Me doing one of those 'classic album' articles.
Slightly syncophantic, I admit. But the point is, blimey that makes me feel pretty old. When that album came out many guys who are now in bands would have been about two years old. Me? I was around ten years old. Then again, Sonic Youth must be seriously pushing fifty now, so they at least make me feel young. I suppose it's the kind of thing punk rock set out to destroy, but nonetheless I'll be going to the Roundhouse to see them do the album track-by-track. Yes, I know this All Tomorrow's Parties Don't Look Back thing is pure nostalgia - Whitehouse member William Bennett certainly thinks so on this blog comment - but fuck it, I'm gonna go anyway. Maybe Whitehouse will play at Don't Look Back too? Would be interesting to hear charming classics such as "I'm Coming Up Your Ass" and "Just Like a Cunt" at Koko...but seriously, it's amazing to think that they've been going almost as long as SY, which would make them one of the first originators of the 'noise' genre along with The New Blockaders, Merzbow, etc. Incredible as it seems given the inherent uncommercial nature of the genre, noise music has now been going as long as goth (which I reckon started around '82 or so - any objections?). Of course, some smartarse could point out that something like 'Metal Machine Music' preceded noise bands by a couple of years, and before that you can cite modern experimental composers, but Lou Reed obviously wasn't a noise artist as such. Noise music must be one of the few genres where you geniunely don't need to play your instrument (even less so than punk), something that was brought home to me at a Wolf Eyes gig recently where the support act Putrifier ran around the venue with a strange guitar/drill hybrid attached to his chest. To bring this argument full circular,
SY themselves have dabbed in the genre of course - Sonic Death being a sort of neo-noise record of sorts.

K-Punk again on The Apprentice.
I'd go further than this and say that while the program is an interesting for what it reveals about the class system in this country - as K-Punk pointed out - it's also a sort of repository for our catharsis when it comes to office politics: most of us will have met characters similar to this in work, and enjoy watching all of them (except for one, obviously) get their comeuppance. I guess Katie is the long in a line.
The whole program is founded on lies, of course: we must have all heard by now that Alan Sugar doesn't actually own that place, with it's pneumatic secretary, where he fires his wanna-be protégé one by one. The implication when you watch the program - even if it's not actually stated - is undoubtedly that this office is one of many of his 'acquisitions'. Furthermore, "Sir" Alan Sugar's (and what a fuckwittedly lame prefix that is) actual equivalent to Trump Towers - which, funnily enough, Donald Trump doesn't entirely own either - is in Brentwood and looks like this, which is less New York, more Skegness in spirit. As this comment on The Guardian's blog acknowledges, winning that program is double-edged sword - the money may be good, but the actual environment in which you'll be "Sir" Alan Sugar's right-hand man (or woman) is hardly glamorous - and what does Amstrad actually do these days anyway? Sugar's hardly the boss of Tesco. He's simply known as a caricature of himself whose made a few bob from property. Not that he's exactly poor (and he's probably made more money than I ever will), but it's the whole notion that he's some Richard Branson-like genius entrepreneur that's embarrassing. But then I suppose the whole program is essentially charlatan-like anyway.
Perhaps Katie's resignation was a stroke of genius: no-one should really want to actually win the program and work at Amstrad. As that blog points out, what have previous winners of the program gone on to do? In that sense, far from being some kind of gritty reality TV show, The Apprentice is actually as airbrushed as any '15 minutes of fame'-type program, where the exposure granted by getting to the last three contestants is the real goal.

A brilliant K-Punk article on The Apprentice and class psychology.

