What do you want to read?

More second guessing and self-examination at the flaccid end of the music press

I've just been going through my outbox and a pile of reviews written a while ago when I came across this. I'd been asked to review this single:



At the time, if I remember rightly, I was on a total noise fix: Whitehouse, Masonna, Yellow Swans, Merzbow, Throbbing Gristle - anything that just abandoned technique for brutal jolts of whipping velocity and decibels. I'd lost touch with 'the song'; its capability to hold nuance and shape and a predictability that was somehow cheery and comforting, rather than anaesthetising. Here's what I wrote.

And now for something COMPLETELY different. Tough to imagine which twisted mind saw Wild Beasts, with their idiot-savant soprano wailing coupled to some of the most pedantic hack-and-slash committed to tape, as a singles band. This is three minutes of the weirdest, most daring and brilliant pieces of pop music of the last five years. As it came to a conclusion, I spontaneously rose to applaud.

Have to admit; two and a half years on, I'm still pretty pleased with that. What have we learned? It's 'different' - markedly so. There's a high voice. It's weird, daring and 'pop music'. In case you don't 'get' the reference to 'hack-and-slash', it's just an onomatopaeic phrase I invented for 'guitar music'. There's enough there to merit a curious look-see at YouTube.

It wasn't enough. The editor wrote back.

Hi man.

Really like your single review, very much want to cover it in the paper, just had one issue.. it'd just be nice if you could jig a little more description of the music into your third sentence. Listening to them, it was very different to what I expected from your review. I really like your second and fourth sentences, maybe cut out your thid sentence "This is three minutes of the weirdest, most daring and brilliant pieces of pop music of the last five years." and replace with something a little more definitive of the sound. Or maybe get rid of the first to make some space. Your current second sentence would be pretty punchy as first. Is that ok? Play around with how you like, but I would appreciate a little more feel for the song.

So you want me to drop sentence three? The key line? Just because the song was different to how you expected?

Describing sound is simply just utilising social orthodoxy to explain something that in reality is unique and only really 'explainable' on its own terms (ie. by listening to it). I'd rather read 'this is fucking amazing' and have no idea what it is than say 'this is rock music' and how no idea how good it is.

The finest piece of music writing, for my money, is Lester Bangs' John Coltrane Lives, in which John Coltrane is mentioned in passing and is an unnamed character who appears in a first-person narrative which ends in Bangs blowing a saxophone in his landlady's face.



What Bangs does, better than me - better than any writer on the topic bar perhaps Ralph Ellison - is get straight to the heart of the matter. Sonic detail is for hacks and chumps and fuckshits and dumbbells. OK, I exaggerate, but it's not something to go on about. Bangs and Ellison and even Christgau's little summaries tell you about the world it relates to, rather than the insular jargon a piece or song is formed of.

A record has to exist in a real life populated by a few heroes and a whole lot of plain old shitbags. To exist, to be noticed, it has to justify itself in moments and reactions. It's not enough to rehash the plot and structure: what does it do? Why does it do? Is what and why it does worth anything?

But as a young writer, I acquiesced and wrote three progressively worse versions.

And now for something COMPLETELY different. Romantic baroque wailings attached to vaudeville prog-pop sensibility straight outta Kendal. Not your average 'single' material, but it is three minutes of the weirdest, most daring and brilliant pieces of pop music of the last five years. As it came to a conclusion, I spontaneously rose to applaud.

Not bad. The next one was specifically as the editor requested.

Tough to imagine which twisted mind saw Wild Beasts, with their idiot-savant soprano wailing coupled to some of the most pedantic hack-and-slash committed to tape, as a singles band. Combining vaudeville prog-pop and indie ghetto approval, this is three minutes of the weirdest, most daring and brilliant pieces of pop music of the last five years. As it came to a conclusion, I spontaneously rose to applaud.

The final one is terrible. That whole 'think of a place, you think of this: well here is this' complete fucking BULLSHIT.

Think of Kendal, Cumbria, you get mint cakes and Alfred Wainwright. Not exactly a hotbed of 30s musichall stylings and angular guitarisms, but that's what we have combined here and it's gosh darn tasty. In fact, I'd go as far to say that this is some of the finest British pop alchemy at present – hooks, idiosyncratic eardrum shattering vocals and a tidy resolution inside three minutes. At the conclusion, I spontaneously rose to applaud.

By which time I'm so racked with doubts about my own ability that I don't write anything else fit for print for a year and a half. Which probably says more about my ego, confidence and level of expectancy than it does about anything else.

Now I'm in the same position as that editor (who is a basically decent chap with whom I just happen to disagree fundamentally), I find myself being able to push my viewpoint - that it's the essence and not the facts that count - across. Often with venom and barely concealed rage, but hey, my prerogative.

With a level of provocation imbued into the fabric of every article, you run the risk of exposure to complaint and the necessity to justify oneself. Such a thing recently happened in response to the print publication of this review.

Dear Sir/Madam

Would somebody please redirect Daniel Brookes to the Opinion section? A music review is supposed to review the music on the CD in question, rather than the supposed class backgrounds of the artists involved. The only thing his review of NME: The Album 2009 told us about the actual music on the CD (y’know, what people would actually buy the CD for…) was that it was ‘identikit sewage’; while the reviewer may feel both Enter Shikari and Little Boots lack his level of musical; sophistication, only the tone-deaf could accuse them of being ‘identikit’. The author seemed much more perturbed by white people daring to be influenced by the music of other cultures, rather than locking themselves into some kind of aural apartheid, as well as musicians refusing to co-opt themselves into a wider class struggle that only exists in the wet dreams of the Socialist Workers’ Party. Most readers would expect a review in the music section to review the music of the artist(s) involved, rather than a review of the (irrelevant) political opinions of the author; if Daniel Brookes could in future remember this, then perhaps he could write an article relevant to the section he is supposed to edit.

Yours sincerely,
Name withheld

This response felt good to receive. That the writing wasn't being passively consumed, but had inflamed a contest of ideas. That said, I completely disagreed. Here is my response in return.

Just writing to say thanks for writing in to the paper re: my review of the NME album. It's totally cool that you chose to take your time to engage with our work; we wish there were more of you. Conversely, have you thought of writing for the music section, or indeed any sections of the paper?

Whilst you may feel the point of reviewing CDs for their content only is the way ahead, I feel that some issues supercede this and that indeed, talking only content in constructive terms about music is insipid hackwork at best. This record serves as an overview of the year, as a constructed entity of what 2009 was; I feel it's something of a right to challenge this.

What I felt I was trying to address here (and I won't accuse you of missing the point; you take what you like from these articles) is the banalisation of a vibrant culture. I'm not saying that there isn't good independent music, it's just that this version of 'indie' is an indie of signifiers.

It's nothing to do with 'aural apartheid' - that's the last thing I'm after. It's just that - in a year of music of the early 21st century - are we really supposed to believe that there were no significant black contributions to independent or guitar music? The one black musician on the 2 discs; Maxim Reality of The Prodigy - doesn't actually play on the included track. Doesn't this trouble you at all?

