Tuesday, May 04, 2004
BP >>> C:DS >>> TBM
It comes in two parts, like The Isley Brothers through the looking glass.
NJS
5/04/2004 11:43:00 am
The Earlies
“Doomie” and I spar with tedious regularity on I Love Music; he’s a big lanky Canadian who loves Urbane Hymns and indie pop and Alan McGee and who writes for the NME, and I’m a short, stocky English country lad who likes techno and jazz and thinks Urbane Hymns is a big pile of cocktwat (one day I shall explain why) and writes for Stylus. Anyway, he’s been waxing lyrical about The Earlies, some arseflap about how they’re the first band to use both the Mamas & Papas and the warp back catalogue in equal measure, nu-psychedelia, blahblahblah, pitched an album review at NME and it stuck. Normally I treat his recommendations with more than a pinch of salt (Montgolfier Brothers? Oh, just FUCK off), plus I’m not keen on Doomie’s online persona or his offline writing style – all that quiet indie passion turns me right off – but even I have to admit that he might be onto something with The Earlies. I did a quick perusal of slsk and found one tune, “Morning Wonder”, which I subsequently downloaded (they’ve only released vinyl EPs so far - uergh, feel the indie, feel the indie - do you not want people to hear your music, you fuckers?). And guess what? It’s really good. Layered, drifting, melodic, big electronic climax – (at least) one of the guys/girls can’t sing (“Let’s do harmonies like The Beach Boys! Even though we can’t!”) – plenty of different instruments scattered around, and a big, wide-open, stargazing feel. Not at all schmindie. The electronic climax is pretty awesome, and gives a sense of ambition that pushes them above and beyond expectations. They’re almost like Spiritualized would be if they’d a; ever been a proper band and b; Jason Pierce wasn’t a cocktwat and also c; all the members weren’t smashed on heroin.
So, Doomie, thumbs up.
NJS
5/04/2004 11:41:00 am
Monday, May 03, 2004
I've Never Really Written About Orbital
At the time I thought I spent 1996 and 1997 searching for The New Stone Roses. I had a letter printed in the NME when they split up. I used the word ‘winsome’ and the guy doing the letters page that week put a snarky exclamation mark in square parenthesis after it. I was distraught. I’d only really had them for a year, and now they’d gone. And, by all accounts, gone badly, like idiots, like they didn’t realise how important they were. When, of course, they always realised (Ian Brown said “what do you think people have done for the last five years? Do you think they stopped breathing? Get real” – that’s how important they were; no one stopped breathing, not really). The Blutones? Fuck off. Kula Shaker? Fuck right off. Although, you know, I’m downloading “Tattva” right now. Just to be sure, like. Anyway. Cast? Not a chance. Oasis? No way. The Verve? Different thing altogether. Embrace? Likewise.
With hindsight I’d already found The New Stone Roses before The Stone Roses had even split. It was never going to be a four-piece guitar band, not really. It had to be someone, anyone, who had that sense of majesty and mystery, humour and charm, oddness and perfection, pop and strangeness. Music that could make me believe in magic, that could alter the way I look at the world.
April 1996. The pre-release press was gushing. Select (or was it Vox?) said they had more in common with Mozart than… some dance act. Someone said they were one of the best five bands of the last ten years in any genre. JR said he’d got an advance tape of the new album and that I should just go and buy it and stop fucking around. So I did. I skived off English or something that Monday morning (April 26th? – check a calendar) and went to Woolies, of all places. It cost me £16, even then, for the limited edition in the blue&black cardboard box. It’s long since gone west, given away because the CD got scratched, replaced with the later release (with “The Saint” tacked on for good measure, you wankers FFrr). A poster of the cover came free with Vox (or was it Select?); it still hangs above my (not slept in for two months) bed, faded and tattooed with blu-tak stains. On the other side are Kula Shaker. I know because I just checked. They can fuck off.
