Checking out Berlin’s bar scene again last weekend, as I’ve done a few times, I couldn’t help but think of the contrasts with London as the hour gets late. This has been especially confirmed when walking around the West End (of London I mean, not Berlin), a truly bereft place beyond midnight, whose peculiar licensing laws (imposed by Westminster Council) ensure that every pub is shut by 11-12pm flat. The net result, of course, is that the only places to go for a drink subsequently are in expensive clubs (with the exception of indie disco After-Skool Club at the Quad in Holborn, and metaller hangout The Crowbar), where you are more often than not packed like cattle into a club playing bland crap far exceeding conversational level, and subjected to a grilling from bouncers.
Of course, the area in London that corresponds most to where we were in Berlin – Prenzlauer Berg – is not the West End, but possibly Shoreditch. But even in the East End of London, the licensing laws still seem somewhat ridiculous considering that London brands itself as a 24-hour city (well, Time Out does at least). Just walk down Kingsland Road where it meets Old Street, and where the inevitable stragglers congregate outside Catch/Jaguar Shoes/Prague Bar, etc. Half of bars are closed by twelve o’clock, with only a handful still operating and inevitably policed by a group of bouncers (leading to bafflement by Spanish tourists, many of whom are probably used to a culture of siesta followed hitting bars much later in the evening).
It is incredible that in 2010 there is still only a handful of pubs or bars in such an area still open after midnight. It seems to me that this is still part of a culture in Britain that emphases drinking straight after work, so as to compete with the absurd 11 o’clock curfew – an archaic law put in place in the first World War. The Sun and The Daily Mail’s instant opposition to the last Government’s admiral stab at liberalising the country’s drinking laws were always going to influence the course of events; the reading figures for The Sun and The Mail are astronomical compared to The Guardian, so the Gruniad’s broad support for liberalised drinking laws meant little. The Government is influenced by what the tabloids say, not by any of the leftie broadsheets, and has always been thus.
As a result, the traditional British ritual of being told by a miserable-looking bouncer/pub owner to drink up at 11 o’clock look set to continue unabated, leading to another ritual, that of fights outside the pub as everyone congregates. This kind of culture has become ingrained, exacerbated by tabloid scare stories about the ‘dangers’ of longer drinking hours, how British society may collapse as we know it in an instant, and how it might affect the impressionable public, accompanied by stories of halfwits – you know the ones, you’ll usually see them in Wetherspoons pubs (or The Elbow Rooms), louder than anyone else - in a coma from excessive drinking. Of course there is club scene in London open all hours – Fabric and the 333 are just two that come to mind - but trying in vain to find a decent number of bars beyond the 1am point has become a surprisingly regular, and frequently frustrating, experience.

It doesn’t have to be this way. London could be like many countries in Europe, where bars open late to the point that people leave at different times, and conversation is invariably more relaxed rather than dominated by having to drink quickly so as to meet looming closing hours. The bar scene in Prenzlauer Berg was a case in point. There were no fights on the street and little need to engage in binge drinking because of doors shutting early. Hypothetically, if the Government was ever to truly liberalise the pub/bar laws – which seems distinctly unlikely under the Tories – what would happen would probably be an initial surge of idiots having to attend hospital after being carried away, but then a subsequent period where the novelty of liberalised bar laws would wear off. What would follow could make London’s pub/bar scene among the best in Europe. Sadly, the tabloids simply don’t want anything of the sort, which leads to us all treated as children, expected to tuck into bed at midnight, duffing our cap to the Queen along the way.

Apologies for the lack of many posts, but have been sorting out this out...the next edition of GoodnightLondon Presents on behalf of Pennyblackmusic. Click on the flyer above for a bigger picture.

Live:
The Willard Grant Conspiracy
The Monroe Transfer
Altai Rockets
Adam Donen

Preview of bands here
Plus DJs till late

Friday October 29th 2010
Doors 8pm
First act on 8:15
£7 in advance from here
£8 on door
The Half Moon Herne Hill
10 Herne Hill Lane, London, SE24
Nearest Overground: Herne Hill (and 15 minutes walk from Brixton Underground)
Bus services and map are here

http://www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk
http://www.halfmoonpub.co.uk

This is gonna be one heck of a night, suckas!

Been wanting to check out the recent screenings at The Cineroleum, a converted petrol station in Clerkenwell, yet they’ve all sold out straight away, unfortunately. Metropolis is one film that deserves to be shown on the big screen, with its dystopian vision of future Berlin still incredible looking today; ironically, of course, the huge 'ivory towers' of upper-class city financiers that the film satirises are not too far from the petrol station's location when transposed to London.
In the same spirit of DIY, Upset The Rhythm’s recent second Yes Way event in a warehouse in deepest Peckham, along with Boat Ting’s experimental nights on Bar & Co boat moored at the Thames, were events well worth the time and effort to check out. At a time when there are arts funding cuts left, right and centre, it’s still vital to have some kind of left-field music worth celebrating. The quality of some of the acts at Yes Way may have been variable - Hype Williams sounding like bad 80s porn film soundtrack music (though maybe that’s the point) and Pheromoans’ wackiness beginning to grate – but there was also some interesting explorations into drone (The Haxan Cloak, Time, Gentle Friendly), brilliantly executed thrash (Ultimate Thrush), noise (Temperatures, Blood Stereo) and dub/electronica. Along with Café Oto, The Hackney Pearl/Elevator Gallery Hackney Wick scene, and The Others, it makes a change for once too to go to a venue that has a different approach to food and drink than any homogeneous Carling-owned franchise of music venues. It’s vital that this kind of DIY spirit still exists now more than ever, with the Foundry and Barden’s Boudoir now closed.

