ART IN MACRO

MAN VERSUS RADIO: One day of Radio 1

2011-02-04T01:15:00.002Z

Radio 1. One day. One man.

This is long. No apologies. I'll keep it short for the remainder of term.

Broadcasting behemoth

VERSUS

Faceless hack

0600: Dev, a new name to these ears, toils gamefully in the late graveyard (0400-0630). Whilst undertaking some preliminary research for this piece, I stumble across this in the blurb for his show of 1^st February 2011: Dev found a musical burping & farting programme for his generic laptop computer. Its his favourite new toy. Though deeply gutted to have missed this, I am not to worry: the very next sentence reassures that I can expect to hear much more of this. Groan.

0602: First track and already a moral quandary: it features Chris Brown, he of the errant fists. Then again, Rihanna's newie is called 'S & M'. Always have a safe word, kids.

0614: The farting and burping machine is being put to good use; it is belching and gassing out the melody to the hits of the recently departed White Stripes. John Peel probably intended to do a similar thing when he returned from holiday.

0625: After a couple of songs, Dev is now farting out the melody of White Stripes' 'Blue Orchid'. Dev also can't be bothered to check out any new band music anymore and is now going to gigs on the strength of the name. Yeah, because it's quicker to get across London than it is to pull up a Myspace now and then.

0628: The news service has brought my attention to http://www.littlegossip.com – a repository for gossip and insults listed on a school-by-school basis. Some of Cambridge's highlights include that Alex Guttenplan is “possibly the biggest bender that has ever existed.” And they say the internet had too little in the way of unverifiable/unfocused screeds against the harmless.

0630: It has become very fashionable in recent years to bash Chris Moyles, almost a rite of passage for the average culturally-aware Guardian-reading 20-35. Stewart Lee devoted a ten minute routine on his BBC2 show to bashing Moyles' second book (The Difficult Second Book). His stock fell dramatically in 2010, when in a pique of self-aggrandisement, he railed against not being paid on time in spite of his salary being twenty times the national average. Though the actual incident itself is relatively prosaic, his Wikipedia refers to an “Auschwitz incident”. This is never a good sign.

My own interactions with Moyles and his art total one: at the 2010 World Cup, the BBC offered extra commentary options on the red button. You could take the antic yelping of Jonathan Pearce on the TV, you could switch to the curmudgeonly Alan Green, or you could take the 'banter' option of Chris Moyles and his sidekick Comedy Dave. This lasted sixteen seconds. Moyles screamed playground-level nicknames for each member of the Spanish midfield, complete with faux-bandido accent (only out by 6000 miles), offering a fairly compelling insight into what the opposite of comedy might actually be.

0645: The RAJAR stats are in for this quarter. How do I know this? Moyles and his team have gloated about his numbers going up since the show opened. They're laughing amongst themselves a lot but no one has actually told a joke. After this he curiously pretends to be above the data-collection industry (“ooh, you're up 1.4% with males aged 16-25 in Derbyshire”) before resorting to more listless boasting.

0650: “I bought loads of meat but it all goes off today!” One of his sidekicks (there appear to be five) points out that meat can be frozen. Nothing stops a Moylesologue, even the existence of technology that dates back centuries.

0655: Back to ratings chat, this time about his television show. No songs yet. Moyles doesn't like it when Lord Sugar crowds his Twitter feed with bragging. I decide to unwrap my grandfather's Browning pistol and leave it on the desk.

0658: Moyles: “I won't play Chris Brown because he slaps women about.” The Browning is re-wrapped and placed carefully in the drawer next to the antique hand-grenades.

0729: 11.2 million listeners for this show per week. Most of them, one would imagine, are listening whilst at work. The one advantage the Radio 1 has over every other pop format broadcaster on earth is that there are zero advertisements (seriously: who is listening to commercial pop radio?) - I've worked for firms that have had a local rival's name boom through the air just as a boss walks by. Radio 1 is a neat insurance policy against that ever happening.

However, it is evident that Moyles has actual fans, unless all of these texts and emails and phone-calls and cold hard statistics are fabricated. Caller Liz is a primary school teacher. She sounds intelligent and natural on the radio, her anecdotes light and clipped, but obviously 'real'. Every time Moyles makes a joke, Liz laughs, her whole body audibly shaking in delight. Cut to the Varsity guinea pig listening at home, arms folded, bereft of delight. If you're a fan of this man, please comment below outlining exactly what it is that attracts you and 11,199,999 others to the choice of Chris Moyles over silence.

0738: Sidekick #6263 has invented a game wherein he lists a British city and the rest of the team have to guess whether its population is higher or lower than the recent Moyles audience increase. What do you know? – they're all lower.

0757: The last twenty minutes have been completely incomprehensible.

0800: “What is mulligatawny?”

0845: This painful in-joke has been going on for about an hour now. Apparently somebody wrote in with the pseudonym Toby LeRone (geddit?) which fooled Moyles. Now they just keep repeating the name and loudly bellowing a fog of laughter.

0905: Earlier, the White Stripes' break-up was honoured by Dev's fart-o-tronic. Bon Jovi's hiatus announcement is being celebrated with 'Livin' On A Prayer' without Moyles interrupting it.

0917: In the chronology of the working day, we are now at the desk. We've been in the shower, choking down a piece of toast and stuck in an angry traffic jam. Now emails are coming in, Daphne in accounts has put a card on your desk to sign for Trevor's retirement. The work experience kid has made you the world's worst brew. Obviously there is only one soundtrack: Moyles rapping about going to the zoo.

0926: A song I like! Admittedly it's in the background of a trailer for a late-night show, but still, enough reason for me to post the video here.

0938: This is probably just me being a luddite but there has not been a song played all day with 'real' instruments. It's all drum machines and anthemic synths and auto-tuned vocals. Most won't care, but all of these pristine over-compressed recordings are making for a very undynamic listen. Very factory-line, functional radio at its worst. Is it meant to be ignorable?

0954: Roy Walker is in the studio for some reason. Either that or it is a very active soundboard. “I hate students”, Walker says to a caller, “get a life.” This gives me carte blanche to tell my Roy Walker story. A friend of mine was at the urinal in a Lytham pub called The Taps. Roy Walker is stood next to him, attending to business. Whilst thinking of a quip, said friend is beaten to the punch when a man walks up, stares at Walker's penis and says “what's Mr. Chips doing now?”

If you didn't watch Catchphrase then let me assure you: that was a hilarious anecdote.

1000: Fearne Cotton is as generally and widely derided as Moyles, though in this case the whole thing has a whiff of misogyny about it. A staple of ITV2 and a graduate of the early-morning yellcast format, what makes me uneasy about Cotton on television is a sense of underlying surliness; a refusal to hide a downness-in-the-mouth that made her interviews and interactions with Peaches Geldof, Mischa Barton, and especially Beth Ditto such an absolute non-event. Looking at her Radio 1 page, ALL of the photographs display a degree of hurt behind the eyes.

1005: A song with drums! Admittedly flat, fake-sounding drums. Cotton is a real rocker though but knows we just need to dip our toes before she blasts out some Acid Mothers Temple.

1011: Swerrrrve! Ke$ha is on. Or as I think of her, the antithesis of John Shuttleworth.

1014: “Here is an old song I like!” yells Cotton. It's from the second Razorlight album.

1036: When did My Chemical Romance turn into Wheatus? They were much better as Queen.

1045: Radio is a great compromise in the workplace. In a place where a bunch of people who are forced to co-exist, silence can be maddening. As David Foster Wallace points out in Host, it is hard to just speak into a microphone to no one (yet at the same time, everyone) and have it be of interest. Even interesting, smart, real-life people cannot do it. It is a skill which Fearne Cotton, with over a decade in showbusiness, undoubtedly possesses. It is the compromise and her lack of qualms about the compromise which make her radio programme ideal for the workplace because whilst it will annoy the student temp in the corner (me), most people will generally not be annoyed by its presence.

Deeply editorial: the mechanical nature of most office-based tasks soundtracked by continuous repetitions of efficient songs with essentially the same formula - to me - is a compelling précis of madness. Imagine the rest of your life as a series of days being torn from a calendar; this is the music that distracts you and speeds you through your allotted time in the most process-orientated and economical manner.

The restricted playlist eventually has a paradoxical effect in which time actually slows despite attempting to offer a distraction to this chronological advancement. Of course people have to work, and of course the nation's publicly-funded broadcasters cannot blast Merzbow at drive-time, but things could be better. Here is a stat from 2009: The ratio of total tracks played to unique tracks (the closer to 100% the more variety) played by the whole radio industry is 9%. That is not much different from simply playing one song over and over and over again. Charles Manson/Helter Skelter, anyone?

1051: Fearne, stop trying to make a Turin Brakes comeback happen.

1118: OH GREAT ANOTHER SONG WITH NO BASS, REVERBED ROLAND-808 CLAP SNARE, EMOTIONAL PIANO AND A RAP ABOUT HOW I GOT TO THE TOP DESPITE THE OVERWHELMING ODDS. I bet this sounds great whilst browsing through a spreadsheet about fourth quarter performance.

1136: The new song by Lewis Hamilton's mum is on. NEEDLESSLY OVERCONFIDENT LYRICS. FILTER SWEEP. KICK IN. ANTHEM. All boxes ticked.

1216: This show is still happening. I cannot remember a time when it was not.

1223: Ah, the satisfying cracking sound of an actual drummer actually hitting a snare, how I have missed thee. White Stripes tribute time: people who say Meg White was a terrible drummer simply do not understand how music works and spend all their time in a state where this fact continually manifests itself as anger. I was never a huge fan of these two on wax but they could completely rip it live.

1239: Fearne has developed a bit of a catchphrase. When she likes a song, she claims not just to love the song, but all the songs on the album - “soooo many good songs on that record.” Nine times this show with not one qualification or elucidation. Just name a song that isn't a single and I'll give you £50. The radio equivalent of wearing a Ramones t-shirt bought from Top Shop and not knowing 'Beat On The Brat'.

1300: The almost-local Greg James (Bishop's Stortford school, UEA graduate) is next. If I were the kind of rapier-like satirist like you get in those big newspapers they have these days I'd say something devastatingly mean but accurate, like how he looks like a student representative in the industry of radio. This is much in the same way that Mumford & Sons are for music and Jack Whitehall is for comedy; lanky, weirdly-jawed and recherché, but oddly cold and calculating like pre-ripped jeans. But I won't say that.

1314: “There's a sign gone up around the offices saying 'no 3G dongles in the studio'. Very useful if you're here, keep your dongles well hidden.” WAAAAAAAAY. Have another lager and put that traffic cone back on my head.

1323: Why are all these songs about partying and having a great time and being on top of the world and conquering odds? Is this Guardian article true, that we're going through a 'blue' period? Or is it just sub-Kanye tosh?

1332: “Someone was saying to me 'why don't the radio newsreaders get smartly dressed like they do on the television?' and it got me thinking.” Open goal.

1349: Agony uncle Johnny stops by and drops raw advice science, such as 'communicate'. He's down with the kids. We know this because he calls all the callers 'bruv' and pretends to like them even though all of their problems are basically asking him to affirm their desire to cheat.

1400: Eight hours in. Brain is complete mush. This is a shame because I really thought I could cough up 1000 words for a project whilst doing this.

1406: Agony uncle Johnny should give Bruno Mars a ring. “I would catch a grenade for you / take a bullet in the brain for you / jump in front of a train for you / but you won't do the same.” Abusive relationship much? Martyr complex? Just sayin'.

1433: Time for another digression. I probably listen to about ten hours of radio programming live per week, not counting podcasts. All of it is from the New Jersey-based station WFMU. Why not something closer to home? Well. Apart from Resonance, nothing like this really exists in the UK. The station is entirely free-form, meaning DJs adhere to nothing but the whims of their own knowledge. There is no playlist and no agenda. There is no advertising. It is entirely listener-sponsored and receives no governmental subsidy.

In short, it is like every show is like the John Peel Show because everybody gets the freedom. Talk show hosts can choose to play records. DJs more associated with a music-based format can just sit and talk if they wish. There are no jingles, no news updates, no wacky DJs promoting themselves as media celebrities as they are all volunteers. It is an oasis of sanity in a desert of horror. There is no attempt to mirror the average working day through radio: drive-time could be anything from Fabio's avant-garde show Strength Through Failure or Billy Jam's hip-hop and beats show Put The Needle On or any one of the expertly-curated three hour shows from a number of people whose love music and sound is positively palpable.

I once worked a night job, 12-hour shifts in an ambulance control room. The building was in the middle of parkland, three miles from the nearest town. Work was solitary, yawning chasms of time would stretch endlessly between calls. So I invested in a dongle (ooh-err, right Greg?) and streamed WFMU. It would be a bit much to credit a radio station for maintaining my sanity, after all, I have willingly sat in front of Radio 1 for a day despite not being a fan of popular entertainment. But the music did not simply attempt to anaesthetise its audience; it made time bend, wrapping around the active and curious parts of the brain, setting off chains of thoughts and pleasant associations – as well as the occasional problem and difficulty (not everything on WFMU is an easy listen). And the phone would ring and I would deal with the call and at its conclusion I would look at the clock and it was much closer to the end of the day than I had anticipated. And I felt all the richer for it.

