Ben Martin

I wrote this for the first Ghost Fuck zine a few issues back – a...

Tue, 11 Sep 2012 01:10:00 +0100

I wrote this for the first Ghost Fuck zine a few issues back – a kick ass fempunk document by my (often) rad flatmate Lizzy. Holler at her here ‘cos I heard she’s pretty much mates with Kathleen Hana now. ghostfuckzine.tumblr.com

I interviewed Anita of Feminist Frequency for the second. If you want to write for the zine she’d love contributions of words and/or pictures.

Black Vase – June 2012 Edition

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 19:38:00 +0100

This week, the Graun attempted some Daily Mail style Twitter-trolling by running a feature asking if guitar music is dead, and for readers to submit a coupla hundred words in the affirmative or negatory.

Guitarist, Scotsman and all-round hero Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai responded by pointing out the obvious gaping chasm at the very heart of this; an atrocious attempt at crowdsourcing masquerading as music journalism, by tweeting the succinct, four-word question that is: “What is guitar music?” Bra-fucking-vo, Stu. My cap is doffed.

So this put me to thinking about the place of the humble (and according to some, ‘past it’) guitar in the context of this column. A hell of a lot of what I have written about in the past few months has been orchestral, or field recordings, or heavily synthesized in some way. Aside from the occasional mention of an obscure hardcore band or two I’ve laid off it. This must change. So here are three musicians who, in my mind, are taking the guitar to the limits of what it can be used for, with spectacular results. Pushing boundaries like Ween be Pushin’ Daisies. Or something.

Oren Ambarchi.

Oren Ambarchi is a Sydney-born guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. His approach to music is to transcend conventional instrumental approaches. I know this because it says so on his website. His solo work often revolves around stretching out longform pieces, often live, and completely blurring the boundaries between what is guitar and what is electronic. In doing this he forces us to re-evaluate how we perceive these two tools for creating music, and we are challenged to lose any notion of how either should sound, by focusing on how he is making them sound. Cool, huh. Check out this semi-live take from 2007 (yeah, that’s all guitar – apart from the percussion), it’s a great example of his work.

Another great thing about Ambarchi is how prolific he is as a collaborator, having made records/played live with Fennesz, Sunn O))), Damo Suzuki, Jim O’Rourke, Boris… I could go on. But won’t. As a collaborator, Ambarchi exhibits some of the most complementary aspects of live musicians playing together – he gauges moods, tempos, feelings, and enhances what is happening simply by being there. ‘Onya, Oren.

Mark Morgan (Sightings)

Now for something a little more… Horrifying. Sightings are an NYC noise rawk band seven albums deep, and vocalist/guitarist Mark Morgan creates the kind of murky squall that gives Steve Albini a tremble in his boxers and the rest of us lucid nightmares. Think unnatural pitch bends, clanking industrial sheets of feedback and buzzsaw fuzz. It’s wonderful.

In my mind (and probably the mind of other lazy hacks like me) Morgan’s guitar work is the logical conclusion of Blixa Bargeld’s (Einsturzende Neubauten/Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) trebly power-drill slashes with the aforementioned python-hider Albini’s impossibly metallic dissonance in Big Black. It’s a sound that reminds us just how far past the use of pure volume, distortion and aggression we are to make a guitar sound deathly. I mean, he obviously uses copious amounts of both those things, but it’s the extra-attention to textural detail that makes him sound just that bit more forward thinking, and makes you want to shit your kecks just that bit more.

Wata (Boris)

I promised some Japanese stylings on Twitter a while back, so here it is. Boris have genre hopped and transcended quite a bit over their 20-odd years and 17 albums (not to mention collabs, splits, bootlegs, live releases…), even going a bit J-rock in their latter years. I feel I should talk about how that represents how diverse they are as a band, and how adept Wata is at adopting styles and making them her own. But fuck that, I want to talk about Feedbacker.

Now, In terms of guitar playing, for most of Feedbacker Wata isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel – a downtempo slowcore-esque intro period gives way to some high-camp and melodrama that is never lacking in Japanese rock, and this goes on for an enjoyable headbang of a half-hour or so. But then, when everything finally implodes (and I mean really implodes) the listener is left to bare witness to some of the most phenomenal uses of guitar-as-sonic-warfare as you’re ever likely to encounter on record. The harsh, brittle, blanketing walls of noise emanating is almost crippling, and if it wasn’t for the unbelievable build-up, you would be able to escape it, but you can’t. Then follows the most bitter-sweet use of noise-as-melody, as Wata coaxes not-quite-pitch-perfect squeals to play the track out. Uh, right. Now I’m going to stop before I sound like I’m pitching this article to Mojo.

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So there are just three that I wanted to highlight. There are many more, and I want to write about them all, but can’t – Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, Ichirou Agata from Melt Banana, Eluvium, Michael Morley of The Dead C etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc… And to return to the beginning, the Guardian question could almost be answered with a terrible Schrödinger’s Cat metaphor – is guitar music dead or alive when no one can see it? Well, plenty can see it, all it takes is the simple task of opening the fucking box.

Black Vase: May Edition

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 22:00:00 +0100

I write a column for The 405, doncha know?

This month I’d like to talk about politics in music. To most, that means a middle-aged lefty with a guitar, or Bono rimming every world leader he can get close to for world peace (but a tax break on his millions would be an acceptable second). No, I have a theory – it’s a simple one – that there is a positive correlation between music and politics, in that the more extreme the music, the more extreme the political ideas and ideologies expressed within that music will be. Imagine an infinite line graph heading straight and true at a constant 45 degrees between the axes of ‘muzik’ and ‘politik’. And, even though we’re believed to live in an age of greater peace than ever before (no, seriously, someone said that) and it is supposedly a post-historical and post-ideological age, things remains to be a bit of a cluster fuck.

In certain areas of extreme music, there are artists who have flirted with ideas and imagery that are incredibly uncomfortable to most. Fascism, domination, totalitarian views and imagery have all been used by many in industrial, noise, neofolk, punk and metal circles. And it’s because of the recent presence of fascism in Europe (okay, so it’s not goose-stepping down your road this very minute, but it’s there), that I think it’s good time to discuss this.

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Shock tactics in economics are old. In the modern sense, they stretch back to the free-market-is-god teachings of Milton Friedman in the 1970s. Shock tactics in art and culture go back way further. What both devices rely on is for the shock to put the sniveling serf/culture vulture into a state of submission so severe, that they might be more suggestible to things they were previously staunchly opposed to. Like, a Fascist dictatorship, say. Or Stockhausen.

And it’s Fascism I want to talk about now. Or, more accurately, the role nationalist, racialist, homophobic and misogynist (basically all the abhorrent shit that comes under the umbrella of Fascist) ideas are used as elements of shock in music.

Recent European elections have seen a significant increase in the number of votes for ultra-right parties. In the first round of the French Presidential election, Marine La Pen of the Front National won 6.4 million votes – 17.9 per cent of the total turnout. It wasn’t enough to see her through to the next round (which would see Socialist Francois Hollande win), but the sheer scale – nearly one-fifth of the voter turnout – putting their faith in her anti-Islam and anti-gay dogma is staggering. Almost more terrifying is the popularity of Golden Dawn in Greece. An openly neo-Nazi organization, who only allow those of Greek birth and ‘Aryan blood’ into their ranks (their logo looks hella like a Swastika too), they won 21 of the 300 seats that make up the Greek parliament, with 6.97 per cent of the vote. That’s roughly what UKIP, the Green party and the BNP received in our last general election put together. Furthermore, you only need to see drunken skinheads treating Luton and Bradford’s respective high streets as catwalks to see it in our green and pleasant land.

But what about those musicians who have used Fascist iconography? Looking at the mainstream end, an early incarnation of the Clash were called ‘The London SS’. Sid Vicious once wore a t-shirt with a Swastika on it. Siouxsie Sioux was often seen with a Third-Reich armband, and the Banshees song ‘Love in a Void’ even had the line that there are ‘Too many Jews for my liking’.

The shock was strong with these ones. All of these people grew up in a society that was irrevocably shaped by the Second World War. Anti-German sentiment was still very strong, and what better way to announce your rejection of a conservative society you don’t belong in than to flaunt the one terror it still holds fresh in its mind? Anyway, Strummer was a rich hippy, Sioux is Jewish herself, and Vicious was just thick as pig shit.

No, what’s more interesting are the bands that really took it to extremes. Musicians-cum-artists like Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, Boyd Rice. The Industrial music scene pushed boundaries in many ways – the most obvious of which was sonically – ugly sounds; unlistenable, harsh electronics and clanging sheet metal. Discombobulated voices and formless, dirge-ridden soundscapes. Music that takes you from the Orwellian factory to the mass grave; through a mental labyrinth of creeping anxiety. Visually, iconography was rife. Whether suggested (TG’s lyrics) or actual (Rice’s Nazi regalia worn onstage and the Wolfsangel as his logo) – there’s nothing Fascists like more than veneration of symbols.

But then you creep into less ambiguous territory. Oi!’s links to the far right, with Skrewdriver being arguably the UK’s most famous Fascist band. Then there is the incredibly fucked up path some Norwegian black metal bands took, with white supremacist ideas being the catalyst for murder, church burnings, and gigs that resembled something akin to the Nuremberg rally.

But the question really is, what’s the difference? On the surface of it, the ideas being put forward are the same. The general vibe is hatred and terror and suppression; and at their core, they are ideas put forward to illicit a response, to create a reaction and provoke; using music as a medium. There are more similarities too – fears are played on, the dark thoughts that people rarely admit to having are put out into the open – forcefully. Then there’s the obvious sonic abrasion. It kinda goes without saying, but none of what I’ve mentioned is exactly… Pretty.

So what I am proposing is that the difference be recognised between the provocative and the preposterous. And it’s a semantically simple one; it is just the difference between shock, and shocking. Musicians using fascist themes to shock, and fascists making music whose ideas are shocking. And if there is no one there to shock you with that which you’d hope were no longer, it’s easy to forget what shocking things can be done in the name of ideology.

And whereas the economic shock gives rise to the ideologically shocking, the artistic shock reminds us that it hasn’t gone away – those things still exist, and people who are proud of believing them still exist; and looking at the Front National, Golden Dawn, and the EDL; they aren’t just lurking in the closet anymore.

Now, as someone who could broadly be labeled as on the extreme of the left myself, it’s hard to say these things. To defend (I’m not apologising for…) the use of Fascist ideas and imagery in music still causes massive reservations. Christ, sometimes it’s hard to listen to. But if you do not keep an open dialogue, or effectively shun the notion of Fascism by refusing to accept the legitimacy of any artist that uses it (as opposed to promoting it), then it will not go away – it will not be ignored into submission. You are merely giving breathing space to those who want to use it to recruit, not repel.

Listen: gauge for yourself. Are you being asked to think? Or told what you should think? If it’s the former, I think that’s great. If it’s the latter; the only way forward is to oppose.

Black Vase: March Edition

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 21:47:00 +0100

More Black Vase japery. Find it all over at The 405 – it’s where the cool kids hang out.

This month I’m going to focus on my three favourite recent releases. And boy-howdy-got-milk are they really quite nice.

Coincidentally, as a kind of nota bene, I should point out they soundtracked an epic eight-hour rail journey between Barrow-In-Furness and Bournemouth really well. The dusky coastal sandflats morphing into rolling middle England hills, with the occasional low-lamp-lit commuter town cropping up, modulated the effect of each record with really interesting (and in some cases moving) results. Make of that what you will.

First up is the debut S/T release from The Eye of Time. It’s the solo post-industrial moniker of Marc Euvrie, a veteran of the French DIY hardcore scene. Euvrie is an angry man. An angry man is Euvrie. Over the course of two disks and three parts he manages to channel this withering nihilism into some of the most brutal clanging percussion, chainsaw-yelp vocals and dissonant sound forges that side of la Manche. Certainly, there are moments where looped piano refrains lock in so tightly with the motorik rhythms and unsettled washes of noise that you know the man, as an artist, has found a creative zenith. However, there are also troughs the mapped drums are gnat-tinny, and the instrumentation has a faint whiff of ‘hmmm, I’ll bung this in here for a few minutes…’ But, It’s nearly two hours long, y’know?