So, RIP The Foundry (and Bardens Boudior and The Cross Kings while I'm at it). The last real bastion of anything truly left-field on Old Street has been replaced. Goodbye to the sense of individualism, of a semi-unregulated place full of strange and weird things going on, where there’s multiple TVs bunched together showing weird stuff, where people snog under banners saying ‘I SH*T’ and where bands prance around with people dressed in Roman toga gear dancing to the sound of saws being bowed and transvestites singing about No:ID cards (see picture below), backed up by women mummified with tin foil covering their heads stumbling blindly around the stage.

Goodbye to a place that serves lots of local ale (*) as opposed to only cans of Carling at £3:75, and that has a sense of anti-corporatism. Goodbye to a place that shows local artwork, weird improvised theatre/music hybrids, drawing classes and ranting poetry. Goodbye to the notion of being able to go to an interesting place that doesn’t have a half-witted security guard instructing you what to do (see also: the demise of the Spitz). Goodbye to that big sign that said “Awesome: I Could Fuckin’ Do That”, or some-such. Goodbye to memories of playing in an analogue synth orchestra for three hours and watching people bash huge metallic pipes that stretch to the ceiling in the name of art. Hello to mediocrity and another hotel, most likely anodyne and exactly the same as the one around the corner, sponsored by Hackney Council (authors of the Hackney Ocean and Stoke Newington Sports Centre - remember that? - no less).

Hello to no atmosphere and zero character – or a PA playing Zero 7, if you like.


(*) admittedly you can buy the locally-brewed beer at the Flea Pit, Café Oto etc. too, but still...

'In C' (live at the lexington: 11/7/2010) by monster bobby

For those who were too hungover/already had plans last Sunday, here is our performance of Terry Riley's In C (see below) in all it's ragged glory. Bear in mind that this was the first time some of us had ever played it (me included). I'm on keyboards - well, one of the keyboards. One of the many keyboards, in fact...

'In C' (live at the lexington: 11/7/2010) by monster bobby

This Sunday at 'The Hangover Lounge'...

Now that I'm safely ensconced back in London, and if anyone fancies coming down, I will be playing part in 'A Little Orchestra' this Sunday (11th July) at The Lexington, near Angel tube, north London, performing In C by Terry Riley along with other musicians. The event is from 2-9pm and we will be playing early (so you can get to the World Cup final with plenty of time to spare - what musician would play at the same time as that??). Guest DJ is none other than Bob Stanley from Saint Etienne. Deduct ten points if you thought I meant the French city there rather than the band.
Details (including directions) are here.

One of the weirdest things I saw while in Los Angeles was a version of the Eiffel Tower (above) in the Americana shopping area that brought to mind Baudrillard’s obsession with both simulacrum and his quote that “Los Angeles [is] no longer real, but belongs to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation”. While that may be a pretentious way of putting it, LA most definitely does feel hyperreal, especially when suffering from jetlag: there is something strange in the city’s postmodern random juxtaposition of architecture, including one of the main Scientology buildings – or rather, castles - which looks like something out of a magical Disney film (only in LA would you also have a street called L. Ron Hubbard Way, devoted entirely to Scientology buildings).


The endless neon signs informing you of Jesus’ presence seem designed paradoxically to inspire epilepsy in their drivers. Driving down its endless freeways towards Downtown feels like something from Blade Runner (which ostensibly depicted the Little Tokyo district of Downtown LA in the future) or the Terminator films, with its endless spaghetti junctions branching off in all directions and corporations on all sides (you could almost imagine Skynet Cyberdime Systems being the next building up). Yet despite its skyscrapers, Downtown doesn’t really feel like the centre of the city: LA doesn’t really feel like it has a corporeal centre as such, just endless cities existing almost autonomously, encircled by the mountains at the edge of the desert, the whole place only really navigatable by car (despite the presence of a public transport system). London’s ordered rows of semidetached houses seem boring and quaint in comparison.

"There's nobody here"...

In honour of the discussion at Cafe Oto a few months ago on 'Hauntology' in music, the above clip - mentioned during the talk - is Oneohtrix Point Never's strangely hypnotic rendering of Chris de Burgh's 'Lady In Red', the 80s schmooch classic remixed to haunting, ghostly effect.

One of the interesting points made in that talk was the fact that photography is changing from the format of photographic film to digital photography, thus losing in some respects the ghostly feel of old photographs which are tied down to a pre-digital photography area. Indeed, it can't be long before traditional photographic film, much like obsolete formats such as the floppy disk and DAT tapes, will become phased out. The unmistakably dated sepia feel of old photos will be an experience forgotten, as digital photography essentially renders all pictures pretty much the same quality, whether now or in ten years' time. It will therefore become increasingly difficult in the future to pinpoint when pictures were taken.

Indeed, a similar point could be bought up regarding analogue vs digital recording equipment. With the preference for digital tape over analogue tape (except for die-hard analogue purists such as Steve Albini and Toerag Studios in east London), even cheaply-recorded material will increasingly have a digital mid-range sheen to them, which could lead to a difficulty in twenty years time of placing songs from the previous two decades. This is in marked contrast to even records from the late 80s, which sound - twenty years on - dinsinctive of their time (the JAMC's "Psychocandy" and New Order's output, to give examples). It's interesting to note that artists such as Ariel Pink (at least in his older material) have embraced the hiss and low-fi noise of 4-track tapes as essentially an intentional, aesthetic choice in this day and age (given that digital music equipment is practically as cheap, and in the case of - now expensive - old analogue tape machines, cheaper). Much of Lee 'Scratch' Perry's dub recordings from the Black Ark days now sound utterly fixed to their time and space, analogue recordings filled with ghostly wooshing sounds, echo, and reverb; indeed, during the talk the point was made that dub was the first genre to remix songs into haunted instrumental versions where the vocals, if they did still remain, became essentially a ghost-like sound, one more instrumental in the mix alongside primitive samples of birds singing and water flowing.

