Minus The Shooting

For the duration of the World Cup I'll be mostly posting over here now... I think it's turning into a excellent little repository of tattle and tale...

If you like that kind of thing.

Brazil are Germany are Us aren't Brazil

I imagine Mark will do this better over at Minus The Shooting (actually, I've just checked and he has; bugger that boy's quick - could use him in the England Back Four etc).

The Brazil are Germany are Us aren't Brazil.

Watching Brazil's typical, topical, bullying demolition of Chile was like watching the Germany of old, stirring the same feelings of admiration / apathetic loathing, though the commentators insisted throughout that each and every example of Brazil brutalism and efficiency (not a bad thing at all, really) was somehow an exception to the rule; that despite what we were seeing (i.e. an incredibly organised and tight and hard working unit) they were actually playing Samba style sexiness like they always have (or like they used to up until, say, 1982).

(cf; I know it looks like we're letting the bankers get their bonuses despite it all being they're fault but really it's for the good of everyone...)

It was like watching Liverpool in the 80s. Very organised. Very quick. Very efficient. They had skillful players but even they knew when to put their foot through the ball. Contrast the England of this World Cup, playing at being possession footballers, not playing at being Premiership footballers.

Both Brazil and Germany are playing a version of our game. Way way better.

Brazil are the best team at this World Cup and it's because they were the most organised. Some of them are technically gifted, yes, but it's the organisation that's destroying teams. Importantly, they seem to know what they're doing and are making the most of what they have (and shedding what they are not - Ronaldinho, take a bow).

Brazil are Germany as they used to be. You wonder how come you hadn't heard much about the German players until the World Cup (until every World Cup)? Because organisation doesn't have star potential. Because pace and power and a game plan isn't easy to stick on a DVD best of. It isn't what people want. People want triumph despite the lack of organisation. That's sexy football. That's what that Brazil team of 1982 almost pulled off. That's the Grail.



Socrates: 'True opinion is as good a guide as knowledge for the purpose of acting rightly'?

But they didn't pull it off. And the Brazil team of now are an indication of what can happen after the crushing disappointment of the Golden Generation; you can start all over again, from the beginning, from the back.

The goals given away by Brazil 82 against Italy in that match were the equal of the silly, sucker-punches that England gave away against Germany on Sunday. England didn't have the players to rally - and neither did Brazil. Even the Golden Generation couldn't muster enough skill to win despite no organisation.

Brazil learned from this. England will have to. Play to a pattern, not to players.

Now, anyone out there have a pattern?

Highpoint Lowlifes

Well, there should have been an inner-view with Thorsten, head-honcho from Highpoint Lowlife, as part of my not particularly ongoing series of future stealers (as documented here and here) but I think that things are changing a little re: Highpoint Lowlife and so he's been a bit reluctant.

Still, I've managed to contract a couple of Remote (Inter)Viewers from the backslides of Chard and Steeple, a mere ectoplasmic slick from the Idiot's Guide Temple in Taunton* and now I think we're just about ready to dig into Thorsten's mindmoulds.

((((((((*follow an etymological path from River Tone - the moon mood musick, tidal tones, Tone-Loc, The Anti-Group's Teste Tones - "we hear the lapland, the laps on the land.." and then reverse-turn from the Tau and end up in Mithras, inside the Taurobolium pit, letting it rain tears of blood )))))))))

Er...

Ok, Thorsten, lets have it:

1) first, tell me a little about the label - how did it all get started?

Well, it started out as a legal form of tender, legal here that is. Really, it was the endpoint of a whole chain of events - for example, the coinage issues of mid to late 20s, where no one really knew how to spend or save... I...

(Here Thorsten pauses, as if remembering an evil clown)

... You see, if you weren't there then... this is going to sound odd. Maybe I shouldn't start from the beginning because...

(Sigh. Twinkle)

The label started because at that time we were using releases as legal tender, as coinage. We'd started with feathers and leaves then progresseed (with little fortune, though don't print that) to shears and bottle-tops, to compensate the townfolk who couldn't get out much. Next the limes and the goblets, before returning to a particularly crazed (and actual) coin which looked the same as any other except had a number of extraneous moral messages indented into the edge.