The use of rather disparate influences assimilated into his artistic leitmotif could have killed ‘The Eye of Time’ – not many people can mash together earthy ambient drones that morph into sheet-metal industrial techno by way of dead end power electronics. But somehow, it just about manages to be done. The passage I felt that really hit an angsty sense of ascension came late, in ‘000007091981151723031994’ (I know…) It was eerily reminiscent of Content Nullity’s ‘With these two bare hands…’ with that creeping ambience finally tearing the mind out of its tormented creator, leading to a vocal explosion of complete. Raw. Anguish. Parfait.

Then we come to Leeds trio ‘A-Sun Amissa’. Another debut, from ex-members of Glissando, ‘Desperate in Her Heavy Sleep’ combines experimental neo-classical tendencies with immersive, blissful drone.

The five tracks on ‘Desperate in Her Heavy Sleep’ explore subtle variations on a similar theme. The string passages avoid the saccharine by often playing at odds with the music, and the occasionally prominent guitar adds texture like on ‘Dislocated Harmony: Into Small Cold Eyes / Several Miles Above’ – something solid and corporeal, like a body in the mist. When the music swells and morphs into something larger and more urgent, it never feels orchestrated (boom tsh), it just feels right – it needs to be happening, it is happening and now my brain is trickling out my ears and I can’t move because I’m in a codependent relationship with sweet, sweet catatonia.

On listening to the album’s more moody passages, you can imagine that it is of a certain space. It’s hard not to think of the chip-wrapper strewn streets of a northern city, the sky as grey as the architecture, and the dead march oppression evoked by the strings in ‘A Hungover Whisper: Thin Light Failure / Decay’ Not to say there isn’t beauty to be found here; the chaotic spree of ‘Speechless Turns: Hung Up/Rejoice Me More Than Mine’ is almost joyful, with shrieks erupting from the bright, peppy sounds.

The final album we’re getting ear-deep into this month is ‘Rolling Bomber’, Another debut, this time from feted avant-garde drummer Erland Dahlen. Dahlen has played on over 130 releases since the mid nineties (cool), for acts such as Mike Patton (cooler), Hanne Hukkelberg (way cool) and Serena Maneesh (Über-cool). ‘Rolling Bomber’ is named after the kit he uses on the record, which dates back to World War II (so fucking cool I just lost my shit).

‘Rolling Bomber’ is a heavily percussive affair (duh…), which really does showcase quite how talented a drummer Dahlen is. His rhythms are novel, fresh and interesting, often propulsive and even when sparse – compelling. But, treasonous as it may be to say this, the most interesting aspects of this album lie not in his drumming, but in the chiming, buzzing and bowed accompaniments to said drumming.

It takes someone with a special affinity for sound to make such hyper-electronic noisy glitches sound quite as organic as Dahlen does, and doubly earthy when matched with what I think is a musical saw (on opener ‘Flower Power’) and the plaintive sine-wave buzzes on ‘Dragon’.

Over the course of these seven tracks Dahlen shows just how broad in scope music can be with percussion at its core, and by embellishing it with very complimentary textures and sounds, just how fascinating (not mutually exclusive from ‘enjoyable’) it can be. It also makes you realize exactly what more mainstream ‘experimental’ artists are trying to achieve, if only they could shake their perverse love for U2 (*cough*, Radiohead…. *cough*).

Black Vase: February Edition

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 21:41:00 +0100

This is the second column in a series for The 405

First off, I would like to apologise for the tardiness of my second column, I’ve been a bit busy sorting out a schlepp 350 miles southwards with all my possessions. But ne’er a worry, I still managed to hunt down some sick sounds for you lot to check out.

Before I start though, I want to point out that not everything in these columns is going to be completely current. As is the way of hunting down the types of music I’m writing about, it was probably released on ‘One Man and His Dog Records’ by one man and his dog on C90 limited to about 17 and a half copies. It’s not specifically a news-y column (and if you want up to date info, Twitter exists – just sayin’), just a place where I can hopefully turn some people onto some of the incredible and mind bending stuff people have turned me onto.

Secret Pyramid were brought to my attention by a friend who spent some time down and out in Vancouver, and I’m really glad he did. Their two current releases – ‘Ghosts’ and ‘The Silent March’ are a bitch to get hold of, yet readily available to stream and download online – with the artists’ consent (here, for example).

The solo project of Amir, from Toronto’s dream pop overlords Solars - Secret Pyramid occupies that unreal place in between consciousness and sleep. The intense drones almost feel corporeal, so breathy you could imagine them escaping like vapour on a frosty morning and so shrouded in reverb it envelopes all around it. It also made the post-war fittings in my mum’s house rattle, which is hella cool.

Moving away from the organic to the, ahem, completely un-organic, another happy find this month has been Alteria Percepsyne. AP is Oxford native Emily Griffiths, who has been producing electronic music of varying forms since 2004 – with the more familiar minimal techno sounds you can hear now beginning in 2009.

Taking inspiration from the cyclical repetition of Steve Reich, old school dub techno like Basic Channel and Gas - and a bit of post-punk and shoegaze – Emily/AP creates submersive pad sounds and hypnagogic beats that really stir the porridge (that’s a real saying, honest). In her own words, ‘…with [AP] I try to create an immersive atmosphere and open a dream-world to the listener, whilst inducing deeply emotional experiences’.

There are currently two AP releases - Intangible Flutter (2010) and Cloaks of Perception (2011) – with plans for a 12” release some time this year. Good.

Moving on to something a bit more between the lines, ‘You Are Genius’, the second album by Berlin five-piece Condre Scr is due to drop February 24th via Oxide Tones. As a newcomer to the band, I was put off by what I at first perceived to be sub-Mogwai post-rock circa 2004. But perseverance proved fruitful, as tracks like ‘The Excellent Cook’ evoked the same static head-fluff as Eluvium’s ‘Lambent Material’. Largely though, this is instrumental post-rock that sounds a bit like Mogwai circa 2004, and should be treated as such. If you like that, you’ll like this. Etc.

Another bunch of posthumous props this week goes to Tampa, Fl. sonic terrorists Neon Blud. Thanks to those wonderful folk at Maximum Rock’N’Roll, I went from having never heard of Neon Blud to realising they’re the best thing ever (hyperbole alert), to realising they are on ‘indefinite hiatus’ as of last August in the space of about five minutes. Doesn’t matter though, as there is still a remote chance that a shelved album will be coming out via Cult Maternal soon.

In the meantime, nab the out of print ‘Whipps CS’ here and revel in its snotty-as-fuck Teenage Jesus meets Polvo mess. And then cry, because you will never see it live.

On the live front, there are two particularly exciting events happening in the near future. First off is the sixth and final British Wildlife festival at the Brudenel Social Club, Royal Park and Oporto in Leeds. It’s criminally cheap (the Friday and Sunday nights are donation only, and the Saturday all-dayer is £8) and features some of the UK’s finest noiseniks. Particularly exciting is a chance to catch the eight-piece sturm und drang of Hey Colossus, legendary UK underground psych-heads Ashtray Navigations and the hardcore-meets-bonkers psychedelia of Zun Zun Egui. British Wildlife runs from the 2nd to 4th or March, and you can get tickets here.

And finally, in news that should please everyone, everywhere, Liz Harris (AKA Grouper) is to bring a completely new live project to the UK. ‘Violet Replacement’ is a set of tape loops and field recordings due to be performed live in specially selected locations. Anyone who has encountered Grouper’s particular brand of echoplectic, keys and guitar driven drone-folk before will know what a treat it will be to hear a new project from her. A CD of the material is also due to be released early this year. The UK dates run through mid-March and can be found over at The Wire.

Review: Tom Arthurs/Ollie Bown/Isambard Khroustaliov/Lothar Ohlmeier - Long Division

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:40:00 +0000

This review is part of my ongoing ‘Black Vase’ series for The 405.

From the off, there are several interesting things of note about this release, so I’ll start at the bottom. Just think of it like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, with the label at the bottom and the music at the top.

Not Applicable is not so much a record label, as a framework for producing music (I know that that, by definition, is what a label is, but bear with me). It is a label insofar as it is a tool for music to be transferred from the domain of the people creating it, into the domain of the listener. A monetary transaction may, or may not occur to enable this.

However, since its conception in 2002, the label has acted more as a way of documenting audio and visual collaborations between a collective of influential musicians, artists and film makers. This documentation comes in the form of performances, CD’s, DVD’s, installations and on the web.

Another key nugget is just how many of the releases are collaborative (the majority of them) and improvised. To me, this means there can be a level of fluidity present in what the label produces that the traditional framework could not, by design, attain. In other words, the polyamoury within the collective means that new ways of working and creating music are found because the same formula between the same people is not overused.

Any road, the current release I’m reviewing is ‘Long Division’, a ‘suite for autonomous electronics’ performed at the North Sea Jazz Festival and again at NK in Berlin as part of the NA Festival. The release is a collection of recordings from both of those live actions.

The musicians performing on the recording are Tom Arthurs (Trumpet, Flugelhorn), Ollie Bown (Autonomous Electronics), Lothar Ohlmeier (Clarinet, Bass Clarinet) and Isambard Kroustaliov (Autonomous Electronics).

Before delving into the whys and wherefores of the record, I feel I should offer a disclaimer of sorts about my personal feelings of live and improvised recordings. To me, much as the outcome of the music depends largely on the in-the-moment headspace and feeling of the musicians, the enjoyment of the recording can depend largely on the in-the-moment headspace of the listener. Suffice to say, there are times when listening to this album I have been bowled over by its instrumental symbiosis, and times when I have wanted to stick a pencil through my eardrums so that I may never hear anything like it again. Such is life.

All that aside, the first thing that struck me was the relationship between the two types of instrumentation on display. At times, they represented polar opposites – the electronics of Bown and Kroustaliov providing juddering static crackles, and the brass and woodwind of Arthurs and Ohlmeier its counterpoint. This is especially apparent on track two, where Ohlmeier’s Clarinet runs long, fluid, breathy passages over a mixture of squelches and digital wind.

And then, as the pieces develop, the line between the organic and the synthetic is blurred. What sound like distorted field recordings become an otherworldly imitation of an organic environment, while Arthurs and Ohlmeier evoke strangled, glottal spasms from their instruments. This is where, to me, the beauty lies in this set of recordings – when preconceived ideas of what roles certain instruments should play are challenged to the extent that you’re not even sure what instrument is what. It feels as though they are reveling in the lack of limitations improvisation presents to them as a musician.

Interesting that may be, and surely the basis of many-a music undergrad’s dissertation, but there still remains whether or not ‘Long Division’ is an enjoyable listen. Certainly it is challenging, and often thought provoking, but there are many moments in its 50-minute running time where the bursts of improvisational inspiration are outweighed by passages that feel like filler.

Luckily, these are rescued by passages where the interplay between electronic and organic is positively hand-in-glove, an essential relationship.

‘Long Division’ is due to be played Monday 30^th January at King’s Place, London. If you are interested in improvisation, I urge you to go along, as ‘Long Division’ is almost a blueprint for everything it can be – both good and bad.

Black Vase 1

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 18:22:00 +0000

This is the first in a series of new columns I’m running for The 405 (www.thefourohfive.com/@The405). I’m writing mainly about avant/drone/noise stuff. Originally published HERE.

When Oliver tweeted asking if anyone would like to write about ‘out there’ sounds, I thought, ‘yeah, why not. I like a bit of that.’ But what exactly is ‘that’? By proxy it’s usually a fool’s game to try and categorise, but for the sake of simplicity, lets just say we’re talking about music that pushes boundaries to the extreme.

Now, pop music often pushes boundaries (usually those of taste…) but rarely does it cause you to question your own perception of what music actually is. I remember hearing Whitehouse’s ‘Why You Never Became A Dancer’ for the very first time, and having every preconceived notion in my tiny little mind turn into a fine pink mist. It was both terrifying and revelatory, and very much in-at-the-deep-end.