Left school 9sixth form) early, as usual. Home by 1pm. Put it on and went to do something else. Transfixed within 2 minutes. Sat still for the next 70. Didn’t do “something else”. Changed the way I listen to music. Music that could make me believe in magic. Yadda. Bought all the old albums. Fell in love. I’ve never really written about Orbital. Before.
Blue Album is their last album. It’s been 15 years since “Chime” was released – they recorded it into their dad’s tape player. The last two albums disappointed me – I liked Middle Of Nowhere at first but didn’t play it for a long time afterwards, possibly because it came out in 1999, the year before that year when my life went nuts and I forgot who I was. With hindsight, it’s a great record. The Altogether actually was just a bit rubbish though; no focus, a series of moments hanging loosely, plus two very, very bad ideas, placed right before the best idea, thus making that look bad as well. And “Dr ?” too. Sorry JR, I still don’t get it. I never will.
Blue Album is great not because it is great (although it nearly, nearly, nearly is), but because at every step it reminds you of how great Orbital have been in the past. It reminds you of every moment of their career thus far, near enough. “Tunnel Vision” is dark and spooky and kinetic. “Bath Time” is delightful and a bit silly. “You Lot” is incensed and atheist and willing to believe and awesome. “One Perfect Sunrise” is a big spiritual moment. “Acid Pants” is NUTS. Etcetera. This isn’t a review. You can wait for that. This is a getting to know you. Because first listen I was impressed, and second listen I was nonplussed, and third I was quite keen, and fourth I was just listening and half asleep and freaked out on headphones. And fifth listen needed to be… Walking. I needed that promontory.
Maybe one of the reasons I don’t get hip hop much is the fact that I’m used to a lot of space. Scary, empty space. Hip hop is too crowded, too urban, too busy; I can’t even begin to hear the words. I never cared about the words. Maybe. I’m used to… The sea. The sky. Great big fucking fields. My house is two minutes from fields, five minutes from seas, no minutes from skies. Maybe this is why Bark Psychosis ‘speak’ to me too. (What an asshole phrase.) Open space, twilight, moving vistas, empty heads. No heads. No company. Expanses. Big swathes of synth? I love The Streets but Skinner’s raving was done indoors, in nightclubs. Orbital did theirs outside, in fields and barns and Glastonbury, which, lest we forget (I’ve never been, though I’ve been to the Pilton Village Fete) is only up the road. Bark Psychosis may be in the city, but they’re in a church or else on the streets at night when nobody else is around, in the roads away from where the clubs kick out. Space. Huge swathes of synth? Orbital. Those enormous, synthesised vistas are like the sea, moving slowly, interlocked, life beneath them and barely perceptible. Standing atop cliffs. And such.
I spent this afternoon on Dartmoor tracing gulleys. This evening I left the house at 6.50pm, iPod in pocket, determined to ‘hear’ Blue Album. I went over on my ankle this afternoon – these days it doesn’t even swell, it just hurts a while and then stops. I went over on it too many times as a kid. The ligaments are fucked, most likely. But I left to walk the clifftop, down to the beach (three routes – I took the most awkward, cutting back on myself halfway down, through the shelter), along the seawall, high tide, no breakwater to stand on, keep on walking. Red Rock, sixty, one hundred, maybe, feet in the air, that role of fog 10 days ago TWO HUNDRED FEET TALL, perhaps (pick yourself up and try again), is maybe two and a half miles from my house. I’d done maybe one and a half, maybe almost two. “You Lot”, track five, started. Reached the SAW II moment; Eccleston starts talking – “You… are becoming Gods.” “Bath Time”, “Acid Pants” and “Easy Serv” to go before “One Perfect Sunrise”. I wanted to be on top of Red Rock for “One Perfect Sunrise”. I could make it to Red Rock by half past seven, just as the sun will be dipping behind the trees. The moon was up, and as ever when it’s in a clear blue sky appears to have been painted onto the evening by a dodgy draughtsman. “Easy Serv” had just started as I reached the base of Red Rock, a sandstone monolith with a gigantic hole whacked out of it by the sea at one side. Grass on top. I wandered around up there, alone, till it finished. Then I sat down and watched the sea move slowly, tiding out, and listened to “One Perfect Sunrise”. I’d thought it was perhaps pushing those buttons rather cynically and automatically before, but… no. Did I cry? I could have, if I hadn’t realised I might. At one point I saw the flow of the sea away from the land really clearly and it was as if everything was rushing away from me before I could experience it, just like Orbital are doing, and it was then that I decided I had to catch them in London before it’s too late. I almost cried then.
