da Capo Best Music Writing 2007 book, in which, AS YOU MAY KNOW, my Imperfect Sound Forever piece was included. Chosen by none other than Robert Christgau. In his introduction, which I think is the first thing I’ve ever read by Christgau, being, as I am, essentially uninterested by rock music criticism, Christgau calls me boring, basically, by intimating that his attention may have wandered during the piece. I don’t blame him – reading it back again elicits the same response in me now as it did the day we published it: why the fuck did I not make this 50% shorter and not repeat myself so damn much? Christgau says he found himself thinking about it for days afterwards (“it” being compression, I suppose, the issue my article was/is about), and that this brainbugging changed his mind and convinced him it was a good piece of writing. He’s very forthright that he wanted his edition of BMW to have only the best writing in it.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m proud to the rafters of what ISF has done, the hits it got, the articles it spawned, the book it got republished in, the records it may or may not have influenced directly or indirectly. Reading it again today, on paper, in a book (HOW WEIRD) was a strange sensation, but I was perhaps most… touched, or awed, by the fact that my tiny, tinny little dedication at the end (Thanks to MD and ME for opinions, photos, and facts, and ER for putting up with me not shutting up about this for the last two months.) wound up in there. Seeing Emma’s initials. It’s two years since I started researching that piece, and I’ve still not shut up. Em’s in the next room, with the kitten, reading, and trying to blot out the Augie March that’s oozing from the little Q Acoustic 1010s in the room I’m in, doubtless.

But that piece… It’s 6,000 words long, for pity’s sake. Compositionally, structurally, it’s fucking horrible. There are some neat turns of phrase in there, but good grief there’s also some right clunkers. And the repetition! As a writer I’m not proud of it. It’s ugly and unedited. Uneditable, I thought. As a music fan I’m fit to burst.

Anyway, this 630-odd words has tumbled out nicely, quickly, only on track 5, even if Augie March songs are so very long. This writing lark; it’s about sorting my own thoughts, I think. If I don’t do it, I get paranoid that I have carbon monoxide poisoning. I get headaches. Maybe that’s the altitude, though. Top two floors.

2007 in Records

2007-12-19T12:38:00.001Z

2007 has been an odd year to say the least. Here are 50-something albums from the last 12 months (or so) that I love, or at least think are worth talking about briefly. They’re in an order, but not necessarily the order, if you get what I mean. Which is to say that the first fifty are, more or less, the list I submitted to Stylus for our premature year-end poll; the rest are afterthoughts and late encounters.

1. Patrick Wolf – The Magic Position
From the moment I first heard it in January or February this was always going to be my ‘number 1’ for the year. Perhaps, as with a lot of things, my affection for it was a hangover from not quite being affectionate enough towards his previous effort, at least at the time - Wind In The Wires probably now cemented firmly as one of my favourite records ever. Three very different live performances across the year (joyous in Bristol, truculent in Birmingham, beautiful in Exeter) sealed the deal. Yes, it’s bigger, brasher, poppier than he’s been before, but there’s still as much beauty and heart and character. The lack of impact it’s made on end-of-year polls, be they website, magazine or newspaper derived, has left me puzzled; surely this is an obviously terrific album of wonderful songs that ought to appeal to everyone?

2. Electrelane – No Shouts No Calls
A discovery late in 2006 during my anti-compression crusade, Electrelane quickly cemented themselves as one of my favourite ‘occasional’ bands; like Long Fin Killie I’ll not think of them for weeks at a time, and then have a couple of days where I listen to nothing else, and think they’re the greatest thing ever. There’s a heart-on-sleeve emotionalism and will to communicate on this album that was lacking, or hidden, on Electrelane’s previous efforts. I think I played this more than any other record from 2007.

3. Caribou – Andorra
Dan Snaith’s fourth album, the second since his litigious name-change, gets close to being that thing; the Holy Grail of what I’m looking for in music, that record I can play again and again and again and never tire of, that makes everything else redundant. Poppy, psychedelic, groovey, jazzy, electronic… it’s all hear. The sound of summer. Every day.

4. Battles – Mirrored
Todd emailed me saying, simply, “I think you might like this” with a link to download Mirrored back in about March. I’d seen a thread discussing them on the Stylus staff messageboard, but hadn’t read it. Initially I felt like it blew my head off; the retreat to jazz in the middle third and the slightly overbearing production made it seem, on second, third, fourth listen, to be a gimmick. Continued exposure revealed a true determination to propel everything and everyone into the future. Seeing them live sealed the deal. This really is a revolution.

5. Acoustic Ladyland – Skinny Grin
A late 2006 release, the momentousness of this caused it to hang on in my esteem; it does what Battles do, in a sense, only from another direction – jazzheads appropriating rock and pop and electronica and the avant-garde rather than the other way around. I can’t wait for what they do next.

6. 65daysofstatic – The Destruction Of Small Ideas
This embodies a lot of things for me, most notably the simple and pleasing fact that I’ve not been wasting my time. Yes, I’m biased a little, probably, but also… this really is great, and brave too, and if I am ‘retiring’ from music journalism, then I’m glad to bow out having influenced the making of this. Excellent guys, as well.

7. LCD Soundsystem – The Sound Of Silver
There are a couple of guys at Stylus (which I will continue to refer to in the present-tense as the staff messageboard still exists) who dislike, sometimes strongly, The Sound Of Silver. Even those two amazing songs in the middle. Or, perhaps, they quite like those two songs, and hate the rest. Me, I love it, still, although don’t play it that often for some reason; the reason for that certainly isn’t the usual “it’s too loud” junket, though, because this is an outstandingly well mixed and mastered record, as well as being funky, kinetic, moving, and cool. Much more to this than the debut. I guess I don’t want to spoil it. A CD release for 45’33” completed a remarkable 18-month spell for James Murphy; musical man of the year without a doubt.

8. Stars Of The Lid – And The Refinement Of Their Decline
Ambient, as pure as it gets, moving into modern classical. I’d be hard-pressed to describe it to you, except… slow… and vatic… and beautiful. Moments emerge but disappear again, and the intangibility makes those moments all the more poignant. An enhancement to whatever calm pursuit it accompanies.

9. Studio – West Coast
The most hipster release of the year; I wanted to like Stragey more, but can’t. The start of this Balearic revival thing? The guitars, the beats, the falls into plains of nothingness, the twists and turns. Actually brilliant; A.R. Kane, Disco Inferno, Underworld, krautrock, postpunk. Awesome.

10. Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Yes, it’s too loud, but it’s also great. My introduction to Spoon. Those beautiful guitars. Those adenoids. Those Ringo drums in the final track! These excellent semi-songs that don’t need anything more.

11. Beirut – The Flying Club Cup
If you were mourning Patrick Wolf’s transmogrification into a fluorescent pop stomper, then Beirut followed up his acclaimed but crunchy and insular debut with something that might just tide over those who pined for something more… winsome? Organic? Owen Pallet joins Zach Condon here, adding strings across the record and vocals to one song, too; one can’t help but think what these two teamed with Mr Wolf might achieve. Excellent songs, excellent music.

12. !!! – Myth Takes
Funky and psychedelic all at once, and with Nic Offer’s foul-mouthed attention-deficit-disorder personality reigned in. Their best record by far. Just get the grooves!

13. Six.By Seven – If Symptoms Persist Kill Your Dr
Another sign that my efforts didn’t fall on deaf ears; Six.By Seven got back together, retreated from fake noise, and re-embraced drone, detail, and real noise. Comments on their website suggest they’ve read my bitchings. I’m glad, again. Take with headphones, LOUD.

14. Working For A Nuclear Free City – Businessmen And Ghosts
Another hangover, this time because I simply didn’t get to this Mancunian quartet’s debut album in time to include it in 2006’s flurry of polls. Perhaps too much to take in if you don’t already know the debut proper. Mastered a touch too loud. I hope they have a future.

15. Panda Bear – Person Pitch
I treat this as an ambient album; Not to bang on – actually, fuck it, to bang on and on and on and on and on – I’d like this an awful lot more if it wasn't so flat and one dimensional sounding, physically; I like the ideas, I like the melodies, I like the sonic juxtapositions and the actual ‘tunes’. I don't like the fact that I can’t climb inside it, that it feels like a plank of wood or pane of glass or sheet of steel. I can’t put it on and feel it flow around me in three dimensions. Hence, ambient. Which I feel is a shame, because there’s a lot of pop in this record, I just can’t touch it.

16. Bjork – Volta
This revealed more of itself as time passed; the Timbaland cuts, while great, have fallen in my estimation from being the best things here to being… just part of the album. I mourn the outright oddpop of Debut, still my favourite record by her, but Bjork can always be relied on to bring something intensely involving in her music. And oh! Those horns, those massive, mournful horns, like the whalesong from whales the size of Jupiter.

17. Apparat – Walls
Trendy poseur techno-come-rock-come-ambient. Not sure why this fell through so many cracks after Orchestra of Bubbles didn’t.

18. The Field – From Here We Go Sublime
An awful lot of people chucked their nut over this record at Stylus; it’s good, but it’s very… it doesn’t break my brain like Orbital did when I was 16, and from some of the superlatives I was party to, that’s what it should have done. Very straightforward, very 00s – linear, semi-ambient (through rendering as much as intention); I can’t imagine kids dancing to this, and not because it’s secretly a prog-orchestral concept album (like Orbital), but because… it’s not very dynamic, or exciting. It’s ambient with a beat.

19. Menomena – Friend And Foe
After losing faith so spectacularly with The Flaming Lips it was nice to discover a band doing something… not so much similar, as… that fills the gap? Grandiose oddpop with clattering percussion. The piano wins, I think. Best artwork of the year, too.

20. PJ Harvey – White Chalk
Subdued, piano-led, beautifully rendered, White Chalk might be a concept album about death; it doesn’t sound like anything Polly has done before. I love her guitars, but I love her more.

21. The Tuss – Rushup Edge
Aphex Twin, even only half paying attention and pretending to be a Cornish woman, still brings it. If it’s him. More than ever before he seems to be making music just for himself; what seemed like marketing gimmicks in the late 90s (the facemasks, the videos) are gone, and the marketing gimmick here (pretending to be a Cornish woman) seems like a genuine attempt to make people fuck off and leave him alone. Maybe.

22. Von Sudenfed – Tromatic Reflexxions
Not a collaboration so much as an actual bona fide new ‘band’, this is more than just Mark E Smith fronting Mouse On Mars. Similarities with LCD Soundsystem are clear, but unimportant, and more distant than you think at first.

23. Ulrich Schnauss – Goodbye
A return to real detail and dynamics after the bludgeoning, clipping 00s shoegaze of A Strangely Isolated Place; I blame M83 for fucking shoegaze up in the 00s. At times vocals interfere (the guy from Longview, wtf?), but when they’re out of the picture, this gets close to transcendence.

24. The Clientele – God Save The Clientele
I still like The Violet Hour best; some of the hazey reverb of that is gone, replaced by a more professional beauty courtesy of Lambchop’s engineer. It still sounds like The Clientele, though.

25. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
Recorded, played and composed with complete precision and good taste, there was little of the… whatever-it-was that made Yankee Hotel Foxtrot so special, and an awfully big sense that Wilco are now just a big old mature country-rock band playing 3-hour shows full of technically astounding guitar solos and songs about alimony, but… Tweedy’s voice, drunk-sounding as ever, adds the character that might otherwise be missing. Nowhere near as good as the last Loose Fur record, but still musical enough, still Wilco enough, to be worthwhile.

26. L’imparfait Des Langues – Louis Sclavis
European jazz; compositionally I’d imagine this is far more complex than the fusion-esque stuff I normally go gaga for; it’s also on ECM Records, and thusly recorded absolutely sublimely.

27. Do Make Say Think – You, You’re A History In Rust
Another introduction to a band I probably ought to have got around to ages ago; I think postrock is a floundering genre generally, but there are snatches of subtlety and breadth here that suggest strongly that Do Make Say Think are more than your average repeat-repeat-repeat merchants.

28. Two Lone Swordsmen – Wrong Meeting / Wrong Meeting II
Two old swordsmen, more like. Andy Weatherall said some disturbing things in praise of Riot City Blues about a month ago; I can only hope that it ‘saved him’ from being a ‘drugs fuck’ by making him stand back and think “good grief, if I’m enjoying this I must be a mess”. Nonetheless… Two albums, little more than a month apart, of a single vision, the first marginally more about tunes, the second marginally more about grooves. Some kind of robotic hoedown. Android-kraut-country. It works.

29. Ash – Twilight Of The Innocents
Their best album, in terms of an “album” that has songs which flow together. Some great moments of pop here, and some great moments of outright RAWK, too, not to mention some dramatic flourishes the like of which Ash haven’t produced before. But everyone ignored it; a tragedy.

30. Strategy – Future Rock
Just very smooth, very cool, slightly decayed-sounding ambient-disco-dub-postrock, if you will. Part of this Balearic thing.

31. The Twilight Sad – Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters
The voice, the inflection of and words sung by, is the most important thing here for me; MBV get mentioned a lot, and I guess there’s an amount of post-Arcade Fire drama too, but really… this is what Idlewild ought to have sounded like in 2007 – intensely Scottish, intensely emotional, intensely intense. It’s a touch too inflated for me sonically, guitars and drums and voices pumped up like a balloon and losing a layer of definition, but when that deep Scottish brogue twists another repetitious line I can forgive.

32. Miracle Fortress – Five Roses
Eno, MBV, Beach Boys… such common namedrops for the aspiring young musician. The first half of this record almost justifies it, particularly the song about girls and trains. Caribou did and does this shtick better, though.

33. Super Furry Animals – Hey Venus!
Return to form? Return to songs you can remember, is all. No, this doesn’t get anywhere near the soaring oddpop heights of Radiator or Guerilla, but it is tight, concise, touchable, memorable, and a whole lot more fun than the last… three (?) SFA records.

34. Pharoahe Monch – Desire
Token hiphop. Listened twice, enjoyed, forgot about it. Again, I should spend more time with it.

35. Matthew Dear – Asa Breed
Safe, bite-size techno for indie kids, perhaps; it’s distracted at times, searching for “songs” where it should be preserving texture, and a little too inflated for its own good.

36. Fraud – Fraud
Young London jazz that promises but hasn’t quite coalesced for me yet. If this list was properly ordered, this would be far further down than it is.

37. Floratone – Floratone
This was a late-in-the-year headphone indulgence flagged up to me by a friend; jazz-dub, or something. Production as important as composition as important as performance. Seriously dazzling on headphones; good on speakers, too.

38. Siobhan Donaghy – Ghosts
So close to realizing what she ought to be doing; more consistent than the debut but without as many highs – when she does ascend though (final track) she does it better than ever before. Embrace the inner Kate Bush, and some real producers rather than trendy journeymen.

39. Queens Of The Stone Age – Era Vulgaris
At points disgusting and at points sublime; guitars unlike anyone else.

40. Radiohead – In Rainbows
It must be odd to be Radiohead, to have every half-thought and accidental move mulled over and acclaimed. This is a nice record by accomplished musicians, not too ambitious, not too obvious; that it lands like a hydrogen bomb in every year-end list going, greedily taking top-spot in many of them, seems utterly incongruous given the… slightness of its concept and execution. Radiohead are at the point now where a new Radiohead record is… just a new Radiohead record. It sounds like Radiohead.

41. Grinderman – Grinderman
Sex guitar.

42. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
I avoided this for so long because of both the unabashed hype and because the debut was so obnoxiously in-your-face – I enjoyed it, but couldn’t remember a second, like trying to conceive of details on a train speeding through a station as you stand still and try to avoid being sucked under. But Arcade Fire’s sophomore album was much more restrained sonically, even if not musically; they retreated to a church and made things more real, more involving, more rewarding. Still nowhere near what some would claim; this is just Springsteen with a banjo and a folk orchestra, from some angles.

43. Basquiat Strings – Basquiat Strings
Like Final Fantasy with the vocals taken out; token Mercury Music Prize jazz nominee; worthy, of course. Seb Roachford’s involvement made too much of. Beautiful in its own right.

44. Kanye West – Graduation
Another token hip-hop inclusion; Kanye’s an amazing producer but a shitty rapper. The Can sample is… inspired? Enough to make this Ege Bamyasi freak include this record just for that, almost.

45. Rufus Wainwright – Release The Stars
Big, gay, absurdly melodic, lusciously recorded – I should have enjoyed this an awful lot more. Not sure why I didn’t.

46. Bill Callahan – Woke On A Whaleheart
Smog loses his name and does a straight (almost) country album. Nice. I need to spend more time with it.

47. The National – Boxer
I’d hear this in record shops (now deceased) over the summer and think “I know this” but never place it; many people I know, from different places, in different ways, adore this band. To me they just seemed like “a good band”; nothing about them makes me want to love them, or even get to know them.

48. Phosphorescent – Pride
Beautiful rustic trampings; isolated like nothing else.

49. The Good The Bad & The Queen – The Good The Bad & The Queen
I wish Dangermouse would keep his mitts off records I’d otherwise like; Albarn has always been a master of beautiful sonics until he teamed up with the rat in the hat, who seems to mangle everything he touches. This dour, dank dub drive through England was rendered almost unlistenable to me; the edges blurred-to-migraine

50. House Of Blondes – House Of Blondes
An odd little record that I was asked to consider by its key creator over a year ago; it was only sent to me come October, so arduous did the mastering process prove to be; my fault, in a roundabout way. I say “little” record but really… it’s an ‘indie’ record, in the sense that it is independent, and fiercely so, but not necessarily “little”. I feel that there’s a narrative here but I’m not sure what about; perhaps a document of a Catholic upbringing? John Blonde’s voice has to be learnt before you can live with it, but the pianos, the guitars, the drums, the other ingredients that flesh out this rich, strange record; at times simple and redolent of things you can’t quite place, at others hinting at an extraordinary depth. Pretty excellent; surprisingly so – if this list was properly ordered, this record might have scraped into the top 20.

51. Voice Of The Seven Woods – Voice Of The Seven Woods
Kraut-country by way of eastern-tinged melodies, built on a bedrock of guitars; lovely, rewarding, musical; only recently discovered.

52. Empirical – Empirical
More young London jazz; not actually heard this yet though – it’s my “Christmas album” for 2007, the last CD I buy myself from the year before festivities kick in, but it’s an award-winner and I’m looking forward to it muchly.

53. Kevin Drew – Spirit If…
It just sounds like Broken Social Scene, doesn’t it? Half-a-dozen listens have left me with little more than the sense that I enjoyed it.

54. Burial – Untrue
One cannot be a music journalist if one doesn’t have an opinion on the second Burial album. It’s probably a good job that I’ve ‘retired’ then, because though I’ve listened to this half a dozen times I’ve been uniformly unstruck by its magnificent depiction of late night urban isolation. I’ve been on a London night bus, many years ago, but just the once. A former work colleague, older than me but clued-in on a number of things musical that I also liked, recommended the debut, which struck me as being ambient dub with occasional two-step rhythms. This is… is it more of the same? More of the same with (more) vocals? It forms part of the stockpile of cultural goods that I intend to get round to one day, alongside the books and DVDs… I suspect it tops the Metacritic 2007 list because the only peoplewho wrote about it are those with a vested interest in describing its vatic concrete beauty. It means less in Exeter. I like cities best when seen from a distance. I’ll play it again soon.

55. M.I.A. – Kala
I feel like I have to refer to this too, given that I was the first person to mention M.I.A. on Stylus way back when; but all I’ve given Kala is one cursory listen while doing the cooking. Schizopop burnout? Possibly. Since the compression thing; hell, maybe since Soulseeking, I’ve been less desperate to hear it all; this, Burial, Pharohae Monch – these are things that aren’t to my taste that I feel ought to be understandable to me, because I’m a critic, perhaps. Now I’m ‘retired’ I might feel less compulsion to keep up?

56. Film School – Hideout
Like The National, Editors and Interpol, but focused more on texture than on dramatics. Bands like this are two-a-penny these days; Film School wont trouble Radio 1 but Hideout provided half-a-dozen pleasurable listens, which is worth more to me.

57. Mountain Of One – Complete Works
More ‘Balearic’ revival, or whatever; less naively sophisticated and otherworldy cool than Studio, less black-clad postrocker friendly than Strategy, Mountain Of One are basically unreconstructed hippies; there’s more Pink Floyd in this than there is disco, beardy old men playing long guitar solos with brief interruptions from impassioned female guest vocalists (Martina Topley-Bird, Tricky’s former chanteuse).

58. Iron And Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog
I like it because it sounds like Califone, sort of.

And that is that, I think. I have no idea if I’ll continue with this blog now. If I’ll continue with writing about music at all. Already though I’m anticipating the new Elbow album and wondering if I should pitch a review at The Guardian or Drowned In Sound or somewhere else. I’m not sure. For now I have nothing left to say, I think. About music, at least. I think I have a book I want to write. But the point of writing, for me, is to be read, and then to speak afterwards to whoever did the reading.

Merry Christmas.

Google You

2007-11-21T11:16:00.000Z

According to some guy on the internet I am “a giant cocksucking douche” because I didn’t adore the latest Underworld album. As you’ll see if you click the link somewhere on the right of this page to my Stylus review of Oblivion With Bells, I did actually quite like it, however. “BrotherLovesDub” also accuses me of stealing a line about Karl Hyde sounding “like Mike Skinner’s dad” from the very forum he calls me a “giant cocksucking douche” on. Seeing as a; people other than myself raised the similarity, and b; I’d never come across this particular forum until I googled myself yesterday afternoon while looking for responses to the Da Capo 2007 Best Music Writing thingy, I can only conclude that, maybe, just maybe, Hyde does sound like Mike Skinner’s dad on that track. A quick perusal of Metacritic suggests that a lot of people think Oblivion With Bells is just “OK”.

(Another thing he moans about is that I reviewed the record and not the Underworld live experience; perhaps this is because it was a record review?)

(Even more amusingly, on the next page someone posts the following; “Do you know who Nick Southall is? I'm not his biggest fan, but trust me, he is not "one of those guys who think Tiesto is the coooooolest". Knock him for whatever, but dude has cred, and for better or worse, 'was there'.”, which is odd but kind of sweet.)

(I could go on forever, but parsing and responding to all one’s criticisms from online forums is insane.)

(All one tries to do in a record review, generally, is be honest and fair.)

But anyway, lots of issues. I’ll scribble them down quickly so I don’t forget, and so you know where I’m going.

• BrotherLovesDub also asks if I have “any plans for a real job?”
• Wtf is googling yourself about, anyway?
• Best Music Writing 2007
• Actually listening to music now that I have ‘retired’ (have I retired?)
• Drowned In Sound

I have a ‘real job’ and have done so for many years; it’s OK, and it helps to pay our mortgage. Writing about music, although sometimes paid, is something I do because I love music; as a result, anonymous internet hardmen calling me a douche and accusing me of either not liking music or needing a ‘real’ job piss me off. Were I not such a philosophical and reflective dude, I might swear and stuff. I’ve never really wanted a ‘career’ in music journalism anyway; bar Drowned In Sound, everyone I’ve ever written for has approached me first, which suggests I’m hardly proactive in throwing myself out there professionally. Writing about music ‘for fun’ gets me close enough to hating music and the music industry without actually having to claw a wage from it too.

Speaking of Drowned In Sound, I don’t know if that’s going to be an ongoing thing or just a one-off. Basically Eric Axelson emailed me about the new album (on the day we moved into our new house) and I promised I’d review it, but ran out of time to cover it for Stylus. So I emailed Mike Diver and asked if I could review it for them, and he said yes. Maybe, if something piques my interest, I’ll cover something else for them.

I’ve had lots of emails from various people seeing if I want to write for them actually, from established places and being-established places, both in print and online. The simple answer is that I don’t know who or what or when I’ll write again; I had so many ideas backed-up that when we knew Stylus was closing I tried to purge myself, and now I’m empty. For a while. I don’t really know what new records have come out in the last month. I don’t actually read any music journalism, really.

Saying that, I have been buying The Guardian in order to get their 1000 Records You Must Hear Before You Die supplements (normally I just check it out online, but this I wanted a copy of to peruse at my leisure while on the sofa – which I could do via the laptop, but… Kindle, yay or nay?). Despite my output of Top Tens for Stylus I’m a self-confessed list-hater, but… I used to love shit like this, you know? I guess when I hadn’t really heard of anything on any given canonical or non-canonical list, everything was a potential epiphany waiting to happen. I don’t own many of the 600 albums I’ve browsed through of the list so far, and I disagree with several of the choices, but I’ve heard of practically everything there in one capacity or another, and as such the list seems almost redundant to me.

Saying that, I haven’t properly sat down with it yet and read many entries; Andrew Purcell, former BBC6Music bod, emailed me a few weeks ago to say he was googling around looking for pieces on Michael Head’s The Magical World Of The Strands while preparing to cover it in fifty words for this very feature, and found my old piece about it for Stylus. I reread it after his email, and it’s a piece I’m definitely proud of.

Saying that, I haven’t actually listened to all that much music in the last few weeks. Moving house, getting a kitten, busy at work, Stylus’ demise… I thought I’d luxuriate in things for the sheer hell of it once I’d ‘retired’, but actually… Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and Brat Camp took up last night. I’m looking forward to Boy A on Monday night. I’ve not watched so much television since I was 18. Hopefully I might buy a chair soon, specifically for sitting in and listening to music, and that will drag me back. Also, general end-of-year malaise always hits me around now.

Googling yourself is an odd activity. I do it every few weeks / coupe of months on average, and usually turn up a few new references on people’s blogs or on forums to things I’ve written. Often in Spanish or Swedish, seemingly. Yesterday I was interested in reaction to the Best Music Writing collection, which I have a piece in this year. I feel very odd about this; I’ve told a few people but haven’t really talked about it. I’m very proud of Imperfect Sound Forever being included, and hope its inclusion can spread its influence further, but I’m more proud of the influence I know its had already. Still, it’ll be nice to having something printed on paper in a book that my mum can read.

I didn’t find much reaction, by the way. Apart from a book review which described me as “curmudgeonly”. Hmph.

High Probability Of Rain

2007-11-20T09:41:00.001Z

See the recent reviews and articles links on the right? There’s a new one, published at an online music magazine that isn’t Stylus. See that picture above? My friend Ed made me a Stylus widget ages ago, that sucked in daily updates from the RSS feed. It’s been blank for weeks now. See the list of links on the right? There’s a new blog linked at the bottom, full of photos of my kitten.