Pontification aside, 2011 was an excellent year for experimental music. You only have to look at the scores of end of year lists to see musicians who have come straight out of leftfield placed relatively highly. The much maligned micro-scene of witch house/drag has matured away from its drab drones to produce sumptuous chop’d and screw’d works like Oneohtrix Point Never’s ‘Replica’, and Patten’s ‘GLAQJO XACCSSO’ – a gorgeous piece of work where shuddering breaks collide with analogue-y blips.

Also to be found bothering top 50s everywhere was Tim Hecker’s ‘Ravedeath, 1972’. My first listen of this album was on a solitary beach walk between Bournemouth and Sandbanks – it was windy and cold, but Hecker’s lush, dusty textures created an ambient warmth – the perfect antidote to the cold, static fog of say, Fennesz (and the south coast in February.)

Heading further through the looking glass, the intimidatingly prolific output of Alva Noto (stage name of Carsten Nikolai, he of Rastor Noton records fame) reached a creative zenith with the release of ‘Univers’ – a hypnotic set of work that flits between minimal tech one second and the sound of your very own technological nightmare the next. If ‘Kid A’ is supposed to explore the landscape of an apocalyptic technological age, ‘Univers’ is the malfunctioning microchip that sets about triggering the singularity.

Elsewhere, drone metal pioneers Earth returned with ‘Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I’, which saw their continued distancing from ‘Sunn O))) Amps and Smashed Guitars’ culminate in glorious freeform folk, and the misleadingly-monikered Master Musicians of Bukkake completed their totem trilogy with ‘Totem Three’ – in which the Pacific Northwestern collective are on particularly fine psychedelic form.

Another turn up for the books was ex-Whitehouse Wasp-botherer William Bennett’s ‘Afro-Noise’ project, Cut Hands. Bennett has explained in many interviews how the continent of Africa has inspired him since the conception of Whitehouse and continues to this day. ‘Afro Noise I’ succeeded in that it’s combination of tribal rhythms and harsh power electronics toned down the relentless assault of Whitehouse, while still sounding intense and claustrophobic.

Outside of releases, it was great to see Supersonic Festival return for a ninth year – it’s no stretch to say that the contribution the Capsule ladies make to experimental music in the UK is invaluable, and as an event, Supersonic is inimitable. Also worth mentioning are the great nights put on at London’s Café Oto and GV Art gallery.

But now, as I should, I shall re-start as I mean to continue and tell you about some of the awesome-as-shit stuff I’ve heard over 2011’s death knell.

Firstly, I was gifted a copy of Aidan Baker’s new monsterpiece ‘The Spectrum of Distraction’. At 97 tracks and just under two hours, listening in one fell swoop is a daunting task. Luckily, the idea behind the project is to listen to it completely at random, thus making each new listening experience pretty much alien to the last. Now, I really enjoyed the album as a piece in itself. The obviously mapped drums playing havoc with Baker’s trademark fuzzed-to-infinity guitars (though admittedly, not so much Nadja wall of noise as singular gut punch). But on shuffle, it sounded a hell of a lot like someone had given Mike Patton a copy of Garageband for the first time. Oh, and Patton’s a toddler. Not my cup of tea. ‘The spectrum of Distraction’ is out now on Robotic Empire records.

Then I checked out Petrels - the solo project of Bleeding Heart Narrative’s Oliver Barrett, and his debut long player ‘Haeligewielle’. A stunning piece of work, ‘Haeligewielle’ (old Saxon for ‘holy well’) transports the listener over a multitude of textures and terrains, from echo-drenched and urgent string sections, to fathomless wells of glorious noise via layered chants and a scintillatingly rhythmic culmination. ‘Haeligewielle’ is a true journey of an album that awards the listener with the smother of climax at its end.

Our final mention this time goes to Birds of Passage, otherwise known as New Zulland experimental musician (and tree-climbing enthusiast) Alicia Merz. Camping in a not-dissimilar field to Grouper, Alicia’s second album ‘Winter Lady’ is the most perfect antithesis to saccharine singer-songwriters. Musically, its field recordings, sparse drones and even sparser piano blanket her spider-web soft vocal delivery in ice, only for her to thaw the sound around her with emotion. Wondrous stuff.

‘Haeligewielle’ and ‘Winter Lady’ are both available on Denovali Records.

An Evening With The Twilight Sad

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:46:00 +0000

The Twilight Sad are a strange beast. They arouse fervour in their fans, the bulk of whom (myself included) don’t understand why they aren’t selling out headline slots at academies nation wide.

Since the arrival of their debut, ‘Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters’ in 2007, the Sad lads have toured with Mogwai, been awarded many ‘Album of the Year’ plaudits, and are due to release their third long player, titled ‘No One Can Ever Know’ on February 13^th, on Fat Cat records.

Leaked previews and the release of single ‘Sick’ show a band moving on, away from the Mogwai/MBV-esque wall-of-noise and towards whip-crack synth-drums and the kind of pads Cab Voltaire and Depeche Mode made their name with – and Cold Cave are currently running with.

I sat down for a chat with jocular (boom-tsh) vocalist James Graham at the Mad Ferret (again, boom-tsh) in Preston - rehearsing rockabilly band to the left of us, sirens to the right – and asked him about their place in British music, working with Andy Weatherall, and supporting their long-time heroes Arab Strap.

What was it like supporting Arab Strap?

Well pretty mindblowing to be honest with you. I’m good pals with Aidan [Moffat] and Malcolm [Middleton] now, and for them to be a fan of the band is just… They were what I grew up listening to – even though they’re pals and they like the band, to be asked to do that… it was just a wee acoustic set we did, but it went down really well and the crowd was amazing for us, deadly silent.

That’s awesome

Aye, even though I kinda think their fans could like us as well - we’re like them in some ways but in a lot of ways we’re not. It was brilliant, a good laugh, and I got to stand at the side of the stage for the whole Arab Strap gig, and I think I just stood there with a big smile on my face. I’m usually a miserable bastard but that night was definitely a career high highlight instead of a ‘this year’ highlight, it’s one of the best things we’ve done.

Mogwai and them, that’s the two bands that I wanted to support and so…

Well you’ve been on tour with Mogwai a few times haven’t you?

Yeah, and they’re good pals as well so it’s all a wee bit of a mindfuck for us. But it’s the biggest compliment to be paid. Nobody’s forced our band on these people; they went out of their way to befriend us and to like our music.

Do Mogwai feel like father figures?

They say to us that we remind them of them when they were our age. We’ve definitely taken a lot of advice from them and they’ve tried to help us along as much as they can, but they really don’t have to, but they do. And if I’ve got a question – say something about the business side of stuff I’ll email Stuart [Braithwaite] and he’ll help us out. I dunno about father figures ‘cos they’re bad role models, taking us out and getting’ steamin’!

The new Album’s out in Feb. You had a really signature sound before. How did the departure come about?

It was never… For us it doesnae seem to be a big departure to be honest. I still do it the same way. I didn’t change anything about what I write about, and I did that and Andy [MacFarlane, Guitar] gave me the music straight back. It was just a case that we all started writing songs and using instruments that were interesting us. And if we’d just repeated our first album or repeated our second album, there’d be no point. We’d have called it a day after a while.

[rockabilly band starts playing in background]

…that’s what we want to be playing! But the erm… I would probably have called it moving forward. I love our first album and I love our second album and I love our third album. But the second one didn’t sound like the first and the third one certainly doesn’t sound like the second. We are just going to keep going, and interesting ourselves so…

Would you say it’s more of an evolution?

Aye, aye. I hate using the words ‘Natural Progression’ because everybody bloody does it and it’s so wanky it’s unbelievable, but it makes sense that way.

You got Andy Weatherall on hand, and he’s a pretty big name. What did he do? How did he contribute? Did you want him on board?

The records he’s been involved in recently have been great, like the Warpaint album.

I didn’t know he had anything to do with that.

Aye, aye, I don’t think he did the whole thing. And I like what he did to them, and we knew he was a fan of the band, and they gave him all the demos and he said ‘shit, this is right up my alley this’. And then, by the time we got down to London we’d done all the pre-production ourselves, he kinda went ‘d’you know what? Yous have produced this’.

He was just there as a… reassurance. He’d be like ‘aye, that’s cool, that’s cool – this is pretty much exactly how I’d do it anyway’. He was there as an ‘anti-producer’. It was just good to have him right there, to bounce stuff off and at the same time to reassure us that we were on the right track. And we kept a lot of the vocals, and the sounds on it and stuff. We produced the album, but we definitely wanted to credit him because we felt like he’d helped us.

For the second album, I remember reading that you were in a very dark place, has anything changed?

Erm, the weird thing is that I think… I gave the album to Stuart and Aidan and they were like ‘man, it’s fucken darker than the last one!’ I was like ‘what, really?’ I thought I’d lightened up a wee bit! I mean, I always focus in on the darker side of things a bit - it interests me more. I like darker films and I like darker music myself so, I find that side’a life more interesting. And I always kinda write about that stuff as it can help you think everything through in a way, so you can get through that.

Like Catharsis?

Yeah, totally man. I think I spoke too much about the last album, I usually keep what everything’s about to myself, and I was a wee bit annoyed with myself for talking a wee bit too much. So with this one I’ll just keep it all to myself this time. I think ‘cos also the fact that people can take what they want from it, and me explaining what the songs are about could spoil it for them in some way. But I’m just gonna keep it to myself this time. I mean, with a title like ‘No one can ever know’, what the fuck didyae expect? The thing is, we’re all of us in the band pretty easy-going guys, and we’re not miserable fucking mops. We just take that side of life out in our music. Apart from that, I just have as good a time as anybody else. Aye, aye. This one’s no’a barrel o’ laughs.

In terms of production and the music… I don’t wanna say retro obviously, because it sounds like you in 2011 - but it says in the press release you were listening to Depeche Mode, Cab Voltaire… Do you see the theme of the record as tying in what what’s happening in the country at the moment? Because the way I look at it it’s like we’re living in the 80s right now.

I’m the least political person goin’, I don’t even know what’s happenin’ in the day-to-day of my own life so… [much laughter] I dunno, eh, we just… Angry young men, I suppose that’s what we are. Even though the country’s fallin’ to piss, we’ve been in a band for 7 years living off absolutely nothing so it’s just the same for us – we’ve never had any money to live.

We’ve probably felt it as a band touring, and things like that – people are still coming to gigs and that but the merchandise situation… If you’re gonna pay to get into a gig and then have a few drinks, and if the merch is pretty expensive - even a tenner’s quite a lot of money - and especially people coming to see us as well. We’re feeling it that way, I suppose. But yeah, I dunno about it tying in with that…

I heard a rumour from a friend, that you wouldn’t go on stage before drinking 8 pints.

Ah I definitely like a drink before I go on, I’m not a… natural front man in that way. I don’t want to be, either. I just wanted to write songs. So a wee bit o’ encouragement from the old booze definitely helps me out. I’ve tried to cut back on it a wee bit now, but I still like to tan a few before we go on, cos it just loosens me up a wee bit and all my nerves will be gone. The more we do it… I’m getting used to it. I wouldnae say I’m all [adopts wankery voice] ‘hi guys, we’re the Twilight Sad…!’ that’s still not me, but I certainly like a drink, aye.

Not that I’m judging!

Hahaha, don’t care! The thing is, there have been points where I’ve been drunk on stage and I feel stupid for that, because people come to the gigs, and they pay money, and they don’t have to come, so if I’m going on stage absolutely plastered it’s not fair and it’s bullshit, basically. But at the same time, I need a drink to boost myself up. I always try and loose myself in my own world, sort of pretend that the audience aren’t there… Well sometimes they’re no’! So yeah basically I kinda just try and think about why I wrote the song in the first place, and just try and bring that out in that.

How have line up changes affected the band, if at all?

