Saturday, July 26, 2003
Unfortunately it seems that crapulent is not an exclusive Southall neologism meaning "rubbish", but rather is an actual real word meaning "given to imbibing alcohol" or some such. I am understandably inconsolable.
In order to combat this distressing news I have now invented the word nobular, as in like a nob. You can choose whether this is an anatomical thing or not.
7/26/2003 11:08:00 pm
And now, exclusively for the attention of Kate St. Claire...
Medicine
The Mechanical Forces of Love
Wall of Sound
2003
Medicine emerged at the start of the 90s as common-or-garden shoegazers. Since then Laner has deigned his shoes uninteresting enough for prolonged examination and has begun seeking out new ways to address, create, and enhance the psychedelic experience, culminating in his vacation into laptop territory for his recent solo material. The Mechanical Forces of Love sees Laner interpolate his recent experiments into his pre-established Medicine aesthetic with frustratingly varied degrees of success. Comparisons have been made with Manitoba’s fast-becoming epochal Up In Flames, but where Dan Snaith is a laptronica prodigy moving into new sonic territory by acquiring and abusing guitars, vocals, and psychedelic touches, Laner is an old shoegazer moving in the opposite direction, and while he is obviously keen on what his new electronic tricks can do he also seems occasionally uncomfortable with actually implementing them. As such The Mechanical Forces of Love sounds less like a toy box come to life than tipped onto the floor.
Manitoba trades less in songs than electronic pieces that resemble songs because of the palette they’re painted with, whereas Laner appears to have constructed a set of songs and then embellished them with technology almost to the point of overkill. Shannon Lee’s presence on vocals gives an air of 60s girl-group sophistication and bliss which fits the old shoegazer trick of masking simple bubblegum pop with layers of feedback and guitar effects, but at times her presence is invasive, especially considering the sometimes awful lyrics she’s asked to deliver. “Wet On Wet” sees her intoning the refrain “you’ll taste my poison / if you should try and fu-u-u-uck me / try and fuck me”, becoming almost unbearably cringe worthy by the end of the song, which also pilfers part of its arrangement liberally from Primal Scream’s “Higher Than The Sun”.
Too often during The Mechanical Forces of Love it sounds as if Laner has gathered a wonderful set of sounds and placed them in the wrong order, but when he occasionally gets it right the results can be tantalizingly brilliant. When the reassuringly existential “Best Future” gets going its hazy layers of sound and shuffling drums are carried wonderfully by Lee’s vocals, and “I M Yrs” is a terrific slice of subtle, shimmering psychedelic house that manages to balance the widening capabilities of technology with Laner’s synaesthetic intentions. The 12 songs on The Mechanical Forces of Love are sonically loaded and demanding of attention, yet Laner leaves little space or absence among them to add context and reason.
It’s enticing and positive that people like Brad Laner are embracing the possibilities of technology so enthusiastically, but in order for it to work effectively there needs to be a much greater understanding of the subtleties and nuances of the new musical areas being created. Medicine’s new album is a hyperactive and clumsy step in the right direction.
7/26/2003 11:03:00 pm
Nowness…
Time, speed, distance, culture, solipsism, removal and Dizzee Rascal.
Dizzee Rascal! Yay, he’s like The Streets, only actually black, and actually garage, and actually a teenager, and actually working class, and actually from London! It’s like a socio-politico-commenting music journalist’s wet dream come to life! He got kicked out of all his classes at school except music too, that’s why he’s so good, cos it’s all he did at school! Music! Five periods of music a day! (That’s a punishment?)
I don’t know; I don’t feel like I’m qualified to comment. I’m from a completely different world. Mind you, so is everybody else who’s commenting in binary and print on young Dizzee’s brilliance. Seems to me almost as if there’s a competition to lavish the most praise and the highest score on Boy In Da Corner (he even gets two Stylus reviews, saying almost exactly the same thing and giving almost exactly the same mark, one by Gavin and one by Scott, only Scott’s is on Pitchfork). Reynolds announced it as album of the year in fucking March or something. Marcello has waxed lyrical. Come December Dizzee and Led Zeppelin will be atop Meta Critic’s poll of polls and by a fair distance too I imagine, simply because no one has the- has the what? Bollocks? Gumption? Wherewithal? Courage? Insight? Honesty? Opinion? No one will say anything other than “Dizzee is a genius”. My suspicion-hackles are up, I feel like a rabbit in an open field, far from trees and cover and safety. I’ve had a copy here for the last week, listened to a few tracks, but never sat down and put the whole thing on, never attempted to relate to it. What’s the point? Everybody else has already decided. The Mercury panel, for fuck’s sake, have put it on the shortlist, 24 hours after it was released. So garage leaves me cold. So I don’t listen to dancehall. So hip hop isn’t really my thing. So do I bother? Am I denying myself something?