1434: Oh it's that Florence & The Machine song that everyone loves even though she stole it from Gang Gang Dance but everyone seems to be totally okay with that.

1452: Ricky from Kaiser Chiefs referred to something as 'the opiate of the masses' and said that he enjoyed Midsomer Murders for its 'soporific effect', both of which make Greg James perform a mental spit-take. If Kaiser Chiefs made better music then I would not need to feel so guilty about finding their singer such an effortlessly charming man.

1516: See 0917 - it is recapped. Which is a bit like a Coronation Street recap halfway through Hitman and Her. That's still on, right? I like to keep these jokes as relevant as possible.

1534: Jeepers, this show is boring. At least people hate Chris Moyles. This is just tan upholstery in front of beige wallpaper. Also, every song played has now been spun at least three times now.

1544: Noah & The Whale's new single sounds like Bright Eyes covering 'Lola' by The Kinks. In short, terrible.

1547: Avril Lavigne. 'Sk8er Boi'. What more can I say? Actually, I will direct you to Richard Herring's absolutely brutal dissection of the lyrics. Here is a quote from the man to speed your clicking fingers:

So how does Avril know about this girl? There is no connection between them. The ballet girl never told anyone that she secretly fancied the skater-boy. Presumably they are no longer in touch, so how does the skater boy or Avril know that the girl came to the gig? Clearly the only way Avril could know about this girl is because her fantastic boyfriend has been going on about her. It was obviously of great importance to him. And Avril, overly pleased with herself for having landed a cool rock-star boyfriend (not that she judges by appearances and would presumably still love him if he was an out of work ballet dancer), is fuming with jealousy that her boyfriend had this (apparently) unrequited love at school. So much so that she has invented this scenario where the pretty-faced girl has had her life fall to pieces.

1554: 'Bittersweet Symphony' by The Verve rounds off the first and last Greg James show I ever hope to hear. I don't mind this song, but considering I was 14 and from The Verve's hometown, this song was practically the National Curriculum. The Verve were my first ever gig. 40000 people on a scrap of land at the side of the local golf course. Twelve lavatories. Ticketless hoards crashing the fence down. Spent the day hanging out with an Oasis tribute band from Grimsby called Morning Glory. Britpop, eh? Magic times.

1600: Scott Mills has become part of the R1 furniture, quietly transitioning from chirpy newcomer to veteran without a significant increase in cynicism or decrease in energy. Still, there's something rather 'local radio' about him. Thankfully he adheres to the same boring drum machine and synth format laid down for the last ten continuous hours, promising more of the same. Wouldn't want anyone to have a heart attack or something.

Scott Mills (r) and the rest of the Friendchips gang.

1621: Sushi chat. Guys, it isn't 1990 anymore. People are totally cool with the idea of raw fish. We've also figured out the pricing system in Yo! Sushi too. And if you don't like fish, get the katsu, the miso, and the edamame. For crying out loud. Didn't think I'd say this, but can we have some music now?

1623: I take it back.

1634: Champing at the bit to hear something raw and unrestrained and untrained and free. Mills plays percentage ball and drops another sub-Kanye synth + drum machine slow jam. Snore.

1645: One hour to go (Newsbeat kicks in at 1745). This section would be funnier if Scott and his cohorts had some comedy chops: one sidekick has been exchanging emails with a spammer and they're getting the Radio 4 continuity people to read the back-and-forth exchange. The sidekick is playing the Karl Pilkington role as best he can. Highlight of the day, though there is little competition from the previous 525 minutes.

1648: “D'Artagnan? Who is that? I thought it was Dogtanian.”

1700: The feel is very much that of winding down. Whether that is my brain leaking out of my ears or the show mirroring the working day I am yet to ascertain.

1745: It. Is. Over. I'm going to stagger to Sainsbury's and then come back and put on this song by the Nation of Ulysses as loud as I can get away with.

ART IN MACRO COMPLETE BUYER'S GUIDES #1: The Fall.

2011-01-27T00:00:00.007Z

Skip to around two minutes into the above video and the case for the cultural significance of The Fall is made; that the tastemaker of tastemakers, the spiritual cool uncle of music, should name the group as his favourite ever. Also fans: Frank Skinner, David 'Bumble' Lloyd, the members of any half-decent US group of the last 30 years, etc.

We're not here to question The Fall's position in the critical canon. Let us assume they are as unimpeachable as Shakespeare, Keats, or Philip Schofield. We're also not here to teach you in detail about the tumult and the firings or even use the word 'curmudgeonly': other people have written books on those subjects. And while we're here, don't buy Mark E. Smith's "auto"-biography. It's one of the worst books ever ghosted.

The problem is: what to buy? No band can cough up thirty records (not mention endless compilations, bootlegs, sessions, and live albums) and not have a stinker amongst them and The Fall are no exception. We at AIM are industry leaders in objectivity and championing the consumer and are subsequently not afraid of any challenge. So here it is: every Fall record in 50 words.

LIVE AT THE WITCH TRIALS ****
Step Forward, 1979
Angry dock clerk Mark E. Smith adds the syllable '-uh' to every line. His drably-dressed friends make 'punk' music that only shares 20% of its DNA with punk (energy, attitude) but little else: they've heard Beefheart, some German stuff. Cheap keyboards, curious rants: soon to be left behind. Excellent though.
Key lyric: “We are The Fall. Northern white crap that talks back.”
Killer track: Two Steps Back

DRAGNET ****
Step Forward, 1979
Looser. Weirder. At times impenetrable. Blackly humoured, proud to be slack, notes flubbed left and right. The amateurish performances and mix sound fantastic though – a happy accident of anti-technique and confident direction. Dragnet marks the debut of key member Steve Hanley, whose bass often sounds like an industrial accident.
Key lyric: “I don't sing. I just shout. All on one note.”
Killer track: Before The Moon Falls

GROTESQUE (AFTER THE GRAMME) ****1/2
Rough Trade, 1980
Weirder still. They now throw their own warped take on rockabilly into the mix (which they call 'country and northern'. Get it?). Hard to describe in mortal words, so I'll try something pretentious – like Bosch re-imagined by LS Lowry. Images of terror and anger softened with humour. Best one yet.
Key lyric: “You think you've got it bad with thin ties, miserable songs synthesized, or circles with A in the middle. Make joke records, hang out with Gary Bushell.”
Killer track: Container Drivers

The Fall, Nijmegen, 1981: (l-r) Steve Hanley, Mark E. Smith, Karl Burns, Marc Riley.

SLATES *****
Rough Trade, 1981
Six-track mini-album/EP that has a reasonably solid claim to being the greatest achievement of all mankind. That is not an exaggeration. 'Slates, Slags, Etc.' takes The Stooges' template and improves upon it by not giving into rock & roll cliché. The three Rs in full, mesmerising effect: repetition, repetition, repetition.
Key lyric: “Academic male slags ream off names of books and bands. Kill cultural interest in our land.”
Killer track: Leave The Capitol

HEX ENDUCTION HOUR ****1/2
Kamera, 1982
Two drummers! Nerve-jangler 'Hip Priest' would find its way into the denouement of Silence of the Lambs at writer Thomas Harris' request. Loose. Some spaces dense with conventional chord changes and others stark and open and minimal. Generally considered their best by the beard-stroking contingent. On some days I agree.
Key lyric: “Made with the highest British attention to the wrong detail.”
Killer track: Fortress/Deer Park

ROOM TO LIVE ***1/2
Kamera, 1982
Unpolished and spontaneous, this record sounds like the run-time is all the time it took to commit this to its finished entity. That results in some brilliantly unforeseeable moments where instruments clash unexpectedly, creating new sounds. It also results in some slightly indulgent moments where 'spartan' and 'boring' are interchangeable terms.
Key lyric: “The sweetest sound she had ever heard was the whinging and crying due to the recession.”
Killer track: Solicitor In Studio

PERVERTED BY LANGUAGE ****
Rough Trade, 1983
The last of the two drummer records, sadly. Some definitive rants and some crucial stuff that almost grooves conventionally ('I Feel Voxish') are interspersed with slow, percussive tracks that routinely shatter the eight minute mark. A disciplined effort with no languers. Who is that female singer on 'Hotel Bloedel' though...?
Key lyric: “The best firms advertise the least.”
Killer track: Smile

THE WONDERFUL AND FRIGHTENING WORLD OF... ****
Beggars Banquet, 1984
So, Mark married an American (Brix) who plays a jangly Rickenbacker like Peter Buck. She must be in the band, decides Mark. A drummer goes missing and sunshine breaks the clouds over Salford. The first brushes with pop, whilst Steve Hanley keeps it dour at the low end. A palate cleanser.
Key lyric: “Used table leg to club son-in-law.”
Killer track: No Bulbs

THIS NATION'S SAVING GRACE *****
Beggars Banquet, 1985
THE starting point. Every idea works. Every track hurts. In a way, their least coherent record – the sum of thousands of influences. The pop of Brix, the grinding of the band, the playful experimentation of Mark...this should be every high school year seven set listening for one whole year.
Key lyric: “Was over accountant's and on business, then I woke up and I decided to recommence my diary. Then I read Paula Yates On Vision Mopeds. Then I found out we were not going to Italy. Later Mam said “Those continentals are little monkeys”.”
Killer track: My New House

BEND SINISTER ***1/2
Beggars Banquet, 1986
The first record without any real difficulties for the listener: this is a band that thrives on chaos! Instead: same line-up, same producer, same label. None of these songs would make the record before – no surprise - but age shows it to be no mere facsimile of a successful effort. Underrated.
Key lyric: “I really think this computer thing is getting out of hand.”
Killer track: Riddler!

THE FRENZ EXPERIMENT ***
Beggars Banquet, 1987
All over the place. The opening trio sound transplanted from 1981, before giving way to a diabetes-inducing version of The Kinks' 'Victoria'. Side two (vinyl fans) drags due to their first real stinkers, some clock the ten-minute mark. Nobody signed up for happiness: The Frenz Experiment reeks of it.
Key lyric: “Diluted Jesuits pour out of mutual walkmans - from Elland Road to Venice Pensions and down the Autobahns.”
Killer track: Frenz

Brix Smith, 1988

I AM KURIOUS ORANJ ****
Beggars Banquet, 1988
A huge curveball: a ballet score! Admittedly for maverick choreographer Michael Clark, this record besmirches ballet more than it does the band. There's a perverse sense of 'let's the see the bastard dance to THIS' running throughout, challenging the band to experiment for the first time in three years. Great!
Key lyric: “I was very let down with the budget. I was expecting a one million quid handout. I was very disappointed. It was the government's fault.”
Killer track: Bad News Girl

EXTRICATE ***1/2
Cog Sinister, 1990
Lead single 'Telephone Thing' isn't really The Fall: it's Mark singing over a Coldcut song. One song tenderly laments the divorce of wife Brix, the rest actively celebrates the divorce of wife Brix. Angular and tightly-wound, with two covers of pioneering garage-rockers The Monks. Another underrated effort; no real lows.
Key lyric: “Does the Home Secretary have barest faintest inkling of what's going down?”
Killer track: Bill Is Dead

SHIFT-WORK **
Phonogram, 1991
Arguably the most nondescript Fall LP: forgotten by all but die-hard fans. Transition from guitars to synths, a sense of the band trying to compete rather than just be. Moving Steve Hanley onto acoustic bass is like telling Mozart to try his hand at funk drumming. Effort? Yes! Reward? Little.
Key lyric: “California has Disneyland. And Blackpool has a Funland. And Flanders had No Man's Land. This place idiot show bands.”
Killer track: High Tension Line

CODE: SELFISH **1/2
Phonogram, 1992
I'm an ass for criticising Smith for bringing techno into the band's sound: they were always concerned with amphetamine-influence music, being a bit speedy themselves. 'Free Range'/'Everything Hurtz' was an essential double A-side single: the rest is a decent grab of garage and pop recorded in a watery '90s style.
Key lyric: “Your brain is software. Your brain is Game Boy. It's filled with excrement.”
Killer track: Everything Hurtz

THE INFOTAINMENT SCAN ***
Permanent, 1993
Popular! They've finally cracked the top ten on the crest of the Madchester house revival by throwing in some bouncy Korg-M1 piano sounds amongst the choppy guitars, grunting bass, and bizarre covers of songs by novelty artists and reggae stars. Personal theory: Animal Collective's 'Fireworks' develops this album's 'Light/Fireworks'.
Key lyric: “At my feet, one who laughs at anything. And at my head, one that laughs at nothing. And I'm just in-between.”
Killer track: Service

MIDDLE CLASS REVOLT ***
Permanent, 1994
The house direction made them popular. Being The Fall, they bring back the guitars and turn the synths way down. Mark sounds fairly restrained throughout an album full of angry content: class discomfit, anti-student resentment, and a cover of Cambridge alumni Henry Cow's 'War'. At times on autopilot, often inspired.
Key lyric: “Heinz is guilty on the borders of your imagination.”
Killer track: M5 #1

CEREBRAL CAUSTIC ***
Permanent, 1995
Earns three stars for sheer gumption: turning their back on the dance zeitgesit and sticking two fingers back up at the prevalent Britpop taking over their city and country by playing repetitive garage rock. Oh yeah – his ex-wife is back on guitar, slightly ruining some songs with her 'singing'.
Key lyric: “We have Richard and Judy's bastard offspring - baseball cap reversed.”
Killer track: One Day

Craig Scanlon played guitar in The Fall from 1979 to 1995.