Craig, the old bass player leaving, it was a surprise but we’re all still really good friends with him. There’s no animosity. In fact, I was out with him last night. He didn’t come to the gig, he was at some kind of opera about a packet of vegetables or somethin’. We all got on really well. But Johnny [Docherty, Bass] coming into the band breathed some new life into us cos he’s a different kinda player – he’s more aggressive. Um, cos, like he’s in a few hardcore bands as well and he’s a more aggressive player, but it just breathes more life into the songs it’s like he’s harder and it’s more… it’s as intense as it’s ever been. Plus he’s a maniac as well. Him coming into the band has improved us. And Dok [Guitar, Synths, Vocals] on keys has given Andy a bit more space, ‘cos he was playing 5 parts.

He was creating a one-man wall of sound.

Basically, he’s still pretty much doing that, but it’s given him more freedom to be a bit more experimental in some ways. Dok’s basically… without him the band wouldnae be happenin’. I’m more confident about our band now than I’ve ever been.

How are you dealing with space in the sound now?

There isnae any! I never have space. We’ve done a few acoustic gigs recently and it’s been good to show people that I can actually sing. I’ve enjoyed that, but I enjoy doing the full band more because it’s just this massive thing, y’know? But no, I’ve never had any space.

And finally, going back to drinking, I’d define Twilight Sad as being music to the eternal hangover. How d’you feel about that?

I would never listen to us with a hangover! Aye, it will definitely wake you up. Even though there’s differences to it, it’s still in yer face, it’s still very intense, just because there may not be the wall of sound, doesnae mean… You know what I mean? I think it’s a different way of putting the noisy element of the band… more creatively, instead of just going BANG BANG BANG. We’ve just developed our songwriting like that.

TP RCRDS '11

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 21:28:00 +0000

I’m not going to use a rounded number just to fit in - if I have to think about putting it in to get to say, ten or 50, then it’s obviously not a favourite.

So here they are, in no particular order.

Except EMA. ‘Cos EMA is tha best.

EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints

Josh T. Pearson - Last of the Country Gentlemen

Cold Cave - Cherish The Light Years

Bill Wells & Aidan Moffat - Everything’s Getting Older

Witch Cult - Witch Cult

Zola Jesus - Conatus

Tim Hecker - Ravedeath, 1972

HTRK - Work (work, work)

Mayyors - Deads EP

The Men - Leave Home

Wugazi - 13 Chambers

Sleepingdog - With Our Heads In The Clouds and Our Hearts In The Fields

Hey Colossus - RRR

Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

Balam Acab - Wander / Wonder

run,WALK! - Peekay EP

Enablers - Blown Realms and Stalled Explosions

Pariso/Kerouac - Split

PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

Bit of a work in progress this, will most likely add and take away. Slightly worried that everything on here is vaguely depressing.

On The Female Anti-Hero...

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:28:00 +0000

Article due to be published in Ghost Fuck #2

For the eighth, and reportedly last, time, Hugh Laurie has returned to screens as the womanising, drug addicted, socially repugnant – but most importantly – heroic, Dr. Gregory House.

The success of House has canonised the eponymous character; placing him amongst a group of elite (and mostly male) characters known for their complexity as much as their moral ambiguity and ability to just get the job done, no matter what the cost. The rough diamonds. The antiheroes.

You know who I’m talking about: Cracker, Jack Regan, Carlin - and more recently Jack Bauer, Tony Soprano, Dexter, and of course, House. These characters often aren’t particularly nice – nor do they do nice things; but for some reason we are drawn to them. We lionize their masculinity, their power is sexualised and their vices are sympathised with as a mere byproduct of being a top geezer.

TV Tropes is an exhaustive Wiki-style ‘…catalog of the tricks of the trade for writing fiction’. Their section on the antihero proved particularly illuminating, shedding light on not just our bog standard antihero (‘…a protagonist who has the opposite of most of the traditional attributes of a hero.) But also the ‘Nineties Anti-Hero’ (‘Not only are they flawed, they may lack any heroic attributes’), the ‘Heroic Sociopath’ (‘He differs from most Anti-Hero archetypes in that he’s never ineffectual or angsty - he loves what he does for a living.’) And the Femme Fatale.

Anita Sarkeesian, creator of the excellent Feminist Frequency ran a special series of Vlogs in partnership with Bitch Media focusing on certain female Tropes, especially those that she thought to be especially demeaning or oppressive. After a quick browse of TV Tropes, it’s hard to see how she narrowed it down to six.

Anita defines the Anti-Hero Trope thusly. “The Anti-Hero usually has a questionable moral compass and the Anti-Hero tends to… shift a little bit one way or another toward the end of their character development.” Anita identifies two strong female examples of the Anti-Hero to be Starbuck, Battlestar Gallactica’s maverick Viper pilot, and Faith – the wise cracking Black Dahlia to Buffy’s (she who slays Vampires) Valley-girl Rose. I myself offered Misfits’ kiss-your-mother-with-that-mouth Kelly.

TV Tropes lists many characters in Film and TV who are perceived as being part of the Anti-Hero trope. Using some rough maths (some of the characters listed are bunched into groups) I concluded that in films, roughly one female character for every six males is listed. In television, it is one for every seven. Naturally, some are disputable – such is the nature of a Wiki-style source. But even with a shift of two or three either way, the results would still be overwhelming.

Tentatively playing devil’s advocate, I proposed the idea that there could be something inherently masculine about the Anti-Hero. Anita deconstructed my theory with a weary and disinterested sigh, proposing that the construction of ‘good versus evil’, or ‘hero versus villain’ were molded around male characteristics – and that the issue lay with writers, directors and producers (or just the behind-the-scenes bankrollers…) merely trying to stick women into this framework.

“Like, what does a female hero look like, one that’s not just emulations or duplications of the male heroic type?”

Maybe we can look to Dame Helen Mirren as an example for a strong, whole female character? In her paper, ‘‘A Good Body’ – The Case Of/For Feminist Media Studies’, Sue Thornham looks at Mirren’s role as DCI Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect, and claims that instead of being allowed the traits of the male antihero, she is instead placed alongside the predominantly female victims, herself made part of the display. It’s hard not to imagine that a male character would have been shown with cool detachment – their Holmesian mind a-whirring.

With a recent US reboot, Prime Suspect has been given the plastic-people-guns’n’violence treatment. Also, ‘Tennison’ is replace with ‘Timoney’. Americanised ocular torture aside, the program shows subtle advances in a more complete representation of a female character – a step closer a character that is what Anita would call ‘a full and complete human being’.

“[The writers] actually allowed us as the viewer to see why she’s so tough and emotionally closed off, but we also see her facing the difficulty of being in this heavily patriarchal space, having them call her out on only making it to the position she’s in because she slept with someone.

“She [Timoney] has to be tougher than all of the guys and smarter than all of the guys and you see her struggle with it, and you also see the emotional ramifications of that on a personal level”. This is no real revelation for British fans of the program, but it does represent the snail’s pace at which complex female characters are being introduced to our screens.

So how will this happen? What will it take for women to be represented as ‘full and complete human beings’ on our screens?

“In terms of creating some sort of gender parity in Hollywood - in TV and movies - it’s just gonna come down to having a more feminist lens inside of these writing rooms and being able to write more characters with deep complexity.

“If we have gender parity it makes sense to have more antihero female charaters, more villainous female characters, more questionable female characters. But until then – when women are on screen and they are shown as manipulative and shown as using their sexuality to seduce men, those become stereotypes that are placed onto real women in the real world.”

The Best Food I Ever Ate: Bosniak Coffee and Burek in Mostar

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 17:56:00 +0000

Originally Published in Sabotage Times, 17th Dec 2011

A sojourn around former Yugoslavia – beautiful though it is – is not really the best trip to take for the herbivores among us. The national dishes of each Eastern European country rely heavily on fleisch, and my main sustenance on that trip came from cheese and bread, or bread and cheese.

Now, I’m a fan of bread and cheese. As a veggie, a nice rustic doorstop cheese sarnie is a quick and reliable staple – Salad Cream please, no Mayo. Maybe a few choices slices of salad vegetable if I feel so inclined. After all, what’s a life without whimsy? But five weeks of being bound up like a dried out cement mixer took the edge off somewhat, and I was aching for something that would tickle the palate.

From the near-Mediterranean splendour of Split in Croatia, I decided to bod on up to Mostar in Bosnia, having once read about it in a book. It was on the way to Sarajevo and had a really really old bridge that the Croats had bombed four-fifths of a flying fuck out of during the war. Good enough for me.

What stunned me about Mostar, first and foremost, was its beauty. I had a very firm image of Bosnia in my mind that mainly came from ‘Behind Enemy Lines’ – crumbling Soviet tower blocks, an eternal winter, and craggy, scarified old men in dirty vests – a dog end eternally affixed to tar-stained lips.

Safe to say I was wrong. The Ottoman Empire had a huge effect on this part of Europe, and I was greeted by a spicy, heady exoticism of Bazaars and cobble-streets, Backgammon in the sun, the whiff of smoke and strong coffee inducing the giddiness of exploration.

Once the 40-degree heat had worn me down sufficiently, I decided to take a break and found a café. It was a wonderful garden-type affair, set in the side of a hillock on the banks of the river Neretva, right next to the now rebuilt Stari Most. From here I could watch the local oiled Adonis’ ransack tourists for money, before jumping off the 79ft structure into the – remarkably shallow – river below.

The waiter – in between playing tune after tune of ear-rape turbo-folk – popped on over and took my order. In need of some pepping up I ordered a coffee and a glass of iced water. Enquiring about snacks, I was told that I should really try Burek – kind of like a sausage roll, with the sausage replaced by melted cheese. Great. Some form of carbs and cheese. Quelle fucking surprise.

I waited for my food feeling rather content. Small finch-like birds played chicken with the ash I was flicking into the ashtray, and the sickly-sweet smell of overripe figs from the trees above me invaded my senses – in a nice way. I tried to catch the eye of a stunning Balkan beauty sat one table over, barefoot and sporting an artfully ripped Sonic Youth tee. Labret piercing glinting in the sunlight as she talked. My reverie was broken with the arrival of my munch.

The coffee was served in the traditional way, grounds floating in the tar-black sludge, housed and brewed in a roughly beaten copper pot. An important distinction to make between Bosnian Coffee (or ‘Bosanska Kahva’) and the more commonly known Turkish coffee is in the preparation. A small amount of water is saved aside once boiling, and then the coffee and water are added to the pot. Once mixed, the remaining water is added and the coffee is brought back up to boiling point again. Apparently it adds depth and flavor. Like it needed more.

I sipped my coffee as is customary, with a brown sugar cube snuggled under my tongue. As it dissolved, it spiked the black diesel liquid with a syrupy sweetness that gave quite the perky kick. Chasing it with sips of iced water had the effect of revitalising my insides. The hot-sweet and bitter coffee and the cool and refreshing water were the devil and god raging inside me. Well, raging inside my guts.

Revived is an understatement – there is weaker Cocaine to be found in SU bars the country over than Bosnian Coffee – I decided to move onto my Burek. About six inches long, two inches wide, greasy and sprinkled with sesame seeds, it wasn’t much to look at. I could bullshit at length about how it had the deep lush hue of a summer cornfield – but it looked like it came from Greggs.

I tentatively chomped down on one end, Sirene (Balkan Goats cheese) oozed into my mouth. And it was everything you wanted in a foodstuff. The pastry was perfect – moist but not too greasy, flaky and crisp on the outside, chewy towards the center. The cheese was salty – the consistency somewhere in between melted cheddar and Feta. Not stringy, but not crumbly either. It had a proper sour twang to it. Nice, if you like that kind of thing.

And as I sat there, breathing deeply the fig-scented air and watching the world pass, Gitane after Gauloises after Camel (fags were so cheap I started a lucky dip process), the coffee starting to supercharge my veins and my mouth a-hum with the stodgy, savoury tones of Burek, I thought to myself that I had never felt quite so contented.

