Every Single Revolution

Tumblr

2011-02-20T12:39:00.001-08:00

I have shifted to Tumblr, for a bunch of reasons, but the main one is following the crowd like a total sheep. Nice one, Brad.

http://everysinglerevolution.tumblr.com/

Please follow me there, please.

Articles of 2010 Part X: The National

2011-02-09T09:13:00.000-08:00

The National finally seemed to catch up with their own popularity and embrace it in 2010. Their record, High Violet, really brought further sympathisers to their cause and made them the sleeper success story of the year. Though their growing fanbase had not gone unnoticed in our circles, the general public only began to learn of this band who've been around since 2000. No complaints here, that's the way it is. I'm glad they've made an impact where most bands don't deserve to. They really do. So below is my November cover story for Playmusic Pickup, header and standfirst intact. Bryce Dessner is a talkative, eloquent chap, as are they all I believe. Read on, dear reader, read on...

Purple Patch

The National have turned their emotive, evocative music into a raging fire to which music fans across the world have finally been beckoned. High Violet represents the apex of their achievements so far, and guitarist Bryce Dessner sheds light on the incredible efforts needed to get there.

Ordinary, daily routine can be the source of as much misery as pleasure. The best music bridges the gap between the melancholy and the joyous, making it one and the same. The best songwriters take that which spans the two and build it from their perspective on life, either at home or away. In doing so it feels like they've somehow touched upon an unanswered question, provided a glint of hope when it feels there is none. The National have patiently been doing this since 1999, garnering a steady stream of accolades and success with each subsequent album. 2005's Alligator, 2007's Boxer and now this year's High Violet have all been lauded for their spacious, elegiac triumph, and it's only now that each one is being cherished by listeners on a grander scale. “There's something in our music,” says Bryce Dessner, co-guitarist with his brother Aaron, one of two pairs of brothers that make up four fifths of the band. “Obviously you could take away almost everything and Matt could sing over a full orchestra or just a solemn piano or a crazy techno beat maybe and you'd still be like 'oh, this is The National'.”

Matt Berninger, vocalist, lyricist and the sole non-musician, is a striking figure quite apart from his sandpaper, baritone voice. He certainly has foresight to craft songs of understated emotional intelligence and gravity. “I think the challenge with the songs is that obviously he sings in a limited range. I think we often get labelled as miserablist or dark rock because his voice is dark, it's like hearing a solo cello or something. The actual timbre of the voice is sombre even if he's actually singing about happy, ridiculous stuff, which often he is actually. There's a lot of humour in the songs, but because it has a slow, gravelly kind of sound to it it does invoke, as I always say to friends and journalists, 'fucking the heartstrings a little bit'.” With that kind of centrepoint around which to revolve, the band's job is all too clear.
“With the music, we've felt, especially live it happens, our job is to make the music dynamic and create arc and flow and make the song go somewhere. We're really sensitive to that and we've written great songs for the first minute and then they don't go anywhere and it doesn't last. Usually it's worked better for us to shade stuff in subtle ways and that's maybe why people call our music 'a grower' or maybe a harsher criticism is that it's boring. It does unfold slowly whereas we really wish sometimes we could be like The Darkness or something,” says Bryce, laughing. “The kind of wanky guitar solos and really over the top in your face stuff has never worked with what we do.”

Whether you take the screamed assault of Alligator era songs Mr November and Abel, the spiralling, brass-pounding anthem of Mistaken For Strangers or the dense, scrambling soundscapes of Terrible Love and Conversation 16, Bryce's point rings true. Colour, light, shade and subtlety are all necessary to trace the lines Matt has sketched for The National.
It's not necessarily a happy family all of the time. Bryce admits that “(Boxer) had been really hard to make and it was very contentious between us. We were disagreeing a fair amount on which direction we wanted to take.” Even a cursory listen to each album reveals a distinct difference in atmosphere, a result of the struggles between the band. Matt's extraordinary energy means that, despite his musical inability, the band are forced to trust his opinion and his obtuse descriptions. Though this is something they've learned to accept over the last decade.
“There is tension about that because sometimes he'll be like 'turn all the guitars up' and maybe he doesn't realise that the guitar is the only thing driving the harmony of the song. At the same time Matt is an incredibly gifted songwriter and we know that so he's right about 75% of the time. You've just gotta watch out for the 25% when he's totally full of it. But he tends to have good ideas probably because he doesn't play an instrument and because he doesn't have an attachment to anything he's played. 'Oh I love that guitar part' or 'oh I love that piano part I played'. That's what happens in bands full of heavy musicians and you get that problem of everyone wanting to hear what they did. It doesn't mean its good because you did it!” explains Bryce. “Sometimes it is limiting for us because he'll speak in non-musical metaphors about ideas he has but obviously we've been doing this for a while and it works and I think maybe Michael Stipe from REM works in a similar way. It's not so unique that he's the frontman and not playing an instrument. Its certainly good for us because otherwise I think a lot of bands that seem on paper to be collaborative, really are much less so. It's like one guy with a guitar who writes the song and he probably has the final say.”

They carve their way through acres of “sketches, which are demos of songs” to filter through the foliage sprouting from Aaron, Bryce, bassist Scott Devendorf and his brother Bryan playing drums, in order to strike gold.
“We have to give Matt a lot of music, and he'll listen to maybe 50 or 60 of these. I'll do a bunch, my brother probably does most of them and then Scott will do some and Bryan contributes to the rhythm but usually later once we know what we're working on, so it works like that and Matt might take one and go 'oh it's in the wrong key' or 'it's got to be faster' or 'I don't like the finger picking guitars, let's make it dirtier' or 'I like the B section' and it goes like that and goes back and forth and I'll make like 30 versions of the same thing,. Then once we know out of those that there's a song starting it'll probably go down to 25-30 of those that we can actually work out drum beats for and start to record basic ideas in the studio all together and that then goes to another level of Matt having to finish the lyrics. Then inevitably a bunch of those get tossed out as well and we get 15 or 20 that end up being finished songs.” The huge effort involved from each member in this process accounts for Bryce saying earlier in our transatlantic phone conversation that making an album is a “long and arduous” rigmarole. The results speak for themselves. High Violet churns, savages expectations and billows gently across a broiling soundscape. Terrible Love is somehow gentile and violent before physical tension is burst across an astounding jarring workout. Bloodbuzz Ohio recalls swarms of pain across fields, while Conversation 16 manages to expound the virtues of anxiety via an escalating, aural trauma. England is the most sublime, galloping classical piece they've done and Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks is practically gospel.

“We never really have a plan. I think its hard enough to do what we do, have five people make music together that we all like. There's definitely thematic elements in the lyrics that become cohesive part of the whole record that Matt worked on for a long time. Musically my brother and I write a lot of the music and what we try and do is push the band in a new direction every time even if it's in the same palette of music that we normally work with. I started orchestrating some of the songs whereas, in the past it's been Padma Newsome. He did England, the big one as far as being orchestral, but a bunch of the others I did and as far as playing the guitar, the piano and being directly inside what the music is, maybe it is true that the orchestration is sort of glued closer to what the band is doing,” admits Bryce. Guitar distortion coils around inflamed strings, filling the songs with static charge, pianos pound into cello serenity and clarinets jostle with Bryan's astounding drum ricochets. It's an astounding use of traditional instruments within a modern setting.
“The sound on Terrible Love was kind of happenstance, a kind of combination of effects that makes that crazy, woolly sound of guitars. It was something we stumbled on and just did it and we were able to keep it. To me Boxer became really, really elegant and a very manicured kind of record and High Violet opens that up. If you listen closely there's looser guitar playing it's rough around the edge is some places.” Bryce says that working alongside Kim Deal from Pixies, her looser style and way of composing, really helped to keep parts more natural and improvised in the studio, hence the rough edges on songs that are full of grandeur. Bryce has also worked with his favourite composer Steve Reich on the latter's latest record Double Sextet/2x5, and Lee Ronaldo of Sonic Youth in the past, again citing each man's fascinating approaches to musicality bringing a lot of inspiration to The National. The beginning flux of Boxer's Fake Empire alone recalls Reich's phasing techniques.
“We're collaborative musicians by nature and that doesn't just mean within The National,” says Bryce. “I think if it was just within The National, we'd get quite claustrophobic. I don't know how much the music could evolve if we weren't constantly opening ourselves up to new things and hearing new things and seeing how other people write songs.”

A band like this isn't your typical indie success story. Yet they've sold out three nights at Brixton Academy, as well as playing a sold out Royal Albert Hall earlier this year, and that's without mentioning that the day before this interview, the band played in Madison, Wisconsin at President Obama's request before he spoke to students at the university.
As Bryce admits, they aren't likely to be recognised and mobbed on the street yet touring has become more comfortable thanks to being able to afford a crew, festival billing has risen meaning more time to play to fans and though promo schedules have become tiring now, the overall feeling is that the band have achieved what they have in the right way, slowly but surely. “A lot of our favourite bands existed off the radar for so many years. I would say certainly with the Pixies, their reunion tour was much bigger than they were back in the day and we laugh because Alligator was mentioned as a record of the decade in a lot of places that didn't even list it as a record of the year initially. So it's sort of a funny thing of what time does to music or whatever, but we certainly don't have any chips on our shoulder about not having had success earlier or anything.”
So unstar-like are they that Bryce describes Matt as a “home-person”, as he has a wife and child and really struggles when on tour. Not just that, but his writing is inspired by the everyday, by a real life back at home with his family. “A lot of our songs are about real life or maybe the way we relate to real life, because sometimes touring is surreal so I think getting off tour and going home and absorbing yourself into a daily existence around a more normal schedule is improtant for the songs, what's in the songs,” says Bryce. “I think Matt really needs to get home and soak up a normal life before he'll feel like making a new record.”

They may even have reached the apex of what they've been doing for over a decade with High Violet. Certainly the almost consistently flawless work contained on their last three records draws the kind of defeated-sounding optimism and flight in the face of fear to the very brink of it's intensity and sonic possibility.
“In a way we feel we've achieved something with High Violet and maybe it's a chapter that's kind of closing. I'm not saying we're gonna take a drastic left turn but it definitely feels like it's more open to us now because we've been refining a certain sound and maybe it'll shift next time.” Whatever steps they take, we'll always be able to celebrate the sorrow and the small victories we win everyday with these songs, or endure, as Matt Berninger puts it, the 'uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults.'

Brad Barrett

Articles of 2010 Part IX: The Dillinger Escape Plan

2011-02-05T14:57:00.000-08:00

Yeah so I'm cheating with the alphabetical thing now. This should really have been further back, as should The Chap. Still, who cares. I'm not in a record store.

The Dillinger Escape Plan mesh brutality and finesse...and then crush them both. But with Option Paralysis, the winding, waltzing jazz flecks became more than just mere flourishes and the compelling evolution that came with Ire Works continued into their most fully formed work so far. Frontman Greg may be a compact powerhouse, but his mind is working overtime constantly, proving DEP to be one of the most forward-thinking, passionate bands in existence. Plus various members hang from ceilings while playing on occasion. Undeniable. "There has to be intent in everything", indeed.

The Dillinger Escape Plan

Almost nothing can prepare the uninitiated for the aural ferocity of The Dillinger Escape Plan. It truly is something to behold. Mere moments into their fourth longplayer, Option Paralysis, you’ve been lulled into a false sense of security with slinky, sleazy, clean chords. You’ll never trust anything ever again. The blazing intensity and complexity of the unexpected warring guitars, scattershot drums and Greg Puciato’s terrifying vocals all consume you immediately. Within a minute you’ve been tricked at least three times more: frenetic turns to hammering power chords which melt into clean tremolo strumming which lurches into eerie voices upon sweep-picked jazz scales. By the end of the fifth minute of Farewell, Mona Lisa, you’ve got an indelible choral refrain painted in your head and your expectations will never be the same again. You may have to take a breath before going any further. If this all sounds like hyperbole, try and remember the first time you heard something you’d never heard before; something so audacious, brave yet completely convincing in its power. You’ve just imagined what you’ll feel when you hear Option Paralysis for the first time.
“We’ve tapped into some creative artery that we need to fucking mine as much as we can because we feel like little kids right now,” says Greg, sitting opposite Playmusic at the unseemly hour of noon in the Camden Barfly venue where, later today, the band will play two shows: one in the afternoon and one in the evening. “We’ve had so much stress and inner turmoil. We started to believe the lie that we had to be fighting with one another to make something good and I do believe there has to be challenge and conflict but it shouldn’t have to be between us.” You’d give anything not to be the challenge or conflict in Greg’s way. He’s a striking figure, a short but stocky powerhouse whose figure can be seen throwing itself upon audience’s heads and hanging from light riggings by its legs. A man possessed by the pure energy of the music this quintet have somehow formulated against the odds.
“We’ve never had the same lineup between records. It’s crazy. Well, this is the best we’ve ever felt. This is the first time we haven’t been fighting a lot. This is the first time there hasn’t been some kind of stress on the horizon,” explains Greg. Dillinger’s potted history is renowned. Greg stepped into the vocalist role after a self titled mini LP, The Running Board EP, their debut proper Calculating Infinity and the Irony Is A Dead Scene EP with the inimitable vocal virtuoso Mike Patton. The result was Miss Machine, where Greg admirably altered the tone of the band for the better. 2007’s stunning Ire Works was marked by the departure of founding member and co-constructor Chris Pennie, leaving guitarist Ben Weinman as the only remaining original DEP conspirator. Though Gil Sharone stepped into his shoes for their third album, he was never considered a permanent member. “We knew that Gill wasn’t the permanent guy going into it. Even when we went into the tour we knew there would be an end we just didn’t know when it was going to be because he knew we knew everyone knew it was temporary.” Billy Rymer however has already earnt his stripes, collaborating with housemate Ben in the early stages of Option Paralysis. “They would wake up in the morning and start working on songs everyday so they formed more organically. They went in directions on their own instead of forcing yourself to write something. We actually ended up writing the record much faster than normal and to me I think its better. I think in the past we’ve been stuck on this thing where we need to take forever to write records to justify to ourselves that we worked hard. People being in a room together and listening to a million different variations on the fly, seeing what works and what doesn’t, instead of being in a bedroom by yourself thinking of how something will sound loud makes a big difference.”
These directions are both surprising and wholly welcome. After the electronic experiments that underpinned Ire Works in sound and writing process, we hear a greater sense of space, string arrangements and real tugs at the DEP signature sound. Yes it has those extreme time signatures, that incomprehensible fret work and Greg’s impassioned roar. But it also contains some of Greg’s most touching vocal performances and some exceptional ivory melodies from pianist Mike Garson. With these sonic lattices co opting the airwaves, it’s inconceivable how Greg still manages to make such a striking and integral impact within the songs, both lyrically and vocally. Part of it is down to an honest approach to writing words and melodies, as he explains.
“I have to have an emotional attachment otherwise I might as well just yell syllables and consonants and vowels. When I’m writing vocal parts I’ll write patterns before I have words. Kinda like scatting you know? And sometimes I actually get stuck on some of the vowel sounds so I find words that sound like gibberish that come out of my mouth but for the most part even if that’s the case the lyrics have to mean something to me. It’s my one chance every couple of years to really dig deep and get something good out of myself. It’s good for me to find more out about myself artistically to figure out what’s going on.”
For a band so replete with nourishment, to be able to express yourself vividly through a vocal performance must be an eye opener. Greg’s free-writing is often a “revelation” to himself. “Every time we’ve written an album, I’ve kinda peeled back layers of myself that I wasn’t aware of and it’s a good thing. That to me is the point. If there’s no honesty then art isn’t that interesting to me. If there’s no soul to something, what’s the point? That’s why I’ve never really understood trying to pick a certain topic and writing about it, especially in a style of music that is inherently very emotional. It seems to make more sense to give a shit about what you’re saying.”
Weirdly, this 'style of music' is often criticised by those who don’t really listen to it as being overly dramatic and that lyrics are lost amongst the noise of the delivery. It’s also what makes a lot of metal sound so awfully generic and throwaway at times. Yet, with torrents of emotion pouring forth from each element of the band, DEP never fall into that category.
“I’m less afraid of my own voice than I used to be and I think when you’re a kid it’s very easy to yell and scream. It’s what you want to do; you’re full of piss and venom. I think as you get older you start to realise you can be extremely effective in other ways. Way heavier and way more impactful than yelling all the time. Because when you start off screaming there’s really nowhere to go, you’re already at 10 so you can’t do anything but drop down and when you drop down its underwhelming so I’m starting to realise that if you keep your average around seven, it’s still pretty intense but you have room to go down to two or up to 10 and that’s way more interesting to me. I love screaming honestly but to me it’s not about trying to make vocals fit. Like I don’t wanna force screaming I don’t wanna force singing. As long as you’re comfortable with every tool in your arsenal it should all flow freely.”
It’s a far cry from composing, yet while Greg is insistent that thinking corrupts the original idea, there’s still a lot of work that goes into it. This isn’t ‘do what you feel’, this is ‘expell what you need to express’. There’s a difference.
“I try to write as fast as I really can then go back a day later and then be critical because it’s important to have that initial block of output to be pure and then later on you can refine it but that initial thing has to be to be like shooting it out of yourself.”
There’s so much to discuss – self-releasing their new record via their own label Party Smasher Inc., their dedication to the band meaning each member knows every detail from finances to t-shirt material, the need for perspective on work/life balance, their European tour of small venues as a treat for fans, reaching your thirties – but sticking to the core and heart of DEP is perhaps where we learn the most.
“The key for me now is to make sure things are honest,” says Greg. “Because I don’t ever want it to become consonants and vowels and not even know what’s coming out of my mouth. There has to be intent to everything.”

Articles of 2010 Part VIII: The Chap

2011-01-28T07:24:00.000-08:00

So I've been told recently that I take criticism to heart, and that may be true but I never really see the point in seeking anyone's approval. I'm generally proud of what I do without being self-satisfied. There's always improvements to make, always tonnes to learn and that's the way it should be, otherwise why carry on? By the same token, I don't compare anything I write to anyone else because I don't see the point. However anyone who says in his bio, with all seriousness, that "he even rejects typical notions of creativity...and instead sees himself as one who simply reflects the earthly forces and realities that surround him," should probably look a bit deeper at himself and work out exactly the point when his head and anal passage become fused instead of criticising others.

Anyway, The Chap are fucking amazing and need far more attention than I can give them. But at least I'm doing something.

The Chap

Pop music should be mined, explored and retrieved from an array of wild ideas. Some of the best songs ever have been the result of madcap ideas: slashing speaker cones a la The Kinks or nicking Kerry King from Slayer like the Beastie Boys. This bravery doesn't often extend to entire catalogues of work though. The Chap's version of pop music is formed from a constant disregard for formulas and playing safe. That's why their four albums are all sublime yet inextricably weaved works of eccentric sounds and noises.
“On this one and the previous album, we were aiming at writing some very shiny, straight forward pop music. In both cases (Mega Breakfast more than Well Done Europe), some of that old screetchy chap magic kept sneaking back in and made it all a lot less commercial than originally intended. We just can’t help ourselves! On Mega Breakfast, the poppiness was intended to sound quite sick and misplaced, which I think it ended up doing to quite an extent. On Well Done Europe, we allowed ourselves to be a bit warmer or - dare I say it - heartfelt with it.” Heartfelt? Weirdly, Well Done Europe sounds less sardonic and as if it's striving to capture some delightful melodic suss the band have hitherto thrown to the wind.
“When we start trying to make an idea into a song, we often go through a long process of rejection of ideas until we find a concept we want to go with. In the old days, these concepts usually consisted of trying to subvert the traditional pop song format by recording stuff really badly and trying to think of the least likely reference to juxtapose the initial recording with. These days, the subversion seems to stem more from the realisation that we have become characterised as this lo fi weirdo underground group and are consequently trying to make everything sound as slick as our budget home studio set-up allows. But in a slightly wrong and unsettling way.” The Chap seem concerned with deconstruction. Even Your Friend, for instance, has a typically deadpan female vocal, some innocuous warped sounds in the background and a steady beat. This soon gets co-opted by huge sampled choral crescendos, twisted, muffled voices, an almost freeform bassline before it all collides into a choppy, anthemic chorus. It's bewildering and brilliant. The amount of throwaway innovation is reminiscent of the approach recently reformed 90s eccentrics Pavement had, unafraid to plunge songs into gallons of awkward ideas.
It's extremely difficult to divide The Chap's musical direction from their consistently intriguing and hilarious lyrical stance. This is without mentioning the pop culture references such as the snippet of Dancing In The Dark by Springsteen in Well Done You. Consider this gem: 'Well done you, you've really really got the hang of it/that's excellent stuff there..../we're really glad to have you with us/I know you were struggling at first/but soon you tackled it head on/and that was quite a feat considering..' Somehow the languishing and deadpan delivery of the vocals seems to overlap with the slick, ambiguous feel and texture of the music. “As with the musical content, we try to come up with something unusual. We will sometimes come up with a concept or just write down phrases which spring to mind by free association. The lyrics are very important, but not necessarily in a way of a particular meaning. That said, more recently, we have started writing songs which actually have an easily indentifiable meaning, like We Work In Bars or Chalet Chalet.”
This patchwork approach goes hand in hand with their similarly sewn musical ouvre. The result is that The Chap's output is distinctive and a refreshing dunk into the oft murky waters of independently weaved pop music. Legendary sonic crackpot Frank Zappa once asked whether humour belongs in music – naturally he had already answered yes to his own question – and it seems ludicrous, in light of bands such as The Chap, that such a question need be asked.
“After making quite a conscious decision to have almost only straight forward song structures on Well Done Europe, we are planning to come back soon with a classic chap style album… I think we’ve just about had it with trying to be Fleetwood Mac all the time! ‘Cause we’re not!” They may not be Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, but to deny them their little niche for not following the accepted rules – including striving for hooks in places where most fear to tread, perhaps because they might appear less serious and committed – would not only be unfair but actually extremely short sighted.

Brad Barrett

Articles Part VII: Portico Quartet

2011-01-25T02:42:00.000-08:00

Currently in limbo, the only way to retain normality is to continue writing about my own writing. Well meta. Here's the seventh article I was most proud of from last year.
With the re-release of their fantastic second album, Isla, last year Portico Quartet deserved a second shot at wider acclaim. Their instrumental, resonating ambient-flecked jazz suits a certain mood - partially melancholy but hopeful anyway. The perfect antidote to overly skronky or intricate meanderings, their sound is built around one instrument - one that you'd be forgiven for thinking was unnecessary in any other place. But within their context, it more than makes sense - it's almost the instrument's entire purpose. And how many musical groups are capable of that?

Portico Quartet

Rarely do we find an artist’s entire output inspired by and reliant on a fairly unfamiliar instrument. Joanna Newsom’s harp is perhaps the only exception we can think of here. The East London-based Portico Quartet are not only one of those rarities but an astonishing discovery in their own right as well. The band’s second album Isla, released in autumn last year, is an exceptional work bereft of cliché and imbued with an exceptional command of jazz and ‘world’ music instruments to craft a gripping, gooseflesh-inducing sound.
The story itself is a suitably heartening one. Nick Mulvey discovered the hang at the WOMAD music festival. “I heard the sound first and saw a crowd of people and just loved the sound of it. It wasn’t like anything I’d heard before. Very quickly I forced my way to the front of the queue and had a go and found that I could play it, not because of any particular gift, but it’s a very intuitive instrument so I could play it instantly.” This rudimentary-looking pitted steel UFO is a Swiss made alien object, with a bewitching sound. Portico Quartet’s elegant yet riveting soundscapes are formed from the simple sculpted steel drum noise through which treated saxophone and double bass swarm and penetrate.
“I’ll put a hang pattern together that has a nice pocket of space and then maybe an inherent tension like it’s asking a question. Then Duncan (Bellamy – drummer) locks in very quickly just using the bell of his hi hat and I know already this is going to go somewhere because we’re already making a nice sound and he’s only using a fraction of his kit, he’s still got all the rest to play yet. Milo (Fitzpatrick – double bass) might have a little lick on the bass and if it catches very quickly we all slot into place around it and usually a groove forms and we’re all jamming on the groove and then we’d then sculpt a tune out of it, pull stuff back and Jack Wylie (saxophone) will find a melody. The second album was largely how can we push beyond this method. Part of the thing is we think textually rather than develop the harmonies like a jazz pianist might, it’s about textures and sound worlds.”

Their balance of composition and improvisation leads not only to incredible studio takes but sophisticated, sensual and haunting live deviations. It was this other worldly sound which brought them from casual busking as students to playing a sold out Barbican in London back in March.
“We’d had one jam in our student halls of residence and everyone, all the students hanging around were like ‘that’s wicked’ so we thought ‘fuck it let’s go down Southbank’ and the response was really overwhelming and we made £300 in a couple of hours. The next Saturday we made more and a festival promoter from Italy walked past and loved it. We started to meet people in the media who were walking down and our repertoire began to solidify, so it was just became a good place to play. I think after the first week we invested one months earnings into an industrial CD burner, went to a mates private studio, recorded four or five of the first tracks and then printed up about 100 copies. We went to the Southbank the next day and shifted all of them for a fiver. Next week we did 200 copies and suddenly we’re making a grand a weekend for five hours work. So we quit all our bar jobs and we were making much better money much easier playing the music we really love. The whole thing, in a way, encouraged itself. We never had any intention. We feel really lucky about it.”

From these humble beginnings, three or four years later, Portico Quartet are working with renowned producer John Leckie. Far from the Muse and Radiohead records he’s known for, Leckie has worked with a huge amount of different music (the India Soundpad project covered by PMP last year for instance). He contacted the band’s new record label Real World, owned by Peter Gabriel, after he heard them play the Mercury Music Prize ceremony for which their debut Knee Deep In The North Sea was nominated. On the same week John contacted Real World, Real World were attempting to contact him for the same reason.
“Having the rock background was really useful for us because we wanted a slightly more muscular sound on the second album,” explains Nick. “We wanted someone who had made a hundred second albums and wasn’t 25 years old and not someone who would interfere in our process too much or at all because we know what we want to do musically.” John Leckie turned out to be the perfect choice.
The proof is contained on Isla, which captures the scintillating results of hard work, inspiration and creativity. In following nothing other than their love of music, Portico Quartet have stumbled upon that remarkably elusive tryst which blossoms from unexpected meeting to rewarding romance. Listening is all it takes to hear why.

Brad Barrett

Articles of 2010 Part VI: Frank Turner

2011-01-23T10:23:00.000-08:00

After three years of trying, I finally managed to get Frank Turner a cover with Playmusic. This is significant because we've both been long term supporters of each other. It just so happens that Kerrang! beat us, which is just the way it goes. I shouldn't have to spout on about what FT means to my friends and I, how his lyrics saved one of my friend's life, to the point where he now lives with someone he truly loves somewhere in the American continent, how his music has affected myself and always reminds me of home, especially now I'm in Germany. His cover rates alongside my Sonic Youth one in personal victories and that is a huge deal. So without further blathering, here's the cover I produced in August 2010. May it be the second of many others for possibly the hardest working man in music today (apart from Peter Andre of course).

Meeting up with Frank Turner and having a chat has become a yearly occurrence. We're too busy for anything more. In the past six months folk-rock songwriter Frank has visited Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, China and Israel all for the first time, toured America a bit, headlined his first festival and supported Green Day at Wembly Stadium. He has reached this plateau in just under five years; since September 2005, in fact, when he first took his sadly departed first and only acoustic guitar out on the road and proceeded to never look back.
“I'm gonna get a tiny bit defensive now and even get a bit of my pride out on show,” he warns while supping a pint of golden nectar in a Notting Hill beer garden towards the end of our interview. “It's just funny because there is a folk punk thing, particularly in America. But in the UK five years ago, people thought I was fucking mental when I said this was what I was gonna do and retrospectively even I think I was mental as well. I don't wanna sound prissy about this but it wasn't the obvious move. So, yes, I do feel vindicated about that.”

Ask Frank what has been most fulfilling about his rise to headlining venues like Brixton Academy, which he will do in December, he'll explain that it's the publicly perceived sense that his rise “isn't a fabricated or a flash in the pan thing”. He admits with blunt honesty that he has never hidden his roots and never wanted to. “I can't claim and don't see the point of claiming and will never claim to be working class in anything that I do in my life with the possible exception of the way I've gone about my career which is that I've done this through graft and I'm proud of that fact. It's the one bit of blue collar in my life.” For a man rapidly approaching his 1000th show in five years, this is no overstatement. Playmusic, in all its guises, has followed Frank from his early shows at tiny acoustic clubs like Monkey Chews in Chalk Farm, open mic nights at The Snooty Fox in Canonbury and three shows at the local Tunbridge Wells Forum. The gig count is well into double figures but that's only roughly about 2-3% of his actual gigging schedule. Which perhaps puts his work rate into perspective for even the most sceptical of you.

Between that time he has also released three full-length albums, an armful of EPs, split singles – all collected on The First Three Years - and two DVDs plus a live recording of his triumphant Shepherd's Bush Empire show in 2009. He's also contributed to several tribute albums (the highlight of which is the excellent Mark Mulcahy tribute album made to raise funds to help the American songwriter raise his family and continue to make music after the death of his wife), been added to countless compilations and has guested on records by Chris T-T and The Dawn Chorus of late. Prolific just about covers it and with a new EP out November, there's no shortage of songs in the Turner canon it seems. “One of the things that drives me to write as much as I can and tour as much as I can, is, to be very specific about it, Bob Dylan in the late seventies. If even Bob Dylan can run out of juice then everyone's gonna run out and that makes me hammer it for all its worth. Of course, if I run out of songs than I'll just coast, tour and not release new material,” he adds, laughing.

“I want to see it as a way into the new album,” Frank says of the new five track EP. “I'm quite confident in the stockpile of songs I've got at the moment and its almost quite hard to choose what songs are gonna go on the EP rather than the record but I think its important to stress that it's not gonna be second class songs on the EP. The lead track is gonna be I Still Believe which is rapidly turning into a live favourite.” Frank's recent iTunes Festival performance at the Roundhouse included this huge, jaunty singalong. With lyrics espousing the virtues of rock and roll, a choral echo primed for arenas and a central lyric that goes 'I still believe (I still believe)/In the need for guitar and drums and desperate poetry', its no surprise that about its first UK outing at a last minute secret show at The Flowerpot in Kentish Town Frank says “the crowd response to it was totally overwhelming, more for any new song I've ever had”. Nevertheless, while he is aware of the importance of meshing his passionate lyricism with indelible hooks, something he's incredibly adept at, it's not necessarily the most fulfilling of his oeuvre for him.
“That was an easy song for me to write. I can already tell you what my favourite song on the next record is going to be and it's not going to be a crowd favourite and we probably won't play it more than once live”, he admits. “It's just got an incredibly dense and complicated set of lyrics that took me forever and its the closest I've ever felt that I've got to writing poetry in my life. I just spent ages on meter and rhythm and rhyming structure. This is not a gripe in anyway but I always felt like people hone in on the more simplistic stuff, with the notable exception of 'Prufrock' which is a crowd favourite and one of the best sets of words I've ever turned out. I'm just geeky about words,” he says, shrugging.