Then someone decided that records and CDs might be more useful and Highpoint was born. The Lowlife, as i'm sure you know, came later.

2) is there a label out there that served as inspiration?



This isn't just a visual pun. The Tate and Lyle label has been inspiring, for many reasons. In the Book of Judges 14:14, Samson was travelling to the land of the Philistines in search of a wife (plenty there, apparently). During the journey he killed a lion, and on his return past the same spot he noticed that a swarm of bees had formed a comb of honey in the carcass. The similarities between this and the genesis of Highpoint Lowlife are obvious, I think... Carcass? Lion? Bees? Well, I particularly like the use of the Samson riddle on the label: "Out of the eater came forth meat and out of the strong came forth sweetness" because it reminded me of the Coil song, Ostia which I know you're going to mention because you always mention Coil in every fucking post...

3) who would be your ideal signing?

Shane McGowan's techno project with Morten Harket from A-Ha... best thing since Alien Sex Fiend went techno.

That or Prince. We could do a job on that little guy, I think.

4) Which release has been your favourite so far?

So hard... so hard... I guess I'd have to say that it's Magnetism, That Electricity beccause that's the one that really got noticed by the staff at our favourite blog An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming...

(I look at him, searching for clues. Too late.)

Nah. It's probably one of The Village Orchestra things. Love those girls. Incredibly hot, all three of them and well up for a bit of promotion, if you know what I mean. Really couldn't give a shit about An Idiot's Guide To Dreaming.

5) Highpoint Lowlife aside, tell us your five favourite albums of all time

Highpoint Lowlife aside? Fuck you.

Oh, I guess...

Peter Gabriel 1

Peter Gabriel 2

Peter Gabriel 3

Peter Gabriel 4

HNAS - Melchior

6) What's in the future of Highpoint Lowlife?

(A long pause. A long pause. He comes back sometime in the next decade)

There. Is. Nothing. I. Have. To. Say. About. Time. Of. Any. Kind.

7) Suggest a track for my funeral

Oasis - Live Forever

Yeah. Abso Glasto Lutely! A track of dreams, man. Pure energy. I'm ot dying, I'm dyeing... You know. A Death's Head Dylon fix! God, yeah. Libby flipped Kipling y'know. Kipling. Made cakes and wine, got caught at the back end of a bull, caned Del Monte (as in Del Boy). Car salesman and all round mean-giver. Blown fuses and spark plugs for noses...

(At this point I assumed he was speaking in tongues and I turned off the tape for ethical reasons)

8) Any films or books that have acted as an inspiration to you?

(Thorsten is a lot calmer now, though now sucking on oxygen through a nosepipe like Gary Oldman in Hannibal)

Well, it'd be hard not to mention HP Lovecraft, especially after all the difficulties we faced getting The Starry Wisdom project off the ground...


(He gives a little subsonic whistle here. At least, I think he does)

...the estate, the fucking ghost of Osman Spare, all that creeping around Dunwich and wherever... clashing with the feral girl gangs responsible for those English Heretic plaques... but Lovecraft, or rather Cthulhu himself, is behind an awful lot of the releases on Highpoint Lowlife - an atmosphere more than anything, a guiding black light... Lovecraft and electricity, the buzzzzzzzzzzzz, y'know... what you said about the 10-20 album... neurobashment... to me, that is so HP, you know.. such a sauce... love him, love it... I think we had a better thrash at Cthulhu than anyone.. I really do... we may even have charged some brains...

(Tape unspools. Didn't even realise that digital recorders could do that...)

The final 2 vinyl releases from this label, soon to be deaded (truly awful news, this is genuinely one of my favorite labels of recent years), are by Roof Light and then they'll close with albums Depakote, Erstalub and The Village Orchestra and an epic DVD-r compilation featuring pretty much everyone who was ever released on or worked with the label.

Can't wait for that one.

After that, Thorsten Sideb0ard will moving on to focus on writing and drawing a graphic novel entitled "74", which is set in a near future post-industrial northern UK city...

The machine rolls on...

Cheers for all the great music, Thorsten; I've still got you down as a future pioneer...

