The Best... Ever

That this exists is the absolute, savage, heart of our world. This is our Capitalism reduced. Absurd and utterly seductive; who could resist the cover, the concept? This is ridiculously now, even in 2009 and we should be ashamed that we let it be. Still, the gleeful malevolence behind this album has to be admired (if you don't see it; you can't fight it), I suppose; the necessary moral contortions and the sheer abandon (the moral compass swings to 'Attachment Issues') must have been hard fought, even if no one can remember fighting (we blame the baby boomers for bypassing the future but we could still use their brains, like John C Lilly thought we could do with dolphin memory traces). In fact, while the likes of Adam Curtis have attempted this kind of moral archaeology (clue: it really is all about 'ritual significance, so even Icke isn't that wrong) other pathways are necessarily undiscovered and it should be a surprise to our future selves when they find out we found the moral past so difficult to ascertain...

I think that's it.

Mirage Men Mirage

We know about Mirage Men. I saw it on NOCHEXXX's twitter or something - I want to believe (etc). It looks good, I haven't seen it yet but... I met someone who did. At a bus stop. No, wait; come back. And he said that the film was a Mirage, a triple bluff, maybe a quadruple bluff (he lost count, I lost count). I wanted to get away at this point. He said Mirage Men was simply a Hall of Mirrors inside a hall of mirrors and that the book - I wasn't aware at the time that there was a book - was a well-meaning investigation into what it said it was a well-meaning investigation into but the film of the book had secrets and new lies that deliberately attempted to obfuscate. He was just a young guy, maybe 25. He looked a bit like Rorschach (mask off, naturally). He seemed normal, except around the eyes. I'm not sure what to think. He was interested in my job as a Philosophy Teacher, though wondered if I'd been tricked too. I've wondered that too. He had a working knowledge of Plato but I didn't think I should hold that against him. The conversation laster only about 5 minutes and it seemed a little like that film about the meaning(s) of Kubrick's The Shining. I haven't seen that, either. He went the other way.

Mirage Men teaser trailer from Roland Denning on Vimeo.

Really want to see this now.

There's a wordpress thing here, too.

Grammy.com (A Big Fuck-OFF)

I'm almost speechless at this, found via Blissblog (who's also almost speechless - unless he's saving his ire for a paid ranting).

Almost.

Actually, that's a lie.

I'm nowhere near speechless. I'm full of words. I'm suddenly thick with them; they are stuffing into my skull and more are coming. This has made me really angry.

That face when David Tennant's Doctor goes: 'What?!!? What?!!?' over and over again. Yeah, that face.


I know this isn't worthy of such vitriol. I know there's stuff everywhere more painful, more important. Of course, this kind of thing doesn't matter, not in the same way that those workers in Bangladesh getting compensation matters or even in the same way that Sophie Stewart's Matrix win matters. Except, it does because it's related. It's part of the problem. It is the problem. It just happens to be about post-rock.

I've never exactly understood the frantic, journalistic rush to name things or to create genres. It made sense to resist labels right from the off (my off, not your off): when punks rejected Punk, Goths rejected Goth and so on. Now, with these little micro-climates like the H words, even Grime (the 2.0 is revealing) we have similar causes and similar effects:

1)I need to CREATE
2)My CREATION (I prefer CREATURE) needs a label
3)I need a label to MARKET
4)I need a MARKET to MONETIZE
5)I need to MONETIZE to CREATE
6)After I've MONETIZED I need to RESIST labelling
7)Because to REALLY MONETIZE I need to BE a label


Maybe. Maybe not. It seems that way sometimes. Laughable watching bands adopt all the tropes of a scene and then pretend they haven't - and even to pretend that they're somehow distanced from that scene; developed independently, weren't using it as a springboard at all.

I guess it's also partly about journalists / theorists playing at Philosophy, trying to make signfiers out of signifieds, trying to be talking about something better, bigger, more eternal, more transcendental than music. About writers wanting to be writers rather than music writers. Writers ever-so-slightly ashamed of their genre non-fiction writing*. Wanting their understanding of life to be the key, rather than their love of music. I'm triple-guessing here and getting distracted but... A quick heads up guys: there isn't anything more eternal or transcendental. Music is that thing you're thinking of; you don't need to sublimate your musical vocabulary to an ethical one, or a political one or even a purely aesthetic one. You are already taking about those things - it's Sublime (in Burke's sense and in all other senses too) and it's ridiculous and you couldn't find a better description of Post-rock.

I digress...

Let's dig a little into that Grammy.com article. Rub it 'til it bleeds.

Over the past two decades, a curious musical insurgency has raged on the outermost fringes of the international music scene.

International = Multinational. Scumfuckers eating at the world, territory by territory. This Globablized game of Risk, leaving bust entrails and Globally-recognisable gloop everywhere.

Dubbed "post-rock," this burgeoning movement was pioneered by ambitious bands who largely discarded vocals and traditional verse-chorus structures in favor of euphoria-inducing song cycles.

Song-cycles? Hey let's look these guys up with the same peeps who bought those Gorecki CDs... let's invent a SubClassical genre; let's make Bliss itself something we can all share around a coffee table. Now, lets just take a little ROAD TRIP to see the members of these funny little bands, hand em a cheque, see how REVOLUTIONARY they really are...

Burgeoning? Burgeoned.

Now, eccentric outliers such as Canada's Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Scotland's Mogwai, Iceland's Sigur Rós, and Chicago-based Tortoise are increasingly being recognized as rock visionaries.

By people who matter. By Industrial people (cf. Industrial people). There's no particular reason why visionary ought to mean difficult, I've been to dinner parties with Godspeed / Sigur Ros et al and Trout Mask Replica / Bernard Parmegiani just doesn't allow for chatter, but here visionary seemed allocated to the ranks, just another subgenre of the Rock pantheon, an attempt at patronising ingratiation and assimilation. Just because these bands are visionary it doesn't mean you recognise why. You still don't know what you're looking for, you fuckwits.

This isn't just music; music is just a symptom. Consider how the Film Industry tries to understand and recreate the sleeper hits, the films that strike chords when the right chords haven't been struck. Consider the endless attempts to recreate (no, reproduce) hits like Trainspotting, Reservoir Dogs, even Four Weddings and The Full Monty. Consider all the failed attempts to distil their essence.

Having paid their dues performing in more intimate venues, many post-rock artists are now performing at international music festivals such as Coachella in Indio, Calif., Glastonbury in the UK and Spain's Primavera Sound, as well as at jazz festivals in several cities around the world. Sigur Rós' headline concert at the Hollywood Bowl in 2006 marked a watershed moment; a relatively obscure post-rock band performed on a historic stage often reserved for philharmonic orchestras and bebop ensembles.