Frank has made no secret of his adoration and continuous research into English folk music, another subject he can be incredibly 'geeky' about. He points to his suitcase – awaiting its trip to Canada the very next morning - which has a volume detailing the history of English folk songs during our conversation. He has also recorded a version of Barbara Allen, first mentioned as a Scottish folk song in Samuel Pepys diary, as well as performing it completely acapella at Shepherd's Bush Empire. This may well have started a trend. “I've been writing a few acapella songs recently. I also found this old myth which is a folk tale from the New Forest, which is just down the road from where I'm from. William II, was killed in a hunting accident in the forest and there's a local myth that his father William the Conqueror stole commoner John the Blacksmith's land for royal hunting grounds and John the Blacksmith laid a curse on the King and said 'I'll kill your son for stealing my land.' I'm just trying to turn that into a traditional song.” Frank also isn't shy about his libertarian political standpoint. Songs like Sons of Liberty should make that really clear. Discussing everything from government funded lobby/charity groups and his distaste for such a practice to the real Robin Hood being a tax-hating worker, its easy to get Frank onto a tangent which eludes an answer entirely, while showing how much he thinks, reads, absorbs and consequently, has to say. The topic of place spreads from “a slight obsession with Ernest Hemingway and this idea of collecting experience,” to the possibility of playing prison shows around London and even the Alternative USO, for US soldiers at military bases and even Afghanistan. He references Kerouac's On The Road and being asked by an American customs official on the phone if he was “the singer in Million Dead”. These tangents are triggered simply by his need to express his love of new experiences and returning to his own country.
“In the last couple of days I've just finished a song about rivers and England. Even when talking about something else, when there comes a time to mention a city or a place, without wanting to sound like Lily Allen, (mocking singing voice)'al fresco, Tesco', I'd rather drop Manchester or Exeter into a song. I probably go more to Denver than I do Exeter but Exeter sounds more relevant to me. I completely agree with you that a sense of place is fascinating and really important and that's one of the many things that attracts me to folk music generally. When I go to other places I'm always super interested in how people live, how other people work and I think it makes me appreciate my own cultural and political identity a little more.”
It's an issue that dominates the media, arts and, yes, songwriting and it's genuinely refreshing to have an increasingly popular musician approach the matter from both a personal and educated standpoint.

Perhaps the biggest shift from his defiantly solo beginnings, and one that originally caused a schism between fans, has been the introduction of his band. They comprise of three members of Oxford band Dive Dive – bassist Tarrant Anderson, guitarist Ben Lloyd and drummer Nigel Powell – and keys player/multi-instrumentalist Matt Nasir. Though they've been present since the first full band show in Oxford's Port Mahon on 20th January 2007, with Matt joining in October of 2008, third album Poetry of the Deed is the first to have the whole band recording their parts in the studio at the same time. “I still say this is MY project and I have done this,” proclaims Frank. “(But) there are one or two songs I don't like and/or can't do solo already, though I have to say I'm slightly annoyed by that because I do like the idea that there's always a solo version of the song that I can play.”
Though Frank refutes the idea that he couldn't imagine his songs without the other musician's contributions, he's very stringent on one point: “I certainly don't want to play with any other musicians any time soon,” he says. “We've actually legally bound ourselves to each other quite recently which I'm very happy about and I was keen to do. There's a strength to the paradigm of one man and his guitar which is important, and there is a reason I'm doing this under my own name and not in a band and all the rest of it, so I don't want to lose sight of any of that but they are important to what I do, particularly to the live show now.” Yet, there have been challenges along the way. Not least the balance between being the four guys in Frank's backing band, and turning into a band with equal billing to Frank himself. His rather cynical but hilarious nickname given to him by the band is 'the product', which aptly distinguishes their roles.
“In the annals of rock and roll, there's not that many well-known established backing bands. There's E Street, there's Crazy Horse but its a delicate balance and I think its great that the guys in the band have got that now. I'm more than happy and comfortable to talk about them in interviews and introduce them on stage and I like that its got to a point where people know them by name. Fans are like 'hey it's Nigel' backstage.”

Inevitably, for a man wanting to distance himself from previous working practices in hardcore and rock bands, there has been a certain amount of “headbutting”when working on new material. “We're still learning. See, one of my reservations about Poetry of the Deed as a record is that I got overly carried away with recording with a band. I think arrangement wise it just kinda goes like that,” he says moving his hand upon an invisible horizontal conveyor belt. “Whereas Love Ire and Song and Sleep Is For the Week have a lot more peaks and troughs. I think part of the reason for that is I was like 'I've got a band in the studio! Everybody play all the time, on everything!' and I think for the next record I'm now less worried saying to a band member, 'hey, you know what? You're not playing on this one'. I feel like we're reaching an equilibrium now and I would love to look back like Springsteen at, say, Born To Run through to Born In The USA, where there's that string of great E-Street band records. I'd love to look from Poetry of the Deed through to whatever album in the same way...”

A week ago at time of writing, Frank won the Kerrang! No Half Measures award, formally the Spirit of Independence award which has seemingly been renamed specifically for him. I don't think there's many who would argue with the sentiment and, as a final example of why he deserves this recognition, Frank tackles my query on just why he considers himself an entertainer rather than an artist. “I don't think there's anything more pretentious than referring to yourself as an artist. I think other people can decide whether what you do is art. Obviously what I do is songwriting and in a broader sense I'm an entertainer. There are people who are very snobby about the term entertainer. Off the top of my head (political activist punk band and one of Frank and my favourite bands as younger men) Propagandhi said: 'It seems we're only here to entertain.' And I think 'ONLY entertain?'. See, you can tie yourself in with travelling players and vaudeville and anyone who has got up on a stage and tried to make people feel better about their life. I actually happen to think that's a very noble tradition to be a part of. So if someone else wants to describe what I do as art, that's fine I'm just not gonna get involved. It's not really for me to say. Actually, I don't think it's for anyone to say except when I'm dead, or at least, older. I think Born To Run is art and I think first of all, we can judge this more than Springsteen can and second we can judge it because it has survived the passage of time and it has become a cultural landmark, in a way. I don't wanna stand here and say I engage in art. I engage in songwriting which might cumulatively become art. I certainly think that of all the tests to establish whether something is art or not, the test of time is a pretty strong one. Townes Van Zandt was really not popular in the day but he has endured and the reason he's endured is because he was a fabulous artist. I know it sounds like a self absorbed thing to be concerned about, but first of all I don't like the connotations of the word artist because the kind of people who describe themselves as artists are cunts. But, also, I'm really bothered about reclaiming the term entertainer. I have this mental image of the old luvvie getting up to play a pantomime dame for the 700th time at the age of 75 and saying 'my public need me' and you know what, they fucking do. And its not because you're saving the world, but because everyone needs to have their mind taken off things. Life is horrible and entertainment and friends are God's compensation. Loudon Wainwright does that for me. He's a consummate entertainer. He tells jokes and tells stories and plays songs and gets the crowd on side and I really like picturing myself like him. I'd love to be Neil Young, doing stadium shows when I'm 60 years old but if I'm like Loudon, who is still just on the road and got enough of a crowd to pay his petrol and the hotel, I'm in.” I've said it before, and I'll continue to say it: this country needs Frank Turner; his band, his energy, his attitude, his guitar, his voice and his desperate poetry. Because if there's anyone in music who can inspire you to do the very best you can and disregard the bloated ambitions of wannabe rock stars, it's him.

Articles of 2010 Part V: Field Music

2011-01-22T12:18:00.001-08:00

Part five of my alphabetical retrospective of interview features I wrote for Playmusic last year continues with the return - in a collective sense - of Field Music. The brothers Brewis are essentially Field Music. Andrew Moore may play drums, but it seems the trio format was always dispensable. The second self-titled album was entirely written and recorded by the Sunderland pair after they separated their efforts into two projects: namely School of Language and The Week That Was, though they both played on each other's 'solo' records.
The point is that this musical collective is fluid, not confined to the band format and the results have always been some of the consistently brilliant guitar pop in the UK. Below is the result of two inspiring phone conversations with the two men and they remain two of my favourite musicians to talk to, to quiz and to challenge. That they were so well rewarded by the UK press upon their return fills me with a lot of satisfaction. They are two of the few who truly deserve every good thing that comes their way.

What’s your motivation for making music? Have you ever questioned why you are doing and how you are doing it? Are you afraid of cracking open that particular Pandora’s Box for fear of what may spring out at you? The reason for asking, for even getting those though processes churning, is that Field Music’s new double album – their finest work to date – was born almost directly from the consequences of those questions.

The way to purify the music making process is to strip away any distracting notions that pervade upon your creative intentions. Peter and David Brewis halted Field Music’s progress after 2007’s Tones of Town because of a myriad of reasons but the one they both seem to agree on is this: “Wait a minute! We’ve accidentally become a band!” Peter exclaims, mirroring his thoughts after completing their second record. “We were in the same sort of game as Kaiser Chiefs or Bloc Party. We didn’t ever see ourselves as that sort of thing. It wasn’t really the kind of music we listen to but we felt like we needed to try and be successful because we ended up in that game and I think we just thought: let’s just stop. Let’s not do Field Music anymore.”

The result was not the loss of a promising and dedicated pop band, but rather the production of two more excellent records the following year: the laptop-rock groove of School of Language, helmed by David, and the ambitious orchestral concept album The Week That Was, led by Peter. These two releases proved David’s point that “within the sphere of indie band music, it seems like a lot of people care more about bands than the music and being in a band gets in the way of making interesting music. For us that’s a definite no no.”

With such undeniably diverse output from the same team members, albeit under the guise of solo projects, the decision to go back to Field Music feels less of a surprise and more like returning to a blueprint with a permanent black marker and some fresh designs. The critically-acclaimed album Field Music (Measure) refuses to adhere to preconceptions of what a double album should be. It does not run together smoothly. It doesn’t stick with a theme. It doesn’t even stick to a single genre with everything from funk, “musical nonsense” and found sound improvisation creeping in. “You always need something to begin with like ‘why are we actually making a record?’ It’s not to make any money because we’re never gonna do that. It’s not to be famous because we’re not interested in that. So what it is that we want to do? We’d been listening to Tusk and the White album and Physical Graffitti and things like that so we really though ‘wouldn’t it be really good fun and a good challenge to try and make a really long record?’ I think we just wanted to confuse ourselves a bit and try and make something a bit sprawling really, something that doesn’t make that much sense.” Peter’s honesty here is mirrored by his brother. Modest ambitions, a sense that music is not just their passion but something to be enjoyed and, perhaps most of all, as suggested by his own question, the need to remain true to the core of their songwriting experiences.
“We were of the mindset of: ‘oh I’ve got this piece of music and though I’ve not heard any Pink Floyd albums I think it sounds like Pink Floyd but shall we put it on the album anyway?’ ‘Yes let’s do it!’ ‘I’ve got this song and it’s got this really kind of daft bluesy guitar riff which we would’ve never done before. Shall we put it on the album anyway?’ ‘Is it good?’ ‘I think so.’ ‘Yes then we’ll put it on!’ There was no attempt to make it seamlessly smooth and coherent.”

Of course, siblings in musical collaborations have a long rock history. As we’ve already covered in several short paragraphs, you’d expect by now that Field Music have very little in common with the Gallaghers and Davies’ of this stereotypical and outland musical world.
“I think we’re inspired by each other’s better songs. Peter brings in a song and I’m like ‘oh that’s great I wish I’d done something like that’. It may be slightly easier for us in that, well, we love each other! Sometimes we get pretty frustrated with each other but that competitiveness is never, ever a negative thing. It’s always tinged with pride and with love,” gushes David.
“Whoever writes the song, that’s the person who is in charge. It’s more difficult when we’re mixing and doing the mastering and deciding on track order because that’s when the democracy gets tested,” explains Peter. “We trust each other’s intentions and, it sounds really pretentious but, maybe also each others vision. Dave knows what he’s doing. If he needs me then he’ll ask me. If he can play something better than I can than he’ll do it himself and that’s fine. Some tracks I’m hardly on and some tracks Dave’s hardly on. In fact one of the tracks Let’s Write a Book…I went on holiday for a few days over the summer and I got back to the studio and Dave’s like: ’Hey I’ve recorded this song. Whaddya think?’ And I thought ‘Ah what?!’ To me that’s probably the best song on the record and I’m not on it.”
Nevertheless, there’s hardly a hint of jealousy, especially as Peter rationalises it by comparing the making of their new record to other classics: “I think Paul McCArtney played 90% of the instruments on the White Album, and probably Lyndsey Buckingham played 70% on Tusk. You start to think that’s fine. It’s important we enjoy the process. We’ve not enjoyed making records before. We tried to make sure everyone was involved all the time and now we just don’t bother. We’re fine getting on with things.”

Field Music (Measure) is an inspiring work. It’s a collection of twenty songs linked only by the Brewis’ and their studio. There were no rules laid down except for the one David expresses early on during our phone interview: “We wanna be able to make the best music we can make and operate in a way that conforms to our principles about music and our principles about how things should be.” From the exquisite merging of tinglingly picked acoustic guitar and regal string refrains on Measure to the bewildering “dissonant harmony” funk of Let’s Write A Book, there’s nothing here that doesn’t manage to capture those lofty goals. The result is armfuls of memorable melodies and a range of expressions which stretch from poignant all the way to celebratory.

Field Music’s key workspace is their studio to the point where David says that “our approach to making records is entirely formed by always recording ourselves.” It seems that self recording has been so essential to Field Music’s ethos that it’s inconceivable that they could work any other way. “I can’t imagine me not knowing how I wanted something to sound and I think really what we’ve found out over the years is we can pick up enough of the technical skills required to do whatever we need to do in an independent way much faster than we can explain to someone else what we’re trying to do. And that’s been made even more stark because there are so few new records we’re interested in. So it’s not like ‘oh I love the sound of that record. I want to work with that person because I think he’ll understand what we do’. There aren’t really any examples of that. The records that we like the sound of are usually stylistically a long way away from what we do. Of course we couldn’t afford a producer, so it’s completely theoretical anyway,” says David.
As well as saving money you don’t have in the long-run, ‘home’ recording has myriad benefits from the skills you develop to being able to realising the soundscape in your head in your own time. Field Music clearly relish the opportunity to craft the sounds they want within the confines of their own studio, as David explains. “Every song we keep trying to find a better way of doing something or we’ll have an idea and you’ll have to go through the quite fun process of figuring out technically how we can do that with our fairly limited resources. That’s something which entirely comes from recording ourselves. Also, coming form a point of really limited technical expertise, we don’t really know the proper ways of doing anything and most of the recording techniques that we use that I really like are, in one sense or another, against the rules. We record most things in ways that are unlike what you’d see in most of the studios that we could ever afford.”
Both David and Peter record ideas on their laptops, using software to compose before bringing those ideas to fruition in their studio. Not all the sounds on Field Music (Measure) are from instruments either. The last four songs on the fourth side – the Brewis’ always think in terms of vinyl with all their records – utilise sounds Peter recorded outside, including at his favourite café in his hometown of Sunderland. “It comes from an idea of improvisation when in our general every day lives people move around, they shiuffle their feet, they make noises they drive their cars they whistle they mutter away they beep their horns - there’s no such thing as an unmusical sound and that’s because everything has I suppose what you’d call a gesture. Rather than just having a pitch or a rhythm it has a movement to it, a certain shape and a dynamic to the sound. Those things aren’t really made by accident I don’t think. They’re made by physical things that we’re doing. In that loose sense the idea was that people are making music that I could accompany on piano or marimba or with strings.”

With refreshing approaches like these, a free spirit sense to recording thanks to their own studio and that constant guiding passion of principles throughout, it’s no real surprise that Playmusic considers Field Music one of the finest pop bands of the last decade. Similarly, it’s very hard to argue with David’s sentiments when he unexpectedly, but justifiably, let’s rip about a few untruths about music which Field Music are fundamentally opposed to. “There’s a real sheen of dishonesty which runs through the music business, which is distasteful because pop music sells itself by its authenticity. There’s fuck all of that as far as I can see. Authenticity has become like a genre rather than having anything deep seeded to it and musicians up and down the land are completely deluding themselves that they are honest and that they just ‘do what they feel’. When people say ‘I just do what I feel’ it means ‘I don’t want to think about it because I probably won’t like what it is’. I want to define us as being against that. It especially galls me that people associate not thinking about stuff as being authentic. ‘We don’t think about what we do, we just do it.’ Well for a start that’s not how thought works. It’s certainly not how my creative process works yet there’s this whole mythology around just ‘doing what you feel’ and not thinking about it coz that just spoils it. Well, what that mostly equates to is people repeating themselves, deluding themselves and making very sub-standard copies of whatever was most prevalent when they were 18. Obviously when I put it in those kind of propaganda terms it doesn’t sound like a very good idea.”

Field Music balance intelligence and intuition, understand that great accomplishments come from hard work, not some outdated notion of spiritual guidance and refuse to let anything get in the way of a good song. They understand that “the whole act of recording music is pretty contrived and ridiculous” which is why their new record is elaborate, open minded and, yes, in places just slightly ridiculous. Hardly ever does a musical duo come along that is so aware of what they want to do, why they want to do it and are so riddled with conviction on how they are going to do it. So, please, make the most of what we’ve got and hopefully you’ll be inspired enough to follow your own path too.

Articles of 2010 Part IV: Everything Everything

2011-01-19T12:04:00.000-08:00

AS 2011 hauls itself into life gradually, mimicking the struggle we have to pull ourselves from the gravity of our beds as light slowly begins to dawn earlier and dwindles later, I'm still eking out the last droplets of 2010.

Last year I got to interview, and throw covers at, a lot of my favourite bands from old (Slayer) to new (The Gaslight Anthem). Everything Everything represent a lot of what I adore about quirky pop music - intelligence, full-steam ahead idea factories that damn the consequences of sounding silly or unlike most other quantifiable things. The day in Abbey Road as they recorded some live tracks was a great day for one particular reason and will always be remembered for that but in addition to that special reason, EE proved to be intriguing interviewees, and damn nice to boot.
Read on for the story I hewed from that afternoon.

ALIVE TO EVERYTHING

Everything Everything are a multi-headed chimera, absorbing musical styles into its awesome presence. Playmusic managed to ensnare the Manchester based quartet after their recording for television at the legendary Abbey Road Studios, another symptom of their steady rise this year since their inclusion in the BBC Sound of 2010 poll...

Do you really have the guts to take it all the way? Are you capable of building your skills, your knowledge and your abilities and bringing them with you? Will you have the heart to plough your own furrow until an unstoppable momentum begins to bring you what you wanted over three years ago? Creativity is a torturous ally. It is with you as soon as you're able to identify how to utilise it to your advantage and pleasure, and then sticks with you imploring that you feed it, harvest its wares and use them for whatever ends are available. Everything Everything, have clearly been hounded by their creativity, chased down many corridors and twisting stairs until, finally, they were able to harness it, leash it and train it into the bewildering array of acrobatics it performs on their debut album Man Alive.
“I think a lot of people, including ourselves, look at the band's development and think 'oh they've got some synths now' when it's really not as straight-forward as that. It wasn't a switching on of the light as soon as we got a keyboard in the room. It's all in the writing and the playing and learning how to be more tasteful, how to enjoy the music more in your own playing and how to write more effectively,” explains Jonathan Higgs, who sings lead vocals, plays guitar and synths.
“We've changed a lot musically even though our very first song and single is on there,” says Jeremy Pritchard, who sings and plays bass, about the savage Suffragette Suffragette. “Even at that stage that was the slinkiest thing we had and everything else was spikier and post punky and louder. It does frustrate me that people look at bands and they need that helping hand straight away: is it based with guitars, is it based with synthesizers? We never saw the fucking difference to be honest.” Jeremy briefly cites Kele Okereke and his solo album away from Bloc Party and how “all that band was doing was channelling the spirit of dance music through a kind of punk filter to begin with” so the lauded heavy dance direction was never a surprise in any way. “I think its unimaginative of the press to portray it as a surprise,” he says. And he's right. Dividing music into camps because of the instruments used to craft the music is far too simplistic. Especially if you're trying to pigeonhole a band like Everything Everything.

Instead we'll talk about the stirring synthetic strings that usher in a svelte funk-inspired stew on MY KZ YR BF, all Marr-esque arpeggios before xylophonic cadences flow underneath ping-pong ball vocals that hit pitches at odds with each other. We could yell about the 8-bit synth roll on Photoshop Handsome or the Eno ambient beauty of Tin (The Manhole). Perhaps the baroque harpsichord flavour of Two For Nero strikes an inspired chord or ten while Leave The Engine Room snaps minimalistic megabytes across the triumphant melancholy of Radiohead's Let Down. Creativity is a fickle and demanding pet. The fact is their inspirations may be audible but they've been strained through an amazing amount of opinions, ideas and sudden unpredictable, at times improvised, flourishes.
“Something like QWERTY Finger on the album, I wrote that after seeing Control, the Joy Division film. I just came down thinking I want this really dirty bass riff with that amazing bass sound so I just wrote one,” says Jonathan.
“It was half the speed as well,” pipes up Jeremy, complete with dirge-y sounding slow bass imitation.
“I was massively influenced by that film but the song sounds nothing like them at all.”
“It's filtered so many more times before people get to hear it on a CD,” says Jeremy. “I remember reading about that Radiohead track Exit Music (For A Film) and the rhythm section at the end was like 'let's do something like Portishead' but they couldn't really do it properly so it comes out as its own flavour and that what we do most of the time. We're not deliberately aping other styles.”

As a result of having elements of slick polish across odd clashes of textures and sound, Everything Everything have had some unintentionally hilarious suggestions from those wanting to work with them and their music.
“I remember when we were talking to labels and one of the majors said 'how would you feel about going into the studio with Fraser T Williams?'. A year ago he was the big R & B producer for Tinchy Stryder, N Dubz, Taio Cruz and all that stuff and that is exactly the wrong idea. That was a sort of press angle as far as we could work out. We really like that music and we like to channel some of those features but still...” says Jeremy.
“The end of Schoolin' is kind of a Dr Dre homage which is kind of how it started life,” says Jonathan, carrying on the theme. “But then it's got no harmonic basis at all. There's no home chord there at all. It's sort of in e minor. It's the kind of thing Dre would probably do, but he probably wouldn't put those guitars there.”
“See, you can't go through the whole process from demoing in the bedroom to playing it live to recording and putting it out thinking I want this to sound like...whoever,” says Jeremy. “We don't. That's why it sounds like us.” Jeremy offers to go easy on our slightly banal questioning though: “You have to remember people weren't there when you wrote it,” he admits.

You can sympathise with Jeremy's plight. It's extremely difficult to answer questions about a creative process because people automatically make assumptions about your inspirations, about your working practices based on what they hear in the music. One imagines it becomes a battle to say anything besides 'it just happens and we don't know how' when faced with legions of eager interrogators. Part of what draws us to music is the magic inherent in whatever we listen to. If you can't work out how it was made, it becomes something more than some miraculous composition of chords and a voice. Creativity remains an intricate, almost unexplainable thing. Another example:
Jonathan's extraordinary falsetto-laden vocal lines, scaled further into the Parthenon of amazement by his syllable-spilling, almost cryptic lyrics, sound as much like an instrument as a direct emotional hook to hang songs upon. Nevertheless, he denies that his choice of words are utilised for mere musical device, even occasionally. “No that's something that's appeared in print once or twice before, maybe because of a misquote or something, but I don't really think that at all. I don't use words to fill a gap. I always make sure they mean something as well as having the rhythm. I always make sure the melody is there and sometimes the rhythms get moved along with the lyrics. However, there's a lot of 'oohs' and 'aahs' on the record. Those are definitely instrumental ideas.” Man Alive's most obviously 'rock' moment, QWERTY Finger, jams these oblique sentences - 'We slide in from the epoch of anglo american wire and a saxon spire/glint in the glare far above me - put pressure on it/She collapse me/Man alive, her every ache a baton to me/Age of ending/where's the worth in proving I was here?' - into a vocal that shudders, explodes and smears across at least three separate ideas. It's only when we reach the middle 8 that normality is even approached.
“In some songs the verses in particular are more intense melodramatically and syllable-wise. You still get the occasional chink of light in the tunnel when something more legato will happen and there's examples of that in Photoshop Handsome and Schoolin'. There's just enough breathing space there. You've got to have those things otherwise you don't get the same joy if everything is ridiculously complicated,” admits Jeremy.
“If I keep coming back to something then there's obviously something in it that I'm enjoying myself and hopefully other people who hear it will enjoy as well. But I like complex melody and complex rhythm more than anything. Still, there are times when I had to be talked out of things,” says Jonathan, prompting laughter. “There are times with other parts, like telling Alex (Robertshaw, guitars and vocals) 'you need to play this',” he continues, imitating the sound of a complex arpeggio ascending to the clouds as an example. “Then the response is 'we could do that or we could do something else'. It's a balancing act sometimes. If it's something so full on we try and ease up in the chorus. If it's completely ridiculous then it's no fun for anyone, including me.”
“I don't think we know how to do it.” says Jeremy shrugging. “I think we've got a lucky a few times. As you said it's the balancing act of having the pop appeal and endurance I suppose. It probably has more to do with our musical training than we realise, just having that brain. We came from a classical schooled orchestra background.” Cello, trumpet, violin, piano were all school instruments that specific members learned. It is even mentioned that drummer and vocalist Michael Spearman is the best keys player in the band but is the only member who didn't play keys on the record. “He refuses to do it. He says its like typing to him. There's no art to it,” is the excuse. So, perhaps creativity is a lover who takes you to completely unexpected places the longer you get acquainted.

Everything Everything have long been an intriguing prospect as much for their utter devotion to maintaining control over how they present themselves and their music as for the end result itself. “We made our own videos, artwork and website and that really helped us out,” says Jonathan. The original Photoshop Handsome video, for instance, was made by the band on a tiny budget with the volunteered help of friends, and yet captured the frenetic atmosphere of the song perfectly.
“It gave us an identity. Basically, if you can give a crack at something, you should. You don't need all these professionals. You dilute your own identity each time you get someone else involved. I think that's why we were approached and signed to Geffen. We had proven ourselves to some extent and Geffen wanted us to carry on in the same vein.”
Nevertheless it remains that “songs and music are the most important thing. If you neglect that, take your eye off that for a second and concentrate on the very absorbing business side of things then you'll delay yourselves”.

Creativity waits around for no one, after all. To deliver a debut album of the unrelenting, boundless vision contained on Man Alive was a long process of determination, hard work and bravery, taking their supersonically-sprouting ideas all the way. Oh, and also having the foresight to be able to allow creativity to run at their own pace, or maybe slightly ahead, but not so much that its necessary to catch up and restrain it indefinitely. Instead, its the rest of us who may well need to sprint into Everything Everything's exhilarating proximity.

Brad Barrett

Articles of 2010 Part III: Deftones

2011-01-18T14:26:00.000-08:00

I finally managed to interview one of my consistently favourite bands of all time back in May. Not only that, but I could grace them with a cover for Playmusic Pickup which, along with Sonic Youth, Frank Turner and a few bands I've never managed to, was always one of my biggest goals.
Anyway, I'm tired after 6 days and nights in California doing this, so no more words from me....except for ones I've already written. Enjoy, or don't. It's entirely up to you, funnily enough.

Trying to do justice to an artist or ensemble whose music has consistently moved you for years with mere words when they have the full articulacy of sound in comparison is one of the hardest tasks a writer faces. Descending to hyperbole and analogy is all too easy and drifting into tangents which merely add colour to a narrative is a common trap. Sacremento's elite pioneers Deftones make my job extremely difficult, but if they didn't exist at all I would still miss them. Perhaps that's just as much about what they represent for us, the fans, as how their music has ensnared us.

The quintet currently touring the globe in promotion activities for their sixth officially released studio album, Diamond Eyes, may well be radically altered from that which made 2006's Saturday Night Wrist, but the heart, spirit and sonic sculptures are unmistakable. A huge amount of energy and thought has been expended by the band on their efforts to struggle on as a creative collective without founder member bassist and backing vocalist Chi Cheng who was left in a coma state following a severe car crash in November 2008, and at time of writing is at home under constant care of his family and a medical expert. Nevertheless, their first album without Chi (former Quicksand bassist Sergio Vega has taken on bass duties) is perhaps their strongest work to date. Amalgamating the eerie, stark and savage sounds the band have been cultivating since 1997's Around the Fur and 2000's White Pony into a truly cohesive and resoundingly heavy record, Diamond Eyes represents a little bit more than a snapshot in time.
“Music in general that I listen to is pretty much put on because I wanna change my headspace so I do feel the same way about the music that we make. Why not be able to use it to escape?,” asks vocalist and guitarist Chino Moreno reasonably. A quick glance at our surroundings, Chino, keyboard/electronics guru Frank Delgado and I, in this inviting central London hotel room immediately makes Chino qualify his statement and question. “It's not like our life is so terrible that we need to escape it but just for a head change, a mood, to get into a groove.”

Placing Deftones' music on a pedestal goes hand-in-hand with the escapism inherently captured within their dense yet subtle concoction of voodoo ambience and brutal riffs. The effect is not unlike exquisite caligraphy formed from fissures and unstable faultlines. “Sonically and musically that's what the bands music does so lyrically I try to live up to that and try not to put up any boundaries. I do none of that.” In the past, Chino's lyrics may have been more direct, but the oblique references, obtuse and haunting imagery as well as a consistent fascination with waves could easily be the subject of several articles in their own right. Of course that isn't our intention here, but it's necessary to briefly illustrate that every part of the Deftones art is inseparable from the other. Though there is no glue that holds the operation together, it's arguable that certain aspects are often overlooked in favour of the most tangible. Hence, Frank Delgado's intricate webs of sound, flowing from effects driven turntables, synthesizers or warped samples and tape effects – perhaps because of their understated yet essential role in the music or perhaps due to being the least visible as well as the latest permanent member (barring Vega) – will be disregarded in favour of Steph Carpenter's magma guitars or Chino's scathing howl and seductive whispers.

“Whether its a riff Chino's creating subtly on his guitar or with me messing around on a synthesizer, we're getting better at closing it all in a song instead of one song being one way and another song being another way. We're able to mesh them now,” explains Frank. Since the eclectic platter of White Pony, where blistering metal like Elite resided along surprising, lush electronica as on Teenager, the band has always had tracks which proudly strutted their opposing colours. Diamond Eyes is notable for having seemingly abandoned that in favour of cohesion which doesn't narrow their ambition or experimental sides in the least. Frank's role, as a result has grown, despite his own misgivings about his position.
“Especially with Steph's sonics with his low guitar, at times it was hard for me,” he admits. “Like how the hell am I gonna fit in this spectrum of sound? On the earlier albums, I don't know how I'm supposed to do this in this band I don't know what the fuck I'm doing but I'm gonna paint my shit and I knew what I wasn't gonna do. As I got better at it I could extend these sounds and change pitches if I borrow Steph's guitar pedal. That's how I ended up creating a sequence of melodies.”