Free music - Fisher Man Dub

Not only does the analogue nature of these recordings bind them to a certain time and place (the late 60's/early 70's, Jamaica), but dub can also be considered a huge influence on hauntology and the first wave of post-rock (Seefel's Quique, Tortoise etc.), along with the whole methodology of 'remix' culture, which has become increasingly superficial (I loved the story of the Aphex Twin being offered to remix a Lemonheads song, and him giving a CD of his own gabba music that happened to be lying around to the biker person who came to pick up the remix at his house). In it's own way, dub remains just an important an influence on 'hauntology' in music as the BBC Radiophonic Workshop/Delia Derbyshire does.

If George Orwell was alive today, I'm not sure what he would have made of the new London Olympic mascots, who go by the frankly creepy names of Wenlock and Madeville. The fact that Britain has more surveillance cameras than anywhere else in Europe is reflected in the CCTV cameras embedded in the eyes, ready to observe any nasty comments about the Olympics in 2012 going way over budget. Big Brother is watching us now from behind the facade of two pseudo-friendly distinctly phallic giant eight-foot walking penises (one of whom appears to have pissed himself). More than that, though, they look genuinely terrifying rather than cuddly: a cross between Cyclops; something from Akira or Tetsuo: The Iron Man or the endless slew of manga cartoons that Japan produces; a London parking meter; and a vision of aliens from another planet distorted by bad acid; while underneath possibly lies two out-of-work actors wondering how their lives ended up this way. Perhaps it's possible that they are a clever, undetected dig at Cameron & Clegg (one representing each) and Britain's morphing into 1984-style Surveillance Society? I think we should be told.

Hello all, and sorry for the delays in posting...without further ado, you may wish to enjoy The European's session on BBC6 Music from last week. Keep listening and you will also be rewarded with a wonderful version of Joy Division's "Insight" from their Peel Sessions (remember Peel sessions? Ahh, it all seems so long ago...then again, it was quite a while ago now).

GoodnightLondon MixCasts Volumes II & III

Goodnight London Mixcast Iii by Goodnightlondon on Mixcloud

SONG TIMES
00:00 - Esmerine - Quelques Mots Pleins D'Ombre
07:15 - Liquid Liquid - Optimo
9:54 - This Heat - Paper Hats
15:31 - Silver Apples - Seagreen Serenades
18:18 - Land Of Kush - Iceland Spar
32:23 - Lau Nau - Kuljen Halki Kuutarhan
36:00 - Sheila Chandra - Shehnai Song
37:52 - Fairport Convention - A Sailor’s Life
48:58 - Do Make Say Think - Dr. Hooch
56:45 - Nico - Nibelungen
1:00:00 - End

Goodnight London Mixcast Ii by Goodnightlondon on Mixcloud

SONG TIMES
00:00 - Hildur Gudnadóttir - Elevation
05:17- Tower Recordings - Harvester
13:50 - Vetiver - No One Word
20:00 - Brian Eno - An Ending (Ascent)
23:00 - Windy & Carl - Through The Portal
28:52 - The European - The Settler
31:40 - Yo La Tengo - Spec Bebop
41:40 - Broadcast - Hammer Without A Master
45:50- Spiritualized - Shine A Light
52:00 - Nels Cline, Wally Shoup, Chris Corsano- Lake of Fire Memories
54:00 - Stars Of The Lid - Requiem For Dying Mothers
1:00:00 - End


April is the cruellest month, as someone once said. In the spirit of mix cassettes treasured long ago, here's some music for those long Easter nights, or what's remaining of them...

The new play Shunt Money from the folks at Shunt - taking place in a huge tobacco warehouse (apparently once owned by Fidel Castro) down the road from their normal premises in the cavernous, catacomb-like railway arches underneath London Bridge station – is certainly visually spectacular in a way that can rival even interactive performance collective Punchdrunk’s mindblowing theatre productions (which GoodnightLondon has covered elsewhere on this blog).
Without wanting to give too much away, let’s just say that inside the panopticon-like warehouse, you feel like you are on the set of Brazil or an updated version of 1984, with dry ice in the darkness and ludicrously dressed riot police (unsurprisingly played by actors/volunteers rather than real police – or at least I’m assuming so) guarding a bronze, huge three-storey Victorian-looking metallic engine structure, replete with steam pulleys, pistons, levers, engines, and dials, resembling something that you might find in an underwater submarine in World War II, or from the set of Metropolis. Towering in the centre of the warehouse and belching out smoke like some being that’s alive, it’s certainly a site to behold, and is even more spectacular when you are trapped in it’s belly inside, with it’s transparent flooring revealing chambers, rooms and saunas below and above, while a bald figure all in white resembling Caliban in Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books descends from ceilings, scurries spider-like through the rooms below and around the opaque roof, and does somersaults around the audience at intervals. Who is the voyeur, the audience or the actors? It’s difficult to tell who is really spying on who, just as the seamless visuals can’t quite hide the handling of the story, which bases itself around Émile Zola’s L’Argent – a novel in the late 1800s prophetically inspired by the collapse of the French bank Union Generale, who went under as a consequence of dire financial management, greed, speculation and over-investment. The relevance is obvious when placed within the context of the current financial crisis (particularly the collapse of Lehman Brothers) and the mismanagement that has took place on Wall Street and the Square Mile, yet the dialogue was so cryptic and obfuscated and the script so impenetrable that it became difficult to really know what was going on half of the time when observing the interaction of the characters as they span their baseless pyramid schemes to each other. Perhaps this impenetrability was deliberate, intended to approximate or signify the Byzantine nature of the doomed dealings and wheelings – grounded, as it turned out, on nothing - that was being depicted, just as we now know that much of the financial dealings of business moguls in the real world was based on an illusion.
Regardless, Punchdrunk’s performance of Faust as a contrast somehow made complete sense even if you weren’t following the story closely, simply because the set design and themes explored in each room captured the story so perfectly and expertly. Still, like watching cities being engulfed by tidal waves and storms in The Day After Tomorrow while ignoring the schmaltzy Hollywood character plotting, the visuals alone made it worthwhile. After attending this and the Punchdrunk performances of Faust and The Masque of the Red Death, it seems obvious where the next location for an interactive theatre performance of this kind should be: Battersea Power Station, a venue that would truly make for an incredible backdrop (which is did, tantalisingly, in Children of Men, and which has at least hosted a couple of exhibitions). Yet, with depressing inevitability, the status of that stunning monument, just as with the handling of the banking system by those responsible that led to the current financial meltdown, remains mired in staggering mismanagement and negligence. Even if Shunt Money’s script was flawed at times, its central message has never been at a more prescient time.