Paid their dues? To whom. The Big Other? The Canon itself? The Hall of Fame?

Urgh.

And, Christ, just because a Festival is International (what the hell does that mean anyway?)... well, what does that mean? I mean I've seen hedgemonkey mates playing bin-lids and drainpipe didgeridoos at Glastonbury... away from the big corporatized / sponsored stages there's still plenty of scope for every kind of act (that's the whole fucking point of a Festival!) - don't confuse the high prices for Glastonbury (and I'm assuming Coachella et al) to mean that this is somehow a sanctified place, a residual of Capital-established worth.

"They're brilliant musicians," he says. "What they're doing is almost mathematical, or classical-based. It's not just simple chord progressions on a guitar. A lot of these musicians can play many, many different instruments, and they're knowledgeable in classical music and all types of jazz. What all these bands do is unique and fascinating."

Mr CEO, you are fucking killing Godspeed for me. Please, please don't reduce the Bliss (the Infantjoy) to musicality and skill. I work in FE, you mention 'upskilling' or 'skillset' one more fucking time and I'll write a very stern letter indeed.

They're also eclectic, Windish might add. So eclectic, in fact, that questions of what defines post-rock are constantly debated. Depending on whom you ask, post-rock is either a spinoff or a contemporized cousin of progressive rock. But such notions seem simplistic as post-rock artists such as Caspian, Explosions In The Sky and the Album Leaf also draw on influences from ambient, psychedelic rock and shoegazer, to jazz, space rock, minimalism, krautrock, classical, and noise punk.

Wow. Musicians influenced by... music? Just because we're used to the BEATLES - OASIS - PEACE axis of musical progression doesn't mean everyone uses it. It'd be foolish not to at least be a sum of your influences - it would require you to disregard them as influences - but, there can be many and the many can be non-compatible, they can be dissonant and from that the new can be formed.

While post-rock bands run the stylistic gamut, some elements are common to the subgenre, including effects-laden guitar, slow-building song arrangements, sampled sound bites, and judiciously applied strings. These and other ingredients combine to create sounds that can be both pastoral and almost hallucinogenic.

"When you listen to it, you are able to feel whatever you're feeling just a little bit extra," says post-rock fan Steven Anderson of Toronto, Ontario. "Drugs were in no way involved in me getting into this style of music. You can listen to this and feel like you're flying, no matter what mental state you're in."

But they help, Steven. They really do.

One of Anderson's favorite bands is the American Dollar, a Queens, N.Y., duo who is winning critical plaudits while demonstrating post-rock's commercial potential. Consisting of multi-instrumentalists Richard Cupolo and John Emanuele, the duo were just beginning to compose original material in 2004 when they posted one of their songs on Myspace.

"Literally the very next day we got a licensing request from a producer over at MTV," Emanuele recalls. "That request was pretty much one of the motivating factors for us continuing to make the first album. It was obvious that we have something here."

Some nine years later, Cupolo and Emanuele have licensed their music to movie trailers, TV shows such as "CSI: Miami" and advertising campaigns for global brands. Their music licensing venture has helped fund their independent record label, Yesh Records.

What makes the American Dollar's songs well-suited for TV and film is how the music conveys varying states of consciousness, as suggested by album titles such as The Technicolour Sleep, A Memory Stream and Awake In The City.

And there is the New Dream: maybe I could get used in a commercial and that would make me be commercial. I guess that is the dream - the best version has your track used in a film, the ultimate is that it's used in a film that you like - but to wish that dream out loud is another thing entirely, an extra sad bow. Don't let this be the guide, people. Don't let this guide your reasoning, your placement of sounds. The BBC were right, that Sigur Ros track worked wonderfully with some of their Wildlife programming but don't trap them into desiring that machine by making it seem like this is the thing to be desired, that this is the purpose of the music, it's pre-ordained intention.

Anyone can be trapped like this, don't make it seem like they're not being trapped.

"Nostalgia is a large part of the feeling that we try to emphasize," says Cupolo. "We try to create an organic sound that has both the modern and the more traditional instruments mixed together."

Empathy, Check. Nostalgia, Check. Organic, Check.

Far from the early '90s when bands such as Talk Talk and Slint were unwittingly laying the foundation of post-rock, the genre has since spawned a growing subculture. Similar to the psychedelic bands of the '60s, many post-rock performances are multimedia affairs during which artists play amid dim lighting and projected images. Chicago-based post-rock trio Russian Circles are known for their energetic live shows and are noted for being able to expand upon their recorded material through the use of sampling and an extensive array of effects and loop pedals.

The 'unwittingly' is key here, yet this seems almost anathema. It's anti-managerial, not at all on message. It's an impossible child.

Perhaps due to the music's radio-averse arrangements, post-rock artists often sign with well-regarded experimental rock labels such as Constellation Records, Kranky and Thrill Jockey Records.

"There are artists and audiences all over the world, but I think there's kind of a home for this music in parts of Europe like Germany, France and Scandinavia — countries where avant-garde jazz and jazz [are] more established, accepted and funded," says Windish.

Radio-friendly? Radio-friendly? Keep saying it over and over again and it will continue to mean something. Or maybe just stop saying it.

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

And this tilt at the Europeans (oh, I see; avant-garde's written in foreign innit?) - what is this? 1920? Is Henry Miller about to head to Paris again? Is it the 50s? Is the Beat Hotel still open? Even the colonials do avant-garde now... this kind of headless subservience to the old European masters just isn't helpful at all... Hey, come to Britain and laugh along with the Arts Council trying to get anything funded that is an any way actually avant-garde.

And then:

While Europe and Canada may be the more fertile performing markets now, increasing awareness has led some to believe that post-rock's global breakthrough is imminent.

"It's definitely encouraging to see more and more of these bands playing around the world, and gaining lots of followers on different social media," says Emanuele. "We kind of feel that [popularity for the genre] is in the cards. Mostly, it's just a matter of time."

Daft, just daft. Encouraging - such a balmy word, such an Agent word. Markets - so warm, so comforting (we all live in a yellow shopping mall, a yellow shopping mall, a yellow shopping mall). And Fertile - fuck's sake, someone get a Freudian back on the case. It's great that lots of people are listening to stuff that they didn't always listen to - there is a marketplace, of ideas, of collaborations, of open-source ravaging - but don't reduce the listeners to the listenable.

I...

Speechless again.






*actually this is the reason I still can't stand bands playing in Art Galleries; it doesn't do either party any favours. It smacks of something... awful and sweet, that Orange Tango smell of a dead body. The power of, for instance, Throbbing Gristle come from them playing with/in the ordinary - in a Gallery setting it's not just preaching to the perverted, it's allowing them to accomodate you...