These cycling, shimmering, harrowing sounds creep throughout the Deftones work but is especially evident as defining moments on classics like Change (In The House Of Flies), Digital Bath and Hexagram – those voices, smeared squealing, putty-like sampled garbling are all Frank's work. Diamond Eyes begins with a statement of intent; a startling onward rush of translucent sound before Steph's sludge guitar threatens to drown all else out. By chorus time a sublime euphoric upper melody has arisen from Frank's effects and it's clear immediately that the awe-inspiring balance between metal, hip-hop, new wave, electro and who knows what other genres effortlessly glide together.
“We all love the same things but we've all found them at different parts of our lives or different routes got us there. It's crazy because sometimes people like to think of Steph as the metal dude and Chino as this new romantic dude and Abe...well he's the black dude,” laughs Frank with Chino joining in. Drummer Abe Cunningham is caucasian yet his hip-hop influenced beats suggest otherwise. “But it's not really that way man. People would bug out if they saw Stpeh in his truest form. He fucking loves Depeche Mode and he loves the shittiest stuff too, like we all do. We saw him listening to PM Dawn and it looked like he was thinking about his whole life!” With those sort of revelations it's no wonder Deftones are one of only a handful of bands in the last twenty years that can stand up and be counted as a truly defined unit with a musical DNA that is impossible to replicate. “It just so happens we're very good at these different parts and getting them to work. We're all honestly trying to do it a little bit cooler, a little bit better and that way it doesn't come off as painting by numbers. That's all those other bands.” Diamond Eyes has proven this to be fact; it's a Deftones record which doesn't surprise at all yet absolutely astounds in its vision and execution.

To complicate things further, the three of us agree that those who have songs fully written inside their heads before recording are to be wondered at. Chino says: “Some people may be able to do that and that's great but for us the fact that things aren't preconceived that's kinda the uniqueness about us. The organic quality. These are some my favourite songs we've written, those with that organic quality and we still have to work at it. But the more organic and natural the better. If there's an idea we start gravitating towards it filters through us and who else is going to do something like that? No one else because there's only one of me, one of him, one of Steph and when you put the five of us together that's a unique sound, something that's not contrived and not formulated.”
“It's funny because in reality, say we wanted to make this electronic song it's not gonna be Deftones before it filters through Steph and Chi and by then it's already fucking morphed already,” says Frank. “The same thing with Stephan's crushing riffs. I mean he was riffing like I hadn't seen him do in a long time but it would just stay like that if it didn't go through Chino and Abe and then it becomes something like You've Seen The Butcher which is something we could never do by thinking in that way. That shit just happens.” Opening with the distinctive jagged chug of guitars before the hesitant, off-the-beat pounding drums and layers of arcane sounds, You've Seen The Butcher branches into stoner rock riffs, long sustained hollering from Chino and seething undercurrents which bellow from the undulating crescendo section. And yes, reading that back it's fair to say that their music is fairly indescribable.

In an ever growing list of contrasts they somehow got Diamond Eyes to sound like a studio creation that is still achievable live.
“We were pretty well prepared as far as being able to play them live pretty much before we went into the studio which was important I think for the way the record sounds and now us going out to play we have a lot more confidence playing it because we're pretty strong. It's probably closer to the way we did things when we didn't have the means to use pro tools or going into a studio and writing the record there,” explains Chino. The record was done in two months, a much shorter time than the last three. It seems as well as having the drive to create – bearing in mind that the band had already written and recorded their sixth album Eros with Chi before the accident, a record that may see the light of day at some point – the refreshing back-to-basics attitude of avoiding pro-tools and rehearsing songs to perfection before recording led to the precise, amalgamated feel of the album.
“The producer Nick worked with us in pre-production which was pretty much the whole writing process. He was very helpful in getting us on what the task of the day or the hour was. In the past we'd all start digging on the same idea and without anybody there to kinda get us focused on that we'd start somewhere and start drifting off to nowhere land, although that's not a bad thing,” says Chino. “But if nobody's speaking up and keeping things in context or keeping an eye focused on the essence of the idea... It snowballed. We'd start with something hone in on it and complete something in a few hours that wasn't there before. When it's done that's more ammo you tuck that into your coat and move on to the next thing so you start getting really inspired. Once you start getting in that rhythm it feels great and everybody hits a super creative stride.”

Essentially, the core of Deftones has always been this unstoppable gang, a group of friends who share such disparate musical tastes but work so closely together that they could only ever end up sounding themselves. This has always been reflected in the warmth and density of their sound, something that embraces you in a way similar music fails to do. Everything from the splicing of musical genetics to the caustic or glorious performances – live or on record – enrapture and captivate but their essential elements are most poignantly proven on Diamond Eyes: courage, conviction and optimism in the darkest of hours and this is something Deftones fans across the globe have taken to heart from this most important of bands.

Brad Barrett

Articles of 2010 Part II: Chrome Hoof

2011-01-09T02:27:00.000-08:00

So while I'm listening to the soothing white noise assault of Cementimental - definitely the best way of calming all the broiling bad feelings about impending, extortionate self-employed tax bills - it's the second installment of my alphabetical list of my own favourite articles of last year about bands.

Chrome Hoof are not just exceptional fun to listen to, but also fun to chat to and interview. This was tremendous fun to write perhaps because they were so good natured. Also they touch upon how it might be to craft as a writer, which is always interesting. Anyway, here it is. NB: no header or standfirst, perhaps because I was creatively tired out by this point.

As fellow music obsessives, there's one thing we can probably all agree on: that there is music out there demanding to be made against whatever odds are thrown at it and regardless of who will listen. Chrome Hoof are in a unique place. The core duo Leo Smee, bassist of UK doom metallers Cathedral, and his brother Milo, on drums, formed an electronic side-project which has gathered musicians, absorbed genres and adopted an indelible image of a collective adorned in disco/sci-fi hooded robes. On the day of their sit-down show at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on London's Southbank as part of Ether Festival's programme of exploratory music, they number 22 including two guitarists, a violinist, lead vocalist Lola Olafisoye, a trumpeteer, a saxophonist, a synth player, a full choir and a harpist. It's an arresting sight, and that's before the eclectic dynamic force of their performance. With the sheer amount of troops they're leading though, it's no wonder Milo – ever smiling, ever so slightly amused – confesses to feeling a little anxious. “I'm never confident. Keeping on high alert throughout the day and getting ridiculously stressed on the day of a gig is normal for me and, hopefully, being like that raises my game by 1%. If it doesn't it's just wasting my time, which is an even more joyous thought,” he says good humouredly. It doesn't help that because of the awesome power of nature, or Eyjafjallajökul as most people are not calling it, prevented Milo flying from his home in Berlin to the UK for rehearsals.
“The new album is obviously quite epic with complex time changes and allthat nonsense,” says the softly spoken Leo. “So with only two days (rehearsal) we're gonna be a bit on the edge but I think that'll add to it. As long as 22 people start and stop at the same time it doesn't matter what happens in the middle.”

Self-deprecating to the last, Chrome Hoof undersell themselves dramatically. Their latest opus, Crush Depth, is their third official album since their 2004 self titled debut and follows the funkdiscometalorchestratronica of Pre-Emptive False Rapture. Straddling the entirety of music like some globe spinning titan, Crush Depth is an astonishing amalgamation of freeform ideas. Gutteral guitars stand alongside funk bass, warped disco synthesizers, demonic choral chants, hi-hat shuffles, cantankerous strings and all embellished with self-styled diva Lola's enigmatic vocal and lyrical bent. It's as hard to describe as it is to imagine. The only option is to listen. Milo at least attempts to explain how it all flows together.
“I actually think what these Chrome Hoof tracks end up sounding like is just an ongoing unconscious progress that everyone has. If you're a writer you'll have that going on and you'll sleep on stuff and a nice way of putting something will come to you. You don't have to sit and think how am I going to approach this one, shall we do it like this or this. It just starts unfolding you start doing stuff that subconsciously you've been working out in your head at other times.”

Working from jams, the very nature of a blueprint or formula seems alien to Chrome Hoof. That there's nothing here that could easily be distilled or co-opted by a lesser collective is tribute to the wild imaginations at work, as well as the decades of experience at the helm; although Milo confesses to a real lack of band experience, his kit skills belie that and Leo has spent his time in Cathedral since 1989. Despite this, Crush Depth was a real effort for everyone involved.
“It was pretty chaotic and quite high pressure actually. There's a little bit of a connection with the album title and the pressure of being deep under sea and things like that. Basically we've got a manager who has done a lot to make this happen because this is a massive undertaking especially for this band to create something like that. The amount of people we've had to rope in and ask favours from...”
“We've got zero budget really,” adds Leo. “Me and Milo's relationship has gone through some funny moments but we've had to stick together whatever happened. We've come out the other side. We're sponges for our life and the music we listen to, things we dig and the styles we like and it comes out, like all the bands, unconsciously, consciously and it's not until the end result when you can sit back and think 'oh, that's just happened!'. In a way, we quite ruthlessly plan something and at the same time we do jam around it. I think the album does show the year we've had through the music, through things that have happened. I don't want to sound too corny but that's how music comes out most of the time.”

It's difficult to reconcile the tough times with the glorious utopian funk soundtrack of Sea Hornet or the pounding symbiosis of Third Sun Descendent despite their fractured, schizophrenic fluidity which suggests madmen at work. Yet it's all so enthralling, it stirs the blood and feeds on your response like an emotional vampire. It's almost as if those robes, adopted early on, have cast a relentless shadow upon the music, and vice versa.
“The image feeds into the music and the other way around,” agrees Milo. “Without an overview of what it was gonna end up like, this is how things have turned out and there are reasons for that and you can make those reasons up for yourself. We've just stuck to what excites us and just just tryied to be honest with ourselves. Stuff that excites us is gonna take priority over what anyone else thinks. If you stick to that then it will go in a certain direction.” Milo smiles wryly again. “We're trying to keep the essence of what we started with although we mostly lose it.”

Brad Barrett

Articles of 2010

2011-01-07T14:15:00.000-08:00

Yep so Albums of 2010 went wrong because of a portable hard drive and floor collision. Damn. I could just reproduce my list of 75, but that would be boring and pointless and if there's two things I don't like to think I'm being, it's those.

However it's always nice to indulge myself in looking over my favourite band interview features of the last year. There's been some ace ones too. Cover wise I finally got my friend Frank on Playmusic Pickup, signalling only his second cover (after Kerrang!). I got to interview Deftones finally, giving them a cover, and there's been plenty of excellent insight from Marnie Stern, Baths, The National and Field Music.

So let's see what I got up to in 2010: in alphabetical order.

Baths AKA Will Wiesenfeld. A bright, enthusiastic and bluntly honest lad. Refreshing and fantastic and it's entirely reflected in his utterly brilliant music, best represented by Baths' debut album Cerulean. Of course, like all features, this has been edited from the original conversation - which was a blast, and very candid on both of our parts. This, however, is the unedited text before it hit Playmusic Pickup in the December 2010 issue.

Liquid Love

Baths is the solo project of 21 year old Will Wiesenfeld, Cleveland's shy electronic lothario. Once a classical music student, his past has helped fuel his desire to open his heart and pour it into music. He reveals all to Brad Barrett...

The emotional connection we have with music is why we engage with it. Any other reason is secondary, or at least should be in my opinion. Dance music of late, has tended towards the evocative where passionate embraces are perhaps more important than mere body movement conducted by cleverly-constructed beats. Will Wiesenfeld, AKA Baths, remains the pinnacle of this attitude as we head into the new year; his underrated homemade debut Cerulean, released earlier in 2010, proving a huge highlight of the last 12 months. It's a rapturous blur of clogged beats, echoing piano melodies, Will's disarming falsetto and unexpected clashes of hyper-tense electro melodies and ethereal instrumentation.

“In terms of using samples, I don't use any. Maybe a drum sample of a bass drum hit, for instance, but then I layer a hundred different things on top of it and make my own sound out of it and the construction of the actual rhythms is all my own,” he says. “The less I start out with, the more open ended it can be and the more comfortable I am. It's like I don't have to abide by any rules, I can do whatever I want. It's easier when I can throw a thousand ideas around and narrow it down to the right things,” explains Will at the City Arts and Music Bar above the basement venue he'll play a few hours later.
This open field he's bringing to our attention is a way of getting away from implied emotions. Rather than building a sad song from a minor key or a happy song from a major key, Will leaves ambiguity in his melodies and propels them to the desired emotional pitch with rhythms and textures which accentuate the sensual mood.
“I really wanted to make something easier to digest than my older material,” he says, referencing his band [post-foetus] and his Geotic side project. “but that is very, very positive and spirited and happy at the same time. That's the whole vibe of the album even though there's more personal and intense subject matter, it's told through a positive lens and feels more reminiscent than directly linked and depressing.”

Will manages to sum up his own music exquisitely. Describing Baths as “intentionally of the moment” and “what I actually want to put out in the world and my main artistic expression”, it's clear that it's a world away from his derivative, ambient Geotic material, which he creates almost purely to help him sleep.
“I used Digital Performer and Ableton Live and I just used a bunch of instruments. I'm lucky enough to have an upright piano in my bedroom, it's the family piano from when I was, like, four. I used an electric guitar, electric bass, my brother's acoustic guitar, a lot of singing, layers of vocals. With the construction of beats and stuff, there's a little bit of samples - maybe two or three percent across the whole album that's like actual drummer library samples - but the rest of those rhythms are all blurry with layers and sounds I put on top of it and the rest is stuff I did in my bedroom: snapping my fingers, clicking on the table, closing and opening doors. I'll record tonnes of layers of that type of stuff and then have to eliminate them. Trial and error and a lot of split second decision making.”

The incredible Hall, coincidentally a name I associate with love and joy in my life – something Will is happy to hear about and discuss, being the adorable chap that he is - begins a cut-up, aquatic burst of burbling voices before breaking into a loop-driven, modern gospel chorus that's more swan-dive beautiful than anything else you've heard in 2010. Plea, as well, is an otherworldly luminescence on the unexpectedly beautiful face of electronica, while You're My Excuse to Travel sprinkles that gorgeous family piano throughout in eloquent fashion. It's truly an album to grasp and hold tight. Considering his beginnings though, it could've turned out very different and perhaps sewn with far more blatant virtuosity.
“I was classically trained from the age of four until about 12 on piano and then I sort of had a falling out with classical music and couldn't stand it any more. The way I was playing piano was so rigid and robotic and completely devoid of emotion. I was playing music that, of course...the composers when they wrote it was a very, very emotional experience for them, but none of that was being communicated to me,” he explains, perhaps reflecting the lives of other kids whose parents urged them to be musical. “I took a break from that and when I started playing again, maybe a year and a half later, I only played my own music and only played what I wanted to play and I was like 'Oh music is thrilling!'” he says, adopting a gushing tone. “At that point in time it had become a horrible, tiresome thing but I wouldn't trade that experience. The spinal memory and the motion in my fingers is something I would never have had otherwise. I owe it all to the fact that I had that training and now I'm able to make ideas come out as fast as they do...because that's all it is. Technical proficiency is just a tool to make writing music easier.”

Will makes an amazing case for really learning your chosen instrument, though it's unlikely that without his revelation he would've embarked on an album which he hopes – rather sweetly - will help him “to look into someone who might be the right person.” He calls the album “crazy romantic” and it's in evidence not just in the lyrics - “Smile for me if you can/I wanna see that in my head” or “Boy you are every colour/How am I visible?/Please tell me you need me” - but in the scaling melodies, the cloudy and dream-like shimmering, the pulse-setting rhythms that occupy the core and prevent any deviation from the surging burst of feeling that erupts from within. Even the extraneous and playful noises throughout cross the lines between doubt and hope, anxiety and devotion. Cerulean sums love up in pure sound.
Certainly though, Will's ambition is to keep Baths consistently different and hearing a new song played later at Camp Basement in Old Street, the next Baths album will be crushing and oppressive or lustful and angry as opposed to tenderly hugging and kissing. But never again can you imagine his music being anything other than purely expressive and an extension of his very being, never becoming just a playground for his dormant expertise.

Brad Barrett

My Favourite Records of 2010

2010-11-09T03:50:00.000-08:00

So it begins. Having had my rather hefty list of 100 records knocked down to a mere 25 by Playmusic Pickup, I thought I'd reveal my list here. Deciding on whether to do a slow, seductive strip tease or go the full monty from the start probably depends on how many people care and, of those who care, how much they care. Either way has its merits. Maybe I'll do both. Routine is overrated.

In alphabetical order, and more for my own weird gratification than anyone else's, here begins my odyssey into 2010's musical canon. This now accounts for late entries and those I've had more time to listen to since compiling the original longlist. All of these are worth a listen, so please do.

The 'A's.

Actress 'Splazsh'
Adebisi Shank 'This Is The Second Album Of A Band Called Adebisi Shank'
Aidan Baker 'Liminoid / Lifeforms'
Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté - 'Ali & Toure'
Aloe Blacc 'Good Things'
Anais Mitchell 'Hadestown'
And So I Watch You From Afar 'The Letters EP'
Animal Collective 'ODDSAC'
Arcade Fire 'The Suburbs'
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti 'Before Today'
Autolux 'Transit Transit'
Avey Tare 'Down There'
Avi Buffalo 'S/T'

Conclusion

There's some incredible records just in the first letter of the alphabet. For me 'Ali & Toumani' stands out as a breathtaking work of considerable technicality and beauty. 'Splazsh' was one of a multitude of electronic records worth spending time with, though it's arguably overshadowed by others later in the list. 'ODDSAC' remains unique in the entire 2010 list for being a visual album, something that needs to be absorbed in one high-intensity sitting. Avey Tare's 'Down There' sneaks in after its release a week ago after a few listens thanks to the surprisingly soulful delivery on the vocal led songs. Similarly, 'Good Things' comes courtesy of a recent listen, a real soulful collection of tracks from the always-reliable Stones Throw label.
Of course, while 'The Suburbs' was too long and flawed tro be truly an album of the year, some of the best Arcade Fire songs so far were included on it, rising it well above the standard of their previous longplayer. 'Liminoid/Lifeforms' is a sparse, avant-garde masterwork, Ariel Pink's 'Before Today' took 9 months of listening to make any sense and Adebisi Shank's excellently titled effort is shock treatment utilising unbelievable displays of rock virtuosity. Anais Mitchell's concept record 'Hadestown' is a brave country-tinged network of haunting songs, ably aided by Justin Vernon whose voice continues to resonate far from his Bon Iver alter-ego. Finally 'The Letters EP' is my nod to one of the plentiful short player records released this year. This Irish instrumental rock troupe have got a savage handle on dynamics and it's a thrilling, four track blast. I'm still of the opinion that Avi Buffalo's self titled album is the weakest here, though just for 'What's In It For?', one of my favourite songs of the year, it must be included. There are some lovely moments dotted about. I would probably choose 'Ali & Toumani' as my favourite from this short list, but all of the rest are either excellent or contain unavoidably evocative moments.

Next: The 'B's

Braid

2010-08-14T01:46:00.000-07:00

Ah dear, neglected blog, how I've missed you. Unfortunately life has gotten in the way again. It is not that I don't love you too, it's just that....well, perhaps I had less to say than I used to. Love B.

As ever, whenever I feel myself falling into a stupor of writing incompetence, it's a medium other than music which pulls me back from the brink. In this case it's the 2008 award-winning videogame Braid.

How to explain its effect on me? Well perhaps I'll try a leaf out of its book.

"And so it clicks. The melancholy irridescence that shimmers across not only the backgrounds and the domineering strings that have severed the bright and sparkling outset, but the snippets of longing and obsession that cloud this simple characters journey. Having been chased from your goal and the object of Tim's obsession snatched away by a perceived rival, you have a chance to reflect upon Braid's time-warping escapades. Only a few minutes before, time was running backwards and Tim was being eagerly helped by his princess to reach her - foiling traps and sprinting away from the evil knight who would snatch her away as well as the horrifying onset of flame, burning and destroying everything in its path. But as we draw back from that moment we get further away from the goal. Back into musing upon whatever invention Tim has been plotting - his princess - and how reversing mistakes have caused everything. #

Each world draws strength from a single mechanical concept that alters it completely from what you played before. The art direction and musical score absorbs this change and distributes it.

The ring, an object that weighs Tim down just like Frodo and Bilbo's counterpart, has an inexorable draw that slows progress of anything within its circumference. It seems that Tim's obsession draws other people into it, eagerly eating away their time. Lonely shadows who can only imitate Tim's actions until they fade away, despondent, into nothing represent the repetition of past mistakes. Their sad, shoe-gazing expression break hearts. World 4 sees Tim's every step manipulating the flow of time. Your actions affect everything around you apart from the very few. Consequences of whatever Tim is planning will inevitably have a huge impact on his world. By the time we've reached the beginning of the game - we are innocently traipsing into Tim's darkened world, his house full of memories and realising that we are able to, gloriously, rewind time so as to never have to worry about making a mistake again. Progress is unstoppable, even time - the one thing we all have - cannot prevent human folly.

And so it is that two legendary quotes from scientists resonate strongly. Ploughing through the game to its ultimate end, by collecting the hidden stars, reveals a new beginning with which to end the game, this one fatal. Tim, more determined than ever, manages to grasp the princess in her escape. A bright white explosion engulfs the screen. The atomic bomb has been dropped."

Quite apart from the incredible storytelling device of rewinding time to turn the storyline on its head, gaming convention has also been twisted. The princess did not want to be saved, she wanted to be rescued from you. The countless homages to gaming past - "The princess is in another castle", flagpoles, Jumpman - are merely utilised to ease you into a world where an innocent 2D platformer can become a strategic puzzle game whose plot is an allegory for the creation of the most deadly weapon known to man. Every little touch - the shadow that becomes your companion but whom is being used for your own benefit, the amazingly deft conclusion to the world where running forwards keeps time going in the right direction which results in a poignant comment on progress both in life and in virtual life, even down to the simple beauty of slotting the puzzle pieces together to form a picture whose image relates to the themes inherent in that world - is a delight. Every moment not spent tackling the brain-taxing methods to capture those puzzle pieces is spent pondering the philosophical questions constantly prodding at you. It's a 2D platform game, one of the oldest forms of videogaming available, that has more depth than the average technologically advanced-3D shooter, and even some RPGs. Its open-ended nature is a call to imagine, something severely lacking in film, literature and videogames today.
It's a game I don't feel guilty extolling the virtues of nor spending some time thinking about, because it's clearly art as well as a challenging game requiring lateral thinking. There's the simple pleasure of warping time into your own shape for linear ends, but its a wonderful - nay - powerful feeling. It must've felt the same once science had reached its logical conclusion and formed a doomsday weapon. Unlike that discovery though, Braid enables the player to reflect on how far videogames have come and yet how perfect they were from the very start.

SxSW Beginner's Guide #8 - Eye, Jay and Kay

2010-02-02T07:51:00.000-08:00

I think this is my first SxSW related post since I booked my (bargain) flights to Austin, so there's definitely no backing out now. Not long til I go either so these posts need to step up a gear.

So below are the highlights of the I, J and K pile winging their way to Texas state in March. Let's dig in and find some excellence shall we?

Inhabitants (www.myspace.com/theinhabitants)

Trumpet guitar bass drums all colliding in a spectacular array of sparks and fissures; this improvising quartet make a glorious racket, of that we can be sure. Go listen.

Instrumenti (www.myspace.com/instrumenti)

Not even sure I like them - which is often a good sign - but their audacious pop tang and glorious piano or fuzz synth accompaniments are undeniably fiery and fun. Could be glorious to watch.

The Intelligence (www.myspace.com/theworldisadrag)

This is going well. The Intelligence are noisy, lo-fi monotony in the same way The Fall are repetitive, lo-fi monotony - in other words pretty addictive and pretty brilliant.

The Intimate Stranger (www.myspace.com/theintimatestranger)

Chilean fuzzy pop from a quartet surely aware of the UK and Canada's indie-pop scene. Pretty good.

The Invisible (www.myspace.com/theinvisiblethree)
Already favourites of mine, plus lovely chaps to boot, their new material is sounding amazing right now, having seen them at The Borderline a week or so back. A definite shout for anyone from foreign climes who hasn't seen them yet. Londoners, you have no excuse not to see them when you get back.

Japandroids (www.myspace.com/japandroids)

Noisy lo-fi pop rush, a driving fuzzy edge that recalls No Age and suchlike. Good stuff though not as great as the aforementioned LA duo.

The Jazzus Lizard (www.myspace.com/jazzuslizard)

Yes. A jazz trio covering Jesus Lizard songs. What a wonderful time to be alive.

Jern Eye (www.myspace.com/jerneye)

Some great cuts on myspace, mainly embellished with epic backing tracks - looped vocals, strings and a generally escalating vibe - so may well be worth a shot.

Jinnyoops! (www.myspace.com/jinnyoops)

Brass and overdriven guitars never sounded like a good idea until Blur wrote Popsong. That was and still is ace, so these Japanese ladies sound like tremendous fun too. They also cheekily steal Orange amps logo, but I'm sure they'll let this pass.

Joan of Arc (www.myspace.com/joanfrc)

Tim Kinsella's long running effort should be a must see for all ex-emo kids.

The John Steel Singers (www.myspace.com/thejohnsteelsingers)

Light airy pop which embraces layers of instruments and colours.

Jookabox (www.myspace.com/jookabox)

Formerly under the even-less-managable moniker of Jookabox Grampall, this group filter disparate ideas through a very kaleidoscopic filter that allows funk, hip hop, rock, soul, jazz and all sorts of sub-genres to amalgamate into a very wholesome soup. Brilliant.

J. Rocc (www.myspace.com/funkypresident)

J. Rocc's excellent funk breaks are exquisite and laid back grooves, set to that internal fuzzy metronome you have which forces dancing on you when you least expect it.

kasms (www.myspace.com/kasms)

I've seen them enough times, but always great value - energetic, noisy and eye-catching.

Zoe Keating (www.myspace.com/zoecello)

Bored of all those streamlined rock acts, dowdy folk rubbish and mainstream Mr Sheen hip-hop? Try some ambient, moody classical yeah?

Kid Congo and The Pink Monkey Birds (www.myspace.com/kidcongoandthepinkmonkeybirds)

Obviously - playing in the Bad Seeds means you automatically get an awesome pass.

Kill It Kid (www.myspace.com/killitkid)

You know how despicable Mumford & Sons are? Yeah? Well Kill It Kid are a bit like them, but with heart, passion, soul and even a pinch of excitement. Brilliant.

Well now the alphabetical list has become the tentative schedule with venues and times for the full five days. So, the next SxSW blog post will involve dates, times and artists. This is gonna be fun.

Sidestep The Hype #4 - Débruit (Xavier Thomas)

2010-02-01T07:10:00.000-08:00

It's pretty impossible for me to pick out particular producers for special attention, especially as - unlike guitar bands and suchlike - I have less scope for explaining and referencing how they craft their music. It's something I always attempt to correct every year but it feels impossible to keep on top of the amount of amazing electronically-designed music out there.

Anyway, Debruit - or Xavier Thomas to his friends and family - caught my attention with his Spatioin Temporel EP. It's a blustery cluster of disparate rhythms, slinky spring sounds and cutting samples that all bring to mind a clash between exotic street parties and underground club ambience. Generally the filtering of ideas ends up sputtering unforseen and unimaginable cultural splicing, down to the finest warped bass register and vocoder voice patch.

Certainly the most refreshing thing I've heard from France for a long time, the exciting thing is just how he's tamed about 50 ideas, lashed them into four tracks and still it feels like he's bursting with incredible energy. All this energy is destined to burst onto a second full-length platter soon.

Here have this youtube feed of Nigeria What? from this very EP. It's ace.

Sidestep The Hype #3 - Rinoa

2010-01-27T03:21:00.000-08:00

Pic by www.avangelistphotography.com

It's no secret that I love the heavy stuff. So - thanks to Ben Patashnik, formerly NME now Features Editor at Rock Sound, reminding me about them - it's my pleasure to introduce you to Rinoa.

Their Offset performance in the hardcore tent last September was a top three highlight (along with fellow aggressors Kong and Rolo Tomassi). Their slabs of impenetrable tonal sculpture flow viscously and vocalist Perry Bryan spits blood across the whole operation, architects of thundering sonic menace.

Having released a debut EP back in '08 on Eyes of Sound and a split 12" with Bossk(RIP), they're in good stead to release their recently recorded debut. No doubt this strangely serene violence will capture who it needs to ensnare and everyone else will wonder what the fuss is about. Those people are missing out.

Sidestep The Hype #2 - Talons

2010-01-26T04:18:00.000-08:00

Ripping asunder the very sky in some biblical approximation of a very natural disaster, duelling violins rip, shred and tear at the onslaught of guitar violence that's being committed kamikaze-style upon the rumbling drums.

If you were to dissect and wrench the most dramatic elements of Sigur Rós' instrumental assault, cure them and then throw them to lions you'd be hearing what Talons are trying to imitate. With nary a calm moment to draw breath, their live spectacle is adrenaline upon adrenaline splashed onto a Jackson Pollock canvas.

Yes this is breathless hyperbole - the best kind - and it only trims the fun value if I tell you it's nothing original, nothing earth-shattering or axis-snapping. But it certainly SOUNDS like all of those things and when ensnared in the grips of their most fervent ripples, you're likely to be reminiscent of wide-eyed rabbits about to be crushed under some enormous other-worldly weight. Apart from the 'hilarious' aggressive rapping a trio of punters thought it would be amusing to shout over these ferocious compositions, the Vice-owned Old Blue Last was left rapt last night and it's easy to imagine other audiences caught short in exactly the same way.

As well as announcing a tour with superb thrash-popstersJohnny Foreigner and having released a split EP on BSM with the similarly excellent And So I Watch You From Afar, they have a whole year planned with releases and support slots. This from a bunch of Hereford kids who couldn't support the mighty Cursive last year because they were still doing their GCSE exams. The youth of today sicken me.

Here's a Beatcast.co.uk video to prove all this is true.

SxSW Beginner's Guide #7 - acH

2010-01-25T03:18:00.000-08:00

Last week was fairly exciting what with Micachu and the Shapes giving it their all at Proud in Camden for a Haiti benefit gig, The Invisible performing excellent new material to those at the Borderline and an Audra Mae showcase at Gibson Guitars Studios, not to mention the extra curricular activities (okay drinking) involved at those shows. Now settling down for the next installment of SxSW's showcasing bands, we begin with a charming Americana-countryesque band...

Ha Ha Tonka (www.myspace.com/hahatonka)

Blending reliable strum with a rawer electric stamp, Ha Ha Tonka deliver that country-tinged Neil Young sound with added harmonies and a harder attack. Authentic.