FAO: Wannabe Columnists RE: Reality TV

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 23:12:00 +0000

Capitalism, as the saying goes, will never die owing to its ability to adapt to the problems it faces. The same could be said for reality television. For a genre that appeared to have jumped the shark long ago (as seen in Big Brother’s pitiful demise and demotion to Channel 5), it constantly finds new ways to root people to their seats and watch hour after hour of fame-hungry narcissists go about their lives.

But another thing that has changed is the way people write about it. More and more I am seeing bloggers and wannabe opinionistas sloshing out 1000 words of lowest common denominator attacks on said fame-hungry narcissists. Self-righteous hacks trying to emulate their lord and saviour, Charlie Brooker - all the while completely missing the subtle nuances to his ferocious spleen-venting, and ultimately, the insightful critique on modern-society-through-a pop-culture-lens contained within.

But, as I appear to be the 1% here (christ, that meme caught on fast, didn’t it?) I shall sagely dole out some advice for those of you who lack the brains to talk about ‘Made In Strictly EsseX Factor’, without splurging insipid, knuckle-dragging insults all over your best friend (sorry, computer).

First, you must go to a DIY shop and purchase a barrel. Any will do, no larger than a compost bin or water butt. Secondly, pop to a garden center or pet shop and acquire some fish. Between five and ten, of a good size (if money is no object, maybe some ornamental Koi?). This is important. If the fish are sold to you in a polythene bag, then you must make sure to have completed step one of this task. Thirdly, acquire a firearms licence - this is VITAL for step four, which is to acquire a firearm. A nice open choked shotgun will suffice - I want to give you the easiest chance possible. And now for stage five - place the fish in the barrel and shoot them.

You see, I really hate reality television. The way it elevates the cult of celebrity stratospheres above eminent thinkers, scientists or artists. I hate the way children are less likely to want to be Firefighters, Journalists or Police Officers, and are more often heard to say they simply want to be ‘famous’. But you know what I’m starting to hate more? The people who can whack a few slack-jawed insults into a Word Document about someone they have never met, and have the audacity to call it journalism.

/rant/

Seven Tribute Acts I'd Love To See

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 22:31:00 +0000

Gabba Gabba Oy Vey

The world’s only Jewish Ramones tribute act. Just imagine this tribute to the fast four, stomping on their yarmulke’s with their curly sidelocks bouncing along to ‘Schmule is a Punk Rocker’. On three now, “Hey little girl, Minorah be your boyfriend…”

Mumford and Dads

Let’s face it, boring MOR tripe is much more acceptable when played by middle aged geezers with paunches and bald patches. Hear them wheeze their way through “Sigh No More”, which now takes on the sinister edge of being about their wife’s lack of phatic grumbling after they buried her under the patio.

Fake Tan Morrison

The Norn Oirish Folk and Soul legend has rarely been done well (Jeff Buckley’s ‘Way Young Lovers Do’ aside), so why not let the cast of ‘The Only Way Is Essex’ have a blast? Listen in abject horror as Mark Wright dedicates ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ to no fewer than 67 women, and howl at the death of all that is beautiful as Amy Childs takes up a career as a Burlesque dancer under the pseudonym ‘Madame George’; then swoon with relief as ‘Van The Man’ grumps them all into a bloody pulp.

EDLP

No one in their right mind likes either prog rock or the neo-fascist organization, the ‘English Defence League’ – so why not combine the two into a singular target for our scorn? Laugh as 30 drunk football hooligans ham their way through a three hour organ solo, cry with mirth as a skinhead dons a cape and sings about Ents conspiring to overthrown the British way of life, and sharpen your knives as a major British tabloid writes a positive Op-Ed about their ‘cause’…

Symptom of a Downs Syndrome

Armenian lefty Nu-Metal as a form of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Anyone? Anyone?

The Tex Mex Pistols

If it works for Mariachi El Bronx, why not the Pistols? They can develop strong ties to Mexican drug cartels and have a resurgence of Rotten & Co’s youthful substance abuse while smuggling Sid Vicious’ corpse back and forth over the US/Mexico border as a Situationist spectacle. Never Mind The Burritos, Amigos!

The Wests

Gloucester MCs Freezey and Reezey attempt to channel the horror and brutality of two of the UK’s most notorious murderers through the music of Kanye West. ‘Runaway’ becomes ‘Runaway (‘Ere Darlin’, I’ll Give Yer A Lift)’, ‘Power’ becomes ‘Powertools (all up in yer grill)’. ‘I’m a muthafuckin’ monster’ indeed.

Uni Mistakes: How Trying To Impress Left Me Hallucinating For Three Weeks

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:07:00 +0100

First Published in Sabotage Times - October 2011

Before Uni I’d done my fair share of drug experimentation. Weed was ubiquitous, naturally. But closeness to Bristol provided some of the purest fuzzy-buzzy I-fucking-love-the-world MDMA you will ever consume. A few lost nights tripping balls on lethal Acid and Ketamine cocktails were had too. But my worst ever drug experience hasn’t come from any gak purchased on Glastonbury High St., it came from a mate’s 100% legal and 100% fucked up anti-depression meds. You’ve got to hand it to irony, that motherfucker has a keen sense of humour.

I started my degree in the autumn of 2008. It was a seasonably hot fresher’s week in Bournemouth – the days were spent making crackling out of our skin on the beach and the nights were spent getting suitably leathered. Freshers were out celebrating their freedom by vomming in gutters and getting ripped on in cabs. I had already spent my final year of A Levels living alone, so the debauchery was business as usual: the only difference was now I had company.

I’d already chatted to Dave (FYI, his name isn’t Dave) through Facebook over the summer. We were due to start the same degree and shared loves for Bukowski and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Needless to say, I was excited about meeting Dave. He seemed like a good sort. Dave, I hoped, would distract me from the absolute caricatures I had been forced into a student house with – three preening Sports students and two girls who did something to do with Fashion.

Anyway. The night I met Dave we waged a gargantuan battle against booze, and amazingly enough, seemed to be doing pretty well for ourselves. Everyone was new, and displaying a mixture of posturing and overt friendliness. After all, you didn’t know whom you’d end up spending the next three years with. The delight at finding common ground within the group was exacerbated. You’d think: “Holy shitballs, they like (such and such a band) too! Maybe we’ll be friends for life? Our lecturers will design some kind of blend of our names to reference just how inseparable we are!”

Now I will admit that my memory of the first half of the night is hazy. Fuck, my memory of that week is hazy. What I do know is that beers were drunk. Many tunes were put on the jukebox. Chips were bought. Cheese was added. I pissed on a car. People went their separate ways. I went back to Dave’s with more booze, to continue our muso pissing contest. We mainly played The Smiths.

I was stood on that perilous precipice between being hammered and passing out when the conversation turned to the blister pack of pills I found on Dave’s desk. ‘Zoloft’ was stamped on the foil side in a black serif. The name was vaguely familiar, like Adderall or Percocet and all those other drugs you hear of via American TV yet you have no idea what they’re actually for. “Oh, those are the meds for my depression”, said Dave. I knew Dave suffered with depression, but had no idea it was to the extent that he was actually medicated.

I floated that idea that I try one. We joked and unanimously agreed that it’d be fucking funny. Hilarity would ensue and all that. I was keen to prove how hardcore I was. After more deliberation Dave decided it was a bad idea, and after all – he needed them. Hindsight has proved Dave to be a very, very wise character. It has also proved me to be a fucking idiot.

No sooner had I hit the lights than I suffered the most intense, corporeal hallucinations of my life – Acid had nothing on this.

Then followed a decision I regret to this day. Being the fucking idiot I am, I discreetly stuffed the Zoloft into my pocket and went to the loo. I popped three 25mg pills. Enough to make Silvia Plath run around handing out flowers to aids-orphans. Stupidly pleased with myself I headed back down to Dave’s room, whacked the packed back on his desk and crashed out on the floor, grinning like the Grinch with a sack full of Whoville’s presents. Their happy, happy presents.

Waking up the next day, I had the floatiest of heads. I couldn’t quite put a finger on what was wrong, but I felt like I’d gone 12 rounds of electro-convulsive therapy. MY body was a dead weight – all major decisions made with difficulty by the mass of scrambled egg that had replaced my grey matter.

I spent the day lying on the sofa, feeling more depressed than I ever had in my life. It seems that if you don’t need the happy pills, they have an adverse effect. Especially when they join forces with a crippling hangover. A quick scour on the Interwebs lists Zoloft overdose symptoms as drowsiness (check), vomiting (check), shakiness (check) and agitation (double check). As I was to find out, this was soft-core compared to what was to come.

I made it to about 8pm having not moved and decided a clean was in order. 30 minutes in the shower proved to have a miraculous effect. I came out sunshine and flowers. I was overwhelmed with such a feeling of joie de vivre that I ignored the nagging thought of just how extreme my mood swings were. Cleary, something was very fucking wrong.

I decided on an early night and hit the sack around 9 - this is when everything went very wrong indeed. No sooner had I hit the lights than I suffered the most intense, corporeal hallucinations of my life – Acid had nothing on this. As many as 50 figures swarming around my room in full Technicolor; swooping down on me, attacking me, and generally scaring the living fuck out of me. Their faces were completely unrecognisable - but at the same time I felt I knew them. Intensely unnerved and feeling for the first time that I’d really gone too far – I spent a night of fitful sleep in the living room; all lights on and chock full of fear that I may have actually fucked myself beyond repair.

I had developed what is known as ‘serotonin syndrome’. This is when a wrongly administered dose of Zoloft reacts with Ibuprofen (the shit I used to make me feel better) and messed about with my serotonin levels (the shit that makes you happy). Symptoms include hallucinations, tachycardia and Confusion. And fuck me if I didn’t have all three.

This continued for about three weeks. Each night the same thing - lights out, people appear, terror ensues, insomnia reigns. Not a great way to start your first term, as you can imagine.

Gradually, the effects wore off. Though to this day I can catch myself daydreaming in a dark room, staring dreamily at a shadow in the corner of a room that will slowly begin to mutate, morph and come alive…

I’d like to say I haven’t touched drugs since – but that would be a lie – but what I can honestly say is when I have, they’ve come in a baggy, not a blister pack. And though they may cause the temporary side effects of being an obnoxious twerp with too much love to give, they haven’t come close to doing the damage caused by messing with meds.

How Nirvana’s Nevermind Destroyed Grunge

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 13:22:00 +0100

Originally Published September 2011, on Sabotage Times

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of Nirvana’s defining work Nevermind, an album which bizarrely destroyed the genre it had helped to create.

Many see Nirvana’s sophomore album as the zenith of that scene what we know as ‘Grunge’. A production masterclass, courtesy of Butch Vig, it took three freaks from a Washington logging town up to the dizzying heights of the Billboard Album Chart #1 spot; toppling the world’s biggest pop star, Michael Jackson, off his perennial perch.

To date, the album has gone diamond (10x platinum), selling over 30 million copies. This is still 14 million copies less than Whitney Houston’s ‘Bodyguard’ soundtrack released a year later, but pop culture is funny like that. Released September 24th 1991, it took a little under four months for the album to hit the number one spot in three countries, by which point it was shifting 300,000 units a week – at which point Nirvana’s old Label, Sub Pop, were presumably tying nooses over the fact that they did not have the resources to release it themselves.

The repercussions of the album’s magnitude were instantly (and continue to be) felt. It sounded the final death knell for cock-rock – a style of music already critically endangered (thank fuck) – and caused the entire paradigm of ‘coolness’ to shift from poodle haired walking phalluses to guys and girls who sounded, looked and smelled real (and in the case of smelled, usually really bad).

The earliest grunge bands slapped together a bricolage of punk’s “you only need three chords” mentality, with a healthy dose of Sabbath’s dirge, doom and bone crushing fuzzed-to-fuck heaviness. The coinage of the word is hotly debated, though I tend to believe the report that Mark Arm of Green River/Mudhoney fame used it to describe his former band Mr. Epp and the Calculations in 1981.