Shunt Money image: © Shunt Money website/Christopher Sims.
Battersea Power Station photo: © Saatchi Gallery website/2006 Parkview International

Slightly late to post this, but...RIP Mark Linkous and Alex Chilton. 3rd/Sister Lovers will never quite sound the same.

I will be taking part in a photo exhibition on the theme of water, accompanied by live music, on a boat on the Thames. It'll take place on Thursday 18th March at Bar & Co, Temple Pier, Victoria Embankment, WCR2. Nearest tube: Temple.

Kaparte Promotions presents:
The Sound of Water
A visual & sonic event
The symbolism of water has a universal undertone of purity and fertility. Symbolically, it is often viewed as the source of life itself as we see evidence in countless creation myths in which life emerges from primordial waters. 11 artists photographers and four music acts celebrate the relationship between the element and the surroundings, showing with their images and sound their personal vision of water, simply on a boat, on the Thames.
Thursday 18 March
Bar & Co, Temple Pier
Victoria Embankment
PHOTOGRAPHERS SLIDESHOW:
Robert Allwood, George Bush, Sophia Dawson, Kelvin Hayes, Ben McDonnell, Angela Last, George Koutsoudopoulous, Poison Creeper & Andrea, Karoliina Hujanen, Grahame Rockhill, Dominic Simpson
LIVE MUSIC
Gagarin, Platform Five (5), Adam Donen, Will Connor (Vultures)
Plus a selection of tunes from opera to post-industrial and special visual effects...
Curated by Klarita Pandolfi
Doors 7.00pm
Entry £5 on the door

Recluse will be returning to The Flea Pit on Columbia Road E2 Thursday 4rd March 2010.

Live acts:
Tom White - Floating surround-sound textures from the smallfish/Hibernate artist.
VLK - Textural noise using max msp processed cello,
found objects and electronics.
Burning Zoo - Guitar noise loops and primordial electronics.

£3, 8pm. DJ sets from Hybernation, visuals from
FBox Records > www.myspace.com/reclusenight

EDIT: This was cancelled due to venue issues

Me on the latest Sunburned Hand of the Man album - though given that they did twelve albums alone in 2009, it may not be their latest any longer...perhaps with the increasingly cheap access of music technology and production these days, there's just too much music? Then again, Sunburned are simply following in the DIY ethic espoused by Merzbow, Sun City Girls, The New Blockaders, etc. and other underground artists in the 80s, in which their standard practice would be to release an enormous amount of mostly improvised music, no matter how lo-fi the sound; the only difference now is the format - a cornucopia of CD-Rs rather than tapes.
What's interesting with that Sunburned album is the way they approximate something similar to the early 80s focus on drums and funk in (mostly) white guitar music, with heavily rhythmic bands such as Liquid Liquid (whose 'Optimo' track - or at least what sounds like it - I'm pretty sure Sunburned sample at the start of A), 23 Skidoo, A Certain Ratio, and even This Heat, as well as very early 80s Eno - which may, of course, be down to the presence of Keiran 'Four Tet' Hebden in the producer's chair. For a band often derided (with some justification) as a shambling jam band, Sunburned can actually venture into some pretty original and innovative places.

And speaking of last November's gig, the next installment of the GoodnightLondon in association with Pennyblackmusic will be at the Half Moon Herne Hill in south London.

Live:
Television Personalities (album launch)
The Pony Collaboration
Of Arrowe Hill (album launch)
The Rebel
and compère Spencer Robertshaw
Preview of bands here

Plus DJs till late and record stalls

Saturday March 20th 2010
Doors 8pm
First act on 8:15
£5 in advance from http://www.wegottickets.com/event/71527
£7 on door
The Half Moon Herne Hill
10 Herne Hill Lane, London, SE24
Nearest Overground: Herne Hill (and 10 minutes walk from Brixton Underground)
Bus services and map are here
http://www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk

Be there or be square

After his performance at the Pennyblackmusic (in conjunction with Goodnight London) gig night last November at the Brixton Windmill, The European returns...

According to TFL's website, on the Underground this weekend no less than eight lines were either at least partially suspended or completely closed, leaving only three lines with a fully running, non-interrupted service. Those tourists eager to visit Camden Town and those dreadful, never-ending shops selling “I Went to London and Got Ripped Off for this Crap T-Shirt” or somesuch would have been perturbed to find that the Camden Town station wasn’t in action at all this weekend. The result must have led to Mornington Crescent station nearby resembling the gates of Hades. Likewise Brick Lane, now a tourist mecca and affected by the Circle Line (even if other lines serve Liverpool Street, and Aldgate East and Bethnal Green stations are relatively nearby).
There’s no doubt that modernising needs to take place on the oldest system in the world, given that the Underground infrastructure appears to be as riddled with holes as French Gruyère cheese. But when it does so, it means that people are forking out money to use a non-existent service. The Bus Replacement Services may be fine for travelling short distances; but long ones can be excruciating experiences, involving much gnashing of teeth and mounting feelings of dread as said bus trundles through never-ending weekend traffic, your eventual destination ever further off.
Yet at the same time, we endure tube fairs rising, which makes a mockery of the idea that the most expensive transport system in the world* should only charge what it does if it’s able to provide an equitable and appropriate service. And with only two years to go towards the Olympics, the prolonged closure of the Victoria line every other weekend means that visitors will find it difficult to see other parts of the city when 2012 rolls on - this on top of all the other line's closures.