Collision-Detection Box Set (remix)

The inevitable remix of the article at Freq


There’s buckets of finely congealed empathy here, beautifully presented. Front And Follow is an unusual, old-fashioned label, not quite made for these times. And thank God for that.

This box set is a collection of 9 EPs from a host of incredible artists, all working within the confines of some strange call & response routine* which sees invited artists submit audio clips into a central pot, which is then distributed around the group for them to do with as they see fit. At least, that’s what this box set is supposed to be. In another reality this is Front and Follow’s collective phantasy, an arc of triumph. This is the illusion of a series of collected EPs, an illusion so pervasive/persuasive that even the artists and the label think that it’s true.

But this is a collaboration in more ways than one. This is a packaged ideal, a little bit of ideology. These artists don’t sound particularly similar and most of them don’t know each other but they are kin and this box set is a series of statements around a common belief in music per se.


I’m listening to this on shuffle, which isn’t really the right way** – I think there’s an awful lot more thought put into the sequencing than I’m allowing – but it has elicited a theme that might be hidden if these songs are taken as they were intended. Listened to in this way, there are some ugly transitions where The Lord keeps head-butting in, reminding me of the effect that Foetus had on Industrial compilations from the 80s* but even that seems somehow part of the kinship. They are friendly non-familiars. They are rubbing against each other to create sparks.


Sone Institute pops up in a kind of Carpenter-guise; like an axe has split an old 80s horror soundtrack's skull down the middle, and only slightly stretched apart the plates

This set ought to lie alongside ‘mythical’ (for many of the pre-CD reissue years) compilations like the Elephant Table album. It is era defining, even at a time when we’re beset with endless micro-genres and expected to simply accept that post-modernism has won and the grand narrative drives of music are gone, or have been subverted, or popularised. Well, bollocks. This shows that there is something bigger than the artists; there is still a functioning system of reason out there, people do still care about being in opposition.


Some of these artists dabble with song-forms (Kemper Norton pulls apart folk music, The Doomed Bird Of Providence tries to soundtrack a dying soldier’s lament for the Balkans****), some of them drift beautifully, like Zoviet France or something (Isnaj Dui, Blk Tag, Psychological Strategy Board), some of them even spin off into almost ‘Big’ Beat(s) (West Norwood Cassette Library stomps all over the place in exactly the right way) but really this album is a collective, a kind of multi-voiced howl of despair against stagnation. Even the methodology behind the choice of sounds is communist and utopian. The label sets their stall perfectly; I’ve got a bunch of MP3s and PDFs but I think I need the artefact as much as anything. So do you. This is exactly what we need right now: attention to detail, to For. Beauty regarded as a value. This shows real solidity in amongst the ruins of the (so-called) www-crushed music industry.


Front and Follow need to be here. These artists are necessary and more or less sufficient. This album will be one that people will talk about. At the very least the cynical among you have an opportunity to buy your future bragging rights now, before they are gone forever.


*this is the first symptom, an old route which seems to be returning. This is the scene and setting of this compilation, the framework that acts like a Dali crutch. You have to listen quite hard to hear this mechanism (it doesn't creak) but you can feel it.

**I feel just about okay doing this with this album; as a collaboration / compilation there ought to be alternative routes through the jungle but... I'm even annoying myself how much I'm reviewing via walking and listening, uploading three or four albums at a time sometimes into a playlist and then letting Shuffle speculate. I'm trying to stop this, especially since a lot of people I know spend a lot of effort sequencing things, only for monkeys like me to load and discard. Certainly, the IX Tab album was very considered in terms of the order since I wanted it to be an album rather than a collection of my least worse bits.

***I mean, of course, that often Foetus tracks (and to a lesser extent NWW) appeared like unholy cows, butting their way into the fold, working bad seams in finely woven tapestries of sound. I like the earnest, believed-in sound of their contempories but it was also wonderful at times (and supremely psychedelic) to puncture the moment with Batman themes or fairground music or odd Nurses laughing...

****that description doesn't do it justice; the odd thing about this is that this urfolk isn't ur at all, this is a pure approach; this sounds like its been recorded (beautifully) in situ, there's very little obvious processing... but yet it fits perfectly with all these monstrous machines.

Colour Sound Oblivion Coil

Love this Val Denham portrait. It manages somehow to capture an intensity and a normality, a humanity... this is the kind of portrait I'm sure Houellebecq was on about in The Map And The Territory. A rare thing. I found this again here, where there's loads of Coil related images, scans, covers etc. Some of which I've never seen before (and I've looked... a lot) Glad someone's still fanning the flames. Miss them. There's also a brilliant Cyclobe interview here . I especially like this bit:

I'm not saying music has to be complicated, or that it has to take a long time to make to be interesting, but I do think people need to take more time. The world is too 'now' orientated and we're littering, smothering each others’ minds with all this uncensored mundanity.

It's something too few people say. Another, incidentally, saying much the same thing is Kevin Shields, of course and he's also been interviewed at the Quietus. Really interesting. Anyway, if it's possible to be bored with nowness, I think I am. It's a seductive quality, spontaneity (or valuing spontaneity) but... maybe it's run its course for a little while. Time and Place. Take your time, folks...

Orbital: Wonky, The Flash & Kant

Well, this little slice of meek bile from Fact magazine got to me...

and it ended up in a mostly inconsistent rant about all kinds of things which I've decided against posting. I dunno, I've been busy and I didn't get round to posting it when I wrote it a few days ago and now... well, those kind of blogrants ony have currency when they are...of the moment...

Here's a few disconnected lowlights:

1) ... now most of the (FACT) features seem embarrassing/embarrassed, like those fitful days when every childrens' TV presenter clearly just wanted to be doing T4 or The News At Ten and just mentally squirmed whenever they had to do something genuinely child-like or child-centric*. The mixes stand alone.

2) ...they've done the hard work, broke the back... we still owe these fucking guys...

3) ...and Waving Not Drowning sort of predicted the poppier chunks of Ghost Box:



4) I mentioned it at the time - but nothing swept in to fill the void..

5) I love Shackleton but he tends to make me want to thrown commuters under trains...

6) (Actually, there's something reasonably joyous about Gentleforce but that's a different kind of joy)

7) Death to Emotional Bulimics!

8) ...and the thing I've always loved is that Orbital never seemed remotely experimental; they seemed entirely, utterly mainstream but in a kind of only slightly alternate universe when the mainstream was a good place to be...

"In a recent FACT interview, the brothers revealed they laid out the LP as a wall plan before they started recording. The weakness of this approach to music making is apparent in the album’s structure, and it feels like they felt forced to crowbar in musical styles that sit uncomfortably with their own sound. So we have “the electro-house one” (‘Where Is It Going’), and “the dubstep ones” (‘Distraction’ and ‘Beezlebub’), all as cringe-inducing as you’d expect."