Halves (www.myspace.com/ahomeforhalves)

Continuing the tried-and-tested theme of weaving the traditional with the refined, cybernetic strands of the modern, Halves from Dublin sacrifice a pastoral folk sound to the itching electronics and elongated structures of ambient post-rock. With great results.

Grant Hart (www.granthart.com)

Just out of respect as much as his song really - founder member of the amazing Hüsker Dü. ENUFF SAID.

Hauschka (www.myspace.com/hauschka)

Beautiful piano compositions with cello and other orchestration. Fluctuating embellishments and stripped-away virtuosity. Really lovely.

Hey Colossus (www.myspace.com/heycolossus)

Doom-addled ferocity. Basically the only music anyone ever needs...if they live in Hades. Definitely go listen as it'll probably be the last thing you'll ever hear again. Luckily their songs go on for an eternity.

Home Blitz (www.myspace.com/homeblitz)

Borderline genius amateurish shit - but in an amazing way. Ramshackle, badly recorded, unnecessarily atonal in places making it fantastically vital and refreshing. Solo pop thrash that cares less about musical technique and more about squeezing every inch of energy and half-tune into each second the song exists.

Hopewell (www.myspace.com/hopewell)

The excellent Hopewell provide us with a bewildering spray of serene grooves and utter chaos. It all borders on gospel-tinged glimmers with adrenaline rush endings. Brilliant.

Hyperpotamus (www.myspace.com/hyperpotamus)

One of the worst names for a musical project ever, but this acapella ONE MAN group (listen and see why this had to be written in shouty capitals) is like Battles without any instruments. Thrilling stuff, and exceptionally composed, this should be a riot to be a part of.

That was fun but took longer than usual. I've booked my flights though so there's no going back now...or stopping me either. Motherfuckers.

Sidestep The Hype #1- Fiction

2010-01-15T08:31:00.001-08:00

Hello and good day to you. After my unhappiness caused by the repetitive and arbitrary nature of every publication's "tips for 2010" lists, I've decided to fill the gaping vacuum left by them all huddling up to a fistful of acts with lots of exciting new bands. Hopefully.

The first up is the unoriginally titled Fiction. You can find them here: www.myspace.com/fictionlondon

I caught them at the Buffalo Bar, that excellent ex-home for Artrocker club situated a few steps from Highbury & Islington tube station, for a Fistful of Fandango Festival opening night. Thinking nothing of spreading the drum kit like a police line dividing the centre of the stage, while two members play it perhaps while teasing out a synth embellishment and doing duelling-harmony vocals as well, it's a sight to behold as well as a treat for the ears. With guitar-glitch trickery not seen since the demise of KaitO, this band have all the post-punk elements necessary to inspire new approaches to making brilliant pop music. Percussive, illuminating, fluorescent and utterly accessible within inaccessibility, Fiction are both a dream and a fantasy. The recordings don't capture the excitement and off-kilter nature of the band's live force. Best get yourself to a show quick sharpish, like.

SxSW Beginner's Guide #6 - Gee

2010-01-14T03:02:00.000-08:00

If you've been following my progress through SxSW's alphabet you'll know what I'm aiming for here. Rather than write about each band - which is how I started and quickly realised was time-sapping folly - I'm picking out the ones worth mentioning either because they have potential to give good show, sound great on recordings or have to be deftly avoided lest you suffer their awful, amateurish shtick. Behold then, G - the seventh letter of the alphabet and the artists that ride within her.

Gadarene (www.myspace.com/gadarenemusic)

Elegant folk-strewn and fiddle led instrumentals.

Gay Witch Abortion (www.myspace.com/gaywitchabortion)

LISTEN JUST FOR THE NAME. Noisy two piece intent on doing lo-fi Lightning Bolt with less skillz and more controversy.

Geeks (www.myspace.com/thexgeeks)

Probably isn't these guys but Korean hardcore punk is brilliant, even if it is generic.

Get Back Guinozzi! (www.myspace.com/getbackguinozzi)

Female fronted duo that get round cutsey by spewing velvet pop adorned with velcro - it attaches itself to your ears while listening through its odd soaring nature.

The problem with beginning-of-year lists

2010-01-11T02:52:00.000-08:00

As everyone gets whipped into that incredulous frenzy involving the musical picks of the new year - with the NME giving us an entire issue of new-ish bands - it's very easy for us all to criticise. Yet, at the risk of being both hypocritical and surplus to requirements, I feel the need to spill forth some garbled words motivated by anger, frustration and a wish to shake off this malaise.

It all starts, of course, with the BBC Sound of 2010 poll. Immediately anyone who knows anything about music 'buzz' and the way these things work knew that Ellie Goulding would emerge as the winner. Who comes after that first placing doesn't really matter. They'll do okay out of it anyway. Why will they do okay? Well because once the BBC has raised the baton, it's snatched by every publication going, fighting over it - pushing, pulling, gnashing teeth - trying to go one further in attempting to grasp that vital advertising money from the record companies.

So it is that we see Ellie Goulding splashed everywhere like a bucket of blood thrown onto printing presses throughout the land. Not just her of course. Here's a definitive list of who will appear in your magazines and on your websites for the next 12 months: Marina and the Diamonds, Hurts, Giggs, Everything Everything, Gold Panda, Joy Orbison, Frankie & the Heartstrings, The Drums...do I go on? Is this really worth my time? It's going to happen anyway so why not just let those who feast on this sort of activity go ahead and fill their boots?

Well, perhaps it's motivated by the next exercise in pushing samecore. The MAMMA group/HMV sponsored music festival The Next Big Thing (perhaps the most hilarious and hopefully unaware moniker for any music related event ever)has just announced the majority of its draws for the lineup. Naturally I had to check out every act on there. Two tracks each for as long as I can stand or feel necessary to grasp what the act is trying to convey and this includes music I had already dismissed previously. Hey, they may have changed direction (read: improved) in the last six months!
So this is what I learnt from my time sifting through this aural pig swill.

Basically, each time I heard something from the list of acts playing, I wanted to do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPsXRiV6yo4

There were a few exceptions, most of which I was already aware of. Hail the survivors: First Aid Kit, Jesca Hoop, Krystal Warren, Ellie Goulding (yeah I know), Sweet Billy Pilgrim....and none of them are particularly great. That's out of sixty possible acts. Isn't that depressing?

How about the NME Radar mixtape? I'm listening to this now and DELETING the tracks which anger me the most. 1st to go - Frankie & The Heartstrings lacklustre boring indie jangle. Time to burn your guitars lads and get some synths.
2nd - Kindness. You made me laugh lots. Your music is hilarious.
3rd - Hurts: you haven't played a gig or released anything. You're the weakest link you cunts.
4th - Music Go Music, went.
5th - Sharks. You are pretty generic and boring.
6th - Chapel Club. Are you taking the piss? Hold your heads up and speed up a bit then you won't sound like you're walking on a featureless landscape.
7th - Delphic. You aren't completely useless but you are completely mediocre.
8th - The Drums. Thought they'd be first. It was the second listen though that made me realise just how fucking shit they are. Don't think I fully grasped it at first. I was too shocked.
The survivors then.
Egyptian Hip Hop - like the lofi party vibe going on and the weird minimalism on the verses where hardly anything is going on. The voices are mismatched and awkward. They also said in an interview that they have no idea what they'll sound like at the end of the year. Brilliant news.
Ellie Goulding - coz she's far better than La Roux even if her Bon Iver cover is horrible.
Everything Everything - because I've been tipping them for a while now and this is unashamed yet complex party-pop. Rather confusingly brilliant. Think Talking Heads versus Battles. I can't believe I just wrote that. *punches self*
Joy Orbison - a name that's been banded about for a while, his mixtapes are great and this track is pretty gritty yet floaty. Yum.
Darwin Deez - inoffensive, and actually a bit more than that. Quite lovely to listen to, without much pretense. I like stars and constellations too.
Giggs - COZ HE SCARES ME. Nah, I think it's got something about it which transcends the usual uk hip-hop bollocks.
Marina and the Diamonds - deep voice which is pretty striking and actually reminds me of Amanda Palmer, which is a great thing. Bit more subversive than the 'new diva' type female acts we had last year.
Washed Out - like the anti-Salem; the same treacle like feel, but on clouds instead of hanging from the back of a taxi.
Avett Brothers - What?! They've been around for AGES! Still they're ace americana type stuff with a real violent delivery. Excellent.
Magnetic Man - menacing electro sounds which only really gives a snippet of the trio's individual genius. They will get better.
Theophilus London - ambient-beat led rap. It's just good feelin's innit.
Surfer Blood - that huge echo sound is still addictive and the chorus to this song has been ringing around my head for a while even though I fear it's just jock rock in a cave.

Not bad NME. Not bad. Though none of these bands are what I'd call essential, barring Everything Everything who are pretty special.

You'll have to wait a bit before I tell you exactly who I think is essential. It'll be fun.

SxSW Beginner's Guide #5 - E(zer Good) & F

2010-01-07T03:41:00.000-08:00

The sun is now shining, gleaming off the quilt of white snow over everything outside. I still have very little reason to go outside so onwards with the next alphabetical characters in SxSW's list of showcasing bands....except I've changed my mind. This is actually insane and I have far more important things to do. So, I'm only going to recommend bands, and forget about the ones who are plain terrible.

Ear Pwr (www.myspace.com/earpwr)

Manic, lofi twee-tronica. Female vocals alight upon beats and synth breaks in an ADHD style sure to annoy and excite in equal measure.

Efterklang (www.myspace.com/efterklang)

Expansive orchestral light and shade. Their follow up to the excellent Parades is out in a few months time.

El Tule (www.myspace.com/eltule)

Party latino music. Ace.

Everybody Was In The French Resistance (www.myspace.com/fixingthecharts)

Eddie Argos in a new band! Sounds like a synth-driven Art Brut. Ace.

Everything Everything (www.myspace.com/everythingeverythinguk)

Already waxed lyrical about these lads somewhere. Pretty original hyper synth prog-pop. Nice.

Explode Into Colors (www.myspace.com/explodeintocolors)

Obtuse drone-fi with at times frenetic percussion and spacious bass lines - occasional female vocals top off this eerie, punchy, swampy Portland band.

Eyeris (www.myspace.com/eyeris)

Original, warped hip-hop. Lack of flow is a problem but the musical background is definitely far more interesting than the majority of hip-hop at SxSW this year. Synths, dubstep darkness, folktronica...it's all here in varying amounts.

Fanfarlo (www.myspace.com/fanfarlo)

Certainly one of the better British folk-fantasy bands around, admittedly it's more of the same, but non-UK people may well be interested regardless.

Julie Feeney (www.myspace.com/juliefeeney)

Intriguing symphonic folk pop from Dublin. Julie's resonance within her contained orchestral music makes for compelling listening at times.

Fenech-Soler (www.myspace.com/fenechsoler)

A band me and colleagues have championed since 2006 their Friendly Fires-esque sound is very much the sound of now, as much as I hate that idea.

The Ferocious Few (www.myspace.com/theferociousfew)

Lo-fi southern rock duo ploughing garage rock up with their accents and their frantic pace.

Floating Action (www.myspace.com/floatingaction)

Minimal, almost soulful sample-led songcraft that lies lazily upon itself, quite happy to sound laid back while still layering sounds upon sounds and creating a funky mass to vibe to.

David Fonseca (www.myspace.com/davidfonseca)

HE IS BRILLIANT.

Fool's Gold (www.myspace.com/foolsgold)

Not totally sure of this lot, but the tropical-esque, latino chiming is fun and plus Micachu has done a remix of one of their songs, meaning they have to be a bit good, if only for that remix.

Frightened Rabbit (www.myspace.ocm/frightenedrabbit)

Not content with making one of the best records of 2008 with The Midnight Organ Fight, they've also made a pretty good follow-up with The Winter of Mixed Drinks. Poppier but still excellent.

The Funeral Pyre (www.myspace.com.com/thefuneralpyre)

Don't be a wimp. This is fucking excellent. Pummelling atmospherics, perhaps a little too Cradle of Filth in places, but it's still great stuff.

SxSW Beginner's Guide Additions #2 - C-D

2010-01-06T01:38:00.000-08:00

While the snow softens everyone's will to work, I continue - with no excuse about transport or avalanches to get me out of it - to plug away at this gargantuan task of listening to and approving of/dismissing the acts playing SxSW in March this year. Here we go again...

CALLmeKAT (www.myspace.com/thisiscallmekat)

Slow, ponderous, scratchy samples, silken female vocal breaking upon the minimal synth lines or picked guitar; CALLmeKAT makes an achingly bare maudlin pop (including a diseased version of Toxic) which is as soothing as it is compelling.

Tom Cary (www.myspace.com/tomtomcary)

Taking a bluesy approach, Tom Cary seems to stick to the softer side, slowing everything down to a studious level. One track bursts upon a bed of distortion, sounding hellish and thrilling. The span of tempos doesn't really change the mood. Not really something exciting but definitely competent.

Casino (...)

You know that gliding shifting riff with clashing open strings that seems to infiltrate every BIG rock anthem? That's the basis for this band.

Caspian (www.myspace.com/caspiantheband)

Heavy instrumental riff-rock that couples the sledgehammer nuances of Pelican with the extended and melodic passages associated with the instrumental rock genre. They've been around since 2003 and have done a split 7" with the excellent Constants too. A must see if you like this stuff, like me.

Ceeplus Bad Knives (www.myspace.com/ceeplusbadknives)

Hi synth pop bands! Do you know why the synth is such an excellent instrument? Because it revolutionised pop and you can still make it sound utterly insane with a catchy tune. So why do you act as if nothing has changed since the pure pop tunes of the 80s? You are a joke.

The Chicharones (www.myspace.com/thechicharones)

A combination of comedy hip-hop covers and real dark breakbeats and catchy wordplay, The Chicharones are an unexpected treat and by all accounts, they sound like they'd put on an excellent live show. Definitely worth a look.

CHIEF (www.myspace.com/chieftheband)

Steady harmonies (no falsetto nonsense), pretty basic chord structures, yet nonetheless catchy, mellow, blues-baked rock. Nowt special but good vocal chops.

Children Collide (www.myspace.com/childrencollide)

It gets harder and harder to express indifference. It feels as if I should really like CC. Explosions of distorted guitars, driving rhythms underneath, semi-memorable choruses - but it all feels so formulaic, simplistic and uneventful. While I can't cite an obviously imitated band, all the elements are recycled making for an unappealing hybrid.

Ora Cogan (www.myspace.com/oracogan)

Sparse folk picking, maudlin female vocal - standard misery music.

Cosmo Jarvis (www.myspace.com/cosmojarvis)

One of our lovely singer songwriters who puts his heart on his sleeve, strums some guitars, plays a simple Korg, puts a drum machine on - that sort of thing. His lyrics are occasionally brilliant, occasionally hilarious. It's all quite light hearted and fun, but doesn't have the incisiveness or originality of The Streets or the social conscience of Get CApe. Wear Cape. Fly. Which leaves him where?

Courtyard Hounds (...)

WHERE ARE YOU COURTYARD HOUNDS FROM AUSTIN??!

Crayon Fields (www.myspace.com/thecrayonfields)

Great name. Boring band. Simply slightly aloof indie pop (yes it makes no sense but you still know what I mean when I use that term) with delusions of low-key grandeur.
Or perhaps just reluctant surf pop.

Crew54 (www.myspace.com/crew54)

They have a reality show. Fuck off.

The Dandies (www.myspace.com/thedandies)

I may just have to start being REALLY dismissive soon. Pub band.

Dark Room Notes (www.myspace.com/darkroomnotesireland)

Synth shit.

Dash Rip Rock (www.myspace.com/dashkicksass)

I like semi naked women as much as the next heterosexual male, but this doesn't disguise this awful southern state country rock enough. More than awful.

Das Racist (www.myspace.com/dasracist)

Slippery, watery, hazy hip hop with dark humour at its heart and intelligence seeping untapped from the source. It's edgy and warped, which makes it instantly brilliant.
Definitely worth some of your time.

D Black (www.myspace.com/dblackmuzik)

Standard hip-hop with female backing and hyperactive string samples.

dd/mm/yyyy (www.myspace.com/ddmmyyyy)

IDEAS IDEAS IDEAS. All within the safe confines of rock time signatures and artillery. Which is fine because it's where they obviously fit best in this case. Not much point trying to explain - frenetic, ambient, savage, quiet, petulant...it's exciting but not necessarily unexpected.

Dead Letter Circus (www.myspace.com/deadlettercircus)

Highly strung, faux-emotive rock. Terrible yet stingingly reminiscent of past guilt and shit music taste.

Dengue Fever (www.myspace.com/denguefevermusic)

You probably know their music without even knowing you've heard it. Especially if you've watched True Blood. To those who don't watch rubbish, they're essentially that lounge-tropical-afrobeat stuff that is pretty forgettable most of the time.

The Dollyrots (www.myspace.com/thedollyrots)

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?! Terrible terrible female fronted pop punk bollocks.

Luke Doucet (www.myspace.com/lukedoucet)

Probably wants to be Ryan Adams. Inoffensive country-blues rock, but inoffensive to me means anaesthesia.

Rose Elinor Dougall (www.myspace.com/roseelinordougallmusic)

Slightly elegaic pop, wistful and harpsichord laden. It's nice but not particularly striking. Still the ambition is glinting underneath the concrete construction and perhaps Rose is biding her time, developing into an amazing songwriter. Or maybe not. We may never know.

DP (www.myspace.com/dpmetalheads)

Processed metal. Unappetising results.

Drive Like Maria (www.myspace.com/drivelikemaria)

Can't we talk about this? Slightly funked up stoner rock basically cribbing Josh Homme's vocal style, and hamming up his guitar technique good and proper. OVER AND OUT.

Well that was a mission. Let's hope SxSW don't add anyone else too soon...

SxSW Beginner's Guide Additions #1 - A-B

2010-01-05T03:08:00.000-08:00

As expected, SxSW decided to sprinkle their already well-populated list of artists with a few more undesirables, and therefore I've had to trudge all the way back to A and add my thoughts to these newcomers. *sigh* It's gonna be a long journey.

Akina Adderly & The Vintage Playboys (www.myspace.com/akinaadderlyandthevintageplayboys)

When did soul and funk become processed, straight-laced plods with energy and excitement drained out of it like the rosy blush on a shocked face? This is truly terminal, heart rate stabilising dullness.

Allo Darlin' (www.myspace.com/allodarlin)

Fey fey fey fey fey female vocals, bland, repetitive guitar picking, chimes that simply slide away than ring out. Sure they're using a uke too but that pens you down to one type of song. This whispered female vocal style is drawn out, like a death rattle. They aren't terrible but they inspire nothing but shoulder shrugging.

Alvarez Kings (www.myspace.com/alvarezkings)

I was once tricked into thinking Alvarez Kings were really good. I'm not sure who I was watching but it's not who this band has become. Taking the abrasive spank of The Sunshine Underground (remember them?), they have added very little to a formula that was actually invented to push subversive agendas. Now it sounds like the prelude to a punch up over a woman, and not in a good way.

An Horse (www.myspace.com/anhorse)

The less members, the better band - a hard and fast rule which makes as much sense as forcing bands into a one album shot at the big time. Nevertheless, I love duos and some of my favourite bands of late have been male/female duos. An Horse aren't one of them, seemingly happy to write half-decent songs without utilising the extreme dynamics a dual personality can provide. A missed opportunity.

Arborea (www.myspace.com/arborea2)

No theatrics, no facade of uncertainty, Arborea make sure you know they're all about gentile, pastoral, banjo plucked serenity. Sticking to woodland scenery and contrasting sunlit and moonlit ideas, they are consciously beautiful in delivery, if a little light on thrills. You can either bathe in this or switch off before sleep takes hold.

Bomani Armah & Project Mayhem (www.myspace.com/knotarapper)

Light-hearted rap, including the rather cute Peek a Boo about his child, mixed with slightly heavier joints like Go Get It and The Hustle, the overall effect is of simply wringing the last drops of creativity from hip-hop while still attempting an individual flow. It's lacking identity, so until that's found I'm giving Bomani a miss.

Astra (www.myspace.com/astrasound)

Astra occupy that massive prog-rock space where pomp and stumbling obviousness reside. Sheets of synth sound, endless guitar solos, some ramped up tempos then slowed to excruciatingly pedestrian levels - Astra have their moments among the plodding. These moments tend to sound like Dungen. I wish Dungen were playing.

Atash (www.myspace.com/atash)

Because my knowledge of music outside the western sphere is growing at the rate of an primordial amoeba, I'm always fascinated by anything avoiding pentatonic blues scales and the like. Atash sound hemmed in with tradition yet open to spontaneity. Gruff, shivering vocals, pirouetting Turkish violins, Asian twang and an overall dramatic air. It's good, I just wish I knew why.

Attack Attack! (PRETTY MUCH FUCK OFF)

Have fun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQVpITyOdc8

AV Okubo (official blog page: http://avokubo.ycool.com/)

Seemingly blending choppy guitars with yelping, screaming vocals, occasional pharmaceutically driven solo breakdowns, keyboard breaks and a sense of fun, these Chinese tykes look as if they may well provide a heavy dose of enjoyment. Nothing special but I bet the crowd loves every second.

Ayah (www.myspace.com/ayahmusic)

The only Ayah I could find, and quite apart from eschewing the R & B stereotypical skinny girl format, her cliched music is still entertaining, still moving in it's own way and is helped by a hard working, hard living attitude. While not something I'd listen to much, it'd be nice to see Ayah fed onto MTV Base and kicking up a fuss instead of those dominating it.

Elle Bandita (www.myspace.com/ellebandita)

Light weight synth expeditions into severely decrepit pop-orientated rock. PO(o)R if you like. Reminds me of some horrendous Twilight/Lost Boys mutated teen-vampire soundtrack.

The Band of Heathens (www.myspace.com/thebandofheathens)

Didn't country rock have an outlaw origin to it? This sounds like country rock delightedly laying down in the dirt for the "man" to trample upon its corpse.

Jill Barber (www.myspace.com/jillbarbermusic)

Didn't love songs used to have substance, wit, pathos and more importantly, sens/sex-uality? This sounds like a love song laying down in the dirt for the "man" to fuck its corpse.

Bastard Child Death Cult (www.myspace.com/bastardchilddeathcult)

Ah glorious feedback! Stampeding rhythms, gritty guitars, a fierce vocal. In the end though, I think it's just my excitement of hearing something that sounds like effort was required to make it which upped my heart rate. It's pretty mediocre hardcore-fuelled stuff. Still, probably a good show to attend nonetheless.

Beans On Toast (www.myspace.com/sexdrugspolitics)

Everyone knows Jay in London. He's just released a double record with 50 songs on it, and the artwork is his name written in felt tip pen on a white piece of paper. Home recordings of rough as hell songs with a rough as sandpaper voice. Brilliant. Definitely see him if you're not from the UK.

The Belle Brigade (www.myspace.com/barbarasongs)

A sibling duo who make glorious pop. My favourite is probably the most joyous (Geraldine), the rest being a bit lackadaisical for me. When they drag it back to slowly strummed acoustic and snail drums, it's pretty boring. Needs more sugar.

Berri Txarrak (www.myspace.com/berritxarrak)

Maravillas begins suitably doomy, massive power chords with drone notes attached to them, but it soon slips fatally into almost hilariously earnest pop-rock. A shame. They know how to riff out but not out to follow such promises. Such a shit voice.

The Black and White Years (www.myspace.com/theblackandwhiteyears)

My heart sinks as soon as that familiar reverbed chord stab clangs into existence. It gets worse when I hear fake handclap drums in the next song. A voice like The Bravery meets Hot Hot Heat emits from my speakers and the case is closed. Go away.

The Black Box Revelation (www.myspace.com/theblackboxrevelation)

See The Stooges. Dismiss anything without the same conviction, sweat, blood, tears and drugs.

Black Feelings (www.myspace.com/bfeelings)

Black Feelings sound like contenders for the title of best unfashionable band. Melding eerie atmospherics and thrumming thrashing climaxes, they also throw in hollering echo vocals and psychadelic ideas like the aforementioned (AND UTTERLY BRILLIANT) Dungen. A hotch potch of moods and ideas, but probably excellent.

Blacklisted Individuals (www.myspace.com/blacklistedindividuals)

Highly charged, rabble rousing and minimal, Blacklisted Individuals bring the party for sure. Although I only heard one track, it's enough to expect this show to be one of the better hip-hop ones on offer this year.

Black Spiders (www.myspace.com/theblackspiders)

This is probably ok, but to me it's heavily affected garage rock, with the weak UK equivalent of 'desert rock' plastered across it. To me this is nothing but boredom in aural form. Rock and roll was never for me really.

The Blow Waves (www.myspace.com/theblowwaves)

It's probably a joke. I wouldn't worry about it. Music like this doesn't deserve any considered criticism. Just forget it's here.

Blue Roses (www.myspace.com/musicofblueroses)

Blue Roses is unfairly underrated - by myself initially - in the UK. A lovely voice and a multi instrumental gospel-like approach leaves a disarmingly huge gap once the the music has desparted. Should hopefully get the same plaudits the massively hyped and under-delivering Florence, La Roux and Bat For Lashes got last year.

Helen Boulding (www.myspace.com/helenboulding)

Lyrically trite, musically soulless, vocally mundane.

Shannon Bourne (www.myspace.com/shannonbourne)

Blatantly inspired by the silver lungs of Justin Vernon, it also appears Shannon has taken on the oblique musical soundscapes of the Bon Iver man too. Machines for instance, uses radio frequency warping via theremin. The intro to Dark Things allows sparse picking from a guitar. His fluid playing allows both space and melody. Though without a massive emotional impact, his musicality is tellingly bracing and impressive.

Brainstorm (...)

Third in the Eurovision song contest 2000. Enough.

Brasstronaut (www.myspace.com/brasstronaut)

With trumpets and piano and a lost little voice in the middle, this is fairly captivating, slow burning songwriting. It's the kind that whips up the flames around you with anticipation before arriving, fully formed just inches from your face. An ensemble with enough suss to grow on you, not hit you in the mouth.

Breakestra (www.myspace.com/breakestra)

This is more like it. Soul as it should be - roots tangled, bellowing brass, voices stained and soaked in good vibes. Breakestra sound like they come from somewhere and belong somewhere too. It's funky, it's gritty and it's wonderful. Excellent.

Tom Brosseau (www.myspace.com/tombrosseau)

Running out of steam. Tom Brosseau expresses himself with a variety of different acoustic techniques, orchestral flourishes and a voice which doesn't do enough to embellish the music underneath. Which seems a shame. It's all a bit doldrum bound.

Butterfly Explosion (www.myspace.com/butterflyexplosion)
"Epic" Irish rock, which builds on guitars and synths with the intention of gargling shoegaze. The result is lightweight, fuzzy rock with little of interest but the slight oscillations between tones and layers...which really isn't their intention.

2009 Closing Credits

2009-12-31T07:47:00.000-08:00

So as The Replacements trample upon the very idea that riotous, raw, distorted songs can't include pathos and humour, it's with delight I say that 2009 is probably the year I got this music thing. Yeah, I'm starting to get to grips with it. The form, the expression, the development, the history, the future, the past, the importance, the artistic and the throwaway. It's an incredible form of communication which can cause joy, fear, laughter and arguments to end relationships. It's a fascinating journey through psyches probably as densely packed and dangerous as our own. There have been some incredible records released this year, some intense and personally affecting performances and a whole heap of good and bad news of all types. Music and all it encompasses continues to fluctuate like the very soundwaves it is made of. If anything simulates the real violent punctuation of human life, it's music. That's why I've devoted a lot of my life to it. It's a way of helping to understand me and others.

I've got a few ambitious ideas for the future. Hopefully the seeds will be planted in 2010. I've got two exciting events planned already - one is my first trip to SxSW (hence my alphabetical guide to the bands playing which you can find here: http://everysinglerevolution.blogspot.com/2009/12/sxsw-beginners-guide-1.html)
which will hopefully take in a trip to Mexico and Argentina along the way. The second is the highly anticipated Pavement ATP in May. As for work, well it's too early to say but I'll never rule out the idea that I'll be the one to save music journalism. NEVER.

Happy New Year to pretty much everyone.

Articles of 2009 - #1 Sonic Youth

2009-12-30T02:39:00.000-08:00

With less than 48 hours left of 2009, I can finally reveal (to this lonely audience of pretty much myself) my favourite article and interview of 2009. Given the opportunity to interview Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo - twice, once on the phone and once in person - might as well be the climax of my writing intentions. Getting Sonic Youth on the cover of a magazine may as well signal the end of my fiery passion to contribute cover stories to magazines. It didn't, but it felt at the time as if I'd done everything I'd set out to do. Why? Because this band represent ground zero for music to me. Everything that I admire and adore in my favourite bands stem from the experimental and commercial achievements of this New York quartet. Their seamless blending of art and music, music and noise has been inspirational since my first listen. Every album has something to cling to, or rather something to springboard from. The one thing SY seem incapable of is standing still. It would be churlish of me to say they can do no wrong...so fuck it, they can do no wrong. If thirty years down the line I could write and disseminate anywhere near as well as they craft and play, I'd be the happiest man that ever lived. Every time I feel like giving up, they remind me there's no substance in failure and that each mistake is merely a lesson learned or something to be embraced, because it's still part of you no matter how hard you try and ignore it. Pushing headlong into something because you feel it's right is the only way forward, even if it means alienating hordes of people forever. Sonic Youth are continually unafraid to be unafraid. Meeting them in person only confirmed this - with Thurston standing up halfway through and leafing through the books on the shelf and handing some tomes out to his bandmates to flick through, Lee and Thurston's discussion about my Pac Man-related t-shirt - they seem to be consistently learning and passing on what they learn. If I can carry this into 2010, as I hope I've done every year, then this article will have been worth the paper it was printed on and the time I took up organising it, writing it and the time the band and PR gave up in order for this to happen.

Sonic Youth: even the name sounds like vital intent – Playmusic Pickup gets the opportunity to talk to guitarists/vocalists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo about leaving a major label and the renewed freedom expressed in The Eternal.