THE LIGHT USER SYNDROME ****
Jet, 1996
The keyboards and samples are back, but this time they're being used less forcefully. Lots of space in the mix: tracks like 'Hostile' and 'Oxymoron' are monolithic creatures, approaching remorselessly. A word can be used that is not often used in the presence of Smith and his pirate band: subtle.
Key lyric: “Don't ever follow the path of being hard and tough when your heart is soft.”
Killer track: Hostile

LEVITATE ***
Artful, 1997
The closest the band got to an out-and-out dance album (not counting Smith's Von Sudenfed project). Slightly maddening production (by Smith himself) means some tracks have real bite, where others have a slightly watercolour feel to them. The songwriting is mostly encouraging, considering their impending implosion. Currently out of print.
Key lyric: “I thought about my debts. He was talking about his house in the Lake District.”
Killer track: The Quartet of Doc Shanley

THE MARSHALL SUITE ***
Artful, 1999
Big fight in New York in 1998: Smith gets jailed and the the band leaves – including Steve Hanley. Features 'Touch Sensitive' (remember the VW advert with the 'hey hey hey' song? That.). Surprisingly manages to be decent in spite of losing THE GREATEST BASSIST EVER. MES = a fool.
Key lyric: “And in dreams I stumble towards you. Knees knocked, as you evaporate. Though I am teed up, I am in the next room with you always.”
Killer track: Birthday Song

THE UNUTTERABLE ***1/2
Eagle, 2000
In a word: frontloaded. The first nine tracks represents their strongest start to an album since 1985! The final six never do much, including a turgid pub-rocker that Smith doesn't even bother to sing. Smith's newest girlfriend is in the band: her keyboard sounds are all six years too late.
Key lyric: “I was in the realm of the essence of Tong.”
Killer track: Two Librans

ARE YOU ARE MISSING WINNER *1/2
Cog Sinister / Voiceprint, 2001
American fight #2 and now Smith's girlfriend is out of his life: so are the rest of the band. The new guys sound like they've had two days with no electricity to learn a sixties garage album. It shows, but without the charming amateurism. Hyper-indulgent, mostly nonsense. Best track: a cover.
Key lyric: “The editor bedraggled, stumbled, some hurt, some days with film crew.”
Killer track: Gotta See Jane

THE REAL NEW FALL LP (FORMERLY COUNTRY ON THE CLICK) ****1/2
Action, 2003
All killer, no filler. Where they pulled this one from after years of diminishing returns is beyond comprehension. Another new girlfriend (later to be wife) is on keyboards and she's really good! Feels like a sequel to This Nation's Saving Grace: accessible, but obviously made by a complete original. Exquisite.
Key lyric: “So I went fishing. A note from a fish said: 'Dear dope, if you wanna catch us you need a rod and a line. Signed the fish.'”
Killer track: Janet, Johnny + James.

Eleni Smith (née Poulou): keys since 2002

FALL HEADS ROLL **1/2
Slogan, 2005
Perhaps that low mark is related to the fact that I paid £16 to buy it and hated it. Subsequent re-appraisal: too many two- and three- chord 'rockers'. Mark seems to think the band were once a conventional garage band: they were always too weird for that. Beauty found within.
Key lyric: “People in Great Britain, please don't get me wrong.”
Killer track: Midnight In Aspen

REFORMATION POST TLC **
Slogan, 2007
ANOTHER fight in America: band leaves. Seriously Mark, just don't go! You always mess up! His support act learned the songs and then he flew them to sunny Stockport to record this. A genuinely unremarkable effort, if anything: still not convinced about the Fall = garage-pop thing. Strangely lauded elsewhere.
Key lyric: “I've seen POWs less hysterical than you.”
Killer track: Fall Sound

IMPERIAL WAX SOLVENT ***
Castle, 2008
STILL going with the garage-pop thing, though at least there are some firsts: the opening track flirts with jazz. The new Mrs. Smith continues her strong showing behind the keys, displaying at worst an up-to-date knowledge and at best, pushing some sloppier tracks into the thumbs-up zone! A good find.
Key lyric: “The spawn of J. "Loaded" Brown and L. Laverne: with the dept. of no name.”
Killer track: Alton Towers

YOUR FUTURE OUR CLUTTER ***1/2
Domino, 2010
Their dullest rhythm section to date. They sound like two blokes at jam night. Fortunately, Mark, Eleni, and the new guitarist are all in sparkling form. New guy plays like Duane Denison, all bent notes and menace. Though he drops back to please the boss, he secretly steals the show.
Key lyric: “She has lips like Fedde Le Grand.”
Killer track: Chino

BONUS MATERIAL

Action Beat: "Playing on Christmas Day was the greatest idea we've had."

2011-01-24T20:00:00.002Z

This post was written for Varsity online, one of the Cambridge student papers.

"On Christmas Day 2005, James and I hired a generator and drove my car around Milton Keynes playing in 4 different spots for over 2 hours. We started at an underpass near a built-up residential area. It was pitch black as all the lights were either smashed out or not functioning. We created an insane racket, with two guitars and a drum machine. People were coming out of their houses to check out the noise that was bellowing out of the underpass. We then moved on to an industrial area, which was a little more isolated and played for about an hour, and during this time a shitload of our friends had come out and were up for following us around to different spots. The next 'show', as it were, was one of my favourite shows off all time, because we played on a walkway bridge, going over the old A5! We finished up at Milton Keynes' notorious skate park. Playing on Christmas Day was probably the greatest idea we ever had."

One of the truly great bands of the 21^st century are based within a 50-mile radius of where you, Cambridge student, are sitting right now. No. Not London. Head southwest out of the city on the A603, where it becomes the sleepy B1042 and the A507, depositing you west of the M1 in Bletchley.

Most of the year, you won't actually find Action Beat there. This is one of the hardest-working, hardest-touring, hardest-living ensembles of recent memory. They have toured constantly for half a decade (until The Bergen Incident, more later). That is no mean feat for the average band, but Action Beat have seven, eight, sometimes ten members crammed like sardines into their van with equipment and personal belongings. Your correspondent has been in bands that argue deathlessly during a trip to the shop in mid-rehearsal break. There's no comprehending how you'd survive with sanity intact after showerless, nutrition-free days of close proximity and ear-shredding volume, with weeks stretched ahead promising much of the same. People have killed for less.

And their music is no easy-listening joyride for today's young-and-swinging single. When Action Beat hit their stride, it sounds like a war being thrown down a staircase. Electric guitars are tortured and bent like sheet metal, multiple drumkits pound away in remorseless ecstasy, with a phalanx of baritone guitars, electric violins, basses, and assorted percussion creaking and shaking and crashing along in white-hot fury. They never practice. They never sound-check. But years of live performance, refined taste, and taking the road less-travelled has honed these skinny teenagers into veterans.

In addition to this, most band members perform in other bands and put on shows in their hometown. McLean has also managed to transform his hometown label, dedicated to documenting local Bletchley heroes such as Dawn Chorus, Madrid Axemen, and Riotmen (among others), into a legitimate business by re-issuing Glenn Branca's 1981 masterwork The Ascension on heavyweight white vinyl. It's a labour of love, funded by “some inheritance money, and wanted to put it to good use rather than waste it on more van repairs.”

It really shows: Robert Longo's artwork gets the forum it finally deserves, whilst the power of the record never fails to overwhelm. If you haven't heard it, the album has not only had a profound effect on myself and Don, but members of various ensembles you might know by the names of My Bloody Valentine, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Sonic Youth.

These years of fun are not without caveats. Years of the DIY lifestyle and aesthetic are taking their toll. Band and label chief Don McLean is about to have a child. On his band's Myspace, he recently posted the kind of blog that only a very nice person would post after years of being repeatedly kicked in the pants. Here are some choice examples of things encountered in the name of sustaining art:

"Hostel with inadequate number of beds, and an old women sleeping in the corner of the room who was obviously freaked out and overwhelmed by the 9 men who just entered the room. Her knickers were drying on the radiator, so that smelt good too. As if an old woman wants to stay with 9 other guys?!?!"

"The promoters at Incubate festival in Tilburg put us up in a squat ran by 18 year olds. It was basically a building site, with no windows or doors. Place was fucking freezing, and the kids spat all over the floor we were sleeping on."

And then there's The Bergen Incident. Shortly after their driver received a €1000 fine for testing positive for THC in a urine sample in Germany, their van broke down in Bergen, Norway. Look at it on the map. It is possibly the worst city in Europe to break down in: miles from anywhere, but facing the UK, being taunted. Just before the tour they had spent £1700 on running repairs and maintenance on the wretched thing.

For six cold days they awaited news on their van before being told it was a write-off. People in the city arranged a benefit show for them, but Norway is a place where a drink costs the same as a black-market kidney in the UK. They eventually flew home, utterly dejected, at a cost of £1800 for the six stranded members, leaving many thousands of pounds worth of gear behind in the van. McLean wrote on Myspace:

"Action Beat is in about £9000 debt now. We don't make money on tour, because our van is constantly breaking. It's now a write-off. We don't make money from record sales, cause we're not that popular."

Action Beat are not a household name. Their music is not accessible to everybody. They often suffer ridiculous indignities in the name of getting to a show and playing it (not that they are demanding or mean or expect kingly riches. Full disclosure: I've cooked for these guys on tour and they're almost pathetically grateful for a place to sit down and eat for an hour in silence). When they do get to the show and play it, even if the place is packed and they sell a few records, it goes back into the tour and the band and the label. So why do it?

The current working theory is this: no earthly feeling can adequately replace when this goes right. Watch.

Fortunately, even though Action Beat are a noise-rock force to name-drop on three continents, their commitment to DIY principles means that a guy like Don McLean is only ever an email away.

"Touring was always something that I had to do, and the 'pleasant novelty' never wore off for us. I am addicted to it, as are most of the band. The more time we can spend on the road the better, even if our minds suffer. In 2010, I got married, and now have a kid on the way, so 2011 won't be as active for us. A lot of members in the band have moved out of their parents, and are paying quite high rent, and this is another obstacle. So, it is definitely going to be a lot harder for us to just leave the country for 10 weeks, but I'm sure we will eventually find the means to do it."

In fact, his email is full of illuminating stories that it would make no sense to cut bits out of.

"It was definitely easier for us to tour so frequently when we first started the band. We all lived at our parents' houses paying little or no rent, worked shitty jobs we were able to quit when we eventually went on tour - and it was generally a really great time for the band because of the lack of any responsibility, or reality. I would plan out these ridiculously long tours, we'd fill the van with 9 people, and all save quite a lot of money so that the van rental and petrol was covered, the tours would run smoothly when we all paid for it. I would always say, “hey, you're paying £250 to go around Europe for 6 weeks. It's a great holiday!”"

Broken down vans, old women, and drug tests aren't the only nightmares of the road. There are also rats.

"It was at a farm which was squatted by French anarchists. It was actually a last minute show, because we had a day off, and it was a very good gig. When we checked out the place to sleep, it was pretty nightmarish, in a sick, cold, dark, damp converted cellar. Most of the beds were wet with condensation and nearly all of them had droplets of shit spread all over. Whilst sleeping, you could hear the rats above you, under the floor boards of the farmhouse. Insane. We actually returned there last year, and were dreading the sleep. We talked about how they had probably fixed the place up a bit, as it was a planned gig...wishful thinking I guess. We were wrong. More rat shit. This time, we all slept in the van, or in the venue."

Despite the hardships, they are not fazed. Their Myspace blurts out the message: “booking a short European tour in April. 2-3 weeks.” With dates set in Belgium, Bristol, and Manchester already (during the Easter break I might add) as well as more to come coupled with the reduced opportunity to see them over the next few years, this is a band worth the trip. For all the hardships they've endured it's the least you can do. But don't feel sorry for them. They're free and living.

http://www.myspace.com/actionbeat/
http://www.fortissimorecords.co.uk/

WHEN I GET SATISFACTION, YOU WILL GET SADIST ACTION

2011-01-18T22:32:00.004Z

Peter Sotos has a lot to answer for.