9) The first part is the weirdest criticism of an album I've heard: the idea that planning the album itself can be a weakness. The cult of spontaneity attempting a sucker punch.

***


...but the key thing is that I can't really hear a bad Orbital album, a bad Orbital track because they are one of those bands that just happened, just flashed at the right moment, with the right people, at the right time... hearing (unexpectedly) the Doctor Who theme at one of my first Orbital gigs is one of the greatest moments in my musical life... it suddenly seemed like I was right, that everyone I knew was right... that we'd won.

Everyone I knew owned the Brown album. And they were all right.

This new album is welcomed with open arms. My children will have to love it. My friends will have to love it. I can't see past it. It may have flaws but I'm playing the fuck out of them, making it as much a memory as the other ones. There's been loads of great stuff released this year but I'll play Wonky more than any of them.

When Kant thought that appreciation of art and culture ought to be at the non-emotional, disinterested, level, he couldn't have been more wrong.

Call out to old readers, via John Maus

Picture via here

A long time ago, when the internet was still quite small and the music blogs could be counted on a whorehouse worth of hands, I posted a track called Lost by a band called Future Fear. I can't remember why I had it or how I found it but it sort of lurched at me one day and I posted a link to it. I didn't know anything about the band (it didn't seem there was a band) but the music was sort of lost and a little Goblin-bleak, slightly detuned and fitted in well with the electrical death-set I was fixed on at the time...

The old post is here, look long and hard if you've followed this blog since 2004 (What? No one?? Fuck...)

...and then, at the weekend, 8 years later, I get a some mysterious messages sent by John Maus via Twitter asking me to contact him... he had a story to tell...

And it turns out that Future Fear was a sort of imaginary band made up by John and Ariel Pink (he quite sweetly asked me if I'd heard of Ariel Pink) as a sort of joke, sort of not a joke. All good except... well, John had long lost the master tapes for this song and it'd been playing on his mind... he'd searched through all the tapes he had, googled it, trawled through the mp3 archives but no; the song was gone... no one he knew had a copy... it might be that I had the only copy of this song in existence!

Except... you guessed it: I can't find it either... there's a few places (old ipods etc) that I've yet to look (i have to find them first) but... it's probably a goner, a lost little gem...

So... does anyone remember downloading this song from here or somewhere else? Please get back to me (or John Maus, if you prefer)

It's these little stories that make me keep this going, even if it's just a dalliance here and there...

Anyway, here's a John Maus inspired/inspiration mix via here

KP1 // John Maus Phase Mix by Know Phase

All Apologies

On The Gradual Impossibility of Music Criticism...

It first started with this little off post about Demdike Stare... Not exactly a slagging but maybe a kind of shrugging. Now if you look at the (obviously unrepresentative) sample of commentators there's clearly a mini-consensus here which then got me thinking: how come no one else has said that before?

((Where are all the haters?))

Well, one reason is the diminishing circles of the internet, of course and the even more diminshing circles of the live circuit... take my recent trip to the Exotic Pylon gig ; I was outside smoking when Chris Bailiff aka Position Normal popped up and said hello. Now, I've said nice things about Position Normal in the past on this blog but it occurred to me as we were talking... what if i hadn't? What if I'd written some terrible, slaked, gnarly, bitchling piece about him and now had to chat amiably as if nothing had happened...

And that got me thinking...

I referred back to the comments of the Demdike post and right there, in the very first comment, an anonymous comment agreeing about what I was saying but clearly uncomfortable about saying it because, well:

my newfound status as a recording artist (who sometimes gets mentioned in the same breath as Demdyke, and who has met and enjoyed the company of one of their members)prevents me saying too much, but just to let you know I feel exactly the same way as you. i feel like i should like this stuff a lot more than i actually do.

You see what I mean? Which then got me thinking even more about how these endless routes and cycles and spirals are getting tighter and tighter, about how maybe along the way they're crushing the life out of criticism itself because this isn't the days of the fanzines, or even the early days of the blogs. In these days, gulp, you might actually meet the people you're writing about, even if you live in the backarse of the West Country, with all the associated smoke and mirrors that that brings.

And these people, these kindly souls you've denigrated, might be really nice people.

Anyone not scared about this must be lying, I think. Or caught in a terrible arch of blankness, or self-immolation, or...

When I started writing for Freq, I remember thinking a similar thing. I'm getting lots of freebies sent my way, lots of stuff I like, lost of stuff I don't. I wrote a lot of positive reviews but felt weird when I wrote something negative. This wasn't even my site, it was someone else's; I didn't want labels to stop sending stuff to them for fear of the bitchy Loki reviewer gnarling them... One CD (nameless, naturally) I didn't even write about because I couldn't think of anything nice (or even eloquently nasty) to say about it... I started to worry that this terrible plague of positivity was going to corrupt me too.

((God, if I don't write nice things then no one will ever send me free stuff, or get me into gigs for free, or...))

But I got over it. Thought nothing more of it until a few weeks ago when I started to make and slowly let seep some of my own music... Immediately, you wait for feedback of course because, though music is supremely personal and I really think that the bext possible music is the one track you've made that no one else likes, there's still that need to put it out there, to gain something else from it, even if it's just a slight nod or a wink or a raised eyebrow...

And I did get some feedback and it was all pretty good (some of it was completely on the money) but then, I would wouldn't I? I let it out on my blog and my twitter feed, to people who are already following so, of course 1) it's more likely that they'll like it - that's the 'group' it's for (even though the group it's really for are mostly lying on their back in a ditch outside East Coker, or making their living selling drugs and whittling in the woods at Caswell Bay, or are dead) and 2) even if they didn't, would they say? They might bump into me, somewhere. They will bump into me virtually... I mean, it would take a lot of balls to be that rude, and it's the kind of balls people wouldn't want to have.

Again, I let it go. Calmed the fuck down.

But then there was this little bit of repartee with Kek over at his blog which was interesting from another, related, angle: what happens if someone who's already a mate releases something that's a bit shit?

Now, obviously, Kek is a mate but even he did a slight gulp when I (stupidly, I realise now) pretended to be offended by what he'd said (he was bang on, as usual) and that really got me thinking: if I thought, even for a second, via the irony-free domain of Twitter (curse that lack of italics) or the facial expression-free blogs, that I'd offended someone when I didn't mean to, I'd be scurrying back to my text, trawling over it, trying to find out where I'd slipped up...