We're Living In Gdansk

2007-11-08T12:02:00.001Z

RIP Electrelane.

We have decided that the upcoming gigs will be our last for the foreseeable future. After ten years of much fun and hard work, we have realised that we all need a break and time to do other things. This was a tough decision for us to make, but ultimately a positive one.

A big thank you to everyone who has come to our shows, put on our shows, and bought our records over the years. It means a lot to us. We're really grateful to have had the opportunity to play gigs all over the world and to meet so many lovely people. This last year has been especially enjoyable and we feel happy about moving on with all these good memories to look back on. At the moment we haven't made any band plans for the future but we're going to have a break and see what happens.

Love, Electrelane

Well that fucking sucks.

I feel kind of short-changed by this actually, even though I only ‘discovered’ Electrelane about a year ago during my anti-compression quest when I came across reference to their two Albini-recorded albums (The Power Out and Axes) having immaculate sound quality. They do.

The reason I feel short-changed is that I didn’t get to see them live, which in itself isn’t that much of a pisser because there are lots of bands I like that I’ve never seen live, only I was guestlisted to see Electrelane play the Thekla (an excellent and unusual venue; a boat moored on Bristol waterfront that normally functions as a nightclub) earlier this year, with the possibility of briefly interviewing them for Stylus. Only then they cancelled the gig for reasons I am unaware of. I assumed they’d play Bristol again later in the year, but no; a support slot with Arcade Fire commandeered their touring quota for the remainder of 2007, and now no more.

There is at least the fact that the band refer to this as an “indefinite hiatus” rather than a split, and there’s no pernicious ‘musical differences’ or the like behind it; rather like Todd’s decision to close Stylus, it just seems to be the right time to try something else for a while.

Nevertheless it’s always a disappointment when people who have made fantastic music together decide to stop making that music; I am still utterly besotted with their current record, and hold massive affection for all their others too.

2007 has been a funny year for music; in terms of wonderful records released I feel like it’s been the best of the last five years, the five years I have been most involved with and aware of what was going on in music. In terms of the business of music, the culture of consumption, the endings and pauses and disappointments, Electrelane’s cessation is another hammer blow to my heart.

Why We Killed It

2007-10-31T20:57:00.001Z

Why Todd killed it. Because it was him. I guess we were all accomplices, though. (Look how much I’m writing! I can’t fucking stop; it’s a reaction, clearly.) Accomplices firstly by not… doing more, perhaps. Accomplices secondly by understanding his reasons and accepting the inevitable.

Todd’s line is that he “got off the subway one day and thought I don’t want to do this anymore”. What that means is that… the guy didn’t sleep. At one point he was working two fulltime jobs and running Stylus. Which is a fulltime job and a difficult one too, and which pays fuck-all. Money from advertising ploughed back into bandwidth. A couple of people got part-time meagre wages for doing stuff towards the end. And that includes Todd. Dude didn’t sleep. I know because he’d answer emails at 9am my time straight away. I ran Stylus for about three months back in late 2003 (I think) when he moved away after university, and it nearly fucking killed me, the lack of sleep, the stress, the organisation, the lack of help or thanks or tangible reward. He’s done that for five fucking years.

Some of the guys wanted to carry on, to take over the name. But it was Todd’s baby and none of them would have been able to give it even 10% of what he’d given it. And if we took it on and fucked it up, that would be… shitting on Todd’s hard work.

Some of the guys wanted to start a new site, but… the work involved five years ago was monstrous. The work involved now would be absolutely fucking unconscionable. The rules have changed. See Playlouder, see all that login shite, that community network download application Facebook bullshit. If you wanted to start a new site today and make it into a viable success, a business model, you need Web 2.0, simple as that. Because people don’t fucking care about… thought, and criticism. Not most people. Consumption is not thought, as Alfred so wisely said.

Dom Passantino and I spoke about it at length in the days after Todd dropped the bomb, talked of starting something new and what it would have to be, and the conclusion was one of two things; either a minimal, blog-esque approach, easy upkeep and low-cost, or something Web 2.0, interactive, with networks and links and gadgets and widgets and… run by programmers, not writers.

This is why I blame Last.fm – sorry Fiona. I’ve nothing personally against the people who work there – say hi to Steve Gravell from me – and I don’t imagine anyone sat down and said “let’s start something which kills music journalism”, but side-effects and repercussions are never considered – they’re side-effects and repercussions.

And yes, Last.fm is a strawman here for me, and I could equally say Myspace or any other net-based music protocol (or other application that includes a music protocol), but Last.fm is the one that…

I’ve just been interrupted by a phonecall from my brother, and explained this to him, and I hit out a sentence that fits perfectly. Why read 600 words about why you might or might not adore a record when you can get given a list of records you almost certainly will quite like for nothing, everyday? And that’s the thing about downloading, about free music; everything is worth a listen if it costs you nothing. The amount of things that are worth tearing your fucking heart open for and following a band around the country for remains the same. But no money out = no disappointment if something’s just ‘average’. Last.fm promotes mediocrity. Not deliberately!

And this isn’t going to be Todd’s reason, but it’s my understanding, my reason. Stylus’ hits were rising massively between 2003 and 2005. From 2006 onwards they weren’t, yet our reputation and influence (look at, to blow my own trumpet some more, Imperfect Sound Forever) continued to grow. But no extra hits means this never becomes the ‘business model’ we needed it to be to make it… not ‘worth our while’, because the people I wrote with and for and about made it worthwhile, but… when you come home from a shitty day at work, tired, and sitting down to write a review seems like yet more work rather than a passion or a hobby, which is something that happened often, then you need a carrot. And yes, I’ve spoken to and met and exchanged emails with and listened to music by amazing people, but… I’d like to be able to pay the mortgage and not worry so much, you know? My ‘career’ outside this has suffered, not because of this… but because I love this, and it’s important.

The game changed for print magazines when we pushed out content daily and they could only manage monthly. The game changed for us when bandwidth speeds meant getting MP3s was as quick as getting a page of text used to be. Initially it helped us. Now? Not so much. I’m not a programmer. I’m not a music journalist! I’m a fan who writes.

And yes, the sort of recommendations Last.fm makes are probably great – Emma’s found plenty of stuff she’s really liked via it – and yes that sort of protocol and the kind of long-form thought, comment and criticism that Stylus purveyed ought to be able to co-exist, but it doesn’t look as if they can.

I had a piece syndicated from LA Weekly to East Bay Express. Initially I thought “wooo! more readers and more money”, but syndication fee is a lot less than commissioning fee, which means that huge publishers get content cheap, and writers other than those syndicated see their opportunities cut down. It also means the collective critical voice gets watered down just a little bit, as one opinion eats another, and does so for financial reasons at the behest of New Times Media or whoever, not because of the relative worth of either opinion.

So when Todd got off the subway and thought “I don’t want to do this anymore”, and when he told us that, we understood, each in our own way and in our own time, that it was the right thing to do, that we should acquiesce to his wish for closure.

Sometimes you just have to walk away.

Top Ten Records I Meant To Write About For Stylus But Never Got Around To

2007-10-31T17:01:00.001Z

When Todd told us back in July that he was shutting Stylus, one of my first reactions was- actually wait. Hang on. Let’s go back to how it happened.

I was in the kitchen with my girlfriend and her brother, and I’d just opened the MacBook and was about to turn it on and login. I had cold beer in the fridge and was going to cook the three of us a meal, as I remember. Then I got a text message, just as I was logging in. It was from Dom and it said “Oh shit”. I replied “wtf?”, or somesuch. Then my email popped open. Literal seconds between the two. I knew what the “Oh shit” meant.

One of my first reactions; I scribbled a list of things I knew I needed to write about before we closed, ideas I’d had and started work on plus things I’d always vaguely wanted to write about one day “in the future" but that wasn’t urgent. Suddenly everything became urgent. A lot of them I got round to; some of them I didn’t. The Rita Lee piece was one, as was the most listened piece, the ‘make better records’ top ten, the headphones piece that’s underneath this. I shoed in Long Fin Killie, Kitchens Of Distinction, Califone, Jim O’Rourke, Lift To Experience and a handful of others I’d always wanted to cover but never quite known how.

But I didn’t manage everything. Obviously. So here are ten I wished I’d got round to, or tried to get round to, or only remembered at the last minute, when it was far too late.

10. Deee-Lite – “Groove Is In The Heart”
I did a handful of Final Seconds pieces for Todd, because… I could, and I wanted to, and I thought it might help. They came pretty quickly. He only ran with one, though, which is good, because it was the best one, and it fitted the feel of the piece well. The very first song it struck me to write about, though, wasn’t “I’m Free Now” by Morphine, but this. Which I’d always wanted to do a Seconds piece on, because… well, if pushed, I’d pick this as the greatest single ever released, just edging out “I Want You Back”. I love it. I have done since I was about twelve. It’s perfect.

9. Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies
Joe 65dos raved about them to me. They had something about them live the other night that made me want to dig further. But an album won’t emerge until next year. Too late for Stylus.

8. Dave Brubeck – “Take Five”
For that scene in Pleasantville, and also for my dad. He loves Brubeck. Cheesy as hell? I only thought so cos I assumed my dad isn’t cool. He isn’t. This is, though.

7. Elbow – “Station Approach”
I love Elbow, in a platonic way, and I think this might be my favourite song by them. It surges, you see. The best songs do. Surging is something dynamic range compression fucks-up. I wrote another Final Seconds blurb about “Station Approach”. It goes like this;

“Both triumphant and exhausted, this is the sound of coming home, literally. Comfort and revulsion, a slow, resigned meander suddenly enlivened by the stomp of recognition; ‘Coming home I feel like I / Designed these buildings I walk by’. Guy Garvey even finds affection here in the things he used to hate. From nothing to everything.”

I didn’t write about Elbow’s last album for Stylus because Ian called it first. Initially I thought it trailed off a touch too much; it doesn’t. Those last few songs are beautiful. Guy Garvey posting a comment on Imperfect Sound Forever made my heart swell. I walked past him on a Manchester street corner once, nearly a couple of years ago. I wish I’d said hi.

6. De La Soul – “Eye Know”
Would have been number 11 on this, but wasn’t, for some reason. It’s those opening guitar notes, isn’t it? Are they Steely Dan? I bet they’re Steely Dan.

5. Mega City Four
My first favourite band, because they were my older brother’s favourite band. His name is in the thank yous on one of their albums. He went to the guitarist’s stag do recently. My favourite song might be “Shivering Sand” or possibly “Shadow” or maybe “Vague” or perhaps “Anne Bancroft”. But it’s probably “Storms To Come”, which sounds like a storm, the grinding bassline and the sudden eruptions into maelstrom. It’s about being caught in blackness, trying to find your way out, waiting for the lightening to illuminate your path and realising… well, here’s how Wiz put it, more than fifteen years ago, in the song itself; “The lightening is too far away / And I can’t wait that long / Regardless of the light I’ll carry on”. Wiz died suddenly almost a year ago. I pitched a piece at The Guardian about how Myspace had brought together a network of past fans of the band. People who’d gigged and ligged together but lost touch as they got laugh lines and mortgages and children, but it was too late and they didn’t bite. My brother is one of those people who’d gigged and ligged.

4. Embrace – The Fireworks EP
I wrote another Final Seconds about “Blind” from this EP, because… oh fuck it.

“Blue and streaming, screaming even; the guitars in the centre of ‘Blind’ slip and slide from channel to channel, rip it apart from the inside; not a mixing board trick, but swinging a microphone around their head in the studio, rattling the sound up inside it. It snarls, it strides, it hides a battered heart. ‘Next time I run I’m gonna open my eyes’. Those guitars; my favourite guitars, ever.”

Really that was a makeweight though; what I should have done, months ago, years ago maybe, was write about the whole of the EP, every contour and note. How it starts with a strident, violent blast, a punch in the face, and then dips into the most beautiful song ever. How it then rises up again into “Blind” and pulverises. How it then dips back again, even more beautiful and ethereal. My relationship with Embrace is all kinds of fucking weird, as you know, and it all, every second of it, stems from this EP.

3. The Beta Band – “Push It Out”
The first Beta Band song I heard, and still my favourite; is that a gong that opens things or just an intrusively close cymbal? The rolling bassline; the distracted hum of the vocals, calling together from east and west; the lazy, jazzy piano breaks that bring things close to a head. Even after a decade I still can’t fathom what Steve Mason is pushing out, I just know it’s important to me. Every day in every way, like I say somewhere underneath in a blurb on his solo album, I love Steve Mason more and more.

2. M/A/R/R/S – “Pump Up The Volume”
Just because.

1. Talk Talk – Laughing Stock / The Colour Of Spring
Aside from a paragraph in the Postrock Top Ten, I’ve never really written about Laughing Stock, and I’ve never written about The Colour Of Spring at all. I wrote the following for the Final Seconds piece, too;

“The preceding four songs on Laughing Stock give ‘New Grass’ its power, its beauty, its bizarre amalgam of joy and desolation. ‘Taphead’ climaxes half an hour of emotional tumult in complete and utter crawling, isolated darkness, sin and death… and then ‘New Grass’ is the rebirth, dawn sunlight breaking through heavy clouds. Those skittish, distant drums, those hesitant guitar chords, faltering in perfection, falling from the sky. Sublime.”

That’s about half of one percent of what I’d want to say. Marcello Carlin once suggested on ILM that I ought to pitch at the 33 1/3 people about writing a book on Laughing Stock. Maybe one day I will.

Top Ten Headphones Albums

2007-10-31T09:11:00.001Z

Written for Stylus, but we ran out of time.

If you hadn’t realized already, I view a decent pair of headphones or three as an essential accessory in the armory of any self-respecting music geek, whether they be for the walk to work, privacy in the office, or those late nights when you don’t want to upset the neighbours.

Cleary many people will say that EVERY record sounds better through headphones, and that therefore a ‘top ten’ is redundant. This is broadly true for most things bar the latest Keane album and its siblings in digital limiting, where all proximity breeds is pain, but nevertheless there are certain records, and certain types of records, that most assuredly gain something extra special when you play them through a pair of good headphones.

10. Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Spoon’s latest is remarkably well engineered, but a little aggressively-mastered, which can make it slightly wearing over a pair of speakers. Run it through headphones that are good with guitars, though, and as well as the drums, brass and six-strings all being rendered beautifully, all the low-level studio chatter and ambience starts to come through; all of a sudden you’re aware of someone humming the guitar riff just before it starts in “Don’t You Evah”, for instance.

9. Augie March – Moo You Bloody Choir
Augie March’s profile is criminally low outside Australia, and even in their native country they’re not exactly superstars, so I don’t feel at all guilty for having included them in three of my recent top tens, because they’re brilliant. What makes Moo You Bloody Choir great on headphones is the scale, depth and variety of the arrangements; Augie are essentially a bloozy bar band, but they ambitiously augment their songs with piano, brass and strings with a cloudy, ornate and inscrutable sophistication way beyond the remit of general indie rockers. The intimate moments are agonisingly personal, the grand passages irreverently pompous, and the rocking bits genuinely rocking; a good set of headphones helps you fully appreciate the scope of what’s going on.

8. US Maple – Talker
I’d never heard of US Maple until a certain scatological violinist recommended Talker to me via email as “the deepest and most rewarding headphone listen of the last 10 years”, and indeed it might be; the extraordinary interlacing of guitars, drum rhythms and gruff, incomprehensible vocals is difficult to take in at first, but on repeated exposure reveals itself to be truly something to behold at close quarters, like a really deranged Magic Band circa Trout Mask Replica accidentally run through a filter of grunge by people who’ve never spoken to anyone bar their immediate family. Particularly astonishing are the outrageous guitar textures, the like of which I really have never heard before.

7. Cornelius – Point
You’d be forgiven for assuming that Cornelius makes records purely for the headphone addict, given the joie-de-vivre with which he applies the stereophonic panning, mixing desk tricks and flippant textural changes. Point in particular lays it on thick – from field recordings of running water to upshots and downshots of guitar flitting from ear-to-ear, every second is crammed with sensuous detail; so much in fact that it can be overwhelming if you’re not in the mood.

6. Mark Hollis – Mark Hollis
Spirit Of Eden and Laughing Stock are both common and very understandable shouts as ‘great headphones records’, but I’ve written about both before, and if anything this decade-old solo album by Mark Hollis takes their aesthetic even further into the austere. Recorded live in a room on two carefully-placed microphones, with no overdubs and as little electricity as possible, Hollis spent seven years preparing for this album, teaching himself classical composition amongst other things. It’s great on headphones because no other record I’ve heard puts you in a room the way this does; it’s the fall of the piano keys in “The Colour Of Spring”, the space between them as the notes decay and the tangible sense of fingers depressing different areas of the keyboard; down and up, left and right. And then there is the brass, the drums, the strings… Listening to this album feels almost intrusive.

5. Disco Inferno – Technicolour
I’ve written about Disco Inferno at length before on Stylus; suffice to say that their bizarre, prescient amalgam of environmental sampling and postpunk is absolutely dazzling on headphones. By Technicolour especially they had mastered their art to the extent that they were creating hooks and riffs from found sounds; the opening title track uses slashes of guitars alongside an array of breaking glass, screeching brakes, ringing alarm clocks and parping car horns. Elsewhere across the album splashes of water, whistling winds, erupting fireworks and untold other effects jostle with orthodox instrumentation to concoct some truly bizarre pop songs; remarkable.

4. PJ Harvey – Rid Of Me
It may seem ludicrous to choose such a relentlessly visceral album for a list of records that work best on headphones, but I’ve found nothing as wildly exciting as running Rid Of Me through a pair of Alessandros at frantically stupid volumes; if I tried to get anywhere near this with speakers I’d either burst my bass drivers or have the police round inside three songs. It’s something to do with the pronounced dynamics of this Albini-produced beast; the quiet parts, on headphones, lull you in like nothing else, before the frightening crescendos threaten to rupture your cerebellum in the most deliciously tinnitus-inducing way. I wouldn’t recommend listening to Rid Of Me in this manner every day, but I’d certainly suggest trying it before you die.

3. The Beta Band – Hot Shots Part 2
It’s a combination of cavernous space and minute attention to detail that makes Hot Shots II so rewarding through an expensive pair of cans running off a proper headphone amp; subtle arrangements of live and synthetic percussion, snippets of acoustic guitars, melodica, piano, sub-tectonic bass, textural inserts drawn from r’n’b and electronica plus intricate layers of Steve Mason’s forlornly beautiful vocals paint wide but intimate refractions across the inside of your head. After the haphazardness of their eponymous debut album, Hot Shots II is a remarkably subtle and controlled affair that reveals more of itself each time you listen, especially when you’re as close as only headphones can get you.

2. Califone – Roomsound
Tim Rutili’s post-country outfit consistently produces such richly textured and beautiful records that choosing them for a list like this seems almost redundant; it’s also incredibly difficult given the high quality of each of their full studio albums. So as a cop-out, I’ll pick their debut, which showed the ex-Red Red Meat members emerging with aesthetic fully formed. The amalgam of slide guitars, feedback, improvised and electronic percussion, mumbled, growled and crooned vocals as well as delicate, spacious layering of atmospheric and found sounds makes this album an experience on headphones like almost nothing else. That the riffs and melodies underneath are insidiously catchy and emotive is more than a bonus.

1. Orbital – In Sides
I think the single experience that convinced me I’d have a long and happy relationship with headphones was listening to this album on a walkman for the first time; specifically the moment when “Out There Somewhere (Part 2)” starts and the scary alien pre-amble suddenly bursts into stereoscopic delight, the melody flitting from left-to-right like points of light in a darkened room, sparking your senses to life. It’s not just that, though, which makes In Sides such a headphone treat; the subtle heartbeat-bass of “The Girl With The Sun In Her Head” being slowly rattled awake by drums and exalted by intertwining layers of synthesiser; the zither textures of “The Box”; the crawling ambience of “Dwr Budr”; the martial tension of “Adnan’s” – every track unveils itself further and further the closer you get to it, and while this is ostensibly a ‘dance’ record by genre, it’s definitely more headphone fodder than club banger.

Fifty From Five

2007-10-30T15:54:00.000Z

These are, as of Tuesday 30th October 2007, my fifty favourite records released during the existence of Stylus Magazine. Only three rules exist for this list; things must have been released between June 3rd 2002 and October 29th 2007, only one album from any given artist, and no reissues or compilations. Oh, and I must like it. A lot.

As a result you won’t find Is A Woman, Point, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Tallahassee or Original Pirate Material on this list; they all came out in the first six months of 2002. There’s no Can or Sly remasters and no Tropicalia either. And there’s definitely no fucking Blueberry Boat. Just fifty new records that I have loved during the life of Stylus. I was going to just do twenty, but it was too hard.

Here they are, in a very vague semblance of preference.

1. Bark Psychosis - ///Codename:Dustsucker
I say vague, but I think this is almost a clear favourite for me. Certainly, unlike almost any other choice here, I feel no pangs or divisions regarding whether this should be above or below this or that other record; it just stands apart. Maybe it’s that I interviewed Graham Sutton and that we’ve occasionally corresponded since; maybe it’s just the infinite depth of the actual music on this record. No, I don’t listen to it every day, and couldn’t, either; but I don’t and couldn’t with any other record on this list. They each have their time and place. In fact, I’m not sure when I last did listen to this; I just know that when I do, nothing else matters.

My Stylus review.

2. Manitoba / Caribou – Up In Flames
Whereas this… I might prefer, right now, both The Milk of Human Kindness and also, especially, Andorra, but this had such epochal impact on me when it landed that I have to pick it over them; I still remember the first listen and the crazed, hyperbole spitting ILM thread I started over four years ago. It’s a freakout, really, and though it’s perhaps a tad too frenetic, I love it, and it definitely hit hard and helped define, I think, what Stylus, and my own personal taste, was / is about.

My Stylus review.

3. Electrelane – The Power Out
Is this really my third favourite album of the last five years? I’m not sure. Is it even my favourite Electrelane album of the last five years? I’m not sure of that, either; No Shouts No Calls perhaps holds as much weight. Hell, maybe Axes does too. But this was first contact, and as such… when “The Valleys” opens up it swells something inside. And the sound! Albini magic. I wish I’d known them sooner. (As with many, many things musical, Emma got their first.)

4. Patrick Wolf – The Magic Position
I probably personally prefer Wind In The Wires as a mood mover, an emotional pipe into me, but as with Manitoba / Caribou and Electrelane, I’m picking the artist here rather than the record. And this, of the three Patrick’s produced since Stylus started, was the most anticipated and explosive, a glitterball burst of positivity that harboured just as much beauty, fragility and fractured persona as the previous two despite what people said about him going ‘pop’. And again, an interview added a further degree of personal connection. The man’s imagination and talent astound me. We’re seeing him live again soon, at the Phoenix again with a minimal approach rather than the full-on glam storm he brought to the Thekla and Birmingham Academy earlier this year.

My Stylus review.

5. Califone – Roots And Crowns
Like I say, this is a very vague semblance of preference; I don’t know this record well enough to call it as my fifth favourite of the last five years in all probability, and that’s largely because there’s so much to get to know, so know much depth, so much detail, so much space, so many hooks and strangely wrought emotions in this weird, spaced-out country headmusic. Perversely catchy too, for something so obstruse.

6. Acoustic Ladyland – Skinny Grin
Should have been epochal but wasn’t; the world in 2007 isn’t ready for jazz anymore, not jazz like this anyway (in the face of Norah Jones and Jamie Cullum), and I was always fighting as losing battle to convince fellow Stylus-ites that Acoustic Ladyland’s relentless pursuit of futurist energy and emotion was as revolutionary as it really is. And it fucking is! Wow. Noise, energy, pitch, feeling, tone, pace, scope; everything goes to the max.

My Stylus review.

7. Battles – Mirrored
As above, really, except that, this being American, NYC even, and allied with postrock or mathrock or whatever, means it got a degree of attention Skinny Grin missed. Don’t get me wrong; this is just as freaky and amazing and weird as the one above, just as wonderful, but the two aren’t that far apart. Is it too recent to pick here? Maybe.

8. The Necks – Drive By
Both vatic and profound; infinite. From casual exposure (playing it in the office) I’ve had more comments about this (“what is this?”) than any other record over the years. Just a… perfect thing. It’s like a sculpture or something; it reminds me of the mirrored cubes that used to be in the Tate Modern (probably still are?- a while since I’ve been) and which, while deceptively simple, can absorb you for hours as you walk around and through them, seeing how they corrupt light and space and time.

My Stylus review.

9. Augie March – Strange Bird
Absolutely immaculately crafted, and a touch boozily so, to add some all-important character; some cracks, wheals, chips and knots in the wood that carving, waxing and polishing can’t fully conceal.

10. Grizzly Bear – Yellow House
What a beautiful, strange, old and unexplored house, full of cobwebs and aged oak furniture full of bizarre curios, everything put together with immense skill but at an angle, an incline, a woozy displacement to where you’d expect.

11. 65daysofstatic – The Destruction of Small Ideas
Another personal link, a holistic web of influence: this album reaffirmed why I ever wrote anything in the first place; in order to try and make things better.

My Stylus review.

12. Sonic Youth – Sonic Nurse
Amazing that such messy, dirty guitars can be done with such extraordinary clarity and care; and such hooks as well! That’s what surprised me.

13. Midlake – The Trials of Van Occupanther
Genuinely beautiful and timeless; or as genuinely as you get. Those harmonies; people said Radiohead as pilgrim fathers but really it’s Fleetwood Mac as persecuted hermits.

14. Roots Manuva – Awfully Deep
Token hip-hop entry number one; this isn’t hip-hop though, it’s some kind of fucked-up cognitive behavioral therapy. It’s beautiful and tapped and deep, deep, deep.

My Stylus review.

15. Working For A Nuclear Free City – Working For A Nuclear Free City
Just really well done, if a little… too eager at points to flit through its record collection. Better than anything Primal Scream managed since XTRMNTR. In love with music.

My Stylus review of the expanded American release.

16. The Clientele – The Violet Hour
Jonesy did the engineering! I didn’t know that until afterwards. My sepia saviour.

My Stylus review.

17. LCD Soundsystem – Sound Of Silver
Is it just those two songs in the middle that make this mean so much? Even if it is, it’s deserved.

My Stylus review.

18. Kate Bush – Aerial
Actually physically beautiful.

My Stylus review.

19. Lift To Experience – The Texas–Jerusalem Crossroads
Undeniable; frighteningly so. Joe 65dos assures me that Josh T. Pearson is a genius. I don’t doubt it.