To end, here's a link to the recent Highpoint Lowlife show on Exotic Pylon.

Joanna Newsom's Loose Limbs

In interviews, Joanna Newsom seems refreshingly down-to-earth (not normally a trait I admire, as it happens but perhaps more essential for her music than it is for her) but it's the choice of photos that is more revealing. The photo above is the exemplar, I think: a mix of sex and angularity; an awkwardness of poise that was certainly absent from the photos in the CD booklet of Have One On Me, which for a moment turned her into an indiescent nymph, an artfully splayed Balthus chick, a woman of these times...





Contrast the Medievalism of Ys...



the folk innocence of The Milk Eyed Mender...



And there's something else that appears when you start looking at the album covers - she really is emerging. Almost hidden in the mix of symbols on the front of The Milk Eyed Mender* then turned into an actual artform on Ys (perhaps as a response to those who couldn't let the music do the talking - we loved her music yes, but we loved her more and this perhaps made her rightfully uncomfortable) and then onto Have One On Me, where there's a kind of 'ah fuck it' shrug and a dash towards sex, albeit still through a slightly otherworldy, 1920s Anais Nin erotica gauze...

*even in the publicity photos she's hidden slightly, or hiding...



But back to what I wanted to say, which is maybe lost now and that's related to the first picture; the way those arms are slightly misaligned, slightly Masonic, oddness paired with sweetness - Out Of The Strong, Came Forth Sweetness - which in turn is paired with an oddly jarring homeliness... crochet sex, homespun drop-necks, a sex position with the addition of some vague time-keeping (is she looking at an invisible watch while we're, you know, while we're... Oh God. Why can't I see that watch? Why is she time-keeping now...?)

Joanna Newsom playing with the latent (fuck it, manifest) male horror of timeliness and sex (too soon, too late, too much)? It's obvious isn't it? I mean, if we're not supposed to take this from that photo, then what are we supposed to take?

Is this just me?

Oh.

Fuck.

Back to the football, I think.

For what it's worth Have One On Me is mostly excellent I think. I'm keeping with it. I like the tales she's spinning. It's a grower, definitely. It's a sing-a-long.

Entity Ghosts

From The Wytch Machine...

Spazzlings

Well, I haven't downloaded this yet but the picture of Ozz is enough to get the juices flowing. Ariel Pink wreaked (no, really) brother. And what the hell's Jimi doing not taking over? Browse around the site a little more and there'll be plenty of things the readers here might recognise, half-remember, find at the bottom of their tape drawers...

World Cup Dreams

A little comment-rant here has expanded. There's lots of irrationality about the World Cup (I'm not even going to bother to look, it's all irrational, all of it, look everywhere...) and for the benefit of the considerable number of readers who really couldn't give a shit about it and feel that the blanket mania/depression is manic and depressing, I feel the (irrational) need to explain:

The World Cup is a dream, it's designed to be and it has to be. It will never matter that these early games are a little dull, this is entirely expected and will not effect the excitement levels at all because even while we're watching we'e editing the games, flicking back and forward in time and space, making our own best case scenarios - Thank God for the South African goal; that was enough to kick start everything... enough to start the splice, the edit...

The splice must flow.

Open Your Eyes, which became Vanilla Sky, is where we should be looking now; it's what every World Cup believer sees - a perfect simulation, a dream-cast, a BBC montage with a Rudyard Kipling Voice-Over (Even ITV are edited out in our memories)...

It's why 3D isn't necessary; won't be*. It's not like you're there, you are there. It's perhaps also why the Vuvuzelas are so scorned; they are blanking out the other sounds, the crowd swells - their pinky-white noise is making things a little less lush: maybe those beautiful Brasilian fans are blighted by a horn in their mouths, are evocative of the flipside of Carnival Culture, are faintly redolent of blow-jobs sold under motorway bridges....

cf: poor South Africa... those pitches, those houses... "It's like a waving flag..."

*“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

The early World Cup matches need to be regarded in terms of their overall purpose - they are foundational, they are there to support the future (better, flair-filled) matches; to pay the bills.

They are work, then comes play.