This looks like something that could have been bestowed on the world by Beezlebub himself. If you'll pardon the expression, John Lennon must be turning in his grave. The endless obsession with all thing 60's - along with the those dreadful 'Top 500 Albums Ever', as with this one - reaches its nadir with Oasis, Stereophonics, and the creative zenith that is Razorlight redoing the whole of Sgt Pepper, along with (yawn) Kaiser Chiefs, James Morrison...still awake?
Look, I'm sure they do love the album, and so did my granny, but that doesn't mean that I want to hear Kelly Jones warbling away at the title track. This is the kind of thing that punk was supposed to destroy. But then, I suppose it's part of the whole nostalgia trip bestowed on the 60's as the shining epochal decade where the young rocked out and saved the world...er, except maybe they didn't, which is why this book, of which the image above is taken from, is such a great read - the author is old enough to have actually been there and pours scorn on the 'baby boomer' generation and it's bogus hippy credentials. Remember, these people are now running the world. Or at least they're running the big multinationals, something that's reflected in this article. Of course, you could Blair to that list, but that would be getting personal.
Admittedly, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't appreciate 60's guitar music - from the Stones and Floyd to the more wigged-out likes of Silver Apples, United States of America, Stooges (a mainly 70's band but they started in the 60's), the 13th Floor Elevators, etc. Moreover, a lot of the music I like owes it's debt to the 60's, not to mention the iconography of films like 2001 and stylish thrillers like Blow-Up, etc. So why do I hate smug 60's obsessives and their endless whistful obsession with that decade? Perhaps because the 60's has become an industry, and with it the consensus that we'll never see anything as good as it again - even though Simon Reynolds in the book Rip It Up and Start Again posits that the years 1978-84 were actually just as exciting and creative for music as anything in the 60's. Maybe it's just the way that the sixties have become like a sacred cow that you can't critize, and with it the inference that all subsequent generations are apathetic and apolitical (despite something like a million people - including me - going on that march in central London against the war in Iraq).
Anyway, Revolver was always a better album than Sgt Pepper. I mean, how can you top "Tomorrow Never Knows"??

After the Spitz, another worthwhile cause to sign (though closed by the look of it). Bit harsh, maybe, but I have to say that what annoys me most about the sycophantic fawning over him is the way that he's compared to Baudelaire and Byron, or some other historical poet, as if writing some average indie tunes and being on drugs a lot instantly makes you the genius poet of our generation. Not that I've read Baudelaire or Byron, I might add. Then there's those cynical 'guerrilla gigs' in pubs, which has a strange parallel with Alex Higgins hustling in pool bars for £10 a go. Anyway, they're on Last FM too...speaking of which here's my own page, which is (ahem) rather still-in-progress...

Well, All Tomorrow's Parties was fun once again, and had the added bonus of sunshine rather than a torrential downpour soundtracking Hair Police or 16 Bitch Pile-Up or Ashtray Navigation's (as per the one last December). This time it was The Dirty 3 curating - such a great idea, to have a band curate a festival and choose all the bands. What makes ATP great above the music too is the attention to detail - the ATP TV/whoever's curating TV channel, compiling all their favourite films and general weird music videos. Again I missed the other delights on offer (crazy golf, go- karting, the all-night cinema, the swimming-pool, the rodeo nonsense, etc.) Once again ATP chose to put on a ridiculously OTT film on Sunday night on the TV after the bands, when you're generally in a less than coherent state; the December fest had an excruciating, explicit Catherine Brelliat film (her of Romance and A Ma Seur) documenting a confused French teenager; this time, it was an equally grim film (the title escapes me) about the Nazi's invading Belarus in WWII, with images of concentration camp victims, general death and destruction, and a young Belorussian boy venting his anger and so on. It's fair to say that laughs were thin on the ground. In fact, it made any of Ingmar Bergman's miesterworks come across like a rom-com in comparison. Perhaps they'll show The Passion of the Christ at the one this weekend, which will doubtless get the party in the Crazy Horse stage going.
A Silver Mount Zion's stunning set on Sunday was the highlight of the festival, a magnificent evocation of exactly how 'post-rock' - whatever that means these days - should be done, with it's seamless mix of violin drones, chamber rock and pummeling all-out attack, Efrim Munuck's strangled sigh trying to make sense of a post-9/11 world, framed against the unforgettable outline of birds flying over the tent. ASMZ's deeply profound and moving set, with it's subtle, mournful lyrics and incendiary, climatic music, was the perfect antidote to blandness and corporatization (ironic, given that they were surrounded by Pizza Hut and Burger King, though that's no bad reflection on ATP); shame that they were followed by the dull boogie-woogie of Cat Power.
Other highlights: the hosts The Dirty 3, Grinderman, Low, Spiritualized, Einsturzende Neubauten (on at 1:30 in the morning!), Felix Lajko, Smog, Joanna Newsom, Papa M. Sadly I missed Suicide's Alan Vega but apparently he was a treat - your crazy grandad running around the stage shouting insults at the audience to a half-genius/half-rubbish techno soundtrack.