20. Elbow – Leaders Of The Free World
Their best? Might be. Rise, fall. Rise, fall. The last four songs or so reward so much over time. About the details.

21. Embrace – Out Of Nothing
Flawed, so flawed, but so impassioned too. Hearts in the right place; heads not always.

22. Guillemots – From The Cliffs
Pipping the album proper because… “Cat’s Eyes” and “Who Left The Lights On Baby”. As simple as that.

23. Polar Bear – Held On The Tips Of Fingers
Modern jazz but without all the nods to electronica that so much modern jazz seems to need; no less modern, though.

My Stylus review.

24. Stars Of The Lid – And The Refinement of Their Decline
Just beautiful, again, and calm, and slow.

25. King Biscuit Time – Black Gold
Grows in stature every time I play it. Pips the final Beta Band album. Steve Mason actually is a genius. I wish him well.

My Stylus review.

26. Loose Fur – Loose Fur
This and the second one both, simply, get listened to more often and enjoyed more fully than any of the “important” Wilco albums; they’re just music.

27. Spoon – Kill The Moonlight
As is this; funky, fun, different. I love his adenoids and his clumsy ass-shake. Like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot’s younger, less po-faced brother.

28. Four Tet – Rounds
Pause is the one, really, but this will do. Final tracks should sound like going home. This one does.

My Stylus review.

29. The Delgados – Hate
Too bold, maybe, but those melodies and voices make up for it.

30. TV On The Radio – Young Liars EP
Love the aesthetic – drone, groove, soul – and this perhaps does it best of the choices available.

31. Final Fantasy – He Poos Clouds
Just exquisitely musical.

32. Fennesz – Venice
Austere and beautiful and strange. The review is worth a read, if I say so myself.

My Stylus review.

33. British Sea Power – Open Season
Calmer, more comfortable; some beautiful moments but still with energy.

34. Two Lone Swordsmen – From The Double Gone Chapel
The start of the new phase; dirty forest rock.

35. Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man – Out Of Season
Distant. Unlike almost anything else. Rural vocal theatre.

My Stylus review.

36. Ghostface Killah – The Pretty Toney Album
Token hip-hop two. Boy got soul.

37. Broken Social Scene – You Forgot It In People
Can’t deny it, even if it’s not quite everything.

38. Missy Elliott – Under Construction
Token hip-hop three. Girl got pointillist digital stereophonic funk.

39. Studio – West Coast
Very recent; unsure; impressed though.

My Stylus review.

40. The Notwist – Neon Golden
Changing men; organically digital. Surprisingly strong songs.

41. Boredoms – Seadrum / House Of Sun
Ambient jazz, or something. Less frenetic, almost; more beautiful, certainly.

42. Scott Walker – The Drift
Still never taken in in one sitting. How could you?

43. Sugababes – Three
Just. Really. Good. Pop.

My Stylus review.

44. N*E*R*D – In Search Of
Second version, for chronology. Dirty drug fucks.

45. Akufen – My Way
Literally cut dance music into tiny new pieces.

46. Vitalic – OK Cowboy
Took those pieces and recast them in classic forms.

47. Rufus Wainwright – Want One
Comically grandiose; staggeringly gifted and egotistical melodicist.

48. OutKast – Speakerboxxx / The Love Below
For a little while, seemed like the best, most important thing ever.

My Stylus review.

49. Boards Of Canada – The Campfire Headphase
Over-exposed sound, more willing to communicate now. Beautiful. Another review worth reading.

My Stylus review.

50. Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
For a little while, seemed like the best, most important thing ever.

My Stylus review.

Good Night, Stylus

2007-10-28T18:10:00.000Z

Stylus Magazine, which I have written for for over five years, ceases publication on October 31st.

There will be lots of 'goodbye' and 'and finally' type pieces published there in the last few days of its existence, including a farewell piece by myself, so I shan't write too much here. Needless to say, I'm sad, and it feels like the end of an era. It is the end of an era.

The following is an excerpt from an email I sent a couple of weeks ago to PR contact of mine, explaining some of the reasoning behind why I think music journalism is dying;

"Last.fm has hit sites like Stylus hard because it removes the need for
criticism / reviews - it essentially cuts out the middleman of the
music press by giving access to specialised peer recommendatons; why
trust a journalist who might be biased or swayed by free gifts when
you can trust someone who likes lots of other records you like?
Couple it with services like emusic and illegal download clients and
you've got a fast system of finding out about bands and hearing them
without having to read an article or visit a record shop; it cuts time
and money from the process, but also ties people up on last.fm or
facebook or whenever which cuts down time they might have spent
reading. No one reads (about music) anymore, so there's no need for
(music) writers."

Haven't Had A Think In A Long Time

2007-10-24T20:49:00.000+01:00

Seems a long time since I took a photograph for the beauty of it.

50 albums from 2007 that I like a lot right now.

1. Patrick Wolf – The Magic Position
2. Electrelane – No Shouts No Calls
3. Caribou – Andorra
4. Battles – Mirrored
5. Acoustic Ladyland – Skinny Grin
6. 65daysofstatic – The Destruction Of Small Ideas
7. LCD Soundsystem – The Sound Of Silver
8. Stars Of The Lid – And The Refinement Of Their Decline
9. Studio – West Coast
10. Spoon – Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
11. Beirut – The Flying Club Cup
12. !!! – Myth Takes
13. Six.By Seven – If Symptoms Persist Kill Your Dr
14. Working For A Nuclear Free City – Businessmen And Ghosts
15. Two Lone Swordsmen – Wrong Meeting 2
16. Panda Bear – Person Pitch
17. Bjork – Volta
18. Apparat – Walls
19. The Field – From Here We Go Sublime
20. Menomena – Friend And Foe
21. PJ Harvey – White Chalk
22. The Tuss – Rushup Edge
23. Von Sudenfed – Tromatic Reflexxions
24. Ulrich Schnauss – Goodbye
25. The Clientele – God Save The Clientele
26. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
27. L’imparfait Des Langues – Louis Sclavis
28. Do Make Say Think – You, You’re A History In Rust
29. Two Lone Swordsmen – Wrong Meeting
30. Ash – Twilight Of The Innocents
31. Strategy – Future Rock
32. The Twilight Sad – Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters
33. Miracle Fortress – Five Roses
34. Super Furry Animals – Hey Venus!
35. Pharoahe Monch – Desire
36. Matthew Dear – Asa Breed
37. Fraud – Fraud
38. Floratone – Floratone
39. Siobhan Donaghy – Ghosts
40. Queens Of The Stone Age – Era Vulgaris
41. Radiohead – In Rainbows
42. Grinderman – Grinderman
43. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
44. Basquiat Strings – Basquiat Strings
45. Kanye West – Graduation
46. Rufus Wainwright – Release The Stars
47. Bill Callahan – Woke On A Whaleheart
48. The National – Boxer
49. Phosphorescent – Pride
50. The Good The Bad & The Queen – The Good The Bad & The Queen

Rainbows

2007-10-15T20:14:00.000+01:00

I woke up on Wednesday having forgotten about Radiohead and In Rainbows because, to be honest, although I respect them I’ve never really cared for them. But then the BBC breakfast news confronted me with the visual identity of their new album and a female music journalist talking about how bands make their money off touring rather than selling CDs these days, and I was reminded that today was the day and I could pay whatever I wanted for digital files of Radiohead’s new record (+45p). So I turned my computer on, opened a browser, searched “radiohead”, clicked a few links, entered a few details, and downloaded In Rainbows for the sum of 1p (+45p).

I got halfway through the album’s ten tracks on my walk to work. Each time I passed another pair of white earbuds I wondered if they were listening to the Radiohead album too. Pre-‘release’ hype had seemed almost non-existent outside the environs of messageboards and other online music communities; several people who I would have expected to know of the existence of In Rainbows actually knew nothing. Until the day of its ‘release’ maybe almost nobody knew anything about In Rainbows. Certainly no one outside Radiohead and their inner circle knew what it would sound like.

I use the word ‘release’ tentatively because this is not a release; with a ‘discbox’ containing a double CD and double vinyl available in December (for £40) and a ‘proper’ CD release in January, what the download version of In Rainbows amounts to is a leak, in the same way that any unscrupulous sort lets any advance promotional copy pass around Oink and beyond before proper release. The twin ironies are that Radiohead’s leak is a; lower quality (at 160kbps) than many other leaks, and b; earning them money. Presuming, of course, that you opted to pay them money for it; choosing a sum of £00:00 for the transaction is entirely possible. I know people who have paid, or donated depending how you look at it, several pounds for a ‘copy’ of In Rainbows. With no label and no manufacturing or distribution costs to get in the way, Radiohead are probably doing very well from this supposedly audacious move, although they’re under no obligation whatsoever to let us know how well.

But enough conjecture about the marketing of this. “15 Step” opens In Rainbows with an electronic beat, a sleight-of-hand tactic revealed as a faint, a joke even, as it transmutes to live drums inside 30 seconds. Sampled crowds of children, buffers of unidentified synthesiser, guitars, drums, bass, vocals; strangely I am left humming “2+2=5”. “Bodysnatchers” growls threateningly with nastily amplified guitars and wailing, but other than this the mood is atmospheric, understated, and calmly repetitious; the electronic synergy that seemed to reach an apex on “Backdrifts” sucked away in favour of a more orthodox instrumentation. I am most often left humming “Scatterbrain”.

“Faust Arp”, for instance, is a brief pastoral illusion, strings like Robert Kirby painted for Nick Drake, guitar playing not like Drake at all, nor melody; instead of melancholy folk we have mechanised repetition in the way Yorke sings, neither essentially or physically beautiful in itself, but thought of as such due to context.

“All I Need” mingled with the early-morning sounds of a brand new shopping precinct as I walked to work through the city again the next day; jackhammers and an outside broadcast by a local radio DJ attempting to hide his perfect ‘face for radio’ with trowled concealer and a leather jacket making a perfect symbiosis with Thom Yorke’s meticulously studied performative ennui. Yorke, once again, sings not of people or events or emotions but of vague feelings and sensations, the kind of oblique urban wretchedness and alienation we are used to; he is an animal locked in a hot car, an insect crawling away from sunlight, a befumed commuter stuck in traffic, a bystander lost in the 21st century, still. Vaguely disgusted, vaguely afraid, vaguely confused. He has talked about the lyrics being frightening, but the music here is so often low-key, warm and delicate, and the words so indistinct and indirect, that I am unconvinced.

“Nude” also approximates beauty, perhaps more effectively by not playing on context, with gentle basslines, filigree repetition of guitar figures, and cooed vocals. “Reckoner” is genuinely beautiful though, recalls the way “Rabbit In Your Headlights” recalls “New Grass”; the only problem being that I have never felt that Yorke actually meant or felt what he was singing in the way that Mark Hollis did; the lyrics “versed in Christ should strength desert me” from Laughing Stock sand-blasted with an openness and feeling that Yorke has conscientiously avoided ever since “Creep”, his intellect and ego presumably embarrassed by such a crass and vulnerable expulsion of emotion. Even “Videotape”, the piano-ballad closer, is oddly impersonal, its whirring percussion and wearied tone unconfessional.

Thom Yorke will never again write anything that might be deemed a hook or a chorus, but it’s nice to hear Phil Sellway actually get to play drums again, because he can, and well; likewise it’s nice to hear Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brian both thrash and caress guitars and Colin Greenwood play an organic, if clean, bass guitar. It’s not quite a stripped-back “live in a room” aesthetic, but it’s as close as we’re likely to get. Probably, possibly, in many ways, the record that casual fans wanted them to record after OK Computer.

Which is to say that In Rainbows is a modern rock record from an intelligent, arch group who are keen to posit themselves as something more than a rock band, and sounds like such; more linear than anything since Kid A but still at several removes to anything on The Bends. Seven albums into their career, Radiohead were never going to launch another paradigm-shifting missile at the heart of popular culture; for all their talk of anti-consumerism, their product is meticulously quality-controlled, packaged, marketed. In many ways they have reached the point, musically, where they are just a band making music; now largely playing it together rather than deconstructing it alone. What marks them out is the methods they construct for themselves to operate in. What still frustrates me is that, no matter how well I can recognise the artisanship of their craft, I know I will be seldom drawn to listen to In Rainbows for either pleasure or catharsis. After fifteen years, I still don’t know what Radiohead are for.

And now that the 'review' bullshit is over... I don't like it anywhere near as much as I like the Caribou record. Or Electrelane. Or Patrick Wolf. Or 65daysofstatic. Or Acoustic Ladyland. If I was clever I'd tell you why.

Fuck the Heck

2007-08-06T13:58:00.001+01:00

The horns in Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga are mixed really quietly and placed way out in the margins; this seems disingenuous when you say this, but when you listen, it works incredibly well, maintaining the clarity and integrity of the horns. I picked up Gimme Fiction too, and it’s alright, but nowhere near as compelling as Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga yet; the first two tracks are too full-on, too throttle-driven, too squashed, and they lose me a bit. When they wind back in and do the line-by-line R‘n’B assemblage of “I Turn My Camera On” it works incredibly well, though; because everything’s falling in on different beats to each other, nothing’s competing for direct space.

Rob’s just told me about two rappers, Eyedea and Abilities, decrying the mastering of modern hip-hop and pop records on the Rock the Bells DVD. Abilities says “shit, the way records are mixed and mastered today, it’s just like… one sound… it doesn’t feel like music, it feels like robots… you go back and listen to old records, to Coltrane, and there’s so much… variance and frequencies and dynamics”.

When I was first researching and talking about this, people were asking whether it affected electronic music, hip hop, pop. Well the simple answer is that it affects everything. It’s about the crispness and impact of a beat when you turn it up, the spark and life of an instrument, the space between that makes the clarity. The most exciting drum is the real one that’s in the room with you, not the big, whoomphing, invisible spread under a 50 Cent tune. Fuck the heck.

Edit. Addition.

Just been pointed towards this piece of text on Six By Seven's website.

Please note: to keep the dynamic of this record, we have not compressed the final mix. This means that your CD will probably be a bit quieter than most other cd’s. We think that too much of the dynamic is sacrificed in order to push the volume up on most CD’s nowadays and leave it up to you to just turn the volume up on your system. We are not in competition with anyone else on the jukebox. When it goes from quiet to loud, we really want you to feel the difference, like you would at a gig!

Quick chorizo and potato 'stew'

2007-07-29T13:16:00.000+01:00

Serves 1 and 1/2. Time = 20-40 minutes.

1 onion
2 tomatoes
5 smalish new potatoes
Chorizo
Tomato puree
Black pepper
Basil
Parsley

Quarter the potatoes and boil fast for ten minutes. Drain, saving half the water.

Chop the onion and tomato.

Fry onion until soft, then add tomato.

Slice chorizo.

Add to frying pan.

Add potatoes and some of the starched water.

Add big squeeze puree, pinch basil, pinch parsley, pinch ground black pepper.

Cover and simmer for however long you like, however fast you like, until the 'stew' has thickened / reduced.

Serve. If not lunchtime, wash down with gallons of rioja.

Viola.

The Records That Sent Me Mad

2007-07-27T08:57:00.000+01:00

1. My CD player (well, one of them) is a temperamental sort; if it’s been turned off, as opposed to left on standby, it’ll only scan discs properly if it’s first fed the Fireworks EP by Embrace (or something of comparable or shorter length). Why this is, I’m not sure. After it’s scanned that, you can remove that disc and feed it anything else with no problem whatsoever, but from cold turn-on, nothing with anything else. It just scans and scans and scans, missing the disc and eventually claiming there’s no disc there.
2. That’s a lie about the Fireworks EP, btw, although only just; it’ll scan anything under about 17 minutes in length first time out.
3. Hearing something different every time.
4. My iPod, after a battery transplant, has died. It lasted 3 ½ years; not a bad lifespan given the warnings people doled out about it dying after 18 months.
5. Having a drum roll actually roll, as in move, as in from one place to another.
6. Paul compared Oasis to Spacemen 3 but was a little trepidatious; understandable, given the likely ‘wtf’ reaction to such a statement.
7. He’s not quite right, but he’s not far off.
8. I’d put a waveform here, but there’s no point.
9. Obv., like typing in Finnish (suomen kieli kuuluu uralilaiseen kielikuntaan, sen suomalais-ugrilaisen haaran itämerensuomalaisiin kieliin), you wont understand what that graphic would have meant if you don’t know the language, but if you do…
10. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t run songs through audio programmes and ‘look at the waveform’ very often to judge whether they’re compressed; I use my ears. As mentioned the other day, I don’t even have Audacity. (Although I’m thinking of looking into it.)
11. But if you know what a normal, uncompressed waveform looks like, then you know that the “Some Might Say” one looks like… noise.
12. Or, rather, looks like something incredibly consistent and repetitive and unchanging.
13. Here’s a waveform from a minute of a track from He Poos Clouds by Owen Pallet.
14.
15. Oasis took shoegaze, trance, and added shoutable melodies over the top; it’s almost unstoppable. Or it was.
16. I doubt they did it deliberately.
17. “Clocks” by Coldplay got a trance remix. Not surprising. Because it’s monotonous, physically.
18. wtf is ‘trance’ anyway?!
19. Saw a guy with some Grado SR60s round his neck at the train station. Decent headphones, but they’re open-backed; surely you can’t hear ANYTHING with them on the train?
20. Perhaps that’s why they were round his neck.
21. I fixed my iPod, btw, seemingly by bleeding inside it.

Enough with the silly list. The selections of records that follow signify three things; the records that unsettled me, the records that reassured me, and the records that followed. Which is to say that those in the red corner are the obnoxiously loud ones that I wanted to like, or did like, but couldn’t bring myself to listen to as often as I thought I should, and didn’t know why. But I do now. And those in the blue corner are the records that I came across at about the same time that I could and did listen to loads, and loved, and that suggested to me that there was something intrinsically and quantifiably different between them and the other batch, something that was wrong with the other batch. And then those that came after are the records that I suspect, one way or another, or, in one case, know for sure, have followed my ‘work’, and got things right.

 In the red corner
 65daysofstatic – One Time For All Time
 Embrace – This New Day
 Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
 Snow Patrol – Final Straw
 Mouse On Mars – Radical Connector
 Cocteau Twins – Heaven Or Las Vegas (Remastered)
 Coldplay – X&Y
 M83 – Before The Dawn Heals Us
 The Flaming Lips – At War With The Mystics
 Queens Of The Stone Age – Songs For The Deaf
Nathan Fake – Drowning In A Sea Of Love
 
In the blue corner
 Guillemots – I Saw Such Things In My Sleep EP
 Patrick Wolf – Wind In The Wires
 Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
 Lambchop – Is A Woman
 The Open - Statues
 Elbow – Leaders Of The Free World
 Kate Bush – Aerial
 Morphine – Cure For Pain

And the records that have benefited
65daysofstatic – The Destruction of Small Ideas
LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
Ulrich Schnauss – Goodbye
Ash – Twilight of the Innocents
Caribou - Andorra
Six.by Seven - If Symptoms Persist Kill Your Doctor

NB. As the author and God of this blog, I shall amend, update, add to and detract from these lists over the future hours, days, weeks, and months, as other records pop into my mind.

The way the patio door creaks and cracks in the morning when the sun hits it and the heat expands its constituent materials, plastic aching against glazing, metal bending into silicone.

Why does one write?

The nature of this blog may change over the next few months; I am not sure. Work, home, passion; all change.

I say "I've only got twelve months left in me" every year, and I'm still here. I don't think I can stop.

Fuck an Objectivity, part 2 is still planned out in my mind, at least. I’m aware that I often write part ones but that part twos either don’t materialise or else don’t do justice, though.

I don’t hate “nu rave”, btw; I just think the records have been shite so far.

I love a good pair of headphones.

Current listening? Wilderness Survival. Basquiat Strings. Caribou. Two Lone Swordsmen.

Songs of the 50s and early 60s. Oh wait a minute Mr Postman. Mr Sandman bring me a dream. Mr Postman bring me a CD.

A profound sentiment or sentence flitted through my head while I was writing that last bit but has gone now. Maybe I’ll remember it later.

Fuck an Objectivity, part 1

2007-07-23T22:44:00.000+01:00

The comments boxes tailcoating Stylus reviews have raised some interesting ideas lately; specifically those for Ian Cohen’s recent Editors review, my New Young Pony Club and Simian Mobile Disco reviews, and Alfred’s Interpol review, all predominantly negative reviews of records that certain sections of Stylus’ readership evidently feel should have received positive reviews.

Firstly, I take direct issue with Stylus reviews “ALWAYS” being the most negative on Metacritic as one reader claimed – for a start this is simply not statistically true or even remotely close, but more importantly than this, if one looks at the relative grade curves for film scores and music scores on Metacritic one will notice very quickly that music scores are massively top-heavy, meaning that the majority of music reviews are far more positive than the majority of film reviews.

Now while I have a much greater interest in music than in film, both personally and professionally, and prefer it as an art form generally, I do not accept that music is a consistently better or more qualitatively effective art form than film – I think across most areas of the arts there is probably a similar distribution of brilliant, good, OK, poor and abominable work, whether that be literature, music, film, painting, sculpture or any other area you care to name. Obviously the subjective nature which governs how we judge art means that this is debatable at best and wildly incomprehensible at worst, but in the scheme of things I don’t think it’s too outrageous to posit that there are proportionally as many great albums as films, as many average albums as films, and as many rubbish albums as films.

If we accept this idea of distribution of quality, then obviously the grade curve for music reviews offered by Metacritic becomes problematic because it suggests that music critics aren’t actually critical, and that many of them are far too happy to praise mediocre or bad art for some reason. Why? Possibly because popular music has never experienced the kind of rigorous academic study which film has, meaning it is still viewed as mere entertainment rather than as art, and anything which entertains must necessarily be good because it is effective, no matter how it entertains. Does the subjectivity which governs our interface with music becomes, in the hands of some critics who strive towards objectivity, a projected solipsism which says “someone might like it, so it can’t be that bad”, rather than “I dislike it, so I shall explain why”?

Unfortunately the tools to really get to grips with a record seem to be hugely underdeveloped in many music writers, possibly because there’s such scant tradition of them being used due to the lack of a proper academic approach to pop music (not that that is the only or best approach); an awful lot of people don’t seem to know how or why a record is bad or good, don’t understand how or why they are reacting to a record the way they are, emotionally, aesthetically, culturally or physically. Sometimes this wrestling with uncertainty can read with great poetry and passion, which is a problem because the mythology that has built up around popular music automatically places emphasis on this approach being the right approach, and then everyone follows this lead regardless of their talent or insight. In most cases this seems to lead to asinine fence-sitting or directionless invective, as many music critics end up over-estimating that which they should be criticising, or else hurling abuse at straw men.

This is to say nothing of the insidious nature of the capitalist music industry, careerist writers, lazy writers, nepotism across the media industry as a whole, or any other of a whole slew of issues which can cause poor music writing. Many people are happy to rewrite a press release and call it a ‘review’, just as many people are happy to compose knee-jerk tirades or ad hominem attacks based on received wisdom, because it’s easier than actually engaging with and thinking about a record.

But let’s be honest; most readers of music reviews don’t want engaged thought anyway, or don’t think they want it. Music journalism is often little more than a glorified catalogue, and often a lot less than that too. Dwindling sales and folding magazines are commonplace on both sides of the Atlantic, and one consistent reaction to this is to cut word counts for reviews – how can one say anything more than “this is OK, if you like that sort of thing” in an 80-word capsule review?

People think they want shortcuts to stuff that they can buy or download that will say or do something about or for their lives. Tumbling sales of physical formats suggest that people aren’t willing to pay for these items and services though, which in turn suggests to me that the effectiveness of these items and services is unacceptable. Which is to say that people get burned by bad music and aren’t willing to take financial or emotional risks in the future in case they get burned again. If reviewers dislike, say, Kaiser Chiefs’ latest album and know they wont listen to it again once they’ve reviewed it, but give it a decent score nevertheless because it’s catchy, fits an aesthetic, and is expected to shift substantial units, and people buy it hoping for more than moronic third-hand tunes, bad production, uninspired arrangements and uncomfortably shouted choruses, then it stands to reason that the trust that a reader has in a writer, in a whole publication, and in the music industry in general, should be eroded.

Which is why I’m glad that Stylus reviews probably do average at a lower score than those of other publications, even if they’re not “ALWAYS” the lowest – I think that a lot of the time the writers here are just being more realistic than those elsewhere. I doubt Ian’s planning on putting on the Editors record for pleasure again anytime soon, anymore than I’m intending to play Yours Truly, Angry Mob or the Simian Mobile Disco album; I think they’re poor, even bad, records, and I got nothing positive from listening to them. In fact, knowing that I’ll never listen to Attack Decay Sustain Release or Kaiser Chiefs again actually suggests to me that I should have been harder on them, even if they do superficially fit some kind of remit of what’s acceptable to praise according to some music fans. (Interestingly, Ricky Wilson from Kaiser Chiefs is interviewed in this month’s GQ magazine and, when asked what the worst thing written about him in a review has been, seems to mention my review in a slightly forlorn manner.)

Which brings me to something else; the idea that Stylus approaches ‘pop’ in a different way to how it approaches ‘indie rock’, and further to that, the question of what ‘pop’ and ‘indie rock’ actually are and how they relate to each other, and further to that, the question of whether Stylus has a wider raison d'être or ulterior motive in its reviews policy.

To answer the last question first, because it’s most succinct; we don’t. We can’t afford one in terms of the time and effort involved in establishing one, as much as anything else.

To answer the other questions, I’m gonna need some more time to ruminate and write. And make curry.

The Thermometer's Guts

2007-07-17T14:21:00.000+01:00

Here’s the 2007 Mercury Music Prize shortlist, announced a couple of hours ago;

Arctic Monkeys – Favourite Worst Nightmare
Dizzee Rascal – Maths and English
The View – Hats Off to the Buskers
Maps – We Can Create
Bat For Lashes – Fur and Gold
Klaxons – Myths Of The Near Future
Jamie T – Panic Prevention
The Young Knives – Voices of Animals and Men
Fionn Regan – The End Of History
Basquiat Strings with Seb Rochford – Basquiat Strings
Amy Winehouse – Back To Black
New Young Pony Club – Fantastic Playroom

From the mouth of Simon Frith, Mercury Panel chair – “This year’s Nationwide Mercury Prize shortlist celebrates a remarkable range of artists who use their albums to tell stories, shape moods, explore emotions and lift the spirits. The list marks the emergence of a wealth of eclectic talent making music with great energy, excitement and personality.”