Imagine, if you will, hundreds, thousands of lines all intersecting at one point then spreading out again to places unknown. Now, think of each line before the intersection as a different form of rock music, all from different roots and ideas. When we reach the intersection the lines that spill forth from it represent completely different branches of rock and guitar-based music: post-punk, grunge, metal and everything inbetween.
This intersecting of lines, apart from looking pretty and complex, is also rare. You can count them on the two hands in front of you. The one we’re interested in though is formed from a group of individuals in New York around the most fertile time of post-punk artistry and the resulting creative and short-lived explosion dubbed, sarcastically, as No Wave.
It’s hard to adequately explain how much Sonic Youth have done in their 27 year career to change popular music. Perhaps the easiest way would be to say this: it’d be pretty difficult to imagine Kurt Cobain making such a prominent, head-turning racquet – and having the confidence to do so – without Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Kim Gordon and Steve Shelley’s influence. Sonic Youth were already seven albums in when they started making waves on MTV with their grunge-slacker-inspired video for Dirty Boots on Universal owned subsidiary Geffen Records. In their time for independent labels they had come from a minimalist and experimental sonic background, before moving on to noise sound collages, vicious atonality and gradually incorporating psychedelic and lengthy, spaced out noise passages in otherwise melodic rock songs. By the time grunge had hit, they had already started moving on from the straightforward rock template they had accidentally established with 1990’s Goo and 1992’s Dirty.
With their 16th studio album, Sonic Youth are at a turning point in their distinguished output. The point is that, after 16 years on a major label, they are back on an independent: the much-celebrated Matador Records. Far from being reticent about talking of their former label, as he towers over me, even when he’s sitting, Thurston Moore seems reluctant to stop talking.
“One has millions and millions of capital…and one does not,” he starts, grinning, before continuing. “Matador has a good sense of taste and actual aesthetics whereas major labels tend to get mired down in too much and they release a lot of stuff that you can’t imagine they are really behind.”
Sonic Youth signed to Geffen Records after unsatisfactory stints on independents, unable to offer proper distribution for their records. Thurston explains that Geffen was “a nice little factory” where friends and respected professionals all congregated, including those involved with legendary label SST (started by Greg Ginn, guitarist of pioneering hardcore band Black Flag). Unfortunately the homely feel didn’t last long.
“David Geffen himself left a year or so after we signed with them. Within two years everyone we’d worked with was gone. Just gone. It was all over but we had a long-term contract and we kinda played it out.” Sonic Youth stayed with the Universal owned Geffen until 2006 and released nine albums through them.
“It was pretty unsatisfying over a number of years. We knew that was the risk, it could’ve been worse, it could’ve been better,” shrugs Thurston. “We never spent that much money, we maintained our dignity through the whole thing. There was a core audience there. I think, if anything, when you’re on a label that has a certain vapidity to it, that doesn’t do you any service. I don’t like buying records that I’m kind of interested in on those labels because I don’t like those labels. So that became a little worrisome and I was only too happy to see it end.”
Despite the ‘big labels are bad’ rhetoric, Sonic Youth never let business interfere with their work, keeping a low profile and releasing fairly consistent releases throughout the nineties and early 00s.
“I think we were always maintaining a progression with our work but there was a little bit of a stink on us because of them. At the same time there were some people there who would’ve loved to have seen us succeed but our music is difficult to work with,” admits Thurston. “The industry had changed, there was no such thing as artist development anymore. That still existed when we signed to Geffen but that died really fast and it was all about: ‘if your record doesn’t do a certain amount of business in one week…’”
“They’re on to you, and you’re dropped,” laughs Lee Ranaldo, silver mained, intelligent foil to Thurston’s firecracker humour. “It’s a really stupid system, a really stupid way to judge anything.”
“We got health insurance. It definitely has its merits,” smirks Thurston.
There are no reservations as to what they think about leaving the label though. Thurston tells it like it is: “It’s like being let out of prison after years and years.”
“It feels great,” reckons Lee. “It’s moving from this big corporate entity where music seemed almost like a tangential issue to moving to a place where everyone’s super interested in what they’re doing, super knowledgable about the music super excite to have us and is a label that’s putting out a lot of interesting music that we would honestly listen to. Gerard, the president of the label, you know, he wrote some of the earliest reviews of our band and put out some of our early records so it’s cool.”
Specifically on his independent label Homestead, who put out third album Bad Moon Rising and the Death Valley ’69 12” single in 1985 – arguably their first conventional song rock song. What’s so appropriate about this apparent homecoming is that not only does it suit Sonic Youth now, but The Eternal represents a continuation of the more straight-forward songwriting Sonic Youth began with their last major label release Rather Ripped. It’s as if the records Universal would’ve loved Sonic Youth to make throughout their time with them have now started to be made, (hopefully) to the benefits of Matador. Naturally, Sonic Youth don’t really see this from their perspective, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
“We see every record as its own entity. It’s definitely part of the progress we were doing. The new songs are always your most exciting. It’s what you’re writing now and it’s relative to what condition you’re in,” explains Lee. Does this mean Sonic Youth don’t see comparisons between older material and newer records?
“Sometimes,” admits Thurston. “Sometimes you’re playing something and it reminds you of something you did. You know, we just did these Daydream Nation tours where we learned all that stuff and that was kinda interesting because it puts you back in this place of how you were playing at that point in time.” These tours were in conjunction with respected promoters/record label/festival organisers ATP as part of their notorious Don’t Look Back series where seminal albums are performed in their entirety by a variety of different artists. Daydream Nation is seen as a seminal American rock record. Released in 1988, Sonic Youth’s sixth album saw the interest in their music from listeners and industry leap, and it’s seen as important enough to have been included in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress in 2006.
“We’ve completely changed since then. There’s certainly interesting things we were doing then. It’s certainly more primal. That was inspiring. You learn from your past, things you had forgotten.” Sonic Youth are liable to forget previous states of mind and compositional ideas, simply because they continue to forge new paths each time they re-emerge. Often, inbetween albums, they will have collaborated with noise artists like Merzbow and jazz saxophonists such as Mats Olaf Gustafsson – as captured live on their recent SYR recording SYR8: Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth. – and often these extreme experiments give life to official studio albums. These collaborations and extreme directions are often showcased on their very own SYR label, with SYR8 being the latest. Experimental and improvisational musician Jim O’Rourke joined the band after their dabbling on the third SYR for two of their most recent albums: 2002’s Murray Street and 2004’s Sonic Nurse. In another way, these other outlets have meant that the last two Sonic Youth records have seen far less of the noise jams and atonal experiments of yore.
“In general though when we make a record we don’t think about the last one,” explains Lee. “We don’t compare them or conceptualise what we’re about to do in any way. We seem to have stripped out the improve elements because that side of our music is satisfied elsewhere.”
“We know what we don’t want to do!” exclaims Thurston. “I dunno it’s weird. When you’re getting ready to make a record you start focusing on sitting down and writing songs and I don’t find myself doing that every day only because of the minutae of the day taking up your time. You know, other things your interested in. To make sure you’re playing songs up tot two hours every day must be insane!” Thurston laughs, good humour spilling from him when you just know he’s got to be a little tired from talking.
So what replaces constant songwriting in the days of Sonic Youth’s frontmen? Thurston’s answers first. “I file noise cassettes.”
Hopefully, what you’ve gathered at this point is that Sonic Youth are not simply a band who make music. To clarify, they are four (or five) individuals who have consistently crafted artistic endeavours using different mediums, fiercely championed local and global artists of all kinds, often using contemporary artists for their sleeve art – although in The Eternal’s case, the artwork painting of late folk/bluegrass artist John Fahey – and throughout have maintained their experimental roots. Their stint on a major record label is an important, and huge, chapter in their lengthy careers. More than anything it brought the wilder side of guitar music to a far wider audience than anyone could’ve expected. The significance of moving away from that era cannot be underplayed. The band seem happier in their position now than at any other time and that comes across in The Eternal’s playfulness and, according to Thurston, even in the “audacity” of it’s title. “I was thinking that this band will last forever. It can’t end. Therefore ‘The Eternal’” he explained over the phone in Brooklyn a week before our meeting. With renewed Sonic Life in their post-major label incarnation, their Eternal may not actually be literal, but can easily be traced within the lines that spew forth, unending, from the intersection they began in.

Brad Barrett

The Highlights of Sonic Youth’s Discography

Sonic Youth (1982)

Is it an album or an EP? Five songs (since expanded to thirteen with the inclusion of an early live set on the reissue) that showcase minimalist intentions in an early incarnation of the band.

Confusion Is Sex (1983)

Originally a single, this caustic, atonal beast arose from those humble intentions and radically changed SY’s sound. All guitars were drastically alternate tuned, starting a discordant journey that would later become the template for so-called alternative rock.

Bad Moon Rising (1985)

Notable for their first ever video for Death Valley ’69, a collaboration with No Wave poet, actress and musician Lydia Lunch, it was also their most conventional song. The album has no gaps between songs, mimicking their live sets which had long periods of retuning needed by each guitarist where silence just wouldn’t do.

Evol/Sister/Daydream Nation (1986 – 1988)

The end of the independent years and three albums in consecutive years which saw melody, and subtlety weave their way into the band’s music. Evol was the first album with now permanent drummer Steve Shelley.

Goo/Dirty (1990/1992)

The grunge years. Solid rock albums with guest stars like Chuck D from Public Enemy (on Kool Thing from Goo) and Ian McKaye from Minor Threat/Fugazi (on Youth Against Facism from Dirty) and a huge variety of ideas throughout.

Experimental, Jet Set, Trash & No Star/Washing Machine/A Thousand Leaves/NYC Ghost and Flowers (1994 – 2000)

Seems a shame to lump these four wildly different albums together, but these records seemed to fight against the very idea of a commercial, major label album. Each one has a different recording style, song composition and in the case of NYC, a different set of instruments – their entire, unique setup, was stolen on tour, leaving them to start from scratch and create their least well-received (yet still amazing) record.

Murray Street/Sonic Nurse (2002/2004)

Jim O Rourke joined the band for these two records, and helped make the most beautiful and startlingly original material. This was twenty odd years into their career, still pushing boundaries.

Rather Ripped/The Eternal (2006/2009)

End of an era, Sonic Youth forge ahead as ever, this time seemingly unable to stop making seemingly classic tunes.

SYR 4 – Goodbye 20th Century (1999)

A nod to their masses of artistic influences, Sonic Youth dedicate an entire double album to covers of avant-garde classical artists – John Cage, Steve Reich, Yoko Ono are just three included on this brave and challenging record.

SYR 7 – J’Accuse Ted Hughes (2008)

As a way of showing Sonic Youth cater for no one but themselves, J’Accuse Ted Hughes is a 23 minute live recording of an improvisational noise piece (then titled New Drone) they opened their 2000 ATP Festival headline slot with. The notorious set continued with instrumental versions of unreleased songs destined for NYC Ghost and Flowers and ended with one song from A Thousand Leaves, Sunday. Amazing.

Ciccone Youth – The Whitey Album (1989)

Combining their rabid sense of humour and adoration of pop, the Whitey Album was a beatbox and sampler experiment which included some Madonna and Robert Palmer covers. It’s insane, borderline genius and an essential element of the many-faceted shape of Sonic Youth.

……and there’s plenty more where that came from.

http://sonicyouth.com/mustang/lp/

Got Daydream Nation? Where to go next (as told by some silly young journalist a few years ago): http://artbaretta.blogspot.com/2007/06/next-album-dilemma.html

There’s tonnes of info about Sonic Youth and their related projects. They’re all worth investigating at some point in your life.

www.sonicyouth.com

Articles of 2009 - #2 Frank Turner / Frank Turner vs. Chris T-T

2009-12-22T05:36:00.000-08:00

It is with great pleasure that I interview Frank Turner on a semi regular basis. As a huge fan of his former band Million Dead - to the point where the two albums they released in their short time together will easily be two of my favourite records of all time - I've watched Frank grow from acoustic solo balladry to full-on rock superstar from the very instant he posted his first two songs online. This year has seen some amazing moments for this man - playing to huge crowds at Reading and Leeds festival on the Radio 1 tent, selling out Shepherd's Bush Empire and a final triumphant, skin-of-his-teeth victory show at the Union Chapel - and it's a real treat to see someone so hard working finally get the love he deserves.
So here's the two interviews I got published this year involving that man. One is a straight ahead story of his success and the other involves a free form debate with fellow excellent songwriter Chris T-T (about to release his new record Love Is Not Rescue in a few months time). I may think about posting the entire transcript at some point but the articles are here for your enjoyment.

Monday 7th September: I begin writing this on the very day that Frank Turner’s third album, Poetry of the Deed, is released. Last night, he announced that his biggest headline show to date – Shepherd’s Bush Empire – had sold out. This follows last weekend when his sets at Reading and Leeds filled out the enormous Radio 1/NME tent. A couple of months before, he was supporting The Offspring in arenas across the US and Canada and celebrating signing to Epitaph worldwide. Before that he was doing 24 shows in 24 hours for a video shoot with yours truly. This is, without a doubt, the weirdest and most exciting success story I’ve ever had the pleasure of writing about. As this article goes through daily revisions, hopefully it’ll capture this extraordinary week.
“Life is slightly surreal at the moment but I retain enough of a sense of humour to find the whole thing hilarious,” says Frank, grinning. “That CNN thing was totally insane.”
Of course, CNN. How could I forget?
“That was really very bizarre. Ben (Dawson – friend/ex-bandmate) texted me at 7am and woke me up and said: ‘Could you give me the address of the crossroads at which you sold your soul.’” Frank, this Winchester-bred, hardcore punk enthusiast and former member of several underground UKHC bands, was featured on American news channel CNN with the presenter describing him as “the voice of a generation…except that our generation as so many worthless wankers in it that don’t deserve to be associated with him”. Jaws dropped all round.
So, what’s so strange about a folk and country-based solo artist signing to a punk label and doing extraordinarily well? Perhaps that it’s a testament to self belief, hard work and that it is possible to make a living from something you love doing. That in itself is unusual for most of us. On a recent hourly check, Frank’s album is number 12 in the itunes chart, number 23 in the Play.com chart and 40 in the Amazon.co.uk chart. It’s irrelevant now you’re reading this, but I’m trying to capture the palpable sense of excitement that myself, his fans, his long-term record label and PR team at Xtra Mile Recordings, his friends and family are all feeling at this very moment.
“There’s a real groundswell happening in the States I think and Europe as well. That’s fantastic, that’s what we always wanted. It means it’s working! People are falling for it!” chants Frank with a sincere smile on his face.
Without going too far into the depths of history, Frank went solo in September 2005, played shows everywhere he could for little or no money, from little bars to unplugged nights in pubs via house parties and a thousand shows at North London hangout Nambucca. After sending out bedroom CDRs to anyone who was interested, he released a 7” single, a couple of EPs and two full albums over the past three years, as well as a compilation of early material, split vinyl and various other physical loveliness. The biggest difference between recordings of yore and Poetry of the Deed is that full band performances have been captured this time round. This highlights both Frank’s songwriting and lyrical talents and those of his excellent band – three members of Oxford-based Dive Dive and keyboard player Matt Nasir. It’s almost Frank’s personal acknowledgment that, despite the massive individual efforts of himself, he owes a debt to others who have helped him along the way.
“I played all the parts except the drums myself before, and then taught them to the guys in my band who are all better at their relative instruments than I am. I preferred the live versions of my songs because Tarrant (Anderson) would add a bass lick that was great or Ben (Lloyd) would do something interesting on the guitar and particularly Matt (Nisar) our keyboard player, the newest member of the band is a phenomenal musician and it just seemed to be pointless to do it the same way. We might as well capture the best on the record. Part and parcel of that is that I wanted to make a record which sounded a bit bigger, more rock.”
Tuesday 8th September: Currently sitting at 8 in the itunes chart and 27 in the Amazon chart, Poetry of the Deed is certainly a wider record in scope and sound. You can expect shimmering guitars on top of Nigel Powell’s proficient and well-suited drum patterns, Tarrant’s restrained bass flourishes and Matt’s glorious piano arpeggios on Our Lady of the Campfire. Mandolins and fiddles fight atop each other on the defiant Sons of Liberty. Stabbing, jaunty major chords clash with the minor key feelings and sentiments wrought across Richard Divine.
That this record was recorded live for the most part gives you an indication of the hard work everyone, including producer and unrepentant “taskmaster” Alex Newport, threw wholeheartedly into Poetry of the Deed. “I don’t really subscribe to that whole Bob Dylan first take sort of approach to recording. We did a residency of shows in Oxford and played the album which was a useful exercise for us because there’s an extra tightness you get from playing live. Alex came in and the difference between our playing after just two rehearsals with him was just fucking crazy. He’s just really anal, but that’s the skill you need to do the job he has.”
Wednesday 9th September: While taking a break from typing, I watched a video of Frank playing live on CNN.com that was posted yesterday. It all seems to be getting just a little out of control. The album is now out in America. A message from his PR company yesterday told me that he made No 13 in the midweek UK charts with the album. In fact, Xtra Mile Recordings in the UK and his press team at Press Counsel have all been with Frank since his hardcore days, and right now they must be jumping for joy. In fact, I’ll email them and see. So with Epitaph taking over worldwide duties, how is this going to change things for the pretty independent Frank?
“It’s really good. My experience of working with labels thus far has been working with Xtra Mile who are AMAZING,” he says, at the label headquarters, a week before Reading/Leeds and on the day his single The Road moves from Radio 1 C-list to B-list. “Don’t crush me like a bug!” he shouts across the office. “But it’s familial, one country, one office and, working with Epitaph, it feels great to have an international team. It’s such an industry thing to say but everyone’s on the same page, man! I really feel like they get how I want to be presented to the world. They’ve created a massive buzz but I’ve always wanted to be somebody who’s not at one removed from the promotion of their album. ‘This is me and what I do, these are my songs, check it out and if you wanna come talk to me, come and say hi.’ They’ve been really good at keeping that spirit going.”
Over the years Frank has been playing house parties, meeting fans, and been great at his own self-promotion. Xtra Mile merchandise emblazoned with “I Am The Real Frank Turner” or “Frank Turner Is Coming. Look Busy” have kept everything light hearted, and faintly ludicrous. At his first gigs he’d be handing out bedroom demos, and sending them for the cost of postage from his family home. It’s a far cry from the 2CD and T-shirt Poetry of the Deed packages on the Epitaph website, or selling out Shepherd’s Bush Empire, which has unfortunately curtailed his ability to hang out at the merch stand and say hello. Does he ever feel that Epitaph has taken too much away from his very capable hands?
“Um, ah, actually, interestingly, not if I don’t want it to be (taken away),” he hesitantly replies. “One of the things that has been really great recently is I’ve been learning how to delegate. I used to co-tour manage myself in the UK, and I’m not involved in that anymore. It’s been really nice to be able to step back a little bit from the day to day machinations of what I do. I have to really, if I’m gonna be able to concentrate on the amount of shows and press I’ve got to do.”
Don’t for a minute think this has made him inaccessible or aloof from fans. Bear in mind that the video for The Road involved us visiting people’s houses, Frank playing songs to fans, meeting them, having a beer with them and generally being himself, as he’s always been.
Friday 11th September: So here we are, two days away from getting the official chart verdict, which I’m sure you all know by now, or at least can find out. Frank, during the interview and being his open and chatty self, explains how he already has around 25 songs and ideas for other low-key releases, how he doesn’t want to upset anyone with his songwriting (“Though, I like the idea of Labour MPs crying because of me. That’s a wonderful idea.”) and that he’ll never cross the strict line he has between private and personal with his lyrics. It’s all interesting but you can read that in one of the countless other interviews doing the rounds or even his messageboard at www.frank-turner.com.
Having announced a relatively intimate Christmas show at the glorious Union Chapel in North London yesterday, Frank and everyone around him have had an exceptional week. The guys at Press Counsel emailed me back too, calling the whole experience “rewarding” and that “it's good to know that the good old fashioned method of hard work can still pay off!”.
What’s best to take away from this is that Frank has never compromised his personal beliefs, or his songwriting but has never sold himself short for either as a self confessed “ambitious person”. He gives equal kudos to the people who’ve helped him as to himself and he’s now enjoying his success for all its worth. He’ll never quit either, in case you haven’t heard the lyrics to Live Fast Die Old: “let’s never retire, let’s keep on making mistakes till we’re done. I’m going to live fast and I’m going to die old, I’m going to end my days in a house with high windows on the quiet shores in the South-West.” Not only that but on Try This At Home, he’s urging YOU AT HOME to go out and do better than him. He’s proved his point, now it’s your turn. Listen to it and I dare you not to be inspired. Besides, why should he feel guilty about finally doing well out of something he loves. As he points out: “I keep myself steady by remembering the terrible, terrible bands that have sold more records than me. That makes me feel good.” Frank Turner is exactly what this country needs.

Brad Barrett

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Folk Academy

You know, we reserve the right to get lazy here at Playmusic Pickup. We break our backs introducing you to the finest (and admittedly, the not so fine) music we can find, signed, unsigned or somewhere inbetween, and occasionally, we want to sit back and let the artists do the talking.
Frank Turner and Chris T-T are both artists we’ve featured or mentioned extensively in the last few years at Playmusic HQ. We’ve busked with Frank, got Patrick Eggle to make him a guitar and we’ve chatted concept albums via email with Chris T-T.
For those of you not in the know, Frank and Chris are two of our finest songwriters. Chris has just finished his trilogy of London-based concept records with this year’s Capital, a fine rock record in its own right. Frank, meanwhile, has just finished a sell-out tour of the country in promotion of his heartfelt second album Love, Ire and Song. Purchase everything they’ve released forthwith, it’s all brilliant, and then sit down with us while two mighty intellects do (heavily edited) battle. Sat in the middle bar of the King’s Cross Scala, Frank starts with his first question for Chris.

Frank: I’ll start with one of my serious questions. How important is place, culture and nationality in songwriting to you?

Chris: It’s almost everything. I think that one of the things that I’m not able to do is write without that there. I just couldn’t write a song about a physical place I’ve never been unless it’s a totally crazy story. For me, it’s not so much that one writes ‘here’s a place and I’m gonna write about it’. It’s that every single song, whatever it’s about, has a place in the back of it for me. I’m really trying hard right now to make a bunch of songs that aren’t about anything and aren’t about a place but that doesn’t work.

Frank: So being English is important to you?

Chris: Oh, massively important. I would always call myself English. But that’s the opposite of being tied to a right wing thing because I definitely believe in open borders and the free movement of people. The Maggie Holland songs about England - A Place Called England, A Proper Gardener - are the ones where it’s Englishness to do with the land, which you do really well on stuff like Nashville Tennessee and To Take You Home, and it’s where we’re from and yet there’s this massive cultural weight on us as pop musicians to almost try to pretend to be something else. It’s really important that we don’t.

Frank: I’m satisfied with your answer.

Chris: You come from a much more punk/alternative background than me. Do you feel, given that your music is now very tuneful and in some places soft, do you miss the punk thing and do you still think that you’re either a punk or an anarchist?

Frank: Good question. Punk infuses everything I do because I learnt how to play music along with that style and it was my doorway into music, both listening and playing. So I’m never gonna stop thinking about it. When I think about heavier sounds I think of them in a punk way, and when I think about melody… It’s just the bedrock of it and that will never cease to be and I don’t want it to cease to be. I think that it’s a great scene and ethos and something that I’m proud to have put a lot of my life into. I guess there are days when I miss the pure rage and aggression but the problem is there’s nothing worse than fake rage and aggression which is kinda why bad hardcore bands are worse than bad bands of any other genre. So to be in a band like that and make it worthwhile and good you have to be pissed off in the right way – 300 days a year. I just can’t.

C: Something that happened on this tour that I hadn’t seen on previous tour, is that you at the end ditched the guitar and went back into the crowd and I think a lot of fans are really overwhelmed by that, being, in a way, being back to Million Dead days but also it’s much more uplifting than it would’ve been a few years ago. It’s like a totally joyous moment.

F: I think that’s true. In Million Dead* we were, to a certain extent, trying to fight the audience. Now I’m just trying to hug them! But punk is vastly important to me and also the other thing is people always ask what punk and folk have in common and I think one of the things they have in common is that they describe both an ethos and a sound and that the two aren’t necessarily linked all the time and I think I incorporate elements of all four into what I do.
Would I call myself a punk? It depends on who I’m talking to. If I’m talking to the kind of person who wants me to be a singer/songwriter: yes. If I’m talking to the kind of person who’s a punk scenester warrior writing a ‘zine then: no fucking way. I think the point of punk was that it had a degree of contrarianism in it anyway. So I’d call myself a corporate singer songwriter punk rocker. I’m not sure I would describe myself as an anarchist anymore. What I would say is that my essential first principles that got me thinking about the realm of politics, which was an essential distrust of power and human beings organised into hierarchies aimed at hurting other human beings, those things are STILL my first principles. The difference is that I’ve decided I’m more interested in practicality and pragmatism than in high falutin’ – with no G – idealism. So yeah it’ll be wonderful if we could overthrow the state and have non-hierarchical systems and organisations. It’s not gonna happen. I’ll state this as a simple fact: any attempt to try and make it happen will end in pain and death for lots of normal, innocent, ordinary people. What I think we should do instead is concentrate on ways of minimizing the impact on ordinary people’s lives and allow them to get on with their lives and not be bothered by the state. Then you’ve suddenly got a range of things to talk about that ARE achievable. Like everything from not having ID cards and trying to dismantle the surveillance system we’ve put together in this country; trying to remove government from people’s lives, letting people be freer. To me, liberty is the highest intellectual achievement of the human race.

Chris: It’s a great answer.

Frank: The music that we make, both of us, let’s be blunt about this, is both quite middle class and quite white and probably predominantly male. I remember when I was younger at a particular phase of my development wishing, hoping I was gay because that would mean I would be part of a minority. (Uncontrollable laughter from Chris, their PR Dani and me) Personally, at this point of my life, I’ve reached a state of karmic calmness about the fact that I make white boy guitar rock and I don’t give a shit. Are you bothered about it?

Chris: No I’ve never, ever been bothered about it at all. Sometimes when I’m having a row with my wife, one of the things she calls me is middle class. It just really makes me laugh. My parentage on my mum’s side is really working class but my parentage on my dad’s side is really middle class. It makes a mockery of the whole thing really. No it doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t think about it so much as you’ve put it into words.

Frank: Not just the politics but in terms of influences. All my influences are all white boys with guitars. I like listening to Public Enemy, but it has nothing to do with the music I make.

Chris: My influences are far more pop. Not even influences, music I love. I go a lot more into the cheesy mainstream than you do and you’ve still maintained a lot of the hardcore stuff, which I love, but definitely aren’t my roots.

Frank: You know Matt our new keyboard player had never heard of Fugazi? I nearly cried.
Emily Barker (tour support) had never heard of Dinosaur Jr.

(General disbelief follows)

Frank: Yeah I know. I’m starting to hang around with proper…

Chris: …Folk people.

Frank: They don’t shower and they drink too much.

Chris: Don’t let them near the cider. It causes problems.

C: I was gonna ask you about songwriting. You said something interesting the other day about lyrics. You definitely, to a greater extent than me, separate lyrics and music in the compositional process. So, is it that you write all the lyrics first then go and turn them into songs.

F: No, music always comes first. I have phrases that come up and I jot down and I have things I want to write about. One of the funny things is that, quite often when I’m coming up with a melody, I end up singing something random but that I quite like. I’ve got a new one which is ‘he cast no shadow in the morning sun’ and that’s just how my brain spewed out that melody.

C: There’s a new song you introduced last night quite late in the tour that you’ve been soundchecking. You had the music right at the beginning, which sounded amazing, but you didn’t have any words. Is that right?

F: Well, you see, the thing is I had a couple of the lines here and there. It’s called Live Fast, Die Old although my band have started calling it Die Hard With A Vengeance now. It’s definitely a case of lyrics, I spend forever on and I kick cases, and tenses and pronouns around ad infinitum.

C: You write almost always about you and very truthfully I think. Do you ever try writing stories about other things that don’t include you and if so do you find that it compromises your truthfulness?

F: I’ll start this by saying you do a lot more of the storytelling which I love and I love it when Springsteen does it and I love that approach to songwriting because I think it’s perfectly possible to tell an emotional and artistic truth through the medium of fiction,
I’m just no good at it. I’ve tried and it always turns out a bit shit and you know I’m still fucking trying and I’m just not very good. I always feel a bit of a fool singing about stuff that hasn’t really happened. I’m gonna write a concept album sooner or later. I’m gonna write a concept album about me and you.

With that promise/threat, we leave Frank and Chris to soundcheck, and prepare themselves for Frank’s sold out headline triumph at Kings Cross Scala, where two folk heroes – who I’ve seen play acoustic nights in pubs – play to a crowd of about a 1000, all singing the words back to them. It’s a sight to behold.

Transcribed, edited and narrated by Brad Barrett

* Million Dead was an incredible post-hardcore band existing from 2002 – 2005 which Frank was the singer and lyricist for. Check out their two albums A Song To Ruin and Harmony No Harmony for some (semi) serious righteous punk fury.

Quotes that we couldn’t fit in, but just had to be printed:

“People say you haven’t got any regrets because you don’t self-examine enough, but I’m not gonna waste time wishing I’d done things differently, I’m just gonna change the way I do things now. I think that’s the only sensible way of living life really.” Frank on eating meat after years of being vegetarian

“I want Castlereigh back. He was great. Worked really, really hard, then cut his own head off in 10 Downing Street. If only Gordon Brown would do the same thing.” Frank on awesome politicians.

“I want politicians who have taken drugs making drugs policy coz otherwise its fucking charlatanism. It'd be like me trying to make up laws for families tax breaks for people have children when I don’t have kids. I want politicians who are skagheads! Sorry, ex-skagheads.”

“If you start looking at where we’re at now, we’ve got massive poverty around the world - which we don’t mind because it’s foreigners. In fact, the infrastructure in the United States is dangerously close to collapse, and they’ve all got guns. I don’t even think it matters who becomes President. I wrote a little thing yesterday. I think whoever is president in six days time might be the last president of the United States as we see it. I really think we’re really close, 4 or 8 years from now, the United States could easily be in a state of collapse, with individual states succeeding and people shooting each other left right and centre.” Chris on the consequences of multi-national corporations, tongue in cheek, but deadly serious on the future of the US.

“What is the single fastest growing youth movement in the country? It’s Conservative Future, the group for young Conservatives, and one of the reasons (for that) is that they’ve been able to detatch themselves from social oppression, from moral bigotry of the old school Tory. So they are very socially liberal, they’re into their drugs, drink and shagging each other, and they don’t mind so much if you’re gay as long as you’re quiet about it and they like a few black people here and there…” Chris on growing youth movements.

“Gordon Brown is an absolutely terrifying human being because he doesn’t seem to be able to get it into his head that some things aren’t his fucking business. One thing I’m very big on is the concept of liberty and freedom and in a peculiarly English way, I like the way the English conception of freedom is almost based around people minding their own business.” Frank on freedom.

SxSW Beginner's Guide #4 - The Golden D

2009-12-04T03:15:00.001-08:00

Typos and syntax errors not withstanding, this SxSW guide experiment has gone pretty smoothly so far. My fourth day this week extracting the value from that modest list on SxSW.com involves artists beginning with the letter D, predictably. This post also marks the first time of going live in conjunction with Artocker.com, the web-only version retaining the values of the original magazine, which has since gone on to greener pastures. To see the rest of my rantings tempered by considered evaluation go straight here: http://everysinglerevolution.blogspot.com.
Anyway onwards...

David Dallas (www.myspace.com/daviddallas)

Auckland rapper David Dallas does very little with the blueprint but follow it - soul sample, typical beats, cliched delivery yadda yadda. There's nothing wrong, but it'd be nice to have something that is rooted in real experience and culturally relevant rather than sounding as if it could've come from the USA at any time in the last 10 years.