They have the Makele role - the more exciting matches will play off these early dull ones, will play around them until, hopefully and inevitably, they are subsumed via social cryptoamnesia and successfully integrated into the Best World Cup Moments Ever! show of 2014...

Of course, this is not destiny. There may be no great moments in this World Cup. Others have already commented on 1994's nadir, the collective amnesia that wiped everything... but perhaps we forget that 1994 existed because it's key moments were absences: Baggio missing, Diana Ross missing... even the winning Brazilian team is deemed inferior somehow to it's predecessors... we prefer the fluid, chain-smoking, beautiful lapses of the losing 1982 Brazilians to the hard-working Dunga-beetles of later Brazilian sides... better to die with a pretty face 3-2 than to grind a 1-0 victory and start parading about it...



The World Cup is about grit, determination, effort.
The World Cup is not about grit, determination effort.

Maybe this is England centric - maybe we like the grit; our winning side was rather solid and that achievement has thrown dangerous echoes down through British Football (why the hell wasn't the team built around Gazza, or Le Tissier? Because Le Tissier was lazy, was a bit, well, continental... Thank God for Rooney, who'll run himself dry and then do some little flicks...)

Our magnificently losing side of 1970 (considered better than 66, remember i.e. more flair-ful, less earnestly workmanlike)is the equivalent of Brazil 1982. Even the multi-winged side of 1990 was rather more Brazilian...

(((Even then, we look at Beardsley and Barnes and Gazza but we forget David Platt. How can we? He did most of the work, didn't he?)))

The World Cup is a dream, a string of Rorschach blots, a loose assemblage of unrelated factors, statistics, best-guesses and wishes thrown together to give the semblence of a whole... it's like a war, seen from the future... it appears to have coherency, to have real meaning, to illustrate the times even when, really, it's a clot, a delicately balanced thrombus... and the coagulant is belief; belief as noun as much as verb, belief in it's terrible raw essence: they will win, they will win, they will win.

Win, they will - is Germany via Schopenhauer, a tickle of Nietzche, is the characteristic of German football and the greatest threat of all - that organisation itself could conquer...

Of course, this is a terrible, tenacious stereotype - the 4-0 win was full of flair, albeit against a criminally odd / old side (who nevertheless had the first decent chance), but the Germans will never be a flair side, not unless they start using Brazilians (which must be cheating, mustn't it?). You see, even the Germans are in awe of the Brazilians of 1970 and 1982 because those Brazilians are the World Cup, whereas Germany just win it, and Italy just win it and...

Would even they prefer to lose beautifully?

The threat of organisation conquering all has overtaken everything else except the World Cup perhaps, which is why we still desperately need to think that Barcelona (or Arsenal) will win the Champions League even if they insist on this ridiculous pass and move, these silly little spirograph patterns, this flair, this beautiful game...

We might tell our mates to 'put yer foor through it' but in real footie (i.e. notreal football) we want a bit of ponce... and we selectively ignore that the Brazilian team of 1970, the team, were hard... they'd been brutalised in 1966 and they came back harder, faster, fitter, angrier... they destroyed teams and then played around them... you watch all the matches rather than the misleading highlights and you'll see that they put in real effort... they could grind and knew they had to...

Posession is overrated. Flair is overrated. Remember Christiano Ronaldo in his first year at Manchester United? - Just get it in there, son...

But still, ask yourself if you're really happy when Barcelona lost to the rigorously organised and magnificiently sufficient Inter Milan. Ask yourself if you wanted the angry skills of Argentina to beat the total football of Holland in 1978.



Patterns appear to be there but in a sample of, what, 20? It's difficult to generalise, but if we do...

Then England are going to win; they've been unlucky in the past, that's all, luck... there's a pattern here and we're on a surge, an upward trend, we're the winners that started small...

The World Cup is a dream, my frontal lobes have been deactivated. I look and I can't see. I've already started editing highlights in my head, games I haven't even seen yet. It'll be fantastic. It's not going to be 1994. It's going to be 1982. The sun is shining. Bryan Robson's shoulder is Okay. Kevin Keegan puts his had through that cross. Those mini-leagues of three have gone. The moon is out. The shining. There's some people on the pitch. Trevor Brooking isn't ill; he's pulling cartwheels, he's joining the Crouch robot procession. The fifth goal has gone in against Germany. Emile Heskey has scored. Lineker's coming in now...