He’s talking piffle, of course. This year’s selection is as dreadful as any other Mercury shortlist, and actually worse than a fair few. Klaxons? The View? Maps? Jamie T? This interminable favouritism towards debut albums is wrongheaded in the extreme and in danger of making the MMP seem even more silly than it already does; few of the debut-nominated artists from the last five years have gone on to make follow-ups that expand on their debuts (unless we’re talking about literal physical sonic expansion generated by ‘getting Jacknife Lee in’ – hello Bloc Party, Editors), let alone show signs of having a rich, varied and rewarding career.

Interestingly, no one has ever won the Mercury Music Prize twice. A handful of artists have even been nominated two or more times, though, including The Streets, Primal Scream, PJ Harvey, Coldplay, Radiohead, Amy Winehouse and Blur. From that elite cadre only Polly Jean has actually won it, though. This year Arctic Monkeys are already joint favourites with Amy Winehouse according to William Hill, at 4/1; surely if they win twice in a row that fact functions as a damning indictment on the state of either British music in general or the Mercury Music Prize itself? I’m not sure how one could put a positive PR spin on that potential result which does anything other than obsequiously claim that Arctic Monkeys are the best British band ever, and thus deserve these plaudits.

For your delectation, here’s Sick Mouthy’s Alternative Mercury Music Prize Shortlist. (I only actually really like about the first eight or nine of these, by the way – the rest are just things I would have expected to be included. Except Ray Quinn. That’s a joke.)

1. Acoustic Ladyland – Skinny Grin
2. Patrick Wolf – The Magic Position
3. 65daysofstatic – The Destruction Of Small Ideas
4. Electrelane – No Shouts No Calls
5. The Tuss – Rushup Edge
6. The Clientele – God Save The Clientele
7. Two Lone Swordsmen – Wrong Meeting II
8. Working For A Nuclear Free City – WFANFC
9. Jarvis Cocker – Jarvis
10. The Good The Bad & The Queen – TGTB&TQ
11. Simian Mobile Disco – Attack Decay Sustain Release
12. Ray Quinn – Ray Quinn

For your reference, it was actually really hard coming up with even ten British albums from the last 12 months that I’ve liked – had I been able to go back eighteen months it’d have been much easier (Guillemots and Scott Walker would be shoe-ins). There’s probably stuff I’m forgetting without my actual CD collection to peruse, though.

And while I don’t posit my list as a serious host of “why are they excluded?!” records, I am utterly baffled by the absence of #s 1 and 2 in my list from the Mercury’s selection – Acoustic Ladyland in particular would have made a fantastic curveball winner that would end the accusations of ‘tokenistic’ genre picks, quite apart from it being, y’know, awesome.

But enough. There’ll be far too many blog pixels and column inches devoted to this faintly rubbish prize over the next couple of days, with another glut once again in September when the winner is announced.

Some Blue, If You Look Up

2007-07-16T14:20:00.000+01:00

Rihanna has been at #1 in the singles chart for nine weeks now with “Umbrella”, equalling Gnarls Barkley’s record for longest #1 this decade when “Crazy” ruled the airwaves last spring. The interesting thing is that while I heard “Crazy” loads, I’ve not even heard “Umbrella” once, to the best of my knowledge.

Part of this may be down to the fact that we got a new car last August, which has both AM radio and a CD player – the car I drove before that had only FM and a cassette deck, which meant I listened to a lot of Radio 1 while driving. These days it’s FiveLive, or sometimes an album, and as a result my handle on what’s in the charts and on the radio at any given time has dissolved almost completely.

The sad thing, if you’re at all inclined to think that it may be sad, is that I don’t really care that my link to the nation’s airwaves has died. Perhaps it’s that this whole ‘war against compression’ has driven me underground, so to speak, in terms of my taste, or maybe it’s just that I’m getting older and being distracted by other matters and thus keeping current with the charts seems like less of a necessity than it used to; circa 2003/2004/2005 I was hiving the charts regularly, both in an effort to be up on everything that was happening musically and also, later on, in order to keep tabs on how Embrace were faring during their comeback, but now…

The last time I listened to Radio 1 was just over a month ago when a friend alerted me that they were going to feature the story about dynamic range compression on Newsbeat that I mentioned a few posts ago. Thinking back, the Newsbeat piece was a haemorrhaged opportunity. In their infinite wisdom, Radio 1 played two versions of an acoustic-based track by a singer-songwriter so memorable that I forget who it was; one compressed, one uncompressed. They sounded, of course, practically identical – either no one in the Newsbeat research team realised that Radio 1 applies insane levels of compression to all its signals pre-broadcast anyway, or they thought it simply didn’t matter. I’ve not tuned in since.

To digress (only not really) for a moment; Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga has been my first contact with Spoon, who despite their profile in the US are utterly anonymous over here, and I’ve enjoyed it thoroughly. Trying to couch why I like the record makes it sound unremarkable though, because it literally just comes down to it being a collection of interesting songs played well; good arrangements, good melodies, good lyrics. I have a slight sense of reservation about it, however, which is down to one thing – “mastered by Howie Weinberg”. Now Weinberg’s not a butcher exactly, but he is fond of making things loud and flat these days, probably mostly due to the requests of people he’s mastered for, who fit snugly for the most part into what one might call ‘leftfield mainstream’ – PJ Harvey, Modest Mouse, White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Gorillaz, Billy Corgan, Muse; all people with a vested interest in radio and TV rotation.

Now the Spoon album is interesting sonically, firstly because it’s incredibly well-engineered, with tones and timbres of instruments caught beautifully, and also because of the minimalist approach to many of the songs in terms of both composition and arrangement – much of it seems to be one guitar, one piano, bass, drums and a vocal, with occasional touches of brass and the odd overdub or multi-track. As such, you can pump up each of the elements reasonably far without them starting to obscure each other, especially given the way many of the constituent instrumental parts interlink, drums falling into holes left between guitar notes or chords, basslines existing in space between the two, etcetera. Also, there’s an amount of between-song studio chatter, adding to a sense of dynamics even if the songs themselves are mostly pretty consistent – saying that, “The Ghost of You Lingers” is just a piano & vocal arrangement, and is noticeably (and wisely) quieter than the preceding or following songs, adding intimacy. Because of these factors, the absolute volume and flatness thereof isn’t too much of an issue; still, though, the kickdrum occasionally gets lost in a wall of sound, which is disappointing. I hammered Repeater + 3 Songs by Fugazi on Sunday morning, and no matter how loud I pushed it nothing ever got obscured. Likewise the 65daysofstatic album, which grows in stature in my mind every time I play it, and which couldn’t ever be described as sounding out of date, which I imagine is a consideration for many people who pump things too loud at the mixing and mastering stage.

Almost everything I’ve just said about Spoon could also apply to The National, except that their arrangements are generally that bit busier, causing an ounce more disorientation at climactic moments. Boxer is a good record, but compared to Spoon or Menomena I’m not getting nearly as excited about it as everyone else seems to be.

Interestingly, I believe Weinberg mastered both Rid Of Me and Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea by PJ Harvey, some seven years apart. Playing them back-to-back it’s interesting noting the difference between the staggering, frightening dynamic leaps in the title track of the former, and the easy consistency of the latter, which for a long time I’d thought of as the ‘better’ record. Now I’m not so sure. How much did Polly change between 1993 and 2000? I need to investigate Uh Huh Her. I suspect Stories… was partly an exercise in seeing what was possible if Polly unwound and pout some slap on. It worked, clearly.

To get back on track, perhaps… if my tastes are turning away from the mainstream it’s not because I’m after some kind of obscurantist’s cache, not trying to bask in the ennui of elitism; I just want music that’s alive and musical and exciting, that doesn’t exist purely to… well I don’t know. Let’s talk positives rather than negatives. Music that exists for the sake of being music is what I’m after, perhaps; to see what can be done, and to be musical because music is wonderful. Major labels don’t seem to have a clue how to produce or market an album today (look at the Ash album), and neither do the major music retailers (look at HMV’s dwindling profits). Looking at the Prince farrago, artists don’t either – a new album in a tatty card sleeve given away free with a Sunday newspaper that has a reputation for knee-jerk conservative bigotry only marginally lesser than its weekly incarnation is hardly the best artistic move the purple one has ever made, even if it has made him a nice sum of money.

Which is why it’s good that Fopp might survive, or at the least be resurrected, and is why I think that, if the music business is going to make it through this currently unsettling time (look at the Happy Mondays review, linked right), then it’s not going to be the gigantic behemoths that are going to lead the way, but rather the minnows that can change direction and surf the tides. This is nothing that hasn’t been said before, of course, and countless times in countless places. Fopp’s business model, it’s ethos of being slightly left-of-centre, a touch discerning and specialist in its stock, probably bodes well because they’re not underestimating their audience’s intelligence (that much). I’m fed up of walking into HMV or Virgin and not being able to find… anything even slightly out of the ordinary. I’m not even talking esoteric, just simple stuff. If you have The Tuss’ album in stock and sell some, get the EP too. As well as a couple of copies of the new Spoon album, get one each of a smattering of their back catalogue in, in case anyone has their interest piqued to investigate further. Or you could keep dozens of copies of OK Computer in, just in case Q do another ‘100 best albums ever’ issue and any of their readers don’t already own it yet.

Speaking of which… there were two (mid-to-late) teenage boys on the train when I was going home from work the other day, and one of them had an HMV bag which looked to contain a lone compact disc. I had my walkman on so couldn’t hear them, but they were chatting (even though one of them had earphones in). Eventually the one with the HMV bag took out the contents to investigate the sleeve and peel off stickers. The album? OK Computer.

Record Shop Musings

2007-07-02T15:04:00.000+01:00

I’ve been involved in a small handful of amusing incidents in record shops over the last week or so; normally I wouldn’t think they were worth writing about but it struck me this morning that actually there might not be many record shops soon, and that I should therefore record these moments for posterity, lest my future children, brainfucked on hypermedia till they have attention only for nanosecond bursts of white noise, ever ask me what it was like to communicate in public with another human being while purchasing music, rather than… whatever it is that they’ll be doing.

First up, I mistakenly bought two copies of the new Queens Of The Stone Age album – I ordered a copy via Amazon one lunchtime, had a phone call from the mortgage advisor shortly afterwards and had to clear out my bank account on surveyor’s fees or searches or suchlike at short notice, so cancelled the order. Or so I thought. The next day, after my dad transferred me some money he owed me, I picked up the QOTSA in HMV for a tenner. A few days later and the Amazon copy arrived.

So a few days further on I took the unplayed copy back to HMV with the receipt, and exchanged it for The Tuss. The assistant manager served me.

“I’d like to swap this for this, please. They’re the same price. I have my receipt.”

“Can I ask if there’s anything wrong with [the Queens Of The Stone Age album]?”

“Well there’s nothing wrong with it per se-”

“I’m not gonna argue with you…”

“- it’s just really badly produced-”

“Oh I agree totally.”

“- too compressed, and apart from a few tracks I can’t listen to it.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Are you really called Spartacus?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.”

“I’m lying. I got fed-up on Saturday and wanted to be anonymous, so made myself a Spartacus nametag.”

I felt like asking him if he’d read any articles about compression on the internet, and if he’d heard of notorious internet music journalist and anti-compression campaigner Nick Southall, but, despite him being called Spartacus (however temporarily), I reasoned that he’d probably consider that kind of behaviour to be moderately insane.

Secondly, on Saturday I had some time to kill in town after a haircut (ideally I wanted a Victorinox ‘tomato knife’, but the kitchen shop didn’t have any) and popped into HMV. Despite my better judgement I had a quick look in the dance section to see if, by chance, they had the debut EP by The Tuss from earlier this year, enamoured as I am with the album proper. They didn’t obviously; record shops don’t stock records people want to buy anymore, which is why they’re going bust – more of that later, though.

There was a guy wistfully and worriedly handling a copy of Rushup Edge, obviously completely indecisive about whether to part with his hard-earned £9.95. Having just reviewed it (eyes right), I felt qualified to pass comment.

“That’s very good, by the way.”

“It is?”

“Oh yeah.”

“And is it… really Aphex Twin?”

“I certainly think so. Sounds like him. It’s his publisher and stuff.”

“Thanks. I think I might buy it.”

He seemed very worried about his potential purchase of The Tuss. Even if it isn’t Aphex Twin, Richard D. James isn’t going to come round your house and throw eggs at you and laugh. And besides, it’s good!

But the fact that it may or may not be Aphex Twin probably wasn’t the root cause of the guy’s trepidation. I get the feeling that for a lot of people buying a record in 2007 is a psychologically worrying thing, and I’m not sure why.

[Having been back in HMV today though, I’m pretty sure they had the same amount of copies left as they did on Saturday – suggesting that he didn’t buy it in the end.]

Perhaps (and this is serious wishful thinking) it’s because people suspect subliminally that they’re not going to enjoy their purchase as much as they might have enjoyed records in the past, and that the cause of this is hideous modern production trends.

But that’s not ever going to be the whole story. There’s something, some issue with private cultural investment. Debord would no doubt say something about spectacle, how it’s useless to listen to music unless people see you listening – i.e. with an iPod or at a gig – that people are loathe to invest capital on private cultural goods that work on a non-visual axis. Hence the popularity of DVDs, which people seem to buy as ornaments. The complete triumph of visual culture over… any other culture. Which means music. But how and why has this happened?

Let’s talk record shops again.

Exeter has one each of the two big chains, both on the High Street. Branson’s is due to move into a new shopping centre this autumn, I gather. The other desperately needs new premises, as it is small, cramped, and cannot hold enough stock. My brother used to work there. (Emma used to work in Branson’s.) I regularly play them off against each other for new releases, which I still prefer to get in a shop on day of release.

There is a smattering of independents, too. First up is Martian Records on Gandy Street; formerly second-hand only and a perpetual hangout for Goths and metallers, it now deals in cheap other-territory imports, a la CDWow, plus a huge array of minutely varied black hoodies with words like Rammstein across the chest, piles of cheap DVDs, and a leftover smattering of second hand stuff. I pop in occasionally but rarely pick anything up. The last thing I bought there was the Jarvis album.

Across the road and into the Guildhall centre is Solo. Fifteen months ago I detailed the start of its demise. Things have not got better since; sparse stock of new releases and no replenishment of back catalogue stock has been order of the day as the lower floor prepares for closure, which will just leave upstairs, which previously housed the ticket shop and ‘specialist’ (jazz, country, world, etc) sections. Whether they will become just a specialist shop is unclear; I just hope they lose the clothing, which they appeared to sell none of over the last year and a half, and which must have been a contributory nail to the coffin. In my late teens and early twenties this was my store of choice. The 3 for £20 section used to be terrific.
Somewhere in town (currently Fore Street) is Reckless and/or Reform Records, which changes name and premises often. I think it used to be a dance vinyl specialist; whether it is anymore, I don’t know. I may have bought one album in there, years ago, when it was by Timepiece; I honestly can’t remember.

And then there is MVC, which a year or so ago became Music Zone, and then a few weeks ago started becoming a Fopp – the sign above the door didn’t change, but the stock and all the point-of-sale and merchandising did; even the chip & pin reader said Fopp. Fopp has of course now gone bust, largely due to over-stretching itself in acquiring the bankrupt Music Zone’s stores. Staff were not paid for last month’s work. If the situation is the same at the rest of the chain’s stores, then they are standing unmanned and unlit, but full of stock.

Beyond these ‘dedicated’ record shops, there are or course the usual other places where you can buy the week’s big releases – WHSmith, Woolworths, Tesco, Sainsburys, etc.

I had a vague plan for where this was going, but I’ve lost my mental destination somewhat since I started writing this over the weekend. Essentially the future doesn’t look bright for physical record stores. Even Berwick Street in London has taken a heavy hit in recent months.

Anyway… In other news: I’ve been using earplugs at gigs for quite a while, specifically this kind of thing. Again, if I was as obsessed as I seem, I’d work in something about how everything is too loud, competing for attention, badly recorded, etc., and how if, say, Simian Mobile Disco records actually had real bass frequencies to start with, you wouldn’t need to turn them so loud in a club to get some kick into the bottom-end.

Also, Imogen Millais-Scott, in Ken Russell’s Salome’s Last Dance, looks just like Björk.

Inactivity

2007-06-19T10:31:00.001+01:00

Please excuse this gross lack of updates; Emma and I are in the process of buying a house, and the peripherals of life have taken a necessary backseat.

Don't Give It A Name

2007-06-04T22:21:00.001+01:00

A confession - I only listened to Spiderland for the first time after having completed the postrock top ten. So shoot me. (I’m sure some of the commentators at Stylus would love to do so given their seeming hatred and contempt for me, but there you go.)

Should I have listened to it before? Probably, but I didn’t own it till after I’d filed the piece with Todd. And anyway, when I say listened to, I mean in a recent context; I first heard it years and years ago, around the time I first heard Mogwai and Sonic Youth, when my friend Joe played it to me. And I thought all of it was backwards because I was getting my mind blown by Orbital at the time.

It was ex-Arsenal striker Ian Wright who convinced me to buy Spiderland finally actually; after reading his reaction to “Good Morning Captain” in Observer Music Monthly I found a shrinkwrapped copy on eBay and arranged for it to wing its way to me.

And the result? My reaction? It wouldn’t have made the top ten piece, MY top ten piece, as in my favourite ten postrock albums where ‘postrock’ means ‘what comes after rock’, rather than ‘Post-Rock (or, Doomed Instrumental Alternative Rock)’. Hence, people, no matter how willfully you misread the deliberately obfuscatory and pretentious introduction (Post-Rock being deliberately obfuscatory and pretentious, geddit? - yes I know it’s lame), the list cannot be ‘wrong’; it’s subjective. (Objectivity not existing, clearly, and if you doubt that you’re almost certainly an idiot one way or another. Hell, even science has pretty much given up trying to be objective, hasn’t it? Post-chaos-theory it’s basically held its hands up and said ‘wtf, don’t ask’ as I understand it.)

So, Slint… It’s a good record, but not in the slightest what I would consider ‘postrock’ according to my definition. It’s just… it’s like a slightly modern take on “Murder Mystery” from The Velvet Underground only with less groove and more oedipal screaming. I enjoyed it, and may go back to it, but it’s not a manifesto for where rock goes next, cos rock already went there. The Doors went there practically, for goodness sake. How it’s more ‘postrock’ than Daydream Nation for instance is utterly mystifying. Unless it ALL boils down to whether you sing or not...

(The Velvet Underground is BY FAR my favourite Velvets record, btw.)

The postrock top ten is problematic, obviously. I knew it would be, the little cynic voice saying ‘postrock kids are utter, utter moody, tribal one-upmanship fuckers, dont do it Nick’, but I had to have this bonkers utopic view that they’d read this piece and go ‘oooh, Beta Band, oooh, Mouse On Mars’, and all turn around and make joyous technopop records that sound like “The Rhinohead” but less drunk. Fat chance. Instead I get a barrage (less bloody than expected, admittedly) of accusations founded on misreadings; discussion in the comments about whether or not Mogwai are Scottish when it states in the body text that they are, for instance. People saying ‘it’s not the ten best of the genre’; well duh, the article is trying to destroy what you understand as ‘the genre’. Other people saying ‘I was expecting ten under-exposed classics and I’ve heard of all of these records’; well duh again, read the intro, and if you can’t manage that opening paragraph get a dictionary. Do Make Say Think are good, yeah, but if they’re anything more than an instrumental rock band I’m the pope. Mogwai are not a sacred cow; they’re a Scottish rock band.

But I knew this would happen. This always happens. People are deaf and blind to their favourites and to the orthodoxy of received wisdom. Not that I’m some kind of soothsayer or anything, obviously. Although… First this in The Times is flagged to me and then this story on BBC Radio 1 Newsbeat is also mentioned, and both on the same day. I gather there’s a piece in this month's Uncut, which they must spin-off from, I suppose. To be sure, The Times piece is written for people who don’t care about understanding the details and contexts, and it mines the ‘record companies evil manipulators of poor innocent musicians’ angle which is complete and utter horseshit, but those are my examples, that line about The Beatles wanting thicker vinyl for deeper bass is lifted straight out of Imperfect Sound Forever. Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery again, Mr Adam Sherwin, media correspondent for The Times.

But really it’s just enough that people are talking about it...The upwards guitar spirals in the second half of “White Peak / Dark Peak”, when the drums drop out… wow. I don’t mind.

I should maybe explain a bit more about big stereos and audiophilia and my distaste for playing music through a computer… It’s not clarity for the sake of clarity that I’m after, not snobbishness about better equipment. It’s just that… from when I was a kid, when I first got into music, I always, always wanted to wade in it, wallow in it, drown in it, have it pumping loud and clear and overwhelmingly from a pair of great big speakers, have it get my heart pumping and my palms sweaty. It’s a big fat cliche to say you want to get ‘lost in music’, but it’s a cliche because it’s true. And I know for a lot of people music’s just… ambience, or noise, or accompaniment, but I think for a lot of people life itself is just an accompaniment. I want something more. And if I’m gonna climb inside a record, and get lost, get overwhelmed, then it helps for the music to be big and loud and precise and clear and realistic and dynamic and involving and detailed. And the best way I’ve found of doing that is a juicy amplifier running 70 watts per channel into a pair of speakers blu-tacked onto sturdy stands. I’m not listening to Diana Krall, people.

Fire

2007-06-04T10:27:00.001+01:00

nick i have yet to hear "boxer". "not criminally" sounds ok. does it have that nasty ring that nearly all modern rock cds have. 'cos i've been opening lots of songs in audacity recently and wow you have almost been down-playing how bad this problem is.
Haha, only just seen this! I've not listened to this record in a couple of weeks and I've only got a weirdly-savaged promo anyway, so I'm not fully up on 'nasty ringing'.
As for the Audacity thing, yes, I am kind of downplaying it simply because it's SO ubiquitous that if one tried to meet it fully you'd go totally spare and hang yourself in the face of an impossible task. A lot of the time, because there's so much of it, you end up over-praising stuff that's just NOT AS BAD AS KEANE (and that last Keane album fucking hell, what a hideous, hideous mess) because it's a relief, rather than because it's done really, really well.
Like, I listened to New Adventures In Hi-Fi by REM yesterday afternoon and that's flat, very flat compared to something like the Guillemots or Electrelane or 65dos, but next to Keane or U2 it's amazing. You know, Dark Side Of The Moon's pretty fucking flat and boring and even (from memory, not listened in years), it's just not corrupted sonically in terms of the sounds being destroyed. I seem to remember a Mark S thread about DSOTM being sonically boring, actually.
And I very, very rarely go off looking at waveforms (partly cos aside from Garageband, which I don't know how to use, I've got nothing that'd do it for me), just trusting my ears, really.
-- Scik Mouthy, Monday, 4 June 2007 08:58 (28 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
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ha i was thinking of starting a thread about it after i spent about half an hour shocking myself with waveforms, the difference between a pavement track form 1992 and a hold steady one from last year was amazing. pavement had all sort of wobbles even though the song itself was kinda droney whilst the hold steady song which seems quite dynamic was basically just an oblong shape.
-- acrobat, Monday, 4 June 2007 09:04 (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
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Compression can be used to make things SEEM dynamic, but the key is SEEMING; on a different, better stereo it may corrupt horribly, for instance. The main thing that's lost is space, to my mind, and a lot of people don't know how to 'hear' space in a modern context. With The Hold Steady that's not so bad, because the aesthetic is dodgy bar band in a cramped venue playing live and loud, but if the Rufus Wainwright album did that it'd be horrendous, because the aesthetic is huge orchestral swells.
Stuff without space gets close to headache territory for me often these days because even with an illusion of dyanmic there is no actual respite. But basically as long as there's some space, some dynamic, and instruments aren't totally squished and corrupted, I can deal with it to an extent (New Adventures, for example). I'd much prefer it not to be there, though.
-- Scik Mouthy, Monday, 4 June 2007 09:14 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
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Also I think a lot of people genuinely misunderstand 'dynamic' and think it does just mean 'full'; not the same.
-- Scik Mouthy, Monday, 4 June 2007 09:20 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Dangerous, Unsafe Building

2007-06-04T10:25:00.001+01:00

yes but nick music is almost always produced and consumed within a set of conventions. when i heard 65dos i immediately made the call that it was "herky jerky post rock type stuff with not very sophisticated electronic bits" which isn't a genre per-se but enough to suggest it wasn't really going to be up my street.
i guess it depends what you want. but i imagine a new hi-hat sound in certain dance records is as exciting for some as this maximal mixing is for you.
-- acrobat, Monday, 4 June 2007 08:38 (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

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No no no minimal mixing! Mix quietly, with lots of space! (I know that's not quite what you mean...)
It is indeed true that music is generally made within a set of conventions, and this is fine and good and a lot of music I enjoy sits squarely in one convention or another; however, I really, REALLY like music that integrates different conventions, and I think a lot of people do; Mark Hollis, of all people, once said that the only way to really innovate is to combine things that don't seem to fit together and haven't been combined before. It's why I prefer Remain In Light to '77 (also that elephant again, songwriting).
-- Scik Mouthy, Monday, 4 June 2007 08:43 (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
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oh and there was perhaps an under current in your soulseeking essays from a long while back that opening oneself up to too much music was in the end limiting. you didn't argue it yrself but one could argue that genre mining could be a fruitful way to avoid this kind of dilettante’s overload.
-- acrobat, Monday, 4 June 2007 08:45 (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
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Aye, and arguably what Louis and I are (kind of) doing is genre-mining - wanting a music that contains elements from different genres doesn't mean dipping into al those genres, necessarily.
-- Scik Mouthy, Monday, 4 June 2007 08:50 (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
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i find that idea attracive in some respects. i was wondering recently what Revolver would sound like if someone tried that today. The Beatles "genius" was pastiche and plagirism and on Revolver they are sort of ram-raiding every stlye available in 1966. i don't get this feeling at all from much fo the stuff you and Louis seem to be sugggest is doing something vaguely similar but maybe that's as you suggest to do with songwriting.
-- acrobat, Monday, 4 June 2007 09:00 (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
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The thing with Revolver is that it's doing it in a very much 'pop' methodology, and very little 'pop' recently has done similar. Certainly there are people, Timbaland being an immediate example, who are doing something similar, but if it's in a 'pop' context it's probbaly flawed in one or other directions that would rule it out for the likes of Louis or I; mixing in commercial, flat, radio-hungry manner, over-emphasis on lyrics / singing / vocal performativity, etcetera, songwriting again, the lack of a 'band' where a band is a group of musicians interracting on several levels. The dynamic of group interplay is something I like a lot, for instance, and you don't get that in figurehead-led R'n'B, for instance, or in, let's say The View, either, because they're not 'playing' in the same way as The Beatles - they're not gonna suddenly start looping and editing and using other instruments and so on in a contemporaneously progressive way that's comparable to what The Beatles did. They may, and in fact almost certainly are, using studio technology in a far more advanced way than The Beatles, because more advanced technology exists, but it'll be for different ends; autotune to smooth out vocal errors, looped guitar lines cos the guitarist can't play more than 8 bars at a time, overdubs or playing to a click because the drummer can't keep time, etcetera - the studio as orthodoxy tool rather than innovation tool.
-- Scik Mouthy, Monday, 4 June 2007 09:09 (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
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And by pop I also mean rock - Oasis, for example.
-- Scik Mouthy, Monday, 4 June 2007 09:15 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
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i think damon allbran would like to do this genre tourist stuff, parklife era blur and gorrilaz both seem like attempts to do just this. that he can't quite get everything in focus in the same way The Beatles did is, for me, the problem.
-- acrobat, Monday, 4 June 2007 09:16 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
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I'd agree with that. I think Damon's got close on occasions, I think TGTB&TQ gets close, but then it's fucking atrociously mixed and mastered, so there you go.
Paul would you mind if I hiked a load of this stuff between us onto my blog, perhaps?
-- Scik Mouthy, Monday, 4 June 2007 09:18 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
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course not.
-- acrobat, Monday, 4 June 2007 09:20 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Get A Better Stereo

2007-06-03T11:41:00.000+01:00

A guy I know called Steve works at last.fm, who, if you know anything about the internet, you will be aware have just been bought by CBS for a cool £140m. A lot of people seem to find this very exciting; not sure why, monopoly-building in the music industry has almost always been bad news as far as I am aware. But there you go. When the ‘good guys’ are being bought out it’s OK, cos they deserve the money, or something.