Dappled Cities (www.myspace.com/dappledcities)

I was alerted to these Australians by an exceptional individual a while back, and while not appealing to my finer senses, I can appreciate their lush string-sewn pop music. Somewhere inbetween the occasional falsetto and earnest lyrics is a slightly manic dramatist aching to turn heads. Entertainment is almost guaranteed.

Daveman (www.myspace.com/davemanmusic)

The amusingly naive moniker doesn't betray the unexpected German take on reggae-flambe pop. However the formulaic, uninspiring rhymes and melodies mean that while it'll sound significantly spicy in the heat, in the cold wintery temperatures of England in December it sounds shockingly insipid.

The Daylights (www.myspace.com/thedaylights)

If you can imagine the musical backdrop to those indie-approved semi-love scenes in teen soaps like The OC and Dawson's Creek and match it transparency-style with the arena ambition of U2, you have the awful travesty that are The Daylights. Almost hilariously bad.

The dB's (www.myspace.com/standsfordecibels)

Perhaps the least new band here, the dB's were a short-lived proposition from the 70s-80s who reformed last year. They deal in fairly dated laid-back rock-pop with finger clicks, saxophone, and lyrical inanities. Nevertheless, they're still ten times more skilled than the majority of what I've listened to so far AND AT LEAST THEY CAN SAY THEY WERE THERE AT THE TIME YOU IDIOTS!!

Dead Sexy Inc. (www.myspace.com/deadsexyinc)

This French and German hybrid are barely worth a mention, seemingly formed as a joke - at least that's what these heavy synth-encrusted pieces of shit they call songs or remixes, and that horribly clunky name - indicate.

The Deaf (www.myspace.com/thedeafspace)

From one of the worst names to one of the best - unfortunately these Netherlands dwellers or a complete facsimile of The Hives, their dress and sound bleeding black and white. Having said that, this 50s/60s garage hybrid is pretty timeless, and it'll be a riot anyway. the teasingly named Miss Fuzz has an excellent voice too.

Deer Tick
(www.myspace.com/deertick)

As the world lumbers under the combined weight of every Bella Union-inspired folk-rooted harmony group that has sprung trapdoor-spider like from Bon Iver's and Fleet Foxes' accomplishments, Deer Tick at least lend a Two Gallants country-esque roll to what they do. It's seriously listenable, and that harder edge at least distinguishes it from those unimaginative acoustic troubadours.

Delhi 2 Dublin (www.myspace.com/delhi2dublin)

Perhaps the most self-explanatory name ever, Delhi 2 Dublin's bhangra via Celt electro-folk is the ultimate culture clash. With Punjabi vocals rubbed across flourishes of fiddle playing, it's a shockingly natural mix. It could've sounded forced but it blends well. Nevertheless it still somehow sounds a novelty, however serious they may be. Might be worth visiting to up your culture points.

Paul Dempsey (www.myspace.com/pauldempseysolo)

From Melbourne band Something For Kate, Paul Dempsey is tedium personified with his lightweight, unambitious acoustic singer-songwriter pop songs. So dispiritingly dull it's hard to express my boredom in a vaguely exciting way. Sorry.

Diplomats of Solid Sound (www.myspace.com/thediplomatsofsolidsound)

Jazz and hip-hop flecked soul music, fronted by the iron gloved, bellowing vocals of two leading ladies it's gloriously funky stuff, but sounds devoid of any touches which will make me anything other than reminiscent for soul's golden age. Still glad they're trying though.

DJ Car Stereo (Wars) (www.myspace.com/carstereowars)

DJ Evil Dee (www.myspace.com/djevildee)

DJ Revolution (www.myspace.com/djrevolution)

Probably best if you listen and make your own minds up before I utter the immortal words "This isn't even music". Coz obviously it is, they're just spinning records is all.

Daniel Francis Doyle (www.myspace.com/danielfrancisdoyle)

Ever felt like you've been slapped right in the face but you don't care because you deserved it and you've been waiting for it in masochistic style for a while? Well when I finally reached DFD's myspace after the swathes of awfulness today, I applauded this sudden rush of awkward guitars and untrained croon. Thoroughly original, frenetic yet almost soothing, DFD's music is almost as unweildy as his full name. An excellent surprise and a must see. Lovely.

Adiam Dymott (www.myspace.com/adiamdymott)

Swedish solo artist Adiam Dymott throws a ragged garage-punk swagger in with her sugary vocals, a surprisingly enticing mix. Ultimately the vocal melodies are far too radio-attuned to really engage with, but it's still a refreshing nod to the commercial possibilities of guitar driven sound. Still one to miss, but perhaps with a guilty feeling of "indier-than-thou".

That's the D's over with. Next will be a double barrage of E's and F's, so bring your best mac lest you get splashed with disapproval.

SxSW Beginner's Guide #3 - C-C-C-C-C

2009-12-03T02:24:00.000-08:00

The most percussive letter in the alphabet, sounding like a snare hit or a rimshot, it's possibly also the most appropriate. Is 2010 THE YEAR OF DRUMS? If we think about bands like Foot Village, Wildbirds and Peacedrums, Vampire Weekend, Liars, HEALTH, Vessels - all vastly different but all with emphasis on their beaty backbone. Anyway, this has very little to do with me embarking on the letter C with SxSW's preliminary list, but there might be some drumm-y bands in here, alright?

Canja Rave (www.myspace.com/canjaraveofficial)

This Brazillian duo seem like enormous fun. Badango has a fairly standard garage-tilt racket with the male half gurning out a second riff which sounds hilarious. Aqui Agora has a Thermals tint to it which is immediately brilliant. Chega has a Jack White-esque pitch-shifted flurry but strikes into a much heavier and, thanks to the male/female harmonies, more melodic territory than White's current Dead Weather incarnation. Could be worth a look-see.

Capsula (www.myspace.com/capsula)

Hailing from the Basque region (Bilbao) of Spain this female fronted trio engage in hypnotic guitar textures and seductive intonation. At times though they descend into horribly derivative and dull garage-indie inspired thrashes. If they stick to the experimental stuff, they could well capture the audience with psychadelic flashes of brilliance.

Carsick Cars (www.myspace.com/carsickcars)

Brilliantly, the first track the myspace player chose on this Chinese trio's player is simply entitled 'C'. All reverberating guitars and shimmery percussion it soon pounds into atonal Thurston Moore-esque yelling and scouring repetitive guitar squeals. You Can Listen You Can Talk is straightforward crescendo driven noise rock, while Invisible Love has that aching, string tapping metallic intro SY made their own. Again, a band adrift in influences, still searching for the right path, but I can see myself enjoying their 'panda noise' live.

Caucus
(www.myspace.com/caucus)

Leaping from lovely acoustic pop to rawkus electro-city and back again (as Caucus do on In Vain You Are) is nothing new. Nevertheless these Japanese young'uns have use a naive weaving of melody that is inherently charming and exhilirating. Sing sounds far more generic though again the main melody is joyous and underlying warped guitars glue some intrigue to the mix. You can't help but think these guys would be fairly big in the UK. Might be worth some time as a lightweight indie-pop refreshment.

The Chevelles (www.myspace.com/thechevelles)

Initially everything from song names (Summer Fun, Stacey Loves Cocaine)to their profile picture makes me think I'm going to hate this. While I don't hate it, it's predictable, summery, vitamin C splashed power pop. Which is what I expected. Ridiculous fun though f'shure.

CHEW LiPS (www.myspace.com/chewlips)

Already pretty sick of these lot, Londoners that they are, with their self proclaimed "8-bit casiotone drone disco". Which actually sounds like an ace description, but the over-egged vocals, lamentably cliched arrangements and saccharine pop makes me feel ill.

Suzanna Choffel (www.myspace.com/suzannachoffel)

Stolen By Birds is all lounge-laden, jazz-flecked coffee table fodder. It doesn't get any better either.

Chris T-T (www.myspace.com/christtuk)

Chris T-T is one of the best songwriters in the UK already, and with a new album out in March (Love Is Not A Rescue out on Xtra Mile Recordings), a bunch of Acid Piano Improvisations and a Christmas EP due, he's a busy guy. He just finished his London trilogy of albums with last year's Capital. It's time for everyone to catch up.

C-Mon & Kypski (www.myspace.com/cmonandkypski)

Four lads from Amsterdam/Netherlands, the first track Turn of the Tides is a sample-cut extravaganza indebt to Daft Punk's heavy distorted synths and vocoder use. China seems like a choppy debt to UK and US indie, but a smooth harmony, odd samples and imagination makes it seem more like a lavish experiment by Avalanches with instruments instead of expensive cleared samples. Splashing soul, dance, electro, guitars, banjos, the kitchen sink all over the place, these guys will be fantastic fun to dance to.

The Coathangers (www.myspace.com/fuckthecoathangers)

The Coathangers' debut album was a sparse, lo-fi yet rotten flourish of a record and checking them out live is a priority.

Simon Collins (www.myspace.com/simoncollins)

When did it become acceptable to sound like an X-Factor dropout whose music inspires nothing but post-traumatic stress disorder? *shudder*

The Constellations (www.myspace.com/constellationsatl)

Atlanta, Georgia's The Constellations have a glam-esque stomp begin Perfect Day, while bluesy organ licks slip in over that faux-grim dark vocal that seems to inherit music which can be described as 'southern gothic'. The chorus is pure pop, but awful. I've already sunk into a stupor.

Contra Coup (www.myspace.com/contracoup)

An excellent name (named after a brain injury) this reggae outfit are playing it safe, sticking to the rudiments of the genre and adding very little else. Fine, but there are bound to be more original and exciting groups of this ilk out there.

Cotton Jones (www.myspace.com/thecottonjonesbasketride)

Cotton Jones is stripped bare, languishing country-esque downtempo....well...shit really. Sorry. I can't be any more articulate than that.

The Crystal Method (www.myspace.com/thecrystalmethod)

That dance duo with the dodgy name that have been around forever. Still be pretty good I reckon if their new album is anything to go by.

That's it for c's. Pretty interesting letter this time. Much better than B's. STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT LETTER WHERE I'LL INvESTIGATE HORDES OF BANDS SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO.

SXSW Beginner's Guide - #2 THE BEST LETTER OF THE ALPHABET THAT IS 'B'

2009-12-02T03:19:00.000-08:00

Continuing my selfish self-reference guide to finding some actually good music to watch at SxSW continues with THE BEST LETTER OF THE ALPHABET. Why is 'B' the best? Well coz it's curvy, has the best sound (BUH! for B!) and my initials consist of two of the fuckers. So, it's with some excitement that I delve into SxSW's current list of B's who have been pretty much confirmed as playing that Texan extravaganza of industry excess.

Bare Wires (www.myspace.com/thebarewires)

You know, it's fine if you want to head through a time warp and embrace retro as your raison d'etre but this doesn't make me want to join you. Sorry.

Julian Berntzen (www.myspace.com/julianberntzen)

Elaborate chamber pop from Norway, regal strings announce Julian's arrival before his sweetly intoned vocals slather themselves across this Beatles-esque orchestral arrangement. Definitely wonderful pop music, if a little lightweight. If he has some string players with him, this could well be delightful.

Best Fwends (www.myspace.com/bestfwends)

Clearly mental, Best Fwends begin their myspace music player with a mash up between Green Day's Brain Stew and the indie/emo rap cover of choice Ginuwine's My Pony. Amusing. The rest is heavily synth-drenched garage/DJ mix ups that sound like an ADHD dreamer's animated feature theme tune. Can't imagine this being anything other than fucking ace.

The Black (www.myspace.com/theblack)

Xeroxed country music with a more fey-indie vocal - almost as if a Pavement fan got dragged into a pedal steel band. I DO NOT LIKE.

The Black Atlantic (www.myspace.com/theblackatlantic)

Baiulus begins with airy piano and vocals, seemingly washing across my acute tinnitus. Fragile Meadow is mandolin-pinging folky lamenting, which as everyone knows post-2008/2009 is either extremely boring or spot on. It builds up nicely with Justin Vernon-type vocals and nice harmonies. Nothing we haven't all heard before, done better.

Dan Black (you don't want to listen to his myspace)

Dan Black's myspace froze on Google Chrome, saving me from having to remind myself how much I hate his music. This is a note to myself to remind myself that no matter how drunk I make myself I am NOT going anywhere near Dan Black. The fucking charlatan.

Black Tide (www.myspace.com/blacktide)

These Miami kids only have samples on their myspace, and boy am I glad because their histrionic hard-rock fakery is vomit inducing and I only have so much bile I can throw up across their disgusting faces.

Bliss N Eso (www.myspace.com/blissneso)

Australian hip-hop eh? Generic as you'd expect (DISCLAIMER: yes Australians are capable of making incredible music, no we never get to hear any of it pumped over here unfortunately).

Boom Boom Satellites (www.myspace.com/boomboom satellites)

Ignoring the Tahj and Flo Rida collaboration, for obvious reasons, it seems this Japanese duo admire Pendulum's bid for rock stardom, and a bit of vocoder action. This is of course severely bad news and this kind of arena/dance bollocks need cutting off before their braindead semen seep into the public consciousness...Pendulum are from Australia, you know? Also the most boring interviewees I've ever had. Far too arrogant to answer questions. Cunts.

The Boxer Rebellion (www.myspace.com/theboxerrebellion)

You either like em or you don't. Do you really need to ask me where I stand?

Break Of Reality (www.myspace.com/breakofreality)

A moniker which makes you spontaneously spurt tears of despair, this New York quartet seem to deal in instrumental post-prog, which involves spindly guitars, brittle strings and urgent dynamics. Spectrum of the Sky is fairly stirring stuff and the overall effect is Tool crossed with Rachel's. Which is odd and a little uninspiring frankly, but might well be worth a look.

B-Real of Cypress Hill

God knows what he's up to these days really, and as long as he's regressed into his bong-strewn reclined rapping as opposed to that nu-metal spined shit Cypress Hill dug up on Skull & Bones and the like, I'd be happy to pay him a visit.

Broadway Calls (www.myspace.com/broadwaycalls)

Oh great. Bolshy, slightly whiny boy-pop-punk. Hideous. Dated. Excruciating.

Broken Records (www.myspace.com/brokenrecordsedinburgh)

Big fuss about these Scots a year or so back, their maudlin, string-driven songcraft is dark and spirit-crushing, in a fairly positive way. Not exhilarating but definitely worth a look.

VV Brown

Despite the bad critical and commercial reception, I have a soft spot for her live doo-wop funtimes. Plus she wears pretty dresses.

The Brunettes (www.myspace.com/thebrunettes)

This New Zealand duo are all drum machines and twee instruments like xylophones and Casablancas drawl/keening female vocals. It's pretty much processed pop, but somehow they were sent the wrong way so that they got caught between the PURE POP and LO-FI SHTICK conveyor belts. My verdict? Meh.

Buckshot (www.myspace.com/buckshot)

A RAPPER??!! FROM BROOKLYN???!!! REALLY??!! WOW???!!!!!

For the best letter in the alphabet, there's an 'alf some shite here.

ATP Excitement Fortnight # 3

2009-12-02T02:54:00.000-08:00

So my last ATP Excitement post was pretty lacklustre, but this one is a doozy because the timetable for ATP's 10 Years celebration has been released today. It can be found here.
The disappointments that arise are inevitably from the clashes of which there are a few important ones.
BAD: First is sine-wave-collapsing destructionists Growing seeping half an hour of their no-doubt hypnotic set into Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks' set. But then with Pavement reforming is anyone actually that bothered by this?

GOOD: THey managed to squeeze Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Fever To Tell (and more) set nicely between J Mascis and the Fog and Mum. SUPERB SCHEDULING.

BAD: Dirty Three and Shellac clash badly on the Saturday.

GOOD: Shellac ALSO play Sunday! YESSSSSSS!

REALLY REALLY BAD: Gonna have to decide between Melvins or Battles and The Breeders or Modest Mouse. Sad face infinity.

REALLY REALLY GOOD: The Sunn O))) set is on at a nightmare enducing 2am - 3.15am slot. Miss this at your peril.

EXTRAORDINARY BADNESS: Set leakage includes Mudhoney into Explosions In The Sky, and Lightning Bolt into Polvo

EXCELLENT GOODNESS: Shellac open Sunday. Also switching between Mars Volta and Sunn O)))'s second set means for maximum brain meltage. YESSSSSS!

Overall this is going to be the best thing ever.

SXSW Beginner's Guide - #1

2009-12-01T10:09:00.000-08:00

This is a misleading title (that one up there ^) because I'm actually a beginner. I'm guiding myself so it's of little use to youze out there. Besides you've all been at least twice and I've NEVER BEEN so stop showing off yeah?!

So my idea is to try to listen to all the bands in one letter category every time I post about Sxsw. So here goes A in REAL TIME.

Aa (www.myspace.com/alittlea)
They are from Brooklyn. Thirteen is already excellent, all stuttering sounds, wild percussion and some soused shouting. The skittering sounds bound and elope. Thumper starts far more restrained, clicky and clappy. Far more minimal. Yum. Manshake = more drums. 2010 could be the YEAR OF DRUMS. More wild bubbly sounds and some shouting. I'm definitely seeing this band.

A Classic Education (www.myspace.com/aclassiceducation)
First thought is that there's a super hyped film called An Education. Anyway, first track What My Life Could Have Been starts pleasantly, all shimmery guitar jangle (with the trebely antics dialled out) but the vocals are merely functional. Further investigation finds that simple Vampire Weekend inspired jauntiness. Might be worth checking but definitely a back burner.

Alpha Rev (www.myspace.com/alpharev)
THIS IS POOR. Emotive voice, piano medicority and a chorus that soars over The Killer's heads. The setup though is thoroughly disgusting. AVOIDED BEFORE I EVEN GET THERE.

Amaral (?)
Couldn't find a direct link to music but found a website with a song. Pretty standard Spanish language singer songwriter fare. Meh.

And So I Watch You From Afar (www.myspace.com/andsoiwatchyoufromafar)
This is not for my reference, it is for yours. I already know they're excellent as do Rock Sound who made their debut album their sixth favourite record of 2009. Nice one Rock Sound.

Apostle of Hustle (www.myspace.com/apostleofhustle)
Another great Canadian band whose second album Anthem of Nowhere captured my imagination back in 2007. Classic Canadian/indie songwriting worth of applause along with Arcade Fire et al. Worth seeing if you haven't already.

Arms (www.myspace.com/armsongs)
More Brooklyn action. The Frozen Lake smears a sparking guitar across pretty dreary-toned yet exhiliratingly-pitched vocals that help the oblique synth swells build up across the length of the track. Kids Aflame is far too folk for my liking. Tiger Tamer is more standard indie fare. Could be a successful live draw, but have a feeling it will drag like Plants and Animals do.

Olof Arnalds (www.myspace.com/olofarnalds)
Olof (sorry about the lack of umlauts and accents over the o) is Icelandic folk rooted songwriting and is thoroughly beautiful. Sung in her own language her heart-tugging understated vibrato really strikes a chord. Not likely to be a SxSW highlight, but certainly someone who will stand out as an emotional high on the day she plays. Maybe I'll pretend she's singing just for me, and it'll be ultra special then...or maybe something marginally less creepy.

Art vs. Science (www.myspace.com/artvsscience)
Who the FUCK wins that battle? Science has gravity and the atom bomb on it's side while art has the Mona Lisa and the Sistine Chapel. It's a no brainer really, which is probably why this New South Wales Australian band are pretty fucking shit. Shit name, shit concept, boring synths but probably a riot live nonetheless. Boooo.

A Shoreline Dream (www.myspace.com/ashorelinedream)
From Denver (or Barnum as it says on their Myspace) these guys begin their track New York with haunting, old school prog type synths with titanic emptiness. It's all let down immediately by the limping vocals and dull-as-something-very-dull-indeed guitars. Seattle sees a driving guitar punch bring a more emphatic, growing track that seems intent on wind-tunnelling your aural vision. Aftershocking reminds me of a lightweight Depeche Mode. The track with Ulrich Schnauss is fucking excellent though.

Nicole Atkins and the Black Sea (www.myspace.com/nicoleatkins)
Hailing from Asbury Park (YES SPRINGSTEEN FANS YES!)Nicole is doing pretty pandemically-alarming dark balladry. Really quite boring to begin with, The Way It Is soon leaks into an arresting vocal performance for the chorus. The live version of The Tower confirms she can perform, but this sort of elegance is unlikely to be noticed, even by me. Seems a shame but she's not gonna divert my attention from something even a little bit different.

Autumn Owls (www.myspace.com/autumnowls)
Hailing from Dublin, Autumn Owls are the latest in the new species of animal monikered bands taking over from the overused Tiger and the relatively anonymous Animal. Gruff Lanegan-esque vocals don't do much to hide this anemic, dragged-out music, even when the singer sounds more like E from the legendary Eels. However, I may keep an eye in case the songwriting gets a little more quirky live...

That's it for A's for now. I'm sure a whole heap will be added next week and I'll have to update. Next B's where I will continue to write reams of words for no money. BRILLIANT.

ATP Excitement Fortnight # 2

2009-12-01T10:01:00.000-08:00

What has been exciting me about ATP today? Well the announcements for the Matt Groening ATP look very nice, but I am not going to that one. Balls. I listened to some Explosions In The Sky today. That's a nice start. They curated last year and came up with this stellar lineup. Lovely.

I'm not even warmed up yet (and I'm not just saying that because I can see my breath as I exhale in my fridge nay room).

Articles of 2009 - #3 Future Of The Left

2009-12-01T03:14:00.000-08:00

Christmas might as well be here now. The rest of December should be abolished so that we can get to the New Year quicker and back to more clement weather. However this would mean I couldn't tell you about my top 3 articles of this year by...err...me. So without further 'ado' here's my Future of the Left article from the June issue of Playmusic Pickup If there's a more articulate, passionate, sarcastic, friendly and angry man in music today than Andrew Falkous formerly of mclusky, now of Future of the Left, then I haven't met him yet. I was ridiculously terrified before this interview, yet enjoyed it muchly. All three of the band were total gentlemen (which actually isn't as rare as you might think in this business, but still). LOOK BELOW.

Sponsored By Ennui

Whether emasculating hecklers or journos, or simply looking menacing in murderous press shots, Future of the Left remain the UK’s most exciting and creative three-piece force. Here’s why – unlike a lot of other beat combos - hyperbole fits them quite nicely…

There are few more daunting moments in life than when you’ve built something up in your head and the time to face it arrives. Perhaps worse though is if that moment never arrives – it gets stolen from you and you’re left feeling angry, empty and like the tension, anxiety and excitement was for nothing.
Future Of The Left – which this writer will now take the opportunity to state as one of the best live bands he’s ever seen in this tiny little country of ours – could be furious. They could be miserable, petulant and sarcastic. They could brush off questions with sneering disdain and vicious spite. They would be well within their rights to and it would be expected and even accepted. Anyone familiar with Future of the Left’s aggressive, seething music – brutality wrapped in slabs of concrete riffs and lethal one liners – will understand. Their 2007 debut Curses was unfathomably brilliant because of the heads down cynical savagery on offer. A trio of Welsh lads renowned for metallic guitar stabs, yelled sandpaper vocals and an exceptional talent for berating hecklers at shows, they are both feared and revered by those who have heard and believe in them.
That’s why whoever decided it was a good idea to leak their record should be quaking in their very skin and bones. For it was Andrew “Falco” Falkous – mild-mannered, eloquent, intelligent, passionate in person, confrontational and terrifying on stage – who uttered on his well reasoned, if understandably disgruntled blog about the premature leaking of the band’s second album: “I'm not angry (in fact I don't blame you, unless you leaked it, in which case I WILL KILL YOU)”. He also said in the same blog post about the show they played at the “laughably bad Camden Crawl “ that “next time somebody tells me that I can't drink my rider in the building I'm playing in, I'm going to fuck them with their own shoes.” So maybe you want to take it with a pinch of salt….at your peril.
“It was more a question of giving the perspective of a band in our particular situation as opposed to the usual way its viewed in very simplistic terms as a Robin Hood good versus evil, robs from the rich gives to the poor,” explains Falco, thoughtfully, about the blog post heard around the microcosm of the UK music scene. “The people that are usually vocally opposed to downloading are the representatives of the music industry who come across in such a business-like manner that it rather alienates music fans because they have nothing in common with those people. That or you’ve got some guy from Metallica who’s just a little bit perturbed that he won’t be able to afford a second yacht that quarter.” A serious matter broken by a cheeky aside is still a serious matter.
“Having said that, it still doesn’t change the principle. I just felt it was important to show it can affect a band, not just financially, but in terms of emotionally as well. There’s always been a sense of an event about a record being released, a certain sense of the moment which is literally stolen away from you. The record is a very special thing for us and hopefully it’ll be special to a few more hundred people. Having that taken away cheapens the whole process. Some people say: ‘it’s a fact of life, get over it’ but rape and murder are facts of life. It doesn’t mean that the affects shouldn’t be addressed and doesn’t mean the morality shouldn’t be picked at and pruned.”
Amen. Read the blog opn their myspace – under the title Jim Fork - now. Let’s absorb that for a second shall we? ….. Done? Got an impression of just how the band feel? Good. We can move on then, constructively and without the ridiculous, yet justifiable, feeling that we’re dealing with the monstrous bogeymen of Welsh rock.
Travels With Myself and Another is the second record from Future of the Left and it is, quite simply, massive. Threaded with noises and ideas intended to shear inappropriate haircuts from heads and, at times, make feeling uncomfortable fun, it’s going to be pretty difficult to find a better guitar-heavy record in 2009.
“The mindset when you begin an album is a combination between some kind of sexy clamminess and cloying desperation,” announces Falco. “The thing is, we were so proud of the first album - that WE managed to record THAT - and all three of us thought it’d be very difficult, in our own terms, to better it.”
Curses is indeed a splendid record which saw people rise from their self-induced stupor after the demise of Falco and (drummer) Jack Eggleston’s band Mclusky and (bassist/backing vocalist) Kelson Mathias’ Jarcrew in 2005. They combine a twisted sense of humour, seemingly abstract yet direct lyrics, fierce screaming, harmonies, guitar and bass interplay and mighty percussion; frankly everything you’d ever want from a three-piece rock band. They still do too. Though for a time it was difficult for even the band to imagine how they could better what came before.
“Until the beginning of December, the writing had gone slowly to say the least. The benefits the hard work is bringing you aren’t always immediately apparent. The months and months of writing definitely helped us break the back of the writing, but then, all of a sudden, the songs flowed out. It happens; you work and work and work you hit a certain peak and you write a couple of songs and the pressure disappears. In the end it was a piece of piss,” reckons Falco. Still, despite the dam breaking eventually, Falco is fairly philosophical about the need for consistent hard work.
“Being in a band, the secret of writing for me, is it’s about working hard but it’s being mentally ready and open enough so, when new ideas do come up, to be able to take full advantage of them. Unfortunately there’s nothing that says if you work for x hours you write y songs. I just wish there was.”
Regardless, the quality on offer shows that whatever circumstances and factors come into the writing and recording process, something went awfully right. Whether it’s the joyous, juicy harmonies in highlight Throwing Bricks At Trains or the dramatic, drawn out synth-scourging of You Need Satan More Than He Needs You, there’s clearly what you might call progression here. The real point though is that Future of the Left have simply found more ways to stamp our heads into amusing shapes.
“They expand upon the first record and, if it was at all possible, trim off even more of the fat. Also, I remember saying at the end of December we didn’t have any keyboard songs and within two weeks we had four ready to go.”
Keyboards seemed a big deal for a lot of fans of their previous bands, with both negative and positive reactions. Was it a big deal to fit some keyboards on this record too?
“Not necessarily. Just by virtue of it being a keyboard it gives it a different sound which creates that little bit of sonic variety rather it being very dull. Interestingly, a lot of people think some of the keyboard songs are guitar songs. The songs Chin Music and Land of the Formers, for instance; a lot of people think they’re keyboard based songs and they’re not. They‘re guitar songs.” It’s here that Falco’s menacing glint appears in his eye, the invisible smirk almost forcing itself out of his very face. “I’ve seen a review of the song Yin/Post-Yin which had a reference to ‘squalling guitar feedback’ which is interesting because,” he pauses before the coup-de-grace, dropping the emphasis of his sentence to the end syllable “there are no guitars on there at all. It’s simply a keyboard. It shows years aren’t really the best judge of music at all. Maybe it sounds better written down, I don’t fucking know.”
Is it simply a case of people not listening properly? Falco looks Playmusic Pickup straight in the eye, smiling: “I’d go as far as to say that’s the answer.”
Keyboards and backing vocals may not sound revolutionary – and to suggest so would be folly nay complete stupidity, especially as they were present on Cruses – but within the context of Future of the Left, there’s definitely something to be said for these flexing of musical muscles.
“We’re all really into backing vocals in general which comes from a lifelong obsession with Queen more than anything. I’ve always self-recorded stuff that has tonnes and tonnes of backing vocals and it’s a nice way of giving the song a bit of extra lift. It does unfortunately mean that that song is gonna be quite difficult to play live,” Falco admits of Throwing Bricks At Trains. “Sometimes it is a challenge to work out how the hell you’re gonna do them justice live. We may have to loop the keyboard part as it’s impossible to sing the lead and play the keyboard but we’ll find a way because we’re intrepid young men and we refuse to face defeat.”
So could it be said that there are restrictions to the strict three piece format?
“I see it more as a pro than a con,” shrugs Kelson. “We don’t go over the top. It’s not like we put sitar and bongos and a peacock on the record.”
“There’s no backward masking or samples of crowds of Irish people baying for sectarian blood or something,” points out Falco. “It’s still doable while still staying true to the format of what a live band in general stand for.”
When not being sponsored by ennui (and yes, I know what Falco said now, I’d just never ever heard ‘ennui’ in conversation before, damn my limited knowledge of the pronunciation of French/English nouns) Future of the Left are simply getting down to the business of being in a rock band. Leaks be damned – Travels With Myself and Another is a triumph, a record merely thirty five minutes long which has more longevity than most albums which exceed that runtime. This album and the band that crafted it deserve your money and support – for the entertainment of them crucifying hecklers at shows, if nothing else. If this is selling them short, they’re used to that. None of us quite have the eloquence or grasp of the English language to do them the justice they deserve anyway. Let’s hope this helps compensate for the loss of that moment for them.

Brad Barrett

ATP Excitement Fortnight # 1

2009-11-30T08:40:00.000-08:00

ATP excitement fortnight begins with this:

Yes the worst movie ever made is being shown on ATP TV at 10 years. I'm almost excited as much by this as Yeah Yeah Yeah's playing Fever To Tell.

Articles of 2009 - #4 Animal Collective

2009-11-26T09:09:00.000-08:00

My timing is impeccable. Animal Collective released their traditional post-album EP this week, Fall Be Kind which includes a couple of regular live favourites of mine including What Would I Want? Sky. It also turns out that Uncut and Mojo have just made their ninth studio album Merriweather Post Pavillion their best album of 2009. Deservedly so too. Showing how much foresight and modesty I have - as well as my ability to ignore naysayers who insisted the fuss about the album was merely desperation on the part of music media in the early part of the year when very little of interest is usually released - here's my March issue cover story for Playmusic Pickup with Avey Tare and Geologist. Enjoy.