We'll feed you to every hungry bird
We'll feed you to every starving animal
And we'll let them eat fat till they're full
And will let them drink blood till they're drunk
As I tell you:
It's helping
While I tell you:
You're doing the right thing

Whitehouse, 'Cut Hands Has The Solution'
from Bird Seed, 2003

I have this urge to kill
I have this urge to kill any woman

Brainbombs, 'Urge To Kill'
from Urge To Kill, 1999

Punk, especially US underground punk of the '80s, eventually moved out of a postered room in the suburbs and found its way onto college campuses. For some, the white-hot nihilistic energy that fuelled the music dimmed with the wishy-washy peace'n'love, feminist, veg-left agenda. Hardcore was E-numbers and I hate my mom AND the military-industrial complex. Colleges were puritan salad with extra ethics.

All this togetherness and unity and melody was plaid-shirted longhair hell to Peter Sotos; it was the '70s all over again. Sotos responded with Pure: a 'zine exploring the role of the serial killer in society. A liberal conceit at the heart designed to test campus liberals; it explored how the media abuses the victims as much as the killer does, utilising the trash/low-literary aesthetics of hate mail, crime reports, pornographic fantasy – and importantly, first-person 'exploitations' of the acts of murder. It provoked the necessary reaction. Pure #2, the child pornography issue, went even farther: it landed Sotos in jail.

Big Black were among the first to take these ideas and channel them through new nihilistic forms (indeed, guitarist/vocalist Steve Albini and Sotos were friends around the Chicago scene): where punk had been fast and unruly but ultimately consonant, like stilted pop music – Big Black made oppressive, discordant, hellish music. Albini, like Sotos' tracts, would channel murderers (“She's wearing his bootprint on her forehead”) and assholes and losers. In a further act of provocation, Albini would name his next band Rapeman. Concerts would be regularly picketed, criticism levelled, the band broke up before Albini spent the remainder of the '80s & '90s producing huge sellers for PJ Harvey, Nirvana, Pixies, and Page & Plant.

For some, Sotos' influence ran deeper. Here was a writer delving into the last taboos, making lustmord more than a dusty academic concept; scratching out conventional lines of inquiry that combined a love of anti-comic situationist thought and a full cognisance of modern tragedy. He would join British power-electronics group Whitehouse, bringing a volatile neuro-linguistic programming edge to their already bracing music; tracks like 'Why You Never Became A Dancer' a small scale model of psychic confusion of the corruption of aging.

Though overwhelmingly powerful and so cloaked in black irony it is hard to see any real truth, Whitehouse, even when assaulting the senses with white-noise and yelled incantations about Gilles De Rais, maintain a moralist understanding of suffering. They're dissed by scholarly music writers such as David Toop and Simon Reynolds, who maintain a frumpy fusty indignation about their connection with Sotos - yet they maintain an air of defensibility in that William Bennett has had a 30-year career and maintains close relationships with so many liberal and un-extreme persons that he can't possibly be all bad; rather, the Hermann Nitsch of contemporary electronic music.

The same can't be said for Brainbombs. Sotos nicknamed Peter Sutcliffe 'The Streetcleaner': Brainbombs have a song called 'Street Cleaner'. The aforementioned lyrics were the lightest in tone that could be found. All of their lyrics allude to misogynistic brutal murders, mutilation, child sex, or a combination of these tropes. They even have a song called 'Fuckmurder'. It's genuinely troubling stuff: at what point do we say word is deed? Is it ever?

From Hudiksvall in Sweden, the general consensus is that Brainbombs – though serious musicians (if you can ignore their lyrics then they're some of the best garage/no wave musicians anywhere) – are a joke played on record collectors, liberals, feminists, political correctness junkies, and anyone square enough to be offended. The defence: if gruesome horror movies can show mutilation and death, which can be unambiguous, given the wrong editor, then why can't Brainbombs sing “I'm a sick fuck / I kill for pleasure / I'm gonna fuck you dead / Cheap fucking meat / Blood dripping from her cunt / Pus out of her mouth”? The cover to Burning Hell has a dead baby in a coffin on the cover. The broken English of the lyrics somehow make the sentiments appears more detached, more dangerous; more deranged. It is not easy going.

Even if the axe is to fall and we unilaterally decide as people that these things are wrong to say/write/think, then kudos to Sotos, Whitehouse, & Brainbombs (and latter-day writers such as Jim Goad and Adam Parfrey) for re-animating a passionate conversation about words once again. Between the lot of them, nobody has committed a crime of the type they continually reference in their art. But as many have accused Arizona gunman Jared Loughner of being inspired by a climate of heightened rhetoric, does this logic not serve to say that the words of Sotos et. al. inspire a heightened passion about violent murder? That if one person is influenced, it was all a bad thing? Is it even possible to just kick back and enjoy Whitehouse and Brainbombs for their music?

Back soon with something lighter.

Michael Gira's God Complex

2010-11-08T20:17:00.004Z

I wrote a couple of articles for the University paper/website. After a couple of meetings and unreturned emails and responses that were unforthcoming, I can only assume that they've gone cold on my articles or me - or are simply snowed under with work. Anyway, here is something I wrote about Swans and Xiu Xiu. The tone is more for unfamiliar readers, but I can't be bothered changing it.

Some people love a good lyric. They have them permanently inscribed on their bodies. They whisper them to loved ones in the dark of the night. They stand in for philosophical conceits, political persuasions, and often negotiate the complex space between real feeling and articulation. Me, I usually couldn't care less; it's often just arbitrary condensed syntax that really doesn't mean that much.

Occasionally, lines will snake around your heart, or somewhere a little more cerebral, to take hold. To wit:

“I work hard for everything I own. Everything I own chokes me when I'm asleep.”
“Out of your mind with whorishness, incredibly young, incredibly filthy.”
“Break into the children's hospital screaming 'don't fuck with me! Don't fuck with me!”
“Cut out the infection. Beat up the violator. Gag him, then screw him down.”
“The oil is black and it is thick. Sex is a void filled with plastic.”
“This is the worst vacation ever. I am going to cut open your head with a roofing shingle.”

No, they don't scream 'party' to me either. They're dark, concerned with the grotesque and the violent, attempting a frustrated, futile malediction against a clustering blackness. Against the backdrop of the radio and the overwhelming banality of UK indie's proud underachievers, these are simply words that stand out; be they good or bad.

In the back catalogues of their writers (respectively: Swans, Xiu Xiu, Xiu Xiu, Swans, Swans, Xiu Xiu) these are not necessarily the best, the most novel, or potent examples of their craft. Their words are repulsive because things are awful. This is the world we live in; not that Usher and his ilk Eurodancing their way to the club are not in the same world. It's just that while the world sees Justin Bieber performing 'Baby' inside to a rapt audience, Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart sees the barmaid molested in the back-room, the CCTV mysteriously malfunctioning for that day only, the music drowning out the cries. Tell me that it wouldn't happen. Tell me that it hasn't happened already.

In February, Xiu Xiu released their seventh LP, entitled Dear God, I Hate Myself. Fluttering, high drama vocalisms take centre stage against a shifting palette of cold synthesiser, unsympathetic mechanic percussion and abrasive string stabs. The tension is sometimes too much to take: Stewart's vocal tightrope-act balances every track in a state of unremitting drama, a house of cards awaiting the merest zephyr to break the tension. And it never comes. There is no catharsis.

September brought the twelfth LP by Swans, My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky, an audience-funded effort to kick Michael Gira's long-running project back into gear after a decade-long absence. Gira, a singular entity in a world of indiscernibles, would take to the stage in the early '80s and order the back door be bolted and the lights turned off but for a single spotlight. The band would unleash unmitigated chaos, deafening bass thrums and atonal guitars that have more in common with the scrapyard than the stage. As their 1990 live album recalls, Anonymous Bodies In An Empty Room, just before a period of mellowing.

My Father... attempts a clever balancing act between the remorselessness of the visceral and physical Swans and some more overtly melodic, sweeping styles, mostly pulled off to great aplomb. Where Jamie Stewart is a histrionic tenor, Michael Gira is a grave and impassive baritone. If most artists were to announce that a key track on their upcoming record was a seven-minute mini-epic about their daughter, it'd be time to line-up the sick bags. The first four minutes of 'Inside Madeline' batter the listener so thoroughly that the rays of sunshine peeking through at its conclusion are easy to miss.

What is signicant here, then? That these are two albums deep into each band's career whose lyrics reveal their treacly-black auteurs to be fundamentally moralist flaneurs: maybe not Christian by self-identfication, but certainly by de facto action. Those lyrics up there: they're not for kicks or to try and play to the kind of sicko who'd get off on them. Swans and Xiu Xiu have spat naked nihilism in their audience's faces for years now and some of them still don't get it, much like semi-racist Little Englanders don't get Alf Garnett. Now they're spelling it out for us. They inhabit the same moral sphere as Justin Bieber and his exhortations to just 'love you, girl', even though against the banality of the radio, you wouldn't quite notice.

Records of the year: Sharpie Crows: Mass Grave/Golf Course

2010-10-25T20:41:00.003+01:00

Firstly: Mass Grave/Golf Course is a phenomenal name for an album; conceptually, syntactically, juxtapositionally, comedically; it just works. It somewhat spoils the party when you understand that Mass Grave and Golf Course are the names of two separate EPs, but if you download one from their Bandcamp page, you get the other bundled in. Hence: Mass Grave/Golf Course. Besides, the artwork all but confirms it.

Cursory listens to older material show the Crows have made a leap into leftfield, swimming forcefully out of the shallows of vaguely garage-y post-punk and into a deeper ocean pitched in the weirdnesses of the San Francisco scene of the early '80s, some Texas art-trash, and perhaps the spirit of countrymen such as The Dead C and The Clean (if not their actual sound). This might sound tenuous and idiotic, but let me try this on paper: the accent and vague 'experimental' tendencies make Liars the first point of comparison, but they do not sound like Liars. However (and this is the big leap of faith) - it sounds like something Liars might attempt in a parallel universe, were they suburban rather than cosmopolitan.

When the band 'rock' they sound more than fine: you imagine that live, they would be completely unhinged. However, it is their slower, more expansive material that satisfies more completely: 'Communist Girls' is the sound of stumbling home, the air hitting the drunken in a burst of badly-directed anger, frustration and bullshit ("do you know what I did today? / I fucked a head of state today.") before arriving home and sobering regretfully. Better still is 'Country Music': airlocked, disembodied, and full of disquiet. "How can we make country music / when there's no country anymore?" they ask, sounding as if they genuinely want to know.

What the album signifies, more than its own excellence (which it absolutely is: consistently across 11 tracks) is the triumph of the democratised unsigned act. Everything is self-generated: the art, the recording, the image and thus retains 100% of its intended characteristics; the band as true auteur.* They'll probably never tour outside of their own continent, but at least we can hear them as quickly, freshly, and in context as their local fans can. The album costs about £2.30/$3.80US. Whether 'the Radiohead model' works for smaller bands is yet-to-be-proven, but at least they can compete musically.

*I know, this has happened for years - but now on microscopic budgets it sounds as good as records you buy in the shops that cost five or six figures to make, ordinarily.

You think you've got problems?

2010-10-24T13:41:00.004+01:00

Art In Macro is back with a minor redesign (a template) and some new content. Some of the old content has been axed too. Yes, because it was rubbish. There will be more frequent updates that are shorter as well as an approximately quarterly piece that threatens to stretch beneath the southern boundary of you screen

Today’s review is of the performance of 4.48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane at the ADC Theatre in Cambridge. What immediately follows is a brief interpolation about why, in spite of minimal theatre-going experience, Art In Macro is reviewing plays. Skip the next bit text to get to the review.
____________________

In sentient adult life I have been to fewer than a dozen plays. Why? I am exactly the sort of person who should go to the theatre. It plays to my respective enjoyment of acting, literature, immediacy, and art. So why is the sum total of my theatre-going experience as an undergraduate a performance of Waiting For Godot with Coronation Street’s Roy Cropper (David Neilson) as Lucky?

Primarily it is about expense. The days of subsidized troupes and theatres are disappearing. You have to be a particularly hardened and embattled soul if you are to regularly stump up £10+ to see something that you can’t own later, that might not be good, that could potentially offend and challenge your understanding of previously cherished text. At least the similarly-priced record and DVD have a repeatability clause built-in. And at least the large touring rock band allows the opportunity for the audience member to come alive, be semi-interactive, and to consume several flagons of draught.

There were never any regrets about those few times I did pay the requisite for a play. And whilst I don’t have the experience to fully separate what makes a production first-rate from one to hate, the weary cynicism of the post-modern/late-capitalist voracious culture-consumer with a mouthpiece (e.g. this blog) is a transposable mode. I am writing as a dilettante to speed my passage into understanding; trying to make sense of things I do not fully understand without recourse to textbooks, theoreticians, and naysayers. Anyway: on with the show.