I've had Ballymore than enough

First Smallfish Records nearby on Old Street, then Hammersmith Palais (no jokes about School Disco, please), now this...perhaps Ballymore Properties have decided that people making interesting, challenging music is just too daring and dangerous a concept - all this new-fangled arty-farty stuff. I mean, Vibacathedral Orchestra onstage doing a 20-minute drone or whatever is obviously seriously dangerous and must be curtailed for the good of society and all that is proper in society. So, come September, the best venue in London (fact!) will be no more, and instead we will have...a bistroteque. Because there's obviously not enough of those around, is there? After all, why not stop there and turn the whole of east London into one big fucking chain of Starbucks? Still, there's always Islington Academy...which reminds me of a certain post on this blog, ahem...

Some new writings of mine up on Pennyblackmusic - a review of All Tomorrow's Parties here, an interview with the mighty Bardo Pond here, live reviews here and here, and an interview with a band called The Early Years here.

My joy at having my PC up and running again was short-tempered on Saturday. There I was, thinking that the song that comes up in a link in an entry posted below about the London Underground was harsh...and then I tried to get the Northern Line, en route to a planned meeting with people at London Bridge, from which I would get to the train to Pinewood and be in the audience for the television programme The I.T. Crowd.
Well, that was the plan, anyway.
Surely anyone who is sane, and who'se used the Northern Line - particularly in rush hour - will tell you that it is the depths of Hades. Perhaps it was what the devil came up when bored. Never mind that it is absolutely roasting; that it is perpetually packed; that is about as fast as a tortoise after a heavy dinner; or that it feels like it was designed in 1582. You also have to put up with the endless closures that seemingly bedevil the track. Exactly what those 1-6am nocturnal hours of the morning, when the Underground is closed, are for if not to repair the tube I don't know, but TFL seems to feel that they have to go the whole hog and close down a whole sector of the Northern Line instead - on a Saturday afternoon. All afternoon. When there are almost as many people as in rush hour. Because, strangely enough, that's what a lot of people do on Saturday: they want to go out and about after working all week.
Arriving at Bank, where I got off the Central Line and attempted to go on to the Northern Line, I found a sign saying the Northern Line wasn't running from this station. Trying vainly to find an alternative route to London Bridge, I opted for Tottenham Court Road, only to find that that whole stretch of the Northern Line was closed. Next to Euston; of course, it's closed for a fire hazard. Silly me for being so optimistic. Next to King's Cross, where I'm informed I have to go back on the only available part of the Northern Line, on the route I've just came, but now all the way to Waterloo too, and thence onto the Jubilee line to London Bridge.
In total I spent nearly an hour on a packed train next to four screaming kids, in the boiling heat, next to someone's armpit. In such circumstances, iPods are mankind's saviour.
So yeah, missed the train to Pinewood. Suddenly the thought of being in that legendary place seemed a long way off. Pissed off and dejected, at London Bridge I had to sheepishly get the bus home, the whole circular trip a pointless waste of time in the end.

apologies for the lack of posts...unfortunately, my PC has been in a state of repair the last two weeks. Back up today and some new posts will follow this week. Watch this space!

K-Punk's very own tribute to the recently deceased Jean Baudrillard. Occasionally as inpenetrable as Baudriallard himself could be, but great stuff nonetheless.

Pissed off with the London Underground? Feel that you are being ripped off with a barely functioning service that somehow is simultaneously among the priciest in the world? Angry that it's hotter in the summer than a cattle truck? Well, you're not alone, as this song attests.