On the way back the tide had moved out enough to reveal the breakwater, and I anticipated eagerly being able to stand on it and look back towards town as if from far out to see. As I was nearing it, from maybe 300 yards, I could see a young couple walking to the end of it, her in a long skirt, him in black. I couldn’t see them clearly but they looked as if they were enacting some courting ritual that I’ve long since forgotten. It looked as though they were nervous. I hoped they were both beautiful and innocent and thrilled. As I got closer, and they left the breakwater, I saw that he was bald, in a suit, and probably 40. She was probably the same age. They were dressed as if they might have just been to church. Not a young couple. Not especially beautiful. Maybe a new couple. Beautiful enough. Love is not the fulfilment of yearning. Sunrise.
NJS
5/03/2004 01:19:00 am
Ronaldinho
Genius. Stops dead, flicks his heel, doesn't even look where his teammate is running, he just knows. Barcelona and Arsenal - next year's dream Champions Cup Final.
NJS
5/03/2004 12:01:00 am
Sunday, May 02, 2004
All The Houses Look THE SAME
The thing that freaks me out about going to Halifax or Northampton is the fact that all the buildings are the same colour, and built in nice neat rows. I’ve grown up in a seaside town (next to the country – you can see the sea from Dartmoor; how fucked up is that, says Emma, from Manchester, fond of Edwardian townhouses, which yes, are nice, but aren’t pink cottages salted by the sea); all the houses are different colours, and built on top of each other. And any that are the same are red, or maybe, on Dartmoor, granite-grey. We live on sandstone. It’s quite spectacular. The sea mist threatened to overshadow Dartmoor this afternoon but it didn’t. The clouds parted and the sun came out and the recent rain flushed the gulley (2 miles from Haytor) so that it became a beautiful amber stream. I hopped, skipped and jumped from one rock to another, traversing the gulley’s fresh flow, looking for my old bird, which has long since flown away.
Then I listened to some bangin’ techno.
NJS
5/02/2004 11:39:00 pm
Spatial Awareness
I was wrong last Sunday when I wrote that Red Rock is 30feet high. It's 30 feet high from the railway side, which is a good 30feet above the low-tide beach level. Making that huge coil of fog crawling down the Exe a good 120feet high.
I know this because this evening I climbed it again.
NJS
5/02/2004 10:59:00 pm
Genre Munching
I was this close the other day to emailing John Darnielle and asking him what genre he’d like The Mountain Goats to be categorised as on my iPod. I had them down, jokingly, as ‘Indie’, but since I only ever use that term as a pejorative these days it seemed unfair. And so I purged it from iTunes. Belle & Sebastian and Clearlake became ‘Alternative / Pop’ alongside Pulp, New Order, Cornelius and The Cure. Delays, Yo La Tengo and The Clientele became ‘Ambient / Dreampop’, sitting alongside Bark Psychosis, Bows, Spiritualized and My Bloody Valentine. Embrace are now ‘Alternative & Punk’, in the company of !!!, The Specials, Disco Inferno and Teenage Fanclub (maybe TFC should be ‘Alternative / Pop’?). The Postal Service became ‘Electronic’, in the company of Vive La Fete, Depeche Mode and Junior Boys. Maybe New Order should be ‘Electronic’ too? And I have to get rid of ‘Ambient’ – it’s silly to have a separate section for it with only 30 or so songs in, when they could all happily fit in either ‘Electronica / Dance’ or ‘Ambient / Dreampop’. And don’t even get me started on what The Streets, Dizzee Rascal and Wiley are! Anything even loosely fitting the template gets deigned ‘Hip Hop / Rap’. Except the stuff that’s down as ‘R&B’. But there’s one Salt ‘n’ Pepa song in ‘R&B’ and one in ‘Hip Hop / Rap’. And is Kamaal The Abstract actually Hip Hop anyway? Or Tricky? Because Massive Attack ended up in ‘Electronica / Dance’. Talk Talk have some stuff in ‘Alternative / Pop’ and some in ‘Avant-garde’, along with Scott Walker and The Penguin Café Orchestra. And then there’s The Tosca Tango Orchestra’s soundtrack to Waking Life, which is down as ‘Soundtrack’ even though it could fit in ‘Avant-garde’, or even have it’s own ‘Tango’ genre made for it. I got rid of the ‘Classical’ section a while ago, deleted Mozart and Arvo Part. Who wants to listen to Requiem on the train? And then there’s the ‘Folk’ genre, with The Strands and a few Nick Drake songs in it. And ‘Funk’ which has Sly Stone, some Lee Dorsey, Funkadelic and Gene Harris. And it seems nuts to call Guns ‘n’ Roses and Jeff Buckley and David Bowie and Love all ‘Rock’. And Robert Wyatt. And Rufus Wainwright. And The Cult. And that one Pearl Jam song (“Given To Fly”). And “Louie Louie”. And why are Big Star ‘Alternative & Punk’? Should Cocteau Twins be ‘Ambient / Dreampop’ instead or ‘Alternative & Punk’? Should Disco Inferno be ‘Avant-garde’? I’ve often said that record shops should only have two genre sections – ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’, but this is obviously insane and is just an example of me being an idiot. In truth it would be much more helpful if they either had none at all, or else thousands and thousands. Actually, scrub that last suggestion.
I think I ended up putting The Mountain Goats in ‘Country’, alongside Gillian Welch, Sparklehorse, Wilco and Lambchop. I hope that’s OK, John.
NJS
5/02/2004 10:53:00 am
A Happy Story
Once upon a time there were two brothers called Phil and Paul, who made wicked techno for ten years. Then they made a duff record, which everyone said was rubbish. Then they decided to make one more record and play two final gigs and split up, and everyone was sad, but the last record was actually really good, much better than the rubbish record that preceded it, and while their fans were sad that they were to make no more music together (at least under the name they had used before), they were happy to hear this new album, and happier still to have been fans for all those years
NJS
5/02/2004 10:35:00 am
I Mean...
It's not up there with In Sides or "Brown", maybe not with Snivilisation, but it's as good as The Middle Of Nowhere (which is still great) and better than the patchy and directionless The Altogether, and "Green" as well, which is to all intents and purposes a handful of GREAT singles and some filler.
There are three different tracklistings floating about at the moment.
The official Orbital site says it's this;
1. Transient
2. Pants
3. Tunnel Vision
4. Lost
5. You Lot
6. Bath Time
7. Acid Pants
8. Easy Serv
9. One Perfect Sunrise
The version I downloaded is like this;
1. Transient
2. Acid Pants
3. You Lot
4. Pants
5. Lost
6. Initiation
7. Bath Time
8. Easy Serve
9. What Happens Next
10. Tunnel Vision
11. One Perfect Sunrise
And the version ILM guy (and occasional Stylus contributor, plus permanant all round Good Guy) Matt D'Cruz has on CD has those tracks but in a different order, which I think must be summat like this;
1. Transient
2. Pants
3. Tunnel Vision
4. Lost
5. You Lot
6. Bath Time
7. Acid Pants
8. Easy Serve
9. Initiation
10. What Happens Next
11. One Perfect Sunrise
Personally I hope "What Happens Next" and "Initiation" both get on the final version, although I don't think they will if they're not even mentioned on the official site. "WHN" in particular is brilliant.
In depth descriptions and reactions at some point in the future, or else just visit this thread for Matt D'Cruz's take, plus the comedy stylings of Dan Perry's arse.
NJS
5/02/2004 09:53:00 am
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