- Where have you been?
- I've been learning how to write.
- But you know how to write.
- Yes. I know that I can write. Sentences are often correct and in the right order but I've never been happy with the things that they say or the style in which they're said. Even this paragraph is disappointing me.
- Then why don't you just write the right thing?
- If only it were that easy.
(almost as if to prove what I am talking about, I have deleted a long confessional paragraph because the wording was making what seemed like a deeply-felt statement into a trite whinge)
Put simply, I have been feeling like there's a disconnect with what feels like a complex and fully-formed thought in my head and the way I put this into language. Not long after writing most things do they begin to gnaw at me.
There's also the issue of over-analysis and over-thought. For nearly a decade I have been mentally composing what was meant to be an amazing piece of writing for an audience of one. More than a simple letter, it would sever mental defences erected with its clear-blue depthlessness. It turns out all I ever wanted to say was much simpler: I like you, I am sorry, you were right, I was wrong.
For all my arts writing and criticism and moaning, the most significant contribution was actually releasing a record. This has not stopped me lurking around music websites and attempting to create dissensus.
The last 12-18 months has been a very strange ride. The next three years promise to be stranger.
Bon Iver is shit.
Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label theory. Show all posts
2.3.12
18.1.11
WHEN I GET SATISFACTION, YOU WILL GET SADIST ACTION
Peter Sotos has a lot to answer for.
Whitehouse, 'Cut Hands Has The Solution'
from Bird Seed, 2003
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.
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.
8.11.10
Michael Gira's God Complex
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:
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.
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.
27.9.09
A difference of opinion with myself
circular argument ago-go; short attention span bonus of two videos
I am a hypocrite. No, let me try that again. I am a complete fucking hypocrite. You know those people who moan that 'this bloody country' is dumbing down, getting stupid, lazy and contrite? That's because of me and people like me. I am a louse, a weed in a coat. A one-man surrender unit. I should be brutally done away with. It's only a million hypocritical shitguards like me who prevent me being found face down in a landfill 2000 years from now.
I have a job at Manchester University's weekly student newspaper as a music editor. I sub-edit, and occasionally write, copy - dealing with the dozens of gigs, records, interviews and other sundries the mega-conglomos deign to send us (I remember Sean Paul's management sending signed string-vests a few years back).
Last week, I reviewed the new Alice In Chains record. It was predictably duff. Here is what I said about it.
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.
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.
1.10.08
Popology #1
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.
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.
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
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