Also: music IS an opinion section. That's EXACTLY what it is. Please tell me what these objective terms I'm supposed to engage with art are, because I've never seen them before. My political opinions are entirely relevant, as are yours implicitly included in your response.

I'll finish as I began; it's great you wrote. And we'd love to have a passionate voice writing for us (though I don't know how you'd manage to express that seeing as you'd contradict yourself if you ever expressed a subjective opinion) if you can make yourself free on a Monday at 5pm (MR1, upstairs in the Union).

Dan Brookes,
Music Editor

Removed from all this, I need to ask the question: what do people want to read? Fire and brimstone and forthright idea-mapping, or passive descriptives?

Perhaps it is me that is wrong. I read press releases and reviews daily that lean toward the latter, but feel ultimately bored and cold by them - though their unceasing existence gives credence to their existence.

TICKLEY FEATHER

A nice rejoinder to not go to a gig based on disliking their Myspace tracks. Though to be fair, you could put up better songs.

TICKLEY FEATHER @ RETRO BAR, 15/1109

Annie Sachs, the name in which Tickley Feather receives pay cheques, is drunk. Not just your common-or-garden drunk either. Smashed on a molecular level. Hammered. Gone. The only surprise is that she doesn't arrive on stage with a traffic cone atop her Minnie Mouse-bowed head.



On record, TF's excursions are so way beyond the static rigidity of the pop format that drunkenness seems like the perfect distillation of her animus; besides, no one in the venue gives a hoot. It's funny. She's funny. Her banter often goes longer than some of her songs. She lights candles on her keyboard stand “because this place smells of toilets”. It really does.

Live, she's flanked by two dudes; one on guitar who flirts and laughs like a current lover, and one who broods over keyboards and samples like a lover spurned. They're winging it all the way; they grin and smile as if to say “I cannot believe we are getting away with this. This is entirely made of awesome.”

The average Tickley Feather tune is just like unearthing a damp, mildewed cassette of '80s pop hits to play back on a '90s cassette player: there's form and recognisable instruments, but it's warped and weird and a little bit sinister. Nostalgic too, if you're of the last generation of cassette mixtapes: lost sentiments buried in corruptible technology.



It's the unintentional comedic flourishes that linger longest; unaffected, a little bit vulnerable and completely human. The mindset of Tickley Feather may be related to the bottle of scotch she carries on stage, but the warmth she generates could never be faked. An original.

PORTICO QUARTET/JAY REATARD

Two live reviews of very different bands in very different environments. I'm probably at my least comfortable when reviewing live performances because I'm aware they change and mutate and sometimes the perceived badness is little to do with the band; bad sound guy, lifeless crowd, ill-chosen venue or promotional decisions. These were my excuses when I perform music anyway.

JAY REATARD @ THE ROADHOUSE, 12/11/09

It's Thursday. It's raining. Shouldn't have to mention it's windy and cold too. It's 7.45, so no one has had time to get even a halfway decent beer buzz going. There are about 20 people present, four of whom write for Student Direct.



To minimise any chance that this night will work on any conceivable level, Reatard's band quit on him a month ago (explained as such via Twitter: “Band quit! Fuck them! They are boring rich kids who can't play for shit anyways. Say hello to your ugly and boring wives”) so he's grabbed a couple of Danish punks to fulfil his obligations.

Thankfully, it works. Reatard's metier, at casual distance, appears to be fun/throwaway garage-rock nonsense. Look closer. There's a twisted pop magician trying to break out, hamstrung by his lack of resistance to coat everything in a dense layer of sonic miasma. Make no mistake, these songs are big hits...in a parallel world where noise and dissonance don't result in radios being turned off or smashed.

There are no breaks between songs either, resulting in a 20 song set being comfortably wrapped up inside 40 minutes. Reatard's famous bad mood surfaces (“hey sound guy, you working tonight? It's feeding back up here”) just once. Talk of highlights doesn't work in a set with no filler. Great songs Reatard has written include 'It Ain't Gonna Save Me' and 'My Shadow', nihilistic pop jams played here with breakneck defiance.



Given the circumstances, it's the songs that shine through. The best sets work on a confluence of atmosphere and brilliance. Though the former was in absentia, the latter worked overtime.

PORTICO QUARTET @ ROYAL NORTHERN COLLEGE OF MUSIC, 02/11/09

To be British and to be jazz is one of the sadder commercial constraints of modern times. It's a straitjacket worn by Portico Quartet, even though theirs is a jazz of signifiers: upright bass, non-linear movement and volcanic drumming. Mostly in 4/4 and solo-free, PQ's unique selling point; the hang, a bowel-shaped object sounding much like a gentrified steel drum.



Their compositions have as much in common with post-rock, ambient and krautrock tropes as they do in jazz. 'Clipper' erupts into a cock-fight between cubist sax, all gung-ho Ornette-inspired octuplet flurries, and a rhythm section tighter than PVA glue leggings.

Exploratory it may be, but there's direction to their tangents. Only a few bars after some chaotic mutual scraping of instruments, they'll drop into comfortable grooves and moods as easily as an old man getting into a warm bath.

It's this hand-holding through the murky waters of free jazz that makes Portico Quartet accessible to newcomers, and it's their melodic and rhythmic invention that makes them the darling of aficionados.



Token jazz nominee of the 2008 Mercury Prize they may have been, but they've come on in leaps and bounds since then. Imagine how good they'll be next time.

IN THE CITY

In The City is an annual industry showcase for about 150 bands on the edge of industry-readiness (in theory) which takes place over three days every October in Manchester. Yours truly had one of the £350 delegate passes which allows entry to any show or panel (not that I was terribly interested in the idea of listening to dudes jerk each other off about the industry in extremely boring terms.)

IN THE CITY: SUNDAY

Pen? Check. Guide? Check. Industrial quantities of cheap energy drink? Check.

Identically coiffed and dressed London duo MIDIMIDIS attempt to shake the Electric Boogaloo with their warmed-over cyberpunk. At times they're frenetic and splenetic, but mostly they're lost in their own mannered poses. Get 'em off!

Down the road at Studio, the twelve-legged genre-disregarding misfits Asakusa Jinta flail and twirl like a Japanese Gogol Bordello; enthusiasm becomes an Olympic event and the wackiness dial clocks 11. Continuing the international theme are French trio The Tatianas, whose diet-Strokes filth should have stayed in the garage, possibly with a running car.


Asakusa Jinta

At Cellar Vie, hushed appreciation greets the post-modern folk wanderings of Sweet Baboo, a solo set laced with humour and consummate ease. Fellow Welshmen Dirty Goods receive muted plaudits back at Boogaloo, an apt venue for their Patrick Bateman-approved coke-pop. Problem is, it's all a bit knowing and slick. Where they could rock out and give some catharsis to their tightly-wound tunes, they cop-out with the '80s synth crud.