But beyond this vague concern about the insidious “big fish eat the little fish” onwards march of capitalism, and with no disrespect to Steve, who is a fine man, last.fm pisses me off. Or, rather, one of the things that I feel it stands for pisses me off.

Not the social-network side of it, although I’ve long since abandoned Myspace and Facebook, because (almost) anything that encourages human communication is pretty good at least on a theoretical level, even if that communication quickly devolves into self-aggrandisement.

I’m not even that pissed off by the fact that one of last.fm’s primary (unspoken) purposes is the destruction of the critic and therefore music writing and therefore any kind of informed and impassioned discussion (and therefore communication) (the easier it is to communicate the less effort and thought people put into communication, perhaps [see above]).

Actually I am, because I think this is dangerous as all hell; much as most critics are seemingly happy just to tell you what to buy in exchange for a +1 and a promo and fifty quid, there are a number out there who are performing important duties regarding the relaying of information (finding new bands) and the recording of the history of music (letting you know about old bands), piecing together strands and constructing narratives where possible (and often where inappropriate, obviously, given that the history of music, like the history of anything, is not an easy-flowing linear story) so that we understand what music is and what it means and what it has done a little better.

There’s also another critical function, that I like to think I’m involved in (and I hope I’m not alone), which is telling people what they’re doing wrong (even if only in my opinion) so that in the future they can not do it wrong and as a result make better records. The 65daysofstatic affair is, I hope, proof that critics can and do exist, sometimes, outside of the realm of merely being catalogue guides and gatekeepers; last.fm isn’t going to write in-depth articles about dynamic range compression any time soon, I suspect.

By allowing people to bypass criticism in terms of finding new music (not necessarily a bad thing), last.fm also allows them to bypass criticism in terms of engaging with and understanding any music (pretty necessarily a bad thing). Is the positivity of the objective worth the negative side-effect? I’m not sure.

But anyway, damaging criticism is a minor concern. My main beef with last.fm is that it’s damaging music itself. How? By making people listen via a computer.

Obviously there are methods that can make using a computer as your primary music-player a decent prospect: digital music servers can be integrated into hi-fi systems; hi-end soundcards with analogue-outs can be run straight into dedicated amplifiers, etcetera. I run a 3.5-stereo-plug-to-analogue-red&whites cable from my iMac to a Denon microsystem next to the computer for the rare occasions when I do want (or need) to listen to something in that room which I only have as digital files; a satisfactory solution, but not ideal when I have a profoundly good headphone set-up within arms reach and a proper hi-fi in the next room.

But most people who use last.fm aren’t doing that or anything remotely close. If you’re lucky, some people might be running a decent modest set of headphones like Sennheiser PX100s straight from the headphone socket; far more will be using 2.1 satellite+sub set-ups (which I also have on the iMac, for watching downloaded TV programs - yes I know TV freaks will see this as heresy on several levels) which are capable of LOUD but very much not capable of detailed or accurate or nuanced or realistic. Possibly as many, maybe more, maybe less, will just be running off bundled or inbuilt speakers though; the tiny, tinny downward-firing grill on the bottom of an iMac or the insane blips and beeps that a PC tower emits. Hell, I regularly see people playing music straight off their mobile phone speaker; I can barely tolerate using the damn things for talking, such is the poor quality, let alone as a loudspeaker for music.

It’s a basic tenet of communication theory that noise affects interpretation of signals; insufficient equipment to relay a signal is a prime cause of noise (but not the only one, obviously). My girlfriend and I noticeably argue a hell of a lot more over the phone than we do face-to-face, because a huge amount of the signal gets lost. I don’t just mean facial expression either; technologically shoddy transceivers garble enunciation, inflection, timbre and tone of voice in a phonecall, and can lead to misunderstandings. Sometimes the message is simple enough and couched in enough clear and translatable signifiers that it can still be understood, but sometimes it isn’t.

With music, where for some listeners, some artists, some entire genres, the nuances of inflection, timbre, tone etcetera are utterly key to understanding and enjoyment, inadequate playback equipment can and does cause just as many problems, even if those problems are just ‘lack of enjoyment’ rather than relationship-threatening miscommunications.

And so back we go to 65daysofstatic, and also Guillemots, both of whom have made defiantly “quiet” records in absolutist, reductionist terms, that mean nothing and do nothing and sound awful when played through the kind of speakers most people run off a computer, but that become radical, enveloping, overwhelming and deeply moving experiences when played on the kind of equipment that’s designed exclusively for listening to music, rather than for running spreadsheets, word processing, accessing the internet, playing games, organising files and any of the other countless tasks that computers are used for. (And yes, I know that a CD player is just a modest computer; but an amplifier isn’t.)

By making it easier to listen to music, you make people put less effort into listening to music. Labour-saving devices are not emancipatory, utopic machines; they’re obfuscations to utopia, laziness traps, sedentary facilitators. Washing machines don’t make you free; they just give you more time to coagulate in front of the television.

I’d probably find last.fm’s holistic spiderweb of links between music fans useful, but I can’t use last.fm because I don’t listen through a computer; my CD collection, my hi-fi, my headphones cannot be scrobbled. I am more than prepared to live without last.fm’s utility if it means I enjoy the music I do listen to so much more.

In other news, I have “Martha My Dear” from The White Album stuck in my head; not sure why, given that it’s Sgt. Pepper that’s veering close to ubiquity at the moment, given its fortieth anniversary.

Also, please note that this blog looks SO MUCH BETTER on a Mac than on a PC. Forget those fucking hideous Mitchell & Webb adverts, which make me want to chuck my MacBook out of the window and take a mallet to my iMac; Macs just render graphics so much better. On a PC my pictures look pixelised and blocky, and the text font is blurred and indistinct. Not so on a Mac.

As an additional aside, Uncut magazine apparently ran an article on dynamic range compression this month. I’ve not seen it yet, but will possibly stand in a newsagent for a few minutes one day this week to have a gander. Anyway, learning this I headed to the magazine’s website to have a look, and GOOD GRIEF at their editorial blogs. If that unevolved claptrap is professional music writing, stick with the kids who do it for free.

Plagiarism

2007-06-01T07:35:00.000+01:00

The most sincere form of flattery, I guess, if a very legally dubious one, as well as being pathetic.

David Renshaw, published 25th of May.

Me, published 16th of May.

Just reference me or something! That would be cool! This is theft, pure and simple. Angry email sent to editor. AT 7AM GOOD GRIEF.

EDIT: A contrite email has been received from the editor at Gigwise, assuring me that the offending piece will be taken down. Suffice to say that the paragraph he stole was my penultimate; a rather imagist and lucid piece of prose, if I say so myself, which stuck out like a sore thumb from the rest of the piece.

I actually find this rather funny.

ANOTHER EDIT: The gigwise editor has also emailed me to compliment my Kaiser Chiefs review (linked on the right). What a strange morning.

AND ANOTHER EDIT: The piece is down and I've had a tail-between-legs apology from the culprit, who's probably a nice guy. This while thing is faintly surreal.

I Am The Great NJS

2007-05-31T13:25:00.000+01:00

More recycling; erroneously written for Stylus one absent morning, a review of Tromatic Reflexxions by Von Südenfed.

Von Südenfed is the nom-de-plume for a new collaboration between German post-techno luminaries Mouse On Mars and Fall mainman / madman / svengali / dictator Mark E. Smith, whose obstreperous career has seen him release well over twenty albums with The Fall, and recently play a foul-mouthed, chain-smoking Jesus in a BBC sitcom. He was fifty in March, and has an autobiography scheduled for publication in June.

The partnership was germinated when Smith attended a Mouse On Mars gig and subsequently guested on the “Wipe That Sound” 12” in 2005. Given his oft-expressed love of both Krautrock and electronica, it makes total sense that he would eventually find himself providing the vocals for a German techno outfit.

And indeed, as soon as you press play, Von Südenfed seems like the perfect unification; Mark E. Smith, mumbling even when he’s shouting, has never sound more brilliantly deranged than on Tromatic Reflexxions, ensnared within an axiomatic, Teutonic machine, banging his fists and trying to get out, while Mouse On Mars, aided by Smith’s lunatic genius, have finally made the album of abstracted pop techno that they’ve been desperate to concoct since the alienating philosophical experiments of Ideology in 2001.

Essentially what we have here is robotic postpunk. Despite allusions elsewhere, it doesn’t sound particularly like LCD Soundsystem; there’s no tastefully retro hipster sheen here, just genuinely danceable and futurist pop, albeit mashed, paralytic, and unintelligible. It’s hard to tell which is more exhilarating; the barrages of packet-switched digital waveforms and algorithms, or the belligerently croaked tirade of vocals, the two elements combining brilliantly to make up the likes of “Fledermaus Can’t Get It” and “Family Feud”.

It’s important to assert that this isn’t just Mark E Smith getting drunk and ranting over a Mouse On Mars record, though, but rather a genuinely new creative union that pushes each artist in previously unseen directions. The gibberish bluegrass guitars & shouting of “Chicken Yiamas” is unlike anything in Andi Toma and Jan St Werner’s history, for instance, while the blissful electropop of “Rhinohead” improbably sees Mark E Smith crooning beatifically (albeit a stream of garbled nonsense culminating in him claiming “I’m a rhino”), something few people can have ever imagined.

He’s still a cantankerous sod, mind you, at one point accusing a rival DJ of wetting the bed during “Flooded”, while his cohorts are capable of digital brainfuck as much as ever; just check the woozy fluid-loss of “Serious Brainskin”. When these elements combine to find twisted hooks such as on “That Sound Wiped” and the astonishingly deranged “Duckrog”, the results are close to terrific.

The final track, “Dearest Friends”, fully demonstrates this collaboration’s ambition; a strangely affecting Afropop-cum-chamber-pop-cum-techno kiss-off, it sounds like something from Jim O’Rourke’s splendid Eureeka album as re-imagined by an inebriated tramp, and as such is unlike anything one might expect from a union between Mark E Smith and Mouse On Mars. Tromatic Reflexxions is hopefully just the start of a fruitful relationship

Sixty Five Understands Me

2007-05-24T10:57:00.000+01:00

A year ago I wrote an article about sound. A week ago I interviewed a band who’d read that article and taken onboard what it said when recording their new album. That interview should be published on Stylus today. Here are a load of spare, contextualising words that I wrote for that piece, but which weren’t really needed. I hate waste. This is recycling…

65daysofstatic, like most instrumental postrock bands, understand that, lacking a singer, they need some kind of visual presence in their live shows to give the audience something to focus on between the sheets of cleansing noise and jackhammer rhythms. So they run video footage, edited in time to specific songs, projected presumably from a laptop onto a giant screen behind them onstage. During one song various photos of the band “on the road” are sequenced, and overlaid with subtitles detailing the carbon footprint of a modest tour…

It is revealed that, in fifteen dates across sixteen days in the UK, the band’s tour-bus pumps out 700kg of carbon per band member. The yearly safe level of carbon production is 600kg. A few years ago one might have suggested that a fossil-fuel-greedy Western rock band’s carbon footprint might be offset by millions of negligible footprints from people in the Indian subcontinent or China. But in 2007, given the rapid and voracious development of those areas some might be tempted to refer to as the Second or even Third World… not anymore. 65daysofstatic are keen recyclers and passionate observers of the erosion of both our culture and our environment; how are they supposed to tour when the very thing they love goes against their principals?

Exeter Phoenix is an odd venue to fill with noise, the auditorium as tall as it is deep, seemingly, sound easily lost in the rafters, but guitars, drums, piano and some ambitious software managed it later that evening. Live, 65daysofstatic swing between engulfing ferocity and stark austerity and they were ultimately rapturously received by an initially timid crowd, audience members fielding mobile phone calls in the middle of the quite bits notwithstanding.

This dynamism of their live show makes the naturalistic, vacillating and detailed sound of The Destruction Of Small Ideas make even more sense after the bruising consistency and attack of their second album, One Time For All Time. It’s not just an aesthete’s improvement to sonics that makes Destruction wonderful, though; compositionally the band have ramped up several levels too. Which is why it’s a shame that reviews of the new album have been mixed, although most of the negative ones appear incompetent at best in light of understanding what the band were trying to achieve; one piece I read criticised the production for being “flat”. It’s clear to me that the naysayers bemoaning the band’s development don’t understand how to listen, don’t understand what music is, don’t really know what they’re talking about. I’m not saying that 65daysofstatic have found the secret chord; but they have made a wonderful record.

But it’s difficult when not only consumers but also reviewers, who are still, just about, gatekeepers of taste, are so busy with other things that the only chance they get to listen to records is on the bus or train on their way to the office or lecture theatre. The extensive, oblique, esoteric sleeve-notes of The Destruction Of Small Ideas state unequivocally that “care has been taken to make this album quietly so you can play it LOUD”; the worry is that people either won’t notice this instruction or else won’t follow it for whatever reason.

One of the videos thrown behind and above their monstrous noise features footage of Threads, a 1984 BBC docudrama written by Barry Hines and directed by Mick Jackson which depicts, with alarmingly realist pessimism, the possible effects of a nuclear strike against Britain. Buildings are blasted apart in atomising eruptions; women piss themselves in the street; grandparents are crushed by the houses they have invested lifetimes in; skin boils, bubbles, lifts from sinew and bone. Not just the impact and immediate devastation is shown though; thirteen years are covered in the denouement of disaster, revealing an emaciated, dislocated nation beset by plague, poverty, infertility, rampantly prolific birth defects and a short, fast descent into a long, slow hell.

Threads is set in and around the working class, steel-industry city of Sheffield in Yorkshire; two members of 65daysofstatic claim it as their hometown. Understanding the impact of Threads is perhaps key to understanding the band, barely toddlers when it was first broadcast and soaked through with the imagery of their home town destroyed in a parallel, televisual universe for their entire lives. 65daysofstatic don’t want to bring about or describe the apocalypse; they want to avert it or, failing that, survive it. To do this they needed to make a record that would last, that was strong enough to evolve in hearts and minds over time. I think they’ve probably done that.

"Never do media sales"

2007-05-14T11:00:00.001+01:00

Olly wished me happy birthday today. It’s not my birthday until tomorrow. (His is 13 days after mine.) I called him a lummox and he reminded me of the time when, at university, we sent Mother’s Day cards to our mothers a month early. Olly is getting married (unsure when, but he is at least engaged, having proposed and had the proposition accepted) and so I have been pondering university again, as one does sometimes. The Mother’s Day thing is symptomatic, perhaps, of the complete and utter dislocation that we suffered at university, an utter severance from the outside world. We had televisions and radios and the internet and often the paper (The Sunday Times when I lived with Jewish Ben; The Guardian on a Friday before that – oh The Guardian on a Friday! A gaggle of us used to leave lectures and seminars at lunchtime and head for The Charles Bradlaugh pub with a Friday newspaper each, and sit, on green sofas around an aged wooden table on the upper floor in the corner by the window, drinking Guinness and perusing the culture sections, Film & Music, reading aloud reviews of albums we were concerned with, interesting articles and facts and observances, and we felt like… kings of the world, perhaps, like sitting around a table on a Friday afternoon while the world worked in its office and we drank Guinness and read broadsheets was the most important thing to be doing; the only thing to be doing. In my mind we did it a hundred times; in reality probably half a dozen. And now I have written in the Film & Music section of The Guardian on a Friday, and perhaps there is a twenty year old student at the University of Northampton now, doing what we did every Friday, and sitting in The Charles Bradlaugh with his friends reading aloud, and maybe this Friday he’ll read something I’ve written?) but still we were dislocated. Mad cow disease, the petrol crisis, Man Utd’s European Cup triumph; these things passed us by. A thousand things passed us by. Getting updates on Peter’s journey through university at the end of every term, watching the students I deal with every day, I can see that dislocation is a common thread. Olly, do you remember that evening in The Cock in the first year, the graduates, five years past us, finding our… ire, and youth, and idealism… amusing? Naïve? Endearing? I’m happier now, as you are I imagine, but if we faced ourselves as we were then, would we say the same things to us as those other graduates did?

Contractual Obligation

2007-05-14T10:34:00.000+01:00

I should post, if only so it’s not a month between posts. Dom Passantino has entire careers as freelancers for style magazines and caravanning journals in the time it takes me to write one blog post; if this isn’t motivation enough to post something, anything, then I am lost.

So. The weekend has been a gaggle of Indian and Italian food, Guinness in the afternoon, Animal Crossing: Wild World on Nintendo DS Lite, and an article for Stylus about Brian Eno. And an internal job application. Tomorrow I am 28. Last week I started writing a novel, I think. Science fiction, should you ask.

“It seems to have more purpose and less disclosure” I just wrote in an email to Olly, re; running this blog in the light of having deleted my Myspace and Facebook accounts. Social network sites being the cultural cancer of the 21st century. Disclosing emails on a blog is hardly “less disclosure” though, is it? Emma’s little brother has (or had) a picture of his (toned) stomach as his MSN Messenger avatar. No such thing as privacy.

On Friday I am going to Bristol to interview Battles for Stylus. Tony Blair is stepping down. He has made Britain financially rich and morally poor. Patrick Wolf is not retiring from music. A lemur tried to steal Emma’s handbag at the zoo, almost. Certainly it considered sitting on her lap. Sometimes I think I expect this blog to update itself – it used to, didn’t it?

Apparently blogging your way, song-by-song, through an artist’s entire career is now a burgeoning blog trend. I did that three years ago. Apparently Imperfect Sound Forever is “sweeping the interwebs”, or “taking the interwebs by storm”, or something, according to an email I received over the weekend from (I assume, given the content) a sound engineer. This is good. Every time I hear about an artist saying they’re going to make a ‘quiet’ record with some integrity, my heart swells a little. 65daysofstatic.

Time to go.

An Email To Mike About Panda Bear

2007-04-20T17:01:00.001+01:00

this and goodbadqueen are both nasty compressed mush - difference is
that with panda it's a deliberate aesthetic (and not nasty). like you
said about earworms, mantra, hypnosis - you're not meant to be able to
touch the sounds in person pitch, they're not meant to be sharp,
accurate, hyper-real; they're sensually surreal, the mix and mastering
is indistinct to allow your mind to drift, to lose concentration of
specific sounds and float in an amniotic haze on top of the music,
rather than inhabiting it's space. it's a flotation tank. you don't
like IT; you like what it DOES.

whereas goodbadqueen is actual songs with distinct parts and
instruments, mashed-up so they hurt your ears.

good compression vs bad compression. it can be an amazing tool.

have you heard the electrelane? or any of their records. that's how
rock with instruments and songs can sound. dirgey, still, simple,
still, dark, still; but precise. not hurting.

No Pithy Title

2007-04-20T11:39:00.000+01:00

Perhaps I’m wrong, and it’s not screamingly obvious that broadcasting the footage Cho Seung-hui posted to NBC mere minutes before shooting dozens of his college-mates dead is a little… insensitive… sensationalist… wrong...

The thing is, as soon as I think or type about it being “screamingly obvious” why not to show the footage, myriad reasons why the footage of Cho should be shown flit around the edges of my consciousness. There isn’t an answer; just recursive questions. Does showing the footage mean that he has somehow “won” because he wanted it to be shown? Does showing the footage reveal his motives? Does showing the footage disrespect the dead and their families? Does showing the footage merely satisfy the public’s morbid hunger for schadenfreude, rubbernecking, and celebrity gossip? Does showing the footage make Cho a posthumous celebrity? 24 hours before, Prince William was the most talked-about 20-something in the World. Now it is Cho Seung-hui, and has been for several days.

I don’t think the footage will reveal Cho Seung-hui’s motives for the simple reason that I don’t think most people who have seen it have paid it any attention, and the reason they haven’t paid it any attention is because they’ve been too busy looking for hidden meanings and Freudian slips, poses jacked from Oldboy and references to his isolated childhood. (Speaking of which; where the fuck are his parents? We know they run a dry-cleaning business and are “inconsolable”, but nothing more. This seems odd to me, to almost discount them.) Cho’s motives are clear; he spells them out. Perhaps it did start all over a girl, but that is not all of it. “Your Mercedes is never enough for you.” He hates rich people. He hates privileged students. Perhaps on a meta level he hates capitalism and its mechanisms which encourage an isolationist society, which he feels he is a victim of for whatever reason; maybe because he is psychologically unable to cope with it. Yes, he’s psychotic, perhaps sociopathic. No, no one can condone what he has done. But I think it’s perhaps easier to understand why he has done it than some would suggest. Liking Oldboy did not make him shoot 32 people dead and then turn the gun on himself. Being spurned by a girl did not make him shoot 32 people dead and then turn the gun on himself. A huge multitude of things did. Every hurt and injustice he has ever suffered, real or imagined, or perceived to have been suffered by anyone else or perpetrated by anyone else, made him do it.

George W. Bush has indirectly killed more than 200 people in Iraq this week, simply by insisting on keeping troops there in order to “help”. Had Cho Seung-hui not been able to buy guns over the counter, it is unlikely that he would have been able to shoot the people that he did. Perhaps the university campus should have and could have been shut down (I doubt Exeter could, but then we would never have a plan of action in order to do so, having much less reason for one). Perhaps his mother could have hugged him more.

We watched two films yesterday - Borat and Dot The i. Both are examples of doing things just because you can, to see if you can. Whether we can do something shouldn’t be a concern anymore; we can do anything. Whether we should, and whether we will, are the important bits.

So It Goes

2007-04-13T14:17:00.001+01:00

A few years ago Billy recommended me Slaughterhouse 5. He said it was a semi-autobiographical war story with aliens and time travel. I read it, and it was.

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the people I would name as a hero. I’ve not read every book by him, far from it, and I don’t know that much about his life, but he just seems…

I once had a dream that left me with a vague impression of a pair of giant scissors, I think. I might not have, but that’s not the point. The point is that as well as a vague impression of giant scissors, I also had a vague impression that the giant scissors in question, as big as a house or maybe a mountain or perhaps just a can-can dancer, were the greatest scissors ever.

That’s kind of how I feel about Vonnegut. It’s the same with Eno (who I’m writing about for Stylus at the moment). Not Bill Drummond though, possibly because I met him and have had a conversation about his penis with the mother of his child, although I might name him as a hero too. (Not because of his penis.) With Eno… I am content to have a handful of his records, to love his work on, say, Remain In Light and Fear of Music, to own a set of Oblique Strategies and tell that story about piss-drinking every so often. I own maybe half a dozen Vonnegut books, and have read all but two of those. I don’t read much, certainly nowhere near as much as I should. I shall read the remaining two (Galapagos and Cat’s Cradle) pretty quickly now, I guess, and probably buy a bunch more, too. But I don’t want to use up everything he did in his life and end up with nothing left for later. Ditto Eno. And now Vonnegut is dead, his works are not only finite but specifically numbered. Everyone’s works are always finite, obviously, but if someone is alive there is at least chance of one more.

Kurt Vonnegut is up in heaven now.

So it goes.

I imagine everyone in the world has written that on a blog by this point.

Oh well.

Obsolete

2007-04-05T15:20:00.001+01:00

In parsing Krauss I have become enamoured by the idea of “the redemptive obverse”. It’s my favourite idea that I’ve come across this month. As loaded with post-modern obfuscation as the phrase is, I think it’s pretty easy to understand if you break it down and use some simple, everyday props as examples. So let’s do just that!

Dictionary.com tells us that an obverse is “the front or principal surface of anything”; generally it means the side of a coin or bank note that contains (in Britain) the Queen’s head. Consider a five pound note. I don’t really think of a fiver as having a “front” or a “back”, yet if you look closely, all the import of a fiver is on one side – the Queen’s head; the promise to “pay the bearer on demand the sum of five pounds”; the hologram; the chief cashier of the Bank of England’s signature; the serial number: the back just says “Bank of England” and “five pounds” over an arbitrary picture of a figure from British history. The front is what the note DOES, what its intention and function is, its purpose; the back is just garnish added to make it look pretty.

An obverse as a philosophical (or theoretical) tool doesn’t need to be a literal flat face, then; it just has to be the initial purpose and intention. So the obverse of a mobile phone, say, is the idea (of / and the function) that it allows you to communicate with anyone, anywhere, at any time, on the move, without being tied to a physical location. This idea, of infinitely location-flexible communication, is pretty utopic; it makes the world better. Likewise the idea of a fiver is pretty utopic – it allows you to carry “money” anywhere, where we understand “money” as real physical gold stocks that are cumbersome and difficult to move. A fiver is not “money” itself, then; it’s the promise of money (but the promise is so entrenched within the thing in our minds that the fiver becomes the money, to all intents and purposes).