*yes I know that link is three years out of date, but it still stands as far as I know...

A short message to say that if anyone fancies coming down tomorrow night (Sunday 14th), I'll be playing analogue synth in 'The Synth-Off' at the Foundry, 86 Great Eastern Street, EC2, alongside members of NOW, The Stella Marris Drone Orchestra, The Rude Mechanicals, and others. Free, 8pm.

Goodnight London MixCast Vol I

More posts will be forthcoming, but in the meantime, here's the first of a number of MixCasts that will appear on Goodnight London via those folk at Mixcloud.com...enjoy.

Goodnight London Mixcast I by Goodnightlondon on Mixcloud

SONG TIMES
00:00 - Alejandro Jodorowsky - Trance Mutation
03:30 - Hangedup - Go Let's Go
08:05 - Out Hud - This Bum's Paid
13:00 - Fursaxa - Alone In The Dark Wood
17:20 - Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. - Pussy Head Man from Outer Space
24:50 - Black Ox Orkestar - Toyte Goyes in Shineln
28:24 - Piano Magic - Theory of Ghosts
32:00 - Wooden Shjips - Clouds Over Earthquake
36:40 - Clear Horizon - Distortion Song
40:20 - Tim Hecker - Blood Rainbow
43:40 - Keith Fullerton Whitman - 2nd Early Monolith
46:08 - Sunburned Hand of the Man - Too High To Fly No More
1:00:00 - End

RIP Tim Hart

In honour of the Steeleye Span guitarist who passed away recently, here's the band in their prime - a favourite of mine as a kid. Reminds me of those long car journeys on holiday...



Watching that video, it's funny to think that for a long time folk-rock was considered by the indie cognoscenti as deeply uncool, with it's obsession with beards, flutes, Morris dancing, ridiculous clothes, et al. Yet somehow in the last decade, the presence of Devandra Barnhart, Espers, Tunng and tons of others have brought focus to the genre again and made it passably trendy - something that's obliquely addressed in this article by Simon Reynolds on the return of the beard in guitar music. Many of these artists (even if some haven't explicitly said it) have seen their music as essentially a reaction to the blandness of MTV pop music, which is somewhat ironic given that folk rock was essentially the pop - as in popular - music of it's time; the music of the people rather than the ruling classes or the monarchy. As such, it had the potential to be a truly revolutionary medium in feudal Britain and elsewhere, which is easily forgotten when viewing with cosy, rose-tinted ironic amusement videos such as above or other 70s footage of bearded folkies (and let's not even mention The Levellers...oh damn, I have).

Christmas may be over and dusted, but the winter chill and darkness still bites in Europe...so I invite you to enjoy a seasonal cover from The European, one of the performers at the Pennyblackmusic (in conjunction with Goodnight London) bands' night at the Brixton Windmill last November. Eat your heart out, Aled Jones.

WALKING IN THE AIR by THE EUROPEAN

Despite my cynicism here towards the endless reviews of the 'noughties' that have abounded this month, as the decade draws close I've contributed my own nomination in Pennyblackmusic's albums of the decade list by writers (scroll down to see my nomination, Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven, album cover above).
That album for me has remained the real soundtrack to a decade undoubtedly defined by 9/11 and everything that followed as a result, far more than the empty posturings of many of the skinny jeans brigade and their fashion spreads. Listening to that incredible album now, nearly ten years after its release, it's as if GB!YE somehow knew in advance just what a turbulent and tense decade the noughties would be, with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the anti-capitalist/IMF demonstrations, impending fear of global warming, Al-Qaeda, etc. But with it's dystopian ghostly urban noises and dread-filled samples of preachers/disaffected down-and-outs filling up the spaces inbetween the band at full throttle, what's also interesting is how, in places, the album can even sound like much inspiring electronica, from Burial (something I expanded briefly on in this thread) to Amon Tobin to Fennesz.
Indeed, this is what have always made Godspeed stand out among the likes of Explosions In The Sky and - a horrible label - many other 'post-rock' acts, who started off sounding exciting (listen to EITS' first album) but who, with their latest material, have sounded like they are beginning to regurgitate what is essentially the same predictable dynamics (this doesn't include the likes of Cul de Sac, I might add, who never followed the quiet-LOUD-quiet pattern as many of these bands have). GB!YE - along with other related luminaries of the Montreal post-rock scene such as Set Fire To Flames, Hrsta, Esmerine etc. - have been constantly innovative and unique.

I'll skip books, films, etc. and present just one other nomination - for the category of Musical Villain Of The Decade award...and there can only be one man. And no, it's not Simon Cowell.

Happy NYE, and here's to a new decade.

So sad about Jack Rose, and now Vic Chesnutt and Rowland S.Howard of The Birthday Party too...

In case you're feeling the winter chill combined with the stress of work deadlines a bit too much...I recommend you read the reply comments to this Sarah Palin 'article' on the Copenhagen summit in The Guardian. You will not be dissapointed.