Natural Selection

From unassuming noise experimentalists to media darlings and commercial success, Animal Collective’s wayward route hasn’t deviated, as Avey Tare and Geologist explain. Is their success enough to spark risk-taking by both the industry and the record buying public or will it just irritate long-term fans?

The best moments in these heady days of slippery corporate grips on music are when a fringe concern becomes a massive deal to both the press and the public. Having delivered nine albums of varied, exciting and challenging material, Animal Collective have a sudden hit on their hands; this years glorious experimental pop record, Merriweather Post Pavillion. Lesson time: Animal Collective is a fluid group that almost resemble the movement of tectonic plates in their group aesthetic. They shift around, immense pressure builds up and it is gloriously released in one awesome spray of technicolour creativity. The plates that mesh together, and how, dictate the results. Though the name Animal Collective explicitly includes Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Avey Tare (David Portner), Deakin (Josh Dibb) and Geologist (Brian Weitz), each album has a different flavour which partly relies on who is involved.
“In terms of how we started, that was how we intended it. We focused on things more as projects. It’s not like we would be this group with a linear direction,” explains Avey/David. It wasn’t until their fifth release, Here Comes The Indian, that all four members were involved and the name Animal Collective was dreamt up, presumably for ease of marketing, as much as anything.
“It doesn’t really matter who’s around, it’s whoever wants to be a part of it. We’ve had to be more organised with what we’re doing and Animal Collective as a band, I guess, has taken more of a precedence. It seemed to become more of a full time band thing but at the same time we’re still open to people coming and going,” admits David, as the three of us, Brian/Geologist being the third, huddle around a Central London alleyway pub table.
In this case, Animal Collective circa 2009 is missing Josh who “after Strawberry Jam really, really needed a break”. The knock-on effect of this free-movement idea, is that Animal Collective rarely go out and ‘play the hits’, as it were. This isn’t out of some snobby progression ethic, but necessity. “It was a little weird because fans at this time expect us to play songs they really know and love, having worked for two years with Feels and Strawberry Jam. They want us to keep going and playing those songs but without Josh we couldn’t really do it. He’s such a crucial part to some of those songs, so still having tours to play, we had to write a bunch of new songs.”
Before we all get a hot and bothered over whether this is the ‘correct’ motive for making music – and what do we know anyway? – David’s addendum clears this up.
“We were inspired to do it anyway, we had it in our heads that we were ready to move on from Strawberry Jam which was an intense time in terms of music.”
Animal Collective’s prolific output has meant almost one album per year since 2000, all fairly unconventional. The first three were attributed to the individual musicians who worked on the songs, 2003s Campfire Songs was actually the bands name as well as the records title, while the music itself has ranged from live improvisations (Hollinndagain) and acoustic tribal-folk duos (Sung Tungs) to the streamlined, hazy-liquid pop found on more recent records, including last year’s Water Curses EP. It’s a baffling, intimidating body of work that would shock the uninitiated currently enjoying the succulence of Merriweather. This time, the loss of Deakin – the group’s most prominent guitar player – has caused another seismic shift, David, thoughtful and laid back, explains:
“You lose one set of instruments and there’s a whole new realm of space to play around with. That previous sound was very thick and wall of sound-y. For me (this time) it’s a lot of the abrasive elements coming out and making a decision to utilise a lot more acoustic and traditional sound sources, like flutes or strings, and do it our own way where it’s manipulated, sampled and played so that it suits our style. The abrasive guitar and electronics are absent and you have this symphonic glaze of sound.”
You can hear why the media and the public have finally sat up and taken notice. Merriweather, with its almost hypnotic, reverbed vocals and churning, natural sound, seems to echo through nature. Swathes of elemental, incandescent noises are melded into something celebratory and soul-warming. Feel-good music wouldn’t be far off, even though there are intense, and even scary, moments – the siren break in Brothersport for instance.
“In terms of the songwriting and the way the songs are produced there’s the emotional melodic from-the-soul kind of element and the emotions we put into it are true and honest. It comes from somewhere within us and we want it to be an honest representation of what we’re doing and the topics of the songs. There’s the other side of it which is a very visual side of music to us which comes from our tastes in music and how we listened to music growing up.”
The balance between crafting a soundscape and writing an emotionally driven song is something that concerns Animal Collective. There’s no denying the overwhelming joy spilling from Merriweather, though whether it carries you with it depends on how you listen: is it with your heart or your head?
“All the music we can agree on has a very human element, whether it’s techno or music concret or folk music. We’re touched, it doesn’t feel just like a fabrication. But we also like music that has this escapism to it and a sonic feeling to it and that seems to be how we build our sound world, and construct each song. We’ve never really studied music. We can’t talk about music in terms of complicated time structures or anything like that. We talk about things like colours or images so it becomes almost escapism. We want the audience to be in this world of sound, you know, to forget about us.”
If success is measured by anything, it should be by the creators of art explaining what they do in a way that absolutely corresponds with the listener. In this case, talking of colours, shapes and imagery in relation to their music makes utter sense to this writer. I couldn’t begin to deconstruct and describe the technical sounds that inhabit Merriweather without removing the heart of the music; a messy operation that would end up with none of us learning anything, and losing so much.
Brian takes this further, explaining that the band went through a period of telling fans what equipment and sounds they used to make their records, but that they found it counter-productive for both parties. “It’s more fun to figure it out on your own. I just tell people to find their own way. When we started getting into weirder music in high school - horror movie soundtracks, music concret records or more experimental sound-collage noise bands – we had no idea how to do it but tried to figure out a way we could make sounds the same and also figure out our own sound.”
As is expected when a band becomes a reasonable success, the uproar and disappointed tutting continues to come from those who expect a certain something from this band they’ve spent the 2000s digesting. What makes this all the more ridiculous with Animal Collective is that each record has been different – drastically so on occasion. Brian and David talk at length about this:

Brian: “I don’t think we worry about it. We’re used to it and we’ve put out a lot of records at this point and if you look at some of them compared to others, they sound like different bands. We had a lot of hardcore fans from the early 2000s with records like Danse Manatee or Here Comes The Indian that saw us play in basements and think of us as this great free noise rock thing and I don’t think they’re so interested in what we do now. Then there are fans who loved the last few records and think: ‘Man, back then they were just completely unlistenable.’ We’re kinda used to having different types of music fans attracted to different records of ours. In a way we think that’s kind of cool. We don’t just put something out for one specific genre. It’s nice to be attractive to people of widely varying tastes.”

Dave: “You have to keep in mind that you get attached to a band at a certain time period in your life and you start to forget they’re these individuals too who have their own individual trajectory and tastes but you want them to do exactly what you want them to do. Then, they do something else and you think that they’re not a good band anymore.
Certain decisions we make aren’t because we want to become mainstream heroes or anything, it’s just sounds we appreciate and stuff we’re honestly interested in”

Brian: “A fan can dislike stuff, but sometimes the accusations of motivations aren’t totally right. You can’t worry about it. You hope people will like it.”

One of my personal pet hates is the need to contrast and compare a bands records, something I’m sure I’ve nevertheless been guilty of in the past. Both Brian and David sprint to agreement when I state that each record should stand by itself. It’s natural to prefer some records to others but to say that one is better than the other is opinion and personal taste. Instead, each record should be appreciated for what it is. If it’s a bad record then that will soon be clear. To try and compare Merriweather to Danse Manatee is futile. What’s nice is Animal Collective’s acceptance and expectation of getting different reactions from whole heaps of different people. Even friends.
“We were in Detroit with the Wolf Eyes guys and they used to like our live shows that were noisier and they used to call it the Four Cavemen sort of shows,” explains Brian. “I was with Dave and Noah on the tour just hanging out and they saw me but they thought I’d be playing. When it came to the set Noah and David walked on with just two acoustic guitars and they came up and said: “What the fuck man?! Why aren’t you up there?” I said: “I’m not playing, they’re doing this now.” They were shocked: “Animal Collective are two guys with acoustic guitars? What the fuck? Aren’t you gonna do the Cavemen screaming thing?’ They were into it, though.”
Their love of what they do is clear – in fact it is part of them. A controversial statement, if you’ll indulge me: music is not strictly entertainment and anything that comes across that way should just be enjoyed for what it is, but will never be worth much of anyone’s time. Music should be something that can be personally relevant to you, even though it was made by others. As for the authors themselves, especially in this case, it’s like an autobiographical study of their lives in sound. Certain records can be painful to listen to, just like looking at old and embarrassing photographs.
Dave: “As creators of the records we get asked what our favourite one is and I think being able to recognise that it comes from such a different time period in our lives and represents something so different means we couldn’t choose.”
Brian: “They’re like: ‘how do you see the progression? How do you evaluate the different steps you’ve made.’ It’s like looking back at my twenties. It’s like asking me about how I feel about a linear progression of how I’ve grown up over the last ten years. You don’t think of it that way. It’s been a reflection of how we’ve grown up as people which isn’t a linear progression for human beings. It’s not a process where you’re striving for perfection, it’s more looking for different experiences in your life.”
Merriweather represents a new high point in their lives, a record more people are relating to than ever before. So, where does it stand in their catalogue of ever-evolving music? Have they moved on already?
Brian: “Not really. We still really like these songs. We have been working on new material but it’s been simultaneously with this record, so it’s not like we’ve put all this to bed. For the next studio record, I’m not sure what we’ll do, where we’ll go or who’ll be on it. We know it’s expected of us but we don’t think it makes any sense for us, or the music, to force it just coz people know Animal Collective work fast. We’ll wait for the inspiration to come. It’s the curse of being proud of being known as a prolific band and it IS something to be proud of. It’s what we do with our time and people recognise we put a lot of work into it.”
As a rumoured visual project begins to take shape, it goes without saying that it is records like Merriweather that kick off a new year in fine style. What comes after from other artists later may be homogenised and commercial, but if this record makes the impact it’s threatening to, the public may well be asking for far more and Animal Collective are quite willing to continue to shock and surprise all of us.

Brad Barrett

Album Discography:

Avey Tare and Panda Bear – Spirit They’ve Gone, Spirit They’ve Vanished
Avey Tare, Geologist, Panda Bear – Danse Manatee
Avey Tare, Geologist, Panda Bear – Holindagain
Campfire Songs – Campfire Songs
Animal Collective – Here Comes The Indian
Animal Collective – Sung Tungs
Animal Collective – Feels
Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavillion
.

“Mavericks”

If you like what you hear, and want to hear more bands that work unconventionally and sound unique, check these incredible groups out:

Liars
They have produced four records since 2002, with 2007’s self titled effort being the first where frontman Angus Andrew says they’ve “tried writing actual songs”. Going from relatively tight funk-punk to fierce, disparate, percussive-driven noise experiments to industrial rock and roll, their work is thrilling and vital.

Sonic Youth
There are fifteen official Sonic Youth studio records (and a whole lot more besides) they started as free noise, tribal drumming freaks, became commericial grunge heroes in the early nineties before descending to new melodic and experimental territory. Sonic Youth never leave their improvisational history behind for long, with their own SYR label releases showing their brave, improvisational and forward thinking approach. Detunings, screwdrivers, drills, drumsticks have all been used to play guitars over their 28 years as rock pioneers.

An Experiment On A Bird In An Air Pump
Mightily young and without a full release yet, these girls certainly have the experimental side sorted. The three of them play in a line: one playing drums, one or two of them singing and one or two of them playing bass. For each song they’ll swap around and this gives each song a different feel ranging from soulful to primitive punk. Plus they cover Sonic Youth’s 100%.

Nelson
These Parisians songs aren’t especially experimental but their refusal to have a frontman leaves every member having to sing, swap instruments and, occasionally, use radio static to layer over their Factory records inspired output.

Micachu and the Shapes
If the music wasn’t unconventional enough – in its leftfield pop realm – Micachu makes her own instruments. The Chu, a resrung acoustic guitar, and a bowed instrument made from a cd rack. Having delivered a grime mix tape and scored for the London Philharmonic Orchestra, she’s perhaps one of the most unique talents in Britain.

Articles of 2009 - #5 Wild Beasts

2009-11-19T08:52:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of rehashing old material for new eyes, as is the warrant of this business, I'm continuing my digging up of elderly pieces from earlier this year with a twist - there's two of them in this post. Ooooooooooh!
Sometimes a band is good enough to warrant two articles of differing feel and content, not just one. Being able to spread the content of an interview across two outlets takes some energy and no small amount of confidence. Below, Wild Beastts get the dual article treatment. See what you think.

There are times when you begin to wonder if the heartfelt, nerve-tingling passion you feed into your creative endeavours – or in this case, into discussing other people’s efforts, which you admire – is ever appreciated. Certainly little remuneration comes from the majority of your own exploits, whilst your emotional responses to them, and anything that affects their proliferation, is usually dismissed as fanaticism. You’re a fan. I’m a fan. We’re all fans. Damn our eyes. So let me say precisely what I mean and stop mincing these seemingly effortless words into anything remotely fanciful. Wild Beasts have crafted an incredible pop record which turns out to be one of my favourites of the year of our Lord, 2009AD.
What brings this writer to such a dramatic conclusion is not only contained within the music, but is also espoused by the very protagonists in the creation of Two Dancers.
“We still have the ideals of the first record and they’re in the second record. It’s just that we’ve got better at fufilling those ideals and fundamentally we do call ourselves pop and in a way, that’s a rock for us to cling to. It keeps us in a place and I think everyone needs that. It’s harder to simplify things. It’s actually quite a skill to make things simpler,” explains Hayden Thorpe, guitarist and possessor of a larynx capable of that resplendent falsetto. Remarkably, the attempt to rid their music of complication has rendered their second full-length album a dense, lush and decadent listen. Brooding, elegiac in places, savage yet subtle, the full-on bellowing impact of debut Limbo, Panto has been replaced by elegance and eroticism.
“I think with the first record there was a huge amount of, to put it badly, teenage angst. A lot of frustration of ‘fuck, we’re doing something different here and this should be listened to’,” says Hayden. “Everybody thinks that what they do should be listened to and we were no different. Once we made a splash, as it were, we allowed ourselves to float a little and that was enjoyable.”
Tom Flemming, the baritone yin to Hayden’s yang, has reflected upon the past year’s experiences: “I think we do try and live in the now. I think we’re aware that we have to take charge of where we are now and take ownership of what we’re doing and look within ourselves to see what we’ll do next. There are all sorts of different ways we could jump now but there’s only one way we will jump and that’ll be decided in the moment, not in the abstract. I think that’s what this album is as well. It was done in the moment, in the practice room. It’s kind of thematic but that happened naturally. It wasn’t a framework it just became that one song begat another.”
Making a tangible distinction between the processes and motives of records just a year apart is tough enough, without the musicality being so different. Two Dancers is merely an evolution and yet it’s revelatory in the weaving of vocal cadences and nuances, gentile musicianship and indelible conviction.
“We learnt a lot about ourselves on the first record and we wanted, if not to make a definitive statement this time round, to just make a record that states a certain period and what we were capable of rather than one that defined us.”
It’s brave to keep ambition at bay and simply record a set of songs that speaks volumes, but allows the artist breathing room. Their two albums are almost at opposite ends of the spectrum, but still resolutely sound like Wild Beasts. For a band to act so surreptitiously, to expand their palette for their listeners and themselves, and STILL make a record that captures your ears, and by extension your heart, is warmly welcomed.
“I’ve been surprised by how many people have actually liked it,” admits Tom, perhaps too modestly. “I think I expected a similar reaction to the first one which was some devotees and a lot of shrugging. With this it’s like ‘oh my God, something’s happening’! I have allowed myself to enjoy it as well because it’s quite rare. We’ve found out what people think of it and most people have been really positive. It’s quite humbling and quite touching because we did what we thought was right and it turns out other people think it’s right too. We didn’t try to make a shining example of who we are, we just made a record.”
Delightfully, the very reasons we love the record could well be the same ones that prevent you from listening more than once. The languishing instrumentation, the distinctive vocal timbres and ideas, the relatively sedate pace, the rampant yet somehow quaint lyricism are all key components of Two Dancers.
“I think we’re walking a very thing line with fire on either side,” expresses Tom. “That’s what it should be. It should have that kind of obscureness and elusiveness All my favourite music is elusive. All my favourite art and literature. It doesn’t tell you what to think. It refuses to judge things. If you think we’ve done something that even has a modicum of that then that’s a really nice thing of you to say.”
Should great art be elitist? Should the best pop music seem unattainable, somehow thoroughly connected to itself and no zeitgeist or trend? Should making your art simpler mean it has to sound simple? Should we even be asking questions about something that is, in the end, ethereal but derived from corporeal means?
Wild Beasts accept that there are no straight answers and that the urge to produce music that sounds like this is, really, the only true consideration. Similarly, this stream of verbosity and prose is nothing but a need to enthuse about the music being made by these four young men. Anything else is a bonus.

Brad Barrett

There aren’t many bands who make a thundering impression on your grey matter so deep that you question your very taste in music. There are even fewer who abandon the crater they’ve made and spend time weaving their obvious strengths into something even more insidious and unshakable.
Wild Beasts could easily fit this description though. Last year’s debut Limbo, Panto introduced careful listeners to the extraordinary and ferocious, screaming falsetto of Hayden Thorpe. It seems Hayden and co-vocalist Tom Flemming didn’t realise how divisive it might be.
“We thought people would be like ‘oh, that’s a nice record, I’ll come and see you’. Instead it became this debate going on: is it shit? Is it great?” says Tom, perhaps overestimating the public’s exposure to wildly different styles of music.
“It’s an empowering situation because so much music passes over you,“ points out Hadyen. Still, it could be concluded that the arrival of their second record, Two Dancers, and its more subtle, far denser sound so soon after Limbo, Panto was a rush to get away from what caused such a fuss. Then again, that conclusion is almost definitely wrong.
“There was never any doubt that we were gonna release an album a year after,” confirms Hayden. “There was, and still is, a sense of urgency about trying to capture something right now. It’s a personal complex that we probably share together, that we’re missing the point right now. Yesterday was a day we could’ve used to do something better than what we did.”
“You have to be able to capture a period in time and just get something down. There’s the importance of work, we’ve always had that in the recording process. Whatever you’re going to do you kinda have to by art and by labour. You put the work in and the art will follow,” explains Tom.
“It’s a worry. It’s something we lose sleep over,” confesses Hayden rather candidly. “In that sense we take it seriously. It’s a sense of knowing what we can achieve and you’ve got to worry to achieve that. If you put the hours in you increase your chances of it happening. There is this ruthless level of possibility and the beauty of being a band is that there are no limits.”
This bubbling cauldron of pressure and lust for life is not only to be admired but is reflected in Two Dancers; specifically the eerie contrast of textures against the gentle, almost quaint, eroticism of the lyrics. It’s a record that lures you in, almost lazily, or as Haydn puts it: “I think of it a bit like a Trojan horse where we built a good facade to let people in and once people are in, or once we’re in, we stick the knife in.” Because once you’re hooked you’re sifting through the sophisticated sounds, eager to try and get to the heart of what’s here, what makes this four piece really tick and their music work so deftly. You may be searching for some time.
“It’s a complete balancing act. A lot of the songs on the album had four or five versions because it took that level of control to make it work. A lot of the time we are singing about quite ugly things and to doll them up and make them pretty is the ultimate goal but it’s a difficult thing to do and sometimes we do fall flat on our faces but that’s part of the fun of it,” Hayden says.
Most revelatory though, bearing in mind the intensity, intelligence and ambition on offer here, is the experimentation going on, and finding sounds which are far bigger than the modest means they come from.
My example to Hayden and Tom, the three of us sitting in the lovely Shoreditch bar, The Reliance, is on When I’m Sleepy – a brooding, shimmering track that features the line ‘You’re the lips for me to pucker’. At the climax of the track, three chords are slashed out and one note swells into an aching, yearning feedback note. Not what you’d put on a normal pop song really.
“What is a normal pop song?” Hayden asks.
“Don’t forget, Purple Haze did that,” retorts Tom before turning to his bandmate. “You did that and I thought at the time ‘ah I wish I was playing that!’. Everyone who’s ever picked up a guitar wants to do that.”
“I personally find it very difficult to capture what goes on because that minute moment was simply because of a split second decision in a guitar shop a few years earlier: should I get the safe guitar or get the daft big hollow body one? Every day split second moments go into it and that’s the human side to it.”
Having already discussed the importance of the human side of their music – the fact that Two Dancers consists of songs finished in a maximum of 10 takes each rather than the 50 or 60 for some of Limbo, Panto, all played pretty much live in a room together - they also worked on finding yet another contrast in a record full of them: “We got more interested in sound and production so it was fun to try and find some alien sounds. We talked about how we wanted more of that coldness against that human warmth.”
“The cheapness of When I’m Sleepy… is incredible. There’s a synth sound in it that is literally my 5 year old laptop straight into a mixing desk. It’s not a luxury sound. We worked within our limitations,” says Tom.
“I’ve got to admit, I was listening to our album on the plane the other day and on Hooting and Howling, listening to it with fresh ears because I’ve been on holiday, I didn’t have a clue what that piano sound is!”
Tom steps in: “I know we used a £50 keyboard on the harp setting. That keyboard is all over the record. It does all the really big stuff, even the darker songs. It’s just what you have to hand. I read an interview with Madlib recently and he was talking about how he never uses more than $250 of equipment. It’s just like: how do you make THAT out of only that? Again, it’s the human element. It’s what you do with your hands.”
“The Hooting and Howling piano noise is the stage piano put into a tape echo, through a driven amp in a toilet with a condenser mic on it, just for the record.”
Essentially though, Two Dancers – a record that will be dismissed by some no doubt as too slow, not musically diverse enough or even boring musically, and to those people we say ‘you really aren’t listening are you?’ – is the sound and result of a band living life, grasping the moment while its here and doing whatever they can to make a record and not some far flung statement.
“I think honestly we had nothing to lose,” concludes Tom. “We had lots of ideas fermenting and we were saving them and this is our chance. That sounds like it was a big decision but it’s not. It was very easy and very natural in a lot of ways. By which I mean it was a lot of work and hours but it wasn’t some existential crisis.”
“I think what most art, novels and painting involves is that just doing it is enough. You don’t need anymore than that. You don’t think about the result of it. You just do it. Everyone needs a purpose don’t they and that became our purpose,” finishes Hayden. “Oh, and we were being paid for it,” he adds with a smirk. With a sense of humour topping off an irresistible sense of adventure and desire to grasp life by the throat, Wild Beasts are far more than you expected them to be.

Brad Barrett

Articles of 2009 - #6 Biffy Clyro

2009-11-11T08:29:00.000-08:00

As I continue to trudge through the crispy underfoot crunch of articles past, I'm bringing us bang up to date with the most recent cover story I've done for Playmusic Pickup on the Scottish trio Biffy Clyro. As this article was altered, and this issue about to expire, I thought I'd bring it out into the relative open environment of the internet, just in time for the week of their UK tour and release of fifth full-length, Only Revolutions. By all means check out the last three Articles of 2009: Micachu, John Leckie & India Soundpad and 100% Genki. They're all great.

Is there anything more satisfying than seeing people who deserve success finally reap their rewards? Having fought, struggled and kept on and on, sometimes dispiritingly ignored or surviving on nothing, suddenly things bloom unexpectedly and beyond their control. Whether it comes from their fighting spirit, a growing belief from others or plain grim determination, the end result is always the same – congratulations from some, resentment from others. Success can come in many different forms. When in relation to music, we always think Top 10 chart placings and selling out venues. However, unlike a lot of possible careers, there’s a multi-tiered achievement scale. Biffy Clyro have always been a success artistically and remained true to themselves. While fans of Blackened Sky, The Vertigo of Bliss or Infinityland might shout you down, both Puzzle and the new album Only Revolutions are huge successes musically too. Puzzle brought the pain and hard times of the band into brittle focus, while Only Revolutions emerges triumphant, joyous and accomplished.

Squeezing upwards, climbing a tight spiralling staircase towards the room at the top of 14th Floor Records’ building, James Johnston and I sit upon separate burgundy sofas. The open space is a little disconcerting, especially as the camera crew, having already filmed the band here, pack up and leave. It’s like a huge breathing space has been left which can only be either the vacuum of silence or the dense catalogue of conversation. Niceties dealt with, my thumb, so used to pushing the notched, scarlet record button on my dictaphone, resumes its regular duty. The noticeable break between chat and interview is hastily plastered over with a question.

“We kinda made a joke that the last album sounded like a band going to war and this one sounds like a band coming back having won the war. That’s kinda why we started with the footsteps on the record coz we just thought that song (The Captain) with the brass and the rhythm of it would just make it sound like us getting into position,” explains James Johnston, the bass half of Biffy’s storming rhythm section.

Certainly The Captain is an unexpected introduction to the record, with its sea-shanty lullaby riot being pounded through layers of brass. To then be crushed by the weight of one of Biffy’s heaviest riffs with That Golden Rule, which resolves into a huge string arrangement, before the tickling melody line of Bubbles, well just the first three song run is enough to have your head spin.

“It feels great,” admits James when confronted with the reality of making their most positive album so far. “I think we’ve always been in the position where we could make whatever record we wanted to. We’ve always been quite a determined band and have a certain amount of self belief. We’ve all tried to make music that we enjoyed so never at any point did we feel constricted by what people expected us to do. In fact, in some way, what we enjoy doing is doing exactly what people wouldn’t expect us to do. Catch them off guard a little bit.”

All around us, beneath us, outside on the streets, life carries on, oblivious. It’s only when a hand dryer splits the air asunder, or the movement blurs the corner of our eyes, that it intrudes on us. As with any interview worth its salt, this is the result of pure engagement. Every member of Biffy are so committed to what they do that they hold your attention with their conviction. They are very clear to make sure answer remain well-considered and in line with their creative endeavours, or it’s all for nought.

“I don’t think any of us feel different as guys. We don’t interact with our family any differently and the good thing is we still love where we grew up. We still work as a band the same. We still practice on a little farm in a little village. There’s nobody around, just literally cows in a field next door, and nobody bothers us. I think that’s fundamental to our music making process. We’re not in a practice room in London where there’s lots of bands coming in and out and we’re not out on the town every night with everybody telling us how fucking great we are. Of course, there are more people listening to our music now which has always been an ambition of ours. When we all become arseholes you’ll be the first to find out,” James says, grinning.

When I bump into Simon Neil later, he’s smiling, more than happy to ask how I’m doing and genuinely pleased I may be able to come to their show in a few weeks time. James’ twin brother Ben is also accommodating and friendly. Nick the tour manager is balancing ten thousand things at once, but has time to smile shake my hand and ask after my wellbeing. Caroline, their press officer, has had an equally hectic schedule to keep up – and a Gregg’s run to complete for lunch - but is bright and chipper as ever. What’s important about this you may ask? Well, it’s another sliver in the giant prism that is success. The band and the small team assembled around them are all delightful people, deservedly part of this amazing success story unfolding, almost unbelievably, before our eyes.

“I’ll tell you what it has changed in the band,” says James, reconsidering his previously vague position on how success can affect a band like Biffy Clyro. “It’s probably given us more confidence, in a way. We’ve always been confident in our music. When things go well, and it’s because of the choices you’ve made, then it empowers you to feel strong about the choices you’re going to make in the future, I guess.” He’s quick to snap at any misconstrued accusations though. “It’s not like we can do no wrong, of course, but we’ve always made our own choices musically. You’ve alluded to the first three albums and these last two albums have been the same way. We like to think it’s people not getting the first three or that they didn’t understand the first three records. Who knows? We’ve obviously gotten better as a band as well. That has something to do with it. It’s kinda interesting. Mistakes will be round the corner and we’ve made mistakes in the past.”

It’s hard to image when these mistakes occurred and what missteps may happen in the future. It’s not unreasonable to believe Biffy are a new band, but to do so would be to miss out on their incredible album run from 2002 – 2004, an album a year, each one an entity to itself.

“There was a big change when Puzzle came out in terms of people’s perception. A lot of people now will interview us and say so this is our second record and it makes us a bit angry but at the same time that’s just the way it goes sometimes. We never try and repeat ourselves I think every album has been different. When we did Infinityland it was our very best attempt at complex pop music. Sometimes the pop bit was at the end of the song and you had to listen to some crazy shit to get there. I think the point we were going through in our lives with Puzzle, it was kind of determined by what the songs were about and having lots of different ideas in there could’ve taken away from the sentiment of the lyrics and that’s primarily why the album was simpler musically. This time around it’s been a bit different, it’s not so specific as it was on Puzzle.”

“’Softly spoken James Johnston’? Who ever said I was soft-spoken?” exclaims James when reading another publication’s cover story. Of course he isn’t softly spoken, just mild-mannered and an example where misrepresentation can end up giving readers the wrong shade or colour of a band, even if it seems inconsequential. Of course, cover stories in major UK publications were a distant goal back in the heady days of 1999 when they released their first single Iname or 2000’s thekidswhopoptodaywillrocktomorrow EP or even 2002’s debut album Blackened Sky.

“We really, really genuinely care about what we do and we don’t just say that because we’re in an interview situation. I think it’s obvious by what we’ve done for the last 10 years that we really care about what we do and I think that’s where our strength lies. That’s where we get enjoyment out of doing what we’re doing and having communication with people through our music and when you’re in a sweaty club with everyone singing along you can’t tell me that isn’t a community vibe. I think that’s where fulfilment comes, from doing it together”

A gang mentality? Maybe. James is at pains to describe it more like a family, or as he says several times, “brothers”. Clearly he and Ben feel Simon is family as much as the Johnston’s are twins. Having been together for so long, sealed within the registration county of Ayreshire, Scotland for most of their lives, that they’ve shared so much goes without saying.

“I think it’s very important to everybody really it informs everything about your life,” agrees James, when I describe my need to explore the notion of place as a key ingredient to any artist’s work. “I think it so happens that because we’re brothers coming together, who’ve had the same sort of experiences, it makes us very strong and I guess the attitude of people in our town influenced us in good ways and bad ways. It definitely informs a lot of the choices you make. We’ve all been fairly cynical guys maybe, glass half full kind of guys, we don’t get too carried away with things and I think they’re quite typical traits of a Scotsman. Some people talk of it as being dour but I think as a nation our people are warm and friendly but it’s in a different way. I think where you come from informs many things about your life not just music. Your attitude the way you dress the way you interact with different people. We don’t ever talk about it unless somebody asks but I think it’s important.”

Perhaps, and this is just conjecture, the fact that Biffy have one singular place they’ve always called home, and one quiet place to practice, they’ve given themselves foundations other bands lose when searching unknown musical territory. Biffy’s records have all been full of far-flung ideas, some even outlandish, but Biffy Clyro has been right at the centre of the storm they’ve whipped up, and it may be because they have a place to come back to.