Ned asked about cultural consumption and novelty and individual reasons and responses and opinions the other day in I Love Everything. Do you feel an urge to go and see a film or listen to a record just so that you can keep up your stock of cultural collateral, maintain currency in the now, keep your hand in those conversations about that elusive thing which is the zeitgeist as it stands right now. Thing is, ILX is such a multinational democracy (meritocracy?), that the now, the zeitgeist, varies depending on what country you’re in. The internet, hyperspeed communication not tethered by location or even income/class or anything at all really (at least in the Western World) other than an ability to get to a computer, means that the now is no longer localised; it’s jus made even more essential and even more ephemeral. As such Reynolds can proclaim Dizzee a genius and an incisive commentator/observer/participant (idiot savant?- “well done chap, you’ve really captured the essence of being an 18-year-old in a rundown and crime-ridden part of London, here’s a pat on the back”- it’s as ludicrous as me thinking I understand the fucking Wu Tang Clan; which is why I don’t, I just enjoy their music some of the time) from the safety of New York, before Dizzee himself has never ventured beyond the Bow Bells (but fuck it, if people actually buy his album then maybe he’ll get to, now), and no one is bothered by this because accuracy and understanding are now no longer as important as the pure speed of the comment/discussion/reporting. “Look, we’ve torn down this statue of Saddam! War is over! [soldiers continue to die for the next four months] Look! We’ve killed these two Iraqis and they look like Saddam’s sons! War is over! [soldiers continue to die for…]” “Look! George W Bush has more votes! He’s won the election! [counting isn’t finished- final counting concludes he did not win, so the count is altered…]” And the circle keeps accelerating. When do people actually find time to enjoy the now in between the frantic moments spent searching for it? At a 200-mile remove from London (and a million-year remove from England Today) the now is not on my doorstep, is not attainable at the explicit point of its nowness. Do I drive myself mad trying to capture it from afar? I have little enough time as it is.
By the time I get to see The Matrix Reloaded or Hulk or hear Dizzee or Cannibal Ox the discussion has already finished. Running to catch up is almost impossible, not to mention objectionable. There is undoubtedly a desire to be able to consume it all, to ruminate and cogitate and appreciate and understand and value-judge it all, to review and rank and list it all, to be the ubermensch perpetually on the cusp of nowness and what’s more controlling and directing it as I see fit. But this is impossible. The simple fact is that I love some of these things I find. It’s why I look for them. Elbow or Manitoba or Gillian Welch or Radiohead or Outkast or Four Tet or whoever, wherever, whatever. The last track on Phantom Power which sounds like the most wonderful cosmic fairground. The reason I try and keep up is not so that I can keep up, but rather because I want to lag that slight moment behind, at that slight remove, and enjoy the sensation of the filtered nowness, capture and keep and revisit the moments that I feel make my existence that touch more- bearable? No, not bearable. Because I could live without it. Fun. Enjoyable. Worthwhile. Staying one step ahead, or even just on step, is too much effort. I’m not running to win; I’m running to run. The goal is not to stay current, but to find more things I can enjoy. Do I need to comment on the Beyonce single or the Girls Aloud single? Not really. Five years into his career and I’ve still not said anything about Eminem.
In completely unrelated news…
Just exactly who the fuck do the Radio 1 schedulers think they’re planning for? Who’s the audience they’ve got in their head? Who in this country is getting “warmed up” to go out to a club at 5pm on a Saturday teatime? I’d wager 40% of the people drinking and puking and fighting and fucking and maybe dancing in UK clubs tonight will be still at work or else eating tea right now (5.25pm), not dancing round their bedrooms shooting coke and chugging bottles of Reef in preparation for the big night out. And once they do embark on their big night out they are not going to be listening to the radio, you fucking piss-ant. So why churn out dance anthems from 5pm onwards at the weekends? No one’s listening buddy. Eminem knows that (“nobody listens to techno”). So isn’t their maybe room to use this time for something a little more appropriate? No. And why not? Because the people who are exerting influence over the Radio 1 schedules are the mates of Judge Jules and Danny Rampling and Pete Tong and Paul Oakenfold etcetera, the same names who’ve been standing in their little disco-pulpits for the last 15 years, who’ll try and stay there for the next fifteen too. Paul Oakenfold you are this generation’s Rolling Stones, suspended animation, frozen, repeating, trudging without aim or goal or reason beyond the trudge, always trying to recapture that feeling, which was so powerful and so fleeting that you have forgotten what it’s like and how to find it. Let us come and see you in your amphitheatre once every two years when you deign it is once again time to tour. You are irrelevant, a renaissance show, a throwback. Hope you die soon. Oh- you already did.