RIP Jack Rose

a truly great guitarist who I had the fortune to see live

Recluse Christmas special

This Saturday, 5th December, from 5pm, £5 entry (that's a lot of fives). At it's usual home of The Flea Pit on Columbia Road in east London...live acts include Hybernation, Plus Plus, Skarabee, Same Actor & Isnaj Dui, Viv, visuals and DJs, and more...
www.recluse01.com I myspace.com/recluseclubnight

I got to meet an ex-member of The Fall recently for the first time, which makes me want to read this book even more than before now (said person - who will remain unnamed - was in the 'halcyon' period of the early 80s line-up). There are apparently a grand total of 43 former members of The Fall (though that figure could now be higher, of course), which means that the band just pips The Brian Jonestown Massacre (40 former members, if my memory serves me). Napalm Death may have come close, but are disqualified anyway by dint of the fact that they now have no members left at all from their original line-up.
Doubtless there are some brilliant stories told in that book about life on the road with Mark E. Smith. My favourite anecdote that I've heard is that when The Fall appeared on Later on Jools Holland, they made Holland sign a contract stipulating that he couldn't play boogie-woogie piano with them (for those reading this from outside the U.K., it's a late-night music programme where the presenter annoyingly feels the need to play keyboards with every band at the start of the programme). Amazingly enough, he complied. Now that is a band with class.

An inevitable by-product of reaching the end of any decade is that there will be the endless obsessive lists and highlights of that decade reprinted in all the magazines and newspapers (and on Christmas TV too, no doubt). In the middle of the deluge, Pitchfork have been a real highlight, managing to at least have a decent view of music trends and a fairly decent top 20 (among a choice of 200 - count 'em!) albums of the decade list. By contrast, the NME's top 20 seems pedestrian in contrast, even with some surprise choices in there (Primal Scream's XTRMNTR - for what it's worth, their last good moment and symbolically that of Creation Records too; PJ Harvey at six; elsewhere The Delgados at 46; erm, that's about it in the top 50).
I'll admit that Is This It is a fairly decent indie-pop record which you could appreciate - can appreciate - for it's raw instinct, and particularly if you're at a certain age. And this list certainly isn't as irritating as that deeply irritating NME 'cool list'. However, listening to one track from each of those albums on this WE7 link, one thing that strikes me is how cynically produced some of those records - particularly that Strokes track, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs track at 6, that rubbish Libertines song, etc. - really are. The deliberately distorted vocals and production on those songs give the impression that they are desperately aiming for 'authenticity', when it's pretty obvious that huge amounts of money have been spent on these albums. It's as if they don't want you to think that these albums have been produced in expensive 36-track studios, which they almost certainly were. I guess the converse is that you could argue that it's just as well these records weren't overproduced, which is probably true. But, listening to a lot of these bands that were at their peak in the early to mid 00s, I can't help but think how horribly contrived some of this stuff is: the skinny jeans, the deliberately 'raw' production, and (in the Stroke's case) studied air of cool (you know, the 'authentic NYC gang' image - ignoring the fact that they probably weren't exactly paupers) masking an ephemeral talent.
When you contrast it from their NYC contemporaries (not applicable to The Libertines, obviously), it's obvious that acts such as Liars and Oneida have turned out to be vastly more interesting, with the former actually becoming more sonically inventive with each album (culminating in the incredible 'Drum's Not Dead'). GoodnightLondon could blather on about a whole heap of great bands at this point from the other side of the pond that aren't on that list - from Atlas Sound to Wooden Shjips, and a cast of many others, not to mention some acts on this side of the Atlantic - but, in relation to above, what's clear is that time has become the great leveller in deciding what bands have longevity and originality and what don't.
I guess there are a small amount of fairly good choices further down the NME's 100 list, including Godspeed You! Black Emperor and others. And that includes the Liars, in at 58 - but rated lower down the list than Hard-Fi. Need I say more?

Am reading JG Ballard's The Drowned World at the moment, which has turned out to be a deeply prophetic read, particularly after the floods in Cumbria that have happened in the last few days, the latest in what feels like an annual event in England, as well as the omniprescent advertising for disaster movies like 2012 (something that I touched on with a previous post about Ballard here). You could argue that the flooding has nothing to do with global warming, but somehow it feels like their continued existence cannot be attributed simply to normal weather. But it's also eerily accurate in matching the description of what James Lovelock has predicted will happen to the Earth in The Revenge of Gaia, as well as other predictions of future global warming, particularly with this excerpt that mentions a future migration to the North and South poles - exactly what scientists, in fact, have predicted:

"All over the world, mean temperatures rose by a few degrees each year. The majority of tropical areas rapidly became uninhabitable, entire populations migrating north or south from temperatures of a hundred and thirty and a hundred and forty degrees...during the next thirty years the pole-ward migration of populations continued...only within the former Arctic and Antarctic Circles was life tolerable."

Ballard wrote the book in 1962, which shows just how prescient he could be. Did he know something that we didn't?

Goodnight London in association with Pennyblackmusic presents the above this Saturday...

More posts coming soon, but for now...Recluse night at The Flea Pit, £3, Thursday 5th November 2009, Columbia Road, east London. Andy Nice, Isnaj Dui and Rocketnumbernine live for your pleasure.

My thoughts here on the forthcoming Espers album.

Things in London that annoy/baffle me - an occasional series

I timed how long the traffic lights stayed red near my home the other day out of interest. I happened to notice that the light has been staying red for an inordinate amount of time recently when I've crossed the road at this set of lights. I mention this because of Diamond Geezer's post here about the 'experiments' that are taking place with various sets of traffic lights around London. I too have noticed the Orwellian sight of sinister looking men (and women) in uniform, holding weird thermometer-type instruments and phalanxed by tough looking blokes, looking serious while standing at pedestrian crossings. I was tempted to point out to them that the traffic lights near my place have stayed red for precisely ONE MINUTE AND FIFTEEN MUTHAFU***N' SECONDS. I timed it. Seventy-five seconds by my watch. Seventy-five seconds of my life that I'll never get back.
Does that not strike you as frankly ludicrous, or am I the only one? What followed when the lights went green was that it stayed green for approximately...I don't know, twenty seconds, maybe. Perhaps even less (I didn't time exactly how long it stayed green). The net result, unsurprisingly, was that people simply walk across anyway after, let's say, thirty seconds of waiting while the light is red - and continue to do so. By the time said pedestrians cross the road, the light is still red, of course. Which completely negates the reason for having a traffic lights system in the first place. And anyway, what kind of nutter would stand at a traffic light for the whole seventy-five seconds of it being red? (Well, admittedly I did, but that was because I was timing it).
I seem to remember that when I was living in Bethnal Green, there was one specific set of traffic lights that took even longer than seventy-five seconds to stay in 'standing position'. Which begs the question - am I the only one, or have other people noticed that different traffic lights tend to take different amounts of time to change from red to green compared to other lights? We should be told.
Which is why I find the notion in DG's article that pedestrians are getting too much time to cross frankly incomprehensible. So bollocks to Boris if I'm officially supposed to wait even more while the light is red.