___________________

4.48 Psychosis – Cambridge ADC Theatre
23rd October 2010

Pitched somewhere between Beckett (formal abstraction, the decomposition of semantics, an almost percussive dialogue) and Plath (despair expressed through snakish – almost primal – monologuing, depression as anger) is 4.48 Psychosis. The director’s notes claim it is not ‘a play purely about depression’ but ‘a cry for love and human connection’. All very well and noble, but ultimately begging a question about why the protagonist (The Lover) hates everyone, including those who attempt to love her?

The Lover is depressed beyond tears, a tiger set loose to live with humans, occasionally benign and self-concerned but mostly filled with incomprehension and an inability to communicate terms which might assuage her. Nothing is ever good enough. The Partner tries anger, calmness, aping The Lover’s rhetorical devices, and just about everything he understands within his power but comes up short. The Doctor attempts to retain a professional impassivity, treating The Lover like a problem rather than a human. The Lover sees this as impersonal and dehumanizing, herself as vehicle for pharmaceutical neutralizing. The Doctor does care; when she takes off the professional mask to reveal herself, The Lover understands the necessity of the object/subject relationship, how social and professional boundaries cannot be transcended. It kills her.

The acting is good throughout. Hannah Wildsmith is perhaps too young, unravaged, and restrained to be The Lover, giving some of the angrier moments the same kind of forearm-to-forehead tendency of the period drama rather than the modernist nerve-jangler. Nonetheless, her smooth, clear-headed soliloquies highlight the patterns that repeat and fold in on themselves later, crushing her under her own rhetoric (appropriate, considering her fate). Archie Preston is similarly fine as The Partner, requiring the greatest range, attempting a light (“RSVP? ASAP?”) that contrasts jarringly with the near treacle-black of the denouement. Best of all, or at least the most convincing, is Nikki Moss as The Doctor. She is a blank page, phlegmatic in that way doctors have to be to preserve their own sanity (irony probably unintentional from Kane). Clipped and distant, yet her notes grant her omnipresence.

The direction is surefooted throughout, with minimal stage set-up to let the actors act and the words breathe. Sound and lights offer subtle tonal shifts; the overriding impression leaves you with no doubt that all concerned have extracted all they can from this play.

All said, it is the play itself that is the most problematic aspect of the production. Endless debate could be devoted to this topic, though to cut a long story short, it appears to valorize the plight of the depressed and somewhat elevate their status to nihilist-visionary. The Lover (difficult not to read as an allegory for Sarah Kane herself, in light of her suicide before this play reached the stage) laments pills and medication as curtailing the higher functions of her brain, when it is pretty clear to see that the higher functions of her brain are misfiring, her synapses prone to influencing angry, awkward bursts of dialogue that make living and supporting a person in that state totally fucking impossible to deal with. Of course, Kane attempts to pre-empt such readings, but these are the moments that feel the most forced.

Funny People and the rise of the insider film

2010-06-10T16:46:00.005+01:00

There are films about love written and produced by some of the most loveless people you could ever hope to meet. There are films about death written by people who have never experienced it in the family or friends. There are films about racial tension written by some of the most privileged around. But when it comes to films which mock the pretensions and politics of entertainment industry insiders, I tend to believe those the most. You write what you know, and in some cases, this is all some people know.

One such film is Funny People, which depicts the life of struggling and successful people in and around Hollywood's comedy scene. This is not a bad film, so please do not read on if you are expecting a humorous panning. It is frequently funny (though notably not-so-much in the stand-up comedy scenes which deign to give the film some kind of authoritative voice) and contains a good half-dozen memorable characters engaging in a not-too-unrealistic series of events. If that isn't praise, I don't know what is.

What it absolutely is is a mess. A confused hurricane of ideas that don't all quite pay off. For instance: I like a lot of music, so when I have a band, there's not this idea of 'oh, we will sound like this or that'. We will begin as a style (let's say energetic post-punk) and then I will bring a song that sounds slow and sad and perhaps a little bit country. This may be a contributing factor toward none of my bands being successful and quite jarring. It doesn't all quite fit – but that's ok, because all I ever was was some dude in a bar. Judd Apatow was 41 with a lot of money at his disposal. There are moments in this work that are pure Curb Your Enthusiasm-style improv. That will sit next to a glossy hi-def/tightly-scripted scene of emotional outpouring. The cinematography is similarly disjointed, as is its observation of certain maxims such as the 30-degree rule, moral consistency of characters and their ability to flip between sincerity and joking.

Adam Sandler plays the version of himself his detractors hold true: a decent comic, inexplicably likeable, who has made a barrel of money playing the kook in increasingly inane and flimsy comedy films – who is now Sad and Alone (and dying). It's a believable premise. RZA, he of Wu-Tang fame, plays a man who works in a salad bar and is happy with it. It is not a believable premise. It is not a believable premise because it is OBVIOUSLY RZA and this film wants you to recognise this as much as it wants you to be familiar with Adam Sandler and his personal story. Somewhere in the middle is Jason Schwartzmann, who is believable as a smug, shallow bedder of the opposite sex, but is not believable as an actor of a desperately uncool sitcom, being the man in Hollywood who has landed on his feet the most times ever.

And as a brief aside, looking for a good female character? Well, there aren't any. There's a pretty lazy “fuck-this-chick omg-i-wanted-to-fuck-that-chick-how-could-YOU-fuck-that-chick-dude-hey-man-if-you-don't-fuck-this-chick-then-i'm-gonna” going on that is gross and weird and the more I think about it could bring the whole film down. Of the five women I can remember with speaking parts, two are 'starfuckers', one is Sarah Silverman (playing herself as comedy insider), and two are main characters – one that Schwartzmann & Rogen have the aforementioned 'dialogue' about, who fulfils the indie-film sex object du jour role well – and the girl that is the object of a tug of love between Sandler and a hilarious Eric Bana that the film can't decide whether she's dreadful and only in love with someone because of mitigating factor X – or whether she's The Woman We All Secretly Want. Ugh.

And maybe this confusion in characterisation is deliberate, a comment – but I can't see it – not when the film contains sage advice spoken by Eminem, playing a version of himself as sage giver of advice caught in the role of celebrity he never wanted. All these scenes do, with moments where we are intimate with some of the world's most recognisable people, whether they are 'real' or 'comic', is add weight to the film's status as 'insider'. That's why it contains so many men of status.

The classic touchstone for such movies would be Robert Altman's The Player, the king of insider movies, not only apes industry mores and dialogue, but pays homage to movies and directors of the past. But recent years have seen television and films that also attempt to show the inside world of 'the industry'; Entourage, Action, The Critic, The Larry Sanders Show, Moving Wallpaper, Boogie Nights, Lost in La Mancha, Man Bites Dog. A whole series of Seinfeld is given over to this; we can even stretch back farther to Dziga Vertov, Michael Powell, Hitchcock and Fellini. Even now, as I write, the episode of Glee quipped “you need to do a real investigation. I'm taking CSI-real.”

Which kind of throws contemporary television into a series of post-modern conundra – about the way that they are contained by and almost cannot exist without reference to the issues they comment on. Film is eating itself. We're not just talking simulacrum and versions of reality. We're talking about the future of art as a landscape whose entire series of reference points is simply other art.

That is exactly what Funny People is. Every scene does not simply stand for itself or its place in a narrative – but for its place outside the film as well, about its relationship to what you know about the actors and their lives, the conventions of plot, etc. And you might say “well, nothing new there, asshole – musicals are totally knowing and people just dance and know routines.” The inherent post-modernism of musical-theatrical performance at least serves to propel the plot. The post-modernism of Funny People serves to say 'Hey. We're being post-modern. We know what this is.” And it's kind of boring. And smug. And massively self-serving.

Fortunately there's enough of a film hanging out in close proximity to these instances (it's long enough) to make it worth a watch. And it's nowhere near as problematic for reality as The Hills – and it's pretty funny. But post-modern looks at the inside of things have sidelined music, movies and TV for long enough. It's time to get back to talking about things.

Crystal Antlers / Mt. Eerie live

2010-04-28T09:44:00.003+01:00

Not together. That would be weird, right? First update for a while, this coincides with the first gigs I've been to in a while and the first tumblr posts I made in a while and the first time I stepped outside to breathe oxygen that did curl back to my face and say "do your fucking dissertation you fuck". So I did. I make no apologies. Sorry.

In reverse chronological order, Crystal Antlers. Saw these dudes at Retro Bar about a year and a half ago early in their hype cycle. Lot of thin kids, pouters, fake glasses, the weird child-like dress sense. Blog readers, basically, hypists. Second time they played I couldn't afford it - £14! OK, you get Ariel Pink and Ponytail thrown in...still, doesn't mean I had the dollar. Heard that place was rammed.

It's pretty clear the hype and memory-purge has done for CA's momentum a bit. There were about as many people there as there were as the first time, and my friend and I were the only repeat offenders. Still, can't keep a good band down. Before the review, a picture that makes them look like just another bunch of dudes spanking their planks.

Shirtless drummer! Singing bass player! Incongruously hot keyboardist! Even a Bez figure! Lesser bands would embody these terrible clichés, even revel in them. Fortunately for Crystal Antlers, their talent is so high that they completely transcend these semiotic nightmares.

So, young rock fan, pick a decade and Crystal Antlers will pay homage. '50s? They have the blue-eyed pop nouse. '60s? Chaotic garage mayhem. '70s? A double-helping of California slack and Grand Funk bass. These guys obviously have heard the Dischord roster from the '80s, and throw the whole fat lot in with the healthy post-modernism of the '90s to now.

The sum of these influences is a brave band, willing to put three-minute reverb-crazy ballads like 'Andrew' next to the depraved psych trawl of 'Parting Song for the Torn Sky'. They largely ignore their own debut LP Tentacles, which was entirely brilliant, but got insulted on blogs owned by people with no taste anyway. Assholes.

It doesn't matter, because Crystal Antlers are survivors. The new stuff pops, the old stuff rocks, and even if Sound Control this evening is doomier and whiter than Edward Scissorhands' hiding place, you can't stop a band from doing it, not when they're this good.

Mt. Eerie then. This was a few weeks ago, I am afraid I cannot recall the date. Last time I saw Phil, he was cross-legged playing fey acoustic stuff, at a time when I didn't really want that kind of stuff. His fans aren't really my kind of people either; there's always this ultra-reverential atmosphere that I can barely resist farting throughout.

His last couple of releases have certainly been interesting, and I think I recognise in him what he's trying to do: get in touch with that 'wood spirit' that lies at the heart of 'black metal', rather than the corpse-paint and spikes and the blasphemy. There are certain chords that are deep and true and quite primal and it would be interesting to see if Mr. Elvrum, famed maker of melancholic acoustic albums, could successfully find his inner metal without resorting to hideous riffola and elven lore.

Not enough rock shows are funny. They're all ultra-serious, this-is-my-art kind of events, which is wholly appropriate for some, but some dudes could just do with treading on a rake once in a while.

Mt. Eerie are funny. Not in a way that makes them novelty, or silly, or make their music less pure, maaaaaan - but funny in a way that makes lead Eerie Phil Elvrum seem like more of a human and less of a phallus-toting rock bloke.

Before we discuss Mt. Eerie's humour, let us discuss No Kids, the support band AND backing band for Mt. Eerie. Sassy blue-eyed pop nuggets played by Games Workshop nerds, a twinkle in their eyes, they create the irresistible urge to dance. They're fun and sexy, but safe for pre-teens.

In their guise as axe-wielders for Mt. Eerie, they are transformed. Phil corpses. "We're going to play 10 to 11 rock songs. Have fun." Then the first chord hits. BAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMM. It's like being sideswiped by a Ford Cortina. The half-dozen or so cute, vegan, PETA-friendly, expensively dishevelled humans on stage launch into a skewed version of metal culled from the darkest forest in Norway. I laugh. My friend laughs. Many people look disheartened. Kaufman is alive! They keep this shtick up. It's brilliant. I want to mosh but there are people typing VERY HARD into their Blackberries.

They ease off the MetalZone pedals to play some gorgeous stuff, some from the Microphones days and some just as effortlessly good as he's always been, whatever the band name. This pleases all until one last ride to Valhalla, guitar raised uncynically aloft, crashing through the enchanted night. Hilarious, man. Brilliant.

TWO BITS OF SPOON

2010-02-19T20:18:00.002Z

First the album, the only record thus far that I have reviewed by listening to it on Spotify. It's probably the future of record-sending; a resource to stream music. Add in some codes and some threats about recording and the industry probably save a ton on promos.

I've been a fan of the band since I saw them in 2005, and even though I am conscious of their status as an indie vanguard band du jour, I can't help but feel they're the one band whose imminent acceptance by FM radio would be a totally welcome and ideal thing.

First, their new LP...

Spoon, Transference

That's the problem with the kids these days: no consistency. The Strokes lost their magic formula as soon as they found it. The Libertines might have done it had they not irritated Her Majesty's finest so much. Oasis and Blur; familiar stories of fighting and drugs. Thank ye gods for Spoon, as dependable and upright as the utensil they're named for, provided Uri Geller is safely outside a 50 mile radius.