So Dizzee’s actually playing now. These actually accented childlike yelps and the war-of-the-machines undercurrent. It’s the sound of next week, maybe. 2010, Gavin reckoned. Gun Come Save Me. ”Dizzee Rarscoow…” It’s quite good, actually. I’m quite enjoying it.
7/26/2003 05:41:00 pm
Thursday, July 24, 2003
As you may be able to tell, I have discovered how to link images.
Which is just as well because I have nothing to say.
7/24/2003 01:39:00 pm
I love these very much.
The are, by the way, Sennheiser PX100 portable headphones, and they're what I wear with my minidisc walkman. The sound is great.
7/24/2003 01:35:00 pm
Ahhh, Thursday.
7/24/2003 10:16:00 am
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
I just watched a butterfly die, it's wings twitching as it spun to earth only it wasn't earth it was water, where it lands, sticks to the surface tension, flits and rises briefly before expiring. It was one of those white butterflies too, it's name something about a cabbage? Perhaps. How long do butterflies live?
I also watched the heron, posied with predatory patience, plucking silver fish from the ochre waters of one of the University's lakes, its body-language so like that of a cat waiting to pounce, taut and on edge, utterly focused, oblivious to my presence, sitting on a rock listening to Phantom Power and tapping my feet. Normally the heron at the first suggestion of human presence makes haste and flaps lazily to the top of the nearest tall tree, where he (don't ask why I think the heron is a 'he', I'm just convinced) will conspicuously avoid your gaze as if embarassed to be seen in pursuit of fish.
7/22/2003 03:24:00 pm
"(My mind keeps returning to the same thought: 'I need to get a haircut!' Why?)"
Because, buddy (abstracted, unreal, word-based binary buddy you may be but a buddy no less) it's that tiny grain of ridiculousness that says "sense" or something like it. If I'd had a haircut yesterday it wouldn't have happened like this... Chaos theory? Yes and no. Had you had a haircut yesterday then that could have taken some of the blame. All of the blame.
Keep safe.
7/22/2003 12:09:00 pm
MERCURY PRIZE NOMINEES
Coldplay (limp)
Radiohead (angular)
Athlete (crapulent)
The Thrills (dull)
Lemon Jelly (tepid)
The Darkness (ridiculous)
Dizzee Rascal (violent)
Floetry (inane)
Terri Walker (bland)
Martina Topley-Bird (tricky)
Eliza Carthy (folk)
Soweto Kinch (jazz)
No Four Tet, no Beth Gibbons. I am wondering why, as they are both British artists who have produced absolutely superlative albums in the last 12 months. If Radiohead don't stand out head & shoulders above the rest of this lot (Floetry and Soweto Kinch excused as I haven't heard them [has anyone?] but judging from the AMG entry for Floetry I'm not pinning any hopes on them) then I obviously cannot tell arse from Elbow. Who I hope get nominated next year.
7/22/2003 12:04:00 pm
Oh yeah, and fuck you, Grice.
7/22/2003 10:55:00 am
The SFA piece underneath this was written on auto-pilot, which is kind of worrying.
7/22/2003 10:55:00 am
This is not a record review.
Super Furry Animals
Phantom Power I can't imagine they deliberately stole this album title from The Tragically Hip, did they?
Epic
2003
Imagine my surprise when I first put on Phantom Power last night and discovered it to be a country record. Wow. Gruff and co. socking it to Dubya with the music of his own home town, two or three tracks laden with pedal steel and and some forlorn strings poking through on occasion too. Very strange.