In the same way that the image of a figure of British history on the back of a fiver is just garnish, so multi-functionality is garnish to a mobile phone; the obverse or function or purpose or utopic intention of a mobile is not helped by the handset also having a digital camera, a walkman, Bluetooth capability, hard disk storage for data files, downloadable polyphonic ringtones or detachable fascia. In fact, this garnish, or added-value, actually detracts from the obverse by assuming greater fiscal importance – the money spent on a mobile phone is not paying for the communication it offers anymore, but rather for the extras, the multi-functionality, the garnish, the added value. The added value or garnish only exists, then, because of commodification; in order for capitalism to survive, it needs to maintain the status of the mobile phone as desirable commodity, and so it adds extra functions in order to perpetuate the desire for a mobile phone in people who already own mobile phones. The original intention of a mobile phone, its utopic function, its obverse, is obscured: you don’t want a new one because it allows you to communicate wherever you are; you want it because it has sat-nav or a death ray or some kind of thermo-nuclear self-propulsion system.

I imagine you understand this idea of the obverse now, but in the time-honoured manner of all theory-talkers everywhere, I am going to repeat myself with another clever example.

Consider the iPod; the iPod’s utopic function or intention or obverse is to enable you to listen to a choice from a wide selection of music, wherever you are. Music is a beautiful thing, and not having to cart around cumbersome CDs just in case you want to listen to Battles instead of Electrelane on the bus, is a utopian dream. To simplify even further, the obverse of an iPod is that it plays music. The procession of generations of iPods have added further functionality, gizmos and added value though. Being able to store text files, view photographs and play U2 videos obscure the obverse. Simple.

Now the redemptive part. The obverse of an object is revealed twice; initially at its birth or inception, and then once again when the object is made obsolete. New generations of iPod with video functionality explicitly reveal my battered and obsolete 3rd generation’s utopic purpose of “playing music” because it simply does not do anything other than this, and furthermore redeem it from the schematic added value of capitalism that makes newer, more technologically advanced versions more desirable as commodities. That is, because my iPod no longer has any exchange-value due its lack of video-playback and a colour screen (i.e. it being technologically obsolete) the reason I bought it in the first place (the fact that it plays music) is brought to the fore, and “saves” it from being just another product that advertising makes me want to spend money on. Essentially this means that the redemptive obverse is that which saves something from being just a commodity; you could call it an ideal intention or an essence. It is something’s reason for existing. Capitalism obscures the purpose of a thing by adding garnish, but realising the purpose once again redeems the thing in question from the process of commodification. The redemptive obverse.

Why am I so enamoured of this idea? Because it’s idealistic, and because it can be used to reveal the idealism behind almost anything to which you apply it. Consider the redemptive obverses of things; on a simple level, a university’s redemptive obverse is to extend academic knowledge of (and within) the world. A car’s is to transport people; a musician’s is to play music. A Compact Disc’s is more specific and so seemingly more complex – to provide greater durability, convenience and sound quality (via increased dynamic range) than vinyl.

The redemptive obverse allows us to re-establish what it is that a thing or a person or an action was meant to be doing, before it or we became distracted by capitalism. It takes us back to an idealistic state, but not an adolescently idealistic state, because we are now enlightened and matured via experience, and thus (one hopes) less likely to once again lose sight of our true intention.

In A Voyage on the North Sea Krauss suggests that the post-medium condition of art (roughly microcosmic to the post-modern condition of everything) allows the redemptive obverse of (forms of) art to be revealed. If postmodernism is “incredulity to meta-narratives” then we can take meta-narratives as the capitalist garnish that distracts us from ideal intention, and incredulity as the tool which enables us to reveal and re-establish ideal intentions. Humanity through emancipation. Our evolution has ceased to be spiritual and has become a capitalist evolution of the market; if we can redeem ourselves from the market, we can start to evolve properly once again. This is why post-modernism is important, possibly, because it makes the world a better place by freeing us to fulfil potential; unfortunately the protracted semantic battles that so many theorists and writers get caught up in obscure the writers’ own redemptive obverses, i.e. to tell us how to use post-modernism in order to make the world a better place.

Now that that spurt of woolly and non-specific idealism is out of the way, I shall do some very specific bitching and swearing. I hate garnish and added value; I have written in the past about my distaste for ornaments and also for the inclusion of peas and carrots arbitrarily alongside any given “British” cuisine in certain types of eating establishments, and also specifically about added value with CDs. The redemptive obverse of an album is the music it contains. Garnish or added value is an obfuscation that allows, in this case, bands and musicians and record companies to get away with substandard actual product; i.e. bad albums (whether that be because the songs are poor or the music is over-compressed during mixing and mastering or whatever other criteria you would consider to contribute to an album’s music being bad). Adding a bonus DVD or some stickers or a poster distracts from that substandard product, from that compromised reductive obverse. I don’t want a free DVD with an album; I just want a fucking good album in the first place. The garnish makes me less likely to buy a record; capitalism becomes self-defeating because the thing it is selling gets lost in the packaging. This is so obvious that it hurts. So let’s go back to source and make the album itself better.

But what reveals the redemptive obverse of the album? The MP3 – the new technology which makes the “album” obsolete. If an MP3 is of shitty music you cannot hide that behind a special edition DVD or a holographic cover sticker or a “UK bonus track”. Far from killing the album format, where the album format is a cohesive collection of songs presented together in a physical format (be it vinyl or CD), the MP3 has actually compelled me to go back towards it, to rediscover its redemptive obverse, to see that the album, stripped of garnish, is not a capitalist unit of fiscal exchange but rather a utopian artistic process. It transcends its status as a commodity. I seem to remember that phrase being used as a definition of “great art”.

Speaking of the redemptive obverse of the CD - Imperfect Sound Forever has been selected to be in the 2007 edition of the Da Capo Best Music Writing Anthology, which I am, needless to say, quite chuffed about. It kind of reminds me of my own reductive obverse as regards music writing.

Some quick thoughts, that may or may not be related.

Listening to Califone on the train to London I was struck by how their spacious, uncompressed production made every constituent part of their complex arrangements (or sound-worlds) seem like a hook, because every part was distinct, existing within its own space, fully-formed, and a pleasure to experience to the extent that I wanted to experience it again, and soon. Now Califone’s music couldn’t be called “compositionally hooky” in any meaningful or traditional sense - their slowly unfurling space-country is often melodically dour or cloaked, their tempos are tepid, etcetera - and yet it is, phenomenologically, hooky, and much more so than, say, the current Thirteen Senses record, which exists in a much more obviously lineated pop landscape than the more experimental Califone. I’m sure there’s something to say about redemptive obverses there and capitalism’s compulsion of pop music to compress destroying the very hooks that pop music attracted people to itself with in the first place.

I had a vague compulsion to write something along the lines of “I am not my record collection. My record collection is something that I use to make my life better,” in the vein of this old Soulseeking column, but I lost the essence of what I wanted to say. It was triggered, I suspect, by my complete lack of sentimentality in the recent focus groups surrounding the restructuring at work; I have effectively talked my own department into obsolescence. Also, I purchased AppleWorks, which is allowing me to build a new database detailing my record collection.

Someone asked me what the high point of a (specific) band’s career was. (You can probably guess the specific band concerned.) As sad and self-defeating as it seems, my strongest instinct was to say “the period before I had heard their music, when I was only aware of them as a concept, and they were a shining, beautiful, golden concept full of amazing potential.” Potential is always greater than realisation, because the idea of what’s possible, the obverse, is always greater than the (necessarily flawed) reality.

Somebody's Watching You (and Me)

2007-04-05T11:11:00.001+01:00

Two brief ideas.

Firstly, the conference I attended in London on Monday concerned copyright in the digital age. One tangential presentation detailed online identity authentication, specifically for students to access online journals and the like remotely. My overriding deduction from the information we were given on this topic is that ID cards are going to be effectively introduced via the back-door of higher-education digital identity management, which will, within the next few years, result in students (customers) being given online IDs at primary school which they carry through their entire academic career and which seamlessly integrate with their email, online social networks, and also banking. This is an inevitable truth in the digital copyright age. There may not be a literal, physical card to start off with, but there will be soon enough (student ID / library cards already existing, obviously), and it will doubtless have biometric metadata embedded in it. If you have to have one in order to be a student and use online and library resources, and 50% of people go through university, that's half the population of 20-30 year olds within the next decade. For the first time EVERYTHING rather than just financial transactions will be being monitored – who you’re friends with on Facebook, what books you read for study, what doors your card-swipe accesses – and all this information will be compiled together in one easy-to-browse system.

Secondly; in reference to the “talking CCTV” cameras that are making the news lately, I can only feel sad that Baudrillard died before this made the news; he would have adored it. He wrote extensively about the transformation of “man” into “the screen” (the idea that all our work time in the computer age is mediated via a screen, and that all our leisure time is too [be it TV or PC] and that soon enough almost all our communications would be too - video messaging, cameras in mobiles, etcetera). Psychologically people can't deal with their still image (i.e. photographs), let alone their moving image. Put a camera in front of anyone and they act weird, either going irrationally shy or irrationally extrovert or a combination thereof. CCTV has so far been a passive and largely ignorable part of life; making it interactive by having it talk, chastise, reprimand, etcetera the people it is watching, makes it a conscious and present part. People will go batshit because we can't deal with our own image. It is the same as when you show a cat a mirror; it does not understand what it sees. While we may do as a species on an intellectual level, I’m not sure we do on an emotional level. One only needs to consider the phenomenon of reality television (or just celebrity culture in general) to understand this.

Through a combination of technological development, environmental and natural resource concerns, happenstance, international relations and eye-on-history politics, the era of New Labour has shown Blair’s government to be the most heavy-handed of all time. And we have gone willingly into this age with seemingly no concern for freedom beyond the freedom to spend. Orwell was two decades out.

AdSense

2007-03-30T15:34:00.001+01:00

I made a prediction about 18 months ago to a few people that “one day we will all work for Google”. As facetious as it seems, I was being entirely serious.

Just now I posted on this here blog of mine about my current listening habits, etc (just scroll down, kids!), and as I navigated away from the post-confirmation page to actually look at this new post (not so new now that this one exists), to check formatting was OK and see if the picture looked good (this blog is really all about the pictures; I know you don’t believe me but the words are totally arbitrary), I noticed that Blogger, or Google or The Corporation or Big Brother or whatever you want to call it, was offering me money.

Specifically it was offering to make me money if I signed up to AdSense and, presumably, allowed Google-sourced “relevant ads” to adorn this blog. Now, aside from Ian, who commented below, my girlfriend, and Colin and Glen who I know have signed up to the RSS feed, I don’t really expect that there’s anyone reading this strange little corner of the internet (which is shit, btw), let alone enough people to click the AdSense banner as many times as it takes to make me any money. (Would it know if I clicked them loads myself?)

Some brief thoughts, because I really wasn’t intending on posting again so soon, but these ideas interest me;

1.
Should I sign-up to AdSense?

2.
Is the growing popularity of Web.2 and net-savvy browsers like Mozilla that allow you to block adverts, plus the increasing immunity to adverts that lots of net-users exhibit (Emma and I have discussed this – neither of us ever click on any net-based adverts; we barely even ever notice they exist), plus several other factors far too woolly and barely-even-holistically-linked reasons that I cannot recall, going to lead to a world where companies realise that advertising in the traditional sense simply does not work and stop spending all that fucking money on viral marketing and graphic design to hawk their products, thus depriving various institutions and publications that rely on ad-money in order to exist the very lifeblood revenue of advertising that they require?

3.
I forgot this one while I was writing that last one

4.
I have deleted / deactivated both my Myspace and Facebook pages because they were annoying me and social network sites are the cultural cancer of the 21st century.

5.
If you’re reading, even if you’re Ian, Emma, Colin or Glen, would you please do me the good-favour of saying “hello” or suchlike in the comments box so that I know who my audience is? Also mention if you like the pictures, please.

I am in London on Monday for a conference on copyright. Thought you ought to know.

Current Listening

2007-03-30T15:10:00.001+01:00

In unrelated news, a certain online music/books/DVDs/stuff retailer named after a rainforest really, really wants me to buy Neon Bible.

“Last year was rubbish for music” is a common complaint in circles I occasionally find overlapping like a ven-diagram of music-lovers. Personally I thought last year was great; Midlake, Guillemots, Grizzly Bear, Final Fantasy, e.s.t., Scott Walker, Jenny Lewis, TV On The Radio, Howe Gelb, King Biscuit Time, Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, Lambchop, Shack…

I think every year is great. This year is also shaping up to be mighty fine; LCD Soundsystem, !!!, Patrick Wolf, Battles, Electrelane, The Field, Do Make Say Think, Acoustic Ladyland… It’s not even April yet. There’s always stuff worth listening to, and generally stuff worth falling in love with.

If you think a year in music is rubbish, you’re not trying hard enough. You can’t expect it to come to you. How often has Radio 1 enlightened you? (Feature idea there – Top Ten Moments When Listening To Radio 1 Actually Made Me Go Batshit Over New Music. I can think of… three. Delakota; Guillemots; “Blind”.)

The life of a music writer is an odd life. Much less interesting than people suppose. It involves a lot of listening to records on one’s own, and then trying to think of something witty or incisive to say about them. It’s not exciting. Maybe it is for some others who do this, but I doubt it.

It also, potentially, divorces you from being able to listen to music the way a “regular fan” does, or looks as though it might from the outside – OK, so “free music” is within reach of anyone with broadband and no fear of the RIAA or BPI, but listening to something in order to formulate an opinion on it rather than just because you enjoy it (or suspect you will enjoy it) is an alien process, perhaps. But is it really what music writers do? Is all our listening critical, purposeful? Do we sit around in an office playing records and discussing their merits? I never have. I consider myself a fan who writes, very definitely, and my listening is still (or, rather, is once again) very much governed by what I like rather than what I feel I need to hear. I simply don’t have the time or heart to try and take in everything.

I think the “normalcy” of music writers’ tastes and listening habits is something that could do with a bit of demythologising, especially in the age of the unpaid internet “critic” (although the ontology and ramifications of the word “critic” are another meme on my mind lately), and as such I have a couple of ideas for Stylus that may see fruit in the next few months. (Mythology, or pop.cult. mythology anyway, and the destruction thereof being something I have always been very keen on anyway, and I’m getting keener. [Listened to The Stone Roses the other day and was struck by how monochrome and dull it was; hmmm.])

As such and in the meantime, here are three current favourite artists who are frequenting the iPod, the hi-fi, the head-fi and sometimes the car, who don’t have new product to pimp and who I shan’t be reviewing any time soon but whose music nonetheless thrills and delights me.

Boredoms
Re-releases of the Super Roots series of EPs and mini-albums (or whatever you want to call them) have piqued my interest. I’ve had Vision Creation Newsun and Super æ for a few years, but aside from one particularly memorable evening dancing to VCN on Emma’s bed with her little brother (then 12 and bewildered / fascinated by what we were listening to and why we were behaving like nutjobs, now 15 and comfortably ensconced in self-identified chav-hell), I’d never really given either much time. I love the idea of crazy Japanese psychedelic rockers playing 10-minute call & response drum grooves but… Perhaps it was that Super æ begins with some nasty, dissonant guitars that put me off enough to make me put it on the shelf and think “one day”. (How many books, DVDs and CDs are waiting for that day? And when will that day come? When I retire and can finally catch-up on my cultural-stockpile pension?) Maybe I first listened during a period when I wanted something soothing (which, of course, some of Super æ is, once you get past those opening guitars)? Whatever, a moment’s research via AMG convinced me to order Super Roots 7 and run Super AE through my headphones properly, all the way to the end, and I was smitten. Super Roots 7 became great driving fodder, and Pop Tatari, purloined from emusic, proved to be much less abrasive and much more fun than I had surmised from hearsay. I think I have an aversion to the word “punk”, probably because the punks are now attempting to do what the baby-boomers have done so effectively for most of the last 30 years – i.e. lord it over current pop culture, constantly claiming their revolution to be the most important and best revolution ever, until I (and presumably lots of other people too) get thoroughly fucking sick of it.

Long Fin Killie
I actually do feel a strong urge to write something about Long Fin Killie, and pretty soon too, although for obvious reasons it won’t be a review for obvious reasons. I’d even try and not make it a simple “Luke Sutherland is a genius” piece, either. (Seven albums [under various guises] and three novels in eleven years suggest he may well be a genius though.) Emma has observed that I “always” listen to them on a Sunday morning, which is an interesting phenomenon and may actually form the basis of what I do end up writing. Three albums, all brilliant – interestingly they got more concise and their albums blessed with greater brevity as they went on, songstructures and musicianship tightly winding-in from the breathless, endless vistas of their debut. I couldn’t pick a favourite record by them.

Califone
A recent discovery thrown up by my adventures in fidelity, Califone’s miraculously arranged, engineered, mixed and mastered records have become my default headphone listening choice. To be offensively reductive as only a music writer can be, imagine Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot dissolved in acid and reassembled from only the basic elements – country guitars, whispering, feedback, wafts of electronics – with ego, epic gestures and sense of import drained away. Songs are not obvious or enlarged here and neither are sonics – every gesture is microcosmic, deeply felt and ruminatively placed. Without wanting to become compression-geek again, they joy I get from listening to Califone, as well as being from their subtle tunes and the deeply-felt (but never over-egged) emotions within those tunes, is a lot to do with their music establishing real, physically topographical spaces that I can climb inside, especially with headphones on (current weapons of choice are a pair of AKG K601s running from a Meier Audio Corda Headfive, geek-fans). There’s amazing control and care taken in the making of these records, and one can only conclude from that, that Tim Rutili and co. care very much about what they’re doing. It’s a shame that more artists don’t seem to take as much care.

Ontology

2007-03-28T10:57:00.001+01:00

“Communication involves other people.”

I wrote this in a comments box of a Stylus review the other day, after another impenetrable tirade of banal linguistic trickery by one of our frequent commentors, who seems to take pleasure in a mean-spirited mockery of those around him by writing in such an obtuse and high-minded style.

Last night I spent two and a half hours parsing Rosalind Krauss’ densely-written A Voyage on the North Sea, in which she explains her vision of a “post-medium condition” in art theory. It involves several things, namely semantic discord over the term “medium”: the end of “the arts” as separatist disciplines, genres and techniques and the triumph of “art” as creative expression: conceptual art as anti-commodity-commodity: conceptual art as (critical) comment on both itself and its venue: and art as revealing the process of art rather than the object of art; that is art as “affect” rather then just “effect”. For instance Michelangelo’s David is not just a marble sculpture – it is the whole ontological process of the sculpture, from commission, planning, man with hammer, chisel and block of marble, to end result. The “art” is the whole process, not just the finished artefact.

I’m not an art historian and I’m not a post-modernist (maybe I am, though – who can say?), but the ideas struck me as essentially pretty simple. Conceptual art triumphs over “the arts” because it is not limited by technique, tradition, or tools; it is not separatist and it is not reductionist; it does not see painting as typified only by “flatness” at a base level. Take Magritte’s infamous pipe that is not a pipe; here it is;

The “art” in Magritte’s pipe is not that it is a painting, which is flat, and contains paints applied to canvas in a certain pattern; it is that it reveals explicitly the process of art. The phrase written beneath the image of the pipe makes you realise that you are looking at a painting and not a real object – we know this already, but like realist cinema imitates documentary which in turn imitates real life, the point of art is often to obscure its own process via mythology, to make you feel moved by something fake by making it appear not-fake, or real: this is what culture is; a system of mythologies which make the artificial (social, planned, cultural, man-made, representative) appear natural (evolved, spontaneous, spiritual, organic, real) – by encouraging you to ponder on the nature and origin (process) of the art.

Looked at as a simple material thing, as “just” paint on canvas, Magritte’s pipe is pretty dull – it’s a lifeless painting with drab colours, the proportions are odd, the lines unrealistic – but looked at as a conceptual whole in which you consider the process and reasoning that brought it into being, it is an enlightening marvel; “this is NOT a pipe!” one’s mind exclaims the moment you “get” it, and one feels a little smarter for having realised Magritte’s ~~schtick~~, or ~~joke~~, or ~~deep metaphysical point~~ (delete as appropriate). (Sad that so much conceptual art should be so rich in concept and so poor in sensual, tactile physicality – place a more equal emphasis on the idea and the object, please! I am sure more people would be better disposed towards conceptual art if it was as pleasant to look upon as it was stimulating to think about.)

The thing is that pretty much any art reveals its process if you look closely enough – the brushstrokes in a painting; the chisel marks in a sculpture – so Krauss’ fight against the modernists, who had reduced painting’s essence to “flatness”, perhaps rushes too far in the opposite direction, over-praising the concept in order to defeat the notion of “flatness” as the essence of a painting, or any specific physical characteristics and/or tool-sets as being the “essence” of any work of art, in any medium / genre / discipline. (One might argue that some conceptual art relies too much on the concept as its essence and that this kind of conceptual essentialism is just as reductive as materialist essentialism – Emin’s bed, perhaps; on a conceptual level it is her life, her emotional structure, her sexual history, her most vulnerable, sleeping self; but it is also just a bed, and painfully mundane to look at.)

These ideas are pretty simple; we all know them and our brains automatically process them a thousand times a day as we encounter magazine covers, billboards, televisions, etcetera. We (almost) all know the ontological ramifications of the Nike swoosh – sport, achievement, commerce, style, sweatshops, more – understanding that isn’t a post-modern trick; it’s common sense and awareness.

I had considered for a long time continuing my education past undergraduate level; if one thing turned me off, it was the fact that the area I’d have continued studying – pop music, pop culture, etcetera – would have meant necessarily having to deal with people like Deleuze, with post-modernism and the unnecessary density of post-modern prose which is self-destructive because it actively discourages communication of simple-yet-important ideas by alienating anyone unwilling to parse its lengthy hall-of-mirrors passages. I hate it. I hated it when a lecturer in my final year read out a passage of Deleuze and said “there; I don’t understand it, but it’s genius.” It’s not genius; it’s smoke and mirrors, obfuscation, ivory towers, gate-keeping, exclusivity, nasty intellectual egotism. The ideas beneath “God is a lobster; or a double-pincer; or a double-bind” may be genius, but “God is a lobster” is not; it is ridiculous. I delved into Sokal & Bricmont’s work; none of my lecturers had heard of them and I walked away from academia disgusted by the social irresponsibility of the culture it encourages in undergraduates as well as by the intellectual impostures, straight into a job at a university.

I’ve taken tomorrow off to parse some more Krauss.

I'm Not Scared

2007-03-19T11:50:00.000Z

We watched Gabriele Salvatore’s excellent Io Non Ho Paura at the weekend (amongst other things - Motorcycle Diaries was another). I’d been meaning to watch it for an age – either Mark Kermode on the radio or Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian had raved about it when it was released in cinemas about three years ago, and we’ve had a copy (two, in fact) of the Italian release at work for a couple of years – but simply hadn’t got round to it until now.

The first thing it reminded me of was Terence Malick’s Days of Heaven. Malick, in theory, is one of my favourite directors, but the paucity of his material, and the overlong pretension of his later work (particularly The Thin Red Line) makes it difficult to be a serious fan. Badlands and Days of Heaven are both pretty-much perfect, though.

Visually Io Non Ho Paura echoes the lavish cornfield cinematography of Days of Heaven; but rather than the romantic twilight ambience of that film, it’s a childhood dream that takes place in broad daylight and strong washes of primary colours – the yellow corn, the blue sky, a boy’s red t-shirt. The southern Italian landscape is as much a member of the cast as the awesome Giuseppe Cristiano; in fact on one level you could see the film as a romance between Cristiano’s character (Michele) and the fields through which he rides his bike, the trees in which he lazes above the scorching earth, and the abandoned stone barns and outhouses where he finds adventure. Where Malick’s film is (visually) all about grieving for the closing of the day, about ruminations and remembrances, Salvatore’s is about the sensual joy of the present; the high sun, the cooling breeze. About being a boy in a summer with no cares.

Except, of course, that there are cares and there are worries, and there are also terrible, strange, senseless (to a child) crimes. Michele discovers a boy chained-up in a hole in the ground, half-starved, blinded by sunlight and so delirious he thinks he is dead…

Io Non Ho Paura is one-third beatific childhood escapism, one third grown-ups being assholes, and one third mystery in a deep, dank hole. So, in a roundabout way, is Pan’s Labyrinth, which is the other film that Io Non Ho Paura reminded me of. Except, of course, that it predates Del Toro’s Franco/fantasy film by about three years. Both films have wonderful child leads of around the same age, both are seen almost exclusively through that child’s eyes, both hinge on daydreaming and the way daydreams make terrible adult events and crimes seem almost banal… In fact, so similar are the films that both child leads are shot by their (real or assumed) fathers in the final moments of each, whether with cold-hearted deliberation or by panicked accident.

Io Non Ho Paura is certainly the less phantasmagorical of the two; the daydreams of the lead are of a Boy’s Own Adventure ilk, rooted in noirish kidnappings and ransom notes; while those of Ofelia in Pan’s Labyrinth are concerned with fairies, mystical tasks and magic spells, less absent-minded fantasy than desperate escapism. It’s also the less brutal; the crimes in Salvatore’s film are perpetrated by bumbling, jealous adults, victims of the system rather than its enforcers. Michele, we are led to think, or hope, does not die from the gunshot inflicted upon him by his father, who is not a torturer or fascist – just a poor man with half a brain who can think enough to dream himself out of poverty but not enough to do it by any means other than criminal. Ofelia, in the real world, has no hope but to die at the close of Pan’s Labyrinth, even if she is reborn a princess in her fading dream.

My instinct would have been to say that I preferred Del Toro’s film – fantastical realism being theoretical catnip to my cinema tastes – but I’m unsure. There was something in the gentle nature of Salvatore’s film that made the drama, when it came, seem almost more poignant than the desperate, unremitting nastiness of that in Pan’s Labyrinth. Even Ofelia’s daydreams are frightening – the giant toad, the Pale Man and even the ancient, rickety faun himself are all fearsome apparitions, less an escape from the unpleasantness of Captain Vidal than a displacement. Perhaps Io Non Ho Paura creates a better balance; perhaps its freshness to me is a boon. No matter – both are wonderful films, and so similar in so many ways that I’m surprised not to have seen mention of Io Non Ho Paura in relation to Pan’s Labyrinth.

I am intending to revisit Del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone soon, as well as Fumihiko Sori’s Ping Pong and Cuaron’s Children of Men (again).