And that's not all. Kek goes on to say:

Doing things for the right reasons (whatever they might be) can often balance out some of the potentially bad shit - vanity / attention-seeking / self-aggrandising / etc will almost always end in tears, so if anyone's gonna get into public-platform creative activities , then they need to weed that shit out of themselves pronto. But - gone round the block and met myself going the other way) I've certainly never written anything on this blog that I didn't mean. Though, sometimes I've meant to write something and didn't.

Which I think absolutely nails it and makes a mockery out of the lack of real criticism out there (The Wire, about a year ago, was full of reviews that refused to say anything negative - it seems to have gotten a bit better now, people are coming out their shells again); yeah, artists need to put away the self-aggrandising shit before even thinking of releasing anything and then the critics would be free to say whatever they really think, without fear of offending...

I mentioned this to a mate who argued that we didn't need haters; that they were an unecessary blight on the internet, hiding in their anonymity (confession: Loki's not my real name), spewing bad Exorcist bile but I can't agree... without them the circle contracts, the feedback artists get just makes them get worse, or go down blind alleys or try to second guess the critics by changing direction when, really, the old direction was where their mind was at...

I'm going to keep releasing stuff as IX Tab (maybe as Twiggwitch too - though I'll come to that) and it's gonna keep following my themes. That old bitch of a word - masturbatory - that's what I'm aiming for. It's music for me. If you don't get it; I don't mind you saying. I'll engage. I won't huff. There's no need for this politeness..

We need the haters, or at least the dissenters; they'll help... even if they don't mean to.

With that in mind the latest release of __________________________ is total and utter shite.

Ekoclef Considered As A Review Of The City And The City

In China Mieville's wondrous The City And The City the city of Beszel exists in more or less the same space as the city of Ul Qoma. The cities interweave, crosshatch; citizens unsee their counterparts in the other city, buildings themselves merge but don't merge. Neighbours live next to each other but dutifully don't notice their proximity, in fact are forbidden from doing so by the mysterious Breach, which is both an action and a powerful agent of order. To see what is there is to breach. To breach is to invoke Breach.

The cities are post USSR, post-world. They share many of the same characteristics but remain absolutely, qualitively different. They are separated by language, by intention, by Kant's categories. It vaguely reminds me of that Wittgenstein quote about how, if a lion could speak our language, we still wouldn't be able to understand it.

Disclaimer: I'm only half way through this book, it just turned out that I've been reading it now with the soundtrack (accidentally analogous) of the Bass Clef + Ekoplekz release, almost reviewed brilliantly here.

And

They

Are

The

Same.

Ekoplekz + Bass Clef doesn't sound like either artist; there are glimpses, unheard snips and wanes, but mostly the tape-swapping has birthed a new monster, one I think neither would have settled on independently.

The protagonist of The City And The City, Inspector Borlu, is vaguely doggged, vaguely determined but resolute in the laws of these non-twin cities; this is not (so far) about an unveiling of the truth behind these mysterious, space-rimmed cities... he doesn't intend to unpick the crosshatch to see the real cities; the hatching is as much a part of his reality, the psychic borders as real as empty spaces, as unmentionable...

And so with Ekoclef - you can listen to this and try to spot the joins. You can but you might miss the (twin) points. The crosshatch is the release, the medium is the massage... when it works it really works and you unhear the joins. Nick and Ralph speak different languages and when the two voices come together they form a supremely odd chorus. The effect is affecting.

Tape spools, unwind, pop and crackle.

Oh I dunno. Less driven than Some Truths, less slurring than Ekoplekz. 'I was a tree in the forest; they cut me down' has sounds that neither would use in their other guises: triballed yelps, flutes, singing... it could be a Vitamin K spoked Shpongle, shorn of its usual gentle mushroom gauze...http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

It doesn't all work; sometimes the joins are too obvious, too difficult to unhear, sometimes the crosshatching just muddies both city states, causes traffic chaos as they fail to swerve around each other and end up on top, like a pair of almost-merged naked wrestlers in a Francis Bacon painting...

(actually, those tracks sound better now I've read this as well)

But mostly this is dogged and delirious and, er, fun and you'll be wanting one.

Buy here maybe.

Buy The City And The City too (if it turns out to be crap in the second half I'll tell you) and play with them together. They make a curious sort of sense together.

God knows what they'd sound like apart.

Prince Rama Re(tard)mix Review w/ Transglobal Underground

For those that really can't be arsed with all the arsing, there's the proper review here.

"Rest in Peace”, the opening track of the latest Prince Rama album opens with a slightly strangulated House howl, the kinda thing you might have gurned circa 1990 (where were you?), which is then savagely dismissed without a thought; a discarded, non-devotional whore… the drum rumbles begin and then the Dead Can Dance Indian sweeps and suddenly we’re deep into what might be a psychosexual memory of Sinbad movies… a primary imprinting on chiffon and chant and painted ladies inside golden pots, concealed by red smoke… I should be clear, this isn’t intended as a slight… I’ve been playing this album a lot, perhaps because I’m imprinted that way too…

...you are too...

...especially if you think you're not...

...or maybe you're looking at this and thinking: I don't know a single bit of A Clockwork Orange argot; I'm not from your world, pops...

...I've never heard of Leela or the Tight Fit...

In which case; I'll try and explain.

No punctuation, or at least no full stops…only accurate way to understand where this record is coming from… it’s breathless dandyism, artful sabre-tossing and ultimately a little melancholic because the sounds of the east appropriated here (or rather, churned over; this isn’t a Transglobal Underground-style appropriation) are the sounds of Holly/Bollywood’s understanding of the east pre 9/11, when it was exotic and tameable… when no one was even thinking about atrocities or Hassan I Sabbah…when the evilest Arab you saw was Tom Baker in full-make up…

...actually I think I'm getting the odd sniffs around the internet (OK, so far just Jonny Mugwump) that Transglobal Underground might be due a comeback and surely now in the midst of MaybeRetromania (not read that book yet so I'm not really sold on the premise) this would be a perfect time for one of those timeless/utterly time-dependent shaggy Club Dog bands to make their comeback... the music definitiely has never gone away (found different beats perhaps, but not that different beats) and, actually, I find it hard to think that Transglobal Underground in particular could go away, being less a band more a condensation of a certain time, a few uncertain spaces... for you, this could be (INSERT Megadoggish drug-binge here), for me it's aligned to Brighton, sometime early-to-mid 90s where I saw Transglobal Underground and where the whole Eat Static inspired psytrance was about to lift off... in just a few days ethnic drones would be smeared over everything... right then, you could only look back and see, what? Monsoon?

(though you could of course blame Coldcut and Ofra Haza; odd how few picked up on this, or how long it took for everyone to align)

So... Prince Rama.



…it’s not all Sinbad (a lot is Sinbad); “Trust” starts off with an airplane drone and then add voices that sound like they’re trapped in another room before building into some cargo cult version of Gary Numan circa Cars, with some added flourishes from Danielle Dax…

I hear a version of She... the Rider Haggard version... unfilmed but out there...