“We’ve always felt strong as a three piece. The heart of the band lies in our relationships together and that’s what’s kept us so vital, hopefully, as a band and that’ll be what allows us to continue in ten years time. The fact that all three of us sing and we work really hard on the dynamics and, not just the dynamics of trying to go loud and quiet, but the dynamics of having a pretty song against an ugly song, and sometimes both within one song. I think that’s really important and we’ve always worked hard for that We just love the fact that it’s just the three of us up there doing it and sometimes people are like ‘this will sound shit, there’s just three people up there!’. I think the element of surprise has always been a big thing for us. We’ve always felt like underdogs.”

Sat around with Greggs wrappers on desks from a hastily devoured lunch earlier, reading their own press with good humour, watching the snooker on the plasma screen TV, organising a taxi to the airport to get back home to Scotland, they look every bit the unassuming, slightly over dressed Scottish lads. These same men have constantly re-evaluated their own take on music, redeveloped and re-shuffled everything to fit around it. So what do we think of when we think success? Unique personal expression, endurance in the face of adversity, inspiring in both achievement and humility, remaining true to your origins – whether all of these apply to a bunch of musicians really depends on how seriously you take music, but if it were applicable, then success could be described as Biffy Clyro.

Articles of 2009 - #7 100% Genki

2009-11-06T03:39:00.000-08:00

Due to internet disruptions, I've been lax in updating which is exactly how my lethargic approach to blogs begins. Hyper enthusiasm in the beginning then disillusionment reigns. Having read through this article though, my excitement has returned.

For Notion magazine I had to break language barriers in order to interview the four touring Japanese bands on the 100% Genki parade, which saw De De Mouse, 80kidz, Riddim Saunter and Tucker wow audiences at UK festivals and one-off showcases. Catching up with them after an admittedly long and drunken morning at Brighton's Great Escape festival, they did an admirable job of putting up with me. A few additional email exchanges later and my need for exploration was engorged, resulting in this paen to my desire to wreck journalistic cliche....or something.

It’s almost an obligation, as someone who composes prose on music, to write something monolithic – almost unassailable in its depth and passion – with every article that gets published. You feel compelled to at least sound like the one expert on that particular subject, the go-to guy when someone needs information or inspiration. Our elders taught us this, whether it be the sadly departed fury of Swells, the punk rock authority of Nick Kent, the acidic gonzo of Lester Bangs or even the savage melding of participation and fiction ala Hunter S Thompson. Then, you hit a brick wall. In this case, it’s Julian Cope’s Japrocksampler. Standing like Mt Fuji in the way of any intention you might have had, a couple of months planning being no match for years of toothcombing and translation, you freeze. The task ahead seemingly becomes insurmountable.
Now, imagine all this strife and pressure wrapped into the psyche of four Japanese bands, visiting a foreign land for a mere month and hoping to bring their brand of music to audiences who are unlikely to be receptive to anything less than sensational. Pinned with the tag of being from the Orient – immediately the prejudices of kookiness, craziness and insanity being plastered all over them – these four artists somehow have to make their visit worth more than a thimbleful of sake in an ocean of alcohol. That’s without taking into account those who have organised such a tour. How do they react to the challenge? It puts puny writers’ block into perspective. Ahhh. Two paragraphs in and you still know very little about what you’ve come here to read. Just like the good old days.
100% Genki was a month long tour that took place back in May and saw four Japanese bands play dates at The Great Escape festival in Brighton, Futuresonic Festival in Manchester, a Strummerville showcase (more on this later), Stag and Dagger Festival in Shoreditch and Liverpool Sound City in…up north somewhere. Organised by music promoters Smash, those who book the annual Fuji Rock Festival in Japan, and supported by Strummerville, a charity organisation set up and run by friends and family of Joe Strummer after his death to promote new music, the intention was to provide festival audiences in the UK a chance to see something new and unique or at the very least, fun.
This was not left to chance. The four bands chosen seem almost specifically designed to provide the required attitude and energy expected from overseas bands. Whether this expectation is down to some form of ‘impress me’ factor or even an outdated casual prejudice is not really a discussion for this article. What it means though is that Smash had their work cut out for them. James Smith explains:
“We were aiming to give the artists on the tour a first stepping stone into the international scene, and to build a platform to promote great music from Japan in general. It was also important to show UK audiences that Japanese music isn't just tongue-in-cheek, and that it possesses its own very individual identity.” Crossing cultural, as well as international, borders in such a delicate, yet perversely impactful, way is akin to breakdancing on eggshells. It helps if the dancers act as if the eggshells aren’t there in the first place.

“Whenever I try to adjust myself to something else, it gets messy. You can pretend to be somebody else but it never works. You just can be you.” De De Mouse

De De Mouse – or as his family know him Daisuke Endo – is a one man electronic-scimitar. Slight in stature and cheerful in nature, it almost seems a crime to have him stuck behind a laptop. Still, he makes the most of his beat and electronics mash up. Driving from blitzed pop samples, to languishing ambience through to happy hardcore psychosis, he never stands still. His performance at Strummerville yard – tucked away in an anonymous car mechanic workshop with ten foot tall anime robots greeting you as you tentatively walk inside – saw him yelling enthusiastically, bounding from foot to foot and tearing the very fabric of musicality with his punk-fuelled Aphex Twin-inspired music.

“When I was younger, yes, I was influenced by so much electronica, maybe too directly. But these days, I am more focusing on how much I can get feedback from the audience of the club, rock venues, or from big festivals.” De De Mouse

Throwing caution to the wind, fighting out of a self-carved corner De De Mouse represents a titanic effort to do more than focus on the usual crowds or people used to his aesthetics and sound. It can be said that this is the essence of 100% Genki, and that Smash’s intentions were drawn from concerns about simply pandering to an obvious audience.
“There are a handful (of Japanese artists) who've found success internationally, and who tour regularly, but many remain cult artists with fanbases consisting mainly of general Japan enthusiasts. Promoting Japanese music to that audience is preaching to the converted, and we wanted to make an effort to get the bands in front of people who have no other general curiosity in Japanese culture - just normal music fans. I think this is what is needed to take Japanese bands forwards, internationally,” explains James.
How do you even approach grabbing the senses of people not particularly interested in the one USP a bunch of bands has? What’s to say anyone will want to read this article who couldn’t care less about far eastern music? How do you tackle that? Well, if you have enough faith in people – readers, music fans, listeners – bringing them a little of what they know with a tinge of intrigue will always work wonders.

“We think music cuts through language barriers. Enjoying music is the one form of communication that makes people in the world happy.” 80kidz

80kidz were perhaps the most accessible of the groups on the tour. A lively trio with a typical setup – Al& plays guitar and keyboard, Jun plays bass and Mayu plays keyboards and sings – they’ve played with the likes of Justice, Boyz Noize and Hot Chip in their homeland. Their synth-ridden, catchy dance tracks bring to mind the rise of Cut Copy and Friendly Fires and their live show is irresistible. Familiarity helps people accept that which is not necessarily derived from the same sources. 80kidz cite relatively obscure Scottish sexpots The Vaselines as an influence, for instance. That they made only 12 songs in their time, it goes to show how much of an affect Western music has on eastern groups. It must be said at this juncture that The Vaselines were lucky enough to have 20% of their entire output covered by Nirvana, but nevertheless, there can only be a handful of people from overseas who’ve heard the originals anyway. I don’t remember everyone jumping for joy when The Vaselines reunion was announced.

“It will take some time but if we keep doing this, that will bring a great impact on both countries and that’s something that government support couldn’t do. Only something like the 100% Genki tour can make it happen.” 80kidz

It’s an unfair and unbalanced exchange – the dominant harmonies of the west and the underrated innovations of the east – but one that Smash is hoping to help redress.
“Promoting foreign music in the UK is always an uphill battle - we're quite insular here, and have a fairly snobby attitude about bands who sing in another language, but English people are increasingly curious about music from Japan.”
When a lot of people’s understanding of another country’s culture is limited to quirky gameshows, martial arts movies and cartoons, it makes you wonder what the motivation of these curious punters is. Do they want to see bands setting themselves on fire and leaping into crowds of people while playing inexplicable breakcore while dressed like a contestant on Takeshi’s Castle? Well...in that case, enter Tucker.

“It’s still not sufficient. I want more of a reaction.” Tucker on limited homeland success.

More of a spectacle than the other three artists, he perhaps represents the typical Japanese exponent that most westerners expect to see. Playing and sampling all the instruments on stage – bass, organ, guitar, theremin – while doing headstands on his tabletop, setting fire to the organ and throwing in snippets of kitsch muzak’s cheerleader Tequila, Tucker is trying to flay your every sense. Musically, he’s a curio, with some interesting layering ideas, and petroleum passion, but this almost comes secondary to his stagecraft. Although without a band, he performs as if no one would ever need one.

“I want to have fun with the audience, and put on a really heavy performance! I’m performing in front of the public, so it’s really important!” Tucker

“We did want to dispel certain preconceptions of Japanese music, and also bring the tour to as wide an audience as possible, and I think we were successful in that respect,” says James. Those preconceptions are possibly represented by Tucker, yet musically he is far and away from some impenetrable or grating noise (hello Merzbow, Melt Banana, Incapacitants, Hijokaidan) or gaping J Pop (take your pick - Hiraku Utada, Morning Musume, Ayumi Hamasaki, Every Little Thing etc.) Instead it’s a variety of styles lending a schizophrenic aural intake to the similarly frenetic visual show. In this ambiguous acceptance and refusal of cliché, Tucker is a sensational talent.

“It’s simply using instruments for fun. We don’t put up any resistance to changing our instruments! Therefore, anything goes, in our performances. It’s the kind of thing where we’ll just keep going if we’re having fun!” Riddim Saunter

Finally, we have the quintet of Riddim Saunter, an eclectic carnival of ska, rock and punk, swirling around like a runaway carousel. They swing rather than stamp their feet and they also seem to joyously snatch summer vibes for their own use. They are perhaps the best example of what 100% Genki is trying to achieve: a band that could quite easily appeal to a festival audience while resolutely originating from Japan. There’s almost no chance the band could come from anywhere else. Their performance at Strummerville saw their drummer leaving his kit to bang the biggest tambourine known to man, while his fellow band members turned to trumpets and keyboards in the spirit of the moment. It’s infectious and getting swept up in it all is the whole point and if there’s anything the UK festival crowds are good at, it’s getting involved.

“It was so fun. The reaction of English people came back to us straight away, compared to the reaction in Japan. However, we think music loving people are similar throughout the world.” Riddim Saunter

“We were all bowled over by audience responses to the acts, and really happy at how many new fans the bands made while they were over here. We managed to present a snapshot of the contemporary scene - vibrant, varied and full of enthusiasm,” adds James, sounding just as enthused by audience participation as Riddim Saunter.
Having tossed Japrocksampler out the window and thoroughly enjoyed the company and performances of the ecstatic and hyperactive yet polite Japanese musicians – who really do feel honoured to visit this country and play for us – I’ve turned my attention back to the insurmountable. You know, that looming mountainous threat, self-imposed and psychological, of somehow making a difference in some 1800 words. Advice to self for the future: step back, re-examine, then put yourself back into context, just for a minute.
“Costs are the first immediate barrier,” James tells me via email, upon my asking just what obstacles need to be tackled when sending four Japanese bands over for a month. The question itself arose simply to make myself feel better, yet gives me cause for thought. “Before you've even started, you're facing airfares of around £600 per person, so working with organisations and sponsors who can support the tour was very important. It also had to be worth everyone's while, and for the bands, this means having enough shows, getting enough chance to promote themselves, and creating new opportunities for their careers. Fortunately, several showcase festivals happen within a short period, and we were able to get them all in front of young, curious audiences.” So, in comparison none of us have anything to worry about, because we’ve hardly anything to lose. For a smidgen of promotional time and exposure, these bands, the organisers and the charities, against all odds, went ahead and meticulously planned the tour to everyone’s best advantage.
So what retort is there to this? Is it inspirational? Rather humbling? Complete madness? In the end, I’ve remembered that I’m merely a passionate writer who uses his language and way of communicating to attempt to breach people’s armour and get them tingling. In a way, I can be compared to these passionate artists and their eager, willing team, because we have the same goals in mind. We want you to listen to just a fraction of the vast musical output from Japan because - and here’s the crux - we all think it’s definitely worth your time. Interrupting your daily routine to listen to the sounds and rhythms that are forged in that land, influenced by western sounds but embalmed in their own traditional musical forms and culture; is that too much to ask? You’ve read this far haven’t you? I know you all like to figure out things for yourselves now that music journalists have become borderline obsolete in your eyes. That’s why I’ve jettisoned that no huge list of excellent acts I compiled. You don’t need anymore than these four and, maybe if you’re still interested, Julian Cope’s research. That’s enough to be getting on with. Have a taste of the insurmountable, your very own mountain range. See what it feels like. Figuring your own way through that terrain is some of the best fun you’ll ever have, I guarantee it.

Brad Barrett

Articles of 2009 - #8 India Soundpad / John Leckie

2009-10-26T07:10:00.000-07:00

Around the time of Brighton's excellent Great Escape festival this May, I was working on two global orientated musical articles. This was the first one. A bit of background before you read. The India Soundpad album project was dreamt up by The British Council with the intention of using a renowned British producer to choose four Indian bands to expose to the UK public via a download compilation. This meant interviewing the four bands involved (Swarathma, Advaitar, Indigo Children and Medusa) and the well-respected John Leckie, a personal bonus for me as he is the man who produced on of my favourite albums ever, Radiohead's The Bends. The article is meant to capture the spirit of the project as well as the inspiring attitudes of bands from another part of the world, another culture yet also influenced by western musical domination.

You could fill a magazine four times the size of the one you’re feverishly pouring over now with the benefits gathered from artists absorbing influences from different cultures. It’s incredibly important to keep these creative links open and continuously expanding in order for musicians and listeners alike to hear the freshest and most honest sounds being crafted by our global community. No matter what style of music you listen to, it has been doused in liberal amounts of cross-cultural knowledge, either by proxy or intention.
Perhaps the most exciting examples of this willingness to keep such channels open and responsive are overseas. Without a doubt, Western music (or if you prefer, American and British music) has become a massive part of many other nations’ young musical innovators.
The British Council, an organisation dedicated to educational opportunities and cultural relations, recognises this and so the India Soundpad project has been conceived. The premise is they’ve taken four bands from India’s emerging alternative scene and brought them together with renowned British producer John Leckie – responsible for production on such important records as Radiohead’s The Bends, The Stone Roses’ debut, The Fall’s This Nation’s Saving Grace and XTC’s White Music, as well as work with diverse acts like PiL, Be-Bop Deluxe and Kula Shaker. The result is a sampler showcasing the depths of wonderful music inspired by the collision of their own heritage and outside influence.
One of those bands, Swarathma, explain why they think this collision of West and East has resulted in such strong unions. “Our take on this is that the spirit of rebellion appealed to the Indian youth. The rebellion that a whole generation in the West embraced was articulated in various forms, one of them being rock music.”
Advaita have an even more articulate analysis of the Western influence on their country’s rich musical heritage: “Western music has had a huge influence on Indian music and culture for a long time. From a classical perspective, India has not really evolved its own ensemble music, barring some forms like qawali in the Islamic music culture. Indian classical music is extremely sophisticated in melodic movement and rhythmic intricacy but there is very little use of harmony. All the popular music, derived from classical roots, that has developed for the last 70 or 80 years - first through theater and then films and other popular music - has had a western influence be it in terms of orchestration or more contemporary band music. This can be seen clearly in how hindi film music has always picked up the trends popular in the west through the last five or six decades and worked them into an indianised sound.”
The point is that Westernised sounds are no stranger to India than, say, their music is to ours – although no one can ever claim that Indian music, scales, structures and themes have been assimilated in quite the same way ours have in India. John Leckie can’t help but detail this when explaining how the project evolved from his being invited by the British Council to take part.
“We did a lot of research on the internet and myspace to see what was happening, what the buzz was and what gigs were being played. Then I went out to Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore and auditioned about 36 different bands who had all submitted things. So, 12 bands across three cities in a two day period. It was pretty full on!” he admits. “When I went through the audition process, it was difficult because I was looking for something that had an Indian element to it, because, obviously you wanna hear some Indian-ness about them, (but) all the bands I auditioned were doing all they could to get rid of their Indian-ness. They were trying to be Western; singing in English, playing electric guitars and although they wrote all their own songs, they were playing covers too.”
Nevertheless, and upon whittling down 36 to four, John gives his reasons for choosing those that appear on the India Soundpad album:
“One is Advaitar which is kind of a fusion band with electric guitars, drums, keyboards but also tabla and sarangi, which is like an Indian violin - a very ancient instrument, and they have two singers: a singer who sings English, like Crosby, Stills and Nash harmonies and that’s contrasted with Indian classical singing.. Swarathma, who are from Bangalore; they don’t speak English at all. You have to remember there are about 150 different languages in India. They’re a party, celebration band, very energetic, a bit theatrical and use tabla, electric violin, bass, drums and guitar. They’re great and what won me over was their energy, really. Indigo Children are much more a western rock band, like a British guitar band. They’ve got rid of all the Indian elements in their music and that’s the contrast. They come from New Delhi. They were the only band who really rocked out, made a noise and really meant it, they weren’t just putting it on. The last band Medusa, similarly, I really liked their naturalness. They really seemed at ease they were just trying to be themselves.”
The key thing that brings these bands together, apart from their country – which isn’t half as important as the place they come from – is their attitude. Listening to each of the bands, they are diverse in approach, energy and genre. Yet, brilliantly, they are entirely distinctive from Western sounds. It’s exhilarating to hear that influence does not have to become imitation.

“To be honest, we do not believe that music has a native territory. Musicians do, but the expression, or artistic expression of any form, does not “belong” to any place or time. Our music, and music anywhere for that matter, can crossover, only if we create it with courage, honesty and conviction.” – Swarathma

“For us, music is most definitely a way of enriching life. I do find the dreariness of a lot of the popular music in the west a bit strange at times)” – Advaita
“We were a band before we were musicians. So, the start was an entire process of trying out ideas as they came to us. Somehow, in the process of giving those ideas a shape, we discovered that we liked a whole range of sounds, artists and musicians.” – Medusa
“We escape the monotony of life by doing what we love the most and simultaneously enrich our lives with it through the personal satisfaction we get by playing music.” – Indigo Children
Perhaps what also threads these bands together is their struggles with being taken seriously in their native country, let alone their willingness to get to as wide an audience as possible. “In India there’s no real infrastructure for gigs; there’s no college circuit there’s no Barfly circuit,” explains John. “They have a lot of major outdoor festivala, a lot of metal festivals: metal in India is huge! A lot of international bands tour, of course. Other problems are that in India, TV is Bollywood driven. It’s very difficult to get anywhere whithout their music in Bollywood films. So, they play wherever they can. They tend to have talent competitions often, battle of the bands, that sort of thing. The same names kept cropping up. In a way, the Soundpad project was a battle of the bands, but at least it’s an opportunity to play. They will jump at any opportunity.”
Swarathma confirm the difficulties of the past, but highlight the hope that seems to have spilled over as a result of progress: “Over the past few years there has been a decisive shift in the way the Indian music listener has treated music coming out of India. Indian independent music - non-Bollywood if you like - relegated to the back burner for years has now started to be recognized. This has probably happened because more Indian bands have started to write music fearlessly, honestly and with conviction. When you do that, it’s hard not to get noticed.”
“It seems people only want art which is escapist and we have to really work extra hard to spread our more thought provoking brand of music,” explain the collective members of Advaita. “Having said that, due to the inherent ‘Indian-ness’ of our sound we have had a bit of success, we released our first album on EMI, a major label, though not a mainstream label in India.”
The overall opinion seems to be that things are improving, and the results of the India Soundpad project have been extremely positive. As well as Advaita, Swarathma have also released music on a major label, Virgin, in India. This is despite each of the bands recognizing that rock music is not a popular genre in India. As John points out: “The development is that there are young people with disposable income. For once there’s a population with money to spend beyond surviving.” This surely bodes well for the growing discontentment with Bollywood superiority.
More than anything, quite apart from the exotic confines of our imaginations, India Soundpad represents four great bands making music they all believe in, each doing it against the odds of being discovered, making a living and being heard. One can’t help but be cynical about British bands and their approach, while the refreshing slant that Swarathma, Indigo Children, Advaita and Medusa lend to real passion and commitment to music makes this even more transparent in UK counterparts. Not to criticise the efforts made and the obstacles we face here in the West, but India Soundpad proves to be a window into how music can be the driving force without sacrificing ambition. As much as they’ve learned from us, we can learn just as much, if not more from them. In the end, Indigo Children say it best: “Good music will be appreciated anywhere, whether coming from India or Mars.”

Brad Barrett

Gig Etiquette - Politeness Forgone

2009-10-20T04:56:00.000-07:00

Gigs are rough n tumble kinda places to hang out. The volume is too high for genial chatting, there's not enough room for elaborate dancing and personal space is a precious commodity. That's okay though, because in general gigs are enjoyable experiences. There's something almost tribal about how we all crowd together, absorb body warmth, embrace physical contact and grin widely at each other when a crowd surfer topples to the ground or and incredible chorus breaks out across the entire room.

Unfortunately, and this is certainly not a new thing as veterens will know, there is almost always a cause to get a little angry or jaded with people attending such gatherings. The whole issue of manners and respect seem to be accepted as optional. Last night's No Age and Gentle Friendly gig at Scala was exceptional. A lot of flailing crowd surfers, a couple of 'rebellious' stage divers and a lot of brilliant indie head nodding and dancing. In these situations, with No Age's fierce, and occasionally soothing, assault bellowing across the faces of 700 odd people, you excuse a lot of accidental shoves, beer showers and other minor misdemeanours. WE'RE HAVING A GOOD TIME, YEAH?!

However, bar etiquette doesn't need to go out of the window. If I'm not sure if I was first, I'll offer it to others ahead of me. If I'm standing behind someone, then spread out along the bar before they are served, I make sure they go first. I do not simply request my single pint, avoiding the confused gaze of the person who had been waiting longer than me. Neither do I, when waiting for the band to play, attempt to walk THROUGH someone's physical being to get to somewhere else in the venue and not say sorry, or attempt to be excused so that person has time to step out of the way for me in the first place. If someone steps aside for me, I will say thanks. If someone holds the door for me, I also say thanks. If I accidentally hit someone in the face during the gig, I will make sure they're ok. These are simple enough things to remember to make the whole experience better for everyone involved, right?

Maybe it's just me.

Oh and Adam & Joe of course!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzadXCsY9fo

Buying Things - Converge: Axe To Fall

2009-10-19T09:54:00.000-07:00

Sure I feel your pain. You used to buy so many records - as did I - and actively enjoyed parting with that hard-earned (or pleadingly borrowed) cash in exchange for a circular disc or rectangular cassette, which you would fleem home with like you'd done something naughty. The delight in pressing play for the first time was something that we'll never recover. Now, you're spoilt for choice. You download free albums, mp3s and watch videos all the time, consumed by music you used to consume. However, there are reasons still to buy. One reason is aptly and eloquently explained by Mr Andrew Falkous of Future of the Left here:

http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=62653487&blogId=485944356

So with that overwhelming opinion in mind, while you steal musician's work, why not reward a few of them along the way? It's only fair right? So, this week I implore you, beg you, plead with you to purchase Converge's Axe To Fall.

Why?

Well because of this:

No don't worry they won't just put you into Saw like devices and tear your flesh from bone a la solving the Lament Configuration if you don't buy. That's just the video to the title track.

If you just found yourself reeling from the onslaught of sheet metal across your face, then may I suggest you calm down and listen again. Then try listening to the entire record here: www.myspace.com/converge

Converge's seventh album deals in the same wrath, retribution and savagery we're used to. The huge amount of effort needed to perform these songs, let alone bleed their energies into their creation and arrangement, should be enough to convince you to part with a fraction of your income. Utilising the use of special guests from a variety of hardcore and metalcore backgrounds, this Converge album can be seen as their most undulating. The moods range from pure, unadulterated rage to maudlin contemplation. It's a fascinating record that pummels as it burns as it soothes as it aches. The atmospheric brutality, incomparable delivery and surprisingly fresh ideas lurking within these writhing metallic anthems are certainly worth both your time and your money.

So do it, please.

Articles of 2009 - #9 Micachu

2009-10-18T15:15:00.001-07:00

As a celebration of both me cleansing my blogging slate and starting afresh AND it almost being the end of 2009, I'd like to share with you 9 of my favourite published articles wot I wrote this year. This is mainly because a) it's a slightly less complicated way of looking back at the year than writing about each album I enjoyed (apparently one shy of a 100, though I doubt I've remembered them all) b) it's a way of sharing my work which isn't readily available due to the perishble nature of print magazines. This also means that rather than having the edited articles, I'm giving you the full, unedited, raw copy straight from these hard working fingers.
So with the intention of plastering one a week across your eyes, here's the first: Micachu.
Having delivered one of my albums of the year, 'Jewellery', and completely mutated - with her band The Shapes - into a formidable live act (as witnessed a few days ago at Kings Cross Scala - Artrocker review due soon), she's one of my favourite musicians. Without further ado, here is the article in it's resplendent glory.

21-year-old Mica Levi has hit upon a type of pop music that has been described as “the lost and found sound of a new UK”. With homemade instruments, a classical background and interest in any musical idea, her disparate, exhilarating music has certainly redefined some people’s expectations of music in 2009.

“There’s just something that makes sense about starting from scratch.”
It’s hard to express how much impact this statement has without at least exploring the person who said it. Mica Levi is a 21 year old composer, currently releasing records and touring with her band under the name Micachu and the Shapes. On the phone she’s a lively, enthusiastic voice who seems almost embarrassed by her ideas and afraid of not being able to sufficiently express them in words. Starting from scratch seems the only place to begin.
“It’s been really helpful,” Mica replied vaguely to my opening question, about how her upbringing and where she came from has helped her musical goals. “I’ve been exposed to a lot of different types of music which, I guess could be a hindrance in that sometimes, I don’t really sure what I’m doing. Too much choice or whatever.” This modesty shows consistently throughout our conversation, so it makes sense for me to stop here and explain why this is significant.
This write really believes Micachu’s debut record Jewellery to be one of the most exciting collections of music he’s heard. Full stop. A bewildering blitz of toy-like sounds at home with being swathed in discordance, liable to change speed, tact and texture every few seconds or so. Mica’s London accent comes across as both tender and bolshy, perfect for the ambiguity present in all aspects of her music. It’s pop music for sure. It’s just unlike any pop music you’ve ever heard.
“I guess the thing at the moment is that it’s best to forget all that stuff really.” That stuff being her classical music education from a family she admits are “really obsessed with it.” So, while unlearning what she’s learnt has become important in the creation of her current musical angle, it certainly hasn’t gone to waste. She has actually written a score for the London Philharmonic Orchestra which was performed last year.
“Yeah it was like a Young Composers project I was involved with. It was really fucking hard man,” she says, laughing. “Really hard. A massive challenge. It was a very intimidating project. I hadn’t really written an orchestral piece before, so it was really scary and difficult. Amazing though, I feel very lucky to have had that opportunity.”
Just to add a bit more depth to her musical dimensions, she’s also author of a hotly-traded grime-slanted mixtape called Filthy Friends, which she’s looking to follow up this year.
Some might say that she can’t seem to focus on one thing at a time, and listening to Jewellery further confirms that.
“It’s part of the trying to forget things and that not really happening. Just hearing so many different things and not wanting to milk things and also my attention span is pretty bad. When you’re working on something, producing it and hearing it over and over again, you get sick of it. It’s the lack of being able to develop things properly really.” This seems incongruous with the elaborate, exhilarating lo-fi debut that’s currently spinning as I write this. It’s as soft as it is ragged and sharp, as melodic as it is noisy – it revels in it’s flaws and makes them part of it’s ramshackle perfection. Saying this isn’t a fully developed work is the sign of some harsh self-criticism. Surely this ADHD-like approach is a way of keeping things exciting for Mica?
“Yeah, I do (get bored easily). It’s something I’m trying to work on. I think part of it is that the songs are quite textural, they’re not groove based so it’s not the sort of thing you can let carry on. Dance music can be quite free-streaming and just carry on because there’s an ongoing pulse there. The minute you’re breaking things up it’s a different sort of area.”
Continuing with the theme of keeping things exciting, Mica’s band The Shapes – AKA Raisa Khan on keys and Marc Pell on drums – have been initiated into the songwriting process for her next work.
“I’m doing a lot more writing with The Shapes now. A proper band thing. That’s really exciting, something different. I’ve never really done that before, so that’ll be cool,” says Mica eagerly. So what are they bringing to your music now? After an amused giggle she answers.
“An incredible amount of commitment! Everything! At the moment we’re doing loads of gigs so Marc and Raisa are trying to interpret the record and everything is divided by three.” She admits it should be more together come time to record a new record although: “They’ve both got quite wild imaginations so maybe we won’t develop in that way at all. Maybe we’re just a bad combination. I don’t know. We’ll find out!” Isn’t that the point? Starting from scratch and finding out what works, what doesn’t – it keeps things fresh and new.
Speaking of such things, Rough Trade have recently come aboard, taking over where Jewellery producer – and renowned electronic artist in his own right – Matthew Herbert’s Accidental label had stepped in originally.
“We’re really excited. We’re sort of quite shocked. Matthew who runs Accidental is really happy about it. It’s really nice. They seem like a really nice family of people. They’re really excited about music and they really hate music as well, which is good. We feel pretty honoured, yeah. When we were talking to them they were very adamant, they were very realistic. They didn’t think we were gonna take the world over at all.”
Although this is indeed unlikely, the overwhelming response to music that, in all honesty, was not made for the masses has been extraordinary. Magazine covers, Rough Trade, mass music press plaudits: “I don’t wanna get too ahead of myself. It’s really nice when you’re working on things if you’re getting a positive response.”
For this cynical, sometimes fatigued, music fan, Mica Levi is a breath of fresh air. As with the majority of my favourite artists, she builds up from Ground Zero. “Just partly satisfaction in DIY stuff,” says Mica about her homemade instruments used to make her music, such as the three stringed guitar, The Chu, and a bowed instrument made from a CD rack. She even uses a vacuum cleaner on final track, Hardcore. “It’s off the back of this Harry Partch guy and his philosophy and attitude towards music which is an inspiration for me. The instruments I’ve made have been pretty shoddy. I need to do more planning. There’s just something that makes sense about starting from scratch. If you’re gonna write music then you’ve gotta make things to write the music with. It seems to be quite an obvious thing to do, doesn’t it?”
Only to those of us who believe in pure expression and making sure we don’t get bored too easily. Fortunately, with artists like Mica, there’s no chance of getting tired with music of any kind. Wiping the slate clean and creating what you want to create is a brave move, especially if it doesn’t work. When it does, it’s worth all the false starts and fleeting ideas.

Brad Barrett