Recluse music night

Tomorrow night (Friday 18th September) at The Flea Pit, with Alex Monk, Konntinent, Isnaj Dui and Met playing live.

Brilliant 'tribute' to the end of Oasis here in The Quietus. I'm not exactly sure what they mean in labelling Liam "genetically curious"; in any case, considering that I've not listened to an Oasis record in about twelve years, much less took any interest in them, I've found myself strangely fascinated by the announcement that Noel Gallagher has left the band. The idea that the rest of Oasis might carry on without him (at least according to this article) is hilarious enough in itself - who exactly in their right mind would pay to go and see a Noel-less Oasis, never mind buy a whole new album?

I never did understand why (What's The Story) Morning Glory? was always in the top rankings of those 'Top 50 Best British Albums Ever Polls' that Q magazine seems to do. For what it's worth, Definitely Maybe and the Some Might Say EP at least had a punk spirit and energy that made them kind of look vital for a while. Yet Morning Glory must rate as one of the most overrated albums ever (as some people are now finally recognising). It's as if the fact that it sold huge amounts of copies somehow automatically transcends it from it's blatant mediocrity and bestows it in people's minds as a piece of great art, when the likes of "Don't Look Back In Anger", "Wonderwall" and "Champagne Supernova" are just bland from start to finish, with smug, half-arsed lyrics and equally half-arsed chord arrangements, not even bothering to hide their plagiarism. Not that Oasis ever sounded like The Beatles, in my view: they could never have done albums as sonically inventive as Revolver or Sgt. Pepper because, at heart, Noel Gallagher just wasn't remotely inventive, dynamic or imaginative as a songwriter beyond his normal frame of reference. Instead, they just sound like a kind of karaoke version of The Rutles, minus the things that made The Beatles interesting and unique in the first place.
I always found it incredibly irritating the way that they would constantly repeat the maxim "we're the best/biggest band in the world", which they always seemed to do in the mid 90s in interviews, as if being the biggest band in the world equates with releasing the 'best' albums in the world (whatever that means) too. By that logic, the last couple of releases by The Rolling Stones are the best albums ever released (given that they often seemed to be labelled with the sobriquet "Biggest Rock Band In The World"), which clearly isn't true. What always irritated me too at that time was the endless articles claiming that there was 'nothing interesting' in music before Oasis - and, by extension, most of Britpop - came along; or that they 'saved' British guitar music, as if the only guitar music of the 90s that was valid was that which directly referenced the 60s (not that Oasis even did it well anyway). Even as a teenager then, I already thought that the implied notion that that there was a huge gaping hole in the early 90s before Oasis' arrival was patently bullshit.

Anyway, now that Andy Bell is (hopefully) freed from his bass duties with the Gallaghers, perhaps the silver lining is that Ride now could reform, whose first two albums were miles better than Oasis in the first place. We'll see.

The travails of moving house...I have left the wastelands of Waltham Forest, interesting as it was to see the evolution of the Olympics site at Stratford. I am no more Blazin' Squad's neighbours. Still, expect more regular posts now that I'm settled at a new abode in the capital, nested in the shadows of gleaming spires.

Since my last post, it's been weird to think how quickly technology advances, and specifically to do with music. Following on from previous posts to do with the future of music consumption, I'm thinking of Spotify, naturally, which - at least in the U.K., and Sweden, and certain other Western European countries where it exists - has took off hugely since, well, my last post (the service isn't available - at least yet - in the U.S. and Canada). Hot on it's heels, we now have a 'rival' site of sorts with the Peter Gabriel-funded WE7, which also relies on advertising in-between tracks for its revenue (most of which isn't half as hilarious as the taped messages that Spotify broadcasts of the site's fans - that includes you, Dave from Cardiff, with your intense Oasis/The Jam obsession). It is weird to think that only sixteen years ago - when I first starting going to 'serious' record shops like Rough Trade in Covent Garden (as it then was) and others - your only source for music was the weeklies (remember Melody Maker?); humble indie record shops vs corporate HMV/Virgin high street chains (depending on your preference); or the radio. Spotify has now decentered music to the point where, in those countries where it fully operates, you practically are the record shop. Like many of a certain age, my first encounter with record shops (years before going to the Rough Trade shop mentioned above) was with the long-extinct Our Price. I used to gaze at the sections on Joy Division and New Order, and look with wonderment at their distinctive and mysterious Peter Saville/Factory Records-designed covers. Ditto Depeche Mode, early Sonic Youth, etc. The idea then that they could all be sitting there on my PC was unthinkable. Back then, it would have seemed impossibly naive to believe too in the idea that these albums would essentially be there for free (if you don't count the amount that you're paying for broadband, of course (which obviously didn't exist then)), along with thousands of others - despite home taping having been a common fashion for a while already back then. This isn't even mentioning the mindboggling array of material by jazz artists - I've lost count of the amount of Miles Davis LPs on there. You could, quite possibly, never go to a record shop again and yet play a new album every day with Spotify (though there is no Beatles, Led Zeppelin and a number of others due to copyright issues).
The ramifications of Spotify are obvious: if it stays afloat (and, judging from the backing by the music industry - whatever that is these days - there's no reason why it shouldn't, despite much scepticism), future generations will become used to the idea that music is, mostly, 'free'; the idea, as in my youth, that you had to save for weeks before excitingly trudging to your independent record shop to buy the product, and then taking it home with baited breath, will slowly become defunct. Music is becoming omniprescent, fulfilling David Bowie's prediction that it'll become like running water one day. Of course, in the face of this, some record shops are still thriving, particularly those with attractions such as in-store gigs (which is precisely what Rough Trade and Pure Groove are doing, with the latter becoming less of a generic indie record shop altogether). And Spotify's lack of content from the more interesting and left-field labels (Constellation and Touch & Go, for example, or the Kranky artists) can be frustrating. Indie record shops will still thrive with obscure vinyl and obscure labels, and other examples that Spotify inevitably can't provide.
That said, one search on Spotify brought up material by the likes of Richard Youngs, Phil Niblock, and Keiji Haino, none of which can be accused of being exactly easy-listening (particularly dear Phil's numerous 25-minute long drone tracks in one chord). I guess I'm just nostalgic about the fact that the thrill of one-upmanship that I felt in 1993 when going to Rough Trade, knowing that I was the only person in my school who knew about the shop, those bands and those records, is somewhat gone. In the age of Spotify, everyone is a deeply knowledgeable music fan now, for better or worse.