…the Dax references continue into “Incarnation” which may be a soundtrack to a James T. Kirk honour duel on some far off Essex planet* while “Portaling” starts somewhere inside a mountain during the heart-sucking scene of Temple Of Doom and then sort of detours into handclaps and, bizarrely, pub rock-soul circa 1974…

<<< I've read reviews since writing this and they seem to know about Prince Rama (art school Krishna commune )... and it seems like the associations, these pretty little stabs at meaning that I make, are only semi-appropriate but...

Fuck it; I'm getting more and more annoyed with research-based reviewing. Occasionally, I give a shit about the context of a band (or what they meant to say) but mostly I don't; with this kind of brainfizzing confection, it's all there, it's in the open, there's nothing that re ---- search could bring to the party... >>>

Hectoring over...

You’ll get a lot of fun out of this record; its brain is grimy enough to past muster with all the Pocahaunted TDK fetishists but its bones want to be in the middle of a Bollywood set; lip synching and twirling imaginary balls of bird fat… it has colour, has odd breadth (and odd breath)

But almost no punctuation.




*This phrase was in the original review but I wrote it so long ago I'm struggling to remember what I meant by Essex Planet... it could be a typo but then I don't believe in typos so I must have meant something by it... perhaps I was thinking of Essex quarries (in all senses of the word, or two at least), perhaps it was just one of those sniping non-sequiters that I occasionally shovel into my word piles just for the steaming hell of it... I'll get back to you on Essex planet,,,

The Act Of Naming

Not everything Holy is good. cf. Wolf, Ghost, Panda, Fuck...

But... as the genres cleanse, fold and manipulate; maybe it's time to rearrange our musical thinking around the act of naming. You can't rely on the existing labels either (haunt, hyp, step, skwe,) - why not put the, er, Jung in jungle? The Act of naming may seem throwaway but there's a reality in there, waiting to get out... cf. bloggers internet names - Loki seemed plucked from the air, seemed hasty but... there's a few bitches of malevolence here and there on these pages, a few fake moves, some tiny pranks (this may be one, I'm yet to decide if I'm serious) and some afterthought actions that only retrospectively made sense.

I was serious about this being a good idea, for instance. I still think it's a great idea, especially with regard to The The - Girls Aloud should cover the whole of Infected, a la Pussy Galore.

Cat could be a genre, a nominal.

So, if they haven't already started doing this, I propose record stores start organising their stock by names rather than genres (or even, urgh, decades). You want to buy everything with Ghost in the name?

On The Floor Considered As a Downhill 3yr Olds Birthday Party

It’s a new generation (who inbvited that kid? He's been scratching for 15 mins now and I swear his hair is moving without him)(everyone here)
Of party people (what do you mean we didn't order a Clown? Who the hell is that then?)

Darling get on the floor (security services suspect terrorism)
Darling get on the floor (security services suspect press invasion/paedophilia)

Let me introduce you to my party people (I invited Randy, but he's dressed as a bear)
In the club… (aka in the soft play area)

[Pitbull]
I’m (on) loose (women)
And everybody knows I get off the train (after watching that documentary with the guy from Merlin and One Foot In The Grave)
Baby it’s the truth (we lost a child down the back of the inflatable; I'm pretty sure he's stopped breathing)
I’m like inception I play with your brain (like the snow scene in Inception perhaps; now, where's the motherfuckin' wotsits?)
So I don’t sleep I snooze (one eye won't shut due to some awful neuralgia; you try being glamorous and trying to keep Calpol on the spoon at 4.30 in the morning...)
I don’t play no games so don’t get it confused no (quadruple negative here is perhaps some attempt at Neural Linguist Programming; the intention is clearly to remind the children that musical statues is coming up)
Cos you will lose yeah (we've rigged pass the parcel so that our kids win)
Now pump it up (the bouncy castle's fading...)
And back it up like a Tonka truck (we decided not to afford an actual Tonka truck, here's one made by Bruder instead...)




[Jennifer Lopez] (interesting move here to a variation of the never-used monoryhme scheme... perhaps a comment on the self-imposed drudgery of filling party bags?)
If you go hard you gotta get on the floor (assumed to be directed to cleaning staff re: fallen savoury hazards)
If you’re a party freak then step on the floor (the only kid here not a party freak is filling his ears with M & Ms)
If you're an animal then tear up the floor (talking to you, face-paint boy; anyone know if Sharpie washes off? I got these as a shop-spoiled lot from the Beckhams)
Break a sweat on the floor (mispelling; should read 'sweet' - the appropriation of the English term rather than the American - 'candy' - is perhaps a significant move towards Global certainty)
Yeah we work on the floor (the cleaning staff retort)
Don’t stop keep it moving (We don't pay 3 cents over minimum wage for nothing!)
Put your drinks up (directed towards the Dads at the back, some of them already slipping into Kestrel Super comas)
Pick your body up and drop it on the floor (How come concussion isn't on my predictive text? This is gonna be in all the papers tomorrow if we can't figure out how to bury the body...)
Let the rhythm change your world on the floor (I think this is just a commentary on the appropriation of the Lambada theme; the world will change if you squeeze it enough - in fact, let's just get rid off this troublesome World Music tag once and for all eh?)
You know we’re running sh*t tonight on the floor (every parent with small children will understand this feeling)

Brazil Morocco
London to Ibiza
Straight to LA, New York
Vegas to Africa(the wonders of positive discrimination, the paucity of American Geography teaching)

[Chorus]
Dance the night away (until we pack up at 6.30)
Live your life ,and stay young on the floor (Mummy's staying young, look, she can still do the... oh... Can someone call the ambulance?)
Dance the night away (in a hospital waiting room)
Grab somebody drink a little more (fuck, the coffee machine dispenses drinks at a thousand times hotter than the surface of the Sun)
Lalalalalalalalalalalalalala (the morphine kicks in...)
Tonight we gon’ be it on the floor (though I'll be sleeping on an old sliding door, trying to realign my vertebrae)

Lalalalalalalalalalalalalala (Morphine, Morpheee Richards, Keith Richards, Keith Harrisand Orville... Is that a pig?)
Tonight we gon’ be it on the floor (I've just brought up some alveoli; I think there may be internal injuries, after all. What does a spleen look like?)

ETC

Mati Klarwein

Yeah


Miles Runs The Voodoo Down




Labradford - Grate



Nick Drake - Pink Moon

RIP Sleazy (2)

End Of Era.