Sophie Madeleine and her ukulele are badly cast against the echo-doom of Bar 38; the soft wispy matter that makes up half of her material is lost in a cloud of chatter, but she battles on bravely. “This is a song I wrote about knitting” she says, placing her firmly in Camp Twee before a note is plucked. Sparse and lovely, with a backing duo every bit her equal, it's the first discovery of the festival.


Sophie Madeleine

The first existential crisis arrives during Fangs' set. They chase the zeitgeist too hard. They are both flap and doodle. They both fluster and bluster. Their electro-sex-attitude shtick looked a joke on C4's MobileAct Unisgned; up close it's a complete sham. MAY68 patrol a similar musical territory, but their motorik-meets-Heaven 17 jams work for all the reasons Fangs' don't; they look like they're having fun, they bothered to finish writing beyond the first hook, and they're all much better-looking.

Whilst In The City brings together the up-and-coming talent from around the UK and beyond, Sunday night belongs to Mancunian talent. Envy is a fearsome young rhymer with a dizzying, kaleidoscopic flow and adroit stage presence born out of brutalising MC battle opponents. Her put-downs are lacerating enough, but its the sweetness between songs that really disarms. A distinctive production is all that separates her from glory.



You could lob an anti-tank missile in front of Kong and they'd still slay. Their masks make them look like sex tourists and their scathing rock-on-steroids is more divisive than the monarchy, but they couldn't care less, crushing mercilessly all the while. 'Leather Penny' is a punch to the abdomen. 'Blood of a Dove' is a knee to the face. The rest of the set works you over with sadistic delight. By the end, you've either left the venue screaming as if your hair is on fire, or you're a committed masochist.



Dutch Uncles


Band of the night: Dutch Uncles. Frontman Duncan Paton is the first person on stage all evening who radiates star quality; the ignorable smart kid at school all grown-up. His nervous tics and karate dances provide a visual hook for songs prone to tangents; 'Face In' is their version of a pop song, except the verse hook owes more to Steve Reich than Stevie Wonder. Anything difficult is tempered intelligently by Paton's ghostly voice, but no one is left waiting too long for the next rapturous pay-off. A rare find; and they're local. No excuse not to see them at the next opportunity, right?

Started coming down with an illness on Monday; battled through, but couldn't be arsed by Tuesday.

IN THE CITY: MONDAY

People are emerging from The Bay Horse toilets clutching their noses self-consciously at the rock'n'roll hour of half past six. Nonetheless, Dan Melrose ploughs through an intimate set pitched halfway between fearful, earnest blues and ornate folk guitar. Its in the latter mode he really shines; 'The Dove' displays playing chops, detailed arrangement and the knack for an earworm of a melody.


Graphic

A sickeningly hip young chap is hunched over his mate's laptop at TV21, awaiting the start of his set. He is Graphic. There's not much in the way of charisma, or even apparent enthusiasm. It all feels a bit Vice until the former Isaac Llewellyn Holman (ah, a fine working-class lad) rips out a few lines over his summery electro agenda and a star in the Just Jack mode is conceived, if not quite born.

Every song in the set of Copy Haho sounds like a potential winning hit, except the song they announce as being an actual single ('Wrong Direction'), which is brilliant nonetheless. For a band from a pedestrian griefhole in Kincardineshire facing the relentlessly dour North Sea, they've emulated taken great urban guitar scene since 1980 and refracted it through 1000 points of light and a deathless ball of energy. More please.



Culture Reject loops live percussion and does the singer-songwriter bit over the top, but it falls flat a heightened rate of knots. Up the road at Electric Boogaloo, Ed Sheeran does the same kind of loop/guitar/voice as Mr. Reject, but succeeds in every area he fails. An almost unbearably magnetic performer with a knack for a three minute pop job that would rival all of Xenomania. Sheeran's potential is practically criminal; he's 18 and you can sense he'll get better with age. The bastard.

JAMES BLACKSHAW INTERVIEW

They say it's hard to interview or meet a hero, but this talk with James Blackshaw disproved that theory. I've got an MP3 of the conversation that I might edit and post up, but here's the potted/tortured journalese version.

He's in his late 20s. He lives in Hastings, but used to live over in Levenshulme. He plays the 12-string guitar and piano. These are facts, but it's not the facts that are the most interesting things about James Blackshaw.



Here's the heavy editorialising; The Glass Bead Game, his seventh, is the finest record of the year – possibly the decade. So pitch-perfect and nuanced are its compositions, it's made some of my friends purchase 12-string guitars to emulate Blackshaw's deathless sound. As a long-time owner of one, it's made this correspondent completely give up.

“Generally, I'm more attracted to instrumental music.” His albums to date have voices on them, but they don't sing words. They humanise the gnarled, knotted emotive qualities in Blackshaw's work, but they don't reveal themselves completely. “If you add words, then to some degree, you're going to dictate the mood of the music.”

Ambiguity is central to James Blackshaw, not naked truths. You own the meaning as you listen. Take the gut-wrenching 'Key' from Glass Bead...; yes, there's ecclesiastical music there. There's definitely something of the '60s avant-garde and the folk-prodigies Blackshaw adores such as John Fahey or Robbie Basho there too.



To nail Blackshaw down as the sum of his influences would be myopic; there's an emotive quality that here can't be bottled or sentimentalised or replicated for Joe Public. Sure, he's soundtracked a couple of FilmFour advertising spots, but it was as much a surprise to him. “My mum called me up and said she swore she heard my stuff on an advert.”

The reason you're likely not to have heard any of his music has little to do with its accessibility or melodic nature; indeed, plays in the Student Direct office have been met with unanimously positive murmurings. Blackshaw is signed to US indie Young God; whilst good for critical credentials, it does nothing to impact the UK marketplace. “I make money by touring and living cheaply.”

So has he ever considered going for financial gratification, pushing his music under the noses of The Man? No. “I pretty much find that whole industry totally abhorrent. Obviously, I don't think something like X Factor as anything to do with music at all, nor any of the awards like NME or Mercury. It's all about the industry.”

Not that he's worried about his own long-term future. “There'll always be people who love music enough to put it out there without worrying about a profit. The internet is also amazing. We can barely comprehend life without it now, too.” Does he not worry that some people develop a sense of entitlement about music if they continually have access to music – more specifically, his music – for nothing?

“No, I think it's pretty low down on the list of things to get pissed off about. Of course it could be taking money away from an artist who needs the money to either make another record, or pay rent – or even eat – but I think in the long-term people will come to understand these issues better.” See: brilliant and trusting.



That week, some friends & yr corresp. decide to make the daunting journey over Snake Pass to get to Sheffield to see him play in a small vegan cafe. Much as his records, it's a tour de force of understated brilliance. In an October air icy with the oncoming winter, his circular melodies warm the hardest of hearts. Every note floats upward into the rafters and hangs tantalisingly, melancholy and reflective, not a single one wasted.

“I'm blocking November and December off to work on the new album.” There's a long, detail-heavy conversation, in which he documents what this might entail; playing electric 12-string for the first time. The sort of massed open-tuned guitar treatments made famous by Rhys Chatham and Glen Branca. Possibly even vocals, which he's worried about. He should trust himself. He's one of the finest musicians around and he doesn't seem to know it.