I Am A Target Market

2007-03-13T16:18:00.001Z

I’ve not taken a decent photo for ages. This needs to be rectified, if only because a primary reason for writing here is that I love heading posts with my own pictures. Please excuse this current shameless use of old images.

Anyway.

I don’t get Arcade Fire. The dude’s voice annoys me, the histrionic songwriting and arrangements annoy me, and the heavy-handed compression on the debut album annoys me too. Also, I dislike epic Springsteen. This adds up to not caring enough to investigate Neon Bible. (Also, dreadful title and worse cover.) I don’t, however, begrudge anyone else liking them. Liking music is healthy, and, as an editor said to me in an email several months ago, people who like different records to me aren’t idiots; they just like different records. (Some of them may be idiots, of course, but then again so might be lots of people who like the same records.)

What I do begrudge is people who assume that liking Arcade Fire automatically makes you a more worthy or discerning or less easily-manipulated listener than liking, say, The Feeling. Arcade Fire may be better than The Feeling (in objective “who can play their instruments better” terms they’re probably not though), but that’s a totally subjective judgements call; I don’t like either (and neither of them are particularly revolutionary or groundbreaking). By choosing to like one over the other you are sadly not escaping the insidious cogs of the capitalist machinery that drives the music industry. Arcade Fire have a PR team just as ravenous for the right kind of success and exposure as The Feeling do; I know, I get their emails. So does any band who has any kind of PR representation at all, even if it’s just themselves loading tunes into Myspace. If you like music, you are being marketed to.

Case in point: About a week ago Todd Burns at Stylus emailed me suggesting I might like the forthcoming album by Battles. Battles are a manic, irreverent, experimental and largely instrumental post-rock / math-rock “supergroup” signed to Warp – about as far from the “Marks & Spencers MOR” of The Feeling and the broadsheet-approved alternative.rock.com of Arcade Fire as you can get without being Louis Sclavis. I downloaded the files of the album from the Stylus promos, and had a listen. Sure enough, I liked it a lot; Todd knows my tastes pretty well. Two or three days later, apropos of nothing, I received an email from the people doing the PR for Battles – they’d got my address from Patrick Wolf’s PR people, they thought I’d like Battles, did I want a promo of the album and was I interested in doing an interview with them for Stylus? See? I am a target market. Even something as (currently) obscure and “experimental” as Battles wants listeners, wants exposure. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re not being watched too.

A Story Worth Telling

2007-03-13T10:42:00.000Z

A little voice keeps telling me to “write more” on here, but motivation is difficult. Partly it’s because blogging seems rather passé in 2007 – BBC Radio FiveLive are exhorting listeners to “blog” via the BBC’s own website once again next week (on March 20th, national storytelling day, or something), and while I can see the good in this (creativity and communication being good things almost any way you look at them) the steady stream of mundane profundity that results is deadening rather than moving – “today I start cognitive therapy to deal with my abused childhood” / “yesterday my father died, how I wish we’d talked more” / “our baby son died a year ago today”.

Each of these events taken individually is a tragedy or a triumph for the person involved, and basic human nature means I can empathise, but none of them are national news and none of them are entertainment, and I only have so much empathy to spread around anyway. At a push they could be deemed emotional education, but I can’t help but feel that the lessons they can teach us would be much better learnt from those around us in daily life rather than from disembodied strangers via a national radio station’s website. I’d rather save my empathy for the people I interact with everyday than use it on abstract strangers.

This interesting article from New York Metro offers a deeper investigation into the nature of the kind of ostentatious confessional that the internet seems to encourage. My girlfriend deleted her Myspace account a few weeks ago; at the time I thought it was hasty but now I’m thinking of doing the same.

The other thing preventing me from using this blog more is the lack of communication it inspires. Blogging seems like… not quite tilting at windmills, but perhaps talking to a wall. I decided against putting a hit counter on here so I have no idea how many views this will get, how many people will read it, and the lack of response is disheartening. Almost everything I write is intended to begin a dialogue; possibly this is a reason why I’ve not pushed myself further with my writing – a piece in a newspaper or magazine is dead as soon as it’s printed, no responses, no ideas flowering from it, no communication. Of course the ironic flipside of that is what I bemoaned in the paragraphs above – when everyone responds because everyone can. Human culture is about storytelling, and there are currently more and easier vehicles for telling stories than there have ever been.

Identity Theft

2007-03-09T14:23:00.000Z

Just so you know, this is not me.

Soulseeking

2006-12-01T11:38:00.000Z

The last fifteen months have seen me write an awful lot of material, the vast majority for Stylus, about the nature of consumption of music, starting with an article called Soulseeking about excessive downloading, and then following on about six months later with Imperfect Sound Forever, a long piece about modern mainstream mixing and mastering techniques and how they severely compromise sound quality. Imperfect Sound Forever has become one of the most read and linked articles we’ve ever run at Stylus, of which I am very proud. I’ve received an awful lot of positive feedback from people – music writers, producers, engineers, people who run independent record companies, and just plain old music fans like myself – about Imperfect Sound Forever, and the article has been written about and (I am lead to believe) inspired similar pieces in a number of online and print publications. Even Bob Dylan got in on the action with his near-infamous “modern records are dreadful, there’s sound all over them” outburst just before the release of his new album. I’ve even been asked by more than one person if I’d cast my ear over working mixes and masters of their music and give my “considered opinion”, which is most flattering.

After the initial article, Soulseeking become a (semi)regular column in its own right, written largely by myself and other Stylus writers, but also with occasional contributions from other writers such as Marcello Carlin. I’ve written twenty editions of Soulseeking myself in the past year or so, and probably less record reviews. I have little time for record reviews these days, and little inclination to take major part in the big, whole-staff-written articles we run at Stylus every so often. I have, as ever, little interest in music writing per se – I write about music because I love music and I love writing, not because I love music writing.

Although actually I’m not sure I love writing, I just kind of have to do it.

Soulseeking is part of the reason why I haven’t really run a regular blog for the last year and a half, despite having had this new one set-up for most of 2006 (with a fantastic bespoke template by Mr Colin Ramsay), as well as general messageboard participation in various locations, work commitments, and various other things. Soulseeking is probably also a big part of the reason why I was approached by The Guardian to contribute to their Brief Encounters column in Friday’s Film & Music section. It’s nice having something that my mum and my gran can read published in a national newspaper. The editor has also been very helpful.

I’m not sure where this is going, which I guess is the nature of blogging. Uergh. It’s so 2003, darling. I think I had intended to link up all the pertinent pieces from Stylus over the last year or so that link together, to place them in order and try and form some kind of narrative. So that’s what I’ll do…

Soulseeking
Bands
Talking
iPop
Imperfect
Diary
Revisited
Perfect One
Perfect Two
Hate
Painting
No Music
Worst
Death
Best

I’m not sure where I go next.

Two Hundred

2006-12-01T10:11:00.000Z

A friend of mine, who is an arsehole, occasionally makes cheeky public demands of me, knowing full well that I will have to cede to his wishes and carry out the demands, because that’s the type of person I am. The last one was a request for my top 100 albums ever. He knows I hate lists. You know I hate lists. Like I say, he’s an arsehole.

What’s the methodology for choosing your favourite hundred albums ever? My approach was simple, crude, and honest. I went along my shelves and nudged out any albums I decided I “loved” so they stood apart from the gathering hordes of musical mediocrity. Then I went back and counted them.

I nudged about 190.

So I thought, fuck it, and nudged another ten or so, to make two hundred. Then I typed them out.

The list is currently only in existence on a messageboard, and is probably about to fall off the end of the database, so I thought I’d conserve it for posterity here. It’s unranked, just alphabetical, so you’ll have to guess if you want to know my favourite record ever. The one I always say, whenever anyone asks me, is just a stock response, designed to either end or stimulate further debate depending on who asked me.

So… here it is…

Aaliyah - Aaliyah
Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92
Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2
Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album
A.R. Kane - “i”
Asian Dub Foundation - Community Music
Associates - Sulk
At The Drive-In - Vaya
Augie March - Strange Bird
Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour Of Bewilderbeast
Bark Psychosis - Hex
Bark Psychosis - //Codename:Dustsucker
Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Beastie Boys - Paul’s Boutique
Beastie Boys - Check Your Head
Beatles - Revolver
Beatles - White Album
Beatles - Abbey Road
Belle & Sebastian - If You’re Feeling Sinister
Beta Band - The 3 EPs
Big Star - Third / Sister Lovers
Bjork - Debut
Black Grape - It’s Great When You’re Straight… Yeah!
Blue Nile - Hats
Blur - Parklife
Boo Radleys - Giant Steps
Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun
Bowie, David - Ziggy Stardust
Bowie, David - “Heroes”
Bowie, David - Low
British Sea Power - Open Season
Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People
Brubeck Quartet, The Dave - Time Out
Buckey, Jeff - Grace
Bush, Kate - The Hounds Of Love
Byrds - Younger Than Yesterday
Can - Ege Bamyasi
Can - Future Days
Cave, Nick - The Boatman’s Call
Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole
Clash - London Calling
Clientele - The Violet Hour
Cocteau Twins - Treasure
Cocteau Twins - Heaven Or Las Vegas
Congos - The Heart Of The Congos
Cure - Disintegration
D’Angelo - Voodoo
Davis, Miles - Kind Of Blue
Davis, Miles - In A Silent Way
Davis, Miles - Bitches Brew
De La Soul - 3ft High & Rising
Delgados - Hate
Disco Inferno - D.I. Go Pop
Dismemberment Plan - Emergency & I
DJ Shadow - ...Endtroducing
Dodgy - Homegrown
Drake, Nick - Five Leaves Left
Echo & The Bunnymen - Ocean Rain
Elbow - Asleep In The Back
Elliott, Missy - Miss E… So Addictive
Elliott, Missy - Under Construction
Embrace - Drawn From Memory
Eminem - The Marshall Mathers LP
Eno, Brian - Another Green World
Eno, Brian - Music For Airports
Eno, Brian and Byrne, David - My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts
Fela Kuti - Expensive Shit / He Miss Road
Fennesz - Endless Summer
Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
Four Tet - Pause
Fugazi - Repeater + 3 Songs
Fugazi - The Argument
Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
Funkadelic - Standing In The Verge Of Getting It On
Funkadelic - One Nation Under A Groove
Gang Of Four - Entertainment
Gang Starr - Step In The Arena
Gaye, Marvin - What’s Going On
Genis/GZA - Liquid Swords
Gibbons & Rustin Man, Beth - Out Of Season
Godspeed You Black Emperor - F# A# (Infinity)
Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
Guillemots - Through The Windowpane
Guns N’ Roses - Appetite For Destruction
Hancock, Herbie - Headhunters
Harvey, PJ - Rid Of Me
Hayes, Isaac - Hot Buttered Soul
Head & The Strands, Michael - The Magical World Of The Strands
Hendrix Experience, The Jimi - Are You Experienced?
Hendrix Experience, The Jimi - Axis: Bold As Love
Hendrix Experience, The Jimi - Electric Ladyland
Hubbard - Freddie - Red Clay
Idlewild - 100 Broken Windows
Jackson, Michael - Thriller
Jaga Jazzist - A Livingroom Headrush
Jane’s Addiction - Ritual De Lo Habitual
Jay-Z - The Blueprint
King, Carole - Tapestry
Kyuss - Welcome To Sky Valley
Lambchop - Nixon
Lambchop - Is A Woman
Led Zeppelin - I
Led Zeppelin - II
Lo-Fidelity Allstars - How To Operate With A Blown Mind
Love - Forever Changes
Mahavishnu Orchestra - The Inner Mounting Flame
MAKE-UP - Save Yourself
Manitoba - Up In Flames
Marley & The Wailers, Bob - Exodus
Massive Attack - Blue Lines
Massive Attack - Mezzanine
Mayfield, Curtis - Curtis
Mayfield, Curtis - Superfly
MC5 - Kick Out The Jams
MC5 - High Time
Mercury Rev - See You On The Other Side
Midlake - The Trials Of Van Occupanther
Mingus, Charles - The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady
Mitchell, Joni - Blue
Mogwai - Rock Action
Morgan, Lee - The Sidewinder
Morphine - Cure For Pain
Mos Def - Black On Both Sides
Mountain Goats - Tallahassee
Mouse On Mars - Iaora Tahiti
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
Nas - Illmatic
Necks - Drive-By
‘O’Rang - Herd Of Instinct
Orbital - Orbital (Brown)
Orbital - Snivilisation
Orbital - In Sides
O’Rourke, Jim - Eureeka
O’Rourke, Jim - Insignificance
Outkast - Aquemini
Outkast - Stankonia
Pablo, Augustus - King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown
Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Pixies - Surfer Rosa / Come On Pilgrim
Plaid - Rest Proof Clockwork
Polar Bear - Held On The Tips Of Fingers
Portishead - Dummy
Primal Scream - Screamadelica
Primal Scream - XTRMNTR
Prince - Sign O’ The Times
Prodigy - Music For The Jilted Generation
Public Enemy - It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
Public Enemy - Fear Of A Black Planet
Pulp - Different Class
Queens Of The Stone Age - Rated R
Radiohead - OK Computer
REM - Automatic For The People
REM - New Adventures In Hi-Fi
Ride - Nowhere
Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed
Roots Manuva - Awfully Deep
Royal Trux - Accelerator
Ruts DC - Rhythm Collision Dub
Screaming Trees - Dust
Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water
Six.By Seven - 04
Sly & The Family Stone - Stand
Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
Sonic Youth - Sonic Nurse
Specials - Specials
Spiritualized - Laser Guided Melodies
Spiritualized - Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
Springfield, Dusty - Dusty In Memphis
Stone Roses - The Stone Roses
Streets - Original Pirate Material
Sugababes - Angels With Dirty Faces
Super Furry Animals - Radiator
Super Furry Animals - Guerilla
Talking Heads - Fear Of Music
Talking Heads - Remain In Light
Talk Talk - The Colour Of Spring
Talk Talk - Spirit Of Eden
Talk Talk - Laughing Stock
Teenage Fanclub - Grand Prix
The The - Mind Bomb
Tortoise - Standards
Tribe Called Quest - The Low-End Theory
Tricky - Maxinequaye
Underworld - Second Toughest In The Infants
Verve - A Storm In Heaven
Verve - A Northern Soul
Waits, Tom - Rain Dogs
Waits, Tom - Mule Variations
Walker, Scott - Tilt
Welch, Gillian - Time (The Revelator)
Wilco - Being There
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Wire - Chairs Missing
Witness - Before The Calm
Wolf, Patrick - Wind In The Wires
Wonder, Stevie - Songs In The Key Of Life
Wu-Tang Clan - Enter The 36 Chambers
Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One
Yo La Tengo - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
Young, Neil - After The Goldrush

Love

2006-11-22T15:48:00.000Z

I loved The Beatles when I was 15 - heck, didn’t we all? Them and Orwell. Perfect. But I’ve not read any Orwell in a dozen years and I’ve barely listened to The Beatles in that time either. Maybe it’s the dodgy mastering on those first batches of CDs in the 80s. Maybe it’s that I’ve moved on, used them as a springboard into other things, a basis for a musical exploration that’s as broad as my imagination can manage. Maybe it’s because - hush - they’re not actually as good as they’re made out to be, and all that talk, all that mythologising, all those legends are just marketing for some decent pop songs, some fortunate zeitgeist coincidences, and a bit of psychedelic whimsy.

Or maybe it’s because I simply forgot about them, because they’re so… ubiquitous? Obvious?

People used to say that Oasis sounded like The Beatles. They don’t, and they never have. No one has, not really. Obviously a million and one people have stolen an idea or a melody or whatever from them here and there - obviously The Beatles themselves stole a few things in their time too - but no one has ever actually done anything quite like the Fab Four.

Love is a strange thing. For 40 years The Beatles have refused to be sampled, but now, in the 00s, the two surviving members consent to having their music remixed and recontextualised for a show by Cirque du Soleil, seemingly because George Harrison and Guy Laliberte (Cirque du Soleil’s founder) happened to share a passion for motor-racing. I have no idea what the show itself is like. I don’t imagine, in the scheme of things, that many Beatles fans will ever get to see it.

By the way, that remixing and recontextualising? They got George Martin to do it, aided and abetted by his son Giles and a host of technicians and engineers at Abbey Road.

When I first heard about Love I was skeptical, perhaps even cynical. I thought my tastes had moved way beyond The Beatles, that they were an adolescent love affair that had faded. When I saw the tracklisting I was even less fussed - sure the big obvious numbers where there, but half my personal favourites - “Baby You’re A Rich Man”, “She Said She Said”, “Happiness Is A Warm Gun” - were missing. And, for heaven’s sake, have we not just had enough of The Beatles, of all the goddamn babyboomers, already?

Actually sticking Love in a CD player and plonking some headphones on though… It could prompt me to start saying ridiculous things, like I’ve fallen in love with The Beatles again. Like… , while Love is actually playing, it’s almost tempting to believe all that guff that fanatics have spouted over the years about all recorded music since being pretty much unnecessary. Obviously it isn’t, but… even “Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite” sounds good here.

So what is it about Love? It works on two levels. First and foremost is the remixing and recontextualisation, that segues “Blackbird” into “Yesterday” and “Come Together” into “Dear Prudence”. One could write this off and say “oh, it’s only a soundtrack” or bemoan the fact that it’s George Martin and not Dangermouse at the controls, but you’d be missing the point. Love isn’t about some po-mo mash-up for the MP3 age – it’s the philosophy behind side 2 of Abbey Road, stretched over 78 minutes, only instead of a two-minute snippet of “Mean Mr Mustard” it’s done with “Hey Jude” and “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and “Back In The USSR” and “Because” (stripped to just vocals and atmospheric birdsong – in concept it sounds… trite? But in execution, oh gosh!) and two dozen other songs that you’ll probably already know inside out and that, far from being revered and made grandiose and immune to the passage of time and weight of history as some kind of po-faced preservation exercise, are actually just made more enjoyable. Yes, it’s respectfully done, but it’s not stifling, it’s not dry, it’s not conservative.

The second, and most important way Love works is the sheer sound of it. The Beatles have always sounded pretty rubbish on CD, because those early 1987 pressings were done before the medium was fully understood. The stereo mixing is appalling – for twenty years people have been moaning that Ringo’s a rubbish drummer, cos he’s all squashed up in one channel – instruments and voices are placed unsympathetically, the sound is thin and lacking warmth. Love gets it right. George and Giles Martin have given the music a richness, a liveliness, a detail and a warmth that was always missing. You could tell the songs had these things but the actual delivery of the content was flawed, now… they’re right in front of you, so obvious and so clear.

McCartney may be a crotchety, ego-driven pillock these days, but by God he can play bass guitar (and write a song too) - just get that incredible throb in “Come Together”. And Ringo! So maligned for so long, proves I was always right to defend his sticksmanship – ushered out of his one-channel prison his drumming comes alive, has real weight, scope and feel that we’ve never quite been exposed to on CD. Just listen to him rattle through “Strawberry Fields Forever”. Awesome. George was the leanest, hookiest player ever bar Steve Cropper, and not a bad writer either. And Lennon? Enough has been said about him. The Beatles aren’t about the individuals in the band; they’re about alchemy. And now the sonics are right too, that alchemy is all the more apparent.

Amusingly, Love has made me go out and buy the Yellow Submarine Songtrack from 1999, because that is also remastered and features (oh my!) “Baby You’re A Rich Man” amongst other things. I’m even considering picking up 1, even though the tracklisting is arbitrarily and conceptually limited, just because I hope it will sound almost as good as Love does. I’m sure I read something with Neil Aspinal earlier this year where he said they were working on proper full remasters of all The Beatles’ material. If they’re doing it properly, then this can’t come soon enough. I don’t know if The Beatles are the best band ever or not – I don’t think any band is the best band ever – but as far as making weird, compelling, catchy, wonderful pop music goes, they’re pretty peerless. And after a dozen years of knowing what they sound like and therefore not bothering to listen to them very much at all, I’m now all excited about hearing them again.

The Internet Is Dead

2006-09-28T14:29:00.000+01:00

I’ve had a busy few days – spent the weekend in London, seen Embrace at Exeter and Bristol on Tuesday and Wednesday (the Exeter gig ended up with me taking Danny to the Lemongrove for a freshers’ week “beach party” which involved 18 year old boys dressed in wetsuits vomiting on each other), somehow found time to write a piece for The Guardian (I don’t know if it’s going to get in yet, but fingers crossed for a slot tomorrow) as well as go to work and do my actual job. Only my job is broken…

I should explain. For two or three days before I went to London, we’d had internet connection problems at work. I assumed this was down to our occasionally temperamental wireless router or perhaps an AOL outage in our area (yes I know we shouldn’t use AOL for innumerable reasons, particularly in coastal Devon, but… oh sod off), but it didn’t bother me much because I was going to London. My girlfriend, who lives across town, also had problems with her connection for a couple of days. She uses AOL too, so, y’know, it must be them.

Only then her university server (she’s finishing an art history degree with Plymouth University, based in Exeter) was having problems on Monday and Tuesday. And then my work server went down on Tuesday and Wednesday for big chunks of time, causing great consternation on Wednesday lunchtime when I was trying to email the finished piece to The Guardian. I work at Exeter University, looking after the film and music collections in the library there. The internet is pretty bloody important to the library. Only it wasn’t just down in the library – it was the entire university server that had gone down. Not one student, academic, librarian, accountant, energy manager or admin assistant could get on the internet. The entire library circulation system and catalogue was inaccessible.

This morning I got in and it was down again, until about half nine. I was expecting an important email and had to try and check it on my phone, which took an age and didn’t work properly anyway – I got to read the first few words of the email and that’s it. In itself this is a minor inconvenience – twenty minutes or so later I was able to check it on my work desktop and reply as usual – but just think about the scenario for a second. The internet in Devon appears, at a glance from where I sit, to be fucked.

What if the internet dies?

I’ve had full internet access since I went to university almost exactly 8 years ago. Before then I’d been online for about 30 minutes tops, on friends’ computers with a superslow connection. Since then… I doubt there have been more than a dozen days when I’ve not been online at all, and most days I’ve been online at least several times, if not pretty much all day at work. I’ve just paid my credit card bills online. I’ve earned money by writing online. I’d not have written for print publications if I hadn’t been spotted writing online. I’ve met a number of very good friends online (well, in most cases I “met them” in the pub, but we arranged it after talking online). My life wouldn’t collapse if the internet died – my bank does just about still have high street branches, I have my friends’ phone numbers, I can send physical printed sheets of paper to publications – but it’d be severely hampered.

That’s not the point though… because even though my bank have physical branches, even though the books in the library are mostly physical copies (ejournals are popular, ebooks not), if the net dies… the library has no physical hardcopy back-up of the catalogue or circulation system. Countless reams of information in 2006 exists purely as digital code online – financial, political, commercial, industrial, social information. Travel agents. Record shops. Local government offices. Hospitals. Electricity companies. All rely on intranets and the internet. If they vanished?

We’ve only had the internet a decade, effectively. I know the Queen sent an email in 1979, but essentially, as a workable, useable interface, the internet has been useable by most people in the Western World since about 1996. Kids my girlfriend’s brother’s age, 15 or so, have grown up using the internet. They can all touchtype apparently, even if they can’t spell. But we don’t know how to use it. We’re not even close to expressing its full potential as a creative, social, business and cultural tool – that will take another decade, maybe more, although in all probability we’ll never fully catch up spiritually with the pace of technological change.

I quite like the idea of the internet dying. But then again, sometimes I want to live in a mud hut.

Hamburg Amateurs

2006-03-14T11:29:00.000Z

I remember seeing The Beatles Anthology programme on television a decade or more ago, and being intrigued by the idea that they’d properly become a band after gigging hard and fast in Hamburg, playing 100 gigs in 100 days to whores and pimps and drunks and scumbags up and down the Reeperbahn.

A few years later I read John Robb’s book about The Stone Roses, and (I don’t have it to hand right now so can’t check) I seem to recall a similar experience for them in about 1986 when they played tiny venues in Sweden. There was an analogue… The cramped, claustrophobic, isolated and psychotic situations they went through together, binding them as a band both musically and psychologically. Like squaddies falling in love with each other, not in a romantic sense but in a fraternal sense, because of all the shit they’ve shovelled or sunk in together.

Arctic Monkeys may be being pimped as a band who broke themselves on the internet, but in reality… Well, they did and you can’t deny that, but you also can’t deny that they gigged long and hard and fast, playing tiny toilets together, getting tighter and tighter until they were as taut as a Catholic schoolgirl’s ringpiece.

Mega City Four’s debut album is called Tranzophobia, a neologism they came up with to describe the psychosis if being a group of men stuck together in a Transit van for months on end, playing gigs in shitholes, earning fuck-all money, writing songs and trying to be a band.

We watched Dig! the other night and The Brian Jonestown Massacre kind of failed at doing that, because Anton Newcombe seemed more concerned with being… something… a rock star?... a genius?... than with making his band work. Gigs for his band weren’t about getting tight or learning to play an audience; they were about Anton’s ego, about his control-freak complex, about hitting his bassist and swearing at his drummer and kicking a paying member of the audience in the head.

(What I also noticed is that despite Courtney Taylor and various A&R people continually wittering on about how incredible Anton’s music was, a few isolated moments aside, it wasn’t even any good, at least as far as I could tell from the film. It was total style over substance. Not even style… chic… junkie, hippie, 60s throwback sitar-playing smack-taking sideburn-wearing hipster fuckface chic. They didn’t seem to have any tunes. The Dandy Warhols succeeded where The Brian Jonestown Massacre failed because they had some tunes. Don’t be ashamed of hits, kids.)

It seems to be how bands meld, how they cement themselves, how they get to be any good – trying your songs out in front of an audience when you’re hungover and unwashed, growing up in public, tightening and tightening until people stop throwing bottles at your head when you’re trying to entertain them.

So much of this is “I seem to remember…” as if my memory is failing. I don’t make notes on this kind of thing; it’s all straight out of my head. I should make notes. I tried.

I seem to remember Embrace describing, in the early days (which sometimes seem as if they were only a few months ago, and sometimes seem as if they were a lifetime past, or a different life in another place, like here but different), how they’d started as a postpunk type band, into Joy Division and Echo & The Bunnymen and sounding it, but that there had been a moment when they’d stopped and said “we need to sound like us”, and from then on had stripped back how they made music and started again from scratch, building from the bottom up. Embrace never sounded to me like any other bands; the basslines, drums, guitar parts, melodies, structures never seemed to fit together like other bands I’d been in to.