My frontal lobes have been deactivated. Yours have too. Realism isn't an option. England to win. England to win. England to win.

Goddamn the sun.

Fuck the Enlightenment.

I'm off to put a tenner on Heskey to win the golden boot and it's only partly to see the look on the Bookie's face.

Concrete and Sky

Bridgwater, Somerset.



Something about the colours which I wasn't sure about. In real life it looks even more painted on than this. Like Marc Almond's hair, around the time of the Jacques Brel album.

From The Wytch Machine...

Warlords Of Atlantis

Never did get to see the whole of this. An IRA bomb threat made us leave in the middle.

You know, I was maybe 7 when this came out but, even then, I remember thinking they should give you the choice:

'Thank you very kindly for warning me that there may be a bomb here but I think I've paid my money so I'll take my chances...'

From The Wytch Machine...

Hacker Farm present JunkCrunch - Perfect 5th, Taunton, UK 9-6-2010

The Believer

Just saw this last night... crept it's way onto the Film 4 schedules sometim last week and from there limped it's way onto my hard drive...



Wow. Very interesting. Troubling. Unsettling. I don't remember much fuss about this at the time but...

Wow. I spent the whole film oscillating between competing thoughts:

1) I have to show this film to my students because it's the best, most conflicted, most serious film about Neo-Nazism..

2) I can't show this film to my students because it's the best, most conflicted, most serious film about Neo-Nazism

3) "Not everyone can savour this bitter fruit with impunity"

4) Everyone should savour this bitter fruit with impunity.

I'm not even sure what I think. Maybe that's a good reason to:

a) show it

b) not show it

HF Ghosts / Kraftwerk treats

From The Wytch Machine...



For no reason, other than something to listen to while you baitbreath for the boys to send out some HF/Junkcrunch audio, here's a little Kraftwerk treat to get yer pulses racing...

Go here and download to death.

H kr Fm 1.3

From The Wytch Machine...



...Never re-edit blog posts, never check for relevance or spelling or, urgh!, facts... but I'm going to reverse engineer these, send some thoughts back through time...

You'll have to click the photos to get the full effect.... The Wytch Machine seems to like only to post the left side of the photo, the Left Hand Path...

At times, Kek looks a little like Masonna, I think... the way he's grappling with that thing in his mouth, it's like a man grappling with ectoplasm or electrical currents, like his body itself is wired for sound...

They're not making a racket though... this is often quite beautiful stuff... the Farmer's beats are wrought in iron...

Psychedelic Iron >>>>>> Butterflies...

Ha ker Fa rm 1.2

From The Wytch Machine...



...you hear a lot of bands who seem to be wreathed in noise... this band really is... wreathed is perfect... noise circles the beats, occasionally strangling them, occasionally letting other voices through... I saw this performance mostly through video... through a little screen that concentrates the eye... flipping from one to another... it's a perfect way to intensify the experience* especially when....

(is that a cow with it's head psycha-dela-melting?)

there's no crowd... where the fuck has everyone gone? This little event is gonna have to scream like hell to get noticed.... and it's a shame that more people aren't here to see this because, to my ears, this is very listenable.... the young dubsteppers at the College could dig this... there's easily enough to grasp onto... more say than the excellent but amorphous Ice Bird Spirallings that Kek used to do...

I know, I know... mates etc... but I really liked this stuff... get a CDR to us, guys!

I filmed the whole set - but there's 23.23 of perfect stuff, i think; well, perfect is probably not the right word. Not sure about stuff, either. Not sure it's as tangible as that...There's 23.23 of Ghosts using Machines. I hope they'll put it up somewhere...


**Sorry if the footage I shot for you guys was a little shaky.... kept forgetting to not bob about... some of them beats are funky...