BASSHUNTER INTERVIEW

When the opportunity came up to interview the guy who has basically annexed my brother's ringtone for the last year, it was too much to pass up. I wish I had a transcript of the piece because he was genuinely nice, funny and engaging.

“Don’t go home with strangers and don’t forget your scuba gear.” This is how Basshunter (the nom de guerre of one Jonas Altberg, 24, chiselled, handsome) signs off our charming chinwag; with a timely piece of sex education. He’s also calling from his parents’ place on the west coast of Sweden, returning home after an intense bout of writing, record and touring.



We talk about the cranium-rattling new single ‘Every Morning.’ “It’s a true story; I broke up with a girl. On winter mornings I like a cup of coffee, and on one particular day I remember her standing over my bed and smiling, holding a cup for me.” The pair since broke up, and he channelled the wistful sentiment onto the wax that makes up the trailer for the upcoming Bass Generation LP.

His first global smash ‘Now You’re Gone’ told a similar tale of regret married to floor-wobbling bass and unpretentious synth madness. I ask if he’s aware of the clash between uplifting party vibes and sad personal content. “Oh, I guess because I just make music all the time, wherever I can, my personal life just becomes part of it.”

At this point you can see the gears ticking over in his brain. “Yeah, I can see it now. Heh. Yeah, people on the dancefloor having a great time and pointing at each other with smiles on their face singing 'now you're gone'. I suppose it is kind of funny.”



We talk tours; he's going on a nationwide jaunt this October. “There will be special guests, hot girl dancers, and, err, me.” His conversation is full of these slightly self-deprecating nuances, but they're endearing rather than mopy. Basshunter knows who he is, a self-proclaimed computer nerd (many times he speaks with authority on computational matters, keeping the interest of your technophobe hack) who plays on-line games with the same friends he had before the colossal fame.

That said, he doesn't actually like the fame game. “I really fucking hate the celebrity thing.” Wine, women and song – what's to hate? “I've been to a lot of these parties and I've never really had a conversation that interests me.” The tonal shift between talking about his friends, music and gaming (rapture) and the celebrities (purgatory) is pretty palpable. It's hard to feel that sorry for him though.

He uses the same software any Joe Schmo could download in minutes to make his beats with, making his hits some of the most profitable music in history. On top of that he's as unaffected and unpretentious as they come, no more so than when telling a story that indicates where his real priorities lie.

“When a flight gets delayed I always say 'yes!' It means I can get my laptop out and play some games for a while.” It does get him into trouble though. “Sometimes I get too into it and end up shouting “DIE! FUCKING ZOMBIE! DIE !”at the screen, then I look up and realise I'm in the airport and not at home. People don't like that.” No!

We wrap up our chat with the aforementioned instructions to pop a hat on your chap when doing that. Basshunter leaves, not to go back to his latest buxom Eurodance girlfan to follow his own advice, but to welcome home his parents from work with coffee. Jonas Altberg; the new, respectful face of commercial dance music.

UNPUBLISHED

Or is that 'never published'? For whatever reason this article was excised from print; I think it's alright though.

Peter Broderick @ Academy 3
9th September 2009
http://www.myspace.com/peterbroderick

In retrospect, lying on the sticky floor of Academy 3 whilst singing accompanied only by sleigh bells is pretty unusual for a solo performer. After the show Peter Broderick delivered he could have driven a nail through somebody’s foot and still received a rapturous reception.



This genial American, an occasional member of Danish ensemble Efterklang, makes minor symphonies by looping delicate fragments of piano, violin, voice and guitar, simultaneously haunting and wistful. Stripped of percussion, and with minimal lighting, it is his effortless skill in deftly switching from instrument to instrument that provides all the showmanship necessary.

Comparisons to fellow wunderkind Final Fantasy seem not without merit, though Broderick is less whimsical and ornate; songs such as ‘Games Again’ break into Brian Eno territory: glacial, vast, with an undercurrent of foreboding. The songs, even when they break into violent conclusions, never feel threatening, always playful. Never indulgent and always inclusive, one song even loops spontaneous audience applause to use as its percussive base.



Peter Broderick has flown under the radar for some time now, but his easy charisma, boyish looks and – crucially – his arsenal of excellent material should put paid to this minor injustice. Shows like this certainly won’t harm his cause much either. A rare delight.

These two album reviews did run, however. From the sublime...

Converge, Axe To Fall

Generic conventions aren't transgressed by Converge; they're assaulted. They're smothered, strangled and maimed with broken glass. The fourth in a series of practically flawless '00s releases by the Massachusetts quartet - the seminal Jane Doe, the claustrophobic You Fail Me and the triumphant No Heroes - are now joined by the batshit insanity of Axe To Fall.



Converge cram into the 103 seconds of 'Effigy' as much ingenuity, emotion and surprise as U2 have in their career to date. The title track utilises instruments less for musical ends and more for a trench battle with the other dark forces of mediocrity, winning in an effortless crush. The victory song must be opener 'Dark Horse', an endorphin rush like no other, inducing spontaneous acts of leaping about to anyone within a 200-yard radius. There's no filler to be found; just head-melting precision. Slackness of the jaw is to be expected.

Sure, they're earnest. Some will be put off by the out-and-out heaviness and forays into discordance; that's the nature of complete artistic conviction. It's a record that lacks half-measures and compromises, placing a premium on surprise, integrity and passion. They're telling us they can't be beaten. Records like this make you believe them.

...to the ridiculous.

Fuck Buttons, Tarot Sport

The basic problem with 'noise music'? That it is practically impossible to differentiate between unappreciated genius and anti-social posturing performed by over privileged chancers. Make no mistake, Fuck Buttons are the latter.

The Skins generation's own noise band has the looks, the arms-aloft bonhomie and hipster credentials, but substance is in limited supply. Opening track 'Surf Solar' aims for shape-shifting hypnosis, but falls woefully short: a ten-minute track whose trajectory becomes apparent in as many seconds.



Tarot Sport has two kinds of track: songs that begin annoyingly and crescendo predictably, and songs that don't even build. The latter kind are especially indulgent; 'Phantom Limb' surely must be an art-school in-joke (like their song titles, their name) given its howlingly pretentious nature. Not even a millisecond passes which could be mistaken for a good song on a good record.

Great noise music is a physical experience, not an intellectual one. Genre predecessors Whitehouse and Wolf Eyes whip the body into a physical frenzy with blasts of white noise so cacophonous that the brain is coerced into retreat or acquiescence. Fuck Buttons' gravest error on Tarot Sport is their own calculating restraint, which comes across as predictable and patronising. The emperor's new clothes disrobe.

MORE ARTICLES WHAT I DONE

Here are my singles roundups for 2009/10's Student Direct: Mancunion Edition thus far.