Another French philosopher bites the dust

First Jacques Derrida, now Jean Baudrillard, the man who declared that the Gulf War didn't exist (he meant it did, of course, but not in the way that we really thought it presented by the media). He coined the idea that LA is the ultimate post-modern City and that much modern day life is a simulacrum - or simulacra - of itself (does that include dying?.
When I saw that he'd snuffed it today I felt a mild sadness, as I did study the guy a lot at University (but obviously not a huge swell of emotion - steady on there). I seem to remember a website that automatically generated random Baudrillard quotes for any day-to-day situations, which is pretty hilarious if you're au fait with his difficult work. If you're not, erm, I suppose you would fail to see why that's so funny. He's the epitome - or at least was - of the existential French philosopher with a metaphysical comment about everything, delivered with the usual gravitas, even if it's as mundane as mowing the lawn.
Some of his (hilariously titled) books in that Guardian article have a striking resemblance to Michel Hollebecq - perhaps it is he, rather than some French academic, who will be the next globe-trotting Gallic thinker? Given how frequently hilarious his books are, I hope so. In any case, this blog entry, also in the Guardian, is a fitting comment on JB. I didn't know that he wore a silver lamé suit onstage at Las Vegas while reading his poetry. Respect to the man. Can you imagine Richard Dawkins doing the same? I mean, you have to hand it to French philosophers, they had panache.

I’ve been lucky enough to witness some amazing crossroads between art, music and performance recently in London.
The interactive performance of Faust at a warehouse in Wapping has to be one of the most extraordinary experiences that I’ve had recently. This re-enactment of the classic story of man's pact with the devil took place on four floors of a warehouse, wherein you adorned a mask on entering and were took into a lift. The lift operator then chucked out people on different floors one by one, after which you were left to explore the different floors, each themed after the play. 210 different rooms were styled after the play, including one styled as a laboratory with an actor as Faust the alchemist muttering to himself and wondering around with pots, vials of liquid, and papyrus everywhere; another with a 50’s themed American diner; another involving bedrooms and parlours; another one with leaves at your feet and bamboo hut walls; and a plush cinema. Meanwhile, maskless actors flitted about between the rooms acting out the roles, so that at times you would literally be standing right next to them as they recited the lines and acted out the parts of the play. Whoever set up the design and layout of the different rooms did so pretty meticulously, with a million things to explore. A pretty amazing experience all round, which included a floor with fauna and another with dark, winding, endless book cases, where you were literally walking around on your own in darkness.





The other two exhibitions that have came close recently are this one off Brick Lane, in which household appliances, used washing machines and general home appliance detritus took central stage in a huge factory. Walking around it felt like something from Tetsuo: The Iron Body Man, particularly when you could go inside a defunct freezer, which led down to a tunnel.





Finally, the performance of Ray Lee’s Sound Bites at Shunt, the huge, cavernous rail arches next to London Bridge station, in which revolving red lights mounted on plinths circled around at different speed. Walking around these plinths in darkness, all you could see was the lights, set to a swirl of freeform, ambient music, oscilltaing at speed like mini planets orbiting the Sun, with everything else blottled out. It’s now on Kinetica galleries too. Pretty amazing stuff.
Next up is Gilbert & George at the Tate Modern.

Just before their set at All Tomorrow's Parties in December, I caught the Sunburned Hand of the Man play at Cargo in London, performing a live soundtrack to Ira Cohen's 60's psychedelic freakout film The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda - a synapse-scorching experience that was like every acid trip combined. The Wire have put up excerpts of it here, which must truly rate as the most tripped-out of that period - check out those dancing hippies! There's also a shorter preview below...enjoy

woah, this program on BBC2 was pretty awesome, covering the labaratory-like environs of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, full of people with white overcoats producing music that at the time must have seemed totally alien-like. The bits about the origins of the Dr Who theme and Delia Derbyshire were obviously gonna feature heavily, but what was equally interesting is how the program linked what was going on in the Workshop to the primitive electronics stuff going on around that time too - The White Noise (featuring Derbyshire), Silver Apples, United States of America, and music concrete. Some hilarious appearances by Sonic Boom (looking stoned, or does he just look like that all the time?) and the Ghost Box people.
Inevitably, one of the remaining members of the Worshop pointed out comparisons in the size of equipment in relation to today. While the huge synthesisers and patch bays took up whole rooms when stacked together, a teenager can produce most of these sounds now in a laptop. I guess this also links to the age of the iPod, in which you can Shuffle songs, taking them totally out of context - something I can never get used to. I still like to listen to albums from start to end - and so do All Tomorrow's Parties, evidently - but with the Shuffle function, an album or collection of disparate songs can be played in any order at all. The other impact of the predominance of mp3s and downloading is that, as David Bowie said recently, music will become as common as running water - whereas just 20 years ago you had to go into a record shop and breathlessly buy your vinyl at the counter (or listen to John Peel on the radio). You can still do that, of course - apart from the bit about Peel, obviously - but I guess the novelty will wear off if you can easily download it for free, and with music in such cheap, plentiful supply...on the other hand, this democratisation of music is pretty DIY in a punk kinda way, if you think about it - it certainly pisses off the major labels. It's never been easier to make your own music.
I suppose labels will have to be more inventive with their packaging to lure customers, which is something Constellation Records have obviously picked up on - their albums are always amazingly designed.