I slipped off Rings Around The World like an ant off frictionless glass, its expensive and slick production screaming 'maturity!' and 'longevity!' at me until I couldn't hold on anymore and had to let go. Nonplussed by Fuzzy Logic, in love with Radiator and Guerilla, keen on Outspaced and (sinfully, I know) never really arsed to listen to Mwng much (not because it's in Welsh but because it's got no techno). Where's the glam techno and frivolous pop stomp on Rings Around The World? All these mature meanderings about politics, these too-accomplished descents into electronic wibble, these ballads and suites- they're no fun, are they? And previously that's what SFA have been about. The title track managed it, just about, and "It's Not the End of the World" was sweetly melancholic enough, but- fuck, no, 'enough' is never enough; I mean is it? Come on.
The first side of Phantom Power (and at this point I've only listened to it two and a half times so these are just impressions rather than properly formed opinions) starts slow and has the country/ballady type tunes to wade through. "Hello Sunshine" has a Beatles title, some wistfully sampled female vocals to start (can't remember who they are as I left the sleeve at home), and is a sweet, winsome pop song with just a touch of Nashville. "Sex, War and Robots" is proper country though, lavished with pedal steel (I still wince slightly whenever I hear that particular instrument, though I'm getting better) and Tennesse sunsets. "Golden Retriever" is a relievingly ridiculous wiggle, short and to-the-pointless. But then we get "The Piccolo Snare" which begins as a woozy psychedelic ballad before finding something akin to a wicked groove for a minute or two, and is perhaps the first really top moment of the record.
Much of the rest of it is pretty 'meh' in a good way, like they're just doing what they do ("Venus & Serena" may not be a tune remarkable in any way but it's named after the tennis-dominating sisters and that rocks!), but the highpoints are great. "Out of Control" is a sinister Ziggy lurch with properly odd Super Furries lyrics and a riff you're sure they've filched off someone else, and it runs straight into "Cityscrape Skybaby" which is just awesome, and exactly what I want SFA to be doing at this point in their career. It'll almost certainly find it's way onto numerous compilations in the latter half of this year, as will closing track "Slow Life", which is not particularly slow but which does symbioses (is that a word?- it is now) techno better than anything else they've done before to my mind, with the possible exception of "Some Things Come from Nothing" off Guerilla.
Elsewhere there are a couple of short, pretty instrumentals and an armful of SFA-by-numbers pop songs. It's a shame to say it, but Phantom Power feels very much like business as usual for the Welsh wizards, as if they've made just another album, which is a shame, I guess, but far from a travesty. Gruff whispers more than I'd like, there isn't quite enough lysergic madness and stomping odd-pop, and the 'phantom' addressed is presumably US foreign policy and the people who come up with and support it. Still one of the most notable alternative pop bands in Britain, just not quite as magnificently unpredictable as they once were.
7/22/2003 10:47:00 am
I'm actually the least angsty person in the world 'in real life', believe it or not.
7/22/2003 09:43:00 am
Monday, July 21, 2003
So I nip into Martian Records to see if they've got the new Jane's Addiction record sans bonus DVD for a tenner (they steal all their stock from the continent and are staffed by metal heads so this is likely) because I'm not arsed enough to pay £15 in HMV or Virgin for the limited edition version (which seems to be all they have) as I am convinced that while the single at least sounds like them, the album will be disappointing, as they are now old men (and, more pertinantly, because it's a photograph of the band on the cover and not a nude woman made of papiér maché fucking herself with a dinosaur bone). Only as soon as I walk in to Martian Records I have to walk out again because the kids behind the counter (I say kids, they're probably 20-22, and I'm only 24) are listening to Live. And singing along / nodding their heads in time. Oh for fuck's sake. That record's haunting me. Only this morning another email turned up in my inbox from some irrate fan of earnest post-grunge wank for 30-somethings ("why are you making personal attacks against the singer? what's he ever done to you?" - he made a fucking awful record, mate). I've had more mail about that Live review than anything else, it's ridiculous. Hasn't the total commercial and critical failure of the record (not to mention it's screaming crapulence) even hinted to these buffoons that it might be shite? Pavlov's Dogs, the lot of them. Urgh. What's more, they were onto the worst track, "The Sanctity of Dreams", which makes my guts contract and my chest tighten. Jane's Addiction and SFA release albums on the same day (and Dizzee Rascal too - picked up a copy for Emma) and the 'bright young things' of Exeter's 'coolest music shop' are listening to Live? It's like the death of culture round here, mate.
7/21/2003 01:50:00 pm
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