SINGLES 21/09
Lady Gaga bolts out of the gate with the fourth single off The Fame, and gosh does it sound like it. The former Stefani Germanotta slides out the single crassest sex synonym since R. Kelly’s ‘Ignition’ (“I wanna take a ride on your disco stick”) - which would be eminently forgiveable were it not married to the same sort of anaemic 'future' R&B sludge that cruds up the third quarter of all Gwen Stefani full-lengths to date.  People compare Gaga to Madonna; Her Madgesty’s fourth single was the mercurial ‘Borderline’.  Just sayin’.



After ‘Now You’re Gone’ seized control of every teenager’s mobile phone on every single bus in the land, the Eurodance arena-shaker known as Basshunter  is out to prove he’s more than just a bloody huge kick drum in relentless 4/4 time. On 'Every Morning' his sonic palette also encompasses a sample of an acoustic guitar, and, err, that’s it. The story is pretty much the standard wishy-washy love gone horribly bloody wrong but forget that SHIT because this is Ibiza YEAH. It meets its design brief (“make a club of proles dance”) and clocks off with admirable brevity, which is the best anyone could have hoped for.

In the dumper: A-Ha return for the umpteenth time with 'Nothing Is Keeping You', which sounds grown-up and windswept and several other synonyms for 'profoundly boring'. Sloppy seconds on offer from The Veronicas, whose bland mall-punk '4ever' charted in their native Australia four years ago when it was still three years past its sell-by date. Rammstein show zero career progress, offering the same industrial-rock nonsense as ever on the not-as-funny-as-they-think 'Pussy'.

Finally we have local (well, from Wigan) chanteuse Nancy Elizabeth, who takes a quantum leap away from her pastoral folk beginnings with an immaculate and dark imagining of what trip-hop would sound like if it originated from the woods instead of the inner city. There's not a wasted note here and her 'Feet of Courage' single proves enough to take this week's crown.

---

SINGLES 28/09
Say what you like about convicted fraudster Lou Pearlman, but when he simultaneously milked and managed US pop behemoth Backstreet Boys, they'd at least manage a high quality single once a year. 'Straight Through The Heart' is conveyor-belt nonsense that straddles a bizarre line between Usher's version of what the future looks like and Ace of Base's conception of the past. One to avoid.

La Roux are so '80s that insiders at their label tell me their next LP will be a recreation of the Miners' Strike played entirely on an Atari ST. Until then we'll have to make do with 'I'm Not Your Toy', a CD so lightweight that when the hacks at the office jabbed it irritatedly out of the stereo, it floated out of the window. Forgettable.



Rudebox was the shame fantasy of his naysayers, but Stoke's version of a charm offensive returns with 'Bodies', which is not The Great Robbie Williams Comeback Single some may have hoped for. Instead, it's more like the boring middle-eight from twenty okay songs stitched inappropriately together. Thankfully none of these songs are 'Rudebox', indicating a positive step forward for all concerned.

Opposite ends of the spectrum represented in this week's British guitar bands; The Enemy return to patronise the working-class a bit more on 'Be Somebody', coming across like the pub-rock Paul Weller manning The Jam karaoke. At least their misguided rage offers some substance; Bombay Bicycle Club have the slender cheekbones, hi-slung guitars and artfully rumpled shoes, but their 'Magnet' single is the lyrical and musical equivalent to a zephyr.

'Save It For Someone Who Cares' is the new effort by The Leisure Society. It won't define any epochs, but will catch you off-guard as you find the work radio tuned to Radio 2. It's chummy, melodic and understated; a parallel world theme tune to The Good Life. The only problem you'll have with this slice of late-summer sunshine is whether you'll still like it when your dad tells you he does too.

---

SINGLES 09/11
If the singles round-up is a lovely party, then Drunkdriver is your pissed-up uncle whose wife just left him. He needs a place to crash, but not as badly as he needs to urinate or learn social graces. This NYC trio flay a cyclone of abuse and ear-junk on their 7” 'Knife Day', a molecular-level garage-rock band practising behind a man violently querying his phone bill. In short, brilliant.



N-Dubz continue their diet pop-hop for the ASBO generation agenda with the admittedly catchy 'I Need You'. Sure, the sentiment is pretty banal (dude needs girl/girl needs dude) but it does contain the line 'look for you on Facebook / will I get a Faceback? / lookin' for you is like a needle in a haystack.' Who says brilliance can't be completely contrived?

What treachery! Girls are all boys! They're burning up the blogs with their sunshine/heartbreak lo-fi but all this hack hears is a reverb-heavy Cast with the American Shane McGowan honking away on vocals. Elsewhere on Indie Boulevard, the brothers Jarman and grumpy cousin Johnny Marr (aka The Cribs), throw out their best effort yet on 'We Share The Same Skies'.

When Britpop was in its pomp, reinforcing ancient 'real rock' stereotypes, Weezer were the ones showing that Americans could do irony without being completely depressed. They were funny and clever and economic – but never at the expense of writing killer songs.



Nowadays they're as cloying as Michael McIntyre's full-bore gurn and a thousand times as irritating. There's a million decisions goes into making an album – literally - and since the turn of the century, they've made every single one wrong. 'If You're Wondering...' is more ham-fisted than Porky Pig. Forget the taxi, this band need a hearse.

NME: THE ALBUM 2009

A quick album review of state of the EDL-dream nation record, landfill indie comp NME: The Album 2009

V/A, NME: The Album 2009

When octagenarian smut-pedlar Ken Russell (ask yer dad) claimed that The Big Pink were 'Kerouac meets Cagney', every British alarm bell should have been sounded. Beacons lit. Emergency frequencies commandeered by the government. Every man on every ship semaphoring the message: INDIE IS FUCKING DEAD.

Nothing against Russell personally but judging by his films, his artistic sensibility lies halfway between a used copy of Razzle (ask yer dad) and one of those Diana plates they sell in the Daily Mail.

If a journey to the cerebral cortex of Jo Whiley sounds like fun, this is the stocking filler for you. The two discs overflow with chance-free identikit sewage. The only thing that differentiates Friendly Fires, Passion Pit and Temper Trap is the space they take up. Even their names are basically the same.

What makes this truly nauseating: in a year where Jay-Z and Dizzee Rascal annexed rock radio, it doesn't feel remiss to note that there is one black musician on this entire 40-track record. If we take the average members per band to be four, then out of 160 musicians then basically we've got ourselves a self-congratulatory white-boy skinny-jeans jungvolk circle-jerk that makes Caligula look like Jim Davidson.

Worse still, there's so much co-opting of ethnic sounds that it begins to feel like a deliberate up-yours to every ethnicity; afro-beat guitars, drum circles and tribal imagery. Talk about fetishing colonial times: there's even a band called Bombay Bicycle Club. Hand, staple, forehead.

The genre that used support the miners and smash down Babylon has become Scrooge McDuck, backstroking in its own affluence. This is the perfect soundtrack to usher David Cameron into power; youthful, white middle-class, devoid of substance and potentially cretinous.

Singing is easy (and no one does it right)

Anyone can sing. Even the deaf. Go on. Do it. Inflate the lungs. Sing along with me. Even this guy can sing too.