This news about the state of the UK's yoof culture is pretty emphatically depressing. Just how did we get this low? It reminds me of a post K-Punk did here (scroll down to 'Reflexive Impotence' post) about the state of British youth, and especially chimes with this:

It is not an exaggeration to say that being a teenager in late capitalist Britain is now close to being reclassified as a sickness.

Exactly why Britain has got so bad is a moot point. It's likely a combination of lots of things: the entrenched class system, the long-hours work culture (I'm thinking of France's 35 working hours a week law - then again, they haven't been hugely successful in the table either), lack of decent public services, and a transport and education system that is still crumbling and inequal (especially the latter, as this testifies). But, as K-Punk taps into in that article, there's also a feeling of impotent helplesness in Britian too, in contrast to France where youth go on protests that inspire the government to change drafted employment laws.
What the list does confirm is that, despite Holland being at the top, Scandinavia is pretty much the best place to live in the world, with all four nations in the top (does Iceland count? Anyway, it's not included at all). The fact that they've hit such a right balance in most forms of life while Britain is lumbering behind is depressing indeed. It's 10 years since Blair got into power - hopefully this report will be the straw that broke the camel's back this year.

Recluse club night

Been well busy sorting out a new night that I'm putting on with Archslider. We'll be playing at it too. It's on March 2nd....should be awesome, and my brother's playing as well.



Also going to the next ATP, with the Dirty 3 curating. Well, the line-ups allright - first time I'll see Einsturzende Neubauten, Papa M / Pajo (or whatever he's calling himself these days) and Alan Vega (sadly not playing with Suicide, but only on his own). And there's others I've seen already but are happy to see again - Dirty 3 (obviously they're playing), Nick Cave, A Silver Mount Zion, Low, Spiritiualized ('acoustic mainlines'?), Joanna Newsom (that'll bring in the Observer readers). I have to say, though, there does look to be a bit too much acoustic singer-songwritery going on...some of that stuff's allright, but a lot can be just dreaful hackneyed shit - lyrics about shooting stars and people doing histronic sets at the Kashmir club - "can we have a little bit of Kashmir hush, please!" Still, should be great, and ATP is always a blast. Hopefully the crazy golf and go-carting will actually be on this time.

RIP Alice Coltrane - admittely I haven't really heard her stuff, but y'know, hugely influential and pioneering. Respect and alll that.

Great post here by K-Punk about Celebrity Big Brother. I would add that The Sun's campaign during this whole episode stinks of hypocrisy: they'll happily castigate the French ("we wouldn't want that on our worst enemy!" - after an Englishwoman went into a coma, woke up, and believed that she was French) and the Germans, or migrants from Romania, or anything Brussels-related (insert 'bureaucrat' here), in their 'Comment' section, and it's quite allright to do that, with millions of readers chortling along. Yet anyone else in the world and all of a sudden The Sun is the most self-righteous paper in the world. Not that this is an excuse for Goody's stupidity, of course...and has anyone on Big Brother ever had an IQ that goes into double figures anyway??

Bobby Gillespie undercovered as not actually that rock n roll shock.
I was obsessed with Screamadelica when it came out. Even the boogie-woogie of that following album wasn't too bad (and the largely forgotten Dixie Narco EP was amazing). I thought Vanishing Point and XTRMNTR were their last great albums; then came Kate Moss and calling an album 'Riot City Blues'. Now Primal Scream are a ham-fisted pub rock act. Still, rock 'n' roll, eh?