Circa:

1987

...bring home Horse Rotovator (on the recommendation of a one-eyed Record seller at a Yeovil Record Fair: "like Psychic TV, only good...") only to find the speakers are shot... can just about make out the textures of this record from pressing my head very close to the needle itself... hear the opening silos of Anal Staircase, only almost without sound... even then, it was the greatest record ever... the horn blasts, the whorls... this was about to become my music, the only band that ever touched my dead-eyed soul...

...heard at last a few days later and then played repeatedely, ritualistically, obsessive-compulsively... a new world/whirled opening up... insect chatter, humchatter, big songs when I'd just about started a period of getting rid of songs...

...heard a day or so later through the gauze of just too much hashish... at times, during Penetralia, the world really does seem to slow down...

it becomes the downer LSD record of choice (the upper LSD record seems a long way away) - starts unravelling things... the world is a wound? Yes, of course...

Huge argument: no way this is Goth... this is the nonGoth death record... this is Mexican Goth i.e. not Goth at all...

...consider Malcolm Lowry for a little while.

...go backwards, find myself in a squat with Thatcher On Acid and Blyth Power practising in the basement... spend a few fruitless moments jumping up and down on the roof of the JAMMs car used in the Doctorin' the Tardis video... I've got a copy of Scatology under my arms, bought 2nd Hand at Notting Hill gate... insist on playing it to all the squat's hippies... curdles Soya... whiteouts....



...search.... Maldoror... De Sade... Bataille... it's an odd path but I keep going....

The Black Sun brings us to Harry Crosby... to Austin Osman Spare... to Richard fucking Dawkins...

1988

...hear an odd version of Tainted Love... a spun off version... a black hole of a record... it turns out much much later that it's isn't Coil I'm hearing except that it is...

...wake up in the woods with Coil's advert musics from the hellraiser 10" playing on a loop on a battered cassette player... someone (now also sadly dead and gone, our own version of Balance rather than Sleazy, has mixed the track so that it plays for the whole 45mins...)

...this is the beginnings of An Idiot's Guide... My Book Of Dreams

...read the Wild Boys, decide that Coil are the soundtrack of the film that never was.

Start seeing pirates again.... and not just in the music...

...keep digging... Gold Is The Metal... feels weightless.. true shards... but hearing Sleazy sing seems like he's talking from outside the grave....

1990

Trying to work out the Wrong Eye single... the slurrs not quite making sense... something seems missing from this... like this is a fragment of a bad dream... it's supremely odd... we sit around playing it over and over.... trying out different speeds... at 78rpm it starts to dance and we have to consider that whatever comes next is going to open up new depths....

...but instead... a new, crystalline brother turns out, blinking into the sunlight... Windowpane... this is a new curl, a turn up, a moment of sudden clarity when we weren't expecting it...

it took awhile before we could be turned from Horse Rotovator's churnings...

a little while...

then, Ecstacy.

Oh, yeah. I get it. This isn't about-

1991

I met a perfect girl on the day I bought ...Love's Secret Domain... a girl that would take me right the way through the end of my teenage years and onto my twenties... I'm talking to her and I'm holding this record... Chaostrophy will sort of become our song... without her, I couldn't have found my perfect wife... without this record, I couldn't have hoped to understand girls



from here this record soundtracks every acid trip for six years or more...

LP? yes. Cassette? Yes. CD? Well, you just had to.


The Acid squiggle is getting to me, finally. Before, I'd been following it; now it's following me...

Lying semi-conscious, wracked with shingles and pleurosy, those evil twins, those nasty little Kray fish - can now only listen to the Hellraiser themes, words are making no sense...

Later, humchatter.

1992



it's twin, Stolen and Contaminated Songs, comes a little later and that too keeps pressing at my brain, keeps me understanding the delirium, devastation and fun and frolics of drug use... these twins are the only records that make any drug sense to me... we sometimes played Shamanarchy compilations or early Shamen records but these two are just boiling and immense... these are why.

1993

very drunk, publicschool educated drunk, backstage at a Brighton Festival... Further Back and Faster is playing really loud over a PA, I can't findthe source, it seems to be following me... I've lost everyone I know... I can't even remember what this Press Pass means or who I'm supposed to be innerviewing.... holy fuck, Leigh Bowery is walking towards me... Further Back and Faster... Minty are playing, I think... soundchecking to... this?

A grin is sliding across my face like an open razor... Leigh Bowery looks mental of course but I'm freaking him out I think... I find myself mouthing the words of the song: "Fingers of the left hand, spell..."

I need out of here.

This music is way too much away from my little psychedelic cocoons...

Much later, on the beach at Brighton on Christmas Day: Chaostrophy blasting onto an empty beach, the perfect Christmas song.

Later, Derek Jarman's Blue premiers on TV... Coil blends... all Coil... the blue suddenly starts to make a lot of sense.. the fact there are all these people, out there, listening to Coil while I'm listening...

There's a glimpse, it seems. A new world. Coil on TOTP. Coil on Richard and Judy. Coil switching on the Christmas Lights...

But...

1994-1998

...Coil music thin on the ground... music itself losing significance a little... finding new things: work taking over, drink taking over... just obsessively scanning the Coil fanlist letters, looking for evidence that all is not lost...

played LSD to someone and they hated it: barely checked fury... music ebbing away...

The Glitch gets worshipped, though it takes it's spacetime to find its right place.

A car, going dead slow in the snow, The Solar Lodge is making a comeback. In the trees, odd figures that will reappear on the Moon's Milk CD just a few years away... for a little while, this Essex backwoods is flipping into Apocalypse Now...

1998

The Solstice singles start creeping out - these will eventually coalesce into my favourite album of the noughties, will eventually make all the sense of the world...

they soundtrack all seasons equally, as such suck air in in all kinds of ways... hot becomes cold, cold becomes hot... this is weather-baiting music...



A car journey full of flashing speedcamera lights and allCoil... I'm deranging the girl who's driving, kinda hoping for a crash.... I'm in an odd place...

1999

Kate Bush appears, as she always threatened to... this is a waves... this is a disappointment at first... not as sparkly as the Solstice singles, too windswept... but it grows... they always grow...



2000



Music To Play In The Dark is played in the dark. Another new direction that no one saw coming. This has been ages in coming.

Eyes closed, sucking it all in. A new child gurgling in the background. Perfect. Moon Musick at a time when the moon is always out; perpetual dawn.

Lots of mushrooming. Red Birds Will Fly Out Of The East And Destroy Paris In A Night takes over. This track will creep, will creep forever now. Begin to understand Thighpaulsandra.

Discover Salvia. Time Machines is the only CD I can listen to while this plant takes hold. Everything else is impossibly intrusive. All words shriek. Flashback to pleurosy/shingles time.

2002

See Coil live, with the wrong girl. The tubes on strike, everything circling.