Hacker Farm 1.1

References? Well, I heard a fair bit of Coil about the edges, the way the beats slid in and out... anyone who knows me knows that that's about the greatest compliment I could give. Also some of the more abstracted dubstep - I'm thinking a solarised Actress, of the top of my head. There's spirals of a lighter Merzbow... certain hint of the East around the eyes... one thing that kept recurring as I was filming them - this is the most unAmerican music I've heard.... no idea where that comes from... but this seems rooted in either the Far (South) West or the Far East (Anglia* and Japan)

Doesn't matter... could only be misleading... references aren't what this is about... this is it's own reference and will remain that way....

Though Farmer Glitch was talking about spending time in Hong Kong so...






*not sure where that came from... never even been to East Anglia (or any Anglia) but there's something, well, indistinct about it in my imagination... and this music could curl beautifully around the edges of an abandoned munitions testing base, looking out over the sea...

From The Wytch Machine...

Ike Reiko Blues

Don't you just hate it when you've plugged the iPod* into the speakers, shoved it on shuffle and an Ike Reiko sexgasping orgasmatrack comes on just when your Mum's visiting?




Forgot to say that you can find some more on Ike Reiko at the ever-reliable, steamroller of a Blog, Mutant Sounds... which may have been where I first came across her...

Actually, during a brief Google for more on Ike Reiko (I won't say my search terms) I found a whole series of stuff on this blog which I'd completely forgotten about. Although now, An Idiot's Guide is clearly a doyen of taste and discrepancy and general good grammer way back in the past it was nothing more than an odd repository of solarised women and slutty record covers.

Check these out: Babe-a-licious Times!

I'm ashamed, but I still think I might return to those times, sometime soon.



*apologies to anyone who feels that my Apple-bobbing affects their delicate mythos / makes their blood boil / drags some terrible trauma into their naked consciousness...

From The Wytch Machine...

Otter Slugs, Taunton circa 2010

From The Wytch Machine...

Sun Araw

feelin' a little Sun Araw today, sun-bleached...

if you don't know Sun Araw then you should... you could argue that there's others out there ploughing the same lo-fi spangles but, really, Sun Araw keeps coming up with the goods...

you already know that I listen blind to mostly everything.... just load it up and let it fly from my iPod, letting the complexities of the Shuffle Al Gore Rhythm bust a gut as to the mood... I rarely even look at the track titles / artists... preferring to let things blow... a lot of the music washes over me... but every time a Sun Araw track comes on I find myself caught up.... it's devastating music.... guitars swirl like nothing else... percussion sounds like skulls or chemical containers... and it swirls... in a very psychedelic way... the voice, the guitar, even the drums swirl... dance music for Ayahuascans, for Magic Mushroom Modettes... it's music that vocalises the unvocal, that tries to speak what shouldn't be spoken...

Keep with me here. I know. I know.

Sun Araw - Horse Steppin

Sun Araw - Deep Cover

Music for walking out of the desert. Scab picking psychedelia of the highest order. Music with it's face burned off. Songs that arrive in town over the back of a mule. Creepy as hell. It would make a perfect soundtrack for a Jodorowsky film. In fact, for Jodorowsky filming this little special needer...

(must get round to writing that someday)

Relentless stuff but intoxicating. Hard work like acid is hard work.

You need this.

Redacted 2

Maybe there is scope for more integration of blogs, webcams, YouTube clips into movie narrative - the metacommentary possibilities alone ought to lend itself to horror and from there to thrillers and eventually everything else... There'll be sideways slides into kiss and tell YouTubes from romcoms, bitchy Richard Curtis jibes from blogs segueing into Richard Curtis playing himself in a movie where he helps Gerard Butler get the girl/find his soul.

Mmm.


From The Wytch Machine...

Redacted

Off. Maybe an honourable failure. And there's a deeper film tic here from De Palma, one that I've mentioned before, a minor obsession of mine: that nonactors and actors can mix seamlessly because they are the same.

The blurs are hardly needed. There's no way these guys or their 'real' counterparts are uninfluenced by the Vietnam movies... For some they'll be the reason for their choice of career.

Who wouldn't act, in the middle of a war? You'd hardly want to just 'be'.


From The Wytch Machine...