Not like that. Too sharp. Too flat. Too pitchy. Too loud. Too quiet. You sound like a grieving horse. A shot sparrow. A misfiring car. Just fucking stop, ok? You make the birds sick. You make Jeremy Irons cry. Children don't want to follow their dreams. Man will cease to procreate. You killed the world.

Broadly speaking, singing holds a special place in human society. It's social, a ritual, a way of reaching God, a comfort, an accent to grief, communication; its functions too broad and bountiful to name comfortably here.

Within the popular or common idiom, it is a representative device used to 'humanise' the song. As 'lyrical' and 'poetic' as instrumental music can be, sane and rational people prefer music with vocals because they can imitate a specific strategy of the music themselves without any specialist training (unless you're some kind of twat who takes a guitar to a gig).



Turn on your TV. People, on shows like X Factor and the musical casting shows are constantly being told that they can't sing. And when people are being told they can sing, they're being told by people who couldn't possibly understand what good singing is and where it comes from.

I blame Stevie Wonder and his melismatic ways. Melismatic singing is that where a syllable is sung as more than one note. This accounts for the 'oooouuuuuewwooooaaoaooaooaoooh' over-enunciating from pretty much every singer since 1966. That said, Stevie's songs were complex and demanded such endeavours. 'She's The One' by Robbie Williams does not.

The voice, even when acting in a representative medium such as song, is capable of sleights of emotion so jarring that the lump in your throat feels like you swallowed a housebrick whole. It can catch you in your most extreme mindsets - of joy and pain - like a mirror and show you back in the most naked state; vulnerable and inexorably human. It's more than simply 'recognising yourself' in song. It's how at once we can elevate ourselves to be more than we've been and yet be isolated, adrift, aware of how futile it can all be. And yet still understand that things matter; that you matter - that this, whatever 'this' is, matters.* Ahem.

Take this example. The second chorus. Two simple words: 'forgive me'. It's one of very few times I have heard an enunciation of a lyric which equates to the sentiment it expresses in reality (ie. not in song).



Think about it. Let's examine some lyrics while you do.

Take a look around
At what technology has found
Is it what we need?
Or are we killing the seed?
Dictated by the screen
No more following your dreams
The world's become a difficult place to be

Fuck. This dude is angry, frustrated, confused. He might even be right. Technology man, all these wasted words and instant communications - but at what cost? The media does act dictatorially; its influence upon the behaviours and motives of individuals and groups is as proveable as almost any cause and effect in science, from race riots to eating disorders. The human voice has ways of expressing the layers of hurt, anger, sadness and nihilism inherent in this lyric. Who is this sage?






Extreme example. Or is it?

Bad singing is not an inability to hit notes in a timely fashion. The Shaggs couldn't do either and yet their songs retain a magical quality.

Bad singing is an inability to analogue appropriate sentiment and real emotion in the vocal medium. Every word in this sentence is a link to examples of bad singing.

It's true that I have a suspicion of professional singers. I've been told that I can't sing by my own parents: I was born with a cleft palete, so that may have had something to do with it - I am lucky to be understood even when simply speaking. I later went on to front a couple of bands anyway. As long as the conviction was there, what did it matter? Professionality has so many negative connotations bound up in; mercenary, slick. What can they care about content? It's also true that I adore unconventional singers such as Mark E. Smith, Damo Suzuki and Marion Coutts.

The point is that you can sing, even if you've been told that you can't - or that you have been told you can but you've been doing it wrong all your life - hitting those notes, coming in at the right time and always looking presentable. You just have to be there, understanding exactly what the fuck you are going on about, and showing it back to us: no matter how fragile and small or bellicose and triumphant that is.

You don't even have to look good doing it or even look comfortable.




*smug preening wankers who laugh their sickly laugh and say 'why don't you study something useful?' in their shirt-and-tie, phone-in-a-room lifestyle who have their head up their arse so far they can't see these are the reasons we bother to keep ourselves alive.

A chance to cure is a chance to psychologically damage forever

PART ONE
Could music be contributing to our own ill-health?

Music is a healer. This isn't a soggy liberal notion: the NHS employ music and play therapists. It is science. Music performance as a rehabilitative therapy aids motor skills, cognition and enables a communication form for those who lack verbal skills. Read some of Oliver Sacks' work on musicophilia. Music helps people suffering a range of ailments from Down's Syndrome to cancer to autism. If you need a real-life example - Neil Young's Trans. His son Zeke was born with cerebral palsy and the Synclavier enabled the two to finally communicate in a meaningful sense.



Music can also cause and induce pain. Some artists base their career upon it; Masonna, Whitehouse, Merzbow - to name just three. Some remain at the level of situationist joke: there's a semi-legendary tale about Extreme Noise Terror staging an intervention at Roskilde by playing 'the brown note' through gigantic speakers facing the floor, causing dozens to shit their pants or throw up spontaneously.

Some go farther. Here in the UK, shops which have a continued issue with loitering teenagers have installed The Mosquito, a device which emits a pulse only audible by teenagers. We are also familiar with the US military's predilection for subjecting prisoners to mental disintegration by looping Metallica, Limp Bizkit and, err, Barney The Dinosaur at preposterously loud volumes. What you may be less familiar with are special weapons designed to emit violently loud and continued bursts of high-frequency noise, such as the Long Range Acoustic Device. This has domestic uses, such as breaking up crowds of rioters, but has been used in wartime situations to:

draw out enemy snipers who are subsequently destroyed by our own snipers.
Neil Davison and Nick Lewer
Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project

The greatest crimes of musical torture, however, are self-inflicted. Chunklet ran an excellent piece of deliberate self-sabotage as the two editors made each other a C-90 tape stuffed with the worst music they could find and subjected themselves to their 'gifts' for 24 hours. You can read the piece here, but here is a quote from the exasperated Brian Teasley after the experiment.

"After a complete 17 insufferable listens of this barbaric, ass-melting retardo music, I’m beyond fucked up. Music is stupid. I can finally understand people who say they don’t listen to it."

Adults, typical adults, everyday working adults - the sort who do not 'get into' music - prefer happy-sounding music. The radio does not knowingly, not least in its more popular slots, play depressing music. The singing contests on the television favour the upbeat, the popular, the universal and the familiar - the inclusive, the people together in harmony. Shops and public places pipe in upbeat, nominally 'happy' music. You can't escape the idea that happiness is supposed to be the norm, and yet it feels desperate, like an attempt to divert you from feeling anything else.

This state of constant beatification is apparent and yet one in three suffer from some kind of mental illness (often depressive or anxiety-related, a worry or acknowledgment that the tenuous balance between the state of fun suggested at in the atmosphere (in visual media also) and the reality of things has been transgressed) at some point in life. Whilst no scientific correlation exists between the prevalence of mental disorders and a society which consensus agrees is overwhelming, rapid, intangible, complex and multi-layered, popular art presents itself as nothing more than a whore, a cultural wallpaper at the cheer-up clinic of retail therapy.