The original Grunge bands can be found on the first two compilations released by ‘the’ Grunge label, Sub Pop. Sub Pop’s 100 and 200 collections featured future Seattle scene stalwarts Mudhoney, Tad, Green River, spoken word artist and darling of the scene Stephen Jesse Bernstein, Screaming Trees and Soundgarden – as well as Scratch Acid and Sonic Youth from further afield. Sonically, the Sub Pop sound owed everything to resident producer Jack Endino. He took the bands’ signature sound – the bass heavy drunken stagger, guitars wading through a swamp of multiple fuzz pedals, guttural plosive vocals – and sculpted it into something listenable; all the while retaining the scummy, sticky floored ambience of the live shows.

This sound is apparent on Nirvana’s first record, Bleach – also produced by Endino. Every track on each song is as harsh and torn as Cobain’s larynx. Once they moved to Geffen and placed Vig behind the desk, this was lost in the polished sheen of double tracked guitars and compression. Paradoxically, this sound came to define Grunge to the masses, yet is as far removed as it can be from the ‘real’ grunge sound – gloomy as the skies over the pacific northwest and heavy like the dread of spending another day in a white trash logging town.

By the time of its release, Grunge was already steaming ahead into gentrification. The success of Sub Pop had every corporate A&R man sniffing around Seattle’s dive bars for the next big thing. Bands they could market the hell out of in search of that lucrative ‘authenticity’ dollar. Just a month before Nevermind’s release, Pearl Jam launched ‘Ten’, and the arrival of what became backhandedly known as ‘Stadium Grunge’. Presumably, the word Grunge is tacked on to honour the band’s lineage through Green River and Mother Love Bone – as it sure as fuck can’t be anything to do with the sound.

As Pearl Jam began to sell out stadiums, and Nirvana headlined festivals, Sub Pop and its roster of bands who had paved the way for their gargantuan royalty cheques chugged along in their wake. As Mudhoney’s Steve Turner is quoted as saying in Michael Azzerad’s excellent ‘Our Band Could Be Your Life’, they became a ‘footnote’ – with singer Mark Arm adding ‘…that’s at best all we’ll be remembered as’. It’s arguable that this is not just applicable to Mudhoney, but the majority of the bands from that time – eclipsed as they were by an album, sold as a sound, that was not Grunge.

In Utero, Nirvana’s third and final album seems proof of this. Cobain hired Steve Albini – legendary punk producer and frontman of Big Black, Rapeman and Shellac – to put his touch on the album, presumably in the hopes that his credibility and talent for capturing rawness at its best would bring out the best in Cobain’s sickly beautiful, emotional outpourings.

But it was vetoed, and Scott Lit – the man who turned R.E.M’s oddball indie-pop into MOR dirgery – was brought in to ’save’ the mixes. And it was then, just six months before the personification of ‘Grunge’ died, that Grunge itself died. So by all means, treat Nevermind as the phenomenal body of work it is, but please don’t call it fucking Grunge.

Final Major Project for BA(Hons) Multimedia Journalism @...

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:26:00 +0100

Final Major Project for BA(Hons) Multimedia Journalism @ Bournemouth University

Can I Help You Officer? The Green & Black Cross

The Green & Black Cross are a non-hierarchical, consensus run organisation offering legal advice and medical help to protesters. They were formed in the wake of the November 10th NUS ‘Demolition’, and take their name from the Anarchist Black Cross and the environmental movement that so many of its members are rooted in. I spoke to Wayne, a member of the organisation, and Anna, who was trained by the GBC as a legal observer.

Final Major Project for BA(Hons) Multimedia Journalism @...

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:23:00 +0100

Final Major Project for BA(Hons) Multimedia Journalism @ Bournemouth University

Corporate Activism: A New Hope?

Corporations are known neither for being benign, nor altruistic. From Enron to BP – destruction and greed have become shorthand for the multi-national. However, a change may be afoot…

Demolition, Day X and Solidarity: The Winter of Protest

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:21:00 +0100

Final Major Project for BA(Hons) Multimedia Journalism @ Bournemouth University

As 2010 drew to an ominous, worrisome close, and darkening days were filled with thoughts of job losses and austerity – something snapped. It was the students what started it, tens of thousands marching on Whitehall – and eventually Millbank – a multi-racial, multi-class and socially diverse mass of anger, frustration and hurt. Their vitriol was matched only by their drive and eloquence. The police, media and even NUS were caught by surprise as 40,000 boots crunched down icy streets, voices strained hoarse, effigies burned, streets reclaimed, windows smashed.

It was over the course of four main days, ‘demolition’, ‘day x’, ‘day x 2’ and ‘day x 3’, that the generally accepted ideas of protest movements were burned like so many placards. This was a new generation – tech savvy and well read, they came armed with smart phones and Chomsky.

To those who attended, it became plain that these protests were not the preserve of the traditional dreadlocked anarchist, nor the militant unionist. Dan Hancox, writer and activist spoke at length about how London itself created this radical shift in demographics: “Social class, and indeed race is more integrated in London than any other cosmopolitan city in the world”. This has a major effect on mass movement, and organisation.

The protesters were instantly characterised as middle class students having a bit of a hooray while at Uni, growing their hair long and experimenting with radicalism before the ‘real world’ kicks in. As Hancox noted, it is always the assumption that protesters are of the “dilettantish lefty-liberal undergrad” sort. Laurie Penny, New Statesman writer and activist shares a similar view, claiming the only real coverage was spun to “middle class revolutionaries out for their jollies”. It’s a stereotype that not only patronises in the extreme, but also is far removed from reality.

Penny attended all four days of protest. Through meeting many of the demonstrators, she has an intimate knowledge of their diversity: “Broadly, it is a young educated person with no future… They’ve got nothing to pour their energy into apart from the gradual realisation that their lives are going to be immeasurably worse than they anticipated.”

What Penny believes is happening could be described as a trifecta of ire. “What’s dangerous is when you get the influence of working class people who are unionised or not unionised coming together with those very dedicated people from the far left, coming together with ordinary people from all walks of life who have personal reasons to be angry at the government. All those kinds of people coming together can create the perfect storm.

“The notion of cross-class solidarity and the notion of a real people’s movement is very, very damaging and is very, very dangerous to people who have a vested interest in their not being a people’s movement.”

That put into context looks something like this. Young people leafing through copies of the Socialist Worker they have picked up off of traditional leftists, to a background of Reggae and Grime sound systems, mingled with the sound of carnivalesque drumming, leading the chants of students from every conceivable background, representing every facet of our beautifully diverse society. This is the real ‘Big Society’, young, old, rich, poor, students, workers, all working together with a common aim. Unfortunately for the coalition, it isn’t a ‘Big Society’ au fait with their aims.

The important thing to note is that class and aspiration are completely different notions to how they have been traditionally seen. It is a case of the idea having changed, but the perception lingering. Penny believes the notion of aspiration is “…not a doctrine anymore. The politics of aspiration are from a different age where you could aspire to something, no matter what class you came from.”

Some people I met on demonstrations were less than supportive in private. One friend was overheard to say, “Who would actually aspire to be working class?” not five minutes after chanting, “students and workers, unite and fight”. The biggest question now is; how far does solidarity stretch?

The future of the protest movement should not be taken so lightly, as Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy did when he proclaimed “…By the time [Aaron Porter, NUS president] was chased and jeered in Manchester in late January, any chance of resuscitation was effectively dead.” It is noticeable, for sure; those latter post-holidays protests have lacked certain coherence and the vociferousness in place on those few iron-skied, fire-hearted days in November and December. But if you think back to the early 1990′s, the anti-poll tax movement fought for three whole years before the legislation was repealed.

Dan Hancox sees the movement growing wider, if not as radicalised. “The Daily Mail, who think that anyone who protests against anything is a fire-breathing Trotskyite have featured UK Uncut actions in quite a favourable light. You say to the people reading that ‘look, here’s Phillip Green, boss of Topshop and Arcadia, and he’s not paying his taxes! You, you have to pay your taxes don’t you!’ And if you can get through to those people, and make an argument about fairness then there’s no reason why you can’t get them broadly on your side – and highlight just how extraordinary and volatile this government is, and ultimately bring it down.”

Laurie Penny takes a long term view on the radicalisation of youth, raising the simple question: What young person in their right minds would vote for the Liberal Democrats or Conservatives by the time the next election comes around? “The radicalisation of that group is incredibly important and it’s going to change the map of the country forever, I think.”

The summer months, with their longer, warmer days have traditionally been a more obvious time to protest. What this winter has highlighted is that thousands of people; not just students – their lecturers, parents and other unionists too – are so incensed by what they see as a removal of civil liberties that they do not care. Snow, wind and ice are no barriers to the fire in their hearts and voices. Of course, time will tell, but I think it would be a fair assumption to make; the winter of discontent is going to turn into a long, hot summer.

Interview: Everett True

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:08:00 +0100

Originally published April 2011, ATTN:magazine and Collapse Board, and Sabotage Times in September 2011

It’s a grim and grimy day in Southampton, tying in nicely with ‘the most depressing week of the year’. The ground is sludgy and the dour grey light makes every scene look like a collaboration between Ingmar Bergman and Mike Leigh.

I’m here to speak to Everett True, who is giving a guest lecture entitled “What’s so wrong with dancing about architecture?”

When I first booked my interview with him, I did some asking around for what to expect. Responses ranged from ‘He’s a legend mate’ to ‘Please, please, please ask him to stop.’ But of course, he polarises opinion. We knew that already. Whether as Editor of some truly great music rags over the past few years, or as the anti-sycophant ranter working inside the mainstream (something he both admits and denies numerous times over the course of our conversation, or more commonly, as that bloke what introduced Kurt to Courtney (“humiliating”, he says).

About two and a half years ago, Everett upped sticks to Brisbane, “an entirely random decision” he claims. It wasn’t long before the Jerry Thackray soaking up the gold coast sun morphed into Everett True, ranting about the poor state of the Australian music press in his weekly Guardian blog.

Outrage was prompted, and soon the revered British music journo was an aussie-bashing imperialist pom. As it transpires, an unrepentant aussie-bashing imperialist pom. “I was really shocked by the reaction, everybody thought I was just trying to be controversial, I wasn’t – I thought I was picking an obvious target. I didn’t expect anybody to particularly care about my opinion to be quite honest with you. I was just some bloke up in Brisbane.”

Until now, Everett had the body language of a man above me. Slouched back, sipping his coffee, offering half formed, monosyllabic answers that skirted the question (actually, over the whole interview he skirted around giving actual answers, but more on that later). As soon as I mentioned Australia, he changed. He leaned forward, halfway across what was an already small table, and developed the affectation of constantly touching his face or playing with his hair, Rain Man style.

Everett currently works on Collapse Board, a Brisbane based music blog, where his self-perceived role as a “…tastemaker, and more importantly, an institution” (his words, not mine) is diluted to nought but the occasional blog and daily ‘song of the day’. The tagline for Collapse Board is “Whatever happened to the music press?”. Well, what?

“It’s not really a question that’s meant to have an answer. Some people say the music press isn’t what it used to be, well that’s true isn’t it? of course it’s not what it bloody used to be, everything’s not what it used to be. There’s nothing wrong with that, everything changes and mutates.

“Everybody’s always like ‘oh yeah the music used to be better in the 80s. No it fucking didn’t, you just used to be younger and you used to have more energy. You know, I’ve got no time for that at all. Music in particular is always as good one year to the next. There’s always fucking great stuff. Always way more music to be discovered than anyone’s every going to write about.”

So, the press? “Alright, it might look different, and it might not be in the print titles all the time. You might have to look around for it, but it depends how you want it… But to me, music criticism is found in the comments section on Mess and Noise and DiS, it’s found in bloggers – not all of them by any means – it’s found on websites like Collapse Board, it’s found in street press titles like The Stranger from seattle, it’s found in blog aggregation sites – even though I don’t like them – it’s found in people giving talks, y’know like Chris Weingarten does, it’s found on Twitter… So the question, whatever happened to music criticism is not meant to be answered, it’s just a question.