Transference, the Austin quartet's seventh, continues in the mutual quest to be the best band that nobody will ever hear. Initially appearing to be their signature mix of loping, sarcastic funk, songwriting that would shame the Brill Building's finest and dubby production tricks, Spoon have subterfuge on their agenda. They invert the symbols that made previous long-players such romps; the repetition seems threatening rather than a call to party. The flickers of echo sound like madness in the dark rather than intimate or loving. There's something of the night about the whole affair.

Closest to the Spoon of old are the singles; 'Written in Reverse' struts along unimpeded, 'Got Nuffin' stomps like Northern Soul and 'The Mystery Zone' manages to leave you demanding more from a one-note bassline. Even the stuff that is a progression or a deconstruction of the previous tropes are delivered with the same cocksure confidence as ever. Even Britt Daniel's pen is refusing to fail him (“I've seen it in your eyes / there's nothing there.”).

If you've ever sat around thinking 'why isn't there some kind of mid-point between the best of indie-rock, soul music and pop, preferably something timeless-sounding without any overplaying or grandstanding emotional outpourings' then you should probably check out Spoon. They're on a helluva run, they put on a great rock show and on form like this, they don't know how to make a bad record. Transference isn't the best starting point (2007's Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is), but it's a great place to wash up.

...and then live on the tour to support it.

Spoon / White Rabbits @ Academy 3
15th February 2010

Five years ago, the Spoon live experience was all about economy. Stripped back, no effects, they pumped out hit after hit after hit without as much as a by-your-leave. They still do the latter, make no mistake. Except now, they're more ambitous; they stretch things out, add and take away, entirely confident that at the core of each number is a Fundamentally Good Thing. And they'd be right.

Seven albums in, they're armed to the teeth with savvy indie-pop-soul-rock nuggets. Their secret? Don't do too much. No one in Spoon ever overplays. A keyboard line could be one or two notes, but they make all the difference. The bassline to 'The Mystery Zone' is one single note, repeatedly jabbed, and it's absolutely fantastic.

It'd be unfair to pick highlights, so to arbitraily pick songtitles off the setlist: 'I Saw The Light' has two parts: great and greater. 'Rhythm and Soul' is the best pop song you didn't hear in the '00s. 'Written In Reverse' will probably be the best pop song you didn't hear this decade. 'The Ghost of You Lingers' recasts German titans Neu! minus their cerebral tendencies in a fairly heartstopping performance. There are no clunkers. It's home run after touchdown after goal after slam dunk all around.

Support act White Rabbits are something of a Spoon Jr; their recent LP was produced by head Spooner Britt Daniel, and they share some of the collar-popping sang froid of their mentors. Still, it's a head-turning performance, refreshingly quirk-free, taking the spirit of the headline act more than their actual tunes.

TV GHOST INTERVIEW

2010-02-11T21:18:00.002Z

Since hearing Cold Fish by TV Ghost, I've been pretty hooked. Thought I'd landed a real scoop only to find out that the NME had pipped me by giving them a brief mention. I'm still pretty sure this is their first UK publication interview though. Interesting for the wrong reasons, perhaps?

The Germans have a saying: “do not make monuments to the living, for they can still disgrace the stone.” It's a bit like our 'don't meet your heroes' line, but cleverer. Having met two heroes previously (British Bulldog: warm, solid handshake, enthusiasm. Dynamite Kid: called me a 'poof'' and yelled dubious obscenities from his knackered wheelchair), your hack opted for the side of generosity and chased up an interview with TV Ghost.

Stricken with love, according to last.fm, yr. corresp spun their recent LP Cold Fish seventeen times, most of which were consecutive. That's not including physical plays and ripping the whole thing to an MP3 player, deleting everything else in turn. Then buying the thing on import, alongside their rare-as-rocking-horse-shit debut self-titled 12”.

People call their genre 'shitgaze'. It's a stupid term, based on a joke. Now people are talking about this whole 'shitgaze' revolution. It's enough to make you vomit up a lung. How does singer/guitarist Timothy Conrad Glick feel about this?

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I dunno.”

At the time, it seems like an infuriating answer. Looking back, it was a dumb question. When has a band ever graciously accepted a genre tag? Even if the genre tag came from the dude who recorded their first 12” record?

So how would you describe what TV Ghost did to some dude or lady dude who had never heard you? “Uhhhhhhhhh. [silence].”

Looks like I'm going to have to do it for him. The Ghosters came a-creepin' outta Lafayette, IN, a “pretty crappy” rustbelt town that one W. Axl Rose used to call home. It's not riven with the crack and crime of East Coast no-fly zones like Trenton and Camden. Instead it's decaying in that mundane, late-capitalistic way, all rusted gates and abandoned lots.

The band themselves are four skinny kids on drugs and a nihilistic kick to match those dudes from The Big Lebowski. Thousand-yard stares. Remorseless stances. Nary a smile between them. You'd mistake them for complete dorks if they weren't playing some of the most vital music of the century.

There's something for everyone who hates most things. TV Ghost stick their necks up above the garage-rock parapet to incorporate telekinetic spasms of no wave, the icy-technological paranoia of Chrome and their early industrial ilk and wiry, worried post-punk. Glick howls like his bowels are being extracted through his gluteals and the rest of the band pummel away in noisy ecstacy.

Back to the interview. What's going down in Lafayette? “Oh, nothing.” It's the spiritual home of Guns'n'Roses, I tell him. Stone silence. Like his album suggests, cold fish. “There's not much of a scene here at all.”

But a lot of the recent garage/lo-fi stuff has had a lot of press coverage. Even MTV did a little feature on groups like Tyvek, Kurt Vile and Psychedelic Horseshit. “I don't know about that.” You've even played some pretty awesome stuff, like the recent WFMU festival with legends such as Teenage Jesus and Faust. “Mmmm.”

Mmmm? Mmmmm???!!! Just as rage is about to find voice, he finds enough to tell Student Direct, a propos of nothing, that Lydia Lunch thought their drummer, the improbably named Jackson Van Horn, was “pretty hot.” And then he laughs a lot, like a man who does not laugh a lot. Like this: “Ha. Ha ha. Ha. Ha.” Stop.

Which sends your writer into an inexplicable fit of laughter, capped with a pretty obvious ephiphany: those Germans were right. Whaddya expect this guy to do, come out with a Beckett play? He's a singer in a band tipped for success, not Ban Ki Moon. His defensiveness and lack of expurgation don't mean much at all when you crank the record up high.

Whatever their future status (hint: they're tipped to act as poster boys in the new US arm of the next big NME wave) they've managed to sew up a couple of high-quality releases along the way. 2010 should see them coming over here to show us what they've got. What can we expect? “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” Oh just go and see them. Far less infuriating.

"I know they were poor but those gaberdine trousers were just divine."

2010-01-10T13:41:00.003Z

Class fetishism in popular music is probably worse than ever.

Joe Lean. Chirpy chirrupy cockernee barrelboy songsmith. Knees up mavver braaaahn. It's just a stage name, he raffishly admits under his artfully corkscrewed haircut; his real name is Joe van Moyland. He won't hide his middle-class background. Fact is the guy was christened Joseph Antony Bernays Beaumont. The guy is so confused about class and self-identity that I wouldn't be surprised if he auditioned for the role of Winston Smith in 1984 wearing a top hat and a silver-topped cane.

Banal caterwauling and awful poetry aside, the pout of his lips leave the exact amount of space to poke a silver spoon into. The sub-Corbijn photography, the chasing after a vacantly doe-eyed nonentity who points her feet inward and walks like a 25-year old version of a 5-year old...these tropes are so hackneyed that they're artless and weird, like a dish with a photograph of a cat on it.

It's not the fault of Lean/van Moyland/Bernays Beaumont. Rock and roll continuously and ignorantly self-mythologises so heavily as the working-class artform that I'm surprised i. that the irony hasn't been sucked out of the universe and ii. that a band hasn't yet taken to the stage in miner's lamps and pith helmets.

A few months ago I reviewed the NME compilation album of 2009 and complained that it contained a whole lot of black signifiers despite the lack of black musicians. The basic nub of the argument was not specifically that the record was racist; it was that the group of people involved in musical manufacture and receipt (i.e. artists and audience) were so scared of what constituted their own authenticity, that they stole the authenticity of others. In as far as such a thing exists anyway.

This is Esser. His song 'Headlock' is track 17 on disc one of said compilation. If you really need to hear it, it's here. I wouldn't though. Take a look at that picture. I mean, a really good look at it. Does anything strike you as incongruous?

An ersatz teddy-boy haircut with mod dress? Making music with undeniable connections to dance, hip-hop and pop? People can talk about post-modernism and the delineation of the pop-culture tribes but these only occur in groups with no discernible means of individuality. Their 'individuality' is to fetishise and magpie other vibrant forms.

I read a great line in an article in Philadelphia Weekly; it stated that 'hybridity is the new authenticity'. I believe that. There's no sense in pining for a fictional Britain/world. We're better than that. We are multi-cultural now and wiser for it.

What class fetishism and tribal fetishism in fashion and music amounts to is a form of cultural and historical tourism. So, when you spot someone who is wearing a keffiyah, NHS-of-1984 glasses (with no glass/plain glass - even worse) and a trilby, it is morally correct to thrash them within an inch of their lives. Coincidentally, it'll be the first authentic experience of their lives.

That said, it happens in higher arts too. Cormac McCarthy was born Charles McCarthy - Charles presumably no earthy enough for McCarthy's blood and thunder Americana. Playing on your own unglamourousness is funny, and it didn't harm David Mitchell, did it? The English middle-class is riven with internal conflicts. What's inauthentic about that?

What do you want to read?

2009-12-03T19:27:00.005Z

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

2009-11-17T18:37:00.002Z

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

2009-11-14T13:06:00.003Z

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

2009-11-08T10:54:00.003Z

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

2009-11-06T22:05:00.006Z

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

2009-11-06T22:00:00.003Z

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

2009-11-03T13:19:00.007Z

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.

NME: THE ALBUM 2009

2009-11-02T19:27:00.001Z

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)

2009-10-14T22:11:00.002+01:00

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

2009-10-04T13:32:00.002+01:00

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

2009-09-27T10:48:00.004+01:00

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

2009-01-25T11:54:00.002Z

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

2009-01-01T19:07:00.005Z

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.

Filmism #2

2008-12-30T14:09:00.014Z

A financially lean holiday season sees Art In Macro turn to the television for comfort. Later, a conversation about this turns into debate between friends. The debate?

NICOLAS CAGE IS/IS NOT THE WORST ACTOR EVER
Critical roundtable reconvenes

As there are so many people in the world, it is naive to think that any thought you have is entirely original: no matter how crass, wrongheaded, cruel or narcissistic it is, someone else thinks it too. Back at my parents, I am watching Face/Off, a mildly entertaining action film with a flimsy premise (though plenty high-octane thrills and spills), and Con Air, a mildly entertaining action film with a flimsy premise (though plenty high-octane thrills and spills). I am in awe.

Let us understand the concept of what £10-14m can buy in terms of the movie-making business. The best cameras, access to the most suitable locations, extravagant sets, rafts of extras, hundreds of cars to load with gelignite and set ablaze. The finest editor, cinematographer, crew, catering and a high-quality second unit for those boring reshoots and landscapes.

Alternatively, you can hire an actor who is routinely out-performed by his own haircut. Art In Macro reconvened the roundtable to investigate this modern phenomenon.

MEET THE ROUNDTABLE

- MM is a civil servant in his late 30s.
- I don't know what RC does, but he's about the same age.
- JE is a music teacher in his mid-20s.
- DR is a producer in his 30s.
- CM is a CAD designer and drummer in his early 20s.
- LH is in her late teens and is a student.

RC: He really does have the worst face in history. Looks like somebody else is controlling it...and they've forgotten they are controlling it.

MM: [produces list of seven or eight films] To be honest, I think the above list would still be good films if he wasn't in them i.e. there's nothing particular about him that makes them good films and so someone else could've played his role.

RC: I'm sure Cage has a pair of creaking, ancient bellows powering his voice, he seems to go loud and then inaudible as some withered old hag pumps his next line out of him. I'd sooner watch my couch for and hour and a half.

DR: I don't mind him. He's a complex character as he can be brilliant but I think he's a bit like Michael Caine in the Seventies. When asked about Swarm, his killer-bee film, he admitted that it was shit but it also bought him a new house.

CM: I dont give a shit about how his acting rates overall. The films he is in are awesome and granted you know whats coming when you see his name and a few explosions underneath it... but that's not always a bad thing.

JE: National Treasure 2 has the single worst face ever pulled in a film. It's awful. It must last all of about 18 frames of film, but it was amazingly bad.

LH: I don't mind him.