In Timequake Kurt Vonnegut posits that there are two types of writers; those who splurge onto the page huge tracts of messy prose and then go back and revise it, and those who have to make sure a sentence is perfect before they go onto the next. I think he posited himself as the latter, which surprised me, and I think he also said that most people were the latter. I think I am the former when I’m good and the latter when I bleach myself out by trying to second guess what I’m writing. When I try to write rather than try to express…

Danny McNamara is not a musician in the way that… Nick Cave is a musician.

Mark Hollis formed Talk Talk as a punk band, because he couldn’t play and he didn’t think technical ability was important. Spirit Of Eden was recorded, made, constructed, by splurging hours of music, mostly improvised around themes, onto digital tape and then painstakingly going back over it and editing pieces together. A splurged record…? Embrace wrote most of This New Day by splurging, jamming around chord sequences together until they had songs, and then going back and tinkering, re-recording, adding, dubbing, rewriting.

I spent an hour and a half on the phone to James last night. I trust him. We talked about this.

Embrace didn’t play gigs until they thought the songs were totally ready. They spent two, three, four years rehearsing, writing, practicing in private. James hates The Good Will Out and hasn’t listened to it for pleasure since 1998, he claims. I might not have listened to it all the way through for pleasure since then either. I’ve listened to it all the way through since then out of a sense of duty and to test it and myself, see if my opinions have changed. We both love the songs, you see. Just not how they’re done.

Embrace were a rubbish band when they made The Good Will Out. They were a rubbish band because they’d only a played a couple of dozen gigs, at most, and they hadn’t learnt how to play together. What they did have was fucking amazing songs though. Absolutely extraordinary songs. I can’t think of another band who have emerged with as many strong songs as they did, no one who even comes close, not really. “Higher Sights”, man! “Retread”!

Think carefully about “All You Good Good People” for a moment – think about the structure, remember in your mind how it goes. That opening verse with the wandering melody, how it breaks into a huge chorus and then, instead of another verse, there’s that spectacular, unexpected orchestral break, trumpets and strings underlaid with guitar. Think about how that transforms into another verse that’s totally different melodically to the first, almost to the point of being a middle 8. Then that chorus again, massive and triumphant and sad and desperate all at the same time. And then there’s the build, the huge orgasm, the spectacular rise and rise and rise and spiral of instruments, of sound, that jaw-dropping moment. Live Richard then breaks into an extraordinary, psychedelic solo that changes at every gig, that they never caught on record. And then they finally breach the storm, emerge over tranquil oceans, that bassline like the sea but not the raging sea or a sea lapping gently at the shore – the huge, calm sea, miles out, still on the surface but with whales schooling underneath. The strings, guitar and piano swoop above this seascape like an aeroplane. I see it in my mind’s eye every time I listen to the song. I can see it now, just by thinking about it and describing it. Think about the journey that this song takes you on, all the places it visits. It’s an epic adventure, a quest. It changes you.

How fucking extraordinary is that?

“Higher Sights” is an amazing song with a great melody and high drama, likewise “Retread”, which is a phenomenally cathartic moment, stupendously powerful. “That’s All Changed Forever”, “My Weakness Is None Of Your Business”…

All amazing, dramatic, surging, sweeping songs that wrench your heart out. But they sound rubbish because the band had spent so long writing them that they never learnt how to play them, to perform them. Amateurs. It was charming, more than charming. It was unusual and bizarre. Live by the end of 1997 they were an awesome band, huge and rocking and noisy. They got better with every gig – had I seen them live in 1998 I’m sure they would have been awesome then too. And by 2000 they’d improved again. “Retread” at Blackpool Ballroom in May 2000 was extraordinary, as was “Hooligan” with the jazzy breaks, “One Big Family” with the dubscape. By 2004 “All You Good Good People” was a fucking world-ending behemoth, the spiralling climax so strung-out and powerful that you thought you’d explode. It’s not like that on record though. Not quite. It’s good on the album, Youth made them speed it up, lash on more guitar than the EP version, but it’s nowhere near as good as my memory of it live.

Embrace never had a Hamburg.

The Hardest Button To Smash Apart

2006-03-14T08:53:00.000Z

Things I don’t like about This New Day are:

1. I don’t think albums should “just start” – I think there should be a build-up and some tension, anticipation. They’ve been very good at this in the past, but neither OON, Dry Kids or TND have done it. This is just a minor personal quibble about what I want the aesthetics of records to be – “No Use Crying” is great as an adrenaline shot but not as a mood maker.

2. Also they could have mixed it to be a bit more disco, put a bit more on the strings.

3. Plus I really liked both the piano and “whooos” in the live version, and while they’re kind of both still here melodically, they’re not exactly the same. I’ll get over it eventually. Oh, I’m over it.

4. I am not keen on the female backing vocals over the chorus of “Nature’s Law” because they seem slightly contrived.

5. Also I kind of thought the lyrics were rubbish until a; I listened to them closely and imagined what they might mean and b; Danny told me what a bit of it means and c; I realised that Danny and Rik are singing from opposite points of view, each trying to convince the other. By the end of it Danny doesn’t know which point of view is his anymore. It’s a very confused song emotionally.

6. The bass notes in “Target” could be better defined, likewise the guitar, especially that line at the top of the right channel that goes “clicky clicky”.

7. The bass in “Sainted” could be deeper.

8. The entire album is too compressed, but at least it’s not a muddy mess where you can’t pick out individual instruments like a lot of OON is.

9. “I Can’t Come Down” is a cheesy ballad and as a manly man I object to that. Actually it amuses me greatly that I can imagine the kind of person that thinks this is the best song on the album is either a; a girl or b; the kind of guy who gang-rapes a holiday rep while on a lad’s package tour to Minorca. To this song.

10. Still don’t like the “let you leave… me” bit cos it’s a bit of a whimper.

11. Can’t think of owt wrong with “Celebrate” to be honest. Maybe the guitar could be mixed with a bit more space, but take that as being addressed in point 6.

12. “Exploding Machines” isn’t quite psychedelic weird enough, and initially reminded me of “Square One” by Coldplay too much. Mind you, I think “Square One” is the best tune by far on X&Y, which I think is a rubbish, hollow record.

13. The only fault with “Even Smaller Stones” is that it was my favourite and now it isn’t. Oh dear.

14. “The End Is Near” could be said to sound like “Clocks” played by men. “Clocks” doesn’t make me want to crash cars though. The lyrics are quite simple but I can’t say that bothered me much because I’m not into lyrics at all. If I were I’d listen to more hip hop.

15. The title track isn’t good enough to be either the title track or the last track after the titular, final track on the last album.

16. I don’t like how Danny rhymes “rush” with “push” in it either.

Some More Songs

2006-02-27T09:20:00.000Z

The Brighouse & Rastrick Brass Band On Acid

Deliver Me
This starts nicely with a swift ambient fade-in, quickly superseded by a typical foursquare "Embrace b-side rhythm", which is faintly disappointing after the quckening pulse of just about everything on the album. Danny's vocals also seem considerably less puff-chested than they have of late; he needs the backing singers (very Black Grape, and not in a good way, says Karim) to carry him through the chorus, their “down down down” refrain a little less mystical than “Fools Gold”, shall we say. The middle eight is more interesting though, but its emergence highlights the song's essential structural obviousness – verse-chorus-verse-chorus-middle eight-chorus-end. On the plus side, it's a nice groove from Steve, and Rik's painting some nice textures in the aisles behind the vocals. There's a good fake ending, guitar squalls and drum bashes. Lyrically it's OK, but nothing more. Torpid indie-gospel, I guess. Not in danger of overshadowing anything on the album, and wouldn't have got on Dry Kids either.

Collide
Interesting opening with shivers of guitar and Danny intoning "Colliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide" in mildly psychedelic fashion before the verse emerges and is stolen almost wholesale, melodically, from "Vertigo" by U2. The groove is again efficient but not spectacular. Lyrically though it's verging on great - "The memory is salt rubbed in my eyes / My love is like a bird that dreams of flight", talk several times of broken glass reflecting “a million different sides”, someone breaking down doors. And all over in 3 minutes, almost before you've got a handle on it, which is a shame – had they kicked off for another minute or more at the end, brought the noise or the disco, it could have been a contender.

Soulmates
Abysmal, sub-Starsailor title aside, this also isn't too bad. But neither is it too good. The intro really reminds me of something but I can't place it. Possibly Guns ‘N’ Roses? Another nice fake ending, another efficient but uninspiring groove; these b-sides are a snapshot of Embrace in the gym, learning to be muscular. More twists and turns in the tune here than on its bedfellows, but even so it's pretty unspectacular. I’d wager from the recording quality that they were recorded in Rik’s studio rather than somewhere like Olympic. Again the lyrics are pretty good – less anxious than the single itself, for instance. What the choices of b-side here do mean, however, is that we're being saved things like "Contender" and "Heart & Soul" for the next album proper, which bodes very, very well. I probably shouldn’t talk about “Contender” when people haven’t even heard “Sainted” properly yet, but it really was jaw-dropping.

Nature's Law (Draft One)
And so the first of the alternate versions of the single that I’ve heard – including this as a download is both clever from a sales point of view and very interesting, because it allows fans a peek into the songwriting process that we would never normally get. So what’s different? The lyrics, for a start, are shown to have been almost completely rewritten for the final version – they’re much more personal, Danny referring directly to a “she” (“She can run all her life / All mine I will chase” – “Nature made her and she made her thorns”). The lyrics that we now know as the middle eight as sung by Rik actually make up the chorus here… the rest I’ll leave so that you can hear them fresh. Karim said it reminded him of “New Adam New Eve”, and there is a slight desperation to that end. Musically I’ve grown fond of the final version – I love the drama of the strings and the piano underneath the bridge, and while the lyrics at first appear non-specific once you align yourself with them they are as any other set of lyrics – what you make of them. The dramatics of the strings are totally absent here, which shows up the quality of the underlying tune itself. I’m eager to here the demo and instrumental versions. But more eager to hear “Contender” again.

Exploding Machine

2006-02-09T10:29:00.000Z

The Brighouse & Rastrick Brass Band On Acid

Part whatever

Introduction

I started this exercise, hidden away in my old blog, back in July 2004 as some kind of exorcism or explanation, and the fact that it’s still continuing some 19 months later is, quite frankly, alarming and a little worrisome. Especially when one considers that by May last year when the final installment arrived I had almost completely run out of steam with it. My sub-Ian MacDonald labour of love isn’t some kind of definitive socio-cultural document detailing a profound revolution that encompassed much more than music – it’s much more personal than that. Because this is wholly about one band’s music and how I react to it; there is no cultural impact, no social revolution, by-and-large (although I could touch on a few things). Just tunes. There have been more important bands (most assuredly) and there have been better bands (arguably), but there have been none who I care about as much as this band. And I’m not sure why that is, but it is, and it is what it is. From first hearing them at the dawn of 1997 and taking tentative steps to document and explain their music and my relationship with it by starting up a fanzine, to being asked to officially document it last summer, albeit in a minor way, there has been something different about this group, about how they made me feel, about what I hoped for from them.

Of course they’ve had critics – there’s outright hatred from some parties – and some of the criticisms hold water, but I’m of the opinion that it’s easier to explain what you dislike than to understand why you do like. And I’ve never been one for hate, not really. Criticism is too often offered forth on the platter of objectivity, as if it is real-ity rather than thought. I’m guilty of this myself, and no doubt will remain an of-fender in the future. What separates us from animals is our ability to elevate our thoughts, and therefore our reactions and behaviour, from our instincts, right? But what makes us human is the fact that we don’t always do that. Instinct and emotion are powerful things.

I’m measuring myself. This is not what I do, not what I’m good at. Not what this is about.

I love this band, above and beyond any other, and I don’t know why, and that confuses me and kind of pisses me off, because I’m very good at figuring out why I do things. People hate them, some people really fucking hate them, and that upsets me, because it makes me wonder if my feelings are irrational (they are, of course they fucking are!) or invalid (which is far, far worse). I would quite gladly tell some-one that their love of Mariah Carey or Haven or Futureshock was invalid because only an idiot could accept their substandard washes of someone else’s art or their clumsy, painted-with-a-spray-can emotion. And I’d do it in verbose and profane and (either) convincing (or massively offensive) style, too. And I wouldn’t give two shits. But I know what the other end is like.

I wish I could make an argument for Embrace being the best band in the world, but any argument would be predicated on the world in question being, first and foremost, my world. The location and topography of anyone else’s world is incidental. But if you’d been at the front of the crowd for the Astoria gig in January 2000, or sitting in the wings with me and Karim at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in September 2004… If you’d pumped “Feels Like Glue” through your earphones as loud as you could stand while perched on top of a 100-foot sandstone boulder in the sea. If you’d played “Blind” as many times and as loudly as I had… I can forgive the little MOR moments, I can ignore the people at gigs who I’d have been scared of a few years ago. They’ve given us a lot of songs over the last nine years. I doubt you could find many bands of their stature who’ve provided more. And I’m pretty certain you’d not find any more diverse in their range, both emotionally and sonically, despite what some people might claim to know about their oeuvre.

Anyway, I’m rambling. Which is what this is, obviously. But I know what you want. You want me to talk about the songs, specifically the ones that very few people know just yet. I may, over the next few months, go back over what I already said about the others elsewhere (both the old blog and also here), realign my opinions, add some perspective perhaps, now that some of the songs I covered in a rush have had time to settle in and find their places in my own personal one-band-canon.

Here are some words about some songs.

No Use Crying
If the opening triumvirate of Out Of Nothing are hewn from metaphorical granite, then the opening triumvirate of This New Day (yeah, the title’s a bit wet and the artwork’s a bit contrived, but a; titles only become good once given context of content, and b; the photography’s really beautiful even if the idea’s a bit Wenslydale) are hewn from metaphorical Vimto. That is to say that people said this was like “Ashes”, and it is, except that “Ashes” is a rock song and this is a pop song. Less austere, more hyperactive. Less desperate, more joyous. That riff, for a start, which gets teased in and then is allowed to run riot for twice as many bars as they would once have dared. It’s faster, it flows a little better (less of a panicked jump to chorus, easily assimilated middle 8), it’s a minute shorter. It’s a pop song, spiraling string sweep and all. Lyrics? They’re nice enough - “I’d take a bullet / Jump a speeding train”… talk of chasing, either doing it yourself or watching someone else do it, which will be a recurring theme this year. You have to understand that lyrics without melody are rubbish, that melody is ALL as far as lyrics are concerned, certainly in the context of this, a superfast pop song. It’s an adrenaline shot to start the album.

Nature’s Law
Yes, it’s a bit plodding. Yes, the title is a bit hokey sentiment wise, and also sounds too much like “Nature Is The Law” by Richard “dickhead” Ashcroft. The lyric is also a touch simplistic and Wenslydale, perhaps - and also features the "big simile cliche" that concerns me slightly in Danny's recent lyrics; “like a something something” is a motif that recurs far too often lately (“sound of tapping from a sinking ship”, “firefly in the big black sky”, “broken record”, “gem on a coalface”, “mile-high neon sign”, etcetera). There's not much to it in the way of excitement or event, no single big moment in the tune where you think WOW like the end of “Retread” of the break in “The Love It Takes” or the “blue skies” bit in “Feels Like Glue” or the end of “Out Of Nothing” or the chorus of “Near Life” or the sheer weight of guitar in “Blind”. It re-minds of both “Wonder” and “Gravity”, neither of which I like much at all. But the record company people and the radio people love it, and they have their jobs for a reason.

On repeat listens, to be fair, it’s a grower, worming its way into your brain and staying there. The melody isn't stunning but it is memorable after a few listens, which is more than I can say for anything I’ve ever heard by Starsailor. At least it has a riff, which is more than “Gravity” or “Come Back To What You Know” managed, and if you close your eyes you could almost pretend it was Embrace having a stab at Talk Talk circa the anthemicism of Colour Of Spring. And from the middle 8 onwards it does very nearly become a stormer - the string swell under “rise again” is a moment of pure drama which I wish was made more of. It’s a good song, nothing more.

Target
Confused nomenclature historiography notwithstanding, this is fucking awesome. It makes my heart skip, makes my stomach tighten in anticipation. A certain ivory tinkler told me it was like a cloud lifting, like “someone you secretly fancy the pants off spending the whole day and night with you in the summer and everything is perfect”. It is. You get that feeling inside the first few bars. It’s a glorious, monstrous wonder. OK, so the cynic says it sounds too much like U2 because of the taut, echo-y guitar, but get how the drums occasionally skip a little, get the efficiency of that groove, get the way the melody opens up the versus. Bono could never write a melody as unashamedly pop as this. Get that enormous chorus and that stellar middle 8 - middle 8s are something Embrace are becoming very good at indeed. I didn’t imagine when Embrace began writing as a unit that they’d be producing better “Embrace” “songs” than they had before - I guess I thought that “Out Of Nothing” and “Near Life” were the destination, that kind of drawn-out, star-scraping angst and wordless catharsis, but this is something else. A pop song, gloriously conceived and executed. Praise be. Still don’t get why he’s going on about taking a swim in the chorus, mind you.

Sainted
This tune highlights a problem Embrace have had for their entire career - not enough fucking bottom-end in the mix. Never, ever enough, except, just possibly, during a few songs from the DFM era. Go and listen to the “OBF” remix for proof of where they ought to be aiming, get that solar plexus thump that makes you a little delirious. It’s a problem simply solved though - adjust your amp or sub, stick your iPod on the “Bass Boost” EQ setting. I have, for the first time ever, done these three things with my main listening devices - namely hi-fi separates, iMac with JBL Creature II satellites and sub, and iPod. I felt incredibly guilty doing it because of some frankly irrational belief that “if they’d meant it to sound like that, they’d have mixed it like that”; which is bollocks, of course, because as soon as I start listening the manner in which I want to hear things becomes more important than any platonic essence governed by a mix engi-neer or mastering dude. Public domain, isn’t it? As soon as This New Day bursts from speakers around the country (world?) it no longer belongs to the band, but rather to the listeners. So listen how you wish.

The tune? A dirty disco-metal thing with a nasty groove, a big chorus, slightly nausea-inducing guitar (listen on good headphones late at night, get that weird spatial placing). Some people have been waiting several years for Embrace to do a tune like this. Namely me. And Ramsay. And others. DFA could remix this quite easily, for example. Not the sound of a Coldplay-lite MOR band. Most satisfactory. I need to know what the opening lyrics is though – “I’ve always been a harlot”, perhaps?

I Can’t Come Down
The ballad. (“Nature’s Law” is a mid-tempo pop song, in case you were wondering.) Verse taken from “Effortless Now”, chorus and middle 8 taken from Jim Steinman - I’m not entirely kidding, and even if I was- well, I kid because I love. This is moving in the same way that “All I Wanna Do (Is Make Love To You)” would be if you let it be. Oh I dunno… it’s got a guitar solo like Noel Gallagher used to play when he still had ideas to steal, and it’s great. Hokey, but beautiful. People will walk down the aisle to this and it’ll be a Meatloaf moment. It’s a proper song, in that it moves and has sections and the melody develops rather than just repeating and, frankly, you can imagine someone like Robbie Williams covering it, and as such is a darn site better than Coldplay can manage when it comes to cheesy ballads. People who complain about this song, and some will, are miserable gits. This is Embrace, after all, in case you hadn’t noticed. A McNamara/McNamara composition, rather than Embrace & Glover.

Celebrate
This is filler in the same way that “Wish ‘Em All Away” is filler except that TND is most definitely not OON Take 2, despite what some people (who notably have not heard the record) have surmised. Which means that instead of a slightly clumsy harmonica rif, this has a rather wicked piano riff, and instead of being a BIG, SELF-CONSCIOUS anthem, this is a pop song. Get that bassline. Get that melodic shuffle which repeats across both the verse and the chorus. Get the fact that the intro is like 45 seconds long (two intros!) and the whole song is fast and over in 3.32. Yes, it’s another superfast, post-“Ashes” pop song, but it’s bloody good, and I’d much rather they use this as filler rather than “Hey What You Trying To Say” (nice as that arrangement is). In many ways “Celebrate” is characteristic of this album more than anything else on it - it has vitality, groove, effortless melody, ideas… cross OON with DFM, maybe, tighten it up, paint a stylistic coherence beneath the bones of it. I’d love for this to be a single. Totally triumphant. (I don’t know why I’m comparing it to “Wish ‘Em All Away” – it has much more in common with “Spell It Out”.)

Exploding Machines
Big pyrokinetic rock thing, amirite? I’ll say more in the section on the title track.

Even Smaller Stones
I don’t mean to sound strange, but this is my song. I’m so pleased it’s here, and so much more pleased that it’s wicked. It evolved around the same time as “Flaming Red Hair” from one of the band’s jam sessions that, post-Youth’s involvement, became writing sessions rather than practice time. I might possibly have the original jam that it came from. They played it live at the tail-end of 2004, and I acquired a couple of bootleg MP3s of it. In early 2005 I was asked if I could send these bootlegs and the original jam to someone via email because “the band have forgotten how it goes” and were in the studio with Youth again, preparing what would become TND. When I first saw it live, it blew me away. Savage, vengeful, groovesome, big nasty slashes and squalls of guitar… Recorded? Well, as I said about “Sainted”, the bass could be deeper, but other than that… I cheekily mentioned to Richard in an email last year that backwards guitar was wicked and they’d never used it, why not? The verses are textured with little flecks of backwards guitar here, over the itchy groove that lies in the centre of Mike, Steve, Rik and Mickey. That makes me happy. Danny said to me jokingly, backstage after one of the Shepherd’s Bush gigs last year, that he was so sure I’d love the stuff they were working on for this album that they were gonna call the record Nick. This song, not just this song though, is proof that he was right, however cheeky he may have been being. I had been under the impression that it wouldn’t be included because they had other songs that did the same thing better (namely “Contender”). I’m so glad it’s here. Those other songs can wait. Knock me out again. In the final third the guitars go off, proper Nick McCabe-style. The ending takes your breath away - I wont say how. Another thing about this record - there’s some fucking beautiful decay - piano, strings, fading guitar chords, all dying in the name of song.

The End Is Near
I can spot a b-side at 300 paces. You could say I’m quite… anal… about them. Which is why I was asked to write the liner notes for Dry Kids, I guess. This is a b-side. I hope that, if you’re reading this, you know who I am and realise what a compliment that is. This was written (by McNamara/McNamara rather than by the band) for the “Ashes” b-side sessions, but was left over because it was felt to have potential. It feels like a b-side, if that makes sense… almost under-written? It’s deceptively simple. Another beautiful piano riff, more 4/4 drums to get adrenaline going. Simple, simple versus – hearts will crack when Danny repeats “I’ll be there / I’ll be there” in the verse. The chorus, again, deceptively simple, almost to the point of being retarded, but somehow right in spite of that. It’s like (whisper it) Coldplay with a shot of testosterone, perhaps. I can hear this on radio. It may well be a lot of people’s favourite on the record, at a hunch – I think it’s Richard’s.

This New Day
Probably the least “last song” last song they’ve done, in many ways. Of course “Exploding Machines” was meant to be the title track, and probably the opening track too, and had it been then, even if the contents were the same, people’s perception of the record as a whole would have been different. What machines are being exploded? The human body is the first machine, arguably (discounting, you know, dinosaurs and amoebas and things) – Danny feels the power of a sun inside him, a bit like Grant Morrison’s Xorn character in his run writing New X-Men. Exploding Machines is about epiphanies, about breaking your own understanding of who you are. As is “This New Day”. The whole album is about chasing and catching something. Another record about a record? About making records? You could see it like that; the band aware of their own narrative now and constructing it from the inside out.

“This New Day” starts beautifully, dappled guitar and piano leading to a voice and then a jerking arrival of drums which tears the song from where you thought it was going. “You know your best will never be enough / it’s nothing you can’t change”. There’s a section, not a middle 8 but almost another chorus, a couple of minutes in that feels almost out of place, a minor-to-major leap possibly (someone who knows better will soon correct me, no doubt). The final minute is catharsis, exhortation. Nowhere near as unexpected and spectacularly redemptional as “Out Of Nothing”, nor as laden with the pathos of denouement as “I Had A Time” or “Satellites”, and not as unifying as “The Good Will Out” (which, as you know, I think is a weak imitation of “Hey Jude” anyway, but there you go – the punters fucking love it). The title track, the imposter title track, is a strange beast. The lyrics are again a little forced, rhyming rush with push, and hint at deep meanings without ever fully detailing specifics. But that’s what Embrace do. It rocks, certainly, has a little of that “Too Many Times” swaggering clatter and a little of the propulsive development of “Red Eye Shot”, from beauty to beast. It trounces almost anything from OON that people would bitch about, it is a move forward, it rises and falls unexpectedly but effectively, and that final minute – keep dreaming, breathing, beat demons – is incredibly powerful. But it doesn’t quite feel like an ending. Which is good because it impels you to hit “play” again, cycle back round at 5000rpm to that outstanding pop rush that begins the album, and go through the mill once more.

And it is a mill, a trial, a challenge. This New Day is Embrace’s shortest, fastest, punchiest album. Their darkest album, and also their most upbeat. It’s positive but also destructive. There’s nothing like “Looking As You Are” here, even remotely. Instead we get “Sainted”, we get “Celebrate”, we get “Target”. Higher highs… more lows, perhaps, not necessarily lower though. (I mean mood, not quality.) Drop “Nature’s Law” from your iPod tracklisting and stick in “Near Life” if you want – they have the same initials after all. Switch “I Can’t Come Down” for “Too Many Times” perhaps, or whatever ends up on the b-side when “Nature’s Law” hits the shelves (no, I don’t know yet, but I’ll tease you as soon as I do). There are some songs left over for the next record – “Contender”, “Heart & Soul”, the disco pop one with mad strings. “Contender” is their “Fools Gold” and their “Begging You” at the same time. But we don’t need it now, we’ve got enough to be going with.

Is there a sense of frustration in this, a feeling that, once again, they’ve played it safe? Not really. TND is, and I know you’re expecting me to say this because you think I’m obliged to, their most consistent album. Is it their best? It’s my favourite at the moment. This may change, of course. “Near Life” and the title track are the two I revisit most often on the last album, with fleeting glances at “Someday” and “Spell It Out”. I can see me going back to 60% of this record, with fleeting glances at 20% more, in two years time and being just as satisfied.

Any questions?

Here we go again... For a while

2006-02-08T10:01:00.000Z

Hello and welcome.