So if music criticism is found everywhere, surely there is a dividing line between the words ‘criticise’ and ‘critique’? “Yeah, yeah, critique is what you do with food right?” Not quite what I meant. To me, I explain, critiquing something is to be constructive, and is – as far as you can be – objective. I reminded him of a quote of his, that “musicians are the dullest of breeds”, something he sticks by – the idea that his ‘art’ is of greater importance and worth than anything created by the people he writes about. That to me, is criticising, not critiquing.

“I do see what you mean, I don’t think I’m clever enough to critique something… First and foremost I’m a music fan, I don’t hold much truck with music critics to be quite honest with you, because I think a lot of them aren’t music fans. I’m always on the side of the enthusiasts.

“To be honest I wouldn’t really split the words that way. Criticism can be constructive, it can be destructive. It depends how passionately you feel about something… You see, my take on it was that I really cared about music when I started writing about it – I still care passionately about it. And so, there are two sides to that coin, and the negative side to that was if I really didn’t like something I tried to destroy it, I wouldn’t try to be constructive about it, why would I? Who cares? Somebody else can go and be constructive. I was trying to get rid of it so I’d never have to fucking hear it again.

“So, the thing is, the music criticism, I don’t understand the point of being fair. That’s what it comes down to, they’re not fair on me – they make bloody horrible music so why shouldn’t I say that?”

The legend of Everett True seems to put him in a different situation to the canonisation of the Kents, Murrays and Morleys of the world. All writers who have had a large impact on either the music press and in some cases, the music they are writing about. But in his mind, does he see himself as one of them?

“People have compared me, or mentioned me in the same breath often enough to make me think that other people see that. I never liked any of those writers, never read any of them either.” He hastily corrects, “sorry, it wasn’t that I didn’t like them, I just never particularly read any of them.

“They’ve had pretty successful careers, and I don’t see myself as having had a successful career. I certainly don’t work within the mainstream. So I don’t know where the parallels would be.”

There it is again, that refusal to be party to the mainstream. Is writing copy for Amazon part of the mainstream? Definitely so. Is writing for the two biggest selling music magazines of the past 40 years mainstream? Arguably so. Either way, I don’t get a chance to move onto this because Seattle has cropped up.

“I mean, if [people] have heard of me tend to know of me because of my association with a couple of famous people. It’s pretty humiliating really just to be known as the +1.”

Isn’t that the case for most critics though? I counter.

“Yeah, quite possibly. But at one point, that wasn’t the only reason I was known. But then again there’s a lot of people who operate from a set platform. And I guess it’s my own choice if I’m not working within the mainstream now.” He pauses for thought, then concedes, “Yeah it probably is the case, but I always contended that what I did was way more of an art than what I was writing about because I could make musicians seem interesting.”

Like mythologising them, as Paul Morley did with Joy Division?

“That’s a better parallel. Look, if Morley hadn’t just done 30 years of crap straight after his early NME stuff I would be happy to be compared to Morley when he was at the NME in ’82, but certainly not afterwards.”

By now I have him fully engaged, gutturally intonating his speech to be heard over the sound of Lady Gaga’s consistent failure to turn off her phone. This, I felt, was a good time to bring up Seattle, and his legacy with that scene. Does he miss it? And has he searched for that kind of experience ever since?

“If I did have an influence in helping break bands, it was probably because I was having conversations with these people all the time and obviously I was quite informed in my taste, so I turned quite a lot of these musicians onto bands that they might not have heard of. As far as Kurt goes, everybody knows that he loved Daniel Johnston, Half Japanese, all of these bands.

“Now why do they know this? Well I’ll tell you why they know that, it’s because of interviews he did with me. They might have come out in other interviews afterwards but it was because I’d directly asked him about those bands, because I knew what his taste was. We shared common taste.

“I think John Peel played all the records at the same time and had a lot more impact. I think it was more the fact that I was able to communicate directly with these people and I brought scenes together… For example, Courtney Love used to go on about how she first discovered Riot Grrrl. No, I had given tapes of Bikini Kill to Huggy Bear in the first instance. Huggy Bear, they would have discovered them anyway, but I was living in the same house as Huggy Bear of course I gave them the tape.”

So, I dare to say, you were effectively a scenester? Not a scenester in the pejorative sense of ‘Shoreditch Twat’, but a scenester none the less.

“Yes. I’ve always thought of that as a compliment. You can use it as a pejorative, I’m totally aware of that, but why? You’d only use it as a pejorative if you call someone a scenester because they’re not into music, they’re just into hanging out. But no, I always just used the word scenester as a fact that someone was really into a scene, because they loved it. Its as straightforward as that.”

A couple of decades on, Everett was heavily involved with both Plan B and Careless Talk Costs Lives, two magazines he remains “really fucking proud of”. As he rejects mainstream, and well, most modern music media, does he not wish there were something like that still circulating?

“Only if I were involved with it. I’m not interested in reading other people. I’ve always had severe tunnel vision about that. I’ve only ever been interested in what I do, I can’t help it – it’s just the way it is. I miss writing for a magazine like that for sure, I miss editing a magazine like that, yeah of course I do.

“It’s funny, the NME had a little slide show up at the end of 2010 of 20 music magazines from the past 2 decades. 16, sorry. And 5 of them, I’d edited. I was like ‘fucking hell, I don’t think anybody else has got that record, Jesus’. Because I never think of myself as being part of the establishment, or having been successful. I think I’m a complete failure at this. I haven’t earned a living from this for years and years and years. And that’s part of how I judge it.”

Throughout this whole interview, creeping paranoia kicks in. Why is he being so evasive and off topic? What he’s saying is interesting, for sure. Is it the sign of a fragmented middle-aged mind battered by too much speed and acid? After all, his writing can be concise when it needs to be – at its most acerbic.

As I wrap up, I try my hardest to get a straight answer. Was he ever part of the establishment? I think he was, he says he was, yet in the same breath says he has nothing to do with it.

“To me, Pitchfork is the establishment, and I’ve never really had much truck with the establishment, I’ve always looked to change it, if I can. But then again I’ve been part of the establishment so what is that all about? The way you abuse your position when you’re there. If you’re part of the establishment you try to abuse your position.”

So do you hold onto that potential to abuse your position when feeling guilty about writing for a mainstream press?

“You use your power, you take advantage of your situation and you just do everything you can to try to turn people onto something that’s new. You don’t just write about everything else, if you’re in a position where you can write about whatever you want you do! You just don’t follow a heard, you write about whatever you want… You’ve got to know what you like. Most music critics don’t, it’s the weirdest fucking thing. Most music critics are reading other music critics to find out what they should like.”

Finally, closure. Is that the issue with the music press today? “I think when anybody sits down to review a record these days, they look at all the other reviews that are online, particularly Pitchfork, and they look at 8 different reviews and go “oh, ok, alright now i’ll do my review”. I’m sure that’s what happens. Absolutely certain. And nobody’s thinking for themselves. Somebody must be. Somewhere.”

I’m feeling drained now and shaking from too much coffee. I thank him for his time, and he apologises, “Sorry I didn’t answer your questions, that’s what you wanted though”. In a way, I say.

We pop outside so I can smoke, and in a moment of flippancy I ask, “Who made that dancing about architecture quote?

“Some cunt… I would fucking love to dance about architecture. Or see architecture inspired by dancing.”

Later on, when he is regaling a semi-full lecture room full of aspiring music hacks with tales of acid, L7 and Courtney Love (and most of my interview); he makes a statement which to my mind, perfectly sums up Everett True – the persona and Jerry Thackray, the person.

“You must have no perspective. Assume that what you are doing is the most important thing in the world, but it isn’t. But you have to ignore that second half of the sentence.”

Which worried me, because without perspective, where are you as a human being? But, maybe that’s less important than music. Just maybe.

COP15 - Long Piece

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:03:00 +0100

Originally published January 2010, Student Times

As I write this I am on another journey - shorter than the 60 hour round trip I just made to from Bournemouth to Copenhagen - just home to my family in Cumbria for the holidays. Eight hours surrounded yet solitary is a good situation in which to reminisce, collect and collate the mass of thoughts, feelings and ideas that plagued my mind just one week ago.

I’ve made a playlist to listen to also, in the hopes of triggering memories that have already buried themselves in the deep recesses of my brain. Neutral Milk Hotel’s paean to Anne Frank, “Oh Comely” sounding as it did when a young anarchist enchanted an audience at the Candy Factory in Norrebro; Le Tigre’s “Hot Topic” still bringing forth the giddy feeling of sleepless and foodless delirium, dancing in sleeping bags with the coolest Riot Grrrl I have ever met. And, of course, a good slice of Billy Bragg.

COP15 (the 15^th meeting of the conference of parties) was intended as the second giant leap in the international combating of climate change. The intention was for a new treaty to be agreed and signed by the G77, the European Community, and developing nations as the original Kyoto Treaty expires in 2010.

Copenhagen was chosen as the host city for a few reasons. Firstly, Denmark is renowned as being one of the happiest and most peaceful nations on earth (more on that later); secondly, Copenhagen is en route to becoming the world’s first carbon neutral city – what an example to set to the developing nations of the world. Look at this place delegates from South America; See this African Nations! If you were hundreds of times richer, with a more realistic climate, you could achieve this too!

On a more cynical note, it is also pretty far in the north, resting as it does on the southern tip of Scandinavia. This effectively prevented people from the less developed nations in the south from having their voices heard. Handy for the leaders of the wealthy north, don’t you think?

I was to travel and stay for the week with Climate Camp UK, an independent organisation acting as part of the international NGO, Climate Justice Action, or CJA. A friend of mine, Nik, is an active member, and he persuaded me that Climate Camp want press, and even if I got nothing out of it, it would be a laugh. I agreed, but not without a juggernaut of reservations. Where would we stay? Would I have to go gonzo? Would there be Wi-Fi? Would my equipment be safe? The answer to pretty much every question along this vein was ‘probably not’.

The night before we travelled ended up being somewhat of an epic blowout, making the narrowly caught coach journey the next day a complete blur. Not the best first impression to give to some of the 300 people I’d be eating, sleeping – and in some cases showering – with for the next 8 days. Luckily, they gave me a chance – something I hadn’t expected them to do – and on the most part, treated the suspect journalist with amiability, if not instant friendliness.

I started to indentify different people as the journey wore on, a James here, an Isobel there, some Johns and Helens. This was mostly done over a brief coffee and cigarette outside service stations. Bruges, Antwerp, Hamburg. Identical places with the same shitty Salami mit Käse sandwiches, just different names.

The final transition from Germany to Denmark went as smoothly as possible, with only a slight delay because some idiot thought a Kevlar army helmet would be easy to take across international borders. Luckily, the Climate Camp legal team kept tabs on how Deutschland’s finest was treating me (very well if you’re interested, they let me off with a caution).

As we crossed into Denmark, I had left enough of my once-horrific comedown behind to properly observe the inhabitants of this hundred-seater travelling revolution. There was, obviously, a peppering of dreads and more than a few wiry beards. Amazingly, it was near-completely white. The only non-waspish looking person aboard was an American named Zeeshan, a writer covering the conference for the Huffington Post. I came to make good friends with Zeeshan over the next week, mostly because of our shared situation – though it never became necessary for the sidelined journos to stick together.

I’ll try to avoid travel writing as much as possible, yet I feel it is important to give an outline of what I saw of Copenhagen as a city. My time was generally divided between two main areas: the city centre, and my convergence space just off of Kobbelsvaenget, a 20-minute bus ride from Norrebro station.

The city centre was an incredibly strange mix of wide-open roads (be warned the Danish driver’s scant regard for green lights), with moderately high buildings. Copenhagen is a strange mix of Washington DC and a Maltese fishing village with all the conventional trappings of a modern capital city (namely shops and overpriced restaurants).

Norrebro was in zone two, and seemed to be to Copenhagen what Tower Hamlets is to Westminster. I quickly learned from a mixture of bus drivers and 7/11 workers that it wasn’t a place most people stayed out late in. After the authorities cracked down on the free drugs trading in Christiania, rival gangs subsequently make the deals, and so the murder rate rises. There is something to be said about not fixing what isn’t broken.