JE: In all seriousness, I could talk for ten minutes to an audience about those 18 frames, seriously. Seriously. Seriously. It's that bad.

If Art In Macro aims to prove anything, it is that a media that represents only one argument is not only doing a disservice. Sure, this writer thinks that Nic Cage is a horrorshow, a film cancer, a curse on motion picture - 26 consecutive stinkers attesting to this. But look at the gross of said stinkers. This guy is bankable for whatever inconceivable reason. He outright deserves his place in the pantheon of highest paid actors because his name is big money, so enough of your socialist suggestions of subjective worth - all that matters is the bacon, and how much of it you bring home! Hard-working Joe and Suzie Lunchpail flop their dollars down for the Nic Cage flick, not the new Bruno Ganz one!

A begrudging New Year salute to you, Nicolas Cage. You are not the worst actor ever. Heck, the way you made The Wicker Man into a comedy was Kaufman-esque.

Say hello to somebody #1

2008-12-26T09:21:00.004Z

We're back from a self-imposed hiatus. Work, computer breakdown - you know how it is. In February 2007, Mark Prindle returned my request for an email interview with lengthy, funny, insightful and personal responses. Who he, ask you? Me tell.

Just as sure as anyone can have a blog, any person can listen to records and write their opinions on them. Anyone can learn HTML. Anyone can post up reader reviews, comment, criticism, rants and other nonsense too. But over the course of 11 years, for free? That's something. Besides, he's written for real publications and appeared on the real television to talk it up too. Here he is on Fox in 2008.

On top of that, there's the style. Or as I should say, 'styles' - Prindle is as likely to embrace surreality, grossness, sentimentality, seriousness,the kind of gonzo arthouse journalism employed by the Bangs and Kents of this world - anything but an academic detachment. This man loves records, and wants them all to be good. Often, they are not, and usually that is when things get funny.

The records I've bought on this man's say-so - dozens. I thank him for showing me Scharpling and Wurster, Thinking Man's Union Local #282, Skip Spence, Sun City Girls, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Cows. Not that he doesn't review 'regular' rock and roll bands; far from it.

I was incredibly touched when I saw how much effort he'd put into this interview for it to be used on a fairly obscure blog. I feel it something of a duty to make it useful for two obscure blogs instead. His words in normal type, mine in are too, just indented.
----
So, for everyone out there in internet-land who isn't aware of you (the cretins!), could you just introduce yourself?

My name is Mark Donavon Prindle. I am 33 years old and live in Manhattan with my wife Brenda and 6-year-old son Henry The Dog. I have become a semi-micro-mini-web-celebrity on the alleged strength of my dumbass web site www.markprindle.com. This site, an 11-years-and-counting labor of OCD, features trillions of profane, off-topic record reviews and interviews with top punk musicians of yesteryear and tomorrowday. Many of my reviews are just awful, but some are hilarious and a few are even insightful (I'm told). The site averages about 4,000 individual visitors and 35,000 click-throughs per day.

I also post a "Wacky Weekly Wphoto" of hilariousness, which everybody enjoys and is enjoyed by all. Although I am completely honest in my writing and opinionating, almost everything I write is 'taking the piss' so I urge readers not to take any of it very seriously. I also used to be a Homemade Guitar God, and have several unreleased CD-Rs to my name. I haven't played in years though. Too old and rickety.

OK. I'm going to tell you a little story. Once upon a time, I went to a music review workshop with a very well-known British writer. I submitted a review for open discussion and he claimed there were 'too many exclamation marks'. This struck me that music journalism was a place not of creativity & critical objectivity, but a place often as boring as being a musician itself. So, what would he make of your reviews? And what do you think of them? And, err, reviewing in general?

Music reviewing is a bullshit job for bullshit people. The job of a music journalist or historian requires significant research and understanding of past trends and influential moments in the history of the art. But music reviewing is just saying what an album sounds like to you. Even though the "quality" of different pieces of music is subjective (fully dependent on the preferences of the individual listener), a music reviewer should still be able to describe a record in such a way that, even if he hates it, fans of that type of music might still be interested in hearing it. Your well-known British writer was just expressing his personal opinion when he claimed that your review had 'too many exclamation marks.' If he were your editor, it would be important that you listen to his opinion. Since he is not, he can eat the dick. I'm sure you could nitpick his style too.

You haven't really told me enough about the writer for me to answer the question of whether or not he would like my style. Perhaps he would enjoy my sense of humor, perhaps not. And why do you find 'being a musician' boring? I've had some of my most fun and creative life moments while playing the old guitar - both with friends and alone. It's a lot of fun! It's not music's fault that many musicians are dull. People in all fields of life seem dull if you have nothing in common with them.

What do I think of my reviews? Here is a post I left on a message board recently, in response to a couple of people who were trashing my writing style:

"My writing definitely isn't 'for everybody.' In fact, a lot of it isn't even 'for me' at this point. But I can't go back and rewrite the whole damned site."

As for throwing in too much personal stuff and humor, that's kinda my 'schtick' as it were. It's the only (questionable) advantage I have over other reviewers, and it's also the only way to keep myself interested in what I'm doing. I mean, I do try to explain how the albums actually sound (much more now than in the past), but the reason people seem to keep coming back to my site is because they like my writing style.

And those who don't come back -- well, they DON'T LIKE IT AT ALL!

The worst part about it is that, in 11 years of writing, there are some TERRIBLE pages on my site. Yes, there was definitely a period when I used gross language and imagery just for the shock value (when I do it now, I try to write actual JOKES with it, rather than just throwing it in to shock). Yes, there was a time when my reviews said hardly anything at all about the records (90% of the time now, they say a HELL of a lot -- it's just that you have to read through all the other bullshit to find it). And yes, there was definitely a period when I simply couldn't write worth a shit and had no notable identity. But if I spent the time it would take to re-write everything that I no longer like, I wouldn't write a new review for the next three years!

Having said that, I DO honestly think that some of my reviews are funny -- but only to ME PERSONALLY. Over time, I tend to forget what I've written, so sometimes while adding reader comments, I'll happen across an old passage that I find absolutely hilarious. Not in a "God, I'm funny!" way, but "God, that's funny! I wrote that!?" way. And if nobody else finds it amusing, that just means that I have an idiosyncratic sense of humor. Sure, why not in life?

One thing I really do want you to understand though is that I'm not arrogant. Sometimes people accuse me of that, and I don't know how to respond. Maybe my 'writing style' is just so far removed from my 'actual identity' that it comes across as confidence. I don't have a hell of a lot of confidence."

As for reviewing in general, I just want reviews that tell me what an album sounds like. Pretty much the only ones I read are All-Music Guide, because they're pretty good about leaving out the bullshit (i.e. the kind of time-wasting crap I write) and just telling it like it are.

So is it true that you purchase all the records you review? If so, if an artist begins to suck you are tied into buying them all?

Oh God no. Why would you think that? I try to get free mp3 or CD-R discs of everything I can these days, particularly since there are pages on my site for people I can't stand (ex. Tori Amos and PJ Harvey). I do still have far too many albums and CDs though (15,000 maybe?)

One thing I've noticed is that you seem incredibly passionate about certain artists, but that passion and genuine evangelicising is passed over by a pedantic section of your fanbase. Ever get pissed off at the people who write in? Have you ever wanted to publically castigate their words? Also, does it ever annoy you when you are considered a bad writer when a) you majored in English from a fairly prestigious college and b) it's quite obvious that you aren't?

I got annoyed at Pedro Andino for sending in too many all-caps comments that had nothing at all to do with the reviews or albums I was discussing. But I just stopped posting them, so that took care of that. Otherwise, I sometimes get a twitch of anger at people who go off on me when they clearly don't understand what I'm trying to do. But that's just a natural human reaction. Once I post the comment and delete it from my email box, I never think about it again (thank God!). The one good thing about angry notes is that I can forward them to my friends, who quite enjoy them.

The few times that people have complained to me that I'm a bad writer, it is usually in response to a particularly bad piece of writing that has been on my site for 7 or 8 years. So I generally respond, "Hey, you're right! That IS a terrible page!" Unfortunately, sometimes you have to read a few pages before finally getting to something worth reading. And even then, you might not like my writing style. It's a bit hyper-active and obscene.

Since the site has started, what changes to your life are directly attributable to it?

I have more confidence in my un-worthlessness now, thanks to the many wonderful people who have supported me with readership and positive feedback over the years. I also feel like I'm achieving self-actualization, by constantly creating reviews that people can enjoy for the writing itself -- regardless of what I'm reviewing. In my 20's, I came to the realization that I would never be a rock star because (a) I lack the leadership skills to lead a band, (b) I don't have the discipline necessary to go through all that touring bullshit, and (c) nobody likes my music. But this web site thing has somehow garnered me lots of 'fans,' which is neat!

I also have more friends and more CD-Rs/MP3 discs than if I'd never started the site. And much less free time.

One thing that is noteable about your reviews is that often they are a forum for you to talk about whatever is on your mind that day: be it an anecdote about being drunk in a Mexican restaurant with your wife, a travel diary or a tirade against Bush. Why do you think you do this? A fringe benefit of having total editorial control, or because you simply can?

I do this because my reviews are the only personal writing I do. If I want to remember something funny that has happened to me, this is where I put it. Also, I don't like the thought of my main creative endeavor being a parasite wholly dependent on somebody else's work, which is what critique of any sort generally is. As such, I like to put in lots of my own personality so people can't just say, "When nobody remembers who Gwar is, your writing will be forgotten and worthless." Well, it probably still will, but at least there are some funny lines in there. So FUCK OFF.

Not you, the interviewer.

Which bands & artistes are grabbing you right now?

Nobody in particular. I just buy and buy and buy and listen and listen and etc. But I hardly spend any time with new CDs until it's time to review them, so sometimes I think I really like a band, then I'll study them more closely for review and realize they're terrible. This happened with GBH and, to a lesser extent, Gwar.

One CD I recently got that excited me quite a bit was "These Are Jokes" by comedian Demetri Martin. He's hilarious! I also finally completed my Bill Hicks collection. I've grown to really enjoy him. Even when he's not tossing out zingers left and right, he's just a lot of fun to listen to. But I think you're talking about music. So let me think about some music people I've been listening to lately.

I now own every single Johnny Cash studio album except "The Rambler," and like a surprising number of them. I recently listened to about half of my Grand Funk albums (I own all of them) and was pleased to learn that they're not all terrible. I really like Wishbone Ash's "Argus" album. I'm still a huge fan of 'outsider' artists and weird music, like Tangela Tricolli's "Jet Lady," Kenneth Higney's "Attic Demonstration," Shooby Taylor The Human Horn, Rodd Keith and all the other song-poem artists, corporate musicals, Arf!Arf!'s "Only In America" compilations, Recordio discs, and just novelty music in general. I'm also really into (for no clear reason) poorly-conceived tribute discs, like all these asinine bluegrass and string quartet tributes to Aerosmith, AC/DC and nonsense like that. I own ten of the "Rockabye Baby!" lullaby CDs and will definitely pick up a few more in my day. I own probably 40 Ramones tribute albums, including steel pan, new wave, blues-rock, karaoke, lullaby, surf, muzak and rockabilly interpretations of their work.

And I'm said that it's been so long since Yes put out a studio album. I still love Yes.

Away from the computer, on which you are a SUPERSTAR, what do you like to do in 'real life'?

Watch horror, exploitation and sexploitation movies. Why, just last night I 'enjoyed' a mid-70s German sexploitation film called "The Sinful Bed." See, it's about this talking bed, see, that tells you about all the different sorts of people that have had sex on it over the years. And - get this - the film actually SHOWS the softcore sex in flashback form! Wow!

I read a lot of non-fiction -- mostly about movies and occasionally music, if it's something interesting. I read some humor too. Good old humor, making people laugh.

I love eating at Uno's Bar & Grill (formerly Pizzeria Uno), and do so several times a week. I always start off with a bowl of peanuts from the bar, and glasses of water and Diet Pepsi. Then I order a flatbread Chef's Choice pizza with hamburger, pepperoni and sliced tomatoes, along with a ton of napkins so I can wipe all the grease off the food and blow my nose a billion times as is my wont. For dessert, I get a Deep Dish Sundae with extra ice cream, and ask them to make sure that the cookie is soft. I can't stand it when the cookie is hard. I feel the same way about penises.

For exercise, I take Tae Kwon Do classes with my wife three days a week. We've been taking them for four years, and are scheduled to go for our Black Belts in May of this year. Wish us duck!

Finally, I enjoy spending quality time with my wife and dog. What kind of asshole wouldn't?

I hate everything else.

INTERDIT

2008-10-05T21:45:00.002+01:00

We are currently not posting for perhaps a week because our keyboard is completely fucked. Thank society for the warranty.

Popology #2

2008-10-02T15:04:00.019+01:00

Art In Macro gathers up some folk to take a look at the new Kings of Leon record.