PART TWO
Remniscences of a nu-metal teenhood

This morning, my housemate reminded me about nu-metal also-rans Stain'd. Let me jog your memory.


(key moment: 3.24. Durst highlights the lyric via the medium of gesture - if you don't punch your screen through in rage before that moment, that is)

Without question, they run the A to Z of horror. Stain'd are artless, bland, cringeworthy and despicable. They're also egregious, flimsy, ghastly, hateable, insipid & jerkish killjoys - lamentably making nothing new. Ordinary powershite, quite rubbish. Simply toss. Uniquely vile. Wank. Insults beginning with X, Y or Z please post as a comment.

I always hated Stain'd. I never warmed to their grey middle-class frustration, their endlessly dreary songs or their designer angst at a time when I was an angsty, dreary middle-class kid. At least all my friends hated them too and we'd take collective joy in switching their videos off.

My friends did like nu-metal though. It was a genre to which I struggled to adjust; the fashions didn't suit me (based as they were around facial hair which I couldn't grow, tattoos which I couldn't afford and baggy denim which rendered my lower half wider than my top half, like a medieval chess piece) and the music seemed a bit silly. For a few years, at least when the music was on, I felt like a tourist.

One of music's greatest strengths is its ability to bond people, to cement a memory that will remain even when priorities and postcodes change.

Another method of sealing the future of a group's collective memory is to expose them to a period of tumult. Terry Waite and John McCarthy may not now be best friends, but their names are inextricable. They will never forget each other.

If music and tumult can force people together, the two combined must be the greatest adhesive ever. Had my friendships with these people not been as long-lasting, there is no doubt that I would always remember them after one week in 2000 that changed us forever.

Stephen's parents were away, so we spent a week off college playing Athlete Kings on the Sega Saturn, getting stoned, eating Canadian steaks and listening to the same two songs by Disturbed over and over again.

Oh, and by that last part I don't mean 'four or five times'. I mean 'over and over again'. The songs ('Down With The Sickness' and their cover of 'Shout' by Tears For Fears) on repeat. Every eight minutes or so, someone would put down their joypad, get up, walk across the room, skip back to the songs and press play. I estimate I heard each song around seventy times each.

It's difficult to explain the sensations experienced ten years removed. We live in and enjoy a culture where something that displeases us can be excised, ignored or switched off. Sometimes you might have to experience something bad a couple of times, maybe even half-a-dozen at worst.

At first it was mildly irritating, as ever it is when a song you dislike will not be turned off - no matter how much you protest. After a few listens, it became funny.



After a dozen, the humour seemed distant, eventually replaced by anger. A dozen more and it became full-blown apoplexy. The anger fatigued me so that my body became a giant raft of shit afloat in a turgid sea of piss.

There I was: drowning in the living room, the curtains closed for days, flaking away. Everyone else seemed rather buoyed by the songs instead of being terminally stricken by them. Nobody else wanted to give up all scheduled bodily functions and become a puddle of enzymes. When I emerged into the light after those three days, I was broken and have never since recovered. Take a listen for yourself. Perhaps even give it 70 spins. See what happens.


(is that not the worst song intro ever?)

Episodes such as these help teach why criticism is important and why the well-meaning rejoinder 'if you don't like it, ignore it' is knuckleheadedly reductive.

To be continued.

A difference of opinion with myself

circular argument ago-go; short attention span bonus of two videos

I am a hypocrite. No, let me try that again. I am a complete fucking hypocrite. You know those people who moan that 'this bloody country' is dumbing down, getting stupid, lazy and contrite? That's because of me and people like me. I am a louse, a weed in a coat. A one-man surrender unit. I should be brutally done away with. It's only a million hypocritical shitguards like me who prevent me being found face down in a landfill 2000 years from now.

I have a job at Manchester University's weekly student newspaper as a music editor. I sub-edit, and occasionally write, copy - dealing with the dozens of gigs, records, interviews and other sundries the mega-conglomos deign to send us (I remember Sean Paul's management sending signed string-vests a few years back).

Last week, I reviewed the new Alice In Chains record. It was predictably duff. Here is what I said about it.

Grunge was over-rated. It grunted, griped and groused without grace, gumption or guile. At best it was a regional scene fussed over to a ridiculous degree. What began as disaffected outsider musing became backward-capped rock for middle-class jocks to blast in SUVs on the ride to the mall.

Alice In Chains were also-rans in the Great Grunge Boom of those early '90s, their shtick being a heavier, oblique take on the genre; hits included the indulgent dirge 'Them Bones' and the dirgily indulgent 'Rooster'. Variety and fun? Not in their navy!

Black Gives Way To Blue is their first full-length release in 14 years. Original vocalist Layne Staley may have shuffled off this mortal coil but he remains curiously present, not only in terms of subject matter, but because hired hand William DuVall can do an uncanny impression of the dearly departed.

There's no reason a fan of the original line-up should dislike this; it's as self-regarding, bloated and rigid as the group ever was. 'A Looking In View', the first single, serves as overture; plodding, over-produced and hopelessly irrelevant. Of course, it's immaculately performed and technically very adept; musicians as smug and macho as this demand it at the expense of any form of recognisable human expression.

The chainsaw-speeding-up-and-slowing-down riff to 'Check My Brain' is wasted on a song that doesn't get anywhere. The circular melodies and understated harmony on 'Private Hell' begin to mark it out as a diamond in the rough until the instincts to rock out – whilst kicking absolutely no ass whatsoever – take over.

The sad thing about this florid review is that it is absolutely nowhere near the truth of this despicable piece of shit. What I wanted to write was as many furiously hate-filled synonyms as I could, perhaps outlining some manifesto wherein bands who make systematically cynical and god-awful music as this could theoretically be sent to some kind of musicians' gulag for crimes against the human ear.

But then I started to think about the spurious notion of 'decorum' and how my inate sense of British politeness prevents me from being completely ruinous. Invective is poor show, old bean, pithiness is the way ahead.

Then I started to think about the press company that sent the record in good faith; they may be in the hot air business, but they're just normal men and women in jobs, trying to do their best for the lazy rich gits that appoint them to do their bidding.

After that I started to think about the newspaper itself; what if the press people stopped sending us records? It's not like they need to send shit to us anyway, we're basically just a student paper when you boil it down - students being the most likely to steal records, much as they are likely to steal other intellectual properties, such as entire fucking essays - so why bother marketing to the most morally corrupt of the demographics? We can't review fresh air.

And don't think that record execs and their nabobs can take the joke. The saying - 'any publicity is good publicity' - you know that one? Utter shite. Polydor refused to send a Robbie Williams record to us in the past because I'd slated another one of their acts weeks previously.

Then I started to think about the editor, and my fellow music sub-editors. They willingly entered into social contract with a normal person, not a person who thinks that an appropriate punishment for Mika for his crimes against music would be to suffer a similar fate as the man in the glasses in the video below. I like the relationships we have.