Hugh Hopper RIP

Sad to hear of the news...I once saw him play, at the Camberwell College of Arts - it was in the middle of the 2006 World Cup. Germany had just beaten Argentina earlier in the evening. Charles Hawyard was on drums, grinning manically; Tymon Dogg was coaxing weird sounds out of weird home-made instruments that looked like huge metronomes zigzagged with strings, creating a sort of weird harp; while a performance artist, face painted in white, walked around the room doing odd movements and smiling demonically to the audience. There were other strange performers too.
In the middle of all this, Hopper quietly played bass, his face inscrutable. I kept thinking that I might have seen a wry smile occasionally play on his lips when viewing the surreal nature of events around him, but I couldn't quite be sure.

P.S. The below was inspired partly by my own experiences and partly by Diamond Geezer's various posts on TfL and the Underground in general.
P.P.S. Please don't sue me for this article, TfL. I don't have much money, and can't claim expenses unlike most British MPs'. If you're really aggrieved, I'll buy you a pint or something.
P.P.P.S. The image below was spotted on a wall near the Barbican Centre. No artists name was provided next to the work.

"Dear Passengers, this is an announcement from your Station Controller, on the weekend of [insert any here]. The following is a travel update.

The Bakerloo line will not be running in either direction due to the fact that the trains feel like rickety wooden sheds which will implode any minute, setting fire and incinerating all passengers within half a minute. In addition, there will be no Central line due to various engineering works which have outrun their allotted time. Meanwhile, ongoing upgrading work on the Victoria line will ensure that the line will be closed every other weekend until two-thousand-and-muthaf****n’ twelve, that’s 2012. Customers living in the Waltham Forest area should also note that, in the absence of the Victoria line running at Blackhorse Road station, they also won’t be able to get the Overground from Barking to Gospel Oak, which stops at that station, due to repair work on the track. But then who cares about the inhabitants of Blackhorse Road anyway? Frankly, it’s full of weirdoes. Who else would live on a street that’s had roadworks for at last seven years? Krypton Komics looks cool from the top deck of the bus, though. Maybe I’ll see a Deep Purple tribute band at the Standard one day. Residents of this area should note that there are replacement bus routes which go to nearby Tottenham Hale; said residents should also note that this bus route will be completely useless due to the fact that Tottenham Hale is on the Victoria line, which also won’t be running. For passengers in this predicament, we would advise taking another bus route to your destination, which will take approximately three days.
Moving on, passengers are advised not to use the Northern line in the middle of the summer, as (a) it will only confuse the hell out of you if you’re a tourist, what with it’s Byzantine complex of stops and different directions which will no doubt bypass wherever station you want to get to; and (b) the experience of being in a packed carriage in the heat will be roughly analogous to dying a prolonged, agonising death in a vat of one’s own faeces. Passengers are assured that when the new Crossrail line links up with Tottenham Court Road station in 2017, we will ensure that there will be still be an irritating trustifarian busker in the pedestrian tunnels regaling you with mediocre covers of Bob Marley ‘classics’.
Customers should also note that the Waterloo & City will be closed on Sunday, just because it’s always been closed on Sunday, as no-one in control can be arsed to run it. Jubilee Line will be closed in its entirety, which we can assure has been done entirely to spite those poshos who (a) can afford to live in West Hampstead, and/or (b) work in Canary Wharf. The District line will also be closed, because, well, who do you know ever gets the District line anyway?
Meanwhile, the Docklands Light Railway, a genuinely enjoyable jewel in our 'crown', is closed completely due to the fact that the O2 venue has turned out to be a giant spacecraft that’s lifted off and burnt the tracks.
All other lines will meanwhile be closed due to various engineering work that’s clearly taking twice as long as we initially forecasted, mainly due to workers striking / eating peanut butter sandwiches for too long / going down the pub / spontaneously combusting. There will also be no National Rail, due to leaves on the track, everywhere, all at once. Customers should note that the exception is Southern rail, who will conveniently fleece you even if you do have an Oyster card.
Please have a pleasant journey. Eat more vegetables. Watch X-Factor. Shut up and be happy, and carry on buying Oyster cards at ludicrous prices, even though your card will be rendered obsolete half the time due to the fact that the line that you actually need to use won’t be running.

On behalf of TfL staff, thank you for listening. We are transforming your tube. Message ends."