'JOSHUA TREE DENIAL'
critical roundtable gears up

We know the drill by now. The template was put down by The Strokes and until we enter a new paradigm shall forever be so.

A young band of dubious provenance arrives on 'the scene'. Talk of their sound; simultaneously retrograde and yet the sound of the absolute now. 'Classic'. We are assured of their 'realness' despite the abstract/absurd nature of this concept.

The debut record (possibly after some impossibly hip limited EP or 7" is 'dropped') is released to vast critical aplomb - heck, even Robert Christgau likes it! It makes the top 100 albums ever despite having only been released four months prior in a traditionally lean spot in the year. A successful tour of the world's dumps and festivals and relax.

The second album dichotomy; more of the same or something different. History shows to err on the side of caution for sales and go for broke to be remembered fondly. It sells well and gets good reviews (critics don't like to think they were fooled, ever) but ultimately there's nothing to trumpet, especially when we have new feed coming in at the beginning of this cycle. Perhaps start to think about solo projects or a clothing line.

The third album tanks but you're still a live draw. Now you have the unenviable task of touring knowing you're pretty much creatively spent as a unit, playing these same chords every night despite the 'stripped-down' and 'mature' record you have inside. Even the groupies look kind of spent and redundant. Often, there is no fourth record, and if there is then it sells so poorly as to be the almost physical manifestation of one hand clapping.

This template works for so many bands; Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Music, The Stills, Interpol and Franz Ferdinand to name a few. Enduring the process over the next year or so will be CSS, Glasvegas and Klaxons. So why have Kings of Leon, forged through the same processes, endured to see a zenith of popularity in the run up to album #4?

Art In Macro have a suspicion that Kings of Leon endured because people simply forgot to listen to them first time around, so their third album was essentially their first to many.

This writer was at a karaoke party and the above song ('The Bucket') came on at random for me to sing: it was pleasant enough without developing (at all) and easy enough to perform despite never having heard a note before. Like good pop songs, it had an enduring and non-annoying quality to it. I mentioned this to a couple of 'music fan' friends. "Oh, they're pretty good, they've changed a lot. It's not just 'Molly's Chambers' going ba-ba-na-na-na-na-na all the time. You should have a listen."

And listen Art In Macro did. And the experience was neither pleasant enough to purchase anything, not terrible enough to incite rage. Kings of Leon had done it! They had run the gauntlet and were now primed to make 'a statement'.

MEET THE ROUNDTABLE
- ML is a singer in a rock and roll band and by day, he writes copy for his employers in the construction sector. He is 27.
- KD is a journalist on the local newspaper in her mid-20s.
- DG is a student and musician. He is 20.

ML: I found their stripped down hick rock they had on their earlier stuff really fucking patronising. That opening track, I think it was ‘Knocked Up’ - if you forgive the hamfisted lyrics, really shocked me. It’s like they’d found another couple of emotions. Or had stopped wearing sandals if you get my drift.

DG: The epic atmospheres that made Because Of The Times great have gone too far. The songs sound wet.

KD: I got a bit bored after about four songs to be honest, but then I do have musical ADHD.

ML: Where the delayed guitars on the last one sounded like a band branching out, they sound really fucking cynical on this. Take the single as a shining example. It’s like they wandered into a big room on their last album, metaphorically and literally, and have stayed there - wide eyed and complacent. Like The Joshua Tree never fucking happened. Joshua Tree denial.

DG: Caleb's voice tends to slide into power ballad mode from time to time, and each time he does this - while it fits with the song - it just contributes to the vast empty spaces, instead of filling them up. It's a shame sometimes because you can't help but feel his indie cred slowly draining out of him and ergo his band, into the realms of, well dare I mention other once rock and roll pioneers turned purveyors of radio friendly stadium capacity rock?

Art In Macro first heard the record whilst out purchasing DVDs in the local HMV, playing as it was at full volume over the speakers and delaying the thought process of purchasing, creating an internal digression of whether to stay or flee. On the bus home, I sent a message to a friend.

Just heard the new Kings of Leon record. It was like some bizarre medieval torture crossed with a terrible U2 record.

For the record, Metacritic have them as nearly a 7 out of 10. Other noteable reviews from Allmusic who give it 7, Observer Music Monthly give it full marks and finally Pitchfork, who give it a mid-three.

Please make up your own minds though. Perhaps let us know what you think.

Filmism #1

2008-10-02T01:06:00.024+01:00

Enough of the pseudo-Marxism for the time being, I was never one to develop a shtick.

A TRIP TO THE CINEMA RESULTS IN CRITICAL ROUNDTABLE AT THE BUS STOP
post cryptically indicates future direction

The last time I saw Gavin was in 2004. He was carrying a mattress across the grey, run-down site of the poor kid halls in Moss Side, his hair loosely tied in a ponytail and a casual Irish brogue to his voice.

Manchester's second best voyeurism spot

I'm sitting in my second favourite spot in Manchester, on the stone front at the Cornerhouse cinema. All of life passes by this spot on a warm late-summer evening such as this. Mature folks in bespoke office wear, young art kids, entry-level freshers dressed in OR scrubs, nervous cinema buffs who never quite got over the fashion statements made in My Dinner With Andre. They clutch copies of Cahiers du Cinema and tut irritatedly when we talk through the pre-trailer advertisements.

All of life indeed, and of past life too, as Gavin from 2004 arrives dressed and sounding and looking exactly as memory had left him. Apropos of afternoon boredom we'd stuck a pin in the newspaper listings and come up with Jar City. With the upswing in the quality of police procedural on television, it finds itself increasingly pressed for cinematic real estate unless it can find itself combined with a shlocky, sepulchral or perhaps metaphysical element. The whodunnit is secondary to the whydunnit.

Jar City is a traditional whodunnit. The kind that Columbo, or even with the medical element of this picture a more serious Quincy, might encounter. There's a nice three-act structure, a denouement, a subplot and a man eating a sheep's head with his fists. Iceland itself plays a stunning role as the backdrop, at turns spellbindly mundane and jawdroppingly fantastic. I used to stare at these webcams at an old call-centre job as a way to elevate myself above the monotony.

The characters are realistic and satisfying and there's never a real jarring or overtly oblique moment to debate questions of technical competance. It is not the world's most original work, nor would it claim to be. The film never tries for your affection and never pushes you firmly away; it offers reasons for its austerity and apparent coldness. MVP award goes to the soundguys by a short head.

A still from Jar City

We leave the cinema in that familiar unusual silence, which Gavin immediately punctures. "Well, I thought the whole premise fell apart after ten minutes." He explains his reasons (this blog is a no-spoiler zone) and whilst reasonable, they did speak of an inate scientific approach to cinema that doesn't entirely sit with my cinema as art viewpoint. "You could at least suspend your disbelief", I say.

Liam, the third member of our party, seeks the role of diplomat. "Well, I kind of see what you're saying Gavin but it didn't ruin the film." We offer marks out of ten. I give it eight. Liam gives it seven. Gavin says it gets a five. Metacritic has it as a seven, as does IMDB.

A fair assumption of popular approach to mainstream cinema is that we seek a tale told efficiently with its artifice concealed - perhaps displaying an epistemelogical level of 'truth'. But what of cinema conscious of its nature as 'art cinema'? Certainly I could see the hole in the plot but dismissed it as inconsquential to the entirety of meaning to be felt through the whole film coming together at the end. For Gavin, he sought a tale told as if watching with detective's eyes; to give a thumbs up would have meant all the pieces in consonance and harmony. He admitted 'he'd quite like to go to Iceland' after seeing it, so certainly the cinematography was compelling as well as murmuring praise for the soundtrack. But the central focus was still on the plot, the story, rather than anything above it. I'm not saying he's even wrong, but just different to the way I experience film.

So, what I'm slowly getting at is this; there will be no individual reviews where I can avoid it. There will be some kind of critical roundtable of different kinds of people. I could attempt to jam my opinions down your throat but I think that 'one man with a blog and I'm gonna tell it like I see it' is so incredibly old (but hey, that's just my opinion) as to be put in a time capsule and studied in future days.

Songs of the revolution #1

2008-10-01T22:24:00.010+01:00

Before Brian Eno gradually sank into the world of corporate opprobrium (working with Coldplay, Microsoft '95) he was the chief architect of potential downfall of the rock and roll oligarchy.

Distending the threads of orthodoxy with a VSC3 synthesizer and make-up, Eno's early solo work speaks directly of struggle and class consciousness. The 'Warm Jets' are the wheels of military might, 'Tiger Mountain' is the rotten state and 'Before and After Science' refers to an exciting plan for after the successful struggle.

In this example Another Green World is the message of hope relayed to the comrades. Instead of the Soviet columns of grey, the new reality will be pastoral green splendour and truly free. Even the artwork shows the modernist and utilitarian uniforms worn by those willingly self-identifying as part of the solution rather than the problem (who would likely be slain like dogs anyway).

Eno's melody work on this record is so clear cut in terms of political principle that lyrics are not always necessary. The titles are evocative enough; 'Little Fishes' evokes swimming in large groups and strength in numbers, 'In Dark Trees' represents a death-knoll to the forces of doubt present in struggle and 'Sombre Reptiles' is a comical satire of the hegemony prevlalent in 70s politics in both west and east.

However, the lyrics are evocative enough to pass muster for this record were it just a sheet of paper with text. 'St. Elmo's Fire', too long to reproduce in its entirety here tells a symbolic tale of two travellers on the way to view revolution in action. 'I'll Come Running' tells the tale from the viewpoint of the new state, offering responsible solutions to fallen workers - 'I'll come running to tie your shoe' can certainly not be taken literally, as all children under this regime will have motor skills enough to tie their own laces and arms enough to make good of this.

Popology #1

2008-10-01T15:51:00.008+01:00

When I hear the popular sounds of today my eyes want to eject themselves, my spleen does a dance of disgruntlement and my ears want to puke themselves to the sun.

This is not because, to use a widely-recognised example, Josh Groban's passionate performances of well-constructed popular motifs disgust me at a technical level. It is because the songs themselves attempt to belie the struggles of our forebears to maintain access to welfare and produce bread for the workers of the state.

In a study of popular song since the age of digital, the recording choice of the true egalitarian, we at Art In Macro have found repeated examples of work affirming our socialist nature, with the attendant corollary of the forces of neoconservatism smashing these subversive messages and incoporating them into the milleu of the bourgeoise.

Here we have 'Everything Counts', the 1983 hit from English pop group Depeche Mode. A subversive take on the nature of consumerism, the pitfalls of the monopolies and mergers commission and Hegelian dialectic. "A handshake/seals the contract/from the contract/there's no turning back." Martin Gore understands the dichotomous life of the professional, presenting a human face, a handshake and a smile, knowing that lurking beyond are shackles.

Even the visual plays these two contrasting ideologies against each other. Clearly Dave Gahan is portraying a man trapped in a hendonistic self-centred free market agenda, as if on drugs, whilst the other three represent a collective voice rising up on a new dawn. The musical agenda heightens this, with the abrasive synth tones contrasted against Gahan's sweet voice, in and of itself Gore's way of sugaring the one-word message: revolution!

Heightening this sense of burgeoning collectivism in both the physical and metaphysical was noted pop phenomenon Belinda Carlisle. Her hit '(We Want) The Same Thing' not only speaks to the proletariat in a literal way, but in a Jungian one as well. Carlisle believes in mass mind; when she tells us 'we dream the same dream' she is not simply referring to the hopes of the people but in the symbolic value of struggle unspoken for fear of repression.

These messages became increasingly part of the language of commerce. True innovators and iconoclasts such as Bronski Beat (the later line up of 'Hit That Perfect Beat', a march for modern youth resistance), The Communards and Frankie Goes To Hollywood woud wither away in confused interpretations of their struggles. All groups who heavily featured idiosyncratic visuals of men together at meetings of radical minds, it was perhaps ironic that such reliance on collectivism scuppered them. Countering these challenging and compelling arguments would be groups like Talk Talk ('it's my life', an individualist clarion which would prove decisive), Visage (pacifism) and Ultravox (themselves an inversion of Brechtian theses).

However, leftist themes were not completely ignored in the recent era. This song by Vanessa Amorosi is arguably the clearest call-to-arms since The Communist Manifesto. Let us examine the lyrics.

Everybody needs a hand to hold,
Someone to cling to...
I am just the same,
A player in the game

Amorosi understands that advantages cannot be made in an individualist mindset, that in the political act of being born she cannot escape the necessity of others. Here the hand is not merely the hand of a lover or a mother, but the hand of welfare and commune. She is part of the 'game', an obvious codeword for a sister of the revolution. However, her precious gift, which could not be simply co-opted, was smothered by the increasingly fascistic media value of popular music.

In these increasingly stressful times we turn to entertainment for guidance but find only Zach De La Rocha. We would therefore be amiss to forget the words of Vanessa Amorosi, surely a Rosa Luxembourg of our times.

Every boy and girl,
Every woman and child.
Every father and son.
I said now everyone