I’m not going to lie; our convergence space was palatial. Climate Camp had wangled a school, disused since 2008, for people to use as a hub for the week from Copenhagen City Council. My fears of lying in a snow filled ditch, clinging to the remnants of my Macbook and sanity were allayed so swiftly I felt giddy. Central heating, a kitchen, showers? This wasn’t right.

Now for a little on how Climate Camp is organised. It is non-hierarchal, and all issues are dealt with by consensus votes at morning meetings. As with any situation such as this, it is always natural for dominant personalities to emerge. Luckily, as is the ideal of an anarchist society, hubris was swiftly kept in check by the masses.

My first experience of a morning meeting was… like watching ecologically sourced paint dry. It’s very likely that I was still knocked for six after the marathon amount of travelling I had just done, but at that precise moment in time the last thing I wanted to see were ideas being argued around for an age, only to be forgotten about and brought up later. The only comic relief on offer was watching people use jazz hands as a sign of silent agreement.

I began to suss out who fell into what group. The passionate people there for the good cause, and mainly to make up numbers, formed the Blue Block. This was the largest block of protesters, and the most peaceful. They made up the bulk of the marches, and are most often the ones wrongfully referred to as ‘violent hordes’ by the mass media. They rarely take part in any ‘Direct Action’ and are rarely justified in getting arrested.

The environmental activists made up the Green Block. Slightly more hardcore than the Blue Block, they split into ‘affinity groups’ and in these they orchestrated direct actions of varying degrees of illegality. They also tended to be less ‘along for the ride’, and more living, eating and breathing their ideals.

I would have to wait until the following day to see any action, but that night I was introduced to the wonders of freeganism. For the uninitiated, this involves liberating supermarkets and chain stores of the fresh produce they put out to waste every day. Maps were displayed in the kitchen and teams sent out on bikes to bring back bumper hauls of fresh bread, salad, veg and pastries. For the most part, the population of the school were comfortably fed on these raids for the whole week.

It is shocking that in the UK you can be arrested on two counts for freeganism: theft and trespass. I would like to see any person try and challenge the case that this process (and the people willing to do it, let’s face it, you’re eating out of bins) is so harmful to the moral fabric of society that it warrants such a waste of police time. In Germany, wasted food is saved for the unemployed and homeless.

Monday was the baptism of fire I had hoped for. I’m secretly a masochist at heart, and trembled at the though of batons and tear gas and drooling hellhound police dogs. Unfortunately, I’m also a bit of a wuss, so I decked myself out in a bright yellow hi-vis vest with ‘press’ stencilled on the back and stuck with the other hacks to the front and side.

The march was orchestrated by the No Borders pressure group, and snaked a 2km route beginning at Israel Platz near Norreport, and ending at the Danish Ministry of Defence, in Holmens Kanal. The idea was to create a symbolic border of human bodies around the building.

I honestly don’t know what I was expecting for my first demonstration, but it was not the sheer boredom stabbing away at my soul with every frozen footstep.

The excitement did appear, when some plucky anarchist untied an orange balloon symbolising a ton of CO2, and I had my first viewing of a police dog, or 30, up close. They’re terrifying. They have bloodshot red eyes, and dripping fangs, and they bark and yelp and completely change the atmosphere of a situation purely with their presence.

After what felt like an hours-long standoff between activists and police, everyone was dispersed. Yet the tension lingered in the air, it was so powerful you could almost smell it. I went home a happy boy that day.

The following day was spent at another of the convergence centres, an old industrial estate up the road in Norrebro. I had already ascertained that where I was staying was well, fluffy. Where I walked now was most definitely spiky. It was a meeting and sleeping place mainly inhabited by the other nationalities. I remember speaking to French, Spanish, Italian and American protesters, but there were definitely more. Activists on the continent seemed to be held in a mixture of reverence and fear from the UK lot.

Apparently this is because the resistance they encounter from their domestic police is tenfold to how the British police act at demonstrations. For example, during the 2001 summit in Genoa, Italy, police beat one demonstrator to death. The activists responded with a riot. Thousands of black-clad anarchists smashed Genoa nearly to rubble, while the police could do nothing but watch. That night, the police arrived at the convergence centre while they all slept, crept in, and proceeded to beat seven shades out of every person in that building. People identified as the main perpetrators were taken into custody and tortured daily until their release.

If that didn’t put things into a little more perspective, maybe this will. I’m quite good at recognising languages (not that I can speak them), but there was one floating around that I just could not get a handle on. It sounded like a mixture of glottal stops and near-fatal choking. I ignored this and went for a look around. I came to a door with a sign that read “Black Resistance Room”. Both inquisitive and nervous, I opened it and had a peek. Luckily there was no one in the room, but all of a sudden the unidentifiable language made sense – it was Basque. I knew this because one side of the bare concrete room was covered in ‘E.T.A’ graffiti.

For those who don’t know, E.T.A is separatist movement located in the Basque region of Spain, which has used indiscriminate terrorist tactics to lobby for their independence as an autonomous nation. You may remember the Madrid train bombing a few years ago, that was E.T.A, and seeing their graffiti all over the walls had the same impact to me as if it said ‘I.R.A’.

This convergence centre was also where the group training was held, and daily reports on police tactics were given as group meetings. These were infinitely more interesting than the daily climate camp meetings, largely because it was made from people of all backgrounds, cultures and languages. The reports on police tactics made the whole week seem more akin to a military operation. It’s just a shame, that al the advice, training, and role-play pretty much fell apart when it mattered.

A good night’s sleep was never going to be on the cards Tuesday night, what with the promise of a police raid in the early hours (which never came) and the apparition of some Frankfurters on one of the skipping runs. I’ve never been so happy to see processed pork in my life; even if it was from a skip.

After a good 30 seconds of sleep it was 6am and time to rise for the big march. The daddy, the one that would see the activists smash Capitalism and make this summit a summit of the people.

Even though I was out and about as early as possible, it seemed it had already begun. The train I took to the Bella Centre was held up by half an hour as activists jumped on the rails; it was their modus operandi to bring Copenhagen to a standstill any way they could.

At every stop after this, the train became a cavalcade of cultures, with an excited atmosphere. The chants began before we even alighted at our stop. “Ah… Anti… Anti Capitalista!” went the Italians, giving the air a feeling of static. What a letdown then, that just as with the No Borders demo, it was a good two hour march through the freezing cold before anything of note actually happened.

The police escort led the march down a large road parallel to the Bella Centre sandwiched between marshland and a stream. At the north end, the push began. At the south end, the Bike Block spent their time causing the poilti as much disruption as they could manage, throwing bikes under police vans and circling them the slow their progress.

The Bike Block is a group of cyclists separated into swarms, each swarm taking it upon themselves to have a consensus vote on their level of direct action. They then split to go forth and disrupt. The Bike Block banner was a screen-printed silhouette of bees, some attached to clothing and some turned into makeshift flags and attached to the bikes themselves.

I was away from them for a while, concentrating on getting the best pictures possible while not getting clobbered by the slightly indiscriminate Politi, which I soon found out were not all Danish. One incredibly angry Robocop turned out to have an incomprehensible Glaswegian brogue that gave him the air of a futuristic Rab C Nesbitt.

Dressed head to toe in armour; the Politi definitely had the aesthetic intimidation tactics down. Even without their steel toe capped, inch heeled boots, each bobby stood around 6’2” at least. I’m that height in boots myself, yet I struggle to remember the last time I ever felt so small.

By this time, minor scuffles had broken out, and some plucky activists had managed to ascend up the occasional police van to pose for the world’s media, who lapped up the spectacle like thirsty dogs.

It didn’t take long at all for clouds of purple tear gas to drift through the crowd, causing the well prepared among us to whip out our bottles of Maalox (a liquid antacid) and take a good squirt in the eyes, saving the bulk for people who had been directly pepper sprayed by the police in the front lines. It was a disturbing sight, screaming people with a film of crusty, white dried Maalox on their starting at their eyes and dripping down their cheeks. Once this confusion – mass hysteria is far too strong a phrase – began, anger arose. The activists began to push at the police ranks to the displeasure of both the police (who decided it would be a good idea to start using their truncheons), and the people trapped at the frontline who were on the receiving end.

I had many crisis’ of objectivity over the week, treading the fine line between reporter and activist to the point where I found myself in the middle of a 3000 strong scrum having my shoulders and neck tenderised by an over-zealous Robocop - who decided to ignore my huge camera, and press pass, and bright yellow hi-vis vest. I was more angry than hurt, and became a bit self-righteous. Still, I got out of the way, which is what he wanted I guess.

More tussling followed, but it seemed ever more fruitless. The Politi took every gap they could, eventually breaking the lines of activists and surrounding small groups. I’ve said it before, but it’s almost impressive watching them work. They are taking the biggest operation in Danish police history very, very seriously.

Their brutally effective tactics on idiotic press members (myself included) meant that we were effectively kettled far away from the activists on the other side of a huge line of riot vans. It was with a stroke of luck that two things happened. I found out that head of COP15, Connie Hedegaard, resigned and was replaced by Danish PM and head of NATO Anders Rasmussen. He seems to like an awful lot of power, doesn’t he?

The second stroke of luck involved being pulled up by police for having a ‘fake’ press pass. I wasn’t about to complain, as I was effectively frog marched right back into where I’d just been pulled out of, the People’s Assembly.

A mass of around 1000 people were sat in concentric circles, listening to different people from south of the equator explain their plight through a megaphone. This was originally supposed to happen inside the Bella Centre after a successful storming operation of it. I can’t help but feel it would have been wiser to focus on a good assembly, with thousands of people acting peacefully outside the Bella Centre, instead of the half arsed shambles it appeared to be.

Climate Justice Action, and Climate Camp UK would do well to take this as a learning curve, which I believe they will. It was again heart warming to see members of Climate NGO’s from all over the world working, as they should, with consensus decisions on an egalitarian basis. The juxtaposition of the riot vans surrounding a den of peacefulness made for an awesome sight.

One little brief moment of excitement followed, as some genii taped together airbeds in an attempt to make it across the freezing stream separating activists from the Bella Centre. Oh, and police dogs, and more police, and more riot vans and…

…A few swift arrests later, rumours began to circulate that delegates and members of NGOs were leaving the Bella Centre in solidarity with the activists, and to show their disdain for what were now commonly accepted to be failed talks. As they were leaving (and this has since been confirmed by both the Guardian and the BBC), they were tear gassed and beaten by police. There are videos on YouTube, I suggest you look at them. These were delegates representing their nation at an important climate talk, and members of internationally renowned pressure groups.

As the people’s summit snailed on, and the police cleared one path, I decided it was far too cold to march all the way back into central Copenhagen, and that nothing was going to happen. So I went back to the school and slept, and slept, and slept. Only to wake up at midnight and check out Christiania, but that is a very different story, for another time.

The next two days before our departure home were a blur – not because they were adrenaline packed and exciting, but because life at the school had become routine. I wasn’t bored there, it still felt fresh, new and exciting; I just felt comfortable.

I was sad to say goodbye to Copenhagen, worse still, that there was a lingering sense of futility about the whole event. Was anything achieved? Not really. The best hope for the conference was for a new treaty to be signed and sealed, which could replace the Kyoto Treaty, signed in 1997. Unfortunately the UN said that this was not possible, and Copenhagen could only cater for preliminary talks, before next year’s summit in Mexico. Disappointing news, yes, but nigh on depressing when you realise this statement was released over a month before the talks even began, effectively turning the whole event into a cynically motivated media spectacle.

So between now and June, when the whole shebang begins again in Mexico, what can we do? Pretty much what we’ve been doing already. Continue to recycle, take more care of our planet, all those little things which en masse make all the difference. Our leaders may have failed this time, spectacularly so, but I’m quite confident that if the voters show how serious they are, whichever party we have next year will get all the more serious as a result.