2003



The live albums keep spilling... each one is a different mystic beast... they will go on and on and on... Coil will live forever...

2004

They. Don't. Fuck. ImBalance. This is the first rock star death that I feel. I'd just managed to have the courage to go an innerview him. He'd been very nice on email and over the phone. He lived just up the road. I sent the questions and then he was gone.

Gutted.

What can we see in the entrails, Roman?

Then: Shards, fragments, totems... there must be more product out there, mustn't there? Thousand of unreleased gems from when Jhonn was alive. It'll all come out now, won't it? There must be ghosts of vocal tracks lying dormant on harddrives, elPHing out, waiting in the shadows...

2005

Oh Christ, the multiverse... Chaostrophy reemerges. For a brief moment, things might be alright...

The Ape Of Naples comes and... it's not enough. It's great, but it's not enough. The harddrives aren't there - is this machine recording?



There's shards, fragments, totems but...

"Some of the songs from Backwards are here too; mostly in much improved versions from the bootlegs that crawled the Russian cracks in the net... mostly in versions where the vocals rise and fall, clambering to get out because he knows it's almost time for words to end...

So far, we've had Boy In A Suitcase and Broccoli but, now this is out, the question remains: will Peter sing again?"

2006-2010

I hear hidden things. An odd sort of hope.

Peter Christopherson is regrouping, getting ready, coming up with some brilliant angles. It's not Coil but it's a breathlike, a tangible, a skew. He's gaining in confidence, the Thresholds being met allover again. He's going to release something immense soon...

These tickles, these treats.

I can't believe he's gone. There must be more. Collaborations, compilations, missing tracks, oddbins, entrails, humchatter...

Shit And Shine-ings

Bit late on this maybe but Shit and Shine go dubstep? What could go wrong?

Sounds necessary... there hasn't been enough genre bending / genre baiting in recent times...

and too much genre-creating...

Haven't even heard this yet but I know it's a good idea, even if it doesn't quite come off... actually, especially if it doesn't quite come off... more follies, I say...morfe mistakes,less worry... Take on all the genres, play with them, ruin them if necessary...

don't spoof them though... forget irony... go with them...

be a have a go Hero...

what does dubstep / chillwave / psychfolk / goth / amphetamine crunk mean to you?

your take is the best take... how could it be otherwise?

Let's see everyone's take on dubstep...

Ekoplekz and Hacker Farm live on Resonance FM

Bottom row, extreme left - Farmer Glitch, second from left - Ekolad, extreme right - Loki, second from right - 2ndFade; middle row, second from right - Kek-W, extreme left - Bob; top row, extreme left - Time Attendant, second from left - John Eden, third from right - Mugwump, extreme right - Cybore. We don't know who the other guys were, or why they turned up in near-identical outfits. Embarrassing.

...


...great live show, Ekoplekz almost early-Aphex Hard, Hacker Farm more ambient than I've seen them before (though ambient like an acid rush, ambient like an accidental theramin, ambient like the beats have gone round the back to meet the children of the night...)

.... whooosh; fizz ... thudddddd ... flick flick ... crackle crackle crack-le... fizzzzzzzzzz ...

scatter scatter scatter drummmmmm ... scatter scatter scatter drummmmmmm ...

Pics, audio, etc here...

Johnny Mugwump was a brilliant host; putting up with the liggers and the hangers-on (i.e. me) and generally being gutsuckingly charming... lovely to meet you Johnny!

....

...and on that note, wonderful to see John Eden and Woebot / Hollow Earth / Cybore / in the flesh too... (cheers for the drink, Matt)... John especially I've had a lot of dealings with over the years. I say dealings, I mean mostly just envy-ridden seethings over the gigs he got to see in the 80s / 90s which me and my Yeovil mates were often trying to get to as well, only somehow getting derailed by falling car doors, exotic illness, bad tidings, fleshfalls, cold readings and non-specific Chaos Magick (in roughly that order - I'm serious: a car door falling off on the motorway stopped us getting to two different gigs)

...

and, almost forgot that the equally charming Bob from West Norwood Cassette Library was also in attendance... as was Time Attendant, who jammed along with the West Country boys in their final flings... Monotron a go go...

... truly a great Blogger meeting of minds... though by then mine was a little, er, aft via Red Wine and Gin and Mojitos

... still, didn't bite anyone...

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?

Gary Glitter Memorial Society

I'm looking through Gary Glit-ter's eyes, looking through Gary Glit-ter's eyes....

Meat Loafing

Mucking about for the first time in years on Dissensus and came across this:



Which made me smile.

Can't remember Dissensus ever making me smile before.

Times, they are a changin'.

RHOd(amn)esia - a review of Kempernorton's latest without hearing it

Rho - a value of 100; Moment, Um (Ohn?) or: the endtime for RNA synthesis and
((((Road)))
Rhode(s)- and associated Colossus; Helios archetypes... Sunburned Hands of God
Damn - the exclusion from Heaven or the separation from the GODhead; the Rhett row...
Amnesia - Fugue in E (Morris Dancer) Minor - a cow's eye looking at the pathway to the Tannery at Pittards; yellow elbowed men from the sticks, eyes burned by chemical vapour...

Kempernorton's road roaming, in music... ripping the wheel from the Motorik: Kraftwerk's Autobahn, Neubaten's Onomatopeic Nnnaaammm, various Highways to Hell...

British Roads mostly resolutely not motorik, not beat-driven but altogether slow and crumbly and ambient... glitches abound, mis-steps, fumbles, false starts - Elvis's Are You Lonesome Tonight dissolving into man-giggles and choking makes much more sense as a soundtrack to West Country roads....

Kempernorton is keeping with his Sus-Sex theme but he's a W/C lad at heart, can't not be...

So...

Comus perhaps... the stop/start, the possibility of burning Christians in the fields... Comus the band and the deity.... The Wicker Man outside Bridgwater, Junction 23, sunk in a trench to avoid the

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

of local Bridgey boys, confused and aroused at a bare wicker bottom...



... the Westonzoyland Road.... past the old abandoned airstrip, now full of kids learning to drive in clapped out taxi cabs .... a territory mapped out in another life by JG Ballard... Psychogeographers in the surrounding woods, digging out trenches, hiding in Hides, watching the anthropology unfold...

The 303... the squiggle and the sound of deer hitting your windpipes... the related sound of the car behind licking it's lips...

80s style burst johnnies..... Nnnaaammm

Roadtrip to Sutton Bingham.... The Spice must flow...

Cows burning in the fields during the Foot in The Mouth days / daze... Punch drunbk farmers wandering the fields.... walking like the Scarecrows in Dr Who... the traffic slowing down to watch and then catching the barb-e-cue smell...

More.