Steven Gerrard Must Go

...I love Steven Gerrard, he's my favourite player, perhaps ever... he's an oddly shaped antelope, a boy-faced Egyptian God, a chisel-haired football legend... he's the dark beating heart of Liverpool FC, the boy wonder with guts and bones to spare... he's been brilliant for Liverpool, loyal in a world of spun-out capitalist scree (I'm reading Zizek at the moment); he'd have genuinely played football for free, never even seemed all that bothered by the other trappings of Premiership footballing (the blur of endorsements, the smudge of lipstick on orange-peel skin, the tug of heartstrings and nightclubs - a fracas here, a loose tongue there, nothing critical or defining, nothing McAvennie, nothing Nicholas, nothing Cole)

I love Steven Gerrard but he must leave Liverpool.

This season, it's been embarrassing... for him, for the fans, for the rest of the team. He's still been good, I don't subscribe to the idea flitting around the media that he's had a bad season particularly - it's not his passes that have gone astray, it's that his team mates have been standing in the wrong place.

Time and time and time again. His pass completion rates must be shot to hell. His body language couldn't of got more mangled. When Torres was fit we looked a much better side, of course and I think Gerrard and Torres were about the most lethal attacking combination in the league but... even when they were playing together there was something amiss, something bigger than both of them... an arch psychological impediment that seemed to stem from Gerrard and flow outwards....



Gerrard must go because he's got so good, has become so essential, so integral, that his team mates are scared of playing... you can see it in their eyes, the millisecond of panic, the fractional glance across the pitch towards him when the ball's coming towards them... good players gone bad because there's someone on their team they feel the need to refer to before playing their game...

It's a small thing, a doubt that I'm sure the other Liverpool players think they're dismissing, but it's a cold virus, affecting their judgement... they're like trainee astronauts, struggling with decompression, with anoxia...

Gerrard's not a bully, not a yeller or a screamer, not a Carragher... his motivation comes from his belief, from his actions on the pitch... but the belief must be dimming now, even in someone so in love with the game and his club and the actions are inhibiting his team mates... he passes to a place where they should be, the ball goes out, he's already running for the return, he turns and he's not even angry, just disappointed... the farce starts up again...

Liverpool don't have any other Steven Gerrard's waiting in the wings, but they have good players who could be much better... in the occasions when he's off the pitch, you can almost see the relaxation... in the moments when Aquilani or (especially) Lucas forget themselves and start playing unfettered by Gerrard's silent expectancy you can see flashes of inspiration... it's not Gerrard's fault but I think he has to go...

unless...

unless...

he could stay if Liverpool could recruit a calm, older head in midfield, a Gary McCallister figure to keep things ticking, someone unfussed by reputation, someone clicking to their own desires...

Alonso was critical as we all knew he would be because he wasn't worried by Gerrard, was old beyond his years, was content to not be the star but to be a starmaker, wasn't brain-stormed by Gerrard's presence, could keep his head, could stand in the right place to receive the ball...

If they reunite at Real Madrid they really will make that team immaculate... it'll break his heart but at least, for a season, we're unlikely to meet him coming the other way...

If there's someone out there who could save Gerrard for Liverpool, if there's a McCallister, then the new Manager needs to buy now or else let Gerrard go and let the existing players free, to see where they go with their freedom, to see if Lucas et al really could be amazing players...

The new manager might need to cut off the head to save the body.

Colleen-ing

Keep hearing Colleen on soundtracks, through windows, in other people's lives... Missed her somehow in my life; an artist I think I feel I should know better. Who's to tell? All the stuff I hear sounds great, is that representative?


Even to me, this feels more like a Tweet. Mixed Mediatosis.

Colleen - Summer Water

Colleen - The Heart Harmonicon

Lost the will to separate. Perhaps temporary.

'Francis likes to talk' - Watson on Crick.

Maybe Colleen is here too, alongside Dawkins on Genius of Britain. She is getting everywhere.

Colleen - The Golden Morning Breaks

I can't write without italics. Not sure why. Or rather, think i know but would prefer to look away. Will return to this maybe. Always return.

Curse this rotten Wytch Machine.



From The Wytch Machine...