Other thoughts spiralled; what if I have a career in this and I ruin it by getting a reputation as someone who only stokes up controversy and bad relationships? Should I engender a better relationship with readers by slowly dragging them into my 'style' and then bring out the 'real opinion' later? What do I really think anyway? Do I even fucking know anymore?

By now, the copy is so imbued with outside concerns, second guessing and your basic level of flim-flam that it's basically as compromised as the godawful music it covers; lobotomised, hampered and kneeling. Why don't I just give them five stars and a hearty pat on the back for all the self-censorship it has endured?

Of course, this is the reason that everyone apart from the terminally insane is hypocritical to some degree; instinctual decisions in developed humans do not exist. All our decisions are to please someone else, or to present a version of ourselves that is more pleasing. The amount of times you could have left the house wearing a 'Macho Man' t-shirt and shorts, smelling of fetid kebab meat, only to think that someone you fancy might be around and potentially showing interest, marks you too out as a walking compromise too.



(Have you honestly heard such pointless cock in your life? Fucking plodding sex-free, humour-free US flag arsewaving...I could go on)

It is possible to live with yourself, to look in the mirror and be fine, because it is a natural state of living; deeds at odds with words. What really marks a person out as special is if they can cohere the two when it matters - and this daft rock record isn't one of those times.

Issue two out on Monday.

Filmism #3

It's that season where the cinema is full of the kind of stuff you'd save for possible DVD rental. From an idle forum post about the Academy awards comes a fully-formed moan.

OSCAR - Only Seriousfilm Considered And Rewarded
self-reward for hilarious opening gag sets tone about meaningless statuette rant

As much as it's still a remarkable achievement to win, or even be nominated for, an Academy Award (more so, given the democratisation of technology), it appears that to win Best Picture these days, you have to adhere to a strict criteria:

- 'Middlebrow'. Tackles an 'issue' rather than a 'concept'.
- Weighty lead roles by middlebrow actors; actors who have never, even accidentally, appeared in a screwball comedy.
- Preferably a veteran of Hollywood directing.
- A relative marriage of scale and tastefulness.
- Major studio backed.

Other caveats that come into play often are some notion of reward for culmulative effort (Danny Boyle this year), the well-made biopic/film that retells a moment in a famous person's life that allegorises their life (the last five years have been very heavy on this: The Aviator, Ray, Capote, The Queen, Michael Clayton, Frost/Nixon, Milk) and occasionally a musical will squeeze through the net to placate various groups.

To think that this year's nominees are the pre-eminent 'superior pictures' is somewhat misguided, it's just that this year's best films fall into the net assembled by the Academy to catch those excellent works not meeting the criteria above. And don't think this is some pro-independence/anti-Hollywood diatribe; Hollywood and other 'large system' methods are increasingly finding money for alternative voices, whereas independent cinema seems stuck in a rut, at least in its English-speaking heartlands.

The Dark Knight, for instance, despite its flaws, is a better film on every conceivable level than The Reader. The former is exciting, keen, visual, metaphorical, exploratory and tumultuous whereas the latter is dour, safe, pseudo-intellectual, literal, flaccid and smug. The former is a cinematic experience, as much as the tale stands on its own merits, it takes advantage of all of the things the anti-piracy/pro-cinema adverts want you to believe. The latter would struggle to look classy on The Hallmark Channel. However, The Dark Knight wins recognition for everything apart the film itself or its director; shoved into a niche, a number to put on the poster.

A better film than all nominated was Werner Herzog's Encounters At The End Of The World. As good as those were Waltz With Bashir and the peerless Wall-E. But they're niche films: documentary, foreign and animated respectively. And no clever marketing strategy, 'culmulative effort' pleas or implorations of the work's gravitas is going to crack the hegemony of the Best Picture nomination circle jerk.



Largely, it has always been this way. Post-war exceptions to the rule, and possible explainations for it, are:

Marty (1955) - a weak year, a reaction to a true heavyweight the previous year, Paddy Chayevsky on board.
- The Sting (1973) - other nominations split the vote, marquee cast. Noteably this year saw a Swedish film (Cries and Whispers) nominated for the central gong, so perhaps everyone went mad in this year.
- Annie Hall (1977) - weak opposition, a 'coming of age',
- Shakespeare In Love (1998) - weak opposition, strong cast, no apparent flaws, not strictly a 'comedy'.

As alluded in my glib sub-heading, these awards are ultimately meaningless. It's just that the idea that people are talking about essentially decent-or-not-even films such as The Reader, Frost/Nixon or - and I hate to say this, as a fan of Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire as 'the best picture' makes something in my throat feel a little dry. One is reminded of those god-awful Q Awards where the 'best act in the world today' is some dreadful guitar-slinging white bunch for Mondeo drivers. Coldplay indeed.

Esoterica #1

The first in a weekly feature investigating some of the less familiar parts of the Art In Macro physical collection; from demos, to limited editions, bootlegs and vanity presses, unusual sizes, shapes and colours of vinyl. Basically the kind of stuff you can't find in the shops anymore, or never could.

Riding Shotgun By Starlight...With The Ominous Sigh!, "Just Trying To Find My Way Home"
TECHNICAL INFO: CD, self-released (Cheguevaraisnotdead Recordings), 2005

Scott Coleman, the brainchild of RSBSWTOS, is the subject of one of my favourite rock and roll stories. Whether it is urban myth or fact, I don't know. Importantly, it doesn't really matter; it was a perfect way of deconstructing the milieu of the man himself.



A friend, who was recording the debut LP (this one is the follow-up), set up the click track for Scott to play along with. Record is hit, and Scott plays the first guitar track. The rhythmic constant of the pulsing metronome is flatly ignored, the music wandering behind and then suddenly leaping ahead. The friend was tearing his hair out, anticipating a lengthy and irritating session of tracking and re-tracking. When finished, the friend, looking to tread lightly, informed Scott that it could do with recording again. Scott declined, preferring to record the second guitar line without the click. Obligingly, my friend did as instructed, despite how abstract and seemingly error-strewn take one was.

What happened next was magical; Scott played the counterpoint track in exact time with his first track. Whilst, to 'common' hearing, still seemed arhythmic and microtonal, it was all exactly as intended. His music had developed its own language, its own logic; it made perfect sense, it could be replicated endlessly, but only by him.

In the early days, his performances were the stuff of legend. Taking to the stage armed with voice and a Fender Stratocaster with ten pedals, billed as 'a one-man art rock explosion', he'd proceed to lay waste to the night. Simply ignoring the man was not an option; he either stunned you into attention or drove you fleeing from the room in sheer terror. This sense of room-bursting horror was heightened when he landed an opening slot for Monitor Records band EZT on a UK tour, bringing doses of sonic ectoplasm nightly.



The record I own is a later effort, when a rhythm section was added. Whilst it does reign in some of the more outre parts of the early material, the lengthy psychedelic/hard-rock tendencies remain, the shifting dynamics and heart-on-sleeve vocals remain. 'Fairfield, Iowa' is more plaintive, mourning a distant love.

He was in our life and is out again. Currently playing in a London-based band White Shoes, Black Heart - a more conventionally rocking affair.